Oh, conscience, how awful are thy terrors! thou art the vicegerent of Heaven, and dost anticipate its vengeance, ere the final hour of retribution arrives. Guilt may be triumphant, but never, never can be happy: it finds no shield against thy stings and arrows. The heart thou smitest bleeds in every pore, and sighs amidst gayety and splendor.
The unfortunate travellers were welcomed with the truest hospitality by the grateful Edwin; he had married, soon after his return from America, a young girl, to whom, from his earliest youth, he was attached. His parents died soon after his union, and the whole of their little patrimony devolved to him. Soothed and attended with the utmost tenderness and respect, Fitzalan hoped Lady Malvina would here regain her health and peace: he intended, after her recovery, to endeavor to be put on full pay; and trusted he should prevail on her to continue at the farm.
At length the hour came, in which she gave a daughter to his arms. From the beginning of her illness the people about her were alarmed; too soon was it proved their alarms were well founded: she lived after the birth of her infant but a few minutes, and died embracing her husband, and blessing his children.
Fitzalan’s feelings cannot well be described: they were at first too much for reason, and he continued some time in perfect stupefaction. When he regained his sensibility, his grief was not outrageous; it was that deep, still sorrow, which fastens on the heart, and cannot vent itself in tears or lamentations: he sat with calmness by the bed, where the beautiful remains of Malvina lay; he gazed without shrinking on her pale face, which death, as if in pity to his feelings, had not disfigured; he kissed her cold lips, continually exclaiming, “Oh! had we never met, she might still have been living.” His language was something like that of a poet of her own country:—
“Wee, modest crimson-tipped flower, I met thee in a luckless hour.”
It was when he saw them about removing her that all the tempest of his grief broke forth. Oh! how impossible to describe the anguish of the poor widower’s heart, when he returned from seeing his Malvina laid in her last receptacle: he shut himself up in the room where she had expired, and ordered no one to approach him; he threw himself upon the bed; he laid his cheek upon her pillow, he grasped it to his bosom, he wetted it with tears, because she had breathed upon it. Oh, how still, how dreary, how desolate, did all appear around him! “And shall this desolation never more be enlightened,” he exclaimed, “by the soft music of Malvina’s voice? Shall these eyes never more be cheered by beholding her angelic face?” Exhausted by his feelings, he sunk into a slumber: he dreamt of Malvina, and thought she lay beside him: he awoke with sudden ecstasy, and under the strong impression of the dream, stretched out his arms to enfold her. Alas! all was empty void: he started up—he groaned in the bitterness of his soul he traversed the room with a distracted pace—he sat him down in a little window, from whence he could view the spire of the church (now glistening in the moonbeams) by which she was interred. “Deep, still, and profound,” cried he, “is now the sleep of my Malvina—the voice of love cannot awake her from it; nor does she now dream of her midnight mourner.”
The cold breeze of night blew upon his forehead, but he heeded it not; his whole soul was full of Malvina, whom torturing fancy presented to his view, in the habiliments of the grave. “And is this emaciated form, this pale face,” he exclaimed, as if he had really seen her, “all that remain of elegance and beauty, once unequalled!”
A native sense of religion alone checked the transports of his grief; that sweet, that sacred power, which pours balm upon the wounds of sorrow, and saves its children from despair; that power whispered to his heart, a patient submission to the will of heaven was the surest means he could attain of again rejoining his Malvina.
She was interred in the village church-yard: at the head of her grave a stone was placed, on which was rudely cut,
MALVINA FITZALAN,
ALIKE LOVELY AND UNFORTUNATE.