CHAPTER XXXII. — SUDDEN LESSON AND NEW SUSPICIONS.
While I had been wasting the precious hours of midnight in a gaming-house, my poor Julia had undergone the peculiar pangs of a mother! While I had been reproaching her in my secret soul for a want of ardency and attachment, she had been giving me the highest proof that she possessed the warmest. These revelations, however, were to reach me slowly; and then, like those of Cassandra, they were destined to encounter disbelief.
Leaving Kingsley, I turned into the street where my wife's mother lived. But the house was shut up—the company gone. I had not been heedful of the progress of the hours. I looked up at the tall, white, and graceful steeple of our ancient church, which towered in serene majesty above us; but, in the imperfect light I failed to read the letters upon the dial-plate. At that moment its solemn chimes pealed forth the hour, as if especially in answer to my quest. How such sounds speak to the very soul at midnight! They seem the voice from Time himself, informing, not man alone, but Eternity, of his progress to that lone night, in which his minutes, hours, days, and years, are equally to be swallowed up and forgotten.
Sweet had been those bells to me in boyhood. Sad were they to me now. I had heard them ring forth merry peals on the holydays of the nation; and peals on the day of national mourning; startling and terrifying peals in the hour of midnight danger and alarm; but never till then had they spoken with such deep and searching earnestness to the most hidden places of my soul. That 'one, two, three, four,' which they then struck, as they severally pronounced the thrilling monotones, seemed to convey the burden of four impressive acts in a yet unfinished tragedy. My heart beat with a feeling of anxiety, such as overcomes us, when we look for the curtain to rise which is to unfold the mysterious progress of the catastrophe.
That fifth act of mine! what was it to be? Involuntarily my lips uttered the name of William Edgerton! I started as if I had trodden upon a viper. The denouement of the drama at once grew up before my eyes. I felt the dagger in my grasp; I actually drew it from my bosom. I saw the victim before me—a smile upon his lips—a fire in his glance—an ardor, an intelligence, that looked like exulting passion; and my own eyes grew dim. I was blinded; but, even in the darkness, I struck with fatal precision. I felt the resistance, I heard the groan and the falling body; and my hair rose, with a cold, moist life of its own, upon my clammy and shrinking temples.
I recovered from the delusion. My dagger had been piercing the empty air; but the feeling and the horror in my soul were not less real because the deed had been one of fancy only. The foregone conclusion was in my mind, and I well knew that fate would yet bring the victim to the altar.
I know not how I reached my dwelling, but when there I was soon brought to a sober condition of the senses. I found everything in commotion. Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford, was there, busy in my wife's chamber, while her husband, surly with such an interruption to his domestic felicity, even at the threshold, was below, kicking his heels in solemn disquietude in the parlor. The servants had been despatched to bring her and to seek me, in the first moments of my wife's danger. She had consciousness enough for that, and Mrs. Delaney had summoned the physician. He too—the excellent old man, who had assisted us in our clandestine marriage—he too was there; sad, troubled, and regarding me with looks of apprehension and rebuke which seemed to ask why I was abroad at that late hour, leaving my wife under such circumstances. I could not meet his glance with a manly eye. They brought me the dead infant—poor atom of mortality—no longer mortal; but I turned away from the spectacle. I dared not look upon it. It was the form of a perished hope, ended in a dream! And such a dream! The physician gave me a brief explanation of the condition of things.
“Your wife is very ill. It is difficult to say what will happen. Make up your mind for the worst. She has fever—has been delirious. But she sleeps now under the effect of some medicine I have given her. She will not sleep long; and everything will depend upon her wakening. She must be kept very quiet.”
I asked if he could conjecture what should bring about such an event. “Though delicate, Julia was not out of health. She had been well during the evening when I left her.”
“You have left her long. This is a late hour, Mr. Clifford, for a young husband to be out. Nothing but matter of necessity could excuse—”
I interrupted him with some gravity:—
“Suppose then it was a matter of necessity—of seeming necessity, at least.”
He observed my emotion.
“Do not be angry with me. I assisted your dear wife into the world, Clifford. I would not see her hurried out of it. She is like a child of my own; I feel for her as such.”
I said something apologetic, I know not what, and renewed my question.
“She has been alarmed or excited, perhaps; possibly has fallen while ascending the stair. A very slight accident will sometimes suffice to produce such a result with a constitution such as hers. She needs great watchfulness, Clifford; close attention, much solicitude. She needs and deserves it, Clifford.”
I saw that the old man suspected me of indifference and neglect. Alas! whatever might be my faults in reference to my wife, indifference was not among them. What he had said, however, smote me to the heart. I felt like a culprit. I dared not meet his eye when, at daylight, he took his departure, promising to return in a few hours.
My excellent mother-in-law was more capable and copious in her details. From her I learned that Julia, though anxious to depart for some time before, had waited for my return until the last of her guests were about to retire. Among these happened to be Mr. William Edgerton!
“He offered his carriage, but Julia put off accepting for a long time, saying you would soon return. But at last he pressed her so, and seeing everybody else gone, she concluded to go, and Mr. Delaney helped her into the carriage, and Mr. Edgerton got in too, to see her home; and off they drove, and it was not an hour after, when Becky (the servant-girl) came to rout us up, saying that her mistress was dying. I hurried on my clothes, and Delaney—dear good man—he was just as quick; and off we came, and sure enough, we found her in a bad way, and nobody with her but the servants; and I sent off after you, and after the doctor; and he just came in time to help her; but she went on wofully; was very lightheaded; talked a great deal about you; and about Mr. Edgerton; I suppose because he had just been seeing her home; but didn't seem to know and doesn't know to this moment what has happened to her.”
I have shortened very considerably the long story which Mrs. Delaney made of it. Rambling as it was—full of nonsense—with constant references to her “dear good man,” and her party, the company, herself, her fashion, and frivolities—there was yet something to sting and trouble me at the core of her narration. Edgerton and my wife linger to the last—Edgerton rides home with her—he and she in the carriage, alone, at midnight;—and then this catastrophe, which the doctor thought was a natural consequence of some excitement or alarm.
These facts wrought like madness in my brain. Then, too, in her delirium she raves of HIM! Is not that significant? True, it comes from the lips of that malicious old woman! she, who had already hinted to me that my wife—her daughter—was likely to be as faithless to me as she had been to herself. Still, it is significant, even if it be only the invention of this old woman. It showed what she conjectured—what she thought to be a natural result of these practices which had prompted her suspicions as well as my own.
How hot was the iron-pressure upon my brain—how keen and scorching was that fiery arrow in my soul, when I took my place of watch beside the unconscious form of my wife, God alone can know. If I am criminal—if I have erred with wildest error—surely I have struggled with deepest misery. I have been misled by wo, not temptation! Sore has been my struggle, sore my suffering, even in the moment of my greatest fault and folly. Sore!—-how sore!