The night was very calm and beautiful. The waters from the lake were falling. Tide was going out, and the murmuring clack of a distant sawmill added a strange sweetness to the hour, and mingled harmoniously with the mysterious goings on of midnight. The starlight, not brilliant, was yet very soft and touching. Isolated and small clouds, like dismembered ravens' wings, flitted lightly along the edge of the western horizon, shooting out at intervals brief, brilliant flashes of lightning. There was a flickering breeze that played with the shrubbery beneath my window, making a slight stir that did not break the quiet of the scene, and gave a graceful movement to the slender stems as they waved to and fro beneath its pressure. A noble pride of India {Footnote: China tree: the melia azedaracha of botanists. A tree peculiar to the south, of singular beauty, and held in high esteem as a shade-tree.} rose directly before my eyes to the south—its branches stretching almost from within touch of the dwelling, over the fence of a neighbor. The whole scene was fairy-like. I should find it indescribable. It soothed my feelings. I had been the victim of a long and painful moral conflict. At length I had a glimmering of repose. Events, in the last few days—small events which, in themselves denoted nothing—had yet spoken peace to my feelings. My heart was in that dreamy state of languor, such as the body enjoys under the gradually growing power of the anodyne, in which the breath of the summer wind brings a language of luxury, and the most emperiest sights and sounds in nature minister to a capacity of enjoyment, which is not the less intoxicating and sweet because it is subdued. I mused upon my own heart, upon the heart which I so much loved and had so much distrusted—upon life, its strange visions, delusive hopes, and the sweet efficacy of mere shadows in promoting one's happiness et last. Then came, by natural degrees, the thought of that strange mysterious union of light and darkness—life and death—the shadows that we are; the substances that we are yet to be. The future!—still it rose before me—but the darkness upon it alone showed me it was there. It did not offend me, however, for my heart was glowing in a present starlight. It was the hour of hopes rather than of fears; and in the mere prospect of transition to the new—such is the elastic nature of youth—I had agreed to forget every pang whether of idea or fact, which had vexed and tortured me in the perished past. My musings were all tender yet joyful—they partook of that “joy of grief” of which the bard of Fingal tells us. I felt a big tear gathering in my eye, I knew not wherefore. I felt my heart growing feeble, with the same delight which one would feel at suddenly recovering a great treasure which had been supposed for ever lost. I fancied that I had recovered my treasure, and I rose quietly, went to the bed where Julia lay sleeping peacefully, and kissed her pale but lovely cheeks. She started, but did not waken—a gentle sigh escaped her lips, and they murmured with some indistinct syllables which I failed to distinguish. At that moment the notes of a flute rose softly from the grove without.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. — RENEWED AGONIES.
In that same moment my pangs were all renewed; my repose of mind departed; once more my heart was on fire, my spirit filled with vague doubts, grief, and commotion. The soft, sweet, preluding note of the player had touched a chord in my soul as utterly different from that which it expressed, as could by any possibility be conceived. Heart and hope were instantly paralyzed. Fear and its train, its haunting spectres of suspicion, took possession of the undefended citadel, and established guard upon its deserted outposts. I tottered to the window which I had left—I shrouded myself in the folds of the curtain, and as the strains rose, renewed and regular, I struggled to keep in my breath, listening eagerly, as if the complaining instrument could actually give utterance to the cruel mystery which I equally dreaded and desired to hear.
The air which was played was such as I had never heard before. Indeed, it could scarcely be called an air. It was the most capricious burden of mournfulness that had ever had its utterance from wo. Fancy a mute—one bereft of the divine faculty of speech, by human, not divine ministration. Fancy such a being endowed with the loftiest desires, moved by the acutest sensibilities, having already felt the pleasures of life, yet doomed to a denial of utterance, denied the language of complaint, and striving, struggling through the imperfect organs of his voice to give a name to the agony which works within him. That flute seemed to me to moan, and sob, and shiver, with some such painful mode of expression as would be permitted to the “half made-up” mortal of whom I have spoken. Its broken tones, striving and struggling, almost rising at times into a shriek, seemed of all things to complain of its own voicelessness.
And yet it had its melody—melody, to me, of the most vexing power. I should have called the strain a soliloquizing one. It certainly did not seem addressed to any ears. It wanted the continuance of apostrophe. It was capricious. Sometimes the burden fell off suddenly—broken—wholly interrupted—as if the vents had been all simultaneously and suddenly stopped. Anon, it rose again—soul-piercing if not loud—so abruptly, and with an utterance so utterly gone with wo, that you felt sure the poor heart must break with the next breath that came from the laboring and inefficient lungs. A “dying fall” succeeding, seemed to afford temporary relief. It seemed as if tears must have fallen upon the instrument, Its language grew more methodical, more subdued, but not less touching. I fancied, I felt, that, entering into the soul of the musician, I could give the very words to the sentiment which his instrument vainly strove to speak. What else but despair and utter self-abandonment was in that broken language? The full heart over-burdened, breaking, to find a vent for the feelings which it had no longer power to contain. And yet; content to break, breaking with a melancholy sort of triumph which seemed to say—
“Such a death has its own sweetness; love sanctifies the pang to its victim. It is a sort of martyrdom. He who loves truly, though he loves hopelessly, has not utterly loved in vain. The devoted heart finds a joy in the offering, though the Deity withholds his acceptance—though a sudden gust from heaven scatters abroad the rich fruits which the devotee has placed upon the despised and dishonored altar.”
Such, I fancied, was the proud language of that melancholy music. Had I been other than I was—nay, had I listened to the burden under other circumstances and in another place—I should most probably have felt nothing but sympathy for the musician. As it was, I can not describe my feelings. All my racking doubts and miseries returned. The tone of triumph which the strain conveyed wrought upon me like an indignity. It seemed to denote that “foregone conclusion” which had been my cause of apprehension so long. Could it be then that Julia was really guilty? Could she have given William Edgerton so much encouragement that triumph and exultation should still mingle with his farewell accents of despair? Ah! what fantasies preyed upon my soul; haunted the smallest movements of my mind; conjured up its spectres, and gave bitterness to its every beverage! When I thought thus of Julia, I rose cautiously from my seat, approached the bed where she was lying, and gazed steadily, though with the wildest thrill of emotion, into her face. I verily believe had she not been sleeping at that moment—sleeping beyond question—she would have shared the fate of
“The gentle lady wedded to the Moor.”