“Why, I did say something about getting a licence from the Cadi.”
BLUE BEARD.
“The visits of the stranger were interrupted for some time, and when he
returned, it seemed as if their purpose was no longer the same. He no
longer attempted to corrupt her principles, or sophisticate her
understanding, or mystify her views of religion. On the latter subject
he was quite silent, seemed to regret he had ever touched on it, and not
all her restless avidity of knowledge, or caressing importunity of
manner, could extract from him another syllable on the subject. He
repayed her amply, however, by the rich, varied, and copious stores of a
mind, furnished with matter apparently beyond the power of human
experience to have collected, confined, as it is, within the limits of
threescore years and ten. But this never struck Immalee; she took “no
note of time;” and the tale of yesterday, or the record of past
centuries, were synchronized in a mind to which facts and dates were
alike unknown; and which was alike unacquainted with the graduating
shades of manner, and the linked progress of events.
“They often sat on the shore of the isle in the evening, where Immalee
always prepared a seat of moss for her visitor, and gazed together on
the blue deep in silence; for Immalee’s newly-awaked intellect and heart
felt that bankruptcy of language, which profound feeling will impress on
the most cultivated intellect, and which, in her case, was increased
alike by her innocence and her ignorance; and her visitor had perhaps
reasons still stronger for his silence. This silence, however, was often
broken. There was not a vessel that sailed in the distance which did not
suggest an eager question from Immalee, and did not draw a slow and
extorted reply from the stranger. His knowledge was immense, various,
and profound, (but this was rather a subject of delight than of
curiosity to his beautiful pupil); and from the Indian canoe, rowed by
naked natives, to the splendid, and clumsy, and ill-managed vessels of
the Rajahs, that floated like huge and gilded fish tumbling in uncouth
and shapeless mirth on the wave, to the gallant and well-manned vessels
of Europe, that came on like the gods of ocean bringing fertility and
knowledge, the discoveries of art, and the blessings of civilization,
wherever their sails were unfurled and their anchors dropt,--he could
tell her all,--describe the destination of every vessel,--the feelings,
characters, and national habits of the many-minded inmates,--and enlarge
her knowledge to a degree which books never could have done; for
colloquial communication is always the most vivid and impressive medium,
and lips have a prescriptive right to be the first intelligencers in
instruction and in love.
“Perhaps this extraordinary being, with regard to whom the laws of
mortality and the feelings of nature seemed to be alike suspended, felt
a kind of sad and wild repose from the destiny that immitigably pursued
him, in the society of Immalee. We know not, and can never tell, what
sensations her innocent and helpless beauty inspired him with, but the
result was, that he ceased to regard her as his victim; and, when seated
beside her listening to her questions, or answering them, seemed to
enjoy the few lucid intervals of his insane and morbid existence. Absent
from her, he returned to the world to torture and to tempt in the
mad-house where the Englishman Stanton was tossing on his straw----”
“Hold!” said Melmoth; “what name have you mentioned?”--“Have patience
with me, Senhor,” said Monçada, who did not like interruption; “have
patience, and you will find we are all beads strung on the same string.
Why should we jar against each other? our union is indissoluble.” He
proceeded with the story of the unhappy Indian, as recorded in the
parchments of Adonijah, which he had been compelled to copy, and of
which he was anxious to impress every line and letter on his listener,
to substantiate his own extraordinary story.
“When absent from her, his purpose was what I have described; but while
present, that purpose seemed suspended; he gazed often on her with eyes
whose wild and fierce lustre was quenched in a dew that he hastily wiped
away, and gazed on her again. While he sat near her on the flowers she
had collected for him,--while he looked on those timid and rosy lips
that waited his signal to speak, like buds that did not dare to blow
till the sun shone on them,--while he heard accents issue from those
lips which he felt it would be as impossible to pervert as it would be
to teach the nightingale blasphemy,--he sunk down beside her, passed his
hand over his livid brow, and, wiping off some cold drops, thought for a
moment he was not the Cain of the moral world, and that the brand was
effaced,--at least for a moment. The habitual and impervious gloom of
his soul soon returned. He felt again the gnawings of the worm that
never dies, and the scorchings of the fire that is never to be quenched.
