CHAPTER XXV.THE SEPARATION.
Had it ever occurred to Manton to reason at all upon the subject of his passion for this girl Elna, or had it been possible for him, under the circumstances which had lately surrounded his life, to reason concerning her, in any sense, he must and would have felt how ominous such a passion in reality was. To be sure, he did not feel that the relations into which it had been attempted to drag him by the mother, had ever been voluntary or accepted on his part; he had loathed and rebelled against them from the first.
But this did not, in reality, make the fact of his having continued near her—to occupy the same house—any the less offensive to the moral sense; for, taking the best aspects of the case, the durance had not been a physical one, and he might, if he had so willed, have walked himself bodily off, and thus escaped this horrible entanglement; but he had not done so. Although we have endeavored, as some extenuation, to trace the reasons why he had not thus acted, yet we have found no excuse sufficient, in all this, for the new sin he has committed, in daring to love, and contemplating honorable marriage, even, with the daughter of such a mother. But we have naught to extenuate, naught to set down in malice, in this too fatally true narrative; we have related it because it is true, and because we felt it to be our duty to do so, that others might be warned of these things, which may, perhaps, enlighten the reader somewhat, as to the character of the new thraldom to which Manton has been subjected.
It must always be borne in mind, in speaking of Manton and measuring his actions, that although the nervous sanguine temperamentpredominated to an extraordinary degree in this man’s organisation, the tendencies of his mind were, nevertheless, unusually conservative. This rendered him, necessarily, a man ofhabits; and therefore, more than usually liable to suffer from gradual and constant encroachment: for, if his quick sense has not instantly detected the danger on its first presentation—if his ear has not recognised the serpent’s hiss at once among the flowers, his fearless hand would soon be caressing the shining reptile, and bear it, it might be, even to his own bosom. It was this tenacity of habits which had rendered him so easy to be imposed upon. Nothing was so difficult for him to throw off as a habit; for, from the intensity of his nature, it always cost him the suffering of a strong excitement before its chains could be broken.
Manton found, very soon after his return, that what he most dreaded now, was to be at once precipitated, which was a separation between himself and Elna. Not that he did not fully concede to the general propriety and prudence of such a step; for he remembered that he had at once proposed the previous separation, when he came to understand the nature of his feelings towards her; but that had been when she was to be placed beyond the reach of her mother, and they could be both out of town at the same time; but now that his business made it imperative for him to remain in New York, if he dreaded before lest she be left with the mother one day even, were not the same causes operating still, and with redoubled force, when, in addition to her baleful contact, he had to contemplate that of the creature she had married?
The moral and spiritual grime of such a contact was enough to blast an angel’s bloom—to sully the purest wing that ever winnowed dream. He must be there to shield his fair treasure always, till the time had come when he could snatch her for ever beyond their reach. But the war had now fairly opened.
On the very day of his return, Manton had been not a little astonished to find the heretofore abject and cringing mother turnupon him, suddenly, with a lofty insolence, that seemed at first incredible; but his surprise and anger rapidly gave way to wonder and stunned amaze, at finding her exhibiting the most unparalleled phenomena of brazen, grave, deliberate falsehood that ever still imagination, in bottomless conceit, had conjured as the thought of demons in dark hell. This was yet, strange as it may seem, a most terrible realisation to have come upon his life; though he had, up to this time, known that she was unscrupulous, as far as the attainment of influential connexions, for the dissemination of her theoretical views, was concerned—that she was, in this respect, a dangerous and an evil woman—that her influence would make her presence deadly to purity, in her own or the other sex; yet, he had not learned to regard her as utterly God-forsaken. The veil was now lifted. The scales that had remained fell forever from his eyes. She now stood revealed, not as he had heretofore striven to palliate his convictions concerning her—the ferocious fanatic of one idea—the cunning and detestable Jesuit of a “A cause”—but as the incarnation of unnatural passions and a demonised selfishness. He trembled to his heart’s core at the thought of that fair young girl, whom he had learned to love, being left to the tender mercies of a monster such as this. He saw at once the whole nefarious scheme that had been concocted between herself and her worthy coadjutor.
