Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

  ‘In spite of the influence of her early education, Elinor had learned to appreciate the advantages of her residence in her grandfather’s castle. She was fond of literature and of poetry. She possessed imagination and enthusiasm, – and these qualities met with their loveliest indulgence amid the picturesque and historical scenery that surrounded the Castle, – the lofty tales told within its walls, and to which every stone in them seemed to cry out in attestation, – and the heroic and chivalrous characters of its inmates, with whom the portraits of their high descended ancestry seemed starting from their gorgeous frames to converse, as the tale of their virtues and their valour was told in their presence. This was a different scene from that in which she had passed her childhood. The gloomy and narrow apartments, divested of all ornament, and awaking no associations but those of an awful futurity – the uncouth habits, austere visages, denunciatory language and polemical fury of its inmates or guests, struck her with a feeling for which she reproached herself, but did not suppress; and though she continued a rigid Calvinist in her creed, and listened whenever she could to the preaching of the non-conformist ministers, she had adopted in her pursuits the literary tastes, and in her manners the dignified courtesy, that became the descendant of the Mortimers.

  ‘Elinor’s beauty, though of a style quite different from that of her cousin, was yet beauty of the first and finest character. Margaret’s was luxuriant, lavish and triumphant, – every movement displayed a conscious grace, – every look demanded homage, and obtained it the moment it was demanded. Elinor’s was pale, contemplative, and touching; – her hair was as black as jet, and the thousand small curls into which, according to the fashion of the day, it was woven, seemed as if every one of them had been twined by the hand of nature, – they hung so softly and shadowingly, that they appeared like a veil dropping over the features of a nun, till she shook them back, and there beamed among them an eye of dark and brilliant light, like a star amid the deepening shades of twilight. She wore the rich dress prescribed by taste and habits of Mrs Ann, who had never, even in the hour of extreme adversity, relaxed in what may be called the rigour of her aristocratical costume, and would have thought it little less than a desecration of the solemnity, had she appeared at prayers, even though celebrated (as she loved to term it) in the Castle-hall, unless arrayed in satins and velvets, that, like ancient suits of armour, could have stood alone and erect without the aid of human inhabitant. There was a soft and yielding tone in the gently modulated harmony of Elinor’s form and movements, – a gracious melancholy in her smile, – a tremulous sweetness in her voice, – an appeal in her look, which the heart that refused to answer could not have living pulse within its region. No head of Rembrandt’s, amid its contrasted luxuries of light and shade, – no form of Guido’s,21 hovering in exquisite and speechful undulation between earth and heaven, could vie with the tint and character of Elinor’s countenance and form. There was but one touch to be added to the picture of her beauty, and that touch was given by no physical grace, – no exterior charm. It was borrowed from a feeling as pure as it was intense, – as unconscious as it was profound. The secret fire that lit her eyes with that lambent glory, while it amused the paleness of her young cheek, – that preyed on her heart, while it seemed to her imagination that she clasped a young cherub in her arms, like the unfortunate queen of Virgil,22 – that fire was a secret even to herself. – She knew she felt, but knew not what she felt.

  ‘When first admitted into the Castle, and treated with sufficient hauteur by her grandfather and his sister, who could not forget the mean descent and fanatic principles of her father’s family, she remembered, that, amid the appalling grandeur and austere reserve of her reception, her cousin, John Sandal, was the only one who spoke to her in accents of tenderness, or turned on her an eye that beamed consolation. She remembered him as the beautiful and gentle boy who had lightened all her tasks, and partaken in all her recreations.

