"It is now four and twenty years," commenced Wacousta, "since your
father and myself first met as subalterns in the regiment he now
commands, when, unnatural to say, an intimacy suddenly sprang up
between us which, as it was then to our brother officers, has since
been a source of utter astonishment to myself. Unnatural, I repeat, for
fire and ice are not more opposite than were the elements of which our
natures were composed. He, all coldness, prudence, obsequiousness, and
forethought. I, all enthusiasm, carelessness, impetuosity, and
independence. Whether this incongruous friendship--friendship! no, I
will not so far sully the sacred name as thus to term the unnatural
union that subsisted between us;--whether this intimacy, then, sprang
from the adventitious circumstance of our being more frequently thrown
together as officers of the same company,--for we were both attached to
the grenadiers,--or that my wild spirit was soothed by the bland
amenity of his manners, I know not. The latter, however, is not
improbable; for proud, and haughty, and dignified, as the colonel NOW
is, such was not THEN the character of the ensign; who seemed thrown
out of one of Nature's supplest moulds, to fawn, and cringe, and worm
his way to favour by the wily speciousness of his manners. Oh God!"
pursued Wacousta, after a momentary pause, and striking his palm
against his forehead, "that I ever should have been the dupe of such a
cold-blooded hypocrite!
"I have said our intimacy excited surprise among our brother officers.
It did; for all understood and read the character of your father, who
was as much disliked and distrusted for the speciousness of his false
nature, as I was generally esteemed for the frankness and warmth of
mine. No one openly censured the evident preference I gave him in my
friendship; but we were often sarcastically termed the Pylades and
Orestes of the regiment, until my heart was ready to leap into my
throat with impatience at the bitterness in which the taunt was
conceived; and frequently in my presence was allusion made to the blind
folly of him, who should take a cold and slimy serpent to his bosom
only to feel its fangs darted into it at the moment when most fostered
by its genial heat. All, however, was in vain. On a nature like mine,
innuendo was likely to produce an effect directly opposite to that
intended; and the more I found them inclined to be severe on him I
called my friend, the more marked became my preference. I even fancied
that because I was rich, generous, and heir to a title, their
observations were prompted by jealousy of the influence he possessed
over me, and a desire to supplant him only for their interests' sake.
Bitterly have I been punished for the illiberality of such an opinion.
Those to whom I principally allude were the subalterns of the regiment,
most of whom were nearly of our own age. One or two of the junior
captains were also of this number; but, by the elders (as we termed the
seniors of that rank) and field officers, Ensign de Haldimar was always
regarded as a most prudent and promising young officer.
"What conduced, in a great degree, to the establishment of our intimacy
was the assistance I always received from my brother subaltern in
whatever related to my military duties. As the lieutenant of the
company, the more immediate responsibility attached to myself; but
being naturally of a careless habit, or perhaps considering all duty
irksome to my impatient nature that was not duty in the field, I was
but too often guilty of neglecting it. On these occasions my absence
was ever carefully supplied by your father, who, in all the minutiae of
regimental economy, was surpassed by no other officer in the corps; so
that credit was given to me, when, at the ordinary inspections, the
grenadiers were acknowledged to be the company the most perfect in
equipment and skilful in manoeuvre. Deeply, deeply," again mused
Wacousta, "have these services been repaid.
"As you have just learnt, Cornwall is the country of my birth. I was
the eldest of the only two surviving children of a large family; and,
as heir to the baronetcy of the proud Mortons, was looked up to by lord
and vassal as the future perpetuator of the family name. My brother had
been designed for the army; but as this was a profession to which I had
attached my inclinations, the point was waved in my favour, and at the
age of eighteen I first joined the ---- regiment, then quartered in the
Highlands of Scotland. During my boyhood I had ever accustomed myself
to athletic exercises, and loved to excite myself by encountering
danger in its most terrific forms. Often had I passed whole days in
climbing the steep and precipitous crags which overhang the sea in the
neighbourhood of Morton Castle, ostensibly in the pursuit of the heron
or the seagull, but self-acknowledgedly for the mere pleasure of
grappling with the difficulties they opposed to me. Often, too, in the
most terrific tempests, when sea and sky have met in one black and
threatening mass, and when the startled fishermen have in vain
attempted to dissuade me from my purpose, have I ventured, in sheer
bravado, out of sight of land, and unaccompanied by a human soul. Then,
when wind and tide have been against me on my return, have I, with my
simple sculls alone, caused my faithful bark to leap through the
foaming brine as though a press of canvass had impelled her on. Oh,
that this spirit of adventure had never grown with my growth and
strengthened with my strength!" sorrowfully added the warrior, again
apostrophising himself: "then had I never been the wretch I am.
