Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
Dreams and
Dream-Stories
by
Anna Kingsford
M.D. of
Author of "The Perfect Way; or the
finding of Christ."
Edited by Edward Maitland
The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
Return to Searchable Text Index
Published in
“For He so giveth unto His
Beloved in Sleep.”
Ps. cxxvii. (Marginal
CONTENTSPage
PREFACE7
Part 1 DREAMS
1THE DOOMED TRAIN 15
2THE WONDERFUL SPECTACLES 19
3THE COUNCIL OF PERFECTION21
5THE BIRD AND THE CAT24
6THE TREASURE IN THE LIGHTED HOUSE25
7THE
8THE ENCHANTED WOMAN30
9THE BANQUET OF THE GODS 38
10THE DIFFICULT PATH 39
11A LION IN THE WAY41
12A DREAM OF DISEMBODIMENT41
13THE
14THE LABORATORY UNDERGROUND 44
15THE OLD YOUNG MAN45
16THE METEMPSYCHOSIS49
17THE THREE KINGS51
18THE ARMED GODDESS 54
19THE GAME OF CARDS 56
20THE PANIC-STRUCK PACK-HORSE59
21THE HAUNTED
22AN
23A HAUNTED HOUSE INDEED !64
24THE SQUARE IN THE HAND 70
DREAM VERSES
1THROUGH THE AGES77
2A FRAGMENT -1- 80
3A FRAGMENT -2-80
4SIGNS OF THE TIMES81
5WITH THE GODS 81
PART IIDREAM - STORIES
1A
2STEEPSIDE; A GHOST STORY 116
3BEYOND THE SUNSET 147
4A TURN OF LUCK169
5NOÉMI182
6THE LITTLE OLD MAN'S STORY212
7THE NIGHTSHADE242
8ST GEORGE THE CHEVALIER270
PREFACE
[Written in 1886. Some of the
experiences in this volume were subsequent to that
date. This publication is
made in accordance with the author’s last wishes.
(Ed.)]
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[Page 7 ]
THE chronicles which I am
about to present to the reader are not the result of
any conscious effort of the
imagination. They are, as the title-page indicates,
records of dreams, occurring
at intervals during the last ten years, and
transcribed, pretty nearly in
the order of their occurrence, from my Diary.
Written down as soon as
possible after awaking from the slumber during which
they presented themselves,
these narratives, necessarily unstudied in style and
wanting in elegance of
diction, have at least the merit of fresh and vivid
colour, for they were
committed to paper at a moment when the effect and impress
of each successive vision
were strong and forceful in the mind, and before the
illusion of reality conveyed
by the scenes witnessed and the sounds heard in
sleep had had time to pass
away.
I do not know whether these
experiences of mine are unique. So far, I have not
yet met with any one in whom
the dreaming faculty appears to be either so
strongly or so strangely
developed as in myself. Most dreams, even when of
unusual vividness and
lucidity, betray a want of coherence in their action, and
an incongruity of detail and
dramatis persona that stamp
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[Page 8] them as the
product of incomplete and
disjointed cerebral function. But the most remarkable
features of the experiences I
am about to record are the methodical
consecutiveness of their
sequences, and the intelligent purpose disclosed alike
in the events witnessed and
in the words heard or read. Some of these last,
indeed, resemble, for point
and profundity, the apologues of Eastern scriptures;
and, on more than one
occasion, the scenery of the dream has accurately
portrayed characteristics of
remote regions, city, forest and mountain, which in
this existence at least I
have never beheld, nor, so far as I can remember, even
heard described, and yet,
every feature of these unfamiliar climes has revealed
itself to my sleeping vision
with a splendour of colouring and distinctness of
outline which made the waking
life seem duller and less real by contrast. I know
of no parallel to this
phenomenon unless in the pages of Bulwer Lytton's romance
entitled — The Pilgrims of
the
student endowed with so
marvellous a faculty of dreaming, that for him the
normal conditions of sleeping
and waking became reversed, his true life was that
which he lived in his
slumbers, and his hours of wake-fulness appeared to him as
so many uneventful and
inactive intervals of arrest occurring in an existence of
intense and vivid interest
which was wholly passed in the hypnotic state. Not
that to me there is any such
inversion of natural conditions. On the contrary,
the priceless insights and
illuminations I have acquired by means of my dreams
have gone far to elucidate
for me many difficulties and enigmas of life, and
even of religion, which might
otherwise have remained dark to me, and to throw
upon the events and
vicissitudes of a career
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[Page 9] filled with bewildering
situations, a light which,
like sunshine, has penetrated to the very causes and
springs of circumstance, and
has given meaning and fitness to much in my life
that would else have appeared
to me incoherent or inconsistent.
I have no theory to offer the
reader in explanation of my faculty, — at least in
so far as its physiological
aspect is concerned. Of course, having received a
medical education, I have speculated
about the modus operandi of the phenomenon,
but my speculations are not
of such a character as to entitle them to
presentation in the form even
of an hypothesis. I am tolerably well acquainted
with most of the propositions
regarding unconscious cerebration, which have been
put forward by men of
science, but none of these propositions can, by any
process of reasonable
expansion or modification, be made to fit my case.
Hysteria, to the multiform
and manifold categories of which, medical experts are
wont to refer the majority of
the abnormal experiences encountered by them, is
plainly inadequate to explain
or account for mine. The singular coherence and
sustained dramatic unity
observable in these dreams, as well as the poetic
beauty and tender subtlety of
the instructions and suggestions conveyed in them
do not comport with the
conditions characteristic of nervous disease. Moreover,
during the whole period
covered by these dreams, I have been busily and almost
continuously engrossed with
scientific and literary pursuits demanding accurate
judgment and complete
self-possession and rectitude of mind. At the time when
many of the most vivid and
remarkable visions occurred, I was following my
course as a student at the
Paris Faculty of Medicine, preparing for
examinations, daily visiting
hospital wards as dresser, and attending lectures.
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[Page 10] Later, when I had taken my
degree, I was engaged in the duties of my
profession and in writing for
the press on scientific subjects. Neither have I
ever taken opium, hashish or
other dream-producing agent. A cup of tea or coffee
represents the extent of my
indulgences in this direction. I mention these
details in order to guard
against inferences which otherwise might be drawn as
to the genesis of my faculty.
With regard to the
interpretation and application of particular dreams, I think
it best to say nothing. The majority
are obviously allegorical, and although
obscure in parts, they are
invariably harmonious, and tolerably clear in meaning
to persons acquainted with
the method of Greek and Oriental myth. I shall not,
therefore, venture on any
explanation of my own, but shall simply record the
dreams as they passed before
me, and the impressions left upon my mind when I
awoke.
Unfortunately, in some
instances, which are not, therefore, here transcribed, my
waking memory failed to
recall accurately, or completely, certain discourses
heard or written words seen
in the course of the vision, which in these cases
left but a fragmentary
impression on the brain and baffled all waking endeavour
to recall their missing
passages.
These imperfect experiences
have not, however, been numerous; on the contrary,
it is a perpetual marvel to
me to find with what ease and certainty I can, as a
rule, on recovering ordinary
consciousness, recall the picture witnessed in my
sleep, and reproduce the
words I have heard spoken or seen written.
Sometimes several interims of
months occur during which none of these
exceptional visions visit me,
but only ordinary dreams, incongruous and
insignificant
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[Page 11] after their kind. Observation,
based on an experience of
considerable length,
justifies me, I think, in saying that climate, altitude,
and electrical conditions are
not without their influence in the production of
the cerebral state necessary
to the exercise of the faculty I have described.
Dry air, high levels, and a
crisp, calm, exhilarating atmosphere favour its
activity; while, on the other
hand, moisture, proximity to rivers, cloudy skies,
and a depressing, heavy
climate, will, for an indefinite period, suffice to
repress it altogether. It is
not, therefore, surprising that the greater number
of these dreams, and,
especially, the most vivid, detailed and idyllic, have
occurred to me while on the
continent. At my own residence on the banks of the
manifestations, and
sometimes, after a prolonged sojourn at home, am tempted to
fancy that the dreaming gift
has left me never to return. But the results of a
visit to
magnetic or psychic tension
never fails to reassert itself; and before many
weeks have elapsed my Diary
is once more rich with the record of my nightly
visions.
Some of these phantasmagoria
have furnished me with the framework, and even
details, of stories which
from time to time I have contributed to various
magazines. A ghost story,
[Steepside] published some years ago in a
magazine, and much commented
on because of its peculiarly weird and startling
character, had this origin;
so had a fairy tale, [Beyond the Sunset] which
appeared in a Christmas
Annual last year, and which has recently been re-issued
in German by the editor of a
foreign periodical. Many of my more
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[Page 12]
serious contributions to
literature have been similarly initiated; and, more
than once, fragments of
poems, both in English and other languages, have been
heard or read by me in
dreams. I regret much that I have not yet been able to
recover any one entire poem.
My memory always failed before I could finish
writing out the lines, no
matter how luminous and recent the impressions made by
them on my mind.[The poem
entitled A Discourse on the Communion of Souls or the
Uses of love between Creature
and Creature, Being a part of the Golden Book of
Venus which forms one of the
appendices to The Perfect Way would be an exception
to this rule but that it was
necessary for the dream to be repeated before the
whole poem could be recalled.
(Ed)] However, even as regards verses, my
experience has been far richer
and more successful than that of Coleridge, the
only product of whose faculty
in this direction was the poetical fragment Kubla
Khan, and there was no scenic
dreaming on the occasion, only the verses were
thus obtained; and I am not
without hope that at some future time, under more
favourable conditions than
those I now enjoy, the broken threads may be resumed
and these chapters of dream
verse perfected and made complete.
It may, perhaps, be worthy of
remark that by far the larger number of the dreams
set down in this volume,
occurred towards dawn; sometimes even, after sunrise,
during a second sleep. A
condition of fasting, united possibly, with some subtle
magnetic or other atmospheric
state, seems therefore to be that most open to
impressions of the kind. And,
in this connection, I think it right to add that
for the past fifteen years I
have been an abstainer from flesh-meats; not a
Vegetarian, because during
the whole of that period I have used such
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[Page 13]
animal produce as butter,
cheese, eggs, and milk. That the influence of fasting
and of sober fare upon the
perspicacity of the sleeping brain was known to the
ancients in times when dreams
were far more highly esteemed than they now are,
appears evident from various
passages in the records of theurgy and mysticism.
Philostratus, in his Life of
Apollonius Tyaneus, represents the latter as
informing King Phraotes that
" the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions,
are wont never to interpret
any vision till they have first inquired the time at
which it befell; for, if it
were early, and of the morning sleep, they then
thought that they might make
a good interpretation thereof (that is, that it
might be worth the
interpreting), in that the soul was then fitted for
divination, and
disincumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near
while the soul was as yet
clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise,
refused to give any
interpretation. Moreover, the gods themselves are of this
opinion, and send their
oracles only into abstinent minds. For the priests,
taking him who doth so
consult, keep him one day from meat and three days from
wine, that he may in a clear
soul receive the oracles." And again, lamblichus,
writing to Agathocles, says:
— "There is nothing unworthy of belief in what you
have been told concerning the
sacred sleep, and seeing by means of dreams. I
explain it thus: — The soul
has a twofold life, a lower and a higher. In sleep
the soul is liberated from
the constraint of the body, and enters, as an
emancipated being, on its
divine life of intelligence. Then, as the noble
faculty which beholds objects
that truly are — the objects in the world of
intelligence — stirs within,
and awakens to its power, who can be astonished
that the mind which contains
in itself the principles of
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[Page 14] all events,
should, in this its state of
liberation, discern the future in those antecedent
principles which will
constitute that future ? The nobler part of the mind is
thus united by abstraction to
higher natures, and becomes a participant in the
wisdom and foreknowledge of
the gods. . . . The night-time of the body is the
daytime of the soul."
But I have no desire to
multiply citations, nor to vex the reader with
hypotheses inappropriate to
the design of this little work. Having, therefore,
briefly recounted the facts
and circumstances of my experience so far as they
are known to myself, I
proceed, without further commentary, to unroll my chart
of dream-pictures, and leave
them to tell their own tale.
A. B. K.
DREAMS
- 1 - THE DOOMED TRAIN
[This narrative was addressed
to the friend particularly referred to in it. The
dream occurred near the close
of 1876, and on the eve, therefore, of the
Russo-Turkish war, and was
regarded by us both as having relation to a national
crisis, of a moral and
spiritual character, our interest in which was so
profound as to be destined to
dominate all our subsequent lives and work
(Author’s Note.)]
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[Page 15]
I WAS visited last night by a
dream of so strange and vivid a kind that I feel
impelled to communicate it to
you, not only to relieve my own mind of the
impression which the
recollection of it causes me, but also to give you an
opportunity of finding the
meaning, which I am still far too much shaken and
terrified to seek for myself.
It seemed to me that you and
I were two of a vast company of men and women, upon
all of whom, with the
exception of myself — for I was there voluntarily —
sentence of death had been
passed. I was sensible of the knowledge — how
obtained I know not — that
this terrible doom had been pronounced by the
official agents of some new
reign of terror. Certain I was that none of the
party had really been guilty
of any crime deserving of death; but that the
penalty had been incurred
through
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[Page 16] their connection with some regime,
political, social or
religious, which was doomed to utter destruction. It became
known among us that the
sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal
scale; but we remained in
absolute ignorance as to the place and method of the
intended execution. Thus far
my dream gave me no intimation of the horrible
scene which next burst on me,
— a scene which strained to their utmost tension
every sense of sight, hearing
and touch, in a manner unprecedented in any dream
I have previously had.
It was night, dark and
starless, and I found myself, together with the whole
company of doomed men and
women who knew that they were soon to die, but not how
or where, in a railway train
hurrying through the darkness to some unknown
destination. I sat in a carriage
quite at the rear end of the train, in a corner
seat, and was leaning out of
the open window, peering into the darkness, when,
suddenly, a voice, which
seemed to speak out of the air, said to me in a low,
distinct, intense tone, the
mere recollection of which makes me shudder, — "The
sentence is being carried out
even now. You are all of you lost. Ahead of the
train is a frightful
precipice of monstrous height, and at its base beats a
fathomless sea. The railway
ends only with the abyss. Over that will the train
hurl itself into
annihilation. THERE is NO ONE ON THE ENGINE !"
At this I sprang from my seat
in horror, and looked round at the faces of the
persons in the carriage with
me. No one of them had spoken, or had heard those
awful words. The lamplight
from the dome of the carriage flickered oN the forms
about me. I looked from one
to the other, but saw no sign of alarm given by any
of them. Then again the voice
out of the
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[Page 17] air spoke to me, — "There
is
but one way to be saved. You
must leap out of the train !"
In frantic haste I pushed
open the carriage door and stepped out on the
footboard. The train was
going at a terrific pace, swaying to and fro as with
the passion of its speed; and
the mighty wind of its passage beat my hair about
my face and tore at my
garments.
Until this moment I had not
thought of you, or even seemed conscious of your
presence in the train.
Holding tightly on to the rail by the carriage door, I
began to creep along the
footboard towards the engine, hoping to find a chance
of dropping safely down on
the line. Hand over hand I passed along in this way
from one carriage to another;
and as I did so I saw by the light within each
carriage that the passengers
had no idea of the fate upon which they were being
hurried. At length, in one of
the compartments, I saw you. "Come out!" I cried;
"come out! Save
yourself! In another minute we shall be dashed to pieces !"
You rose instantly, wrenched
open the door, and stood beside me outside on the
footboard. The rapidity at
which we were going was now more fearful than ever.
The train rocked as it fled
onwards. The wind shrieked as we were carried
through it. "Leap
down", I cried to you; "save yourself! It is certain death to
stay here. Before us is an
abyss; and there is no one on the engine!"
At this you turned your face
full upon me with a look of intense earnestness,
and said, "No, we will
not leap down. We will stop the train".
With these words you left me,
and crept along the footboard towards the front of
the train. Full of half-angry
anxiety at what seemed to me a Quixotic act, I
followed.
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[Page 18] In one of the carriages we
passed I saw my mother and eldest
brother, unconscious as the
rest. Presently we reached the last carriage, and
saw by the lurid light of the
furnace that the voice had spoken truly, and that
there was no one on the
engine.
You continued to move
onwards. "Impossible! Impossible!" I cried; "it cannot be
done. O, pray, come
away!"
Then you knelt upon the
footboard, and said, — "You are right. It cannot be done
in that way; but we can save
the train. Help me to get these irons asunder".
The engine was connected with
the train by two great iron hooks and staples. By
a tremendous effort, in
making which I almost lost my balance, we unhooked the
irons and detached the train;
when, with a mighty leap as of some mad
supernatural monster, the
engine sped on its way alone, shooting back as it went
a great flaming trail of
sparks, and was lost in the darkness. We stood together
on the footboard, watching in
silence the gradual slackening of the speed. When
at length the train had come
to a standstill, we cried to the passengers, "Saved
! saved !" and then amid
the confusion of opening the doors and descending and
eager talking, my dream
ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with the
horror of it.
- 2 - THE WONDERFUL
SPECTACLES
[From another letter to the
friend mentioned in the note appended to the Doomed
Train. (Author’s Note)]
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[Page 19]
I was walking alone on the
sea-shore. The day was singularly clear and sunny.
Inland lay the most beautiful
landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of
tall hills, the highest peaks
of which were white with glittering snows. Along
the sands by the sea came
towards me a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a
letter. It was from you. It
ran thus: —
"I have got hold of the
earliest and most precious book extant. It was written
before the world began. The
text is easy enough to read; but the notes, which
are very copious and
numerous, are in such minute and obscure characters that I
cannot make them out. I want
you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg
used to wear; not the smaller
pair — those he gave to Hans Christian Andersen —
but the large pair, and these
seem to have got mislaid. I think they are
Spinoza's make. You know he
was an optical-glass maker by profession, and the
best we have ever had. See if
you can get them for me."
When I looked up after
reading this letter, I saw the postman hastening away
across the sands, and I cried
out to him, " Stop ! how am I to send the answer ?
Will you not wait for it
?"
He looked round, stopped, and
came back to me.
"I have the answer
here," he said, tapping his letter-bag, " and I shall deliver
it immediately."
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[Page 20]
"How can you have the
answer before I have written it?" I asked. "You are making
a mistake".
"No", he said.
"In the city from which I come, the replies are all written at
the office, and sent out with
the letters themselves. Your reply is in my bag".
"Let me see it", I
said. He took another letter from his wallet and gave it to
me. I opened it, and read, in
my own handwriting, this answer, addressed to
you:—
"The spectacles you want
can be bought in
use them at once, for they
have not been worn for many years, and they sadly
want cleaning. This you will
not be able to do yourself in
too dark there to see well,
and because your fingers are not small enough to
clean them properly. Bring
them here to me, and I will do it for you."
I gave this letter back to
the postman. He smiled and nodded at me; and I then
perceived to my astonishment
that he wore a camels-hair tunic round his waist. I
had been on the point of
addressing him — I know not why — as Hermes. But I now
saw that he must be John the
Baptist; and in my fright at having spoken with so
great a saint, I awoke.[The
dreamer knew nothing of Spinoza at this time, and
was quite unaware that he was
an optician. Subsequent experience made it clear
that the spectacles in
question were intended to represent her own remarkable
faculty of intuitional and
interpretive perception (Ed)]
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[Page 21]
- 3 - THE COUNSEL OF
PERFECTION
I dreamed that I was in a
large room, and there were in it seven persons, all
men, sitting at one long
table; and each of them had before him a scroll, some
having books also; and all
were grey-headed and bent with age save one, and this
was a youth of about twenty
without hair on his face. One of the aged men, who
had his finger on a place in
a book open before him, said:
"This spirit, who is of
our order, writes in this book, — Be ye perfect,
therefore, as your Father in
heaven is perfect. How shall we understand this
word perfection ?" And
another of the old men, looking up, answered, " It must
mean wisdom, for wisdom is
the sum of perfection." And another old man said,
"That cannot be; for no
creature can be wise as God is wise. Where is he among
us who could attain to such a
state ? That which is part only, cannot comprehend
the whole. To bid a creature
to be wise as God is wise would be mockery."
Then a fourth old man said: —
" It must be Truth that is intended. For truth
only is perfection. "But
he who sat next the last speaker answered, "Truth also
is partial; for where is he
among us who shall be able to see as God sees?"
And the sixth said, " It
must surely be Justice; for this is the whole of
righteousness." And the
old man who had spoken first, answered him: — "Not so;
for justice comprehends
vengeance, and it is written that vengeance is the
Lord's alone."
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[Page 22]
Then the young man stood up
with an open book in his hand and said: —" I have
here another record of one
who likewise heard these words. Let us see whether
his rendering of them can help
us to the knowledge we seek." And he found a
place in the book and read
aloud: —
"Be ye merciful, even as
your Father is merciful."
And all of them closed their
books and fixed their eyes upon me.
- 4- THE CITY OF
I dreamed that I was
wandering along a narrow street of vast length, upon either
hand of which was an unbroken
line of high straight houses, their walls and
doors resembling those of a
prison. The atmosphere was dense and obscure, and
the time seemed that of
twilight; in the narrow line of sky visible far overhead
between the two rows of
house-roofs, I could not discern sun, moon, or stars, or
colour of any kind. All was
grey, impenetrable, and dim. Under foot, between the
paving-stones of the street,
grass was springing. Nowhere was the least sign of
life: the place seemed
utterly deserted. I stood alone in the midst of profound
silence and desolation.
Silence ? No! As I listened, there came to my ears from
all sides, dully at first and
almost imperceptibly, a low creeping sound like
subdued moaning; a sound that
never ceased, and that was so native to the place,
I had at first been unaware
of it. But now I clearly gathered in the sound and
recognised it as expressive
of the intensest physical suffering. Looking
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206
[Page
23] steadfastly towards one
of the houses from which the most distinct of these
sounds issued, I perceived a stream
of blood slowly oozing out from beneath the
door and trickling down into
the street, staining the tufts of grass red here
and there, as it wound its
way towards me. I glanced up and saw that the glass
in the closed and barred
windows of the house was flecked and splashed with the
same horrible dye.
"Some one has been
murdered in this place !" I cried, and flew towards the door.
Then, for the first time, I
perceived that the door had neither lock nor handle
on the outside, but could be
opened only from within. It had, indeed, the form
and appearance of a door, but
in every other respect it was solid and impassable
as the walls themselves. In
vain I searched for bell or knocker, or for some
means of making entry into
the house. I found only a scroll fastened with nails
upon a crossbeam over the
door, and upon it I read the words: — This is the
Laboratory of a Vivisector.
As I read, the wailing sound redoubled in intensity,
and a noise as of struggling
made itself audible within, as though some new
victim had been added to the
first. I beat madly against the door with my hands
and shrieked for help; but in
vain. My dress was reddened with the blood upon
the door step. In horror I
looked down upon it, then turned and fled. As I
passed along the street, the
sounds around me grew and gathered volume,
formulating themselves into
distinct cries and bursts of frenzied sobbing. Upon
the door of every house some
scroll was attached, similar to that I had already
seen. Upon one was inscribed:
— "Here is a husband murdering his wife:" upon
another: — "Here is a
mother beating her child to death:" upon a third: "This is
a slaughter-house."
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[Page 24]
Every door was impassable;
every window was barred. The idea of interference
from without was futile.
Vainly I lifted my voice and cried for aid. The street
was desolate as a graveyard;
the only thing that moved about me was the stealthy
blood that came creeping out
from beneath the doors of these awful dwellings.
Wild with horror I fled along
the street, seeking some outlet, the cries and
moans pursuing me as I ran.
At length the street abruptly ended in a high dead
wall, the top of which was
not discernible; it seemed, indeed, to be limitless
in height. Upon this wall was
written in great black letters —There is no way
out.
Overwhelmed with despair and
anguish, I fell upon the stones of the street,
repeating aloud — There is no
way out.
HlNTON. Jan 1877
- 5- THE BIRD AND THE CAT
[This dream and the next
occurred at a moment when it had almost been decided to
relax the rule of privacy
until then observed in regard to our psychological
experiences, among other
ways, by submitting them to some of the savants of the
Paris Faculté, — a project of
which these dreams at once caused the abandonment.
This was not the only
occasion on which a dream bore a twofold aspect, being a
warning or a prediction,
according to the heed given to it. (ED.)]
I dreamt that I had a
beautiful bird in a cage, and that the cage was placed on
a table in a room where there
was a cat. I took the bird out of the cage and put
him on the table. Instantly
the cat sprang upon
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 25] him and seized him in
her mouth. I threw myself
upon her and strove to wrest away her prey, loading
her with reproaches and
bewailing the fate of my beautiful bird. Then suddenly
some one said to me,
"You have only yourself to blame for this misfortune. While
the bird remained in his cage
he was safe. Why should you have ' taken him out
before the eyes of the cat ?
"
- 6- THE TREASURE IN THE
LIGHTED HOUSE
A second time I dreamt, and
saw a house built in the midst of a forest. It was
night, and all the rooms of
the house were brilliantly illuminated by lamps. But
the strange thing was that
the windows were without shutters, and reached to the
ground. In one of the rooms
sat an old man counting money and jewels on a table
before him. I stood in the
spirit beside him, and presently heard outside the
windows a sound of footsteps
and of men's voices talking together in hushed
tones. Then a face peered in
at the lighted room, and I became aware that there
were many persons assembled
without in the darkness, watching the old man and
his treasure. He also heard
them, and rose from his seat in alarm, clutching his
gold and gems and
endeavouring to hide them. " Who are they ? " I asked him. He
answered, his face white with
terror; "They are robbers and assassins. This
forest is their haunt. They
will murder me, and seize my treasure". "If this be
so", said I, "why
did you build your house in the midst of this forest, and why
are there no shutters to the
windows ? Are you mad, or
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 26] a fool, that
you do not know every one can
see from without into your lighted rooms ? " He
looked at me with stupid
despair. "I never thought of the shutters", said he.
As we stood talking, the
robbers outside congregated in great numbers, and the
old man fled from the room
with his treasure bags into another apartment. But
this also was brilliantly
illuminated within, and the windows were shutterless.
The robbers followed his
movements easily, and so pursued him from room to room
all round the house. Nowhere
had he any shelter. Then came the sound of gouge
and mallet and saw, and I
knew the assassins were breaking into the house, and
that before long, the owner
would have met the death his folly had invited, and
his treasure would pass into
the hands of the robbers.
- 7 - THE
I found myself — accompanied
by a guide, a young man of Oriental aspect and
habit — passing through long
vistas of trees which, as we advanced, continually
changed in character. Thus we
threaded avenues of English oaks and elms, the
foliage of which gave way as
we proceeded to that of warmer and moister climes,
and we saw overhead the
hanging masses of broad-leaved palms, and enormous trees
whose names I do not know,
spreading their fingered leaves over us like great
green hands in a manner that
frightened me. Here also I saw
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 27] huge
grasses which rose over my
shoulders, and through which I had at times to beat
my way as through a sea; and
ferns of colossal proportions; with every possible
variety and mode of tree-life
and every conceivable shade of green, from the
faintest and clearest yellow
to the densest blue-green. One wood in particular I
stopped to admire. It seemed
as though every leaf of its trees were of gold, so
intensely yellow was the tint
of the foliage.
In these forests and thickets
were numerous shrines of gods such as the Hindus
worship. Every now and then
we came upon them in open spaces. They were uncouth
and rudely painted; but they
all were profusely adorned with gems, chiefly
turquoises, and they all had
many arms and hands, in which they held lotus
flowers, sprays of palms, and
coloured berries.
Passing by these strange figures,
we came to a darker part of our course, where
the character of the trees
changed and the air felt colder. I perceived that a
shadow had fallen on the way;
and looking upwards I found we were passing
beneath a massive roof of
dark indigo-coloured pines, which here and there were
positively black in their
intensity and depth. Intermingled with them were firs,
whose great, straight stems
were covered with lichen and mosses of beautiful
variety, and some looking
strangely like green ice-crystals.
Presently we came to a little
broken-down rude kind of chapel in the midst of
the wood. It was built of
stone; and masses of stone, shapeless and moss-grown,
were lying scattered about on
the ground around it. At a little rough-hewn altar
within it stood a Christian
priest, blessing the elements. Overhead, the great
dark sprays of the larches
and cone-laden firs swept its roof.
---------
[Page 28] I sat
down to rest on one of the
stones, and looked upwards a while at the foliage.
Then turning my gaze again
towards the earth, I saw a vast circle of stones,
moss-grown like that on which
I sat, and ranged in a circle such as that of
grasses and climbing plants
of the place had fastened on the crevices of the
stones.
One stone, larger and taller
than the rest, stood at the junction of the circle,
in a place of honour, as
though it had stood for a symbol of divinity. I looked
at my guide, and said,
"Here, at least, is an idol whose semblance belongs to
another type than that of the
Hindus." He smiled, and turning from me to the
Christian priest at the
altar, said aloud, "Priest, why do your people receive
from sacerdotal hands the
bread only, while you yourselves receive both bread
and wine?" And the
priest answered, "We receive no more than they. Yes, though
under another form, the
people are partakers with us of the sacred wine with its
particle. The blood is the
life of the flesh, and of it the flesh is formed, and
without it the flesh could
not consist. The communion is the same".
Then the young man my guide
turned again to me and waved his hand towards the
stone before me. And as I
looked the stone opened from its summit to its base;
and I saw that the strata
within had the form of a tree: and that every minute
crystal of which it was
formed, — particles so fine that grains of sand would
have been coarse in comparison
with them, — and every atom composing its mass,
were stamped with this same
tree-image, and bore the shape of the ice-crystals,
of the ferns and of the
colossal palm-leaves I had seen. And my guide
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 29]
said, "Before these
stones were, the Tree of Life stood in the midst of the
Universe".
And again we passed on,
leaving behind us the chapel and the circle of stones,
the pines and the firs: and
as we went the foliage around us grew more and more
stunted and like that at
home. We travelled quickly; but now and then, through
breaks and openings in the
woods, I saw solitary oaks standing in the midst of
green spaces, and beneath them
kings giving judgment to their peoples, and
magistrates administering
laws.
At last we came to a forest
of trees so enormous that they made me tremble, to
look at them. The hugeness of
their stems gave them an unearthly appearance; for
they rose hundreds of feet
from the ground before they burst out far, far above
us, into colossal masses of
vast-leaved foliage. I cannot sufficiently convey
the impressions of awe with
which the sight of these monster trees inspired me.
There seemed to me something
pitiless and phantom-like in the severity of their
enormous bare trunks,
stretching on without break or branch into the distance
overhead, and there at length
giving birth to a sea of dark waving plumes, the
rustle of which reached my
ears as the sound of tossing waves.
Passing beneath these vast
trees we came to others of smaller growth, but still
of the same type, —
straight-stemmed, with branching foliage at their summit.
Here we stood to rest, and as
we paused I became aware that the trees around me
were losing their colour, and
turning by imperceptible degrees into stone. In
nothing was their form or
position altered; only a cold, grey hue overspread
them, and the intervening
spaces between their stems became filled up, as though
by a cloud which gradually
grew substantial. Presently I raised my eyes,
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page
30] and lo ! overhead were
the arches of a vast cathedral, spanning the sky and
hiding it from my sight. The
tree stems had become tall columns of grey stone;
and their plumed tops, the
carven architraves and branching spines of Gothic
sculpture. The incense rolled
in great dense clouds to their outstretching arms,
and, breaking against them,
hung in floating, fragrant wreaths about their
carven sprays. Looking
downwards to the altar, I found it covered with flowers
and plants and garlands, in
the midst of which stood a great golden crucifix,
and I turned to my guide
wishing to question him, but he had disappeared, and I
could not find him. Then a
vast crowd of worshippers surrounded me, a priest
before the altar raised the
pyx and the patten in his hands. The people fell on
their knees, and bent their
heads, as a great field of corn over which a strong
wind passes. I knelt with the
rest, and adored with them in silence.
- 8- THE ENCHANTED WOMAN
[On the night previous to
this dream, Mrs Kingsford was awoke by a bright light,
and beheld a hand holding out
towards her a glass of foaming ale, the action
being accompanied by the
words, spoken with strong emphasis, You must drink
this. It was not her usual
beverage, but she occasionally yielded to pressure
and took it when at home. In
consequence of the above prohibition she abstained
for that day, and on the
following night received this vision, in order to fit
her for which the prohibition
had apparently been imposed. It was originally
entitled a Vision of the
World’s Fall, on the supposition that it represented
the loss of the Intuition,
mystically called the Fall of the Woman, through the
sorceries of priestcraft.
(Ed)]
The first consciousness which
broke my sleep last night was one of floating, of
being carried swiftly by some
invisible force through a vast space; then, of
being gently lowered; then of
light, until, gradually, I found myself on
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
[Page
31] my feet in a broad
noon-day brightness, and before me an open country.
Hills, hills, as far as the
eye could reach, — hills with snow on their tops,
and mists around their
gorges. This was the first thing I saw distinctly. Then,
casting my eyes towards the
ground, I perceived that all about me lay huge
masses of grey material
which, at first, I took for blocks of stone, having the
form of lions; but as I
looked at them more intently, my sight grew clearer, and
I saw, to my horror, that
they were really alive. A panic seized me, and I tried
to runaway; but on turning, I
became suddenly aware that the whole country was
filled with these awful
shapes; and the faces of those nearest to me were most
dreadful, for their eyes, and
something in the expression, though not in the
form, of their faces, were
human. I was absolutely alone in a terrible world
peopled with lions, too, of a
monstrous kind. Recovering myself with an effort,
I resumed my flight, but, as
I passed through the midst of this concourse of
monsters, it suddenly struck
me that they were perfectly unconscious of my
presence. I even laid my
hands, in passing, on the heads and manes of several,
but they gave no sign of
seeing me or of knowing that I touched them. At last I
gained the threshold of a
great pavilion, not, apparently, built by hands, but
formed by Nature. The walls
were solid, yet they were composed of huge trees
standing close together, like
columns; and
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 32] the roof of the pavilion
was formed by their massive
foliage, through which not a ray of outer light
penetrated. Such light as
there was seemed nebulous, and appeared to rise out of
the ground. In the centre of
this pavilion I stood alone, happy to have got
clear away from those
terrible beasts and the gaze of their steadfast eyes.
As I stood there, I became
conscious of the fact that the nebulous light of the
place was concentrating
itself into a focus on the columned wall opposite to me.
It grew there, became
intenser, and then spread, revealing, as it spread, a
series of moving pictures
that appeared to be scenes actually enacted before me.
For the figures in the
pictures were living, and they moved before my eyes,
though I heard neither word
nor sound. And this is what I saw. First there came
a writing on the wall of the
pavilion: —This is the History of our World. These
words, as I looked at them,
appeared to sink into the wall as they had risen out
of it, and to yield place to
the pictures which then began to come out in
succession, dimly at first,
then strong and clear as actual scenes.
First I beheld a beautiful
woman, with the sweetest face and most perfect form
conceivable. She was dwelling
in a cave among the hills with her husband, and
he, too, was beautiful, more
like an angel than a man. They seemed perfectly
happy together; and their
dwelling was like
sunlight, and repose. This
picture sank into the wall as the writing had done.
And then came out another;
the same man and woman driving together in a sleigh
drawn by reindeer over fields
of ice; with all about them glaciers and snow, and
great mountains veiled in
wreaths of
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
206
[Page 33] slowly moving mist. The sleigh
went at a rapid pace, and its
occupants talked gaily to each other, so far as I
could judge by their smiles
and the movement of their lips. But, what caused me
much surprise was that they
carried between them, and actually in their hands, a
glowing flame, the fervour of
which I felt reflected from the picture upon my
own cheeks. The ice around
shone with its brightness. The mists upon the snow
mountains caught its gleam.
Yet, strong as were its light and heat, neither the
man nor the woman seemed to
be burned or dazzled by it. This picture, too, the
beauty and brilliancy of
which greatly impressed me, sank and disappeared as the
former.
Next, I saw a terrible
looking man clad in an enchanter's robe, standing alone
upon an ice-crag. In the air
above him, poised like a dragon-fly, was an evil
spirit, having a head and
face like that of a human being. The rest of it
resembled the tail of a
comet, and seemed made of a green fire, which flickered
in and out as though swayed
by a wind. And as I looked, suddenly, through an
opening among the hills, I
saw the sleigh pass, carrying the beautiful woman and
her husband; and in the same
instant the enchanter also saw it, and his face
contracted, and the evil
spirit lowered itself and came between me and him. Then
this picture sank and
vanished.
I next beheld the same cave
in the mountains which I had before seen, and the
beautiful couple together in
it. Then a shadow darkened the door of the cave;
and the enchanter was there,
asking admittance; cheerfully they bade, him enter,
and, as he came forward with
his snake-like eyes fixed on the fair woman, I
understood that he wished to
have her for his own, and was even then devising
---------
[Page 34] how to bear her away. And the spirit
in the air beside him seemed busy
suggesting schemes to this
end. Then this picture melted and became confused,
giving place for but a brief
moment to another, in which I saw the enchanter
carrying the woman away in
his arms, she struggling and lamenting, her long
bright hair streaming behind
her. This scene passed from the wall as though a
wind had swept over it, and
there rose up in its place a picture, which
impressed me with a more
vivid sense of reality than all the rest.
