DOUBTS--SUMMONS.
The billet which was addressed to my wife was in the following
language:--“Lady, on the verge of the grave, having sincerely repented
of the offense I have given you, I implore you to pity and to pardon.
A sense of guilt and shame weighs me down to earth. You can not apply a
harsher judgment to my conduct than I feel it deserves; but I am crushed
already. You will not trample the prostrate. In a few hours my body will
be buried in the dust. My soul is already there. But, though writhing,
I do not curse; and still loving, I yet repent. In my last moments I
implore you to forgive! forgive! forgive!”
This was all, and I considered the two documents with keen and
conflicting feelings. There was an earnestness--a sincerity about them,
which I could not altogether discredit. He had freely avowed his own
errors; but he had not spoken for hers. I did not dare to admit the
impression which he evidently wished to convey of her entire innocence,
not only from the practices, but the very thoughts of guilt. It is
in compliance with a point of honor that the professed libertine yet
endeavors to excuse and save the partner of his wantonness. In this
light I regarded all those parts of his narrative which went to
extenuate her conduct. There was one part of her conduct, indeed, which,
as it exceeded his ability to account for, was beyond his ability to
excuse--namely, her strange concealment of his insolence. This was the
grand fault which, it appeared to me, was conclusive of all the rest. It
was now my policy to believe in this fault wholly. If I did not, where
was I? what was my condition?--my misery?
I sat brooding, with these documents open before me on the table, when
Kingsley tapped at the door. I bade him enter, and put the papers in
his hands. He read them in silence, laid them down without a word, and
looked me with a grave composure in the face.
“What do you think of it?” I demanded.
“That he speaks the truth,” he replied.
“Yes, no doubt--so far as he himself is concerned.”
“I should think it all true.”
“Indeed! I think not.”
“Why do you doubt, and what?”
“I doubt those portions in which he insists upon my wife's integrity.”
“Wherefore?”
“There are many reasons; the principal of which is her singular
concealment of the truth. She suffers a strange man to offend her virtue
with the most atrocious familiarities, and says nothing to her
husband, who, alone, could have redressed the wrong and remedied the
impertinence.”
“That certainly is a staggering fact.”
“According to his own admission, she warns him to fly from the wrath of
her husband, to which his audacity had exposed him--warns him, in her
night-dress, and from the window of her chamber.”
“True, true! I had forgotten that.”
“Look at all the circumstances. He haunts the house--according to his
own showing, persecutes her with attentions, which are so marked,
that, when he finds her husband ignorant of them, leads him to the
conclusion--which is natural--that they are not displeasing to the wife.
He avails himself of the privileges of the waltz, at the marriage of
Mrs. Delaney, to gratify his lustful anticipations. He presses her arm
and waist with his d----d fingers. Rides home with her, and, according
to his story, takes other liberties, which she baffles and sets aside.
But, mark the truth. Though she requires him to set her down in the
street--though she makes terms for his forbearance--a wife making terms
with a libertine--yet he evidently sees her into the house, and when she
is taken sick, hurries for the mother and the physician. He tells just
enough of the story to convict himself, but suppresses everything which
may convict her. How know I that this resistance in the carriage was
more than a sham? How know I that he did not attend her in the house?
That they did not dabble together on their way through the dark
piazza--along the stairs?--Nay, what proof is there that he did not find
his way, with polluting purpose, into the very chamber?--that chamber,
from which, not three weeks after, she bade him fly to avoid my wrath!
What makes her so precious of his life--the life of one who pursues her
with lust and dishonor--if she does not burn with like passions? But
there is more.”
Here I told him of the letter of Mrs. Delaney, in which that permanent
beldame counsels her daughter, less against the passion itself, than
against the imprudent exhibition of it. It was clear that the mother
had seen what had escaped my eyes. It was clear that the mother was
convinced of the attachment of the daughter for this man. Now, the
attachment being shown, what followed from the concealment of the
indignities to which Edgerton had subjected her, but that she was
pleased with them, and did not feel them to be such. These indignities
are persevered in--are frequently repeated. Our footsteps are followed
from one country to another. The husband's hours of absence are noted.
His departure is the invariable signal for them to meet. They meet. His
hands paddle with hers; his arms grasp her waist. True, we are told
by him, that she resists; but it is natural that he should make this
declaration. Its truth is combated by the fact that, of these insults,
SHE says nothing. That fact is everything. That one fact involves all
the rest. The woman who conceals such a history, shares in the guilt.
Kingsley assented to these conclusions.
