The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
The Professor answered the question in a way that startled him.
“Have you ever loved?” he said.
“You must tell me first what you mean by the word.”
“Have you ever loved a woman intensely--passionately--loved her so
much that your life was fused in her life--your soul in her soul?”
The Doctor sat up in his chair and stared at his friend. For a moment
he thought he had gone mad.
“_Never!_” he said, emphatically. “As a rule, I have not cared for
women. I look upon the sex as a necessary evil--something without
which population cannot go on--without which, too, Nature could not
exist--but as something also to be avoided as much as possible, and
dealt with as little as may be!”
Ricardo sighed.
“Happy man!” he ejaculated at last, “you are to be envied, Steinberg.
You have missed great happiness, and great pain.”
“Happiness!” echoed Steinberg, “is it possible, Signor, that your
grave demeanour and your mysterious studies have anything to do with a
woman?”
“They have everything--everything, to do with it,” exclaimed the elder
man, excitedly. “Steinberg, I have never told you my history. You do
not even know who I am! If I confide in you, will you hold my
confidence sacred?”
The Doctor held out his hand.
“Most certainly I will. There is my hand on it. But do not stir up
painful memories for my sake, Professor! If you are endeavouring to
forget the Past, let it lie in it’s grave!”
“I wish you to hear it,” replied Ricardo, “I am old, I might go any
day. You are my only friend. I should like you to know the truth
before we part!”
“Why do you talk of yourself as an old man? What age are you?”
“I was forty-nine on my last birthday.”
“Nonsense! You are in the prime of life. This intelligence still
further confirms my belief that your appearance and weakness are due
to your unnatural studies alone.”
“But the pursuit of which holds the only consolation this world can
afford me,” replied Ricardo. “Wait till you have heard what I have to
tell you, Steinberg, and you will acknowledge that I am right. First,
then, as to my identity. My name is not Ricardo. I am Paolo, Marchese
di Sorrento, the last member of one of the oldest families in Italy.”
“A nobleman!” cried Steinberg, “and in this humble position? For what
reason? What brought you down so low, as to be compelled to work for
your daily bread?”
“A political offence, my friend, and not of my own doing! A plot
against the Government, in which several nobles were concerned, and
being the intimate friend and associate of most of them, my name
became unfortunately mixed up with theirs, and I found my property and
estates confiscated, and myself banished from Italy, before I hardly
knew what it was all about. It was a great misfortune, but many have
suffered in the same way. I came to England as the only land in which
I could make a little money by teaching my native language, and I have
managed to exist since and have found several pupils in noble
families, as you well know. But my father’s name--the title that had
been handed down and honoured through so many generations--I could not
retain that! It would have been an infamy--a degradation!”
“No wonder that you have aged before your time--that you are of so
melancholy a temperament,” observed Steinberg. “Your misfortunes have
been sufficient to kill you.”
“Ah! do not mistake me, my good friend! This reverse, however cruel,
could not have had the power to sap my life-strings in this manner.
There was worse behind it--so much worse that the blow of losing my
name and money fell almost scatheless upon me! I had already lost my
world.”
Steinberg remained silent, waiting for him to proceed.
“I asked you just now if you had ever loved, and you told me, ‘No’.
You are right! Keep to your resolution. Never allow yourself to be
entangled in a woman’s wiles, for they are Death to those who trust in
them. When I was only one-and-twenty and had just come into my
father’s estates and title, I fell a victim to the charms of Leonora
d’Asissi, a young lady my equal in rank and position, and after a
brief courtship, we were married. Ah! Steinberg, how I loved--I
adored--that woman! You, who confess to having never experienced the
tender passion cannot enter into my feelings. We Italians are famous
for our ardent love, and no Italian ever loved more ardently than I
did. I lived only in her presence; I was never weary of contemplating
her exquisite beauty; I waited on her as a slave; I made the day and
night tremulous with the repetition of my love. Do not we often weary
women by telling them too often that we love them, Steinberg? Are they
fickle by nature, or is it only that they hate monotony? Any way
Leonora, my adored wife, wearied of me and mine. She could not bear to
remain in our beautiful villa in the country, where she saw no one but
her enraptured lover, but pined to return to the palazzo in Rome which
has been in our family for generations. Here, she would collect around
her all the young married women like herself, with their attendant
_cavalieres serventes_ and turn night into day with her balls and
feasts and concerts. And yet I suspected nothing!”
“Was there anything to suspect?” demanded the Doctor.
The Professor started in his seat.
“Ah! now you touch the root of the matter! Was there? _Was_ there? The
question haunts me night and day. But I was jealous, Steinberg, all my
nation are! Where Love is so warm, doubts will intrude themselves.
Perhaps we expect too much from women. Their natures are not so
passionate as ours. We tax them too much--we look for a flame as
ardent as our own--and when we do not find it, we begin to suspect it
is bestowed upon another man. When I had my Leonora all to
myself--when in the silence of night, her beautiful head lay in
peaceful sleep upon my breast, I believed nothing but good of her--but
when I watched her whirling round the ball room in the arms of some
one of my acquaintance, or found her sitting in the conservatory with
another, Suspicion would lay hold of my jealous temper, and I would
question if after all, she were deceiving me, and everyone knew the
bitter truth but myself.”
The recollection of those days of anguish seemed to overcome the
Signor even then, for he pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the
moisture from his brow.
“The relation distresses you,” remarked Steinberg, “pray do not
proceed.”
“No! no! I shall not stop now until you have heard all. I have gone
too far already. Amongst Leonora’s acquaintances was a young man, a
mere lad called Lorenzo Centi. Some one made a joke about her and this
boy before me and aroused my suspicions concerning them. I found
Leonora on more than one occasion sitting apart on a couch with young
Centi--once, with their hands clasped together--and I forbad him the
house in consequence. But a rumour reached my ears that, when I was
away from home, my wife’s woman was used to fetch Centi to her, and
they spent the time of my absence together. I determined to watch. I
professed to be going for a night into the country to see after my
farm, but I returned at midnight, and found them supping together in
Leonora’s boudoir. I rushed in upon them furiously, and my wife turned
and laughed in my face--knowing all my deep love for her, she laughed
at my disappointment and she drove me mad. Before God, Steinberg, if
she had only cried, or seemed frightened, or sorry, I should have
spared her--I loved her so intensely--but her laugh raised all the
Devil in me and before the smile had left her lips, she lay dead at my
feet.”
The stoical German sprang away from Ricardo’s side. He had been
prepared for much, but not for murder.
“No! no! you must be mistaken,” he exclaimed; “you do not mean that
you killed her!”
“_Killed her!_ Of course I did, and would have killed her lover into
the bargain, but that he escaped before I could lay hands on him. She
laughed at my distress, and I stabbed her to the heart with my dagger.
Better dead, a thousand times, I thought, than live a lie! But
now--now----”
“You are sorry--you repent----” said Steinberg, sympathetically, “Yes!
I can understand it perfectly! But it was done in a moment of
anger--you were not master of yourself--you would act very differently
were the time to come over again.”
“Not if she were false,” cried the Professor, “I would kill her over
again this moment, if she deceived me! But did she--did she? That is
the question that harasses me now.”
“What! have you any doubts upon the subject?”
“I have every doubt--they torture me day and night. What proofs had I
of her guilt? She was young and careless and very, very beautiful!
Might she not have played with fire without considering the
consequences--without being burnt? She laughed at me, it is true--but
she did not know the depth of a man’s love--the strength of a man’s
jealousy.
“She did not think, my poor Leonora, that my hand was on the fatal
weapon I carried in my breast. Ah, Steinberg, it is better like you
never to have known the rapture of possessing a woman, than to feel
you have sent her out of the world, when perhaps she was innocent.”
“It is terrible,” said the Doctor, “but was it never cleared up?”
“_Never!_ In my country, we think far less of such things than you do
in yours. A husband who kills his wife through jealousy, and
especially when he has found her with her lover, is too common an
offender to provoke condign punishment. I was had up before the
tribunal to afford an explanation of my wife’s death, and the reasons
I gave were considered sufficient. I left the country afterwards, more
to escape from my maddening recollections than to avoid Society--I
also had a burning desire to meet young Centi and give him his due,
but he was so successfully concealed by his family, that I never
gained my wish. Perhaps it was for the best. My hands might have been
imbrued in a second unnecessary murder! When, after many years’
wandering, I ventured to return to Rome, it was to find that my
estates were no longer mine, and I was doomed to exile. Now, you have
my history, Steinberg, and you may thank God that you have escaped so
sad a one!”
Karl Steinberg was silent for awhile--so was his companion. This
narrative had rather shocked the German’s sensibilities, while it had
excited great sympathy for the lonely man before him, who had been
bereft of all he held dear, or that made life worth living for him.
The Doctor, with his want of faith in Women, had not much doubt in his
own mind that the Signor’s wife had merited her doom, but he declined
to express an opinion on the subject either way. After a few minutes’
pause, he said, with the view of turning a conversation which had
become so painful to both of them,
“But what has all this to do, Professor, with your study of the Black
Art?”
CHAPTER II.
Ricardo looked up dreamily, as if he had quite forgotten that part
of the subject.
“Have I not told you?” he inquired; “do you not understand?”
“Indeed I do not! I am quite in the dark about it! You have related to
me the painful story of your poor wife’s death, with which I fully
sympathise, but I do not trace any connection between that and your
interest in Mysticism.”
“How strange! How very strange!” replied Ricardo, shaking himself
together. “Why! to me they are one. My one object in life now is to
learn the truth--to hear if I were only the rightful agent to avenge a
great wrong, or if my mad jealousy prompted me to commit a murder. It
is for this reason alone that I have studied, as far as I am able, the
Art of Magic, and pored over my books and my experiments half the
nights through, in order to gain an answer.”
“But how can that avail you, Signor? Do you expect the Spirits of Evil
to aid you in this matter?”