FATAL SILENCE.
Strange and cruel destiny! When everything depended upon my firmness, I
was overwhelmed by feebleness. It seemed as if I had not before believed
that this terrible moment of confirmation would come. And yet, if
anybody could have been prepared for such a discovery, I should
have been. I had brooded over it for months. A thousand times had my
imagination pictured it to me in the most vivid and fearful aspect.
I fancied that I should have been steeled by conviction against every
other feeling but that of vengeance. But in reality, my hope was so
sanguine, my love for Julia so fervent, I did not, amidst all my fears,
really believe that such a thing could ever prove true. All my boasted
planning and preparation, and espionage, had only deceived myself.
I believed, at worst, that Julia might be brought to love William
Edgerton,--but that he would presume to give utterance to his love, and
that she would submit to listen, was not truly within my belief. I had
not been prepared for this, however much, in my last interview with
Kingsley, I had professed myself to be.
But had she submitted? That was still a question. I had seen nothing
beyond what I have stated. His audacious hand had rested upon hers--his
impious arm had encircled her waist, and then my blindness and darkness
followed. I was struck as completely senseless, and fell from the tree
with as little seeming life, as if a sudden bullet had traversed my
heart.
In this state I lay. How long I know not--it must have been for
several hours. I was brought to consciousness by a sense of cold. I
was benumbed--a steady rain was falling, and from the condition of my
clothes, which were completely saturated, must have been falling for
some time previous. I rose with pain and difficulty to my feet. I
was still as one stunned and stupified, by one of those extremes of
suffering for which the overcharged heart can find no sufficient or
sufficiently rapid method of relief. When I rose, the light was no
longer in the parlor. The parties were withdrawn.
Horrible thought! That I should have failed at that trying moment. I
knew everything--I knew nothing. It was still possible that Julia had
repulsed him. I had seen HIS audacity only--was it followed by HER
guilt? How shall that be known? I could answer this question as Kingsley
would have answered it.
“If your wife be honest, she must now reveal the truth. She can no
longer forbear. The proceeding of Edgerton has been too decided, and she
shares his guilt if she longer keeps it secret. The wife who submits to
this form of insult, without seeking protection where alone it may be
found, clearly shows that the offence is grateful to her--that she deems
it no insult.”
That, then, shall be the test! So I determined. Edgerton must be
punished. There is no escape. But for her--if she does not seek
the earliest occasion to reveal the truth, she is guilty beyond
doubt--doomed beyond redemption.
I entered the house with difficulty. I was as feeble as if I had been
under the hands of the physician for weeks. A light was burning on
the staircase. I took it and went into the parlor, which I narrowly
examined. There were no remaining proofs of the late disorder. The table
was set against the wall. The chess-men were all gathered up, and neatly
put away in the box, which stood upon the mantel.
“There is proof of coolness and deliberation here!” I muttered to
myself, as I took my way up-stairs. When I entered my chamber, I felt a
pang, the fore-runner of a spasm. I had been for several years afflicted
with these spasms, in great or small degree. They marked every singular
mental excitement under which I labored. It was no doubt one of these
spasms which had seized and overpowered me while I sat within the tree.
Never before had I suffered from one so severe; but the violence of
this was naturally due to the extreme of agony--as sudden as it was
terrible--which seized upon my soul. My physician had provided me with a
remedy against these attacks to which I was accustomed to resort. This,
though a potent remedy, was also a potent poison. It was a medicine
called the hydrocyanic or prussic acid. Five minims was a dose, but two
drops were death. I went to the medicine-case which stood beneath the
head of the bed, with the view to getting out the vial; but my wife
started up eagerly as I approached, and with trembling accents, demanded
what was the matter. She saw me covered with mud and soaking with water.
I told her that I had got wet coming homeward and had slipped down the
hill.
“Why did you stay so late--why not come home sooner, dear husband?”
“Hypocrite!” I muttered while stooping down for the chest.
“You are sick--you have your spasms!” she now said, rising from the
bed and offering to measure the medicine. This she had repeatedly done
before; but I was not now willing to trust her. Doubts of her fidelity
led to other doubts.
“If she is prepared to dishonor, she is prepared to destroy you!” said
my familiar.
This suggestion seized upon my brain, and while I measured out the
minims, the busy fiend reminded me that I grasped the bane as well
as the antidote in my hand. A stern, a terrible image of retributive
justice presented itself before my thoughts. The feeling of an awful
necessity grew strong within me. “Shall the adulterer alone perish?
Shall the adultress escape?” The fiend answered with tremulous but stern
passion--“She shall surely die!”
“If she reveals not the truth in season,” I said in my secret soul; “if
she claims not protection at my hands against the adulterer, she shall
share his fate!” and with this resolve, even at the moment when I was
measuring the antidote for myself, I resolved that the same vial should
furnish the bane for her!
The medicine relieved me, though not with the same promptness as usual.
