CHAPTER III.
THE stars still shone brightly when I awoke, and Taurus high in thesouthern heaven shewed that it was midnight. I awoke from disturbed dreams.Methought I had been invited to Timon's last feast; I came with keenappetite, the covers were removed, the hot water sent up its unsatisfyingsteams, while I fled before the anger of the host, who assumed the form ofRaymond; while to my diseased fancy, the vessels hurled by him after me,were surcharged with fetid vapour, and my friend's shape, altered by athousand distortions, expanded into a gigantic phantom, bearing on its browthe sign of pestilence. The growing shadow rose and rose, filling, and thenseeming to endeavour to burst beyond, the adamantine vault that bent over,sustaining and enclosing the world. The night-mare became torture; with astrong effort I threw off sleep, and recalled reason to her wontedfunctions. My first thought was Perdita; to her I must return; her I mustsupport, drawing such food from despair as might best sustain her woundedheart; recalling her from the wild excesses of grief, by the austere lawsof duty, and the soft tenderness of regret.
The position of the stars was my only guide. I turned from the awful ruinof the Golden City, and, after great exertion, succeeded in extricatingmyself from its enclosure. I met a company of soldiers outside the walls; Iborrowed a horse from one of them, and hastened to my sister. Theappearance of the plain was changed during this short interval; theencampment was broken up; the relics of the disbanded army met in smallcompanies here and there; each face was clouded; every gesture spokeastonishment and dismay.
With an heavy heart I entered the palace, and stood fearful to advance, tospeak, to look. In the midst of the hall was Perdita; she sat on the marblepavement, her head fallen on her bosom, her hair dishevelled, her fingerstwined busily one within the other; she was pale as marble, and everyfeature was contracted by agony. She perceived me, and looked upenquiringly; her half glance of hope was misery; the words died before Icould articulate them; I felt a ghastly smile wrinkle my lips. Sheunderstood my gesture; again her head fell; again her fingers workedrestlessly. At last I recovered speech, but my voice terrified her; thehapless girl had understood my look, and for worlds she would not that thetale of her heavy misery should have been shaped out and confirmed by hard,irrevocable words. Nay, she seemed to wish to distract my thoughts from thesubject: she rose from the floor: "Hush!" she said, whisperingly; "aftermuch weeping, Clara sleeps; we must not disturb her." She seated herselfthen on the same ottoman where I had left her in the morning resting on thebeating heart of her Raymond; I dared not approach her, but sat at adistant corner, watching her starting and nervous gestures. At length, inan abrupt manner she asked, "Where is he?"
"O, fear not," she continued, "fear not that I should entertain hope! Yettell me, have you found him? To have him once more in my arms, to see him,however changed, is all I desire. Though Constantinople be heaped above himas a tomb, yet I must find him--then cover us with the city's weight,with a mountain piled above--I care not, so that one grave hold Raymondand his Perdita." Then weeping, she clung to me: "Take me to him," shecried, "unkind Lionel, why do you keep me here? Of myself I cannot find him--but you know where he lies--lead me thither."
At first these agonizing plaints filled me with intolerable compassion. Butsoon I endeavoured to extract patience for her from the ideas shesuggested. I related my adventures of the night, my endeavours to find ourlost one, and my disappointment. Turning her thoughts this way, I gave theman object which rescued them from insanity. With apparent calmness shediscussed with me the probable spot where he might be found, and plannedthe means we should use for that purpose. Then hearing of my fatigue andabstinence, she herself brought me food. I seized the favourable moment,and endeavoured to awaken in her something beyond the killing torpor ofgrief. As I spoke, my subject carried me away; deep admiration; grief, theoffspring of truest affection, the overflowing of a heart bursting withsympathy for all that had been great and sublime in the career of myfriend, inspired me as I poured forth the praises of Raymond.
"Alas, for us," I cried, "who have lost this latest honour of the world!Beloved Raymond! He is gone to the nations of the dead; he has become oneof those, who render the dark abode of the obscure grave illustrious bydwelling there. He has journied on the road that leads to it, and joinedthe mighty of soul who went before him. When the world was in its infancydeath must have been terrible, and man left his friends and kindred todwell, a solitary stranger, in an unknown country. But now, he who diesfinds many companions gone before to prepare for his reception. The greatof past ages people it, the exalted hero of our own days is counted amongits inhabitants, while life becomes doubly 'the desart and the solitude.'
