JEALOUSY.
Naturally, Althea was a changed person in the eyes of her husband. A man
less jealously disposed might have attributed this to the sudden death
of an only beloved child. But to Thornton, the knowledge that Hubert
Lisle, a man his superior in mental, moral and personal accomplishments,
had associated with Althea during almost the whole period of his
absence, this knowledge, we say, was to Thornton as gall and wormwood.
"And how did you like your cousin?" he questioned with assumed
carelessness.
Had Althea answered equally carelessly, "Oh! very well," she would have
aroused suspicion, for she well understood her husband. So she said with
enthusiasm: "I liked him very much indeed. I wish you could have met
him. He is very agreeable and most intelligent."
"You speak as if you thought I was a stranger to him. I have seen Hubert
Lisle before to-day!"
"But you have not seen him of late. A six years residence abroad must
have changed him greatly."
"Umph! Your cousin is not the first person who has crossed the Atlantic,
as you would have me infer. At all events, he is a sneak and a coward to
stay in my house more than two weeks, and decamp just before I was
expected." Althea was silent.
"A sneak and a coward, I repeat; what have you to say to that?" demanded
Thornton, his eyes blazing like coals of fire.
"Nothing," said the wife, indifferently.
"Nothing! By Mars! do you answer _nothing_, when I ask you a civil
question? It is well he did not let me find him here; it is not the
first insult he would have got from me, and perhaps something worse. If
there's a person on earth I hate worse than Sharp, it is that
self-conceited Hubert Lisle. He is a puppy, an upstart, vain as a woman,
and deep and false as perdition itself."
He waited as if expecting a reply. None came; he glanced sideways to his
wife, and continued:
"Yes, you two would make a very pretty couple, very suitable. Your two
heads are forever among the stars. I wonder there is a book of poetry
left in the house. It is a marvel you both did not sail away in some
carved shell of hollow pearl, almost translucent with the light divine
_des tous deux_ within. For ottomans you could have piles of Scott,
Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; and for food and drink, you could have
stringed instruments, and easel, palette, and brush. How contemptible
are womanish tastes in a man!" Again he waited vainly for a reply. The
pallid fingers of Althea were pulling in pieces a half-faded flower,
upon which her lustrous eyes were unvaryingly fastened.
"Good heavens, Althea, how provoking you are!" cried Thornton, rising
from his seat and confronting furiously his wife, "cannot you speak to a
man; what have you to say, what are you thinking of?"
"Thinking of?" she said absently, scattering the petals from her fair
palm to the floor, then raising her eyes full to his: "Thinking of the
fair little blossom that withered in its bloom. I have done wrong to
weep for him such bitter tears; for he was _your_ child, and had he
lived he might have cursed some woman's life as you have cursed mine."
This was uttered apparently without anger, and in modulated tones. But
no words of Althea had ever struck Thornton Rush like these. He was
speechless; and when she arose and passed him by to an adjoining room,
he stirred not hand nor foot. If she had expected then would fall the
arranged blow, she would have been disappointed. But she had not
expected it, nor even thought about it. The faded flower had, indeed,
brought up her own withered blossom, as she had said. Had her husband's
discourse been of Johnny, instead of the senseless tirade against her
cousin, had he exhibited kindness, and generous sympathy for herself,
she might still have been won back to duty. But now, Thornton's words
and sneers, however deserved she might have felt them to be, caused her
to contrast the wretchedness of a continued life with him with what it
_might be_. Thus far she had been agitated by indecision and scruples,
they should henceforth trouble her no more. She was fully resolved,
even more than when she had promised Hubert.
In her own room, Althea withdrew the blinds and looked out at the sky.
It was covered with clouds, save one space of blue.
