University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

THE narrow, vaulted passage leading to Mr. Murray's
suit of rooms was dim and gloomy when
Edna approached the partially opened door of
the rotunda, whence issued a stream of light.
Timidly she crossed the threshold and stood within on the
checkered floor, whose polished tiles glistened under the
glare of gas from bronze brackets representing Telamones,
that stood at regular intervals around the apartment. The
walls were painted in Saracenic style, and here and there
hung specimens of Oriental armor—Turcoman cimeters
Damascus swords, Bedouin lances, and a crimson silk flag,
with heavy gold fringe, surmounted by a crescent. The
cornice of the lofty arched ceiling was elaborately arabesque,
and as Edna looked up she saw through the glass
roof the flickering of stars in the summer sky. In the
centre of the room, immediately under the dome, stretched
a billiard-table, and near it was a circular one of black
marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis lazuli, which formed
a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah, while in the
middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled
with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge
plaster Trimurti stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal
of black rock, and the Siva-face and the writhing
cobra confronted all who entered. Just opposite grinned a
red granite slab with a quaint basso-relievo taken from the
ruins of Elora. Near the door were two silken divans, and
a richly carved urn, three feet high, which had once ornamented

the façade of a tomb in the royal days of Petra, ere
the curse fell on Edom, now stood an in memoriam of the
original Necropolis. For what purpose this room was designed
or used Edna could not imagine, and after a hasty
survey of its singular furniture, she crossed the rotundo,
and knocked at the door that stood slightly ajar. All was
silent; but the smell of a cigar told her that the owner was
within, and she knocked once more.

“Come in.”

“I don't wish to come in; I only want to hand you something.”

“Oh! the deuce you don't! But I never meet people even
half-way, so come in you must, if you have any thing to say
to me. I have neither blue blazes nor pitchforks about me,
and you will be safe inside. I give you my word there are
no small devils shut up here, to fly away with whomsoever
peeps in! Either enter, I say, or be off.”

The temptation was powerful to accept the alternative;
but as he had evidently recognized her voice, she pushed
open the door and reluctantly entered. It was a long room,
and at the end were two beautiful fluted white marble
pillars, supporting a handsome arch, where hung heavy
curtains of crimson Persian silk, that were now partially
looped back, showing the furniture of the sleeping apartment
beyond the richly carved arch. For a moment the
bright light dazzled the orphan, and she shaded her eyes;
but the next instant Mr. Murray rose from a sofa near the
window, and advanced a step or two, taking the cigar from
his lips.

“Come to the window and take a seat.”

He pointed to the sofa; but she shook her head, and said
quickly:

“I have something which belongs to you, Mr. Murray,
which I think you must value very much, and therefore I
wanted to see it safe in your own hands.”

Without raising her eyes she held the book toward him.

“What is it?”

He took it mechanically, and with his gaze fixed on the
girl's face; but as she made no reply, he glanced down at
it, and his stern, swarthy face lighted up joyfully.

“Is it possible? my Dante! my lost Dante! The copy
that has travelled round the world in my pocket, and that I
lost a year ago, somewhere in the mountains of Tennessee!
Girl, where did you get it?”

“I found it where you left it—on the grass near a blacksmith's
shop.”

“A blacksmith's shop! where?”

“Near Chattanooga. Don't you remember the sign,
under the horse-shoe, over the door, `Aaron Hunt'?”

“No; but who was Aaron Hunt?”

For nearly a minute Edna struggled for composure, and
looking suddenly up, said falteringly:

“He was my grandfather—the only person in the world
I had to care for, or to love me—and—sir—”

“Well, go on.”

“You cursed him because your horse fretted, and he could
not shoe him in five minutes.”

“Humph!”

There was an awkward silence; St. Elmo Murray bit his
lip and scowled, and, recovering her self-control, the orphan
added:

“You put your shawl and book on the ground, and when
you started you forgot them. I called you back and gave
you your shawl; but I did not see the book for some time
after you rode out of sight.”

“Yes, yes, I remember now about the shawl and the
shop. Strange I did not recognize you before. But how
did you learn that the book was mine?”

