MEDITATED EXILE.
With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had not
gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as many pangs as
himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised under the supposed
condition of another, the subject of my own mockery; and if I succeeded
in driving the iron into HIS soul, the other end of the shaft was all
the while working in mine! His flight was an equal relief to both of
us. The stern spirit left me from that moment. My agony found relief,
momentary though it was, in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy
head sank upon my palms, and I groaned in unreserved homage to
the never-slumbering genius of pain--that genius which alone is
universal--which adopts us from the cradle--which distinguishes our
birth by our tears, hallows the sentiment of grief to us from the
beginning, and maintains the fountains which supply its sorrows to the
end. The lamb skips, the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps,
the young colt frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn.
He alone is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the
first proofs of his singular and superior destiny.
Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains
of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment when
my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within it, and
when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and fro, the most
sore and shining passages of my soul. Had not Edgerton fled, I could
not have sustained it much longer. My passions would have hurled aside
my judgment, and mocked that small policy under which I acted. I
felt that they were about to speak, and rejoiced that he fled. Had he
remained, I should most probably have poured forth all my suspicion, all
my hate; dragged by violence from his lips the confession of his wrong,
and from his heart the last atonement for it.
At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused myself of
tameness--the dishonorable tameness of submitting to indignity--the last
of all indignities--and of conferring calmly, even good-humoredly,
with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came. A brief interval
sufficed--helped by the flood of tears which rushed, hot and scalding,
from my eyes--to subdue the angry spirit. I remembered my pledges to the
father; my unspeakable obligations to him; and when I again recollected
that my convictions had not assailed the purity of my wife, and,
at most, had questioned her affections only, my forbearance seemed
justified.
But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be done?
It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done, for the
relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton was
suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged, might be
successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of the water will
wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit to impertinent advances
without declaring them to her husband, the work of seduction was already
half done. To listen is, in half the number of cases, to fall. I must
save her; I had not the courage to put her from me. Believing that she
was still safe, I resolved, through the excess of that love which
was yet the predominant passion in my soul, in spite of all its
contradictions, to keep her so, if human wit could avail, and human
energy carry its desires into successful completion.
To do this, there was but one process. That was flight. I must leave
this city--this country. By doing so, I remove my wife from temptation,
remove the temptation from the unhappy young man whom it is destroying;
and thus, though by a sacrifice of my own comforts and interests, repay
the debt of gratitude to my benefactor in the only effective manner. It
called for no small exercise of moral courage and forbearance--no small
benevolence--to come to this conclusion. It must be understood that my
professional business was becoming particularly profitable. I was rising
in my profession. My clients daily increased in number; my
acquaintance daily increased in value. Besides, I loved my
birthplace--thrice-hallowed--the only region in my eyes--
“The spot most worthy loving Of all beneath the sky.”
But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately grew
active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home--a spot,
remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household gods, and set
them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole world-wide
West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural wealth and splendor,
it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every
newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less
heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society
can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale
conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius
and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I
go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the
whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched
in half an hour. “I will go to Alabama.”
Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions. This,
however, reasoned upon with the utmost circumspection, seemed the very
best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued from the danger
that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of taking a life so dear
to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man himself--the victim to a
blind passion--having no longer in his sight the temptation which misled
him, would be left free to return to better thoughts, and the accustomed
habits of business and society. I had concluded upon my course in the
brief interval which followed my interview with William Edgerton and my
return home.
The next day I saw his father. I communicated the assurance of the son,
and renewed my own, that neither drunkenness nor gaming was a vice. What
it was that afflicted him I did not pretend to know, but I ascribed it
to want of employment; a morbid, unenergetic temperament; the fact that
he was independent, and had no rough necessities to make him estimate
the true nature and the objects of life; and, at the close, quietly
suggested that possibly there was some affair of the heart which
contributed also to his suffering. I did not deny that his looks were
wretched, but I stoutly assured the old man that his parental fears
exaggerated their wretchedness. We had much other talk on the
subject. When we were about to separate for the day, I declared my own
determination in this manner:--
“I have just decided on a step, Mr. Edgerton, which perhaps will
somewhat contribute to the improvement of your son, by imposing some
additional tasks upon him. I am about to emigrate for the southwest.”
“You, Clifford? Impossible! What puts that into your head?”
It was something difficult to furnish any good reason for such a
movement. The only obvious reason spoke loudly for iny remaining where I
was.
“This is unaccountable,” said he. “You are doing here as few young men
have done before you. Your business increasing--your income already
good--surely, Clifford, you have not thought upon the matter--you are
not resolved.”
I could plead little other than a truant disposition for my proceeding,
but I soon convinced him that I was resolved. He seemed very much
troubled; betrayed the most flattering concern in my interests; and,
renewing his argument for my stay, renewed also his warmest professions
of service.
