door looms out in the uncertain twilight! I neither play nor sing, yet I
own a piano. It is a comfort to me to look at it, and to feel that the
music is there, although I am not able to break the spell that binds it.
It is pleasant to know that Bellini and Mozart, Cimarosa, Porpora, Glueck
and all such,--or at least their souls,--sleep in that unwieldy case.
There lie embalmed, as it were, all operas, sonatas, oratorios,
nocturnos, marches, songs and dances, that ever climbed into existence
through the four bars that wall in melody. Once I was entirely repaid
for the investment of my funds in that instrument which I never use.
Blokeeta, the composer, came to see me. Of course his instincts urged
him as irresistibly to my piano as if some magnetic power lay within it
compelling him to approach. He tuned it, he played on it. All night
long, until the gray and spectral dawn rose out of the depths of the
midnight, he sat and played, and I lay smoking by the window listening.
Wild, unearthly, and sometimes insufferably painful, were the
improvisations of Blokeeta. The chords of the instrument seemed breaking
with anguish. Lost souls shrieked in his dismal preludes; the half-heard
utterances of spirits in pain, that groped at inconceivable distances
from anything lovely or harmonious, seemed to rise dimly up out of the
waves of sound that gathered under his hands. Melancholy human love
wandered out on distant heaths, or beneath dank and gloomy cypresses,
murmuring its unanswered sorrow, or hateful gnomes sported and sang in
the stagnant swamps triumphing in unearthly tones over the knight whom
they had lured to his death. Such was Blokeeta's night's entertainment;
and when he at length closed the piano, and hurried away through the
cold morning, he left a memory about the instrument from which I could
never escape.
Those snow-shoes that hang in the space between the mirror and the door
recall Canadian wanderings,--a long race through the dense forests, over
the frozen snow through whose brittle crust the slender hoofs of the
caribou that we were pursuing sank at every step, until the poor
creature despairingly turned at bay in a small juniper coppice, and we
heartlessly shot him down. And I remember how Gabriel, the _habitant_,
and Francois, the half-breed, cut his throat, and how the hot blood
rushed out in a torrent over the snowy soil; and I recall the snow
_cabane_ that Gabriel built, where we all three slept so warmly; and the
great fire that glowed at our feet, painting all kinds of demoniac
shapes on the black screen of forest that lay without; and the
deer-steaks that we roasted for our breakfast; and the savage
drunkenness of Gabriel in the morning, he having been privately drinking
out of my brandy-flask all the night long.
That long haftless dagger that dangles over the mantelpiece makes my
heart swell. I found it, when a boy, in a hoary old castle in which one
of my maternal ancestors once lived. That same ancestor--who, by the
way, yet lives in history--was a strange old sea-king, who dwelt on the
extremest point of the southwestern coast of Ireland. He owned the whole
of that fertile island called Inniskeiran, which directly faces Cape
Clear, where between them the Atlantic rolls furiously, forming what the
fishermen of the place call "the Sound." An awful place in winter is
that same Sound. On certain days no boat can live there for a moment,
and Cape Clear is frequently cut off for days from any communication
with the mainland.
This old sea-king--Sir Florence O'Driscoll by name--passed a stormy
life. From the summit of his castle he watched the ocean, and when any
richly laden vessels bound from the South to the industrious Galway
merchants, hove in sight, Sir Florence hoisted the sails of his galley,
and it went hard with him if he did not tow into harbor ship and crew.
In this way he lived; not a very honest mode of livelihood, certainly,
according to our modern ideas, but quite reconcilable with the morals of
the time. As may be supposed, Sir Florence got into trouble. Complaints
were laid against him at the English court by the plundered merchants,
and the Irish viking set out for London, to plead his own cause before
good Queen Bess, as she was called. He had one powerful recommendation:
he was a marvellously handsome man. Not Celtic by descent, but half
Spanish, half Danish in blood, he had the great northern stature with
the regular features, flashing eyes, and dark hair of the Iberian race.
This may account for the fact that his stay at the English court was
much longer than was necessary, as also for the tradition, which a local
historian mentions, that the English Queen evinced a preference for the
Irish chieftain, of other nature than that usually shown by monarch to
subject.
