"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision; and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company, where they would tell with the sharpest effect.
"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the feeling she expressed were real or pretended.
"The grace and apparent abandon of her manner, her beauty, her wit, her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put forth all her arts, and caught me.
"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately. Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane. She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land on board one of the Cunard steamers.
"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded. I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will, and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.
"One afternoon, at Messina, at the table d'hôte, we met a lively young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard, gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson. Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone, no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if I had it would have availed me nothing.
"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever; and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good, and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on returning,—it was a sultry July afternoon,—I remember it as if it were yesterday,—sitting in the reading room window of the New York Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover, whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is, and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!—if I had not eloped with her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly well knows. It is her vanity—nothing but her vanity: she delights to hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in it."
"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away from this miserable fascination?"
"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has failed me as often."
"Who takes charge of her now?"