"It boots not now, Clara, to enter upon all that succeeded to my first
introduction to your mother. It would take long to relate, not the
gradations of our passion, for that was like the whirlwind of the
desert, sudden and devastating from the first; but the burning vow, the
plighted faith, the reposing confidence, the unchecked abandonment that
flew from the lips, and filled the heart of each, sealed, as they were,
with kisses, long, deep, enervating, even such as I had ever pictured
that divine pledge of human affection should be. Yes, Clara de
Haldimar, your mother was the child of nature THEN. Unspoiled by the
forms, unvitiated by the sophistries of a world with which she had
never mixed, her intelligent innocence made the most artless avowals to
my enraptured ear,--avowals that the more profligate minded woman of
society would have blushed to whisper even to herself. And for these I
loved her to my own undoing.
"Blind vanity, inconceivable folly!" continued Wacousta, again pressing
his forehead with force; "how could I be so infatuated as not to
perceive, that although her heart was filled with a new and delicious
passion, it was less the individual than the man she loved. And how
could it be otherwise, since I was the first, beside her father, she
had ever seen or recollected to have seen? Still, Clara de Haldimar,"
he pursued, with haughty energy, "I was not always the rugged being I
now appear. Of surpassing strength I had ever been, and fleet of foot,
but not then had I attained to my present gigantic stature; neither was
my form endowed with the same Herculean rudeness; nor did my complexion
wear the swarthy hue of the savage; nor had my features been rendered
repulsive, from the perpetual action of those fierce passions which
have since assailed my soul. My physical faculties had not yet been
developed to their present grossness of maturity, neither had my moral
energies acquired that tone of ferocity which often renders me hideous,
even in my own eyes. In a word, the milk of my nature (for, with all my
impetuosity of character, I was generous-hearted and kind) had not yet
been turned to gall by villainy and deceit. My form had then all that
might attract--my manners all that might win--my enthusiasm of speech
all that might persuade--and my heart all that might interest a girl
fashioned after nature's manner, and tutored in nature's school. In the
regiment, I was called the handsome grenadier; but there was another
handsomer than I,--a sly, insidious, wheedling, false, remorseless
villain. That villain, Clara de Haldimar, was your father.
"But wherefore," continued Wacousta, chafing with the recollection,
"wherefore do I, like a vain and puling schoolboy, enter into this
abasing contrast of personal advantages? The proud eagle soars not more
above the craven kite, than did my soul, in all that was manly and
generous, above that of yon false governor; and who should have prized
those qualities, if it were not the woman who, bred in solitude, and
taught by fancy to love all that was generous and noble in the heart of
man, should have considered mere beauty of feature as dust in the
scale, when opposed to sentiments which can invest even deformity with
loveliness? In all this I may appear vain; I am only just.
"I have said that your mother had been brought up in solitude, and
without having seen the face of another man than her father. Such was
the case;--Colonel Beverley, of English name, but Scottish connections,
was an old gentleman of considerable eccentricity of character. He had
taken a part in the rebellion of 1715; but sick and disgusted with an
issue by which his fortunes had been affected, and heart-broken by the
loss of a beloved wife, whose death had been accelerated by
circumstances connected with the disturbed nature of the times, he had
resolved to bury himself and child in some wild, where the face of man,
whom he loathed, might no more offend his sight. This oasis of the
mountains was the spot selected for his purpose; for he had discovered
it some years previously, on an occasion, when, closely pursued by some
of the English troops, and separated from his followers, he had only
effected his escape by venturing on the ledges of rock I have already
described. After minute subsequent search, at the opposite extremity of
the oblong belt of rocks that shut it in on every hand, he had
discovered an opening, through which the transport of such necessaries
as were essential to his object might be effected; and, causing one of
his dwelling houses to be pulled down, he had the materials carried
across the rocks on the shoulders of the men employed to re-erect them
in his chosen solitude. A few months served to complete these
arrangements, which included a garden abounding in every fruit and
flower that could possibly live in so elevated a region; and; this, in
time, under his own culture, and that of his daughter, became the Eden
it first appeared to me.
"Previous to their entering on this employment, the workmen had been
severally sworn to secrecy; and when all was declared ready for his
reception, the colonel summoned them a second time to his presence;
when, after making a handsome present to each, in addition to his hire,
he found no difficulty in prevailing on them to renew their oath that
they would preserve the most scrupulous silence in regard to the place
of his retreat. He then took advantage of a dark and tempestuous night
to execute his project; and, attended only by an old woman and her
daughter, faithful dependants of the family, set out in quest of his
new abode, leaving all his neighbours to discuss and marvel at the
singularity of his disappearance. True to his text, however, not even a
boy was admitted into his household: and here they had continued to
live, unseeing and unseen by man, except when a solitary and distant
mountaineer occasionally flitted among the rocks below in pursuit of
his game. Fruits and vegetables composed their principal diet; but once
a fortnight the old woman was dispatched through the opening already
mentioned, which was at other times so secured by her master, that no
hand but his own could remove the intricate fastenings. This expedition
had for its object the purchase of bread and animal food at the nearest
market; and every time she sallied forth an oath was administered to
the crone, the purport of which was, not only that she would return,
unless prevented by violence or death, but that she would not answer
any questions put to her, as to who she was, whence she came, or for
whom the fruits of her marketing were intended.
"Meanwhile, wrapped up in his books, which were chiefly classic
authors, or writers on abstruse sciences, the misanthropical colonel
paid little or no attention to the cultivation of the intellect of his
daughter, whom he had merely instructed in the elementary branches of
education; in all which, however, she evinced an aptitude and
perfectability that indicated quickness of genius and a capability of
far higher attainments. Books he principally withheld from her, because
they brought the image of man, whom he hated, and wished she should
also hate, too often in flattering colours before her; and had any work
treating of love been found to have crept accidentally into his own
collection, it would instantly and indignantly have been committed to
the flames.
"Thus left to the action of her own heart--the guidance of her own
feelings--it was but natural your mother should have suffered her
imagination to repose on an ideal happiness, which, although in some
degree destitute of shape and character, was still powerfully felt.
Nature is too imperious a law-giver to be thwarted in her dictates; and
however we may seek to stifle it, her inextinguishable voice will make
itself heard, whether it be in the lonely desert or in the crowded
capital. Possessed of a glowing heart and warm sensibilities, Clara
Beverley felt the energies of her being had not been given to her to be
wasted on herself. In her dreams by night, and her thoughts by day, she
had pictured a being endowed with those attributes which were the fruit
of her own fertility of conception. If she plucked a flower, (and all
this she admitted at our first interview," groaned Wacousta,) "she was
sensible of the absence of one to whom that flower might be given. If
she gazed at the star-studded canopy of heaven, or bent her head over
the frowning precipices by which she was every where surrounded, she
felt the absence of him with whom she could share the enthusiasm
excited by the contemplation of the one, and to whom she could impart
the mingled terror and admiration produced by the dizzying depths of
the other. What dear acknowledgments (alas! too deceitful,) flowed from
her guileless lips, even during that first interview. With a candour
and unreservedness that spring alone from unsophisticated manners and
an untainted heart, she admitted, that the instant she beheld me, she
felt she had found the being her fancy had been so long tutored to
linger on, and her heart to love. She was sure I was come to be her
husband (for she had understood from her aged attendant that a man who
loved a woman wished to be her husband); and she was glad her pet stag
had been wounded, since it had been the means of procuring her such
happiness. She was not cruel enough to take pleasure in the sufferings
of the poor animal; for she would nurse it, and it would soon be well
again; but she could not help rejoicing in its disaster, since that
circumstance had been the cause of my finding her out, and loving her
even as she loved me. And all this was said with her head reclining on
my chest, and her beautiful countenance irradiated with a glow that had
something divine in the simplicity of purpose it expressed.
