CHAPTER XXVII 388
suffering mother of love : its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion . I accept it , Jane ; let the daughter have free advent -- my arms wait to receive her ."
" Now , sir , proceed ; what did you do when you found she was mad ?"
" Jane , I approached the verge of despair ; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf . In the eyes of the world , I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour ; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight -- and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes , and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects . Still , society associated my name and person with hers ; I yet saw her and heard her daily : something of her breath ( faugh !) mixed with the air I breathed ; and besides , I remembered I had once been her husband -- that recollection was then , and is now , inexpressibly odious to me ; moreover , I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife ; and , though five years my senior ( her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age ), she was likely to live as long as I , being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind . Thus , at the age of twenty-six , I was hopeless .
" One night I had been awakened by her yells -- ( since the medical men had pronounced her mad , she had , of course , been shut up ) -- it was a fiery West Indian night ; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates . Being unable to sleep in bed , I got up and opened the window . The air was like sulphur-steams -- I could find no refreshment anywhere . Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room ; the sea , which I could hear from thence , rumbled dull like an earthquake -- black clouds were casting up over it ; the moon was setting in the waves , broad and red , like a hot cannon-ball -- she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest . I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene , and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out ; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate , with such language ! -- no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she : though two rooms off , I heard every word -- the thin partitions of the West India house