LADY HOPE IN THE CASTLE.
Lady Clara had been dancing, talking and receiving such homage as would
have satisfied the ambition of a princess. She had managed to snatch
time to exchange many a sweet word and bright look with her lover, and
would have been happy in delicious weariness, but for the sudden
indisposition which had fallen upon her grandmother. As it was she could
hardly realize anything, but gave way to intense weariness, and almost
fell asleep as Margaret was undressing her.
But Caroline had been alone all the evening, within hearing of the
laughter, the music, and feeling the very tread of the dancers in every
nerve. She was young, ardent, and naturally felt a craving wish for the
amusement she had resolutely denied herself; now, less than ever, could
she feel a desire for sleep. Instead of seeking her room she wandered
off to a wing of the castle, in which the picture gallery stretched its
silent range of dead shadows, and tried to throw off the unaccountable
excitement that possessed her, by walking up and down the long gallery.
The late moon was shining through the windows, and a crowd of dimly
outlined figures, in armor or sweeping garments, looked down upon her
from the walls.
Why this strange spirit of unrest had sent her to that gallery she could
not have told, but it was there still, urging her on and on, she could
not tell where, but walked swiftly up and down, up and down, as if
striving to weary herself in a desire for the slumber that seemed to
have fallen upon every human being in the castle.
As she was walking thus wildly, a footstep, not her own, disturbed her.
She stopped to listen--made sure that it was some one advancing, and
drew slowly back toward the wall, hoping to shelter herself among the
low-hanging pictures.
The moonlight, from a neighboring window, lay full upon her as she
retreated across the room, with her face turned down the gallery, and
her breath hushed in fear. She saw, coming toward her, now in shadow,
now in broader light, a lady, in garments of rustling silk, sweeping far
back on the oaken floor, and gleaming duskily, amber-hued in the
imperfect light of a small silver lamp which she carried in her hand--a
beautiful lady, with rubies on her neck and in her hair. The lamplight,
for a moment, concentrated on a face whose weariness was overborne by
slumbering triumph, which poised her head like that of a newly crowned
empress.
Caroline stood for the moment fascinated, then made a swift retreat, for
she saw those great, black eyes turned full upon her, and fled in a
panic.
A shriek--the crash of a falling lamp, and a mass of dusky drapery
huddled together on the floor, brought the girl out of her covert.
Something must have happened--the lady had hurt herself--perhaps could
not arise from want of help. She went down the gallery, passing first
one window then another, taking the moonlight from each, when the fallen
lady uttered another cry, sprang to her feet and fled down the gallery,
leaving her lamp overturned, with the wick still burning.
Caroline took up the lamp, and placing it on a bracket, left the
gallery, vexed with herself for the fright she had occasioned this
strange lady by wandering about so heedlessly in the dark. Still she
could not sleep, but went to her own room and sat waiting there for the
morning to dawn.
Perhaps an hour after Caroline left the picture gallery, a figure
clothed in white from head to foot, came through an end door, walking
firmly through the darkness, and touching the floor with the noiseless
tread of her naked feet. She walked straight to the silver lamp and took
it from the bracket. Now her face was revealed. It was Lady Hope.
She held the lamp before her, and moved on very slowly, looking ahead
through the darkness with those wide open, staring eyes.
After that, when all the fires of that vivid illumination had burned out
in the park, and were quenched in the castle, a bright star seemed
wandering up and down the vast building; now at one window, then at
another, lighting it up with fitful gleams, then leaving it in darkness,
and appearing again in some far off casement.
Once or twice the form of a woman in white cast its cloudy outline
across the plate glass of an unshuttered window; but no person was in
the park to observe her, and she wandered on with a lamp in her firm
hand, which brightened over the pallid outlines of her face, and kindled
up her night drapery like sunshine over drifted snow. Up and down along
the corridors, and through the long drawing-room, the figure swept,
carrying her lamp, and moving noiselessly over the floor with her white,
naked feet.
Upon that unconscious face a look of deep pain had stamped itself in
place of haughty triumph, and the wide open black eyes had a far-off
look, as if their glance could penetrate the walls and the very sky
beyond.
On and on the woman wandered, till she came to a closed door in one of
the corridors. Here she paused, laid her right hand on the silver knob,
and turned it so noiselessly that, when the door opened, it seemed like
the action of a ghost.
The room was darkened from even the faint light of the stars by sweeping
draperies of silk, which glowed out redly as the lamp light fell upon it
in flashes, as if suddenly drenched with wine.
A high ebony bedstead stood in the centre of this noble room, canopied
half way over, and draped like the windows, so that a red gleam fell
upon the whiteness of the counterpane as the light of that lamp fell
upon it.
