Cruel as the grave

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“It was black enough last night, was it not?” asked Mr. Berners, with a smile.

“Oh, it was black everywhere last night; but no blacker here than elsewhere, so I don’t see the justice of calling this the Black Valley. I should call it rather the ‘Valley of the Sun.’”

“Would not the ‘Valley of the Pyrotechnics’ do as well?” inquired Lyon Berners, with dry humor.

“I think it would,” replied Rosa, quite seriously, “for certainly this morning, with this glorious sunshine and these glowing, sparkling woods and waters, the place is a perfect spectacle of fire-works!”

“You view the scenery at its best and brightest. It is never so beautiful and brilliant as on a clear sunny autumn noon-day. At all other seasons, and at all other hours, it is gloomy enough. In a very few hours from this, when the sun gets behind the mountain, it will be quite black enough to justify its name,” said Mr. Berners very gravely.

The conversation had been carried on between Mr Berners and Mrs. Blondelle exclusively. Sybil had not volunteered a word; and it happened also that neither of her companions had addressed a word to her. She felt as if she were dropped out of their talk, and though bodily present, dropped out of their company as well. She felt that this was very hard; and once more she experienced the wild and vain regret that she had ever invited this too-alluring stranger to become an inmate of her house.

Before now, when they had been together, Lyon Berners had been accustomed to think of, smile on, talk to, only her, his wife! Now his thoughts, smiles, conversation were all divided with another!—Oh no! Oh no! not divided, but almost entirely absorbed by that other! At least so suspected the jealous wife.

“Is it possible, oh! is it possible that he loves me less than formerly? that he loves me not at all? that he loves this stranger?” thought Sybil, as she watched her husband and her friend, entirely taken up with each other, and entirely oblivious of her! And at this thought a sensation of sickness and faintness came over her, and she saved herself from falling, only by a great effort of self-command. They, talking to each other, smiling at each other, enjoying each other’s exclusive attention, did not observe her emotion, although almost any casual spectator must have seen it in the deadly pallor of her face.

In all this there was little to arouse her jealousy; and perhaps there was nothing at all. Her heart pang may have come of a false fear, or a true one; who could then tell?

For my own part, looking towards this situation of affairs through the light of after knowledge, I think that her fears were, even then, well-founded; that even then it was a true instinct which warned her that her adored husband, he to whom her whole heart, soul, and spirit were entirely given, he for whom only she “lived and moved and had her being,” he was becoming fascinated, for the time being at least, by this beautiful stranger, who was evidently also flattered by his attentions. And this in the very honeymoon of the bride to whom he owed so much!