It was difficult to escape from the generous embraces of my ardent father-in-law; and the whole street witnessed them.
That afternoon I spent in part with the Edgertons. I went soon after my own dinner and found the family at theirs. William Edgerton was present.
The old man insisted that I should take a seat at the table and join them in a bottle of wine, which I did. It was a family, bearing apparently all the elements within itself of a happiness the most perfect and profound. Particularly an amiable family. Yet there was no insipidity. The father has already been made known; the son should be by this time; the mother was one of those strong-minded, simple women, whose mind may be expressed by its most striking characteristic--independence. She had that most obvious trait of aristocratic breeding, a quiet, indefinable, easy dignity--a seemingly natural quality, easy itself, that puts everybody at ease, and yet neither in itself nor in others suffered the slightest approach to be made to unbecoming familiarity. A sensible, gentlewoman--literally gentle--yet so calm, so firm, you would have supposed she had never known one emotion calculated to stir the sweet, gla.s.s-like placidity of her deportment.
And yet, amidst all this calm placidity, with an eye looking benevolence, and a considerateness that took note of your smallest want, she sustained the pangs of one yearning for her firstborn; dissatisfied and disappointed in his career, and apprehensive for his fate. The family was no longer happy. The worm was busy in all their hearts.
They treated me kindly, but it was obvious that they were suffering. A visible constraint chilled and baffled conversation; and I could see the deepening anxieties which clouded the face of the mother, whenever her eye wandered in the direction of her son. This it did, in spite, I am convinced, of her endeavors to prevent it.
I, too, could now look in the same quarter. My feelings were less bitter than they were, and William Edgerton shared in the change. I did not the less believe him to have done wrong, but, in the renewed conviction of my wife"s purity, I could forgive him, and almost think he was sufficiently punished in entertaining affections which were without hope. Punished he was, whether by hopelessness or guilt, and punished terribly. I could see a difference for the worse in his appearance since I had last conferred with him. He was haggard and spiritless to the last degree. He had few words while we sat at table, and these were spoken only after great effort; and, regarding him now with less temper than before, it seemed to me that his parents had not exaggerated the estimate which they had formed of his miserable appearance. He looked very much like one, who had abandoned himself to nightly dissipation, and those excesses of mind and body, which sap from both the saving and elevating substance. I did not wonder that the old man ascribed his condition to the bottle and the gaming-table. But that I knew better, such would most probably have been my own conclusion.
The conversation was not general--confined chiefly to Mr. Edgerton the elder and myself. Mrs. Edgerton remained awhile after the cloth had been withdrawn, joining occasionally in what was said, and finally left us, though with still a lingering, and a last look toward her son, which clearly told where her heart was. William Edgerton followed her, after a brief interval, and I saw no more of him, though I remained for more than an hour. He had said but little. It was with some evident effort, that he had succeeded in uttering some general observation on the subject of the Alabama prairies--those beautiful "gardens of the desert,"
"For which the speech of England has no name."
My removal had been the leading topic of our discourse, and when I declared my intention to start on the very next day, and that the present was a farewell visit, the emotion of the son visibly increased.
Soon after he left the room. When I was alone with the father, he took occasion to renew his offer of service, and, in such a manner, as to take from the offer its tone of service. He seemed rather to ask a favor than to suggest one. Money he could spare--the repayment should be at my own leisure--and my bond would be preferable, he was pleased to say, to that of any one he knew. I thanked him with becoming feelings, though, for the present, I declined his a.s.sistance. I pledged myself, however, should circ.u.mstances make it necessary for me to seek a loan, to turn, in the first instance, to him. He had been emphatically my friend--THE friend, sole, singular--never fluctuating in his regards, and never stopping to calculate the exact measure of my deserts. I felt that I could not too much forbear in reference to the son, having in view the generous friendship of the father.
That day, and the night which followed it, was a long period with me. I had to see many acquaintances, and attend to a thousand small matters.
