Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851

The course she took upon this subject gave me some uneasiness. I echoed in my own heart the question she so frequently started, but which I could never answer. Suppose he was dead? I could only suppose it; I could not follow the speculation any further. Astræa may have conjectured that all was mist and storm in my mind beyond that point, and was therefore indifferent about clearing up our present position. She thought it better to leave things as they were, than to open new sources of embarrassment—perhaps of sorrow and bitterness!

This was the main topic between us. We talked over it perpetually, and used to sit up long past midnight, weaving foolish webs of things that might never be, and unweaving things that had been, for the sake of fancying how differently we might have woven them had we had the threads from the first in our own hands! One night—a gusty, dry, cold night—while we were thus engaged, as usual, in a kind of waking dream over the fire, a sudden knock at the door startled the whole house. It was a very small house, or cottage, and the sound ran all up the little stairs, and seemed to enter bodily every one of the little rooms. It was a peremptory and nervous knock. The circumstance was extraordinary in itself, particularly at that hour; and before the owner of the house, who occupied the rooms below, could make up his mind to open the door, he thought it necessary to take my opinion and counsel on the subject.

"If it be for you, sir, what am I to say?" cried the man, looking a little pale and terrified.

"For me? That is very unlikely—very. But if it should be—"

"At home, of course," said Astræa. "If it be any body for us, show them up."

We listened anxiously, as the landlord went down stairs. Astræa was quite collected, and sat opposite the door of our apartment, so that whoever entered should see her at once. Presently the bolts were withdrawn, and the chain dropped—for in these small houses they adopted precautions in the winter season, when the poor, like the birds, were starved out, and are occasionally compelled to commit depredations for food. A stranger entered the hall. We heard the tramp of his boots, and could distinguish clearly that there was but one person. There was a flutter for a moment below, and then the stranger, following the landlord, ascended the stairs. The door opened, and a man, warmly muffled up, entered the room. We both rose. He looked at us for a moment—spoke to me by my name—but I recognized neither his features nor his voice. One fact, however, was obvious—he was not our Mephistophiles.

III

"You have forgotten me," said the stranger. "I am not surprised at it. Many years have elapsed, and great changes have happened since we parted."

I scrutinized him carefully. His voice awakened some dim associations, but nothing distinctly; and I could not recall where or when I had seen him before. At length, just as I had almost given it up, it burst upon me all at once.

"Forrester!" I exclaimed.

"You find me altered: but it is only in appearance. We all alter in time. I hope you will not think I have intruded unwarrantably upon you. The truth is—but"—and he turned hesitatingly toward Astræa, who was still standing, looking on, and wondering at the scene before her.

I finished the sentence for him by introducing him to her in a hurried way. It was the first time such a ceremony had taken place. I did not know how it was to be done exactly, and felt at a loss how to designate her. To escape the difficulty, I simply presented him, but did not repeat her name. The circumstance was trifling in itself, and proceeded, on my part, from delicacy, rather than any evasion of responsibility; but I thought Astræa, as she made a very formal courtesy to the stranger, looked hurt and angry. Slight things were beginning to jar upon her nerves; and it was not until I noticed the effect of this trivial action upon her, that I had the least suspicion she would have even noticed it.

Forrester was much altered. His face had grown thinner, and was bronzed all over; his figure had spread out, and become gaunt; and his voice had fallen into a low, husky tone, in which I could trace hardly a single reminiscence of those modulations in which he used to relate ghost stories, and other strange narratives, with such wonderful gusto and effect. The sight of him—seated there in a great cushioned chair by the fireside that winter's night, talking in his deep voice, brought back a flood of memories. A youth of mental sorcery and disordered passion—things inexplicable in themselves, and marvelous in their issues—returned upon me, bringing with them the awe and superstition of the old creed. It was like a piece of enchantment. I was living in that world of spirits over again; and as I observed Forrester stretch out his long, sharp fingers over the table, I could not help thinking that he was come on a mission from a potentate, whom people generally name with more terror than respect. Of course, I shook off these absurd fancies; and after a few general revelations on both sides, during which he told me that he had spent all the intervening years in wandering, chiefly in the East, and that he had found his way back to England only within the last two months, I inquired how he had discovered our retreat.

