CHAPTER XVII. THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT.
And how, O Poet of the sad belief, and eloquence "like ebony, at oncedark and splendid [It was said of Tertullian that 'his style was likeebony, dark and splendid']," how couldst thou, august Lucretius, deem itbut sweet to behold from the steep the strife of the great sea, or,safe from the peril, gaze on the wrath of the battle, or, serene in thetemples of the wise, look afar on the wanderings of human error? Is itso sweet to survey the ills from which thou art delivered? Shall notthe strong law of SYMPATHY find thee out, and thy heart rebuke thyphilosophy? Not sweet, indeed, can be man's shelter in self when he saysto the storm, "I have no bark on the sea;" or to the gods of the battle,"I have no son in the slaughter;" when he smiles unmoved upon Woe, andmurmurs, "Weep on, for these eyes know no tears;" when, unappalled, hebeholdeth the black deeds of crime, and cries to his conscience, "Thouart calm." Yet solemn is the sight to him who lives in all life,--seeksfor Nature in the storm, and Providence in the battle; loses self in thewoe; probes his heart in the crime; and owns no philosophy that sets himfree from the fetters of man. Not in vain do we scan all the contrastsin the large framework of civilized earth if we note "when the dustgroweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together." Range, OArt, through all space, clasp together in extremes, shake idle wealthfrom its lethargy, and bid States look in hovels where the teacher isdumb, and Reason unweeded runs to rot! Bid haughty Intellect pause inits triumph, and doubt if intellect alone can deliver the soul from itstempters! Only that lives uncorrupt which preserves in all seasons thehuman affections in which the breath of God breathes and is. Go forthto the world, O Art, go forth to the innocent, the guilty, the wise, andthe dull; go forth as the still voice of Fate! Speak of the insecurityeven of goodness below; carry on the rapt vision of suffering Virtuethrough "the doors of the shadows of death;" show the dim revelationsymbolled forth in the Tragedy of old,--how incomplete is man's destiny,how undeveloped is the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally inthe ribs of the rock, and Oedipus vanish forever in the Grove of theFuries. Here below, "the waters are hid with a stone, and the faceof the deep is frozen;" but above liveth He "who can bind the sweetinfluence of the Pleiades, and loose the bands of Orion." Go with Fateover the bridge, and she vanishes in the land beyond the gulf! Beholdwhere the Eternal demands Eternity for the progress of His creatures andthe vindication of His justice!
It was past midnight, and Lucretia sat alone in her dreary room; herhead buried on her bosom, her eyes fixed on the ground, her handsresting on her knees,--it was an image of inanimate prostration anddecrepitude that might have moved compassion to its depth. The dooropened, and Martha entered, to assist Madame Dalibard, as usual, toretire to rest. Her mistress slowly raised her eyes at the noise of theopening door, and those eyes took their searching, penetratingacuteness as they fixed upon the florid nor uncomely countenance of thewaiting-woman.
In her starched cap, her sober-coloured stuff gown, in her prim,quiet manner and a certain sanctified demureness of aspect, there wassomething in the first appearance of this woman that impressed you withthe notion of respectability, and inspired confidence in those steadygood qualities which we seek in a trusty servant. But more closelyexamined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhapsto disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of theforehead, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanicallyparted; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed upand constrained; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, cold blueeyes,--might have caused an uneasy sentiment, almost approaching tofear. The fat grocer's spoilt child instinctively recoiled from herwhen she entered the shop to make her household purchases; the old,gray-whiskered terrier dog at the public-house slunk into the tap whenshe crossed the threshold.
Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into theadjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly completedbefore she said abruptly,--
"So you attended Mr. Varney's uncle in his last illness. Did he suffermuch?"
"He was a poor creature at best," answered Martha; "but he gave me adeal of trouble afore he went. He was a scranny corpse when I streckedhim out."
Madame Dalibard shrank from the hands at that moment employed uponherself, and said,--
"It was not, then, the first corpse you have laid out for the grave?"
"Not by many."
"And did any of those you so prepared die of the same complaint?"
"I can't say, I'm sure," returned Martha. "I never inquires how folksdie; my bizness was to nurse 'em till all was over, and then to sit up.As they say in my country, 'Riving Pike wears a hood when the weatherbodes ill.'" [If Riving Pike do wear a hood, The day, be sure, willne'er be good. A Lancashire Distich.]
"And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel no fear inthe dead of the night,--that corpse before you, no fear?"
"Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm. Oh, he's a clever man!What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Martha, with a horrid simplicity.
"You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have heard yousay,--a sect not unfamiliar to me; a sect to which great crime is veryrarely known?"
"Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be weel [whirlpool]deep!"
"You do not believe what they taught you?"
"I did when I was young and silly."
"And what disturbed your belief?"
"Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, was the first Iever kep' company with," answered Martha, without a change in her floridhue, which seemed fixed in her cheek, as the red in an autumn leaf."After he had ruined me, as the girls say, he told me as how it was allsham!"
"You loved him, then?"
"The man was well enough, ma'am, and he behaved handsome and got me ahusband. I've known better days."
"You sleep well at night?"
"Yes, ma'am, thank you; I loves my bed."
