University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VENETIAN GLASS.

Nothing is so selfish as love-sorrow. Not the maelstrom itself is so absorbent,
and, from Huldy Ann, whose mother complains that she is no longer
“wuth her salt,” to Rosa Matilda, whose canary bird would starve but for the
parlor-maid's attentions, you shall find its victims self-absorbed, dreamy, and
forgetful of the life about them. So Francia never thought again of her promise
to Nancy Brume, until that worthy woman sent to Bonniemeer an explicit
inquiry, whether she was to count upon either of the ladies there as “a watcher”
for Mrs. Luttrell.

Francia, vehemently remorseful for her negligence, insisted upon going the
first night, and returned in the morning with a melancholy account of the condition
of the invalid, whose prostration of body had become excessive, while her
mind alternated constantly from gloomy depression to excited fancies and hallucinations,
hysterical emotion and frightful mirth.

“You told them I would come to-night, didn't you, dear?” asked Neria,
when Francia had given the experiences of her arduous watch.

“Yes, but I don't think you ought to stay alone with her. She seemed out
of her head part of the time, and was so excited she quite frightened me.
Then she is so weak that she cannot stir without help. It will be too much for
you, Neria.”

“O no, dear. I will ask Mrs. Brume to sleep within call in case any help is
needed, and I am not at all timid.”

“You are nothing that would prevent your doing good to other people,” said

Francia, fondly, and sighed at her own deficiencies, while Neria's heart contracted
with a sharp pain as she thought of Vaughn and the good she had
wrought in his life.

When Neria arrived at Cragness she was received by Dr. Luttrell, who announced
that he should share her watch, as the condition of the patient was so
critical that the end might be expected at almost any moment.

They stood together in the library while he said this, and Neria raised her
eyes to his face with some expression of sympathy and concern upon her lips,
but the words died in an incoherent murmur as she looked. Always pale, Dr.
Luttrell's face was to-night of a ghastly yellowish tinge, scarcely changed even
in the dry lips at which he gnawed incessantly. His eyelids drooped as if to
conceal the tawny eyes, alive with electricity, gleaming and sparkling in their
lurid depths as they wandered impatiently hither and thither, with a watchful,
expectant look—a look of desperation and yet of terror—a look like that of the
baited tiger, who knows the jungle closely environed by the hunters, and with
his haunches gathered for the spring, watches every point at once for the first
assailant.

The vigilant eyes did not fail to perceive and interpret Neria's gaze. They
flashed upon her and away, then back, with a steady daring, and held hers, while
the dry lips said:

“You find me changed, Mrs. Vaughn. It is now two weeks that I have
spent every day and nearly every night at my wife's bedside. Remember, I am
her physician as well as husband and nurse.”

“You must be very much fatigued,” said Neria, slowly, as she tried to analyze
the ominous echo of these words in her mind. “I beg,” continued she,
earnestly, “that you will trust me with the sole charge to-night, and try to rest
yourself thoroughly for to-morrow.”

“No; O, no!” returned the doctor, hurriedly. “That is impossible. To-night
is, I believe, a crisis in the disorder, and I must be present. It is my
duty, and, at any rate, I could not rest.” Nancy Brume opened the door.

“If you're ready to go up stairs, Miss Vaughn, I guess I'll be off to bed.
Like enough I shan't more'n get my forty winks 'fore I'm called up,” said she;
and Neria followed, without reply, to a large and gloomy chamber upon the second
floor, where lay the sick woman, a pale spectre, shadowed and surrounded
by dark bed-hangings and furniture, that seemed to oppress the air of the room
with their funereal atmosphere. The two windows looked upon the sea, which
now came booming up beneath them, each wave smiting the foundations of the
old house with the sullen roar of a cannonade. A half-open door showed a
dressing-room, with a handsome toilet-table and apparatus, among which stood
a shaded lamp, and an arm-chair beside it. Nancy pointed toward the door.

“The doctor 'll set in there and read, so's he'll be handy in case anything
goes wrong. He'll give her the medicine when the time comes.”

With these words she departed, and Neria, approaching the bed, looked
compassionately down at the patient, who had altered sensibly for the worse
since she had last seen her. Her eyes, showing supernaturally large in her
ghastly and emaciated face, were wide open and glazed. Beneath them a circle
of violet stained the otherwise colorless skin, and the same tinge had deepened
under the transparent nails of the hands folded languidly upon the counterpane.
The parted lips were parched and blackened, and Neria tenderly moistened
them with some water in a goblet upon the little stand beside the bed. The
patient looked up and smiled.

“You are Michael, the angel who fights with the devil,” said she, quietly.
“He was here a moment ago, and I suppose is hiding from you. He poured
some fire down my throat while I was asleep one night, and it burns—O, how
it burns!”

She laid her hand upon her chest, and looked piteously into Neria's face,
bending above her with a divine compassion in its every line.

“He keeps his imps in the next room, all in bottles,” pursued the sufferer,
in a mysterious whisper; “and sometimes he brings them out and shakes them
up before my eyes. Then they dance—the imps do—dance just like the fire
down in that old library—did you ever see how that dances in the twilight?—
and when it flashes into the dark corners you can see—ugh, I've seen them time
and again! That was before he caught them and put them in bottles, I suppose.
And then that old man who sits and plays on the organ in the dark—did
you ever see him? He never makes any sound, but he plays and plays till the
ghost of the music fills the whole room—only the ghost, you know; you can't
hear it, but you feel it. It comes creeping, creeping through your blood, till it
chills it to ice. I believe that's the way I first came to be so cold; and now I
never am warm. Good Michael, can't you take the ghost out of my blood? It
freezes me even while the devil's fire scorches.”

Neria took the thin, white hands in hers. They were indeed ice cold, and
had the stiff, hard feel of flesh no longer instinct with vitality. She pressed and
chafed them in her own. The patient smiled gratefully.

“Ah, that is comfortable,” said she. “I feel the little spears of life going
out of your hands into mine. If you had come sooner you might have saved
me; but now I have drank too much of that fire. Wait—I want you to do
something for me—will you?”

“What is it?”

“You see that wardrobe over there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, open it and I will tell you.—Ah, there he comes! Now, where's
your sword! Now you will fight him! Now you can make him take away the
fire out of me!”

She rose in her bed, and, with a long, white finger, pointed past Neria, while
in her eyes the look of terror and foreboding dawning there when she first came
to Cragness shone full-moon. Neria glanced quickly over her shoulder. In
the door of the dressing-room, holding by the lintel, stood Doctor Luttrell, his
ghastly face and brilliant eyes thrown out from the dark space behind him, into
which his figure seemed to melt.

“He's got a head, you see, but no body—that is bad,” said the sick woman,
anxiously. “But you might crush his head. Don't the Bible tell about putting
your heel on his head?”

“Neria did not answer. She was held by the glittering eyes that seemed imperiously
to demand of her her inmost thought. For a moment she quailed and
grew confused, but then a great wave of divine strength and power seemed
to swell through her soul, filling it with a serene assurance. The wild words
of the dying woman bore of a sudden a strange significance. She had called
her by the name of the Warrior Angel, and something of his sublime courage
and ardor raised her to a level above that of ordinary moods. She lifted her
head, and looked back the look of these opalescent eyes, while her own quickened
with lambent fire, and deepened to their darkest hue. The color rose
lightly to her cheeks, her lips parted, and her golden hair seemed touched with
a glory like that of sudden sunshine, or the aureola of a saint.

The white face in the doorway writhed with a bitter sneer, but retreated into
the darkness.

“There, he's gone! But he'll be back in a moment,” gasped the sick woman,
who still sat upright, clinging to Neria, while her staring eyes and pointing
finger seemed plunging into the darkness in pursuit of the object of her terror.

As Neria turned to answer and soothe her, a stealthy foot crept over the
carpet, and before she knew that he was near, Dr. Luttrell's voice said, significantly,
“You see that my wife is very ill, quite out of her senses, in fact, and as
frequently is the case in mania, her fancies are the direct opposite of her impressions
when sane. For instance, she was but now, I believe, describing me as a
fiend, and you, the most feminine of women, if I may say it, as a warrior. My
poor Beatrice!”

He laid his hand upon his wife's brow and smiled pityingly down upon her.
Neria made no answer but watched him attentively. So did his wife, who lay
now perfectly quiet, her whole consciousness apparently absorbed in the wary
questioning look she fixed upon him. Luttrell drew a little nearer to her, and,
still pressing his hand upon her brow, seem to plunge the concentrated rays of
his burning eyes into hers, which soon began to waver, to droop, and finally
closed altogether, while from beneath the long fair lashes, great tears stole out,
and ran down the pallid cheeks.

“She is asleep,” said Dr. Luttrell, turning toward Neria, but not meeting
her eyes. “It will do her good if anything now can. You had best go into
the dressing-room and read, or rest on the arm-chair you will find there. You
need not try to keep awake. I will call you if anything is needed.”

“On the contrary,” said Neria, quickly. “It is I who will stay here, and
you who had better go and rest. I am in no need of sleep myself, and should
prefer to stay with Mrs. Luttrell.”

He glanced swiftly at her, and said, carelessly,

“As you please, of course. I think she will sleep until midnight, when I
will give her a draught.”

He glided away as he spoke, and presently Neria saw him light the shaded
lamp and seat himself to read, in such a position that his eyes commanded both
the bed and the chair in which she sat beside it.

The night wore on, as slowly as it always wears for those who wake while
others sleep; and Neria, who had laid her watch upon the little table at her
side, could hardly believe that its slender hands moved at all, so reluctantly did
they creep over the dial.

For the first two hours she was painfully conscious that the eyes of the motionless
figure in the other room were fixed upon herself, and her own gaze
wandered perpetually from the pallid sleeper at her side, to the circle of light
beneath the reading lamp, showing a book, two white hands, a dark-clad figure
as high as the breast, and nothing more, except the occasional gleam of two
bright points a little higher, flashing out of the darkness toward her.

But no mind, however active, however subtile, can absolutely control the
body, and as midnight approached, Doctor Luttrell slept, at first lightly, but
finally with the heavy exhaustion of overtaxed nature.

As he dropped to sleep, the corpse-like figure in the bed stirred slightly, and
Neria turning, found the eyes of her charge fixed upon her face in a dumb appeal
for help, not to be misunderstood or denied.

“What can I do for you?” asked she, softly.

“I don't know. I think nobody can do anything now,” said the sufferer,

sadly, and with no appearance of excitement or hallucination. She paused, still
looking with anxious entreaty into the heavenly face above her.

“I do not know,” said she, slowly. “But I think there is something wrong
about this illness. I was always well until a few months since, and my symptoms
are so strange. My husband calls this a decline, but—well, it would do no
good to know. A few more hours will end all; and I love him, yes, I do love him
dearly, and shall die loving him. If he had asked me for my life, I would have
given it freely—he need not have taken such pains to steal it. It was long ago.
O so long, that this dreadful suspicion, this great shapeless doubt came into my
mind, and then I began to watch him, to see if I could find out from his eyes—
they are such strange eyes—did you ever notice them? But I never could, and
I don't know now. There is one thing you can do—not that it means anything,
you know, but just to amuse me. Open that wardrobe, please, the door is in the
middle, and on a shelf with some trinkets you will see a ruby-colored wine-glass
in a gold stand. Will you bring it to me?”

“Certainly,” said Neria, a little surprised at the request, and taking the
night-lamp from the fireplace she opened the wardrobe, found the glass without
difficulty, and, as she brought it toward the bed, curiously examined its singular
and admirable workmanship. A golden serpent resting on his coil, reared aloft
his swelling throat and evil head, between whose wide distended jaws was fixed
a bubble-like bowl of ruby glass, capable of holding, perhaps, a spoonful of some
priceless nectar—nectar such as that with which la Borgia stilled the too urgent
reproaches of her injured lovers; and as Neria slightly turned it in her hand,
the faint lamplight striking through the ruby bowl flashed down upon the scaly
folds of the serpent, and glanced off with a gleam like trickling blood. She held
it before the weary eyes, that momently grew heavier and duller.

“Yes, that is it! It is a Venetian glass—one of those that they used to
make in the old time; the art is forgotten now. My mother was an Italian and
this was in her family for generations. Will you have it—or, rather, wait; perhaps
it will not be worth giving. You see that vial on the table—that tiny one.
Now, please pour some of its contents into the glass.”

Neria took the vial—a very small one, without label, and about half filled
with a colorless, odorless liquid—uncorked it, and was inclining it toward the
glass, when Mrs. Luttrell said, hastily, “Put the glass on the table first, for fear.'

Neria, without question, did as desired, and, setting the cup upon the table,
filled it half full.

“That will do; wait, now,” whispered the sick woman, eagerly fixing her
eyes upon the glass, whose contents were already in a state of strange ebullition,
foaming, flashing, and sparkling through and through, as if interpenetrated
with tiny shafts of flame, while a dark wave of color, as if it were the breath of
the serpent, came creeping up the sides of the ruby bowl, changing its pure tint
to a turbid stain. The boiling contents reached the lips of the glass, the turbid
stain sullied the last line of color, and, with a clear, sharp explosion, the glass
flew into a million pieces.

Dr. Luttrell, startled from his sleep, sprang hastily to his feet, approached
the table, saw all, understood all, and turned to Neria with the look upon his
face of Satan summoned to answer for his conspiracy. She confronted him as
did Michael confront that Satan. He turned to his wife, who had sunk back
upon her pillows, pale and breathless. As he approached she suddenly aroused,
and grasped his hands in both of hers, while in her eyes, the weary question answered
at last, gave place to a tender and fathomless love, unmingled with reproach

“It was not needed,” said she. “I would have died if you had told me it
was necessary to your happiness that I should. I knew you loved her better
than me always, but you might have told me, and let me go away somewhere out
of your sight, and die of my broken heart as surely, and less painfully. I have
suffered so much. It was hard to feel my life torn out of me inch by inch—it
was such a brave young life when you began. But don't be sorry—not too sorry
—I am willing now, although when I began to know, I was not—and I fought
against it, fought hard, and tried not to believe. It was to find out that I watched
you always, and I read it at last. It began far down in your eyes, so far that it
only showed like the great dim creatures that live under the sea, and then it
came up slowly, slowly, and every day I read it plainer, until now it is written
there so that a child might read, D, e, a, t, h—that's the way it goes. Don't
look at any one—don't let that angel see, who was here just now—he might
write it with his finger on your forehead, just as God did on Cain's, you know—
I am so tired now—so—tired. Good-by—don't be too sorry—when—”

The next breath that crossed the white lips was inarticulate, then came a
long sigh that seemed to strike a chill through all the air of the chamber, and
then the pale, sad face dropped of a sudden into the sharp outlines, the marble
rigidity, unmistakably distinguishing the most sleep-like death from the most
death-like sleep. The eyelids drooped, but again slowly opened, and with the
last instinct of vitality the eyes turned to those of Luttrell, while from their blue
depths arose once more the solemn question, whose answer was Death, and
stood there patiently—stood, even when Neria, with trembling hands, had closed
over it the lids that could not hide it, stood there when the pale form lay encoffined,
when the earth was laid upon it; and when he, the mourner, came back
to his lonely home, the question was there before him, always, everywhere, waiting,
waiting, always waiting, till it forced the answer to his own eyes, and he
shrank away from men lest they should read it there—shrank most of all from
Neria, of whom the dying woman had bid him beware, as the angel whom God
had sent to write the secret upon his brow.