When laurelled ruffians die, the Heaven and Earth,
And the deep Air give warning. Shall the good
Perish and not a sign?--ANONYMOUS.
It was the evening after the event recorded in our last chapter: all
was hushed and dark in the room where Mordaunt sat alone; the low
and falling embers burned dull in the grate, and through the unclosed
windows the high stars rode pale and wan in their career. The room,
situated at the back of the house, looked over a small garden, where the
sickly and hoar shrubs, overshadowed by a few wintry poplars and grim
firs, saddened in the dense atmosphere of fog and smoke, which broods
over our island city. An air of gloom hung comfortless and chilling over
the whole scene externally and within. The room itself was large and
old, and its far extremities, mantled as they were with dusk and shadow,
impressed upon the mind that involuntary and vague sensation, not
altogether unmixed with awe, which the eye, resting upon a view that it
can but dimly and confusedly define, so frequently communicates to the
heart. There was a strange oppression at Mordaunt’s breast with which he
in vain endeavoured to contend. Ever and anon, an icy but passing chill,
like the shivers of a fever, shot through his veins, and a wild and
unearthly and objectless awe stirred through his hair, and his eyes
filled with a glassy and cold dew, and sought, as by a self-impulse, the
shadowy and unpenetrated places around, which momently grew darker and
darker. Little addicted by his peculiar habits to an over-indulgence of
the imagination, and still less accustomed to those absolute conquests
of the physical frame over the mental, which seem the usual sources of
that feeling we call presentiment, Mordaunt rose, and walking to and
fro along the room, endeavoured by the exercise to restore to his veins
their wonted and healthful circulation. It was past the hour in which
his daughter retired to rest: but he was often accustomed to steal up to
her chamber, and watch her in her young slumbers; and he felt this night
a more than usual desire to perform that office of love; so he left the
room and ascended the stairs. It was a large old house that he tenanted.
The staircase was broad, and lighted from above by a glass dome; and as
he slowly ascended, and the stars gleamed down still and ghastly upon
his steps, he fancied--but he knew not why--that there was an omen in
their gleam. He entered the young Isabel’s chamber: there was a light
burning within; he stole to her bed, and putting aside the curtain,
felt, as he looked upon her peaceful and pure beauty, a cheering warmth
gather round his heart. How lovely is the sleep of childhood! What
worlds of sweet, yet not utterly sweet, associations, does it not
mingle with the envy of our gaze! What thoughts and hopes and cares
and forebodings does it not excite! There lie in that yet ungrieved and
unsullied heart what unnumbered sources of emotion! what deep fountains
of passion and woe! Alas! whatever be its earlier triumphs, the victim
must fall at last! As the hart which the jackals pursue, the moment its
race is begun the human prey is foredoomed for destruction, not by
the single sorrow, but the thousand cares: it may baffle one race of
pursuers, but a new succeeds; as fast as some drop off exhausted, others
spring up to renew and to perpetuate the chase; and the fated, though
flying victim never escapes but in death. There was a faint smile upon
his daughter’s lip, as Mordaunt bent down to kiss it; the dark lash
rested on the snowy lid--ah, that tears had no well beneath its
surface!---and her breath stole from her rich lips with so regular and
calm a motion that, like the “forest leaves,” it “seemed stirred with
prayer!” [And yet the forest leaves seem stirred with prayer.--BYRON.]
One arm lay over the coverlet, the other pillowed her head, in the
unrivalled grace of infancy.
Mordaunt stooped once more, for his heart filled as he gazed upon his
child, to kiss her cheek again, and to mingle a blessing with the
kiss. When he rose, upon that fair smooth face there was one bright and
glistening drop; and Isabel stirred in sleep, and, as if suddenly vexed
by some painful dream, she sighed deeply as she stirred. It was the last
time that the cheek of the young and predestined orphan was ever pressed
by a father’s kiss or moistened by a father’s tear! He left the room
silently; no sooner had he left it, than, as if without the precincts
of some charmed and preserving circle, the chill and presentiment at his
heart returned. There is a feeling which perhaps all have in a momentary
hypochondria felt at times: it is a strong and shuddering impression
which Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and supernatural verse,
that something not of earth is behind us; that if we turned our gaze
backward we should behold that which would make the heart as a bolt of
ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within its socket. And so intense
is the fancy that when we turn, and all is void, from that very void we
could shape a spectre, as fearful as the image our terror had foredrawn.
Somewhat such feeling had Mordaunt now, as his steps sounded hollow and
echoless on the stairs, and the stars filled the air around him with
their shadowy and solemn presence. Breaking by a violent effort from a
spell of which he felt that a frame somewhat overtasked of late was the
real enchanter, he turned once more into the room which he had left to
visit Isabel. He had pledged his personal attendance at an important
motion in the House of Commons for that night, and some political papers
were left upon his table which he had promised to give to one of the
members of his party. He entered the room, purposing to stay only a
minute; an hour passed before he left it: and his servant afterwards
observed that, on giving him some orders as he passed through the hall
to the carriage, his cheek was as white as marble, and that his step,
usually so haughty and firm, reeled and trembled like a fainting man’s.
Dark and inexplicable Fate! weaver of wild contrasts, demon of this
hoary and old world, that movest through it, as a spirit moveth over
the waters, filling the depths of things with a solemn mystery and an
everlasting change! Thou sweepest over our graves, and Joy is born from
the ashes: thou sweepest over Joy, and lo, it is a grave! Engine and
tool of the Almighty, whose years cannot fade, thou changest the earth
as a garment, and as a vesture it is changed; thou makest it one
vast sepulchre and womb united, swallowing and creating life! and
reproducing, over and over, from age to age, from the birth of creation
to the creation’s doom, the same dust and atoms which were our fathers,
and which are the sole heirlooms that through countless generations they
bequeath and perpetuate to their sons.