Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, vol 1 | Page 8

half a light-hearted mockery of her own mysterious awe in the presence
of what she had been taught to view as either fraud or
insanity--prompted her playfully to insist upon the fullest application of
the Hungarian's art to her own case; nay, she would have the hands of
our little Francis read and interpreted as well as her own, and she
desired to hear the full professional judgment delivered without
suppression or softening of its harshest awards. She laughed whilst she
said all this; but she also trembled a little. The Hungarian first took the
hand of our young child, and perused it with a long and steady scrutiny.
She said nothing, but sighed heavily as she resigned it. She then took
the hand of Agnes--looked bewildered and aghast--then gazed piteously
from Agnes to her child--and at last, bursting into tears, began to move
steadily out of the room. I followed her hastily, and remonstrated upon
this conduct, by pointing her attention to the obvious truth--that these
mysterious suppressions and insinuations, which left all shadowy and
indistinct, were far more alarming than the most definite denunciations.
Her answer yet rings in my ear:--'Why should I make myself odious to
you and to your innocent wife? Messenger of evil I am, and have been
to many; but evil I will not prophecy to her. Watch and pray! Much
may be done by effectual prayer. Human means, fleshly arms, are vain.
There is an enemy in the house of life,' [here she quitted her palmistry
for the language of astrology;] 'there is a frightful danger at hand, both
for your wife and your child. Already on that dark ocean, over which
we are all sailing, I can see dimly the point at which the enemy's course
shall cross your wife's. There is but little interval remaining--not many
hours. All is finished; all is accomplished; and already he is almost up
with the darlings of your heart. Be vigilant, be vigilant, and yet look not
to yourself, but to Heaven, for deliverance.'
This woman was not an impostor: she spoke and uttered her oracles
under a wild sense of possession by some superior being, and of mystic
compulsion to say what she would have willingly left unsaid; and never
yet, before or since, have I seen the light of sadness settle with so
solemn an expression into human eyes as when she dropped my wife's
hand, and refused to deliver that burden of prophetic wo with which she
believed herself to be inspired.

The prophetess departed; and what mood of mind did she leave behind
her in Agnes and myself? Naturally there was a little drooping of spirits
at first; the solemnity and the heart-felt sincerity of fear and grief which
marked her demeanor, made it impossible, at the moment when we
were just fresh from their natural influences, that we should recoil into
our ordinary spirits. But with the inevitable elasticity of youth and
youthful gaiety we soon did so; we could not attempt to persuade
ourselves that there had been any conscious fraud or any attempt at
scenical effect in the Hungarian's conduct. She had no motive for
deceiving us; she had refused all offerings of money, and her whole
visit had evidently been made under an overflow of the most grateful
feelings for the attentions shown to her child. We acquitted her,
therefore, of sinister intentions; and with our feelings of jealousy,
feelings in which we had been educated, towards everything that tended
to superstition, we soon agreed to think her some gentle maniac or sad
enthusiast, suffering under some form of morbid melancholy.
Forty-eight hours, with two nights' sleep, sufficed to restore the wonted
equilibrium of our spirits; and that interval brought us onwards to the
6th of April--the day on which, as I have already said, my story
properly commences.
On that day, on that lovely 6th of April, such as I have described it, that
6th of April, about nine o'clock in the morning, we were seated at
breakfast near the open window--we, that is, Agnes, myself, and little
Francis; the freshness of morning spirits rested upon us; the golden
light of the morning sun illuminated the room; incense was floating
through the air from the gorgeous flowers within and without the house;
there in youthful happiness we sat gathered together, a family of love,
and there we never sat again. Never again were we three gathered
together, nor ever shall be, so long as the sun and its golden light-- the
morning and the evening--the earth and its flowers endure.
Often have I occupied myself in recalling every circumstance the most
trivial of this the final morning of what merits to be called my life.
Eleven o'clock, I remember, was striking when Agnes came into my
study,