University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

Lalla Rookh.

In these seven years of her widowhood circumstances
had been fortunate for my mother. With
more happy associations and less oppressing cares,
the natural gentleness of her disposition had been
restored, and sweet affections which a miserable life
had blighted, blossomed again in modest beauty,
making her in a humble sphere and limited circle
an object of the kindliest regard, so that all who
knew her had been pleased with her accession to
the little competence which led to our reunion. In
our pleasant cottage a new and happy life opened
upon me, as the fairest morning in gardens of flowers,
to one who has wandered all night in deserts.

Though I had received but such education as is
bestowed in the common schools in rural districts,

yet in the winter quarter of each year I had been
an industrious and quick learner, and had generally
been first in my class and in the praises of my
teachers. And I had cultivated as much as possible,
though always without any suitable instructor,
my taste for drawing. The little sketches I sometimes
made with crayons or common water colors
were very rude indeed, but I was proud of them,
and always fancied, perhaps truly, that the last one
was the best of all I had made. In every way the
discipline of character and habit at my uncle's had
been advantageous to me, and I was now happy in
the conviction of my mother—that I surpassed in
all accomplishments as in beauty any young girl
with whom I was likely to associate.

But new changes were before me. One afternoon
as I sat by the window of our little parlor, I
was startled by some disturbance in the street, and
in a moment a gentleman who had been thrown
from his carriage was brought into the house. He
was not seriously injured, but in the opinion of the
physician who was summoned, it was necessary
that he should remain a few days in repose, and as
I with book or pencil sat frequently in the room
where he reclined on a sofa, we became acquainted,
and a feeling of such interest succeeded as I had
never felt for any one I knew.

I had never, in truth, previously known a gentleman

of education and the manners which belong
to a polished society, and my poorly educated fancy
had never an ideal to be compared with Mr. Warburton.
His conversation was all freshness and
beauty to me, and he was studiously kind, as if
delighted that he had power to communicate to
any one a pleasure. I listened with more rapt
attention than the fair Venetian long ago. He saw
my attempts at drawing, praised them, and said
that with such genius as I possessed but cultivation
was necessary to a great excellence in art, and in a
mood half serious and half earnest he became for
the time my instructor, unfolding to me those fundamental
principles which a taste for sketching had
made familiar to himself when a youth, though he
confessed a long neglect of a pursuit in which a
love of nature once had made him an enthusiast.

One day as I was exhibiting to him my first
rude pictures, I related the chance by which I had
become aware of the possession of any natural
talent of this kind—the stranger's notice of me,
his kindness, and its influence on my happiness
and efforts. He heard me with attention, growing
into earnestness, and when I had concluded, exclaimed,
“Oh, I have then to congratulate myself
on having been your discoverer, as well as teacher!”
Suddenly the bond of our union was drawn closer
—we were old friends. I need not enter into details.

From what I have said you may readily
conceive of his handsome person, intellectual endowments,
and persuasive eloquence; and of my
ambition, trustfulness, and simple faith. Why
should I linger on such scenes—why tell you the
results your thought anticipates? We parted lovers,
and in truth

His love—for I still believe he loved me—was
not the all-absorbing passion which was in my
heart. Ambition was mixed with his tenderest
devotion. His partiality led him to exaggerate
my talents, which he believed would ultimately
add new luster to the fame he was determined himself
to achieve. I was never for a moment, something
to shelter, to protect—a solace for sorrow or
joy of softer and less ambitious moods—but
through the very bridal veil the iron purpose he
formed stood hard and unyielding before me. No
paradise of sweet repose tempted me, but study
and toil, with certainty of disappointed hopes, and
the constant goading of a task-master who would
hear of no pain, nor weariness, nor faltering, nor
see anything but the possible triumph. But when
he swept from the hard and steep way the soft
mists of fancy, and taking my hand, said, “Are
you strong enough? and brave enough? have you

sufficient faith in yourself and in me?” I went
forward with a courage equal to his will; and so
long as his arm was about me, and his voice whispering
inducements and confidence, no labor or
sacrifice was greater than I could dare.

“He will never marry you,” said my mother;
“I wish you had never seen him. Throw away
your idle fancies, and become the happy wife of
John Dale.” But opposition strengthened my
devotion to him, and when forbidden to see each
other any more, we met clandestinely, and the
fruits of my disobedience were such abandonment
of my very soul to him as Heaven has ever visited
with shame and misery.

Night after night I sat in the accustomed bower,
waiting for his promised footsteps, with my heart
beating, down from the wildness of expectancy to
the stillness of distracting fear, as the hours deepened
and darkened, and my mysterious lover did
not come. At last this agony of suspense could
be endured no longer, and under false pretexts I
left my home, and sought, alone and friendless, in
the strange great city, my promised husband.

At a time and place most unfortunate, I presented
myself before him, and claimed the fulfilment
of his vows.

Need I say how I appeared—a rustic girl, without
the beauty joy and hope can give the commonest

expression, and without the grace which the most
untutored may possess with innocence and content,
thus intruding into the midst of refinement
and elegance?

“Who is she, and what does she want?” whispered
one to another; for Mr. Warburton had
given me but a cold recognition, without an intimation
as to the claims I had upon his affection
and justice, and I saw the angry spot burning in
his cheek as he gracefully made his adieus, and as
hastily as possible drew me away. What an ordeal
awaited me! Shame, confusion, self-reproach, utter
despair, and, over all, the cold cruelty, the calm
decision, the unconcealed anger and probable
abandonment of him for whom I had bartered
every hope that had been mine, for honor, life, or
eternity.

I was dumb before him, went whithersoever he
led, and to all his harsh reproaches answered not a
word. At length with wonderful adroitness he
assumed to be the injured party, and talked of ruin
my thoughtless imprudence would bring upon us
both. “Marriage, just now,” he said, “is impossible.
You must content yourself with such a home
as I think proper or have power to give you, for a
while, and, meantime, I will be with you as much
as is consistent with my duties; I will aid you in
your studies, and you will have all my love. Have

you bravery and faith enough to work, and wait
till it is possible to fulfil the promises I made you,
and have ever held to be sacred obligations? If
you say yes, dear Elsie, I shall for your courage
and endurance hold you doubly dear. If you say
no, I abandon you at once and forever to the doom
you court, and give you but my hatred and my
curse.”

“For your love, Nathan,” I said, “I can brave
all things. I can wait, and work, and hope. But
when shall we be married?”

“I do not know,” he answered; “but as soon
as it is possible. The future, however, is not what
you are to think of now. You must bend all your
energies to the development of your genius. Feeling
can be crushed easily enough—with only an
effort of the will.”

We had gone through various windings and
intricate ways, and stopped, at length, before a
dilapidated building, some four or five stories in
height, in an obscure and narrow street, and here,
for the present, was to be my home. I ascended
the steep and dirty stairs, pair after pair, and was
shewn, at last, to a small and cheaply furnished
apartment, in the fourth story, where, I was told,
I must make myself contented and happy.

As the door closed, or was about closing upon
my prison, I could no longer keep the tears from

my eyes, or suppress the sound of my emotion.
“Wait,” I said, imploringly, reaching out my
arms, “Oh! wait, and reassure me! My head and
heart are breaking, and I am afraid to be here
alone.”

“I have said all I can say, given you every assurance
of love and protection that a reasonable
woman could ask, and, unless you wish to forfeit
all claims upon me, refrain from such foolish and
ill-timed appeals. Good night.”

“Oh, have mercy! pity me!” I exclaimed. I
could not help it. He turned toward me, for a
moment, and with a look that seemed crushing me
into perdition, folded his arms, and saying, simply,
“Well!” he descended the stairs without another
word.

Tehe agony I endured that night may never be
written.

When the morning came, and I went to the window,
I found that instead of looking into the street
as I expected, the prospect was completely shut in
by high brick walls, with only a plat of ground a
few yards in extent for the eye to rest on, and that
beaten, heated, cracked open, and entirely destitute
of grass or flowers. This, then, was to be my
home! I soon discovered that I was in one of the
most crowded and in all ways least endurable of
the common boarding houses of New York.

I cannot describe it, nor my sufferings while I
remained in it, a helpless and hopeless stranger,
among persons with whom I could not wish to be
acquainted. Only one gleam of sunshine ever illumined
the place, and that was in the kind words
and cheerful smile of a grocer—an awkward young
man, but good and amiable, who lived there, and
had kindly assisted me to find Mr. Warburton, on
my arrival in town.

I was constantly tortured with the fear of desertion,
and sometimes the days came and went
and the long nights wore by without his coming,
for whose sake only I endured existence.

And when he made his unfrequent visits, and
my heart leapt joyously to meet him, he would
perhaps simply inquire what I had accomplished,
examine my work critically, and if it were good
say I must make it better, and if it chanced to
displease him, tear it or trample it beneath his feet,
and without a word of endearment, or a promise
of brighter days, leave me to the awful solitude of
my thoughts. Sometimes I prayed to die; sometimes
I cried out, like a child that is lost in a
wilderness, and sometimes, with my hands dropping
listlessly beside me, I sat through the day and
night in silent and dumb despair. At other times
I took courage—Heaven knows whence it came—
and wrought earnestly and hopefully, till physical

weariness, or the old fear, brought back again
despair and the prostration of all my faculties.

I must have died, but for some occasional kindnesses,
giving me gleams of hope. How grateful I
was for them, and how long I lived on their memory!
Is it a wonder if, under such circumstances,
my progress in my difficult art was slow? and, as
the ambition once connected with me began to
decay, if his love rapidly declined, and soon was
ended.

The history of this wretched prison would fill a
volume, if I had time to write it. How vividly it
all rises in memory—all that I saw and felt there.
There was dark panel work at the head and the
foot of the bed, by which I used to sit, and, on the
smooth surfaces, trace characters with my finger—
sometimes my own name, sometimes Mr. Warburton's—and
records of sin and suffering, fearful
death-beds, and terrible judgments. What pages I
have thus traced, to give shape or solace to my
sorrow. But all that mournful writing left no impression
on the blank panels, where the same
story was repeated over and over a thousand
times.

The dusty cobwebs seemed to have hung for
ages along the ceiling, and to have filled the corners
of the room with gossamer shelves, that were

sunken with the white wings of the candle-moth,
and the bodies of flies, dry as mummies. The
colors in the tattered carpet had been worn into a
red and muddy hue; the chairs seemed to have
been brought there because too much decayed or
broken to be retained in the more public rooms,
pegs in the wall served instead of a wardrobe, and
the other furniture consisted of a small table,
painted red, and streaked and dotted with yellow,
and a stand, of a bluish stone color, on which was a
bowl and a tall pitcher, with the spout and handle
broken. Add to these a green rocking-chair, with
yellow flowers painted on the slats of the back, and
so disordered with age or careless use as searcely
to be occupied with safety, and you have a perfect
inventory of the room's contents.

Notwithstanding its unpromising aspect I often
pleased myself with fancies that, for so little, this
might be mended and that renewed, till all should
be comfortable and pretty, and then how happy we
could be, even there! he whom I loved so well,
and I. But these visions, so bright to me, were
never a spell for him, and I dared not even whisper
them, since to him the impolitic was the impossible.
What would the people among whom he was accustomed
to move, say to his union with me, and
the abandonment of his elegant lodgings for a
humbler home to be shared with such a wife? In

such a prospect he would have seen the forfeiture
of his long sought and hardly earned position.

I made a thousand plans that seemed feasible, till
I unfolded them to him. “Do you not see, dear
Elsie,” he would say, “how utterly impossible it
is? Employ your mind with your pictures, just
now. I hope a brighter destiny awaits you. If
I should not live to see it—when my poor name is
forgotten, your's will be famous. Work, dear Elsie,
work, and wait a little longer.”

Often, as he spoke thus, tears were in his eyes,
and there was a pathos and tremulous gentleness
in his voice that indicated the sincerity of his trust
in my abilities, and the fear of some dark and premature
ending of his own career; which foreknowledge,
as it now seems to have been, stood ever
like some haunting phantom between him and the
light. While he spoke of my prospective triumphs
he felt always the presence of this prophetic shadow
over him; and, forgetting the miserable realities in
which I was already involved—I, who needed
strength and comfort so much, became his strengthener
and comforter. While he was with me, and
speaking kindly and hopefully, I forgot all the
past, and all the future; for in the blindness of her
own devotion, woman rests satisfied, so long as she
is not cast into outer darkness. Good—she knows
not, suspects not how—will at some indefinite

time—she thinks not when—be the result of ill;
and so, with the darkest present closing about her,
she remains unconscious, incredulous, and, under
the close arching of the sepulcher, reaching for
roses on the wall.