Chapter V
Some time had elapsed when there happened another occurrence, still moreremarkable. Pleyel, on his return from Europe, brought information ofconsiderable importance to my brother. My ancestors were noble Saxons,and possessed large domains in Lusatia. The Prussian wars had destroyedthose persons whose right to these estates precluded my brother's.Pleyel had been exact in his inquiries, and had discovered that, by thelaw of male-primogeniture, my brother's claims were superior to thoseof any other person now living. Nothing was wanting but his presence inthat country, and a legal application to establish this claim.
Pleyel strenuously recommended this measure. The advantages he thoughtattending it were numerous, and it would argue the utmost folly toneglect them. Contrary to his expectation he found my brother averseto the scheme. Slight efforts, he, at first, thought would subdue hisreluctance; but he found this aversion by no means slight. The interestthat he took in the happiness of his friend and his sister, and his ownpartiality to the Saxon soil, from which he had likewise sprung, andwhere he had spent several years of his youth, made him redouble hisexertions to win Wieland's consent. For this end he employed everyargument that his invention could suggest. He painted, in attractivecolours, the state of manners and government in that country, thesecurity of civil rights, and the freedom of religious sentiments. Hedwelt on the privileges of wealth and rank, and drew from the servilecondition of one class, an argument in favor of his scheme, since therevenue and power annexed to a German principality afford so large afield for benevolence. The evil flowing from this power, in malignanthands, was proportioned to the good that would arise from the virtuoususe of it. Hence, Wieland, in forbearing to claim his own, withheld allthe positive felicity that would accrue to his vassals from his success,and hazarded all the misery that would redound from a less enlightenedproprietor.
It was easy for my brother to repel these arguments, and to shew that nospot on the globe enjoyed equal security and liberty to that which heat present inhabited. That if the Saxons had nothing to fear frommis-government, the external causes of havoc and alarm were numerous andmanifest. The recent devastations committed by the Prussians furnisheda specimen of these. The horrors of war would always impend over them,till Germany were seized and divided by Austrian and Prussian tyrants;an event which he strongly suspected was at no great distance. Butsetting these considerations aside, was it laudable to grasp at wealthand power even when they were within our reach? Were not these the twogreat sources of depravity? What security had he, that in this changeof place and condition, he should not degenerate into a tyrant andvoluptuary? Power and riches were chiefly to be dreaded on account oftheir tendency to deprave the possessor. He held them in abhorrence, notonly as instruments of misery to others, but to him on whom theywere conferred. Besides, riches were comparative, and was he not richalready? He lived at present in the bosom of security and luxury. Allthe instruments of pleasure, on which his reason or imagination set anyvalue, were within his reach. But these he must forego, for the sake ofadvantages which, whatever were their value, were as yet uncertain. Inpursuit of an imaginary addition to his wealth, he must reduce himselfto poverty, he must exchange present certainties for what was distantand contingent; for who knows not that the law is a system of expence,delay and uncertainty? If he should embrace this scheme, it would layhim under the necessity of making a voyage to Europe, and remaining fora certain period, separate from his family. He must undergo the perilsand discomforts of the ocean; he must divest himself of all domesticpleasures; he must deprive his wife of her companion, and his childrenof a father and instructor, and all for what? For the ambiguousadvantages which overgrown wealth and flagitious tyranny have to bestow?For a precarious possession in a land of turbulence and war? Advantages,which will not certainly be gained, and of which the acquisition, if itwere sure, is necessarily distant.
Pleyel was enamoured of his scheme on account of its intrinsic benefits,but, likewise, for other reasons. His abode at Leipsig made that countryappear to him like home. He was connected with this place by many socialties. While there he had not escaped the amorous contagion. But thelady, though her heart was impressed in his favor, was compelled tobestow her hand upon another. Death had removed this impediment, andhe was now invited by the lady herself to return. This he was of coursedetermined to do, but was anxious to obtain the company of Wieland;he could not bear to think of an eternal separation from his presentassociates. Their interest, he thought, would be no less promoted by thechange than his own. Hence he was importunate and indefatigable in hisarguments and solicitations.
