Chapter XI: Part III: Love Lies Bleeding (3)

A few nights before Gabriel and I had seen a strolling company play _Cymbeline_: so I began to mimic the stentorian voice of the Imogen. The keyhole, which was hard to find, was covered with a stiff and rusty scutcheon, which I had some difficulty in moving. At last, though, I could press my lips to the void, and ‘What, ho, Pisanio!’ I cried. Gabriel was too tired to smile; but footsteps came along the passage, and after a wearisome time the bolts were all undrawn, and the door opened as wide as the chain would run. A harsh and feeble voice came forth upon the night: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Supper and a room,’ I said. Another minute, and we stood in a yellow-washed hall, hung at even distances with dusty stags’-heads. A few paintings of scriptural scenes, done in Guercino’s style and framed in black, were fixed between queer oak carvings, the subjects taken from the superstitions of Holy Church, for in the first I saw Christ, crowned with a great golden aureole, descending a ladder into flames that coiled snake-like about the bottom rungs.

I showed it to Gabriel; but he scarce seemed to heed. His eyes and mind were fixed on the woman who stood looking at us, the candle held above her head. To tell the truth, I never saw a stranger creature. She wore a long gown of amber cloth, padded voluminously, but unbuttoned at the bosom and showing her brown, wrinkled throat. Her feet were shoeless, and were covered with grey stockings. Her face was profoundly unhallowed. There were remains of marvellous beauty; unparalleled eyes, pure and light blue and unfathomably deep, under white, knotted, bushy brows. No other feature did I note, save loose, prehensile lips and rippling flaxen hair that fell, like a young girl’s, in great locks over her shoulders. In truth, she had sinned monstrously; and in punishment thereof Nature had gifted the most alluring of her sweetnesses with a perenneity of youth: so making her a frightful anomaly--a terrifying Death-and-Life. She stood bowed; her mouth twisting, her eyes falling with inquiry on me. Gabriel she scarce observed; and I know not what in myself attracted her. I was excited, and could scarce repress my mirth. Yet, when I think of it, how oddly laughter would have rung along that mildewed passage! How Sara in the painting of the Angel’s Visit would have smiled a grimmer smile!

After a while, sighing heavily, she turned and led the way to a great room. Here she lighted two candles on the central table and, bidding us wait for a little, disappeared. We could hear her movements grow more and more distant. I sat on a tiny settee--(bah, how cold it was!)--whilst Gabriel wandered about, lifting the candle at times to the Italian landscapes painted on the panelling. ‘The Colosseum!’ he cried suddenly--‘and not ruined, but in its full pride. See, I can’t understand this!’ He drew me towards the picture (poor Gabriel was always a lover of art),--I looked, and was amazed to see the building I had so often dreamed of glistening in the moonlight. But my gaze was not so deeply interested as his, and, leaving the picture, it fell upon the miniature of a young girl above the mantelpiece. A host of memories came, my eyes grew dim, my chin trembled. Surely--surely--the likeness was familiar? Yet it could not be. The woman with the web of flaxen hair, Lenore whom I had lost, but never loved, Lenore whom I had forgotten years ago. Lenore with a rose--a lust-flower--a flower of volupty--warming the iciness of the breasts it glowed between! _Lenore! Lenore! Lenore!_

I could not show it to Gabriel. It was not Lenore. How should the portrait of the holy witch, who slept so peacefully, encounter me here of all places? Fie! An instant, and I had fallen to speculating as the jack-o’-lanthorn of my folly bade, when the hostess came back. She bore a pan of live coals and a bundle of fagots; these she threw on the hearth, so that a bright flame was soon leaping giddily up the chimney. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘your chamber is making ready. Supper shall be laid anon.’

