FROM MRS. ST. JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
At last I can give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is
now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a
disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she
grew (no thanks to your forbearance) gradually better. I trust that she
will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she
now feels and decides that it will be for the last time. You have, it
is true, injured her happiness for life her virtue, thank Heaven, is yet
spared; and though you have made her wretched, you will never, I trust,
succeed in making her despised.
You ask me, with some menacing and more complaint, why I am so bitter
against you. I will tell you. I not only know Emily, and feel confident,
from that knowledge, that nothing can recompense her for the reproaches
of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are the last
man to render her happy. I set aside, for the moment, all rules of
religion and morality in general, and speak to you (to use the cant
and abused phrase) “without prejudice” as to the particular instance.
Emily’s nature is soft and susceptible, yours fickle and wayward in
the extreme. The smallest change or caprice in you, which would not be
noticed by a mind less delicate, would wound her to the heart. You
know that the very softness of her character arises from its want of
strength. Consider, for a moment, if she could bear the humiliation and
disgrace which visit so heavily the offences of an English wife? She has
been brought up in the strictest notions of morality; and, in a mind,
not naturally strong, nothing can efface the first impressions of
education. She is not--indeed she is not--fit for a life of sorrow or
degradation. In another character, another line of conduct might be
desirable; but with regard to her, pause, Falkland, I beseech you,
before you attempt again to destroy her for ever. I have said all.
Farewell.
Your, and above all, Emily’s friend.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
You will see me, Emily, now that you are recovered sufficiently to do so
without danger. I do not ask this as a favour. If my love has deserved,
anything from yours, if past recollections give me any claim over you,
if my nature has not forfeited the spell which it formerly possessed
upon your own, I demand it as a right.
The bearer waits for your answer.
FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
See you, Falkland! Can you doubt it? Can you think for a moment that
your commands can ever cease to become a law to me? Come here whenever
you please. If, during my illness, they have prevented it, it was
without my knowledge. I await you; but I own that this interview will be
the last, if I can claim anything from your mercy.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
I have seen you, Emily, and for the last time! My eyes are dry--my hand
does not tremble. I live, move, breathe, as before--and yet I have seen
you for the last time! You told me--even while you leaned on my bosom,
even while your lip pressed mine--you told me (and I saw your sincerity)
to spare you, and to see you no more. You told me you had no longer
any will, any fate of your own; that you would, if I still continued to
desire it, leave friends, home, honour, for me; but you did not disguise
from me that you would, in so doing, leave happiness also. You did not
conceal from me that I was not sufficient to constitute all your world:
you threw yourself, as you had done once before, upon what you called
my generosity: you did not deceive yourself then; you have not deceived
yourself now. In two weeks I shall leave England, probably for ever.
I have another country still more dear to me, from its afflictions and
humiliation. Public ties differ but little in their nature from private;
and this confession of preference of what is debased to what is exalted,
will be an answer to Mrs. St. John’s assertion, that we cannot love in
disgrace as we can in honour. Enough of this. In the choice, my poor
Emily, that you have made, I cannot reproach you. You have done wisely,
rightly, virtuously. You said that this separation must rest rather with
me than with yourself; that you would be mine the moment I demanded it.
I will not now or ever accept this promise. No one, much less one whom I
love so intensely, so truly as I do you, shall ever receive disgrace at
my hands, unless she can feel that that disgrace would be dearer to her
than glory elsewhere; that the simple fate of being mine was not so much
a recompense as a reward; and that, in spite of worldly depreciation and
shame, it would constitute and concentrate all her visions of happiness
and pride. I am now going to bid you farewell. May you--I say this
disinterestedly, and from my very heart--may you soon forget how much
you have loved and yet love me! For this purpose, you cannot have
a better companion than Mrs. St. John. Her opinion of me is loudly
expressed, and probably true; at all events, you will do wisely to
believe it. You will hear me attacked and reproached by many. I do not
deny the charges; you know best what I have deserved from you. God bless
you, Emily. Wherever I go, I shall never cease to love you as I do now.
May you be happy in your child and in your conscience! Once more, God
bless you, and farewell!
FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
O Falkland! You have conquered! I am yours--yours only--Wholly and
forever. When your letter came, my hand trembled so, that I could not
open it for several minutes; and when I did, I felt as if the very earth
had passed from my feet. You were going from your country; you were
about to be lost to me for ever. I could restrain myself no longer; all
my virtue, my pride, forsook me at once. Yes, yes, you are indeed
my world. I will fly with you anywhere--everywhere. Nothing can be
dreadful, but not seeing you; I would be a servant--a slave--a dog,
as long as I could be with you; hear one tone of your voice, catch one
glance of your eye. I scarcely see the paper before me, my thoughts are
so straggling and confused. Write to me one word, Falkland; one word,
and I will lay it to my heart, and be happy.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE. -------- Hotel, London.
I hasten to you, Emily--my own and only love. Your letter has restored
me to life. To-morrow we shall meet.
It was with mingled feelings, alloyed and embittered, in spite of the
burning hope which predominated over all, that Falkland returned to
E------. He knew that he was near the completion of his most ardent
wishes; that he was within the grasp of a prize which included all the
thousand objects of ambition, into which, among other men, the desires
are divided; the only dreams he had ventured to form for years were
about to kindle into life. He had every reason to be happy;--such is the
inconsistency of human nature, that he was almost wretched. The morbid
melancholy, habitual to him, threw its colourings over every emotion
and idea. He knew the character of the woman whose affections he had
seduced; and he trembled to think of the doom to which he was about to
condemn her. With this, there came over his mind a long train of
dark and remorseful recollections. Emily was not the only one whose
destruction he had prepared. All who had loved him, he had repaid with
ruin; and one--the first--the fairest--and the most loved, with death.
That last remembrance, more bitterly than all, possessed him. It will
be recollected that Falkland, in the letters which begin this work,
speaking of the ties he had formed after the loss of his first love,
says, that it was the senses, not the affections, that were engaged.
