"There are other things I would regret more."
She looked into his face. It was a quick, questioning glance, but long enough for him to note her beauty. They went on to the house in silence, but Paula's heart fluttered.
CHAPTER XL.
HER FACE WAS THE MIRROR OF HER PLEASANT DREAMS.
In Hampton Cemetery there stands, and will stand for the sympathetic admiration of future ages, an imposing monument, which apprises him who meditates among the tombs that it was "Erected to the Memory of Jeremiah Morley, by his Sorrowing Widow." At the date of the construction of this expensive evidence of grief, the cost whereof had been provided by testamentary direction—for the late Jeremiah had not been the man to stake a testimonial to his worth upon anything less binding—the stone-cutter, as one versed in the prevailing fashion of monumental inscriptions, had suggested the conventional reference to the usual "Hope of a Joyful Resurrection"; but the widow, her conscience already strained by the legend agreed upon, had objected. Yet the inscription which strained her conscience had the merit of truth; for the man beneath the stone had left her sorrowing, as she had sorrowed nearly every day since she had been pronounced his wife; but, being strictly Hamptonian in her views, her long intimacy with the deceased had rendered her incredulous of his joyous resurrection.
Years before the erection of the monument, while Easthampton was still a port known to mariners, the warehouses since pulled down by Mrs. Joe having hardly commenced to rot, a certain Jerry Morley who, so far as he or anybody else knew, had no legitimate right to name or existence, had sailed from the harbor in the capacity of third mate of the barque "Griselda," a trim vessel manned by a crew of blackguards, not one of whom could approach the mate either in hardihood or in villainy. At that time Mate Jerry had been scarcely more than a boy, ragged, unkempt and fierce-eyed; when he returned, which he did by stage (for the barque had disappeared from the ken of man), he was a smooth-shaven, portly gentleman, hard and domineering; but strict in his walk (to all appearance), and rich. The voice of detraction is never absolutely silent, and though Mr. Morley possessed all the ingredients which go to the making of a "Prominent Citizen," and played that role successfully for many years; yet occasional whispers were heard as to mutiny, murder, seizure of the "Griselda," and a subsequent career as a slaver; whispers, confined mostly to the ancient mariners who smoked and basked about the decaying docks of Easthampton, and which, in due time, were heard no more. Mr. Morley purchased a fine residence in Hampton, was munificent to the Seminary, married the fair daughter of a prominent theologian, and, in short, appeared to the eyes of the world as a clean, pompous, very wealthy and highly respected citizen and church member. Few beside his wife knew that, in fact, he was a brute, given over to secret vices. He had possessed a brain incapable of either excitation or ache. Never sober, no man had ever seen him (to the observer's knowledge) drunk. Few suspected his secret indulgence, but at the age of sixty, liquor, aided by other sly excesses known only to himself, struck him down, as a bullet might have done, relieving a once rarely beautiful woman of a great load, and granting her a few years of comfort as a set-off against many years of hidden misery.
From this grandfather Leonard had inherited more than one unsuspected trait, but not the iron constitution which had succumbed only after years of abuse. Berthe still had her adorable one, but her adoration was gone; her man had become an object of compassionate disgust. The brilliant theologian was a sot.
His fall had been from so great a height to so low a depth, that in his own eyes his ruin was accomplished before his case was hopeless. He was not hurried to his doom by late awakened appetites alone; he had hardly abandoned his home before regret, if not repentance, became a burden too heavy for endurance. The mournful echoes of his days of virtue, the visions of his past of honor, were ever in his ears and before his eyes. Remorse, the hell of sinners, was ever present; and from its constant pangs was no relief except in plunging deeper into sin, inviting greater horrors, and ever beckoned by them. To such miseries were added the fear of that unending life beyond the grave; the life of torment, which all his days he had been taught to contemplate as the doom of souls abandoned by their Maker. The knowledge that he was one of those "passed by" and left for the fires of hell—this knowledge hourly increased the anguish of his spirit. Who among men shall too hardly judge a ruined fellow-creature, abandoned by his God, who in debauchery can find forgetfulness; or who, in the hazy mists of drunkenness alone, can see some rays to cheer the gloom of ruin?
They had at first gone to Paris, and there he had plunged into dissipation with an ardor that had startled and angered his companion, whose good sense had been revolted. True, she had shown him the way, recognizing his need of distraction; but she had not counted on reckless excess, and had at first welcomed the change when he showed a disposition to concentrate his attention upon liquor alone. She was to learn that this slavery was the most debasing of all.