But how to save him? How to approach him? How to keep down my own sense of wrong, my own feeling of misery, while representing the wishes and the feelings of that good old man—that venerable father? These were questions to afflict, to confound me! Still, I was committed; I must do what I had promised; undertake it at least; and the conviction that such a task was to be the severest trial of my manliness, was a conviction that necessarily helped to strengthen me to go through with it like a man.
What I had heard from Mr. Edgerton in relation to his son, though new, and somewhat surprising to myself, had not altered, in any respect, my impressions on the subject of his conduct toward, or with, my wife. Indeed, it rather served to confirm them. I could have told the old man, that, in losing all traces of his son in the neighborhood of my dwelling the night when he pursued him, he had the most conclusive proofs that he had gone to no gaming-houses. But where did he go? That was a question for myself. Had he entered my premises, and hidden himself amidst the foliage where I had myself so often harbored, while my object had been the secret inspection of my household? Could it be that he had loitered there during the last few nights of my wife's illness, in the vain hope of seeing me take my departure? This was the conclusion which I reached, and with it came the next thought that he would revisit the spot again that night. Ha! that thought! “Let him come!” I muttered to myself. “I will endeavor to be in readiness!”
But, surely, the father was grievously in error; his parental fear, alone, had certainly drawn the picture of his son's reduced and miserable condition. I had seen nothing of this. I had observed that he was shy, incommunicative—seeking to avoid me, as, according to their showing, he had striven to avoid his parents. So far our experience had been the same. But I had totally failed to perceive the marks of suffering or of sin which the vivid feelings of the father on this subject had insisted were so apparent. I had seen in Edgerton only the false friend, the traitor, stealing like a serpent to my bower, to beguile from my side the only object which made it dear to me. I could see in him only the exulting seducer, confident in his ability, artful in his endeavors, winning in his accomplishments, and striving with practised industry of libertinism, in the prosecution of his cruel schemes. I could see the grace of his bearing, the ease of his manner, the symmetry of his person, the neatness of his costume, the superiority of his dancing, the insinuation of his address. I could see these only! That he looked miserable—that he was thin to meagreness, I had not seen.
Yet, even were it so, what could this prove, as the father had conclusively shown, but guilt. Poverty could not trouble him—he had never been an unrequited lover. He had gone along the stream of society, indifferent to the lures of beauty, and with a bark that had always appeared studiously to keep aloof from the shores or shoals of matrimony. If he was miserable, his misery could only come from misconduct, not from misfortune. It was a misery engendered by guilt, and what was that guilt? I KNEW that he did not drink; and was not his course in regard to Kingsley, as narrated by that person on the night when we went to the gaming-house together—was not that sufficient to show that he was no gamester, unless he happened to be one of the most bare faced of all canting hypocrites, which I could not believe him to be. What remained, but that my calculations were right? It was guilt that was sinking him, body and soul, so that his eye no longer dared to look upward—so that his ear shrunk from the sounds of those voices which, even in the language of kindness, were still speaking to him in the severest language of rebuke. And whom did that guilt concern more completely than myself? Say that the father was to lose his son, his only son—what was my loss, what was my shame! and upon whom should the curse most fully and finally fall, if not upon the wrong-doer, though it so happened that the ruin of the guilty brought with it overthrow to the innocent scarcely less complete!
The extent of that guilt of Edgerton?
On this point all was a wilderness, vague, inconclusive, confused and crowded within my understanding. I believed that he had approached my wife with evil designs—I believed, without a doubt, that he had passed the boundaries of propriety in his intercourse with her; but I believed not that she had fallen! No! I had an instinctive confidence in her purity, that rendered it apparently impossible that she should lapse into the grossness of illicit love. What, then, was my fear? That she did love him, though, struggling with the tendency of her heart, she had not yielded in the struggle. I believed that his grace, beauty, and accomplishments—his persevering attention—his similar tastes—had succeeded in making an impression upon her soul which had effectually eradicated mine. I believed that his attentions were sweet to her—that she had not the strength to reject them; and, though she may have proved herself too virtuous to yield, she had not been sufficiently strong to repulse him with virtuous resentment.
