All this was calculated to satisfy me. But this was not all. If
gentleness, sweetness, cheerfulness, and a sleepless consideration
of one's wants and feelings, could convince any mortal of the love
of another--I must have been satisfied. We resumed most of the
habits which began with our marriage, but which had been so long
discontinued. We rose with the sun, and went abroad after his
example. Like him we rose to the hill-tops, and then descended into
the valleys. We grew familiar with the deepest shades of wood and
forest while the dewdrops were yet beading the bosoms of the wild
flowers; and we followed the meandering course of the Alabama,
long before the smoking steamer vexed it with her flashing paddles.
My professional toils from breakfast to dinner-time--for this
interval I studiously gave to my office, even if I had little to do
there--occasioned the only interregnum which I knew in the positive
pleasures which I enjoyed. In the afternoon our enjoyments were
renewed. Our cottage was so sweetly secluded, that we did not need
to go far in order to find the Elysian grove which we desired.
At the top of our hill we were surrounded by a natural temple of
proud pines--guarding the spot from any but that sort of devine
and religious light which streams through the painted windows of
the ancient cathedral. The gay glances of the sun came gliding
through the foliage in drops, and lay upon the grass in little pale,
fanciful gleams, most like eyes of fairies peeping upward from its
velvety tufts. Here we read together from the poets--sometimes
Julia sung, even while sketching. Not unfrequently, Mrs. Porterfield
came with us, and, at such times, our business was to detect distant
glimpses of barge, or steamboat, as they successively darted into
sight, along such of the glittering patches of the Alabama as were
revealed to us in its downward progress through the woods.
Our evenings were such as hallow and make the luxury of cottage
life--evenings yielded up to cheerfulness, to content and harmony.
Between music, and poetry, and painting, my heart was subdued to
the sweetest refinements of love. Without the immorality, we had
the very atmosphere of a Sybarite indulgence. I was enfeebled by the
excess of sweets; and the happiness which I felt expressed itself
in signs. These denoted my presentiments. My apprehensions were
my sole cause of doubt and sorrow. How could such enjoyments last?
Was it possible, with any, that they should last? Was it possible
that they should last with me? I should have been mad to think it.
But, in the sweet delirium which their possession inspired, I
almost forgot the past. The soul of man is the most elastic thing
in nature. Those harassing tortures of the heart which I had been
suffering for months--those weary days of exhausting doubt--those
long nights of torturing suspicion--the shame and the fear, the
sting of jealousy, and the suffering--I had almost forgotten in the
absorbing pleasures of my new existence. If I remembered them it
was only to smile; if I thought of William Edgerton it was only
to pity;--and, as for Julia, deep was the crimson shadow upon my
cheek, whenever the reproachful memory reminded me of the tortures
which I had inflicted upon her gentle heart while laboring under
the tortures of my own--when I thought of the unmanly espionage which
I had maintained over conduct which I now felt to be irreproachable.