"Have you heard that among certain tribes of the North-American Indians are men who possess an art which enables them to endure torture and actual death without apparent suffering or even consciousness? I once chanced to fall in with one of these tribes, then living in Louisiana, now removed to the far West, and was permitted to witness some fantastic rites, half warlike, half religious, in which, however, there was nothing noticeable except this trance-like condition, which some of the warriors seemed to command at pleasure, manifested by a tense rigidity of the features and muscles, and a mental exaltation which proved to be both clairvoyant and clairoyant: a state analogous to that of hypnotism, or the artificial sleep produced by gazing fixedly on a near, bright object, and differing only in degree from the nervous or imaginative control which has been known to arrest and cure disease, which chained St. Simeon Stylites to his pillar, and sustains the Hindoo fakirs in their apparently superhuman vigils. These children of Nature had probed with direct simplicity some of the deep secrets which men of science often fail to discern through tortuous devices. I was assured that this trance was merely the result of a concentrative energy of the will, which riveted the faculties upon a single purpose or idea, and held every nerve and sense in absolute abeyance. We are so little accustomed to test the potency of the will out of the ordinary plane of its operation, that we have little conception how mighty a lever it may be made, or to what new exercise it may be directed; and yet we are all conscious of periods in our lives when, like a vast rock in ocean, it has suddenly loomed up firm and defiant amid our petty purposes and fretful indecisions, waxing grander and stronger under opposition, a something apart from, yet a conscious portion of ourselves,—a master, though a slave,—another revelation of the divinity within.
"I will confess that curiosity led me long ago to slight experiments in the direction in which you say the diabolic lies, but my mind was never concentrated on any one idea of sufficient interest to command success, until, in some periods of mingled peril and excitement, the memory of Blanche, and the conscious, even startling nearness of that sweet presence, have lent to my will unwonted energy and inspiration.
"Twenty years passed slowly away. It is common to speak of the flight of time. For me, time has no wings. The days and years are faltering and tardy-footed, laden with the experiences of the outer and the problems of the inner world, which seem perpetually multiplied by reflection, like figures in a room mirrored on all sides. Meanwhile, my wife had died. I have never since sought women beyond the formal pale of the drawing-room: not from insensibility to loveliness, but because the memory, 'dearer far than bliss,' of one irretrievable affection shut out all inferior approach,—like a solitary planet, admitting no dance of satellites within its orbit.
"At last the long silence was broken. I heard that Blanche was free, and, with mingled haste and hesitation, I prepared to seek her. The ideal should be tested, I said to myself, by the actual, and if proved a deceit, then was all faith a mockery, all promise and premonition a glittering lie. As soon as winds and waves could carry me, I was in Louisiana, and in the very dwelling and at the same hour which had witnessed our parting. Again was it a soft summer evening. The same faint golden rays painted the sun's farewell, and the same silver moon looked eloquent response, as on the evening breeze floated sweet remembered odors of jessamine and orange. Again the ideal beauty of the lovely portrait met my gaze and seemed to melt into my heart; and once more, softly, lightly, fell a footstep, and the Presence by which I had never been forsaken, which I could never forsake, stood before me in 'palpable array of sense.' It was indeed the living Blanche, calm and stately as of old,—no longer radiant with the flush of youth, but serene in tenderest grace and sweet reserve, and beautiful through the lustre of the inner light of soul. She uttered a faint cry of joy, and placing her trembling hand in mine, we stood transfixed and silent, with riveted gaze, reading in each other's eyes feelings too sacred for speech, too deep for smiles or tears. In that long, burning look, it seemed as if the emotions of each were imparted to the other, not in slow succession as through words and sentences, but daguerreotyped or electrotyped in perfected form upon the conscious understanding. No language could have made so clear and comprehensible the revelation of that all-centring, unconquerable love which thrilled our inmost being, and pervaded the atmosphere around us with subtile and tremulous vibrations. In that moment all time was fused and forgotten. There was for us no Past, no Future; there was only the long-waited, all-embracing Now. I could willingly have died then and there, for I knew that all life could bring but one such moment. My heart spoke truly. A change passed over the countenance of Blanche,—an expression of unutterable grief, like Eve's retrospective look at Eden. Quivering with strange tremor, again she stood before me, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, in the very attitude of that memorable apparition, and again fell upon my ears the mysterious plaint and the uncompleted question,—'You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did you not'—
"Now, my friend, can your philosophy explain this startling verification, this reflex action of the vision, or the fantasy, or whatever else you may please to term it, whose prophetic shadow fell upon my astonished senses long years before? In all the intervening time, we were separated by great distance, no word or sign passed between us, nor did we even hear of each other except indefinitely and through chance. Is there, then, any explanation of that vision more rational than that the spirit thus closely affined with my own was enabled, through its innate potencies, or through some agency of which we are ignorant, to impress upon my bodily perceptions its uncontrollable emotions? That this manifestation was made through what physiologists call the unconscious or involuntary action of the mind was proved by the incredulity and surprise of Blanche when I told her of the wonderful coincidence.
