Seraphina

“ Silence, stillness, breathless caution were the absolute conditions of our existence. But I hadn’t the heart to remonstrate with him for the danger he caused Seraphina and myself. The fog was so thick now that I could not make out his outline, but I could smell the tobacco very plainly.
The acrid odour of picadura seemed to knit the events of three years into one uninterrupted adventure. I remembered the shingle beach; the deck of the old Thames. It brought to my mind my first vision of Seraphina, and the emblazoned magnificence of Carlos’ sick bed. ”

“ They concluded, indeed, that Seraphina’s abstraction was owing merely to a bluntness of perception and feelings, which would always prove a formidable obstacle against her acquisition of those accomplishments suited to her rank. It was proposed, therefore, to send her to a convent, where the sisters devoted their leisure hours to the instruction of young ladies; when, unexpectedly, an old clergyman, who had long been employed to give lessons in our family, assured Seraphina’s friends that he had never, in all his life, met with any child whose mind was more susceptible and powerful than hers. ”

“ He married a beautiful Seraphina, afterward countess, graceful and lady-like, once the daughter of a girdle-maker, and named Lorenza Feliciani. Every one, simple or sedate, knows that it is best to hunt in couples. What one has not the other may have. So Seraphina had beauty, lightness, buoyancy, and could float up her count when the demons and harpies of a certain troublesome devil, called law or justice, seemed bent upon his swift destruction. ”

“ Seraphina clutched my arm. “Juan—together—no separation.”
I had known it, even as I spoke of selling our lives dearly. They could only be surrendered. Surrendered miserably to these wretches, or to the everlasting darkness in which Castro muttered his despair. I needed not to hear this ominous and sinister sound—nor yet Seraphina’s cry. She understood, too. They would never come down unless to look upon us when we were dead. I need not have gone to the entrance of the cave to understand all the horror of our fate. The Lugareños had already lighted a fire. Very near the brink, too. ”

“ The beauteous spirit, perceiving her question gave offense, pursued it no farther. She had indeed all the sweetness and good-humor which are so extremely amiable (when found) in that sex which tenderness most exquisitely becomes. Her countenance displayed all the cheerfulness, the good-nature, and the modesty, which diffuse such brightness round the beauty of Seraphina, 5 awing every beholder with respect, and, at the same time, ravishing him with admiration. ”

“ My father, however, would never believe any of these rumours,—nor would he now listen to what I told him privately of Seraphina being visible at one and the same moment in the library and the garden. ‘Say no more, I command you,’ he exclaimed, ‘I have heard quite enough of those wonders and miracles with which, your own imagination so amply supplies you. It is true, indeed, that Seraphina’s character is extraordinary. She is by no means like other young people of the same age and rank ”

“ The old man is in despair: he accuses them of cowardice; he tears his hair and beard; he beats his breast; the excess of his grief has made him almost mad. Seraphina, poor girl, abandoned by her attendants, has just swooned with terror in her own apartment, where, in a few minutes, a dense smoke will stifle her. She is lost to him for ever: no mortal can save her. ”

“ He retorted: “Your English generosity could wish your countrymen no better luck than that my Lugareños, as your worship pleases to call them, should miss their way. They are hungry for loot—with much fasting. And it is hunger that makes your wolf fly straight at the throat.”
All the time Seraphina breathed no word. But when I raised my voice, she put out a hushing hand to my arm. And, from her intent pose, from the turn of her shadowy head, I knew that she was peering and listening loyally. ”

“ Williams!” I cried. “That’s it! When all is well! And all must be well in a very short time, with you and your husband’s help, which shall not fail me, I know. I feel as if the worst of our troubles were over already....”
But at that moment I saw Seraphina coming out on deck. She emerged from the companion, bare-headed, and looked about at her new surroundings with that air of imperious and childlike beauty which made her charm. ”

“ I started when the door opened, drew nearer to my father, and asked him whether he did not perceive a kind of effulgence coming from the door? It was not the gleam of the moon—nor of a candle, nor lamp—but I thought of what Seraphina had described of the figure seen by its own light, and believed that the spectre was again there. My father answered me with a calmness which I thought was affected—for his voice faltered, ‘Well, Florentine, if I did see the light of which you speak, might not this too be the delusion of our own disordered senses? ”

“ What other terror could it hold? We had come back from the very confines of destruction. But Seraphina, reclining back in an armchair, very still, with her eyes fixed on the high white wall facing the veranda across the court, would murmur the word “Separation!”
The possibility of our lives being forced apart was terrible to her affection, and intolerable to her pride. She had made her choice, and the feeling she had surrendered herself to so openly must have had a supreme potency. She had disregarded for it all the traditions of silence and reserve. ”

“ In that land of white clothes, that precise, ancient, Castilian in black was something to remember. The black cane that had made the tap, tap, tap dangled by a silken cord from the hand whose delicate blue-veined, wrinkled wrist ran back into a foam of lawn ruffles. The other hand paused in the act of conveying a pinch of snuff to the nostrils of the hooked nose that had, on the skin stretched tight over the bridge, the polish of old ivory; the elbow pressing the black cocked-hat against the side; the legs, one bent, the other bowing a little back—this was the attitude of Seraphina’s father. ”

