Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (no david read aloud .TXT) 📕

Thus the wraith of Stella spoke to his soul in visions. Presently, with drumming ears and eyes before which strange lights seemed to play, Morris staggered from the place, so weak, indeed, that he could scarcely thrust one foot before the other. Yet his heart was filled with a mad joy, and his brain was drunken with the deep cup of a delight and a knowledge that have seldom been given to man.

On other nights the visions were different. Thus he saw the spirits of men going out and returning, and among them his own slumbering spirit that a vast and shadowy Stella bore in her arms as a mother bears a babe.

He saw also the Vision of Numbers. All the infinite inhabitants of all the infinite worlds passed before him, marching through the ages to some end unknown. Once, too, his mind was opened, and he understood the explanation of Evil and the Reason of Things. He shouted at their glorious simplicity—shouted for joy; but lo! before he rose from his chair they were forgotten.

Other visions there were without count. Also they would mix and fall into new patterns, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. There was no end to them, and each was lovelier, or grander, or fraught with a more sweet entrancement, than the last. And still she who brought them, she who opened his eyes, who caused his ears to hear and his soul to see; she whom he worshipped; his heart’s twin, she who had sworn herself to him on earth, and was there waiting to fulfil the oath to all eternity; the woman who had become a spirit, that spirit that had taken the shape of a woman—there she stood and smiled and changed, and yet was changeless. And oh! what did it matter if his life was draining from him, and oh! to die at those glittering feet, with that perfumed breath stirring in his hair! What did he seek more when Death would be the great immortal waking, when from twilight he passed out to light? What more when in that dawn, awful yet smiling, she should be his and he hers, and they twain would be one, with thought that answered thought, since it was the same thought?

There is much that might be told—enough to fill many pages. It would be easy, for instance, to set out long lists of the entrancing dreams which were the soul speech of the spirit of Stella, and to some extent, to picture them. Also the progress of the possession of Morris might be described and the student of his history shown, step by step, how the consummation that in her life days Stella had feared, overtook him; how “the thing got the mastery of him,” and he became “unfitted for his work on earth!” How, too, his body wasted and his spiritual part developed, till every physical sight and deed became a cause of irritation to his new nature, and at times even a source of active suffering.

Thus an evil odour, the spectacle of pain, the cry of grief, the sight of the carcases of dead animals, to take a few examples out of very many, were agonies to his abnormal, exasperated nerves. Nor did it stop there, since the misfortune which threatened Stella when at length she had succeeded in becoming bodily conscious of the presence of the eidolon of her sister, and “heard discords among the harmonies” of the rich music of her violin, overtook him also.

Thus, for instance, in the scent of the sweetest rose at times Morris would discover something frightful; even the guise of tender childhood ceased to be lovely in his eyes, for now he could see and feel the budding human brute beneath. Worse still, his beautiful companion, Mary, fair and gracious as she was, became almost repulsive to him, so that he shrank from her as in common life some delicate-nurtured man might shrink from a full-bodied, coarse-tongued young fishwife. Even her daily need of food, which was healthy though not excessive, disgusted him to witness,—he who was out of touch with all wholesome appetites of earth, whose distorted nature sought an alien rest and solace.

Of Mary herself, also, it might be narrated how, after first mocking at the thought and next thrusting it away, by degrees she grew to appreciate the reality of the mysterious foreign influence which reigned in her home. It might be told how in that spiritual atmosphere, shedding its sleepy indolence, her own spirit awoke and grew conscious and far-seeing, till impressions and hints which in the old days she would have set aside as idle, became for her pregnant with light and meaning. Then at last her eyes were opened, and understanding much and guessing more she began to watch. The attitude of the Colonel also could be studied, and how he grew first suspicious, then sarcastic, and at last thoroughly alarmed, even to his ultimate evacuation of the Abbey House, detailed at length.

But to the chronicler of these doings and of their unusual issues at any rate, it appears best to resist a natural temptation; to deny the desire to paint such closing scenes in petto. Much more does this certainty hold of their explanation. Enough has been said to enable those in whom the spark of understanding may burn, to discover by its light how much is left unsaid. Enough has been hinted at to teach how much there is still to guess. At least few will deny that some things are best abandoned to the imagination. To attempt to drag the last veil from the face of Truth in any of her thousand shapes is surely a folly predoomed to failure. From the beginning she has been a veiled divinity, and veiled, however thinly, she must and will remain. Also, even were it possible thus to rob her, would not her bared eyes frighten us?

It was late, very late, and there, pale and haggard in the low light of the fire, once again Morris stood pleading with the radiant image which his heart revealed.

“Oh, speak! speak!” he moaned aloud. “I weary of those pictures. They are too vast; they crush me. I grow weak. I have no strength left to fight against the power of this fearful life that is discovered. I cannot bear this calm everlasting life. It sucks out my mortality as mists are sucked up by the sun. Become human. Speak. Let me touch your hand. Or be angry. Only cease smiling that awful smile, and take those solemn eyes out of my heart. Oh, my darling, my darling! remember that I am still a man. In pity answer me before I die.”

Then a low and awful cry, and Morris turned to behold Mary his wife. At last she had seen and heard, and read his naked heart. At last she knew him—mad, and in his madness, most unfaithful—a man who loved one dead and dragged her down to earth for company.

Look! there in his charmed and secret sight stood the spirit, and there, over against her, the mortal woman, and he—wavering—he lost between the two.

Certainly he had been sick a long while, since the sun-ray touched the face of the old abbot carved in that corner of the room to support the hammer beam. This, as he had known from a child, only chanced at mid-summer. Mary was bending over him, but he was astonished to find that he could sit up and move. Surely, then, his mind must have been more ill than his body.

“Hush!” she said, “drink this, dear, and go to sleep.”

It was a week after, and Morris had told her all, the kind and gentle wife who was so good to him, who understood and could even smile as he explained, in faltering, shame-heavy words. And he had sworn for her sake and his children’s sake, that he would put away this awful traffic, and seek such fellowship no more.

Nor for six months did he seek it; not till the winter returned. Then, when his body was strong again, the ravening hunger of his soul overcame him, and, lest he should go mad or die of longing, Morris broke his oath—as she was sure he would.

One night Mary missed her husband from her side, and creeping down in the grey of the morning, she found him sitting in his chair in the chapel workshop, smiling strangely, but cold and dead. Then her heart seemed to break, for she loved him. Yet, remembering her promises, and the dust whereof he was made, and the fate to which he had been appointed, she forgave him all.

The search renewed, or the fruit of some fresh discovery—what he sought or what he saw, who knows?—had killed him.

Or perhaps Stella had seemed to speak at last and the word he heard her say was Come!

This, then, is the end of the story of Stella Fregelius upon earth, and this the writing on a leaf torn from the book of three human destinies. Remember, only one leaf.