A MEETING BETWEEN CONSTANCE AND THE PROPHETESS.
A strange suspicion had entered Constance’s mind, and for Godolphin’s
sake she resolved to put it to the proof. She drew her mantle round her
stately figure, put on a large disguising bonnet, and repaired to Madame
Liehbur’s house.
The Moorish girl opened the door to the countess; and her strange dress,
her African hue and features, relieved by the long, glittering pendants
in her ears, while they seemed suited to the eccentric reputation of her
mistress, brought a slight smile to the proud lip of Lady Erpingham,
as she conceived them a part of the charlatanism practised by the
soothsayer. The girl only replied to Lady Erpingham’s question by an
intelligent sign; and running lightly up the stairs, conducted the guest
into an anteroom, where she waited but for a few moments before she was
admitted into Madame Liehbur’s apartment.
The effect that the personal beauty of the diviner always produced on
those who beheld her was not less powerful than usual on the surprised
and admiring gaze of Lady Erpingham. She bowed her haughty brow with
involuntary respect, and took the seat to which the enthusiast beckoned.
“And what, lady,” said the soothsayer, in the foreign music of her low
voice, “what brings thee hither? Wouldst thou gain, or hast thou lost,
that gift our poor sex prizes so dearly beyond its value? Is it of love
that thou wouldst speak to the interpreter of dreams and the priestess
of the things to come?”
While the bright-eyed Liehbur thus spoke, the countess examined through
her veil the fair face before her, comparing it with that description
which Godolphin had given her of the sculptor’s daughter, and her
suspicion acquired new strength.
“I seek not that which you allude to,” said Constance; “but of the
future, although without any definite object, I would indeed like to
question you. All of us love to pry into dark recesses hid from our
view, and over which you profess the empire.”
“Your voice is sweet, but commanding,” said the oracle; “and your air is
stately, as of one born in courts. Lift your veil, that I may gaze upon
your face, and tell by its lines the fate your character has shaped for
you.”
“Alas!” answered Constance, “life betrays few of its past signs by
outward token. If you have no wiser art than that drawn from the lines
and features of our countenances, I shall still remain what I am now--an
unbeliever in your powers.”
“The brow, and the lip, and the eye, and the expression of each and
all,” answered Liehbur, “are not the lying index you suppose them.”
“Then,” rejoined Constance, “by those signs will I read your own
destiny, as you would read mine.”
The sibyl started, and waved her hand impatiently; but Constance
proceeded.
“Your birth, despite your fair locks, was under a southern sky; you were
nursed in the delusions you now teach; you were loved, and left alone;
you are in the country of your lover. Is it not so?--am I not an oracle
in my turn?”
The mysterious Liehbur fell back in her chair; her lips apart and
blanched--her hands clasped--her eyes fixed upon her visitant.
“Who are you?” she cried at last, in a shrill tone; “who, of my own sex,
knows my wretched history? Speak, speak!--in mercy speak! tell me more!
convince me that you have but vainly guessed my secret, or that you have
a right to know it!”
“Did not your father forsake, for the blue skies of Rome, his own colder
shores?” continued Constance, adopting the heightened and romantic tone
of the one she addressed; and, “Percy Godolphin--is that name still
familiar to the ear of Lucilla Volktman?”
A loud, long shriek burst from the lips of the soothsayer, and she sank
at once lifeless on the ground. Greatly alarmed, and repenting her own
abruptness, Constance hastened to her assistance. She lifted the poor
being, whom she unconsciously had once contributed so deeply to injure,
from the ground; she loosened her dress, and perceived that around her
neck hung a broad ivory necklace wrought with curious characters, and
many uncouth forms and symbols. This evidence that, in deluding others,
the soothsayer deluded herself also, touched and affected the countess;
and while she was still busy in chafing the temples of Lucilla, the
Moor, brought to the spot by that sudden shriek, entered the apartment.