Gabriel and I went to the fireside now, and stood in the heat. He was silent but not unhappy: indeed the gleaming of his sunken eyes went far towards dispelling the passion awakened by the miniature. Again the woman entered, this time with a laden tray. She drew the table nearer the fire, and, having spread the cloth and arranged the quaint china, produced from a large press dishes of old-fashioned confections--rose-petals, clusterberries, and almond comfits. Also, there were birds dressed in a way that I had never seen before. We grew very hungry at the sight. A sense of possession came over me: I was the host, Gabriel the guest. I assumed the honours. ‘Pray, make yourself comfortable!’ I said, and we both laughed until the lamplight fluttered. He could laugh best--with the most singleheartedness. Outside the wind cried like a beaten child, and the gusts in the corridors were as mournful as the last breaths of a dying man. As no rain beat upon the windows, I surmised that the weather was fair, and I drew one of the sombre curtains. But I could see nothing but blackness: so with a shudder and a joyful thanksgiving that we were indoors, I went back to the table.

The collation done, I rang for the dishes to be removed. When, after a long time, the woman came, her suspicious curiosity was gone, and she moved in apathy. As she left us for the last time, after placing two logs across the andirons, she courtesied foolishly. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘the door of your chamber opens on the first landing. A fire is burning there: you will see the reflection when you wish to retire.’

Beside the hearth were two great leathern arm-chairs, shaped like sedans. Gabriel took one, I the other. They were padded deep, and exquisitely comfortable. I leaned back, gazing dreamily on my friend’s face; for I wanted his features burned into my brain. He enjoyed the examination, but soon distracted me by speech.

‘It seems a hundred years since we left the town,’ he said; ‘we are in quite another world--in a realm full of romance----’

‘Gabriel,’ I interrupted, as if I had not heard his remark, ‘will you tell me the perfect truth if I ask you something?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I promise seriously.’ I covered my forehead with my handkerchief. I was fain to hide my look. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘it is this: _Do you really care for my friendship?_’

‘My dear fellow,’ he cried impetuously, ‘why do you ask? I thought you knew before now. There is nobody else on earth for whom I care a thousandth part as much.’

‘Have I been of any use to you?’ I asked: unnecessarily, for I knew what his reply would be. He reiterated my words.

‘Any use to me--any use to me? Why I had sunk into a dreadful slough before I knew you. It had been a sleep of years and years, and you helped me out of it all, and made me human again. You have brought me ideal happiness in our friendship.’

I was silent a moment, then I said tentatively: ‘Suppose that I had to take a long journey--one with no chance of returning? What of your friendship then?’

His face grew very white. ‘If you take such a journey,’ he said, ‘I go with you.’

A stillness followed, so profound that I was afraid lest the beating of my heart should attain to him and stir his sympathy. The gleaming logs on the hearth were as quiet as if the lapping flames were magical; and a dull, subtle perfume spread from the wisps of azure smoke that came winnowing down the chimney. The mantel was wonderfully wrought--a masterpiece in carven oak. Lilith, the wife of Adam, stood to the left; the Queen of Sheba, her feet on Solomon’s Mirror, to the right; on the transome, clustering and grotesque, were angels and fiends. It was in accordance with my imagination--wild and fantastic, and with no unity. I bent towards Gabriel to point it out, but seeing that, drowsy with the heat, he had let his head fall back to the cushion, and was already well-nigh asleep, I strangled my remark, and began conning his face once more. What a curious forehead! It was high: not narrow, but oddly misshapen, particularly above the eyes, where the great black brows, bristling on penthouses, gave a fiercely kind look. His nose was good, his moustache coarse and with bitten ends; his lips were full and unequal; his chin was square. Here was nothing fascinating, save the fact that it was the face of my only friend.

Soon, impatient that he should sleep when I was wide awake, I rose from my chair and began walking about the room. Not daring to look at the miniature again, I turned to the opposite wall. A cry of delight burst from me, for standing there was a satin-wood spinet with open lid. I read the label of Johannes Pohlman, and the date, 1781. I had cherished from my earliest childhood the desire of playing on such an instrument, and I drew out the needleworked stool, and ran my fingers lightly over the keys in an attempt to harmonise my thoughts. To my surprise the tone was neither discordant nor decayed, but echoed with a charming tinkling. In a minor, on a numbed undercurrent of bass, a melody like a thin gold wire began its incantation. I lost myself: I was the Spirit of the Music--not the fragile fool whose life should be required of him so soon! But the vein was soon exhausted, and I turned to Gabriel to find him awake and looking at me. ‘What are you playing?’ he said eagerly. ‘I was dreaming unpleasantly, and the sound brought me to myself. I never heard anything like it’ (he passed his hand over his forehead as if perplexed): ‘it reminds me of twilight vapours in June, wind-borne across a marshy pool to die among foxgloves and wild aniseed on the farther shore.’

