"I do not see how you can bring him here. You forget that we are mere lodgers ourselves; indebted for our accommodation to the kindness of a lady upon whom we should have no right to press other lodgers. Such an arrangement would crowd the house, and make all parties uncomfortable.
Besides, I suppose Mr. Edgerton will scarcely remain long enough in M---to make it of much importance where he lodges, and when he finds the tavern uncomfortable he will take his departure."
"But should he get sick at the tavern?"
"Such a chance would follow him wherever he went. That is the risk which every man incurs when he goes abroad. He has a servant with him--no doubt a favorite servant."
"Should he get sick, Julia, even a favorite servant will not be enough.
It will be our duty to make other provision for him. I owe his father much; the old man evidently expects much from me by his last letter. I owe the son much. He has been a true friend to me. I must do for him as if he were a brother, and should he get sick, Julia, you must be his nurse."
"Impossible, Mr. Clifford!" she replied, with unwonted energy, while a deep, dark flush settled over her otherwise placid features, which were now not merely discomposed but ruffled. "It is impossible that I should be what you require. Suffer me, in this case, to determine my duties for myself. Do for YOUR FRIEND what you think proper. You can provide a nurse, and secure by money, the best attendance in the town. I do not think that I can do better service than a hundred others whom you may procure; and you will permit me to say, without seeking to displease you, that I will not attempt it."
I was not displeased at what she said, but it was not my policy to admit this. With an air almost of indignation, I replied:
"And you would leave my friend to perish?"
"I trust he will not perish--I sincerely trust he will continue in health while he remains here. I implore you, dear husband, to make no requisition such as this. I can not serve your friend in this capacity.
I pray that he may not need it."
"But should he?"
"I can not serve him."
"Julia, you are a cold-hearted woman--you do not love me."
"Cold-hearted, Edward, cold-hearted? Not love you, Edward?--Oh, surely, you can not mean it. No! no! you can not!"
She threw herself into my arms, clasped me fondly in hers, and the warm tears from her eyes gushed into my bosom.
"Love me, love my dog--at least my friend!" I exclaimed, in austere accents, but without repulsing her. I could not repulse her. I had not strength to put her from me. The embrace was too dear; and the energy with which she rejected a suggestion in which I proposed only to try and test her, made her doubly dear at that moment to my bosom. Alas! how, in the attempt to torture others, do we torture ourselves! If I afflicted Julia in this scene, I am very sure that my own sufferings were more intense. One thing alone would have made them so. The ONE quality of evil, of the bad spirit which mingled in with MY feelings, and did not trouble HERS. But, just then I did not think her innocent altogether. I still had my doubts that her resistance to my wishes was simply meant to conceal that tendency in her own, the exposure of which she had naturally every reason to dread. The demon of the blind heart, though baffled for awhile, was still busy. Alas! he was not always to be baffled.
CHAPTER XLII.
CROSS PURPOSES.
Weeks pa.s.sed and still William Edgerton was a resident of M---, and a constant guest at our little cottage. He had, in this time, effectually broken up the harmony and banished the peace which had previously prevailed there. The unhappy young man pursued the same insane course of conduct which had been productive of so much bitterness and trouble to us all before; and, under the influence of my evil demon, I adopted the same blind policy which had already been so fruitful of misery to myself and wife. I gave them constant opportunities together. I found my a.s.sociates, and pursued my pastimes--pastimes indeed--away from home.
Poetry and song were given up--we no longer wandered by the river-side, and upon the green heights of our sacred hill. My evenings were consumed in dreary rambles, alone with my own evil thoughts, and miserable fancies, or consumed with yellow-eyed watching, from porch or tree, upon those privacies of the suspected lovers, in which I had so shamefully indulged before. I felt the baseness of this vocation, but I had not the strength to give it up. I know there is no extenuation for it. I know that it was base! base! base! It is a point of conscience with me, not only to declare the truth, but to call things by the truest and most characteristic names. Let me do my understanding the justice to say that, even when I practised the meanness, I was not ignorant--not insensible of its character. It was the strength only--the courage to do right, and to forbear the wrong--in which I was deficient. It was the blind heart, not the unknowing head to which the shame was attributable, though the pang fell not unequally upon heart and head.
Meanwhile, Kingsley returned from Texas. He became my princ.i.p.al companion. We strolled together in my leisure hours by day. We sat and smoked together in his chamber by night. My blind fort.i.tude may be estimated, when the reader is told that Kingsley professed to find me a very agreeable companion. He complimented me on my liveliness, my wit, my humor, and what not--and this, too, when I was all the while meditating, with the acutest feeling of apprehension, upon the very last wrong which the spirit of man is found willing to endure;--when I believed that the ruin of my house was at hand; when I believed that the ruin of my heart and hope had already taken place;--and when, hungering only for the necessary degree of proof which justice required before conviction, I was laying my gins and snares with the view to detecting the offenders, and consummating the last terrible but necessary work of vengeance! But Kingsley did not confine himself altogether to the language of compliment.
