One morning, in Dublin, where they were residing, he came to my house in a state of trembling perturbation. He showed me a wound on his hand, and another slight one from a knife’s point indented on his breast-bone. Mary, he said, had, in a paroxysm of rage, attempted to stab him whilst sitting at breakfast: he had, with difficulty, wrested the knife from her grasp, and left the house never to return to it. He could in fact no longer feel safe in her society; and therefore, arranging all his necessary concerns, he repaired to Edinburgh, where his regiment was quartered.
The suit for a decree of nullity was immediately commenced, but no effective proceedings were ever taken, nor any sentence in the cause pronounced, owing to events still more unfortunate to poor Hartpole.
Prior to this fatal act of George’s, I had never observed an attachment on his part toward any female, save a very temporary one to a young lady in his neighbourhood, whom few men could see without strong feelings of admiration;—the second daughter of Mr. Yates, of Moon, a gentleman of the old school, almost antediluvian in his appearance, and of good fortune in County Kildare.
The beauty of Myrtle Yates arose nearly to perfection. It was of that brilliance with which poets and romance writers endeavour to adorn the most favoured of their heroines. Had she lived of yore, the Grecian sculptor or Roman artist might have profited by charms which they could never fancy:—she might have been the model for a Venus, or, at a later era, sat for a Madonna. Nature, indeed, seemed to have created her solely for the blandishments of affection; and her whole form appeared susceptible of being dissolved in love.
In a word, at twenty, Myrtle Yates was wholly irresistible; not a youth of her country, who had a heart, could boast of its insensibility; and perhaps she owed to the bewildering number of those admirers the good fortune of not devoting herself to any of them.
Yet Hartpole’s attachment to Myrtle Yates was neither deep nor lasting. He considered her too attractive—perhaps too yielding; and had he always adhered to the same principle of judgment, it is possible he might have yet existed.
On his return from Scotland he immediately repaired to Clifton, to drink the waters for a severe cold which could no longer be neglected, and required medical advice and a balmy atmosphere. Here fate threw in the way of this ill-fated youth another lure for his destruction, but such a one as might have entrapped even the most cautious and prudent. Love, in its genuine and rational shape, now assailed the breast of the ever-sensitive Hartpole; and an attachment sprang up fatal to his happiness, and eventually to his existence.
At Clifton, my friend made the acquaintance of a lady and gentleman, in whose only daughter were combined all the attractive qualities of youth, loveliness, and amiability. Their possessor moved in a sphere calculated to gratify his pride; and those who saw and knew the object of George’s new attachment could feel no surprise at the vehemence of his passion.
The unfortunate young man, however, sorely felt that his situation under these circumstances was even more dreadful than in the former connexion. Loving one woman to adoration, and as yet the acknowledged husband of another, it is not easy to conceive any state more distracting to a man of honour. His agitated mind had now no suspension of its misery, save when lulled into a temporary trance by the very lassitude induced by its own unhappiness.
He wrote to me, expressing the full extent of his sensations—that is, as fully as pen could convey them. But imperfect indeed must be all expression which attempts to describe intensity of feeling. It was from blots and scratches, and here and there the dried-up stain of an hieroglyphic tear, rather than from words, that I gathered the excess of his mental agony. He required of my friendship to advise him—a task, to the execution of which I was utterly incompetent. All I could properly advise him to, was what I knew he would not comply with; namely, to come over to Ireland, and endeavour to conquer the influence of his passion, or at least to take no decisive step in divulging it till the law had pronounced its sentence on his existing connexion.