“But, do not leave me another time—not so long, Edward Do not leave me alone. Your business is one thing. THAT you must, of course, attend to; but hours—not of business—hours in which you do no business—hours of leisure—your evenings, Edward—these you must share with me—you must give to me entirely. Ah! will you not? will you not promise me?”
These were among the last words which she spoke to me ere we slept that night. The next morning, almost at awaking, she resumed the same language. I could not help perceiving that she spoke in tones of greater earnestness than usual—an earnestness expressive of anxiety for which I felt at some loss to account. Still, the tenor of what she said, at the time, gave me pleasure—a satisfaction which I did not seek to conceal, and which, while it lasted, was the sweetest of all pleasures to my soul. But the busy devil in my heart made his suggestions also, which were of a kind to produce any other but satisfying emotions. While I stood in my wife's presence—in the hearing of her angel-voice, and beholding the pure spirit speaking out from her eyes—he lay dormant, rebuked, within his prison-house, crouching in quiet, waiting a more auspicious moment for activity. Nor was he long in waiting; and then his cold, insinuating doubts—his inquiries—begot and startled mine!
“Very good—all very good!” Such was the tone of his suggestions. “She may well compound for the evenings with you, since she gives her whole mornings to your rival.”
Archimedes asked but little for the propulsion of the world. The jealous spirit—a spirit jealous like mine—asks still for the moving of that little but densely-populous world, the human heart. I forgot the sweet tones of my wife's words—the pure-souled words themselves—tones and words which, while their sounds yet lingered in my ears, I could not have questioned—I did not dare to question. The tempter grew in the ascendant the moment I had passed out of her sight; and when I met William Edgerton the next day, he acquired greatly-increased power over my understanding.
William Edgerton had evidently undergone a change. He no longer met my glances boldly with his own. Perhaps, had he done so, my eyes would have been the first to shrink from the encounter. He looked down, or looked aside, when he spoke to me; his words were few, timorous, hesitating, but studiously conciliatory; and he lingered no longer in my presence than was absolutely unavoidable. Was there not a consciousness in this? and what consciousness? The devil at my heart answered, and answered with truth, “He loves your wife.” It would have been well, perhaps, had the cruel fiend said nothing farther. Alas! I would have pardoned, nay, pitied William Edgerton, had the same chuckling spirit not assured me that she also was not insensible to him. I was continually reminded of the words, “Your business must, of course, be attended to!”—“What a considerate wife!” said the tempter; “how very unusual with young wives, with whom business is commonly the very last consideration!”
That very day, I found, on reaching home, that William Edgerton had been there—had gone there almost the moment after he had left me at the office; and that he had remained there, obviously at work in the studio, until the time drew nigh for my return to dinner. My feelings forbade any inquiries. These, facts were all related by my wife herself. I did not ask to hear them. I asked for nothing more than she told. The dread that my jealousy should be suspected made me put on a sturdy aspect of indifference; and that exquisite sense of delicacy, which governed every movement of my wife's heart and conduct, forbade her to say—what yet she certainly desired I should know—that, in all that time, she had not seen him, nor he her. She had studiously kept aloof in her chamber so long as he remained. Meanwhile, I brooded over their supposed long and secret interviews. These I took for granted. The happiness they felt—the mutual smile they witnessed—the unconscious sighs they uttered! Such a picture of their supposed felicity as my morbid imagination conjured up would have roused a doubly damned and damning fiend in the heart of any mortal.
What a task was mine, struggling with these images, these convictions!—my pride struggling to conceal, my feelings struggling to endure. Then, there were other conflicts. What friends had the Edgertons been to me—father, mother—nay, that son himself, once so fondly esteemed, once so fondly esteeming! Of course, no ties such as these could have made me patient under wrong. But they were such as to render it necessary that the wrong should be real, unquestionable, beyond doubt, beyond excuse. This I felt, this I resolved.
“I will wait! I will be patient! I will endure, though the vulture gnaws incessant at my heart! I will do nothing precipitate. No, no: I must beware of that! But let me prove them treacherous—let them once falter, and go aside from the straight path, and then—oh, then!”
