The Last Man
beauty of the night was unobserved; their extasy could not be increased
by outward objects, and I was wrapt in reverie. At about midnight
Raymond and I took leave of my sister, to return to town. He was all
gaiety; scraps of songs fell from his lips; every thought of his
mind—every object about us, gleamed under the sunshine of his mirth. He
accused me of melancholy, of ill-humour and envy.
“Not so,” said I, “though I confess that my thoughts are not occupied
as pleasantly as yours are. You promised to facilitate my visit to
Adrian; I conjure you to perform your promise. I cannot linger here; I
long to soothe —perhaps to cure the malady of my first and best friend.
I shall immediately depart for Dunkeld.”
“Thou bird of night,” replied Raymond, “what an eclipse do you throw
across my bright thoughts, forcing me to call to mind that melancholy
ruin, which stands in mental desolation, more irreparable than a
fragment of a carved column in a weed-grown field. You dream that you
can restore him? Daedalus never wound so inextricable an error round
Minotaur, as madness has woven about his imprisoned reason. Nor you,
nor any other Theseus, can thread the labyrinth, to which perhaps some
unkind Ariadne has the clue.”
“You allude to Evadne Zaimi: but she is not in England.”
“And were she,” said Raymond, “I would not advise her seeing him.
Better to decay in absolute delirium, than to be the victim of the
methodical unreason of ill-bestowed love. The long duration of his
malady has probably erased from his mind all vestige of her; and it
were well that it should never again be imprinted. You will find him at
Dunkeld; gentle and tractable he wanders up the hills, and through the
wood, or sits listening beside the waterfall. You may see him—his hair
stuck with wild flowers —his eyes full of untraceable meaning—his voice
broken—his person wasted to a shadow. He plucks flowers and weeds, and
weaves chaplets of them, or sails yellow leaves and bits of bark on the
stream, rejoicing in their safety, or weeping at their wreck. The very
memory half unmans me. By Heaven! the first tears I have shed since
boyhood rushed scalding into my eyes when I saw him.”
It needed not this last account to spur me on to visit him. I only
doubted whether or not I should endeavour to see Idris again, before I
departed. This doubt was decided on the following day. Early in the
morning Raymond came to me; intelligence had arrived that Adrian was
dangerously ill, and it appeared impossible that his failing strength
should surmount the disorder. “To-morrow,” said Raymond, “his mother
and sister set out for Scotland to see him once again.”
“And I go to-day,” I cried; “this very hour I will engage a sailing
balloon; I shall be there in forty-eight hours at furthest, perhaps in
less, if the wind is fair. Farewell, Raymond; be happy in having chosen
the better part in life. This turn of fortune revives me. I feared
madness, not sickness—I have a presentiment that Adrian will not die;
perhaps this illness is a crisis, and he may recover.”
Everything favoured my journey. The balloon rose about half a mile from
the earth, and with a favourable wind it hurried through the air, its
feathered vans cleaving the unopposing atmosphere. Notwithstanding the
melancholy object of my journey, my spirits were exhilarated by
reviving hope, by the swift motion of the airy pinnace, and the balmy
visitation of the sunny air. The pilot hardly moved the plumed
steerage, and the slender mechanism of the wings, wide unfurled, gave
forth a murmuring noise, soothing to the sense. Plain and hill, stream
and corn-field, were discernible below, while we unimpeded sped on
swift and secure, as a wild swan in his spring-tide flight. The machine
obeyed the slightest motion of the helm; and, the wind blowing
steadily, there was no let or obstacle to our course. Such was the
power of man over the elements; a power long sought, and lately won;
yet foretold in by-gone time by the prince of poets, whose verses I
quoted much to the astonishment of my pilot, when I told him how many
hundred years ago they had been written:—
Oh! human wit, thou can’st invent much ill,
Thou searchest strange arts: who would think by skill,
An heavy man like a light bird should stray,
And through the empty heavens find a way?
I alighted at Perth; and, though much fatigued by a constant exposure
to the air for many hours, I would not rest, but merely altering my
mode of conveyance, I went by land instead of air, to Dunkeld. The sun
was rising as I entered the opening of the hills. After the revolution
of ages Birnam hill was again covered with a young forest, while more
aged pines, planted at the very commencement of the nineteenth century
by the then Duke of Athol, gave solemnity and beauty to the scene. The
rising sun first tinged the pine tops; and my mind, rendered through my
mountain education deeply susceptible of the graces of nature, and now
on the eve of again beholding my beloved and perhaps dying friend, was
strangely influenced by the sight of those distant beams: surely they
were ominous, and as such I regarded them, good omens for Adrian, on
whose life my happiness depended.
