Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

by Charles Robert Maturin

  ‘He asks for what he wants in English,’ said the harassed housekeeper, ‘and he can call for candle in English, and he can say he’ll go to bed in English; and why the devil can’t he do every thing in English? – He can say his prayers too in English to that picture he’s always pulling out of his breast and talking to, though it’s no saint, I am sure, he prays to, (from the glimpse I got of it), but more like the devil, – Christ save us!’ All these strange rumours, and ten thousand more, were poured into Melmoth’s ears, fast and faster than he could receive them. ‘Is Father Fay in the house,’ said he at last, understanding that the priest visited the stranger every day; ‘if he be, let me see him.’ Father Fay attended him as soon as he quitted the stranger’s apartment.

  He was a grave and decent priest, well ‘spoken of by those that were without’ the pale of his own communion; and as he entered the room, Melmoth smiled at the idle tattle of his domestics. ‘I thank you for your attention to this unfortunate gentleman, who, I understand, is in my house.’ – ‘It was my duty.’ – ‘I am told he sometimes speaks in a foreign tongue.’ The priest assented. ‘Do you know what countryman he is?’ ‘He is a Spaniard,’ said the priest. This plain, direct answer, had the proper effect on Melmoth, of convincing him of its veracity, and of there being no mystery in the business, but what the folly of his servants had made.

  The priest proceeded to tell him the particulars of the loss of the vessel. She was an English trader bound for Wexford or Waterford, with many passengers on board; she had been driven up the Wicklow coast by stress of weather, had struck on the night of the 19th October, during the intense darkness that accompanied the storm, on a hidden reef of rocks, and gone to pieces. Crew, passengers, all had perished, except this Spaniard. It was singular, too, that this man had saved the life of Melmoth. While swimming for his own, he had seen him fall from the rock he was climbing, and, though his strength was almost exhausted, had collected its last remains to preserve the life of a being who, as he conceived, had been betrayed into danger by his humanity. His efforts were successful, though Melmoth was unconscious of them; and in the morning they were found on the strand, locked in each other’s hold, but stiff and senseless. They shewed some signs of life when an attempt was made to remove them, and the stranger was conveyed to Melmoth’s house. ‘You owe your life to him,’ said the priest, when he had ended. ‘I shall go and thank him for it this moment,’ said Melmoth; but as he was assisted to rise, the old woman whispered to him with visible terror, ‘Jasus’ sake, dear, don’t tell him ye’re a Melmoth, for the dear life! he has been as mad as any thing out of Bedlam, since some jist mintioned the name before him the ither night.’ A sickening recollection of some parts of the manuscript came over Melmoth at these words, but he struggled with himself, and proceeded to the apartment of the stranger.

  The Spaniard was a man about thirty, of a noble form and prepossessing manners. To the gravity of his nation was super-added a deeper tint of peculiar melancholy. He spoke English fluently; and when questioned on it by Melmoth, he remarked with a sigh, that he had learnt it in a painful school. Melmoth then changed the subject, to thank him with earnest gratitude for the preservation of his life. ‘Senhor,’ said the Spaniard, ‘spare me; if your life was no dearer to you than mine, it would not be worth thanks.’ ‘Yet you made the most strenuous exertions to save it,’ said Melmoth. ‘That was instinct,’ said the Spaniard. ‘But you also struggled to save mine,’ said Melmoth. ‘That was instinct too at the moment,’ said the Spaniard; then resuming his stately politeness, ‘or I should say, the influence of my better genius. I am wholly a stranger in this country, and must have fared miserably but for the shelter of your roof.’

