I will only add, that after some weeks of painful debility, I was again restored to health—having tasted the full bitterness of death.
THE BRIDE OF LINDORF
Letitia E. Landon
MIDNIGHT is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves. Vain hopes, vainer fears, feverish pleasure, passionate sorrow, crime, despair, and death—these make up the eternal records of Time’s dark chronicle. But this hurried life has its pauses—once in the twenty-four come a few hours of rest and silence.
Vienna was now still as the grave, whose darkness hung over a few lamps swung dimly to and fro, and a few dark shadows—which the crimes of men make needful. The weary watchers of the night paced with slow and noiseless steps the gloomy streets. God knows that many of those hushed and darkened houses might have many a scene of waking care within—many a pillow might be but a place of unrest for the aching head—still the outward seeming of all was repose.
One house, and one only, obeyed not the general law. It was a magnificent hotel in the largest square, and was obviously the scene of a splendid fête. Light and music streamed from the windows, the courtyard was filled with equipages, and a noisy crowd—part servants, part spectators—thronged the gates. Within, all was pomp and gaiety. The Countess von Hermanstadt was unrivalled in her fêtes. She knew how to give them—a knowledge very few possess. The generality labour under the delusion, that when they have lighted and filled their rooms, they have done their all. They never were more in error. Lighting is much—crowding is much also—but there lacks ‘something more exquisite still.’* This something the countess possessed in its perfection. Any can assemble a crowd, but few can make it mingle. But Madame von Hermanstadt had a skill which a diplomatist might have studied. She saw—she heard everything; she knew who would and who would not understand each other; she caught at a glance the best position for one lady’s velvets, and for the diamonds of another; she never interrupted those who were engaged—she never neglected those who were not; she took care that great people should be amused, and little people astonished. Moreover, she had an object in whatever she did—hence the incentive of interest was added to the pride of art.
The ball of to-night was given in honour of Pauline von Lindorf, her niece, who had just left the convent of St Therese;—her education, as it is called, completed—that education which is but begun. How many cares—how much sorrow will it take to give the stern and bitter education of actual life! Pauline had just finished a waltz, having pleaded fatigue sooner than might have been expected from a foot so light—a form so fairy-like. She wore a robe of white satin, trimmed with swansdown; large pearls looped back the folds, and a band of diamonds scarcely restrained the bright hair that fell over her neck and shoulders in a thousand natural ringlets. It was of that rare rich golden so seldom seen—almost transparent, like rain with the sunbeams shining through it. At the first glance, that slight and graceful girl—with the rose on her cheek a little flushed by exercise, her glittering curls falling round her, golden as those of Hope—might have seemed the very ideal of youth and pleasure;—so much for the first glance, and how few go beyond! But whoso had looked closer would have seen that the soft red on the cheek was feverish; and there was that tremulous motion of the lip which bespeaks a heart ill at ease. At first she was looking down, and the long shadow of the curled eyelash rested on the rounded cheek; but there was something in the expression of the eyes, when raised, that caught even the most careless passer-by. They were large—unusually large—and of that violet blue which so rarely outlasts the age of childhood, while they wore that wild and melancholy look whose shadows have a character of fate;—they are omens of the heart.
It was growing late, and a furtive gaze of the young baroness wandered more and more frequent round the rooms, and each time sought the ground with a deeper shade of disappointment. The Countess von Hermanstadt observed the look, and her own haughty brow curved with a scarcely perceptible frown. It was smoothed away instantly; and passing with a bland smile through the assembled groups, she left the ball-room.
