The Woman-Hater | Page 6

noble eyes
filled to the brim, and two tears stood ready to run over.
"Why, the man must be an idiot!" shouted Ashmead.
"Hush! not so loud. That waiter is listening: let me come to your table."
She came and sat down at his table, and he sat opposite her. They
looked at each other. He waited for her to speak. With all her fortitude,
her voice faltered, under the eye of sympathy. "You are my old friend,"
she said. "I'll try and tell you all." But she could not all in a moment,
and the two tears trickled over and ran down her cheeks; Ashmead saw
them, and burst out, "The villain!--the villain!"
"No, no," said she, "do not call him that. I could not bear it. Believe me,
he is no villain." Then she dried her eyes, and said, resolutely, "If I am
to tell you, you must not apply harsh words to him. They would close
my mouth at once, and close my heart."

"I won't say a word," said Ashmead, submissively; "so tell me all."
Ina reflected a moment, and then told her tale. Dealing now with longer
sentences, she betrayed her foreign half.
"Being alone so long," said she, "has made me reflect more than in all
my life before, and I now understand many things that, at the time, I
could not. He to whom I have given my love, and resigned the art in
which I was advancing--with your assistance--is, by nature, impetuous
and inconstant. He was born so, and I the opposite. His love for me was
too violent to last forever in any man, and it soon cooled in him,
because he is inconstant by nature. He was jealous of the public: he
must have all my heart, and all my time, and so he wore his own
passion out. Then his great restlessness, having now no chain, became
too strong for our happiness. He pined for change, as some wanderers
pine for a fixed home. Is it not strange? I, a child of the theater, am at
heart domestic. He, a gentleman and a scholar, born, bred, and fitted to
adorn the best society, is by nature a Bohemian.
"One word: is there another woman?"
"No, not that I know of; Heaven forbid!" said Ina. "But there is
something very dreadful: there is gambling. He has a passion for it, and
I fear I wearied him by my remonstrances. He dragged me about from
one gambling-place to another, and I saw that if I resisted he would go
without me. He lost a fortune while we were together, and I do really
believe he is ruined, poor dear."
Ashmead suppressed all signs of ill-temper, and asked, grimly, "Did he
quarrel with you, then?"
"Oh, no; he never said an unkind word to me; and I was not always so
forbearing, for I passed months of torment. I saw that affection, which
was my all, gliding gradually away from me; and the tortured will cry
out. I am not an ungoverned woman, but sometimes the agony was
intolerable, and I complained. Well, that agony, I long for it back; for
now I am desolate."

"Poor soul! How could a man have the heart to leave you? how could
he have the face?"
"Oh, he did not do it shamelessly. He left me for a week, to visit friends
in England. But he wrote to me from London. He had left me at Berlin.
He said that he did not like to tell me before parting, but I must not
expect to see him for six weeks; and he desired me to go to my mother
in Denmark. He would send his next letter to me there. Ah! he knew I
should need my mother when his second letter came. He had planned it
all, that the blow might not kill me. He wrote to tell me he was a ruined
man, and he was too proud to let me support him: he begged my pardon
for his love, for his desertion, for ever having crossed my brilliant path
like a dark cloud. He praised me, he thanked me, he blessed me; but he
left me. It was a beautiful letter, but it was the death-warrant of my
heart. I was abandoned."
Ashmead started up and walked very briskly, with a great appearance
of business requiring vast dispatch, to the other end of the _salle;_ and
there, being out of Ina's hearing, he spoke his mind to a candlestick
with three branches. "D--n him! Heartless, sentimental scoundrel! D--n
him! D--n him!"
Having relieved his mind with this pious ejaculation, he returned to Ina
at a reasonable pace and much relieved, and was now enabled to say,
cheerfully, "Let us take a business view of