She seemed surprised and terrified at her mistress’s condition, and
poured forth, in some tongue unknown to Constance, what seemed to her a
volley of mingled reproach and lamentation. She seized Lady Erpingham’s
hand, dashed it indignantly away, and, supporting herself the ashen
cheek of Lucilla, motioned to Lady Erpingham to depart; but Constance,
not easily accustomed to obey, retained her position beside the still
insensible Lucilla; and now, by slow degrees, and with quick and
heavy sighs, the unfortunate daughter of Volktman returned to life and
consciousness.
In assisting Lucilla, the countess had thrown aside her veil, and the
eyes of the soothsayer opened upon that superb beauty, which once to
see was never to forget. Involuntarily she again closed her eyes, and
groaned audibly; and then, summoning all her courage, she withdrew her
hand from Constance’s clasp, and bade her Moorish handmaid leave them
once more alone.
“So, then,” said Lucilla, after a pause, “it is Percy Godolphin’s wife;
his English wife, who has come to gaze on the fallen, the degraded
Lucilla; and yet,” sinking her voice into a tone of ineffable and
plaintive sweetness--“yet I have slept on his bosom, and been dear and
sacred to him as thou! Go, proud lady, go!--leave me to my mad, and
sunken, and solitary state. Go!”
“Dear Lucilla!” said Constance, kindly, and striving once more to take
her hand, “do not cast me away from you. I have long sympathised with
your generous although erring heart--your hard and bitter misfortunes.
Look on me only as your friend--nay, your sister, if you will. Let me
persuade you to leave this strange and desultory life; choose your own
home: I am rich to overflowing; all you can desire shall be at your
command. He shall not know more of you unless (to assuage the remorse
that the memory of you does, I know, still occasion him) you will suffer
him to learn, from your own hand, that you are well and at ease, and
that you do not revoke your former pardon. Come, dear Lucilla!” and the
arm of the generous and bright-souled Constance gently wound round the
feeble frame of Lucilla, who now, reclining back, wept as if her heart
would break.
“Come, give me the deep, the grateful joy of thinking I can minister to
your future comforts. I was the cause of all your wretchedness; but
for me, Godolphin would have been yours for ever--would probably, by
marriage, have redressed your wrongs; but for me you would not have
wandered an outcast over the inhospitable world. Let me in something
repair what I have cost you. Speak to me, Lucilla!”
“Yes, I will speak to you,” said poor Lucilla, throwing herself on
the ground, and clasping with grateful warmth the knees of her gentle
soother; “for long, long years--I dare not think how many--I have not
heard the voice of kindness fall upon my ear. Among strange faces and
harsh tongues hath my lot been cast; and if I have wrought out from the
dreams of my young hours the course of this life (which you contemn,
but not justly), it has been that I may stand alone and not dependent;
feared and not despised. And now you, you whom I admire and envy, and
would reverence more than living woman (for he loves you and deems
you worthy of him), you, lady, speak to me as a sister would speak,
and--and----” Here sobs interrupted Lucilla’s speech; and Constance
herself, almost equally affected, and finding it vain to attempt to
raise her, knelt by her side, and tenderly caressing her, sought to
comfort her, even while she wept in doing so.
And this was a beautiful passage in the life of the lofty Constance.
Never did she seem more noble than when, thus lowly and humbling
herself, she knelt beside the poor victim of her husband’s love, and
whispered to the diseased and withering heart tidings of comfort,
charity, home, and a futurity of honour and of peace. But this was not
a dream that could long lull the perturbed and erring brain of Lucilla
Volktman. And when she recovered, in some measure, her self-possession,
she rose, and throwing back the wild hair from her throbbing temples,
she said, in a calm and mournful voice:
“Your kindness comes too late. I am dying, fast--fast. All that is left
to me in the world are these very visions, this very power--call it
delusion if you will--from which you would tear me. Nay, look not so
reproachfully, and in such wonder. Do you not know that men have in
poverty, sickness, and all outer despair, clung to a creative spirit
within--a world peopled with delusions--and called it Poetry? and that
gift has been more precious to them than all that wealth and pomp could
bestow? So,” continued Lucilla, with fervid and insane enthusiasm, “so
is this, my creative spirit, my imaginary world, my inspiration, what
poetry may be to others. I may be mistaken in the truth of my belief.