It represented a market
place, in the midst of which was a pile of faggots and a
stake, such as were used
formerly for the burning of heretics and witches. The
market place, round which
were rows of seats as though for a concourse of
spectators, yet appeared
quite deserted. I saw only three living beings present,
— the beautiful woman, the
enchanter, and the evil spirit. Nevertheless, I
thought that the seats were
really occupied by invisible tenants, for every now
and then there seemed to be a
stir in the atmosphere as of a great multitude;
and I had, moreover, a
strange sense of facing many witnesses. The enchanter led
the woman to the stake,
fastened her there with iron chains, lit the faggots
about her feet and withdrew
to a short distance, where he stood with his arms
folded, looking on as the
flames rose about her. I understood that she had
refused his love, and that in
his fury he had denounced her as a sorceress. Then
in the fire, above the pile,
I saw the evil spirit poising itself like a fly,
and rising and sinking and
fluttering in the thick smoke. While I wondered what
this meant, the flames which
had concealed the beautiful woman, parted in their
midst, and disclosed a sight
so horrible and unexpected as to thrill me from
---------
[Page 35] head to foot, and curdle my
blood. Chained to the stake there stood,
not the fair woman I had seen
there a moment before, but a hideous monster, — a
woman still, but a woman with
three heads, and three bodies linked in one. Each
of her long arms ended, not
in a hand, but in a claw like that of a bird of
rapine. Her hair resembled
the locks of the classic Medusa, and her faces were
inexpressibly loathsome. She
seemed, with all her dreadful heads and limbs, to
writhe in the flames and yet
not to be consumed by them. She gathered them in to
herself; her claws caught
them and drew them down; her triple body appeared to
suck the fire into itself, as
though a blast drove it. The sight appalled me. I
covered my face and dared
look no more.
When at length I again turned
my eyes upon the wall, the picture that had so
terrified me was gone, and
instead of it, I saw the enchanter flying through the
world, pursued by the evil
spirit and that dreadful woman. Through all the world
they seemed to go. The scenes
changed with marvellous rapidity. Now the picture
glowed with the wealth and
gorgeousness of the torrid zone; now the ice-fields
of the North rose into view;
anon a pine-forest; then a wild sea-shore; but
always the same three flying
figures; always the horrible three-formed harpy
pursuing the enchanter, and
beside her the evil spirit with the dragon-fly
wings.
At last this succession of
images ceased, and I beheld a desolate region, in the
midst of which sat the woman
with the enchanter beside her, his head reposing in
her lap. Either the sight of
her must have become familiar to him and, so, less
horrible, or she had
subjugated him by some spell. At all events, they were
mated at last, and their
offspring lay around them on the stony ground,
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
[Page
36] or moved to and fro.
These were lions, — monsters with human faces, such as
I had seen in the beginning
of my dream. Their jaws dripped blood; they paced
backwards and forwards,
lashing their tails. Then too, this picture faded and
sank into the wall as the
others had done. And through its melting outlines came
out again the words I had
first seen: — This is the History of our World, only
they seemed to me in some way
changed, but how, I cannot tell. The horror of the
whole thing was too strong
upon me to let me dare look longer at the wall. And I
awoke, repeating to myself
the question, " How could one woman become three ? "
HINTON, February 1877.
- 9 - THE BANQUET OF THE GODS
I saw in my sleep a great
table spread upon a beautiful mountain, the distant
peaks of which were covered
with snow, and brilliant with a bright light. Around
the table reclined twelve
persons, six male, six female, some of whom I
recognised at once, the
others afterwards. Those whom I recognised at once were
Zeus, Hera, Pallas Athena,
Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis. I knew them by the
symbols they wore. The table
was covered with all kinds of fruit, of great size,
including nuts, almonds, and
olives, with flat cakes of bread, and cups of gold
into which, before drinking,
each divinity poured two sorts of liquid, one of
which was wine, the other
water. As I was looking on, standing on a step a
little below the top of the
flight which led to the table, I was startled by
seeing Hera suddenly fix her
eyes on me and say,
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 37] " What seest thou at
the lower end of the table
?" And I looked and answered, "I see two vacant
seats". Then she spoke
again and said, " When you are able to eat of our food
and to drink of our cup, you
also shall sit and feast with us." Scarcely had she
uttered these words, when
Athena, who sat facing me, added, "When you are able
to eat of our food and to
drink of our cup, then you shall know as you are
known". And immediately
Artemis, whom I knew by the moon upon her head,
continued, " When you
are able to eat of our food and to drink of our cup, all
things shall become pure to
you, and ye shall be made virgins."
Then I said, "O Immortals,
what is your food and your drink, and how does your
banquet differ from ours,
seeing that we also eat no flesh, and blood has no
place in our repasts ? "
Then one of the Gods, whom at
the time I did not know, but have since recognised
as Hermes, rose from the
table, and coming to me put into my hands a branch of a
fig-tree bearing upon it ripe
fruit, and said, "If you would be perfect, and
able to know and to do all
things, quit the heresy of Prometheus. Let fire warm
and comfort you externally:
it is heaven's gift. But do not wrest it from its
rightful purpose, as did that
betrayer of your race, to fill the veins of
humanity with its contagion,
and to consume your interior being with its breath.
All of you are men of clay,
as was the image which Prometheus made. Ye are
nourished with stolen fire,
and it consumes you. Of all the evil uses of
heaven's good gifts, none is
so evil as the internal use of fire. For your hot
foods and drinks have
consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your nerves,
sealed your senses, and cut
short your lives. Now, you neither see nor hear;
---------
[Page 38] for the fire in your organs
consumes your senses. Ye are all blind and
deaf, creatures of clay. We
have sent you a book to read. Practise its precepts,
and your senses shall be
opened."
Then, not yet recognising
him, I said, "Tell me your name, Lord." At this he
laughed and answered, "I
have been about you from the beginning. I am the white
cloud on the noon-day
sky". "Do you, then", I asked, "desire the whole world to
abandon the use of fire in
preparing food and drink ? "
Instead of answering my
question, he said, "We show you the excellent way. Two
places only are vacant at our
table. We have told you all that can be shown you
on the level on which yoU
stand. But our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree
of Life, are beyond your
reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are
purified and have come up
higher. The conditions are GOD'S; the will is with
you."
These last words seemed to be
repeated from the sky overhead, and again from
beneath my feet. And at the
instant I fell, as if shot down like a meteor from a
vast height; and with the
swiftness and shock of the fall I awoke.
HINTON, Sept. 1877.
[The book referred to was a
volume entitled Fruit and Bread, which had been sent
anonymously on the previous
morning. The fig-tree, which both with the Hebrews
and the Greeks was the type
of intuitional perception, was a special symbol of
Hermes, called by the Hebrews
Raphael. The plural used by the seer included
myself as the partner of her
literary and other studies. The term virgin in its
mystical sense signifies a soul
pure from admixture of matter. Editor]
---------
[Page 39]
- 10 - THE DIFFICULT PATH
Having fallen asleep last
night while in a state of great perplexity about the
care and education of my
daughter, I dreamt as follows.
I was walking with the child
along the border of a high cliff, at the foot of
which was the sea. The path
was exceedingly narrow, and on the inner side was
flanked by a line of rocks
and stones. The outer side was so close to the edge
of the cliff that she was
compelled to walk either before or behind me, or else
on the stones. And, as it was
unsafe to let go her hand, it was on the stones
that she had to walk, much to
her distress. I was in male attire, and carried a
staff in my hand. She wore
skirts and had no staff; and every moment she
stumbled or her dress caught
and was torn by some jutting crag or bramble. In
this way our progress was
being continually interrupted and rendered almost
impossible, when suddenly we
came upon a sharp declivity leading to a steep path
which wound down the side of
the precipice to the beach below. Looking down, I
saw on the shore beneath the
cliff a collection of fishermen's huts, and groups
of men and women on the
shingle, mending nets, hauling up boats, and sorting
fish of various kinds. In the
midst of the little village stood a great crucifix
of lead, so cast in a mould
as to allow me from the elevated position I occupied
behind it, to see that though
in front it looked solid, it was in reality
hollow. As I was noting this,
a voice of some one close at hand suddenly
addressed me; and on turning
my head I found
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 40] standing before me a man
in the garb of a fisherman,
who evidently had just scaled the steep path leading
from the beach. He stretched
out his hand to take the child, saying he had come
to fetch her, for that in the
path I was following there was room only for one.
"Let her come to
us", he added; "she will do very well as a fisherman's
daughter". Being
reluctant to part with her, and not perceiving then the
significance of his garb and
vocation, I objected that the calling was a dirty
and unsavoury one, and would
soil her hands and dress. Whereupon the man became
severe, and seemed to insist
with a kind of authority upon my acceptance of his
proposition. The child, too,
was taken with him, and was moreover anxious to
leave the rough and dangerous
path; and she accordingly went to him of her own
will and, placing her hand in
his, left me without any sign of regret, and I
went on my way alone. Then
lifting my eyes to see whither my path led, I beheld
it winding along the edge of
the cliff to an apparently endless distance, until,
as I gazed steadily on the
extreme limit of my view, I saw the grey mist from
the sea here and there break
and roll up into great masses of slow-drifting
cloud, in the intervals of
which I caught the white gleam of sunlit snow. And
these intervals continually
closed up to open again in fresh places higher up,
disclosing peak upon peak of
a range of mountains of enormous altitude.[Always
the symbol of high mystical
insight and spiritual attainment — Biblically called
the Hill of the Lord and
Mount of God (Ed)]
By a curious coincidence, the
very morning after this dream, a friend, who knew
of my perplexity, called to
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 41] recommend a school in a
certain convent as
one suitable for my child.
There were, however, insuperable objections to the
scheme.
- 11 - A LION IN THE WAY
Owing to the many and great
difficulties thrown in my way, I had been seriously
considering the advisability
of withdrawing, if only for a time, from my course
of medical studies, when I
received the following dream, which determined me to
persevere: —
I found myself on the same
narrow, rugged, and precipitous path described in my
last dream, and confronted by
a lion. Afraid to pass him I turned and fled. On
this the beast gave chase,
when finding escape by flight hopeless, I turned and
boldly faced him. Whereupon
the lion at once stopped and slunk to the side of
the path, and suffered me to
pass unmolested, though I was so close to him that
I could not avoid touching
him with my garments in passing.
[The prognostic was fully
justified by the event. (Ed)]
- 12 - A DREAM OF
DISEMBODIMENT
I dreamt that I was dead, and
wanted to take form and appear to C, in order to
converse with him. And it was
suggested by those about me — spirits like myself,
I suppose — that I might
materialize myself through
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in
[Page 42] the medium of some
man whom they indicated to me.
Coming to the place where he was, I was directed
to throw myself out forward
towards him by an intense concentration of will;
which I accordingly tried to
do, but without success, though the effort I made
was enormous. I can only
compare it to the attempt made by a person unable to
swim, to fling himself off a
platform into deep water. Do all I would, I could
not gather myself up for it;
and although encouraged and stimulated, and assured
I had only to let myself go,
my attempts were ineffectual. Even when I had
sufficiently collected and
prepared myself in one part of my system, the other
part failed me.
At length it was suggested to
me that I should find it easier if I first took on
me the form of the medium.
This I at length succeeded in doing, and, to my
annoyance, so completely that
I materialized myself into the shape not only of
his features, but of his
clothing also. The effort requisite for this exhausted
me to the utmost, so that I
was unable to keep up the apparition for more than a
few minutes, when I had no
choice but to yield to the strain and let myself go
again, only in the opposite
way. So I went out, and mounted like a sudden flame,
and saw myself for a moment
like a thin streak of white mist rising in the air;
while the comfort and relief
I experienced by regaining my light
spirit-condition, were
indescribable. It was because I had, for want of skill,
de-materialized myself
without sufficient deliberation, that I had thus rapidly
mounted in the air.
After an interval I dreamt
that, wishing to see what A would do in case I
appeared to him after my
death, I went to him as a spirit and called him by his
name. Upon hearing my voice
he rose and went to the window
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[Page 43] and looked
out uneasily. On my going
close to him and speaking in his ear, he was much
disturbed, and ran his hand
through his hair and rubbed his head in a puzzled
and by no means pleased
manner. At the third attempt to attract his attention he
rushed to the door and,
calling for a glass, poured out some wine, which he
drank. On seeing this, and
finding him inaccessible, I desisted, thinking it
must often happen to the
departed to be distressed by the inability or
unwillingness of those they
love to receive and recognize them.
- 13 - THE
I saw in my sleep a
cart-horse who, coming to me, conversed with me in what
seemed a perfectly simple and
natural manner, for it caused me no surprise that
he should speak. And this is
what he said: —
“Kindness to animals of the
gentler orders is the very foundation of
civilization. For it is the
cruelty and harshness of men towards the animals
under their protection which
is the cause of the present low standard of
humanity itself. Brutal usage
creates brutes; and the ranks of mankind are
constantly recruited from
spirits already hardened and depraved by a long course
of ill-treatment. Nothing
develops the spirit as much as sympathy. Nothing
cultivates, refines, and aids
it in its progress towards perfection so much as
kind and gentle treatment. On
the contrary, the brutal usage and want of
sympathy with which we meet
at the hands of men,
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[Page 44] stunt our development
and reverse all the currents
of our nature. We grow coarse with coarseness, vile
with reviling, and brutal
with the brutality of those who surround us. And when
we pass out of this stage we
enter on the next depraved and hardened, and with
the bent of our dispositions
such that we are ready by our nature to do in our
turn that which has been done
to us. The greater number of us, indeed know no
other or better way. For the
spirit learns by experience and imitation, and
inclines necessarily to do
those things which it has been in the habit of seeing
done. Humanity will never
become perfected until this doctrine is understood and
received and made the rule of
conduct.”
- 14 - THE LABORATORY
UNDERGROUND
I dreamed that I found myself
underground in a vault artificially lighted.
Tables were ranged along the
walls of the vault, and upon these tables were
bound down the living bodies
of half-dissected and mutilated animals. Scientific
experts were busy at work on
their victims with scalpel, hot iron and forceps.
But, as I looked at the
creatures lying bound before them, they no longer
appeared to be mere rabbits,
or hounds, for in each I saw a human shape, the
shape of a man, with limbs
and lineaments resembling those of their torturers,
hidden within the outward
form. And when they led into the place an old worn-out
horse, crippled with age and
long
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[Page 45] toil in the service of man,
and
bound him down, and lacerated
his flesh with their knives, I saw the human form
within him stir and writhe as
though it were an unborn babe moving in its
mother’s womb. And I cried
aloud — “Wretches! you are tormenting an unborn man!”
But they heard not, nor could
they see what I saw. Then they brought in a white
rabbit, and thrust its eyes
through with heated irons. And as I gazed, the
rabbit seemed to me like a
tiny infant, with human face, and hands which
stretched themselves towards
me in appeal, and lips which sought to cry for help
in human accents. And I could
bear no more, but broke forth into a bitter rain
of tears, exclaiming - “O
blind! blind” not to see that you torture a child, the
youngest of your own flesh
and blood!”
And with that I woke, sobbing
vehemently.
- 15 - THE OLD YOUNG MAN
I dreamed that I was in
and asked leave to introduce
to us a young man, a student of art, whose history
and condition were singular.
They came together in the evening. In the room
where we sat was a kind of
telephonic tube, through which, at intervals, a voice
spoke to me. When the young
man entered, these words were spoken in my ear
through the tube: —
“You have made a good many
diagnoses lately of
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[Page 46] cases of physical
disease; here is a curious
and interesting type of spiritual pathology, the like
of which is rarely met with.
Question this young man.”
Accordingly I did so, and
drew from him that about a year ago he had been
seriously ill of Roman fever;
but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak
on the subject, I questioned
the friend. From him I learnt that the young man
had formerly been a very
proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in
malaria, in consequence of
his remaining in
it necessary to go into the
country, and that the malady had so affected the
nervous system that since his
recovery he had been wholly unlike his former
self. His great aptitude for
artistic work, from which so much had been
expected, seemed to have
entirely left him; he was no longer master of his
pencil; his former faculty
and promise of excellence had vanished. The physician
who had attended him during
his illness affirmed that all this was readily
accounted for by the
assumption that the malaria had affected the cerebral
centers, and in particular,
the nerve-cells of the memory; that such
consequences of severe
continuous fever were by no means uncommon, and might
last for an indefinite
period. Meanwhile the young man was now, by slow and
painful application, doing
his utmost to recover his lost power and skill.
Naturally the subject was
distasteful to him, and he shrank from discussing it.
Here the voice again spoke to
me through the tube, telling me to observe the
young man, and especially his
face. On this I scanned his countenance with
attention, and remarked that
it wore a singularly old look, — the look of a man
advanced in years and
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[Page 47] experience. But that I
surmised to be a not
unusual effect of severe
fever.
“How old do you suppose the
patient to be?” asked the interrogative voice.
“About twenty years old, I
suppose” said I.
“He is a year old,” rejoined
the voice.
“A year! How can that be?”
“If you will not allow that
he is only a year old, then you must admit that he
is sixty-five, for he is
certainly either one or the other.”
This enigma so perplexed me,
that I begged my invisible informant for the
solution of the difficulty,
which was at once vouchsafed in the following terms:
—
“Here is the history of your
patient. The youth who was the proficient and
gifted student, who
astonished his masters, and gave such brilliant indications
of future greatness, is dead.
The malaria killed him. But he had a father, who,
while alive, had loved his
son as the apple of his eye, and whose whole being
and desire centered in the
boy. This father died some six years ago, about the
age of sixty. After his death
his devotion to the youth continued, and as a
spirit, he followed him
everywhere, never quitting his side. So entirely was he
absorbed in the lad and in
his career, that he made no advance in his own
spiritual life, nor, indeed
was he fully aware of the fact that he had himself
quitted the earthly plane.
For there are souls which, having been obtuse and
dull in their apprehension of
spiritual things during their existence in the
flesh, and having neither
hopes not aims beyond the body, are very slow to
realize the fact of their
dissolution, and remain, therefore, chained to the
earth by earthly affections
and interests, haunting the places or persons they
have most affected.
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[Page 48] But the young artist was not
of this order.
Idealist and genius, he was
already highly spiritualized and vitalized even upon
earth, and when death rent
the bond between him and his body, he passed at once
from the atmosphere of carnal
things into a loftier sphere. But at the moment of
his death, the phantom father
was watching beside the son’s sick-bed, and filled
with agony at beholding the
wreck of all the brilliant hopes he had cherished
for the boy, thought only of
preserving the physical life of that dear body,
since the death of the
outward form was still for him the death of all he had
loved. He would cling to it,
preserve it, re-animate it at any cost. The spirit
had quitted it; it lay before
him a corpse. What, then did the father do? With a
supreme effort of desire,
ineffectual indeed to recall the departed ghost, but
potent in its reaction upon
himself, he projected his own vitality into his
son’s dead body, re-animated
it with his own soul, and thus effected the
resuscitation for which he
had so ardently longed. So the body you now behold
is, indeed, the son’s body,
the soul which animates it is that of the father.
And it is a year since this
event occurred. Such is the real solution of the
problem, whose natural
effects the physician attributes to the result of
disease. The spirit which now
tenants this young man’s form had no knowledge of
art when he was so strangely
reborn into the world, beyond the mere rudiments of
drawing which he had learned
while watching his son at work during the previous
six years. What, therefore
seems to the physician to be a painful recovery of
previous aptitude, is, in
fact the imperfect endeavour of a novice entering a
new and unsuitable career.
“For the father the
experience is by no means an unprofitable one. He would
certainly sooner or later,
have
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[Page 49] resumed existence upon earth
in the
flesh, and it is as well that
his return should be under the actual
circumstances. The study of
art upon which he has thus entered is likely to
prove to him an excellent
means of spiritual education. By means of it his soul
may ascend as it has never yet
done; while the habits of the body he now
possesses, trained as it is
to refined and gentle modes of life, may do much to
accomplish the purgation and
redemption of its new tenant. It is far better for
the father that this strange
event should have occurred, than that he should
have remained an earth-bound
phantom, unable to realize his own position, or to
rise above the affection
which chained him to merely worldly things.”
- 16 - THE METEMPSYCHOSIS
I was visited last night in
my sleet by one whom I presently recognized as the
famous Adept and Mystic of
the first century of our era, Apollonius of Tyana,
called the Pagan Christ. He
was clad in a grey linen robe with a hood, like that
of a monk, and had a smooth,
beardless face, and seemed to be between forty and
fifty years of age. He made
himself known to me by asking if I had heard of his
lion. [This was a tame
captive lion, in whom Apollonius is said to have
recognized the soul of the
Egyptian King Amasis, who had lived 500 years
previously. The lion burst
into tears at the recognition, and showed much
misery. (Author’s Note.) ] He
commenced by speaking of Metempsychosis,
concerning which he informed
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[Page 50] me as follows: — “There are
two streams
or currents, and upward and a
downward one, by which souls are continually
passing and repassing as on a
ladder. The carnivorous animals are souls
undergoing penance by being
imprisoned for a time in such forms on account of
their misdeeds. Have you not
heard the story of my lion?” I said yes, but that I
did not understand it,
because I thought it impossible for a human soul to
suffer the degradation of
returning into the body of a lower creature after once
attaining humanity. At this
he laughed out, and said that the real degradation
was not in the penance but in
the sin. “It is not by the penance, but by
incurring the need of the
penance, that the soul is degraded. The man who
sullies his humanity by
cruelty or lust, is already degraded thereby below
humanity; and the form which
his soul assumes afterwards assumes is the mere
natural consequence of that
degradation. He may again recover humanity, but only
by means of passing through
another form than that of the carnivora. When you
were told [The reference is
to an instruction received by her four years
previously, but in sleep, and
not from Apollonius, though from a source no less
transcendental. (Ed.)] that
certain creatures were redeemable or not redeemable,
the meaning was this: They
who are redeemable may, on leaving their present
form, return directly into
humanity. Their penance accomplished in that form,
and in it, therefore, they
are redeemed. But they who are not redeemable, are
they whose sin has been too
deep or too ingrained to suffer them to return until
they have passed through
other lower forms. They are not redeemable therein, but
will be on ascending again.
Others, altogether vile and past redemption, sink
continually lower and lower
down the stream, until
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[Page 51] at length they burn
out. They shall neither be
redeemed in the form they now occupy, nor in any
other.”
*** [ Remembering, on being
told this dream, that Eliphas Levi in his Haute
Magie, had described an
interview with the phantom of Apollonius, which he had
evoked, I referred to the
book, and found that he also saw him with a
smooth-shaven face, but
wearing a shroud (linceul) (Ed.)]
- 17 - THE THREE KINGS
The time was drawing towards
dawn in a wild and desolate region. And I stood
with my genius at the foot of
a mountain the summit of which was hidden in mist.
At a few paces from me stood
three persons, clad in splendid robes and wearing
crowns on their heads. Each
personage carried a casket and a key: the three
caskets differed from one
another, but the keys were all alike. And my genius
said to me, “These are the
three kings of the East, and they journey hither over
the river that is dried up,
to go up into the
I saw that the one who stood
nearest to me on the left hand was a man, and color
of his skin was dark like
that of an Indian. And the second was in form like a
woman, and her complexion was
fair: and the third had the wings of an Angel, and
carried a staff of gold. And
I heard them say one to another, “Brother, what
hast thou in thy casket?” And
the first answered, and the King who bore the
aspect of a woman, answered,
" I am the carp. “I am the Stonelayer,
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[Page 52]
and I carry the implements of
my craft; also a bundle of myrrh for thee and for
me.”I am the Carpenter, and I
bear the instruments of my craft; also a box of
frankincense for thee and for
me.” And the Angel-king answered, “I am the
Measurer, and I carry the
secrets of the living God, and the rod of gold to
measure your work withal.”
Then the first said, “Therefore let us go up into the
hill of the Lord and build
the walls of
mountain. But they had not
taken the first step when the king, whose name was
Stonelayer, said to him who
was called the Carpenter, “Give me first the
implements of thy craft, and
the plan of thy building, that I may know after
what sort thou buildest, and
may fashion thereto my masonry.” And the other
asked him, “What buildest
thou, brother?” And he answered, “I build the Outer
Court,” Then the Carpenter
unlocked his casket and gave him a scroll written
over in silver, and a crystal
rule, and a carpenter’s plane and a saw. And the
other took them and put them
into his casket. Then the Carpenter said to the
Stonelayer, “Brother, give me
also the plan of thy building, and the tools of
thy craft. For I build the
foundation.” But the other
answered, “Nay, my brother, for I have promised the
laborers. Build thou alone.
It is enough that I know thy secrets; ask not mine
of me.” And the Carpenter
answered, “How then shall the
built? Are we not of three
Ages, and is the temple yet perfected?” Then the
Angel spoke, and said to the
Stonelayer, “Fear not, brother: freely hast thou
received; freely give. For
except thine elder brother had been first a
Stonelayer, he
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[Page 53] could not now be a Carpenter.
Art thou not of Solomon,
and he of Christ? Therefore he
hath already handled thy tools, and is of thy
craft. And I also, the
Measurer, I know the work of both. But now is that time
when the end cometh, and that
which hath been spoken in the ear in closets, the
same shall be proclaimed on
the housetops.” Then the first king unlocked his
casket, and gave to the
Carpenter a scroll written in red, and a compass and a
trowel. But the Carpenter
answered him: “It is enough. I have seen, and I
remember. For this is the
writing King Solomon gave into my hands when I also
was a Stonelayer, and when
thou wert of the company of them that labor. For I
also am thy Brother, and that
thou knowest I know also.” Then the third king,
the Angel, spoke again and
said, “Now is the knowledge perfected and the bond
fulfilled. For neither can
the Stonelayer build alone, nor the Carpenter
construct apart. Therefore,
until this day, is the
But now is the time come, and
Lord.”
And there came down a mist
from the mountain, and out of the mist a star. And my
Genius said, “Thou shalt yet
see more on this wise.” But I saw then only the
mist, which filled the
valley, and moistened my hair and my dress; and so I
awoke.
[ For the full comprehension
of the above dream, it is necessary to be
profoundly versed at once in
the esoteric signification of the Scriptures and in
the mysteries of Freemasonry.
It was the dreamer’s great regret that she neither
knew, nor could know, the
latter, women being excluded from initiation. (Ed.)]
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[Page 54]
- 18 - THE ARMED GODDESS
I dreamed that I sat reading
in my study, with books lying about all round me.
Suddenly a voice marvellously
clear and silvery, called me by name. Starting up
and turning, I saw behind me
a long vista of white marble columns, Greek in
architecture, flanking on
either side a gallery of white marble. At the end of
this gallery stood a shape of
exceeding brilliancy, the shape of a woman above
mortal height, clad from head
to foot in shining mail armor. In her right hand
was a spear, on her left arm
a shield. Her brow was hidden by a helmet, and the
aspect of her face was stern,
severe even, I thought, I approached her, and as I
went, my body was lifted up
from the earth, and I was aware of that strange
sensation of floating above
the surface of the ground, which is so common with
me in sleep that at times I
can scarce persuade myself after waking that it has
not been a real experience.
When I alighted at the end of the long gallery
before the armed woman, she
said to me:
“Take off the nightdress thou
wearest.”
I looked at my attire and was
about to answer — “This is not a nightdress,” when
she added, as though
perceiving my thought: —
“The woman’s garb is a
nightdress; it is a garment made to sleep in. The man’s
garb is the dress for the
day. Look eastward!”
I raised my eyes and, behind
the mail-clad shape, I saw the draw breaking,
blood-red, and with great
clouds like
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[Page 55] pillars of smoke rolling up on
either side of the place
where the sun was about to rise. But as yet the sun was
not visible. And as I looked,
she cried aloud, and her voice rang through the
air like the clash of steel:
—
“Listen!”
And she struck her spear on
the marble pavement. At the same moment there came
from afar off, a confused
sound of battle. Cries, and human voices in conflict,
and the stir as of a vast
multitude, the distant clang of arms and a noise of
the galloping of many horses
rushing furiously over the ground. And then, sudden
silence.
Again she smote the pavement,
and again the sounds arose, nearer now, and more
tumultuous. Once more they
ceased, and a third time she struck the marble with
her spear.
Then the noises arose all
about and around the very spot where we stood, and the
clang of the arms was so
close that it shook and thrilled the very columns
beside me. And the neighing
and snorting of horses, and the thud of their
ponderous hoofs flying over
the earth made, as it were, a wind in my ears, so
that it seemed as though a
furious battle were raging all around us. But I could
see nothing. Only the sounds
increased, and became so violent that they awoke
me, and even after waking I
still seemed to catch the commotion of them in the
air. [This dream was shortly
followed by Mrs Kingsford’s anti-vivisection
expedition to
predictive significance it
may have had.]
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[Page 56]
- 19 - THE GAME OF CARDS
I dreamed I was playing at
cards with three persons, the two opposed to me being
a man and a woman with hoods
pulled over their heads, and cloaks covering their
persons. I did not
particularly observe them. My partner was an old man without
hood or cloak, and there was
about him this peculiarity, that he did not from
one minute to another appear
to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a very
young man, the features not
appearing to change in order to produce this effect,
but an aspect of youth and
even of mirth coming into the face as though the
features were lighted from
within. Behind me stood a personage whom I could not
see, for his hand and arm
only appeared, handing me a pack of cards. So far as I
discerned, it was a man’s
figure, habited in black. Shortly after the dream
began, my partner addressed
me, saying,
“Do you play by luck or by
skill?”
I answered” “I play by luck
chiefly; I don’t know how to play by skill. But I
have generally been
lucky." In fact I had already, lying by me, several tricks I
had taken. He answered me: —
“To play by luck is to trust
to without; to play by skill is to trust to within.
In this game, Within goes
further than Without.”
“What are trumps?” I asked.
“Diamonds are trumps,” he
answered.
I looked at the cards in my
hand and said to him: — “I have more clubs than
anything else.”
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[Page 57]
At this he laughed, and
seemed all at once quite a youth. “Clubs are strong
cards, after all,” he said.
“Don’t despise the black suits. I have known some of
the best games ever played
won by players holding more clubs than you have.”
I examined the cards and
found something very odd about them. There were four
suits, diamonds, hearts,
clubs, and spades. But the picture cards in my hand
seemed different altogether
from any I had ever seen before. One was queen of
Clubs, and her face altered
as I looked at it. First it was dark, — almost
dusky, — with the imperial
crown on the head; then it seemed quite fair, the
crown changing to a smaller
one of English aspect, and the dress also
transforming itself. There
was a queen of Hearts, too, in an antique peasant’s
gown, with brown hair, and
presently this melted into a suit of armor which
shone as if reflecting
fire-light in its burnished scales. The other cards
seemed alive likewise, even
the ordinary ones, just like the court-cards. There
seemed to be pictures moving
inside the emblems on their faces. The clubs in my
hand ran into higher figures
than the spades; these came next in number, and
diamonds next. I had no
picture-cards of diamonds, but I had the Ace. And this
was so bright I could not
look at it. Except the two queens of Clubs and Hearts
I think I had no
picture-cards in my hand, and very few red cards of any kind.
There were high figures in
the spades. It was the personage behind my chair who
dealt the cards always. I
said to my partner: — “It is difficult to play at all,
whether by luck or by skill,
for I get such a bad hand dealt me each time.
“That is your fault,” he
said. “Play your best with what you have, and next time
you will get better cards.”
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[Page 58]
“How can that be? I asked.
“Because after each game, the
tricks you take are added to the bottom of the
pack which the dealer holds,
and you get the honors you have taken up from the
table. Play well and take all
you can. But you must put more head into it. You
trust too much to fortune.
Don’t blame the dealer; he can’t see.”
“I shall lose this game,” I
said presently, for the two persons playing against
us seemed to be taking up all
the cards quickly, and the lead never came to my
turn.
“It is because you don’t
count your points before putting down a card,” my
partner said. “If they play
high numbers, you must play higher.”
“But they have all the
trumps,” I said.
“No,” he answered, “you have
the highest trump of all in your own hand. It is
the first and the last. You may
take every card they have with that, for it is
the chief of the whole
series. But you have spades too, and high ones.” (He
seemed to know what I had.)
“Diamonds are better than
spades,” I answered. “And nearly all my cards are
black ones. Besides, I can’t
count, it wants so much thinking. Can’t you come
over here and play for me?”
He shook his head, and I
thought that again he laughed. “No,” he replied, “that
is against the law of the
game. You must play for yourself. Think it out.”
He uttered these words very
emphatically and with so strange an intonation that
they dissipated the rest of
the dream, and I remember no more of it.
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[Page 59]
ATCHAM,
- 20 - THE PANIC-STRUCK
PACK-HORSE
Out of a veil of palpitating
mist there arose before me in my sleep the image of
a colossal and precipitous
cliff, standing sheer up against a sky of cloud and
sea-mist, the tops of the
granite peaks being merged and hidden in the vapor. At
the foot of the precipice
beat a wild sea, tossing and flecked with foam; and
out of the flying spray rose
sharp splinters of granite, standing like
spearheads about the base of
the sold rock. As I looked, something stirred far
off in the distance, like a
fly crawling over the smooth crag. Fixing my gaze
upon it I became aware that
there was at a great height above the sea, midway
between sky and water, a narrow
unprotected footpath winding up and down
irregularly along the side of
the mighty cliff; — a slender, sloping path,
horrible to look at, like a
rope or a thread stretched midair, hanging between
heaven and the hungry foam.
One by one, came towards me along this awful path a
procession of horses, drawing
tall narrow carts filled with bales of
merchandise. The horses moved
along the edge of the crag as though they clung to
it, their bodies aslant
towards the wall of granite on their right, their legs
moving with the precision of
creatures feeling and grasping every step. Like
deer they moved, — not like
horses, — and as they advanced, the carts they drew
swayed behind them, and I
thought every jolt would hurl them over the precipice.
Fascinated I watched, — I
could not choose but watch. At length came a grey
horse, not drawing a cart,
but carrying something on his back, — on a
pack-saddle apparently. Like
the rest he
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[Page 60] came on stealthily, sniffing
every inch of the terrible
way, until, just at the worst and giddiest point he
paused, hesitated, and seemed
about to turn. I saw him back himself into a
crouching attitude against the
wall of rock behind him, lowering his haunches,
and rearing his head in a
strange manner. The idea flashed on me that he would
certainly turn, and then —
what could happen? More horses were advancing, and
two beasts could not possibly
pass each other on that narrow ledge! But I was
totally unprepared for the
ghastly thing that actually did happen. The miserable
horse had been seized with
the awful mountain-madness that sometimes overtakes
men on stupendous heights, —
the madness of suicide. With a frightful scream,
that sounded partly like a
cry of supreme desperation, partly like one of
furious and frenzied joy, the
horse reared himself to his full height on the
horrible ledge, shook his
head wildly, and leaped with a frantic spring into the
air, sheer over the
precipice, and into the foam beneath. His eyes glared as he
shot into the void, a great
dark living mass against the white mist. Was he
speared on those terrible
shafts or rock below, or was his life dashed out in
horrible crimson splashes
against the cliff-side? Or did he sink into the
reeling swirl of the foaming
waters, and die more mercifully in their steel-dark
depths? I could not see. I
saw only the flying form dart through the mist like
an arrow from a bow. I head
only the appalling cry, like nothing earthly ever
heard before; and I woke in a
panic, with hands tightly clasped, and my body
damp with moisture. It was
but a dream — this awful picture; it was gone as an
image from a mirror, and I
was awake and gazing only upon blank darkness.
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[Page
61]
ATCHAM, Sept 15, 1884
- 21 - THE HAUNTED INN
I seemed in my vision to be
on a long and wearisome journey, and to have arrived
at an Inn, in which I was
offered shelter and rest. The apartment given me
consisted of a bedroom and
parlor, communicating, and furnished in an antique
manner, everything in the
rooms appearing to be worm-eaten, dusty and out of
date. The walls were bare and
dingy; there was not a picture or an ornament in
the apartment. An extremely
dim light prevailed in the scene; indeed, I do not
clearly remember, whether,
with the exception of the fire and a night-lamp, the
rooms were illumined at all.
I seated myself in a chair by the hearth; it was
late, and I thought only of
rest. But, presently, I became aware of strange
things going on about me. On
a table in a corner lay some papers and a pencil.
With a feeling of indescribable
horror I saw this pencil assume an erect
position and begin of itself
to write on the paper, precisely as though an
invisible hand held and
guided it. At the same time, small detonations sounded
in different parts of the room;
tiny bright sparks appeared, burst, and
immediately expired in smoke.
The pencil having ceased to write, laid itself
gently down, and taking the
paper in my hand I found on it a quantity of writing
which at first appeared to me
to be in cipher, but I presently perceived that
the words composing as it
were written backwards, from right to left, exactly as
one sees writing reflected on
a looking glass. What was written made a
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[Page 62]
considerable impression on me
at the time, but I cannot now recall it, I know,
however, that the dominant
feeling I experienced was one of horror.
I called the owners of the
inn and related to them what had taken place. They
received my statement with
perfect equanimity, and told me that in their house
this was the normal state of
things, of which, in fact, they were extremely
proud: and they ended by
congratulating me as a visitor much favored by the
invisible agencies of the
place.
“We call them our Lights,”
they said.
“It is true,” I observed,
“that I saw lights in the air about the room, but they
went out instantaneously, and
left only smoke behind them. And why do they write
backwards? Who are They?”
As I asked this question, the
pencil on the table rose again, and wrote thus on
the paper: —
“ksatonoD”
Again horror seized on me,
and the air becoming full of smoke I found it
impossible to breathe. “Let me
out!” I cried, “I am stifled here, — the air is
full of smoke!”
Outside, the people of the
house answered, “you will lose your way; it is quite
dark, and we have no other
rooms to let. And, besides, it is the same in all the
other apartments of the inn.”
“But the place is haunted!” I
cried; and I pushed past them, and burst out of
the house.
