PART THE FIRST—MORNING.
I.
The sapling, green and tender, yields readily to wind and sun and the hand of the trainer; the grown tree resists the storm, and 'tis well with it if it be not torn up by the roots; the aged trunk, dried to the core, spreads out its branches and perishes. This is human life.
At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are moulded by surrounding circumstances, which often affect our after lives, as colors laid at the root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their tints to the blossom; next comes the age of knowledge, when reason struggles with passion, and is not always the victor; lastly, the decay, when passion is extinct, and we live on a little longer on our memories, and then drop into dust.
When I formed the resolution to set down the events that have agitated my life, and marked it out with a strange difference from the lives of other men, I did not see the difficulties that beset my confession on the very threshold. They grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected on it, the more reluctance I felt at the thought of writing about things which no man would believe. Looking back upon them from the verge of the grave, which can not now be long untenanted, they seem, even to me, more like fantastic dreams or wild allegories than real occurrences. How then can I expect others to accept as true a narration which contradicts their experience and convictions, and which I can not elucidate myself? I can explain nothing; I can only relate what has happened to me, careful not to deviate a hair's breadth into exaggeration. It would be little to the purpose to say that truth is stranger than fiction, an axiom which every body admits as a loose generality, but which nobody will consent to apply in the instances by which it is illustrated. I can attest, out of my own knowledge, that truth often presents inexplicable phenomena, and is sometimes irreconcilable with the laws of nature. But who will credit me, I said, when I narrate such things?
Again and again I approached the subject, and as often recoiled from the execution of my design. It was only by repeated efforts that I summoned up sufficient moral courage to overcome the fear and shame that overwhelmed me, from the apprehension that I should be regarded as one who had been himself deceived, or who was practicing a deception on others. A patient examination of the motives upon which my resolution was founded, determined me, however, to brave all such risks, in the assurance that they who, exercising their literal judgment, as they have a right to do, might see reason for doubting my veracity, could not fail, upon the whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations. For the rest, I must appease my own scruples by declaring that I have herein written nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly as it occurred.
II.
My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it yesterday. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it of suffering, or anger, I know not which. The only parent I knew was my mother, with whom I lived in a solitude that I can not contemplate at this distance of time without shuddering.
Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border—a dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and desolate. It was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras of so great an age, that the colors had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its founders had long since passed away with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the day-time by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the thick walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited rooms it was necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that led from the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the quadrangle.
This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of its terrors. There were many legends whispered from one to another in the winter nights of revolting crimes which had taken place there in former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real. If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were discernible flitting across the floor or creeping up the walls; and as I involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner casements, remnants of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering against the windows, and other relics of a 'sheeted ancestry,' would seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms swaying and undulating before my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was distilling drops of agony over my body by the greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood—and children will understand me.
Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed under them. Skepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably employed in endeavoring to solve the problems which concern the connection between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain uneasiness in the dark? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of any thing upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses are cognizant; but a vague consciousness of invisible influences. In the daylight we have no such sensations; they belong exclusively to silence and darkness.
As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences, fostered by loneliness and the moody companionship of a wayward woman, who held little intercourse with the outer world, and shut herself up in dreams and superstitions. An incident which occurred at this period helped to give a supernatural turn to many circumstances that were, no doubt, capable of a simple solution.
Toward the extremity of a court to the south of the old pile, there was a chasm in the ground, partly filled up with loose stones and brambles. The whole place was over-run with grass and weeds, and the walls and outbuildings that surrounded it were in ruins. I had heard that this spot, which gaped so grimly through the tall, lank bushes and accumulated rubbish, was formerly the entrance to a series of subterranean galleries, that had been excavated below the foundations for the purpose of concealing troops, or stowing away prisoners, in times of trouble; and that they had been used in that way during the Civil War, when the mansion stood out a long siege against some of Fairfax's generals. An irresistible curiosity to explore these galleries seized upon me. I was fascinated by the very fear with which the stories related about them had inspired me. I never could pass that yawning chasm, which, now nearly choked up, was hardly wide enough to admit of the descent of a grown person, without longing to plunge into its depths. I often lingered there in the twilight, when the shadows were falling about, enhancing the terror and the temptation; and one evening in the autumn I took courage, and, clearing away the brambles with trembling hands, I forced myself down, bringing with me a torrent of stones and earth.
Finding my feet at the bottom, and rubbing my eyes, I tried to grope my way onward. At first there was a dim light at a great distance above me, in a slanting direction, but in an instant afterward I was in total darkness. My first impulse was to laugh at the exploit I had achieved; but as I pattered along, plashing sometimes in pools of water, and sometimes knocking my head against the rough stones that jutted out on each side, my mirth deserted me. When I became accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I could discern shapeless figures rising up and vanishing in the gloom—the walls seemed to move out of their places, and heave to and fro like wrecks in a storm—then they would open, and collapse, and disappear: all was in motion, black and tumultuous, and a surging sound, as of winds and waters lashing and wailing in a confined space, moaned dismally in my ears. Even when I closed my eyes, and pressed my fingers upon them to shut out these sights, they were still before me. This was, of course, the work of mere fright; but what followed can not be so easily accounted for.
