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
carne 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.