Before the doorway stood a
tall veiled figure, like translucent silver. A sense
of reverence overcame me. The
night was balmy, and bright almost as day with
resplendent starlight. The
stars seemed to lean out of heaven; they looked down
on me like living eyes, full
of
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[Page 63] a strange immeasurable
sympathy. I
crossed the threshold, and
stood in the open plain, breathing with rapture and
relief the pure warm air of
that delicious night. How restful, calm, and
glorious was the dark
landscape, outlined in purple against the luminous sky !
And what a consciousness of
vastness and immensity above and around me ! " Where
am I ? " I cried.
The silver figure stood
beside me, and lifted its veil. It was Pallas Athena.
"Under the Stars of the East", she
answered me, " the true eternal Lights of
the World."
After I was awake, a text in
the Gospels was vividly brought to my mind: —
"There was no room for
them in the Inn." What is this Inn, I wondered, all the
rooms of which are haunted,
and in which the Christ cannot be born ? And this
open country under the
eastern night, — is it not the same in which they were "
abiding," to whom that
Birth was first angelically announced ?
ATCHAM, Nov. 5, 1885.
*** [ The solution of the
enigma was received subsequently in an instruction,
also imparted in sleep, in
which it was said, " If Occultism were all, and held
the key of heaven, there
would be no need of Christ."(ED.)]
- 22 - AN EASTERN APOLOGUE.
The following was read by me
during sleep, in an old book printed in archaic
type. As with many other
things similarly read by me, I do not know whether it
is to be found in any book: —
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[Page 64] "After Buddha had been
ten years in
retirement, certain sages
sent their disciples to him, asking him, —
' What dost thou claim to be,
Gautama ?' "
Buddha answered them, ' I
claim to be nothing.'
" Ten years afterwards
they sent again to him, asking the same question, and
again Buddha answered: — ' I
claim to be nothing.'
"Then after yet another
ten years had passed, they sent a third time, asking, '
What dost thou claim to be,
Gautama ?'
"And Buddha replied, ' I
claim to be the utterance of the most high God.'
" Then they said to him:
' How is this, that hitherto thou hast proclaimed
thyself to be nothing, and
now thou declarest thyself to be the very utterance
of God ?'
" Buddha answered: '
Either I am nothing, or I am the very utterance of God, for
between these two all is
silence.'"
ATCHAM, March 5, 1885.
- 23 - A HAUNTED HOUSE INDEED
I dreamt that during a tour
on the Continent with my friend C. we stayed in a
town wherein there was an
ancient house of horrible reputation, concerning which
we received the following
account. At the top of the house was a suite of rooms,
from which no one who entered
at night ever again emerged. No corpse was ever
found; but it was said by
some that the victims were absorbed bodily by the
walls; by others that there
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[Page 65] were in the rooms a number of
pictures in
frames, one frame, however,
containing a blank canvas, which had the dreadful
power, first, of fascinating
the beholder, and next of drawing him towards it,
so that he was compelled to
approach and gaze at it. Then, by the same hideous
enchantment, he was forced to
touch it, and the touch was fatal. For the canvas
seized him as a devil-fish
seizes its prey, and sucked him in, so that he
perished without leaving a
trace of himself, or of the manner of his death. The
legend said further that if
any person could succeed in passing a night in these
rooms and in resisting their
deadly influence, the spell would for ever be
broken, and no one would
thenceforth be sacrificed.
Hearing all this, and being
somewhat of the knight-errant order, C. and I
determined to face the
danger, and, if possible, deliver the town from the
enchantment. We were assured
that the attempt would be vain, for that it had
already been many times made,
and the Devils of the place were always
triumphant. They had the
power, we were told, of hallucinating the senses of
their victims; we should be
subjected to some illusion, and be fatally deceived.
Nevertheless, we were
resolved to try what we could do, and in order to acquaint
ourselves with the scene of
the ordeal, we visited the place in the daytime. It
was a gloomy-looking
building, consisting of several vast rooms, filled with
lumber of old furniture,
worm-eaten and decaying; scaffoldings, which seemed to
have been erected for the
sake of making repairs and then left; the windows were
curtainless, the floors bare,
and rats ran hither and thither among the rubbish
accumulated in the corners.
Nothing could possibly look more desolate and
gruesome. We saw no pictures;
but as we
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[Page 66] did not explore every part of
the rooms, they may have been
there without our seeing them.
We were further informed by
the people of the town that in order to visit the
rooms at night it was
necessary to wear a special costume, and that without it
we should have no chance
whatever of issuing from them alive. This costume was
of black and white, and each
of us was to carry a black stave. So we put on this
attire, — which somewhat
resembled the garb of an ecclesiastical order, — and
when the appointed time came,
repaired to the haunted house, where, after
toiling up the great
staircase in the darkness, we reached the door of the
haunted apartments to find it
closed. But light was plainly visible beneath it,
and within was the sound of
voices. This greatly surprised us; but after a short
conference we knocked. The
door was presently opened by a servant, dressed as a
modern indoor footman usually
is, who civilly asked us to walk in. On entering
we found the place altogether
different from what we expected to find, and had
found on our daylight visit.
It was brightly lighted, had decorated walls,
pretty ornaments, carpets,
and every kind of modern garnishment, and, in short,
bore all the appearance of an
ordinary well-appointed private flat. While we
stood in the corridor,
astonished, a gentleman in evening dress advanced towards
us from one of the reception
rooms. As he looked interrogatively at us, we
thought it best to explain
the intrusion, adding that we presumed we had either
entered the wrong house, or
stopped at the wrong apartment.
He laughed pleasantly at our
tale, and said, "I don't know anything about
haunted rooms, and, in fact,
don't believe in anything of the kind. As for these
rooms, they have for a long
time been let for two or three nights
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[Page 67]
every week to our Society for
the purpose of social reunion. We are members of a
musical and literary
association, and are in the habit of holding conversaziones
in these rooms on certain
evenings, during which we entertain ourselves with
dancing, singing, charades,
and literary gossip. The rooms are spacious and
lofty, and exactly adapted to
our requirements. As you are here, I may say, in
the name of the rest of the
members, that we shall be happy if you will join
us." At this I glanced
at our dresses in some confusion, which being observed by
the gentleman, he hastened to
say: " You need be under no anxiety about your
appearance, for this is a
costume night, and the greater number of our guests
are in travesty." As he
spoke he threw open the door of a large drawing-room and
invited us in. On entering we
found a company of men and women, well-dressed,
some in ordinary evening
attire and some costumed. The room was brilliantly
lighted and beautifully
furnished and decorated. At one end was a grand piano,
round which several persons
were grouped; others were seated on ottomans taking
tea or coffee; and others
strolled about, talking. Our host, who appeared to be
master of the ceremonies,
introduced us to several persons, and we soon became
deeply interested in a
conversation on literary subjects. So the evening wore on
pleasantly, but I never
ceased to wonder how we could have mistaken the house or
the staircase after the
precaution we had taken of visiting it in the daytime in
order to avoid the
possibility of error.
Presently, being tired of
conversation, I wandered away from the group with
which C. was still engaged,
to look at the beautiful decorations of the great
salon, the walls of which
were covered with artistic designs in
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[Page 68]
fresco. Between each couple
of panels, the whole length of the salon, was a
beautiful painting,
representing a landscape or a sea-piece. I passed from one
to the other, admiring each,
till I had reached the extreme end, and was far
away from the rest of the company,
where the lights were not so many or so
bright as in the centre. The
last fresco in the series then caught my attention.
At first it appeared to me to
be unfinished; and then I observed that there was
upon its background no
picture at all, but only a background of merging tints
which seemed to change, and
to be now sky, now sea, now green grass. This empty
picture had, moreover, an odd
metallic colouring which fascinated me; and saying
to myself " Is there
really any painting on it ? " I mechanically put out my
hand and touched it. On this
I was instantly seized by a frightful sensation, a
shock that ran from the tips
of my fingers to my brain, and steeped my whole
being. Simultaneously I was
aware of an overwhelming sense of sucking and
dragging, which, from my hand
and arm, and, as it were, through them, seemed to
possess and envelop my whole
person. Face, hair, eyes, bosom, limbs, every
portion of my body was locked
in an awful embrace which, like the vortex of a
whirlpool, drew me
irresistibly towards the picture. I felt the hideous impulse
clinging over me and sucking
me forwards into the wall. I strove in vain to
resist it. My efforts were
more futile than the flutter of gossamer wings. And
then there rushed upon my mind
the consciousness that all we had been told about
the haunted rooms was true;
that a strong delusion had been cast over us; that
all this brilliant throng of
modern ladies and gentlemen were fiends
masquerading, prepared
beforehand for our coming; that all the beauty and
splendour of our surroundings
were mere glamour; and
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[Page 69] that in reality
the rooms were those we had
seen in the daytime, filled with lumber and rot and
vermin. As I realised all
this, and was thrilled with the certainty of it, a
sudden access of strength
came to me, and I was impelled, as a last desperate
effort, to turn my back on
the awful fresco, and at least to save my face from
coming into contact with it
and being glued to its surface. With a shriek of
anguish I wrenched myself
round and fell prostrate on the ground, face
downwards, with my back to
the wall, feeling as though the flesh had been torn
from my hand and arm. Whether
I was saved or not I knew not. My whole being was
overpowered by the
realisation of the deception to which I had succumbed. I had
looked for something so
different, — darkness, vacant, deserted rooms, and
perhaps a tall, white, empty
canvas in a frame, against which I should have been
on my guard. Who could have
anticipated or suspected this cheerful welcome,
these entertaining literati,
these innocent-looking frescoes ? Who could have
foreseen so deadly a horror
in such a guise? Was I doomed? Should I, too, be
sucked in and absorbed, and
perhaps C. after me, knowing nothing of my fate? I
had no voice; I could not
warn him; all my force seemed to have been spent on
the single shriek I had
uttered as I turned my back on the wall. I lay prone
upon the floor, and knew that
I had swooned.
And thus, on seeking me, C.
would doubtless have found me, lying insensible
among the rubbish, with the
rooms restored to the condition in which we had seen
them by day, my success in
withdrawing myself having dissolved the spell and
destroyed the enchantment.
But as it was, I awoke from my swoon only to find
that I had been dreaming.
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[Page 70]
- 24 - THE SQUARE IN THE HAND
The foregoing dream was
almost immediately succeeded by another, in which I
dreamt that I was concerned
in a very prominent way in a political struggle in
France for liberty and the
people's rights. My part in this struggle was,
indeed, the leading one, but
my friend C. had been drawn into it at my instance,
and was implicated in a
secondary manner only. The government sought our arrest,
and, for a time, we evaded
all attempts to take us, but at last we were
surprised and driven under
escort in a private carriage to a military station,
where we were to be detained
for examination. With us was arrested a man
popularly known as Fou, a
poor weakling whom I much pitied. When we arrived at
the station which was our
destination, Fou gave some trouble to the officials. I
think he fainted, but at all
events his conveyance from the carriage to the
caserne needed the conjoined
efforts of our escort, and some commotion was
caused by his appearance
among the crowd assembled to see us. Clearly the crowd
was sympathetic with us and
hostile to the military. I particularly noticed one
woman who pressed forward as
Fou was being carried into the station, and who
loudly called on all present
to note his feeble condition and the barbarity of
arresting a witless creature
such as he. At that moment C. laid his hand on my
arm and whispered: "Now
is our time; the guards are all occupied with Fou; we
are left alone for a minute;
let us jump out of the carriage and run !" As he
said this
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[Page 71] he opened the carriage door on
the side opposite to the
caserne and alighted in the
street. I instantly followed, and the people
favouring us, we pressed
through them and fled at the top of our speed down the
road. As we ran I espied a
pathway winding up a hill-side away from the town,
and cried, " Let us go
up there; let us get away from the street!" C. answered,
"No, no; they would see
us there immediately at that height, the path is too
conspicuous. Our best safety
is to lose ourselves in the town. We may throw them
off our track by winding in
and out of the streets." Just then a little child,
playing in the road, got in
our way, and nearly threw us down as we ran. We had
to pause a moment to recover
ourselves. " That child may have cost us our
lives," whispered C.,
breathlessly. A second afterwards we reached the bottom of
the street which branched off
right and left. I hesitated a moment; then we both
turned to the right. As we
did so — in the twinkling of an eye — we found
ourselves in the midst of a
group of soldiers coming round the corner. I ran
straight into the arms of one
of them, who the same instant knew me and seized
me by throat and waist with a
grip of iron. This was a horrible moment! The iron
grasp was sudden and solid as
the grip of a vice; the man's arm held my waist
like a bar of steel. " I
arrest you !" he cried, and the soldiers immediately
closed round us. At once I
realised the hopelessness of the situation, — the
utter futility of resistance.
" Vous n’avez pas besoin de me tenir ainsi," I
said to the officer;
"j’irai tranquillement." He loosened his hold and we were
then marched off to another
military station, in a different part of the town
from that whence we had
escaped. The man who had arrested me was a sergeant or
some officer
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[Page 72] in petty command. He took me
alone with him into the
guardroom, and placed before
me on a wooden table some papers which he told me
to fill in and sign. Then he
sat down opposite to me and I looked through the
papers. They were forms, with
blanks left for descriptions specifying the name,
occupation, age, address and
so forth of arrested persons. I signed these, and
pushing them across the table
to the man, asked him what was to be done with us.
"You will be shot",
he replied, quickly and decisively. "Both of us ? " I asked.
"Both", he replied.
" But", said I, "my companion has done nothing to deserve
death. He was drawn into this
struggle entirely by me. Consider, too, his
advanced age. His hair is
white; he stoops, and, had it not been for the
difficulty with which he
moves his limbs, both of us would probably be at this
moment in a place of safety.
What can you gain by shooting an old man such as he
? " The officer was
silent. He neither favoured nor discouraged me by his
manner. While I sat awaiting
his reply, I glanced at the hand with which I had
just signed the papers, and a
sudden idea flashed into my mind. "At least", I
said, "grant me one
request. If my companion must die, let me die first." Now I
made this request for the
following reason. In my right hand, the line of life
broke abruptly halfway in its
length, indicating a sudden and violent death. But
the point at which it broke
was terminated by a perfectly marked square,
extraordinarily clear-cut and
distinct. Such a square, occurring at the end of a
broken line means rescue,
salvation. I had long been aware of this strange
figuration in my hand, and
had often wondered what it presaged. But now, as once
more I looked at it, it came
upon me with sudden conviction that in some way I
was
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[Page 73] destined to be delivered from
death at the last moment, and I
thought that if this be so it
would be horrible should C. have been killed
first. If I were to be saved.
I should certainly save him also, for my pardon
would involve the pardon of
both, or my rescue the rescue of both. Therefore it
was important to provide for
his safety until after my fate was decided. The
officer seemed to take this
last request into more serious consideration than
the first. He said shortly:
" I may be able to manage that for you," and then at
once rose and took up the
papers I had signed. " When are we to be shot ? " I
asked him. "Tomorrow
morning", he replied, as promptly as before. Then he went
out, turning the key of the
guard-room upon me.
The dawn of the next day
broke darkly. It was a terribly stormy day; great black
lurid thunderclouds lay piled
along the horizon, and came up slowly and awfully
against the wind. I looked
upon them with terror; they seemed so near the earth,
and so like living, watching
things. They hung out of the sky, extending long
ghostly arms downwards, and
their gloom and density seemed supernatural. The
soldiers took us out, our
hands bound behind us, into a quadrangle at the back
of their barracks. The scene
is sharply impressed on my mind. A palisade of two
sides of a square, made of
wooden planks, ran round the quadrangle. Behind this
palisade, and pressed up
close against it, was a mob of men and women — the
people of the town — come to
see the execution. But their faces were
sympathetic; an unmistakable
look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with
desperation — for they were a
down-trodden folk — shone in the hundreds of eyes
turned towards us.
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[Page 74] I was the only woman among the
condemned. C. was
there, and poor Fou, looking
bewildered, and one or two other prisoners. On the
third and fourth sides of the
quadrangle was a high wall, and in a certain place
was a niche partly enclosing
the trunk of a tree, cut off at the top. An iron
ring was driven into the
trunk midway, evidently for the purpose of securing
condemned persons for
execution. I guessed it would be used for that now. In the
centre of the square piece of
ground stood a file of soldiers, armed with
carbines, and an officer with
a drawn sabre. The palisade was guarded by a row
of soldiers somewhat sparsely
distributed, certainly not more than a dozen in
all. A Catholic priest in a
black cassock walked beside me, and as we were
conducted into the enclosure,
he turned to me and offered religious consolation.
I declined his ministrations,
but asked him anxiously if he knew which of us was
to die first. You he replied;
"the officer in charge of you said you wished it,
and he has been able to
accede to your request." Even then I felt a singular joy
at hearing this, though I had
no longer any expectation of release. Death was, I
thought, far too near at hand
for that. Just then a soldier approached us, and
led me, bareheaded, to the
tree trunk, where he placed me with my back against
it, and made fast my hands
behind me with a rope to the iron ring. No bandage
was put over my eyes. I stood
thus, facing the file of soldiers in the middle of
the quadrangle, and noticed
that the officer with the drawn sabre placed himself
at the extremity of the line,
composed of six men. In that supreme moment I also
noticed that their uniform
was bright with steel accoutrements. Their helmets
were of steel, and their carbines,
as they raised them and pointed them at me,
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[Page 75] ready cocked, glittered in a
fitful gleam of sunlight with the same
burnished metal. There was an
instant's stillness and hush while the men took
aim; then I saw the officer
raise his bared sabre as the signal to fire. It
flashed in the air; then,
with a suddenness impossible to convey, the whole
quadrangle blazed with an
awful light, — a light so vivid, so intense, so
blinding, so indescribable
that everything was blotted out and devoured by it.
It crossed my brain with
instantaneous conviction that this amazing glare was
the physical effect of being
shot, and that the bullets had pierced my brain or
heart, and caused this
frightful sense of all-pervading flame. Vaguely I
remembered having read or
having been told that such was the result produced on
the nervous system of a
victim to death from firearms. " It is over", I said, "
that was the bullets".
But presently there forced itself on my dazed senses a
sound — a confusion of sounds
— darkness succeeding the white flash — then
steadying itself into gloomy
daylight; a tumult; a heap of stricken, tumbled men
lying stone-still before me;
a fearful horror upon every living face; and then
... it all burst on me with
distinct conviction. The storm which had been
gathering all the morning had
culminated in its blackest and most electric point
immediately overhead. The
file of soldiers appointed to shoot us stood exactly
under it. Sparkling with
bright steel on head and breast and carbines, they
stood shoulder to shoulder, a
complete lightning conductor, and at the end of
the chain they formed, their
officer, at the critical moment, raised his
shining, naked blade towards
the sky. Instantaneously heaven opened, and the
lightning fell, attracted by
the burnished steel. From blade to carbine, from
helmet to breastplate it ran,
smiting every man dead as he stood.
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[Page 76] They
fell like a row of ninepins,
blackened in face and hand in an instant, — in the
twinkling of an eye. Dead.
The electric flame licked the life out of seven men
in that second; not one moved
a muscle or a finger again. Then followed a wild
scene. The crowd, stupefied
for a minute by the thunderbolt and the horror of
the devastation it had
wrought, presently recovered sense, and with a mighty
shout hurled itself against
the palisade, burst it, leapt over it and swarmed
into the quadrangle, easily
overpowering the unnerved guards. I was surrounded;
eager hands unbound mine;
arms were thrown about me; the people roared, and
wept, and triumphed, and fell
about me on their knees praising Heaven. I think
rain fell, my face was wet
with drops, and my hair, — but I knew no more, for I
swooned and lay unconscious
in the arms of the crowd. My rescue had indeed come,
and from the very Heavens!
ROME, April 12, 1887.
DREAM-VERSES
THROUGH THE AGES
WAKE, thou that sleepest!
Soul, awake !
Thy light is come, arise and
shine !
For darkness melts, and dawn
divine
Doth from the holy Orient
break;
Swift-darting down the
shadowy ways
And misty deeps of unborn
Time,
God's Light, God's Day, whose
perfect prime
Is as the light of seven
days.
Wake, prophet-soul, the time
draws near,
The God who knows within thee
stirs
And speaks, for His thou art,
and Hers
Who bears the mystic shield and
spear.
The hidden secrets of their
shrine
Where thou, initiate, didst
adore,
Their quickening finger shall
restore
And make its glories newly
thine.
A touch divine shall thrill
thy brain,
Thy soul shall leap to life,
and lo !
What she has known, again
shall know;
What she has seen, shall see
again;
The ancient Past through
which she came,—
A cloud across a sunset sky,—
A cactus flower of scarlet
dye,—
A bird with throat and wings
of flame;—
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[Page 78]
A red wild roe, whose
mountain bed
Nor ever hound or hunter
knew,
Whose flying footprint dashed
the dew
In nameless forests, long
since dead.
And ever thus in ceaseless
roll
The wheels of Destiny and
Time
Through changing form and age
and clime
Bear onward the undying Soul:
Till now a Sense, confused
and dim,
Dawns in a shape of nobler
mould,
Less beast, scarce human;
uncontrolled,
With free fierce life in
every limb;
A savage youth, in painted
gear,
Foot fleeter than the summer
wind;
Scant speech for scanty needs
designed,
Content with sweetheart,
spoil and spear:
And, passing thence, with
burning breath,
A fiery Soul that knows no
fear,
The arméd hosts of Odin hear
Her voice amid the ranks of
death;
There, where the sounds of
war are shrill,
And clarion shrieks, and
battle roars,
Once more set free, she leaps
and soars
A Soul of flame, aspiring
still !
Till last, in fairer shape
she stands
Where lotos-scented waters
glide,
A Theban Priestess,
dusky-eyed,
Barefooted on the golden
sands;
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[Page 79]
Or, prostrate, in the
Temple-halls,
When Spirits wake, and
mortals sleep,
She hears what mighty Voices
sweep
Like winds along the columned
walls.
A Princess then beneath the
palms
Which wave o'er Afric's
burning plains,
The blood of Afric in thy
veins,
A golden circlet on thine
arms.
By sacred Ganges' sultry
tide,
With dreamy gaze and claspéd
hands
Thou walkst a Seeress in the
lands
Where holy Buddha lived and
died.
Anon, a sea-bleached mountain
cave
Makes shelter for thee, grave
and wan,
Thou solemn, solitary Man,
Who, nightly, by the star-lit
wave
Invokest with illumined eyes
The steadfast Lords who rule
and wait
Beyond the heavens and Time
and fate.
Until the perfect Dawn shall
rise,
And oracles, through ages
dumb,
Shall wake, and holy forms
shall shine
On mountain peaks in light
divine,
When mortals bid God's
kingdom come !
So turns the wheel of thy
[keen] soul;
From birth to birth her
ruling stars,
Swift Mercury and fiery Mars,
In ever changing orbits roll!
PARIS, May 1880.
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[Page 80]
FRAGMENT - 1 -
A jarring note, a chord amiss
—
The music's sweeter after,
Like wrangling ended with a
kiss,
Or tears, with silver
laughter.
The high gods have no joys
like these,
So sweet in human story;
No tempest rends their
tranquil seas
Beyond the sunset glory.
The whirling wheels of Time
and Fate
FRAGMENT 2
[These are not properly
dream-verses, having been suddenly presented to the
waking vision one day in
Paris while gazing at the bright sky. (Ed)]
I thank Thee, Lord, who hast
through devious ways
Led me to know Thy Praise,
And to this Wildernesse
Hast brought me out, Thine
Israel to blesse.
If should faint with Thirst,
or weary, sink,
To these my Soule is Drink,
To these the Majick Rod
Is Life, and mine is hid with
Christ in God.
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[Page 81]
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Eyes of the dawning in heaven
?
Sparks from the opening of
hell ?
Gleams from the altar-lamps
seven ?
Can you tell ?
Is it the glare of a fire ?
Is it the breaking of day ?
Birth-lights, or funeral
pyre?
Who shall say ?
April 19, 1886.
WITH THE GODS
Sweet lengths of shore with
sea between,
Sweet gleams of tender blue
and green,
Sweet wind caressive and
unseen,
Soft breathing from the deep;
What joy have I in all sweet
things;
How clear and bright my
spirit sings;
Rising aloft on mystic wings;
While sense and body sleep.
In some such dream of grace
and light,
My soul shall pass into the
sight
Of the dear Gods who in the
height
Of inward being dwell;
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[Page 82]
And joyful at Her perfect
feet
Whom most of all I long to
greet,
My soul shall lie in meadow
sweet
All white with asphodel.
August 31, 1887 [Pages 83 -
85]
PART II
DREAM-STORIES
- 1 - A VILLAGE OF SEERS
A CHRISTMAS STORY
A DAY or two before
Christmas, a few years since, I found myself compelled by
business to leave England for
the Continent.
I am an American, junior
partner in a London mercantile house having a large
Swiss connection; and a
transaction — needless to specify here — required
immediate and personal
supervision abroad, at a season of the year when I would
gladly have kept festival in
London with my friends. But my journey was destined
to bring me an adventure of a
very remarkable character, which made me full
amends for the loss of
Christmas cheer at home.
I crossed the Channel at
night from Dover to Calais. The passage was bleak and
snowy, and the passengers
were very few. On board the steamboat I remarked one
traveller whose appearance
and manner struck me as altogether unusual and
interesting, and I deemed it
by no means a disagreeable circumstance that, on
arriving at Calais, this man
entered the compartment of the railway carriage in
which I had already seated
myself.
So far as the dim light
permitted me a glimpse of the
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[Page 86] stranger's face,
I judged him to be about
fifty years of age. The features were delicate and
refined in type, the eyes
dark and deep-sunken, but full of intelligence and
thought, and the whole aspect
of the man denoted good birth, a nature given to
study and meditation, and a
life of much sorrowful experience.
Two other travellers occupied
our carriage until Amiens was reached. They then
left us, and the interesting
stranger and I remained alone together.
" A bitter night",
I said to him, as I drew up the window, " and the worst of it
is yet to come ! The early
hours of dawn are always the coldest".
" I suppose so," he
answered in a grave voice. The voice impressed me as
strongly as the face; it was
subdued and restrained, the voice of a man
undergoing great mental
suffering.
" You will find Paris
bleak at this season of the year", I continued, longing to
make him talk. " It was
colder there last winter than in London."
" I do not stay in
Paris," he replied, " save to breakfast."
"Indeed; that is my
case. I am going on to Bâle."
" And I also", he
said, " and further yet".
Then he turned his face to
the window, and would say no more. My speculations
regarding him multipled with
his taciturnity. I felt convinced that he was a man
with a romance, and a desire
to know its nature became strong in me. We
breakfasted apart at Paris,
but I watched him into his compartment for Bâle, and
sprang in after him. During
the first part of our journey we slept; but, as we
neared the Swiss frontier, a
spirit of wakefulness took hold of us, and fitful
sentences were exchanged. My
companion, it appeared, intended to
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[Page 87] rest
but a single day at Bâle. He
was bound for far-away Alpine regions, ordinarily
visited by tourists during
the summer months only, and, one would think,
impassable at this season of
the year.
" And you go alone ?
" I asked him. " You will have no companions to join you?"
" I shall have guides",
he answered, and relapsed into meditative silence.
Presently I ventured another
question: "You go on business, perhaps — not on
pleasure ? "
He turned his melancholy eyes
on mine. "Do I look as if I were travelling for
pleasure's sake ? " he
asked gently.
I felt rebuked, and hastened
to apologise. " Pardon me; I ought not to have said
that. But you interest me
greatly, and I wish, if possible, to be of service to
you. If you are going into
Alpine districts on business and alone, at this time
of the year — "
There I hesitated and paused.
How could I tell him that he interested me so much
as to make me long to know
the romance which, I felt convinced, attached to his
expedition ?
Perhaps he perceived what was
in my mind, for he questioned me in his turn. "
And you — have you business
in Bâle ? "
" Yes, and in other
places. My accent may have told you my nationality. I travel
in the interests of the
American firm, Fletcher Bros., Roy, & Co., whose London
house, no doubt, you know.
But I need remain only twenty-four hours in Bâle.
Afterwards I go to Berne,
then to Geneva. I must, however, wait for letters from
England after doing my
business at Bâle, and I shall have some days free."
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[Page
88]
"How many?"
" From the 21st to the
26th."
He was silent for a minute,
meditating. Then he took from his travelling-bag a
porte-feullle, and from the
porte-feuille a visiting-card, which he handed to
me.
" That is my name,"
he said briefly.
I took the hint, and returned
the compliment in kind. On his card I read:
MR CHARLES DENIS ST AUBYN,
Grosvenor Square, London.
St Aubyn's Court, Shrewsbury.
And mine bore the legend:
MR FRANK ROY, Merchants'
Club, W. C.
"Now that we are no
longer unknown to each other," said I, " may I ask, without
committing an indiscretion,
if I can use the free time at my disposal in your
interests ? "
"You are very good, Mr
Roy. It is the characteristic of your nation to be
kind-hearted and readily
interested in strangers." Was this sarcastic? I
wondered. Perhaps; but he
said it quite courteously. " I am a solitary and
unfortunate man. Before I
accept your kindness, will you permit me to tell you
the nature of the journey I
am making? It is a strange one."
He spoke huskily, and with
evident effort. I assented eagerly.
The following, recounted in
broken sentences, and with many abrupt pauses, is
the story to which I
listened:
Mr St Aubyn was a widower.
His only child, a boy twelve years of age, had been
for a year past afflicted
with loss of speech and hearing, the result of a
severe
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[Page 89] typhoid fever, from which he
barely escaped with life. Last
summer, his father, following
medical advice, brought him to Switzerland, in the
hope that Alpine air, change
of scene, exercise, and the pleasure of the trip,
would restore him to his
normal condition. One day father and son, led by a
guide, were ascending a
mountain pathway, not ordinarily regarded as dangerous,
when the boy, stepping aside
to view the snowy ranges above and around, slipped
on a treacherous fragment of
half-detached rock, and went sliding into the
ravine beneath. The height of
the fall was by no means great, and the level
ground on which the boy would
necessarily alight was overgrown with soft herbage
and long grass, so that
neither the father nor the guide at first conceived any
serious apprehensions for the
safety of the boy's life or limbs. He might be
bruised, perhaps even a few
cuts or a sprained wrist might disable him for a few
days, but they feared nothing
worse than these. As quickly as the slippery
ground would permit, they
descended the winding path leading to the meadow, but
when they reached it, the boy
was nowhere to be seen. Hours passed in vain and
anxious quest; no track, no
sound, no clue assisted the seekers, and the shouts
of the guide, if they
reached, as doubtless they did, the spot where the lost
boy lay, fell on ears as dull
and deadened as those of a corpse. Nor could the
boy, if crippled by his fall,
and unable to show himself, give evidence of his
whereabouts by so much as a
single cry. Both tongue and ears were sealed by
infirmity, and any low sound
such as that he might have been able to utter would
have been rendered inaudible
by the torrent rushing through the ravine hard by.
At nightfall the search was
suspended, to be renewed before daybreak with fresh
assistance from the
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[Page 90] nearest village. Some of the
new-comers spoke of a
cave on the slope of the
meadow, into which the boy might have crept. This was
easily reached. It was
apparently of but small extent; a few goats reposed in
it, but no trace of the child
was discoverable. After some days spent in futile
endeavour, all hope was
abandoned. The father returned to England to mourn his
lost boy, and another
disaster was added to the annual list of casualties in the
Alps.
So far the story was sad
enough, but hardly romantic. I clasped the hand of the
narrator, and assured him
warmly of my sympathy, adding, with as little
appearance of curiosity as I
could command: —
"And your object in
coming back is only, then, to — to — be near the scene of
your great trouble ? "
"No, Mr Roy; that is not
the motive of my journey. I do not believe either that
my boy's corpse lies
concealed among the grasses of the plateau, or that it was
swept away, as has been
suggested, by the mountain cataract. Neither hypothesis
seems to me tenable. The bed
of the stream was followed and searched for miles;
and though, when he fell, he
was carrying over his shoulder a flask and a thick
fur-lined cloak, — for we
expected cold on the heights, and went provided
against it, — not a fragment
of anything belonging to him was found. Had he
fallen into the torrent, it
is impossible his clothing should not have become
detached from the body and
caught by the innumerable rocks in the shallow parts
of the stream. But that is
not all. I have another reason for the belief I
cherish." He leaned forward,
and added in firmer and slower tones: " I am
convinced that my boy still
lives, for — / have seen him"
" You have seen him
!" I cried.
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[Page 91]
"Yes; again and again —
in dreams. And always in the same way, and with the same
look. He stands before me,
beckoning to me, and making signs that I should come
and help him. Not once or
twice only, but many times, night after night I have
seen the same thing!"
Poor father! Poor desolate
man! Not the first driven distraught by grief; not
the first deluded by the
shadows of love and longing !
" You think I am
deceived by hallucinations," he said, watching my face. " It is
you who are misled by the
scientific idiots of the day, the wiseacres who teach
us to believe, whenever soul
speaks to soul, that the highest and holiest
communion attainable by man
is the product of physical disease! Forgive me the
energy of my words; but had
you loved and lost your beloved — wife and child —
as I have done, you would
comprehend the contempt and anger with which I regard
those modern teachers whose
cold and ghastly doctrines give the lie, not only to
all human hopes and
aspirations towards the higher life, but also to the
possibility of that very
progress from lower to nobler forms which is the basis
of their own philosophy, and
to the conception of which the idea of the soul and
of love are essential ! Evolution
pre-supposes possible perfecting, and the
conscious adaptation of means
to ends in order to attain it. And both the ideal
itself and the endeavour to
reach it are incomprehensible without desire, which
is love, and whose seat is in
the interior self, the living soul — the maker of
the outward form ! "
He was roused from his
melancholy now, and spoke connectedly and with
enthusiasm. I was about to
reassure him in regard to my own philosophical
convictions,
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[Page 92] the soundness of which he
seemed to question, when his
voice sank again, and he
added earnestly: —
" I tell you I have seen
my boy, and that I know he lives, — not in any far-off
sphere beyond the grave, but
here on earth, among living men ! Twice since his
loss I have returned from
England to seek him, in obedience to the vision, but
in vain, and I have gone back
home to dream the same dream. But — only last week
— I heard a wonderful story.
It was told me by a friend who is a great
traveller, and who has but
just returned from a lengthened tour in the south. I
met him at my club, by
accident, as unthinking persons say. He told me that
there exists, buried away out
of common sight and knowledge, in the bosom of the
Swiss Alps, a little village
whose inhabitants possess, in varying degrees, a
marvellous and priceless
faculty. Almost all the dwellers in this village are
mutually related, either
bearing the same ancestral name, or being branches from
one original stock. The
founder of this community was a blind man, who, by some
unexplained good fortune,
acquired or became endowed with the psychic faculty
called second sight, or
clairvoyance. This faculty, it appears, is now the
hereditary property of the
whole village, more developed in the blind man's
immediate heirs than in his
remoter relatives; but, strange to say, it is a
faculty which, for a reason
connected with the history of its acquirement, they
enjoy only once a year, and
that is on Christmas Eve. I know well," continued Mr
St Aubyn, "all you have
it in your mind to say. Doubtless, you would hint to me
that the narrator of the tale
was amusing himself with my credulity; or that
these Alpine villagers, if
they exist, are not clairvoyants, but charlatans
trading on the
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[Page 93] folly of the curious, or even
that the whole story is a
chimera of my own dreaming
brain. I am willing that, if it please you, you
should accept any of these
hypotheses. As for me, in my sorrow and despair, I am
resolved to leave no means
untried to recover my boy; and it happens that the
village in question is not
far from the scene of the disaster which deprived me
of him. A strange hope — a
confidence even — grows in my heart as I approach the
end of my journey. I believe
I am about to verify the truth of my friend's
story, and that, through the
wonderful faculty possessed by these Alpine
peasants, the promise of my
visions will be realized."
His voice broke again, he
ceased speaking, and turned his face away from me. I
was greatly moved, and
anxious to impress him with a belief in the sincerity of
my sympathy, and in my
readiness to accept the truth of the tale he had
repeated.
"Do not think", I
said with some warmth, " that I am disposed to make light of
what you tell me, strange
though it sounds. Out in the West, where I come from,
I heard, when a boy, many a
story at least as curious as yours. In our wild
country, odd things chance at
times, and queer circumstances, they say, happen
in out of the way tracks in
forest and prairie; — aye, and there are strange
creatures that haunt the
bush, some tell, in places where no human foot is wont
to tread. So that nothing of
this sort comes upon me with an air of newness, at
least! I mayn't quite trust
it, as you do, but I am no scoffer. Look, now, Mr St
Aubyn, I have a proposal to make.
You are alone, and purpose undertaking a
bitter and, it may be, a
perilous journey in mountain ground at this season.
What say you to
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[Page 94] taking me along with you ? May
be, I shall prove of
some use; and at any rate,
your adventure and your story interest me greatly !"
I was quite tremulous with
apprehension lest he should refuse my request, but he
did not. He looked earnestly
and even fixedly at me for a minute, then silently
held out his hand and grasped
mine with energy. It was a sealed compact. After
that we considered ourselves
comrades, and continued our journey together.
Our day's rest at Bâle being
over, and the business which concerned me there
transacted, we followed the
route indicated by Mr St Aubyn, and on the evening
of the 22nd of December
arrived at a little hill station, where we found a guide
who promised to conduct us
the next morning to the village we sought. Sunrise
found us on our way, and a
tramp of several weary hours, with occasional breaks
for rest and refreshment,
brought us at last to the desired spot.
It was a quaint, picturesque
little hamlet, embosomed in a mountain recess, a
sheltered oasis in the midst
of a wind-swept, snow-covered region. The usual
Swiss trade of wood-carving
appeared to be the principal occupation of the
community. The single narrow
street was thronged with goats, whose jingling
many-toned bells made an
incessant and agreeable symphony. Under the projecting
roofs of the log-built
châlets bundles of dried herbs swung in the frosty air;
stacks of fir-wood, handy for
use, were piled about the doorways, and here and
there we noticed a huge dog of
the St Bernard breed, with solemn face, and
massive paws that left tracks
like a lion's in the fresh-fallen snow. A rosy
afternoon-radiance glorified
the surrounding mountains and warmed the aspect of
the little village as we
entered it. It was not
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[Page 95] more than three
o'clock, yet already the sun
drew near the hill-tops, and in a short space he
would sink behind them and
leave the valleys immersed in twilight. Inn or
hostelry proper there was
none in this out of the world recess, but the peasants
were right willing to
entertain us, and the owner of the largest châlet in the
place speedily made ready the
necessary board and lodging. Supper — of goat's
milk cheese, coarse bread,
honey, and drink purporting to be coffee — being
concluded, the villagers
began to drop in by twos and threes to have a look at
us; and presently, at the
invitation of our host, we all drew our stools around
the pine-wood fire, and
partook of a strange beverage served hot with sugar and
toast, tasting not unlike
elderberry wine. Meanwhile my English friend, more
conversant than myself with
the curiously mingled French and German patois of
the district, plunged into
the narration of his trouble, and ended with a frank
and pathetic appeal to those
present, that if there were any truth in the tale
he had heard regarding the
annual clairvoyance of the villagers, they would
consent to use their powers
in his service.
Probably they had never been
so appealed to before. When my friend had finished
speaking, silence, broken
only by a few half-audible whispers, fell on the
group. I began to fear that,
after all, he had been either misinformed or
misunderstood, and was
preparing to help him out with an explanation to the best
of my ability, when a man
sitting in the chimney-corner rose and said that, if
we pleased, he would fetch
the grandsons of the original seer, who would give us
the fullest information possible
on the subject of our inquiry. This
announcement was encouraging,
and we assented with joy. He left the châlet, and
shortly afterwards returned
with two
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[Page 95] stalwart and
intelligent-looking
men of about thirty and
thirty-five respectively, accompanied by a couple of St
Bernards, the most
magnificent dogs I had ever seen. I was reassured instantly,
for the faces of these two
peasants were certainly not those of rogues or fools.
They advanced to the centre
of the assembly, now numbering some twenty persons,
men and women, and were duly
introduced to us by our host as Theodor and
Augustin Raoul. A wooden
bench by the hearth was accorded them, the great dogs
couched at their feet, pipes
were lit here and there among the circle; and the
scene, embellished by the
ruddy glow of the flaming pine-logs, the unfamiliar
costume of the peasantry, the
quaint furniture of the chalet-kitchen in which we
sat, and enhanced by the
strange circumstances of our journey and the yet
stranger story now recounted
by the two Raouls, became to my mind every moment
more romantic and
unworld-like. But the intent and strained expression of St
Aubyn's features as he bent
eagerly forward, hanging as if for life or death on
the words which the brothers
poured forth, reminded me that, in one respect at
least, the spectacle before
me presented a painful reality, and that for this
desolate and lonely man every
word of the Christmas tale told that evening was
pregnant with import of the
deepest and most serious kind. Here, in English
guise, is the legend of the
Alpine seer, recounted with much gesticulation and
rugged dramatic force by his
grandsons, the younger occasionally interpolating
details which the elder
forgot, confirming the data, and echoing with a sonorous
interjection the exclamations
of the listeners.
Augustin Franz Raoul, the
grandfather of the men who addressed us, originally
differed in no respect, save
that
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[Page 97] of blindness, from ordinary
people.
One Christmas Eve, as the day
drew towards twilight, and a driving storm of
frozen snow raged over the
mountains, he, his dog Hans, and his mule were
fighting their way home up
the pass in the teeth of the tempest. At a turn of
the road they came on a priest
carrying the Viaticum to a dying man who
inhabited a solitary hut in
the valley below. The priest was on foot, almost
spent with fatigue, and
bewildered by the blinding snow which obscured the
pathway and grew every moment
more impenetrable and harder to face. The whirling
flakes circled and danced
before his sight, the winding path was well-nigh
obliterated, his brain grew
dizzy and his feet unsteady, and he felt that
without assistance he should
never reach his destination in safety. Blind Raoul,
though himself tired, and
longing for shelter, listened with sympathy to the
priest's complaint, and
answered, "Father, you know well I am hardly a pious son
of the Church; but if the
penitent dying down yonder needs spiritual consolation
from her, Heaven forbid that
I should not do my utmost to help you to him !
Sightless though I am, I know
my way over these crags as no other man knows it,
and the snow-storm which
bewilders your eyes so much cannot daze mine. Come,
mount my mule, Hans will go with
us, and we three will take you to your
journey's end safe and
sound."
" Son", answered
the priest, "God will reward you for this act of charity. The
penitent to whom I go bears
an evil reputation as a sorcerer, and we all know
his name well enough in these
parts. He may have some crime on his conscience
which he desires to confess
before death. But for your timely help I should not
be able to fight my way
through this
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[Page 98] tempest to his door, and he
would
certainly perish unshriven.”
The fury of the storm
increased as darkness came on. Dense clouds of snow
obscured the whole landscape,
and rendered sky and mountain alike
indistinguishable. Terror
seized the priest; but for the blind man, to whose
sight day and night were
indifferent, these horrors had no great danger. He and
his dumb friends plodded
quietly and slowly on in the accustomed path, and at
length, close upon midnight,
the valley was safely reached, and the priest
ushered into the presence of
his penitent. What the dying sorcerer's confession
was the blind man never knew;
but after it was over, and the Sacred Host had
passed his lips, Raoul was
summoned to his bedside, where a strange and solemn
voice greeted him by name and
thanked him for the service he had rendered.
"Friend", said the
dying man, "you will never know how great a debt I owe you.
But before I pass out of the
world, I would fain do somewhat towards repayment.
Sorcerer though I am by
repute, I cannot give you that which, were it possible,
I would give with all my
heart, the blessing of physical sight. But may God hear
the last earthly prayer of a
dying penitent, and grant you a better gift and a
rarer one than even that of
the sight of your outward eyes, by opening those of
your spirit ! And may the
faculty of that interior vision be continued to you
and yours so long as ye use
it in deeds of mercy and human kindness such as this
!"
The speaker laid his hand a
moment on the blind man's forehead, and his lips
moved silently awhile, though
Raoul saw it not. The priest and he remained to
the last with the penitent;
and when the grey Christmas
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[Page 99] morning broke
over the whitened plain they
left the little hut in which the corpse lay, to
apprise the dwellers in the
valley hamlet of the death of the wizard, and to
arrange for his burial. And
ever since that Christmas Eve, said the two Raouls,
their grandfather found
himself when the sacred time came round again, year
after year, possessed of a
new and extraordinary power, that of seeing with the
inward senses of the spirit
whatever he desired to see, and this as plainly and
distinctly, miles distant, as
at his own threshold. The power of interior vision
came upon him in sleep or in
trance, precisely as with the prophets and sybils
of old, and in this
condition, sometimes momentary only, whole scenes were
flashed before him, the faces
of friends leagues away became visible, and he
seemed to touch their hands.
At these times nothing was hidden from him; it was
necessary only that he should
desire fervently to see any particular person or
place, and that the intent of
the wish should be innocent, and he became
straightway clairvoyant. To
the blind man, deprived in early childhood of
physical sight, this
miraculous power was an inestimable consolation, and
Christmas Eve became to him a
festival of illumination whose annual
reminiscences and
anticipations brightened the whole round of the year. And when
at length he died, the
faculty remained a family heritage, of which all his
descendants partook in some
degree, his two grandsons, as his nearest kin,
possessing the gift in its
completest development. And — most strange of all —
the two hounds which lay
couched before us by the hearth, appeared to enjoy a
share of the sorcerer's
benison ! These dogs, Fritz and Bruno, directly
descended from Hans, had
often displayed strong evidence of lucidity, and under
its influence they had been
known to
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[Page 100] act with acumen and sagacity
wholly beyond the reach of
ordinary dogs. Their immediate sire, Glück, was the
property of a community of
monks living fourteen miles distant in the Arblen
valley; and though the Raouls
were not aware that he had yet distinguished
himself by any remarkable
exploit of a clairvoyant character, he was commonly
credited with a goodly share
of the family gift.
"And the mule ? " I
asked thoughtlessly.
"The mule,
monsieur", replied the younger Raoul, with a smile, "has been dead
many long years. Naturally he
left no posterity."
Thus ended the tale, and for
a brief space all remained silent, while many
glances stole furtively
towards St Aubyn. He sat motionless, with bowed head and
folded arms, absorbed in
thought.
One by one the members of the
group around us rose, knocked the ashes from their
pipes, and with a few brief
words quitted the châlet. In a few minutes there
remained only our host, the
two Raouls, with their dogs, my friend, and myself.
Then St Aubyn found his
voice. He too rose, and in slow tremulous tones,
addressing Theodor, asked, —
"You will have
everything prepared for an expedition tomorrow, in case — you
should have anything to tell
us?”
"All shall be in
readiness, monsieur. Pierre (the host) will wake you by
sunrise, for with the dawn of
Christmas Eve our lucid faculty returns to us, and
if we should have good news
to give, the start ought to be made early. We may
have far to go, and the days
are short.”
He whistled to the great
hounds, wished us good-night,
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[Page 101] and the two
brothers left the house
together, followed by Fritz and Bruno.
Pierre lighted a lantern, and
mounting a ladder in the corner of the room,
invited us to accompany him.
We clambered up this primitive staircase with some
difficulty, and presently
found ourselves in a bed-chamber not less quaint and
picturesque than the kitchen
below. Our beds were both prepared in this room,
round the walls of which were
piled goat's-milk cheeses, dried herbs, sacks of
meal, and other winter
provender.
Outside it was a star-lit
night, clear, calm, and frosty, with brilliant promise
for the coming day. Long
after I was in the land of dreams, I fancy St Aubyn lay
awake, following with
restless eyes the stars in their courses, and wondering
whether from some far-off,
unknown spot his lost boy might not be watching them
also.
Dawn, grey and misty,
enwrapped the little village when I was startled from my
sleep by a noisy chorus of
voices and a busy hurrying of footsteps. A moment
later some one, heavily
booted, ascended the ladder leading to our bedroom, and
a ponderous knock resounded
on our door. St Aubyn sprang from his bed, lifted
the latch, and admitted the
younger Raoul, whose beaming eyes and excited manner
betrayed, before he spoke,
the good tidings in store.
"We have seen him
!" he cried, throwing up his hands triumphantly above his
head. " Both of us have
seen your son, monsieur ! Not half an hour ago, just as
the dawn broke, we saw him in
a vision, alive and well in a mountain cave,
separated from the valley by
a broad torrent. An Angel of the good Lord has
ministered to him: it is a
miracle! Courage, he will be restored to you. Dress
quickly, and come down to
breakfast. Everything is ready for the expedition, and
there is no time to lose!
"
These broken ejaculations
were interrupted by the voice of the elder brother,
calling from the foot of the
ladder:
"Make haste, messieurs,
if you please. The valley we have seen in our dream is
fully twelve miles away, and
to reach it we shall have to cut our way through
the snow. It is bad at this
time of the year, and the passes may be blocked !
Come, Augustin !"
Everything was now hurry and
commotion. All the village was astir; the
excitement became intense.
From the window we saw men running eagerly towards
our châlet with pickaxes,
ropes, hatchets, and other necessary adjuncts of
Alpine adventure. The two
great hounds, with others of their breed, were
bounding joyfully about in
the snow, and showing, I thought, by their
intelligent glances and
impatient behaviour, that they already understood the
nature of the intended day's
work.
At sunrise we sat down to a
hearty meal, and amid the clamor of voices and
rattling of platters, the
elder Raoul unfolded to us his plans for reaching the
valley, which both he and his
brother had recognized as the higher level of the
Arblen, several thousand feet
above our present altitude, and in mid-winter a
perilous place to visit.
"The spot is completely
shut off from the valley by the cataract", said he, "and
last year a landslip blocked
up the only route to it from the mountains. How the
child got there is a mystery
!"
" We must cut our way
over the Thurgau Pass", cried Augustin.
"That is just my idea.
Quick now, if you have
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[Page 103] finished eating, call
Georges and Albert, and take
the ropes with you ! "
Our little party was speedily
equipped, and amid the lusty cheers of the men and
the sympathetic murmurs of
the women, we passed swiftly through the little
snow-carpeted street and
struck into the mountain path. We were six in number,
St Aubyn and myself, the two
Raouls, and a couple of villagers carrying the
requisite implements of
mountaineering, while the two dogs, Fritz and Bruno,
trotted on before us.
At the outset there was some
rough ground to traverse, and considerable work to
be done with ropes and tools,
for the slippery edges of the highland path
afforded scarce any foothold,
and in some parts the difficulties appeared
well-nigh insurmountable. But
every fresh obstacle overcome added a new zest to
our resolution, and, cheered
by the reiterated cry of the two seers, "Courage,
messieurs ! Avançons! The
worst will soon be passed !" we pushed forward with
right good will, and at
length found ourselves on a broad rocky plateau.
All this time the two hounds
had taken the lead, pioneering us with amazing
skill round precipitous corners,
and springing from crag to crag over the icy
ravines with a daring and
precision which curdled my blood to witness. It was a
relief to see them finally
descend the narrow pass in safety, and halt beside us
panting and exultant. All
around lay glittering reaches of untrodden snow,
blinding to look at,
scintillant as diamond dust. We sat down to rest on some
scattered boulders, and gazed
with wonder at the magnificent vistas of glowing
peaks towering above us, and
the luminous expanse of purple gorge and valley,
with the white, roaring
torrents
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[Page 104] below, over which wreaths of
foam-like filmy mist hovered
and floated continually.
As I sat, lost in admiration,
St Aubyn touched my arm, and silently pointed to
Theodor Raoul. He had risen,
and now stood at the edge of the plateau
overhanging the lowland
landscape, his head raised, his eyes wide-opened, his
whole appearance indicative
of magnetic trance. While we looked he turned slowly
towards us, moved his hands
to and fro with a gesture of uncertainty, as though
feeling his way in the dark,
and spoke with a slow dreamy utterance:
"I see the lad sitting
in the entrance of the cavern, looking out across the
valley, as though expecting
some one. He is pallid and thin, and wears a
dark-coloured mantle — a
large mantle — lined with sable fur."
St Aubyn sprang from his
seat. True ! he exclaimed. " It is the mantle he was
carrying on his arm when he
slipped over the pass ! O, thank God for that; it
may have saved his
life!"
"The place in which I
see your boy", continued the mountaineer, "is fully three
miles distant from the plateau
on which we now stand. But I do not know how to
reach it. I cannot discern
the track. I am at fault! " He moved his hands
impatiently to and fro, and
cried in tones which manifested the disappointment
he felt: "I can see no
more! the vision passes from me. I can discover nothing
but confused shapes merged in
ever-increasing darkness !"
We gathered round him in some
dismay, and St Aubyn urged the younger Raoul to
attempt an elucidation of the
difficulty. But he too failed. The scene in the
cave appeared to him with
perfect distinctness; but when he strove to trace the
path which should conduct
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[Page 105] us to it, profound darkness
obliterated the
vision.
"It must be
underground," he said, using the groping action we had already
observed on Theodor's part.
" It is impossible to distinguish anything, save a
few vague outlines of rock.
Now there is not a glimmer of light; all is profound
gloom !"
Suddenly, as we stood
discussing the situation, one advising this, another that,
a sharp bark from one of the
hounds startled us all, and immediately arrested
our consultation. It was
Fritz who had thus interrupted the debate. He was
running excitedly to and fro,
sniffing about the edge of the plateau, and every
now and then turning himself
with an abrupt jerk, as if seeking something which
eluded him. Presently Bruno
joined in this mysterious quest, and the next
moment, to our admiration and
amazement, both dogs simultaneously lifted their
heads, their eyes illumined
with intelligence and delight, and uttered a
prolonged and joyous cry that
reverberated chorus-like from the mountain wall
behind us.
"They know ! They see ! They
have the clue ! " cried the peasants, as the two
hounds leapt from the plateau
down the steep declivity leading to the valley,
scattering the snow-drifts of
the crevices pell-mell in their headlong career.
In frantic haste we resumed
our loads, and hurried after our flying guides with
what speed we could. When the
dogs had reached the next level, they paused and
waited, standing with
uplifted heads and dripping tongues while we clambered
down the gorge to join them.
Again they took the lead; but this time the way was
more intricate, and their
progress slower. Single-file we followed them along a
narrow winding track of
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[Page 106] broken ground, over which
every moment a tiny
torrent foamed and tumbled;
and as we descended the air became less keen, the
snow rarer, and a few patches
of gentian and hardy plants appeared on the craggy
sides of the mountain.
Suddenly a great agitation
seized St Aubyn. "Look ! look!" he cried, clutching
me by the arm; " here,
where we stand, is the very spot from which my boy fell!
And below yonder is the
valley !"
Even as he uttered the words,
the dogs halted and came towards us, looking
wistfully into St Aubyn's
face, as though they fain would speak to him. We stood
still, and looked down into
the green valley, green even in mid-winter, where a
score of goats were browsing
in the sunshine. Here my friend would have
descended, but the Raouls
bade him trust the leadership of the dogs.
" Follow them,
monsieur", said Theodor, impressively; " they can see, and you
cannot. It is the good God
that conducts them. Doubtless they have brought us to
this spot to show you they know
it, and to inspire you with confidence in their
skill and guidance. See! they
are advancing! On ! do not let us remain behind!
Thus urged, we hastened after
our canine guides, who, impelled by the mysterious
influence of their strange
faculty, were again pressing forward. This time the
track ascended. Soon we lost
sight of the valley, and an hour's upward
scrambling over loose rocks
and sharp crags brought us to a chasm, the two edges
of which were separated by a
precipitous gulf some twenty feet across. This
chasm was probably about
eight or nine hundred feet deep, and its sides were
straight and sheer as those
of a well. Our ladders were in requisition,
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[Page 107] now, and with the aid of
these and the ropes, all the members of our party,
human and canine, were safely
landed on the opposite brink of the abyss.
We had covered about two
miles of difficult ground beyond the chasm, when once
more, on the brow of a
projecting eminence, the hounds halted for the last time,
and drew near St Aubyn,
gazing up at him with eloquent exulting eyes, as though
they would have said, "
He whom you seek is here ! "
It was a wild and desolate
spot, strewn with tempest-torn branches, a spot
hidden from the sun by dense
masses of pine foliage, and backed by sharp peaks
of granite. St Aubyn looked
around him, trembling with emotion.
"Shout", cried one
of the peasants; " shout, the boy may hear you ! "
"Alas", answered
the father, "he cannot hear; you forget that my child is deaf
and dumb !"
At that instant, Theodor, who
for a brief while had stood apart, abstracted and
silent, approached St Aubyn
and grasped his hand.
"Shout!" repeated he,
with the earnestness of a command; " call your boy by his
name ! "
St Aubyn looked at him with
astonishment; then in a clear piercing voice obeyed.
"Charlie!" he
cried; "Charlie, my boy ! where are you ? "
We stood around him in dread
silence and expectancy, a group for a picture. St
Aubyn in the midst, with
white quivering face and clasped hands, the two Raouls
on either side, listening
intently, the dogs motionless and eager, their ears
erect, their hair bristling
round their stretched throats. You might have heard
a pin drop on
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[Page 108] the rock at our feet, as we
stood and waited after that
cry. A minute passed thus,
and then there was heard from below, at a great
depth, a faint uncertain
sound. One word only — uttered in the voice of a child,
tremulous, and intensely
earnest: " Father ! "
St Aubyn fell on his knees.
"My God ! my God !" he cried, sobbing; "it is my boy
! He is alive, and can hear
and speak !"
With feverish haste we
descended the crag, and speedily found ourselves on a
green sward, sheltered on
three sides by high walls of cliff, and bounded on the
fourth, southward, by a
rushing stream some thirty feet from shore to shore.
Beyond the stream was a wide
expanse of pasture stretching down into the Arblen
valley.
Again St Aubyn shouted, and
again the child-like cry replied, guiding us to a
narrow gorge or fissure in
the cliff almost hidden under exuberant foliage. This
passage brought us to a turfy
knoll, upon which opened a deep recess in the
mountain rock; a picturesque
cavern, carpeted with moss, and showing, from some
ancient, half obliterated
carvings which here and there adorned its walls, that
It had once served as a crypt
or chapel, possibly in some time of ecclesiastical
persecution. At the mouth of
this cave, with startled eyes and pallid parted
lips, stood a fair-haired
lad, wrapped in the mantle described by the elder
Raoul. One instant only he
stood there; the next he darted forward, and fell
with weeping and inarticulate
cries into his father's embrace.
We paused, and waited aloof
in silence, respecting the supreme joy and emotion
of a greeting so sacred as
this. The dogs only, bursting into the cave, leapt
and
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[Page 109] gambolled about, venting
their satisfaction in sonorous barks and
turbulent demonstrations of
delight. But for them, as they seemed well to know,
this marvellous discovery
would have never been achieved, and the drama which
now ended with so great
happiness, might have terminated in a life-long tragedy.
Therefore we were not surprised
to see St Aubyn, after the first transport of
the meeting, turn to the
dogs, and clasping each huge rough head in turn, kiss
it fervently and with
grateful tears.
It was their only guerdon for
that day's priceless service: the dumb beasts that
love us do not work for gold
!
And now came the history of
the three long months which had elapsed since the
occurrence of the disaster
which separated my friend from his little son.
Seated on the soft moss of
the cavern floor, St Aubyn in the midst and the boy
beside him, we listened to
the sequel of the strange tale recounted the
preceding evening by Theodor
and Augustin Raoul. And first we learnt that until
the moment when his father's
shout broke upon his ear that day, Charlie St Aubyn
had remained as insensible to
sound and as mute of voice as he was when his
accident befell him. Even now
that the powers of hearing and of speech were
restored, he articulated
uncertainly and with great difficulty, leaving many
words unfinished, and helping
out his phrases with gesticulations and signs, his
father suggesting and
assisting as the narrative proceeded. Was it the strong
love in St Aubyn's cry that
broke through the spell of disease and thrilled his
child's dulled nerves into
life ? was it the shock of an emotion coming
unexpected and intense after
all those dreary weeks of futile watchfulness ? or
was the miracle an effect of
the same Divine grace which, by
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[Page 110] means of
a mysterious gift, had
enabled us to track and to find this obscure and unknown
spot ?
It matters little; the spirit
of man is master of all things, and the miracles
of love are myriad-fold. For,
where love abounds and is pure, the spirit of man
is as the Spirit of God.
Little St Aubyn had been
saved from death, and sustained during the past three
months by a creature dumb
like himself: — a large dog exactly resembling Fritz
and Bruno. This dog, he gave
us to understand, came from over the torrent,
indicating with a gesture the
Arblen Valley; and, from the beginning of his
troubles, had been to him
like a human friend. The fall from the hill-side had
not seriously injured, but
only bruised and temporarily lamed the lad, and after
lying for a minute or two a
little stunned and giddy, he rose and with some
difficulty made his way
across the meadow slope on which he found himself,
expecting to meet his father
descending the path. But he miscalculated its
direction, and speedily
discovered he had lost his way. After waiting a long
time in great suspense, and
seeing no one but a few goatherds at a distance,
whose attention he failed to
attract, the pain of a twisted ankle, increased by
continual movement, compelled
him to seek a night's shelter in the cave
subsequently visited by his
father at the suggestion of the peasants who
assisted in the search. These
peasants were not aware that the cave was but the
mouth of a vast and wandering
labyrinth tunnelled, partly by nature and partly
by art, through the rocky
heart of the mountain. A little before sunrise, on the
morning after his accident,
the boy, examining with minute curiosity the
picturesque grotto in which
he had passed the night, discovered in its darkest
corner a
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[Page 111] moss-covered stone behind
which had accumulated a great
quantity of weeds, ivy, and loose
rubbish. Boy-like, he fell to clearing away
these impedimenta and
excavating the stone, until, after some industrious labour
thus expended, he dismantled
behind and a little above it a narrow passage, into
which he crept, partly to
satisfy his love of exploring, partly in the hope that
it might afford him an egress
in the direction of the village. The aperture thus
exposed had not, in fact,
escaped the eye of St Aubyn, when about an hour
afterwards the search for the
lost boy was renewed. But one of his guides, after
a brief inspection, declared
the recess into which it opened empty, and the
party, satisfied with his
report, left the spot, little thinking that all their
labour had been lost by a too
hasty examination. For, in fact, this narrow and
apparently limited passage
gradually widened in its darkest part, and, as little
St Aubyn found, became by
degrees a tolerably roomy corridor, in which he could
just manage to walk upright,
and into which light from the outer world
penetrated dimly through
artificial fissures hollowed out at intervals in the
rocky wall. Delighted at this
discovery, but chilled by the vault-like coldness
of the place, the lad
hastened back to fetch the fur mantle he had left in the
cave, threw it over his
shoulders, and returned to continue his exploration. The
cavern gallery beguiled him
with ever-new wonders at every step. Here rose a
subterranean spring, there a
rudely carved gurgoyle grinned from the granite
roof; curious and intricate
windings enticed his eager steps, while all the time
the death-like and horrible
silence which might have deterred an ordinary child
from further advance, failed
of its effect upon ears unable to distinguish
between the living sounds of
the outer world and the stillness of a
sepulchre.
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[Page 112] Thus he groped and wandered,
until he became aware that the
gloom of the corridor had
gradually deepened, and that the tiny openings in the
rock were now far less
frequent than at the outset. Even to his eyes, by this
time accustomed to obscurity,
the darkness grew portentous, and at every step he
stumbled against some unseen
projection, or bruised his hands in vain efforts to
discover a returning path.
Too late he began to apprehend that he was nearly
lost in the heart of the
mountain. Either the windings of the labyrinth were
hopelessly confusing, or some
débris, dislodged by the unaccustomed concussion
of footsteps, had fallen from
the roof and choked the passage behind him. The
account which the boy gave of
his adventure, and of his vain and long-continued
efforts to retrace his way,
made the latter hypothesis appear to us the more
acceptable, the noise
occasioned by such a fall having of course passed unheeded
by him. In the end,
thoroughly baffled and exhausted, the lad determined to work
on through the Cimmerian
darkness in the hope of discovering a second terminus
on the further side of the
mountain. This at length he did. A faint star-like
outlet finally presented
itself to his delighted eyes; he groped painfully
towards it; gradually it
widened and brightened, till at length he emerged from
the subterranean gulf which
had so long imprisoned him into the mountain cave
wherein he had ever since
remained. How long it had taken him to accomplish this
passage he could not guess,
but from the sun's position it seemed to be about
noon when he again beheld
day. He sat down, dazzled and fatigued, on the mossy
floor of the grotto, and
watched the mountain torrent eddying and sweeping
furiously past in the gorge
beneath his retreat. After
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[Page 113] a while he
slept, and awoke towards
evening faint with hunger and bitterly regretting the
affliction which prevented
him from attracting help.
Suddenly, to his great amaze,
a huge tawny head appeared above the rocky edge of
the plateau, and in another
moment a St Bernard hound clambered up the steep
bank and ran towards the
cave. He was dripping wet, and carried, strapped across
his broad back, a double
panier, the contents of which proved on inspection to
consist of three flasks of
goat's milk, and some half-dozen rye loaves packed in
a tin box.
The friendly expression and
intelligent demeanour of his visitor invited little
St Aubyn's confidence and
reanimated his sinking heart. Delighted at such
evidence of human proximity, and
eager for food, he drank of the goat's milk and
ate part of the bread,
afterwards emptying his pockets of the few sous he
possessed and enclosing them
with the remaining loaves in the tin case, hoping
that the sight of the coins
would inform the dog's owners of the incident. The
creature went as he came,
plunging into the deepest and least boisterous part of
the torrent, which he crossed
by swimming, regained the opposite shore, and soon
disappeared from view.
But next day, at about the
same hour, the dog reappeared alone, again bringing
milk and bread, of which
again the lad partook, this time, however, having no
sous to deposit in the
basket. And when, as on the previous day, his new friend
rose to depart, Charlie St
Aubyn left the cave with him, clambered down the bank
with difficulty, and essayed
to cross the torrent ford. But the depth and
rapidity of the current
dismayed him, and with sinking heart the child returned
to his abode. Every day the
same thing happened, and at length the strange
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[Page
114] life became familiar to
him, the trees, the birds, and the flowers became
his friends, and the great
hound a mysterious protector whom he regarded with
reverent affection and
trusted with entire confidence. At night he dreamed of
home, and constantly visited
his father in visions, saying always the same
words, " Father, I am
alive and well."
"And now",
whispered the child, nestling closer in St Aubyn's embrace, " the
wonderful thing is that
today, for the first and only time since I have been in
this cave, my dog has not
come to me ! It looks, does it not, as if in some
strange and fairy-like way he
really knew what was happening, and had known it
all along from the very
beginning! O father ! can he be — do you think — can he
be an Angel in disguise? And,
to be sure, I patted him, and thought he was only
a dog !"
As the boy, an awed expression
in his lifted blue eyes, gave utterance to this
naïve idea, I glanced at St
Aubyn's face, and saw that, though his lips smiled,
his eyes were grave and full
of grateful wonder.
He turned towards the
peasants grouped around us, and in their own language
recited to them the child's
story. They listened intently, from time to time
exchanging among themselves
intelligent glances and muttering interjections
expressive of astonishment.
When the last word of the tale was spoken, the elder
Raoul, who stood at the
entrance of the cave, gazing out over the sunlit valley
of the Arblen, removed his
hat with a reverent gesture and crossed himself.
"God forgive us
miserable sinners", he said humbly, "and pardon us our human
pride! The Angel of the Lord
whom Augustin and I beheld in our vision,
ministering to the lad, is no
other than the dog Glück who
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[Page 115] lives at
the monastery out yonder !
And while we men are lucid only once a year, he has
the seeing gift all the year
round, and the good God showed him the lad in this
cave, when we, forsooth,
should have looked for him in vain. I know that every
day Glück is sent from the
monastery laden with food and drink to a poor widow
living up yonder over the
ravine. She is infirm and bedridden, and her little
grand-daughter takes care of
her. Doubtless the poor soul took the sous in the
basket to be the gift of the
brothers, and, as her portion is not always the
same from day to day, but
depends on what they can spare from the store set
apart for almsgiving, she
would not notice the diminished cakes and milk, save
perhaps to grumble a little at
the increase of the beggars who trespassed thus
on her pension."
There was silence among us
for a moment, then St Aubyn's boy spoke.
"Father", he asked,
tremulously, "shall I not see that good Glück again and tell
the monks how he saved me,
and how Fritz and Bruno brought you here ?"
" Yes, my child",
answered St Aubyn, rising, and drawing the boy's hand into his
own, "we will go and
find Glück, who knows, no doubt, all that has passed today,
and is waiting for us at the
monastery."
" We must ford the
torrent," said Augustin; " the bridge was carried off by last
year's avalanche, but with
six of us and the dogs it will be easy work."
Twilight was falling; and
already the stars of Christmas Eve climbed the frosty
heavens and appeared above
the snowy far-off peaks.
Filled with gratitude and
wonder at all the strange events of the day we betook
ourselves to the ford, and by
the help of ropes and stocks our whole party
landed
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[Page 116] safely on the valley side.
Another half-hour brought us into
the warm glow of the monk's
refectory fire, where, while supper was prepared,
the worthy brothers listened to
a tale at least as marvellous as any legend in
their ecclesiastical
repertory. I fancy they must have felt a pang of regret
that holy Mother Church would
find it impossible to bestow upon Glück and his
two noble sons the dignity of
canonization.
- 2 - STEEPSIDE
A GHOST STORY
THE strange things I am going
to tell you, dear reader, did not occur, as such
things generally do, to my
great-uncle, or to my second cousin, or even to my
grandfather, but to myself.
It happened that a few years ago I received an
invitation from an old
schoolfellow to spend Christmas week with him in his
country house on the borders
of North Wales, and, as I was then a happy
bachelor, and had not seen my
friend for a considerable time, I accepted the
invitation, and turned my
back upon London on the appointed day with a light
heart and anticipations of
the pleasantest description.
Leaving my City haunts by a
morning train, I was landed early in the afternoon
at the nearest station to my
friend's house, although in this case nearest was
indeed, as it proved, by no
means near. When I reached the inn where I had
fondly expected to find
" flys, omnibuses, and other vehicles obtainable on the
shortest notice," I was
met by the landlady of the establishment,
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[Page 117]
who, with an apologetic
curtsey and a deprecating smile, informed me that she
was extremely sorry to say her
last conveyance had just started with a party,
and would not return until
late at night. I looked at my watch; it was nearing
four. Seven miles, and I had
a large travelling-bag to carry.
"Is it a good road from
here to -----?" I asked the landlady.
"Oh yes, sir; very
fair."
"Well", I said,
"I think I'll walk it. The railway journey has rather numbed my
feet, and a sharp walk will
certainly improve their temperature."
So I courageously lifted my
bag and set out on the journey to my friend's house.
Ah, how little I guessed what
was destined to befall me before I reached that
desired haven! I had gone, I
suppose, about two miles when I descried behind me
a vast mass of dark, surging
cloud driving up rapidly with the wind. I was in
open country, and there was
evidently going to be a very heavy snowstorm.
Presently it began. At first
I made up my mind not to heed it; but in about
twenty minutes after the
commencement of the fall the snow became so thick and
so blinding, that it was
absolutely impossible for me to find my way along a
road which was utterly new to
me. Moreover, with the cloud came the twilight,
and a most disagreeably keen
wind. The travelling-bag became unbearably heavy. I
shifted it from one hand to
the other; I hung it over my shoulder; I put it
under my arm; I carried it in
all sorts of ways, but none afforded me any
permanent relief. To add to
my misfortune, I strongly suspected that I had
mistaken my way, for by this
time the snow was so deep that the footpath was
altogether obliterated. In
this predicament I
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[Page 118] looked out wistfully
across the whitened landscape
for signs of an inn or habitation of some
description where I might put
up for the night, and by good fortune (or was it
bad ?) I at last espied
through the gathering gloom a solitary and not very
distant light twinkling from
a lodge at the entrance of a private road. I fought
my way through the snow as
quickly as possible, and, presenting myself at the
gate of the little cottage,
rang the bell complacently, and flattered myself
that I had at length
discovered a resting-place. An old man with grey hair
answered my summons. Him I
acquainted with my misfortune, and to him I preferred
my request that I might be
allowed a night's shelter in the lodge, or at least
the temporary privilege of
drying myself and mes habillements at his fireside.
The old fellow admitted me
cheerfully enough; but he seemed more than doubtful
as to the possibility of my
passing the night beneath his roof. "Ye see, sir",
he said, "we've only one
small room — me and the missis; and I don't well see
how we're to manage about
you. All the same, sir, I wouldn't advise ye to go on
tonight, for if ye're bound
for Mr ------'s, ye've come a deal out of your way,
and the storm's getting worse
and worse every minute. We shall have a nasty
night of it, sir, and it'll
be a deal too stiff for travelling on foot."
Here the wife, a
hospitable-looking old woman, interposed.
"Willum, don't ye think
as the gentleman might be put to sleep in the room up at
the House, where George slept
last time he was here to see us ? His bed's there
still, ye know. It's a very
good room, sir," she argued, addressing me; " and I
can give ye a pair of
blankets in no time."
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[Page 119]
"But" said I,
"the master of the house doesn't know me. I am a stranger here
altogether."
"Lor! bless ye, sir
!" answered my host, " there ain't nobody in the place. The
house has been to let these
ten years at least to my knowledge; for I've been
here eight, and the house and
the lodge had both been empty no one knows how
long when I come, I rents
this cottage of Mr Houghton, out yonder."
"Oh well", I
rejoined, "if that is the case, and there is nobody's leave save
yours to ask, I'm willing enough
to sleep at the house, and thank you too for
your kindness."
So it was arranged that I
should pass the coming night within the walls of the
empty mansion; and, until it
was time to retire thither, I amused and edified
myself by a friendly chat with
the old man and his spouse, both of whom were
vastly communicative. At ten
o'clock I and my host adjourned to the house, which
stood at a very short
distance from the lodge. I carried my bag, and my
companion bore the blankets
already referred to, a candle, and some firewood and
matches. The chamber to which
he conducted me was comfortable enough, but by no
means profusely furnished. It
contained a small truckle bedstead, two chairs,
and a washstand, but no
attempt at pictures or ornaments of any description.
Evidently it was an impromptu
bedroom.
My entertainer in a few
minutes kindled a cheerful fire upon the old-fashioned
stone hearth. Then, after
arranging my bed and placing my candle on the
mantelpiece, he wished me a
respectful good-night and withdrew. When he was gone
I dragged one of the chairs
towards the fireplace, and sat down to enjoy the
pleasant flicker of the
blaze. I ruminated upon the occurrences of the
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[Page
120] day, and the possible
history of the old house, whose sole occupant I had
thus strangely become. Now, I
am of an inquisitive turn of mind, and perhaps
less apt than most men to be
troubled with that uncomfortable sensation which
those people who are its
victims describe as nervousness, and those who are not,
as cowardice. Another in my
place might have shrunk from doing what I presently
resolved to do, and that was
to explore, before going to rest, at least some
part of this empty old house.
Accordingly, I took up my candle and walked out
into the passage, leaving the
door of my room widely open, so that the
fire-light streamed full into
the entrance of the dark gallery, and served to
guide me on my way along it.
When I had thus progressed for some twenty yards, I
was brought to a standstill
by encountering a large red baize door, which
evidently shut off the wing
in which my room was situated from the rest of the
mansion, and completely
closed all egress from the corridor where I then stood.
I paused a moment or two in
uncertainty, for the door was locked; but presently
my glance fell on an old
rusty key hanging from a nail, likewise rusty, in a
niche of the wall. I
abstracted this key from its resting-place, destroying as I
did so the residences of a
dozen spiders, which, to judge from appearances,
seemed to have thrived
excellently in the atmosphere of desolation which
surrounded them. It was some
time before I could get the clumsy old lock to act
properly, or summon
sufficient strength to turn the key; but at length
perseverance met with its
proverbial reward, and the door moved slowly and
noisily on its hinges. Still
bearing my candle, I went on my way into a second
corridor, which was literally
carpeted with dust, the accumulation probably of
the ten years to which my
host had referred.
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[Page 121]
All round was gloomy and
silent as a sepulchre, save that every now and then the
loosened boards creaked
beneath my tread, or some little misanthropical animal,
startled from his hermitage
by the unwonted sound of my steps, hurried across
the passage, making as he went
a tiny trail in the thick furry dust. Several
galleries branched off from
the mainway like tributary streams, but I preferred
to steer my course down the
central corridor, which finally conducted me to a
large antique-looking
apartment with carved wainscot and curious old paintings
on the panelled walls. I put
the candle upon a table which stood in the centre
of the room, and standing
beside it, took a general survey. There was an old
mouldy-looking bookcase in
one corner of the chamber, with some old mouldy books
packed closely together on a
few of its shelves. This piece of furniture was
hollowed out, crescent-wise,
at the base, and partially concealed a carved oaken
door, which had evidently in
former times been the means of communication with
an adjoining apartment.
Prompted by curiosity, I took down and opened a few of
the nearest books on the
shelves before me. They proved to be some of the very
earliest volumes of the
Spectator, — books of considerable interest to me, — and
in ten minutes I was quite
absorbed in an article by one of our most noted
masters of literature. I drew
one of the queer high-backed chairs scattered
about the room, towards the
table, and sat down to enjoy a feast of reason and a
flow of soul. As I turned the
mildewed page, something suddenly fell with a dull
flop upon the paper. It was a
drop of blood ! I stared at it with a strange
sensation of mingled horror
and astonishment. Could it have been upon the page
before I turned it ? No; it
was wet and bright,
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[Page 122] and presented the
uneven, broken disc which
drops of liquid always possess when they fall from a
considerable height. Besides
I had heard and seen it fall. I put the book down
on the table and looked
upward at the ceiling. There was nothing visible there
save the grey dirt of years.
I looked closely at the hideous blotch, and saw it
rapidly soaking and widening
its way into the paper, already softened with age.
As, of course, after this
incident I was not inclined to continue my studies of
Addison and Steele, I shut
the volume and replaced it on the shelves. Turning
back towards the table to
take up my candle, my eyes rested upon a full-length
portrait immediately facing
the bookcase. It was that of a young and handsome
woman with glossy black hair
coiled round her head, but, I thought, with
something repulsive in the
proud, stony face and shadowed eyes. I raised the
light above my head to get a
better view of the painting. As I did this, it
seemed to me that the
countenance of the figure changed, or rather that a Thing
came between me and it. It
was a momentary distortion, as though a gust of wind
had passed across the
portrait and disturbed the outline of the features; the
how and the why I know not
but the face changed; nor shall I ever forget the
sudden horror of the look it
assumed. It was like that face of phantom
ghastliness that we see
sometimes in the delirium of fever, — the face that
meets us and turns upon us in
the mazes of nightmare, with a look that wakes us
in the darkness, and drives
the cold sweat out upon our forehead while we lie
still and hold our breath for
fear. Man as I was, I shuddered convulsively from
head to foot, and fixed my
eyes earnestly on the terrible portrait. In a minute
it was a mere picture again —
an inanimate
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[Page 123] colored canvas — wearing
no expression upon its
painted features save that which the artist had given to
it nearly a century ago. I
thought then that the strange appearance I had
witnessed was probably the
effect of the fitful candle-light, or an illusion of
my own vision; but now I
believe otherwise. Seeing nothing further unusual in
the picture, I turned my back
upon it, and made a few steps towards the door,
intending to quit this
mysterious chamber of horrors, when a third and more
hideous phenomenon riveted me
to the spot where I stood; for, as I looked
towards the oaken door in the
corner, I became aware of something slowly
filtering from beneath it,
and creeping towards me. O heaven ! I had not long to
look to know what that
something was: — it was blood, — red, thick, stealthy !
On it came, winding its way
in a frightful stream into the room, soddening the
rich carpet, and lying
presently in a black pool at my feet. It had trickled in
from the adjoining chamber,
that chamber the entrance to which was closed by the
bookcase. There were some
great volumes on the ground before the door, — volumes
which I had noticed when I
entered the room, on account of the thick dust with
which they were surrounded. They
were lying now in a pool of stagnant blood. It
would be utterly impossible
for me to attempt to describe my sensations at that
minute. I was not capable of
feeling any distinct emotion. My brain seemed
oppressed, I could scarcely
breathe — scarcely move. I watched the dreadful
stream oozing drowsily
through the crevices of the mouldy, rotting woodwork —
bulging out in great beads
like raindrops on the sides of the door — trickling
noiselessly down the knots of
the carved oak. Still I stood and watched it, and
it crept on slowly, slowly,
like a living thing,
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[Page 124] and growing as it
came, to my very feet. I
cannot say how long I might have stood there,
fascinated by it, had not
something suddenly occurred to startle me into my
senses again; for full upon
the back of my right hand fell, with a sullen, heavy
sound, a second drop of
blood. It stung and burnt my flesh like molten lead, and
the sharp, sudden pain it
gave me shot up my arm and shoulder, and seemed in an
instant to mount into my
brain and pervade my whole being. I turned and fled
from the terrible place with
a shrill cry that rang through the empty corridors
and ghostly rooms like
nothing human. I did not recognise it for my own voice,
so strange it was, — so
totally unlike its accustomed sound; and now, when I
recall it, I am disposed to
think it was surely not the cry of living mortal,
but of that unknown Thing
that passed before the portrait, and that stood beside
me even then in the lonely
room. Certain I am that the echoes of that cry had in
them something inexpressibly
fiendish, and through the deathly gloom of the
mansion they came back,
reverberated and repeated from a hundred invisible
corners and galleries. Now, I
had to pass, on my return, a long, broad window
that lighted the principal
staircase. This window had neither shutters nor
blind, and was composed of
those small square panes that were in vogue a century
ago. As I went by it, I threw
a hasty, appalled glance behind me, and distinctly
saw, even through the blurred
and dirty glass, the figures of two women, one
pursuing the other over the
thick white snow outside. In the rapid view I had of
them, I observed only that
the first carried something in her hand that looked
like a pistol, and her long
black hair streamed behind her, showing darkly
against the dead whiteness of
the landscape. The arms of her pursuer
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were outstretched, as though
she were calling to her companion to stop; but
perfect as was the silence of
the night, and close as the figures seemed to be,
I heard no sound of a voice.
Next I came to a second and smaller window which
had been once boarded up, but
with lapse of time the plank had loosened and
partly fallen, and here I
paused a moment to look out. It still snowed slightly,
but there was a clear moon, sufficient
to throw a ghastly light upon the outside
objects nearest to me. With
the sleeve of my coat I rubbed away the dust and
cobwebs which overhung the
glass, and peered out. The two women were still
hurrying onward, but the
distance between them was considerably lessened. And
now for the first time a
peculiarity about them struck me. It was this, that the
figures were not substantial;
they flickered and waved precisely like flames, as
they ran. As I gazed at them
the foremost turned her head to look at the woman
behind her, and as she did
so, stumbled, fell, and disappeared. She seemed to
have suddenly dropped down a
precipice, so quickly and so completely she
vanished. The other figure
stopped, wrung its hands wildly, and presently turned
and fled in the direction of
the park-gates, and was soon lost in the obscurity
of the distance. The sights I
had just witnessed in the panelled chamber had not
been of a nature to inspire
courage in any one, and I must candidly confess that
my knees actually shook and
my teeth rattled as I left the window and darted up
the solitary passage to the
baize door at the top of it. Would I had never
unlocked that door ! Would
that the key had been lost, or that I had never set
foot in this abominable
house! Hastily I refastened the door, hung up the rusty
key in its niche, and rushed
into my own room, where I dropped into a chair with
a
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[Page 126] deadly faintness creeping
over me. I looked at my hand, where the
clot of blood had fallen. It
seemed to have burnt its way into my flesh, for it
no longer appeared on the
surface, but, where it had been was a round, purple
mark, with an outer ring, like
the scar of a burn. That scar is on my hand now,
and I suppose will be there
all my life. I looked at my watch, which I had left
behind on the mantelpiece. It
was five minutes past twelve. Should I go to bed?
I stirred the sinking fire
into a blaze, and looked anxiously at my candle.
Neither fire nor candles, I
perceived, would last much longer. Before long both
would be expended, and I
should be in darkness. In darkness, and alone in that
house. The bare idea of a
night passed in such solitude was terrible to me. I
tried to laugh at my fears,
and reproached myself with weakness and cowardice. I
reverted to the stereotyped
method of consolation under circumstances of this
description, and strove to
persuade myself that, being guiltless, I had no cause
to fear the powers of evil.
But in vain. Trembling from head to foot, I raked
together the smoldering
embers in the stove for the last time, wrapped my
railway rug around me — for I
dared not undress — and threw myself on the bed,
where I lay sleepless until
the dawn. But oh, what I endured all those weary
hours no human creature can
imagine. I watched the last sparks of the fire die
out, one by one, and heard
the ashes slide and drop slowly upon the hearth. I
watched the flame of the
candle flare up and sink again a dozen times, and then
at last expire, leaving me in
utter darkness and silence. I fancied, ever and
anon, that I could
distinguish the sound of phantom feet coming down the
corridor towards my room, and
that the mysterious Presence I had encountered in
the
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[Page 127] paneled chamber stood at my
bedside looking at me, or that a
stealthy hand touched mine. I
felt the sweat upon my forehead, but I dared not
move to wipe it away. I
thought of people whose hair had turned white through
terror in a few brief hours,
and wondered what colour mine would be in the
morning. And when at last —
at last — the first grey glimmer of that morning
peered through the
window-blind, I hailed its appearance with much the same
emotions as, no doubt, a
traveller fainting with thirst in a desert would
experience upon descrying a
watery oasis in the midst of the burning sands. Long
before the sun arose, I leapt
from my couch, and having made a hasty toilette, I
sallied out into the bleak,
frosty air. It revived me at once, and brought new
courage into my heart.
Looking at the whitened expanse of lawn where last night
I had seen the two women
running, I could detect no sign of footmarks in the
snow. The whole lawn
presented an unbroken surface of sparkling crystals. I
walked down the drive to the
lodge. The old man, evidently an early bird, was in
the act of unbarring his door
as I appeared.
"Halloa, sir, you're up
betimes!" he exclaimed. "Will ye just step in now and
take somethin' ? My ole
woman's agoin' to get out the breakfast. Slept well last
night, sir ? " he
continued, as I entered the little parlour; "the bed is
rayther hard, I know; but, ye
see, it does well enow for my son George when he's
up here, which isna often. Ye
look tired like, this morning; didna get much rest
p'raps ? Ah ! now then, Bess,
gi' us another plate here, ole gal."
I ate my breakfast in
comparative silence, wondering to myself whether it would
be well to say anything to my
host of my recent experiences, since he had
clearly
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[Page 128] no suspicions on the subject;
and, anon, wishing I had
comported myself in that
terrible house with as little curiosity as the son
George, who no doubt was
content to stay where he was put at night, and was not
given to nocturnal excursions
in empty mansions.
"Have you any
idea", said I, at last, "whether there's any story connected with
that place where I slept last
night ? I only ask", added I, with a feeble grin,
like the ghost of a smile
that had been able-bodied once, "because I'm fond of
hearing stories, and because,
as you know, there generally is a legend, or
something of that sort,
related about old family mansions".
"Well, sir",
answered the old man slowly, " I never heard nothin' but then, you
see, I never asked no questions.
We came here eight years agone, and then no one
round remembered a tenant at
the big house. It's been empty somewhere nigh
twenty years, I should say, —
to my own knowledge more than ten, — and what's
more, nobody knows exactly
who it belongs to: and there's been lawsuits about it
and all manner o' things, but
nothin' ever came of them."
"Did no one ever tell
you anything about its history", I asked, "or were you
never asked any questions
about it until now ? "
"Not particularly as I
remember", replied he musingly.
Then, after a moment's pause,
he added more briskly, " Ay, ay, though, now I
come to think of it, there
was a man up here more'n five months back, a
Frenchman, who came on
purpose to see it and ask me one or two questions, but I
on'y jest told him nothin' as
I've told you. He was a popish priest, and seemed
to take a sight of interest
in the place somehow. I think if you want to know
about it, sir, you'd better
go and see him; he's
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[Page 129] staying down here in
the village, about a mile and
a half off, at the Crown Inn."
"And a queer old fellow
he is", broke in my host's wife, who was clearing away
the breakfast; "no one
knows where he comes from, 'cept as he's a Frenchman. I
see him about often, prowlin'
along with his stick and his snuff-box, always
alone, and sometimes he nods
at me and says 'good-morning' as I go by."
In consequence of this information
I resolved to make my way immediately to the
old priest's dwelling, and
having acquainted myself with the direction in which
the house lay, I took leave
of my host, shouldered my bag once more, and set out
en route. The air was clear
and sharp, and the crisp snow crackled pleasantly
under my Hessian boots as I
strode along the country lanes. All traces of cloud
had totally disappeared from
the sky, the sun looked cheerfully down on me, and
my morning's walk thoroughly
refreshed and invigorated me. In due time I arrived
at the inn which had been
named to me as the abode of the Rev. M. Pierre, — a
pretty homely little nest,
with an antique gable and portico. Addressing myself
to the elderly woman who
answered my summons at the house-door, I inquired if I
could see M. Pierre, and, in
reply, received a civil invitation to "step inside
and wait". My suspense
did not last long, for M. Pierre made his appearance very
promptly. He was a tall, thin
individual with a fried-looking complexion, keen
sunken eyes, and sparse hair
streaked with grey. He entered the room with a
courteous bow and inquiring
look. Rising from the chair in which I had rested
myself by the fire, I
advanced towards him and addressed him by name in my
suavest tones. He inclined
his head and looked at me more inquiringly than
before. " I
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[Page 130] have taken the liberty to
request an interview with you
this morning", continued
I, " because I have been told that you may probably be
able to give me some
information of which I am in search, with regard to an old
mansion in this part of the
county, called Steepside, and in which I spent last
night."
Scarcely had I uttered these
last words when the expression of the old priest's
face changed from one of
courteous indifference to earnest interest.
"Do I understand you
rightly, monsieur ?" he said. " You say you slept last
night in Steepside mansion ?
"
"I did not say I slept
there," I rejoined, with an emphasis; "I said I passed
the night there."
"Bien", said he
dryly, "I comprehend. And you were not pleased with your night's
lodging. That is so, is it
not, monsieur, — is it not ? " he repeated, eying my
face curiously, as though he
were seeking to read the expression of my thoughts
there.
"You may be sure",
said I, "that if something very peculiar had not occurred to
me in that house, I should
not thus have troubled a gentleman to whom I am,
unhappily, a stranger."
He bowed slightly and then
stood silent, contemplating me, and, as I think,
considering whether or not he
should afford me the information I desired.
Presently, his scrutiny
having apparently proved satisfactory, he withdrew his
eyes from my face, and seated
himself beside me.
" Monsieur", said
he, "before I begin to answer your inquiry, I will ask you to
tell me what you saw last
night at Steepside."
He drew from his pocket a small,
old-fashioned snuffbox and refreshed his little
yellow nose with a pinch of
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[Page 131] rappee, after which
ceremonial he leaned
back at his ease, resting his
chin in his hand and regarding me fixedly during
the whole of my strange
recital. When I had finished speaking he sat silent a
few minutes, and then
resumed, in his queer broken manner:
"What I am going to tell
you I would not tell to any man who had not done what
you have done, and seen what
you saw last night. Mon Dieu! it is strange you
should have been at that
house last night of all nights in the year, the 22nd of
December!”
He seemed to make this
reflection rather to himself than to me, and presently
continued, taking a small key
from a pocket in his vest as he spoke:
"Do you understand
French well, monsieur ? "
"Excellently well",
returned I with alacrity; "a great part of my business
correspondence is conducted
in French, and I speak and hear it every day of my
life."
He smiled pleasantly in
reply, rose from his seat, and, unlocking with the key
he held a small drawer in a
chest that stood beside the chimney-piece, took out
of it a roll of manuscript
and a cigar.
"Monsieur" , said
he, offering me the latter, "let me recommend this, if you
care to smoke so early in the
day. I always prefer rappee, but you, doubtless,
have younger tastes."
Having thus provided for my
comfort, the old priest reseated himself, unfolded
the manuscript, and, without
further apology, read the following story in the
French language: —
Towards the latter part of
the last century Steepside became the property of a
certain Sir Julian
Lorrington. His family consisted only of his wife, Lady
Sarah, and
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[Page 132] their daughter Julia, a girl
remarkable alike for her
beauty and her expectations.
For a long time Sir Julian
had retained in his establishment an old French
maitre d'hôtel and his wife,
who both died in the baronet's service, leaving one
child, Virginie, whom Lady
Sarah, out of regard for the fidelity of her parents,
engaged to educate and
protect.
In due time this orphan,
brought up in the household of Sir Julian, became the
chosen companion of his
heiress; and when the family took up their residence at
Steepside, Virginie Giraud,
who had been associated in Julia's studies and
recreations from early
childhood, was installed there as maid and confidant to
the hope of the house.
Not long after the settlement
at Steepside, Sir Julian, in the summary fashion
of those days with regard to
matrimonial affairs, announced his intention of
bestowing his daughter upon a
certain Welsh squire of old ancestry and broad
acres. Sir Julian was a
practical man, thoroughly incapable of regarding wedlock
in any other light than as a
mere union of wealth and property, the owners of
which joined hands and lived
together. This was the way in which he had married,
and it was the way in which
he intended his daughter to marry; love and passion
were meaningless, if not
vulgar words in his ears, and he conceived it
impossible they should be
otherwise to his only child. As for Lady Sarah, she
was an unsympathetic
creature, whose thoughts ran only on the ambition of seeing
Julia married to some
gentleman of high position, and heading a fine
establishment with social
success and distinction.
So it was not until all
things relative to the contract had been duly arranged
between these amiable parents
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[Page 133] and their intended
son-in-law, that the
bride elect was informed of
the fortune in store for her.
But all the time that the
lawyers had been preparing the marriage settlements, a
young penniless gentleman
named Philip Brian had been finding out for himself
the way to Julia's heart, and
these two had pledged their faith to each other
only a few days before Sir
Julian and Lady Lorrington formally announced their
plans to their daughter. In
consequence of her engagement with Philip, Julia
received their intelligence
with indignation, and protested that no power on
earth should force her to act
falsely to the young man whose promised wife she
had become. The expression of
this determination was received by both parents
with high displeasure. Sir Julian
indulged in a few angry oaths, and Lady Sarah
in a little select satire;
Philip Brian was, of course, forbidden the house, all
letters and messages between
the lovers were interdicted, and Julia was
commanded to comport herself
like a dutiful and obedient heiress.
Now Virginie Giraud was the
friend as well as the attendant of Sir Julian's
daughter, and it was Virginie
therefore who, after the occurrence of this
outbreak, was despatched to
Philip with a note of warning from his mistress.
Naturally the lover returned
an answer by the same means, and from that hour
Virginie continued to act as
agent between the two, carrying letters to and fro,
giving counsel and arranging
meetings. Meanwhile the bridal day was fixed by the
parent Lorringtons, and
elaborate preparations were made for a wedding festival
which should be the
wonderment and admiration of the county. The breakfast room
was decorated with lavish
splendour, the richest apparel bespoken for the bride,
and all the wealthy and
titled relatives of both contracting
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[Page 134] families
were invited to the pageant.
Nor were Philip and Julia idle. It was arranged
between them that, at eleven
o'clock on the night of the day preceding the
intended wedding, the young
man should present himself beneath Julia's window,
Virginie being on the watch
and in readiness to accompany the flight of the
lovers. All three, under
cover of the darkness, should then steal down the
avenue of the coach-drive and
make their exit by the shrubbery gate, the key of
which Virginie already had in
keeping. The appointed evening came, — the 22nd of
December. Snow lay deep upon
the ground, and more threatened to fall before
dawn, but Philip had engaged
to provide horses equal to any emergency of
weather, and the darkness of
the night lent favour to the enterprise. Virginie's
behaviour all that day had
somehow seemed unaccountable to her mistress. The
maid's face was pallid and
wore a strange expression of anxiety and
apprehension. She winced and
trembled when Julia's glance rested upon her, and
her hands quivered violently
while she helped the latter to adjust her hood and
mantle as the hour of assignation
approached. Endeavouring, however, to persuade
herself that this strange
conduct arose from a feeling of excitement or
nervousness natural under the
circumstances, Julia used a hundred kind words and
tender gestures to reassure
and support her companion. But the more she consoled
or admonished, the more
agitated Virginie became, and matters stood in this
condition when eleven o'clock
arrived.
Julia waited at her chamber
window, which was not above three feet from the
ground without, her hood and
mantle donned, listening eagerly for the sound of
her lover's voice; and the
French girl leant behind her
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[Page 135] against the
closed door, nervously
tearing to fragments a piece of paper she had taken from
her pocket a minute ago.
These torn atoms she flung upon the hearth, where a
bright fire was blazing, not
observing that, meanwhile, Julia had opened the
window-casement. A gust of wind
darting into the room from outside caught up a
fragment of the yet
unconsumed paper and whirled it back from the flames to
Julia's feet. She glanced at
it indifferently, but the sight of some characters
on it suddenly attracting
her, she stooped and picked it up.
It bore her name written over
and over several times, first in rather laboured
imitation of her own
handwriting, then more successfully, and, lastly, in so
perfect a manner that even
Julia herself was almost deceived into believing it
her genuine signature. Then
followed several L's and J's, as though the copyist
had not considered those
initials satisfactory counterparts of the original.
Julia wondered, but did not
doubt; and as she tossed the fragment from her hand,
Virginie turned and perceived
the action. Instantly a deep flush of crimson
overspread the maid's face;
she darted suddenly forward, and uttered an
exclamation of alarm. Her cry
was immediately succeeded by the sharp noise of a
pistol report beneath the
window, and a heavy, muffled sound, as of the fall of
a body upon the snow-covered
earth. Julia looked out in fear and surprise. The
leaping firelight from within
the room streamed through the window, and, in the
heart of its vivid
brightness, revealed the figure of a man lying motionless
upon the whitened ground, his
face buried in the scattered snow, and his
outstretched hand grasping a
pistol.
Julia leaped through the open
casement with a wild shriek, and flung herself on
her knees beside him.
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[Page 136]
"Phil! Phil!" she
said. " what have you done ? what has happened ? Speak to me!"
But the only response was a
faint, low moan.
Philip Brian had shot
himself!
In an agony of grief and
horror Julia lifted his head upon her arm, and pressed
her hand to his heart. The
movement recalled him to life for a few moments; he
opened his eyes, looked at
her, and uttered a few broken words. She stooped and
listened eagerly.
The letter ! he gasped;
" the letter you sent me ! O Julia, you have broken my
heart! How could you be false
to me, and I loving you — trusting you — so wholly
! But at least I shall not live
to see you wed the man you have chosen; I came
here tonight to die, since
without you life would be intolerable. See what you
have done!"
Desperate and silent, she
wound her arms around him, and pressed her lips to
his. A convulsive shudder
seized him; his eyes rolled back, and with a sigh he
resigned himself to the death
he had courted so madly. Death in the passion of a
last kiss !
Julia sat still, the corpse
of her lover supported on her arm, and her hand
clasped in his, tearless and
frigid as though she had been turned into stone by
some fearful spell. Half
hidden in the bosom of his vest was a letter, the
broken seal of which bore her
own monogram. She plucked it out of its
resting-place, and read it
hastily by the flicker of the firelight. It was in
Lady Sarah's handwriting, and
ran thus: —
"MY DEAR MR BRIAN, —
Although, when last we parted, it was with the usual
understanding that tonight we
should meet again; yet subsequent reflection, and
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[Page 137] the positive injunctions of
my parents, have obliged me to decide
otherwise. You are to know,
therefore, that, in obedience to the wishes of my
father and mother, I have
promised to become the wife of the gentleman they have
chosen for me. All
correspondence between us must therefore wholly cease, nor
must you longer suffer
yourself to entertain a thought of me. It is hardly
necessary to add that I shall
not expect to see you this evening; your own sense
of honour will, I am
persuaded, be sufficient to restrain you from keeping an
appointment against my
wishes. In concluding, I beg you will not attempt to
obtain any further explanation
of my conduct; but rest assured that it is the
unalterable resolve of cool
and earnest deliberation.
" For the last time I
subscribe myself”.
JULIA LORRINGTON.
" Postscript. — In order
to save you any doubt of my entire concurrence in my
mother's wishes, I sign and
address this with my own hand, and Virginie, who
undertakes to deliver it,
will add her personal testimony to the truth of these
statements, since she has
witnessed the writing of the letter, and knows how
fully my consent has been
given to all its expressions."
" With my own hand !
" Yes, surely; both signature and address were perfect
facsimiles of Julia's writing
! What wonder that Philip had been deceived into
believing her false ? Twice
she read the letter from beginning to end; then she
laid her lover's corpse
gently down on the snow, and stood up erect and silent,
her face more ghastly and
death-like than the face of the dead beside her.
In a moment the whole
shameful scheme had flashed
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[Page 138] upon her mind; —
Virginie's treachery and
clever fraud; its connection with the torn fragment of
paper which Julia had seen
only a few minutes before; the deliberate falsehood
of which Lady Sarah had been
guilty; the bribery, by means of which she had
probably corrupted Virginie's
fidelity; the cruel disappointment and suffering
of her lover; all these
things pressed themselves upon her reeling brain, and
gave birth to the suggestions
of madness.
Stooping down, she put her
lithe hand upon the belt of the dead man. There was,
as she expected, a second
pistol in it, the fellow of that with which he had
shot himself. It was loaded.
Julia drew it out, wrapped her mantle round it, and
climbed noiselessly into her
chamber through the still open window. Crossing the
room, she passed out into the
corridor beyond, and went like a shadow, swift and
silent of foot, to the door
of her father's study, — an apartment communicating,
by means of an oaken door,
with the panelled chamber.
Virginie, from a dark recess
in the wall of the house, had heard and noted all
that passed in the garden.
She saw Julia open and read the letter; she caught
the expression of her face as
she stooped for the pistol, and apprehending
something of what might
follow, she crept through the window after her mistress
and pursued her up the dark
passages. Here, crouching again into a recess in the
gallery outside the panelled
room, she waited in terror for the next scene of
the tragedy.
Julia flung open the door of
the study where her father sat writing at his
table, and, standing on the
threshold in the full glare of the lamplight which
illumined the apartment,
raised the pistol, cocked and aimed it. Sir Julian had
barely time to leap from his
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[Page 139] chair with a cry when she
fired, and the
next instant he fell, struck
by the bullet on the left temple, and expired at
his daughter's feet. At the
report of the pistol and the sound of his fall, Lady
Sarah quitted her
dressing-room and ran in disordered attire into the study,
where she beheld her husband lying
dead and bloody upon the floor, and Julia
standing at the entrance of
the panelled chamber, with the light of madness and
murder in her eyes. Not long
she stood there, however, for, seeing Lady Sarah
enter, the distracted girl
threw down the empty weapon, and flinging herself
upon her mother, grasped her
throat with all the might of her frenzied being. Up
and down the room they
wrestled together, two desperate women, one bent upon
murder, the other battling
for her life, and neither uttered cry or groan, so
terribly earnest was the
struggle. At length Lady Sarah's strength gave way; she
fell under her assailant's
weight, her face black with suffocation, and her eyes
protruding from their
swelling sockets. Julia redoubled her grip. She knelt upon
Lady Sarah's breast, and held
her down with the force and resolution of a fiend,
though the blood burst from
the ears of her victim and filmed her staring eyes;
nor did the pitiless fingers
relax until the murderess knew her vengeance was
complete. Then she leapt to
her feet, seized Philip's pistol from the floor,
and, with a wild, pealing
shriek, fled forth along the gallery, down the
staircase, and out into the
park, — out into the wind, and the driving snow, and
the cold, her uncoiled hair
streaming in dishevelled masses down her shoulders,
and her dress of trailing
satin daubed with stains of blood. Behind her ran
Virginie, well-nigh maddened
herself with horror, vainly endeavouring to catch
or to stop the unhappy
fugitive. But just as the
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[Page 140] latter reached the
brink of a high precipice at
the boundary of the terraced lawn, from which the
mansion took its name of
Steepside she turned to look at her pursuer, missed her
footing, and fell headlong
over the low stone coping that bordered the slope
into the snow-drift at the
bottom of the chasm.
Virginie ran to the spot and
looked over. The steep was exceedingly high and
sudden; not a trace of Julia
could be seen in the darkness below. Doubtless the
miserable heiress of the
Lorringtons had found a grave in the bed of soft, deep
snow which surrounded its
base.
Then, stricken through heart and
brain with the curse of madness which had
already sent her mistress
red-handed to death, Virginie Giraud fled across the
lawn — through the park-gates
— out upon the bleak common beyond, and was gone.
The old priest laid aside the
manuscript and took a fresh pinch of rappee from
the silver snuff-box.
"Monsieur", said
he, with a polite inclination of his grey head, "I have had the
honour to read you the
history you wished to hear".
"And I thank you most
heartily for your kindness", returned
without danger of seeming too
inquisitive, ask you one question more?"
Seeing assent in his face,
and a smile that anticipated my inquiry wrinkling the
corners of his mouth, I
continued boldly, " Will you tell me, then, M. Pierre,
by what means you became
possessed of this manuscript, and who wrote it ? "
"It is a natural
question, monsieur", he answered after a short pause, "and I
have no good reason for
withholding
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[Page 141] the reply, since every one
who
was personally concerned in
the tragedy has long been dead. You must know, then,
that in my younger days I was
curé to a little parish of about two hundred souls
in the province of Berry.
Many years ago there came to this village a strange
old woman of whom nobody in
the place had the least knowledge. She took and
rented a small hovel on the
borders of a wood about two miles from our church,
and, except on market days,
when she came to the village for her weekly
provisions, none of my
parishioners ever held any intercourse with her. She was
evidently insane, and
although she did harm to nobody, yet she often caused
considerable alarm and
wonderment by her eccentric behaviour. It is, as you must
know, often the case in
intermittent mania that its victims are insane upon some
particular subject, some
point upon which their frenzy always betrays itself, —
even when, with regard to
other matters, they conduct themselves like ordinary
people. Now this old woman's
weakness manifested itself in a wild and continual
desire to copy every written
document she saw. If, on her market-day visits to
the village, any written
notice upon the church-doors chanced to catch her eye
as she passed, she would
immediately pause, draw out pencil and paper from her
pocket, and stand muttering
to herself until she had closely transcribed the
whole of the placard, when
she would quietly return the copy to her pocket and
go on her way.
"Thinking it my duty, as
pastor of the village, to make myself acquainted with
this poor creature, who had
thus become one of my flock, I went occasionally to
visit her, in the hope that I
might possibly discover the cause of her strange
disorder (which I suspected
had its origin in some calamity of her earlier
days), and so qualify myself
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[Page 142] to afford her the advice and
comfort she
might need. During the first
two or three visits I paid her I could elicit
nothing. She sat still as a
statue, and watched me sullenly while I spoke to her
of the mysteries and
consolations of our faith, exhorting her vainly to make
confession and obtain that
peace of heart and mind which the sacrament of
penance could alone bestow.
Well, it chanced that on the occasion of one of
these visits I took with me,
besides my prayer-book, a small sheet of paper, on
which I had written a few passages
of Scripture, such as I conjectured to be
most suited to her soul's
necessity. I found her, as usual, moody and reserved,
until I drew from my missal
the sheet of transcribed texts and put it into her
hand. In an instant her
manner changed. The madness gleamed in her eyes, and she
began searching nervously for
a pencil. 'I can do it!' she cried. 'My writing
was always like hers, for we
learnt together when we were children. He will
never know I wrote it; we
shall dupe him easily. Already I have practised her
signature many times — soon I
shall be able to make it exactly like her own
hand. And I shall tell her,
my lady, that he would have deceived her, that I
overheard him love-making to
another girl — that I discovered his falsehood —
his baseness — and that he
fled in his shame from the county. Yes, yes, we will
dupe them both.'
"In this fashion she
chattered and muttered feverishly for some minutes, till I
grew alarmed, and taking her
by the shoulders, tried to shake back the senses
into her distracted brain. '
What ails you, foolish old woman ?' cried I ' I am
not miladi; I am your parish
pastor. Say your Pater Noster, or your Ave, and
drive Satan away.'
"I am not sure whether
my words or the removal of
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[Page 143] the unlucky
manuscript recalled her
wandering wits. At any rate, she speedily recovered,
and, after doing my best to
soothe and calm her by leading her to speak on other
topics, I quitted the cottage
reassured.
"Not long after this
episode a neighbour called at my house one morning, and
told me that, having missed
the old woman from the weekly market, and knowing
how regular she had always
been in her attendance, he had gone to her dwelling
and found her lying sick and
desiring to see me. Of course I immediately
prepared to comply with her
request, providing myself in case I should find her
anxious for absolution and
the viaticum. Directly I entered her hut, she
beckoned me to the bedside,
and said in a low, hurried voice: —
" 'Father, I wish to
confess to you at once, for I know I am going to die.'
"Perceiving that, for
the present at least, she was perfectly sane, I willingly
complied with her request,
and heard her slowly and painfully unburden her
miserable soul.
"Monsieur, if the story
with which Virginie Giraud intrusted me had been told
only in her sacramental
confession, I should not have been able to repeat it to
you. But, when the final
words of peace had been spoken, she took a packet of
papers from beneath her
pillow and placed it in my hands. ' Here, father,' she
said, ' is the substance of
my history. When I am dead, you are free to make
what use of it you please. It
may warn some, perhaps, from yielding to the great
temptation which overcame
me.'
" ' The temptation of a
bribe ? " said I, inquiringly. She turned her failing
sight towards my face and
shook her head feebly.
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[Page 144]
" 'No bribe,
father," she answered. ' Do you believe I would have done what I
did for mere coin? "
"I gave no reply, for her
words were enigmatical to me, and I was loath to
harass with my curiosity a
soul so near its departure as hers. So I leaned back
in my chair and sat silent,
in the hope that, being wearied with her religious
exercises, she might be able
to sleep a little. But, no doubt, my last question,
working in her disordered
mind, awoke again the madness that had only slumbered
for a time. Suddenly she
raised herself on her pillow, pressed her withered
hands to her head, and cried
out wildly: —
" ' Money ! — money to
me, who would have sold my own soul for one day of his
love! Ah! I could have flung
it back in their faces! — fools that they were to
believe I cared for gold !
Philip ! Philip ! you were mad to think of the
heiress as a wife; it had
been better for you had you cared to look on me — on
me who loved you so ! Then I
should never have ruined you — never betrayed you
to Lady Sarah! But I could
not forgive the hard words you gave me; I could not
forgive your love, for Julia
! Shall I ever go to paradise — to paradise where
the saints are ? Will they
let me in there ? — will they suffer my soul among
them ? Or shall I never leave
purgatory, but burn, and burn, and burn there
always uncleansed ? For, oh !
if all the past should come back to me a thousand
years hence, I should do the
same thing again, Phil Brian, for love of you !'
"She started from the
bed in her delirium; there came a rattling sound in her
throat — a sudden choking cry
— and in a moment her breast and pillow and quilt
were deluged with a crimson
stream ! In her paroxysm she had burst a
blood-vessel. I sprang
forward to catch
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[Page 145] her as she fell prone upon
the brick floor; raised her
in my arms, and gazed at her distorted features.
There was no breath from the
reddened lips. Virginie Giraud was a corpse.
" Thus in her madness
was told the secret of her life and her crime; a secret
she would not confess even to
me in her sane moments. It was no greed of gold,
but despised and vindictive
love that lay behind all the horrors she had
related. From my soul I
pitied the poor dead wretch, for I dimly comprehended
what a hell her existence on
earth had been.
"The written account of
the Steepside tragedy with which she had intrusted me
furnished, in somewhat
briefer language, the story I have just read to you, and
many of its more important
details have subsequently been verified by me on
application to other sources,
so that in that paper you have the testimony of an
eyewitness to the facts, as
well as the support of legal evidence.
"Some forty years after
Virginie's death, monsieur, family reasons obliged me to
seek temporary release from
duty and come to England; and, finding that
circumstances would keep me
in the country for some time, I came here and went
to see that house. But the
tenant at the lodge could only tell me that Steepside
was empty then, and had been
empty for years past; and I have discovered that,
since that horrible 22nd of
December, it never had an occupant. Sir Julian, to
whom it belonged by purchase,
left no immediate heirs, and his relatives
squabbled between themselves
over the property, till one by one the disputing
parties died off, and now
there is no one enterprising enough to resuscitate the
lawsuit."
Rising to take my leave of
the genial old man, it
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[Page 146] occurred to me as
extremely probable that he
might have been led to form some opinion worth
hearing with regard to the
nature of the strange appearances at Steepside, and I
ventured accordingly to make
the inquiry.
