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 Astræa persisted in repudiating. Whatever verdict society might choose to pronounce, Astræa 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 Astræa. 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.
Astræa'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.