ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SEARCH RENEWED.
Everybody was late next day at the Court; everybody except Clide de Winton, whose waking dreams being brighter than any that his pillow could suggest, had deserted it at a comparatively early hour, and had been for a stroll in the park before breakfast. He re-entered the house whistling an air from Don Giovanni, and went into the library, where he expected to find Sir Simon. The baronet generally came in there to read his letters when there were people staying in the house. The library was a noble room with its six high pointed windows set in deep mullions, and its walls wainscoted with books on the east and west—rich-clad volumes of crimson and brown, with the gold letters of their names relieving the sombre hues like thin streaks of light, while at intervals great old florentines in folios “garmented in white” made a break in the general solemnity. The end opposite the windows was left clear for a group of family portraits; and beneath these, as Clide burst into the room, there stood a living group, conversing together in low tones, and with anxious, harassed faces. Mrs. de Winton, contrary to her custom, had on a gray cashmere dressing-gown, whose soft, clinging drapery gave her tall figure some resemblance to a classical statue; she was leaning her arm on the high mantel-piece, with an open letter in her hand, which she was apparently discussing with deep annoyance, and with a cloud of incredulity on her handsome, cold features; the admiral was striking the marble with his clenched hand, and looking steadily at the bronze clock, as if vehemently remonstrating with it for marking ten minutes to eleven; Sir Simon was standing with his hands in his pockets, his back against the base of Cicero’s bust, very nearly as white as the Roman orator himself.
The three figures started when Clide opened the door. He felt instantaneously that something was amiss, but there was a momentary pause before he said:
“Has anything happened?”
Mrs. de Winton, seeing that no one else spoke, came forward: “Nothing that we are certain of; but your uncle has received a letter that has shocked and startled us a good deal, although it seems on the face of it quite impossible that the thing can be true. But you will be brave, Clide, and meet it as becomes a Christian.” She spoke calmly, but her voice trembled a little.
“For heaven’s sake what is it?” said Clide, a horrible thought darting through him like a sting. Why did his uncle keep looking away from him? “Uncle, what is it?”
“It is a letter from Ralph Cromer—you remember your uncle’s old valet?—he is in London now; he was at Glanworth on that dreadful night.… My dear boy,” laying her hand kindly on his arm, “it may be a mere fancy of his; in fact, it seems impossible for a moment to admit of its being anything else; but Cromer says he has seen her.…”
“Seen whom? My dead wife … Isabel! The man is mad!”
“It must be a delusion; we are certain it is; but still it has given us a shock,” said his stepmother.
“What does the man say? Show me his letter!”
She handed it to him.
“Honored Master: I am hard set to believe it; but if it an’t her, it’s her ghost as I seen this mornin’ comin’ out of a house in Wimpole Street, and though I ran after her as hard as my bad leg ’ud let me, she jumped into a cab and was off before I could get another look of her. It was the young missis, Master Clide’s wife, as you buried eight year ago, Sir, as I’m a live man; unless I went blind of a sudden and saw wrong, which an’t likely, as you know to the last my eyes was strong and far-seein’. I went back to the house, but the man could tell me nothin’ except as all sorts of people keep comin’ and goin’ with the toothache, in and out, his employer bein’ a dentist, and too busy to be disturbed with questions as didn’t pay. I lose no time in acquaintin’ you of, honored master, and remain yours dutifully to command,
Ralph Cromer.”
There was a dead silence in the room while Clide read the letter. Every one of the six eyes was fixed on him eagerly. He crushed the paper in his hand, and sat down without uttering a word.
“Don’t let yourself be scared too quickly, De Winton,” said Sir Simon; “it is perfectly clear to my mind that the thing is a mere imagination of Cromer’s; he’s nearly in his dotage; he sees somebody who bears a strong likeness to a person he knew nearly eight years ago, and he jumps at the conclusion that it is that person.”
Clide made no answer to this, but turned round and faced his uncle, who still stood with his hand clenched stolidly on the mantel-piece.
“Uncle, what do you think of it?” he said hoarsely.
The admiral walked deliberately towards the sofa and sat down beside his nephew. Before he spoke he held out his horny palm, and grasped Clide’s hand tightly. The action was too significant not to convey to Clide all it was meant—perhaps unconsciously—to express.
The admiral did not believe the story to be the phantom of dotage; he believed Cromer had seen Isabel.
“My boy,” he said, speaking in a harsh, abrupt tone, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “I can say nothing until we have investigated the matter. An hour ago I would have sworn it was absurd, impossible. I would have said, with an oath, it cannot be true. I saw her laid in her coffin and buried at St. Valéry. But I might have sworn falsely. Several days had elapsed between the death and the burial; the features were swollen, scarcely recognizable. I took it perhaps too readily for granted that they were hers; I ought to have looked closer and longer; but I shrank from looking at all; I only glanced; they showed me the hair; it was the same length and apparently the same color, deep jet black; the height too corresponded. This, as well as all the collateral evidence, satisfied me at once as to the identity. It may be that I was too rash, too anxious to be convinced.”
Clide was silent for a few moments. Then he said:
“Where did the dentist live that gave us the clew before?”
“In Wimpole Street.”
Clide drew away his hand quickly from his uncle’s with a visible shudder. The coincidence had done its work with the others before he came in. An inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some sort, broke from him.
“Come, come,” said Sir Simon, striding towards the window, “it’s sheer nonsense to take for granted that the house is burnt down because there’s a smell of fire. The coincidences are strange, very singular certainly; but such things happen every day. I stick to my first impression that it’s nothing but a delusion of Cromer’s in the first instance, to which the chance similarity of the dentist’s address gives a color of reality too faint to be worth more than it actually is. You must go up to town at once, and clear away the mistake; it’s too monstrous to be anything else.”
He spoke in a very determined manner, as if he were too thoroughly convinced himself to doubt of convincing others. Clide made a resolute effort to be convinced.
“Yes, you say truly; it’s unreasonable to accept the story without further evidence. I will go in search of it without an hour’s delay. Uncle, you will come with me?”
“Yes, my boy, yes; we will go together; we must start in about an hour from this”—pulling out his watch—“meantime, come in and have your breakfast; it wont help matters to travel on an empty stomach.”
Mrs. de Vinton left the room hurriedly; the others were following; but Clide had weightier things on his mind than breakfast; he closed the door after his uncle and turned round, facing Sir Simon.
The latter was the first to speak.
“Has anything definite passed between you and Franceline?”
It was precisely to speak about this that he had detained Sir Simon, yet when the baronet broached the subject in this frank, straight-to-the-point way, he answered him almost savagely: “What’s the use of reminding me of her now! As if the thought were not already driving me mad!”
“I must speak of it. Whatever misery may be in store for the rest of us, I am responsible for her share in it. I insist upon knowing how far things have gone between you. Have you distinctly committed yourself?”
“If following a woman like her shadow, and hanging on every word she says, and telling her by every look and tone that he worships the ground she walks on—if you call that distinctly committing myself, I shouldn’t think you needed to ask.”
“Have you asked her to be your wife?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Does she care for you? De Winton, be honest with me. This is no time for squeamishness. Speak out to me as man to man. I feel towards this young girl as if she were my own child. I have known all along how it was with you. But how about her? Have I guessed right—does she love you?”
“God help me! God help us both!” And with this passionate cry Clide turned away and, hiding his face in his hands, let himself fall into a chair.
“God help you, my poor lad! And God forgive me!” muttered Sir Simon.
The accent of self-reproach in which the prayer was uttered smote Clide to the heart; it stirred all that was noble and unselfish within him, and in the midst of his overwhelming anguish bade him forget himself to comfort his friend.
“You have nothing to reproach yourself with; you acted like a true friend, like a father to me. You meant to make me the happiest of men, to give me a treasure that I never could be worthy of. God bless you for it!” He held out his hand, and grasped Sir Simon’s. “No, nobody is to blame; it is my own destiny that pursues me. I thought I had lived it down; but I was mistaken. I am never to live it down. I could bear it if it fell upon myself alone. I had grown used to it. But that it should fall upon her! What has she done to deserve it?… What do I not deserve for bringing this curse upon her?” He rose up with flashing eye, his whole frame quivering with passion—he struck out against the air with both arms, as if striving to burst some invisible, unendurable bond.
Sir Simon started back affrighted. Kind-hearted, easy-going Sir Simon had never experienced the overmastering force of passion, whether of anger or grief, love or joy; his was one of those natures that when the storm comes lie down and let it sweep over them. He was brought now for the first time in his life in contact with the spectacle of one who did not bend under the tempest, but rose up in frantic defiance, breasting and resisting it. He quailed before the sight; he could not make a sign or find a word to say. But the transient paroxysm of madness spent itself, and after a few minutes Clide said, hopelessly yet fiercely:
“Speak to me, why don’t you, Harness?” Emotion swept away his habitual tone of respect towards the man who might have been his father. “Help me to help her! What can I do to stand between her and this misery? I must see her before I go, and what in Heaven’s name shall I say to her?”
“You shall not see her,” said Sir Simon; “you would not think of such a thing if you were in your right mind; but you are mad, De Winton. Say to her, indeed! That you find you are a married man—I don’t believe it, mind—but what else could you say if you were to see her? While there is the shadow of a doubt on this head you must not see her, must not directly or indirectly hold any communication with her.”
“And I am to sneak off without a word of explanation, and leave her to think of me as a heartless, dishonorable scoundrel!”
“A bitter alternative; but it is better to seem a scoundrel than to be one,” answered Sir Simon. “What could you say to her if you saw her?”
“I would tell her the truth and ask her to forgive me,” said the young man, his face kindling with tenderness and passion of a softer kind than that which had just convulsed its fine lineaments. “I would bless her for what the memory of her love must be to me while I live. Harness, if it is only to say ‘God bless you and forgive me!’ I must see her.”
“I’ll shoot you first!” said the baronet, clutching his arm and arresting his steps toward the door. “You call that love? I call it the basest selfishness. You would see the woman who loves you for the sole purpose of planting yourself so firmly in the ruins of her broken heart that nothing could ever uproot it; but then she would worship you as a victim—a victim of her own making, and this would be compensation to you for a great deal. I thought better of you, De Winton, than to suppose you capable of such heartless foppery.”
It was Clide’s turn to quail. But he answered quickly:
“You are right. It would be selfish and cruel. I was mad to think of it.”
“Of course you were. I knew you would see it in a moment.”
“But there is no reason why I should not see her father,” said Clide; “it is only fit that I should speak to him. Shall I go there, or will you bring him up here?”
“You shall not see him, here or anywhere else,” was the peremptory reply. “Have you spoken to him already?”
“No. I went down this morning for the purpose, but he was not up.”
“That was providential. And about Franceline, am I to understand there is a distinct engagement between you?”
“As distinct as need be for a man of honor.”
“Since when?”
“Last night.”
Sir Simon winced. This at any rate was his doing. He had taken every pains to precipitate what now he would have given almost anything he possessed to undo.
“I’ll tell you what it is, you must leave the matter in my hands. I will see the count as soon as you are gone. I will tell him that your uncle has been called off suddenly on important business that required your presence, and that you have gone with him. For the present it is not necessary to say more; it would be cruel to do so.”
“I will abide by your advice,” said Clide submissively; “but afterwards—what if this terrible news turns out to be true?”
“It has yet to be proved.”
“If it is proved it will kill her!” exclaimed Clide, speaking rather to himself than to his companion.
