My victim!—my wife!
I stood above her inanimate form. How lovely in death—but, oh! how cold! I looked upon her pale, transparent cheeks and forehead, through which the blue lines of veins, that were pulseless now, gleamed out, showing the former avenues of the sweet and blessed life. I was disarmed of my anger while I gazed. I bent down beside her, took the rigid fingers of her hand in mine, and pressed my lips upon the bloodless but still beautiful forms of hers.
I remembered her youth and her beauty—the glowing promise of her mind, and the gentle temper of her heart. I remembered the dear hours of our first communion—how pure were our delights—how perfect my felicity. How we moved together as with one being only—beside the broad streams of our birthplace—under the shelter of shady pines—morning, and noon, and in the star-lighted night—never once dreaming that an hour like this would come!
And she seemed so perfect pure, as she was so perfect lovely! Never did I hear from her lips sentiment that was not—not only virtuous, but delicate and soft—not only innocent but true—not only true but fond! Alas! so to fall—so too yield herself at last! To feel the growth of rank passion—to surrender her pure soul and perfect form to the base uses of lust—to be no better than the silly harlot, that, beguiled by her eager vanity, surrenders the precious jewel in her trust, to the first cunning sharper that assails her with a smiling lie!
Oh God! how these convictions shook my frame! I had no longer strength for thought or action. I was feebler than the child, who, lost in the woods, struggles and sinks at last, through sheer exhaustion, into sobbing slumber at the foot of the unfeeling tree. I did not sob. I had no tears. But at intervals, the powers of breathing becoming choked, and my struggles for relief were expressed in a groan which I vainly endeavored to keep down. The sense of desolation was upon me much more strongly than that of either crime or death. I did not so much feel that she was guilty, as that I was alone! That, henceforth, I must for ever be alone. This was the terrible conviction;—and oh! how lone! To lessen its pangs, I strove to recall the fault for which she perished—to renew the recollection of those thousand small events, which, thrown together, had seemed to me mountains of rank and reeking evidence against her. But even my memory failed me in this effort. All this was a blank. The few imperfect and shadowy facts which I could recall seemed to me wholly unimportant in establishing the truth of what I sought to believe; and I shuddered with the horrible doubt that she might be innocent! If she were indeed innocent, what am I?
With the desperate earnestness of the cast-away, who strives, in mid-ocean, for the only plank which can possibly retard his doom, did I toil to re-establish in my mind that conviction of her guilt which the demon in my soul had made so certain by his assurances before. Alas! I had not only lost the wife of my bosom, but its fiend also. Vainly now did I seek to summon him back. Vainly did I call upon him to renew his arguments and proofs! He had fled—fled for ever; and I could fancy that I heard him afar off, chuckling with hellish laughter, over the triumphant results of his malice.
I know not how long I hung over that silent speaker. Her pale, placid countenance—her bloodless lips, that still seemed to smile upon me as they had ever done before;—and that eye of speaking beauty—only half closed—oh! what conclusive assurances did they seem to give of that innocence which it now seemed the worst impiety to doubt! I would have given worlds—alas! how impotent is such a speech! Death sets his seal upon hope, and love, and endeavor; and the regrets of that childish precipitation which has obeyed the laws of passion only, are only so many mocking memorials of the blind heart, that jaundiced the face of truth, and distorted all the aspects of the beautiful.
Once more I laughed—a vain hysterical laugh—the expression of my conviction that I was self-doomed and desperate; and, writhing beside the inanimate angel whom I then would have recalled though with all her guilt—assuming all of it to have been true—to the arms that wantonly cast her off for ever—I grasped the cold senseless limbs in my embrace, and placed the drooping head once more upon the bosom where it could not long remain! What a weight! The pulsation in my own heart ceased, and, with a shudder, I released the chilling form from my grasp, and found strength barely to compose the limbs once more in the bed beside me.
I pass over the usual and unnecessary details. There was a show of inquiry of course; but the one word of the learned young gentleman in black silenced any further examination. It was shown to the inquest by Mrs. Porterfield that my wife had been sick—that she was suddenly found dead. The physician furnished the next necessary fact. I was not examined at all, I stood by in silence. I heard the verdict—“Death by apoplexy”—-with a smile. I was not unwilling to state the truth. Had I been called upon I should have done so. At first I was about to proffer my testimony, but a single sentence from the lips of Kingsley, when I declared to him my purpose, silenced me:—
“If you are not afraid to declare your own act, you should at least scruple to denounce her shame! She died your wife. Let that seal your tongue. The shame would be shared between you! You could only justify your crime by exposing hers!”