Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.

"I did."

"Did you not watch them anxiously, forward them daily, and exult in their progress, until you became secretly convinced that both Astræa's feelings and mine were engaged beyond recall?"

"I did – I did – I did!" roared the dwarf.

"Did you not produce this very result yourself? Did you not seek it, urge it, fan it to its height, and even glory in the flame you had nursed so cunningly?"

"I did – I did – I did!" he shrieked, his whole body seeming to take part in the frenzy that convulsed him.

"Fiend!" I cried; "inexplicable devil! what would you have, then? What is your aim in thus coming with your curses between us?"

"You shall never know," he replied, "unless to deplore it to the last hour of your life. You can never know unless you outrage my will. I have the power to make you wretched forever, to blight and destroy you. And if you treat my warning with contempt, I will do it without fail, without mercy, without remorse. The jester who has contributed so largely to your entertainment, and furnished such a delectable theme for your secret and cowardly mockery, will shoot a bolt of a graver cast when you least expect it, and think yourself most secure. Mark me – note me well. These are not words of rage, or transient passion: remember them, be wise, and look to your safety. See Astræa no more. With this I leave you. Our next meeting must be of your making."

I was alone. Overwhelmed and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; not that the malice of the demon could scare me from my resolves, but that his motives were so impenetrable as to suffer no clew to escape by which I could discover the evil purpose that lay at the bottom.

It was not the machination or revenge of a disappointed suitor. He never could have aspired to a hope of Astræa, and he avowed his aversion to her. She was ignorant of all this bravado about her; and would be even more indignant to hear of it than I was to suffer it. I resolved, therefore, not to insult her by revealing it to her. Fortunately, I had made an appointment to meet her alone on the following day. That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me.

VII

My resolution was taken, as I thought, very composedly. I tried to persuade myself that I was not in the least ruffled or agitated by the scene I had passed through; but I was secretly conscious, notwithstanding, of a vague dread which I endeavored in vain to stifle. The defiance which the dwarf had so insolently flung at me, the contrast he drew between his shriveled frame and my physical advantages, and the Satanic pride with which he rose superior to his wretched deformities, gave me no slight cause for uneasiness, although I could not analyze the nature of the fear that possessed me. All through the night I abandoned myself to the wildest speculations upon the unaccountable conduct and designs of my arch-enemy; but as morning advanced that oppressive train of reflections gave way to more agreeable thoughts, just as the hideous images of the night-mare vanish before the approach of day.

The prospect of meeting Astræa excluded all other considerations. As impediments to the flow of a current only serve to increase its force, so the opposition which the dwarf had thrown in my way gave an additional impetus to my feelings. The very publicity which our intercourse had attracted altered our relations to each other. It was no longer possible to indulge in the romantic dreams, secret looks, and stolen conversations with which we had hitherto pampered our imagination; it was necessary to act. I felt the responsibility that was thus cast upon me; and I confess that I was rather obliged to my villainous Mephistophiles than angry with him for having, as it were, brought all my wayward raptures to so immediate and decisive a conclusion. As to his anathemas and warnings, I treated them as so much buffoonery on the wrong side of the grotesque. In short, I was too much engrossed by the approaching interview, and too much intoxicated by the contemplation of the result to which it inevitably led, to think at all about that imp of darkness and his ludicrous fulminations. Astræa occupied brain and heart, and left no room for my tormentor.

I fancied she looked unusually happy that morning; but not so happy as I was, not so disturbed and unsettled by happiness. She was perfectly tranquil, and it was evident that nothing had transpired in the interval to awaken a suspicion of what had occurred between me and the dwarf. She observed at once that a change had taken place in my manner.

"You are in marvelously high spirits to-day," she said; "but this exuberant gayety is not quite natural to you."

"High spirits! I am not conscious of it."

"So much the worse," she replied; then, placing her hand upon my arm, and looking earnestly at me, she added, "something has happened since I saw you. What is it? It would be wrong, and useless as well as wrong, to affect to deny it."

I had noticed at times in Astræa an air of solemnity, which would fall upon her face like a shadow, slowly receding again before its habitual, but always subdued brightness; and occasionally I imagined that I detected a sudden and brief sternness in her eyes, which conveyed an impression that she was interrogating with their concentrated rays, the concealed thoughts of the person upon whom they were directed. These were some of the outward signs of that mystery of her nature which I never could penetrate. Upon this occasion a world of latent doubts and suspicions appeared to be condensed in her look. It seemed as if in that single glance she read the whole incident which, to spare her feelings, I was so unwilling to disclose.

"What do you suppose, Astræa," I inquired, "can have happened since I saw you?"

"You are not candid with me," she returned. "I ask you a question, and you answer by asking me another. If nothing has happened, you can easily satisfy me; if it be otherwise, and you are silent, I must draw my own conclusions."

"Whatever conclusions you draw, Astræa, I know you have too firm a reliance on my truth and devotion not to believe that I am actuated by the purest motives. Have I not always been sincere and frank with you?"

"Always."

"Have you not an implicit confidence in the steadfastness of my love?"

"Were it otherwise, should I be now standing here questioning you, or should there be need of questions of this kind between us? Confidence! Why am I so sensitive to the slightest fluctuations of tone and manner I observe in you, and where do I derive the intuitive perception of their meanings? Love must have confidence! But it has instincts also. I feel there is something – I am sure of it – but I will urge you no further. It is not, perhaps, for your happiness or mine that I should seek to know."

