# A Pagan Incantation

II. — III. — IV. — V. — VI.
A PAGAN INCANTATION.
By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
HAROLD OLYPHANT'S face was lighted up, by the glow of the fire, with a Rembrandt-like effect. You could see that it was a delicate face; perhaps you might even pronounce it a handsome one, but you might not discover at once, in that rosy illumination, that it was the face of a sick man. Whatever beauty it had was that of intelligence, refinement, and sensibility. It was not obtrusively handsome; nor obtrusively anything. Such gravely observant blue eyes, such thin, wavy, blond hair, such gently accentuated features, we see every day among professional men with a taste for scholarship; and, if we take the trouble to interpret them at all, we conclude that they indicate inherited culture, and a disposition to take life seriously.
The moon hung, large and red, over the ridge of the mountains; the forest traced itself in a black, undulating line against the horizon, except where a gigantic pine loomed up ruthlessly, spreading its crooked arms with sharp and ragged elbows. Mosquitoes and moths innumerable whirled upward with the smoke, and heedless beetles came blundering along and dropped into the flames. Two white tents, faintly flushed with the sheen of the fire, broke the monotony of the twilight, and the form of a man, seated on a keg and smoking a cigar, showed in vague relief against one of them. He was a stalwart young fellow, and did not in the least resemble his delicate friend, who lay wrapped in a blanket, reading a book in front of the fire.
Oliver Griffin was a graduate of Yale, and by occupation a manufacturer of hats. He was a plain, honest, straightforward young man—the kind of young man who is characterized by his friends by the phrase: "There is no nonsense about him." He prided himself on his superiority to romantic considerations, declared that he meant to marry a homely girl, because the beautiful ones were always spoiled by flattery before they were out of their pinafores; and he was not discouraged by Olyphant's prophecy that, if he made his intention known, he was doomed to celibacy. A man so well "fixed" in life as himself, Griffin contended, need give himself no trouble on that score. He had hitherto rather been troubled by an embarras de richesse. With his placid self-conceit (which had a touch of drollery in it, and was not offensive) and his solid satisfaction with existence as it is, he was a most grateful companion to his high-strung and self-torturing cousin, who was always bothering about life's meaning, social problems, and other fantastic affairs. It was chiefly to escape his sense of responsibility for the world's misery that Olyphant had accepted the advice of his physician and gone to Norway; for whatever misery there is in Norway is of a quiet and unobtrusive kind, and is scarcely visible in summer; and even if it were visible, Olyphant could hardly, by any stretch of conscientious self-accusation, hold himself accountable for it. Moreover, Norway is so far out of the world, so pastoral and idyllic, that a man may, if he chooses, become a Strephon or a Philander, and live with his blonde Doris, in a golden age of love, undisturbed by politics.
So, at least, thought Olyphant. He was weary of the noise and clatter of life; the din of a locomotive made the lobes of his brain quiver with sympathetic excitement. The telegraph ran its impertinent messages, with shock on shock, through his nerve-centres, and the Italian hand-organ man and the German street band filled his ear with exquisite agony. The hysterical sensationalism of the newspaper press disgusted him; the shrieking mendacity of wrangling politicians made him despair of his kind. This supersensitiveness was, of course, a symptom of his illness, and he told himself a hundred times that it was unnatural and unhealthy. But such a mere intellectual conviction was impotent to affect the diseased nerve-centres, and, preach as much as he would, his feelings remained the same. Even the kindly but unmusical laugh of his cousin jarred on him, and it was useless to talk to Griffin about his longing for primeval silence and the like; for that blunt young gentleman took no hints, but treated his kinsman as a harmless and amiable lunatic, whose opinions he brushed away like so many cobwebs. He let his harsh mirth ring with a certain gusto through the lonely wilderness; and it seemed to Olyphant that it tore long, cruel rents in the beautiful silence. And when the loon answered from some dark tarn with its strange, wild laugh, it seemed like the voice of mocking mountain-spirits who reclaimed the alien sound and brought it into harmony with the grand and solemn solitude.
"Now put away that stupid thing and try to be sociable, Harry," said Griffin, walking up to the fire and flinging away the stump of his cigar.
"It is so very strange," murmured Olyphant.
"What is so very strange?"
"It is an old pagan incantation. I picked up this ancient parchment in Bergen the other day, without knowing what there was in it. I only saw that it was written in a style of script which has not been in use since the fourteenth century."
"Oh, twaddle, some clever swindler has forged it."
"No, a forger would have chosen something of more obvious value—a fragment of the Elder Edda or something of that kind. This is a piece of paganism, surreptitiously preserved in some Norse cloister after the introduction of Christianity. The very fact that it is interlined, in small, pale runes, between the big, fat letters of the breviary shows that the poor, old half-converted monk who copied it held it in high esteem, and intended that no one should discover it."
"And what did you say it was?"
"A magic incantation for transferring a disease from which you suffer to another person."
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
Griffin's mirth again broke through the forest, with its rude discords, and a chorus of echoes took it up and laughed from east, west, north, and south with a strange, ghostly glee.
"Oh, don't, Oliver—don't," begged Olyphant, in a hushed, imploring tone.
Griffin was about to answer when all of a sudden there came a loud unearthly laugh out of the depth of the forest—not evil, but untamed, riotous, indescribably wild. It was not mirthful, but perhaps rather solemn. It was as if a Faun or an Oread had lifted up its voice; as if the forest itself had laughed.
"I'll be hanged," said Griffin, "if that wasn't rather queer."
"Hush," whispered Olyphant, "for God's sake, hush!"
He had his eyes fixed with a trance-like stare at something white that beckoned to him between the tree-trunks. Sometimes it seemed to be nothing but drifting mist that shimmered in the moonlight; now it was a gauzy garment, fluttered by an exquisite arm; and then, again, an undulating form that floated upward with outstretched arms, turning toward him a lovely face whose ghastly pallor struck a chill to his heart. There was something so wondrously still and immobile in the moonlight, like the stare of a large dead eye; life, with its noises, seemed so inconceivable and so far away, and strange things which tremble on the boundary of the senses drew near and became intelligible. To grow like a tree, slowly and placidly, with long sensitive roots penetrating the soil, a thousand branches wrestling with the storm, and leaves without number drinking the sun and the dew through myriad pores, must have its deep delights. How beautiful to feel the rare and potent juices of life mount within you, instinct with the sweetness and strength of the earth, building with elfin craft your delicate fibres, and unfolding your growth in a little green world, feeding and sheltering a teeming variety of animated things. Your vital processes are grand and slow, the rhythm of your being is Nature's rhythm; you inhale in a day, you exhale in a night; you sleep in the winter and wake with the spring.
