Her voice broke in a sob--she made an uncertain step forward, and he sprang to meet her.

"I love you, love you!"--she cried, pa.s.sionately--"Let the whole world forsake me, if only you remain! I am all yours!--do with me as you will!"

He caught her in his arms--straining her to his heart with all the pa.s.sion of a long-denied lover's embrace--their lips met--and for a brief s.p.a.ce they were lost in that sudden and divine rapture that comes but once in a lifetime,--when like a shivering sense of cold the name again was whispered:

"Cosmo de Medicis!"

A shadow fell across the scene, and a woman, dark and heavy-featured, stood like a blot in the sunlit brightness of the studio,--a woman very richly attired, who gazed fixedly at the lovers with round, suspicious eyes and a sneering smile. The artist turned and saw her--his face changed from joy to a pale anxiety--yet, holding his love with one arm, he flung defiance at her with uplifted head and fearless demeanour.

"Spy!"--he exclaimed--"Do your worst! Let us have an end of your serpent vigilance and perfidy!--better death than the constant sight of you! What! Have you not watched us long enough to make discovery easy?

Do your worst, I say, and quickly!"

The cruel smile deepened on the woman's mouth,--she made no answer, but simply raised her hand. In immediate obedience to the signal, a man, clad in the Florentine dress of the sixteenth century, and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank. Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey. There was a brief and breathless struggle--three daggers gleamed in air--a shriek rang through the stillness--another instant and the victim lay dead, stabbed to the heart, while she who had just clung to his living body and felt the warmth of his living lips against hers, dropped on her knees beside the corpse with wild waitings of madness and despair.

"Another crime on your soul, Cosmo de Medicis!"--she cried--"Another murder of a n.o.bler life than your own!--may Heaven curse you for it!

But you have not parted my love from me--no!--you have but united us for ever! We escape you and your spies--thus!"

And s.n.a.t.c.hing a dagger from the hand of one of the a.s.sa.s.sins before he could prevent her, she plunged it into her own breast. She fell without a groan, self-slain,--and I saw, as in a mist of breath on a mirror, the sudden horror on the faces of the men and the one woman who were left to contemplate the ghastly deed they had committed. And then--noting as in some old blurred picture the features of the man who wore the collar of jewels, I felt that I knew him--yet I could not place him in any corner of my immediate recognition. Gradually this strange scene of cool white marble vastness with its brilliant vista of flowers and foliage under the bright Italian sky, and the betrayed lovers lying dead beside each other in the presence of their murderers, pa.s.sed away like a floating cloud,--and the same slow, calm Voice I had heard once before now spoke again in sad, stern accents:

"Jealousy is cruel as the grave!--the coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame! Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it--if a man would give all his substance for love it would be utterly contemned!"

I closed my eyes,--or thought I closed them--a vague terror was growing upon me,--a terror of myself and a still greater terror of the man beside me who held my hand,--yet something prevented me from turning my head to look at him, and another still stronger emotion possessed me with a force so overpowering that I could hardly breathe under the weight and pain of it, but I could give it no name. I could not think at all--and I had ceased even to wonder at the strangeness and variety of these visions or dream-episodes full of colour and sound which succeeded each other so swiftly. Therefore it hardly seemed remarkable to me when I saw the heavy curtain of mist which hung in front of my eyes suddenly reft asunder in many places and broken into a semblance of the sea.

A wild sea! Gloomily grey and grand in its onsweeping wrath, its huge billows rose and fell like moving mountains convulsed by an earthquake,--light and shadow combated against each other in its dark abysmal depths and among its toppling crests of foam--I could hear the savage hiss and boom of breakers dashing themselves to pieces on some unseen rocky coast far away,--and my heart grew cold with dread as I beheld a ship in full sail struggling against the heavy onslaught of the wind on that heaving wilderness of waters, like a mere feather lost from a sea-gull's wing. Flying along like a hunted creature she staggered and plunged, her bowsprit dipping into deep chasms from which she was tossed shudderingly upward again as in light contempt, and as she came nearer and nearer into my view I could discern some of the human beings on board--the man at the wheel, with keen eyes peering into the gathering gloom of the storm, his hair and face dashed with spray,--the sailors, fighting hard to save the rigging from being torn to pieces and flung into the sea,--then--a sudden huge wave swept her directly in front of me, and I saw the two distinct personalities that had been so constantly presented to me during this strange experience,--THE MAN WITH THE FACE OF SANTORIS--THE WOMAN WITH MY OWN FACE SO TRULY REFLECTED that I might have been looking at myself in a mirror. And just now the resemblance to us both was made more close and striking than it had been in any of the previous visions--that is to say, the likenesses of ourselves were given almost as we now existed.

