 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE.
The soul that rises in us, our life's star,
Has had elsewhere it's setting,
And cometh from afar.”
—Wordsworth.
The death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at liberty to
narrate the circumstances which follow.
A few words of previous explanation, however.
I am inclined to believe, from conversations on the subject with
many sensible persons, that there are few men who have not had,
at different intervals in their lives, sudden emotions, currents of
thought, affections of mind and body, which not only were wholly
disconnected with the course of life thus interrupted, but seemed
to belong to a wholly different being.
Perhaps I shall somewhere touch the reader's experience by
describing rather minutely, and in the first person, some sensations
of this kind not unusual to myself.
Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect health,
with every faculty gayly alive, I suddenly lose the sense of neighborhood.
I see—I hear—but I feel as if I had become invisible
where I stand, and were, at the same time, present and visible
disconnected and (magnetically speaking) unlinked from the
human beings near. If spoken to at such a moment, I answer
with difficulty. The person who speaks seems addressing me
from a world to which I no longer belong. At the same time, I
have an irresistible inner consciousness of being present in another
scene of every-day life—where there are streets, and houses, and
people—where I am looked on without surprise as a familiar
object—where I have cares, fears, objects to attain—a different
scene altogether, and a different life, from the scene and life of
which I was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache at
the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this trance lasts,
and then, slowly and reluctantly, my absent soul seems creeping
back, the magnetic links of conscious neighborhood, one by one,
re-attach, and I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible
feeling of sadness.
It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they recede. I
have struggled a thousand times, in vain, to particularize and note
down what I saw in the strange city to which I was translated.
The memory glides from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness.
In a book called “The Man of Two Lives,” similar sensations
to these are made the basis of the story. Indeed, till I saw that
book, the fear of having my sanity suspected sealed my lips on
the subject.
I have still a reserve in my confession. I have been conscious,
since boyhood, of a mental peculiarity which I fear to name while
I doubt that it is possessed by others than myself—which I should
not allude to now, but that it forms a strange link of identity
between me and another being to be mentioned in this story.
I may say, also, without attaching any importance to it, except
have no occasion to be taught, or which I did, as the common
phrase is, by intuition, drawing was the easiest and most passionately
followed of my boyish pursuits.
With these preliminaries, and probably some similar experience
of his own, the reader may happily form a woof on which to
embroider the following circumstances.
Travelling through Styria, some years since, I chanced to have,
for a fellow-occupant of the coupé of a diligence, a very courteous
and well-bred person, a gentleman of Gratz. As we rolled slowly
along, on the banks of the Muer, approaching his native town, he
very kindly invited me to remain with him a day or two, offering
me, as an inducement, a presentation at the soirée of a certain
lady of consequence, who was to receive, on the night of our
arrival, and at whose house I should see, some fair specimens of
the beauty of Styria.
Accepted.
It was a lovely summer's night, when we strolled through the
principal street toward our gay destination, and, as I drew upon
my friend's arm to stop him while the military band of the fortress
finished a delicious waltz (they were playing in the public square),
he pointed out to me the spacious balconies of the countess's
palace, whither we were going, crowded with the well-dressed
company, listening silently to the same enchanting music. We
entered, and, after an interchange of compliments with the hostess,
I availed myself of my friend's second introduction to take a stand
in one of the balconies, beside the person I was presented to, and
under cover of her favor, to hear out the unfinished music of the
band.
As the evening darkened, the lights gleamed out from the
the balconies and joined the gayer circles within. The music
ceased at the beat of the drum. My companion in the balcony
was a very quiet young lady, and, like myself, she seemed subdued
by the sweet harmonies we had listened to, and willing to
remain without the shadow of the curtain. We were not alone
there, however. A tall lady, of very stately presence, and with
the remains of remarkable beauty, stood on the opposite side of
the balcony, and she, too, seemed to shrink from the glare within,
and cling to the dewy darkness of the summer night.
After the cessation of the music, there was no longer an excuse
for intermittent conversation, and, starting a subject which
afforded rather freer scope, I did my best to credit my friend's
flattering introduction. I had discoursed away for half an hour
very unreservedly, before I discovered that, with her hand upon
her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion, the tall lady was
earnestly listening to me. A third person embarrasses even the most
indifferent dialogue. The conversation languished, and my companion
rose and took my arm for a promenade through the rooms.
Later in the evening, my friend came in search of me to the
supper-room.
“Mon ami!” he said, “a great honor has fallen out of the
sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the beau reste of the
handsomest woman of Styria—Margaret, Baroness R—, whose
chateau I pointed out to you in the gold light of yesterday's sunset.
She wishes to know you—why I cannot wholly divine—for
it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has given in twenty
years. But she seems agitated, and sits alone in the countess's
boudoir. Allons-y!”
As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily sketched
convent for a forced marriage with the baron whose name she
bears; at eighteen, a widow, and, for the first time, in love—the
subject of her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to
Italy. The artist died at her chateau—they were to have been
married—she has ever since worn weeds for him. And the
remainder you must imagine—for here we are!”
The baroness leaned with her elbow upon a small table of ormolu,
and her position was so taken that I seated myself necessarily
in a strong light, while her features were in shadow. Still,
the light was sufficient to show me the expression of her countenance.
She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble
physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelid—something like
to which, I thought I remembered to have seen, in a portrait
of a young girl, many years before. The resemblance troubled
me somewhat.
“You will pardon me this freedom,” said the baroness with
forced composure, “when I tell you that—a friend—whom I
have mourned twenty-five years—seems present to me when you
speak.”