“Pooh! nonsense! All fancy that. Lovers’ dead are easily buried,” said Sir Simon, affecting a cheerfulness he was very far from feeling. He knew better than Clide how ill-fitted Franceline was, both by the sensitive delicacy of her own nature and the inherited delicacy of a consumptive mother, to bear up against such a blow as that which threatened her; but he would not lacerate the poor fellow’s heart by letting him share these gloomy forebodings that were based on surer ground than the sentimental fears of a lover. Perhaps the expression of his undisciplined features—the brow that could frown but knew not how to dissemble; the lip that could smile so kindly, or curl in contempt, but knew not how to lie; the eye that was the faithful, even when the unconscious, interpreter of the mind—may have said more to Clide than was intended.
“I trust you to watch over her,” he said; and then added in a tone that went to Sir Simon’s very heart, “don’t spare me if it can help you to spare her. Tell her I am a blackguard—it’s true by comparison; compared to her snow-white purity and angelic innocence of heart, I am no better than a false and selfish brute. Blacken me as much as you like—make her hate me—anything rather than that she should suffer, or guess what I am suffering. God knows I would bear it and ten times worse to shield her from one pang!”
“That is spoken like yourself,” said the baronet. “I recognize your father’s son now.”
They grasped each other’s hands in silence. Clide was opening the door when suddenly he turned round and said with a smile of touching pathos:
“You will not begin the blackening process at once? You will wait till we know if it is necessary?”
“All right—you may trust me,” was the rejoinder, and they went together into the breakfast-room.
They had the carriage to themselves. Clide was glad of it. It was a strange fatality that drew these two men, alike only in name, so closely together in the most trying crises of the younger man’s life. He spoke of it gratefully, but bitterly.
“Yes, your support is the one drop of comfort granted me in this trouble, as it was in the other,” he said, as the train carried them through the green fields and past many a spot made dear and beautiful by memory; “it is abominably selfish of me to use it as I do, but where should I be without it! I should have been in a mad-house before this if it were not for you, uncle, hunted as I am like a mad-dog. What have I done so much worse than other men to be cursed like this!”
The admiral had hitherto been as gentle towards his nephew as a fond but awkward nurse handling a sick child; but he turned on him now with a severe countenance.
“What right have you to turn round on your Maker and upbraid him for the consequences of your own folly? You talk of being cursed; we make our own curses. We commit follies and sins, and we have to pay for it, and then we call it destiny! It is your own misdoing that is hunting you. You thought to make life into a holiday; to shirk every duty, everything that was the least irksome or distasteful; you flew in the face of common-sense, and family dignity, and all the responsibilities of life in your marriage; you rushed into the most solemn act of a man’s life with about as much decency and reverence as a masquerader at a fancy ball. Instead of acting openly in the matter and taking counsel with your relatives, you fall in love with a pretty face and marry it without even as much prudence as a man exercises in hiring a groom. You pay the penalty of this, and then, forsooth, you turn round on Providence and complain of being cursed! I don’t want to be hard on you, and I’m not fond of playing Job’s comforter; but I can’t sit here and listen to you blaspheming without protesting against it.”
When the admiral had finished this harangue, the longest he ever made in his life, he took out his snuff-box and gave it a sharp tap preparatory to taking a pinch.
“You are quite right, sir; you are perfectly right,” said Clide; “I have no one to blame but myself for that misfortune.”
“Well, if you see it and own it like a man that’s a great point,” said the admiral, mollified at once. “The first step towards getting on the right tack is to see that we have been going on the wrong one.”
“I was very young too,” pleaded Clide; “barely of age. That ought to count for something in my favor.”
“So it does; of course it does, my boy,” assented his uncle warmly.
“I came to see the folly and the sinfulness of it all—of shirking my duties, as you say—and I was resolved to turn over a new leaf and make up for what I had left undone too long. M. de la Bourbonais said to me, ‘We most of us are asleep until the sting of sorrow wakes us up.’ It had taken a long time to do it, but it did wake me up at last; and just as I was thoroughly stung into activity, into a desire to be of use to somebody, to make my life what it ought to be, there comes down this thunderclap upon me, and dashes it all to pieces again. That is what I complain of. That is what is hard. This has been no doing of mine.”
“Whose doing is it? It is the old mistake sticking to you still. It is the day of reckoning that comes sooner or later after every man’s guilt or folly. We bury it out of sight, but it rises up like a day of judgment on us when we least expect it.”
“I was not kept long waiting for the day of reckoning to my first folly—call it sin, if you like—” said Clide bitterly. “I should have thought it was expiated by this. Eight of the best years of my life wasted in wretchedness.”
“You wasted them because you liked it; because it was pleasanter to you to go mooning about the world than to come back to your post at home, and do your duty to God and yourself and your fellow-men,” retorted the admiral gruffly. “If we swallow poison, are its gripings to be reckoned merit to us? You spent eight years eating the fruit of your own act, and you expect the bitterness to count as an atonement. My boy, I have no right to preach to you, or to any one; I have too many holes in my own coat; but I have this advantage over you—that I see where the holes are and what made them. We need never expect things to go right with us unless we do the right thing; and if we do right and things seem to go wrong, they are sure to be right all the same, though we can’t see it. It is not all over here; the real reckoning is on the other side. But we have not come to that yet,” he added, in an encouraging tone; “this threat may turn out to be a vain one, and if so you will be none the worse for it—probably all the better. We want to be reminded every now and then that we don’t command either waves or wind; that when we are brought through smooth seas safe into port, a Hand mightier than ours has been guiding the helm for us. We are not quite such independent, fine fellows as we like to think. But come what may, fine weather or foul, you will meet it like a Christian, you will bow your head and submit.”
The admiral tapped his snuff-box again at this climax, took another pinch, and then fell back on the cushions and opened his paper.
Clide was glad to be left to himself, although his thoughts were not cheerful.
Sir Simon had said truly, he was or ought to have been a Catholic. At almost the very outset of his acquaintance with Franceline, he had intimated this fact to her, and though she did not inform her father of it, the knowledge undoubtedly went far in attracting her towards the young man and inspiring the confidence that she yielded to him so quickly and unquestioningly.
Mrs. de Winton, Clide’s mother, had been a sincere Catholic, although her heart had beguiled her into the treacherous error of marrying a man who was not of her faith. She had stipulated unconditionally that her children should be brought up Catholics; and on her death-bed demanded a renewal of the promise—then, as formerly, freely given—that Clide, their only child, should be carefully educated in his mother’s religion. But these things can never safely be entrusted to the good-will of any human being. The mother compromised—if she did not betray—her solemn trust, and her child paid the penalty. Mr. de Winton kept his promise as far as he could. He had no prejudices against the old religion—he was too indifferent to religion in the main for that—the antiquity and noble traditions of the Catholic Church claimed his intellectual sympathies, while its spirit and teaching, as exemplified in the life of her whom he revered as the model of all the virtues, inclined him to look on the doctrines of Catholicity with an indulgence leaning to reverence, even where he felt them most antagonistic.
Clide had a Catholic nurse to wash and scold him in his infantine days, and when, too soon after his father’s second marriage, the boy became an orphan and was left to the care of a stepmother, that cold but conscientious lady carried out her husband’s dying injunctions by engaging a Catholic governess to teach him his letters. Conscience, however, gave other promptings which Mrs. de Winton found it hard to reconcile with the faithful discharge of her late husband’s wishes. She maintained the Catholic influence at home, but she would not prolong the evil day an hour more than was absolutely necessary. She felt justified, therefore, in precipitating Clide’s entrance at Eton at an age when many children were still in the nursery. The Catholic catechism was not on the list of Etonian school-books, and he would be otherwise safe from the corroding influence which as yet could scarcely have penetrated below the surface of his mind. It was reasonably to be hoped that in course of time the false tenets he had imbibed would fade out of his mind altogether, and that when he was of an age to choose for himself the boy would elect the more respectable and rational creed of the De Wintons. His stepmother carried her conscientious scruples so far in this respect, however, as to inform the dame who was charged with the care of Clide’s linen, and the tutor who was to train his mind, that the boy was a Catholic and that his religion was to be respected. This injunction was, after a certain fashion, strictly obeyed. The subject of religion was carefully avoided, never mentioned to Clide directly or indirectly; and he was left to grow up with about as much spiritual culture as the laborer bestows on the flowers of the field. The seeds sown by his mother’s hand were quickly carried away by the winds that blow from the four points of the compass in those early, youthful days. If some sunk deeper and remained, they had not sun or dew enough to blossom forth and fructify. Perhaps, nevertheless, they did their work, and acted as an antidote in the virgin, untilled soil, and preserved the young infidel from the vicious vapors that tainted the air around him. It is certain that Clide left the immoral atmosphere of the great public school quite uncorrupted, guileless and upright, and still calling himself a Catholic, although he had practically broken off from all communion with the church of his childhood. He was more to be pitied than blamed. He was thinking so now as he lay back in the railway carriage, while the admiral sat beside him grunting complacently over the leading article, and mentally prognosticating that the country was going to the dogs, thanks to those blundering, unpatriotic Whigs. Yes, Clide pitied himself as he surveyed the past, and saw how his young life had been wasted and shipwrecked. If he felt that he had been too severely punished for follies that he had never been warned against, you must make allowance for him. His face wore a very sad, subdued look as he gazed out vacantly at the quiet fields and villages and steeples flying past. Why does he suddenly make that almost imperceptible movement, starting as if a voice had sounded close to his side? Was it fancy, or did he really hear a voice, low and soft, like faint, distant music that stirred his soul, making it vibrate to some dimly remembered melody? Could it be his mother’s voice echoing through the far-off years when he was a little child and knelt with his small hands clasped upon her knee, and lisped out some forgotten words that she dictated? Was it a trick of his imagination, or did some one stand at his side, gently touching his right hand and constraining him to lift it to his forehead, while his tongue mechanically accompanied the movement with some once familiar, long disused formula? There was in truth a presence near him, and a voice sounding from afar, murmuring those notes of memory which are the mother-tongue of the soul, subtle, persuasive, irresistible; accents that live when we have forgotten languages acquired with mature choice and arduous study; a presence that clings to us through life, and reveals itself when we have the will and the gift to see and to recognize it. That power is mostly the purchase of a great pain; the answer to our soul’s cry in the hour of its deepest need.
It flashed suddenly upon Clide, as that sweet and solemn influence pervaded and uplifted him, that here lay the unexpected solution of the problem—the missing key of life. He had fancied for a moment that he had found it in M. de la Bourbonais’ serene theories and practical philosophy. These had done much for him, it is true; but they had fallen away; they failed like a broken sword in the hour of trial; they did well enough for peaceful times, but they could not help and rescue him when all the forces of the enemy were let loose. Yet they seemed to have sufficed for Raymond.
Clide did not know that the calm philosophy was grafted on a root of faith in the French gentleman’s mind; his faith was not dead; far from it, and its vital heat had fed the strength which philosophy alone could never have supplied. Poor Clide! If any one had been at hand to interpret to him the message of that voice from his childhood, the whole aspect of life might there and then have changed for him. But no spiritual guide, no gentle monitor was there to tell him what it meant. The music died away; the presence was clouded over and ceased to be felt. When the train entered the station the passing emotion had disappeared, drowned without by the roar of the great city; within, by the agitation of the present which other thoughts had for a moment lulled to sleep.
The travellers drove straight from the railway station to Wimpole Street. Mr. Peckett, the dentist, was at home. They were admitted at once, and a few minutes’ conversation sufficed to confirm their worst forebodings. There could be no doubt but that the person whom Cromer had recognized in that transitory glimpse the day before was the beautiful and mysterious creature, Clide’s wife.
