THE SEPARATION.
Had it ever occurred to Manton to reason at all upon the subject of
his passion for this girl Elna, or had it been possible for him, under
the circumstances which had lately surrounded his life, to reason
concerning her, in any sense, he must and would have felt how ominous
such a passion in reality was. To be sure, he did not feel that the
relations into which it had been attempted to drag him by the mother,
had ever been voluntary or accepted on his part; he had loathed and
rebelled against them from the first.
But this did not, in reality, make the fact of his having continued
near her—to occupy the same house—any the less offensive to the moral
sense; for, taking the best aspects of the case, the durance had not
been a physical one, and he might, if he had so willed, have walked
himself bodily off, and thus escaped this horrible entanglement; but
he had not done so. Although we have endeavored, as some extenuation,
to trace the reasons why he had not thus acted, yet we have found no
excuse sufficient, in all this, for the new sin he has committed, in
daring to love, and contemplating honorable marriage, even, with the
daughter of such a mother. But we have naught to extenuate, naught to
set down in malice, in this too fatally true narrative; we have related
it because it is true, and because we felt it to be our duty to do
so, that others might be warned of these things, which may, perhaps,
enlighten the reader somewhat, as to the character of the new thraldom
to which Manton has been subjected.
It must always be borne in mind, in speaking of Manton and measuring
his actions, that although the nervous sanguine temperament
predominated to an extraordinary degree in this man’s organisation,
the tendencies of his mind were, nevertheless, unusually conservative.
This rendered him, necessarily, a man of _habits_; and therefore, more
than usually liable to suffer from gradual and constant encroachment:
for, if his quick sense has not instantly detected the danger on its
first presentation—if his ear has not recognised the serpent’s hiss
at once among the flowers, his fearless hand would soon be caressing
the shining reptile, and bear it, it might be, even to his own bosom.
It was this tenacity of habits which had rendered him so easy to be
imposed upon. Nothing was so difficult for him to throw off as a habit;
for, from the intensity of his nature, it always cost him the suffering
of a strong excitement before its chains could be broken.
Manton found, very soon after his return, that what he most dreaded
now, was to be at once precipitated, which was a separation between
himself and Elna. Not that he did not fully concede to the general
propriety and prudence of such a step; for he remembered that he had at
once proposed the previous separation, when he came to understand the
nature of his feelings towards her; but that had been when she was to
be placed beyond the reach of her mother, and they could be both out of
town at the same time; but now that his business made it imperative for
him to remain in New York, if he dreaded before lest she be left with
the mother one day even, were not the same causes operating still, and
with redoubled force, when, in addition to her baleful contact, he had
to contemplate that of the creature she had married?
The moral and spiritual grime of such a contact was enough to blast an
angel’s bloom—to sully the purest wing that ever winnowed dream. He
must be there to shield his fair treasure always, till the time had
come when he could snatch her for ever beyond their reach. But the war
had now fairly opened.
On the very day of his return, Manton had been not a little astonished
to find the heretofore abject and cringing mother turn upon him,
suddenly, with a lofty insolence, that seemed at first incredible; but
his surprise and anger rapidly gave way to wonder and stunned amaze,
at finding her exhibiting the most unparalleled phenomena of brazen,
grave, deliberate falsehood that ever still imagination, in bottomless
conceit, had conjured as the thought of demons in dark hell. This was
yet, strange as it may seem, a most terrible realisation to have come
upon his life; though he had, up to this time, known that she was
unscrupulous, as far as the attainment of influential connexions, for
the dissemination of her theoretical views, was concerned—that she was,
in this respect, a dangerous and an evil woman—that her influence would
make her presence deadly to purity, in her own or the other sex; yet,
he had not learned to regard her as utterly God-forsaken. The veil was
now lifted. The scales that had remained fell forever from his eyes.
She now stood revealed, not as he had heretofore striven to palliate
his convictions concerning her—the ferocious fanatic of one idea—the
cunning and detestable Jesuit of a “A cause”—but as the incarnation
of unnatural passions and a demonised selfishness. He trembled to
his heart’s core at the thought of that fair young girl, whom he had
learned to love, being left to the tender mercies of a monster such as
this. He saw at once the whole nefarious scheme that had been concocted
between herself and her worthy coadjutor.
