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[page
171, unnumbered, column 1, continued:]
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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 first and most
frequently in [column 2:] some
large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her
family — I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely
ancient date
cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more
than all
else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that
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
finally 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 fails 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 as 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 marble hand upon my
shoulder.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of
an
opium dream — 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 Verulam, speaking
truly
of all the forms and genera
of beauty, "without some strangeness
in the
proportion." Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not
of
a 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 [page 172:] medallions
of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection.
There
were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely
perceptible
tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils
speaking
the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the
triumph
of all things heavenly — the magnificent turn of the short upper lip —
the soft, 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 fullness 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
Verulam
alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes
of
our own race. They were even 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 hue 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 tint. The "strangeness," however, which I
found
in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color,
or the brilliancy of the features, and 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.
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 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. I mean to say that, subsequently to the
period 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 around [[aroused]] within me by her large and
luminous orbs.
Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even [column 2:] steadily
view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes 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, save only through the weakness of his feeble
will."
Length of years, and subsequent
reflection, have
enabled me to trace,
indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the 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 the 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 wild words which she habitually 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 have never known in woman — but where breathes the man who has
traversed,
and successfully, all the
wide areas of moral, physical, 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 — but less known — that delicious vista by slow
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! [page 173:]
How poignant, then, must have been
the grief with
which, after some
years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
and fly 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. Wanting the radiant
lustre of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than
Saturnian
lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages
over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too —
too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent
waxen
hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled
and
sank 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 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
until the
last
instance, 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 my hand, would she pour out
before
me the overflowing 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 recognized
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.
At high noon of the night in which
she departed,
beckoning me, peremptorily,
to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not
many days before. I obeyed her. — They were these:
Lo! 'tis a gala
night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low, [column
2:]
And hither and thither fly —
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama! — oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased forevermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out — out are the lights — out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm. |
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia,
leaping to her
feet and extending her
arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines —
"O God! O Divine Father! — shall these things be undeviatingly so? —
shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel
in Thee? Who — who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor?
Man
doth not yield him to the angels, nor
unto death utterly, save only through
the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with
emotion, she
suffered her white arms to
fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of Death. And as she breathed
her
last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
bent to them my ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of
the
passage in Glanvill — "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 calls wealth. Ligeia
had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls 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 [page 174:]
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
fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
There is no 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 on the objects within. Over the upper portion of this
huge window, extended the 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
writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a 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
pall-like
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. The
material was the richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at
irregular
intervals, with arabesque figures, 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 [column 2:] the
room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities;
but
upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by
step, as the visiter 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 Norman, 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 august, 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 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,
I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned — ah, could it be
forever? — upon the 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
pertubed [[perturbed]]
state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and
about
the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the
distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric 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 physicians. 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. 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 emphasis upon my attention. She had just
awakened
from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half of
anxiety, half of 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 [page 175:] 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
almost inarticulate breathings, and those 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 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 although
invisible
object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon
the
golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the
censer,
a shadow — a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect — such as might
be fancied for the shadow of a shade. 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. Having found the wine, I recrossed the
chamber,
and poured out a goblet-ful, which I held to the lips of the fainting
lady.
She had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself,
while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened 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 my own
perception
that, immediately subsequent
to the fall of the ruby-drops, 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 draperry [[drapery]], and
upon the
writhing
of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell,
as
I called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot
beneath
the glare of the censer where I had seen 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 gazing 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, [column 2:] 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 soul
was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my
attention
riveted 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 feeble, 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 no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt 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 — 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 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 saw — a tremor upon the lips. In a
minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly
teeth.
Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which had
hitherto
reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason
wandered;
and it was only by a violent 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 afterward,
the whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the
intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all 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 [page 176:] 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
revivication [[revivification]]
was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and
apparently
more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle
with
some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I know not
what
of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry
to
a conclusion.
The greater part of the fearful night
had worn
away, and she who had
been dead, 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 thing that was enshrouded advanced
boldly
[[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 stature, the demeanor of the figure,
rushing hurridly
[[hurriedly]] through my brain, had paralyzed — had chilled me into
stone.
I stirred not — but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad
disorder
in my thoughts — a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living
Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all — the fair-haired,
the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt
it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth — but then might it not be
the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks — there
were
the roses as in her noon of life — yes, these might indeed be the fair
cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples,
as in health, might it not be 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 slowly opened the eyes 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 my lost love — of the lady — of the LADY
LIGEIA!"
EDGAR A. POE
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