"I was anxious to see you again," he replied, "and having found and lost several traces of you in London, I went into the north, believing that there, at least, I should obtain some satisfactory tidings. Your agent knew me, and was, perhaps, more confidential with me than he would have been with others." He paused, as if he was not quite sure whether he ought to enter into particulars before Astræa. My only apprehension was, that he was about to make some allusion to former circumstances in which we had been mutually interested, and intimating to him by a sign, which he evidently understood, my desire to avoid all those matters, I requested him to continue his narrative.

"Pray go on," said I, assuming an appearance of the utmost candor; "we have no secrets from each other."

"He seemed to think that something had happened which rendered it necessary for you to keep out of London," Forrester resumed. "This first attracted my attention, and, being an idle man, I thought my services might be of some use to you. I had great difficulty in prevailing on him to give me your address, nor would he consent to give it until I had made some inquiries in certain quarters in town, which he indicated to me. He had strong suspicions that there was danger in those quarters; and the only inducement I could bribe him with was that I should ascertain whether his suspicions were well founded, in order that I might apprise you of the result. He would have done all this himself, but he was afraid you might think it a liberty."

"Well, my steward is certainly a shrewd fellow; but I can not imagine what inquiries he could have set you upon."

Forrester looked at me very earnestly. He had small gray eyes, and when he was moved by any strong feeling, the light that came into them conveyed it with most singular effect. At this moment, in his eyes and in his voice, there was an unmistakable expression of grief and compassion as he pronounced the name of the dwarf.

I confess I was startled at the sound. The mystery that had always hung over Forrester was darker than ever. He was utterly unlike all other men. Whatever subject or business he took an interest in, seemed to grow into solemn importance under his hands, and to acquire an unaccountable fascination from his connection with it. His attenuated figure, the habit of loneliness which imparted such severe and inflexible gravity to his features, his very dress, loose, careless, and slouching, all helped to give a peculiar force to his words. Had the Wandering Jew suddenly appeared before us, and mentioned the name of the dwarf, I could not have been more astonished. My steward was ignorant of my acquaintance with him, and Forrester had left England before it began. By what means, then, could Forrester have obtained a clew to him? It really looked like a stroke of diablerie.

"You knew him, then?" inquired Astræa, quite as much surprised as I was myself.

"I have known him many years," he returned.

"How very strange!" I observed. "This gentleman," I continued, turning to Astræa, "is a very old friend of mine. Long before I knew you, we were much together; at one time inseparable. Yet I never heard him speak of—did you know him then?" I inquired of Forrester.

"Yes, intimately. I was in his confidence. There is nothing surprising in that."

"Oh, no; only it does seem odd, that, in London, where there are so many hundreds of thousands of human beings, people should find so many common acquaintances in the crowd."

"We can generally trace the wonder to very natural causes, if we will only take the trouble to look into it. You made his acquaintance through a friend of mine—in fact, through me!"

It was so; and I had forgotten all about it. Forrester's knowledge of the dwarf was, therefore, antecedent to my own; and, curiously enough, it was my acquaintance with him that led to my introduction to the family. How very strangely these things seemed to come about, and to bring me back to the time when Forrester held my destiny in his power!—an age of exciting experiences, equal in emotion and reaction to a whole life-time, had passed in the interval, and here he was now returned suddenly, and sitting at my hearth, with the threads of my fate again in his hands!

I was all impatience to know whether the dwarf still lived, but was afraid to ask the question, or, rather, to betray my anxiety about it. Astræa, as usual, was more courageous.

"You have seen him, then? It was to him, I presume, the steward directed your inquiries?"