He knew that he could not hope for mine or his sister's readyconcurrence in this scheme. Should the subject be mentioned to us, weshould league our efforts against him, and strengthen that reluctancein Wieland which already was sufficiently difficult to conquer. He,therefore, anxiously concealed from us his purpose. If Wieland werepreviously enlisted in his cause, he would find it a less difficult taskto overcome our aversion. My brother was silent on this subject, becausehe believed himself in no danger of changing his opinion, and he waswilling to save us from any uneasiness. The mere mention of sucha scheme, and the possibility of his embracing it, he knew, wouldconsiderably impair our tranquillity.
One day, about three weeks subsequent to the mysterious call, it wasagreed that the family should be my guests. Seldom had a day been passedby us, of more serene enjoyment. Pleyel had promised us his company, butwe did not see him till the sun had nearly declined. He brought withhim a countenance that betokened disappointment and vexation. He did notwait for our inquiries, but immediately explained the cause. Two daysbefore a packet had arrived from Hamburgh, by which he had flatteredhimself with the expectation of receiving letters, but no letters hadarrived. I never saw him so much subdued by an untoward event. Histhoughts were employed in accounting for the silence of his friends.He was seized with the torments of jealousy, and suspected nothing lessthan the infidelity of her to whom he had devoted his heart. The silencemust have been concerted. Her sickness, or absence, or death, would haveincreased the certainty of some one's having written. No suppositioncould be formed but that his mistress had grown indifferent, or that shehad transferred her affections to another. The miscarriage of a letterwas hardly within the reach of possibility. From Leipsig to Hamburgh,and from Hamburgh hither, the conveyance was exposed to no hazard.
He had been so long detained in America chiefly in consequence ofWieland's aversion to the scheme which he proposed. He now became moreimpatient than ever to return to Europe. When he reflected that, by hisdelays, he had probably forfeited the affections of his mistress, hissensations amounted to agony. It only remained, by his speedy departure,to repair, if possible, or prevent so intolerable an evil. Already hehad half resolved to embark in this very ship which, he was informed,would set out in a few weeks on her return.
Meanwhile he determined to make a new attempt to shake the resolution ofWieland. The evening was somewhat advanced when he invited the latterto walk abroad with him. The invitation was accepted, and they leftCatharine, Louisa and me, to amuse ourselves by the best means in ourpower. During this walk, Pleyel renewed the subject that was nearesthis heart. He re-urged all his former arguments, and placed them in moreforcible lights.
They promised to return shortly; but hour after hour passed, and theymade not their appearance. Engaged in sprightly conversation, it was nottill the clock struck twelve that we were reminded of the lapse of time.The absence of our friends excited some uneasy apprehensions. We wereexpressing our fears, and comparing our conjectures as to what might bethe cause, when they entered together. There were indications in theircountenances that struck me mute. These were unnoticed by Catharine, whowas eager to express her surprize and curiosity at the length of theirwalk. As they listened to her, I remarked that their surprize was notless than ours. They gazed in silence on each other, and on her. Iwatched their looks, but could not understand the emotions that werewritten in them.
These a
ppearances diverted Catharine's inquiries into a new channel.What did they mean, she asked, by their silence, and by their thusgazing wildly at each other, and at her? Pleyel profited by this hint,and assuming an air of indifference, framed some trifling excuse, at thesame time darting significant glances at Wieland, as if to caution himagainst disclosing the truth. My brother said nothing, but deliveredhimself up to meditation. I likewise was silent, but burned withimpatience to fathom this mystery. Presently my brother and his wife,and Louisa, returned home. Pleyel proposed, of his own accord, to bemy guest for the night. This circumstance, in addition to those whichpreceded, gave new edge to my wonder.
As soon as we were left alone, Pleyel's countenance assumed an air ofseriousness, and even consternation, which I had never before beheld inhim. The steps with which he measured the floor betokened the trouble ofhis thoughts. My inquiries were suspended by the hope that he would giveme the information that I wanted without the importunity of questions.I waited some time, but the confusion of his thoughts appeared in nodegree to abate. At length I mentioned the apprehensions which theirunusual absence had occasioned, and which were increased by theirbehaviour since their return, and solicited an explanation. He stoppedwhen I began to speak, and looked stedfastly at me. When I had done,he said, to me, in a tone which faultered through the vehemence of hisemotions, "How were you employed during our absence?" "In turning overthe Della Crusca dictionary, and talking on different subjects; butjust before your entrance, we were tormenting ourselves with omens andprognosticks relative to your absence." "Catherine was with you thewhole time?" "Yes." "But are you sure?" "Most sure. She was not absent amoment." He stood, for a time, as if to assure himself of my sincerity.Then, clinching his hands, and wildly lifting them above his head, "Lo,"cried he, "I have news to tell you. The Baroness de Stolberg is dead?"
This was her whom he loved. I was not surprised at the agitations whichhe betrayed. "But how was the information procured? How was the truthof this news connected with the circumstance of Catharine's remaining inour company?" He was for some time inattentive to my questions. When hespoke, it seemed merely a continuation of the reverie into which he hadbeen plunged.
"And yet it might be a mere deception. But could both of us in thatcase have been deceived? A rare and prodigious coincidence! Barely notimpossible. And yet, if the accent be oracular--Theresa is dead. No,no," continued he, covering his face with his hands, and in a tone halfbroken into sobs, "I cannot believe it. She has not written, but ifshe were dead, the faithful Bertrand would have given me the earliestinformation. And yet if he knew his master, he must have easily guessedat the effect of such tidings. In pity to me he was silent."
"Clara, forgive me; to you, this behaviour is mysterious. I will explainas well as I am able. But say not a word to Catharine. Her strength ofmind is inferior to your's. She will, besides, have more reason to bestartled. She is Wieland's angel."
Pleyel proceeded to inform me, for the first time, of the scheme whichhe had pressed, with so much earnestness, on my brother. He enumeratedthe objections which had been made, and the industry with which hehad endeavoured to confute them. He mentioned the effect upon hisresolutions produced by the failure of a letter. "During our late walk,"continued he, "I introduced the subject that was nearest my heart.I re-urged all my former arguments, and placed them in more forciblelights. Wieland was still refractory. He expatiated on the perils ofwealth and power, on the sacredness of conjugal and parental duties, andthe happiness of mediocrity.
"No wonder that the time passed, unperceived, away. Our whole souls wereengaged in this cause. Several times we came to the foot of the rock;as soon as we perceived it, we changed our course, but never failed toterminate our circuitous and devious ramble at this spot. At length yourbrother observed, 'We seem to be led hither by a kind of fatality. Sincewe are so near, let us ascend and rest ourselves a while. If you are notweary of this argument we will resume it there.'
"I tacitly consented. We mounted the stairs, and drawing the sofa infront of the river, we seated ourselves upon it. I took up the thread ofour discourse where we had dropped it. I ridiculed his dread of the sea,and his attachment to home. I kept on in this strain, so congenial withmy disposition, for some time, uninterrupted by him. At length, he saidto me, "Suppose now that I, whom argument has not convinced, shouldyield to ridicule, and should agree that your scheme is eligible; whatwill you have gained? Nothing. You have other enemies beside myself toencounter. When you have vanquished me, your toil has scarcely begun.There are my sister and wife, with whom it will remain for you tomaintain the contest. And trust me, they are adversaries whom all yourforce and stratagem will never subdue." I insinuated that they wouldmodel themselves by his will: that Catharine would think obedience herduty. He answered, with some quickness, "You mistake. Their concurrenceis indispensable. It is not my custom to exact sacrifices of this kind.I live to be their protector and friend, and not their tyrant and foe.If my wife shall deem her happiness, and that of her children, mostconsulted by remaining where she is, here she shall remain." "But," saidI, "when she knows your pleasure, will she not conform to it?" Beforemy friend had time to answer this question, a negative was clearly anddistinctly uttered from another quarter. It did not come from one sideor the other, from before us or behind. Whence then did it come? Bywhose organs was it fashioned?
