"I leave you, Edgerton, with one regret--not that we part, for life
is full of partings, and the strong mind must be reconciled with
them, or it is nothing--but that I leave you so unlike your former
self. I wish I could do something for you."
I gave him my hand as as I spoke. He did not grasp--he rather
shrunk from it. An uncontrollable burst of feeling seemed suddenly
to gush from him as he spoke:-"Take no heed of me, Clifford--I am not worthy of YOUR thought."
"Ha! What do you mean?"
He spoke hastily, in manifest discomfiture:-"I am worthy of no man's thought."
"Pshaw! you are a hypochondriac."
"Would it were that!--But you go!--when?"
"In a week, perhaps."
"So soon? So very soon? Do you--do you carry your family with you
at once?"
There was great effort to speak this significant inquiry. I perceived
that. I perceived that his eyes were on the ground while it was
made. The question was offensive to me. It had a strange and painful
significance. It recalled the whole cause, the bitter cause of my
resolve for exile; and I could not control the altered tones of
my voice in answering, which I did with some causticity of feeling,
which necessarily entered into my utterance.
"Family, surely! My wife only! No great charge, I'm thinking, and
her health needs an early change. Would you have me leave HER? I
have no other family, you know!"
The dialogue, carried on with restraint before, was shortened by
this; and, after a few business remarks, which were necessary to
our office concerns, he pleaded an engagement to get away. He left
me with some soreness upon my mind, which formed its expression in
a brief soliloquy.
"You would have the path made even freer than before, would you?
It does not content you, these long morning meditations--these
pretended labors of the painting-room, the suspicious husband
withdrawn, and the wife, neither scorning nor consenting, willing
to believe in that devotion to the art which is properly a devotion
to herself? These are not sufficient opportunities, eh? There
were--more room for landscape, appoint you, Mr. Edgerton!--Ah!
could I but know all. Could I be sure that she did love him! Could
I be sure that she did not! That is the curse--that doubt!--Will
it remain so? No! no! Once removed--once in those forest regions,
it can not be that she will repine for anything. She MUST love me
then--she will feel anew the first fond passion. She will forget
these passing fancies. They WILL pass! She is young. The image
will haunt her no longer--at least, it will no longer haunt me!"
So I spoke, but I was not so sure of that last. The doubt did not
trouble me, however. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
But I had another test yet to try. I wished to see how Julia would
receive the communication of my purpose. As yet she knew nothing
of my contemplated departure. "It will surprise her," I thought to
myself. "In that surprise she will show how much our removal will
distress her!"