"If my views on the
subject have any value or interest for you", said he, "you
are very welcome to know
them. As a priest of the Catholic Church, I cannot
accept the popular notions
about ghostly visitations. Such experiences as yours
in that ill-fated mansion are
explicable to me only on the following hypothesis.
There is a Power greater than
the powers of evil; a Will to which even demons
must submit. It is not
inconsistent with Christian doctrine to suppose that, in
cases of such terrible crimes
as that we have been discussing, the evil spirits
who prompted these crimes
may, for a period more or less lengthy, be forced to
haunt the scene of their
machinations, and re-enact there, in phantom show, the
horrors they once caused in
reality. Naturally — or perhaps", said he, breaking
off with a little smile,
" I ought rather to say super-naturally — these demons,
in order to manifest
themselves, would be forced to resume some shape that would
identify them with the crime
they had suggested; and, in such a case, what more
likely than that they should
adopt the spectral forms of their human victims —
murdered and murderer, or
otherwise — according to the nature of the wickedness
perpetrated ? This is but an
amateur opinion, monsieur; I offer it as an
individual, not as a priest speaking
on the part of the Church. But it may serve
to account for a real
difficulty, and may be held without impiety. Of one thing
at least we may rest assured
as Christian men; that the souls of the dead,
whether of saints or sinners,
are in God's safe keeping, and walk the earth no
more."
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[Page 147]
Then I shook hands with M.
Pierre, and we parted. And after that, reader, I went
to my friend's house, and
spent my Christmas week right merrily.
Part
2------------------------------------------------------------
Dreams and
Dream-Stories
by
Anna Kingsford
Part 2 of 2
M.D. of
Author of "The Perfect
Way; or the finding of Christ."
Edited by Edward Maitland
Published in
“For He so giveth unto His
Beloved in Sleep.”
Ps. cxxvii. (Marginal
CONTENTSPage
PREFACE7
Part 1 DREAMS
1THE DOOMED TRAIN 15
2THE WONDERFUL SPECTACLES 19
3THE COUNCIL OF PERFECTION21
4THE CITY OF BLOOD 22
5THE BIRD AND THE CAT24
6THE TREASURE IN THE LIGHTED HOUSE25
7THE FOREST CATHEDRAL26
8THE ENCHANTED WOMAN30
9THE BANQUET OF THE GODS 38
10THE DIFFICULT PATH 39
11A LION IN THE WAY41
12A DREAM OF DISEMBODIMENT41
13THE PERFECT WAY WITH ANIMALS43
14THE LABORATORY UNDERGROUND 44
15THE OLD YOUNG MAN45
16THE METEMPSYCHOSIS49
17THE THREE KINGS51
18THE ARMED GODDESS 54
19THE GAME OF CARDS 56
20THE PANIC-STRUCK PACK-HORSE59
21THE HAUNTED INN 61
22AN EASTERN APOLOGUE63
23A HAUNTED HOUSE INDEED !64
24THE SQUARE IN THE HAND 70
DREAM VERSES
1THROUGH THE AGES77
2A FRAGMENT -1- 80
3A FRAGMENT -2-80
4SIGNS OF THE TIMES81
5WITH THE GODS 81
PART IIDREAM - STORIES
1A VILLAGE OF SEERS85
2STEEPSIDE; A GHOST STORY 116
3BEYOND THE SUNSET 147
4A TURN OF LUCK169
5NOÉMI182
6THE LITTLE OLD MAN'S STORY212
7THE NIGHTSHADE242
8ST GEORGE THE CHEVALIER270
- 3 - BEYOND THE SUNSET
A FAIRY TALE FOR THE TIMES
Once upon a time there was a
Princess. Now, this Princess dwelt in a far-off and
beautiful world beyond the
sunset, and she had immortal youth and an ancestry of
glorious name. Very rich,
too, she was, and the palace in which she lived was
made all of marble and
alabaster and things precious and wonderful. But that
which was most wonderful
about her was her exceeding beauty, — a beauty not like
that one sees in the world
this side of the sunset. For the beauty of the
Princess was the
bright-shining of a lovely spirit; her body was but the veil of
her soul that shone through
all her perfect form as the radiance of the sun
shines through clear water. I
cannot tell you how beautiful this Princess was,
nor can I describe the colour
of her hair and her eyes, or the aspect of her
face. Many men have seen her
and tried to give an account of her; but though I
have read several of these
accounts, they differ so greatly from one another
that I should find it hard
indeed to reproduce her picture from the records of
it which her lovers have
left.
For all these men who have
written about the Princess
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[Page 148] loved her;
none, indeed, could help it
who ever looked on her face. And to some she has
seemed fair as the dawn, and
to others dark as night; some have found her gay
and joyous as Allegro, and
others sad and silent and sweet as Penseroso. But to
every lover she has seemed the
essence and core of all beauty; the purest,
noblest, highest, and most
regal being that he has found it possible to
conceive. I am not going to
tell you about all the lovers of the Princess, for
that would take many volumes
to rehearse, but only about three of them, because
these three were typical
personages, and had very remarkable histories.
Like all the lovers of the
Princess, these three men were travellers, coming
from a distant country to the
land beyond the sunset on purpose to see the
beautiful lady of whom their
fathers and grandfathers had told them; the lady
who never could outlive youth
because she belonged to the race of the
everlasting Gods who ruled
the earth in the old far-off Hellenic times.
I do not know how long these
three men stayed in the country of the Princess;
but they stayed quite long
enough to be very, very much in love with her, and
when at last they had to come
away — for no man who is not dead can remain long
beyond the sunset — she gave
to each of them a beautiful little bird, a tiny
living bird with a voice of
sweetest music, that had been trained and tuned to
song by Phoebus Apollo
himself. And I could no more describe to you the
sweetness of that song than I
could describe the beauty of the Princess.
Then she told the travellers
to be of brave heart and of valiant hope, because
there lay before them an
ordeal demanding all their prowess, and after that the
prospect of a great reward.
" Now," she said, " that you have
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[Page 149] learned
to love me, and to desire to
have your dwelling here with me, you must go forth
to prove your knighthood. I
am not inaccessible, but no man must think to win me
for his lady unless he first
justify his fealty by noble service. The world to
which you now go is a world
of mirage and of phantasms, which appear real only
to those who have never
reached and seen this realm of mine on the heavenward
side of the sun. You will
have to pass through ways beset by monstrous spectres,
over wastes where rage
ferocious hydras, chimaeras, and strange dragons
breathing flame. You must
journey past beautiful shadowy islets of the summer
sea, in whose fertile bays
the cunning sirens sing; you must brave the mountain
robber, the goblins of the
wilderness, and the ogre whose joy is to devour
living men. But fear nothing,
for all these are but phantoms; nor do you need
any sword or spear to slay them,
but only a loyal mind and an unswerving
purpose. Let not your vision
be deceived, nor your heart beguiled; return to me
unscathed through all these
many snares, and doubt not the worth and greatness
of the guerdon I shall give.
Nor think you go unaided. With each of you I send a
guide and monitor; heed well
his voice and follow where he leads."
2
Now, when the three
travellers had received their presents, and had looked their
last upon the shining face of
the donor, they went out of the palace and through
the golden gate of the
wonderful city in which she dwelt, and so, once again,
they came into the land which
lies this side of the sun.
Then their ordeal began; but,
indeed, they saw no
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[Page 150] sirens or dragons
or gorgons, but only people
like themselves going and coming along the highways.
Some of these people
sauntered, some ran, some walked, alone and pensively,
others congregated in groups
together and talked or laughed or shouted noisy
songs. Under the pleasant
trees on the greensward were pavilions, beautifully
adorned; the sound of music
issued from many of them, fair women danced there
under the new blossoming trees,
tossing flowers into the air, and feasts were
spread, wine flowed, and
jewels glittered. And the music and the dancing women
pleased the ear and eye of
one of the three travellers, so that he turned aside
from his companions to listen
and to look. Then presently a group of youths and
girls drew near and spoke to
him. " It is our festival," they said; " we are
worshippers of Queen Beauty;
come and feast with us. The moon of May is rising;
we shall dance all night in
her beautiful soft beams." But he said, "I have just
returned from a country the
beauty of which far surpasses that of anything one
can see here, and where there
is a Princess so lovely and so stately that the
greatest Queen of all your
world is not fit to be her tiring maid." Then they
said, " Where is that
country of which you speak, and who is this wonderful
Princess ? " " It
is the land beyond the sunset," he answered, " but the name of
the Princess no man knows
until she herself tells it him. And she will tell it
only to the man whom she
loves."
At that they laughed and made
mirth among themselves. "Your land is the land of
dreams", they said;
"we have heard all about it. Nothing there is real, and as
for your Princess she is a
mere shadow, a vision of your own creation, and no
substantial being at all. The
only real and true beauty is the beauty we see and
touch
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[Page 151] and hear; the beauty which
sense reveals to us, and which is
present with us today."
Then he answered, "I do not blame you at all, for you
have never seen my Princess.
But I have seen her, and heard her speak, and some
day I hope to return to her.
And when I came away she warned me that in this
country I should be beset by
all manner of strange and monstrous spectres,
harpies, and sirens, eaters
of men, whom I must bravely meet and overcome. I
pray you tell me in what part
of your land these dangers lie, that I may be on
my guard against them."
Thereat they laughed the
more, and answered him, "Oh, foolish traveller, your
head is certainly full of
dreams ! There are no such things as sirens; all that
is an old Greek fable, a
fairy tale with no meaning except for old Greeks and
modern babies ! You will
never meet with any sirens or harpies, nor will you
ever see again the Princess
of whom you talk, unless, indeed, in your dreams. It
is this country that is the
only real one, there is nothing at all beyond the
sunset."
Now all this time the little
bird which the Princess had given to him was
singing quite loudly under
the folds of the traveler’s cloak. And he took it out
and showed it to the youths
who spoke with him, and said, “This bird was given
me by the Princess whom you
declare to be a myth. How could a myth give me this
living bird?” They answered,
“You are surely a madman as well as a dreamer.
Doubtless the bird flew into
your chamber while you slept, and your dreaming
fancy took advantage of the
incident to frame this tale about the Princess and
her gift. It is often so in
dreams. The consciousness perceives things as it
were through a cloud, and
weaves fictions out of realities.”
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[Page 152]
Then he began to doubt, but
still he held his ground, and said, “Yet hear how
sweetly it sings! No wild,
untaught bird of earth could sing like that”. Whereat
they were vastly merry, and
one cried, “Why, it is quite a common tweet-tweet!.
It is no more than the chirp
of a vulgar, everyday thrush or linnet!” And
another, “Were I you, I would
wring the bird’s neck; it must be a terrible
nuisance if it always makes
such a noise!” And a third, “Let it fly, we cannot
hear ourselves speaking for
its screaming!” Then the traveler began to feel
ashamed of his bird. “All
that I say,” he thought, “appears to them foolish,
even the Princess’s gift is,
in they eyes, a common chirping chaffinch. What if
indeed I have been dreaming;
what if this, after all, should be the real world,
and the other a mere
fantasy?”
The bird sang, “Away! away!
or you will never see the Princess more! The real
world lied beyond the gates
of the sunset!”
But when the traveler asked
the youths what the bird sang, they answered that
they had only heard
Tweet-tweet,” and Chirp-chirp. Then he was really angry, but
not with them, as you would
perhaps have thought. No, he was angry with the
bird, and ashamed of it and of
himself. And he threw it from him into the air,
and clapped his hands to
drive it away; and all the youths and girls that stood
around him clapped theirs
too. Sh-shsh, they cried, “be off, you are a
good-for-nothing hedge-finch,
and may be thankful your neck has not been wrung
to punish you for making such
a noise!”
So the bird flew away, away
beyond the sunset, and I think it went back to the
Princess and told her all
that had happened. And the traveler went, and danced
and
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[Page 153] sang and feasted to his
heart’s content with the worshipers of
Queen Beauty, not knowing
that he really had fallen among the sirens after all!
3
Meanwhile the two other
travelers had gone on their way, for neither of them
cared about pleasure; one was
a grave looking man who walked with his eyes on
the ground, looking curiously
at every rock and shrub he passed by the wayside,
and often pausing to examine
more closely a strange herb, or to pick to pieces a
flower; the other had a calm,
sweet face, and he walked erect, his eyes lifted
towards the great mountains
that lay far away before them.
By-and-by there came along
the road towards the two travelers a company of men
carrying banners, on which
were inscribed as mottoes - Knowledge is Freedom!.
Science knows no law but the
law of Progress! Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
Utility is Virtue. and a
great many other fine phrases. Most of the persons who
marched first in this
procession wore spectacles, and some were clad in
academical costumes. The
greater number had gone past, when the grave-looking
traveler — he who had
interested himself so much in the stones and foliage by
the wayside — courteously stopped
one of the company and asked him what the
procession meant. “We are
worshipers of Science,” answered the man whom he
addressed; “today we hold
solemn rites in honor of our deity. Many orations will
be made by her high priests, and
a great number of victims slain, — lambs, and
horses, and doves, and hinds,
and all manner of animals. They will be put to
death with unspeakable
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[Page 154] torments, racked, and maimed,
and burned, and
hewn asunder, all for the
glory and gain of Science. And we shall shout with
enthusiasm as the blood flows
over he altars, and the smoke ascends in her
praise.
“But all this is
horrible”,said the grave man, with a gesture of avoidance; “it
sounds to me like a
description of the orgies of savages, or of the pastimes of
madmen; it is unworthy of
intelligent and sane men.” “On the contrary,” returned
his informant, “it is just
because we are intelligent and sane that we take
delight in it. For it is by
means of these sacrifices that our deity vouchsafes
her oracles. In the mangled
corpses and entrails of these victims our augurs
find the knowledges we seek”.
“And what knowledges are they?” asked the traveler
. “The knowledge of Nature’s
secrets”, cried the votary of Science with kindling
eye, “the knowledge of life
and death; the magic of the art of healing disease;
the solution of the riddle of
the universe! All this we learn, all this we
perceive, in the dying throes
of our victims. Does not this suffice? — is not
the end great enough to
justify the means?”
Then, when the second of the
travelers heard these words — he whose face had
been lifted as he walked — he
drew nearer and answered: —
“No; it is greater to be just
than to be learned. No man should wish to be
healed at the cost of
another’s torment.” At which the stranger frowned, and
retorted impatiently, “You
forget, methinks, that they whom we seek to heal are
men, and they who are
tormented merely beasts. By these means we enrich and
endow humanity”. “Nay, I
forgot not”, he answered gently, “buy he who would be
so healed is man no longer.
By that wish and act he becomes lower than any
beast. Nor can humanity
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[Page 155] be enriched by that which
beggars it of all
its wealth.” “Fine speeches,
forsooth!” cried the worshiper of Science; “you are
a moralist, I find, and doubtless
a very ignorant person! All this old-fashioned
talk of yours belongs to a
past age. We have cast aside superstition, we have
swept away the old faiths.
Our only guide is Reason, our only goal is
Knowledge!” “Alas!” returned
the other, “it is not the higher but the lower
Reason which leads you, and
the Knowledge you covet is not that of realities,
but of mere seemings. You do
not know the real world. You are the dupes of a
Phantasm which you take for
Substance.” With that he passed on, and the man of
Science was left in the
company of the traveler who had first accosted him.
“What person is that?” asked
the former, looking after the retreating figure of
him who had just spoken. “He
is a poet”, returned the grave-faced traveler; “we
have both of us been beyond
the sunset to see the lovely Princess who rules that
wonderful country, and we
left it together on a journey to this world of yours.”
Beyond the sunset ! repeated
the other incredulously. “That is the land of
shadows; when the world was
younger they used to say the old Gods lived there”.
“Maybe they live there
still,” said the traveler, “for the Princess is of their
kith and lineage”. “A pretty
fable, indeed”, responded the scientific votary.
“But we know now that all
that kind of thing is sheer nonsense, and worse, for
it is the basis of the effete
old-world sentiment which forms the most
formidable obstacle to
Progress, and which Science even yet finds it hard to
overthrow. But what is that
strange singing I hear beneath your cloak?”
It was the bird which the
traveler had received from
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[Page 156] the Princess. He
drew it forth, but did not
say whose gift it was nor whence it came, because of
the contempt with which his
companion had spoken of the mystic country and its
Rulers. Already he began to
waver in his loyalty towards the Princess, and to
desire greatly the knowledges
of which the stranger told him. For this traveler,
though he cared nothing for
pleasure, or for the beauty of sensuous things, was
greatly taken by the wish to
be wise; only he did not rightly know in what
wisdom consists. He thought
it lay in the acquirement of facts, whereas really
it is the power by which
facts are transcended.
“That is a foreign bird”,
observed the scientific man, examining it carefully
through his spectacles, “and
quite a curiosity. I do not remember having ever
seen one like it. The note,
too, is peculiar. In some of its tones it reminds me
of a nightingale. No doubt it
is the descendant of a developed species of a
nightingale, carefully
selected and artificially bred from one generation to
another. Wonderful
modifications of species may be obtained in this manner, as
experiments with fancy breeds
of pigeons have amply proved. Permit me to examine
the bill more closely. Yes,
yes — a nightingale certainly — and yet — indeed, I
ought not to decide in haste.
I should greatly like to have the opinion of
Professor Effaress on the
subject. But what noise is that yonder?”
For just then a terrible
hubbub arose among a crowd of people congregated under
the portico of a large and
magnificent building a little way from the place
where the scientific man and
the intellectual traveler stood conversing. This
building, the facade of which
was adorned all over with bas-reliefs of Liberty
and Progress, and modern
elderly gentlemen in doctors’ gowns and
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[Page 157]
laurel wreaths, with rolls of
paper and microscopes, was, in fact, a great
Scientific Institution, and
into it the procession of learned personages whom
the travelers had met on
their way had entered, followed by a great multitude of
admirers and enthusiasts. In
this edifice the solemn rites which the votary of
Science had described were to
be held, and a vast congregation filled its halls.
All at once, just as the
sacrifices were about to begin, a solitary man arose in
the midst of the hushed
assembly, and protested, as once of old, by the banks of
the far-away Ganges,
Siddârtha Buddha had protested against the bloody offerings
of the priests of Indra. And
much after the same manner as Buddha had spoken
this man spoke, of the high
duty of manhood, of the splendor of justice, of the
certainty of retribution, and
of the true meaning of Progress and Freedom, the
noblest reaches of which are
spiritual, transcending all the baser and meaner
utilities of the physical
nature. And when the high priests of Science, not like
the priests of Indra in older
times, answered the prophet disdainfully and
without shame, that they knew
nothing of any spiritual utilities, because they
believed in evolution and held
man to be only a developed ape, with no more soul
than his ancestor, the
stranger responded that he too was an Evolutionist, but
that he understood the
doctrine quite differently from them, and more after the
fashion of the old teachers,
— Pythagoras, Plato, Hermes and Buddha. And that
the living and incorruptible
Spirit of God was in all things, whether ape or
man, whether beast or human,
ay, and in the very flowers and grass of the field,
and in every element of all
that is ignorantly thought to be dead and inert
matter. So that the soul of
man, he said, is one of the soul that is in all
Nature,
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[Page 158] only that when man is truly
human, in him alone the soul
becomes self-knowing and
self-concentrated, the mirror of Heaven, and the focus
of the Divine Light. And he
declared, moreover, that the spiritual evolution of
which he spoke was not so
much promoted by intellectual knowledge as by moral
goodness; and that it was
possible to be a very learned ape indeed, but in no
wise to deserve the name of
man; and that inasmuch as any person was disposed to
sacrifice the higher to the
lower reason, and to rank intellectual above
spiritual attainment,
insomuch that person was still an ape and had not
developed humanity.
Now, the stranger who was
brave enough to say all this was no other than the
traveler poet, and all the
time he was speaking, the bird which the Princess had
given him lay hid in his
bosom and sang to him, clear and sweet, Courage!
courage! these are the ogres
and the dragons; fight the good fight; to be of
bold heart!” Nor was he
astonished or dismayed when the assembly arose with
tumult and hooting, and
violently thrust him out of the Scientific Institution
into the street. And that was
the noise which the other traveler and his
companion had heard.
But when the greater part of
the mob had returned into the building there was
left with the poet a little
group of men and women whose hearts had been stirred
by his protest. And they said
to him, “You have spoken well, sir, and have done
a noble thing. We are
citizens of this place, and we will devote ourselves to
giving effect to your words. Doubt
not that we shall succeed, though it may be
long first, for indeed we
will work with a will.” Then the poet was glad,
because he had not spoken in
vain, and he bade them good speed, and went on his
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[Page 159] way, but the scientific man,
who was with the other traveler, heard
these last words, and became
very angry. "Certainly", he said, “this foolish and
ignorant person who has just
been turned out of the assembly must have insulted
our great leaders! What
presumption! what insolence! No one knows what mischief
he may not have done by his
silly talk! It is deplorable! But see, here comes
Professor Effaress, the very
man I most wished to see. Professor, let me present
this gentleman. He is the
owner of a rare and remarkable bird, on which we want
your opinion.
The Professor was a very
great personage, and his coat was covered all over with
decorations and bits of
colored ribbon, like those on a kit’s tail. Perhaps,
like a kit’s tail, they
weighed and steadied him, and kept him from mounting too
high into the clouds. The
Professor looked at the bird through his spectacles,
and nodded his head
sagaciously. “I have seen this species before,” he said,
“though not often. It belongs
to a very ancient family indeed, and I scarcely
thought that any specimen of
it remained in the present day. Quite a museum
bird; and in excellent
plumage too. Sir, I congratulate you.”
“You do not, then consider,
Professor”, said the traveler, “that this bird has
about it anything
transcendental - that it is - in fact - not altogether -
pardon me the expression - a
terrestrial bird?” For he was afraid to say the
truth, that the bird really
came from beyond the sunset.
The decorated personage was
much amused. He laughed pleasantly and answered in
bland tones, “Oh dear, no; I
recognize quite well the species to which it
belongs. An ancient species,
as I have said, and one indeed that Science has
done her utmost to extirpate,
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[Page 160] purposely in part, because it
is proved
to be a great devastator of
the crops, and thus directly injurious to the
interests of mankind, and
partly by accident, for it has a most remarkable
song-note, and scientific men
have destroyed all the specimens they have been
able to procure, in the hope
of discovering the mechanism by which the vocal
tones are produced. But,
pardon me, are you a stranger in this city, sir?”
“I am”, responded the
traveler, “and permit me to assure you that I take a
lively interest in the
scientific and intellectual pursuits with which in this
place, I perceive, you are
largely occupied.”
“We have a Brotherhood of
Learning here, sir”, returned the Professor; “we are
all Progressionists. I trust
you will remain with us and take part in our
assemblies.” But, as he said
that, the fairy bird suddenly lifted up his song
and warned the traveler,
crying in the language of the country beyond the
sunset, “Beware! beware! This
is an ogre, he will kill you, and mix your bones
with his bread! Be warned in
time, and fly; fly, if you cannot fight!”
“Dear me”, said the
Professor, “what a very remarkable note! I am convinced that
the structure and disposition
of this bird’s vocal organs must be unique.
Speaking for my scientific
brethren, as well as for myself, I may say that we
should hold ourselves
singularly indebted to you if you would permit us the
opportunity of adding so rare
a specimen to our national collection. It would be
an acquisition, sir, I assure
you, for which we would show ourselves profoundly
grateful. Indeed, I am sure
that the Society to which I have the honor to belong
would readily admit to its
Fellowship the donor of a treasure so inestimable.”
As he spoke, he fixed
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[Page 161] his eyes on the traveler, and
bowed with much
ceremony and condescension.
And the traveler thought what a fine thing it would
be to become a Professor, and
be able to wear a great many bits of colored
ribbon, and to be immensely
learned, and know all the faces of the universe.
And, after all, what was a
little singing bird, and a fairy Princess, in whose
very existence the scientific
gentlemen did not in the least believe, and who
was, perhaps, really the
shadow of a dream? So he bowed in return, and said he
was greatly honored; and Professor
Effaces took the bird and twisted its neck
gravely, and put the little
corpse into his pocket. And so the divine and
beautiful song of the fairy
minstrel was quenched, and instead of it I suppose
the traveler got a great deal
of learning and many fine decorations on his coat.
But the spirit of the slain
bird fled from that inhospitable city, and went back
to the Princess and told her
what had befallen.
4
As for the poet, he went on
his way alone into the open country, and saw the
peasants in the fields,
reaping and gleaning and gathering fruit and corn, for
it was harvest time. And he
passed through many hamlets and villages, and
sometimes he rested a night
or two at an inn; and on Sundays he heard the parish
parson say prayers and preach
in some quaint little Norman or Saxon church.
And at last he came to a
brand-new town, where all the houses were Early
English, and all the people
dressed like ancient Greeks, and all the manners
Renaissance, or,
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[Page 162] perhaps, Gothic. The poet
thought they were Gothic,
and probably was right.
In this town the talk was
mostly about Art, and many fine things were said in
regard to sweetness and
light. Everybody claimed to be an artist of some kind,
whether painter, musician,
novelist, dramatist, verse-maker, reciter, singer, or
what not. But although they
seemed so greatly devoted to the Graces and the
Muses, it was but the images
of the Parnassian Gods that they worshiped. For in
the purlieus of this fine
town, horrible cruelties and abuses were committed,
yet none of the so-called
poets lifted a cry of reform. Every morning, early,
before daybreak, there came
through the streets long and sad processions and
meek-eyed oxen and bleating
lambs, harried by brutal drovers, with shouts and
blows, — terrible processions
of innocent creatures going to die under the
poleaxe and the knife in order
to provide the pleasures of the table for dainty
votaries of sweetness and
light. Before the fair faint dawn made rosy the
eastern sky over the houses,
you might have heard on every side the heavy thud
of the poleaxe striking down
the patient heifer on her knees, — the heifer whose
eyes are like the eyes of
Heré, say the old Greek songbooks, that were read and
quoted all day in this town
of Culture and Art.
And a little later, going
down the by-ways of the town, you might have seen the
gutters running with fresh
blood, and have met carts laden with gory hides, and
buckets filled with brains
and blood, going to the factories and tan-yards.
Young lads spent all their
days in the slaughter-houses, dealing violent deaths,
witnessing tragedies of carnage,
hearing incessant plaintive cries, walking
about on clogs among pools of
clotting or
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[Page 163] steamy blood, and breathing
the fumes of it. And scarce a
mile away from the scene of all these loathsome
and degrading sights, sounds,
and odors, you might have found fastidious and
courtly gentlemen, and ladies
all belaced and bejewelled, sentimentalizing over
their aspic de foie gras, or
their cotelettes à la jardinière.” or some other
euphemism for the dead flesh
which could not, without pardonable breach of good
breeding, be called by its
plain true name in their presence.
And when the poet reminded
them of this truth, and spoke to them of the
demoralization to which, by
their habits, they daily subjected many of their
fellow-men; when he drew for
them graphic pictures of the slaughter-yard, and of
all the scenes of suffering
and tyranny that led up to it and ensued from it,
they clapped their hands to
their ears, and cried out that he was a shockingly
coarse person, and quite too
horribly indelicate for refined society. Because,
indeed, they cared only about
a surface and outside refinement, and not a whit
for that which is inward and
profound. For beauty of being they had neither
desire nor power of
reverence; all their enthusiasm was spent over forms and
words and appearances of
beauty. In them the senses were quickened, but not the
heart, nor the reason. Therefore
the spirit of the Reformer was not in them, but
the spirit of the Dilettante
only.
And the poet was grieved and
angry with them, because every true poet is a
Reformer; and he went forth
and spoke aloud in their public places and rebuked
the dwellers in that town.
But except a few curiosity hunters and some idle
folks who wanted higher wages
and less work, and thought he might help them to
get what they wished for,
nobody listened to him. But they went in crowds to see
a conjurer, and to hear a man
who
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[Page 164] lectured on blue china, and
another
who made them a long oration
about intricate and obscure texts in a certain old
dramatic book. And I think
that in those days, if it had not been for the sweet
and gracious song of the
fairy bird which he carried about always in his bosom,
the poet would have become
very heart-sick and desponding indeed. I do not quite
know what it was that the
bird sang, but it was something about the certainty of
the advent of wisdom, and of
the coming of the perfect day; and the burden of
the song was hope for all the
nations of the earth. Because every beautiful and
wise thought that any man conceives
is the heritage of the whole race of men,
and an earnest and fore-gleam
of what all men will some day inviolably hold for
true. And forasmuch as poets
are the advanced guard of the marching army of
humanity, therefore they are
necessarily the first discoverers and proclaimers
of the new landscapes and
ranges of Duties and Rights that rise out of the
horizon, point after point,
and vista after vista, along the line of progress.
For the sonnet of the poet
today is to furnish the key-note of the morrow’s
speech in Parliament, as that
which yesterday was song is today the current
prose of the hustings, the
pulpit, and the market. Wherefore, O poet, take heart
for the world; thou, in whose
utterance speaks the inevitable Future; who art
thyself God’s prophecy and
covenant of what the race at large shall one day be!
Sing thy songs, utter thine
whole intent, recount thy vision; though today no
one heed thee, thou hast
nevertheless spoken, and the spoken word is not lost.
Every true thought lives,
because the Spirit of God is in it, and when the time
is ripe it will incarnate
itself in action. Thou, thou art the creator, the man
of thought; thou art the
pioneer of the ages!
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[Page 165]
Somewhat on this wise sang
the fairy bird, and thereby the poet was comforted,
and took courage, and lifted
up his voice and his apocalypse. And though few
people cared to hear, and
many jeered, and some rebuked, he minded only that all
he should say might be well
said, and as perfect and wise and worthy as he could
make it. And when he had
finished his testimony, he went forth from the gates of
the town, and began once more
to traverse the solitudes of moor and forest.
But now the winter had set in
over the land, and the wastes were bleak, and the
trees stood like pallid
ghosts, sheeted and shrouded in snow. And the north wind
moaned across the open
country, and the traveler grew cold and weary. Then he
spoke to the bird and said,
"Bird, when I and my companions set out on our
journey from the land beyond
the sunset, the Princess promised us each a guide,
who should bring us back in
safety if only we would faithfully heed his
monitions. Where then is this
guide? for hitherto I have walked alone, and have
seen no leader.
And the bird answered, “O
poet, I, whom thou bearest about in they bosom, and
that guide and monitor! I am
thy director, thine angel, and thine inward light.
And to each of thy companions
a like guide was vouchsafed, but the man of
appetite drove away his
monitor, and the man of intellect did even worse, for he
gave over to death his friend
and is better self. Gold against dross, the wisdom
of the Gods against the knowledges
of men! But thou, poet, art the child of the
Gods, and thou alone shalt
again behold with joy the land beyond the sunset, and
face of Her whose true
servitor and knight thou art!”
Then the traveler was right
glad, and his heart was
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[Page 166] lifted up, and as
he went he sang. But, for all
that, the way grew steeper to his feet, and the
icy air colder to his face;
and on every hand there were no longer meadows and
orchards full of laboring
folk, but glittering snow-wreaths, and diamond bright
glaciers, shining hard and
keen against the deeps of darkening space; and at
times the roar of a distant avalanche
shook the atmosphere about him, and then
died away into the silence
out of which the sound had come. Peak above peak of
crystal-white mountain ranges
rose upon his sight, massive, and still, and
awful, terrible affirmations
of the verity of the Ideal. For this world of
colossal heights and
fathomless gulfs, of blinding snows, of primeval silence,
of infinite revelation, of
splendid lights upon manifold summits of opal, topaz
,and sardony, all seemed to
him the witness and visible manifestation of his
most secret and dreadful
thoughts. He had seen these things in his visions, he
had shaped them in his hidden
reveries, he had dared to believe that such a
region as this might be —
nay, ought to be — if the universe were of Divine
making. And now it burst upon
him, an apocalypse of giant glories, an empire of
absolute being, independent
and careless of human presence, affirming itself
eternally to its own
immeasurable solitudes.
“I have reached the top and
pinnacle of life”, cried the poet; “this is the
world wherein all things are
made!”
And now, indeed, save for the
fairy bird, he trod his path alone. Now and then
great clouds of mist swept
down from the heights, or rose from the icy gorges,
and wrapped him in their soft
gray folds, hiding from his sight the glittering
expanse around him, and
making him afraid. Or, at times, he beheld his own
shadow, a vast
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[Page 167] and portentous Self,
projected on the nebulous air,
and looming in his pathway, a
solitary monster threatening him with doom. Or yet
again, there arose before
him, multiplied in bewildering eddies of fog-wreath, a
hundred spectral selves, each
above, and behind the other, like images repeated
in reverberating mirrors -
his own form, his own mien, his own garb and aspect -
appalling in their
omnipresence, maddening in their grotesque immensity as the
goblins of a fever dream. But
when first the traveler beheld this sight, and
shrank at it, feeling for his
sword, the fairy bird at his breast sang to him,
“Fear not, this is the
Chimaera of whom the Princess spoke. You have passed
unhurt the sirens, the ogres
and the hydra-headed brood of plain and lowland;
now meet with courage this
phantom of the heights. Even now thou standest on the
confines of the land beyond
the sunset; these are the dwellers on the border,
the spectres who haunt the
threshold of the farther world. They are but shadows
of thyself, reflections cast
upon the mists of the abyss, phantoms painted on
the veil of the sanctuary.
Out of the void they arise, the offspring of Unreason
and of the Hadean Night.”
Then a strong wind came down
from the peaks of the mountain like the breathing
of a God, and it rent the
clouds asunder, and scattered the fog-wreaths, and
blew the phantoms hither and
thither like smoke; and like smoke they were
extinguished and spent
against the crags of the pass. And after that the poet
cared no more for them, but
went on his way with a bold heart, until he had left
behind and below him the
clouds and mists of the ravines among the hills, and
stood on the topmost expanse
of dazzling snow, and beheld once more the golden
gate of the Land that lies
beyond the Sun.
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[Page 168]
But of his meeting with the
Princess, and of the gladness and splendor of their
espousals, and of all the joy
that he had, is not for me to tell, for these
things, which belong to the
chronicles of that fairy country, no mortal hand in
words of human speech is in
any wise able to relate. All that I certainly know
and can speak of with
plainness is this, that he obtained the fulness of his
heart’s desire, and beyond
all hope, or knowledge, or understanding of earth,
was blessed for evermore.
And now I have finished the
story of a man who say and followed his Ideal, who
loved and prized it, and
clave to it above and through all lesser mundane
things. Of a man whom the
senses could not allure, nor the craving for
knowledge, nor the lust of
power, nor the blast of spiritual vanity, shake from
his perfect rectitude and
service. Of a man who, seeing the good and the
beautiful way, turned not
aside from it, nor yielded a step to the enemy; in
whose soul the voice of the
inward Divinity no rebuke, no derision, nor neglect
could quench; who chose his
part and abode by it, seeing no reconciliation with
the world, not weakly
repining because his faith in the Justice of God distanced
his sympathies of common men.
Every poet has it in him to imagine, to
comprehend, and desire such a
life as this, he who lives it canonizes his
genius, and, to the topmost
manhood of the Seer, adds the Divinity of Heroism.
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[Page 169]
- 4 - A TURN OF LUCK
" Messieurs, faites
votre jeu ! . . . Le jeu est fait! . . . Rien ne va plus ! .
. . Rouge gagne et la couleur
! . . . Rouge gagne, la couleur perd! . . . Rouge
perd et la couleur !. . .
"
Such were the monotonous
continually recurring sentences, always spoken in the
same impassive tones, to
which I listened as I stood by the tables in the
gaming-rooms of Monte Carlo.
Such are the sentences to which devotees of the
fickle goddess, Chance,
listen hour after hour as the day wears itself out from
early morning to late evening
in that beautiful, cruel, enchanting earthly
paradise, whose shores are
washed by the bluest sea in the world, whose gardens
are dotted with globes of
golden fruit, and plumed with feathery palms, and
where, as you wander in and
out among the delicious shadowy foliage, you hear,
incessantly, the sound of guns,
and may, now and then, catch sight of some
doomed creature with delicate
white breast and broken wing, dropping, helpless
and bleeding, into the still
dark waters below the cliff. A wicked place ! A
cruel place! Heartless,
bitter, pitiless, inhuman ! And yet, so beautiful!
I stood, on this particular
afternoon, just opposite a young man seated at one
of the rouge et noir tables.
As my glance wandered from face to face among the
players, it was arrested by his,
— a singularly pallid, thin, eager face; —
remarkably eager, even in
such a place and in such company as this. He seemed
about twenty-five, but he had
the bowed and shrunken look of an invalid,
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[Page
170] and from time to time he
coughed terribly, the ominous cough of a person
with lungs half consumed by
tubercle. He had not the air of a man who gambles
for pleasure, nor, I thought,
that of a spendthrift or a ne'er-do-weel ;
disease, not dissipation, had
hollowed his cheeks and set his hands trembling,
and the unnatural light in
his eyes was born of fever rather than of greed. He
played anxiously but not
excitedly, seldom venturing on a heavy stake, and
watching the game with an
intentness which no incident diverted. Suddenly I saw
a young girl make her way
through the throng towards him. She was plainly
dressed, and had a sweet, sad
face and eyes full of tenderness. She touched him
on the shoulder, stooped over
him, and kissed him in the frankest, simplest
manner possible on the
forehead. "Viens," she whispered, "je m'etouffe ici, il
fait si frais dehors;
sortons." He did not answer; his eyes were on the cards.
Rouge perd, et la couleur,
said the hard official voice.
