The Last Man
guard to protect this treasure of dust; and ordered perpetual torches
to be burned around.
When I returned to Perdita, I found that she had already been informed
of the success of my undertaking. He, her beloved, the sole and eternal
object of her passionate tenderness, was restored her. Such was the
maniac language of her enthusiasm. What though those limbs moved not,
and those lips could no more frame modulated accents of wisdom and
love! What though like a weed flung from the fruitless sea, he lay the
prey of corruption— still that was the form she had caressed, those the
lips that meeting hers, had drank the spirit of love from the
commingling breath; that was the earthly mechanism of dissoluble clay
she had called her own. True, she looked forward to another life; true,
the burning spirit of love seemed to her unextinguishable throughout
eternity. Yet at this time, with human fondness, she clung to all that
her human senses permitted her to see and feel to be a part of Raymond.
Pale as marble, clear and beaming as that, she heard my tale, and
enquired concerning the spot where he had been deposited. Her features
had lost the distortion of grief; her eyes were brightened, her very
person seemed dilated; while the excessive whiteness and even
transparency of her skin, and something hollow in her voice, bore
witness that not tranquillity, but excess of excitement, occasioned the
treacherous calm that settled on her countenance. I asked her where he
should be buried. She replied, “At Athens; even at the Athens which he
loved. Without the town, on the acclivity of Hymettus, there is a rocky
recess which he pointed out to me as the spot where he would wish to
repose.”
My own desire certainly was that he should not be removed from the spot
where he now lay. But her wish was of course to be complied with; and I
entreated her to prepare without delay for our departure.
Behold now the melancholy train cross the flats of Thrace, and wind
through the defiles, and over the mountains of Macedonia, coast the
clear waves of the Peneus, cross the Larissean plain, pass the straits
of Thermopylae, and ascending in succession Œrta and Parnassus, descend
to the fertile plain of Athens. Women bear with resignation these long
drawn ills, but to a man’s impatient spirit, the slow motion of our
cavalcade, the melancholy repose we took at noon, the perpetual
presence of the pall, gorgeous though it was, that wrapt the rifled
casket which had contained Raymond, the monotonous recurrence of day
and night, unvaried by hope or change, all the circumstances of our
march were intolerable. Perdita, shut up in herself, spoke little. Her
carriage was closed; and, when we rested, she sat leaning her pale
cheek on her white cold hand, with eyes fixed on the ground, indulging
thoughts which refused communication or sympathy.
We descended from Parnassus, emerging from its many folds, and passed
through Livadia on our road to Attica. Perdita would not enter Athens;
but reposing at Marathon on the night of our arrival, conducted me on
the following day, to the spot selected by her as the treasure house of
Raymond’s dear remains. It was in a recess near the head of the ravine
to the south of Hymettus. The chasm, deep, black, and hoary, swept from
the summit to the base; in the fissures of the rock myrtle underwood
grew and wild thyme, the food of many nations of bees; enormous crags
protruded into the cleft, some beetling over, others rising
perpendicularly from it. At the foot of this sublime chasm, a fertile
laughing valley reached from sea to sea, and beyond was spread the blue
Aegean, sprinkled with islands, the light waves glancing beneath the
sun. Close to the spot on which we stood, was a solitary rock, high and
conical, which, divided on every side from the mountain, seemed a
nature-hewn pyramid; with little labour this block was reduced to a
perfect shape; the narrow cell was scooped out beneath in which Raymond
was placed, and a short inscription, carved in the living stone,
recorded the name of its tenant, the cause and aera of his death.
Every thing was accomplished with speed under my directions. I agreed
to leave the finishing and guardianship of the tomb to the head of the
religious establishment at Athens, and by the end of October prepared
for my return to England. I mentioned this to Perdita. It was painful
to appear to drag her from the last scene that spoke of her lost one;
but to linger here was vain, and my very soul was sick with its
yearning to rejoin my Idris and her babes. In reply, my sister
requested me to accompany her the following evening to the tomb of
Raymond. Some days had passed since I had visited the spot. The path to
it had been enlarged, and steps hewn in the rock led us less
circuitously than before, to the spot itself; the platform on which the
pyramid stood was enlarged, and looking towards the south, in a recess
overshadowed by the straggling branches of a wild fig-tree, I saw
foundations dug, and props and rafters fixed, evidently the
commencement of a cottage; standing on its unfinished threshold, the
tomb was at our right-hand, the whole ravine, and plain, and azure sea
immediately before us; the dark rocks received a glow from the
descending sun, which glanced along the cultivated valley, and dyed in
purple and orange the placid waves; we sat on a rocky elevation, and I
gazed with rapture on the beauteous panorama of living and changeful
colours, which varied and enhanced the graces of earth and ocean.
