The Mysteries of Udolpho
her at times sensible to the ‘thick-coming fancies’ of a mind greatly
enervated. It was lamentable, that her excellent understanding should
have yielded, even for a moment, to the reveries of superstition, or
rather to those starts of imagination, which deceive the senses into
what can be called nothing less than momentary madness. Instances of
this temporary failure of mind had more than once occurred since her
return home; particularly when, wandering through this lonely mansion
in the evening twilight, she had been alarmed by appearances, which
would have been unseen in her more cheerful days. To this infirm state
of her nerves may be attributed what she imagined, when, her eyes
glancing a second time on the arm-chair, which stood in an obscure part
of the closet, the countenance of her dead father appeared there. Emily
stood fixed for a moment to the floor, after which she left the closet.
Her spirits, however, soon returned; she reproached herself with the
weakness of thus suffering interruption in an act of serious
importance, and again opened the door. By the directions which St.
Aubert had given her, she readily found the board he had described in
an opposite corner of the closet, near the window; she distinguished
also the line he had mentioned, and, pressing it as he had bade her, it
slid down, and disclosed the bundle of papers, together with some
scattered ones, and the purse of louis. With a trembling hand she
removed them, replaced the board, paused a moment, and was rising from
the floor, when, on looking up, there appeared to her alarmed fancy the
same countenance in the chair. The illusion, another instance of the
unhappy effect which solitude and grief had gradually produced upon her
mind, subdued her spirits; she rushed forward into the chamber, and
sunk almost senseless into a chair. Returning reason soon overcame the
dreadful, but pitiable attack of imagination, and she turned to the
papers, though still with so little recollection, that her eyes
involuntarily settled on the writing of some loose sheets, which lay
open; and she was unconscious, that she was transgressing her father’s
strict injunction, till a sentence of dreadful import awakened her
attention and her memory together. She hastily put the papers from her;
but the words, which had roused equally her curiosity and terror, she
could not dismiss from her thoughts. So powerfully had they affected
her, that she even could not resolve to destroy the papers immediately;
and the more she dwelt on the circumstance, the more it inflamed her
imagination. Urged by the most forcible, and apparently the most
necessary, curiosity to enquire farther, concerning the terrible and
mysterious subject, to which she had seen an allusion, she began to
lament her promise to destroy the papers. For a moment, she even
doubted, whether it could justly be obeyed, in contradiction to such
reasons as there appeared to be for further information. But the
delusion was momentary.
“I have given a solemn promise,” said she, “to observe a solemn
injunction, and it is not my business to argue, but to obey. Let me
hasten to remove the temptation, that would destroy my innocence, and
embitter my life with the consciousness of irremediable guilt, while I
have strength to reject it.”
Thus reanimated with a sense of her duty, she completed the triumph of
her integrity over temptation, more forcible than any she had ever
known, and consigned the papers to the flames. Her eyes watched them as
they slowly consumed, she shuddered at the recollection of the sentence
she had just seen, and at the certainty, that the only opportunity of
explaining it was then passing away for ever.
It was long after this, that she recollected the purse; and as she was
depositing it, unopened, in a cabinet, perceiving that it contained
something of a size larger than coin, she examined it. “His hand
deposited them here,” said she, as she kissed some pieces of the coin,
and wetted them with her tears, “his hand—which is now dust!” At the
bottom of the purse was a small packet, having taken out which, and
unfolded paper after paper, she found to be an ivory case, containing
the miniature of a—lady! She started—“The same,” said she, “my father
wept over!” On examining the countenance she could recollect no person
that it resembled. It was of uncommon beauty, and was characterised by
an expression of sweetness, shaded with sorrow, and tempered by
resignation.
St. Aubert had given no directions concerning this picture, nor had
even named it; she, therefore, thought herself justified in preserving
it. More than once remembering his manner, when he had spoken of the
Marchioness of Villeroi, she felt inclined to believe that this was her
resemblance; yet there appeared no reason why he should have preserved
a picture of that lady, or, having preserved it, why he should lament
over it in a manner so striking and affecting as she had witnessed on
the night preceding his departure.
Emily still gazed on the countenance, examining its features, but she
knew not where to detect the charm that captivated her attention, and
inspired sentiments of such love and pity. Dark brown hair played
carelessly along the open forehead; the nose was rather inclined to
aquiline; the lips spoke in a smile, but it was a melancholy one; the
eyes were blue, and were directed upwards with an expression of
peculiar meekness, while the soft cloud of the brow spoke of the fine
sensibility of the temper.
Emily was roused from the musing mood into which the picture had thrown
her, by the closing of the garden gate; and, on turning her eyes to the
window, she saw Valancourt coming towards the château. Her spirits
agitated by the subjects that had lately occupied her mind, she felt
unprepared to see him, and remained a few moments in the chamber to
recover herself.
