Chapter VII: Part THE THIRD: Night (1)

IV.

The interval of suspense to which we were doomed before we received any tidings of Forrester seemed to us interminable; and our speculations on the cause of his silence did not contribute to make our solitude the more endurable. We clung together, it is true; but it was like people on a raft, with our heads stretched out, looking apart into the distance for succor.

[8] Concluded from the July Number.

At last, at the end of a fortnight, there came a note in Forrester's handwriting (which I well remembered), signed only with an initial letter, requiring to see me alone in a roadside hostelrie about half a mile inland. The note was cautiously worded, so that if it fell into other hands, its purport would be unintelligible.

I thought this strange; but Forrester was always fond of a little mystery, and on the present occasion there might be a necessity for it. I am ashamed to say, that after I had read this note two or three times, I felt some hesitation about giving him the meeting. The doubt was unworthy of us both; yet I could not help asking myself, over and over again, why he wished me to go alone?--why he appointed to meet me at night?--why he should act under a mask in an affair which demanded the utmost candor on all sides?--and a hundred other uncomfortable questions. Circumstances had made me anxious and distrustful; and I was so conscious of the irritable state of my nerves, that, even while these suspicions were passing through my brain, I made an effort to do justice to my friend by recalling to mind the incidents of our former intercourse, throughout which he had displayed a fidelity and steadfastness that entitled him to my most implicit confidence. Even if it had been otherwise, I had no choice but to trust to him; it was indispensable that we should know the determination of our implacable enemy, and it was through Forrester alone we could obtain that information.

The night was dark and stormy. The solitary walk to the little inn afforded me time to collect myself for an interview which I approached with no slight uneasiness. I had left Astraea behind me in a depressed and fretful mood. She could not comprehend why she was excluded from our councils, and seemed to regard it as a sort of conspiracy to dishonor and humiliate her. Every trifling circumstance that affected her personally was viewed in the same light, with jealousy and suspicion. Poor Astraea! Her life was already beginning to jar with mental discords, and the shadows of the future were falling thickly upon her, and darkening her path.

The hostelrie at which I had the appointment with Forrester stood on the edge of a bleak common. In that part of the country there are many similar wastes, stretching a half mile or more into the interior, covered with a scant and sickly herbage, and presenting on the surface an arid picture of sand, stones, and shells, as if these great, unprofitable pastures had been redeemed from the sea without being converted into available land. There is a salt flavor in the air over these wild inland stretches; the sea seems to pursue you with its saline weeds, its keen winds, and measured murmurs; and the absolute solitude of a scene in which you very rarely meet a house or a tree, is calculated to make a dismal impression on a person otherwise out of humor with the world. I felt it forcibly that night. I thought the northeast wind that swept diagonally across the common was more wintry and biting than usual; and the red light in the distant window of the "Jolly Gardeners" (of all conceivable signs for such a spot!) looked as if it were dancing away further and further from me as I advanced across the heath.

At last I reached the inn--a low tiled house, with a tattered portico jutting out upon the road some ten or twelve feet, a few latticed windows, and a narrow passage, lighted by a single candle in a sconce on the wall, leading into a sanded parlor beyond a little square "bar" that looked like the inside of a cupboard, decorated with a variety of jugs, teacups, saucers, and other ware hung up in rows all round. The house was altogether a very tolerable specimen of what used to be called an ale-house in remote country districts; a place suggestive of the strictest caution about liquors, but where you might repose with confidence on an impromptu entertainment of rashers and eggs. It was exactly the sort of house that Forrester would have preferred to a well-appointed hostel in the days of our summer vagrancy, when we used to wander toward Hampstead and Highgate, avoiding beaten tracks and crowded localities, and seeking out for ourselves, whenever we could find it, a secluded "Barley Mow" shut up in a nest of orchards. He had not lost his early tastes--nor had I! That little "bar," with its innumerable samples of delft, threw me back sundry years of my life, to the time when I was free to dream or idle, to go into the haunts of men, or to desert them at will. The incident was a trifling one in itself; but it shot through my heart like a bolt of fire. It was the first time I had gone out and left Astraea alone behind me. I thought of her, seated in her lonely room, brooding over her desolation, and torturing herself with speculations upon the business in which I was engaged: while I?--I was out again on the high road, exulting in a man's privilege to act for myself, with her destiny, for good or evil, at my disposal, and possessing the power of returning into the world from whence I had drawn her, and in which she could never again appear! I?--I was at large once more, with the memories of the freedom and tranquillity I had relinquished tempting my thoughts into rebellion. And she?--alas! she never seemed in my eyes so forlorn and lost as at that moment!

A single glance at the boxed-up "bar," and the honest round face, with a skin-cap over it, that gaped at me behind a complete breastwork of pewter and glass, awakened me from the state of reverie in which I had entered the house. I dare say I looked rather bewildered, like a man just shaking off a fit of abstraction, for the honest round face immediately started out of the chair which served as a socket for the body to which it belonged, and without waiting to hear me ask any questions, instantly proposed to conduct me to the gentleman up-stairs, who had been for some time expecting my arrival.

