THE efforts which were made to save Miss Loring, only had the effect
to render the sacrifice more acutely painful. Evil instead of good
followed Mrs. Denison's appeals to Mr. Dexter. They served but to
arouse the demon jealousy in his heart. Upon Hendrickson's movements
he set the wariest surveillance. Twice, since that never-to-be-forgotten
evening he met the young man in company when Jessie was present. With
an eye that never failed for an instant in watchfulness, he noted his
countenance and movements; and he kept on his betrothed as keen an
observation. Several times he left her alone, in order to give
Hendrickson an opportunity to get into her company. But there was too
studied avoidance of contact. Had they met casually and exchanged a
few pleasant words, suspicion would have been allayed. As it was,
jealousy gave its own interpretation to their conduct.
On the last of these occasions referred to, from a position where he
deemed himself beyond the danger of casual observation, Hendrickson
searched with his eyes for the object of his undying regard. He saw
her, sitting alone, not far distant. Her manner was that of one lost
in thought--the expression of her countenance dreamy, and overcast
with a shade of sadness. How long he had been gazing upon her face,
the young man could not have told, so absorbed was he in the
feelings her presence had awakened, when turning almost
involuntarily his eyes caught the gleam of another pair of eyes that
were fixed intently upon him. So suddenly had he turned, that the
individual observing him was left without opportunity to change in
any degree the expression of his eyes or countenance. It was almost
malignant. That individual was Leon Dexter.
In spite of himself, Hendrickson showed confusion, and was unable to
return the steady gaze that rested upon him. His eyes fell. When he
looked up again, which was in a moment, Dexter had left his
position, and was crossing the room towards Miss Loring.
"It is the fiend Jealousy!" said Hendrickson, as he withdrew into
another room. "Well--let it poison all the springs of his happiness,
as he has poisoned mine! I care not how keen may be his sufferings."
He spoke with exceeding bitterness.
A few weeks later, and the dreaded consummation came. In honor of
the splendid alliance formed by her niece, Mrs. Loring gave a most
brilliant wedding party, and the lovely bride stood forth in all her
beauty and grace--the admired and the envied. A few thought her
rather pale--some said her eyes were too dreamy--and a gossip or two
declared that the rich young husband had only gained her person,
while her heart was in the keeping of another. "She has not married
the man, but his wealth and position!" was the unguarded remark of
one of these thoughtless individuals; and by a singular fatality,
the sentence reached the ears of Mr. Dexter. Alas! It was but
throwing another fagot on the already kindling fires of unhallowed
jealousy. The countenance of the young husband became clouded; and
it was only by an effort that he could arouse himself, and assume a
gay exterior. The prize after which he had sprung with such eager
haste, distancing all competitors, was now his own. Binding vows had
been uttered, and the minister had said--"What God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder." Yet, even in his hour of
triumph, came the troubled conviction that, though he had gained the
beautiful person of his bride, he could not say surely that her more
beautiful soul was all his own.
And so there was a death's head at his feast; and the costly wine
was dashed with bitterness.
Of what was passing in the mind of Dexter his bride had no
knowledge; nor did her keen instincts warn her that the demon of
jealousy was already in his heart. Suffering, and the colder spirit
of endurance that followed, had rendered her, in a certain sense,
obtuse in this direction.
A full-grown, strong woman, had Jessie become suddenly. The gentle,
tenderly-loving, earnest, simple-hearted girl, could never have
sustained the part it was hers to play. Unless a new and more
vigorous life had been born in her, she must have fallen. But now
she stood erect, shading her heart from her own eyes, and gathering
from principle strength for duty. Very pure--very true she was. Yet,
in her new relation, purity and truth were shrined in a cold
exterior. It were not possible to be otherwise. She did not love her
husband in any thing like the degree she was capable of loving. It
was not in him to find the deep places of her heart. But true to him
she could be, and true to him it was her purpose to remain.
Taking all the antecedents of this case, we will not wonder, when
told that quite from the beginning of so inharmonious a union,
Dexter found himself disappointed in his bride. He was naturally
ardent and demonstrative; while, of necessity, she was calm, cold,
dignified--or simply passive. She was never unamiable or capricious;
and rarely opposed him in anything reasonable or unreasonable. But
she was reserved almost to constraint at times--a vestal at the
altar, rather than a loving wife. He was very proud of her, as well
he might be; for she grew peerless in beauty. But her beauty was
from the development of taste, thought, and intellect. It was not
born of the affections. Yes, Leon Dexter was sadly disappointed. He
wanted something more than all this.
Lifted from an almost obscure position, as the dependent niece of
Mrs. Loring, the young wife of Mr. Dexter found herself in a larger
circle, and in the society of men and women of more generally
cultivated tastes. She soon became a centre of attraction; for
taste attracts taste, mind seeks mind. And where beauty is added,
the possessor has invincible charms. It did not escape the eyes of
Dexter that, in the society of other men, his young wife was gayer
and more vivacious than when with him. This annoyed him so
much, that he began to act capriciously, as it seemed to Jessie.
Sometimes he would require her to leave a pleasant company long
before the usual hour, and sometimes he would refuse to go with her
to parties or places of amusement, yet give no reasons that were
satisfactory. On these occasions, a moody spirit would come over
him. If she questioned, he answered with evasion, or covert
ill-nature.
The closer union of an external marriage did not invest the husband
with any new attractions for his wife. The more intimately she knew
him, the deeper became her repugnance. He had no interior qualities
in harmony with her own. An intensely selfish man, it was impossible
for him to inspire a feeling of love in a mind so pure in its
impulses, and so acute in its perceptions. If Mrs. Dexter had been a
worldly-minded woman--a lover of--or one moved by the small
ambitions of fashionable life--her husband would have been all well
enough. She would have been adjoined to him in a way altogether
satisfactory to her tastes, and they would have circled their orbit
of life without an eccentric motion. But the deeper capacities and
higher needs of Mrs. Dexter, made this union quite another thing.
Her husband had no power to fill her soul--to quicken her
life-pulses--to stir the silent chords of her heart with the deep,
pure, ravishing melodies they were made to give forth. That she was
superior to him mentally, Mr. Dexter was not long in discovering.
Very rapidly did her mind, quickened by a never-dying pain, spring
forward towards its culmination. Of its rapid growth in power and
acuteness, he only had evidence when he listened to her in
conversation with men and women of large acquirements and polished
tastes. Alone with him, her mind seemed to grow duller every day;
and if he applied the spur, it was only to produce a start, not a
movement onwards.
Alas for Leon Dexter! He had caged his beautiful bird; but her song
had lost, already, its ravishing sweetness.