“This is magnificent!” cries Mrs. Challoner, who, with her family, had travelled a great deal, and was quite accustomed to hurricanes and other inconveniences caused by the unaccommodating behaviour of the elements. “I don’t think I ever saw anything like it, John dear, even that storm we saw at Chamounix was not any better than this.”
“Well,” returned her husband meditatively, “you see we had the snow mountains there, and the effect was pretty lively. Then there were the echoes — those cavernous echoes were grand! What was that passage in Job, Effie, that I used to say they reminded me of?”
“‘The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His reproof ... The thunder of His power, who can understand?’” replied Effie Challoner reverently.
“That’s it!” he replied. “I opine that Job was pretty correct in his ideas — don’t you, reverend sir?” turning to Father Paul.
The priest nodded, and held up his finger warningly.
“That lady — Mrs. Everard — is going to sing or play, I think,” he observed. “Shall we not keep silence?”
I looked towards Amy in some surprise. I knew she sang very prettily, but I had thought she was rendered too nervous by the storm to do aught but sit quiet in her chair. However, there she was at the piano, and in another moment her fresh, sweet mezzo-soprano rang softly through the room in Tosti’s plaintive song, “Good-bye!” We listened, but none of us moved from the open window where we still inhaled what air there was, and watched the lowering sky.
“Hush! a voice from the far-away,
‘Listen and learn,’ it seems to say;
‘All the to-morrows shall be as to-day,’”
sang Amy with pathetic sweetness. Zara suddenly moved, as if oppressed, from her position among us as we stood clustered together, and stepped out through the French window into the outside balcony, her head uncovered to the night.
“You will catch cold!” Mrs. Challoner and I both called to her simultaneously. She shook her head, smiling back at us; and folding her arms lightly on the stone balustrade, leaned there and looked up at the clouds.
“The link must break, and the lamp must die;
Good-bye to Hope! Good-bye — good-bye!”
Amy’s voice was a peculiarly thrilling one, and on this occasion sounded with more than its usual tenderness. What with her singing and the invisible presence of the storm, an utter silence possessed us — not one of us cared to move.
Heliobas once stepped to his sister’s side in the open balcony, and said something, as I thought, to warn her against taking cold; but it was a very brief whisper, and he almost immediately returned to his place amongst us. Zara looked very lovely out there; the light coming from the interior of the room glistened softly on the sheen of her satin dress and its ornaments of pearls; and the electric stone on her bosom shone faintly, like a star on a rainy evening. Her beautiful face, turned upwards to the angry sky, was half in light and half in shade; a smile parted her lips, and her eyes were bright with a look of interest and expectancy. Another sudden glare, and the clouds were again broken asunder; but this time in a jagged and hasty manner, as though a naked sword had been thrust through them and immediately withdrawn.
“That was a nasty flash,” said Colonel Everard, with an observant glance at the lovely Juliet-like figure on the balcony. “Mademoiselle, had you not better come in?”
“When it begins to rain I will come in,” she said, without changing her posture. “I hear the singing so well out here. Besides, I love the storm.”
A tumultuous crash of thunder, tremendous for its uproar and the length of time it was prolonged, made us look at each other again with anxious faces.
“What are we waiting for? Oh, my heart!
Kiss me straight on the brows and part!
Again! again, my heart, my heart!
What are we waiting for, you and I?
A pleading look — a stifled cry!
Good-bye for ever—”
Horror! what was that? A lithe swift serpent of fire twisting venomously through the dark heavens! Zara raised her arms, looked up, smiled, and fell — senseless! With such appalling suddenness that we had scarcely recovered from the blinding terror of that forked lightning-flash, when we saw her lying prone before us on the balcony where one instant before she had stood erect and smiling! With exclamations of alarm and distress we lifted and bore her within the room and laid her tenderly down upon the nearest sofa. At that moment a deafening, terrific thunder-clap — one only — as if a huge bombshell had burst in the air, shook the ground under our feet; and then with a swish and swirl of long pent-up and suddenly-released wrath, down came the rain.
Amy’s voice died away in a last “Good-bye!” and she rushed from the piano, with pale face and trembling lips, gasping out:
“What has happened? What is the matter?”
“She has been stunned by a lightning-flash,” I said, trying to speak calmly, while I loosened Zara’s dress and sprinkled her forehead with eau-de-Cologne from a scent-bottle Mrs. Challoner had handed to me. “She will recover in a few minutes.”
But my limbs trembled under me, and tears, in spite of myself, forced their way into my eyes.
Heliobas meanwhile — his countenance white and set as a marble mask — shut the window fiercely, pulled down the blind, and drew the heavy silken curtains close. He then approached his sister’s senseless form, and, taking her wrist tenderly, felt for her pulse. We looked on in the deepest anxiety. The Challoner girls shivered with terror, and began to cry. Mrs. Everard, with more self-possession, dipped a handkerchief in cold water and laid it on Zara’s temples; but no faint sigh parted the set yet smiling lips — no sign of life was visible. All this while the rain swept down in gusty torrents and rattled furiously against the window-panes; while the wind, no longer a moan, had risen into a shriek, as of baffled yet vindictive anger. At last Heliobas spoke.
“I should be glad of other medical skill than my own,” he said, in low and stifled accents. “This may be a long fainting-fit.”
Mr. Challoner at once proffered his services.
“I’ll go for you anywhere you like,” he said cheerily; “and I think my wife and daughters had better come with me. Our carriage is sure to be in waiting. It will be necessary for the lady to have perfect quiet when she recovers, and visitors are best away. You need not be alarmed, I am sure. By her colour it is evident she is only in a swoon. What doctor shall I send?”
Heliobas named one Dr. Morini, 10, Avenue de l’Alma.
“Right! He shall be here straight. Come, wife — come, girls! Mrs. Everard, we’ll send back our carriage for you and the Colonel. Good-night! We’ll call to-morrow and inquire after mademoiselle.”
Heliobas gratefully pressed his hand as he withdrew, and his wife and daughters, with whispered farewells, followed him. We who were left behind all remained near Zara, doing everything we could think of to restore animation to that senseless form.
Some of the servants, too, hearing what had happened, gathered in a little cluster at the drawing-room door, looking with pale and alarmed faces at the death-like figure of their beautiful mistress. Half an hour or more must have passed in this manner; within the room there was a dreadful silence — but outside the rain poured down in torrents, and the savage wind howled and tore at the windows like a besieging army. Suddenly Amy Everard, who had been quietly and skilfully assisting me in rubbing Zara’s hands and bathing her forehead, grew faint, staggered, and would have fallen had not her husband caught her on his arm.
“I am frightened,” she gasped. “I cannot bear it — she looks so still, and she is growing — rigid, like a corpse! Oh, if she should be dead!” And she hid her face on her husband’s breast.
At that moment we heard the grating of wheels on the gravel outside; it was the Challoners’ carriage returned. The coachman, after depositing his master and family at the Grand Hotel, had driven rapidly back in the teeth of the stinging sleet and rain to bring the message that
Dr. Morini would be with us as soon as possible.
“Then,” whispered Colonel Everard gently to me, “I’ll take Amy home. She is thoroughly upset, and it’s no use having her going off into hysterics. I’ll call with Challoner to-morrow;” and with a kindly parting nod of encouragement to us all, he slipped softly out of the room, half leading, half carrying his trembling wife; and in a couple of minutes we heard the carriage again drive away.
Left alone at last with Heliobas and Father Paul, I, kneeling at the side of my darling Zara, looked into their faces for comfort, but found none. The dry-eyed despair on the countenance of Heliobas pierced me to the heart; the pitying, solemn expression of the venerable priest touched me as with icy cold. The lovely, marble-like whiteness and stillness of the figure before me filled me with a vague terror. Making a strong effort to control my voice, I called, in a low, clear tone:
“Zara! Zara!”