I found Forrester in a small room which was reached by a flight of stairs, so sharp and precipitate, that they looked as if they were inserted on the face of the wall. Having lighted me into the room, the honest face disappeared, and left us alone together.

Forrester stretched out his hand, as I thought, somewhat formally; then motioning me to a seat opposite to him, waited in silence till the landlord had left the room.

"You are surprised I should have asked you to come here," he said.

"No," I replied, interrupting him, hastily; "but I am surprised we did not hear from you sooner. In the name of Heaven, what can have been the cause of your silence?"

"How long is it since I saw you?"

"How long? Upward of a fortnight, and we expected a letter every day. But the world forgets us when we forget ourselves."

"It might be well with some people, if the world _did_ forget them," he rejoined; "but that is no affair of mine. I have not forgotten you, whatever you may have deserved from others."

This was uttered in a tone of asperity unusual with Forrester. But I felt that I had provoked it by the unacknowledging spirit in which I had met him after all the trouble he had taken on my account, and I was proceeding to make the best apology I could, when he cut me short with a wave of his hand, and entered upon the business that brought us together.

"You were aware when I undertook to negotiate between you and the husband of Astraea, that I was his friend as well as yours. He had even stronger claims upon my friendship; I had known him in our boyhood; and when I returned, after an interval of years, and found him bereaved, as I had been myself--and by the same person--you can not be astonished that I should feel some interest in his situation."

"I do not blame you for that," I returned, hardly knowing what I said, I was so amazed by the tone and substance of this unexpected opening.

"Blame me?" reiterated Forrester. "Blame me for sympathizing with an early friend, whose life, like my own, had been blasted to the root? You must suppose my nature to be something different from that of other men, if you imagine I could witness his sufferings unmoved."

"To what is this intended to lead?" I demanded. "When I saw you last, your sympathies were not so exclusive. You were then, Forrester, the friend of both?"

"Am I not so still? What brings me here? It is not exactly the sort of weather a man would select for a trip of pleasure into the country. What brings me here? Your business. Does this look like a failure of friendship? You are soured--isolation and self-reproaches, which pride will not suffer you to acknowledge, have turned your blood to acid. You are ready to quarrel for straws, and your whole care is how to escape the responsibility which passion and selfishness have brought upon you."

I leaped from my chair at these words, and looked fiercely at Forrester. He was perfectly calm, and continued to speak in a voice of freezing quietness.

"Pray, resume your seat. It is sheer waste of time to lose your temper with me. Either I must speak candidly to you, or there is an end to our intercourse."

"Yes--candidly, but not insultingly," I replied, seizing my chair, and, after giving it a very ill-tempered fling upon the ground, throwing myself into it.

"How foolish it is in you to exhibit this humor to me," he resumed after a short pause. "I imagine I have a right to speak to you exactly what I think, and that the interest I have taken in your concerns ought to protect me from the suspicion of desiring to insult you. Were it my cue to insult you, it is not in this affair I should look for the grounds of quarrel. But let that pass. I have seen the man whom you have made your mortal enemy, and have endeavored to prevail upon him to break the marriage. I have failed."

"Failed? How? Why? What does he say? He is a fiend!"

"Strange that he should have just the same opinion of you. Beelzebub is rather a respectable and virtuous person in his estimation compared with you. Just possible both may be right!"

I never saw Forrester in this sort of vein before. It was as if he were determined to lacerate my feelings and lay them bare; and yet there was a certain eccentric kindness under this rough treatment, which helped to reconcile me to it. At all events, I was bound to endure it; I knew that if I outraged him by any show of distrust or violence, his lips would be closed forever. I felt, too, that I had given him some provocation in the first instance by the temper I had betrayed; and that the fault was at least as much mine as his.

"Well," I cried, "you must forgive me, Forrester, if I am a little chafed and galled, and, as you say, soured. Circumstances have pressed hardly upon me. Remember how long I have been shut out from communication with society--and the state of anxiety and suspense in which I have lived. You must make allowances for me."

"Exactly. _I_ must make allowances for _you_. But when I ask _you_ to make allowances for _him_, who has gone through sufferings a hundred-fold more acute, which you have inflicted upon him, what kind of response do I receive? No matter. I _do_ make allowances for you. If you are not entirely absorbed by selfish considerations, you will endeavor to comprehend the wrong you have committed, and do what you can to avoid making it worse."

"Wrong? Premeditated wrong I never will admit. My conscience is clear of that. But I will not argue with you. What would you have me do?"

"Leave the country. You have no other alternative."

"What? Fly from this demon, who first tempted me, and who now wants to triumph over my ruin?"