With a sigh, he rose,
coughed, passed his hand over his eyes, and took his
wife's arm. (I felt sure she
was his wife.) They passed slowly through the rooms
together, and I lost sight of
them. But not of his face — nor of hers. Sitting
by the fountain outside the
gaming saloons half an hour afterwards, I fell to
musing about this strange
couple. So young, — she scarcely more than a child,
and he so ill and wasted ! He
had played with the manner of an old habitué, and
she seemed used to finding
him at the tables and leading him away. I made up my
mind that I had stumbled on a
romance, and resolved to hunt it down. At the
table d'hôte dinner in my
hotel that evening I met a friend from Nice to whom I
confided my curiosity.
"I know", said he, "the young people of whom you speak;
they are
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[Page 171] patients of Dr S. of Monaco,
one of my most intimate
acquaintances. He told me
their story". " They", I interpolated, — " is the
wife, then, also ill ? "
My friend smiled a little. "Not ill exactly, perhaps",
he answered. " But you
must have seen, — she will very shortly be a mother. And
she is very young and delicate".
" Tell me their story", I said, " since you
know it. It is romantic, I am
certain". " It is sad", he said, " and sadness
suffices, I suppose, to
constitute romance. The young man's name is Georges
Saint-Cyr, and his family
were poor relations of an aristocratic house. I say
were, because they are all
dead, — his father, mother, and three sisters. The
father died of tubercle, so
did his daughters; the son, you see, inherits the
same disease and will also
die of it at no very distant time. Georges Saint-Cyr
never found anybody to take
him up in life. He was quite a lad when he lost his
widowed mother, and his
health was, even then, so bad and fitful that he could
never work. He tried his
best; but what chef can afford to employ a youth who is
always sending in doctor's
certificates to excuse his absence from his desk, and
breaking down with headache
or swooning on the floor in office-hours ? He was
totally unfit to earn his
living, and the little money he had would not suffice
to keep him decently.
Moreover, in his delicate condition he positively needed
comforts which to other lads
would have been superfluous. Still he managed to
struggle on for some five
years, getting copying-work and what-not to do in his
own rooms, till he had contrived,
by the time he was twenty-two, to save a
little money. His idea was to
enter the medical profession and earn a livelihood
by writing for scientific
journals, for he had wits and was not
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[Page 172]
without literary talent. He
was lodging then in a cheap quarter of Paris not far
from the École de Médecine.
Well, the poor boy passed his baccalaureat and
entered on his first year. He
got through that pretty well, but then came the
hospital work; and then, once
more he broke down. The rising at six o'clock on
bitter cold winter mornings,
the going out into the bleak early air sometimes
thick with snow or sleet, the
long attendance day after day in unwholesome wards
and foetid postmortem rooms;
the afternoons spent over dissecting, — all these
things contributed to bring
about a catastrophe. He fell sick and took to his
bed, and as he was quite alone
in the world, his tutor, who was a kind-hearted
man, undertook to see him
through his illness, both as physician and as friend.
And when, after a few weeks,
Georges was able to get about again, the professor,
seeing how lonely the young
man was, asked him to spend his Sundays and spare
evenings with himself and his
family in their little apartment au cinquième of
the rue Cluny. For the
professor was, of course, poor, working for five francs a
lesson to private pupils, and
a much more modest sum for class lectures such as
those which Georges attended.
But all this mattered nothing to Georges. He went
gladly the very next Sunday
to Dr Le Noir's, and there he met the professor's
daughter — whom you have
seen. She was only just seventeen, and prettier then
than she is now I doubt not,
for her face is anxious and sorrowful now, and
anxiety and sorrow are not
becoming. You don't wonder that the young student
fell in love with her. The
father, engrossed in his work, did not see what was
going on, and so Pauline's
heart was won before the mischief could be stopped.
The young people themselves
went to him
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[Page 173] hand in hand one evening and
told him all about it. Madame
Le Noir had long been dead, and the professor had
two sons studying medicine.
His daughter was, perhaps, rather in his way; he
loved her much, but she was
growing fast into womanhood, and he did not quite
know what to do with her.
Saint-Cyr was well-born and he was clever. If only his
health were to take a turn
for the better, all might go well. But then, if not ?
He looked at the young man's
pale face and remembered what his stethoscope had
revealed. Still, in such an early
stage these physical warnings often came to
nothing. Rest, and fresh air,
and happiness, might set him up and make a healthy
man of him yet. So he gave a
preliminary assent to the engagement, but forbade
the young people to consider
the affair settled — for the present. He wanted to
see how Georges got on. It
was early spring then. Hope and love and the April
sunshine agreed with the
young man. He was much stronger by June, and did well
at the hospital and at his
work. He had reached the end of his fin d'année
examinations; a year's
respite was before him now before beginning to pass for
his doctorate. Le Noir
thought that if he could pass the next winter in the
south of France he would be
quite set up, and lost no time in imparting this
idea to Georges. But Georges
was not just then in funds; his time had been
lately wholly taken up with
his studies, and he had been unable to do any
literary hacking. When he
told the professor that he could not afford to spend a
winter on the Riviera, Le
Noir looked at him fixedly a minute or two and then
said: — ' Pauline's dot will
be 10,000 francs. It comes to her from her mother.
With care that ought to keep
you both till you have taken your doctorate and can
earn
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[Page 174] money for yourself. Will you
marry Pauline this autumn and take
her with you to the south?'
Well, you can fancy whether this proposal pleased
Georges or not. At first he
refused, of course; he would not take Pauline's
money; it was her's; he would
wait till he could earn money of his own. But the
professor was persuasive, and
when he told his daughter of the discussion, she
went privately into her
father's study where Georges sat, pretending to read
chemistry, and settled the
matter. So the upshot of it was that late in October,
Pauline became Madame
Saint-Cyr, and started with her husband for the Riviera.
"The winter turned out a
bitter one. Bitter and wild and treacherous over the
whole of Europe. Snow where
snow had not been seen time out of mind; biting
murderous winds that nothing
could escape. My friend Dr S. says the Riviera is
not always kind to
consumptives, even when at its best; and this particular
season saw it at its worst.
Georges Saint-Cyr caught a violent chill one evening
at St Raphael, whither he and
his wife had gone for the sake of the cheapness
rather than to any of the
larger towns on the littoral; and in a very short time
his old malady was on him
again, — the fever, the cough, the weakness, — in
short, a fresh poussée, as
the doctors say. Pauline nursed him carefully till
March set in; then he
recovered a little, but he was far from convalescent. She
wrote hopefully to her
father; so did Georges; indeed both the young man and his
wife, ignorant of the hold
which the disease had really got upon him, thought
things to be a great deal
better than they actually were. But as days went on
and the cough continued, they
made up their minds that St Raphael did not suit
Georges, and resolved to go
on to Nice. March was already far
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[Page 175]
advanced; Nice would not be
expensive now. So they went, but still Georges got
no better. He even began to
get weaker; the cough tore him, he said, and he
leaned wearily on his wife's
arm when they walked out together. Clearly he would
not be able to return to
Paris and to work that spring. Pauline, too, was not
well, the long nursing had
told on her, and she had, besides, her own ailments,
for already the prospect of
motherhood had defined itself. She wrote to her
father that Georges was still
poorly and that they should not return home till
May. But before the first ten
days of of April had passed, something of the true
state of the case began to
dawn on Saint-Cyr. ' I shall never again be strong
enough to work hard,' he said
to himself, ' and I must work hard if I am to pass
my doctorate examinations.
Meantime, all Pauline's dot will be spent. I may have
to wait months before I can
do any consecutive work; perhaps, even, I shall be
unable to make a living by
writing. I am unfit for any study. How can I get
money — and get it quickly —
for her sake and for the child's ?'
"Then the thought of the
tables at Monte Carlo flashed into his mind. Eight
thousand francs of Pauline's
dot remained; too small a sum in itself to be of
any permanent use, but enough
to serve as capital for speculation in rouge et
noir. With good luck such a
sum might produce a fortune. The idea caught him and
fascinated his thoughts
sleeping and waking. In his dreams he beheld piles of
gold shining beside him on
the green cloth, and by day as he wandered feebly
along the Promenade des
Anglais with Pauline he grew silent, feeding his sick
heart with this new fancy.
One day he said to his wife: — ' Let us run over to
Monte Carlo and see the
playing; it will amuse us; and the gardens are
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[Page
176] lovely, You will be
delighted with the place. Everybody says it is the most
beautiful spot on the
Riviera.' So they went, and were charmed, but Georges did
not play that day. He stood
by the tables and watched, while Pauline, too timid
to venture into the saloons,
and a little afraid of le jeu, sat by the great
fountain in the garden
outside the casino. Georges declared that evening as they
sat over their tea at Nice
that he had taken a fancy for beautiful Monaco, and
that he would rather finish
the month of April there than at Nice. Pauline
assented at once, and the
next day they removed to the most modest lodgings they
could find within easy access
of the gardens. Then; very warily and gently,
Saint-Cyr unfolded to Pauline
his new-born hopes. She was terribly alarmed at
first and sobbed piteously. '
It is so wicked to gamble, Georges,' she said; — '
no blessing can follow such a
plan as yours. And I dare not tell papa about it'.
'It would be wicked, no
doubt,' said Georges, 'to play against one's friend or
one's neighbour, as they do
in clubs and private circles, because in such cases
if one is lucky, someone else
is beggared, and the money one puts in one's
pocket leaves the other
players so much the poorer. But here it is quite another
thing. We play against a
great firm, an administration, whom our individual
successes do not affect, and
which makes a trade of the whole concern. Scruples
are out of place under such
circumstances. Playing at Monte Carlo hurts nobody
but oneself, and is not
nearly so reprehensible as the legitimate business that
goes on daily at the Bourse'.
' Still', faltered Pauline, 'such horrid persons
do play, — such men, — such
women ! It is not respectable.' ' It is not
respectable for most people
certainly,' he said, ' because other ways of earning
are
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[Page 177] open to them. The idle come
here, the dissolute, the
good-for-nothings. I know all
that. But we are quite differently placed; and
have no other means of
getting money to live with. At those tables, Pauline, I
shall be working for you as
sincerely and honestly as though I were buying up
shares or investing in
foreign railroads. It is the name and tradition of the
thing that frightens you.
Look it in the face and you will own that it is simply
. . . speculation'. '
Georges,' said Pauline, ' you know best. Do as you like
dear, I understand nothing,
and you were always clever.'
"So Saint-Cyr had his
way, and went to work accordingly, without loss of time, a
little shyly at first, not
daring to venture on any considerable stake. So he
remained for a week at the
roulette tables; because at the rouge et noir one can
only play with gold. The week
came to an end and found him neither richer nor
poorer. Then he grew bolder
and ventured into the deeper water. He played on
rouge et noir, with luck the
first day or two, but after that fortune turned
dead against him. He said
nothing of it to Pauline, who came every day into the
rooms at intervals to seek
him and say a few words, sometimes leading him out
for air when he looked weary,
or beguiling him away on pretence of her own need
for companionship or for a
walk. No doubt the poor girl suffered much; anxiety,
loneliness, and a lingering
shame which she could not suppress, paled her
cheeks, and made her thin and
careworn. She dared not ask how things were going,
but her husband's silence and
the increased sickliness of his aspect set her
heart beating heavily with
dread. Alone in her room she must have wept much
during all this sad time, for
my friend Dr S. says that when she made her first
call upon his
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[Page 178] services he noted the signs
of tears upon her face, and
taxed her with the fact,
getting from her the reply that she ' often cried.'
"Little by little, being
a kind and sympathetic man, he drew from her the story
I have told you. Georges
became his patient also, but was always reticent in
regard to le jeu. Dr S. tried
to dissuade him from visiting the tables, on the
ground that the atmosphere in
the saloons would prove poisonous to him and
perhaps even fatal. But
although, in deference to this counsel, the young man
shortened somewhat the
duration of his sittings, and spent more time under the
trees with Pauline, he did
not by any means abandon his speculation, hoping
always, no doubt, as all
losers hope, to see the luck turn and to take revenge
on Fortune."
"And the luck has not
turned yet in Saint-Cyr's case, I suppose?" said I.
"No", answered my
friend. "I fear things are going very ill with him and poor
Pauline's dot"
As he spoke he rose from the
dinner-table, and we strolled out together upon the
moonlight terrace of the
hotel. " In ten minutes," said I, " my train starts. I
am going back to Nice tonight.
Despite all its loveliness, Monte Carlo is
hateful to me, and I do not
care to sleep under its shadow. But before I go, I
have a favour to ask of you.
Let me know the sequel of the story you have told
me tonight. I want to know
how it ends — in triumph or in tragedy. Dr S. will
always be able to keep you
informed whether you remain here or not. Write to me
as soon as there is anything
to tell, and you will do me a signal kindness. You
see you are such an admirable
raconteur that you have interested me irresistibly
in your subject and must pay
the penalty of talent!"
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[Page 179]
He laughed, broke off the
laugh in a sigh, then shook hands with me, and we
parted.
About two months later, after
my return to England, I had from my friend the
following letter: —
"You have, I do not
doubt, retained your interest in the fortunes of the two
young people who so much
attracted you at the tables last April. Well, I have
just seen my friend Dr S. in
Lyons, and he has related to me the saddest tale
you can imagine concerning
Georges and Pauline. Here it is, just as he gave it,
and while it is fresh in my
memory. It seems that all through the month of April
and well into May,
Saint-Cyr's ill luck stuck to him. He lost daily, and at last
only a very slender remnant
of his wife's money was left to play with. Week by
week, too, he grew more
wasted and feeble, fading with his fading fortune. As
for Pauline, although she did
not complain about herself, Dr S. saw reason to
feel much anxiety on her
account. Grief and sickened hope and the wear of the
terrible life she and Georges
were leading combined to break down her strength.
Phthisis, too, although not a
contagious malady in the common sense of the term,
is apt to exercise on
debilitated persons constantly exposed to the
companionship of its victims
an extremely baleful effect, and to this danger
Pauline was daily and nightly
subjected. She became feverish, a sensation of
unwonted languor took
possession of her, and sleep, nevertheless, became almost
impossible. Georges,
engrossed in his play, observed but little the
deterioration of his wife's health;
or, perhaps, attributed it to her condition
and to nervousness in regard
to her approaching trial. Things were in this
state, when, one day towards
the close of May,
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[Page 180] Georges took his
customary seat at the rouge
et noir table. The weather had suddenly become
extremely hot, and the crowd
in the salles de jeu had considerably diminished.
Only serious and veteran
habitués were left, staking their gold, for the most
part, with the coolness and
resolution of long experience. Pauline remained in
her room, she felt too ill to
rise, and attributed her indisposition to the
heat. Very sick at heart,
Georges entered the gaming-rooms alone, and laid out
on the green cloth the last
of his capital. Then occurred one of those strange
and complete reversions of
luck that come to very few men. Georges won
continuously, without a
break, throughout the entire day. After an hour or two
of steady success, he grew
elated, and began to stake large sums, with a
recklessness that might have
appalled others than the old stagers who sat beside
him. But his temerity brought
golden returns, every stake reaped a fruitful
harvest, and louis d'or
accumulated in tall piles at his elbow. Before the rooms
closed he had become a rich
man, and had won back Pauline's dowry forty times
over. Men turned to look at
him as he left the tables, his face white with
fatigue, his eyes burning
like live coals, and his gait unsteady as a
drunkard's. Outside in the
open air, everything appeared to him like a dream. He
could not collect his
thoughts; his brain whirled; he had eaten nothing all day,
fearing to quit his place
lest he should change his luck or lose some good coup,
and now extreme faintness
overcame him. Stooping over the great basin of the
fountain in front of the
Casino he bathed his face with his hands, and eagerly
drew in the cool evening
breeze of the Mediterranean, just sweeping up sweet and
full of refreshment over the
parched rock of Monte Carlo. Then he made his way
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[Page 181] home, climbed with toil the
high narrow staircase, and entered the
little apartment he shared
with Pauline. In the sitting room he paused a minute,
poured out a glass of wine
and drank it at a draught, to give himself courage to
tell her his good news like a
man. His hand turned the key of his bedroom; his
heart beat so wildly that its
throbbing deafened him; he could not hear his own
voice as he cried: ' Pauline
— darling ! — we are rich ! my luck has turned !' .
. . But then he stopped,
stricken by a blow worse than the stroke of death.
Before him stood Dr S., and a
woman whom he did not recognise, bending over the
bed upon which Pauline lay,
pallid and still, with hands folded upon her breast.
Georges flung his
porte-monnaie, stuffed with notes, upon the foot of the bed,
and sank down on his knees beside
it, his eyes fixed upon his young wife's face.
Dr S. touched him upon the
shoulder. ' Du courage, Saint-Cyr,' he whispered. '
She has gone . . . first.'
The kindly words meant that the separation would not
be for long. The woman in
charge by the couch of the dead girl wept aloud, but
there were no tears yet in
the eyes of Georges. ' And the child ?' he asked at
length, vaguely comprehending
what had happened. They lifted the sheet gently,
and showed him a little white
corpse lying beside its mother. ' I am glad the
child is dead, too,' said
Georges Saint-Cyr.
"He would not have her
buried by the Mediterranean; — no — nor would he let the
corpse be taken home for
burial. The desire for flight was upon him, and he said
he must carry his dead with
him till he himself should die. That night he left
Monte Carlo for Rome, bearing
with him those dear remains of wife and child; and
the good doctor seeing his
desperation and full of pity for so
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[Page 182] vast a
woe, went with him.
'Perhaps', he told me, 'had I not gone, Georges would not
himself have reached Rome
alive.' They travelled night and day, for the young
man would not rest an
instant. His design was to have the body of his wife
burned in the crematorium of
the Eternal City, and Dr S. was, fortunately, able
to obtain for him the
fulfilment of his desire. Then Saint-Cyr enclosed the
ashes of his beloved in a
little silver box, slung it about his neck and bade
his friend farewell. I asked
the doctor where he went. Northward, he answered, '
but I did not ask his plans.
He gave me no address; he had money in plenty, and
it matters little where he went,
for death was in his face as he wrung my hand
at parting, and he cannot
live to see the summer out.' "
That was the end of the
letter. And for my part, with the sole exception of
Georges Saint-Cyr, I never
heard of any man who became rich over the tables of
Monte Carlo.
- 5 - NOEMI; OR, THE SILVER
RIBBON
I have often heard practising
physicians and students of pathology assert that
no one ever died of a broken
heart — that is, of course, in the popular sense of
the phrase. Rupture of the heart,
such as that which killed the passionate
tyrant John of Muscovy, is a
rare accident, and has no connection with the
mental trouble and strain
implied in the common expression heart-breaking. I
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[Page 183] have, however, my own theory
upon this question, — a theory founded
on some tolerably strong
evidence which might serve more scientifically-minded
persons than myself as a text
for a medical thesis; but, as for me, I am no
writer of theses, and had
much ado to get honestly through the only production
of the sort which ever issued
from my pen, my Thèse de Doctorat. For I studied
the divine art of Aesculapius
at the École de Médicine of Paris, and it was
there, just before taking my
degree, that I became involved in a singular little
history, the circumstances of
which first led me to adopt my present views on
the subject alluded to in the
opening words of this story.
It is now many years since I
inhabited the students' quarter in the gay city,
and rented a couple of little
rooms in an hotel meublé not far from the gardens
of the Luxembourg. Medical
students are never rich, and I was no exception to
the rule, though, compared
with many of my associates, my pecuniary position was
one of enviable affluence. I
had a library of my own, I drank wine at a franc
the litre, and occasionally
smoked cigars. My little apartment overlooked a wide
street busy with incessant traffic,
and on warm evenings, after returning from
dinner at the restaurant
round the corner, it was my habit to throw open my
window-casement and lean out
to inhale the fresh cool air of the coming night,
and to watch the crowds of
foot-passengers and vehicles going and coming like
swarms of ants along the
paved street below.
On a certain lovely July
evening towards the close of my student career, I took
up my favourite position as
usual, luxuriating in the fumes of my cigarette and
in that sweetest of mental
enjoyments, absolute idleness, earned at the cost of
hard and long-continued toil.
The sun
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[Page 184] had but just gone down, the
sky
was brilliant with pink
lights and mellow tints of golden green blending with
the blue of the deep vault
overhead, scores of swift-darting birds were wheeling
about in the still air,
uttering sharp clear cries, as though calling one
another to rest. Below, women
stood at their house-doors gossiping with their
neighbours; peals of laughter
and the incessant chatter of feminine voices
mingled with the din of
horses' hoofs on the hard road and with the never-ending
jingle of the harness-bells.
Gazing lazily down into the
street, my attention was suddenly arrested by the
singular appearance and
behaviour of an odd-looking brown dog, which seemed to
be seeking someone among the
hurrying crowds and rattling carts. Half-a-dozen
times he ran up the street and
disappeared from view, only to retrace his steps,
each time with increasing
agitation and eagerness of manner. I saw him cross the
street again and again, scan
the faces of the passers-by, dash up the various
turnings and come panting
back, his tongue, his tail drooping; one could even
fancy there were tears in his
eyes. At length, exhausted or despairing, he
crossed the street for the
last time and sat down on the doorstep of the house I
inhabited, the picture of
grief and dismay. He was lost ! Now I had not served
my five years' apprenticeship
to medical science in Paris without becoming
intimate with the horrible
secrets of physiological laboratories. I knew that a
lost dog in Paris, if not
handsome, and valuable to sell as a pet, runs a
terrible chance of falling
directly or indirectly into the hands of vivisecting
professors, and dying a death
of torture. He may be picked up by an employé
engaged in the search for
fitting victims, and so handed over to immediate
martyrdom, or
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[Page 185] he may be hurried off to
languish for weeks in that
horrible fourrière for lost
dogs whose managers hang their wretched captives by
fifties every Tuesday, and
liberally supply the demands of all the physiologists
who take the trouble to send
to them for subjects. Knowing these things, and
perceiving that my concierge
was absorbed in discussing scandal on the opposite
side of the street, I took advantage
of her absence from her post to slip down
to the rez-de-chaussée,
pounce on the unfortunate dog, whom I found seated
hopelessly at the entrance,
and smuggle him upstairs into my rooms. There I
deposited him on the floor,
patted him encouragingly, and gave him water and a
couple of sweet biscuits. But
he was abjectly miserable, and though he drank a
little, would eat nothing.
After taking two or three turns round the apartment
and sniffing suspiciously at
the legs of the chairs and wainscot of the walls,
he returned to me where I
stood with my back to the window watching him, looked
up in my face, wagged his
tail feebly, and whined. I stooped again to caress
him, and, so doing, observed
that he had, tied round his neck, and half-hidden
in his rough brown hair, a
ribbon of silver tinsel, uncommon both in material
and design. I felt assured
that the dog's owner must be a woman, and hastily
removed the ribbon, expecting
to find embroidered upon it some such name as
Amélie or Léontine. But my
examination proved futile, the silver ribbon afforded
me no clue to the antecedents
of my canine waif. And indeed, as I stood
contemplating him in some
perplexity, the conviction forced itself on my mind
that he was not exactly the
kind of animal that Amélie or Léontine would be
likely to select for a pet.
He was a poodle certainly, but of an ill-bred and
uncouth description
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[Page 186] and instead of being shaved
to his centre, and
wearing frills round his
paws, his coat had been suffered to grow in its natural
manner, — an indication
either of neglect or of want of taste impossible in a
feminine proprietor. But his face
was the most puzzling and at the same time the
most fascinating thing about
him. It bore a more human expression than I had
ever before seen upon a dog's
countenance, an expression of singular appeal and
childishness, so comic withal
in its contrast with the rough hair, round eyes,
and long nose of the
creature, that as I watched him an involuntary laugh
escaped me.
"Certainly", I said to him, "you are a droll dog. One might do a
good deal with you in a
travelling caravan! " As the evening wore on he became
more tranquil. Perhaps he
began to have confidence in me and to believe that I
should restore him to his
owner. At any rate, before we retired to rest he
prevailed on himself to eat
some supper which I prepared for him, pausing every
now and then in his meal to
lift his infantile face to mine and wag his tail in
a halfhearted manner, as
though he said, "You see I am doing my best to trust
you, though you are a medical
student!" Poor innocent beast! Well indeed for him
that he had not chanced to
stop at the door of my neighbour and camarade, Paul
Bouchard, who had a passion
for practical physiology, and with whom no amount of
animal suffering was of the
smallest importance when weighed against the remote
chance of an insignificant
discovery, which would be challenged and contradicted
as soon as announced by
scores of his fellow-experimentalists. If torture were
indeed the true method of
science, then would the vaunted tree of knowledge be
no other than the upas tree
of oriental legend, beneath
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[Page 187] whose fatal
shadow lie hecatombs of
miserable victims slain by its poisonous exhalations,
the odour of which is fraught
with agony and death !
My poodle remained with me
many days. No one appeared to claim him, and no
inquiries elicited the least
information regarding him. La douceur of five
francs had soothed the
natural indignation and resentment displayed by my
concierge at the first sight
of my canine protégé; the restlessness and
suspicion he had evinced on
making my acquaintance had subsided; and we were
getting on in a very
comfortable and friendly manner together, when accident
threw in my way the clue I had
laboriously but vainly sought. Returning one day
from a lecture, and being
unusually pressed for time, I took a shorter cut
homeward than was my wont,
and at the corner of a narrow and ill-smelling street
I came upon a little
heterogeneous shop, in the windows of which were set out a
variety of faded and bizarre
articles of millinery. Hanging from a front shelf
in a conspicuous position
among the collection was a strip of the identical
silver ribbon which had
encircled Pepin's throat — I called the dog Pepin — on
the night I rescued him from
the streets. Without hesitation I entered the shop
and questioned a slatternly
woman who sat behind the counter munching gruyere
cheese and garlic.
" Will you tell me,
madame," said I with my most agreeable air, " whether you
recollect having sold any of
that tinsel ribbon lately, and to whom?"
She was not likely to have
much custom, I thought, and her clients would be
easily remembered.
"What's that to
you?" was her retort, as she paused in her meal and stared at
me; " do you want to buy
the rest of it?"
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[Page 188]
I took the hint immediately,
and produced my purse. "With all the pleasure in
life," I said, "if
you will do me the favour I ask."
She darted a keen look at me,
laughed, pushed her cheese aside, and took the
ribbon from its place in the
shop window.
"I sold half a mètre of
it about three weeks ago," said she slowly, " to Noémi
Bergeron; you know her,
perhaps? She's not been this way lately. There's a mètre
of it left; it's one franc
twenty, monsieur."
"And where does Noémi
Bergeron live ?" I asked, as she dropped the money into
her till.
" Well, she used to
lodge at number ten in this street, with Maman Paquet. Maybe
she's gone. I've not seen
either her or her dog this fortnight."
"A poodle dog,"
cried I eagerly, "with his coat unclipped, — a rough brown dog?"
"Yes, exactly. Ah, you
know Noémi, — bien sûr!" And she leered at me, and
laughed again unpleasantly.
"I never saw her in my
life," said I hotly; " but her dog has come astray to my
lodgings, and he had a piece
of this ribbon of yours round his throat; nothing
more than that."
" Ah ? Well, she lives
at number ten. Tenez, — there's Maman Paquet the other
side of the street; you'd
better go and speak to her."
She pointed to a hideous old
harridan standing on the opposite pavement, her
bare arms resting on her
hips, and a greasy yellow kerchief twisted
turban-wiseround her head.
My heart sank. Noémi must be
very poor, or very unfortunate, to live under the
same roof with such an old
sorcière ! Nevertheless, I crossed the street, and
accosted the hag with a
smile.
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[Page 189]
"Good-day, Maman Paquet.
Can you tell me anything of your lodger, Noémi
Bergeron?"
"Hein?" She was
deaf and surly. I repeated my question in a louder key. " I know
nothing of her," she
answered, in a voice that sounded like the croak of a frog.
" She couldn't pay me
her rent, and I told her to be off. Maybe she's drowned by
this."
"You turned her
out?" I cried.
"Yes, turned her
out," repeated the hag, with a savage oath. " It was her own
fault; she might have sold
her beast of a poodle to pay me, and she wouldn't.
Why not, I should like to
know, — she sold everything else she had!"
"And you can tell me
nothing about her now, — you know no more than that ? "
"Nothing. Go and find
her!" She muttered a curse, glared at me viciously, and
hobbled off. I had turned to
depart in another direction, when a skinny hand
suddenly clutched my arm, and
looking round, I found that Maman Paquet had
followed and overtaken me.
" You know the girl," she squeaked, eyeing me
greedily, — "will you
pay her rent? She owed me a month's lodging, seven
francs."
She looked so loathsome and
horrible with her withered evil face so close to
mine that I gave a gesture of
disgust and shook her off as though she had been a
toad.
"No", said I,
quickening my steps; " she is a stranger to me, and my pockets are
empty".
Maman Paquet flung a curse
after me, more foul and emphatic than the last, and
went her way blaspheming.
I returned home to Pépin
saddened and disquieted. "So, after all", I said to
him, " your owner
belongs to the fair sex! But, heaven! in what misery she and
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[Page 190] you must have lived! And yet
you cried for her, Pépin!"
Not long after these
incidents — three or four days at the latest — a party of
my fellow-students came to
smoke with me, and as the shell always sounds of the
sea, our conversation
naturally savoured of our professional pursuits. We
discussed our hospital chefs,
their crotchets, their inventions, their medical
successes, their politics; we
criticised new methods of operation, related
anecdotes of the theatre and
consulting-room, and speculated on the chances of
men about to go up for
examination. Then we touched on the subject of obscure
diseases, unusual mental
conditions, prolonged delirium, and kindred topics. It
was at this point that one of
us, Eugène Grellois, a house-surgeon at a
neighbouring hospital, remarked,
—
"By the way, we have a
curious case now in the women's ward of my service, a
pretty little Alsatian girl
of eighteen or twenty. She was knocked down by a
cart about three weeks ago
and was brought in with a fracture of the neck of the
left humerus, and two ribs
broken. Well, there was perforation of the pleura,
traumatic pleurisy and fever,
and her temperature went up as high as 41º-8. She
was delirious for three days,
and talked incessantly; we had to put her in a
separate cabinet, so that the
other patients might not be disturbed. I sat by
her bed for hours and
listened. You never heard such odd things as she said. She
let me into the whole of her
history that way. I don't think I should have cared
for it though, if she were
not so wonderfully pretty ! "
"Was it a love story,
Eugène? " asked Auguste Villemin, laughing.
"Not a bit of it; it was
all about a dog who seemed
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[Page 191] to be her pet.
Such an extraordinary dog !
From what she said I gathered that he was a brown
poodle, that he could stand
on his head, and walk on his hind paws, that he
followed her about wherever
she went, that he carved in wood for illustrated
books and journals, that he
wore a silver collar, that she was engaged to be
married to him when he had
earned enough to keep house, and that his name was
Antoine !"
All his hearers laughed
except myself. As for me, my heart bounded, my face
flushed, I was sensible of a
keen sensation of pleasure in hearing Eugène
describe his patient as
wonderfully pretty. I leapt from my chair, pointed to
Pépin, who lay dozing in a
corner of the room, and exclaimed, —
" I will wager anything
that the name of your Alsatian is Noémi Bergeron, and
that my dog there is Antoine
himself!" And before any questions could be put I
proceeded to recount the
circumstances with which my reader is already
acquainted. Of course Pépin
was immediately summoned into the midst of the
circle we had formed round
the open window to have his reputed accomplishments
tested as a criterion of his
identity with Antoine. Amid bursts of laughter and
a clamour of encouragement
and approbation, it was discovered that my canine
protégé possessed at least the
first two of the qualifications imputed to him,
and could walk on his hind
legs or stand on his head for periods apparently
unlimited.
In fact, so obedient and
willing we found him, that when for the third time he
had inverted himself, no
persuasion short of picking him up by his tail, a
proceeding which I deemed
necessary to avert asphyxia, could induce him to
resume his normal position.
But that
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[Page 192] which rendered the
entertainment
specially fascinating and
ludicrous was the inimitable and unbroken gravity of
Pépin's expression. No matter
what his attitude, his eyes retained always the
solemnity one observes in the
eyes of an infant to whom everything in the world
is serious and nothing
grotesque.
"But now for the
engraving on wood !" cried Jules Leuret, when we had exhausted
ourselves with laughing.
"What a pity you have no implements of the art here,
Gervais!"
"That's Eugène's chaff!"
I cried. "Noémi never said anything of the sort, I
warrant! "
"On my honour she
did," said he, emphatically. " Come and see her tomorrow;
she's quite sane now, no
fever left at all. She'll be delighted to hear that you
have her dog, and will tell
you all about him, no doubt."
"After the chefs visit,
then, and we'll breakfast together at noon."
"Agreed. Laughing makes
one dry, mon ami; let me have some more of your wine. We
can't afford good wine like
that, nous autres ! "
2
When the following morning
arrived, I rose sooner than my wont: Eugène's service
was an early one, and by
half-past ten o'clock he and I were alone in the wards
of his hospital. He led me to
a bed in one of the little spaces partitioned off
from the common salle for the
reception of special cases or refractory patients.
There, propped up on her
pillows, her arm bandaged and supported by a cushion,
lay a young girl with fair
braided hair and the sweetest face I had ever seen
out of a
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[Page 193] picture. Something in the
childish and wistful look of her
deep eyes and serious mouth
reminded me strangely of Pépin; it was Pépin's
plaintive expression refined
and intensified by spiritual influence, a look such
as one might imagine on the
face of some young novice, brought up in a convent
and innocent of all evil, —
an ingénue untainted by the world and ignorant of
its ways. Could such a creature
as this come out of the foul and sin-reeking
quartier I had visited four
days ago, with its filthy houses, its fetid alleys,
its coarse blaspheming women
and drunken men ? My mind misgave me: surely, after
all, this could not be Noémi
Bergeron !
I put the question to her
fearfully, for I dreaded to hear her deny it. She was
so beautiful; if she should
say no I should be in despair.
A voice as sweet as the face
answered me, with just a faint inflexion of
surprise in it, and as she
spoke a slight blush suffused her cheeks and showed
the delicate transparency of
her skin.
"Yes, that is my name.
Does monsieur know me, then?"
In my turn I blushed, but
with delight. No wonder Pépin had repined at
separation from so lovely a
mistress !
"I went to your house to
inquire for you the other day, mademoiselle," stammered
I, " for I think I have
a dog which belongs to you. Have you not lost a brown
poodle with a ribbon like
this round his throat?"
As I spoke I produced the
tinsel ornament from my pocket, but before I finished
my last sentence she started
forward with a joyous cry, and but for the timely
intervention of Eugène, who
stood beside the bed, the injured
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[Page 194] arm
might have suffered seriously
from the effects of her excitement.
"Ah!" she cried,
weeping with joy; "my Bambin, my dear Bambin ! He is found
then, he is safe, and I shall
see him again ! "
" Bambin !"
repeated I, dubiously. "Monsieur Grellois thought that his name was
Antoine !"
The rosy colour deepened
under her delicate cheeks and crept to the roots of her
braided hair.
"No", she replied
in a lower tone, " monsieur is mistaken. My dog's name is
Bambin; we called him so
because he is so like a baby. Don't you think him like
a baby, monsieur ? "
She looked wondrously like a
baby herself, and I longed to tell her so; I could
not restrain my curiosity,
her blushes were so enticing.
"And Antoine ? "
persisted I.
"He is a friend of mine,
monsieur; an engraver on wood, an artist."
Eugène and I exchanged
glances. "And you and he are engaged to be married, is it
not so?"
Unconsciously I questioned
her as I might have questioned a child. She hardly
seemed old enough to have the
right over her own secrets.
"Yes, monsieur. But I do
not know where he is; and I have looked for him so
long, ah, so long !"
"What, have you lost him
too, then, as well as Bambin?"
She shook her head, and
looked troubled.
"Tell me," said I,
coaxing her, "perhaps I maybe able to find him also."
"We are Alsatians,"
said Noémi, with her eyelids
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[Page 195] drooping, doubtless
to hide the tears gathering
behind them; "and we lived in the same village and
were betrothed. Antoine was
very clever, and could cut pictures in wood
beautifully, — oh so
beautifully, — and they sent him to Paris to be apprenticed
to a great house of business,
and to learn engraving thoroughly. And I stayed at
home with my father, and
Antoine used to write to me very often, and say how
well he was getting on, and
how he had invented a new method of wood-carving,
and how rich he should be
some day, and that we were to be married very soon.
And then my father died,
quite suddenly, and I was all alone in the house. And
Antoine did not write; — week
after week there was no letter, though I never
ceased writing to him. So I
grew miserable and frightened, and I took Bambin —
Antoine gave me Bambin, and
taught him all his tricks — and I came to Paris to
try and find him. I had a
little money then, and besides, I can make lace, and I
thought it would not be long
before Antoine and I got married. But he had left
the house of business for
which he had worked, and they knew nothing of him at
his lodgings, and there were
ever so many of my letters on the table in the
conciergerie unopened. So I
could learn nothing, for no one knew where he had
gone, and little by little
the money I had brought with me went in food for me
and Bambin. Then somebody
told me that Maman Paquet had a room to let that was
cheap, and I went there and
tried to live on my lace-making, always hoping that
Antoine would come to find
me. But the air of the place was so horrible — oh, so
horrible after our village !
— and I got the fever, and fell sick, and could do
no work at all. And by
degrees I sold all the things I had — my lace-pillow and
all — and when they were gone
the old
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[Page 196] woman wanted me to sell
Bambin,
because he was clever, and
she was sure I could get a good price for him. But I
would rather have sold the
heart out of my body, and so I told her. Then she was
angry, and turned us both
out, Bambin and me, and we went wandering about all
day till at last I got very
faint and tired, for I had been ill a long time,
monsieur, and we had nothing
to eat, so that I lost my senses and fell in the
road all at once, and a cart
went over me. Then the people picked me up, and
carried me here, but none of
them knew Bambin, and I had fainted and could tell
them nothing. So they must
have driven him away, thinking he was a strange dog,
and had no right to follow
me. And when my senses came back I was in the
hospital, and Bambin was
gone, and I thought I never would see him again."
