Thus she raved. My conscience applied these stinging words of scorn, which seemed particularly fitted to the mean suspicious watch which I had kept upon her. I could have no thought that they were meant for any other ears than my own, and the crimson flush upon my cheeks was the involuntary acknowledgment which my soul made of the demerits of my unmanly conduct. I fancied that Julia had detected my espionage, and that her language had this object in reference only. But there were other words; and, passing with unexpected transition from the language of dislike and scorn, she now indulged in that of love—language timidly suggestive of love, as if its utterance were restrained by bashfulness, as if it dreaded to be heard. Then a deep sigh followed, as if from the bottom of her heart, succeeded by convulsive sobs, at last ending in a gushing flood of tears.
For the space of half an hour I had been an attentive but suffering listener to this wild raving. My pangs followed every sentence from her lips, believing, as I did, that they were reproachful of myself, and associated with a now unrestrained expression of passion for another. Gradually I had ceased, in the deep interest which I felt, to be conscious that Mrs. Delaney was present. I leaned across the couch; I bent my ear down toward the lips of the speaker, eager to drink up every feeble sound which might help to elucidate my doubts, and subdue or confirm my suspicions. Then, as the accumulating conviction formed itself, embodied and sharp, like a knife, into my soul, I groaned aloud, and my teeth were gnashed together in the bitterness of my emotion! In that moment I caught the keen gray eyes of my mother-in-law fixed upon me, with a jibing expression, which spoke volumes of mockery. They seemed to say, “Ah! you have it now! The truth is forced upon you at last! You can parry it no longer. I see the iron in your soul. I behold and enjoy your contortions!”
Fiend language! She was something of a fiend! I started from the bedside, and just then a flood of tears came to the relief of my wife, and lessened the excitement of her brain. The tears relieved her. The paroxysm passed away. She turned her eyes upon me, and closed them involuntarily, while a deep crimson tint passed over her cheek, a blush, which seemed to me to confirm substantially the tenor of that language in which, while delirious, she had so constantly indulged. It did not lessen the seeming shame and dislike which her countenance appeared at once to embody, that a soft sweet smile was upon her lips at the same moment, and she extended to me her hand with an air of confidence which staggered and surprised me.
“What is the matter, dear husband? And you here, mother? Have I been sick? Can it be?”
“Hush!” said the mother. “You have been sick ever since the night of my marriage.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed with an air of anxiety and pain, while pressing her hand upon her eyes, “Ah! that night!”
A shudder shook her frame as she uttered this simple and short sentence. Simple and short as it was, it seemed to possess a strange signification. That it was associated in her mind with some circumstances of peculiar import, was sufficiently obvious. What were these circumstances? Ah! that question! I ran over in my thought, in a single instant, all that array of events, on that fatal night, which could by any possibility distress me, and confirm my suspicions. That waltz with Edgerton—that long conference between them—that lonely ride together from the home of Mrs. Delaney, in a close carriage—and the subsequent disaster—her unconscious ravings, and the strong, strange language which she employed, clearly full of meaning as it was, but in which I could discover one meaning only! all these topics of doubt and agitation passed through my brain in consecutive order, and with a compact arrangement which seemed as conclusive as any final issue. I said nothing; but what I might have said, was written in my face. Julia regarded me with a gaze of painful anxiety. What she read in my looks must have been troublously impressive. Her cheeks grew paler as she looked. Her eyes wandered from me vacantly, and I could see her thin soft lips quivering faintly like rose-leaves which an envious breeze has half separated from the parent-flower. Mrs. Delaney watched our mutual faces, and I left the room to avoid her scrutiny. I only re-entered it with the physician. He administered medicine to my wife.
“She will do very well now, I think,” he said to me when leaving the house; “but she requires to be treated very tenderly. All causes of excitement must be kept from her. She needs soothing, great care, watchful anxiety. Clifford, above all, you should leave her as little as possible. This old woman, her mother, is no fit companion for her—scarcely a pleasant one. I do not mean to reproach you; ascribe what I say to a real desire to serve and make you happy; but let me tell you that Mrs. Delaney has intimated to me that you neglect your wife, that you leave her very much at night; and she further intimates, what I feel assured can not well be the case, that you have fallen into other and much more evil habits.”
“The hag!”
“She is all that, and loves you no better now than before. Still, it is well to deprive such people of their scandal-mongering, of the meat for it at least. I trust, Clifford, for your own sake, that you were absent of necessity on Wednesday night.”