A Romance of Two Worlds Part 29

Zara smiled, and gently repeated her request to me for some music--a request in which Mrs. Challoner and her daughters eagerly joined. As I went to the piano I thought of Edgar Allan Poe's exquisite poem:

"In Heaven a spirit doth dwell, Whose heart-strings are a lute; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars, so legends tell, Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice--all mute."

As I poised my fingers above the keys of the instrument, another long, low, ominous roll of thunder swept up from the distance and made the room tremble.

"Play--play, for goodness' sake!" exclaimed Mrs. Everard; "and then we shall not be obliged to fix our attention on the approaching storm!"

I played a few soft opening arpeggio pa.s.sages, while Zara seated herself in an easy-chair near the window, and the other ladies arranged themselves on sofas and ottomans to their satisfaction. The room was exceedingly close: and the scent of the flowers that were placed about in profusion was almost too sweet and overpowering.

"And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre, By which lie sits and sings,-- The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings."

How these verses haunted me! With them floating in my mind, I played--losing myself in mazes of melody, and travelling harmoniously in and out of the different keys with that sense of perfect joy known only to those who can improvise with ease, and catch the unwritten music of nature, which always appeals most strongly to emotions that are unspoilt by contact with the world, and which are quick to respond to what is purely instinctive art. I soon became thoroughly absorbed, and forgot that there were any persons present. In fancy I imagined myself again in view of the glory of the Electric Ring--again I seemed to behold the opaline radiance of the Central Sphere:

"Where Love's a grown-up G.o.d, Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we wors.h.i.+p in a star."

By-and-by I found my fingers at the work of tenderly unravelling a little skein of major melody, as soft and childlike as the innocent babble of a small brooklet flowing under ferns. I followed this airy suggestion obediently, till it led me of itself to its fitting end, when I ceased playing. I was greeted by a little burst of applause, and looking up, saw that all the gentlemen had come in from the dining-room, and were standing near me. The stately figure of Heliobas was the most prominent in the group; he stood erect, one hand resting lightly on the framework of the piano, and his eyes met mine fixedly.

"You were inspired," he said with a grave smile, addressing me; "you did not observe our entrance."

I was about to reply, when a loud, appalling crash of thunder rattled above us, as if some huge building had suddenly fallen into ruins. It startled us all into silence for a moment, and we looked into each other's faces with a certain degree of awe.

"That was a good one," remarked Mr. Challoner. "There was nothing undecided about that clap. Its mind was made up."

Zara suddenly rose from her seat, and drew aside the window-curtains.

"I wonder if it is raining," she said.

Amy Everard uttered a little shriek of dismay.

"Oh, don't open the blinds!" she exclaimed. "It is really dangerous!"

Heliobas glanced at her with a little sarcastic smile.

"Take a seat on the other side of the room, if you are alarmed, madame," he said quietly, placing a chair in the position he suggested, which Amy accepted eagerly.

She would, I believe, have gladly taken refuge in the coal-cellar had he offered it. Zara, in the meantime, who had not heard Mrs. Everard's exclamation of fear, had drawn up one of the blinds, and stood silently looking out upon the night. Instinctively we all joined her, with the exception of Amy, and looked out also. The skies were very dark; a faint moaning wind stirred the tops of the leafless trees; but there was no rain. A dry volcanic heat pervaded the atmosphere--in fact we all felt the air so stifling, that Heliobas threw open the window altogether, saying, as he did so:

"In a thunderstorm, it is safer to have the windows open than shut; besides, one cannot suffocate."

A brilliant glare of light flashed suddenly upon our vision. The heavens seemed torn open from end to end, and a broad lake of pale blue fire lay quivering in the heart of the mountainous black clouds--for a second only. An on-rus.h.i.+ng, ever-increasing, rattling roar of thunder ensued, that seemed to shake the very earth, and all was again darkness.

"This is magnificent!" cries Mrs. Challoner, who, with her family, had travelled a great deal, and was quite accustomed to hurricanes and other inconveniences caused by the unaccommodating behaviour of the elements. "I don't think I ever saw anything like it, John dear, even that storm we saw at Chamounix was not any better than this."

"Well," returned her husband meditatively, "you see we had the snow mountains there, and the effect was pretty lively. Then there were the echoes--those cavernous echoes were grand! What was that pa.s.sage in Job, Effie, that I used to say they reminded me of?"

"'The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His reproof ...

The thunder of His power, who can understand?'" replied Effie Challoner reverently.

"That's it!" he replied. "I opine that Job was pretty correct in his ideas--don't you, reverend sir?" turning to Father Paul.

