Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

  ‘Ines, still incredulous, yet imagining that to soothe his delirium was perhaps the best way to overcome it, demanded what that condition was. Though they were alone, Walberg would communicate it only in a whisper; and Ines, fortified as she was by reason hitherto undisturbed, and a cool and steady temper, could not but recollect some vague reports she had heard in her early youth, before she quitted Spain, of a being permitted to wander through it, with power to tempt men under the pressure of extreme calamity with similar offers, which had been invariably rejected, even in the last extremities of despair and dissolution. She was not superstitious, – but, her memory now taking part with her husband’s representation of what had befallen him, she shuddered at the possibility of his being exposed to similar temptation; and she endeavoured to fortify his mind and conscience, by arguments equally appropriate whether he was the victim of a disturbed imagination, or the real object of this fearful persecution. She reminded him, that if, even in Spain, where the abominations of Antichrist prevailed, and the triumph of the mother of witchcrafts and spiritual seduction was complete,11 the fearful offer he alluded to had been made and rejected with such unmitigated abhorrence, the renunciation of one who had embraced the pure doctrines of the gospel should be expressed with a tenfold energy of feeling and holy defiance. ‘You,’ said the heroic woman, ‘you first taught me that the doctrines of salvation are to be found alone in the holy scriptures, – I believed you, and wedded you in that belief.We are united less in the body than in the soul, for in the body neither of us may probably sojourn much longer. You pointed out to me, not the legends of fabulous saints, but the lives of the primitive apostles and martyrs of the true church. There I read no tales of ‘voluntary humility,’12 of self – inflicted – fruitless sufferings, but I read that the people of God were ‘destitute, afflicted, tormented.’13 And shall we dare to murmur at following the examples of those you have pointed out to me as ensamples14 of suffering? They bore the spoiling of their goods, – they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, – they resisted unto blood, striving against sin. – And shall we lament the lot that has fallen to us, when our hearts have so often burned within us, as we read the holy records together? Alas! what avails feeling till it is brought to the test of fact? How we deceived ourselves, in believing that we indeed participated in the feelings of those holy men, while we were so far removed from the test by which they were proved! We read of imprisonments, of tortures, and of flames! – We closed the book, and partook of a comfortable meal, and retired to a peaceful bed, triumphing in the thought, while saturated with all the world’s goods, that if their trials had been ours, we could have sustained those trials as they did. Now, our hour has come, – it is an hour sharp and terrible!’ – ‘It is!’ murmured the shuddering husband. ‘But shall we therefore shrink?’ replied his wife. Tour ancestors, who were the first in Germany that embraced the reformed religion, have bled and blazed for it, as you have often told me, – can there be a stronger attestation to it?’ – ‘I believe there can,’ said Walberg, whose eyes rolled fearfully, – ‘that of starving for it! – Oh Ines,’ he exclaimed, as he grasped her hands convulsively, ‘I have felt, –1 still feel, that a death at the stake would be mercy compared to the lingering tortures of protracted famine, – to die death that we the daily – and yet do not die! What is this I hold?‘ he exclaimed, grasping unconsciously the hand he held in his. ‘It is my hand, my love,’ answered the trembling wife. – ‘Yours! – no – impossible! – Your fingers were soft and cool, but these are dry, – is this a human hand?‘ – ‘It is mine,’ said the weeping wife. ‘Then you must have been famishing,’ said Walberg, awakening as if from a dream. ‘We have all been so latterly,’ answered Ines, satisfied to restore her husband’s sanity, even at the expense of this horrible confession, – We have all been so – but I have suffered the least. When a family is famishing, the children think of their meals – but the mother thinks only of her children. I have lived on as little as – I could, – I had indeed no appetite.’ – ‘Hush, said Walberg, interrupting her – ‘what sound was that? – was it not like a dying groan?’ – ‘No – it is the children who moan in their sleep.’– What do they moan for?’ ‘Hunger I believe,’ said Ines, involuntarily yielding to the dreadful conviction of habitual misery. – ‘And I sit and hear this,’ said Walberg, starting up, – ‘I sit to hear their young sleep broken by dreams of hunger, while for a word’s speaking I could pile this floor with mountains of gold, and all for the risk of – ‘Of what?’– said Ines, clinging to him, – ‘of what? – Oh! think of that! – what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? – Oh! let us starve, die, rot before your eyes, rather than you should seal your perdition by that horrible’ – ‘Hear me, woman!’ said Walberg, turning on her eyes almost as fierce and lustrous as those of Melmoth, and whose light, indeed, seemed borrowed from his; ‘Hear me! – My soul is lost! They who die in the agonies of famine know no God, and want none – if I remain here to famish among my children, I shall as surely blaspheme the Author of my being, as I shall renounce him under the fearful conditions proposed to me! – Listen to me, Ines, and tremble not. To see my children die of famine will be to me instant suicide and impenitent despair! But if I close with this fearful offer, I may yet repent, – I may yet escape! – There is hope on one side – on the other there is none – none – none! Your hands cling round me, but their touch is cold! – You are wasted to a shadow with want! Shew me the means of procuring another meal, and I will spit at the tempter, and spurn him! – But where is that to be found? – Let me go, then, to meet him! – You will pray for me, Ines, – will you not? – and the children? – No, let them not pray for me! – in my despair I forgot to pray myself, and their prayers would now be a reproach to me. – Ines! – Ines! – What? am I talking to a corse?’ He was indeed, for the wretched wife had sunk at his feet senseless. ‘Thank God!’ he again emphatically exclaimed, as he beheld her lie to all appearance lifeless before him. ‘Thank God a word then has killed her, – it was a gentler death than famine! It would have been kind to have strangled her with these hands! Now for the children!’ he exclaimed, while horrid thoughts chased each other over his reeling and unseated mind, and he imagined he heard the roar of a sea in its full strength thundering in his ears, and saw ten thousand waves dashing at his feet, and every wave of blood. ‘Now for the children!’ – and he felt about as if for some implement of destruction. In doing so, his left hand crossed his right, and grasping it, he exclaimed as if he felt a sword in his hand, – ‘This will do – they will struggle – they will supplicate, – but I will tell them their mother lies dead at my feet, and then what can they say? How now, said the miserable man, sitting calmly down, ‘If they cry to me, what shall I answer? Julia, and Ines her mother’s namesake, – and poor little Maurice, who smiles even amid hunger, and whose smiles are worse than curses!– I will tell them their mother is dead!’ he cried, staggering towards the door of his children’s apartment – ‘Dead without a blow! – that shall be their answer and their doom.’

