With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had
not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as
many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised
under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own
mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul,
the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His
flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me
from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was,
in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms,
and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius
of pain--that genius which alone is universal--which adopts us from
the cradle--which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows
the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains
the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips,
the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt
frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn. He alone
is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first
proofs of his singular and superior destiny.
Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains
of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment
when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within
it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and
fro, the most sore and shrineing passages of my soul. Had not
Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My passions
would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy
under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and
rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have
poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence
from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the
last atonement for it.
At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused
myself of tameness--the dishonorable tameness of submitting to
indignity--the last of all indignities--and of conferring calmly,
even good-humoredly, with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came.
A brief interval sufficed--helped by the flood of tears which
rushed, hot and scalding, from my eyes--to subdue the angry spirit.
I remembered my pledges to the father; my unspeakable obligations
to him; and when I again recollected that my convictions had not
assailed the purity of my wife, and, at most, had questioned her
affections only, my forbearance seemed justified.
But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be
done? It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done,
for the relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton
was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged,
might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of
the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit
to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the
work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the
number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage
to put her from me. Believing that she was still safe, I resolved,
through the excess of that love which was yet the predominant
passion in my soul, in spite of all its contradictions, to keep her
so, if human wit could avail, and human energy carry its desires
into successful completion.