Such, as in spoken words, was the unspoken resolution of my soul; and this resolution required, first of all, that I should carry out the base purpose which, without a purpose, I had already begun. I must be a spy upon their interviews. They must be followed, watched—eyes, looks, hands! Miserable necessity! but, under my present feelings and determination, not the less a necessity. And I, alone, must do it; I, alone, must peer busily into these mysteries, the revelation of which can result only in my own ruin—seeking still, with an earnest diligence, to discover that which I should rather have prayed for eternal and unmitigated blindness, that I might not see! Mine was, indeed, the philosophy of the madman.
I persevered in it like one. I yielded all opportunities for the meeting of the parties—all opportunities which, in yielding, did not expose me to the suspicion of having any sinister object. If, for example, I found, or could conjecture, that William Edgerton was likely to be at my house this or that evening, I studiously intimated, beforehand, some necessity for being myself absent. This carried me frequently from home—lone, wandering, vexing myself with the most hideous conjectures, the most self-torturing apprehensions. I sped away, obviously, into the city-to alleged meetings with friends or clients—or on some pretence or other which seemed ordinary and natural But my course was to return, and, under cover of night, to prowl, around my own premises, like some guilty ghost, doomed to haunt the scene of former happiness, in its wantonness rendered a scene of ever-during misery. Certainly, no guilty ghost ever suffered in his penal tortures a torture worse than mine at these humiliating moments. It was torture enough to me that I was sensible of all the unhappy meanness of my conduct. On this head, though I strove to excuse myself on the score of a supposed necessity, I could not deceive myself—not—not for the smallest moment.
Weeks passed in this manner—weeks to me of misery—of annoyance and secret suffering to my wife. In this time, my espionage resulted in nothing but what has been already shown—in what was already sufficiently obvious to me. William Edgerton continued his insane attentions: he sought my dwelling with studious perseverance—sought it particularly at those periods when he fancied I was absent—when he knew it—though such were not his exclusive periods of visitation. He came at times when I was at home. His passion for my wife was sufficiently evident to me, though her deportment was such as to persuade mo that she did not see it. All that I beheld of her conduct was irreproachable. There was a singular and sweet dignity in her air and manner, when they were together, that seemed one of the most insuperable barriers to any rash or presumptuous approach. While there was no constraint about her carriage, there was no familiarity—nothing to encourage or invite familiarity. While she answered freely, responding to all the needs of a suggested subject, she herself never seemed to broach one; and, after hours of nightly watch, which ran through a period of weeks, in which I strove at the shameful occupation of the espial, I was compelled to admit that all her part was as purely unexceptionable as the most jealous husband could have wished it.
But not so with the conduct of William Edgerton. His attentions were increasing. His passion was assuming some of the forms of that delirium to which, under encouragement, it is usually driven in the end. He now passionately watched my wife's countenance, and no longer averted his glance when it suddenly encountered hers. His eyes, naturally tender in expression, now assumed a look of irrepressible ardency, from which, I now fancied—pleased to fancy—that hers recoiled! He would linger long in silence, silently watching her, and seemingly unconscious, the while, equally of his scrutiny and his silence. At such times, I could perceive that Julia would turn aside, or her own eyes would be marked by an expression of the coldest vacancy, which, but for other circumstances, or in any other condition of my mind, would have seemed to me conclusive of her indignation or dislike. But, when such became my thought, it was soon expelled by some suggestion from the busy devil of my imagination:—
“They may well put on this appearance now; but are such their looks when they meet, sometimes for a whole morning, in the painting-room?” Even here, the fiend was silenced by a fact which was revealed to me in one of my nocturnal watches.
“Clifford not at home?” said Edgerton one evening as he entered, addressing my wife, and looking indifferently around the room. “I wished to tell him about some pictures which are to be seen at ——'s room—really a lovely Guido—an infant Savior—and something, said to be by Carlo Dolce, though I doubt. You must see them. Shall I call for you tomorrow morning?”
“I thank you, but have an engagement for the morning.”
“Well, the next day. They will remain but a few days longer in the city.”
“I am sorry, but I shall not be able to go even the next day, I am so busy.”
“Busy? ah! that reminds me to ask if you have given up the pencil altogether? Have you wholly abandoned the studio? I never see you now at work in the morning. I had no thought that you had so much of the fashionable taste for morning calls, shopping, and the like.”
“Nor have I,” was the quiet answer. “I seldom leave home in the morning.”
“Indeed!” with some doubtfulness of countenance, almost amounting to chagrin—“indeed! how is it that I so seldom see you, then?”
“The cares of a household, I suppose, might be my sufficient excuse. While my liege lord works abroad, I find my duties sufficiently urgent to task all my time at home.”
“Really—but you do not propose to abandon the atelier entirely? Clifford himself, with his great fondness for the art, will scarcely be satisfied that you should, even on a pretence of work.”
“I do not know. I do not think that MY HUSBAND”—the last two words certainly emphasized—“cares much about it. I suspect that music and painting, however much they delighted and employed our girlhood, form but a very insignificant part of our duties and enjoyments when we get married.”
“But you do not mean to say that a fine landscape, or an exquisite head, gives you less satisfaction than before your marriage?”
“I confess they do. Life is a very different thing before and after marriage. It seems far more serious—it appears to me a possession now, and time a sort of property which has to be economized and doled out almost as cautiously as money. I have not touched a brush this fortnight. I doubt if I have been in the painting-room more than once in all this time.”
This conversation, which evidently discomfited William Elgerton, was productive to me of no small satisfaction. After a brief interval, consumed in silence, he resumed it:—
“But I must certainly get you to see these pictures. Nay, I must also—since you keep at home—persuade you to look into the studio tomorrow, if it be only to flatter my vanity by looking at a sketch which I have amused myself upon the last three mornings. By-the-way, why may we not look at it tonight?”
“We shall not be able to examine it carefully by night,” was the answer, as I fancied, spoken with unwonted coldness and deliberation.
“So much the better for me,” he replied, with an ineffectual attempt to laugh; “you will be less able to discern its defects.”
“The same difficulty will endanger its beauties,” Julia answered, without offering to rise.
“Well, at least, you must arrange for seeing the pictures at ——'s. They are to remain but a few days, and I would not have you miss seeing them for the world. Suppose you say Saturday morning?”
“If nothing happens to prevent,” she said; “and I will endeavor to persuade Mr. Clifford to look at them with us.”
“Oh, he is so full of his law and clients, that you will hardly succeed.”
This was spoken with evident dissatisfaction. The arrangement, which included me, seemed unnecessary. I need not say that I was better pleased with my wife than I had been for some time previous; but here the juggling fiend interposed again, to suggest the painful suspicion that she knew of my whereabouts, of my jealousy, of my espionage; that her words were rather meant for my ears than for those of Edgerton; or, if this were not the case, her manner to Edgerton was simply adopted, as she had now become conscious of her own feelings—feelings of peril—feelings which would not permit her to trust herself. Ah! she feared herself: she had discovered the passion of William Edgerton, and it had taught her the character and tendency of her own. Was there ever more self-destroying malice than was mine? I settled down upon this last conviction. My wife's coldness was only assumed to prevent Edgerton from seeing her weakness; and, for Edgerton himself, I now trembled with the conviction that I should have to shed his blood.
This conviction now began to haunt my mind with all the punctuality of a shadow. It came to me unconsciously, uncalled for; mingled with other thoughts and disturbed them all. Whether at my desk, or in the courts; among men in the crowded mart, or in places simply where the idle and the thoughtless congregate, it was still my companion. It was, however, still a shadow only; a dull, intangible, half-formed image of the mind; the crude creature of a fear rather than a desire; for, of a truth, nothing could be more really terrible to me than the apparent necessity of taking the life of one so dear to me once, and still so dear to the only friends I had ever known. I need not say how silently I strove to banish this conviction. My struggles on this subject were precisely those which are felt by nervous men suddenly approaching a precipice, and, though secure, flinging themselves off, in the extremity of their apprehensions of that danger which has assumed in their imaginations an aspect so absorbing. With such persons, the extreme anxiety to avoid the deed, whether of evil or of mere danger, frequently provokes its commission. I felt that this risk encountered me. I well knew that an act often contemplated may be already considered half-performed; and though I could not rid myself of the impression that I was destined to do the deed the very idea of which made me shudder, I yet determined, with all the remaining resolution of my virtue, to dismiss it from my thought, as I resolved to escape from its performance if I could.