This was but the initial step. This precipitation of a quarrel with
himself, which would bring about at least a partial separation with
Elna, and then their subsequent game would slowly and surely accomplish
the rest. Was it likely that a wretch like this pink of delicacy,
Narcissus, who had before, for years, been steeped to the lips in
that monstrous traffic, the sale of bodies as well as souls, would
quietly permit to slip through his fingers a lovely and fascinating
girl as Elna had now grown to be, over who’s value, in dollars and
cents, he had gloated from the first? or was it likely that his worthy
consort, who had clearly learned to appreciate the convenience of such
speculations, would not fully coincide with him in his view of the
policy of defeating Manton, who, in the event of success, would be sure
to separate her from them as far as the poles are sundered?
We shall now see how far the young lady herself was likely to, or had
already, become a party to such utilitarian views.
Manton had left the house, and taken board elsewhere. The same evening,
he visited Elna, who received him alone, in the warm, well-lighted, and
neatly-arranged parlor. Manton had come in the most hopeless mood, for
all the results of this separation had been most fully and painfully
impressed upon him since the first indication of the rupture that had
led to his quitting the house.
The young girl sprang eagerly to meet him, and with a bounding caress
clasped his neck, exclaiming—
“Dearest one, you must not look so sad! We are to have the parlor
thus every evening, when you shall come to see me; when we shall
be very stately and proper folk. I shall play the dignified matron
in anticipation, and you shall be my very wise and solemn lord and
master. Mother is not to permit any interruption, and we shall have
such nice and easy times. Come, sit down here by my side, and let us
begin to play stately. And clear up that gloomy brow of yours, for I am
determined that we shall be happy!”
Manton could only smile faintly, as he seated himself.
“Ah, heedless child, you do not see in all this gay vision, the black
and deadly realities that couch within its shadows! I understand your
mother’s game fully. This will not last long; and you are about to be
sorely tried, my little love!”
His head fell back heavily, and his eyelids drooped with an expression
of unutterable despondency. Elna, who had been watching him eagerly,
now flew to his side, and taking his head gently on her shoulder,
commenced caressing his face in a peculiar manner. She did not
absolutely touch it, but her lips crept over certain portions with
a slow snake-like motion, while the deep heavings of her chest,
disclosed that she was breathing heavily upon them, and a certain
greenish dilation of the pupil of her eyes revealed—what? Ah, horror!
and she so young! What? what! is that the mother’s art? Let us see.
The lines of the man’s face are sunken in the expression of hopeless
prostration. Soon a slight twitching of the nerves becomes evident,
then a faint smile breaks across its pallor; the inspirations become
deeper, and she breathes with almost convulsive energy. The glowing
air lingers and burns along the sensitive temple, and now it pauses
on the cheek, close beside the ear—ha! her arm is about his neck; is
it a wonder that the blood mounts flushing to that man’s cheek and
forehead, that his eyes fly open filled with wild and vivid fires, that
a shuddering thrill is running through his frame, as he stretches forth
his arms to her, with a low, ecstatic laugh, of passionate yearning,
while she clings about him, and their lips meet, in a burning,
lingering kiss, and then, with a light laugh, she springs beyond his
reach, and dances in tantalising mockery about him, permitting him but
to touch her for a moment, eluding his grasp, with yet more subtle
sleight, until exhausted by morbid excitement the unfortunate man sinks
upon the sofa?
This picture is only but too real. But why should Manton have endured
the repetition of a scene like this? He was a man of habits, and for
years, before a thought of passion had for once intruded upon him,
this young girl, under the sacred shield of childhood, had been taught
to approach him with fondling caresses. There seemed no danger then,
but when the real time for danger came, he felt a vague and general
monition of it, yet failed to locate it where it really rested. These
caresses had become so dear and natural to him; they seemed so harmless.
He blamed only himself, cursed only the unetherialised grossness of his
own nature. There was to him far too much of affection and accustomed
tenderness in all this to arouse his suspicions for a moment. He hated
only himself, and strove on each of these now frequent occasions, to
chasten, by the severest self-inflicted penance, his own soul.
In the meanwhile, this modern Tantalus grew thinner and more pale each
day; was wasting rapidly to a shadow, beneath such scenes as we have
witnessed.
