The Missionary: An Indian Tale; vol. II Read online

  CHAPTER XI.

  Slowly restored to a perfect consciousness of his situation; to arecollection of the fatal avowal, by which he had irretrievablycommitted himself, and of the singular event which had produced it; theMissionary still lay motionless and silent; still lay supported by theNeophyte which love alone had given him. He dreaded a recovery from thepartial suspension of all his higher faculties; he shrank from theobtrusive admonitions of reason and religion, and sought to perpetuatean apparent state of insensibility, which gave him up to the indulgenceof a passive but gracious feeling, scarcely accompanied by any positiveperception, and resembling, in its nature and influence, some confusedbut delightful dream, which, while it leaves its pleasurable impressionon the senses, defies the accuracy of memory to recall or to arrange it.His heart now throbbed lightly, for it was disburdened of its fatalsecret; his mind reposed from its conflicts, for it had passed thecrisis of its weakness in betraying it: he felt the tears of love on hisbrow; he felt an affectionate hand returning the pressure of his; and asense of a sacred communion, which identified the soul of another withhis own, possessed itself of his whole being; and passion was purifiedby an intelligence which seemed to belong alone to mind. Alive tofeelings more acute, to a sensibility more exquisite, than he hadhitherto known; all external objects faded from his view for the moment;life was to him a series of ideas and feelings, of affections andemotions: he sought to retain no consciousness, but that of loving andbeing loved; and if he was absorbed in illusion, it was an illusionwhich, though reason condemned, innocence still ennobled andconsecrated.

  Luxima hung over him in silence, and her countenance was the reflectionof all the various emotions which flitted over his. The repose whichsmoothed his brow, communicated to hers its mild and tranquilexpression; her pulse quickened to the increasing throb of his temples;and the vital hues which revisited his cheek, rosed hers with the brightsuffusion of love and hope. Fearing almost for his life, she bowed herhead to catch the low-drawn respiration, and returned every breath ofrenovating existence with a sigh of increasing joy.

  “Luxima!” said a voice, which, though low and tremulous, reached herinmost soul.

  “I am here, father!” she replied in emotion, and bashfully withdrawingher arm from beneath a head which no longer needed support.

  The Missionary took the hand thus withdrawn, and pressed it, for thefirst time, to his lips. The modest eyes of the vestal Priestess sankbeneath the look which accompanied the tender act: it was the first lookof love acknowledged and returned; it penetrated and mingled itself withthe very existence of her to whom it was directed; it resembled, in itsabsorbing and delicious influence, the ecstacy of enthusiasm, which, inthe days of her religious illusion, descended on her spirit to kindleand to entrance it; which had once formed the inspiration of theProphetess, and animated beyond the charms of human beauty theloveliness of the woman. Turning away her glance in timid disorder, shesought for resource against herself in the objects which encompassedher: she threw up her eyes to that heaven, to whose exclusive love shehad once devoted herself, and, from a sudden association of ideas, sheturned them to the mouldering altar of the god whose service she hadabandoned. The religion of her spirit and of her senses, of truth anderror, alike returned with all their influence on her soul; and sheshuddered as she looked on the shrine where she had once worshipped witha pure, pious, and undivided feeling: the moonlight fell in broken raysupon its shining fragments, and formed a strong relief to their lustrein the massive foliage of a dark tree which shaded it. The air wasbreathless, and the branches of this consecrated and gigantic treealone were agitated; they waved with a slow but perceptible undulation;the fearful eyes of the apostate pursued their mysterious motion, whichseemed influenced by no external cause: they bowed, they separated, andthrough their hitherto impervious darkness gleamed the vision of a humancountenance! if human it might be called; which gave the perfect imageof Brahma, as he is represented in the _Avatar_ of “the Destroyer.” Itvanished--the moon sank in clouds--the vision lasted but a moment; butthat moment for ever decided the fate of the Priestess of Cashmire!Luxima saw no more--with a loud and piercing shriek she fell prostrateon the earth.

  The Missionary started in horror and amazement; the form which now laypale and lifeless at his feet, had, an instant before, by its animatedbeauty rivetted his eyes, absorbed his thoughts, and engrossed hisexclusive attention, as half-averted, half-reposing in his arms, it hadmingled in its expression and its attitude the tender confidence ofinnocence and love, the dignified reserve of modesty and virtue; stillseeing no object but herself, he remained ignorant of the cause of heremotion, and was overwhelmed by its effects. He trembled with a selfishfondness for a life on which his happiness, his very existence, nowdepended: he raised her in his arms; he murmured on her ear words ofpeace and love. He threw back her long dark tresses, that the air mightplay freely on her face; and he only withdrew his anxious looks from thebeauty of her pale and motionless countenance, to try if he coulddiscover, in the surrounding scene, any cause for a transition offeeling so extraordinary; but nothing appeared which could changehappiness into horror, which could tend to still the pulse of love inthe throbbing heart, or bleach its crimson hue upon the glowing cheek.The moon had again risen in cloudless majesty, rendering the minutestblossom visible: the stillness of the air was so profound, that thefaintest sigh was heard in dying echoes. All was boundless solitude andsoothing silence. The mystery, therefore, of Luxima’s suddendistraction was unfathomable. She still lay motionless on the shoulderof the Missionary; but the convulsive starts, which at intervals shookher frame, the broken sighs which fluttered on her lips, betrayed thereturn of life and consciousness. “Luxima!” exclaimed the Missionary,pressing the cold hands he held; “Luxima, what means this heart-rending,this fearful emotion? Look at me! Speak to me! Let me again meet thineeye, and hang upon thy voice--fatal eye and fatal voice--my destructionand my felicity! still I woo and fear the return of their magicinfluence. Luxima, if Heaven forbids our communion in happiness, does italso deny us a sympathy in sorrow? Art thou to suffer alone? or rather,are my miseries to be doubled in my ignorance of thine? Oh! my beloved,if conscience speak in words of terror to thy soul, what has not mine tofear? It is I, I alone, who should be miserable in being weak. Createdto feel, thou dost but fulfil thy destiny, and in thee nature contemnsthe false vow by which superstition bound thee to thy imaginary god. Inthee it is no crime to love! in me, it is what I abhor no less thancrime--it is sin, it is shame, it is weakness. It is I alone who shouldweep and tremble; it is I alone who have fallen, and whose misery andwhose debasement demand pity and support. Speak to me then, my too wellbeloved disciple; solace me by words, for thy looks are terrific. OLuxima! give me back that soft sweet illusion, which thy voice of terrordissipated, or take from me its remembrance; give me up at once toreason and to remorse, or bid me, with one look of love, renounce bothfor ever at thy feet, and I will obey thee! I!--Redeemer of the World!hast thou then quite forsaken him whom thou didst die to save? Is thebearer of thy cross, is the minister of thy word, abandoned by hisSaviour? Is he so steeped in misery and sin, that the spirit, which thygrace once enlightened, dares not lift itself to thee, and cry for mercyand salvation? Is the soul, which was tempted to error in its zeal forthy cause, to sink into the endless night prepared for the guilty?Woman! fiend! whatever thou art, who thus by the seeming ways of Heavenleadest me to perdition, leave me! fly me! loose thy fatal hold on myheart, while yet the guilty passions, which brood there, have made mecriminal in thought alone.”

  Luxima shuddered; she raised her drooping head from the bosom whichrecoiled from supporting her, and she fixed on the agitated countenanceof the Monk a look, tender, and reproachful, even through the expressionof horror and remorse, which darkened its softness and its lustre. Thislook had all its full effect; but Luxima shrunk back from the arms whichagain involuntarily extended to receive and to support her; and, in asolemn and expressive voice, she said, “It is all over!--ere that orb
shall have performed its nightly course we shall be _parted for ever_!”

  The Missionary was silent, but horror and consternation were in hislooks.

  Luxima threw round her a wild and timid glance; then creeping towardhim, she said, in a low whispering voice, “Sawest thou nothing, some fewminutes back, which froze thy blood, and harrowed up thy soul?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, watching, in strong emotion, the sad wildexpression of her countenance.

  “That is strange,” she returned, with a deep sigh, “most strange!” Then,after a pause, she demanded, with a vacant look, “Where are we, father?”

  “Luxima! Luxima!” he exclaimed, gazing on her in fear and in amazement,“what means this sudden, this terrific change? Merciful Heaven! does thymind wander; or hast thou quite forgotten thine own consecrated shades,the ‘_confluence of the streams_,’ where first the Christian Missionaryaddressed the Priestess of Brahma? Hast thou forgotten the altar of thyonce worshipped god?”

  At these words, emphatically pronounced, to steady her waveringrecollection, lightning from heaven seemed to fall upon the head of theapostate Priestess; her limbs were convulsed, her complexion grew livid,she threw her eyes wildly round her, and murmuring, in a low quickvoice, a Brahminical invocation, she sprung forward with rapid bound,and fell prostrate before the shrine of her former idol. There theChristian dared not follow her: he arose, and advanced a few steps, andpaused, and gazed; then, wringing his hands in agony, he said, “Happy inher illusion, she returns to her false gods for support and comfort,while I, debased and humbled, dare not raise my eyes and heart insupplications to the God of Truth.” As he spoke, he cast a look on thecross, which hung from his rosary; but it was still humid with tears,which love had shed, it still breathed the odours of the tresses thewind had wafted on its consecrated surface. He shuddered, and let itfall, and groaned, and covered his eyes with his robe, as if he soughtto shut out the light of the Heaven he had offended. When again heraised his head, he perceived that Luxima was moving slowly towards him,not, as she had left him, in delirium, and in tears; but in all thedazzling lustre of some newly-awakened enthusiasm; resembling in hermotions and her look the brilliant, the blooming, the inspiredProphetess, who had first disturbed his imagination and agitated hismind, in the groves of Lahore; extending her right hand to forbid hisapproach, she paused and leaned on the branch of a blasted tree, withall the awful majesty of one who believed herself fresh from a communionwith a celestial being, and irradiated with the reflection of his glory.“Christian!” she said, after a long pause, “the crisis of humanweakness is past, and the powers of the immortal spirit assertthemselves:--Heaven has interposed to save its faithless servant, andshe is prepared to obey its mandate: a divine hand has extended itselfto snatch her from perdition, and she refuses not its aid. Christian!the hour of sacrifice is arrived--Farewell. Go! while yet thou mayestgo, in innocence; while yet the arm of eternal destruction has notreached thee. O Christian! dangerous and fatal! while yet I have breathand power to bid thee depart, leave me! The light of the great Spirithas revisited my soul. Even now I am myself become a _part of theDivinity_.” As she spoke, her eyes were thrown up, and the whites onlywere visible; a slight convulsive smile gleamed across her features; andshe passed her right hand from her bosom to her forehead with a slowmovement. This mysterious act seemed to bestow upon her a new sense ofexistence[10]. Her religious ecstacy slowly subsided--her eyes fell--thecolour revisited her cheek--she sighed profoundly, and after a silentpause, she said,

  “Christian, thou hast witnessed my re-union to the source of myspiritual being. Oppose not thyself to the Heaven, which opens toreceive me: depart from me; leave me now--and for ever.”

  “Luxima,” interrupted the Missionary, in the low wild accent of terrorand amazement; and perceiving that some delirium of religious fanaticismhad seized her imagination--“Luxima, what means this wondrousresolution, this sudden change? Are all our powers alike reversed? Hastthou risen above humanity, or have I fallen below it? And art thou, thesole cause of all my weakness and my shame, to rise upon the ruin thouhast made, to triumph upon the destruction thou hast effected? Part withme now! abandon me in a moment such as this! O Luxima,” he added, withtenderness and passion, and in a voice soft and imploring, “am Ideceived, or do you love me?”

  Luxima replied not, but her whole countenance and form changed theirexpression: she no longer looked like an inspired sibyl, borne away bythe illusions of her own disordered imagination, but like a tender anddevoted woman. She advanced; she fell at his feet, and kissed withhumility and passion the hem of his robe; but when he would have raisedher in his arms, she recoiled from his support, and seating herself ona bank, at a little distance from him, she wept. He approached, andstood near her: he saw in the rapid transitions of her manner, and herconduct, the violent struggles of feeling and opinion, the ceaselessconflicts of love and superstition; he saw imaged in her emotions thecontending passions which shook him to dissolution. He sighed heavily,and mentally exclaimed,

  “Alas! her virtue derives more strength even from error, than mine fromtruth: she obeys her ideas of right as a Brahmin; I, as a Christian,violate and forsake mine.” He turned his eyes on Luxima, and perceivedthat she was now gazing with a look of exquisite fondness on him,tempered with something of melancholy and sadness.

  “It is hard,” said she, “to look on thee, and yet to part with thee! butwho will dare to disobey the mandate of a _God_, who comes in his _ownpresence to save and to redeem us_?”

  “What mean you, Luxima?” interrupted the Missionary, in emotion, andthrowing himself beside her.

  “Hear me,” she returned; “_believe_, and _obey_.--From the moment Ifirst beheld thee, first listened to thee, I have ceased to be myself;thy looks, thy words, encompassed me on every side; it seemed as if mysoul had anticipated its future fate, and already fled to accomplish itin thee. I felt that, in ceasing to be near thee, I should cease toexist: therefore I concealed from thee the danger which hung upon ourinterviews, and all that might lead thee, for thine own sake or formine, to withdraw from me the heaven of thy presence--but the dream isover! the God whom thou didst teach me to abandon, has this nightappeared on earth to reclaim his apostate.”

  “Luxima! Luxima!”

  “Hear me, father! If I live, this night the vision of Brahma, the Godwhom I forsook, appeared to me amidst the ruins of his own neglectedaltar!”

  “Impossible! impossible!” exclaimed the Missionary vehemently.

  “Then,” she returned, in a voice which resembled the heart-piercingaccent of melancholy madness, “then there lives some human testimony ofour interview, and thou art lost! thou, my soul’s own idol! Oh! then,fly--for ever fly: let me feel death and shame but once, and not athousand, thousand times through thy destruction. But, no,” she added ina calmer tone; “it was no human form I saw; I have oft before met thatawful vision in my dream of inspiration! haply it came to warn me of thydanger, and to save _my_ life through _thine_--then go, leave me whileyet I have power to say--_leave me_!”

  The Missionary heard her in uncontrolled emotion; but without any faithin a fancied event, which he deemed but the vision of her own disorderedimagination, influenced by the agitation of her feelings, by the hour,the scene, and by the fanaticism and superstitious horrors which stillgoverned her vacillating mind: but he saw that there was evidently, atthat moment, an obstinacy in her illusion, a bigotry in her faith, itwould be vain to attempt to dissipate or to vanquish, until a calmermood of thought and feeling should succeed to their present tumultuousand unsettled state. Less surprised at the nature of her vision, than atthe peculiar result of its influence, he could not comprehend themiracle by which she submitted to an eternal separation, at a momentwhen his mind, broken and enervated, sunk under the tyranny of a passionwhich had just reached its acmé. But he knew love only as a man, andcould not comprehend its nature in the heart of a woman:--with him theexisting moment was every thing, but her affection took eternity itselfinto i
ts compass; and though she could have more easily parted with herlife than with her lover, yet she did not hesitate to sacrifice herfelicity to his safety, to his glory, and to the hope of that eternalreunion which might await two souls, which crime had not yet degraded;for her tolerant, but zealous, religion, shut not the gates of Heavenagainst all who sought it by a different path; and consecrating a humanfeeling, in ascribing to it an immortal duration, love itself enabledher to make the sacrifice religion demanded. The Missionary sought notto subdue the influence of that wild and fervid imagination, which now,he believed, held the ascendant; but he sought to combat the resolutionit had given birth to--and gazing on a countenance, where the enthusiasmof religion still mingled with the expressions of tenderness andpassion, he said,