I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The baroness shaded
her eyes with her hand, and sat silent for a few moments, gazing
at me.
“You are not like him in a single feature,” she resumed, “yet
the expression of your face, strangely, very strangely, is the same.
He was darker—slighter”—
“Of my age?” I inquired, to break my own silence. For
there was something in her voice which gave me the sensation of
a voice heard in a dream.
“Oh, God! that voice! that voice!” she exclaimed wildly,
burst of tears.
“Rodolph,” she resumed, recovering herself with a strong
effort, “Rodolph died with the promise on his lips that death
should not divide us. And I have seen him! Not in dreams—
not in revery—not at times when my fancy could delude me. I
have seen him suddenly before me in the street—in Vienna—
here—at home at noonday—for minutes together, gazing on me.
It is more in latter years that I have been visited by him; and a
hope has latterly sprung into being in my heart—I know not
how—that in person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold
converse with him—fold him living to my bosom. Pardon me!
You will think me mad!”
I might well pardon her; for, as she talked, a vague sense of
familiarity with her voice, a memory, powerful, though indistinct,
of having before dwelt on those majestic features, an impulse of
tearful passionateness to rush to her embrace, well nigh over-powered
me. She turned to me again.
“You are an artist?” she said, inquiringly.
“No; though intended for one, I believe, by nature.”
“And you were born in the year —.”
“I was!”
With a scream she added the day of my birth, and waiting an
instant for my assent, dropped to the floor, and clung convulsively
and weeping to my knees.
“Rodolph! Rodolph!” she murmured faintly, as her long
grey tresses fell over her shoulders, and her head dropped insensible
upon her breast.
Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered the room
I rushed out of doors. I had need to be in darkness and alone.
It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my hotel. A
chasseur stood sentry at the door of my apartment with a letter
in his hand. He called me by name, gave me his missive, and
disappeared. It was from the baroness, and ran thus:
“You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter will find
you waking. And I must write, for my heart and brain are over-flowing.
“Shall I write to you as a stranger?—you whom I have
strained so often to my bosom—you whom I have loved and still
love with the utmost idolatry of mortal passion—you who have
once given me the soul that, like a gem long lost, is found again,
but in a newer casket! Mine still—for did we not swear to love
for ever!
“But I am taking counsel of my own heart only. You may
still be unconvinced. You may think that a few singular coincidences
have driven me mad. You may think that, though born
in the same hour that my Rodolph died, possessing the same
voice, the same countenance, the same gifts—though by irresistible
consciousness I know you to be him—my lost lover returned
in another body to life—you may still think the evidence incomplete—you
may, perhaps, even now, be smiling in pity at my
delusion. Indulge me one moment.
“The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost, possessed a faculty of
mind, which, if you are he, answers with the voice of an angel to
my appeal. In that soul resided, and wherever it be, must now
reside, the singular power”
(The reader must be content with my omission of this fragment
of the letter. It contained a secret never before clothed in
language—a secret that will die with me, unless betrayed by what
accurately and inevitably in the words of another—I felt as if the
innermost chamber of my soul was suddenly laid open to the
day—I abandoned doubt—I answered to the name by which she
called me—I believed in the previous existence of which my whole
life, no less than these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished
me with repeated evidence. But, to resume the letter.)
“And now that we know each other again—now that I can
call you by name, as in the past, and be sure that your inmost
consciousness must reply—a new terror seizes me! Your soul
comes back, youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of
unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to your eye
the same outer garment, grown dull with mourning and faded
with the wear of time. Am I grown distasteful? Is it with the
sight only of this new body that you look upon me? Rodolph!
—spirit that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul that
was sworn to me for ever!—am I—the same Margaret, refound
and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh God! What a bitter
answer would this be to my prayers for your return to me!
“I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles upon
fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting for two who
parted as lovers. You shall not see me again in the house of a
stranger and in a mourning attire. When this letter is written,
I will depart at once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses
already in the court-yard, and while you read this I am speeding
swiftly home. The bridal dress you were secretly shown, the
day before death came between us, is still freshly kept. The
room where we sat—the bowers by the streams—the walks where
we projected our sweet promise of a future—they shall all be
made ready. They shall be as they were! And I—oh Rodolph,
Believe me, I am unchanged in soul! And I will strive to be—
I will strive to look—God help me to look and be—as of yore!
“Farewell now! I leave horses and servants to wait on you
till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for any delay! but we will
pass this life and all other time together. We have seen that a
vow of eternal union may be kept—that death can not divide
those who will to love for ever! Farewell now!
“Margaret.”
Circumstances compelled me to read this letter with but one
feeling—exquisite pain! Love lasts till death, but it is mortal!
The affections, however intense and faithful (I now know), are
part of the perishable coil, forgotten in the grave. With the
memory of this love of another life, haunting me through my
youth, and keeping its vow of visitation, I had given the whole
heart of my second youth to another. Affianced to her, waited
for by her, bound to her by vows which death had not divided, I
had but one course to pursue. I left Gratz in an hour, never to
return.
A few days since I was walking alone in the crowded thorough-fare
of the city where I live. Suddenly my sense of presence
there fell off me. I walked on, but my inward sight absorbed all
my consciousness. A room which was familiar to me shut me in,
and a bed hung in mourning became apparent. In another
instant a figure laid out in a winding-sheet, and partially covered
with a velvet pall, grew distinct through the dimness, and in the
low-laid head I recognised, what a presentiment had already
betrayed to me, the features of Margaret, Baroness R—. It
will be still months before I can see the announcement of her
death. But she is dead.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |