CHAPTER XI

Who rears the bloody hand?

SAYERS

Emily remained in her chamber, on the following morning, without

receiving any notice from Montoni, or seeing a human being, except the

armed men, who sometimes passed on the terrace below. Having tasted no

food since the dinner of the preceding day, extreme faintness made her

feel the necessity of quitting the asylum of her apartment to obtain

refreshment, and she was also very anxious to procure liberty for

Annette. Willing, however, to defer venturing forth, as long as

possible, and considering, whether she should apply to Montoni, or to

the compassion of some other person, her excessive anxiety concerning

her aunt, at length, overcame her abhorrence of his presence, and she

determined to go to him, and to entreat, that he would suffer her to

see Madame Montoni.

Meanwhile, it was too certain, from the absence of Annette, that some

accident had befallen Ludovico, and that she was still in confinement;

Emily, therefore, resolved also to visit the chamber, where she had

spoken to her, on the preceding night, and, if the poor girl was yet

there, to inform Montoni of her situation.

It was near noon, before she ventured from her apartment, and went

first to the south gallery, whither she passed without meeting a single

person, or hearing a sound, except, now and then, the echo of a distant

footstep.

It was unnecessary to call Annette, whose lamentations were audible

upon the first approach to the gallery, and who, bewailing her own and

Ludovico’s fate, told Emily, that she should certainly be starved to

death, if she was not let out immediately. Emily replied, that she was

going to beg her release of Montoni; but the terrors of hunger now

yielded to those of the Signor, and, when Emily left her, she was

loudly entreating, that her place of refuge might be concealed from

him.

As Emily drew near the great hall, the sounds she heard and the people

she met in the passages renewed her alarm. The latter, however, were

peaceable, and did not interrupt her, though they looked earnestly at

her, as she passed, and sometimes spoke. On crossing the hall towards

the cedar room, where Montoni usually sat, she perceived, on the

pavement, fragments of swords, some tattered garments stained with

blood, and almost expected to have seen among them a dead body; but

from such a spectacle she was, at present, spared. As she approached

the room, the sound of several voices issued from within, and a dread

of appearing before many strangers, as well as of irritating Montoni by

such an intrusion, made her pause and falter from her purpose. She

looked up through the long arcades of the hall, in search of a servant,

who might bear a message, but no one appeared, and the urgency of what

she had to request made her still linger near the door. The voices

within were not in contention, though she distinguished those of

several of the guests of the preceding day; but still her resolution

failed, whenever she would have tapped at the door, and she had

determined to walk in the hall, till some person should appear, who

might call Montoni from the room, when, as she turned from the door, it

was suddenly opened by himself. Emily trembled, and was confused, while

he almost started with surprise, and all the terrors of his countenance

unfolded themselves. She forgot all she would have said, and neither

enquired for her aunt, nor entreated for Annette, but stood silent and

embarrassed.

After closing the door he reproved her for a meanness, of which she had

not been guilty, and sternly questioned her what she had overheard; an

accusation, which revived her recollection so far, that she assured him

she had not come thither with an intention to listen to his

conversation, but to entreat his compassion for her aunt, and for

Annette. Montoni seemed to doubt this assertion, for he regarded her

with a scrutinizing look; and the doubt evidently arose from no

trifling interest. Emily then further explained herself, and concluded

with entreating him to inform her, where her aunt was placed, and to

permit, that she might visit her; but he looked upon her only with a

malignant smile, which instantaneously confirmed her worst fears for

her aunt, and, at that moment, she had not courage to renew her

entreaties.

“For Annette,” said he,—“if you go to Carlo, he will release the girl;

the foolish fellow, who shut her up, died yesterday.” Emily

shuddered.—“But my aunt, Signor”—said she, “O tell me of my aunt!”

“She is taken care of,” replied Montoni hastily, “I have no time to

answer idle questions.”

He would have passed on, but Emily, in a voice of agony, that could not

be wholly resisted, conjured him to tell her, where Madame Montoni was;

while he paused, and she anxiously watched his countenance, a trumpet

sounded, and, in the next moment, she heard the heavy gates of the

portal open, and then the clattering of horses’ hoofs in the court,

with the confusion of many voices. She stood for a moment hesitating

whether she should follow Montoni, who, at the sound of the trumpet,

had passed through the hall, and, turning her eyes whence it came, she

saw through the door, that opened beyond a long perspective of arches

into the courts, a party of horsemen, whom she judged, as well as the

distance and her embarrassment would allow, to be the same she had seen

depart, a few days before. But she staid not to scrutinize, for, when

the trumpet sounded again, the chevaliers rushed out of the cedar room,

and men came running into the hall from every quarter of the castle.

Emily once more hurried for shelter to her own apartment. Thither she

was still pursued by images of horror. She reconsidered Montoni’s

manner and words, when he had spoken of his wife, and they served only

to confirm her most terrible suspicions. Tears refused any longer to

relieve her distress, and she had sat for a considerable time absorbed

in thought, when a knocking at the chamber door aroused her, on opening

which she found old Carlo.

“Dear young lady,” said he, “I have been so flurried, I never once

thought of you till just now. I have brought you some fruit and wine,

and I am sure you must stand in need of them by this time.”

“Thank you, Carlo,” said Emily, “this is very good of you. Did the

Signor remind you of me?”

“No, Signora,” replied Carlo, “his _Excellenza_ has business enough on

his hands.” Emily then renewed her enquiries, concerning Madame

Montoni, but Carlo had been employed at the other end of the castle,

during the time, that she was removed, and he had heard nothing since,

concerning her.

While he spoke, Emily looked steadily at him, for she scarcely knew

whether he was really ignorant, or concealed his knowledge of the truth

from a fear of offending his master. To several questions, concerning

the contentions of yesterday, he gave very limited answers; but told,

that the disputes were now amicably settled, and that the Signor

believed himself to have been mistaken in his suspicions of his guests.

“The fighting was about that, Signora,” said Carlo; “but I trust I

shall never see such another day in this castle, though strange things

are about to be done.”

On her enquiring his meaning, “Ah, Signora!” added he, “it is not for

me to betray secrets, or tell all I think, but time will tell.”

She then desired him to release Annette, and, having described the

chamber in which the poor girl was confined, he promised to obey her

immediately, and was departing, when she remembered to ask who were the

persons just arrived. Her late conjecture was right; it was Verezzi,

with his party.

Her spirits were somewhat soothed by this short conversation with

Carlo; for, in her present circumstances, it afforded some comfort to

hear the accents of compassion, and to meet the look of sympathy.

An hour passed before Annette appeared, who then came weeping and

sobbing. “O Ludovico—Ludovico!” cried she.

“My poor Annette!” said Emily, and made her sit down.

“Who could have foreseen this, ma’amselle? O miserable, wretched,

day—that ever I should live to see it!” and she continued to moan and

lament, till Emily thought it necessary to check her excess of grief.

“We are continually losing dear friends by death,” said she, with a

sigh, that came from her heart. “We must submit to the will of

Heaven—our tears, alas! cannot recall the dead!”

Annette took the handkerchief from her face.

“You will meet Ludovico in a better world, I hope,” added Emily.

“Yes—yes,—ma’amselle,” sobbed Annette, “but I hope I shall meet him

again in this—though he is so wounded!”

“Wounded!” exclaimed Emily, “does he live?”

“Yes, ma’am, but—but he has a terrible wound, and could not come to let

me out. They thought him dead, at first, and he has not been rightly

himself, till within this hour.”

“Well, Annette, I rejoice to hear he lives.”

“Lives! Holy Saints! why he will not die, surely!”

Emily said she hoped not, but this expression of hope Annette thought

implied fear, and her own increased in proportion, as Emily endeavoured

to encourage her. To enquiries, concerning Madame Montoni, she could

give no satisfactory answers.

“I quite forgot to ask among the servants, ma’amselle,” said she, “for

I could think of nobody but poor Ludovico.”

Annette’s grief was now somewhat assuaged, and Emily sent her to make

enquiries, concerning her lady, of whom, however, she could obtain no

intelligence, some of the people she spoke with being really ignorant

of her fate, and others having probably received orders to conceal it.

This day passed with Emily in continued grief and anxiety for her aunt;

but she was unmolested by any notice from Montoni; and, now that

Annette was liberated, she obtained food, without exposing herself to

danger, or impertinence.

Two following days passed in the same manner, unmarked by any

occurrence, during which she obtained no information of Madame Montoni.

On the evening of the second, having dismissed Annette, and retired to

bed, her mind became haunted by the most dismal images, such as her

long anxiety, concerning her aunt, suggested; and, unable to forget

herself, for a moment, or to vanquish the phantoms, that tormented her,

she rose from her bed, and went to one of the casements of her chamber,

to breathe a freer air.

