The Romance of the Forest, Ann Radcliffe [reader novel txt] 📗

of her countenance.” Ñ Adeline interrupted him. “Let me beg of you to consider your health Ñ this dewy air cannot be good for invalids.” He stood with his hands clasped, and seemed not to hear her. She took up the lute to go, and passed her fingers lightly over the chords. The sounds recalled his scattered senses: he raised his eyes, and fixed them in long unsettled gaze upon hers. “Must I leave you here?” said she, smiling, and standing in an attitude to depart Ñ “I entreat you to play again the air I heard just now,” said M. Amand, in a hurried voice. Ñ “Certainly;” and she immediately began to play. He leaned against a palm tree in an attitude of deep attention, and as the sounds languished on the air, his features gradually lost their wild expression, and he melted into tears. He continued to weep silently till the song concluded, and it was some time before he recovered voice enough to say, “Adeline, I cannot thank you for this goodness. My mind has recovered its bias, you have soothed a broken heart. Increase the kindness you have shewn me by promising never to mention what you have witnessed this evening, and I will endeavour never again to wound your sensibility “by a similiar offence.” Ñ Adeline gave the required promise; and M. Amand, pressing her hand, with a melancholy smile, hurried from the garden, and she saw him no more that night.

La Luc had been near a fortnight at Nice, and his health, instead of amending, seemed rather to decline, yet he wished to make a longer experiment of the climate. The air, which failed to restore her venerable friend, revived Adeline, and the variety and novelty of the surrounding scenes amused her mind, though, since they could not obliterate the memory of past, or suppress the pang of present affection, they were ineffectual to dissipate the sick languor of melancholy. Company, by compelling her to withdraw her attention from the subject of her sorrow, afforded her a transient relief, but the violence of the exertion generally nerally left her more depressed. It was in the stillness of solitude, in the tranquil observance of beautiful nature, that her mind recovered its tone, and indulging the pensive inclination now become habitual to it, was soothed and fortified. Of all the grand objects which nature had exhibited, the ocean inspired her with the most sublime admiration She loved to wander alone on its shores, and, when she could escape so long from the duties or the forms of society, she would sit for hours on the beach watching the rolling waves, and listening to their dying murmur, till her softened fancy recalled long lost scenes, and restored the image of Theodore, when tears of despondency too often followed those of pity and regret. But these visions of memory, painful as they were, no longer excited that phrenzy of grief they formerly awakened in Savoy; the sharpness of misery was passed, though its heavy influence was not perhaps less powerful. To these solitary indulgences generally succeeded calmness, and what Adeline endeavoured to believe was resignation.

She usually rose early, and walked down to the shore to enjoy, in the cool and silent hours of the morning, the cheering beauty of nature, and inhale the pure sea-breeze. Every object then smiled in fresh and lively colours. The blue sea, the brilliant sky, the distant fishing boats, with their white sails, and the voices of the fishermen borne at intervals on the air, were circumstances which reanimated her spirits, and in one of her rambles, yielding to that taste for poetry which had seldom forsaken her, she repeated the following lines:

MORNING, ON THE SEA SHORE.

What print of fairy feet is here

On Neptune’s smooth and yellow sands?

What midnight revel’s airy dance,

Beneath the moonbeams’ trembling glance,

Has blest these shores? Ñ What sprightly bands

Have chac’d the waves uncheck’d by fear?

Whoe’er they were they fled from morn,

For now all silent and forlorn

These tide-forsaken sands appear Ñ

Return, sweet sprites! the scene to cheer!

In vain the call! Ñ Till moonlight’s hour

Again diffuse its softer pow’r,

Titania, nor her fairy loves,

Emerge from India’s spicy groves.

Then, when the shad’wy hour returns,

When silence reigns o’er air and earth,

And ev’ry star in ¾ther burns,

They come to celebrate their mirth;

In frolic ringlet trip the ground,

Bid Music’s voice on Silence win,

Till magic echoes answer round Ñ

Thus do their festive rites begin.

O fairy forms! so coy to mortal ken,

Your mystic steps to poets only shewn,

O! lead me to the brook, or hallow’d glen,

Retiring far, with winding woods o’ergrown!

Where’er ye best delight to rule;

If in some forest’s lone retreat,

Thither conduct my willing feet

To the light brink of fountain cool,

Where, sleeping in the midnight dew,

Lie Spring’s young buds of ev’ry hue,

Yielding their sweet breath to the air;

To fold their silken leaves from harm,

And their chill heads in moonshine warm,

To bright Titania’s tender care.

There, to the night-bird’s plaintive chaunt

Your carols sweet ye love to raise,

With oaten reed and past’ral lays;

And guard with forceful spell her haunt,

Who, when your antic sports are done,

Oft lulls ye in the lily’s cell,

Sweet flow’r! that suits your slumbers well,

And shields ye from the rising sun.

When not to India’s steeps ye fly

After twilight and the moon,

In honey’d buds ye love to lie,

While reigns supreme Light’s fervid noon;

Nor quit the cell where peace pervades

Till night leads on the dews and shades.

E’en now your scenes enchanted meet my sight!

I see the earth unclose, the palace rise,

The high dome swell, and long arcades of light

Glitter among the deep embow’ring woods,

And glance reflected from the trembling floods!

While to soft lutes the portals wide unfold,

And fairy forms, of fine ¾therial dyes,

Advance with frolic step and laughing eyes,

Their hair with pearl, their garments deck’d with gold;

Pearls that in Neptune’s briny waves they sought,

And gold from India’s deepest caverns brought.

Thus your light visions to my eyes unveil,

Ye sportive pleasures, sweet illusions, hail!

But ah! at morn’s first blush again ye fade!

So from youth’s ardent gaze life’s landscape gay,

And forms in Fancy’s summer hues array’d,

Dissolve at once in air at Truth’s resplendent day!

During several days succeeding that on which M. Amand had disclosed the cause of his melancholy, he did not visit La Luc. At length Adeline met him in one of her solitary rambles on the shore. He was pale and dejected, and seemed much agitated when he observed her; she therefore endeavoured to avoid him, but he advanced with quickened steps and accosted her. He said it was his intention to leave Nice in a few days. “I have found no benefit from the climate,” added M. Amand; Alas! what climate can relieve the sickness of the heart! I go to lose in the varieties of new scenes the remembrance of past happiness; yet the effort is vain; I am every where equally restless and unhappy.” Adeline tried to encourage him to hope much from time and change of place. “Time will blunt the sharpest edge of sorrow,” said she; “I know it from experience.” Yet while she spoke, the tears in her eyes contradicted the assertion of her lips. “You have been unhappy, Adeline! Ñ Yes Ñ I knew it from the first. The smile of pity which you gave me, assured me that you knew what it was to suffer.” The desponding air with which he spoke renewed her apprehension of a scene similar to the one she had lately witnessed, and she changed the subject, but he soon returned to it. “You bid me hope much from time! Ñ My wife! Ñ My dear wife!” Ñ his tongue faultered Ñ “It is now many months since I lost her Ñ yet the moment of her death seems but as yesterday.” Adeline faintly smiled. “You can scarcely judge of the effect of time yet, you have much to hope for.” He shook his head. “But I am again intruding my misfortunes on your notice; forgive this perpetual egotism. There is a comfort in the pity of the good such as nothing else can impart; this must plead my excuse; may you, Adeline, never want it. Ah! those tears Ñ ” Adeline hastily dried them. M. Amand forbore to press the subject, and immediately began to converse on indifferent topics. They returned towards the chateau, but La Luc being from home, M. Amand took leave at the door. Adeline retired to her chamber, oppressed by her own sorrows and those of her amiable friend.

Near three weeks had now elapsed at Nice, during which the disorder of La Luc seemed rather to encrease than to abate, when his physician very honestly confessed the little hope he entertained from the climate, and advised him to try the effect of a sea voyage, adding, that if the experiment failed, even the air of Montpellier appeared to him more likely to afford relief than that of Nice. La Luc received this disinterested advice with a mixture of gratitude and disappointment. The circumstances which had made him reluctant to quit Savoy, rendered him yet more so to protract his absence, and encrease his expences; but the ties of affection that bound him to his family, and the love of life, which so seldom leaves us, again prevailed over inferior considerations, and he determined to coast the Mediterranean as far as Languedoc, where, if the voyage did not answer his expectations, he would land and proceed to Montpellier.

When M. Amand learned that La Luc designed to quit Nice in a few days, he determined not to leave it before him. During this interval he had not sufficient resolution to deny himself the frequent conversation of Adeline, though her presence, by reminding him of his lost wife, gave him more pain than comfort. He was the second son of a French gentleman of family, and had been married about a year to a lady to whom he had long been attached when she died in her lying-in. The infant soon followed its mother, and left the disconsolate father abandoned to grief, which had preyed so heavily on his health, that his physician thought it necessary to send him to Nice. From the air of Nice, however, he had derived no benefit, and he now determined to travel farther into Italy, though he no longer felt any interest in those charming scenes which in happier days, and with her whom he never ceased to lament, would have afforded him the highest degree of mental luxury Ñ now he sought only to escape from himself, or rather from the image of her who had once constituted his truest happiness.

La Luc having laid his plan, hired a small vessel, and in a few days embarked, with a sick hope bidding adieu to the shores of Italy and the towering alps, and seeking on a new element the health which had hitherto mocked his pursuit.

M. Amand took a melancholy leave of his new friends, whom he attended to the sea side. When he assisted Adeline on board, his heart was too full to suffer him to say farewell; but he stood long on the beach pursuing with his eyes her course over the waters, and waving his hand, till tears dimmed his sight. The breeze wafted the vessel gently from the coast, and Adeline saw herself surrounded by the undulating waves of the ocean. The shore appeared to recede, its mountains to lessen, the gay colours of its landscape to melt into each other, and in a short time the figure of M. Amand was seen no more: the town of Nice, with its castle and