That Edgerton had not succeeded, did not lessen HIS offence. The attempt was an indignity that demanded atonement—that justified punishment equally severe with that which should have followed a successful prosecution of his purpose. Women are by nature weak. They are not to be tempted. He who, knowing their weakness, attempts their overthrow by that medium, is equally cowardly and criminal. I could not doubt that he had made this attempt; but now it seemed necessary that I should suspend my indignation, in obedience with what appeared to be a paramount duty. A selfish reasoning now suggested compliance with this duty as a mean for procuring better intelligence than I already possessed. I need not say that the doubt was the pain in my bosom. I felt, in the words of the cold devil Iago, those “damned minutes” of him “who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves.”
The shapeless character of my fears and suspicions did not by any means lessen their force and volume. On the contrary it caused them to loom out through the hazy atmosphere of the imagination, assuming aspects more huge and terrible, in consequence of their very indistinctness; as the phantom shapes along the mountains of the Brocken, gathering and scowling in the morning or the evening twilight. To obtain more precise knowledge—to be able to subject to grasp and measure the uncertain phantoms which I feared—was, if not to reduce their proportions, at least to rid me of that excruciating suspense, in determining what to do, which was the natural result of my present ignorance.
With some painstaking, I was enabled to find and force an interview with Edgerton that very day. He made an effort to elude me—such an effort as he could make without allowing his object to be seen. But I was not to be baffled. Having once determined upon my course, I was a puritan in the inveteracy with which I persevered in it. But it required no small struggle to approach the criminal, and so utterly to subdue my own sense of wrong, my suspicions and my hostility, as to keep in sight no more than the wishes and fears of the father. I have already boasted of my strength in some respects, even while exposing my weaknesses in others. That I could persuade Edgerton and my wife, equally, of my indifference, even at the moment when I was most agonized by my doubts of their purity, is a sufficient proof that I possessed a certain sort of strength. It was a moral strength, too, which could conceal the pangs inflicted by the vulture, even when it was preying upon the vitals of the best affections and the dearest hopes of the heart. It was necessary that I should put all this strength in requisition, as well to do what was required by the father, as to pierce, with keen eye, and considerate question, to the secret soul of the witness. I must assume the blandest manner of our youthful friendship; I must say kind things, and say them with a certain frank unconsciousness. I must use the language of a good fellow—a sworn companion—who is anxious to do justice to my friend's father, and yet had no notion that my friend himself was doing the smallest thing to justify the unmeasured fears of the fond old man. Such was my cue at first. I am not so sure that I pursued it to the end; but of this hereafter.
My attention having been specially drawn to the personal appearance of William Edgerton, I was surprised, if not absolutely shocked, to see that the father had scarcely exaggerated the misery of his condition. He was the mere shadow of his former self. His limbs, only a year before, had been rounded even to plumpness. They were now sharp and angular. His skin was pale, his looks haggard; and that apprehensive shrinking of the eye, which had called forth the most keen expressions of fear and suspicion from the father's lips, was the prominent characteristic which commanded my attention during our brief interview. His eye, after the first encounter, no longer rose to mine. Keenly did I watch his face, though for an instant only. A sudden hectic flush mantled its paleness. I could perceive a nervous muscular movement about his mouth, and he slightly started when I spoke.
“Edgerton,” I said, with tones of good-humored reproach, “there's no finding you now-a-days. You have the invisible cap. What do you do with yourself? As for law, that seems destined to be a mourner so far as you are concerned. She sits like a widow in her weeds. You have abandoned her: do you mean to abandon your friends also?”
He answered, with a faint attempt to smile:—
“No; I have been to see you often, but you are never at home.”
“Ah! I did not hear of it. But if you really wished to see a husband who has survived the honeymoon, I suspect that home is about the last place where you should seek for him. Julia did the honors, I trust?”
His eye stole upward, met mine, and sunk once more upon the floor. He answered faintly:—
“Yes, but I have not seen her for some days.”