These were the thoughts that dimly drifted through Olyphant's mind at the sight of the dimly beautiful face that gazed at him through the mist. It beckoned him to something for which a wild yearning suddenly awoke in him—the grand and solemn joy of absorption in infinite Nature. The old Brahmins called it Nirvana. The Norsemen say that it is the old pagan gods dwelling in woods and tarns and mountains, who beckon to man, striving to ensnare his immortal soul.
"What the deuce are you staring at, Harry?" cried Griffin, lighting a fresh cigar.
"Hush! Do you see that?"
"I see some shreds of vapor drifting among the trees."
"Ah, there you chased her away," ejaculated Olyphant with a voice of deep regret; "she was so beautiful."
"If you have any more visions,"'retorted his friend, angrily, "I am going to have a commission appointed de lunatico inquirendo."
Olyphant made no answer, and a great stillness stole out of the forest and encompassed land and sea. The sky impressed him no more with a sense of glorious space and freedom, but with an oppressive vastness, like a gaze into the eye of eternity. It was as if all Nature was holding her breath in terrified suspense. He began to long for Griffin's harsh voice, simply to relieve him of his nightmarish oppression. But, as Griffin said nothing, he seized his parchment once more and attempted to read. It was written in old Norse or Icelandic, with many exasperating abbreviations; the small pale, snake-like runes, writhing with the infernal magic of a dead faith, winding themselves in close coils about the large and open letters of the Lord's Prayer. Was it a wanton sacrilege, on the part of the old monk, who had long since mingled his dust with the earth, or was it merely an artifice to avoid detection? The runes looked actually like mere decorations, such as occur in all mediæval breviaries, of the sacred text. But it pleased Olyphant's fancy to imagine a fiendish mockery in this shielding and clinging intimacy between the dread heathen incantation, breathing evil curses, and the sacred words of consolation and love, uttered by Him who hurled the old bloody gods from their thrones into the outer darkness. Perhaps the old monk intended by this ingenious arrangement to effect a compromise between the old gods and the new; perhaps he meant to counteract the magic of the incantation by that of the prayer as that of the prayer by the incantation. For the magic potency of the Lord's Prayer was an unacknowledged article of faith with the mediæval Christian Church. There seemed to be little sense, at first, in the quaint and abrupt alliterations, but no sooner had he begun to puzzle over them again than the strange chorus of minute sounds again became audible, and the same exquisite joy of oneness with nature, coupled with a sympathetic rhythm of being and ecstatic insight, burst upon him. He was no longer afraid of it now; but surrendered himself freely to his sensations. Freely translated into English, this is what he read:
Breathing and brooding
At the base of being,
Hear I the hell-hound
Howling hoarsely.
Hemlock and henbane
Harm the hardiest.
Wuotan wither
With woe and winter
The life of thy limbs;
Thy life-juice languish.
Frey and Frigga
Freeze the fountain
Of force that feeds thee.
The fiends that fret me
With frost and fire
Flee from me, fly from me;
Dole dealing, death-dealing
Dwell with thee."
It occurred to Olyphant while he lay sinking, as it were, into the embrace of an infinite, soothing mother, that the old pagan gods were nature gods—personifications of the forces of nature. Who knows that they were mere figments of the primitive brain? The early Christian Church declared that Christ had dethroned them; and that they were now demons, yet inhabiting forest, field, and lake, and striving by fiendish arts to reconquer their dominion over the souls of men. Nature was accursed of God, sharing in the curse of man. From the moment such a faith gained currency, man's sense had become blunter and coarser, and had at last been closed to all the subtler moods and sounds of nature. The old gods had shrunk into a shy reserve, withholding from man the gifts which it was in their power to be stow. But, ah! here came another thought, far more fraught with consequences than the first. If, perchance, this magic were real; if it were possible to transfer a disease to some other creature, why then should he, Olyphant, not avail himself of his discovery? He had so much to do in the world which only his weakness prevented him from accomplishing. Since he abandoned his linguistic studies, which he had prosecuted for three years in Germany, and devoted himself to science, life had seemed to him rich and precious. For three years he had labored with unremitting zeal at a grand discovery in physics which would revolutionize human society. It would double the earth's capacity for supporting her children; it would postpone for thousands of years the exhaustion of her resources. Paradoxical as it may sound, his purpose (which was indeed entirely feasible) was to make water the world's fuel. Every scientist knows that water can be burned by means of an electric current; but this method is too expensive. Olyphant was on the track of a much cheaper and simpler method, which had already yielded him astonishing results but was not yet sufficiently perfected for publication. I am bound to respect his wishes in giving no hint as to the nature of the discovery, which I do the more readily as he has never confided to me the details of his process.
It was in the untiring and feverish pursuit of this grand secret that Olyphant had worn out his health. He was an enthusiast of a noble sort, who did not begrudge the force he spent in an undertaking fraught with such enormous benefits to humanity. But one morning, when he had passed the night in excited anticipation over his experiments, his servant found him lying, in a dead swoon, on the floor of his laboratory; and from that day he had been a wretched invalid. He suffered from a sense of lassitude and profound exhaustion; life had lost its light and color, and a gray veil had been drawn over earth and sky. His thoughts were as vivid as ever; but, now that he was helpless to carry them out, they were but so many tormentors. At times he revived, and was full of hope; but then, again, the most absurd and insignificant incident would plunge him into a slough of despond in which he floundered heavily for days and weeks, seeing no gleam of light upon his horizon. And from the depths of his soul r ose dimly the voices of his yearnings and aspirations like the sound of church-bells from submerged villages on the bottom of the sea.
