Shortly after the stranger has read to Aliaga the tale related above, Melmoth himself appears at the inn. He causes—in a way unexplained—the death of the stranger who has dared to investigate into his achievements, and the next day associates himself with Aliaga. The merchant is not at all charmed with his obtrusive companion, but cannot well get rid of him; and as they slowly ride onward, Melmoth narrates what is called The Lovers’ Tale.[143]
This time Spain is left behind, and the reader is conducted to the England of the Restoration. The tale opens with a short chronicle of the fortunes of the Mortimer family, one of the oldest and noblest in the kingdom. At the time of Charles the First the then head of the house, Sir Roger Mortimer, ‘a man lofty alike in pride and in principle,’ distinguishes himself as one of the most fervent supporters of the royal cause. After the defeat of the monarch he is subjected to the reprisals, in form of fines and sequestrations, of the victorious rebels, in addition to which his domestic felicity is completely destroyed. His eldest son has fallen for his king at the battle of Newbury, while his second son has embraced the Puritan cause, married accordingly, and finally died, having ‘fought all day at the head of his regiment, and preached and prayed to them all night.’ The only daughter of the old loyalist also goes the wrong way and marries an Independent preacher of the name of Sandal, whom she survives. The daughter of the eldest son, Margaret, is made the heiress of the castle, where she resides with her grandfather and his old sister, Mrs. Ann Mortimer, who leads the household after the death of his brother’s wife. The daughter of the apostate son, Elinor, is, after the death of her mother, also received at the castle and educated there, though without expectations. Young John Sandal, the son of the rejected daughter, is recognized by his grandfather on the express condition of henceforth fighting for the royal family; he has, at his own request, been sent to sea at a very early age. At the return of Charles the Second old Sir Roger dies of joy, but the sacrifices of the family in the royal cause are amply compensated, and they are once again raised among the foremost in the country. At that period the widow Sandal takes up her residence in the neighbourhood of the castle and sometimes visits it, although the relations between her and her aunt Mrs. Ann never become very cordial. From her intrigues subsequently follows the fall of the house of Mortimer.
Through the re-acquired importance of the family a distinguished position in the navy is procured for John Sandal, and during the Dutch war he has the opportunity of showing that the spirit of his ancestors is not dead within him. News of valorous deeds achieved by John reaches even the remote castle, where the gentle Elinor, who remembers him with feelings of love in early childhood, is, more than others, occupied in thoughts of him. When the widow Sandal makes her appearance in the vicinity, she calls on her every day to talk about her son, and when John arrives to pay a visit to his mother, she is the first to meet him. John Sandal turns out to be as good as he is brave, and his friendship to his cousin Elinor swiftly ripens to love. Their betrothal is greeted with joy by all except the widow, who determines to prevent the union by any means. She has obtained a knowledge of Sir Roger’s will, which is to the effect that if his granddaughter Margaret marries John Sandal, all the immense estates are to fall to her, whereas John, in case of his marrying Elinor, is entitled only to a small fortune.—The wedding-day, however, is fixed; the church is filled with guests from far and near and everything is ready, yet the bridegroom, for some inexplicable reason, fails to appear. Tired and anxious at the delay Elinor retires to the vestry, from the casement window of which she sees a rider approaching at full speed. The rider, John Sandal, gallops past the church, casts a look of horror upon Elinor, and disappears.
After the frustration of her hopes Elinor quits the castle and takes up her abode in Yorkshire, at the house of a strictly Puritan sister of her late mother. Peace of mind, however, is denied her, and she lingers on in a pitiable state, when, one day, she receives a letter from Margaret, of surprising contents. Both old Mrs. Ann and Margaret have assured that the faithless bridegroom shall never darken their doors again; now Margaret announces to Elinor that John Sandal has returned to the castle and invites her to join them, dropping some ‘mysterious hints relative to the interruption of the marriage.’ With a vague hope Elinor sets out to the castle and is tenderly received by both her cousins; the manner of John, however, clearly evinces that there can be no question of other sentiments than a calm friendship between them. As the betrothal of Margaret and John is made public, her stay at the castle becomes too painful to Elinor; she returns to Yorkshire where she leads a life in utter seclusion, her Puritan aunt having died in the meantime. Yet she is once more summoned to the castle by a message from Margaret, who, now in confinement, implores Elinor’s presence at her hour of danger. Elinor obeys, but the gloomy forebodings of Margaret are fulfilled: twins are born dead, and a moment afterwards the mother also expires. Amid general despair the widow Sandal now makes a confession to her son, with the result that his reason is extinguished for ever. Solicitous to secure for her son the family estates, she had invented a story which she had imparted to him the night before his intended nuptials with Elinor, according to which he was not her son, but the offspring of an ‘illicit commerce of her husband the preacher with the Puritan mother of Elinor’—and this story she had bound her son by oath never to disclose to Elinor.
