“Removed!” croaked the old woman, “aye, she has removed, far enough from this, I warrant.”
“Where has she gone?” gasped the husband.
“I know nothing about her,” was the reply, and the sash fell with a rattling sound that struck like clods upon a coffin upon the desolate heart of Anson. He stood upon the pavement with one foot resting on a trunk, and his eyes turned to the windows of his late dwelling, as if expecting the form of his wife to appear there. The voice of the watchman, calling the first hour of the night, aroused him from his abstraction, and suggested the necessity of present action. He remembered that he had a duplicate key of the street door, and if not fastened within, he could at least gain admittance. On applying the instrument, it was evident that the person who had last left the house, had egressed through the door, for no bar or bolt betrayed the caution of an inmate. Anson engaged the watchman to place his effects in the hall, and procure a light. Having once more secured the main entrance of the house, he wandered through its tenantless chambers, like a suffering ghost among scenes of its happier hours. The splendid paraphernalia which wealth and taste had spread throughout that happy mansion, were there yet. Not an ornament had been removed, nor had the most fragile article decayed,—nay, the very exotics in the bow-pots had begun to put forth their tender blossoms under the genial influence of the season. But human life was absent. She that had diffused joy, and hope, and a heaven-like halo round her, was gone.
Mad with apprehension, Anson rushed to his wife’s bed-chamber, hoping there to find some clue to her mysterious departure. Her toilet was in confusion; ornaments lay scattered about; and a diamond ring, his gift to her on her last birth-day, shone, on the approach of the light, so like a living thing, that Anson, in the wildness of his brain, thought that its thousand eyes flashed with intelligence of its departed mistress. On a small writing desk lay some sheets of pure paper, and in the open drawer a sealed note caught the eye of Anson. He seized it with a trembling hand, but paused ere he opened it; a sickness, like that of death, settled down upon his heart. Unhappy man! What had he to hope or fear?—he read:
“Husband:—We meet no more on earth. At the bar of eternal justice your curse will blast me! I am in the coils of a fiend, disguised like a god! As the fluttering bird, though conscious of destruction, obeys the fatal fascination of the serpent’s eye, so I, beholding in the future nought but despair, yield, a victim to a passion that has mocked my struggles to subdue it. You must be happy because you are virtuous, and in mercy forget the fallen,
“Josephine.”
Anson sat long with this letter in his hand, gazing firmly on a portrait of his wife, that hung over her escritoire. She had sat for that painting at a time when her health was delicate, and a sacred pledge of their happy love was expected. Heaven had—mercifully it seemed now—denied the boon. Memory struck the fountain of tears in the heart of that bereaved man, and he wept. Oh! it is fearful to see a strong man weep. Tears are natural in children, and beautiful in women;—in men, they often seem mysterious gushings from the stern soul—dread forebodings of evil to come. The deserted husband gazed upon the painting, until he thought some evil spirit had changed the sweet smile and mild eye into a scornful sneer. A change came over his spirit—his features gradually assumed a look of unutterable ferocity; his frame dilated as with the conception of awful deeds—strange whisperings of dark purposes whizzed, as from legions of fiends, through his brain, and he went forth REVENGE!
Major Derode, of the British army, was one of the most strikingly handsome men of the last age, and his address the most insinuating that a constant intercourse with the best society could confer. Although he had led a life of much dissipation, his fine constitution had withstood its ravages, and calling art to the aid of nature, he looked like a man of thirty, when he was really twelve years older. He had married in early life, and was the father of a son and daughter. The son had entered the navy, and had already obtained a lieutenancy,—to the daughter fell a large share of the singular beauty of her father, refined into feminine loveliness by the delicate graces of her mother. Mrs. Derode had been dead some years, and the major’s present visit to America was connected with some governmental mission to the commander-in-chief of the British forces in Canada. Viewing the cities of the United States on his return home, he became acquainted with the beautiful Mrs. Anson. He became at once her lover. He was a cold-hearted systematic seducer, and besieged her heart with a perseverance and address long accustomed to conquer. He imagined that his own callous heart was touched by her bright eyes, and he delayed his departure for two months, in order to accomplish her ruin.
When I introduced him to the reader, in conversation with Mrs. Anson, the poison of his flattery had already tainted that weak woman’s heart. I will not follow his serpent-like course—it is sickening to mark the progress of such arts. We left him in a gay assembly in Walnut Street—we now find him in London, and, it pains me to write it, Mrs. Anson was with him. To dispel the gloom that had already overcast her features, and to feed his own inordinate vanity, Derode introduced his victim to much society, but her keen eye soon penetrated the equivocal character of those who visited her in her splendid apartments. With this discovery came the first deep sense of her utter degradation.