While I stood hesitating how I should proceed, for I had lost my track, and knew not whether I ought to go backward or forward, I heard a distinct rushing sound, quite close to me. It swept past, and all was silent again. It was like a rush of silk or satin, or some fabric that, suddenly crushed, gives out a crackling noise. All the blood in my body gathered into my head; my eyes emitted fire, as if they had been struck by a cord. A stifling sensation bubbled up to my throat, and I involuntarily uttered a cry, which was echoed from a hundred recesses, and continued at intervals, reverberating like a succession of shots in the distance. I panted with horror, as I grasped the wall and listened. My fear was too great to suffer me to cry out for help. The apprehension of again invoking these dreadful echoes appalled me; I hardly breathed, and stood still to listen, I know not how long. A death-like silence pervaded the darkness. The soughing of the winds had ceased, or I fancied so, the stillness was so heavy. It may be that my faculties were intent upon that palpable sound I had heard, and could distinguish nothing else.
At last I began to move, treading softly, and stopping at intervals to watch and listen. I had scarcely proceeded in this way a dozen paces, when I felt as plainly as if I saw the object in the broad glare of the sun, a quick motion at my side in a nook or crevice of the wall. It was like the effort of a person to shrink down and escape from me. In an excess of fright and desperation I clutched at it with my hands, and caught it—I say caught it, for a substance resembling a thick silk filled the palms of both my hands. I held it with the grasp of one who was struggling for life, and tried to speak, but my tongue was dry; and I could not articulate a word: and while I held it, I was conscious that the object was moving away—it moved away, and still I thought I held it. I had not the power to loosen my fingers, which I had a strong impulse to do—and then the silk glided out of them, although they were coiled in it—and the next moment a grasp of muscles, cold and sharp, was on my neck, and pressed into my flesh. I was distraught with terror, and my senses forsook me.
When I recovered, I found myself lying on a couch in the great room, my mother sitting at a distance, and an ancient female servant watching over me.
This woman was the oldest domestic in the house. She had lived all her life in the family, and had seen two generations into the grave. It was from her lips I had learned most of the traditions that filled my head with such alarm and curiosity; it was from her I had acquired a knowledge of those subterranean passages in which I had encountered this singular adventure; and as soon as my mother left the room I related the whole story to her. She heard it to the end with a dark expression of anger on her face, which I interpreted into a reproof on my willfulness and folly in venturing into such places; and then she questioned me severely as to what I heard and saw, and what I thought it could have been. Finding that I could give her no satisfactory answers to these questions, she enjoined me to hold my tongue about it, and above all things not to speak of it to my mother. She rated me soundly for saying that I firmly believed I had caught something like a woman's dress in my hands; and she made me feel her old stuff gown, that I might assure myself it was no such texture as that. "How could I be so silly as to suppose that a woman, or even a man, would hide in vaults and passages that had not been opened for hundreds of years? What could I imagine they were doing there? It was more likely that rats, and toads, and bats were to be found there than human beings." And a great deal more to the like effect, as if she wanted to impress upon me that it was altogether the fancy of a distempered brain, and no reality.
Yet, in spite of every thing she said, my conviction remained unaltered. I could not be deceived in a fact so clearly attested by my own sensations. But the mystery was never cleared up; and I brooded over it in secret so perversely, that it exercised a blighting influence for a long time upon my imagination.
Many years afterward a suspicion crossed my mind, that this woman knew more about the matter than she cared to acknowledge. It was she who carried me into the house, having discovered me, as she stated, lying insensible in the court-yard; but I had no recollection of having found my way out into the air—a circumstance which at the time did not present itself to me in the light in which I am disposed to regard it now. Nor should I, perhaps, have been led to suspect her of duplicity, had she not acted with ingratitude at a time when sorrow and misfortune had fallen upon the house that had nurtured her from infancy.
III.
My mother had no companion. Even the servants lived apart, and performed their allotted offices at hours when she was not present; so that our table was laid and our wants supplied, for the most part by unseen hands. Such was my mother's way of life. Solitude and early griefs had fallen heavily upon her spirits, and fretted her temper. She rarely exchanged words with the servants, and never except upon unavoidable occasions. A spoken language was almost interdicted among us, and in its place the language of books was substituted. We dwelt in a world of our own, in which the unreal was invested with a living interest. Conversation wearied her; she had no sympathy with the actual life around her, and had long closed her heart against it. But the charm of books was ever fresh and inexhaustible. She possessed in a higher degree than any person I ever knew the power of realizing their contents. Portraits stepped out of them, and became as familiar to her as if they had moved about her bodily in the flesh. This daily intercourse with the creations of the brain fed her morbid desire for seclusion, and was cultivated with an earnestness that proved fatal at last.
Her taste lay entirely in one direction; the marvelous and extravagant alone interested her. She prohibited all works that treated of real life, and sought for the excitement she loved in the region of wonder and romance. Her library (a room of which I will speak more particularly presently) was filled with histories of sorcery and enchantment—of miraculous escapes and perils—providential interpositions—dreams, omens, and spectral appearances—astrology and witchcraft—church-yard legends, and the superstitions which ascribe a mysterious power to spells, charms, and incantations—traditions of giants and monsters—feats of the genii and evil spirits, and narratives that embraced the whole round of that curious lore which relates to the alchemists and diviners.
These books were the delight and occupation of her life; and when her eyes latterly began to grow dim with age, it was my task to read them aloud to her. At first, I revolted from this labor; it hung drearily upon me, and sickened me. Youth is naturally mutinous under confinement, and yearns for activity and freedom. But it was surprising how soon I fell into her tastes, and found myself kindling, as she used to do, over the horrors these terrible books unfolded. And now they took possession of me, I began to believe in them as she did; and with belief, or the awe which is so closely allied to it, my eagerness to penetrate further and further grew into an irresistible passion. Many a time in the bleak autumn nights, when the sharp winds snapped the leaves from the trees, and drifted their crisp spoils against the windows, have I sat gasping over some hideous tale, to which, by an involuntary association of ideas, the desolation of the season imparted additional terrors. I was wrought upon by that sort of fascination which resides in the eyes of the snake, when it fixes its gaze upon the face of a child.