Poor fellow! he lay stretched on a bed of sickness, his cheeks glowing
with the hues of fever, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular and
difficult. Yet it was less painful to see him thus, than to find him
fulfilling the animal functions uninterruptedly, his mind sick the
while. I established myself at his bedside; I never quitted it day or
night. Bitter task was it, to behold his spirit waver between death and
life: to see his warm cheek, and know that the very fire which burned
too fiercely there, was consuming the vital fuel; to hear his moaning
voice, which might never again articulate words of love and wisdom; to
witness the ineffectual motions of his limbs, soon to be wrapt in their
mortal shroud. Such for three days and nights appeared the consummation
which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and
spectre-like, through anxiety and watching. At length his eyes unclosed
faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak;
but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching
convalescence. He knew me. What a brimful cup of joyful agony it was,
when his face first gleamed with the glance of recognition—when he
pressed my hand, now more fevered than his own, and when he pronounced
my name! No trace of his past insanity remained, to dash my joy with
sorrow.
This same evening his mother and sister arrived. The Countess of
Windsor was by nature full of energetic feeling; but she had very
seldom in her life permitted the concentrated emotions of her heart to
shew themselves on her features. The studied immovability of her
countenance; her slow, equable manner, and soft but unmelodious voice,
were a mask, hiding her fiery passions, and the impatience of her
disposition. She did not in the least resemble either of her children;
her black and sparkling eye, lit up by pride, was totally unlike the
blue lustre, and frank, benignant expression of either Adrian or Idris.
There was something grand and majestic in her motions, but nothing
persuasive, nothing amiable. Tall, thin, and strait, her face still
handsome, her raven hair hardly tinged with grey, her forehead arched
and beautiful, had not the eye-brows been somewhat scattered—it was
impossible not to be struck by her, almost to fear her. Idris appeared
to be the only being who could resist her mother, notwithstanding the
extreme mildness of her character. But there was a fearlessness and
frankness about her, which said that she would not encroach on
another’s liberty, but held her own sacred and unassailable.
The Countess cast no look of kindness on my worn-out frame, though
afterwards she thanked me coldly for my attentions. Not so Idris; her
first glance was for her brother; she took his hand, she kissed his
eye-lids, and hung over him with looks of compassion and love. Her eyes
glistened with tears when she thanked me, and the grace of her
expressions was enhanced, not diminished, by the fervour, which caused
her almost to falter as she spoke. Her mother, all eyes and ears, soon
interrupted us; and I saw, that she wished to dismiss me quietly, as
one whose services, now that his relatives had arrived, were of no use
to her son. I was harassed and ill, resolved not to give up my post,
yet doubting in what way I should assert it; when Adrian called me, and
clasping my hand, bade me not leave him. His mother, apparently
inattentive, at once understood what was meant, and seeing the hold we
had upon her, yielded the point to us.
The days that followed were full of pain to me; so that I sometimes
regretted that I had not yielded at once to the haughty lady, who
watched all my motions, and turned my beloved task of nursing my friend
to a work of pain and irritation. Never did any woman appear so
entirely made of mind, as the Countess of Windsor. Her passions had
subdued her appetites, even her natural wants; she slept little, and
hardly ate at all; her body was evidently considered by her as a mere
machine, whose health was necessary for the accomplishment of her
schemes, but whose senses formed no part of her enjoyment. There is
something fearful in one who can thus conquer the animal part of our
nature, if the victory be not the effect of consummate virtue; nor was
it without a mixture of this feeling, that I beheld the figure of the
Countess awake when others slept, fasting when I, abstemious naturally,
and rendered so by the fever that preyed on me, was forced to recruit
myself with food. She resolved to prevent or diminish my opportunities
of acquiring influence over her children, and circumvented my plans by
a hard, quiet, stubborn resolution, that seemed not to belong to flesh
and blood. War was at last tacitly acknowledged between us. We had many
pitched battles, during which no word was spoken, hardly a look was
interchanged, but in which each resolved not to submit to the other.
The Countess had the advantage of position; so I was vanquished, though
I would not yield.
I became sick at heart. My countenance was painted with the hues of ill
health and vexation. Adrian and Idris saw this; they attributed it to
my long watching and anxiety; they urged me to rest, and take care of
myself, while I most truly assured them, that my best medicine was
their good wishes; those, and the assured convalescence of my friend,
now daily more apparent. The faint rose again blushed on his cheek; his
brow and lips lost the ashy paleness of threatened dissolution; such
was the dear reward of my unremitting attention—and bounteous heaven
added overflowing recompence, when it gave me also the thanks and
smiles of Idris.
After the lapse of a few weeks, we left Dunkeld. Idris and her mother
returned immediately to Windsor, while Adrian and I followed by slow
journies and frequent stoppages, occasioned by his continued weakness.
As we traversed the various counties of fertile England, all wore an
exhilarating appearance to my companion, who had been so long secluded
by disease from the enjoyments of weather and scenery. We passed
through busy towns and cultivated plains. The husbandmen were getting
in their plenteous harvests, and the women and children, occupied by
light rustic toils, formed groupes of happy, healthful persons, the
very sight of whom carried cheerfulness to the heart. One evening,
quitting our inn, we strolled down a shady lane, then up a grassy
slope, till we came to an eminence, that commanded an extensive view of
hill and dale, meandering rivers, dark woods, and shining villages. The
sun was setting; and the clouds, straying, like new-shorn sheep,