The man held the woman beside him closely clasped with one arm, supporting her and himself, with the other thrown round one of the shaking masts. I saw her look up to him with the light of a great and pa.s.sionate love in her eyes. And I heard him say:--

"The end of sorrow and the beginning of joy! You are not afraid?"

"Afraid?" And her voice had no tremor--"With you?"

He caught her closer to his heart and kissed her not once but many times in a kind of mingled rapture and despair.

"This is death, my beloved!"--he said.

And her answer pealed out with tender certainty. "No!--not death, but life!--and love!"

A cry went up from the sailors--a cry of heartrending agony,--a ma.s.s of enormous billows rolling steadily on together hurled themselves like giant a.s.sa.s.sins upon the frail and helpless vessel and engulfed it--it disappeared with awful swiftness, like a small blot on the ocean sucked down into the whirl of water--the vast and solemn greyness of the sea spread over it like a pall--it was a nothing, gone into nothingness! I watched one giant wave rise in a crystalline glitter of dark sapphire and curl over the spot where all that human life and human love had disappeared,--and then--there came upon my soul a sudden sense of intense calm. The great sea smoothed itself out before my eyes into fine ripples which dispersed gradually into mist again--and almost I found my voice--almost my lips opened to ask: "What means this vision of the sea?" when a sound of music checked me on the verge of utterance--the music of delicate strings as of a thousand harps in heaven. I listened with every sense caught and entranced--my gaze still fixed half unseeingly upon the heavy grey film which hung before me--that mystic sky-canvas upon which some Divine painter had depicted in life-like form and colour scenes which I, in a sort of dim strangeness, recognised yet could not understand--and as I looked a rainbow, with every hue intensified to such a burning depth of brilliancy that its light was almost intolerably dazzling, sprang in a perfect arch across the cloud! I uttered an involuntary cry of rapture--for it was like no earthly rainbow I had ever seen. Its palpitating radiance seemed to penetrate into the very core and centre of s.p.a.ce,--aerially delicate yet deep, each separate colour glowed with the fervent splendour of a heaven undreamed of by mere mortality and too glorious for mortal description. It was the shining repentance of the storm,--the a.s.surance of joy after sorrow--the pa.s.sionate love of the soul rising upwards in perfect form and beauty after long imprisonment in ice-bound depths of repression and solitude--it was anything and everything that could be thought or imagined of divinest promise!

My heart beat quickly--tears sprang to my eyes--and almost unconsciously I pressed the kind, strong hand that held mine. It trembled ever so slightly--but I was too absorbed in watching that triumphal arch across the sky to heed the movement. By degrees the l.u.s.trous hues began to pale very slowly, and almost imperceptibly they grew fainter and fainter till at last all was misty grey as before, save in one place where there were long rays of light like the falling of silvery rain. And then came strange rapidly pa.s.sing scenes as of cloud forms constantly shifting and changing, in all of which I discerned the same two personalities so like and yet so unlike ourselves who were the dumb witnesses of every episode,--but everything now pa.s.sed in absolute silence--there was no mysterious music,--the voices had ceased--all was mute.

Suddenly there came a change over the face of what I thought the sky--the clouds were torn asunder as it were to show a breadth of burning amber and rose, and I beheld the semblance of a great closed Gateway barred across as with gold. Here a figure slowly shaped itself,--the figure of a woman who knelt against the closed barrier with hands clasped and uplifted in pitiful beseeching. So strangely desolate and solitary was her aspect in all that heavenly brilliancy that I could almost have wept for her, shut out as she seemed from some mystic unknown glory. Round her swept the great circle of the heavens--beneath her and above her were the deserts of infinite s.p.a.ce--and she, a fragile soul rendered immortal by quenchless fires of love and hope and memory, hovered between the deeps of immeasurable vastness like a fluttering leaf or flake of snow! My heart ached for her--my lips moved unconsciously in prayer:

"O leave her not always exiled and alone!" I murmured, inwardly--"Dear G.o.d, have pity! Unbar the gate and let her in! She has waited so long!"

The hand holding mine strengthened its clasp,--and the warm, close pressure sent a thrill through my veins. Almost I would have turned to look at my companion--had I not suddenly seen the closed gateway in the heavens begin to open slowly, allowing a flood of golden radiance to pour out like the steady flowing of a broad stream. The kneeling woman's figure remained plainly discernible, but seemed to be gradually melting into the light which surrounded it. And then--something--I know not what--shook me down from the pinnacle of vision,--hardly aware of my own action, I withdrew my hand from my companion's, and saw--just the solemn grandeur of Loch Coruisk, with a deep amber glow streaming over the summit of the mountains, flung upward by the setting sun!

Nothing more!--I heaved an involuntary sigh--and at last, with some little hesitation and dread, looked full at Santoris. His eyes met mine steadfastly--he was very pale. So we faced each other for a moment--then he said, quietly:--

"How quickly the time has pa.s.sed! This is the best moment of the sunset,--when that glory fades we shall have seen all!"

IX

DOUBTFUL DESTINY

His voice was calm and conventional, yet I thought I detected a thrill of sadness in it which touched me to a kind of inexplicable remorse, and I turned to him quickly, hardly conscious of the words I uttered.

"Must the glory fade?"--I said, almost pleadingly--"Why should it not remain with us?"

He did not reply at once. A shadow of something like sternness clouded his brows, and I began to be afraid--yet afraid of what? Not of him--but of myself, lest I should unwittingly lose all I had gained.

But then the question presented itself--What had I gained? Could I explain it, even to myself? There was nothing in any way tangible of which to say--"I possess this," or "I have secured that,"--for, reducing all circ.u.mstances to a prosaic level, all that I knew was that I had met in my present companion a man who had a singular, almost compelling attractiveness, and with whose personality I seemed to be familiar; also, that under some power which he might possibly have exerted, I had in an unexpected place and at an unexpected time seen certain visions or 'impressions' which might or might not be the working of my own brain under a temporary magnetic influence. I was fully aware that such things could happen--and yet--I was not by any means sure that they had so happened in this case. And while I was thus hurriedly trying to think out the problem, he replied to my question.

"That depends on ourselves,"--he said--"On you perhaps more than any other."

I looked up at him wonderingly.

"On me?" I echoed.

He smiled a little.

"Why, yes! A woman always decides."

I turned my eyes again towards the sky. Long lines of delicate pale blue and green were now intermingled with the amber light of the after-glow, and the whole scene was one of indescribable grandeur and beauty.

"I wish I could understand,"--I murmured.

"Let me help you,"--he said, gently. "Possibly I can make things clearer for you. You are just now under the spell of your own psychic impressions and memories. You think you have seen strange episodes--these are nothing but pictures stored far away back in the cells of your spiritual brain, which (through the medium of your present material brain) project on your vision not only presentments and reflections of past scenes and events, but which also reproduce the very words and sounds attending those scenes and events. That is all.

Loch Coruisk has shown you nothing but itself in varying effects of light and cloud--there is no mystery here but the everlasting mystery of Nature in which you and I play our several parts. What you have seen or heard I do not know--for each individual experience is and always must be different. All that I am fully conscious of is, that our having met and our being here together to-day is, as it were, the mending of a broken chain. But it rests with you--and even with me--to break it once more if we choose."

I was silent, not because I could not but because I dared not speak.

All my life seemed suddenly to hang on the point of a hair's-breadth of possibility.

"I think,"--he continued in the same quiet voice--"that just now we may let things take their ordinary course. You and I"--here he paused, and impelled by some secret emotion I lifted my eyes to his. Instinctively, and with a rush of feeling, we stretched out our hands to each other.

He clasped mine in his own, and stooping his head kissed them tenderly.

"You and I,"--he went on--"have met before in many a phase of life and on many a plane of thought--and I believe we know and realise this. Let us be satisfied so far--and if destiny has anything of happiness or wisdom in store for us let us try to a.s.sist its fulfilment and not stand in the way."

I found my voice suddenly.