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Title: Confession

Author: W. Gilmore Simms

Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6059]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 30, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CONFESSION ***




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Team.



[Illustration: Confession]

Confession;

or,

The Blind Heart.

A Domestic Story.

By W. Gilmore Simms,



  Wagner. But of the world-the heart, the mind of man,
          How happy could we know!
  Faust.              What can we know?
          Who dares bestow the infant his true name?
          The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave
          Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell!
          Incapable to keep their full hearts in,
          They, from the first of immemorial time,
          Were crucified or burnt.
                           Goethe's Faust, MS. Version.






CHAPTER I.

Confession, or The Blind Heart.


  "Who dares bestow the infant his true name?
  The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave
  Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell
  Incapable to keep their full hearts in,
  They, from the first of immemorial time,
  Were crucified or burnt."--Goethe's "Faust."





The pains and penalties of folly are not necessarily death.  They
were in old times, perhaps, according to the text, and he who kept
not to himself the secrets of his silly heart was surely crucified
or burnt. Though lacking in penalties extreme like these, the present
is not without its own. All times, indeed, have their penalties for
folly, much more certainly than for crime; and this fact furnishes
one of the most human arguments in favor of the doctrine of rewards
and punishments in the future state. But these penalties are not
always mortifications and trials of the flesh. There are punishments
of the soul; the spirit; the sensibilities; the intellect--which
are most usually the consequences of one's own folly. There is a
perversity of mood which is the worst of all such penalties. There
are tortures which the foolish heart equally inflicts and endures.
The passions riot on their own nature; and, feeding as they do
upon that bosom from which they spring, and in which they flourish,
may, not inaptly, be likened to that unnatural brood which gnaws
into the heart of the mother-bird, and sustains its existence at
the expense of hers. Meetly governed from the beginning, they are
dutiful agents that bless themselves in their own obedience; but,
pampered to excess, they are tyrants that never do justice, until
at last, when they fitly conclude the work of destruction by their
own.

The narrative which follows is intended to illustrate these opinions.
It is the story of a blind heart--nay, of blind hearts--blind
through their own perversity--blind to their own interests--their
own joys, hopes, and proper sources of delight.  In narrating my
own fortunes, I depict theirs; and the old leaven of wilfulness,
which belongs to our nature, has, in greater or less degree, a
place in every human bosom.

I was the only one surviving of several sons. My parents died while
I was yet an infant. I never knew them. I was left to the doubtful
charge of relatives, who might as well have been strangers; and,
from their treatment, I learned to doubt and to distrust among the
first fatal lessons of my youth. I felt myself unloved--nay, as I
fancied, disliked and despised. I was not merely an orphan. I was
poor, and was felt as burdensome by those connections whom a dread
of public opinion, rather than a sense of duty and affection,
persuaded to take me to their homes. Here, then, when little more
than three years old, I found myself--a lonely brat, whom servants
might flout at pleasure, and whom superiors only regarded with a
frown.  I was just old enough to remember that I had once experienced
very different treatment. I had felt the caresses of a fond mother--I
had heard the cheering accents of a generous and a gentle father.
The one had soothed my griefs and encouraged my hopes--the other
had stimulated my energies and prompted my desires. Let no one
fancy that, because I was a child, these lessons were premature.
All education, to be valuable, must begin with the child's first
efforts at discrimination. Suddenly, both of these fond parents
disappeared, and I was just young enough to wonder why.

The change in my fortunes first touched my sensibilities, which
it finally excited until they became diseased. Neglected if not
scorned, I habitually looked to encounter nothing but neglect or
scorn. The sure result of this condition of mind was a look and
feeling, on my part, of habitual defiance. I grew up with the mood
of one who goes forth with a moral certainty that he must meet and
provide against an enemy. But I am now premature.

The uncle and aunt with whom I found shelter were what is called
in ordinary parlance, very good people. They attended the most
popular church with most popular punctuality. They prayed with
unction--subscribed to all the charities which had publicity and
a fashionable list to recommend them--helped to send missionaries
to Calcutta, Bombay, Owyhee, and other outlandish regions--paid
their debts when they became due with commendable readiness--and
were, in all out-of-door respects, the very sort of people who
might congratulate themselves, and thank God that they were very
far superior to their neighbors. My uncle had morning prayers at
home, and my aunt thumbed Hannah More in the evening; though it
must be admitted that the former could not always forbear, coming
from church on the sabbath, to inquire into the last news of the
Liverpool cotton market, and my aunt never failed, when they reached
home, on the same blessed day, to make the house ring with another
sort of eloquence than that to which she had listened with such
sanctimonious devotion from the lips of the preacher. There were
some other little offsets against the perfectly evangelical character
of their religion. One of these--the first that attracted my infant
consideration--was naturally one which more directly concerned
myself. I soon discovered that, while I was sent to an ordinary
charity school of the country, in threadbare breeches, made of the
meanest material--their own son--a gentle and good, but puny boy,
whom their indulgence injured, and, perhaps, finally destroyed--was
despatched to a fashionable institution which taught all sorts of
ologies--dressed in such choice broadcloth and costly habiliments,
as to make him an object of envy and even odium among all his less
fortunate school-fellows.

Poor little Edgar! His own good heart and correct natural understanding
showed him the equal folly of that treatment to which he was
subjected, and the injustice and unkindness which distinguished
mine. He strove to make amends, so far as I was concerned, for the
error of his parents. He was my playmate whenever he was permitted,
but even this permission was qualified by some remark, some direction
or counsel, from one or other of his parents, which was intended
to let him know, and make me feel, that there was a monstrous
difference between us.

The servants discovered this difference as quickly as did the
objects of it; and though we were precisely of one age, and I was
rather the largest of the two, yet, in addressing us, they paid
him the deference which should only be shown to superior age, and
treated me with the contumely only due to inferior merit. It was
"Master Edgar," when he was spoken to--and "you," when I was the
object of attention.

I do not speak of these things as of substantial evils affecting
my condition. Perhaps, in one or more respects, they were benefits.
They taught me humility in the first place, and made that humility
independence, by showing me that the lesson was bestowed in wantonness,
and not with the purpose of improvement.  And, in proportion as
my physical nature suffered their neglect, it acquired strength
by the very roughening to which that neglect exposed it. In this
I possessed a vast advantage over my little companion. His frame,
naturally feeble, sunk under the oppressive tenderness to which the
constant care of a vain father, a doting mother, and sycophantic
friends and servants, subjected it. The attrition of boy with boy,
in the half-manly sports of schoolboy life--its very strifes and
scuffles--would have brought his blood into adequate circulation,
and hardened his bones, and given elasticity to his sinews. But
from all these influences, he was carefully preserved and protected.
He was not allowed to run, for fear of being too much heated. He
could not jump, lest he might break a blood-vessel. In the ball
play he might get an eye knocked out; and even tops and marbles
were forbidden, lest he should soil his hands and wear out the knees
of his green breeches. If he indulged in these sports it was only
by stealth, and at the fearful cost of a falsehood on every such
occasion. When will parents learn that entirely to crush and keep
down the proper nature of the young, is to produce inevitable
perversity, and stimulate the boyish ingenuity to crime?

With me the case was very different. If cuffing and kicking could
have killed, I should have died many sudden and severe deaths in
the rough school to which I was sent. If eyes were likely to be lost
in the campus, corded balls of India-rubber, or still harder ones
of wood, impelled by shinny (goff) sticks, would have obliterated
all of mine though they had been numerous as those of Argus. My
limbs and eyes escaped all injury; my frame grew tall and vigorous
in consequence of neglect, even as the forest-tree, left to the
conflict of all the winds of heaven; while my poor little friend,
Edgar, grew daily more and more diminutive, just as some plant,
which nursing and tendance within doors deprive of the wholesome
sunshine and generous breezes of the sky. The paleness of his cheek
increased, the languor of his frame, the meagerness of his form,
the inability of his nature! He was pining rapidly away, in spite
of that excessive care, which, perhaps, had been in the first
instance, the unhappy source of all his feebleness.

He died--and I became an object of greater dislike than ever
to his parents. They could not but contrast my strength, with his
feebleness--my improvement with his decline--and when they remembered
how little had been their regard for me and how much for him--without
ascribing the difference of result to the true cause--they repined
at the ways of Providence, and threw upon me the reproach of it.
They gave me less heed and fewer smiles than ever. If I improved
at school, it was well, perhaps; but they never inquired, and I
could not help fancying that it was with a positive expression of
vexation, that my aunt heard, on one occasion, from my teacher, in
the presence of some guests, that I was likely to be an honor to
the family.

"An honor to the family, indeed!" This was the clear expression in
that Christian lady's eyes, as I saw them sink immediately after
in a scornful examination of my rugged frame and coarse garments.

The family had its own sources of honor, was the calm opinion of
both my patrons, as they turned their eyes upon their only remaining
child--a little girl about five years old, who was playing around
them on the carpet. This opinion was also mine, even then: and my
eyes followed theirs in the same direction. Julia Clifford was one
of the sweetest little fairies in the world. Tender-hearted, and
just, and generous, like the dear little brother, whom she had
only known to lose, she was yet as playful as a kitten. I was twice
her age--just ten--at this period; and a sort of instinct led me to
adopt the little creature, in place of poor Edgar, in the friendship
of my boyish heart. I drew her in her little wagon--carried her over
the brooklet--constructed her tiny playthings--and in consideration
of my usefulness, in most generally keeping her in the best of
humors, her mother was not unwilling that I should be her frequent
playmate. Nay, at such times she could spare a gentle word even
to me, as one throws a bone to the dog, who has jumped a pole, or
plunged into the water, or worried some other dog, for his amusement.
At no other period did my worthy aunt vouchsafe me such unlooked-for
consideration.

But Julia Clifford was not my only friend. I had made another
shortly before the death of Edgar; though, passingly it may be said,
friendship-making was no easy business with a nature such as mine
had now become. The inevitable result of such treatment as that
to which my early years had been subjected, was fully realized. I
was suspicious to the last degree of all new faces--jealous of the
regards of the old; devoting myself where my affections were set
and requiring devotion--rigid, exclusive devotion--from their object
in return. There was a terrible earnestness in all my moods which
made my very love a thing to be feared. I was no trifler--I could
not suffer to be trifled with--and the ordinary friendships of man
or boy can not long endure the exactions of such a disposition.
The penalties are usually thought to be--and are--infinitely beyond
the rewards and benefits.

My intimacies with William Edgerton were first formed under
circumstances which, of all others, are most likely to establish
them on a firm basis in our days of boyhood. He came to my rescue
one evening, when, returning from school, I was beset by three
other boys, who had resolved on drubbing me. My haughty deportment
had vexed their self-esteem, and, as the same cause had left me
with few sympathies, it was taken for granted that the unfairness
of their assault would provoke no censure. They were mistaken. In
the moment of my greatest difficulty, William Edgerton dashed in
among them. My exigency rendered his assistance a very singular
benefit. My nose was already broken--one of my eyes sealed up for
a week's holyday; and I was suffering from small annoyances, of hip,
heart, leg, and thigh, occasioned by the repeated cuffs, and the
reckless kicks, which I was momently receiving from three points
of the compass.  It is true that my enemies had their hurts to
complain of also; but the odds were too greatly against me for any
conduct or strength of mine to neutralize or overcome; and it was
only by Edgerton's interposition that I was saved from utter defeat
and much worse usage. The beating I had already suffered. I was
sore from head to foot for a week after; and my only consolation
was that my enemies left the ground in a condition, if anything,
something worse than my own.

But I had gained a friend, and that was a sweet recompense, sweeter
to me, by far, than it is found or felt by schoolboys usually. None
could know or comprehend the force of my attachment--my dependence
upon the attachment of which I felt assured!--none but those who,
with an earnest, impetuous nature like my own--doomed to denial
from the first, and treated with injustice and unkindness--has felt
the pang of a worse privation from the beginning;--the privation
of that sustenance, which is the "very be all and end all" of its
desire and its life--and the denial of which chills and repels its
fervor--throws it back in despondency upon itself--fills it with
suspicion, and racks it with a never-ceasing conflict between its
apprehension and its hopes.

Edgerton supplied a vacuum which my bosom had long felt.  He was,
however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself.  He was rather
phlegmatic than ardent--slow in his fancies, and shy in his
associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed
by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much
restrained by them also, to be a popular one. This, perhaps, was
the secret influence which brought us together. A mutual sense
of isolation--no matter from what cause--awakened the sympathies
between us. Our ties were formed, on my part, simply because I was
assured that I should have no rival; and on his, possibly, because
he perceived in my haughty reserve of character, a sufficient
security that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to
suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and
tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently,
when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;--and
ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose
from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and
abstract. He was contemplative--an idealist; I was impetuous and
devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was
disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal;
but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things and
persons habitually subjected me.






CHAPTER II.

BOY PASSIONS--A PROFESSION CHOSEN.





Between William Edgerton and Julia Clifford my young life and best
affections were divided, entirely, if not equally. I lived for no
other--I cared to seek, to know, no other--and yet I often shrunk
from both. Even at that boyish period, while the heavier cares and
the more painful vexations of life were wanting to our annoyance,
I had those of that gnawing nature which seemed to be born of the
tree whose evil growth "brought death into the world and all our
wo." The pang of a nameless jealousy--a sleepless distrust--rose
unbidden to my heart at seasons, when, in truth, there was no
obvious cause. When Julia was most gentle--when William was most
generous--even then, I had learned to repulse them with an indifference
which I did not feel--a rudeness which brought to my heart a pain
even greater than that which my wantonness inflicted upon theirs.
I knew, even then, that I was perverse, unjust; and that there was
a littleness in the vexatious mood in which I indulged, that was
unjust to my own feelings, and unbecoming in a manly nature. But
even though I felt all this, as thoroughly as I could ever feel it
under any situation, I still could not succeed in overcoming tha'
insane will which drove me to its indulgence.

Vainly have I striven to account for the blindness of heart--for
such it is, in all such cases--which possessed me. Was there
anything in my secret nature, born at my birth and growing with
my growth--which impelled me to this willfulness. I can scarcely
believe so; but, after serious reflection, am compelled to think
that it was the strict result of moods growing out of the particular
treatment to which I had been subjected. It does not seem unnatural
that an ardent temper of mind, willing to confide, looking to
love and affection for the only aliment which it most and chiefly
desires, and repelled in this search, frowned on by its superiors
as if it were something base, will, in time, grow to be habitually
wilful, even as the treatment which has schooled it. Had I been
governed and guided by justice, I am sure that I should never have
been unjust.

My waywardness in childhood did not often amount to rudeness, and
never, I may safely say, where Julia was concerned. In her case,
it was simply the exercise of a sullenness that repelled her
approaches, even as its own approaches had been repelled by others.
At such periods I went apart, communing, sternly with myself,
refusing the sympathy that I most yearned after, and resolving not
to be comforted. Let me do the dear child the justice to say that
the only effect which this conduct had upon her, was to increase
her anxieties to soothe the repulsive spirit which should have
offended her. Perhaps, to provoke this anxiety in one it loves, is
the chief desire of such a spirit. It loves to behold the persevering
devotion, which it yet perversely toils to discourage. It smiles
within, with a bitter triumph, as it contemplates its own power,
to impart the same sorrow which a similar perversity has already
made it feel.

But, without seeking further to analyze and account for such
a spirit, it is quite sufficient if I have described it. Perhaps,
there are other hearts equally froward and wayward with my own. I
know not if my story will amend--perhaps it may not even instruct
or inform them--I feel that no story, however truthful, could have
disarmed the humor of that particular mood of mind which shows
itself in the blindness of the heart under which it was my lot to
labor. I did not want knowledge of my own perversity. I knew--I
felt it--as clearly as if I had seen it written in characters of
light, on the walls of my chamber.  But, until it had exhausted
itself and passed away by its own processes, no effort of mine could
have overcome or banished it.  I stalked apart, under its influence,
a gloomy savage--scornful and sad--stern, yet suffering--denying
myself equally, in the perverse and wanton denial to which I
condemned all others.

Perhaps something of this temper is derived from the yearnings of
the mental nature. It may belong somewhat to the natural direction
of a mind having a decided tendency to imaginative pursuits. There
is a dim, vague, indefinite struggle, for ever going on in the nature
of such a person, after an existence and relations very foreign to
the world in which it lives; and equally far from, and hostile to
that condition in which it thrives.  The vague discontent of such
a mind is one of the causes of its activity; and how far it may be
stimulated into diseased intensity by injudicious treatment, is a
question of large importance for the consideration of philosophers.
The imaginative nature is one singularly sensitive in its conditions;
quick, jealous, watchful, earnest, stirring, and perpetually
breaking down the ordinary barriers of the actual, in its struggles
to ascertain the extent of the possible. The tyranny which drives
it from the ordinary resources and enjoyments of the young,
by throwing it more completely on its own, impels into desperate
activity that daring of the imaginative mood, which, at no time,
is wanting in courage and audacity. My mind was one singularly
imaginative in its structure; and my ardent temperament contributed
largely to its activity. Solitude, into which I was forced by the
repulsive and unkind treatment of my relatives, was also favorable
to the exercise of this influence; and my heart may be said to have
taken, in turn, every color and aspect which informed my eyes. It
was a blind heart for this very reason, in respect to all those
things for which it should have had a color of its own. Books and
the woods--the voice of waters and of song--the dim mysteries of
poetry, and the whispers of lonely forest-walks, which beguiled me
into myself, and more remotely from my fellows, were all, so far
as my social relations were concerned, evil influences! Influences
which were only in part overcome by the communion of such gentle
beings as William Edgerton and Julia Clifford.

With these friends, and these only, I grew up. As my years advanced,
my intimacy with the former increased, and with the latter diminished.
But this diminution of intimacy did not lessen the kindness of her
feelings, or the ordinary devotedness of mine. She was still--when
the perversity of heart made me not blind--the sweet creature to
whom the task of ministering was a pleasure infinitely beyond any
other which I knew. But, as she grew up to girlhood, other prospects
opened upon her eyes, and other purposes upon those of her parents.
At twelve she was carried by maternal vanity into company--sent to
the dancing school--provided with teachers in music and painting,
and made to understand--so far as the actions, looks, and words of
all around could teach--that she was the cynosure of all eyes, to
whom the whole world was bound in deference.

Fortunately, in the case of Julia, the usual effects of maternal
folly and indiscretion did not ensue. Nature interposed to protect
her, and saved her in spite of them all. She was still the meek, modest
child, solicitous of the happiness of all around her--unobtrusive,
unassuming--kind to her inferiors, respectful to superiors, and
courteous to, and considerate of all other persons. Her advancing
years, which rendered these new acquisitions and accomplishments
desirable, if not necessary, at the same time prompted her foolish
mother to another step which betrayed the humiliating regard which
she entertained for me. When I was seventeen, Julia was twelve,
and when neither she nor myself had a solitary thought of love,
the over considerate mother began to think, on this subject, for
us both.  The result of her cogitations determined her that it was
no longer fitting that Julia should be my companion. Our rambles in
the woods together were forbidden; and Julia was gravely informed
that I was a poor youth, though her cousin--an orphan whom her
father's charity supported, and whom the public charity schooled.
The poor child artlessly told me all this, in a vain effort to
procure from me an explanation of the mystery (which her mother had
either failed or neglected to explain) by which such circumstances
were made to account for the new commands which had been given her.
Well might she, in her simplicity of heart, wonder why it was, that
because I was poor, she should be familiar with me no longer.

The circumstance opened my eyes to the fact that Julia was a tall
girl, growing fast, already in her teens, and likely, under the
rapidly-maturing influence of our summer sun, to be soon a woman.
But just then--just when she first tasked me to solve the mystery
of her mother's strange requisitions, I did not think of this.
I was too much filled with indignation--the mortified self-esteem
was too actively working in my bosom to suffer me to think of anything
but the indignity with which I was treated.  A brief portion of the
dialogue between the child and my self, will give some glimpses of
the blind heart by which I was afflicted.

"Oh, you do not understand it, Julia. You do not know, then, that
you are the daughter of a rich merchant--the only daughter--that
you have servants to wait on you, and a carriage at command--that
you can wear fine silks, and have all things that money can buy,
and a rich man's daughter desire.  You don't know these things,
Julia, eh?"

"Yes, Edward, I hear you say so now, and I hear mamma often say
the same things; but still I don't see--"

"You don't see why that should make a difference between yourself
and your poor cousin, eh? Well, but it does; and though you don't
see it now, yet it will not be very long before you will see, and
understand it, and act upon it, too, as promptly as the wisest
among them. Don't you know that I am the object of your father's
charity--that his bounty feeds me--and that it would not be seemly
that the world should behold me on a familiar footing of equality
or intimacy with the daughter of my benefactor--my patron--without
whom I should probably starve, or be a common beggar upon the
highway?"

"But father would not suffer that, Edward."

"Oh, no! no!--he would not suffer it, Julia, simply because his own
pride and name would feel the shame and disgrace of such a thing.
But though he would keep me from beggary and the highway, Julia,
neither he nor your mother would spend a sixpence or make an effort
to save my feelings from pain and misery. They protect me from the
scorn of others, but they use me for their own."

The girl hung her head in silence.

"And you, too," I added--"the time will come when you.  too, Julia,
will shrink as promptly as themselves from being seen with your
poor relation. You--"

"No! no! Edward--how can you think of such a thing?" she replied
with girlish chiding.

"Think it!--I know it! The time will soon be here. But--obey your
mother, Julia. Go! leave me now. Begin, once the lesson which,
before many days, you will find it very easy to learn."

This was all very manly, so I fancied at the time; and then
blind with the perverse heart which boiled within me, I felt not
the wantonness of my mood, and heeded not the bitter pain which I
occasioned to her gentle bosom. Her little hand grasped mine, her
warm tears fell upon it; but I flung away from her grasp, and left
her to those childish meditations which I had made sufficiently
mournful.

Subsequent reflection, while it showed me the brutality of my
conduct to Julia, opened my eyes to the true meaning of her mother's
interdiction; and increased the pang of those bitter feelings,
which my conscious dependence had awakened in my breast, it was
necessary that this dependence should be lessened; that, as I was
now approaching manhood, I should cast about for the future, and
adopt wisely and at once the means of my support hereafter. It was
necessary that I should begin the business of life. On this head
I had already reflected somewhat, and my thoughts had taken their
direction from more than one conference which I had had with William
Edgerton.  His father was an eminent lawyer, and the law had been
adopted for his profession also. I determined to make it mine;
and to speak on this subject to my uncle. This I did. I chose an
afternoon, the very week in which my conversation had taken place
with Julia, and, while the dinner things were undergoing removal,
with some formality requested a private interview with him. He looked
round at me with a raised brow of inquiry--nodded his head--and
shortly after rose from the table.  My aunt stared with an air of
supercilious wonder; while poor Julia, timid and trembling, barely
ventured to give me a single look, which said--and that was enough
for me--"I wish I dared say more."

My conference with my uncle was not of long duration. I told
him it was my purpose--my desire--to begin as soon as possible to
do something for myself. His answer signified that such was his
opinion also. So far we were agreed; but when I told him that it
was my wish to study the law, he answered with sufficient, and as
I thought, scornful abruptness:--

"The law, indeed! What puts the law into your head?  What preparations
have you made to study the law? You know nothing of languages which
every lawyer should know--Latin--"

I interrupted him to say that I had some slight knowledge of
Latin--sufficient, I fancied, for all legal purposes.

"Ah! indeed! where did you get it?"

"A friend lent me a grammar and dictionary, and I studied myself."

"Oh, you are ambitious; but you deceive yourself. You were never
made for a lawyer. Besides, how are you to live while prosecuting
your studies? No, no! I have been thinking of something for you,
Edward--and, just now, it happens fortunately that old Squire
Farmer, the bricklayer, wants some apprentices--"

I could scarcely listen thus far.

"I thank you, sir, but I have no disposition to be a bricklayer."

"You must do something for yourself. You can not expect to eat
the bread of idleness. I have done, and will do for you what I
can--whatever is necessary;--but I have my own family to provide
for. I can not rob my own child---"

"Nor do I expect it, Mr. Clifford," I replied hastily, and with some
indignation. "It is my wish, sir, to draw as little as  possible
from your income and resources. I would not rob Julia Clifford of
a single dollar. Nay, sir, I trust before many years to be able
to refund you every copper which has been spent upon me from the
moment I entered your household."

He said hastily:--

"I wish nothing of that, Edward;--but the law is a study of years,
and is expensive and unpromising in every respect. Your clothes
already call for a considerable sum, and such a profession requires,
more than almost any other, that a student should be well dressed."

"I promise you, sir, that my dress shall be such as shall not
trespass upon your income. I shall be governed by as much economy--"

He interrupted me to say, that

"His duty required that his brother's son should be dressed as well
as his associates."

I replied, with tolerable composure:--

"I do not think, sir, that bricklaying will admit of very  genteel
clothing, nor do I think that the vocation will suit me. I have
flattered myself, sir, that my talents--"

"Oh, you have talents, then, have you? Well, it is fortunate that
the discovery has been made in season."

I bore with this, though my cheek was burning, and said--with
an effort to preserve my voice and temper, in which, though the
difficulty was great, I was tolerably successful--

"You have misunderstood me in some things, Mr. Clifford; and I will
try now to explain myself clearly in others. Having resolved, sir,
that the law shall be my profession---"

"Ha! resolved, say you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, go on--go on!"

"Having resolved to pursue the study of law, and seeing that I am
burdensome and expensive to you--believing, too, that I can relieve
you of the burden--I have simply requested permission of you to
make the attempt."

"Why, how do you propose to do so?--how can you support yourself--that
is relieve me of the burden of your expenses--and study the law at
the same time?"

"Such things have been done, sir; and can be done again. I flatter
myself I can do it. Industry will enable me to do so. I propose to
apply for a clerkship in a mercantile establishment which I know
stands in need of assistance, and while there will pursue my studies
in such intervals of leisure as the business will afford me."

"You seem to have the matter ready cut and dry. Why do you come to
me, then? Remember, I can make no advances."

"I need none, sir. My simple object with you, sir, was to declare
my intention, and to request that I may be permitted to refer to
you the merchants to whom I mean to apply, for a knowledge of my
character and attainments."

"Oh, certainly, you may--for the character;--but as to the
attainments"--with a sneering smile--"of them I can say nothing,
and, perhaps, the less said the better. I've no doubt you'll do
well enough with the merchants. It does not need much genius or
attainment for such situations. But, if you'll take my counsel,
you'll go to the bricklayer. We want bricklayers sadly. To be a
tolerable lawyer, parts are necessary; and God knows the country
is over-stocked with hosts of lawyers already, whose only parts lie
in their impudence.  Better think a little while longer. Speak to
old Farmer yourself."

I smiled bitterly--thanked him for his counsel, which was only a
studied form of insult, and turned away from him without further
speech, and with a proud swelling of indignation at my heart. Thus
our conference ended. A week after, I was ensconced behind the
counter of a wholesale dealer, and my hands at night were already
busy in turning over the heavy folios of Chitty and Blackstone.






CHAPTER III.

ADMITTED AMONG THE LAWYERS





Behold me, then, merchandising by day, and conning by night
the intricate mysteries of law. Books for the latter purpose were
furnished by my old friend, William Edgerton, from his father's
library. He himself was a student, beginning about the same time
with myself; though with the superior privilege of devoting himself
exclusively to this study. But if he had more time, I was more
indefatigable. My pride was roused, and emulation soon enabled me
to supply the want of leisure. My nights were surrendered, almost
wholly, to my new pursuit. I toiled with all the earnestness which
distinguished my temperament, stimulated to a yet higher degree by
those feelings of pride and pique, which were resolved to convince
my skeptical uncle that I was not entirely without those talents, the
assertion of which had so promptly provoked his sneer. Besides, I
had already learned that no such scheme as mine could be successfully
prosecuted, unless by a stern resolution; and this implied the
constant  presence of a close, undeviating method in my studies. I
tasked myself accordingly to read--understandingly, if possible--so
many pages every night, making my notes, queries, doubts, &c., EN
PASSANT. In order to do this, I prescribed to myself a rule, to
pass directly from the toils of the day and the store to my chamber,
suffering no stoppage by the way, and studiously denying myself
the dangerous fascinations of that society which was everywhere at
command, in the persons of young men about my own age and condition.
The intensity of my character, and the suspiciousness which it
induced, helped me in this  determination. Perhaps, there is no
greater danger to a young man's habits of study and business, than
a chat at the street corner, with a merry and thoughtless group.
A single half hour consumed in this manner, is almost always fatal
to the remaining hours of the day. It breaks into the circle, and
impairs the method without which the passage of the sun becomes
a very weary and always an unprofitable progress. If you would
be a student or anything, you must plunge headlong into it at the
beginning--bury yourself in your business, and work your way out
of your toils, by sheer, dogged industry.

My labors were so far successful that I could prosecute my studies
with independence. I had left the dwelling of my uncle the moment
I took employment in the mercantile house. My salary, though small,
was ample; with my habits, it was particularly so. I had few of
those vices in which young men are apt to indulge, and which, when
they become habits, cease unhappily to be regarded as vices. I used
tobacco in no shape, and no ardent spirits. I needed no stimulants,
and, by the way, true industry never does. It is only indolence that
needs drink; and indolence does need it; and the sooner drunkenness
kills indolence by the use of drink, the better for society. The
only objection to liquors as an agent for ridding the community of
a nuisance, is, that it is rather too slow, and too offensive in
its detailed operations; arsenic would be far less offensive,  more
summary, and is far more certain. You would seek vainly to cure
drunkenness, unless you first cure the idleness which is its root
and strength, and, while they last, its permanent support.  But my
object is not homily.

If I was free from vices such as these, however, I had vices of my
own, which were only less odious as they were less obvious. That
vexing, self-tormenting spirit of which I have spoken as the evil
genius that dogged my footsteps--that moral perverseness which
I have described as the "blind heart"--still afflicted me, though
in a far less degree now than when I was the inmate of my uncle's
dwelling, and exposed to all the caprices of himself, his wife
and servants. I kept on good terms with my employers, for the very
natural reason that they saw me attend to my business and theirs,
with a hearty cheerfulness that went to work promptly in whatever
was to be done, and executed its tasks with steady fortitude,
neatness, and rapidity.  But, even with them, I had my sulks--my
humors--my stubborn fits of sullenness, that seemed anxious to provoke
opposition, and awaken wrath. These, however, they considerately
forgave in consideration of my real usefulness: and as they perceived
that whatever might have been the unpleasantness  occasioned by
these specimens of spleen, they were never suffered to interfere
with or retard the operations of business. "It's an ugly way he's
got," was, probably, the utmost extent of what either of the partners
said, and of what is commonly said on such occasions by most persons,
who do not care to trouble themselves with a too close inquiry.

Well, at twenty-one, William Edgerton and myself were admitted
to the practice of the law, and that too with considerable credit
to ourselves. I had long since been carried by my friend into his
family circle; and Mr. Edgerton, his father, had been pleased to
distinguish me with sundry attentions, which were only grateful to
me in consequence of the unusual deference with which his manner
evinced his regard. His gentle inquiries and persuasive suggestions
beguiled me into more freedom of speech than I had ever before been
accustomed to; and his judicious management of my troubled spirit,
for a time, stifled its contradictions, and suppressed its habitual
tendencies. But it was with some jealousy, and an erectness of manner
which was surely ungracious, though, perhaps, not offensive, that
I endured and replied to his inquiries into my personal condition,
my resources, and the nature of that dependence which I bore to the
family of my uncle. When he learned--which he did not from me--in
what manner I had pursued my studies--after what toils of the day,
and at what late hours of the night--when he found from a close
private examination, which he had given me, before my admission,
that my knowledge of the law was quite as good as the greater
number of those who apply for admission--he was pleased to express
his astonishment at my perseverance, and delight at my success.
When, too, in addition to this, he discovered, upon a minute inquiry
from my employers and others, that I was abstemious, and indulged
in no excesses of any kind, his interest in me increased, as
I thought, who had been accustomed to nothing of the sort, beyond
all reasonable measure-and I soon had occasion to perceive that it
was no idle curiosity that prompted his consideration and inquiry.

Without my knowledge, he paid a visit to my uncle. This gentleman,
I may be permitted here to say, had been quite as much surprised as
anybody else, at my determined prosecution of my studies in spite
of the difficulties by which I was  surrounded. That I was pursuing
them, while in the mercantile establishment to which I had gone, he
did not believe; and very frequently when I was at his house--for
I visited the family, and sometimes, though unfrequently, dined
with them on a sabbath--he jeered me on my progress--the "wonderful
progress," as he was pleased to term it--which he felt sure I was
making with my Coke and Blackstone, while baling blankets,  or
bundling up plains and kerseys. This I bore patiently, sustained
as I was by the proud, indomitable spirit within me, which assured
me of the ultimate triumph which I felt positive would ensue.
I enjoyed his surprise--a surprise that looked something like
consternation--when the very day of my  admission to the bar, and
after that event, I encountered him in the street, and in answer
to his usual sarcastic inquiry:--

"Well, Edward, how does the law come on? How is Sir William
Blackstone, Sir Edward Coke, and the rest of the white heads?"

I simply put the parchment into his hands which declared my formal
introduction to those venerable gentry.

"Why, you don't mean? Is it possible? So you really are admitted--a
lawyer, eh?"

"You see, sir--and that, too, without any Greek."

"Well, and what good is it to do you? To have a  profession, Edward,
is one thing; to get business, another!"

"Yes, sir--but I take it, the profession must be had first.  One
step is gained. That much is sure. The other, I trust, will follow
in due season."

"True, but I still think that the bricklayer would make the more
money."

"Were money-making, sir, the only object of life, perhaps, then,
that would be the most desirable business; but--"

"Oh, I forgot--the talents, the talents are to be considered."

And after the utterance of this sneer, our dialogue as may be
supposed, did not much longer continue.

I did not know of the contemplated visit of Mr. Edgerton to my
worthy uncle, nor of its purpose, or I should, most assuredly, have
put my veto upon the measure with all the tenacity of a resentful
spirit; but this gentleman, who was a man of nice sensibility as
well as strong good sense, readily comprehended a portion of my
secret history from what was known to him.  He easily conceived
that my uncle was somewhat of a niggard from the manner in which I
had employed myself during my preparation for the bar. He thought,
however, that my uncle, though unwilling to expend money in the
prosecution of a scheme which he did not approve--now that the scheme
was so far successful as to afford every promise of a reasonable
harvest, could not do less than come forward to the assistance of
one who had shown such a determined disposition to assist himself.

He was mistaken. He little knew the man. His interview with my
uncle was a short one. The parties were already acquainted, though
not intimately. They knew each other as persons of standing in the
same community, and this made the opening of Mr. Edgerton's business
easy. I state the tenor of the interview as it came to my knowledge
afterward.

"Mr. Clifford," he said, "you have a nephew--a young gentleman,
who has been recently admitted to the bar--Mr. Edward Clifford."

The reply, with a look of wonder was necessarily affirmative.

"I have had much pleasure," continued the other, "in knowing him
for some time. He is an intimate of my eldest son, and from what
has met my eyes, sir, I should say, you are fortunate in having a
nephew of so much promise."

"Why, yes, sir, I believe he is a clever youth enough," was the
costive answer.

"He is more than that, sir. I regard him, indeed, as a most
astonishing young man. The very manner in which he has pursued his
studies while engaged in the harassing labors of a large wholesale
business house of this city--alone establishes this fact."

The cheeks of my uncle reddened. The last sentence of Mr. Edgerton
was unfortunate for his object. It conveyed a tacit reproof, which
the niggardly conscience of Mr. Clifford readily appropriated and,
perhaps, anticipated. He dreaded lest Mr. Edgerton knew all.

"You are probably aware, Mr. Edgcrton," he replied with equal
hesitancy and haste--"you have heard that Edward Clifford is an
orphan--that he has nothing, and it was therefore necessary that
he should learn to employ himself; though it was against my wish,
sir, that he went into a mercantile house."

There was something suppressed in this--a mean evasion--for he could
not easily have told Mr. Edgcrton, without a blush, that, instead
of the mercantile establishment, he would have made me a bricklayer's
hodman. But this, it seems, Edgerton had found out for himself. His
reply, however, was calculated to soothe the jealous apprehensions
of Mr. Clifford. He had an object in view, which he thought too
important to risk for the small pleasure of a passing sarcasm.

"Perhaps, it has happened for the best, Mr. Clifford. You were
right in requiring the young man to do for himself. Were I worth
millions, sir, I should still prefer that my son should learn that
lesson--that he should work out his own deliverance with the sweat
of his own brow."

"I agree with you, sir, perfectly," replied the other, with increased
complacency. "A boy learns to value his money as he should, only
when he has earned it for himself."

"Ah! it is not for this object simply," replied Mr. Edgerton,
"that I would have him acquire habits of industry; it is for the
moral results which such habits produce--the firmness, character,
consistency--the strength and independence--temperance, justice--all
of which arise, and almost only, from obedience to this law. But
it is clear that one can not do everything by himself, and this
young man, though he has gone on in a manner that might shame the
best of us, is still not so thoroughly independent as he fancies
himself. It will be some time before he will be able to realize
anything from his profession, and he will need some small assistance
in the meantime."

"I can not help him," exclaimed Mr. Clifford, abruptly--"I have
not the means to spare. My own family need everything that I can
give. He has himself only to blame. He chose his profession for
himself. I warned him against it. He needn't send to me."

"Do not mistake me, Mr. Clifford," said Mr. Edgerton, calmly.
"Your nephew knows nothing of my present visit. I would be loath
that he should know. It was the singular independence of his mind
that led me to the conviction, that he would sooner die than ask
assistance from anybody, that persuaded me to suggest to you in
what manner you might afford him an almost necessary help, without
offending his sensibility."

"Humph!" exclaimed the other, while a sneer mantled upon his lips.
"You are very considerate, Mr. Edgerton; but the same sensibilities
might prompt him to reject the assistance when tendered."

"No, sir," replied Edgerton, mildly--"I think I could manage that."

"I am sorry, sir, that I can not second your wishes in any material
respect," was the answer of my uncle;--"but I will see Edward, and
let him know that my house is open to him as it was from, the time
he was four years old; and he shall have a seat at my table until
he can establish himself more to his satisfaction; but money, sir,
in truth, I have not a cent to spare.  My own necessities--"

"Enough, sir," said Mr. Edgerton, mildly; "I take it for granted,
Mr. Clifford, that if you could contribute to the success of your
brother's son, you certainly would neither refuse nor refrain to
do so."

"Oh, surely--certainly not," replied the other, hastily.  "Anything
that I could do--anything in reason, sir, I should be very happy
to do, but--"

And then followed the usual rigmarole about "his own family," and
"hard times," and "diminished resources," and all those stereotype
commonplaces which are for ever on the lips of stereotype insincere
people. Mr. Clifford did not perceive the dry and somewhat scornful
inuendo, which lay at the bottom of Mr.  Edgerton's seemingly innocent
assumption; and the latter took his leave, vexed with himself at
having made the unsuccessful application--but still more angry with
the meanness of character which he had encountered in my uncle.






CHAPTER IV.

"She still soothed The mock of others."





It is not improbable that, after a few hours given to calm reflection,
my uncle perceived how obnoxious he might be made to public censure
for his narrow treatment of my claims; and the next day he sent for
me in order to tender me the freedom of his house--a tender which
he had made the day before to Mr.  Edgerton in my behalf. But his
offer had been already anticipated by that excellent friend that
very day. Coming warm and fresh from his interview with my uncle,
he called upon me, and in a very plain, direct, business-like, but
yet kind and considerate manner, informed me that he stood very
much in need of an assistant who would prepare his papers--did me
the honor to say that he fancied I would suit him better than anybody
else he knew, and offered me six hundred dollars for my labors in
that capacity for the first year of my service.  My engagement to
him, he said at the same time, did not imply such entire employment
as would incapacitate me for the execution of any business which
might be intrusted to my hands individually.  I was permitted the
use of a desk in his office, and was also permitted to hang out my
own banner from his window I readily persuaded myself that I could
be of service to Mr.  Edgerton--such service as would, perhaps,
leave my obligation a light one--and promptly acceded to his offer.
He had scarcely departed when a servant brought a note from Mr.
Clifford.  Even while meditating what he fancied was a favor, he
could not forbear the usual sneer. The following was his communication:

"DEAR EDWARD: If you can spare a moment from your numerous clients,
and are not in a great hurry to make your deposites, you will
suffer me to see you at the office before two o'clock.  Yours
affectionately, J. B. CLIFFORD."

"Very affectionately!"! exclaimed. It might be nothing more than
a pleasantry which he intended by the offensive passages in his
note; but the whole tenor of his character and conduct forbade this
conviction.

"No! no!" I muttered to myself, as the doubt suggested itself to
my mind; "no! no! it is the old insolence--the insolence of pride,
of conscious wealth--of power, as he thinks, to crush!  But he is
mistaken. He shall find defiance. Let him but repeat those sarcasms
and that sneer which are but too frequent on his lips when he speaks
to me, and I will answer him, for the first time, by a narration
which shall sting him to the very soul, if he has one!"

This resolution was scarcely made when the image of Julia Clifford--the
sweet child--a child now no longer-the sweet woman--interposed,
and my temper was subdued of its resolve, though its bitterness
remained unqualified.

And what of Julia Clifford? I have said but little of her for some
time past, but she has not been forgotten. Far from it.  She was
still sufficiently the attraction that drew me to the dwelling of
my selfish uncle. In the three years that I had been at the mercantile
establishment, her progress, in mind and person, had been equally
ravishing and rapid. She was no more the child, but the blooming
girl--the delicate blossom swelling to the bud--the bud bursting into
the flower--but the bloom, and the beauty, and the innocence--the
rich tenderness, and the dewy sweet, still remained the same through
all the stages of her progress from the infant to the woman. Wealth,
and the arrogant example of those about her, had failed to change
the naturally true and pure simplicity of her character. She was
not to be beguiled by the one, nor misguided by the other, from the
exquisite heart which was still worthy of Eden. When I was admitted
to the bar at twenty-one, she was sixteen--the age in our southern
country when a maiden looks her loveliest. But I had scarcely felt
the changes in the last three years which had been going on in
her. I beheld beauties added to beauties, charms to charms; and she
seemed every day to be the possessor of fresh graces newly dropped
from heaven; but there was no change.  Increased perfection does
not imply change, nor does it suffer it.

It was my custom, as the condescending wish of my uncle expressed,
that I should take my Sunday dinner with his family.  I complied
with this request, and it was no hard matter to do so. But it was
a sense of delight, not of duty, that made me comply; and, but
for Julia, I feel certain that I should never have darkened the
doors, which opened to admit me only through a sense of duty. But
the attraction--scarcely known to myself--drew me with singular
punctuality; and I associated the privilege which had been accorded
me with another. I escorted the ladies to church; sometimes, too,
when the business of my employers permitted, I spent an evening
during the week with the family; and beholding Julia I was not
over-anxious to perceive the indifference with which I was treated
by all others.

But let me retrace my steps. I subdued my choler so far as to go,
with a tolerable appearance of calmness if not humility, to the
interview which my uncle had been pleased to solicit. I need not
repeat in detail what passed between us. It amounted simply to
a supercilious offer, on his part, of lodging and board, until I
should be sufficiently independent to open the oyster for myself.
I thanked him with respect and civility, but, to his surprise,
declined to accept his offer.

"Why, what do you propose to do ?" he demanded.

"Do what I have been doing for the three past years; work for
myself, and pay my board from the proceeds of my own labor."

"What, you go back to the merchants, do you? You are wiser than
I thought. The law would not give you your bread here for twenty
years in this city."

"You are mistaken, uncle," I said, good humoredly--"it is from the
law that I propose to get my bread."

"Indeed!--You are even more sanguine than I thought you. But, pray,
upon what do you base your expectations?--the talents, I suppose."

I felt the rankling of this well-known and offensive sneer, but
replied simply to the point:--

"No, sir, upon assurances which you will probably think far more
worthy of respect. I have already been employed by Mr.  Edgerton
as an attorney, at a salary of six hundred dollars."

"Ah, indeed! Well, you are a fortunate fellow, I must say, to get
such a helping hand at the outset. But you may want some small
amount to begin with--you can not draw upon Mr. Edgerton  before
services are rendered, and if fifty or a hundred dollars, Edward--"

"I thank you, sir;--so far from wanting money, I should be almost
able to lend some. I have saved some two hundred from my mercantile
salary"

I enjoyed the ghastly grin which rose to his features. It was
evident that he was not pleased that I should be independent.  He
had set out with the conviction, when my father died, that my
support and education would devolve upon him, and though they did
not, yet it was plain enough to me that he was not unwilling that
such should be the impression of the community. I had disarmed
him entirely by the simplest process, and, mortified at being
disappointed, he was disposed to hate the youth who had baffled
him. It was the strangest thing in the world that such should be
the feeling of any man, and that, too, in reference to so near a
relation; but the case is nevertheless true. I saw it in his looks
that moment--I felt it in his accents. I KNEW that such was the real
feeling in his soul. There are motives which grow from vanities,
piques, rivalries, arid the miserable ostentations of a small spirit,
which act more terribly upon the passions of man, than even the
desire of gain or the love of woman.  The heart of Mr. Clifford,
was, after its particular fashion, a blind heart, like my own.

"Well, I am glad you are so well off. You will dine with us on
Sunday, I suppose?"

My affirmative was a matter of course; and, on Sunday, the evident
gratification of Julia when she saw me, amply atoned for all her
father's asperities and injustice. She had heard of my success--and
though in a sneer from the lips of her father it was not the
less productive of an evident delight to her. She met me with the
expression of this delight upon all her features.

"I am so glad, so very glad, and so surprised, too, Cousin Edward,
at your success. And yet you kept it all to yourself.  You might
have told ME, at least, that you were studying law.  Why was it
that I was never allowed to know of your intention?"

"Your father knew it, Julia."

"Yes, so he says now. He says you told him something about it when
you first went into a store; but he did not think you in earnest."

"Not in earnest! He little knew me, Julia."

"But your telling him, Edward, was not telling me. Why did you not
tell me?"

"You might not have kept my secret, Julia. You know what naughty
things are said of your sex, touching your inability to keep a
secret."

"Naughty things, indeed--naughty and untrue! I'm sure, I should
have kept your secret, if you desired it. But why should it be a
secret?"

"Why, indeed!" I muttered, as the shadow of my perverseness  passed
deeply over my heart. "Why, unless to protect myself from the sneers
which would stifle my ambition, and the sarcasm which would have
stung my heart,"

"But you have no fear of these from me, Cousin Edward," she said
gently, and with dewy eyes, while her fingers slightly pressed upon
my wrist.

"I know not that, Cousin Julia, I somehow suspect everything and
everybody now. I feel very lonely in the world--as if there was a
destiny at work to make my whole life one long conflict, which I
must carry on without sympathy or succor."

"Oh, these are only notions, Edward."

"Notions!" I exclaimed, giving her a bitter smile as I spoke, while
my thoughts reverted to the three years of unremitting and almost
uncheered labor through which I had passed.

