The Last Man
have lost you, myself, my life!”
“Do you not believe me?” said Raymond haughtily.
“To believe you,” she exclaimed, “I would give up all, and expire with
joy, so that in death I could feel that you were true—but that cannot
be!”
“Perdita,” continued Raymond, “you do not see the precipice on which
you stand. You may believe that I did not enter on my present line of
conduct without reluctance and pain. I knew that it was possible that
your suspicions might be excited; but I trusted that my simple word
would cause them to disappear. I built my hope on your confidence. Do
you think that I will be questioned, and my replies disdainfully set
aside? Do you think that I will be suspected, perhaps watched,
cross-questioned, and disbelieved? I am not yet fallen so low; my
honour is not yet so tarnished. You have loved me; I adored you. But
all human sentiments come to an end. Let our affection expire—but let
it not be exchanged for distrust and recrimination. Heretofore we have
been friends—lovers—let us not become enemies, mutual spies. I cannot
live the object of suspicion—you cannot believe me—let us part!”
“Exactly so,” cried Perdita, “I knew that it would come to this! Are we
not already parted? Does not a stream, boundless as ocean, deep as
vacuum, yawn between us?”
Raymond rose, his voice was broken, his features convulsed, his manner
calm as the earthquake-cradling atmosphere, he replied: “I am rejoiced
that you take my decision so philosophically. Doubtless you will play
the part of the injured wife to admiration. Sometimes you may be stung
with the feeling that you have wronged me, but the condolence of your
relatives, the pity of the world, the complacency which the
consciousness of your own immaculate innocence will bestow, will be
excellent balm;—me you will never see more!”
Raymond moved towards the door. He forgot that each word he spoke was
false. He personated his assumption of innocence even to
self-deception. Have not actors wept, as they pourtrayed imagined
passion? A more intense feeling of the reality of fiction possessed
Raymond. He spoke with pride; he felt injured. Perdita looked up; she
saw his angry glance; his hand was on the lock of the door. She started
up, she threw herself on his neck, she gasped and sobbed; he took her
hand, and leading her to the sofa, sat down near her. Her head fell on
his shoulder, she trembled, alternate changes of fire and ice ran
through her limbs: observing her emotion he spoke with softened
accents:
“The blow is given. I will not part from you in anger;—I owe you too
much. I owe you six years of unalloyed happiness. But they are passed.
I will not live the mark of suspicion, the object of jealousy. I love
you too well. In an eternal separation only can either of us hope for
dignity and propriety of action. We shall not then be degraded from our
true characters. Faith and devotion have hitherto been the essence of
our intercourse;—these lost, let us not cling to the seedless husk of
life, the unkernelled shell. You have your child, your brother, Idris,
Adrian”—
“And you,” cried Perdita, “the writer of that letter.”
Uncontrollable indignation flashed from the eyes of Raymond. He knew
that this accusation at least was false. “Entertain this belief,” he
cried, “hug it to your heart—make it a pillow to your head, an opiate
for your eyes —I am content. But, by the God that made me, hell is not
more false than the word you have spoken!”
Perdita was struck by the impassioned seriousness of his asseverations.
She replied with earnestness, “I do not refuse to believe you, Raymond;
on the contrary I promise to put implicit faith in your simple word.
Only assure me that your love and faith towards me have never been
violated; and suspicion, and doubt, and jealousy will at once be
dispersed. We shall continue as we have ever done, one heart, one hope,
one life.”
“I have already assured you of my fidelity,” said Raymond with
disdainful coldness, “triple assertions will avail nothing where one is
despised. I will say no more; for I can add nothing to what I have
already said, to what you before contemptuously set aside. This
contention is unworthy of both of us; and I confess that I am weary of
replying to charges at once unfounded and unkind.”
Perdita tried to read his countenance, which he angrily averted. There
was so much of truth and nature in his resentment, that her doubts were
dispelled. Her countenance, which for years had not expressed a feeling
unallied to affection, became again radiant and satisfied. She found it
however no easy task to soften and reconcile Raymond. At first he
refused to stay to hear her. But she would not be put off; secure of
his unaltered love, she was willing to undertake any labour, use any
entreaty, to dispel his anger. She obtained an hearing, he sat in
haughty silence, but he listened. She first assured him of her
boundless confidence; of this he must be conscious, since but for that
she would not seek to detain him. She enumerated their years of
happiness; she brought before him past scenes of intimacy and
happiness; she pictured their future life, she mentioned their
child—tears unbidden now filled her eyes. She tried to disperse them,
but they refused to be checked—her utterance was choaked. She had not
wept before. Raymond could not resist these signs of distress: he felt
perhaps somewhat ashamed of the part he acted of the injured man, he
who was in truth the injurer. And then he devoutly loved Perdita; the
bend of her head, her glossy ringlets, the turn of her form were to him
subjects of deep tenderness and admiration; as she spoke, her melodious
tones entered his soul; he soon softened towards her, comforting and
caressing her, and endeavouring to cheat himself into the belief that
he had never wronged her.
Raymond staggered forth from this scene, as a man might do, who had
been just put to the torture, and looked forward to when it would be
again inflicted. He had sinned against his own honour, by affirming,
swearing to, a direct falsehood; true this he had palmed on a woman,
and it might therefore be deemed less base—by others—not by him;—for
whom had he deceived?—his own trusting, devoted, affectionate Perdita,
whose generous belief galled him doubly, when he remembered the parade
of innocence with which it had been exacted. The mind of Raymond was
not so rough cast, nor had been so rudely handled, in the circumstance
of life, as to make him proof to these considerations—on the contrary,
he was all nerve; his spirit was as a pure fire, which fades and
shrinks from every contagion of foul atmosphere: but now the contagion
had become incorporated with its essence, and the change was the more
painful. Truth and falsehood, love and hate lost their eternal
boundaries, heaven rushed in to mingle with hell; while his sensitive
mind, turned to a field for such battle, was stung to madness. He
heartily despised himself, he was angry with Perdita, and the idea of
Evadne was attended by all that was hideous and cruel. His passions,
always his masters, acquired fresh strength, from the long sleep in
which love had cradled them, the clinging weight of destiny bent him
down; he was goaded, tortured, fiercely impatient of that worst of
miseries, the sense of remorse. This troubled state yielded by degrees,
to sullen animosity, and depression of spirits. His dependants, even
his equals, if in his present post he had any, were startled to find
anger, derision, and bitterness in one, before distinguished for
suavity and benevolence of manner. He transacted public business with
distaste, and hastened from it to the solitude which was at once his
bane and relief. He mounted a fiery horse, that which had borne him
forward to victory in Greece; he fatigued himself with deadening
exercise, losing the pangs of a troubled mind in animal sensation.
He slowly recovered himself; yet, at last, as one might from the
effects of poison, he lifted his head from above the vapours of fever
and passion into the still atmosphere of calm reflection. He meditated
on what was best to be done. He was first struck by the space of time
that had elapsed, since madness, rather than any reasonable impulse,
had regulated his actions. A month had gone by, and during that time he
had not seen Evadne. Her power, which was linked to few of the enduring
emotions of his heart, had greatly decayed. He was no longer her
slave—no longer her lover: he would never see her more, and by the
completeness of his return, deserve the confidence of Perdita.
Yet, as he thus determined, fancy conjured up the miserable abode of
the Greek girl. An abode, which from noble and lofty principle, she had
refused to exchange for one of greater luxury. He thought of the
splendour of her situation and appearance when he first knew her; he
thought of her life at Constantinople, attended by every circumstance
of oriental magnificence; of her present penury, her daily task of
industry, her lorn state, her faded, famine-struck cheek. Compassion
swelled his breast; he would see her once again; he would devise some
plan for restoring her to society, and the enjoyment of her rank; their
separation would then follow, as a matter of course.
Again he thought, how during this long month, he had avoided Perdita,
flying from her as from the stings of his own conscience. But he was
awake now; all this should be remedied; and future devotion erase the
memory of this only blot on the serenity of their life. He became
cheerful, as he thought of this, and soberly and resolutely marked out
the line of conduct he would adopt. He remembered that he had promised
Perdita to be present this very evening (the 19th of October,
anniversary of his election as Protector) at a festival given in his
honour. Good augury should this festival be of the happiness of future
years. First, he would look in on Evadne; he would not stay; but he
owed her some account, some compensation for his long and unannounced
absence; and then to Perdita, to the forgotten world, to the duties of
society, the splendour of rank, the enjoyment of power.
After the scene sketched in the preceding pages, Perdita had
contemplated an entire change in the manners and conduct of Raymond.
She expected freedom of communication, and a return to those habits of
affectionate intercourse which had formed the delight of her life. But
Raymond did not join her in any of her avocations. He transacted the
business of the day apart from her; he went out, she knew not whither.
The pain inflicted by this disappointment was tormenting and keen. She
looked on it as a deceitful dream, and tried to throw off the
consciousness of it; but like the shirt of Nessus, it clung to her very
flesh, and ate with sharp agony into her vital principle. She possessed
that (though such an assertion may appear a paradox) which belongs to
few, a capacity of happiness. Her delicate organization and creative
imagination rendered her peculiarly susceptible of pleasurable emotion.
The overflowing warmth of her heart, by making love a plant of deep
root and stately growth, had attuned her whole soul to the reception of
happiness, when she found in Raymond all that could adorn love and
satisfy her imagination. But if the sentiment on which the fabric of
her existence was founded, became common place through participation,
the endless succession of attentions and graceful action snapt by
transfer, his universe of love wrested from her, happiness must depart,
and then be exchanged for its opposite. The same peculiarities of
character rendered her sorrows agonies; her fancy magnified them, her
sensibility made her for ever open to their renewed impression; love
envenomed the heart-piercing sting. There was neither submission,