"If any uncertainty had existed with regard to these particulars, itwould have been removed by a deliberate and equally distinct repetitionof the same monosyllable, "No." The voice was my sister's. It appearedto come from the roof. I started from my seat. Catharine, exclaimed I,where are you? No answer was returned. I searched the room, and thearea before it, but in vain. Your brother was motionless in his seat.I returned to him, and placed myself again by his side. My astonishmentwas not less than his."
"Well," said he, at length, "What think you of this? This is theself-same voice which I formerly heard; you are now convinced that myears were well informed."
"Yes," said I, "this, it is plain, is no fiction of the fancy." We againsunk into mutual and thoughtful silence. A recollection of the hour, andof the length of our absence, made me at last propose to return. Werose up for this purpose. In doing this, my mind reverted to thecontemplation of my own condition. "Yes," said I aloud, but withoutparticularly addressing myself to Wieland, "my resolution is taken. Icannot hope to prevail with my friends to accompany me. They may dozeaway their days on the banks of Schuylkill, but as to me, I go in thenext vessel; I will fly to her presence, and demand the reason of thisextraordinary silence."
"I had scarcely finished the sentence, when the same mysterious voiceexclaimed, "You shall not go. The seal of death is on her lips. Hersilence is the silence of the tomb." Think of the effects which accentslike these must have had upon me. I shuddered as I listened. As soon asI recovered from my first amazement, "Who is it that speaks?" said I,"whence did you procure these dismal tidings?" I did not wait long foran answer. "From a source that cannot fail. Be satisfied. She is dead."You may justly be surprised, that, in the circumstances in which I heardthe tidings, and notwithstanding the mystery which environed him by whomthey were imparted, I could give an undivided attention to the facts,which were the subject of our dialogue. I eagerly inquired, when andwhere did she die? What was the cause of her death? Was her deathabsolutely certain? An answer was returned only to the last of thesequestions. "Yes," was pronounced by the same voice; but it now soundedfrom a greater distance, and the deepest silence was all the return madeto my subsequent interrogatories.
"It was my sister's voice; but it could not be uttered by her; and yet,if not by her, by whom was it uttered? When we returned hither, anddiscovered you together, the doubt that had previously existed wasremoved. It was manifest that the intimation came not from her. Yet ifnot from her, from whom could it come? Are the circumstances attendingthe imparting of this news proof that the tidings are true? God forbidthat they should be true."
Here Pleyel sunk into anxious silence, and
gave me leisure to ruminateon this inexplicable event. I am at a loss to describe the sensationsthat affected me. I am not fearful of shadows. The tales of apparitionsand enchantments did not possess that power over my belief which couldeven render them interesting. I saw nothing in them but ignorance andfolly, and was a stranger even to that terror which is pleasing. Butthis incident was different from any that I had ever before known. Herewere proofs of a sensible and intelligent existence, which could notbe denied. Here was information obtained and imparted by meansunquestionably super-human.
That there are conscious beings, beside ourselves, in existence, whosemodes of activity and information surpass our own, can scarcely bedenied. Is there a glimpse afforded us into a world of these superiorbeings? My heart was scarcely large enough to give admittance toso swelling a thought. An awe, the sweetest and most solemn thatimagination can conceive, pervaded my whole frame. It forsook me notwhen I parted from Pleyel and retired to my chamber. An impulse wasgiven to my spirits utterly incompatible with sleep. I passed the nightwakeful and full of meditation. I was impressed with the belief ofmysterious, but not of malignant agency. Hitherto nothing had occurredto persuade me that this airy minister was busy to evil rather than togood purposes. On the contrary, the idea of superior virtue had alwaysbeen associated in my mind with that of superior power. The warningsthat had thus been heard appeared to have been prompted by beneficentintentions. My brother had been hindered by this voice from ascendingthe hill. He was told that danger lurked in his path, and his obedienceto the intimation had perhaps saved him from a destiny similar to thatof my father.
Pleyel had been rescued from tormenting uncertainty, and from thehazards and fatigues of a fruitless voyage, by the same interposition.It had assured him of the death of his Theresa.
