A common topic of conversation! Well, I have no objection, provided my good-natured friends do not say any thing injurious, or wound the lady's feelings by an improper use of my name."
He paused for a moment, and lowering his voice, then went on,
"You never said any thing of this before."
"Why should I? The inquiry was never made of me before."
"I have made no inquiry," he retorted. "I didn't ask you to confess. You have avowed it all yourself, unconsciously."
I felt that the dwarf was getting serious, and that he was likely to make me more in earnest before he was done than I had at first anticipated. I saw the necessity of showing him at once that I would not brook his interference, and I addressed him in a more deliberate tone than I had hitherto adopted.
"Allow me to ask," I demanded, "what interest you may take in this matter, and by what right you assume the office of interrogating me so authoritatively?"
"By what right?" he answered. "My right to do so is rather clearer than your right to refuse an explanation. You met her at my mother's house – you meet her there. She is under our roof, under our guardianship and protection. That gives me the right. It is not pleasant to interfere in this way; but I am called upon to do so by my position, and I delayed it in the hope that you would render it unnecessary."
"Why should you hope so? Why should you desire any explanation on the subject? The lady is her own mistress: she is under your roof, it is true; but not under your control. The same thing might happen under any other roof, and nobody would thereby acquire a right to interfere in a matter that concerns her alone. You will surely see the propriety of not suffering your curiosity to meddle any further in the affair?"
"Meddle!" he reiterated; "control! Are these the phrases with which you taunt me? But," dropping his voice again, he added, "you are right in suggesting that I have discharged my office when I demand, to what end those very marked attentions are paid to Astræa?"
"You make an unwarrantable demand, and you shall have a fitting answer to it; and my answer is, that to Astræa alone will I confide my confession, as you call it. She is old enough and wise enough to think and act for herself; nor will I consent to compromise my respect for her understanding by admitting that she requires an arbitrator – perhaps I ought to say, champion."
"Have a care," he replied, kindling up all at once into a sort of frenzy – "have a care what you say or do. You move in darkness – you tread on smothered fire."
"Do you threaten me?" said I.
"No; I do not threaten you. Look at your arm and mine – compare your muscles with my shrunken and stunted frame," he cried, with an expression of pain and bitterness; "I do not threaten you, but I warn you – mark me, I warn you! Heed my warning, I beseech, I implore you – nay, heed it for your life!"
I could not but admire the sibyl-like grandeur of his head and outstretched arms as he uttered these strange words. His voice was hoarse with some surging emotion; and if so poor a creature could have been the recipient of a supernatural inspiration, he might have sat at that moment for the portrait of one of the deformed soothsayers in a tale of magic.
"Do I understand you correctly?" said I; "or are you only playing off some new freak upon me? Answer me frankly one question, and I shall be better able to comprehend the meaning of your mysterious menace. Are you – but I know it is absurd, I feel that the question is very ridiculous, only that your reply to it will, perhaps, set us both right – do you love Astræa? I really can not conceive any thing short of some such feeling to justify this violence."
"Love her? I love Astræa? If there be a mortal I hate in the core of my heart, it is Astræa. Are you satisfied?" he replied, with an expression of fiendish satisfaction in his face, as if he were glad of the excuse for giving vent to his malignity.
"Hate her?" said I, calmly; "that is unreasonable: but the whole discussion is unreasonable. I have given you my answer; none other shall you have from me. So, good-night."
"One word," he said, leaping out of his chair into the middle of the room. "One word before you go. I am a dwarf – do not delude yourself into any contempt of me on that account. I know as well as you do my disadvantages in the world; I am as conscious as you are of my physical defects and shortcomings, my distorted spine, and the parsimony of nature in all particulars when she made me. But I have passions like other men; and I pursue them like other men, only, as I am shut out from the summary and open process, I am compelled, perchance, to the choice of dark and crooked means. Perhaps, too, my passions are all the more turbulent and dangerous because they are pent up in an incapable frame, and denied the vents and appliances which men like you have at their command. Mark me! see Astræa no more. Let your last interview with her be your last forever. Enter our house no more; that interdict, at least, I have a right to pronounce. But for myself, and from myself, and apart from the privilege of my own roof, I warn you at your peril, and on my own responsibility, never to see Astræa again."
"Are you mad?" I exclaimed. "Never to see Astræa again! To forsake her society at your bidding! Wherefore do you make this monstrous demand? Do you not feel how preposterous it is to thrust yourself into a quarrel with me in a matter which not only does not concern you, but which involves the feelings, perhaps the whole future happiness, of a person whom you have just ostentatiously declared is the object of your hate?"
"I make no quarrel with you," he answered; "I will not quarrel with you. I should be mad, indeed, if I did. What! set myself against your thews and sinews? No, no – I break no bones with you – but I tell you, once again, your fate is in my hands. I am your destiny, if you will have it so. You may trample on the oracle; but you can not, with all your show of bravery and your proud pretensions, with the lady, too, in triumph on your side, escape its denunciations."
"Did you, or did you not," I inquired, bewildered by his language, and not quite satisfied that he was in possession of his senses, "did you, or did you not, observe those attentions some months ago of which you now complain for the first time?"
"I did," he answered.
"And why did you not then speak to me on the subject?"
"Because it wasn't ripe!"
"Ripe? If you have any meaning in these obscure hints, why do you not explain it for your own sake, since you can not believe that I will submit patiently to your insane threats? Again I ask you, did you, or did you not, promote these attentions by every artifice and suggestion in your power?"
"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,
