— This to me

In dreadful secrecy they did impart,

And I with them the third night kept the watch.

SHAKESPEARE

‘As they spoke, a soft knock was heard, such as kindness gives at the door of misfortune, and Everhard started up to answer it. ‘Stay,’ said Walberg, absently, ‘Where are the servants?’ Then recollecting himself, he smiled agonizingly, and waved his hand to his son to go. It was the good priest. He entered, and sat down in silence, — no one spoke to him. It might be truly said, as it is sublimely said in the original, ‘There was neither speech nor language, but voices were heard among them — ‘and felt too.’ The worthy priest piqued himself on his orthodoxy of all matters of belief and form enjoined by the Catholic church; and, moreover, had acquired a kind of monastic apathy, of sanctified stoicism, which priests sometimes imagine is the conquest of grace over the rebellion of nature, when it is merely the result of a profession that denies nature its objects and its ties. Yet so it was, that as he sat among this afflicted family, after complaining of the keenness of the morning air, and wiping away in vain the moisture, which he said it had brought into his eyes, he at last yielded to his feelings, and ‘lifted up his voice and wept.’ But tears were not all he had to offer. On hearing the plans of Walberg and his family, he promised, with a faultering voice, his ready assistance in promoting them; and, as he rose to depart, observing that he had been entrusted by the faithful with a small sum for the relief of the unfortunate, and knew not where it could be better bestowed, he dropped from the sleeve of his habit a well filled purse on the floor, and hurried away.

‘The family retired to rest as the day approached, but rose in a few hours afterwards without having slept; and the remainder of that day, and the whole of the three following, were devoted to applications at every door where encouragement might be expected, or employment obtained, the priest in person aiding every application. But there were many circumstances unfavourable to the ill-starred family of Walberg. They were strangers, and, with the exception of their mother, who acted as interpreter, ignorant of the language of the country. This was ‘a sore evil,’ extending almost to the total preclusion of their exertions as teachers. They were also heretics, — and this alone was a sufficient bar to their success in Seville. In some families the beauty of the daughters, in others that of the son, was gravely debated as an important objection. In others the recollection of their former splendour, suggested a mean and rancorous motive to jealous inferiority to insult them by a rejection, for which no other cause could be assigned. Unwearied and undismayed, they renewed their applications every day, at every house where admission could be obtained, and at many where it was denied; and each day they returned to examine the diminished stock, to divide the scantier meal, calculate how far it was possible to reduce the claims of nature to the level of their ebbing means, and smile when they talked of the morrow to each other, but weep when they thought of it alone. There is a withering monotony in the diary of misery, — ‘one day telleth another.’ But there came at length a day, when the last coin was expended, the last meal devoured, the last resource exhausted, the last hope annihilated, and the friendly priest himself told them weeping, he had nothing to give them but his prayers.

‘That evening the family sat in profound and stupified silence together for some hours, till the aged mother of Walberg, who had not for some months uttered any thing but indistinct monosyllables, or appeared conscious of any thing that was going on, suddenly, with that ominous energy that announces its effort to be the last, — that bright flash of parting life that precedes its total extinction, exclaimed aloud, apparently addressing her husband, ‘There is something wrong here, — why did they bring us from Germany? They might have suffered us to die there, — they have brought us here to mock us, I think. Yesterday, — (her memory evidently confounding the dates of her son’s prosperous and adverse fortune), yesterday they clothed me in silk, and I drank wine, and to-day they give me this sorry crust, — (flinging away the piece of bread which had been her share of the miserable meal), — there is something wrong here. I will go back to Germany, — I will!’ and she rose from her seat in the sight of the astonished family, who, horror-struck, as they would have been at the sudden resuscitation of a corse, ventured not to oppose her by word or movement. ‘I will go back to Germany,’ she repeated; and, rising, she actually took three or four firm and equal steps on the floor, while no one attempted to approach her. Then her force, both physical and mental, seemed to fail, — she tottered, — her voice sunk into hollow mutterings, as she repeated, ‘I know the way, — I know the way, — if it was not so dark. — I have not far to go, — I am very near — home!‘ As she spoke, she fell across the feet of Walberg. The family collected round her, and raised — a corse. ‘Thank God!’ exclaimed her son, as he gazed on his mother’s corse. — And this reversion of the strongest feeling of nature, — this wish for the death of those for whom, in other circumstances, we would ourselves have died, makes those who have experienced it feel as if there was no evil in life but want, and no object of rational pursuit but the means of avoiding it. Alas! if it be so, for what purpose were hearts that beat, and minds that burn, bestowed on us? Is all the energy of intellect, and all the enthusiasm of feeling, to be expended in contrivances how to meet or shift off the petty but torturing pangs of hourly necessity? Is the fire caught from heaven to be employed in lighting a faggot to keep the cold from the numbed and wasted fingers of poverty? Pardon this digression, Senhor,’ said the stranger, ‘but I had a painful feeling, that forced me to make it.’ He then proceeded.

