My first object was to create a change in her feelings toward my rival;—not to destroy her love for him,—of the futility of such an attempt I was aware,—but to modify the cold, desperate, and resentful feeling of disappointment she entertained; to superimpose upon her thwarted passion, which would continue to regard him as a hero of romance, another condition of feeling, that should bring him before her in a different aspect, and to rouse her listlessness by suggesting something to be done which should be connected with him,—the only incentive, I was assured, sufficiently powerful to stimulate her to action. I had a patient whom I intended to treat in the most delicate and scientific manner. I determined to appeal to her benevolence,—a feeling which, though latent, always exists in a true woman. My disconsolate hero of romance was to be brought down and made a mortal, capable of receiving favors. Instead of being the object of love, he was to become one of charity.
'My dear,' said I, one evening, with a suppressed yawn, as I was perusing a magazine, 'I have been reading a stupid account of the pictures and statues, and so on, in Florence. These things are very fine, doubtless, to those who understand and appreciate them. My early education in aesthetics was neglected; or rather the hard necessities of my youth allowed me no opportunity to cultivate them. But it is a good thing to encourage art, and I have been thinking it might be well for us to have some paintings and statuary. If I attempt to select them I shall be tricked and bamboozled into purchasing mere daubs and botches. Would it not be well to engage some person of judgment—perhaps an artist—to go to Italy and make an investment for us? I know none such, but you have been more associated with artists, and if you can secure one, I will give him carte blanche. Will you please make some inquiries?'
I had kept my eyes on the magazine, but felt that she was looking at me with scrutinizing glances. Had she suspected my knowledge of her love, she would probably—with some of that passion of which I had been a secret witness—have declared the whole matter, and then, with scornful upbraidings of my hypocrisy, perhaps have left me forever. I was careful to avoid any such premature explosion, and with another yawn continued carelessly turning the leaves of the magazine. Reassured, she replied that she would undertake the business. With a hasty glance, through apparently sleepy eyes, I saw that I had roused her,—that she was already intent on planning occupation for Frank, and laying out for him a course of success and honor, through the stimulus which would be imparted by the execution of a commission of her bestowal. Another feeling I was delighted to see exhibited. She felt that she was now about to render him some equivalent for his disappointment. Already was he become to her less Frank the lover than Frank the artist, whose fortunes she was to assist. I will make you yet his lady-patroness, thought I. I foresaw that some of my rival's productions would grace my apartments, in a year or two. But, better his imagination than his heart, said I to myself,—better the works of his chisel, which I and all the throng of the public can eulogize, than the secret, doating passion confined to the intense idolatry of one breast.
After a few premonitory nods I retired.
I did not trouble myself about the manner in which the commission was conveyed to Frank. Thither, however, it went, as I learned in after time.
I well understood that to attempt rivaling Frank in matters cognate with his own department of talent, would render me only as ridiculous as an old beau who seeks to gain favor with the girls by imitating with his rouge, hair dyes, and laced waistcoats, the freshness and symmetry of youth. But I must endeavor to establish some common ground on which I and the magnificent creature at my side could meet and hold converse. I must find it in literature. In a garret over my store I had a safe and some papers conveyed, ostensibly for attention to private business. I kept my room securely locked. Thither, from time to time, I secretly carried a library of English classics, and all works of the day which received public intention. I revived all my early recollections of literature, and made myself acquainted with the lighter contemporaneous works, which are the most prolific topics of conversation in society. Under pretense of business I devoted every moment I could to my solitary chamber. Never did college student, cramming himself for examination, labor more intently than I. I stored my mind not only with words, but ideas. I committed to memory innumerable fine passages. Personally, I was well repaid for my toil. Literature is always solacing, elevating, and ennobling. The Bedouin of the desert is less of a robber and murderer while singing the songs of his national poets.
My acquisitions, however, were carefully hidden. They were for future use. At present I continued to talk nothing that was beyond the scope of the newspapers.
Thus some months passed. It was near the close of summer, and the gorgeous autumnal season was at hand. I designed to attempt something which would create a change in my wife's nature,—her acquired nature, to substitute some healthful exuberance for the weary listlessness which had become habitual to her. The physical is the foundation of all other departments of humanity. With a physical system of glowing health, mental or emotional or moral disease is impossible; and the converse is true, that when these exist, the physical system must deteriorate. I must then give a filip to my wife's physical vigor,—dissipate her desperateness and her love in the same manner in which a good game of billiards drives from a man the blues. I must remove all her morbidness. Where could I go but to the great mother Nature? If physical enjoyment, in connection with an appreciative view of the beauties and glories everywhere spread before humanity, on the mountains, the plains, the valleys, and the oceans, does not revive and restore, the case is hopeless. My wife was an excellent equestrian. Her theatrical experience had familiarized her with firearms. She had a cultivated taste for scenery, and some degree of skill in delineating it. Far off, then, into the prairies and the western mountains, into scenes away from the beaten track, where everything should be as dissimilar as possible from all previous life, I determined to lead her.
My arrangements were quickly and quietly made,—my equipments secretly completed. On pretense of visiting business acquaintances, I requested my wife to accompany me on a journey to St. Louis. With her usual passiveness, she consented. In a few days we were on our way. After our arrival, we made trips into the interior. Gradually, I diverged from civilization. Professing to find an unexpected charm in the novelty of this, I led the way still onward. We traveled on horseback,—often amid solitudes. I first astonished my wife by occasionally displaying on the game my precision with the rifle. (I had spent scores of hours at a shooting gallery in St. Louis.) I persuaded her to try a few shots. (I had provided a beautiful light rifle for her use.) Ambition to shoot well soon possessed her. By degrees, our open-air life gave her blood a bound which no secret grief could counteract. The excitement of the chase on our fleet horses, the incidents of our hunting adventures, and the novelty of our associations, created a glow of spirit which burst forth in unrestrained conversation, mirth, and song. Now, then, I began to display my literary acquisitions. During the long evenings in our tent, or the wigwam of an Indian, or the log cabin of a backwoods settler, we alternated in reading aloud from an excellent collection of books I had prepared. Reading introduced topics of conversation, in which I employed all that I had in memory, and all that had been created in myself by the electric collision of great authors. Never did a professional wit more ingeniously produce as sudden coruscations the bon mots tediously studied; never did a philosophical conversationalist use to more advantage the wisdom conned over in the closet. I talked eloquently, profoundly. I rattled forth witticisms and poetical quotations. I amazed her. The man whom she thought incapable of any ideas beyond his ledger, and the stock market, and the cotton warehouse, was revealed as a person of taste and reading. Instead of appearing to her merely an indifferent person, to whom her fate had been chained, and whom she regarded in somewhat the same manner as Prometheus did his rock, I had become a pleasant companion,—a being of more vitality than she had perhaps ever met.
Still, I had not excited the emotion of love. I did not expect it at this stage of the treatment, but I observed its absence with a pang.