"Indeed! my father--so early? What could be the matter? Did he tell you?

"Yes, i'faith, he is in tribulation about you. He fancies you are in a fair way to destruction. You can't conceive what he fancies. It seems, according to his account, that you are a night-stalker. He dwells at large upon your nightly absences from home, and then about your appearance, which, to say truth, is very wretched. You scarcely look like the same man. Edgerton. Have you been sick? What's the matter with you?"

"I am NOT altogether well," he said, evasively.

"Yes, but mere indisposition would never produce such a change, in so short a period, in any man! Your father is disposed to ascribe it to other causes."

"Ah! what does he think?"

I fancied there was mingled curiosity and trepidation in this inquiry.

"He suspects you of gaming and drinking; but I a.s.sured him, very confidently, that such was not the case. On one of these heads I could speak confidently, for I met Kingsley the other night--the night of Mother Delaney's party--who was hot and heavy against you because you refused to lend him money for such purposes. I was more indulgent, lent him the money, went with him to the house, and returned home with a pocket full of specie, sufficient to set up a small banking-operation of my own."

"You! can it be possible!"

"True; and no such dull way of spending an evening either. I got home in the small hours, and found Julia delirious. I haven't had such a fright for a stolen pleasure, Heaven knows when. There was the doctor, and there my eternal mother-in-law, and my poor little wife as near the grave as could be! But the circ.u.mstance of refusing the money to Kingsley, knowing his object, made me confident that gaming was not the cause of your night-stalking, and so I told the old gentleman."

"And what did he say?"

"Shook his head mournfully, and reasoned in this manner: 'He has no pecuniary necessities, has no oppressive toils, and has never had any disappointment of heart. There is nothing to make him behave so, and look so, but guilt--GUILT!'"

I repeated the last word with an entire change in the tone of my voice.

Light, lively, and playful before, I spoke that single word with a stern solemnity, and, bending toward him, my eye keenly traversed the mazes of his countenance.

"HE HAS IT!" I thought to myself, as his head drooped forward, and his whole frame shuddered momentarily.

"But"--here my tones again became lively and playful--I even laughed--"I told the old man that I fancied I could hit the nail more certainly on the head. In short, I said I could pretty positively say what was the cause of your conduct and condition."

"Ah!" and, as he uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon the floor in visible emotion.

"Yes! I told him--was I not right?--that a woman was at the bottom of it all!"

He started to his feet. His face was averted from me.

"Ha! was I not right? I knew it! I saw through it from the first; and, though I did not tell the old man THAT, I was pretty sure that you were trespa.s.sing upon your neighbor's grounds. Ha! what say you? Was I not right? Were you not stealing to forbidden places--playing the snake, on a small scale, in some blind man's Eden? Ha! ha! what say you to that? I am right, am I not? eh?"

I clapped him on the shoulder as I spoke. His face had been half averted from me while I was speaking; but now it turned upon me, and his glance met mine, teeming with inquisitive horror.

"No! no! you are not right!" he faltered out; "it is not so. Nothing is the matter with me! I am quite well--quite! I will see my father, and set him right."

"Do so," I said, coolly and indifferently--"do so; tell him what you please: but you can't change my conviction that you're after some pretty woman, and probably poaching on some neighbor's territory. Come, make me your confidante, Edgerton. Let us know the history of your misfortune.

Is the lady pliant? I should judge so, since you continue to spend so many nights away from home. Come, make a clean breast of it. Out with your secret! I have always been your friend. WE COULD NOT BETRAY EACH OTHER, I THINK!"

"You are quite mistaken," he said, with the effort of one who is half strangled. "There is nothing in it; I a.s.sure you, you were never more mistaken."

"Pshaw, Edgerton! you may blind papa, but you can not blind me. Keep your secret, if you please, but, if you provoke me, I will trace it out; I will unkennel you. If I do not show the sitting hare in a fortnight, by the course of the hunter, tell me I am none myself."

His consternation increased, but I did not allow it to disarm me.

I probed him keenly, and in such a manner as to make him wince with apprehension at every word which I uttered. Morally, William Edgerton was a brave man. Guilt alone made him a coward. It actually gave me pain, after a while, to behold his wretched imbecility. He hung upon my utterance with the trembling suspense of one whose eye has become enchained with the fascinating gaze of the serpent. I put my questions and comments home to him, on the a.s.sumption that he was playing the traitor with another's wife; though taking care, all the while, that my manner should be that of one who has no sort of apprehensions on his own score. My deportment and tone tallied well with the practised indifference which had distinguished my previous overt conduct. It deceived him on that head; but the truth, like a sharp knife, was no less keen in penetrating to his soul; and, preserving my coolness and directness, with that singular tenacity of purpose which I could maintain in spite of my own sufferings--and keep them still unsuspected--I did not scruple to impel the sharp iron into every sensitive place within his bosom.

He writhed visibly before me. His struggles did not please me, but I sought to produce them simply because they seemed so many proofs confirming the truth of my conjectures. The fiend in my own soul kept whispering, "He has it!"--and a fatal spell, not unlike that which riveted his attention to the language which tore and vexed him, urged me to continue it until at length the sting became too keen for his endurance. In very desperation, he broke away from the fetters of that fascination of terror which had held him for one mortal hour to the spot.

"No more! no more!" he exclaimed, with an uncontrollable burst of emotion. "You torture me! I can stand it no longer! There is nothing in your conjecture! There is no reason for your suspicions! She is--"

"She? Ah!"

I could not suppress the involuntary exclamation. The truth seemed to be at hand. I was premature. My utterance brought him to his senses. He stopped, looked at me wildly for an instant, his eyes dilated almost to bursting. He seemed suddenly to be conscious that the secrets of his soul--its dark, uncommissioned secrets--were about to force themselves into sight and speech; and unable, perhaps, to arrest them in any other way he darted headlong from my presence.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

MEDITATED EXILE.

With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul, the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was, in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms, and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius of pain--that genius which alone is universal--which adopts us from the cradle--which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips, the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn.

He alone is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first proofs of his singular and superior destiny.

Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and fro, the most sore and shining pa.s.sages of my soul. Had not Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My pa.s.sions would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the last atonement for it.

At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused myself of tameness--the dishonorable tameness of submitting to indignity--the last of all indignities--and of conferring calmly, even good-humoredly, with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came. A brief interval sufficed--helped by the flood of tears which rushed, hot and scalding, from my eyes--to subdue the angry spirit. I remembered my pledges to the father; my unspeakable obligations to him; and when I again recollected that my convictions had not a.s.sailed the purity of my wife, and, at most, had questioned her affections only, my forbearance seemed justified.

But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be done?

It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done, for the relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged, might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage to put her from me. Believing that she was still safe, I resolved, through the excess of that love which was yet the predominant pa.s.sion in my soul, in spite of all its contradictions, to keep her so, if human wit could avail, and human energy carry its desires into successful completion.

To do this, there was but one process. That was flight. I must leave this city--this country. By doing so, I remove my wife from temptation, remove the temptation from the unhappy young man whom it is destroying; and thus, though by a sacrifice of my own comforts and interests, repay the debt of grat.i.tude to my benefactor in the only effective manner. It called for no small exercise of moral courage and forbearance--no small benevolence--to come to this conclusion. It must be understood that my professional business was becoming particularly profitable. I was rising in my profession. My clients daily increased in number; my acquaintance daily increased in value. Besides, I loved my birthplace--thrice-hallowed--the only region in my eyes--

"The spot most worthy loving Of all beneath the sky."

But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately grew active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home--a spot, remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household G.o.ds, and set them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole world-wide West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an hour. "I will go to Alabama."

Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions. This, however, reasoned upon with the utmost circ.u.mspection, seemed the very best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued from the danger that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of taking a life so dear to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man himself--the victim to a blind pa.s.sion--having no longer in his sight the temptation which misled him, would be left free to return to better thoughts, and the accustomed habits of business and society. I had concluded upon my course in the brief interval which followed my interview with William Edgerton and my return home.

The next day I saw his father. I communicated the a.s.surance of the son, and renewed my own, that neither drunkenness nor gaming was a vice. What it was that afflicted him I did not pretend to know, but I ascribed it to want of employment; a morbid, unenergetic temperament; the fact that he was independent, and had no rough necessities to make him estimate the true nature and the objects of life; and, at the close, quietly suggested that possibly there was some affair of the heart which contributed also to his suffering. I did not deny that his looks were wretched, but I stoutly a.s.sured the old man that his parental fears exaggerated their wretchedness. We had much other talk on the subject. When we were about to separate for the day, I declared my own determination in this manner:--

"I have just decided on a step, Mr. Edgerton, which perhaps will somewhat contribute to the improvement of your son, by imposing some additional tasks upon him. I am about to emigrate for the southwest."

"You, Clifford? Impossible! What puts that into your head?"

It was something difficult to furnish any good reason for such a movement. The only obvious reason spoke loudly for iny remaining where I was.

"This is unaccountable," said he. "You are doing here as few young men have done before you. Your business increasing--your income already good--surely, Clifford, you have not thought upon the matter--you are not resolved."

I could plead little other than a truant disposition for my proceeding, but I soon convinced him that I was resolved. He seemed very much troubled; betrayed the most flattering concern in my interests; and, renewing his argument for my stay, renewed also his warmest professions of service.

"I had hoped," he said, "to have seen you and William, closely united, pursuing the one path equally and successfully together. I shall have no hopes of him if you leave us."

"The probability is, sir, that he will do better with the whole responsibility of the office thrown upon him."