  ‘As he spoke, he stumbled over the senseless body of his wife; and the tone of his mind once more strung up to the highest pitch of conscious agony, he cried, ‘Men! – men! – what are your pursuits and your passions? – your hopes and fears? – your struggles and your triumphs? – Look on me! – learn from a human being like yourselves, who preaches his last and fearful sermon over the corse of his wife, and approaching the bodies of his sleeping children, whom he soon hopes to see corses also – corses made so by his own hand! – Let all the world listen to me! – let them resign factitious wants and wishes, and furnish those who hang on them for subsistence with the means of bare subsistence! – There is no care, no thought beyond this! Let our children call on me for instruction, for promotion, for distinction, and call in vain – I hold myself innocent. They may find those for themselves, or want them if they list – but let them never in vain call on me for bread, as they have done, – as they do now! I hear t
he moans of their hungry sleep! – World – world, be wise, and let your children curse you to your face for any thing but want of bread! Oh that is the bitterest of curses, – and it is felt most when it is least uttered! I have felt it often, but I shall feel it no longer!’ – And the wretch tottered towards the beds of his children.

  ‘Father! – father!’ cried Julia, ‘are these your hands? Oh let me live, and I will do any thing – any thing but’ – ‘Father! – dear father!’ cried Ines, ‘spare us! – to-morrow may bring another meal!’ Maurice, the young child, sprung from his bed, and cried, clinging round his father, ‘Oh, dear father, forgive me! – but I dreamed a wolf was in the room, and was tearing out our throats; and, father, I cried so long, that I thought you never would come. And now – Oh God! oh God!’ – as he felt the hands of the frantic wretch grasping his throat, – ‘are you the wolf?’

