Chapter 7 OVERBURDENED.

Carice Bergan was gifted with instincts singularly quick and delicate. She had not long breathed the same atmosphere with Astra and Doctor Remy before she felt it growing heavy around her with some intensity of emotion which she neither shared nor understood. It might be sympathy, it might be aversion; in either case, its effect was to make her feel confused and constrained, in their presence. At one moment, she seemed to behold them afar off, as it were, in a sphere of their own, whither she had neither the right nor the ability to follow them; at another, she felt herself standing between them, barring their way to a free and satisfactory interchange of thought and feeling; and again, she believed that Doctor Remy alone was responsible for her discomfort, interrupting, by his presence, the cordial flow of sympathy between Astra and herself. At any rate, it would be a relief to escape from so oppressive an atmosphere; accordingly, she took her departure, leaving the lovers—if such they can be called—together.

Certainly, there was nothing lover-like in the manner with which they faced each other, a few moments after the door had closed behind her. That brief interval had been spent by both in preparation for the crisis which the one knew, and the other felt, to be approaching. Astra awaited it with a mixture of eagerness and dread; she was weary of wearing the checkered tissue of suspense and anxiety; she would be glad to know exactly what was in store for her, even though the bitter fruit of such knowledge should be mortification and anguish. Doctor Remy's face was set and hard; over it a sombre emotion, like the gray shadow of a cloud on a rock, now and then passed swiftly, taking nothing from its sternness, but adding much to its gloom. He looked like a man who, at no slight cost to himself, has braced his soul with iron for the performance of some heavy, but necessary, task. Little as he likes it, he will carry it out pitilessly to the end.

With an inauspicious frown on his brow—none the less dark because it must have been assumed—he now opened the conversation by saying, abruptly;—

"Astra, I have heard some very strange rumors, of late."

"Indeed!" she returned, with a note of disappointment, as well as of surprise, in her voice. This was but a roundabout road to explanation, she thought; it would have pleased her better had the doctor chosen a more direct one. She looked round for a chair, and sat down wearily, as if to wait his pleasure with such patience as she could command.

However, Doctor Remy was going as straight to the point—his point, at least—as could be wished. "Perhaps you will be less indifferent to these rumors," he continued, insinuatingly, "when you understand that they concern you, and your good name, much."

A slight flush rose to Astra's face, and her eyes lit; but she kept her seat, and she answered not a word, though Doctor Remy waited a moment, as if he expected her to speak. Seeing her silent, however, he went on, slowly, and with seeming reluctance; yet, to a keen and disinterested observer, it might have appeared that he was trying his best to provoke her.

"I once told you that it was not in my nature to trust," said he. "But I have trusted you, Astra, even to blindness,—else I should not have been indebted to others for the first intimations of things that I ought to have seen for myself. I should have discovered what sort of game you were playing, before the knowledge was forced upon me at the hands of public rumor. I suppose that I ought to take shame to myself for being so easily deceived;—I do,—nevertheless your shame is certainly the greater for having so deceived me."

The flame in Astra's eyes was kindling brightly now, and her breath came quick and short; nevertheless, it was in a tone of the coldest and quietest dignity that she answered;—

"I am not quick at reading riddles—be so good as to tell me, plainly, what you mean."

"As plainly as the subject allows," returned Doctor Remy, in a tone that was in itself a taunt. "I mean that the names of Astra Lyte and Bergan Arling are ringing together from one end of the town to the other, in a way which, it may readily be believed, is not pleasant to my ears. It is confidently asserted—and believed—that a secret engagement exists between them. That is to say; the lady has long admitted the gentleman to a degree of daily intimacy and familiarity, which she could not with propriety have accorded to any other than her promised husband;—some say, not even to him. Mr. Arling has been observed to be in her studio for hours together; he has been seen strolling with her in the outskirts of the town; the twain have been noticed talking earnestly together in that out-of-the-way spot known as the oak amphitheatre. On all these occasions the lady has been observed to be so much the more demonstrative of the two, as to give rise to the suspicion that the gentleman's sudden journey westward has been taken, mainly, for the purpose of freeing himself from entanglements not approved by his better judgment."

