9. CHAPTER IX.
Late one night in June two gentlemen arrived at
the Villa Hotel of the Baths of Lucca. They stopped
the low britzka in which they travelled, and, leaving
a servant to make arrangements for their lodging,
linked arms and strolled up the road toward the banks
of the Lima. The moon was chequered at the moment
with the poised leaf of a treetop, and as it passed
from her face, she arose and stood alone in the
steel-blue of the unclouded heavens—a luminous and
tremulous plate of gold. And you know how beautiful
must have been the night, a June night in Italy,
with a moon at the full!
A lady, with a servant following her at a little distance,
passed the travellers on the bridge of the Lima.
She dropped her veil and went by in silence. But
the Freyherr felt the arm of his friend tremble within
his own.
“Do you know her, then?” asked Von Leisten.
“By the thrill in my veins we have met before,”
said Clay; “but whether this involuntary sensation
was pleasurable or painful, I have not yet decided.
There are none I care to meet—none who can be
here.” He added the last few words after a moment's
pause, and sadly.
They walked on in silence to the base of the mountain,
busy each with such coloring as the moonlight
threw on their thoughts, but neither of them was
happy.
Clay was humane, and a lover of nature—a poet,
that is to say—and, in a world so beautiful, could never
be a prey to disgust; but he was satiated with the
common emotions of life. His heart, for ever overflowing,
had filled many a cup with love, but with
strange tenacity he turned back for ever to the first.
He was weary of the beginnings of love—weary of
its probations and changes. He had passed the period
of life when inconstancy was tempting. He
longed now for an affection that would continue into
another world—holy and pure enough to pass a gate
guarded by angels. And his first love—recklessly as
he had thrown it away—was now the thirst of his existence.
It was two o'clock at night. The moon lay broad
upon the southern balconies of the hotel, and every
casement was open to its luminous and fragrant stillness.
Clay and the Freyherr Von Leisten, each in
his apartment, were awake, unwilling to lose the luxury
of the night. And there was one other under
that roof waking, with her eyes fixed on the moon.
As Clay leaned his head on his hand, and looked
outward to the sky, his heart began to be troubled.
There was a point in the path of the moon's rays
where his spirit turned back. There was an influence
abroad in the dissolving moonlight around him which
resistlessly awakened the past—the sealed but unforgotten
past. He could not single out the emotion. He
knew not whether it was fear or hope—pain or pleasure.
He called, through the open window, to Von Leisten.
The Freyherr, like himself, and like all who have
outlived the effervescence of life, was enamored of the
night. A moment of unfathomable moonlight was
dearer to him than hours disenchanted with the sun.
He, too, had been looking outward and upward—but
with no trouble at his heart.
“The night is inconceivably sweet,” he said, as he
entered, “and your voice called in my thought and
sense from the intoxication of a revel. What would
you, my friend?”
“I am restless, Von Leisten! There is some one
near us whose glances cross mine on the moonlight,
and agitate and perplex me. Yet there was but one
on earth deep enough in the life-blood of my being
to move me thus—even were she here! And she is
not here!”
His voice trembled and softened, and the last word
was scarce audible on his closing lips, for the Freyherr
had passed his hands over him while he spoke,
and he had fallen into the trance of the spirit-world.
Clay and Von Leisten had retired from the active
passions of life together, and had met and mingled at
that moment of void and thirst when each supplied
the want of the other. The Freyherr was a German
noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of singular
acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge.
Too wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit
his thoughts or his attainments to the criticism or
judgment of the world, he lavished on his own life, and
on those linked to him in friendship, the strange powers
he had acquired, and the prodigal overthrow of his
daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior,
perhaps, in genius, and necessity had driven him to
develop the type of his inner soul, and leave its impress
on the time. But he was inferior to Von Leisten
in the power of will, and he lay in his control like
a child in its mother's. Four years they had passed
together, much of it in the secluded castle of Von
Leisten, busied with the occult studies to which the
Freyherr was secretly devoted; but travelling down
to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, and dividing
their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the
ideal world they had unlocked. Von Leisten had
lost, by death, the human altar on which his heart
could alone burn the incense of love; and Clay had
flung aside in an hour of intoxicating passion the one
pure affection in which his happiness was sealed—
and both were desolate. But in the world of the
past, Von Leisten, though more irrevocably lonely,
was more tranquilly blest.
The Freyherr released he entranced spirit of his
friend, and bade him follow back the rays of the moon
to the source of his agitation.
A smile crept slowly over the speaker's lips.
In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the
night, reclined, in an invalid's chair, propped with pillows,
a woman of singular, though most fragile beauty.
Books and music lay strewn around, and a lamp, subdued
to the tone of the moonlight by an orb of alabaster,
burned beside her. She lay bathing her blue
eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion
of brown ringlets fell over the white dress that enveloped
her, and her oval cheek lay supported on the
palm of her hand, and her bright red lips were parted.
The pure, yet passionate spell of that soft night possessed
her.
Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who
had once loved her—praying to God that his soul
might be so purified as to mingle unstartingly, unrepulsively,
in hallowed harmony with hers. And presently
he felt the coming of angels toward him, breathing
into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful
and purifying sadness. And with a trembling aspiration
of grateful humility to his Maker, he stooped to
her forehead, and with his impalpable lips impressed
upon its snowy tablet a kiss.
It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that
brought the blood suddenly to her cheek. She started
from her reclining position, and, removing the obscuring
shade from her lamp, arose and crossed her hands
upon her wrists, and paced thoughtfully to and fro.
Her lips murmured marticulately. But the thought,
painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to
melancholy sweetness; and, subduing her lamp again,
she resumed her steadfast gaze upon the moon.
Ernest knelt beside her, and with his invisible brow
bowed upon her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless
language of the soul, his memories of the past, his
hope, his repentance, his pure and passionate adoration
at the present hour.
And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet
wondering at its truthfulness and power, Eve wept,
silently and long. As the morning touched the east,
slumber weighed upon her moistened eyelids, and
kneeling by her bedside she murmured her gratitude
to God for a heart relieved of a burden long borne,
and so went peacefully to her sleep.
It was in the following year, and in the beginning
of May. The gay world of England was concentrated
in London, and at the entertainments of noble
houses there were many beautiful women and many
marked men. The Freyherr Von Leisten, after
years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious
and undeniabe superiority of mien and influence
again yielded to, as before, and again bringing to his
feet the homage and deference of the crowd he moved
among. To his inscrutable power the game of society
was easy, and he walked where he would through
its barriers of form.
He stood one night looking on at a dance. A lady
of a noble air was near him, and both were watching
the movements of the loveliest woman present, a creature
in radiant health, apparently about twenty-three,
and of matchless fascination of person and manner.
Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire
her name, but his attention was arrested by the re
semblance between her and the object of his admiring
curiosity, and he was silent.
The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze,
however.
“I think we have met before!” she said; but at
the next instant a slight flush of displeasure came to her
cheek, and she seemed regretting that she had spoken.
“Pardon me!” said Von Leisten, “but—if the
question be not rude—do you remember where?”
She hesitated a moment.
“I have recalled it since I have spoken,” she continued;
“but as the remembrance of the person who
accompanied you always gives me pain, I would willingly
have unsaid it. One evening of last year, crossing
the bridge of the Lima, you were walking with
Mr. Clay. Pardon me—but, though I left Lucca
with my daughter on the following morning, and saw
you no more, the association, or your appearance,
had imprinted the circumstance on my mind.”
“And is that Eve Gore?” said Von Leisten, musingly,
gazing on the beautiful creature now gliding
with light step to her mother's side.
But the Freyherr's heart was gone to his friend.
As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing
of the quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl,
and as they moved round to the entrancing music, he
murmured in her ear, “He who came to you in the
moonlight of Italy will be with you again, if you are
alone, at the rising of to-night's late moon. Believe
the voice that then speaks to you!”
It was with implacable determination that Mrs.
Gore refused, to the entreaties of Von Leisten, a renewal
of Clay's acquaintance with her daughter.
Resentment for the apparent recklessness with which
he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlawful
passion—scornful unbelief of any change in his
character—distrust of the future tendency of the
powers of his genius—all mingled together in a hostility
proof against persuasion. She had expressed
this with all the positiveness of language, when her
daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the
morning after the ball, and she had risen late. But
though subdued and pensive in her air, Von Leisten
saw at a glance that she was happy.
“Can you bring him to me?” said Eve, letting her
hand remain in Von Leisten's, and bending her deep
blue eyes inquiringly on his.
And with no argument but tears and caresses, and
an unexplained assurance of her conviction of the repentant
purity and love of him to whom her heart
was once given, the confiding and strong-hearted
girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her happiness.
Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her
neck, and gave her hand in silent consent to Von Leisten.
The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed
on the ground. The color fled from his cheeks, and
his brow moistened.
“I have called him,” he said—“he will be here!”
An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He
had risen from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and
in terror—for the spirit-summons was powerful. But
Von Leisten welcomed him at the door with a smile,
and withdrew the mother from the room, and left Ernest
alone with his future bride—the first union, save
in spirit, after years of separation.
