But Consuelo.
“Adieu! adieu! when next we meet,
Will not all sadness then retreat,
And yield the conquered time to bliss,
And seal the triumph with a kiss?
Say, Consuelo.”
On reading this missive, as might well be supposed, Forrest was struck to the heart with surprise, grief, and rage. To one of his ample experience of the world it seemed to leave no doubt of an utter lapse from the marriage-vow on the part of its recipient. He was heard rapidly pacing the floor of his library until long after midnight, when his wife arrived from a party and a violent scene of accusation and denial occurred. He wrote an oath, couched in the most stringent and solemn terms, which she signed, swearing that she was innocent of any criminal infringement of her marital obligations. He was quieted, but not satisfied. On questioning the servants as to the scenes and course of conduct in his house during his absences, and employing such other methods of inquiry as did not involve publicity, he learned a variety of facts which confirmed his fear and resulted in a fixed belief that his wife had been unfaithful to him. Many a jealous husband has entertained a similar belief on insufficient and on erroneous grounds. He, too, may have done so. All that justice requires to be affirmed here is the assertion that he was himself firmly convinced, whether on adequate or inadequate evidence, that he had been grossly wronged, and he acted on that conviction in good faith. The pretence that he had tired of his marriage, longed to be free, and devised false charges in order to compass his purpose, is a pure slander, without truth or reason. And as to the theory of the distinguished counsel against him, namely, that he found himself by the building of Fonthill Castle involved in a financial ruin that would disgrace him and change its name to Forrest’s Folly, and so, as the easiest way out, he deliberately “determined to have a quarrel with his wife for some private cause not to be explained, and then to assign the breaking up of his family as the reason for relinquishing his rural residence,”—it is not only the flimsiest of fancies, but a perfect absurdity in face of the facts, and an infamous outrage on the helpless memory of the dead. Could a woman of the mind, spirit, position, and with the friends of Mrs. Forrest be expected meekly to submit to such a fiendish sacrifice? How does such a thought seem in the light of the first letters of the parties in the controversy? The supposition, too, is inconceivably contradictory to the character of Forrest, who, however rough, violent, or furious he may sometimes have been, was not a man of cruel injustice or selfish malignity, was never a sneaking liar and hypocrite. Furthermore, no financial difficulty existed; since the fortune of Forrest at that time was about three hundred thousand dollars, and his direct earnings from his professional labor some thirty thousand a year. Fonthiil cost him all told less than a hundred thousand, and on separating from his wife, in addition to carrying the load of Fonthiil for six years longer, the residence which he purchased and occupied in Philadelphia was worth nearly as much more, and, besides paying out over two hundred thousand dollars in his divorce lawsuits, his wealth was steadily swelling all the time.
After the intense personal hostility and indomitable professional zeal and persistency with which Charles O’Conor pushed the cause of his fair client, in eight years securing five repetitions of judgment, heaping up the expenses for the defendant, as he says, “with the peculiar effect of compound interest,” he should not have penned so unfounded and terrible an accusation. The man who could sacrifice the honor and happiness of his wife with the motive and in the manner O’Conor attributes to Forrest must be the most loathsome of scoundrels. But in the very paper in which the great illustrious lawyer presents this theory he says, “Mr. Forrest possessed great talents, and, unless his conduct in that controversy be made a subject of censure, he has no blemish on his name.” The innocence of Mrs. Forrest is publicly accredited, and is not here impugned. But history abundantly shows that her husband’s affirmation of her guilt does not prove him to have been a wilful monster. His suspicion was naturally aroused, and, though it may have been mistaken, naturally culminated, under the circumstances accompanying its course, in an assured conviction of its justice.
In his proud, sensitive, and tenacious mind, recoiling with all its fibres from the fancied wrong and shame, the poison of the Consuelo letter worked like a deadly drug, burning and mining all within. By day or by night he could not forget it. The full experience of jealousy, as so many poor wretches in every age have felt it, gnawed and tore him. He who had so often enacted the passion now had to suffer it in its dire reality. For more than a year he kept his dark secret in silence, not saying a word even to his dearest friends, secluding himself much of the time, brooding morbidly over his pent-up misery. Now he learned to probe in their deepest significance the words of his great Master,—
“But oh, what damned minutes tells he o’er