Chapter 9 - Page 2

GREAT SORROW. YOU MUST HAVE KNOWN FOR WEEKS, EVEN
MONTHS, THAT MARRIAGE BETWEEN US WAS IMPOSSIBLE;' am I perfectly in my
senses? 'IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE;' why, 'tis heart treason
of the worst kind! Can I bear it? Can I bear it? Can I bear it? Oh
Cornelia! Cornelia! 'WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY.' Oh it is piteous, sad. So
young, so fair, so false! and she 'GRIEVES AT MY GOING AWAY,' and bids
me on 'NO ACCOUNT CALL ON HER FATHER'--and takes pains to tell me the
'NO IS ABSOLUTE'--and I am not to 'BLAME HER.' Oh this is the vilest
treachery! She might as well have played the coquette in speech as
writing. It is Rem Van Ariens who is at the bottom of it. May the devil
take the fellow! I shall need some heavenly power to keep my hands off
him. This is a grief beyond all griefs--I believed she loved me so
entirely. Fool! a thousand times fool! Have I not found all women of a
piece? Did not Molly Trefuses throw me over for a duke? and Sarah Talbot
tell me my love was only calf-love and had to be weaned? and Eliza Capel
regret that I was too young to guide a wife, and so marry a cabinet
minister old enough for her grandfather? Women are all just so, not a
cherry stone to choose between them--I will never wonder again at
anything a woman does--Was ever a lover so betrayed? Oh Cornelia! your
ink should have frozen in your pen, ere you wrote such words to me."

Thus his passionate grief and anger tortured him until midnight. Then he
had a high fever and a distracting headache, and, the physical torment
being the most insistent and distressing, he gave way before it. With
such agonizing tears as spring from despairing wounded love he threw
himself upon his bed, and his craving, suffering heart at length found
rest in sleep from the terrible egotism of its sorrow.

Never for one instant did he imagine this sorrow to be a mistaken and
quite unnecessary one. Indeed it was almost impossible for him to
conceive of a series of events, which though apparently accidental, had
a fatality more pronounced than anything that could have been arranged.
Not taking Rem Van Ariens seriously into his consideration, and not
fearing his rival in any way, it was beyond all his suspicions that Rem
should write to Cornelia in the same hour, and for the same purpose as
himself. He had no knowledge of Rem's intention to go to Boston, and
could not therefore imagine Cornelia "grieving" at any journey but his
own impending one to England. And that she should be forced by
circumstances to answer both Rem and himself in the same hour, and in
the very stress and hurry of her great love and anxiety should misdirect
the letters, were likelihoods outside his consciousness.

It was far otherwise with Rem. The moment he opened the