by Robert Reed
appear before you, not vanquished, but as a conqueror, inspired me
during my wordy war .”
Perdita looked at him like one amazed; her expressive counte-
nance shone for a moment with tenderness; to see him only was
happiness . But a bitter thought swiftly shadowed her joy; she bent
her eyes on the ground, endeavouring to master the passion of tears
that threatened to overwhelm her . Raymond continued, “I will not
act a part with you, dear girl, or appear other than what I am, weak
and unworthy, more fit to excite your disdain than your love. Yet
you do love me; I feel and know that you do, and thence I draw
my most cherished hopes . If pride guided you, or even reason, you
might well reject me . Do so; if your high heart, incapable of my
infirmity of purpose, refuses to bend to the lowness of mine. Turn
from me, if you will,—if you can . If your whole soul does not urge
you to forgive me—if your entire heart does not open wide its door
to admit me to its very centre, forsake me, never speak to me again .
I, though sinning against you almost beyond remission, I also am
proud; there must be no reserve in your pardon—no drawback to the
gift of your affection .”
Perdita looked down, confused, yet pleased . My presence embar-
rassed her; so that she dared not turn to meet her lover’s eye, or
trust her voice to assure him of her affection; while a blush mantled
her cheek, and her disconsolate air was exchanged for one expres-
sive of deep-felt joy . Raymond encircled her waist with his arm, and
continued, “I do not deny that I have balanced between you and the
highest hope that mortal men can entertain; but I do so no longer .
Take me—mould me to your will, possess my heart and soul to all
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 880
eternity . If you refuse to contribute to my happiness, I quit England
tonight, and will never set foot in it again .
“Lionel, you hear: witness for me: persuade your sister to forgive
the injury I have done her; persuade her to be mine .”
“There needs no persuasion,” said the blushing Perdita, “except
your own dear promises, and my ready heart, which whispers to me
that they are true .”
That same evening we all three walked together in the forest,
and, with the garrulity which happiness inspires, they detailed to me
the history of their loves . It was pleasant to see the haughty Ray-
mond and reserved Perdita changed through happy love into prat-
tling, playful children, both losing their characteristic dignity in the
fulness of mutual contentment . A night or two ago Lord Raymond,
with a brow of care, and a heart oppressed with thought, bent all
his energies to silence or persuade the legislators of England that a
sceptre was not too weighty for his hand, while visions of dominion,
war, and triumph floated before him; now, frolicsome as a lively boy
sporting under his mother’s approving eye, the hopes of his ambi-
tion were complete, when he pressed the small fair hand of Perdita
to his lips; while she, radiant with delight, looked on the still pool,
not truly admiring herself, but drinking in with rapture the reflection
there made of the form of herself and her lover, shewn for the first
time in dear conjunction .
I rambled away from them . If the rapture of assured sympathy
was theirs, I enjoyed that of restored hope . I looked on the regal tow-
ers of Windsor . High is the wall and strong the barrier that separate
me from my Star of Beauty . But not impassible . She will not be his .
A few more years dwell in thy native garden, sweet flower, till I by
toil and time acquire a right to gather thee . Despair not, nor bid me
despair! What must I do now? First I must seek Adrian, and restore
him to her . Patience, gentleness, and untired affection, shall recall
him, if it be true, as Raymond says, that he is mad; energy and cour-
age shall rescue him, if he be unjustly imprisoned .
After the lovers again joined me, we supped together in the al-
cove . Truly it was a fairy’s supper; for though the air was perfumed
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 881
by the scent of fruits and wine, we none of us either ate or drank—
even the beauty of the night was unobserved; their extasy could not
be increased by outward objects, and I was wrapt in reverie . At about
midnight Raymond and I took leave of my sister, to return to town .
He was all gaiety; scraps of songs fell from his lips; every thought
of his mind—every object about us, gleamed under the sunshine of
his mirth . He accused me of melancholy, of ill-humour and envy .
“Not so,” said I, “though I confess that my thoughts are not oc-
cupied as pleasantly as yours are . You promised to facilitate my visit
to Adrian; I conjure you to perform your promise . I cannot linger
here; I long to soothe —perhaps to cure the malady of my first and
best friend . I shall immediately depart for Dunkeld .”
“Thou bird of night,” replied Raymond, “what an eclipse do you
throw across my bright thoughts, forcing me to call to mind that
melancholy ruin, which stands in mental desolation, more irrepa-
rable than a fragment of a carved column in a weed-grown field.
You dream that you can restore him? Daedalus never wound so in-
extricable an error round Minotaur, as madness has woven about his
imprisoned reason . Nor you, nor any other Theseus, can thread the
labyrinth, to which perhaps some unkind Ariadne has the clue .”