"Yes, notions only, Cousin Edward. You are full of such notions.
You every now and then start up with a new one; and it makes you
gloomy and discontented--"

"I make no complaints, Julia."

"No, that is the worst of it. You make no complaints, I think,
because you do not wish to be cured of them. You prefer nursing
your supposed cause of grief, with a sort of solitary pleasure--the
gratification of a haughty spirit, that is too proud to seek for
solace, and to find it."

Julia had in truth touched upon the true nature of my misanthropy
--of that self vexing and self-torturing spirit which too effectually
blinds the heart.

"But could I find it, Julia?" I asked, looking into her eyes with
an expression which I began to feel was something very new to mine.

"Perhaps--I think--you could," was the half-tremulous answer, as
she beheld the peculiar expression of my glance.  The entrance of
Mrs. Clifford, was, perhaps, for the first time, rather a relief
to us both.

"And so you are a lawyer, Edward? Well, who would have thought of
it? It must be a very easy thing to be made a lawyer."

Julia looked at me with eyes that reddened with vexation.  I felt
my gorge rising; but when I reflected upon the ignorance, and
the unworthy nature of the speaker, I overcame the disposition to
retort, and smilingly replied:--

"It's not such hard work as bricklaying, certainly."

"Ah," she answered, "if it were only half so profitable.  But Mr.
Clifford says that a lawyer now is only another name for a beggar--a
sort of genteel beggar. The town's overrun with them--half of them
live upon their friends."

"I trust I shall not add to the number of this class, Mrs.  Clifford."

"Oh, no! I know YOU never will, Cousin Edward," exclaimed Julia,
with a flush upon her cheeks at her own temerity.

"Really, Julia," said her mother, "you are very confident.  How do
you know anything about it?"

The sharp glances of rebuke which accompanied this speech daunted
the damsel for a moment, and her eyes were suddenly cast in confusion
upon the ground; but she raised them with boldness a moment after,
as she replied:--

"We have every assurance, mother, for what I say, in the fact that
Cousin Edward has been supporting himself at another business, while
actually pursuing the study of law for these three years; and that
very pride about which father spoke today, is another assurance--"

"Bless my stars, child, you have grown very pert on a sudden, to
talk about guaranties and assurances, just as if you was a lawyer
yourself. The next thing we hear, I suppose, will be that instead
of being busy over the 'Seven Champions' and the last fashions,
you, too, will he turning over the leaves of big law-books, and
carrying on such studies in secret to surprise a body, as if there
was any merit or good in doing such things secretly."

Julia felt that she had only made bad worse, and she hung her head
in silence. For my part, though I suppressed my choler, the pang was
only the more keenly felt for the effort to hide it. In my secret
soul, I asked, "Will the day never come when I, too, will be able
to strike and sting?" I blushed an instant after, at the small and
mean appetite for revenge that such an inquiry implied. But I came
to the support of Julia.

"Let me say, Mrs. Clifford, that I think--nay, I know--that Julia
is right in her conjecture. The guaranty which I have given to my
friends, by the pride and industry which I have shown, should be
sufficient to convince them what my conduct shall be hereafter.
I know that I shall never trespass upon their feelings or their
pockets. They shall neither blush for nor lose by their relationship
with Edward Clifford."

"Well said! well spoken! with good emphasis and proper action.
Forrest himself could scarce have done it better!"

Such was the exclamation of Mr. Clifford, who entered the room
at this moment. His mock applause was accompanied by a clamorous
clapping of his hands. I felt my cheeks burn, and my blood boil.
The truth is, I was not free from the consciousness that I had
suffered some of the grandiloquent to appear in my manner while
speaking the sentence which had provoked the ridicule of my uncle.
The sarcasm acquired increase of sting in consequence of its being
partially well-merited. I replied with some little show of temper,
which the imploring glances of Julia did not altogether persuade
me to suppress.  The "blind heart" was growing stronger within
me, from the increasing conviction of my own independence. In this
sort of mimic warfare the day passed off as usual. I attended the
family to church in the afternoon, took tea, and spent the evening
with them--content to suffer the "stings and arrows"--however
outrageous, of my exemplary and Christian aunt and uncle, if permitted
to enjoy the presence and occasional smiles of the true angel,
whose influence could still temper my feelings into a humane and
patient toleration of influences which they yet burned to trample
under foot.






CHAPTER V.

DEBUT.





A brief interval now passed over, after my connection begun with
Mr. Edgerton, in which time the world went on with me more smoothly,
perhaps, than ever. My patron--for so this gentleman deserves
to be called--was as indulgent as I could wish. He soon discerned
the weaknesses in my character, and with the judgment of an old
practitioner, he knew how to subdue and soften, without seeming to
perceive them. I need not say that I was as diligent and industrious,
and not less studious, while in his employ, than I had been in that
of my mercantile acquaintance. The entire toils of the desk soon
fell upon my shoulders, and I acquired the reputation among my
small circle of acquaintance, of being a very good attorney for a
young beginner. It is true, I was greatly helped by the continued
perusal of an admirable collection of old precedents, which a long
period of extensive practice had accumulated in the collection of
my friend. But to be an attorney, simply, was not the bound of my
ambition. I fancied that the forum was, before all others, my true
field of exertion. The ardency of my temper, the fluency of my speech,
the promptness of my thought, and the warmth of my imagination, all
conspired in impressing on me the belief that I was particularly
fitted for the arena of public disputation. This, I may add, was
the opinion of Mr. Edgerton also; and I soon sought an occasion
for the display of my powers.

It was the custom at our bar--and a custom full of danger--for
young beginners to take their cases from the criminal docket.
Their "'prentice han'," was usually exercised on some wretch from
the stews, just as the young surgeon is permitted to hack the
carcass of a tenant of the "Paupers' Field," the better to prepare
him for practice on living and more worthy victims. Was there a
rascal so notoriously given over to the gallows that no hope could
possibly be entertained of his extrication from the toils of the
evidence, and the deliberations of a jury, he was considered fair
game for the young lawyers, who, on such cases, gathered about him
with all the ghostly and keen propensities of vultures about the
body of the horse cast out upon the commons.

The custom was evil, and is now, I believe, abandoned. It led to
much irreverence among thoughtless young men--to an equal disregard
of that solemnity which should naturally attach to the court
of justice, and to the life of the prisoner arraigned before it.
A thoughtless levity too frequently filled the mind of the young
lawyer and his hearers, when it was known that the poor wretch
on trial was simply regarded as an agent, through whose miserable
necessity, the beginner was to try his strength and show his skill
in the art of speech-making. It was my fortune, acting rather in
compliance with the custom than my own preference, to select one
of these victims and occasions for my debut. I could have done
otherwise. Mr. Edgerton freely tendered to me any one of several
cases of his own, on the civil docket, in which to make my appearance;
but I was unwilling to try my hand upon a case in which the penalty
of ill success might be a serious loss to my friend's client, and
might operate to the injury of his business; and, another reason
for my preference was to be found--though not expressed by me--in
the secret belief which I entertained that I was peculiarly gifted
with the art of appealing to the passions, and the sensibilities
of my audience.

Having made my determination, I proceeded to prepare myself by a due
consideration of the case at large; the history of the transaction,
which involved the life of my client--(the allegation was for
murder)--and of the testimony of the witnesses so far as it had
been suggested in the EXPARTE examination before the grand jury.
I reviewed the several leading principles on the subject of the
crime; its character, the sort of evidence essential to conviction,
and certainly, to do myself all justice, as effectually prepared
myself for the duties of the trial as probably any young man of
the time and community was likely to have done. The case, I need
not add, was hopelessly against me; the testimony conclusive; and
I had nothing to do but to weigh its character with keen examination,
pick out and expose its defects and inconsistencies, and suggest
as plausible a presumption in favor of the accused, as could be
reasonably made out from the possibilities and doubts by which all
human occurrences are necessarily attended. Something, too, might
be done by judicious appeals to the principle of mercy, assuming
for the jury a discretion on this subject which, by the way, they
have no right to exercise.

I was joined in the case by my friend, young Edgerton. So far our
boyish fortunes had run together, and he was not unwilling, though
against his father's counsel, to take the same occasion with me for
entering the world in company. The term began; the case was one of
the last on the criminal docket, and the five days which preceded
that assigned for the trial, were days, I am constrained to confess,
of a thrilling and terrible agitation to my mind. I can scarcely
now recall the feelings of that week without undergoing a partial
return of the same painful sensations. My soul was striving as
with itself, and seeking an outlet for escape. I panted, as if for
breath--my tongue was parched--my lips clammy--my voice, in the
language of the poet, clove to the roof of my throat. Altogether,
I have never felt such emotions either before or since.

I will not undertake to analyze them, or account for those conflicting
sensations which make us shrink, with something like terror, from
the very object which we desire. At length the day came, and the
man; attended by his father, William Edgerton, and myself, took our
places, and stood prepared for the issue. I looked round me with a
dizzy feeling of uncertainty.  Objects appeared to swim and tremble
before my sight. My eyes were of as little service to me then as
if they had been gazing to blindness upon the sun. Everything was
confused and imperfect. I could see that the courthouse was filled
to overflowing, and this increased my feebleness. The case was one
that had occasioned considerable excitement in the community, It
was one of no ordinary atrocity. This was a sufficient reason why
the audience should be large. There was yet another. There were
two new debutants. In a community where popular eloquence is, of
all others, perhaps the most desirable talent, this circumstance
was well calculated to bring many listeners. Besides, something
was expected from both Edgerton and myself. We had not reached our
present position without making for ourselves a little circle, in
which we had friends to approve and exult, and enemies to depreciate,
and condemn.

The proceedings were at length opened by the attorney-general, the
witnesses examined, and turned over to us for cross-examination.
This part of the duty was performed by my associate.  The business
fairly begun, my distraction was lessened.  My mind, driven to a
point, made a decisive stand; and the sound of Edgerton's voice,
as he proposed his questions, served still more to dissipate my
confusion. I furnished him with sundry questions, and our examination
was admitted to be quite searching and acute. My friend went through
his part of the labor with singular coolness. He was in little or
no respect excited. He, perhaps, was deficient in enthusiasm. If
there was no faltering in what he said, there was no fine phrensy.
His remarks and utterance were subdued to the plainest demands
of the subject. They were shrewd and sensible, not particularly
ingenious, nor yet deficient in the proper analysis of the evidence.
He acquitted himself creditably.

It was my part to reply to the prosecuting attorney; but when I
rose, I was completely confounded. Never shall I forget the pang of
that impotence which seemed to overspread my frame, and to paralyze
every faculty of thought and speech.  I was the victim to my
own ardor. A terrible reaction of mind had taken place, and I was
prostrated. The desire to achieve greatness--the belief that it
was expected from me--the consciousness that hundreds of eyes were
then looking into mine with hungering expectation, overwhelmed me!
I felt that I could freely have yielded myself for burial beneath
the floor on which I stood. My cheeks were burning, yet my hands
were cold as ice, and my knees tottered as with an ague. I strove
to speak, however; the eyes of the judge met mine, and they looked
the language of encouragement--of pity. But this expression only
increased my confusion. I stammered out nothing but broken syllables
and incoherent sentences. What I was saying, I know not--how long
I presented this melancholy spectacle of imbecility to the eyes of
my audience, I know not.  It may have been a few minutes only. To
me it seemed an age; and I was just endued with a sufficient power
of reflection to ask myself whether I had not better sit down at
once in irreversible despair, when my wandering and hitherto vacant
eyes caught a glance-a single glance--of a face opposite.

It was that of my uncle! He was perched on one of the loftiest
benches, conspicuous among the crowd--his eyes keenly fixed upon
mine, and his features actually brightened by a smile of triumphant
malice and exultation.

That glance restored me. That single smile brought me strength. I
was timid, and weak, and impotent no longer.  Under the presence
of habitual scorn, my habitual pride and independence returned to
me. The tremors left my limbs. The clammy huskiness which had loaded
my tongue, and made it cleave to the roof of my mouth, instantly
departed; and my whole mind returned to my control as if beneath the
command of some almighty voice. I now saw the judge distinctly--I
could see the distinct features of every juryman; and with the pride
of my restored consciousness, I retorted the smile upon my uncle's
face with one of contempt, which was not without its bitterness.

Then I spoke, and spoke with an intenseness, a directness of purpose
and aim--a stern deliberateness--a fire and a feeling--which
certainly electrified my hearers with surprise, if with no more
elevated emotions. That one look of hostility had done more for
my mind than could have been effected in my behalf by all the kind
looks and encouraging voices of all the friends in creation.

After a brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the
subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest
the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was
doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had been taken against
him--I proceeded to compare and contrast its several parts. There
were some inconsistencies in the evidence which enable me to make
something of a case. The character of the witnesses was something
more than doubtful and that, too, helped, in a slight degree,
my argument. This was rapid, direct, closely wound together,
and proved--such was the opinion freely expressed by others,
afterward--that I had the capacity for consecutive arrangement of
facts and inferences in a very remarkable degree. I closed with
an appeal in favor of that erring nature, which, even in our own
cases, led us hourly to the commission of sins and errors; and
which, where the individual was poor, wretched, and a stranger,
under the evil influences of destitution, vicious associations, and
a lot in life, which, of necessity, must be low, might well persuade
us to look with an eye of qualified rebuke upon his offences.

This was, of course, no argument, and was only to be considered
the natural close of my labors. Before I was half through I saw
my uncle rise from his seat, and hastily leave the court-room; and
then I knew that I was successful--that I had triumphed, through
that stimulating influence of his hate, over my own fears and
feebleness. I felt sure that the speech must be grateful to the
rest of my hearers, which HE could not stay to hear; and in this
conviction, the tone of my spirits became elevated--the thoughts
gushed from me like rain, in a natural and unrestrainable torrent
of language--my voice was clear and full, far more so than I had
ever thought it could be made--and my action far more animated,
perhaps, than either good taste or the occasion justified. The
criminal was not acquitted; but both William Edgerton and myself
were judged to have been eminently successful.

The result of my debut, in other respects, was flattering far beyond
my expectations. Business poured in upon me. My old employers,
the merchants, were particularly encouraging and friendly. They
congratulated me warmly on my success, assured me that they had
always thought I was better calculated for the law than trade;
and ended by putting into my hands all their accounts that needed
a legal agency for collection.  Mr. Edgerton was loud in his
approbation, and that very week saw his son and myself united in
co-partnership, with the prospect of an early withdrawal of the
father from business in my favor. Indeed, the latter gave us to
understand that his only purpose now was to see us fairly under
way, with a sufficient knowledge of the practice, and assured of
the confident of his own friends, in order to give his years and
enfeebled health a respite from the toils of the profession.

My worthy uncle, true to himself, played a very different part from
these gentlemen. He hung back, forbore all words on the subject of
my debut, and of the promising auspices under which my career was
begun, and actually placed certain matters of legal business into
the hands of another lawyer.  Of this, he himself gave me the first
information in very nearly this language:--

"I have just had to sue Yardle & Fellows, and a few others, Edward,
and I thought of employing you, but you are young, and there may
be some legal difficulties in the way:--but when you get older, and
arrive at some experience, we will see what can be done for you."

"You are perfectly right, sir," was my only answer, but the smile
upon my lips said everything. I saw, then, that HE COULD NOT
SMILE. He was now exchanging the feeling of scorn which he formerly
entertained for one of a darker quality. Hate was the necessary
feeling which followed the conviction of his having done me wilful
injustice--not to speak of the duties left undone, which were
equally his shame.

There were several things to mortify him in my progress.  His sagacity
as a man of the world stood rebuked--his conduct as a gentleman--his
blood as a relation, who had not striven for the welfare and good
report of his kin, and who had suffered unworthy prejudices, the
result of equal avarice and arrogance, to operate against him.

There is nothing which a base spirit remembers with so much malignant
tenacity as your success in his despite. Even in the small matter
just referred to, the appropriation of his law business, the
observant fates gave me my revenge. By a singular coincidence of
events, the very firm against which he had brought action the day
before were clients of Mr. Edgerton.  That gentleman was taken
with a serious illness at the approach of the next court, and the
business of their defence devolved upon his son and myself; and
finally, when it was disposed of, which did not happen till near
the close of that year, it so happened that I argued the case; and
was successful.

Mr Clifford was baffled, and you may judge the feeling with which
he now regarded me. He had long since ceased to jest with me and
at my expense. He was now very respectful, and I could see that
his dislike grew daily in strict degree with his deference. But the
deportment of Mr. Clifford--springing as it did from that devil,
which each man is supposed to carry at times in his bosom, and of
whose presence in mine at seasons I was far from unaware--gave me
less annoyance than that of another of his household. Julia, too,
had put on an aspect which, if not that of coldness, was at least,
that of a very marked reserve. I ascribed this to the influence of
her parents--perhaps, to her own sense of what was due to their
obvious desires--to her own feeling of indifference--to any and
every cause but the right one.

There were other circumstances to alarm me, in connection with this
maiden. She was, as I have said, singularly beautiful; and, as I
thought, until now, singularly meek and considerate.  Her charms,
about which there could bo no two opinions, readily secured her
numerous admirers, and when these were strengthened by the supposed
fortune of which she was to be the heiress, the suitors were, some
of them, almost as pressing, after the fashion of the world in
which we lived, as those of Penelope. I now no longer secured her
exclusive regard at the evening fireside or in our way to church.
There were  gallants on either hand--gay, dashing lads, with
big whiskers, long locks, and smart ratans, upon whom madame, our
lady-mother,  looked with far more complacency than upon me. The
course of Julia, herself, was, however, unexceptionable. She was
singularly cautious in her deportment, and, if reserved to me.
the most jealous scrutiny--after due reflection--never enabled me
to discover that she was more lavish of her regards to any other.
But the discovery of her position led me to another discovery which
the reader will wonder, as I did myself, that I had not made before.
This was the momentous discovery that my heart was irretrievably
lost to her--that I loved her with all the intensity of a first
passion, which, like every other passion in my heart, was absorbing
during its prevalence. I could name my feelings to myself only when
I perceived that such feelings were entertained by others;--only
when I found that the prize, which I desired beyond all others,
was likely to be borne away by strangers, did I know how much it
was desirable to myself.

The discovery of this affection instantly produced its natural
effects as well upon my deportment as upon my feelings; and that
sleepless spirit of suspicion and doubt--that true creature and
consequence of the habitual distrust which my treatment from boyhood
had instilled into my mind--at once rose to strength and authority
within me, and swayed me even as the blasts of November sway the
bald tops of the slender trees which the gusts have already denuded
of all foliage. The change in Julia's deportment, of which I have
already spoken, increased the febrile fears and suspicions which
filled my soul and overcame my judgment. She too--so I fancied--had
learned to despise and dislike me, under the goading influences of
her father's malice and her mother's silly prejudices. I jumped to
the conclusion instantly, that I was bound to my self to assert my
superiority, my pride and independence, in such a manner, as most
effectually to satisfy all parties that their hate or love was
equally a matter of indifference.

You may judge what my behavior was after this. For a time, at least,
it was sufficiently unbecoming. The deportment of Julia grew more
reserved than ever, and her looks more grave.  There was a sadness
evidently mingled with this gravity which, amid all the blindness
of my heart, I could not help but see.  She became sadder and
thinner every day; and there was a wo-begone listlessness about her
looks and movements which began to give me pain and apprehension.
I discovered, too after a while, that some apprehensions had also
crept into the minds of her parents in respect to her health. Their
looks were frequently addressed to her in evident anxiety. They
restrained her exercises, watched the weather when she proposed
to go abroad, strode in every way to keep her from fatigue and
exposure; and, altogether, exhibited a degree of solicitude which
at length had the effect of arousing mine.

Involuntarily, I approached her with more tenderness than my vexing
spirit had recently permitted me to show; but I recoiled from
the effects of my own attentions. I was vexed to perceive that my
approaches occasioned a start, a flutter--a shrinking inward--as
if my advance had been obtrusive, and my attempts at familiarity
offensive.

I was then little schooled in the intricacies of the female heart.
I little conjectured the origin of that seemingly  paradoxical
movement of the mind, which, in the case of one, sensitive and
exquisitely delicate, prompts to flight from the very pursuit which
it would yet invite; which dreads to be  suspected of the secret
which it yet most loves to cherish, and seeks to protect, by
concealment, the feelings which it may not defend; even as the bird
hides the little fledglings of its care from the hunter, whom it
dare not attack.

Stupid, and worse than stupid, my blind heart saw nothing of
this, and perverted what it saw. I construed the conduct of Julia
into matter of offence, to be taken in high dudgeon and resolutely
resented; and I drew myself up stiffly when she appeared, and
by excess of ceremonious politeness only, avoided the reproach of
brutality. Yet, even at such moments, I could see that there was
a dewy reproach in her eyes, which should have humbled me, and
made me penitent. But the effects of fifteen years of injudicious
management were not to be  dissipated in a few days even by the
Ithuriel spells of love. My sense of independence and self-resource
had been stimulated to a diseased excess, until, constantly on the
QUI VIVE, it became dogged and inflexible. It was a work of time
to soften me and make me relent; and the labor then was one of my
own secret thoughts, and unbiased private decision. The attempt to
persuade or reason me into a conviction was sure to be a failure.

Months passed in this manner without effecting any serious change
in Julia, or in bringing us a step nearer to one another.  Meanwhile,
the sphere of my observation and importance  increased, as the
circle of my acquaintance became extended. I was regarded as a
rising young man, and one likely to be  successful ultimately in
my profession. The social privileges of my friends, the Edgertons,
necessarily became mine; and it soon occurred that I encountered my
uncle and his family in circles in which it was somewhat a matter
of pride with him to be permitted to move. This, as it increased my
importance in his sight, did not diminish his pains. But he treated
me now with constant deference, though with the same unvarying
coldness. When in the presence of others, he warmed a little.  I
was then "his nephew;" and he would affect to speak with great
familiarity on the subject of my business, my interests, the last
case in which I was engaged, and so forth--the object of which was
to persuade third persons that our relations were precisely as they
should be, and as people would naturally  suppose them.

At all these places and periods, when it was my lot to meet
with Julia, she was most usually the belle of the night. A dozen
attendants followed in her train, solicitous of all her smiles, and
only studious how to afford her pleasure. I, only, stood aloof--I,
who loved her with a more intense fervor than all, simply because
I had none, or few besides to love. The heart which has been evermore
denied, will always burn with this intensity. Its passion, once
enkindled, will be the all-absorbing flame. Devoted itself, it
exacts the most religious devotion; and, unless it receives it,
recoils upon its own  resources, and shrouds itself in gloom, simply
to hide its sufferings from detection.

I affected that indifference to the charms of this maiden, which
no one of human sensibilities could have felt. Opinions might have
differed in respect to her beauty; but there could be none on
the score of her virtues and her amiability, and  almost as few
on the possessions of her mind. Julia Clifford, though singularly
unobtrusive in society, very soon convinced all around her that
she had an excellent understanding, which study had improved, and
grace had adorned by all the most appropriate modes of cultivation.
Her steps were always  followed by a crowd--her seat invariably
encircled by a  group to itself. I looked on at a distance, wrapped up
in  the impenetrable folds of a pride, whose sleeves were momently
plucked, as I watched, by the nervous fingers of jealousy and
suspicion. Sometimes I caught a timid glance of her eye, addressed
to the spot where I stood, full of inquiry, and, as I could not
but believe, of apprehension;--and yet, at such mcments; I turned
perversely from the spot, nor suffered myself to steal another look
at one, all of whose triumphs seemed made at my expense.

On one of these occasions we met--our eyes and hands, accidentally;
and, though I, myself, could not help starting back with a cold
chill at my heart, I yet fancied there was something monstrous
insulting in the evident recoil of her person from the contact with
mine, at the same moment. I was about to turn hurriedly away with
a slight bow of acknowledgment, when the touching tenderness of
her glance, so full of sweetness and sadness, made me shrink with
shame from such a rudeness.  Besides, she was so pale, so thin,
and really looked so unwell, that my conscience, in spite of that
blind heart whose perversity would still have kept me to my first
intention, rebuked me, and drove me to my duty. I approached--I
spoke to her--and my words, though few, under the better impulses
of the moment, were gentle and solicitous, as they should have been.
My tones, too, were softened:--wilfully as I still felt, I could
not forbear the exercise of that better ministry of the affections
which was disposed to make amends for previous misconduct. I do not
know exactly what I said--I probably did nothing more than utter
the ordinary phrases of social compliment;--but everything was
obliterated from my mind in an instant, by the startling directness
of what was said by her.  Looking at me with a degree of intentness
by which, alone, she was, perhaps, able to preserve her seeming
calmness, she replied by an inquiry as remote from what my observation
called for as possible, yet how applicable to me and my conduct!

"Why do you treat me thus, Edward? Why do you neglect me as you
do--as if I were a stranger, or, at least, not a friend? What have
I done to merit this usage from one who---"

She did not finish the sentence, but her reproachful eyes, full
of a dewy suffusion that seemed very much like tears, appeared to
conclude it thus--

"One who--used to love me!"

So different was this speech from any that I looked for--so different
from what the usage of our conventional world would have seemed
to justify--so strange for one so timid, so silent usually on the
subject of her own griefs, as Julia Clifford--that I was absolutely
confounded. Where had she got this courage? By what strong feeling
had it been stimulated? Had I been at that time as well acquainted
with the sex as I have grown since, I must have seen that nothing
but a deep interest in my conduct and regard, could possibly have
prompted the spirit of one so gentle and shrinking, to the utterance
of so searching an appeal. And in what way could I answer it?
How could I excuse myself? What say, to justify that cold, rude
indifference to a relative, and one who had ever been gentle and
kind and true to me. I had really nothing to complain of. The vexing
jealousies of my own suspicious heart had alone informed it to its
perversion; and there I stood--dumb, confused, stupid-speaking,
when I did speak, some incoherent, meaningless sentences, which
could no more have been understood by her than they can now be
remembered by me.  I recovered myself, however, sufficiently soon
to say, before we were separated by the movements of the crowd:-

"I will come to you to-morrow, Julia. Will you suffer me to see
you in the morning, say at twelve?"

"Yes, come!" was all her answer; and the next moment the harsh
accents of her ever-watchful mother warned us to risk no more.






CHAPTER VI.

DENIAL AND DEFEAT.





My sleep that night was anything but satisfactory. I had feverish
dreams, unquiet slumbers, and woke at morning with an excruciating
headache. I was in no mood for an explanation such as my promise
necessarily implied, but I prepared my toilet with particular
care--spent two hours at my office in a vain endeavor to divert
myself, by a resort to business, from the conflicting and annoying
sensations which afflicted me, and then proceeded to the dwelling
of my uncle.

I was fortunate in seeing Julia without the presence of her mother.
That good lady had become too fashionable to suffer herself to
be seen at so early an hour. Her vanity, in this respect, baffled
her vigilance, for she had her own apprehensions on the score of
my influence upon her daughter. Julia was scarcely so composed in
the morning as she had appeared on the preceding night. I was now
fully conscious of a flutter in her manner, a flush upon her face,
an ill-suppressed apprehension in her eyes, which betokened strong
emotions actively at work. But my own agitation did not suffer
me to know the full extent of hers. For the first time, on her
appearance, did I ask myself the question--"For what did I seek
this interview?" What had I to say--what near? How explain my
conduct--my coldness? On what imaginary and unsubstantial premises
base the neglect in my deportment, amounting to rudeness, of which
she had sufficient reason and a just right to complain?  When I
came to review my causes of vexation, how trivial did they seem. The
reserve which had irritated me, on her part, now that I analyzed its
sources, seemed a very natural reserve, such as was only maidenly
and becoming. I now recollected that she was no longer a child--no
longer the lively little fairy whom I could dandle on my knee and
fling upon my shoulder, without a scruple or complaint. I stood like
a trembling culprit in her presence. I was eloquent only through
the force of a stricken conscience.

"Julia!" I exclaimed when we met, "I have come to make atonement.
I feel how rude I have been, but that was only because I was very
wretched."

"Wretched, Edward!" she exclaimed with some surprise.  "What should
make you wretched?"

"You--you have made me wretched."

"Me!" Her surprise naturally increased

"Yes, you, dear Julia, and you only."

I took her hand in mine. Mine was burning--hers was colder than the
icicles. Need I say more to those who comprehend the mysteries of
the youthful heart. Need I say that the tongue once loosed, and
the declaration of the soul must follow in a rush from the lips.
I told her how much I loved her;--how unhappy it made me to think
that others might bear away the prize; that, in this way, my rudeness
arose from my wretchedness, and my wretchedness only from my love.
I did not speak in vain. She confessed an equal feeling, and we
were suffered a brief hour of unmitigated happiness together.

Surely there is no joy like that which the heart feels in the first
moment when it gives utterance to its own, and hears the avowed
passion of the desired object:--a pure flame, the child of sentiment,
just blushing with the hues of passion, just budding with the
breath and bloom of life. No sin has touched the sentiment;--no
gross smokes have risen to involve and obscure the flame; the altar
is tended by pure hands; white spirits; and there is no reptile
beneath the fresh blossoming flowers which are laid thereon. The
grosser passions sleep, like the fumes at the shrine of Apollo,
beneath the spell of that master passion in whose presence they
can only maintain a subordinate existence. I loved; I had told
my love;--and I was loved in return. I trembled with the deep
intoxication of that bewildering moment; and how I found my way
back to my office--whom I saw on the way, or to whom I spoke, I know
not. I loved;--I was beloved. He only can conceive the delirium of
this sweet knowledge who has passed a life like mine--who has felt
the frowns and the scorn, and the contempt of those who should
have nurtured him with smiles--whose soul, ardent and sensitive,
has been made to recoil cheerlessly back on itself--denied the
sunshine of the affections, and almost forbade to hope. Suddenly,
when I believed myself most destitute, I had awakened to fortune--to
the realization of desires which were beyond my fondest dreams. I,
whom no affection hitherto had blessed, had, in a moment, acquired
that which seemed to me to comprise all others, and for which all
others might have been profitably thrown away.

I fancied now that henceforth my sky was to be without a cloud. I
did not--nor did Julia imagine for a moment that any opposition to
our love could arise from her parents. What reason now could they
have to oppose it? There was no inequality in our social positions.
My blood had taken its rise from the same fountains with her own.
In the world's estimation my rank was quite as respectable as that
of any in my uncle's circle, and, for my condition, my resources,
though small, were improving daily, and I had already attained
such a place among my professional brethren, as to leave it no
longer doubtful that it must continue to improve. My income, with
economy--such economy as two simple, single-minded creatures, like
Julia and myself, were willing to employ--would already yield us
a decent support.  In short, the idea of my uncle's opposition to
the match never once entered my head. Yet he did oppose it. I was
confounded with his blunt, and almost rugged refusal.

"Why, sir, what are your objections?"

He answered with sufficient coolness.

"I am sorry to refuse you, Edward, but I have already formed other
arrangements for my daughter. I have designed her for another."

"Indeed, sir--may I ask with whom?"

"Young Roberts--his father and myself have had the matter for some
time in deliberation. But do not speak of it, Edward--my confidence
in you, alone, induces me to state this fact."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir;--but you do not surely mean
to force young Roberts upon Julia, if she is unwilling?"

"Ah, she will not be unwilling. She's a dutiful child, who will
readily recognise the desires of her parents as the truest wisdom."

"But, Mr. Clifford--you forget that Julia has already admitted to
me a preference--"

"So you tell me, Edward, and it is with regret that I feel myself
compelled to say that I wholly disapprove of your seeking my
daughter's consent, before you first thought proper to obtain mine.
This seems to me very muck like an abuse of confidence."

"Really, sir, you surprise me more than ever. Now that you force
me to speak, let me say that, regarding myself as of blood scarcely
inferior to that of my cousin, I can not see how the privilege of
which I availed myself in proposing for her hand, can be construed
into a breach of confidence. I trust, sir, that you have not
contemplated your brother's son in any degrading or unbecoming
attitude."

"No, no, surely not, Edward; but mere equality of birth does not
constitute a just claim, by itself, to the affections of a lady."

"I trust the equality of birth, sir, is not impaired on my part
by misconduct--by a want of industry, capacity--by inequalities in
other respects--"

"And talents!"

He finished the sentence with the ancient sneer. But I was now a
man--a strong one, and, at this moment particularly a stern one.

"Stop, sir," I retorted; "there must be an end to this.  Whether you
accede to my application or not, sir, there is nothing to justify
you in an attempt to goad and mortify my feelings.  I have proffered
to you a respectful application for the hand of of your daughter,
and though I were poorer, and humbler, and less worthy in all respects
than I am, I should still be entitled to respectful treatment. At
another time, with my sensibilities less deeply interested than
they are, I should probably submit, as I have already frequently
submitted, to the unkind and ungenerous sarcasms in which you have
permitted yourself to indulge at my expense. But my regard for
your daughter alone would prompt me to resent and repel them now.
The object of my interview with you is quite too sacred--too solemnly
invested--to suffer me to stand silently under the scornful usage
even of her father."

All this may have been deserved by Mr. Clifford, but it was scarcely
discreet in me. It gave him the opportunity which, I do not doubt,
he desired--the occasion which he had in view. It afforded him
an excuse for anger, for a regular outbreak between us, which, in
some sort, yielded him that justification for his refusal, without
which he would have found it a very difficult matter to account
for or excuse. We parted in mutual anger, the effect of which was
to close his doors against me, and exclude me from all opportunities
of interview with Julia, unless by stealth. Even then, these
opportunities were secured by my artifice, without her privity. As
dutiful as fond, she urged me against them; and, resolute to "honor
her father and mother" in obedience to those holy laws without a
compliance with which there is little hope and no happiness, she
informed me with many tears that she was now forbidden to see me,
and would therefore avoid every premeditated arrangement for our
meeting. I did not do justice to her character, but reproached her
with coldness--with a want of affection, sensibility, and feeling.

"Do not say so, Edward--do not--do not! I cold--I insensible--I
wanting in affection for you! How, how can you think so?" And she
threw herself on my bosom and sobbed until I began to fancy that
convulsions would follow.

We separated, finally, with assurances of mutual fidelity--assurances
which, I knew, from the exclusiveness of all my feelings, my
concentrative singleness of character, and entire dependence upon
the beloved object of those affections which were now the sole solace
of my heart, would not be difficult for me to keep. But I doubted
HER strength--HER resolution--against the pressing solicitations
of parents whom she had never been accustomed to withstand. But
she quieted me with that singular earnestness of look and manner
which had once before impressed me previous to our mutual explanation.
Like vulgar thinkers generally, I was apt to confound weakness of
frame and delicacy of organization with a want of courage and moral
resources of strength and consolation.

"Fear nothing for my truth, Edward. Though, in obedience to
my parents, I shall not marry against their will, be sure I shall
never marry against my own."

"Ah, Julia, you think so, but--"

"I know so, Edward. Believe nothing that you hear against me or of
me, which is unfavorable to my fidelity, until you hear it from my
own lips."

"But you will meet me again--soon?"

"No, no, do not ask it, Edward. We must not meet in this manner.
It is not right. It is criminal."

I had soon another proof of the decisive manner in which my uncle
seemed disposed to carry on the war between us. Erring, like
the greater number of our young men, in their ambitious desire to
enter public life prematurely, I was easily persuaded to become a
candidate for the general assembly. I was now just twenty-five--at
a time when young men are not yet released from the bias of early
associations, and the unavoidable influence of guides, who are
generally blind guides. Until thirty, there are few men who think
independently; and, until this habit is acquired--which, in too
many cases, never is acquired--the individual is sadly out of place
in the halls of legislation. It is this premature disposition to
enter into public life, which is the sole origin of the numberless
mistakes and miserable inconsistencies into which our statesmen
fall; which cling to their progress for ever after, preventing
their performances, and baffling them in all their hopes to secure
the confidence of the people. They are broken-down political hacks
in the prime of life, and just at the time when they should be
first entering upon the duties of the public man. Seduced, like
the rest, as well by my own vanity as the suggestions of favoring
friends, I permitted my name to be announced, and engaged actively
in the canvass. Perhaps the feverish state of my mind, in consequence
of my relations with Julia Clifford and her parents, made me more
willing to adopt a measure, about which, at any other time, I
should have been singularly slow and  cautious. As a man of proud,
reserved, and suspicious temper, I had little or no confidence in
my own strength with the people; and defeat would be more mortifying
than success grateful to a person of my pride. I fancied, however,
that popular life would somewhat subdue the consuming passions which
were rioting within my bosom; and I threw myself into the thick of
the struggle with all the ardor of a sanguine temperament.

To my surprise and increased vexation, I found my worthy uncle
striving in every possible way, without actually declaring his
purpose, in opposing my efforts and prospects. It is true he did
not utter my name; but he had formed a complete ticket, in which
my name was not; and he was toiling with all the industry of a
thoroughgoing partisan in promoting its success.  The cup which he
had commended to my lips was overrunning with the gall of bitterness.
Hostility to me seemed really to have been a sort of monomania
with him from the first. How else was this canton procedure to be
accounted for? how, even with this belief, could it be excused? His
conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon
which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being
a jot the wiser.

If his desire was to baffle me, he was successful. I was defeated,
after a close struggle, by a meagre majority of seven votes in some
seventeen hundred; and the night after the election was declared,
he gave a ball in honor of the successful candidates, in which
his house was filled to overflowing. I passed the dwelling about
midnight. Music rang from the illuminated parlor. The merry dance
proceeded. All was life, gayety, and rich profusion. And Julia!
even then she might have been whirling in the capricious movements
of the dance with my happy rival--she as happy--unconscious of him
who glided like some angry spectre beneath her windows, and almost
within hearing of her thoughtless voice.

Such were my gloomy thoughts--such the dark and dismal subjects of
my lonely meditations. I did the poor girl wrong.  That night she
neither sung nor danced; and when I saw her again, I was shocked at
the visible alteration for the worse which her appearance exhibited
She was now grown thin, almost to meagreness; her cheeks were very
wan, her lips whitened, and her beauty greatly faded in consequence
of her suffering health.

Yet, will it be believed that, in that interview, though such
was her obvious condition, my perverse spirit found the language
of complaint and suspicion more easy than that of devotion and
tenderness. I know that it would be easy, and feel that it would
be natural, to account for and to excuse this brutality, by a
reference to those provocations which I had received from her father. A
warm temper, ardent and glowing, it is very safe to imagine, must
reasonably become soured and perverse by bad treatment and continual
injury. But this for me was no excuse. Julia was a victim also of
the same treatment, and in far greater degree than myself, as she
was far less able to endure it. Mine, however, was the perverseness
of impetuous blood--unrestrained, unchecked--having a fearful
will, an impetuous energy, and, gradually, with success and power,
swelling to the assertion of its own unqualified dominion--the
despotism of the blind heart.

Julia bore my reproaches until I was ashamed of them. Her submission
stung me, and I loved then too ardently not to arrive in time at
justice, and to make atonement. Would I had made it sooner! When I
had finished all my reproaches and complainings, she answered all
by telling me that the affair with young Roberts had been just
closed, and she hoped finally, by her unqualified rejection of
his suit, even though backed by all her father's solicitations,
complaints, nay, threats and anger.  How ungenerous and unmanly,
after this statement had been made, appeared all the bitter eludings
in which I had indulged!  I need not say what efforts I made to
atone for my precipitation and injustice; and how easily I found
forgiveness from one who knew not how to harbor unkindness--and
if she even had the feeling in her bosom, entertained it as one
entertains his deadliest foe, and expelled it as soon as its real
character was discovered.






CHAPTER VII.

TEMPTATION.





Thus stood the affair between my fair cousin and myself--a
condition of things seriously and equally affecting her health and
my temper--when an explosion took place, of a nature calculated to
humble my uncle and myself, if not in equal degree, or to the same
attitude, at least to a most mortifying extent in both cases. I
have not stated before--indeed, it was not until the affair which
I am now about to relate had actually exploded, that I was made
acquainted with any of the facts which produced it--that, prior to
my father's death, there had been some large business connections
between himself and my uncle. In those days secret connections in
business, however dangerous they might be in social, and more than
equivocal in moral respects, were considered among the legitimate
practices of tradesmen. What was the particular sort of relations
existing between my father and uncle, I am not now prepared to
state, nor is it absolutely necessary to my narrative. It is enough
for me to say that an exposure of them took place, in part, in
consequence of some discovering made by my father's unsatisfied
creditors, by which the obscure transactions of thirty years
were brought to light, or required to be brought to light; and in
the development of which, the fair business fame of my uncle was
likely to be involved in a very serious degree--not to speak of
the inevitable effects upon his resources of a discovery and proof
of fraudulent concealment. The reputation of my father must have
suffered seriously, had it not been generally known that he left
nothing--a fact beyond dispute from the history of my own career,
in which neither goods nor chattels, lands nor money, were suffered
to enure to my advantage.

The business was brought to me. The merchant who brought it, and who
had been busy for some years in tracing out the testimony, so far
as it could be procured, gave me to understand that he had determined
to place it in my hands for two reasons: firstly, to enable me
to release the memory of my father from the imputation--under any
circumstances discreditable--of bankruptcy, by compelling my uncle
to disgorge the sums which he had appropriated, and which, as was
alleged, would satisfy all my father's creditors; and, secondly,
to give me an opportunity of revenging my own wrongs upon one, of
whose course of conduct toward me the populace had already seen
enough, during the last election, to have a tolerably correct idea.

I examined the papers, thanked my client for his friendly intentions,
but declined taking charge of the case for two other reasons. My
relations to the dead and to the living were either of them sufficient
reasons for this determination. I communicated  the grounds of
action, in a respectful letter, to my uncle, and soon discovered,
by the alarm which he displayed in consequence,  that the cause
of the complaint was in all probability good. The case belonged to
the equity jurisdiction, and the relator soon filed his bill.

My uncle's tribulation may be conjectured from the fact that
he called upon me, and seemed anxious enough to bury the hatchet.
He wished me to take part in the proceedings--insisted, somewhat
earnestly, and strove very hard to impress me with the conviction
that my father's memory demanded that I should devote myself to the
task of meeting and confounding the creditor who thus, as it were,
had set to work to rake up the ashes of the dead; but I answered
all this very briefly and very dryly:--

"If my father has participated in this fraud, he has reaped none
of its pleasant fruits. He lived poor, and died poor. The public
know that; and it will be difficult to persuade them, with a due
knowledge of these facts, that he deliberately perpetrated such
unprofitable villany. Besides, sir, you do not seem to remember
that, if the claim of Banks, Tressell, & Sons, is good, it relieves
my father's memory of the only imputation that now lies against
it--that of being a bankrupt."

"Ay !" he cried hoarsely, "but it makes me one--me, your uncle."

"And what reason, sir, have I to remember or to heed this relationship?"
I demanded sternly, with a glance beneath which he quailed.

"True, true, Edward, your reproach is a just one. I have not been
the friend I should have been; but--let us be friends, now, and
hereafter--we must be friends. Mrs. Clifford is very anxious that
it should be so--and--and--Edward," solemnly, "you must help me
out of this business. You must, by Heaven, you must--if you would
not have me blow my brains out!"

The man was giving true utterance to his misery--the fruit of those
pregnant fears which filled his mind.

"I would do for you, sir, whatever is proper for me to do, but can
not meddle in this unless you are prepared to make restitution,
which I should judge to be your best course."

"How can you advise me to beggar my child? This claim, if recognised,
will sweep everything. The interest alone is a fortune. I can not
think of allowing it. I would rather die!"

"This is mere madness, Mr. Clifford; your death would not lessen the
difficulty. Hear me, sir, and face the matter manfully. You must do
justice. If what I understand be true, you have most unfortunately
suffered yourself to be blinded to the dishonor of the act which you
have committed; you have appropriated wealth which did not belong
to you, and, in thus doing, you have subjected the memory of my father
to the reproach of injustice which he did not deserve. I will not
add the reproach which I might with justice add, that, in thus
wronging the father's memory, and making it cover your own improper
gains, you have suffered his son to want those necessaries of
education and sustenance, which--"

"Say no more, Edward, and it shall all be amended. Listen to me
now; but stay--close that door for a moment--there!--Now, look
you."

And, having taken these precautionary steps, the infatuated man
proceeded to admit the dishonest practices of which he had been
guilty. His object in making the confession, however, was not that
he might make reparation. Far from it. It was rather to save from
the clutch of his creditors, from the grasp of justice, his ill-gotten
possessions. I have no patience in revealing the schemes by which
this was to be effected; but, as a preliminary, I was to be made the
proprietor of one half of the sum in question, and the possessor of
his daughter's hand; in return for which I was simply to share with
him in the  performance of certain secret acts, which, without
rendering his virtue any more conspicuous, would have most effectually
eradicated all of mine.

"I have listened to you, Mr. Clifford, and with great difficulty.
I now distinctly decline your proposals. Not even the bribe, so
precious in my sight, as that which you have tendered in the person
of your daughter, has power to tempt me into hesitation. I will
have nothing to do with you in this matter.  Restore the property
to your creditors."

"But, Edward, you have not heard;--your share alone will be twenty
odd thousand dollars, without naming the interest!"

"Mr. Clifford, I am sorry for you. Doubly sorry that you persist
in seeing this thing in an improper light. Even were I disposed to
second your designs, it is scarcely possible, sir, that you could
be extricated. The discovery of those papers, and the extreme
probability that Hansford, the partner of the  English firm of
Davis, Pierce, & Hansford, is surviving, and can be found, makes
the probabilities strongly against you. My  advice to you, is,
that you make a merit of necessity;--that you endeavor to effect a
compromise before the affair has gone too far. The creditors will
make some concessions sooner than trust the uncertainties of a legal
investigation, and whether you lose or gain, a legal investigation
is what you should  particularly desire to avoid. If you will adopt
this counsel, I will act for you with Banks & Tressel: and if you
will give me carte blanche, I think I can persuade them to a private
arrangement by which they will receive the principal in liquidation
of all  demands. This may be considered a very fair basis for an
arrangement, since the results of the speculation could only  accrue
from the business capacities of the speculator, and did not belong
to a fund which the proprietor had resolved not to  appropriate,
and which must therefore, have been entirely  unproductive. I do
not promise you that they will accept, but it is not improbable.
They are men of business--they need, at this moment, particularly,
an active capital; and have had too much knowledge of the doubts
and delays attending a prolonged suit in equity, not to listen to a
proposition which yields them the entire principal of their claim."

I need not repeat the arguments and entreaties by which I succeeded
in persuading my uncle to accede to the only arrangement which
could possibly have rescued him from the public exposure which was
impending; but he did consent, and, armed with his credentials, I
proceeded to the office of Banks & Tressell, without loss of time.

Though resolved, if I could effect the matter, that my uncle
should liquidate their claim to the uttermost farthing which they
required, it was my duty to make the best bargain which I could, in
reference to his unfortunate family. Accordingly, without suffering
them to know that I had carte blanche, I simply communicated to them
my wish to have the matter arranged without public investigation--that
I was persuaded from a hasty review which I had given to the case,
that there were good grounds for action;--but, at the same time,
I dwelt upon the casualties of such a course--the possibility that
the chief living witness--if he were living--might not be found,
or might not survive long enough--as he was reputed to be very
old--for the purposes of examination before the commission;--the
long delays which belonged to a litigated suit, in which the details
of a mixed foreign and domestic business of so many years was to
be raked up, reviewed and explained; and the further chances, in
the event of final success, of the property of the debtor being
so covered, concealed, or made away with, as to baffle at last all
the industry and labors of the creditor.

