‘How eloquent of truth is nature in her very silence! How fertile of reflections amid her profoundest desolations! But the desolation now presented to the eyes of Immalee, was that which is calculated to cause terror, not reflection. Earth and heaven, the sea and the dry land, seemed mingling together, and about to replunge into chaos. The ocean, deserting its eternal bed, dashed its waves, whose white surf gleamed through the darkness, far into the shores of the isle. They came on like the crests of a thousand warriors, plumed and tossing in their pride, and, like them, perishing in the moment of victory. There was a fearful inversion of the natural appearance of earth and sea, as if all the barriers of nature were broken, and all her laws reversed.
The waves deserting their station, left, from time to time, the sands as dry as those of the desert; and the trees and shrubs tossed and heaved in ceaseless agitation, like the waves of a midnight storm. There was no light, but a livid grey that sickened the eye to behold, except when the bright red lightning burst out like the eye of a fiend, glancing over the work of ruin, and closing as it beheld it completed.
‘Amid this scene stood two beings, one whose appealing loveliness seemed to have found favour with the elements even in their wrath, and one whose fearless and obdurate eye appeared to defy them. ‘Immalee,’ he cried, ‘is this a place or an hour to talk of love! – all nature is appalled – heaven is dark – the animals have hid themselves – and the very shrubs, as they wave and shrink, seem alive with terror.’ – ‘It is an hour to implore protection,’ said the Indian, clinging to him timidly. ‘Look up,’ said the stranger, while his own fixed and fearless eye seemed to return flash for flash to the baffled and insulted elements; ‘Look up, and if you cannot resist the impulses of your heart, let me at least point out a fitter object for them. Love,’ he cried, extending his arm towards the dim and troubled sky, ‘love the storm in its might of destruction – seek alliance with those swift and perilous travellers of the groaning air, – the meteor that rends, and the thunder that shakes it! Court, for sheltering tenderness, those masses of dense and rolling cloud, – the baseless mountains of heaven! Woo the kisses of the fiery lightnings, to quench themselves on your smouldering bosom! Seek all that is terrible in nature for your companions and your lover! – woo them to burn and blast you – perish in their fierce embrace, and you will be happier, far happier, than if you lived in mine! Lived! – Oh who can be mine and live! Hear me, Immalee!’ he cried, while he held her hands locked in his – while his eyes, rivetted on her, sent forth a light of intolerable lustre – while a new feeling of indefinite enthusiasm seemed for a moment to thrill his whole frame, and new-modulate the tone of his nature; ‘Hear me! If you will be mine, it must be amid a scene like this for ever – amid fire and darkness – amid hatred and despair – amid –’ and his voice swelling to a demoniac shriek of rage and horror, and his arms extended, as if to grapple with the fearful objects of some imaginary struggle, he was rushing from the arch under which they stood, lost in the picture which his guilt and despair had drawn, and whose images he was for ever doomed to behold.
‘The slender form that had clung to him was, by this sudden movement, prostrated at his feet; and, with a voice choaked with terror, yet with that perfect devotedness which never issued but from the heart and lip of woman, she answered his frightful questions with the simple demand, ‘Will you be there?’ – ‘Yes! – THERE I must be, and for ever! And will you, and dare you, be with me?’ And a kind of wild and terrible energy nerved his frame, and strengthened his voice, as he spoke and cowered over pale and prostrate loveliness, that seemed in profound and reckless humiliation to court its own destruction, as if a dove exposed its breast, without flight or struggle, to the beak of a vulture. ‘Well, then,’ said the stranger, while a brief convulsion crossed his pale visage, ‘amid thunder I wed thee – bride of perdition! mine shalt thou be for ever! Come, and let us attest our nuptials before the reeling altar of nature, with the lightnings of heaven for our bed-lights, and the curse of nature for our marriage-benediction!’ The Indian shrieked in terror, not at his words, which she did not understand, but at the expression which accompanied them.8 ‘Come,’ he repeated, ‘while the darkness yet is witness to our ineffable and eternal union.’ Immalee, pale, terrified, but resolute, retreated from him.
‘At this moment the storm, which had obscured the heavens and ravaged the earth, passed away with the rapidity common in those climates, where the visitation of an hour does its work of destruction unimpeded, and is instantly succeeded by the smiling lights and brilliant skies of which mortal curiosity in vain asks the question, Whether they gleam in triumph or in consolation over the mischief they witness?
‘As the stranger spoke, the clouds passed away, carrying their diminished burden of wrath and terror where sufferings were to be inflicted, and terrors to be undergone, by the natives of other climes – and the bright moon burst forth with a glory unknown in European climes. The heavens were as blue as the waves of the ocean, which they seemed to reflect; and the stars burst forth with a kind of indignant and aggravated brilliancy, as if they resented the usurpation of the storm, and asserted the eternal predominance of nature over the casual influences of the storms that obscured her. Such, perhaps, will be the development of the moral world. We shall be told why we suffered, and for what; but a bright and blessed lustre shall follow the storm, and all shall yet be light.9
‘The young Indian caught from this object an omen alike auspicious to her imagination and her heart. She burst from him – she rushed into the light of nature, whose glory seemed like the promise of redemption, gleaming amid the darkness of the fall. She pointed to the moon, that sun of the eastern nights, whose broad and brilliant light fell like a mantle of glory over rock and ruin, over tree and flower.