"What a noble creature was Raymond, the first among the men of our time. Bythe grandeur of his conceptions, the graceful daring of his actions, by hiswit and beauty, he won and ruled the minds of all. Of one only fault hemight have been accused; but his death has cancelled that. I have heard himcalled inconstant of purpose--when he deserted, for the sake of love, thehope of sovereignty, and when he abdicated the protectorship of England,men blamed his infirmity of purpose. Now his death has crowned his life,and to the end of time it will be remembered, that he devoted himself, awilling victim, to the glory of Greece. Such was his choice: he expected todie. He foresaw that he should leave this cheerful earth, the lightsomesky, and thy love, Perdita; yet he neither hesitated or turned back, goingright onward to his mark of fame. While the earth lasts, his actions willbe recorded with praise. Grecian maidens will in devotion strew flowers onhis tomb, and make the air around it resonant with patriotic hymns, inwhich his name will find high record."
I saw the features of Perdita soften; the sternness of grief yielded totenderness--I continued:--"Thus to honour him, is the sacred duty ofhis survivors. To make his name even as an holy spot of ground, enclosingit from all hostile attacks by our praise, shedding on it the blossoms oflove and regret, guarding it from decay, and bequeathing it untainted toposterity. Such is the duty of his friends. A dearer one belongs to you,Perdita, mother of his child. Do you remember in her infancy, with whattransport you beheld Clara, recognizing in her the united being of yourselfand Raymond; joying to view in this living temple a manifestation of youreternal loves. Even such is she still. You say that you have lost Raymond.O, no!--yet he lives with you and in you there. From him she sprung,flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone--and not, as heretofore, are youcontent to trace in her downy cheek and delicate limbs, an affinity toRaymond, but in her enthusiastic affections, in the sweet qualities of hermind, you may still find him living, the good, the great, the beloved. Beit your care to foster this similarity--be it your care to render herworthy of him, so that, when she glory in her origin, she take not shamefor what she is."
I could perceive that, when I recalled my sister's thoughts to her dutiesin life, she did not listen with the same patience as before. She appearedto suspect a plan of consolation on my part, from which she, cherishing hernew-born grief, revolted. "You talk of the future," she said, "while thepresent is all to me. Let me find the earthly dwelling of my beloved; letus rescue that from common dust, so that in times to come men may point tothe sacred tomb, and name it his--then to other thoughts, and a newcourse of life, or what else fate, in her cruel tyranny, may have markedout for me."
After a short repose I prepared to leave her, that I might endeavour toaccomplish her wish. In the mean time we were joined by Clara, whose pallidcheek and scared look shewed the deep impression grief had made on heryoung mind. She seemed to be full of something to which she could not givewords; but, seizing an opportunity afforded by Perdita's absence, shepreferred to me an earnest prayer, that I would take her within view of thegate at which her father had entered Constantinople. She promised to commitno extravagance, to be docile, and immediately to return. I could notrefuse; for Clara was not an ordinary child; her sensibility andintelligence seemed already to have endowed her with the rights ofwomanhood. With her therefore, before me on my horse, attended only by theservant w
ho was to re-conduct her, we rode to the Top Kapou. We found aparty of soldiers gathered round it. They were listening. "They are humancries," said one: "More like the howling of a dog," replied another; andagain they bent to catch the sound of regular distant moans, which issuedfrom the precincts of the ruined city. "That, Clara," I said, "is the gate,that the street which yestermorn your father rode up." Whatever Clara'sintention had been in asking to be brought hither, it was balked by thepresence of the soldiers. With earnest gaze she looked on the labyrinth ofsmoking piles which had been a city, and then expressed her readiness toreturn home. At this moment a melancholy howl struck on our ears; it wasrepeated; "Hark!" cried Clara, "he is there; that is Florio, my father'sdog." It seemed to me impossible that she could recognise the sound, butshe persisted in her assertion till she gained credit with the crowd about.At least it would be a benevolent action to rescue the sufferer, whetherhuman or brute, from the desolation of the town; so, sending Clara back toher home, I again entered Constantinople. Encouraged by the impunityattendant on my former visit, several soldiers who had made a part ofRaymond's body guard, who had loved him, and sincerely mourned his loss,accompanied me.
