 | This, that and the other |  |
VALERIE.
Strangely, and strongly, and more and more,
As to one I have known and loved before;
For every soul is akin to me, that dwells in the land of mystery.”
Golden Legend.
“Come to me! Come to me!”
It was the third night I had heard that summons in my sleep,
and awoke to find a cold sweat on my brow, and a chilliness as
of death in my limbs. The third night, and I dared not disregard
it longer. I knew that it was the voice of Valérie; I
knew that those were the pale hands of my beloved stretched
out to me thus imploringly; I knew that those were her beseeching
eyes looking into mine from the far distance. But the
way was long. I had not met Valérie for years; and she was
living in a stately castle, many thousand miles away. Between
us were high mountains and boiling waves, and many a league
of torrid deserts. The second night, when the voice called me, I
had made answer,
“Wherefore dost thou summon me, O restless spirit, suffering
me not to slumber? The way is long, and, lo! I am weak
and helpless!” But still the answer was, “Come to me! come
to me!” and the third morning I started.
I crossed many a rapid stream, many a dreary waste; and
every night, when I lay down to rest, still sounded that far-off
voice in my ear, hurrying, pleading, beseeching, — “Come to
was a boy scarcely yet fifteen, I was the pupil of a far-famed
sage, and in his house I first saw my beloved. She, too, was
there, from a great distance. She was three years my senior,
and at first I only dared to gaze timidly into the mysterious
depths of her eyes. She was always dressed in black, with her
heavy black hair pushed off her broad, intellectual forehead, and
lying round her pale cheeks like shadows of midnight. I used
to look all day into her great eyes; and at night I would see her
in my dreams, her white, still face set in its night of hair.
I don't know how it was that I ever dared to speak to her of
love, but I suppose I obeyed the voice of my fate. The hour came,
and I spoke. Valérie threw herself into my arms. There was
no attempt at disguise or concealment. In that faint, sweet voice,
which always sounded to my ear like music out of grave-yards,
she whispered, as she laid her soft lips to my cheek, “Paul, I
love you! — I am yours now and forever.” And never, surely,
were vows of love breathed by truer lips. Valérie was mine.
We talked often of that world of spirits lying above us and
around us — of the power of the immortal, and the strength of
the human will. “There is no such thing as death,” said Valérie,
one day. “What men call so, is but the change, when the tired,
worn-out body needs rest, and the soul seeks another habitation.
We die when our souls will; and I shall only die when you are
by my side, for I will give you a double might. My soul shall
enter your body, and dwell with yours. No matter how many
leagues of land lie between us, — I will summon you to my side,
and my soul shall not go forth until it enter the tabernacle of
yours.”
Months passed on, and we were parted. Valérie returned to
the castle of her fathers, and I entered the lists at the great
tournament of life. “Valérie,” I had said, “when years have
passed, and I have won gold and fame, I will seek you in the
far-off castle, and you shall be my wife.”
“Yes, Paul; but this frail body may get weary sooner than
that; and then I shall summon you to my side, and you shall
bear away my soul to help you onward. — Will you come?”
I bound myself by a solemn oath, on the holy Evangels, and
we parted, — Valérie stretching toward me ever and forever her
pale hands, and turning on mine her great eyes, streaming with
tears.
I had gone forth into the world, and fought manfully against
the spectral knight, in his death-black armor, whom men call Fate.
I had wrested many things from his iron fingers; and before every
encounter I had said, “I will win this, and this; and, bearing its
price in my hand, I will go to Valérie;” and every time my soul
had been unsatisfied, and I had waited till still another good
gift should be mine, ere I started on my journey.
But at last, in the solemn winter-midnight, the summons came.
In the solemn winter-midnight, the pale hands supplicated me,
the great eyes melted me with their tears, the wailing voice pleaded,
“Come to me, come to me!” and I went forth on my way.
After many days, I came to a green path, which led up
through a thicket of roses to a stately castle; and again I heard
the voice, coming from a turret in the left wing of the building.
The castle was of dark-gray stone. It had towers and bastions,
“With its battlements high in the hush of the air, and the turrets
thereon.”
Under its windows lay sleeping a fair lake, very calm and
tranquil. On its marge grew strange, flame-colored flowers,
shaped like living things; and over them fluttered gorgeous insects,
red, green, and blue. I drew near to the brink, and gazed
downward; and the reflection of my own face seemed to come
from very far off, and I looked pale and wan, as I had seen the
faces of the dead. And then once more, from the lofty turret,
fell the sound of that wailing voice.
I opened the ponderous castle-door, which yielded readily to
my touch, and passed onward through a long suite of rooms.
They were furnished with a cold, funereal magnificence. I saw
no one. There was nothing to give evidence of life. The carpets
on the floor were rich and dark; the hangings were of heavy
crimson; and the furniture of solid mahogany, quaintly carved
in curious devices, the forms of griffins and monsters. The
statues were of persons already dead, cold and sepulchral in the
cerements of the grave; the paintings were livid and ghastly,
as of human beings transfixed in mortal agony. The table in the
centre of the long hall seemed like a hearse; and on it stood
a vase, in the form of a death's head, the face upturned and the
wide-open mouth filled with a bouquet of the same flame-colored
flowers which grew upon the margin of the lake. I had time
for only a passing glance at all these things, as I was hurried onward,
and ever onward, by that beseeching, resistless voice. At
last I came to a narrow, winding staircase, up which I climbed,
and before me was a heavy, oaken-panelled door, slightly ajar.
I pushed it open, and entered a room which seemed a chamber
of mystery. It was hung with thick folds of sable velvet. It
had no windows, but from a dome of colored glass fell rays of
over the black drapery. Directly beneath, and in the
full radiance of white light pouring from its very centre, where
all the colors of the rainbow were concentrated to one focus, stood
a lofty bedstead of carved ebony. It formed the support to a
couch of crimson velvet, and here reposed a female figure. The
long hair, black as night, floated over the white pillows; the great,
fathomless eyes were wide open, with their tides of light coming
and going. The pale hands were outstretched, and the low voice
hushed its unquiet wailing at last, and only whispered, “Paul,
you have come to me! — life of my life, I am at rest!” The
weary leagues of torrid desert, the rushing streams, and the
heaven-crowned mountains, were crossed at last! — Valérie was
in my arms!
I had climbed upon the tessellated couch, and once more Valerie's
arms were around my neck, her head on my bosom, and I
held there in my embrace that only one, of all earth's daughters,
to whose voice the pulses of my soul could ever, in all eternity,
keep time. I held her there for hours. Neither of us spoke,
until the sunlight had ceased to pour downward through the
stained-glass dome, and the room was only lighted by the ever-burning
wax tapers, standing on the black tables, in the
corners.
“Paul!” said Valérie, at length, looking upward; “Paul, do
you see that star? Is it Mars or Venus?”
“Mars, my beloved!”
“Yes, Paul, I thought so. It is the star of strength, and
when it sets, this poor body will be worn out, and I must leave
it. I have been on a weary journey, my beloved! Many days
I have lived many years, Paul, since our last meeting — many
more than could be counted in earthly records. Do you not know,
beloved, the old Arabian secret of the fast life? Do you not
know that every human soul, in the first hour of its incarnation,
has a weird appointed it, according to its strength; and it may
do this task quickly, and pass to another sphere of action, or it
may linger slothfully in the body, like the toad who slept a
thousand years in the ruins of Thebes? I have wrought my
work quickly, Paul; and I have sent for you, because, when the
star of strength shall set, my soul, departing from the flesh, shall
dwell with yours. Lift me up, my beloved, and lay my head
just where I can hear your heart beat beneath it. That is it,
strong, true heart; now listen, and, while I still may speak, you
shall hear the secrets of the stars.”
And, holding her there, I listened. God of the Hebrews, is
there forgiveness for the idol worshipper, who dies holding his
idol to his breast, with his cold lips pressed to the shrine? I
cannot answer. In that hour Valérie told me strange secrets of
nature, wizard-spells that I dare not whisper over to myself at
midnight. Spoken here, they would raise the gray stones from
the roof, rive the madman's fetters, and lay chapel and tower in
ruins. And, between them all, Valérie interrupted herself with
oaths, and vows, and passionate cries of love, that on other lips
than hers would have been blasphemy; and, whispered there,
with her lips against my cheek, they seemed to scorch me, like
the wind blowing upward from the valley where flows the bottomless
river of Phlegethon. What wonder that love so uttered
is unblest? Love which raises before the Saviour, and his cross,
tresses which o'ersweep a mortal bosom?
It was morning ere the star of strength sank in the west.
Valérie had lain for some time silently watching it, and when
it disappeared she raised her head in momentary strength.
She pressed her lips fervently to mine, and then the fire passed
from her eyes, the graceful head fell heavily back upon my
arm, the sweet mouth closed, the long lashes drooped downward,
and the unbound tresses floated over my bosom like a
pall. Valérie was what men called dead; but I knew my
beloved was living still, free and happy, now that her task of
life was wrought. I put her gently from me, and smoothed the
pillows for her unconscious head.
All that day I watched her. I sat motionless by her side,
while the features grew more and more rigid, looking out from
their frame of death-black hair. That night, at midnight, a
change came. All day had my eyes been wide open, — fixed
upon her face, — but, while the bell was chiming twelve, I felt
an unseen hand pass before them, and they were sealed. Then,
all around me, I felt a buzzing, swarming life. The air was full
of life. It was above me, beneath me, around me, — life that
thrilled the blood in all my veins, and quickened all my pulses,
and yet kept me silent and motionless. And then there was a
shock which took away my breath. The castle shook to its
foundations. The calm lake under the windows burst its bounds,
and hurried surging toward some unseen sea. The tapers
flared upwards in the corners, and I could feel the room flooded
with a strange light. A moment, and all was still. The
soul had entered my body. Over the corpse on the
carved ebony bedstead had passed a change too ghastly to
name. It was my beloved no longer. Valérie was in my
heart, and the dead body there was no longer aught but the
sister of the worms.
We left the castle, I and the soul of Valérie, and went forth
among men. I believe they feared us; they could not comprehend
the strange might of my two-souled existence. They did
not know that when I laid my hand in kindness on an old
friend's shoulder, it was not my will, but that strange, passionate
soul of Valérie, in its wild strength, which flew at his throat
and throttled him. They bound me with fetters, and put me in
this strong fortress; and they think they have me safe. They
would start up from their slumbers and tremble, did they but
know that I am free still, — that I stay here only because it is
my fate to suffer, and that when the hour is come I shall go
forth again, I and the soul of Valérie, to dwell in the far-distant
castle, whose western turrets rise up out of the still lake, with
the flame-colored flowers on its margin.
They tell me I am mad! They told me it was not a castle
where I found Valérie, but a stately tomb. That the furniture
I saw was grave-stones, and the table with its death's-head was
a hearse; and that there I found my Valérie dead, in the white
garments of the grave. That I called wildly on her name, and
watched there by her side, with wide-opened eyes, until at last
sleep came at midnight, and I woke up raving. But I remembered
once more the voice which summoned me; the weary
and stained-glass dome. Then knew I that I was not mad. I
speak the words of truth and soberness. Hush your murmurs,
heart of mine! the weird is almost over. Soon shall we go to
rest, I and the soul of Valérie, my beloved!
| This, that and the other | |