The priest nodded, and held up his finger warningly.

"That lady--Mrs. Everard--is going to sing or play, I think," he observed. "Shall we not keep silence?"

I looked towards Amy in some surprise. I knew she sang very prettily, but I had thought she was rendered too nervous by the storm to do aught but sit quiet in her chair. However, there she was at the piano, and in another moment her fresh, sweet mezzo-soprano rang softly through the room in Tosti's plaintive song, "Good-bye!" We listened, but none of us moved from the open window where we still inhaled what air there was, and watched the lowering sky.

"Hus.h.!.+ a voice from the far-away, 'Listen and learn,' it seems to say; 'All the to-morrows shall be as to-day,'"

sang Amy with pathetic sweetness. Zara suddenly moved, as if oppressed, from her position among us as we stood cl.u.s.tered together, and stepped out through the French window into the outside balcony, her head uncovered to the night.

"You will catch cold!" Mrs. Challoner and I both called to her simultaneously. She shook her head, smiling back at us; and folding her arms lightly on the stone bal.u.s.trade, leaned there and looked up at the clouds.

"The link must break, and the lamp must die; Good-bye to Hope! Good-bye--good-bye!"

Amy's voice was a peculiarly thrilling one, and on this occasion sounded with more than its usual tenderness. What with her singing and the invisible presence of the storm, an utter silence possessed us--not one of us cared to move.

Heliobas once stepped to his sister's side in the open balcony, and said something, as I thought, to warn her against taking cold; but it was a very brief whisper, and he almost immediately returned to his place amongst us. Zara looked very lovely out there; the light coming from the interior of the room glistened softly on the sheen of her satin dress and its ornaments of pearls; and the electric stone on her bosom shone faintly, like a star on a rainy evening. Her beautiful face, turned upwards to the angry sky, was half in light and half in shade; a smile parted her lips, and her eyes were bright with a look of interest and expectancy. Another sudden glare, and the clouds were again broken asunder; but this time in a jagged and hasty manner, as though a naked sword had been thrust through them and immediately withdrawn.

"That was a nasty flash," said Colonel Everard, with an observant glance at the lovely Juliet-like figure on the balcony. "Mademoiselle, had you not better come in?"

"When it begins to rain I will come in," she said, without changing her posture. "I hear the singing so well out here. Besides, I love the storm."

A tumultuous crash of thunder, tremendous for its uproar and the length of time it was prolonged, made us look at each other again with anxious faces.

"What are we waiting for? Oh, my heart!

Kiss me straight on the brows and part!

Again! again, my heart, my heart!

What are we waiting for, you and I?

A pleading look--a stifled cry!

Good-bye for ever---"

Horror! what was that? A lithe swift serpent of fire twisting venomously through the dark heavens! Zara raised her arms, looked up, smiled, and fell--senseless! With such appalling suddenness that we had scarcely recovered from the blinding terror of that forked lightning-flash, when we saw her lying p.r.o.ne before us on the balcony where one instant before she had stood erect and smiling! With exclamations of alarm and distress we lifted and bore her within the room and laid her tenderly down upon the nearest sofa. At that moment a deafening, terrific thunder-clap--one only--as if a huge bombsh.e.l.l had burst in the air, shook the ground under our feet; and then with a swish and swirl of long pent-up and suddenly-released wrath, down came the rain.

Amy's voice died away in a last "Good-bye!" and she rushed from the piano, with pale face and trembling lips, gasping out:

"What has happened? What is the matter?"

"She has been stunned by a lightning-flash," I said, trying to speak calmly, while I loosened Zara's dress and sprinkled her forehead with eau-de-Cologne from a scent-bottle Mrs. Challoner had handed to me.

"She will recover in a few minutes."

But my limbs trembled under me, and tears, in spite of myself, forced their way into my eyes.

Heliobas meanwhile--his countenance white and set as a marble mask--shut the window fiercely, pulled down the blind, and drew the heavy silken curtains close. He then approached his sister's senseless form, and, taking her wrist tenderly, felt for her pulse. We looked on in the deepest anxiety. The Challoner girls s.h.i.+vered with terror, and began to cry. Mrs. Everard, with more self-possession, dipped a handkerchief in cold water and laid it on Zara's temples; but no faint sigh parted the set yet smiling lips--no sign of life was visible. All this while the rain swept down in gusty torrents and rattled furiously against the window-panes; while the wind, no longer a moan, had risen into a shriek, as of baffled yet vindictive anger. At last Heliobas spoke.

"I should be glad of other medical skill than my own," he said, in low and stifled accents. "This may be a long fainting-fit."

Mr. Challoner at once proffered his services.