Never, indeed, since her death, till he met Emily, had his heart been
unfaithful to her memory. Alas! none but those who have cherished in
their souls an image of the death; who have watched over it for long and
bitter years in secrecy and gloom; who have felt that it was to them as
a holy and fairy spot which no eye but theirs could profane; who have
filled all things with recollections as with a spell, and made the
universe one wide mausoleum of the lost;--none but those can understand
the mysteries of that regret which is shed over every after passion,
though it be more burning and intense; that sense of sacrilege with
which we fill up the haunted recesses of the spirit with a new and a
living idol and perpetrate the last act of infidelity to that buried
love, which the heavens that now receive her, the earth where we beheld
her, tell us, with, the unnumbered voices of Nature, to worship with the
incense of our faith.
His carriage stopped at the lodge. The woman who opened the gates gave
him the following note:
“Mr. Mandeville is returned; I almost fear that he suspects our
attachment. Julia says, that if you come again to E------, she will
inform him. I dare not, dearest Falkland, see you here. What is to be
done? I am very ill and feverish: my brain burns so, that I can
think, feel, remember nothing, but the one thought, feeling, and
remembrance--that through shame, and despite of guilt, in life, and till
death, I am yours. E. M.”
As Falkland read this note, his extreme and engrossing love for Emily
doubled with each word: an instant before, and the certainty of seeing
her had suffered his mind to be divided into a thousand objects; now,
doubt united them once more into one.
He altered his route to L------, and despatched from thence a short note
to Emily, imploring her to meet him that evening by the lake, in order
to arrange their ultimate flight. Her answer was brief, and blotted with
her tears; but it was assent.
During the whole of that day, at least from the moment she received
Falkland’s letter, Emily was scarcely sensible of a single idea: she sat
still and motionless, gazing on vacancy, and seeing nothing within her
mind, or in the objects which surrounded her, but one dreary blank.
Sense, thought, feeling, even remorse, were congealed and frozen; and
the tides of emotion were still, bid they were ice!
As Falkland’s servant had waited without to deliver the note to Emily,
Mrs. St. John had observed him: her alarm and surprise only served
to quicken her presence of mind. She intercepted Emily’s answer under
pretence of giving it herself to Falkland’s servant. She read it, and
her resolution was formed. After carefully resealing and delivering it
to the servant, she went at once to Mr. Mandeville, and revealed Lady
Emily’s attachment to Falkland. In this act of treachery, she was solely
instigated by her passions; and when Mandeville, roused from his wonted
apathy to a paroxysm of indignation, thanked her again and again for
the generosity of friendship which he imagined was all that actuated her
communication, he dreamed not of the fierce and ungovernable jealousy
which envied the very disgrace which her confession was intended to
award. Well said the French enthusiast, “that the heart, the most serene
to appearance, resembles that calm and glassy fountain which cherishes
the monster of the Nile in the bosom of its waters.” Whatever reward
Mrs. St. John proposed to herself in this action, verily she has had the
recompense that was her due. Those consequences of her treachery, which
I hasten to relate, have ceased to others--to her they remain. Amidst
the pleasures of dissipation, one reflection has rankled at her mind;
one dark cloud has rested between the sunshine and her soul; like the
murderer in Shakespeare, the revel where she fled for forgetfulness
has teemed to her with the spectres of remembrance. O thou untameable
conscience! thou that never flatterest--thou that watchest over the
human heart never to slumber or to sleep--it is thou that takest from
us the present, barrest to us the future, and knittest the eternal chain
that binds us to the rock and the vulture of the past!
The evening came on still and dark; a breathless and heavy apprehension
seemed gathered over the air: the full large clouds lay without motion
in the dull sky, from between which, at long and scattered intervals,
the wan stars looked out; a double shadow seemed to invest the grouped
and gloomy trees that stood unwaving in the melancholy horizon. The
waters of the lake lay heavy and unagitated as the sleep of death; and
the broken reflections of the abrupt and winding banks rested upon their
bosoms, like the dreamlike remembrance of a former existence.
The hour of the appointment was arrived: Falkland stood by the spot,
gazing upon the lake before him; his cheek was flushed, his hand was
parched and dry with the consuming fire within him. His pulse beat thick
and rapidly; the demon of evil passions was upon his soul. He stood so
lost in his own reflections, that he did not for some moments perceive
the fond and tearful eye which was fixed upon him on that brow and
lip, thought seemed always so beautiful, so divine, that to disturb its
repose was like a profanation of something holy; and though Emily came
towards him with a light and hurried step, she paused involuntarily to
gaze upon that noble countenance which realised her earliest visions of
the beauty and majesty of love. He turned slowly, and perceived her;
he came to her with his own peculiar smile; he drew her to his bosom in
silence; he pressed his lips to her forehead: she leaned upon his bosom,
and forgot all but him. Oh! if there be one feeling which makes Love,
even guilty Love, a god, it is the knowledge that in the midst of
this breathing world he reigns aloof and alone; and that those who are
occupied with his worship know nothing of the pettiness, the strife,
the bustle which, pollute and agitate the ordinary inhabitants of earth!
What was now to them, as they stood alone in the deep stillness of
Nature, everything that had engrossed them before they had met and
loved? Even in her, the recollections of guilt and grief subsided: she
was only sensible of one thought--the presence of the being who stood
beside her,
That ocean to the rivers of her soul.
They sat down beneath an oak: Falkland stooped to kiss the cold and pale
cheek that still rested upon his breast. His kisses were like lava: the
turbulent and stormy elements of sin and desire were aroused even to
madness within him. He clasped her still nearer to his bosom: her lips
answered to his own: they caught perhaps something of the spirit which
they received: her eyes were half-closed; the bosom heaved wildly that
was pressed to his beating and burning heart. The skies grew darker and
darker as the night stole over them: one low roll of thunder broke upon
the curtained and heavy air--they did not hear it; and yet it was the
knell of peace--virtue--hope--lost, lost for ever to their souls!