If he had suffered from an incurable organic disease, his case could scarcely have been more hopeless. He had made an overdraft upon his strength, his physician said; and the cure was to repair the deficit by a constant and gradual adding to the credit side of his account with nature, and a rigid economy in expenditure. That sounded very nice, to be sure; but how to do it—that was the question. His imagination—his perpetual mental tortures—kept wasting the oil of his vitality more rapidly than his body could supply it; and no one had suggested a remedy for this waste. If he could but stop the machinery of his thought! But the master machinist who achieves this, he knows not the trick of setting it in motion again. He stops it for ever; and, all things considered, that was perhaps the issue most to be desired.
II.
Griffin put down his heavy foot, and swore that he had had enough of the wilderness. What with mosquitoes and bats, and wolves prowling about the tents, howling like demons, and the loons making night hideous with their unearthly mirth, he could scarcely be blamed for refusing to make a martyr of himself any longer. He compelled his cousin by main force to break up the camp, not for the reason he alleged, but because he honestly believed that Olyphant, if permitted to nurse his fancies in solitude, would sooner or later lose his mind. He therefore induced him to go to Hardanger, where they put up at a village inn, spending their days in sailing and fishing. It was Griffin who took the initiative in everything, the invalid obeying listlessly like a sick child. It was only when they talked of science, and by inference of his own invention (of which Griffin knew in a general way) that he occasionally waked up and his eyes kindled with the old animation.
"Oliver," he said, one sunny afternoon, as he was lying in the stern of the boat, gazing up into the sky, "could you imagine any circumstance which would justify a man in sacrificing another life to preserve his own?"
"We are doing that all the time," Griffin answered, lifting his dripping oars. "The first thing I did, when I came into the world, was to kill a man, who, I believe, in that case was a girl, and I have been at it ever since."
"I assure you I am not joking, cousin."
"Nor am I. You know my mother was too delicate to nurse me, when I was born. So she engaged a wet-nurse; whose child, being deprived of its moth er's breast, died that I might live."
"And has the thought never troubled you, that you were the cause of that child's death."
"Not a bit. The chances are ten to one that that little girl would have extracted little happiness from existence, and much misery. The pain I saved her far outweighs the pleasure of which I deprived her. Moreover, her father, being separated from his wife, took to drink and went to the bad. He was a weak vessel, I fear, and when his home was broken up, that I might live, he got into bad company and was killed in a brawl. There is life number two I have on my conscience."
"Why, Oliver, you seem positively to gloat over your destructiveness."
"My dear boy, we are all engaged in driving each other to the wall. You would be appalled, if you knew how many lives have been impoverished that yours and mine might be enriched; how many have been destroyed that ours might be preserved. Impoverishment is but a lesser destruction. I am bound to think that my life is the most important in the world and to act upon that supposition. And the moment I cease to think so, I am routed and defeated. I have signed my own death-warrant."
"I wish you would sign mine, too, Oliver."
"If you were a manufacturer of hats, I would, cheerfully. But as physicists don't in any way interfere with me, and may benefit me, I have no interest in despatching them into eternity."
"Your philosophy is a brutal one, Oliver."
"Not at all. Nature is lavish of life. She is appallingly prolific. She has ordained that only the strong should survive, that the fit should develop their fitness by eliminating the unfit. Nine lives out of ten are in my opinion worthless, except in this indirect way, as the small fishes are valuable to the big."
"Supposing you were right—if I could but find one of these absolutely worthless lives—and be sure of it, beyond a doubt—I should—I should——"
He could not finish. The thought refused to shape itself so that it could be uttered, and, moreover, he was a little bit ashamed of avowing, before his sceptical cousin, even a shadow of belief in the magic of the old incantation. In one moment it was perfectly plain to him that he had no such belief; but in the next he felt a temptation to whisper the old verse to somebody, just to see if there was anything in it, He knew that it was a silly and childish desire; but supposing it was true, as Griffin said, that nine lives out of ten were of no use either to themselves or anybody else, what then could be the harm of making the experiment? A man who is sick unto death does not mind throwing his reason overboard in his efforts to keep hold of the life that is slipping away from him. No cure is too absurd to try, if somebody asserts that it has benefited him. It was a ridiculous thing, of course, incapable of being discussed among rational people; but that did not prevent Harold Olyphant from clutching at a shivering hope that he held in this mysterious parchment the key to restored health and activity. There was a twilight region of the soul, separate and distinct from the daylight region, in which science and reason dwelt; and in these dusky recesses the strangest things could strike root and send forth long pallid shoots that sought and yet shrank from the daylight.
The next day the two friends were out rowing on the fjord. When they had talked for awhile, Olyphant pulled the ancient parchment from his pocket, and became absorbed in the contemplation of the runes. The locusts—oh, what an exquisite, swelling crescendo they executed; while the crickets fiddled away merrily on their one little shrill metallic note; and a sweet-voiced bird on the shore burst into a rapturous warble. In an indefinable way he seemed nearer to "the base of being;" a purely pagan joy took possession of him—a kind of bacchantic sympathy with riotous mirth and revelry and wildly unrestrained passion. He sprang up in the boat, gave a shout, and waved the hand in which he held the parchment. The light wherry gave a lurch.
Harold Olyphant reeled, and in order to recover his balance, involuntarily unclosed his hand, and the parchment fell into the water. He had a momentary insane impulse to plunge in after it; for it sank as if it had been of stone. If Griffin had not grabbed him by the shoulder, he would have gone overboard. As he fell forward, the boat careened, shipped some water, and came near upsetting; but Griffin's presence of mind again averted the catastrophe.
"Now, brace up; and behave like a rational creature," he cried, angrily.