It would have been easy enough for me to have kept this resolution as it was enough for me to make it, had it not clashed with a superior passion in my mind; but that blindness of heart under which I labored, impaired my judgment, enfeebled my resolution, baffled my prudence, defeated all my faculties of self-preservation. I was, in fact, a monomaniac. On one subject, I was incapable of thought, of sane reasoning, of fixed purpose. I am unwilling to distinguish this madness by the word “jealousy.” In the ordinary sense of the term it was not jealousy. Phrenologists would call it an undue development of self-esteem, diseased by frequent provocation into an irritable suspiciousness, which influenced all the offices of thought. It was certain, to myself, that in instituting the watch which I did over the conduct of my wife and William Edgerton, I did not expect to discover the commission of any gross act which, in the vulgar acceptation of the world, constitutes the crime of infidelity. The pang would not have been less to my mind, though every such act was forborne, if I perceived that her eyes yearned for his coming, and her looks of despondency took note of his absence. If I could see that she hearkened to his words with the ears of one who deferred even to devotedness, and found that pleasure in his accents which should only have been accorded to mine. It is the low nature, alone, which seeks for developments beyond these, to constitute the sin of faithlessness. Of looks, words, consideration, habitual deference, and eager attention, I was quite as uxorious as I should have been of the warm kiss, or the yielding, fond embrace. They were the same in my eyes. It was for the momentary glance, the passing word, the forgetful sigh, that I looked and listened, while I pursued the unhappy espionage upon my wife and her lover. That he was her lover, was sufficiently evident—how far she was pleased with his devotion was the question to be asked and—answered!
The self-esteem which produced these developments of jealousy, in my own home, was not unexercised abroad. The same exacting nature was busy among my friends and mere acquaintance. Of these I had but few; to these I could be devoted; for these I could toil; for these I could freely have perished! But I demanded nothing less from them. Of their consideration and regard I was equally uxorious as I was of the affections of my wife. I was an INTENSIFIER in all my relations, and was not willing to divide or share my sympathies. I became suspicious when I found any of my acquaintance forming new intimacies, and sunk into reserves which necessarily produced a severance of the old ties between us. It naturally followed that my few friends became fewer, and I finally stood alone. But enough of self-analysis, which, in truth, owes its origin to the very same mental quality which I have been discussing—the presence and prevalence of EGOISME. Let us hurry our progress.
My wife advised me of the visit which William Edgerton had proposed to the picture collection.
“I will go,” she said, “if you will.”
“You must go without me.”
“Ah, why? Surely, you can go one morning?”
“Impossible. The morning is the time for business. THAT must be attended to, you know.”
“But you needn't slave yourself at it because it is business, Edward. But that I know that you are not a money-loving man, I should suppose, sometimes, from the continual plea of business, that you were a miser, and delighted in filling old stockings to hide away in holes and chinks of the wall. Come, now, Saturday is not usually a busy day with you lawyers; steal it this once and go with us. I lose half the pleasure of the sight always, when you are not with me, and when I know that you are engaged in working for me elsewhere.”
“Ah, you mistake, Julia. You shall not flatter me into such a faith. You lose precious little by my absence.”
“But, Edward, I do; believe me—it is true.”
“Impossible! No, no, Julia, when you look on the Carlo Dolce and the Guido, you will forget not only the toils of the husband, but that you have one at all. You will forget my harsh features in the contemplation of softer ones.”
“Your features are not harsh ones, Edward.”
“Nay, you shall not persuade me that I am not an Orson—a very wild man of the woods. I know I am. I know that I have harsh features; nay, I fancy you know it too, by this time, Julia.”
“I admit the sternness at times, Edward, but I deny the harshness. Besides, sternness, you know, is perfectly compatible with the possession of the highest human beauty. I am not sure that a certain portion of sternness is not absolutely necessary to manly beauty. It seems to me that I have never yet seen what I call a handsome man, whose features had not a certain sweet gravity, a sort of melancholy defiance, in them which neutralized the effect of any effeminacy which mere beauty must have had; and imparted to them a degree of character which compelled you to turn again and look, and made you remember them, even when they had disappeared from sight. Now, it may be the vanity of a wife, Edward, but it seems to me that this is the very sort of face which you possess.”
“Ah! you are very vain of me, I know—very!”
“Proud, fond—not vain!”