No sign — not the faintest flicker of an eyelash! Only the sound of the falling rain and the moaning wind — the thunder had long ago ceased. Suddenly a something attracted my gaze, which first surprised and then horrified me. The jewel — the electric stone on Zara’s bosom no longer shone! It was like a piece of dull unpolished pebble. Grasping at the meaning of this, with overwhelming instinctive rapidity, I sprang up and caught the arm of Heliobas.
“You — you!” I whispered hurriedly. “YOU can restore her! Do as you did with Prince Ivan; you can — you must! That stone she wears — the light has gone out of it. If that means — and I am sure it does — that life has for a little while gone out of HER, YOU can bring it back. Quick — Quick! You have the power!”
He looked at me with burning grief-haunted eyes; and a sigh that was almost a groan escaped his lips.
“I have NO power,” he said. “Not over her. I told you she was dominated by a higher force than mine. What can I do? Nothing — worse than nothing — I am utterly helpless.”
I stared at him in a kind of desperate horror.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said slowly, “that she is dead — really dead?”
He was about to answer, when one of the watching servants announced in a low tone: “Dr. Morini.”
The new-comer was a wiry, keen-eyed little Italian; his movements were quick, decisive, and all to the point of action. The first thing he did was to scatter the little group of servants right and left, and send them about their business. The next, to close the doors of the room against all intrusion. He then came straight up to Heliobas, and pressing his hand in a friendly manner, said briefly:
“How and when did this happen?”
Heliobas told him in as few words as possible. Dr. Morini then bent over Zara’s lifeless form, and examined her features attentively. He laid his car against her heart and listened. Finally, he caught sight of the round, lustreless pebble hanging at her neck suspended by its strings of pearls. Very gently he moved this aside; looked, and beckoned us to come and look also. Exactly on the spot where the electric stone had rested, a small circular mark, like a black bruise, tainted the fair soft skin — a mark no larger than a small finger-ring.
“Death by electricity,” said Dr. Morini quietly. “Must have been instantaneous. The lightning-flash, or downward electric current, lodged itself here, where this mark is, and passed directly through the heart. Perfectly painless, but of course fatal. She has been dead some time.”
And, replacing the stone ornament in its former position, he stepped back with a suggestive glance at Father Paul. I listened and saw — but I was in a state of stupefaction. Dead? My beautiful, gay, strong Zara DEAD? Impossible! I knelt beside her; I called her again and again by every endearing and tender name I could think of; I kissed her sweet lips. Oh, they were cold as ice, and chilled my blood! As one in a dream, I saw Heliobas advance; he kissed her forehead and mouth; he reverently unclasped the pearls from about her throat, and with them took off the electric stone. Then Father Paul stepped slowly forward, and in place of that once brilliant gem, now so dim and destitute of fire, he laid a crucifix upon the fair and gentle breast, motionless for ever.
At sight of this sacred symbol, some tense cord seemed to snap in my brain, and I cried out wildly:
“Oh, no, no! Not that! That is for the dead; Zara is not dead! It is all a mistake — a mistake! She will be quite well presently; and she will smile and tell you how foolish you were to think her dead! Dead? She cannot be dead; it is impossible — quite impossible!” And I broke into a passion of sobs and tears.
Very gently and kindly Dr. Morini drew me away, and by dint of friendly persuasion, in which there was also a good deal of firm determination, led me into the hall, where he made me swallow a glass of wine. As I could not control my sobs, he spoke with some sternness:
“Mademoiselle, you can do no good by giving way in this manner. Death is a very beautiful and solemn thing, and it is irreverent to show unseemly passion in such a great Presence. You loved your friend — let it be a comfort to you that she died painlessly. Control yourself, in order to assist in rendering her the last few gentle services necessary; and try to console the desolate brother, who looks in real need of encouragement.”
These last words roused me. I forced back my tears, and dried my eyes.
“I will, Dr. Morini,” I said, in a trembling voice. “I am ashamed to be so weak. I know what I ought to do, and I will do it. You may trust me.”
He looked at me approvingly.
“That is well,” he said briefly. “And now, as I am of no use here, I will say good-night. Remember, excessive grief is mere selfishness; resignation is heroism.”
