University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

I need not say that no happiness awaited
me in my marriage. Still less is it necessary
that I should tell you of the small amount of
happiness that fell to the lot of my wife. I
did not ill-treat her—that is to say, I employed
neither blows nor violence; but I was a
wretched discontent, and when I say this I
have said all. She suffered with patience,
however, and I sometimes found it impossible,
and always difficult, to drive her beyond
the boundary of yielding and forgiving humility.
She loved me not from the first, and
only became my bride from the absence of
sufficient firmness of character, to resist the

command. The discovery of this fact, which
I soon made, offended my pride. I did not
distrust, however—I hated her; and, with a
strange perversity of character, which, let philosophers
account for as they may—when I
found that she could love, and that feelings
were engendered in her bosom for another,
hostile to her affection for me, though not at
variance with her duties—I encouraged their
growth. I nursed their developement. I stimulated
their exercise; and strove, would you
believe it, to make her the instrument of my own
dishonor. But her sense of pride and propriety
was greater than mine. Though conscious
that her heart was another's, she unerringly held
her faith to her husband, and my anger and dislike
were exaggerated, when I discovered that
my vice, even when allied to and assisted by
her own feelings, could gain no ascendancy
over her virtue.

She was won by the gentleness, the talent,
the high character of my old friend, William
Harding. She listened to his language with
unreluctant and unconcealed pleasure. She
delighted in his society; and with a feeling
which she had never dared to name to herself,
she gave him a preference, in every thought,
in every emotion of her being. Nor—boy as
he was—sensitive and easily wrought upon
by respect and kindness—was he at all insensible
to her regards. He became, as an
acquaintance, almost an inmate of our house.
He was always with us—and with the openness
of heart common to such a character, he
unreservedly sought for the society of Constance.

I soon discovered their mutual propensities,
for, at an early period, I had learned,
with singular felicity, to analyze character.
At first, and while she was yet a charming
creation in my sight, and before I had learned to
disregard and be indifferent to the admiration
which she excited in others, this predilection
gave me not a little concern. I was for a
season the victim of a jealous doubt—not so
much the result of a fear of offended honor,
as of a weak pride and vanity, that was vexed
at the preference given to him over myself, in
the bosom of one, I strove to have exclusively
my own. But this feeling went with the season.
I grew indifferent at first, then pleased
with their association, and finally it became
an object with me, so to encourage it, as to
give me a sufficient excuse and opportunity
for a dreadful and overwhelming revenge.
But they were both honest—honest as I had
never been—as I never expected man or woman
to have been! Twining and intermingling,
hourly in spirit, the most jealous scrutiny,
the most bitter hate and hostility, could
never detect the slightest feature of impropriety
in their conduct. Many were the modes
which I chose to stimulate their passions—to
influence their desires—to put their spirits
into flame; and many were the opportunities
with which I sought, in hurrying them to
crime, to provide myself with victims. They
went through the ordeal like angels—without
one speck of earth; and pining with suppressed
and strong affections, I beheld the
cheek of Constance grow paler, day by day,
and saw, at every visit—the increased wildness
of look—the still exaggerated emotions
struggling for utterance and life, in the bosom
of the young and susceptible Harding.