CHAPTER XLVII. — 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 The parties were withdrawn.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!