A dread feeling is jealousy, mortified vanity, or whatever you may
designate the disappointment of love. I have experienced the sting of
shame, the blight of broken fortune, the fear of death itself; yet none
of these ever wrung my heart so rudely as the pang of an unreciprocated
passion. The former are but transient trials, and their bitterness soon
has an end. Jealousy, like the tooth of the serpent, carries poison in
its sting, and long and slow is the healing of its wound. Well knew he
this, that master of the human heart: Iago's prayer was not meant for
mockery.
To drown my mortification, I had drunk wine freely at the ball; and on
returning home, had continued my potations with the more fiery spirit of
"Catalan." By this means I gained relief and sleep, but only of short
duration. Long before day I was awake--awake to the double bitterness
of jealousy and shame--awake to both mental and physical pain, for the
fumes of the vile stuff I had drunk wrecked my brain as though they
would burst open my skull. An ounce of opium would not have set me to
sleep again, and I tossed on my couch like one labouring under delirium.
Of course the incidents of the preceding night were uppermost in my
mind. Every scene and action that had occurred were as plainly before
me as if I was again witnessing them. Every effort to alienate my
thoughts, and fix them upon some other theme, proved vain and idle; they
ever returned to the same circle of reflections, in the centre of which
was Isolina de Vargas! I thought of all that had passed, of all she had
said. I remembered every word. How bitterly I remembered that scornful
laugh!--how bitterly that sarcastic smile, when the double mask was
removed!
The very remembrance of her beauty pained me! It was now to me as to
Tantalus the crystal waters, never to be tasted. Before, I had formed
hopes, had indulged in prospective dreams: the masquerade adventure had
dissipated them. I no longer hoped, no longer permitted myself to dream
of pleasant times to come: I felt that I was scorned.
This feeling produced a momentary revulsion in my thoughts. There were
moments when I hated her, and vengeful impulses careered across my soul.
These were fleeting moments: again before me rose that lovely form, that
proud grand spirit, in the full entirety of its power, and again my soul
became absorbed in admiration, and yielded itself to its hopeless
passion. It was far from being my first love. And thus experienced, I
could reason upon it. I felt certain it was to be the strongest and
stormiest of my life.
I know of three loves distinct in kind and power. First, when the
passion is reciprocated--when the heart of the beloved yields back
thought for thought, and throb for throb, without one reserved
pulsation. This is bliss upon earth--not always long-lived--ending
perchance in a species of sublimated friendship. To have is no longer
to desire.
The second is love entirely unrequited--love that never knew word or
smile of encouragement, no soft whisper to fan it into flame, no ray of
hope to feed upon. Such dies of inanition--the sooner that its object
is out of the way, and absence in time will conquer it.
The third is the love that "dotes yet doubts," that doubts but never
dies--no never. The jealousy that pains, only sustains it; it lives on,
now happy in the honeyed conviction of triumph, now smarting under real
or fancied scorn--on, on, so long as its object is accessible to sight
or hearing! No matter how worthless that object may be or become--no
matter how lost or fallen! Love regards not this; it has nought to do
with the moral part of our nature. Beauty is the shrine of its worship,
and beauty is not morality.
In my own mind I am conscious of three elements or classes of feeling:
the _moral_, the _intellectual_, and what I may term the _passional_--
the last as distinct from either of the other two as oil from spirits or
water. To the last belongs love, which, I repeat again, has no sympathy
with the moral feelings of our nature, but, alas! as one might almost
believe, with their opposite. Even a plain but wicked coquette will
captivate more hearts than a beautiful saint, and the brilliant
murderess ere now has made conquests at the very foot of the scaffold!
It pains me to pronounce these convictions, derived as they are from
experience. There is as little gain as pleasure in so doing, but
popularity must be sacrificed at the shrine of truth. For the sake of
effect, I shall not play false with philosophy.
Rough ranger as I was, I had studied psychology sufficiently to
understand these truths; and I endeavoured to analyse my passion for
this girl or woman--to discover _why_ I loved her. Her physical beauty
was of the highest order, and that no doubt was an element; but it was
not all. Had I merely looked upon this beauty under ordinary
circumstances--that is, without coming in contact with the spirit that
animated it--I might have loved her, or I might not. It was the spirit,
then, that had won me, though not alone. The same gem in a less
brilliant setting might have failed to draw my admiration. I was the
captive both of the spirit and the form. Soul and body had co-operated
in producing my passion, and this may account for its suddenness and
profundity. Why I loved her person, I knew--I was not ignorant of the
laws of beauty--but why the spirit, I knew not. Certainly not from any
idea I had formed of her high _moral_ qualities; I had no evidence of
these. Of her courage, even to daring, I had proof; of energy and
determined will; of the power of thought, quick and versatile; but these
are not _moral_ qualities, they are not even _feminine_! True, she wept
over her slain steed. Humanity? I have knows a hardened _lorette_ weep
bitter tears for her tortoise-shell cat. She refused to take from me my
horse. Generosity? She had a thousand within sight. Alas! in thus
reviewing all that had passed between myself and the beautiful Isolina,
in search of her moral qualities, I met with but little success!
Mystery of our nature! I loved her not the less! And yet my passion
was pure, and I do not believe that my heart was wicked. Mystery of our
nature! He who reads all hearts alone can solve thee!
I loved without reason; but I loved now without hope. Hope I had before
that night. Her glance through the turrets--her note--its contents--a
word, a look at other times, had inspired me with hopes, however faint
they were. The incident of the ball-room had crushed them.
Ijurra's dark face kept lowering before me; even in my visions he was
always by her side. What was between the two? Perhaps a nearer
relationship than that of cousin? Perhaps they were affianced?
Married?
The thought maddened me.
I could rest upon my couch no longer. I rose and sought the open air; I
climbed to the azotea, and paced it to and fro, as the tiger walks his
cage. My thoughts were wild, and my movements without method.
To add to the bitterness of my reflections, I now discovered that I had
sustained a loss--not in property, but something that annoyed me still
more. I had lost the order and its enclosure--the note of Don Ramon. I
had dropped them on the day in which they were received, and I believed
in the patio of the hacienda, where they must have been picked up at
once. If by Don Ramon himself, then all was well; but if they had
fallen into the hands of some of the leather-clad herdsmen, ill affected
to Don Ramon, it might be an awkward affair for that gentleman--indeed
for myself. Such negligence would scarcely be overlooked at
head-quarters; and I had ill forebodings about the result. It was one
of my soul's darkest hours.
From its very darkness I might have known that light was near, for the
proverb is equally true in the moral as in the material world. Light
_was_ near.