“Not since Mother Delaney's party, I believe?”
The color came again into his cheeks, but instantly after was succeeded by a deadly paleness.
“What a bore these parties are! and such parties as those of Mrs. Delaney are particularly annoying to me. Why the d—l couldn't the old tabby halter her hobby without calling in her neighbors to witness the painful spectacle? You were there, I think?”
“Yes.”
“I left early. I got heartily sick. You know I never like such places; and, as soon as they began dancing, I took advantage of the fuss and fiddle to steal off. It was unfortunate I did so, for Julia was taken sick, and has had a narrow chance for it. I thought I should have lost her.”
All this was spoken in tones of the coolest imaginable indifference. Edgerton was evidently surprised. He looked up with some curiosity in his glance, and more confidence; and, with accents that slightly faltered, he asked:—
“Is she well again? I trust she is better now.”
“Yes!” I answered, with the same sang-froid. “But I've had a serious business of watching through the last three nights. Her peril was extreme. She lost her little one.”
A visible shudder went through his frame.
“Tired to death of the walls of the house, which seems a dungeon to me, I dashed out this morning, at daylight, as soon as I found I could safely leave her; and, strolling down to the office, who should I find there but your father, perched at the desk, and seemingly inclined to resume all his former practice?”
“Indeed! my father—so early? What could be the matter? Did he tell you?
“Yes, i'faith, he is in tribulation about you. He fancies you are in a fair way to destruction. You can't conceive what he fancies. It seems, according to his account, that you are a night-stalker. He dwells at large upon your nightly absences from home, and then about your appearance, which, to say truth, is very wretched. You scarcely look like the same man. Edgerton. Have you been sick? What's the matter with you?”
“I am NOT altogether well,” he said, evasively.
“Yes, but mere indisposition would never produce such a change, in so short a period, in any man! Your father is disposed to ascribe it to other causes.”
“Ah! what does he think?”
I fancied there was mingled curiosity and trepidation in this inquiry.
“He suspects you of gaming and drinking; but I assured him, very confidently, that such was not the case. On one of these heads I could speak confidently, for I met Kingsley the other night—the night of Mother Delaney's party—who was hot and heavy against you because you refused to lend him money for such purposes. I was more indulgent, lent him the money, went with him to the house, and returned home with a pocket full of specie, sufficient to set up a small banking-operation of my own.”
“You! can it be possible!”
“True; and no such dull way of spending an evening either. I got home in the small hours, and found Julia delirious. I haven't had such a fright for a stolen pleasure, Heaven knows when. There was the doctor, and there my eternal mother-in-law, and my poor little wife as near the grave as could be! But the circumstance of refusing the money to Kingsley, knowing his object, made me confident that gaming was not the cause of your night-stalking, and so I told the old gentleman.”
“And what did he say?”
“Shook his head mournfully, and reasoned in this manner: 'He has no pecuniary necessities, has no oppressive toils, and has never had any disappointment of heart. There is nothing to make him behave so, and look so, but guilt—GUILT!'”
I repeated the last word with an entire change in the tone of my voice. Light, lively, and playful before, I spoke that single word with a stern solemnity, and, bending toward him, my eye keenly traversed the mazes of his countenance.
“HE HAS IT!” I thought to myself, as his head drooped forward, and his whole frame shuddered momentarily.
“But”—here my tones again became lively and playful—I even laughed—“I told the old man that I fancied I could hit the nail more certainly on the head. In short, I said I could pretty positively say what was the cause of your conduct and condition.”
“Ah!” and, as he uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon the floor in visible emotion.
“Yes! I told him—was I not right?—that a woman was at the bottom of it all!”
He started to his feet. His face was averted from me.
“Ha! was I not right? I knew it! I saw through it from the first; and, though I did not tell the old man THAT, I was pretty sure that you were trespassing upon your neighbor's grounds. Ha! what say you? Was I not right? Were you not stealing to forbidden places—playing the snake, on a small scale, in some blind man's Eden? Ha! ha! what say you to that? I am right, am I not? eh?”
