Lady Morgan

“ CHAPTER II. THERE is a dear and precious period in the life of man, which, brief as sweet, is best appreciated in recollection; when but to exist is to enjoy; when the rapid pulse throbs, wildly, with the vague delight which fills the careless heart, and when it may be truly said, “that nothing is, but what is not.”
While this rainbow hour lasted, the thorny wreath, which faith had plaited round Hilarion’s brow, was worn as cheerily, as if the rose of pleasure had glowed upon his temple. The vows he had made were ever present to his mind. The ceremonies of his religion occupied his imagination ”

“ Touched by her unresisting softness, moved by a sadness, his severity had caused, and gazing with secret admiration on the grace and loveliness of her looks and attitude, as she chased away the tears which fell on her bosom, with her long hair, “Luxima,” he said, in a tone which struggled between his secret emotion, and assumed coldness, “Luxima, why do you weep? I am not used to see a woman’s tears, save when they fall from hearts which penitence, or grief, has touched; but yours, Luxima—they fall in such tender softness: dearest daughter, have I offended you?” ”

“ A thousand times the dream of short slumbers gives her to my arms as I last beheld her. A thousand times I am awakened from a heavy unrefreshing sleep by the fancied sound of her harp and voice. There was one old Irish air she used to sing like an angel, and in the idiom of her national music sighed out certain passages with a heart-breaking thrill, that used to rend my very soul! Well, this song I cannot send from my memory; it breathes around me, it dies upon my ear, and in the weakness of emotion I weep—weep like a child. ”

“ Every thing adds to the mystic charm which breathes o’er her character and person. Abstracted in her brilliant error, absorbed in the splendid illusion of her religious dreams, believing herself the purest incarnation of the purest spirit, her elevated soul dwells not on the sensible images by which she is surrounded, but is wholly fixed upon the heaven of her own creation; and her beauty, her enthusiasm, her graces, and her genius, alike capacitate her to propagate and support the errors of which she herself is the victim. ”

“ Man was now to him an atom, and earth a speck! the collective force of his mind was directed to one sole object, but that object was—eternity! The struggle between the mortal and immortal being was over; passion no longer gave to his imagination the vision of its disappointed desires, nor love the seductive images of its frail enjoyment: the ambition of religious zeal, and the blandishments of tender emotion, no longer influenced a soul which was, in so short a space of time, to be summoned before the tribunal of its God. ”

“ He sighed heavily, and mentally exclaimed,
“Alas! her virtue derives more strength even from error, than mine from truth: she obeys her ideas of right as a Brahmin; I, as a Christian, violate and forsake mine.” He turned his eyes on Luxima, and perceived that she was now gazing with a look of exquisite fondness on him, tempered with something of melancholy and sadness.
“It is hard,” said she, “to look on thee, and yet to part with thee! but who will dare to disobey the mandate of a God, who comes in his own presence to save and to redeem us?” ”

“ Once we were everywhere, and by all, justly famed for our patriotism, ardour of affection, love of letters, skill in arms and arts, and refinement of manners; but no sooner did there arise a connexion between us and a sister country, than the reputed virtues and well-earned glory of the Irish sunk at once into oblivion: as if (continued this enthusiastic Milesian, rising from his seat with all his native vehemence,) —as if the moral world was subject to those convulsions which shake the natural to its centre, burying by a single shock the monumental splendours of countless ages. ”

“ The empires of the earth, and the genius of man; suddenly faded from his mind; he thought of Him, in whose eye empire was a speck, and man an atom; he stood self-accused, humbled, awed; and invoked the protection of Him, who reigns only in perfect love in that heart, where worldly ambition has ceased to linger, and from whence human passions have long been exterminated.
The vessel in which he had embarked, was among the last to reach the port of Goa; and the reputation of his sanctity, and the history of his rank, his genius, and his mission, had preceded his arrival. ”

“ Luxima revived, raised her eyes to those which were bent in agony and fondness over her, and on her look of suffering, and smile of sadness, beamed the ardour of a soul whose warm, tender, and imperishable feelings were still triumphant over even pain and death.
“Luxima!” exclaimed the Missionary, in a melancholy transport, and pressing her to a heart which a feeble hope cheered and re-animated, “Luxima, my beloved! wilt thou not struggle with death? wilt thou not save me from the horror of knowing, that it is for me thou diest? ”

“ But it was on the altar, from its peculiar position, that the beams fell with brightest lustre; and the Missionary, as he approached, thought that he beheld on its rude steps, a vision brighter than his holiest trance had e’er been blessed with; for nothing human ever looked so fair, so motionless, or so seraphic. His eye was dazzled; his imagination was bewildered; he invoked his patron saint, and crossed himself; he approached, and gazed, and yet he doubted; but it was no spirit of an higher sphere; no bright creation of religious ecstacy:—it was Luxima! ”