"Thus is _my_ sky covered with gloom," she murmured, "thus amidst the
darkness gleams my one ray of precious light. O blessed ultramarine,
from on high I take thee as a token. God is good; God does not will that
I should suffer; He does not will that I should love a demon. I am still
so young; a long life may be in store for me; a cruel, wretched life
with Thornton Rush, who assumed the guise of an angel of light to win me
to destruction. A peaceful, happy life with Hubert, for whom heaven
itself must have intended me. The sin is Thornton's, not mine, nor
Hubert's. On the contrary, to continue to live with Thornton would be a
sin. I can no longer deceive myself or him, I love him not; I believe I
could hate him!" and a gleam unusual shot from the large, dreamful eyes.
Althea forgot, while she thus soliloquised, that she could not thus have
felt, or could not have spoken such words, had not Hubert Lisle won her
love. While her heart had not been given to another, she could have
endured her husband patiently, fulfilling her wifely duties, and
possessing a conscience clear before God. She would leave her husband
then, not because of the harshness and cruelty allegible, but because
she had criminally strayed from her allegiance and given her love where
she had no right to give.
So blinded, however, was Althea, she did not perceive this. While she
was wronged, indeed, by Thornton, she was still farther wronged by
Hubert. No unkind treatment of the one could excuse her for listening,
without rebuke, to words of unlawful love from the other. They were an
insult to her good sense and virtue; and so at first had Althea esteemed
them to be. But by and by--ah, it is an old story, and the saddest,
sorriest of all stories in this life of ours; reading it, or hearing it,
one sighs that our guardian angel's wings are invisible, and that once
from out their protecting shadow, we rush headlong unto darkness and
death.
We will not assert that Thornton felt not the death of his only son; he
was not so inhuman as to be unaffected. He would have given all his
earthly possessions to hear again that winsome voice of his child
resounding through the house. He had not realized
"How much of hope, how much of joy,
May be buried up with an only boy!"
until the house was darkened by the death of Johnny. The grief which he
experienced, however, affected him strangely. As we have seen, instead
of softening his selfish nature, it rendered him more morose and
censorious. It alienated, instead of binding him closer to his bereaved
wife.
One reason was in this; that Althea had for him now no winning ways. She
made no effort at conciliation, and sought not to give or to receive
mutual sympathy. Indeed, from the period of the conversation above
recorded between husband and wife, he was like a volcano, and she like
an iceberg. As much as he was capable of loving, he loved Althea.
Desirable as had been her fortune in his eyes, he would never have
practised such a series of stratagems and self-denials, had she not
personally been of great value in his eyes. When won, and she was surely
his, he discontinued his deception, and appeared his natural self. She
became to him, as we have before said, like the pet dog to his young
master, though secretly beloved, yet ill-treated, scolded and abused.
The thought of her ever being lost to him had not occurred to his mind,
until he learned of the visit of Hubert Lisle. With him, Thornton well
knew he would suffer in comparison. That was the reason Thornton's
mother had taken such infinite and dishonorable pains in preventing his
coming to his dying father. Althea would surely prefer her cousin.
But Thornton was at a loss what to make of Althea's present behavior. He
had at first felt a deadly jealousy of Hubert. That emotion had almost
over-shadowed his grief. But he could not learn that any communication
was kept up between the parties. No letters came to and fro. The mention
of Hubert's name caused no blush upon Althea's cheek. She spoke of him
kindly and naturally, as of a brother that was dear to her. In the
distant years, he had been convinced of Hubert's honorable nature. He
might not have changed. At all events he was gone now, and might never
return. It was more agreeable to attribute Althea's rigid coldness to a
shock of grief, rather than to a shock of hatred to himself or of
affection for another. Nevertheless, he gave her no peace nor quiet. He
became angered if she did not converse, and equally out of temper with
whatever she might say.
Does such a man deserve a wife? Let him have a woman, then, who will
bring him to his senses--or what passes for senses--in a manner
veritably Xantippean; and not one of those tender-hearted, peace-loving
creatures who would bless some good man's heart and home.
There are few men upon whom kindness and gentleness will not make more
or less impression; but our unprepossessing hero is of that unfavored
few.