THE BLACK DOG ONCE MORE UPON THE SCENE.
The next day was devoted to an examination of our premises and the
neighborhood. The result of this examination was such as to render us
better satisfied with the change that we had made. We were still young
enough to be sensible to the loveliness of novelty. Everything wore that
purple light which the eye of youth confers upon the object. And then
there was repose. That harassing strife of the “blind heart” was at
rest. I had no more suspicions; and my wife looked and spoke as if
she had never had either doubts of me, or fears of herself, within her
bosom. I was happiness itself, when, by the unreserved ease and gayety
of her deportment she persuaded me that she suffered no regrets. I
little fancied how much the change in my wife's manner had arisen from
the involuntary change which had been going on in mine. I now looked
the love which I felt; and she felt, in the improvement of my looks, the
renewal of that fond passion which I had never ceased to feel, but
which I had only too much ceased to show while suffering from the “blind
heart.” She resumed her old amusements with new industry. Our little
parlor received constant accessions of new pictures. All our leisure was
employed in exploring the scenery of the neighborhood; and not a bit of
forest, or patch of hill, or streak of rivulet or stream, to which the
genius of art could lend loveliness, but she picked up, in these happy
rambles, and worked into fitting places upon our cottage walls.
Our good old hostess became attached to us. She virtually surrendered
the management of the household to my wife. She was old and quite
infirm; and was frequently confined for days to her chamber; which must
have been a solitary place enough before our coming. My wife became
a companion to her in these periods of painful seclusion, and thus
provided her with a luxury which had been long denied her. Under
these circumstances we had very much our own way. The old lady had
few associates, and these were generally very worthy people. They soon
became our associates also, and under the influence of better feelings
than had governed me for a long time past, I now found myself in a
condition of comfort, cheerfulness, and peace, which I fancied I had
forfeited for ever.
Two weeks after our arrival, Kingsley took his departure for Texas, on
a visit. He proposed to be absent two months. His object, as he had
described it before, in some pleasant exaggerations, was to select some
favorable spots for purchase, which should combine as nearly as possible
the three prime requisites of salubrity, fertility, and beauty. His
object was to speculate; “and this was to be done,” he said, “at an
early hour of the day.” “The Spanish proverb,” he was wont to say,
“which regulates the eating of oranges, is not a bad rule to govern
a man in making his speculations. Speculations (oranges) are gold at
morning, silver at noon, and lead at night. It is your wise man,” he
added, “who buys and sells early; your merely sensible man who does
so at midday; while your dunce, waiting for an increased appetite at
evening, swallows nothing but lead.”
I was in some respects a very fortunate man. If I had been a wise one!
It has been seen that I was singularly successful in business at my
first beginning in my native city. I had not been long in the town
of M--, before I began to congratulate myself on the prospect of like
fortune attending me there. The affairs of Kingsley brought me into
contact with several men of business. My letters of introduction made
me acquainted with many more; not simply of the town, but of the
neighboring country. My ardency of temper was particularly suited to a
frank, confiding people, such as are most of the southwestern men; and
one or two accidental circumstances yielded me professional occupation
long before I expected to find it. I had occasion to appear in court
at an early day, and succeeded in making a favorable impression upon
my hearers. To be a good speaker, in the south and southwest, is to be
everything. Eloquence implies wisdom--at least all the wisdom which is
supposed to be necessary in making lawyers and law-makers--a precious
small modicum of a material by no means precious. I was supposed to
have the gift of the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were
indulgent. My name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I
discovered that, in a professional as well as personal point of view,
I had no reason to regret the change of residence which I had made.
Business began to flow in upon me. Applications reached me from
adjoining counties, and though my fees, like the cases which I was
employed in, were of moderate amount, they promised to be frequent,
while my clients generally were very substantial persons.
