 | Tales of the grotesque and arabesque |  |
LIGEIA.
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth
the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a
great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man
doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
only through the weakness of his feeble will.
Joseph Glanvill.
I Cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or
even precisely where, I first became acquainted with
the Lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and
my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or,
perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind,
because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her
rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty,
and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low,
musical language, made their way into my heart by
paces so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they
have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe
that I met her most frequently in some large, old,
decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family—I have
surely heard her speak—that they are of a remotely
ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Buried in
studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
sweet word alone—by Ligeia—that I bring before
mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more.
And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon
me that I have never known the paternal name of
her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who
became the partner of my studies, and eventually the
wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the
part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength
of affection that I should institute no inquiries upon
this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own—
a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most
passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact
itself—what wonder that I have utterly forgotten
the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance—if
ever she, the wan, and the misty-winged
Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell,
over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided
over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my
memory faileth me not. It is the person of Ligeia.
In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and in her
latter days even emaciated. I would in vain attempt
to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor,
or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity
of her footfall. She came and departed like a
shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance
into my closed study save by the dear music of her
low sweet voice, as she placed her delicate hand
upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever
—an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine
than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering
souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features
were not of that regular mould which we have been
falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of
the heathen. “There is no exquisite beauty,” says
Bacon, Lord Verülam, speaking truly of all the forms
and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in
the proportions.” Yet, although I saw that the features
of Ligeia were not of classic regularity, although
I perceived that her loveliness was indeed “exquisite,”
and felt that there was much of “strangeness” pervading
it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity,
and to trace home my own perception of
“the strange.” I examined the contour of the lofty
and pale forehead—it was faultless—how cold
indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine!
—the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding
extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions
above the temples, and then the raven-black, the
glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses,
setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet,
“hyacinthine!” I looked at the delicate outlines of
the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful medallions
of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection.
There was the same luxurious smoothness of surface,
the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline,
the same harmoniously curved nostril speaking the
free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was
indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the
voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which
sported, and the color which spoke—the teeth glancing
back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every
ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her
serene, and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all
smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin—
and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the
softness and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality,
of the Greek,—the contour which the god
Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son
of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large
eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely
antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes
of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verülam
alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than
the ordinary eyes of our race. They were even far
fuller than the fullest of the Gazelle eyes of the tribe
of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals—in
moments of intense excitement—that
this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable
in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty—
in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps—the
beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth
—the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk.
The color of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
and far over them hung jetty lashes of great length.
The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same
hue. The “strangeness,” however, which I found in
the eyes was of a nature distinct from the formation,
must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah,
word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of
mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much
of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of
Ligeia! How, for long hours have I pondered upon
it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer
night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that
something more profound than the well of Democritus
—which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
What was it? I was possessed with a passion to
discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining,
those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of
Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers. Not
for a moment was the unfathomable meaning of
their glance, by day or by night, absent from my
soul.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible
anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly
exciting than the fact—never, I believe,
noticed in the schools—that in our endeavors to
recall to memory something long forgotten we often
find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance
without being able, in the end, to remember. And
thus, how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of
Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge
of the secret of their expression—felt it
approaching—yet not quite be mine—and so at
length entirely depart. And (strange, oh strangest
mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects
of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression.
when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there
dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences
in the material world, a sentiment such as I
felt always aroused within me by her large and
luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that
sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the commonest
objects of the universe. It has flashed upon
me in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the
contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a
stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean,
in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the
glances of unusually aged people. And there are
one or two stars in heaven—(one especially, a star
of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be
found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic
scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the
feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds
from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by
passages from books. Among innumerable other
instances, I well remember something in a volume
of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its
quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire
me with the sentiment,—“And the will therein
lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries
of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
will pervading all things by nature of its intentness.
Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death
utterly, but only through the weakness of his feeble
will.”
Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have
enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connexion
between this passage in the old English moralist and
a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity
in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a
result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition
which, during our long intercourse, failed to give
other and more immediate evidence of its existence.
