Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

  ‘But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and it was not till his return the next day, when he revisited the isle, that he discovered Immalee’s friend was what he suspected. He found this innocent and lovely being bending over a stream that reflected her image, and wooing it with a thousand wild and graceful attitudes of joyful fondness. The stranger gazed at her for some time, and thoughts it would be difficult for man to penetrate into, threw their varying expression over his features for a moment. It was the first of his intended victims he had ever beheld with compunction. The joy, too, with which Immalee received him, almost brought back human feelings to a heart that had long renounced them; and, for a moment, he experienced a sensation like that of his master when he visited paradise,4 – pity for the flowers he resolved to wither for ever. He looked at her as she fluttered round him with outspread arms and dancing eyes; and sighed, while she welcomed him in tones of such wild sweetness, as suited a being who had hitherto conversed with nothing but the melody of birds and the murmur of waters. With all her ignorance, however, she could not help testifying her amazement at his arriving at the isle without any visible means of conveyance. He evaded answering her on this point, but said, ‘Immalee, I come from a world wholly unlike that you inhabit, amid inanimate flowers, and unthinking birds. I come from a world where all, as I do, think and speak.’ Immalee was speechless with wonder and delight for some time; at length she exclaimed, ‘Oh, how they must love each other! even I love my poor birds and flowers, and the trees that shade, and the waters that sing to me!’ The stranger smiled. ‘In all that world, perhaps there is not another being beautiful and innocent as you. It is a world of suffering, guilt, and care.’ It was with much difficulty she was made to comprehend the meaning of these words,5 but when she did, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, that I could live in that world, for I would make every one happy!’ – ‘But you could not, Immalee,’ said the stranger; ‘this world is of such extent that it would take your whole life to traverse it, and, during your progress, you never could be conversant with more than a small number of sufferers at a time, and the evils they undergo are in many instances such as you or no human power could relieve.’ At these words, Immalee burst into an agony of tears. ‘Weak, but lovely being,’ said the stranger, ‘could your tears heal the corrosions of disease? – cool the burning throb of a cancered heart? – wash the pale slime from the clinging lips of famine? – or, more than all, quench the fire of forbidden passion?’ Immalee paused aghast at this enumeration, and could only faulter out, that wherever she went, she would bring her flowers and sunshine among the healthy, and they should all sit under the shade of her own tamarind. That for disease and death, she had long been accustomed to see flowers wither and die their beautiful death of nature. ‘And perhaps,’ she added, after a reflective pause, ‘as I have often known them to retain their delicious odour even after they were faded, perhaps what thinks6 may live too after the form has faded, and that is a thought of joy.’ Of passion, she said she knew nothing, and could propose no remedy for an evil she was unconscious of. She had seen flowers fade with the season, but could not imagine why the flower should destroy itself. ‘But did you never trace a worm in the flower?’ said the stranger, with the sophistry of corruption. ‘Yes,’ answered Immalee, ‘but the worm was not the native of the flower; its own leaves never could have hurt it.’ This led to a discussion, which Immalee’s impregnable innocence, though combined with ardent curiosity and quick apprehension, rendered perfectly harmless to her. Her playful and desultory answers, – her restless eccentricity of imagination, – her keen and piercing, though ill-poised intellectual weapons, – and, above all, her instinctive and unfailing tact in matters of right and wrong, formed altogether an array that discomfited and baffled the tempter more than if he had been compelled to encounter half the wranglers7 of the European academies of that day. In the logic of the schools he was well-versed, but in this logic of the heart and of nature, he was ‘ignorance itself.’ It is said, that the ‘awless lion’ crouches before ‘a maid in the pride of her purity.’8 The tempter was departing gloomily, when he saw tears start from the bright eyes of Immalee, and caught a wild and dark omen from her innocent grief. ‘And you weep, Immalee?’ ‘Yes,’ said the beautiful being, ‘I always weep when I see the sun set in clouds; and will you, the sun of my heart, set in darkness too? and will you not rise again? will you not?’ and, with the graceful confidence of pure innocence, she pressed her red delicious lip to his hand as she spoke. ‘Will you not? I shall never love my roses and peacocks if you do not return, for they cannot speak to me as you do, nor can I give them one thought, but you can give me many. Oh, I would like to have many thoughts about the world that suffers, from which you came; and I believe you came from it, for, till I saw you, I never felt a pain that was not pleasure; but now it is all pain when I think you will not return.’ – ‘I will return,’ said the stranger, ‘beautiful Immalee, and will shew you, at my return, a glimpse of that world from which I come, and in which you will soon be an inmate.’ – ‘But shall I see you there,’ said Immalee, ‘otherwise how shall I talk thoughts?’ – ‘Oh yes, – oh certainly.’ – ‘But why do you repeat the same words twice; your once would have been enough.’ – ‘Well then, yes.’ – ‘Then take this rose from me, and let us inhale its odour together, as I say to my friend in the fountain, when I bend to kiss it; but my friend withdraws its rose9 before I have tasted it, and I leave mine on the water. Will you not take my rose,’ said the beautiful suppliant, bending towards him. ‘I will,’ said the stranger; and he took a flower from the cluster Immalee held out to him. It was a withered one. He snatched it, and hid it in his breast. ‘And will you go without a canoe across that dark sea?’ said Immalee. – ‘We shall meet again, and meet in the world of suffering,’ said the stranger. – ‘Thank you, – oh, thank you,’ repeated Immalee, as she saw him plunge fearless amid the surf. The stranger answered only, We shall meet again.’ Twice, as he parted, he threw a glance at the beautiful and isolated being; a lingering of humanity trembled round his heart, – but he tore the withered rose from his bosom, and to the waved arm and angel-smile of Immalee, he answered, ‘We shall meet again.’

