United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But even Rosa was not with him. How " "Patience! And do not interrupt me with questions. I am giving away a secret which carries with it my my reputation. Long before my marriage I had known Lord Clarenceux. He knew many women; I was one of them. That affair ended. I married Sullivan. "I happened to be in Vienna at the time Lord Clarenceux was taken with brain fever.
He had formerly been an admirer of Camden's, his "humble friend," he called himself; but when Camden was promoted over his head to be Clarenceux King-of-Arms, it seemed to Ralph Brooke that it became his duty to denounce the too successful antiquary as a charlatan. He accordingly fired off the unpleasant little gun already mentioned, and, for the moment, he hit Camden rather hard.
I could feel the perspiration on my forehead and at the back of my neck. I fronted the inscrutable white face of the thing which had once been Lord Clarenceux, the lover of Rosetta Rosa; I met its awful eyes, dark, invidious, fateful. Ah, those eyes! Even in my terror I could read in them all the history, all the characteristics, of Lord Clarenceux.
Then with abrupt change she laughed. "Don't you agree that I am cursed? Am I not cursed? Say it! say it!" "I will not say it," I answered. "Why should you be cursed? What do you mean?" "I do not know what I mean, but I know what I feel. Look back at my life. My mother died, deserted. My father has died, killed by a mad woman. My dear friend Alresca died who knows how? Clarenceux he too died."
They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I had heard from different people. But as far as I was concerned that night the eyes held nothing but cruelty and disaster; though I could detect in them the other qualities, those qualities were not for me.
It seems to me that Alresca was mistaken. His foe was not so implacable as Alresca imagined. Alresca having surrendered in the struggle between them, the ghost of Lord Clarenceux hesitated, and then ultimately withdrew its hateful influence, and Alresca recovered. Then Rosa came again into his existence that evening at Bruges.
From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he objected.
Occupying it was a figure the figure of the man whose portrait hung on the wall the figure of the man who had haunted me ever since I met Rosa the figure of Lord Clarenceux, whom Rosa had seen dead. At last, oh, powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of my calamity.
Rosa!" my voice nearly broke "you must know that I love you. Say that you love me that you would love me whether Clarenceux were dead or alive." An infinite tenderness shone in her face. She put out her hand, and to calm me stroked my hair. "Carl!" she whispered. It was enough. I got up. I did not kiss her.
"I was sitting in my room after dinner, thinking and thinking. And suddenly I could see this room, and you, and the spectre, as plainly as I see you now. I felt your terror; I knew every thought that was passing in your brain, the anguish of it! And then, and then, an idea struck me. I had never appealed in vain to Lord Clarenceux in life why should I not appeal now?
Word Of The Day