“ I cannot well tell you what the Lady Glorvina is, for she is like nothing upon the face of God’s creation but herself. I do not know how it comes to pass, that every mother’s soul of us loves her better nor the Prince; ay, by my conscience, and fear her too; for well may they fear her, on the score of her great learning, being brought up by Father John, the chaplain, and spouting Latin faster nor the priest of the parish: and we may well love her, for she is a saint upon earth, and a great physicianer to boot; curing all the sick and maimed for twenty miles round. ”

“ It was Luxima! At the rustling of his robe among the trees, she started, turned round, and her eyes fell upon his figure, while her own was still fixed in the graceful attitude of devotion. Silently gazing, in wonder, upon each other, they stood finely opposed, the noblest specimens of the human species, as it appears in the most opposite regions of the earth; she; like the East, lovely and luxuriant; he, like the West, lofty and commanding: the one, radiant in all the lustre, attractive in all the softness which distinguishes her native regions ”

“ But the evil which always exists, and that against which it is most difficult to guard, exists within ourselves, Luxima.”
“Thou sayest it,” returned Luxima, “and therefore must it be true; and yet, methinks, in us at least no evil can exist—look around thee, Father; behold those hills which encompass us on every side, and which, seeming to shut out the universe, exclude all the evil passions by which it is agitated and disordered; and since absent from all human intercourse, our feelings relate only to each other, surely in us at least no evil can exist.” ”

“ Haply thou knowest this Christian; perhaps thou lovest him! as it is most certain that he loves thee. I also love thee: judge then between us. With me thou mayst one day reign upon the throne of India, and yet become the empress of thine own people; what he can proffer thee, besides his love, I know not.”
“Besides his love!” faintly repeated Luxima; and a sigh, which came from her heart, lingered long and trembling on her lips, while she turned her full eyes upon the Missionary.
“Ah! thou lovest him then?” demanded the Prince, in strong and unsubdued emotion. ”

“ As this quotation was meant all for Glorvina, I looked earnestly at her as I repeated it. A crimson torrent rushed to her cheek, and convinced me that she felt the full force of a sentiment so applicable to us both.
“And why,” said I, addressing her in a low voice, “was Rosseau excluded from the sacred coalition with Ossian, Collins, your twilight harp, and winter rose?”
Glorvina made no reply; but turned full on me her “eyes of dewy light.” Mine almost sunk beneath the melting ardour of their soul-beaming o o glance.
Oh! child of Nature! child of genius and of passion! ”

“ What various epochas in time; what various states of human power and human intellect, did not ye blend and harmonize, in one great picture! What a powerful influence were not your wildness and your solemnity, your grandeur and your gloom, calculated to produce upon the mind of religious enthusiasm, upon the spirit of genius and melancholy; upon a character, formed of all the higher elements of human nature, upon such a mind, upon such a genius, upon such a character as thine, Hilarion! ”

“ Luxima, even yet I might spare myself and thee a life so cold, so sad and dreary, that conscious virtue and true religion only can support us through it,—even yet, escaping from every eye, save Heaven’s, we might together fly to the pathless wilds of these delicious regions, and live in sinful bliss, the commoners of nature:—But, Luxima, the soul of him who loves, and who resists thee, is formed of such a temper, that it can taste no perfect joy in weakness or in crime. ”

“ This rosary was fastened on my arm by a parent’s tender hand, and bathed in Nature’s holiest dew—a parent’s tender tears: hold not the Christians relics, such as these, precious and sacred? Thou hast called thy religion the religion of the heart; will it not then respect the heart’s best feelings?” A deep convulsive sob interrupted her words; all the ties she had broken pressed upon her bosom, and the affections of habit, those close-knit and imperishable affections, interwoven, by time and circumstance, with the very life-nerves of the heart, bore down for the moment, every other passion. ”

“ I am to become an object of popular favour and royal esteem; and all this time, in the fancied triumph of his parental hopes, he sees not that the heart of their object is breaking.
Were you to hear him! were you to see him. What a father! what a man! Such intelligence—such abilities. A mind so dignified—a heart so tender! and still retaining all the ardour, all the enthusiasm of youth. In what terms he spoke of my elected bride! He indeed dwelt chiefly on her personal charms, and the simplicity of her unmodified character. Alas! I once found both united to genius and sensibility. ”

“ The Missionary bore her in his feeble clasp to the base of a rock, which afforded them some shelter from the rays of the sun. He would have spoken to her of the Heaven to which her soul seemed already taking its flight; he would have assured her that his spirit would soon mingle with hers, and that an eternal union awaited them: but, in a moment, when love was strengthened by mutual suffering, and despair gave force to passion, and when each at once only lived and died for the other, words were poor vehicles to feelings so acute ”