"The wild daring by which my boyhood had been marked was again
powerfully awakened by the bold and romantic scenery of the Scottish
Highlands; and as the regiment was at that time quartered in a part of
these mountainous districts, where, from the disturbed nature of the
times, society was difficult of attainment, many of the officers were
driven from necessity, as I was from choice, to indulge in the sports
of the chase. On one occasion a party of four of us set out early in
the morning in pursuit of deer, numbers of which we knew were to be met
with in the mountainous tracts of Bute and Argyleshire. The course we
happened to take lay through a succession of dark deep glens, and over
frowning rocks; the difficulties of access to which only stirred up my
dormant spirit of enterprise the more. We had continued in this course
for many hours, overcoming one difficulty only to be encountered by
another, and yet without meeting a single deer; when, at length, the
faint blast of a horn was heard far above our heads in the distance,
and presently a noble stag was seen to ascend a ledge of rocks
immediately in front of us. To raise my gun to my shoulder and fire was
the work of a moment, after which we all followed in pursuit. On
reaching the spot where the deer had first been seen, we observed
traces of blood, satisfying us he had been wounded; but the course
taken in his flight was one that seemed to defy every human effort to
follow in. It was a narrow pointed ledge, ascending boldly towards a
huge cliff that projected frowningly from the extreme summit, and on
either side lay a dark, deep, and apparently fathomless ravine; to look
even on which was sufficient to appal the stoutest heart, and unnerve
the steadiest brain. For me, however, long accustomed to dangers of the
sort, it had no terror. This was a position in which I had often wished
once more to find myself placed, and I felt buoyant and free as the
deer itself I intended to pursue. In vain did my companions (and your
father was one) implore me to abandon a project so wild and hazardous.
I bounded forward, and they turned shuddering away, that their eyes
might not witness the destruction that awaited me. Meanwhile, balancing
my long gun in my upraised hands, I trod the dangerous path with a
buoyancy and elasticity of limb, a lightness of heart, and a
fearlessness of consequences, that surprised even myself. Perhaps it
was to the latter circumstance I owed my safety, for a single doubt of
my security might have impelled a movement that would not have failed
to have precipitated me into the yawning gulf below. I had proceeded in
this manner about five hundred yards, when I came to the termination of
the ledge, from the equally narrow transverse extremity of which
branched out three others; the whole contributing to form a figure
resembling that of a trident. Pausing here for a moment, I applied the
hunting horn, with which I was provided, to my lips. This signal,
announcing my safety, was speedily returned by my friends below in a
cheering and lively strain, that seemed to express at once surprise and
satisfaction; and inspirited by the sound, I prepared to follow up my
perilous chase. Along the ledge I had quitted I had remarked occasional
traces where the stricken deer had passed; and the same blood-spots now
directed me at a point where, but for these, I must have been utterly
at fault. The centre of these new ridges, and the narrowest, was that
taken by the animal, and on that I once more renewed my pursuit. As I
continued to advance I found the ascent became more precipitous, and
the difficulties opposed to my progress momentarily more multiplied.
Still, nothing daunted, I continued my course towards the main body of
rock that now rose within a hundred yards. How this was to be gained I
knew not; for it shelved out abruptly from the extreme summit,
overhanging the abyss, and presenting an appearance which I cannot more
properly render than by comparing it to the sounding-boards placed over
the pulpits of our English churches. Still I was resolved to persevere
to the close, and I but too unhappily succeeded." Again Wacousta
paused. A tear started to his eye, but this he impatiently brushed away
with his swarthy hand.
