Joseph Wilmot, or, The Memoirs of a Man-Servant — page 383: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

370 with it. You started—and I fied. I know not ! now what thoughts were in wy brain, or wherefore T should thus have rushed away from your presence: but, Oh! I am not the mistress of my own actions | —invisible shapes guide me, and do with me ac- cording to their own will. Now let me kiss you once :—it may be for the last time until we meet in another world, to join him who has gone before us ! }?? Then the speaker bent over me. I distinctly ' felt the soft pressure of her lip upon my cheek, If I was not completely awake before, but only in a sort of dfteamy repose, that touch aroused me ; and starting up, I caught the sound of a light step—of a rustling dress—instantaneously followed by the closing of the door. I was now broad awake, and sitting up in the | bed. But, good heavens!—what thoughts—what ideas—what terrible suspicions were agitating in my tortured and bewildered brain! That voice— Oh! was it not familiar to me, though modulated to so soft a plaintiveness and to such a profound mournfulness of tone? Had accident no, not accident———had the hand of Proyidence brought me beneath the same roof with her whose love on recent occasions I had been denouncing as so fatal P —and, great God! was it possible that it was my own child whose remains were coffined beneath that pall on which, by the aid of the wax-lights, my eyes had ere now been fixed within the walls of the oratorio? There was confusion in my brain: I pressed my hand to my throbbing brows, en- deayouring to persuade myself that it was all a vision—the result of the concussion sustained by the accident in the road, and akin to those fevered fancies which had haunted and scared me while dreamily reposing in the arm-chair, But no—I could not thus convince myself, The soft music of Calanthe’s voice still floated around me, with its ineffable mournfulness; those plaintive words which she had uttered, and which appeared to bespeak an intellect unhinged and the powers of reason wrecked, still murmured in my ears. A cold perspiration was all over me: I was bathed as it were in my own horror, anguish, and agony. And I felt too the touch of her lips still upon my cheek, as if the soft kiss she had deposited there had left its impress and had marked me. “No, no,” I wildly exclaimed aloud: “ it is all | adream!’ AndI exerted every possible faculty | of the mind—every power of the intellect, to per- suade myself that it was so. I lay down again—a sensation of faintness came over me—lI strove to shake it off—but could not; and consciousness ‘utterly abandoned me, When I came to myself, the gray dawn of the | JOSEPH WILMOT; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A MAN-SERVANT. awful reality. My soul was full of consternation and bewilderment — uncertainty and dismay: so much so, that I had not immediately the power nor the courage to rise and hasten to clear up the _ stupendous mystery. * My God, if it be true!” I suddenly exclaimed, | as the thought that my child possibly lay dead be- neath the same roof, thrilled again, but with a | wilder anguish than before, through my imagina- tion. I sprang from my couch—hastily huddled on my clothes—and issued from the chamber. No jone was in the corridor; I sped along it—I ‘reached the landing—I paused at the portals of the oratorio. “ Oh, now for the solution!” my soul’s yoice said in mingled anguish and consternation within me; and I trembled convulsively from head to foot as I stood against those ae — I dared not for the moment push 7 length, ina fit of desperation, I extended my and " ry * ‘doors fell back—and the first glance flung into the chapel showed me that it was no dream, but an awful reality, The doors closed behind me, swing- ing to of their own accord upon their noiseless hinges; and I stood within the threshold, a prey to indescribable emotions as I gaged on the black pall which covered the little coffia, The dim misty light of morning pervaded the place: the tapers were still burning—but now with a feeble and sickly glimmering. Suddenly I advanced to- wards the coffin, My hand was stretched forth to raise the pall, to read whatsoever name might be upon the lid—when I was all in a moment startled by beholding a female figure stretched upon the cold pavement-floor on the other side of the funeral scene, the sweeping sable drapery of which had hitherto hidden the form from my view. I advanced a step and then stopped short —— yes, stopped short smitten by feelings which language poe. describe; for no part of the pre- vious night’s mysteries now remained unsolyed. The form which y there, was that of Calanthe Dundas! She appeared to be buried in a profound slumber. She was apparelled in deep black; and a sable veil flowing from above her raven hair, |rested upon the pavement. Her countenance was | however left completely exposed; and as the dull misty light of morning and the sickly glimmering of the tapers played upon that countenance, it | Seemed of marble paleness. The hands too, ‘motionless by her sides, had the exact resemblance of alabaster: her eyes were closed ; but her lips "appeared to be moving slightly, as if with the regular breathings of profound slumber. This wintry morning was stealing in at the windows; | however was only an illusion produced by the and with an equal dimness and sluggishness did sickly flickering of the tapers; and when in a few my recollections begin to revive within me. At | moments the conviction burst upon me that those first the incidents or the fancies,—for I scarcely | lips really moved not at all, the horrible idea struck knew how to account them,—of the past night me that she was Sleepine that sleep from which presented themselves in a confused and conflicting | mass to my contemplation: but by degrees the light of intelligence shed itself upon this chaotic state of the mind—my thoughts settled themselves in the proper cells of my brain—and I was enabled to review deliberately and collectively all that I have been narrating, I knew not to what conclusion to come. It appeared to me a wild and wondrous there is no awakening ! In an instant my arms were thrown around her to raise her up: my cheek touched her’s—my hand caught one of her own. A wild ery burst from my lips: for her cheek was as cold as the stone from which I had raised her—her hand too sent quivering through me the ice-chill of the dead. Oh, who can describe what I felt—the dream—and yet, on the other hand, a solemn and _ horror, the anguish which rent my soul! Again Wee st ene RS Sine el DOOkKSHGO im