University of Virginia Library

14. XIV.
THE NEMESIS OF PASSION.

MALBONE was a person of such ready,
emotional nature, and such easy expression,
that it was not hard for Hope to
hide from herself the gradual ebbing of his
love. Whenever he was fresh and full of
spirits, he had enough to overflow upon her
and every one. But when other thoughts and
cares were weighing on him, he could not
share them, nor could he at such times, out
of the narrowing channel of his own life, furnish
more than a few scanty drops for her.

At these times he watched with torturing
fluctuations the signs of solicitude in Hope,
the timid withdrawing of her fingers, the
questioning of her eyes, the weary drooping
of her whole expression. Often he cursed
himself as a wretch for paining that pure and
noble heart. Yet there were moments when
a vague inexpressible delight stole in; a glimmering
of shame-faced pleasure as he pondered
on this visible dawning of distrust; a

sudden taste of freedom in being no longer
fettered by her confidence. By degrees he
led himself, still half ashamed, to the dream
that she might yet be somehow weaned from
him, and leave his conscience free. By constantly
building upon this thought, and putting
aside all others, he made room upon the
waste of his life for a house of cards, glittering,
unsubstantial, lofty, — until there came
some sudden breath that swept it away; and
then he began on it again.

In one of those moments of more familiar
faith which still alternated with these cold,
sad intervals, she asked him with some sudden
impulse, how he should feel if she loved
another? She said it, as if guided by an
instinct, to sound the depth of his love for
her. Starting with amazement, he looked at
her, and then, divining her feeling, he only
replied by an expression of reproach, and by
kissing her hands with an habitual tenderness
that had grown easy to him, — and they were
such lovely hands! But his heart told him
that no spent swimmer ever transferred more
eagerly to another's arms some precious burden
beneath which he was consciously sinking,
than he would yield her up to any one

whom she would consent to love, and who
could be trusted with the treasure. Until
that ecstasy of release should come, he would
do his duty, — yes, his duty.

When these flushed hopes grew pale, as
they soon did, he could at least play with the
wan fancies that took their place. Hour
after hour, while she lavished upon him the
sweetness of her devotion, he was half consciously
shaping with his tongue some word
of terrible revealing that should divide them
like a spell, if spoken, and then recalling it
before it left his lips. Daily and hourly he
felt the last agony of a weak and passionate
nature, — to dream of one woman in another's
arms.

She, too, watched him with an ever-increasing
instinct of danger, studied with a chilly
terror the workings of his face, weighed and
reweighed his words in absence, agonized herself
with new and ever new suspicions; and
then, when these had accumulated beyond
endurance, seized them convulsively and threw
them all away. Then, coming back to him
with a great overwhelming ardor of affection,
she poured upon him more and more in proportion
as he gave her less.

Sometimes in these moments of renewed
affection he half gave words to his remorse,
accused himself before her of unnamed wrong,
and besought her to help him return to his
better self. These were the most dangerous
moments of all, for such appeals made tenderness
and patience appear a duty; she must
put away her doubts as sins, and hold him to
her; she must refuse to see his signs of faltering
faith, or treat them as mere symptoms of
ill health. Should not a wife cling the closer
to her husband in proportion as he seemed
alienated through the wanderings of disease?
And was not this her position? So she
said within herself, and meanwhile it was
not hard to penetrate her changing thoughts,
at least for so keen an observer as Aunt
Jane. Hope, at length, almost ceased to
speak of Malbone, and revealed her grief by
this evasion, as the robin reveals her nest by
flitting from it.

Yet there were times when he really tried
to force himself into a revival of this calmer
emotion. He studied Hope's beauty with his
eyes, he pondered on all her nobleness. He
wished to bring his whole heart back to her,
— or at least wished that he wished it. But

hearts that have educated themselves into
faithlessness must sooner or later share the
suffering they give. Love will be avenged on
them. Nothing could have now recalled this
epicure in passion, except, possibly, a little
withholding or semi-coquetry on Hope's part,
and this was utterly impossible for her. Absolute
directness was a part of her nature;
she could die, but not manœuvre.

It actually diminished Hope's hold on Philip,
that she had at this time the whole field to
herself. Emilia had gone for a few weeks to
the mountains, with the household of which
she was a guest. An ideal and unreasonable
passion is strongest in absence, when the
dream is all pure dream, and safe from the
discrepancies of daily life. When the two
girls were together, Emilia often showed herself
so plainly Hope's inferior, that it jarred
on Philip's fine perceptions. But in Emilia's
absence the spell of temperament, or whatever
else brought them together, resumed
its sway unchecked; she became one great
magnet of attraction, and all the currents
of the universe appeared to flow from the
direction where her eyes were shining. When
she was out of sight, he needed to make no

allowance for her defects, to reproach himself
with no overt acts of disloyalty to Hope, to
recognize no criticisms of his own intellect
or conscience. He could resign himself to his
reveries, and pursue them into new subtleties
day by day.

There was Mrs. Meredith's house, too,
where they had been so happy. And now
the blinds were pitilessly closed, all but one
where the Venetian slats had slipped, and
stood half open as if some dainty fingers held
them, and some lovely eyes looked through.
He gazed so long and so often on that silent
house, — by day, when the scorching sunshine
searched its pores as if to purge away every
haunting association, or by night, when the
mantle of darkness hung tenderly above it,
and seemed to collect the dear remembrances
again, — that his fancy by degrees grew morbid,
and its pictures unreal. “It is impossible,”
he one day thought to himself, “that
she should have lived in that room so long,
sat in that window, dreamed on that couch,
reflected herself in that mirror, breathed that
air, without somehow detaching invisible fibres
of her being, delicate films of herself, that
must gradually, she being gone, draw together

into a separate individuality an image not
quite bodiless, that replaces her in her absence,
as the holy Theocrite was replaced by the
angel. If there are ghosts of the dead why
not ghosts of the living also?” This lover's
fancy so pleased him that he brought to bear
upon it the whole force of his imagination,
and it grew stronger day by day. To him,
thenceforth, the house was haunted, and all
its floating traces of herself visible or invisible,
— from the ribbon that he saw entangled in
the window-blind to every intangible and fancied
atom she had imparted to the atmosphere,
— came at last to organize themselves into
one phantom shape for him and looked out, a
wraith of Emilia, through those relentless
blinds. As the vision grew more vivid, he
saw the dim figure moving through the house,
wan, restless, tender, lingering where they had
lingered, haunting every nook where they had
been happy once. In the windy moanings
of the silent night he could put his ear at the
keyhole, and could fancy that he heard the
wild signals of her love and despair.