The Macabre Megapack. Lafcadio Hearn

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СКАЧАТЬ I answered in the affirmative.

      “‘Remember, then, Chevalier Graham,’ replied she, ‘that I am not answerable for what I shall find. Am I to tell you all the truth?’

      “‘All—every word.’

      “‘Once again I warn you—but I see it is thrown away. Here, then’—and I drew a card from her proffered handful. After some unintelligible ceremony, she spread them before her. For an instant she looked intensely serious—then, as if she were resolved to carry off the matter as a pleasantry—‘Good and evil, as usual,’ she said. “I am no prophetess to foretell unmingled fairy luck—what do you think of an heiress for a wife—if you are to die by her hand?’

      “I half started up from my seat.

      “‘Now you look as much shocked,’ said she, ‘as if I were indeed an oracle. Nay, positively not a word more’—and as she spoke she fixed her eyes very pointedly on a remarkably handsome ruby ring which I wore.

      “‘I have been told,’ said I, attempting to catch her tone, ‘that the only way to confirm the good and undo the evil is to bind the Sybil in some charm. May it please you to wear this ring for me for seven years and a day, and then I shall hope to be safe—it is a talisman.’

      “She took it carelessly, as a matter of course, and, placing it upon her finger, ‘Come,’ said she, ‘we will join the company.’

      * * * *

      “Two years afterwards I was married to the most beautiful woman in Italy, after a week’s acquaintance. I met her in Venice; and was completely dazzled by the fascinations, whether of personal beauty, or of the grace, wit, and elegance of her manners. She seemed, like myself, totally unconnected; but I asked no questions. I wore her chains; I laid myself at her feet, and was accepted. Known only as a passing stranger, I escaped all unmeaning congratulations; and, careless of the envy of unsuccessful rivals, I carried off my beautiful wife in triumph. I married her, literally, from the fancy of a moment. Nor did I discover, till some weeks after we were united, that I had fulfilled the first prediction, and that my wife was heiress to great wealth as well as the possessor of great beauty. ‘I have kept this a secret,’ said she, ‘because I was resolved never to be wooed and won for my money.’

      “This was plausible, but not true. On becoming gradually acquainted with Clementine’s history, I found that she had in truth had few, if any, honorable suitors; and I was curious to discover what circumstances could have enabled me to distance all thousand of inamorati of Italy. Then she had accepted my devotions so readily, so eagerly! But my researches were in vain. There was a mystery about her not to be penetrated. I soon found that we were to be totally separate as far as the interests of the heart were concerned. What my wife’s secret was I had not the remotest idea; but her love—I should have said her liking—for me waned daily. And erelong I felt a strange and indescribable distrust creeping over me, a sense that I was tied to one who might be said to have another existence, independent of aught that I knew. I foresaw that this state of things could not last, and went on, blindly, madly, to my own undoing.

      “One evening, when we were sitting together, ‘It is strange, my Clementina,’ said I, ‘that I do not yet know the name of your mother.’ She had changed hers, I had been given to understand, in order to possess some property bequeathed to her upon that condition.

      “‘Do you think so?’ she replied carelessly—and then, half rising from her couch and casting a piercing look upon me—‘It is odd, too, that I forget the name of yours.’

      “I was dumb, and changed the conversation. A few evenings after this, however, in passing through her dressing-room, when my wife had gone to a ball, I chanced to find her jewel-casket open. At the top of many ornaments lay a miniature. Good heaven!—and I recognized the original at once—the never-to-be-forgotten eye of pride, the stately brow, the rich, dark hair—and, to confirm my assurance, there were these words traced on the back—‘Clementine de Villerac’s last gift to her daughter’—and underneath, in a hand which I knew to be my wife’s—‘My mother died when I was seventeen’—so that I had married the daughter, the heiress, of that mysterious Sybil; while it was next to a certainty that others, knowing from whom she was descended, had been deterred from approaching her.

      “I shut up my knowledge in my breast—but thenceforth my peace of mind was gone forever. Upon my gloomy and irritable temperament the possession of such a secret wrought me increasing agony. I struggled with the presentiments which it engendered: I tried reason—I tried religion, society, solitude, change of place, study—all would not do. And what was remarkable, during four years of conflict such as this, my wife never seemed to advert to what would have grieved and surprised any other woman. So long as she received her accustomed tribute of admiration, and we lived with the semblance of tolerable concord, she was content. I suppose that the privileges which a married woman enjoys were what she sought in accepting my hand, and, satisfied in the possession of these, she concerned herself no further.

      “Each year widened this mutual estrangement of feeling. As Clementina’s beauty waned—and it waned early—she seemed more covetous of homage, and to allow herself greater latitude of conduct than formerly, while the mantle of my spirit grew darker and darker day by day. The second part of my mother-in-law’s prediction arose unceasingly to my recollection. We came to England; and here I perceived, with a sort of gloomy apathy, that Clementina’s deviations from a correct demeanor became daily wider—that in fact she allowed the attentions of other men in an unsuitable degree. My own father was dead, having, on his death, left me a fortune equivalent to my former yearly income. I was still young, had unbroken health—and yet God knows how often I have stood at a window of our sumptuous house and envied the most miserable beggar, old, poverty-stricken, and diseased, that crawled past for his daily alms. I had lost what little relish I ever had for the common pleasures of life. Gaming was to me no excitement, music only a source of pain, and the mere animal enjoyment of bodily exercises a weariness. I resembled one of those unhappy beings of whom one has to read in the old records of superstition, who are bound by spells that they have no power to break, and whose lives are as a long and weary dream of dull misery.

      “It was about this time, now thirty years ago, that the devotion of a certain Lord Mordown to my wife became so evident that I resolved to arouse myself while there was yet time. I remonstrated with her kindly, yet spiritedly; and she as usual made no answer. On the evening of the day when I mentioned this hateful subject to her, she repaired alone to a masquerade, where she met the nobleman in question. I learned in the course of the evening, no matter how, that it was necessary that I should take speedy measures in my own defense, if at all; and, revolving many plans in my mind, I sat, in an unwonted tumult of feeling, awaiting her return.

      “She came home much earlier than usual. I ran to meet her, and handed her out of her carriage. I remarked an unusual paleness on her lip, an unusual tremor of hand. ‘I am very ill,’ she said, almost throwing herself into my arms. I led her upstairs in silence. She called her maid to undress her as speedily as she could. I suppose that the seeds of some malignant disease had been lying dormant in her constitution, and that the excitement and the heat of entertainment had suddenly riped them, for in another hour she was in a raging fever. I dismissed her attendants, resolving to watch her myself. She grew worse; and about two in the morning she was seized with violent delirium, and cried out for water.

      “It was the work of some demon that the prediction never occurred to me so strongly as at that moment. Will you not turn me out from your shelter? I say that the horrid idea of contradicting my destiny possessed me—so that I sat still, and called for no help. Every servant slept in a different part of the house. I tell you I sat still, listening to her ravings, with unmoved ear and cool calculating brow. ‘It will be daylight soon,’ I said to myself, ‘and the servants will be up, and will hear’—and СКАЧАТЬ