+FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL+
LADY MONTGOMERY’S DIARY.
_New York, Aug. 10th._—Seated in the window of our parlor, I once more
write my thoughts in my journal. The wind is sultry—scarce a movement
stirs the trees in Madison Square, although the sun has long since sunk
below the horizon. Mary is playing Chopin’s music on a fine piano of
Chickering’s, sent here to wait our arrival—a graceful attention from
Philip D’Arcy. I have just implored dear Mary to repeat that Impromptu,
to which the twilight lends additional charm. Oh! how infinitely do I
prefer instrumental to vocal music, especially to the conventionalism of
the modern school of Italian singing; even when the latter is well
executed, (which is rare) you know each intonation which will be given;
all is too material, it chains you down to its own level—while the
listening to a classical instrumental symphony is like following a long,
closely connected chain of reasoning, and at the same time you are
inspired with a thousand new ideas and sensations; or the phrases of
musical diction accompany you in the train of thought you are at the
time pursuing—brightening, poetizing all. How I love to wander with the
serious, philosophic Beethoven, through mazes of tangled modulations, at
the same time clear and intricate, to revel in the delicious harmonized
melodies of the divine Mozart, to drink in the weird and plaintive tones
of the melancholy Weber, to muse, and sigh with the poet _pianiste_
Chopin, criticising naught, analyzing naught, floating as it were, in an
ocean of sweet sounds, lost in a reverie of ineffable bliss. Oh! if our
most intense and delicious emotions are those of the mind, the spirit,
who can say that the individual perishes with the worthless clay of the
body!
* * * * *
_11th._—I had written thus far when Philip D’Arcy entered,
unexpected—unannounced. Oh! sweet surprise! if partings here are
painful, there is at least compensation in again meeting those we love,
when the charm of their dear presence is as sunlight after storm, as
rest to the weary—as the fragrance of spring flowers after the snows of
winter. In D’Arcy especially, as I have before mentioned, this power of
fascination is remarkable; he enters, and your very soul is illumined
with gladness, he departs, and a shadow falls on all around. Softly,
tenderly, happily, we conversed in the dim twilight, the three I love
most on earth.
Sir Percy was from home—he is rarely with us—D’Arcy expressed the desire
to make my husband’s acquaintance. _My husband_, how strangely from his
lips did those words grate on my ear.
* * * * *
_Aug. 15th._—Since I last wrote in my diary, only a few days have
elapsed, and yet what events! It appears to me, as if I had dreamed a
horrible dream and have at last awaked. We had decided on leaving the
city on the morrow, escorted by D’Arcy, for his beautiful villa on the
Hudson. Sir Percy, was, as usual, out—but Philip determined to wait his
return in order to see him, and arrange with him about our journey—as
yet they had never met.
Mary had retired early, feeling unwell, but at my request Ella remained
to await with us Sir Percy’s appearance. At about eleven we heard his
heavy step in the corridor, and he entered the room.
“What, not yet in bed?” he said.
“I waited,” I replied, “to present you——”
The sentence was never finished, for at this moment D’Arcy emerged from
the shadow, into the full glare of the gas-light. I saw Sir Percy
stagger, as a drunken man, and turn almost pale. Thinking him ill, I
would have sprang towards him, but Philip caught my wrist and held it as
in a vice. I turned to look at him. To say that hatred and scorn flashed
from his eyes were little, his entire form seemed dilated with passion,
his eyes glowed and flamed like live coals, his lip and nostril
expressed the most profound contempt.
The baronet, on the other hand, seemed paralyzed with terror; his
fingers worked, and his hands trembled fearfully; his eyes (never able
to support a look without flinching), now rolled in restless agony.
D’Arcy paused only for a moment, as the tiger before his deadly
spring—then, with one bound he cleared the space between himself and his
victim: “Oh! cursed, cursed serpent,” he muttered, between his clenched
teeth, “how darest thou defile this pure Eden with the foul slime of thy
presence? Demon in human form,” and the delicate and spiritual-looking
man shook his sturdy and muscular adversary as a reed, “demon, I say,
how darest thou violate the sanctity of this angel home. Vile, pitiless
wretch, where is poor Alice Vivian? Answer, if thy lying tongue can
frame one word of truth, didst thou not wed her, break her heart, drive
her to madness, and then shut her up with gibbering maniacs in a
madhouse? and now she lives—no denial, I say,” (as the hardened culprit
made a movement of dissent), “she lives! by Heaven, she lives, thy
wronged, thy wretched wife; a wreck in soul as in body. Oh! may the
curse of a desolate heart and blighted affections recoil upon thee, may
rest forsake thy pillow, and peace be forever a stranger to thy couch,
that thy hard heart may be shivered at last, as into fragments, by blank
despair—despair of pity here, of mercy hereafter! May God himself be
deaf to the prayers wrung from thy bitter agony. No, go—I will not
blaspheme: if thou bee’st a devil I cannot kill thee. Go, miserable man,
and repent—if thou canst.”
D’Arcy still held the cowed and trembling wretch in his nervous grasp.
Ella, pale, almost fainting, had quitted the room. Silent, motionless,
horror-stricken, with dilated eyes, I watched, as in a nightmare, the
fearful scene, powerless to speak or scream. I saw Philip at length open
the door, violently ejecting, almost flinging the man from the room. I
saw no more—my trembling limbs refused any longer to sustain me. I sank
into the nearest chair, sick—sick, covering my face with my hands, a
film before my eyes. On recovering consciousness, I was alone, and all
was still.
[Illustration]
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