All without was silent and dark, unless that could be called light,

which was only the faint glimmer of the stars, showing imperfectly the

outline of the mountains, the western towers of the castle and the

ramparts below, where a solitary sentinel was pacing. What an image of

repose did this scene present! The fierce and terrible passions, too,

which so often agitated the inhabitants of this edifice, seemed now

hushed in sleep;—those mysterious workings, that rouse the elements of

man’s nature into tempest—were calm. Emily’s heart was not so; but her

sufferings, though deep, partook of the gentle character of her mind.

Hers was a silent anguish, weeping, yet enduring; not the wild energy

of passion, inflaming imagination, bearing down the barriers of reason

and living in a world of its own.

The air refreshed her, and she continued at the casement, looking on

the shadowy scene, over which the planets burned with a clear light,

amid the deep blue æther, as they silently moved in their destined

course. She remembered how often she had gazed on them with her dear

father, how often he had pointed out their way in the heavens, and

explained their laws; and these reflections led to others, which, in an

almost equal degree, awakened her grief and astonishment.

They brought a retrospect of all the strange and mournful events, which

had occurred since she lived in peace with her parents. And to Emily,

who had been so tenderly educated, so tenderly loved, who once knew

only goodness and happiness—to her, the late events and her present

situation—in a foreign land—in a remote castle—surrounded by vice and

violence—seemed more like the visions of a distempered imagination,

than the circumstances of truth. She wept to think of what her parents

would have suffered, could they have foreseen the events of her future

life.

While she raised her streaming eyes to heaven, she observed the same

planet, which she had seen in Languedoc, on the night, preceding her

father’s death, rise above the eastern towers of the castle, while she

remembered the conversation, which has passed, concerning the probable

state of departed souls; remembered, also, the solemn music she had

heard, and to which the tenderness of her spirits had, in spite of her

reason, given a superstitious meaning. At these recollections she wept

again, and continued musing, when suddenly the notes of sweet music

passed on the air. A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood

listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then

endeavoured to recollect her thoughts, and to reason herself into

composure; but human reason cannot establish her laws on subjects, lost

in the obscurity of imagination, any more than the eye can ascertain

the form of objects, that only glimmer through the dimness of night.

Her surprise, on hearing such soothing and delicious sounds, was, at

least, justifiable; for it was long—very long, since she had listened

to anything like melody. The fierce trumpet and the shrill fife were

the only instruments she had heard, since her arrival at Udolpho.

When her mind was somewhat more composed, she tried to ascertain from

what quarter the sounds proceeded, and thought they came from below;

but whether from a room of the castle, or from the terrace, she could

not with certainty judge. Fear and surprise now yielded to the

enchantment of a strain, that floated on the silent night, with the

most soft and melancholy sweetness. Suddenly, it seemed removed to a

distance, trembled faintly, and then entirely ceased.

She continued to listen, sunk in that pleasing repose, which soft music

leaves on the mind—but it came no more. Upon this strange circumstance

her thoughts were long engaged, for strange it certainly was to hear

music at midnight, when every inhabitant of the castle had long since

retired to rest, and in a place, where nothing like harmony had been

heard before, probably, for many years. Long suffering had made her

spirits peculiarly sensible to terror, and liable to be affected by the

illusions of superstition.—It now seemed to her, as if her dead father

had spoken to her in that strain, to inspire her with comfort and

confidence, on the subject, which had then occupied her mind. Yet

reason told her, that this was a wild conjecture, and she was inclined

to dismiss it; but, with the inconsistency so natural, when imagination

guides the thoughts, she then wavered towards a belief as wild. She

remembered the singular event, connected with the castle, which had

given it into the possession of its present owner; and, when she

considered the mysterious manner, in which its late possessor had

disappeared, and that she had never since been heard of, her mind was

impressed with a high degree of solemn awe; so that, though there

appeared no clue to connect that event with the late music, she was

inclined fancifully to think they had some relation to each other. At

this conjecture, a sudden chillness ran through her frame; she looked

fearfully upon the duskiness of her chamber, and the dead silence, that

prevailed there, heightened to her fancy its gloomy aspect.

At length, she left the casement, but her steps faltered, as she

approached the bed, and she stopped and looked round. The single lamp,

that burned in her spacious chamber, was expiring; for a moment, she

shrunk from the darkness beyond; and then, ashamed of the weakness,

which, however, she could not wholly conquer, went forward to the bed,

where her mind did not soon know the soothings of sleep. She still

mused on the late occurrence, and looked with anxiety to the next

night, when, at the same hour, she determined to watch whether the

music returned. “If those sounds were human,” said she, “I shall

probably hear them again.”