I was on my feet the whole day, and even when the night came I had no rest. I was in the city till near eleven o"clock. When I got home I found that my wife had done her share of the tasks. She had completed her preparations. Our luggage was all ready for removal. To her I had a.s.signed the labor of packing up her pictures, her materials for painting, her clothes, and such other matters as she desired to carry with us, to our new place of abode. The rest was to be sold by a friend after our departure, and the proceeds remitted. I knew I should need them all. Most of our baggage was to be sent by water. We travelled in a private carriage, and consequently, could take little. Julia, unlike most women, was willing to believe with me that impediments are the true name for much luggage; and, with a most unfeminine habit, she could limit herself without reluctance to the merest necessities. We had no bandboxes, baskets, or extra bundles, to be stuffed here and there, filling holes and corners, and crowding every s.p.a.ce, which should be yielded entirely to the limbs of the traveller. Though sensitive and delicate in a great degree, she had yet that masculine sense which teaches that, in the fewness of our wants lies our truest source of independence; and she could make herself ready for taking stage or steamboat in quite as short a time as myself.
Her day"s work had exhausted her. She retired, and when I went up to the chamber, she already seemed to sleep. I could not. Fatigue, which had produced exhaustion, had baffled sleep. Extreme weariness becomes too much like a pain to yield readily to repose. The moment that exercise benumbs the frame, makes the limbs ache, the difficulty increases of securing slumber. I felt weary, but I was restless also. I felt that it would be vain for me to go to bed. Accordingly, I placed myself beside the window, and looked out meditatingly upon the broad lake which lay before our dwelling.
The night was very calm and beautiful. The waters from the lake were falling. Tide was going out, and the murmuring clack of a distant sawmill added a strange sweetness to the hour, and mingled harmoniously with the mysterious goings on of midnight. The starlight, not brilliant, was yet very soft and touching. Isolated and small clouds, like dismembered ravens" wings, flitted lightly along the edge of the western horizon, shooting out at intervals brief, brilliant flashes of lightning. There was a flickering breeze that played with the shrubbery beneath my window, making a slight stir that did not break the quiet of the scene, and gave a graceful movement to the slender stems as they waved to and fro beneath its pressure. A n.o.ble pride of India [Footnote: China tree: the melia azedaracha of botanists. A tree peculiar to the south, of singular beauty, and held in high esteem as a shade-tree.]
rose directly before my eyes to the south--its branches stretching almost from within touch of the dwelling, over the fence of a neighbor.
The whole scene was fairy-like. I should find it indescribable. It soothed my feelings. I had been the victim of a long and painful moral conflict. At length I had a glimmering of repose. Events, in the last few days--small events which, in themselves denoted nothing--had yet spoken peace to my feelings. My heart was in that dreamy state of languor, such as the body enjoys under the gradually growing power of the anodyne, in which the breath of the summer wind brings a language of luxury, and the most emperiest sights and sounds in nature minister to a capacity of enjoyment, which is not the less intoxicating and sweet because it is subdued. I mused upon my own heart, upon the heart which I so much loved and had so much distrusted--upon life, its strange visions, delusive hopes, and the sweet efficacy of mere shadows in promoting one"s happiness et last. Then came, by natural degrees, the thought of that strange mysterious union of light and darkness--life and death--the shadows that we are; the substances that we are yet to be.
The future!--still it rose before me--but the darkness upon it alone showed me it was there. It did not offend me, however, for my heart was glowing in a present starlight. It was the hour of hopes rather than of fears; and in the mere prospect of transition to the new--such is the elastic nature of youth--I had agreed to forget every pang whether of idea or fact, which had vexed and tortured me in the perished past. My musings were all tender yet joyful--they partook of that "joy of grief"
of which the bard of Fingal tells us. I felt a big tear gathering in my eye, I knew not wherefore. I felt my heart growing feeble, with the same delight which one would feel at suddenly recovering a great treasure which had been supposed for ever lost. I fancied that I had recovered my treasure, and I rose quietly, went to the bed where Julia lay sleeping peacefully, and kissed her pale but lovely cheeks. She started, but did not waken--a gentle sigh escaped her lips, and they murmured with some indistinct syllables which I failed to distinguish. At that moment the notes of a flute rose softly from the grove without.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
RENEWED AGONIES.