‘The family collected around the dead body, — and it might have been a subject worthy the pencil of the first of painters, to witness its interment, as it took place the following night. As the deceased was a heretic, the corse was not allowed to be laid in consecrated ground; and the family, solicitous to avoid giving offence, or attracting notice on the subject of their religion, were the only attendants on the funeral. In a small inclosure, at the rear of their wretched abode, her son dug his mother’s grave, and Ines and her daughters placed the body in it. Everhard was absent in search of employment, — as they hoped, — and a light was held by the youngest child, who smiled as he watched the scene, as if it had been a pageant got up for his amusement. That light, feeble as it was, showed the strong and varying expression of the countenances on which it fell; — in Walberg’s there was a stern and fearful joy, that she whom they were laying to rest had been ‘taken from the evil to come,’ — in that of Ines there was grief, mingled with something of horror, at this mute and unhallowed ceremony. — Her daughters, pale with grief and fear, wept silently; but their tears were checked, and the whole course of their feelings changed, when the light fell on another figure who appeared suddenly standing among them on the edge of the grave, — it was that of Walberg’s father. Impatient of being left alone, and wholly unconscious of the cause, he had groped and tottered his way till he reached the spot; and now, as he saw his son heap up the earth over the grave, he exclaimed, with a brief and feeble effort of reminiscence, sinking on the ground, ‘Me, too, — lay me there, the same spot will serve for both!’ His children raised and supported him into the house, where the sight of Everhard, with an unexpected supply of provisions, made them forget the horrors of the late scene, and postpone once more the fears of want till to-morrow. No inquiry how this supply was obtained, could extort more from Everhard than that it was the gift of charity. He looked exhausted and dreadfully pale, — and, forbearing to press him with further questions, they partook of this manna-meal, — this food that seemed to have dropped from heaven, and separated for the night.

‘Ines had, during this period of calamity, unremittingly enforced the application of her daughters to those accomplishments from which she still derived the hopes of their subsistence. Whatever were the privations and disappointments of the day, their musical and other exercises were strictly attended to; and hands enfeebled by want and grief, plied their task with as much assiduity as when occupation was only a variation of luxury. This attention to the ornaments of life, when its actual necessaries are wanted, — this sound of music in a house where the murmurs of domestic anxiety are heard every moment, — this subservience of talent to necessity, all its generous enthusiasm lost, and only its possible utility remembered or valued, — is perhaps the bitterest strife that ever was fought between the opposing claims of our artificial and our natural existence. But things had now occurred that shook not only the resolution of Ines, but even affected her feelings beyond the power of repression. She had been accustomed to hear, with delight, the eager application of her daughters to their musical studies; — now — when she heard them, the morning after the interment of their grandmother, renewing that application — she felt as if the sounds struck through her heart. She entered the room where they were, and they turned towards her with their usual smiling demand for her approbation.

