When he had finished it, he sunk down on the table near
which he had been reading it, his face hid in his folded arms, his
senses reeling, his mind in a mingled state of stupor and excitement. After a few moments, he raised himself with an involuntary start, and
saw the picture gazing at him from its canvas. He was within ten inches
of it as he sat, and the proximity appeared increased by the strong
light that was accidentally thrown on it, and its being the only
representation of a human figure in the room. Melmoth felt for a moment
as if he were about to receive an explanation from its lips. He gazed on it in return,--all was silent in the house,--they were alone
together. The illusion subsided at length; and as the mind rapidly
passes to opposite extremes, he remembered the injunction of his uncle
to destroy the portrait. He seized it;--his hand shook at first, but the
mouldering canvas appeared to assist him in the effort. He tore it from
the frame with a cry half terrific, half triumphant;--it fell at his
feet, and he shuddered as it fell. He expected to hear some fearful
sounds, some unimaginable breathings of prophetic horror, follow this
act of sacrilege, for such he felt it, to tear the portrait of his
ancestor from his native walls. He paused and listened:--“There was no
voice, nor any that answered;”--but as the wrinkled and torn canvas fell
to the floor, its undulations gave the portrait the appearance of
smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and
imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the
next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly
watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf-fire which had
been lit in his room. As Melmoth saw the last blaze, he threw himself
into bed, in hope of a deep and intense sleep. He had done what was
required of him, and felt exhausted both in mind and body; but his
slumber was not so sound as he had hoped for. The sullen light of the
turf-fire, burning but never blazing, disturbed him every moment. He
turned and turned, but still there was the same red light glaring on,
but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment. The wind was
high that night, and as the creaking door swung on its hinges, every
noise seemed like the sound of a hand struggling with the lock, or of a
foot pausing on the threshold. But (for Melmoth never could decide) was
it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at
the door?--hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his
uncle’s death,--saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him
whisper, “You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can
survive.--I am alive,--I am beside you.” Melmoth started, sprung from
his bed,--it was broad day-light. He looked round,--there was no human
being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his
right arm. He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent
gripe of a strong hand. CHAPTER IV. Haste with your weapons, cut the shrouds and stay,
    And hew at once the mizen-mast away. FALCONER. The following evening Melmoth retired early. The restlessness of the
preceding night inclined him to repose, and the gloom of the day left
him nothing to wish for but its speedy conclusion. It was now the latter
end of Autumn; heavy clouds had all day been passing laggingly and
gloomily along the atmosphere, as the hours of such a day pass over the
human mind and life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
portentously off, like ships of war after reconnoitering a strong fort,
to return with added strength and fury. The threat was soon fulfilled;
the evening came on, prematurely darkened by clouds that seemed
surcharged with a deluge. Loud and sudden squalls of wind shook the
house from time to time, and then as suddenly ceased. Towards night the
storm came on in all its strength; Melmoth’s bed was shaken so as to
render it impossible to sleep. He “liked the rocking of the
battlements,” but by no means liked the expected fall of the chimneys,
the crashing in of the roof, and the splinters of the broken windows
that were already scattered about his room. He rose and went down to the
kitchen, where he knew a fire was burning, and there the terrified
servants were all assembled, all agreeing, as the blast came roaring
down the chimney, they never had witnessed such a storm, and between the
gusts, breathing shuddering prayers for those who were “out at sea that
night.” The vicinity of Melmoth’s house to what sea-men call an
iron-bound coast, gave a dreadful sincerity to their prayers and their
fears. In a short time, however, Melmoth perceived that their minds were
occupied with terrors beside those of the storm. The recent death of his
uncle, and the supposed visit of that extraordinary being in whose
existence they all firmly believed, were connected in their minds
inseparably with the causes or consequences of this tempest, and they
whispered their fearful suggestions to each other, till the sound
reached Melmoth’s ears at every step that he measured across the broken
floor of the kitchen. Terror is very fond of associations; we love to
connect the agitation of the elements with the agitated life of man; and
never did a blast roar, or a gleam of lightning flash, that was not
connected in the imagination of some one, with a calamity that was to be
dreaded, deprecated, or endured,--with the fate of the living, or the
destination of the dead. The tremendous storm that shook all England on
the night of Cromwell’s death, gave the hint to his puritanic chaplains
to declare, that the Lord had caught him up in the whirlwind and chariot
of fire, even thereafter, as he caught the prophet Elijah; while all the
cavalier party, putting their own construction on the matter, proclaimed
their confidence, that the Prince of the power of the air was
vindicating his right, and carrying off the body of his victim (whose
soul had long been his purchase) in a tempest, whose wild howl and
triumphant ravage might have been variously, and with equal justice,
interpreted by each party as giving testimony to their mutual
denunciations. Just such a party (_mutatis mutandis_) were collected
round the bickering fire and rocking chimney in Melmoth’s kitchen. “He
is going in that blast,” said one of the hags, taking the pipe from her
mouth, and trying vainly to rekindle it among the embers that the storm
scattered about like dust; “he is going in that blast.”--“He’ll come
again,” cried another Sybil, “he’ll come again,--he’s not at rest!--He
roams and wails about till something is told that he never could tell in
his life-time.--G-d save us!” she added, howling up the chimney, as if
addressing the troubled spirit; “tell us what you want, and _stop the
blast_, will ye?”--The wind came like thunder down the chimney; the hag
shuddered and retreated.