He was gone. I nerved myself to the task I had before me, and within an hour the fair casket of what had been Zara lay on an open bier in the little chapel, lights burning round it, and flowers strewn above it in mournful profusion.
We left her body arrayed in its white satin garb; the cluster of orange-blossoms she had gathered still bloomed upon the cold breast, where the crucifix lay; but in the tresses of the long dark hair I wove a wreath of lilies instead of the pearls we had undone.
And now I knelt beside the bier absorbed in thought. Some of the weeping servants had assembled, and knelt about in little groups. The tall candles on the altar were lit, and Father Paul, clad in mourning priestly vestments, prayed there in silence. The storm of rain and wind still raged without, and the windows of the chapel shook and rattled with the violence of the tempest.
A distant clock struck ONE! with a deep clang that echoed throughout the house. I shuddered. So short a time had elapsed since Zara had been alive and well; now, I could not bear to think that she was gone from me for ever. For ever, did I say? No, not for ever — not so long as love exists — love that shall bring us together again in that far-off Sphere where —
Hush! what was that? The sound of the organ? I looked around me in startled wonderment. There was no one seated at the instrument; it was shut close. The lights on the altar and round the bier burnt steadily; the motionless figure of the priest before the tabernacle; the praying servants of the household — all was unchanged. But certainly a flood of music rolled grandly on the ear — music that drowned for a moment the howling noise of the battering wind. I rose softly, and touched one of the kneeling domestics on the shoulder.
“Did you hear the organ?” I said.
The woman looked up at me with tearful, alarmed eyes.
“No, mademoiselle.”
I paused, listening. The music grew louder and louder, and surged round me in waves of melody. Evidently no one in the chapel heard it but myself. I looked about for Heliobas, but he had not entered. He was most probably in his study, whither he had retired to grieve in secret when we had borne Zara’s body to its present couch of dreamless sleep.
These sounds were meant for me alone, then? I waited, and the music gradually died away; and as I resumed my kneeling position by the bier all was again silence, save for the unabated raging of the storm.
A strange calmness now fel
l on my spirits. Some invisible hand seemed to hold me still and tearless. Zara was dead. I realized it now. I began to consider that she must have known her fate beforehand. This was what she had meant when she said she was going on a journey. The more I thought of this the quieter I became, and I hid my face in my hands and prayed earnestly.
A touch roused me — an imperative, burning touch. An airy brightness, like a light cloud with sunshine falling through it, hovered above Zara’s bier! I gazed breathlessly; I could not move my lips to utter a sound. A face looked at me — a face angelically beautiful! It smiled. I stretched out my hands; I struggled for speech, and managed to whisper:
“Zara, Zara! you have come back!”
Her voice, so sweetly familiar, answered me: “To life? Ah, never, never again! I am too happy to return. But save him — save my brother! Go to him; he is in danger; to you is given the rescue. Save him; and for me rejoice, and grieve no more!”
The face vanished, the brightness faded, and I sprang up from my knees in haste. For one instant I looked at the beautiful dead body of the friend I loved, with its set mouth and placid features, and then I smiled. This was not Zara — SHE was alive and happy; this fair clay was but clay doomed to perish, but SHE was imperishable.
“Save him — save my brother!” These words rang in my ears. I hesitated no longer — I determined to seek Heliobas at once. Swiftly and noiselessly I slipped out of the chapel. As the door swung behind me I heard a sound that first made me stop in sudden alarm, and then hurry on with increased eagerness. There was no mistaking it — it was the clash of steel!
CHAPTER XVI.
A STRUGGLE FOR THE MASTERY.
I rushed to the study-door, tore aside the velvet hangings, and faced Heliobas and Prince Ivan Petroffsky. They held drawn weapons, which they lowered at my sudden entrance, and paused irresolutely.
“What are you doing?” I cried, addressing myself to Heliobas. “With the dead body of your sister in the house you can fight! You, too!” and I looked reproachfully at Prince Ivan; “you also can desecrate the sanctity of death, and yet — you LOVED her!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 25