I clapped him on the shoulder as I spoke. His face had been half averted from me while I was speaking; but now it turned upon me, and his glance met mine, teeming with inquisitive horror.
“No! no! you are not right!” he faltered out; “it is not so. Nothing is the matter with me! I am quite well—quite! I will see my father, and set him right.”
“Do so,” I said, coolly and indifferently—“do so; tell him what you please: but you can't change my conviction that you're after some pretty woman, and probably poaching on some neighbor's territory. Come, make me your confidante, Edgerton. Let us know the history of your misfortune. Is the lady pliant? I should judge so, since you continue to spend so many nights away from home. Come, make a clean breast of it. Out with your secret! I have always been your friend. WE COULD NOT BETRAY EACH OTHER, I THINK!”
“You are quite mistaken,” he said, with the effort of one who is half strangled. “There is nothing in it; I assure you, you were never more mistaken.”
“Pshaw, Edgerton! you may blind papa, but you can not blind me. Keep your secret, if you please, but, if you provoke me, I will trace it out; I will unkennel you. If I do not show the sitting hare in a fortnight, by the course of the hunter, tell me I am none myself.”
His consternation increased, but I did not allow it to disarm me. I probed him keenly, and in such a manner as to make him wince with apprehension at every word which I uttered. Morally, William Edgerton was a brave man. Guilt alone made him a coward. It actually gave me pain, after a while, to behold his wretched imbecility. He hung upon my utterance with the trembling suspense of one whose eye has become enchained with the fascinating gaze of the serpent. I put my questions and comments home to him, on the assumption that he was playing the traitor with another's wife; though taking care, all the while, that my manner should be that of one who has no sort of apprehensions on his own score. My deportment and tone tallied well with the practised indifference which had distinguished my previous overt conduct. It deceived him on that head; but the truth, like a sharp knife, was no less keen in penetrating to his soul; and, preserving my coolness and directness, with that singular tenacity of purpose which I could maintain in spite of my own sufferings—and keep them still unsuspected—I did not scruple to impel the sharp iron into every sensitive place within his bosom.
He writhed visibly before me. His struggles did not please me, but I sought to produce them simply because they seemed so many proofs confirming the truth of my conjectures. The fiend in my own soul kept whispering, “He has it!”—and a fatal spell, not unlike that which riveted his attention to the language which tore and vexed him, urged me to continue it until at length the sting became too keen for his endurance. In very desperation, he broke away from the fetters of that fascination of terror which had held him for one mortal hour to the spot.
“No more! no more!” he exclaimed, with an uncontrollable burst of emotion. “You torture me! I can stand it no longer! There is nothing in your conjecture! There is no reason for your suspicions! She is—”
“She? Ah!”
I could not suppress the involuntary exclamation. The truth seemed to be at hand. I was premature. My utterance brought him to his senses. He stopped, looked at me wildly for an instant, his eyes dilated almost to bursting. He seemed suddenly to be conscious that the secrets of his soul—its dark, uncommissioned secrets—were about to force themselves into sight and speech; and unable, perhaps, to arrest them in any other way he darted headlong from my presence.
With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul, the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was, in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms, and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius of pain—that genius which alone is universal—which adopts us from the cradle—which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips, the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn. He alone is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first proofs of his singular and superior destiny.
Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and fro, the most sore and shining passages of my soul. Had not Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My passions would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the last atonement for it.
At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused myself of tameness—the dishonorable tameness of submitting to indignity—the last of all indignities—and of conferring calmly, even good-humoredly, with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came. A brief interval sufficed—helped by the flood of tears which rushed, hot and scalding, from my eyes—to subdue the angry spirit. I remembered my pledges to the father; my unspeakable obligations to him; and when I again recollected that my convictions had not assailed the purity of my wife, and, at most, had questioned her affections only, my forbearance seemed justified.
But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be done? It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done, for the relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged, might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage to put her from me. Believing that she was still safe, I resolved, through the excess of that love which was yet the predominant passion in my soul, in spite of all its contradictions, to keep her so, if human wit could avail, and human energy carry its desires into successful completion.