The dentist had very little definite information to give concerning her. He could only certify that she was the same who had come to him nearly ten years ago to have a silver tooth made. It was a fantastic idea of her own, and in spite of all his remonstrances she insisted on having it carried out; it had seriously injured the neighboring tooth—nearly eaten it away. This was what Mr. Peckett had foretold. He was launching out into a rather excited denunciation of the thing, an absurdity against all the laws of dentistry, when the admiral called him back to the point. Did this tooth still exist? Yes; and if it was of no other use, it would serve to identify the wearer. She had been to have it arranged about four years ago, and again within the last few days. Mr. Peckett said she was very little changed in appearance; as beautiful as ever, and considerably developed in figure; but in manner she was greatly altered. Her former childlike gayety was quite gone; she sat demure and silent, and when she spoke it was with a sort of frightened restraint; if a door opened, or if he asked a question abruptly, she started as if in terror. It was not the ordinary starting of a nervous person; there was something in the expression of the face, in the quivering of the mouth and the wavering glance of the eyes, that had on one occasion especially suggested to him the idea of a person whose mental faculties had suffered some derangement. She gave him the impression, in fact, of one who either had been or might on slight provocation become mad. She never gave any name or address, but had always been accompanied by either the man whom she called “uncle,” or an elderly woman with the manner of a well-to-do shopkeeper; and she seemed in great awe of both of them. Yesterday was the first time she had ever come by herself, and Mr. Peckett thought that very likely either of these persons was waiting for her in the cab into which she had jumped so quickly when Cromer was trying to come up with her. She had left no clew as to her residence or projected movements; only once, in reply to some question about a recipe which her uncle wanted the dentist to see, she said that it had been forgotten in St. Petersburg. His answer seemed to imply that they meant to return there. Mr. Peckett was quite sure she sang in public, but whether on the stage or only in concerts he could not say.
This was all he had to tell about his mysterious patient. He was very frank, and appeared anxious to give any assistance in his power, and promised to let Admiral de Winton know if she came to him again. But he thought this was not likely for some time, at any rate. He had finished with her on the last visit, and there was no reason that he foresaw for her coming back at present.
There was not a shadow of doubt on Clide’s mind but that the person in question was his lost Isabel. The admiral, however, stoutly continued to pooh-pooh the idea as absurd and impossible. He was determined, at any rate, not to give in to it until he had been to St. Valéry, and investigated the question of the dead Isabel whom he had seen buried there. So he left Clide to open communications once more with Scotland Yard, and set the police in motion amongst the managers of theatres and other agents of the musical world, while he went on board the steamer to Dieppe. He was not long searching for the link he dreaded to find. The young woman whom he had so hastily concluded to be his nephew’s missing wife had been proved to be the daughter of a Spanish merchant, whose ship had foundered on the Normandy coast in the gales that had done so much damage during that eventful week. He himself had been saved almost miraculously, and after many weeks of agonized suspense as to the fate of his child, he heard of a body having been washed ashore at St. Valéry, and buried after waiting several days for recognition. He hastened to the spot, and, in spite of the swift ravages of death, recognized it beyond a doubt as that of his child. The English milord who had paid for all the expenses of the little grave, and manifested such emotion on beholding the body, turning away without another glance when he saw the long hair sweeping over it like a veil, had left no address, so the authorities had no means of communicating with him.
This was the intelligence which Clide received two days after his interview with the dentist. It only confirmed his previous conviction. He was as satisfied that his wife was alive as if he had seen and spoken to her. About an hour after his uncle’s return there came a note from Mr. Peckett saying that “the person in question” was on her way to Berlin, if she had not already arrived there. The landlady of the house where she had been lodging, under the name of Mme. Villar, had called at Wimpole Street for a pocket-book which her late tenant believed she must have dropped there. While she was inquiring about it of the servant, Mr. Peckett came out; he inquired after his patient; the landlady was glad to say she was well, and sorry to say she was gone; she had left the day before for Berlin, going via Paris.
“Now, uncle, we must part,” said Clide; “I can’t drag you about on this miserable business any more. I must do what remains to be done myself. I will start at once for Berlin, and once there, à la grace de Dieu! you will hear from me when I have anything to say.”
“I shall hear from you as soon as you arrive; you must write to me without waiting for news,” said the admiral. “You will take Stanton with you?”
“I suppose I had better; he knows everything, so there is no need to shirk him, and he’s a discreet fellow, as well as intelligent and good-natured. He may be of use to me.”
“Then God be with you both, my boy. Bear up, and keep a stout heart whatever comes,” said the admiral, wringing his hand.
“You will write to Harness for me,” said Clide; “tell him I can’t write myself; and say I trust to his doing whatever is best for me.…”
He turned away abruptly; and so they parted.
No incident broke the monotony of the road until Clide reached Cologne. There, as he was crossing the platform, a lady passed him; she looked at him, and started, or he fancied she did, and instead of getting into the carriage that they were both evidently making for, she hurried on to the one higher up. He drew his hand across his forehead, and stood for a moment trying to remember where he had seen the face, but his memory failed him. His curiosity was roused, however, and he was in that frame of mind when every insignificant trifle comes to us pregnant with unlooked-for possibilities. He went on to the carriage the lady had entered. There was only another occupant beside herself, an elderly German, with a beery countenance and brick-red whiskers. Clide got in and seated himself opposite the lady, who was at the other end of the compartment, and steadily looking out of the window. He felt sure she had seen him come up to the door, but she did not turn round when he opened it and closed it again with a bang. They had five minutes to wait before the train started. Clide employed them in getting out a book and making himself comfortable for the long ride in prospect. The lady was still absorbed in the landscape. The German made his preparations by taking a clay pipe from his pocket, filling it as full as it would hold with tobacco, and then striking a light. Clide had started bolt upright, and was watching in amazement. The lady was in front of him. Did the brute mean to puff his disgusting weed into her face? He was making a chimney of his hand to let the match light thoroughly. Perhaps Clide’s vehement look of indignation touched him mesmerically, for before applying it to the pipe he looked round at him and said in very intelligible English:
“I hope you don’t object to smoking?”
“I can’t say I much relish tobacco, but I sha’n’t interfere with you if this lady does not object.”
Mein herr asked her if she did. She was compelled to turn round at the question.
“I am sorry to say I do, sir; the smell of tobacco makes me quite sick.”
Hem! She is not a lady, at any rate, thought Clide.
“Oh! I am sorry for that,” said the German; “for you’ll have the trouble of getting out.”
Before Clide could recover sufficient presence of mind to collar the man and pitch him headforemost out of the window, the lady had grasped her bag, rug, and umbrella, and was standing on the platform. The impending ejectment was clearly a most welcome release; nothing but the utmost goodwill could have enabled her to effect such a rapid exit. Clide was so struck by it that he forgot to collar the German, who had begun with equal alacrity to puff away at his pipe, and the train moved on.
The first thing Clide saw on alighting at the next station was his recent vis-à-vis marshalling an array of luggage that struck even his inexperienced eye as somewhat out of keeping with a person who said “sir” and travelled without a servant. What could one lone woman want with such a lot of boxes, and such big ones? She waylaid a porter, who proceeded to pile them on a truck while she stood mounting guard over them.
“Follow that man and see where he is taking that luggage to,” Clide whispered to Stanton, and the latter, leaving his master to look after their respective portmanteaux, hurried on in the direction indicated.
“They are going to the Hotel of the Great Frederick, sir,” he said, returning in a few minutes.
“Then call a cab and let us drive there.”
The Hotel of the Great Frederick was not one of the fashionable caravansaries of the place; it was a large, old-fashioned kind of hostelry, chiefly frequented by business people, travelling clerks, dress-makers, etc.; and its customers were numerous enough to make it often difficult to secure accommodation there on short notice. This was a busy season; everybody was flitting to and from the watering-places, where the invalids and gamblers of Europe were ruining or repairing their fortunes and their constitutions, so that Mr. de Winton was obliged to content himself with two small rooms in the third story for the night; to-morrow many travellers would be moving on, and he could have more convenient quarters.
“Stanton, keep a lookout after that person. I am in a mood for suspecting everything and everybody; but I don’t think it’s all fancy in this case. I believe the woman is trying to avoid me; and if so, she must have a motive for it. Ask for the visitors’ book, and bring it to me at once.”
Stanton brought the book, and while his master was running his eye searchingly over the roll of names, hoping and dreading to see Mme. Villar among the number, he set off to look after the woman with the multitude of boxes. She was lodging on the first floor, and had been expected by a lady and gentleman who had taken rooms in the house the day before. This much Stanton learned from a Kellner,[148] whom he met coming out of the said rooms with a tray in his hands.
“I think I know her,” said Stanton. “What is her name?”
But before the Kellner could answer the door opened, and the lady herself stood face to face with Mr. de Winton’s valet. Their eyes met with a sudden flash of recognition; Stanton turned away with an almost inaudible whistle, and was vaulting up to the third story in the twinkling of an eye.
“I’ve seen her, sir, and I can tell you who she is. She is the dressmaker that made Mrs. de Winton’s gowns before you brought her to Glanworth. I remembered her the moment I saw her without a bonnet. I had been twice to her place in Brook Street, with messages and a band-box from Mrs. de Winton.”
Clide had started up with an exclamation of anger and triumph. Here, then, was a clew. Evidently the woman held communication or was in some way connected with Isabel, else why should she have shrunk from meeting him? It was clear as daylight now that she did shrink.
“Tell the landlord I wish to speak to him,” said Clide.
He was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, and his head tossed back like an impatient horse, when the owner of the Great Frederick came in.
“I want to have a word of conversation with you; sit down, pray,” said Clide; but he continued walking, as we are apt to do when agitation is too vehement to bear immobility, and must have an outlet in motion. The landlord had taken a chair as desired, but rose again on seeing that his guest did not sit down; the hotel-keeper was a well-mannered man. There was a lapse of two or three moments while Clide considered what he should say. It was impossible to acknowledge the real motive of his curiosity about the occupants of the first-floor rooms, and how otherwise could he justify any inquiries about them and their movements? He recoiled from the odious necessity that drove him to pry into people’s affairs, to ask questions and set watches like a police agent; but this was the mere husk of the bitter kernel he had to eat. It may have been the extraordinary agitation visible in the young man’s face and gait and manner that aroused the hotel-keeper’s suspicions and put him on the defensive, or it may have been that some one had been beforehand with Clide, and cut the ground from under his feet by warning the landlord not to give any information; but at any rate the latter acted with a circumspection that was remarkable in a person so unskilled in the science of diplomacy. These first-floor people were good customers; this was the third time they had stopped at the Great Frederick, and it was not likely to be the last, unless, indeed, the house should be made objectionable to them in some way; and no landlord who knew his duty to his customers could be a party to such a proceeding.
“Mme. Brack is a most excellent customer, but no dressmaker—that I can assure milord of; she has many boxes because she goes to spend many months at Vienna; that is her custom, as also that of the friends she travels with—M. Roncemar and his daughter, people of quality like milord, and large fortune. Unfortunately they do not tarry long at the Great Frederick, only remaining three days to rest themselves; their rooms are already bespoke from Friday morning, when they start by the midday train. But why should not milord go himself and ask of M. Roncemar any information he desires? M. Roncemar is a most polite gentleman, and would no doubt be happy to see a compatriot.”
This was all that Clide could extract from the wily master of the Great Frederick. If he had been more outspoken, he might have been more successful; but he could not bring himself to this; he spoke so vaguely that his motives might have borne the most opposite constructions. The landlord’s private opinion was that there was a money-claim in the way, and that he was on the track of some fugitive, perhaps fraudulent, debtor; it was no part of a landlord’s business to pry into matters of this sort, or bring a customer into trouble.
“Well, sir?” said Stanton, coming in when he saw the landlord come out.
