Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861

Captain Cyril Wilde, the hero, or rather the victim, of the events we are about to narrate, was one of those perfectly happy men whom every one has learned to regard as favorites of Fortune, and on whom no one ever expects disaster to fall, simply because it never has done so. Well descended, at a period when good birth was a positive honor in itself, and connected, either by affinity or friendship, with the best society of Kentucky, he held, by hereditary right, a high position among that old aristocracy which then and for a long time afterward stoutly maintained its own against the encroaching spirit of democratic equality, and whose members still kept in mind many of the traditions, honored in their own persons the dignity, and strove to preserve in their households somewhat of the manners, of the Cavaliers of the Old Dominion. Nor was wealth wanting to complete his happiness,—at least, such wealth as was needed by one of his simple tastes and unostentatious habits. He was rich beyond his disposition to spend, but not beyond his capacity to enjoy,—a capacity multiplied by as many times as he had friends to stimulate it;—summer friends, alas! too many of them proved to be. His character was without reproach; his disposition easy and genial; his mind of that happy middle order which always commands respect, while it feels none of the restless ambition and impotent longing for public recognition that usually attend the possession of superior abilities.

Such was the position of Captain Wilde, and such the character he bore during the first thirty-eight years of his life. Not many have known a more lengthened prosperity,—and few, very few, a more sudden and terrible reverse. Fortune, like a fond mistress, had lavished her gifts on him without stint,—but, like a jealous one, seemed resolved that he should owe everything to her gratuitous bounty, and the moment he sought to win an object of desire by his own exertions turned her face away forever, persecuting her former favorite thenceforth with vindictive malice. Continuing to yield, for a time, with apparent complacency, every boon he sought, she treacherously concealed therein the germs of all his woes.

In the year 17—Captain Wilde was persuaded to better his already happy condition by marriage. The lady he chose, or suffered to be chosen for him, was a Miss M–, a scion of one of those extensive families, not now so common as formerly, which by repeated intermarriage and always settling together develop a spirit of clanship, so exclusive as to make them almost incapable of any feeling of interest outside of their own name and connection, and render them liable to regard any person of different blood, who may happen to intermarry among them, as an intruder. In some parts of the Union these clans may still be found flourishing in considerable purity and vigor,—the same name sometimes prevailing over a district of many miles,—a fact which an observant traveller would surmise from a certain prevailing cast of form and feature.

It was with a family of this kind that Captain Wilde was, in an evil hour, induced to ally himself,—a step which soon proved to be the first in a long career of misfortune. The lady possessed that worst of all tempers, a quick and irritable, but at the same time hard and unforgiving one. And she soon showed, that, in her estimation, the feelings and interests of her husband were as nothing in comparison with those of her family, and that, in any variance, she would leave the former and cleave to the latter. Such variances were, unfortunately, almost inevitable; for the family of Mrs. Wilde differed both in politics and religion from her husband,—a fact, it may here be remarked, which had no small influence on his subsequent fate,—and the narrow, bigoted exclusiveness of the wife was utterly incompatible with the free and open-hearted fellowship with which the husband received his acquaintances, of whatever sect or party. In a very few months, therefore, it began to be whispered abroad that the hitherto happy and joyous bachelor's-hall had become a scene of constant bickerings and heartburnings.

But mere incongruity of tempers and habits was not, as was supposed by their neighbors, the only source of domestic discord. This might in time have entirely disappeared; had conjugal confidence only been allowed its natural growth, all might have been passably well in the end, in spite of such serious drawbacks; for, from the necessity of his nature, the husband would in time have become completely subservient to the sterner spirit of his wife, which, in turn, might have been mollified in some degree amid the peaceful duties of home;—a state of things that has existed in many families, which have, nevertheless, enjoyed a fair share of domestic happiness in spite of this inversion of the natural relations of their heads. But Mrs. Wilde had brought into her husband's house that deadliest foe of domestic peace, an elderly, ill-tempered, suspicious female relative, serving in the capacity of confidante . This curse was embodied in the person of a much older sister, who happened to be neither maid, wife, nor widow, and, having once effected an entrance under the pretence of assisting to arrange the disordered household-affairs, easily contrived to render her position a permanent one. So soon as this was achieved, she appears to have begun her hateful work of sowing discord between the new-married pair. Having long since blighted her own hopes of happiness, she seemed to find no consolation so sweet as wrecking that of others;—not that she had no love for her sister; on the contrary, her love, such as it was, was really strong and lasting; and in her fierce grief for that sister's death she met a punishment almost equal to her deserts. Nor was it long before she provided herself with a most effectual means of accomplishing her malicious object, of inflaming the troubles of the household into which she had intruded herself. This was the discovery, real or pretended, of a former illicit connection between her brother-in-law and a pretty and intelligent mulatto girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, who was still retained in the family in the capacity of housemaid. Having once struck this jarring chord, she continued to play upon it with diabolical skill. To those who watched the course of her unholy labors, the energy and ingenuity with which this wretched woman wrought at her task, and the completeness of her success, would have seemed a subject of admiration, if the result had not been so deplorable as to merge all other emotions in indignant detestation.

So thoroughly had her design been accomplished in the course of a single year, that the birth of as sweet a child as ever smiled upon fond parents, instead of serving as a point of union between Captain Wilde and his wife, only increased their estrangement by furnishing another subject of contention. Alas! the peace of Eden was not more utterly destroyed by the treacherous wiles of the serpent than that of this ill-starred household by the whispers of this serpent in woman's shape. Under her continual exasperations, Mrs. Wilde's temper, naturally harsh, became at last so outrageous and unbridled as to render her unfortunate husband's life one long course of humiliation and misery. Far from taking any pains to hide their discords from the world, she seemed to court observation by seizing every opportunity of inflicting mortification upon him in public, reckless of the reflections such improprieties might bring upon herself.

But why, it may be asked, did not both parties seek a separation, when affairs had reached such a state as this? First, because Captain Wilde, though advised thereto, naturally shrank from the scandal such a step always occasions; and, on the other side, because his wife was gifted with one of those intolerable tempers that make some women cling to a partner they hate with a jealous tenacity which love could scarcely inspire, simply for the reason that a separation would put an end to their power, so dearly prized, of inflicting pain;—for hatred has its jealousy, as well as love.