‘The mother, with the forced smile of a sickening heart, said she believed there was no occasion for their practising any further that day. The daughters, who understood her too well, relinquished their instruments, and, accustomed to see every article of furniture converted into the means of casual subsistence, they thought no worse than that their ghitarras might be disposed of this day, and the next they hoped they would have to teach on those of their pupils. They were mistaken. Other symptoms of failing resolution, — of utter and hopeless abandonment, appeared that day. Walberg had always felt and expressed the strongest feelings of tender respect towards his parents — his father particularly, whose age far exceeded that of his mother. At the division of their meal that day, he shewed a kind of wilfish and greedy jealousy that made Ines tremble. He whispered to her — ‘How much my father eats — how heartily he feeds while we have scarce a morsel!’ — ‘And let us want that morsel, before your father wants one!’ said Ines in a whisper — ‘I have scarce tasted any thing myself.’ — ‘Father — father,’ cried Walberg, shouting in the ear of the doting old man, ‘you are eating heartily, while Ines and her children are starving!’ And he snatched the food from his father’s hand, who gazed at him vacantly, and resigned the contested morsel without a struggle. A moment afterwards the old man rose from his seat, and with horrid unnatural force, tore the untasted meat from his grandchildren’s lips, and swallowed it himself, while his rivelled and toothless mouth grinned at them in mockery at once infantine and malicious.

‘Squabbling about your supper?’ cried Everhard, bursting among them with a wild and feeble laugh, — ‘Why, here’s enough for to-morrow — and to-morrow.’ And he flung indeed ample means for two day’s subsistence on the table, but he looked paler and paler. The hungry family devoured the hoard, and forgot to ask the cause of his increasing paleness, and obviously diminished strength.

‘They had long been without any domestics, and as Everhard disappeared mysteriously every day, the daughters were sometimes employed on the humble errands of the family. The beauty of the elder daughter, Julia, was so conspicuous, that her mother had often undertaken the most menial errands herself, rather than send her daughter into the streets unprotected. The following evening, however, being intently employed in some domestic occupation, she allowed Julia to go out to purchase their food for to-morrow, and lent her veil for the purpose, directing her daughter to arrange it in the Spanish fashion, with which she was well acquainted, so as to hide her face.

‘Julia, who went with trembling steps on her brief errand, had somehow deranged her veil, and a glimpse of her beauty was caught by a cavalier who was passing. The meanness of her dress and occupation suggested hopes to him which he ventured to express. Julia burst from him with the mingled terror and indignation of insulted purity, but her eyes rested with unconscious avidity on the handful of gold which glittered in his hand. — She thought of her famishing parents, — of her own declining strength, and neglected useless talents. The gold still sparkled before her, — she felt — she knew not what, and to escape from some feelings is perhaps the best victory we can obtain over them. But when she arrived at home, she eagerly thrust the small purchase she had made into her mother’s hand, and, though hitherto gentle, submissive, and tractable, announced, in a tone of decision that seemed to her startled mother (whose thoughts were always limited to the exigencies of the hour) like that of sudden insanity, that she would rather starve than ever again tread the streets of Seville alone.

‘As Ines retired to her bed, she thought she heard a feeble moan from the room where Everhard lay, and where, from their being compelled to sell the necessary furniture of the bed, he had entreated his parents to allow Maurice to sleep with him, alleging that the warmth of his body would be a substitute for artificial covering to his little brother. Twice those moans were heard, but Ines did not dare to awake Walberg, who had sunk into that profound sleep which is as often the refuge of intolerable misery, as that of saturated enjoyment. A few moments after, when the moans had ceased, and she had half persuaded herself it was only the echo of that wave that seems for ever beating in the ears of the unfortunate, — the curtains of her bed were thrown open, and the figure of a child covered with blood, stained in breast, arms, and legs, appeared before her, and cried, — ‘It is Everhard’s blood — he is bleeding to death, — I am covered with his blood! — Mother — mother — rise and save Everhard’s life!’ The object, the voice, the words, seemed to Ines like the imagery of some terrible dream, such as had lately often visited her sleep, till the tones of Maurice, her youngest, and (in her heart) her favourite child, made her spring from the bed, and hurry after the little blood-spotted figure that paddled before her on its naked feet, till she reached the adjoining room where Everhard lay. Amid all her anguish and fear, she trod as lightly as Maurice, lest she should awake Walberg.

‘The moon-light fell strongly through the unshuttered windows on the wretched closet that just contained the bed. Its furniture was sufficiently scanty, and in his spasms Everhard had thrown off the sheet. So he lay, as Ines approached his bed, in a kind of corse-like beauty, to which the light of the moon gave an effect that would have rendered the figure worthy the pencil of a Murillo, a Rosa, or any of those painters, who, inspired by the genius of suffering, delight in representing the most exquisite of human forms in the extremity of human agony. A St Bartholomew flayed, with his skin hanging about him in graceful drapery — a St Laurence, broiled on a gridiron, and exhibiting his finely-formed anatomy on its bars, while naked slaves are blowing the coals beneath it, — even these were inferior to the form half-veiled, — half-disclosed by the moon-light as it lay. The snow-white limbs of Everhard were extended as if for the inspection of a sculptor, and moveless, as if they were indeed what they resembled, in hue and symmetry, those of a marble statue. His arms were tossed above his head, and the blood was trickling fast from the opened veins of both, — his bright and curled hair was clotted with the red stream that flowed from his arms, — his lips were blue, and a faint and fainter moan issued from them as his mother hung over him. This sight banished in a moment all other fears and feelings, and Ines shrieked aloud to her husband for assistance. Walberg, staggering from his sleep, entered the room, — the object before him was enough. Ines had only strength left to point to it. The wretched father rushed out in quest of medical aid, which he was obliged to solicit gratuitously, and in bad Spanish, while his accents betrayed him at every door he knocked at, — and closed them against him as a foreigner and a heretic. At length a barber-surgeon (for the professions were united in Seville) consented, with many a yawn, to attend him, and came duly armed with lint and styptics. The distance was short, and he was soon by the bed of the young sufferer. The parents observed, with consternation unspeakable, the languid looks of recognition, the ghastly smile of consciousness, that Everhard viewed him with, as he approached the bed; and when he had succeeded in stopping the h?morrhage, and bound up the arms, a whisper passed between him and the patient, and the latter raised his bloodless hand to his lips, and uttered, ‘Remember our bargain.’ As the man retired, Walberg followed, and demanded to know the meaning of the words he had heard. Walberg was a German, and choleric — the surgeon was a Spaniard, and cool. ‘I shall tell you to-morrow, Senhor,’ said he, putting up his instruments, — ‘in the mean time be assured of my gratuitous attendance on your son, and of his certain recovery. We deem you heretics in Seville, but that youth is enough to canonize the whole family, and cover a multitude of sins.’ And with these words he departed. The next day he attended Everhard, and so for several, till he was completely recovered, always refusing the slightest remuneration, till the father, whom misery had made suspicious of every thing and nothing, watched at the door, and heard the horrible secret. He did not disclose it to his wife, — but from that hour, it was observed that his gloom became more intense, and the communications he used to hold with his family, on the subject of their distress, and the modes of evading it by hourly expedients, utterly and finally ceased.

‘Everhard, now recovered, but still pale as the widow of Seneca, was at last able to join the family consultation, and give advice, and suggest resources, with a mental energy that his physical weakness could not overcome. The next day, when they were assembled to debate on the means of procuring subsistence for the following one, they for the first time missed their father. At every word that was uttered, they turned to ask for his sanction — but he was not there. At last he entered the room, but without taking a part in their consultation. He leaned gloomily against the wall, and while Everhard and Julia, at every sentence, turned their appealing looks towards him, he sullenly averted his head. Ines, appearing to pursue some work, while her trembling fingers could scarce direct the needle, made a sign to her children not to observe him. Their voices were instantly depressed, and their heads bent closely towards each other. Mendicity appeared the only resource of this unfortunate family, — and they agreed, that the evening was the best time for trying its effect. The unhappy father remained rocking against the shattered wainscot till the arrival of evening. Ines repaired the clothes of the children, which were now so decayed, that every attempt at repair made a fresh rent, and the very thread she worked with seemed less attenuated than the worn-out materials it wrought on.

