The narrow, vaulted passage leading to Mr. Murray's suit of rooms was
dim and gloomy when Edna approached the partly opened door of the
rotunda, whence issued a stream of light. Timidly she crossed the
threshold and stood within on the checkered floor, whose polished tiles
glistened under the glare of gas from bronze brackets representing
Telamones, that stood at regular intervals around the apartment. The
walls were painted in Saracenic style, and here and there hung
specimens of Oriental armor--Turcoman cimeters, Damascus swords,
Bedouin lances, and a crimson silk flag, with heavy gold fringe,
surmounted by a crescent. The cornice of the lofty arched ceiling was
elaborately arabesque, and as Edna looked up she saw through the glass
roof the flickering of stars in the summer sky. In the centre of the
room, immediately under the dome, stretched a billiard-table, and near
it was a circular one of black marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis
lazuli, which formed a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah,
while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled
with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge plaster Trimurti
stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal of black rock, and
the Siva-face and the writhing cobra confronted all who entered. Just
opposite grinned a red granite slab with a quaint basso-relievo taken
from the ruins of Elora. Near the door were two silken divans, and a
richly carved urn, three feet high, which had once ornamented the
facade of a tomb in the royal days of Petra, ere the curse fell on
Edom, now stood an in memoriam of the original Necropolis. For what
purpose this room was designed or used Edna could not imagine, and
after a hasty survey of its singular furniture, she crossed the
rotunda, and knocked at the door that stood slightly ajar. All was
silent; but the smell of a cigar told her that the owner was within,
and she knocked once more.
"Come in."
"I don't wish to come in; I only want to hand you something."
"Oh! the deuce you don't! But I never meet people even half-way, so
come in you must, if you have anything to say to me. I have neither
blue blazes nor pitchforks about me, and you will be safe inside. I
give you my word there are no small devils shut up here, to fly away
with whomsoever peeps in! Either enter, I say, or be off."
The temptation was powerful to accept the alternative; but as he had
evidently recognized her voice, she pushed open the door and
reluctantly entered. It was a long room, and at the end were two
beautiful fluted white marble pillars, supporting a handsome arch,
where hung heavy curtains of crimson Persian silk, that were now partly
looped back, showing the furniture of the sleeping apartment beyond the
richly carved arch. For a moment the bright light dazzled the orphan,
and she shaded her eyes; but the next instant Mr. Murray rose from a
sofa near the window, and advanced a step or two, taking the cigar from
his lips.
"Come to the window and take a seat."
He pointed to the sofa; but she shook her head, and said quickly:
"I have something which belongs to you, Mr. Murray, which I think you
must value very much, and therefore I wanted to see it safe in your own
hands."
Without raising her eyes she held the book toward him.
"What is it?"
He took it mechanically, and with his gaze fixed on the girl's face;
but as she made no reply, he glanced down at it, and his stern, swarthy
face lighted up joyfully.
"Is it possible? my Dante! my lost Dante! The copy that has travelled
round the world in my pocket, and that I lost a year ago, somewhere in
the mountains of Tennessee! Girl, where did you get it?"
"I found it where you left it--on the grass near a blacksmith's shop."
"A blacksmith's shop! where?"
"Near Chattanooga. Don't you remember the sign, under the horse-shoe,
over the door, 'Aaron Hunt'?"
"No; but who was Aaron Hunt?"
For nearly a minute Edna struggled for composure, and looking suddenly
up, said falteringly:
"He was my grandfather--the only person in the world I had to care for,
or to love me--and--sir--"
"Well, go on."
"You cursed him because your horse fretted, and he could not shoe him
in five minutes."
"Humph!"
There was an awkward silence; St. Elmo Murray bit his lip and scowled,
and, recovering her self-control, the orphan added:
"You put your shawl and book on the ground, and when you started you
forgot them. I called you back and gave you your shawl; but I did not
see the book for some time after you rode out of sight."
"Yes, yes, I remember now about the shawl and the shop. Strange I did
not recognize you before. But how did you learn that the book was mine?"
"I did not know it was yours until I came here by accident, and heard
Mrs. Murray call your name; then I knew that the initials written in
the book spelt your name. And besides, I remembered your figure and
your voice."
Again there was a pause, and her mission ended, Edna turned to go.
"Stop! Why did you not give it to me when you first came?"
She made no reply, and putting his hand on her shoulder to detain her,
he said, more gently than she had ever heard him speak to any one:
"Was it because you loved my book and disliked to part with it, or was
it because you feared to come and speak to a man whom you hate? Be
truthful."
Still she was silent, and raising her face with his palm, as he had
done in the park, he continued in the same low, sweet voice, which she
could scarcely believe belonged to him:
"I am waiting for your answer, and I intend to have it."
Her large, sad eyes were brimming with precious memories, as she lifted
them steadily to meet his, and answered:
"My grandfather was noble and good, and he was all I had in this world."
"And you can not forgive a man who happened to be rude to him?"
"If you please, Mr. Murray, I would rather go now. I have given you
your book, and that is all I came for."
"Which means that you are afraid of me, and want to get out of my
sight?"
She did not deny it, but her face flushed painfully.
"Edna Earl, you are at least honest and truthful, and those are rare
traits at the present day. I thank you for preserving and returning my
Dante. Did you read any of it?"
"Yes, sir, all of it. Good-night, sir."
"Wait a moment. When did Aaron Hunt die?"
"Two months after you saw him."
"You have no relatives? No cousins, uncles, aunts?"
"None that I ever heard of. I must go, sir."
"Good-night, child. For the present, when you go out in the grounds, be
sure that wolf, Ali, is chained up, or you may be sorry that I did not
cut his throat, as I am still inclined to do."
She closed the door, ran lightly across the rotunda, and regaining her
own room, felt inexpressibly relieved that the ordeal was over--that in
future there remained no necessity for her to address one whose very
tones made her shudder, and the touch of whose hand filled her with
vague dread and loathing.
When the echo of her retreating footsteps died away, St. Elmo threw his
cigar out of the window, and walked up and down the quaint and elegant
rooms, whose costly bizarrerie would more appropriately have adorned a
villa of Parthenope or Lucanian Sybaris, than a country-house in
soi-disant "republican" America. The floor, covered in winter with
velvet carpet, was of white and black marble, now bare and polished as
a mirror, reflecting the figure of the owner as he crossed it. Oval
ormolu tables, buhl chairs, and oaken and marquetrie cabinets, loaded
with cameos, intaglios, Abraxoids, whose "erudition" would have filled
Mnesarchus with envy, and challenged the admiration of the Samian
lapidary who engraved the ring of Polycrates; these and numberless
articles of vertu testified to the universality of what St. Elmo called
his "world-scrapings," and to the reckless extravagance and archaistic
taste of the collector. On a verd-antique table lay a satin cushion
holding a vellum MS., bound in blue velvet, whose uncial letters were
written in purple ink, powdered with gold-dust, while the margins were
stiff with gilded illuminations; and near the cushion, as if prepared
to shed light on the curious cryptography, stood an exquisite white
glass lamp, shaped like a vase, and richly ornamented with Arabic
inscriptions in ultra-marine blue--a precious relic of some ruined
Laura in the Nitrian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary
hermits, whom St. Macarius ruled, broke the midnight gloom chanting,
"Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison," fourteen hundred years before St.
Elmo's birth. Immediately opposite, on an embossed ivory stand, and
protected from air and dust by a glass case, were two antique goblets,
one of green-veined agate, one of blood-red onyx; and into the coating
of wax, spread along the ivory slab, were inserted amphorae, one dry
and empty, the other a third full of Falerian, whose topaz drops had
grown strangely mellow and golden in the ashy cellars of Herculaneum,
and had doubtless been destined for some luxurious triclinium in the
days of Titus. A small Byzantine picture, painted on wood, with a
silver frame ornamented with cornelian stars, and the background
heavily gilded, hung over an etagere, where lay a leaf from
Nebuchadnezzar's diary, one of those Babylonish bricks on which his
royal name was stamped. Near it stood a pair of Bohemian vases
representing the two varieties of lotus--one velvety white with
rose-colored veins, the other with delicate blue petals. This latter
whim had cost a vast amount of time, trouble, and money, it having been
found difficult to carefully preserve, sketch, and paint them for the
manufacturer in Bohemia, who had never seen the holy lotus, and
required specimens. But the indomitable will of the man, to whose
wishes neither oceans nor deserts opposed successful barriers, finally
triumphed, and the coveted treasures fully repaid their price as they
glistened in the gaslight, perfect as their prototypes slumbering on
the bosom of the Nile, under the blazing midnight stars of rainless
Egypt. Several handsome rosewood cases were filled with rare books--two
in Pali--centuries old; and moth-eaten volumes and valuable MSS.--some
in parchment, some bound in boards--recalled the days of astrology and
alchemy, and the sombre mysteries of Rosicrucianism. Side by side, on
an ebony stand, lay an Elzevir Terence, printed in red letters, and a
curious Birman book, whose pages consisted of thin leaves of ivory,
gilded at the edges; and here too were black rhyta from Chiusi, and a
cylix from Vulci, and one of those quaint Peruvian jars, which was so
constructed that, when filled with water, the air escaped in sounds
that resembled that of the song or cry of the animal represented on the
vase or jar. In the space between the tall windows that fronted the
lawn hung a weird, life-size picture that took strange hold on the
imagination of all who looked at it. A gray-haired Cimbrian Prophetess,
in white vestments and brazen girdle, with canvas mantle fastened on
the shoulder by a broad brazen clasp, stood, with bare feet, on a low,
rude scaffolding, leaning upon her sword, and eagerly watching, with
divining eyes, the stream of blood which trickled from the throat of
the slaughtered human victim down into the large brazen kettle beneath
the scaffold. The snowy locks and white mantle seemed to flutter in the
wind; and those who gazed on the stony, inexorable face of the
Prophetess, and into the glittering blue eyes, shuddered and almost
fancied they heard the pattering of the gory stream against the sides
of the brass caldron. But expensive and rare as were these relics of
bygone dynasties and mouldering epochs, there was one other object for
which the master would have given everything else in this museum of
curiosities, and the secret of which no eyes but his own had yet
explored. On a sculptured slab, that once formed a portion of the
architrave of the Cave Temple at Elephanta, was a splendid marble
miniature, four feet high, of that miracle of Saracenic architecture,
the Taj Mahal at Agra. The elaborate carving resembled lacework, and
the beauty of the airy dome and slender, glittering minarets of this
mimic tomb of Noor-Mahal could find no parallel, save in the superb and
matchless original. The richly-carved door that closed the arch of the
tomb swung back on golden hinges, and opened only by a curiously-shaped
golden key, which never left Mr. Murray's watch-chain; consequently
what filled the penetralia was left for the conjecture of the
imaginative; and when his mother expressed a desire to examine it, he
merely frowned and said hastily:
"That is Pandora's box, MINUS imprisoned hope. I prefer it should not
be opened."
Immediately in front of the tomb he had posted a grim sentinel--a black
marble statuette of Mors, modeled from that hideous little brass figure
which Spence saw at Florence, representing a skeleton sitting on the
ground, resting one arm on an urn.
Filled though it was with sparkling bijouterie that would have graced
the Barberini or Strozzi cabinets, the glitter of the room was cold and
cheerless. No light, childish feet had ever pattered down the long rows
of shining tiles; no gushing, mirthful laughter had ever echoed through
those lofty windows; everything pointed to the past--a classic, storied
past, but dead as the mummies of Karnac, and treacherously, repulsively
lustrous as the waves that break in silver circles over the buried
battlements, and rustling palms and defiled altars of the proud cities
of the plain. No rosy memories of early, happy manhood lingered here;
no dewy gleam of the merry morning of life, when hope painted and
peopled a smiling world; no magic trifles that prattled of the
springtime of a heart, that in wandering to and fro through the earth,
had fed itself with dust and ashes, acrid and bitter; had studiously
collected only the melancholy symbols of mouldering ruin, desolation,
and death, and which found its best type in the Taj Mahal, that
glistened so mockingly as the gas-light flickered over it.
A stranger looking upon St. Elmo Murray for the first time, as he paced
the floor, would have found it difficult to realize that only
thirty-four years had plowed those deep, rugged lines in his swarthy
and colorless but still handsome face; where midnight orgies and
habitual excesses had left their unmistakable plague-spot, and
Mephistopheles had stamped his signet. Blase, cynical, scoffing, and
hopeless, he had stranded his life, and was recklessly striding to his
grave, trampling upon the feelings of all with whom he associated, and
at war with a world, in which his lordly brilliant intellect would have
lifted him to any eminence he desired, and which, properly directed,
would have made him the benefactor and ornament of the society he
snubbed and derided. Like all strong though misguided natures, the
power and activity of his mind enhanced his wretchedness, and drove him
farther and farther from the path of rectitude; while the consciousness
that he was originally capable of loftier, purer aims, and nobler
pursuits than those that now engrossed his perverted thoughts, rendered
him savagely morose. For nearly fifteen dreary years, nothing but jeers
and oaths and sarcasms had crossed his finely sculptured lips, which
had forgotten how to smile; and it was only when the mocking demon of
the wine-cup looked out from his gloomy gray eyes that his ringing,
sneering laugh struck like a dagger to the heart that loved him, that
of his proud but anxious and miserable mother. To-night, for the first
time since his desperate plunge into the abyss of vice, conscience,
which he had believed effectually strangled, stirred feebly, startling
him with a faint moan, as unexpected as the echo from Morella's tomb,
or the resurrection of Ligeia; and down the murdered years came wailing
ghostly memories, which even his iron will could no longer scourge to
silence. Clamorous as the avenging Erinnys, they refused to be
exorcised, and goaded him almost to frenzy.
Those sweet, low, timid tones, "I am sorry for you," had astonished and
mortified him. To be hated and dreaded was not at all unusual or
surprising, but to be pitied and despised was a sensation as novel as
humiliating; and the fact that all his ferocity failed to intimidate
the "little vagrant" was unpleasantly puzzling.
For some time after Edna's departure he pondered all that had passed
between them, and at length he muttered: "How thoroughly she abhors me!
If I touch her, the flesh absolutely writhes away from my hand, as if I
were plague-stricken or a leper. Her very eyelids shudder when she
looks at me--and I believe she would more willingly confront Apollyon
himself. Strange! how she detests me. I have half a mind to make her
love me, even despite herself. What a steady, brave look of scorn there
was in her splendid eyes when she told me to my face I was sinful and
cruel!"
He set his teeth hard, and his fingers clinched as if longing to crush
something; and then came a great revulsion, a fierce spasm of remorse,
and his features writhed.
"Sinful? Ay! Cruel? O my lost youth! my cursed and wrecked manhood! If
there be a hell blacker than my miserable soul, man has not dreamed of
nor language painted it. What would I not give for a fresh, pure, and
untrampled heart, such as slumbers peacefully in yonder room, with no
damning recollections to scare sleep from her pillow? Innocent
childhood!"
He threw himself into a chair, and hid his face in his hands; and thus
an hour went by, during which he neither moved nor sighed.
Tearing the veil from the past, he reviewed it calmly, relentlessly,
vindictively, and at last, rising, he threw his head back, with his
wonted defiant air, and his face hardened and darkened as he approached
the marble mausoleum, and laid his hand upon the golden key.
"Too late! too late! I can not afford to reflect. The devil himself
would shirk the reading of such a record."
He fitted the key in the lock, but paused and laughed scornfully as he
slung it back on his chain.
"Pshaw! I am a fool! After all, I shall not need to see them, the
silly, childish mood has passed."
He filled a silver goblet with some strong spicy wine, drank it, and
taking down Candide, brightened the gas jets, lighted a fresh cigar,
and began to read as he resumed his walk:
"Lord of himself; that heritage of woe--That fearful empire which the
human breast But holds to rob the heart within of rest."