Stung by his thoughts, Trevylyan rose abruptly, and stealing from the lowly hostelry, walked forth amidst the serene and deepening night; from the window of Gertrude’s room the light streamed calm on the purple air.
With uneven steps and many a pause, he paced to and fro beneath the window, and gave the rein to his thoughts. How intensely he felt the ALL that Gertrude was to him! how bitterly he foresaw the change in his lot and character that her death would work out! For who that met him in later years ever dreamed that emotions so soft, and yet so ardent, had visited one so stern? Who could have believed that time was when the polished and cold Trevylyan had kept the vigils he now held below the chamber of one so little like himself as Gertrude, in that remote and solitary hamlet; shut in by the haunted mountains of the Rhine, and beneath the moonlight of the romantic North?
While thus engaged, the light in Gertrude’s room was suddenly extinguished; it is impossible to express how much that trivial incident affected him! It was like an emblem of what was to come; the light had been the only evidence of life that broke upon that hour, and he was now left alone with the shades of night. Was not this like the herald of Gertrude’s own death; the extinction of the only living ray that broke upon the darkness of the world?
His anguish, his presentiment of utter desolation, increased. He groaned aloud; he dashed his clenched hand to his breast; large and cold drops of agony stole down his brow. “Father,” he exclaimed with a struggling voice, “let this cup pass from me! Smite my ambition to the root; curse me with poverty, shame, and bodily disease; but leave me this one solace, this one companion of my fate!”
At this moment Gertrude’s window opened gently, and he heard accents steal soothingly upon his ear.
“Is not that your voice, Albert?” said she, softly. “I heard it just as I lay down to rest, and could not sleep while you were thus exposed to the damp night air. You do not answer; surely it is your voice: when did I mistake it for another’s?” Mastering with a violent effort his emotions, Trevylyan answered, with a sort of convulsive gayety,—
“Why come to these shores, dear Gertrude, unless you are honoured with the chivalry that belongs to them? What wind, what blight, can harm me while within the circle of your presence; and what sleep can bring me dreams so dear as the waking thought of you?”
“It is cold,” said Gertrude, shivering; “come in, dear Albert, I beseech you, and I will thank you to-morrow.” Gertrude’s voice was choked by the hectic cough, that went like an arrow to Trevylyan’s heart; and he felt that in her anxiety for him she was now exposing her own frame to the unwholesome night.
He spoke no more, but hurried within the house; and when the gray light of morn broke upon his gloomy features, haggard from the want of sleep, it might have seemed, in that dim eye and fast-sinking cheek, as if the lovers were not to be divided—even by death itself.