Of all women whom I have ever known she, the
outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the
most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of
stern passion. And of such passion I could form no
estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those
eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me,
by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness
and placidity of her very low voice, and by the
fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast
with her manner of utterance) of the words which
she uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was
immense—such as I have never known in woman.
In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient,
and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard
to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never
known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the
most admired, because simply the most abstruse, of
the boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever
found Ligeia at fault? How singularly, how thrillingly,
this one point in the nature of my wife has
forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention!
I said her knowledge was such as I had never
like her, has traversed, and successfully, all the wide
areas of moral, natural, and mathematical science?
I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the
acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding—yet
I was sufficiently aware of her infinite
supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence,
to her guidance through the chaotic world
of metaphysical investigation at which I was most
busily occupied during the earlier years of our
marriage. With how vast a triumph—with how
vivid a delight—with how much of all that is
ethereal in hope—did I feel, as she bent over me
in studies but little sought for—but less known—
that delicious vista by slow but perceptible degrees
expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous,
and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward
to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious
not to be forbidden!
How poignant, then, must have been the grief
with which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded
expectations take wings to themselves and
flee away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child
groping benighted. Her presence, her readings
alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries
of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed.
Letters, lambent and golden, grew duller
than Saturnian lead, wanting the radiant lustre of
her eyes. And now those eyes shone less and less
frequently upon the pages over which I pored.
Ligeia grew ill. The wild eye blazed with a too—
the transparent waxen hue of the grave—and the
blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sunk
impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion.
I saw that she must die—and I struggled
desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the
struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment,
even more energetic than my own. There
had been much in her stern nature to impress me
with the belief that, to her, death would have come
without its terrors—but not so. Words are impotent
to convey any just idea of the fierceness of
resistance with which she wrestled with the dark
shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable
spectacle. I would have soothed—I would have
reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for
life—for life—but for life, solace and reason were
alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not for an instant,
amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce
spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor.
Her voice grew more gentle—grew more
low—yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild
meaning of the quietly-uttered words. My brain
reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody more
than mortal—to assumptions and aspirations which
mortality had never before known.
That she loved me, I should not have doubted; and
I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such
as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion.
But in death only, was I fully impressed with the
strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining
of a heart whose more than passionate
devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved
to be so blessed by such confessions?—how had I
deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my
beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon
this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say
only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment
to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily
bestowed, I at length recognised the principle of her
longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life
which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this
wild longing—it is this eager vehemence of desire
for life—but for life—that I have no power to
portray—no utterance capable of expressing. Methinks
I again behold the terrific struggles of her
lofty, her nearly idealized nature, with the might
and the terror, and the majesty, of the great Shadow.
But she perished. The giant will succumbed to a
power more stern. And I thought, as I gazed upon
the corpse, of the wild passage in Joseph Glanvill:
“The will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who
knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor?
For God is but a great will pervading all things by
nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to
the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through
the weakness of his feeble will.”
She died—and I, crushed into the very dust with
sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation
of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the
Rhine. I had no lack of what the world terms
more, than falls ordinarily to the lot of mortals.
After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless
wandering, I purchased, and put in some repair, an
abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest
and least frequented portions of fair England. The
gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the
almost savage aspect of the domain, the many
melancholy and time-honored memories connected
with both, had much in unison with the feelings of
utter abandonment which had driven me into that
remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet
although the external abbey, with its verdant decay
hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave
way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance
with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a
display of more than regal magnificence within.
For such follies even in childhood I had imbibed a
taste, and now they came back to me as if in the
dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient
madness might have been discovered in the
gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn
carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture,
in the bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold!
I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of
opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a
coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I
must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that
one chamber, ever accursed, whither, in a moment
of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride
—as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia—the
of Tremaine.
There is not any individual portion of the architecture
and decoration of that bridal chamber which
is not now visibly before me. Where were the souls
of the haughty family of the bride, when, through
thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold
of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a
daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely
remember the details of the chamber—yet I am
sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment—and here
there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic
display, to take hold upon the memory. The room
lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was
pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying
the whole southern face of the pentagon was
the sole window—an immense sheet of unbroken
glass from Venice—a single pane, and tinted of a
leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or
moon, passing through it, fell with a ghastly lustre
upon the objects within. Over the upper portion of
this huge window extended the open trellice-work of
an aged vine which clambered up the massy walls
of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak,
was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted
with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a
semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the
most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended,
by a single chain of gold, with long links, a
huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern,
and with many perforations so contrived that there
serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored
fires. Some few ottomans and golden candelabra
of Eastern figure were in various stations
about—and there was the couch, too, the bridal
couch, of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured
of solid ebony, with a canopy above. In each of
the angles of the chamber, stood on end a gigantic
sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the
kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full
of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the
apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all. The
lofty walls—gigantic in height—even unproportionably
so, were hung from summit to foot, in vast
folds, with a heavy and massive looking tapestry—
tapestry of a material which was found alike as a
carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans
and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as
the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially
shaded the window. This material was the richest
cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular
intervals, with arabesque figures, of about a foot in
diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of
the most jetty black. But these figures partook of
the true character of the arabesque only when regarded
from a single point of view. By a contrivance
now common, and indeed traceable to a
very remote period of antiquity, they were made
changeable in aspect. To one entering the room
they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities;
but, upon a farther advance, this appearance suddenly
moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself
surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly
forms which belong to the superstition of the Northman,
or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk.
The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened
by the artificial introduction of a strong continual
current of wind behind the draperies—giving a
hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.
In halls such as these—in a bridal chamber such
as this—I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed
hours of the first month of our marriage—
passed them with but little disquietude. That my
wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—
that she shunned me, and loved me but little—I
could not help perceiving—but it gave me rather
pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a
hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My
memory flew back, (oh, with what intensity of
regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the beautiful, the
entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity,
of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of
her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did
my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the
fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium
dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the iron
shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her
name, during the silence of the night, or among
the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if,
through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
consuming ardor of my longing for the departed
pathway she had abandoned upon earth.
About the commencement of the second month of
the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with
sudden illness from which her recovery was slow.
The fever which consumed her rendered her nights
uneasy, and, in her perturbed state of half-slumber,
she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about
the chamber of the turret, which had no origin save
in the distemper of her fancy, or, perhaps, in the
phantastic influences of the chamber itself. She
became at length convalescent—finally well. Yet
but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent
disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering—
and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble,
never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were,
after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more
alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge
and the great exertions of her medical men. With
the increase of the chronic disease which had thus,
apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution
to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail to
observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of
her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial
causes of fear. Indeed reason seemed fast tottering
from her throne. She spoke again, and now more
frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds, of the
slight sounds, and of the unusual motions among the
tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.
One night near the closing in of September, she
pressed this distressing subject with more than usual
from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching,
with feelings half of anxiety, half of a vague terror,
the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat
by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans
of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an
earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then
heard, but which I could not hear, of motions which
she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The
wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and
I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I
could not all believe) that those faint, almost inarticulate
breathings, and the very gentle variations of the
figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of
that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly
pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me that
my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She
appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were
within call. I remembered where was deposited a
decanter of some light wine which had been ordered
by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber
to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of
the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature
attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable
object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw
that there lay a faint indefinite shadow upon the
golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre
thrown from the censer. But I was wild with the
excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and
heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to
Rowena. Finding the wine, I recrossed the chamber,
lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially
recovered, however, and took, herself, the vessel,
while I sank upon the ottoman near me, with my
eyes rivetted upon her person. It was then that I
became distinctly aware of a gentle foot-fall upon the
carpet, and near the couch; and, in a second thereafter,
as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine
to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw,
fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring
in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large
drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. If this I
saw—not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine
unhesitatingly, and I forbore to speak to her of a
circumstance which must, after all, I considered,
have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination,
rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady,
by the opium, and by the hour.
Yet—I cannot conceal it from myself—after
this period, a rapid change for the worse took place
in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third
subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared
her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with
her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which
had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium
engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed
with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles
of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery,
and upon the writhing of the particolored fires in
the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called
to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the
beheld the faint traces of the shadow. It was there,
however, no longer, and, breathing with greater
freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and rigid
figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand
memories of Ligeia—and then came back upon
my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the
whole of that unutterable wo with which I had
regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned;
and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the
one only and supremely beloved, I remained with
mine eyes rivetted upon the body of Rowena.
It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier,
or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob,
low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my
revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony—
the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious
terror—but there was no repetition of the
sound; I strained my vision to detect any motion in
the corpse, but there was not the slightest perceptible.
Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard
the noise, however faint, and my whole soul was
awakened within me, as I resolutely and perseveringly
kept my attention rivetted upon the body. Many
minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred
tending to throw light upon the mystery. At length
it became evident that a slight, a very faint, and
barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within
the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the
eyelids. Through a species of unutterable horror
and awe, for which the language of mortality has
reel, my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid
where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to
restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt
that we had been precipitate in our preparations for
interment—that Rowena still lived. It was necessary
that some immediate exertion be made; yet the
turret was altogether apart from the portion of the
abbey tenanted by the servants—there were none
within call,—I had no means of summoning them
to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes—and
this I could not venture to do. I therefore
struggled alone in my endeavors to call back
the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was
certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the
color utterly disappeared from both eyelid and cheek,
leaving a wanness even more than that of marble;
the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in
the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess
and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the
body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately
supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the
couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused,
and again gave myself up to passionate waking
visions of Ligeia.
An hour thus elapsed when, (could it be possible?)
I was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing
from the region of the bed. I listened—in
extremity of horror. The sound came again—it
was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw—distinctly
they slightly relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the
pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my
bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto
reigned therein alone. I felt that my vision grew
dim, that my reason wandered, and it was only by a
convulsive effort that I at length succeeded in nerving
myself to the task which duty thus, once more, had
pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon
the forehead and upon the cheek and throat—a
perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame—there
was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady
lived; and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to
the task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the
temples and the hands, and used every exertion which
experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest.
But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the
pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of
the dead, and, in an instant afterwards, the whole
body took upon itself the icy chillness, the livid hue,
the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and each and
all of the loathsome peculiarities of that which has
been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.
And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia—and
again, (what marvel that I shudder while I write?)
again there reached my ears a low sob from the region
of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely
detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why
shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until near
the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of
relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more
irredeemable death? Let me hurry to a conclusion.
The greater part of the fearful night had worn
away, and the corpse of Rowena once again stirred
—and now more vigorously than hitherto, although
arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter
hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle
or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the
ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions,
of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible,
the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred,
and now more vigorously than before. The hues
of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the
countenance—the limbs relaxed—and, save that
the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and
that the bandages and draperies of the grave still
imparted their charnel character to the figure, I
might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken
off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was
not, even then, altogether adopted, I could, at least,
doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering,
with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the
manner of one bewildered in a dream, the Lady of
Tremaine advanced bodily and palpably into the
middle of the apartment.
I trembled not—I stirred not—for a crowd of
unutterable fancies connected with the air, the demeanor
of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my
brain, had paralyzed, had chilled me into stone. I
stirred not—but gazed upon the apparition. There
Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena
who confronted me? Why, why should I doubt it?
The bandage lay heavily about the mouth—but then
it was the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine.
And the cheeks—there were the roses as in her
noon of life—yes, these were indeed the fair cheeks
of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with
its dimples, as in health, was it not hers?—but had
she then grown taller since her malady? What
inexpressible madness seized me with that thought?
One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking
from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened,
the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and
there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of
the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled
hair. It was blacker than the raven wings of the
midnight! And now the eyes opened of the figure
which stood before me. “Here then, at least,” I
shrieked aloud, “can I never—can I never be mistaken—these
are the full, and the black, and the
wild eyes—of the lady—of the Lady Ligeia!”
| Tales of the grotesque and arabesque | |