Zanoni Part 38

"The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I sprang forward, and cried,--

"'Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!'

"The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I stood rooted to the ground.

"'Yes,' he said solemnly, 'we meet, and it is this meeting that I have sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--thoughts that would strike all order from the universe--express the hopes of the sage who would rise to the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?'

"'It is thy fault,--it is thine!' I exclaimed. 'Exorcise the phantom!

Take the haunting terror from my soul!'

"Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--

"'No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith climbs its t.i.tan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium,--thou shalt behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and Reason. I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it marshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet,--a power that defies my own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment of thy destiny, and await thy cure.'

"At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the mystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain.

All my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were consumed in the same pursuit,--not a trace of Mejnour could be discovered. Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had deserved, recoiling from Mejnour's prophecy of the scene in which I was to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air of my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I might work out my own emanc.i.p.ation from the spectre. I left all whom I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither. Amidst mercenary schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for something n.o.bler than the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy l.u.s.t of avarice, as by the noisier pa.s.sions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment me. But, but," continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible shudder, "at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came that hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes of poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations never to be divulged." He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow.

"But I," said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around him,--"but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away."

"No, no!" exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. "The worst revelation is to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural enemy troubled me not, I--I--have--Oh, Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There it stands,--there, by thy side,--there, there!" And he fell to the ground insensible.

CHAPTER 5.V.

Doch wunderbar ergriff mich's diese Nacht; Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.

Uhland.

(This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already in the power of death.)

A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of consciousness; and when, by Adela's care more than the skill of the physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably shocked by the change in his sister's appearance; at first, he fondly imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his own. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the malady was deep-seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by the ravings of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, "It is there,--there, by thy side, my sister!" He had transferred to her fancy the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into s.p.a.ce; by the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession; bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,--to undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an overheated brain!

And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often, as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned paler if he approached,--she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela's face, he beheld when he murmured "Farewell." He travelled for some weeks through the wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.

Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.

Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour, and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice knocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a countenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers on her forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her; and when she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up her blood, the repet.i.tion of the ghastly visitation.

The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon's return, and whose letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace pract.i.tioner, ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of cure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the patient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpa.s.sing wit, of all the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the delusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes,--he continued to excite her attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the time. The hour struck. "Joy, my brother!" she exclaimed, throwing herself in his arms; "the time is past!" And then, like one released from a spell, she suddenly a.s.sumed more than her ancient cheerfulness. "Ah, Clarence!" she whispered, "forgive me for my former desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!

in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!" And Clarence smiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed his stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour that seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over Adela's face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose,--he approached her. Adela started up, "look--look--look!" she exclaimed.

"She comes! Save me,--save me!" and she fell at his feet in strong convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the half-hour.

The physician lifted her in his arms. "My worst fears are confirmed,"

he said gravely; "the disease is epilepsy." (The most celebrated pract.i.tioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion precisely similar in its circ.u.mstances and its physical cause to the one here narrated.)

The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.

CHAPTER 5.VI.

La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous: elle vous frappera tous: le genre humain a besoin de cet exemple.--Couthon.

(The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against you; it will strike you all: humanity has need of this example.)

"Oh, joy, joy!--thou art come again! This is thy hand--these thy lips.

Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of another; say it again,--say it ever!--and I will pardon thee all the rest!"

"So thou hast mourned for me?"

"Mourned!--and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it is,--there, untouched!"

"Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of Ma.r.s.eilles, hast thou found bread and shelter?"

"Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou didst once think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?"

"Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?"

"There is a painter here--a great man, one of their great men at Paris, I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here,--life and death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is for a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Think of thy Fillide's renown!" And the girl's wild eyes sparkled; her vanity was roused. "And he would have married me if I would!--divorced his wife to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!"

A knock at the door was heard,--a man entered.

"Nicot!"

"Ah, Glyndon!--hum!--welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,--my country, my mistress.

Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty.

Ca ira! ca ira!"

But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets,--the fiery song of the Ma.r.s.eillaise! There was a crowd, a mult.i.tude, a people up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song,--with song, with enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that martial movement was one, not of war, but ma.s.sacre,--Frenchmen against Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Ma.r.s.eilles,--and ample work for Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing but the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to the sun the glorious lie, "Le peuple Francais, debout contre les tyrans!"

(Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)

The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.

They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and relentless Hebert, by the stranger's side, at the cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Ay, shout again!" cried the painter,--"shout for the brave Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and France!"

A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Ma.r.s.eillaise rose in majesty again.

"Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!" muttered Glyndon; and he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.

"Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,--I will manage it all for thee!" cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: "and Paris--"

"Ah, if I could but see Paris!" cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.

Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air--save where, unheard, rose the cry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thy grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason, of mankind! "Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her kindred darkness."

And Nicot's shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre--"Flambeau, colonne, pierre angulaire de l'edifice de la Republique!" ("The light, column, and keystone of the Republic."--"Lettre du Citoyen P--; Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre," tom 11, page 127.)--smiled ominously on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with pa.s.sionate arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.