Olyphant did not answer; but lay with his face over the stern, staring down into the clear water. The parchment was still sinking; down, down it went through the cool, green regions of the deep; and the fishes swam wonderingly about it, skipping out of the way and again curiously returning. At last it touched bottom; but it seemed to Olyphant that the bottom moved, as if alive, and a mist of mud rose, and for a moment, obscured the view. Then a great, wise-looking flounder, with a sour expression and mouth awry, emerged from the mist, and, curling its sensitive fins, moved away. There lay the venerable curse, among the brown kelp and the green rock-weed which streamed out, half covering it, and waved faintly in sympathy with some subtle pulse-beat that vibrated upward. What a happy realm was that vast emerald expanse, clear as crystal, as far as the eye could reach; where the placid fishes swam at meditative ease; where the pink and purple starfishes clung to the kelp-grown bowlders, where the sea-anemones unfolded their vivid bloom, and the sluggish jelly-fishes drew their comet-like tails like a crimson mist behind them. A sudden luminous insight into the very soul of creation flashed through the young man's brain. A deep mysterious sympathy with these tranquil creatures, {[dhr|1]}
"But half aroused from the primordial sleep,"
{[dhr|1]} took possession of him. How beautiful seemed to him their calm accord with nature, their unreflecting submission to the dim instincts that kindled and preserved their slow-pulsed lives! How gladly would he, too, have sunk into this happy dusk of semiconscious existence, as a child, through a delicious semi-slumber, sinks to dreamless repose upon its mother's breast.
III.
The next day the weather was stormy, and Olyphant was ill. He felt wilted and withered in every limb; the day light seemed a weariness and an impertinence; the rain that beat spasmodically like handfuls of shot against the window- panes startled him and made him jump in bed. A young peasant girl named Marit, in scarlet bodice and black skirt and two long braids down her back, came in and began to strew fresh sand and juniper-twigs upon the floor. The invalid lay sniffing the pungent odor, until Griffin entered, smoking a strong cigar.
"I wish you wouldn't smoke," Olyphant said. "You are killing the juniper-smell."
"Juniper-smell? Oh, you like it, do you?"
"I do."
"Then I'll leave you to enjoy it alone. If you want me, send for me. There's a party of Yankee tourists weather-bound here. I'm going down to flirt a little, just to kill time."
Olyphant, for some reason, felt a vague animosity toward those Yankee tourists. He pictured to himself some shrill, angular New England girls, with short hair and a thirst for culture. As the afternoon wore on, the weather grew worse; and the New England girls tortured his fancy with suggestions of all the things which he abhorred in women. They grew constantly more definite and unattractive. They became Cook tourists "doing" Norway in nine days; most likely Massachusetts school-mistresses with hard, intelligent faces, eye-glasses, mannish attire; and devoid of every grace that makes womanhood adorable. Griffin, with his cumbrous sportiveness and his matter-of-fact manner, flirting with these unlovely damsels must be a sight for gods. The vision pursued Olyphant like a nightmare.
Through the small lead-framed windows there came a burst of clear sky. Presently Marit brought supper, but Olyphant was unable to touch it. When she had departed he tumbled out of bed, in a sort of feverish daze; reeled about on the floor in search of this garment and that, and succeeded, in the course of an hour, in making a passable toilet. He flung the windows open, and sat gazing into the cool, transparent dusk, out of which the huge pile of the mountains rose in placid majesty. The pure bracing air revived him somewhat, and with the aid of a stout stick he managed to make his way to the balcony, where tourists sat in groups raving about the grandeur of the scenery. Through Olyphant's oppressed mind flared suddenly a wild hostility to these people. He did not know why—but he detested them all—he hated them. Here were lives enough that cumbered the earth, and could well be spared. There could be no harm in trying the ancient curse on one of these—for in all probability it would have no more effect than the breeze which wafted over their heads—but it must be someone, unknown and unseen, whose fate, past and to come, he would never know; some one whose veiled face rose for this one instant out of the vast indistinguishable throng, and vanished like a drop in the tides of being.
He was not sane, perhaps, as he stood there, leaning upon his stick, peering forward with eager, feverish gaze. Out of the chaotic depths of his soul struggled a shuddering conviction that the curse was yet potent—that death and dole still dwelt in the mysterious alliterations. A harsh, cackling laugh struck his ear from the corner of the balcony where his cousin was sitting. It shivered his spine and excoriated his nerve-centres. It was only those odious Cook tourists, with their coupon trip-tickets, their brazen inquisitiveness, and manufactured enthusiasm, who could laugh thus. He fastened his eyes upon the back of the one from whom he supposed that the laugh had come, and tried to recall the pagan verse. He saw vaguely the outlines of a woman's form a wide-brimmed straw hat, a shawl covering the shoulders, and a lock of hair which strayed from under the hat-brim. The shadow of the great mountain above deepened the twilight and obliterated all hints of personality. It was but a woman—whether young or old he could not tell. And she had a harsh, cackling laugh! One of the forty thousand supernumeraries of Massachusetts, probably. And yet he was all in a tremor as he strove to whisper the fateful words. His head was in a whirl, his thoughts piled themselves helter-skelter in wild confusion. It was an awful thing he was about to do. Murder seemed innocent in comparison with it. But then, what is the struggle for existence but a slow, perpetual murder? For impoverishment is "slower destruction," as Griffin said. He was a foolish sentimentalist to be troubled with scruples. He had but this one life; and if he lost it, what was there left to him?
"Breathing and brooding,"
he began; but the words stuck in his throat, and the blood ran riot in his head, which throbbed as if it were going to split.
"Breathing and brooding,"
he began again; and this time the second line came without effort; all struggle was at an end; his blood ran with a marvellous, placid vigor and a cool serenity which astonished him, as he murmured, in the uncouth Icelandic, the dread and venerable imprecation.
"Breathing and brooding
At the base of being,
Hear I the hell-hound
Howling hoarsely."
It seemed to him as if the air grew strangely still about him. The crickets in the grass broke off their shrill note with a startling abruptness, and the mosquitoes that hummed about him dropped out of sight, as if smitten with a deadly plague. That same oppressive suspense which he had noted the first time he deciphered the flaming runes in the forest again took possession of all nature about him. The sky seemed to be holding its breath in anxious expectation.
"Wuotan wither
With woe and winter
The life of thy limbs;
Thy life-juice languish,"
he continued, in a murmurous undertone—almost joyously.
"The fiends that fret me
With frost and fire
Flee from me, fly from me;
Dole-dealing, death-dealing
Dwell with thee!"
he finished breathlessly, fixing his gaze, all the while, with the concentration of all his soul's energy, upon the girl who sat leaning over the balustrade at Griffin's side, gazing out upon the landscape. As he uttered the last words a convulsive shiver ran through her; she arose abruptly, pressed her hand against her temples, and said, in a tremulous but singularly musical voice:
"Why, aunt, I fear I have caught cold; I feel so strange."