"Good fellow and good companion as you are, Clifford--and loath as I should be to give up these pleasant evenings, still I think you very wrong in one respect. You neglect your wife."
"Ha! ha! what an idea! You are not serious?"
"As a judge."
"Psha! She does not miss me."
"Perhaps not," he answered gravely--"but for your own sake if not for hers, it seems to me you should pursue a more domestic course."
"What mean you?"
"You leave your wife too much to herself!--nay--let me be frank--not too much to herself, for there would be little danger in that, but too much with that fellow Edgerton."
"What? You would not have me jealous, Kingsley?"
"No! Only prudent."
"You dislike Edgerton, Kingsley."
"I do! I frankly confess it. I think he wants manliness of character, and such a man always lacks sincerity. But I do not speak of him. I should utter the same opinion with respect to any other man, in similar circ.u.mstances. A wife is a dependent creature--apt to be weak!--If young, she is susceptible--equally susceptible to the attentions of another and to the neglect of her husband. I do not say that such is the case--with your wife. Far from it. I esteem her very much as a remarkable woman. But women were intended to be dependents. Most of them are governed by sensibilities rather than by principles. Impulse leads them and misleads. The wife finds herself neglected by the very man who, in particular, owes her duty. She finds herself entertained, served, watched, tended with sleepless solicitude, by another; one, not wanting either in personal charms and accomplishments, and having similar tastes and talents. What should be the result of this? Will she not become indifferent where she finds indifference--devoted where she finds devotion? A cunning fellow, like Edgerton, may, under these circ.u.mstances, rob a man of his wife"s affections. Mark me, I do not say that he will do anything positively dishonorable, at least in the world"s acceptation of the term. I do not intimate--I would not willingly believe--that she would submit to anything of the sort. I speak of the affections, not of the virtues. There is shame to the man in his wife"s dishonor; but the misfortune of losing her affections is neither more nor less than the suffering without the shame. Look to it.
I do not wish to prejudice your mind against Edgerton. Far from it.
I have forborne to speak hitherto because I knew that my own mind was prejudiced against him. Even now I say nothing against HIM. What I say has reference to your conduct only.--I do not think Edgerton a bad man.
I think him a weak one. Weak as a woman--governed, like her, by impulse rather than by principle--easily led away--incapable of resisting where his affections are concerned--repenting soon, and sinning, in the same way, as fast as he repents. He is weak, very weak--washy-weak--he wants stamina, and, wanting that, wants principle!"
"Strange enough, if you should be right! How do you reconcile this opinion with his refusal to lend you money to game upon? He was governed in that by principle."
"Not a bit of it! He was governed by habit. He knew nothing of gambling--had heard his father always preaching against it--it was not a temptation with him. His tastes were of another sort. He could not be tried in that way. The very fact that he was susceptible, in particular, to the charms of female society, saved him from the pa.s.sion for gaming, as it would save him from the pa.s.sion for drink. But the very tastes that saved him from one pa.s.sion make him particularly susceptible to another. He can stand the temptation of play, but not that of women.
Let him be tried THERE, and he falls! his principle would not save him--would not be worth a straw to a drowning man."
"You underrate--undervalue Edgerton. He has always been a true, generous friend of mine."
"Be it so! with that I have nothing to do. But friendship has its limits which it can not pa.s.s. Were Edgerton truly your friend, he would advise you as I have done. Nay, a proper sense of friendship and of delicacy would have kept him from paying that degree of attention to the wife which must be an hourly commentary on the neglect of her husband. I confess to you it was this very fact that made me resolve to speak to you."
"I thank you, my dear fellow, but I have nothing to fear. Poor Edgerton is dying--music and painting are his solace--they minister to his most active tastes. As for Julia, she is immaculate."
"I distrust neither; but you should not throw away your pearl, because you think it can not suffer stain."
"I do not throw it away."
"You do not sufficiently cherish it."
"What would you have me do--wear it constantly in my bosom?"
"No! not exactly that; but at least wear nothing else there so frequently or so closely as that."
"I do not. I fancy I am a very good husband. You shall not put me out of humor, Kingsley, either with my wife or myself. You shall not make me jealous. I am no Oth.e.l.lo--I have no visitations of the moon."
And I laughed--laughed while speaking thus--though the keen pang was writhing at that moment like a burning arrow through my brain.
"I have no wish to make you jealous, Clifford, and I very much admire your superiority and strength. I congratulate you on your singular freedom from this unhappy pa.s.sion. But you may become too confident. You may lose your wife"s affections by your neglect, when you might not lose them by treachery."
"You are grown a croaker, Kingsley, and I will leave you. I will go home. I will show you what a good husband I am, or can become."
"That"s right; but smoke another cigar before you go."
"There it is!" I exclaimed, laughingly. "You blow hot and cold. You would have me go and stay."