Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/137

 full—crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there: palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers, so thronged and so hushed.

Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown; with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet; a great and new planet she was, but in what shape? I waited her rising.

She rose at nine that December night; above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment day. Seen near, it was a chaos—hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing—half lava, half glow. I had heard the woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness—something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.

For a while—a long while—I thought it was only a woman, though a unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognised my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man; in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength—she was but a frail creature; and, as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote "Hell" on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Fate and murder and madness incarnate she stood.

It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation. Suffering had struck that stage empress, and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor, in finite measure, resenting it; she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background, and entourage, and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster—like silver: rather, be it said, like death. Wicked, perhaps, she is; but also she is strong, and her strength has conquered beauty, has overcome grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each varied movement royally, imperially, exceedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in revel or war, is still an angel's hair, and glorious under a halo.

Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she