"I shouldn't wonder, dear," answered the lady on the other side of Griffin, in a voice which corresponded to the cackling laugh; "let us go in. This night-air is very treacherous."
Olyphant had intended never to see or know the one against whom he hurled the ancient curse, for his morbid conscience would torture him to death, in case this person should show symptoms of ill-health. But an anonymous and impersonal victim could never be very troublesome. He would have slipped away now, and never questioned Griffin about his companion, if the conviction had not burst upon him that he had made a terrible mistake. He had attached the unmusical laugh to the wrong person, and perhaps brought calamity upon one whom he had not intended to harm. A fatal fascination riveted him to the spot; reluctantly he peered forward, with his heart in his throat. A dismal foreboding of evil stole over him like a chilly mist.
"Hallo, old man," cried Griffin, as he caught sight of the pale, eager face, quivering with dumb agony, "what are you up to now? I have just been telling the ladies of your interesting lunacy. Here, Miss Ramsey, is my cousin, of whom I have been speaking. Permit me to make you acquainted with him. Mr. Olyphant—Miss Ramsey."
Olyphant found himself bowing automatically, like a man in a dream who does preposterous things, without being able to account for them. Just at that moment the moon sailed out from behind the mountain-peak and softly illuminated the girl's face. He gasped out an exclamation of amazement or inarticulate woe, and with dilated eyes stared at her. Ah, the pity, the misery of it. This creature whom he had picked out as the most worthless of her kind seemed to him surpassingly lovely. So pure and sweet a countenance, so nobly fashioned, he had never seen before. The idealizing glamour of the moon which draws its soft veil over small imperfections lent a pathos to her features which went straight to his heart. He felt that in this face his fate was wrapped up, for good or for ill! The eyes which she fixed upon him had a vague entreaty in them, as if she were dimly conscious of his power to harm her. She was rather tall of stature, though not robust. Her hair was of rich brown color with a burnished sheen in it. In her look and attitude there was something which reminded him of a certain Sainte Cécile in the Louvre—something sweetly radiant and spiritual which made the frail flesh, with all its loveliness, seem of minor consequence.
Olyphant had made these observations rapidly, and was just recovering his self-command, when Griffin took him by the arm and presented him to Mrs. Coleman, Miss Ramsey's aunt.
"We had feared we were going to miss the pleasure of your acquaintance," Mrs. Coleman remarked, in a voice that had every now and then a curious jar in it, as if it scraped bottom; "your cousin told us that you were sick in bed."
"So I was, half an hour ago," Olyphant answered, absently; "but I am well now—quite well."
It had not occurred to him, until the question was raised, that the weakness in his limbs had left him. That "withered" feeling of which he had complained was, as it were, blown away. That nightmarish giddiness in his head, which had made him reel like a drunken man while he was trying to dress, had given way to a bright sanity and clearness of thought which amazed him. But deep down in his heart there was a writhing sense of agony, as the conviction stole upon him that the ancient curse was working. Were the powers of darkness, upon whom he had called, anything but a crude fever fancy of primitive man? And had they heard him now, and were they doing his bidding? Were they blighting this fair young life at his side, exhausting the full fountain of her vigor in order to replenish his empty one? It was a diabolical thought. He strove to drive it away; but it hummed in his ears like a torturing tune which makes you march to its rhythm, whether you will or not.
IV.
Olyphant devoutly hoped, when he arose about ten o'clock the next morning, after a long and refreshing sleep, that Miss Ramsey and her aunt had put themselves beyond his reach. He longed to see the young girl; but a deep conviction in his soul told him that it was best both for him and her that they should never meet again. The same clearness of thought which he had perceived the night before, still reigned in his brain, and the earth seemed delightfully firm beneath his feet. The two things somehow seemed kindred phenomena, flowing from the same source. The mountain-air which streamed in through the open windows was a cool elixir surcharged with health and strength. The sunshine had a radiance in it which penetrated to the innermost recesses of the soul, filling them with light. But, in spite of all, Olyphant was conscious of a kind of internal quivering; and when Griffin congratulated him on his good appearance a pang shot through him. He ate his breakfast with a guilty zest, as if he were stealing it. He was ashamed of his appetite, at the same time that he gloried in it. His sense of taste seemed so extraordinarily keen, the flavors of every dish, though it was nothing but bread, butter, cream, coffee, and brook-trout, were tenfold intensified. The butter especially was fragrant with the breath of the succulent grass in the wide mountain-plains. It was so exquisitely rural, idyllic, and instinct with the sweet pastoral associations of early Aryan times. The coffee was redolent with the Orient, and suggested heavy-eyed odalisques of rich and voluptuous beauty. The trout had condensed in its pink flaky flesh the subtlest life of the mountain-brook; its leaping and plashing joy, its glancing shafts of sunlight, and its dark, cool, delicious pools. Olyphant had never suspected that such enjoyment could be derived from a sense which he had always regarded as the grossest of the five.
He would have eaten on as long as there was anything left on the table if Griffin had not entered, smoking, and vitiated the atmosphere with his foul weed. Though he had never been averse to tobacco-smoke before, it appeared to him now the vilest of odors. The pure, sweet pagan vigor that rioted with joyous tumult in his veins was deeply repugnant to these dusky narcotic fumes. He felt that it would be impossible for him to put a cigar between his lips again.
"This climate, I should say, is just the thing for you," Griffin remarked, seating himself in a big, carved chair; "you look like a different man."
"Oh, yes," answered Olyphant, ruefully; "I woke up with a ravenous appetite this morning; I feel as if I had a bottomless pit within me."
"Oh, no," laughed his cousin, blowing a series of smoke-rings against the ceiling; "that you have in store for you, if you keep on fooling with the black arts, and consign yourself, like Faust, to the devil."
His pleasantry grated on Olyphant's nerves, and with a sudden irritation he got up and left the room. Outside on the balcony he met Mrs. Coleman, who greeted him cordially.