They separated as they had never done before. In Emily’s bosom there was
a dreary void--a vast blank-over which there went a low deep voice like
a Spirit’s--a sound indistinct and strange, that spoke a language she
knew not; but felt that it told of woe-guilt-doom. Her senses were
stunned: the vitality of her feelings was numbed and torpid: the first
herald of despair is insensibility. “Tomorrow then,” said Falkland--and
his voice for the first time seemed strange and harsh to her--“we
will fly hence for ever: meet me at daybreak--the carriage shall be in
attendance--we cannot now unite too soon--would that at this very moment
we were prepared!”--“To-morrow!” repeated Emily, “at daybreak!” and as
she clung to him, he felt her shudder: “to-morrow-ay-to-morrow!--” one
kiss--one embrace--one word--farewell--and they parted.
Falkland returned to L------, a gloomy foreboding rested upon his mind:
that dim and indescribable fear, which no earthly or human cause
can explain--that shrinking within self--that vague terror of the
future--that grappling, as it were, with some unknown shade--that
wandering of the spirit--whither?--that cold, cold creeping dread--of
what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential servant. He gave
him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then retired into
the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room: the
wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the
expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the
casement in silence--he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead,
not with a sense of freshness, but, like the parching atmosphere of the
east, charged with a weight and fever that sank heavy into his soul. He
turned:--he threw himself upon the bed, and placed his hands over his
face. His thoughts were scattered into a thousand indistinct forms, but
over all, there was one rapturous remembrance; and that was, that
the morrow was to unite him for ever to her whose possession had only
rendered her more dear. Meanwhile, the hours rolled on; and as he lay
thus silent and still, the clock of the distant church struck with
a distinct and solemn sound upon his ear. It was the half-hour after
midnight. At that moment an icy thrill ran, slow and curdling, through
his veins. His heart, as if with a presentiment of what was to follow,
beat violently, and then stopped; life itself seemed ebbing away; cold
drops stood upon his forehead; his eyelids trembled, and the balls
reeled and glazed, like those of a dying man; a deadly fear gathered
over him, so that his flesh quivered, and every hair in his head seemed
instinct with a separate life, the very marrow of his bones crept, and
his blood waxed thick and thick, as if stagnating into an ebbless and
frozen substance. He started in a wild and unutterable terror. There
stood, at the far end of the room, a dim and thin shape like moonlight,
without outline or form; still, and indistinct, and shadowy. He gazed
on, speechless and motionless; his faculties and senses seemed locked in
an unnatural trance. By degrees the shape became clearer and clearer to
his fixed and dilating eye. He saw, as through a floating and mist-like
veil, the features of Emily; but how changed!--sunken and hueless, and
set in death. The dropping lip, from which there seemed to trickle a
deep red stain like blood; the lead-like and lifeless eye; the calm,
awful, mysterious repose which broods over the aspect of the dead;--all
grew, as it were, from the hazy cloud that encircled them for one, one
brief, agonising moment, and then as suddenly faded away. The spell
passed from his senses. He sprang from the bed with a loud cry. All was
quiet. There was not a trace of what he had witnessed. The feeble light
of the skies rested upon the spot where the apparition had stood; upon
that spot he stood also. He stamped upon the floor--it was firm beneath
his footing. He passed his hands over his body--he was awake--he was
unchanged: earth, air, heaven, were around him as before. What had thus
gone over his soul to awe and overcome it to such weakness? To these
questions his reason could return no answer. Bold by nature, and
sceptical by philosophy, his mind gradually recovered its original tone:
he did not give way to conjecture; he endeavoured to discard it; he
sought by natural causes to account for the apparition he had seen or
imagined; and, as he felt the blood again circulating in its accustomed
courses, and the night air coming chill over his feverish frame, he
smiled with a stern and scornful bitterness at the terror which had so
shaken, and the fancy which had so deluded, his mind.
Are there not “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
our philosophy”? A Spirit may hover in the air that we breathe: the
depth of our most secret solitudes may be peopled by the invisible;
our uprisings and our downsittings may be marked by a witness from the
grave. In our walks the dead may be behind us; in our banquets they may
sit at the board; and the chill breath of the night wind that stirs the
curtains of our bed may bear a message our senses receive not, from
lips that once have pressed kisses on our own! Why is it that at moments
there creeps over us an awe, a terror, overpowering, but undefined?
Why is it that we shudder without a cause, and feel the warm life-blood
stand still in its courses? Are the dead too near? Do unearthly wings
touch us as they flit around? Has our soul any intercourse which
the body shares not, though it feels, with the supernatural
world--mysterious revealings--unimaginable communion--a language of
dread and power, shaking to its centre the fleshly barrier that divides
the spirit from its race?
How fearful is the very life which we hold! We have our being beneath a
cloud, and are a marvel even to ourselves. There is not a single thought
which has its affixed limits. Like circles in the water, our researches
weaken as they extend, and vanish at last into the immeasurable and
unfathomable space of the vast unknown. We are like children in the
dark; we tremble in a shadowy and terrible void, peopled with our
fancies! Life is our real night, and the first gleam of the morning,
which brings us certainty, is death.
Falkland sat the remainder of that night by the window watching the
clouds become gray as the dawn rose, and its earliest breeze awoke. He
heard the trampling of the horses beneath: he drew his cloak round him,
and descended. It was on a turning of the road beyond the lodge that
he directed the carriage to wait, and he then proceeded to the place
appointed. Emily was not yet there. He walked to and fro with an
agitated and hurried step. The impression of the night had in a great
measure been effaced from his mind, and he gave himself up without
reserve to the warm and sanguine hopes which he had so much reason to
conceive. He thought too, at moments, of those bright climates beneath
which he designed their asylum, where the very air is music, and the
light is like the colourings of love; and he associated the sighs of a
mutual rapture with the fragrance of myrtles, and the breath of a Tuscan
heaven. Time glided on. The hour was long past, yet Emily came not!