“You allude to Evadne Zaimi: but she is not in England .”
“And were she,” said Raymond, “I would not advise her seeing
him . Better to decay in absolute delirium, than to be the victim of
the methodical unreason of ill-bestowed love . The long duration of
his malady has probably erased from his mind all vestige of her; and
it were well that it should never again be imprinted. You will find
him at Dunkeld; gentle and tractable he wanders up the hills, and
through the wood, or sits listening beside the waterfall . You may
see him—his hair stuck with wild flowers —his eyes full of untrace-
able meaning—his voice broken—his person wasted to a shadow .
He plucks flowers and weeds, and weaves chaplets of them, or sails
yellow leaves and bits of bark on the stream, rejoicing in their safety,
or weeping at their wreck . The very memory half unmans me . By
Heaven! the first tears I have shed since boyhood rushed scalding
into my eyes when I saw him .”
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 882
It needed not this last account to spur me on to visit him . I only
doubted whether or not I should endeavour to see Idris again, before
I departed . This doubt was decided on the following day . Early in the
morning Raymond came to me; intelligence had arrived that Adrian
was dangerously ill, and it appeared impossible that his failing
strength should surmount the disorder . “Tomorrow,” said Raymond,
“his mother and sister set out for Scotland to see him once again .”
“And I go today,” I cried; “this very hour I will en
gage a sailing
balloon; I shall be there in forty-eight hours at furthest, perhaps in
less, if the wind is fair . Farewell, Raymond; be happy in having cho-
sen the better part in life . This turn of fortune revives me . I feared
madness, not sickness—I have a presentiment that Adrian will not
die; perhaps this illness is a crisis, and he may recover .”
Everything favoured my journey . The balloon rose about half a
mile from the earth, and with a favourable wind it hurried through
the air, its feathered vans cleaving the unopposing atmosphere . Not-
withstanding the melancholy object of my journey, my spirits were
exhilarated by reviving hope, by the swift motion of the airy pinnace,
and the balmy visitation of the sunny air . The pilot hardly moved
the plumed steerage, and the slender mechanism of the wings, wide
unfurled, gave forth a murmuring noise, soothing to the sense . Plain
and hill, stream and corn-field, were discernible below, while we un-
impeded sped on swift and secure, as a wild swan in his spring-tide
flight. The machine obeyed the slightest motion of the helm; and,
the wind blowing steadily, there was no let or obstacle to our course .
Such was the power of man over the elements; a power long sought,
and lately won; yet foretold in by-gone time by the prince of poets,
whose verses I quoted much to the astonishment of my pilot, when
I told him how many hundred years ago they had been written:—
Oh! human wit, thou can’st invent much ill,
Thou searchest strange arts: who would think by skill,
An heavy man like a light bird should stray,
And through the empty heavens find a way?
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 883
I alighted at Perth; and, though much fatigued by a constant expo-
sure to the air for many hours, I would not rest, but merely altering
my mode of conveyance, I went by land instead of air, to Dunkeld .
The sun was rising as I entered the opening of the hills . After the
revolution of ages Birnam hill was again covered with a young for-
est, while more aged pines, planted at the very commencement of
the nineteenth century by the then Duke of Athol, gave solemnity
and beauty to the scene. The rising sun first tinged the pine tops; and
my mind, rendered through my mountain education deeply suscep-
tible of the graces of nature, and now on the eve of again beholding
my beloved and perhaps dying friend, was strangely influenced by
the sight of those distant beams: surely they were ominous, and as
such I regarded them, good omens for Adrian, on whose life my
happiness depended .
Poor fellow! he lay stretched on a bed of sickness, his cheeks
glowing with the hues of fever, his eyes half closed, his breath ir-
regular and difficult. Yet it was less painful to see him thus, than to
find him fulfilling the animal functions uninterruptedly, his mind
sick the while . I established myself at his bedside; I never quitted it
day or night . Bitter task was it, to behold his spirit waver between
death and life: to see his warm cheek, and know that the very fire
which burned too fiercely there, was consuming the vital fuel; to
hear his moaning voice, which might never again articulate words
of love and wisdom; to witness the ineffectual motions of his limbs,
soon to be wrapt in their mortal shroud . Such for three days and
nights appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for my
labours, and I became haggard and spectre-like, through anxiety and
watching . At length his eyes unclosed faintly, yet with a look of re-
turning life; he became pale and weak; but the rigidity of his features
was softened by approaching convalescence . He knew me . What a
brimful cup of joyful agony it was, when his face first gleamed with
the glance of recognition—when he pressed my hand, now more
fevered than his own, and when he pronounced my name! No trace
of his past insanity remained, to dash my joy with sorrow .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 884
This same evening his mother and sister arrived . The Countess
of Windsor was by nature full of energetic feeling; but she had very
seldom in her life permitted the concentrated emotions of her heart
to shew themselves on her features . The studied immovability of her
countenance; her slow, equable manner, and soft but unmelodious
voice, were a mask, hiding her fiery passions, and the impatience of
her disposition . She did not in the least resemble either of her chil-
dren; her black and sparkling eye, lit up by pride, was totally unlike
the blue lustre, and frank, benignant expression of either Adrian or
Idris . There was something grand and majestic in her motions, but
nothing persuasive, nothing amiable . Tall, thin, and strait, her face
still handsome, her raven hair hardly tinged with grey, her forehead
arched and beautiful, had not the eye-brows been somewhat scat-
tered—it was impossible not to be struck by her, almost to fear her .