He turned the fatal light of his dark eyes on the only being who never
shrunk from their expression, for her innocence made her fearless. He
looked intensely at her, while rage, despair, and pity, convulsed his
heart; and as he beheld the confiding and conciliating smile with which
this gentle being met a look that might have withered the heart of the
boldest within him,--a Semele gazing in supplicating love on the
lightnings that were to blast her,--one human drop dimmed their
portentous lustre, as its softened rays fell on her. Turning fiercely
away, he flung his view on the ocean, as if to find, in the sight of
human life, some fuel for the fire that was consuming his vitals. The
ocean, that lay calm and bright before them as a sea of jasper, never
reflected two more different countenances, or sent more opposite
feelings to two hearts. Over Immalee’s, it breathed that deep and
delicious reverie, which those forms of nature that unite tranquillity
and profundity diffuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to
an unmingled and exclusive enjoyment of nature. None but crimeless and
unimpassioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean, and heaven. At our
first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first parents, from
her paradise for ever.
“To the stranger the view was fraught with far different visions. He
viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey; there might be
the storm and the wreck; or, if the elements were obstinately calm,
there might be the gaudy and gilded pleasure barge, in which a Rajah and
the beautiful women of his haram were inhaling the sea breeze under
canopies of silk and gold, overturned by the unskilfulness of their
rowers, and their plunge, and struggle, and dying agony, amid the smile
and beauty of the calm ocean, produce one of those contrasts in which
his fierce spirit delighted. Or, were even this denied, he could watch
the vessels as they floated by, and, from the skiff to the huge trader,
be sure that every one bore its freight of woe and crime. There came on
the European vessels full of the passions and crimes of another
world,--of its sateless cupidity, remorseless cruelty, its intelligence,
all awake and ministrant in the cause of its evil passions, and its very
refinement operating as a stimulant to more inventive indulgence, and
more systematized vice. He saw them approach to traffic for “gold, and
silver, and the souls of men;”--to grasp, with breathless rapacity, the
gems and precious produce of those luxuriant climates, and deny the
inhabitants the rice that supported their inoffensive existence;--to
discharge the load of their crimes, their lust and their avarice, and
after ravaging the land, and plundering the natives, depart, leaving
behind them famine, despair, and execration; and bearing with them back
to Europe, blasted constitutions, inflamed passions, ulcerated hearts,
and consciences that could not endure the extinction of a light in their
sleeping apartment.
“Such were the objects for which he watched; and one evening, when
solicited by Immalee’s incessant questions about the worlds to which the
vessels were hastening, or to which they were returning, he gave her a
description of the world, after his manner, in a spirit of mingled
derision, malignity, and impatient bitterness at the innocence of her
curiosity. There was a mixture of fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and
fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which was often interrupted by the
cries of astonishment, grief, and terror, from his hearer. “They come,”
said he, pointing to the European vessels, “from a world where the only
study of the inhabitants is how to increase their own sufferings, and
those of others, to the utmost possible degree; and, considering they
have only had 4000 years practice at the task, it must be allowed they
are tolerable proficients.”--“But is it possible?”--“You shall judge. In
aid, doubtless, of this desirable object, they have been all originally
gifted with imperfect constitutions and evil passions; and, not to be
ungrateful, they pass their lives in contriving how to augment the
infirmities of the one, and aggravate the acerbities of the other. They
are not like you, Immalee, a being who breathes amid roses, and subsists
only on the juices of fruits, and the lymph of the pure element. In
order to render their thinking powers more gross, and their spirits more
fiery, they devour animals, and torture from abused vegetables a drink,
that, without quenching thirst, has the power of extinguishing reason,
inflaming passion, and shortening life--the best result of all--for life
under such circumstances owes its only felicity to the shortness of its
duration.”