"Astræa," I exclaimed, passionately, "there is nothing I would conceal from you that I think you ought to know, or that would make you happier to know; and if I have any reserve from you, it is for your sake, and you must ascribe it to the tenderness of my regard for you."

"For my sake?" she repeated, with a slightly terrified and curious expression.

"Now listen to me; I have something to say to you which is of more importance to us both than these wise, loving conjectures of yours. Take my arm, and let us get into the Park."

We were near one of the inclosures of the Regent's Park; and when we reached a more secluded place, I resumed:

"First of all, I should like to have your own unbiased opinion about your friends with whom you are residing. Have you observed any change in their manner toward you?"

"Change? None whatever."

"Do you think – I mean from any thing you have yourself noticed – that they have watched our actions or been inquisitive in our affairs?"

She looked inquiringly at me, and hesitated.

"I think it would be impossible to be much with them and escape their persiflage, let us act as we might. But beyond that sort of idle criticism which they deal out indiscriminately to every body, I have observed nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have reason to believe that my attentions to you have attracted more observation than either of us suspected; and that, in fact, they have made such remarks on us as no longer leaves our future course at our own time or option."

"You have reason to believe this?"

"The best possible reason."

"Who is your authority?"

"Will you not accept my own authority, without seeking further?"

"No. It is not a time to hold back from any false delicacy to me, or any mistaken respect for the confidence of others. Beware of such confidences, if there be any. They are not meant for your peace or mine, but to plunge us both into an abyss in which we shall be left to perish. I must know all. I am entitled to know it. If your love be a hundredth part as strong and devoted, and as prepared for sacrifice as mine, you will place a full and entire trust in me."

"And I do. You shall know all; but I must exact a solemn promise from you, before I tell you how, and in what manner, this information was communicated to me. It is impossible for me to foresee how it may affect or wound your feelings; and it is due to me, if I yield to your request against my own judgment, that you should pledge yourself, be the consequences what they may, to give me a public right to protect you against the further malignity – I can not call it by any milder term – of your enemies and mine."

She was deeply affected by this request, which was spoken in so low and tremulous a voice, so burdened with a painful earnestness, that she appeared to gather from it the final conviction that upon her answer depended the future happiness or misery of our lives. I confess, for my own part, that the pause which ensued, during which she almost unconsciously repeated to herself, "Be the consequences what they may!" was to me harrowing beyond expression. It seemed as if there was some sinister influence at work to destroy us both; and that even the immediate prospect of our union was not sufficient to allay the terror that influence inspired, and into the causes and springs of which I now began to imagine she had a clearer insight than I had previously suspected. But I was steeped in a tumultuous passion, which would not suffer me to investigate intervening difficulties. What the source of her terror was I knew not; mine arose only from the apprehension of losing her; and to have secured her at that moment, looking as she did, in the agitation that gave such a wild lustre to her eyes, more lovely than ever, I would have cheerfully relinquished every thing else in the world. So far from being anxious to have the cause of her fears and hesitation cleared up, I was in the utmost alarm lest she should enter upon an explanation that might delay the consummation of my wishes. I sought only an affirmative reply to my request, which, come what might, would make her mine forever.

She loosened herself from my arm, and walked apart from me in silence. This action, and the sort of panic it indicated, filled me with alarm.

"Astræa, you have not answered my question. What is the reason of your silence?"

"Be the consequences what they may!" she reiterated. "I did not think of that, but it is right I should. I should have thought of it before – I did think of it; but of what avail, while I suffered myself to indulge in a dream which that thought ought to have dispelled?"

"You speak in a language that is unintelligible to me; but there is no time now for explanations. We must decide, Astræa, at once, for to-day and forever. I only ask your explicit pledge. Let us reserve explanations for hereafter."

"You say this in ignorance of what awaits you. I feel that I ought not to make any pledge until – " and she hesitated again.

"If I am satisfied to take your pledge, and all consequences with it, and to repay it with the devotion of my life, why, beloved Astræa, should you hesitate? Let the responsibility fall on me – of that another time. Every hour is precious now, and you will understand why I urge you so impatiently when I tell you that I can never again enter the house where you are now residing."

"I knew it. I saw it clearly from the first word you uttered. It was revealed to me in the very tone of your voice. Now hear me patiently. Your peace, your honor, all feelings that contribute to the respect and happiness of life, are at stake upon this moment."

The determination of her manner left me no choice but to listen.

"Are you prepared to risk all other ties, obligations, and prospects, in the consummation of this one object? to hazard friends, opinion, the world – perhaps it may be, to sacrifice them for the love that has grown up between us, and which, for good or evil, must this day bind us together, or sever us for the rest of our lives?"

"What a question to put to me! The 'world!' it is ashes without you. I tell you, Astræa, that if the choice lay between the grave and the single word that would sunder us, I would die rather than utter it. I don't know what your question implies – I don't seek to know; and would prefer to remain ignorant of it, that I may the more clearly prove to you the depth of my trust and devotion, which will be satisfied with the simple pledge that makes you mine. That, at least, you have in your own power; let me answer for the rest."