“Yet,” he said, “there is an air of truthfulness about these
papers--this narrative--that I should be pleased to believe, even if
I could not;--that I should believe for your sake, Clifford, if for no
other reason. Honestly, after all you have said and shown--with all the
unexplained and perhaps unexplainable particulars before me, making the
appearances so much against her--I can not think your wife guilty. I
should be sorry to think so.”
“I should now be sorry to think otherwise,” I said huskily. I thought
of that poisonous draught. I thought with many misgivings, and trembled
where I sat.
“You surprise me to hear you speak so. Surely, Clifford, you love your
wife!”
“Love her!” I exclaimed; I could say no more. My sobs choked my
utterance.
“Nay, do not give up,” he said tenderly. “Be a man. All will go well
yet. The facts are anything but conclusive. These papers have a realness
about them, which have their weight against any suspicions, however
strong. Remember, these are the declarations of a dying man! Surely, all
minor considerations of policy would give way at such a moment to the
all-important necessity of speaking the truth. Besides, there is one
consideration alone, to which we have made no reference, which yet
seems to me full of weight and value. Edgerton could scarcely have been
successful in his designs upon your wife. He was in fact dying of the
disappointment of his passions. They could not have been gratified.
Success takes an exulting aspect. He was always miserable and
wo-begone--always desponding, sad, unhappy, from the first moment when
this passion began, to the last.”
“Guilt, guilt, nothing but guilt!”
“No, Clifford, no!--The guilt that works so terribly upon conscience as
to produce such effects upon the frame, inevitably leads to repentance.
Now, we find that Edgerton pursued his object until he was detected.”
I shook my head.
“Do not steel yourself against probabilities, my dear fellow,” said
Kingsley.
“Proofs against probabilities always!”
“No! none of these are proofs except the papers you have in your hands,
and the imperfect events which you witnessed. I am so much an admirer of
your wife myself, that I am ready to believe this statement against the
rest; and to believe that, however strange may have been her conduct in
some respects, it will yet be explained in a manner which shall acquit
her of misconduct. Believe me, Clifford, think with me--”
“No! no! I can not--dare not! She is a--”
“Do not! Do not! No harsh words, even were it so! She has been your
wife. She should still be sacred in your eyes, as one who has slept upon
your bosom.”
“A traitress all the while, dreaming of the embraces of another.”
“Clifford, what can this mean? You are singularly inveterate.”
“Should I not be so? Am I not lost--abandoned--wrecked on the high seas
of my hope--my fortunes scattered to the winds--my wealth, the jewel
which I prized beyond all beside, which was worth the whole, gone down,
swallowed up, and the black abyss closed over it for ever?”
“We are not sure of this”
“I am!”
“No! no!”
“I am! Though she be innocent, who shall rid me of the doubt, the fear,
the ineradicable suspicion! THAT blackens all my sunlight; THAT poisons
all my peace. I can never know delight. Nay, though you proved her
innocent, it is now too late. Kingsley, by this time I have no wife!”
“Ha! Surely, Clifford, you have not--”
“Hark! Some one knocks! Again!--again!--I understand it. I know what it
means. They are looking for me. She is dead or dying. I tell you it is
quite in vain that you should argue. Above all, do not seek to prove her
innocent.”
The knocking without increased. He seized my arm as I was going forward,
and prevented me.
“Compose yourself,” he said, thrusting me into a chair. “Remain here
till I return. I will see what is wanted.”
But I followed him, and reached the door almost as soon as himself. It
was as I expected. I had been sent for. My wife was dangerously ill.
Such was the tenor of the message. More I could not learn. The servant
had been an hour in search of me. Had sought me at the office and in
other places which I had been accustomed to frequent; and I felt that
after so long a delay, there was no longer need for haste. Still, I was
about to depart with hasty footsteps. The servant was already dismissed.
Kingsley grasped my arm.
“I will go along with you.” he said; and as we went, he spoke, in low
accents, to the following effect:--
“I know not what you have done, Clifford; and there is no need that I
should know. Keep your secret. I do not think the worse of you that you
have been maddened to crime. Let the same desperation nerve you now to
sufficient composure. Beware of what you say, lest these people suspect
you.”
“And what if they do? Think you, Kingsley, that I fear? No! no! Life has
nothing now. I lost fear, and hope, and everything in her.”
“But may she not live?”
“No, I think not; the poison is most deadly. Though, even if she lives,
my loss would not be less. She ceased to live for me the moment that she
began to live for another!”