The merchants were men of good sense, and estimated the proverb--"a
bird in hand is worth two in the bush"--at its true value. It did
not require much argument to persuade them to receive a sum of over
forty thousand dollars, and give a full discharge to the defendant;
and I flattered myself that the matter was all satisfactorily
arranged, and had just taken a seat at my table to write to Mr.
Clifford to this effect, when, to my horror, I receive a note from
that gentleman, informing me of his resolve to join issue with
the claimants, and "maintain his RIGHTS(?) to the last moment."
He thanked me, in very cold consequential style, for my "FRIENDLY
efforts"--the words italicised, as I have now written it;--but
conduced with informing me that he had taken the opinion of older
counsel, which, though it might be less correct than mine, was,
perhaps, more full of promise for his interests.

This note justified me in calling upon the unfortunate gentleman.
It is true I had not committed him to Banks & Tressell--the
suggestions which I had made for the arrangement were all proposed
as a something which I might be able to bring about in a future
conference with him--but I was too anxious to save him from
his lamentable folly--from that miserable love of money, which,
overreaching itself in its blindness, as does every passion--was
not only about to deliver him to shame but to destitution also.

I found him in Mrs. Clifford's presence. That simple and silly woman
had evidently been made privy to the whole transaction, so far as
my arguments had been connected with it;--for  ALL the truth is
not often to be got out of the man who means or has perpetrated a
dishonesty. She had been alarmed at the immense loss of money, and
consequently of importance, with which the family was threatened;
and without looking into, or being able to comprehend the facts as
they stood, she had taken around against any measure which should
involve such a sacrifice. Her influence over the weak man beside
her, was never so clear to me as now; and in learning to despise his
character more than ever, I discovered, at the same time, the true
source of many of his errors and much of his misconduct. She did
not often suffer him to reply for himself--yielded me the ultimatum
from her own lips; and condescended to assure me that she could
only ascribe the advice which I had given to her husband, to the
hostile disposition which I had always entertained for herself and
family. That I was "a wolf in sheep's clothing, SHE had long since
been able to see, though all others unhappily seemed blind."

Here she scowled at her husband, who contented himself with walking
to and fro, playing with his coatskirts, and feeling, no doubt,
a portion of the shame which his miserable bondage to this silly
woman necessarily incurred.

"Mr. Clifford has got a lawyer who can do for him what it seems
you can not," was her additional observation. "He promises to get
him to dry land, and save him without so much as wetting his shoes,
though his own blood relations, who are thought so smart, can not,
it appears, do anything."

Of course I could have nothing to say to the worthy lady, but my
expostulations were freely urged to Mr. Clifford.

"You, at least," said I, "should know the risks which you incur
by this obstinacy. Mrs. Clifford can not be expected to know; and
I now warn you, sir, that the case of Banks & Tressell is a very
strong one, very well arranged, and so admirably hung together,
in its several links of testimony, that even the absence of old
Hansford (the chief witness), should his answers never be obtained,
would scarcely impair the integrity of the evidence. In a purely
moral point of view, nothing can be more complete than it is now."

"Well, and who would it convict, Mr. Edward Clifford?" exclaimed the
inveterate lady, anticipating her husband's answer with accustomed
interference; "who would it convict, if not your own father? It
was as much his business as my husband's; and if there's any shame,
I'm sure his memory and his son will have to bear their share of
it; and this makes it so much more wonderful to me that you should
take sides against Mr. Clifford, instead of standing up in his
defence."

"I would save him, madam, if you and he would let me," I exclaimed
with some indignation. "Your reference to my father's share in this
transaction does not affect me, as it is very evident that you are
not altogether acquainted with the true part which he had in it.
He had all the risk, all the loss, all the blame--and your husband
all the profit, all the importance. He lived poor, and died so;
without a knowledge of those profitable results to his brother
of which the latter has made his own avails by leaving my father's
memory to aspersion which he did not deserve, and his son to
destitution and reproach which he merited as little. My father's
memory is liable to no reproach when every creditor knows that he
died in a state of poverty, in which his only son has ever lived.
Neither he nor I ever shared any of the pleasant fruits, for which
we are yet to be made accountable."

"And whose fault was it that you didn't get your share I'm sure Mr.
Clifford made you as handsome an offer yesterday as any man could
desire. Didn't he offer you half? But I suppose nothing short of
the whole would satisfy so ambitious a person."

"Neither the half nor the whole will serve me, madam, in such
a business. My respect for your husband and his family would, of
itself, have been sufficient to prevent my acceptance of his offer."

"But there was Julia, too, Edward!" said Mr. Clifford, approaching
me with a most insinuating smile.

"It is not yet too late," said Mrs. Clifford, unbending a little.
"Take the offer of Mr. Clifford, Edward, and be one of us; and then
this ugly business--"

"Yes, my dear Edward, even now, though I have spoken with young
Perkins about the affair, and he tells me there's nothing so much
to be afraid of, yet, for the look of the thing, I'd rather that
you should be seen acting in the business. As it's so well known
that your father had nothing, and you nothing, it'll then be easy
for the people to believe that nothing was the gain of any of us;
and--and--"

"Young Perkins may think and say what he pleases, and you are
yourself capable of judging how much respect you may pay to his
opinion. Mine, however, remains unchanged.  You will have to pay
this money--nay, this necessity will not come alone. The development
of all the particulars connected with the transaction will disgrace
you for ever, and drive you from the community. Even were I to
take part with you, I do not see that it would change the aspect of
affairs. So far from your sharing with me the reputation of being
profitless in the affair, the public would more naturally suspect
that I had shared with you--now, if not before--and the whole amount
involved would not seduce me to incur this imputation."

"But my daughter--Julia--"

"Do not speak of her in this connection, I implore you, Mr.  Clifford.
Let her name remain pure, uncontaminated by any considerations,
whether of mere gain or of the fraud which the gain is supposed
to involve. Freely would I give the sum in question, were it mine,
and all the wealth besides that I ever expect to acquire, to make
Julia Clifford my wife;--but I can not suffer myself, in such a
case as this, to accept her as a bribe, and to sanction crime. Nay,
I am sure that she too would be the first to object."

"And so you really refuse? Well, the world's coming to a pretty
pass. But I told Mr. Clifford, months ago, that you had quite forgot
yourself, ever since you had grown so great with the Edgertons,
and the Blakes, and Fortescues, and all them high-headed people.
But I'm sure, Mr. Edward Clifford, my daughter needn't go a-begging
to any man; and as for this business, whatever you may say against
young Perkins, I'll take his opinion of the law against that of
any other young lawyer in the country. He's as good as the best,
I'm thinking."

"Your opinion is your own, Mrs. Clifford, but I beg to set you right
on the subject of mine. I did not say anything against Mr. Perkins."

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I'm sure you did. You said he was nothing
of a lawyer, and something more."

Was there ever a more perverse and evil and silly woman!  I contented
myself with assuring her that she was mistaken and had very much
misunderstood me--took pains to repeat what I had really said, and
then cut short an interview that had been painful and humbling to
me on many grounds. I left the happy pair tete-a-tete, in their
princely parlor together, little fancying that there was another
argument which had been prepared to overthrow my feeble virtue.
But all this had been arranged by the small cunning of this really
witless couple. I was left to find my way down stairs as I might;
and just when I was about to leave the dwelling--vexed to the heart
at the desperate stolidity of the miserable man, whom avarice and
weakness were about to expose to a loss which might be averted in
part, and an exposure to infamy which might wholly be avoided--I
was encountered by the attenuated form and wan countenance of his
suffering but still lovely daughter.






CHAPTER VIII.

LOVE FINDS NO SMOOTH WATER IN THE SEA OF LAW





"Julia!" I exclaimed, with a start which betrayed, I am sure, quite
as much surprise as pleasure. My mood was singularly inflexible.
My character was not easily shaken, and, once wrought upon by any
leading influence, my mind preserved the tone which it acquired
beneath it, long after the cause of provocation had been withdrawn.
This earnestness of character--amounting to intensity--gave me an
habitual sternness of look and expression, and I found it hard to
acquire, of a sudden, that command of muscle which would permit
me to mould the stubborn lineaments, at pleasure, to suit the
moment.  Not even where my heart was most deeply interested--thus
aroused--could I look the feelings of the lover, which, nevertheless,
were most truly the predominant ones within my bosom.

"Julia," I exclaimed, "I did not think to see you."

"Ah, Edward, did you wish it?" she replied in very mournful accents,
gently reproachful, as she suffered me to take her hand in mine,
and lead her back to the parlor in the basement story. I seated
her upon the sofa, and took a place at her side.

"Why should I not wish to see you, Julia? What should lead you to
fancy now that I could wish otherwise?"

"Alas!" she replied, "I know not what to think--I scarcely know
what I say. I am very miserable. What is this they tell me? Can it
be true, Edward, that you are acting against my father--that you
are trying to bring him to shame and poverty?"

I released her hand. I fixed my eyes keenly upon hers.

"Julia, you have your instructions what to say. You are sent here
for this. They have set you in waiting to meet me here, and speak
things which you do not understand, and assert things which I know
you can not believe."

"Edward, I believe YOU!" she exclaimed with emphasis, but with
downcast eyes; "but it does not matter whether I was sent here, or
sought you of my own free will. They tell me other things--there
is more--but I have not the heart to say it, and it needs not much."

"If you believe me, Julia, it certainly does not need that you
should repeat to me what is said of me by enemies, equally unjust
to me, and hostile to themselves. Yet I can readily conjecture some
things which they have told you. Did they not tell you that your
hand had been proffered me, and that I had refused it?"

She hung her head in silence.

"You do not answer."

"Spare me; ask me not."

"Nay, tell me, Julia, that I may see how far you hold me worthy
of your love, your confidence. Speak to me--have they not told you
some such story?"

"Something of this; but I did not heed it, Edward."

"Julia--nay!--did you not?"

"And if I did, Edward--"

"It surely was not to believe it?"

"No! no! no! I had no fears of you--have none, dear Edward! I knew
that it was not, could not be true."

"Julia, it was true!"

"Ah!"

"True, indeed! There was more truth in THAT than in any other part
of the story. Nay, more--had they told you all the truth, dearest
Julia, that part, strange as it may appear, would have given you
less pain than pleasure."

"How! Can it be so?"

"Your hand was proffered me by your father, and I refused it.
Nay, look not from me, dearest--fear not for my affection--fear
nothing. I should have no fear that you could suppose me false to
you, though the whole world should come and tell you so. True love
is always secured by a just confidence in the beloved object; and,
without this confidence, the whole life is a series of long doubts,
struggles, griefs, and apprehensions, which break down the strength,
and lay the spirit in the dust.  I will now tell you, in few words,
what is the relation in which I stand to your father and his family.
He, many years ago, committed an error in business, which the laws
distinguish by a harsher name. By this error he became rich. Until
recently, the proofs of this error were unknown. They have lately
been discovered by certain claimants, who are demanding reparation.
In the difficulty of your father, he came to me. I examined the
business, and have given it as my opinion that he should stifle
the legal process by endeavoring to make a private arrangement with
the creditors."

"Could he do this?"

"He could. The creditors were willing, and at first he consented
that I should arrange it with them. He now rejects the arrangement."

"But why?"

"Because it involves the surrender of the entire amount of property
which they claim--a sum of forty thousand dollars."

"But, dear Edward, is it due?--does my father owe this money? If
he does, surely he can not refuse. Perhaps he thinks that he owes
nothing."

"Nay, Julia, unhappily he knows it, and the offer of your hand, and
half of the sum mentioned, was made to me, on the express condition
that I should exert my influence as a man, and my ingenuity as a
lawyer, in baffling the creditors and stifling the claim."

The poor girl was silent and hung her head, her eyes fixed upon
the carpet, and the big tears slowly gathering, dropping from them,
one, by one. Meanwhile, I explained, as tenderly as I could, the
evil consequences which threatened Mr. Clifford in consequence of
his contumacy.

"Alas" she exclaimed, "it is not his fault. He would be willing--I
heard him say as much last night--but mother--she will not consent.
She refused positively the moment father said it would be necessary
to sell out, and move to a cheaper house. Oh, Edward, is there no
way that you can save us?  Save my father from shame, though he
gives up all the money."

"Would I not do this, Julia? Nay, were I owner of the necessary
amount myself, believe me, it should not be withheld."

"I do believe you, Edward; but"--and here her voice sunk to a
whisper--"you must try again, try again and again--for I think that
father knows the danger, though mother does not; and I think--I
hope--he will be firm enough, when you press him, and warn him of
the danger, to do as you wish him."

"I am afraid not, Julia. Your mother--"

"Do not fear; hope--hope all, dear Edward; for, to confess to you,
I KNOW that they are anxious to have your support--they said as
much. Nay, why should I hide anything from you? They sent me here
to see--to speak with you, and--"

"To see what your charms could do to persuade me to be a villain.
Julia! Julia! did you think to do this--to have me be the thing
which they would make me?"

"No! no!--Heaven forbid, dear Edward, that you should fancy that
any such desire had a place, even for a moment, in my mind. No! I
knew not that the case involved any but mere money considerations.
I knew not that--"

"Enough! Say no more, Julia! I do not think that you would counsel
me to my own shame."

"No! no! You do me only justice. But, Edward, you will save my
father! You will try--you will see him again--"

"What! to suffer again the open scorn, the declared doubts of my
friendship and integrity, which is the constant language of your
mother? Can it be that you would desire that I should do this--nay,
seek it?"

"For my poor father's sake!" she cried, gaspingly.

But I shook my head sternly.

"For mine, then--for mine! for mine!"

She threw herself into my arms, and clung to me until I promised
all that she required. And as I promised her, so I strove with her
father. I used every argument, resorted to every mode of persuasion,
hut all was of no avail. Mr. Clifford was under the rigid, the iron
government of his fate! His wife was one of those miserably silly
women--born, according to Iago--

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer"--

who, raised to the sudden control of unexpected wealth, becomes
insane upon it, and is blind, deaf, and dumb, to all counsel or
reason which suggests the possibility of its loss. From the very
moment when Mr. Clifford spoke of selling out house, horses, and
carriage, as the inevitable result which must follow his adoption of
my recommendation, she declared herself against it at all hazards,
particularly when her husband assured her that "the glorious uncertainties
of the law" afforded a possibility of his escape with less loss.
The loss of money was, with her, the item of most consideration;
her mind was totally insensible to that of reputation. She was
willing to make this compromise with me, as a sort of alternative,
for, in that case, there would be no diminution of attendance
and expense--no loss of rank and equipage. We should all live
together--how harmoniously, one may imagine--but the grandeur and
the state would still be intact and unimpaired. Even for this,
however, she was not prepared, when she discovered that there was
no certainty that my alliance would bring immunity to her husband.
How this notion got even partially into his head, I know not;
unless in consequence of a growing imbecility of intellect, which
in a short time after betrayed itself more strikingly. But of this
in its own place.

My attempts to convince my unfortunate uncle were all rendered
unavailing, and shown to be so to Julia herself in a very short
time afterward. The insolence of Mrs. Clifford, when I did seek
an interview with her husband, was so offensive and unqualified,
that Julia herself, with a degree of indignation which she could
not entirely suppress, begged me to quit the house, and relieve
myself from such undeserved insult and abuse. I did so, but with
no unfriendly wishes for the wretched woman who presided over its
destinies, and the no less wretched husband whom she helped to
make so; and my place as consulting friend and counsellor was soon
supplied by Mr.  Perkins--one of those young barristers, to be
found in every community, who regard the "penny fee" as the sine
qua non, and obey implicitly the injunction of the scoundrel in
the play "Make money--honestly if you can, but--make money!" He was
one of those creatures who set people at loggerheads, goad foolish
and petulant clients into lawsuits, stir up commotions in little sets,
and invariably comfort the suit-bringer with the most satisfactory
assurances of success. It was  the confident assurances of this
person which had determined Mr. Clifford--his wife rather--to
resist to the last the suit in question.  Through the sheer force
of impudence, this man had obtained a tolerable share of practice.
His clients, as may be supposed, lay chiefly among such persons
as, having no power or standard for judging, necessarily look upon
him who is most bold and pushing as the most able and trustworthy.
The bullies of the law--and, unhappily, the profession has quite
too many--are very commanding persons among the multitude. Mr.
Clifford knew this fellow's mental reputation very well, and was
not deceived by the confidence of his assurances; nay, to the last,
he showed a hankering desire to give me the entire control of the
subject; but the hostility of Mrs. Clifford overruled his more
prudent if not more honorable purposes; and, as he was compelled to
seek a lawyer, the questionable moral standing of Perkins decided
his choice. He wished one, in short, to do a certain piece of
dirty work: and, as if in anticipation of the future, he dreaded
to unfold the case to any of the veterans, the old-time gentlemen
and worthies of the bar. I proposed this to him. I offered to
make a supposititious relation of the facts for the opinion of Mr.
Edgerton and others--nay, pledged myself to procure a confidential
consultation--anything, sooner than that he should resort to a mode
of extrication which, I assured him, would only the more deeply
involve him in the meshes of disgrace and loss. But there was a
fatality about this gentleman--a doom that would not be baffled,
and could not be stayed. The wilful mind always precipitates
itself down the abyss; and, whether acting by his own, or under
the influence of another's judgment, such was, most certainly, the
case with him. He was not to be saved. Mr. Perkins was regularly
installed as his defender--his counsellor, private and public--and
I was compelled, though with humiliating reluctance, to admit to
the plaintiffs, Banks & Tressell, that there was no longer any hope
of compromise. The issue on which hung equally his fortune and his
reputation was insanely challenged by my uncle.






CHAPTER IX.

DUELLO.





But my share in the troubles of this affair was not to end, though
I was no longer my uncle's counsellor. An event now took place
which gave the proceedings a new and not less unpleasing aspect
than they had worn before. Mrs. Clifford, it appears, in her
communications to her husband's lawyer, did  not confine herself to
the mere business of the lawsuit. Her voluminous discourse involved
her opinions of her neighbors, friends, and relatives; and, one
day, a few weeks after, I was suddenly surprised by a visit from
a gentleman--one of the members of the bar--who placed a letter
in my hands from Mr.  Perkins. I read this billet with no small
astonishment. It briefly stated that certain reports had reached his
ears, that I had expressed myself contemptuously of his abilities
and character, and concluded with an explicit demand, not for an
explanation, but an apology. My answer was immediate.

"You will do me the favor to say, Mr. Carter, that Mr. Perkins has
been misinformed. I never uttered anything in my life which could
disparage either his moral or legal reputation."

"I am sorry to say, Mr. Clifford," was the reply, "that denial is
unnecessary, and can not be received. Mr. Perkins has his information
from the lips of a lady; and, as a lady is not responsible, she can
not be allowed to err. I am required, sir to insist on an apology.
I have already framed it, and it only needs your signature."

He drew a short, folded letter, from his pocket, and placed it
before me. There was so much cool impertinence in this proceeding,
and in the fellow's manner, that I could with difficulty refrain
from flinging the paper in his face. He was one of the little and
vulgar clique of which Perkins was a sort of centre.  The whole set
were conscious enough of the low estimate which was put upon them
by the gentlemen of the bar. Denied caste, they were disposed to
force their way to recognition by the bully's process, and stung
by some recent discouragements, Mr. Perkins was, perhaps, rather
glad than otherwise, of the silly, and no less malicious than
silly, tattle of Mrs. Clifford for I did not doubt that the gross
perversion of the truth which formed the basis of his note, had
originated with her, which enabled him to single out a victim, who,
as the times went, had suddenly risen to a comparative elevation
which is not often accorded to a young beginner. I readily conjectured
his object from his character and that of the man he sent. My own
nature  was passionate; and the rude school through which my boyhood
had gone, had made me as tenacious of my position as the grave.
That I should be chafed by reptiles such as these, stung me to
vexation; and though I kept from any violence of action, my words
did not lack of it.

"Mr. Perkins is, permit me to say, a very impertinent fellow;  and,
if you please, our conference will cease from this moment."

He was a little astounded--rose, and then recovering himself,
proceeded to reply with the air of a veteran martinet.

"I am glad, sir, that you give me an opportunity of proceeding
with this business without delay. My friend, Mr. Perkins, prepared
me for some such answer. Oblige me, sir, by reading this paper."
He handed me the challenge for which his preliminaries had prepared
me.

"Accepted, sir; I will send my friend to you in the course of the
morning."

As I uttered this reply, I bowed and waved him to the door.  He
did not answer, other than by a bow, and took his departure.  The
promptness which I had shown impressed him with respect. Baffled,
in his first spring, the bully, like the tiger, is very apt to slink
back to his jungle. His departure gave me a brief opportunity for
reflection, in which I slightly turned over in my mind the arguments
for and against duelling. But these were now too late--even were
they to decide me against the practice--to affect the present
transaction; and I sallied out to seek a friend--a friend!

Here was the first difficulty. I had precious little choice among
friends. My temper was not one calculated to make or keep friends.
My earnestness of character, and intensity of mood, made me dictatorial;
and where self-esteem is a large and active development, as it must
be in an old aristocratic community, such qualities are continually
provoking popular hostility. My friends, too, were not of the kind
to whom such scrapes as the present were congenial. I was unwilling
to go to young Edgerton, as I did not wish to annoy his parents
by my novel anxieties. But where else could I turn? To him I went.
When he heard my story, he began by endeavoring to dissuade me from
the meeting.

"I am pledged to it, William," was my only answer.

"But, Edward, I am opposed to duelling myself, and should not
promote or encourage, in another, a practice which I would not be
willing myself to adopt."

"A good and sufficient reason, William. You certainly should not.
I will go to Frank Kingsley."

"He will serve you, I know; but, Edward, this duelling is a bad
business. It does no sort of good. Kill Perkins, and it does not
prove to him, even if he were then able to hear, that Mrs. Clifford
spoke a falsehood; and if he kills you, you are even still farther
from convincing him.

"I have no such desire, William; and your argument, by the way,
is one of those beggings of the question which the opponents of
duelling continually fall into when discussing the subject. The
object of the man, who, in a case like mine, fights a duel, is
not to prove his truth, but to protect himself from persecution.
Perkins seeks to bully and drive me out of the community. Public
opinion here approves of this mode of protecting one's self;--may,
if I do not avail myself of its agency, the same public opinion
would assist my assailant in my expulsion. I fight on the same
ground that a nation fights when it goes to war. It is the most
obvious and easy mode to protect myself from injury and insult. So
long as I submit, Perkins will insult and bully, and the city will
encourage him, If I resist, I silence this fellow, and perhaps
protect other young beginners. I have not the most distant idea of
convincing him of my truth by fighting him--may, the idea of giving
him satisfaction is an idea that never entered my brain.  I simply
take a popular mode of securing myself from outrage and persecution."

"But, do you secure yourself? Has duelling this result?"

"Not invariably, perhaps; simply because the condition of humanity
does not recognise invariable results. If it is shown to be the
probable, the frequent result, it is all that can be expected of
any human agency or law."

"But, is it probable--frequent?"

"Yes, almost certain, almost invariable. Look at the general manners,
the deportment, the forbearance, of all communities where duelling
is recognised as an agent of society. See the superior deference
paid to females, the unfrequency of bullying, the absence of
blackguarding, the higher tone of this public press, and of society
in general, from which the public press takes its tone, and which
it represents in our country, but does not often inform. Even
seduction is a rare offence, and a matter of general exclamation,
where this extra-judicial agent is recognised."

And so forth. It is not necessary to repeat our discussion
on this vexed question, of its uses and abuses. I did not succeed
in convincing him, and, under existing circumstances, it is not
reasonable to imagine that his arguments had any influent over me.
To Frank Kingsley I went, and found him in better mood to take up
the cudgels, and even make my cause his own.  He was one of those
ardent bloods, who liked nothing better than the excitement of such
an affair; whether as principal or assistant, it mattered little.
To him I expressed my wish that his arrangements should bring the
matter to an issue, if possible, within the next twenty-four hours.

"Prime!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands. "That's what I like. If
you shoot as quickly now, and as much to the point, you may count
any button on Perkins's coat."

He proceeded to confer with the friend of my opponent, while, with
a meditative mind, I went to my office, necessarily oppressed with
the strange feelings belonging to my situation.  In less than two
hours after Kingsley brought me the carte, by which I found that
the meeting was to take place two miles out  of town, by sunrise
the day after the one ensuing--the  weapons, pistols--distance, as
customary, ten paces!

"You are a shot, of course?" said Kingsley.

My answer, in the negative, astonished him.

"Why, you will have little or no time for practice."

"I do not intend it. My object is not to kill this man; but to make
him and all others see that the dread of what may be done, either
by him or them, will never reconcile me to submit to injury or
insult. I shall as effectually secure this object by going out, as
I do, without preparation, as if I were the best shot in America.
He does not know that I am not; and a pistol is always a source of
danger when in the grasp of a determined man."

"You are a queer fellow in your notions, Clifford, and I can not
say that I altogether understand you; but you must certainly ride
out with me this afternoon, and bark a tree. It will do no hurt to
a determined man to be a skilful one also."

"I see no use in it."

"Why--what if you should wish to wing him?"

"I think I can do it without practice. But I have no such desire."

"Really you are unnecessarily magnanimous. You may be put to it,
however. Should the first shot be ineffectual and he should demand
a second, would you throw away that also?"

"No! I should then try to shoot him. As my simple aim is to secure
myself from persecution, which is usually the most effectual mode
of destroying a young man in this country, I should resort only to
such a course as would be likely to yield me this security. That
failing, I should employ stronger measures; precisely as a nation
would do in a similar conflict with another nation. One must not
suffer himself to be destroyed or driven into exile. This is the
first law of nature--this  of self-preservation. In maintaining
this law, a man must do any or all things which in his deliberate
judgment, will be effectual for the end proposed. Were I fighting
with savages, for example, and knew that they regarded their scalps
with more reverence than their lives, I should certainly scalp as
well as slay."

"They would call that barbarous?"

"Ay, no doubt; particularly in those countries where they paid
from five to fifty, and even one hundred pounds to one Indian for
the scalp of his brother, until they rid themselves of both. But see
you not that the scalping process, as it produces the most terror
and annoyance, is decidedly the most merciful, as being most likely
to discourage and deter from war. If the scalp could bo taken from
the head of every Seminole shot down, be sure the survivors never
after would have come within range of rifle-shot."

But these discussions gave way to the business before me.  Kingsley
left me to myself, and though sad and serious with oppressive
thoughts, I still had enough of the old habits, dominant with me,
to go to my daily concerns, and arrange my papers with considerable
industry and customary method. My professional  business was set
in order, and Edgerton duly initiated in the knowledge of all such
portions as needed explanation.  This done, I sat down and wrote
a long farewell letter to Julia, and one, more brief, but renewing
the counsel I had previously given to her father, in respect to the
suit against him. These letters were so disposed as to be sent in
the event of my falling in the fight. The interval which followed
was not so easy to be borne. Conscience and reflection were equally
busy, and unpleasantly so. I longed for the time of action which
should silence these unpleasant monitors.

The brief space of twenty-four hours was soon overpassed, and my
anxieties ceased as the moment for the meeting with my enemy, drew
nigh. My friend called at my lodgings a good hour before daylight--it
was a point of credit with him that we should not delay the
opposite party the sixtieth part of a second. We drove out into the
country in a close carriage, taking a surgeon--who was a friend of
Kingsley--along with us. We were on the ground in due season, and
some little time before our customers. But they did not fail or
delay us. They were there with sufficient promptitude.

Perkins was a man of coolness and courage. He took his position
with admirable nonchalance; but I observed, when his eyes met mine,
that they were darkened with a scowl of anger.  His brows were
contracted, and his face which was ordinarily red, had an increased
flush upon it which betrayed unusual excitement. He evidently
regarded me with feelings of bitter animosity. Perhaps this was
natural enough, if he believed the story of Mrs. Clifford--and my
scornful answer to his friend, Mr. Carter, was not calculated to
lessen the soreness. For my part, I am free to declare, I had not
the smallest sentiment of unkindness toward the fellow. I thought
little of him, but did not hate--I could not have hated him. I had
no wish to do him hurt; and, as already stated, only went out to
put a stop to the further annoyances of insolents and bullies, by
the only effectual mode--precisely as I should have used a bludgeon
over his head, in the event of a personal assault upon me. Of
course, I had no purpose to do him any injury, unless--with the
view to my own safety. I resolved secretly to throw away my fire.
Kingsley suspected me of some such intention, and earnestly  protested
against it.

"I should not place you at all," he said, "if I fancied you could
do a thing so d---d foolish. The fellow intends to shoot you if he
can. Help him to a share of the same sauce."

I nodded as he proceeded to his arrangements. Here some conference
ensued between the seconds:--

"Mr. Carter was very sorry that such a business must proceed.  Was it
yet too late to rectify mistakes? Might not the matter be adjusted?"

Kingsley, on such occasions, the very prince of punctilio, agreed
that the matter was a very lamentable one--to be regretted, and so
forth--but of the necessity of the thing, he, Mr. Carter, for his
principal, must be the only judge.

"Mr. Carter could answer for his friend, Mr. Perkins, that he was
always accessible to reason."

"Mr. Kingsley never knew a man more so than HIS principal."

"May we not reconcile the parties?" demanded Mr. Carter.

"Does Mr. Perkins withdraw his message?" answered Kingsley by
another question.

"He would do so, readily, were there any prospect of adjusting the
matter upon an honorable footing."

"Mr. Carter will be pleased to name the basis for what he esteems
an honorable adjustment."

"Mr. Perkins withdraws his challenge."

"We have no objection to that."

"He substitutes a courteous requisition upon Mr. Clifford for an
explanation of certain language, supposed to be offensive, made to
a lady."

"Mr. Clifford denies, without qualification, the employment of any
such language."

"This throws us back on our old ground," said Carter--"there is a
lady in question--"

"Who can not certainly be brought into the controversy," said
Kingsley--"I see no other remedy, Mr. Carter, but that we should
place the parties. We are here to answer to your final summons."

"Very good, sir; this matter, and what happens, must lie at your
door. You are peremptory. I trust you have provided a surgeon."

"His services are at your need, sir," replied Kingsley with military
courtesy.

"I thank you, sir--my remark had reference to your own necessity.
Shall we toss up for the word?"

These preliminaries were soon adjusted. The word fell to Carter,
and thus gave an advantage to Perkins, as his ear was more familiar
than mine with the accents of his friend. We were placed, and the
pistol put into my hands, without my uttering a sentence.

"Coolly now, my dear fellow," said Kingsley in a whisper, as he
withdrew from my side;--"wing him at least--but don't burn powder
for nothing."

Scarcely the lapse of a moment followed, when I heard the words "one,"
"two," "three," in tolerably rapid succession, and, at the utterance
of the last, I pulled trigger. My antagonist had done so at the
first. His eye was fixed upon mine with deliberate malignity--THAT
I clearly saw--but it did not affect my shot. This, I purposely
threw away. The skill of my enemy did not correspondend (sic) with
his evident desires. I was hurt, but very slightly. His bullet
merely raised the skin upon the fleshy part of my right thigh. We
kept our places while a conference ensued between the two seconds.
Mr. Perkins, through his friend, declared himself unsatisfied
unless I apologized, or--in less unpleasant language--explained.
This demand was answered by Kingsley with cavalier indifference He
came to me with a second pistol. His good-humored visage was now
slightly ruffled.

"Clifford!" said he, as he put the weapon into my hand, "you must
trifle no longer. This fellow abuses your generosity.  He knows,
as well as I, that you threw away your fire; and he will play the
same game with you, on the same terms, for a month together, Sundays
not excepted. I am not willing to stand by and see you risk your
life in this manner; and, unless you tell me that you will give
him as good as he sends, I leave you on the spot. Will you take
aim this time?"

"I will!"

"You promise me then?"

"I do!"

I was conscious of the increased activity of my organ of
destructiveness as I said these words. I smiled with a feeling
of pleasant bitterness--that spicy sort of malice which you may
sometimes rouse in the bosom of the best-natured man in the world,
by an attempt to do him injustice. The wound I had received, though
very trifling, had no little to do with this determination. It
was not unlike such a wound as would be made by a smart stroke of
a whip, and the effect upon my blood was pretty much as if it had
been inflicted by some such instrument. I was stung and irritated
by it, and the pertinacity of my enemy, particularly as he must
have seen that my shot was thrown away, decided me to punish him
if I could. I did so!  I was not conscious that I was hurt myself,
until I saw him falling!--I then felt a heavy and numbing sensation
in the same thigh which had been touched before. A faintness relieved
me from present sensibility, and when I became conscious, I found
myself in the carriage, supported by Kingsley and the surgeon, on
my way to my lodgings. My wound was a flesh wound only; the ball
was soon extracted, and in a few weeks after, I was enabled to
move about with scarcely a feeling of  inconvenience. My opponent
suffered a much heavier penalty. The bone of his leg was fractured,
and it was several months before he was considered perfectly safe.
The lesson he got made him a sorer and shorter--a wiser, if not a
better man; but as I do not now, and did not then, charge myself
with the task of bringing about his moral improvement, it is not
incumbent upon me to say anything further on this subject. We will
leave him to get better as he may.






CHAPTER X.

HEAD WINDS.





The hurts of Perkins did not, unhappily, delay the progress of my
uncle to that destruction to which his silly wife and knavish lawyer
had destined him. His business was brought before the court by the
claimants, Messrs. Banks & Tressell; and a brief period only was
left him for putting in his answer.  When I thought of Julia, I
resolved, in spite of all previous difficulties--the sneers of the
father, and the more direct, coarse insults of the mother--to make
one more effort to rescue him from the fate which threatened him.
I felt sure that, for the reasons already given, the merchants
would still be willing to effect a compromise which would secure
them the principal of their claim, without incurring the delay and
risk of litigation.  Accordingly, I penned a note to Mr. Clifford,
requesting  permission to wait upon him at home, at a stated hour.
To this I  received a cold, brief answer, covering the permission
which I sought. I went, but might as well have spared myself the
labor and annoyance of this visit. Mrs. Clifford was still in the
ascendant--still deaf to reason, and utterly blind to the base
position into which her meddlesome interference in the business
threw her husband. She had her answer ready; and did not merely
content herself with rejecting my overtures, but  proceeded to speak
in the language of one who really regarded me as busily seeking,
by covert ways, to effect the ruin of her family. Her looks and
language equally expressed the indignation of a mind perfectly
convinced of the fraudulent and evil purposes of the person she
addressed. Those of my uncle were scarcely less offensive. A grin
of malicious self-gratulation mantled his lips as he thanked me
for my counsel, which, he yet remarked, "however wise and good,
and well-intended, he did not think it advisable to adopt. He had
every confidence in the judgment of Mr. Perkins, who, though without
the great legal knowledge of some of his youthful neighbors, had
enough for his purposes; and had persuaded him to see the matter
in a very different point of view from that in which I was pleased
to regard it."

There was no doing anything with or for these people. The fiat for
their overthrow had evidently been issued. The fatuity which leads
to self-destruction was fixed upon them; and, with a feeling rather
of commiseration than anger, I prepared to leave the house. In this
interview, I made a discovery, which tended still more to lessen
the hostility I might otherwise have felt toward my uncle. I
was constrained to perceive that he labored under an intellectual
feebleness and incertitude which disconcerted his expression, left
his thoughts seemingly without purpose, and altogether convinced
me that, if not positively imbecile in mind and memory, there were
yet some ugly  symptoms of incapacity growing upon him which might
one day result in the loss of both. I had always known him to be a
weak-minded man, disposed to vanity and caprice, but the weakness
had expanded very much in a brief period, and now presented itself to
my view in sundry very salient aspects. It was easy now to divert
his attention from the business which he had in hand--a single casual
remark of courtesy or  observation would have this effect--and then
his mind wandered from the subject with all the levity and caprice
of a thoughtless damsel. He seemed to entertain now no sort of
apprehension of his legal difficulties, and spoke of them as topics
already adjusted. Nay, for that matter, he seemed to have no serious
sense of any subject, whatever might be its personal or general
interest; but, passing from point to point, exhibited that
instability of mental vision which may not inaptly be compared to
that wandering glance which is usually supposed to distinguish and
denote, in the physical eye, the presence of insanity. It was not
often now that he indulged, while speaking to me, in that manner of
hostility--those sneers and sarcastic remarks--which had been his
common habit. This was another proof of the change which his mental
man had undergone. It was not that he was more prudent or more
tolerant than before.  He was quite as little disposed to be generous
toward me. But he now appeared wholly incapable of that degree
of intellectual concentration which could enable him to examine
a subject to its close. He would begin to talk with me seriously
enough, and with a due solemnity, about the suit against him;
but, in a tangent, he would dart off to the consideration of some
trifle, some household matter, or petty affair, of which, at any
other time, he must have known that his hearers had no wish to hear.
Poor Julia confirmed the conjectures which I entertained, but did
not utter, by telling me that her father had changed very much in
his ways ever since this business had been begun.

"Mother does not see it, but he is no longer the same man.  Oh,
Edward, I sometimes think he's even growing childish."

The fear was a well-founded one. Before the case was tried, Mr.
Clifford was generally regarded, among those who knew him intimately,
as little better than an imbecile; and so rapid was the progress of
his infirmity, that when the judgment was given, as it was, against
him, he was wholly unable to understand or fear its import. His own
sense of guilt had anticipated its effects, and his intense vanity
was saved from public shame only by the substitution of public pity.
The decree of the court gave all that was asked; and the handsome
competence of the Cliffords was exchanged for a miserable pittance,
which enabled the family to live only in the very humblest manner.

It will readily be conjectured, from what I have stated in respect
to myself, that mine was not the disposition to seek revenge, or
find cause for exultation in these deplorable events.  I had no
hostility against my unhappy uncle; I should have scorned myself if
I had. If such a feeling ever filled my bosom, it would have been
most effectually disarmed by the sight of the wretched old man,
a grinning, gibbering idict, half-dancing and half-shivering from
the cold, over the remnants of a  miserable and scant fire in the
severest evening in November. It was when the affair was all over;
when the property of the family was all in the hands of the sheriff;
when the mischievous counsel of such a person as Jonathan Perkins,
Esquire could do no more harm even to so foolish a person as my
uncle's wife; and when his presence, naturally enough withdrawn
from a family from which he could derive no further profit, and
which he had helped to ruin, was no longer likely to offend mine by
meeting him there--that I proceeded to renew my direct intercourse
with the unfortunate people whom I was not suffered to save.

The reader is not to suppose that I had kept myself entirely aloof
from the family until these disasters had happened. I sought Julia
when occasion offered, and, though she refused it, tendered my
services and my means whenever they might be hestowed with hope of
good. And now, when all was over, and I met her at the door, and
she sank upon my bosom, and wept in my embrace, still less than
ever was I disposed to show to her mother the natural triumph of a
sagacity which had shown itself at the expense of hers. I forgot,
in the first glance of my uncle, all his folly and unkindness. He
was now a shadow, and the mental wreck was one of the most deplorable,
as it was one of the most rapid and complete, that could be imagined.
In less than seven months, a strong man--strong in health--strong,
as supposed, in intellect--singularly acute in his dealings among
tradesmen--regarded by them as one of the most shrewd in
the fraternity--vain of his parts, of his family, and of his
fortune--solicitous of display, and constant in its indulgence!--that
such a man should be stricken down to imbecility and idiotism--a
meagre skeleton in form--pale, puny, timid--crouching by
the fireplace--grinning with stealthy looks, momently cast around
him--and playing--his most constant employment--with the bellows
strings that hung beside him, or the little kitten, that, delighted
with new consideration, had learned to take her place constantly
at his feet! What a wreck!

But the moral man had been wrecked before, or this could not have
been. It was only because of his guilt--of its  exposure rather--that
he sunk. In striving to shake off the  oppressive burden, he shook
off the intellect which had been compelled chiefly to endure it.
The sense of shame, the conviction of loss, and, possibly, other
causes of conscience which lay yet deeper--for the progeny of crime
is most frequently a litter as numerous as a whelp's puppies--helped
to crush the mind which was neither strong enough to resist temptation
at first, nor to bear exposure at last. I turned away with a tear,
which I could not suppress, from the wretched spectacle. But I could
have borne with more patience to behold this ruin, than to subdue
the rising reproach which I felt as I turned to encounter Mrs.
Clifford.

This weak woman, still weak, received me coldly, and I could see
in her looks that she regarded me as one whom it was natural to
suppose would feel some exultation at beholding their downfall.
I saw this, but determined to say nothing, in the attempt to undo
these impressions. I knew that time was the best teacher in all
such matters, and resolved that my deportment should gradually make
her wiser on the subject of that nature which she had so frequently
abused, and which, I well knew, she could never understand. But
this hope I soon discovered to be unavailing. Her disaster had
only soured, not subdued her; and, with the natural tendency of
the vulgar mind, she seemed to regard me as the person to whom she
should ascribe all her misfortunes. As, to her narrow intellect,
it seemed natural that I should exult in the accomplishment of my
predictions, so it was a process equally natural that she should
couple me with their occurrence; and, indeed, I was too nearly
connected with the event, through the medium of my unconscious
father, not to feel some portion of the affliction on his account
also; though neither his memory nor my reputation suffered from
the development of the affair in the community where we lived.

Mrs. Clifford did not openly, or in words, betray the feelings
which were striving in her soul; but the general restraint which
she put upon herself in my presence, the acerbity of her tone,
manner, and language, to poor Julia, and the unvaried  querulousness
of her remarks, were sufficient to apprize me of the spite which
she would have willingly bestowed upon myself, had she any tolerable
occasion for doing so. A few weeks served still further to humble
the conceit and insolence of the unfortunate woman. The affair
turned out much more seriously than I expected. A sudden fall in
the value of real and personal  estate, just about the time when
the sheriff's sale took place, rendered necessary a second levy,
which swept the  miserable remnant of Mr. Clifford's fortune, leaving
nothing to my uncle but a small estate which had been secured by
settlement to Mrs. Clifford and her daughter, and which the sheriff
could not legally lay hands on.

I came forward at this juncture, and, having allowed them to remove
into the small tenement to which, in their reduced condition they
found it prudent to retire, I requested a private interview with
Mrs. Clifford, and readily obtained it.

I was received by the good lady in apparent state. All the little
furniture which she could save from the former, was transferred
very inappropriately to the present dwelling-house. The one was
quite unsuited to the other. The massive damask curtains accorded
badly with the little windows over which they were now suspended,
and the sofa, ten feet in length, occupied an unreasonable share
of an apartment twelve by sixteen. The dais of piled cushions, on
which so many fashionable groups had lounged in better times, now
seemed a mountain, which begot ideas of labor, difficulty, and
up-hill employment, rather than ease, as the eye beheld it cumbering
two thirds of the miserable area into which it was so untastefully
compressed. These, and other articles of splendor and luxury,
if sold, would have yielded her the means to buy furniture more
suitable to her circumstances and situation, and left her with
some additional resources to meet the daily and sometimes pressing
exigencies of life.

The appearance of this parlor argued little in behalf of the salutary
effect which such reverses might be expected to produce in a mind
even tolerably sensible. They argued, I fancied, as unfavorably for
my suit as for the humility of the lady whom I was about to meet.
If the parlor of Mrs.  Clifford bore such sufficient tokens of her
weakness of intellect, her own costume betrayed still more. She had
made her person a sort of frame or rack upon which she hung every
particle of that ostentatious drapery which she was in the habit
of wearing at her fashionable evenings. A year's income was paraded
upon her back, and the trumpery jewels of three generations found
a place on every part of her person where it is usual for fashionable
folly to display such gewgaws. She sailed into the room in a style
that brought to my mind instantly the description which Milton gives
of the approach of Delilah to Samson, after the first days of his
blind captivity:--


   "But who is this, what thing of se or land?--
    Female of sex it seems--
    That so bedecked, ornate and gay,
    Comes this way sailing, like a stately ship
    Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
    Of Javan or Gadire,
    With all her bravery on and tackle trim,
    Sails filled, and streamers waving,
    Courted by all the winds that hold their play,
    An amber scent of odorous perfume
    Her harbinger!"


No description could have been more, just and literal in the case
of Mrs. Clifford. I could scarce believe my eyes; and when forced
to do so, I could scarcely suppose that this bravery was intended
for my eyes only. Nor was it;--but let me not anticipate.  This
spectacle, I need not say, sobered me entirely, if anything
was necessary to produce this effect, and increased the  grave
apprehensions which were already at my heart. The next consequence
was to make the manner of my communication  serious even to severity.
A smile, which was of that doubtful sort which is always sinister
and offensive, overspread her lips as she motioned me to resume
the seat from which I had risen at her entrance; while she threw
herself with an air of studied  negligence upon one part of the
sofa. I felt the awkwardness of my position duly increased, as
her house, dress, and manner, convinced  me that she was not yet
subdued to hers; but a conscious rectitude of intention carried me
forward, and lightened the task to my feelings.

"Mrs. Clifford," I said, without circumlocution, "I have presumed
to ask your attention this morning to a brief communication
which materially affects my happiness, and which I trust may not
diminish, if it does not actually promote, yours. Before I make
this communication, however, I hope I may persuade myself that
the little misunderstandings which have occurred between us are no
longer to be considered barriers to our mutual peace, and happiness--"

"Misunderstandings, Mr. Clifford?--I don't know what  misunderstandings
you mean. I'm sure I've never misunderstood you."

I could not misunderstand the insolent tenor of this speech, but
I availed myself of the equivoque which it involved to express my
gratification that such was the case.

"My path will then be more easy, Mrs. Clifford--my purpose more
easily explained."

"I am glad you think so, sir," she answered coolly, smoothing down
certain folds of her frock, and crossing her hands upon her lap,
while she assumed the attitude of a patient listener. There was
something very repulsive in all this; but I saw that the only way
to lessen the unpleasantness of the scene, and to get on with her,
would be to make the interview as short as possible, and come at
once to my object. This I did.

"It is now more than a year, Mrs. Clifford, since I had the honor
to say to my uncle, that I entertained for my cousin Julia such
a degree of affection as to make it no longer doubtful to me that
I should best consult my own happiness by seeking to make her my
wife. I had the pleasure at the same time to inform him, which I
believed to be true, that Julia herself was not unwilling that such
should be the nearer tie between us--"

"Yes, yes, Mr. Clifford, I know all this; but my husband and myself
thought better of it, and--" she said with fidgetty impatience.

"And my application was refused," I said calmly; thus  finishing
the sentence where she had paused.

"Well, sir, and what then?"

"At that time, madam, my uncle gave as a reason that he had other
arrangements in view."

"Yes, sir, so we had; and this reminds me that those arrangements
were broken off entirely in consequence of the perversity which
you taught my daughter. I know it all, sir; there's no more need
to tell me of it, than there is to deny it. You put my daughter
up to refusing young Roberts, who would have jumped at her, as his
father did--and he one of the best families and best fortunes in
the city. I'm sure I don't know, sir, what object you can have in
reminding me of these things."

