The day was calm and breathless. Scarcely a leaf stirred in the trees, and the long shadows slept without a ruffle on the turf. The stillness of the place contrasted strangely with the tempest of emotions that was raging in my heart. I longed to get into the air. I felt the house stifling, and thought that I should breathe more freely among the branches of the little wood that looked so green and cool down by the margin of the stream. There was a rustic seat there under a canopy of drooping boughs, close upon the water and the bridge, where we could enjoy the luxury of perfect solitude. Requesting her to follow me, I went alone into the wood.
The interval seemed to me long before she came; and when she did come, she was paler and more agitated than before. I tried to give her confidence by repeated protestations of my devotion; and as she seemed to gather courage from the earnestness of my language, I again and again renewed the pledges which bound me to her, at any risk our position might demand.
"It is that," she exclaimed, "which gives me hope and comfort. You have had time to reflect on these pledges, and weigh the consequences they involve, and you now repeat them to me with an ardor which I should do you a great wrong to doubt. I entirely trust to you. If I am deceived, I will try still to be just, and hardly blame you so much as the world, which few men can relinquish for love."
There was a pause, during which she gradually recovered her self-composure. I felt that these expressions gave me a nobler motive for surrendering every thing for her sake. She seemed to make me a hero by the penalties my devotion enforced upon me; and I was eager to prove myself capable of the most heroic sacrifices. In the abyss of an overwhelming passion, where reason is imprisoned by the senses, every man is willing to be a martyr.
"You have required of me, Astræa," said I, "no, not required; but you have placed before me the possibility of sufferings and trials resulting from our union—loss of friends, the surrender of many things that enter into the ordinary scheme of married life, and that are considered by the world indispensable to its happiness. I am ready to relinquish them all. I have looked for this end. I know not why it should be so, nor does it give me a moment's concern. I only know that I love you passionately, and that life is desolation to me without you. Let us therefore have no further delay. All impediments are now out of our path. We have our destinies in our own hands. Let us knit them into one, and disappoint the scandal and malignity which, from that hour, can exercise no further influence over us."
"You spoke," returned Astræa, looking with a calm, clear gaze into my face, as if she penetrated my soul, "you spoke of married life."
The question surprised me. It was her look more than her words that conveyed a meaning, indistinct, but full of terrible suggestions. It was a key to a thousand painful conjectures, which flashed upon me in an instant, leaving confusion and giddiness behind, and nothing certain but the fear of what was to follow. I could not answer her; or, rather, did not know how to answer her, and merely tried to reassure her with a smile, which I felt was hollow and unnatural.
"One word," she proceeded, in the same tone, "must dispel that dream forever. It is not for us that serene life you speak of. It is not for me. Our destinies, if they be knit together, must be cemented by our own hands, not at the altar in the church, but in the sight of heaven—a bond more solemn, and imposing a more sacred obligation."
I will not attempt to describe the effect of these expressions. A cold dew crept over my body, and I felt as if a paralysis had struck my senses. Yet at the same moment, and while she was speaking so quietly and deliberately, and uttering words, under the heavy weight of which the fabric I had reared in my imagination crumbled down, and fell with a crash that smote my brain—a crowd of memories came upon me—isolated words and gestures, the dark allusions of the dwarf, and the warnings of Astræa herself—a crowd of things that were all dark before were now lighted up. As the stream of electricity flies along the chain, traversing link after link and mile after mile, with a rapidity that baffles calculation, so my thoughts flashed over every incident of the past. I now understood it all—the mystery that lay buried in Astræa's words and abstractions—the vacant heart—the hope that looked out from her eyes, and then fled back to be quenched in silent despair—her yearnings for solitude and repose—the devotional spirit that, blighted in the world, and condemned to be shut out from seeking happiness in social conventions, had fallen back upon its own lonely strength, and made to itself a faith of passion! It was all plain to me now. But there were explanations yet to come.
"Astræa!" I cried, hoarsely, and I felt the echoes of the name moaning through the trees. "Astræa! What is the meaning of these dreadful words? Have you not pledged your faith to me?"