It is impossible to conjecture the strange enchainment of events whichrestored the lifeless form of my friend to our hands. In that part of thetown where the fire had most raged the night before, and which now layquenched, black and cold, the dying dog of Raymond crouched beside themutilated form of its lord. At such a time sorrow has no voice; affliction,tamed by it is very vehemence, is mute. The poor animal recognised me,licked my hand, crept close to its lord, and died. He had been evidentlythrown from his horse by some falling ruin, which had crushed his head, anddefaced his whole person. I bent over the body, and took in my hand theedge of his cloak, less altered in appearance than the human frame itclothed. I pressed it to my lips, while the rough soldiers gathered around,mourning over this worthiest prey of death, as if regret and endlesslamentation could re-illumine the extinguished spark, or call to itsshattered prison-house of flesh the liberated spirit. Yesterday those limbswere worth an universe; they then enshrined a transcendant power, whoseintents, words, and actions were worthy to be recorded in letters of gold;now the superstition of affection alone could give value to the shatteredmechanism, which, incapable and clod-like, no more resembled Raymond, thanthe fallen rain is like the former mansion of cloud in which it climbed thehighest skies, and gilded by the sun, attracted all eyes, and satiated thesense by its excess of beauty.
Such as he had now become, such as was his terrene vesture, defaced andspoiled, we wrapt it in our cloaks, and lifting the burthen in our arms,bore it from this city of the dead. The question arose as to where weshould deposit him. In our road to the palace, we passed through the Greekcemetery; here on a tablet of black marble I caused him to be laid; thecypresses waved high above, their death-like gloom accorded with his stateof nothingness. We cut branches of the funereal trees and placed them overhim, and on these again his sword. I left a guard to protect this treasureof dust; and ordered perpetual torches to be burned around.
When I returned to Perdita, I found that she had already been informed ofthe success of my undertaking. He, her beloved, the sole and eternal objectof her passionate tenderness, was restored her. Such was the maniaclanguage of her enthusiasm. What though those limbs moved not, and thoselips could no more frame modulated accents of wisdom and love! What thoughlike a weed flung from the fruitless sea, he lay the prey of corruption--still that was the form she had caressed, those the lips that meeting hers,had drank the spirit of love from the commingling breath; that was theearthly mechanism of dissoluble clay she had called her own. True, shelooked forward to another life; true, the burning spirit of love seemed toher unextinguishable throughout eternity. Yet at this time, with humanfondness, she clung to all that her human senses permitted her to see andfeel to be a part of Raymond.
Pale as marble, clear and beaming as that, she heard my tale, and enquiredconcerning the spot where he had been deposited. Her features had lost thedistortion of grief; her eyes were brightened, her very person seemeddilated; while the excessive whiteness and even transparency of her skin,and something hollow in her voice, bore witness that not tranquillity, butexcess of excitement, occasioned the treacherous calm that settled on hercountenance. I asked her where he should be buried. She replied, "AtAthens; even at the Athens which he loved. Without the town, on theacclivity of Hymettus, there is a rocky recess which he pointed out to meas the spot where he would wish to repose."
My own desire certainly was that he should not be removed from the spotwhere he now lay. But her wish was of course to be complied with; and Ientreated her to prepare without delay for our departure.
Behold now the melancholy train cross the flats of Thrace, and wind throughthe defiles, and over the mountains of Macedonia, coast the clear waves ofthe Peneus, cross the Larissean plain, pass the straits of Thermopylae, andascending in succession Oeta and Parnassus, descend to the fertile plain ofAthens. Women bear with resignation these long drawn ills, but to a man'simpatient spirit, the slow motion of our cavalcade, the melancholy reposewe took at noon, the perpetual presence of the pall, gorgeous though itwas, that wrapt the rifled casket which had contained Raymond, themonotonous recurrence of day and night, unvaried by hope or change, all thecircumstances of our march were intolerable. Perdita, shut up in herself,spoke little. Her carriage was closed; and, when we rested, she sat leaningher pale cheek on her white cold hand, with eyes fixed on the ground,indulging thoughts which refused communication or sympathy.
