In an instant, by one of those inexplicable connections of the brain or
soul, he found himself living over an experience of his college youth.
He had been spending the day in Boston with a dear friend, some score of
years his senior; a man of the rarest culture, and of a most sweet and
gentle nature withal; and when evening came they had drifted naturally
to the theatre,--the fool's paradise it may be sometimes, but to them on
that occasion a real paradise.
He remembered well the play. It was Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_. He
had never read it, but, before the curtain rose, his friend had
unfolded the story in so kind and skilful a manner as to have imbued him
as fully with the spirit of the tale as though he had studied the book.
What he chiefly recalled in the play was the scene in which Ravenswood
comes back to Emily long after they had been plighted,--long after he
had supposed her faithless,--long after he had been tossed on a sea of
troubles, touching the seeming decay in her affections. Just as she is
about to be enveloped in the toils which were spread for her,--just as
she is about to surrender herself to the hated nuptials, and submit to
the embrace of one whom she loathed more than she dreaded
death,--Ravenswood, the man whom Heaven had made for her, presents
himself.
What followed was quiet, yet intensely dramatic. Ravenswood, wrought to
the verge of despair, bursts upon the scene at the critical moment,
detaches Emily from her party, and leads her slowly forward.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126