Notwithstanding the courage with which she set herself against the waters that were visibly closing round us on all sides, and the light, yet earnest and fearful way she talked about it, her health was rapidly declining. Her color was gone. She was growing thin; there was a slight cough hovering upon her nerves; and she had become so fanciful, that she could not bear to go out in the dusk of the evenings, although that was the only time when we could walk out at our ease.
These changes brought others. Her temper was altered; she tried to subjugate herself, but could not; a notion seemed to have taken possession of her that she was a weight upon me, and that the necessity of sharing disgrace and exclusion with her was preying upon my mind.
In the first few months she was jealous of every hour I was absent from her, and used to consider it a slight, and a proof that I was becoming weary of her. Then all was new, and the gloss of novelty and enthusiasm was yet upon her feelings. Now it was totally different; she had no longer any care about herself; it was all for me. The dream of love had been dreamed out, and she had ceased to regard herself as the object of a devotion which was ready to incur shame and suffering for her sake. She had seen that delusion to an end; and, having a real fear that, being pent up continually with her, contracting the man's activity within the sphere of the woman's limited range, would make our way of life hateful to me at last, she now used to urge me to go out for long walks in the country, or to visit the reading-rooms, and keep myself au courant with the events of the day. Exercise, mental and physical, was healthful for me, and she would not have me moped to death in the house. For her own part, she would say to me, she rather liked having a little time to herself; a woman has always something to do, and is never at a loss for occupation; and while I was out, she hardly missed me till I came back—she was so busy! These professions and entreaties were kindly and judiciously meant, but the difficulty was to act upon them. She could not endure solitude. She always dreaded to be left alone, and, only that it was a greater dread to her to make a prisoner of me at the risk of rendering my existence wretched, nothing could have induced her to go through the hours of misery she suffered in my absence. This conflict made her temper unequal and sometimes unreasonable; but in such a situation, what else could be expected? We were haunted by shadows that were forever falling about our path; move where we would, these dark phantoms pursued us.
Our lives were not like the lives of other people: we had no kindred, no associations, no stir in the sad stagnation of day and night. Time seemed to be mantling over us, and the breath of heaven to be becoming less and less perceptible in our dreariness. Astræa was like a person who was dying from the heart; and with all the fortitude I could bring to my help, I felt it no easy task to lift myself out of the dismal depression which occasionally seized upon me. At last we agreed that our scheme of traveling about had disappointed our expectations, and that, after all, London was the best of all places for people who sought either of the extremes of society or seclusion. And so to London we forthwith repaired.
VII.
The heart of the town, or the suburbs? The question was speedily decided in favor of a small detached house, not very far from the Regent's Park. We had the whole park for a pleasure-ground, a little scrap of verdure of our own, and an open space and airy situation to regale our lungs in. We entered upon our new locality with sensations of security we had felt nowhere else. We seemed to have left behind us the
gloom and terror that had been so long dogging our footsteps. Even Astræa brightened, and grew better; her fretfulness was disappearing, and a tone of contentment and cheerfulness supervening upon it. We were each of us more free in our movements, and the dread of observation which had so long kept us in a state of perpetual alarm, was gradually passing away.
But what had become all this time of the vengeance of the dwarf? Had he abandoned his great plan of revenge? Had he thought better of it, and, finding that Astræa was immovable, addressed himself to some more sensible pursuit than that of plaguing us? I sometimes touched upon the subject to Astræa, but could not extract from her what her suspicions were. She did not like to talk about him. She seemed to be ruled by a superstitious fear of reviving the topic. It was like the old wives' adage, "Talk of the devil, and he'll appear!"
I can not exactly remember how long this lasted, or when it was that I first detected in Astræa the return of the nervousness which had in some degree abated upon our arrival in town. It could not, however, have been more than two or three months after we had taken this house, that I observed a striking change in her. Haggard lines seemed all of a sudden to have been plowed round her eyes and cheeks, and her look had become wild and unsettled. I never saw any body so completely shattered in so short a time, and the transition from comparative tranquillity to a state of excessive nervous excitement was so alarming, that I thought there must have been some cause for it beyond that of mere physical illness. I questioned her upon it, but always got the same unsatisfactory answers, ending by entreating of me not to notice her, but to let her go on in her own way. I can not recall what there was about her manner—some strangeness in the way she looked at me or spoke to me—that aroused the most painful suspicions. I confess I did not know what to suspect; but there was a mental reservation of some kind, and I was resolved to ascertain what it was. I had the utmost confidence in Astræa; love with her was the most sacred of all obligations; and she loved me sincerely—at least, she had loved me enthusiastically in the beginning. What revolutions had since taken place in her heart, I could not answer for. She had passed through a chaos in the interval that might have destroyed the capacity of loving. That there was something more in her thoughts than she had revealed, I felt sure; and the first shape my suspicions took—natural enough in our circumstances, although not the more just on that account—was a shape of jealousy. My alarm immediately flew to the defense of my pride, or, as Forrester in his cauterizing way would have called it, my selfishness; I resolved to observe her closely, and I did so some time without being able to glean any thing further.
At last the secret of her wasting frame and pallid face was suddenly divulged.