"You say your conscience is clear of wrong. You have a happy conscience. But it deceives you. It is true, that when you first knew Astraea, you were ignorant of his rights; but you were not ignorant of them when he found you together and claimed her. Up to that moment, you might have had some excuse. There was yet time to save her, yourself, and him. How did you act, then? If we are to discuss this matter with any hope of arriving at a rational conclusion, you must rid yourself of the flattering deception that you have been doing no wrong. We are not children, but grown-up men and responsible agents."

"Well, I put myself in your hands. But that I should become an exile because this man chooses to pursue me with vindictive feelings, _does_ seem something monstrous."

"From your point of sight, I dare say it does. Just change places with him. A man who desires to decide justly will always endeavor to look at both sides of a question. Put yourself in his position. He loves this woman. I am satisfied he loves her more truly and tenderly, and less selfishly now than he ever loved her from the beginning. You sneer at that. You do not credit the possibility of such a thing. It is a constitutional fallacy of yours to believe that no man loves as you do--that there is a leaven of earth in other men which mixes with their devotion and corrupts it. You have nursed this creed all your life, and it has grown with your growth. You alone are pure and spiritual. I remember you had that notion once before. I remember how you exalted yourself on the intensity and endurance of your passion. Surely by this time you should have outlived that delusion; for even then you might have seen men with hearts as--But I am wandering from the subject."

"I understand you. I was young, superstitious, ignorant--"

"I will speak plainly. You are not capable of a great devotion. Your character is not strong enough. You have none of the elements of power necessary to the maintenance of the martyrdom of love. In a nature constituted like yours, passion burns up fiercely, and goes out suddenly. I have heard you say--some years gone by!--that you were consumed by a love which would end only with your life. I was silent. I loved, too; but I vailed my eyes, and spoke not, as the coffin which contained all I cherished in the world was lowered into the grave. Hope--affection--the desire of life, were buried with it. You see me now wasted, haggard, solitary, a wreck upon the waters. And you? I find you plunged into the ecstasies of a new passion. And what of the old one? Where are the traces of it now? Some men can not live except in this condition of excitement. You are one of them. But do not deceive yourself into the belief that others have not hearts, because they do not show them in spasms such as these. Do not despise the faithful agonies even of the dwarf!"

I felt the severe justice of the reproach less in Forrester's words than in his pallid face, and the pangs he struggled to conceal. I was even secretly compelled to admit that there was a miserable truth in what he said about Mephistophiles; yet it was difficult for me to give utterance to the expression of any sympathy in the sufferings of a man who seemed to have directed his whole energies to the pursuit of an insane and unprofitable vengeance.

"The portrait is not flattering," I observed. "But why do you thus put me on the rack? What has all this to do with the matter that has brought us together?"

"It has every thing to do with it. The instability of your character--the certainty of remorse and disappointment, passion sated and exhausted, romance broken up, and nothing left but mutual reproaches, which will not be the less bitter because they may not find expression in words--the certainty that such is the fate to which Astraea is doomed under your protection, justifies me in laying before you those secrets of your nature which, without the help of some friendly monitor like me, you would never be able to discover."

This was said in a tone of sarcasm. No man knows himself. With much modesty and humility in some things (springing, perhaps, from weakness rather than discretion or reserve), I had always overrated myself in others. I had a strong faith in my own constancy of purpose--in the steadfastness of my principles and feelings. But it was true that I was self-deceived, if Forrester and Astraea had read my character accurately. Their agreement was something wonderful. They used almost the very same words in describing the points on which my strength was likely to break down. I was beginning to fear that they were right; but I owed a grave responsibility to Astraea, and could not yet be brought to admit, even to myself, that it was possible I should fail in it.

"You judge from the rest of the world, and not from me, Forrester," I replied. "But granted that it is as you say, how can that mend the business? Believe me, you are ignorant of Astraea's character and mine. No matter--let that pass. Suppose we should hereafter find our lives wearisome and joyless, may we not justly trace the cause to the malice that will not suffer us to redeem ourselves."

"Is your redemption, by the strength of your own efforts, so sure, then? Neither he whom you have wronged, nor I, have any faith in your fortitude. We believe that if you were free to marry Astraea, a certain sense of justice would induce you at once to make her your wife; but we believe also, that the enchantment would perish at the altar. Attachments that begin in one form of selfishness generally end in another--even with people of the most amiable intentions."

There was a scoff in his voice that made my blood tingle; but I subdued myself. "Pray, come to the point," I exclaimed, impatiently.

"The point is simple enough," he returned. "My mission has failed. He will make no terms, take no steps for a divorce, listen to no expostulations until a separation shall have taken place between you and Astraea."

"A separation?"

"It is clear to me that, in looking forward to such a contingency, it is not because he hopes or desires, under such circumstances, to see her again; but because it would enable him, without pain or humiliation, to become the guardian of her future life. It is the passion of his soul to dedicate himself, unseen, to the sacred duty of watching over her."

