"Do I not--ah! do I not love you, Edward?"
"I believe you--G.o.d be praised, I DO believe you!"
"Oh, surely, Edward, you never doubted this."
"No, no!--never!"
Such was the fervent e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of my lips; such, in spite of its seeming inconsistency, was the real belief within my soul. What was it, then, that I did doubt? wherefore, then, the misery, the suspense, the suspicion, which grew and gathered, corroding in my heart, the parent of a thousand unnamed anxieties? It will be difficult to answer. The heart of man is one of those strange creations, so various in its moods, so infinite in its ramifications, so subtle and sudden in its transitions, as to defy investigation as certainly as it refuses remedy and relief. It is enough to say that, with one schooled as mine had been, injuriously, and with injustice, there is little certainty in any of its movements. It becomes habitually capricious, feeds upon pa.s.sions intensely, without seeming detriment; and, after a season, prefers the unwholesome nutriment which it has made vital, to those purer natural sources of strength and succor, without which, though it may still enjoy life, it can never know happiness.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PROGRESS OF Pa.s.sION.
"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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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 st.u.r.dy 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 d.a.m.ned and d.a.m.ning 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion was a.s.suming some of the forms of that delirium to which, under encouragement, it is usually driven in the end. He now pa.s.sionately watched my wife"s countenance, and no longer averted his glance when it suddenly encountered hers. His eyes, naturally tender in expression, now a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumed 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.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A GROUP.
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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sion 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.