Melmoth the Wanderer, Vol. 3

by Charles Robert Maturin

“Armed with all his malignity and all his power, he approached Immalee, armed only with her purity, and standing like the reflected beam of the last ray of light on whose extinction she was gazing. There was a contrast in her form and her situation, that might have touched any feelings but those of the wanderer.

“The light of her figure shining out amid the darkness that enveloped her,—its undulating softness rendered still softer to the eye by the rock against which it reclined,—its softness, brightness, and flexibility, presenting a kind of playful hostility to the tremendous aspect of nature overcharged with wrath and ruin.

“The stranger approached her unobserved; his steps were unheard amid the rush of the ocean, and the deep, portentous murmur of the elements; but, as he advanced, he heard sounds that perhaps operated on his feelings as the whispers of Eve to her flowers on the organs of the serpent. Both knew their power, and felt their time. Amid the fast approaching terrors of a storm, more terrible than any she had ever witnessed, the poor Indian, unconscious, or perhaps insensible of its dangers, was singing her wild song of desperation and love to the echoes of the advancing storm. Some words of this strain of despair and passion reached the ear of the stranger. They were thus:

“The night is growing dark—but what is that to the darkness that his absence has cast on my soul? The lightnings are glancing round me—but what are they to the gleam of his eye when he parted from me in anger?

“I lived but in the light of his presence—why should I not die when that light is withdrawn? Anger of the clouds, what have I to fear from you? You may scorch me to dust, as I have seen you scorch the branches of the eternal trees—but the trunk still remained, and my heart will be his for ever.

“Roar on, terrible ocean! thy waves, which I cannot count, can never wash his image from my soul,—thou dashest a thousand waves against a rock, but the rock is unmoved—and so would be my heart amid the calamities of the world with which he threatens me,—whose dangers I never would have known but for him, and whose dangers for him I will encounter.”

“She paused in her wild song, and then renewed it, regardless alike of the terrors of the elements, and the possible presence of one whose subtle and poisonous potency was more fatal than all the elements in their united wrath.

“When we first met, my bosom was covered with roses—now it is shaded with the dark leaves of the ocynum. When he saw me first, the living things all loved me—now I care not whether they love me or not—I have forgot to love them. When he came to the isle every night, I hoped the moon would be bright—now I care not whether she rises or sets, whether she is clouded or bright. Before he came, every thing loved me, and I had more things to love than I could reckon by the hairs of my head—now I feel I can love but one, and that one has deserted me. Since I have seen him all things have changed. The flowers have not the colours they once had—there is no music in the flow of the waters—the stars do not smile on me from heaven as they did,—and I myself begin to love the storm better than the calm.”

“As she ended her melancholy strain, she turned from the spot where the increasing fury of the storm made it no longer possible for her to stand, and turning, met the gaze of the stranger fixed on her. A suffusion, the most rich and vivid, mantled over her from brow to bosom; she did not utter her usual exclamation of joy at his sight, but, with averted eyes and faultering step, followed him as he pointed her to seek shelter amid the ruins of the pagoda. They approached it in silence; and, amid the convulsions and fury of nature, it was singular to see two beings walk on together without exchanging a word of apprehension, or feeling a thought of danger,—the one armed by despair, the other by innocence. Immalee would rather have sought the shelter of her favourite banyan-tree, but the stranger tried to make her comprehend, that her danger would be much greater there than in the spot he pointed out to her. “Danger!” said the Indian, while a bright and wild smile irradiated her features; “can there be danger when you are near me?”—“Is there, then, no danger in my presence?—few have met me without dreading, and without feeling it too!” and his countenance, as he spoke, grew darker than the heaven at which he scowled. “Immalee,” he added, in a voice still deeper and more thrilling, from the unwonted operation of human emotion in its tones; “Immalee, you cannot be weak enough to believe that I have power of controuling the elements? If I had,” he continued, “by the heaven that is frowning at me, the first exertion of my power should be to collect the most swift and deadly of the lightnings that are hissing around us, and transfix you where you stand!”—“Me?” repeated the trembling Indian, her cheek growing paler at his words, and the voice in which they were uttered, than at the redoubling fury of the storm, amid whose pauses she scarce heard them.—“Yes—you—you—lovely as you are, and innocent, and pure, before a fire more deadly consumes your existence, and drinks your heart-blood—before you are longer exposed to a danger a thousand times more fatal than those with which the elements menace you—the danger of my accursed and miserable presence!”

“Immalee, unconscious of his meaning, but trembling with impassioned grief at the agitation with which he spoke, approached him to soothe the emotion of which she knew neither the name or the cause. Through the fractures of the ruin the red and ragged lightnings disclosed, from time to time, a glimpse of her figure,—her dishevelled hair,—her pallid and appealing look,—her locked hands, and the imploring bend of her slight form, as if she was asking pardon for a crime of which she was unconscious,—and soliciting an interest in griefs not her own. All around her wild, unearthly, and terrible,—the floor strewed with fragments of stone, and mounds of sand,—the vast masses of ruined architecture, whose formation seemed the work of no human hand, and whose destruction appeared the sport of demons,—the yawning fissures of the arched and ponderous roof, through which heaven darkened and blazed alternately with a gloom that wrapt every thing, or a light more fearful than that gloom.—All around her gave to her form, when it was momently visible, a relief so strong and so touching, that it might have immortalized the hand who had sketched her as the embodied presence of an angel who had descended to the regions of woe and wrath,—of darkness and of fire, on a message of reconciliation,—and descended in vain.