"Preposterous. He watch over her? The recollection of his former guardianship is not so agreeable as to induce her to trust herself under it again. As to separation, her devotion to me would make her spurn such a proposition."

"H--m! It is because I believed her pride would make her spurn it that I recommended you to go abroad."

"And why should we go abroad on that account?"

"Because his revenge, sleepless and insatiable, will render it impossible for you to remain in England."

"His revenge! Pshaw! I am sick of hearing of it. Believe me, the word has lost its terrors--if it ever had any."

"You are wrong. My advice is prudent, and is given honestly, for both your sakes. In England there is danger; abroad, you will be beyond his reach."

"Why," answered I, with a forced smile, "one would suppose that you were speaking of the Grand Inquisition, or the Council of Ten, and that we lived in a country where there was neither law nor social civilization. What do you imagine I can possibly have to fear from him?"

"A vengeance that you can not evade, so subtle and unrelenting as to leave no hour of your existence free from dread and misery. Can you not understand how a man whose life you have laid waste may haunt you with his curse? Can you not comprehend the workings of a mortal hate, ever waiting for its opportunity, patient, silent, untiring, never for an instant losing sight of its object, and making all things and all seasons subservient to its deadly purpose? _I_ can understand this in the most commonplace natures, when they are strongly acted upon; but in him, fiery, self-willed, and vindictive, it is inevitable."

"Is this an inference of your own, drawn from your knowledge of his character, or has he confided his intentions to you?"

"Even if he had not confided his intentions to me, I know him too well not to foresee the course he will take; but he has concealed nothing of his designs from me, except the mode in which he intends to work them out. Of that I know nothing. But it is enough, surely, that such a man should swear an oath of vengeance in my presence, to justify me in the warning I have given you."

"I thank you. And this warning--upon which we seem to put very different valuations--is the result of your friendly interference?"

"You are at liberty to doubt my friendship; but I will not leave my motives open to misconstruction. I repeat to you that I give you this warning, for _his_ sake as much as for yours."

"And why for his sake?"

"Because if you avoid him you may save him from the perpetration of a crime. The whole energies of his mind are directed to one end. He lives for nothing else, and will pursue it at any cost or peril to himself. I know him. If you are wise, you will heed my warning. If not, take your own course. I have discharged my conscience, and have done."

As he spoke these words, he drew his chair toward the fire, and sat musing as if he had dropped out of the conversation.

"Forrester," I exclaimed, "one question more! Why did you not communicate this to Astraea yourself? Why did you leave to me the pain of carrying home such ill news?"

"Home!" repeated Forrester, involuntarily; then, raising his voice, he went on: "Why did I not go to her, and tell her that she ought to separate from you, if she had any regard for her own future security? What should you have thought of my friendship if I had done that? Why, you distrust me as it is."

"No--I have no distrusts. It is evident on which side your sympathies are engaged."

"With whom should I sympathize--the wronged, or the wrong-doer?"

"When we parted last, I believed that you felt otherwise."

"When we parted last, you had made impressions upon me which I have since found to be deceptive. I do not blame you for that. You told your story in your own way, from your own point of sight: I believed it to be true. Nor had I then looked into this man's heart--this suffering man in his agony, whom you painted as a monster: I did not then know how capable he was of loving and of suffering for love's sake--the noblest and the most sorrowful of all suffering! nor how gently that heart, crushed and struck to the core, had risen again to life, strengthened and sweetened by the injuries it had learned to forgive! You can not judge of that tenderness of soul, out of which a happier fortune and a prosperous love might have drawn a life of kindliness and charity. You--who, having accomplished your desires, are now reposing in the lull of your sated passions--you can see nothing in him but the evil which you have helped to nourish; his sacrifices and magnanimity are all darkness to you."

"I will listen no longer," I said, starting up from my chair. "I see distinctly what is before me. Old friends fall from us in our adversities. Well! new ones must be made. It is some comfort that the world is wide enough for us all, and that the loss, even of such a friend as you, is not irreparable."

"H--m! a successful epitome of your creed and character! You can cast old affections and memories from you with as little emotion as a bird moults its feathers; and having got rid of one set of sensations, you can begin again, and so go on, destroying and renewing, and still thinking yourself misunderstood and injured, and taking your revenge in fresh indulgences."

"I will endure no more of this," I exclaimed, seizing my hat and going toward the door; "let us part, before I forget the ties that once bound us together."

"Forget them?" he echoed, and his face grew ghastly pale; but, forcibly controlling his agitation, he went on, in a low voice: "Have you not forgotten them already? Have you not shaken them off like dust from your feet? Ay, let us part; I am unfit to be your friend or companion. Leave me to mate with him you have bereaved, and whose heart is desolate like mine! There, at least, I shall find a community of feeling on one point--the blight which we both owe to you. Go! Leave me--no words--no words!"