Children who have been brought up in a healthy collision with the world know nothing of the state of fear and mental slavery I am describing. A little judicious counsel would have dispelled these delusions; a little timely explanation would have shown me their absurdity. But where was I to seek it? In my isolation I had not a single adviser. I took all I read for granted. The book could not dissipate the chaos of doubts and importunities of struggling reason it generated; it was dumb, and could not answer my questions. If I appealed to my mother, she was chafed at the interruption and the heresy, and commanded me to read on. At last I doubted no longer. Wonder after wonder swept away my feeble judgment. I believed in a spiritual kingdom—in the return of the dead to the earth—in the power of prophecy and the agency of demons—in second sight and the elixir vitæ—in amulets and miraculous invocations; the crystal mirror of Cornelius Agrippa, the witches of the Brocken, the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, were all realities to me. The ignorant alone believe in such things; but in this ignorance consisted all the knowledge that was thrown open to me.
The library was at some distance from the inhabited part of the house. It was an oblong room, with deep recesses, in which stood the old oak book-cases. If we had had the power of selecting a theatre for the performance of the legends which were read aloud here every night, we could not have found one better adapted to the purpose. The apartment was large and gloomy; and the tapestried walls, the ponderous draperies, the polished floor, the painted ceiling, the high-backed chairs, and the vast fire-place, with its carved mantle-shelf, supplied the very style of scene and furniture best adapted to give a striking effect to tales of crime and enchantment. Except close to the fire, and round the table on which we placed our lights, the library, from its height and extent, was buried in deep shadow; so that there was nothing wanted to help the imagination to a fitting locality for all kinds of mysteries.
I shall never forget my mother's sensations on one occasion when I read to her in this room an account of some man who kept watch through a whole night in a haunted chamber, and was never heard of afterward. She fancied that the tapestry moved, and called upon me to observe it. I did so, and fancied I saw it too. Twice she grasped my arm, and bade me cease; and looking shudderingly round, she twice desired me to listen, and tell her if I did not hear a foot-fall passing the extremity of the apartment in the dark with solemn regularity. I heard something—it was like the slow tread of a sentinel.
It was in that room, which cast its gloom over every page, blotting out its lines of sunshine wherever any happened to fall, that I read the Decameron. The groups in the garden—radiant, joyous, and in rapt attitudes of expectation and attention—were distinctly present to me, but darkened by immediate associations. Sorrow and anguish seemed to sit in their faces; there was no flush of emotion, no lightening in the eyes, no intensity in the cleft lips, no streaming hair, or burning cheeks, or startled gestures. All was cold, as if it were cut in marble. That pallid circle of listeners, disposed in such picturesque forms, seemed to me to be lying in a trance, so completely did the miserable influence of that room kill the gayety of all objects, and leave nothing but the skeleton behind.
We were never at a loss for excitement of this kind, which appeared, indeed, the only thing for which we lived. Our pursuits were interrupted for a time by the serious illness of my mother; but her irritable temperament rendered her impatient of sickness, and before the signs of the malady had passed out from her stricken frame she insisted upon returning to her nightly vigils.
Night after night she continued at her dangerous indulgence, while her eyes were visibly contracting a dull film, her cheeks wasting and falling in, and her pulse growing fainter and fainter. It was not a sight for a son to look upon, and tend with idle fancies and the levities of fable. I felt this and remonstrated, and the agonizing reality before me awakened me for a moment to the vanities of books. But she persisted in her demand and still preserved her listening posture, although the sense of hearing and the faculty of attention were sinking rapidly.
Some weeks had been consumed in this way, when one winter night she desired me to read a certain history from a favorite volume of old legends. The history she selected was that of a supernatural appearance that was alleged to have followed a gentleman of Verona with the fidelity of a shadow. The history set forth the arts and devices by which he endeavored to perplex and evade it—how he went into dark and lonely places, and how still his spectral companion stood at his side—how he rushed into crowded scenes, forcing his way violently through the mass, in the hope that he would thus escape; but no matter how dense the multitude, or by what stratagems and confederacy the gentleman sought to bury himself out of sight, the apparition in its human shape was ever standing or moving close beside him. The strangest thing was that it bore an unnatural likeness to him, not only in its face and form, but in its actions, which were always so faithfully and so instantaneously copied after him, that they resembled a reflection in a mirror. He tried the most painful and unexpected contortions, only to see them reproduced with a rapidity that mocked his despair.
The history went on to say how he invented various schemes, and underwent many fearful trials of sorcery, in the hope of banishing or subduing his horrid familiar, but all in vain, for the fiend baffled all his efforts, and was still found at his side, day and night, whether he rode or walked, or threw himself on his couch for repose—how he summoned courage to speak to it at last, and was answered by the echoes of his own voice—how he swam floods with the ghastly thing floating along with him on the surge—how he climbed the highest hills and fled into savage caverns, the familiar still toiling or groveling beside him—how, in a fit of madness, he tried to grapple it on the edge of a precipice with the desperate intent of dragging it down with him into the abyss below, and how the shape wrought in the struggle, impalpable to the touch, but visible to the sight, like painted air—how, after enduring horrible tortures, the man wasted away, and became a mere shadow, the spirit waning and fading in like manner—and how the priests of a holy order, in the solitudes of the Apennines, hearing of these strange events, bethought them of shriving the man, and expelling the incarnate devil that had worked such inexplicable misery upon him.
