--"What a considerate wife!" said the tempter; "how very unusual
with young wives, with whom business is commonly the very last
consideration!"
That very day, I found, on reaching home, that William Edgerton had
been there--had gone there almost the moment after he had left me
at the office; and that he had remained there, obviously at work
in the studio, until the time drew nigh for my return to dinner.
My feelings forbade any inquiries. These, facts were all related
by my wife herself. I did not ask to hear them. I asked for nothing
more than she told. The dread that my jealousy should be suspected
made me put on a sturdy aspect of indifference; and that exquisite
sense of delicacy, which governed every movement of my wife's heart
and conduct, forbade her to say--what yet she certainly desired I
should know--that, in all that time, she had not seen him, nor he
her. She had studiously kept aloof in her chamber so long as he
remained. Meanwhile, I brooded over their supposed long and secret
interviews. These I took for granted. The happiness they felt--the
mutual smile they witnessed--the unconscious sighs they uttered!
Such a picture of their supposed felicity as my morbid imagination
conjured up would have roused a doubly damned and damning fiend in
the heart of any mortal.
What a task was mine, struggling with these images, these convictions!--my
pride struggling to conceal, my feelings struggling to endure.
Then, there were other conflicts. What friends had the Edgertons
been to me--father, mother--nay, that son himself, once so fondly
esteemed, once so fondly esteeming! Of course, no ties such as
these could have made me patient under wrong. But they were such as
to render it necessary that the wrong should be real, unquestionable,
beyond doubt, beyond excuse. This I felt, this I resolved.
"I will wait! I will be patient! I will endure, though the vulture
gnaws incessant at my heart! I will do nothing precipitate. No,
no: I must beware of that! But let me prove them treacherous--let
them once falter, and go aside from the straight path, and then--oh,
then!"
Such, as in spoken words, was the unspoken resolution of my soul;
and this resolution required, first of all, that I should carry
out the base purpose which, without a purpose, I had already begun.
I must be a spy upon their interviews. They must be followed,
watched--eyes, looks, hands! Miserable necessity! but, under my
present feelings and determination, not the less a necessity. And
I, alone, must do it; I, alone, must peer busily into these mysteries,
the revelation of which can result only in my own ruin--seeking
still, with an earnest diligence, to discover that which I should
rather have prayed for eternal and unmitigated blindness, that I
might not see! Mine was, indeed, the philosophy of the madman.