"Children!" I murmured mournfully, as I recalled one of his remarks; "children! children! these, indeed, were blessings; but if we only had love, truth, peace. If that d.a.m.ning doubt were not there!--that wild fear, that fatal, soul-petrifying suspicion!"

I groaned audibly as I traversed the streets, and it seemed as if the pavements groaned hollowly in answer beneath my hurrying footsteps. In a moment more I had absolutely forgotten the recent strife, the strange scene, the accents of my friend; for but that one.

"Children! children! These might bind her to me; might secure her erring affections; might win her to love the father, when he himself might possess no other power to tempt her to love. Ah! why has Providence denied me the blessing of a child?"

Alas! it was not probable that Julia should ever have children. This was the conviction of our physician. Her health and const.i.tution seemed to forbid the hope; and the gloomy despair under which I suffered was increased by this reflection. Yet, even at that moment, while thus I mused and murmured, my poor wife had been unexpectedly and prematurely delivered of an infant son--a tiny creature, in whom life was but a pa.s.sing gleam, as of the imperfect moonlight, and of whom death took possession in the very instant of its birth.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

SUDDEN LESSON AND NEW SUSPICIONS.

While I had been wasting the precious hours of midnight in a gaming-house, my poor Julia had undergone the peculiar pangs of a mother! While I had been reproaching her in my secret soul for a want of ardency and attachment, she had been giving me the highest proof that she possessed the warmest. These revelations, however, were to reach me slowly; and then, like those of Ca.s.sandra, they were destined to encounter disbelief.

Leaving Kingsley, I turned into the street where my wife's mother lived.

But the house was shut up--the company gone. I had not been heedful of the progress of the hours. I looked up at the tall, white, and graceful steeple of our ancient church, which towered in serene majesty above us; but, in the imperfect light I failed to read the letters upon the dial-plate. At that moment its solemn chimes pealed forth the hour, as if especially in answer to my quest. How such sounds speak to the very soul at midnight! They seem the voice from Time himself, informing, not man alone, but Eternity, of his progress to that lone night, in which his minutes, hours, days, and years, are equally to be swallowed up and forgotten.

Sweet had been those bells to me in boyhood. Sad were they to me now. I had heard them ring forth merry peals on the holydays of the nation; and peals on the day of national mourning; startling and terrifying peals in the hour of midnight danger and alarm; but never till then had they spoken with such deep and searching earnestness to the most hidden places of my soul. That 'one, two, three, four,' which they then struck, as they severally p.r.o.nounced the thrilling monotones, seemed to convey the burden of four impressive acts in a yet unfinished tragedy. My heart beat with a feeling of anxiety, such as overcomes us, when we look for the curtain to rise which is to unfold the mysterious progress of the catastrophe.

That fifth act of mine! what was it to be? Involuntarily my lips uttered the name of William Edgerton! I started as if I had trodden upon a viper. The denouement of the drama at once grew up before my eyes. I felt the dagger in my grasp; I actually drew it from my bosom. I saw the victim before me--a smile upon his lips--a fire in his glance--an ardor, an intelligence, that looked like exulting pa.s.sion; and my own eyes grew dim. I was blinded; but, even in the darkness, I struck with fatal precision. I felt the resistance, I heard the groan and the falling body; and my hair rose, with a cold, moist life of its own, upon my clammy and shrinking temples.

I recovered from the delusion. My dagger had been piercing the empty air; but the feeling and the horror in my soul were not less real because the deed had been one of fancy only. The foregone conclusion was in my mind, and I well knew that fate would yet bring the victim to the altar.

I know not how I reached my dwelling, but when there I was soon brought to a sober condition of the senses. I found everything in commotion.

Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford, was there, busy in my wife's chamber, while her husband, surly with such an interruption to his domestic felicity, even at the threshold, was below, kicking his heels in solemn disquietude in the parlor. The servants had been despatched to bring her and to seek me, in the first moments of my wife's danger. She had consciousness enough for that, and Mrs. Delaney had summoned the physician. He too--the excellent old man, who had a.s.sisted us in our clandestine marriage--he too was there; sad, troubled, and regarding me with looks of apprehension and rebuke which seemed to ask why I was abroad at that late hour, leaving my wife under such circ.u.mstances. I could not meet his glance with a manly eye. They brought me the dead infant--poor atom of mortality--no longer mortal; but I turned away from the spectacle. I dared not look upon it. It was the form of a perished hope, ended in a dream! And such a dream! The physician gave me a brief explanation of the condition of things.

"Your wife is very ill. It is difficult to say what will happen. Make up your mind for the worst. She has fever--has been delirious. But she sleeps now under the effect of some medicine I have given her. She will not sleep long; and everything will depend upon her wakening. She must be kept very quiet."

I asked if he could conjecture what should bring about such an event.

"Though delicate, Julia was not out of health. She had been well during the evening when I left her."

"You have left her long. This is a late hour, Mr. Clifford, for a young husband to be out. Nothing but matter of necessity could excuse--"

I interrupted him with some gravity:--

"Suppose then it was a matter of necessity--of seeming necessity, at least."

He observed my emotion.

"Do not be angry with me. I a.s.sisted your dear wife into the world, Clifford. I would not see her hurried out of it. She is like a child of my own; I feel for her as such."

I said something apologetic, I know not what, and renewed my question.