The history next went on to relate how the monks found the man so weak and emaciated that he could scarcely take food or answer their questions—and how they had him conveyed to their chapel at midnight, amid the glare of torches and the chants of the holy brotherhood, the imperishable fiend lying stretched by his side in the litter, in open spite of the holy water with which they had sprinkled it, and of the care with which they had caused it to be made so small that it was thought impossible for him to find room upon it—and how, when the wretched man was brought to the altar, they placed him upright before it, and began to pray, the fiend all the while being in his usual place next to his mortal fellow—and how, as the prayers proceeded and the voices of the assembled priests, of whom numbers had collected from distant places to witness the scene, ascended to the roof, filling the sanctuary with solemn and blessed music, the man turned a look of deathly fear, and gazed into the eyes of the spirit, the spirit giving back the look with the same thrilling and awful expression—and how the sufferer, when the venerable abbot came to the benediction, and offered to place his hands upon his head, sank gradually down, the fiend sinking with him—and how, as the last word was uttered, they vanished together into the earth, and on the instant the torches were extinguished, as by a sudden gust of wind.
When I came to this point of the story, I lifted my eyes to look upon my mother. She sat upon her great chair opposite to me, looking straight at me with a glassy and vacant stare. Her limbs were rigid, and a spasm sat upon her features.
"Mother!" I exclaimed; "mother!" I could not speak more. I was choking for utterance, my hair coiled out like living fibres, the room seemed to swim round and round. I stretched out my arms and seized her hands—they were cold, cold and clammy. Let me not dwell on it—in that spectral chamber I was alone with the dead!
IV.
For many days afterward the house was like a tomb. My mother was laid out in the state-room, which, never having been used in our time, had a dank, earthy smell, and was wretchedly bleak and naked. She lay upon the old square bed, whose hangings, swept up into a ring over head, were once a bright orange damask, but now an undistinguishable tawny mass, from which tracery and color had long disappeared. There was no other article of furniture in the apartment, which bore dreary evidence of the neglect into which it had fallen. The fire-place was closed up with a screen; and the fragments of arras that hung from the walls were eaten into shreds by the damp. Desolate was the pomp of the poor corpse that lay freezing under its stately coverlid, in the icy air of that room.
The old woman, of whom I have already spoken, undertook the melancholy office of watching the dead. She suffered nobody else to approach the body. The house felt as if it were empty. Wherever a foot trod in the passage it gave out a hollow sound; and the servants, scared by undefined terror, immured themselves in their rooms, where they remained cooped and huddled together till the last rites were over.
Then went forth a scanty procession of ashy faces, winding down the black hills to the church-yard; and when she was laid in the grave, a shudder passed among them, and they whispered one to another, and then their eyes rested upon me. The action was significant of the feeling with which they regarded my situation. I was the last of my race, and my inheritance was little more than the mausoleum of my ancestors.
The old woman had done well to monopolize the tending of the dead, and the management of the funeral. She knew my unfitness, from grief and ignorance of the world, to enter upon such details; and she took them all off my hands, with a most careful watchfulness of my ease—and her own interest. During that brief interval of sorrow—when the whole household had withdrawn into retirement—she collected all the plate, valuables, and moneys, she could find in the house; and when the grave was closed, and the servants had returned home, she was nowhere to be found. She had, in short, made ample provision for the rest of her life out of such spoils as she could secure; for which, I afterward discovered, she had been making industrious preparations long before. Some attempts were made to trace her, but they were fruitless.
This was my first experience of the heartlessness of the world; and, although it is an incident of every-day occurrence in all civilized communities, it was new to me at that time, and stung me to the soul.
After months of seclusion through the biting winter and spring, summer came round again, and I thought I would venture abroad, in hope that the air and a little activity and change of scene would recruit my health; for I was shattered and nervous, and conscious of a prostration of mind almost amounting to disease. The country round about was abrupt and wild, covered with heather for the most part, broken up and picturesque, and studded here and there with patches of bright verdure, invaded by clumps of forest trees. In some places it took a mountainous character, and brawling streams rushing through deep gorges and rocky glens assimilated the scenery to the general tone of the region that lies still farther to the north. The neighborhood was lonely and unfrequented; it resembled the hilly solitudes of Arran and Bute; there were few homesteads in the distant landscape to send up cheerful volumes of smoke among the trees: and you might ride a whole morning without meeting a wayfarer.
I was on horseback one day, passing leisurely in an idle mood out of the mouth of a ravine that led to an open valley, when I saw a lady, in a riding-habit, mounted at no great distance from me. Her horse was apparently picking his way slowly through the hillocks that dotted the surface of the sward. The appearance of a lady alone loitering in so unfrequented a spot surprised me. Had I seen an apparition I could not have been more astonished.
As she moved past toward the opposite side she turned her head, and her clear, pensive eyes, fell full upon my face with an expression of ineffable sweetness.
Where had I seen those features before? They seemed quite familiar to me. The dress, the action of her arm as she reined up her horse, and, above all, the sad beauty of her eyes, I could have protested I had seen a hundred times. Yet an instant's reflection would have sufficed to convince me that I was under a mistake, for visitors or friends like her there were none in our lonely house.