  CHAPTER XVI

  Più non ho la dolce speranza.1

  DIDONE

  ‘Seven mornings and evenings Immalee paced the sands of her lonely isle, without seeing the stranger. She had still his promise to console her, that they should meet in the world of suffering; and this she repeated to herself as if it was full of hope and consolation. In this interval she tried to educate herself for her introduction into this world, and it was beautiful to see her attempting, from vegetable and animal analogies, to form some image of the incomprehensible destiny of man. In the shade she watched the withering flower. – ‘The blood that ran red through its veins yesterday is purple to-day, and will be black and dry to-morrow,’ she said; ‘but it feels no pain – it dies patiently, – and the ranunculus2 and tulip near it are untouched by grief for their companion, or their colours would not be so resplendent. But can it be thus in the world that thinks? Could I see him wither and die, without withering and dying along with him. Oh no! when that flower fades, I will be the dew that falls over him!’

  ‘She attempted to enlarge her comprehension, by observing the animal world. A young loxia had fallen dead from its pendent nest; and Immalee, looking into the aperture which that intelligent bird forms at the lower extremity of the nest to secure it from birds of prey, perceived the old ones with fire-flies in their small beaks, their young one lying dead before them. At this sight Immalee burst into tears. – ‘Ah! you cannot weep,’ she said, ‘what an advantage I have over you! You eat, though your young one, your own one, is dead; but could I ever drink of the milk of the cocoa, if he could no longer taste it? I begin to comprehend what he said – to think, then, is to suffer – and a world of thought must be a world of pain! But how delicious are these tears! Formerly I wept for pleasure – but there is a pain sweeter t
han pleasure, that I never felt till I beheld him. Oh! who would not think, to have the joy of tears?’

  ‘But Immalee did not occupy this interval solely in reflection; a new anxiety began to agitate her; and in the intervals of her meditation and her tears, she searched with avidity for the most glowing and fantastically wreathed shells to deck her arms and hair with. She changed her drapery of flowers every day, and never thought them fresh after the first hour; then she filled her largest shells with the most limpid water, and her hollow cocoa nuts with the most delicious figs, interspersed with roses, and arranged them picturesquely on the stone bench of the ruined pagoda. The time, however, passed over without the arrival of the stranger, and Immalee, on visiting her fairy banquet the next day, wept over the withered fruit, but dried her eyes, and hastened to replace them.

