The Last Man
patience, nor self-abandonment in her grief; she fought with it,
struggled beneath it, and rendered every pang more sharp by resistance.
Again and again the idea recurred, that he loved another. She did him
justice; she believed that he felt a tender affection for her; but give
a paltry prize to him who in some life-pending lottery has calculated
on the possession of tens of thousands, and it will disappoint him more
than a blank. The affection and amity of a Raymond might be
inestimable; but, beyond that affection, embosomed deeper than
friendship, was the indivisible treasure of love. Take the sum in its
completeness, and no arithmetic can calculate its price; take from it
the smallest portion, give it but the name of parts, separate it into
degrees and sections, and like the magician’s coin, the valueless gold
of the mine, is turned to vilest substance. There is a meaning in the
eye of love; a cadence in its voice, an irradiation in its smile, the
talisman of whose enchantments one only can possess; its spirit is
elemental, its essence single, its divinity an unit. The very heart and
soul of Raymond and Perdita had mingled, even as two mountain brooks
that join in their descent, and murmuring and sparkling flow over
shining pebbles, beside starry flowers; but let one desert its primal
course, or be dammed up by choaking obstruction, and the other shrinks
in its altered banks. Perdita was sensible of the failing of the tide
that fed her life. Unable to support the slow withering of her hopes,
she suddenly formed a plan, resolving to terminate at once the period
of misery, and to bring to an happy conclusion the late disastrous
events.
The anniversary was at hand of the exaltation of Raymond to the office
of Protector; and it was customary to celebrate this day by a splendid
festival. A variety of feelings urged Perdita to shed double
magnificence over the scene; yet, as she arrayed herself for the
evening gala, she wondered herself at the pains she took, to render
sumptuous the celebration of an event which appeared to her the
beginning of her sufferings. Woe befall the day, she thought, woe,
tears, and mourning betide the hour, that gave Raymond another hope
than love, another wish than my devotion; and thrice joyful the moment
when he shall be restored to me! God knows, I put my trust in his vows,
and believe his asserted faith—but for that, I would not seek what I am
now resolved to attain. Shall two years more be thus passed, each day
adding to our alienation, each act being another stone piled on the
barrier which separates us? No, my Raymond, my only beloved, sole
possession of Perdita! This night, this splendid assembly, these
sumptuous apartments, and this adornment of your tearful girl, are all
united to celebrate your abdication. Once for me, you relinquished the
prospect of a crown. That was in days of early love, when I could only
hold out the hope, not the assurance of happiness. Now you have the
experience of all that I can give, the heart’s devotion, taintless
love, and unhesitating subjection to you. You must choose between these
and your protectorate. This, proud noble, is your last night! Perdita
has bestowed on it all of magnificent and dazzling that your heart best
loves—but, from these gorgeous rooms, from this princely attendance,
from power and elevation, you must return with to-morrow’s sun to our
rural abode; for I would not buy an immortality of joy, by the
endurance of one more week sister to the last.
Brooding over this plan, resolved when the hour should come, to
propose, and insist upon its accomplishment, secure of his consent, the
heart of Perdita was lightened, or rather exalted. Her cheek was
flushed by the expectation of struggle; her eyes sparkled with the hope
of triumph. Having cast her fate upon a die, and feeling secure of
winning, she, whom I have named as bearing the stamp of queen of
nations on her noble brow, now rose superior to humanity, and seemed in
calm power, to arrest with her finger, the wheel of destiny. She had
never before looked so supremely lovely.
We, the Arcadian shepherds of the tale, had intended to be present at
this festivity, but Perdita wrote to entreat us not to come, or to
absent ourselves from Windsor; for she (though she did not reveal her
scheme to us) resolved the next morning to return with Raymond to our
dear circle, there to renew a course of life in which she had found
entire felicity. Late in the evening she entered the apartments
appropriated to the festival. Raymond had quitted the palace the night
before; he had promised to grace the assembly, but he had not yet
returned. Still she felt sure that he would come at last; and the wider
the breach might appear at this crisis, the more secure she was of
closing it for ever.
It was as I said, the nineteenth of October; the autumn was far
advanced and dreary. The wind howled; the half bare trees were
despoiled of the remainder of their summer ornament; the state of the
air which induced the decay of vegetation, was hostile to cheerfulness
or hope. Raymond had been exalted by the determination he had made; but
with the declining day his spirits declined. First he was to visit
Evadne, and then to hasten to the palace of the Protectorate. As he
walked through the wretched streets in the neighbourhood of the
luckless Greek’s abode, his heart smote him for the whole course of his
conduct towards her. First, his having entered into any engagement that
should permit her to remain in such a state of degradation; and then,
after a short wild dream, having left her to drear solitude, anxious
conjecture, and bitter, still—disappointed expectation. What had she
done the while, how supported his absence and neglect? Light grew dim
in these close streets, and when the well known door was opened, the
staircase was shrouded in perfect night. He groped his way up, he
entered the garret, he found Evadne stretched speechless, almost
lifeless on her wretched bed. He called for the people of the house,
but could learn nothing from them, except that they knew nothing. Her
story was plain to him, plain and distinct as the remorse and horror
that darted their fangs into him. When she found herself forsaken by
him, she lost the heart to pursue her usual avocations; pride forbade
every application to him; famine was welcomed as the kind porter to the
gates of death, within whose opening folds she should now, without sin,
quickly repose. No creature came near her, as her strength failed.