"On my demanding to know whether it was not her face I had seen at the
opening in the cliff, she replied that it was. Her stag often played
the truant, and passed whole hours away from her, rambling beyond the
precincts of the solitude that contained its mistress; but no sooner
was the small silver bugle, which she wore across her shoulder, applied
to her lips, than 'Fidelity' (thus she had named him) was certain to
obey the call, and to come bounding up the line of cliff to the main
rock, into which it effected its entrance at a point that had escaped
my notice. It was her bugle I had heard in the course of my pursuit of
the animal; and, from the aperture through which I had effected my
entrance, she had looked out to see who was the audacious hunter she
had previously observed threading a passage, along which her stag
itself never appeared without exciting terror in her bosom. The first
glimpse she had caught of my form was at the moment when, after having
sounded my own bugle, I cleared the chasm; and this was a leap she had
so often trembled to see taken by 'Fidelity,' that she turned away and
shuddered when she saw it fearlessly adventured on by a human being. A
feeling of curiosity had afterwards induced her to return and see if
the bold hunter had cleared the gulf, or perished in his mad attempt;
but when she looked outward from the highest pinnacle of her rocky
prison, she could discover no traces of him whatever. It then occurred
to her, that, if successful in his leap, his progress must have been
finally arrested by the impassable rock that terminated the ridge; in
which case she might perchance obtain a nearer sight of his person.
With this view she had removed the bushes enshrouding the aperture;
and, bending low to the earth, thrust her head partially through it.
Scarcely had she done so, however, when she beheld me immediately,
though far beneath her, with my back reposing against the rock, and my
eyes apparently fixed on hers.
"Filled with a variety of opposite sentiments, among which unfeigned
alarm was predominant, she had instantaneously removed her head; and,
closing the aperture as noiselessly as possible, returned to the
moss-covered seat on which I had first surprised her; where, while she
applied dressings of herbs to the wound of her favourite, she suffered
her mind to ruminate on the singularity of the appearance of a man so
immediately in the vicinity of their retreat. The supposed
impracticability of the ascent I had accomplished, satisfied, even
while (as she admitted) it disappointed her. I must of necessity
retrace my way over the dangerous ridge. Great, therefore, was her
surprise, when, after having been attracted by the rustling noise of
the bushes over the aperture, she presently saw the figure of the same
hunter emerge from the abyss it overhung. Terror had winged her flight;
but it was terror mingled with a delicious emotion entirely new to her.
It was that emotion, momentarily increasing in power, that induced her
to pause, look back, hesitate in her course, and finally be won, by my
supplicating manner, to return and bless me with her presence.
"Two long and delicious hours," pursued Wacousta, after another painful
pause of some moments, "did we pass in this manner; exchanging thought,
and speech, and heart, as if the term of our acquaintance had been
coeval with the first dawn of our intellectual life; when suddenly a
small silver toned bell was heard from the direction of the house, hid
from the spot--on which we sat by the luxuriant foliage of an
intervening laburnum. This sound seemed to dissipate the dreamy calm
that had wrapped the soul of your mother into forgetfulness. She
started suddenly up, and bade me, if I loved her, begone; as that bell
announced her required attendance on her father, who, now awakened from
the mid-day slumber in which he ever indulged, was about to take his
accustomed walk around the grounds; which was little else, in fact,
than a close inspection of the walls of his natural castle. I rose to
obey her; our eyes met, and she threw herself into my extended arms. We
whispered anew our vows of eternal love. She called me her husband, and
I pronounced the endearing name of wife. A burning kiss sealed the
compact; and, on her archly observing that the sleep of her father
continued about two hours at noon, and that the old woman and her
daughter were always occupied within doors, I promised to repeat my
visit every second day until she finally quitted her retreat to be my
own for life. Again the bell was rung; and this time with a violence
that indicated impatience of delay. I tore myself from her arms, darted
to the aperture, and kissing my hand in reply to the graceful waving of
her scarf as she half turned in her own flight, sunk finally from her
view; and at length, after making the same efforts, and mastering the
same obstacles that had marked and opposed my advance, once more found
myself at the point whence I had set out in pursuit of the wounded deer.
