There was stillness, and gloom, and death, around me, but I was not alone. I felt that creeping consciousness that my evil spirit was near. I raised my eyes and saw the phantom—the dark and hideous one; my old companion as standing by me—muttering and mocking at my grief. I shrank from the fiend.
I drew closer to the loved form of her I adored. I took her cold hand and placed it on my burning brow. I can feel the death-like coldness now where that small hand lay. I closed my eyes and tried to pray; but fiendish shouts of laughter rang in my ears, and I felt that an evil spirit was by my side. My whole frame quivered with suppressed agony. I turned. I saw it move; and the shadowless hand was raised as if to touch the precious and costly form of her I loved. I can remember no more; all after for some time was gloom and misery. * * *
Wild spirits are dancing around me, bearing in their arms the dear form of my Julia. Sometimes her voice breaks the stillness of my chamber in the darkness of night, for I never sleep—my brain is too hot for sleep. Sometimes I am roused by feeling the softness of her light taper fingers on my brow, and then I start from my uneasy and wretched bed to look for her once more; but instead of her I see my dark spirit the demon, watching me with that untired eye, following me with that noiseless step, that shadowless form, and then falling on my bed, I bury my face in my pillow, and try to pray for peace, and for tears—but both are denied me.
The sun mocks me with his bright, clear, dancing beams speaking of life, and hope, and joy. It brings back the memory of that wretched day when I had killed by my burning passions the only woman I had ever loved.
She was, indeed, the sun of my gloom; and, without her, I am as a captive in a darkened cell, through the gratings of which thoughts of her stream in, and make a dim twilight—a sad satisfaction. Oh! if I were to be false to her, my soul would be a void; my memory, a curse; my heart, a heap of ashes.
I see again, with terrible reality, that graceful form—that regal face—dead, yet smiling—as I last saw her in that curtained chamber, with the sun shining in glory through the crimson drapery, and shedding a warm glow on the inanimate features.
Even now I see her. I see that last look of unsullied purity and fear. I feel again that warm blood, as it trickled down and fell on my hands and face, as I knelt before her. It fell on my forehead, and I know that it is eating in, deeper and deeper, towards my brain.
Her last words ring in my ears; her last smile is my beacon, my only ray of hope, luring me on towards a happier future.
There is a fire kindled within me that will dry up every thought but recollection of her; for every circumstance connected with her is impressed on my memory with a vivid distinctness.
Can it be?—the thought sometimes occurs to me, with a balmy and consoling power, like that fragrant wind from the Spicy Islands, which the mariner feels blowing cool upon his brow, as he lies becalmed, in the still noon, on the wide and desert sea? Can it be, that the devotion of a lifetime—such as my devotion has been—may be repaid by association in eternity?