We descended from Parnassus, emerging from its many folds, and passedthrough Livadia on our road to Attica. Perdita would not enter Athens; butreposing at Marathon on the night of our arrival, conducted me on thefollowing day, to the spot selected by her as the treasure house ofRaymond's dear remains. It was in a recess near the head of the ravine tothe south of Hymettus. The chasm, deep, black, and hoary, swept from thesummit to the base; in the fissures of the rock myrtle underwood grew andwild thyme, the food of many nations of bees; enormous crags protruded intothe cleft, some beetling over, others rising perpendicularly from it. Atthe foot of this sublime chasm, a fertile laughing valley reached from seato sea, and beyond was spread the blue Aegean, sprinkled with islands, thelight waves glancing beneath the sun. Close to the spot on which we stood,was a solitary rock, high and conical, which, divided on every side fromthe mountain, seemed a nature-hewn pyramid; with little labour this blockwas reduced to a perfect shape; the narrow cell was scooped out beneath inwhich Raymond was placed, and a short inscription, carved in the livingstone, recorded the name of its tenant, the cause and aera of his death.
Every thing was accomplished with speed under my directions. I agreed toleave the finishing and guardianship of the tomb to the head of thereligious establishment at Athens, and by the end of October prepared formy return to England. I mentioned this to Perdita. It was painful to appearto drag her from the last scene that spoke of her lost one; but to lingerhere was vain, and my very soul was sick with its yearning to rejoin myIdris and her babes. In reply, my sister requested me to accompany her thefollowing evening to the tomb of Raymond. Some days had passed since I hadvisited the spot. The path to it had been enlarged, and steps hewn in therock led us less circuitously than before, to the spot itself; the platformon which the pyramid stood was enlarged, and looking towards the south, ina recess overshadowed by the straggling branches of a wild fig-tree, I sawfoundations dug, and props and rafters fixed, evidently the commencement ofa cottage; standing on its unfinished threshold, the tomb was at ourright-hand, the whole ravine, and plain, and azure sea immediately beforeus; the dark rocks received a glow from the descending sun, which glancedalong the cultivated valley, and dyed in purple and orange the placidwaves; we sat on a rocky elevation, and I gazed with rapture on thebeauteous panorama of living and changeful colours, which varied andenhanced the graces of earth and ocean.
"Did I not do right," said Perdita, "in having my loved
one conveyedhither? Hereafter this will be the cynosure of Greece. In such a spot deathloses half its terrors, and even the inanimate dust appears to partake ofthe spirit of beauty which hallows this region. Lionel, he sleeps there;that is the grave of Raymond, he whom in my youth I first loved; whom myheart accompanied in days of separation and anger; to whom I am now joinedfor ever. Never--mark me--never will I leave this spot. Methinks hisspirit remains here as well as that dust, which, uncommunicable though itbe, is more precious in its nothingness than aught else widowed earthclasps to her sorrowing bosom. The myrtle bushes, the thyme, the littlecyclamen, which peep from the fissures of the rock, all the produce of theplace, bear affinity to him; the light that invests the hills participatesin his essence, and sky and mountains, sea and valley, are imbued by thepresence of his spirit. I will live and die here!
"Go you to England, Lionel; return to sweet Idris and dearest Adrian;return, and let my orphan girl be as a child of your own in your house.Look on me as dead; and truly if death be a mere change of state, I amdead. This is another world, from that which late I inhabited, from thatwhich is now your home. Here I hold communion only with the has been, andto come. Go you to England, and leave me where alone I can consent to dragout the miserable days which I must still live."
A shower of tears terminated her sad harangue. I had expected someextravagant proposition, and remained silent awhile, collecting my thoughtsthat I might the better combat her fanciful scheme. "You cherish drearythoughts, my dear Perdita," I said, "nor do I wonder that for a time yourbetter reason should be influenced by passionate grief and a disturbedimagination. Even I am in love with this last home of Raymond's;nevertheless we must quit it."
"I expected this," cried Perdita; "I supposed that you would treat me as amad, foolish girl. But do not deceive yourself; this cottage is built by myorder; and here I shall remain, until the hour arrives when I may share hishappier dwelling."
"My dearest girl!"
