“I can bear to hear all you have to say to me,” I said, with a burning blush upon my cheek. The exertion I made to maintain my own calmness was exhausting me dreadfully, but I could bear it better when he spoke, and when my natural spirit of resistance was roused by his words, than when he went away or was silent, when I would be left to the consuming remorseful persecution of my own thoughts.
When I said this he looked at me steadily and sadly;—“Was it hopeless then? would I receive him in no fashion but this?” I met his gaze with the blank look of sullen resentment; he turned away from me with a heavy sigh, and wrung his hands with impatience and suffering; then he came back, took the chair which Alice had been using, and sat down opposite to me.
“Then it is to be so,” he said with suppressed bitterness; “neither time nor solitude, neither tenderness nor absence, says a gentle word for me in your heart; you are resolved that we shall be miserable, Hester; you will leave me to the pity of the servants, you will show none; you will condemn me to frightful anxiety, anxiety which I dare not venture to anticipate; you will shut me out from every right; I must not be near; I must not try to support you; is this what you quietly doom me to, Hester?”
“You use strange words; I doom you to nothing,” said I; “we were very wretched when we were together; you told me you were deceived in me, and I also was deceived in you; all that I have done is to come away, to free each of us from a galling and perpetual slavery. If I give no pity, I ask none; let justice be done between us, and it is justice surely to permit me to take care for myself when I do not encumber you. You have not more to suffer or to complain of than I have; we are on equal terms, and so long as we are apart we cannot drive each other mad, as you said I would do to you; I beseech you to be content, let us remain as we are; it will be best for us both.”
If I was agitated when I began to speak, I had become quite calm before I ended. He never withdrew his eye from me—he followed my motions, almost my breath—and when I moved my hands and clasped them together, as I did to support myself, his gaze turned to them—my hands were thin and worn, and very white—they looked like an invalid’s. Before I was aware, he bent over and kissed them, saying, “Poor Hester! poor Hester!” Ah, it was very hard for me to keep up to my resolution, reading his thoughts as I did with an instinctive certainty. He was not thinking of my unkind and bitter words—he was thinking only of me.
But when he spoke after this pause, I saw clearly enough that my words had not escaped him; he did not entreat any longer; he saw it was vain; but the kindness of his tone was undiminished. I fancied I could perceive the resolution he had taken now; that he had made up his mind not to strive with me, but to leave me to myself. I would rather he had persecuted me with the most violent and perpetual persecution; that I could have met with courage; but I knew what a longing, yearning, remorseful misery would come upon me when I was left to the sole company of my own heart.
“I will wait till you come to think of something else than justice,” he said kindly, but sadly. “To have my rights yielded to me only because they are rights, will never satisfy me, Hester. I warn you of this now; you are not doing justice. I know that you can have no doubt what are my feelings to you; you know what my love is, but not how much it can bear, and you treat me with cruel injustice, Hester. Enough of this. I will plead my own cause no more. I will leave everything to yourself. By-and-bye, I do not doubt you will see my rights in a different aspect; but I will not be content with my rights,” he continued, growing unconsciously vehement; “when you are willing to do me justice, I will still be dissatisfied. It is not justice I want from you, and the time of our reunion will never come till you reject justice as I do. I know that I am right.”
“It will never come,” said I, under my breath.
“The most wretched criminal has hope, Hester,” he said, rising with impatience which he could not control, and coming to the window, “and I am not so much wiser than my kind as to be able to live without it. I have read of humility and patience, I grant you, and these are difficult qualities; but I will quarrel no more on my own account, and it is hard to maintain a feud on one side only, Hester? Will you permit me to live near you, since you insist on leaving me? Will you let me see you now and then? will you let me be near at hand, if by any chance you should relent and wish for me? In your present circumstances, this is no great boon to yield to your husband, Hester?”
“What end would it answer?” I said, though my heart leaped with a strange mixture of joy and pain at his words; “I am sure we are better quite apart.”