To do this, there was but one process. That was flight. I must leave this city—this country. By doing so, I remove my wife from temptation, remove the temptation from the unhappy young man whom it is destroying; and thus, though by a sacrifice of my own comforts and interests, repay the debt of gratitude to my benefactor in the only effective manner. It called for no small exercise of moral courage and forbearance—no small benevolence—to come to this conclusion. It must be understood that my professional business was becoming particularly profitable. I was rising in my profession. My clients daily increased in number; my acquaintance daily increased in value. Besides, I loved my birthplace—thrice-hallowed—the only region in my eyes—
“The spot most worthy loving Of all beneath the sky.”
But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately grew active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home—a spot, remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household gods, and set them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole world-wide West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an hour. “I will go to Alabama.”
Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions. This, however, reasoned upon with the utmost circumspection, seemed the very best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued from the danger that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of taking a life so dear to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man himself—the victim to a blind passion—having no longer in his sight the temptation which misled him, would be left free to return to better thoughts, and the accustomed habits of business and society. I had concluded upon my course in the brief interval which followed my interview with William Edgerton and my return home.
The next day I saw his father. I communicated the assurance of the son, and renewed my own, that neither drunkenness nor gaming was a vice. What it was that afflicted him I did not pretend to know, but I ascribed it to want of employment; a morbid, unenergetic temperament; the fact that he was independent, and had no rough necessities to make him estimate the true nature and the objects of life; and, at the close, quietly suggested that possibly there was some affair of the heart which contributed also to his suffering. I did not deny that his looks were wretched, but I stoutly assured the old man that his parental fears exaggerated their wretchedness. We had much other talk on the subject. When we were about to separate for the day, I declared my own determination in this manner:—
“I have just decided on a step, Mr. Edgerton, which perhaps will somewhat contribute to the improvement of your son, by imposing some additional tasks upon him. I am about to emigrate for the southwest.”
“You, Clifford? Impossible! What puts that into your head?”
It was something difficult to furnish any good reason for such a movement. The only obvious reason spoke loudly for iny remaining where I was.
“This is unaccountable,” said he. “You are doing here as few young men have done before you. Your business increasing—your income already good—surely, Clifford, you have not thought upon the matter—you are not resolved.”
I could plead little other than a truant disposition for my proceeding, but I soon convinced him that I was resolved. He seemed very much troubled; betrayed the most flattering concern in my interests; and, renewing his argument for my stay, renewed also his warmest professions of service.
“I had hoped,” he said, “to have seen you and William, closely united, pursuing the one path equally and successfully together. I shall have no hopes of him if you leave us.”
“The probability is, sir, that he will do better with the whole responsibility of the office thrown upon him.”
“No! no!” said the old man, mournfully. “I have no hope of him. There seems to me a curse upon wealth always—that follows and clings to it, and never leaves it, till it works out the ruin of all the proprietors. See the number of our young men, springing from nothing, that make everything out of it—rise to eminence and power—get fortune as if it were a mere sport to command and to secure it; while, on the other Sand, look at the heirs of our proud families. Profligate, reckless, abandoned: as if, reasoning from the supposed wealth of their parents, they fancied that there were no responsibilities of their own. I saw this danger from the beginning. I have striven to train up my son in the paths of duty and constant employment; and yet—but complaint is idle. The consciousness of having tried my best to have and make it otherwise is, nevertheless, a consolation. When do you think to go?”
“In a week or two at farthest. I have but to rid myself of my impediments.”
“Always prompt; but it is best. Once resolved, action is the moral law. Still, I wish I could delay you. I still think you are committing a great error. I can not understand it. You have established yourself. This is not easy anywhere. You will find it difficult in a new country, and among strangers.”
