When one did nothing, the other
generally did nothing also, and when one schemed, the other also schemed,
and similarly. Thus what had been the greatest pleasure of our peculiar
relation, our mental and moral resemblance, namely, became a large factor
in our mutual hate. For with self-loathing shame, and a misery that makes
me curse the day I was born, I confess that for a time I hated the
brother of my heart; and I have but too good ground for believing that he
also hated me!"
"I did! I did!" cried uncle Edmund, when my own uncle, in his verbal
narrative, mentioned his belief that his brother hated him; whereupon
uncle Edward turned to me, saying--
"Is it not terrible, my little one, that out of a passion called by the
same name with that which binds you and John Day, the hellish smoke of
such a hate should arise! God must understand it! that is a comfort: in
vain I seek to sound it. Even then I knew that I dwelt in an evil house.
Amid the highest of such hopes as the woman roused in me, I scented the
vapours of the pit. I was haunted by the dim shape of the coming hour
when I should hate the woman that enthralled me, more than ever I had
loved her. The greater sinner I am, that I yet yielded her dominion over
me. I was the willing slave of a woman who sought nothing but the
consciousness of power; who, to the indulgence of that vilest of
passions, would sacrifice the lives, the loves, the very souls of men!
She lived to separate, where Jesus died to make one! How weak and
unworthy was I to be caught in her snares! how wicked and vile not to
tear myself loose! The woman whose touch would defile the Pharisee, is
pure beside such a woman!"
I return to his manuscript.
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