In that same moment my pangs were all renewed; my repose of mind departed; once more my heart was on fire, my spirit filled with vague doubts, grief, and commotion. The soft, sweet, preluding note of the player had touched a chord in my soul as utterly different from that which it expressed, as could by any possibility be conceived. Heart and hope were instantly paralyzed. Fear and its train, its haunting spectres of suspicion, took possession of the undefended citadel, and established guard upon its deserted outposts. I tottered to the window which I had left--I shrouded myself in the folds of the curtain, and as the strains rose, renewed and regular, I struggled to keep in my breath, listening eagerly, as if the complaining instrument could actually give utterance to the cruel mystery which I equally dreaded and desired to hear.
The air which was played was such as I had never heard before. Indeed, it could scarcely be called an air. It was the most capricious burden of mournfulness that had ever had its utterance from wo. Fancy a mute--one bereft of the divine faculty of speech, by human, not divine ministration. Fancy such a being endowed with the loftiest desires, moved by the acutest sensibilities, having already felt the pleasures of life, yet doomed to a denial of utterance, denied the language of complaint, and striving, struggling through the imperfect organs of his voice to give a name to the agony which works within him. That flute seemed to me to moan, and sob, and shiver, with some such painful mode of expression as would be permitted to the "half made-up" mortal of whom I have spoken. Its broken tones, striving and struggling, almost rising at times into a shriek, seemed of all things to complain of its own voicelessness.
And yet it had its melody--melody, to me, of the most vexing power. I should have called the strain a soliloquizing one. It certainly did not seem addressed to any ears. It wanted the continuance of apostrophe. It was capricious. Sometimes the burden fell off suddenly--broken--wholly interrupted--as if the vents had been all simultaneously and suddenly stopped. Anon, it rose again--soul-piercing if not loud--so abruptly, and with an utterance so utterly gone with wo, that you felt sure the poor heart must break with the next breath that came from the laboring and inefficient lungs. A "dying fall" succeeding, seemed to afford temporary relief. It seemed as if tears must have fallen upon the instrument, Its language grew more methodical, more subdued, but not less touching. I fancied, I felt, that, entering into the soul of the musician, I could give the very words to the sentiment which his instrument vainly strove to speak. What else but despair and utter self-abandonment was in that broken language? The full heart over-burdened, breaking, to find a vent for the feelings which it had no longer power to contain. And yet; content to break, breaking with a melancholy sort of triumph which seemed to say--
"Such a death has its own sweetness; love sanctifies the pang to its victim. It is a sort of martyrdom. He who loves truly, though he loves hopelessly, has not utterly loved in vain. The devoted heart finds a joy in the offering, though the Deity withholds his acceptance--though a sudden gust from heaven scatters abroad the rich fruits which the devotee has placed upon the despised and dishonored altar."
Such, I fancied, was the proud language of that melancholy music. Had I been other than I was--nay, had I listened to the burden under other circ.u.mstances and in another place--I should most probably have felt nothing but sympathy for the musician. As it was, I can not describe my feelings. All my racking doubts and miseries returned. The tone of triumph which the strain conveyed wrought upon me like an indignity. It seemed to denote that "foregone conclusion" which had been my cause of apprehension so long. Could it be then that Julia was really guilty?
Could she have given William Edgerton so much encouragement that triumph and exultation should still mingle with his farewell accents of despair?
Ah! what fantasies preyed upon my soul; haunted the smallest movements of my mind; conjured up its spectres, and gave bitterness to its every beverage! When I thought thus of Julia, I rose cautiously from my seat, approached the bed where she was lying, and gazed steadily, though with the wildest thrill of emotion, into her face. I verily believe had she not been sleeping at that moment--sleeping beyond question--she would have shared the fate of
"The gentle lady wedded to the Moor."