Previous to his departure, Sir Florence had intrusted the care of his
property to an Englishman named Hull. During the long absence of the
knight, this person managed to ingratiate himself with the local
authorities, and gain their favour so far that they were willing to
support him in almost any scheme. After a protracted stay, Sir Florence,
pardoned of all his misdeeds, returned to his home. Home no longer. Hull
was in possession, and refused to yield an acre of the lands he had so
nefariously acquired. It was no use appealing to the law, for its
officers were in the opposite interest. It was no use appealing to the
Queen, for she had another lover, and had forgotten the poor Irish
knight by this time; and so the viking passed the best portion of his
life in unsuccessful attempts to reclaim his vast estates, and was
eventually, in his old age, obliged to content himself with his castle
by the sea and the island of Inniskeiran, the only spot of which the
usurper was unable to deprive him. So this old story of my kinsman's
fate looms up out of the darkness that enshrouds that haftless dagger
hanging on the wall.
It was somewhat after the foregoing fashion that I dreamily made the
inventory of my personal property. As I turned my eyes on each object,
one after the other,--or the places where they lay, for the room was now
so dark that it was almost impossible to see with any distinctness,--a
crowd of memories connected with each rose up before me, and, perforce,
I had to indulge them. So I proceeded but slowly, and at last my cigar
shortened to a hot and bitter morsel that I could barely hold between my
lips, while it seemed to me that the night grew each moment more
insufferably oppressive. While I was revolving some impossible means of
cooling my wretched body, the cigar stump began to burn my lips. I flung
it angrily through the open window, and stooped out to watch it falling.
It first lighted on the leaves of the acacia, sending out a spray of red
sparkles, then, rolling off, it fell plump on the dark walk in the
garden, faintly illuminating for a moment the dusky trees and breathless
flowers. Whether it was the contrast between the red flash of the
cigar-stump and the silent darkness of the garden, or whether it was
that I detected by the sudden light a faint waving of the leaves, I know
not; but something suggested to me that the garden was cool. I will take
a turn there, thought I, just as I am; it cannot be warmer than this
room, and however still the atmosphere, there is always a feeling of
liberty and spaciousness in the open air, that partially supplies one's
wants. With this idea running through my head, I arose, lit another
cigar, and passed out into the long, intricate corridors that led to the
main staircase. As I crossed the threshold of my room, with what a
different feeling I should have passed it had I known that I was never
to set foot in it again!
I lived in a very large house, in which I occupied two rooms on the
second floor. The house was old-fashioned, and all the floors
communicated by a huge circular staircase that wound up through the
centre of the building, while at every landing long, rambling corridors
stretched off into mysterious nooks and corners. This palace of mine was
very high, and its resources, in the way of crannies and windings,
seemed to be interminable. Nothing seemed to stop anywhere. Cul-de-sacs
were unknown on the premises. The corridors and passages, like
mathematical lines, seemed capable of indefinite extension, and the
object of the architect must have been to erect an edifice in which
people might go ahead forever. The whole place was gloomy, not so much
because it was large, but because an unearthly nakedness seemed to
pervade the structure. The staircases, corridors, halls, and vestibules
all partook of a desert-like desolation. There was nothing on the walls
to break the sombre monotony of those long vistas of shade. No carvings
on the wainscoting, no moulded masks peering down from the simply severe
cornices, no marble vases on the landings. There was an eminent
dreariness and want of life--so rare in an American establishment--all
over the abode. It was Hood's haunted house put in order and newly
painted. The servants, too, were shadowy, and chary of their visits.
Bells rang three times before the gloomy chambermaid could be induced to
present herself; and the negro waiter, a ghoul-like looking creature
from Congo, obeyed the summons only when one's patience was exhausted or
one's want satisfied in some other way. When he did come, one felt sorry
that he had not stayed away altogether, so sullen and savage did he
appear. He moved along the echoless floors with a slow, noiseless
shamble, until his dusky figure, advancing from the gloom, seemed like
some reluctant afreet, compelled by the superior power of his master to
disclose himself. When the doors of all the chambers were closed, and no
light illuminated the long corridor save the red, unwholesome glare of a
small oil lamp on a table at the end, where late lodgers lit their
candles, one could not by any possibility conjure up a sadder or more
desolate prospect.
Yet the house suited me. Of meditative and sedentary habits, I enjoyed
the extreme quiet. There were but few lodgers, from which I infer that
the landlord did not drive a very thriving trade; and these, probably
oppressed by the sombre spirit of the place, were quiet and ghost-like
in their movements. The proprietor I scarcely ever saw. My bills were
deposited by unseen hands every month on my table, while I was out
walking or riding, and my pecuniary response was intrusted to the
attendant afreet. On the whole, when the bustling, wide-awake spirit of
New York is taken into consideration, the sombre, half-vivified
character of the house in which I lived was an anomaly that no one
appreciated better than I who lived there.
I felt my way down the wide, dark staircase in my pursuit of zephyrs.
The garden, as I entered it, did feel somewhat cooler than my own room,
and I puffed my cigar along the dim, cypress-shrouded walks with a
sensation of comparative relief. It was very dark. The tall-growing
flowers that bordered the path were so wrapped in gloom as to present
the aspect of solid pyramidal masses, all the details of leaves and
blossoms being buried in an embracing darkness, while the trees had lost
all form, and seemed like masses of overhanging cloud. It was a place
and time to excite the imagination; for in the impenetrable cavities of
endless gloom there was room for the most riotous fancies to play at
will. I walked and walked, and the echoes of my footsteps on the
ungravelled and mossy path suggested a double feeling. I felt alone and
yet in company at the same time. The solitariness of the place made
itself distinct enough in the stillness, broken alone by the hollow
reverberations of my step, while those very reverberations seemed to
imbue me with an undefined feeling that I was not alone. I was not,
therefore, much startled when I was suddenly accosted from beneath the
solid darkness of an immense cypress by a voice saying, "Will you give
me a light, sir?"
"Certainly," I replied, trying in vain to distinguish the speaker amidst
the impenetrable dark.
Somebody advanced, and I held out my cigar. All I could gather
definitively about the individual who thus accosted me was that he must
have been of extremely small stature; for I, who am by no means an
overgrown man, had to stoop considerably in handing him my cigar. The
vigorous puff that he gave his own lighted up my Havana for a moment,
and I fancied that I caught a glimpse of long, wild hair. The flash was,
however, so momentary that I could not even say certainly whether this
was an actual impression or the mere effort of imagination to embody
that which the senses had failed to distinguish.
"Sir, you are out late," said this unknown to me, as he, with
half-uttered thanks, handed me back my cigar, for which I had to grope
in the gloom.
"Not later than usual," I replied, dryly.
"Hum! you are fond of late wanderings, then?"
"That is just as the fancy seizes me."
"Do you live here?"
"Yes."
"Queer house, isn't it?"
"I have only found it quiet."
"Hum! But you _will_ find it queer, take my word for it." This was
earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my
arm, that cut it sharply like a blunted knife.
"I cannot take your word for any such assertion," I replied rudely,
shaking off the bony finger with an irrepressible motion of disgust.
"No offence, no offence," muttered my unseen companion rapidly, in a
strange, subdued voice, that would have been shrill had it been louder;
"your being angry does not alter the matter. You will find it a queer
house. Everybody finds it a queer house. Do you know who live there?"
"I never busy myself, sir, about other people's affairs," I answered
sharply, for the individual's manner, combined with my utter uncertainty
as to his appearance, oppressed me with an irksome longing to be rid of
him.
"O, you don't? Well, I do. I know what they are--well, well, well!" and
as he pronounced the three last words his voice rose with each, until,
with the last, it reached a shrill shriek that echoed horribly among the
lonely walks. "Do you know what they eat?" he continued.
"No, sir,--nor care."
"O, but you will care. You must care. You shall care. I'll tell you what
they are. They are enchanters. They are ghouls. They are cannibals. Did
you never remark their eyes, and how they gloated on you when you
passed? Did you never remark the food that they served up at your table?
Did you never in the dead of night hear muffled and unearthly footsteps
gliding along the corridors, and stealthy hands turning the handle of
your door? Does not some magnetic influence fold itself continually
around you when they pass, and send a thrill through spirit and body,
and a cold shiver that no sunshine will chase away? O, you have! You
have felt all these things! I know it!"
The earnest rapidity, the subdued tones, the eagerness of accent, with
which all this was uttered, impressed me most uncomfortably. It really
seemed as if I could recall all those weird occurrences and influences
of which he spoke; and I shuddered in spite of myself in the midst of
the impenetrable darkness that surrounded me.
"Hum!" said I, assuming, without knowing it, a confidential tone, "may I
ask you how you know these things?"
"How I know them? Because I am their enemy; because they tremble at my
whisper; because I hang upon their track with the perseverance of a
bloodhound and the stealthiness of a tiger; because--because--I was _of_
them once!"
"Wretch!" I cried excitedly, for involuntarily his eager tones had
wrought me up to a high pitch of spasmodic nervousness, "then you mean
to say that you----"
As I uttered this word, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, I stretched
forth my hand in the direction of the speaker and made a blind clutch.
The tips of my fingers seemed to touch a surface as smooth as glass,
that glided suddenly from under them. A sharp, angry hiss sounded
through the gloom, followed by a whirring noise, as if some projectile
passed rapidly by, and the next moment I felt instinctively that I was
alone.
A most disagreeable feeling instantly assailed me;--a prophetic instinct
that some terrible misfortune menaced me; an eager and overpowering
anxiety to get back to my own room without loss of time. I turned and
ran blindly along the dark cypress alley, every dusky clump of flowers
that rose blackly in the borders making my heart each moment cease to
beat. The echoes of my own footsteps seemed to redouble and assume the
sounds of unknown pursuers following fast upon my track. The boughs of
lilac-bushes and syringas, that here and there stretched partly across
the walk, seemed to have been furnished suddenly with hooked hands that
sought to grasp me as I flew by, and each moment I expected to behold
some awful and impassable barrier fall across my track and wall me up
forever.
At length I reached the wide entrance. With a single leap I sprang up
the four or five steps that formed the stoop, and dashed along the hall,
up the wide, echoing stairs, and again along the dim, funereal corridors
until I paused, breathless and panting, at the door of my room. Once so
far, I stopped for an instant and leaned heavily against one of the
panels, panting lustily after my late run. I had, however, scarcely
rested my whole weight against the door, when it suddenly gave way, and
I staggered in head-foremost. To my utter astonishment the room I had
left in profound darkness was now a blaze of light. So intense was the
illumination that, for a few seconds while the pupils of my eyes were
contracting under the sudden change, I saw absolutely nothing save the
dazzling glare. This fact in itself, coming on me with such utter
suddenness, was sufficient to prolong my confusion, and it was not until
after several minutes had elapsed that I perceived the room was not only
illuminated, but occupied. And such occupants! Amazement at the scene
took such possession of me that I was incapable of either moving or
uttering a word. All that I could do was to lean against the wall, and
stare blankly at the strange picture.
It might have been a scene out of Faublas, or Gramont's Memoirs, or
happened in some palace of Minister Foucque.
Round a large table in the centre of the room, where I had left a
student-like litter of books and papers, were seated half a dozen
persons. Three were men and three were women. The table was heaped with
a prodigality of luxuries. Luscious eastern fruits were piled up in
silver filigree vases, through whose meshes their glowing rinds shone in
the contrasts of a thousand hues. Small silver dishes that Benvenuto
might have designed, filled with succulent and aromatic meats, were
distributed upon a cloth of snowy damask. Bottles of every shape,
slender ones from the Rhine, stout fellows from Holland, sturdy ones
from Spain, and quaint basket-woven flasks from Italy, absolutely
littered the board. Drinking-glasses of every size and hue filled up the
interstices, and the thirsty German flagon stood side by side with the
aerial bubbles of Venetian glass that rest so lightly on their
threadlike stems. An odour of luxury and sensuality floated through the
apartment. The lamps that burned in every direction seemed to diffuse a
subtle incense on the air, and in a large vase that stood on the floor I
saw a mass of magnolias, tuberoses, and jasmines grouped together,
stifling each other with their honeyed and heavy fragrance.
The inhabitants of my room seemed beings well suited to so sensual an
atmosphere. The women were strangely beautiful, and all were attired in
dresses of the most fantastic devices and brilliant hues. Their figures
were round, supple, and elastic; their eyes dark and languishing; their
lips full, ripe, and of the richest bloom. The three men wore
half-masks, so that all I could distinguish were heavy jaws, pointed
beards, and brawny throats that rose like massive pillars out of their
doublets. All six lay reclining on Roman couches about the table,
drinking down the purple wines in large draughts, and tossing back their
heads and laughing wildly.
I stood, I suppose, for some three minutes, with my back against the
wall staring vacantly at the bacchanal vision, before any of the
revellers appeared to notice my presence. At length, without any
expression to indicate whether I had been observed from the beginning or
not, two of the women arose from their couches, and, approaching, took
each a hand and led me to the table. I obeyed their motions
mechanically. I sat on a couch, between them as they indicated. I
unresistingly permitted them to wind their arms about my neck.
"You must drink," said one, pouring out a large glass of red wine, "here
is Clos Vougeout of a rare vintage; and here," pushing a flask of
amber-hued wine before me, "is Lachryma Christi."
"You must eat," said the other, drawing the silver dishes toward her.
"Here are cutlets stewed with olives, and here are slices of a _filet_
stuffed with bruised sweet chestnuts"--and as she spoke, she, without
waiting for a reply, proceeded to help me.
The sight of the food recalled to me the warnings I had received in the
garden. This sudden effort of memory restored to me my other faculties
at the same instant. I sprang to my feet, thrusting the women from me
with each hand.
"Demons!" I almost shouted. "I will have none of your accursed food. I
know you. You are cannibals, you are ghouls, you are enchanters. Begone,
I tell you! Leave my room in peace!"
A shout of laughter from all six was the only effect that my passionate
speech produced. The men rolled on their couches, and their half-masks
quivered with the convulsions of their mirth. The women shrieked, and
tossed the slender wine-glasses wildly aloft, and turned to me and flung
themselves on my bosom fairly sobbing with laughter.
"Yes," I continued, as soon as the noisy mirth had subsided, "yes, I
say, leave my room instantly! I will have none of your unnatural orgies
here!"
"His room!" shrieked the woman on my right.
"His room!" echoed she on my left.
"His room! He calls it his room!" shouted the whole party, as they
rolled once more into jocular convulsions.
"How know you that it is your room?" said one of the men who sat
opposite to me, at length, after the laughter had once more somewhat
subsided.
"How do I know?" I replied indignantly. "How do I know my own room? How
could I mistake it, pray? There's my furniture--my piano----"
"He calls that a piano," shouted my neighbours, again in convulsions as
I pointed to the corner where my huge piano, sacred to the memory of
Blokeeta, used to stand. "O, yes! It is his room. There--there is his
piano!"
The peculiar emphasis they laid on the word "piano" caused me to
scrutinize the article I was indicating more thoroughly. Up to this
time, though utterly amazed at the entrance of these people into my
chamber, and connecting them somewhat with the wild stories I had heard
in the garden, I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole
thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the
bacchanalian orgie I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of
some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes
turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and
beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very
ceiling, and convinced myself, by a hurried process of memory, that it
occupied the very spot in which I had left my own instrument, the little
self-possession that I had left forsook me. I gazed around me
bewildered.
In like manner everything was changed. In the place of that old haftless
dagger, connected with so many historic associations personal to myself,
I beheld a Turkish yataghan dangling by its belt of crimson silk, while
the jewels in the hilt blazed as the lamplight played upon them. In the
spot where hung my cherished smoking cap, memorial of a buried love, a
knightly casque was suspended on the crest of which a golden dragon
stood in the act of springing. That strange lithograph of Calame was no
longer a lithograph, but it seemed to me that the portion of the wall
which it covered, of the exact shape and size, had been cut out, and, in
place of the picture, a _real_ scene on the same scale, and with real
actors, was distinctly visible. The old oak was there, and the stormy
sky was there; but I saw the branches of the oak sway with the tempest,
and the clouds drive before the wind. The wanderer in his cloak was
gone; but in his place I beheld a circle of wild figures, men and women,
dancing with linked hands around the hole of the great tree, chanting
some wild fragment of a song, to which the winds roared an unearthly
chorus. The snow-shoes, too, on whose sinewy woof I had sped for many
days amidst Canadian wastes, had vanished, and in their place lay a pair
of strange up-curled Turkish slippers, that had, perhaps, been many a
time shuffled off at the doors of mosques, beneath the steady blaze of
an orient sun.