This was but the initial step. This precipitation of a quarrel with himself, which would bring about at least a partial separation with Elna, and then their subsequent game would slowly and surely accomplish the rest. Was it likely that a wretch like this pink of delicacy, Narcissus, who had before, for years, been steeped to the lips in that monstrous traffic, the sale of bodies as well as souls, would quietly permit to slip through his fingers a lovely and fascinating girl as Elna had now grown to be, over who’s value, in dollars and cents, he had gloated from the first? or was it likely that his worthy consort, who had clearly learned to appreciate the convenience of suchspeculations, would not fully coincide with him in his view of the policy of defeating Manton, who, in the event of success, would be sure to separate her from them as far as the poles are sundered?
We shall now see how far the young lady herself was likely to, or had already, become a party to such utilitarian views.
Manton had left the house, and taken board elsewhere. The same evening, he visited Elna, who received him alone, in the warm, well-lighted, and neatly-arranged parlor. Manton had come in the most hopeless mood, for all the results of this separation had been most fully and painfully impressed upon him since the first indication of the rupture that had led to his quitting the house.
The young girl sprang eagerly to meet him, and with a bounding caress clasped his neck, exclaiming—
“Dearest one, you must not look so sad! We are to have the parlor thus every evening, when you shall come to see me; when we shall be very stately and proper folk. I shall play the dignified matron in anticipation, and you shall be my very wise and solemn lord and master. Mother is not to permit any interruption, and we shall have such nice and easy times. Come, sit down here by my side, and let us begin to play stately. And clear up that gloomy brow of yours, for I am determined that we shall be happy!”
Manton could only smile faintly, as he seated himself.
“Ah, heedless child, you do not see in all this gay vision, the black and deadly realities that couch within its shadows! I understand your mother’s game fully. This will not last long; and you are about to be sorely tried, my little love!”
His head fell back heavily, and his eyelids drooped with an expression of unutterable despondency. Elna, who had been watching him eagerly, now flew to his side, and taking his head gently on her shoulder, commenced caressing his face in a peculiar manner. She did not absolutely touch it, but her lips crept over certain portions with a slow snake-like motion,while the deep heavings of her chest, disclosed that she was breathing heavily upon them, and a certain greenish dilation of the pupil of her eyes revealed—what? Ah, horror! and she so young! What? what! is that the mother’s art? Let us see.
The lines of the man’s face are sunken in the expression of hopeless prostration. Soon a slight twitching of the nerves becomes evident, then a faint smile breaks across its pallor; the inspirations become deeper, and she breathes with almost convulsive energy. The glowing air lingers and burns along the sensitive temple, and now it pauses on the cheek, close beside the ear—ha! her arm is about his neck; is it a wonder that the blood mounts flushing to that man’s cheek and forehead, that his eyes fly open filled with wild and vivid fires, that a shuddering thrill is running through his frame, as he stretches forth his arms to her, with a low, ecstatic laugh, of passionate yearning, while she clings about him, and their lips meet, in a burning, lingering kiss, and then, with a light laugh, she springs beyond his reach, and dances in tantalising mockery about him, permitting him but to touch her for a moment, eluding his grasp, with yet more subtle sleight, until exhausted by morbid excitement the unfortunate man sinks upon the sofa?
This picture is only but too real. But why should Manton have endured the repetition of a scene like this? He was a man of habits, and for years, before a thought of passion had for once intruded upon him, this young girl, under the sacred shield of childhood, had been taught to approach him with fondling caresses. There seemed no danger then, but when the real time for danger came, he felt a vague and general monition of it, yet failed to locate it where it really rested. These caresses had become so dear and natural to him; they seemed so harmless.
He blamed only himself, cursed only the unetherialised grossness of his own nature. There was to him far too much of affection and accustomed tenderness in all this to arouse his suspicions for a moment. He hated only himself, and strove oneach of these now frequent occasions, to chasten, by the severest self-inflicted penance, his own soul.
In the meanwhile, this modern Tantalus grew thinner and more pale each day; was wasting rapidly to a shadow, beneath such scenes as we have witnessed.
The girl, Elna, grew fairer and more strong each day—seeming to have fed upon his slow consumption.
We will not dwell upon such pictures farther. It was enough that all the consequences dreaded by Manton followed, in slow, but sure progression, and that the last blow the subtle couple struck at him was fully characteristic and consummated the separation.
Elna had seen little, as yet, of public amusements, and her strong imitative faculty had led her to express a passion for the stage, which Manton greatly dreaded, and had particularly wished to guard her against, until her mind should become more fully developed, and until he, himself, should possess the legal right to attend her, upon all such occasions. He had, therefore, at all times resolutely opposed her going to any public place of amusement, unless he could accompany her. But now it happened that, being engaged in bringing out a new work, with the press only twenty-four hours behind him, urging him inexorably for a certain amount of daily matter, which left him no leisure whatever, except a few moments, which he wrested from the vortex, for the short evening re-union with her he so loved, he had, therefore, no time left to accompany her to such places.
Here the enterprising couple saw at once their advantage; the mother understood what Manton did not, the extreme shallowness of the character he had thus perseveringly idealised. She at once laid siege to her passion for dress and display, as well as novelty. They bought her fine and showy clothes, and urged her first to accompany them to concerts, then to theatres, and then to public balls.
When the young girl first came to Manton, all flushed with eagerness, to show him her finery, and ask him if she might notgo with her dear mother and her new “papa,” he felt his heart sink unutterably within him. He reasoned with her long and earnestly, endeavoring to make her understand how impossible it was for a woman, who was to become his wife, to appear at any public assembly in the city of New York, with a person so notorious as this, whom she had thus, suddenly, learned to style “papa.”
But he soon found it to be all in vain; for, when he told her if she would only be content to wait a few weeks until his book had been published, that he would himself dedicate any amount of time she might require to visiting such places with her, she still urged that she did not see why it was improper for her to accompany the man whom her mother had married, to any public place—that her new dresses were so beautiful—that she wished to attend this magnificent concert.
Manton sighed heavily and only answered in a mournful voice to her repeated entreaties—
“Alas! poor child, my dream is nearly over! I see they have bought you with the tinsel of a fine dress and new ribbons!”
The child wept and fondled and caressed; but all her arts failed this time. His heart felt like lead within him; and he no longer had nerves with life enough to be played upon. But she went that night, nevertheless, and the great gulf had sunk impassably between them.
Manton was now again a madman. In the pride of his hopeful love he had built magnificent schemes, which his singular energies had rapidly placed upon the firm basis of realisation; it only required the calm exercise of his own will to consummate all and make his name illustrious. But he had not labored for himself—and she, for whom all had been achieved, was no longer his—she was gone—utterly gone! She had sold her birthright, and was no longer his. The world became dark, its honors and its ambitions as nothing. To recount the wild and desperate extravagance by which he dashed to earth all that he had achieved, as the heartless and hideous shallowness of thephantom soul he had been worshipping, became, with each day, more apparent, would be only painful to the reader, who can well understand what to expect from the recklessness of such a madman. Suffice it that the separation was complete. He last saw her, but for an instant, on her eighteenth birthnight, to commemorate which, the mother, in pursuance of her schemes, had assembled a large party at her house. This was to have been their wedding-night; and Manton, though long since hopelessly separated from her, could not resist the passionate desire to see once more, upon this night, to which he had so long looked forward with holy raptures, that face and form.
He rang the bell, and, by a curious instinct, she recognised the characteristic pull, and met him alone at the door. She was lovely, radiant even, as she had sometimes come to him in his wild imaginings. Dressed in pure white, with a wreath of flowering myrtle resting lightly on her brow. There was a look of exultation on her face which she had not been able to throw off, as she came forth from the admiration of the crowded room. Manton took her hand—
“Ah, child, you are very lovely now—you look just as I dreamed you would look on this night, when you were to have been my bride. My eyes are filled with blood, now! I cannot see you any more! Farewell! farewell!” and he rushed from the door into the dark street, while she, who had spoken no word, made no attempt to detain him, turned coldly back, and entered, with a beaming face, the scene of her new triumph.