The Mysteries of Udolpho

CHAPTER I-4

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 would dry them and return to the chamber with a countenance composed by an endeavour which did but increase his grief.

Never had Emily felt the importance of the lessons, which had taught her to restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daughter.