Day after day passed by, still no message came from her husband. Her uncle had told her that the principal creditors had willingly and generously arranged matters; for, as every one said, the failure had resulted from misfortune, not from mismanagement, and that he had heard that a friend had offered Mr. Murray a situation in a commercial house out in the very farthest west, with a chance of becoming a partner in time. Then the next news that reached her was, that he was actually leaving for his new home. And would Ralph leave her without a word—a line? she asked herself over and again.
At last a letter came—a cold, stern, haughty letter, bidding her farewell, as if for ever. There were one or two tender passages in it; but the tone of the whole letter was so cold and unforgiving, that it crushed her to the earth. She had received it the day before our little sketch opens; and when her aunt urged her to drive out and shake off her trouble, she only buried her little head still deeper in the pillows and prayed still more agonizingly for death. The afternoon passed slowly enough to the poor sufferer. Then came the evening—the noisy, gay evening. As there was a ball in the saloon of the hotel, her thoughtless, butterfly aunt and uncle joined the merry crowd of triflers, after an earnest but unsuccessful persuasion of Edda to follow their example.
The merry music of the band sounded loudly in Edda’s lonely bed-room; but the lively dancing melodies seemed to her ears like the voices of taunting demons. She restlessly rose from her bed and walked into her little parlor, which opened on a balcony that swept around the house. She stepped out on this balcony, and listened to the pealing thunder of the ocean, which rolled unceasingly before her. Her agony increased, and a demon seemed to whisper in her ears:
“What is life but a torment? Death is an endless, dreamless sleep. Why suffer when you can so easily find relief?”
Shudderingly she put her little hands to her ears, and, closing her eyes, hastened into the room, fearing that in another instant she might be induced, by despair, to plunge headlong over the railings on the cliff beneath. For a while she laid on the lounge, as if stunned; but at last tears came to her relief, and she felt calmer. To avoid danger she closed the Venetian shutters of the door and window, but drew up under them the lounge, and threw herself on it, that the damp night air might cool her fevered, burning head. She had not been long there when she heard the sound of voices and laughter, but she was too weak to arise, and remained quiet—remembering that she could not be seen from the outside.