This relation of Cecilia quickly solved the enigma in Hortensia’s last letter. I also learnt from her that Charles, who was severely but not mortally wounded, had immediately on his recovery, entered into the service of the order of Malta, and soon after died.
I left Gaeta in a pensive, yet happy mood. Hortensia’s misfortune and the loss of her father, excited my compassion, but at the same time gave birth to a bolder hope than I had at any time ventured to conceive. I flattered myself that I might be able to change her determination for a cloister life, and with her heart, perhaps win her hand. I was dizzy with the thought of being able to share the fruits of my labors with Hortensia. This was my only dream the whole way to Leghorn, which I entered one beautiful morning, eight days before the allotted time.
I did not delay a moment in seeking out the Swiss commercial house, to which I was directed. I ran there in my travelling dress, and asked the address of the widow Schwarz, in order that I might learn whether the Countess had yet arrived in Leghorn. A menial servant conducted me to the widow, who lived in an obscure street, and in a very simple, private house. How great was my vexation to learn, that Mrs. Schwarz was gone out, and that I must call in two hours. Every moment of delay was so much taken from my life. I returned again at the appointed hour. An old servant woman opened the door, led me up stairs and announced me to her lady. I was invited to enter a very simply furnished but neat room. Opposite the room door, on a couch, sat a young lady, who did not appear to notice my entrance, or to return my salutation, but covering her face with both hands, endeavoured to conceal her sobs and tears.
At this sight, a feverish shudder ran through me. In the figure of the young lady, in the tone of her sobs, I recognized the form and voice of Hortensia. Without deliberating or assuring myself of the fact, like one intoxicated, I let hat and cane fall, and threw myself at the feet of the weeping one. Oh, God! who can say what I felt? Hortensia’s arms hung round my neck—her lips met mine. The whole past was forgotten—the whole future seemed strewed with flowers. Never was love more beautifully remunerated, or constancy more blissfully rewarded. We both feared, simultaneously, that this moment was merely a dream of felicity. Indeed, on the first day of our meeting, so little was asked or answered, that we separated without knowing more of each other, than that we had met.
On the following day, one may easily believe, that I was ready in good time, to take advantage of the bewitching Hortensia’s invitation to breakfast with her. Her servants consisted of a cook, a house maid, a waiting maid, coachman and footman. All the table service was of the finest porcelain and silver, although no longer with the arms and initials of the old Count. This appearance of a certain opulence, which was quite contrary to my first idea, and went far above the powers of my own fortune, was very humbling to the dreamy plans I had indulged in during my journey from Gaeta to Leghorn. I expected, yes, I even wished to find Hortensia in a more limited situation, in order to have courage to offer my all. Now, I again stood before her, the poor painter.
I did not conceal, in our confidential conversations, what I had heard at Gaeta from Cecilia, and what feelings, what determinations, what hopes had been awakened. I described to her all my destroyed dreams, and hoped that she, perhaps, would give up her cruel design of burying her youth and beauty in the walls of a cloister; that she would choose me for her servant and true friend; that I would lay at her feet all that I had saved, and all that my future industry might gain. I described to her, with the colors of loving hope, the blessedness of a quiet private life, in some retired situation—the simple house, the little garden—near it, the work room of the artist, inspired by her presence. I hesitated—I trembled—it was impossible to proceed. She threw her bright eyes upon me, and a heavenly color flew over and animated her countenance.
“Thus have my fancies revelled,” added I, after some time, “and shall they not be realized?”
Hortensia arose, went to a closet, drew out a little ebony casket, richly studded with silver, and handed it to me, together with the key.
