I had no case that necessitated my return to L---- the following day.
The earlier hours of the forenoon I devoted to Strahan and his building
plans. Margrave flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an April
sunbeam, sometimes flinging himself on a sofa, and reading for a few
minutes one of the volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip’s
library was so rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that
crabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. “I picked
up the ancient Greek,” said he, “years ago, in learning the modern.”
But the book soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, archly
enjoying Strahan’s peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open
the window and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; and
in another moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad
lime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him.
In the afternoon my host was called away to attend some visitors of
importance, and I found myself on the sward before the house, right in
view of the mausoleum and alone with Margrave.
I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpse
of the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strong
desire to speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that
tortured me. But--setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I had
given, or dreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow--to fulfil that
desire would have been impossible,--impossible to any one gazing on that
radiant youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then: a white
doe, that even my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovingly
to his side, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there like
the incarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have before
applied to him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned.
Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, “Art
thou the master of demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?”
As if from redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rather
cooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike the
music one hears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand
over my forehead in bewilderment and awe.
“Are there,” I said unconsciously,--“are there, indeed, such prodigies
in Nature?”
“Nature!” he cried, catching up the word; “talk to me of Nature! Talk of
her, the wondrous blissful mother! Mother I may well call her. I am her
spoiled child, her darling! But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to lose
sight of Nature!--to rot senseless, whether under these turfs or within
those dead walls--”
I could not resist the answer,--
“Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by whom?”
“By whom? I thought that was clearly proved.”
“The hand was proved; what influence moved the hand?”
“Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell? Nature herself
is a grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm!
All Nature’s children live to take life; none, indeed, so lavishly as
man. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible sting
of hunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may
scarcely taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying! We
speak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is so dire
a ravager as man,--so cruel and so treacherous? Look at yon flock
of sheep, bred and fattened for the shambles; and this hind that I
caress,--if I were the park-keeper, and her time for my bullet had come,
would you think her life was the safer because, in my own idle whim, I
had tamed her to trust to the hand raised to slay her?”
“It is true,” said I,--“a grim truth. Nature, on the surface so loving
and so gentle, is full of terror in her deeps when our thought descends
into their abyss!”
Strahan now joined us with a party of country visitors. “Margrave is
the man to show you the beauties of this park,” said he. “Margrave knows
every bosk and dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in its
intricate, undulating ground.”
Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition; and as he led us through
the park, though the way was long, though the sun was fierce, no one
seemed fatigued. For the pleasure he felt in pointing out detached
beauties which escaped an ordinary eye was contagious. He did not talk
as talks the poet or the painter; but at some lovely effect of light
amongst the tremulous leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet
below, he would halt, point it out to us in silence, and with a kind
of childlike ecstasy in his own bright face, that seemed to reflect the
life and the bliss of the blithe summer day itself.
Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature faded away,--all my
horror, all my hate; it was impossible to resist the charm that breathed
round him, not to feel a tender, affectionate yearning towards him as to
some fair happy child. Well might he call himself the Darling of Nature.
Was he not the mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful as
Apollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in another?