"It was evident to me," he again resumed, "that there must be some
opening through which the deer had effected his escape to the
precipitous height above; and I felt a wild and fearful triumph in
following him to his cover, over passes which it was my pleasure to
think none of the hardy mountaineers themselves would have dared to
venture upon with impunity. I paused not to consider of the difficulty
of bearing away my prize, even if I succeeded in overtaking it. At
every step my excitement and determination became stronger, and I felt
every fibre of my frame to dilate, as when, in my more boyish days, I
used to brave, in my gallant skiff, the mingled fury of the warring
elements of sea and storm. Suddenly, while my mind was intent only on
the dangers I used then to hold in such light estimation, I found my
further progress intercepted by a fissure in the crag. It was not the
width of this opening that disconcerted me, for it exceeded not ten
feet; but I came upon it so unadvisedly, that, in attempting to check
my forward motion, I had nearly lost my equipoise, and fallen into the
abyss that now yawned before and on either side of me. To pause upon
the danger, would, I felt, be to ensure it. Summoning all my dexterity
into a single bound, I cleared the chasm; and with one buskined foot
(for my hunting costume was strictly Highland) clung firmly to the
ledge, while I secured my balance with the other. At this point the
rock became gradually broader, so that I now trod the remainder of the
rude path in perfect security, until I at length found myself close to
the vast mass of which these ledges were merely ramifications or veins:
but still I could discover no outlet by which the wounded deer could
have escaped. While I lingered, thoughtfully, for a moment, half in
disappointment, half in anger, and with my back leaning against the
rock, I fancied I heard a rustling, as of the leaves and branches of
underwood, on that part which projected like a canopy, far above the
abyss. I bent my eye eagerly and fixedly on the spot whence the sound
proceeded, and presently could distinguish the blue sky appearing
through an aperture, to which was, the instant afterwards, applied what
I conceived to be a human face. No sooner, however, was it seen than
withdrawn; and then the rustling of leaves was heard again, and all was
still as before.
"Why did my evil genius so will it," resumed Wacousta, after another
pause, during which he manifested deep emotion, "that I should have
heard those sounds and seen that face? But for these I should have
returned to my companions, and my life might have been the life--the
plodding life--of the multitude; things that are born merely to crawl
through existence and die, knowing not at the moment of death why or
how they have lived at all. But who may resist the destiny that
presides over him from the cradle to the grave? for, although the mass
may be, and are, unworthy of the influencing agency of that Unseen
Power, who will presume to deny there are those on whom it stamps its
iron seal, even from the moment of their birth to that which sees all
that is mortal of them consigned to the tomb? What was it but destiny
that whispered to me what I had seen was the face of a woman? I had not
traced a feature, nor could I distinctly state that it was a human
countenance I had beheld; but mine was ever an imagination into which
the wildest improbability was scarce admitted that it did not grow into
conviction in the instant.
"A new direction was now given to my feelings. I felt a presentiment
that my adventure, if prosecuted, would terminate in some extraordinary
and characteristic manner; and obeying, as I ever did, the first
impulse of my heart, I prepared to grapple once more with the
difficulties that yet remained to be surmounted. In order to do this,
it was necessary that my feet and hands should be utterly without
incumbrance; for it was only by dint of climbing that I could expect to
reach that part of the projecting rock to which my attention had been
directed. Securing my gun between some twisted roots that grew out of
and adhered to the main body of the rock, I commenced the difficult
ascent; and, after considerable effort, found myself at length
immediately under the aperture. My progress along the lower superficies
of this projection was like that of a crawling reptile. My back hung
suspended over the chasm, into which one false movement of hand or
foot, one yielding of the roots entwined in the rock, must inevitably
have precipitated me; and, while my toes wormed themselves into the
tortuous fibres of the latter, I passed hand over hand beyond my head,
until I had arrived within a foot or two of the point I desired to
reach. Here, however, a new difficulty occurred. A slight projection of
the rock, close to the aperture, impeded my further progress in the
manner hitherto pursued; and, to pass this, I was compelled to drop my
whole weight, suspended by one vigorous arm, while, with the other, I
separated the bushes that concealed the opening. A violent exertion of
every muscle now impelled me upward, until at length I had so far
succeeded as to introduce my head and shoulders through the aperture;
after which my final success was no longer doubtful. If I have been
thus minute in the detail of the dangerous nature of this passage,"
continued Wacousta, gloomily, "it is not without reason. I would have
you to impress the whole of the localities upon your imagination, that
you may the better comprehend, from a knowledge of the risks I
incurred, how little I have merited the injuries under which I have
writhed for years."