Had I spoken it would have been angrily. But although my pride was wounded, and I was bitterly mortified and disappointed at the result of a meeting, which, instead of alleviating my anxiety, had only loaded me with miseries, I felt that it would have been barbarous at that moment, had I given way to my own feelings. I stood and gazed upon him in silence while I held the half-opened door in my hand.

The old feeling was all at once revived, and as he buried his head in his broad, shapeless hands, and bent over the table, the night when he related to me the singular history with which he prefaced the introduction to Gertrude, came back upon me with all its agonies and terrors as freshly as if but a few weeks, instead of long and checkered years, had elapsed in the interval. His great anguish on that occasion, and the grandeur of the sacrifice he made to what he hoped would have been the foundation of the life-long happiness of her he loved, returned with painful distinctness. He was changed in nothing since, except in the haggard expression of his face and figure. His heart--his strong, manly heart--was still the same. His affections were in the grave with Gertrude; he had traversed half the world, had been thrown into trying circumstances, and doubtless, like other men, had been exposed to many temptations, yet he had never swerved from his early attachment, and had brought back with him from his wanderings the same truthfulness and the same sorrow he had carried with him into exile. How strange it was that he, of all men, should be cast by the force of accidental occurrences into close communion with the dwarf! that the only men on earth who in the depths of their hearts could--whether justly or unjustly, mattered little--find a cause for hating and denouncing me, should be drawn together, not by any sympathy of their own, but by a common resentment against me! these two men, so utterly unlike each other in every thing else, whose natures were as widely different and opposed as night and day! And then in the midst of this rose up the memory of Gertrude, of whom I could recollect nothing but a macilent figure, stretched upon a sofa and scarcely breathing. The lineaments were gone, but there were the spirit and the reproach, and the gloom that had settled on the opening of my life, making all the rest wayward, fantastical, and unreasoning.

I paused at the door, looked for the last time on Forrester, and noiselessly leaving the room, descended the stairs. In the next moment I was out again on the bleak heath.

V.

On my return, I found Astraea pacing up and down the room in a state of nervous irritation at my long absence. Her usual self-command was broken down. The grace and dignity that once imparted to her an aspect of calmness and power, were gone. Isolation was doing its work upon her! Isolation and the feeling of banishment and disgrace which we struggled with darkly in our minds, but which were slowly and surely destroying our confidence in ourselves, and our trust in the future.

She was impatient to hear what I had to relate to her, yet was so ruffled by it, that she constantly interrupted me by exclamations of scorn and anger. The suggestion of our separation, and the subsequent guardianship of the dwarf, which I stated simply, without coloring or comment, affected her differently. She looked at me in silence, as I slowly repeated the words of Forrester, her lips trembled slightly, and a faint flush spread over her face and forehead. There was a great conflict going on, and I could see that her strength was unequal to it. Gradually the flush deepened, and tears sprang into her eyes. I shall never forget it! A sob broke from her, and crushing up her face in her outspread hands with a wildness that almost terrified me, she exclaimed:

"I never was humiliated till now! never till now! till now! O God! what have I done that this bitterness should come upon me?"

"Astraea! for Heaven's sake do not give way to these violent emotions. After all, what does it come to?"

She threw back her head with an expression of fierce reproach in her eyes, and replied:

"Disgrace! _You_ do not feel it. _You_ are safe, free, unscathed; but _I_--_I_--and this is what women suffer who sacrifice themselves as I have done!"

"Come, you are nervous and desponding, Astraea. Why do you talk of suffering? No body has the power to inflict suffering upon you now."

"It is idle--idle--idle!" she answered, moving to and fro; "you can not comprehend it. Men have no sense of these things. Happy for them it is so. I believe you mean all in kindness--I believe your manhood, your pride would not allow you to see me unprotected, lost, degraded so early! No! don't speak! Let me go on. He makes a condition that I should leave you--that I should violate the most solemn obligation of my life, and proclaim myself that which my soul recoils from, and my lips dare not utter; then, when I shall have damned myself, he will protect me! With a forbearance, for which I ought to be thankful he will watch over me unseen--provide for my wants--take care that I am fed and housed; and having secured my dependence on him, and broken my rebellious heart, he will take infinite credit to himself for the delicacy and magnanimity with which he has treated me. Oh man--man! how little you know our natures, and how superior we are to you, even in our degradation! I ask you, in what light must he regard me who could presume to make such a proposition? And in what light should I deserve to be regarded if I accepted it?"

"It is quite true, Astraea. I feel the whole force of your observations. The proposition is an insult."

"Thank you--thank you, for that word!" she exclaimed, throwing herself into my arms, and bursting into a flood of tears. "There is something yet left to cling to. Thank God, I am not yet so lost but that you should feel it to be an insult to me. It is something not to be yet quite beyond the reach of insult."