I was in the mood for desperate things.
But she slept--her cheek upon her arm--pale, but oh! how beautiful! and looking, oh! how pure! Her breathing was as tranquil and regular as that of an infant. I felt, while I gazed, that hers must be the purity of an infant also. I turned from beholding her, as the renewed notes of the musician once more ascended to the chamber. I again took my seat at the window and concealed myself behind the curtain. Here I had been concealed but a few moments, when I heard a rustling in the branches of the tree. Meanwhile, the music again ceased. I peered cautiously from behind the drapery, and fancied I beheld a dark object in the tree. It might be one of its branches, but I had not been struck by it before. I waited in breathless watchfulness. I saw it move. Its shape was that of a man. An exulting feeling of violence filled my breast. I rose stealthily, went into the dressing-room, and took up one of my pistols which lay on the toilet, and which I had that afternoon prepared with a travelling charge.
"A brace of bullets," I muttered to myself, "will bring out another sort of music from this rare bird."
With this murderous purpose I concealed myself once more behind the curtain. The figure was sufficiently distinct for aim. The window was not more than twelve or fourteen paces from the tree. My nerves were now as steady as if I had been about to perform the most ordinary action.
What then prevented me? What stayed my arm? A single thought--a momentary recollection of an event which had taken place in my boyhood.
What a providence that it should have occurred to me at that particular moment. The circ.u.mstance was this.
When first sent to school I had been frequently taken at advantage by a bigger boy. He had twice my strength--he took a strong dislike for me--perhaps, because I was unwilling to pay him that deference, which, as school-bully, he extorted from all others;--and he drubbed me accordingly, whenever an opportunity occurred. My resistance was vain, and only stimulated him to increased brutality. One day he was lying upon the gra.s.s, beneath an oak which stood in the centre of a common on which we usually played. It happened that I drew near him unperceived.
In approaching him I had no purpose of a.s.sault or violence. But the circ.u.mstance of my nearing him without being seen, suggested to my mind a sudden thought of revenging all my previous injuries. I felt bitterness and hate enough, had I possessed the strength, to have slain a dozen. I do not know that I had any design to slay him--to revenge myself was certainly my wish. Of death probably I had no idea. I looked about me for the agent of my vengeance. A pile of old brick which had formed the foundations of a dwelling which had stood on the spot, and which had been burned, conveniently presented itself to my eye. I possessed myself of as large a fragment as my little hand could grasp; I secured a second as a dernier resort. Slowly and slily--I may add, basely--I approached him from behind, levelled the brick at his head, and saw the blood fly an instant after the contact. He was stunned by the blow, staggered up, however, with his eyes blinded by blood, and moved after me like a drunken man. I receded slowly, lifting the remaining fragment which I held, intending, if he approached me, to repeat the blow.
On a sudden he fell forward sprawling. Then I thought him dead, and for the first time the dreadful consciousness of my crime in its true character, came to my mind. I can not describe the agony of fear and horror which filled my soul. He did not die, but he was severely hurt.
The recollection of that event--of what I then suffered--came to me involuntarily, as I was about to perform a second similar crime. I shuddered with the recollection of the past, and shrunk, under the equal force of shame and conscience, from the performance of a deed which, otherwise, I should probably have committed in the brief time which I employed for reflection. With a feeling of nervous horror I put the weapon aside, and sinking once more into the chair beside the window I bore with what fort.i.tude I might, the renewal of the accursed but touching strains that vexed me.
William Edgerton was a master of the flute. Often before, when we were the best friends, had I listened with delight, while he compelled it into discourse of music wild and somewhat incoherent still: his present performance had now attained more continuousness and character. It was still mournful, but its sorrows rose and fell naturally, in compliance with the laws of art. I listened till I could listen no longer. Human patience must have its limits. My wife still slept. I descended the stairs, opened the door with as much cautiousness as possible, and prepared to grapple the musician and haul him into the light.
It might be Edgerton or not. I was morally sure it was. By grappling with him, in such a situation, I should bring the affair to a final issue, though it might not be a murderous one. But of that I did not think; I went forward to do something; what that something was to be, it was left for time and chance to determine. But, suddenly, as I opened the door, the music ceased. Stepping into the yard, I heard the sound as of a falling body. I naturally concluded that he had heard the opening of the door, and had suffered himself to drop down to the ground. I took for granted that he had descended on the opposite side of the yard and within the enclosure of a neighbor. I leaped the fence, hurried to the tree, traversed the grounds, and found n.o.body. I returned, reached my own premises, and found the gate open which opened upon the street. He had gone then in that direction. I turned into this street, posted with all speed to the corner of the square and met only the watchman.
I asked, but he had seen n.o.body. The street was perfectly quiet, I returned, reascended to my chamber, found Julia now awake, and evidently much agitated. She had arisen in my absence, and was only about to re-enter the bed when I rushed up stairs.
What was I to think? What fear? I was too conscious of the suspicious nature of my thoughts and fears to suffer myself to ask any questions--and she, unhappily for both of us--she said nothing. Had she but spoken--had she but uttered the natural inquiry--"Did you hear that strange music, husband?"--how much easier had been her extrication. But she was silent, and I was again let loose upon a wide sea of fears and doubts and d.a.m.nable apprehensions. Once more, and now with a feeling which would not have made me forbear the use of any weapon, however deadly, I re-examined my own enclosure, but in vain. The horrible thought which possessed me was that he had even penetrated the dwelling while I was seeking him in the street; that they had met; and how was I to know the degree of tenderness which had marked their meeting and sweetness to their adieus!
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
THE NEW HOME.
With these revived suspicions, half stifled, but still struggling in my bosom, did I commence my journey for the West. My arrangements were comprehensive, but simple. I had procured a second-hand travelling carriage and fine pair of horses from an acquaintance, at a very moderate price--a price which, I well knew, I should easily get for them again on reaching my place of destination. I was my own driver. I had no money to spare in purchasing what might be dispensed with. A single trunk contained all the necessary luggage of my wife and self. What was not absolutely needed by the wayside was sent on by water. This included my books, desks, Julia"s painting materials, and such other articles of the household, as were of cost and not bulky. I had previously written--as I may have stated already--to my friend Kingsley. He was to procure me temporary lodgings in the town of M---. I left much to his judgment and experience. He had once before been in Alabama and having interests there, had made himself familiar with everything in that region, necessary to be known. I put myself very much in his hands.
I was too anxious to get away to urge any difficulties or make any troublesome requisitions. He was simply to procure me an abiding-place in some private family--if possible in the suburbs--until I should be able to look about me. Economy was insisted upon. I had precious little money to spare, and even the spoils of my one night"s visit to the gaming-house, were of no small help in sustaining me in my determination to remove. I had not applied them previously. I confess to a feeling of shame when I was compelled by necessity at last to use them. I had saved something already from my professional income, and I procured an advance on my furniture which was left for sale. I had calculated my expenses in removing and for one year"s residence in M--, and was prepared, so far as poor human foresight may prepare itself, to keep want from our doors at least for that period. I trusted to good fortune, my own resources, and the notorious fact that, at that day, there were few able lawyers in M--, to secure me an early and valuable practice. I carried with me letters from the best men in the community I had left. But I carried with me what was of more value than any letters, even though they be written in gold. I carried with me methodical habits and an energy of character which would maintain my resolution, and bear me through, to a safe conclusion, in any plan which I should contemplate. Industry and perseverance are the giants that cast down forests, drain swamps, level mountains, and create empires. I flattered myself that with these I had other and crowning qualities of intellect and culture. Perhaps it may be admitted that I had. But of what avail were all when coupled with the blind heart? Enough--I must not antic.i.p.ate.
Filled with the exciting fancies engendered by the affair of the last night, I commenced my journey. The day was a fine one; the sun cheery and bright without being oppressive; and soon, gliding through the broad avenues, lined with n.o.blest trees, which conducted us from the city to the forests, we had the pleasant carol of birds, and the lively chirp of hopping insects.
I was always a lover of the woods; green shady dells, and winding walks amidst crowding foliage. I cared little for mere flowers. A garden was never a desire in my mind. I could be pleased to see and to smell, but I had no pa.s.sion for its objects. But the trees--the big, venerable oaks, like patriarchs and priests; the lofty and swaggering pines in their green helmets, like warriors of the feudal ages--these were forms that I could worship. I may say, I loved trees with a real pa.s.sion. Flowers, and the taste for flowers seemed to me always petty; but my instincts led me to behold a sneaking and most impressive grandeur, in these old lords of the forest, that had been the first, rising from the mighty mother to attest the wondrous strength of her resources, and the teeming glories of her womb.
Now, however, they did not fill my soul with earnest reachings, as had ever been the case before. They soothed me somewhat, but the eyes of my mind were turned within. They looked only at the prostration of that miserable heart which was torturing itself with vague, wild doubts--guessing and conjecturing with an agonizing pain, and without the least hope of profit. I could not drive from my thoughts, the vexing circ.u.mstances of the last night in the city; and, for the first day of our journey, the hours moved with oppressive slowness. Objects which I had formerly loved to contemplate and always found sweet and refreshing, now gave me little pleasure and exacted little of my attention; and I reached our stopping-place for the night with a sense of weariness and stupor which no mere fatigue of body, I well knew, could ever have occasioned.
But this could not last. The elasticity of my nature, joined with the absence of that one person whom I had now learned to regard as my evil genius, soon enabled me to shake off the oppressive doubts and sadness which fettered and enfeebled me. Once more I began to behold the forests with all the eyes of former delight and affection, and I was conscious, after the progress of a day or two, of periods in which I entirely lost sight of William Edgerton and all my suspicions in the sweet warmth of a fresh and pleasing contemplation.
Something of this--nay, perhaps, the most of it, was due to my wife herself. There was a change in her air and manner which sensibly affected my heart. I had treated her coldly at first, but she had not perceived it; at least she had not suffered it to influence her conduct; and I was equally pleased and surprised to behold in her language, looks, and deportment, a degree of life and buoyant animation, which reminded me of the very champagne exuberance and spirit of her youth.
Her eyes flashed with a sense of freedom. Her voice sounded with the silvery clearness of one, who, long pent up in the limits of a dungeon, uses the first moment of escape into the forests to delight himself with song. She seemed to have just thrown off a miserable burden;--and, as for any grief--any sign of regret at leaving home and tics from which she would not willingly part--there was not the slightest appearance of any such feeling in her mind, look, or manner. Kindly, considerately, and sweetly, and with a cheery smile in her eyes, and a springing vigor in the accents of her voice, she strove to enliven the way and to expel the gloom which she soon perceived had fastened itself upon my soul. Her own cares, if she had any, seemed to be very slight, and were utterly lost in mine. She spoke of our new abiding-place with a hearty confidence; that it would be at once a home of prosperity and peace; and, altogether convinced me for the time that the sacrifice must be comparatively very small, which she had made on leaving her birth-place.
I very soon wondered that I should have fancied that William Edgerton was ever more to her than the friend of her husband.
Our journey was slow but not tedious. Had our progress been only half so rapid, I should have been satisfied. It was love alone that my heart wanted. I craved for nothing but the just requital of my own pa.s.sion. I had no complaint, no affliction, when I could persuade myself that I had not thrown away my affections upon the ungrateful and undeserving.
a.s.sured now of the love of the beloved one, all the intense devotion of my soul was re-awakened; and the deepest shadows of the forest, gloomy and desolate as they were, along the waste tracts of Georgia and Alabama--in that earlier day--enlivened by the satisfied spirit within, seemed no more than so many places of retreat, where security and peace, combining in behalf of Love, had given him an exclusive sovereignty.