  ‘At an early age John Sandal, at his own request, had been sent to sea, and had never since visited the Castle. On the Restoration, the remembered services of the Mortimer family, and the high fame of the youth’s courage and ability, had procured him a distinguished situation in the navy. John Sandal’s consequence now rose in the eyes of the family, of whom he was at first an inmate on toleration only; and even Mrs Ann Mortimer began to express some anxiety to hear tidings of her valiant cousin John. When she spoke thus, the light of Elinor’s eye fell on her aunt with as rich a glow as ever summer sun on an evening landscape; but she felt, at the same moment, an oppression, – an indefinable suspension of thought, of speech, almost of breath, which was only relieved by the tears which, when retired from her aunt’s presence, she indulged in. Soon this feeling was exchanged for one of deeper and more agitating interest. The war with the Dutch23 broke out, and Captain John Sandal’s name, in spite of his youth, appeared conspicuous among those of the officers appointed to that memorable service.

  ‘Mrs Ann, long accustomed to hear the names of her family uttered always in the same breath with the stirring report of high heroic deeds, felt the elation of spirit she had experienced in bygone days, combined with happier associations, and more prosperous auguries. Though far advanced in life, and much declined in strength, it was observed, that during the reports of the war, and while she listened to the accounts of her kinsman’s valour and fast-advancing eminence, her step became firm and elastic, her lofty figure dilated to its youthful height, and a colour at times visited her cheek, with as rich and brilliant a tinge as when the first sighs of love murmured over its young roses. The high minded Margaret, partaking that enthusiasm which merged all personal feeling in the glory of her family and of her country, heard of the perils to which her cousin (whom she hardly remembered) was exposed, only with a haughty confidence that he would meet them as she felt she would have met them herself, had she been, like him, the last male descendant of the family of Mortimer. Elinor trembled and wept, – and when alone she prayed fervently.

  ‘It was observable, however, that the respectful interest with which she had hitherto listened to the family legends so eloquently told by Mrs Ann, was now exchanged for a restless and unappeaseable anxiety for tales of the naval heroes who had dignified the family history. Happily she found a willing narrator in Mrs Ann, who had little need to search her memory, and no occasion to consult her invention, for splendid stories of those whose home was the deep, and whose battle-field was the wild waste ocean. Amid the gallery richly hung with family portraits, she pointed out the likeness of many a bold adventurer, whom the report of the riches and felicities of the new discovered world had tempted on speculations sometimes wild and disastrous, sometimes prosperous beyond the golden dreams of cupidity. ‘How precarious! – how perilous!’ murmured Elinor, shuddering. But when Mrs Ann told the tale of her uncle, the literary speculator, the polished scholar, the brave and gentle of the family, who had accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh on his calamitous expedition,24 and years after died of grief for his calamitous death, Elinor, with a start of horror, caught her aunt’s arm, emphatically extended towards the portrait, and implored her to desist. The decorum of the family was so great, that this liberty could not be taken without an apology for indisposition; – it was duly though faintly made, and Elinor retired to her apartment.

  ‘From February 1665, – from the first intelligence of De Ruyter’s enterprises,25 till the animating period when the Duke of York was appointed to the command of the Royal fleet, – all was eager and anticipative excitement, and eloquent expatiations on ancient achievements, and presageful hopes of new honours, on the part of the heiress of Mortimer and Mrs Ann, and profound and speechless emotion on that of Elinor.

  ‘The hour arrived, and an express was dispatched from London to Mortimer Castle with intelligence, in which King Charles, with that splendid courtesy which half redeemed his vices, announced himself most deeply interested, inasmuch as it added to the honours of the loyal family, whose services he appreciated so h
ighly. The victory was complete, – and Captain John Sandal, in the phrase which the King’s attachment to French manners and language was beginning to render popular, had ‘covered himself with glory.’ Amid the thickest of the fight, in an open boat, he had carried a message from Lord Sandwich to the Duke of York, under a shower of balls, and when older officers had stoutly declined the perilous errand; and when, on his return, Opdam the Dutch Admiral’s ship blew up,26 amid the crater of the explosion John Sandal plunged into the sea, to save the half-drowning, half-burning wretches who clung to the fragments that scorched them, or sunk in the boiling waves; and then, – dismissed on another fearful errand, flung himself between the Duke of York and the ball that struck at one blow the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr Boyle,27 and when they all fell at the same moment, wiped, with unfaultering hand, and on bended knee, their brains and gore, with which the Duke of York was covered from head to foot. When this was read by Mrs Ann Mortimer, with many pauses, caused by sight dim with age, and diffused with tears, – and when at length, finishing the long and laborious read detail, Mrs Ann exclaimed – ‘He is a hero!’ Elinor tremblingly whispered to herself – ‘He is a Christian.’