The sun rose, and Falkland turned in dark and angry discontent from its
beams. With every moment his impatience increased, and at last he could
restrain himself no longer. He proceeded towards the house. He stood for
some time at a distance; but as all seemed still hushed in repose, he
drew nearer and nearer till he reached the door: to his astonishment
it was open. He saw forms passing rapidly through the hall. He heard a
confused and indistinct murmur. At length he caught a glimpse of Mrs.
St. John. He could command himself no more. He sprang forwards--entered
the door--the hall--and caught her by a part of her dress. He could not
speak, but his countenance said all which his lips refused. Mrs. St.
John burst into tears when she saw him. “Good God!” she said, “why are
you here? Is it possible you have yet learned--” Her voice failed her.
Falkland had by this time recovered himself. He turned to the servants
who gathered around him. “Speak,” he said calmly. “What has occurred?”
“My lady--my lady!” burst at once from several tongues. “What of her:”
said Falkland, with a blanched cheek, but unchanging voice. There was a
pause. At that instant a man, whom Falkland recognised as the physician
of the neighbourhood, passed at the opposite end of the hall. A light,
a scorching and intolerable light, broke upon him. “She is dying--she
is dead, perhaps,” he said, in a low sepulchral tone, turning his eye
around till it had rested upon every one present. Not one answered. He
paused a moment, as if stunned by a sudden shock, and then sprang up the
stairs. He passed the boudoir, and entered the room where Emily slept.
The shutters were only partially closed a faint light broke through, and
rested on the bed: beside it bent two women. Them he neither heeded nor
saw. He drew aside the curtains. He beheld--the same as he had seen it
in his vision of the night before--the changed and lifeless countenance
of Emily Mandeville! That face, still so tenderly beautiful, was
partially turned towards him. Some dark stains upon the lip and neck
told how she had died--the blood-vessel she had broken before had
burst again. The bland and soft eyes, which for him never had but one
expression, were closed; and the long and disheveled tresses half hid,
while they contrasted, that bosom, which had but the night before
first learned to thrill beneath his own. Happier in her fate than she
deserved, she passed from this bitter life ere the punishment of her
guilt had begun. She was not doomed to wither beneath the blight of
shame, nor the coldness of estranged affection. From him whom she had
so worshipped, she was not condemned to bear wrong nor change. She died
while his passion was yet in its spring--before a blossom, a leaf, had
faded; and she sank to repose while his kiss was yet warm upon her lip,
and her last breath almost mingled with his sigh. For the woman who has
erred, life has no exchange for such a death. Falkland stood mute and
motionless: not one word of grief or horror escaped his lips. At length
he bent down. He took the hand which lay outside the bed; he pressed it;
it replied not to the pressure, but fell cold and heavy from his own. He
put his cheek to her lips; not the faintest breath came from them; and
then for the first time a change passed over his countenance: he pressed
upon those lips one long and last kiss, and, without word, or sign,
or tear, he turned from the chamber. Two hours afterwards he was found
senseless upon the ground; it was upon the spot where he had met Emily
the night before.
For weeks he knew nothing of this earth--he was encompassed with the
spectres of a terrible dream. All was confusion, darkness, horror--a
series and a change of torture! At one time he was hurried through the
heavens in the womb of a fiery star, girt above and below and around
with unextinguishable but unconsuming flames. Wherever he trod, as he
wandered through his vast and blazing prison, the molten fire was his
footing, and the breath of fire was his air. Flowers, and trees, and
hills were in that world as in ours, but wrought from one lurid and
intolerable light; and, scattered around, rose gigantic palaces and
domes of the living flame, like the mansions of the city of Hell.
With every moment there passed to and fro shadowy forms, on whose
countenances was engraven unutterable anguish; but not a shriek, not a
groan, rung through the red air; for the doomed, who fed and inhabited
the flames, were forbidden the consolation of voice. Above there sat,
fixed and black, a solid and impenetrable cloud-Night frozen into
substance; and from the midst there hung a banner of a pale and sickly
flame, on which was written “For Ever.” A river rushed rapidly beside
him. He stooped to slake the agony of his thirst--the waves were waves
of fire; and, as he started from the burning draught, he longed to
shriek aloud, and could not. Then he cast his despairing eyes above for
mercy; and saw on the livid and motionless banner “For Ever.”
A change came o’er the spirit of his dream
He was suddenly borne up on the winds and storms to the oceans of an
eternal winter. He fell stunned and unstruggling upon the ebbless and
sluggish waves. Slowly and heavily they rose over him as he sank: then
came the lengthened and suffocating torture of that drowning death--the
impotent and convulsive contest with the closing waters--the gurgle, the
choking, the bursting of the pent breath, the flutter of the heart,
its agony, and its stillness. He recovered. He was a thousand fathoms
beneath the sea, chained to a rock round which the heavy waters rose as
a wall. He felt his own flesh rot and decay, perishing from his limbs
piece by piece; and he saw the coral banks, which it requires a thousand
ages to form, rise slowly from their slimy bed; and spread atom by atom,
till they became a shelter for the leviathan: their growth, was his only
record of eternity; and ever and ever, around and above him, came
vast and misshapen things--the wonders of the secret deeps; and the
sea-serpent, the huge chimera of the north, made its resting-place by
his side, glaring upon him with a livid and death-like eye, wan, yet
burning as an expiring seta. But over all, in every change, in every
moment of that immortality, there was present one pale and motionless
countenance, never turning from his own. The fiends of hell, the
monsters of the hidden ocean, had no horror so awful as _the human face
of the dead whom he had loved_.
The word of his sentence was gone forth. Alike through that delirium
and its more fearful awakening, through the past, through the future,
through the vigils of the joyless day, and the broken dreams of the
night, there was a charm upon his soul--a hell within himself; and the
curse of his sentence was--never to forget!
When, Lady Emily returned home on that guilty and eventful night, she
stole at once to her room: she dismissed her servant, and threw herself
upon the ground in that deep despair which on this earth can never again
know hope. She lay there without the power to weep, or the courage to
pray--how long, she knew not. Like the period before creation, her
mind was a chaos of jarring elements, and knew neither the method of
reflection nor the division of time.
As she rose, she heard a slight knock at the door, and her husband
entered. Her heart misgave her; and when she saw him close the door
carefully before he approached her, she felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth, alike from her internal shame, and her fear of its
detection.
Mr. Mandeville was a weak, commonplace character; indifferent in
ordinary matters, but, like most imbecile minds, violent and furious
when aroused. “Is this, Madam, addressed to you?” he cried, in a voice
of thunder, as he placed a letter before her (it was one of Falkland’s);
“and this, and this, Madam?” said he, in a still louder tone, as he
flung them out one after another from her own escritoire, which he had
broken open.
Emily sank back, and gasped for breath. Mandeville rose, and, laughing
fiercely, seized her by the arm. He grasped it with all his force. She
uttered a faint scream of terror: he did not heed it; he flung her from
him, and as she fell upon the ground, the blood gushed in torrents from
her lips. In the sudden change of feeling which alarm created, he raised
her in his arms. She was a corpse! At that instant the clock struck upon
his ear with a startling and solemn sound: it was the half-hour after
midnight.
The grave is now closed upon that soft and erring heart, with its
guiltiest secret unrevealed. She went to that last home with a blest
and unblighted name; for her guilt was unknown, and her virtues are yet
recorded in the memories of the Poor.
They laid her in the stately vaults of her ancient line, and her bier
was honoured with tears from hearts not less stricken, because their
sorrow, if violent, was brief. For the dead there are many mourners, but
only one monument--the bosom which loved them best. The spot where the
hearse rested, the green turf beneath, the surrounding trees, the gray
tower of the village church, and the proud halls rising beyond,--all had
witnessed the childhood, the youth, the bridal-day of the being whose
last rites and solemnities they were to witness now. The very bell which
rang for her birth had rung also for the marriage peal; it now tolled
for her death. But a little while, and she had gone forth from that home
of her young and unclouded years, amidst the acclamations and blessings
of all, a bride, with the insignia of bridal pomp--in the first bloom
of her girlish beauty--in the first innocence of her unawakened heart,
weeping, not for the future she was entering, but for the past she was
about to leave, and smiling through her tears, as if innocence had
no business with grief. On the same spot, where he had then waved
his farewell, stood the father now. On the grass which they had then
covered, flocked the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by
the same priest who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had
plighted its vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered.
The day itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled
upon her nuptials. And size--she-but four little years, and all youth’s
innocence darkened, and earth’s beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her,
but the mourner whom she left! In death even love is forgotten; but in
life there is no bitterness so utter as to feel everything is unchanged,
except the One Being who was the soul of all--to know the world is the
same, but that its sunshine is departed.
The noon was still and sultry. Along the narrow street of the small
village of Lodar poured the wearied but yet unconquered band, which
embodied in that district of Spain the last hope and energy of freedom.
The countenances of the soldiers were haggard and dejected; they
displayed even less of the vanity than their accoutrements exhibited of
the pomp and circumstances of war. Yet their garments were such as even
the peasants had disdained: covered with blood and dust, and tattered
into a thousand rags, they betokened nothing of chivalry but its
endurance of hardship; even the rent and sullied banners drooped
sullenly along their staves, as if the winds themselves had become the
minions of fortune, and disdained to swell the insignia of those whom
she had deserted. The glorious music of battle was still. An air of
dispirited and defeated enterprise hung over the whole army. “Thank
Heaven,” said the chief, who closed the last file as it marched--on to
its scanty refreshment and brief repose; “thank Heaven, we are at least
out of the reach of pursuit; and the mountains, those last retreats of
liberty, are before us!” “True, Don Rafael,” replied the youngest of two
officers who rode by the side of the commander; “and if we can cut our
passage to Mina, we may yet plant the standard of the Constitution in
Madrid.” “Ay,” added the elder officer, “and I sing Riego’s hymn in the
place of the Escurial!” “Our sons may!” said the chief, who was indeed
Riego himself, “but for us--all hope is over! Were we united, we could
scarcely make head against the armies of France; and divided as we are,
the wonder is that we have escaped so long. Hemmed in by invasion, our
great enemy has been ourselves. Such has been the hostility faction has
created between Spaniard and Spaniard, that we seem to have none left to
waste upon Frenchmen. We cannot establish freedom if men are willing to
be slaves. We have no hope, Don Alphonso--no hope--but that of death!”
As Riego concluded this desponding answer, so contrary to his general
enthusiasm, the younger officer rode on among the soldiers, cheering
them with words of congratulation and comfort; ordering their several
divisions; cautioning them to be prepared at a moment’s notice; and
impressing on their remembrance those small but essential points of
discipline, which a Spanish troop might well be supposed to disregard.
When Riego and his companion entered the small and miserable hovel
which constituted the headquarters of the place, this man still
remained without; and it was not till he had slackened the girths of his
Andalusian horse, and placed before it the undainty provender which the
_ecurie_ afforded that he thought of rebinding more firmly the bandages
wound around a deep and painful sabre cut in the left arm, which for
several hours had been wholly neglected. The officer, whom Riego had
addressed by the name of Alphonso, came out of the hut just as his
comrade was vainly endeavouring, with his teeth and one hand, to replace
the ligature. As he assisted him, he said, “You know not, my dear
Falkland, how bitterly I reproach myself for having ever persuaded you
to a cause where contest seems to have no hope, and danger no glory.”