Here was ingenious perversity. I bore with it as well as I could,
and strove to preserve my consideration and calmness.

"You do your daughter injustice, Mrs. Clifford, and me no less, in
this opinion. But I do not seek to remind you of misunderstandings
and mistakes, the memory of which can do no good.  My purpose now
is to renew the offer to you which I originally made to Mr. Clifford.
My attachment to your daughter remains unaltered, and I am happy
to say that fortune has favored me so far as to enable me to place
her in a situation of comparative comfort and independence which
I could not offer then--"

"Which is as much as to say that she don't enjoy comfort and
independence where she is; and if she does not, sir, to whom is it
all owing, sir, but to you and your father? By your means it is
that we are reduced to poverty; but you shall see, sir, that we
are not entirely wanting in independence. My answer, sir, is just
the same as Mr. Clifford's was. I am very much obliged to you for
THE HONOR you intend my family, but we must decline it. As for the
comfort and independence which you proffer to my daughter, I am
happy to inform you that she can receive it at any moment from a
source perhaps far more able than yourself to afford both, if her
perversity does not stand in the way, as it did when young Roberts
made his offers.  Mr. Perkins, sir, the excellent young man that
you tried to murder, is to be here, sir, this very morning, to see
my  daughter. Here's his letter, sir, which you may read, that you
may be under no apprehensions that my daughter will ever suffer
from a want of comfort and independence."

She flung a letter down on the sofa beside her, but I simply bowed,
and declined looking at it. I did not, however, yield the contest
in this manner. I urged all that might properly be urged on the
subject, and with as much earnestness as could be permitted in an
interview with a lady--and such a lady!--but, as the reader may
suppose, my toils were taken in vain: all that I could suggest,
either in the shape of reason or  expostulation, only served to make
her more and more dogged, and to increase her tone of insolence;
and sore, stung with vexation, disappointed, and something more
than bewildered, I dashed almost headlong out of the house, without
seeing either Julia or her father, precisely at the moment when
Mr. Perkins was about to enter.






CHAPTER XI.

CRISIS.





The result of this interview of my rival with the mother of Julia,
was afforded me by the latter. The mother had already given her
consent to his suit--that of Julia alone was to be obtained; and
to this end the arts of the suitor and the mother were equally
devoted. Her refusal only brought with it new forms of persecution.
Her steps were haunted by the swain, to whom Mrs. Clifford gave
secret notice of all her daughter's intentions. He was her invariable
attendant at church, wheve I had the pain constantly to behold them,
in such close proximity,  that I at length abandoned the customary
house of worship, and found my pew in another, where I could be
enabled to endure the forms of service without being oppresssd by
foreign and distracting thoughts and fancies.

Of the progress of the suit I had occasional intelligence from
Julia herself, whom I had, very reluctantly on her part, persuaded
to meet me at the house of a female relative and friend, who favored
our desires and managed our interviews. Brief were these stolen
moments, but oh, how blissful! The pleasures they afforded, however,
were almost wholly mine. The clandestine  character of our meetings
served to deprive her of the joy which they otherwise might have
yielded; and the fear that she was not doing right, humbled her
spirit and made her tremble with frequent apprehensions.

At length Mrs. Clifford suspected our interviews, and detected
them. We had a most stormy scene on one occasion, when the sudden
entrance of this lady surprised us together, at the house of our
friend. The consequence of this was, a rupture between the ladies,
which resulted in Julia's being forbidden to visit the house of
her relative again. This measure was followed by others of such
precaution, that at length I could no longer communicate with her,
or even seek her, unless when she was on her way to church. Her
appearance then was such as to awaken all my apprehensions. Her
form, always slender, was become more so. The change was striking
in a single week. Her face, usually pale and delicate, was now
haggard.  Her walk was feeble, and without elasticity. Her whole
appearance was wo-begone and utterly spiritless. Days and weeks
passed, and my heart was filled with hourly-increasing apprehensions.
I returned to the familiar church, but here  I suffered a new alarm.
That sabbath the family pew was unoccupied.  While I trembled lest
something serious had befallen her, I was called on by the family
physician. This gentleman had been always  friendly. He had been
my father's physician, and had been his friend and frequent guest;
he knew my history, and sympathized with my fortunes. He now know
the history of Julia's  affections. She had made him her confidante
so far, and he brought me a letter from her. She was sick, as I
expected.  This letter was of startling tenor:--

"Save me, Edward, if you can. I am now willing to do as you proposed.
I can no longer endure these annoyances--these cruel persecutions!
My mother tells me that I must submit and marry this man, if we
would save ourselves from ruin.  It seems he has a claim against
the estate for professional services; and as we have no other means
of payment, without the sale of all that is left, he is base enough
to insist upon my hand as the condition of his forbearance. He
uses threats now, since entreaties have failed him. Oh, Edward,
if you can save me, come!--for of a certainty, I can not bear this
persecution much long and live. I am now willing to consent to do
what Aunt Sophy recommended. Do not think me bold to say so, dear
Edward--if I am bold, it is despair which makes me so."

I read this letter with mingled feelings of indignation and
delight--indignation, because of the cruelties to which the worthless
mother and the base suitor subjected one so dear and innocent
delight, since the consent which she now yielded placed the means
of saving her at my control. The consent was to flight and clandestine
marriage, to which I had, with the assistance of our mutual friend,
endeavored to persuade her, in several instances, before.

The question now was, how to effect this object, since we had
no opportunities for communication; but, before I took any steps
in the matter, I made it a point of duty to deprive the infamous
attorney, Perkins, of his means of power over the unhappy family.
I determined to pay his legal charges; and William Edgerton, at
my request, readily undertook this part of the business. They were
found to be extortionate, and far beyond anything either warranted
by the practice or the fee bill. Edgerton counselled me to resist
the claim; but the subject was too delicate in all its relations,
and my own affair with Perkins would have made my active opposition
seem somewhat the consequence of malice and inveterate hostility.
I preferred to pay the excess, wnich was done by Edgerton, rather
than have any further dispute or difficulty with one whom I so
much despised. Complete satisfaction was entered upon the records
of the court, and a certified discharge, under the hand of  Perkins
himself--which he gave with a reluctance full of  mortification--was
sent in a blank envelope to Mrs. Clifford. She was thus deprived
of the only excuse--if, indeed, such a woman ever needs an excuse
for wilfulness--for persecuting her unhappy daughter on the score
of the attorney.

But the possession of this document effected no sort of change in
her conduct. She pursued her victim with the same old tenacity.  It
was not to favor Perkins that she strove for this object: it was
to baffle ME. That blind heart, which misguides all of us in turn,
was predominant in her, and rendered her  totally incapable of
seeing the cruel consequences to her daughter which her perseverance
threatened. Julia was now so feeble as scarcely to leave her
chamber; the physician was daily in attendance; and, though I could
not propose to make use of his services in promoting a design which
would subject him to the reproach of the grossest treachery, yet,
without counsel, he took it upon him plainly to assure the mother
that the disorder of her daughter arose solely from her mental
afflictions. He went farther. Mrs. Clifford, whose garrulity was
as notorious as her vanity and folly, herself took occasion, when
this was told her, to ascribe the effect to me; and, with her
own coloring, she continued, by going into a long history of our
"course of wooing." The doctor availed himself of these statements
to suggest the necessity of a compromise, assuring Mrs. Clifford
that I was really a more deserving person than she thought me, and,
in short, that some concessions must be made, if it was her hope
to save her daughter's life.

"She is naturally feeble of frame, nervous and sensitive, and these
excitements, pressing upon her, will break down her constitution
and her spirits together. Let me warn you, Mrs. Clifford, while yet
in season. Dismiss your prejudices against this young man, whether
well or ill founded, and permit your daughter to marry him. Suffer
me to assure you, Mrs. Clifford, that such an event will do more
toward her recovery than all my medicine."

"What, and see him the master of my house--he, the poor beggar-boy
that my husband fed in charity, and who turned from him with ingratitude
in his moment of difficulty, and left him to be despoiled by his
enemies? Never! never! Daughter of mine shall never be wife of his!
The serpent! to sting the hand of his benefactor!"

"My dear Mrs. Clifford, this prejudice of yours, besides being
totally unfounded, amounts to monomania. Now, I know something of
all these matters, as you should be aware; and I should be sorry to
counsel anything to you or to your family which would be either
disgraceful or injurious. So far from this young man being ungrateful,
neglectful, or suffering your husband to be preyed on by enemies,
I am of opinion that, if his counsel had been taken in this late
unhappy business, you would probably have been spared all of the
misery and nearly one half of the loss which has been incurred by
the refusal to do so."

"And so you, too, are against us, doctor? You, too, believe everything
that this young man tells you?"

"No, madam; I assure you, honestly, that I never heard a single
word from his lips in regard to this subject. It is spoken of by
everybody but himself."

"Ay! ay! the whole town knows it, and from who else but him, I
wonder? But you needn't to talk, doctor, on the subject.  My mind's
made up. Edward Clifford, while I have breath to say 'No,' and a
hand to turn the lock of the door against him, shall never again
darken these doors!"

The physician was a man of too much experience to waste labor
upon a case so decidedly hopeless. He knew that no art within his
compass could cure so thorough a case of heart-blindness,  and he
gave her up; but he did not give up Julia. He whispered words of
consolation into her ears, which, though vague, were yet far more
useful than physic.

"Cheer up, my daughter; be of good heart and faith. I AM SURE that
there will be some remedy provided for you, before long, which will
do you good. I have given the letter to your aunt, and she promises
to do as you wish."

It may be said, en passant, that the billet sent to me had been covered
in another to my female friend and Julia's relative; and that the
doctor, though not unconscious of the agency of this lady between
us, was yet guilty of no violation of the faith which is always
implied between the family and the  physician. He might SUSPECT,
but he did not KNOW; and whatever might have been his suspicions,
he certainly did not have the most distant idea of that concession
which Julia had made, and of the course of conduct for which her
mother's persecutions had now prepared her mind.

Mr. Perkins, though deprived of his lien upon Mrs. Clifford, by
reason of his claim, did not in the least forego his intentions.
His complaints and threatenings necessarily ceased--his tone was
something lowered; but he possessed a hold upon this silly woman's
prejudices which was far superior to any which he might before have
had upon her fears. His hostility to me was grateful to the hate
which she also entertained, and which seemed to be more thoroughly
infixed in her after her downfall--which, as it has been seen, she
ascribed to me; chiefly because of my predictions that such would
be the case.  In due proportion to her hate for me, was her desire
to baffle my wishes, even though it might be at the expense of her
own daughter's life. But a vain mother has no affections--none, at
least, worthy of the name, and none which she is not prepared to
discard at the first requisition of her dearer self. Her hate of
me was so extreme as to render her blind to everything besides--her
daughter's sickness, the counsel of the physician, the otherwise
obvious vulgarity and meanness of Perkins, and that gross injustice
which I had suffered at her hands from the beginning, and which, to
many minds, might have amply justified in me the hostile feelings
which she laid to my charge. In this blindness she precipitated
events, and by her cruelty  justified extremities in self-defence.
The moment that Julia  exhibited some slight improvement, she was
summoned to an interview with Perkins, and in this interview her
mother solemnly swore that she should marry him. The base-minded
suitor stood by in silence, beheld the loathing of the maiden,
heard her distinct refusal, yet clung to his victim, and permitted
the violence of the mother, without rebuke--that rebuke which the
true gentleman might have administered in such a case, and which,
to forbear, was the foulest shame--the rebuke of his own decided
refusal to participate in such a sacrifice. But he was not capable
of this; and Julia, stunned and terrified, was shocked to hear
Mrs. Clifford appoint the night of the following Thursday for the
forced nuptials.

"She will consent--she shall consent, Mr. Perkins," were the vehement
assurances of the mother, as the craven-spirited suitor prepared
to take his leave. "I know her better than you do, and she knows
me. Do you fear nothing, but bring Mr--"  (the divine) "along with
you. We shall put an end to this folly."

"Oh, do not, do not, mother, if you would not drive me mad!" was
the exclamation of the destined victim, as she threw herself at the
feet of her unnatural parent. "You will kill me to wed this man!
I can not marry him--I can not love him.  Why would you force this
matter upon me--why! why!"

"Why will you resist me, Julia? why will you provoke your mother
to this degree? You have only to consent willingly, and you know
how kind I am."

"I can not consent!" was the gasping decision of the maiden.

"You shall! you must! you will!"

"Never! never! On my knees I say it, mother. God will witness what
you refuse to believe. I will die before I consent to marry where
I do not give my heart."

"Oh, you talk of dying, as if it was a very easy matter. But you
won't die. It's more easy to say than do. Do you come, Mr. Perkins.
Don't you mind--don't you believe in these denials, and oaths,
and promises. It's the way with all young ladies. They all make a
mighty fuss when they're going to be married; hut they're all mighty
willing, if the truth was known.  I ought to know something about
it. I did just the same as she when I was going to marry Mr.
Clifford; yet nobody was more willing than I was to get a husband.
Do you come and bring the parson; she'll sing a different tune when
she stands up  before him, I warrant you."

"That shall never be, Mr. Perkins!" said the maiden  solemnly,
and somewhat approaching the person whom she addressed.  "I have
already more than once declined the honor you propose to do me.
I now repeat to you that I will sooner marry the grave and the
winding-sheet than be your wife! My mother mistakes me and all my
feelings. For your own sake, if not for mine, I beg that YOU will
not mistake them; for, if the strength is left me for speech, I
will declare aloud to the reverend man whom you are told to bring,
the nature of those persecutions to which you have been privy. I
will tell him of the cruelty which I have been compelled to endure,
and which you have beheld and encouraged with your silence."

Perkins looked aghast, muttered his unwillingness to prosecute
his suit under such circumstances, and prepared to take his leave.
His mutterings and apologies were all swallowed up in that furious
storm of abuse and denunciation which now poured from the lips
of the exemplary mother. These we need not repeat. Suffice it
that the deep feelings of Julia--her sense of propriety and good
taste--prevailed to keep her silent, while her mother, still raving,
renewed her assurances to the pettifogger that he should certainly
receive his wife at her hands on the evening of the ensuing Thursday.
The unmanly suitor accepted her assurances--and took leave of mother
and daughter, with the expression of a simpering hope, intended
chiefly for the latter, that her objections would resolve themselves
into the usual maidenly scruples when the appointed time should
arrive. Julia mustered strength enough to reply in language which
brought down another storm from her mother upon her devoted head.

"Do not deceive Perkins--do not let the assurances of my mother
deceive you. She does not know me. I can not and will not marry
you. I will sooner marry the grave--the winding-sheet--the worm!"

Her strength failed her the moment he left the apartment.  She
sank in a fainting-fit upon the floor, and was thus saved from
hearing the bitter abuse which her miserable and  misguided parent
continued to lavish upon her, even while undertaking the task of
her restoration. The evident exhaustion of her frame, her increasing
feebleness, the agony of her mind, and the possibly fatal termination
of her indisposition, did not in the least serve to modify the
violent and vexing mood of this most unnatural woman!






CHAPTER XII.

"GONE TO BE MARRIED."





These proceedings, the tenor of which was briefly communicated
to me in a hurried note from Julia, despatched by the hands of
the physician, under a cover, to the friendly aunt, rendered it
imperatively necessary that, whatever we proposed to do should be
done quickly, if we entertained any hope to save.

The tone of her epistle alarmed me exceedingly in one respect, as
it evidently showed that she could not much longer save herself. Her
courage was sinking with her spirits, which were yielding rapidly
beneath the continued presence of that persecution which had
so long been acting upon her. She began now to distrust her own
strength--her very powers of utterance to declare her aversion to
the proposed marriage, if ever the trial was brought to the threatened
issue before the holy man.

"What am I to do--what say--" demanded her trembling epistle,
"should they go so far? Am I to declare the truth?--can I tell to
strange ears that it is my mother who forces this cruel sacrifice
upon me? I dread I can not. I fear that my soul and voice will
equally fail me. I tremble, dear Edward, when I think that the awful
moment may find me speechless, and my consent may be assumed from
my silence. Save me from this trial, dearest Edward; for I fear
everything now--and fear myself--my unhappy weakness of nerve and
spirit more than all. Do not leave me to this trial of my strength--for
I have none. Save me if you can!"

It may be readily believed that I needed little soliciting to
exertion after this. The words of this letter occasioned an alarm
in my mind, little less--though of a different kind--than that which
prevailed in hers. I knew the weakness of hers--I knew hers--and
felt the apprehension that she might fail at the proper moment,
even more vividly than she expressed it.

This letter did not take me by surprise. Before it was received,
and soon after the first with which she had favored me, by the
hands of the friendly physician, I had begun my preparations with
the view to our clandestine marriage. I was only now required to
quicken them. The obstacle, on the face of it, was, comparatively, a
small one. To get her from a dwelling, in which, though her steps
were watched, she was not exactly a prisoner, was scarcely a
difficulty, where the lover and the lady are equally willing.

Our mode of operations was simple. There was a favorite servant--a
negro--who had been raised in the family, had been a playmate
with my poor deceased cousin and myself, and had always been held
in particular regard by both of us. He was not what is called
a house-servant, but was employed in the yard in doing various
offices, such as cutting wood, tending the garden, going of messages,
and so forth. This was in the better days of the Clifford family.
Since its downfall he had been instructed to look an owner, and,
opportunely, at this moment, when I was deliberating upon the
process I should adopt for the extrication of his young mistress,
he came to me to request that I would buy him. The presence of this
servant suggested to me that he could assist me materially in my
plans.  Without suffering him to know the intention which I had
formed I listened to his garrulous harangue. A negro is usually very
copious, where he has an auditor; and though, from his situation,
he could directly see nothing of the proceedings in the house of
his owner, yet, from his fellow-servants he had contrived to gather,
perhaps, a very correct account of the general condition of things.
It appeared from his story that the attachment of Miss Julia to
myself was very commonly understood.  The effort of the mother to
persuade her to marry Perkins was also known to him; but of the
arrangement that the marriage should take place at the early day
mentioned in her note, he told me nothing, and, in all probability,
this part of her proceedings was kept a close secret by the wily
dame Peter--the name of the negro--went on to add, that, loving
me, and loving his young mistress, and knowing that we loved one
another, and believing that we should one day be married, he was
anxious to have me for his future owner.

"I will buy you, Peter, on one condition."

"Wha's dat, Mas' Ned?"

"That you serve me faithfully on trial, for five days, without
letting anybody know who you serve--that you carry my messages
without letting anybody hear them except that person to whom you
are sent--and, if I give you a note to carry, that you carry it
safely, not only without suffering anybody to see the note but the
one to whom I send it, but without suffering anybody to know or
suspect that you've got such a thing as a note about you."

The fellow was all promises; and I penned a billet to Julia which,
in few words, briefly prepared her to expect my attendance at her
house at three in the afternoon of the very day when her nuptials
were contemplated. I then proceeded to a friend--Kingsley--the friend
who had served me in the meeting with Perkins; a bold, dashing,
frank fellow, who loved nothing better than a frolic which worried
one of the parties; and who, I well knew, would relish nothing more
than to baffle Perkins in a love affair, as we had already done in
one of strife. To him I unfolded my plan and craved his assistance,
which was promised instantly. My female friend, the relative of
Julia, whose assistance had been already given us, and whose quarrel
with Mrs. Clifford in consequence, had spiced her determination to
annoy her still further whenever occasion offered, was advised of
our plans; and William Edgerton readily undertook what seemed to
be the most innocent part of all, to procure a priest to officiate
for us, at the house of the lady in question, and at the appointed
time.

My new retainer, Peter, brought me due intelligence of the delivery
of the note, in secret, to Julia, and a verbal answer from her
made me sanguine of success. The day came, and the hour; and in
obedience to our plan, my friend, Kingsley, proceeded boldly to the
dwelling of Mrs. Clifford, just as that lady had taken her seat at
the dinner-table, requesting to see and speak with her on business
of importance. The interview was vouchsafed him, though not until
the worthy lady had instructed the servant to say that she was
just then at the dinner-table, and would be glad if the gentleman
would call again.

But the gentleman regretted that he could not call again.  He was
from Kentucky, desirous of buying slaves, and must leave town the
next morning for the west. The mention of his, occupation, as Mrs.
Clifford had slaves to sell, was sufficient to persuade her to lay
down the knife and fork with promptness; and the servant was bade
to show the Kentucky gentleman, into the parlor. Our arrangement
was, that, with the departure of the lady from the table Julia should
leave it also--descend the stairs, and meet me at the entrance.

Trembling almost to fainting, the poor girl came to me, and I
received her into my arms, with something of a tremor also. I felt
the prize would be one that I should be very loath to lose; and
joy led to anxiety, and my anxiety rendered me nervous to a womanly
degree. But I did not lose my composure and when I had taken her
into my arms, I thought it would be only a prudent precaution to
turn the key in the outer dour, and leave it somewhere along the
highway. This I did, absolutely forgetting, that, in thus securing
myself against any sudden pursuit, I had also locked up my friend,
the Kentucky trader.

Fortune favored our movements. Our preparations had been properly
laid, and Edgerton had the divine in waiting. In less than half
an hour after leaving the house of her parents, Julia and myself
stood up to be married. Pale, feeble, sad--the poor girl, though she
felt no reluctance, and suffered not the most momentary remorse for
the steps she had taken, and was about to take, was yet necessarily
and naturally impressed with the solemnity and the doubts which
hung over the event.  Young, timid, artless, apprehensive, she
was unsupported by those whom nature had appointed to watch over
and protect her; and though they had neglected, and would have
betrayed their trust, she yet could not but feel that there was an
incompleteness about the affair, which, not even the solemn accents
of the priest, the deep requisitions of those pledges which she
was called upon to make, and the evident conviction which she now
entertained, that what had been done was necessary to be done,
for her happiness, and even her life--could entirely remove. There
was an awful but sweet earnestness in the sad, intense glance of
entreaty, with which she regarded me when I made the final response.
Her large black eye dilated, even under the dewy suffusion of its
tears, as it seemed to say:--

"It is to you now--to you alone--that I look for that protection,
that happiness which was denied where I had best right to look for
it. Ah! let me not look, let me not yield myself to you in vain!"

How imploring, yet how resigned was that glance of tears--love in
tears, yet love that trusted without fear! It was the embodiment of
innocence, struggling between hope and doubt, and only strengthened
for the future by the pure, sweet faith which grew out of their
conflict. I look back upon that scene, I recall that glance, with
a sinking of the heart which is full of terror and terrible reproach.
Ah! then, then, I had no fear, no thought, that I should see that
look, and others, more sad, more imploring still, and see them
without a corresponding faith and love! I little knew, in that
brief, blessed hour, how rapidly the blindness of the heart comes
on, even as the scale over the eyes--but such a scale as no surgeon's
knife can cut away.






CHAPTER XIII.

BAFFLED FURY.





In the first gush of my happiness--the ceremony being completed,
and the possession of my treasure certain--I had entirely forgotten
my Kentucky friend, whom I had locked up, in confidential TETE-A-TETE
with madam, my exemplary mother-in-law.  He was a fellow with
a strong dash of humor, and could not resist the impulse to amuse
himself at the expense of the lady, by making an admirable scene
of the proceeding. He began the business by stating that he had
heard she had several negroes whom she wished to sell--that he was
anxious to buy--he did not care how many, and would give the very
best prices of any trader in the market. At his desire, all were
summoned in attendance--some three or four in number, that she
had to dispose of--all but the worthy Peter, who, under existing
circumstances, was quite too necessary to my proceedings to be
dispensed with. These were all carefully examined by the trader.
They were asked their ages, their names, their qualities; whether
they were willing to go to Kentucky, the paradise of the western
Indian, and so forth--all those questions which, in ordinary cases,
it is the custom of the purchaser to ask. They were, then dismissed,
and the Kentuckian next discussed with the lady the subject of
prices. But let the worthy fellow speak for himself:--

"I was so cursed anxious," he said, "to know whether you had got
off and in safety, for I was beginning to get monstrous tired of
the old cat, that I jumped up every now and then to take a peep out
of the front window. I made an excuse to spit on such occasions--though
sometimes I forgot to do so--and then I would go back and begin
again, with something about the bargain and the terms, and whether
the negroes were honest, and sound, and all that. Well, though I
looked out as often as I well could with civility, I saw nothing
of you, and began to fear that something had happened to unsettle
the whole plan; but, after a while, I saw Peter, with his mouth drawn
back and hooked up into his ears, with his white teeth glimmering
like so many slips of moonshine in a dark night, and I then concluded
that all was as it should be. But seeing me look out so earnestly
and often, the good lady at length said:--

"'I suppose, sir, your horses are in waiting. Perhaps you'd like
to have a servant to mind them.'

"'No, ma'am, I'm obliged to you; but I left the hotel on foot.'

"'Yes, sir,' said she, 'but I thought it might be your horses seeing
you so often look out.'

"I could scarcely keep in my laughter. It did burst out into a sort
of chuckle; and, as you were then safe--I knew THAT from Peter's
jaws--I determined to have my own fun out of the old woman. So I
said--pretty much in this sort of fashion, for I longed to worry
her, and knew just how it could be done handsomest--I said:--

"'The truth is, ma'am--pardon me for the slight--but really I
was quite interested--struck, as I may say, by a very suspicious
transaction that met my eyes a while ago, when I first got up to
spit from the window.'

"'Ah, indeed, sir! and pray, if I may ask, what was it you saw?'

"'Really very curious; but getting up to spit, and looking out
before I did so--necessary caution, ma'am--some persons might be
just under the window, you know--'

"'Yes, sir, yes.' The old creature began to look and talk mighty
eager.

"'An ugly habit, ma'am--that of spitting. We Kentuckians carry it to
great excess. Foreigners, I'm told, count it monstrous vulgar--effect
of tobacco-chewing, ma'am--a deuced bad habit, I grant you, but 'tis
a habit, and there's no leaving it off, even if we would. I don't
think Kentuckians, as a people, a bit more vulgar than English, or
French, or Turks, or any other respectable people of other countries.'

"'No, sir, certainly not; but the transaction--what you saw.'

"Ah yes! beg pardon; but, as I was saying, something really quite
suspicious! Just as I was about to spit, when I went to the window,
some ten minutes ago--perhaps you did not observe, but I did not
spit. Good reason for it, ma'am--might have done mischief"

"How, sir?"

"Ah that brings me to the question I want to ask: any handsome
young ladies living about here, ma'am?--here, in your neighborood?"

"Why, yes, sir," answered the old tabby, with something like
surprise; there's several--there's the Masons, just opposite: the
Bagbys, next door to them below, and Mr. Wilford's daughter: all
of them would be considered pretty by some persons.  On the same
side with us, there's Mrs. Freeman and her two daughters, but the
widow is accounted by many the youngest looking and prettiest of
the whole, though, to my thinking, that's saying precious little for
any. Next door to us is a Mr.  and Mrs. Gibbs, who have a daughter,
and she IS rather pretty, but I don't know much about them. It might
be a mother's vanity, sir, but I think I may be proud of having a
daughter myself, who is about as pretty as any of the best among
them; and that's saying a great deal less for her than might be
said."

"Ah, indeed--you a daughter, ma'am? But she is not grown-up, of
course--a mere child?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, said the old creature, tickled up to
the eyes, and looking at me with the sweetest smiles; though it
may surprise you very much, she is not only no child, but a woman
grown; and, what's more, I think she will be made a wife this very
night."

"Egad, then I suspect she's not the only one that's about to
be made a wife of. I suspect some one of these young ladies, your
neighbors, will be very soon in the same condition."

"Indeed, sir--pray, who?--how do you know? and the old tabby edged
herself along the sofa until she almost got jam up beside me."

"Well, said I, I don't KNOW exactly, but I'm deucedly suspicious
of it, and, more than that, there's some underhand work going on."

"This made her more curious than ever; and her hands and feet, and
indeed her whole body, got such a fidgeting, that I fancied she
began to think of getting St. Vitus for a bedfellow.  Her eagerness
made her ask me two or three times what made me think so; and, seeing
her anxiety, I purposely delayed in order to worry her. I wished
to see how far I could run her up. When I did begin to explain,
I went to work in a round-about way enough--something thus, old
Kentuck--as I began: "Well, ma'am, this tobacco-chewing, as I said
before, carried me, as you witnessed, constantly to the window.
I don't know that I chew more than many others, but I know I chew
too much for my good, and for decency, too, ma'am."

"Yes, sir, yes; but the young lady, and--"

"Ah, yes, ma'am. Well, then, going to the window once, twice, or
thrice, I could not help but see a young man standing beneath it,
evidently in waiting--very earnest, very watchful--seemingly very
much interested and anxious, as if waiting for somebody."

"Is it possible?" whispered the tabby, full of expectation.

"Yes, very possible, ma'am--very true." There he stood; I could even
hoar his deep-drawn sighs--deep, long, as if from the very bottom
of his heart.'

"Was he so VERY near, sir?"

"Just under the window--going to and fro--very anxious.  I was
almost afraid I had spit on him, he looked up so hard--so--"

"What, sir, up at you? at--at MY windows, sir?"

"Not exactly, ma'am, that was only my notion, for I thought I
might have spit upon him, and so wakened his anger; but, indeed,
he looked all about him, as, indeed, it was natural that he should,
you know, if he meditated anything that wa'n't exactly right. There
was a carriage in waiting--a close carriage--not a hundred yards
below, and--"

"Ah, sir, do tell me what sort of a looking young gentleman was
it--eh?"

"Good-looking fellow enough, ma'am--rather tall, slenderish, but
not so slender--wore a black frock." By this time the old creature
was up at the window--her long, skinny neck stretched out as far
as it could go.

"Ah!" said I, "ma'am, you're quite too late, if you expect to see
the sport. They're off; I saw the last of them when I took my last
spit from the window. They were then--"

"But, sir, did he--did you say that this person--the person you
spit on--carried a young lady away with him?"

"You mistake me, ma'am--"

"Ah"--she drew a mighty long breath as if relieved.

"I did NOT spit upon him; I only came near doing it once or twice.
If I hadn't looked, I should very probably have divided my quid
pretty equally between both of them."

"Both! both!" she almost screamed. "Did she go with him, then?--was
there in truth a young woman?"

"You never saw a creature in such a tearing fidget. Her long
nose was nearly stuck into my face, and both her hands, all claws
extended, seemed ready for my cheeks. I felt a little ticklish, I
assure you; but I kept up my courage, determined to see the game
out, and answered very deliberately, after I had put a fresh quid
into my jaws:--"

"Ay, that she did, ma'am, and seemed deuced glad to go, as was
natural enough. A mighty pretty girl she was, too; rather thin,
but pretty enough to tempt a clever fellow to do anything. I reckon
they're nigh on to being man and wife by this time, let the old
people say what they will."

"But the old put didn't wait to hear me say all this. Before the
words were well out of my mouth, she gave a bounce, to the bell-rope
first--I thought she'd ha' jerked it to pieces--and then to the
head of the stairs."

"Excuse me for a moment, sir, if you please," she said, in a
considerable fidget.

"Certainly, ma'am," says I, with a great Kentucky sort of bow and
natural civility; and then I could hear her squalling from the
head of the stairs, and at the top of her voice, "Julia!  Julia!
Julia!"--but there was no answer from Julia. Then came the servants;
then came the outcry; then she bounced back into the parlor,
and blazed out at me for not telling her at once that it was her
daughter who had been carried off, without making so long a story
of it, and putting in so much talk about tobacco.

"Lord bless you, my dear woman!" says I, innocent enough, was that
pretty girl your daughter? That accounts for the fellow looking
up at the window so often; and I to fancy that it was all because
I might have given him a quid!"

"You must have seen her THEN!"

"Well, ma'am," said I, "I must come again about the negroes.  I
see you've got your hands full."

"And, with that, I pushed down stairs, while she blazed out at
her husband, whom she called an old fool; and me, whom she called
a young one; and the negroes, whom she ordered to fly in a hundred
ways in the same breath; and, to make matters worse, she seized
her hat and shawl, and bounced down the steps after me. Here we
were in a fix again, that made her a hundred times more furious.
The street-door was locked on the outside, and the key gone, and
I fastened up with the old mad tabby. I tried to stand it while
the servants were belaboring to break open, but the storm was too
heavy, and, raising a sash, I went through: and, in good faith, I
believe she bounced through after me; for, when I got fairly into
the street and looked round, there she went, bounce, flounce,
pell-mell, all in a rage, steam up, puffing like a porpoise--though,
thank Jupiter!  she took another course from myself. I was glad to
get out of her clutches, I assure you."

Such was Kingsley's account of his expedition, told in his
particular manner; and endued with the dramatic vitality which he
was well able to give it, it was inimitable. It needs but a few
words to finish it. Mrs. Clifford, with unerring instinct, made
her way to the house of that friendly lady who had assisted our
proceedings. But she came too late for anything but abuse. Julia
was irrevocably mine. Bitter was the clamor which, in our chamber,
assailed us from below.

"Oh, Edward, how shall I meet her?" was the convulsive speech of
Julia, as she heard the fearful sounds of her mother's voice--a
voice never very musical, and which now, stimulated by unmeasured
rage--the rage of a baffled and wicked woman--poured forth a torrent
of screams rather than of human accents.  We soon heard the rush
of the torrent up stairs, and in the direction of our chamber.

"Fear nothing, Julia; her power over you is now at an end.  You
are now mine--mine only--mine irrevocably!"

"Ah, she is still my mother!" gasped the lovely trembler in my
arms. A moment more, and the old lady was battering at the door. I
had locked it within. Her voice, husky but subdued, now called to
her daughter--

"Julia! Julia! Julia!--come out!"

"Who is there? what do you want?" I demanded. I was disposed to
keep her out, but Julia implored me to open the door. She had really
no strength to reply to the summons of the enraged woman; and her
entreaty to me was expressed in a whisper which scarcely filled
my own ears. She was weak almost to fainting. I trembled lest her
weakness, coupled with her fears, and the stormy scene that I felt
might be reasonably anticipated, would be too much for her powers
of endurance. I hesitated. She put her hand on my wrist.

"For my sake, Edward, let her in. Let her see me. We will have to
meet her, and better now--now, when I feel all the solemnity of
my new position, and while the pledges I have just made are most
present to my thoughts. Do not fear for me. I am weak and very
feeble, but I am resolute. I feel that I am not wrong."

She could scarcely gasp out these brief sentences. I urged her not
to risk her strength in the interview.

"As you love me, do as I beg you," she replied, with entreating
earnestness. "It does not become me to keep my mother, under any
circumstances, thus waiting at the door, and asking entrance."

Meanwhile, the clamors of Mrs. Clifford were continued.  Julia's
aunt was there also, and the controversy was hot and heavy between
them. Annoyed as I was, and apprehensive for Julia.  I yet could not
forbear laughing at the ludicrousness of my position and the whole
scene. I began to think, from the equal violence of the two ancient
dames without, that they might finally get to blows. This was also
the fear of Julia, and another reason why we should throw open the
door. I at length did so; and soon had the doubtful satisfaction
of transferring to myself all the wrath of the disappointed mother.
She rushed in, the moment the door turned upon its hinges, almost
upsetting me in the violence of her onset. Bounding into the apartment
with a fury that was utterly beyond her own control, I was led to
fear that she might absolutely inflict violence upon her daughter,
who by this time had sunk, in equal terror and exhaustion, upon a
sofa in the remotest corner of the room. I hastily placed myself
between them, and did not scruple, with extended hands, to maintain
a safe interval of space between the two. I will not attempt to
describe the tigress rage or the shrieking violence which ensued on
the part of this veteran termagant. It was only closed at length,
when, Julia having fainted under the storm, dead to all appearance,
I picked up the assailant VI ET ARMIS, and, in defiance of screams
and scratches--for she did not spare the use of her talons--resolutely
transported her from the chamber.






CHAPTER XIV.

ONE DEBT PAID.





Staggering forward under this burden--a burden equally active and
heavy--who should I encounter at the head of the stairs, but the
liege lord of the lady--my poor imbecile uncle.  As soon as she
beheld him--foaming and almost unintelligible in her rage--she
screamed for succor--cried "murder" "rape," "robbery," and heaven
knows what besides. A moment before, though she scratched and
scuffled to the utmost, she had not employed her lungs. A momentary
imprecation alone had broken from her, as it were, perforce and
unavoidably. Now, nothing could exceed the stentorian tumult which
her tongue maintained. She called upon her husband to put me to
death--to tear me in pieces--to do anything and everything for the
punishing of so dreadful an offender as myself. In thus commanding
him, she did not forbear uttering her own unmeasured opinion of
the demerits of the man whose performances she required.

"If you had the spirit of a man, Clifford--if you were not a poor
shoat--you'd never have submitted so long as you have to this
viper's insolence. And there you stand, doing nothing--absolutely
still as a stock, though you see him beating your wife. Ah! you
monster!--you coward!--that I should ever have married a man that
wasn't able to protect me."

This is a sufficient sample of her style, and not the worst. I am
constrained to confess that some portions of the good lady's language
would better have suited the modes of speech common enough among
the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian
mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne
the repetition of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after
the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and
husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled;
my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly  escaped. But I grasped her
firmly; and when her husband, my worthy uncle, in obedience to her
orders, sprang upon me, with the bludgeon which he now habitually
carried, I confronted him with the lusty person of his spouse, and
regret to say, that the first thwack intended for my shoulders,
descended with some considerable emphasis upon hers. This increased
her fury, and redoubled her screams. But it did not lessen my
determination, or make me change my mode of proceeding. I resolutely
pushed her before me. The husband stood at the head of the stairs
and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs
were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force
him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM--not to
perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders--which, I happened
to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all
previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted
me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance;
but I was finally successful;  without any injury beyond that which
had been inflicted by the talons of the fair lady, and perhaps
a single and slight stroke upon the shoulder from the club of her
husband, I succeeded in landing her upon the lower flat in safety.
Beyond a squeeze or two, which the exigency of the case made
something more affectionate than any I should have been otherwise
pleased to bestow upon her, she suffered no hurt at my hands.

But, though willing to release her, she was not so willing herself
to be released. When I set her free, she flew at me with cat-like
intrepidity; and I found her a much more difficult  customer than
her husband. Him I soon baffled. A moment sufficed to grapple with
him and wrench the stick from his hands, and then, with a moderate
exercise of agility, I contrived to spring up the stairway which I
had just descended, regain the chamber, and secure the door, before
they could overtake or annoy me with their further movements. My
wife's aunt, meanwhile, had been busy with her restoratives. Julia
was now recovering from the fainting fit; and I had the satisfaction
of hearing from one of the servants that the baffled enemy had gone
off in a fury that made their departure seem a flight rather than
a mere retreat.

I should have treated the whole event with indifference--their
rage and their regard equally--but for my suffering and sensitive
wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all
her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her
filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties,
I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an
elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when
an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated
to subdue my anger, and make the feelings of my wife, if possible,
more accessible than ever to the influences of fear and sorrow.
Only three days from our marriage had elapsed, when her father was
stricken speechless in the street. He was carried home for dead.
I have already hinted that, months before, and just after the
threatened discovery of those fraudulent measures by which he lost
his fortune, his mind had become singularly enfeebled; his memory
failing, and all his faculties of judgment--never very strong--growing
capricious, or else obtuse and unobserving.  These were the symptoms
of a rapid physical change, the catastrophe  of which was at hand.
How far the excitement growing out of his daughter's flight and
marriage may have precipitated this result, is problematical. It
may be said, in this place, that my wife's mother charged it all to
my account. I was pronounced the murderer of her husband. On this
head I did not reproach myself. It was necessary, however, that a
reconciliation should take place between the father and his child.
To this I had, of course, no sort of objection. But it will scarce
be believed that the miserable woman, her mother, opposed herself to
their meeting with the utmost violence of her character. Nothing
but the outcry of the family and all its friends--including
the excellent physician whose secret services had contributed so
much toward my happiness--compelled her to give way, though still
ungraciously, to the earnest entreaty of her daughter for permission
to see her father before he died! and even then, by the death-bed
of the unhappy and almost unconscious man, she recommenced the scene
of abuse and bitter reproach, which, however ample the reader and
hearer may have already found it, it appears she had left unfinished.
It was in the midst of a furious tirade, directed against myself,
chiefly, and Julia, in part, that the spasms of death, unperceived
by the mother, passed over the contracted muscles of the father's
face. The bitter speech of the blind woman--blind of heart--was actually
finished  after death had given the final blow to the victim. Of
this she had no suspicion, until instructed by the piercing shrieks
of her daughter, who fell swooning upon the corse before her.






CHAPTER XV.

HONEYMOON PERIOD.





It was supposed by Julia and certain of her friends that an event
so solemn, so impressive, and so unexpected, as the death of Mr.
Clifford, would reasonably affect the mind of his widow; and the
concessions which I had meditated to address to herself and her
late husband were now so varied as to apply solely to herself. I
took considerable pains in preparing my letter, with the view to
soften her prejudices and asperities, as well as to convince her
reason. There was one suggestion which Julia was disposed to insist
on, to which, however, I was singularly averse. In the destitution
of Mrs. Clifford, her diminished and still diminishing resources,
not to speak of her loneliness, she thought that I ought to tender
her a home with us. Had she been any other than the captious,
cross-grained creature that she was--bad her misfortunes produced
only in part their legitimate and desirable effects of subduing
her perversity--I should have had no sort of objection. But I knew
her imperious and unreasonable nature; and I may here add, that,
by this time, I knew something of my own: I was a man of despotic
character. The constant conflicts which I had had from boyhood,
resulting as they had done in my frequent successes and final
triumph, had, naturally enough, made me dictatorial. Sanguine  in
temperament, earnest in character, resolute in impulse, I was
necessarily arbitrary in mood. It was not likely that Mrs. Clifford
would forget her waywardnesses, and it was just as unreasonable
that I should submit to her insolences. Besides,  one's home ought
to be a very sacred place. It is necessary that the peace there
should compensate and console for the strifes without. To hope for
this in any household where there is more than one master, would
bo worse than idle. Nay, even if there were peace, the chances are
still great that there would be some lack of propriety. Domestic
regulations would become inutile. Children and servants would
equally fail of duty and improvement under conflicting authorities;
and all the sweet social harmonies of family would be jarred
away by misunderstandings if not bickerings, leading to coldness,
suspicion, and irremediable jealousies. These things seemed to
threaten me from the first moment when Julia submitted to me her
desire that her mother should be invited to take up her abode with
us.  I reasoned with her against it; suggested all the grounds of
objection  which I really felt; and reviewed at length the long
history of our connection from my childhood up, which had been
distinguished by her constant hostility and hate. "How," I asked,
"can it be hoped that there will be any change for the better now?
She is the same woman, I the same man! It is not reasonable to think
that the result of our reunion will be other than it has been."
But Julia implored.

"I know what you say is reasonable--is just; but, dear Edward, she
is my mother, and she is alone."

I yielded to her wishes. Could I else? My letter to her mother
concluded with a respectful entreaty that she would take apartments
in our dwelling, and a chair at our table, and lessen, to this
extent, the expenses of her own establishment.

"What!" exclaimed the frenzied woman to Julia's aunt, to whom the
charge of presenting the communication was committed--"what! eat
the bread of that insolent and ungrateful wretch? Never! never!"

She flung the epistle from her with disdain; and, to confess a truth,
though, on Julia's account, I should have wished a reconciliation,
I was by no means sorry, on my own, that such was her ultimatum. I
gave myself little further concern about this foolish person, and
was happy to see that in a short time my wife appeared to recover
from the sadness and stupor which the death of her father and the
temper of her mother had naturally  induced. The truth is, she had,
for so long a period previously to her marriage, suffered from the
persecutions of the latter, and moaned over the shame and imbecility
of the former, that her present situation was one of great relief,
and, for a while, of comparative happiness.

We lived in a pleasant cottage in the suburbs. A broad and placid
lake spread out before our dwelling; and its tiny billows, under
the pressure of the sweet southwestern breezes, beat  almost against
our very doors. Green and shady groves environed us on three sides,
and sheltered us from the intrusive gaze of the highway; and never
was a brighter collection of flowers and blossoms clustered around
any habitation of hope and happiness before. I rented the cottage
on moderate terms, and furnished it neatly, but simply, as became
my resources.  All things considered, the prospect was fair and
promising before us. Julia had few toils, and ample leisure for
painting and music, for both of which she had considerable taste;
for the former art, in particular, she possessed no small talent.

Our city, indeed, seemed one peculiarly calculated for these arts.
Our sky was blue--deeply, beautifully blue; our climate mild and
delightful. Our people were singularly endowed with the genius
for graceful and felicitous performances. Music was an ordinary
attribute of the great mass; and in no community under the sun was
there such an overflow of talent in painting and sculpture. It was
the grand error of our wise heads to fancy that our city could be
made one of great trade; and, in a vain struggle to give it some
commercial superiority over its neighbor communities, the wealth
of the people was thrown away upon projects that yielded nothing;
and the arts were left neglected in a region which might have
been made--and might still be made--if not exclusively, at least
pre-eminently their own. The ordinary look of the women was beauty,
the ordinary accent was sweetness. The soft moonlight evenings were
rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering
guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every
third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies
stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine
piano. The tastes even of the mechanic were refined by this language,
the purest In which passion ever speaks; and an ambition--the result
of the highest tone of aristocratic influence upon society--prompted
his desires to purposes and a position to which in other regions
he is not often permitted to aspire. These influences were assisted
by the peculiar location of our city--by its suburban freedom from all
closeness; its innumerable gardens, the appanage of every household;
its piazzas, verandahs, porches; its broad and minstrel-wooing rivers;
and the majestic and evergreen forests, which grew and gathered
around us on every hand. If ever there was a city intended by nature
more particularly than another for the abodes and the offices of
art, it was ours. It will become so yet: the mean, money-loving
soul of trade can not always keep it from its destinies. We may
never see it in our day; but so surely as we live, and as it shall
live, will it become an Athens in our land--a city of empire by
the sea, renowned for genius and taste--and the chosen retreat of
muses, younger and more vigorous, and not less lovely, than the
old!

Julia was in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and
desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our
people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed.
Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while
he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural
endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She
soon discovered how much she could learn from the little which her
teacher knew; and when she made this discovery, she ceased to have
any use for his assistance.  Books, the study of the old masters,
and such of the new as were available to her, served her infinitely
more in the prosecution of her efforts; and these I stimulated by
all means in my power: for I esteemed her natural endowments to
be very high, and very well knew how usual it is for young ladies,
after marriage, to give up those tastes and accomplishments which
had distinguished and heightened their previous charms. It was quite
enough that I admired the art, and tasked her to its pursuit, to
make her cling to it with alacrity and love. We wandered together
early in the morning and at the coming on of evening, over all the
sweet, enticing scenes which were frequent in our suburbs. Environed
by two rivers, wide and clear, with deep forests beyond--a broad
bay opening upon the sea in front--lovely islands of gleaming sand,
strewn at pleasant intervals, seeming, beneath the transparent
moonlight, the chosen places of retreat for naiads from the deep
and fairies from the grove--there was no lack of objects to delight
the eye and woo the pencil to its performances. Besides, never was
blue sky, and gold-and-purple sunset, more frequent, more rich,
more shifting in its shapes and colors, from beauty to superior
beauty, than in our latitude. The eye naturally turned up to it
with a sense of hunger; the mind naturally felt the wish to record
such hues and aspects for the use of venerating love; and the eager
spirit, beginning to fancy the vision wrought according to its own
involuntary wish, seemed spontaneously to cry aloud, in the language
of the artist, on whom the consciousness of genius was breaking
with a sun-burst for the first time, "I, too, am a painter!"