“I did not know it was yours until I came here by accident,
and heard Mrs. Murray call your name; then I knew
that the initials written in the book spelt your name. And
besides, I remembered your figure and your voice.”

Again there was a pause, and her mission ended, Edna
turned to go.

“Stop! Why did you not give it to me when you first
came?”

She made no reply, and putting his hand on her shoulder
to detain her, he said more gently than she had ever heard
him speak to any one:

“Was it because you loved my book and disliked to part
with it, or was it because you feared to come and speak to
a man whom you hate? Be truthful.”

Still she was silent, and raising her face with his palm, as
he had done in the park, he continued in the same low,
sweet voice, which she could scarcely believe belonged to
him:

“I am waiting for your answer, and I intend to have it.”

Her large, sad eyes were brimming with precious memories,
as she lifted them steadily to meet his, and answered:

“My grandfather was noble and good, and he was all I
had in this world.”

“And you can not forgive a man who happened to be
rude to him?”

“If you please, Mr. Murray, I would rather go now. I
have given you your book, and that is all I came for.”

“Which means that you are afraid of me, and want to
get out of my sight?”

She did not deny it, but her face flushed painfully.

“Edna Earl, you are at least honest and truthful, and
those are rare traits at the present day. I thank you for
preserving and returning my Dante. Did you read any
of it?”

“Yes, sir, all of it. Good-night, sir.”

“Wait a moment. When did Aaron Hunt die?”

“Two months after you saw him.”

“You have no relatives? No cousins, uncles, aunts?”

“None that I ever heard of. I must go, sir.”

“Good night, child. For the present, when you go out

in the grounds, be sure that wolf, Ali, is chaired up, or you
may be sorry that I did not cut his throat, as I am still in
clined to do.”

She closed the door, ran lightly across the rotundo, and
regaining her own room, felt inexpressibly relieved that the
ordeal was over—than in future there remained no necessity
for her to address one whose very tones made her shudder
and the touch of whose hand filled her with vague dread
and loathing.

When the echo of her retreating steps died away, St.
Elmo threw his cigar out of the window, and walked up
and down the quaint and elegant rooms, whose costly
bizarrerie would more appropriately have adorned a villa
of Parthenope or Lucanian Sybaris, than a country-house in
soi-disant “republican” America. The floor, covered in
winter with velvet carpet, was of white and black marble
now bare and polished as a mirror, reflecting the figure of
the owner as he crossed it. Oval ormolu tables, buhl chairs,
and oaken and marquetrie cabinets, loaded with cameos,
intaglios, Abraxoids, whose “erudition” would have filled
Mnesarchus with envy, and challenged the admiration of
the Samian lapidary who engraved the ring of Polycrates
these and numberless articles of virtu testified to the universality
of what St. Elmo called his “world scrapings,”
and to the reckless extravagance and archaistic taste of the
collector. On a verd-antique table lay a satin cushion,
holding a vellum MS., bound in blue velvet, whose uncial
letters were written in purple ink, powdered with gold-dust,
while the margins were stiff with gilded illuminations; and
near the cushion, as if prepared to shed light on the curious
cryptography, stood an exquisite white glass lamp, shaped
like a vase and richly ornamented with Arabic inscriptions
in ultra-marine blue—a precious relic of some ruined Laura
in the Nitrian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary
hermits, whom St. Macarius ruled, broke the midnight
gloom chanting, “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison,” fourteen