Falkland smiled bitterly. “Do not deceive yourself, my dear uncle,” said
he; “your persuasions would have been unavailing but for the suggestions
of my own wishes. I am not one of those enthusiasts who entered on your
cause with high hopes and chivalrous designs: I asked but forgetfulness
and excitement--I have found them! I would not exchange a single pain
I have endured for what would have constituted the pleasures of other
men:--but enough of this. What time, think you, have we for repose?”
“Till the evening,” answered Alphonso; “our route will then most
probably be directed to the Sierre Morena. The General is extremely
weak and exhausted, and needs a longer rest than we shall gain. It is
singular that with such weak health he should endure so great an excess
of hardship and fatigue.” During this conversation they entered the
hut. Riego was already asleep. As they seated themselves to the wretched
provision of the place, a distant and indistinct noise was heard. It
came first on their ears like the birth of the mountain wind-low, and
hoarse, and deep: gradually it grew loud and louder, and mingled with
other sounds which they defined too well--the hum, the murmur, the
trampling of steeds, the ringing echoes of the rapid march of armed men!
They heard and knew the foe was upon them!--a moment more, and the drum
beat to arms. “By St. Pelagio,” cried Riego, who had sprung from his
light sleep at the first sound of the approaching danger, unwilling to
believe his fears, “it cannot be: the French are far behind:” and then,
as the drum beat, his voice suddenly changed, “the enemy? the enemy!
D’Aguilar, to horse!” and with those words he rushed out of the hut. The
soldiers, who had scarcely begun to disperse, were soon re-collected. In
the mean while the French commander, D’Argout, taking advantage of the
surprise he had occasioned, poured on his troops, which consisted solely
of cavalry, undaunted and undelayed by the fire of the posts. On, on
they drove like a swift cloud charged with thunder, and gathering wrath
as it hurried by, before it burst in tempest on the beholders. They did
not pause till they reached the farther extremity of the village: there
the Spanish infantry were already formed into two squares. “Halt!” cried
the French commander: the troop suddenly stopped confronting the nearer
square. There was one brief pause-the moment before the storm. “Charge!”
said D’ Argout, and the word rang throughout the line up to the clear
and placid sky. Up flashed the steel like lightning; on went the troop
like the clash of a thousand waves when the sun is upon them; and
before the breath of the riders was thrice drawn, came the crash--the
shock--the slaughter of battle. The Spaniards made but a faint
resistance to the impetuosity of the onset: they broke on every side
beneath the force of the charge, like the weak barriers of a rapid and
swollen stream; and the French troops, after a brief but bloody victory
(joined by a second squadron from the rear), advanced immediately upon
the Spanish cavalry. Falkland was by the side of Riego. As the
troop advanced, it would have been curious to notice the contrast of
expression in the face of each; the Spaniard’s features lighted up with
the daring enthusiasm of his nature; every trace of their usual languor
and exhaustion vanished beneath the unconquerable soul that blazed
out the brighter for the debility of the frame; the brow knit; the
eye flashing; the lip quivering:--and close beside, the calm, stern;
passionless repose that brooded over the severe yet noble beauty of
Falkland’s countenance. To him danger brought scorn, not enthusiasm: he
rather despised than defied it. “The dastards! they waver,” said Riego,
in an accent of despair, as his troop faltered beneath the charge of the
French: and so saying, he spurred his steed on to the foremost line. The
contest was longer, but not less decisive, than the one just concluded.
The Spaniards, thrown into confusion by the first shock, never recovered
themselves. Falkland, who, in his anxiety to rally and inspirit the
soldiers, had advanced with two other officers beyond the ranks, was
soon surrounded by a detachment of dragoons: the wound in his left arm
scarcely suffered him to guide his horse: he was in the most imminent
danger. At that moment D’Aguilar, at the head of his own immediate
followers, cut his way into the circle, and covered Falkland’s retreat;
another detachment of the enemy came up, and they were a second time
surrounded. In the mean while, the main body of the Spanish cavalry were
flying in all directions, and Riego’s deep voice was heard at intervals,
through the columns of smoke and dust, calling and exhorting them in
vain. D’Aguilar and his scanty troop, after a desperate skirmish, broke
again through the enemy’s line drawn up against their retreat. The rank
closed after them like waters when the object that pierced them has
sunk: Falkland and his two companions were again environed: he saw his
comrades cut to the earth before him. He pulled up his horse for one
moment, clove down with one desperate blow the dragoon with whom he was
engaged, and then setting his spurs to the very rowels into his horse,
dashed at once through the circle of his foes. His remarkable presence
of mind, and the strength and sagacity of his horse, befriended him.
Three sabres flashed before him, and glanced harmless from his raised
sword, like lightning on the water. The circle was passed! As he
galloped towards Riego, his horse started from a dead body that lay
across his path. He reined up for one instant, for the countenance,
which looked upwards, struck him as familiar. What was his horror,
when in that livid and distorted face he recognised his uncle! The thin
grizzled hairs were besprent with gore and brains, and the blood yet
oozed from the spot where the ball had passed through his temple.
Falkland had but a brief interval for grief; the pursuers were close
behind: he heard the snort of the foremost horse before he again put
spurs into his own. Riego was holding a hasty consultation with his
principal officers. As Falkland rode breathless up to them, they had
decided on the conduct expedient to adopt. They led the remaining square
of infantry towards the chain of mountains against which the village,
as it were, leaned; and there the men dispersed in all directions. “For
us,” said Riego to the followers on horseback who gathered around him,
“for us the mountains still promise a shelter. We must ride, gentlemen,
for our lives--Spain will want them yet.”