“I did not make much out of him; the fellow either knows more than he cares to tell, or we are on the wrong scent. You must lose no time in finding out from the waiters whether these names are the real ones; whether, at least, they are the same the people have borne here before, and also if it is true that the rooms are taken till Friday next; if so, it gives me time to go to the consul and take proper legal steps for their arrest. But it may be a dodge of his; if the woman recognized us both, as I am strongly inclined to believe, they have put the landlord up to telling me this, just to prevent my entrapping them, and so as to give them time to escape. The people whom he calls Roncemar have been here at any rate before the alarm came, and it will be known most likely whether they are on their way to Vienna or not. Be cautious, Stanton; don’t rouse suspicion by asking too pointed questions, because you see it may be that as yet there is no suspicion, it may be my fancy about the man’s throwing me off the scent. He urged me to go and see M. Roncemar myself, which was either a proof that he suspects nothing, or that he is the cleverest knave who ever outwitted another. Be off and see what you can learn. I will dine at the table d’hôte.”
The few details that Stanton gleaned from the kellner attached to the first floor corroborated all that the landlord had said: the party were to remain until Friday—in fact they were not quite decided about going so soon; the younger lady was in delicate health, and greatly fatigued by the journey; it was possible they might remain until the Monday. “So if you are counting on the rooms you may be disappointed,” he added, winking at Stanton as he whipped up a tray and darted up the stairs like a monkey, three steps at a time.
So far, then, Clide was sure of his course. He walked about after dinner—supper, as it was called there—and called at the consulate; but the consul had been out of town for the last week, and was not expected home until the next day.
“And he is sure to be here to-morrow?” inquired the visitor.
“Yes, sir; he has an appointment of great importance at one o’clock. We expect him home at twelve.”
“Then I will call at two. You will not neglect to give him this card?” He wrote a line in pencil on it announcing his visit at two next day, and returned to the hotel. As he was crossing the hall he heard the heavy tramp of hobnailed shoes on the stairs, and a noise as of men toiling under a weight. It was a piano. Clide walked slowly up after the carriers, saw them halt at the rooms on the first floor, saw the doors thrown open and the instrument carried in; there was no mistake about it; the occupants meant to remain there for some few days at least.
He sat down and wrote a long letter to the admiral, lit a cigar, and killed time as best he could with the newspapers until, physically worn out, he lay down in hopes of catching a few hours’ sleep. Stanton, satisfied with the information he already possessed, felt it might be unwise to ask further questions, and contented himself with hanging about the corridors in the neighborhood of Mrs. Brack’s rooms, in hopes of seeing her coming in or out, and catching a glimpse, perhaps, of another inmate who interested him more closely. It may seem irrational in him, and especially in his master, to have jumped at a positive conclusion as to the identity of that inmate on such a flimsy tissue of evidence; but when our minds are entirely possessed by an idea, we magnify trifles into important facts, and see all things colored by the medium of our prepossessions, and go on hooking link after link in the chain of witnesses till we have completed it, and made our internal evidence do the work of substantial testimony.
It was a glorious day, and when Clide had breakfasted he was glad to go out and reconnoitre the town instead of sitting in his dingy room, or lounging about the reading-room. He was a trained walker, thanks to his years of travel, and once set going he would go on for hours, oblivious of time, and quite unconscious of fatigue as long as the landscape offered him beauty or novelty enough to interest him. It was about half-past ten when he left the house, and he tramped on far beyond the town, and walked for nearly two hours, when the chimes of a village Angelus bell reminded him that time was marching too, and that he had better be retracing his steps. It was close upon two o’clock when he appeared at the consul’s door. On entering the hall, the first person he saw was Stanton.
“Sir, I’ve been waiting here these two hours for you. You’d better please let me have a word with you before you go in”; and Clide turned into the dining-room, which the servant of the house civilly opened for him. “We’ve been sold. They were off this morning at six. The three started together. They are gone to Berlin—at least so one of the kellners let out to me; the one I spoke to yesterday was coached-up by the landlord and the people themselves, I suppose, for he told me it was Vienna they were gone to; he had a trumped-up story about the fraulein’s mother being taken suddenly ill and telegraphing for them. They are a cunning lot. That piano was a dodge to put us to sleep, sir.”
“What proof have you that they are gone to Berlin? That other man may be mistaken, or lying to order like the rest? I must see the consul and take advice with him. This scoundrel of a landlord shall pay for his lies,” said Clide, beating his foot with a quick, nervous movement on the ground; “he must be forced to speak, and to speak the truth.”
“No need, sir; I’ve found it out without him. I’ve been to the railway. I made believe I was the servant following with luggage that was forgotten, and they told me the train they started by and the hour it arrives, and described them all three as true as life,” said Stanton.
“And it is she?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir. As certain as I’m Stanton.” Clide felt nevertheless that it would be well to see the consul; the case was so delicate, so fraught with difficulties on all sides, that it was desirable at any cost of personal feeling to furnish himself with all the information he could get as to how he should now proceed, so as not to entangle things still further.
On hearing his visitor’s strange tale, the consul’s advice was that he should see with his own eyes the person whom he took for granted was his wife, before venturing on any active steps. “The fact is quite clear to you,” he remarked, “and from what you say it is equally clear to me; but the evidence on which we build this assumption would not hold water for one minute before a magistrate. Suppose, after all, it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity; what a position you would be in!”
“That is impossible,” affirmed Clide.
“No, not impossible; highly improbable, I grant you; but such improbable things occur every day. You must have more substantial ground than second-hand evidence and corroborating circumstances to go upon before you stir in the matter, and then you must do nothing without proper legal advice.”
Clide recognized the common-sense and justice of this, and determined to be advised. He started for Berlin, and on arriving there went straight from the railway to the British Embassy, where he obtained a letter from the ambassador to the Minister of Police, requesting that functionary to give the young Englishman every assistance and facility. The minister was going to bed; it was near twelve o’clock; the ambassador’s letter, however, secured the untimely visitor immediate admission, and a civil and attentive hearing. He took some notes down from Clide’s dictation, and promised that all the resources of the body which he controlled should be enlisted in the matter, and as soon as they had discovered where the party they were in pursuit of had alighted, he would communicate with Mr. de Winton.
The latter then went to the hotel, where Stanton had preceded him, and was waiting impatiently for his arrival. The moment he entered the room, Stanton was struck by his pale, haggard look; he had not noticed it on the journey; when the train stopped, they saw each other in the shade or in the dark, and after exchanging a hasty word passed each to his separate buffets and carriages. It was indeed no wonder his master should be worn out after the terrible emotions of the last few days, added to the continued travelling and scarcely any sleep or food, but it did not look like ordinary fatigue.
“You had better go to bed, sir; you’ll be used up if you take on like this; and that won’t mend much,” he said, when Clide, after lighting a cigar, flung himself into a chair and bade Stanton bring him the papers.
“I’ll go to bed presently; bring me the papers,” repeated Clide, and the man left the room.
When he returned he found his master standing up and holding on by the back of his chair as if to steady himself.
“I feel queerish, Stanton; get me some brandy and water; make haste,” he said, speaking faintly.
Instead of obeying him, Stanton forced him gently into the chair, and proceeded to undress him Clide resigning himself passively to it, as if he were in a stupor; he let himself be put to bed in the same way, like a child too sleepy to know what was being done to it.
“I don’t like the looks of him at all,” thought Stanton, as he stole softly out of the room; “if he’s not all right to-morrow, I send for the admiral.”
Clide was not all right in the morning; he was feverish and exhausted, and complained in a querulous way, quite unlike his usual self, of a burning, hammering pain in his head. Stanton sent for a medical man without consulting him. When he said he had done so, Clide gave no sign of displeasure; he did not seem quite to take it in.
“I’ve got fifty thousand toothaches in my skull, Stanton; what the deuce is it, eh?” he cried, tossing from side to side on his pillow. Then suddenly he raised himself:
“Stanton!”
“Yes, sir!”
“You think I’m going to be ill. Don’t deny it; I see it in your face. Perhaps I am; I feel uncommonly odd here”—passing his hand over his forehead—“but I want to say one thing while I think of it: you don’t write a word to any one in England until the doctor says I’m a dead man. Do you hear me speaking to you?”
“Yes, sir; but don’t you think if the admiral…”
“If you attempt to write to him, I’ll dismiss you that very instant!” And his eyes flashed angrily. “You mind what I say, Stanton!”
“All right, sir; you know best what you like about it.”
The excitement seemed to have exhausted his remaining strength; he grew rapidly worse; and when the doctor came, he declared his patient was in for a brain fever that might turn to worse unless the circumstances were specially propitious.
Why should we linger by his bedside? It would be only a repetition of the old story; delirium following on days of pain and restlessness; a long period of anxiety while youth battled with the enemy, now seemingly about to be worsted in the fight, then rising above the disease with unexpected starts, showing how rich and strong the resources of the young frame were. The medical man was not communicative with the valet; he kept his alternations of hope and fear to himself; it was only by scrutinizing the expression of his face as he felt the patient’s pulse that Stanton could make a guess at his opinion. To his eager inquiries on accompanying the oracle to the door, he received the uniform reply that this was a case in which the disease must run its course, when no one could say what a day might bring forth, when much depended on the quality of the patient’s constitution; the one drop of comfort Stanton extracted from him was the emphatic assurance that in this instance the patient had a constitution of gold. The crisis came, and then Stanton, convinced in his inexperienced mind that no mortal constitution could pass this strait, boldly asked the doctor if it was not time to write to the family.
“These things must run their course; in twenty-four hours it will be decided,” was the sententious reply.
Stanton was fain to be content with it, and wait. The day passed, and the night dragged on slowly as a passing bell, until at last the decisive hour came and was passed; then the medical man spoke again.
“He is saved. The worst is now over; he is entering on the period of convalescence.”
The period was long—longer than he had anticipated; for the golden constitution had been fiercely tried and shaken; it was more than two months from the day of Clide’s arrival in Berlin until he was able to leave the hotel. In the meantime, what had become of Isabel, or Mme. Villar, as we shall call her for the present? All that Stanton could ascertain was that she had left Berlin about a week after his master had been struck down, and had gone—so it was said at the hotel where she and her party put up—for a tour in the neighboring spas, after which she was to proceed to St. Petersburg to fulfil an engagement for the season. This was the last link the police had got hold of; but as nobody had taken it up at the time, it was impossible to say how many others had intervened in the two months that had gone by.
It was now late in September. Clide was very weak still, and unfit for a long railway journey, and besides, it was unlikely Mme. Villar would be yet in St. Petersburg, assuming that the story of her going there at all was true. He yielded therefore to the doctor’s advice, and went to recruit himself at the nearest watering-place, after having again seen the authorities at Berlin, and urged them not to let the affair sleep, but to keep a sharp lookout in every direction.
In the first week of October he arrived in St. Petersburg. The city of the Czars looked dreary and desolate enough in these keen autumn days; there was not much movement in its immense market-places—its bald, spacious squares, and high, broad houses standing unsocial and mistrustful, far apart in the wide, noiseless streets; but people were dropping in quickly from day to day from their country-houses, getting out their furs, and settling down for the winter campaign that was at hand; for the foe was marching steadily on them, girt with sullen skies of lead, and tawny mists, and trumpeted by the shrill blast of the north wind, a few strong puffs from whose ice-breathing nostrils would soon paralyze the rivers and lay them to sleep under twenty feet of ice. Clide was weary after his long ride, and was in a mood to be exasperated when, on stepping out of the train, and seeking for their two portmanteaus amongst the heaps of luggage, the porters said they were missing. It was no small inconvenience, for the said portmanteaus contained all their clothes, and nearly all their money.