As these atrocious sentences fell, one by one, with distinct and cutting emphasis, from Doctor Remy's lips, Astra rose to her feet; the flush on either cheek settled into a vivid crimson spot, in the midst of a deadly pallor; her eyes darted fire; her lips trembled with the rush of an indignation too tumultuous, as yet, for word or action. Noting these signs, Doctor Remy congratulated himself upon the successful progress of his experiment. Already, the lioness was at bay; with a little more provocation, she would think only of vengeance.

He resumed his statement. "At first, of course, I paid no attention to these rumors; my ears and eyes were closed against them by that blind, foolish trust in you, of which I have spoken. By and by, they came thicker and faster, and in a shape to compel my consideration. I began to understand that the possible heir of Bergan Hall possessed an immense advantage over the humble physician;—although it might be well to keep a hold on the latter until the former was secure, and his inheritance certain. By way of two strings to the bow, there might be two secret engagements. I commenced an investigation. I traced the reports which I have mentioned back to their source—"

"You did!" interrupted Astra, with indignation that she could no longer repress. "Instead of sending these foul slanders back down the throats which invented them, you—" She stopped, choked by her bitter sense of indignity and wrong.

"—took the pains to verify them," rejoined Doctor Remy, coolly finishing her sentence. "Every accusation was established in the mouths of several witnesses. Arling himself had spoken frankly, as well as lightly, of his engagement, to more than one person."

"It is false, and you know it!" exclaimed Astra. "Mr. Arling is incapable of such baseness."

"Never mind defending him," said Doctor Remy, with a curl of the lip. "What have you to say for yourself?"

Astra walked to the door, and flung it wide open. "I have that to say," she replied, turning upon him with a look of ineffable scorn, and a queenly gesture of dismissal. "Go!"

Doctor Remy stood for a moment irresolute, with an unwonted flush of shame rising to his brow. The climax had not only come sooner than he anticipated, but in an unexpectedly embarrassing shape,—a shape that gave him a sudden, startling perception of the vileness of the task which he had set himself to do. Naturally, he was inclined to be angry with Astra for the action to which he owed this moment of self-recognition; yet, on the whole, it was the most bewitching thing that he had ever seen her do. Never had she attracted him so strongly as while she thus stood pointing him to the door. Her free and noble attitude, the wonderful vividness of her expression, the maidenly dignity of her tacit refusal to descend for one moment to his level, and discuss with him the points that he had raised, thrilled him with involuntary admiration. It irked him to think that he must needs give her up. Was there really no way to keep her, and at the same time win Bergan Hall? He sent his thoughts back over the road which they had trodden so often, during the past fortnight, and decided once more that the risk was too great. He must persevere in the course upon which he had entered. Nor did a little present mortification matter, in comparison with hopeful progress. Astra was only helping him forward in the way that he wished to go. How easily the affections and passions of others became the puppets of his will!

Nevertheless, it was not without a softened, almost regretful, tone that he finally said,—"If I go, Astra, you understand that our engagement is at an end."

"Our engagement!" repeated Astra, looking at him with a kind of scornful amaze. "How dare you insult me thus? I was never engaged to you,—never!"

Doctor Remy stood aghast. For one moment, he believed that her senses were taking leave of her.

"Never!" repeated Astra, with proud emphasis. "I was engaged," she went on, after a moment, in an altered and tremulous tone, "to a MAN,—a calm, wise, noble man,—not a monster, nor a piece of mechanism. I was engaged to an earnest seeker after truth, a courageous grappler with problems that other men shunned, an honest speaker of his own thoughts and moulder of his own opinions,—a man who, though he might be temporarily led astray by the very excess of his virtues of candor, boldness, and integrity, would be sure to come right in the end. He is dead,—or he never lived, except in my imagination,—requiescat in pace. But to you,—a body without a soul, an intellect without a heart, a will without a faith, a kind of human beast of prey, intent on nothing but the gratification of his own selfish ends,—to you I was never pledged. I would as soon have bound myself to a corpse, or a calculating machine."

"This is plain talk, Astra," said Dr. Remy, growing pale with anger and mortification. "If you were not a woman, it would be easier to answer it."

"It is not only plain talk, but plain sight," replied Astra. "The scales have fallen from my eyes; at last, I see you as you are. The most that can be said for you, as well as in excuse for my late infatuation (for I would not seem altogether despicable in my own eyes), is that great and rich capabilities have been miserably perverted, in your person. A grand soul has somehow been strangled within you. Some hidden canker—beginning I know not when nor where, but to which your surgeon's knowledge ought to have impelled you long ago to put the surgeon's knife—has slowly eaten out everything that was sound and good, in your moral system, and left nothing but rottenness. And it is now too late for remedy. If it were not,—if there were any hope that I could help to save you, by clinging to you,—I think I have the strength and courage to do it. As it is, I should only corrupt myself. Indeed, I fear it will be long ere I get rid of the virus of doubt and captiousness, which, I find, you have already introduced into my mind; and of which that figure" (she pointed to the statue of clay) "is the legitimate outcome. You have given a bias to my mode of thought, which has already shaken my faith to its foundations,—and might, in time (but for the scathing commentary of your life upon your opinions), have destroyed it. Leave me now. We have done with each other."

Perhaps Dr. Remy's good angel, absent from his side for many years, hovered, at that moment, above his head, with a wistful—almost a hopeful—face. For, at last, the strong man was visibly affected. Some chance word of Astra's had found a joint in his iron armor, and penetrated to the living flesh. His lip trembled,—it may have been with an unshaped prayer to Astra to make that effort to save him, of which she had declared herself capable,—it may have been with a sudden perception of the barrenness of his life, and the valuelessness of its ends, disposing him, for a moment, to try whether any richer realities were to be reaped from an unselfish human affection and an unquestioning heavenly faith.

But not thus easily and quickly was the whole bent of a life to be changed, not thus the holding of the cords of evil to be loosed! Suddenly, between him and Astra, rose a vision of Bergan Hall, with its immense revenues, its ancient and aristocratic prestige, the vast power and influence that it would impart to capable hands, the abundant means and leisure that it would allow for scientific pursuits. For, if Doctor Remy lived for anything besides himself, it was for science. He had managed to persuade himself that the interests of the two were identical. He had embodied his selfishness, as it were, in a theory; for the development, confirmation, and proclamation, of which, he believed that he desired leisure and wealth, far more than for himself; and through which he meant to be a benefactor to his race, as well as to wreathe his own name with undying laurels. On the one hand, then, was this wide prospect of wealth, freedom, usefulness, and fame; on the other, Astra, and a life of restrictions and limitations, narrowed down to the daily necessity of daily bread. Quickly he made his choice. The angel spread his white wings, and flew upward,—never to return!

Doctor Remy turned to Astra, and held out his hand. "Let us part friends," said he.

"Not so," replied Astra; "let us part—as we are to remain—strangers. No need to mock the sacred past with the commonplace civilities of ordinary intercourse. The relation that once existed between us is simply dead, not changed into something else."

"As you will," returned Doctor Remy, after a pause. "At least let me wish you a short mourning, and a bright thereafter. Adieu."

He went out as he spoke, closing the door behind him. In his excitement, he used more force than he was aware of, and it fell to with a clangor that reverberated loudly through the large, uncarpeted room, and jarred painfully upon Astra's nerves. She shivered, and her eyes fell upon the clay figure. Apparently, it was trembling with sympathetic emotion; it even bent toward her, as if suddenly endued with life; for one moment, the old fable of Pygmalion seemed coming true, in her modern experience. Then, the limbs gave way, the trunk fell forward, down went Bearer and Child together, the faces of each giving her one last, distorted look of malign meaning, ere they crushed into fragments on the platform.

"It is not the only ruin that he has left behind him," murmured Astra to herself, with a sad and bitter smile.

In another moment, she too began to sink. The long fever of suspense was ended; the excitement that had carried her through the late trying interview was over; the inevitable time of reaction and depression had come. The thought of the terrible blank left in her heart and life, of the woful loss of affection, faith, and hope, that she had suffered, of the miserable waste in her past, and of the chaotic emptiness in her future, came over her with awful force. Slowly she sank, as if an invisible weight were pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned her head on the ruins of her statue, and shook with sobs of tearless agony.

She knew not how long a time went by thus; it seemed to her to stretch its slow length over an age. But it is a merciful provision that acute sorrow soon exhausts itself. The mind, like the body, has beneficent limits to its power of endurance. In due time, Astra exchanged the anguish of wretchedness for its torpor. Her sobs died away, the convulsive trembling of her frame ceased, she sat up and looked around her with a face of quiet misery. Perhaps it was a little hard, too. Her pride was coming to her aid in bearing the burden for which, she told herself, she was largely accountable, and must therefore struggle along with as best she could. It was miraculously heavy, it would tax all her strength and resolution, she saw that plainly enough; but she forgot to look into it for any sign of divine origin, or promise of divine help. The baleful effect of Doctor Remy's influence still followed her, making God an overhanging Law, instead of a surrounding Love. She could not even read aright the lesson of her own fragments of clay!

She was struggling up to her feet, when Mrs. Lyte hurriedly entered, holding an open letter in her hand, and looking both frightened and bewildered. Perhaps nothing could have been better for either mother or daughter, at that moment, than to see the other's troubled face. In both countenances, there was a quick change of expression,—something of sorrow and anxiety gone, something of loving sympathy in its place,—as each uttered the eager inquiry;—

"What is the matter?"

Fortunately, Astra was not obliged to answer. Mrs. Lyte instantly discovered the fallen statue, and connected it, though not without a degree of surprise, with her daughter's woe-begone face. For Astra had been wont to bear disaster with more fortitude! Still, this was the largest work that she had yet undertaken; besides, she had seemed so far from well, of late! Mrs. Lyte's heart thrilled with motherly sympathy.

"I am so sorry!" she said, pityingly. "Is it an utter ruin?"

"Utter," replied Astra, with dreary emphasis. "But never mind about it now. What has happened to distress you?"

Mrs. Lyte put the letter into Astra's hand. "Read that," said she, "and see what you can make of it."

It was not without difficulty, under the pressure of her own misery, that Astra made herself comprehend the purport of the document before her, through the disguise of the legal terms wherein it had duly been couched by the lawyer employed by Major Bergan. With enlightenment, however, strange to say, came a quick sense of relief. Here, at least, was a necessity for action; and the trouble which is attended by that, is never so great as one which calls only for patient endurance. Besides, how glad would she be to leave Berganton at this juncture, to escape at once from its curiosity, its sympathy, or its censure, to be spared the pain of meeting Doctor Remy's altered face, and the irksomeness of going on with the old life, in the old scene, after it had lost all the old color and substance. Her face brightened so much, as she looked up from the letter, that Mrs. Lyte gave a sigh of relief.

"Then it is not so bad as I thought," said she.

Astra's heart smote her for her selfishness. She reflected what grief it would cause her mother to be thrust out from the home endeared to her by so many and sacred associations. Her face fell, and her heart sank again. Covering her eyes with her hands, she burst into a sudden passion of tears,—a softer agony than had shaken her before, but still so plainly an agony disproportionate to the occasion, that Mrs. Lyte's eyes suddenly opened to the perception of some hitherto unsuspected sorrow. She put her arms round her daughter, and drew her head on to her bosom, as in the days of her childhood.

"What is it, darling?" she asked.

The soft tone, the affectionate touch, the motherly sympathy, were irresistible. Before she well knew what she was doing, Astra was pouring forth all her sad story.

"Oh, mother!" she moaned, as she finished, "if we could only go away,—just for a time, at least, until I have recovered myself a little! If we could only go at once, too, without explanations or farewells!"

"We will, my child," returned Mrs. Lyte, soothingly,—"that is, if I can manage it."

Then followed a long consultation.