Volume I Part 33 (2/2)

Soon a low murmur, like the distant sough of the wind, gradually approached. A faint light flashed through the chamber. He saw his own wild woods and the distant castle. It was just visible, dimly outlined on the horizon, as he had last beheld it in the cold grey beam that accompanied his departure. It arose tranquilly on his spirit. The voice of other years visited his soul. His eyes filled--he could have wept in the very overflowing of his delight. He dashed his hand across his forehead; but the pageant had disappeared.

Daylight once more shone into the apartment; but nothing was discerned, save a dark curtain concealing one extremity of the room, and the seer sitting at his elbow.

”Boy, what sawest thou?” said Kelly, not raising his head as he spoke, but intently poring over a grim volume of cabalistic symbols.

”In troth, I am hard put to it, Master Kelly. The maid I have just seen is accounted the veriest shrew in the parish, and one whom no man may approach with a safe warranty. I am like to lose all hope of wiving, if this be the maiden I am to woo. And yet”--The form of the comely suitor he had seen kneeling at her feet just then flashed on his mind, yet cared he not to show the seer how much the phantom had disturbed him.

”Idle tales?” said Kelly. ”I wot not but half the gay gallants in the town would give the best jewel in their caps to have one sweet look, one pretty smile from her cruel mouth. 'Tis but the report of those whom she hath slighted with loathing and contempt, that hath raised this apprehension in her disfavour. The churls know not what is hidden beneath this outward habit of her perverse nature, and she careth not to discover. Should some youth of n.o.ble bearing and condition but woo her as she deserves, thou shouldest see her tamed, ay, and loving too, as the very idol of her wors.h.i.+p, or I would forfeit my best gift.”

”But she hath a lover!” said Rodolf, gravely.

”Peradventure she hath, but not of her own choosing, or mine art fails me. Look, this figure is the horoscope of her birth. Thou hast some knowledge of the celestial sciences. The directions are so close worked that should this night pa.s.s and Kate go unwed--indicated by Venus coming to a trine of the sun on the cusp of the seventh house, she will refuse all her suitors, and her whole patrimony pa.s.s into the hands of a stranger; but”--he raised his voice with a solemn and emphatic enunciation--”to-night! look to it! If not thine she may be another's.”

The listener's brain seemed on a whirl; thought hurrying on thought, until the mind lost all power of discrimination. The succession of images was too rapid. All individuality was gone. He felt as though not one idea was left out of the busy crowd on which to rest his own ident.i.ty. He seemed a mere pa.s.sive existence, unable either to execute the functions of thought or volition.

”Go, for a brief s.p.a.ce. Thou mayest return at sunset. Yet”--the seer fixed a penetrating glance on the youth as he retired--”go not nigh the merchant's dwelling, unless thou wouldest mar thy fortune.

To-night--remember!”

In the dim solitude of his chamber Rodolf sought in vain to allay the feverish excitement he had endured. He seemed left to the sport and caprice of a power he could not control. The coursers of the imagination grew wilder with restraint: he recklessly flung the reins upon their neck; but this did not tire their impetuosity. His brain glowed like a furnace; he seemed hastening fast on to the verge of either folly or madness. He threw himself on the couch, when the voice of Altdorff came like a winged harmony upon his spirit. The page was seated in the narrow cloisters,--the lute, his untiring companion, enticing a few chords from his touch, playful and gentle as the feelings that awaked them; some old and quaint chant, scarce worth the telling, but cherished in the heart's inmost shrine, from the hallowed nature of its a.s.sociations. A deep slumber crept heavily on the cavalier, but the merchant's daughter still haunted him: sometimes s.n.a.t.c.hed away from his embrace just as a rosy smile was kindling on her lips; at others, she met him with frowns and menace, but ere he could speak to her she had disappeared. Then was he tottering on the battlements of some old turret, when a storm arose, the maiden crept to his side, but in an instant, with a hideous crash, she was borne away by the rude grasp of the tempest. He awoke, with a mortifying discovery that the crash had been of a somewhat less equivocal nature. A cabinet of costly workmans.h.i.+p lay overturned at his feet, and a rich vase, breathing odours, strewed the floor in a thousand fragments.

The noise brought up several of the college servitors; to rid himself from the annoyance he ascended the roof, then protected by low battlements, and leaded, so that a person might walk round the building and pursue his meditations without interruption.

On this day, teeming with events, Dr Dee had been too closely engaged in parish duties to give heed to these love fancies, and even had he been ever so free to exercise his judgment in the matter, it is more than likely Rodolf would not have opened to him the proceedings then afoot.

He well knew that the Doctor yet bore no good-will to Kelly, and might possibly thwart his designs, to the undoing of any good purposed by the strange transactions that had already occurred; he resolved, therefore, to let this day pa.s.s, ere he opened his lips on the subject. But how to while away the hours until evening was a most embarra.s.sing problem.

Sleep he had tried, but he found no wish to repeat the experiment; reading was just then foreign to his humour; mathematics must, that day, go unstudied. After beating time to at least a dozen strange metres, he hit upon the happy contrivance of writing a love-song, as a kind of expedient to restore the equilibrium. He was rather unskilled at the work; but the pen becomes eloquent when the soul moves it. We will, however, leave him at this thrifty employment, having no design, gentle reader, to make the occasion as wearisome to thee as to himself. Having the power to annihilate both time and s.p.a.ce, let us watch the round sun, as he threw his last look, that evening, on the scene of this marvellous history. The old walls of the college, and the church tower, were invested with a gorgeous apparel of light, as though illumined for some gay festival, some season of rejoicing, when gladness s.h.i.+nes out visibly in the shape of bonfires and torches. But few moments elapsed, ere the love-sick youth was again admitted into the dark interior of the seer's dwelling.

A voice whispered in his ear--

”Not a word, hardly a breath, as thou wouldest thrive in thy pursuit.

There be spirits abroad, not of earth, nor air. Be silent and discreet.”

A ray suddenly darted across the room. Again the voice was at his ear:--

”Hold thine eye to the crevice when the light enters, and mark well what thou beholdest.”

Again he saw his mistress, apparently in a vaulted chamber, lighted by a single lamp: she sat as if anxious and disturbed, her cheek pale and flushed by turns, whilst her eye wandered hurriedly around the room.

Some one approached; it was the seer. Rodolf heard him speak.

”Maiden, hast thou a lover?”

The sound seemed scarcely akin to that of human speech. It rose heavily and deep, as from the charnel-house, as if the grim and cold jaws of the grave could utter a voice,--the dreary echoes of the tomb! The seer's lips were motionless, whilst he thus continued in the same sepulchral tone.

”I know thou hast. 'Tis here thy love would tend.” He drew a richly-set miniature from his bosom. It was mounted in so peculiar a fas.h.i.+on that Rodolf started back with the first emotion of surprise. The miniature was his own; a gem newly from the artist, and which he had left, as he thought, in safe custody a short time ago. The voice again whispered in his ear, ”Beware.”

He subdued the expression of wonder just rising on his lip, watching the issue with increased interest.

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