Again one of those painful pauses with which his narrative was so often
broken, occurred; and, with an energy that terrified her whom he
addressed, Wacousta pursued--"Clara de Haldimar, it was here--in this
garden--this paradise--this oasis of the rocks in which I now found
myself, that I first saw and loved your mother. Ha! you start: you
believe me now.--Loved her!" he continued, after another short
pause--"oh, what a feeble word is love to express the concentration of
mighty feelings that flowed like burning lava through my veins! Who
shall pretend to give a name to the emotion that ran thrillingly--madly
through my excited frame, when first I gazed on her, who, in every
attribute of womanly beauty, realised all my fondest fancy ever
painted?--Listen to me, Clara," he pursued, in a fiercer tone, and with
a convulsive pressure of the form he still encircled:--"If, in my
younger days, my mind was alive to enterprise, and loved to contemplate
danger in its most appalling forms, this was far from being the master
passion of my soul; nay, it was the strong necessity I felt of pouring
into some devoted bosom the overflowing fulness of my heart, that made
me court in solitude those positions of danger with which the image of
woman was ever associated. How often, while tossed by the raging
elements, now into the blue vault of heaven, now into the lowest gulfs
of the sea, have I madly wished to press to my bounding bosom the being
of my fancy's creation, who, all enamoured and given to her love,
should, even amid the danger that environed her, be alive but to one
consciousness,--that of being with him on whom her life's hope alone
reposed! How often, too, while bending over some dark and threatening
precipice, or standing on the utmost verge of some tall projecting
cliff, my aching head (aching with the intenseness of its own
conceptions) bared to the angry storm, and my eye fixed unshrinkingly
on the boiling ocean far beneath my feet, has my whole soul--my every
faculty, been bent on that ideal beauty which controlled every sense!
Oh, imagination, how tyrannical is thy sway--how exclusive thy
power--how insatiable thy thirst! Surrounded by living beauty, I was
insensible to its influence; for, with all the perfection that reality
can attain on earth, there was ever to be found some deficiency, either
physical or moral, that defaced the symmetry and destroyed the
loveliness of the whole; but, no sooner didst thou, with magic wand,
conjure up one of thy embodiments, than my heart became a sea of flame,
and was consumed in the vastness of its own fires.
"It was in vain that my family sought to awaken me to a sense of the
acknowledged loveliness of the daughters of more than one ancient house
in the county, with one of whom an alliance was, in many respects,
considered desirable. Their beauty, or rather their whole, was
insufficient to stir up into madness the dormant passions of my nature;
and although my breast was like a glowing furnace, in which fancy cast
all the more exciting images of her coinage to secure the last impress
of the heart's approval, my outward deportment to some of the fairest
and loveliest of earth's realities was that of one on whom the
influence of woman's beauty could have no power. From my earliest
boyhood I had loved to give the rein to these feelings, until they at
length rendered me their slave. Woman was the idol that lay enshrined
within my inmost heart; but it was woman such as I had not yet met
with, yet felt must somewhere exist in the creation. For her I could
have resigned title, fortune, family, every thing that is dear to man,
save the life, through which alone the reward of such sacrifice could
have been tasted, and to this phantom I had already yielded up all the
manlier energies of my nature; but, deeply as I felt the necessity of
loving something less unreal, up to the moment of my joining the
regiment, my heart had never once throbbed for created woman.
"I have already said that, on gaining the summit of the rock, I found
myself in a sort of oasis of the mountains. It was so. Belted on every
hand by bold and precipitous crags, that seemed to defy the approach
even of the wildest animals, and putting utterly at fault the
penetration and curiosity of man, was spread a carpet of verdure, a
luxuriance of vegetation, that might have put to shame the fertility of
the soft breeze-nourished valleys of Italy and Southern France. Time,
however, is not given me to dwell on the mingled beauty and wildness of
a scene, so consonant with my ideas of the romantic and the
picturesque. Let me rather recur to her (although my heart be lacerated
once more in the recollection) who was the presiding deity of the
whole,--the being after whom, had I had the fabled power of Prometheus,
I should have formed and animated the sharer of that sweet wild
solitude, nor once felt that fancy, to whom I was so largely a debtor,
had in aught been cheated of what she had, for a series of years, so
rigidly claimed.
"At about twenty yards from the aperture, and on a bank, formed of
turf, covered with moss, and interspersed with roses and honeysuckles,
sat this divinity of the oasis. She, too, was clad in the Highland
dress, which gave an air of wildness and elegance to her figure that
was in classic harmony with the surrounding scenery. At the moment of
my appearance she was in the act of dressing the wounded shoulder of a
stag, that had recently been shot; and from the broad tartan riband I
perceived attached to its neck, added to the fact of the tameness of
the animal, I presumed that this stag, evidently a favourite of its
mistress, was the same I had fired at and wounded. The rustling I made
among the bushes had attracted her attention; she raised her eyes from
the deer, and, beholding me, started to her feet, uttering a cry of
terror and surprise. Fearing to speak, as if the sound of my own voice
were sufficient to dispel the illusion that fascinated both eye and
heart into delicious tension on her form, yet with my soul kindled into
all that wild uncontrollable love which had been the accumulation of
years of passionate imagining, I stood for some moments as motionless
as the rock out of which I appeared to grow. It seemed as though I had
not the power to think or act, so fully was every faculty of my being
filled with the consciousness that I at length gazed upon her I was
destined to love for ever.