"Many were the congratulations I received from my companions, whom I
found waiting my return. They had endured the three hours of my absence
with intolerable anxiety and alarm; until, almost despairing of
beholding me again, they had resolved on going back without me. They
said they had repeatedly sounded their horns; but meeting with no
answer from mine, had been compelled to infer either that I had strayed
to a point whence return to them was impracticable, or that I must have
perished in the abyss. I readily gave in to the former idea; stating I
had been led by the traces of the wounded deer to a considerable
distance, and over passes which it had proved a work of time and
difficulty to surmount, yet without securing my spoil. All this time
there was a glow of animation on my cheek, and a buoyancy of spirit in
my speech, that accorded ill, the first, with the fatigue one might
have been supposed to experience in so perilous a chase; the second,
with the disappointment attending its result. Your father, ever cool
and quick of penetration, was the first to observe this; and when he
significantly remarked, that, to judge from my satisfied countenance,
my time had been devoted to the pursuit of more interesting game, I
felt for a moment as if he was actually master of my secret, and was
sensible my features underwent a change. I, however, parried the
attack, by replying indifferently, that if he should have the hardihood
to encounter the same dangers, he would, if successful, require no
other prompter than the joy of self-preservation to lend the same glow
of satisfaction to his own features. Nothing further was said on the
subject; but conversing on indifferent topics, we again threaded the
mazes of rock and underwood we had passed at an early hour, and finally
gained the town in which we were quartered.
"During dinner, as on our way home, although my voice occasionally
mixed with the voices of my companions, my heart was far away, and full
of the wild but innocent happiness in which it had luxuriated. At
length, the more freely to indulge in the recollection, I stole at an
early hour from the mess-room, and repaired to my own apartments. In
the course of the morning, I had hastily sketched an outline of your
mother's features in pencil, with a view to assist me in the design of
a miniature I purposed painting from memory. This was an amusement of
which I was extremely and in which I had attained considerable
excellence; being enabled, from memory alone, to give a most correct
representation of any object that particularly fixed my attention. She
had declared utter ignorance of the art herself, her father having
studiously avoided instructing her in it from some unexplained motive;
yet as she expressed the most unbounded admiration of those who
possessed it, it was my intention to surprise her with a highly
finished likeness of herself at my next visit. With this view I now set
to work; and made such progress, that before I retired to rest I had
completed all but the finishing touches, to which I purposed devoting a
leisure hour or two by daylight on the morrow.
"While occupied the second day in its completion, it occurred to me I
was in orders for duty on the following, which was that of my promised
visit to the oasis; and I despatched my servant with my compliments to
your father, and a request that he would be so obliging as to take my
guard for me on the morrow, and I would perform his duty when next his
name appeared on the roster. Some time afterwards I heard the door of
the room in which I sat open, and some one enter. Presuming it to be my
servant, returned from the execution of the message with which he had
just been charged, I paid no attention to the circumstance; but
finding, presently, he did not speak, I turned round with a view of
demanding what answer he had brought. To my surprise, however, I beheld
not my servant, but your father. He was standing looking over my
shoulder at the work on which I was engaged; and notwithstanding in the
instant he resumed the cold, quiet, smirking look that usually
distinguished him, I thought I could trace the evidence of some deep
emotion which my action had suddenly dispelled. He apologised for his
intrusion, although we were on those terms that rendered apology
unnecessary, but said he had just received my message, and preferred
coming in person to assure me how happy he should feel to take my duty,
or to render me any other service in his power. I thought he laid
unusual emphasis on the last sentence; yet I thanked him warmly,
stating that the only service I should now exact of him would be to
take my guard, as I was compelled to be absent nearly the whole of the
following morning. He observed, with a smile, he hoped I was not going
to venture my neck on those dangerous precipices a second time, after
the narrow escape I had had on the preceding day. As he spoke, I
thought his eye met mine with a sly yet scrutinizing glance; and, not
wishing to reply immediately to his question, I asked him what he
thought of the work with which I was endeavouring to beguile an idle
hour. He took it up, and I watched the expression of his handsome
countenance with the anxiety of a lover who wishes that all should
think his mistress beautiful as he does himself. It betrayed a very
indefinite sort of admiration; and yet it struck me there was an
eagerness in his dilating eye that contrasted strongly with the calm
and unconcern of his other features. At length I asked him, laughingly,
what he thought of my Cornish cousin. He replied, cautiously enough,
that since it was the likeness of a cousin, and he dwelt emphatically
on the word, he could not fail to admire it. Candour, however,
compelled him to admit, that had I not declared the original to be one
so closely connected with me, he should have said the talent of so
perfect an artist might have been better employed. Whatever, however,
his opinion of the lady might be, there could be no question that the
painting was exquisite; yet, he confessed, he could not but be struck
with the singularity of the fact of a Cornish girl appearing in the
full costume of a female Highlander. This, I replied, was mere matter
of fancy and association, arising from my having been so much latterly
in the habit of seeing that dress principally worn. He smiled one of
his then damnable soft smiles of assent, and here the conversation
terminated, and he left me.