"Exactly so; but I must beg an indemnity for the man's zeal, if you think he did wrong in confiding his fears to me."

"These old servants," I replied, "will do things their own way. Pray go on. You saw him?"

"Yes, I saw him."

"How long since?"

"I left him only last night."

At these words, I took the liberty of indulging myself with a very long breath, which I certainly had not ventured upon since the beginning of this nervous conversation; and even Astræa, malgré her grand air of indifference, looked a little more at her ease.

"I will tell you every thing exactly as it happened. I came here to tell it to you, hoping I might be the means of rendering some service—at both sides. If I should say any thing painful to either, you must forgive me. My intention is not to inflict fresh wounds, but to heal old ones."

We assured him that we accepted his kindness as it was meant; and he then went on.

"Harley (that was the name of the steward) suspected that you had had a quarrel in that quarter; and in the course of some inquiries he had made, he discovered that your antagonist, as he supposed, had been shot, and his fears, following up this discovery, led him to apprehend nothing less than a criminal prosecution. Finding that I was personally acquainted with the gentleman, he entreated me to ascertain exactly how the case stood. I knew nothing more. Harley threw out some vague conjectures as to the cause of this supposed quarrel; but they were so very vague, that I thought it best to dismiss them from my mind altogether, and to obtain the information I sought from the principal himself. You must remember that I have not yet heard your version of the affair; and that I am now about to give you his.

"It is about a month since I first saw him. He was in a small room leading from his bedchamber, and was apparently suffering great pain. An extraordinary change had taken place in him since I had formerly known him. His person was emaciated almost to a skeleton, showing his angular and ungainly form at a distressing disadvantage. His face had withered away to a narrow point under the large bones of his head, which looked larger than ever, with his great shock hair starting out from it on all sides. The skin of his face had become crimped and yellow; but the most remarkable change of all was, that his hair, a dark auburn when I knew him, was quite silvery, not exactly white or gray, but gleaming all over. This gave him almost an unearthly appearance.

"The weather was cold, and pinched him; and after the first few words of recognition were over, he told me that the changes of the season affected him severely. A bullet was lodged somewhere in his shoulder, and the easterly winds always inflicted excruciating agonies upon him in consequence. This led to an inquiry as to how it happened, which brought out the whole narrative."

Forrester here entered into all the details, which were accurate enough in the main, only that they were drawn from the dwarf's point of sight, and colored by his own vehemence and malice. We constantly stopped Forrester, to set him right on particular points; and long before he had wound up the story, we found ourselves embroiled in assertions and rejoinders, which must have greatly bewildered him. Without wasting time over matters with which the reader is already acquainted, I will confine myself to the only new facts Forrester had to relate to us.

On the night when we had the rencontre with the little demon, the ball, as I apprehended, had struck him in the scuffle, and entering the fleshy part of the arm, had settled in the back. Crawling off in considerable pain, when he found that his appeal to Astræa was useless, and bleeding the whole way, he regained a carriage which was waiting for him at a little distance, and drove back to London. His intention was to return the next day; but loss of blood, agony of mind, prostration of strength, and physical pain rendered the journey impossible. For several days his life hung on a thread, and two or three months elapsed before he was able to move about the house. An awful change had passed over him in the mean while! It cost even Astræa some struggle to hide the shock which Forrester's description of his sufferings inflicted on her. Poor Astræa! she had need to shut her heart against pity, and to crush all tenderness out of her nature. This was her work—and mine! What would have become of her if she had allowed herself to look back upon it, and think, and feel? No, no; she dared not look there with a woman's eyes or a woman's heart. It would have killed her, had she felt it, and given way to it. And so she sat and listened, and looked cold and angry by turns, as if his miseries were an impertinence and a wrong to her; trying to take refuge against remorse in a great bravery of hate and contempt!

He related the whole history to Forrester who had been in his confidence about the marriage from the beginning. We had no suspicion of the inordinate love, suppressed, chafed, galled, and tortured into madness, he had borne to Astræa all through those years of malediction, during which he had exhausted every form of threat and appeal to enforce his rights. He had hoped on wildly to the last. He had watched the progress of my attachment to her, and had encouraged it under a frantic delusion, that the final detection of it would place her at his mercy. His mind had been so wrought upon by this terrible passion, and the plots and schemes he was forever weaving to win or ensnare her, that much of his conduct which had appeared to me monstrous and absurd, became susceptible of a sufficiently obvious solution.

He assigned as a reason for not having adopted legal means to compel the fulfillment of the contract, his fear of driving Astræa to extremities. He had always apprehended that the moment he adopted any step of that kind, she would make her escape from him; and his policy was to keep on terms with her, at all events, and by a system of small, perpetual persecution, to subjugate her at last.

And now that she was gone, and that she had put the world between them, what course did he intend to pursue? Implacable vengeance against me—peace and pardon for her! This unintelligible being, whose person was not more hideous than his mind, had yet in the depths of his nature one drop of sweetness that redeemed and made him human. This love had survived all hatreds and revenges; and now that hope was over, that its object never could soothe his agonies or reward his devotion, that even the sufferings he was undergoing on her account only rendered him more repulsive in her eyes, nothing but tenderness and forgiveness toward her remained, with the bitterest regrets and self-accusations for the wrongs he had done her and the issues to which he had forced her. How such a flower of noble and delicate feeling could have sprung up in such a soil was, indeed, inexplicable. But it is wonderful how a great sorrow purifies and strengthens the soul!

But for me? There was no clemency for me. The concentrated venom of his nature was reserved for a man who had robbed him of the miserable right of persecuting Astræa. Had I simply made her unhappy by awakening a passion in her heart, and then abandoning her upon the discovery of her situation (which was exactly what he appeared to have calculated upon), he would have forgiven me; he might have even been grateful to me for having humiliated her, and cast her helpless at his feet. But the crime I had committed in loving her too well to forsake her, admitted of no palliation. He could extract nothing out of it but vengeance. The sleepless hostility with which the Indian follows the trail of his foe, is not more vindictive and persevering than the feelings of hatred with which he coiled himself up for the spring which he was nursing all his strength to make upon me. He had not yet been able to get out of the house—but he was coming! No inducements, no arguments, founded on mercy or justice, could move him to sue for a dissolution of the marriage. He was determined to hold that horror over our heads, so that the vulture should tear our hearts, and shriek "despair!" in our ears forever and ever. He had the power in his own hands to embitter our whole lives, and could distill the last dregs of the poison that was to rack and madden us.

I did not expect any other sort of treatment from him. To me he was still the same crooked fiend he had ever been. So far as I was concerned, he was perfectly consistent; and although I secretly admired the relenting spirit he exhibited toward Astræa, recognizing in it the elements of a tenderness which circumstances had stunted, as nature had stunted his person, I could not help feeling that his malice, now that it could avail him nothing except the gratification of a wanton revenge, fully justified henceforth any reprisals opportunity might enable me to make. It plucked out all commiseration, and obliterated the injury (if injury there were) of which he complained.

It seemed to me, that of all three it was I who had the greatest reason to complain. Ignorant of the existence of his claim upon Astræa, and meeting her as a free agent, I had formed this attachment, and won her love before I became acquainted with the position in which she was placed. What right had he to complain, if, having kept his rights hidden from the world, he found me unknowingly trespassing upon them? The law might certainly hold me responsible, but moral claim upon me I felt he had none.