The girl, Elna, grew fairer and more strong each day—seeming to have
fed upon his slow consumption.
We will not dwell upon such pictures farther. It was enough that
all the consequences dreaded by Manton followed, in slow, but sure
progression, and that the last blow the subtle couple struck at him was
fully characteristic and consummated the separation.
Elna had seen little, as yet, of public amusements, and her strong
imitative faculty had led her to express a passion for the stage,
which Manton greatly dreaded, and had particularly wished to guard her
against, until her mind should become more fully developed, and until
he, himself, should possess the legal right to attend her, upon all
such occasions. He had, therefore, at all times resolutely opposed her
going to any public place of amusement, unless he could accompany her.
But now it happened that, being engaged in bringing out a new work,
with the press only twenty-four hours behind him, urging him inexorably
for a certain amount of daily matter, which left him no leisure
whatever, except a few moments, which he wrested from the vortex, for
the short evening re-union with her he so loved, he had, therefore, no
time left to accompany her to such places.
Here the enterprising couple saw at once their advantage; the mother
understood what Manton did not, the extreme shallowness of the
character he had thus perseveringly idealised. She at once laid siege
to her passion for dress and display, as well as novelty. They bought
her fine and showy clothes, and urged her first to accompany them to
concerts, then to theatres, and then to public balls.
When the young girl first came to Manton, all flushed with eagerness,
to show him her finery, and ask him if she might not go with her dear
mother and her new “papa,” he felt his heart sink unutterably within
him. He reasoned with her long and earnestly, endeavoring to make her
understand how impossible it was for a woman, who was to become his
wife, to appear at any public assembly in the city of New York, with a
person so notorious as this, whom she had thus, suddenly, learned to
style “papa.”
But he soon found it to be all in vain; for, when he told her if she
would only be content to wait a few weeks until his book had been
published, that he would himself dedicate any amount of time she might
require to visiting such places with her, she still urged that she
did not see why it was improper for her to accompany the man whom her
mother had married, to any public place—that her new dresses were so
beautiful—that she wished to attend this magnificent concert.
Manton sighed heavily and only answered in a mournful voice to her
repeated entreaties—
“Alas! poor child, my dream is nearly over! I see they have bought you
with the tinsel of a fine dress and new ribbons!”
The child wept and fondled and caressed; but all her arts failed
this time. His heart felt like lead within him; and he no longer had
nerves with life enough to be played upon. But she went that night,
nevertheless, and the great gulf had sunk impassably between them.
Manton was now again a madman. In the pride of his hopeful love
he had built magnificent schemes, which his singular energies had
rapidly placed upon the firm basis of realisation; it only required
the calm exercise of his own will to consummate all and make his name
illustrious. But he had not labored for himself—and she, for whom
all had been achieved, was no longer his—she was gone—utterly gone!
She had sold her birthright, and was no longer his. The world became
dark, its honors and its ambitions as nothing. To recount the wild and
desperate extravagance by which he dashed to earth all that he had
achieved, as the heartless and hideous shallowness of the phantom
soul he had been worshipping, became, with each day, more apparent,
would be only painful to the reader, who can well understand what to
expect from the recklessness of such a madman. Suffice it that the
separation was complete. He last saw her, but for an instant, on her
eighteenth birthnight, to commemorate which, the mother, in pursuance
of her schemes, had assembled a large party at her house. This was to
have been their wedding-night; and Manton, though long since hopelessly
separated from her, could not resist the passionate desire to see once
more, upon this night, to which he had so long looked forward with holy
raptures, that face and form.
He rang the bell, and, by a curious instinct, she recognised the
characteristic pull, and met him alone at the door. She was lovely,
radiant even, as she had sometimes come to him in his wild imaginings.
Dressed in pure white, with a wreath of flowering myrtle resting
lightly on her brow. There was a look of exultation on her face
which she had not been able to throw off, as she came forth from the
admiration of the crowded room. Manton took her hand—
“Ah, child, you are very lovely now—you look just as I dreamed you
would look on this night, when you were to have been my bride. My
eyes are filled with blood, now! I cannot see you any more! Farewell!
farewell!” and he rushed from the door into the dark street, while she,
who had spoken no word, made no attempt to detain him, turned coldly
back, and entered, with a beaming face, the scene of her new triumph.