The officials were very civil, however, and assured the travellers that their luggage would be forthcoming next day. There was nothing for it but to console themselves with this promise, and go on to the hotel. Clide then gave his purse to Stanton and bade him go out and purchase such things as were indispensable for the night. The valet accordingly set off, accompanied by an English waiter who volunteered to interpret for him, and Clide sallied forth for a stroll along the Neva, that still flowed high and free between its broad quays. He walked on and on, forgetting time, as was his habit, until lassitude recalled him to his senses, and he looked around him and began to wonder where he had strayed to. He had drifted far beyond his intention, and now found himself on an island where handsome villas amidst groves and long avenues were to be seen on every side. Happily a drosky passed empty at the moment; he hailed it, gave the name of his hotel, and drove home. Stanton had not yet returned. This was odd, for his interpreter had come back an hour since, and said that the valet, after doing all his commissions, had lingered behind merely to see the quays, saying he would follow in ten minutes. It was impossible he could have lost his way, for the hotel was in sight. The fact was, Stanton had had an adventure. He happened to be crossing the bridge when he noticed a man bestriding the parapet at the other end, swinging from side to side, and apostrophizing the lamp-post with great earnestness. Stanton watched him as he walked on, mentally wondering how long this social position would prove tenable, when the man gave a sudden lunge, and was precipitated with a shriek into the water. There were several foot-passengers close to the spot; they rushed towards the parapet, and began screaming to each other in Russian and gesticulating with great animation, hailing everybody and everything within sight, but no one gave any sign of doing the only thing that could be of avail, namely, jumping in after the drowning man. The unfortunate wretch was struggling frantically, and gasping out cries for help whenever he got his head above the water. There was a stair running down from the quay, where boats were moored to rings in the wall. Stanton saw this; he was a capital swimmer; so, without stopping to reflect, he pulled off his coat, flew down the steps, and plunged in. A loud cheer rang all along the parapet, then a breathless silence followed; the two men in the water were wrestling in a desperate embrace; Stanton had the Russian by the collar, and the latter with the suicidal impulse of a drowning man, was clutching him wildly, and dragging him down with all his might. Happily, he was no match for the Englishman’s sinewy arms; Stanton shook himself free with a vigorous effort, swam out a few yards, then he turned and swam back, caught the drowning man by the hair, and drew him on with him to the steps. A thundering salvo greeted his achievement; the group had now swelled to a crowd, and a score of spectators came tumbling down the steps gabbling their congratulations, and, what was more to the purpose, helping the hero to lift the rescued man on to the steps, and then haul him up to the landing-place. Stanton broke through the press to snatch up his coat, and was elbowing his way out, when two individuals, whom he rightly took for policemen, came up to him, and began to hold forth volubly in the same unintelligible jargon. Stanton only understood, by their pointing to some place and clutching him by the shoulder, that they wanted him to accompany them. With native instinct, Stanton suspected they were proposing a tribute of admiration to him in the shape of a bumper at the tavern; but he was more intent on his wet clothes, and, thanking them by signs, indicated that he must go in the opposite direction, shouting meanwhile, at the very top of his lungs, “Hôtel Peterhof! I’m going to Peterhof!” But the policemen shook their heads, and still pointed and tugged, until, finding further expostulation useless, one of them took a stout grip of Stanton’s collar and proceeded to drag him on, nolens volens. The British lion rose up in Stanton “and roared a roar.” He levelled his clenched fist at the aggressor’s chest, struck him a vigorous blow, and in language more forcible than genteel bade him stand off. But the Russian held on like grim death, gabbling away harder than ever, and pointing with his left thumb to the spit on his own breast, and then touching the corresponding spot on Stanton’s wet shirt; but Stanton would not see it. He doubled up his fist for another blow, when the other policeman suddenly caught him by both arms, and pinned his elbows as in a vise behind his back. The crowd had gone on swelling, and now numbered several hundred persons; they crushed round the infuriated Englishman, who stood there the picture of impotent rage, dripping and foaming and appealing to everybody to help him. At this juncture a carriage drove up; the coachman stopped to know what was going on; and great was Stanton’s joy when he heard a voice cry out to him in English: “You must go with them; they won’t hurt; they are going to give you a decoration for saving a man’s life.”
“Confound their decoration! What the devil do I want with their decoration? Tell them I’m not a Russian!”
“They know that, but it don’t matter; the law is the same for natives and foreigners,” explained the coachman.
“Hang it, I’m not a foreigner; what do you take me for? I’m an Englishman!” protested Stanton.
“Don’t matter; you must be decorated; you may as well do it, and be done with it.”
“But look at my clothes, man! I’m as wet as a drowned rat!”
“Served you right! What business had you jumping into the water after a fool that wanted to drown himself?”
“I wish I’d let him,” said Stanton devoutly; “but just you tell these chaps to let me go or else they’ll ’ear of it; tell them my master will go to the ambassador and get them flogged all round; tell them that, and see what comes of it.”
“No good. The law is the law. Good morning to you; take a friend’s advice, and keep your skin dry next time”; and, nodding to Stanton, he touched his horses and was off at a pace.
There was nothing for it but to resign himself to his fate. Stanton ceased all resistance, and let himself be led to the altar where glory awaited him in the form of a yellow spit. He was marched on to a large, barrack-like building; two sentries were mounting guard over its ponderous iron gate. He passed through them and was marched from bureau to bureau, addressed by several officials in every tongue under the sun, it seemed to him, till they came to the right one, requested to record his name, age, and state of life in several ominous-looking books, and on each occasion was embraced and shaken hands with by the presiding genius of the bureau; at last he was brought into the presence of a gold-laced and highly decorated individual, who handed him a written document, very stiff and very long, and with this a knot of ribbon. Stanton without more ado was stuffing both into the pocket of his soaked pantaloons, when the gold-laced gentleman exclaimed with friendly warmth, “Oh! you must permit me to place the spit upon your breast!” Upon which the Englishman recoiled three steps with a scowl of disgust, and bade him do it if he dared. The official, apparently surprised to see his polite offer met so ungraciously, forbore to press it, and demanded the fee. “The fee!—what fee?” He explained that a fee was always paid on receipt of a decoration. Stanton declined paying it, for the substantial reason that he had no money; his luggage had been lost on the railway; so had his master’s. The polite gentleman was very sorry to hear of their misadventure, but the law was inexorable—every man who performed that noble feat of saving a Russian’s life should be decorated, and the decoration involved a fee.
“Then what in the name of the furies do you want me to do?” cried the exasperated Stanton; “I can’t coin any, can I?”
No; this was not a practical alternative, but very likely his master could devise one; he would have no difficulty in getting credit for the amount; any one in St. Petersburg would be happy to accommodate a milord with so small a sum, or indeed any sum.
Stanton had nothing for it but to write a line to the Peterhof explaining his pitiable position, and entreating his master to come to the rescue without delay.
It was late in the evening when this missive was handed to Clide. The landlord, with the utmost alacrity, placed the coffers of the Peterhof at his disposal, and sent for a carriage to convey him to the scene of his valet’s distress.
“If ever any one catches me saving a Russian fellow’s life again may I be drowned myself!” was Stanton’s ejaculation as he shut his master into the cab, and drove home with the spit in his pocket.
This little incident gave Clide some food for reflection, and aroused in him a prudent desire to make some acquaintance with the ways and customs of Muscovy before he went further. A little knowledge of the code which included such a very peculiar law as the aforementioned might prove not only desirable but essential, before he entangled himself in its treacherous meshes. A paternal government might have its advantages, but clearly it had its drawbacks. Russia was almost the only spot in the so-called civilized world that he had not explored in the course of his wanderings, so the people and their laws were as unknown to him practically as the people and the laws of the Feejee Islands. He had gone once as far as Warsaw with the intention of pushing on to Russia, but what he saw in the Polish city of her spirit and national character sickened and horrified him; he turned his back on the scene of her cruelty and demoralizing rule, and went down to Turkey. There at least barbarism reigned with a comparatively gentle sceptre, and wore no hypocrite’s mask. He had not furnished himself with a single letter of introduction to St. Petersburg. It never entered into his imagination when leaving London that he should want any; he did not dream that the will-o’-the-wisp he was chasing would have led him so far. But he was here now, and he must find some one to steer him safe through quicksands and sunken rocks.
There was no doubt an English lawyer in the city to whom he could safely apply. The landlord of the Peterhof gave him the address of one. It was a Russian name, but he assured Clide that it was that of the English lawyer of St. Petersburg, who managed all the law affairs of English residents. Clide went to this gentleman’s office, and found a small, urbane little man, who spoke English with a very pure accent and fluently, but with Muscovite written on every line of his face. It was of no consequence, however, as he showed his client in the first few questions he put that he was in the habit of dealing with English people and transacting confidential and intricate cases for them. The present one he frankly admitted was without precedent in his legal experience, and his advice to Clide was pretty much the same as the consul’s, reinforced, however, by a rather startling argument.
“You must first prove beyond a doubt that it is not a case of mistaken identity, and, even when this is done, you have to consider whether it is expedient to run the risks that must attend any active proceedings against the persons in question. Let us consider the facts as they stand, setting aside possible antecedents. The lady is engaged here for the season. I can guarantee that much. I heard her repeatedly last year, and the announcement, on the night of her last appearance, that she was to return next season, was received with an enthusiasm that I cannot describe. She is, therefore, an established favorite with the public. This in itself is a fact fraught with danger to any one seeking to molest her—I use the word from the point of view of the public—any person interfering with so important a branch of their pleasure as the opera would expose himself to disagreeable consequences. The government is paternally anxious that the people should be amused. It is not wise to thwart a paternal government.… The Czar, moreover, has shown decided appreciation of this prima donna. He condescended to receive her into the imperial box and himself clasp a costly diamond bracelet on her arm. He and the rest of the royal family are to be present at her first reappearance. No one, be they ever so guilty, can be attacked with impunity while under the favor of the imperial smile. A paternal government is not trammelled by the conventionalisms and routine that check the action of other forms of government; it acts promptly, decisively. If you meddle in this matter rashly, you may find yourself in very unpleasant circumstances.”
“I should agree with all you say if I were a subject of the Russian government,” said Clide, “but I am an Englishman; surely that makes a difference?”
The lawyer smiled grimly.
“I would not advise you to count upon it for security. I have known some Englishmen whose nationality did not prove such a talisman as they expected.”
“You mean that they have been imprisoned without offence or trial, treated like Russian subjects?” Clide’s lip curled under his moustache as he emitted the monstrous proposition.
“I mean to give you the best advice in my power,” returned the urbane lawyer with unruffled coolness. “You have come to me for counsel. You are free to follow it or not as you see good.”
“So far, you have given me only negative advice. You tell me what I must not do; can you tell me nothing that I can and ought to do?” said Clide.
“For the present, I can only urge you to be prudent. One rash act may precipitate you into a still worse dilemma than the present. See this lady for yourself, and see the man who accompanies her. I do not advise you to speak to them, nor even to let them know of your presence here, still less of your intentions. The man, from what you already know of him, is likely to be an unscrupulous fellow, a dangerous enemy to cope with. He—on account of his pupil or niece—has patrons in high place. If he got wind of your designs, he might frustrate them in a manner … that … that you don’t foresee.…” The lawyer paused, and bent his sharp green eyes on Clide with a meaning that was not to be misunderstood.
“You mean that the government would connive at or assist him in some personal violence to me?”