  “Wondrous and powerful being! equally fatal in thy weakness and thyforce, in thy seducing softness, and resisting virtue: wilt thou now,thus suddenly, thus unprepared, abandon me? now, that thou hasttrampled on my religion and my vows; now, that thou hast conquered myhabits of feeling, my principles of thinking, subdued every faculty ofmy being to thy influence, and bereft me of all, save that long latentpower of loving passionately--that tyrannic and dreadful capability ofan exclusive devotion to a creature frail and perishable as myself, bywhich thou hast effected my ruin, and changed the very constitution ofmy nature?”

  “Oh, no!” returned Luxima, endeavouring to conceal her tenderness andher tears; “oh, no! Part we cannot. Go where thou mayest, my life muststill hang upon thine! my thoughts will pursue thee. Indissolublyunited, there is now but one soul between us. But, O father! to preservethat soul pure and untainted--the human intercourse, that dear and fatalsymbol of our eternal union, ought, and can, no longer exist; the voiceof God and the law of man, alike oppose it: let us not further provokethe wrath of both, let us remember our respective vows, and immolateourselves to their performance.” She arose as she spoke. The tears stoodtrembling in her inflamed eyes, and that deadly sickness of the soulwhich ushers in the moment of separation from all the heart holdsdearest, spread its livid hues over her cheek, its agony of expressionover her countenance.

  “Woman! woman!” exclaimed the Missionary, wildly, and seizing hertrembling hands, “give me back my peace, or remain to solace me for itsloss; give me back to the Heaven from which you have torn me, or stay,stay, and teach me to forget the virtue by which I earned itsprotection. While yet a dreadful remembrance of my former self remains,you dare not leave me to horror and remorse! You dare not, cold, orcruel, or faithless, as you may be, you dare not say, ‘This moment isour last.’ O Luxima! Luxima!”--Overcome by a sense of his weakness, hedrooped his head upon her hands, and wept. Had not the salvation of hislife been the purchase of her firmness and her resistance, Luxima wouldhave granted to the tears of love, what its ardour or its eloquencecould now have obtained: but she knew the danger of remaining longer,or of again meeting him in a place, where they had either beendiscovered by the jealous guardians of her rigid order, or from whichthey had been warned by a divine intimation. Mingling her tears withhis, after an affecting pause, she said, in a low voice, and scarcelyarticulate from contending emotions,

  “To-morrow, then, we shall again meet, when the sun sets behind themountains: but not here--not here! Oh, no! These shades have becomefearful and full of danger to my imagination. But if thou wilt repair tothe western arcades of the great banyan-tree, then----” The words diedaway on her trembling lips, and she cast round a wild and timid look,as if some minister of Heaven’s mercy was near to forbid an appointment,which might be, perhaps, pregnant with destruction to both.

  “_And then_,” repeated the Missionary, with vehemence and with firmness,“we meet to part _for ever_!--or--_to part no more_!”

  Luxima, at these words, turned her eyes on him, with a look of love,passionate and despairing--then, folding her hands upon her bosom, sheraised those eloquent eyes to Heaven, with a glance of sweet and holyresignation to its will. This seraph look of suffering and pietyoperated like a spell upon the frantic feelings of her lover. The arms,extended to detain her, fell back nerveless on his breast. He saw hermove slowly away, resembling the pensive spirit of some innocentsufferer, whom sorrow had released from the bondage of painfulexistence. He saw her light and perfect form, faintly tinged with themoon-ray, slowly fading into distance, till it seemed to mingle with thefleecy vapours of the night: then he felt as if she had disappeared fromhis eyes for ever, and, turning to her image in his heart, he gavehimself up to suffering and to thought, to the alternate influence ofpassion and remorse.