‘You are right,’ I replied. ‘It is a requiem.’

Looking at my watch, I saw that it was now midnight, so I took up a candle and, lighting it at the fire, suggested sleepily that we should go to bed. Gabriel rose, and ascended the staircase at my side. The fagots in the bedroom had burnt low: only a dim red gleam was mirrored on the panelling of the landing and on the glossy door of a clock, above whose dial a curious arrangement showed the waxing and waning of the moon. Our chamber was large, and apparently was over the supper-room. No carpet covered the worm-eaten floor; but a few discoloured skin rugs, irregularly shapen, lay about, chiefly round the cedar bedstead in the middle, whereon a volant angel, blowing a gilt bugle, leaned from the top of every post. I threw logs on the hearth, and while Gabriel undressed I lay on a couch from one of the recesses in the wall. As I rested, hot tears ran down my cheeks.

Gabriel drew aside the bed-curtains. I sprang to his side and took his hands. ‘Stay,’ I said gravely; ‘you have not said your prayers.’

He laughed blithely. ‘I never say them,’ he replied. I did not relax my hold.

‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered, ‘say them to-night of all nights.’

His mirth died quickly: ‘If you will sleep better with the knowledge, I will say them;’ and he began to pray with a surprising beauty. I said _Amen_ when all was done. In less than ten minutes he was fast asleep.

For me, I sat listening to the deathwatch sound in the region of my heart; the nearly silent drip-dropping of blood from the vessel, now well-nigh exhausted, whose emptiness means freedom. Its ticking alternated with the clock’s, and each one brought a separate vision to my fancy--visions that I had thought ripped from my heart years ago. Visions of Lenore! O damned miniature! But Gabriel’s breathing soothed me. Once he murmured: ‘Friend!’

The gleaming of the hangings startled me. Some dull metal was interwoven with the wool, so that, as the light rose and fell, figures sprang from the folds and leaped down chasms, eyes gleamed and dimmed, arms were uplifted and struck. Soon, in my curiosity, I began to consider the chief subject, and was amazed to find it that scene in _Tamburlane_, where Bajazeth and Zabina lie with their brains dashed out. It was wrought on the side nearest the fire, and on the other (which I saw by candlelight) was an uncouth picture of the tent of Heber the Kenite, with Jael in act to use the lethal hammer. Suicide and murder, each grimly figured--suicide and murder: here were strange subjects for a temple of rest! Yet Gabriel’s dreams were happy. Often during my vigil I drew the curtain, and laid my hand tenderly on his forehead, and watched the lines of care fade out and away. As the night passed, he seemed to realise my presence: so, not wishing to break his rest, I was content to listen to the rise and fall of his breath.

The wind lulled before dawn. I looked from the window, and high above (for the opposite hill walled out all but a narrow slit) was the sky, dark blue and nebulous. On the sill a thin-voiced bird chirped a few odd notes. Another light began contending with the gleam from the fire. A solemn grey took the place of the gloom outside--a grey that brightened and brightened.

... ‘Gabriel,’ I said aloud. ‘Let us see the sunrise together. Come, dress yourself! We will go to the crest of the Naze.’

He sat up in bed yawning.

‘Nay,’ he answered. ‘I am too lazy to walk far before breakfast. It is not time to get up yet. I am sleepy.’

But, seeing me fully dressed, he sprang to the floor with a bound that made things shake, and, clamouring that he was no sluggard, began to put on his clothes.

The sun rose; a long ruddy haze trembled above the hill. All the stars faded, and the glitter began to creep down the side of the valley. Streamlets were leaping in the tiny cloughs, and spreading before they reached the melancholy river into brown and white mare’s tails. Only that one bird, with the same acid piping! When we descended, breakfast had just been laid. There was nobody to wait at table; but everything you needed was there. ’Twas a still stranger meal than that of the night before. The food was impregnated with a strong flavouring, as of cinnamon; the coffee smelled deliciously; but a dish of scarlet poppies, with hearts like fingers, effused a close and sleepy perfume. We ate in silence; and, having sat a while, I rang for the reckoning.

