Ce que j’ignore
Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 5, sc. 1.
(That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled
the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that
fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant
cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels
halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that
stately palace. He gave the word to the rowers,--the vessel approached
the marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the
broad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young
mother!--the last page is turned!
An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these
words in English, “Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon.”
Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence!
she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier
life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the
gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.
He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art,
the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
“Is it you?” she said at last. “Poor Clarence, how changed!”
“Changed!” he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. “And whom
am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thy
existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the news
reached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and through
innumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps
life, if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and save you.
Changed, you call me!--changed without; but what is that to the ravages
within? Be warned, be warned in time!”
The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even
more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one
risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. “What,” she said, at last,
in a faltering voice,--“what wild words do you utter! Can you--”
“Listen!” interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and its
touch was as cold as death,--“listen! You have heard of the old stories
of men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment of
preternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live.
Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like
themselves. If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes
them, even in this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe,
yea, a more lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can
charm the evil one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene where
blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the side of the bravest
and the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the
mortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness
of the chamber where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!”
It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed,
as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone. He
described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance
of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and
congealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it never
was to be exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting black
thoughts,--whispering strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent
excitement was it absent! Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires
after peace and virtue,--THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!
Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the dim
impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of affection, had
been closely examined, but rather banished as soon as felt,--that
the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like those of
mortals,--impressions which her own love had made her hitherto censure
as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated, had perhaps only
served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and
senses, but which now, as Glyndon’s awful narrative filled her
with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
before,--Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
child in her arms!
“Unhappiest one!” cried Glyndon, shuddering, “hast thou indeed given
birth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,--let it
look to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose
and peace!”
Then there came back to Viola’s mind the remembrance of Zanoni’s
night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had
crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as
the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange
intelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed her
awe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,--the sun
smiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though
they saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!
But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
rosy lips, and say, mournfully, “I speak to thee in thy child. In return
for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
sentence of a maniac who accuses?”
Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and
holy light.
“Go, poor victim of thine own delusions,” she said to Glyndon; “I
would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And
what knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly
spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst
connect them?”
“Thou wilt learn too soon,” replied Glyndon, gloomily. “And the very
phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
leave Venice we shall meet again.”
He said, and departed.