‘The grandfather, still seated in his ample chair by the care of Ines, (for his son had grown very indifferent about him), watched her moving fingers, and exclaimed, with the petulance of dotage, ‘Aye, — you are arraying them in embroidery, while I am in rags. — In rags!’ he repeated, holding out the slender garments which the beggared family could with difficulty spare him. Ines tried to pacify him, and showed her work, to prove that it was the remnants of her children’s former dress she was repairing; but, with horror unutterable, she perceived her husband incensed at these expressions of dotage, and venting his frantic and fearful indignation in language that she tried to bury the sound of, by pressing closer to the old man, and attempting to fix his bewildered attention on herself and her work. This was easily accomplished, and all was well, till they were about to separate on their wretched precarious errands. Then a new and untold feeling trembled at the heart of one of the young wanderers. Julia remembered the occurrence of a preceding evening, — she thought of the tempting gold, the flattering language, and the tender tone of the young cavalier. She saw her family perishing around her for want, — she felt it consuming her own vitals, — and as she cast her eye round the squalid room, the gold glittered brighter and brighter in her eye. A faint hope, aided perhaps by a still more faint suggestion of venial pride, swelled in her heart. ‘Perhaps he might love me,’ she whispered to herself, ‘and think me not unworthy of his hand.’ Then despair returned to the charge. ‘I must die of famine,’ she thought, ‘if I return unaided, — and why may I not by my death benefit my family! I will never survive shame, but they may, — for they will not know it!’ — She went out, and took a direction different from that of the family.

‘Night came on, — the wanderers returned slowly one by one, — Julia was the last. Her brothers and sister had each obtained a trifling alms, for they had learned Spanish enough to beg in, — and the old man’s face wore a vacant smile, as he saw the store produced, which was, after all, scarce sufficient to afford a meal for the youngest. ‘And have you brought us nothing, Julia?’ said her parents. She stood apart, and in silence. Her father repeated the question in a raised and angry voice. She started at the sound, and, rushing forward, buried her head in her mother’s bosom. ‘Nothing, — nothing,’ she cried, in a broken and suffocated voice; ‘I tried, — my weak and wicked heart submitted to the thought for a moment, — but no, — no, not even to save you from perishing, could I! — I came home to perish first myself!’ Her shuddering parents comprehended her, — and amid their agony they blessed her and wept, — but not from grief. The meal was divided, of which Julia at first steadily refused to partake, as she had not contributed to it, till her reluctance was overcome by the affectionate importunity of the rest, and she complied.

‘It was during this division of what all believed to be their last meal, that Walberg gave one of those proofs of sudden and fearful violence of temper, bordering on insanity, which he had betrayed latterly. He seemed to notice, with sullen displeasure, that his wife had (as she always did) reserved the largest portion for his father. He eyed it askance at first, muttering angrily to himself. Then he spoke more aloud, though not so as to be heard by the deaf old man, who was sluggishly devouring his sordid meal. Then the sufferings of his children seemed to inspire him with a kind of wild resentment, and he started up, exclaiming, ‘My son sells his blood to a surgeon, to save us from perishing!1 My daughter trembles on the verge of prostitution, to procure us a meal!’ Then fiercely addressing his father, ‘And what dost thou do, old dotard? Rise up, — rise up, and beg for us thyself, or thou must starve!’ — and, as he spoke, he raised his arm against the helpless old man. At this horrid sight, Ines shrieked aloud, and the children, rushing forward, interposed. The wretched father, incensed to madness, dealt blows among them, which were borne without a murmur; and then, the storm being exhausted, he sat down and wept.

1 Fact, — it occurred in a French family not many years ago.

‘At this moment, to the astonishment and terror of all except Walberg, the old man, who, since the night of his wife’s interment, had never moved but from his chair to his bed, and that not without assistance, rose suddenly from his seat, and, apparently in obedience to his son, walked with a firm and steady pace towards the door. When he had reached it, he paused, looked back on them with a fruitless effort at recollection, and went out slowly; — and such was the terror felt by all at this last ghastly look, which seemed like that of a corse moving on to the place of its interment, that no one attempted to oppose his passage, and several moments elapsed before Everhard had the recollection to pursue him.

