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- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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Mr. Fregelius was an historian, and possessed some interesting records, upon which it was his habit to descant. Amongst other things he instructed Morris in the annals of Stella’s ancestry upon both sides, which, as it happened, could be traced back for many generations. In these discourses it grew plain to his listener whence had sprung certain of her qualities, such as her fearless attitude towards death, and her tendency towards mysticism. Here in these musty chronicles, far back in the times when those of whom they kept record were half, if not wholly, heathen, these same qualities could be discovered among her forbears.
Indeed, there was one woman of whom the saga told, a certain ancestress named Saevuna, whereof it is written “that she was of all women the very fairest, and that she drew the hearts of men with her wonderful eyes as the moon draws mists from a marsh,” who, in some ways, might have been Stella herself, Stella unchristianized and savage.
This Saevuna’s husband rebelled against the king of his country, and, being captured, was doomed to a shameful death by hanging as a traitor. Thereon, under pretence of bidding him farewell, she administered poison to him, partaking of the same herself; “and,” continues the saga, “they both of them, until their pains overcame them, died singing a certain ancient song which had descended in the family of one of them, and is called the Song of the Over-Lord, or the Offering to Death. This song, while strength and voice remained to them, it is the duty of this family to say or sing, or so they hold it, in the hour of their death. But if they sing it, except by way of learning its words and music from their mothers, and escape death, it will not be for very long, seeing that when once the offering is laid upon his altar, the Over-Lord considers it his own, and, after the fashion of gods and men, takes it as soon as he can. So sweet and strange was the singing of this Saevuna until she choked that the king and his nobles came out to hear it, and all men thought it a great marvel that a woman should sing thus in the very pains of death. Moreover, they declared, many of them, that while the song went on they could think of nothing else, and that strange and wonderful visions passed before their eyes. But of this nobody can know the truth for certain, as the woman and her husband died long ago.”
“You see,” said Mr. Fregelius, when he had finished translating the passage aloud, “it is not wonderful that I thought it unlucky when I heard that you had found Stella singing this same song upon the ship, much as centuries ago her ancestress, Saevuna, sang it while she and her husband died.”
“At any rate, the omen fulfilled itself,” answered Morris, with a sigh, “and she, too, died with the song upon her lips, though I do not think that it had anything to do with these things, which were fated to befall.”
“Well,” said the clergyman, “the fate is fulfilled now, and the song will never be sung again. She was the last of her race, and it was a law among them that neither words nor music should ever be written down.”
When such old tales and legends were exhausted, and, outside the immediate object of their search, some of them were of great interest to a man who, like Morris, had knowledge of Norse literature, and was delighted to discover in Mr. Fregelius a scholar acquainted with the original tongues in which they were written, these companions fell back upon other matters. But all of them had to do with Stella. One night the clergyman read some letters written by her as a child from Denmark. On another he produced certain dolls which she had dressed at the same period of her life in the costume of the peasants of that country. On a third he repeated a piece of rather indifferent poetry composed by her when she was a girl of sixteen. Its strange title was, “The Resurrection of Dead Roses.” It told how in its author’s fancy the flowers which were cut and cast away on earth bloomed again in heaven, never to wither more; a pretty allegory, but treated in a childish fashion.
Thus, then, from time to time, as occasion offered, did this strange pair celebrate the rites they thought so harmless, and upon the altar of memory make offerings to their dead.
CHAPTER XX STELLA’S DIARY
It seems to be a law of life that nothing can stand completely still and changeless. All must vary, must progress or retrograde; the very rocks in the bowels of the earth undergo organic alterations, while the eternal hills that cover them increase or are worn away. Much more is this obvious in the case of ephemeral man, of his thoughts, his works, and everything wherewith he has to do, he who within the period of a few short years is doomed to appear, wax, wane, and vanish.
Even the conversations of Mr. Fregelius and Morris were subject to the working of this universal rule; and in obedience to it must travel towards a climax, either of fruition, however unexpected, or, their purpose served, whatever it may have been, to decay and death, for lack of food upon which to live and flourish. The tiniest groups of impulses or incidents have their goal as sure and as appointed as that of the cluster of vast globes which form a constellation. Between them the principal distinction seems to be one of size, and at present we are not in a position to say which may be the most important, the issue of the smallest of unrecorded causes, or of the travelling of the great worlds. The destiny of a single human soul shaped or directed by the one, for aught we know, may be of more weight and value than that of a multitude of hoary universes naked of life and spirit. Or perhaps to the Eye that sees and judges the difference is nothing.
Thus even these semi-secret interviews when two men met to talk over the details of a lost life with which, however profoundly it may have influenced them in the past, they appeared, so far as this world is concerned, to have nothing more to do, were destined to affect the future of one of them in a fashion that could scarcely have been foreseen. This became apparent, or put itself in the way of becoming apparent, when on a certain evening Morris found Mr. Fregelius seated in the rectory dining-room, and by his side a little pile of manuscript volumes bound in shabby cloth.
“What are those?” asked Morris. “Her translation of the Saga of the Cave Outlaws?”
“No, Morris,” answered Mr. Fregelius—he called him Morris when they were alone—“of course not. Don’t you remember that they were bound in red?” he added reproachfully, “and that we did them up to send to the publisher last week?”
“Yes, yes, of course; he wrote to me yesterday to say that he would be glad to bring out the book”—Morris did not add, “at my risk.”—“But what are they?”
“They are,” replied Mr. Fregelius, “her journals, which she appears to have kept ever since she was fourteen years of age. You remember she was going to London on the day that she was drowned—that Christmas Day? Well, before she went out to the old church she packed her belongings into two boxes, and there those boxes have lain for three years and more, because I could never find the heart to meddle with them. But, a few nights ago I wasn’t able to sleep—I rest very badly now—so I went and undid them, lifting out all the things which her hands had put there. At the bottom of one of the boxes I found these volumes, except the last of them, in which she was writing till the day of her death. That was at the top. I was aware that she kept a diary, for I have seen her making the entries; but of its contents I knew nothing. In fact, until last night I had forgotten its existence.”
“Have you read it now?” asked Morris.
“I have looked into it; it seems to be a history of her thoughts and theories. Facts are very briefly noted. It occurred to me that you might like to read it. Why not?”
“Yes, yes, very much,” answered Morris eagerly. “That is, if you think she will not mind. You see, it is private.”
Mr. Fregelius took no notice of the tense of which Morris made use, for the reason that it seemed natural to him that he should employ it. Their strange habit was to talk of Stella, not as we speak of one dead, but as a living individuality with whom they chanced for a while to be unable to communicate.
“I do not think that she will mind,” he answered slowly; “quite the reverse, indeed. It is a record of a phase and period of her existence which, I believe, she might wish those who are—interested in her—to study, especially as she had no secrets that she could desire to conceal. From first to last I believe her life to have been as clear as the sky, and as pure as running water.”
“Very well,” answered Morris, “if I come across any passage that I think I ought not to read, I will skip.”
“I can find nothing of the sort, or I would not give it to you,” said Mr. Fregelius. “But, of course, I have not read the volumes through as yet. There has been no time for that. I have sampled them here and there, that is all.”
That night Morris took those shabby note-books home with him. Mary, who according to her custom went to bed early, being by this time fast asleep, he retired to his laboratory in the old chapel, where it was his habit to sit, especially when, as at the present time, his father was away from home. Here, without wasting a moment, he began his study of them.
It was with very strange sensations, such as he had never before experienced, that he opened the first of the volumes, written some thirteen years earlier, that is, about ten years before Stella’s death. Their actual acquaintance had been but brief. Now he was about to complete his knowledge of her, to learn many things which he had found no time, or had forgotten to inquire into, to discover the explanation of various phases of her character hitherto but half-revealed; perhaps to trace to its source the energy of that real, but mystic, faith with which it was informed. This diary that had come—or perhaps been sent to him—in so unexpected a fashion, was the key whereby he hoped to open the most hidden chambers of the heart of the woman whom he loved, and who loved him with all her strength and soul.
Little wonder, then, that he trembled upon the threshold of such a search. He was like the neophyte of some veiled religion, who, after long years of arduous labour and painful preparation, is at length conducted to the doors of its holy of holies, and left to enter there alone. What will he find beyond them? The secret he longed to learn, the seal and confirmation of his hard-won faith, or empty, baulking nothingness? Would the goddess herself, the unveiled Isis, wait to bless her votary within those doors? Or would that hall be tenanted but by a painted and bedizened idol, a thing fine with ivory and gold, but dead and soulless?
Might it not be better indeed to turn back while there was yet time, to be content to dwell on in the wide outer courts of the imagination,
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