Retired to her lonely cabin, her melancholy thoughts still hovered
round the body of her deceased parent; and, when she sunk into a kind
of slumber, the images of her waking mind still haunted her fancy. She
thought she saw her father approaching her with a benign countenance;
then, smiling mournfully and pointing upwards, his lips moved, but,
instead of words, she heard sweet music borne on the distant air, and
presently saw his features glow with the mild rapture of a superior
being.
The strain seemed to swell louder, and she awoke. The vision
was gone, but music yet came to her ear in strains such as angels might
breathe. She doubted, listened, raised herself in the bed, and again
listened. It was music, and not an illusion of her imagination. After
a solemn steady harmony, it paused; then rose again, in mournful
sweetness, and then died, in a cadence, that seemed to bear away the
listening soul to heaven. She instantly remembered the music of the
preceding night, with the strange circumstances, related by La Voisin,
and the affecting conversation it had led to, concerning the state of
departed spirits. All that St. Aubert had said, on that subject, now
pressed upon her heart, and overwhelmed it. What a change in a few
hours! He, who then could only conjecture, was now made acquainted with
truth; was himself become one of the departed! As she listened, she was
chilled with superstitious awe, her tears stopped; and she rose, and
went to the window.
All without was obscured in shade; but Emily,
turning her eyes from the massy darkness of the woods, whose waving
outline appeared on the horizon, saw, on the left, that effulgent
planet, which the old man had pointed out, setting over the woods. She
remembered what he had said concerning it, and, the music now coming
at intervals on the air, she unclosed the casement to listen to the
strains, that soon gradually sunk to a greater distance, and tried
to discover whence they came. The obscurity prevented her from
distinguishing any object on the green platform below; and the sounds
became fainter and fainter, till they softened into silence. She
listened, but they returned no more. Soon after, she observed the
planet trembling between the fringed tops of the woods, and, in the next
moment, sink behind them.
Chilled with a melancholy awe, she retired
once more to her bed, and, at length, forgot for a while her sorrows in
sleep. On the following morning, she was visited by a sister of the convent,
who came, with kind offices and a second invitation from the lady
abbess; and Emily, though she could not forsake the cottage, while the
remains of her father were in it, consented, however painful such a
visit must be, in the present state of her spirits, to pay her respects
to the abbess, in the evening.