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

Bess, without a word, shook the crumbs from her lap, and was turning into the house, when he witholds her a minute in a perfectly altered fashion, saying, "There be some works, mistress, our confessors tell us be works of supererogation … is not that ye word? I learn a long one now and then … such as be setting food before a full man, or singing to a deaf one, or buying for one's pigs a silver trough, or, for the matter of that, casting pearls before a dunghill cock, or fishing for a heron, which is well able to fish for itself, and is an ill-natured bird after all, that pecks the hand of his mistress, and, for all her kindness to him, will not think of Bessy More."

How apt alle are to abuse unlimited license? Yet 'twas good counsel.

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.—AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.10

PART THE THIRD—NIGHT

I

THE whole color of my life was changed in a single night. Years of excitement could not have wrought such a miracle upon me. The next day, I seemed to have passed out of my former self into a new individual and a new state of existence. I was no longer alone! I was no longer drifting about, aimless and dreamy. There was work for me to do, and the interest I had in it was vivid and engrossing.

What had become of the dwarf? Not a trace of him was to be found. I examined the grass, and fancied I could detect two or three dark spots; but there had been heavy showers in the night, and as the mould had been thrown up here and there, discoloring the verdure, I could not determine whether these spots were blood-marks, as I feared, or the mere beating of rain and mire. But I did not trouble myself any further. Our persecutor was gone. That was all we cared to be assured of; and our next step was to escape from a place in which it was no longer safe for us to remain.

That mournful voice was still in my ears; but the consciousness of danger, the sense of triumph, the selfishness of happiness, out-clamored it! Destined as it was to return in after-years in tones that always seemed more piteous and more laden with pain and bitterness as that miserable night receded further and further back into the darkness of the past, it came upon me the next morning with something of a feeling of asperity and antagonism. There was yet the risk that the dwarf might re-appear, and as every thing concerning his rights and his probable mode of proceeding was vague and uncertain, we were much more occupied in thinking of our own security, than of his sufferings or wrongs. Indeed, under the influence of the feelings that actuated us then, we were strongly impressed with the conviction that the wrongs were all on our side, and that whatever he might have suffered, was nothing more than a measure of just punishment for having inflicted them.

People who do a wrong seldom have any difficulty in finding out excuses and justifications for it. We certainly had abundant ground to complain of the conduct of poor Mephistophiles. We were not aware that in those moments of irritation and revenge we exaggerated his faults, and palliated our own. We could see every thing he had done that was harsh, or disagreeable, or unjust; we could see nothing we had done ourselves that was not forced upon us in self-defense, and capable of vindication. We had acted all throughout, upon a necessity he had woven round us like a net. We were, in fact, the victims, and he was the cool, crafty, heartless tempter and persecutor. We did all we could to forget the brief gleam of humanity he had betrayed the evening before. What was that, weighed against years of oppression and cruelty? And even if we were inclined to admit that it showed his character in rather a better light, it came too late to be entitled to any consideration from us. If he had been capable of such manly feelings, why did he not exhibit them sooner? But the truth was, we affected not to believe in the genuineness of his emotions. He was such an habitual mimic, that he could assume any mood that suited the occasion, and nobody could tell whether he was in earnest or not, which warranted us in supposing that the whole of that wild burst of passionate reproaches, apparently welling up out of baffled and imploring love, might have been put on like any other piece of cunning gesticulation.

I was quite willing to believe that the deep and harrowing emotion he exhibited was mere acting, or at least a passing spasm of wounded vanity, or even of love in its dying throes. It was comfortable to suppose that he had endeavored to impose upon me to the last, to gull and outrage me. I wanted some such apology to myself for hating him, with that heart-rending cry rising up out of the earth, and ascending in accents of unutterable grief to heaven! It was needful that I should hate and despise him during the first few hours of that violent transition which was to alter the whole face of things, and project me into a new life, in which occupation and intercourse were to be displaced by lonely wanderings and the isolation of the heart. It was needful that I should have some strong sophism to bridge over the gulf that was henceforth to yawn between me and mankind; and I felt that this detestation of the dwarf was a link that still connected me with the world I had forsaken.

I had not courage enough to attempt to do any justice to him. I did not dare to imagine what his agonies must have been, if, indeed, he still lived. I was plumed with conquest: he was crushed. I could only fancy him crawling, bleeding, and straining himself along the earth, to creep away and hide himself, and leave me to my happiness. But to relieve this image of its appealing claims upon my pity or remorse, to arm myself against a possibility of relenting, I associated this figure of the wretch groveling out of sight with all that was venomous and treacherous in the nature of reptiles. I refused to consider him human. Had I dared to look into his heart—now that the wretch's last hope was extinct—to gaze upon the misery which filled it to overflowing, if, indeed, he were not dead, and his heart broken, how could I have held my head erect, and looked into Astræa's face with eyes that rained joy, and pride, and exultation into hers?

Some sorts of happiness are essentially cruel and selfish. Such was hers—such was mine. We knew it; yet, although our natures were not originally hard or narrow, we would not suffer ourselves to be generous even in our thoughts toward him we had wronged. We were afraid to trust our feelings in that direction.

Few questions passed between us that morning. We knew by instinct what was before us, and what it was necessary for each of us to do. We had a mutual terror that he was dead, but we did not give it utterance; there was no need. We knew that the same fear was in both our minds, and we tried to avoid it. We imagined that we ought to be very cheerful, and banish all gloomy and distressing subjects. It was a kind of hymeneal day with us! There were wild altars in our thoughts, hung with garlands, and lighted up by sunshine; and to these we brought our vows and offerings, and all the mirth and gayety, without much speech, we could summon into our looks. There was a visible effort in all this at both sides; but notwithstanding the ghastly hand, smeared with blood, that seemed every now and then to come out of the darkness of the night, and hold us back, our jubilee rode out the day valiantly.

Astræa did not go to the windows. This was not from an apprehension of any thing she should see, but from a nervous aversion of the light, which strangely affected her that morning. She kept her rooms darkened, and busied herself over her preparations for departure. We hardly exchanged a single word on the subject; yet both felt how imperative it was to fly from that house. And flight it was; not mere traveling for ease or pleasure. How rapidly we got through our task-work, and what vivacity there was in our eyes and fingers! It was the eagerness to get away, as if all our joys lay before us, and at a distance from that place, which gave such activity to our motions. At a hasty glance it might be supposed we were merrily occupied, there was so much alacrity in the bustle we made; but the bent and silent heads offered a strange contradiction to the busy hands.

At last the moment came when we were to take our departure. A thrill of terror shot through our veins, as a close post-chaise, sweeping through the trees, stopped suddenly at the door, where we stood in the shadow of the portico, with our cases and boxes waiting for its arrival. The good people of the house, somewhat alarmed, and hardly knowing what construction to put upon this sudden movement, which they connected vaguely with the mysteries of the night before, were dotted about the gravel-walk and under the trees; two very old people and two or three grandchildren, looking up helplessly at us, with a bewildering wonder in their open mouths, which, under any other circumstances, might have amused us; but we were not in a mood to appreciate points of humor. Terror, shapeless and oppressive, shook us both to the core as I handed Astræa into the post-chaise, and, hastily following her, closed the door—leaving the windows open, that we might breathe freely, and see every object distinctly around us, and in advance of us.

There was a desperate exultation in that moment, too!—a riotous sense of fierce happiness! I was carrying away Astræa from the whole world! Astræa was giving up the whole world for me! My heart beat loudly, and poured its palpitating blood into my throbbing temples. The postillion cracked his whip, and the panting horses started off with a plunge, as if they would tear up the earth. We turned to each other—our faces were lighted up with a flash of rapture—I clasped her hands in mine, and showered a hundred burning kisses upon them; and when we cleared the little valley, and felt the fresh breeze of the cool uplands upon our cheeks, we thought that, from the days of the first innocence in the garden of Eden to that hour, no two people ever loved each other so passionately, or were ever so profoundly happy!

II

The first hour of accomplished love is, perhaps, the only passage in a man's life with which he is perfectly satisfied. It is the only reality that does not disappoint the dream of expectation. There is no region of speculation beyond it—its horizon bounds his world—its present engulfs his past and his future. In all other circumstances, it is true that—

Man never is, but always to be, blest;

but here the aphorism is falsified. In this brief hour, the lover is so thoroughly "blest" as to have but one desire left—that it should last forever! Clouds, surcharged with tears that will not flow, gather into our eyes as we look back upon these memories.

What we both wanted was oblivion. We were anxious to forget every thing, except the perilous delight we had borne, like a burning brand, out of that dark struggle. We had the oblivion we desired—for a time. All other considerations were absorbed in ourselves. The scenes and the people with whom we had been mixed up, and the incidents that had driven us out from among them, entered no more into our conversation than if they had never existed. We felt that we had given up the old life, and had begun a new one, and that an effort was necessary to strengthen ourselves against any suggestions of pity or remorse that might point toward the waste and ashes we had left behind us. We felt, too, that those efforts hardened us; but people who harden themselves for each other's sake against the rest of the world, have a great faith in their own sensibility while the process of hardening is going on. They even believe that the more callous they become, and the more completely they isolate their sympathies, the more tenderness they are capable of developing to each other. It is like people who bar up their doors and windows to enjoy themselves by themselves, forgetting that all genial and healthy elements and influences—light, sunshine, air—are diffusive and universal.

I took precautions to avoid the danger of being tracked. I knew not what I had to dread—what shapes of revenge or retribution might follow me; but whether law or vengeance, it was equally necessary, at least while blood on both sides was hot, to cut off all pursuit. Dismissing the post-chaise outside Dover, we walked into the town, having sent our luggage forward by a different conveyance. I urged upon Astræa the necessity of avoiding public places at present—that we should not be seen on the drive or the esplanade—that, in short, we ought to keep as much is possible in obscurity. The color mounted into her cheeks as I spoke to her, and heavy rolling clouds seemed to course ever her face. It was early to open the book of fate for omens of the future! She had never thought of this before. The actual details and humiliations of the Pariah's life had never presented themselves to her; and this unexpected suggestion of the ban that shut us out from the open daylight of the world around us, fell heavily upon her. It was the first blush of shame! But shaking off her rich tresses, which in the heat and flurry had fallen down over her shoulders, she looked up at me, and laughed—a brave laugh, that chilled me to the heart.

Passing out of Dover in a carriage which we hired at the further end of the town, we made our way in the haze of the evening toward a scattered village on the coast near Walmer Castle. Here we established ourselves, quite secure from interruption, and with ample opportunity, in the way of leisure, to reflect upon our situation, and strike out permanent plans for the future.

Leisure it was, most rare and ethereal! We had nothing on earth to do but to walk out, and walk in again, and look at each other all day long. The interminable stretches of strand we paced, hour after hour; the old wooden huts on the beach, white as silver, that the sea used to beat against every day, leaving little crests of foam in the hollows between them, to glisten there for a moment, till the sand sucked them up; the row of marine cottages, with pea-green shutters, and small gardens in front, boxed up with tarred railings, and cut in the centre by a single walk, strewn all over with the dust and fragments of shells; the single bathing-machine that served the whole village, and seemed even too much for it, and that looked as if it had never moved out of the one spot, with its rusty wheels half buried in the drift of gravel and sea-weed—all such little unchangeable items of that marvelous leisure are strongly impressed upon me. It would have been very dreary if we had not had something in ourselves to fall back upon; and as long as that lasted, we bore up against the flatness and sameness of our lives. The sea, of all things, grows heavy and wearing to people whose constitutions are not capable of drinking in health and elasticity from its exhilarating breezes. There is nothing so monotonous as the wailing and lashing sea, especially in the night time, when darkness covers it, and its presence is announced only by that eternal surging and moaning of the waters which strike upon the invalided fancy like the cries of suffering spirits. The seaboard population on the coast of Brittany have an ocean superstition which exactly answers to this interpretation of the peculiar melancholy of the waves, soughing and pining along the beach at night.

We liked this solitude at first. It left us entirely to ourselves, which was precisely the ideal life we had yearned for. The same objects every day in our walks—the same objects every moment to look out upon from our windows—the same faces, few or none, on the desolate sands—the very same sky, with hardly any variation, although the slightest fluctuation in the points of the wind, or the current of the clouds, produced a sensation! It suited us at first, for we had no space in our thoughts for external objects, and the total absence of all excitement threw us more in upon ourselves. But even then it was sad. Such days of idleness—such idle dalliance—such a happy negation of all action and effort! How long was this to last? or rather, how long could such a life last for two people who felt within themselves aspirations for movement and results of some kind?

Although we hid ourselves in this retirement for several months, I did not consider it necessary to adopt the further security of changing my name. I yielded to the prudence of avoiding a collision with the dwarf, if he still lived; but I shrank from the meanness of denying myself to any demand that might be made upon us, should my retreat be discovered. All links between us and London were broken. For three months, Astræa had had no communication with any body. Her friends and relations might have supposed that she was dead, which she wished them to think. She knew that she was dead to the world, and that she should never re-enter it; and she only looked forward to the moment when she might put her house in order, and sit down for the rest of her life in tranquillity and obscurity. In the beginning, this was a gladdening prospect to her; her high spirits and bounding enthusiasm sped onward into the future, and filled it with images of love in a state of beatitude; but as time advanced, and the dreary sea fell dismally on her ears, and the long walks on the beach had lost their freshness, and there was nothing to be read in each others' faces, which had not been read there ten thousand times over—except, perhaps, an increasing look of care and anxiety—this prospect of settling down, alone, away from human intercourse, without any object to live for, without motives to exertion—without aims, purpose, occupation—with a brand upon us that seemed stamped upon our foreheads, so that we dared not venture into the haunts of our fellow-men, lest they should shun us or expel us from among them—this prospect, as time advanced, grew darker and darker, and Astræa, still buoyant and energetic, and strong in her resolves, relinquished slowly the charming pictures she had drawn in her imagination, and came down to the most prosaic views of our position, tinged from day to day with tints that grew more and more sombre. The bright colors of the poetry had all faded.

With the agent of my property in the north I was in constant correspondence. To him alone I confided my address, and through him received all letters and communications that were left for me in London or elsewhere. Strange to say, that for three months no intelligence reached us concerning the dwarf; nor had I any means of procuring information, unless I intrusted my agent with my secret, which I considered unsafe. I was unwilling to originate any inquiry on the subject. It was for him to seek me, not for me to follow him. He could have had no difficulty in reaching me by a letter, and his silence seemed to imply either that he had abandoned all further thoughts of revenge, or, which was more likely, that he was dead.

As the days shortened into winter, and the howling winds came early in the evenings, and drove us home a dreary hour or two before dinner, to get through the interval as well as we could by the fireside, our reserve on personal matters gradually wore off, and it became a relief to us to talk freely upon the topics which we had hitherto been reluctant to approach. These wintry conversations, leading to nothing, yet wonderfully animated by bitterness of spirit, showed the change that Astræa's character was undergoing. She was more easily chafed by contradiction than she used to be, and dwelt more upon words, and small points, and trifles which formerly she would have hurried over with indifference; conversation degenerated, I could hardly tell how, into discussion; and notwithstanding the ascendency and elevation of her language and her manner, I could see that there was less real strength behind, and that beneath the calmness which still sat loftily upon her, there was much secret and repressed agitation. Sometimes she presented to me the idea of a woman who was sustaining an habitual expression of command and self-possession by the mere energy of her will, and who, when that failed her, would break down at once, and be shattered, like a vase, in the fall.

The winter was deepening round us, and drifting gales ran shudderingly along the bleak strand, and rising over the waters, lashed them into fury, till they broke upon the ears like distant thunder. Sometimes there was an epic grandeur in these scenes, when a rush of black clouds, descending upon the sea, blotted out its mighty palpitations, burying it, and the masses that floated on its surface, under one vast pall, which hung there like a curtain, till the lightning rent it open and disclosed an horizon of fire. But these occasional changes, although they imparted a little variety to the out-of-door scene, only helped to make our in-door life more triste, by shutting us up half the day in the house.

The seasons are all-important to two people who are living apart from the world. It is surprising how much depends upon their fluctuations—how the temper, the health, the desire of life and capacity of enjoyment, are affected by the aspect of the morning, the turn of the day at noon, the intermittent shower, the shifting of the wind, the cold, the heat. When people are occupied, these things have little influence upon them, and very often none at all. But to the listless and idle—especially when they are constrained into idleness against their inclinations—the slightest incident that breaks the dull monotony of the day is magnified into an event.

What were we to do in these short, dismal days, and long, shivering nights? Books? Newspapers? We had both, and tired of them. The power of abstraction necessary for the enjoyment of books was no longer at our command. We could not abstract ourselves from our own thoughts to enter into the political controversies of history, or the fictitious sorrows of the novel or romance. The newspaper had some attraction at first. We looked out for the names of people we knew. Births, marriages, and deaths, which, I believe, I had never read in my life before, were now explored with breathless curiosity. But week by week, and month by month, our curiosity diminished; and as we became more and more divorced from society, and our personal interest in it fell away, the newspaper lost its charm. It lay sometimes untouched upon the table. Astræa relinquished it first; and although I dawdled over it every day out of sheer inanition, it only yielded me a sort of excuse for silence. Astræa saw that I used it as a refuge against a tête-à-tête after breakfast, and had the good sense to provide herself with other occupations, so that she should not seem to be deserted for the newspaper!

This was all very well in the morning. But when the rapid darkness fell, and evening and night came, how was time to be filled? It was not always pleasant to sit listening to the savage roar of the waters across the high road in front of our windows, or to watch the flickering of the lights, or the ripple of the curtain, as the wind, forcing its way into the house in spite of all precautions, exhibited a special curiosity to investigate every cranny of our small apartment. We had no resource but to talk. Reading, as a habit, under such circumstances, with a fear and doubt upon our minds, which had latterly grown terribly alarming, from the interval of time that had elapsed without one word to clear up the mystery that haunted us, would have driven us mad. We were compelled to turn to each other, and talk in those dismal winter nights; and as the one subject was insensibly acquiring a monopoly of our thoughts, we could not help constantly reverting to it. At last we brooded so much over it, that, whatever subject we began upon, we were sure to drop into and end with that.

It was natural we should be much occupied with a matter which concerned us so deeply. Five months had now passed away since the night we last saw the dwarf, and we had a right to suppose that, if he still lived, his vengeance was not idle. Yet we had never heard of him, although, had he taken any steps to trace us, they must have reached me through the channel by which all other communications were conveyed to me. Had he abandoned the revenge he had threatened us with, or were all animosities between us discharged in the grave? My belief was, that he was dead—judging partly from his wound, and the dreadful excitement he had undergone, which was not unlikely to prove fatal to a frame so liable to snap from any violent action. Astræa thought otherwise: she was convinced that he still lived, and that he was cherishing some subtle scheme to destroy us. She said that she knew him better than I did, and over and over again cautioned me to be upon my guard. I urged the necessity of endeavoring to obtain the requisite information, to set our doubts at rest, and proposed to go to London privately for the purpose. But Astræa strongly resisted that proceeding. She did not care to obtain any information. How would it help us? Suppose he was dead?