Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863

I loved her—love her still. Will she know what these words mean, when she finds them here? I cannot tell. They are enough for me. Not for you are they written, ball-room lounger, whispering of endless devotion between every qaudrille; not to you, proud beauty, taking and absorbing declarations as you would an ice; not for you, chattering monkey of the Champs Elyseés, raving of your grande passion for Eloise, so charmante , so spirituelle ; nor for you, Eloise aforesaid, with your devilish devices, stringing hearts in your girdle as Indians do scalps; not for you, dancing Spaniard, with your eternal castagnets, whispering just one word to your dark-eyed señorita, as you hand her another perfumed cigarette; not for you, lounging Italian, hissing intrigues under the shadow of an Athenian portico, or stealing after your veiled incognita, as her shadow flits over the place where the blood of Cæsar dyed the floor of the Capitol, or where the knife of Virginius flashed in the summer sun—not for one of you, for I have seen and despise you all. To you all love is a sealed book, which you shall never open—a tree of knowledge that will never turn into a curse for you—a beautiful serpent that, as you gaze upon its changing hues, will never sting you to the death.

I never told her. I would wait for hours to see her pass, if she went out alone—but I never told her. I would trace her footsteps where she had taken her daily walk; I would wait beneath her window at night, to see but her shadow upon the blind, until she put out her lamp, and left the stars and myself the only watchers there—but I never told her. I would lay flowers in her way, happy if she wore them on her bosom, or wreathed them in her hair, as she sometimes would—but she never knew from whom they came. I sickened at my heart for her; I pined, oh! how I pined for her, and worshipped her as a saint, the hope, the glory, the heaven of my life—but I never told her.

Did she love me? No. And, while I loved, I feared her. She never made me her companion, never took my arm; would always sit opposite me in the carriage instead of by my side; if in a game of forfeits, I forced the embrace I had won, she would struggle with tears of anger, though she had given her cheek to William with a blush but a few minutes before. If I had not been her abject slave, I could have torn her in pieces. Alas! alas! we were but boys, and she a girl still. How many, long years I have suffered since then!

One night I could not sleep, but sat up in my room thinking. Why should she not love me? I am esteemed well-looking and intelligent, thought I, looking into the glass, as if to confirm my satisfactory judgment of myself. I gazed long and earnestly. Yes, certainly handsome, said I with my lips, but—fool! fool! said my mocking eyes; for at that moment there came out of their depths—there came a devil! Yes, a devil that glared at me from the glass! a devil that was, and yet was not, myself! a devil that had my form, and looked out of my face, but with its own cruel, mocking eyes! And he and I confronted each other in that horrible glass. I know not how long, but they told me afterward that I was found next morning making ghastly faces at myself.

And then I was carried by spirits into a land of visions, where for a hundred years, or for a moment of time, I was flying through space, and clouds, and fire!—groping through dark caverns, millions of miles long, crying wildly for light and air; now a giant, entangled in myriads of chains that I could not break; now a reptile, writhing away from footsteps that made the earth reel and tremble beneath their tread; and at last waking, as if out of sleep, a poor, puny thing, with limbs like shadows, laughing or crying by turns for very feebleness.

As I arose from that bed I knew that I was changed. It was a secret thought, a secret that I have kept till now. I was not quite sure at first, but it thus fell out that I knew it well:

One day William and I had been sitting for some time in the library, he reading and I looking at the faces that glowed in the red-hot coal, and thinking of Lucy and him.

'Where is Lucy?' said I, at length,

'Gone out into the village,' he answered, without looking from the book; 'first to buy gloves, then to see Miss Trip, the dancing mistress, who is ill, then to Hurst Park to tea, whence I am to fetch her at nine o'clock.'

'You seem to know all her movements,' I said, with a sneer.

'Certainly, he rejoined, 'she told me all that I have told you.'

'You always are in her confidence,' said I, very angrily, as my blood rose.

'I believe so,' said he, calmly; though he looked at me with some surprise.

'And I never,' said I, between my teeth.

'That,' he said, 'is a matter with which I have no concern.'

I ground my teeth, but I kept quiet. I kept quiet, though every nerve in my body tingled with rage, and my boiling blood rushed into my eyes till I could hardly see. 'Do you know,' I shouted, 'do you know that I love her—would die a thousand deaths for her?'

He clasped his hands with a quick motion, as he said in a low voice, 'And so do I; and so would I.'

'Beast, fiend!' I screamed, 'does she—does she–' I could not get out the accursed words.

'We have been engaged,' he answered, divining what I would have asked, 'we have been engaged for some time, and–'

He did not finish the sentence, for I sprang at him, crushed him to the floor, squeezed his throat till his face grew black and the froth oozed out from his lips, beat his head upon the hearthstones till he lay still and bleeding, and then sought my knife. It was up stairs. I flew to get it. It lay upon my dressing table before the glass, and I snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced me through, and saw the cold, bitter smile that was on the face before me, I knew that the fiend would leave me never more, and that I was mad!

What was a quarrel with my brother now? I stole back, and, lifting him up, carried him to his room, where I washed the blood from his face. When he came to himself I fell at his feet and besought his pardon, and that he would keep what had happened a secret. He forgave me. And I believe the only lie he ever told in all his life was when he told Lucy that he had cut his head by falling on a jagged stone.

Oh, how often after that my fingers itched to be at his throat again; but I always quailed before his steady eye.

I pass over the next few years, except to say that I went to college, where I was shunned by all, though never alone: was a dunce, and plucked twice. Perhaps it was I who shunned others, for had I not society in the constant presence of my Familiar? I was of course a dunce, for my brain was never steady enough to carry me over the Pons Asinorum , or to make a Latin verse with even decent correctness. I went away in disgust. I think if I had stayed longer I should have torn somebody, or else myself.

I went next into the army. It was a new era in my life, and, strange to say, my devil left me for a while, so that I was able to master the details of my profession, and to be esteemed a good and careful officer. There was hope, too, of active service; for the Russian Eagle was slowly unfolding his vast wings for a new descent into the plains of Europe. William, married to Her now, who was a lieutenant in the Foot Guards, wrote to me to say that he hoped we should be really brothers, now that we were to meet before an enemy; and the next day out came the declaration of war. When I had read it, I drew my sword, and, as I ran my eye along its cold, sharp blade from hilt to point, I thought how strange was its power to let out a man's life, and turn him, in a moment, into a heap of inanimate carrion.