The upper part of the magnificent house was in darkness, but in one window burned a still and lonely lamp. It lighted a small chamber sufficiently removed from the scene of the festival to be quite undisturbed by its tumult, though a distant sound of music floated in, ever and anon, at the open window. The chamber was panelled with old carved oak, and the arches thus formed were filled with books. Books, too, of all sizes, were piled on the ground, and papers and writing materials covered a table in the middle. There were also some pictures: a sombre landscape of Salvator Rosa*—just a desolate rock, grey and barren, standing out amid old dark trees, where many a branch was bare with the lightning’s fiery visitings. Beneath them stood a single figure—pale, bare-headed, with long black hair that had not yet lost the motion of the wind. He looked what he was—an outlaw; the blood which he had shed, yet warm upon his hand, and his foot yet quivering with its flight for life or death. Near this was a dark, grave portrait by Velasquez: one of those faces whereon time has written the lesson of the prophet king—‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit.’* Others were scattered round, but all more or less of a sombre character, and marking the taste of their possessor. He was a young man of some twenty-two years of age. The richness of part of his costume ill suited the apparently studious recluse; but the task of dressing had been hastily suspended. He had flung a loose robe of sables around him, and leaned back in a large arm-chair, thinking of anything but the festival for which he had begun to prepare. His eye sometimes dwelt on an old history of chivalry, whose silver clasps lay open before him—sometimes on the last sparks of the fire that was dying away on the hearth, but oftener on a copy of a well known Italian picture, the portrait of Beatrice Cenci.*
‘Yes,’ said he, half aloud, ‘a few links bring all life before us: here is adventure—excitement—the toil and the triumph of the body. I wish I had been born in those stirring times—life spent half on horseback, half at the banquet board—when you had but to look round the tournament, fix on the brightest smile, and then win your lady with your sword. Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine—so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny; it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just begun. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins—a brilliant light dances around it—it is bright—it is beautiful—and it is consumed! What remains?—A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blacke
ned ashes! What more will remain of the heart?’
At this moment a burst of sudden flame sprung up from the mouldering embers, and fell with singular effect on the wan and lovely likeness of Beatrice Cenci. ‘Why does that face haunt me?’ exclaimed the youth. ‘Why, when others younger and brighter are near, does it glide between them and me like a shadow? I remember finding it as a child in the old deserted gallery. I loved it then, I know not why—save that it brought to my memory a face I fancy watched my sleep when I was a little child. I recollect a large, dark room—a bed whose gloomy curtains were drawn aside—and some one bent over me and kissed me. I put my arms around her neck, and went to sleep, for I had been afraid. She came every night then; but my memory is faint and confused—I can recall nothing more. How beautiful is that picture, with its clear, colourless cheek—with the imperial brow, and the large black eyes filled with melancholy tenderness! Holy Madonna, what a destiny was hers!—A childhood whose sweetest affections were crushed! I can fancy the little pale trembler crouching beneath her angry father’s fierce eyes; and at last, as if those soft eyes grew desperate gazing on their slain, who shall say what madness of despair led to the fearful crime—avenging one yet more fearful? Why do I keep it here? It makes me sad—too sad!’ And he turned aside, and leant his head upon his hand.
Ernest, for such was the young student’s name, was singularly handsome; but it was the heart and the mind that gave their own nameless charm. The heart sent the flushed crimson to the cheek—the mind lighted up the clear white forehead, around which darkened the blackest hair: that deep black hair whose comparisons are all so gloomy, the poet likens it to midnight—to the shadow of the grave—to the tempest—to the raven’s wing. Brought from the south, our cold climes just serve to dash the passionate temperament which it indicates with the despondency and the reverie of our sad and misty skies. All women would have called him interesting—the woman who loved him would have called him beautiful. Had the word fascinating never been used before, it would have been invented for him. Like all of his susceptible organization, Ernest was very variable: sometimes the life of society, with every second word an epigram; at others, grave and absorbed—no stimulus, no flattery, could rouse him to animation. His intimate, his very few intimate friends, said that nothing could exceed his eloquence in graver converse: carried away by his feelings, how could he help being eloquent? He was made of all nature’s most dangerous ingredients: he thought deeply—he felt acutely; and for such this world has neither resting-place nor contentment.
The door of Ernest’s chamber suddenly opened, and its threshold was crossed by a step that certainly had never crossed it before. Stately and slow, as usual, the Countess von Hermanstadt just raised her robe with an air of utter disdain, as she swept by the heavy folios that lay scattered on the ground.
‘What! not dressed yet, Ernest?—Certainly the Count von Hermanstadt is well employed, sitting there like a moonstruck dreamer. Pray, am I to have the distinguished honour of a poet or a painter, or,’—added she, pointing sneeringly to a volume of planetary signs that lay open at her feet—‘or even an astrologer, as my son?’
Ernest coloured, and rose hastily from his seat. ‘I do so hate,’ said he, ‘those crowds where no one cares for the other; where’—
‘No one,’ interrupted the Countess, ‘can be so great a simpleton as yourself. Who, in a crowd or elsewhere, will care about one whom they never see? What friends will you ever make in this little, miserable room? The Archduke Charles has twice inquired after you. I managed as well as I could; but I really have something else to do to-night than just to make excuses for you.’
‘Ah! my mother, you cannot think how unfitted I am for the mock gaiety of to-night. Let me stay where I am.’
‘Nonsense!—Why, there has been your pretty cousin waiting, till I forbade it, to dance with you. I left her waltzing with Prince Louis.’
‘The less need of me.’
‘Nay, my dear child!’ said his mother, in those caressing tones she well knew how to assume, ‘think what a slight it will be to our guests if you do not appear; and so many old friends of our house among them. I want assistance. Come, Ernest, would you be the only son in Vienna who would refuse his mother the slight favour of appearing at a ball which is given to introduce him to old friends, whom she at least loves and values?’
Ernest rose hastily and silently from his seat. ‘I will be there almost as soon as yourself,’ exclaimed he; and indeed the Countess had scarcely resumed her place at the upper end of the room, before she saw her son enter, and noted with delight, hidden under an air of proud humility, his graceful and high-born bearing. ‘He is odd, reserved, and studious,’ thought she; ‘but I shall make something of him yet.’
But one eye, and one ear, was yet quicker than her own. Pauline was the first to see her cousin enter. She hastily turned aside, and began to be very much interested in some Bengal roses that stood beside; but her sigh was as soft, and almost as low, as their own, and her blush was still richer and deeper. Ernest came up and asked her to dance. Her eyes were downcast, and he thought she took his arm coldly; but more than one bystander remarked how different was the animation with which the young Baroness von Lindorf waltzed with her cousin, to that with which she had danced with the handsome Prince Louis.
At length the ball ended, as all balls do—having given some delight, more discontent, and also several colds; but it had answered the Countess’s purpose. All Vienna talked of the approaching marriage of the beautiful heiress with Count von Hermanstadt. Many of her young friends ventured on a little gentle raillery. Pauline blushed, smiled, sighed, and denied the charge, but was believed by none. The time soon came for her return to the Castle of Lindorf; but little of her life had been passed there. She had left it, when quite a child, for the convent, and of late she had spent much time with her aunt. Her father, a silent and reserved man, but doatingly fond of his child, came often to see her; and though Pauline could recollect nothing of the affectionate confidence which so often exists between father and daughter when left alone in the world, yet she was full of gratitude and tenderness. With the quick instinct of a loving heart, she saw that she was the Baron’s first and only object—that her happiness, and even her girlish pleasures, were his constant care. There was something in his unbroken sadness, his habits of seclusion, and his gloomy deportment, that excited her youthful imagination, and gave a depth of anxious devotion to her filial attachment.
The paramount desire of the Baron appeared to be, that she should not find her home dull on returning to it. At his request the Countess von Hermanstadt had collected together a gay young party, and the old castle was for some weeks to be a scene of perpetual festival. Pauline went thither accompanied by her aunt and cousin. She at least found the journey delightful. Ernest, taken away from his books, animated by the fresh air and the rapid travelling, undisturbed by the presence of strangers, and anxious to please, now that he had no fear of either ridicule or coldness, was in high spirits. He drew their attention to every spot haunted by an association, and told its history as those tell who are steeped to the lip in poetry—rich in imagery, abounding in anecdote, he flung around all of which he spoke his own warm and fanciful feeling. Pauline fixed upon him her large blue eyes, where tenderness struggled with delight; while in the interest excited by his various details, she forgot the sweet and inward consciousness that would have fixed her eyes on the ground, or anywhere rather than on her cousin’s face. The Countess was delighted to see everything going on so prosperously, and already began to plan wedding fêtes.
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre Page 22