"It was this utter immobility on my own part, that ensured me a
continuance of the exquisite happiness I then enjoyed. The first
movement of the startled girl had been to fly towards her dwelling,
which stood at a short distance, half imbedded in the same clustering
roses and honey-suckles that adorned her bank of moss; but when she
remarked my utter stillness, and apparent absence of purpose, she
checked the impulse that would have directed her departure, and
stopped, half in curiosity, half in fear, to examine me once more. At
that moment all my energies appeared to be restored; I threw myself
into an attitude expressive of deep contrition for the intrusion of
which I had been unconsciously guilty, and dropping on one knee, and
raising my clasped hands, inclined them towards her in token of mingled
deprecation of her anger, and respectful homage to herself. At first
she hesitated,--then gradually and timidly retrod her way to the seat
she had so abruptly quitted in her alarm. Emboldened by this movement,
I made a step or two in advance, but no sooner had I done so than she
again took to flight. Once more, however, she turned to behold me, and
again I had dropped on my knee, and was conjuring her, with the same
signs, to remain and bless me with her presence. Again she returned to
her seat, and again I advanced. Scarcely less timid, however, than the
deer, which followed her every movement, she fled a third time,--a
third time looked back, and was again induced, by my supplicating
manner, to return. Frequently was this repeated, before I finally found
myself at the feet, and pressing the hand--(oh God! what torture in the
recollection!)--yes, pressing the hand of her for whose smile I would,
even at that moment, have sacrificed my soul; and every time she fled,
the classic disposition of her graceful limbs, and her whole natural
attitude of alarm, could only be compared with those of one of the
huntresses of Diana, intruded on in her woodland privacy by the
unhallowed presence of some daring mortal. Such was your mother, Clara
de Haldimar; yes, even such as I have described her was Clara Beverley."
Again Wacousta paused, and his pause was longer than usual, as, with
his large hand again covering his face, he seemed endeavouring to
master the feelings which these recollections had called up. Clara
scarcely breathed. Unmindful of her own desolate position, her soul was
intent only on a history that related so immediately to her beloved
mother, of whom all that she had hitherto known was, that she was a
native of Scotland, and that her father had married her while quartered
in that country. The deep emotion of the terrible being before her, so
often manifested in the course of what he had already given of his
recital, added to her knowledge of the facts just named, scarcely left
a doubt of the truth of his statement on her mind. Her ear was now bent
achingly towards him, in expectation of a continuance of his history,
but he still remained in the same attitude of absorption. An
irresistible impulse caused her to extend her hand, and remove his own
from his eyes: they were filled with tears; and even while her mind
rapidly embraced the hope that this manifestation of tenderness was but
the dawning of mercy towards the children of her he had once loved, her
kind nature could not avoid sympathizing with him, whose uncouthness of
appearance and savageness of nature was, in some measure, lost sight of
in the fact of the powerful love he yet apparently acknowledged.
But no sooner did Wacousta feel the soft pressure of her hand, and meet
her eyes turned on his with an expression of interest, than the most
rapid transition was effected in his feelings. He drew the form of the
weakly resisting girl closer to his heart; again imprinted a kiss upon
her lips; and then, while every muscle in his iron frame seemed
quivering with emotion, exclaimed,--"By Heaven! that touch, that
glance, were Clara Beverley's all over! Oh, let me linger on the
recollection, even such as they were, when her arms first opened to
receive me in that sweet oasis of the Highlands. Yes, Clara," he
proceeded more deliberately, as he scanned her form with an eye that
made her shudder, "such as your mother was, so are you; the same
delicacy of proportion; the same graceful curvature of limb, only less
rounded, less womanly. But you must be younger by about two years than
she then was. Your age cannot exceed seventeen; and time will supply
what your mere girlhood renders you deficient in."
There was a cool licence of speech--a startling freedom of manner--in
the latter part of this address, that disappointed not less than it
pained and offended the unhappy Clara. It seemed to her as if the
illusion she had just created, were already dispelled by his language,
even as her own momentary interest in the fierce man had also been
destroyed from the same cause. She shuddered; and sighing bitterly,
suffered her tears to force themselves through her closed lids upon her
pallid cheek. This change in her appearance seemed to act as a check on
the temporary excitement of Wacousta. Again obeying one of these rapid
transitions of feeling, for which he was remarkable, he once more
assumed an expression of seriousness, and thus continued his narrative.