“You deceive yourself still, I suspect, even with your distinctions. But you must forego the pleasure of displaying my 'stern beauties,' as your particular possession, at the gallery. You must content yourself with others not so stern, though perhaps not less beautiful, and certainly more amiable. Edgerton will be your sufficient chaperon.”
“Yes, but I do not wish to be troubling Mr. Edgerton so frequently; and, indeed, I would rather forego the pleasure of seeing the pictures altogether, than trespass in this way upon his attention and leisure.”
“Indeed, but I am very sure you do not trespass upon either. He is an idle, good fellow, relishes anything better than business, and you know has such a passion for painting and pictures that its indulgence seems to justify anything to his mind. He will forget everything in their pursuit.”
All this was said with a studious indifference of manner. I was singularly successful in concealing the expression of that agony which was gnawing all the while upon my heart. I could smile, too, while I was speaking—while I was suffering! Look calmly into her face and smile, with a composure, a strength, the very consciousness of which was a source of terrible overthrow to me at last. I was surprised to perceive an air of chagrin upon Julia's countenance, which was certainly unstudied. She was one of those who do not well conceal or cloak their real sentiments. The faculty of doing so is usually much more strongly possessed by women than by men—much more easily commanded—but SHE had little of it. Why should she wear this expression of disappointment—chagrin! Was she really anxious that I should attend her? I began to think so—began to relent, and think of promising that I would go with her, when she somewhat abruptly laid her hand upon my arm.
“Edward, you leave me too frequently. You stay from me too long, particularly at evening. Do not forget, dear husband, how few female friends I have; how few friends of any sort—how small is my social circle. Besides, it is expected of all young people, newly married, that they will be frequently together; and when it is seen that they are often separate—that the wife goes abroad alone, or goes in the company of persons not of the family, it begets a suspicion that all is not well—that there is no peace, no love, in the family so divided. Do not think, Edward, that I mean this reproachfully—that I mean complaint—that I apprehend the loss of your love: oh no! I dread too greatly any such loss to venture upon its suspicion lightly, but I would guard against the conjectures of others—”
“So, then, it is not that you really wish my company. It is be-cause you would simply maintain appearances.”
“I would do both, Edward. God knows I care as little for mere appearances, so long as the substances, are good, as you do; but I confess I would not have the neighbors speak of me as the neglected wife; I would not have you the subject of vulgar reproach.”
“To what does all this tend?” I demanded impatiently.
“To nothing, Edward, if by speaking it I make you angry.”
“Do not speak it, then!” was my stern reply.
“I will not; do not turn away—do not be angry:” here she sobbed once, convulsively; but with an effort of which I had not thought her capable, she stifled the painful utterance, and continued grasping my wrist as she spoke with both her hands, and speaking in a whisper—
“You are not going to leave me in anger. Oh, no! Do not! Kiss me, dear husband, and forgive me. If I have vexed you, it was only because I was so selfishly anxious to keep you more with me—to be more certain that you are all my own!”
I escaped from this scene with some difficulty. I should be doing my own heart, blind and wilful as it was, a very gross injustice, if I did not confess that the sincere and natural deportment of Julia had rendered me largely doubtful of the good sense or the good feeling of the course I was pursuing. But the effects of it were temporary only. The very feeling, thus forced upon me, that I was, and had been, doing wrong, was a humiliating one; and calculated rather to sustain my self-esteem, even though it lessened the amount of justification which my jealousy may have supposed itself possessed of. The disease had been growing too long within my bosom. It had taken too deep root—had spread its fibres into a region too rank and stimulating not to baffle any ordinary diligence on the part of the extirpator, even if he had been industrious and sincere. It had been growing with my growth, had shared my strength from the beginning, was a part of my very existence! Still, though not with that hearty fondness which her feeling demanded, I returned her caresses, folded her to my bosom, kissed the tears from her cheek, and half promised myself, though I said nothing of this to her, that I would attend her to the picture exhibition.
But I did not. Half an hour before the appointed time I resolved to do so; but the evil spirit grew uppermost in that brief interval, and suggested to me a course more in unison with its previous counsellings. Under this mean prompting I prepared to go to the gallery, but not till my wife had already gone there under Edgerton's escort. The object of this afterthought was to surprise them there—to enter at the unguarded moment, and read the language of their mutual eyes, when they least apprehended such scrutiny.