If she died, where could there be found on record a murderer, whose
cruel act might compare with his? What fiend more wanton in his
mischief, what damned soul more worthy of perdition! But he was not
reserved for this agony of self-reproach. He sent for medical
assistance; the hours passed, spun by suspense into ages; the darkness
of the long autumnal night yielded to day, before her life was secure.
He had her then removed to a more commodious dwelling, and hovered
about her, again and again to assure himself that she was safe.
In the midst of his greatest suspense and fear as to the event, he
remembered the festival given in his honour, by Perdita; in his honour
then, when misery and death were affixing indelible disgrace to his
name, honour to him whose crimes deserved a scaffold; this was the
worst mockery. Still Perdita would expect him; he wrote a few
incoherent words on a scrap of paper, testifying that he was well, and
bade the woman of the house take it to the palace, and deliver it into
the hands of the wife of the Lord Protector. The woman, who did not
know him, contemptuously asked, how he thought she should gain
admittance, particularly on a festal night, to that lady’s presence?
Raymond gave her his ring to ensure the respect of the menials. Thus,
while Perdita was entertaining her guests, and anxiously awaiting the
arrival of her lord, his ring was brought her; and she was told that a
poor woman had a note to deliver to her from its wearer.
The vanity of the old gossip was raised by her commission, which, after
all, she did not understand, since she had no suspicion, even now that
Evadne’s visitor was Lord Raymond. Perdita dreaded a fall from his
horse, or some similar accident—till the woman’s answers woke other
fears. From a feeling of cunning blindly exercised, the officious, if
not malignant messenger, did not speak of Evadne’s illness; but she
garrulously gave an account of Raymond’s frequent visits, adding to her
narration such circumstances, as, while they convinced Perdita of its
truth, exaggerated the unkindness and perfidy of Raymond. Worst of all,
his absence now from the festival, his message wholly unaccounted for,
except by the disgraceful hints of the woman, appeared the deadliest
insult. Again she looked at the ring, it was a small ruby, almost
heart-shaped, which she had herself given him. She looked at the
hand-writing, which she could not mistake, and repeated to herself the
words—“Do not, I charge you, I entreat you, permit your guests to
wonder at my absence:” the while the old crone going on with her talk,
filled her ear with a strange medley of truth and falsehood. At length
Perdita dismissed her.
The poor girl returned to the assembly, where her presence had not been
missed. She glided into a recess somewhat obscured, and leaning against
an ornamental column there placed, tried to recover herself. Her
faculties were palsied. She gazed on some flowers that stood near in a
carved vase: that morning she had arranged them, they were rare and
lovely plants; even now all aghast as she was, she observed their
brilliant colours and starry shapes.—“Divine infoliations of the spirit
of beauty,” she exclaimed, “Ye droop not, neither do ye mourn; the
despair that clasps my heart, has not spread contagion over you!—Why am
I not a partner of your insensibility, a sharer in your calm!”
She paused. “To my task,” she continued mentally, “my guests must not
perceive the reality, either as it regards him or me. I obey; they
shall not, though I die the moment they are gone. They shall behold the
antipodes of what is real—for I will appear to live—while I am—dead.”
It required all her self-command, to suppress the gush of tears
self-pity caused at this idea. After many struggles, she succeeded, and
turned to join the company.
All her efforts were now directed to the dissembling her internal
conflict. She had to play the part of a courteous hostess; to attend to
all; to shine the focus of enjoyment and grace. She had to do this,
while in deep woe she sighed for loneliness, and would gladly have
exchanged her crowded rooms for dark forest depths, or a drear,
night-enshadowed heath. But she became gay. She could not keep in the
medium, nor be, as was usual with her, placidly content. Every one
remarked her exhilaration of spirits; as all actions appear graceful in
the eye of rank, her guests surrounded her applaudingly, although there
was a sharpness in her laugh, and an abruptness in her sallies, which
might have betrayed her secret to an attentive observer. She went on,
feeling that, if she had paused for a moment, the checked waters of
misery would have deluged her soul, that her wrecked hopes would raise
their wailing voices, and that those who now echoed her mirth, and
provoked her repartees, would have shrunk in fear from her convulsive
despair. Her only consolation during the violence which she did
herself, was to watch the motions of an illuminated clock, and
internally count the moments which must elapse before she could be
alone.
At length the rooms began to thin. Mocking her own desires, she rallied
her guests on their early departure. One by one they left her—at length
she pressed the hand of her last visitor. “How cold and damp your hand