"Astraea," I said, folding her tenderly in my arms, "compose yourself, and trust to me. We must trust to each other. There--there--dear Astraea!"

"What a wretch should I be," she replied, "if _this_ were all--if it were for _this_ I forfeited every thing; no, no, _you_ don't think so. It is my last hold--self-respect!--and it is in your keeping. For you I gave up all--and would have given up life itself--it would be hard if I should perish in my sin by his hands for whom I sinned!" Then releasing herself from me, she grasped my arm, and looking earnestly into my face, she demanded, "And what answer did you give to this proposal?"

"Why, what answer should I give, but that I knew you would spurn it?"

"That was right!" she cried; "right--manly--honest. We must let him know that I am not the defenseless outcast he supposes; he must see and feel that we can walk abroad as proudly in the open day as he or his. _His_ vengeance? What have we to fear? Let us cast the shame from us and show ourselves to the world. We make our own disgrace by hiding and flying from our friends. You see how our forbearance has been appreciated, and what a charitable construction has been put upon our conduct. We owe it to ourselves to vindicate ourselves. I will endure those dismal whispers that carry a blight in every word no longer. I would rather die! Come--let us decide once and forever our future course!"

These were brave words, and bravely uttered. Toward the close, Astraea had regained much of her original power; the strength of purpose and towering will, which I remembered so well in former days, and which gave so elevated a character to her beauty, came back once more, and lighted up her fine features.

It was late; but what were hours to us? Day or night made little difference. We had no objects to call us up early--we had no occupations for the next day--it was immaterial whether we retired or sat up; and so in this listless mode of life we always followed the immediate impulse, whatever it might be. When we found ourselves weary, we betook ourselves to repose; when we felt inclined to talk and maunder over the fire, we never troubled ourselves to ask what o'clock it was. In short, time had no place in our calendar, which was governed, not by the revolutions of the earth, but by our own moods and sensations.

We discussed a great question that night. No theme before a debating club--such as the choice between Peace and War, between Society or Solitude, or any of those grand abstract antitheses that agitate nations--was ever more completely exhausted in all its details than the question--Whether we should leave England, or remain at home, and go boldly into public, with the determination to live down the persecutions of the dwarf.

It was a question of life or death with us. We both felt that any fate would be more welcome than the life to which we were then condemned. We pined for human faces and human voices. We were sick at heart of eternal loneliness. We longed for free intercourse with educated people like ourselves, who would sympathize with our intellectual wants, and talk to us in our own language. We had arrived at the discovery that the solitude we had colored so brightly in those happy hours of romance which love takes such pains in filling up with delusions, would be rendered much more agreeable by an occasional variety, or an incidental shock from without--any thing that would stir the pulses and awaken the life-blood that was growing stagnant in our veins. We were not weary of each other; on the contrary, anxiety had brought our hearts more closely together; but we had drunk all the light out each other's eyes, and our aspects were becoming wan and passionless from lack of change and movement; we yearned for the presence even of strangers, to break up the dullness and uniformity, and make us feel that we had an interest in the living world, and that our love, sweet as it was in seclusion, was sweeter still as a bond that linked us to the great family, from which in our desolate retreat we felt ourselves entirely cut off.

I need not detail the arguments by which our final resolution was determined. To go abroad, and embrace a voluntary banishment, would have looked like an admission of guilt, which Astraea persisted in repudiating. Whatever verdict society might choose to pronounce, Astraea would be governed only by her own. Her justice adapted itself expressly to the occasion, setting aside the larger views which laws designed for the general security must include. But such is woman's logic ever!--circumstantially sensitive, clear, and narrow! Her voice was for war. I had no motive for opposing her; my pride agreed with her--my reason took the other side; but, in reality, I saw no great choice either way. I knew, or felt, that society would never be reconciled to us. Men have instincts on such points; but women, with their wild sense of what may be called natural law, never can see these things in the same light. This was a matter I could not argue with Astraea. I merely told her that in our anomalous situation, we must not look for much sympathy or consideration; that, in fact, I had known similar cases (perhaps not quite so peculiar, but that made no difference in the eyes of society), and that the issue of the struggle to get back always ended in increased humiliation; yet I was, nevertheless, ready to adopt any plan of life that would satisfy her feelings. I was bound to think of that first, and perfectly willing to take chance for the rest.

It was settled at last, at the close of our long council, that we should adopt a sort of middle course; and before we returned to London, which we now fully resolved to do at the opening of the season, we projected a visit to Brighton, and one or two other places on the coast.

VI.

Talk of the sagacity of the lower animals, and the reasoning faculties of man! We are the most inconsistent of all creatures; we are perpetually contradicting ourselves, perpetually involved in anomalies of our own making. It is impossible to reconcile half the things we do with the exercise of that reason which we boast of as the grand distinction that elevates us above the horse, the dog, the elephant. We never find any of these animals doing unaccountable things, or practically compromising their sagacity.

For my part, looking back on my life, I feel that it is full of contradictions, which, although apparent to me now, were not so in the whirl of agitation out of which they surged. Here, for example, after a flight from the world, and nearly six months' burial in the severest solitude, behold us on a sudden in the midst of the gay crowds of Brighton. The transition is something startling. It was so to us at the time; and I confess that at this distance from the excitement which led to it, I can not help regarding it as an act of signal temerity, considering the circumstances in which we were placed.

Astraea's spirits grew lighter; she cast off her gloom and reserve, and surrendered herself to the full tide of human enjoyment in which we were now floating. Whatever might have been the terror or misgiving at either of our hearts, we did not show it in our looks. We wore a mask to each other--a mask of kindness, each desiring to conceal the secret pang, and to convey to the other a notion that all was at peace within! We were mutually conscious of the well-meant deception, but thought it wiser and more generous on both sides to affect entire confidence in the gayety we assumed! Upon this hollow foundation we set about building the superstructure of our future lives.

We had a cheerful lodging facing the sea--rather a handsome and extravagant lodging; for being intent upon our project of asserting ourselves in the eyes of the world, we resolved to test any friends we might happen to meet, by inviting them to our house. The landlady, a respectable widow, was one of the most civil and obliging persons in the world. Her whole establishment was at our disposal, and she never could do too much to make us feel perfectly at our ease. Emerging as we had just done from utter loneliness, with a strong fear that the hand of the world was against us, all this attention and kindness touched us deeply. Slight an incident as it was, it made us think better of our species, and look forward more hopefully for ourselves. There was yet something to live for! There always is, if we will only suffer our hearts to explore for us, and find it out.

Any person who has moved much in the London circles is sure to find a numerous acquaintance at Brighton. We met several people we had known in the great maelstrom of the West End. It was pleasant to us to exchange salutes with them. It was like coming back after a long voyage, and finding one's self at home again among old faces and household scenes. We were intimate with none of these people; and as our knowledge of them did not justify more than a passing recognition, which was generally very cordial on both sides, we used to return from our drive every day, exulting in the success of our experiment upon society. The world, after all, was not so bad as we supposed.

One day, sauntering on the sands, Astraea saw a lady at a distance whose figure seemed to be familiar to her. She was an old schoolfellow of hers, who had been recently married. They flew into each other's arms. The meeting, indeed, was marked by such affectionate interest on the part of the lady, who was a stranger to me, that I apprehended she was entirely ignorant of our story. Almost the first question that passed between them determined that fact; and as they had a great deal of news to communicate to each other, it was arranged between them that they should meet the next morning for a long gossip.

Astraea went alone, and staid away half the day. She returned to me full of glee. Her friend had listened to her history with the deepest interest, and entirely agreed with her that she could not have acted otherwise, adopting, at the same time, without hesitation, Astraea's opinion of the sanctity of our union. It was not our fault that we had not been married in a church and this generous lady, seeing the embarrassment of our situation, enthusiastically declared that the world might take its own course, but that _she_, at least, would never abandon a friend under such circumstances. This was very cheering. I must remark, however, that this lady was several years younger than Astraea, under whose protection she had been taken at school, where Astraea had been a resident for convenience, rather than a pupil, when she entered it. In this way their attachment originated. It would have been difficult for any young person to have been placed in such close and endearing intimacy with Astraea, and not to have acquired an enthusiastic regard for her. She always inspired that sort of feeling--a deep and passionate love, great admiration of her intellect, implicit respect for her judgment. In the eyes of her schoolfellow she was the model of all human excellence. As easily would she have believed in an error of the planetary system, as that Astraea could commit an aberration of any kind. Whatever Astraea did, appeared to her unimpeachable. A feeling of veneration like this carried away from school will stand many severe shocks in the mind of a true-hearted girl before it will give way.

This was all very well so far as the lady herself was concerned; but how could we answer for the view her husband might take of the matter? She volunteered in the most courageous way to take all that upon herself. She could answer for her husband. She was very young, and very pretty, and very giddy, and only just married, and her husband never denied her any thing, and she ruled him with as queenly an influence as the heart of the most imperious little beauty could desire. Nor did she reckon without her host, as the event proved. Her husband, in the most good-humored way, fell into her view of the case. He was one of those easy-natured souls who, when they marry school-girls, feel themselves called upon to marry the whole school, and to take its romps, and its vows, and its bridesmaid pledges, to heart and home along with their wives. He had heard her speak of Astraea a thousand times, and professed to be very curious to see her; and so it was arranged that we should all meet, and make the merriest double-bridal party in the universe. The reunion was curious between these open-hearted, innocent young people, with their track of bright flowers before them, and those who sat opposite to them, with a terrible conviction that the path which lay before _them_ was covered with ashes.

