Stella Fregelius: A Tale of Three Destinies

by H. Rider Haggard

Again, Mr. Fregelius wished to erect a monument to his daughter, which, as her body never had been found, could properly be placed in the chancel of the church. Morris entered heartily into the idea and undertook to spend the hundred pounds which the old gentleman had saved for this purpose on his account and to the best advantage. In effect he did spend it to excellent advantage, as Mr. Fregelius admitted when the monument arrived.

It was a lovely thing, executed by one of the first sculptors of the day, in white marble upon a black stone bed, and represented the mortal shape of Stella. There she lay to the very life, wrapped in a white robe, portrayed as a sleeper awakening from the last sleep of death, her eyes wide and wondering, and on her face that rapt look which Morris had caught in his sketch of her, singing in the chapel. At the edge of the base of this remarkable effigy, set flush on the black marble in letters of plain copper was her name—Stella Fregelius—with the date of her death. On one side appeared the text that she had quoted, “O death, where is thy sting?” and on the other its continuation, “O grave, where is thy victory?” and at the foot part of a verse from the forty-second psalm: “Deep calleth unto deep. . . . All Thy waves and storms have gone over me.”

Like the organ, this monument, which stood in the chancel, was much admired by everybody, except Mary, who found it rather theatrical; and, indeed, when nobody was looking, surveyed it with a gloomy and a doubtful eye.

That Morris had something to do with the thing she was quite certain, since she knew well that Mr. Fregelius would never have invented any memorial so beautiful and full of symbolism; also she doubted his ability to pay for a piece of statuary which must have cost many hundreds of pounds. A third reason, which seemed to her conclusive, was that the face on the statue was the very face of Morris’s drawing, although, of course, it was possible that Mr. Fregelius might have borrowed the sketch for the use of the sculptor. But of all this, although it disturbed her, occurring as it did just when she hoped that Stella was beginning to be forgotten, she spoke not a word to Morris. “Least said, soonest mended,” is a good if a homely motto, or so thought Mary.

The monument had been in place a year, but whenever he was at home Morris’s visits to Mr. Fregelius did not grow fewer. Indeed, his wife noticed that, if anything, they increased in number, which, as the organ was now finished down to the last allegorical carvings of its case, seemed remarkable and unnecessary. Of course, the fact was that on these occasions the conversation invariably centred on one subject, and that subject, Stella. Considered in certain aspects, it must have been a piteous thing to see and hear these two men, each of them bereaved of one who to them above all others had been the nearest and dearest, trying to assuage their grief by mutual consolations. Morris had never told Mr. Fregelius all the depth of his attachment to his daughter, at least, not in actual, unmistakable words, although, as has been said, from the first her father took it for granted, and Morris, tacitly at any rate, had accepted the conclusion. Indeed, very soon he found that no other subject had such charms for his guest; that of Stella he might talk for ever without the least fear that Morris would be weary.

So the poor, childless, unfriended old man put aside the reserve and timidity which clothed him like a garment, and talked on into those sympathetic ears, knowing well, however—for the freemasonry of their common love taught it to him—that in the presence of a third person her name, no allusion to her, even, must pass his lips. In short, these conversations grew at length into a kind of seance or solemn rite; a joint offering to the dead of the best that they had to give, their tenderest thoughts and memories, made in solemn secrecy and with uplifted hearts and minds.

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.”