Julia's studio was soon full of beginnings. Fragmentary landscapes
were all about her. Like most southrons, she did not like to finish.
There is an impatience of toil--of its duration at least--in the
southern mind, which leaves it too frequently unperforming. This
is a natural characteristic of an excitable people. People easily
moved are always easily diverted from their objects. People of very
vivid fancy are also very capricious. There is yet another cause
for the non-performance of the southern mind--its fastidiousness.
In a high state of social refinement, the standards of taste become
so very exacting, that the mind prefers not to attempt, rather
than to offend that critical judgment which it feels to be equally
active in its analysis and rigid in its requisitions. Genius and
ambition must be independent of such restraints. "Be bold, be bold,
be bold!" is the language of encouragement in Spenser; and when
he says, at the end, "Be not too bold," we are to consider the
qualification as simply a quiet caution not to allow proper courage
to rush into rashness and insane license. The GENIUS that suffers
itself to be fettered by the PRECISE, will perhaps learn how
to polish marble, but will never make it live, and will certainly
never live very long itself!

With books and music, painting and flowers, we passed the happy
moments of the honeymoon. I yielded as little of myself and my mind
to my office and clients, in that period, as I possibly could. My
cottage was my paradise. My habits, as might be inferred from my
history, were singularly domestic.  Doomed, as I had been, from my
earliest years, to know neither friends nor parents; isolated, in
my infancy, from all those tender ties which impress upon the heart,
for all succeeding years, tokens of the most endearing affection;
denied the smiles of those who yet filled my constant sight--my
life was a long yearning for things of love--for things to love!
While the struggle continued between Julia's parents and myself,
though confiding in her love, I had yet no confidence in my own
hope to realize and to secure it. Now that it was mine--mine, at
last--I grew uxorious in its contemplation. Like the miser, I had
my treasure at home, and I hastened home to survey it with precisely
the same doubts, and hopes, and fears, which the disease of avarice
prompts in the unhappy heart of its victim To this disease, in
chief, I have to attribute all my future  sorrows; but the time
is not yet for that. It is my joys now that I have to contemplate
and describe. How I dwelt, and how I dreamed! how I seemed to tread
on air, in the unaccustomed fullness of my spirit! how my whole
soul, given up to the one pursuit, I fondly fancied had secured
its object! I fancied--nay, for the time, I was happy! Surely, I
was happy!






CHAPTER XVI.

THE HAPPY SEASON.





Surely, I then was happy! I can not deceive myself as to the
character of those brief Eden moments of security and peace.  Even
now, lone as I appear in the sight of others--degraded as I feel
myself--even now I look back on our low white  cottage, by the
shores of that placid lake--its little palings  gleaming sweetly
through its dense green foliage--recall those happy, halcyon days,
and feel that we both, for the time, had attained the secret--the
secret worth all the rest--of an enjoyment actually felt, and
quite as full, flush, and satisfactory, as it had seemed in the
perspective. Possession had taken nothing of the gusto from hope.
Truth had not impaired a single beauty of the ideal. I looked in
Julia's face at morning when I  awakened, and her loveliness did
not fade. My lips, that drank sweetness from hers, did not cease
to believe the sweetness to be there--as pure, as warm, as full
of richness, as when I had only dreamed of their perfections. Our
days and nights were pure, and gentle, and fond. One twenty-four
hours shall speak for all.

When we rose at morning, we prepared for a ramble, either into the
woods, or along the banks of the lovely river that lay west of, and
at a short distance only from, our dwelling. There, wandering, as
the sun rose, we imparted to each other's eyes the several objects
of beauty which his rising glance betrayed.  Sometimes we sat
beneath a tree, while she hurriedly sketched a clump of woods, the
winding turn of the shore, its occasional crescent form or abrupt
headland, as they severally appeared in a new light, and at a happy
moment of time, beneath our vision. The songs of pleasant birds
allured us on; the sweet scent of pines and myrtle refreshed us;
and a gay, wholesome, hearty spirit was awakened in our mutual
bosoms, as thus, day  after day, while, like the d&y, our hearts
were in their first youth, we resorted to the ever-fresh mansions
of the sovereign Nature. This habit produces purity of feeling,
and continues the habit in its earliest simplicity. The childlike
laws which it encourages and strengthens are those which virtue
most loves, and which strained forms of society are the first to
overthrow.  The pure tastes of youth are those which are always
most dear to humanity; and love is easy of access, and peace not
often a stranger to the mind, where these tastes preserve their
ascendency.

My profession was something at variance with these tastes and
feelings. The very idea of law, which presupposes the frequent
occurrence of injustice, engenders, by its practice, a habit of
suspicion. To throw doubt upon the fact, and defeat and prevent
convictions of the probable, are habits which  lawyers soon acquire.
This is natural from the daily encounter with bad and striving
men--men who employ the law as an instrument by which to evade
right, or inflict wrong; and, this apart, the acute mind loves,
for its own sake, the very exercise of doubt, by which ingenuity
is put in practice, and an adroit discrimination kept constantly
at work.

I was saved, however, from something of this danger. The injustice
which I had been subjected to, in my own boyhood, had filled me
with the keenest love for the right. The idea of injustice aroused
my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as
a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that
I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the
wrong-doer--for asserting right, and maintaining innocence! I had
my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness,
that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination
of attribute and subject, which distinguish this profession beyond
all others, and seem to confirm the assumption made in its behalf,
by which it has been declared the perfection of human reason. It
will not be subtracting anything from this estimate, if I express
my  conviction, founded upon my own experience, that, though such
may be the character of the law as an abstract science, it  deserves
no such encomium as it is ordinarily practised. Lawyers are too
commonly profound only in the technicalities of the  profession;
and a very keen study and acquaintance with these--certainly a too
great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers--leads
to a dreadful departure from elementary  principles, and a most woful
(sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of
knowledge without which laws multiply  at the expense of reason,
and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those
ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely upon
continual sounding to grope their way along the accustomed shores.
Let them once leave the shores, and get beyond the reach of their
plummets, and the good ship must owe its safety to fortune and the
favor of the winds, for further skill is none.

I did not find the practice of the law affect my taste for domestic
pleasures; on the contrary, it stimulated and preserved them. After
toiling a whole morning in the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to
be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear
voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never
stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine
the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly
right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes--scenes
of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich
variety  of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent waters, hallowed
by the meek glances of the matron moon. No creature could have
been more gentle than my wife. She met me with a composed  smile,
equally bright and meek. I never heard a complaint  from her
lips. The evils of which other men complain--the complaints about
servants, scoldings about delay or dinner--never reached my ears.
The kindest solicitude that, in my fatigue, or amid the toils of
a business of which wives can know little, and for which they make
too little allowance, there should be nothing at home to make me
irritable or give me disquiet,  distinguished equally her sense and
her affection. If it became her duty to communicate any unpleasant
intelligence--any tidings which might awaken anger or impatience--she
carefully waited foi the proper time, when the excitement of my
blood was overcome, and repose of blood and brain had naturally
brought about a kindred composure of mind.

Our afternoons were usually spent in the shade of the garden  or
piazza. Sometimes, I sat by her while she was sketching.  At others,
she helped me to dress and train my garden-vines.  Now and then
we renewed our rambles of the morning, heedfully  observing the
different aspects of the same scenes and object, which had then
delighted us, under the mellowing smiles of the sun at its decline.
With books, music, and chess, our evenings passed away without
our consciousness; and day melted into night, and night departed
and gave place to the new-born day, as quietly as if life had, in
truth, become to us a great instrument of harmony, which bore us
over the smooth seas of Time, to the gentle beating of fairy and
unseen minstrelsy.  Truly, then, we were two happy children. The
older children of this world, stimulated by stronger tastes and more
lofty indulgences, may smile at the infantile simplicity of such
resources and modes of enjoyment. They were childish, but perhaps
not the less wise for that. Infancy lies very near to heaven.
Childhood is a not unfit study for angels; and happy were it for us
could we maintain the hearts and the hopes of that innocent period
for a longer day within our bosoms. In our world we grow too fast,
too presumptuously. We live on too rich food, moral and intellectual.
The artifices of our tastes prove most fatally the decline of our
reason. But, for us--we two linked hearts, so segregated from all
beside--we certainly lived the lives of children for a while. But
we were not to live thus always. In some worldly respects, _I_ was
still a child: I cared little for its pomps, its small honors, its
puny efforts, its tinselly displays. But I had vices of mind--vices
of my own--sufficient to embitter the social world where all seems
now so sweet--where all, in truth, WAS sweet, and pure, and worthy
--and which might, under other circumstances, have been kept so to
the last. I am now to describe a change!






CHAPTER XVII.

THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.





Heretofore, I have spoken of the blind hearts of others--of Mr.
Clifford and his wilful wife--I have yet said little to show the
blindness of my own. This task is now before me, and, with whatever
reluctance, the exhibition shall resolutely be made. I have
described a couple newly wed--eminently happy--blessed with tolerable
independence--resources from without and within--dwelling in the
smiles of Heaven, and not uncheered by the friendly countenance of
man. I am to display the cloud, which hangs small at first, a mere
speck, but which is to grow to a gloomy tempest that is to swallow
up the loveliness of the sky, and blacken with gloom and sorrow
the fairest aspects of the earth. I am to show the worm in the
bud which is to bring blight--the serpent in the garden which is
to spoil the Eden. Wo, beyond all other woes, that this serpent
should be engendered in one's own heart, producing its blindness,
and finally working its bane! Yet, so it is! The story is a painful
one to tell; the task is one of self-humiliation.  But the truth
may inform others--may warn, may strengthen, may save--before their
hearts shall be utterly given up to that blindness which must end
in utter desperation and irretrievable overthrow.

If the reader has not been utterly unmindful of certain moral
suggestions which have been thrown out passingly in my previous
narrative, he will have seen that, constitutionally, I am of an
ardent, impetuous temper--an active mind, ready, earnest,  impatient
of control--seeking the difficult for its own sake, and delighting
in the conquest which is unexpected by others.

Such a nature is usually frank and generous. It believes in the
affections--it depends upon them. It freely gives its own, but
challenges the equally free and spontaneous gift of yours in return.
It has little faith in the things which fill the hearts of the mere
worldlings. Worldly honors may delight it, but not worldly toys. It
has no veneration for gewgaws. The shows of furniture and of dress
it despises. The gorgeous equipage  is an encumbrance to it; the
imposing jewel it would not wear, lest it might subtract something
from that homage which it prefers should be paid to the wearer.
It is all selfish--thoroughly selfish--but not after the world's
fashion of selfishness. It hoards nothing, and gives quite as much
as it asks.  What does it ask? What? It asks for love--devoted
attachment;  the homage of the loved one and the friends; the
implicit  confidence of all around it! Ah! can anything be more
exacting? Cruelly exacting, if it be not worthy of that it asks!

Imagine such a nature, denied from the beginning! The parents of
its youth are gone!--the brother and the sister--the father and the
friend! It is destitute, utterly, of these!  It is also destitute
of those resources of fortune which are supposed to be sufficient
to command them. It is thrown upon the protection, the charge of
strangers. Not strangers--no! From strangers, perhaps, but little
could be expected. It is thrown upon the care of relatives--a
father's brother! Could the tie be nearer? Not well! But it had
been better if strangers had been its guardians. Then it might
have learned to endure more patiently. At least, it would have felt
less keenly the pangs inflicted by neglect, contumely, injustice.
In this situation it grows up, like some sapling torn from its parent
forest, its branches hacked off, its limbs lacerated! It grows up
in a  stranger soil. The sharp winds assail it from every quarter.
But still it lives--it grows. It grows wildly, rudely, ungracefully;
but it is strong and tough, in consequence of its exposure and its
trials. Its vitality increases with every collision which shakes
and rends it; until, in the pathetic language of relatives unhappily
burdened with such encumbrances, "it seems impossible  to kill it!"

I will not say that mine tried to kill me, but I do say that they
took precious little care that I was not killed. The effect upon
my body was good, however--the effect of their indifference. This
roughening process is a part of physical training which very few
parents understand. It is essential--should be insisted on--but it
must not be accompanied with a moral roughening, which forces upon
the mind of the pupil the conviction  that the ordeal is meant for
his destruction rather than for his good. There will be a recoil of
the heart--a cruel recoil from the humanities--if such a conviction
once fills the mind. It was this recoil which I felt! With warm
affections seeking for objects of love--with feelings of hope and
veneration,  imploring for altars to which to attach themselves--I
was commanded to go alone. The wilderness alone was open to me:
what wonder if my heart grew wild and capricious even as that of
the savage who dwells only amid their cheerless  recesses? With
a smile judiciously bestowed--with a kind word, a gentle tone, an
occasional voice of earnest encouragement--my uncle and aunt might
have fashioned my heart at their pleasure. I should have been as
clay in the hands of the potter--a pliant willow in the grasp of
the careful trainer. A nature  constituted like mine is, of all
others, the most flexible; but it is also, of all others, the most
resisting and incorrigible.  Approach it with a judicious regard
to its affections, and you do with it what you please. Let it but
fancy that it is the victim  of your injustice, however slight,
and the war is an interminable  one between you!

Thus did I learn the first lessons of suspiciousness. They attended
me to the schoolhouse; they governed and made me watchful there.
The schoolhouse, the play-places--the very regions of earnest faith
and unlimited confidence--produced no such effects in me. They might
have done so, had I ceased, on going to school, to see my relatives
any longer. But the daily presence of my uncle and aunt, with their
system of continued injustice, at length rendered my suspicious
moods habitual.  I became shy. I approached nobody, or approached
them with doubt and watchfulness. I learned, at the earliest
period, to look into character, to analyze conduct, to pry into the
mysterious  involutions of the working minds around me. I traced,
or fancied that I traced, the performance to the unexpressed and
secret motive in which it had its origin. I discovered, or believed
that I discovered, that the world was divided into banditti and
hypocrites. At that day I made little allowance for the existence
of that larger class than all, who happen to be the victims. Unless
this were the larger class, the other two must very much and very
rapidly diminish. My infant philosophy did not carry me very deeply
into the recesses of my own heart.  It was enough that I felt some
of its dearest rights to be  outraged--I did not care to inquire
whether it was altogether right itself.

At length, there was a glimpse of dawn amid all this darkness.  The
world was not altogether evil. All hearts were not shut against me;
and in the sweet smiles of Julia Clifford, in her kind attentions,
soothing assurances, and fond entreaties, there was opportunity,
at last, for my feelings to overflow.  Like a mountain-stream
long pent up, which at length breaks through its confinements, my
affections rushed into the grateful channel which her pliant heart
afforded me. They were wild, and strong, and, devoted, in proportion
to their long denial and restraint. Was it not natural enough that
I should love with no ordinary attachment--that my love should be
an impetuous torrent--all-devoted--struggling, striving--rushing
only in the one direction--believing, in truth, that there was none
other in the world in which to run?

This was a natural consequence of the long sophistication of my
feelings. I knew nothing of the world--of society. I had shared
in none of its trusts; I had only felt its exactions. Like some
country-boy, or country-girl, for the first time brought into the
great world, I surrendered myself wholly to the first gratified
impulse. I made no conditions, no qualifications. I set all my
hopes of heart upon a single cast of the die, and did not ask what
might be the consequences if the throw was unfortunate.

One of the good effects of a free communication of the young with
society is, to lessen the exacting nature of the affections.  People
who live too much to themselves--in their own centre, and for their
own single objects--become fastidious to disease.  They ask too
much from their neighbors. Willing to surrender their OWN affections
at a glance, they fancy the world wanting in sensibility when
they find that their readiness in this respect fails to produce a
corresponding readiness in others. This is the natural history of
that enthusiasm which is thrown back upon itself and is chilled
by denial. The complaint of coldness and selfishness against the
world is very common among very young or very inexperienced men.
The world gets a bad  character, simply because it refuses to lavish
its affections along the highways--simply because it is cautious
in giving its trusts, and expects proofs of service and actual
sympathy rather than  professions. Men like myself, of a warm,
impetuous nature,  complain of the heartlessness of mankind. They
fancy themselves peculiarly the victims of an unkind destiny in
this respect; and finally cut their throats in a moment of frenzy,
or degenerate into a cynicism that delights in contradictions, in
sarcasms, in self-torture, and the bitterest hostility to their
neighbors.

Society itself is the only and best corrective of this unhappy
disposition. The first gift to the young, therefore, should be
the gift of society. By this word society, however, I do not mean
a set, a clique, a pitiable little circle. Let the sphere of movement
be sufficiently extended--as large as possible--that the means of
observation and thought may be sufficiently  comprehensive, and no
influences from one man or one family shall be suffered to give the
bias to the immature mind and  inexperienced judgment. In society
like this, the errors, prejudices, weaknesses, of one man, are
corrected by a totally opposite form of character in another. The
mind of the youth hesitates.  Hesitation brings circumspection,
watchfulness; watchfulness, discrimination; discrimination, choice;
and a capacity to choose implies the attainment of a certain
degree of deliberateness and judgment with which the youth may be
permitted to go upon his way, supposed to be provided for in the
difficult respect of being able henceforward to take care of himself.

I had no society--knew nothing of society--saw it at a distance,
under suspicious circumstances, and was myself an object of
its suspicion. Its attractions were desirable to me, but seemed
unattainable. It required some sacrifices to obtain its entree,
and these sacrifices were the very ones which my independence would
not allow me to make. My independence was my treasure, duly valued
in proportion to the constant strife by which it was assailed. I
had that! THAT could not be taken from me. THAT kept me from sinking
into the slave the tool, the sycophant, perhaps the brute; THAT
prompted me to hard study in secret places; THAT strengthened my
heart, when, desolate and striving against necessity, I saw nothing
of the smiles of society, and felt nothing of the bounties of
life.  Then came my final emancipation--my success--my triumph!
My independence was assailed no longer. My talents were no longer
doubted or denied. My reluctant neighbors sent in their adhesion.
My uncle forbore his sneers. Lastly, and now--Julia was mine!
My heart's desires were all gratified as  completely as my mind's
ambition!

Was I happy? The inconsiderate mind will suppose this very
probable--will say, I should be. But evil seeds that are planted
in the young heart grow up with years--not so rapidly or openly as
to offend--and grow to be poisonous weeds with maturity. My feelings
were too devoted, too concentrative, too all-absorbing, to leave me
happy, even when they seemed  gratified. The man who has but a single
jewel in the world, is very apt to labor under a constant apprehension
of its loss. He who knows but one object of attachment--whose
heart's devotion turns evermore but to one star of all the countless
thousands in the heavens--wo is he, if that star be shrouded from
his gaze in the sudden overflow of storms!--still more wo is he,
when that star withdraws, or seems to withdraw, its corresponding
gaze, or turns it elsewhere upon another worshipper! See you not
the danger which threatened me? See you not that, never having been
beloved before--never having loved but the one--I loved that one
with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength; and
required from that one the equal love of heart, soul, strength?
See you not that my love--linked with  impatient mind, imperious
blood, impetuous enthusiasm, and  suspicious fear--was a devotion
exacting as the grave--searching as fever--as jealous of the thing
whose worship it demands as God is said to be of ours?

Mine was eminently a jealous heart! On this subject of jealousy, men
rarely judge correctly. They speak of Othello as jealous--Othello,
one of the least jealous of all human  natures! Jealousy is a
quality that needs no cause. It makes its own cause. It will find
or make occasion for its exercise, in the most innocent circumstances.
The PROOFS that made Othello wretched and revengeful, were sufficient
to have  deceived any jury under the sun. He had proofs. He had
a strong case to go upon. It would have influenced any judgment.
He did not seek or find these proofs for himself. He did not wish
to find them. He was slow to see them. His was not jealousy. His
error was that of pride and self-esteem. He was outraged in both.
His mistake was in being too prompt of action in a case which
admitted of deliberation. This was the error of a proud man, a
soldier, prompt to decide, prompt to act, and to punish if necessary.
But never was human character less marked by a jealous mood than
that of Othello. His great self-esteem was, of itself, a sufficient
security against jealousy.  Mine might have been, had it not been
so terribly diseased by ill-training.






CHAPTER XVIII.

PRESENTIMENTS.





Without apprehending the extent of my own weakness, the forms that
it would take, or the tyrannies that it would inflict, I was still
not totally uninformed on the subject of my peculiar character;
and, fearing then rather that I might pain my wife by some of its
wanton demonstrations, than that she would ever furnish me with,
an occasion for them, I took an opportunity, a few evenings after
our marriage, to suggest to her the necessity of regarding my
outbreaks with an indulgent eye.

My heart had been singularly softened by the most touching
associations. We sat together in our piazza, beneath a flood of
the richest and balmiest moonlight, screened only from its silvery
blaze by interposing masses of the woodbine, mingled with shoots
of oleander, arbor-vitae, and other shrub-trees. The mild breath
of evening sufficed only to lift quiveringly their green leaves
and glowing blossoms, to stir the hair upon our cheeks, and give
to the atmosphere that wooing freshness which seems so necessary
a concomitant of the moonlight. The hand of Julia was in mine.
There were few words spoken between us; love has its own sufficing
language, and is content with that consciousness that all is right
which implores no other assurances. Julia had just risen from the
piano: we had both been touched with a deeper sense of the thousand
harmonies in nature, by listening to those of Rossini; and now,
gazing upon some transparent, fleecy, white clouds that were slowly
pressing forward in the path of the moonlight, as if in duteous
attendance upon some maiden queen, our mutual minds were busied
in framing pictures from the fine yet fantastic forms that glowed,
gathering on our gaze. I felt the hand of Julia trembling in my
own. Her head sank upon my shoulder; I felt a warm drop fall from
her eyes upon my hand, and exclaimed--

"Julia, you weep! wherefore do you weep, dear wife?"

"With joy, my husband! My heart is full of joy. I am so happy, I
can only weep. Ah! tears alone speak for the true happiness."

"Ah! would it last, Julia--would it last!"

"Oh, doubt not that it will last. Why should it not t What have we
to fear?"

Mine was a serious nature. I answered sadly, if not gloomily:--

"Because it is a joy of life that we feel, and it must share the
vicissitudes of life."

"True, true, but love is a joy of eternal life as well as of this."

There was a beautiful and consoling truth in this one little
sentence, which my self-absorption was too great, at the time, to
suffer me to see. Perhaps even she herself was not fully conscious
of the glorious and pregnant truth which lay at the bottom of what
she said. Love is, indeed, not merely a joy of eternal life: it is
THE joy of eternal life!--its particular joy--a dim shadow of which
we sometimes feel in this--pure, lasting, comparatively perfect,
the more it approaches, in its  performances and its desires, the
divine essence, of which it is so poor a likeness. We should so
live, so love, as to make the one run into the other, even as a
small river runs down, through a customary channel, into the great
deeps of the sea. Death should be to the affections a mere channel
through which they pass into a natural, a necessary condition, where
their streams flow with more freedom, and over which, harmoniously
controlling, as powerful, the spirit of love broods ever with
"dovelike wings outspread." I answered, still gloomily, in the
customary world commonplaces:--

"We must expect the storm. It will not be moonlight always. We must
look for the cloud. Age, sickness, death!--ah! do these not follow
on our footsteps, ever unerring, certain always, but so often rapid?
Soon, how soon, they haunt us in the happiest moments--they meet
us at every corner! They never altogether leave us."

"Enough, dear husband. Dwell not upon these gloomy thoughts. Ah!
why should you--NOW?'

"I will not; but there are others, Julia."

"What others? Evils?"

"Sadder evils yet than these."

"Oh, no!--I hope not."

"Coldness of the once warm heart. The chill of affection in the
loved one. Estrangement--indifference!--ah, Julia!"

"Impossible, Edward! This can not, MUST not be, with us You do not
think that I could be cold to you; and you--ah!  surely YOU will
never cease to love me?"

"Never, I trust, never!"

"No! you must not--SHALL not. Oh, Edward, let me die first before
such a fear should fill my breast. You I love, as none was loved
before. Without your love, I am nothing. If I can not hang upon
you, where can I hang?"

And she clung to me with a grasp as if life and death depended on
it, while her sobs, as from a full heart, were insuppressible in
spite of all her efforts.

"Fear nothing, dearest Julia: do you not believe that I love you?"

"Ah! if I did not, Edward--"

"It is with you always to make me love you. You are as completely
the mistress of my whole heart as if it had acknowledged no laws
but yours from the beginning."

"What am I to do, dear Edward?"

"Forbear--be indulgent--pity me and spare me!"

"What mean you, Edward?"

"That heart which is all and only yours, Julia, is yet, I am assured,
a wilful and an erring heart! I feel that it is strange, wayward,
sometimes unjust to others, frequently to itself. It is a cross-grained,
capricious heart; you will find its exactions irksome."

"Oh, I know it better. You wrong yourself."

"No! In the solemn sweetness of this hour, dear Julia--now, while all
things are sweet to our eyes, all things dear to our affections--I
feel a chill of doubt and apprehension come over me. I am so happy--so
unusually happy--that I can not feel sure that I am so--that my
happiness will continue long. I will try, on my own part, to do
nothing by which to risk its loss. But I feel that I am too wilful,
at times, to be strong in keeping a resolution which is so very
necessary to our mutual happiness. You must help--you must strengthen
me, Julia."

"Oh, yes! but how? I will do anything--be anything."

"I am capricious, wayward; at times, full of injustice. Love me
not less that I am so--that I sometimes show this waywardness to
you--that I sometimes do injustice to your love. Bear with me till
the dark mood passes from my heart. I have these moods, or have
had them, frequently. It may be--I trust it will be--that, blessed
with your love, and secure in its possession, there will be no room
in my heart for such ugly feelings.  But I know not. They sometimes
take supreme possession of me. They seize upon me in all places.
They wrap my spirit as in a cloud. I sit apart. I scowl upon those
around me. I feel moved to say bitter things--to shoot darts in
defiance at every glance--to envenom every sentence which I speak.
These are cruel moods. I have striven vainly to shake them off.
They have grown up with my growth--have shared in whatever strength
I have; and, while they embitter my own thoughts and happiness, I
dread that they will fling their shadow upon yours!"

She replied with gayety, with playfulness, but there was an effort
in it.

"Oh, you make the matter worse than it is. I suppose all that
troubles you is the blues. But you will never have them again. When
I see them coming on I will sit by you and sing to you. We will
come out here and watch the evening; or you shall read to me, or we
will ramble in the garden--or--a thousand things which shall make
you forget that there was ever such a thing in the world as sorrow."

"Dear Julia--will you do this?"

"More--everything to make you happy." And she drew me closer in her
embrace, and her lips with a tremulous, almost convulsive sweetness,
were pressed upon my forehead; and clinging there, oh! how sweetly
did she weep!

"You will tire of my waywardness--of my exactions. Ah!  I shall
force you from my side by my caprice."

"You can not, Edward, if you would," she replied, in mournful
accents like my own, "I have no remedy against you! I have nobody
now to whom to turn. Have _I_ not driven all from my side--all but
you?"

It was my task to soothe her now.

"Nay, Julia, be not you sorrowful. You must continue glad and blest,
that you may conquer my sullen moods, my dark presentiments. When
I tell you of the evils of my temper, I tell you of occasional
clouds only. Heaven forbid that they should give an enduring aspect
to our heavens!"

She responded fervently to my ejaculation. I continued:--

"I have only sought to prepare you for the management of my arbitrary
nature, to keep you from suffering too much, and sinking beneath
its exactions. You will bear with me patiently.  Forgive me for
my evil hours. Wait till the storm has overblown; and find me your
own, then, as much as before; and let me feel that you are still
mine--that the tempest has not separated our little vessels."

"Will I not? Ah! do not fear for me, Edward. It is a happiness for
me to weep here--here, in your arms. When you are sad and moody,
I will come as now."

"What if I repulse you?"

"You will not--no, no!--you will not."

"But if I do I Suppose---"

"Ah! it is hard to suppose that. But I will not heed it. I will
come again."

"And again?"

"And again!"

"Then you will conquer, Julia. I feel that you will conquer!  You
will drive out the devils. Surely, then, I shall be incorrigible
no longer."

Such was my conviction then. I little knew myself.






CHAPTER XIX.

DISTRUST.





I little knew myself! This knowledge of one's self is the
most important knowledge, which very few of us acquire. We seldom
look into our own hearts for other objects than those which will
administer to their petty vanities and passing triumphs. Could we
only look there sometimes for the truth!  But we are blind--blind
all! In some respects I was one of the blindest!

I have given a brief glimpse of our honeymoon. Perhaps, as the
world goes, the picture is by no means an attractive one.  Quiet
felicity forms but a small item in the sources of happiness,
now-a-days, among young couples. Mine was sufficiently quiet and
sufficiently humble. One would suppose that he who builds so lowly
should have no reason to apprehend the hurricane.  Social ambition
was clearly no object with either of us. We sighed neither for
the glitter nor the regards of fashionable life.  Neither upon
fine houses, jewels, or equipages, did we set our hearts. For the
pleasures of the table I had no passion, and never was young woman
so thoroughly regardless of display as Julia Clifford. To be let
alone--to be suffered to escape in our own way, unharming, unharmed,
through the dim avenues of life--was assuredly all that we asked
from man. Perhaps--I say it without cant--this, perhaps, was all
that we possibly asked from heaven. This was all that I asked, at
least, and this was much. It was asking what had never yet been
accorded to humanity. In the vain assumption of my heart I thought
that my demands were moderate.

Let no man console himself with the idea that his chances of
success are multiplied in degree with the insignificance, or seeming
insignificance, of his aims. Perhaps the very reverse of this is
the truth. He who seeks for many objects of enjoyment--whose tastes
are diversified--has probably the very best prospect that some of
them may be gratified. He is like the merchant whose ventures on
the sea are divided among many vessels. He may lose one or more,
yet preserve the main bulk of his fortune from the wreck. But he
who has only a single bark--one freightage,  however costly--whose
whole estate is invested in the one venture--let him lose that, and
all is lost. It does not matter that his loss, speaking relatively,
is but little. Suppose his shipment, in general estimation, to be
of small value. The loss to him is so much the greater. It was the
dearer to him because of its insignificance, and being all that he
had; is quite as conclusive of his ruin, as would be the foundering
of every vessel which the rich merchant sent to sea.

I was one of these petty traders. I invested my whole capital
of the affections in one precious jewel. Did I lose it, or simply
fear its loss? Time must show. But, of a truth, I felt as the miser
feels with his hoarded treasure. While I watched its richness and
beauty, doubts and dread beset me. Was it safe?  Everything depended
upon its security. Thieves might break in and steal. Enough, for
the present, to say, that much of my security, and of the security
of all who, like me, possess a dear treasure, depends upon our
convictions of security. He who apprehends loss, is already robbed.
The reality is scarcely worse than the hourly anticipation of it.

My friends naturally became the visitors of my family.  Certain of
the late Mrs. Clifford's friends were also ours.  Our circle was
sufficiently large for those who already knew how to distinguish
between the safe pleasures of a small set, and the horse-play and
heartless enjoyments of fashionable jams. Were we permitted in this
world to live only for ourselves, we should have been perfectly
gratified had this been even less. We should have been very well
content to have gone on from day to day without ever beholding the
shadow of a stranger upon our threshold.

This was not permitted, however. We had a round of congratulatory
visits.  Among those who came, the first were the old, long-tried
friends to whom I owed so much--the Edgertons.  No family could
have been more truly amiable than this; and William Edgerton was the
most amiable of the family. I have already said enough to persuade
the reader that he was a very worthy man. He was more. He was
a principled one. Not very highly endowed, perhaps, he was yet an
intelligent gentleman.  None could be more modest in expression--none
less obtrusive in deportment--none more generous in service. The
defects in his character were organic--not moral. He had no vices--no
vulgarities. But his temperament was an inactive one. He was apt to
be sluggish, and when excited was nervous.  He was not irritable,
but easily discomposed. His tastes were active at the expense of
his genius. With ability, he was yet unperforming. His standards
were morbidly fastidious. Fearing to fall below them, he desisted
until the moment of action was passed for ever; and the feeling of
his own weakness, in this respect, made him often sad, but to do
him justice, never querulous.

With a person so constituted, the delicate tastes and sensibilities
are like to be indulged in a very high degree. William Edgerton
loved music and all the quiet arts. Painting was his particular
delight. He himself sketched with great spirit. He had the happy
eye for the tout ensemble in a fine landscape. He knew exactly
how much to take in and what to leave out, in the delineation of a
lovely scene. This is a happy talent for discrimination which the
ordinary artist does not possess. It is the capacity which, in
the case of orators and poets, informs them of the precise moment
when they should stop. It is the happiest sort of judgment, since,
though the artist may be neither very excellent in drawing, nor
very felicitous in color, it enables him always to bestow a certain
propriety on his picture which compensates, to a certain degree,
for inferiority in other respects.  To know how to grasp objects
with spirit, and bestow them with a due regard to mutual dependence,
is one of the most exquisite faculties of the landscape-painter.

William Edgerton, had he been forced by necessity to have made
the art of painting his profession would have made for himself  a
reputation of no inferior kind. But amateur art, like amateur
literature, rarely produces any admirable fruits. Complete success
only attends the devotee to the muse. The worship must be exclusive
at her altar; the attendance constant and unremitting. There must
be no partial, no divided homage. She is a jealous mistress, like
all the rest. The lover of her charms, if he would secure her
smiles, must be a professor at her shrine. He can not come and go
at pleasure. She resents such impertinence by neglect. In plain
terms, the fine arts must be made a business by those who desire
their favor. Like law, divinity, physic, they constitute a profession
of their own; require the same diligent endeavor, close study,
fond pursuit!  William Edgerton loved painting, but his business
was the law.  He loved painting too much to love his profession. He
gave too much of his time to the law to be a successful painter--too
much time to painting to be a lawyer. He was nothing! At the bar he
never rose a step after the first day, when, together, we appeared
in our mutual maiden case; and contenting himself with the occasional
execution of a landscape, sketchy and bold, but without finish,
he remained in that nether-land of public consideration, unable to
grasp the certainties of either pursuit at which he nevertheless
was constantly striving; striving, however, with that qualified
degree of effort, which, if it never could secure the prize, never
could fatigue him much with the endeavor to do so.

He was perfectly delighted when he first saw some of the sketches
of my wife. He had none of that little jealousy which so frequently
impairs the temper and the worth of amateurs. He could admire
without prejudice, and praise without reserve. He praised them. He
evidently admired them. He sought every occasion to see them, and
omitted none in which to declare his opinion of their merits. This,
in the first pleasant season of my marriage--when the leaves were
yet green and fresh upon the tree of love--was grateful to my
feelings. I felt happy to discover that my judgment had not erred
in the selection of my wife. I stimulated her industry that I might
listen to my friend's eulogy. I suggested subjects for her pencil.
I fitted up an apartment especially as a studio for her use.  I
bought her some fine studies, lay figures, heads in marble and
plaster; and lavished, in this way, the small surplus fund which
had heretofore accrued from my professional industry, and that
personal frugality with which it was accompanied.

William Edgerton was now for ever at our house. He brought his own
pictures for the inspection of my wife. He sometimes painted in her
studio. He devised rural and aquatic parties with sole reference
to landscape scenery and delineation; and indifferent to the law
always, he now abandoned  himself almost entirely to those tastes
which seemed to have acquired of a sudden, the strangest and the
strongest impulse.

In this--at least for a considerable space of time--I saw nothing
very remarkable. I knew his tastes previously. I had seen how
little disposed he was to grapple earnestly with the duties of his
profession; and did not conceive it surprising, that, with family
resources sufficient to yield him pecuniary independence, he should
surrender himself up to the luxurious influence of tastes which were
equally lovely in themselves, and natural to the first desires of
his mind. But when for days he was missed from his office--when
the very hours of morning which are most religiously devoted by the
profession to its ostensible if not earnest pursuit, were yielded
up to the easel--and when, overlooking the boundaries which,
according to the conventional usage, made such a course improper,
he passed many of these mornings at my house, during my absence,
I began to entertain feelings of disquietude.

For these I had then no name. The feelings were vague and indefinable,
but not the less unpleasant. I did not fancy for a moment that I
was wronged, or likely to be wronged, but I felt that he was doing
wrong. Then, too, I had my misgivings  of what the world would
think! I did not fancy that he had any design to wrong me; but
there seemed to me a cruel want of consideration in his conduct.
But what annoyed me most was, that Julia should receive him at such
periods He was thoughtless, enthusiastic in art, and thoughtless,
perhaps, in consequence of his enthusiasm. But I expected that
she should think for both of us in such a case. Women, alone, can
be the true guardians of appearances where they themselves are
concerned; and it was matter of painful surprise to me that she
should not have asked herself the question: "What will the neighbors
think, during my husband's absence, to see a stranger, a young
man, coming to visit me with periodical regularity, morning after
morning?"

That she did not ask herself this question should have been a very
strong argument to show me that her thoughts were all innocent.
But there is a terrible truth in what Caesar said of his wife's
reputation: "She must be free from suspicion." She must not only do
nothing wrong, but she must not suffer or do anything which might
incur the suspicion of wrong doing.  There is nothing half so sensible
to the breath of calumny, as female reputation, particularly in
regions of high civilization, where women are raised to an artificial
rank of respect, which obviates, in most part, the obligations of
their dependence upon man, but increases, in due proportion, some
of their responsibilities  to him. Poor Julia had no circumspection,
because she had no feeling of evil. I believe she was purity itself;
I equally believe that William Edgerton was quite incapable of evil
design. But when I came from my office, the first morning that he
had thus passed at my house in my absence, and she told me that
he had been there, and how the time had been spent, I felt a pang,
like a sharp arrow, suddenly rush into my brain.  Julia had no
reserve in telling me this fact. It was a subject she seemed pleased
to dwell upon. She narrated with the earnest, unseeing spirit of a
self-satisfied child, the sort of conversation which had taken place
between them--praised Edgerton's taste, his delicacy, his subdued,
persuasive manners, and showed  herself as utterly unsophisticated
as any Swiss mountain-girl who voluntarily yields the traveller a
kiss, and tells her mother of it afterward. I listened with chilled
manners and a troubled mind.

"You are unwell, Edward," she remarked tenderly, approaching and
throwing her arms around my neck, as she  perceived the gradual
gathering of that cloud upon my brows.

"Why do you think so, Julia?"

"Oh, you look so sad--almost severe, Edward, and your words are so
few and cold. Have I offended you, dear Edward?"

I was confused at this direct question. I felt annoyed, ashamed.
I pleaded headache in justification of my manner--it did ache, and
my heart, too, but not with the ordinary pang; and I felt a warm
blush suffuse my cheek, as I yielded to the first suggestion which
prompted me to deceive my wife.

A large leading step was thus taken, and progress was easy afterward.

Oh! sweet spirit of confidence, thou only true saint, more needful
than all, to bind the ties of kindred and affection! why art thou
so prompt to fly at the approach of thy cold, dark enemy, distrust?
Why dost thou yield the field with so little struggle? Why, when
the things, dearest to thee of all in the world's gift--its most
valued treasure, its purest, sweetest, and proudest trophies--why,
when these are the stake which is to reward thy courage, thy
adherence, to compensate thee for trial, to console thee for loss
and outrage--why is it that thou art so ready to despond of the
cause so dear to thee, and forfeit the conquest by which alone thy
whole existence is made sweet.  This is the very suicide of self.
Fearful of loss, we forsake the prize, which we have won; and
hearkening to the counsel of a natural enemy, eat of that bitter
fruit which banishes for ever from our lips the sweet savor which
we knew before, and without which, no savor that is left is sweet.






CHAPTER XX.

PROGRESS OF THE EVIL SPIRIT.





If I felt so deeply annoyed at the first morning visit which William
Edgerton paid to my wife, what was my annoyance when these visits
became habitual. I was miserable but could not complain. I was
ashamed of the language of complaint on such a subject. There is
something very ridiculous in the idea of a jealous husband--it has
always provoked the laughter of the world; and I was one of those
men who shrunk from ridicule with a more than mortal dread. Besides,
I really felt no alarm. I had the utmost confidence in my wife's
virtue. I had not the less confidence in that of Edgerton. But I
was jealous of her deference--of her regard--for another. She was,
in my eyes, as something sacred, set apart--a treasure exclusively my
own! Should it be that another should come to divide her veneration
with me? I was vexed that she should derive satisfaction from another
source than myself. This satisfaction she derived from the visits
of Edgerton. She freely avowed it.

"How amiable--how pleasant he is," she would say, in the perfect
innocence of her heart; "and really, Edward, he has so much talent!"

These praises annoyed me. They were as so much wormwood to my spirit.
It must be remembered that I was not myself  what the world calls
an amiable man. I doubt if any, even of my best friends, would
describe me as a pleasant one.  I was a man of too direct and
earnest a temperament to establish a claim, in reasonable degree,
to either of these characteristics. I was, accordingly, something
blunt in my address--the tones of my voice were loud--my manner
was all empressement, except when I was actually angry, and then
it was cold.  hard, dry, inflexible. I was the last person in the
world to pass for an amiable. Now, Julia, on the other hand, was
quiet, subdued, timorous--the tones of a strong, decided voice
startled her--she shrunk from controversy--yielded always with
a happy grace in anticipation of the conflict, and showed, in all
respects, that nice, almost nervous organization which attaches
the value of principles and morals to mere manners, and would be
as much shocked, perhaps, at the expression of a rudeness, as at
the commission of a sin. Not that such persons would hold a sin to
be less criminal or innocuous than would we ourselves;  but that
they regard mere conduct as of so much more importance.

When, therefore, she praised William Edgerton for those qualities
which I well knew I did not possess, I could not resist the annoyance.
My self-esteem--continually active--stimulated  as it had been
by the constant moral strife, to which it had been subjected from
boyhood--was continually apprehending  disparagement. Of the purity
of Julia's heart, and the chastity of her conduct, the very freedom
of her utterance was conclusive. Had she felt one single improper
emotion toward William Edgerton, her lips would never have voluntarily
uttered  his name, and never in the language of applause. On this
head I had not then the slightest apprehension. It was not jealousy
so much as EGOISME that was preying upon me.  Whatever it was,
however, it could not be repressed as I listened to the eulogistic
language of my wife. I strove, but could not subdue, altogether,
the evil spirit which was fast becoming predominant within me. Yet,
though speaking under its immediate influence, I was very far from
betraying its true nature. My egoisme had not yet made such advances
as to become reckless and incautious. I surprised her by my answer
to her eulogies.

"I have no doubt he is amiable--he is amiable--but that is not
enough for a man. He must be something more than amiable, if he
would escape the imputation of being feeble--something more if he
would be anything!"

Julia looked at me with eyes of profound and dilating astonishment.
Having got thus far, it was easy to advance. The first step is half
the journey in all such cases.

"William Edgerton is a little too amiable, perhaps, for his own
good. It makes him listless and worthless. He will do nothing at
pictures, wasting his time only when he should be at his business."

"But did I not understand you, Edward, that he was a man of fortune,
and independent of his profession?" she answered timidly.

"Even that will not justify a man in becoming a trifler. No man
should waste his time in painting, unless he makes a trade of it."

"But his leisure, Edward," suggested Julia, with a look of increasing
timidity.

"His leisure, indeed, Julia;--but he has been here all day--day
after day. If painting is such a passion with him, let him abandon
law and take to it. But he should not pursue one art while processing
another. It is as if a man hankered after that which he yet lacked
the courage to challenge and pursue openly.'

"I don't think you love pictures as you used to, Edward," she
remarked to me, after a little interval passed in unusual silence.

"Perhaps it is because I have matters of more consequence to
attend to. YOU seem sufficiently devoted to them now to  excuse my
indifference."

"Surely, dear Edward, something I have done vexes you.  Tell me,
husband. Do not spare me. Say, in what have I offended?"

I had not the courage to be ingenuous. Ah! if I had!

"Nay, you have not offended," I answered hastily--"I am only worried
with some unmanageable thoughts. The law, you know, is full of
provoking, exciting, irritating necessities."

She looked at ne with a kind but searching glance. My soul seemed
to shrink from that scrutiny. My eyes sunk beneath her gaze.

"I wish I knew how to console you, Edward: to make you entirely
happy. I pray for it, Edward. I thought we were always to be
so happy. Did you not promise me that you would always leave your
cares at your office--that our cottage should be sacred to love
and peace only?"

She put her arms about my neck, and looked into my face with such
a sweet, strange, persuasive smile--half mirth, half sadness--that
the evil spirit was subdued within me. I clasped her fervently in
my embrace, with all my old feelings of confidence and joy renewed.
At this moment the servant  announced Mr. Edgerton, and with
a start--a movement--scarcely as gentle as it should have been, I
put the fond and still beloved woman from my embrace!






CHAPTER XXI.

CHANGES OF HOME.





From this time my intercourse with William Edgerton was, on my part,
one of the most painful and difficult constraint. I had nothing to
reproach him with; no grounds whatever for quarrel; and could not,
in his case--regarding the long intimacy which I had maintained with
himself and father, and the obligations which were due from me to
both--adopt such a manner of reserve and distance as to produce
the result of indifference and estrangement which I now anxiously
desired. I was still compelled to meet him--meet him, too, with
an affectation of good feeling and good humor, which I soon found
it, of all things in the world, the most difficult even to pretend.
How much would I have given could he only have provoked me to anger
on any ground--could he have given me an occasion for difference
of any sort or to any degree--anything which could have justified
a mutual falling off from the old intimacy!  But William Edgerton
was meekness and kindness itself.  His confidence in me was of
the most unobservant, suspicionless  character; either that, or
I succeeded better than I thought in the effort to maintain the
external aspects of old friendship. He saw nothing of change in my
deportment. He seemed not to see it, at least; and came as usual,
or more  frequently than usual, to my house, until, at length, the
studio of my wife was quite as much his as hers--nay, more; for,
after a brief space, whether it was that Julia saw what troubled me,
or felt herself the imprudence of Edgerton's conduct, she almost
entirely surrendered it to him. She was not now so often to be seen
in it.

This proceeding alarmed me. I dreaded lest my secret should be
discovered. I was shocked lest my wife should suppose me jealous.
The feeling is one which carries with it a sufficiently severe
commentary, in the fact that most men are heartily ashamed to be
thought to suffer from it. But, if it vexed me to think that she
should know or suspect the truth, how much more was I troubled
lest it should be seen or suspected by others! This fear led to
new circumspection. I now affected levities of demeanor and remark;
studiously absented myself from home of an evening, leaving my wife
with Edgerton, or any other friend who happened to be present; and,
though I began no practices of profligacy, such as are common to
young scapegraces in all times, I yet, to some moderate extent,
affected them.

A tone of sadness now marked the features of my wife.  There was
an expression of anxiety in her countenance, which, amid all her
previous sufferings, I had never seen there before.  She did not
complain; but sometimes, when we sat alone together,  I reading,
perhaps, and she sewing, she would drop her work in her lap, and
sigh suddenly and deeply, as if the first shadows of the upgathering
gloom were beginning to cloud her young and innocent spirit, and
force her apprehensions into utterance. This did not escape me, but
I read its signification, as witches are said to read the Bible,
backward. A gloomier fancy filled my brain as I heard her unconscious
sigh.

"It is the language of regret. She laments our marriage.  She
could have found another, surely, who could have made her happier.
Perhaps, had Edgerton and herself known each other intimately
before!--"

Dark, perverse imagining! It crushed me. I felt, I can not tell,
what bitterness. Let no one suppose that I endured less misery than
I inflicted. The miseries of the damned could not have exceeded
mine in some of the moments when these cruel conjectures filled my
mind. Then followed some such proofs as these of the presence of
the Evil One:--

"You sigh, Julia. You are unhappy."

"Unhappy? no, dear Edward, not unhappy! What makes you think so?"

"What makes you sigh, then?"

"I do not know. I am certainly not unhappy. Did I sigh, Edward?"

"Yes, and seemingly from the very bottom of your heart. I fear,
Julia, that you are not happy; nay, I am sure you are not! I feel
that I am not the man to make you happy. I am a perverse--"

"'Nay, Edward, now you speak so strangely, and your brow is stern,
and your tones tremble! What can it be afflicts you?  You are angry
at something, dear Edward. Surely, it can not be with me."

"And if it were, Julia, I am afraid it would give you little
concern."

"Now, Edward, you are cruel. You do me wrong. You do yourself wrong.
Why should you suppose that it would give me little concern to see
you angry? So far from this, I should regard it as the greatest
misery which I had to suffer. Do not speak so, dearest Edward--do
not fancy such things. Believe me, my husband, when I tell you
that I know nothing half so dear to me as your love--nothing that
I would not sacrifice with a pleasure, to secure, to preserve THAT!"

"Ah! would you give up painting?"

"Painting! that were a small sacrifice! I worked at it only because
you used to like it."

"What, you think I do not like it now?"

"I KNOW you do not."

"But you paint still?"

"No! I have not handled brush or pencil for a week. Mr.  Edgerton
was reproaching me only yesterday for my neglect."

"Ah, indeed! Well, you promised him to resume, did you not? He is
a rare persuader! He is so amiable, so mild--you could not well
resist."

It was from her face that I formed a rational conjecture of the
expression that must have appeared in mine. Her eyes dilated with
a look of timid wonder, not unmixed with apprehension.  She actually
shrunk back a space; then, approaching, laid her hand upon my wrist,
as she exclaimed:--

"God of heaven, Edward, what strange thought is in your bosom?
what is the meaning of that look? Look not so again, if you would
not kill me!"

I averted my face from hers, but without speaking. She threw her
arms around my neck.

"Do not turn away from me, Edward. Do not, do not, I entreat you!
You must not--no! not till you tell me what is troubling you--not
till I soothe you, and make you love me again as much as you did
at first."

When I turned to her again, the tears--hot, scalding tears--were
already streaming down my cheeks.

"Julia, God knows I love you! Never woman yet was more devotedly
loved by man! I love you too much--too deeply--too entirely! Alas,
I love nothing else!"

"Say not that you love me too much--that can not be! Do I not love
you--you only, you altogether? Should I not have your whole love
in return?"

"Ah, Julia! but my love is a convulsive eagerness of soul--a passion
that knows no limit! It is not that my heart is entirely yours:
it is that it is yours with a frenzied desperation.  There is a
fanaticism in love as in religion. My love is that fanaticism. It
burns--it commands--where yours would but soothe and solicit."

"But is mine the less true--the less valuable for this, dear Edward?"

"No, perhaps not! It may be even more true, more valuable; it may
be only less intense. But fanaticism, you know, is exacting--nothing
more so. It permits no half-passion, no moderate zeal. It insists
upon devotion like its own. Ah, Julia, could you but love as I do!"

"I love you all, Edward, all that I can, and as it belongs in my
nature to love. But I am a woman, and a timid one, you know. I am
not capable of that wild passion which you feel.  Were I to indulge
it, it would most certainly destroy me. Even as it sometimes appears
in you, it terrifies and unnerves me.  You are so impetuous!"

"Ah, you would have only the meek, the amiable!"

And thus, with an implied sarcasm, our conversation ended.  Julia
turned on me a look of imploring, which was naturally one of
reproach. It did not have its proper influence upon me.  I seized
my hat, and hurried from the house. I rushed, rather than walked,
through the streets; and, before I knew where I was, I found myself
on the banks of the river, under the shade of trees, with the soft
evening breeze blowing upon me, and the placid moon sailing quietly
above. I threw myself down upon the grass, and delivered myself up
to gloomy thoughts. Here was I, then, scarcely twenty-five years
old; young, vigorous; with a probable chance of fortune before me;
a young and lovely wife, the very creature of my first and only
choice, one whom I tenderly loved, whom, if to seek again, I should
again, and again, and only, seek! Yet I was miserable--miserable
in the very possession of my first hopes, my best joys--the very
treasure that had always seemed the dearest in my sight.  Miserable
blind heart! miserable indeed! For what was there to make me
miserable? Absolutely nothing--nothing that the outer world could
give--nothing that it could ever take away.  But what fool is it
that fancies there must be a reason for one's wretchedness? The
reason is in our own hearts; in the perverseness which can make of
its own heaven a hell! not often fashion a heaven out of hell!

Brooding, I lay upon the sward, meditating unutterable things,
and as far as ever from any conclusion. Of one thing alone I
was satisfied--that I was unutterably miserable; that my destiny
was written in sable; that I was a man foredoomed to wo!  Were
my speculations strange or unnatural! Unnatural indeed!  There
is a class of surface-skimming persons, who  pronounce all things
unnatural which, to a cool, unprovoked, and perhaps unprovokable
mind, appear unreasonable: as if a vexed nature and exacting
passions were not the most unreasonable yet most natural of all
moral agents. My woes may have been groundless, but it was surely
not unnatural that I felt and entertained them.

Thus, with bitter mood, growing more bitter with every moment of
its unrestrained indulgence, I gloomed in loneliness beside the
banks of that silvery and smooth-flowing river.  Certainly the
natural world around me lent no color to my fancies.  While all
was dark within, all was bright without. A fiend was tugging at
my heart; while from a little white cottage, a few hundred yards
below, which grew flush with the margin of the stream, there stole
forth the tender, tinkling strains of a guitar, probably touched
by fair fingers of a fair maiden, with some enamored boy, blind and
doting, hovering beside her. I, too, had stood thus and hearkened
thus, and where am I--what am I!

I started to my feet. I found something offensive in the music.
It came linked with a song which I had heard Julia sing a hundred
times; and when I thought of those hours of confidence, and felt
myself where I was, alone--and how lone!--bitterer than ever were
the wayward pangs which were preying upon the tenderest fibres of
my heart.

In the next moment I ceased to be alone. I was met and jostled by
another person as I bounded forward, much too rapidly, in an effort
to bury myself in the deeper shadow of some neighboring trees. The
stranger was nearly overthrown in the collision, which extorted a
hasty exclamation from his lips, not unmingled with a famous oath
or two. In the voice. I recognised that of my friend Kingsley--the
well-known  pseudo-Kentucky gentleman, who had acted a part so
important in extricating my wife from her mother's custody. I made
myself known to him in apologizing for my rudeness.

"You here!" said he; "I did not expect to meet you. I have just
been to your house, where I found your wife, and where I intended
to stop a while and wait for you. But Bill Edgerton, in the meanwhile,
popped in, and after that I could hear nothing but pictures and
paintings, Madonnas, Ecce Homos, and the like; till I began to fancy
that I smelt nothing but paint and varnish. So I popped out, with
a pretty blunt excuse, leaving the two amateurs to talk in oil
and water-colors, and settle the principles of art as they please.
Like you, I fancy a real landscape, here, by the water, and under
the green trees, in preference to a thousand of their painted
pictures."

It may be supposed that my mood underwent precious little improvement
after this communication. Dark conceits, darker than ever, came
across my mind. I longed to get away, and return to that home from
which I had banished confidence!--ah, only too happy if there still
lingered hope! But my friend, blunt, good-humored, and thoughtless
creature as he was, took for granted that I had come to look at
the landscape, to admire water-views by moonlight, and drink fresh
draughts of sea-breeze from the southwest; and, thrusting his arm
through mine, he dragged me on, down, almost to the threshold of
the cottage, whence still issued the tinkle, tinkle, of the guitar
which had first driven me away.

"That girl sings well. Do you know her--Miss Davison?  She's soon
to be married, THEY say (d--n 'they say,' however--the greatest
scandal-monger, if not mischief-maker and liar, in the world!)--she
is soon to be married to young Trescott--a clover lad who sniffles,
plays on the flute, wears whisker and imperial on the most cream-colored
and effeminate face you ever saw! A good fellow, nevertheless, but
a silly! She is a good fellow, too, rather the cleverest of the
twain, and perhaps the oldest. The match, if match it really is to
be, none of the wisest for that very reason. The damsel, now-a-days,
who  marries a lad younger than herself, is laying up a large stock
of pother, which is to bother her when she becomes thirty--for even
young ladies, you know, after forty, may become thirty.  A sort of
dispensation of nature. She sings well, nevertheless."

I said something--it matters not what. Dark images of home were in
my eyes. I heard no song--saw no landscape The voice of Kingsley
was a sort of buzzing in my ears.

"You are dull to-night, but that song ought to soothe you.  What a
cheery, light-hearted wench it is! Her voice does seem so to rise
in air, shaking its wings, and crying tira-la!  tira-la! with an
enthusiasm which is catching! I almost feel prompted to kick up my
heels, throw a summerset, and, while turning on my axis, give her
an echo of tira-la! tira-la! tira-la!  after her own fashion."

"You are certainly a happy, mad fellow, Kingsley!" was my faint,
cheerless commentary upon a gayety of heart which I could not share,
and the unreserved expression of which, at that moment, only vexed
me.

"And you no glad one, Clifford. That song, which almost prompts me
to dance, makes no impression on you! By-the-way, your wife used
to sing so well, and now I never hear her.  That d---d painting,
if you don't mind, will make her give up everything else! As for
Bill Edgerton, he cares for nothing else out his varnish, trees,
and umber-hills, and streaky water.  You shouldn't let him fill
your wife's mind with this oil-and-varnish spirit--giving up the
piano, the guitar, and that sweeter instrument than all, her own
voice. D--n the paintings!--his long talk on the subject almost makes
me sick of everything like a picture. I now look upon a beautiful
landscape like this.  as a thing that is shortly to be desecrated--taken
in vain--scratched out of shape and proportion upon a deal-board,
and colored after such a fashion as never before was seen in the
natural world, upon, or under, or about this solid earth. D--n the
pictures, I say again!--but, for God's sake, Clifford, don't let
your wife give up the music! Make her play, even if she don't like
it. She likes the painting best, but I wouldn't allow it! A wife is
a sort of person that we set to do those things that we wish done
and can't do for ourselves. That's my definition of a wife. Now, if
I were in your place, with my  present love for music and dislike
of pictures, I'd put her at the piano, and put the paint-saucers,
and the oil, and the smutted canvass, out of the window; and
then--unless he came to his senses like other people--I'd thrust
Bill Edgerton out after them! I'd never let the best friend in the
world spoil my wife."

The effect of this random chatter of my good-natured friend upon
my mind may well be imagined. It was fortunate that he was quite
too much occupied in what he was saying to note my annoyance. In
vain, anxious to be let off, was I restrained in utterance--cold,
unpliable. The good fellow took for granted that it was an act
of friendship to try to amuse; and thus, yearning with a nameless
discontent and apprehension to get home I was marched to and fro
along the river-bank, from one scene to another--he, meanwhile,
utterly heedless of time, and as actively bent on perpetual motion
as if his sinews were of steel and his flesh iron. Meanwhile, the
guitar ceased, and the song in the cottage of Miss Davison; the
lights went out in that and all the other dwellings in sight; the
moon waned; and it was not till the clock from a distant steeple
tolled out the hour of eleven with startling solemnity, that Kingsley
exclaimed:--

"Well, mon ami, we have had a ramble, and I trust I have somewhat
dissipated your gloomy fit. And now to bed--what say you?--with
what appetite we may!"

With what appetite, indeed! We separated. I rushed homeward,  the
moment he was out of sight--once more stood before my own dwelling.
There the lights remained unextinguished and William Edgerton was
still a tenant of my parlor!






CHAPTER XXII.

SELF-HUMILIATION.





I had not the courage to enter my own dwelling! My heart sank
within me. It was as if the whole hope of a long life, an intense
desire, a keen unremitting pursuit, had suddenly been for ever
baffled. Let no one who has not been in my situation; who has not
been governed by like moral and social influences from the beginning;
who knows not my sensibilities, and the organization--singular and
strange it may be--of my mind and body; let no such person jump
to the conclusion that there was any thing unnatural, however
unreasonable and unreasoning, in the wild passion which possessed
me. I look back upon it with some surprise myself. The fears which
I felt, the sufferings I endured, however unreasonable, were yet
true to my training.  That training made me selfish; how selfish let
my blindness show! In the blindness of self I could see nothing but
the thing I feared, the one phantom--phantom though it were--which
was sufficient to quell and crush all the better part of man within
me, banish all the real blessings which were at command around
me. I gave but a single second glance through the windows of my
habitation, and then darted desperately away from the entrance! I
bounded, without a consciousness, through the now still and dreary
streets, and found myself, without intending it, once more beside the
river, whose constant melancholy chidings, seemed the echoes-though
in the faintest possible degree--of the deep waters of some
apprehensive sorrow then rolling through all the channels of my
soul.

What was it that I feared? What was it that I sought? Was it love?
Can it be that the strange passion which we call by this name, was
the source of that sad frenzy which filled and afflicted my heart?
And was I not successful in my love? Had I not found the sought?--won
the withheld? What was denied to me that I desired? I asked of
myself these questions.  I asked them in vain. I could not answer
them. I believe that I can answer now. It was sincerity, earnestness,
devotion from her, all speaking through an intensity like that
which I felt within my own soul.

Now, Julia lacked this earnestness, this intensity. Accustomed
to submission, her manner was habitually subdued. Her strongest
utterance was a tear, and that was most frequently hidden. She did
not respond to me in the language in which my affections were wont
to speak. Sincerity she did not lack--far from it--she was truth
itself! It is the keener pang to my conscience now, that I am
compelled to admit this conviction.  Her modes of utterance were
not less true than mine. They were not less significant of truth;
but they were after a different fashion. In a moment of calm and
reason, I might have believed this truth; nay, I knew it, even at
those moments when I was most unjust. It was not the truth that I
required so much as the presence of an attachment which could equal
mine in its degree and strength. This was not in her nature. She
was one taught to subdue her nature, to repress the tendencies of
her heart, to submit in silence and in meekness. She had invariably
done so until the insane urgency of her mother made her desperate.
But for this desperation she had still submitted,  perhaps, had never
been my wife. In the fervent intensity of my own love, I fancied,
from the beginning, that there was  something too temperate in the
tone of hers. Were I to be  examined now, on this point, I should
say that her deportment was one which declared the nicest union
of sensibility and maidenly propriety. But, compared with mine,
her passions were feeble, frigid. Mine were equally intense and
exacting. Perhaps, had she even responded to my impetuosity with
a like fervor, I should have recoiled from her with a feeling of
disgust much more rapid and much more legitimate, than was that of
my present frenzy.

Frenzy it was! and it led me to the performance of those things
of which I shame to speak. But the truth, and its honest utterance
now, must be one of those forms of atonement with which I may
hope, perhaps vainly, to lessen, in the sight of Heaven, some of
my human offences. I had scarcely reached the water-side before
a new impulse drove me back. You will scarcely believe me when I
tell you that I descended to the base character of the spy upon my
household. The blush is red on my cheek while I record the shameful
error. I entered the garden, stole like a felon to the lattice of
the apartment in which my wife sat with her guest, and looked in
with a greedy fear, upon the features of the two!

What were my own features then? What the expression of my eyes?
It was well that I could not see them; I felt that they must be
frightful. But what did I expect to see in this  espionage? As I
live, honestly now, and with what degree of honesty I then possessed,
I may truly declare that when I THOUGHT upon the subject at all,
I had no more suspicion that my wife would be guilty of any gross
crime, than I had of the guilt of the Deity himself. Far from it.
Such a fancy never troubled me. But, what was it to me, loving as
I did, exclusive, and selfish, and exacting as I was--what was it
to me if, forbearing all crime of conduct, she yet regarded another
with eyes of idolatry--if her mind was yielded up to him in deference
and regard; and thoughts, disparaging to me, filled her brain with
his superior worth, manners, merits? He had tastes, perhaps talents,
which I had not. In the forum, in all the more energetic, more
imposing performances of life, William Edgerton, I knew, could
take no rank in competition with myself. But I was no ladies' man.
I had no arts of society. My manners were even rude. My address
was direct almost to bluntncss. I had no discriminating graces,
and could make no sacrifice, in that school of polish, where the
delicacy is too apt to become false, and the performances trifling.
It is idle to dwell on this; still more idle to speculate upon
probable causes. It may be that there are persons in the world of
both sexes, and governed by like influences, who have been guilty
of like follies; to them my revelations may be of service. My
discoveries, if I have made any, were quite too late to be of much
help to me.

To resume, I prowled like a guilty phantom around my own habitation. I
scanned closely, with the keenest eyes of jealousy, every feature,
every movement of the two within. In the eyes of Edgerton,
I beheld--I did not deceive myself in this--I beheld the speaking
soul, devoted, rapt, full of love for the object of his survey.
That he loved her was to me sufficiently clear. His words were few,
faintly spoken, timid. His eyes  did not encounter hers; but when
hers were averted, they riveted their fixed glances upon her face
with the adherence of the yearning steel for the magnet! Bitterly
did I gnash my teeth--bitterly did my spirit rise in rebellion, as
I noted these characteristics. But, vainly, with all my perversity
of feeling and judgment, did I examine the air, the look, the
action, the expression, the tones, the words of my wife, to make a
like discovery. All was passionless, all seeming pure, in her whole
conduct. She was gentle in her manner, kind in her words, considerate
in her attentions; but so entirely at ease, so evidently unconscious,
as well of improper thoughts in herself as of an improper tendency
in him, that, though still resolute to be wilful and unhappy, I
yet could see nothing of which I could reasonably complain. Nay,
I fancied that there was a touch of listlessness, amounting to
indifference, in her air, as if she really wished him to be gone;
and, for a moment, my heart beat with a returning flood of tenderness,
that almost prompted me to rush suddenly into the apartment and
clasp her to my arms.

At length, Edgerton departed. When he rose to do so, I felt
the awkwardness of my situation--the meanness of which I had been
guilty--the disgrace which would follow detection.  The shame I
already felt; but, though sickening beneath it, the passion which
drove me into the commission of so slavish an act, was still superior
to all others, and could not then be overcome.  I hurried from the
window and from the premises while he was taking his leave. My mind
was still in a frenzy. I rambled off, unconsciously, to the most
secluded places along the suburbs, endeavoring to lose the thoughts
that troubled me. I had now a new cause for vexation. I was haunted
by a conviction of my own shame. How could I look Julia in the
face--how meet and speak to her, and hear the accents of her voice
and my own after the unworthy espionage which I had instituted
upon her?  Would not my eyes betray me--my faltering accents, my
abashed looks, my flushed and burning cheeks? I felt that it was
impossible for me to escape detection. I was sure that every look,
every tone, would sufficiently betray my secret. Perhaps I should
not have felt this fear, had I possessed the conrage to  resolve
against the repetition of my error. Could I have declared this
resolution to myself, to forego the miserable proceeding which
I had that night begun, I feel that I should then have taken one
large step toward my own deliverance from that  formidable fiend
which was then raging unmastered in my soul.  But I lacked the courage
for this. Fatal deficiency! I felt impressed with the necessity of
keeping a strict watch upon  Edgerton. I had seen, with eyes that
could not be deceived, the feeling which had been expressed in his.
I saw that he loved her, perhaps, without a consciousness himself
of the unhappy truth. I hurried to the conclusion, accordingly,
that he must be looked after. I did not so immediately perceive
that in looking after him, I was, in truth, looking after Julia;
for what was my watch upon Edgerton but a watch upon her? I had not
the confidence in her to leave her to herself. That was my error.
The true reasoning by which a man in my situation should be governed,
is comprised in a nutshell. Either the wife is virtuous or she is
not. If she is virtuous, she is safe without my espionage.  If she
is not, all the watching in the world will not suffice to make her
so. As for the discovery of her falsehood, he will make that fast
enough. The security of the husband lies in his wife's purity, not
in his own eyes. It must be added to this  argument that the most
virtuous among us, man or woman, is still very weak; and neither
wife, nor daughter, nor son, should be exposed to unnecessary
temptation. Do we not daily implore in our own prayers, to be saved
from temptation?

I need not strive to declare what were my thoughts and feelings as
I wandered off from my dwelling and place of espionage that night.
No language of which I am possessed could embody to the idea of
the reader the thousandth part of what I suffered.  An insane and
morbid resentment filled my heart. A close, heavy, hot stupor,
pressed upon my brain. My limbs seemed feeble as those of a child.
I tottered in the streets. The stars, bright mysterious watchers,
seemed peering down into my face with looks of smiling inquiry. The
sudden bark of a watch-dog startled and unnerved me. I felt with
the consciousness of a mean action, all the humiliating weakness
which belongs to it.

It took me a goodly hour before I could muster up courage to return
home, and it was then midnight. Julia had retired to her chamber,
but not yet to her couch. She flew to me on my entrance--to my
arms. I shrunk from her embraces; but she grasped me with greater
firmness. I had never witnessed so much warmth in her before. It
surprised me, but the solution of it was easy. My long stay had
made her apprehensive. It was so unusual. My coldness, when she
embraced me, was as startling to her, as her sudden warmth was
surprising to me.  She pushed me from her--still, however, holding
me in her grasp, while she surveyed me. Then she started, and with
newer apprehensions.

Well she might. My looks alarmed her. My hair was  dishevelled
and moist with the night-dews. My cheeks were very pale. There was
a quick, agitated, and dilating fullness of my eyes, which rolled
hastily about the apartment, never even resting upon her. They dared
not. I caught a hasty glance of myself in the mirror, and scarcely
knew my own features.  It was natural enough that she should be
alarmed. She clung to me with increased fervency. She spoke hurriedly,
but  clearly, with an increased and novel power of utterance, the
due result of her excitement. Could that excitement be occasioned
by love for me--by a suspicion of the truth, namely, that I had
been watching her? I shuddered as this last conjecture passed into
my mind. That, indeed, would be a humiliation--worse, more degrading,
by far, than all.

"Oh, why have you left me--so long, so very long? where have you
been? what has happened?"

"Nothing--nothing."

"Ah, but there is something, Edward. Speak! what is it, dear husband?
I see it in your eyes, your looks! Why do you turn from me? Look
on me! tell me! You are very pale, and your eyes are so wild, so
strange! You are sick, dear Edward; you are surely sick: tell me,
what has happened?"

Wild and hurried as they were, never did tones of more touching
sweetness fall from any lips. They unmanned--nay, I use the wrong
word--they MANNED me for the time. They brought me back to my senses,
to a conviction of her truth, to a  momentary conviction of my own
folly. My words fell from me without effort--few, hurried, husky--but
it was a sudden heartgush,  which was unrestrainable.

"Ask me not, Julia-ask me nothing; but love me, only love me, and
all will be well--all is well."

"Do I not--ah! do I not love you, Edward?"

"I believe you--God be praised, I DO believe you!"

"Oh, surely, Edward, you never doubted this."

"No, no!--never!"

Such was the fervent ejaculation 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 passions 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 PASSION.





"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.






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 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 sterm, 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 expsion 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.






CHAPTER XXV.

THE OLD GOOSE FINDS A YOUNG GANDER.





We will suppose some months to have elapsed in this manner--months,
to me, of prolonged torture and suspicion.  Circumstanees, 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--


                        "Trifles, light as air,
       Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
       As proofs Of Holy Writ"?


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 treament 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 smies
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.






CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE HEART-FIEND FINDS AN ECHO FROM THE FIEND WITHOUT.





And a spectacle it was! Mrs. Clifford, about to become Mrs.
Delaney, was determined that the change in her situation should
be distinguished by becoming eclat. Always a silly woman, fond of
extravagance and show, she prepared to celebrate an occasion of the
greatest folly in a style of greater extravagance than ever. She
accordingly collected as many of her former numerous acquaintances
as were still willing to appear within a circle in which wealth
was no longer to be found. Her house was small, but, as has been
elsewhere stated in this narrative, she had made it smaller by
stuffing it with the massive and costly furniture which had been
less out of place in her former splendid mansion, and had there much
better accorded with her fortunes. She now still further stuffed
it with her guests. Of course, many of those present, came only to
make merry at her expense. Her husband was almost entirely unknown
to any of them; and it was enough to settle his pretensions in
every mind, that, in the vigor of his youth, a really fine-looking,
well-made person of twenty-five, he was about to connect himself,
in marriage, with a haggard old woman of fifty, whose personal
charms, never very great, were nearly all gone; and whose mind and
manners, the grace of youth being no more, were so very deficient
in all those qualities which might  commend one to a husband. So
far as externals went, Mr. Delaney was a very proper man. He behaved
with sufficient decorum, and unexpected modesty; and went through
the ordeal as  composedly as if the occurrence had been frequently
before familiar; as indeed we shall discover in the sequel, was
certainly the case.  But this does not concern us now.

Three rooms were thrown open to the company. We had refreshments
in abundance and great variety, and at a certain hour, we were
astounded by the clamor of tamborine and fiddle giving due notice
to the dancers. Among my few social  accomplishments, this of
dancing had never been included.  Naturally, I should, perhaps, be
considered an awkward man. I was conscious of this awkwardness at
all times when not  excited by action or some earnest motive. I was
incapable of that graceful loitering, that flexibleness of mind
and body, which excludes the idea of intensity, of every sort,
and which constitutes one of the great essentials for success in
a ball-room.  It was in this very respect that my FRIEND, William
Edgerton, may be said to have excelled most young men of our acquaintance.
He was what, in common speech, is called an accomplished man. Of
very graceful person, without much  earnestness of character, he
had acquired a certain fastidiousness of taste on the subjects of
costume and manners, which, without Brummellizing, he yet carried
to an extent which betrayed a considerable degree of mental feebleness.
This somewhat  assimilated him to the fashionable dandy. He walked
with an air equally graceful, noble, and unaffected. He was never
on stilts, yet he was always EN REGLE. He had as little maurias,
honte as maurais ton. In short, whatever might have been his
deficiencies, he was confessedly a very neat specimen of the fine
gentleman in its most commendable social sense.

William Edgerton was among the guests of Mrs. Clifford.  There
had been no previous intimacy between the Edgerton and Clifford
families, yet he had been specially invited. Mrs.  C. could have
had but a single motive for inviting him--so I thought--that of
making her evening a jam. She had just that ambition of the lady
of small fashion, who regards the number rather than the quality of
her guests, and would prefer a saloon full of Esquimaux or Kanzas,
and would partake of their sea-blubber, rather than lose the triumph
of making more noise than her rival neighbors, the Sprigginses or
Wigginses.

William Edgerton did not seek me; but, when I left the side of my
wife to pay my respects to some ladies at the opposite end of the
room, he approached her. A keen pang that rendered  me unconscious
of everything I was saying--nay, even of the persons to whom I was
addressing myself--shot through my heart, as I beheld him crossing
the floor to the place that I had left. Involuntarily, the gracefulness
of his person and carriage provoked in my mind a contrast most
unfavorable to me, between him and myself. It was no satisfaction
to me at that time to reflect that I was less graceful only because
I was more earnest, more sincere. This is usually the case, and
is reasonably accounted for. Intensity and great earnestness of
character, are wholly inconsistent with a nice attention to forms,
carriage, demeanor. But what does a lady care for such distinction?
Does she even suspect it? Not often. If she could only fancy for
a moment that the well-made but awkward man who traverses the room
before her, carried in his breast a soul of such ardency and volume
that it subjected his very motion arbitrarily to its own excitements,
its own convulsions; that the very awkwardness which offended her
was the result of the most deep and passionate feelings--feelings
which, like the buried flame in the mountain, are continually
boiling up for utterance--convulsing the prison-house which retained
them--shaking the solid earth with their pent throes, that will
not always be pent! Ah! these things do not move ladies' fancies.
There are very few endowed with that thoughtful pride which disdains
surfaces. Julia Clifford was one of these few! But I little knew
it then.

The approach of William Edgerton to my wife was a signal for my
torture all that evening. From that moment my mind was wandering.
I knew little what I said, or looked, or did.  My chat with those
around me became, on a sudden, bald and disjointed; and when I
beheld the pair, both nobly formed--he tall, graceful, manly--she,
beautiful and bending as a lily--a purity beaming, amid all their
brightness, from her eyes--a purity which, I had taught myself to
believe, was no longer in her heart--when I beheld them advance into
the floor,  conspicuous over all the rest, in most eyes, as they
certainly were in mine--I can not describe--you may conjecture--the
cold, fainting sickness which overcame my soul. I could have lain
myself down upon the lone, midnight rocks, and surrendered myself
to solitude and storm for ever.

They entered the stately measures of the Spanish dance But the
grace of movement which won the murmuring applause of all around
me, only increased the agony of my afflictions.  I saw their linked
arms--the compliant, willing movements of their mutual forms--and
dark were the images of guilt and hateful suspicion which entered
my brain and grew to vivid forms, in action before me. I fancied the
fierce, passionate yearnings in the heart of Edgerton; I trembled
when I  conjectured what fancies filled the heart of Julia. I can
not linger over the torturing influence of those moments--moments
which seemed ages! Enough that I was maddened with the delirium,
now almost as its height, which had been for months preying upon
my brain like some corroding serpent.

The dance closed. Edgerton conducted her to a seat and placed
himself beside her. I kept aloof. I watched them from a distance;
and in sustaining this watch, I was compelled to recall my senses
with a stern degree of resolution which should save my feelings
from the detection of those inquisitive glances which I fancied
were all around me. If I was weakest among men, in the disease which
destroyed my peace, Heaven knows I was among the strongest of men
in concealing its expression at the very moment when every pulsation
of my heart was an especial agony. I affected indifference, threw
myself into the midst of a group of such people as talk of their
neighbor's bonnets or breeches, the rise of stocks, or the fall of
rain; and how Mrs. Jenkins has set up her carriage, and Mr. Higgins
has been compelled to set down, and to sell out his. Interesting
details, perhaps, without which the nine in ten might as well be
tongueless or tongue-tied for ever. This stuff I had to hear, and
requite in like currency, while my brain was boiling, and dim,
but terrible images of strife, and storm, and agony, were rushing
through it with howling and hisses. There I sat, thus seemingly
engaged, but with an eye ever glancing  covertly to the two, who,
at that moment, absorbed every thought of my mind, every feeling
of my heart, and filled them both with the bitterest commotion.
The glances of their mutual eyes, the expression of lip and check,
I watched with the keenest analysis of suspicion. In Julia, I saw
sweetness mixed with a delicate reserve. She seemed to speak but
little. Her eyes wandered from her companion--frequently to where
I sat---but I gave myself due credit, at such moments, for the
ability with which I conducted my own espionage. My inference--equally
unjust and unnatural--that her timid glances to my-self  denoted in
her bosom a consciousness of wrong--seemed to me the most natural
and inevitable inference. And when I noted the ardency of Edgerton's
gaze, his close, unrelaxing  attentions, the seeming forgetfulness
of all around which he manifested, I hurried to the conclusion
that his words were of a character to suit his looks, and betray
in more emphatic  utterance, the passion which they also betrayed.

The signal, after a short respite, devoted to fruits, ices, &C.,
was made for the dancers, and William Edgerton rose. I noted his bow
to my wife, saw that he spoke, and necessarily concluded, that he
again solicited her to dance. Her lips moved--she bowed slightly--and
he again took his seat beside her.  I inferred from this that she
declined to dance a second time.  She was certainly more prudent
than himself. I assigned to prudence--to policy--on her part, what
might well have been placed to a nobler motive. I went further.

"She will not dance with him," said the busy fiend at my shoulder,
"for the very reason that she prefers a quiet seat beside him. In
the dance they mingle with others; they can not speak with so much
ease and safety. Now she has him all to herself."

I dashed away, forgetful, gloomily, from the knot by which I
had been encompassed. I passed into the adjoining room, which was
connected by folding doors, with that I left. The crowd necessarily
grouped itself around the dancers, and (sic) a window-jamb, I stood
absolutely forgetting where I was  alone among the many--with my
eye stretching over the heads of the flying masses, to the remote
spot where my wife still sat with Edgerton. I was aroused from my
hateful dream by a slight touch upon my arm. I started with a painful
sense of my own weakness--with a natural dread that the secret misery
under which I labored was no longer a secret. I writhed under the
conviction that the cold, the sneering, and the worthless,  were
making merry with my afflictions. I met the gaze of the bride--the
mistress of ceremonies--my wife's mother Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford.
I shuddered as I beheld her glance. I could not mistake the volume
of meaning in her smile--that wretched smile of her thin, withered
lips, brimful of malignant cunning, which said emphatically as such
smile could say:--

"I see you on the rack; I know that you are writhing; and I enjoy
your tortures."

I started, as if to leave her, with a look of fell defiance,
roused, ready to burst forth into utterance, upon my own face. But
she gently detained my arm.

"You are troubled."

"No."

"Ah! but you are. Stop awhile. You will feel better."

"Thank you; but I feel very well."

"No, no, you do not. You can not deceive me. I know where the shoe
pinches; but what did you expect? Were you simple enough to imagine
that a woman would be true to her husband, who was false to her
own mother?"

"Fiend!" I muttered in her ear.

"Ha! ha! ha!" was the unmeasured response of the bel dame, loud
enough for the whole house to hear. I darted from her grasp, which
would have detained me still, made my way--how I know not--out of
the house, and found myself almost gasping for breath, in the open
air of the street.

She, at least, had been sagacious enough to find out my secret

OHAPTEB, XXVII

KINGSLEY.

THE fiendish suggestion of the mother, against the purity of her own
child, almost divested me, for the moment, of my own rancor--almost
deprived me of my suspicions! Could anything have been more
thoroughly horrible and atrocious! It certainly betrayed how deep
was the malignant hatred which she had ever borne to myself, and
of which her daughter was now required to bear a portion. What a
volume of human depravity was opened on my sight, by that single
utterance of this wretched mother. Guilt and sin! ye are, indeed,
the masters everywhere! How universal is your dominion! How
ye rage--how ye riot among souls, and minds, and fancies--never
utterly overthrown anywhere--busy always--everywhere--sovereign in
how many hapless regions of the heart! Who is pure among men? Who
can be sure of himself for a day--an hour? Precious few! None,
certainly, who do not distrust their own strength with a humility
only to be won from prayer--prayer coupled with moderate desires,
and the presence of a constant thought, which teaches that time is
a mere agent of eternity, and he who works for the one only, will
not even be secure of peace during the period for which he works.
Truly, he who lives not for the future is the very last who may
reasonably hope to enjoy the blessings of the present.

But this was not the season, nor was mine the mood, for moral
reflections of any sort. My secret was known! That was everything.
When the conduct of William Edgerton had become such, as to awaken
the notice of third persons, I was justified in exacting from him
the heavy responsibility he had incurred. The vague, indistinct
conviction had long floated  before my mind, that I would
be required to take his life. The period which was to render this
task necessary, was that which had now arrived--when it had been
seen by others--not  interested like myself--that he had passed
the bounds of propriety.  Of course, I was arguing in a circle,
from which I should have found it impossible to extricate myself.
Thousands might have seen that I was jealous, without being able to
see any just cause for my jealousy. It was, however, quite enough
for a proud spirit like my own, that its secret fear should be
revealed. It did not much matter, after this, whether my suspicions
were, or were not causeless. It was enough that they were known--that
busy, meddling women, and men about town, should  distinguish me with
a finger--should say: "His wife is very pretty and--very charitable!"

"Ha! ha! ha!"

I, too, could laugh, under such musings, and in the spirit of Mrs.
Delaney--late Clifford.

"Ha! ha! ha!" The street echoed, beneath the windows of that reputable
lady, with my involuntary, fiendish laughter.  I stood there--and
the music rang through my senses like the cries of exulting demons.
She was there--of my wife the thoughts ran thus, she was there,
whirling, perchance, in the mazes of that voluptuous dance, then
recently become fashionable among us; his arm about her waist--her
form inclining to his, as if seeking support and succor--and both
of them forgetting all things but the mutual intoxication which
swallowed up all things and thoughts in the absorbing sensuality
of one! Or, perhaps, still apart, they sat to themselves--her
ear fastened upon his lips--her consciousness given wholly to his
discourse; and that discourse!--"Ha! ha! ha!"--I laughed again,
as I hurried away from the spot, with gigantic strides, taking the
direction which led to my own lonely dwelling.

All was stillness there, but there was no peace. I entered the
piazza, threw myself into a chair, and gazed out upon the leaves and
waters, trying to collect my scattered thoughts--trying to subdue
my blood, that my thoughts might meet in  deliberation upon
the desolating prospect which was then spread before me. But I
struggled for this in vain. But one thought was mine at that hour.
But one fearful image gathered in completeness and strength before
my mind; and that was one calculated to banish all others and baffle
all their deliberations.

"The blood of William Edgerton must be shed, and by these hands!
My disgrace is known! There is no help for it!"

I had repeatedly resolved this gloomy conviction in my mind.  It
was now to receive shape and substance. It was a thing no longer
to be thought upon. It was a thing to be done! This necessity
staggered me. The kindness of the father, the kindness and long
true friendship of the son himself, how could I  requite this after
such a fashion? How penetrate the peaceful home of that fond family
with an arm of such violence, as to tend their proudest offspring
from the parental tree, and, perhaps, in destroying it, blight
for ever the venerable trunk upon which it was borne? Let it not
be fancied that these feelings were without effect. Let it not be
supposed that I weakly, willingly, yielded to the conviction of
this cruel necessity--that I determined, without a struggle, upon
this seemingly necessary  measure! Verily, I then, in that dreary
house and hour, wrestled like a strong man with the unbidden
prompter, who counselled me to the deed of blood. I wrestled with
him as the desperate man, knowing the supernatural strength of
his enemy, wrestles with a demon. The strife was a fearful one. I
could not suppress my groans of agony; and the cold sweat  gathered
and stood upon my forehead in thick, clammy drops.

But the struggle was vain to effect my resolution. It had been
too long present as a distinct image before my imagination.  I had
already become too familiar with its aspects. It had the look of
a fate to my mind. I fancied myself--as probably most men will do,
whose self-esteem is very active--the victim of a fate. My whole
life tended to confirm this notion. I was chosen out from the
beginning for a certain work, in which, my-self a victim, I was
to carry out the designs of destiny in the ease of other victims.
I had struggled long not to believe this--not to do this work.
But the struggle was at last at an end.  I was convinced, finally.
I was ready for the work. I was resigned to my fate. But oh!
how grateful once had one of these victims seemed in my eyes! How
beautiful, and still how dear was the other!

I rose from my seat and struggle, with the air of one strengthened
by thoughtful resolution for any act. Prayer could not have
strengthened me more. I felt a singular degree of strength.  I can
well understand that of fanaticism from my own feelings.  Nothing,
in the shape of danger, could have deterred me from the deed. I
positively had no remaining fear. But, how was it to be done? With
this inquiry in my mind, still unanswered, I took a light, went
into my study, and drew from my escritoir the few small weapons
which I had in possession. These are soon named. One was a neat
little dirk--broad in blade, double-edged, short--sufficient for
all my purposes. I examined my pistols and loaded them--a small,
neat pair, the present of Edgerton himself. This fact determined me
not to use them.  I restored them to the escritoir; put the dagger
between the folds of my vest, and prepared to leave the house.

At this moment a heavy knocking was heard at the gate I resumed my
seat in the piazza until the servant should report the nature of
the interruption. He was followed in by my friend Kingsley.

"I am glad to find you home," said he abruptly, grasping my hand;
"home, and not a-bed. The hour is late, I know, but the devil never
keeps ordinary hours, and men, driven by his satanic majesty, have
some excuse for following his example."

This exordium promised something unusual. The manner of Kingsley
betrayed excitement. Nay, it was soon evident he had been taking
a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke
excessively loud in order to be intelligible.  There was something
like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger
of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my
fingers. I subdued my own passions--nay, they were subdued--singularly
so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, and was able,
therefore, to appear calm and smooth as summer water in his eyes.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "You seem excited. No evil, I trust?"

"Evil, indeed! Not much; but even if it were, I tell you Ned Clifford,
I am just now in the mood to say, 'Evil be thou my good!' I have
reason to say it; and, by the powers, it will not be said only. I
will make evil my good after a fashion of my own; but how much good
or now little evil, will be yet another question."

I was interested, in spite of myself, by the vehemence and unusual
seriousness of my companion's manner. It somewhat harmonized
with my own temper, and in a measure beguiled me into a momentary
heedlessness of my particular griefs. I urged him to a more frank
statement of the things that troubled him.

"Can I serve you in anything?" was the inquiry which concluded my
assurance that I was sufficiently his friend to sympathize with
him in his afflictions.

"You can serve me, and I need your service. You can serve me in
two respects; nay, if you do not, I know not which side to turn
for service. In the first place, then, I wish a hundred dollars,
and I wish it to-night. In the next place, I wish a companion--a
man not easily scared, who will follow where I lead him, and take
part in a 'knock down and drag out,' if it should become necessary,
without asking the why and the wherefore."

"You shall have the money, Kingsley."

"Stay! Perhaps I may never pay it you again."

"I shall regret that, for I can ill afford to lose any such sum;
but, even to know that would not prevent me from lending you in
your need. It is enough that you are in want. You tell me you are."

"I am; but my wants are not such as a pure moralist, however strong
might be his friendship, would be disposed to gratify.  I shall
stake that money on the roll of the dice."

"Impossible! You do not game!"

"True as a gospel! Hark you, Clifford, and save us the homily. I
am a ruined man--ruined by the d---d dice and the deceptive cards.
I shall pay you back the hundred dollars, but I shall have precious
little after that."

"But, surely, I was not misinformed. You were rich a few years
ago."

"A few months! But the case is the same. I am poor now.  My riches
had wings. I am reduced to my tail-feathers; but I will flourish
with these to the last. I have fallen among thieves.  They have
clipped my plumage--close! close! They have stripped me of everything,
but some small matters which, when sold, will just suffice to get
me horse or halter. Some dirty acres in Alabama, are all I absolutely
have remaining of any real value. But there is one thing that I
may have, if I stake boldly for it."

"You will only lose again. The hope of a gamester rises, in due
degree, with the increasing lightness of his pockets."

"Do not mistake me. I hope nothing from your hundred dollars;
indeed, fifty will answer. I propose to employ it only as a pretext.
I expect to lose it, and lose it this very night.  But it will give
me an opportunity to ascertain what I have suspected--too late,
indeed, to save myself--that I have been the victim of false dice
and figured cards. You say you will let me have the money--will
you go with me--Will you see me through?"

He extended his hand as he spoke, I grasped it. He shook it with a
hearty feeling, while a bright smile almost, dissipated the cloud
from his face.

"You are a man, Clifford; and now, would you believe it, our
excellent, immaculate young friend, Mr. William Edgerton, refused
me this money."

"Strange! Edgerton is not selfish--he is not mean! From THAT vice
he is certainly free."

"By G-d, I don't know that! He refused me the money; refused to
go with me. I saw him at eight o'clock, at his own room, where he
was rigging himself out for some d---d tea-drinking; told him my
straits, my losses, my object and all; and what was his plea, think
you? Why, he disapproved of gambling; couldn't think of lending
me a sixpence for any such purpose; and, as for going into such a
suspected quarter as a gambling-house--wouldn't do it for the world!
Was there ever such a puritan--such a humbug!"

I did William Edgerton only justice in my reply;--

"I've no doubt, Kingsley, that such are his real principles.  He
would have lent you thrice the money, freely, had not your object
been avowed."

"But what a devil sort of despotism is that! Can't a friend get
drunk, or game, or swagger? may he not depart from the highway,
and sidle into an alley, without souring his friend's temper and
making him stingy? I don't understand it at all. I'm glad, at least,
to find you are of another sort of stuff."

"Nay, Kingsley, I will lend you the money--go with you, as you
desire; but, understand me, I do not, no more than Edgerton, approve
of this gambling."

"Tut, tut! I don't want you to preach, though I could hear you with
a devilish sight better temper than him. There's a hundred things
that one's friend don't approve of, but shall he desert him for
all that? Leave him to be plucked, and kicked, and abandoned; and,
moralizing, with a grin over his fain, say, 'I told you. so!' No!
no! Give me the fellow that'll stand by me--keep me out of evil,
if he can, but stand by me, nevertheless, at all events; and not
suffer me to be  swallowed up at the last moment, when an outstretched
finger might save!"

"But, am I to think, Kingsley, that my help can do this?"

"No! not exactly--it may--but if it does not, what then?  I shall
lose the money, but you shan't. But, truth to speak, Clifford, I do
not propose to myself the recovery of what is lost. I know I have
been the prey of sharpers. That is to say, I have every reason to
believe so, and I have had a hint to that effect. I have a spice
of the devil in me, accordingly--a mocking, mortifying devil, that
jeers me with my d---d simplicity; and I propose to go and let the
swindlers know, in a way as little circuitous as possible, that I
am not blind to the fact that they have made an ass of me. There
will be some satisfaction, in that. I will write myself down an
ass, for their benefit, only to enjoy the satisfaction of kicking
a little like one. I invite you on a kicking expedition."

I felt for my dagger in my bosom, as I answered: "Very good! Have
you weapons?"

"Hickory! You see! a moderate axe-handle, that'll make its sentiments
understood You are warned; you see what you are to expect. I will
not take you in. Are you ready for a scratch ?"

"Allons!" I replied indifferently. The truth is, my bosom was full
of a recklessness of a far more sweeping character than his own.
I was in the mood for strife. It promised only the more thoroughly
to prepare me for the darker trial which was before me, and which
my secret soul was meditating  all the while with an intense  and
gloomy tenacity of purpose.






CHAPTER XXVIII.

MORALS OF ENTERPRISE.





I got him the money he required; and we were about to set forth,
when he exclaimed abruptly:--

"Put money in thy own purse, Clifford. It may be necessary to practise
a little ruse de guerre. In playing my game, it may be important
that you should deem to play one also.  You have no scruples to
fling the dice or flirt the cards for the nonce."

"None! But I should like to know your plans. Tell me, in the first
place, your precise object."