hundred years before St. Elmo's birth. Immediately opposite,
on an embossed ivory-stand, and protected from air and
dust by a glass case, were two antique goblets, one of green-veined
agate, one of blood-red onyx; and into the coating
of wax, spread along the ivory slab, were inserted
amphoræ, one dry and empty, the other a third full of
Falernian, whose topaz drops had grown strangely mellow
and golden in the ashy cellars of Herculaneum, and had
doubtless been destined for some luxurious triclinium in the
days of Titus. A small Byzantine picture, painted on wood,
with a silver frame ornamented with cornelian stars, and
the background heavily gilded, hung over an etagère, where
lay a leaf from Nebuchadnezzar's diary, one of those Baby-lonish
bricks on which his royal name was stamped. Near
it stood a pair of Bohemian vases representing the two varieties
of lotus—one velvety white with rose-colored veins,
the other with delicate blue petals. This latter whim had
cost a vast amount of time, trouble, and money, it having
been found difficult to carefully preserve, sketch, and paint
them for the manufacturer in Bohemia, who had never seen
the holy lotus, and required specimens. But the indomitable
will of the man, to whose wishes neither oceans nor
deserts opposed successful barriers, finally triumphed, and
the coveted treasures fully repaid their price as they glistened
in the gaslight, perfect as their prototypes slumbering
on the bosom of the Nile, under the blazing midnight
stars of rainless Egypt. Several handsome rosewood cases
were filled with rare books—two in Pali—centuries old;
and moth-eaten volumes and valuable MSS.—some in parchment,
some bound in boards—recalled the days of astrology
and alchemy, and the sombre mysteries of Rosicrucianism.
Side by side, on an ebony stand, lay an Elzevir Terence,
printed in red letters, and a curious Birman book, whose
pages consisted of thin leaves of ivory, gilded at the edges;
and here too were black rhyta from Chiusi, and a cylix
from Vulci, and one of those quaint Peruvian jars, which
was so constructed that, when filled with water the air
escaped in sounds that resembled that of the song or cry of
the animal represented on the vase or jar. In the space between
the tall windows that fronted the lawn hung a weird,
life-size picture that took strange hold on the imagination
of all who looked at it. A gray-haired Cimbrian Prophetess,
in white vestments and brazen girdle, with canvas mantle
fastened on the shoulder by a broad brazen clasp, stood
with bare feet, on a low, rude scaffolding, leaning upon her
sword, and eagerly watching, with divining eyes, the stream
of blood which trickled from the throat of the slaughtered
human victim down into the large brazen kettle beneath the
scaffold. The snowy locks and white mantle seemed to
flutter in the wind; and those who gazed on the stony, inexorable
face of the Prophetess, and into the glittering blue
eyes, shuddered and almost fancied they heard the pattering
of the gory stream against the sides of the brass caldron.
But expensive and rare as were these relics of bygone
dynasties and mouldering epochs, there was one other
object for which the master would have given every thing
else in this museum of curiosities, and the secret of which
no eyes but his own had yet explored. On a sculptured
slab, that once formed a portion of the architrave of the
Cave Temple at Elephanta, was a splendid marble miniature,
four feet high, of that miracle of Saracenic architecture,
the Taj Mahal at Agra. The elaborate carving resembled
lace-work, and the beauty of the airy dome and
slender, glittering minarets of this mimic tomb of Noor-Mahal
could find no parallel, save in the superb and matchless
original. The richly-carved door that closed the arch of the
tomb swung back on golden hinges, and opened only by a
curiously-shaped golden key, which never left Mr. Murray's
watch-chain; consequently what filled the penetralia was
left for the conjectures of the imaginative; and when his
mother expressed a desire to examine it, he merely frowned
and said hastily:

“That is Pandora's box, minus imprisoned hope. I prefer
it should not be opened.”

Immediately in front of the tomb he had posted a grim
sentinel—a black marble statuette of Mors, modeled from
that hideous little brass figure which Spence saw at Florence,
representing a skeleton sitting on the ground, resting
one arm on an urn.

Filled though it was with sparkling bijouterie that would
have graced the Barberini or Strozzi cabinets, the glitter of
the room was cold and cheerless. No light, childish feet
had ever pattered down the long rows of shining tiles; no
gushing mirthful laughter had ever echoed through those
lofty windows; every thing pointed to the past—a classic,
storied past, but dead as the mummies of Karnac, and
treacherously, repulsively lustrous as the waves that break
in silver circles over the buried battlements, and rustling
palms, and defiled altars of the proud cities of the plain. No
rosy memories of early, happy manhood lingered here; no
dewy gleam of the merry morning of life, when hope painted
and peopled a smiling world; no magic trifles that
prattled of the spring-time of a heart that, in wandering to
and fro through the earth, had fed itself with dust and
ashes, acrid and bitter; had studiously collected only the
melancholy symbols of mouldering ruin, desolation, and
death, and which found its best type in the Taj Mahal,
that glistened so mockingly as the gas-light flickered over it.

A stranger looking upon St. Elmo Murray for the first
time, as he paced the floor, would have found it difficult to
realize that only thirty-four years had plowed those deep,
rugged lines in his swarthy and colorless but still handsome
face; where midnight orgies and habitual excesses had left
their unmistakable plague-spot, and Mephistopheles had
stamped his signet. Blasé, cynical, scoffing, and hopeless, he
had stranded his life, and was recklessly striding to his
grave, trampling upon the feelings of all with whom he
associated, and at war with a world, in which his lordly,

brilliant intellect would have lifted him to any eminence he
desired, and which, properly directed, would have made him
the benefactor and ornament of the society he snubbed and
derided. Like all strong though misguided natures, the
power and activity of his mind enhanced his wretchedness,
and drove him farther and farther from the path of rectitude;
while the consciousness that he was originally capable
of loftier, purer aims, and nobler pursuits than those that
now engrossed his perverted thoughts, rendered him savagely
morose. For nearly fifteen dreary years, nothing but
jeers and oaths and sarcasms had crossed his finely sculptured
lips, which had forgotten how to smile; and it was
only when the mocking demon of the wine-cup looked out
from his gloomy gray eyes that his ringing, sneering laugh
struck like a dagger to the heart that loved him, that of his
proud but anxious and miserable mother. To-night, for the
first time since his desperate plunge into the abyss of vice,
conscience, which he had believed effectually strangled,
stirred feebly, startling him with a faint moan, as unexpected
as the echo from Morella's tomb, or the resurrection of
Ligeia; and down the murdered years came wailing ghostly
memories, which even his iron will could no longer scourge
to silence. Clamorous as the avenging Erinnys, they refused
to be exorcised, and goaded him almost to frenzy.

Those sweet, low, timid tones, “I am sorry for you,”
had astonished and mortified him. To be hated and
dreaded was not at all unusual or surprising, but to be
pitied and despised was a sensation as novel as humiliating;
and the fact that all his ferocity failed to intimidate the
“little vagrant” was unpleasantly puzzling.

For some time after Edna's departure he pondered all
that had passed between them, and at length he muttered.

“How thoroughly she abhors me! If I touch her, the
flesh absolutely writhes away from my hand, as if I were
plague-stricken or a leper. Her very eyelids shudder,
when she looks at me—and I believe she would more willingly

confront Apollyon himself. Strange! Low she detests
me. I have half a mind to make her love me, even
despite herself. What a steady, brave look of scorn there
was in her splendid eyes when she told me to my face I
was sinful and cruel!”

He set his teeth hard, and his fingers clinched as if longing
to crush something; and then came a great revulsion,
a fierce spasm of remorse, and his features writhed.

“Sinful? Ay! Cruel? O my lost youth! my cursed
and wrecked manhood! If there be a hell blacker than my
miserable soul, man has not dreamed of nor language painted
it. What would I not give for a fresh, pure, and untrampled
heart, such as slumbers peacefully in yonder room,
with no damning recollections to scare sleep from her pillow?
Innocent childhood!”

He threw himself into a chair, and hid his face in his
hands; and thus an hour went by, during which he neither
moved nor sighed.

Tearing the veil from the past, he reviewed it calmly,
relentlessly, vindictively, and at last, rising, he threw his
head back, with his wonted defiant air, and his face hardened
and darkened as he approached the marble mausoleum,
and laid his hand upon the golden key.

“Too late! too late! I can not afford to reflect. The
devil himself would shirk the reading of such a record.”

He fitted the key in the lock, but paused and laughed
scornfully as he slung it back on his chain.

“Pshaw! I am a fool! After all, I shall not need to see
them, the silly, childish mood has passed.”

He filled a silver goblet with some strong spicy wine,
drank it, and taking down Candide, brightened the gasjets,
lighted a fresh cigar, and began to read as he resumed
his walk: