Vashti Part 48

One long narrow picture baffled interpretation, and excited speculations that served in some degree to divert the sad current of the physician's thoughts.

It was a dreary plain, dotted with the "fallen cromlechs of Stonehenge," and in front of the desecrated stone altars stood a veiled woman, with her hands clasped over a silver crescent-curved knife, and her bare feet resting on oaken chaplets and mistletoe boughs, starred and fringed with snowy flowers. Under the dexterously painted gauze that shrouded the face, the outline of the features was distinctly traceable, end behind the film,--large, oracular, yet mournful eyes, burned like setting stars, seen through magnifying vapors that wreathe the horizon.

It was a solemn, desolate, melancholy picture, relieved by no flush of color,--gray plain, gray distance, gray sky, gray temple tumuli, and that ghostly white woman, gazing grimly down at the gray-haired sufferer on the low bed beneath her.

Under some circ.u.mstances, certain pictures seem basilisk-eyed, riveting a gaze that would gladly seek more agreeable subjects, and it chanced that Dr. Grey found a painful fascination in this piece of canvas that hung immediately in front of him. Wherein consisted the magnetism that so powerfully attracted him, he could not decide, but several times when the wind blew the scalloped edge of the lace curtain between the lamp and the picture, and threw a dim wavering shadow over the figure on the wall, he almost expected to see the veil float away from the stony face, and reveal what the artist had adroitly shrouded. Now it looked a doomed "Norma," and anon the Nemesis of a dishonored faneless faith, that was born among Magi, and had tutored Pythagoras; and finally Dr. Grey rose and turned away to escape its spectral spell.

Waking Katie, he charged her to call him if any change occurred in his patient, and went to the front of the house for a breath of fresh air.

Narcissus-like, a three-quarter moon was staring down at her own image, rocked on the bosom of the sea, while dim stars printed silver photographs on the deep blue beneath them,--

"And the hush of earth and air Seemed the pause before a prayer."

The wind that had blown steadily for two days past from the south-east, had gone down into some ocean lair; but the sullen element refused to forget its late scourging, and occasionally a long swelling billow dashed itself into froth against the stone piers of the boat-house, and the cliffs which stood like a phantom fleet along the southern bend of the beach, were fringed with a white girdle of incessant breakers.

Far out from sh.o.r.e the rolling ma.s.s of water was darkly blue, but now and then a wave broke over its neighbor, and in the distance the foam flashed under moonshine like some reconnoitring Siren-face, peeping landward for fresh victims; or as the samite-clad arm that Arthur and Sir Bedivere saw rise above the mere to receive Excalibar.

Following the beckoning of those snowy hands, and listening to the low musical monologue that sea uttered to sh.o.r.e, Dr. Grey started in the direction of the terrace, whence he could see the whole trend of the beetling coast, but some unaccountable impulse induced him to pause and look back.

The dense shadow of the trees shut out from the spot where he stood the golden radiance of the moon, but over the lawn it streamed in almost unearthly splendor,--and there he saw some white object glide swiftly towards the group of deodars. The first solution that occurred to his mind was that Katie had fallen asleep, and Mrs. Gerome in her delirium making her way out of the house, was seeking her favorite walk; but a moment's reflection convinced him that she was too utterly prostrated to cross the room, still less the grounds, and, resolved to satisfy himself, he followed the moving object that retreated before him.

Walking rapidly but stealthily in the shadow of the trees and shrubbery, he soon ascertained that it was a woman's figure, and saw that it stopped at Elsie's grave, and bent down to touch the head-board. Creeping forward, he had approached within ten yards of her, when his hat struck the lower limbs of a large acacia, and startled a bird that uttered a cry of terror and darted out. The sound caused the figure to turn her head, and catching a glimpse of Dr.

Grey, she ran under the dense boughs of the deodars, and disappeared.

He followed, and groped through the gloom, but when he emerged, no living thing was visible; and, perplexed and curious, he stood still.

After some moments he heard a faint sound, as of some one smothering a cough, and pursuing it, found himself at the boundary of the grounds.

Here a thick hedge of osage orange barred egress, and he saw the woman disentangling her drapery from the thorns that had seized it.

Springing forward, he exclaimed,--

"Stand still! You can not escape me. Who are you?"

A feigned and lugubrious voice answered,--

"I am the restless spirit of Elsie Maclean, come back to guard her grave."

In another instant he was at her side, and laying his hand on the white netted shawl with which she was veiling her features, he tore it away, and Salome's fair face looked defiantly at him.

"If I had known that my pursuer was Dr. Grey, I would not have troubled myself to play the ghost farce, for of course I could not expect to frighten you off; but I hoped you were one of the servants, who would not very diligently chase a spectre. I did not suppose that you could be coaxed or driven thus far from your arm-chair beside the bed where Mrs. Gerome is asleep."

Astonishment kept him silent for some seconds, and, in the awkward pause, the girl laughed constrainedly--nervously.

"After all your show of bravery in pursuing a woman, I verily believe you are too much frightened to arrest me if I chose to escape."

"Salome, has something terrible happened at home, that you have come here at midnight to break to me?"

"Nothing has happened at home."

"Then why are you here? Are you, too, delirious?"

Her scornful laugh rang startlingly on the still night air.

"Oh, Salome! You grieve, you shock me!"

"Yes, Dr. Grey, you have a.s.sured me of that fact too frequently--too feelingly--to permit me to doubt your sincerity. You need not repeat it; I accept the a.s.sertion that you are shocked at my indiscretions."

Compa.s.sion predominated over displeasure, as he observed the utter recklessness that pervaded her tone and manner.

"I am unwilling to believe that you would, without some very cogent reason, violate all decorum by coming alone at dead of night two miles through a dreary stretch of hills and woods. Necessity sometimes sanctions an infraction of the rules of rigid propriety, and I am impatient to hear your defence of this most extraordinary caprice."

She was endeavoring to disengage the fringe of her shawl from the hedge, but finding it a tedious operation, she caught her drapery in both hands and tore it away from the thorns, leaving several shreds hanging on the p.r.i.c.kly boughs.

"Dr. Grey, I have no defence to offer."

"Tell me what induced you to come here."

"An eminently charitable and commendable interest in your fair patient. I came here simply and solely to ascertain whether Mrs.

Gerome would die, or whether she could possibly recover."

Unflinchingly she looked up into his eyes, and he thought he had never seen a fairer, prouder, or lovelier face.

"How did you expect to accomplish your errand by wandering about these grounds, exposing yourself to insult and to injury?"

"I have been on the gallery since twilight, looking through the lace curtains at Mrs. Gerome lying on her bed, and at you sitting in the arm-chair. Her eyes are keener than yours, for she saw me peeping through the window, and told you so. When you left the room I came out among the trees to escape observation. I scorn all equivocation, and have no desire to conceal the truth, for if I am not dowered

'With blood trained up along nine centuries, To hound and hate a lie,'

at least I hold my pauper soul high above the mire of falsehood; and

... 'The things we do, We do: we'll wear no mask, as if we blushed.'"

They had walked away from the hedge, and Dr. Grey paused at the mound, where the Ariadne gleamed cold and white in the moonbeams that slanted across it like silver lances.

Revolving in his mind the best method of extricating the orphan from the unfortunate predicament in which her rashness had plunged her, he did not answer immediately, and Salome continued, impatiently,--

"If you imagine that I came here to act as spy upon your actions, you most egregiously mistake me, for I know all that the most rigid surveillance could possibly teach me. I heard you say that this night would prove a crisis in Mrs. Gerome's case, and I was so anxious to learn the result that I could not wait quietly at home until morning.

I begged you to bring me, and you refused; consequently, I came alone.

Deal frankly with me,--tell me, will that woman die?"

The breathless eagerness with which she bent towards him, the strained, almost ferocious expression of her keen eyes, sickened his soul, and he put his hand over his face to shut out the sight of hers.

"Tell me the truth. I must and will know it."

Her sweet clear voice had become a low hoa.r.s.e pant, and the knotted lines were growing harder and tighter on her beautiful brow.

"I pray ceaselessly that G.o.d will spare her to me, and I hope all things from His mercy. Another hour will probably end my suspense, and decide the awful question of life or death. Salome, if she should die, my future will be very lonely,--and my heart bereft of the brightest, dearest hopes, that have ever cheered it."