I need not say, however, that I positively refused to accept this
offer. I would take nothing but the hundred which I had lent him,
and placed the handkerchief with all its contents into his hands.
"And now, Clifford, I must leave you. You have yet to learn another
of my secrets. I take the rail-car at daylight in the morning. I
am off for Alabama; and considering my Texan and Mexican projects,
I leave you, perhaps, for ever."
"So soon?"
"Yes, everything is ready. There need be no delay. I have no wife
nor children to cumber me. My trunks are already packed; my resolve
made; my last business transacted I have some lands in Alabama
which I mean to sell. This done, I am off for the great field of
performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may
wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama.
I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly
a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me
what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from
the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford, and whatever else
you can about our fools and knaves, for though I leave them without
a tear, yet, d--n 'em, I keep 'em in my memory, if it's only for
the sake of the old city whom they bedevil."
Enough of our dialogue that night. Kingsley was a fellow of every
excellent and some very noble qualities. We did not sympathize in
sundry respects, but I parted from him with regret; not altogether
satisfied, however, that there were not some defects in that reasoning
by which he justified our proceedings with the gamblers. I turned
from him with a sad, sick heart. In his absence the whole feeling
of my domestic doubts and difficulties rushed back upon me freshly
and with redoubled force.
"Children!" I murmured mournfully, as I recalled one of his remarks;
"children! children! these, indeed, were blessings; but if we only
had love, truth, peace. If that damning doubt were not there!--that
wild fear, that fatal, soul-petrifying suspicion!"
I groaned audibly as I traversed the streets, and it seemed as
if the pavements groaned hollowly in answer beneath my hurrying
footsteps. In a moment more I had absolutely forgotten the recent
strife, the strange scene, the accents of my friend; for but that
one.
"Children! children! These might bind her to me; might secure
her erring affections; might win her to love the father, when he
himself might possess no other power to tempt her to love. Ah! why
has Providence denied me the blessing of a child?"
Alas! it was not probable that Julia should ever have children. This
was the conviction of our physician. Her health and constitution
seemed to forbid the hope; and the gloomy despair under which I
suffered was increased by this reflection. Yet, even at that moment,
while thus I mused and murmured, my poor wife had been unexpectedly
and prematurely delivered of an infant son--a tiny creature, in
whom life was but a passing gleam, as of the imperfect moonlight,
and of whom death took possession in the very instant of its birth.