“Immalee shuddered at the mention of animal food, as the most delicate
European would at the mention of a cannibal feast; and while tears
trembled in her beautiful eyes, she turned them wistfully on her
peacocks with an expression that made the stranger smile. “Some,” said
he, by way of consolation, “have a taste by no means so
sophisticated,--they content themselves at their need with the flesh of
their fellow-creatures; and as human life is always miserable, and
animal life never so, (except from elementary causes), one would imagine
this the most humane and salutary way of at once gratifying the
appetite, and diminishing the mass of human suffering. But as these
people pique themselves on their ingenuity in aggravating the sufferings
of their situation, they leave thousands of human beings yearly to
perish by hunger and grief, and amuse themselves in feeding on animals,
whom, by depriving of existence, they deprive of the only pleasure their
condition has allotted them. When they have thus, by unnatural diet and
outrageous stimulation, happily succeeded in corrupting infirmity into
disease, and exasperating passion into madness, they proceed to exhibit
the proofs of their success, with an expertness and consistency truly
admirable. They do not, like you, Immalee, live in the lovely
independence of nature--lying on the earth, and sleeping with all the
eyes of heaven unveiled to watch you--treading the same grass till your
light step feels a friend in every blade it presses--and conversing with
flowers, till you feel yourself and them children of the united family
of nature, whose mutual language of love you have almost learned to
speak to each other--no, to effect their purpose, their food, which is
of itself poison, must be rendered more fatal by the air they inhale;
and therefore the more civilized crowd all together into a space which
their own respiration, and the exhalation of their bodies, renders
pestilential, and which gives a celerity inconceivable to the
circulation of disease and mortality. Four thousand of them will live
together in a space smaller than the last and lightest colonnade of your
young banyan-tree, in order, doubtless, to increase the effects of fœtid
air, artificial heat, unnatural habits, and impracticable exercise. The
result of these judicious precautions is just what may be guessed. The
most trifling complaint becomes immediately infectious, and, during the
ravages of the pestilence, which this habit generates, ten thousand
lives a-day are the customary sacrifice to the habit of living in
cities.”--“But they die in the arms of those they love,” said Immalee,
whose tears flowed fast at this recital; “and is not that better than
even _life_ in solitude,--as mine was before I beheld you?”
“The stranger was too intent on his description to heed her. “To these
cities they resort nominally for security and protection, but really for
the sole purpose to which their existence is devoted,--that of
aggravating its miseries by every ingenuity of refinement. For example,
those who live in uncontrasted and untantalized misery, can hardly feel
it--suffering becomes their habit, and they feel no more jealousy of
their situation than the bat, who clings in blind and famishing
stupefaction to the cleft of a rock, feels of the situation of the
butterfly, who drinks of the dew, and bathes in the bloom of every
flower. But the people of the _other worlds_ have invented, by means of
living in cities, a new and singular mode of aggravating human
wretchedness--that of contrasting it with the wild and wanton excess of
superfluous and extravagant splendour.”
“Here the stranger had incredible difficulty to make Immalee comprehend
how there could be an unequal division of the means of existence; and
when he had done his utmost to explain it to her, she continued to
repeat, (her white finger on her scarlet lip, and her small foot beating
the moss), in a kind of pouting inquietude, “Why should some have more
than they can eat, and others nothing to eat?”--“This,” continued the
stranger, “is the most exquisite refinement on that art of torture which
those beings are so expert in--to place misery by the side of
opulence--to bid the wretch who dies for want feed on the sound of the
splendid equipages which shake his hovel as they pass, but leave no
relief behind--to bid the industrious, the ingenious, and the
imaginative, starve, while bloated mediocrity pants from excess--to bid
the dying sufferer feel that life might be prolonged by one drop of that
exciting liquor, which, wasted, produces only sickness or madness in
those whose lives it undermines;--to do this is their principal object,
and it is fully attained. The sufferer through whose rags the wind of
winter blows, like arrows lodging in every pore--whose tears freeze
before they fall--whose soul is as dreary as the night under whose cope
his resting-place must be--whose glued and clammy lips are unable to
receive the food which famine, lying like a burning coal at his vitals,
craves--and who, amid the horrors of a houseless winter, might prefer
its desolation to that of the den that abuses the name of home--without
food--without light--where the howlings of the storm are answered by the
fiercer cries of hunger--and he must stumble to his murky and strawless
nook over the bodies of his children, who have sunk on the floor, not
for rest, but despair. Such a being, is he not sufficiently miserable?”