After this catastrophe the life of Elinor is devoted to the tending of the patient, whom she never leaves. It then befalls that they are, on one of their evening walks, approached by a stranger, who introduces himself by showing them some slight attentions and speaking on indifferent subjects. Their acquaintance continues some time, till it suddenly ends by the stranger saying something that causes Elinor wildly to rush to a neighbouring clergyman for assistance. The clergyman happens to be the identical friend of Melmoth the Wanderer who witnessed his apparent death in Germany, which strange event he now discloses to Elinor; as for Melmoth, he departs on recognizing the clergyman, and troubles Elinor no longer. Her time passes on in the same occupation, until her ward dies, and, in his last moments knows her, nor does she survive him long.
This beautiful story, though little noted by commentators, is inferior to none in the book, except the opening chapters describing the death of the old Irish miser; on the contrary, it seems rather the best of all the longer tales. Maturing favourite period in English history was sure to become to him a source of highest inspiration, whenever he turned to it, and to his other good qualities is here added that of an impartial historian. When Elinor, as a child, is taken up at the castle, she is said to come to the conclusion ‘that there must be good on both sides, however obscured or defaced by passion, where so much intellectual power, and so much physical energy, had been displayed by both;’ and in this spirit the controversies are treated throughout the story. That the author’s sympathies rest with the cavaliers is evident enough, but the errors of Puritanism—fortunately—do not irritate him so much as to prevent him from speaking of them with calmness, mingled with an almost imperceptible tinge of humour. And the peculiar spirit of the period he catches by the forelock and never leaves hold of it; Maturin had penetrated to the very soul of that wonderful time, when furious contests, religious and political, splintered family ties and shook the foundations of the empire, and when the last remnants of ancient chivalry clashed against growing democracy and sturdy Puritanism. Yet as the principal part of the tale takes place after the Restoration, when the wounds of the civil war are already beginning slowly to heal, he contrives to make those turbulent events felt through the pages as the after-rolls of a mighty storm. And as the plot consists of the tragical downfall of a great and illustrious house, there is, in the style, something like the glow of an autumnal sun setting over a rich and glorious landscape. It is, in fact, in autumn—the season Maturin loved best—that most of the incidents occur, and the pages abound in magnificent descriptions of nature, like the following:
Elinor took the path through the park, and, absorbed in new feelings, was for the first time insensible of its woodland beauty, at once gloomy and resplendent, mellowed by the tints of autumnal colouring, and glorious with the light of an autumnal evening,—till she was roused to attention by the exclamations of her companion, who appeared rapt into delight at what he beheld. — — — — As they approached the Castle, the scene became glorious beyond the imagination of a painter, whose eye has dreamed of sunset in foreign climes. The vast edifice lay buried in shade,—all its varied and strongly charactered features of tower and pinnacle, bartizan and battlement, were melted into one dense and sombrous mass. The distant hills with their conical summits, were still clearly defined in the dark-blue heaven, and their peaks still retained a hue of purple so brilliant and lovely, that it seemed as if the light had loved to linger there, and, parting, had left that tint as the promise of a glorious morning. The woods that surrounded the Castle stood as dark, and apparently as solid as itself. Sometimes a gleam like gold trembled over the tufted foliage of their summits, and at length, through a glade which opened among the dark and massive boles of the ancient trees, one last rich and gorgeous flood of light burst in, turned every blade of grass it touched into emerald for a moment,—passed on its lovely work—and parted. The effect was so instantaneous, brilliant, and evanishing, that Elinor had scarce time for a half uttered exclamation, as she extended her arm in the direction where the light had fallen so brightly and so briefly.
This style is sustained throughout the narrative, but instead of rendering it monotonous, it only makes the ‘atmosphere’ intense and harmonious in the extreme, which is the chief merit of The Lovers’ Tale. The characters, if not exactly conventional, are less originally conceived. Margaret and Elinor are a pair of heroines known from countless romances of all ages: the former high-spirited and vivacious, demanding homage and obtaining it at the same moment; the latter tender, pale, soft and contemplative, yet not without traits of distinct individuality. The characterization of John Sandal is not successful—it is the only thing in the tale which is not—he is too gentle, too ‘milky’ to be a young sailor and warrior, and is depicted with a considerable amount of sentimentality. He appears, however, but little; the principal personage is Elinor, whose hopes and sufferings are delineated with a psychological insight recalling corresponding passages in Women. Like Zaira, in the last-named romance, Elinor in vain seeks forgetfulness in philanthrophy and religion. In her aunt’s house nothing is changed since her earliest childhood. The Puritanic ideals and the memories of celebrated preachers are still cherished by the old maid with undiminished force; but Elinor cannot, in spite of desperate endeavours, find consolation in what once was all in all to her, too. It is not only that her heart is broken; she belongs to a new time, and her views have been enlarged during her life in the castle. The difference between two generations, in the persons of these two women, is brought forth with exquisite fineness, and the great and heroic qualities in Puritanism are freely admitted: