-------- 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."