"I need not relate, even if I could do so, the outpouring of long-pent emotions which relieved the yearning love and haunting memories of sad, silent, lingering years. It is enough to tell you briefly of the story which was repeated in fragments through many hours of unfamiliar bliss. Soon after my departure from New Orleans, the father of Blanche, with the stern authority which many parents exercise over the matrimonial affairs of their daughters, insisted upon her forming an alliance to which the opposition of her own heart was the only objection. So trifling an impediment was decisively put aside by him, and Blanche, having delayed the marriage as long as possible, until the time fixed for my return was past, and unable to plead any open acknowledgment on my part which could justify her refusal, had no alternative but to obey. 'I confess,' said she, in faltering tones, 'that, after my fate was fixed, and I was parted from you, as I believed for life, I tried to believe that the love which had given so slight witness in words to its truth and fervor must have faded entirely away, and that I was forgotten, and perhaps supplanted. And therefore, in the varied pursuits and pleasures of my new sphere, and in the indulgence and kindness which ministered to the outer, but, alas! never to the inner life, I sought happiness, and I, too, like yourself, strove to forget. Ah! that art of forgetting, which the Athenian coveted as the best of boons,—when was it ever found through effort or desire? In all scenes of beauty or of excitement, in the allurements of society, in solitude and in sorrow, my heart still turned to you with ceaseless longing, as if you alone could touch its master-chord, and waken the harmonies which were struggling for expression. By slow degrees, as I learned to dissever you from the material world, there came a conviction of the nearness of your spirit, sometimes so positive that I would waken from a reverie, in which I was lost to sights and sounds around me, with a sense of having been in your actual presence. I was aware of an effect rather than of an immediate consciousness,—as if the magnetism of your touch had swept over me, cooling the fever of my brain, and charming to deep tranquillity my troubled heart. And thus I learned, through similar experience, the same belief as yours. I have felt the continuous nearness, the inseparable union of our spirits, as plainly as I feel it now, with my hand clasped in yours, and reading in your eyes the unutterable things which we can never hope to speak, because they are foreshadowings of another existence.
"What I possess I see afar off lying,
And what I lost is real and undying."
The material presence is indeed very dear, but I believe that it is not essential to the perpetuity of that love which is nurtured through mutual and perfect understanding.'
"'It is not essential,' I replied, 'but it is, as you say, very, very dear, because it is an exponent and participant of the hidden life which it was designed to aid and to enframe. Blanche, it was you who first wakened my soul to the glorious revelation, the heavenly heritage of love. It was you who opened to me the world which lies beyond the mere external, who gently allured me from the coarse and clouding elements of sense, and infolded me in the holy purity of that marriage of kindred natures which alone is hallowed by the laws of God, and which no accidents of time or place can rend asunder. Apart from the bitterness of this long separation, the lesson might not have been learned; but now that it is ineffaceably engraven on both our hearts, and confirmed in the assurance of this blessed reunion, may I not hope that for the remainder of our earthly lives we may study together in visible companionship such further lessons as may be held in reserve for us?'
"Her face glowed with a soft crimson flush, and again her eyes were suffused with tears, through which beamed a look of sweet, heavenly sorrow,—such as might have shone in the orbs of the angel who enforced upon Adam the sentence of expulsion from Paradise, and who, while sharing the exile's grief, beheld in the remote horizon, far beyond the tangled wilderness of Earth, another gate, wide opening to welcome him to the Immortal Land. She was silent for a little time, and then she murmured, lingering gently on the words, 'No, it must not be. We are, indeed, inalienably one, in a nearer and dearer sense than can be expressed by any transient symbol. Let us not seek to quit the spiritual sphere in which we have long dwelt and communed together, for one liable to discord and misinterpretation. I have an irresistible impression that my life here will be very brief. While I remain, come to me when you will, let me be the Egeria of your hours of leisure, and a consoler in your cares,—but let us await, for another and a higher life, the more perfect consummation of our love. For, oh, believe, as I believe, faith is no mockery, nor is the heart's prophecy a lie. We were not born to be the dupes of dreams or the sport of chance. The voice which whispered to me long ago the promise fulfilled in this hour tells me that in a bright Hereafter we shall find compensation for every sorrow, reality for every ideal, and that there at last shall be resolved in luminous perception the veiled and troubled mystery of PRESENCE!'"