Chapter 28

“On landing in England, I at once set off to the far northern county where she resided. I arrived at the well-known village; all looked the same; I recognised the cottages and their flower-gardens, and even some of the elder inhabitants looking, methought, no older than when I left them. My heart hailed my return home with rapture, and I quickened my steps towards the cottage. It was shut up and abandoned. This was the first check my sanguine spirit had met. Hitherto I had not pronounced her name or asked a question—I longed to return, as from a walk, and to find all things as I had left it. Living in a dream, I had not considered the chances and the storms, or even the mere changes, of the seasons of life.

“My pen lags in its task—I dilate on things best hurried over, yet they serve as a screen between me and fate. A few inquiries revealed the truth. Captain Rivers was dead—his daughter married. I had lived in a fool’s paradise. None of the obstacles existed that I expected to meet and conquer, but in their stead a fourfold brazen door had risen, locked, barred, and guarded, and I could not even shake a hinge, or put back a bolt.

“I hurried from the fatal spot; it became a hell to me. And oh, to think that I had lived in vain—vainly dreamed of the angel of my idolatry, vainly hoped—and most vainly loved; called her mine when another held her, sold myself to perpetual slavery to her shadow, while her living image enriched the shrine of another’s home! The tempest that shook my soul did not permit me to give form, or, indeed, to dwell consecutively on such desolating thoughts. As a man who arrives from a pleasant journey, and turns the corner where he expects to view the dwelling in which repose his wife, his children—all dear to him—and when he gains the desired spot, beholds it smouldering in ashes, and is told that all are consumed, and that their bones lie beneath the ruins; thus was I—my imagination had created home, and bride, and fair being sprung from her side, who called me father, and one word defaced my whole future life and widowed me for ever.

“Now began that chain of incidents that led to a deed I had not thought of. Incidents or accidents; acts, done I know not why; nothing in themselves; but meeting, and kindled by the fiery spirit that raged in my bosom, they gave such direction to its ruinous powers as produced the tragedy for ever to be deplored.

“Bewildered and overwhelmed by the loss which to me had all the novelty and keenness of a disaster of yesterday, though I found that many years had gone by since, in reality, it was completed, I fled from the spot I had so fondly sought, and hurried up to London on no fixed errand, with no determined idea, yet vaguely desiring to do something. Scarcely arrived, I met a man whom I had known in India. He asked me to dine with him, and I complied; because to refuse would have required explanation, and the affirmative was more easily given. I did not mean to keep my engagement; yet when the hour came, so intolerable had I become to myself—so poignant and loathsome were my thoughts—that I went, so to lose for a few moments the present sense of ill. It was a bachelor’s dinner, and there were, in addition to myself, three or four other guests—among them a Mr. Neville. From the moment this man opened his lips to speak, I took a violent dislike to him. He was, and always must have been, the man whom among ten thousand I should have marked out to abhor. He was cold, proud, and sarcastic, withal a decayed dandy, turned cynic—who, half despising himself, tried wholly to disdain his fellow-creatures. A man whose bosom never glowed with a generous emotion, and who took pride in the sagacity which enabled him to detect worms and corruption in the loveliness of virtue. A poor, mean-spirited fellow, despite his haughty outside; and then when he spoke of women, how base a thing he seemed! his disbelief in their excellence, his contemptuous pity, his insulting love, made my blood boil. To me there was something sacred in a woman’s very shadow. Was she evil, I regarded her with the pious regret with which I might view a shrine desecrated by sacrilegious hands—the odour of sanctity still floated around the rifled altar; I never could regard them as mere fellow-creatures—they were beings of a better species, sometimes gone astray in the world’s wilderness, but always elevated above the best among us. For Alithea’s sake I respected every woman. How much good I knew of them! Generous, devoted, delicate—their very faults were but misdirected virtues; and this animal dared revile beings of whose very nature he could form no conception. A burden was lifted from my soul when he left us.

“‘It is strange,’ said our host, ‘that Neville should indulge in this kind of talk; he is married to the most beautiful, and the best woman in the world. Much younger than himself, she yet performs her duties as a wife with steadiness and cheerfulness; lovely beyond her sex, she is without its weakness; to please some jealous freak of his, she has withdrawn herself from the world, and buried herself alive at his seat in the North. How she can endure an eternal tête-à-tête with that empty, conceited, and arrogant husband of hers is beyond any guessing.’

“I made some observation expressive of my abhorrence of Mr. Neville’s character, and my friend continued—’Disagreeable and shallow as he is, one would have thought that the society of so superior, so perfect a woman, would reconcile him to her sex, but I verily believe he is jealous of her surpassing excellence; and that it is not so much a natural, and I might almost call it generous, fear of losing her affections, as a dislike of seeing her admired, and knowing that she is preferred to him, especially now that he absolutely looks an old fellow. Poor Alithea Rivers—hers is a hard fate!’

“I had a glass of wine in my hand; my convulsive grasp shivered the brittle thing, but I gave no other outward sign; before, I was miserable, I had lost all that made life dear; but to know that she was lost to herself, bound for life to a human brute, curdled my heart’s blood, and spread an unnatural chilliness through my frame.