"I have done with you," said Madame Dalibard, stifling a groan, asnow, placed in her bed, she turned to the wall. Martha extinguished thecandle, leaving it on the table by the bed, with a book and a box ofmatches, for Madame Dalibard was a bad sleeper, and often read in thenight. She then drew the curtains and went her way.
It might be an hour after Martha had retired to rest that a hand wasstretched from the bed, that the candle was lighted, and LucretiaDalibard rose; with a sudden movement she threw aside the coverings, andstood in her long night-gear on the floor. Yes, the helpless, paralyzedcripple rose, was on her feet,--tall, elastic, erect! It was as aresuscitation from the grave. Never was change more startling than thatsimple action effected,--not in the form alone, but the whole characterof the face. The solitary light streamed upward on a countenance onevery line of which spoke sinister power and strong resolve. If youhad ever seen her before in her false, crippled state, prostrate andhelpless, and could have seen her then,--those eyes, if haggard still,now full of life and vigour; that frame, if spare, towering aloft incommanding stature, perfect in its proportions as a Grecian image ofNemesis,--your amaze would have merged into terror, so preternatural didthe transformation appear, so did aspect and bearing contradict the verycharacter of her sex, uniting the two elements most formidable in man orin fiend,--wickedness and power.
She stood a moment motionless, breathing loud, as if it were a joy tobreathe free from restraint; and then, lifting the light, and gliding tothe adjoining room, she unlocked a bureau in the corner, and bent over asmall casket, which she opened with a secret spring.
Reader, cast back your eye to that passage in this history when LucretiaClavering took down the volume from the niche in the tapestried chamberat Laughton, and numbered, in thought, the hours left to her uncle'slife. Look back on the ungrateful thought; behold how it has swelledand ripened into the guilty deed! There, in that box, Death guards histreasure crypt. There, all the science of Hades numbers its murderousinventions. As she searched for the ingredients her design hadpre-selected, something heavier than those sma
ll packets she derangedfell to the bottom of the box with a low and hollow sound. She startedat the noise, and then smiled, in scorn of her momentary fear, as shetook up the ring that had occasioned the sound,--a ring plain and solid,like those used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opalin the centre. What secret could that bauble have in common withits ghastly companions in Death's crypt? This had been found amongstOlivier's papers; a note in that precious manuscript, which had givento the hands of his successors the keys of the grave, had discoveredthe mystery of its uses. By the pressure of the hand, at the touch of aconcealed spring, a barbed point flew forth steeped in venom more deadlythan the Indian extracts from the bag of the cobar de capello,--a venomto which no antidote is known, which no test can detect. It corrupts thewhole mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the brain; itrends the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion. But examine thedead, and how divine the effect of the cause! How go back to the recordsof the Borgias, and amidst all the scepticisms of times in which,happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero ofMachiavel how a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe! Easier and morenatural to point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollenflesh round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail--nay, a pin--canengender when the humours are peccant and the blood is impure! Thefabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was themasterpiece in the science of Dalibard,--a curious and philosophicaltriumph of research, hitherto unused by its inventor and his heirs; forthat casket is rich in the choice of more gentle materials: but the useyet may come. As she gazed on the ring, there was a complacent and proudexpression on Lucretia's face.
"Dumb token of Caesar Borgia," she murmured,--"him of the wisest headand the boldest hand that ever grasped at empire, whom Machiavel, thevirtuous, rightly praised as the model of accomplished ambition! Whyshould I falter in the paths which he trod with his royal step, onlybecause my goal is not a throne? Every circle is as complete in itself,whether rounding a globule or a star. Why groan in the belief thatthe mind defiles itself by the darkness through which it glides on itsobject, or the mire through which it ascends to the hill? Murderer ashe was, poisoner, and fratricide, did blood clog his intellect, or crimeimpoverish the luxury of his genius? Was his verse less melodious [Itis well known that Caesar Borgia was both a munificent patron andan exquisite appreciator of art; well known also are his powers ofpersuasion but the general reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted withthe fact that this terrible criminal was also a poet], or his love ofart less intense, or his eloquence less persuasive, because he sought toremove every barrier, revenge every wrong, crush every foe?"
In the wondrous corruption to which her mind had descended, thusmurmured Lucretia. Intellect had been so long made her sole god thatthe very monster of history was lifted to her reverence by his ruthlessintellect alone,--lifted in that mood of feverish excitement whenconscience, often less silenced, lay crushed, under the load of the deedto come, into an example and a guide.
Though at times, when looking back, oppressed by the blackest despair,no remorse of the past ever weakened those nerves when the Hour calledup its demon, and the Will ruled the rest of the human being as amachine.
She replaced the ring, she reclosed the casket, relocked its depository;then passed again into the adjoining chamber.
A few minutes afterwards, and the dim light that stole from the heavens(in which the moon was partially overcast) through the casement onthe staircase rested on a shapeless figure robed in black from head tofoot,--a figure so obscure and undefinable in outline, so suited to thegloom in its hue, so stealthy and rapid in its movements, that had youstarted from sleep and seen it on your floor, you would perforce havedeemed that your fancy had befooled you!
Thus darkly, through the darkness, went the Poisoner to her prey.