Melmoth the Wanderer

remembered everything in a moment, though nothing distinctly, but felt the most intense anxiety to see the stranger saved from the shipwreck, who, he remembered the governante had told him (while her words seemed to falter on the threshold of his closing senses), was still alive, and an inmate in his house, but weak and ill from the bruises he had received, and the exhaustion and terror he had undergone. The opinions of the household on the subject of this stranger were various. The knowledge of his being a Catholic had conciliated their hearts, for the first act of his recovered reason was to request that a Catholic priest might be sent for, and the first use of his speech was to express his satisfaction that he was in a country where he might enjoy the benefits of the rites of his own church. So far all was well; but there was a mysterious haughtiness and reserve about him, that somewhat repelled the officious curiosity of his attendants. He spoke often to himself in a language they did not understand; they hoped relief from the priest on this point, but the priest, after listening long at the invalid’s door, pronounced the language in which he was soliloquizing not to be Latin, and, after a conversation of some hours with him, refused to tell what language the stranger spoke to himself in, and forbid all inquiry on the subject. This was bad enough; but, still worse, the stranger spoke English with ease and fluency, and therefore could have no right, as all the household argued, to torment them with those unknown sounds, that, sonorous and powerful as they were, seemed to their ears like an evocation of some invisible being.

“He asks for what he wants in English,” said the harassed housekeeper, “and he can call for candle in English, and he can say he’ll go to bed in English; and why the devil can’t he do everything in English?⁠—He can say his prayers too in English to that picture he’s always pulling out of his breast and talking to, though it’s no saint, I am sure, he prays to (from the glimpse I got of it), but more like the devil⁠—Christ save us!”

All these strange rumours, and ten thousand more, were poured into Melmoth’s ears, fast and faster than he could receive them. “Is Father Fay in the house,” said he at last, understanding that the priest visited the stranger every day; “if he be, let me see him.” Father Fay attended him as soon as he quitted the stranger’s apartment.

He was a grave and decent priest, well “spoken of by those that were without” the pale of his own communion; and as he entered the room, Melmoth smiled at the idle tattle of his domestics. “I thank you for your attention to this unfortunate gentleman, who, I understand, is in my house.”

“It was my duty.”

“I am told he sometimes speaks in a foreign tongue.” The priest assented. “Do you know what countryman he is?”

“He is a Spaniard,” said the priest. This plain, direct answer, had the proper effect on Melmoth, of convincing him of its veracity, and of there being no mystery in the business, but what the folly of his servants had made.

The priest proceeded to tell him the particulars of the loss of the vessel. She was an English trader bound for Wexford or Waterford, with many passengers on board; she had been driven up the Wicklow coast by stress of weather, had struck on the night of the 19th October, during the intense darkness that accompanied the storm, on a hidden reef of rocks, and gone to pieces. Crew, passengers, all had perished, except this Spaniard. It was singular, too, that this man had saved the life of Melmoth. While swimming for his own, he had seen him fall from the rock he was climbing, and, though his strength was almost exhausted, had collected its last remains to preserve the life of a being who, as he conceived, had been betrayed into danger by his humanity. His efforts were successful, though Melmoth was unconscious of them; and in the morning they were found on the strand, locked in each other’s hold, but stiff and senseless. They showed some signs of life when an attempt was made to remove them, and the stranger was conveyed to Melmoth’s house. “You owe your life to him,” said the priest, when he had ended.

“I shall go and thank him for it this moment,” said Melmoth; but as he was assisted to rise, the old woman whispered to him with visible terror, “Jasus’ sake, dear, don’t tell him ye’re a Melmoth, for the dear life! He has been as mad as anything out of Bedlam, since some jist mintioned the name before him the ither night.” A sickening recollection of some parts of the manuscript came over Melmoth at these words, but he struggled with himself, and proceeded to the apartment of the stranger.

The Spaniard was a man about thirty, of a noble form and prepossessing manners. To the gravity of his nation was superadded a deeper tint of peculiar melancholy. He spoke English fluently; and when questioned on it by Melmoth, he remarked with a sigh, that he had learnt it in a painful school. Melmoth then changed the subject, to thank him with earnest gratitude for the preservation of his life.

“Señor,” said the Spaniard, “spare me; if your life was no dearer to you than mine, it would not be worth thanks.”

“Yet you made the most strenuous exertions to save it,” said Melmoth.

“That was instinct,” said the Spaniard.

“But you also struggled to save mine,” said Melmoth.

“That was instinct too at the moment,” said the Spaniard; then resuming his stately politeness, “or I should say, the influence of my better genius. I am wholly a stranger in this country, and must have fared miserably but for the shelter of your roof.”

Melmoth observed that he spoke with evident pain, and