Wearied and exhausted as they were, that small and devoted troop fled on
into the recesses of the mountains for the remainder of that day--twenty
men out of the two thousand who had halted at Lodar. As the evening
stole over them, they entered into a narrow defile: the tall hills rose
on every side, covered with the glory of the setting sun, as if Nature
rejoiced to grant her bulwarks as a protection to liberty. A small clear
stream ran through the valley, sparkling with the last smile of the
departing day; and ever and anon, from the scattered shrubs and the
fragrant herbage, came the vesper music of the birds, and the hum of the
wild bee.
Parched with thirst, and drooping with fatigue, the wanderers sprung
forward with one simultaneous cry of joy to the glassy and refreshing
wave which burst so unexpectedly upon them: and it was resolved that
they should remain for some hours in a spot where all things invited
them to the repose they so imperiously required. They flung themselves
at once upon the grass; and such was their exhaustion, that rest was
almost synonymous with sleep. Falkland alone could not immediately
forget himself in repose: the face of his uncle, ghastly and disfigured,
glared upon his eyes whenever he closed them. Just, however, as he was
sinking into an unquiet and fitful doze, he heard steps approaching: he
started up, and perceived two men, one a peasant, the other in the dress
of a hermit. They were the first human beings the wanderers had met;
and when Falkland gave the alarm to Riego, who slept beside him, it was
immediately proposed to detain them as guides to the town of Carolina,
where Riego had hopes of finding effectual assistance, or the means
of ultimate escape. The hermit and his companion refused, with much
vehemence, the office imposed upon them; but Riego ordered them to be
forcibly detained. He had afterwards reason bitterly to regret this
compulsion.
Midnight came on in all the gorgeous beauty of a southern heaven, and
beneath its stars they renewed their march. As Falkland rode by the side
of Riego, the latter said to him in a low voice, “There is yet escape
for you and my followers: none for me: they have set a price on my
head, and the moment I leave these mountains, I enter upon my own
destruction.” “No, Rafael!” replied Falkland; “you can yet fly to
England, that asylum of the free, though ally of the despotic; the
abettor of tyranny, but the shelter of its victims!” Riego answered,
with the same faint and dejected tone, “I care not now what becomes of
me! I have lived solely for Freedom; I have made her my mistress, my
hope, my dream: I have no existence but in her. With the last effort
of my country let me perish also! I have lived to view liberty not only
defeated, but derided: I have seen its efforts not aided, but mocked. In
my own country, those only, who wore it, have been respected who used it
as a covering to ambition. In other nations, the free stood aloof when
the charter of their own rights was violated in the invasion of ours.
I cannot forget that the senate of that England, where you promise me
a home, rang with insulting plaudits when her statesman breathed
his ridicule on our weakness, not his sympathy for our cause; and
I--fanatic--dreamer--enthusiast, as I may be called, whose whole life
has been one unremitting struggle for the opinion I have adopted, am
at least not so blinded by my infatuation, but I can see the mockery
it incurs. If I die on the scaffold to-morrow, I shall have nothing of
martyrdom but its doom; not the triumph--the incense--the immortality of
popular applause: I should have no hope to support me at such a moment,
gleaned from the glories of the future--nothing but one stern and
prophetic conviction of the vanity of that tyranny by which my sentence
will be pronounced.” Riego paused for a moment before he resumed, and
his pale and death-like countenance received an awful and unnatural
light from the intensity of the feeling that swelled and burned within
him. His figure was drawn up to its full height, and his voice rang
through the lonely hills with a deep and hollow sound, that had in it a
tone of prophecy, as he resumed “It is in vain that they oppose OPINION;
anything else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, nature
itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtle, pervading spirit,
their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar: its
votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself they cannot touch.
If they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot
build a wall across the whole earth; and, even if they could, it
would pass over its summit! Chains cannot bind it, for it is
immaterial--dungeons enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot
and the scaffold--over the bleeding bodies of its defenders which they
pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless but unceasing
march. Do they levy armies against it, it presents to them no palpable
object to oppose. Its camp is the universe; its asylum is the bosoms of
their own soldiers. Let them depopulate, destroy as they please, to
each extremity of the earth; but as long as they have a single supporter
themselves--as long as they leave a single individual into whom that
spirit can enter--so long they will have the same labours to encounter,
and the same enemy to subdue.”
As Riego’s voice ceased, Falkland gazed upon him with a mingled pity
and admiration. Sour and ascetic as was the mind of that hopeless and
disappointed man, he felt somewhat of a kindred glow at the pervading
and holy enthusiasm of the patriot to whom he had listened; and though
it was the character of his own philosophy to question the purity of
human motives, and to smile at the more vivid emotions he had ceased to
feel, he bowed his soul in homage to those principles whose sanctity he
acknowledged, and to that devotion of zeal and fervour with which
their defender cherished and enforced them. Falkland had joined the
constitutionalists with respect, but not ardour, for their cause. He
demanded excitation; he cared little where he found it. He stood in this
world a being who mixed in all its changes, performed all its offices,
took, as if by the force of superior mechanical power, a leading share
in its events; but whose thoughts and soul were as offsprings of another
planet, imprisoned in a human form, and _longing for their home_!
As they rode on, Riego continued to converse with that imprudent
unreserve which the openness and warmth of his nature made natural to
him: not one word escaped the hermit and the peasant (whose name
was Lopez Lara) as they rode on two mules behind Falkland and Riego.
“Remember,” whispered the hermit to his comrade, “the reward!”
“I do,” muttered the peasant.