“ Manuel called again. “Your father, who is with the saints, gave me alms when I was a boy. Will you let them kill a man to whom your father...”
“Snares. All snares. Can she be blessed in going away from her natural guardians at night, alone, with a young man? How can we, consistently with our duty...”
Her voice was cold and gentle. Even in the imperfect light her appearance suggested something cold and monachal. The thought of what she might have been saying, or, in the subtle way of women, making Seraphina feel, in there, made me violently angry, but lucid, too. ”

“ It was wrung with the very ecstasy of tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed eyes, there shone the very light of love.
‘Seraphina?’ he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice, ‘Seraphina?’
‘Look round you at this glade,’ she cried, ‘and where the leaves are coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is where we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to be born again. O, what a pit there is for sins—God’s mercy, man’s oblivion!’
‘Seraphina,’ he said, ‘let it be so, indeed ”

“ It isn’t easy to conceive that one is going to be hanged, I doubt if one does even with the rope round one’s neck. I hadn’t much wanted to live, but now I wanted to fight—one good fight before I went under for good and all, condemned or acquitted. There wasn’t anything left for me to live for, Seraphina could not be alive. The Lion must have been lost. ”

“ As it was, he began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her misfortune, and now that she was fallen, proffering unloved caresses to the wife who had spurned him in prosperity. The sore spots upon his vanity began to burn; once more, his anger assumed the carriage of a hostile generosity; he would utterly forgive indeed; he would help, save, and comfort his unloving wife; but all with distant self-denial, imposing silence on his heart, respecting Seraphina’s disaffection as he would the innocence of a child. ”

“ I know not what reason you have given Dame Lorenza to be at variance with you; but true it is, you are become so unbearably hateful to her, that if you do not get out of this castle as soon as possible, her death, she says, must be the sure consequence. You cannot but suppose that Seraphina, who knows your value, used all her influence at first against a prejudice to which she could not administer without injustice and ingratitude. But though the best of women, she is still a woman. Sephora brought her up, and she loves her like a mother. ”

“ The three friends being alone, Florentina began as follows:—
“You were acquainted with my sister Seraphina, whom I had the misfortune to lose; but I alone can boast of possessing her confidence; which is the cause of my mentioning many things relative to her, before I begin the history I have promised, in which she is the principal personage.
“From her infancy, Seraphina was remarkable for several singularities. She was a year younger than myself ”

“ But the salient point on which every psychologist’s eye was pensive to-day was why she had dismissed Seraphina after a year’s harmonious co-operation for agreeing with Salvatore that a particular beefsteak did not stink. Never had she had such a servant as Seraphina, nor ever would, and well she knew it. Someone suggested that Mrs. Mackellar had determined to be an eater of uncooked foods, and others who remembered her welter of appreciation over an ordinary mutton cutlet, hardly troubled to reply to so inadmissible a conjecture. ”

“ He must disabuse Seraphina of the belief that she either looks or can play the ingenu, and relegate her to the part of the housekeeper. We all have our natural and acquired capabilities for various parts, and can do no other. ”

“ Seraphina herself can make no impression on the rough temper of Agroicus; neither her quality nor her beauty can exact the least complacence from him; and he would let her lovely limbs ach rather than offer her his chair: while the gentle Lyperus tumbles over benches and overthrows tea-tables to take up a fan or a glove; he forces you, as a good parent doth his child, for your own good; he is absolute master of a lady's will, nor will allow her the election of standing or sitting in his company. ”

“ Hastily, as if barring my road to Seraphina’s cabin, “Miss Riego, I would have you know,” she said, “is in good bodily health. I have this moment looked upon her again. The poor, superstitious young lady is on her knees, crossing herself.”
Mrs. Williams shuddered slightly. It was plain that the sight of that popish practice had given her a shock—almost a scare, as if she had seen a secret and nefarious rite. I explained that Seraphina, being a Catholic, worshipped as her lights enjoined, as we did after ours. Mrs. ”

“ Von Rosen is a better women than you, my Princess, though you will never have the pain of understanding it; and when I took the Prince your order, and looked upon his face, my soul was melted—O, I am frank—here, within my arms, I offered him repose!’ She advanced a step superbly as she spoke, with outstretched arms; and Seraphina shrank. ‘Do not be alarmed!’ the Countess cried; ‘I am not offering that hermitage to you; in all the world there is but one who wants to, and him you have dismissed! ”

“ It lies, all the way, by glade and dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.’
‘Lead on,’ she said. ‘Are you not Otto the Hunter?’
They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by trees. Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes. A weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like the beginnings of sleep ”

“ Our bedroom window was always tightly closed, and, at night, so were the shutters; yet a sunbeam, adventurous, like ourselves, found its way through a broken slat, and, cleaving the heavy air of the chamber, flew straight to The Seraph's nose, where it perched, lending a radiant prominence to that soft feature.
The Seraph roused himself. He opened his eyes; the sunbeam found them two dark forest pools, and plunged therein. The Seraph opened his mouth and laughed, showing all his little white teeth, and the sunbeam dived straightway down his throat. ”

“ See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned.”
Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen and known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the globe,—a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the haughtiest of men is forced to regard his guide as a brother, forgetting his own superior station till he descends to the valleys and the abodes of his kind. Seraphitus unfastened the skees from Minna’s feet, kneeling before her. ”

“ And I touched my forehead and waved my hand in the air.
Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he filled his glass again. The padrona hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smile than would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. “It’s for that that I love him!” she said. “The world has so little kindness for such persons. It laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them. He is too good for this wicked life! It’s his fancy that he finds a little Paradise up here in my poor apartment. ”