The stranger appeared troubled,--an emotion new to himself
agitated him for a moment,--then a smile of self-disdain curled his lip,
as if he reproached himself for the indulgence of human feeling even for
a moment. Again his features relaxed, as he turned to the bending and
averted form of Immalee, and he seemed like one conscious of agony of
soul himself, yet inclined to sport with the agony of another’s. This
union of inward despair and outward levity is not unnatural. Smiles are
the legitimate offspring of happiness, but laughter is often the
misbegotten child of madness, that mocks its parent to her face. With
such an expression he turned towards her, and asked, “But what is your
meaning, Immalee?”--A long pause followed this question, and at length
the Indian answered, “I know not,” with that natural and delicious art
which teaches the sex to disclose their meaning in words that seem to
contradict it. “I know not,” means, “I know too well.” Her companion
understood this, and enjoyed his anticipated triumph. “And why do your
tears flow, Immalee?”--“I know not,” said the poor Indian, and her tears
flowed faster at the question. “At these words, or rather at these tears, the stranger forgot himself
for a moment. He felt that melancholy triumph which the conqueror is
unable to enjoy; that triumph which announces a victory over the
weakness of others, obtained at the expence of a greater weakness in
ourselves. A human feeling, in spite of him, pervaded his whole soul, as
he said, in accents of involuntary softness, “What would you have me do,
Immalee?” The difficulty of speaking a language that might be at once
intelligible and reserved,--that might convey her wishes without
betraying her heart,--and the unknown nature of her new emotions, made
Immalee faulter long before she could answer, “Stay with me,--return not
to that world of evil and sorrow.--Here the flowers will always bloom,
and the sun be as bright as on the first day I beheld you.--Why will you
go back to the world to think and to be unhappy?” The wild and
discordant laugh of her companion, startled and silenced her. “Poor
girl,” he exclaimed, with that mixture of bitterness and commiseration,
that at once terrifies and humiliates; “and is this the destiny I am to
fulfil?--to listen to the chirping of birds, and watch the opening of
buds? Is this to be my lot?” and with another wild burst of unnatural
laughter, he flung away the hand which Immalee had extended to him as
she had finished her simple appeal.--“Yes, doubtless, I am well fitted
for such a fate, and such a partner. Tell me,” he added, with still
wilder fierceness, “tell me from what line of my features,--from what
accent of my voice,--from what sentiment of my discourse, have you
extracted the foundation of a hope that insults me with the view of
felicity?” Immalee, who might have replied, “I understand a fury in your
words, but not your words,” had yet sufficient aid from her maiden
pride, and female penetration, to discover that she was rejected by the
stranger; and a brief emotion of indignant grief struggled with the
tenderness of her exposed and devoted heart. She paused a moment, and
then checking her tears, said, in her firmest tones, “Go, then, to your
world,--since you wish to be unhappy--go!--Alas! it is not necessary to
go there to be unhappy, for I must be so here. Go,--but take with you
these roses, for they will all wither when you are gone!--take with you
these shells, for I shall no longer love to wear them when you no longer
see them!” And as she spoke, with simple, but emphatic action, she
untwined from her bosom and hair the shells and flowers with which they
were adorned, and threw them at his feet; then turning to throw one
glance of proud and melancholy grief at him, she was retiring. “Stay,
Immalee,--stay, and hear me for a moment,” said the stranger; and he
would, at that moment, have perhaps discovered the ineffable and
forbidden secret of his destiny, but Immalee, in silence, which her look
of profound grief made eloquent, shook sadly her averted head, and
departed. CHAPTER XVIII. Miseram me omnia terrent, et maris sonitus, et scopuli, et solitudo,
    et sanctitudo Apollinis. LATIN PLAY. “Many days elapsed before the stranger revisited the isle. How he was
occupied, or what feelings agitated him in the interval, it would be
beyond human conjecture to discover. Perhaps he sometimes exulted in the
misery he had inflicted,--perhaps he sometimes pitied it. His stormy
mind was like an ocean that had swallowed a thousand wrecks of gallant
ships, and now seemed to dally with the loss of a little slender skiff,
that could hardly make way on its surface in the profoundest calm. Impelled, however, by malignity, or tenderness, or curiosity, or
weariness of artificial life, so vividly contrasted by the unadulterated
existence of Immalee, into whose pure elements nothing but flowers and
fragrance, the sparkling of the heavens, and the odours of earth, had
transfused their essence--or, possibly, by a motive more powerful than
all,--_his own will_; which, never analysed, and hardly ever confessed
to be the ruling principle of our actions, governs nine-tenths of
them.--He returned to the shore of the haunted isle, the name by which
it was distinguished by those who knew not how to classify the new
goddess who was supposed to inhabit it, and who were as much puzzled by
this new specimen in their theology, as Linnæus himself could have been
by a non-descript in botany. Alas! the varieties in moral botany far
exceed the wildest anomalies of those in the natural. However it was,
the stranger returned to the isle. But he had to traverse many paths,
where human foot but his had never been, and to rend away branches that
seemed to tremble at a human touch, and to cross streams into which no
foot but his had ever been dipped, before he could discover where
Immalee had concealed herself. “Concealment, however, was not in her thoughts. When he found her, she
was leaning against a rock; the ocean was pouring its eternal murmur of
waters at her feet; she had chosen the most desolate spot she could
find;--there was neither flower or shrub near her;--the calcined rocks,
the offspring of volcano--the restless roar of the sea, whose waves
almost touched her small foot, that seemed by its heedless protrusion at
once to court and neglect danger--these objects were all that surrounded
her. The first time he had beheld her, she was embowered amid flowers
and odours, amid all the glorious luxuries of vegetable and animal
nature; the roses and the peacocks seemed emulous which should expand
their leaves or their plumes, as a shade to that loveliness which seemed
to hover between them, alternately borrowing the fragrance of the one,
and the hues of the other.