"No, sir, finish it now; I pity you--I do earnestly pity you."
"Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of
tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of
those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous,
selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes,
crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But
that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your
whole face is full at this moment--with which your eyes are now
almost overflowing--with which your heart is heaving--with which
your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the
suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the
divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free
advent--my arms wait to receive her."
"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?"
"Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect
was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the
world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved
to be clean in my own sight--and to the last I repudiated the
contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection
with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and
person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of
her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I
remembered I had once been her husband--that recollection was then,
and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while
she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife;
and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied
to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as
long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind.
Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.
"One night I had been awakened by her yells--(since the medical men
had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)--it was a
fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently
precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in
bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-
steams--I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came
buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I
could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake--black
clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves,
broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw her last bloody
glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was
physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were
filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she
momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with
such language!--no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary
than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word--the thin
partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction
to her wolfish cries.