Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

A single glance at the boxed-up "bar," and the honest round face, with a skin-cap over it, that gaped at me behind a complete breastwork of pewter and glass, awakened me from the state of reverie in which I had entered the house. I dare say I looked rather bewildered, like a man just shaking off a fit of abstraction, for the honest round face immediately started out of the chair which served as a socket for the body to which it belonged, and without waiting to hear me ask any questions, instantly proposed to conduct me to the gentleman up-stairs, who had been for some time expecting my arrival.

I found Forrester in a small room which was reached by a flight of stairs, so sharp and precipitate, that they looked as if they were inserted on the face of the wall. Having lighted me into the room, the honest face disappeared, and left us alone together.

Forrester stretched out his hand, as I thought, somewhat formally; then motioning me to a seat opposite to him, waited in silence till the landlord had left the room.

"You are surprised I should have asked you to come here," he said.

"No," I replied, interrupting him, hastily; "but I am surprised we did not hear from you sooner. In the name of Heaven, what can have been the cause of your silence?"

"How long is it since I saw you?"

"How long? Upward of a fortnight, and we expected a letter every day. But the world forgets us when we forget ourselves."

"It might be well with some people, if the world did forget them," he rejoined; "but that is no affair of mine. I have not forgotten you, whatever you may have deserved from others."

This was uttered in a tone of asperity unusual with Forrester. But I felt that I had provoked it by the unacknowledging spirit in which I had met him after all the trouble he had taken on my account, and I was proceeding to make the best apology I could, when he cut me short with a wave of his hand, and entered upon the business that brought us together.

"You were aware when I undertook to negotiate between you and the husband of Astræa, that I was his friend as well as yours. He had even stronger claims upon my friendship; I had known him in our boyhood; and when I returned, after an interval of years, and found him bereaved, as I had been myself – and by the same person – you can not be astonished that I should feel some interest in his situation."

"I do not blame you for that," I returned, hardly knowing what I said, I was so amazed by the tone and substance of this unexpected opening.

"Blame me?" reiterated Forrester. "Blame me for sympathizing with an early friend, whose life, like my own, had been blasted to the root? You must suppose my nature to be something different from that of other men, if you imagine I could witness his sufferings unmoved."

"To what is this intended to lead?" I demanded. "When I saw you last, your sympathies were not so exclusive. You were then, Forrester, the friend of both?"

"Am I not so still? What brings me here? It is not exactly the sort of weather a man would select for a trip of pleasure into the country. What brings me here? Your business. Does this look like a failure of friendship? You are soured – isolation and self-reproaches, which pride will not suffer you to acknowledge, have turned your blood to acid. You are ready to quarrel for straws, and your whole care is how to escape the responsibility which passion and selfishness have brought upon you."

I leaped from my chair at these words, and looked fiercely at Forrester. He was perfectly calm, and continued to speak in a voice of freezing quietness.

"Pray, resume your seat. It is sheer waste of time to lose your temper with me. Either I must speak candidly to you, or there is an end to our intercourse."

"Yes – candidly, but not insultingly," I replied, seizing my chair, and, after giving it a very ill-tempered fling upon the ground, throwing myself into it.

"How foolish it is in you to exhibit this humor to me," he resumed after a short pause. "I imagine I have a right to speak to you exactly what I think, and that the interest I have taken in your concerns ought to protect me from the suspicion of desiring to insult you. Were it my cue to insult you, it is not in this affair I should look for the grounds of quarrel. But let that pass. I have seen the man whom you have made your mortal enemy, and have endeavored to prevail upon him to break the marriage. I have failed."

"Failed? How? Why? What does he say? He is a fiend!"

"Strange that he should have just the same opinion of you. Beelzebub is rather a respectable and virtuous person in his estimation compared with you. Just possible both may be right!"

I never saw Forrester in this sort of vein before. It was as if he were determined to lacerate my feelings and lay them bare; and yet there was a certain eccentric kindness under this rough treatment, which helped to reconcile me to it. At all events, I was bound to endure it; I knew that if I outraged him by any show of distrust or violence, his lips would be closed forever. I felt, too, that I had given him some provocation in the first instance by the temper I had betrayed; and that the fault was at least as much mine as his.

"Well," I cried, "you must forgive me, Forrester, if I am a little chafed and galled, and, as you say, soured. Circumstances have pressed hardly upon me. Remember how long I have been shut out from communication with society – and the state of anxiety and suspense in which I have lived. You must make allowances for me."

"Exactly. I must make allowances for you. But when I ask you to make allowances for him, who has gone through sufferings a hundred-fold more acute, which you have inflicted upon him, what kind of response do I receive? No matter. I do make allowances for you. If you are not entirely absorbed by selfish considerations, you will endeavor to comprehend the wrong you have committed, and do what you can to avoid making it worse."

"Wrong? Premeditated wrong I never will admit. My conscience is clear of that. But I will not argue with you. What would you have me do?"

"Leave the country. You have no other alternative."

"What? Fly from this demon, who first tempted me, and who now wants to triumph over my ruin?"

"You say your conscience is clear of wrong. You have a happy conscience. But it deceives you. It is true, that when you first knew Astræa, you were ignorant of his rights; but you were not ignorant of them when he found you together and claimed her. Up to that moment, you might have had some excuse. There was yet time to save her, yourself, and him. How did you act, then? If we are to discuss this matter with any hope of arriving at a rational conclusion, you must rid yourself of the flattering deception that you have been doing no wrong. We are not children, but grown-up men and responsible agents."

"Well, I put myself in your hands. But that I should become an exile because this man chooses to pursue me with vindictive feelings, does seem something monstrous."

"From your point of sight, I dare say it does. Just change places with him. A man who desires to decide justly will always endeavor to look at both sides of a question. Put yourself in his position. He loves this woman. I am satisfied he loves her more truly and tenderly, and less selfishly now than he ever loved her from the beginning. You sneer at that. You do not credit the possibility of such a thing. It is a constitutional fallacy of yours to believe that no man loves as you do – that there is a leaven of earth in other men which mixes with their devotion and corrupts it. You have nursed this creed all your life, and it has grown with your growth. You alone are pure and spiritual. I remember you had that notion once before. I remember how you exalted yourself on the intensity and endurance of your passion. Surely by this time you should have outlived that delusion; for even then you might have seen men with hearts as – But I am wandering from the subject."

"I understand you. I was young, superstitious, ignorant – "

"I will speak plainly. You are not capable of a great devotion. Your character is not strong enough. You have none of the elements of power necessary to the maintenance of the martyrdom of love. In a nature constituted like yours, passion burns up fiercely, and goes out suddenly. I have heard you say – some years gone by! – that you were consumed by a love which would end only with your life. I was silent. I loved, too; but I vailed my eyes, and spoke not, as the coffin which contained all I cherished in the world was lowered into the grave. Hope – affection – the desire of life, were buried with it. You see me now wasted, haggard, solitary, a wreck upon the waters. And you? I find you plunged into the ecstasies of a new passion. And what of the old one? Where are the traces of it now? Some men can not live except in this condition of excitement. You are one of them. But do not deceive yourself into the belief that others have not hearts, because they do not show them in spasms such as these. Do not despise the faithful agonies even of the dwarf!"

I felt the severe justice of the reproach less in Forrester's words than in his pallid face, and the pangs he struggled to conceal. I was even secretly compelled to admit that there was a miserable truth in what he said about Mephistophiles; yet it was difficult for me to give utterance to the expression of any sympathy in the sufferings of a man who seemed to have directed his whole energies to the pursuit of an insane and unprofitable vengeance.

"The portrait is not flattering," I observed. "But why do you thus put me on the rack? What has all this to do with the matter that has brought us together?"

"It has every thing to do with it. The instability of your character – the certainty of remorse and disappointment, passion sated and exhausted, romance broken up, and nothing left but mutual reproaches, which will not be the less bitter because they may not find expression in words – the certainty that such is the fate to which Astræa is doomed under your protection, justifies me in laying before you those secrets of your nature which, without the help of some friendly monitor like me, you would never be able to discover."

This was said in a tone of sarcasm. No man knows himself. With much modesty and humility in some things (springing, perhaps, from weakness rather than discretion or reserve), I had always overrated myself in others. I had a strong faith in my own constancy of purpose – in the steadfastness of my principles and feelings. But it was true that I was self-deceived, if Forrester and Astræa had read my character accurately. Their agreement was something wonderful. They used almost the very same words in describing the points on which my strength was likely to break down. I was beginning to fear that they were right; but I owed a grave responsibility to Astræa, and could not yet be brought to admit, even to myself, that it was possible I should fail in it.

"You judge from the rest of the world, and not from me, Forrester," I replied. "But granted that it is as you say, how can that mend the business? Believe me, you are ignorant of Astræa's character and mine. No matter – let that pass. Suppose we should hereafter find our lives wearisome and joyless, may we not justly trace the cause to the malice that will not suffer us to redeem ourselves."

"Is your redemption, by the strength of your own efforts, so sure, then? Neither he whom you have wronged, nor I, have any faith in your fortitude. We believe that if you were free to marry Astræa, a certain sense of justice would induce you at once to make her your wife; but we believe also, that the enchantment would perish at the altar. Attachments that begin in one form of selfishness generally end in another – even with people of the most amiable intentions."

There was a scoff in his voice that made my blood tingle; but I subdued myself. "Pray, come to the point," I exclaimed, impatiently.

"The point is simple enough," he returned. "My mission has failed. He will make no terms, take no steps for a divorce, listen to no expostulations until a separation shall have taken place between you and Astræa."

"A separation?"

"It is clear to me that, in looking forward to such a contingency, it is not because he hopes or desires, under such circumstances, to see her again; but because it would enable him, without pain or humiliation, to become the guardian of her future life. It is the passion of his soul to dedicate himself, unseen, to the sacred duty of watching over her."

"Preposterous. He watch over her? The recollection of his former guardianship is not so agreeable as to induce her to trust herself under it again. As to separation, her devotion to me would make her spurn such a proposition."

"H – m! It is because I believed her pride would make her spurn it that I recommended you to go abroad."

"And why should we go abroad on that account?"

"Because his revenge, sleepless and insatiable, will render it impossible for you to remain in England."

"His revenge! Pshaw! I am sick of hearing of it. Believe me, the word has lost its terrors – if it ever had any."

"You are wrong. My advice is prudent, and is given honestly, for both your sakes. In England there is danger; abroad, you will be beyond his reach."

"Why," answered I, with a forced smile, "one would suppose that you were speaking of the Grand Inquisition, or the Council of Ten, and that we lived in a country where there was neither law nor social civilization. What do you imagine I can possibly have to fear from him?"

"A vengeance that you can not evade, so subtle and unrelenting as to leave no hour of your existence free from dread and misery. Can you not understand how a man whose life you have laid waste may haunt you with his curse? Can you not comprehend the workings of a mortal hate, ever waiting for its opportunity, patient, silent, untiring, never for an instant losing sight of its object, and making all things and all seasons subservient to its deadly purpose? I can understand this in the most commonplace natures, when they are strongly acted upon; but in him, fiery, self-willed, and vindictive, it is inevitable."

"Is this an inference of your own, drawn from your knowledge of his character, or has he confided his intentions to you?"