It will not need that I should dwell farther on these topics. It will be
sufficient to show that, in worldly respects, I was as likely to prosper
in my new as in my past abode. In social respects I had still more
reason to be gratified. The days went by with me as smoothly as with
Thalaba. My wife was all that I could wish. She was the very Julia whom
I had married. Nay, she was something more--something better. Her health
improved, and with it her spirits. She evidently had no regrets. A sigh
never escaped her. Her content and cheerfulness were wonderful. She
had none of that vague, vain yearning which the feeble feel, called
“home-sickness.” She convinced me that I was her home--the only home
that she desired. It was evident that she thought less of our ancient
city than I did myself. I am sure that if either of us, at any moment,
felt a desire to look upon it again, the person was myself. I maintained
a correspondence with the place--received the newspapers, groped over
them with persevering industry--nay--missed not the advertisements, and
was disappointed and a discontent on those days when the mail failed.
My wife had no such appetite. She sometimes read the papers, but she
appeared to have no curiosity; and, with the exception of an occasional
letter which she received from her mother, she had no intercourse
whatever with her former home.
All this was calculated to satisfy me. But this was not all. If
gentleness, sweetness, cheerfulness, and a sleepless consideration
of one's wants and feelings, could convince any mortal of the love of
another--I must have been satisfied. We resumed most of the habits which
began with our marriage, but which had been so long discontinued. We
rose with the sun, and went abroad after his example. Like him we rose
to the hill-tops, and then descended into the valleys. We grew familiar
with the deepest shades of wood and forest while the dewdrops were yet
beading the bosoms of the wild flowers; and we followed the meandering
course of the Alabama, long before the smoking steamer vexed it with
her flashing paddles. My professional toils from breakfast to
dinner-time--for this interval I studiously gave to my office, even if I
had little to do there--occasioned the only interregnum which I knew in
the positive pleasures which I enjoyed. In the afternoon our enjoyments
were renewed. Our cottage was so sweetly secluded, that we did not need
to go far in order to find the Elysian grove which we desired. At
the top of our hill we were surrounded by a natural temple of proud
pines--guarding the spot from any but that sort of devine and religious
light which streams through the painted windows of the ancient
cathedral. The gay glances of the sun came gliding through the foliage
in drops, and lay upon the grass in little pale, fanciful gleams, most
like eyes of fairies peeping upward from its velvety tufts. Here we read
together from the poets--sometimes Julia sung, even while sketching.
Not unfrequently, Mrs. Porterfield came with us, and, at such times, our
business was to detect distant glimpses of barge, or steamboat, as they
successively darted into sight, along such of the glittering patches of
the Alabama as were revealed to us in its downward progress through the
woods.
Our evenings were such as hallow and make the luxury of cottage
life--evenings yielded up to cheerfulness, to content and harmony.
Between music, and poetry, and painting, my heart was subdued to the
sweetest refinements of love. Without the immorality, we had the very
atmosphere of a Sybarite indulgence. I was enfeebled by the excess of
sweets; and the happiness which I felt expressed itself in signs. These
denoted my presentiments. My apprehensions were my sole cause of doubt
and sorrow. How could such enjoyments last? Was it possible, with any,
that they should last? Was it possible that they should last with me? I
should have been mad to think it.
But, in the sweet delirium which their possession inspired, I almost
forgot the past. The soul of man is the most elastic thing in nature.
Those harassing tortures of the heart which I had been suffering for
months--those weary days of exhausting doubt--those long nights of
torturing suspicion--the shame and the fear, the sting of jealousy, and
the suffering--I had almost forgotten in the absorbing pleasures of my
new existence. If I remembered them it was only to smile; if I thought
of William Edgerton it was only to pity;--and, as for Julia, deep
was the crimson shadow upon my cheek, whenever the reproachful memory
reminded me of the tortures which I had inflicted upon her gentle heart
while laboring under the tortures of my own--when I thought of the
unmanly espionage which I had maintained over conduct which I now felt
to be irreproachable.
But, just at the moment when I thus thought and felt--when I no longer
suffered and no longer inflicted pain--when my wife was not only virtue
in my sight, but love, and beauty, and grace, and meekness--all that was
good and all that was dear besides;--when my sky was without a cloud,
and the evening star shone through the blue sky upon the green tops of
our cottage trees, with the serene lustre of a May-divinity--just then a
thunderbolt fell upon my dwelling, and blackened the scene for ever.
I had now been three months a resident in M----, and never had I been
more happy--never less apprehensive on the score of my happiness--when
I received a letter from my venerable friend and patron, the father of
William Edgerton.
“My son,” he wrote, “is no better than when you left us. We have every
reason to believe him worse. He has a cough, he is very thin, and there
is a flushed spot upon his cheek which seems to his mother and myself
the indubitable sign of vital decay. His frame is very feeble, and our
physician advises travel. Under this counsel he set off with a favorite
servant on Wednesday of last week. He will make easy stages through
Tennessee to the Ohio, will descend into Mississippi, and return home
by way of Alabama. He contemplates paying you a brief visit. I need not
say, dear Clifford, how grateful I shall be for any kindness which you
can show to my poor boy. His mother particularly invokes it. I should
not have deemed it necessary to say so much, but would have preferred
leaving it to William to make his own communication, were it not that
she so particularly desires it. It may be well to add, that on one
subject we are both very much relieved. We now have reason to believe
that our apprehensions on the score of his morals were without
foundation. It is our present belief that he neither gamed nor drank.
This is a consolation, dear Clifford, though it brings us no nigher to
our wish. It is something to believe that the object of our love is not
worthless; though it adds to the pang that we should feel in the event
of losing him. Our parting would be less easy. For my own part, I have
little hope that his journey will do him any material benefit. It may
prolong his days, but can not, I fear, have any more decided influence
upon his disease. His mother, however, is more sanguine, and it is
perhaps well that she should be so. I know that when William reaches
your neighborhood, you will make it as cheerful and pleasant to him as
possible. The talent of your young and sweet wife--her endowments in
painting and music--have always been a great solace to him. His tastes
you know are very much like hers. I trust she will exercise them, and
be happy in ministering to the comfort of one, who will not, I fear,
trespass very long upon any earthly ministry. My dear Clifford, I know
that you will do your utmost in behalf of your earliest friend, and I
will waste no more words in unnecessary solicitation.”
Such was the important portion of the letter. In an instant, as I read
it, I saw, with the instinct of jealousy, the annihilation of all my
hopes of happiness. All my dreams were in the dust--all my fancies
scattered--my schemes and temples overthrown. Bitter was the pang I felt
on reading this letter. It said more--much more--in the very language of
solicitation which the good old father professed to believe unnecessary.
He poured forth the language of a father's grief and entreaty. I felt
for the venerable man--the true friend--in spite of my own miserable
apprehensions. I felt for him, but what could I do? What would he have
me do? I had no house in which to receive his son. He would lodge,
perhaps, for a time, in the community. It could not be supposed that he
would remain long. The letter of the father spoke only of a brief visit.
Our neighborhood had no repute, as a place of resort, for consumptive
patients. I consoled myself with the reflection that William Edgerton
could, on no pretence, linger more than a week or two among us. I will
treat him kindly--give him the freedom of the house while he remains. A
dying man, if so he be, must have reached a due sense of his situation,
and will not be likely to trespass upon the rights of another. His
passions must be subdued by this time. Ah! but will not his condition be
more likely to inspire sympathy?
The fiend of the blind heart prompted that last suggestion. It was the
only one that I remembered. When I returned home that day to dinner, I
mentioned, as if casually, the letter I had received, and the contents.
My eye narrowly watched that of my wife while I spoke. Hers sunk beneath
my glance Her cheeks were suddenly flushed--then, as suddenly, grew
pale, and I observed, that, though she appeared to eat, but few morsels
of food were carried into her mouth that day. She soon left the table,
and, pleading headache declined joining me in our usual evening rambles.