I RETURN HOME AND HEAR NEWS OF
COUNTESS LUKSTEIN.
From Lukstein we rode hot-foot down the Vintschgau Thal to Meran, and
thence by easy stages to Verona, in Italy. I had no great fear of
pursuit or detection after the first day, since the road was much
frequented by travellers, and neither my spurs, nor my pistol, nor the
miniature of Julian bore any marks by which Jack or myself could be
singled out. At Verona an inflammation set up in my wounded shoulder,
very violent and severe, so that I lay in that town for some weeks
delirious and at death's door. Indeed, but for Jack's assiduous care
in nursing me, I must infallibly have lost my life.
At length, however, being somewhat recovered, I was carried southwards
to Naples, and thence we wandered from town to town through the
provinces of Italy until, in the year 1686, the fulness of the spring
renewed my blood and set my fancies in a tide towards home. Jack
accompanied me to England and took up his abode in my house in
Cumberland, being persuaded without much difficulty to abandon his
pretence of studying the law, and to throw in his lot with me for good
and all.
"My estates need a steward," said I, "and I--God knows I need a
friend." And with little more talk the bargain was struck.
During all this time, however, I had not so much as breathed a word to
him concerning the doings of that night in Castle Lukstein. At first
the matter was too hot in my thoughts, and even afterwards, when the
horror of my memories had dimmed, I could not bring myself to the
point of speech. Had it not been for the appearance and intervention
of the Countess, doubtless I should have blurted out the tale long
before. But with her face ever fixed within my view, I could not
speak; I could only picture it desolate with grief, and washed with a
pitiful rain of tears. Moreover, I knew that Jack would account my
story as the story of a worthy exploit, and I shrank from his praise
as from a burning iron.
'Twould have, nevertheless, been strange had not my ravings in my
delirium disclosed some portion of the night's incidents, and that
they did so I understood from a certain speech Jack once made me.
'Twas when I was yet lying sick at Verona. One morning, when I was
come to my senses after a feverish night, he walked over to my bedside
from the chair where he had been watching.
"I have been a common fool," says he, and repeats the remark, shifting
a foot to and fro on the floor; and then he claps his hand upon mine.
"God send me such a friend as you, Morrice, if ever trouble comes to
me!" says he, and so gets him quickly from the room.
Often did I wonder how much I had betrayed, but I had reason
subsequently to believe that 'twas very little; just enough to assure
him that I had not flinched from the conflict, with probably some
revelation of the fear in which I engaged upon it.
'Twas in the last days of March that I saw once more the rolling
slopes of Yewbarrow, streaked here and there with a ribbon of snow,
and my house at the base of it, its grey tiles shining in the sunset
like glass; and a homely restfulness settled upon my spirit, and
looking back upon the last months of purposeless wandering, I resolved
to pass my days henceforward in a placid ordering of my estate.
This feeling of peace, however, stayed with me no great while, the
very monotony of a quiet life casting me back upon my troubled
recollections. As a relief, I sought diversion with Jack's ready
assistance in the pleasures of the field. Hawking, hunting,
and climbing--for which somehow my companion never acquired a
taste--filled out the hours of daylight We chased the fox on foot
along ridges of the hills; we hunted the red deer in the forests
about Styhead; we walked miles across fell and valley to watch a
wrestling-match or attend a fair. In a word, we lived a clean,
open-air life of wholesome activity.
But alas! 'Twas of little profit to me. I would get me tired to bed
only to plunge into a whirlpool of unrestful dreams, and toss there
until the morning. Sometimes it would be the door of the little
staircase to the Count's bedroom. I would see it opening and opening
perpetually, and yet never wide open; or again, it would grow gigantic
in size, and swing back across the world as though it was hinged
betwixt the poles. Most often, however, it would be Count Lukstein's
wife. I beheld her now, tall and stately, with her glorious aureole of
hair and her dark, unseeing eyes eating through me like a slow fire as
she advanced across the room; now I followed her as she moved through
the moonlit garden with the taper burning clear and steady in her
hand. But, however the dream began, 'twould always end the same way.
The fiery windows of Castle Lukstein would leap upon me out of the
darkness, and I would wake in a cold sweat, my body a-quiver, and her
lone cry knelling in my ears.
A strange feature of these nightmare fancies, and a feature that
greatly perplexed me, was that the Count himself played no part in
them. Were my dreams the test and touchstone of the truth, I could
never so much as have set eyes upon him. The encounter, the
conversation which preceded it, the last cowardly thrust, and the dead
form huddled up in my arms among the curtains--of these things I had
not even a hint. They became erased from my memory the moment that I
fell asleep. Then 'twas always the woman who was pictured to me; in no
single instance the man. I wondered at this omission the more,
inasmuch as I frequently thought of Count Lukstein during the
day-time, remembering with an odd sense of envy the softness of his
voice when he spoke concerning his wife.
Spent with the double fatigue of the day's exertions and the night's
phantasmal horrors, I betook myself at length to my library, seeking
rest, if not forgetfulness, among my old companions. But the delight
and joy of books had gone out from me, and nowise could I recover it.
Once the very covers had seemed to me to answer the pressure of my
fingers with a friendly welcome; now I applied myself straightway to
the text as to a laborious and uncongenial task. I had looked so
deeply into a tragic reality that these printed images of life
appeared false and distorted, like reflections thrown from a convex
mirror; and I understood how it is that those who act are but seldom
their own historians, and when they are, content themselves with a
simple register of deeds. However, I persevered in this course for a
while, hoping that some time my former zest and liking would return to
me, and I should taste again the fine flavour of a nicely-ordered
sentence or of a discriminate sequence of thoughts.
But one May morning, coming into the study shortly after sunrise, I
sat me down, with my limbs unrefreshed and aching, before the "Religio
Medici" of the Norwich doctor, and I fell immediately across this
passage:
"I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
Alexandria. For my own part, I think there be too many in the world,
and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could
I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon."
The words chimed so appositely with my thoughts that I resolved there
and then to put the theory into practice, and closing the book, I made
a beginning with Sir Thomas Browne. Outside the window the birds piped
happily from vernal branches; the shadows played hide-and-seek upon
the grass, and the beck babbled and laughed as it raced down behind
the house. I locked the door of the library, and taking the key in my
hand, walked to the side of the beck. At this point the stream spouted
in a fountain from a cleft of rock, and fell some twelve feet into a
deep bason. A group of larches overhung the pool, and the sunlight,
sprinkling between the leaves, dappled the clear green surface with an
ever-shifting pattern. Into this bason I dropped the key, and watched
it sink with a sparkling tail of bubbles to the bottom. 'Twas of a
bright metal, so that I could still see it distinctly as it rested on
the rock-bed. A large stone lay upon the bank beside me, and with a
sudden, uncontrollable impulse I stripped off my clothes, picked up
the stone, and diving into the cool water, set it carefully atop of
the key. Many months passed before I came again to the pool, and found
the key still hidden safe beneath the stone; and during those months
so much that was strange occurred to me, and I wandered along such new
and devious paths, that when I held it again, all rusty and corroded,
in my hand, I felt as though it could not have been myself who had
dropped it there, but some one whose memories had been transmitted to
me and incorporated in my being by a mysterious alchemy.
It was on that very afternoon that the letter was brought to me. Jack
and I were sitting at dinner in the big oak dining-room about four of
the clock; the great windows were open, and the sunny air streamed in
laden with fresh perfumes. I can see Jim Ritson now as he rode up the
drive--'twas part of his duty to meet the mail at the post-town of
Cockermouth--I can almost hear his voice as he gave in the letter at
the hall-door. "There's a letter for t' maister," he said.
Jim is grown to middle age by this time, and owns a comfortable fat
face and a brood of children. But whenever I pass him in the lanes and
fields I ever experience a lively awe and respect for him as for the
accredited messenger of fate.
The letter came from Lord Elmscott and urged me to visit him in town.
"Come!" he wrote. "To the dust of Leyden you are superadding the mould
of Cumberland. Come and brush yourself clean with the contact of wits!
There is much afoot that should interest you. What with Romish priests
and English bishops, the town is in ferment. Moreover, a new beauty
hath come to Court. There is nothing very strange in that. But she is
a foreigner, and her rivals have as yet discovered no scandal to
smirch her with. There is something very strange in that. Such a
miracle is well worth a man's beholding. She hails from the Tyrol and
is the widow of one Count Lukstein, who was in London last year. She
wears no mourning for her husband, and hath many suitors. I have of
late won much money at cards, and so readily forgive you for that you
were the death of Ph[oe]be."
The letter ran on to some considerable length, but I read no more of
it. Indeed, I understood little of what I had read. The face of
Countess Lukstein seemed stamped upon the page to the obscuring of the
inscription. I passed it across to Jack without a word, and he perused
it silently and tossed it back. All that evening I sat smoking my pipe
and pondering the proposal. An overmastering desire to see her
features alive with the changing lights of expression, began to
possess me. The more I thought, the more ardently I longed to behold
her. If only I could see her eyes alert and glancing, if only I could
hear her voice, I might free myself from the picture of the blank,
impassive mask which she wore in my dreams. That way, I fancied, and
that way alone, should I find peace.
"I shall go," I said at last, knocking the ashes from my pipe. "I
shall go to-morrow."
"You shan't!" cried Jack vehemently, springing up and facing me. "She
knows you. She has seen you."
"She has never seen me," I replied steadily, and he gazed into my face
with a look of bewilderment which gradually changed into fear.
"Are you mad, Morrice?" he asked, in a broken whisper, and took a step
or two backwards, keeping his eyes fixed upon mine.
"Nay, Jack," said I; "but unless God helps me, I soon shall be. He may
be helping me now. I trust so, for this visit alone can save me."
"She has never seen you?" he repeated. "Swear it! Morrice! Swear it!"
I did as he bade me.
"What brings her to England?" he mused.
"What kept us wandering about Italy?" I answered. "The fear to return
home."
"'Twill not serve," said he. "She wears no mourning for her husband."
I wondered at this myself, but could come at no solution, and so got
me to bed. That night, for the first time since I left Austria, I
slept dreamlessly. In the morning I was yet more determined to go. I
felt, indeed, as though I had no power to stay, and, hurrying on my
servants, I prepared to set out at two of the afternoon. Udal and two
other of my men I took with me.
"Morrice," said Jack, as he stood upon the steps of the porch, "don't
stay with your cousin! Hire a lodging of your own!"
"Why?" I asked, in surprise.
"You talk overmuch in your sleep. Only two nights ago I heard you
making such an outcry that I feared you would wake the house. I rushed
into your room. You were crouched up among the bed-curtains at the
head of the bed and gibbering: 'It will touch her. It flows so fast.
Oh, my God! My God!'"
I made no answer to his words, and he asked again very earnestly:
"The Countess has never seen you? You are sure?"
"Quite!" said I firmly, and I shook him by the hand, and so started
for London.