The Soul of Countess Adrian/Chapter 11

buzz of applause was over. This strange new Duchess, bold, self-indulgent, cynical, who had thrown the world away for the gratification of her passion and had met her doom with the courage of a nature that fears neither God nor man, had come before the curtain and had curtsied to the cheers and clappings which her remarkable performance deserved. Shocked, miserable and sick at heart, Lendon was preparing to leave the theatre. His mind vividly recalled the last occasion on which Beatrice had played the part, when her acting had been wrought to so refined a pitch of spiritual passion that there was scarcely a dry eye in the house as the curtain fell to Ferdinand's remorseful ejaculation:

This Duchess had called forth no tears, no emotion, save that of almost involuntary admiration of her dauntless bravery. The prevailing sentiment was one of bewilderment. From a saint the Duchess of Malfi had been transformed into an evil enchantress. There were people who declared that her very physique had changed, that her form seemed more luxuriantly moulded than before her illness, and that her lips and eyes had acquired a peculiar and voluptuous expression. A good many of the Dionysion clique stood in knots about the stalls and lower boxes, and discussed the phenomenon.

As had been anticipated the word went round that Cosway Keele expected his immediate friends "behind," and these hundred and one intimates were waiting till the ordinary crowd had departed, and till the stage was cleared and the drop curtain once more raised. It was with a little difficulty that Lendon steered his way through. At each turn someone accosted him.

"Mr. Lendon, what do you think of it? … It is extraordinary! … It is disgusting! … It is too horrible! But how could she have done it? … When could she have thought out such a reading? … Do tell me, is she really not quite a proper person? … It is impossible that she can be nice and yet act so!"

Such were the confused remarks and murmurs. And again, from a young lady artist, who delighted in the drama, "I think it is simply utterly uncanny; but I never saw anything so powerful. I loved the other Duchess of Malfi, I hate this one."

A bearded critic, given to rather straight language, pulled Lendon aside. "Good God! Lendon, what does she mean by this? You know more of the girl than most of us. Why, in the name of Heaven, has she started on that tack? Does she propose to rival Violet Belavon?"—he named an actress whose name was uttered in horror by even the more lax members of her profession—"I never saw anything more damnably suggestive."

"But what a genius!" put in another critic, who had joined them. "There has never been anything the least like it since Lucca changed her first reading of Marguerite—only that was the other way. And there's no doubt the character lends itself to the coarser interpretation. It's much more likely the Duchess was a sinner than a saint—much more in the spirit of mediæval Italy. It's audacious; but as I say, it's genius."

"Are you coming behind, Mr. Lendon?" somebody asked.

"No!" he returned, savagely. He could almost have throttled the critic who had first spoken. That Beatrice—his Beatrice, should be the subject of ribald remark! He heard in anticipation the gossip of club suppers. That she, whom he had so loved and so reverenced, should have dragged herself down to this! It was too horrible! He passed a night of intense misery. Part of it was spent in roaming the streets, and then he went home and paced his room till morning. He almost persuaded himself that he was a victim of his own diseased imagination, but the morning paper confirmed too surely his impression of the night. He sent out for other papers. All, in more or less suggestive language, gave the same verdict. All expressed amazement at the singular genius which could transform an impersonation of the purest, most womanly, poetry into that of a high-born courtezan.

To a nature refined, sensitive, as that of Lendon, these criticisms were torture. In his quieter moments, when he was not writhing under the pain and shock which her presence caused him, he thought, with the deepest pity, of the agony she must suffer when she read the papers, and realized the feelings that her acting had produced. She would recover from this temporary madness, for such he felt certain was the cause of the change in her; and then, what need of him she would have to comfort, and console her! He thought of Mrs. Cubison's dark hints. He thought of cases he had read about, in which most refined women had shown the first signs of insanity by a coarseness in their demeanour that had shocked and puzzled their friends. This was the clue to the mystery. He blamed himself for his own passion of revolt. What was his love worth if it could not bear this strain! It should be his part to tend and cherish her in her sickness, and to help reawaken her own pure exquisite nature. He was thinking thus when the curtain that covered the gallery door was drawn aside and, unannounced, Beatrice herself descended the steps and came towards him. She was alone. Never before had Beatrice come to him in this manner. Involuntarily his mind leaped to the memory of Countess Adrian and of her first visit to the studio.

"Beatrice!" he cried.

She had thrown back her veil and caught both his hands in hers, which were hot and feverish. "I have come to you," she said; "because you would not come to me, and I long for you. You are my magnet, Bernard; and if you were at the other end of the world I should fly to you. Why did you not keep your promise last night? I watched, and watched. The night was so beautiful; and the moon was shining, and I sat at my window, and my heart called to you, 'Love; Love—come.' Where were you? I left the theatre early; I would not wait for the supper and the congratulations. Tell me. Did I please you? Did you think me beautiful? Was I sweet to you—my Antonio—my lover—my husband?"

"Beatrice," he said gravely, "have you read the papers? Do you know what they say of your performance last night?"

She laughed lightly. "Oh! the critics. I have set them a riddle. What does it matter about them? I was not acting to them, but to you. I wanted to show you that I could love well. You saw how the Duchess loved Antonio. That is how I love you."

Lendon drew back, half unconsciously.

"Why, my Antonio," she said, "how cold and constrained you are! Where is your love? The Antonio was not like that. He could meet his Duchess half way, at least, and take her to his heart. Come—meet me half way." She advanced towards him.

"Beatrice," he said gravely. "I don't quite understand your altered manner. You are not quite yourself. You are not well. You want care and tenderness and watching." He forced himself to talk gently and kindly to her. His real self he felt sure must be all gentleness and kindness to her. But there was something stirring in his heart that seemed to keep him away from her, that seemed to make him shrink from her, almost to make him hate her.

"Not well!" she exclaimed with a scornful laugh, "My solemn Antonio, I am bubbling over with outrageous health and sheer animal spirits, and with love for you. Come—talk to me like a lover."

"You will find a lover—a true, devoted lover—in your husband, Beatrice."

"Let us not wait too long, then! I am sick of this separation, this lonely life." There was something now in her tone that touched him in spite of his revolt against her.

"We shall not wait long, we shall be married at once, as soon as ever you wish." His heart seemed to sink as he spoke the words. A fearful thought arose in him, was he as one who chains himself to a maniac? Oh, what had become of his Beatrice?

"Oh, at once, at once," she said eagerly. "I long to be able to call you mine for ever. You will be mine for ever?"

"For ever!" The words came out as if they acknowledged a sentence of doom, rather than gave forth a pledge of love.

"In this world and the next," she cried, and flung her arms round his neck.

Suddenly she started violently. Her arms fell, and she cowered back as though she had seen something which terrified her.

Lendon turned. There had been no announcement, no sound of opening door, no step on the stairs, and yet there, not six paces from him, stood Maddox Challis—Maddox Challis, the mystic philosopher, whom the papers reported to be thousands of miles distant, away in the fastnesses of Lebanon, yet here in a light semi-Eastern dress, grey-bearded, keen-eyed, withered, and sallow, and with the same half cynical, half benevolent smile as when he had taken leave of the Countess Adrian at Sir Donald Urquhart's supper-party.

"Forgive my intrusion," he said, in his slow incisive way, looking from one to the other, and showing no sign of surprise at the effect his appearance produced. "I had orders, Mr. Lendon, from those in authority, to present myself in your studio this morning."

"From those in authority?" repeated Lendon in bewilderment.

"Strange things seem to have happened in the last few days," Challis went on, taking no heed of the interruption. "It is the death of Countess Adrian which has brought me here from Palestine."

"You say you have come from Palestine!" cried Lendon. "Impossible. It is scarcely a week since Countess Adrian died; and, even if the news had been sent you by telegraph, you could not have arrived so soon."

The mystic smiled his peculiar smile. "My Masters have other means of transmitting intelligence than by the electric wires," he said. "And as for my rapid travelling—well, Mr. Lendon, time and space are very slight hindrances to those whom the Masters choose to do their business. If the conditions of my visit appear strange to you now, I will give you an explanation later."

"You are welcome, Mr. Challis, under any conditions," said Lendon, recovering himself. "First, I want you to know this lady—my future wife—Miss Beatrice Brett."

Challis made a slight dignified inclination of his head, and his deep luminous eyes fixed themselves on Beatrice with an expression of sternness—it seemed to Lendon, of wrath. The effect his gaze produced on Beatrice was extraordinary. For an instant she glared at him like a wild animal entrapped. Then her eyes drooped as if she were cowed. All the grace and charm of womanhood vanished from her features. There was something approaching bestiality in their look. Lendon, who had gone close to her, started back. As Challis addressed her he gave a cry of horror and amazement, but words forsook him.

"Woman, possessed with a devil," said the mystic, "my business is with you." He drew up his bent frame and stood before her erect and stately, with set majestic face and arm upraised, the forefinger pointed at her, like some high priest, denouncing a sinner against the supreme law. "I know you for what you are," he went on in vibrating tones that thrilled Lendon with the sense of being in presence of a power above things earthly. "You, who walked the earth in the body of a passion-tossed woman, and as Countess Adrian awoke the desire of sin and the lust of the flesh—spirit of all evil and uncleanness, in the might of the White Brotherhood, by the Sign which must be obeyed, by the Word which is Holy, I command you to come forth."

He pronounced some syllables in a strange tongue of which Lendon knew no interpretation, and with his first finger traced rapidly in the air the sign of the mystic Pentagram. As his hand moved, the Odic Force flowed from it, showing a faint bluish light. Fire seemed to flame from the Initiate's eyes. His spare frame dilated. Twice again, in low awe-inspiring accents, he uttered the sacred formula.

The girl struggled under the spell. Curious inarticulate cries came from her. Her features were contorted and her eyes became glassy. Her body writhed as in a convulsion, and she beat the air helplessly with her hands as she staggered forward, and then fell, a piteous heap, white and still on the ground.

A dumb horror seized Lendon as he watched her. He too felt under a spell. He had an impulse to rush to her and support her, but he was not able to move or speak. He was conscious of a sensation of intense cold. Again the mystic spoke, but his voice sounded afar-off and unintelligible as a sound in a dream. A wonderful supernal light filled the studio, outshining the light of day and bringing with it a giddy sense of exhilaration and of divine ecstasy. He fancied that he beheld for a moment the outlines of a gracious god-like form. There ran through his body a thrill ineffable, and then his limbs grew numb as under the influence of an atmosphere rarer and more potent than that which the untempered human frame can endure. His brain reeled. The celestial radiance, the glorious visitant, the helpless, huddled form of Beatrice, even the face of the Seer himself—all grew dim, and he knew no more.

When he came to himself the studio was darkened, he was seated in his own chair, and Maddox Challis, to all appearance in ordinary flesh and blood, was bending over him, one hand on his forehead and the other feeling his pulse. He drew back as Lendon opened his eyes.

"You are right now," he said quietly. "The Master's magnetism was more than you could stand; but you will feel the benefit of it in time to come, and your studio will certainly be the clearer of all unwholesome influences."

"The Master!" repeated Lendon dreamily. "What has happened?"

"You scarcely remember," said Challis. "It is well that the impression of horror should fade. For your comfort I will tell you that in a few hours' time you will have ceased to connect the woman you love, and who is pure and sweet and worthy of your love, with the soul of that unhappy being who was Countess Adrian."

"Ah!" cried Lendon with a shudder. "The horror comes back now. But my mind is confused. I can't realize what you have done. Mr. Challis, there is a mystery, will you explain it?"

"Yes, there is a mystery," replied Challis, "but it is easily read by those whose eyes are open to the Inner Light. Mr. Lendon, if you were learned in the lore of the you would know that there exist in Nature certain elementary spirits which are indeed the astral corpses of those who have died in crime or in the flush and heat of sensuous longing, and who, bodiless, tormented by desire, and incapable of gratifying it, haunt cities, like vampires suck the vitality of human beings, and even sometimes enter the bodies of living persons, and thus live on in enjoyment of their material pleasures.

"To those who know, many a man and woman going about in the world is but a soulless organism whose higher self has been expelled by some sudden shock or demoniac machination, and whose body has become the home of one of these wandering earth-bound spirits. Strange it is that the more spiritual the nature, the more loosely are the particles bound together, and the more readily is the soul separated from the body. Do not misunderstand me. Such expulsions, though retarding the progress of the soul, do it no ultimate injury. For the body is but a garment; the spirit is eternal and must live again. … This is the occult explanation of incurable propensity to crime, mania, epilepsy, and other diseases with which medicine is powerless to grapple. For even in this nineteenth-century London, devils may enter into a man and torment him as in the days in Galilee when Jesu cast forth that dumb spirit which threw the young man down and tare him grievously. … It was for this reason that the ancients, who understood the secret laws of nature, guarded their Sybils and their Pythonesses so that no impure magnetism might touch them, and that they might be less accessible to the influences from the astral world. In these days such beings are called mediums, and they are let loose in the foul atmosphere of cities, and woe be to those who are not pure and strong to escape destruction." Challis paused. "Do you understand the mystery?" he asked. "The soul of Countess Adrian was one of these vampire spirits. When it lost its home of flesh Countess Adrian's will prepared for it another body. Countess Adrian's kiss established the necessary physical contact at the moment of dissolution. The emotional conditions, the peculiar organization of Beatrice, the love of the two women for you—all contributed to the magnetic rapport."

"And Beatrice," cried Lendon, "Oh, tell me—she is saved?" He rose in his agitation, one thought only possessing him. "Where is she?" he cried.

"See," said Challis. He led Lendon to a sofa beneath the window where Beatrice lay, pure, sweet, and serene, as a child in a happy sleep. She smiled in her dream as her lover bent over her. Her eyes opened. It was the soul that he knew which gazed out of them.

He caught her in his arms. In that kiss, long, deep, wholly rapturous, the memory of Countess Adrian and of the nightmare Avatar vanished for ever. When he released her, they were alone. Maddox Challis had vanished too.