With his accustomed blindness, the husband could not see anything of this; he made quite sure that it was entirely for his sake that the young man played chess, talked politics, smoked tobacco, and went out to walk or to fish whenever Damon wished to go. In order that they might manage to be still more together, he had prevailed upon the cousin to come out and stay with him at a country-house he had hired at a few miles from town, where they had plenty of room. This invitation was given much against the wishes of his wife, who had tried to prevent it, but she had consented to it when she found that Damon had set his heart on it. He said, jestingly, that he could not do without some male society, and a trio would be pleasant in their pastoral life. In this trio he himself voluntarily assigned the second part to the cousin, while he took the third to himself.
Damon, however, was a little changed; he felt no longer inclined to be quite so subservient in his friendship as he had formerly been with his two-and his four-footed friends. By degrees, a desire had crept into his mind to take his revenge, and for once become himself the domineering party. He began to be somewhat importunate in his claims on the time and companionship of the cousin, who, on his side, showed decided symptoms of wishing to emancipate himself, especially from the tiresome and frequent fishing expeditions to the neighbouring lake; but fishing was perhaps Damon's greatest pleasure, especially when he had the company of a good friend. Damon was annoyed that the cousin had several times latterly excused himself from accompanying him, and, not caring to go alone, he had been obliged to relinquish his favourite amusement. One day--it was too bad--on a beautiful evening in the very height of summer, he refused to go fishing, when there could be no earthly reason for his doing so--none that Damon could discover, except that he preferred to parade up and down the alley of linden-trees at the other end of the garden with his wife--while he himself sat at the top of the stone stairs, and fretted until he was quite out of humour. He could see that they spoke eagerly to each other, and laughed, and amused themselves, while he was wearying himself; and neither of them seemed to be thinking of him or his ennui. What were they going to do now? So! They were actually setting off to walk in the very direction of the lake, where he would so gladly have gone to fish; but then, it was too far to go, forsooth!--now, they could go notwithstanding the distance. It was almost like defying him; that was probably the cousin's intention.
A disagreeable light seemed to dawn on his mind. And when this operation first begins to take place, a man is apt to fancy more than he has valid grounds for supposing. And this was the case with Damon.
In an exceedingly unpleasant state of mind, he returned to the usual sitting-room in search of some employment to make time pass less heavily. The comfortable room spoke volumes to his excited mind, with its quiet and peace. It was arranged by his wife's taste, everything bore witness in her favour. There stood her work-table, there lay her work, the half-finished embroidery which she was preparing for his birthday, and at which he therefore avoided looking. Upon a table close by hers lay the cousin's portfolios and drawing materials. There was no necessity for the tables being so near each other, and he pushed the table with the drawings a little way from the work-table. The young man certainly had talent--there were comical sketches and little landscapes, thrown off as illustrations of poems, not without genius; he thought he would just look into the portfolios, when, in opening one of them, a sheet of paper, with pencil drawings, slipped out of it. What were these? He must see. They were a whole row of caricatures, in doing which the cousin excelled. There was a man with his nightcap on, evidently asleep and snoring; a man with a pipe in his mouth, half-asleep over a fishing-rod; a man half-asleep over a chessboard; a man half-asleep over a Berlin newspaper; and lastly, a man half asleep over his tobacco-pipe, while his pretty young wife seemed dreaming over the work she had in her hand. Of what was she dreaming while he was dozing? This question forced itself upon him. The sleepy-headed man was no other than himself, caricatured in the most laughable manner; the young wife might have been taken from nature: it was a charming likeness. Damon sat as if he had fallen from the skies, with the sheet of paper in his hand; he could scarcely conceive the ingratitude which had suggested these sketches, or the barefaced impudence of leaving them in an open portfolio, in his own daily sitting-room, where anyone might see them--not only himself and his wife, but his guests and his servants also.
Fate brought me to him for a second time at a critical moment. I came accidentally to pay him a visit, and found him somewhat in the same state as on the evening Hector had been doing battle with him. I entered into his angry feelings, but nevertheless could hardly refrain from bursting into a fit of laughter at the exceedingly impertinent, but very droll drawings. We had a serious conversation on the position in which he was placed; with great difficulty I brought him, at length, to perceive that much of the blame rested with himself, and that his young wife had nothing to reproach herself with. I combated his assertion that she must have been cognizant of the existence of these caricatures, and must have sat for the likeness of herself; and I even went so far as to promise to prove to him her ignorance of the drawings, though I did not know how that was to be effected without occasioning a scene--and I had the greatest horror of scenes.
We had a long conversation, we two, for the wife and the cousin remained a good while absent--longer than I thought was exactly right, especially as it was getting late; but Damon did not seem to think about it; he was engaged in speculating on the theme I had suggested for his consideration--namely, that a husband who never makes the slightest effort to find amusement for his young wife, but, without the least compunction, leaves her to solitude or weariness, has himself to blame if another succeeds in interesting and amusing her. It is this unfortunate transition from the devoted assiduity of the days of courtship, to the sleepy security of married life, that so often undermines love, and renders the heart empty; and nature has decreed that a woman's heart can never remain long perfectly vacant.
At last the truants returned. It was evident that the lady, at least, felt it was not quite right to have stayed out till so long after the usual hour for tea; she bustled about to get the tea ready, and was very attentive in helping us to it. Damon maintained a grave silence, and I felt somewhat embarrassed; the cousin alone seemed quite at his ease, and not at all gêné; I could not make out whether this was nature or art. Perhaps it was politic to appear as if he had no idea that there could be any cause for animadversion on account of their unusually long walk. My confidence in her began to waver a little, whilst my anger at him increased.
After tea the conversation fell, by mere accident, on portrait painting. It was the lady who brought the subject forward, by speaking of a picture of a female which she had observed in passing, hanging like a sign, over the open door of a garden. Nothing could have been more à propos. I hastened to ask the young wife if she had ever had her likeness taken. No, she never had, and she never intended to have it taken, for she could not bear the idea that anyone should sit down and stare at her. The cousin declared this was a silly objection, and appealed to me if he were not right.
'Oh! that is because he wants to make a sketch of me himself,' she said, in rather a hurried manner; 'he has often begged me to permit it, but I won't do so.'
The cousin remarked that there was no question of permission, only of complaisance; if he chose to make a portrait of her, he could do it without asking her leave; he could take her likeness without her knowing anything about it; he could do it from memory. His cousin laughed at these assertions, and laughed so naturally, that I felt quite convinced I was right about her. Damon, on the contrary, looked more and more distressed as this conversation proceeded; it was quite apparent to me that he was miserable, and in a painful state of doubt, and I had promised him a proof of his wife's innocence. Without uttering a word, I laid hold of a corner of the paper on which were the treacherous drawings, drew it out of the portfolio, and handed it to her. I admit that this was very hard on the cousin, but why should I spare the young jackanapes, from whom no mercy for others was to be expected, as his caricatures showed plainly enough?