"I am glad to see you looking so well this morning," she said, in her jarring voice; "we had expected to leave to-day for Drontheim and the North Cape, but Winifred my niece is not feeling exactly herself; and so we have concluded to stay here and rest for a couple of days."
"I hope it is nothing serious," he ejaculated, with an anxiety which he found it impossible to conceal.
"Oh, no, only over-fatigue; and perhaps a cold on the top of it. She complains of a sort of withered feeling in her limbs, and a sense of oppression, which she cannot shake off. I think perhaps this delicious air is the best thing for her; and I am going to persuade her to come down and sit here in the sun."
Every word the lady uttered stabbed the young man like a sharp blade. Mrs. Coleman was a large woman of forty-five or fifty, with a majestic carriage and a perceptible mustache. On her cheeks, too, the down would need but little encouragement to develop into whiskers. But, for all that, her face was agreeable and not unkindly, and there was a look of race about her which distinctly stamped her as a gentlewoman. While they were talking, Miss Ramsey came out of the dining-room, her face framed in a mist of lace and a mass of auburn hair. There was a startled anxiety in her eyes, when she saw him; and her first impulse was to turn about and run. She restrained herself, however, and returned his greeting. Her beauty,'re vealed anew in the daylight, quivered through him like an electric shock. It was again the intensity of expression in her features which impressed him. But there was something incommunicable in this expression; it was directed inward as it were, and not outward. It was illuminated from within, and the light shone through the translucent surface. There was some dear and cherished object, he felt sure, which she constantly contemplated—about which her joys and her sorrows revolved. Olyphant was conscious of a vague jealousy of this object—whatever it was—then of a desire to share it with her. But how to gain the confidence of so shy a creature, who stood like a bird, always ready to take flight—that was the question. If he could but lull his accusing conscience to sleep, and forget what he had done to her, the task might, perhaps, not be beyond his power. But the oppressive sense of guilt which tormented him made him appear ill at ease.
"I hope," he said, as he approached to grasp her hand, "that your indisposition has left you."
"Not quite," she answered, with a vague, sweet smile, "but it soon will."
"Only sit here and breathe, and you will be well," he exclaimed; "no ailment can thrive in this glorious air."
There was a slightly artificial strain in this exhortation, for out of some grisly deep within him rose a whisper which rippled with cold chills through all his nerves.
"She is doomed," this voice seemed to say; "no power in heaven or on earth can save her."
"It is a delightful place, is it not?" she observed, as she accepted the rush-bottomed chair which he placed before her; "no one has any business to be ill here. The air is so full of joyous sounds, humming and buzzing and whirring and warbling. The very grass seems to enjoy growing."
Her voice, so soft and rich and musical, became instantly part of this vast summer symphony, with which it blended in gentle harmony. The fancy flitted through his brain that it was the incantation, working in her blood, which was opening her senses to the subtler life and the hidden music of nature, as it had opened his. He became conscious of a closer kinship with her when he saw how beautifully her eyes lit up at the mention of this murmurous summer chorus. They were both under the same spell now, for good or for ill.
"Don't you think man made a great mistake in becoming civilized?" he asked, after a while.
"You mean, because he lost the keen scent, and sight, and hearing of the savage?"
It pleased him beyond measure to have her follow thus sympathetically the train of his thought. There was an exquisite intelligence implied in this swift divination.
"Yes," he said; "I would give all that civilization has bestowed upon us for a set of fresh Indian senses, capable of bright and vivid sensations. The mere smells of earth and woods and dewy grass, in their primeval freshness, are an exquisite pleasure."
"Yes," she ejaculated, eagerly, "and the bark of the fox in the lonely wilderness—how wondrously wild it sounds in the summer night. I heard it often last week, when we slept in the mountain-inns, and I felt in me the material for a savage."
They sat talking for a long while in this strain; and the winged hours sped unheeded over their heads. They made rapid advances in each other's confidence; for each stimulated all that was best in the other, and rejoiced in the discovery of new points of sympathy. Miss Ramsey's shyness had not the faintest touch of awkwardness about it, it was a native virginal reserve which repelled rather than invited confidence. But this very reserve, when coupled with the sweetness of nature which he found behind it, became doubly attractive to him; it furnished the key-note to her character, and the more he explored this character, the lovelier it appeared to him.
Mrs. Coleman, who had been on a rowing excursion with Griffin and Marit, returned about noon, and seemed in no wise displeased at Olyphant's attention to her niece. As soon as she had ascertained that his antecedents were satisfactory, she favored him with some fragments of her own and Winifred's biography. The latter, it appeared, belonged to an old impoverished Knickerbocker family, of historic distinction. She had a scapegrace brother whom she loved dearly, and for whom she had labored indefatigably. She had established a Kindergarten, written blood-and-thunder stories for The New York Ledger, and, in fact, been inexhaustible in her devices for increasing his allowance. Very recently an old great-uncle had died and left her some forty or fifty thousand dollars. She had seized the long-desired opportunity to go abroad; as she would have worked herself to death, if Providence had not interfered.
V.
A sabbath among the mountains seems purer and more solemn than in the open, smiling plain. All nature unites to keep it holy. The dragon-flies, with their large emerald eyes, as they flitted noiselessly across the water, had a sense of something festal; and their bright and hushed demeanor added to the solemnity of the day. Olyphant imagined that if he could climb the mountain-peak, he might gaze straight into the blue eternity. He was seated in a boat with Winifred, she reclining in the stern with one listless hand hanging over the gunwale, he rowing with long, vigorous strokes. It was two weeks now since they first met, but it appeared to both of them as if they had always known each other. His conscience troubled him. In broken and incoherent sentences he told her of the ancient incantation, and of the use he had made of it. But he was amazed when she said, with soft breathlessness, "I knew it all."
"You knew it?" he exclaimed; "how could you know it, when I had told no one?"
She waited a good while before answering, following the flight of a sea-bird with her eyes.
"Your cousin told me of your curious find," she said; "it was the first evening we met on the balcony. I laughed at the thing at first, but as he went on and described the nights you spent camping in the highlands, where the laugh of the loon echoed so wildly—the mood of the old incantation came over me, and I felt it all."
"But you did not know I was there?"
"No; but while he told so vividly of the strange magic of the runes, I felt the curse creeping all over me. I could not sit still. I rose and shivered."
"Oh, how can you forgive me?" he cried, bowing his head, in passionate sorrow; "it was at that very moment I spoke the awful verse."
"Let us be rational she replied, after a thoughtful little pause; "you do not believe that the verse harmed me. And I surely do not believe it. I caught cold that night. My imagination was strangely wrought upon by the uncanny tale. I shouldn't wonder if it were my own reluctant credulity which has made me ill. If I could only shake the whole thing off, I am sure I should be well to-morrow."
"Then you bear me no resentment."
"Not at all. But one little grudge I have—that you selected me, even unknowingly, as the most worthless creature on earth."
"Well, you have had your revenge for that. For now the earth itself is worthless without you."
Olyphant confided to his cousin the next day that he had proposed to Miss Ramsey.
He waited impatiently during the entire day for the appearance of the ladies; and was dumfounded when he learned, toward evening, that they had left by the early steamer.
"Oliver," he said to his cousin, "I am going to find this girl wherever she is."
"But don't you see she doesn't want to be found? She's trying to run away from you."
"It doesn't matter. I must find her, if I have to follow her to the ends of the earth."
"Well, that's all right. But by what route do you intend to start for the ends of the earth?"
"I am serious, Oliver. If you won't go with me, I am going alone."
"Well, if it comes to that, I am afraid to trust you alone. But I tell you, Harry, you ought to have more sense. Love, especially if it doesn't run smooth, is bad for a valetudinarian."
Griffin continued to argue the case with lawyer-like ingenuity, but he made no impression upon the Quixotic lover. Perceiving the futility of further effort, he yielded with good grace, and summoned Marit, who declared that the ladies had taken the southward steamer early in the morning; Miss Ramsey had cried and didn't want to go; but her aunt had scolded and coaxed her, and had threatened to leave her, unless she followed. She was so weak that she had to be carried down to the steamboat landing. Where they had gone Marit did not profess to know, but she had heard the elder lady mention Copenhagen and Home.
VI.
To trace Harold Olyphant's devious course over the map of Europe during the next twelve months, would be a futile task. His wanderings appeared as erratic as those of a fly under the ceiling. And yet they were directed by a purpose that knew no faltering—the same that led Orpheus to hell and Leander to swim the Hellespont. His cousin, losing patience with him, had left him early in the autumn and returned to the United States. And it was, on the whole, a relief to Olyphant to be alone; for Griffin's sympathy, no less than his criticism, had come to be irksome to him. Moreover, he continued to be physically well, in spite of the pangs of remorse and grief which tormented him. He had a guilty conviction that a fresh fountain of strength had welled up within him; and he could almost hear it gurgle and bubble with exuberant vigor. He succeeded occasionally in persuading himself that it was all a hallucination; that he had done no harm to Winifred Ramsey, and that the course of wisdom would be to return home and devote his recovered health to the perfecting of his great discovery. But his heart rose in passionate protest against this reasoning. Out of the depth of his nature something cried out with wild voices which he could not hush or appease. He must see Winifred and do penance to her, humble himself in the dust before her, and receive her forgiveness. All other things—all purposes and interests which formerly had swayed his life—seemed pale and misty now, in comparison with this one ardent desire. All the world was stricken with a kind of blight. It moved past him like a phantasmal show—a hideous Walpurgis-Night procession, that made the weary eyes ache and the tortured ears vainly refuse to listen.
Olyphant had lost the track of his fugitives at Copenhagen and had not found any trace of them in Rome. But a dim instinct drove him constantly back to the Eternal City, possibly because all roads lead thither, and all the world's exiles find there a home. One morning at the beginning of the winter he was sitting in the reading-room of the American Bank, when he heard some one pronounce distinctly the name—Winifred Ramsey. He looked up, startled, and saw a tall, black-whiskered courier who was inquiring for letters. Two or three, bearing American stamps, were handed to him, and Olyphant managed to catch a glimpse of the handwriting, which, much to his relief, was of the high-shouldered, feminine style. He lost no time in making the acquaintance of the courier, who, for a proper consideration, communicated to him the fact that Miss Ramsey and Mrs. Coleman were at Frascati, at the Villa Falconieri. A dozen other questions trembled on his lips, but he feared to ask them. Was she well? Was she ill? Did she have yet that divine anguish in her eyes, or were they slowly closing to all earthly concerns with an equally divine indifference? Ah, what misery in the uncertainty, and what still greater misery in a knowledge strangling hope!
Olyphant found himself at the railroad depot on the Piazza delle Terme at two o'clock in the afternoon, and rode through the golden haze of the early Roman winter, heedless of the glare of earth and sky. Having arrived at Frascati, he engaged a donkey of a perverse disposition, which was induced to carry him to the gate of the Villa Falconieri. There was something indescribably melancholy about the place; a calm and cool splendor, an equilibrium as of death. The vast bright sky struck a chill to his heart. The great façade of the villa, as it loomed up among the stone-pines and cypresses, stared at him out of its many windows with a stately remoteness. It looked uninhabited, in human. A knock at the tremendous portone summoned a concierge, who conducted the American through a labyrinth of resonant hallways, where his footsteps re-echoed as in a tomb. It seemed as if he were under some awful spell—that he was doomed to walk on forever. Somehow and somewhere, however, they came to a halt; and the concierge opened a door and ushered Olyphant into an ante-room flooded with sunlight, but yet chilly. Then Mrs. Coleman appeared in a trance-like and unaccountable manner, pressed his hand, shed some tears, and said that she was glad he had come. This seemed very extraordinary, considering the fact that she had wasted so much ingenuity in trying to run away from him. Some such sentiment probably escaped him, as he sat vis-à-vis with her in that vast and dreary reception-room, and she entered into a defence of her action, declaring that the terrible story of the incantation had taken such hold of her niece that it was killing her. She knew it was a hallucination, but it was on that account none the less dangerous. She had gone away secretly, because she had hoped that new scenes and new friends might obliterate the dreadful fancy. In this hope she had, however, been disappointed. Winifred had grown steadily worse since leaving Norway; and the skill of the most famed physicians of Europe had failed to benefit her. Mrs. Coleman did not wish to bear the responsibility of further interference. She would place no more obstacles in Olyphant's path. So saying, she pushed open the door to the next room, where Winifred lay upon a sofa, before the fire. She was very pale, but her fair face was lighted with a strange brilliancy. Her eyes shone with gratitude and affection as he grasped her hand and fell upon his knees at her side. There was no shadow of suffering visible in her features; only fading of strength, declining vitality. The tide of life was ebbing in her veins. A light-blue cashmere wrapper enveloped her form, and a fine mesh of ancient lace encircled her throat and wrists.