Her brief, quiet glance, had something in it of a look of recognition. I felt as if there was a recognition on both sides. I felt, too, or imagined, that she was slightly agitated by it. I knew that my own heart fluttered wildly. My solitary life had rendered me nervous, and the dangerous lore with which my head was filled gave to the incident an immediate coloring of romance. A new sensation had taken possession of me, a new world was opening to me; the solitude and remoteness of the place, and the unexpectedness of that vision rising up among the wild flowers and the dark green heather, acted like a charm upon me, and awakened me to a sense of bewildering delight I had never experienced before.
There is always an awkwardness in country places at rencounters between people who are unaccustomed to strangers. I hardly knew whether I should advance or retreat, and suffering my horse to take his own course, he carried me a little circuit behind a patch of trees that intervened between us. When I looked again she was gone. Scarcely a moment had elapsed, and she had vanished like a sunbow. I could hardly believe in a disappearance so miraculous, and rubbed my eyes, and gazed again and again over the vacant space before me. But she was nowhere to be seen. My curiosity was highly excited, and, dashing at full speed over the very spot she had so recently occupied, I traversed every outlet, but without success. It was broad noon. I knew all the bridle-tracks in and out of the valley, and it was impossible she could have taken any of them, and escaped my vigilant search in so short a time. What, then, was this form I had beheld? I had heard of Second Sight, and other visual deceptions—was this one of them? Had she melted into air? Had she come there only to mock me? Was I the victim of a self-delusion? The tortures of Tantalus were slight in comparison with the misery I felt as I rode round and round that sequestered dell, hoping in vain that she would return. But it was unlike any misery that had ever preyed upon me before. There was a strange thrill of expectation and uncertainty in it, and it pointed to an object in the future which, from that hour, gave me a novel interest in life. A total change had passed over me, and any change was welcome.
Every day I renewed my visit to the same place, but the nymph of my pilgrimage never returned to the spot where I had first beheld her. Under this disappointment fancy liberally supplied a picture which sustained and heightened my desire to gaze once more on the reality. By a mental process, of which I can give no further account than that it is very well known to all readers of romance who are endowed with faith and imagination, I culled the most lovable and fascinating qualities of a hundred heroines—the tenderness and devotion, gentleness and grace, of all the Amandas, Isidoras, and Ethelindas, my brain had become intimately acquainted with—and compiled out of them a suitable Ideal for the worship of my perturbed affections. Nor was I satisfied with creating this imaginary enchantress by a sweeping contribution from the special charms of all the fine heroines I had read of, but I must needs put her into every possible emergency that could show off her beauty and her virtues to advantage. I believe I made her run the gauntlet of more perilous adventures and extraordinary trials than ever befell any single heroine in the whole library of fiction.
I could not for an instant dismiss her from my thoughts; and that one look that had enthralled me was ever present to me. Even in sleep I was haunted by its disturbing influence, and the tantalizing scene in the valley was re-enacted, with sundry alterations and additions, over and over again in my dreams. As it had then become the sole occupation of my life to think of her, and to explore the country every day in search of her, it was not very wonderful that her image should have resolved itself into a settled illusion, possessing me so entirely that, in the image conjured up by my distempered imagination, I should at last believe that I actually saw before me that which I so cordially desired to see, and the seeing which was the object that engrossed me to the exclusion of all other pursuits. When one idea thus tyrannically absorbs the mind, the very monotony of its pressure is apt to overlay the reasoning faculties and coerce them into delusions. People mourning to excess over the dead have sometimes supposed that they saw them again "in their habit as they lived." Under the influence of great excitement, profound grief has done the work of fever; and assuredly there is a fever of the mind as well as of the body.
Thus it was that, laboring under this constant agony of desire, I saw that abstraction of all conceivable loveliness once more. She was seated in the library—in the very chair in which my mother died. I then little suspected that I was entranced by a phantom of my own making, and that the exquisite appearance that sat in my presence was of no more substance than a beam of light, into which outlines and colors of immortal beauty were infused by my heated fancy. I spoke to her—she turned aside, and raised her hand with a motion, as I thought, of surprise. Again I addressed her, and she rose, and passed noiselessly toward the door. I confess that, anxious as I was to detain her, and procure some explanation from her, my courage gave way at this movement, and I spoke no more; but I followed her with my eyes, trying to read the feeling that seemed to flit in hers. It was clear to me, ambiguous as its expression was, and difficult as it is to explain it. The melancholy smile that played over her features contained a history. There was love (of course, having created her, it was natural I should make her return my passion), intense love, darkened by some great sorrow, as if insuperable obstacles stood in its way, and turned it to despair. She retired to the door-way, and stood there for a moment in the attitude of leave-taking. She was not, I thought, to be lost thus, and perhaps forever—one effort, and I might yet preserve her. I advanced hastily to grasp her hand, but as I stretched out mine to touch it, a chill, not of fear, but awe, came upon me, and I stood looking helplessly upon the inexplicable magic of her departure. She did not leave me in the manner of one who fled from my approach, but rather as if she left me reluctantly and by constraint, slowly and lingeringly dissolving from my sight—like a bright cloud fainting from twilight into darkness.
