“Do not deceive Perkins—do not let the assurances of my mother deceive you. She does not know me. I can not and will not marry you. I will sooner marry the grave—the winding-sheet—the worm!”
Her strength failed her the moment he left the apartment. She sank in a fainting-fit upon the floor, and was thus saved from hearing the bitter abuse which her miserable and misguided parent continued to lavish upon her, even while undertaking the task of her restoration. The evident exhaustion of her frame, her increasing feebleness, the agony of her mind, and the possibly fatal termination of her indisposition, did not in the least serve to modify the violent and vexing mood of this most unnatural woman!
CHAPTER XII. — “GONE TO BE MARRIED.”
These proceedings, the tenor of which was briefly communicated to me in a hurried note from Julia, despatched by the hands of the physician, under a cover, to the friendly aunt, rendered it imperatively necessary that, whatever we proposed to do should be done quickly, if we entertained any hope to save.
The tone of her epistle alarmed me exceedingly in one respect, as it evidently showed that she could not much longer save herself. Her courage was sinking with her spirits, which were yielding rapidly beneath the continued presence of that persecution which had so long been acting upon her. She began now to distrust her own strength—her very powers of utterance to declare her aversion to the proposed marriage, if ever the trial was brought to the threatened issue before the holy man.
“What am I to do—what say—” demanded her trembling epistle, “should they go so far? Am I to declare the truth?—can I tell to strange ears that it is my mother who forces this cruel sacrifice upon me? I dread I can not. I fear that my soul and voice will equally fail me. I tremble, dear Edward, when I think that the awful moment may find me speechless, and my consent may be assumed from my silence. Save me from this trial, dearest Edward; for I fear everything now—and fear myself—my unhappy weakness of nerve and spirit more than all. Do not leave me to this trial of my strength—for I have none. Save me if you can!”
It may be readily believed that I needed little soliciting to exertion after this. The words of this letter occasioned an alarm in my mind, little less—though of a different kind—than that which prevailed in hers. I knew the weakness of hers—I knew hers—and felt the apprehension that she might fail at the proper moment, even more vividly than she expressed it.
This letter did not take me by surprise. Before it was received, and soon after the first with which she had favored me, by the hands of the friendly physician, I had begun my preparations with the view to our clandestine marriage. I was only now required to quicken them. The obstacle, on the face of it, was, comparatively, a small one. To get her from a dwelling, in which, though her steps were watched, she was not exactly a prisoner, was scarcely a difficulty, where the lover and the lady are equally willing.