“Nay, sir, more easy there than anywhere else. If a man has anything in him, strangers and a new country are the proper influences to bring it out. Friends and an old community keep it down, suppress, strangle it. This is the misfortune of your son. He has family, friends—resources which defeat all the operations of moral courage, and prevent independence. Necessity is the moral lever. Do you forget the saying of one of the wise men? 'If you wish your son to become a man, strip him naked and send him among strangers'—in other words, throw him upon his own resources, and let him take care of himself. The not doing this is the source of that misfortune which only now you deplored as so commonly following the condition of the select and wealthy. I do not fear the struggle in a new country. It will end in my gaining my level, be that high or low. Nothing, in such a region, can keep a man from that.”
“Ay, but the roughness of those new countries—the absence of refinement—the absolute want of polish and delicacy.”
“The roughness will not offend me, if it is manly. The world is full of it. To be anything, a man must not have too nice a stomach. Such a stomach will make him recoil from sights of misery and misfortune; and he who recoils from such sights, will be the last to relieve, to repair them. But while I admit the roughness and the want of polish among these frontier men, I deny the want of delicacy. Their habits are rude and simple, perhaps, but their tastes are pure and unaffected, and their hearts in the right place. They have strong affections; and strong affections, properly balanced, are the true sources of the better sort of delicacy. All other is merely conventional, and consists of forms and phrases, which are very apt to keep us from the thing itself which they are intended to represent. Give me these frank men and women of the frontier, while my own feelings are yet strong and earnest. Here, I am perpetually annoyed by the struggle to subdue within the social limits the expression of that nature which is for ever boiling up within me, and the utterance of which is neither more nor less than the heart's utterance of the faith and hope which are in it. We are told of those nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears polite.' They are the preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental society. Whatever hell may be, they are the very teachers that, by their mincing forbearance, conduct the poor soul that relies on them into its jaws. It is a sort of lie not to use the properest language to express our thoughts, but rather so to falsify our thoughts by a sort of lack-a-daisaical phraseology which deprives them of all their virility. A nation or community is in a bad way for truth, when there is a tacit understanding among their members to deal in the diminutives of a language, and forbear the calling of things by their right names. An Englishman, wishing to designate something which is graceful, pleasing, delicate, or fine, uses the word 'nice'—more fitly applied to bon-bons or beefsteaks, according to the stomach of the speaker. An energetic form of speech is rated, in fashionable society, as particularly vulgar. In our larger American cities, where they have much pretension but little character, a leg must not be spoken of as such. You may say 'limb,' but not 'leg.' The word 'woman'—one of the sweetest in the language—is supposed to disparage the female to whom it is applied. She must be called a 'lady,' forsooth; and this word, originally intended to pacify an aristocratic vanity, has become the ordinary appellative of every member of that gross family which, in the language of Shakspere, is only fit to 'suckle fools and chronicle small beer.' I shall be more free, and feel more honest in that rough world of the west; a region in which the dilettantism, such as it is, of our Atlantic cities, is always very prompt to sneer at and disparage; but I look to see the day, even in our time, when that west shall be, not merely an empire herself, but the nursing mother of great empires. There shall be a genius born in that vast, wide world—a rough, unlicked genius it may be, but one whose words shall fall upon the hills like thunder, and descend into the valleys like a settled, heavy rain, which shall irrigate them all with a new life. Perhaps—”
I need not pursue this. I throw it upon paper with no deliberation. It streams from me like the rest. Its tone was somewhat derived from those peculiar, sad feelings, and that pang-provoking course of thought, which it has been the purpose of this narrative to embody. In the expression of digressive but earnest notions like these, I could momentarily divert myself from deeper and more painful emotions. I had really gone through a great trial: I say a great trial—always assuming human indulgence for that disease of the blind heart which led me where I found myself, which makes me what I am. I did not feel lightly the pang of parting with my birthplace. I did not esteem lightly the sacrifice of business, comfort, and distinction which I was making; and of that greater cause of suffering, supposed or real, of the falling off in my wife's affection, the agony is already in part recorded. It may be permitted to me, perhaps, under these circumstances—with the additional knowledge, which I yet suppressed, that these sacrifices were to be made, and these sufferings endured, partly that the son might be saved—to speak with some unreserved warmth of tone to the venerable and worthy sire. He little knew how much of my determination to remove from my country was due to my regard for him. I felt assured that, if I remained, two things must happen. William Edgerton would persevere in his madness, and I should murder him in his perseverance! I banished myself in regard for that old man, and in some measure to requite his benefactions, that I might be spared this necessity.
