THIS was the history of Emilia’s concealed visits to Malbone.
One week after her marriage, in a crisis of agony, Emilia took up her
pen, dipped it in fire, and wrote thus to him:--
“Philip Malbone, why did nobody ever tell me what marriage is where
there is no love? This man who calls himself my husband is no worse,
I suppose, than other men. It is only for being what is called by that
name that I abhor him. Good God! what am I to do? It was not for money
that I married him,--that you know very well; I cared no more for his
money than for himself. I thought it was the only way to save Hope. She
has been very good to me, and perhaps I should love her, if I could love
anybody. Now I have done what will only make more misery, for I cannot
bear it. Philip, I am alone in this wide world, except for you. Tell me
what to do. I will haunt you till you die, unless you tell me. Answer
this, or I will write again.”
Terrified by this letter, absolutely powerless to guide the life with
which he had so desperately entangled himself, Philip let one day pass
without answering, and that evening he found Emilia at his door, she
having glided unnoticed up the main stairway. She was so excited, it was
equally dangerous to send her away or to admit her, and he drew her in,
darkening the windows and locking the door. On the whole, it was not so
bad as he expected; at least, there was less violence and more despair.
She covered her face with her hands, and writhed in anguish, when she
said that she had utterly degraded herself by this loveless marriage.
She scarcely mentioned her husband. She made no complaint of him, and
even spoke of him as generous. It seemed as if this made it worse, and
as if she would be happier if she could expend herself in hating him.
She spoke of him rather as a mere witness to some shame for which she
herself was responsible; bearing him no malice, but tortured by the
thought that he should exist.
Then she turned on Malbone. “Philip, why did you ever interfere with my
life? I should have been very happy with Antoine if you had let me marry
him, for I never should have known what it was to love you. Oh! I wish
he were here now, even he,--any one who loved me truly, and whom I could
love only a little. I would go away with such a person anywhere, and
never trouble you and Hope any more. What shall I do? Philip, you might
tell me what to do. Once you told me always to come to you.”
“What can you do?” he asked gloomily, in return.
“I cannot imagine,” she said, with a desolate look, more pitiable than
passion, on her young face. “I wish to save Hope, and to save my--to
save Mr. Lambert. Philip, you do not love me. I do not call it love.
There is no passion in your veins; it is only a sort of sympathetic
selfishness. Hope is infinitely better than you are, and I believe she
is more capable of loving. I began by hating her, but if she loves you
as I think she does, she has treated me more generously than ever one
woman treated another. For she could not look at me and not know that I
loved you. I did love you. O Philip, tell me what to do!”
Such beauty in anguish, the thrill of the possession of such love, the
possibility of soothing by tenderness the wild mood which he could not
meet by counsel,--it would have taken a stronger or less sympathetic
nature than Malbone’s to endure all this. It swept him away; this
revival of passion was irresistible. When her pent-up feeling was
once uttered, she turned to his love as a fancied salvation. It was a
terrible remedy. She had never looked more beautiful, and yet she seemed
to have grown old at once; her very caresses appeared to burn. She
lingered and lingered, and still he kept her there; and when it was no
longer possible for her to go without disturbing the house, he led her
to a secret spiral stairway, which went from attic to cellar of that
stately old mansion, and which opened by one or more doors on each
landing, as his keen eye had found out. Descending this, he went forth
with her into the dark and silent night. The mist hung around the house;
the wet leaves fluttered and fell upon their cheeks; the water lapped
desolately against the pier. Philip found a carriage and sent her back
to Mrs. Meredith’s, where she was staying during the brief absence of
John Lambert.
These concealed meetings, once begun, became an absorbing excitement.
She came several times, staying half an hour, an hour, two hours. They
were together long enough for suffering, never long enough for soothing.
It was a poor substitute for happiness. Each time she came, Malbone
wished that she might never go or never return. His warier nature was
feverish with solicitude and with self-reproach; he liked the excitement
of slight risks, but this was far too intense, the vibrations too
extreme. She, on the other hand, rode triumphant over waves of passion
which cowed him. He dared not exclude her; he dared not continue to
admit her; he dared not free himself; he could not be happy. The privacy
of the concealed stairway saved them from outward dangers, but not from
inward fears. Their interviews were first blissful, then anxious, then
sad, then stormy. It was at the end of such a storm that Emilia had
passed into one of those deathly calms which belonged to her physical
temperament; and it was under these circumstances that Hope had followed
Philip to the door.