A long illness followed this visitation. During the fever that supervened, I was reunited in a delicious rapture to her who had so mysteriously fascinated me. Alone with her in weird solitudes, I gazed into the deep light of her eyes, fearing to speak lest at the sound of my voice she might again vanish from me. Silence appeared to be understood between us as the condition of our intercourse, so unconsciously did my imagination adapt itself to the spiritual nature of the delusion. At length the fever passed away, but although the body was delivered from the raging fires that had consumed its strength, the mind was still devoured by the same insatiable longing to discover the object of my inextinguishable passion. I was shattered in health and spirits; incapable of much exertion; and harassed by disappointments. I tried to shake off the despair that was rapidly gaining an ascendency over me; but the bleakness and loneliness of my life only helped to encourage it; and I finally resolved to leave the country, and seek relief and oblivion in new scenes and excitements. And so I forsook the old mansion with a heavy heart, and directed my course to London.
V.
It was my first experiment in the world. I had no friends or acquaintances in the great metropolis. I was a stranger in its thronged thoroughfares, which are more desolate to a stranger than a howling wilderness.
At first I was distracted out of myself by the whirl of the vortex in which I found myself engulfed. The eternal din, the countless multitudes, the occupation that was legibly written in every man's face, gave me something to think of, and forced me into a sort of blind activity. But the novelty of this uproar and bustle, in which my own sympathies or interests were in no way engaged, soon palled upon me, and threw me back upon the morbid humors which the sudden change had only temporarily lulled. I panted again for quiet, and sought it in the depth of the town.
At that time the church, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was buried in a mass of dingy buildings, which, clustering up about it on all sides, blotted it out from the sun. These buildings were intersected by numerous dark courts and passages, and in one of them there was a retired tavern frequented by a few persons, mostly of an intellectual caste—artists, musicians, authors; men of high aspirations, but whom fortune never seemed weary of persecuting, and who met here of an evening to compare notes, and vent their complaints against the world. This was exactly the sort of company that fell in with my tastes. It was a satisfaction to me to herd with disappointed men, and hear them rail at the prosperity which refused to crown their merits. Their failures in life had given a peculiar turn to their minds, and tinged their conversation with a spirit of fatalism. They were one and all clearly convinced that it was in vain to struggle against destiny—that no genius, however original or lofty, could secure its legitimate rewards by legitimate means—and that, in short, the only individuals really deserving of success were those who, by a perverse dispensation of laurels, never could attain it. This view of the wrongs and injustice they suffered from society stirred up much pride and bitterness among them, and led them into many abstract disquisitions, which were rendered attractive to me, no less by the nature of the topics they selected, than by the piquancy and boldness with which they dissected them.
The most remarkable person in this little knot was a young man of the name of Forrester. Like myself, he was of no profession, and appeared to be drawn into the circle by much the same motives. He was tall and pale, and generally reserved in speech; but subject to singular fluctuations—sometimes all sunshine, breaking out into fits of wild enthusiasm, and sometimes overwhelmed with despondency. These vicissitudes of mood and temperament, which indicated a troubled experience beyond his years, interested my sympathies. The more intimate I became with him, the more reason I had to suspect that his life, like my own, was the depository of some heavy secret; but I did not venture to question him on this point, from an apprehension which his bearing toward me led me to entertain that a similar suspicion lurked in his mind respecting me. I confess that I dreaded any allusion to my own history, and carefully avoided all subjects likely to lead to it; for I should have been ashamed to acknowledge the sufferings I underwent from a cause which most men would have treated with ridicule and skepticism. I was quite aware that it was vulnerable to attacks of that sort, and the terror of having the deception, if it were one, which I had cherished with such fervor, rudely assailed and beaten down by common sense, made me preserve a strict silence in every thing relating to myself—a precaution that probably gave a keener zest to the curiosity I desired to baffle.
A strong friendship grew up between me and Forrester. We were both idlers, and we discovered that, by a happy coincidence, our literary tastes—if an industrious prosecution of desultory and unprofitable reading may be dignified by such a term—lay in the same channels. He was as deeply learned in the literature of the marvelous as I was myself; and during the summer evenings we used to take long walks into the country, beguiling the way by discussions upon a variety of wonderful matters which we turned up out of our old stores. The exercise at least was healthy, and the very disputations upon the evidence and likelihood of these things strengthened my faculties, and cleared off some clouds of credulity. This collision with another mind was a novelty to me, and, for a time, diverted me from other thoughts.
At our tavern Forrester and I enjoyed distinguished popularity. Every body listened to our opinions with attention, not so much because they were remarkable for their soundness, as because they were generally opposed to established notions, and were urged with earnestness. We always spoke like men who speak out of their convictions, while most of the others argued merely for argument's sake, and were ready to take any side of a question for the pleasure of getting up a controversy, and showing off their ingenuity.
One evening the conversation turned upon the possibility of the dead revisiting the earth, and the theory of manifest warnings before dissolution. The debate, which began in levity, soon took a more serious tone, and we had been arguing a full hour before I discovered that Forrester and I had engrossed the discussion to ourselves, the rest of the company maintaining a profound silence, and listening to our observations with undisguised wonder and astonishment. This discovery abashed me a little, for I never meant to make such a display, and I looked across at Forrester for the purpose of drawing his attention to the circumstance. I perceived, then, for the first time, that his face had undergone an extraordinary change. The natural pallor had taken an almost livid hue. The ordinary placidity of his features had given place to an expression of severe pain and alarm.
"What is the matter?" I inquired. "Are you ill?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"You look dreadfully pale." He only smiled at this remark—but it was a ghastly smile.
"I know that something is the matter," I cried. "What is it, Forrester?"
"Nothing. What can be the matter? Are we not all living men talking upon equal terms, and in the best possible humor, about the dead? Why should that affect me more than any body else?"
"I know not why it should," I replied, "but I feel it does."