This woman was then dead. A confirmation of the tidings, if true, wouldspeedily arrive. Was this confirmation to be deprecated or desired?By her death, the tie that attached him to Europe, was taken away.Henceforward every motive would combine to retain him in his nativecountry, and we were rescued from the deep regrets that would accompanyhis hopeless absence from us. Propitious was the spirit that impartedthese tidings. Propitious he would perhaps have been, if he had beeninstrumental in producing, as well as in communicating the tidings ofher death. Propitious to us, the friends of Pleyel, to whom has therebybeen secured the enjoyment of his society; and not unpropitious tohimself; for though this object of his love be snatched away, is therenot another who is able and willing to console him for her loss?
Twenty days after this, another vessel arrived from the same port. Inthis interval, Pleyel, for the most part, estranged himself from his oldcompanions. He was become the prey of a gloomy and unsociable grief.His walks were limited to the bank of the Delaware. This bank is anartificial one. Reeds and the river are on one side, and a watery marshon the other, in that part which bounded his lands, and which extendedfrom the mouth of Hollander's creek to that of Schuylkill. No scene canbe imagined less enticing to a lover of the picturesque than this. Theshore is deformed with mud, and incumbered with a forest of reeds. Thefields, in most seasons, are mire; but when they afford a firm footing,the ditches by which they are bounded and intersected, are mantled withstagnating green, and emit the most noxious exhalations. Health is noless a stranger to those seats than pleasure. Spring and autumn are sureto be accompanied with agues and bilious remittents.
The scenes which environed our dwellings at Mettingen constituted thereverse of this. Schuylkill was here a pure and translucid current,broken into wild and ceaseless music by rocky points, murmuring on asandy margin, and reflecting on its surface, banks of all varieties ofheight and degrees of declivity. These banks were chequered by patchesof dark verdure and shapeless masses of white marble, and crowned bycopses of cedar, or by the regular magnificence of orchards, which, atthis season, were in blossom, and were prodigal of odours. The groundwhich receded from the river was scooped into valleys and dales. Itsbeauties were enhanced by the horticultural skill of my brother, whobedecked this exquisite assemblage of slopes and risings with everyspecies of vegetable ornament, from the giant arms of the oak to theclustering tendrils of the honey-suckle.
To screen him from the unwholesome airs of his own residence, it hadbeen proposed to Pleyel to spend the months of spring with us. He hadapparently acquiesced in this proposal; but the late event induced himto change his purpose. He was only to be seen by visiting him in hisretirements. His gaiety had flown, and every passion was absorbed ineagerness to procure tidings from Saxony. I have mentioned the arrivalof another vessel from the Elbe. He descried her early one morning ashe was passing along the skirt of the river. She was easily recognized,being the ship in which he had performed his first voyage to Germany.He immediately went on board, but found no letters directed to him.This omission was, in some degree, compensated by meeting with an oldacquaintance among the passengers, who had till lately been a residentin Leipsig. This person put an end to all suspense respecting the fateof Theresa, by relating the particulars of her death and funeral.
Thus was the truth of the former intimation attested. No longer devouredby suspense, the grief of Pleyel was not long in yielding to theinfluence of society. He gave himself up once more to our company. Hisvivacity had indeed been damped; but even in this respect he was a moreacceptable companion than formerly, since his seriousness was neitherincommunicative nor sullen.
These incidents, for a time, occupied all our thoughts. In me theyproduced a sentiment not unallied to pleasure, and more speedily than inthe case of my friends were intermixed with other topics. My brother wasparticularly affected by them. It was easy to perceive that most of hismeditations were tinctured from this source. To this was to be ascribeda design in which his pen was, at this period, engaged, of collectingand investigating the facts which relate to that mysterious personage,the Daemon of Socrates.
My brother's skill in Greek and Roman learning was exceeded by that offew, and no doubt the world would have accepted a treatise upon thissubject from his hand with avidity; but alas! this and every otherscheme of felicity and honor, were doomed to sudden blast and hopelessextermination.