‘In the mean time, Ines had dismissed her children, and sitting as near as she dared to the wretched father, attempted to address some soothing expressions to him. Her voice, which was exquisitely sweet and soft, seemed to produce a mechanical effect on him. He turned towards her at first, — then leaning his head on his arm, he shed a few silent tears, — then flinging it on his wife’s bosom, he wept aloud. Ines seized this moment to impress on his heart the horror she felt from the outrage he had committed, and adjured him to supplicate the mercy of God for a crime, which, in her eyes, appeared scarce short of parricide. Walberg wildly asked what she alluded to; and when, shuddering, she uttered the words, — ‘Your father, — your poor old father!’ — he smiled with an expression of mysterious and supernatural confidence that froze her blood, and, approaching her ear, softly whispered, ‘I have no father! He is dead, — long dead! I buried him the night I dug my mother’s grave! Poor old man,’ he added with a sigh, ‘it was the better for him, — he would have lived only to weep, and perish perhaps with hunger. But I will tell you, Ines, — and let it be a secret, I wondered what made our provisions decrease so, till what was yesterday sufficient for four, is not to-day sufficient for one. I watched, and at last I discovered — it must be a secret — an old goblin, who daily visited this house. It came in the likeness of an old man in rags, and with a long white beard, and it devoured every thing on the table, while the children stood hungry by! But I struck at — I cursed it, — I chased it in the name of the All-powerful, and it is gone. Oh it was a fell devouring goblin! — but it will haunt us no more, and we shall have enough. Enough,’ said the wretched man, involuntarily returning to his habitual associations, — ‘enough for to-morrow!’

‘Ines, overcome with horror at this obvious proof of insanity, neither interrupted or opposed him; she attempted only to soothe him, internally praying against the too probable disturbance of her own intellects. Walberg saw her look of distrust, and, with the quick jealousy of partial insanity, said, ‘If you do not credit me in that, still less, I suppose, will you in the account of that fearful visitation with which I have latterly been familiar.’ — ‘Oh, my beloved!’ said Ines, who recognized in these words the source of a fear that had latterly, from some extraordinary circumstances in her husband’s conduct, taken possession of her soul, and made the fear even of famine trifling in comparison, — ‘I dread lest I understand you too well. The anguish of want and of famine I could have borne, — aye, and seen you bear, but the horrid words you have lately uttered, the horrid thoughts that escape you in your sleep, — when I think on these, and guess at’ — ‘You need not guess,’ said Walberg, interrupting her, ‘I will tell you all.’ And, as he spoke, his countenance changed from its expression of wildness to one of perfect sanity and calm confidence, — his features relaxed, his eye became steady, and his tone firm. — ‘Every night since our late distresses, I have wandered out in search of some relief, and supplicated every passing stranger; — latterly, I have met every night the enemy of man, who’ — ‘Oh cease, my love, to indulge these horrible thoughts, — they are the results of your disturbed unhappy state of mind.’ — ‘Ines, listen to me. I see that figure as plainly as I see yours, — I hear his voice as distinctly as you hear mine this moment. Want and misery are not naturally fertile in the production of imagination, — they grasp at realities too closely. No man, who wants a meal, conceives that a banquet is spread before him, and that the tempter invites him to sit down and eat at his ease. No, — no, Ines, the evil one, or some devoted agent of his in human form, besets me every night, — and how I shall longer resist the snare, I know not.’ — ‘And in what form does he appear?’ said Ines, hoping to turn the channel of his gloomy thoughts, while she appeared to follow their direction. ‘In that of a middle-aged man, of a serious and staid demeanour, and with nothing remarkable in his aspect except the light of two burning eyes, whose lustre is almost intolerable. He fixes them on me sometimes, and I feel as if there was fascination in their glare. Every night he besets me, and few like me could have resisted his seductions. He has offered, and proved to me, that it is in his power to bestow all that human cupidity could thirst for, on the condition that — I cannot utter! It is one so full of horror and impiety, that, even to listen to it, is scarce less a crime than to comply with it!’

‘Ines, still incredulous, yet imagining that to soothe his delirium was perhaps the best way to overcome it, demanded what that condition was. Though they were alone, Walberg would communicate it only in a whisper; and Ines, fortified as she was by reason hitherto undisturbed, and a cool and steady temper, could not but recollect some vague reports she had heard in her early youth, before she quitted Spain, of a being permitted to wander through it, with power to tempt men under the pressure of extreme calamity with similar offers, which had been invariably rejected, even in the last extremities of despair and dissolution. She was not superstitious, — but, her memory now taking part with her husband’s representation of what had befallen him, she shuddered at the possibility of his being exposed to similar temptation; and she endeavoured to fortify his mind and conscience, by arguments equally appropriate whether he was the victim of a disturbed imagination, or the real object of this fearful persecution. She reminded him, that if, even in Spain, where the abominations of Antichrist prevailed, and the triumph of the mother of witchcraf............