“I mean to advise you honestly. I might put you off with a sham, or lay a trap for you; I should be well paid for it. But I traffic as little as possible in that sort of thing, and never with an English client.” It was impossible to doubt the genuine frankness in this assurance, coupled as it was with the implied admission that the lawyer was less incorruptible to native clients. Clide was convinced the man was dealing fairly by him.
“And when I have seen them both, and thus put a seal on certainty—what next?”
“Wait until the season is over; then follow them to their next destination, out of Russia, and take counsel with a shrewd legal man of the place. My own opinion is that your wisest course would be to do nothing until you can attack the affair in England: the mere fact of being a foreigner puts barriers in the way of the law for helping you anywhere; but, as you value your liberty, don’t interfere with a prima donna who is in favor with the Court of St. Petersburg—it were safer for you to play with fire.”
Clide laid a large fee on the lawyer’s green table, and wished him good morning.
He hesitated as he was stepping into his fly. Should he go to the British Embassy, and lay the whole story before Lord X——, and so place one strong barrier between him and the monstrous possibilities with which the lawyer had threatened him? He stood for a moment with his hand on the door, which Stanton was holding open for him; his forehead had that hard line straight down between the horizontal bars over his eyes that had once so scared Franceline. “To the hotel!” he said, slamming the door, and Stanton jumped up beside the coachman.
They had gone about a hundred yards when the window was pulled down in front, and Clide called out: “To the British Embassy!”
The horse’s head was turned that way. While they were rattling over the stones, Clide was arguing his change of resolution, and trying to justify it. “I will burn my ship and take the consequences. What balderdash he talked about the danger of letting the man know of my intentions! How the deuce could they harm me? If I were a Russian, no doubt; but the government would hardly run their neck into such a noose as assault or imprisonment of a British subject for the sake of a popular prima donna! Pshaw! I was an idiot to mind him.”
The coachman pulled up before the British Embassy. Two private carriages stopped at the same moment, gentlemen alighted from them and ran up the steps. Stanton held the door open for his master, but Clide did not move; he sat with his head bent forward, examining his boots, to all appearance unconscious of his valet’s presence.
“Here we are, sir; this is the Embassy,” said Stanton. But Clide sat dumb, as if he were glued to the seat. At last, starting from his revery, he said “Home!” and flung himself back in the carriage.
“That fever has left him a bit queer,” thought Stanton, as he closed the door on his capricious master.
“What a fool’s errand it would be!” muttered Clide to himself; “and what have I to say to Lord X——? If it should turn out to be a case of mistaken identity.… The lawyer’s advice is after all the safest and the most rational.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
SPACE.
II.
It is of the utmost importance in the philosophical investigation in which we have engaged to bear in mind that the power by which we attain to the knowledge of the intrinsic nature of things is not our imagination, but our intellect. The office of imagination is to form sensible representations of what lies at the surface of the things apprehended; the intellect alone is competent to reach what lies under that surface, that is, the essential principles of the thing, and their ontological relations. This remark is so obvious that it may seem superfluous; but our imagination has such a power in fashioning our thoughts, and such an obtrusive manner of interfering with our mental processes, that we need to be reminded, in season and out of season, of our liability to mistake its suggestions for intellectual conceptions. What we have said about absolute space in our past article shows that even renowned philosophers are liable to such mistakes; for nothing but imagination could have led Balmes, Descartes, and many others, to confound absolute space with the material extension of bodies. As to relative space, the danger of confounding its intellectual notion with our sensible representation of it, is, perhaps, less serious, when we have understood the nature of absolute space; yet, here too we are obliged to guard against the incursions of the imaginative faculty, which will not cease to obtrude itself, in the shape of an auxiliary, upon our intellectual ground.
Absolute space cannot become relative unless it be extrinsically terminated, or occupied, by distinct terms. Hence, in passing from the consideration of absolute space to that of relative space, the first question by which we are met is the following:
Is absolute space intrinsically modified or affected by being occupied? or, Does the creation of a material point in space entail an intrinsic modification of absolute space?
The answer to this question cannot be doubtful. Absolute space is not and cannot be intrinsically affected or modified by the presence of a material point, or of any number of material points. We have shown that absolute space is nothing else than the virtuality of God’s immensity; and since no intrinsic change can be conceived as possible in God’s attributes or in the range of their comprehension, it is evident that absolute space cannot be intrinsically modified by any work of creation. On the other hand, nothing can be intrinsically modified unless it receives in itself, as in a subject, the modifying act; for all intrinsic modifications result from corresponding impressions made on the subject which is modified. Thus the modifications of the eye, of the ear, and of other senses, result from impressions made on them, and received in them as in so many subjects. But the creation of a material point in space is not the position of a thing in it as in a subject; for, if absolute space received the material point in itself as in a subject, this point would be a mere accident; as nothing but accidents exist in a subject, and since it is manifest that material elements are not accidents, it is plain that they are not received in space as in a subject.
Hence the creation of any number of material points in space implies nothing but the extrinsic termination of absolute space, which accordingly remains altogether unaffected and unmodified. Just as a body created at the surface of the earth immediately acquires weight, without causing the least intrinsic change in the attractive power which is the source of all weights on earth, so does a material element, created in absolute space, acquire its ubication without causing the least intrinsic change in absolute space which is the source of all possible ubications. A material element has its formal ubication inasmuch as it occupies a point in space. This point, as contained in absolute space, is virtual; but, as occupied by the element, or marked out by a point of matter, it is formal. Thus the formality of the ubication consists in the actual termination and real occupation of a virtual point by an extrinsic term corresponding to it.
The formal ubication of an element is a mere relativity, or a respectus. The formal reason, or foundation, of this relativity is the reality through which the term ubicated communicates with absolute space, viz., the real point which is common to both, though not in the same manner, as it is virtual in space, and formal in the extrinsic term. A material element in space is therefore nothing but a term related by its ubication to divine immensity as existing in a more perfect manner in the same ubication. But since the formality of the contingent ubication exclusively belongs to the contingent being itself, absolute space receives nothing from it except a relative extrinsic denomination.
Some will say: To have a capacity of containing something, and to contain it actually, are things intrinsically different. But absolute space, when void, has a mere capacity of containing bodies, whilst, when occupied, it actually contains them. Therefore absolute space is intrinsically modified by occupation.
To this we answer, that the word “capacity,” on which the objection is built up, is a mischievous one, no less indeed than the word “potency,” which, when used indeterminately, is liable to opposite interpretations, and leads to contradictory conclusions.
The capacity of containing bodies which is commonly predicated of absolute space, is not a passive potency destined to be actuated by contingent occupation; it is, on the contrary, the formal reason of all contingent ubications, since it contains already in an infinitely better manner all the ubications of the bodies by which it may be occupied. To be occupied, and not to be occupied, are not, of course, the same thing; but it does not follow from this that space unoccupied is intrinsically different from space occupied; it follows only, that, when space is occupied, a contingent being corresponds to it as an extrinsic term, and gives it an extrinsic denomination. In other terms, everything which occupies space, occupies it by ubication. Now every ubication is the participation in the contingent being of a reality which absolute space already contains in a better manner. Consequently, the capacity of containing bodies, which is predicated of space, already contains actually the same ubications, which, when bodies are created, are formally attributed to the bodies themselves.
This answer is, we think, philosophically evident. But, as our imagination, too, must be helped to rise to the level of intellectual conceptions, we will illustrate our answer by an example. Man has features which can be reflected in any number of mirrors, so as to form in them an image of him. This “capacity” of having images of self is called “exemplarity,” and consists in the possession of that of which an image can be produced. Hence, man’s exemplarity actually, though only virtually, contains in itself all the images that it can form in any mirror; and when the image is formed, man’s exemplarity gives existence to it, but receives nothing from it, except a relative denomination drawn from the extrinsic term in which it is portrayed. In a like manner, God’s omnipotence, and his other attributes, are mirrored in every created thing, and their “capacity” of being imitated in a finite degree arises from the fact that God’s attributes contain already in an eminent manner the whole reality which can be made to exist formally in the contingent things. Hence, when these contingent things are created, God gives existence to them, but receives nothing from them, except a relative denomination drawn from the extrinsic terms in which his perfections are mirrored. In the same manner, too, when a material element is created, it receives its being, and its mode of being in space, that is, its ubication, which is a finite image or imitation of God’s infinite ubication; but it gives nothing to the divine ubication, except the extrinsic denomination; just as the image in the mirror gives nothing to the body of which it is the image, but simply borrows its existence from it.
From this it follows that material elements are in space not by inhesion, but by correlation, each point which is formally marked out by an element corresponding to a virtual point of space, to which it gives an extrinsic denomination. The said correlation consists in this, that the contingent term, by its formal mode of existing in the point it marks out, really imitates the eminent mode of being of divine immensity in the same point; and from this it follows again, that whatever new reality results from the existence of a material element in space, belongs entirely to the element itself, and constitutes its mode of being.
The relation between the contingent being as existing formally in its ubication, and divine immensity as existing eminently in the same ubication, is called “presence.”
We must notice, before we go further, that the virtuality of God’s immensity, when considered in relation to the distinct terms by which it is extrinsically terminated, assumes distinct relative denominations, and therefore, though it is one entitatively, it becomes manifold terminatively. In this latter sense it is true to say that the virtuality of divine immensity which is terminated by a certain term A, is distinct from the virtuality which is terminated by a certain other term B; and when a material point moves in space, we may say that its ubication ceases to correspond to one virtuality of immensity, and begins to correspond to another. Such virtualities, as we have just remarked, are not entitatively distinct, for immensity has but one infinite virtuality. Yet this one virtuality, owing to the possibility of infinite distinct terminations, is capable of being related to any number of distinct extrinsic terms, and of receiving from their distinct mode of existing in it any number of distinct relative denominations. When, therefore, we speak of distinct virtualities of divine immensity, we simply refer to the distinct extrinsic terminations of one and the same infinite virtuality, in the same manner as, when we speak of distinct creations, we do not mean that God’s creative act is manifold in itself, but only that its extrinsic termination to one being, v. gr. the sun, is not its termination to other beings, v. gr. the stars. And in a similar manner, when a word is heard by many persons, its sound in their ears is distinct on account of distinct terminations, though the word is not distinct from itself.
We have explained the origin and nature of formal ubication; we have yet to point out its division. Ubication may be considered either objectively or subjectively. Objectively considered, it is nothing else than a point in space marked out by a simple point of matter. We say, by a simple point of matter, because distinct material points in space have distinct ubications. Hence, we cannot approve those philosophers who confound the ubi with the locus, that is, the ubication with the place occupied by a body. It is true that those philosophers held the continuity of matter; but they should have seen all the same that all dimensions involved distinct ubications, and that every term designable in such dimensions has an ubication of its own independent of the ubications of every other designable term; which proves that the locus of a body implies a great number of ubications, and therefore cannot be considered as the synonym of ubi.
If the ubication is considered subjectively, that is, as an appurtenance of the subject of which it is predicated, it may be defined as the mode of being of a simple element in space. This mode consists of a mere relativity; for it results from the extrinsic termination of absolute space, as already explained. Hence, the ubication is not received in the subject of which it is predicated, and does not inhere in it, but, like all other relativities and connotations, simply connects it with its correlative, and lies, so to say, between the two.[149]
But, although it consists of a mere relativity, the ubication still admits of being divided into absolute and relative, according as it is conceived absolutely as it is in itself, or compared with other ubications. Nor is this strange; for relative entities can be considered both as to what they are in themselves, and as to what they are to one another. Likeness, for instance, is a relation; and yet when we know the likeness of Peter to Paul, and the likeness of Peter to John, we can still compare the one likeness with the other, and pronounce that the one is greater than the other.
