Yet, even were it so, what could this prove, as the father had
conclusively shown, but guilt. Poverty could not trouble him--he
had never been an unrequited lover. He had gone along the stream of
society, indifferent to the lures of beauty, and with a bark that
had always appeared studiously to keep aloof from the shores or
shoals of matrimony. If he was miserable, his misery could only come
from misconduct, not from misfortune. It was a misery engendered
by guilt, and what was that guilt? I KNEW that he did not drink;
and was not his course in regard to Kingsley, as narrated by that
person on the night when we went to the gaming-house together--was
not that sufficient to show that he was no gamester, unless he
happened to be one of the most bare faced of all canting hypocrites,
which I could not believe him to be. What remained, but that my
calculations were right? It was guilt that was sinking him, body
and soul, so that his eye no longer dared to look upward--so that
his ear shrunk from the sounds of those voices which, even in the
language of kindness, were still speaking to him in the severest
language of rebuke. And whom did that guilt concern more completely
than myself? Say that the father was to lose his son, his only
son--what was my loss, what was my shame! and upon whom should
the curse most fully and finally fall, if not upon the wrong-doer,
though it so happened that the ruin of the guilty brought with it
overthrow to the innocent scarcely less complete!
The extent of that guilt of Edgerton?
On this point all was a wilderness, vague, inconclusive, confused
and crowded within my understanding. I believed that he had
approached my wife with evil designs--I believed, without a doubt,
that he had passed the boundaries of propriety in his intercourse
with her; but I believed not that she had fallen! No! I had an
instinctive confidence in her purity, that rendered it apparently
impossible that she should lapse into the grossness of illicit love.
What, then, was my fear? That she did love him, though, struggling
with the tendency of her heart, she had not yielded in the struggle.
I believed that his grace, beauty, and accomplishments--his
persevering attention--his similar tastes--had succeeded in making
an impression upon her soul which had effectually eradicated mine.
I believed that his attentions were sweet to her--that she had
not the strength to reject them; and, though she may have proved
herself too virtuous to yield, she had not been sufficiently strong
to repulse him with virtuous resentment.
That Edgerton had not succeeded, did not lessen HIS offence. The
attempt was an indignity that demanded atonement--that justified
punishment equally severe with that which should have followed a
successful prosecution of his purpose. Women are by nature weak.
They are not to be tempted. He who, knowing their weakness, attempts
their overthrow by that medium, is equally cowardly and criminal.
I could not doubt that he had made this attempt; but now it seemed
necessary that I should suspend my indignation, in obedience with
what appeared to be a paramount duty. A selfish reasoning now
suggested compliance with this duty as a mean for procuring better
intelligence than I already possessed. I need not say that the
doubt was the pain in my bosom. I felt, in the words of the cold
devil Iago, those "damned minutes" of him "who dotes, yet doubts,
suspects, yet strongly loves."