X.
LADY SACKVIL'S JOURNAL.
"I have been playing the part of a peri at the gates of paradise. I have been watching Mary Vane with her child. My life looks to me unbearable. I am a blunder on the part of nature. I have the passions of a man and the follies of a woman. This is the last entry I shall make in this book. Once for all I will put my agony into words, and then throw this wretched record of three months into the canal, to rot with the other impurities thrown daily into the sluggish flood.
When first I allowed myself to exercise my power over Vane, it was from mere coquetry and love of excitement. I wished to reassert my sway and punish his former cruelty. Later I dreamed of a Platonic love, à la Récamier and Chateaubriand. True, one pities Mesdames de Chateaubriand, viewing them as a class; but they must suffer for their bad management. I did not recognize, I do not recognize the claims of so-called duty; I lack motive. Virtue as virtue does not attract me; neither does sin as sin attract me. I want to have my own way. Gratified self-will has afforded me the only permanent enjoyment of my life; but it has this disadvantage. While you rule your will and indulge it for fancy's sake, the pleasure is unquestionable. When your will begins to rule you, there is no slavery so galling. I had not thought of this; I know it now.
Once for all, I put my torture into words. I love him. Ten years ago I buried my heart—in sand or sawdust, or something else, where grass and flowers cannot grow. It has risen now in an awful resurrection, and taken possession of me. He might have been all mine. I wish to hate his wife, and am forced to honor her profoundly. I cannot leave this place. My will refuses to let me go. Oh! if I stay here and do not say one word, where is the harm? And if he should utter the word I dare not say—"
Amelia paused shuddering. "O subtle—O inexorable horror!" she said. Then, enveloping the book in paper, she carried it out onto the balcony, and dropped it into the canal, and heard the splash, and marked with satisfaction its disappearance beneath the dull green water.
"There—that's gone!" she said, and reëntered the room. Her face, which reflected every change of mood, grew very white.
"It is not gone!" she cried; and pressing her hands to her breast exclaimed, "It is here; it is my double—my bosom serpent! O God! how it gnaws!"
She went to a press, and pulling open drawers and slides, sought something eagerly. Then, as if forgetting the object of her search, paused in deep thought, and finally rang the bell violently.
Josephine came promptly, but unsurprised, being used to vehemence on the part of her mistress.
"You may pack my trunks. I shall leave Venice to-morrow."
The maid proceeded to take out dress after dress and fold them. When one trunk was packed, Lady Sackvil who had been standing on the balcony in the blazing sun, looking down into the water, glanced over her shoulder.
"You may pack the other boxes another day," she remarked calmly; "I shall not go to-morrow. Your dinner-bell is ringing; you can go."
She locked the door behind Josephine, and then returned to her researches in the press. At last she produced a small vial of laudanum, and, sitting down before the toilette-table, poured a little into a glass and paused. "I wish I knew how much to take," she said ponderingly; "it would be so tiresome to take too little or too much." Then she fell to considering herself in the mirror—looked anxiously at the faint commencement of a wrinkle between her eyebrows; and pushing back her hair, revealed a gray hair or two hidden beneath the dark locks so full of sunny gleams. "I will do it," she said, and then took a few drops; then paused again. "I can't—I won't!" she said violently. "I'm afraid; I'm afraid of hell—I'm afraid of that horrid, clammy thing they call death! I'm afraid of making poor, good little Flora miserable! Oh! I'm afraid of myself, dead or alive," she moaned, rocking herself to and fro, in a passion of regret and pain.
At last the paroxysm passed. She poured back the laudanum, washed the glass, replaced every thing accurately, and threw herself on the couch. There, overcome by the drug, to which her healthy frame was wholly unaccustomed, she fell into a heavy sleep.
The plea of weariness afforded an excuse for going early to bed. When she awoke the second time, the Campanile clock was striking two. A rain was falling, pattering on the canal, dripping and trickling from the eaves and from the pointed traceries above the windows. She got up, put on a white wrapper, and went out onto the balcony. The rain felt cool on her burning head. It drenched her to the skin, and dripped from her hair. Yet still she stood there, crying bitter tears that brought no relief, shaken with sobs that she with difficulty prevented from becoming cries. She wrung her hands with grief, and passion, and pain. Night added nothing to the darkness in her soul; dawn brought neither light nor hope of change; and when at last she went in from the cold, gray morning light, to change her wet clothes and creep into bed, it was to a second dose of laudanum that she owed the temporary bliss of oblivion.