Our new friends had a large acquaintance at Brighton, and saw a great deal of company; yet they were always glad to get away when they could, and make a little holyday with us. Her husband entered into our meetings with an ease and friendliness that were quite charming. He was an indolent man, taking no trouble to look after pleasure, but ready to be pleased in a passive way with any thing that other people enjoyed. As for his wife, she was always in the highest spirits with Astraea. The chatter they made together was quite an ecstasy. It seemed as if there was no end to the things they had to talk about. Poor Astraea had been shut up from her own sex so long, that the delight with which the companionship of this young creature inspired her appeared to me extremely pathetic and affecting.

One morning we were walking on the Parade as usual. Among the carriages that were flying about, we recognized the open phaeton of our friends. It passed quite close to us--so close that we could have shaken hands with them as they swept by. We expected that they would have stopped as usual, and we stood and put out our hands--but the carriage went on. There was a hasty bow from the lady, and then her head was quickly turned aside, as if something had suddenly attracted her attention. Astraea looked at me, and asked me what I thought of it? I evaded her question, by saying that they had other friends, and that we must not be too _exigeant_. Astraea made no remark, but merely shook her head and walked on.

In the afternoon we met them again. There was a gay crowd of people walking, and our friends, in the midst of a group, were coming up toward us. There was no possibility, at either side, of avoiding the meeting, for the place was narrow, and we were compelled to pass each other slowly. I could perceive, from the way in which Astraea's cheeks kindled, that she was resolved to put her schoolfellow's friendship to the proof at once. I anticipated the result, but thought it best not to interfere, lest Astraea might suppose I shrank from the ordeal. We met face to face. The lady grew very white, and then red, and then white again, and caught her husband by the arm, and moved her lips as if she wished to appear to be speaking to him, although she did not utter a word. Astraea looked full into her eyes. Had the young wife seen a spectre from the grave, she could not have been more effectually paralyzed. That look seemed to turn her to stone. Not a single expression of greeting took place between them. Upon the husband's part, the feeling was even less equivocal. There was a dark, scowling frown upon his face as we came up; he looked straight at us--and walked on. These _insouciant_ men, who take the world so indifferently on ordinary occasions, are always the most fierce when roused. They hate the trouble of being obliged to act with decision, and when compelled to do so, they cut it short by an energetic demonstration, that they may fall back the sooner upon their habitual lassitude.

We returned to our lodging with a clear sense of our position. Galled as I was on my own account, I felt it a hundred times more acutely on account of Astraea. Here was her young friend and enthusiastic disciple, who had always looked up to her with confidence and admiration, who had heard her story, and clung all the more lovingly and protectingly to her in pity for the unhappy circumstances in which she was placed, and this friend had now abandoned and disowned her!--a blow under which some women would have sunk at once, and which would have made others reckless and desperate. Upon Astraea it acted slowly and painfully. Externally it did not seem to affect her much; but I could perceive from that time a tendency to lapse into fits of silence, and a desire to be alone, which I had not noticed before. Whenever she alluded to her friend, she spoke of her as a weak person, who had never been remarkable for much character, with a kind heart and no understanding, and always carried away by the last speaker. Ascribing her inconsistency on this occasion to the influence of her husband, we agreed to dismiss the subject--not from our thoughts, that was impossible--but from our conversation. Astraea was bruised and hurt; and through all her efforts to conceal it, I saw that she suffered severely. It was the first touch she had directly experienced of the ice of the world's contumely, and it had struck in upon her heart.

A few days passed away, and we were reconciling ourselves by daily practice to the personal humiliation of passing and being passed in the streets by the friends with whom we had been recently on terms of absolutely hilarious alliance; when, on one occasion, on returning to our solitary lodging, we were received at the door by our obliging landlady in a manner which plainly showed that her opinion of us had undergone a most singular change during our absence. Her quiet, sleepy eyes scintillated with anger; her face was hot with excitement, and instead of the civility she had hitherto invariably shown us, she all at once broke out into a tirade which I will spare the reader the unpleasantness of hearing: there can be no difficulty in guessing what it was all about. This worthy woman had heard our history--falsified in detail, and blackened by the most venomous exaggeration; and being a very pure lodging-house keeper, standing upon the whiteness of her morals and her caps, and trusting much to the patronage of the rector, who allowed her to refer to him for the proprieties and respectabilities of her establishment, she thought that the best way to vindicate her own reputation was to assail ours in the most open and public manner. Accordingly, she took care that every word she said should be overheard by every body within reach, so that the whole neighborhood should know of her indignation, and report it to her friend the rector. There never was such a change in a woman; it was a saint turned into a demon. I demanded her authority for the injurious aspersions she cast upon us, and threatened her with a variety of tremendous, though exceedingly vague, legal consequences--but to no effect. She desired us to leave the house, and take our remedy; she would give us no satisfaction; she had good grounds for what she said; that was enough for her; she knew what "kind" we were; and a great deal more to the same purpose.