Next day, at her request, he paid her a second visit. "Really," said she, when he had taken his seat and his pipe, "we were together for hours last night, and still I have heard nothing at all of my old friends; now do tell me something of your dear mother and her sister; I never knew your father—it was after I left Burton-Pynsent that your mother married." Kinglake began to furnish the desired particulars; but his questioner could not long attend to them. She soared away to loftier topics; so that the second interview, though it lasted two or three hours, was all occupied by her mystical, theological, transcendental, necromantical discourse, in which she displayed the expressiveness, if not the glowing eloquence, of a Coleridge.
In the course of the afternoon, the captain of an English man-of-war arrived at Djoun, and Lady Hester resolved on receiving him for the same reason as that which had governed her reception of Mr. Kinglake, namely, an early intimacy with his family. He proved to be a pleasant and amusing guest, and all three sat smoking until midnight, conversing chiefly upon magical science.
"Lady Hester's unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was, no doubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride, most perilously akin to madness; but I am quite sure," says Mr. Kinglake, "that the mind of the woman was too strong to be thoroughly overcome by even this potent feeling. I plainly saw that she was not an unhesitating follower of her own system; and I even fancied that I could distinguish the brief moments during which she contrived to believe in herself, from those long and less happy intervals in which her own reason was too strong for her.
"As for the lady's faith in astrology and magic science, you are not for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of intellect. She believed these things in common with those around her; and it could scarcely be otherwise, for she seldom spoke to anybody, except crazy old dervishes, who at once received her alms and fostered her extravagances; and even when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into contact with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained uncontradicted. This entourage, and the habit of fasting from books and newspapers, was quite enough to make her a facile recipient of any marvellous story."[24]
After Lady Hester's death, a visit was paid to the place which had been her residence for so many years, by Major Eliot Warburton, the accomplished author of "The Crescent and the Cross." He speaks of the buildings, that constituted the palace, as of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only one story in height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping rooms, halls of audience and ladies' bowers, all strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds clambered about the open portals and a tangle of roses and jasmine blocked the way to the inner court, where the flowers no longer bloomed and the fountains had ceased to play in the marble basins. At nightfall when Major Warburton's escort had lighted their watch-fires, the lurid gleam fell strangely upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine; on the white, mouldering walls beneath, and the dark, waving trees above; while the quaint picture seemed appropriately filled up by the group of wild mountaineers, with their long beards and vivid dresses, who gathered around the cheerful blaze.
Next morning, Major Warburton explored the spacious gardens. "Here many a broken arbour and trellis bending under masses of jasmine and honeysuckle, showed the care and taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage: a garden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses run wild, stood in the midst of a grove of myrtle and bay trees. This was Lady Hester's favourite resort during her life-time, and now, within its silent enclosure,
"'After life's fitful fever she sleeps well.'"
It is painful to know that in her last illness she was shamefully deserted. Mr. Moore, the English consul at Beyrout, on hearing that she was stricken, rode across the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr. Thompson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and silence reigned in the palace. No attendants met them. They lighted their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned through court and gallery until they reached the room where she lay—dead. "A corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation from her kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete. That morning, thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye; its spell once darkened by death, every one fled with such plunder as they could secure. A little girl, adopted by her, and maintained for years, took her watch and some papers on which she had set peculiar value. Neither the child nor the property was ever seen again. Not a single thing was left in the room where she lay dead, except the ornaments upon her person: no one had ventured to take these; even in death she seemed able to protect herself. At midnight, her countryman and the missionary carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been formerly her favourite resort, and there they buried the self-exiled lady."