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The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his voice in the response startled even the bride. If it had rung from the depths of a cavern, it could not have been more sepulchral. I looked at him with a shudder. His lips were curled with an exulting expression, mixed with an indefinable fear; and all the blood in his face seemed settled about his eyes, which were so bloodshot and fiery, that I have ever since wondered he was not, at the first glance, suspected of insanity. But oh! the heavenly sweetness with which that loveliest of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in sickness and in health! I never go to a bridal but it half breaks my heart; and as the soft voice of that beautiful girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my ear, and I looked at her, with lips calm and eyes moistened, vowing a love which I knew to be stronger than death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only pain and sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepressible tears, and I wept.
The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his prayer seemed to awake him from a trance. He looked around with a troubled face for a moment; and then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he suddenly clasped his arms about her, and straining her violently to his bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and laughter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command, he apologized for the over-excitement of his feelings, and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till the guests departed.
There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits of the small bridal party left in the lighted rooms; and, as they gathered round the fire, I approached, and endeavoured to take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my hand in silence as I said, “Good night,” and dropped his head upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to rally him, but it jarred on the general feeling, and I left the house.
It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had a vitreous brilliancy, which I have never seen in any other climate, the rays of the moonlight almost visibly splintering with the keenness of the frost. The moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed nothing between her and the earth but palpable and glittering cold.
I hurried home: it was but eleven o’clock; and, heaping up the wood in the large fire-place, I took a volume of “Ivanhoe,” which had just then appeared, and endeavoured to rid myself of my unpleasant thoughts. I read on till midnight; and then, in a pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night, hoping, for poor Larry’s sake, that the moon was buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of the lake: and as I looked down upon the glassy waste, spreading away from the land, I saw the dark figure of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon’s rays. In another moment he rose to his feet, and the tall, slight form of my poor friend was distinctly visible, as, with long and powerful strokes, he sped away upon his skates along the shore.
To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur around my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work of but a minute. My straps were soon fastened; and, following in the marks of the sharp irons at the top of my speed, I gained sight of him in about half an hour, and with great effort neared him sufficiently to shout his name with a hope of being heard.
“Larry! Larry!”
The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in repeated echoes; but he redoubled his strokes, and sped on faster than before. At my utmost speed I followed on; and when, at last, I could almost lay my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength to my breathless lungs, and shouted again—“Larry! Larry!”
He half looked back, and the full moon at that instant streamed full into his eyes. I have thought since that he could not have seen me for its dazzling brightness; but I saw every line of his features with the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget them. A line of white foam ran through his half-parted lips; his hair streamed wildly over his forehead, on which the perspiration glittered in large drops; and every lineament of his expressive face was stamped with unutterable and awful horror. He looked back no more; but, increasing his speed with an energy of which I did not think his slender frame capable, he began gradually to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and hills fled back like magic. My limbs began to grow numb; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a strong north-east wind was behind us, and the ice smoother than a mirror; and I struck out my feet mechanically, and still sped on.
For two hours we had kept along the shore. The branches of the trees were reflected in the polished ice, and the hills seemed hanging in the air, and floating past us with the velocity of storm-clouds. Far down the lake, however, there glimmered the just visible light of a fire, and I was thanking God that we were probably approaching some human succour, when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me suddenly darted off to the left, and made swifter than before toward the centre of the icy waste. Oh, God! what feelings were mine at that moment. Follow him far I dared not; for, the sight of land once lost, as it would be almost instantly with our tremendous speed, we perished, without a possibility of relief.
He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him was the only hope. I summoned my last nerve for the effort, and, keeping him in my eye, struck across at a sharper angle, with the advantage of the wind full in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and knew that we were already forty miles from home, a distance it would be impossible to retrace against the wind; and the thought of freezing to death, even if I could over-take him, forced itself appallingly upon me.
Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs, and soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts seemed flagging and faint. I neared him. Another struggle! I could have dropped down where I was, and slept, if there were death in the first minute, so stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame.
“Larry!” I shouted. “Larry!”
He started at the sound, and I could hear a smothered and breathless shriek, as, with supernatural strength, he straightened up his bending figure, and, leaning forward again, sped away from me like a phantom on the blast.
I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates, still going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to look after him, but the frost had stiffened my eyes, and there was a mist before them, and they felt like glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to retrace the slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It was painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no longer warmed my body, and I felt the cold shoot sharply into my loins, and bind across my breast like a chain of ice; and, with the utmost strength of mind at my command, I could just resist the terrible inclination to lie down and sleep. I forgot poor Larry. Life—dear life!—was now my only thought! So selfish are we in our extremity!
With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then, unbuttoning my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail, I set my feet together, and went slowly down before the wind, till the fire which I had before noticed began to blaze cheerily in the distance. It seemed an eternity in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw the shadow of its naked branches across the way; hill after hill glided slowly backward; but my knees seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice; and if my life had depended on striking out my feet, I should have died powerless. My jaws were locked, my shoulders drawn half down to my knees, and in a few minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood would have thickened in my veins, and stood still, for ever.
I could see the tongues of the flames—I counted the burning faggots—a form passed between me and the fire—I struck, and fell prostrate on the snow; and I remember no more.
The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees when I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of embers played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped me, and beneath my head was a soft cushion of withered leaves. On the opposite side of the fire lay four Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her head on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles, sat an Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep upon her watch. The stir I made aroused her, and, as she piled on fresh faggots, and kindled them to a bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep.
I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o’clock by the sun. The Indians were about, occupied in various avocations, and the woman was broiling a slice of deer’s flesh on the coals. She offered it to me as I rose; and having eaten part of it with a piece of a cake made of meal, I requested her to call in the men, and with offers of reward, easily induced them to go with me in search of my lost friend.
We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death, far out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the marks of his skate-irons, and from their appearance he had sunk quietly down, probably drowsy and exhausted, and had died of course without pain. His last act seemed to have been under the influence of his strange madness, for he lay on his face, turned from the quarter of the setting moon.
We carried him home to his bride. Even the Indians were affected by her uncontrollable agony. I cannot describe that scene, familiar as I am with pictures of horror.
I made inquiries with respect to the position of his bridal chamber. There were no shutters, and the moon streamed broadly into it, and after kissing his shrinking bride with the violence of a madman, he sprang out of the room with a terrific scream, and she saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal bed.
First published in the November 1834 issue The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal [London]. Collected in Inklings of Adventure (1836).
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