“I had hoped,” he said, “to have seen you and William, closely united,
pursuing the one path equally and successfully together. I shall have no
hopes of him if you leave us.”
“The probability is, sir, that he will do better with the whole
responsibility of the office thrown upon him.”
“No! no!” said the old man, mournfully. “I have no hope of him. There
seems to me a curse upon wealth always--that follows and clings to it,
and never leaves it, till it works out the ruin of all the proprietors.
See the number of our young men, springing from nothing, that make
everything out of it--rise to eminence and power--get fortune as if it
were a mere sport to command and to secure it; while, on the other
Sand, look at the heirs of our proud families. Profligate, reckless,
abandoned: as if, reasoning from the supposed wealth of their parents,
they fancied that there were no responsibilities of their own. I saw
this danger from the beginning. I have striven to train up my son in the
paths of duty and constant employment; and yet--but complaint is idle.
The consciousness of having tried my best to have and make it otherwise
is, nevertheless, a consolation. When do you think to go?”
“In a week or two at farthest. I have but to rid myself of my
impediments.”
“Always prompt; but it is best. Once resolved, action is the moral law.
Still, I wish I could delay you. I still think you are committing a
great error. I can not understand it. You have established yourself.
This is not easy anywhere. You will find it difficult in a new country,
and among strangers.”
“Nay, sir, more easy there than anywhere else. If a man has anything in
him, strangers and a new country are the proper influences to bring it
out. Friends and an old community keep it down, suppress, strangle it.
This is the misfortune of your son. He has family, friends--resources
which defeat all the operations of moral courage, and prevent
independence. Necessity is the moral lever. Do you forget the saying of
one of the wise men? 'If you wish your son to become a man, strip him
naked and send him among strangers'--in other words, throw him upon his
own resources, and let him take care of himself. The not doing this is
the source of that misfortune which only now you deplored as so commonly
following the condition of the select and wealthy. I do not fear the
struggle in a new country. It will end in my gaining my level, be that
high or low. Nothing, in such a region, can keep a man from that.”
“Ay, but the roughness of those new countries--the absence of
refinement--the absolute want of polish and delicacy.”
“The roughness will not offend me, if it is manly. The world is full
of it. To be anything, a man must not have too nice a stomach. Such a
stomach will make him recoil from sights of misery and misfortune; and
he who recoils from such sights, will be the last to relieve, to repair
them. But while I admit the roughness and the want of polish among these
frontier men, I deny the want of delicacy. Their habits are rude and
simple, perhaps, but their tastes are pure and unaffected, and their
hearts in the right place. They have strong affections; and strong
affections, properly balanced, are the true sources of the better sort
of delicacy. All other is merely conventional, and consists of forms and
phrases, which are very apt to keep us from the thing itself which they
are intended to represent. Give me these frank men and women of the
frontier, while my own feelings are yet strong and earnest. Here, I am
perpetually annoyed by the struggle to subdue within the social limits
the expression of that nature which is for ever boiling up within me,
and the utterance of which is neither more nor less than the heart's
utterance of the faith and hope which are in it. We are told of those
nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears polite.' They are the
preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental society. Whatever hell
may be, they are the very teachers that, by their mincing forbearance,
conduct the poor soul that relies on them into its jaws. It is a sort
of lie not to use the properest language to express our thoughts,
but rather so to falsify our thoughts by a sort of lack-a-daisaical
phraseology which deprives them of all their virility. A nation or
community is in a bad way for truth, when there is a tacit understanding
among their members to deal in the diminutives of a language, and
forbear the calling of things by their right names. An Englishman,
wishing to designate something which is graceful, pleasing, delicate,
or fine, uses the word 'nice'--more fitly applied to bon-bons or
beefsteaks, according to the stomach of the speaker. An energetic form
of speech is rated, in fashionable society, as particularly vulgar. In
our larger American cities, where they have much pretension but little
character, a leg must not be spoken of as such. You may say 'limb,' but
not 'leg.' The word 'woman'--one of the sweetest in the language--is
supposed to disparage the female to whom it is applied. She must be
called a 'lady,' forsooth; and this word, originally intended to pacify
an aristocratic vanity, has become the ordinary appellative of every
member of that gross family which, in the language of Shakspere, is only
fit to 'suckle fools and chronicle small beer.' I shall be more free,
and feel more honest in that rough world of the west; a region in which
the dilettantism, such as it is, of our Atlantic cities, is always very
prompt to sneer at and disparage; but I look to see the day, even in
our time, when that west shall be, not merely an empire herself, but the
nursing mother of great empires. There shall be a genius born in that