The woman came, as evil-looking as ever; still wearing the amber gown. Moreover, the interest she had in me was greatly heightened, for she stood a minute gazing open-mouthed at my face, and her words were mystical. ‘I trust that you have slept well here,’ she said dreamily, ‘for he who sleeps here needs no more sleep on earth. But this is not your last visit!’ Had she seen anything in my eyes? Was she a witch? I turned to Gabriel, my heart panting. Thank God, he had not heard! But when I had paid her she plucked my sleeve, and led me to a great mirror between the windows. There she pointed to the reflection of my face, which I had never seen so impassive before. I turned half-angrily away, aghast but not surprised at her familiarity (for I knew her now), and she cackled drily, with a sound that better suggested wickedness than the most insidious speech. Even Gabriel was startled, and walked quickly to the door. As we stood on the threshold, to which she followed to speed us with courtesyings, I asked the nearest way to the village of Esperance, whose church, with its priest’s chamber and its bells, I wished to see.

‘’Tis fourteen miles from here, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Pass for a good step along the river; cross at the leppings, where the water lies broadest; and when you reach the hill-top eight miles of barren moorland lie before you. The path is a Roman road, swarded and wide. Turn at the pillar with the snake-rings. Go straight through the clough to the right, and there is Esperance, with the Featherbed Moss betwixt.’

She closed the door with a loud bang, and left us standing in amaze. The guide-book showed me that the village was at most some seven miles off, and that by a straight road. But the sound of drawing bolts prevented us from asking any more: so we started for the river-side. Suddenly Gabriel turned to look at the quaint cluster of buildings. A cry burst from his lips: ‘By Jove, we’ve come to the wrong place! This is not the Eagle--just look at the sign!’ We returned. It was a long swinging hatchment, a lozenge with proper supporters, whereon was painted an ungainly mythical creature, half dog and half bird. An inscription--_Ye Gabbleratch Inne_--in faded gilt letters gleamed below. But that was not all; for through a small mullioned window to the left the old woman was peering at us, and looking over her shoulder was the face of the handsomest man I have ever seen: youthful, white, and with auburn hair: but so sinister withal that his gaze seemed as petrifying as a cockatrice’s.

We turned and fled, breathless almost, but with a fleetness I should not have believed attainable to one in my condition. Ere long we turned the foot of a crag, and to our common relief passed out of sight of the inn.

‘The Devil and his Dam!’ quoth Gabriel, half in earnest.

The river broadened until it filled the bottom of the valley, whose walls grew more and more precipitous. Moss-covered stones, that bore the marks of ancient carving, met the path soon; and, though in places they were somewhat under water, they were distinct enough to make crossing safe. They ended at the entrance to a gorge, along whose side a path, built of clamped flags, rose sharply to a level platform. When we reached the top there lay a prospect of utter barrenness: an immense plain with an horizon of jagged peaks; a few scant patches of heather relieving the sameness of the red earth; the Roman road, with its green, velvety turf, stretching, like a stagnant canal, from where we stood to the furthest crevice in the sky-line.

A queer memory awoke in me. ‘Gabriel,’ I said, ‘do you know the secret of this earth?’ He did not: so I told him of a place, something akin to this, where, in my own childhood, the body of a girl, murdered in the first year of Queen Anne, was discovered perfectly intact and supple. The tale pleased him. ‘This is just the place I should like to be buried in,’ he remarked. His words excited me. At that instant I could have done it--painfully. But I wished above all things to spare him pain.

Once I paused; between myself and the sun a hawk was grappling with a smaller bird, whose feathers floated down like snow-flakes. My tongue formed the word ‘metempsychosis’ again, and Gabriel understood once more. A taint of sorrow came at the thought of our brief parting. And then I was possessed of an unutterable joy.

* * * * *

At mid-day he lay sleeping beside me on the moor. With my own hands I made his bed: with my own hands smoothed the sheet. Evening had fallen, when, alone and pensive, I heard the sweet bells of Saint Anne of Esperance, and saw the dim valleys of Braithwage and Camsdell with their serpentine streams.

ROXANA RUNS LUNATICK

Amongst the May poetry in the ninety-first volume of the _British Review_ is the following composition by Lady Penwhile, whose Roxana had shaken the town for a whole season.

‘Placed in the hand of the Satyr who guards the Puzzle-Pegs at N----, with a tress of hair for Hyperion.’

_If so be that Hyperion visit thy stately lawn on the anniversary of our parting, O Satyr, wilt thou tell him that R---- hath often sigh’d for him there, and that, tho’ she has worn green Hellebore, such as he gave her a year agone--when he vow’d an early return--her hopes grow ever fainter and fainter. Say to him that she is bound in golden chains, but that her heart sings when she thinks of him--(ay, her heart is ever singing)--whisper that she loves him more as every moment passes. And when thou hast done all this, bid Pan trill from his pipes, whilst thou chantest this ditty._

Five halting verses follow, wherein ’tis told that the lovers had parted, that Roxana had wedded an old man, that she felt incapable of expressing in words the vehemency of her passion. But dear, pleasing ghosts haunted her chambers day and night.

My lord’s cast-off doxy sent the journal, with a venomous letter bidding him rub his forehead, for fear of the cuckoo. So he pondered in his book-room, his half-blinded eyes fixed upon the logs; and, after many struggles with his better nature, he devised a plot worthy of Satan himself.

For Roxana was a prize worth keeping. She was pale, exquisitely pale. One forgot her eyes, but remembered that somewhere in her face was seen the sudden starting of a timid woman’s soul.... Hast ever watched the heart of a palm-catkin when a wanton hand has fired it? Lurking under the outer blackness are red and yellow intermixed. Such was the colour of her hair that fell from nape to heel. Hands that alone might have quenched lawless desires: of a subtle pink, like the ivory that comes from Africk.

Few women could have given such devotion as she gave my lord. By some stratagem, some wild persuasion in her moment of wavering, he had gained possession. Compassion weakens distaste, and he had posed long as one broken-hearted. How daintily did she acknowledge his requirements, how sweet her service had become! When he had decided concerning Hyperion, his punctilio was greater than ever: the house rang with shrill commands for madam’s comfort, and he sat hour after hour listening to her tenderest songs. She was a lutanist too, and great in the Italian masters.

On Oak Day, when men and maids bore the garland through the park, a country fellow came to mistress and delivered her a note. My lord was not present, but she grew faint and chill, and had much ado to applaud the pageant. With unseemly haste she withdrew to her chamber and read there----

‘Many days have passed ere I could summon courage. At twilight to-morrow we will meet; I have discovered the place. What manner of love was mine erstwhile that thou wert false?’

In her cabinet were many choice silks. She made a bag of the richest, and put the folded sheet inside, and spread ambergris upon it, then hung it between her breasts. That night as she slept her fingers relaxed, and my lord took thence the token, and read it, gnashing his teeth. He put it back: so that in the morning flush, when her hand sought the thing, it seemed untouched.

That day passed so wearily! In her spouse’s company she was gay and brilliant; all her paleness had disappeared, and a feverish red pulsed in her cheeks. And he was brimful of paradox and of jesting, but sometimes she trembled because of the fearsome coldness of his looks. Once, when she fawned upon him he put her away, not untenderly.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said towards sunset, ‘an’ if thou wert false!’

‘Ay, me,’ she faltered, for the repetition of Hyperion’s words struck her with terror. ‘False! false!’

It was growing dusk; he peered close to the clock-face. ‘More than two months have passed since we came here,’ he noted, breaking the ominous silence. ‘And yet this place is strange to you. Let us visit the old house--see, here are the keys! Dearest, lean on my arm.’

They passed through the garden to the porch and so to the mildewed avenues of the pre-Elizabethan part where all the lumber was stored. My lord saw Roxana’s bodice swell as if the threads would burst. Soon they reached a great hall lighted with green windows, whose dimness scarce revealed the many sacks of too long-garnered grain, where the mice ran in and out. There, near the foot of a staircase that led to the gallery, he left her, and she heard the clicking of a lock.

My lord went to an upper chamber whence he could see the outlet of the maze. The belling of his red-eyed dogs as they strutted in their leash tickled his ears: he laughed and rubbed his forehead. The moon rose, and he could hear Roxana clamouring in the hall. After a while he descended by another way, and took out his death-hounds, and went towards the trysting-place.

Roxana could not know what happened in the darkness. The agony of the man whose every vestige of clothes was torn away, and whose white flesh gaped bloodily, was hidden from her by the seven feet of masonry that parted them as he leaped madly into the courtyard. Nor could she hear his worn, querulous cry--such a cry as the peewit makes before dawn. Yet, withal, her hands began to drum in her lap.

When the darkness was intense my lord came back. He felt for Roxana in the place where he had left her. She was not there: an hour before she had climbed to the gallery. He groped painfully round the walls.

In one corner soft delicious things like nets of gossamer fell on his fingers. He stooped to the floor, and touched more of them. Above was a sound of tearing, but no panting nor indrawing of breath. Another web fluttered past his face; his lips began to quiver. It was Roxana’s hair.

THE PAGEANT OF GHOSTS

A late twilight in June. A wood-lark rippling in mid-air. Drowsy-scented ladies’ bed-straw in a marsh that was once a garden. On the terrace wall, beside the cedar, a stone urn with a lambent flame.

The casement hung open, and the excess of beauty and perfume drugged me: so that, with a sigh, I sank back into a moth-eaten sedan that had borne four generations to Court. Dried dust of lavender and rue filtered through the brocade lining, and grew into a mist, wherethrough the bird’s song waxed fainter and fainter. Indeed, I was just closing my eyes when the tuning of fifes and viols roused me with a start.

A shrill titter from the further end of the ball-room drew me from my seat. At the outer extremity of the oriel hung a curtain of Philimot velvet, lined inwardly with pale green silk: behind this I stole, and, parting the draperies from the wall, gazed towards the musicians’ gallery. Five men, dressed in styles that ranged from the trunk-hose and collared mantle of Elizabeth’s day to the pantaloons and muslin cravats of the third George, were arranging yellow music-sheets on the table. The youngest forced a harsh note from his viol, then struck another’s bald pate, and set all a-laughing. A grave silence followed. Then began just such a curious melody as the wind makes in a wood of half-blighted firs.

All the sconces were lighted of a sudden, and the martlets and serpents in the alt-relief above the panelling sprang into a weird life. Resting between the fire-dogs on the open hearth were three logs, one of pine, another of oak, and a third of sycamore. The grey flame licked them hungrily, and the sap hissed and bubbled. The carved work of the walls was distinct: Potiphar’s wife wrapped her bed-gown about Joseph, Judith triumphed with the bloody head aloft, and in the centre Lot’s daughters paddled with his withered jowls.

I felt but little wonder at the change from stillness to life. As the last of my race, treasurer of a vast hoard of traditions, why should I be disturbed by this return of the creatures of old? I dragged forth the creaking sedan, and sat waiting.

A rusty, half-unstrung zither that hung near quivered and gave one faint note to the melody. Ere its vibration had ceased, Mistress Lenore entered through the arched doorway. Hour after hour had she plucked those wires that cried out in welcome.

Her fox-coloured tresses were wrought into a fantastic web; each separate hair twisted and coiled. A pink flush painted her cheeks, and her lustrous blue eyes were mirthful. She wore opals (unfortunate stones for such as love), and hanging from a black riband below her throat was the golden cross Prince Charles had sent her from Rome.

The legends of her character came in floods. Wantonly capricious at one moment, earnest and devout as a nun’s at another, her expression changed a thousand times as I beheld. Now she was racking her soul with jealousy; now pleading--as she alone could plead--for pardon; now, when pardon was won, laughingly swearing that her repentance was only feigned. As she neared my heart beat furiously, and I cried ‘_Lenore! Lenore!_’ My voice was low and broken (the music gave a loud burst then), but she passed without a word, her ivory-like hands almost hidden beneath jewels and lace. The further door stood open, and she disappeared.

Nowell the Platonist followed; a haggard middle-aged man in a long cloak of sable-edged black velvet. Forgetful of all save desire, he bore a scroll of parchment, whereon was written in great letters _To Parthenia_. This was the only outcome of his one passion. At the second window he paused, with a wry mouth, to gaze on that statue of Europa from whose arm he had hanged himself. Then his hands were uplifted to his head to force away the agony of despair; for hurrying towards him came the Mad Maid, who could not love him, being devoted to the memory of one wrecked at sea.

‘Why art thou in anguish?’ she said. ‘See my joy; laugh with me, dance with me. He returns to-morrow--the boat’s coming in. Ah, darling! ah, heart’s delight!’ And she held up her arms to a girandole whose candles fluttered; but her face grew long, and thin, and pale, and she rested on a settee and drew from her pocket a dusky lace veil, which, being unfolded, discovered a ring with a burning topaz and a heart of silver. She leaned forward, resting her brow in her hands, and talked to the toys in her lap as if they understood.

To the veil she said, ‘No bride’s joy-blushes shalt thou conceal!’

To the ring, ‘Thou last gift of him who died and left me!’

To the heart, ‘O heart, thou hast endured! Thou art not broken!’

After a few tears she refolded all, and unbuttoning her bodice took from the bosom a miniature framed with pearls; but, as if afraid lest it should grow cold, she replaced it hurriedly, and seeing that Nowell beckoned towards her, glided on, sighing, and with downcast looks.

Then passed a cavalier in azure silk and snowy ruffled cravat and long-plumed cap of estate. He was whistling a song that threw all bachelors into humorous ecstasy. Who he was I know not: unless the courtier who had fought a duel with my Lord Brandreth, and had died in the wood near St. Giles’s Well, pressing convulsively in his right hand a dainty glove of Spanish kid. A merry fellow, quoth the legend, who loved the world and all in it, but who was over fond of his own jest.

Fidessa, the singer, entered next. She had brought her little gilt harp, and her lips were parted to join harmonies of voice and instrument. Bright yellow hair plaited in bands that formed a filigrain-bound coronet; eyes half-veiled, with sleepy lashes, hands fragile as sea-shells. It was the _Verdi Prati_, Mr. Handel’s celebrated song, that she adored most, and on the morrow she would sing it at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields Theatre. At least she purposed to sing it then and there. Fate, however, had otherwise ordained: the to-morrow would never come, and the sweetheart at the upland grange might well write on her letters, ‘Darkness hath overcome me.’

Thin and pale Margot, her wanness heightened by dishevelled black curls, came forward in her scarlet cloak. Silent reproach was in her every feature; her eyes were stern and long-suffering. The prophecy that bound up her life with that of her dying twin was rapidly approaching consummation. Another moment and the direst pain filled her; for a loud cry from an outer chamber told her he was dead.

As she disappeared in the gloom, Nabob Darrington, himself in life the lover of a ghost, paced slowly along. A beau of the last century, wearing a satin flowered waistcoat and a coat and breeches of plum-coloured kerseymere, between his finger and thumb he held the diamond which he had brought from the East as a spousal gift for the woman who, unknown to him, had died of waiting. He was anticipating the meeting with her, and his brown cheeks flushed blood-red at the sound of a light footstep. He turned, saw one with violet eyes and tragic forehead; and with one joyous murmur they enfolded each other and passed.

Althea approached; a massive creature gowned in white and gold. In one hand she held a tangle of sops-in-wine, in the other, as symbolical kings hold globes, a bejewelled missal. The contention between the two lovers--the old, who had tyrannised until her life was of the saddest, and the new, who filled her with such wild happiness--was troubling her, and she was pondering as to which should gain the victory. She was just beginning to understand that to wait in passive indecision is to be torn with dragon’s teeth.

Barbara, with eyes like moon-pierced amethysts, followed, singing Ben Jonson’s _Robin Goodfellow_ in a sweet quaver that was only just heard above the music. How strangely her looks changed--from maiden innocence to the awakening of love! from the height of passion to the abyss of despair!

But as she went the horizon was ripped from end to end, and a golden arrow leaped into the ball-room. Dawn had broken. The scent of the ladies’ bed-straw was trebly strong; the tired wood-lark sank lower and lower.

The room was empty--the pageant passed and done.

THE END.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.