“In order to deliver you this, I requested your presence in Leghorn. It belongs not in part, but in completion of your dream. After the death of my father, my first thought was to fulfil the duties of my gratitude to you. I have never lost sight of you since your flight from Battaglia. A fortunate accident brought into my hands the letter of your servant, written to one of his friends in my service, from Ravenna, giving your travelling plans. Mr. Tufaldini of Naples was persuaded by me, in a secret conference, to take care of you himself, forever. He received a small capital to defray all expenses, and even, if necessary, for your support. I would also, willingly have rewarded him for his trouble, but it was with the greatest reluctance the good man would accept from me the most trifling present. Thus I had the pleasure of receiving every four weeks, news of your health. Tufaldini’s letters were my only comfort after our parting. On the death of my father, I separated myself; as regards fortune, from my family. Our estates must remain in the male line, all the rest I converted into gold. I no longer thought of returning to my native country—my last refuge should be a cloister. Under the pretence of impoverishment, I avoided all the old vicinities of my father, parted with my former domestics, took a private station and name, in order to live more concealed. It was not until I had accomplished all this, that I summoned you, in order to finish the work and redeem the vow which I had made to Heaven. The moment is at hand. You have related to me your beautiful dreams. Perhaps on yourself, more than on any other, now depends their realization.”
She opened the casket and drew out a packet of papers carefully secured and directed in my name; she broke the seal and laid before me a deed prepared by a notary, in which, partly as payment of a debt, partly as accrued interest which belonged to me, and partly as being heir to an inheritance left by the widow Marian Schwarz, an immense sum, in bank notes of different countries, was made over to me.
“This, dear Faust,” continued the Countess, “is your property—your well earned, well deserved property. I have no longer any share in it. A modest income is sufficient for me at present. When I renounce the world and belong to a cloister, you will also be heir to what I possess. If I am of any value to you, prove it by an eternal silence as regards my person, my station, and my true name. Yet more, I desire you to say not a syllable which can indicate refusal or thanks for this your own property. Give me your hand to it.”
I listened to her speech with surprise and pain, laid down the papers with indifference, and replied:
“Do you believe that these bank notes have any value for me? I may neither refuse nor yet be thankful for them. Be not fearful of either. When you go into a cloister, all that remains, the world itself, is superfluous to me. I need nothing. What you give me is dust.
Ah! Hortensia, you once said that it was my soul which animated you; were it still so, you would not pause to follow my example. I would burn these notes. What shall I do with them?—destroy you and your fortune also! Oh! that you were poor and mine! Hortensia, mine!”
She leant tremblingly towards me, clasped one of my hands in both of hers, and said passionately and with tears in her eyes:
“Am I not so, Emanuel?”
“But the cloister? Hortensia!”
“My last refuge—if thou forsakest me!”
Then made we our vows before God. At the altar, by the priestly hand, were they consecrated. We left Leghorn, and sought the charming solitude, in which we now dwell with our children.
THE UNCANNY BAIRN, by Mrs. Alfred (Louisa) Baldwin
A Story of the Second Sight
David Galbraith owned a compact estate in East Lothian which he farmed at a considerable profit. The land had passed from father to son for a couple of hundred years. It had always yielded a good livelihood to the owner, but never had it been so highly cultivated or produced such abundant crops as under David Galbraith’s liberal and skilful management. The oats and potatoes grown on his farm commanded the highest prices in th
e market, and his root crops were superior to any in the district. The large, solidly built, stone house in which so many generations of Galbraiths had lived and died stood in the midst of the property, sheltered by a belt of trees on rising ground from the sweeping east wind, and the laborers’ cottages, equally well constructed to resist the gales that blew across the Firth of Forth, were models of decent comfort. The livestock on the farm was well fed and cared for and the whole property bore evidence to the wealth, thrift, and intelligence of its owner.
And David Galbraith’s wife was well-to-do and thrifty like himself. She, too, was the child of a Lowland landowner and farmer, and had brought her husband no inconsiderable tocher[1] while her industry and housewifely accomplishments might in themselves have served as a marriage portion. She too, like her husband, came of a douce[2] Presbyterian stock, worthy, upright folk, holding by the faith and practice of their forebears; orthodox and thrifty, worshipping as their fathers had done, and hauding[3] the gear as tightly, nothing doubting but that to them was especially assigned not only the good things of this world, but also of that which is to come.
Galbraith did not marry till he was a middle-aged man. But he had long had the cares of a family on his shoulders without its pleasures to lighten the burden. He was the eldest of six orphan sisters and brothers, to whom he had acted the part of a father, and it was not till Colin, the last and youngest, had left Scotland for a sheep run in Australia, with money lent him by his brother, that he felt himself at liberty to marry. But now that his pious duty towards his family was fulfilled, David Galbraith did not hesitate to take to himself a wife in the person of Miss Alison McGilivray, a lady of some five-and-thirty years of age, with large hands and feet, small grey eyes, high cheek bones, and a complexion betokening exposure to a harsh climate. She was well educated and intelligent, and in talking with her servants and poor neighbors, commonly fell into the comfortable Lowland Scotch that her father and mother had taken a pride in speaking.
Only one child was born to David and his wife in the ample home where there was space, maintenance, and welcome for a dozen. Yet this one was a son, and the Galbraiths were not doomed to die out. The boy was christened Alexander, after his two grandfathers, both of whom were Alexanders, so that there was no chance of dispute as to which side of the house should have the naming of the child.
And a poor, wee, frail child he was, apparently inheriting nothing of the strength and vigor of the Galbraiths and McGilivrays, nor did he resemble father or mother in feature. He seemed a little foreigner that had come to stay with them for awhile, and often in his feeble infancy he bade fair to depart and leave his parents childless. The shrewd bracing winds, that were life and health to them, nipped and shrivelled him. He took every ailment that was to be had, and when there was nothing catching in the neighborhood he would originate some illness of his own, severe enough to have shaken the constitution of any but a seasoned weakling like himself. The Lowland farmer would hang over the cradle of his waxen-faced baby, holding his breath for very fear as he looked at the puny thing, and would say, dropping into broad Scotch, as his wont was when strongly moved, “Wha wad ken this for a bairn o’ mine, sae strang and bonny and weel set up as the Galbraiths have aye been?”
But the babe won through the troubles and perils of his sickly infancy, and at six years of age had grown into a delicate slip of a child, with an interesting pair of grey eyes in his pale face, and a bright spark of intellect in his big head. The family doctor, to whose unceasing care Sandie owed his life almost as much as to his mother’s devoted nursing, forbade his parents to attempt anything in the way of systematic education till the boy was eight or nine years of age.
“Canna ye be content to let weel alane,” he would say, “and bide till the bairn’s strang and healthy before ye trouble him to read and write? Gin ye set his brains ableeze wi’ letters and figures, ye’ll just be burnin’ down the house that’s meant to be the habitation of a fine soul; gin ye wad hauld your hands aft it and leave it alane!”
And little Sandie. did very well, though unable to read or write till long after the age at which the children of his father’s laborers could spell out a psalm, and sign their names in a big round hand. But the child had a memory such as must have been commoner in the world before there were books to refer to at every turn than it is now, and his mind was stored with fairy-tales and old Border ballads that his mother and his nurse told or sung to him in the winter evenings. But Mrs. Gaibraith and Effie were careful never to tell him stories of a weird or ghostly nature, for the doctor had impressed upon them before all things that Sandie must never be frightened. “For gin the bairn be frighted he will na’ sleep,” said the astute mistress to the maid, “and ye’ll just hae to sit the lang mirk evenings by his bed, while ye hear the maids daffin’ by candlelicht below, or walking wi’ their laddies; but gin ye never let him hear o’ ghaists and wraiths, he’ll just sleep like a bird wi’ its head under its wing, and whiles ye’ll be able to leave him and hae a crack wi’ your neebors like ony ither body!”
Though mother and nurse, actuated by different but equally strong motives, kept all knowledge of the supernatural from the child, there came a day when his father accused them both of poisoning his mind with stories of witches, warlocks and ghosts, and making an uncanny bairn of the boy.
When Sandie was seven years of age, a lean and overgrown child without his front teeth, and any comeliness he might possess existed only in his mother’s eyes, a strange circumstance happened that greatly perplexed and distressed his parents. One cold afternoon late in October Mrs. Gaibraith told Effie to take a pudding and a can of broth to an old and very poor woman, called Elspeth McFie, who lived in a lone cottage a mile from the farm, and Sandie was to go with her for the sake of the walk. The trees were already stripped by the autumn gales, to which a dead calm succeeded, and a cold fog had crept up from the sea and brooded over the bare fields, settling on the naked boughs in chilly drops of moisture. The careful mother wrapped a plaid round the boy, and bade him run as he went to keep himself warm. Away sped Sandie along the highroad, driving a ball before him, and running after it to send it flying again with a dexterous blow of his stick, till his pale cheeks glowed with exercise, and he overshot his mark, ran past old Elspeth’s cottage, and had to be recalled by Effie.
“Ye maun pit the basket in her hand your ain sel’,” she said, as she led the reluctant child into the dark, close room where the old woman sat shivering by the fire, spreading her skinny hands over the dying embers. But Sandie held back, and neither threatening nor coaxing would induce him to move a step nearer to Elspeth, so that, stigmatizing him as “a dour limb,” Effie was obliged to set the basket on the table herself.
“It’s just a pudding and a few broth that Mistress Galbraith has sent ye, for she’s aye mindfu’ o’ the puir,” she said, as she set out the can and bowl before the old woman. Elspeth looked with a bitter smile at the good things spread before her.
“It’s a’ verra gude sae far as it gaes, but gin I’d been the rich body, and Mistress Galbraith the puir carline, I wad hae sent her a mutchkin o’ something stranger than mutton broth. Does she no warm her ain thrapple wi’ a drap whusky hersel’?”
“For shame, Elspeth! Ye maun just tak’ what’s sent ye and be thankfu’!” said Effie sharply; and turning to Sandie, who stood gazing intently at the old woman, “What ails the bairn that he canna tak’ his eyes aff your face? It’s no your beauty, I’m thinking, Elspeth, that draws him sae.”
The ill-favored old woman cackled to herself, displaying a few yellow tusks, the last survivors of a set of teeth that had once been as white and strong as Effie’s.
“It’s lang since man or bairn looked at auld Elspeth wi’ sic a gaze. What does the bairn see in an auld wife’s face? Ye suld look at the lasses, Sandie, lad,” and Elspeth stretched out her lean arm, caught the boy by the wrist, and drew him towards her. She was a hideous old woman, and in the gathering twilight, when the red glare
of the embers shed a glow on her harsh features, she appeared positively witch-like. Sandie suffered himself to be drawn close to her as one who walks in his sleep, with wide-open eyes void of expression, and then stood opposite her for a moment pale and silent. Before either of the women could speak the child’s voice was heard.
“What for hae ye bawbies on your ’een, Elspeth McFie, and a white claith lappit under your chin?”
Old Elspeth dropped Sandie’s hand and sank back with a groan.
“Effie, Effie, hark till him! The bairn has the second sight, and he sees me stricket for the grave, ay, and ye’ll all see it sune! I feel the mouls upon me a’ready! Tak’ him awa’, tak’ him awa’, he’s an awesome bairn!” and Sandie quietly put on his cap and went out into the cold mist. Effie followed him, and relieved her fright and agitation by speaking sharply to the child.
“For shame of yoursel’, Sandie, to fright an old woman wi’ gruesome words that ye never heard from your mither nor me!”
“But what for suld Elspeth be frighted? There were bawbies on her ’een, and a white claith round her heid, and I just tauld her aboot it; and gin I see the like of it on your face, Effie, I will tell ye!”
“My certie! but ye’ll be brent for a warlock gin ye read folks’ deaths on their faces, and ye’d best haud your clavers!” and Effie said no more, but thought much on her way back to the farm. She was sure that Sandie did not know the meaning of his own words. He had never seen a dead body, and he did not know how a corpse is prepared for the grave, and he certainly had no information on the subject from books, for he could not read. And the appearance he described on old Elspeth’s face did not seem to frighten him. He had gazed at her from the moment in which they entered the cottage till they left it, but with wonder and interest rather than fear. The fright was for Elspeth McFie and herself, and as she watched the child, unconscious of the death-wound he had given, bounding along the road still playing with his ball and stick, Effle shuddered with vague and nameless fears.
The Second Macabre Megapack Page 25