vast, wide world--a rough, unlicked genius it may be, but one whose
words shall fall upon the hills like thunder, and descend into the
valleys like a settled, heavy rain, which shall irrigate them all with a
new life. Perhaps--”
I need not pursue this. I throw it upon paper with no deliberation. It
streams from me like the rest. Its tone was somewhat derived from those
peculiar, sad feelings, and that pang-provoking course of thought, which
it has been the purpose of this narrative to embody. In the expression
of digressive but earnest notions like these, I could momentarily divert
myself from deeper and more painful emotions. I had really gone through
a great trial: I say a great trial--always assuming human indulgence for
that disease of the blind heart which led me where I found myself, which
makes me what I am. I did not feel lightly the pang of parting with my
birthplace. I did not esteem lightly the sacrifice of business, comfort,
and distinction which I was making; and of that greater cause of
suffering, supposed or real, of the falling off in my wife's affection,
the agony is already in part recorded. It may be permitted to me,
perhaps, under these circumstances--with the additional knowledge,
which I yet suppressed, that these sacrifices were to be made, and these
sufferings endured, partly that the son might be saved--to speak with
some unreserved warmth of tone to the venerable and worthy sire. He
little knew how much of my determination to remove from my country was
due to my regard for him. I felt assured that, if I remained, two things
must happen. William Edgerton would persevere in his madness, and I
should murder him in his perseverance! I banished myself in regard for
that old man, and in some measure to requite his benefactions, that I
might be spared this necessity.
When, the next day, I sought William Edgerton himself, and declared my
novel determination, he turned pale as death. I could see that his lips
quivered. I watched him closely. He was evidently racked by an emotion
which was more obvious from the necessity he was under of suppressing
it. With considerable difficulty he ventured to ask my reasons for this
strange step, and with averted countenance repeated those which his
father had proffered against my doing so. I could see that he fain
would have urged his suggestions more vehemently if he dared. But
the conviction that his wishes were the fathers to his arguments was
conclusive to render him careful that his expostulations should not put
on a show of earnestness. I must do William Edgerton the justice to
say that guilt was not his familiar. He could not play the part of the
practised hypocrite. He had no powers of artifice. He could not wear the
flowers upon his breast, having the volcano within it. Professionally,
he could be no roué. He could seem no other than he was. Conscious of
guilt, which he had not the moral strength to counteract and overthrow,
he had not, at the same time, the art necessary for its concealment. He
could use no smooth, subtle blandishments. His cheek and eye would tell
the story of his mind, though it strove to make a false presentment. I
do him the further justice to believe that a great part of his misery
arose from this consciousness of his doing wrong, rather than from the
difficulties in the way of his success. I believe that, even were he
successful in the prosecution of his illicit purposes, he would not
have looked or felt a jot less miserable. I felt, while we conferred
together, that my departure was perhaps the best measure for his relief.
While I mused upon his character and condition, my anger yielded in part
to commiseration. I remembered the morning-time of our boyhood--when we
stood up for conflict with our young enemies, side by side--obeyed the
same rallying-cry, recognised the same objects, and were a sort of David
and Jonathan to one another. Those days!--they soothed and softened
me while I recalled them. My tone became less keen, my language less
tinctured with sarcasm, when I thought of these things; and I thought of
our separation without thinking of its cause.
“I leave you, Edgerton, with one regret--not that we part, for life is
full of partings, and the strong mind must be reconciled with them, or
it is nothing--but that I leave you so unlike your former self. I wish I
could do something for you.”
I gave him my hand as as I spoke. He did not grasp--he rather shrunk
from it. An uncontrollable burst of feeling seemed suddenly to gush from
him as he spoke:--
“Take no heed of me, Clifford--I am not worthy of YOUR thought.”
“Ha! What do you mean?”
He spoke hastily, in manifest discomfiture:--
“I am worthy of no man's thought.”
“Pshaw! you are a hypochondriac.”
“Would it were that!--But you go!--when?”
“In a week, perhaps.”
“So soon? So very soon? Do you--do you carry your family with you at
once?”
There was great effort to speak this significant inquiry. I perceived
that. I perceived that his eyes were on the ground while it was
made. The question was offensive to me. It had a strange and painful
significance. It recalled the whole cause, the bitter cause of my
resolve for exile; and I could not control the altered tones of my
voice in answering, which I did with some causticity of feeling, which
necessarily entered into my utterance.
“Family, surely! My wife only! No great charge, I'm thinking, and her
health needs an early change. Would you have me leave HER? I have no
other family, you know!”
The dialogue, carried on with restraint before, was shortened by this;
and, after a few business remarks, which were necessary to our office
concerns, he pleaded an engagement to get away. He left me with some
soreness upon my mind, which formed its expression in a brief soliloquy.
“You would have the path made even freer than before, would you? It does
not content you, these long morning meditations--these pretended labors
of the painting-room, the suspicious husband withdrawn, and the wife,
neither scorning nor consenting, willing to believe in that devotion
to the art which is properly a devotion to herself? These are not
sufficient opportunities, eh? There were--more room for landscape,
appoint you, Mr. Edgerton!--Ah! could I but know all. Could I be sure
that she did love him! Could I be sure that she did not! That is the
curse--that doubt!--Will it remain so? No! no! Once removed--once in
those forest regions, it can not be that she will repine for anything.
She MUST love me then--she will feel anew the first fond passion. She
will forget these passing fancies. They WILL pass! She is young. The
image will haunt her no longer--at least, it will no longer haunt me!”
So I spoke, but I was not so sure of that last. The doubt did not
trouble me, however. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. But I
had another test yet to try. I wished to see how Julia would receive the
communication of my purpose. As yet she knew nothing of my contemplated
departure. “It will surprise her,” I thought to myself. “In that
surprise she will show how much our removal will distress her!”
But when I made known to her my intention, the surprise was all my own.
The communication did not seemed to distress her at all. Surprise her
it did, but the surprise seemed a pleasant one. It spoke out in a sudden
flashing of the eye, a gentle smiling of the mouth, which was equally
unexpected and grate ful to my heart.
“I am delighted with the idea!” she exclaimed, putting her arms about my
neck. “I think we shall be so happy there. I long to get away from this
place.”
“Indeed! But are you serious?”
“To be sure.”
“I was apprehensive it might distress you.”
“Oh! no! no! I have been dull and tired here, for a long while; and I
thought, when you told me that Mr. Kingsley had gone to Alabama, how
delightful it would be if we could go too.”
“But you never told me that.”
“No.”
“Nor even looked it, Julia.”
“Surely not--I should have been loath to have you think, while your
business was so prosperous, and you seemed so well satisfied here, that
I had any discontent.”
“I satisfied!” I said this rather to myself than her.
“Yes, were you not? I had no reason to think otherwise. Nay, I feared
you were too well satisfied, for I have seen so little of you of late.
I'm sure I wished we were anywhere, so that you could find your home
more to your liking.”
“And have such notions really filled your brain Julia?”
“Really.”
“And you have found me a stranger--you have missed me?”
“Ah! do you not know it, Edward?”
“You shall have no need to reproach me hereafter. We will go to Alabama,
and live wholly for one another. I shall leave you in business time
only, and hurry back as soon as I can.”
“Ah, promise me that?”
“I do!”
“We shall be so happy then. Then we shall take our old rambles, Edward,
though in new regions, and will resume the pencil, if you wish it.”
This was said timidly.
“To be sure I wish it. But why do you say, 'resume'? Have you not been
painting all along?”
“No! I have scarcely smeared canvass the last two months”
“But you have been sketching?”
“No!”
“What employed you then in the studio? How have you passed your
mornings?”
This inquiry was made abruptly, but it did not disturb her. Her answer
was strangely satisfactory.
“I have scarcely looked in upon the studio in all that time.”
I longed to ask what Edgerton had done with himself, and whether he had
been suffered to employ himself alone, in his morning visits, but my
tongue faltered--I somehow dared not. Still, it was something to have
her assurance that she had not found her attractions in that apartment
in which my jealous fancy had assumed that she took particular delight.
She had spoken with the calmness of innocence, and I was too happy to
believe her. I put my arms about her waist.
“Yes, we will renew the old habits, for I suppose that business there
will be less pressing, less exacting, than I have found it here. We will
take our long walks, Julia, and make up for lost time in new sketches.
You have thought me a truant, Julia--neglectful hitherto! Have you not?”
“Ah, Edward!”--Her eyes filled with tears, but a smile, like rainbow,
made them bright.
“Say, did you not?”
“Do not be angry with me if I confess I thought you very much altered in
some respects. I was fearful I had vexed you.”
“You shall have no more reason to fear. We shall be the babes in the
wood together. I am sure we shall be quite happy, left to ourselves. No
doubts, no fears--nothing but love. And you are really willing to go?”
“Willing! I wish it! I can get ready in a day.”
“You have but a week. But, have you no reluctance? Is there nothing
that you regret to leave? Speak freely, Julia. Your mother, your
friends--would you not prefer to remain with them?”
She placed her hands on my shoulders, laid her head close to my bosom
and murmured--how softly, how sweetly--in the touching language of the
Scripture damsel.
“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to refrain from following after thee;
for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.
Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!”
I folded her with tremulous but deep joy in my embrace; and in that
sweet moment of peace, I wondered that I ever should have questioned the
faith of such a woman.