When the ubication is considered simply as a termination of absolute space without regard for anything else, then we call it absolute, and we define it as the mode of being of an element in absolute space, by which the element is constituted in the divine presence. This absolute ubication is an essential mode of the material element no less than its dependence from the first cause, and is altogether immutable so long as the element exists; for, on the one hand, the element cannot exist but within the domain of divine immensity, and, on the other, it cannot have different modes of being with regard to it, as absolute space is the same all throughout, and the element, however much we may try to imagine different positions for it, must always be in the centre, so to say, of that infinite expanse. Hence, absolute ubication is altogether unchangeable.
When the ubication of one element is compared with that of another element in order to ascertain their mutual relation in space, then the ubication is called relative, and, as such, it may be defined as the mode of terminating a relation in space. This ubication is changeable, not in its intrinsic entity, but in its relative formality; and it is only under this formality that the ubication can be ranked among the predicamental accidents; for this changeable formality is the only thing in it which bears the stamp of an accidental entity.
The consideration of relative ubications leads us directly to the consideration of the relation existing between two points distinctly ubicated in space. Such a relation is called distance. Distance is commonly considered as a quantity; yet it is not primarily a quantity, but simply the relation existing between two ubications with room for movement from the one to the other. Nevertheless, this very possibility of movement from one point to another gives us a sufficient foundation for considering the relation of distance as a virtual dimensive quantity. For the movement which is possible between two distant points may be greater or less, according to the different manners in which these points are related. Now, more and less imply quantity.
The quantity of distance is essentially continuous. For it is by continuous movement that the length of the distance is measured. The point which by its movement measures the distance, describes a straight line by the shifting of its ubication from one term of the distance to the other. The distance, as a relation, is the object of the intellect, but, as a virtual quantity, it is the object of imagination also. We cannot conceive distances as relations without at the same time apprehending them as quantities. For, as we cannot estimate distances except by the extent of the movement required in order to pass from one of its terms to the other, we always conceive distances as relative quantities of length; and yet distances, objectively, are only relations, by which such quantities of length are determined. The true quantity of length is the line which is drawn, or can be drawn, by the movement of a point from term to term. In fact, a line which reaches from term to term exhibits in itself the extent of the movement by which it is generated, and it may rightly be looked upon as a track of it, inasmuch as the point, which describes it, formally marks by its gliding ubication all the intermediate space. The marking is, of course, a transient act; but transient though it is, it gives to the intermediate space a permanent connotation; for a fact once passed, remains a fact for ever. Thus the gliding ubication leaves a permanent, intelligible, though invisible, mark of its passage; and this we call a geometric line. The line is therefore, formally, a quantity of length, whereas the distance is only virtually a quantity, inasmuch as it determines the length of the movement by which the line can be described. Nevertheless, since we cannot, as already remarked, conceive distances without referring the one of its terms to the other through space, and, therefore, without drawing, at least mentally, a line from the one to the other, all distances, as known to us, are already measured in some manner, and consequently they exhibit themselves as formal quantities. Distance is the base of all dimensions in space, and its extension is measured by movement. It is therefore manifest that no extension in space is conceivable without movement, and all quantity of extension is measured by movement.
We have said that distance is a relation between two terms as existing in distinct ubications; and we have now to inquire what is the foundation of such a relation. This question is of high philosophical importance, as on its solution depends whether some of our arguments against Pantheism are or are not conclusive. Common people, and a great number of philosophers too, confound relations with their foundation, and do not reflect that when they talk of distances as relative spaces, they do not speak with sufficient distinctness.
We are going to show that relative space must be distinguished from distances, as well as from geometric surfaces and volumes, although these quantities are also called “relative spaces” by an improper application of words. Relative space is not an intrinsic constituent, but only an extrinsic foundation, of these relative quantities; hence these quantities cannot be styled “relative spaces” without attributing to the formal results what strictly belongs to their formal reason.
What is relative space? Whoever understands the meaning of the words will say that relative space is that through which the movement from a point to another point is possible. Now, the possibility of movement can be viewed under three different aspects. First, as a possibility dependent on the active power of a mover; for movement is impossible without a mover. Secondly, as a possibility dependent on the passivity of the movable term; for no movement can be imparted to a term which does not receive the momentum. Thirdly, as a possibility dependent on the perviousness of space which allows a free passage to the moving point; for this is absolutely necessary for the possibility of movement.
In the present question, it is evident that the possibility of movement cannot be understood either in the first or in the second of these three manners; for our question does not regard the relation of the agent to the patient, or of the patient to the agent, but merely the relation of one ubication to another, and the freedom for movement between them. If the possibility of movement were taken here as originating in a motive power, such a possibility would be greater or less according to the greater or less power; and thus the relativity of two given ubications would be changed without altering their relation in space; which is absurd. And if the possibility of movement were taken as resulting from the passivity of the term moved, then, since this passivity is a mere indifference to receive the motion, and since indifference has no degrees, it would follow that the possibility of movement would be always the same; and therefore the relativity of the ubications would remain the same, even though the ubications were relatively changed; which is another absurdity. Accordingly, the possibility of movement which is involved in the conception of relative space is that which arises from space itself, whose virtual extension virtually contains all possible lines of movement, and allows any such lines to be formally drawn through it by actual movement.
From this it follows that relative space is nothing else than absolute space as extrinsically terminated by distinct terms, and affording room for movement between them. It follows, further, that this space is relative, not because it is itself related, but because it is that through which the extrinsic terms are related. It is actively, not passively, relative; it is the ratio, not the rationatum, the foundation, not the result, of the relativities. It follows, also, that the foundation of the relation of distance is nothing else than space as terminated by two extrinsic terms, and affording room for movement from the one to the other. This space is at the same time absolute and relative; absolute as to its entity, relative as to the extrinsic denomination derived from the relation of which it is the formal reason.
The distinction between absolute and relative space is therefore to be taken, not from space itself, but from its comparison with absolute or with relative ubications. Space, as absolute, exhibits the possibility of all absolute ubications; as relative, it exhibits the possibility of all ubicational changes. Absolute space may therefore be styled simply “the region of ubications,” whilst relative space maybe defined as “the region of movement.”
This notion of relative space will not fail to be opposed by those who think that all real space results from the dimensions of bodies. Their objections, however, need not detain us here, as we have already shown that the grounds of their argumentation are inadmissible. The same notion will be opposed with greater plausibility by those who confound the formal reason of local relations with the relations themselves, under the common name of relative space. Their objections are based on the popular language, as used, even by philosophers, in connection with relative space. We will reduce these objections to two heads, and answer them, together with two others drawn from other sources, that our reader may thus form a clearer judgment of the doctrine we have developed.
First difficulty. The entity of a relation is the entity of its foundation. If, then, the foundation of the relation of distance is absolute space, or the virtuality of God’s immensity, it follows that the entity of distance is an uncreated entity. But this cannot be admitted, except by Pantheists. Therefore the relation of distance is not founded on the virtuality of God’s immensity.
This difficulty arises from a false supposition. The entity of the relation is not the entity of its foundation, but it is the entity of the connotation (respectus) which arises from the existence of the terms under such a foundation. Likeness, for instance, is a relation resulting between two bodies, say, white, on account of their common property, say, whiteness. Whiteness is therefore the foundation of their likeness; but whiteness it not likeness. On the contrary, the whiteness which founds this relation is still competent to found innumerable other relations; a thing which would be impossible if the entity of the foundation were not infinitely superior to the entity of the relation which results from it.
This is even more evident in our case; for the foundation of the relation between two ubications is an entity altogether extrinsic to the ubications themselves, as we have already shown. Evidently, such an entity cannot be the relativity of those ubications. The relation of distance is neither absolute nor relative space, but only the mode of being of one term in space with respect to another term in space. Now, surely no one who has any knowledge of things will maintain that space, either absolute or relative, is a mode of being. The moon is distant from the earth; and therefore there is space, and possibility of movement, between the moon and the earth. But is this space the relation of distance? No. It is the ground of the relation. The relation itself consists in the mode of being of the moon with respect to the earth; and, evidently, this mode is not space.
The assumption that the entity of the relation is the entity of its foundation may be admitted in the case of transcendental relations, inasmuch as the actuality of beings, which results from the conspiration of their essential principles, identifies itself in concreto with the beings themselves. But the same cannot be said of predicamental relations. It would be absurd to say that the dependence of the world on its Creator is the creative act; nor would it be less absurd to say that the relativity of a son to his father is the act of generation, or that the fraternity of James and John is the same thing as the identity of Zebedee, their father, with himself. And yet these absurdities, and many others, must be admitted, if we admit the assumption that the entity of predicamental relations is the entity of their foundation. Hence the assumption must be discarded as false; and the objection, which rested entirely on this assumption, needs no further discussion.
We must, however, take this opportunity to again warn the student of the necessity of not confounding under one and the same name the relative space with the relations of things existing in space. This confusion is very frequent, as we often hear of distances, surfaces, and volumes of bodies spoken of as “relative spaces,” which, properly speaking, they are not. We ourselves are now and then obliged to use this inaccurate language, owing to the difficulty of conveying our thoughts to common readers without employing common phrases. But we would suggest that, to avoid all misconstruction of such phrases, the relative space, of which we have determined the notion, might be called “fundamental relative space,” whilst the relations of things as existing in space might receive the name of “resultant relative spaces.” At any rate, without some epithets of this sort, we cannot turn to good account the popular phraseology on the subject. Such a phraseology expresses things as they are represented in our imagination, not as they are defined by our reason. Distances are intervals between certain points in space, surfaces are intervals between certain lines in space, volumes are intervals between certain surfaces in spaces; but these intervals are no parts of space, though they are very frequently so called, but only relations in space. Space is one, not many; it has no parts, and, whether you call it absolute or relative, it cannot be cut to pieces. What is called an interval of space should rather be called an interval in space; for it is not a portion of space, but a relation of things in space; it is not a length of space, but the length of the movement possible between the extrinsic terms of space; it is not a divisible extension, but the ground on which movement can extend with its divisible extension. In the smallest conceivable interval of space there is God, with all his immensity. To affirm that intervals of space are distinct spaces would be to cut God’s immensity into pieces, by giving it a distinct being in really distinct intervals. It is therefore necessary to concede that, whilst the intervals are distinct, the space on which they have their foundation is one and the same.
Pantheists have taken advantage of the confusion of fundamental space with the resulting relations in space, to spread their absurd theories. If we grant them that distance is space, how can we refute their assertion that distance is a form under which divine substance, or the Absolute, makes an apparition? For, if distance is space, and space is no creature, distance consists of something uncreated (and therefore divine) under a contingent form. This is not the place for us to refute Pantheism; what we aim at is simply to point out the need we have of expressing our thoughts on space with philosophical accuracy, lest the Pantheists may shield themselves with our own loose phraseology.
God is everywhere, and touches, so to say, every contingent ubication by his presence to every ubicated thing. But the contingent ubications are not spaces, nor anything intrinsic to space; they are merely extrinsic terms, corresponding to space, as we have explained; and therefore such ubications are not apparitions of the divine substance, but apparitions of contingent things; they are not points of divine immensity, but points contingently projected on the virtuality of God’s immensity. It is as vain to pretend that contingent ubications are points of space, as it is vain to pretend that contingent essences are the divine substance. Pantheists, indeed, have said that, because the essences of things are contained in God, the substance of all things must be God’s substance; but their paralogism is manifest. For the essences of things are in God, not formally with the entity which they have in created things, but eminently and virtually, that is, in an infinitely better manner. The formal essences of things are only in the things themselves, and they are extrinsic terms of creation, imperfect images of what exists perfect in God. In the same manner the ubications of things are not in God formally, but eminently and virtually. They formally belong to the things that are ubicated. So also the intervals of space are in God eminently, not formally; they formally arise from extrinsic terminations, and therefore are mere correlations of creatures. This suffices to show that distances and other relations in space involve nothing divine in their entity, although they are grounded on the existence and universal presence of God, in whom “we live, and move, and have our being.”
