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55 - Melmoth The Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin · Melmoth The Wanderer

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  Speaker 1: By Charles Robert Macheren, chapter thirty nine. And in he
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  Speaker 1: came with eyes of flame, the fiend to fetch the
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  Speaker 1: dead Southey's old woman of Berkley, Melmoth, and Monsada did
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  Speaker 1: not dare to approach the door till about noon. They
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  Speaker 1: then knocked gently at the door, and, finding the summons unanswered,
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  Speaker 1: they entered slowly and irresolutely. The apartment was in the
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  Speaker 1: same state in which they had left it the preceding
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  Speaker 1: night or other morning. It was dusky and silent, the
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  Speaker 1: shutters had not been opened, and the wanderer still seemed
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  Speaker 1: sleeping in his chair. At the sound of their approach,
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  Speaker 1: he half started up and demanded, what was the hour?
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  Speaker 1: They told him, My hour is come, said the wanderer.
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  Speaker 1: It is an hour you must neither partake or witness.
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  Speaker 1: The clock of eternity is about to strike, and its
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  Speaker 1: knell must be unheard by mortal ears. As he spoke,
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  Speaker 1: they approached nearer and saw with horror the change the
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  Speaker 1: last few hours had wrought on him. The fearful luster
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  Speaker 1: of his eyes had been deadened before their late interview,
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  Speaker 1: but now the lines of extreme age were visible in
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  Speaker 1: every feature. His hairs were as white as snow. His
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  Speaker 1: mouth had fallen in, the muscles of his face were
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  Speaker 1: relaxed and withered. He was the very image of hoary,
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  Speaker 1: decrepid debility. He started himself at the impression which his
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  Speaker 1: appearance visibly made on the intruders. You see what I feel,
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  Speaker 1: he exclaimed. The hour then is come. I am summoned,
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  Speaker 1: and I must obey the summons. My master has other
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  Speaker 1: work for me. When a meteor blazes in your atmosphere,
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  Speaker 1: when a comet pursues its burning path towards the sun,
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  Speaker 1: look up, and perhaps you may think of the spirit
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  Speaker 1: condemned to guide the blazing and erratic orb. The spirits
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  Speaker 1: that had risen to a kind of wild elation as
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  Speaker 1: suddenly subsided. And he added, leave me. I must be
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  Speaker 1: alone for the few last hours of my mortal existence,
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  Speaker 1: if indeed they are to be the last. He spoke
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  Speaker 1: this with an inward shuddering that was felt by his
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  Speaker 1: hearers in this apartment. He continued, I first drew breath
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  Speaker 1: in this I must perhaps resign. It would would I
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  Speaker 1: had never been born. Men retire, leave me alone. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: noises you hear in the course of the awful night
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  Speaker 1: that is approaching, Come not near this apartment. At peril
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  Speaker 1: of your lives, Remember, raising his voice, which still retained
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  Speaker 1: all its powers. Remember, your lives will be the forfeit
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  Speaker 1: of your desperate cureuriosity. For the same stake I risked
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  Speaker 1: more than life and lost it. Be warned retire. They
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  Speaker 1: retired and passed the remainder of that day without even
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  Speaker 1: thinking of food from that intense and burning anxiety that
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  Speaker 1: seemed to prey on their very vitals. At night, they retired,
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  Speaker 1: and though each laid down, it was without a thought
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  Speaker 1: of repose. Repose indeed, would have been impossible. The sounds
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  Speaker 1: that soon after midnight began to issue from the apartment
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  Speaker 1: of the Wanderer were at first of a description not
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  Speaker 1: to alarm, but they were soon exchanged for others of
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  Speaker 1: such indescribable horror that mal Mouth, though he had taken
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  Speaker 1: the precaution of dismissing the servants to sleep in the
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  Speaker 1: adjacent offices, began to fear that those sounds might reach them,
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  Speaker 1: and rest us himself from insupportable inquietude, rose and walked
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  Speaker 1: up and down the passage that led to that room
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  Speaker 1: of horror. As he was thus occupied, he thought he
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  Speaker 1: saw a figure at the lower end of the passage.