“ His heart throbbed with a violence new to its sober pulse, when he perceived Luxima standing beneath the shadowy branches of a cannella-alba, or cinnamon-tree, looking like the deity of the stream, in whose lucid wave her elegant and picturesque form was reflected. The bright buds of the water-loving lotos were twined round her arms and bosom: she seemed fresh from her morning worship, and the enthusiasm of devotion still threw its light upon her features; but when the Missionary stood before her, this devotional expression was lost in the splendour of her illuminated countenance. ”

“ Luxima!” interrupted he, in wild and uncontrollable emotion, nor daring to meet the look which accompanied words so dangerous, “cease, as you value my eternal happiness. You know not what you do, nor what you say. You are confounding ideas which should be eternally distinct and separate: you deceive yourself, and you destroy me! The innocence of your nature, your years, your sex, the purity of your feelings, and your soul, must save you; but I! I!—Fatal creature! it must not be! Farewell, Luxima!—O Luxima! on earth at least we meet no more!” ”

“ Two hours had elapsed before the venerable priest again sought the two objects dearest to his heart; he found Glorvina overwhelmed with soft emotion, her cheek covered with blushes, and her hand clasped in that of the interesting invalid, whose flushing colour and animated eyes spoke the return of health and happiness; not indeed confirmed, but fed by sanguine hope; such hope as the heart of a mourning child could give to the object of her heart’s first passion, in that era of filial grief, when sorrow is mellowed by reason, and soothed by religion into a tender but not ungracious melancholy. ”

“ In a rude and lonesome cavern, faintly lighted up by the rays of the moon, and echoing to the moaning murmurs of the ocean’s tide, lay that Luxima, who once, like the delicious shade of her native region, seemed created only for bliss, and formed only for delight; those eyes, in whose glance the spirit of devotion, and the enthusiasm of tenderness, mingled their brilliancy and their softness, were now dim and beamless; and that bosom, where love lay enthroned beneath the vestal’s veil, was stained with the lifeblood which issued from its almost exhausted veins. ”

“ Luxima!” exclaimed the Missionary, with emotion, “this rhapsody, glowing and tender as it is, is not the language of religion, but the eloquence of an ardent enthusiasm; it bears not the pure and sacred stamp of holy truth, but the gloss and colouring of human feeling. O my daughter! true religion, pure and simple as it is, is yet awful and sublime—to be approached with fear and trembling, and to be cultivated, not in fanciful and tender intimacy, but in spirit and in truth; by sacrifices of the earthly passions, and the human feeling ”

“ He moved slowly on, in all the majesty of religious meekness: awful in his humility—commanding in his subjection: his finely formed head, unshaded, even by his cowl; his naked feet unshrinking from the sharpness of the stony pavement; the peace of Heaven stamped on his countenance; and the cross he had taken up, pressed to his bosom. All that could touch in the saint, or impose in the man, breathed around him: the sublimity of religion, and the splendour of beauty, the purity of faith, and the dignity of manhood ”

“ How readily the mind adopts the phraseology of habit, when the sentiment it once clothed no longer exists. Would that my past pursuits were even in recollection, the aspect of enjoyments. But even my memory has lost its character of energy, and the past, like the present, appears one unwearied scence of chill and vapid existence. No sweet point of reflection seizes on the recollective powers. No actual joy woos my heart’s participation, and no prospect of future felicity glows on the distant vista of life, or awakens the quick throb of hope and expectation; all is cold, sullen and dreary. ”

“ To these humane offers, Luxima replied only by tears: an outcast herself, the unconquerable prejudice and religious pride of the cast she had forfeited, still operated with unabated influence on her mind, and she shuddered when she beheld the Missionary stretch out his hands and press in their grateful clasp those of the unfortunate and benevolent pariah: he had been the saviour of the life of her he loved; for it was the music of his sylvan reed, which had seduced the serpent from his prey, and the point of his spear was still red with the blood of the reptile he had destroyed. ”

“ It is I, I alone, who should be miserable in being weak. Created to feel, thou dost but fulfil thy destiny, and in thee nature contemns the false vow by which superstition bound thee to thy imaginary god. In thee it is no crime to love! in me, it is what I abhor no less than crime—it is sin, it is shame, it is weakness. It is I alone who should weep and tremble; it is I alone who have fallen, and whose misery and whose debasement demand pity and support. Speak to me then, my too well beloved disciple; solace me by words, for thy looks are terrific. O Luxima! ”

“ Nothing can be more delightful than the evenings passed in this vengolf—-this hall of Woden; where my sweet Glorvina hovers round us, like one of the beautiful valkyries of the Gothic paradise, who bestow on the spirit of the departed warrior that heaven he eagerly rushes on death to obtain. Sometimes she accompanies the old bard on her harp, or with her voice; and frequently as she sits at her wheel (for she is often engaged in this simple and primitive avocation,) endeavours to lure, her father to speak on those subjects most interesting to him or to me ”

“ Luxima, what means this heart-rending, this fearful emotion? Look at me! Speak to me! Let me again meet thine eye, and hang upon thy voice—fatal eye and fatal voice—my destruction and my felicity! still I woo and fear the return of their magic influence. Luxima, if Heaven forbids our communion in happiness, does it also deny us a sympathy in sorrow? Art thou to suffer alone? or rather, are my miseries to be doubled in my ignorance of thine? Oh! my beloved, if conscience speak in words of terror to thy soul, what has not mine to fear? ”

“ Yesterday, in the absence of the priest, I read to her as she drew. After a thousand little symptoms of impatience and weariness—“here,” said she, yawning—“here is a straight line I can make nothing of—do you know, Mr. Mortimer, I never could draw a perpendicular line in my life. See now my pencil will go into a curve or an angle; so you must guide my hand, or I shall——”
I “guide her hand to draw a straight line!”
“Nay then,” said I, with the ostentatious gravity of a pedagogue master, “I may as well do the drawing myself.”
“Well then,” said she, playfully, “do it yourself.” ”

“ He threw himself on the dewy earth, and felt something like a horrible enjoyment, in giving himself up, without reservation, to pangs of love betrayed, of faith violated, of a jealousy, whose fury rose in proportion to the loveliness of its object, and to the force and ardour of the character on which it operated. His memory, faithful only to the events which aimed at his peace, gave back to his imagination Luxima in all her bewitching tenderness, in all the seduction of her seeming innocence: he felt the touch of her hand, he met the fondness of her look ”

“ The priest transfixed with pity and amazement let fall the sacred volume from his hands. Emotions of an indescribable nature mingled in the countenance of the bridegroom. The priest was the first to dissolve the spell, and to recover a comparative presence of mind; he descended from the altar and endeavoured to raise and extricate the lifeless Glorvina from the arms of her unhappy lover, but the effort was vain. Clasping her to his heart closer than ever, the almost frantic M———— exclaimed, “She is mine! mine in the eye of heaven! and no human power can part us!” ”

“ The Missionary replied with a deep sigh, “You would do well, my daughter; it is pity only he deserves.” Then, after a long pause, he said firmly, “Luxima, I came hither this evening to commune with thee upon that great subject, which should alone unite us; but the mysterious emotion in which I found thee wrapt, distracted thoughts, which are not yet, I fear, all Heaven’s; nor did thy little story, dearest daughter, serve to tranquillize or sooth them; for, in the mirror of another’s faults, man, weak and erring, may still expect to see the sad reflection of his own. ”

“ If I recollect right, somebody has defined genius to be ‘the various powers of a strong mind directed to one point:’ making it the result of combined force, not the vital source, whence all intellectual powers flow; in which light, the genius of Glorvina has ever appeared to me as a beam from heaven, an emanation of divine intelligence, whose nutritive warmth cherishes into existence that richness and variety of talent which wants only a little care to rear it to perfection. ”

“ But he knew love only as a man, and could not comprehend its nature in the heart of a woman:—with him the existing moment was every thing, but her affection took eternity itself into its compass; and though she could have more easily parted with her life than with her lover, yet she did not hesitate to sacrifice her felicity to his safety, to his glory, and to the hope of that eternal reunion which might await two souls, which crime had not yet degraded; for her tolerant, but zealous, religion, shut not the gates of Heaven against all who sought it by a different path ”

“ Surely, virtue would not be the less attractive for being united to genius and the graces.
But to return to the never-to-be-forgotten first of May! Early in the evening the Prince, his daughter, the priest, the bard, the old nurse, and indeed all the household of Inismore, adjourned to the vale, which being the only level ground on the peninsula, is always appropriated to the sports of the rustic neighbours. It was impossible I should enter this vale without emotion; and when I beheld it crowded with the vulgar throng, I felt as if it were profanation for the
“Sole of unblest feet!” ”

“ As he spoke, he cast a look on the cross, which hung from his rosary; but it was still humid with tears, which love had shed, it still breathed the odours of the tresses the wind had wafted on its consecrated surface. He shuddered, and let it fall, and groaned, and covered his eyes with his robe, as if he sought to shut out the light of the Heaven he had offended. When again he raised his head, he perceived that Luxima was moving slowly towards him, not, as she had left him, in delirium, and in tears; but in all the dazzling lustre of some newly-awakened enthusiasm ”

“ He continued brushing an intrusive tear from his eye; and the next moment whistling a lively air, he advanced to his cow, talking to her in Irish, in a soothing tone, and presenting her with such wild flowers and blades of grass as the scanty vegetation of the bog afforded, turned round to me with a smile of self-satisfaction and said, “One can better suffer themselves a thousand times over, than see one’s poor dumb beast want: it is next, please your Honour, to seeing one’s child in want—God help him who has witnessed both!” ”