"And what is there so strange in my design? I might have deceived you; Imight have talked of remaining here only a few months; in your anxiety toreach Windsor you would have left me, and without reproach or contention, Imight have pursued my plan. But I disdained the artifice; or rather in mywretchedness it was my only consolation to pour out my heart to you, mybrother, my only friend. You will not dispute with me? You know how wilfulyour poor, misery-stricken sister is. Take my girl with you; wean her fromsights and thoughts of sorrow; let infantine hilarity revisit her heart,and animate her eyes; so could it never be, were she near me; it is farbetter for all of you that you should never see me again. For myself, Iwill not voluntarily seek death, that is, I will not, while I can commandmyself; and I can here. But drag me from this country; and my power of selfcontrol vanishes, nor can I answer for the violence my agony of grief maylead me to commit."
"You clothe your meaning, Perdita," I replied, "in powerful words, yet thatmeaning is selfish and unworthy of you. You have often agreed with me thatthere is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improveourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others: and now, in the veryprime of life, you desert your principles, and shut yourself up in uselesssolitude. Will you think of Raymond less at Windsor, the scene of yourearly happiness? Will you commune less with his departed spirit, while youwatch over and cultivate the rare excellence of his child? You have beensadly visited; nor do I wonder that a feeling akin to insanity should driveyou to bitter and unreasonable imaginings. But a home of love awaits you inyour native England. My tenderness and affection must soothe you; thesociety of Raymond's friends will be of more solace than these drearyspeculations. We will all make it our first care, our dearest task, tocontribute to your happiness."
Perdita shook her head; "If it could be so," she replied, "I were much inthe wrong to disdain your offers. But it is not a matter of choice; I canlive here only. I am a part of this scene; each and all its properties area part of me. This is no sudden fancy; I live by it. The knowledge that Iam here, rises with me in the morning, and enables me to endure the light;it is mingled with my food, which else were poison; it walks, it sleepswith me, for ever it accompanies me. Here I may even cease to repine, andmay add my tardy consent to the decree which has taken him from me. Hewould rather have died such a death, which will be recorded in history toendless time, than have lived to old age unknown, unhonoured. Nor can Idesire better, than, having been the chosen and beloved of his heart, here,in youth's prime, before added years can tarnish the best feelings of mynature, to watch his tomb, and speedily rejoin him in his blessed repose.
"So much, my dearest Lionel, I have said, wishing to persuade you that I doright. If you are unconvinced, I can add nothing further by way ofargument, and I can only declare my fixed resolve. I stay here; force onlycan remove me. Be it so; drag me away--I return; confine me, imprison me,still I escape, and come here. Or would my brother rather devote theheart-broken Perdita to the straw and chains of a maniac, than suffer herto rest in peace beneath the shadow of His society, in this my own selectedand beloved recess?"--
All this appeared to me, I own, methodized madness. I imagined, that it wasmy imperative duty to take her from scenes that thus forcibly reminded herof her loss. Nor did I doubt, that in the tranquillity of our family circleat Windsor, she would recover some degree of composure, and in the end, ofhappiness. My affection for Clara also led me to oppose these fond dreamsof cherished grief; her sensibility had already been too much excited; herinfant heedlessness too soon exchanged for deep and anxious thought. Thestrange and romantic scheme of her mother, might confirm and perpetuate thepainful view of life, which had intruded itself thus early on hercontemplation.
On returning home, the captain of the steam packet with whom I had agreedto sail, came to tell me, that accidental circumstances hastened hisdeparture, and that, if I went with him, I must come on board at five onthe following morning. I hastily gave my consent to this arrangement, andas hastily formed a plan through which Perdita should be forced to becomemy companion. I believe that most people in my situation would have actedin the same manner. Yet this consideration does not, or rather did not inafter time, diminish the reproaches of my conscience. At the moment, I feltconvinced that I was acting for the best, and that all I did was right andeven necessary.