When she met him in the parlour, she was struck with the change that
appeared in his air and countenance since they had parted in Rousillon,
which twilight and the distress she suffered on the preceding evening
had prevented her from observing. But dejection and languor
disappeared, for a moment, in the smile that now enlightened his
countenance, on perceiving her. “You see,” said he, “I have availed
myself of the permission with which you honoured me—of bidding _you_
farewell, whom I had the happiness of meeting only yesterday.”
Emily smiled faintly, and, anxious to say something, asked if he had
been long in Gascony. “A few days only,” replied Valancourt, while a
blush passed over his cheek. “I engaged in a long ramble after I had
the misfortune of parting with the friends who had made my wanderings
among the Pyrenees so delightful.”
A tear came to Emily’s eye, as Valancourt said this, which he observed;
and, anxious to draw off her attention from the remembrance that had
occasioned it, as well as shocked at his own thoughtlessness, he began
to speak on other subjects, expressing his admiration of the château,
and its prospects. Emily, who felt somewhat embarrassed how to support
a conversation, was glad of such an opportunity to continue it on
indifferent topics. They walked down to the terrace, where Valancourt
was charmed with the river scenery, and the views over the opposite
shores of Guienne.
As he leaned on the wall of the terrace, watching the rapid current of
the Garonne, “I was a few weeks ago,” said he, “at the source of this
noble river; I had not then the happiness of knowing you, or I should
have regretted your absence—it was a scene so exactly suited to your
taste. It rises in a part of the Pyrenees, still wilder and more
sublime, I think, than any we passed in the way to Rousillon.” He then
described its fall among the precipices of the mountains, where its
waters, augmented by the streams that descend from the snowy summits
around, rush into the Vallée d’Aran, between whose romantic heights it
foams along, pursuing its way to the north west till it emerges upon
the plains of Languedoc. Then, washing the walls of Thoulouse, and
turning again to the north west, it assumes a milder character, as it
fertilizes the pastures of Gascony and Guienne, in its progress to the
Bay of Biscay.
Emily and Valancourt talked of the scenes they had passed among the
Pyrenean Alps; as he spoke of which there was often a tremulous
tenderness in his voice, and sometimes he expatiated on them with all
the fire of genius, sometimes would appear scarcely conscious of the
topic, though he continued to speak. This subject recalled forcibly to
Emily the idea of her father, whose image appeared in every landscape,
which Valancourt particularized, whose remarks dwelt upon her memory,
and whose enthusiasm still glowed in her heart. Her silence, at length,
reminded Valancourt how nearly his conversation approached to the
occasion of her grief, and he changed the subject, though for one
scarcely less affecting to Emily. When he admired the grandeur of the
plane-tree, that spread its wide branches over the terrace, and under
whose shade they now sat, she remembered how often she had sat thus
with St. Aubert, and heard him express the same admiration.
“This was a favourite tree with my dear father,” said she; “he used to
love to sit under its foliage with his family about him, in the fine
evenings of summer.”
Valancourt understood her feelings, and was silent; had she raised her
eyes from the ground she would have seen tears in his. He rose, and
leaned on the wall of the terrace, from which, in a few moments, he
returned to his seat, then rose again, and appeared to be greatly
agitated; while Emily found her spirits so much depressed, that several
of her attempts to renew the conversation were ineffectual. Valancourt
again sat down, but was still silent, and trembled. At length he said,
with a hesitating voice, “This lovely scene!—I am going to leave—to
leave you—perhaps for ever! These moments may never return; I cannot
resolve to neglect, though I scarcely dare to avail myself of them. Let
me, however, without offending the delicacy of your sorrow, venture to
declare the admiration I must always feel of your goodness—O! that at
some future period I might be permitted to call it love!”
Emily’s emotion would not suffer her to reply; and Valancourt, who now
ventured to look up, observing her countenance change, expected to see
her faint, and made an involuntary effort to support her, which
recalled Emily to a sense of her situation, and to an exertion of her
spirits. Valancourt did not appear to notice her indisposition, but,
when he spoke again, his voice told the tenderest love. “I will not
presume,” he added, “to intrude this subject longer upon your attention
at this time, but I may, perhaps, be permitted to mention, that these
parting moments would lose much of their bitterness if I might be
allowed to hope the declaration I have made would not exclude me from
your presence in future.”
Emily made another effort to overcome the confusion of her thoughts,
and to speak. She feared to trust the preference her heart acknowledged
towards Valancourt, and to give him any encouragement for hope, on so
short an acquaintance. For though in this narrow period she had
observed much that was admirable in his taste and disposition, and
though these observations had been sanctioned by the opinion of her
father, they were not sufficient testimonies of his general worth to
determine her upon a subject so infinitely important to her future
happiness as that, which now solicited her attention. Yet, though the
thought of dismissing Valancourt was so very painful to her, that she
could scarcely endure to pause upon it, the consciousness of this made
her fear the partiality of her judgment, and hesitate still more to