"The next day saw me again at the side of your mother, who received me
with the same artless demonstrations of affection. There was a mellowed
softness in her countenance, and a tender languor in her eye, I had not
remarked the preceding day. Then there was more of the vivacity and
playfulness of the young girl; now, more of the deep fervour and the
composed serenity of the thoughtful woman. This change was too
consonant to my taste--too flattering to my self-love--not to be
rejoiced in; and as I pressed her yielding form in silent rapture to my
own, I more than ever felt she was indeed the being for whom my glowing
heart had so long yearned. After the first full and unreserved
interchange of our souls' best feelings, our conversation turned upon
lighter topics; and I took an opportunity to produce the fruit of my
application since we had parted. Never shall I forget the surprise and
delight that animated her beautiful countenance when first she gazed
upon the miniature. The likeness was perfect, even to the minutest
shading of her costume; and so forcibly and even childishly did this
strike her, that it was with difficulty I could persuade her she was
not gazing on some peculiar description of mirror that reflected back
her living image. She expressed a strong desire to retain it; and to
this I readily assented: stipulating only to retain it until my next
visit, in order that I might take an exact copy for myself. With a look
of the fondest love, accompanied by a pressure on mine of lips that
distilled dewy fragrance where they rested, she thanked me for a gift
which she said would remind her, in absence, of the fidelity with which
her features had been engraven on my heart. She admitted, moreover,
with a sweet blush, that she herself had not been idle. Although her
pencil could not call up my image in the same manner, her pen had
better repaid her exertions; and, in return for the portrait, she would
give me a letter she had written to beguile her loneliness on the
preceding day. As she spoke she drew a sealed packet from the bosom of
her dress, and placing it in my hand, desired me not to read it until I
had returned to my home. But there was an expression of sweet confusion
in her lovely countenance, and a trepidation in her manner, that, half
disclosing the truth, rendered me utterly impatient of the delay
imposed; and eagerly breaking the seal, I devoured rather than read its
contents.
"Accursed madness of recollection!" pursued Wacousta, again striking
his brow violently with his hand,--"why is it that I ever feel thus
unmanned while recurring to those letters? Oh! Clara de Haldimar, never
did woman pen to man such declarations of tenderness and attachment as
that too dear but faithless letter of your mother contained. Words of
fire, emanating from the guilelessness of innocence, glowed in every
line; and yet every sentence breathed an utter unconsciousness of the
effect those words were likely to produce. Mad, wild, intoxicated, I
read the letter but half through; and, as it fell from my trembling
hand, my eye turned, beaming with the fires of a thousand emotions,
upon that of the worshipped writer. That glance was more than her own
could meet. A new consciousness seemed to be stirred up in her soul.
Her eye dropped beneath its long and silken fringe--her cheek became
crimson--her bosom heaved--and, all confidingness, she sank her head
upon my chest, which heaved scarcely less wildly than her own.
"Had I been a cold-blooded villain--a selfish and remorseless seducer,"
continued Wacousta with vehemence--"what was to have prevented my
triumph at that moment? But I came not to blight the flower that had
long been nurtured, though unseen, with the life-blood of my own being.
Whatever I may be NOW, I was THEN the soul of disinterestedness and
honour; and had she reposed on the bosom of her own father, that
devoted and unresisting girl could not have been pressed there with
holier tenderness. But even to this there was too soon a term. The hour
of parting at length arrived, announced, as before, by the small bell
of her father, and I again tore myself from her arms; not, however,
without first securing the treasured letter, and obtaining a promise
from your mother that I should receive another at each succeeding
visit."