But, though willing to release her, she was not so willing herself
to be released. When I set her free, she flew at me with cat-like
intrepidity; and I found her a much more difficult customer than
her husband. Him I soon baffled. A moment sufficed to grapple with
him and wrench the stick from his hands, and then, with a moderate
exercise of agility, I contrived to spring up the stairway which I
had just descended, regain the chamber, and secure the door, before
they could overtake or annoy me with their further movements. My
wife's aunt, meanwhile, had been busy with her restoratives. Julia
was now recovering from the fainting fit; and I had the satisfaction
of hearing from one of the servants that the baffled enemy had gone
off in a fury that made their departure seem a flight rather than
a mere retreat.
I should have treated the whole event with indifference--their
rage and their regard equally--but for my suffering and sensitive
wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all
her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her
filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties,
I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an
elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when
an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated
to subdue my anger, and make the feelings of my wife, if possible,
more accessible than ever to the influences of fear and sorrow.
Only three days from our marriage had elapsed, when her father was
stricken speechless in the street. He was carried home for dead.
I have already hinted that, months before, and just after the
threatened discovery of those fraudulent measures by which he lost
his fortune, his mind had become singularly enfeebled; his memory
failing, and all his faculties of judgment--never very strong--growing
capricious, or else obtuse and unobserving. These were the symptoms
of a rapid physical change, the catastrophe of which was at hand.
How far the excitement growing out of his daughter's flight and
marriage may have precipitated this result, is problematical. It
may be said, in this place, that my wife's mother charged it all to
my account. I was pronounced the murderer of her husband. On this
head I did not reproach myself. It was necessary, however, that a
reconciliation should take place between the father and his child.
To this I had, of course, no sort of objection. But it will scarce
be believed that the miserable woman, her mother, opposed herself to
their meeting with the utmost violence of her character. Nothing
but the outcry of the family and all its friends--including
the excellent physician whose secret services had contributed so
much toward my happiness--compelled her to give way, though still
ungraciously, to the earnest entreaty of her daughter for permission
to see her father before he died! and even then, by the death-bed
of the unhappy and almost unconscious man, she recommenced the scene
of abuse and bitter reproach, which, however ample the reader and
hearer may have already found it, it appears she had left unfinished.
It was in the midst of a furious tirade, directed against myself,
chiefly, and Julia, in part, that the spasms of death, unperceived
by the mother, passed over the contracted muscles of the father's
face. The bitter speech of the blind woman--blind of heart--was actually
finished after death had given the final blow to the victim. Of
this she had no suspicion, until instructed by the piercing shrieks
of her daughter, who fell swooning upon the corse before her.