"Are you quite sure," he returned, in a low voice, "that it does not affect you as deeply?" He looked at me as if he knew my whole life, which he could not have known; and, in spite of a violent effort to suppress my feelings, I was conscious that I betrayed the agitation into which I was thrown by that searching look.
"Come, come," he exclaimed, rallying wildly, "we have both looked death in the face before now; and although use can not make it familiar, still a sight often repeated must lose some of its horrors."
"No, you are wrong. I have not seen death often."
"Once—only once," he replied, in the same hollow voice; "but you have seen many deaths in one."
"How do you know that?" I demanded; "or assume to know it?"
"One day you shall learn," he answered, calmly.
"You amaze me. Speak openly to me, Forrester, and not in these dark enigmas. I can bear to hear."
"Can you bear to suffer?" he asked.
"I can—I think I can," I replied, shrinking at my heart from the ordeal I invited. "I have suffered that which I should once have thought utterly fabulous, and beyond human endurance."
"I know it. But endurance has its limits. The earthly can bear only that which is of the earth—test them with sufferings that look out beyond this world into the darkness of eternity, and they perish. The trial is not in those things that are dated, bounded, and finite: it is where speculation can not reach nor reason avail us, where human knowledge and human strength are blind and idle, that the trial of that suffering begins, which is akin to the penalties of immortal spirits—a beginning without an end."
"I do not understand you," I answered.
"You will understand me, however, when the hour arrives." Then stopping short, he whispered, "they are observing us; this is not the place for such a theme. We shall meet again, when you shall be satisfied."
"When?"
"Soon—I fear too soon. No matter—we shall meet, and you shall be satisfied."
He rose and left the room.
I was restrained from following him only by the consideration that I should expose myself to the criticisms of our companions, who, I had observed, were fond of making merry at the expense of their absent friends; and as I was beginning to feel very sensitive to ridicule, I determined not to give them an opportunity of exercising their wit upon me.
When Forrester was gone, they immediately took him to pieces. His character, habits, life, and opinions, furnished them with abundant materials for commentary, which they were all the less scrupulous in dealing freely with because they really knew little or nothing about him. One said that there was a mysterious something about Forrester that he couldn't make out—it might be all right, but, for his part, he liked people to be candid with you and above-board; another remarked, that a man who lived nobody knew exactly how, and who disappeared every night at pretty much the same hour, and was so very incommunicative about his pursuits, laid himself open to suspicion, at all events; a third suggested that, probably, he had experienced some blight, which had spoiled him for company—perhaps he had been crossed in love (here there was a general laugh, and a rapid succession of puns); while a fourth, who made it a rule never to form a judgment on any man's character without knowing him thoroughly, could not help observing that Mr. Forrester certainly held some rather extraordinary doctrines about ghosts and other nonsense of that sort, which, to be sure, was no imputation on his character, but—here the speaker stopped short, and shook his head in a very significant manner.
These opinions, delivered off-hand, puzzled me exceedingly, for I could not arrive at their meaning. It was evident that Forrester was an object of mystery to our friends—and so he was to me. But neither they nor I could get any farther in the matter. They, however, dismissed him from their minds with the drain of their glasses, while I lay restlessly all night ruminating on what had occurred.
I was passing through a state of transition from the seclusion in which my faculties had been kept dormant into a section of society which was eminently calculated to awaken and sharpen them for use. I was already getting into a habit of reasoning with myself, of trying to trace effects to causes, and examining with suspicion many things which I had hitherto taken upon trust. At first I committed numerous blunders, and fell into all sorts of mistakes, in my eagerness to emulate the cleverness of the experienced individuals with whom I was in the habit of associating. And I could not have dropped upon a clique better qualified or disposed to ride roughshod over the whole region of romance. They were generally practical men and some of them were worldly men; for although not one of them was able to do any thing for himself, they were all adepts in the knowledge of what other people ought to do. They looked with supreme contempt upon sentimental people, and took infinite pleasure in running them down. They were not the sort of men to be tricked by appearances or clap-trap. They despised finery, and ostentation, and outside manners. They loved to look at things as they were, and to call them by their proper names; never, by any accident, over-rating an excellence, but very frequently exaggerating a defect, which they considered as an error on the right side. In this severe school I acquired a few harsh practical views of life, and was beginning to feel its realities growing up about me; but in the progress from the visionary to the real there were many shapes of darkness yet to be struggled with.
A few nights afterward I met Forrester on his way to the rendezvous. There was the same unaccountable reserve in his manner which he betrayed at our last abrupt parting; but my anxiety, awakened more by his looks than his words, would not brook delay. I resolved to get an explanation on the spot.
"Forrester," I said, "you have inflicted a pain upon me which no man has a right to inflict upon another, without giving him at the same time his full confidence. You have made use of strange allusions and hints, which you are bound to explain. You seem to know more about me than I have myself ever confided to you, or than you could have known through any channels with which I am acquainted. I ask you to satisfy me at once whether it is so, or not?"
"It is so," he replied. "You see I am as frank as you are curious."
"But that does not satisfy me. You say you know more about me than I have thought it necessary or desirable to impart to you. What is it that you know?"
"Little," he returned with a singularly disagreeable smile.
"Then it will be the sooner told. What is that little?" and I uttered the last word with rather a bitter and satirical emphasis.
Forrester drew up gravely at this, and replied to me slowly,
"That little is all. All that has ever happened to you, and the whole may be expressed in a single word. Your life has scarcely had enough of action in it to stir the surface; it has been a life of inward strife."
"You have described it truly. My world has not been like that of other men."