Pitiful as was this design, I yet pursued it. I entered the picture room at a moment which was sufficiently auspicious for my objects. They were the only occupants of the apartment. I learned this fact before I ascended the stairs from the keeper of the gallery, who sat in a lower room. The stairs were carpeted. I wore light thin pumps, which were noiseless. I may add, as a singular moral contradiction, that I not only did not move stealthily, but that I set down my feet with greater emphasis than was usual with me, as if I sought, in this way to lessen somewhat the meanness of my proceeding. My approach, however, was entirely unheard; and I stood for a few seconds in the doorway, gazing upon the parties without making them conscious of my intrusion.
Julia was sitting, gazing, with hand lifted above her eyes, at a Murillo—a ragged Spanish boy, true equally to the life and to the peculiar characteristics of that artist—dark ground-work, keen, arch expression, great vivacity, with an air of pregnant humor which speaks of more than is shown, and makes you fancy that other pictures are to follow in which the same boy must appear in different phases of feeling and of fortune.
I need not say that the pictures, however, called for a momentary glance only from me. My glances were following my thoughts, and they were piercing through the only possible avenues, the cheeks, the lips, the tell-tale eyes, deep down into the very hearts of the suspected parties. They were so placed that, standing at the door, and half hidden from sight by a screen, I could see with tolerable distinctness the true expresion in each countenance, though I saw but half the face. Julia was gazing upon the pictures, but Edgerton was gazing upon her! He had no eyes for any other object; and I fancied, from the abstracted and almost vacant expression of his looks, that I without startling him from his dream. In his features, speaking, even in their obliviousness of all without, was one sole, absorbing sentiment of devotion. His eyes were riveted with a strenuous sort of gaze upon her, and her only. He stood partly on one side, but still behind her, so that, without changing her position, she could scarcely have beheld his countenance. I looked in vain, in the brief space of time which I employed in surveying them, but she never once turned her head; nor did he once withdraw his glance from her neck and cheek, a part only of which could have been visible to him where he stood. Her features, meanwhile, were subdued and placid. There was nothing which could make me dissatisfied with her, had I not been predisposed to this dissatisfaction; and when the tones of my voice were heard, she started up to meet me with a sudden flash of pleasure in her eyes which illuminated her whole countenance.
“Ah I you are come, then. I am so glad!”
She little knew why I had come. I blushed involuntarily with the conviction of the base motive which had brought me. She immediately grasped my arm, drew me to the contemplation of those pictures which had more particularly pleased herself, absolutely seeming to forget that there was a third person in the room. William Edgerton turned away and busied himself, for the first time no doubt, in the examination of a landscape on the opposite wall. I followed his movement with my glance for a single instant, but his face was studiously averted.
We will suppose some months to have elapsed in this manner—months, to me, of prolonged torture and suspicion. Circumstances, like petty billows of the sea, kept chafing upon the low places of my heart, keeping alive the feverish irritation which had already done so much toward destroying my peace, and overthrowing the guardian outposts of my pride and honor. How long the strife was to bo continued before the ocean-torrents should be let in—before the wild passions should quite overwhelm my reason—was a subject of doubt, but not the less a subject of present and of exceeding fear. In these matters, I need not say that there was substantially very little change in the character of events that marked the progress of my domestic life. William Edgerton still continued the course which he had so unwittingly begun. He still sought every opportunity to see my wife, and, if possible, to see her alone. He avoided me as much as possible; seldom came to the office; absolutely gave up his business altogether; and, when we met, though his words and manner were solicitously kind, there was a close restraint upon the latter, a hesitancy about the former, a timid apprehensiveness in his eye, and a generally-shown reluctance to approach me, which I could not but see, and could not but perceive, at the same time, that he endeavored with ineffectual effort to conceal. He was evidently conscious that he was doing wrong. It was equally clear to me that he lacked the manly courage to do right. What was all this to end in? The question became momently more and more serious. Suppose that he possessed no sort of influence over my wife! Even suppose his advances to stop where they were at present—his course already, so far, was a humiliating indignity, allowing that it became perceptible to the eyes of others. That revelation once made, there could be no more proper forbearance on the part of the husband. The customs of our society, the tone of public opinion—nay, outraged humanity itself—demanded then the interposition of the avenger. And that revelation was at hand.