We eagerly inquired of Forrester as to the nature of the terrible retribution he intended to exact; but there Forrester could give us no information. Mephistophiles was impenetrable on that subject; and all that could be exacted from him was, that he would have a reckoning with us at his own time, and in his own way. Forrester, who knew his nature well, inferred from the vehemence of his expression that this reckoning would be carried out in a spirit of calm, demoniacal revenge, against which it would be impossible to set up any safeguards; and that, if we could not, by a legal separation, place Astræa under the protection of the laws, the only course that remained, as a measure of security, was to leave the kingdom. It was, in fact, to warn us of our danger, and to give us this friendly advice, that he had sought us out.

Astræa agreed with Forrester in his view of the dwarf's character, and was equally persuaded that whatever plan of vengeance he adopted, would be marked by subtlety and perseverance. But she was by no means disposed to fly from the danger. On the contrary, she thought it advisable to confront it, and ascertain the worst at once. What had we to fear? Personal violence was out of the question. He would never bring his own life into jeopardy by attempting ours. She believed he was quite capable of the most dastardly and treacherous crime; but she thought he was too cunning, cautious, and selfish, to contemplate a mode of revenge which could not be accomplished without risk to himself. In any case, however, she was clearly convinced that the best plan was to go boldly upon him at once. It was like taking the sting out of a nettle, by grasping it suddenly. She thought he would shrink from publicity; and that if we refused to give him a struggle in the dark, we should effectually baffle him.

There was much reason in this argument. Men like our dwarf always avoid direct collisions when they can. They fight at a disadvantage unless they are permitted to use their own weapons and their own tactics. On the other hand, there was a serious objection to this mode of proceeding. In her passionate aversion to the dwarf, and her eagerness to publish her defiance and contempt of him, Astræa had overlooked the peculiarities of our situation, unconscious of the way in which the world would be likely to regard an open demonstration such as she recommended. She had not yet acquired the full flavor of that obloquy which waits upon those who outrage social conventions; scarcely a soupçon of its bitterness had troubled her palate!

But Forrester and I had seen and experienced too much of human life not to distrust the policy of flying in the face of society. We knew that the recoil would strike us down. A middle course was, therefore, hit upon, and finally adopted. It was agreed that Forrester should go back to London, for the purpose of seeing the dwarf again, armed with authority from us to open a negotiation for a divorce—thus, at least, showing that we were ready to meet all the legal consequences of our act, and throwing upon him the consequences of a refusal.

Long after midnight we sat discussing these questions, and were forcibly impressed throughout by the quiet earnestness with which Forrester entered into our feelings. He was the only friend we had—the only one that had come to us in the season of darkness and trouble, and we clung to him wildly in our loneliness.

The next day he went back to London, promising to return within two days. It seemed to us that those two days lasted a month. At length they passed away, but Forrester had not returned. A third and a fourth day passed, and our impatience became intolerable. Morning and night we watched in agonizing suspense; but the sun rose and set, and still Forrester had not returned.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

SOMNAMBULISM

THAT a person deeply immersed in thought, should, like Dominie Sampson, walk along in a state of "prodigious" unconsciousness, excites no surprise, from the frequency of the occurrence; but that any one should, when fast asleep, go through a series of complicated actions which seem to demand the assistance of the senses while closed against ordinary external impressions is, indeed, marvelous. Less to account for this mysterious state of being, than to arrange such a series of facts as may help further inquiry into the subject, we have assembled several curious circumstances regarding somnambulism.

Not many years ago a case occurred at the Police-office at Southwark, of a woman who was charged with robbing a man while he was walking in his sleep during the daytime along High-street, in the Borough, when it was proved in evidence that he was in the habit of walking in his somnambulic fits through crowded thoroughfares. He was a plasterer by trade, and it was stated in court that it was not an uncommon thing for him to fall asleep while at work on the scaffold, yet he never met with any accident, and would answer questions put to him as if he were awake. In like manner, we are informed that Dr. Haycock, the Professor of Medicine at Oxford, would, in a fit of somnambulism, preach an eloquent discourse; and some of the sermons of a lady who was in the habit of preaching in her sleep have been deemed worthy of publication.