"Simply to detect certain knaves, and save certain fools.  The
knaves have ruined me, and I make no lamentations; but there are
others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who
may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not
a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little
mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more.
There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but
you are a man! Not like that d--d milksop, who gives up his friend
as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling
him--precious information, truly--that he's in a fair way to the
devil. The toss of a copper for such friendship."

The humor of Kingsley tallied somewhat with my own. It had in it
a spice of recklessness which pleased me. Perhaps, too, it tended
somewhat to relieve and qualify the intenseness of that excitement
in my brain, which sometimes rose to such a pitch as led me
to apprehend madness. That I was a monomaniac has been admitted,
perhaps not a moment too soon for the author's candor. The sagacity
of the reader made him independent of the admission.

"Your beggar," said he, somewhat abruptly, "has the only true feeling
of independence. Absolutely, I never knew till now what it was to
be thoroughly indifferent to what might come to-morrow. I positively
care for nothing. I am the first prince Sans Souci. That shall
be my title when I get among the Cumanches. I will have a code of
laws and constitution to suit my particular humor, and my chief
penalties shall be inflicted upon your fellows who grunt. A sigh
shall incur a week's solitary confinement; a sour look, pillory;
and for a groan, the hypochondriac shall lose his head! My prime
minister shall be the fellow who can longest use his tongue without
losing his temper; and the man who can laugh and jest shall always
have his plate at my table. Good-humored people shall have peculiar
privileges. It shall be a certificate in one's favor, entitling
him to so many acres, that he takes the world kindly. Such a man
shall have two wives, provided he can keep them peacefully in the
same house. His daughters shall have dowries from government. The
prince of Sans Souci will himself provide for them."

I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking
bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of
both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.

"You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses
of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes.  Such things
may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet
to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall
stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles--mongrel
Spaniards and mongrel Indians--can not very long bedevil that great
country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who,
when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims
than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing;
with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny
and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip
a Mexican--dollar or man--at a hundred yards, and a heart that can
defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between
us--and who so likely to win his  principality as myself? Look to
see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear
of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then,
and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment."

"I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince."

"Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should
laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token
of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow
because I am a dare-devil that I am a  thoughtless one. I have been
so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered
by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done--gone--lost;
I am free from its  incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a
man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to
my old lifeless existence.

"Hear me!" he continued; "you laugh again, Clifford--very good!
Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come.
I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas
simply, or in Mexico, but here--here in your own self-opinionated
United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I
speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain.
A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more
men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old
English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of  Montezuma!
That done, and floods of people pour in from all  quarters. It
needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace--a conviction
that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable
government--in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government--to tempt
millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters  of the world.
Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the
immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then
will be, by a stern, pressing,  performing people, have no effect
upon these states of yours?  They will have the greatest; nay, they
will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep
you all in  equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great
Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns,
a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men.
A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous
states, the policy and character of which will be New England
all  over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory,
[Footnote: Florida, since admittied, but unhappily, as a single
state.] of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your
purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary
that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil
apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions,
and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two
more states, and, in this  manner, try to bolster up your federal
relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will
be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution
of which will  depend upon the relative strength of fleets and
success of  seamanship. These islands, which should of right be
ours, and  without which we can never be sure against any maritime
power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by
our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the
southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen
you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for
the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural,
never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a
commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf,
the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political
characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked
changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part
of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change
of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead
to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the
next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon
it is  inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article
at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of
these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant.
Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers
the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and
Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control
the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small
animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars,  the Bustamentes,
and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated;  and the country, the
noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a
country!--a great and glorious country--stretching from the gulf
to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few
years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by
which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see,
therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy,
my horse and my rifle--not to speak of stout heart and hand--reasonably
aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but
be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will
have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince.  I say it, It
is written--Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations  were
written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since
been verified.]

"Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"

"Bravissimo, you improve; you will make a courtier--but mum now
about my projects. We must suppress our dignities here. We are at
the entrance of our hell!"

We had reached the door of a low habitation in a secluded street.
The house was of wood--an ordinary hovel of two stories. A cluster
of similar fabrics surrounded it, most of which I afterward
discovered--though this fact could not be  conjectured by an observer
from the street--were connected by blind alleys, inner courts, and
chambers and passages running along the ground floors. We stopped
an instant, Kingsley having his hand upon the little iron knocker,
a single black ring, that worked against an ordinary iron knob.

"Before I knock," said he, in a whisper, "before I knock, Clifford,
let me say that if you have any reluctance--"

"None! none! knock!"

"You will meet with some dirty rascals, and you must not only
meet them with seeming civility, but as if you shared in their
tastes--sought the same objects only--the getting of money--the only
object which alone is clearly comprehensible by their understanding."

"Go ahead! I will see you through."

"A word more! Get yourself in play at a different table from me.
You will find rogues enough around, ready to relieve you of your
Mexicans. Leave me to my particular enemy; you will soon see whose
shield I touch--but keep an occasional eye upon us; and all that
I ask farther at your hands, should you see us by the ears, is to
keep other fingers from taking hold of mine."

A heavy stroke of the knocker, followed by three light ones and a
second heavy stroke, produced us an answer from within.  The door
unclosed, and by the light of a dim lamp, I discovered before me,
as a sort of warden, a little yellow, weather-beaten, skin-dried
Frenchman, whom I had frequently before seen at a fruit-shop in
another part of the city. He looked at me, however,  without any
sign of recognition--with a blank, dull, indifferent countenance;
motioned us forward in silence, and reclosing the door, sunk into
a chair immediately behind it. I followed my companion through a
passage which was unfathomably  dark, up a flight of stairs, which
led us into a sort of refreshment room. Tables were spread, with
decanters, glasses, and tumblers upon them, that appeared to be in
continual use.  In a recess, stood that evil convenience of most
American  establishments, whether on land or sea, a liquor bar;
its shelves crowded with bottles, all of which seemed amply full,
and ready to complete the overthrow of the victim, which the other
appliances of such a dwelling must already have actively begun.

"Here you may take in the Dutch courage, Clifford, should you lack
the native. This, I know, is not the case with you, and yet the
novelty of one's situation frequently overcomes a sensitive mind
like fear. Perhaps a julep may be of use."

"None for me. I need no farther stimulant than the mere sense of
mouvement. I take fire, like a wheel, by my own progress."

"Pretty much the same case with myself. But I have been in the
habit of drinking here, of late, and too deeply. To-night, however,
as I said before, ends all these habits. If there is honey in the
carcass, and strength from the sleep, there is wisdom from the folly,
and virtue from the vice. There is a moral as well as a physical
recoil, that most certainly follows the  overcharge; and really,
speaking according to my sincere conviction I never felt myself
to be a better man, than just at this moment when I am about to do
that which my own sense of morality fails altogether to justify.
I do not know that I make you understand my feelings; I scarcely
understand them myself; but of this sort they are, and I am really
persuaded that I never felt in a better disposition to be a good
man and a working man than just at the close of a career which has
been equally profligate and idle."

I think my companion can be understood. There seems, in fact very
little mystery in his moral progress. I understood him, but did
not answer. I was not anxious to keep up the ball of conversation
which he had begun with a spirit so mixed up of contradictions--so
earnest yet so playful. A deep sense of shame unquestionably lurked
beneath his levity; and yet I make no question that he felt in
truth, and for the first time, that degree of mental hardihood of
which he boasted.

He advanced through the refreshment-room, to a door which led to an
apartment in an adjoining tenement. It was closed, but unfastened.
The sound of voices, an occasional buzz, or a slight murmur, came
to our ears from within; that of rattling dice and rolling balls
was more regular and more intelligible.  Kingsley laid his hand
upon the latch, and looked round to me.  His eye was kindled with
a playful sort of malicious light. A smile of pleasant bitterness
was on his lips. He said to me in a whisper:--

"Stake your money slowly. A Mexican is the lowest stake.  Keep to that,
and lose as little as possible. You will soon see me sufficiently
busy, and I will endeavor to urge my labors forward, so as to make
your purgatory a short one. I shall only wait till I feel myself
cheated in the game, to begin that which I came for. See that I
have fair play in THAT, MON AMI, and I care very little about the
other."

He lifted the latch as he concluded, and I followed him into the
apartment.






CHAPTER XXIX.

THE HELL.





The scene that opened upon us was, to me, a painfully interesting
one. It was a mere hell, without any of those attractive adjuncts
which, in a diseased state of popular refinement, such as exists in
the fashionable atmospheres of London and Paris, provides it with
decorations, and conceals its more discouraging and offensive
externals. The charms of music, lovely women, gay lights, and superb
drapery and furniture, were here entirely wanting. No other arts
beyond the single passion for hazard, which exists, I am inclined
to think, in a greater or less degree in every human breast, were
here employed to beguile the young and unsuspecting mind into
indulgence. The establishment into which I had fallen, seemed to
presuppose an acquaintance, already formed, of the gamester with his
fascinating vice. It was evidently no place to seduce the uninitiate.
The passion must have been already awakened--the guardianship
of the good angel lulled into indifference or slumber--before the
young mind could be soon reconciled to the moral atmosphere of such
a scene.

The apartment was low and dimly lighted. Groups of small tables
intended for two persons were all around. In the centre of the floor
were tables of larger size, which were surrounded by the followers
of Pharo. Unoccupied tables, here and there, were sprinkled with
cards and domino; while, as if to render the characteristics of
the place complete, a vapor of smoke and a smell of beer assailed
our senses as we entered.

There were not many persons present--I conjectured, at a glance,
that there might be fifteen; but we heard occasional voices from
an inner room, and a small door opening in the rear discovered a
retreat like that we occupied, in the dim light of which I perceived
moving faces and shadows, and Kingsley informed me that there were
several rooms all similarly occupied with ours.

An examination of the persons around me, increased the unpleasant
feelings which the place had inspired. With the  exception of a few,
the greater number were evidently superior to their employments.
Several of them were young men like my companion--men not yet lost
to sensibility, who looked up with some annoyance as they beheld
Kingsley accompanied by a stranger. Two or three of the inmates
were veteran gamesters.  You could see THAT in their business-like
nonchalance--their rigid muscles--the manner at once demure and
familiar. They were evidently "habitues del l'enfer"--men to whom
cards and dice were as absolutely necessary now, as brandy and
tobacco to the drunkard. These men were always at play. Even the
smallest interval found them still shuffling the cards, and looking
up at every opening of the door, as if in hungering  anticipation
of the prey. At such periods alone might you behold any expression
of anxiety in their faces. This disappeared entirely the moment
that they were in possession of the victim.  That imperturbable
composure which distinguished them was singularly contrasted with
the fidgety eagerness and nervous rapidity by which you could
discover the latter; and I glanced over the operations of the two
parties, as they were fairly shown in several sets about the room,
with a renewed feeling of wonder how a man so truly clever and
strong, in some things, as Kingsley, should allow himself to be
drawn so deeply into such low snares; the tricks of which seemed
so apparent, and the attractions of which, in the present instance,
were obviously so inferior and low. I little knew by what inoffensive
and gradual changes the human mind, having once commenced its
downward progress, can hurry to the base; nor did I sufficiently
allow for that love of hazard itself, in games of chance, which I
have already expressed the opinion, is natural to the proper heart
of man, belongs to a rational curiosity, and arises, most probably,
from that highest property of his intellect, namely, the love of
art and intellectual ingenuity. It would be very important to know
this fact, since then, instead of the blind hostility which is
entertained for sports of this description, by certain classes of
moralists among us, we might so employ their ministry as to deprive
them of their hurtfulness and make them permanently beneficial in
the cause of good education.

Kingsley seemed to conjecture my thoughts. A smile of lofty
significance expressing a feeling of mixed scorn and humility, rose
upon his countenance--as if admitting his own feebleness, while
insisting upon his recovered strength, A sentence which he uttered
to me in a whisper, at this moment, was intended to convey some
such meaning.

"It was only when thrown to the earth, Clifford, that the wrestler
recovered his strength."

"That fable," I replied, "proves that he was no god, at least. Of
the earth, earthy, he found strength only in his sphere. The moment
he aspired above it the god crushed him.  I doubt if Hercules could
have derived any benefit from the same source."

"Ah! I am no Hercules, but you will also find that I am no Antaeus.
I fall, but I rise again, and I am not crushed. This is peculiarly
the source of HUMAN strength."

"Better not to fall."

"Ah! you are too late from Utopia. But--"

We were interrupted; a voice at my elbow--a soft, clear, insinuating
voice addressed my companion:--

"Ah, Monsieur Kingsley, I rejoice to see you."

Kingsley gave me a single look, which said everything, as he turned
to meet the new-comer. The latter continued:--

"Though worsted in that last encounter, you do not despair, I see."

"No! why should I?"

"True, why? Fortune baffles skill, but what of that? She is capricious.
Her despotism is feminine; and in her empire, more certainly than
any other, it may be said boldly, that, with change of day there
is change of doom. It is not always rain."

"Perhaps not, but we may have such a long spell of it that
everything is drowned. 'It's a long lane,' says the proverb, 'that
has no turn;' but a man be done up long before he gets to the
turning place."

The other replied by some of the usual commonplaces by which, in
condescending language, the gamester provoked and stimulates his
unconscious victim. Kingsley, however, had reached a period of
experience which enabled him to estimate these phrases at their
proper worth.

"You would encourage me," he said quietly, and in tones which, to
the unnoteful ear, would have seemed natural enough, but which,
knowing him as I did, were slightly sarcastic, and containing a
deeper signification than they gave out: "but you are the better
player. I am now convinced of that. Something  there is in fortune,
doubtless; my self-esteem makes me willing to admit that; and yet
I do not deceive myself. You have been too much for me--you are!"

"The difference is trifling, very trifling, I suspect. A little
more practice will soon reconcile that."

"Ha! ha! you forget the practice is to be paid for."

"True, but it is the base spirit only that scruples at the cost of
its accomplishments."

"Surely, surely!"

"You are fresh for the encounter to-night?"

"Pleasantly put! Is the query meant for the player or his purse?"

"Good, very good! Why, truly, there is no necessary affinity between
them."

"And yet the one without the other would scarcely be able to
commend himself to so excellent an artist as Mr. Latour Cleveland.
Clifford, let me introduce you to my ENEMY; Mr.  Cleveland, my
FRIEND."

In this manner was I introduced. Thus was I made acquainted
with the particular individual whom it was the  meditated purpose
of Kingsley to expose. But, though thus marked in the language of
his introduction, there was nothing in the tone or manner of my
companion, at all calculated to alarm the suspicions of the other.
On the contrary, there was a sort of reckless joviality in the
air of ABANDON, with which he presented me and spoke. A natural
curiosity moved me to examine Cleveland more closely. He was what
we should call, in common speech, a very elegant young man. He was
probably thirty or thirty-five years of age, tall, graceful, rather
slenderish,  and of particular nicety in his dress. All his clothes
were disposed with the happiest precision. White kid-gloves covered
his taper fingers. Withdrawn, a rich diamond blazed upon one hand,
while a seal-ring, of official dimensions, with characters cut in
lava, decorated the other. His movements betrayed the same nice method
which distinguished the arrangement of his dress. His evolutions
might all have been performed by trumpet signal, and to the sound
of measured music. He was evidently one of those persons whose
feelings are too little earnest, ever to affect their policy; too
little warm ever to disparage the rigor of their customary play;
one of those cold, nice men, who, without having a single passion
at work to produce one condition of feeling higher than another, are
yet the very ideals of the most narrow and concentrated selfishness.
His face was thin, pale, and intelligent. His lips were thick,
however--the eyes bright, like those of a snake, but side-looking,
never direct, never upward, and always with a smiling shyness in
their glance, in which a suspicious mind like my own would always
find sufficient occasion for distrust.

Mr. Cleveland bestowed a single keen glance upon me while going
through the ordeal of introduction. But his scrutiny labored under
one disadvantage. His eyes did not encounter mine! One loses a great
deal, if his object be the study of tuman nature, if he fails in
this respect.

"Much pleasure in making your acquaintance, Mr. Clifford; I trust,
however, you will find me no worse enemy than your friend has done."

"If he find YOU no worse, he will find himself no better.  He will
pay for his enmity, whatever its degree, as I have done, ancl be
wiser, by reason of his losses."

"Ah! you think too much of your ill fortunes. That is bad.  It
takes from your confidence and so enfeebles your skill. You should
think of it less seriously. Another cast, and the tables chinge.
You will have your revenge."

"I WILL!" said Kingsley with some emphasis, and a gravity which
the other did not see. He evidently heard the words only as he
had been accustomed to hear them--from the lips of young gamesters
who perpetually delude themselves with hopes based upon insane
expectations. A benignant smile mantled the cheeks of the gamester.

"Ah, well! I am ready; but if you think me too much for you--"

He paused. The taunt was deliberately intended. It was the customary
taunt of the gamester. On the minds of half the number of young
men, it would have had the desired efiect--of goading vanity,
and provoking the self-esteem of the conceited boy into a sort of
desperation, when the powers of sense and caution become mostly
suspended, and no unnecessary suspicion or watchfulness then
interferes to increase the difficulty of plucking the pigeon. I read
the smile on Kingsley's lip. It was brief, momentary, pleasantly
contemptuous. Then, suddenly, as if he had newly recollected his
policy, his countenance assumed a new expression--one more natural
to the youth who has been depressed by losses, vexed at defeat, but
flatters himself that the atonement is at hand. Perhaps, something
of the latent purpose of his mind increased the intense bitterness
in the manner and tones of my companion.

"Too much for me, Mr. Cleveland! No, no! You are willing, I see, to
rob good fortune of some of her dues. You crow too soon. I have a
shrewd presentiment that I shall be quite too much FOR YOU to-night."

A pleasant and well-satisfied smile of Cleveland answered the
speaker.

"I like that," said he; "it proves two things, both of which
please me. Your trifling losses have not hurt your fortunes.  nor
the adverse run of luck made you despond of better  success hereafter.
It is something of a guaranty in favor of one's performance that he
is sure of himself. In such case he is equally sure of his opponent."

"Look to it, then, for I have just that sort of self-guaranty
which makes me sure of mine. I shall play deeply, that I may make
the most of my presentiments. Nay, to show you how confident I am,
this night restores me all that I have lost, or leaves me nothing
more to lose."

The eyes of the other brightened.

"That is said like a man. I thank you for your warning.  Shall we
begin?"

"Ready, ay, ready!" was the response of Kingsley, as he turned to
one of the tables. Quietly laying down upon it the short, heavy
stick which he carried, he threw off his gloves, and rubbed his
hands earnestly together, laughing the while without restraint, as
if possessed suddenly of some very pleasant and ludicrous fancy.

"They laugh who win," remarked Cleveland, with something of coldness
in his manner.

"Ha! ha! ha!" was the only answer of Kingsley to this remark. The
other continued--and I now clearly perceived that his purpose was
provocation:--

"It is certainly a pleasure to win your money, Kingsley--you bear
it with so much philosophy. Nay, it seems to give you pleasure,
and thus lessens the pain I should otherwise feel in receiving the
fruits of my superiority."

"Ha! ha! ha!" again repeated Kingsley. "Excuse me, Mr. Cleveland.
I am reminded of your remark, 'They laugh who win.' I am laughing,
as it were, anticipatively. I am so certain that I shall have my
revenge to-night."

Cleveland looked at him for a moment with some curiosity, then
called:--

"Philip!"

He was answered by a young mulatto--a tall, good-looking fellow,
who approached with a mixed air of equal deference and self-esteem,
plaited frills to a most immaculately white shirt-collar, a huge
bulbous breastpin in his bosom, chains and seals, and all the usual
equipments of Broadway dandyism.  The fellow approached us with
a smile; his eyes looking  alternately to Cleveland and Kingsley,
and, as I fancied, with no unequivocal sneer in their expression,
as they settled on the latter. A significance of another kind
appeared in the look of Cleveland as he addressed him.

"Get us the pictures, Philip--the latest cuts--and bring--ay, you
may bring the ivories."

In a few moments, the preliminaries being despatched, the two were
seated at a table, and a couple of packs of cards were laid beside
them. Kingsley drew my attention to the cards.  They were of a
kind that my experience had never permitted me to see before. In
place of ordinary kings and queens and knaves, these figures were
represented in attitudes and costumes the most indecent--such
as the prolific genius of Parisian bawdry alone could conceive
and delineate. It seems to be a general opinion among rogues that
knavery is never wholly triumphant unless the mind is thoroughly
degraded; and for this reason it is, perhaps, that establishments
devoted to purposes like the present, have, in most countries, for
their invariable adjuncts, the brothel and the bar-room. If they
are not in the immediate tenement, they are sufficiently nigh to
make the work of moral prostitution comparatively easy, in all its
ramifications,  with the young and inconsiderate mind. Kingsley
turned over the cards, and I could see that while affecting to
show me the pictures he was himself subjecting the cards to a close
inspection of another kind. This object was scarcely perceptible
to myself, who knew his suspicions, and could naturally conjecture
his policy. It did not excite the alarm of his antagonist.

The parties sat confronting each other. Kingsley drew forth a wallet,
somewhat ostentatiously, which he laid down beside him. The sight
of his wallet staggered me. By its bulk I should judge it to have
held thousands; yet he had assured me that he had nothing beside,
the one hundred dollars which he had procured from me. My surprise
increased as I saw him open the wallet, and draw from one of its
pockets the identical roll which I had put into his hands. The
bulk of the pocket-book seeemed (sic) scarcely to be diminished.
My suspicions were beginning to be roused. I began to think that
he had told me a  falsehood; but he looked up at this instant, and
a bright manly smile on his deep purposeful countenance, reassured
me. I felt that there was some policy in the business which was not
for me then to fathom. The cards were cut. A box of dice was also
in the hands of Cleveland.

"Spots or pictures?" said Cleveland.

"Pictures first, I suppose," said Kingsley, "till the blood gets up.
The ivories then as the most rapid. But these pictures are really
so tempting. A new supply, Philip!"

"Just received, sir," said the other.

"And how shall we begin?" demanded Cleveland, drawing a handful of
bills, gold, and silver, from his pocket; "yellow, white, or brown?"

It was thus, I perceived, that gold, silver, and paper money, were
described.

"Shall it be child's play, or--"

"Man's, man's!" replied Kingsley, with some impatience "I am
for beginning with a cool hundred," and, to my  consternation, he
unfolded the roll he had of me, counted out the bills, refolded them
and placed them in a saucer, where they were soon covered with a
like sum by his antagonist. I was absolutely sickened, and stared
aghast upon my reckless  companion. He looked at me with a smile.

"To your own game, Clifford. You will find men enough for your
money in either of the rooms. Should you run short, come to me."

Thus confidently did he speak; yet he had actually but the single
hundred which he had so boldly staked on the first issue.  I thought
him lost; but he better knew his game than I. He also knew his man.
The eyes of Cleveland were on the huge wallet in reserve, of which
the "cool hundred" might naturally be considered a mere sample. I
had not courage to wait for the result, but wandered off, with a
feeling not unallied to terror, into an adjoining apartment.






CHAPTER XXX.

FALSE LUCK.





Though confounded with what I had seen of the proceedings of Kingsley,
I was yet willing to promote, so far as I could, the purpose for
which we came. I felt too, that, unless I played, that purpose,
or my own, might reasonably incur suspicion.  To rove through the
several rooms of a gambling-house, surveying closely the proceedings
of others, without partaking, in however slight a degree, in the
common business of the establishment, was neither good policy nor
good manners.  Unless there to play, what business had I there?
Accordingly I resolved to play. But of these games I knew nothing.
It was necessary to choose among them, and, without a choice I
turned to one of the tables where the genius of Roulette presided.
A motley group, none of whom I knew, surrounded it.  I placed my
dollar upon one of the spots, red or black, I know not which, and
saw it, in a moment after, spooned up with twenty others by the
banker. I preferred this form of play to any other, for the simple
reason that it did not task my own faculties, and left me free
to bestow my glances on the proceedings of my friend. But I soon
discovered that the contagion of play is irresistible; and so
far from putting my stake down at intervals, and with philosophic
indifference, I found myself, after a little while, breathlessly
eager in the results. These, after the first few turns of the machine,
had ceased to be unfavorable. I was confounded to discover myself
winning.  Instead of one I put down two Mexicans.

"Put down ten," said one of the bystanders, a dark,  sulky-looking
little yellow man, who seemed a veteran at these places.  "You are
in luck--make the most of it."

The master of the ceremonies scowled upon the speaker; and this
determined me to obey his suggestions. I did so, and doubled the
money; left my original stake and the winnings on the same spot, and
doubled that also; and it was not long before, under this stimulus
of success, and the novelty of my situation, I found myself as
thoroughly anxious and intensely interested, as if I had gone to
the place in compliance with a natural passion.  I know not how
long I had continued in this way, but I was still fortunate. I
had doubled my stakes repeatedly, and my pockets were crammed with
money.

"Stop now, if you are wise," whispered the same sulky-looking little
man who had before urged me to go on more boldly, as he sidled along
by me for this object; "never ride a good horse to death. There's
a time to stop just as there's a time to push.  You had better stop
now. Stake another dollar and you lose all your winnings."

"Let the gentleman play his own game, Brinckoff. I don't see why
you come here to spoil sport."

Such was the remark of the keeper of the table. He had overheard
my counsellor. He felt his losses, and was angry. I saw that, and
it determined me. I took the counsel of the stranger. I was the
more willing to do so, as I reproached  myself for my inattention
to my friend. It was time to see what had been his progress, and I
prepared to leave the theatre of my own success. Before doing so,
I turned to my counsellor, and thus addressed him: "Your advice has
made me win; I trust I will not offend a gentleman who has been so
courteous, by requesting him to take my place upon a small capital."

I put twenty pieces into his hand.

"I am but a young beginner," I continued, "and I owe you for my
first lesson."

"You are too good," he said, but his hand closed over the dollars.
The keeper of the table renewed his murmurs of discontent as he
saw me turn away.

"Ah! bah! Petit, what's the use to grumble?" demanded my representative.
"Do you suppose I will give up my sport for yours? When would I
get a sixpence to stake, if it were not that I was kind to young
fellows just beginning? There; growl no more; the twenty Mexicans
upon the red!"

The next minute my gratuity was swallowed up in the great spoon of
the banker. I was near enough, to see the result. I placed another
ten pieces in the hand of the unsuccessful gambler.

"Very good," said he; "very much obliged to you; but if you please,
I will do no more to-night. It's not my lucky night.  I've
lost every set."

"As you please--when you please."

"You are a gentleman," he said; "the sooner you go home the better.
A young beginner seldom wins in the small hours."

This was said in another whisper. I thanked him for his further
suggestion, and turned away, leaving him to a side squabble with the
banker, who finally concluded by telling him that he never wished
to see him at his table.

"The more fool you, Petit," said Brinckoff; "for the youngster that
wins comes back, and he does not always win. You finish him in the
end as you finished me, and what more would you have?"

The rest, and there was much more, was inaudible to me. I hurried
from the place somewhat ashamed of my success. I doubt whether
I should have had the like feelings had I lost.  As it was, never
did possession seem more cumbrous than the mixed gold, paper, and
silver, with which my pockets were burdened. I gladly thought of
Kingsley, to avoid thinking of  myself. It was certain, I fancied,
that he had not lost, else how could he have continued to play? My
anxiety hurried me into the room where I had left him.

They sat together, he and Cleveland, as before. I observed that
there was now an expression of anxiety--not intense, but obvious
enough--upon the countenance of the latter. Philip, too, the mulatto,
stood on one side, contemplating the proceedings with an air of
grave doubt and uncertainty in his  countenance. No such expression
distinguished the face of Kingsley.  Never did a light-hearted,
indifferent, almost mocking spirit, shine out more clearly from
any human visage. At times he chuckled as with inward satisfaction.
Not unfrequently he laughed aloud, and his reckless "Ha! ha! ha!"
had more than once reached and startled me in the midst of my own
play, in the adjoining room. The opponents had discarded their
"pictures," They were absolutely rolling dice for their stakes. I
saw that the wallet of Kingsley lay untouched, and quite as full
as ever, in the spot where he had first laid it down. A pile of
money lay open beside him; the gold and silver pieces keeping down
the paper. When he saw me approach, he laughed aloud, as he cried
out:--

"Have they disburdened you, Clifford? Help yourself. I am punishing
my enemy famously. I can spare it."

A green, sickly smile mantled the lips of Cleveland. He replied in
low, soft tones, such as I could only partly hear; and, a moment
after, he swept the stake before the two, to his own side of the
table. The amount was large, but the features of Kingsley remained
unaltered, while his laugh was renewed as heartily as if he really
found pleasure in the loss.

"Ha! ha! ha! that is encouraging; but the end is not yet.  The tug
is yet to come!"

I now perceived that Kingsley took up his wallet with one hand
while he spread his handkerchief on his lap with the other. Into
this he drew the pile of money which he had loose before on his
side of the table, and appeared to busy himself in counting into
it the contents of the wallet. This he did with such adroitness,
that, though I felt assured he had restored the wallet to his bosom
with its bulk undiminished, yet I am equally certain that no such
conclusion could have been reached by any other person. This done,
he lifted the handkerchief, full as it was, and dashed it down upon
the table.

"There! cover that, if you be a man!" was his speech of defiance.

"How much?" huskily demanded Cleveland.

"All!"

"Ah!"

"Yes, all. I know not the number of dollars, cents, or sixpences,
but face it with your winnings: there need be no counting. It is
loss of time. Stir the stuff with your fingers, and you will find
it as good, and as much, as you have here to put against it. On
that hangs my fate or yours. Mine for certain!  I tell you, Mr.
Cleveland, it is all!"

Cleveland lifted the ends of the handkerchief, as if weighing its
contents; and then, without more scruple, flung into it a pile not
unlike it in bulk and quality: a handful of mixed gold paper, and
silver. Kingsley grasped the dice before him, and with a single
shake dashed them out upon the table.

"Six, four, two," cried Philip with a degree of excitement which
did not appear in either of the active opponents. Meanwhile  my
heart was in my mouth. I looked on Kingsley with a sentiment of
wonder. Every muscle of his face was composed  into the most quiet
indifference. He saw my glance, and smilingly exclaimed:--

"I trust to my star, Clifford. Sans Souci--remember!"

No time was allowed for more. The moment was a breathless  one.
Cleveland had taken up the dice. His manner was that of the most
singular deliberation. His eyes were cast down upon the table. His
lips strongly closed together; and now it was that I could see the
keen, piercing look which Kingsley  addressed to every movement of
the gambler. I watched him also. He did not immediately throw the
dice, and I was  conscious of some motion which he made with his
hands before he did so. What that motion was, however, I could
neither have said nor conceived. But I saw a grim smile, full of
intelligence, suddenly pass over Kingsley's lips. The dice descended
upon the table with a sound that absolutely made me tremble.

"Five, four, six!" cried Philip, loudly, with tones of evident
exultation. I felt a sense like that of suffocation, which was
unrelieved even by the seemingly unnatural laughter of my companion.
He did laugh, but in a manner to render less strange and unnatural
that in which he had before indulged.  Even as he laughed he rose
and possessed himself of the dice which the other had thrown down.

"The stakes are mine," cried Cleveland, extending his hand toward
the handkerchief.

"No!" said Kingsley, with a voice of thunder, and as he spoke,
he handed me the kerchief of money, which I grasped instantly, and
thrust with some difficulty into my bosom. This was done instinctively;
I really had no thoughts of what I was doing. Had I thought at all
I should most probably have  refused to receive it.

"How!" exclaimed Cleveland, his face becoming suddenly pale. "The
cast is mine--fifteen to twelve!"

"Ay, scoundrel, but the game I played for is mine! As for the
cast, you shall try another which you shall relish less. Do you
see these?"

He showed the dice which he had gathered from the table.  The
gambler made an effort to snatch them from his hands.

"Try that again," said Kingsley, "and I lay this hickory over your
pate, in a way that shall be a warning to it for ever."

By this time several persons from the neighboring tables and the
adjoining rooms, hearing the language of strife, came rushing in.
Kingsley beheld their approach without concern. There were several
old gamblers among them, but the greater number were young ones.

"Gentlemen," said Kingsley, "I am very glad to see you.  You come
at a good time. I am about to expose a scoundrel to you."

"You shall answer for this, sir," stammered Cleveland, in equal
rage and confusion.

"Answer, shall I? By Jupiter! but you shall answer too!  And you
shall have the privilege of a first answer, shall you?"

"Mr. Kingsley, what is the meaning of this?" was the demand of a
tall, dark-featured man, who now made his  appearance from an inner
room, and whom I now learned, was, in fact, the proprietor of the
establishment.

"Ah! Radcliffe--but before another word is wasted put your fingers
into the left breeches pocket of that scoundrel there, and see what
you will find."

Cleveland would have resisted. Kingsley spoke again to Radcliffe,
and this time in stern language, which was evidently felt by the
person to whom it was addressed.

"Radcliffe, your own credit--nay, safety--will depend upon your
showing that you have no share in this rogue's practice.  Search
him, if you would not share his punishment."

The fellow was awed, and obeyed instantly. Himself, with three
others, grappled with the culprit. He resisted strenuously, but in
vain. He was searched, and from the pocket in question three dice
were produced.

"Very good," said Kingsley; "now examine those dice, gentlemen, and
see if you can detect one of my initials, the letter 'K,' which I
scratched with a pin upon each of them."

The examination was made, and the letter was found, very small and
very faint, it is true, but still legible, upon the ace square of
each of the dice.

"Very good," continued Kingsley; "and now, gentlemen, with your
leave--"

He opened his hand and displayed the three dice with which Cleveland
had last thrown.

"Here you see the dice with which this worthy gentleman hoped
to empty my pockets. These are they which he last threw upon the
table. He counted handsomely by them! I threw, just before him,
with those which you have in your hand.  I had contrived to mark
them previously, this very evening, in order that I might know them
again. Why should he put them in his pocket, and throw with these?
As this question is something important, I propose to answer it to
your satisfaction as well as my own; and, for this reason, I came
here, as you see, prepared to make discoveries."

He drew from his pocket, while he spoke, a small saddler's hammer and
steel-awl. Fixing with the sharp point of the awl in the ace spot
of the dice, he struck it a single but sudden blow with the hammer,
split each of the dice in turn, and disclosed to the wondering, or
seemingly wondering, eyes of all around, a little globe of lead in
each, inclining to the lowest numeral, and necessarily determining
the roll of the dice so as to leave the lightest section uppermost.

"Here, gentlemen," continued Kingsley, "you see by what process I
have lost my money. But it is not in the dice alone.  Look at these
cards. Do you note this trace of the finger-nail, here, and there,
and there--scarcely to be seen unless it is shown to you, but clear
enough to the person that made it, and is prepared to look for it.
Radcliffe, your fellow, Philip, has been concerned in this business.
You must dismiss him, or your visiters will dismiss you. Neither
myself nor my friends will visit you again--nay, more, I denounce
you to the police.  Am I understood?"

Radcliffe assented without scruple, evidently not so anxious for
justice as for the safety of his establishment. But it appeared
that there were others in the room not so well pleased with the
result. A hubbub now took place, in which three or four fellows
made a rush upon Kingsley--Cleveland urging and clamoring from the
rear, though without betraying much real desire to get into the
conflict.

But the assailants had miscalculated their forces. The youngsters
in the establishment, regarding Kingsley's development as serving
the common cause, were as soon at his side as myself. The scuffle
was over in an instant. One burly ruffian was prostrated by a
blow from Kingsley's club; I had my share in the prostration of a
second, and some two others took to their heels, assisted in their
progress by a smart application from every foot and fist that
happened to be convenient enough for such a service.

But Cleveland alone remained. Why he had not shared the summary fate
of the rest it would be difficult to say, unless it was because he
had kept aloof from the active struggle to which he had egged them
on. Perhaps, too, a better reason--he was reserved for some more
distinguishing punishment. Why he had shown no disposition for
flight himself, was answered as soon as Kingsley laid down his club,
which he did with a laugh of exemplary good-nature the moment he
had felled with it his first assailant. The flight of his allies
left the path open between himself and Cleveland, and, suddenly
darting upon him, the desperate gambler aimed a blow at his breast
with a dirk which he had drawn that instant from his own. He
exclaimed as he struck:--

"Here is something that escaped your search. Take this!  this!"

Kingsley was just lifting up the cap, which he had worn that night,
from the table to his brows. Instinctively he dashed it into the
face of his assassin, and his simple evolution saved him.  The
next moment the fearless fellow had grappled with his enemy, torn
the weapon from his grasp, and, seizing him around the body as if
he had been an infant, moved with him to an open window looking out
upon a neighboring court. The victim struggled, yelled for succor,
but before any of us could interpose, the resolute and powerful man
in whose hold he writhed and struggled vainly, with the gripe of
a master, had thrust him through the opening, his heels, in their
upward evolutions, shattering a dozen of the panes as he disappeared
from sight below.  We all concluded that he was killed. We were
in an upper chamber, which I estimated to be twenty or thirty feet
from the ground. I was too much shocked for speech, and rushed
to the window, expecting to hehold the mangled and bloody corpse
of the miserable criminal beneath. The laughter of Radclifle half
reassured me.

"He will not suffer much hurt," said he; "there is something to
break his fall."

I looked down, and there the unhappy wretch was seen squatting and
clinging to the slippery shingles of an old stable, unhurt, some
twelve feet below us, unable to reascend, and very unwilling to adopt
the only alternative which the case presented---that of descending
softly upon the rank bed of stable-ordure which the provident care
of the gardener had raised up on every hand, the recking fumes of
which were potent enough to expel us very soon from our place of
watch at the window.  Of the further course of the elegant culprit
we took no heed.  The ludicrousness of his predicament had the
effect of turning the whole adventure into merriment among those
who remained in the establishment; and availing ourselves of the
clamorous mirth of the parties, we made our escape from the place
with a feeling, on my part, of indescribable relief.

Chapter XXXI

How the Game was Played

"WELL, we may breathe awhile," said Kingsley, as we found ourselves
once more in the pure air, and under the blue sky of midnight. "We
have got through an ugly task with tolerable success. You stood by
me like a man, Clifford. I need not tell you how much I thank you."

"I heartily rejoice that you are through with it, Kingsley; but I
am not so sure that we can deliberately approve of  everything that
we may have been required by the circumstances of the case to do."

"What! you did not relish the playing? I respect your scruples,
but it does not follow that it must become a habit.  You played to
enable a friend to get back from a knave what he lost as a fool,
and to punish the knavery that he could not well hope to reform. I
do not see, considering the amount of possible good which we have
done, that the evil is wholly  inexcusable."

"Perhaps not; but this heap of money which I have in my bosom--should
you have taken it?"

"And why not? Whose should it be, if not mine?"

"You took with you but one hundred dollars. I should say you have
more than a thousand here."

"I trust I have," said he coolly. "What of that? I won it fairly,
and he played fairly, until the last moment when everything was at
stake. His false dice were then called in--and would you have me
yield to his roguery what had been the fruits of a fair conflict?
No! no! friend of mine! no! no!  all these things did I consider
well before I took you with me to-night. I have been meditating
this business for a week, from the moment when a friendly fellow
hinted to me that I was the victim of knavery."

"But that wallet of money, Kingsley? You assured me that you were
pennyless."

"All! that wallet bedevilled Mr. Latour Cleveland, as it seems to
have bedevilled you. There, by the starlight, look at the contents
of this precious wallet, and see how much further your eyes can
pierce into the mystery of my proceedings.'"

He handed me the wallet, which I opened. To my great surprise, I
found it stuffed with old shreds of newspaper, bits of rag, even
cotton, but not a cent of money.

"There! ara you satisfied? You shall have that wallet, with all
its precious contents, as a keepsake from me. It will remind you of
a strange scene. It will have a history for you when you are old,
which you will tell with a chuckle to your children."

"Children!" I involuntarily murmured, while my voice trembled, and
a tear started to my eye. That one word recalled  me back, at once,
to home, to my particular woes--to all that I could have wished
banished for ever, even in the  unwholesome stews and steams of a
gaming-house. But Kingsley did not suffer me to muse over my own
afflictions. He did not seem to hear the murmuring exclamation of
my lips. He continued:--

"I have no mysteries from you, and you need, as well as  deserve,
an explanation. All shall be made clear to you. The reason of this
wallet, and another matter which staggered you quite as much--my
audacious bet of a cool hundred--your own disconsolate hundred--as
a first stake! I have no doubt you thought me mad when you heard
me."

I confessed as much. He laughed.

"As I tell you, I had studied my game beforehand, even in its
smallest details. By this time, I knew something of the play of
most gamblers, and of Mr. Latour Cleveland, in  particular. These
people do not risk themselves for trifles. They play fairly enough
when the temptation is small. They cheat only when the issues are
great. I am speaking now of gamesters  on the big figure, not of
the petty chapmen who pule over their pennies and watch the exit
of a Mexican, with the feelings of one who sees the last wave of a
friend's handkerchief going upon the high seas. My big wallet and
my hundred dollar bet, were parts of the same system. The heavy
stake at the beginning led to the inference that I had corresponding
resources.  My big wallet lying by me, conveniently and ostentatiously,
confirmed this impression. The cunning gambler was willing that I
should win awhile. His policy was to encourage me; to persuade me
on and on, by gradual stimulants, till all was at stake. Well! I
knew this. All was at stake finally, and I had then to call into
requisition all the moral strength of which I was capable, so that
eye and lip and temper should not fail me at those moments when I
would need the address and agency of all.

"The task has been an irksome one; the trial absolutely painful.
But I should have been ashamed, once commencing the undertaking,
not to have succeeded. He, too, was not  impregnable. I found out
his particular weakness. He was a vain man; vain of his bearing,
which he deemed aristocratic; his person, which he considered very
fine. I played with these vanities. Failing to excite him on the
subject of the game, I made HIMSELF my subject. I chattered with
him freely; so as to prompt him to fancy that I was praising his
style, air,  appearance; anon, by some queer jibe, making him half
suspicious that I was quizzing him. My frequent laughter, judiciously
disposed, helped this effect; and, to a certain extent, I  succeeded.
He became nervous, and was excited, though you may not have seen
it. I saw it in the change of his complexion, which became suddenly
quite bilious. I found, too, that he could only speak with some
effort, when, if you remember, before we began to play, his tongue,
though deliberate, worked pat enough. I felt my power over him
momently increase; and I sometimes won where he did not wish it.
I do verily believe that he ceased to see the very marks which he
himself had made upon the cards. Nervous agitation, on most persons,
produces a degree of blindness quite as certainly as it affects
the speech. Well, you saw the condition of our funds when you
re-appeared. I had determined to bring the business to a close.
I had marked the dice, actually before his face, while we took a
spell of rest over a bottle of porter. I had scratched them quietly
with a pin which I carried in my sleeve for that  purpose, while
he busied himself with a fidgety shuffling of the cards. My leg,
thrown over one angle of the table, partly  covered my operations,
and I worked upon the dice in my lap. You may suppose the etching
was bad enough, doing precious little credit to the art of engraving
in our country. But the thing was thoroughly done, for I had worked
myself into a rigorous sort of philosophic desperation which made
me as cool as a  cucumber. To seem to empty the contents of the
wallet into my lap was my next object, and this I succeeded in,
without his suspecting that my movement was a sham only. The purse
thus made up, I emphatically told him was all I had--this was the
truth--and then came the crisis. His trick was to be  employed
now or never. It was employed, but he had become so nervous, that
I caught a sufficient glimpse of his proceedings. I saw the slight
o'hand movement which he attempted, and--you know the rest. I regard
the money as honestly mine--so far as good morals may recognise the
honesty of getting money by gambling;--and thinking so, my dear
Clifford, I have no scruple in begging you to share it with me.
It is only fit that you, who furnished all the capital--you see I
say nothing of the wallet which should, however, be priceless in
our eyes--should derive at least a moiety of the profit.  It is
quite as much yours as mine. I beg you so to consider it."

I need not say, however, that I positively refused to accept this
offer. I would take nothing but the hundred which I had lent him,
and placed the handkerchief with all its contents into his hands.

"And now, Clifford, I must leave you. You have yet to learn another
of my secrets. I take the rail-car at  daylight in the morning. I
am off for Alabama; and considering my Texan and Mexican projects,
I leave you, perhaps, for ever."

"So soon?"

"Yes, everything is ready. There need be no delay. I have no wife
nor children to cumber me. My trunks are  already packed; my resolve
made; my last business transacted I have some lands in Alabama
which I mean to sell. This done, I am off for the great field of
performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may
wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama.
I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly
a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me
what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from
the muck-heap. Write me all about it,  Clifford, and whatever else
you can about our fools and knaves, for though I leave them without
a tear, yet, d--n 'em, I keep 'em in my memory, if it's only for
the sake of the old city whom they bedevil."

Enough of our dialogue that night. Kingsley was a fellow of every
excellent and some very noble qualities. We did not sympathize in
sundry respects, but I parted from him with  regret; not altogether
satisfied, however, that there were not some defects in that reasoning
by which he justified our  proceedings with the gamblers. I turned
from him with a sad, sick heart. In his absence the whole feeling
of my domestic doubts and difficulties rushed back upon me freshly
and with redoubled force.

"Children!" I murmured mournfully, as I recalled one of his remarks;
"children! children! these, indeed, were  blessings; but if we only
had love, truth, peace. If that damning doubt were not there!--that
wild fear, that fatal, soul-petrifying suspicion!"

I groaned audibly as I traversed the streets, and it seemed as
if the pavements groaned hollowly in answer beneath my  hurrying
footsteps. In a moment more I had absolutely forgotten the recent
strife, the strange scene, the accents of my friend; for but that
one.

"Children! children! These might bind her to me; might secure
her erring affections; might win her to love the father, when he
himself might possess no other power to tempt her to love. Ah! why
has Providence denied me the blessing of a child?"

Alas! it was not probable that Julia should ever have children. This
was the conviction of our physician. Her health and constitution
seemed to forbid the hope; and the gloomy despair under which I
suffered was increased by this reflection. Yet, even at that moment,
while thus I mused and murmured, my poor wife had been unexpectedly
and prematurely  delivered of an infant son--a tiny creature, in
whom life was but a passing gleam, as of the imperfect moonlight,
and of whom death took possession in the very instant of its birth.






CHAPTER XXXII.

SUDDEN LESSON AND NEW SUSPICIONS.





While I had been wasting the precious hours of midnight in a
gaming-house, my poor Julia had undergone the peculiar pangs of a
mother! While I had been reproaching her in my secret soul for a
want of ardency and attachment, she had been giving me the highest
proof that she possessed the warmest.  These revelations, however,
were to reach me slowly; and then, like those of Cassandra, they
were destined to encounter disbelief.

Leaving Kingsley, I turned into the street where my wife's mother
lived. But the house was shut up--the company gone.  I had not
been heedful of the progress of the hours. I looked up at the tall,
white, and graceful steeple of our ancient church, which towered
in serene majesty above us; but, in the imperfect  light I failed
to read the letters upon the dial-plate. At that moment its solemn
chimes pealed forth the hour, as if especially in answer to my quest.
How such sounds speak to the very soul at midnight! They seem the
voice from Time himself, informing, not man alone, but Eternity,
of his progress to that lone night, in which his minutes, hours,
days, and years, are equally to be swallowed up and forgotten.

Sweet had been those bells to me in boyhood. Sad were they to me
now. I had heard them ring forth merry peals on the holydays of
the nation; and peals on the day of national mourning; startling
and terrifying peals in the hour of midnight  danger and alarm;
but never till then had they spoken with such deep and searching
earnestness to the most hidden places of my soul. That 'one, two,
three, four,' which they then struck, as they severally pronounced
the thrilling monotones, seemed to convey the burden of four impressive
acts in a yet unfinished tragedy. My heart beat with a feeling of
anxiety, such as overcomes us, when we look for the curtain to rise
which is to unfold the mysterious progress of the catastrophe.

That fifth act of mine! what was it to be? Involuntarily my lips
uttered the name of William Edgerton! I started as if I had trodden
upon a viper. The denouement of the drama at once grew up before
my eyes. I felt the dagger in my grasp; I actually drew it from my
bosom. I saw the victim before me--a smile upon his lips--a fire
in his glance--an ardor, an intelligence, that looked like exulting
passion; and my own eyes grew dim. I was blinded; but, even in the
darkness, I struck with fatal precision. I felt the resistance,
I heard the groan and the falling body; and my hair rose, with a
cold, moist life of its own, upon my clammy and shrinking temples.

I recovered from the delusion. My dagger had been piercing the empty
air; but the feeling and the horror in my soul were not less real
because the deed had been one of fancy only.  The foregone conclusion
was in tny mind, and I well knew that fate would yet bring the
victim to the altar.

I know not how I reached my dwelling, but when there I was soon
brought to a sober condition of the senses. I found everything in
commotion. Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford, was there, busy in my wife's
chamber, while her husband, surly with such an interruption to his
domestic felicity, even at the threshold, was below, kicking his
heels in solemn disquietude in the parlor. The servants had been
despatched to bring her and to seek me, in the first moments of
my wife's danger. She had consciousness enough for that, and Mrs.
Delaney had summoned the physician. He too--the excellent old man,
who had assisted us in our clandestine marriage--he too was there;
sad, troubled, and regarding me with looks of apprehension and rebuke
which seemed to ask why I was abroad at that late hour, leaving my
wife under such circumstances. I could not meet his glance with a
manly eye. They brought me the dead infant--poor atom of mortality--no
longer mortal; but I turned away from the spectacle. I dared not
look upon it. It was the form of a perished hope, ended in a dream!
And such a dream! The physician gave me a brief explanation of the
condition of things.

"Your wife is very ill. It is difficult to say what will happen.
Make up your mind for the worst. She has fever--has been delirious.
But she sleeps now under the effect of some medicine I have given
her. She will not sleep long; and everything will depend upon her
wakening. She must be kept very quiet."

I asked if he could conjecture what should bring about such an
event. "Though delicate, Julia was not out of health. She had been
well during the evening when I left her."

"You have left her long. This is a late hour, Mr. Clifford, for
a young husband to be out. Nothing but matter of necessity  could
excuse--"

I interrupted him with some gravity:--

"Suppose then it was a matter of necessity--of seeming necessity,
at least."

He observed my emotion.

"Do not be angry with me. I assisted your dear wife into the world,
Clifford. I would not see her hurried out of it. She is like a
child of my own; I feel for her as such."

I said something apologetic, I know not what, and renewed my
question.

"She has been alarmed or excited, perhaps; possibly has fallen
while ascending the stair. A very slight accident will sometimes
suffice to produce such a result with a constitution such as hers.
She needs great watchfulness, Clifford; close attention, much
solicitude. She needs and deserves it, Clifford."

I saw that the old man suspected me of indifference and neglect. Alas!
whatever might be my faults in reference to my wife, indifference
was not among them. What he had said, however, smote me to the
heart. I felt like a culprit. I dared not meet his eye when, at
daylight, he took his departure, promising to return in a few hours.

My excellent mother-in-law was more capable and copious in her
details. From her I learned that Julia, though anxious to depart
for some time before, had waited for my return until the last of
her guests were about to retire. Among these happened to be Mr.
William Edgerton!"

"He offered his carriage, but Julia put off accepting for a long
time, saying you would soon return. But at last he pressed  her
so, and seeing everybody else gone, she concluded to go, and Mr.
Delaney helped her into the carriage, and Mr.  Edgerton got in too,
to see her home; and off they drove, and it was not an hour after,
when Becky (the servant-girl) came to rout us up, saying that her
mistress was dying. I hurried on my clothes, and Delaney--dear
good man--he was just as quick; and off we came, and sure enough,
we found her in a bad way, and nobody with her but the servants;
and I sent off after you, and after the doctor; and he just came
in time to help her; but she went on wofully; was very lightheaded;
talked a great deal about you; and about Mr. Edgerton; I suppose
because he had just been seeing her home; but didn't seem to know
and doesn't know to this moment what has  happened to her."

I have shortened very considerably the long story which Mrs. Delaney
made of it. Rambling as it was--full of  nonsense--with constant
references to her "dear good man," and her party, the company,
herself, her fashion, and frivolities--there was yet something to
sting and trouble me at the core of her narration. Edgerton and my
wife linger to the last--Edgerton rides home with her--he and she
in the carriage, alone, at midnight;--and then this catastrophe,
which the doctor thought was a natural consequence of some excitement
or alarm.

These facts wrought like madness in my brain. Then, too, in her
delirium she raves of HIM! Is not that  significant? True, it comes
from the lips of that malicious old woman! she, who had already
hinted to me that my wife--her daughter--was likely to be as faithless
to me as she had been to herself. Still, it is significant, even
if it be only the invention of this old woman. It showed what
she conjectured--what she thought to be a natural result of these
practices which had prompted her suspicions as well as my own.

How hot was the iron-pressure upon my brain--how keen and scorching
was that fiery arrow in my soul, when I took my place of watch
beside the unconscious form of my wife, God alone can know. If
I am criminal--if I have erred with wildest error--surely I have
struggled with deepest misery.  I have been misled by wo, not
temptation! Sore has been my struggle, sore my suffering, even in
the moment of my greatest fault and folly. Sore!---how sore!






CHAPTER XXXIII.

STILL THE CLOUD.





For three days and nights did I watch beside the sick bed of my
wife. In all this time her fate continued doubtful. I doubt if any
anxiety or attention could have exceeded mine; as it was clear to
myself that, in spite of jealousy and suspicion, my love for her
remained without diminution. Yet this watch was not maintained
without some trials far more severe and searching than those which
it produced upon the body. Her mind, wandering and purposeless, yet
spoke to mine, and  renewed all its racking doubts, and exaggerated
all its nameless fears. Her veins burned with fever. She was fitfully
delirious.  Words fell from her at spasmodic moments--strange,
incoherent words, but all full of meaning in my ears. I sat beside
the bed on one hand, while, on one occasion, her mother occupied
a seat upon that opposite. The eyes of my wife opened upon both of
us--turned from me, convulsively, with an expression, as I thought,
of disgust, then closed--while her lips, taking up their language,
poured forth a torrent of threats and reproaches.

I can not repeat her words. They rang in my ears, understood,  indeed,
but so wildly and thrillingly, that I should find it a vain task
to endeavor to remember them. She spoke of persecution, annoyance,
beyond propriety, beyond her powers of endurance. She threatened
me--for I assumed myself to be the object of her denunciation--with
the wrath of some one capable to punish--nay, to rescue her, if
need be, by violence, from the clutches of her tyrant. Then followed
another change in her course of speech. She no longer threatened or
denounced. She derided. Words of bitter scorn and loathing contempt
issued from those bright, red, burning, and always beautiful lips,
which I had never supposed could have given forth such utterance,
even if her spirit could have been  supposed capable of conceiving
it. Keen was the irony which she expressed--irony, which so well
applied to my demerits in one great respect, that I could not help
making the personal application.

"How manly and generous," she proceeded, "was this sort of persecution
of one so unprotected, so dependent, so placed, that she must even
be silent, and endure without speech or complaint, in the dread of
dangers which, however, would not light upon her head. Oh, brave
as generous!" she exclaimed, with a burst of tremendous delirium,
terminating in a shriek; "oh, brave as generous!--scarcely lion-like,
however, for the noble beast rushes upon his victim. He does not
prowl, and skulk, and sneak, watching, cat-like; crouching and base,
in stealth and darkness. Very noble, but mousing spirit!  Beware!
Do I not know you now! Fear you not that I will show your baseness,
and declare the truth, and guide other eyes to your stealthy
practice? Beware! Do not drive me into madness!"

Thus she raved. My conscience applied these stinging words of scorn,
which seemed particularly fitted to the mean suspicious watch which
I had kept upon her. I could have no thought that they were meant
for any other ears than my own, and the crimson flush upon my
cheeks was the involuntary  acknowledgment which my soul made of the
demerits of my  unmanly conduct. I fancied that Julia had detected
my espionage, and that her language had this object in reference
only. But there were other words; and, passing with unexpected
transition from the language of dislike and scorn, she now
indulged in that of love--language timidly suggestive of love, as
if its utterance were restrained by bashfulness, as if it dreaded
to be heard. Then a deep sigh followed, as if from the bottom of
her heart, succeeded by convulsive sobs, at last ending in a gushing
flood of tears.

For the space of half an hour I had been an attentive but suffering
listener to this wild raving. My pangs followed every sentence
from her lips, believing, as I did, that they were  reproachful
of myself, and associated with a now unrestrained expression of
passion for another. Gradually I had ceased, in the deep interest
which I felt, to be conscious that Mrs.  Delaney was present. I
leaned across the couch; I bent my ear down toward the lips of the
speaker, eager to drink up every feeble sound which might help to
elucidate my doubts, and subdue or confirm my suspicions. Then,
as the accumulating conviction formed itself, embodied and sharp,
like a knife, into my soul, I groaned aloud, and my teeth were
gnashed together in the bitterness of my emotion! In that moment I
caught the keen gray eyes of my mother-in-law fixed upon me, with
a jibing expression, which spoke volumes of mockery. They seemed
to say, "Ah! you have it now! The truth is forced upon you at last!
You can parry it no longer. I see the iron in your soul. I behold
and enjoy your contortions!"

Fiend language! She was something of a fiend! I started from the
bedside, and just then a flood of tears came to the relief of my
wife, and lessened the excitement of her brain.  The tears relieved
her. The paroxysm passed away. She turned her eyes upon me, and
closed them involuntarily, while a deep crimson tint passed over
her cheek, a blush, which seemed to me to confirm substantially
the tenor of that language in which, while delirious, she had
so constantly indulged.  It did not lessen the seeming shame and
dislike which her countenance appeared at once to embody, that
a soft sweet smile was upon her lips at the same moment, and she
extended to me her hand with an air of confidence which staggered
and surprised me.

"What is the matter, dear husband? And you here, mother?  Have I
been sick? Can it be?"

"Hush!" said the mother. "You have been sick ever since the night
of my marriage."

"Ah!" she exclaimed with an air of anxiety and pain, while pressing
her hand upon her eyes, "Ah! that night!"

A shudder shook her frame as she uttered this simple and
short sentence. Simple and short as it was, it seemed to possess
a strange signification. That it was associated in her mind with
some circumstances of peculiar import, was sufficiently obvious.
What were these circumstances? Ah! that question!  I ran over in
my thought, in a single instant, all that array of events, on that
fatal night, which could by any possibility distress me, and confirm
my suspicions. That waltz with Edgerton--that long conference between
them--that lonely ride together from the home of Mrs. Delaney,
in a close carriage--and the subsequent disaster--her unconscious
ravings, and the strong, strange language which she employed,
clearly full of meaning as it was, but in which I could discover
one meaning only! all these topics of doubt and agitation passed
through my brain in consecutive order, and with a compact arrangement
which seemed as conclusive as any final issue. I said nothing; but
what I might have said, was written in my face. Julia regarded me
with a gaze of painful anxiety. What she read in my looks must have
been troublously impressive.  Her cheeks grew paler as she looked.
Her eyes wandered from me vacantly, and I could see her thin soft
lips quivering faintly like rose-leaves which an envious breeze
has half separated from the parent-flower. Mrs. Delaney watched
our mutual faces, and I left the room to avoid her scrutiny. I only
re-entered it with the physician. He administered medicine to my
wife.

"She will do very well now, I think," he said to me when leaving
the house; "but she requires to be treated very tenderly. All
causes of excitement must be kept from her. She needs soothing,
great care, watchful anxiety. Clifford, above all, you should leave
her as little as possible. This old woman, her mother, is no fit
companion for her--scarcely a pleasant one. I do not mean to reproach
you; ascribe what I say to a real desire to serve and make you
happy; but let me tell you that Mrs. Delaney has intimated to me
that you neglect your wife, that you leave her very much at night;
and she further intimates, what I feel assured can not well be the
case, that you have fallen into other and much more evil habits."

"The hag!"

"She is all that, and loves you no better now than before.  Still,
it is well to deprive such people of their scandal-mongering, of
the meat for it at least. I trust, Clifford, for your own sake,
that you were absent of necessity on Wednesday night."

"It will be enough for me to think so, sir," was my reply.

"Surely, if you DO think so; but I am too old a man, and too old
a friend of your own and wife's family, to justify you in taking
exception to what I say. I hope you do not neglect this dear child,
for she is one too sweet, too good, too gentle, Clifford, to be
subjected to hard usage and neglect. I think her one of earth's
angels--a meek creature, who would never think or do wrong, but
would rather suffer than complain. I sincerely hope, for your own
sake, as well as hers, that you truly estimate her worth."

I could not answer the good old man, though I was angry with him.
My conscience deprived me of the just power to give utterance to
my anger. I was silent, and he forbore any further reference to
the subject. Shortly after he took his leave, and I re-ascended the
stairs. Wearing slippers, I made little noise, and at the door of
my wife's chamber I caught a sentence from the lips of Mrs. Delaney,
which made me forget everything that the doctor had been saying.

"But Julia, there must have been some accident--something must
have happened. Did your foot slip? perhaps, in getting out of the
carriage, or in going up stairs, or--. There must have been something
to frighten you, or hurt you. What was it?"

I paused; my heart rose like a swelling, struggling mass in the
gorge of my throat. I listened for the reply. A deep sigh followed;
and then I heard a reluctant, faint utterance of the single word,
"Nothing!"

"Nothing?" repeated the old lady. "Surely, Julia, there was something.
Recollect yourself. You know you rode home with Mr. Edgerton. It
was past one o'clock--"

"No more--no more, mother. There was nothing--nothing that I
recollect. I know nothing of what happened. Hardly know where I am
now."

I felt a momentary pang that I had lingered at the entrance.
Besides, there was no possibility that she would have revealed
anything to the inquisitive old woman. Perhaps, had this been
probable, I should not have felt the scruple and the pang.  The
very questions of Mrs. Delaney were as fully productive of evil
in my mind, as if Julia had answered decisively on every topic. I
entered the room, and Mrs. Delaney, after some little lingering,
took her departure, with a promise to return again  soon. I paced
the chamber with eyes bent upon the floor.

"Come to me, Edward-come sit beside me." Such were  the gentle
words of entreaty which my wife addressed to me.  Gentle words, and
so spoken--so sweetly, so frankly, as if  from the very sacredest
chamber of her heart. Could it be  that guilt also harbored in that
very heart--that it was the  language of cunning on her lips--the
cunning of the serpent?  Ah! how can we think that with serpent-like
cunning, there should be dove-like guilelessness? My soul revolted
at the idea.  The sounds of the poor girl's voice sounded like
hissing in my ears.  I sat beside her as she requested, and almost
started, as I felt her fingers playing with the hair upon my temples.

"You are cold to me, dear husband; ah! be not cold. I have  narrowly
escaped from death. So they tell me--so I feel! Be  not cold to
me. Let me not think that I am burdensome to you."

"Why should you think so, Julia?"

"Ah! your words answer your question, and speak for me.  They are
so few--they have no warmth in them; and then, you leave me so
much, dear husband--why, why do you leave me?"

"You do not miss me much, Julia."

"Do I not! ah! you do me wrong. I miss nothing else but you.  I
have all that I had when we were first married--all but my husband!"

"Do not deceive yourself, Julia; these fine speeches do not  deceive
me. I am afraid that the love of woman is a very  light thing. It
yields readily to the wind. It does not keep in one direction long,
any more than the vane on the house-top."

"You do NOT think so, Edward. Such is not MY love. Alas!  I know
not how to make it known to you, husband, if it be not  already
known; and yet it seems to me that you do not know it,  or, if
you do, that you do not care much about it. You seem to  care very
little whether I love you or not."

I exclaimed bitterly, and with the energy of deep feeling.

"Care little! _I_ care little whether you love me or no! Psha!
Julia, you must think me a fool!"

It did seem to me a sort of mockery, knowing my feelings as  _I_
did--knowing that all my folly and suffering came from the  very
intensity of my passion--that I should be reproached, by  its
object, with indifference! I forgot, that, as a cover for my
suspicion, I had been striving with all the industry of art to put
on the appearance of indifference. I did not give myself  sufficient
credit for the degree of success with which I had  labored, or I
might have suddenly arrived at the gratifying  conclusion, that,
while I was impressed and suffering with  the pangs of jealousy,
my wife was trembling with fear that she  had for ever lost
my affections. My language, the natural utterance  of my real
feelings, was not true to the character I had assumed. It filled
the countenance of the suffering woman  with consternation. She
shrunk from me in terror. Her hand  was withdrawn from my neck, as
she tremulously replied:--

"Oh, do not speak to me in such tones. Do not look so harshly upon
me. What have I done?"

"Ay! ay!" I muttered, turning away.

She caught my hand.

"Do not go--do not leave me, and with such a look! Oh!  husband,
I may not live long. I feel that I have had a very  narrow escape
within these few days past. Do not kill me with  cruel looks; with
words, that, if cruel from you, would sooner  kill than the knife
in savage hands. Oh! tell me in what have  I offended? What is it
you think? For what am I to blame?  What do you doubt--suspect?"

These questions were asked hurriedly, apprehensively, with  a
look of vague terror, her cheoks whitening as she spoke, her  eyes
darting wildly into mine, and her lips remaining parted after she
had spoken.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, keenly watching her. Her glance sank  beneath
my gaze. I put my hand upon her own.

"What do I suspect I What should I suspect? Ha!"--Here I arrested
myself. My ardent anxiety to know the truth led me to forget my
caution; to exhibit a degree of eagerness,  which might have proved
that I did suspect and seriously. To  exhibit the possession of
jealousy was to place her upon her  guard--such was the suggestion
of that miserable policy by  which I had been governed--and defeat
the impression of that feeling of perfect security and indifference,
which I had been  so long striving to awaken. I recovered myself,
with this  thought, in season to re-assume this appearance.

"Your mind still wanders, Julia. What should I suspect?  and whom?
You do not suppose me to be of a suspicious nature, do you?"

"Not altogether--not always--no! But, of course, there is nothing
to suspect. I do not know what I say. I believe I do wander."

This reply was also spoken hurriedly, but with an obvious  effort
at composure. The eagerness with which she seized upon  my words,
insisting upon the absence of any cause of suspicion,  and ascribing to
her late delirium, the tacit admissions which her  look and language
had made, I need not say, contributed to  strengthen my suspicions,
and to confirm all the previous conjectures of my jealous spirit.

"Be quiet," I said with an air of sang froid. "Do not worry yourself
in this manner. You need sleep. Try for it, while I leave you."

"Do not leave me; sit beside me, dear Edward. I will sleep so much
better when you are beside me."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, believe me. Ah! that I could always keep you beside me!"

"What! you are for a new honeymoon?" I said this in a TONE of
merriment, which Heaven knows, I little felt.

"Do not speak of it so lightly, Edward. It is too serious a  matter.
Ah! that you would always remain with me; that you would never
leave me."

"Pshaw! What sickly tenderness is this! Why, how could I earn my
bread or yours?"

"I do not mean that you should neglect your business, but  that
when business is over, you should give me all your time as  you
used to. Remember, how pleasantly we passed the  evenings after
our marriage. Ah! how could you forget?"

"I do not, Julia."

"But you do not care for them. We spend no such evenings now!"

"No! but it is no fault of mine!" I said gloomily; then, interrupting
her answer, as if dreading that she might utter  some simple but
true remark, which might refute the interpretation which my words
conveyed, that the fault  was hers, I enjoined silence upon her.

"You scarcely speak in your right mind yet, Julia. Be quiet,
therefore, and try to sleep."

"Well, if you will sit beside me."

"I will do so, since you wish for it; but where's the need?"

"Ah! do not ask the need, if you still love me," was all she
said, and looked at me with such eyes--so tearful, bright, so sad,
soliciting--that, though I did not less doubt, I could no longer
deny.  I resumed the seat beside her. She again placed her fingers
in my hair, and in a little while sunk into a profound slumber,
only broken by an occasional sob, which subsided into a sigh.

Were she guilty--such was the momentary suggestion of the  good
angel--could she sleep thus?--thus quietly, confidingly,  beside the
man she had wronged--her fingers still paddling in  his hair--her
sleeping eyes still turning in the direction of his face?

To the clear, open mind, the suggestion would have had the  force
of a conclusive argument; but mine was no longer a clear,  open
mind. I had the disease of the blind heart upon me, and  all things
came out upon my vision as through a glass, darkly. The evil one
at my elbow jeered when the good angel spoke.

"Fool! does she not see that she can blind you still!" Then, in
the vanity and vexation of my spirit, I mused upon it further,  and
said to myself:--"Ay, but she will find, ere many days, that I am
no longer to be blinded!" The scales  were never thicker upon my
sight than when I boasted in this foolish wise.






CHAPTER XXXIV.

A FATHER'S GRIBFS.





She continued to improve, but slowly. Her organization  was always
very delicate. Her frame was becoming thin,  almost to meagreness;
and this last disaster, whatever might  be its cause, had contributed
still more to weaken a constitution  which education and nature had
never prepared for much hard  encounter. But, though I saw these
proofs of feebleness--of  a feebleness that might have occasioned
reasonable apprehensions  of premature decay, and possibly very rapid
decline--there were little  circumstances constantly occurring--looks
shown, words spoken--which kept up the irritation of my soul,
and prevented me from doing justice to her enfeebled condition.
My sympathies were absorbed in  my suspicions. My heart was the
debateable land of self. The blind passion which enslaved it, I
need scarce say, was of a nature so potent, that it could easily
impregnate, with its own color, all the objects of its  survey.
Seen through the eyes of suspicion, there is no truth, no virtue;
the smile is that of the snake; the tear, that of the crocodile;
the assurance, that of the traitor. There is no act, look, word,
of the suspected object,  however innocent, which, to the diseased
mind of jealousy, does not  suggest conjectures and arguments,
all conclusive or confirmatory of its  doubts and fears. It is not
necessary to say that I shrunk from Julia's  endearment, requited
her smiles with indifference; and, though I did not  avoid her
presence--I could not, in the few days when her case was doubtful--yet
exhibited, in all respects, the conduct of one who was in a sort
of Coventry.

But one fact may be stated--one of many--which seemed to give
a sanction to my suspicions, will help to justify my course, and
which, at the time, was terribly conclusive, to my reason, of the
things which I feared. She spoke audibly the name of Edgerton,
twice, thrice, while she slept beside me, in tones very faint, it
is true, but still distinct enough. The faintness of her utterance,
gave the tones an emphasis of tenderness which perhaps  was
unintended. Twice, thrice, that fatal name; and then, what a sigh
from the full volume of a surcharged heart. Let any one conceive my
situation--with my feelings, intense on all subjects--my suspicions
already so thoroughly awakened; and then fancy what they must have
been on hearing that utterance; from the unguarded lips of slumber;
from the wife lying beside him; and of the name of him on whom
suspicion already rested.  I hung over the sleeper, breathless,
almost gasping, finally, in the effort to contain my breath--in
the hope to hear something, however slight, which was to confirm
finally, or finally end my doubts. I heard no more; but did
more seem to be necessary?  What jealous heart had not found this
sufficiently conclusive?  And that deep-drawn sigh, sobbing, as
of a heart breaking with the deferred hope, and the dream of youth
baffled at one sweeping,  severing blow.

I rose. I could no longer subdue my emotions to the necessary
degree of watchfulness. I trod the chamber till daylight.  Then,
I dressed myself and went out into the street. I had no distinct
object. A vague persuasion only, that I must do something--that
something must be done--that, in short, it was necessary to force
this exhausting drama to its fit conclusion.  Of course William
Edgerton was my object. As yet, how to bring about the issue, was
a problem which my mind was not prepared to solve. Whether I was
to stab or shoot him; whether we were to go through the tedious
processes of the duel; to undergo the fatigue of preliminaries,
or to shorten them by sudden rencounter; these were topics which
filled my thoughts confusedly; upon which I had no clear conviction;
not because I did not attempt to fix upon a course, but from a sheer
inability  to think at all. My whole brain was on fire; a chaotic
mass, such as rushes up from the unstopped vents of the volcano--fire,
stones, and lava--but dense smoke enveloping the whole.

In this frame of mind I hurried through the streets. The shops were
yet unopened. The sun was just about to rise.  There was a humming
sound, like that of distant waters murmuring  along the shore, which
filled my ears; but otherwise everything was silent. Sleep had not
withdrawn with night from his stealthy watch upon the household. It
seemed to me that I alone could not sleep. Even guilt--if my wife
were really guilty--even guilt could sleep. I left her sleeping,
and how sweetly! as if the dream which had made her sob and sigh,
had been succeeded by others, that made all smiles again. I could
not sleep, and yet, who, but a few months before, had been possessed
of such fair prospects of peace and prosperity?  Fortune held
forth sufficient promise; fame--so far as fame can be accorded by
a small community--had done something toward  giving me an honorable
repute; and love--had not love been seemingly as liberal and prompt
as ever young passions could have desired? I was making money; I was
getting reputation; the only woman whom I had ever loved or sought,
was mine; and mine, too, in spite of opposition and discouragements
which would have chilled the ardor of half the lovers in the world.
And yet I was not happy. It takes so small an amount of annoyance
to produce misery in the heart of selfesteem,  when united with
suspicion, that it was scarcely possible  that I should be happy.
Such a man has a taste for self-torture; as one troubled with an
irritating humor, is never at rest, unless he is tearing the flesh
into a sore; he may then rest as he may.

I took the way to my office. It was not often that I went thither
before breakfast. But William Edgerton had been in the habit of
doing so. He lived in the neighborhood, and his father had taught
him this habit during the period when he was employed in studying
the profession. It might be that I should find him there on the
present occasion. Such was my notion.  What farther thought I had
I know not; but a vague suggestion that, in that quiet hour--there--without
eye to see, or hand to interpose, I might drag from his heart the
fearful secret--I might compel confession, take my vengeance, and
rid myself finally of that cruel agony which was making me its
miserable puppet. Crude, wild notions these, but very natural.

I turned the corner of the street. The window of my office was open.
"He is then there," I muttered to myself; and my teeth clutched each
other closely. I buttoned my coat. My heart was swelling. I looked
around me, and up to the windows.  The street was very silent--the
grave not more so. I strode rapidly across, threw open the door
of the office which stood ajar, and beheld, not the person whom I
sought, but his venerable father.

The sight of that white-headed old man filled me with a sense of
shame and degradation. What had he not done for me? How great his
assistance, how kind his regards, how liberal his offices. He had
rescued me from the bondage of poverty. He had put forth the hand
of help, with a manly grasp of succor at the very moment when it was
most needed; had helped to make me what I was; and, for all these,
I had come to put to death his only son. A revulsion of feeling
took place within my bosom. These thoughts were instantaneous--a
sort of lightning-flash from the moral world of thought. I stood
abashed; brought to my senses in an instant, and was scarcely able
to conceal my discomfiture and confusion. I stood before him with
the feeling, and must have worn the look, of a culprit. Fortunately,
he did not perceive my confusion. Poor old man! Cares of his
own--cares of a father, too completely occupied his mind, to suffer
his senses to discharge their duties with freedom.

"I am glad to see you, Clifford, though I did not expect it.  Young
men of the present day are not apt to rise so early."

"I must confess, sir, it is not my habit."

"Better if it were. The present generation, it seems to me, may be
considered more fortunate, in some respects, than the past, though
they are scarcely wiser. They seem to me exempt from such necessities
as encountered their fathers. Their tasks are fewer--their labor
is lighter--"

"Are their cares the lighter in consequence?" I demanded.

"That is the question," he replied. "For myself, I think not. They
grow gray the sooner. They have fewer tasks, but heavier troubles.
They live better in some respects. They have luxuries which, in
my day, youth were scarcely permitted to enjoy; and which, indeed,
were not often enjoyed by age.  But they have little peace:-and,
look at the bankruptcies of our city. They are without number--they
produce no shame--do not seem to affect the credit of the parties;
and, certainly, in no respect diminish their expenditures. They live
as if the present day were the last they had to live; and living
thus, they must live dishonestly. It is inevitable. The moral sense
is certainly in a much lower condition in our country, than I have
ever known it. What can be the reason?"

"The facility of procuring money, perhaps. Money is the most
dangerous of human possessions."

"There can be none other. Clifford!"

"Sir."

"I change the subject abruptly. Have you seen my son lately,
Clifford?"

The question was solemnly, suddenly spoken. It staggered me. What
could it mean? That there was a meaning in it--a deep meaning--was
unquestionable. But of what nature?  Did the venerable man suspect
my secret--could he by any chance conjecture my purpose? It is
one quality of a mind not exactly satisfied of the propriety of
its proceedings, to be suspicious  of all things and persons--to
fancy that the consciousness  which distresses itself, is also the
consciousness of its neighbors. Hence the blush upon the cheek--the
faltering accents--the tremulousncss of limb, and feebleness of
movement.  For a moment after the old man spoke--troubled with this
consciousness, I could not answer. But my self-esteem came to my
relief--nay, it had sufficed to conceal my disquiet.  My looks were
subdued to a seeming calm--my voice was un-broken, while I answered:--

"I have seen him within a few days, sir--a few nights ago we were
at Mrs. Delaney's party. But why the question, sir?--what troubles
you?"

"Strange that you have not seen! Did you not remark the  alteration
in his appearance?"

"I must confess, sir, I did not; but, perhaps, I did not remark
him closely among the crowd."

"He is altered--terribly altered, Clifford. It is very strange that
you have not seen it. It is visible to myself--his mother--all the
family, and some of its friends We tremble for his life. He is a
mere skeleton--moves without life or animation, feebly--his cheeks
are pale and thin, his lips white, and his eyes have an appearance
which, beyond anything besides, distresses  me--either lifelessly
dull, or suddenly flushed up with an expression of wildness, which
occurs so suddenly as to distress us with the worst apprehensions
of his sanity."

"Indeed, sir!" I exclaimed with natural surprise.

"So it appears to us, his mother and myself, though, as it has
escaped your eyes, I trust that we have exaggerated it. That we have
not imagined all of it, however, we have other proofs to show. His
manner is changed of late, and most of his habits.  The change is
only within the last six months; so suddenly made that it has been
forced upon our sight. Once so frank, he is now reserved and shrinking
to the last degree; speaks little; is reluctant to converse; and,
I am compelled to believe, not only avoids my glance, but fears
it."

"It is very strange that he should do so, sir. I can think of no
reason why he should avoid YOUR glance. Can you sir?  Have you any
suspicions?"

"I have."

"Ha! have you indeed?"

The old man drew his chair closer to me, and, putting his hand on
mine, with eyes in which the tears, big, slow-gathering, began to
fill--trickling at length, one by one, through the venerable furrows
of his cheeks--he replied in faltering accents:--

"A terrible suspicion, Clifford. I am afraid he drinks; that he
frequents gambling-houses; that, in short, he is about to be lost
to us, body and soul, for ever."

Deep and touching was the groan that followed from that old man's
bosom. I hastened to relieve him.

"I am sure, sir, that you do your son great injustice. I cannot
conceive it possible that he should have fallen into these habits"

"He is out nightly--late--till near daylight. But two hours ago he
returned home. Let me confess to you, Clifford, what I should be
loath to confess to anybody else. I followed him last night. He
took the path to the suburbs, and I kept him in sight almost till
he reached your dwelling. Then I lost him.  He moved too rapidly
then for my old limbs, and disappeared among those groves of wild
orange that fill your neighborhood.  I searched them as closely as
I could in the imperfect starlight, but could see nothing of him.
I am told that there are gambling-houses, notorious enough, in the
suburbs just beyond you.  I fear that he found shelter in these--that
he finds shelter in them nightly."

I scarcely breathed while listening to the unhappy father's,
narrative. There was one portion of it to which I need not refer
the reader, as calculated to confirm my own previous convictions.
I struggled with my feelings, however, in respect for his. I kept
them down and spoke.

"In this one fact, Mr. Edgerton, I see nothing to alarm you.  Your
son may have been engaged far more innocently than you imagine. He
is young--you know too well the practices of young men. As for the
drinking he is perhaps the very last person whom I should suspect
of excess. I have always thought his temperance unquestionable."

"Until recently, I should have had no fears myself. But connecting
one fact with another--his absence all night, nightly--the
stealthiness with which he departs from home after the family has
retired--the stealthiness with which he returns just before day--his
visible agitation when addressed--and, oh Clifford! worst of all
signs, the shrinking of his eye beneath mine and his mother's--the
fear to meet, and the effort to avoid us--these are the signs which
most pain me, and excite my apprehensions But look at his face and
figure also. The haggard misery of the one, sign of sleeplessness
and late watching--the attenuated feebleness of the other, showing
the effects of some practices, no matter of what particular sort,
which are undermining his constitution, and rapidly tending to
destroy him. If you but look in his eye as I have done, marking
its wildness, its wandering, its sensible expression of shame--you
can hardly fail to think with me that something is morally wrong.
He is guilty--"

"He is guilty!"

I echoed the words of the father, involuntarily. They struck the
chord of conviction in my own soul, and seemed to me the language
of a judgment.

"Ha! You know it, then?" cried the old man. "Speak!  Tell me,
Clifford--what is his folly? What is the particular guilt and shame
into which he has fallen?"

I knew not that I had spoken until I heard these words.  The
agitation of the father was greatly increased. Truly, his sorrows
were sad to look upon. I answered him:--

"I simply echoed your words, sir--I am ignorant, as I said before;
and, indeed, I may venture, I think, with perfect safety, to assure
you that gaming and drink have nothing to do with his appearance
and deportment. I should rather suspect him of some improper--SOME
GUILTY CONNECTION--"

I felt that, in the utterance of these words, I too had become
excited. My voice did not rise, but I knew that it had acquired
an intenseness which I as quickly endeavored to suppress.  But the
father had already beheld the expression in my face, and perhaps
the sudden change in my tones grated harshly upon his ear. I could
see that his looks became more eager and inquiring.  I could note
a greater degree of apprehension and anxiety in his eyes. I subdued
myself, though not without some effort.

"William Edgerton may be erring, sir--that I do not deny, for I have
seen too little of him of late to say anything of his proceedings;
but I am very confident when I say that excess in liquor can not
be a vice of his; and as for gaming, I should fancy that he was the
last person in the world likely to be tempted to the indulgence of
such a practice."

The father shook his head mournfully.

"Why this shame?--this fear? Besides, Clifford, what we know of
our son makes us equally sure that women have nothing to do with
his excesses. But these conjectures help us nothing. Clifford, I
must look to you."

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"He is my son, my only son--the care of many sad, sleepless hours.
It was his mother's hope that he would be our solace in the weary
and the sad ones. You can not understand yet how much the parent
lives in the child--how many of his hopes settle there. William has
already disappointed us in our ambition. He will be nothing that
we hoped him to be; but of this I complain not. But that he should
become base, Clifford; a night-prowler in the streets; a hanger-on
of stews and gaming-houses;  a brawler at an alehouse bar; a man
to skulk through life and society; down-looking in his father's
sight; despised in that of the community--oh! these are the cruel,
the dreadful apprehensions!"

"But you know not that he is any of these."

"True; but there is something grievously wrong when the  son dares
not meet the eye of a parent with manly fearlessness;  when he
looks without joyance at the face of a mother, and  shrinks from
her endearments as if he felt that he deserved  them not. William
Edgerton is miserable; that is evident enough.  Now, misery does
not always imply guilt; but, in his case, what  else should it
imply! He has had no misfortunes. He is independent;  he is beloved
by his parents, and by his friends; he has had no denial of the
affections; in short, there is no way of accounting for his conduct
or appearance, but by the supposition that he has fallen into
vicious habits.  Whatever these habits are, they are killing him.
He is a mere skeleton;  his whole appearance is that of a man
running a rapid course of dissipation  which can only advance in
shame, and terminate in death. Clifford, if I have  ever served
you in the hour of your need, serve me in this of mine. Save  my
son for me. Bring him back from his folly; restore him, if you
can, to  peace and purity. See him, will you not? Seek him out;
see him; probe his  secret; and tell me what can be done to rescue
him before it be too late."

"Really, Mr. Edgerton, you confound me. What can I do?"

"I know not. Every thing, perhaps! I confess I can not counsel
you.  I can not even suggest how you should begin. You must judge
for yourself. You must think and make your approaches according to
your own judgment. Remember, that it is not in his behalf only.
Think of the father, the mother! our hope, our all is at stake. I
speak  to you in the language of a child, Clifford. I am a child
in this. This  boy has been the apple of our eyes. It is our sight
for which I seek  your help. I know your good sense and sagacity.
I know that you  can trace out his secret when I should fail. My
feelings would blind  me to the truth. They might lead me to use
language which would drive him from me. I leave it all to you. I
know not who else can do for me half so well in a matter of this
sort.  Will you undertake it?"

Could I refuse? This question was discussed in all its bearings,
in a few lightning-like progresses of thought. I felt all its
difficulties--anticipated the annoyances to which it would subject
me, and the degree of self-forbearance which it would necessarily
require; yet, when I looked on the noble old gentleman  who sat
beside me--his gray hairs, his pleading looks, the recollection of
the deep debt of gratitude which I owed him--I put my hand in his;
I could resist no longer.

"I will try!" was the brief answer which I made him.

"God bless, God speed you!" he exclaimed, squeezing my hand with a
pressure that said everything, and we separated; he for his family,
and I for that new task which I had undertaken.  How different from
my previous purpose! I was now to seek to save the person whom I
had set forth that morning with the purpose (if I had any purpose)
to destroy. What a volume made up of contradictions and inconsistencies,
strangely bound together, is the moral world of man!






CHAPTER XXXV.

APPLICATON OF "THE QUESTION."





But how to save him? How to approach him? How to keep down my
own sense of wrong, my own feeling of misery, while representing
the wishes and the feelings of that good old man--that venerable
father? These were questions to afflict, to confound me! Still,
I was committed; I must do what I had promised; undertake it at
least; and the conviction that such a task was to be the severest
trial of my manliness, was a conviction that necessarily helped to
strengthen me to go through with it like a man,

What I had heard from Mr. Edgerton in relation to his son, though
new, and somewhat surprising to myself, had not altered, in any
respect, my impressions on the subject of his conduct toward, or
with, my wife. Indeed, it rather served to confirm them. I could
have told the old man, that, in losing all traces of his son in
the neighborhood of my dwelling the night when he pursued him, he
had the most conclusive proofs that he had gone to no gaming-houses.
But where did he go? That was a question for myself. Had he entered
my premises, and hidden himself amidst the foliage where I had myself
so often harbored, while my object had been the secret inspection
of my household? Could it be that he had loitered there during the
last few nights of my wife's illness, in the vain hope of seeing
me take my departure? This was the conclusion  which I reached,
and with it came the next thought that he would revisit the spot
again that night. Ha! that thought!  "Let him come!" I muttered to
myself. "I will endeavor to be in readiness!"

But, surely, the father was grievously in error; his parental
fear, alone, had certainly drawn the picture of his son's reduced
and miserable condition. I had seen nothing of this. I had observed
that he was shy, incommunicative--seeking to avoid me, as, according
to their showing, he had striven to avoid his parents. So far our
experience had been the same. But I had totally failed to perceive
the marks of suffering or of sin which the vivid feelings of the
father on this subject had insisted were so apparent. I had seen
in Edgerton only the false friend, the traitor, stealing like a
serpent to my bower, to beguile from my side the only object which
made it dear to me. I could see in him only the exulting seducer,
confident in his ability, artful in his endeavors, winning in his
accomplishments, and striving with practised industry of libertinism,
in the prosecution of his cruel schemes. I could see the grace of
his bearing, the ease of his manner, the symmetry of his person,
the neatness of his costume, the superiority of his dancing, the
insinuation of his address. I could see these only! That he looked
miserable--that he was thin to meagreness, I had not seen.

Yet, even were it so, what could this prove, as the father had
conclusively shown, but guilt. Poverty could not trouble him--he
had never been an unrequited lover. He had gone along the stream of
society, indifferent to the lures of beauty, and with a bark that
had always appeared studiously to keep aloof from the shores or
shoals of matrimony. If he was miserable, his misery could only come
from misconduct, not from misfortune.  It was a misery engendered
by guilt, and what was that guilt? I KNEW that he did not drink;
and was not his course in regard to Kingsley, as narrated by that
person on the night when we went to the gaming-house together--was
not that sufficient to show that he was no gamester, unless he
happened  to be one of the most bare faced of all canting hypocrites,
which I could not believe him to be. What remained, but that my
calculations were right? It was guilt that was sinking  him, body
and soul, so that his eye no longer dared to look upward--so that
his ear shrunk from the sounds of those voices which, even in the
language of kindness, were still speaking to him in the severest
language of rebuke. And whom did that guilt concern more completely
than myself?  Say that the father was to lose his son, his only
son--what was my loss, what was my shame! and upon whom should
the curse most fully and finally fall, if not upon the wrong-doer,
though it so happened that the ruin of the guilty brought with it
overthrow to the innocent scarcely less complete!

The extent of that guilt of Edgerton?

On this point all was a wilderness, vague, inconclusive, confused
and crowded within my understanding. I believed that he had
approached my wife with evil designs--I believed, without a doubt,
that he had passed the boundaries of propriety in his intercourse
with her; but I believed not that she had fallen!  No! I had an
instinctive confidence in her purity, that rendered  it apparently
impossible that she should lapse into the grossness  of illicit love.
What, then, was my fear? That she did love him, though, struggling
with the tendency of her heart, she had not yielded in the struggle.
I believed that his grace, beauty, and accomplishments--his
persevering attention--his similar tastes--had succeeded in making
an impression upon her soul which had effectually eradicated mine.
I believed that his attentions  were sweet to her--that she had
not the strength to reject them; and, though she may have proved
herself too virtuous  to yield, she had not been sufficiently strong
to repulse him with virtuous resentment.

That Edgerton had not succeeded, did not lessen HIS offence.  The
attempt was an indignity that demanded atonement--that justified
punishment equally severe with that which should have followed a
successful prosecution of his purpose. Women are by nature weak.
They are not to be tempted. He who, knowing their weakness, attempts
their overthrow by that medium, is equally cowardly and criminal.
I could not doubt that he had made this attempt; but now it seemed
necessary that I should suspend my indignation, in obedience with
what appeared to be a paramount duty. A selfish reasoning now
suggested compliance with this duty as a mean for procuring better
intelligence than I already possessed. I need not say that the
doubt was the pain in my bosom. I felt, in the words of the cold
devil Iago, those "damned minutes" of him "who dotes, yet doubts,
suspects, yet strongly loves."

The shapeless character of my fears and suspicions did not by any
means lessen their force and volume. On the contrary it caused
them to loom out through the hazy atmosphere of the imagination,
assuming aspects more huge and terrible, in  consequence of their
very indistinctness; as the phantom shapes along the mountains of
the Brocken, gathering and scowling in the morning or the evening
twilight. To obtain more precise knowledge--to be able to subject
to grasp and measure the  uncertain phantoms which I feared--was,
if not to reduce their proportions, at least to rid me of that
excruciating suspense, in determining what to do, which was the
natural result of my present ignorance.

With some painstaking, I was enabled to find and force an interview
with Edgerton that very day. He made an effort to elude me--such
an effort as he could make without allowing his object to be seen.
But I was not to be baffled. Having once determined upon my course,
I was a puritan in the  inveteracy with which I persevered in it.
But it required no small struggle to approach the criminal, and
so utterly to subdue my own sense of wrong, my suspicions and my
hostility, as to keep in sight no more than the wishes and fears of
the father. I have already boasted of my strength in some respects,
even while exposing my weaknesses in others. That I could persuade
Edgerton and my wife, equally, of my indifference, even at the
moment when I was most agonized by my doubts of their purity, is
a sufficient proof that I possessed a certain sort of strength. It
was a moral strength, too, which could conceal the pangs inflicted
by the vulture, even when it was preying upon the vitals of the
best affections and the dearest hopes of the heart. It was necessary
that I should put all this strength in requisition, as well to do
what was required by the father, as to pierce, with keen eye, and
considerate question, to the secret soul of the witness. I must
assume the blandest manner of our youthful friendship; I must say
kind things, and say them with a certain frank unconsciousness. I
must use the language of a good fellow--a sworn companion--who is
anxious to do justice to my friend's father, and yet had no notion
that my friend himself was doing the smallest thing to justify the
unmeasured fears of the fond old man. Such was my cue at first. I
am not so sure that I pursued it to the end; but of this hereafter.

My attention having been specially drawn to the personal appearance
of William Edgerton, I was surprised, if not absolutely shocked,
to see that the father had scarcely exaggerated the misery of his
condition. He was the mere shadow of his former self. His limbs,
only a year before, had been rounded even to plumpness. They were
now sharp and angular. His skin was pale, his looks haggard; and
that apprehensive shrinking of the eye, which had called forth
the most keen expressions of fear and suspicion from the father's
lips, was the prominent characteristic which commanded my attention
during our brief interview. His eye, after the first encounter,
no longer rose to mine. Keenly did I watch his face, though for an
instant only. A sudden hectic flush mantled its paleness. I could
perceive a nervous muscular movement about his mouth, and he slightly
started when I spoke.

"Edgerton," I said, with tones of good-humored reproach, "there's
no finding you now-a-days. You have the invisible cap. What do you
do with yourself? As for law, that seems destined to be a mourner
so far as you are concerned. She sits like a widow in her weeds.
You have abandoned her: do you mean to abandon your friends also?"

He answered, with a faint attempt to smile:--

"No; I have been to see you often, but you are never at home."

"Ah! I did not hear of it. But if you really wished to see a husband
who has survived the honeymoon, I suspect that home is about the
last place where you should seek for him. Julia did the honors, I
trust?"

His eye stole upward, met mine, and sunk once more upon the floor.
He answered faintly:--

"Yes, but I have not seen her for some days."

"Not since Mother Delaney's party, I believe?"

The color came again into his cheeks, but instantly after was
succeeded by a deadly paleness.

"What a bore these parties are! and such parties as those of Mrs.
Delaney are particularly annoying to me. Why the d--l couldn't
the old tabby halter her hobby without calling in her neighbors to
witness the painful spectacle? You were there, I think?"

"Yes."

"I left early. I got heartily sick. You know I never like such
places; and, as soon as they began dancing, I took advantage