The confidence-man :: :: University of Virginia Library

It appeared that the unfortunate man had had for a
wife one of those natures, anomalously vicious, which
would almost tempt a metaphysical lover of our species
to doubt whether the human form be, in all cases, conclusive
evidence of humanity, whether, sometimes, it may
not be a kind of unpledged and indifferent tabernacle,
and whether, once for all to crush the saying of Thrasea,
(an unaccountable one, considering that he himself was
so good a man) that “he who hates vice, hates humanity,”
it should not, in self-defense, be held for a reasonable
maxim, that none but the good are human.

Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, too
straight, indeed, for a woman, a complexion naturally
rosy, and which would have been charmingly so, but for
a certain hardness and bakedness, like that of the glazed
colors on stone-ware. Her hair was of a deep, rich
chestnut, but worn in close, short curls all round her
head. Her Indian figure was not without its impairing
effect on her bust, while her mouth would have been
pretty but for a trace of moustache. Upon the whole,

aided by the resources of the toilet, her appearance at
distance was such, that some might have thought her, if
anything, rather beautiful, though of a style of beauty
rather peculiar and cactus-like.

It was happy for Goneril that her more striking peculiarities
were less of the person than of temper and taste.
One hardly knows how to reveal, that, while having a
natural antipathy to such things as the breast of chicken,
or custard, or peach, or grape, Goneril could yet in
private make a satisfactory lunch on hard crackers and
brawn of ham. She liked lemons, and the only kind of
candy she loved were little dried sticks of blue clay,
secretly carried in her pocket. Withal she had hard,
steady health like a squaw's, with as firm a spirit and
resolution. Some other points about her were likewise
such as pertain to the women of savage life. Lithe
though she was, she loved supineness, but upon occasion
could endure like a stoic. She was taciturn, too. From
early morning till about three o'clock in the afternoon
she would seldom speak—it taking that time to thaw
her, by all accounts, into but talking terms with humanity.
During the interval she did little but look, and
keep looking out of her large, metallic eyes, which her
enemies called cold as a cuttle-fish's, but which by her
were esteemed gazelle-like; for Goneril was not without
vanity. Those who thought they best knew her, often
wondered what happiness such a being could take in
life, not considering the happiness which is to be had by
some natures in the very easy way of simply causing
pain to those around them. Those who suffered from

Goneril's strange nature, might, with one of those
hyberboles to which the resentful incline, have pronounced
her some kind of toad; but her worst slanderers
could never, with any show of justice, have accused
her of being a toady. In a large sense she possessed
the virtue of independence of mind. Goneril held it
flattery to hint praise even of the absent, and even if
merited; but honesty, to fling people's imputed faults
into their faces. This was thought malice, but it certainly
was not passion. Passion is human. Like an
icicle-dagger, Goneril at once stabbed and froze; so at
least they said; and when she saw frankness and innocence
tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell,
according to the same authority, inly she chewed her
blue clay, and you could mark that she chuckled. These
peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but another
was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company
she had a strange way of touching, as by accident, the
arm or hand of comely young men, and seemed to reap
a secret delight from it, but whether from the humane
satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called,
or whether it was something else in her, not equally
wonderful, but quite as deplorable, remained an enigma.

Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's,
when, engaged in conversation with company, he would
suddenly perceive his Goneril bestowing her mysterious
touches, especially in such cases where the strangeness
of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing
the mystery, on the spot, as a subject of discussion for

the company. In these cases, too, the unfortunate man
could never endure so much as to look upon the touched
young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification
of meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less
quizzingly-knowing expression. He would shudderingly
shun the young gentleman. So that here, to the husband,
Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the
heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So,
at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately,
would venture in private interviews gently to
make distant allusions to this questionable propensity.
She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it
was witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish
ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to
rejoice his soul with such chimeras, much connubial joy
might they give him. All this was sad—a touching
case—but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
unfortunate man—conscientiously mindful of his vow—
for better or for worse—to love and cherish his dear
Goneril so long as kind heaven might spare her to him
—but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for
none other could possess her, and the object of that deranged
jealousy, her own child, a little girl of seven, her
father's consolation and pet; when he saw Goneril artfully
torment the little innocent, and then play the
maternal hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient
long-suffering gave way. Knowing that she would
neither confess nor amend, and might, possibly, become
even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a

father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as
he did, he could not do so without accompanying it into
domestic exile himself. Which, hard though it was, he
did. Whereupon the whole female neighborhood, who
till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning
a cause, could deliberately abandon the wife of
his bosom, and sharpen the sting to her, too, by depriving
her of the solace of retaining her offspring. To all this,
self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been
had he continued so; for when, driven to desperation,
he hinted something of the truth of the case, not a soul
would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the
suggestion of some woman's-rights women, the injured
wife began a suit, and, thanks to able counsel and accommodating
testimony, succeeded in such a way, as
not only to recover custody of the child, but to get such
a settlement awarded upon a separation, as to make
penniless the unfortunate man (so he averred), besides,
through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting a
judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made
it yet more lamentable was, that the unfortunate man,
thinking that, before the court, his wisest plan, as well
as the most Christian besides, being, as he deemed, not
at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to
put forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril,
which done, he could, with less of mortification to himself,
and odium to her, reveal in self-defense those

eccentricities which had led to his retirement from the
joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this
charge of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself—especially,
when, among other things, he alleged
her mysterious touchings. In vain did his counsel,
striving to make out the derangement to be where, in
fact, if anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise,
to hold that such a being as Goneril was sane, this was
constructively a libel upon womankind. Libel be it.
And all ended by the unfortunate man's subsequently
getting wind of Goneril's intention to procure him to
be permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which
he fled, and was now an innocent outcast, wandering
forlorn in the great valley of the Mississippi, with a
weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he had
lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought
it but proper to comply with the prescribed form of
mourning in such cases. For some days past he had
been trying to get money enough to return to his child,
and was but now started with inadequate funds.

Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant
could not but consider rather hard for the unfortunate
man.