Part 15

Roderick’s society still possessed a singular charm for her. In his presence she became more like her former self. She still loved him with a calm, settled love, which nothing on earth could ever destroy. When he turned his mournful gaze toward her, there was so much of tenderness and truth, so much of ill-concealed anxiety and trust, that tears of anguish and of pity would gather upon her eyelids, and she would turn her head, to brush them away unseen. There was no selfishness in her love for him; it was virtuous and sincere, unshaken; yet, in his absence her thoughts continually recurred to the all-absorbing passion that possessed her. Day after day would she go to the bower, but she found no pretext now, in duty to Roderick, for she always returned before it was time for him to be there, and he never knew she went. He said to me on the mount, when relating this portion of his history—“She never went to the bower any more.” Count Frederick did not come again. He secluded himself at home more closely than ever—and let us not trespass upon the sanctuary of a penitent heart. Poor Ella might have been seen day after day, as evening drew near, wandering alone over the hill, watching, with intense anxiety, the path which Count Frederick would take in case he _should_ go out upon his evening walk. A mournful, restless spirit of solitude she seemed, ever wending her silent way among the evening shadows, never venturing upon the sun-lit green. At last her daring steps would turn toward the manor, and she would take its circuit, on her way to the bower. Once she passed, muffled and trembling, through the very lawn. O! could she have seen herself as others would have seen her, she would have sunk into the earth for very shame. How strange—that he who had been the ruthless tempter, in heart and mind the fell destroyer, should now, whilst retiring in virtuous seclusion, become the tempted! How strange, how passing strange—that she, poor victim, should become tempter, persecutor! Yet so it was: and such is man.—And such is woman—when she falls.

One day, from his chamber window he beheld her retreating form slowly disappearing in a little copse near the manor. The whole truth flashed like lightning on his mind: that he was not the only tempter; that not with him lay the damning guilt he had supposed; that he was sought; that she could be gained. The whirlwind of passion came again. The reflection that he had too unjustly accused himself, stifled every breath of remorse; and he went forth, in heart a demon, worse than ever. He soon gained her, and heaven-attesting vows were exchanged of never-dying love. All that was honorable and fair for man to do he promised. Their interviews thenceforward were frequent and clandestine; her health was failing in a perpetual struggle, and matters were drawing to a crisis. She never told her uncle what was done; she feared, she felt in her own heart, that it was not honest love. Count Frederick, I said, had promised all that was honorable for man to do; that promise he did not intend to keep. The more he thought over it, the more fully was he persuaded that she was not sanguine of its observance. After a lengthy consideration his plot was laid, and he appointed a time with Ella for an interview at the bower. It was Roderick’s eventful evening, the one he alluded to when he said: “I could not resist a moment’s visit to the bower, for, since pleasure there seemed henceforth to be forbidden fruit to me, I longed for a moment, even of its pain.” They were both punctual to the appointment. Count Frederick was paler than usual; she noticed his agitation, and he, to cover it, took out his Virgil and read her several beautiful passages. He turned to the Æneiad, and wrought upon her mind and her sympathies with the loves and sorrows, the struggles and the fall, of the queenly Dido. She caught the incendium, and as he repeated over and over, with increasing gusto, the more inflammatory passages, in the words of the poet, like Dido herself she sat “_pendesque iterum narrantis ab ore_.” At last, as he closed the book, he gazed intently on her, trembling with the very burden of his task. He took her hand; she smiled.

“Ella,” said he, “dost thou love me?”

She took the book, and marked a passage with her pencil. He read:

“Est mollis flamma medullas, Interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.”

The glow of her features attested the truth. He continued:

“Wouldst thou be happy to wander the wide world over by my side, to revel in the gayeties of Paris, to stand amid the awful ruins of Athens and Palmyra, to tread the hallowed spots of Palestine, and bask in the sunny skies of Italy?”

“With thee and honor, anywhere.”

“Ella, thou hast a picture; let me see it? Who gave it thee?”

“My mother.”

“When?—dost thou remember?”

“Yes, when I was a tiny child. She gave it in my hands and said it was all I had from my dear father but his name.”

“Thou hast his name. Dost thou know, Ella, who this is?”

“I never knew.”

“I know. I have seen her: she is living yet, and bears but a slight resemblance now to this young face.”

“Tell me of her; is she my father’s sister?”

“No; but wouldst thou know indeed?”

“Tell me.”

“Listen then—thy father’s wife.”

She sat stupefied; her bosom heaved convulsively.

“Couldst thou marry Roderick, now?”

