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.