M. P. Shiel Phorfor

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the grey symbol of apathy beside me, a grey pen in the gloom of the recess, still wearing on her
pensive forehead the jewel without name of her lost celestial home. Did she not care that I should
leave her lonely in the morning? Was Sergius still the just dead bridegroom of her widowhood?
She took from the sinus of her dress a small roll, the three new-written fantasias of his deathbed.
Pored over them in the dim light, bent, forgetting me. Then suddenly vocal:
What, think you, did he mean by suns whose rays are living lutes ?
I cannot tell, Areta. Read the whole.
The cooing doves of her voice were like a bath of lukewarm luxury to my wallowing. She read
the poem.
Sergius best knew his own winged meanings, Areta: they may, as you once said, have been
prophecy, or rhapsody, or prayer.
The second was the prayer of a Moses dying at sunset on Pisgah.
She read it, bent grey in the gloom.
The third seems mere poetry.
Do not think so! he never conceived mere poetry. This too she commenced slowly to read:
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Shapes in the Fire come and go:
an orb from Scorpio swoons
(empurpled woe!)
and horns hath she, and eyes,
and lethal trance, and voice, that as she hies,
the swan s death-nocturne tunes.
I see a headlong Messenger:
her robe a crocus flame
(confide in her!)
thrills shake her plumes amain:
her passion s load, the burthen of her pain,
is the burthen of A NAME.
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Areta! I cried, breaking in, ecstatic. A sudden flash seemed to enkindle a whole landscape of
truth to me. Areta, love! I sprang to my feet. A crocus flame! thrills shake her plumes my
God! the burthen of a name! You shall see! Heedfulness died in me, moderation, remembrance,
and hurrying to an opposite recess, I dashed aside the draperies, mounted on moveable steps, and
threw wide the doors of a high-hung cage. There was a stirring, a meditation, a poising, and
instantly a little saffron bird, yellow-bright as orpiment, took flight, clipping within twinkling
tongue and wing a ruled and fluid pathway through the air alighting upon the high white bosom
Areta spread to it.
Her face changed to the beaming sunlight of joy. She knew Beatrix, though changed by my
earnest lavings from the grave grey of Sergius to her native gold of Canary.
And thou hast come back to thy Areta s soul whispering low ah wild, wild aeronaut
hugging it to her throat come back in gaudier robes and yet I love, I love, I love thee just so,
too no other than just so, little prodigal! But say your master s name lisp, lisp it to my secret
ear sw-e-et Sergius!
Numa! Numa! Numa! shrilled Beatrix, recovered in breath, eloquent of the briefer euphony
of my own arduously inculcated name.
Areta slid into waltzing with the bird, her head tossed back, laughing.
O changeling Beatrix! O wanton breeze! O whirling whisp! What, another name, then? No
longer deserted Sergius? And does the new-launched burthen loll move lightly, then, on the ebb
and flow of its little, little, liquid throat? Ah, it is well! it is well!
We sat again within the recess, the bird swiftly fickle from her to me, an incessant slim bobbin
zealous for the net, a frantic ploughshare in the sands, stitching us together with a million airy
threads. Numa was her constant burthen.
Confide in her, Areta! ha, love! can you not now believe that the mighty soul of your brother
lovingly foreknew me?
She looked upon me and smiled.
A huge clock of greenish-black augite under the rosy central lamp tolled midnight.
It is midnight. Whither was it you spoke of going?
Nowhither, Areta. I will not leave you to-night.
The indecision had frozen together into sudden resolve within me. No blood, I decreed, of me
or by me, should spill at that final parting-time. Theodore, if he dared, might think one of my
race a coward. In the morning he would know me gone for ever.
But I rose, and bearing the steps to one of the high western windows, mounted upon them, and
slightly opening a stained half on one side of the mullion, peeped through. Theodore would
probably go to the meeting-place by the underground way, but if he took boat, I was there to
wave him signal of my changed purpose. He would not wait to see me leave the terrace in the
shallop, knowing that I now knew the subterranean way from the vaults of the castle.
Several minutes passed; then concluding that he had by that time reached the rendezvous I
commenced to descend; but was arrested seeing a shadow, the shadow surely of Theodore,
pass by a blind of the Tower. Awe and confusion filled me, dread of his dreadful subtlety. What
woof did he weave? He was not in the Tower having returned from the meeting-place: for this
the time since midnight was utterly insufficient. He had not therefore gone at all. But for what
reason? As I stood debating, a horrible bursting and cracking, uproars of wrack and shock, earth-
heavings, throbbed and thundered at my ear, loosened my knees. Enceladus, compact with
tremors, crawled beneath us. The castle, flicked but by the tail of the explosion, shivered as with
the coldness of horror. Looking in the direction of the chapel, I saw the wide winging of smoke, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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