  ‘Fortunately those hands were powerless from the very convulsion of the agony that prompted their desperate effort. The daughters had swooned from horror, – and their swoon appeared like death. The child had the cunning to counterfeit death also, and lay extended and stopping his breath under the fierce but faultering gripe that seized his young throat – then relinquished – then grasped it again – and then relaxed its hold as at the expiration of a spasm.

  ‘When all was over, as the wretched father thought, he retreated from the chamber. In doing so, he stumbled over the corse – like form of his wife. – A groan announced that the sufferer was not dead. ‘What does this mean?’ said Walberg, staggering in his delirium, – ‘does the corse reproach me for murder? – or does one surviving breath curse me for the unfinished work?’

  ‘As he spoke, he placed his foot on his wife’s body. At this moment, a loud knock was heard at the door. ‘They are come!’ said Walberg, whose frenzy hurried him rapidly through the scenes of an imaginary murder, and the consequence of a judicial process. ‘Well! – come in – knock again, or lift the latch – or enter as ye list – here I sit amid the bodies of my wife and children – I have murdered them – I confess it – ye come to drag me to torture, I know – but never – never can your tortures inflict on me more than the agony of seeing them perish by hunger before my eyes. Come in – come in – the deed is done! – The corse of my wife is at my foot, and the blood of my children is on my hands – what have I further to fear?‘ But while the wretched man spoke thus, he sunk sullenly on his chair, appearing to be employed in wiping from his fingers the traces of blood with which he imagined they were stained. At length the knocking at the door became louder, – the latch was lifted, – and three figures entered the apartment in which Walberg sat. They advanced slowly, – two from age and exhaustion, – and the third from strong emotion. Walberg heeded them not, – his eyes were fixed, – his hands locked in each other; – nor did he move a limb as they approached.

  ‘Do you know us?’ said the foremost, holding up a lantern which he held in his hand. Its light fell on a groupe worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt. The room lay in complete darkness, except where that strong and unbroken light fell. It glared on the rigid and moveless obduracy of Walberg’s despair, who appeared stiffening into stone as he sat. It showed the figure of the friendly priest who had been Guzman’s director, and whose features, pale and haggard with age and austerities, seemed to struggle with the smile that trembled over their wrinkled lines. Behind him stood the aged father of Walberg, with an aspect of perfect apathy, except when, with a momentary effort at recollection, he shook his white head, seeming to ask himself why he was there – and wherefore he could not speak. Supporting him stood the young form of Everhard, over whose cheek and eye wandered a glow and lustre too bright to last, and instantly succeeded by paleness and dejection. He trembled, advanced, – then shrinking back, clung to his infirm grandfather, as if needing the support he appeared to give. Walberg was the first to break the silence. ‘I know ye who ye are,’ he said hollowly – ‘ye are come to seize me – ye have heard my confession – why do you delay? Drag me away – I would rise and follow you if I could, but I feel as if I had grown to this seat – you must drag me from it yourselves.’

  ‘As he spoke, his wife, who had remained stretched at his feet, rose slowly but firmly; and, of all that she saw or heard, appearing to comprehend only the meaning of her husband’s words, she clasped her arms round him, as if to oppose his being torn from her, and gazed on the groupe with a look of impotent and ghastly defiance. ‘Another witness,’ cried Walberg, ‘risen from the dead against me? Nay, then, it is time to be gone,’ – and he attempted to rise. ‘Stay, father,’ said Everhard, rushing forward and detaining him in his seat; ‘stay, – there is good news, and this good priest has come to tell it, – listen to him, father, I cannot speak.’ – ‘You! oh you! Everhard,’ answered the father, with a look of mournful reproach, ‘you a witness against me too, – I never raised my hand against you! – Those whom I murdered are silent, and will you be my accuser?’