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  Speaker 1: So disturbed was his vision that he did not at
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  Speaker 1: first recognize Monsada. Neither asked the other the reason of
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  Speaker 1: his being there. They walked up and down together silently.
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  Speaker 1: In a short time, the sounds became so terrible that
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  Speaker 1: scarcely had the awful warning of the wanderer power to
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  Speaker 1: withhold them from attempting to burst into the room. These
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  Speaker 1: noises were of the most mixed and indescribable kind. They
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  Speaker 1: could not distinguish whether they were the shrieks of supplication
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  Speaker 1: or the yell of blasphemy. They hoped inwardly they might
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  Speaker 1: be the former. Towards morning, the sound suddenly ceased. They
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  Speaker 1: were stilled as in a moment. The silence that succeeded
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  Speaker 1: seemed to them, for a few moments more terrible than
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  Speaker 1: all that preceded. After consulting each other by a glance,
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  Speaker 1: they hastened together to the apartment. They entered. It was empty.
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  Speaker 1: Not a vestige of its last inhabitant was to be
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  Speaker 1: traced within. After looking around in fruitless amazement, they perceived
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  Speaker 1: a small door opposite to that by which they had entered.
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  Speaker 1: It communicated with a back staircase and was open. As
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  Speaker 1: they approached it, they discovered the traces of footsteps that
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  Speaker 1: appeared to be those of a person who had been
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  Speaker 1: walking in damp sand or clay. These traces were exceedingly
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  Speaker 1: plain They followed them to a door that opened on
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  Speaker 1: the garden. That door was open also. They traced the
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  Speaker 1: footmarks distinctly through the narrow gravel walk, which was terminated
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  Speaker 1: by a broken fence and opened on a heathy field
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  Speaker 1: which spread half way up a rock whose summit overlooked
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  Speaker 1: the sea. The weather had been rainy, and they could
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  Speaker 1: trace the steps distinctly through that heaty field. There ascended
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  Speaker 1: the rock together. Early as it was, the cottagers, who
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  Speaker 1: were poor fishermen residing on the shore, were all up
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  Speaker 1: and assuring Melmouth and his companion that they had been
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  Speaker 1: disturbed and terrified the preceding night by sounds which they
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  Speaker 1: could not describe. It was singular that these men, accustomed
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  Speaker 1: by nature and habit alike to exaggeration and superstition, used
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  Speaker 1: not the language of either on this occasion. There is
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  Speaker 1: an overwhelming mass of conviction that falls on the mind
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  Speaker 1: that annihilates idiom and peculiarities and crushes out truth from
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  Speaker 1: the heart. Melmouth waved back all who offered to accompany
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  Speaker 1: him to the precipice which overhung the sea. Monsada alone
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  Speaker 1: followed him through the firs that clothed this rock. Almost
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  Speaker 1: to its summit. There was a kind of tract, as
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  Speaker 1: if a person had dragged or been dragged his way
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  Speaker 1: through it, a down trodden track over which no footsteps
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  Speaker 1: but those of one impelled by force, had ever passed.
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  Speaker 1: Melmouth and Mansada gained at last the summit of the rock.
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  Speaker 1: The ocean was beneath the wide waste and gulfing ocean.
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  Speaker 1: On a crag. Beneath them, something hung as floating to
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  Speaker 1: the blast. Melmouth clambered down and caught it. It was
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  Speaker 1: the handkerchief which the Wanderer had worn about his neck
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  Speaker 1: the preceding night. That was the last trace of the Wanderer.
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  Speaker 1: Melmoth and Mansada exchanged looks of silent and unutterable horror,
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  Speaker 1: and returned slowly home. Finnis and of Chapter thirty nine
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  Speaker 1: and of Melmouth the Wanderer by Charles Robert macherin