  ‘The details of such an event forming a kind of era in a family so sequestered, imaginative and heroic, as that of the Mortimers, the contents of the letter signed by the King’s own hand were read over and over again. They formed the theme of converse at their meals, and the subject of their study and comment when alone. Margaret dwelt much on the gallantry of the action, and half-imagined she saw the tremendous explosion of Opdam’s ship. Elinor repeated to herself, ‘And he plunged amid the burning wave to save the lives of the men he had conquered!’ And some months elapsed before the brilliant vision of glory, and of grateful royalty, faded from their imagination; and when it did, like that of Micyllus,28 it left honey on the eye-lids of the dreamer.

  ‘From the date of the arrival of this intelligence, a change had taken place in the habits and manners of Elinor, so striking as to become the object of notice to all but herself. Her health, her rest, and her imagination, became the prey of indefinable fantasies. The cherished images of the past, – the lovely visions of her golden childhood, – seemed fearfully and insanely contrasted in her imagination with the ideas of slaughter and blood, – of decks strewed with corses, – and of a young and terrible conqueror bestriding them amid showers of ball and clouds of fire. Her very senses reeled between these opposite impressions. Her reason could not brook the sudden transition from the smiling and Cupid-like companion of her childhood, to the hero of the embattled deep, and of nations and navies on fire, – garments rolled in blood, – the thunder of the battle and the shouting.

  ‘She sat and tried, as well as her wandering fancy would allow her, to reconcile the images of that remembered eye, whose beam rested on her like the dark blue of a summer heaven swimming in dewy light, – with the flash that darted from the burning eye of the conqueror, whose light was as fatal where it fell as his sword. She saw him, as he had once sat beside her, smiling like the first morning in spring, – and smiled in return. The slender form, the soft and springy movements, the kiss of childhood that felt like velvet, and scented like balm, – was suddenly exchanged in her dream (for all her thoughts were dreams) for a fearful figure of one drenched in blood, and spattered with brains and gore. And Elinor, half-screaming, exclaimed, ‘Is this he whom I loved?’ Thus her mind, vacillating between contrasts so strongly opposed, began to feel its moorings give way. She drifted from rock to rock, and on every rock she struck a wreck.

  ‘Elinor relinquished her usual meetings with the family – she sat in her own apartment all the day, and most of the evening. It was a lonely turret projecting so far from the walls of the Castle, that there were windows, or rather casements, on three sides. There Elinor sat to catch the blast, let it blow as it would, and imagined she heard in its moaning the cries of drowning seamen. No music that her lute, or that which Margaret touched with a more powerful and brilliant finger, could wean her from this melancholy indulgence.

  ‘Hush!’ she would say to the females who attended her – ‘Hush! let me listen to the blast! – It waves many a banner spread for victory, – it sighs over many a head that has been laid low!’

  ‘Her amazement that a being could be at once so gentle and so ferocious – her dread that the habits of his life must have converted the angel of her wilderness into a brave but brutal seaman, estranged from the feelings that had rendered the beautiful boy so indulgent to her errors, – so propitiatory between her and her proud relatives, – so aidant29 in all her amusements, – so necessary to her very existence. – The tones of this dreamy life harmonized, awfully for Elinor, with the sound of the blast as it shook the turrets of the Castle, or swept the woods that groaned and bowed beneath its awful visitings. And this secluded life, intense feeling, and profound and heart-rooted secret of her silent passion, held perhaps fearful and indescribable alliance with that aberration of mind, that prostration at once of the heart and the intellect, that have been found to bring forth, according as the agents were impelled, ‘the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.’30 She had all the intensity of passion, combined with all the devotedness of religion; but she knew not which way to steer, or what gale to follow. She trembled and shrunk from her doubtful pilotage, and the rudder was left to the mercy of the winds and waves. Slender mercy do those experience who commit themselves to the tempests of the mental world – better if they had sunk at once amid the strife of the dark waters in their wild and wintry rage; there they would soon have arrived at the haven where they would be secure.

  ‘Such was the state of Elinor, when the arrival of one who had been long a stranger in the vicinity of the Castle caused a strong sensation in its inhabitants.

  ‘The widow Sandal, the mother of the young seaman, who had hitherto lived in obscurity on the interest of the small fortune bequeathed her by Sir Roger, (under the rigid injunction of never visiting the Castle), suddenly arrived in Shrewsbury, which was scarce a mile from it, and declared her intention of fixing her residence there.

  ‘The affection of her son had showered on her, with the profusion of a sailor, and the fondness of a child, all the rewards of his services – but their glory; – and in comparative affluence, and honoured and pointed to as the mother of the young hero who stood high in royal favour, the widow of many sorrows took up her abode once more near the seat of her ancestors.

  ‘At this period, every step taken by the member of a family was a subject of anxious and solemn consultation to those who considered themselves its heads, and there was a kind of chapter31 held in Mortimer Castle on this singular movement of the widow Sandal. Elinor’s heart beat hard during the debate – it subsided, however, at the determination, that the severe sentence of Sir Roger was not to be extended beyond his death, and that a descendant of the House of Mortimer should never live neglected while almost under the shadow of its walls.

  ‘The visit was accordingly solemnly paid, and gratefully received, – there was much stately courtesy on the part of Mrs Ann towards her niece, (whom she called cousin after the old English fashion), and a due degree of retrospective humility and decorous dejection on that of the widow. They parted mutually softened towards, if not pleased with each other, and the intercourse thus opened was unremittingly sustained by Elinor, whose weekly visits of ceremony soon became the daily visits of interest and of habit. The object of the thoughts of both was the theme of the tongue of but one; and, as is not uncommon, she who said nothing felt the most. The details of his exploits, the description of his person, the fond enumeration of the promises of his childhood, and the graces and goodliness of his youth, were dangerous topics for the listener, to whom the bare mention of his name caused an intoxication of the heart, from which it scarce recovered for hours.

  ‘The frequency of these visits was not observed to be diminished by a faint rumour, which the widow seemed to believe, rather from hope than pro
bability, that Captain Sandal was about to visit the neighbourhood of the Castle. It was one evening in autumn, that Elinor, who had been prevented during the day from visiting her aunt, set out attended only by her maid and her usher. There was a private path through the park, that opened by a small door on the verge of the suburbs where the widow lived. Elinor, on her arrival, found her aunt from home, and was informed she had gone to pass the evening with a friend in Shrewsbury. Elinor hesitated for a moment, and then recollecting that this friend was a grave staid widow of one of Oliver’s knights, wealthy, however, and well respected, and a common acquaintance, she resolved to follow her thither. As she entered the room, which was spacious, but dimly lit by an old-fashioned casement window, she was surprised to see it filled with an unusual number of persons, some of whom were seated, but the greater number were collected in the ample recess of the window, and among them Elinor saw a figure, remarkable rather for its height, than its attitude or pretension, – it was that of a tall slender boy, about eighteen, with a beautiful infant in his arms, whom he was caressing with a tenderness that seemed rather associated with the retrospective fondness of brotherhood, than the anticipated hope of paternity. The mother of the infant, proud of the notice bestowed on her child, made, however, the usual incredulous apology for its troubling him.