Idris appeared to be the only being who could resist her mother, not-
withstanding the extreme mildness of her character . But there was a
fearlessness and frankness about her, which said that she would not
encroach on another’s liberty, but held her own sacred and unassail-
able .
The Countess cast no look of kindness on my worn-out frame,
though afterwards she thanked me coldly for my attentions . Not so
Idris; her first glance was for her brother; she took his hand, she
kissed his eye-lids, and hung over him with looks of compassion
and love . Her eyes glistened with tears when she thanked me, and
the grace of her expressions was enhanced, not diminished, by the
fervour, which caused her almost to falter as she spoke . Her mother,
all eyes and ears, soon interrupted us; and I saw, that she wished to
dismiss me quietly, as one whose services, now that his relatives had
arrived, were of no use to her son . I was harassed and ill, resolved
not to give up my post, yet doubting in what way I should assert it;
when Adrian called me, and clasping my hand, bade me not leave
him . His mother, apparently inattentive, at once understood what
was meant, and seeing the hold we had upon her, yielded the point
to us .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 885
The days that followed were full of pain to me; so that I some-
times regretted that I had not yielded at once to the haughty lady,
who watched all my motions, and turned my beloved task of nursing
my friend to a work of pain and irritation . Never did any woman
appear so entirely made of mind, as the Countess of Windsor . Her
passions had subdued her appetites, even her natural wants; she
slept little, and hardly ate at all; her body was evidently considered
by her as a mere machine, whose health was necessary for the ac-
complishment of her schemes, but whose senses formed no part of
her enjoyment . There is something fearful in one who can thus con-
quer the animal part of our nature, if the victory be not the effect of
consummate virtue; nor was it without a mixture of this feeling, th
at
I beheld the figure of the Countess awake when others slept, fast-
ing when I, abstemious naturally, and rendered so by the fever that
preyed on me, was forced to recruit myself with food . She resolved
to prevent or diminish my opportunities of acquiring influence over
her children, and circumvented my plans by a hard, quiet, stubborn
resolution, that seemed not to belong to flesh and blood. War was at
last tacitly acknowledged between us . We had many pitched battles,
during which no word was spoken, hardly a look was interchanged,
but in which each resolved not to submit to the other . The Countess
had the advantage of position; so I was vanquished, though I would
not yield .
I became sick at heart . My countenance was painted with the
hues of ill health and vexation . Adrian and Idris saw this; they attrib-
uted it to my long watching and anxiety; they urged me to rest, and
take care of myself, while I most truly assured them, that my best
medicine was their good wishes; those, and the assured convales-
cence of my friend, now daily more apparent . The faint rose again
blushed on his cheek; his brow and lips lost the ashy paleness of
threatened dissolution; such was the dear reward of my unremitting
attention—and bounteous heaven added overflowing recompence,
when it gave me also the thanks and smiles of Idris .
After the lapse of a few weeks, we left Dunkeld . Idris and
her mother returned immediately to Windsor, while Adrian and I
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 886
followed by slow journies and frequent stoppages, occasioned by
his continued weakness . As we traversed the various counties of fer-
tile England, all wore an exhilarating appearance to my companion,
who had been so long secluded by disease from the enjoyments of
weather and scenery . We passed through busy towns and cultivated
plains . The husbandmen were getting in their plenteous harvests,
and the women and children, occupied by light rustic toils, formed
groupes of happy, healthful persons, the very sight of whom car-
ried cheerfulness to the heart . One evening, quitting our inn, we
strolled down a shady lane, then up a grassy slope, till we came to
an eminence, that commanded an extensive view of hill and dale,
meandering rivers, dark woods, and shining villages . The sun was
setting; and the clouds, straying, like new-shorn sheep, through the