A man lay profoundly sleeping on this bed--a handsome, middle-aged man,
whose thick brown beard showed soft gleams of silver in it, and whose
hair, though waving and bright, was growing thin on the top of his head.
The man appeared to sleep heavily, and a smile lay on his lips; but a
look of habitual care had written itself on his forehead, and his mouth
was surrounded by stern, hard lines, that seemed graven there with
steel.
The woman stood by this sleeping man, gazing on him with the far-off
look of a ghost. She turned at last, and set the light down on a
console, where it fell less distinctly on the pillow where that head was
lying. Then she crept back and sat down on the side of the bed, so close
to the unconscious sleeper that her shadow fell across him. Slowly, as
if she had been touching a serpent, her hand crept stealthily toward
that which lay in the supine carelessness of sleep on the white
counterpane. She touched it at last, but started back. A blood-red stain
from the curtain fell across it as her bending form let the light stream
through the silk.
The woman drew back and passed her left hand quickly over that which had
touched the sleeping man. Again and again she rubbed one hand over the
other, muttering to herself.
Then a look of passionate distress came to that dark face, and, going to
a marble table, on which a silver bowl and pitcher stood, she poured
some water into the bowl, and plunged the hand with which she had
touched that sleeping man into it. The splash of the water aroused him,
and its icy coldness shocked the woman out of her unnatural sleep. She
turned around wildly, with the water dripping from her hands--turned to
find herself in her husband's chamber, with his astonished eyes fixed
upon her as he sat up in bed.
"Rachael!"
She did not answer him, but stood gazing around the room in wild
bewilderment. How came she standing there? By what spirit of love or
hate had she been sent to that silver basin?
"Rachael, is anything wrong? Are you ill?"
The woman began to shiver. Perhaps the ice cold water had chilled her.
She looked down upon her hands as if the red shadow haunted her yet, but
all she saw were drops of pure water rolling down her slender fingers,
and falling one by one to the floor.
"I do not know!" she answered, in cold bewilderment. "Something drove me
out from the bed, and sent me wandering, wandering, wandering! But how I
came here, alas! Norton, I cannot tell you."
Rachael shivered all over as she spoke, and, as if drawn that way by
some unseen force, came close to Lord Hope's bed, and sat down upon it.
"Oh, I am so cold--so dreary cold!"
An eider down quilt lay across the foot of the bed. Lord Hope reached
forward and folded it around her, very gently, murmuring:
"My poor wife! poor Rachael! You have been dreaming."
"No; it was not all dreaming, Norton. I did see--no matter what; but it
was something that terrified me out of all the joy and glory of this
night. I must have been fearfully worn out to sleep after that; but the
lamp, which I left behind me, is burning there, and my hands were in the
cold water, trying to wash themselves, when you awoke me. I must have
been in that fearful picture gallery again."
"You have courage to go there at all, Rachael!"
"I got there without knowing it. The rooms have been so changed I lost
my way, and took the wrong corridor, and there I saw--"
"_Her_ picture."
"Was it that? Oh! was it only that?"
"It is there--her picture--life size; and so like that I would not look
on it for the world."
"But what carried me there, Norton? On this night, too, when I have been
honored, as your wife should be for the first time! when her mother has
taken me by the hand and lifted the cloud from my name! Ah, Norton!
Norton! it was glory to me when I saw your eyes kindle, and answer back
to mine, as the noblest of the land crowded round to do me homage. Then
I knew that the old love was perfect yet. Oh, Destiny is cruel, that it
will not let me have one perfect day!"
"After all, it was but a picture. Why allow it to distress you so?"
Lord Hope took her hands in his. She did not shrink from his touch now,
as she had in her abnormal sleep; but he felt her palms growing warm,
and saw the light coming back to her eyes, where it had seemed frozen at
first.
"And you love me? I was sure of it to-night. That was my chiefest glory.
Lacking that, what would the homage of all the world be to Rachael
Closs? I was thinking this, when _that_ seemed to start up before me,
and whispering to myself, 'He loves me! he loves me! he loves me!' like
a young girl; for I have seemed very young to-night. Why not? A glorious
life lies before us. You will now step more fearlessly forward, and take
your place among the great men of the earth,--while I--I will be
anything; charm stones, work miracles, to win popularity and lay it at
your feet.
"Say that you love me once more, Norton, and then I will creep back to
my pillow, the proudest and happiest woman on earth--for, after all, it
was only a picture!"
Rachael Closs had hardly done speaking when a cry of distress rang
through the neighboring corridor, the door of Lord Hope's chamber was
flung open, and a pallid face looked in.
"Come--come at once! My lady is dying!"
Round to other rooms came that cry of terror, arousing those two
girls--the one from her sleep, the other from her mournful vigil--and
drawing the family together, in pale groups, into the tower-chamber.