“Did I not do right,” said Perdita, “in having my loved one conveyed
hither? Hereafter this will be the cynosure of Greece. In such a spot
death loses half its terrors, and even the inanimate dust appears to
partake of the spirit of beauty which hallows this region. Lionel, he
sleeps there; that is the grave of Raymond, he whom in my youth I first
loved; whom my heart accompanied in days of separation and anger; to
whom I am now joined for ever. Never—mark me—never will I leave this
spot. Methinks his spirit remains here as well as that dust, which,
uncommunicable though it be, is more precious in its nothingness than
aught else widowed earth clasps to her sorrowing bosom. The myrtle
bushes, the thyme, the little cyclamen, which peep from the fissures of
the rock, all the produce of the place, bear affinity to him; the light
that invests the hills participates in his essence, and sky and
mountains, sea and valley, are imbued by the presence of his spirit. I
will live and die here!
“Go you to England, Lionel; return to sweet Idris and dearest Adrian;
return, and let my orphan girl be as a child of your own in your house.
Look on me as dead; and truly if death be a mere change of state, I am
dead. This is another world, from that which late I inhabited, from
that which is now your home. Here I hold communion only with the has
been, and to come. Go you to England, and leave me where alone I can
consent to drag out the miserable days which I must still live.”
A shower of tears terminated her sad harangue. I had expected some
extravagant proposition, and remained silent awhile, collecting my
thoughts that I might the better combat her fanciful scheme. “You
cherish dreary thoughts, my dear Perdita,” I said, “nor do I wonder
that for a time your better reason should be influenced by passionate
grief and a disturbed imagination. Even I am in love with this last
home of Raymond’s; nevertheless we must quit it.”
“I expected this,” cried Perdita; “I supposed that you would treat me
as a mad, foolish girl. But do not deceive yourself; this cottage is
built by my order; and here I shall remain, until the hour arrives when
I may share his happier dwelling.”
“My dearest girl!”
“And what is there so strange in my design? I might have deceived you;
I might have talked of remaining here only a few months; in your
anxiety to reach Windsor you would have left me, and without reproach
or contention, I might have pursued my plan. But I disdained the
artifice; or rather in my wretchedness it was my only consolation to
pour out my heart to you, my brother, my only friend. You will not
dispute with me? You know how wilful your poor, misery-stricken sister
is. Take my girl with you; wean her from sights and thoughts of sorrow;
let infantine hilarity revisit her heart, and animate her eyes; so
could it never be, were she near me; it is far better for all of you
that you should never see me again. For myself, I will not voluntarily
seek death, that is, I will not, while I can command myself; and I can
here. But drag me from this country; and my power of self control
vanishes, nor can I answer for the violence my agony of grief may lead
me to commit.”
“You clothe your meaning, Perdita,” I replied, “in powerful words, yet
that meaning is selfish and unworthy of you. You have often agreed with
me that there is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to
improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others: and now,
in the very prime of life, you desert your principles, and shut
yourself up in useless solitude. Will you think of Raymond less at
Windsor, the scene of your early happiness? Will you commune less with
his departed spirit, while you watch over and cultivate the rare
excellence of his child? You have been sadly visited; nor do I wonder
that a feeling akin to insanity should drive you to bitter and
unreasonable imaginings. But a home of love awaits you in your native
England. My tenderness and affection must soothe you; the society of
Raymond’s friends will be of more solace than these dreary
speculations. We will all make it our first care, our dearest task, to
contribute to your happiness.”
Perdita shook her head; “If it could be so,” she replied, “I were much
in the wrong to disdain your offers. But it is not a matter of choice;
I can live here only. I am a part of this scene; each and all its
properties are a part of me. This is no sudden fancy; I live by it. The
knowledge that I am here, rises with me in the morning, and enables me
to endure the light; it is mingled with my food, which else were
poison; it walks, it sleeps with me, for ever it accompanies me. Here I
may even cease to repine, and may add my tardy consent to the decree
which has taken him from me. He would rather have died such a death,
which will be recorded in history to endless time, than have lived to
old age unknown, unhonoured. Nor can I desire better, than, having been
the chosen and beloved of his heart, here, in youth’s prime, before
added years can tarnish the best feelings of my nature, to watch his
tomb, and speedily rejoin him in his blessed repose.
“So much, my dearest Lionel, I have said, wishing to persuade you that
I do right. If you are unconvinced, I can add nothing further by way of
argument, and I can only declare my fixed resolve. I stay here; force
only can remove me. Be it so; drag me away—I return; confine me,
imprison me, still I escape, and come here. Or would my brother rather
devote the heart-broken Perdita to the straw and chains of a maniac,
than suffer her to rest in peace beneath the shadow of His society, in
this my own selected and beloved recess?”—
All this appeared to me, I own, methodized madness. I imagined, that it
was my imperative duty to take her from scenes that thus forcibly
reminded her of her loss. Nor did I doubt, that in the tranquillity of
our family circle at Windsor, she would recover some degree of
composure, and in the end, of happiness. My affection for Clara also
led me to oppose these fond dreams of cherished grief; her sensibility
had already been too much excited; her infant heedlessness too soon
exchanged for deep and anxious thought. The strange and romantic scheme