CHAPTER VII.--A SURPRISE AWAITS HER
Feb. 5.--Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but
I now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.
Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very
engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid. But a fearful
complication of affairs attends it!
O what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is. He
says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the
counterfeit, while he still loves me? Yet how, on the other hand,
can he leave it unfulfilled? All this time I have not told her, and
up to this minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for
better, for worse, till death them do part. It is a harassing
position for me, and all three. In the awful approach of death,
one's judgment loses its balance, and we do anything to meet the
exigencies of the moment, with a single eye to the one who excites
our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the brink of being separated
for ever.
Had he really married her at that time all would be settled now. But
he took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his
reason. If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a
sad woman; but not a tempest-tossed one . . . The possibility of his
claiming me after all is what lies at the root of my agitation.
Everything hangs by a thread. Suppose I tell her the marriage was a
mockery; suppose she is indignant with me and with him for the
deception--and then? Otherwise, suppose she is not indignant but
forgives all; he is bound to marry her; and honour constrains me to
urge him thereto, in spite of what he protests, and to smooth the way
to this issue by my method of informing her. I have meant to tell
her the last month--ever since she has been strong enough to bear
such tidings; but I have been without the power--the moral force.
Surely I must write, and get him to come and assist me.
March 14.--She continually wonders why he does not come, the five
months of his enforced absence having expired; and still more she
wonders why he does not write oftener. His last letter was cold, she
says, and she fears he regrets his marriage, which he may only have
celebrated with her for pity's sake, thinking she was sure to die.
It makes one's heart bleed to hear her hovering thus so near the
truth, and yet never discerning its actual shape.
A minor trouble besets me, too, in the person of the young Scripture
reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played. Surely I
am punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of
her better judgment!
April 2.--She is practically well. The faint pink revives in her
cheek, though it is not quite so full as heretofore. But she still
wonders what she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and I
have been obliged to tell the smallest part of the truth--an
unimportant fragment of the whole, in fact, I said that I feared for
the moment he might regret the precipitancy of the act, which her
illness caused, his affairs not having been quite sufficiently
advanced for marriage just then, though he will doubtless come to her
as soon as he has a home ready. Meanwhile I have written to him,
peremptorily, to come and relieve me in this awful dilemma. He will
find no note of love in that.
April 10.--To my alarm the letter I lately addressed to him at
Venice, where he is staying, as well as the last one she sent him,
have received no reply. She thinks he is ill. I do not quite think
that, but I wish we could hear from him. Perhaps the peremptoriness
of my words had offended him; it grieves me to think it possible.
_I_ offend him! But too much of this. I MUST tell her the truth, or
she may in her ignorance commit herself to some course or other that
may be ruinously compromising. She said plaintively just now that if
he could see her, and know how occupied with him and him alone is her
every waking hour, she is sure he would forgive her the wicked
presumption of becoming his wife. Very sweet all that, and touching.
I could not conceal my tears.
April 15.--The house is in confusion; my father is angry and
distressed, and I am distracted. Caroline has disappeared--gone away
secretly. I cannot help thinking that I know where she is gone to.
How guilty I seem, and how innocent she! O that I had told her
before now!
1 o'clock.--No trace of her as yet. We find also that the little
waiting-maid we have here in training has disappeared with Caroline,
and there is not much doubt that Caroline, fearing to travel alone,
has induced this girl to go with her as companion. I am almost sure
she has started in desperation to find him, and that Venice is her
goal. Why should she run away, if not to join her husband, as she
thinks him? Now that I consider, there have been indications of this
wish in her for days, as in birds of passage there lurk signs of
their incipient intention; and yet I did not think she would have
taken such an extreme step, unaided, and without consulting me. I
can only jot down the bare facts--I have no time for reflections.
But fancy Caroline travelling across the continent of Europe with a
chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an assistance!
They will be a mark for every marauder who encounters them.
Evening: 8 o'clock.--Yes, it is as I surmised. She has gone to join
him. A note posted by her in Budmouth Regis at daybreak has reached
me this afternoon--thanks to the fortunate chance of one of the
servants calling for letters in town to-day, or I should not have got
it until to-morrow. She merely asserts her determination of going to
him, and has started privately, that nothing may hinder her; stating
nothing about her route. That such a gentle thing should suddenly
become so calmly resolute quite surprises me. Alas, he may have left
Venice--she may not find him for weeks--may not at all.
My father, on learning the facts, bade me at once have everything
ready by nine this evening, in time to drive to the train that meets
the night steam-boat. This I have done, and there being an hour to
spare before we start, I relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up
my pen. He says overtake her we must, and calls Charles the hardest
of names. He believes, of course, that she is merely an infatuated
girl rushing off to meet her lover; and how can the wretched I tell
him that she is more, and in a sense better than that--yet not
sufficiently more and better to make this flight to Charles anything
but a still greater danger to her than a mere lover's impulse. We
shall go by way of Paris, and we think we may overtake her there. I
hear my father walking restlessly up and down the hall, and can write
no more.