"You are not angry with me, then," she said, meeting with wistful eyes the sorrowful gaze he fixed upon her. "Tell me again that you are not angry with me."
"Why should I be angry with you, dearest?"
"Because I ran away, when you had told me you loved me. But I did not do it willingly."
"I know it. Your aunt has told me about it."
"And how did you find me? Did she write to you?"
"No. I spent half a year seeking you, everywhere. To-day I met by chance a courier who knew where you were."
It was touching to see the joy that kindled in her eyes and illuminated her features as he spoke.
"I shall not be afraid to die now," she whispered, giving his hand a faint pressure. "I was only afraid, when I thought you had forgotten me."
He could say nothing, but sat struggling with a confession—a prayer for forgiveness—he knew not what; only that he might relieve the weight of woe that oppressed him. But what had he to confess? He had told her all. He wrung his hands silently, opened his lips as if to speak, but said nothing.
"Oh, you must not die!" he cried at last, with a sudden, piercing pain; and, jumping up, began to pace the floor; "it is all a dream, a horrible nightmare. Shake it off. Here, take my hand. Come with me into the garden. Do you not love me? Why, then, should you die now when you are just beginning to live?"
He paused, astonished at his own violence. But still more amazed he was when he felt the firm grasp of her fingers, and he saw Winifred rise, slowly, gropingly—but still rise, and, leaning upon his arm, walk across the floor. A half-timid exultation shone in her eyes, as she became assured that her limbs supported her. He wrapped a shawl about her, pushed the door to the hall open, and with slow and tentative steps she moved at his side, through the white desolation of the long, empty corridors. Fearing to overtax her strength, he put his arms about her and carried her down the stairs into the garden. There the flood of sunshine nearly blinded him; but the cypresses cut their black silhouettes out of the radiant blue of the sky and afforded relief to the wearied vision. There was a hopeless perfection in the day which annihilated him. All things seemed evanescent and unreal. Even the beloved form which clung to him was in some strange way slipping from his embrace; a crowd of bright, airy demons, inexorable but not abhorrent, were tugging at her garments. As she stood amid the cypresses, in the glare of the pitiless sun, there was the remoteness of death in her beauty—a chill alienation which made him shiver. What was that terrible force to which he had surrendered her? Was there no counter-charm, no spell that could redeem her from the hungry deep? There were invisible hands outstretched through that awful, silent glare, and he felt them flash about his head; from above, from below, from everywhere. With a cry of uncontrollable horror he clasped her once more in his arms, and prayed a wild, distracted prayer; but he knew not to whom he addressed it; and it seemed after a while that the God whom he entreated was dead. She lay like a weary child in his arms; resting her head upon his shoulder, smiling vaguely toward the moss-grown Faun that was playing his broken reed under the ilexes. There was something quivering through the light—a kind of dumb anguish, a rigid, shining despair. Then there came a chorus of strange wild voices, flute-like, incorporeal, and remote. There was laughter in them—mirthless and mocking—like that of the loon in the Norseland wilderness. He fancied he heard in these ethereal sounds a semblance of her name; and, shuddering, he pressed her closer to his breast. In the ceaseless pulsation that throbbed in the air about him he recognized notes of that wondrous summer chorus which had burst upon his awakened sense after the reading of the incantation. They stormed in upon him—lightly and noiselessly—sang bright ditties of a sweet, æolian remoteness in his ear, as if to beguile his thought away from her whom he held in his arms. For he felt that, as long as he held her closely encompassed with his love, as long as all the energy of his affectionate solicitude was concentrated upon her, he could not lose her. For an hour the battle raged noiselessly, but fiercely; he tried to move away, but stood as if riveted to the spot. Again and again the hushed, wondrous melody allured him, and his thought began to wander; a sweet weariness stole over him; all things except rest—a deep, all-obliterating oblivion—seemed of small moment. All impressions became blurred; only a vague tenderness filled his heart for someone or something that was, for some reason, very dear to him. There was a rush as of water, cool and refreshing, in his ears, and the flash and sheen of bright, emerald currents before his eyes. The world lost itself in a golden mist of lovely sights and sounds. He sank into a swoon. He knew not how long he lay unconscious; but he woke up with a chilling horror; he tried to scream, but could not. There was a weight upon his breast; and his clasped hands, as they relaxed, touched a cold forehead. He shivered; a sense of desolation stole over him. Raising himself with great effort—for he seemed stiff in every joint—he saw what he already knew before. Winifred was dead. The peace in her face was sweet and profound. Not a trace of trouble or of struggle was visible. It was the peace, not of marble, but of the sea and the sky on a perfect day. She had never been more beautiful.
Olyphant sat staring at her with heavy, vacuous eyes. He kept his feelings desperately at bay, because he feared their vehemence. How vast the sky was! And the mountains, how blue and airy and divinely indifferent! What is life, that we should deplore its loss; or death, that we should dread its coming? But this one life, which was so dear to him, why should it be chosen for extinction out of all the worthless millions? Remorse hovered like a shadow in the background of his mind; but he could not bring himself to believe in it. A strange chill numbness settled all over him, and he felt nothing, except a dull heartache.
The harsh scream of a bird of prey aroused him. He arose slowly, lifted the dead body in his arms, and bore it back toward the villa. And again he seemed to himself to be under a spell which would compel him to march on with this burden forever. The future through which his path lay stretched out before him as a vast, blank, sunlit vista which made his eyes ache. The silence oppressed him; the emptiness terrified him. The endless procession of hours, white, black, and gray, which rose out of the deep—what should he do with them—how was he to traverse them, with this grief never to be appeased, with this burden ever to be borne?
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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