I looked at the watch and found it two o'clock. My wife begged me to
come to bed, but that was impossible. I proceeded to change my garments.
By the time that I had finished, the rain ceased, the stars came out,
the morning promised to be clear. I determined to set forth from
my office. I had no particular purpose; but I felt that I could not
meditate where she was. She continually spoke to me--always tenderly and
with great earnestness. I pleaded my spasms as a reason for not lying
down. But I lingered. I was as unwilling to go as to stay. I longed to
hear her narrative; and, once or twice, I fancied that she wished to
tell me something. But she did not. I waited till near daylight, in
order that she should have every opportunity, but she said little beyond
making professions of love, and imploring me to come to bed.
In sheer despair, at last, I went out, taking my pistol-case,
unperceived by her, under my arm. I went to my office where I locked
it up. There I seated myself, brooding in a very whirlwind of thought,
until after daylight.
When the sun had risen, I went to a man in the neighborhood who hired
out vehicles. I ordered a close carriage to be at my door by a certain
hour, immediately after breakfast. I then despatched a note to Kingsley,
saying briefly that Edgerton and myself would call for him at nine. I
then returned home. My wife had arisen, but had not left the chamber.
She pleaded headache and indisposition, and declined coming out
to breakfast. She seemed very sad and unhappy, not to say greatly
disquieted--appearances which I naturally attributed to guilt.
For--still she said nothing. I lingered near her on various small
pretences in the hope to hear her speak. I even made several approaches
which, I fancied, might tend to provoke the wished-for revelation.
Indeed, it was wished for as ardently as ever soul wished for the
permission to live--prayed for as sincerely as the dying man prays for
respite, and the temporary remission of his doom.
In vain! My wife said little, and nothing to the purpose. The moments
became seriously short. Could she have anything to say? Was it possible
that, being innocent, she should still lock up the guilty secret in
her bosom? She could not be innocent to do so! This conclusion seemed
inevitable. In order that she should have no plea of discouragement,
I spoke to her with great tenderness of manner, with a more than usual
display of feeling. It was no mere show. I felt all that I said and
looked. I knew that a trying and terrible event was at hand--an event
painful to us both--and all my love for her revived with tenfold
earnestness. Oh! how I longed to take her into my arms, and warn her
tenderly of the consequences of her error; but this, of course, was
impossible. But, short of this, I did everything that I thought likely
to induce her confidence. I talked familiarly to her, and fondly, with
an effort at childlike simplicity and earnestness, in the hope that, by
thus renewing the dearest relations of ease and happiness between us,
she should be beguiled into her former trusting readiness of speech. She
met my fondnesses with equal fondness. It seemed to give her particular
pleasure that I should be thus fond. In her embrace, requiting mine,
she clung to me; and her tears dropping warm upon my hands, were yet
attended by smiles of the most hearty delight. A thousand times she
renewed the assurances of her love and attachment--nay, she even went
so far as tenderly to upbraid me that our moments of endearment were so
few;--yet, in spite of all this, she still forbore the one only subject.
She still said nothing; and as I knew how much she COULD say and ought
to say, which she did not say, I could not resist the conviction that
her tears were those of the crocodile, and her assurances of love the
glozing commonplaces of the harlot.
In silence she suffered me to leave her for the breakfast-table. She
looked, it is true--but what had I to do with looks, however earnest
and devoted? I went from her slowly. When on the stairs, fancying I had
heard her voice, I returned, but she had not called me. She was still
silent. Full of sadness I left her, counting slowly and sadly every step
which I took from her presence.
Edgerton was already at table. He looked very wretched I observed him
closely. His eye shrunk from the encounter of mine. His looks answered
sufficiently for his guilt. I said to him:--
“I have to ride out a little ways in the country this morning, and count
upon your company. I trust you feel well enough to go with me? Indeed,
it will do you good.”
Of course, my language and manner were stripped of everything that might
alarm his fears. He hesitated, but complied. The carriage was at the
door before we had finished breakfast; and with no other object than
simply to afford her another opportunity for the desired revelation,
I once more went up to my wife's chamber. Here I lingered fully ten
minutes, affecting to search for a paper in trunks where I knew it could
not be found. While thus engaged I spoke to her frequently and fondly.
She did not need the impulse to make her revelation, except in her own
heart. The occasion was unemployed. She suffered me once more to depart
in silence; and this time I felt as if the word of utter and inevitable
wo had been spoken. The hour had gone by for ever. I could no longer
resist the conviction of her shameless guilt. All her sighs and tears,
professions of love and devotion, the fond tenacity of her embrace,
the deep-seated earnestness and significance in her looks--all went
for nothing in her failure to utter the one only, and all-important
communication.
Let no woman, on any pretext, however specious, deceive herself with the
fatal error, that she can safely harbor, unspoken to her husband, the
secret of any insult, or base approach, of another to herself!