The Mysteries of Udolpho
improvements might be deferred, gave him a hope, that they might never
take place.
Before they separated for the night, M. Quesnel desired to speak with
St. Aubert alone, and they retired to another room, where they remained
a considerable time. The subject of this conversation was not known;
but, whatever it might be, St. Aubert, when he returned to the
supper-room, seemed much disturbed, and a shade of sorrow sometimes
fell upon his features that alarmed Madame St. Aubert. When they were
alone she was tempted to enquire the occasion of it, but the delicacy
of mind, which had ever appeared in his conduct, restrained her: she
considered that, if St. Aubert wished her to be acquainted with the
subject of his concern, he would not wait on her enquiries.
On the following day, before M. Quesnel departed, he had a second
conference with St. Aubert.
The guests, after dining at the château, set out in the cool of the day
for Epourville, whither they gave him and Madame St. Aubert a pressing
invitation, prompted rather by the vanity of displaying their
splendour, than by a wish to make their friends happy.
Emily returned, with delight, to the liberty which their presence had
restrained, to her books, her walks, and the rational conversation of
M. and Madame St. Aubert, who seemed to rejoice, no less, that they
were delivered from the shackles, which arrogance and frivolity had
imposed.
Madame St. Aubert excused herself from sharing their usual evening
walk, complaining that she was not quite well, and St. Aubert and Emily
went out together.
They chose a walk towards the mountains, intending to visit some old
pensioners of St. Aubert, which, from his very moderate income, he
contrived to support, though it is probable M. Quesnel, with his very
large one, could not have afforded this.
After distributing to his pensioners their weekly stipends, listening
patiently to the complaints of some, redressing the grievances of
others, and softening the discontents of all, by the look of sympathy,
and the smile of benevolence, St. Aubert returned home through the
woods,
where,
At fall of eve the fairy-people throng,
In various games and revelry to pass
The summer night, as village stories tell.
THOMSON
“The evening gloom of woods was always delightful to me,” said St.
Aubert, whose mind now experienced the sweet calm, which results from
the consciousness of having done a beneficent action, and which
disposes it to receive pleasure from every surrounding object. “I
remember that in my youth this gloom used to call forth to my fancy a
thousand fairy visions, and romantic images; and, I own, I am not yet
wholly insensible of that high enthusiasm, which wakes the poet’s
dream: I can linger, with solemn steps, under the deep shades, send
forward a transforming eye into the distant obscurity, and listen with
thrilling delight to the mystic murmuring of the woods.”
“O my dear father,” said Emily, while a sudden tear started to her eye,
“how exactly you describe what I have felt so often, and which I
thought nobody had ever felt but myself! But hark! here comes the
sweeping sound over the wood-tops;—now it dies away;—how solemn the
stillness that succeeds! Now the breeze swells again. It is like the
voice of some supernatural being—the voice of the spirit of the woods,
that watches over them by night. Ah! what light is yonder? But it is
gone. And now it gleams again, near the root of that large chestnut:
look, sir!”
“Are you such an admirer of nature,” said St. Aubert, “and so little
acquainted with her appearances as not to know that for the glow-worm?
But come,” added he gaily, “step a little further, and we shall see
fairies, perhaps; they are often companions. The glow-worm lends his
light, and they in return charm him with music, and the dance. Do you
see nothing tripping yonder?”
Emily laughed. “Well, my dear sir,” said she, “since you allow of this
alliance, I may venture to own I have anticipated you; and almost dare
venture to repeat some verses I made one evening in these very woods.”
“Nay,” replied St. Aubert, “dismiss the _almost_, and venture quite;
let us hear what vagaries fancy has been playing in your mind. If she
has given you one of her spells, you need not envy those of the
fairies.”
“If it is strong enough to enchant your judgment, sir,” said Emily,
“while I disclose her images, I need _not_ envy them. The lines go in a
sort of tripping measure, which I thought might suit the subject well
enough, but I fear they are too irregular.”
THE GLOW-WORM.
How pleasant is the green-wood’s deep-matted shade
On a mid-summer’s eve, when the fresh rain is o’er;
When the yellow beams slope, and sparkle thro’ the glade,
And swiftly in the thin air the light swallows soar!
But sweeter, sweeter still, when the sun sinks to rest,
And twilight comes on, with the fairies so gay
Tripping through the forest-walk, where flow’rs, unprest,
Bow not their tall heads beneath their frolic play.
To music’s softest sounds they dance away the hour,
Till moonlight steals down among the trembling leaves,
And checquers all the ground, and guides them to the bow’r,
The long haunted bow’r, where the nightingale grieves.
Then no more they dance, till her sad song is done,
But, silent as the night, to her mourning attend;
And often as her dying notes their pity have won,
They vow all her sacred haunts from mortals to defend.
When, down among the mountains, sinks the ev’ning star,
And the changing moon forsakes this shadowy sphere,
How cheerless would they be, tho’ they fairies are,
If I, with my pale light, came not near!
Yet cheerless tho’ they’d be, they’re ungrateful to my love!
For, often when the traveller’s benighted on his way,
And I glimmer in his path, and would guide him thro’ the grove,
They bind me in their magic spells to lead him far astray;
And in the mire to leave him, till the stars are all burnt out,
While, in strange-looking shapes, they frisk about the ground,
And, afar in the woods, they raise a dismal shout,
Till I shrink into my cell again for terror of the sound!
But, see where all the tiny elves come dancing in a ring,
With the merry, merry pipe, and the tabor, and the horn,
And the timbrel so clear, and the lute with dulcet string;
Then round about the oak they go till peeping of the morn.
Down yonder glade two lovers steal, to shun the fairy-queen,
Who frowns upon their plighted vows, and jealous is of me,
That yester-eve I lighted them, along the dewy green,
To seek the purple flow’r, whose juice from all her spells can free.
And now, to punish me, she keeps afar her jocund band,
With the merry, merry pipe, and the tabor, and the lute;
If I creep near yonder oak she will wave her fairy wand,
And to me the dance will cease, and the music all be mute.
O! had I but that purple flow’r whose leaves her charms can foil,
And knew like fays to draw the juice, and throw it on the wind,
I’d be her slave no longer, nor the traveller beguile,
And help all faithful lovers, nor fear the fairy kind!
But soon the _vapour of the woods_ will wander afar,
And the fickle moon will fade, and the stars disappear,
Then, cheerless will they be, tho’ they fairies are,
If I, with my pale light, come not near!
Whatever St. Aubert might think of the stanzas, he would not deny his
daughter the pleasure of believing that he approved them; and, having
given his commendation, he sunk into a reverie, and they walked on in
silence.
A faint erroneous ray,
Glanc’d from th’ imperfect surfaces of things,
Flung half an image on the straining eye;
While waving woods, and villages, and streams,
And rocks, and mountain-tops, that long retain
The ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,
Uncertain if beheld.
THOMSON.
St. Aubert continued silent till he reached the château, where his wife
had retired to her chamber. The languor and dejection, that had lately
oppressed her, and which the exertion called forth by the arrival of
her guests had suspended, now returned with increased effect. On the
following day, symptoms of fever appeared, and St. Aubert, having sent
for medical advice, learned, that her disorder was a fever of the same
nature as that, from which he had lately recovered. She had, indeed,
taken the infection, during her attendance upon him, and, her
constitution being too weak to throw out the disease immediately, it
had lurked in her veins, and occasioned the heavy languor of which she
had complained. St. Aubert, whose anxiety for his wife overcame every
other consideration, detained the physician in his house. He remembered
the feelings and the reflections that had called a momentary gloom upon
his mind, on the day when he had last visited the fishing-house, in
company with Madame St. Aubert, and he now admitted a presentiment,
that this illness would be a fatal one. But he effectually concealed
this from her, and from his daughter, whom he endeavoured to reanimate
with hopes that her constant assiduities would not be unavailing. The
physician, when asked by St. Aubert for his opinion of the disorder,
replied, that the event of it depended upon circumstances which he
could not ascertain. Madame St. Aubert seemed to have formed a more
decided one; but her eyes only gave hints of this. She frequently fixed
them upon her anxious friends with an expression of pity, and of
tenderness, as if she anticipated the sorrow that awaited them, and
that seemed to say, it was for their sakes only, for their sufferings,
that she regretted life. On the seventh day, the disorder was at its
crisis. The physician assumed a graver manner, which she observed, and
took occasion, when her family had once quitted the chamber, to tell
him, that she perceived her death was approaching. “Do not attempt to
deceive me,” said she, “I feel that I cannot long survive. I am
prepared for the event, I have long, I hope, been preparing for it.
Since I have not long to live, do not suffer a mistaken compassion to
induce you to flatter my family with false hopes. If you do, their
affliction will only be the heavier when it arrives: I will endeavour
to teach them resignation by my example.”
The physician was affected; he promised to obey her, and told St.
Aubert, somewhat abruptly, that there was nothing to expect. The latter
was not philosopher enough to restrain his feelings when he received
this information; but a consideration of the increased affliction which
the observance of his grief would occasion his wife, enabled him, after
some time, to command himself in her presence. Emily was at first
overwhelmed with the intelligence; then, deluded by the strength of her
wishes, a hope sprung up in her mind that her mother would yet recover,
and to this she pertinaciously adhered almost to the last hour.
The progress of this disorder was marked, on the side of Madame St.
Aubert, by patient suffering, and subjected wishes. The composure, with
which she awaited her death, could be derived only from the retrospect
of a life governed, as far as human frailty permits, by a consciousness
of being always in the presence of the Deity, and by the hope of a
higher world. But her piety could not entirely subdue the grief of
parting from those whom she so dearly loved. During these her last
hours, she conversed much with St. Aubert and Emily, on the prospect of
futurity, and on other religious topics. The resignation she expressed,
with the firm hope of meeting in a future world the friends she left in
this, and the effort which sometimes appeared to conceal her sorrow at
this temporary separation, frequently affected St. Aubert so much as to
oblige him to leave the room. Having indulged his tears a while, he