“Immalee’s shudderings were her only answer, (though of many parts of
his description she had a very imperfect idea). “No, he is not enough so
yet,” pursued the stranger, pressing the picture on her; “let his steps,
that know not where they wander, conduct him to the gates of the
affluent and the luxurious--let him feel that plenty and mirth are
removed from him but by the interval of a wall, and yet more distant
than if severed by worlds--let him feel that while _his_ world is
darkness and cold, the eyes of those within are aching with the blaze of
light, and hands relaxed by artificial heat, are soliciting with fans
the refreshment of a breeze--let him feel that every groan he utters is
answered by a song or a laugh--and let him die on the steps of the
mansion, while his last conscious pang is aggravated by the thought,
that the price of the hundredth part of the luxuries that lie untasted
before heedless beauty and sated epicurism, would have protracted his
existence, while it poisons theirs--let him _die of want on the
threshold of a banquet-hall_, and then admire with me the ingenuity that
displays itself in this new combination of misery. The inventive
activity of the people of the world, in the multiplication of calamity,
is inexhaustibly fertile in resources. Not satisfied with diseases and
famine, with sterility of the earth, and tempests of the air, they must
have laws and marriages, and kings and tax-gatherers, and wars and
fetes, and every variety of artificial misery inconceivable to you.”
“Immalee, overpowered by this torrent of words, to her unintelligible
words, in vain asked a connected explanation of them. The demon of his
superhuman misanthropy had now fully possessed him, and not even the
tones of a voice as sweet as the strings of David’s harp, had power to
expel the evil one. So he went on flinging about his fire-brands and
arrows, and then saying, “Am I not in sport? These people(15),” said he,
“have made unto themselves kings, that is, beings whom they voluntarily
invest with the privilege of draining, by taxation, whatever wealth
their vices have left to the rich, and whatever means of subsistence
their want has left to the poor, till their extortion is cursed from the
castle to the cottage--and this to support a few pampered favourites,
who are harnessed by silken reins to the car, which they drag over the
prostrate bodies of the multitude. Sometimes exhausted by the monotony
of perpetual fruition, which has no parallel even in the monotony of
suffering, (for the latter has at least the excitement of hope, which is
for ever denied to the former), they amuse themselves by making war,
that is, collecting the greatest number of human beings that can be
bribed to the task, to cut the throats of a less, equal, or greater
number of beings, bribed in the same manner for the same purpose. These
creatures have not the least cause of enmity to each other--they do not
know, they never beheld each other. Perhaps they might, under other
circumstances, wish each other well, as far as human malignity would
suffer them; but from the moment they are hired for legalized massacre,
hatred is their duty, and murder their delight. The man who would feel
reluctance to destroy the reptile that crawls in his path, will equip
himself with metals fabricated for the purpose of destruction, and smile
to see it stained with the blood of a being, whose existence and
happiness he would have sacrificed his own to promote, under other
circumstances. So strong is this habit of aggravating misery under
artificial circumstances, that it has been known, when in a sea-fight a
vessel has blown up, (here a long explanation was owed to Immalee, which
may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged into
the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives of those
with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment before, and
whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions, their pride refused
to sacrifice to the elements.”--“Oh that is beautiful!--that is
glorious!” said Immalee, clasping her white hands; “I could bear all you
describe to see that sight!”
(15) As, by a mode of criticism equally false and unjust, the worst
sentiments of my worst characters, (from the ravings of Bertram to the
blasphemies of Cardonneau), have been represented as _my own_, I must
here trespass so far on the patience of the reader as to assure him,
that the sentiments ascribed to the stranger are diametrically
opposite to mine, and that I have purposely put them into the mouth of
an agent of the enemy of mankind.
“Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of high-toned
feeling, had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown of
the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of his
upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or contempt.
“But what do the kings do?” said Immalee, “while they are making men
kill each other for nothing?”--“You are ignorant, Immalee,” said the
stranger, “very ignorant, or you would not have said it was for
_nothing_. Some of them fight for ten inches of barren sand--some for
the dominion of the salt wave--some for any thing--and some for
nothing--but all for pay and poverty, and occasional excitement, and the
love of action, and the love of change, and the dread of home, and the
consciousness of evil passions, and the hope of death, and the
admiration of the showy dress in which they are to perish. The best of
the jest is, they contrive not only to reconcile themselves to these
cruel and wicked absurdities, but to dignify them with the most imposing
names their perverted language supplies--the names of fame, of glory, of
recording memory, and admiring posterity.
“Thus a wretch whom want, idleness, or intemperance, drives to this
reckless and heart-withering business,--who leaves his wife and children
to the mercy of strangers, or to famish, (terms nearly synonimous), the
moment he has assumed the blushing badge that privileges massacre,
becomes, in the imagination of this intoxicated people, the defender of
his country, entitled to her gratitude and to her praise. The idle
stripling, who hates the cultivation of intellect, and despises the
meanness of occupation, feels, perhaps, a taste for arraying his person
in colours as gaudy as the parrot’s or the peacock’s; and this
effeminate propensity is baptised by the prostituted name of the love of
glory--and this complication of motives borrowed from vanity and from
vice, from the fear of distress, the wantonness of idleness, and the
appetite for mischief, finds one convenient and sheltering appellation
in the single sound--patriotism. And those beings who never knew one
generous impulse, one independent feeling, ignorant of either the
principles or the justice of the cause for which they contend, and
wholly uninterested in the result, except so far as it involves the
concerns of their own vanity, cupidity, and avarice, are, while living,
hailed by the infatuated world as its benefactors, and when dead,
canonized as its martyrs. He died in his country’s cause, is the epitaph
inscribed by the rash hand of indiscriminating eulogy on the grave of
ten thousand, who had ten thousand different motives for their choice
and their fate,--who might have lived to be their country’s enemies if
they had not _happened_ to fall in her defence,--and whose love of their
country, if fairly analysed, was, under its various forms of vanity,
restlessness, the love of tumult, or the love of show--purely love of
themselves. There let them rest--nothing but the wish to disabuse their
idolaters, who prompt the sacrifice, and then applaud the victim they
have made, could have tempted me to dwell thus long on beings as
mischievous in their lives, as they are insignificant in their death.
“Another amusement of these people, so ingenious in multiplying the
sufferings of their destiny, is what they call law. They pretend to find
in this a security for their persons and their properties--with how much
justice, their own felicitous experience must inform them! Of the
security it gives to the latter, judge, Immalee, when I tell you, that
you might spend your life in their courts, without being able to prove
that those roses you have gathered and twined in your hair were your
own--that you might starve for this day’s meal, while proving your right
to a property which must incontestibly be yours, on the condition of
your being able to fast on a few years, and survive to enjoy it--and
that, finally, with the sentiments of all upright men, the opinions of
the judges of the land, and the fullest conviction of your own
conscience in your favour, you cannot obtain the possession of what you
and all feel to be your own, while your antagonist can start an
objection, purchase a fraud, or invent a lie. So pleadings go on, and
years are wasted, and property consumed, and hearts broken,--and law
triumphs. One of its most admirable triumphs is in that ingenuity by
which it contrives to convert a difficulty into an impossibility, and
punish a man for not doing what it has rendered impracticable for him to
do.
“When he is unable to pay his debts, it deprives him of liberty and
credit, to insure that inability still further; and while destitute
alike of the means of subsistence, or the power of satisfying his
creditors, he is enabled, by this righteous arrangement, to console
himself, at least, with the reflection, that he can injure his creditor
as much as he has suffered from him--that certain loss is the reward of
immitigable cruelty--and that, while he famishes in prison, the page in
which his debt is recorded rots away faster than his body; and the angel
of death, with one obliterating sweep of his wing, cancels misery and
debt, and presents, grinning in horrid triumph, the release of debtor
and debt, signed by a hand that makes the judges tremble on their
seats.”--“But they have religion,” said the poor Indian, trembling at
this horrible description; “they have that religion which you shewed
me--its mild and peaceful spirit--its quietness and resignation--no
blood--no cruelty.”--“Yes,--true,” said the stranger, with some
reluctance, “they have religion; for in their zeal for suffering, they
feel the torments of one world not enough, unless aggravated by the
terrors of another. They have such a religion, but what use have they
made of it? Intent on their settled purpose of discovering misery
wherever it could be traced, and inventing it where it could not, they
have found, even in the pure pages of that book, which, they presume to
say, contains their title to peace on earth, and happiness hereafter, a
right to hate, plunder, and murder each other. Here they have been
compelled to exercise an extraordinary share of perverted ingenuity. The
book contains nothing but what is good, and evil must be the minds, and
hard the labour of those evil minds, to extort a tinge from it to colour
their pretensions withal. But mark, in pursuance of their great object,
(the aggravation of general misery), mark how subtilly they have
wrought. They call themselves by various names, to excite passions
suitable to the names they bear. Thus some forbid the perusal of that
book to their disciples, and others assert, that from the exclusive
study of its pages alone, can the hope of salvation be learned or
substantiated. It is singular, however, that with all their ingenuity,
they have never been able to extract a subject of difference from the
_essential_ contents of that book, to which they all appeal--so they
proceed after their manner.
“They never dare to dispute that it contains irresistible
injunctions,----that those who believe in it should live in habits of
peace, benevolence, and harmony,--that they should love each other in
prosperity, and assist each other in adversity. They dare not deny that
the spirit that book inculcates and inspires, is a spirit whose fruits
are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, mildness, and truth. On these
points they never presumed to differ.--They are too plain to be denied,
so they contrive to make matter of difference out of the various habits
they wear; and they cut each other’s throats for the love of God, on the
important subject(16), whether their jackets should be red or white--or
whether their priests should be arrayed in silk ribbons(17), or white
linen(18), or black household garments(19)--or whether they should
immerse their children in water, or sprinkle them with a few drops of
it--or whether they should partake of the memorials of the death of him
they all profess to love, standing or on their knees--or---- But I weary
you with this display of human wickedness and absurdity. One point is
plain, they all agree that the language of the book is, “Love one
another,” while they all translate that language, “Hate one another.”
But as they can find neither materials or excuse from that book, they
search for them in their own minds,--and there they are never at a loss,
for human minds are inexhaustible in malignity and hostility; and when
they borrow the name of that book to sanction them, the deification of
their passions becomes a duty, and their worst impulses are hallowed and
practised as virtues.”--“Are there no parents or children in these
horrible worlds?” said Immalee, turning her tearful eyes on this
traducer of humanity; “none that love each other as I loved the tree
under which I was first conscious of existence, or the flowers that grew
with me?”--“Parents?--children?” said the stranger; “Oh yes! There are
fathers who instruct their sons----” And his voice was lost--he
struggled to recover it.
(16) The Catholics and Protestants were thus distinguished in the wars
of the League.
(17) Catholics.
(18) Protestants.
(19) Dissenters.
“After a long pause, he said, “There are some kind parents among those
sophisticated people.”--“And who are they?” said Immalee, whose heart
throbbed spontaneously at the mention of kindliness.--“Those,” said the
stranger, with a withering smile, “who murder their children at the hour
of their birth, or, by medical art, dismiss them before they have seen
the light; and, in so doing, they give the only credible evidence of
parental affection.”
“He ceased, and Immalee remained silent in melancholy meditation on what
she had heard. The acrid and searing irony of his language had made no
impression on one with whom “speech was truth,” and who could have no
idea why a circuitous mode of conveying meaning could be adopted, when
even a direct one was often attended with difficulty to herself. But she
could understand, that he had spoken much of evil and of suffering,
names unknown to her before she beheld him, and she turned on him a
glance that seemed at once to thank and reproach him for her painful
initiation into the mysteries of a new existence. She had, indeed,
tasted of the tree of knowledge, and her eyes were opened, but its fruit
was bitter to her taste, and her looks conveyed a kind of mild and
melancholy gratitude, that would have wrung the heart for giving its
first lesson of pain to the heart of a being so beautiful, so gentle,
and so innocent. The stranger marked this blended expression, and
exulted.
“He had distorted life thus to her imagination, perhaps with the purpose
of terrifying her from a nearer view of it; perhaps in the wild hope of
keeping her for ever in this solitude, where he might sometimes see her,
and catch, from the atmosphere of purity that surrounded her, the only
breeze that floated over the burning desert of his own existence. This
hope was strengthened by the obvious impression his discourse had made
on her. The sparkling intelligence,--the breathless curiosity,--the
vivid gratitude of her former expression,--were all extinguished, and
her down cast and thoughtful eyes were full of tears.
“Has my conversation wearied you, Immalee?” said he.--“It has grieved
me, yet I wish to listen still,” answered the Indian. “I love to hear
the murmur of the stream, though the crocodile may be beneath the
waves.”--“Perhaps you wish to encounter the people of this world, so
full of crime and misfortune.”--“I do, for it is the world you came
from, and when you return to it all will be happy but me.”--“And is it,
then, in my power to confer happiness?” said her companion; “is it for
this purpose I wander among mankind?” A mingled and indefinable
expression of derision, malevolence, and despair, overspread his
features, as he added, “You do me too much honour, in devising for me an
occupation so mild and so congenial to my spirit.”
“Immalee, whose eyes were averted, did not see this expression, and she
replied, “I know not, but you have taught me the joy of grief; before I
saw you I only smiled, but since I saw you, I weep, and my tears are
delicious. Oh! they are far different from those I shed for the setting
sun, or the faded rose! And yet I know not--” And the poor Indian,
oppressed by emotions she could neither understand or express, clasped
her hands on her bosom, as if to hide the secret of its new
palpitations, and, with the instinctive diffidence of her purity,
signified the change of her feelings, by retiring a few steps from her
companion, and casting on the earth eyes which could contain their tears
no longer. The stranger appeared troubled,--an emotion new to himself
agitated him for a moment,--then a smile of self-disdain curled his lip,
as if he reproached himself for the indulgence of human feeling even for
a moment. Again his features relaxed, as he turned to the bending and
averted form of Immalee, and he seemed like one conscious of agony of
soul himself, yet inclined to sport with the agony of another’s. This
union of inward despair and outward levity is not unnatural. Smiles are
the legitimate offspring of happiness, but laughter is often the
misbegotten child of madness, that mocks its parent to her face. With
such an expression he turned towards her, and asked, “But what is your
meaning, Immalee?”--A long pause followed this question, and at length
the Indian answered, “I know not,” with that natural and delicious art
which teaches the sex to disclose their meaning in words that seem to
contradict it. “I know not,” means, “I know too well.” Her companion
understood this, and enjoyed his anticipated triumph. “And why do your
tears flow, Immalee?”--“I know not,” said the poor Indian, and her tears
flowed faster at the question.
“At these words, or rather at these tears, the stranger forgot himself
for a moment. He felt that melancholy triumph which the conqueror is
unable to enjoy; that triumph which announces a victory over the
weakness of others, obtained at the expence of a greater weakness in
ourselves. A human feeling, in spite of him, pervaded his whole soul, as
he said, in accents of involuntary softness, “What would you have me do,
Immalee?” The difficulty of speaking a language that might be at once
intelligible and reserved,--that might convey her wishes without
betraying her heart,--and the unknown nature of her new emotions, made
Immalee faulter long before she could answer, “Stay with me,--return not
to that world of evil and sorrow.--Here the flowers will always bloom,
and the sun be as bright as on the first day I beheld you.--Why will you
go back to the world to think and to be unhappy?” The wild and
discordant laugh of her companion, startled and silenced her. “Poor
girl,” he exclaimed, with that mixture of bitterness and commiseration,
that at once terrifies and humiliates; “and is this the destiny I am to
fulfil?--to listen to the chirping of birds, and watch the opening of
buds? Is this to be my lot?” and with another wild burst of unnatural
laughter, he flung away the hand which Immalee had extended to him as
she had finished her simple appeal.--“Yes, doubtless, I am well fitted
for such a fate, and such a partner. Tell me,” he added, with still
wilder fierceness, “tell me from what line of my features,--from what
accent of my voice,--from what sentiment of my discourse, have you
extracted the foundation of a hope that insults me with the view of
felicity?” Immalee, who might have replied, “I understand a fury in your
words, but not your words,” had yet sufficient aid from her maiden
pride, and female penetration, to discover that she was rejected by the
stranger; and a brief emotion of indignant grief struggled with the
tenderness of her exposed and devoted heart. She paused a moment, and
then checking her tears, said, in her firmest tones, “Go, then, to your
world,--since you wish to be unhappy--go!--Alas! it is not necessary to
go there to be unhappy, for I must be so here. Go,--but take with you
these roses, for they will all wither when you are gone!--take with you
these shells, for I shall no longer love to wear them when you no longer
see them!” And as she spoke, with simple, but emphatic action, she
untwined from her bosom and hair the shells and flowers with which they
were adorned, and threw them at his feet; then turning to throw one
glance of proud and melancholy grief at him, she was retiring. “Stay,
Immalee,--stay, and hear me for a moment,” said the stranger; and he
would, at that moment, have perhaps discovered the ineffable and
forbidden secret of his destiny, but Immalee, in silence, which her look
of profound grief made eloquent, shook sadly her averted head, and
departed.