It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

“Yes,” she answered, “but hopeless.”

“Why hopeless? Speak, speak!” he demanded.

“There is no safety,” she protested. “Danger lurks about us. Even now we may be trifling with death. Frazer departed only an hour since to see a friend on a vessel that lies at the wharf in the town. He contemplates a voyage to Italy.”

“Frazer?” questioned Kit, still embracing her, not yet realizing the real condition of affairs.

“Yes, the Count,” she answered.

And at that moment, as though in answer to his name so faintly spoken, the Count appeared at the open doorway.

While sudden had been the passage of Marlowe from the lower room to the one in which he now stood; while his pausing at the door and his greeting of the woman had consumed but an additional moment, enough time had passed for the so-called Count also to withdraw from the tap-room, and make the same passage. It had taken longer, for he had attempted to make it noiseless. His following of Marlowe had not been occasioned by groundless suspicions of the latter’s purpose in withdrawing from the tap-room. Although he had never had cause to suspect his wife of infidelity, he was convinced when he noticed the departure of the actor that a meeting was about to take place in which he, himself, had a vital interest. This conviction was the result of his having accidentally heard the words which his wife had spoken at noon that day to Tabbard. This request of hers for a meeting with some one, coming close, as it had, on the heels of a quarrel, concerning the contemplated voyage to the continent, made him suspect an elopement. With whom it was to be attempted he had obtained no knowledge. Soon after their marriage, Anne had realized the intensely jealous nature of the Count, and this had kept her from any mention of her old lover. At the meeting between husband and wife, immediately after his overhearing her words to Tabbard, the Count had kept his own counsel. As night came on he had lulled all fears of discovery which she might hate entertained, by departing with the announcement that he was going aboard the “Petrel” and would return near midnight. He went no further than the tap-room, where, awaiting developments, with the calmness of one who knowingly holds a winning hand, he had met and watched the three actors. It was not until Marlowe arose at the summons of the serving-man that the Count’s suspicions became centered, and as the lower door closed on the former’s withdrawal, the latter with hasty remarks of disinclination to continue the game, also strode from the room. He had not even paused to sheathe his sword, and with it held in tense grasp pointing before him, with one, foot advanced into the apartment and the other on the threshold, he stood a spectator of the ardent meeting of the lovers.

It might be thought that the vitality of the mind’s picture of a scene from human life depends upon the peculiarity or vigor in action of the original. But that the duration and strength of existence of such a picture is not to be measured by this criterion is shown in our evanescent remembrance of even the most thrilling plays. Upon what principle is it that a scene is perpetually held in unfading colors in the shifting gallery of the mind? How is it that one particular spectacle in the vast panorama of daily vision is alone singled out, and swept into our dreams forever? It is never our voluntary selection, for it is frequently a scene of direst woe, or horror almost indescribable, all of which we would willingly forget.

In determining these questions we turn our thoughts from the object to the recipient, and we find that the secret lies in the condition of sensitiveness of the latter at the moment of impression. Thus, if at that moment, the soul is at the point of supreme exaltation, or in the lowest depths of despair, the object that brings about a sudden and absolute change of feeling becomes one of the undying pictures of the mind.

This explains why it was that Anne’s view of the Count in the doorway, at the moment of her surrender to Marlowe, shot every feature, every line, every shade of the face of the former, as he then appeared to her, into the chambers of her brain and fastened them there forever. Even at her dying hour, obscuring the visions of the then wished-for countenances of those she loved, was that face with its gleaming eyes, its air of desperation and insolent command, its cheeks on which the flush of wine and the pallor of suppressed rage contended for exhibition, its nostrils expanded into a sneer, and its lips expressive of determined violence. It was the picture of an avenger gloating over the assured prospect of the near fulfillment of a murderous vow.