VISIONS AND RETROSPECTIONS.
Chaleco came close to me and laid one hand softly on my head.
“Be tranquil—be tranquil,” he murmured, smoothing my hair from time to
time.
A soft languor stole over me. I sunk slowly down upon what seemed to be
a couch, and like two rose-leaves heavy with fragrance, my eyelids
closed so softly that I felt a thrill as the lashes fell upon my cheek.
He kept one hand upon my head awhile, then moved it gently across my
forehead and over my eyes. I felt a delicious and almost imperceptible
current of air flowing coolly over my bosom and down my arms. Then the
air was agitated, as if a group of angels were fanning me with their
wings; the lids fell heavier still over my slumberous eyes; my limbs
grew rigid, but with a sensation of exquisite repose. It began to
lighten. I knew that fiery gleams were breaking and sparkling all around
me. Then followed peal after peal of thunder making the tower rock, and
upheaving, as it seemed, the very foundations of the building.
I was conscious of all this, but it did not disturb the languid repose
into which I had fallen. The dawning consciousness of two lives—two
entire beings came sweetly upon my soul. I saw my old self fading away;
I was alone in the universe with that man; the whole past or present,
for the time, held nothing but him and me. Then followed a blank like
that which fills the first year of infancy, dreamy and quiet.
Pang after pang went through me after that, each sweeping the shadows
from my brain; and I saw a young girl, mature in her dark bright beauty,
but almost a child still, holding an infant in her lap. The little one
was like its mother, the same eyes, the same rich complexion. I knew the
mother well, and the child. My own soul, full of innocent love, lay in
the bosom of that child.
I looked around. The two were in an old farm-house, among hills covered
with purple heath; sheep grazed along the upland slopes; and cattle
ranged the valleys. Men in short, plaid garments and flat bonnets
watched the sheep; and the young mother carried her child to the window,
that it might see the lambs play as the shepherds drove them to the
fold.
While the mother stood there with her child, a stout farmer came to the
window, and taking the little one from her arms began to dance it up and
down in the bright air, till the silken curls blew all over its face.
The mother laughed, and so did the child, gleefully, like a little bird.
Then came a woman round an angle of the house; her sleeves were rolled
up, leaving her round, well-shaped arms bare to the elbow. She took the
child from her good man, and smoothing its curls with her plump fingers,
covered it with kisses.
A shot from the hill-side made the whole group start joyfully forward.
The old man shaded his eyes and looked eagerly toward the mountain. The
young mother seized her child and ran forward, her eyes sparkling, and
her cheeks in a glow.
Along the shore of a little lake that lay in the lap of those hills,
came a young man in hunter’s dress. A gun, which he had just discharged,
was thrown back upon his shoulders, and as he saw the young mother
coming toward him, he flung out a white handkerchief, smiling a happy
welcome.
I knew the young man’s face well, and my soul, which was in the child’s
bosom, sang for joy as he came up.
A moment of obscurity, of mistiness and shadows—then appeared before me
the cottage in Greenhurst, its gardens, its dim old wilderness of trees;
and now my soul leaped from event to event, scaling over all that might
have been repose, and seizing upon the rugged points of that human
history like a vampire.
Again and again I saw that young mother, so beautiful, so sad, that
every fibre of my being ached with sympathy. It was not her face or her
form alone that I saw, but all the doubt, the anguish, the humiliation
of her wild, proud nature tortured my own being. I not only saw her, but
felt all the changes of her soul writing themselves on my own
intelligence.
Why was it that in that wonderful sleep or trance—I know not to this day
what it was—but how did it happen that I could read every thought and
feeling in my mother’s heart, but only the actions of my father? Did
that weird being so will it, that all my burning nature should pour
itself forth in sympathy for the wronged woman, and harden into iron
toward the man? I saw him too, pale, struggling with indecisions, that
ended in more than mental torture, but this awoke no sympathy in my
bosom, none, none. Then came another upon my vision, a proud, noble
woman, always clad in black, that hovered around the old dwelling where
my father rested, like a raven. She was my mother’s rival; I felt it the
moment her black shadow fell upon my memory. I saw her in a dim old
room, and he was with her. Both were pale and in trouble; she sat
watching him through her tears, and those tears shook his manhood till
he trembled from head to foot. A child, dark-eyed, and with a look of
intelligence beyond her years, sat crouching in a corner, with her great
black eyes following every movement—I knew that child well. It was the
infant who had shouted its joyous greeting to the young huntsman. Its
blood was beating then in my own veins.
Again I saw the woman, beneath a clump of gnarled old oaks. She lay
prone upon the earth, white as death, stiffened like a corpse; a horse
dripping with sweat stood cowering on the other side of a chasm that
yawned between him and the lady. There was that child again, peering out
from a thicket, with her wild eyes gleaming with ferocious joy, as if
she gloried in the stillness that lay like death upon the woman.
Then a huntsman rode up, and I saw the white face of the woman on his
bosom. He kissed the face—he wept over it—he laid her on the grass, and
looked piteously around for help.
Then the child sprang up like a tiger-cub from the thicket; with a bound
she stood beside the two; her little form dilating, her whole attitude
full of wrath. Words were spoken, between the man and the child, bitter,
harsh words. Then the woman moved faintly; the child saw it; her tiny
hands were clenched; her teeth locked together, and lifting her foot,
she struck it fiercely down upon the lady’s bosom.
A blow from the man dashed her to the ground; confusion followed,
flashes as of fire filled my vision. Then I saw the child wandering
through the tall trees alone, her little features locked, her arms
tightly folded.
It grew dark, so dark that under the trees the young mother, who stood
by her child, could not see the fierce paleness of her face. Then I saw
them both wandering like thieves along the vast mansion house. They were
separated. The mother went into numberless chambers searching for some
one, and holding her breath. At one moment she stood over a bed, on
which the strange woman slept; then I was sure that the child was hers
by the deadly blackness of her eyes as they fell on the noble sleeper.
She passed out with one hand firmly clenched, though it held nothing,
and wandered into the darkness again.
Once more she stood in the light, dim and faint, for the lamp that gave
it was hidden under an alabaster shade, and sent forth only a few pale
rays like moonbeams. I saw little that surrounded her, for my soul was
searching the great agony of heart with which she stood beside that man.
He was not in bed, but wrapped in a dressing-gown of some rich Oriental
silk, lay upon a couch with his eyes closed and smiling.
She held her breath, and the last tender love that ever beat in her
heart swelled up from its depths as she bent down and gathered the smile
with her lips.
He started. She fell upon her knees; she locked his hand in hers; her
black tresses drooped over him; oh, with what agony pleaded for a return
of the love that had been the pulse of her life, the breath on her lips.
He arose and shook her off—with a mighty effort he steeled his heart and
shook her off, the mother of his child, the wife of his bosom. She stood
upright, pale and transfigured. For one whole minute she remained gazing
on him speechless, and so still that the beating of his heart sounded
clear and distinct in the room. She turned and glided into the darkness
again, and she disappeared with her child, who waited for her there.
Then followed a panorama of scenery, rivers, mountains, and seas, over
which the mother wandered, holding her child by the hand. At last she
stood in sight of an ancient city, rich with Moorish relics, but as I
turned to gaze on them a crowd of fierce human beings surrounded her,
filling the air with hoarse noises, glaring at her and the child with
their fierce eyes. An old woman, tiny as a child, and thin as a mummy,
stood by, shouting back their reviling with defiance. Thus with whoop,
and taunt, and sacrilegious gibes, they drove the poor creature onward
to the mountains. Up and up she clambered with the little one still
clinging to her neck, till the snow became heavy around her, and she
waded knee deep through it, tottering and faint. At last the crowd
surged together around a mountain peak, and pointed with hoarse shouts
to a valley half choked up with stone cairns and shimmering with untrod
snow.
Down into the virgin whiteness of this valley the black masses poured,
treading down the snow with all their squalid ferocity doubled by
contrast with its whiteness. They took the child from her mother and
carried her shrieking to the outskirts of the crowd. I knew the man that
held her, and read all the fierce agony of his grief as he strove to
blind the child to the horrible deed that crowd was perpetrating.
I saw it all—the first unsteady whirl of stones, the fiendish eagerness
that followed; I heard the shrieks—I felt her death agony.
Oh, how I struggled! how I pleaded with the strong will that enslaved my
faculties! how I prayed that he would redeem me from the horrors of that
mountain pass! But no, the curse of memory must be complete; I was
compelled to live over the agony of my mother’s death.
I knew well all the time that the child and myself were one being; but
as in ordinary life a person often looks upon his own sufferings with
self-pity, as if he were a stranger; so I followed wearily after the
little creature as they bore her, an orphan, from the Valley of Stones.
I saw her growing thin, pining, pining always for the mother who was
dead, till she grew into a miserable shadow, with all the life of her
being burning in those large eyes. The old woman and the man kept her to
themselves, but she seemed pining to death while they wandered from
mountain to mountain, and at last across the seas.
Again Greenhurst arose on my vision, the old building among distant
trees, the village just in sight. A gipsy’s tent stood in a hollow, back
from the wayside, and in it lay the shadowy child.
The gipsy man and that weird little woman were in the tent, and from
without I heard the ringing of bells and the tramp of horses, smothered
and soft, as if each hoof-fall were broken with flowers.
Then I forgot the sick child and stood within the village church. _He_
was there standing before the altar, his hand clasped that of the proud
lady who had so often wandered through the drama which I was forced to
witness. The bridegroom was pale as death, and she looked strangely
pallid in the silvery cloud of her brocaded robe. Still she was firm,
and I saw that nothing had been confided to her—that the history of my
poor mother had never reached the bosom of that proud woman. _He_ was
resolute, resolute to trample down every right of another in search of
his own happiness. Fool! fool! happiness will not be thus wickedly
wrenched from the hands of the Creator. Even then, before God’s altar,
he had begun to reap the whirlwind. Coming events cast their shadows all
around. No wonder he grew white. No wonder the marriage vows died like
snow upon his lips. No wonder that all the bridal blossoms with which
the greensward glowed when they went in, had withered beneath the hot
sun! Their dying fragrance fell over the noble pair as they came forth
wedded man and wife. Man and wife! had he forgotten the subterranean
vaults beneath the Alhambra, where my mother stood by his side with
firmer faith and more devoted constancy than that woman ever knew? Was
that oath forgotten? No, as he came forth into the sunshine treading
down the pale blossoms as he had trampled my mother out of life, a
bronzed hand, long and lean as a vulture’s claw, was thrust over his
path; and night-shade fell thick among the dead blossoms. He did not see
it, for the weird gipsy woman moved like a shadow among the village
children; but he shrunk as if with some hidden pain, and grew paler than
before.
