A Romance of Two Worlds by Marie Corelli (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📕

I smiled at her enthusiasm, but was forced to admit that she was right as far as my actual looks went. No one would believe that I was, or ever had been, ill. In silence I loosened my hair and began to brush it and put it in order before the mirror, and as I did so my thoughts were very busy. I remembered distinctly all that had happened in the studio of Raffaello Cellini, and still more distinctly was I able to recall every detail of the three dreams that had visited me in my slumber. The NAME, too, that had been the key-note of them all I also remembered, but some instinct forbade me to utter it aloud. Once I thought, “Shall I take a pencil and write it down lest I forget it?” and the same instinct said “No.” Amy’s voluble chatter ran on like the sound of a rippling brook all the time I thus meditated over the occurrences of the day.

“Say, child!” she exclaimed; “will you go to the dance?”

“Certainly I will, with pleasure,” I answered, and indeed I felt as if I should thoroughly enjoy it.

“Brava! It will be real fun. There are no end of foreign titles coming, I believe. The Colonel’s a bit grumpy about it,—he always is when he has to wear his dress suit. He just hates it. That man hasn’t a particle of vanity. He looks handsomer in his evening clothes than in anything else, and yet he doesn’t see it. But tell me,” and her pretty face became serious with a true feminine anxiety, “whatever will you wear? You’ve brought no ball fixings, have you?”

I finished twisting up the last coil of my hair, and turned and kissed her affectionately. She was the most sweet-tempered and generous of women, and she would have placed any one of her elaborate costumes at my disposal had I expressed the least desire in that direction. I answered:

“No, dear; I certainly have no regular ball ‘fixings,’ for I never expected to dance here, or anywhere for that matter. I did not bring the big trunks full of Parisian toilettes that you indulge in, you spoilt bride! Still I have something that may do. In fact it will have to do.”

“What is it? Have I seen it? Do show!” and her curiosity was unappeasable.

The discreet Alphonse tapped at the door again just at this moment.

“Entrez!” I answered; and our tea, prepared with the tempting nicety peculiar to the Hotel de L–-, appeared. Alphonse set the tray down with his usual artistic nourish, and produced a small note from his vest-pocket.

“For mademoiselle,” he said with a bow; and as he handed it to me, his eyes opened wide in surprise. He, too, perceived the change in my appearance. But he was dignity itself, and instantly suppressed his astonishment into the polite impassiveness of a truly accomplished waiter, and gliding from the room on the points of his toes, as was his usual custom, he disappeared. The note was from Cellini, and ran as follows:

“If mademoiselle will be so good as to refrain from choosing any flowers for her toilette this evening, she will confer a favour on her humble friend and servant,

“RAFFAELLO CELLINI.”

I handed it to Amy, who was evidently burning with inquisitiveness to know its contents.

“Didn’t I say he was a queer young man?” she exclaimed, as she perused the missive attentively. “This is only his way of saying that he means to send you some flowers himself. But what puzzles me is to think how he could possibly know you were going to make any special ‘toilette’ this evening. It is really very mysterious when I come to think of it, for Madame Didier said plainly that she would not ask Cellini to the dance till she saw him at the table d’hote to-night.”

“Perhaps Alphonse has told him all about it,” I suggested.

My friend’s countenance brightened.

“Of course! That is it; and Mr. Cellini takes it for granted that a girl of your age would not be likely to refuse a dance. Still there is something odd about it, too. By-the-bye, I forgot to ask you how the picture got on?”

“Oh, very well, I believe,” I replied evasively. “Signor Cellini only made a slight outline sketch as a beginning.”

“And was it like you?—a really good resemblance?”

“I really did not examine it closely enough to be able to judge.”

“What a demure young person you are!” laughed Mrs. Everard. “Now, I should have rushed straight up to the easel and examined every line of what he was doing. You are a model of discretion, really! I shan’t be anxious about leaving you alone any more. But about your dress for to-night. Let me see it, there’s a good girl.”

I opened my trunk and took out a robe of ivory-tinted crepe. It was made with almost severe simplicity, and was unadorned, save by a soft ruffle of old Mechlin lace round the neck and sleeves. Amy examined it critically.

“Now, you would have looked perfectly ghastly in this last night, when you were as pale and hollow-eyed as a sick nun; but to-night,” and she raised her eyes to my face, “I believe you will do. Don’t you want the bodice cut lower?”

“No, thanks!” I said, smiling. “I will leave that to the portly dowagers—they will expose neck enough for half-a-dozen other women,”

My friend laughed.

“Do as you like,” she returned; “only I see your gown has short sleeves, and I thought you might like a square neck instead of that little simple Greek round. But perhaps it’s better as it is. The stuff is lovely; where did you get it?”

“At one of the London emporiums of Eastern art,” I answered. “My dear, your tea is getting cold.”

She laid the dress on the bed, and in doing so, perceived the antique-looking book with the silver clasps which I had left there.

“What’s this?” she asked, turning it round to discover its name. “‘Letters of a Dead Musician!’ What a shivery title! Is it morbid reading?” “Not at all,” I replied, as I leaned comfortably back in an easy-chair and sipped my tea. “It is a very scholarly, poetical, and picturesque work. Signor Cellini lent it to me; the author was a friend of his.”

Amy looked at me with a knowing and half-serious expression.

“Say now—take care, take care! Aren’t you and Cellini getting to be rather particular friends—something a little beyond the Platonic, eh?”

This notion struck me as so absurd that I laughed heartily. Then, without pausing for one instant to think what I was saying, I answered with amazing readiness and frankness, considering that I really knew nothing about it:

“Why, my dear, Raffaello Cellini is betrothed, and he is a most devoted lover.”

A moment after I had uttered this assertion I was surprised at myself. What authority had I for saying that Cellini was betrothed? What did I know about it? Confused, I endeavoured to find some means of retracting this unfounded and rash remark, but no words of explanation would come to my lips that had been so ready and primed to deliver what might be, for all I knew, a falsehood. Amy did not perceive my embarrassment. She was pleased and interested at the idea of Cellini’s being in love.

“Really!” she exclaimed, “it makes him a more romantic character than ever! Fancy his telling you that he was betrothed! How delightful! I must ask him all about his chosen fair one. But I’m positively thankful it isn’t you, for I’m sure he’s just a little bit off his head. Even this book he has lent you looks like a wizard’s property;” and she fluttered the leaves of the “Dead Musician’s” volume, turning them rapidly over in search of something attractive. Suddenly she paused and cried out: “Why, this is right-down awful! He must have been a regular madman! Just listen!” and she read aloud:

“‘How mighty are the Kingdoms of the Air! How vast they are—how densely populated—how glorious are their destinies—how all-powerful and wise are their inhabitants! They possess everlasting health and beauty—their movements are music—their glances are light—they cannot err in their laws or judgments, for their existence is love. Thrones, principalities, and powers are among them, yet all are equal. Each one has a different duty to perform, yet all their labours are lofty. But what a fate is ours on this low earth! For, from the cradle to the grave, we are watched by these spiritual spectators—watched with unflinching interest, unhesitating regard. O Angelic Spirits, what is there in the poor and shabby spectacle of human life to attract your mighty Intelligences? Sorrow, sin, pride, shame, ambition, failure, obstinacy, ignorance, selfishness, forgetfulness—enough to make ye veil your radiant faces in unpierceable clouds to hide forever the sight of so much crime and misery. Yet if there be the faintest, feeblest effort in our souls to answer to the call of your voices, to rise above the earth by force of the same will that pervades your destinies, how the sound of great rejoicing permeates those wide continents ye inhabit, like a wave of thunderous music; and ye are glad, Blessed Spirits!—glad with a gladness beyond that of your own lives, to feel and to know that some vestige, however fragile, is spared from the general wreck of selfish and unbelieving Humanity. Truly we work under the shadow of a “cloud of Witnesses.” Disperse, disperse, O dense yet brilliant multitudes! turn away from me your burning, truthful, immutable eyes, filled with that look of divine, perpetual regret and pity! Lo, how unworthy am I to behold your glory! and yet I must see and know and love you all, while the mad blind world rushes on to its own destruction, and none can avert its doom.’”

Here Amy threw down the book with a sort of contempt, and said to me:

“If you are going to muddle your mind with the ravings of a lunatic, you are not what I took you for. Why, it’s regular spiritualism! Kingdoms of the air indeed! And his cloud of witnesses! Rubbish!”

“He quotes the CLOUD OF WITNESSES from St. Paul,” I remarked.

“More shame for him!” replied my friend, with the usual inconsistent indignation that good Protestants invariably display when their pet corn, the Bible, is accidentally trodden on. “It has been very well said that the devil can quote Scripture, and this musician (a good job he IS dead, I’m sure) is perfectly blasphemous to quote the Testament in support of his ridiculous ideas! St. Paul did not mean by ‘a cloud of witnesses,’ a lot of ‘air multitudes’ and ‘burning, immutable eyes,’ and all that nonsense.”

“Well, what DID he mean?” I gently persisted.

“Oh, he meant—why, you know very well what he meant,” said Amy, in a tone of reproachful solemnity. “And I wonder at your asking me such a question! Surely you know your Bible, and you must be aware that St. Paul could never have approved of spiritualism.”

“‘And there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial, but one is the glory of the celestial?” I quoted with, a slight smile.

Mrs. Everard looked shocked and almost angry.

“My dear, I am ashamed of you! You are a believer in spirits, I do declare! Why, I thought Maskelyne and Cook had cured everybody of such notions; and now here’s this horrid book going to make you more nervous than ever. I shall have you getting up one night and shrieking about burning, immutable