Meanwhile, the keenest eyes of suspicion could behold nothing in the conduct of Julia which was not entirely unexceptionable. If William Edgerton was still persevering in his pursuit, Julia seemed insensible to his endeavors. Of course, they met frequently when it was not in my power to see them. It was my error to suppose that they met more frequently still—that he saw her invariably in his morning visits to the studio, which was not often the case—and, when they did meet, that she derived quite as much satisfaction from the interview as himself. Of their meetings, except at night, when I was engaged in my miserable watch upon them, I could say nothing. Failing to note anything evil at such periods, my jealous imagination jumped to the conclusion that this was because my espionage was suspected, and that their interviews at other periods were distinguished by less prudence and reserve. And yet, could I have reasoned rightly at this period, I must have seen that, if such were the case, there would have been no such display of EMPRESSMENT as William Edgerton made at these evening visits. Did he expend his ardor in the day, did he apprehend my scrutiny at night, he would surely have suppressed the eagerness of his glance—the profound, all-forgetting adoration which marked his whole air, gaze, and manner. Nor should I have been so wretchedly blind to what was the obvious feeling of discontent and disquiet in her bosom. Never did evenings seem to pass with more downright dullness to any one party in the world. If Edgerton spoke to her, which he did not frequently, his address was marked by a trepidation and hesitancy akin to fear—a manner which certainly indicated anything but a foregone conclusion between them; while her answers, on the other hand, were singularly cold, merely replying, and calculated invariably to discourage everything like a protracted conversation. What was said by Edgerton was sufficiently harmless—nor harmless merely. It was most commonly mere ordinary commonplace, the feeble effort of one who feels the necessity of speech, yet dares not speak the voluminous passions which alone could furnish him with energetic and manly utterance. Had the scales not been abundantly thick and callous above my eyes, how easily might these clandestine scrutinies have brought me back equally to happiness and my senses! But though I thus beheld the parties, and saw the truth as I now relate it, there was always then some little trifling circumstance that would rise up, congenial to suspicion, and cloud my conclusions, and throw me back upon old doubts and cruel jealousies. Edgerton's tone may, at moments, have been more faltering and more tender than usual; Julia's glance might sometimes encounter his, and then they both might seem to fall, in mutual confusion, to the ground. Perhaps she sung some little ditty at his instance—some ditty that she had often sung for me. Nay, at his departure, she might have attended him to the entrance, and he may have taken her hand and retained his grasp upon it rather longer than was absolutely necessary for his farewell. How was I to know the degree of pressure which he gave to the hand within his own? That single grasp, not unfrequently, undid all the better impressions of a whole evening consumed in these unworthy scrutinies. I will not seek further to account for or to defend this unhappy weakness. Has not the great poet of humanity said—
Medical men tell us of a predisposing condition of the system for the inception of epidemic. It needs, after this, but the smallest atmospheric changes, and the contagion spreads, and blackens, and taints the entire body of society, even unto death. The history of the moral constitution is not unanalogous to this. The disease, the damning doubt, once in the mind, and the rest is easy. It may sleep and be silent for a season, for years, unprovoked by stimulating circumstances; but let the moral atmosphere once receive its color from the suddenly-passing cloud, and the dark spot dilates within the heart, grows active, and rapidly sends its poisonous and poisoning tendrils through all the avenues of mind. Its bitter secretions in my soul affected all the objects of my sight, even as the jaundiced man lives only in a saffron element. Perhaps no course of conduct on the part of my wife could have seemed to me entirely innocent. Certainly none could have been entirely satisfactory, or have seemed entirely proper. Even her words, when she spoke to me alone, were of a kind to feed my prevailing passion. Yet, regarded under just moods, they should have been the most conclusive, not simply of her innocence, but of the devotedness of her heart to the requisitions of her duty. Her love and her sense of right seemed harmoniously to keep together. Gentlest reproaches eluded me for leaving her, when she sought for none but myself. Sweetest endearments encountered my return, and fondest entreaties would have delayed the hour of my departure. Her earnestness, when she implored me not to leave her so frequently at night, almost reached intensity, and had a meaning, equally expressive of her delicacy and apprehensions, which I was unhappily too slow to understand.
Six months had probably elapsed from the time of Mr. Clifford's death, when, returning from my office one day, who should I encounter in my wife's company but her mother? Of this good lady I had been permitted to see but precious little since my marriage. Not that she had kept aloof from our dwelling entirely. Julia had always conceived it a duty to seek her mother at frequent periods without regarding the ill treatment which she received; and the latter, becoming gradually reconciled to what she could no longer prevent, had at length so far put on the garments of Christian charity as to make a visit to her daughter in return. Of course, though I did not encourage it, I objected nothing to this renewed intercourse; which continued to increase until, as in the present instance, I sometimes encountered this good lady on my return from my office. On these occasions I treated her with becoming respect, though without familiarity. I inquired after her health, expressed myself pleased to see her, and joined my wife in requesting her to stay to dinner. Until now, she usually declined to do so; and her manner to myself hitherto was that of a spoiled child indulging in his sulks. But, this day, to my great consternation, she was all smiles and good humor.
A change so sudden portended danger. I looked to my wife, whose grave countenance afforded me no explanation. I looked to the lady herself, my own countenance no doubt sufficiently expressive of the wonder which I felt, but there was little to be read in that quarter which could give me any clue to the mystery. Yet she chattered like a magpie; her conversation running on certain styles of dress, various purchases of silks, and satins, and other stuffs, which she had been buying—a budget of which, I afterward discovered, she had brought with her, in order to display to her daughter. Then she spoke of her teeth, newly filed and plugged, and grinned with frequent effort, that their improved condition might be made apparent. Her chatter was peculiarly that of a flippant and conceited girl-child of sixteen, whose head has been turned by premature bringing out, and the tuition of some vain, silly, wriggling mother. I could see, by my wife's looks, that there was a cause for all this, and waited, with considerable apprehension, for the moment when we should be alone, in order to receive from her an explanation. But little of Mrs. Clifford's conversation was addressed to me, though that little was evidently meant to be particularly civil. But, a little before she took her departure, which was soon after dinner, she asked me with some abruptness, though with a considerable smirk of meaning in her face, if I “knew a Mr. Patrick Delaney.” I frankly admitted that I had not this pleasure; and with a still more significant smirk, ending in a very affected simper, meant to be very pleasant, she informed me, as she took her leave, that Julia would make me wiser. I looked to Julia when she was gone, and, with some chagrin, and with few words, she unravelled the difficulty. Her mother—the old fool—was about to be married, and to a Mr. Patrick Delaney, an Irish gentleman, fresh from the green island, who had only been some eighteen months in America.
“You seem annoyed by this affair, Julia; but how does it affect you?”
“Oh, such a match can not turn out well. This Mr. Delaney is a young man, only twenty-five, and what can he see in mother to induce him to marry her? It can only be for the little pittance of property which she possesses.”
I shrugged my shoulders while replying:—
“There must be some consideration in every marriage-contract.”
“Ah! but, Edward, what sort of a man can it be to whom money is the consideration for marrying a woman old enough to be his mother?”
“And so little money, too. But, Julia, perhaps he marries her as a mother. He is a modest youth, who knows his juvenility, and seeks becoming guardianship. But the thing does not concern us at all.”
“She is my mother, Edward.”
“True; but still I do not see that the matter should concern us. You do not apprehend that Mr. Patrick Delaney will seek to exercise the authority of a father over either of us?”
“No! but I fear she will repent.”
“Why should that be a subject of fear which should be a subject of gratulation? For my part, I hope she may repent. We are told she can not be saved else.”
Julia was silent. I continued:—
“But what brings her here, and makes her so suddenly affable with me? That is certainly a matter which looks threatening. Does she explain this to you, Julia?”
“Not otherwise than by declaring she is sorry for former differences.”
“Ah, indeed! but her sorrow comes too late, and I very much suspect has some motive. What more? the shaft is not yet shot.”
“You guess rightly; she invites us to the wedding, and insists that we must come, as a proof that we harbor no malice.”
“Is that all?”
“All, I believe.”
“She is more considerate than I expected. Well, you promised her?”
“No; I told her I could say nothing without consulting you.”
“And would you wish to go, Julia?”
“Oh, surely, dear husband.”
“We will both go, then.”
A week afterward the affair took place, and we were among the spectators.