Throughout the whole of that long and dreary night, the--wanderers rode
on incessantly, and found themselves at daybreak near a farm-house: this
was Lara’s own home. They made the peasant Lara knock; his own brother
opened the door. Fearful as they were of the detection to which so
numerous a party might conduce, only Riego, another officer (Don Luis
de Sylva), and Falkland entered the house. The latter, whom nothing ever
seemed to render weary or forgetful, fixed his cold stern eye upon the
two brothers, and, seeing some signs pass between them, locked the
door, and so prevented their escape. For a few hours they reposed in the
stables with their horses, their drawn swords by their sides. On waking,
Riego found it absolutely necessary that his horse should be shod. Lopez
started up, and offered to lead it to Arguillas for that purpose. “No,”
said Riego, who, though naturally imprudent, partook in this instance of
Falkland’s habitual caution: “your brother shall go and bring hither the
farrier.” Accordingly the brother went: he soon returned. “The farrier,”
he said, “was already on the road.” Riego and his companions, who were
absolutely fainting with hunger, sat down to breakfast; but Falkland,
who had finished first, and who had eyed the man since his return with
the most scrutinising attention, withdrew towards the window, looking
out from time to time with a telescope which they had carried about
them, and urging them impatiently to finish. “Why?” said Riego,
“famished men are good for nothing, either to fight or fly--and we
must wait for the farrier.” “True,” said Falkland, “but--” he stopped
abruptly. Sylva had his eyes on his face at that moment. Falkland’s
colour suddenly changed: he turned round with a loud cry. “Up! up!
Riego! Sylva! We are undone--the soldiers are upon us!” “Arm!” cried
Riego, starting up. At that moment Lopez and his brother seized their
own carbines, and levelled them at the betrayed constitutionalists.
“The first who moves,” cried the former, “is a dead man!” “Fools!” said
Falkland, with a calm bitterness, advancing deliberately towards them.
He moved only three steps--Lopez fired. Falkland staggered a few paces,
recovered himself, sprang towards Lara, clove him at one blow from the
skull to the jaw, and fell with his victim, lifeless upon the floor.
“Enough!” said Riego to the remaining peasant; “we are your prisoners;
bind us!” In two minutes more the soldiers entered, and they were
conducted to Carolina. Fortunately Falkland was known, when at Paris,
to a French officer of high rank then at Carolina. He was removed to
the Frenchman’s quarters. Medical aid was instantly procured. The first
examination of his wound was decisive; recovery was hopeless!
Night came on again, with her pomp of light and shade--the night that
for Falkland had no morrow. One solitary lamp burned in the chamber
where he lay alone with God and his own heart. He had desired his couch
to be placed by the window and requested his attendants to withdraw. The
gentle and balmy air stole over him, as free and bland as if it were to
breathe for him for ever; and the silver moonlight came gleaming through
the lattice and played upon his wan brow, like the tenderness of a bride
that sought to kiss him to repose. “In a few hours,” thought he, as he
lay gazing on the high stars which seemed such silent witnesses of an
eternal and unfathomed mystery, “in a few hours either this feverish and
wayward spirit will be at rest for ever, or it will have commenced a new
career in an untried and unimaginable existence! In a very few hours
I may be amongst the very heavens that I survey--a part of their
own glory--a new link in a new order of beings--breathing amidst the
elements of a more gorgeous world--arrayed myself in the attributes of a
purer and diviner nature--a wanderer among the planets--an associate
of angels--the beholder of the arcana of the great God-redeemed,
regenerate, immortal, or--dust!
“There is no OEdipus to solve the enigma of life. We are--whence came
we? We are not--whither do we go? All things in our existence have
their object: existence has none. We live, move, beget our species,
perish--and for what? We ask the past its moral; we question the gone
years of the reason of our being, and from the clouds of a thousand
ages there goes forth no answer. Is it merely to pant beneath this weary
load; to sicken of the sun; to grow old; to drop like leaves into the
grave; and to bequeath to our heirs the worn garments of toil and labour
that we leave behind? Is it to sail for ever on the same sea, ploughing
the ocean of time with new furrows, and feeding its billows with new
wrecks, or--” and his thoughts paused blinded and bewildered.
No man, in whom the mind has not been broken by the decay of the body,
has approached death in full consciousness as Falkland did that moment,
and not thought intensely on the change he was about to undergo; and yet
what new discoveries upon that subject has any one bequeathed us? There
the wildest imaginations are driven from originality into triteness:
there all minds, the frivolous and the strong, the busy and the idle,
are compelled into the same path and limit of reflection. Upon that
unknown and voiceless gulf of inquiry broods an eternal and impenetrable
gloom; no wind breathes over it--no wave agitates its stillness:
over the dead and solemn calm there is no change propitious to
adventure--there goes forth no vessel of research, which is not driven,
baffled and broken, again upon the shore.
The moon waxed high in her career. Midnight was gathering slowly
over the earth; the beautiful, the mystic hour, blent with a thousand
memories, hallowed by a thousand dreams, made tender to remembrance by
the vows our youth breathed beneath its star, and solemn by the olden
legends which are linked to its majesty and peace--the hour in which,
men should die; the isthmus between two worlds; the climax of the past
day; the verge of that which is to come; wrapping us in sleep after a
weary travail, and promising us a morrow which, since the first birth
of Creation has never failed. As the minutes glided on, Falkland felt
himself grow gradually weaker and weaker. The pain of his wound had
ceased, but a deadly sickness gathered over his heart: the room reeled
before his eyes, and the damp chill mounted from his feet up--up to the
breast in which the life-blood waxed dull and thick.
As the hand of the clock pointed to the half-hour after midnight the
attendants who waited in the adjoining room heard a faint cry. They
rushed hastily into Falkland’s chamber; they found him stretched half
out of the bed. His hand was raised towards the opposite wall; it
dropped gradually as they approached him; and his brow, which was at
first stern and bent, softened, shade by shade, into his usual serenity.
But the dim film gathered fast over his eye, and the last coldness upon
his limbs. He strove to raise himself as if to speak; the effort failed,
and he fell motionless on his face. They stood by the bed for some
moments in silence: at length they raised him. Placed against his
heart was an open locket of dark hair, which one hand still pressed
convulsively. They looked upon his countenance--(a single glance was
sufficient)--it was hushed--proud--passionless--the seal of Death was
upon it.
End of Project Gutenberg’s Falkland, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton