Hubert's Wife Part 22

Hubert Lisle would have turned his back upon such sophistry, and scorned such a diabolical medium, how fair soever. He had not, however, been at Vine Cottage a week, every day in the society of one whose situation so much appealed to his sympathy and kindness, when he became conscious that he had been taken into a high mountain, and had not strength to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

From this height was offered him a treasure worth more than kingdoms and thrones and all the riches of the earth. Instead of shuddering and turning back, he fixed his eye upon the glittering prize.

"It is thine," whispered the tempter, "the hand that holds so fair a pearl is all unworthy. It chafes and frets within the cruel grasp which an ungleaming pebble might fill as well. It would glow in the sunlight of your fostering care. It would enrich your soul as a priceless gem; as an amaranthine flower it would breathe unto your heart an eternal perfume."

Hubert Lisle had made obeisance to feminine beauty in every land; but his heart had remained untouched. Like his father years before, he had arrived at the mature age of twenty-eight, unscathed by the blind G.o.d's arrow.

Hit at last, and so unwisely pierced! To love the wife of another!

Hubert would have scorned such an insinuation but a few days before. But he had not then seen Althea. He loved her, was she not his cousin? He loved her, who could resist, she was so beautiful and good? He loved her, she was so unhappy, _must_ be unhappy as the wife of Thornton Rush.

She had been won with false words and deceitful ways and wiles. Thornton deserved to lose what he had dishonestly gained, and what he apparently valued so little. Had not Thornton Rush wronged and, as it were, robbed the dead, and bitterly betrayed himself to gain possession of a jewel which should have been his own, which he would have worn so proudly? Had not this man been his enemy from childhood; with his mother, the curse of his father's house? Ever in his way, a perpetual thorn in the flesh, could he not now dislodge him root and branch, and spit him upon an arrow, that should cease never to quiver?

Hubert Lisle experienced qualms of conscience, debated as to right and wrong, gave many thoughts to the censoriousness of the world, but he had not the fear of G.o.d before his eyes.

"I can win her if I will," was his confident thought at the first.

"I will win her at all hazards," was his later iron purpose.

And Althea! Oh! is it thus that the child of Ellice doth come to Della's daughter?

And what hath this daughter as a shield from the tempter? Came he not unto sinless Eve in Paradise; unto her even who had seen the Eternal Majesty, and listened to His voice?

And Althea had not laid up her treasure in Heaven. She had not given her wounded heart to Him who was wounded for our transgressions. She had not poured her sorrows into the ear of the Infinite, nor laid her bleeding hands upon the cross of Christ.

So turned Althea from a now unloved, ungracious husband; from a bitter sorrow for her lost child, to human love and human consolation.

But Althea was not won so easily from her stronghold of duty. Nor would she, on recovering from the shock of Hubert's first proposal, consent to flee at once, putting the sea between them and Thornton Rush. Hubert pleaded strongly and well, but could gain only this point. He would return to Kennons, and dispose of his property and hers. She would remain with her husband for the present. The first time he should raise his hand against her, as he had already done, she would leave his house and procure a divorce. With this was Hubert fain to be content; and the day before the antic.i.p.ated return of Thornton Rush, after his absence of three weeks, he left Vine Cottage and the sad-faced lady who dwelt therein, confident that ere many months he would have Althea as his wife, and sweet revenge upon his old-time enemy.

CHAPTER XXIV.

JEALOUSY.

Naturally, Althea was a changed person in the eyes of her husband. A man less jealously disposed might have attributed this to the sudden death of an only beloved child. But to Thornton, the knowledge that Hubert Lisle, a man his superior in mental, moral and personal accomplishments, had a.s.sociated with Althea during almost the whole period of his absence, this knowledge, we say, was to Thornton as gall and wormwood.

"And how did you like your cousin?" he questioned with a.s.sumed carelessness.

Had Althea answered equally carelessly, "Oh! very well," she would have aroused suspicion, for she well understood her husband. So she said with enthusiasm: "I liked him very much indeed. I wish you could have met him. He is very agreeable and most intelligent."

"You speak as if you thought I was a stranger to him. I have seen Hubert Lisle before to-day!"

"But you have not seen him of late. A six years residence abroad must have changed him greatly."

"Umph! Your cousin is not the first person who has crossed the Atlantic, as you would have me infer. At all events, he is a sneak and a coward to stay in my house more than two weeks, and decamp just before I was expected." Althea was silent.

"A sneak and a coward, I repeat; what have you to say to that?" demanded Thornton, his eyes blazing like coals of fire.

"Nothing," said the wife, indifferently.

"Nothing! By Mars! do you answer _nothing_, when I ask you a civil question? It is well he did not let me find him here; it is not the first insult he would have got from me, and perhaps something worse. If there's a person on earth I hate worse than Sharp, it is that self-conceited Hubert Lisle. He is a puppy, an upstart, vain as a woman, and deep and false as perdition itself."

He waited as if expecting a reply. None came; he glanced sideways to his wife, and continued:

"Yes, you two would make a very pretty couple, very suitable. Your two heads are forever among the stars. I wonder there is a book of poetry left in the house. It is a marvel you both did not sail away in some carved sh.e.l.l of hollow pearl, almost translucent with the light divine _des tous deux_ within. For ottomans you could have piles of Scott, Moore, Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats; and for food and drink, you could have stringed instruments, and easel, palette, and brush. How contemptible are womanish tastes in a man!" Again he waited vainly for a reply. The pallid fingers of Althea were pulling in pieces a half-faded flower, upon which her l.u.s.trous eyes were unvaryingly fastened.

"Good heavens, Althea, how provoking you are!" cried Thornton, rising from his seat and confronting furiously his wife, "cannot you speak to a man; what have you to say, what are you thinking of?"

"Thinking of?" she said absently, scattering the petals from her fair palm to the floor, then raising her eyes full to his: "Thinking of the fair little blossom that withered in its bloom. I have done wrong to weep for him such bitter tears; for he was _your_ child, and had he lived he might have cursed some woman's life as you have cursed mine."

This was uttered apparently without anger, and in modulated tones. But no words of Althea had ever struck Thornton Rush like these. He was speechless; and when she arose and pa.s.sed him by to an adjoining room, he stirred not hand nor foot. If she had expected then would fall the arranged blow, she would have been disappointed. But she had not expected it, nor even thought about it. The faded flower had, indeed, brought up her own withered blossom, as she had said. Had her husband's discourse been of Johnny, instead of the senseless tirade against her cousin, had he exhibited kindness, and generous sympathy for herself, she might still have been won back to duty. But now, Thornton's words and sneers, however deserved she might have felt them to be, caused her to contrast the wretchedness of a continued life with him with what it _might be_. Thus far she had been agitated by indecision and scruples, they should henceforth trouble her no more. She was fully resolved, even more than when she had promised Hubert.

In her own room, Althea withdrew the blinds and looked out at the sky.

It was covered with clouds, save one s.p.a.ce of blue.

"Thus is _my_ sky covered with gloom," she murmured, "thus amidst the darkness gleams my one ray of precious light. O blessed ultramarine, from on high I take thee as a token. G.o.d is good; G.o.d does not will that I should suffer; He does not will that I should love a demon. I am still so young; a long life may be in store for me; a cruel, wretched life with Thornton Rush, who a.s.sumed the guise of an angel of light to win me to destruction. A peaceful, happy life with Hubert, for whom heaven itself must have intended me. The sin is Thornton's, not mine, nor Hubert's. On the contrary, to continue to live with Thornton would be a sin. I can no longer deceive myself or him, I love him not; I believe I could hate him!" and a gleam unusual shot from the large, dreamful eyes.

Althea forgot, while she thus soliloquised, that she could not thus have felt, or could not have spoken such words, had not Hubert Lisle won her love. While her heart had not been given to another, she could have endured her husband patiently, fulfilling her wifely duties, and possessing a conscience clear before G.o.d. She would leave her husband then, not because of the harshness and cruelty allegible, but because she had criminally strayed from her allegiance and given her love where she had no right to give.

So blinded, however, was Althea, she did not perceive this. While she was wronged, indeed, by Thornton, she was still farther wronged by Hubert. No unkind treatment of the one could excuse her for listening, without rebuke, to words of unlawful love from the other. They were an insult to her good sense and virtue; and so at first had Althea esteemed them to be. But by and by--ah, it is an old story, and the saddest, sorriest of all stories in this life of ours; reading it, or hearing it, one sighs that our guardian angel's wings are invisible, and that once from out their protecting shadow, we rush headlong unto darkness and death.

We will not a.s.sert that Thornton felt not the death of his only son; he was not so inhuman as to be unaffected. He would have given all his earthly possessions to hear again that winsome voice of his child resounding through the house. He had not realized

"How much of hope, how much of joy, May be buried up with an only boy!"

until the house was darkened by the death of Johnny. The grief which he experienced, however, affected him strangely. As we have seen, instead of softening his selfish nature, it rendered him more morose and censorious. It alienated, instead of binding him closer to his bereaved wife.

One reason was in this; that Althea had for him now no winning ways. She made no effort at conciliation, and sought not to give or to receive mutual sympathy. Indeed, from the period of the conversation above recorded between husband and wife, he was like a volcano, and she like an iceberg. As much as he was capable of loving, he loved Althea.

Desirable as had been her fortune in his eyes, he would never have practised such a series of stratagems and self-denials, had she not personally been of great value in his eyes. When won, and she was surely his, he discontinued his deception, and appeared his natural self. She became to him, as we have before said, like the pet dog to his young master, though secretly beloved, yet ill-treated, scolded and abused.

The thought of her ever being lost to him had not occurred to his mind, until he learned of the visit of Hubert Lisle. With him, Thornton well knew he would suffer in comparison. That was the reason Thornton's mother had taken such infinite and dishonorable pains in preventing his coming to his dying father. Althea would surely prefer her cousin.

But Thornton was at a loss what to make of Althea's present behavior. He had at first felt a deadly jealousy of Hubert. That emotion had almost over-shadowed his grief. But he could not learn that any communication was kept up between the parties. No letters came to and fro. The mention of Hubert's name caused no blush upon Althea's cheek. She spoke of him kindly and naturally, as of a brother that was dear to her. In the distant years, he had been convinced of Hubert's honorable nature. He might not have changed. At all events he was gone now, and might never return. It was more agreeable to attribute Althea's rigid coldness to a shock of grief, rather than to a shock of hatred to himself or of affection for another. Nevertheless, he gave her no peace nor quiet. He became angered if she did not converse, and equally out of temper with whatever she might say.

Does such a man deserve a wife? Let him have a woman, then, who will bring him to his senses--or what pa.s.ses for senses--in a manner veritably Xantippean; and not one of those tender-hearted, peace-loving creatures who would bless some good man's heart and home.

There are few men upon whom kindness and gentleness will not make more or less impression; but our unprepossessing hero is of that unfavored few.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE AWAKENING.

After a few weeks, Thornton has something outside his house to engage him. Election is approaching. Although neither Thornton nor his rival are in the field as candidates, each has his favorite nominee to support. The fire that Thornton has kept raging within Vine Cottage is now transferred to hall, stump and settler's cabin. Sharp is not in the background. His antagonist hears of him, or crosses his trail here, there and elsewhere. He is put to his wits' end in checkmating and circ.u.mventing him. He, at length, learns something quite astonishing. He has returned from an extended trip to the country, supposing Sharp to be not far in front or rear. To his chagrin he has remained all the while in town, and been an attendant at the Catholic Mission, being held for ten days in Windsor.

"That is a game at which two can play, I am thinking," said Thornton, mentally, grinding his teeth at the thought of the votes Sharp's presence might secure among such a crowd.