  Melmoth observed that he spoke with evident pain, and he confessed a few moments afterwards, that though he had escaped without any serious injury, he had been so bruised and lacerated, that he still breathed with difficulty, and hardly possessed the use of his limbs. As he concluded the account of his sufferings during the storm, the wreck, and the subsequent struggle for life, he exclaimed in Spanish, ‘God! why did the Jonah survive, and the mariners perish?’ Melmoth, imagining he was engaged in some devotional ejaculation, was going to retire, when the Spaniard detained him. ‘Senhor, I understand your name is –’ He paused, shuddered, and with an effort that seemed like convulsion, disgorged the name of Melmoth. ‘My name is Melmoth.’ ‘Had you an ancestor, a very remote one, who was – at a period perhaps beyond family-tradition – It is useless to inquire,’ said the Spaniard, covering his face with both his hands, and groaning aloud. Melmoth listened in mingled excitement and terror. ‘Perhaps, if you would proceed, I could answer you – go on, Senhor.’ ‘Had you,’ said the Spaniard, forcing himself to speak, abruptly and rapidly, ‘had you, then, a relative who was, about one hundred and forty years ago, said to be in Spain.’ ‘I believe – yes, I fear – I had.’ ‘It is enough, Senhor – leave me – to-morrow perhaps – leave me now.’ ‘It is impossible to leave you now,’ said Melmoth, catching him in his arms before he sunk on the floor. He was not senseless, for his eyes were rolling with terrible expression, and he attempted to articulate. They were alone. Melmoth, unable to quit him, called aloud for water; and while attempting to open his vest, and give him air, his hand encountered a miniature portrait close to the heart of the stranger. As he touched it, his touch operated on the patient with all the force of the most powerful restorative. He grasped it with his own cold hand with a force like that of death, and muttered in a hollow but thrilling voice, ‘What have you done?’ He felt eagerly the ribbon by which it was suspended, and, satisfied that his terrible treasure was safe, turned his eyes with a fearful calmness of expression on Melmoth, ‘You know all, then?’ – ‘I know nothing,’ said Melmoth faultering. The Spaniard rose from the ground, to which he had almost fallen, disengaged himself from the arms that supported him, and eagerly, but staggeringly, hurrying towards the candles, (it was night), held up the portrait full before Melmoth’s eye. It was a miniature likeness of that extraordinary being. It was painted in a coarse and unartist-like style, but so faithfully, that the pencil appeared rather held by the mind than by the fingers.

  ‘Was he – was the original of this – your ancestor? – Are you his descendant? – Are you the depository of that terrible secret which –’ He again fell to the ground convulsed, and Melmoth, for whose debilitated state this scene was too much, was removed to his own apartment. It was several days before he again saw his visitor; his manner was then calm and collected, till he appeared to recollect the necessity of making an apology for his agitation at their last meeting. He began – hesitated – stopped; tried in vain to arrange his ideas, or rather his language; but the effort so obviously renewed his agitation, that Melmoth felt an exertion on his part necessary to avert its consequences, and began most inauspiciously to inquire into the motive of his voyage to Ireland. After a long pause, the Spaniard said, ‘That motive, Senhor, a few days past I believed it was not in mortal power to compel me to disclose. I deemed it incommunicable as it was incredible. I conceived myself to be alone on the earth, without sympathy and beyond relief. It is singular that accident should have placed me within the reach of the only being from whom I could expect either, and perhaps a development of those circumstances which have placed me in a situation so extraordinary.’ This exordium, delivered with a composed but thrilling gravity, had an effect on Melmoth. He sat down and prepared to listen, and the Spaniard began to speak; but after some hesitation, he snatched the picture from his neck, and trampling on it with true continental action, exclaimed, ‘Devil! devil! thou choakest me!’ and crushing the portrait, glass and all, under his feet, exclaimed, ‘Now I am easier.’

  The room in which they sat was a low, mean, wretchedly furnished apartment; the evening was tempestuous, and as the windows and doors rattled in the blast, Melmoth felt as if he listened to some herald of ‘fate and fear.’ A deep and sickening agitation shook his frame; and in the long pause that preceded th
e narrative of the Spaniard, the beating of his heart was audible to him. He rose, and attempted to arrest the narration by a motion of his hand; but the Spaniard mistook this for the anxiety of his impatience, and commenced his narrative, which, in mercy to the reader, we shall give without the endless interruptions, and queries, and anticipations of curiosity, and starts of terror, with which it was broken by Melmoth.

  Tale of the Spaniard

  ‘I am, Senhor, as you know, a native of Spain, but you are yet to learn I am a descendant of one of its noblest houses, – a house of which she might have been proud in her proudest day, – the house of Monçada. Of this I was not myself conscious during the first years of my life; but during those years, I remember experiencing the singular contrast of being treated with the utmost tenderness, and kept in the most sordid privacy. I lived in a wretched house in the suburbs of Madrid with an old woman, whose affection for me appeared prompted as much by interest as inclination. I was visited every week by a young cavalier and a beautiful female; they caressed me, called me their beloved child, and I, attached by the grace with which my young father’s capa was folded, and my mother’s veil adjusted, and by a certain air of indescribable superiority over those by whom I was surrounded, eagerly returned their caresses, and petitioned them to take me home with them; at these words they always wept, gave a valuable present to the woman I lived with, whose attention was always redoubled by this expected stimulant, and departed.