"She has been alarmed or excited, perhaps; possibly has fallen while ascending the stair. A very slight accident will sometimes suffice to produce such a result with a const.i.tution such as hers. She needs great watchfulness, Clifford; close attention, much solicitude. She needs and deserves it, Clifford."

I saw that the old man suspected me of indifference and neglect. Alas!

whatever might be my faults in reference to my wife, indifference was not among them. What he had said, however, smote me to the heart. I felt like a culprit. I dared not meet his eye when, at daylight, he took his departure, promising to return in a few hours.

My excellent mother-in-law was more capable and copious in her details.

From her I learned that Julia, though anxious to depart for some time before, had waited for my return until the last of her guests were about to retire. Among these happened to be Mr. William Edgerton!

"He offered his carriage, but Julia put off accepting for a long time, saying you would soon return. But at last he pressed her so, and seeing everybody else gone, she concluded to go, and Mr. Delaney helped her into the carriage, and Mr. Edgerton got in too, to see her home; and off they drove, and it was not an hour after, when Becky (the servant-girl) came to rout us up, saying that her mistress was dying. I hurried on my clothes, and Delaney--dear good man--he was just as quick; and off we came, and sure enough, we found her in a bad way, and n.o.body with her but the servants; and I sent off after you, and after the doctor; and he just came in time to help her; but she went on wofully; was very lightheaded; talked a great deal about you; and about Mr. Edgerton; I suppose because he had just been seeing her home; but didn't seem to know and doesn't know to this moment what has happened to her."

I have shortened very considerably the long story which Mrs. Delaney made of it. Rambling as it was--full of nonsense--with constant references to her "dear good man," and her party, the company, herself, her fashion, and frivolities--there was yet something to sting and trouble me at the core of her narration. Edgerton and my wife linger to the last--Edgerton rides home with her--he and she in the carriage, alone, at midnight;--and then this catastrophe, which the doctor thought was a natural consequence of some excitement or alarm.

These facts wrought like madness in my brain. Then, too, in her delirium she raves of HIM! Is not that significant? True, it comes from the lips of that malicious old woman! she, who had already hinted to me that my wife--her daughter--was likely to be as faithless to me as she had been to herself. Still, it is significant, even if it be only the invention of this old woman. It showed what she conjectured--what she thought to be a natural result of these practices which had prompted her suspicions as well as my own.

How hot was the iron-pressure upon my brain--how keen and scorching was that fiery arrow in my soul, when I took my place of watch beside the unconscious form of my wife, G.o.d alone can know. If I am criminal--if I have erred with wildest error--surely I have struggled with deepest misery. I have been misled by wo, not temptation! Sore has been my struggle, sore my suffering, even in the moment of my greatest fault and folly. Sore!---how sore!

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

STILL THE CLOUD.

For three days and nights did I watch beside the sick bed of my wife.

In all this time her fate continued doubtful. I doubt if any anxiety or attention could have exceeded mine; as it was clear to myself that, in spite of jealousy and suspicion, my love for her remained without diminution. Yet this watch was not maintained without some trials far more severe and searching than those which it produced upon the body.

Her mind, wandering and purposeless, yet spoke to mine, and renewed all its racking doubts, and exaggerated all its nameless fears. Her veins burned with fever. She was fitfully delirious. Words fell from her at spasmodic moments--strange, incoherent words, but all full of meaning in my ears. I sat beside the bed on one hand, while, on one occasion, her mother occupied a seat upon that opposite. The eyes of my wife opened upon both of us--turned from me, convulsively, with an expression, as I thought, of disgust, then closed--while her lips, taking up their language, poured forth a torrent of threats and reproaches.

I can not repeat her words. They rang in my ears, understood, indeed, but so wildly and thrillingly, that I should find it a vain task to endeavor to remember them. She spoke of persecution, annoyance, beyond propriety, beyond her powers of endurance. She threatened me--for I a.s.sumed myself to be the object of her denunciation--with the wrath of some one capable to punish--nay, to rescue her, if need be, by violence, from the clutches of her tyrant. Then followed another change in her course of speech. She no longer threatened or denounced. She derided.

Words of bitter scorn and loathing contempt issued from those bright, red, burning, and always beautiful lips, which I had never supposed could have given forth such utterance, even if her spirit could have been supposed capable of conceiving it. Keen was the irony which she expressed--irony, which so well applied to my demerits in one great respect, that I could not help making the personal application.

"How manly and generous," she proceeded, "was this sort of persecution of one so unprotected, so dependent, so placed, that she must even be silent, and endure without speech or complaint, in the dread of dangers which, however, would not light upon her head. Oh, brave as generous!"

she exclaimed, with a burst of tremendous delirium, terminating in a shriek; "oh, brave as generous!--scarcely lion-like, however, for the n.o.ble beast rushes upon his victim. He does not prowl, and skulk, and sneak, watching, cat-like; crouching and base, in stealth and darkness.

Very n.o.ble, but mousing spirit! Beware! Do I not know you now! Fear you not that I will show your baseness, and declare the truth, and guide other eyes to your stealthy practice? Beware! Do not drive me into madness!"

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, pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sociated with a now unrestrained expression of pa.s.sion 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 acc.u.mulating 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 pa.s.sed away. She turned her eyes upon me, and closed them involuntarily, while a deep crimson tint pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociated in her mind with some circ.u.mstances of peculiar import, was sufficiently obvious. What were these circ.u.mstances? 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured can not well be the case, that you have fallen into other and much more evil habits."

"The hag!"