‘Wed me by this light,’ cried Immalee, ‘and I will be yours for ever!’ And her beautiful countenance reflected the full light of the glorious planet that rode bright through the cloudless heaven – and her white and naked arms, extended towards it, seemed like two pure attesting pledges of the union. ‘Wed me by this light,’ she repeated, sinking on her knees, ‘and I will be yours for ever!’
‘As she spoke, the stranger approached, moved with what feelings no mortal thought can discover. At that moment a trifling phenomenon interfered to alter his destiny. A darkened cloud at that moment covered the moon – it seemed as if the departed storm collected in wrathful haste the last dark fold of its tremendous drapery, and was about to pass away for ever.
‘The eyes of the stranger flashed on Immalee the brightest rays of mingled fondness and ferocity. He pointed to the darkness, – ‘WED ME BY THIS LIGHT!’ he exclaimed, ‘and you shall be mine for ever and ever!’ Immalee, shuddering at the grasp in which he held her, and trying in vain to watch the expression of his countenance, yet felt enough of her danger to tear herself from him. ‘Farewell for ever!’ exclaimed the stranger, as he rushed from her.
‘Immalee, exhausted by emotion and terror, had fallen senseless on the sands that filled the path to the ruined pagoda. He returned – he raised her in his arms – her long dark hair streamed over them like the drooping banners of a defeated army – her arms sunk down as if declining the support they seemed to implore – her cold and colourless cheek rested on his shoulder.
‘Is she dead?’ he murmured. ‘Well, be it so – let her perish – let her be any thing but mine!’ He flung his senseless burden on the sands, and departed – nor did he ever revisit the island.’
CHAPTER XIX
Que donne le monde aux siens plus souvent,
Echo Vent.
Que dois-je vaincre ici, sans jamais relacher,
Echo la chair.
Qui fit le cause des maux, qui me sont survenus,
Echo Venus.
Que faut dire après d’une telle infidelle,
Echo Fi d’elle.
MAGDALÈNIADE, by
Father Pierre de St Louis. 1
‘Three years had elapsed since t
he parting of Immalee and the stranger, when one evening the attention of some Spanish gentlemen, who were walking in a public place in Madrid, was arrested by a figure that passed them, habited in the dress of the country, (only without a sword), and walking very slowly. They stopt by a kind of simultaneous movement, and seemed to ask each other, with silent looks, what had been the cause of the impression this person’s appearance had made on them. There was nothing remarkable in his figure, – his demeanour was quiet; it was the singular expression of his countenance which had struck them with a sensation they could neither define or account for.
‘As they paused, the person returned alone, and walking slowly – and they again encountered that singular expression of the features, (the eyes particularly), which no human glance could meet unappalled. Accustomed to look on and converse with all things revolting to nature and to man, – for ever exploring the mad-house, the jail, or the Inquisition, – the den of famine, the dungeon of crime, or the death-bed of despair, – his eyes had acquired a light and a language of their own – a light that none could gaze on, and a language that few dare understand.
‘As he passed slowly by them, they observed two others whose attention was apparently fixed on the same singular object, for they stood pointing after him, and speaking to each other with gestures of strong and obvious emotion. The curiosity of the groupe for once overcame the restraint of Spanish reserve, and approaching the two cavaliers, they inquired if the singular personage who had passed was not the subject of their conversation, and the cause of the emotion which appeared to accompany it. The others replied in the affirmative, and hinted at their knowledge of circumstances in the character and history of that extraordinary being that might justify even stronger marks of emotion at his presence. This hint operated still more strongly on their curiosity – the circle of listeners began to deepen. Some of them, it appeared, had, or pretended to have, some information relative to this extraordinary subject. And that kind of desultory conversation commenced, whose principal ingredients are a plentiful proportion of ignorance, curiosity and fear, mingled with some small allowance of information and truth; – that conversation, vague, unsatisfactory, but not uninteresting, to which every speaker is welcome to contribute his share of baseless report, – wild conjecture, – anecdote the more incredible the better credited, – and conclusion the more falsely drawn the more likely to carry home conviction.
‘The conversation passed very much in language incoherent as this. – ‘But why, if he be what he is described, what he is known to be, – why is he not seized by order of government? – why is he not immured in the Inquisition?’ – ‘He has been often in the prison of the holy office – oftener, perhaps, than the holy fathers wished,’ said another. ‘But it is a well-known fact, that whatever transpired on his examination, he was liberated almost immediately.’ Another added, ‘That the stranger had been in almost every prison in Europe, but had always contrived either to defeat or defy the power in whose grasp he appeared to be inclosed, – and to be active in his purposes of mischief in the remotest parts of Europe at the moment he was supposed to be expiating them in others.’ Another demanded, ‘if it was known to what country he belonged?’ and was answered, ‘He is said to be a native of Ireland – (a country that no one knows, and which the natives are particularly reluctant to dwell in from various causes)2 – and his name is Melmoth.’ The Spaniard had great difficulty in expressing that theta,3 unpronounceable by continental lips. ‘Another, who had an appearance of more intelligence than the rest, added the extraordinary fact of the stranger’s being seen in various and distant parts of the earth within a time in which no power merely human could be supposed to traverse them – that his marked and fearful habit was every where to seek out the most wretched, or the most profligate, of the community among which he flung himself – what was his object in seeking them was unknown.’ – ‘It is well known,’ said a deep-toned voice, falling on the ears of the startled listeners like the toll of a strong but muffled bell, – ‘it is well known both to him and them.’
