Two Days later Dartmouth received a despatch from the steward of his
estates in the north of England announcing that there was serious
trouble among his tenantry, and that his interests demanded he should
be on the scene at once. The despatch was brought to his room, and he
went directly down to the hall, where he had left Weir, and told
her he must leave her for a few days. She had been standing by the
fire-place warming her foot on the fender, but she sat suddenly
down on a chair as he explained to her the nature of the telegram.
"Harold," she said, "if you go you will never come back."
"My dear girl," he said, "that speech is unworthy of you. You are not
the sort of woman to believe in such nonsense as presentiments."
"Presentiments may be supernatural," she said, "but not more so
than the experience we have had. So long as you are with me I feel
comparatively untroubled, but if you go I know that something will
happen."
He sat down on the arm of her chair and took her hand. "You are
low-spirited yet," he said, "and consequently you take a morbid view
of everything. That is all. I am beginning to doubt if the dream we
had was anything more than the most remarkable dream on record; if it
were otherwise, two such wise heads as ours would have discovered the
hidden meaning by this time. And, granting that, you must also grant
that if anything were going to happen, you could not possibly know it;
nor will predicting it bring it about. I will be with you in two days
from this hour, and you will only remember how glad you were to get
rid of me."
"I hope so," she said. "But--is it absolutely necessary for you to
go?"
"Not if you don't mind living on bread and cheese for a year or two.
The farms of my ancestral home make a pretty good rent-roll, but if my
tenants become the untrammelled communists my steward predicts, we may
have to camp out on burnt stubble for some time to come. It is in the
hope of inducing them to leave me at least the Hall to take a bride to
that I go to interview them at once. I may be too late, but I will do
my best."
"You will always joke, I suppose," she said, smiling a little; "but
come back to me."
He left Rhyd-Alwyn that evening and arrived at Crumford Hall the next
morning. He slept little during the journey. His mood was still upon
him, and without consideration for Weir as an incentive it was more
difficult to fight it off, indeed, it was almost a luxury to yield to
it. Moreover, although it had been easy enough to say he would think
no more about his vision and its accompanying incidents, it was not
so easy to put the determination into practice, and he found himself
spending the night in the vain attempt to untangle the web, and in
endeavoring to analyze the subtle, uncomfortable sense of mystery
which those events had left behind them. Toward morning he lost all
patience with himself, and taking a novel out of his bag fixed his
mind deliberately upon it; and as the story was rather stupid, it had
the comfortable effect of sending him to sleep.
When he arrived at his place he found that the trouble was less
serious than his steward had represented. The year had been
unproductive, and his tenants had demanded a lowering of their rents;
but neither flames nor imprecations were in order. Dartmouth was
inclined to be a just man, and, moreover, he was very much in love,
and anxious to get away; consequently, after a two days' examination
of the situation in all its bearings, he acceded in great part to
their demands and gave his lieutenant orders to hold the reins lightly
during the coming year.
On the second night after his arrival he went into his study to write
to Weir. He had been so busy heretofore that he had sent her but a
couple of lines at different times, scribbled on a leaf of his note
book, and he was glad to find the opportunity to write her a letter.
He had hoped to return to her instead, but had found several other
matters which demanded his attention, and he preferred to look into
them at once, otherwise he would be obliged to return later on.
His study was a comfortable little den just off the library, and its
four walls had witnessed the worst of his moods and the most roseate
of his dreams. In it he had frequently sat up all night talking
with his grandmother, and the atmosphere had vibrated with some hot
disputes. There was a divan across one end, some bookshelves across
the other, and on one side was a desk with a revolving chair before
it. Above the desk hung a battle-axe which he had brought from
America. Opposite was a heavily curtained window, and near it a door
which led into his private apartments. Between was a heavy piece of
furniture of Byzantine manufacture. As he entered the little room
for the first time since his arrival, he stood for a moment with a
retrospective smile in his eyes. He almost fancied he could see his
grandmother half-reclining on one end of the divan, with a pillow
beneath her elbow, her stately head, with its tower of white hair,
thrown imperiously, somewhat superciliously back, as her eyes flashed
and her mouth poured forth a torrent of overwhelming argument. "Poor
old girl!" he thought; "why do women like that have to die? How she
and Weir would have--argued, to put it mildly. I am afraid I should
have had to put a continent between them. But I would give a good deal
to see her again, all the same."
He shut the door, sat down before his desk, and took a bunch of keys
from his pocket. As he did so, his eyes fell upon one of curious
workmanship, and he felt a sudden sense of pleasant anticipation. That
key opened the Byzantine chest opposite, somewhere in whose cunningly
hidden recesses lay, he was convinced, the papers which he had once
seen in his grandmother's clenched hands. He did not believe she had
destroyed them; she had remarked a few days before her death--which
had been sudden and unexpected--that she must soon devote an
unpleasant hour to the burning of old letters and papers. She
had spoken lightly, but there had been a gleam in her eyes and a
tightening of her lips which had suggested the night he had seen her
look as if she wished that the papers between her fingers were a human
throat. Should he find those papers and pass away a dull evening?
There was certainly nothing but the obstinacy of the chest to prevent,
and she would forgive him more than that. He had always had a strong
curiosity in regard to those papers, but his curiosity so far had been
an inactive one; he had never before been alone at the Hall since
his grandmother's death. He wheeled about on his chair and looked
whimsically at the divan. "Have I your permission, O most fascinating
of grandmothers?" he demanded aloud. "No answer. That means I have. So
be it."
He wrote to Weir, then went over and kneeled on one knee before the
chest. It looked outwardly like a high, deep box, and was covered
with heavy Smyrna cloth, and ornamented with immense brass handles
and lock. Dartmouth fitted the key into a small key-hole hidden in
the carving on the side of the lock, and the front of the chest fell
outward. He let it down to the floor, then gave his attention to the
interior. It was as complicated as the exterior was plain. On one side
of the central partition were dozens of little drawers, on the other
as many slides and pigeon-holes and alcoves. On every square inch of
wood was a delicate tracery, each different, each telling a story. The
handles of the drawers, the arcades of the alcoves, the pillars of
the pigeon-holes--all were of ivory, and all were carved with the
fantastic art of the Mussulman. It was so beautiful and so intricate
that for a time Dartmouth forgot the papers. He had seen it before,
but it was a work of art which required minute observation and study
of its details to be appreciated. After a time, however, he recurred
to his quest and took the drawers out, one by one, laying them on the
floor. They were very small, and not one of them contained so much as
a roseleaf. At the end of each fourth shelf which separated the rows
of drawers, was a knob. Dartmouth turned one and the shelf fell from
its place. He saw the object. Behind each four rows of drawers was a
room. Each of these rooms had the dome ceiling and Byzantine
pillars of a mosque, and each represented a different portion of the
building--presumably that of St. Sophia. The capitals of the pillars
were exquisite, few being duplicated, and the shafts were solid
columns of black marble, supported on bases of porphyry. The floor was
a network of mosaics, and the walls were a blaze of colored marbles.
The altar, which stood in the central room, was of silver, with
trappings of gold-embroidered velvet, and paraphernalia of gold.
Dartmouth was entranced. He had a keen love of and appreciation
for art, but he had never found anything as interesting as this. He
congratulated himself upon the prospect of many pleasant hours in its
company.
He let it go for the present and pressed his finger against every inch
of the walls and floor and ceilings of the mosque, and of the various
other apartments. It was a good half-hour's work, and the monotony and
non-success induced a certain nervousness. His head ached and his hand
trembled a little. When he had finished, and no panel had flown back
at his touch, he threw himself down on one hand with an exclamation of
impatience, and gazed with a scowl at the noncommittal beauty before
him. He cared nothing for its beauty at that moment. What he wanted
were the papers, and he was determined to find them. He stood up and
examined the top of the chest. There was certainly a space between the
visible depths of the interior and the back wall. He rapped loudly,
but the wood and the stuff with which it was covered were too thick;
there was no answering ring. He recalled the night when he had
cynically examined the fragments of the broken cabinet at Rhyd-Alwyn.
He felt anything but cynical now; indeed, he was conscious of a
restless eagerness and a dogged determination with which curiosity had
little to do. He would find those papers if he died in the attempt.
He knelt once more before the chest, and once more pressed his
finger along its interior, following regular lines. Then he shook the
pillars, and inserted his penknife in each most minute interstice of
the carving; he prodded the ribs of the arches, and brought his fist
down violently on the separate floors of the mosque. At the end of an
hour he sprang to his feet with a smothered oath, and cutting a slit
in the cover of the chest with his penknife, tore it off and examined
the top and sides as carefully as his strained eyes and trembling
hands would allow. He was ashamed of his nervousness, but he was
powerless to overcome it. His examination met with no better success,
and he suddenly sprang across the room and snatched the battle-axe
from the wall. He walked quickly back to the chest. For a moment he
hesitated, the thing was so beautiful! But only for a moment. The
overmastering desire to feel those papers in his hands had driven out
all regard for art. He lifted the axe on high and brought it down on
the top of the chest with a blow which made the little room echo. He
was a powerful man, and the axe was imbedded to its haft. He worked it
out of the tough wood and planted another blow, which widened the rift
and made the stout old chest creak like a falling tree. The mutilated
wood acted upon Dartmouth like the smell of blood upon a wolf: the
spirit of destruction leaped up and blazed within him, a devouring
flame, and the blows fell thick and fast. He felt a fierce delight
in the havoc he was making, in the rare and exquisite beauty he was
ruining beyond hope of redemption. He leaned down, and swinging the
axe outward, sent it straight through the arcades and pillars, the
mosques and images, shattering them to bits. Then he raised the axe
again and brought it down on the seam which joined the back to the
top. The blow made but little impression, but a succession of blows
produced a wide gap. Harold inserted the axe in the rift, and kneeling
on the chest, attempted to force the back wall outward. For a time it
resisted his efforts, then it suddenly gave way, and Dartmouth dropped
the axe with a cry. From a shelf below the roof a package had sprung
outward with the shock, and a small object had fallen with a clatter
on the prostrate wall. Dartmouth picked it up in one hand and the
papers in the other, his fingers closing over the latter with a joy
which thrilled him from head to foot. It was a joy so great that it
filled him with a profound peace; the excitement of the past hour
suddenly left him. He went over to his desk and sat down before it.
With the papers still held firmly in his hand, he opened the locket.
There were two pictures within, and as he held them up to the light he
was vaguely conscious that he should feel a shock of surprise; but he
did not. The pictures were those of Lady Sionèd Penrhyn and--himself!
With the same apparent lack of mental prompting as on the night in the
gallery when he had addressed Weir with the name of her grandmother,
he raised the picture of the woman to his lips and kissed it fondly.
Then he laid it down and opened the packet. Within were a thick piece
of manuscript and a bundle of letters. He pressed his hand lovingly
over the closely written sheets of the manuscript, but laid them down
and gave his attention to the letters. They were roughly tied into a
bundle with a bit of string. He slipped the string off and glanced at
the address of the letter which lay uppermost. The ink, though faded,
was legible enough--"Lady Sionèd-ap-Penrhyn, Constantinople." He
opened the letter and glanced at the signature. The note was signed
with the initials of his grandfather, Lionel Dartmouth. They were
peculiarly formed, and were in many of the library books.
He turned back to the first page. As he did so he was aware of a
new sensation, which seemed, however, but a natural evolution in his
present mental and spiritual exaltation. It was as if the page were a
blank sheet and he were wielding an invisible pen. Although, before
he took up the letter, he had had no idea of its contents beyond
a formless, general intuition, as soon as he began to read he was
clearly aware of every coming word and sentence and sentiment in it.
So strong was the impression, that once he involuntarily dropped the
note and, picking up a pen, began hastily writing what he knew was on
the unread page. But his mind became foggy at once, and he threw down
the pen and returned to the letter. Then the sense of authorship and
familiarity returned. He read the letters in the order in which they
came, which was the order of their writing. Among them were some pages
of exquisite verse: and verses and letters alike were the words of a
man to a woman whom he loved with all the concentration and intensity
of a solitary, turbulent, passionate nature; who knew that in this
love lay his and her only happiness; and who would cast aside the
orthodoxy of the world as beneath consideration when balanced against
the perfecting of two human lives. They reflected the melancholy,
ill-regulated nature of the man, but they rang with a tenderness and
a passion which were as unmistakable as the genius of the writer; and
Harold knew that if the dead poet had never loved another woman he
had loved Sionèd Penrhyn. Or had he loved her himself? Or was it Weir?
Surely these letters were his. He had written them to that beautiful
dark-eyed woman with the jewels about her head. He could read the
answers between the lines; he knew them by heart; the passionate words
of the unhappy woman who had quickened his genius from its sleep. Ah,
how he loved her, his beautiful Weir!--No--Sionèd was her name, Sionèd
Penrhyn, and her picture hung in the castle where the storms beat upon
the grey Welsh cliffs thousands of miles away....
If he had but met her earlier--he might to-day be one of that
brilliant galaxy of poets whose music the whole world honored. Oh! the
wasted years of his life, and his half-hearted attempts to give to
the world those wonderful children of his brain! He had loved and been
jealous of them, those children, and they had multiplied until it had
seemed as if they would prove stronger than his will. But he had let
them sing for himself alone; he would give the world nothing until
one day in that densely peopled land of his brain there should go up
a paean of rejoicing that a child, before which their own glory paled,
had been born. And above the tumult should rise the sound of such a
strain of music as had never been heard out of heaven; and before it
the world should sink to its knees....
And it had come to pass at last, this dream. This woman had awakened
his nature from its torpor, and with the love had come, leaping,
rushing, thundering, a torrent of verse such as had burst from no
man's brain in any age.
And to her he owed his future, his fame, and his immortal name. And
she would be with him always. She had struggled and resisted and
refused him speech, but the terrible strength of her nature had
triumphed over dogmas and over the lesser duties she owed to others;
of her free will she had sent for him. He would be with her in an
hour, and to-morrow they would have left codes and conventions behind
them. There was a pang in leaving this beautiful room where his
poem had been born, and beneath which lay such a picture as man sees
nowhere else on earth. But to that which was to come, what was this?
He would write a few lines to the woman who bore his name, and
then the time would have come to go. She too was a beautiful and a
brilliant woman, but her nature was narrow and cold, and she had never
understood him for a moment. There! he had finished, and she would be
happier without him. She had her world and her child--that beautiful
boy!--But this was no time for pangs. He had chosen his destiny, and a
man cannot have all things. It was time to go. Should he take one last
glance at the boy laughing in the room beyond? He had but to push the
tapestry aside, yes--there--God!
Ah, it was grateful to get into the cool air of the street, and before
him, only a short distance away, were the towers of the Embassy. Would
he never reach them? The way had been so long--could it be that his
footsteps were already echoing on the marble floor which led to that
chamber? Yes, and the perfume of that jasmine-laden room was stealing
over his senses, and the woman he loved was in his arms. How the
golden sunset lay on the domes and minarets below! How sonorous
sounded the voices of the muezzins as they called the people to
prayer! There was music somewhere, or was it the wails for the dead
down in Galata? It was all like a part of a dream, and the outlines
were blurred and confused--What was that? A thunderclap? Why were he
and Sionèd lying prostrate there, she with horror in her wide open,
glassy eyes, he with the arms which had held her lying limply on
the blood stained floor beside him? He seemed to see them both as he
hovered above. It was death? Well, what matter? She had gone out with
him, and in some cloud-walled castle, murmurous with harmonies of
quiring spheres, and gleaming with their radiance, they would dwell
together. Human vengeance could not reach them there, and for love
there is no death. The soul cannot die, and love, its chiefest
offspring, shares its immortality. It persists throughout the ages,
like the waves of music that never cease. He would take her hand and
lead her upward--Where was she? Surely she must be by his side. But he
could see no one, feel no presence. God! had he lost her? Had she
been borne upward and away, while he had lingered, fascinated with
the empty clay that a moment since had been throbbing with life
and keenest happiness? But he would find her--even did he go to the
confines of Eternity. But where was he? He could see the lifeless
shells no longer. He was roaming--on--on--in a vast, grey, pathless
land, without light, without sound, unpeopled, forsaken. These were
the plains of Eternity!--the measureless, boundless, sun-forgotten
region, whose monarch was Death, and whose avenging angel--Silence! An
eternal twilight more desolate than the blackness of night, a twilight
as of myriads of ghostly lanterns shedding their colorless rays upon
an awful, echoless solitude He would never find her here The dead of
ages were about him--the troubled spirits who had approached the pale,
stern gates of the Hereafter with rapture, and found within their
portals not rest, but a ceaseless, weary, purposeless wandering, the
world tired souls of aged men pursuing their never-ending quest in
meek, faltering wonder, and longing for the goal which surely they
must reach at last, the white, unquestioning souls of children
floating like heavenly strains of unheard music in the void immensity,
but one and all invisible imponderable. They were there, the monarchs
of buried centuries and the thousands who had knelt at their thrones,
the high and the low, the outcast and the shrived, but each as alone
as if the solitary inhabitant of all Space And _he_, who would have
fled from his fellow-men on earth, must long in vain for the sound of
human voice or the rapture of human touch He must go on--on--in these
colorless, shadowless, haunted plains, until the last trumpet-blast
should awaken the echoes of the Universe and summon him to confront
his Maker and be judged Oh! if but once more he could see the earth he
had scorned! Was it spinning on its way still, that dark, tiny ball?
How long since he had given that last glance of farewell? It must
be years and years and years, as reckoned by the time of men, for in
Eternity there is no time. And Sionèd--where was she? Desolate and
abandoned, shrieked at by sudden winds, flying terrified and helpless
over level, horizonless plains only to fling herself upon the grey
waves of Death's noiseless ocean? Oh, if he could but find her and
make her forget! Together, what would matter death and silence and
everlasting unrest? All would be forgot, all but the exquisite pain of
the regret for the years he had wasted on earth, and for the solitary
heritage he had left the world. Those children of his brain! They were
with him still. Would that he had left them below to sing his name
down through the ages! They were a torment to him here, in their
futility and inaction. They could not sing to these shapeless ghosts
about him; their voices would be unheeded music; nor would any strain
sweep downward to that world whose tears he might have drawn, whose
mirth provoked, whose passions played upon at his will. The one grand
thing he had done must alone speak for him. There was in it neither
pathos nor mirth; it had sprung to the cloud-capped point of human
genius, and its sublimity would prove its barrier to the world's
approval. But it would give him fame when--God! what was that thought?
The manuscript of that poem had lain in the room where he had met
his death. Had the hand that had slain him executed a more terrible
vengeance still? Oh, it could not be! No man would be so base. And
yet, what mercy had he the right to expect? And the nature of the
man--cold--relentless--To consign the man who had wronged him to
eternal oblivion--would he not feel as he watched the ashes in the
brazier, that such vengeance was sweeter than even the power to
kill? And he was impotent! He was a waif tossed about in the chaos
of eternity, with no power to smite the man whose crime
had--perhaps--been greater than the thrusting of two lives from
existence a few years before their time. He was as powerless as the
invisible beggar who floated at his side. And that man was on earth
yet, perchance, coldly indifferent in his proud position, inwardly
gloating at the fullness of his revenge....
Years, years, years! They slipped from his consciousness like water
from the smooth surface of a rock. And yet each had pressed more
heavily and stung more sharply than the last. Oh, if he could but
know that his poem had been given to the world--that it had not been
blotted from existence! This was what was meant by Hell. No torture
that man had ever pictured could approach the torments of such regret,
such uncertainty, such pitiable impotence. Truly, if his sin had been
great, his punishment was greater.
But why was he going downward? What invisible hand was this which was
resistlessly guiding him through the portals of the shadow land, past
the great sun and worlds of other men, and down through this quivering
ether? What? He was to be born again? A bit of clay needed an atom of
animate force to quicken it into life, and he must go again? And it
was to the planet Earth he was going? Ah! his poem! his poem! He
could write it again, and of what matter the wasted generations? And
Sionèd--they would meet again. Sooner or later, she too must return,
and on Earth they would find what had been denied them above. What
was that? His past must become a blank? His soul must be shorn of its
growth? He must go back to unremembering, unforseeing infancy, and
grow through long, slow years to manhood again? Still, his genius
and his intelligence in their elements would be the same, and with
development would come at last the fruition of all his fondest hopes.
And Sionèd? He would know her when they met. Their souls must be
the same as when the great ocean of Force had tossed them up; and
evolution could work no essential change. Ah! they had entered the
blue atmosphere. And, yes--there lay the earth below them. How he
remembered its green plains and white cities and blue waters! And that
great island--yes, it was familiar enough. It was the land which had
given him birth, and which should have knelt at his feet and granted
him a resting-place amidst its illustrious dead. And this old castle
they were descending upon? He did not remember it. Well, he was to be
of the chosen of earth again. He would have a proud name to offer
her, and this time it should be an unsullied one. This time the world
should ring with his genius, not with his follies. This time--Oh,
what was this? Stop! Stop! No; he could not part with it. The grand,
trained intellect of which he had been so proud--the perfected genius
which had been his glory--they should not strip them from him--they
were part of himself; they were his very essence; he would not give
them up! Oh, God! this horrible shrinking! This was Hell; this was
not re-birth. Physical torture? The words were meaningless beside
this warping, this tearing apart of spirit and mind--those precious
children of his brain--limb from limb. Their shrieks for
help!--their cries of anguish and horror! their clutches! their last
spasmodic--despairing--weakening embrace! He _would_ hold them! His
clasp would defy all the powers of Earth and Air! No, they should not
go--they should not. Oh! this cursed hand, with its nerves of steel.
It would conquer yet, conquer and compress him down into an atom
of impotence--There! it had wrenched them from him; they were
gone--gone--forever. But no, they were there beside him; their moans
for help filled the space about him; yes, moans--they were cries
no longer--and they were growing fainter--they were
fading--sinking--dying--and he was shrinking--