  ‘They all now gathered round him, partly in terror and partly in consolation, – all anxious to disclose to him the tidings with which their hearts were burdened, yet fearful lest the freight might be too much for the frail vessel that rocked and reeled before them, as if the next breeze would be like a tempest to it. At last it burst forth from the priest, who, by the necessities of his profession, was ignorant of domestic feelings, and of the felicities and agonies which are inseparably twined with the fibres of conjugal and parental hearts. He knew nothing of what Walberg might feel as a husband or father, – for he could never be either; but he felt that good news must be good news, into whatever ears they were poured, or by whatever lips they might be uttered. ‘We have the will,’ he cried abruptly, ‘the true will of Guzman. The other was – asking pardon of God and the saints for saying so – no better than a forgery. The will is found, and you and your family are heirs to all his wealth. I was coming to acquaint you, late as it was, having with difficulty obtained the Superior’s permission to do so, and in my way I met this old man, whom your son was conducting, – how came he out so late?’ At these words Walberg was observed to shudder with a brief but strong spasm. ‘The will is found!’ repeated the priest, perceiving how little effect the words seemed to have on Walberg, – and he raised his voice to its utmost pitch. ‘The will of my uncle is found,’ repeated Everhard. ‘Found, – found, – found!’ echoed the aged grandfather, not knowing what he said, but vaguely repeating the last words he heard, and then looking round as if asking for an explanation of them. ‘The will is found, love,’ cried Ines, who appeared restored to sudden and perfect consciousness by the sound; ‘Do you not hear, love? We are wealthy, – we are happy! Speak to us, love, and do not stare so vacantly, – speak to us!’ A long pause followed. At length, – ‘Who are those?’ said Walberg in a hollow voice, pointing to the figures before him, whom he viewed with a fixed and ghastly look, as if he was gazing on a band of spectres. Tour son, love, – and your father, – and the good friendly priest. Why do you look so doubtfully on us?’ – ‘And what do they come for?’ said Walberg. Again and again the import of their communication was told him, in tones that, trembling with varied emotion, scarce could express their meaning. At length he seemed faintly conscious of what was said, and, looking round on them, uttered a long and heavy sigh. They ceased to speak, and watched him in silence. – Wealth! – wealth! – it comes too late. Look there, – look there!‘ and he pointed to the room where his children lay.

  ‘Ines, with a dreadful presentiment at her heart, rushed into it, and beheld her daughters lying apparently lifeless. The shriek she uttered, as she fell on the bodies, brought the priest and her son to her assistance, and Walberg and the old man were left together alone, viewing each other with looks of complete insensibility; and this apathy of age, and stupefaction of despair, made a singular contrast with the fierce and wild agony of those who still retained their feelings. It was long before the daughters were recovered from their death-like swoon, and still longer before their
father could be persuaded that the arms that clasped him, and the tears that fell on his cold cheek, were those of his living children.

  ‘All that night his wife and family struggled with his despair. At last recollection seemed to burst on him at once. He shed some tears;–then, with a minuteness of reminiscence that was equally singular and affecting, he flung himself before the old man, who, speechless and exhausted, sat passively in his chair, and exclaiming, ‘Father, forgive me!’ buried his head between his father’s knees.

  *

  ‘Happiness is a powerful restorative, – in a few days the spirits of all appeared to have subsided into a calm. They wept sometimes, but their tears were no longer painful; – they resembled those showers in a fine spring morning, which announce the increasing warmth and beauty of the day. The infirmities of Walberg’s father made the son resolve not to leave Spain till his dissolution, which took place in a few months. He died in peace, blessing and blessed. His son was his only spiritual attendant, and a brief and partial interval of recollection enabled him to understand and express his joy and confidence in the holy texts which were read to him from the scriptures. The wealth of the family had now given them importance; and, by the interest of the friendly priest, the body was permitted to be interred in consecrated ground. The family then set out for Germany, where they reside in prosperous felicity;– but to this hour Walberg shudders with horror when he recals the fearful temptations of the stranger, whom he met in his nightly wanderings in the hour of his adversity, and the horrors of this visitation appear to oppress his recollection more than even the images of his family perishing with want.