She started to her feet. “Fiend! I understand you,” she shouted. Her eyes flashed, her form dilated, her outstretched arm quivered with the strength of her indignation; whilst her melodious voice raised in tones of inspiration, rang through the evening stillness with the poet’s terrible imprecation:

“Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat, Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras, Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam”—

she turned away, and sinking upon one knee, raised her clasped hands and streaming eyes—

“Ante pudor quam te violem, aut-tua-jura re-solvam.”

And she fell lifeless upon the ground. A step was heard. The count launched himself down the precipice. Roderick came, saw, and flew off on the wings of the wind, with a crushed heart and raving brain.

Ella’s first act of returning consciousness was to recognize herself reclining in the arms of Count Frederick. The swaying to and fro, the heavy lurch, the crackling stones, the dashing tramp, soon brought home to her mind the terrible certainty that she had departed from Heidelberg forever. How far she was away, whither she was going she knew not: she only knew that she was lost beyond redemption. Her body and her mind were powerless, paralyzed in utter imbecility: she could not, would not will: but as the reality of the world and her existence in it stole on her awakening senses, every power of her soul rushed to the view of her prostration; her heart struggled in very anguish, her reason staggered from side to side in the mazes of a darksome labyrinth; night had gathered around, and heavy dews swept through the carriage windows; terrors, strange and indefinable, fell like a death chill on her sickened soul, and she clung with frenzied grasp to the form beside her. Words of love, of courage, of hope, breathed into her ears another life, and she abandoned her whole being to the power of its inspiration. Ere morning dawned they were far away, and the second nightfall beheld them in Cologne.

Before I proceed any further, let me make a little necessary explanation concerning Ella’s picture. What Count Frederick said concerning her “father’s wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature was that of a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to in England, and whom he forsook for another, more to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious, and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting upon her and her family, he retired into as great obscurity as possible, on the continent, and married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered in his retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in his village, his fall in a duel with a brother of his former betrothed, were consequent upon that discovery. Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could be. The mystery which hung about the picture had prepared her mind to become the easy dupe of a well-told lie.

Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of a raging fever, whilst a sad and anxious watcher, night and day, moved ever silently about the darkened chamber. This was the most trying period of Count Frederick’s life. Ever and anon the low murmuring of troubled dreams would fall like heavy curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently move aside the curtains and bend his ear to feel the parching breath, words fraught with the odor of youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light of childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on her mind, and smiles of love and tenderness and purity would gently play about her mouth, dimpling her beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would whisper: “Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God keep little Ella from all sin.’” Then there would be some uneasy motion, some momentary contortion, as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling sigh, scarce rising with its burden of despair. O, how he shook in very agony! Then all was still. Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal application, to extend, by some inappreciable virtue of its own, its subtle influence unceasingly through the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none but ecstatic moods of happiness or devotion ever called forth from her stores of melody; even the name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation and softened whisper, rose up like threatening spectres in Count Frederick’s night of mental darkness. He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness, watched every quiver of her parted lips, and could have rejoiced in the life of their occasional smile or tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless eyes, and the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never changed in all her emotions—appalled with the coldness of some fearful death: and he turned away. He would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being, but his heart was void; it was his brain that ached, for he knew that all that melancholy ruins had fallen from a sublime structure by his fell utterance of a lie.

It behooves me now to hasten this lengthy history to a close. As soon as possible our wanderers hastened off to Paris, to restore their sunken spirits amid the pleasures and gayeties of the _beau monde_. There it was I saw them, as they took their evening airing along the Champs Elysées. They had been there several months, and poor Ella’s looks and manner both told the inefficiency of worldly pleasure, to lighten the heavy burden of a guilty soul. The gayety of France was like the smart of sparkling wine on an ulcerated sore, and away they wandered into distant lands. The still, death-like aspect of the Grecian shores seemed like the languor of cold sympathy with her own silent sorrow; and as the startling semblance rose up before her, and she viewed in every phase and feature that all that was elevating and life-giving was passed away, she shuddered at her own kindred desolation. She would venture upon the rocky cliffs and gaze into the troubled sea, where—as now in her own mind—the lights of Heaven were pictured in flitting and uncertain forms; she would look abroad upon the unspotted blue, where not a coming or departing sail broke the distinct horizon, and she would reflect how the powers of her soul were mouldered away, and brought no more back to her enjoyment the riches and the fruits of other climes, the luxuries from nature’s and religion’s overflowing bounty. Then she would wander upon the lonely strand, and the splashing of the journeyed waters, whose tempest roar was spent in low, last murmurs at her feet, reëchoed the wild moanings of a dying spirit. Oh! how she sat and cried. Had her tears been those of repentance and return, they would have hallowed for ever a spot that was only classic, and her groans would have lifted the vault of Heaven; but the bitter drops, wrung by degradation and despair, were swept away by the encroaching wavelets—and the sighs were borne afar by the winds, to swell that everlasting _ROMOR_ of anguish that never reaches God.

In the Roman Colosseum, the blood-stained arena of the martyrs seemed to burn her very feet, and she looked not upon a stone, nor an herb, in that sanctuary of Christendom but returned a look of withering reproach, as if by express command of Heaven. There was no peace. Like Jonah, had she tried to flee from the wrath of God, and find ease and security in sin; and now that she found it not, she longed for death—but dared not court it—as the oblivion of all her being.

Again our fugitives sought the resources of Paris. Ella was fast failing in health, and both knew that she must soon die. She possessed no longer any gayety, and Count Frederick secretly rejoiced in her decline, as the only means of ridding himself of a burden now become almost insupportable. Still, her death would not have occurred without inflicting upon him one severe pang; for her intellect, increasing in beauty and brilliancy as the body faded, held him in a spell that seemed to involve his very life. A short time after their arrival in Paris, the revolution of February put all Europe in a commotion. It was a God-send to Count Frederick, for a field now opened to him for the employment of his faculties; something at last, if not repose, at least a breathing spell to ease him in his tired struggle with a sleepless, unflagging remorse. He plunged into the under-revolutionary current, heedless of whence it flowed or where it came to light. All manner of impure ultraïsm gathering in its way, formed the nuclei of innumerable vortices that eddied and whirled at every turn of his onward progress, hurling him along with strange fits of semi-delirium, until the following June, when the whole concentrated power bubbled in red volumes to the surface, and the streets of Paris ran with human blood. Count Frederick became a willing tool in crafty hands, and shrank not from offices of most imminent danger. All night and all day did he lend his wealth, his influence and his labor to the construction of barricades for the defense of the populace: he became a leading spirit, and on several occasions his sword was foremost in the fray. His attire, his repose, his ordinary food, all was forgotten. Once he stood tired and worn, within a new barricade not far from the barrière St. Martin; his hat and coat were thrown aside, his dress all torn and begrimed with sweat and dirt; in one hand he held a naked sword, whilst the other grasped the stock of a pistol that was still unmoved from his leathern belt. Upon this arm hung poor Ella, still clinging through toil and danger to him she could not but love. Her bonnet was thrown aside; a soiled cambric handkerchief tied beneath the chin, had kept in check her unbound hair, but it was now in places loose and disheveled; one dark lock swung around her neck, and as it reposed upon her bosom, the curled, purple extremity appeared in fearful contrast with the snowy field it lay upon. Woman to the last, she bore upon her person many a mark of blood, and many dying lips within the last few hours, had breathed a blessing upon the unknown and beautiful angel of mercy that bent above them. Upon a stove, that had been carried into the middle of the street, stood a popular demagogue, gesticulating wildly, and thundering anathemas against the provisional government, that were horrible for ears to listen to; whilst around him stood some hundreds of the armed and excited populace, venting, at almost every gesture of the frantic orator, vows of eternal vengeance on what they deemed the recreant soldiery. Some one had just arrived to announce that the military, in force, were marching upon them. The shadow of the hand of death seemed already to rest upon the multitude, and not an eye was there that did not dwell upon eternity. Soon the military, in serried ranks and with bristling bayonets, wheeled into view far down the street, and then commenced the steady advance upon the barricade. The orator grew wilder and wilder, and every heart in that vast multitude quivered in awful expectation. The street was cleared, not a soul moved upon the side-walks; and the measured tread of the soldiers, with now and then a groan or shriek from out some chamber, was all that broke the silence as they marched along. Soon the note of death sounded in the rear, then the noise of changing muskets, at the word of command—and immediately was heard from out the barricade, trembling in solemn melody, low sounds as of some unearthly dirge; and the words, “_Mourir pour la patrie_”—arose with many a mingled yell. With the gallop of the words—“_c’est la mort la plus belle_,” all rushed to action, and when the first great burst of the murderous fire was past, the last words of the death-song still rang o’er piles of bleeding men.

The attack on this barricade was long and bloody. At the second discharge, Count Frederick rolled from the mound of curb-stones upon which he had leaped to replace a fallen red-republican ensign, and was borne into a neighboring house; there all assistance ceased. As he lay bleeding upon the floor, in a state of almost insensibility, Ella knelt beside him, striving to staunch with her handkerchief, her dress, her hair, the exhaustless spring of blood that welled up from a bullet wound in his chest. Not a word escaped her lips, not a tear fell from her eye, but she bent all the faculties of her mind to the faithful accomplishment of her stupendous task. His breathing became weak and weaker; she heeded it not. The veil of eternity was settling upon him, and the dim vision of mortality was being illumined under its shadow; the heinousness of his damning crime shone out in perfect distinctness; but one reparation, he thought, and that a slight one, remained; but how could he ever summon courage to speak it there? She seemed to him, in truth, an angel, as he turned his glazing eyes toward her; she would not yield to despair. He made the sacrifice; collected all his strength of body and of mind, and told to the wretched girl the story of his deception. It fell upon her like a thunderbolt. For the first time she became aware of the stupendous depth of her fall. Her only stay, her only consolation, her only anchor of future hope, upon her troubled sea, had rested on the excuse of natal degradation: now that was taken away. She sunk upon the floor; but in a moment, with frantic energy she bounded to her feet, and seizing the flag-staff from the dying hand, rushed into the street. The combat still raged; leaping over the dead and dying, with a bound she reached the breast-work.

The French journals, in describing the assault upon, and the carrying of this barricade, illustrated the enthusiastic patriotism of the insurgents, with the story of a young and beautiful girl, who, in the hottest of the fight, leaped upon the ramparts, flag in hand, and waving it gallantly above her head, shouting—_liberté_—fell, pierced by a hundred bullets, outside the barricade. It was Ella Corbyn.

* * * * *

SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.

BY WILLIAM ALBERT SUTLIFFE.

Midnight was brooding o’er the Arctic highlands Midnight, the dim, and faint, and strangely cold; When on an iceberg, ’mid the icy islands, Sat the chill Northern Spirit, weird, and cold. Her floating tresses hung, Wailing unto the blast; Her vapory vestment swung As the wind hurried past: And ever and anon she moaned, and sung, With tremulous voice, such as the tempest leaf In piny woods, and then again she flung Her slender fingers o’er a harp, and wept, And wailed unearthly music, as when grieves And sings a fallen angel, then it slept A moment in the rude arms of the blast— The snowy-footed madly rushing past— And then sprung up again, as when o’erleap Rich showers of harmony Heaven’s rampart steep, And, star-like, from on high Far-trailing down the sky, Strike mortals mad, or wild: So the pale Boreal Child Sang to the soul of Naught, that brooded o’er Lone semi-annual nights, and days as long, An icy ocean, with an icy shore, And icy islands, sparsely thrown among A yest of icy waves; and all was ice, By sempiternal Winter wrought To many a quaint device.

And then again, when the cold North-wind kissed Her pallid lips, up to the amethyst Of the far heaven she raised her spirit eyes, Then beat, and wept, while ever grim Surprise Wondered that she should weep, and then she played A prelude to her harp, then sung, then paused, While symphonies filled up the gaps she made, And Echo woke applause. Wondrous the sadness of her floating strain! The icebergs thrilled unto their heart of hearts, And Ocean’s breast rose with convulsive starts; While from her eyes the tearful-beaded rain Froze into gems upon her vapory dress, Embroidered loveliness.

O Loneliness, O Nothingness, O Death! O Dreariness around me, I must weep! Would that my very soul were tears to steep The wind with, that, at every breath, With weeping, I might spend my soul so fast My agony’s last throb would soon be past.

O Desolation, wild, and gaunt, and grim! O hopeless absence of all glad and bright! O horrid shapes fantastical, what hymn Of mine, alas! can tell such shapes aright Would ye but strike me mad, I should indeed be glad, I now can pass the dark hours but in weeping; And could my soul but freeze, Like the breast of the seas, How rapturous would be my silent sleeping.

Thou cold and icy moon, Thou dost not pity me! Six long months hast thou seen My weary soul, each year, Since Earth began, nor wept. Away, thou’rt hateful now! Away, for I am mad!

And Earth, detested orb, How long must thou exist? Each throb of thy vast pulse Strikes keenest agony Into this soul of mine. If thou hast loveliness, It ne’er was shown to me. Come, let us die together! Hurry thy steeds, O Time! Bear us into the dark Of that Eternity, Whose shadows are so deep We cannot pierce them yet.

Ye icebergs, that have seen My wildest misery, Do ye know sympathy? Then melt ye down in tears, And in a sea of grief Flow round me with sweet sound!

They feel not, know not, aught! My misery is full! I must unto my bower— My bower of chillest ice— Would that it were my tomb Ye smile on me in scorn, Ye that do see my grief!

Then spreading out her wings, Toward the extremest North She took her liquid way. The moon withdrew, and wept; The stars died out with grief; The icebergs thrilled again Unto their icy hearts. All things were sad for her, Saddened by her wild song.

* * * * *

SONNET.—ART.

BY WM. ALEXANDER.