“This, senor. I would rather die than give you offence; and as for the senora, I love her also, for is she not your wife? But will you be angry still, when I tell you, when I warn you, to beware of that man, that priest? He is a bad man, very bad. Ah, I have watched—and seen!”
“What have you seen?” cried Haldane, clutching him by the arm. “Come, out with it!”
“Enough to show me that he is not your friend—that he is dangerous.”
“Bah! is that all? Now, listen to me, and be sure I mean what I say. I will have no servant of mine spying upon my wife. I will have no servant of mine insinuating that my honour is in danger. If I hear another word of this, if you convey to me by one look the fact that you are still prying, spying, and suspecting, I shall take you by the collar and send you flying out of my house. Now, go!”
Baptisto, who knew his master’s temper perfectly, bowed and withdrew. He had no wish to say one word more. He had thrown out a dark hint, a black seed of suspicion, and he knew that he might safely let it work. It did work, rapidly and terribly. Left alone, Haldane became a prey to the wildest fears and suspicions. He remembered now that his wife had been acquainted with this man in her girlhood; that there had even been some passage of love between them. He remembered how eagerly she had renewed the acquaintance, and with what admiring zeal the clergyman had responded. He pictured to himself the sympathetic companionship, the zealous meetings, the daily religious intercourse, of these two young people, each full of the fervour of a blind superstition. Could it be possible that they loved each other? Questioning his memory, he recalled looks, words, tones, which, although scarcely noticed at the time, seemed now of painful significance. The mere thought was sickening. Already he realized the terrible phrase-of the poet Young—“the jealous are the damned.”
Haldane was not habitually a violent man. Though passionate and headstrong by temperament, he had schooled himself to gentleness after a stormy youth, and the chilly waters of philosophy, at which he drank daily, kept his head cool and his pulses calm. But the stormy spirit, though hushed, was not altogether dead within him, and under his habitual reticence and good-humoured cynicism, there lay the most passionate idolatry for his beautiful wife. He had set her up in his heart of hearts, with a faith too perfect for much expression; and it had not occurred to him, in his remotest dreams, that any other man could ever come between them.
And now, suddenly as a lightning flash illumining a dark landscape, the fear came upon him that perhaps he had been unwary and unwise. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he had’ been too studious and too book-loving, too reticent also in all those little attentions which by women, who always love sweetmeats, are so tenderly prized? Moreover, he was ten years his wife’s, elder—was that disparity of years also a barrier between their souls? No; he was sure it was not. He was sure that she was not hypocritical, and that she loved him. Wherever the blame might be, if blame there were, it was certainly not hers. She had been in all respects, a tender and a sympathetic wife; encouraging his deep study of science, even when she most distrusted its results; proud of his attainments, and eager for his success; in short, a perfect helpmate, but for her old-fashioned prejudices in the sphere of religion. Ah, religion! There was the one word which solved the enigma, and aroused in our philosopher’s bosom that fierce indignation which long ago led Lucretius into such passionate hate against the Phantom,=
Which with horrid head
Leered hideously from all the gates of heaven!”
It needed only this to complete his loathing for the popular theology, for all its teachers. Yes, he reflected, religion only was to blame. In its name, his wife’s sympathies had been tampered with, her spirit more or less turned against himself; in its name, his house had been secretly invaded, his domestic happiness poisoned, his peace of mind destroyed. It was the old story! Wherever this shadow of superstition crawled, craft and dissimulation began. Now, as in the beginning, it came between father and child, sister and brother, man and wife.