An old non-conformist minister, a very Saint John for sanctity of life, and simplicity of manners, had been seized by a magistrate while giving the word of consolation to a few of his flock who had met at the cottage of her aunt.
The old man had supplicated for a moment’s delay on the part of the civil power, and its officers, by an unusual effort of toleration or of humanity, complied. Turning to his congregation, who, amid the tumult of the arrest, had never risen from their knees, and only changed the voice of supplication from praying with their pastor to praying for him,—he quoted to them that beautiful passage from the prophet Malachi, which appears to give such delightful encouragement to the spiritual intercourse of Christians,—“Then they that feared the Lord, spoke often to one another, and the Lord heard it,” etc. As he spoke, the old man was dragged away by some rougher hands, and died soon after in confinement.
On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written. Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds and the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.
Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this reminiscence of religion—it was her last resource. Like the wife of Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she named him Ichabod,—and felt the glory was departed. She went to the narrow apartment,—she seated herself in the very chair that venerable man occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to her like that of an ascending prophet. She would then have caught the folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight had led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last words, to produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and wept in indescribable agony at feeling those words had no feeling now for her.
The faint hope wakened in her half-benumbed heart by Margaret’s first letter is soon extinguished. Gradually she loses her beauty and her strength, and when addressed by Melmoth she is, bodily, almost as weak as her ward. It has been said[144] that it is not clear why he tempts Elinor; it must be presumed that he would have the power to restore the mind of John, though his chance of succeeding with Elinor is certainly slight, she being altogether resigned to her fate.—
That The Lovers’ Tale is told by Melmoth himself, and told in such a way as it is, belongs to those curiosities in the composition of the book, which simply must be accepted as freaks of a careless yet self-conscious imagination that follows laws of its own. Aliaga, naturally enough, is at a loss to comprehend how this tale could be applied to him; but the next day, as they continue their journey together, Melmoth briefly recapitulates the early history of Isidora—the details of the shipwreck and her discovery later are now first revealed to the reader—adding that Aliaga should not lose a moment to save his daughter. Notwithstanding this warning, Aliaga allows concerns of business to detain him, and in the meantime the fatal nuptials of Melmoth and Isidora take place. After the Indians’ tale then has been brought to an end, the thread of the original narrative is at last resumed and the reader once more conducted to where young John Melmoth and the Spaniard Monçada are sitting in the desolate Irish country-house. Their conversation is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the subject of all these adventures. The term of his supernaturally prolonged existence is drawing to a close, and the terrible lustre of his eyes is already extinguished. He assures the horrified youths that there is nothing to fear; his wanderings are finished, and the reason for these wanderings need no longer be kept secret, any more than the failure of all his pursuits:
No one has ever exchanged destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. I have traversed the world in the search, and no one, to gain that world, would lose his own soul! Not Stanton in his cell—nor you, Monçada, in the prison of the Inquisition—nor Walberg, who saw his children perishing with want—nor—another—
After this confession the Wanderer asks for a moment’s repose, to sleep for the last time in his human existence. His dreams, however, are filled with a grand and awful vision of the realm of death which is awaiting him and which he has no hope of escaping. During the night mysterious voices issue from the room in which he has shut himself. In the morning the room is empty, but footsteps can be traced up to a rock overlooking the sea. John and Monçada follow the steps until they gain the last summit of the rock:
The ocean was beneath—the wide, waste, engulphing ocean! On a crag beneath them, something hung as floating to the blast. Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night—that was the last trace of the Wanderer!
Melmoth and Monçada exchanged looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly home.—