  ‘She was thus employed on the eighth morning, when she saw the stranger approach; and the wild and innocent delight with which she bounded towards him, excited in him for a moment a feeling of gloomy and reluctant compunction, which Immalee’s quick susceptibility traced in his pausing step and averted eye. She stood trembling in lovely and pleading diffidence, as if intreating pardon for an unconscious offence, and asking permission to approach by the very attitude in which she forbore it, while tears stood in her eyes ready to fall at another repelling motion. This sight ‘whetted his almost blunted purpose.’ 3 She must learn to suffer, to qualify her to become my pupil, he thought. ‘Immalee, you weep,’ he added, approaching her. ‘Oh yes!’ said Immalee, smiling like a spring morning through her tears; ‘you are to teach me to suffer, and I shall soon be very fit for your world – but I had rather weep for you, than smile on a thousand roses.’ – ‘Immalee,’ said the stranger, repelling the tenderness that melted him in spite of himself, ‘Immalee, I come to shew you something of the world of thought you are so anxious to inhabit, and of which you must soon become an inmate. Ascend this hill4 where the palm-trees are clustering, and you shall see a glimpse of part of it.’ – ‘But I would like to see the whole, and all at once!’ said Immalee, with the natural avidity of thirsty and unfed intellect, that believes it can swallow all things, and digest all things. ‘The whole, and all at once!’ said her conductor, turning to smile at her as she bounded after him, breathless and glowing with newly excited feeling. ‘I doubt the part you will see to-night will be more than enough to satiate even your curiosity.’ As he spoke he drew a tube from his vest, and bid her apply it to her sight. The Indian obeyed him; but, after gazing a moment, uttered the emphatic exclamation, ‘I am there! – or are they here?’ and sunk on the earth in a frenzy of delight. She rose again in a moment, and eagerly seizing the telescope, applied it in a wrong direction, which disclosed merely the sea to her view, and exclaimed sadly, ‘Gone! – gone! – all that beautiful world lived and died in a moment – all that I love die so – my dearest roses live not half so long as those I neglect – you were absent for seven moons since I first saw you, and the beautiful world lived only a moment.’

  ‘The stranger again directed the telescope towards the shore of India, from which they were not far distant, and Immalee again exclaimed in rapture, ‘Alive and more beautiful than ever! – all living, thinking things! – their very walk thinks. No mute fishes, and senseless trees, but wonderful rocks,* on which they look with pride, as if they were the works of their own hands. Beautiful rocks! how I love the perfect straitness of your sides, and the crisped and flower-like knots of your decorated tops! Oh that flowers grew, and birds fluttered round you, and then I would prefer you even to the rocks under which I watch the setting sun! Oh what a world must that be where nothing is natural, and every thing beautiful! – thought must have done all that. But, how little every thing is! – thought should have made every thing larger – thought should be a god. But,’ she added with quick intelligence and self-accusing diffidence, ‘perhaps I am wrong. Sometimes I have thought I could lay my hand on the top of a palm-tree, but when, after a long, long time, I came close to it, I could not have reached its lowest leaf were I ten times higher than I am. Perhaps your beautiful world may grow higher as I approach it.’ – ‘Hold, Immalee,’ said the stranger, taking the telescope from her hands, ‘to enjoy this sight you should understand it.’ – ‘Oh yes!’ said Immalee, with submissive anxiety, as the world of sense rapidly lost ground in her imagination against the new-found world of mind, – ‘yes – let me think.’ – ‘Immalee, have you any religion?’ said the visitor, as an indescribable feeling of pain made his pale brow still paler. Immalee, quick in understanding and sympathizing with physical feeling, darted away at these words, returned in a moment with a banyan leaf, with which she wiped the drops from his livid forehead; and then seating herself at his feet, in an attitude of profound but eager attention, repeated, ’Religion! what is that? is it a new thought?’ – ‘It is the consciousness of a Being superior to all worlds and their inhabitants, because he is the Maker of all, and will be their judge – of a Being whom we cannot see, but in whose power and presence we must believe, though invisible – of one who is every where unseen; always acting, though never in motion; hearing all things, but never heard.’ Immalee interrupted with an air of distraction – ‘Hold! too many thoughts will kill me – let me pause. I have seen the shower that came to refresh the rose-tree beat it to the earth.’ After an effort of solemn recollection, she added, ‘The voice of dreams told me something like that before I was born, but it is so long ago, – sometimes I have had thoughts within me like that voice. I have thought I loved the things around me too much, and that I should love things beyond me – flowers that could not fade, and a sun that never sets. I could have sprung, like a bird into the air, after such a thought – but there was no one to shew me that path upward.’ And the young enthusiast lifted towards heaven eyes in which trembled the tears of ecstatic imaginings, and then turned their mute pleadings on the stranger.

  ‘It is right,’ he continued, ‘not only to have thoughts of this Being, but to express them by some outward acts. The inhabitants of the world you are about to see, call this, worship, – and they have adopted (a Satanic smile curled his lip as he spoke) very different modes; so different, that, in fact, there is but one point in which they all agree – that of making their religion a torment; – the religion of some prompting them to torture themselves, and the religion of some prompting them to torture others. Though, as I observed, they all agree in this important point, yet unhappily they differ so much about the mode, that there has been much disturbance about it in the world that thinks.’ – ‘In the world that thinks! repeated Immalee, ‘Impossible! Surely they must know that a difference cannot be acceptable to Him who is One.’ – ‘And have you then adopted no mode of expressing your thoughts of this Being, that is, of worshipping him?’ said the stranger. ‘I smile when the sun rises in its beauty, and I weep when I see the evening star rise,’ said Immalee. – ‘And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and tears in your address to the Deity?’ – ‘I do, – for they are both the expressions of joy with me,’ said the poor Indian; ‘the sun is as happy when he smiles through the rain-clouds, as when he burns in the mid-height of heaven, in the fierceness of his beauty; and I am happy whether I smile or I weep.’ – ‘Those whom you are about to see,’ said the stranger, offering her the telescope, ‘are as remote in their forms of worship as smiles from tears; but they are not, like you, equally happy in both.’ Immalee applied her eye to the telescope, and exclaimed in rapture at what she saw. ‘What do you see?’ said the stranger. Immalee described what she saw with many imperfect expressions, which, perhaps, may be rendered more intelligible by the explanatory words of the stranger.

  ‘You see,’ said he, ‘the coast of India, the shores of the world near you. – There is the black pagoda of Juggernaut, that enormous building on which your eye is first fixed. Beside it stands a Turkish mosque – you may distinguish it by a figure like that of the half-moon. It is the will
of him who rules that world, that its inhabitants should worship him by that sign.* At a small distance you may see a low building with a trident on its summit – that is the temple of Maha-deva, one of the ancient goddesses of the country.’ – ‘But the houses are nothing to me,’ said Immalee, ‘shew me the living things that go there. The houses are not half so beautiful as the rocks on the shore, draperied all over with seaweeds and mosses, and shaded by the distant palm-tree and cocoa.’ – ‘But those buildings,’ said the tempter, ‘are indicative of the various modes of thinking of those who frequent them. If it is into their thoughts you wish to look, you must see them expressed by their actions. In their dealings with each other, men are generally deceitful, but in their dealings with their gods, they are tolerably sincere in the expression of the character they assign them in their imaginations. If that character be formidable, they express fear; if it be one of cruelty, they indicate it by the sufferings they inflict on themselves; if it be gloomy, the image of the god is faithfully reflected in the visage of the worshipper. Look and judge.’