"Nor mine; but I have come out of the mist, and you are in it still."
"You speak riddles, and involve me in deeper obscurity than ever. But I am resolved to be satisfied, and will be trifled with no longer. What is that which you said, nay, pledged yourself I should soon learn?"
"You must not be impatient. Do not fear that I will not keep my pledge. If you knew all, you would understand that I dare not break it. To-morrow night, at this hour precisely, meet me on this spot, and you shall be made wiser; happier, I will not promise. Better it should never be, than that it should be too late. This is dark to you now, it will soon be clear enough."
We shook hands after the promise of meeting on the following night, and so parted. Neither of us was in a condition to join the cynics at the tavern.
After a night of feverish suspense I rose early the next morning, my brain full of the prospect, clouded as it was, of the interview with Forrester. The day was passed in a ferment of agitation; I could not remain at home; I wandered abroad, forgot to dine, and was racked with a presentiment that my fate, for good or evil, hung upon the issue of the night.
VI.
At last the appointed hour arrived. Forrester was punctual to the moment. He was evidently affected by some strong emotion, which he made fearful efforts to control. I was too much touched by his condition, and had too much dread about what was coming, to venture upon any questions, particularly as he seemed to desire silence. He locked his arm in mine violently, and, without uttering a word, we traversed several streets till we reached a part of the town with which I was unacquainted. As we went forward Forrester's agitation sensibly increased; and when we entered a small square, in the centre of which there was a stunted plantation, with a mutilated fountain in the midst, he suddenly stopped, and turning, looked me full in the face.
"Have you courage?" he demanded.
"Mortal courage," I replied, "no more."
"Well, well, we are fools," he continued; "very worms, to think that we can cope with that which even to endure in ignorance is a task that sublimes our nature. Suffering is retributive and purifying. This is my last agony."
He then advanced hastily to a house, the door of which was screened by a low porch, tastefully covered with creepers. In his attitude at this instant there was a grandeur that made a deep impression upon me; it was derived from the triumph of his manly spirit over the anguish that was laboring at his heart. He knocked, and the door was hurriedly opened by a servant in mourning.
I should here remark that I had never been at his house before, although I had known him many months; nor was I even then aware that the house we were entering was his.
Motioning me to follow him up the stairs, which he ascended stealthily, I crept up after him with a very uneasy mind. When he reached the drawing-room door he paused for a moment, then turning the handle slowly and noiselessly, he entered the room. One glance at the apartment gave me a general idea of its character. It was small and fashionably furnished, but had an air of neglect and disorder which indicated that its tenant had been long confined by illness. At the opposite side was a sofa, which, for convenience, had been moved near the fire. A lady, apparently in a very delicate state of health (I could only judge by the languor of her position, for I could not see her face), lay resting upon it. Forrester stole quietly to her side, and took her hand.
"Gertrude, how do you feel this evening?"
A sigh, from the depths of her heart, answered him.
"Don't be alarmed; I am not alone; we have come to—"
"Who?" she demanded, suddenly raising herself from the sofa. "Who is come? Come!—come!—you!—Henry—and—"
She looked at me; I stood in the full light of the fire; our eyes met; every vein and artery in my body seemed to beat audibly; she uttered an hysterical cry, and fell back upon the sofa. I rushed to catch her, sobbed, gasped, tried to speak, flung myself upon my knees before her, and madly clasped the drooping hand, the living hand, of her who had so long enthralled my soul, and who, until this hour, had appeared to me more like a spirit of another world than a being of the earth like myself.
During this short and agitated scene, Forrester stood looking at us with a mixed expression of grief and satisfaction. His mind was evidently relieved of some weight that had oppressed it, but there still remained a heavy pang behind. His fortitude was admirable.
"It is accomplished!" he exclaimed, flinging himself into a chair; "and if there be a hope of repose left, perhaps I may live to look back upon this night with tranquillity."
The excitement of the moment affected the invalid so much that her strength sank under it, and she fainted in my arms. I did not perceive this until Forrester, whose watchfulness respecting her was unceasing, gently directed my attention to it, at the same time moving her to an easier position. I was too much bewildered to have sufficient self-possession to know what to do, but, trivial as this accident was, it instantly awoke me to the full consciousness that she lived and breathed before me; she who had hitherto been to me like the invisible spirit that accompanied the knight of old, uttering sweet sounds in the air, until his heart was consumed by the love of that Voice which poured its faithful music into his ears. It was a new life to know that she lived, and that the happiness I had so hopelessly yearned for was now within my reach.
"Enough," cried Forrester, "for the present. Let us leave her. She will be tended by more skillful leeches than we should prove."
A servant entered the room just as we retired, and after one long gaze, in which all past delusions seemed to expire, I followed him hastily into the street.
I stopped at the first retired place we reached. The explanation could no longer be delayed, but my impatience was so great that I interrupted it by a flood of questions. My mind was full of wonder, and I broke forth into a series of interrogatories, for the purpose of getting the information I wanted in the order of my own thoughts.
"Resolve me, Forrester," I concluded,—"resolve me on all these points, for I begin to fear that my life has hithertofore been but a dream, and that even the reality which I have just looked upon will perish like the rest."
"Patience, patience!" he returned; "my thoughts are as confused as yours. I have as many scattered recollections to gather up as you have questions to put, and I know not if either of us can be satisfied in the end. But I am worn out. This new demand on my spirits has exhausted me. Let us go forward to a seat."
We advanced into the shrubbery, and in one of the recesses we found a seat. After a pause, Forrester began his revelations.