I sat with Perdita and soothed her, by my seeming assent to her wildscheme. She received my concurrence with pleasure, and a thousand timesover thanked her deceiving, deceitful brother. As night came on, herspirits, enlivened by my unexpected concession, regained an almostforgotten vivacity. I pretended to be alarmed by the feverish glow in hercheek; I entreated her to take a composing draught; I poured out themedicine, which she took docilely from me. I watched her as she drank it.Falsehood and artifice are in themselves so hateful, that, though I stillthought I did right, a feeling of shame and guilt came painfully upon me. Ileft her, and soon heard that she slept soundly under the influence of theopiate I had administered. She was carried thus unconscious on board; theanchor weighed, and the wind being favourable, we stood far out to sea;with all the canvas spread, and the power of the engine to assist, wescudded swiftly and steadily through the chafed element.
It was late in the day before Perdita awoke, and a longer time elapsedbefore recovering from the torpor occasioned by the laudanum, she perceivedher change of situation. She started wildly from her couch, and flew to thecabin window. The blue and troubled sea sped past the vessel, and wasspread shoreless around: the sky was covered by a rack, which in its swiftmotion shewed how speedily she was borne away. The creaking of the masts,the clang of the wheels, the tramp above, all persuaded her that she wasalready far from the shores of Greece.--"Where are we?" she cried, "whereare we going?"--
The attendant whom I had stationed to watch her, replied, "to England."--
"And my brother?"--
"Is on deck, Madam."
"Unkind! unkind!" exclaimed the poor victim, as with a deep sigh she lookedon the waste of waters. Then without further remark, she
threw herself onher couch, and closing her eyes remained motionless; so that but for thedeep sighs that burst from her, it would have seemed that she slept.
As soon as I heard that she had spoken, I sent Clara to her, that the sightof the lovely innocent might inspire gentle and affectionate thoughts. Butneither the presence of her child, nor a subsequent visit from me, couldrouse my sister. She looked on Clara with a countenance of woful meaning,but she did not speak. When I appeared, she turned away, and in reply to myenquiries, only said, "You know not what you have done!"--I trusted thatthis sullenness betokened merely the struggle between disappointment andnatural affection, and that in a few days she would be reconciled to herfate.
When night came on, she begged that Clara might sleep in a separate cabin.Her servant, however, remained with her. About midnight she spoke to thelatter, saying that she had had a bad dream, and bade her go to herdaughter, and bring word whether she rested quietly. The woman obeyed.
The breeze, that had flagged since sunset, now rose again. I was on deck,enjoying our swift progress. The quiet was disturbed only by the rush ofwaters as they divided before the steady keel, the murmur of the movelessand full sails, the wind whistling in the shrouds, and the regular motionof the engine. The sea was gently agitated, now shewing a white crest, andnow resuming an uniform hue; the clouds had disappeared; and dark etherclipt the broad ocean, in which the constellations vainly sought theiraccustomed mirror. Our rate could not have been less than eight knots.
Suddenly I heard a splash in the sea. The sailors on watch rushed to theside of the vessel, with the cry--some one gone overboard. "It is notfrom deck," said the man at the helm, "something has been thrown from theaft cabin." A call for the boat to be lowered was echoed from the deck. Irushed into my sister's cabin; it was empty.
With sails abaft, the engine stopt, the vessel remained unwillinglystationary, until, after an hour's search, my poor Perdita was brought onboard. But no care could re-animate her, no medicine cause her dear eyes toopen, and the blood to flow again from her pulseless heart. One clenchedhand contained a slip of paper, on which was written, "To Athens." Toensure her removal thither, and prevent the irrecoverable loss of her bodyin the wide sea, she had had the precaution to fasten a long shawl roundher waist, and again to the staunchions of the cabin window. She haddrifted somewhat under the keel of the vessel, and her being out of sightoccasioned the delay in finding her. And thus the ill-starred girl died avictim to my senseless rashness. Thus, in early day, she left us for thecompany of the dead, and preferred to share the rocky grave of Raymond,before the animated scene this cheerful earth afforded, and the society ofloving friends. Thus in her twenty-ninth year she died; having enjoyed somefew years of the happiness of paradise, and sustaining a reverse to whichher impatient spirit and affectionate disposition were unable to submit. AsI marked the placid expression that had settled on her countenance indeath, I felt, in spite of the pangs of remorse, in spite of heart-rendingregret, that it was better to die so, than to drag on long, miserable yearsof repining and inconsolable grief. Stress of weather drove us up theAdriatic Gulph; and, our vessel being hardly fitted to weather a storm, wetook refuge in the port of Ancona. Here I met Georgio Palli, thevice-admiral of the Greek fleet, a former friend and warm partizan ofRaymond. I committed the remains of my lost Perdita to his care, for thepurpose of having them transported to Hymettus, and placed in the cell herRaymond already occupied beneath the pyramid. This was all accomplishedeven as I wished. She reposed beside her beloved, and the tomb above wasinscribed with the united names of Raymond and Perdita.
I then came to a resolution of pursuing our journey to England overland. Myown heart was racked by regrets and remorse. The apprehension, that Raymondhad departed for ever, that his name, blended eternally with the past, mustbe erased from every anticipation of the future, had come slowly upon me. Ihad always admired his talents; his noble aspirations; his grandconceptions of the glory and majesty of his ambition: his utter want ofmean passions; his fortitude and daring. In Greece I had learnt to lovehim; his very waywardness, and self-abandonment to the impulses ofsuperstition, attached me to him doubly; it might be weakness, but it wasthe antipodes of all that was grovelling and selfish. To these pangs wereadded the loss of Perdita, lost through my own accursed self-will andconceit. This dear one, my sole relation; whose progress I had marked fromtender childhood through the varied path of life, and seen her throughoutconspicuous for integrity, devotion, and true affection; for all thatconstitutes the peculiar graces of the female character, and beheld her atlast the victim of too much loving, too constant an attachment to theperishable and lost, she, in her pride of beauty and life, had thrown asidethe pleasant perception of the apparent world for the unreality of thegrave, and had left poor Clara quite an orphan. I concealed from thisbeloved child that her mother's death was voluntary, and tried every meansto awaken cheerfulness in her sorrow-stricken spirit.
One of my first acts for the recovery even of my own composure, was to bidfarewell to the sea. Its hateful splash renewed again and again to my sensethe death of my sister; its roar was a dirge; in every dark hull that wastossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a bier, that would convey to deathall who trusted to its treacherous smiles. Farewell to the sea! Come, myClara, sit beside me in this aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves theazure serene, and with soft undulation glides upon the current of the air;or, if storm shake its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we candescend, and take shelter on the stable continent. Here aloft, thecompanions of the swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresistingelement, fleetly and fearlessly. The light boat heaves not, nor is opposedby death-bearing waves; the ether opens before the prow, and the shadow ofthe globe that upholds it, shelters us from the noon-day sun. Beneath arethe plains of Italy, or the vast undulations of the wave-like Apennines:fertility reposes in their many folds, and woods crown the summits. Thefree and happy peasant, unshackled by the Austrian, bears the doubleharvest to the garner; and the refined citizens rear without dread the longblighted tree of knowledge in this garden of the world. We were liftedabove the Alpine peaks, and from their deep and brawling ravines enteredthe plain of fair France, and after an airy journey of six days, we landedat Dieppe, furled the feathered wings, and closed the silken globe of ourlittle pinnace. A heavy rain made this mode of travelling now incommodious;so we embarked in a steam-packet, and after a short passage landed atPortsmouth.
A strange story was rife here. A few days before, a tempest-struck vesselhad appeared off the town: the hull was parched-looking and cracked, thesails rent, and bent in a careless, unseamanlike manner, the shroudstangled and broken. She drifted towards the harbour, and was stranded onthe sands at the entrance. In the morning the custom-house officers,together with a crowd of idlers, visited her. One only of the crew appearedto have arrived with her. He had got to shore, and had walked a few pacestowards the town, and then, vanquished by malady and approaching death, hadfallen on the inhospitable beach. He was found stiff, his hands clenched,and pressed against his breast. His skin, nearly black, his matted hair andbristly beard, were signs of a long protracted misery. It was whisperedthat he had died of the plague. No one ventured on board the vessel, andstrange sights were averred to be seen at night, walking the deck, andhanging on the masts and shrouds. She soon went to pieces; I was shewnwhere she had been, and saw her disjoined timbers tossed on the waves. Thebody of the man who had landed, had been buried deep in the sands; and nonecould tell more, than that the vessel was American built, and that severalmonths before the Fortunatas had sailed from Philadelphia, of which notidings were afterwards received.