There are times when my brain is cool, and my frame at rest, and I sit
alone and think over the real past--when I feel my trust shaken, and my
ardour damped: but that thought does not console but torture me, and
I hasten to plunge once more among the charms, and spells, and mighty
dreams, that wrap me from my living self. Oh, lady! bright, and
beautiful, and lofty, as you are, there may come a time when you can
conceive that even madness may be a relief. For” (and here the wandering
light burned brighter in the enthusiast’s glowing eyes), “for, when the
night is round us, and there is peace on earth, and the world’s children
sleep, it is a wild joy to sit alone and vigilant, and forget that we
live and are wretched. The stars speak to us then with a wondrous
and stirring voice; they tell us of the doom of men and the wreck of
empires, and prophesy of the far events which they taught to the old
Chaldeans. And then the Winds, walking to and fro as they list, bid us
go forth with them and hear the songs of the midnight spirits; for you
know,” she whispered with a smile, putting her hand upon the arm of
the appalled and shrinking Constance, who now saw how hopeless was
the ministry she had undertaken, “though this world is given up to two
tribes of things that live and have a soul: the one bodily and
palpable as we are; the other more glorious, but invisible to our dull
sight--though I have seen them--Dread Solemn Shadows, even in their
mirth; the night is their season as the day is ours; they march in the
moonbeams, and are borne upon the wings of the winds. And with them,
and by their thoughts, I raise myself from what I am and have been. Ah,
lady, wouldst thou take this comfort from me?”
“But,” said Constance, gathering courage from the gentleness which
Lucilla’s insanity now wore, and trying to soothe, not contradict her
in her present vein, “but in the country, Lucilla, in some quiet and
sheltered nook, you might indulge these visions without the cares and
uncertainty that must now perplex you; without leading this dangerous
and roving life, which must at times expose you to insult, to annoyance,
and discontent you with yourself.”
“You are mistaken, lady,” said the astrologer, proudly; “none know me
who do not fear. I am powerful, and I hug my power--it comforts me:
without it, what should I be?--an abject, forsaken, miserable woman.
No! that power I possess--to shake men’s secret souls--even if it be
a deceit--even if I should laugh at them, not pity--reconciles me to
myself and to the past. And I am not poor, madam,” as, with the common
caprice of her infirmity, an angry suspicion seemed to cross her; “I
want no one’s charity, I have learned to maintain myself. Nay, I could
be even wealthy if I would!”
“And,” said Constance, seeing that for the present she must postpone her
benevolent intentions, “and he--Godolphin--you forgive him still?”
At that name, it was as if a sudden charm had been whispered to the
fevered heart of the poor fanatic; her head sank from its proud bearing;
a deep, a soft blush coloured the wan cheek; her arms drooped beside
her; she trembled violently; and, after a moment’s silence, sank again
on her seat and covered her face with her hands. “Ah!” said she, softly,
“that word brings me back to my young days, when I asked no power but
what love gave me over one heart: it brings me back to the blue Italian
lake, and the waving pines, and our solitary home, and my babe’s distant
grave. Tell me,” she cried, again starting up, “has he not spoken of me
lately--has he not seen me in his dreams? have I not been present to his
soul when the frame, torpid and locked, severed us no more, and, in the
still hours, I charmed myself to his gaze? Tell me, has he not owned
that Lucilla haunted his pillow? Tell me; and if I err, my spells are
nothing, my power is vanity, and I am the helpless creature thou wouldst
believe me!”
Despite her reason and her firm sense, Constance half shuddered at these
mysterious words, as she recalled what Percy had told her of his dreams
the preceding evening, and the emotions she herself had witnessed in
his slumbers when she watched beside his bed. She remained silent, and
Lucilla regarded her countenance with a sort of triumph.
“My art, then, is not so idle as thou wouldst hold it. But--hush!--last
night I beheld him, not in spirit, but visibly, face to face: for I
wander at times before his home (his home was once mine!) and he saw me,
and was smitten with fear; in these worn features he could recognise
not the living Lucilla he had known. But go to him!--thou, his wife, his
own--go to him; tell him--no, tell him not of me. He must not seek me;
we must not held parley together: for oh, lady” (and Lucilla’s face
became settled into an expression so sad, so unearthly sad, that no word
can paint, no heart conceive, its utter and solemn sorrow), “when we two
meet again to commune,--to converse,--when once more I touch that hand,
when once more I feel that beloved, that balmy breath;--my last hour is
at hand--and danger--imminent, dark, and deadly danger, clings fast to
him!”
As she spoke, Lucilla closed her eyes, as it to shut some horrid vision
from her gaze; and Constance looked fearfully round, almost expecting
some apparition at hand. Presently Lucilla, moving silently across
the room, beckoned to the countess to follow: she did so: they entered
another apartment: before a recess there hung a black curtain: Lucilla
drew it slowly aside, and Constance turned her eyes from a dazzling
light that broke upon them; when she again looked, she beheld a sort of
glass dial marked with various quaint hieroglyphics and the figures of
angels, beautifully wrought; but around the dial, which was circular,
were ranged many stars, and the planets, set in due order. These were
lighted from within by some chemical process, and burnt with a clear and
lustrous, but silver light. And Constance observed that the dial turned
round, and that the stars turned with it, each in a separate motion; and
in the midst of the dial were the hands as of a clock-that moved, but so
slowly, that the most patient gaze alone could observe the motion.
While the wondering Constance regarded this singular device, Lucilla
pointed to one star that burned brighter than the rest; and below it,
half-way down the dial, was another, a faint and sickly orb, that, when
watched, seemed to perform a much more rapid and irregular course than
its fellows.
“The bright star is his,” said she; “and yon dim and dying one is the
type of mine. Note: in the course they both pursue they must meet at
last; and when they meet, the mechanism of the whole halts--the work of
the dial is for ever done. These hands indicate hourly the progress made
to that end; for it is the mimicry and symbol of mine. Thus do I number
the days of my fate; thus do I know, even almost to a second, the period
in which I shall join my Father that is in Heaven!
“And now,” continued the maniac (though maniac is too harsh and decided
a word for the dreaming wildness of Lucilla’s insanity), as, dropping
the curtain, she took her guest’s hand and conducted her back into the
outer room--“and now, farewell! You sought me, and, I feel, only from
kind and generous motives. We never shall meet more. Tell not your
husband that you have seen me. He will know soon, too soon, of my
existence: fain would I spare him that pang and,” growing pale as she
spoke, “that peril; but Fate forbids it. What is writ, is writ: and who
shall blot God’s sentence from the stars, which are His book? Farewell!
high thoughts are graved upon your brow: may they bless you; or, where
they fail to bless, may they console and support. Farewell! I have not
yet forgotten to be grateful, and I still dare to pray.”
Thus saying, Lucilla kissed the hand she had held, and turning hastily
away, regained the room she had just left; and, locking the door, left
the stunned and bewildered countess to depart from the melancholy abode.
With faltering steps she quitted the chamber, and at the foot of the
stairs the little Moor awaited her. To her excited fancy there was
something eltrich and preternatural in the gaze of the young African,
and the grin of her pearly teeth, as she opened the door to the
visitant. Hastening to her carriage, which she had left at a corner
of the square, the countess rejoiced when she gained it; and throwing
herself back on the luxurious cushions, felt as exhausted by this starry
and weird incident in the epic of life’s common career, as if she
had partaken of that overpowering inspiration which she now almost
incredulously asked herself, as she looked forth on the broad day and
the busy streets, if she had really witnessed.