  ‘I observed their visits were always short, and paid late in the evening; thus a shadow of mystery enveloped my infant days, and perhaps gave its lasting and ineffaceable tinge to the pursuits, the character, and the feelings of my present existence. A sudden change took place; – one day I was visited, splendidly dressed, and carried in a superb vehicle, whose motion made me giddy with novelty and surprise, to a palace whose front appeared to me to reach the heavens. I was hurried through several apartments, whose splendour made my eyes ache, amid an army of bowing domestics, to a cabinet where sat an old nobleman, whom, from the tranquil majesty of his posture, and the silent magnificence that surrounded him, I felt disposed to fall down and worship as we do those saints, whom, after traversing the aisles of an immense church, we find niched in some remote and solitary shrine. My father and mother were there, and both seemed awed by the presence of that aged vision, pale and august; their awe increased mine, and as they led me to his feet, I felt as if about to be sacrificed. He embraced me, however, with some reluctance and more austerity; and when this ceremony was performed, during which I trembled, I was removed by a domestic, and conducted to an apartment where I was treated like the son of a grandee; in the evening I was visited by my father and mother; they shed tears over me as they embraced me, but I thought I could perceive they mingled the tears of grief with those of fondness. Every thing around appeared so strange, that perhaps I felt something appropriate in this change. I was so much altered myself, that I expected an alteration in others, and the reverse would have struck me as a phenomenon.

  ‘Change followed change with such rapidity, that it produced on me an effect like that of intoxication. I was now twelve years old, and the contracted habits of my early life had had their usual effect, of exalting my imagination, while they impaired every other faculty. I expected an adventure whenever the door opened, and that was but seldom, to announce the hours of devotion, food, and exercise. On the third day after I was received into the palace of Monçada, the door was opened at an unusual hour, (a circumstance that made me tremble with anticipation), and my father and mother, attended by a number of domestics, entered, accompanied by a youth whose superior height and already distinguished figure, made him appear my senior, though he was in fact a year younger.

  ‘Alonzo,’ said my father to me, ‘embrace your brother.’ I advanced with all the eagerness of youthful affection, that feels delight from new claims on its store, and half wishes those new claims were endless; but the slow step of my brother, the measured air with which he extended his arms, and declined his head on my left shoulder for a moment, and then raising it, viewed me with eyes in whose piercing and haughty lustre there was not one beam of fraternity, repelled and disconcerted me. We had obeyed our father, however, and embraced. ‘Let me see you hand in hand together,’ said my father, as if he would have enjoyed the sight. I held out my hand to my brother, and we stood thus linked for a few moments, my father and mother remaining at some distance to gaze on us; during these few moments, I had leisure to glance from my parents to my brother, and judge of the comparative effect our appearance thus contrasted might produce on them. The contrast was by no means favourable to me. I was tall, but my brother was much taller; he had an air of confidence, of conquest I might say; the brilliancy of his complexion could be equalled only by that of his dark eyes, which turned from me to our parents, and seemed to say, ‘Chuse between us, and reject me if you dare.’

  ‘My father and mother advanced and embraced us both. I clung round their necks; my brother submitted to their caresses with a kind of proud impatience, that seemed to demand a more marked recognition.

  ‘I saw no more of them, – that evening the whole household, which perhaps contain two hundred domestics, were in despair. The Duke de Monçada, that awful vision of anticipated mortality whom I had seen but once, was dead. The tapestry was torn from the walls; every room was filled with ecclesiastics; I was neglected by my attendants, and wandered through the spacious rooms, till I by chance lifted up a curtain of black velvet, and saw a sight which, young as I was, paralyzed me. My father and mother, dressed in black, sat beside a figure which I believed to be my grandfather asleep, but his sleep was very profound; my brother was there too, in a mourning dress, but its strange and grotesque disfigurement could not conceal the impatience with which he wore it, and the flashing eagerness of his expression, and the haughty brilliancy of his eye, shewed a kind of impatience of the part he was compelled to act. – I rushed forward; – I was withheld by the domestics; – I asked, “Why am I not permitted to be here, where my younger brother is?” An ecclesiastic drew me from the apartment. I struggled with him, and demanded, with an arrogance which suited my pretensions better than my prospects, “Who I was?” “The grandson of the late Duke of Monçada,” was the answer. “And why am I thus treated?” To this no answer. I was conveyed to my apartment, and closely watched during the interment of the Duke of Monçada. I was not permitted to attend his funeral. I saw the splendid and melancholy cavalcade depart from the palace. I ran from window to window to witness the funeral pomp, but was not allowed to accompany it. Two days after I was told a carriage waited for me at the gate. I entered it, and was conveyed to a convent of Ex-Jesuits, (as they were well known to be, though no one in Madrid dared to say so), where an agreement had been made for my board and education, and where I became an inmate that very day. I applied myself to my studies, my teachers were pleased, my parents visited me frequently, and gave the usual marks of affection, and all was well; till one day as they were retiring, I heard an old domestic in their suite remark, how singular it was, that the eldest son of the (now) Duke de Monçada should be educated in a convent, and brought up to a monastic life, while the younger, living in a superb palace, was surrounded by teachers suited to his rank. The word “monastic life” thrilled in my ears; it furnished me with an interpretation not only of the indulgence I had experienced in the convent, (an indulgence quite inconsistent with the usual severity of their discipline), but of the peculiar language in which I had been always addressed by the Superior, the brethren, and the boarders. The former, whom I saw once a week, bestowed the most flattering praises on the progress I had made in my studies, (praises that covered me with blushes, for I well knew it was very moderate compared with that of the other boarders), and then gave me his benediction, but never without adding, “My God! thou wilt not suffer this lamb to wander from thy fold.”

  ‘The brethren always assumed before me an air of tranquillity, that eulogized their situation more po
werfully than the most exaggerated eloquence. The petty squabbles and intrigues of the convent, the bitter and incessant conflicts of habits, tempers, and interests, the efforts of incarcerated minds for objects of excitement, the struggles to diversify endless monotony, and elevate hopeless mediocrity; – all that makes monastic life like the wrong side of tapestry, where we see only uncouth threads, and the harsh outlines, without the glow of the colours, the richness of the tissue, or the splendour of the embroidery, that renders the external surface so rich and dazzling; all this was carefully concealed. I heard something of it, however, and, young as I was, could not help wondering how men who carried the worst passions of life into their retreat, could imagine that retreat was a refuge from the erosions of their evil tempers, the monitions of conscience, and the accusations of God. The same dissimulation was practised by the boarders; the whole house was in masquerade from the moment I entered it. If I joined the latter at the time of recreation, they went through the few amusements allowed them with a kind of languid impatience, as if it was an interruption of better pursuits to which they were devoted. One of them, coming up to me, would say, “What a pity that these exercises are necessary for the support of our frail nature! what a pity we cannot devote its whole powers to the service of God!” Another would say, “I never am so happy as in the choir! What a delightful eulogy was that pronounced by the Superior on the departed Fre Jose! How thrilling was that requiem! I imagined the heavens opened, and angels descending to receive his soul, as I listened to it!”

  ‘All this, and much more, I had been accustomed to hear every day. I now began to understand it. I suppose they thought they had a very weak person to deal with; but the bare-faced coarseness of their manoeuvres only quickened my penetration, which began to be fearfully awake. I said to them, “Are you, then, intended for the monastic life?” “We hope so.” “Yet I have heard you, Oliva, once (it was when you did not think I overheard you) I heard you complain of the length and tediousness of the homilies delivered on the eves of the saints.” – “I was then under the influence of the evil spirit doubtless,” said Oliva, who was a boy not older than myself; “Satan is sometimes permitted to buffet those whose vocation is but commencing, and whom he is therefore more afraid to lose.” “And I have heard you, Balcastro, say you had not taste for music; and to me, I confess, that of the choir appears least likely to inspire a taste for it.” “God has touched my heart since,” replied the young hypocrite, crossing himself; “and you know, friend of my soul, there is a promise, that the ears of the deaf shall be opened.” “Where are those words?” “In the Bible.” “The Bible? – But we are not permitted to read it.” “True, dear Monçada, but we have the word of our Superior and the brethren for it, and that is enough.” “Certainly; our spiritual guides must take on themselves the whole responsibility of that state, whose enjoyments and punishments they reserve in their own hands; but, Balcastro, are you willing to take this life on their word, as well as the next, and resign it before you have tried it?” “My dear friend, you only speak to tempt me.” “I do not speak to tempt,” said I, and was turning indignantly away, when the bell ringing, produced its usual effect on us all. My companions assumed a more sanctified air, and I struggled for a more composed one.