When, the next day, I sought William Edgerton himself, and declared my novel determination, he turned pale as death. I could see that his lips quivered. I watched him closely. He was evidently racked by an emotion which was more obvious from the necessity he was under of suppressing it. With considerable difficulty he ventured to ask my reasons for this strange step, and with averted countenance repeated those which his father had proffered against my doing so. I could see that he fain would have urged his suggestions more vehemently if he dared. But the conviction that his wishes were the fathers to his arguments was conclusive to render him careful that his expostulations should not put on a show of earnestness. I must do William Edgerton the justice to say that guilt was not his familiar. He could not play the part of the practised hypocrite. He had no powers of artifice. He could not wear the flowers upon his breast, having the volcano within it. Professionally, he could be no roué. He could seem no other than he was. Conscious of guilt, which he had not the moral strength to counteract and overthrow, he had not, at the same time, the art necessary for its concealment. He could use no smooth, subtle blandishments. His cheek and eye would tell the story of his mind, though it strove to make a false presentment. I do him the further justice to believe that a great part of his misery arose from this consciousness of his doing wrong, rather than from the difficulties in the way of his success. I believe that, even were he successful in the prosecution of his illicit purposes, he would not have looked or felt a jot less miserable. I felt, while we conferred together, that my departure was perhaps the best measure for his relief. While I mused upon his character and condition, my anger yielded in part to commiseration. I remembered the morning-time of our boyhood—when we stood up for conflict with our young enemies, side by side—obeyed the same rallying-cry, recognised the same objects, and were a sort of David and Jonathan to one another. Those days!—they soothed and softened me while I recalled them. My tone became less keen, my language less tinctured with sarcasm, when I thought of these things; and I thought of our separation without thinking of its cause.
“I leave you, Edgerton, with one regret—not that we part, for life is full of partings, and the strong mind must be reconciled with them, or it is nothing—but that I leave you so unlike your former self. I wish I could do something for you.”
I gave him my hand as as I spoke. He did not grasp—he rather shrunk from it. An uncontrollable burst of feeling seemed suddenly to gush from him as he spoke:—
“Take no heed of me, Clifford—I am not worthy of YOUR thought.”
“Ha! What do you mean?”
He spoke hastily, in manifest discomfiture:—
“I am worthy of no man's thought.”
“Pshaw! you are a hypochondriac.”
“Would it were that!—But you go!—when?”
“In a week, perhaps.”
“So soon? So very soon? Do you—do you carry your family with you at once?”
There was great effort to speak this significant inquiry. I perceived that. I perceived that his eyes were on the ground while it was made. The question was offensive to me. It had a strange and painful significance. It recalled the whole cause, the bitter cause of my resolve for exile; and I could not control the altered tones of my voice in answering, which I did with some causticity of feeling, which necessarily entered into my utterance.
“Family, surely! My wife only! No great charge, I'm thinking, and her health needs an early change. Would you have me leave HER? I have no other family, you know!”
The dialogue, carried on with restraint before, was shortened by this; and, after a few business remarks, which were necessary to our office concerns, he pleaded an engagement to get away. He left me with some soreness upon my mind, which formed its expression in a brief soliloquy.
“You would have the path made even freer than before, would you? It does not content you, these long morning meditations—these pretended labors of the painting-room, the suspicious husband withdrawn, and the wife, neither scorning nor consenting, willing to believe in that devotion to the art which is properly a devotion to herself? These are not sufficient opportunities, eh? There were—more room for landscape, appoint you, Mr. Edgerton!—Ah! could I but know all. Could I be sure that she did love him! Could I be sure that she did not! That is the curse—that doubt!—Will it remain so? No! no! Once removed—once in those forest regions, it can not be that she will repine for anything. She MUST love me then—she will feel anew the first fond passion. She will forget these passing fancies. They WILL pass! She is young. The image will haunt her no longer—at least, it will no longer haunt me!”
So I spoke, but I was not so sure of that last. The doubt did not trouble me, however. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. But I had another test yet to try. I wished to see how Julia would receive the communication of my purpose. As yet she knew nothing of my contemplated departure. “It will surprise her,” I thought to myself. “In that surprise she will show how much our removal will distress her!”
But when I made known to her my intention, the surprise was all my own. The communication did not seemed to distress her at all. Surprise her it did, but the surprise seemed a pleasant one. It spoke out in a sudden flashing of the eye, a gentle smiling of the mouth, which was equally unexpected and grate ful to my heart.
“I am delighted with the idea!” she exclaimed, putting her arms about my neck. “I think we shall be so happy there. I long to get away from this place.”
“Indeed! But are you serious?”
“To be sure.”
“I was apprehensive it might distress you.”
“Oh! no! no! I have been dull and tired here, for a long while; and I thought, when you told me that Mr. Kingsley had gone to Alabama, how delightful it would be if we could go too.”
“But you never told me that.”
“No.”
“Nor even looked it, Julia.”
“Surely not—I should have been loath to have you think, while your business was so prosperous, and you seemed so well satisfied here, that I had any discontent.”
“I satisfied!” I said this rather to myself than her.
“Yes, were you not? I had no reason to think otherwise. Nay, I feared you were too well satisfied, for I have seen so little of you of late. I'm sure I wished we were anywhere, so that you could find your home more to your liking.”
“And have such notions really filled your brain Julia?”
“Really.”
“And you have found me a stranger—you have missed me?”
“Ah! do you not know it, Edward?”
“You shall have no need to reproach me hereafter. We will go to Alabama, and live wholly for one another. I shall leave you in business time only, and hurry back as soon as I can.”
“Ah, promise me that?”
“I do!”
“We shall be so happy then. Then we shall take our old rambles, Edward, though in new regions, and will resume the pencil, if you wish it.”
This was said timidly.
“To be sure I wish it. But why do you say, 'resume'? Have you not been painting all along?”
“No! I have scarcely smeared canvass the last two months”
“But you have been sketching?”
“No!”
“What employed you then in the studio? How have you passed your mornings?”
This inquiry was made abruptly, but it did not disturb her. Her answer was strangely satisfactory.
“I have scarcely looked in upon the studio in all that time.”
I longed to ask what Edgerton had done with himself, and whether he had been suffered to employ himself alone, in his morning visits, but my tongue faltered—I somehow dared not. Still, it was something to have her assurance that she had not found her attractions in that apartment in which my jealous fancy had assumed that she took particular delight. She had spoken with the calmness of innocence, and I was too happy to believe her. I put my arms about her waist.
“Yes, we will renew the old habits, for I suppose that business there will be less pressing, less exacting, than I have found it here. We will take our long walks, Julia, and make up for lost time in new sketches. You have thought me a truant, Julia—neglectful hitherto! Have you not?”
“Ah, Edward!”—Her eyes filled with tears, but a smile, like rainbow, made them bright.
“Say, did you not?”
“Do not be angry with me if I confess I thought you very much altered in some respects. I was fearful I had vexed you.”
“You shall have no more reason to fear. We shall be the babes in the wood together. I am sure we shall be quite happy, left to ourselves. No doubts, no fears—nothing but love. And you are really willing to go?”
“Willing! I wish it! I can get ready in a day.”
“You have but a week. But, have you no reluctance? Is there nothing that you regret to leave? Speak freely, Julia. Your mother, your friends—would you not prefer to remain with them?”
She placed her hands on my shoulders, laid her head close to my bosom and murmured—how softly, how sweetly—in the touching language of the Scripture damsel.
“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to refrain from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!”
I folded her with tremulous but deep joy in my embrace; and in that sweet moment of peace, I wondered that I ever should have questioned the faith of such a woman.