Martin Faber-The Story of a Criminal by William Gilmore Simms

I need not say that no happiness awaited me in my marriage. Still less is it necessary that I should tell you of the small amount of happiness that fell to the lot of my wife. I did not ill-treat her-- that is to say, I employed neither blows nor violence; but I was a wretched discontent, and when I say this I have said all. She suffered with patience, however, and I sometimes found it impossible, and always difficult, to drive her beyond the boundary of yielding and forgiving humility. She loved me not from the first, and only became my bride from the absence of sufficient firmness of character, to resist the command. The discovery of this fact, which I soon made, offended my pride. I did not distrust, however--I hated her; and, with a strange perversity of character, which, let philosophers account for as they may--when I found that she could love, and that feelings were engendered in her bosom for another, hostile to her affection for me, though not at variance with her duties--I encouraged their growth. I nursed their developement. I stimulated their exercise; and strove, would you believe it, to make her the instrument of my own dishonor. But her sense of pride and propriety was greater than mine. Though conscious that her heart was another's, she unerringly held her faith to her husband, and my anger and dislike were exaggerated, when I discovered that my vice, even when allied to and assisted by her own feelings, could gain no ascendancy over her virtue.

She was won by the gentleness, the talent, the high character of my old friend, William Harding. She listened to his language with unreluctant and unconcealed pleasure. She delighted in his society; and with a feeling which she had never dared to name to herself, she gave him a preference, in every thought, in every emotion of her being. Nor--boy as he was--sensitive and easily wrought upon by respect and kindness--was he at all insensible to her regards. He became, as an acquaintance, almost an inmate of our house. He was always with us--and with the openness of heart common to such a character, he unreservedly sought for the society of Constance. I soon discovered their mutual propensities, for, at an early period, I had learned, with singular felicity, to analyze character. At first, and while she was yet a charming creation in my sight, and before I had learned to disregard and be indifferent to the admiration which she excited in others, this predilection gave me not a little concern. I was for a season the victim of a jealous doubt--not so much the result of a fear of offended honor, as of a weak pride and vanity, that was vexed at the preference given to him over myself, in the bosom of one, I strove to have exclusively my own. But this feeling went with the season. I grew indifferent at first, then pleased with their association, and finally it became an object with me, so to encourage it, as to give me a sufficient excuse and opportunity for a dreadful and overwhelming revenge. But they were both honest--honest as I had never been--as I never expected man or woman to have been! Twining and intermingling, hourly in spirit, the most jealous scrutiny, the most bitter hate and hostility, could never detect the slightest feature of impropriety in their conduct. Many were the modes which I chose to stimulate their passions--to influence their desires--to put their spirits into flame; and many were the opportunities with which I sought, in hurrying them to crime, to provide myself with victims. They went through the ordeal like angels--without one speck of earth; and pining with suppressed and strong affections, I beheld the cheek of Constance grow paler, day by day, and saw, at every visit--the increased wildness of look--the still exaggerated emotions struggling for utterance and life, in the bosom of the young and susceptible Harding.