The will that controlled mine forced me onward with the newly married
pair. I saw him struggle against the leaden memories that would not be
swept away. His mournful smile, as he looked on her, was full of
saddened love. I could have pitied them but for my mother. I saw what
they did not, her grave, that cairn of reddened stones looming before
them at every step. They shuddered beneath the invisible shadow, but I
knew from whence it fell.
Their route to Greenhurst was trampled over a carpet of flowers; silver
and gold fell like rain among the village children; the carriage
streaming with favors swept by that gipsy tent where the sick child was
lying, his child, all unconscious of its double orphanage.
In the thralldom of my intellect I was forced to look on, though my
strength was giving way. With shrinking terror I watched the movements
of that weird murderess as she crept into Greenhurst, and with the
accuracy of a bloodhound stole through the very apartments my mother had
penetrated, crawling like a reptile close to the walls, till she stood
upright in the bridal chamber. She concealed herself behind the snowy
masses of drapery that fell around the bed.
While her form was shrouded in the heavy waves of silk, her dark face
peered, ever and anon, through the transparent lace of the inner
curtains like that of a watching fiend.
As one whose senses were locked in a single channel, I too waited and
watched. People came in and out of the room, little dreaming of the
fiend hidden in the snow of the curtains.
Even in its slavery my spirit sickened as I watched and saw the withered
veins of that unearthly wretch swelling with murderous venom, while her
victims were moving unconsciously in the next room.
The curtains rustled, that claw-like hand was thrust out, and I saw half
a dozen drops flash down like diamonds into a goblet of water that had
just been placed on the toilet.
Then a door opened, and the bride entered from her dressing-room alone.
In the simple white of her robe she looked touching and lovely, like one
subdued and humbled by the depth of her own feelings. The delicate lace
of her night coif left a shadow on her temples less deep than that which
lay beneath her eyes. Her bosom rose slowly and with suppressed
respiration beneath the rich embroidery that embossed her night robe,
and her uncovered feet fell almost timidly on the carpet; not with
girlish bashfulness, but with a sort of religious awe as one visits a
place of prayer afraid to enter.
She knelt down by the bed, and clasping her hands, remained still, as if
some prayer lay at the bottom of her heart, which she had not the
courage to breathe aloud. The broad, white eyelids were closed, and
twice I saw that fiendish face glaring at her through the curtains.
She arose at length, and heaving a deep sigh, stepped into bed. As she
sunk to the pillow her eye fell upon the goblet, and resting on one
elbow, she reached forth her hand and drank off its contents.
As she fell softly back to the pillows, a hoarse chuckle came through
the curtains. She started, turned her face that way, and out came that
black head, peering at her with its terrible eyes. A broken sigh, a
shudder that made the white drapery rustle as if in a current of wind,
and the bride lay with her eyes wide open staring upon the Sibyl.
The dead face grew more and more pallid; the dark one above glowed and
gloated over it like a ghoul. Then the soft light was darkened, and the
bridegroom leaned over his bride listening for her breath. As he
stooped, the curtains opposite were flung back, the lace torn away, and
like an exulting demon the old woman laughed over the living and the
dead.
The scene changed, the old woman, the gipsy man and the child were in a
tent at midnight. The poor little one, aroused from her torpid rest,
looked wildly up as the Sibyl told of her murderous act—told of it and
perished in the midst of her triumph—her old age, exhausted by the
excitement of her crime, ended in death.
As the life left her body, I felt a shock run through my whole being;
the past was linked with the present. Back to that gipsy tent my memory
ran strong and connectedly.
I struggled in the mesmeric hands which guided my energies like steel.
“Peace,” said the man who had enthralled me, “peace, and remember.”
There was a stir in the air as if some unseen bird were fanning it with
his wings, a cool and delicious feeling of rest crept over me, and as a
child wakes I opened my eyes. The Spanish gipsy stood over me revealed
by the quick flashes of lightning that blazed through the room. I knew
that he had been my mother’s friend, that the blood in his veins was of
her nation and mine. I reached forth my hand. He took it in his, and I
sat up.
“You remember all now?” he said—“all that I have revealed to you—all
that old Papita bade you forget?”
“Yes, I remember—I know much, but not all; that which happened before I
lived, tell me of that.”
“Not yet, you are tired!”
“Yes, but”——
A faintness came over me, my strength had received too great a shock;
for a time I had no power to think or feel.