Second difficulty.—If the foundation of local relations is uncreated, it is always the same; and therefore it will cause all such relations to be always the same. Hence, all distances would be equal; which is manifestly false.
This difficulty arises from confounding the absolute entity of the thing which is the foundation of the relation, with the formal manner of founding the relation. The same absolute entity may found different relations by giving to the terms a different relativity; for the same absolute entity founds different relations whenever it connects the terms of the relation in a different manner. Thus, when the entity of the foundation is a generic or a universal notion, it can give rise to relations of a very different degree. Taking animality, for instance, as the foundation of the relation, we may compare one hound with another, one wolf with another, one bird with another, or we may compare the hound with the wolf, the wolf with the bird, the bird with the lion, etc.; and we shall find as many different relations, all grounded on the same foundation—that is, on animality. In fact, there will be as many different relations of likeness as there are different animals compared. Now, if one general ratio suffices to do this, on account of its universality, which extends infinitely in its application to concrete things, it is plain that as much and more can be done by the infinite virtuality of God’s immensity, which can be terminated by an infinite variety of extrinsic terminations. It is the proper attribute of an infinite virtuality to contain in itself the reason of the being of infinite terms, and of their becoming connected with one another in infinite manners. This is what the infinite virtuality of divine immensity can do with respect to ubicated terms. Such an infinite virtuality is whole, though not wholly, in every point and interval of space; it is as entire between the two nearest molecules as between the two remotest stars. Hence its absolute entity, though unchangeable itself, can have different extrinsic terminations; and, since it founds the relations in question inasmuch as it has such different terminations, consequently it can found as many different local relations as it can have different extrinsic terminations. A hound and a wolf, as we have said, inasmuch as they are animals, are alike; and the wolf and the bird, also, inasmuch as they are animals, are alike; but the likeness in the second case is not the same as in the first, because the animality, which is one in the abstract, is different in the concrete terms to which it is applied. Hence the difference, or entitative distance, so to say, between the wolf and the hound is less than the entitative distance between the wolf and the bird, although the ground of the comparison is one and the same. In a like manner, the distance from a molecule to a neighboring molecule is less than the distance from a star to another star, although the ground of the relation be one and the same; with this difference, however, that in the case of the animals above mentioned the relation has an intrinsic foundation, because “animality” is intrinsic to the terms compared; whilst in the case of local distances the relation has an extrinsic foundation; for the ubications compared are nothing but extrinsic terms of space.
Third difficulty.—Distances evidently intercept portions of space, and differ from one another according as they intercept more or less of it. But, if space is the virtuality of divine immensity, such portions cannot be admitted; for the virtuality of divine immensity cannot be divided into parts distinct from one another.
This difficulty arises from the confusion of that which belongs to space intrinsically, with that which belongs to it by extrinsic denomination only. Space in itself has no parts; and therefore distance cannot intercept a portion of the entity of space. Nevertheless, parts are attributed to space by extrinsic denomination, that is, inasmuch as the movements, which space makes possible between given terms, do not extend beyond those terms, while other movements are possible outside of the given terms. Hence, since space is infinite and affords room for an infinite length of movement in all directions, the space which corresponds to a limited movement has been called an interval of space and a portion of space. But this denomination is extrinsic, and does not imply that space has portions, or that the entity of space is divisible. That such a denomination is extrinsic, there can be no doubt, for it is taken from the consideration of the limited movement possible between the terms of the distance, as all distances are known and estimated by movement. Indeed, we are wont to say that “movement measures space,” which expression seems to justify the conclusion that the space measured is a finite portion of infinite space; but, though the expression is much used (from want of a better one), it must not be interpreted in a material sense. Its real meaning is simply that movement “measures the length of the distance” in space, or that movement “measures its own extent” in space—that is, the length or the extent, not of space, but of what space causes to be extrinsically possible between two extrinsic terms.
This will be still more manifest by referring to the evident truth already established, that all ubications as compared with the entity of space are unchangeable, because the thing ubicated cannot have two modes of being in the infinite expanse of space, but, wherever it be, is always, so to say, in the centre of it. This proves that the movement of a point between the terms of a given distance measures nothing else than its own length in space; for, had it to measure space itself, it would have to take successively different positions with regard to it, which we know to be impossible. We must therefore conclude that distance does not properly intercept space, though it determines the relative length of a line which can be drawn by a point moving through space; for this line is not a line of space, but a line of movement. In other words, distance is not the limit of the space said to be intercepted, but of the movement possible between the distant terms.
As this answer may not satisfy our imagination as much as it does our intellect, and as our habit of expressing things as they are represented in our imagination makes it difficult to speak correctly of what transcends the reach of this lower faculty, we will make use of a comparison which, in our opinion, by putting the intelligible in contact with the sensible, will not fail to help us fully to realize the truth of what has been hitherto said.
Let God create a man, a horse, and a tree. The difference, or, as we will call it, the entitative distance, between the man and the horse is less than between the man and the tree, as is evident. Yet the man, the horse, and the tree are extrinsic terms of the same divine omnipotence, which neither is divisible nor admits of more or less. Now, can we say that, because the man is entitatively more distant from the tree than from the horse, there must be more of divine omnipotence between the man and the tree than between the man and the horse? It would be folly to say so. The only consequence which can be deduced from the greater entitative distance of the man and of the tree, is, that a greater multitude of creatures (extrinsic terms of divine omnipotence) is possible between the man and the tree, than between the man and the horse. The reader will readily see how the comparison applies to our subject; for the two cases are quite similar. Can we say, then, that, because two points in space are more distant than two other points, there must be more of divine immensity, or of its virtuality, between the former than between the latter? By no means. The only consequence which can be deduced from the greater distance of the two former points is, that a greater multitude of ubications (extrinsic terms of immensity) is possible between them, than between the two others. This greater multitude of possible ubications constitutes the possibility of a greater length of movement; and shows the truth of what we have maintained, viz., that distance endues the aspect of quantity through the consideration of the greater or less extent of the movement possible between its terms, and not through a greater or less “portion” of space intercepted.[150]
The difficulty is thus fully answered. Nevertheless, as to the phrases, “a portion of space,” “an interval of space,” “space measured by movement,” and a few others of a like nature, we readily admit that their use, having become so common in the popular language, we cannot avoid them without exposing ourselves to the charge of affectation, nay, we must use them, as we frequently do, in order to be better understood. But we should remember that the common language has a kernel as well as a shell, and that, when we have to determine the essential notions and the intelligible relations of things, we must break the shell that we may reach the kernel.
Fourth difficulty.—The notions of space and of ubication above given imply a sort of vicious circle. For space is explained by the possibility of ubications, whilst ubications are said to be modes of being in space. Therefore neither space nor ubication is sufficiently defined.
We answer, that then only is a sort of vicious circle committed in defining or explaining things, when an unknown entity is defined or explained by means of another equally unknown. When, on the contrary, we explain the common notions of such things as are immediately known and understood before any definition or explanation of them is given, there is no danger of a vicious circle. In such a case, things are sufficiently explained if our definition or description of them agrees with the notion we have acquired of them by immediate apprehension. We say that Being is that which is, and we explain the extension of time by referring to movement, while we also explain movement by referring to time and velocity, and again we explain velocity by referring to the extension of time and movement. This is no vicious circle; for every one knows these entities before hearing their formal definition. Now, the same is true with respect to space and ubication; for the notion of space is intuitive, and before we hear its philosophical definition, we know already that it is the region of all possible ubications and movements.
Moreover, such things as have a mutual connection, or as connote one another, can be explained and defined by one another without a vicious circle. Thus we say that a father is one who has a son, and a son is one who has a father. In the same manner we define the matter as the essential term of a form, and the form as the essential act of the matter. Accordingly, since ubications are extrinsic terms of absolute space, and space is the formal reason of their extrinsic possibility, it is plain that we can, without any fear of a vicious circle, define and explain the former by the latter, and vice versa.
Finally, no philosopher has ever defined space or explained it otherwise than by reference to possible or actual ubications, nor was ubication ever described otherwise than as a mode of being in absolute or in relative space. This shows that it is in the very nature of things that the one should be explained by reference to the other. Hence it is that even our own definition of absolute space, which does not explicitly refer to contingent ubications, refers to them implicitly. For when we say that “absolute space is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of divine immensity,” we implicitly affirm the possibility of extrinsic terms, viz., of ubications.
And here we will end our discussion on the entity of relative space; for we do not think that there are other difficulties worthy of a special solution. We have seen that relative space is entitatively identical with absolute space, since it does not differ from it by any intrinsic reality, but only by an extrinsic denomination. We have shown that space is relative in an active, not in a passive sense, that is, as the formal reason, not as a result of extrinsic relations. We have also seen that these extrinsic relations are usually called “relative spaces,” and that this phrase should not be used in philosophy without some restrictive epithet, as it is calculated to mislead.
Let us conclude with a remark on the known division of space into real and imaginary. This division cannot regard the entity of space, which is unquestionably real. It regards the reality or unreality of the extrinsic terms conceived as having a relation in space. The true notion of real, as contrasted with imaginary space, is the following: Space is called real, when it is really relative, viz., when it is extrinsically terminated by real terms, between which it founds a real relation; on the contrary, it is called imaginary, when the extrinsic terms do not exist in nature, but only in our imagination; for, in such a case, space is not really terminated, and does not found real relations, but both the terminations and the relations are simply a fiction of our imagination. Thus it appears that void space, as containing none but imaginary relations, may justly be called “imaginary,” though in an absolute sense it is intrinsically real.
Hence we infer that the indefinite space, which we imagine, when we carry our thoughts beyond the limits of the material world, and which philosophers have called “imaginary,” is not absolute, but relative space, and is not imaginary in itself, but only as to its denomination of relative, because where real terms do not exist there are only imaginary relations, notwithstanding the reality of the entity through which we refer the imaginary terms to one another.
That absolute space, considered in itself, cannot be called “imaginary” is evident, because absolute space is not an object of imagination. Imagination cannot conceive space except in connection with imaginary terms so related as to offer the image of sensible dimensions. It is, therefore, a blunder to confound imaginary and indefinite space with absolute and infinite space. Indeed, our intellectual conception of absolute and infinite space is always accompanied in our minds by a representation of indefinite space; but this depends on the well-known connection of our imaginative and intellectual operations: Proprium est hominis intelligere cum phantasmate; and we must be careful not to attribute to the object what has the reason of its being in the natural condition of the subject. It was by this confusion of the objective notion of space with our subjective manner of imagining it, that Kant formed his false theory of subjective space. He mistook, as we have already remarked, with Balmes, the product of imagination for a conception of the intellect, and confounded his phantasma of the indefinite with the objectivity of the infinite. It was owing to this same confusion that other philosophers made the reality of space dependent on real occupation, and denied the reality of vacuum. In vacuum, of course, they could find no real terms and no real relations, but they could imagine terms and relations. Hence they concluded that, since vacuum supplied nothing but imaginary relations, void space was an imaginary, not a real, entity. This was a paralogism; for the reason why those relations are imaginary is not the lack of real entity in absolute space, but the absence of the real terms to which absolute space has to impart relativity that the relation may ensue. It was not superfluous, then, to warn our readers, as we did in our introduction to this article, against the incursions of imagination upon our intellectual field.