University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

The outside of St. Evermont's Cottage.—Evening Scenery.
Enter Madame St. Evermont and Julia.
Mad.
This has its cause, for I of late observe
A sadness muses in her countenance,
Moves in each measured step, and to her form
Imparts its fixed and mournful attitude.
Why is it thus with Adelaide?

Julia.
In truth,
A melancholy, like the heavy air
That hangs its sickness on a budding tree,
Weighs down the rosy blossoms of her beauty.
Full oft amid the abbey's loneliness,
When evening's star ascended in the west,
I have surprised her weeping 'mid the tombs:
And when I chid the tears that trickled down,
With such a woeful smile she strove to hide them,
I too have wept. Then would we sit and think
Of times gone by and Albert.

Mad.
Oh! my Julia!

Julia.
To lose him in the hour of holy love.

Mad.
Do not, who hast decreed that we should suffer,
Do not forbid our tears, but leave us yet
That miserable comfort of the wretched.
But Julia, let those tears be secret ones:
Not in the presence of St. Evermont
Indulge those sorrows, which afflict him more
Than all his own endurance: and howe'er
There is an agony in seeming happy,
Yet let us wear the semblance of content.

Julia.
It is an art which I must learn of thee,
My gentle tutoress in resignation,
And more than mother. What though destiny
Between our luckless hearts hath interposed
Its iron hand—and I was never Albert's—
Yet have you ta'en me with parental fondness,
And saved me.

Mad.
Julia, thou art precious to me:
And had my Albert lived! You are my child;
I love you as my Adelaide, and she
Is dear, as to the pilgrim of the desert
Are the remaining drops which he has saved
From his subverted urn.

Julia.
Those fair blue eyes,
Where shines a soul most pensive and most loving,
Her soft variety of winning ways,
And all the tender witchery of her smiles
That charm each sterner grief, her studious care
In all the offices of sweet affection,
Would make the world enamoured.

Mad.
Her endearments
Have all that soft and downy consolation
That, like an Indian's breast-plate made of plumes,
Repels the arrows of adversity.
Have I not seen her, with a parent's pride,
Smoothing the wrinkled sorrows of her father,
And, with the whispers of her gentle voice,
Where care awakened in its broken sleep,
As music lulls a sick man to repose,
Persuade it to oblivion of itself.

Julia.
He is in need of comfort.

Mad.
There are few
Whom heaven hath visited with such disaster.
For know the Count St. Evermont was once
Among the great ones of this little world.

Julia.
Sorrow indeed has done its work upon him.

Mad.
Yet only leaves such clefts as does the fire
That lights upon the summit of an Alp,
And striking shakes not.

Julia.
And yet oftentimes
I have observed him mutely gaze upon us,
When we have sat together, round the hearth
That cheered the coldness of a winter's eve,
In woman's workmanship. Then would he start,
And suddenly compress us to his bosom,
While from those eyes that sent a look to God
Tears shed their trickling heat upon my breast.

Mad.
See where he comes, and moves as if the soul
Infused its nobleness o'er all his form.
That letter, if his face doth speak aught,
Is sure joy's harbinger. 'Tis very long
Since joy hath been with us.

[Enter St. Evermont with a letter.]
St. Ever.
Almighty one!
Forgive, if e'er in tribulation's hour
I rose a rebel 'gainst thy providence,
Thou who mysteriously dost arbitrate
In comfort, and in grief! my wife, my Julia,
I almost think that I am not unhappy.

Mad.
(who has snatched the letter from him)
My Adelaide! what, Holstein!

Julia.
Let me be
A partner of your comforts: I have been
The partner of your sorrows.

Mad.
Oh! my husband!
My Julia! at the dead of slumbering night,
I have knelt down and prayed that, in the hour
We should be laid beneath the earth together,
There should be one to lift her from the tomb,
To take her in his arms and to console her.
(to Julia)
Count Holstein asks the hand of Adelaide.

Julia.
She will be blest; for Holstein is a man
Whose soul was formed of heaven's own milder air.

Mad.
All, Julia, will be blest. Though we are fallen
From off the pinnacles of human life,
A quiet freshness spreads along the vale,
A tranquil green down the declivity
Where all the sweet felicities of home
Have fixed their sheltered dwelling.

St. Ever.
Oh! my country!

Mad.
Hold not such muttered converse with yourself:
Look not so very sadly: who forgets
That he was happier once is happy still.
Is she not ours? But where is Adelaide?

St. Ever.
I bade old Godfrey seek the ruined abbey
Where she is wont at such an hour to stray.

Julia.
See where they come together.

[Enter Godfrey and Adelaide.]
Mad.
Adelaide!

St. Ever.
Come to my bosom, Adelaide, my child!
And art thou left me still?

Adel.
My gentle father!
Amid the deep recesses of these woods
Where not an echo of the talking world
Hath told its pompous moral, I have learned
The precept of that sweet philosophy
Instinctive nature teaches,—to belove you.
My mother!

Mad.
I have saved thee, Adelaide,
E'en as perhaps the first of mothers bore
A little flower from Eden's holy bowers,
And loved it more than Eden, and thou art
As pure and lovely as the first fresh rose
That, in the dewy groves of Paradise,
Grew in creation's morning.

St. Ever.
Read, my child.

Julia.
She trembles, ha! she faints.

Adel.
Support me, Julia.
My life, but not my heart: oh! take my life,
And do not frown upon me: oh! my father!

St. Ever.
Thou wilt not wed Count Holstein?

Mad.
Adelaide.

St. Ever.
I must endure this too. Fond cheating hope,
Thou meteor in the evening of my life,
That from the hot affections of this heart
Exhaled a bright illusion.

Mad.
Do you love me?

Adel.
Were my heart made transparent, every thought
And each particular wish made visible,
You would behold a prayer, that, like the eye
Of an arch-angel, supplicated heaven
To pour its blessings o'er my parents' age.

St. Ever.
“Arise, and” leave me.

Julia.
(to Adelaide, as they go out together)
Ah! my weeping friend,
What sorrows yet can fortune have in store?

[Exeunt Adelaide and Julia.
St. Ever.
Suspicion is the growth of meaner spirits;
Yet does misfortune often cherish it,
And then it lurks a rank and leafless weed
Amid the ruins of a noble mind.
He is the friend of my calamity.
(To Godfrey)
You came to me with fearful hesitation,
'Tis scarce a month, and when I bade you speak,
You cried, beware Lunenberg. In wrath
I flung you off.

Godf.
Beware of him, my lord.

Mad.
Old man, you wrong her.

Godf.
Madam, I am old.

Mad.
I am a mother.

St. Ever.
Speak, I charge thee, speak.

Godf.
Upon the very evening 'ere the day
Count Lunenberg departed; o'er the hills
That from your cottage slope in woods away,
I chanced to wander: suddenly I heard
The murmurs of a voice most tremulous,
And pausing, looked through twilight's sinking veil,
When straight I saw a man, who kneeling pressed
A woman's hand: she wept and sobbed in grief,
He rose and clasped her.

Mad.
It was not my child!

Godf.
It was your daughter Adelaide.

St. Ever.
'Tis false.
I now remember me thou hadst a child,
And that she perished; thou dost envy me,
Wouldst make me wretched as thou art thyself:
Thou didst not see all this, or if thou didst
Thou shouldst not have believed thine aged eyes:
Or if thou didst, false dotard.—Look not on me,
For, when I gaze upon thy countenance,
I cannot but remember thou hast followed
Misfortune's footsteps: time has changed thy hair,
But time, nor fortune, could not change thy faith.

Mad.
Oh Adelaide! thou wert my only solace.

St. Ever.
There is a tomb, where sleep my ancestors:
None e'er hath stood upon that sepulchre
And said, Here rests a coward or a wanton.
It is a vault of glory. Adelaide.

[Enter Adelaide and Julia.]
Adel.
Is it my father's call?

St. Ever.
It is thy father:
Who tells his daughter that he keenly feels
What nature's providence has wisely willed
A father's love; yet tells his daughter too
That if a thawing breath of infamy
Drop its corruption on thy name of snow,
He would, all crimsoned with thy filial blood,
Pluck the hot dagger from thy panting breast,
And lift it, reeking o'er with life, to heaven.

Adel.
(to Julia)
Protect me, Julia, save me in thine arms.

Mad.
And shall I ever curse my travail for thee?

St. Ever.
Have I not honor still? And who shall take
What I still hold, in proud despite of fortune
And all the malice of conspiring stars?
Count Lunenberg, I'm not that thick fat root
That draws its juices from the sepulchre,
And feeds upon the dead. I will not live
On my child's shame. 'Tis done. From hence, for ever!
To-morrow's setting sun shall see me far
From thine accursed towers. Preserve me, heaven,
Save me from infamy. I do not think
That thou hast done the utmost deed of shame,
But, by the mighty power that made the world,
One impure thought, one touch.... 'Twill make me mad.

[Exit.
Mad.
This earth is all too full of misery.

[Exit weeping.
Adel.
Am I permitted still to sob upon thee?
Dost thou constrain me, Julia, to thy heart
And weep upon me.

Julia.
Here, upon my bosom,
On friendship's pillow lay your sorrows down:
From infancy we shared each little joy,
And we have conned affliction's book together.
I claim your grief, for it is all mine own.

Adel.
Heaven has abandoned me.

Julia.
Say, what has happened.

Adel.
Oh! there is not an outcast of the world
So lost, or so distracted. Julia, Julia,
What will become of me! oh! Lunenberg!

Julia.
That name, I fear, came bursting from your heart,
A load of misery. Speak, Adelaide.

Adel.
And was it not enough that he should leave me?
That after one short month of exstacy,
One little month, he tore him from my arms?
You frown; but hear me, Julia, and if e'er
Your Albert was beloved, you'll pity me.

Julia.
Yes, I will pity thee, but, Adelaide—

Adel.
Thine eyes proclaim a meaning which the lips
Would fear to utter. Dost thou, canst thou think it?
No! Though I love him with a fainting rapture,
And cling around his memory with a clasp
Of most enamoured fondness, witness heaven
That if thy minister, with holy rite,
Had not to love extended sanctity,
I never had been his.

Julia.
What! married! then
You still are innocent.

Adel.
If she can be so
Who, in despite of that high ordinance
That wills a parent's empire o'er his child,
Gave promise that she never would reveal
Her marriage to her father.

Julia.
Why demand it?

Adel.
He said, if e'er it reached the imperial ear,
His sovereign's frown would blast him, and my father
Would never brook a moment's secrecy.
And then by all our loves he did entreat
I ne'er would speak of it.

Julia.
And this you trusted?

Adel.
Is there not sweet perdition in his eyes?
Is not that face refulgent with a soul
Sublimely ardent, while his every word
Is tempered with a wooing gentleness?
And has not glory wreathed around his brow
A garland from her ever-green? Whose arm
Hurls swift destruction through the ranks of war
With might like his? Whose smile hath such a beam?
Whose lips such soft persuasive eloquence?
And has he not received my father's sorrows,
And dried my mother's tears? Who had not loved him?
I loved, and, loving, never could suspect.

Julia.
I own him all that woman's virgin wishes
In fancy's kindling vision can pourtray;
Yet high ambition swells within his heart.

Adel.
Oh! he has sworn by every sacred power,
By all heaven's host that glitter through the night,
That Adelaide was dearer than his glory;
That to one sigh, one smile of Adelaide,
He would resign the empire of the world.
If you had seen the flash of fervid soul
Suffused o'er all that burning countenance,
If you had felt the throbbing of his heart
When, in the tumult of impetuous passion,
He seized my hand and clasped it to his bosom,
Then would you say he loved. Dost thou remember
That day, when down a winter torrent's roll
He plunged precipitous? He cleft the tide,
And bore me back to life and to my father?

Julia.
Yet why demand this strange mysterious silence?

Adel.
O Julia! thou hast opened many a wound,
And bid'st them bleed afresh. Thou hast recalled
My wandering thought from scenes of happiness
To present sorrows, and to future perils.
Within my breast there is a messenger
Of shame and misery: nay, let me tell thee
That when amid the abbey's mouldering altars
I swore the nuptial vow, ('twas in the hour
Of calm and holy night, when vigilant heaven
Opes its bright eyes to watch the sleeping world)
A secret voice was whispering guilt and horror:
And, Julia, when I threw me in his arms
To hide my blushes, and to quell my fears,
He trembled too: his eye was all on fire,
And dreadful passions flared upon his face.
How soon he left me too!

Julia.
Alas, my friend,
Heaven has decreed calamity enough!

Adel.
He left me, Julia! one poor little month
Was all of bliss that I have ever known.
Yet was he still as ardent as before,
And spoke and looked all exstacy. At length
An order from the court commanded him
Back to Vienna. Julia, I have pined
E'er since that time in weeping solitude:
My heart is wasted: and the rising morn
And setting sun behold me still in tears.

Julia.
Fly to your mother, open all your bosom,
Reveal this fatal marriage.

Adel.
'Tis impossible.
E'en as he parted, and my winding arms
Detained him still within their long embrace,
E'en in the pressure of the last sad kiss,
E'en as I prayed another of his lips,
He whispered, Adelaide, the stars alone
And yonder orb be conscious of our loves.

Julia.
Your father cried that he would hence for ever;
And 'twas the look and accent of resolve.

Adel.
What! o'er the world! the cold and heartless world,
Thrown out! To have no hope, no smiling hope,
To lean on in his age! to see the night
Fast gathering o'er his head, and have no home:
Then think on better times! I will kneel down,
I will entreat him! What? It cannot be!
Then heaven have mercy! Send some pitying angel
To rescue my distraction! Oh my husband!
Where art thou, Lunenberg?

[Exeunt.