I saw a face,—my God! how dark, how deadly, how terrible it was! I knew that face, and my heart was rifted as if by a thunderbolt.
The loud report of a pistol, and a shriek such as never before issued from mortal lips, bursting from mine, were simultaneous sounds. Richard fell back with a deep groan. Then there seemed a rushing sound as the breaking up of the great deep, a heaving and tossing like the throes of an earthquake; then a sinking, sinking, lower and lower, and then a cloud black as night and heavy as iron came lowering and crushing me,—me, and the bleeding Richard. All was darkness,—silence,—oblivion.
CHAPTER L.
A light, soft and glimmering as morning twilight, floated round me. Was it the dawn of an eternal morning, or the lingering radiance of life's departing day? Did my spirit animate the motionless body extended on that snowy bed, or was it hovering, faint and invisible, above the confines of mortality?
I was just awakened to the consciousness of existence,—a dim, vague consciousness, such as one feels in a dissolving dream. I seemed involved in a white, transparent cloud, and reclining on one of those downy-looking cloud-beds that I have seen waiting to receive the sinking sun.
While thus I lay, living the dawning life of infancy, the white cloud softly rolled on one side, and a figure appeared in the opening, that belonged to a previous state of existence. I had seen its mild lineaments in another world; but when,—how long ago?
My eyes rested on the features of the lady till they grew more and more familiar, but there was a white cloud round her face, that threw a mournful shadow over it,—that I had never seen before. Again my eyelids closed, and I seemed passing away, where, I knew not; yet consciousness remained. I felt soft, trembling kisses breathed upon my face, and tears too, mingling with their balm. With a delicious perception of tenderness, watchfulness, and love, I sunk into a deep, deep sleep.
When I awoke, the silver lustre of an astral lamp, shaded by a screen, glimmered in the apartment and quivered like moonbeams in the white drapery that curtained the bed. I knew where I was,—I was in my own chamber, and the lady who sat by my bedside, and whose profile I beheld through the parted folds of the curtains, was Mrs. Linwood. And yet, how strange! It must have been years since we had met, for the lovely brown of her hair was now a pale silver gray, and age had laid its withering hand on her brow. With a faint cry, I ejaculated her name, and attempted to raise my head from the pillow, but in vain. I had no power of motion. Even the exertion of uttering her name was beyond my strength. She rose, bent over me, looked earnestly and long into the eyes uplifted to her face, then dropping on her knees and clasping her hands, her spirit went upwards in silent prayer.
As thus she knelt, and I gazed on her upturned countenance, shaded by that strange, mournful, silver cloud, my thoughts began to shape themselves slowly and gradually, as the features of a landscape through dissolving mists. They trembled as the foliage trembles in the breeze that disperses the vapors. Images of the past gained distinctness of outline and coloring, and all at once, like the black hull, broken mast, and rent sails of a wrecked vessel, one awful scene rose before me. The face, like that of the angel of death, the sound terrible as the thunders of doom, the bleeding body that my arms encircled, the destroying husband,—the victim brother,—all came back to me; life,—memory,—grief,—horror,—all came back.