‘It was now twilight, but the eyes of all could distinguish the figure of the stranger as he passed; and some even averred they could see the ominous lustre of those eyes which never rose on human destiny but as planets of woe. The groupe paused for some time to watch the retreat of the figure that had produced on them the effect of the torpedo.4 It departed slowly, – no one offered it molestation.
‘I have heard,’ said one of the company, ‘that a delicious music precedes the approach of this person when his destined victim, – the being whom he is permitted to tempt or to torture, – is about to appear or to approach him. I have heard a strange tale of such music being heard; and – Holy Mary be our guide! did you ever hear such sounds? – ‘Where – what? – ‘ and the astonished listeners took off their hats, unclasped their mantles, opened their lips, and drew in their breath, in delicious ecstasy at the sounds that floated round them. ‘No wonder,’ said a young gallant of the party, ‘no wonder that such sounds harbinger the approach of a being so heavenly. She deals with the good spirits; and the blessed saints alone could send such music from above to welcome her.’ As he spoke, all eyes were turned to a figure, which, though moving among a groupe of brilliant and attractive females, appeared the only one among them on whom the eye could rest with pure and undivided light and love. She did not catch observation – observation caught her, and was proud of its prize.
‘At the approach of a large party of females, there was all that anxious and flattering preparation among the cavaliers, – all that eager arrangement of capas, and hats, and plumes, – that characterized the manners of a nation still half-feudal,5 and always gallant and chivalrous. These preliminary movements were answered by corresponding ones on the part of the fair and fatal host approaching. The creaking of their large fans – the tremulous and purposely-delayed adjustment of their floating veils, whose partial concealment flattered the imagination beyond the most full and ostentatious disclosure of the charms they seemed jealous of – the folds of the mantilla, of whose graceful falls, and complicated manœuvres, and coquettish undulations, the Spanish women know how to avail themselves so well – all these announced an attack, which the cavaliers, according to the modes of gallantry in that day (1683), were well prepared to meet and parry.
‘But, amid the bright host that advanced against them, there was one whose arms were not artificial, and the effect of whose singular and simple attractions made a strong contrast to the studied arrangements of her associates. If her fan moved, it was only to collect air – if she arranged her veil, it was only to hide her face – if she adjusted her mantilla, it was but to hide that form, whose exquisite symmetry defied the voluminous drapery of even that day to conceal it. Men of the loosest gallantly fell back as she approached, with involuntary awe – the libertine who looked on her was half-converted – the susceptible beheld her as one who realized that vision of imagination that must never be embodied here – and the unfortunate as one whose sight alone was consolation – the old, as they gazed on her, dreamt of their youth – and the young for the first time dreamt of love – the only love which deserves the name – that which purity alone can inspire, and perfect purity alone can reward.
‘As she mingled among the gay groupes that filled the place, one might observe a certain air that distinguished her from every female there, – not by pretension to superiority, (of that her unequalled loveliness must have acquitted her, even to the vainest of the groupe), but by an untainted, unsophisticated character, diffusing itself over look and motion, and even thought – turning wildness into grace – giving an emphasis to a single exclamation, that made polished sentences sound trifling – for ever trespassing against etiquette with vivid and fearless enthusiasm, and apologizing the next moment with such timid and graceful repentance, that one doubted whether the offence or the apology were most delightful.
‘She presented altogether a singular contrast to the measured tones, the mincin
g gait, and the organized uniformity of dress, and manner, and look, and feeling, of the females about her. The harness of art was upon every limb and feature from their birth, and its trappings concealed or crippled every movement which nature had designed for graceful. But in the movement of this young female, there was a bounding elasticity, a springiness, a luxuriant and conscious vitality, that made every action the expression of thought; and then, as she shrunk from the disclosure, made it the more exquisite interpreter of feeling. There was around her a mingled light of innocence and majesty, never united but in her sex. Men may long retain, and even confirm, the character of power which nature has stamped on their frames, but they very soon forfeit their claim to the expression of innocence.
‘Amid the vivid and eccentric graces of a form that seemed like a comet in the world of beauty, bound by no laws, or by laws that she alone understood and obeyed, there was a shade of melancholy, that, to a superficial observer, seemed transitory and assumed, perhaps as a studied relief to the glowing colours of a picture so brilliant, but which, to other eyes, announced, that with all the energies of intellect occupied, – with all the instincts of sense excited, – the heart had as yet no inmate, and wanted one.
Melmoth the Wanderer Page 46