She sank down on her pillow
and drew a great sigh of relief. It had evidently
comforted her to tell her
story to sympathetic listeners. Poor child! scant
sympathy could she have found
in Maman Paquet's unwomanly breast and evil
associations. We were silent
when she had finished, and in the silence we heard
through the open window the
joyous song of the birds, and the hum of the bees
wandering blithely from
flower to flower, laden with their sweets, — sounds that
never cease through all the
long summer days. Alas ! how strange and sad a
contrast it is, — the eternal
and exuberant gladness of Nature's soulless
children, — the universal
inevitable misery of human lives !
Presently the religieuse who
had the charge of the adjoining ward opened the
door softly and called
Eugène.
"Monsieur, will you come
to No. 7 for a moment? Her wound is bleeding again
badly."
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[Page 197]
He looked up, nodded, and
rose from his seat.
"I must go for the
present, Gervais", said he. " If you stay with our little
friend, don't let her
disarrange her arm. The ribs are all right now, but the
humerus is a longer affair.
Au revoir ! "
But I found Noémi too much
excited and fatigued for further conversation; so,
promising to take every
possible care of Bambin and to come again and see her
very soon, I withdrew to the
adjoining ward and joined Eugene.
No need to say that both
these promises were faithfully observed.
Throughout the whole of July
and of the ensuing month Noémi remained an inmate
of the hospital, and it was
not until the first two weeks of September were
spent that the fractured arm
was consolidated and the mandate for dismissal
issued.
Two days before that fixed
for her departure I went to pay her the last of my
customary visits, and found
her sitting at the open window busily engaged in
weaving lace upon a new
pillow, which she exhibited to me with childish glee.
"See, monsieur, what a
beautiful present I have had ! " she cried, holding up
the cushion for me to
examine. " It is much better than the old one I sold; only
look how prettily the bobbins
on it are painted !"
I had never before beheld a
lace pillow, and the curiosity which I displayed
fairly delighted Noémi.
"And who is your
generous benefactor?" I asked, replacing the cushion in her
lap.
"Don't you know?"
she asked in turn, opening her eyes wide with surprise. "I
thought he would have been
sure to tell you. Why, it was that good Monsieur
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[Page 198] Grellois, to be sure ! He
gave some money to the sister to buy it for
me."
Kind Eugène! He had very
little money to live upon, and must, I know, have
economised considerably in
order to purchase this gift for his little patient.
Still I was not jealous of
his bounty, since for many days past I had been
greatly occupied with Noémi's
future welfare, and had busied myself in secret
with certain schemes and
arrangements the issue of which it remained only to
announce.
"So," said I,
taking a chair beside her, " you are going to earn your living
again by making lace ? "
"To try" she
answered with a sad emphasis.
"Lace-making does not
pay well, then ? "
"Oh no, monsieur ! It
cannot be done quickly, you see, — only a little piece
like this every day, working
one's best, — and so much lace is made by machines
now !"
"But it cannot cost you
much to live, Noémi ? "
"The eating and drinking
is not much, monsieur; it is the rent; and all the
cheap lodgings are so dirty !
It is that which is the most terrible. I can't
bear to have ugly things
about me and hideous faces, — like Maman Paquet's!"
She had the poet's instincts,
this little Alsatian peasant. Most girls in her
case would have cared little
for the unlovely surroundings, so long as food and
drink were plentiful.
"But supposing you had a
nice room of your own, clean and comfortable, with an
iron bedstead like this one
here, and chairs and a table, and two windows
looking out over the
Luxembourg gardens, — and nothing to pay."
"Ah, monsieur!"
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[Page 199]
She dropped her pillow, and
fixed her great brown eyes earnestly on my face.
"It is impossible",
pursued I, reddening under her gaze, " for you to return to
the horrible quartier in
which Maman Paquet lives. It is not fit for a young
girl; you would grow wicked
and base like the people who live there, — or else
you would die, — and I think
you would die, Noémi."
"But I have no money,
monsieur."
"If you have no money,
you have friends; a friend has given you your new pillow,
you know, and another friend,
perhaps, may give you a room to live in."
Her eyelids drooped, her
colour came and went quickly, I detected beneath her
bodice the convulsive
movement of her heart. The agitation she betrayed
communicated itself to me; I
rose from my chair and leaned against the
window-sill, so that my face
might be no longer on a level with her eyes.
"I understand you,
monsieur ! " she cried, and immediately burst into tears.
"Yes, Noémi", I
said, "I see you understand me. There is really a room for you
such as I have described. In
two days you will leave the hospital, but you are
not without a home. The woman
of the house in which you will live is kind and
good, she knows all about you
and Bambin, and has promised me to take care of
you. Your furniture is
bought, your rent is paid, — you have nothing to do but
to go and take possession of
the room. I hope you and Bambin will be happy
there."
She made me no reply in
words, but bending forward over her pillow she took my
hand and timidly kissed it.
It would be hard to say which
of us was the happier on the day which saw Noémi
installed in her new abode,
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[Page 200] — she, or I, or Bambin.
Bambin's delight
was certainly the most
demonstrative; he careered round and round the room
uttering joyous barks,
returning at intervals in a panting and exhausted
condition to his pretty
mistress to give and receive caresses which I own I felt
greatly disposed to envy him.
I left my four-footed friend with some regret, for
he and I had been good
companions during Noémi's sojourn at the hospital, and I
knew that my rooms would at
first seem lonely without him. His fair owner, as
she bade me good-bye at the
door of her new domicile, begged me to return often
and see them both, but hard
as I found it to refuse the tempting request, I
summoned up resolution to
tell her that it would be best for us to meet very
seldom indeed, perhaps only
once or twice more, but that her landlady had my
name and address and would be
able to give me tidings of her pretty often.
Her childlike nature and
instincts were never more apparent than on this
occasion.
"What have I done,
monsieur ?" she asked with a bewildered expression, her brown
eyes lifted pleadingly, and
the corners of her mouth depressed. " I thought you
would like to come and see
us. Bambin is so fond of you, too, — we shall both be
so sorry if you don't
come."
As gently and as tenderly as
I could, I tried to explain to her our mutual
position and the evil
construction which others would be sure to place on any
friendship between us. But
she only shook her head in a troubled way and sighed.
"I don't
understand," she said, " but of course you know best. I used to hear
something like that at Maman
Paquet's, about other girls, but I never understood
it.
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[Page 201] Only say that you are not
angry with me, and let me hear about
you as often as you
can."
I promised, smiling, and left
her standing at the open door with Bambin tucked
under her arm, looking after
me down the street and nodding her pretty golden
head.
Many days went by — I
concentrated my mind upon my books, and devoted the whole
of my time and of my thoughts
to preparation for my last two doctorate
examinations, contenting
myself with only a few passing inquiries of Noémi's
landlady concerning the
welfare of her lodger, and with the assurance that both
she and her dog were well and
happy.
But one evening late in
September, as I sat immersed in study, my ear caught the
sound of light girlish
footsteps on the staircase leading to my rooms; then came
a momentary pause, a tap on
the door, and the next minute Noémi herself, closely
followed by the faithful
Bambin, burst upon my solitude.
"I have found him,
monsieur !" she cried breathlessly. "I came at once to tell
you, — I knew you would be so
glad !"
"What, — Antoine?"
I asked, rising and laying my book aside.
"Yes; — Antoine ! I met
him in the street. He was dressed like a gentleman; no
one would have known him
except me ! He had no idea I was in Paris; he turned
quite white with the surprise
of seeing me. And I told him what a search I had
made for him, and how
miserable I had been, and how good you were to me, and
where I was living. And he is
coming to see me this very evening ! Oh, I am so
happy !"
"You should have sent me
word of this, Noémi," said
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[Page 202] I gravely. " You
ought not to have come here.
It is very foolish ------ "
She interrupted me with an
imploring gesture.
"Oh, yes, I know; I am
so sorry ! But just at the moment I forgot. I longed to
tell you about Antoine, and
everything else went out of my head. Don't be cross
with me !"
Could any one be angry with
her? She was thoroughly innocent, and natural, as
innocence always is.
"My child, it is only of
yourself I am thinking. Antoine will teach you to be
wiser by-and-by. Tell him to
come and see me. I suppose you will be married soon
now, won't you?"
"Oh, yes, monsieur, very
soon ? Antoine only wanted money, and he has plenty
now; he has a business of his
own, and is a patron himself!"
"Well, Noémi, I am very
glad. You must let me come to your wedding. I shall call
at your house tomorrow, and
ask all about it; for no doubt Antoine will want you
to settle the arrangements at
once. And now run home, for your own sake, my
child."
"Good-bye !
monsieur." She paused at the door and added shyly, "You will really
come tomorrow morning?"
" Yes, yes; before
breakfast, Good-bye, Noémi."
3
At about ten on the ensuing
day I repaired to Noémi's lodging, and found Madame
Jeannel, the landlady, on the
look-out for me.
" Noémi told me you were
coming", she said; " I will go and fetch her. Her
fiancé was here last night,
and she has a great deal to tell you."
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In two minutes she returned
with my pretty friend, radiant as the sunlight with
happiness and renewed hope.
Antoine loved her more than ever, she said, and he
had brought her a beautiful
present, a silver cross, which she meant to wear on
her wedding-day, tied round
her throat upon the bit of tinsel ribbon I had given
her, and which matched it
exactly. And was the wedding-day fixed ? I asked. No,
not the precise day; Antoine
had said nothing about it; but he had spoken much
of his love, and of the
happiness in store for them both, and of the lovely
things he should give her.
The day was nothing; that could be settled in a
minute at any time. Then she
fetched me some lace she had made, and told me that
Antoine knew of a rich lady
who would buy it, — a marquise, who doated on lace
of the sort, and who gave
enormous sums for a few yards; and the money would do
for her dot, it would buy her
wedding-dress, perhaps. So she prattled on, blithe
and ingenuous, the frank
simplicity of her guileless soul reflected in the clear
depths of her eyes, as the
light of heaven is mirrored in pure waters.
Days went by, and weeks, but
Antoine never came to see me, and whenever I called
at Madame Jeannel's and asked
for Noémi — which I ventured to do several times,
now that the good woman knew
she was engaged to be married, and understood so
well our relations with each
other — I always heard the same story, and always
received, on Antoine's
behalf, the same vague excuses for the postponement of
the visit I had invited him
to pay me. At one time, he bade Noémi tell me his
work was too pressing, and he
could find no time to come; at another, that he
feared to disturb me, knowing
I was very busy; and again, that he had been just
about to
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[Page 204] start when an important
letter or an inopportune customer
had arrived and detained him.
As for the wedding-day, he would never come to the
point about it, and Noémi,
naturally shy of the subject, never pressed him. She
was quite happy and
confident; Antoine loved her with all his heart, and told
her so every day. What more
could she want ? He brought her lovely bunches of
red and white roses, little
trinkets, sweetmeats, ribbons; indeed, he seemed
never to come empty-handed.
She used to take walks with him when his day's work
was over, in the Luxembourg
gardens, and once or twice they went out as far as
the Champs-Elysées. Oh, yes,
Antoine loved her dearly, and she was very happy;
they should certainly be
married before long. We were already in November, the
days were getting bleak and
chill, I had to light my lamp early and close my
windows against the damp
evening air. One afternoon, just as it was beginning to
grow dark, Madame Jeannel
came to see me, looking very disturbed and anxious.
"Monsieur", she
said, " a strange thing has happened which makes me so uneasy
that I cannot help coming to
tell you of it, and to ask your opinion and advice.
Antoine came about
half-an-hour ago and took Noémi out for a walk. Not ten
minutes after they had left
the house, a lady whom I do not know came to my door
and asked if Mademoiselle
Bergeron lived there. I said yes, but that she was
out. The strange lady stared
hard at me and asked if she had gone out alone. I
told her no, she was with her
fiancé, but that if any message could be left for
her I would be careful to
give it directly she should return. Immediately the
lady seized me by the arm so
tightly I almost screamed. She grew white, and then
red, then she seemed to find
her voice, and
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[Page 205] asked me if she could
wait upstairs in Noémi's room
till she came back. At first I said ' No', but she
would not take a refusal; she
insisted upon waiting; and there she is, I could
not get her to leave the
place."
Madame Jeannel stood opposite
to me; I lifted my eyes, and met hers steadily.
When I had satisfied myself
of her suspicions, I said in a low voice, —
"You have done rightly
to fetch me. There is great trouble in store for our poor
child. I fear this woman may
have a better right to Antoine than Noémi has."
"I am sure of it,"
responded Madame Jeannel. " If you could but have seen how
she looked ! Thank the good
God she has come in time to save our Noémi from any
real harm !"
"It will blight the
whole of her life", said I; "she is so innocent of evil, and
she loves him so much".
I took up my hat as I spoke,
and followed Madame Jeannel downstairs and into the
street. When we reached her
house, I left her in her own little parlour upon the
entresol, and with a resolute
step but a heavy heart I went alone to confront
the strange woman in Noémi's
room. Alas ! the worst that could happen had
already befallen. Noémi had
returned from her walk during the absence of her
landlady, and I opened the
door upon a terrible scene. My poor child stood
before me, with a white
scared face, and heaving breast, upon which was pinned a
bunch of autumn violets,
Antoine's last gift to her. Her slender figure, her
fair hair, her pallid
complexion looked ghost-like in the uncertain twilight;
she seemed like a troubled
spirit, beautiful and sorely distressed, but there
was no shame in her lovely
face, nor any sense of guilt. Seeing me enter, she
uttered a cry of relief, and
sprang forward as though to seek protection.
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206]
"Speak to her,
monsieur!" she exclaimed in a voice of piercing entreaty; "oh,
speak to her and ask her what
it all means ! She says she is Antoine's wife !"
The strange woman whose back
had been turned towards the door when I opened it,
looked round at the words,
and her face met mine. She was a brunette, with sharp
black eyes and an inflexible
mouth, a face which beside Noémi's seemed like a
dark cloud beside clear
sunlight.
"Yes indeed !" she
cried; and her voice was half choked with contending anger
and despair, "I am his
wife; and what then is she ? I tracked him here. He is
always away from me now. I
found a letter of hers signed with her name; she
writes to him as if she loved
him ! See!"
She flung upon the table a
crumpled scrap of paper, and suddenly burying her
face in her hands, burst into
a torrent of passionate tears and sobs. Noémi
stood silent and watched her,
terrified and wondering. I closed the door softly,
and approaching the
unfortunate woman, laid my hand upon her shoulder.
"It is your husband who
is alone to blame,"I whispered to her. "Do not revile
this innocent girl; she
suffers quite as much as you do, — perhaps even more,
for she was betrothed to him
years ago."
My grief for Noémi, and my
resentment against Antoine made me imprudent; I spoke
unjustly, but the provocation
was great.
"You take her
part!" she cried, repelling me indignantly. "Innocent — she
innocent ? Bah ! She must
have known he was married, for why else did he not
marry her ? Do you think me a
child to be fooled by such a tale?"
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"No", answered I
sternly, looking away from her at Noémi. "You are not a child,
madame, but she is one ! Had
she been a woman like yourself, your husband would
never have deceived her. She
trusted him wholly."
With a gesture that was
almost fierce in its pride, Antoine's wife turned her
back upon Noémi, and moved
towards the door. " I thank my God", she said
solemnly, choking down her
sobs, and bending her dark brows upon me, " that I
was never such an innocent as
she is! I am not your dupe, monsieur, I know well
enough what you are, and what
it is that constitutes your right to defend her.
The neighbours know her
story; trust them for finding it out and repeating it.
This room belongs to you,
monsieur; your money paid for everything in it, and
your innocent there no doubt
is included in the bargain. Keep her to yourself
for the future; Antoine's
foot shall never again be set in this wicked house!"
She opened the door with the
last words, and vanished into the darkness without.
For a moment there was a deep
silence, the voice which had just ceased seemed to
me to ring and echo around
the dim, still room. The sense of a great shame was
upon me; I dared not lift my
eyes to Noémi's face.
Suddenly a faint cry startled
me. She stretched her arms towards me and fell on
her knees at my feet.
"O monsieur! Antoine is
lost! My heart is dead !" Then she struck her breast
wildly with her clenched
hand, and swooned upon the floor.
None of us ever saw Antoine
again after that terrible evening. Whether he had
been most weak or most wicked
we could not tell; but, for my part I always
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208] believed that he had
really loved Noémi, and that his marriage had been one
of worldly convenience,
contracted, in an evil hour, for the sake of gain. His
wife was rich, Noémi was a
beggar. As for her, poor child, she never uttered a
word of reproach against him;
never a gesture of impatience, or an expression of
complaint betrayed her
suffering. She had spent all her innocent life upon her
love, and with the love her
life also went from her. Day after day she lay on
her bed like a flower crushed
and fading slowly. There were no signs of organic
disease in her, there was no
appreciable malady; her heart was broken, so said
Madame Jeannel, and more than
that the wisest could not say. Bambin, dimly
comprehending that some great
sorrow had befallen his dear mistress, lay always
at her feet, watching her
with eyes full of tender and wistful affection,
refusing to leave her by
night or by day. It must have comforted her somewhat to
see in him, at least, the
evidence of one true and faithful love.
So white and spirituelle she
grew as she lay there, day by day, so delicately
lovely, her deep lustrous
eyes shining as with some inward light, and her hair
of gold surrounding her head
like the aureole of a pictured saint, that at times
I fancied she was becoming
de-materialised before our eyes; her spirit seemed as
it were to grow visible, as
though in the intensity of its pure fire the mere
earthly body which had
contained it were being re-absorbed and consumed.
Sometimes in the evenings her
pulse quickened and her cheeks flushed with the
hectic touch of fever; — it
was the only symptom of physical disorder I ever
detected in her; — but even
that was slight, — the temperature of her system was
hardly affected by it.
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So she lay, her body fading,
day after day and hour after hour.
Madame Jeannel was deeply
concerned, for she was a good woman, and could
sympathise with others in
sorrow, but nothing that she could say or do seemed to
reach the senses of Noémi.
Indeed, at times I fancied the poor child had no
longer eyes or ears for the
world from which she was passing away so strangely;
she looked as though she were
already beginning life in some other sphere and on
some other plane than ours,
and could see and hear only sights and sounds of
which our material natures
had no cognisance.
"C'est le chagrin,
monsieur", said Madame Jeannel; "c'est comme ça que le
chagrin tue, —
toujours."
Early in the third week of
December I received my summons to pass the final
examination for the M.D.
degree. The day was bitterly cold, a keen wind swept
the empty streets and drove
the new-fallen snow into drift-heaps at every
corner. Along the boulevards
booths and baraques for the sale of New Year's
gifts were already in course
of erection, the shops were gay with bright
coloured bonbonnières.
Children, merry with anticipations of good things
corning, pressed round the
various tempting displays and noisily disputed their
respective merits. All the
streets were filled with mirth and laughter .and
preparations for festivity,
and close by, in her little lonely room, Noémi lay
dying of a broken heart !
I underwent my ordeal with
success; yet as I quitted the examination-room and
descended into the quadrangle
of the École, crowded with sauntering groups of
garrulous students, my spirit
was heavy within me, and the expression of my face
could hardly have been that
of a young man who has safely passed the Rubicon of
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[Page 210] scientific apprenticeship,
and who sees the laurels and honours of
the world within his reach.
The world? The very thought of its possible homage
repelled me, for I knew that
its best successes and its loudest praise are
accorded to men whose hearts
are of steel and whose lives are corrupt. I knew
that still, as of old, it
slays the innocent and the ingenuous and stones the
pure of spirit.
Escaping somewhat impatiently
from the congratulations of the friends and
colleagues whom I chanced to
encounter in the quadrangle, I returned gloomily
home and found upon my table
a twisted note in which was written this brief
message: —
" Pray, come at once,
monsieur, she cannot live long now. I dare not leave her,
and she begs to see you.—
MARIE JEANNEL."
With a shaking hand I thrust
the paper into my vest and hastened to obey its
summons. Never had the
distance between my house and Noémi's been so long to
traverse; never had the
stairs which led to her room seemed to me so many or so
steep. At length I gained the
door; it stood ajar; I pushed it open and entered.
Madame Jeannel sat at the foot
of the little white-draped bed; Bambin lay beside
his mistress; the only sound
in the room was the crackling of the burning logs
on the hearth. As I entered,
Madame Jeannel turned her head and looked at me;
her eyes were heavy with
tears, and she spoke in tones that were hushed and
tremulous with the awe which
the presence of death inspires.
"Monsieur, you come too
late. She is dead." I sprang forward with a cry of
horror. "Dead?" I
repeated, "Noémi dead?"
White and still she lay — a
broken lily — beautiful and
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[Page 211] sweet even in
death; her eyes were closed
lightly, and upon her lovely lips was the first
smile I had seen there since
the day which had stricken her innocent life into
the dust. Her right hand
rested on Bambin's head, in her left she held the piece
of silver ribbon I had given
her, — the ribbon she had hoped to wear at her
wedding.
"They are for you,"
said Madame Jeannel softly. "She said you were fond of
Bambin, and he of you, and
that you must take care of him and keep him with you
always. And as for the
ribbon, — she wished you to take it for her sake, that it
might be a remembrance of her
in time to come."
I fell on my knees beside the
bed and wept aloud.
"Hush, hush !"
whispered Madame Jeannel, bending over me; " it is best as it is,
she is gone to the angels of
God."
Science has ceased to believe
in angels, but in the faith of good women they
live still.
The chief work of the wise
among us seems to me to consist in the destruction of
all the beautiful hopes and
loves and beliefs of the earth; of all that since
the beginning of time till
now has consoled, or purified, or brought peace to
the hearts of men. Some day,
perhaps, in the long-distant future, the voice of
Nature may speak to us more
clearly through the lips of a nobler and purer
system of science than any we
now know, and we may learn that Matter is not all
in all, nor human love and
desire given in vain; but that torn hearts may be
healed and ruined lives
perfected in a higher spiritual existence, where, "
beyond these voices, there is
peace."
Meanwhile Noémi's body rests
in its quiet grave, and upon the faithful bosom
lies the silver cross which her
lover gave her.
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She was one of those who
could endure all things for love's sake, but shame and
falsehood broke her steadfast
heart. And it was the hand of her beloved which
dealt the blow of which she
died!
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[Page 212]
- 6 - THE LITTLE OLD MAN'S
STORY
" O love, I have loved
you !
O my soul, I have lost you ! "
— AURORA LEIGH.
CHAPTER 1
"It is getting very dark
now, and I have been sitting at my open bay window ever
since sundown. How fresh and
sweet the evening air is, as it comes up from my
little flower garden below,
laden with the fragrance of June roses and almond
blossom ! Ah, by the way, I
will send over some more of those same roses to my
opposite neighbour tomorrow
morning, — and there is a beautiful spray of white
jasmin nodding in at the
casement now, and only waiting to be gathered for him.
Poor old man ! he must be
very lonely and quiet, lying there day after day in
his dark little bed-chamber,
with no companions save his books and his old
housekeeper. But then Dr
Peyton is with him very often, and Dr Peyton is such a
dear kind soul that he makes
every one cheerful ! I think they have drawn down
the blinds earlier than usual
tonight at the little old gentleman's. Dr Peyton
says he always likes to sit
up in his arm-chair when the day closes, and watch
the twilight gathering over
the blue range of the Malvern hills in the distance,
and talk dreamy bits of
poetry to himself the while, but this evening I noticed
the blinds were pulled down
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[Page 213] almost directly after sunset.
And such a
lovely sunset as it was
tonight! I never beheld anything more glorious ! What a
wondrous glamour of molten
mellow light it threw over all the meadows and
cottage gardens! It seemed to
me as though the gates of heaven itself were
unfolded to receive the
returning sun into the golden land of the Hereafter!
Dear, dear, I shall get quite
poetical in my old age ! This is not the first
time I have caught myself
stumbling unawares on the confines of romance ! Miss
Lizzie, Miss Lizzie, you must
not be fanciful ! Do you forget that you are an
old maid ! Yes, an old maid.
Ah, well-a-day, 'tis a very happy, contented,
peaceful sound to me now; but
twenty years ago, ------ Here comes dear old Dr
Peyton himself up my garden
path! He does not seem to walk so blithely tonight
as usual, — surely nothing is
the matter; I wish I could see his face, but it is
much too dark for that, so
I'll go at once and let him in. Now I shall hear news
of my opposite neighbour !
Ah, I hope he is no worse, poor little old man ! "
Gentle reader, I shall not
trouble you much in the story I am going to tell,
with any personal experiences
of my own. But you may as well understand before
we proceed farther, that I —
Miss Elizabeth Fairleigh — am a spinster on the
shady side of forty-five,
that I and my two serving-maids occupy a tiny,
green-latticed, porticoed,
one-storeyed cottage just outside a certain little
country town, and that Dr
Peyton, the one medical man of the parish, is a
white-haired old gentleman of
wondrous kindliness and goodness of heart, who was
Pythias to my father's Damon
at college long, long ago, and who is now my best
friend and my most welcome
and frequent visitor. And on the particular evening
in question, I had a special
interest in his visit, for I wanted very much
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214] to know what only he
could tell me, — how matters fared with my neighbour
and his patient, the little
old man who lay sick over the way.
Now this little old man bore
the name of Mr Stephen Gray, and he was a bachelor,
so Dr Peyton said, a bachelor
grown, from some cause unknown to my friend,
prematurely old, and wizened,
and decrepit. It was long since he had first come
to reside in the small house
opposite mine, and from the very day of his arrival
I had observed him with
singular interest, and conjectured variously in my idle
moments about his probable
history and circumstances. For many months after his
establishment over the way,
this old gentleman used morning and evening to
perambulate the little
country road which divided our respective dwellings,
supporting his feeble limbs
with a venerable-looking staff, silver-headed like
himself; and on one occasion,
when my flower garden happened to look especially
gay and inviting, he paused
by the gate and gazed so wistfully at its beauties,
that I ventured to invite him
in, and presented him, bashfully enough, with a
posy of my choicest rarities.
After this unconventional introduction, many
little courtesies passed
between us, other nosegays were culled from my small
parterre to adorn the little
old gentleman's parlour, and more than once Miss
Elizabeth Fairleigh received
and accepted an invitation to tea with Mr Stephen
Gray.
But by-and-by these
invitations ceased, and my neighbour's pedestrian excursions
up and down our road became
less and less frequent. Yet when I sent my maid, as
I often did, to inquire after
his health, the answer returned alternated only
between two inflections, — Mr
Gray was always either pretty well, or a little
better today. But presently I
noticed that my friend Dr Peyton
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to pay visits at my opposite
neighbour's, and of him I inquired concerning the
little old man's condition,
and learned to my surprise and sorrow that his
health and strength were
rapidly failing, and his life surely and irrecoverably
ebbing away. It might be many
long months, Dr Peyton said, before the end, it
might be only a few weeks, but
he had seen many such cases, and knew that no
human skill or tenderness had
power to do more than to prolong the patient's
days upon earth by some brief
space, and to make the weary hours of feebleness
and prostration as pleasant
and calm as possible.
When Dr Peyton told me this,
it was late autumn, and the little old gentleman
lived on in his weakness all
through the snow-time and the dim bleak winter
days. But when the Spring
came round once more, he rallied, and I used often to
see him sitting up in his
arm-chair at the open window, arrayed in his
dressing-gown, and looking so
cheerful and placid, that I could not forbear to
nod to him and smile
hopefully, as I stood by my garden gate in the soft warm
sunshine, thinking that after
all my opposite neighbour would soon be able to
take his daily walks, and
have tea with me again in his cosy little parlour. But
when I spoke of this to Dr
Peyton, he only shook his head incredulously, and
murmured something about the
flame burning brighter for a little while before
going out altogether. So the
old gentleman lingered on until June, and still
every time I sent to ask
after his health returned the same old reply, — his
"kind regards to Miss
Fairleigh, and he was a little better today." And thus
matters remained on that
identical evening of which I first spoke, when I sat at
the bay window in my tiny
drawing-room, and saw Dr Peyton coming so soberly up
the garden path.
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Dr Peyton," said I, as I
placed my most comfortable chair for him in the
prettiest corner of the bay,
" you are the very person I have been longing to
see for the last half-hour !
I want to know how my neighbour Mr Gray is tonight.
I see his blinds are down,
and I am afraid he may be worse. Have you been there
this evening ? "
I paused abruptly, for my old
friend looked very gravely at me, and I thought as
his eyes rested for a moment
on my face, that notwithstanding the twilight, I
could discern traces of
recent tears in them.
"Lizzie", said he,
very slowly, and his voice certainly trembled a little as he
spoke, " I don't think
Mr Gray was ever so well in his life as he is tonight. I
have been with him for
several hours. He is dead."
"Dead!" I echoed
faintly, for I almost doubted whether my ears heard aright. "
My little old gentleman dead
? Oh, I am very, very grieved indeed ! I fancied he
was getting so much stronger
!"
Dr Peyton smiled, one of his
peculiar, sweet, grave smiles, such as I had often
seen on his kindly face at
certain times and seasons when other men would not
have smiled at all.
"Lizzie", he
answered, "there are some deaths so beautiful and so full of peace,
that no one ought to grieve
about them, for they bring eternal rest after a life
that has been only bitter
disquiet and heaviness. And such a death — aye, and
such a life — were Mr
Gray's."
He spoke so certainly and so
calmly, that I felt comforted for the little old
man's sake, and longed to
know, — woman-like, I suppose, — what sad story of his
this had been, to which Dr
Peyton's words seemed to point.
"Then he had a romance
after all !" I cried, "and you knew of it! Poor old
gentleman ! I often wondered
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[Page 217] how he came to be so lonely.
May you
tell me, as we sit here
together ? I should so like to hear about it."
"Yes", said he, with
that same peculiar smile, " I may tell you, for it is no
secret now. Indeed, I came
here partly for that very purpose, because I know
well how much you were
interested in your opposite neighbour, and how you used
to speculate about his
antecedents and associations. But I have not known this
story long. He only told it
me this evening; just an hour or two before he died.
Well, we all have our little
romances, as you are pleased to call them ! "
"Yes, yes, all of us.
Even I, unpretentious, plain Elizabeth Fairleigh, — but no
matter". I mind me,
reader, that I promised not to talk of my own experiences.
Ah, there are no such
phenomena in the world really, as commonplace lives, and
"commonplace persons!
"Poor little old man
!" I sighed again. "Did he tell you his story then of his
own accord, or " — And I
paused in some embarrassment, for I remembered that Dr
Peyton was a true gentleman,
and possessed of far too much delicacy of feeling
to question anybody upon
personal matters or private concerns. But either he did
not actually notice my
hesitation, or perhaps understood the cause of it well
enough to prevent him from
appearing to notice it, for he resumed at once, as
though no interruption to his
discourse had taken place.
"When I went this
afternoon to visit your neighbour, Lizzie, I perceived
immediately from the change
in him that the end was not far off, though I did
not think it would come
today. But he did. He was in bed when I entered his
room, and as soon as he saw
me, he looked up and welcomed me with a pleasant
smile and said, 'Ah, Doctor,
I am so glad you are come! I was just
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going to send round for you !
Not that I think you can do me any more good upon
earth, for I know that
tonight I shall go to my long rest. To my long rest.' He
lingered so strangely and so
contentedly over these words, that I was singularly
touched, and I sat down by
his bedside and took his thin white hand in mine. '
Doctor,' said he, presently,
' you have been very good and kind to me now for
more than ten months, and I
have learned in that time to trust and esteem you as
though I had known you for
many long years. There are no friends of mine near me
in the world now, for I am a
lonely old man, and before I came here I lived
alone, and I have been lonely
almost all my life. But I cannot die tonight
without telling you the story
of my past, and of the days when I used to be
young, — very long ago now, —
that you may understand why I die here alone, a
white-haired old bachelor;
and that I may be comforted in my death by the
knowledge that I leave at
least one friend upon earth to sympathise in my sorrow
and to bless me in my
solitary grave. 'It is a long story, Doctor,' said the
little old man, ' but I feel
stronger this afternoon than I have felt for weeks,
and I am quite sure I can
tell it all from end to end. I have kept it many years
in my heart, a secret from
every human soul; but now all is over with my sorrow
and with me for ever, and I
care not who knows of it after I am gone.' Then
after a little pause he told
me his story, while I sat beside him holding his
hand in mine, and I think I
did not lose a word of all he said, for he spoke
very slowly and distinctly,
and I listened with all my heart. Shall I tell it to
you, Lizzie ? It is not one
of those stories that end happily, like the stories
we read in children's fairy
books, nor is it exciting and sensational like the
modern popular
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[Page 219] novels. There are no dramatic
situations in it, and no
passionate scenes of tragical
love or remorse; 'tis a still, neutral-coloured,
dreamy bit of pathos, — the
story of a lost life, — that it will make you sad
perhaps to hear, and maybe, a
little graver than usual. Only that."
" Please tell it, Dr
Peyton," I answered. " You know I have a special liking for
such sad histories. 'Tis one
of my old-maidish eccentricities I suppose; but
somehow I always think sorrow
more musical than mirth, and I love the quiet of
shadowy places better than
the brilliant glow of the open landscape."
"You are right,
Lizzie", he returned. "That is the feeling of the true poet in
all ages, and the most
poetical lives are always those in which the melancholy
element predominates. Yet it
is contrast that makes the beauty of things, and
doubtless we should not fully
understand the sweetness of your grave harmonies,
nor the loveliness of your
shadowy valleys, were all music grave and all places
shadowy. And inanimate nature
is most assuredly the faithful type and mirror of
human life. But I must not waste
our time any longer in such idle prologues as
these ! You shall hear the
little old man's story at once, while it is still
fresh in my memory, though
for the matter of that, I am not likely, I think, to
forget it very easily."
So Dr Peyton told it me as we
sat together there in the growing darkness of the
warm summer night, and this,
reader mine, is the story he told.
CHAPTER 2
Some forty years ago, there
lived in one of the prettiest houses in Kensington,
a rich old wine-merchant, and
his two only children. These young men, Stephen
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[Page 220] and Maurice Grey, were twins,
whose mother had died at their birth,
and all through their infancy
and childhood the old wine-merchant had been to
them as father and mother in
one, and the brothers had grown up to manhood,
loving him and each other as
dearly as heart could wish. Already Stephen, the
first-born of the twins, had
become partner in his father's flourishing
business, and Maurice was
preparing at a military college for service in the
army, which he was shortly to
join, when a certain event occurred at Kensington,
trifling enough in itself,
but in the sequel pregnant with bitter misfortune to
at least two human souls.
There came to reside in the
house adjoining old Mr Gray's, an elderly widow lady
and her orphan niece, — Mrs
Lamertine and Miss Adelaïs Cameron. They came there
principally for the sake of
the latter, — a pale consumptive girl of eighteen,
whose delicate health and
constitution it was thought might be considerably
benefited by the mild soft
air of that particular neighbourhood. Soon after the
arrival of these ladies in
their new abode, the old wine-merchant in his
courtesy and kindliness of
heart saw fit to pay them a visit, and in due time
and form the visit was
returned, and a friendly come-and-go understanding
established between the two
houses. In this manner it happened that Stephen, the
elder son, by living always
in his father's house, from which he was absent only
during the office-hours of
the day, saw a great deal of Adelaïs Cameron, and
learnt before long to love
her with all the depth and yearning that a young man
feels in his first rapturous adoration
of a beautiful woman.
For a beautiful woman Adelaïs
certainly was. Very fair to look upon was the
pale, transparent face, and
the
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[Page 221] plentiful braided hair,
golden and
soft almost as undyed silk,
that wreathed about the lovely little head. Clear
and sweet too were the eyes
whence the soul of Adelaïs looked forth, clear and
brown and sweet; so that
people who beheld her fair countenance and heard her
musical voice for the first
time, were fain to say in their hearts, " Such a
face and such a voice as
these are not earthly things; Adelaïs Cameron is
already far on her road
towards the land of the angels."
But at least Mrs Lamertine
and her friendly neighbours the Grays could perceive
that the pale girl grew none
the paler nor sicklier for her residence at
Kensington, and as days and
weeks flew pleasantly by in the long autumn season,
the old lady talked more and
more confidently of her niece's complete
restoration to health and
youthful vigour. Then by-and-by Christmas drew round,
and with it Maurice Gray came
home to his father's house for his last
vacation-time; Maurice, with
his frank handsome face and curly hair, always so
cheerful, always so
good-humoured, always so unconscious of his own
attractiveness, that wherever
he went, everybody was sure to trust and to
idolise him. Ay, and to love
him too sometimes, but not as Adelaïs Cameron did,
when her full womanly soul
awoke first to the living intensity of passion, and
she found in him the one god
at whose feet to cast all her new wealth of
tenderness and homage. Never
before had Maurice Gray been so beloved, never
before had his own love been so
desired and coveted by human soul. And now that
the greatest blessing of
earth lay so ready to his grasp, Maurice neither
perceived the value of the
gift, nor understood that it was offered to him. Such
was the position when
Christmas Day arrived, and the widower begged that Mrs
Lamertine and her niece
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[Page 222] would do him the pleasure to
dine in his
house and spend the evening
there, that they might sing songs and play forfeits
together and keep up the
ancient institutions of the time, as well as so tiny
and staid a party could
manage to do; to which sociable invitation, the old
dame, nothing averse to
pleasant fellowship at any season, readily consented.
But when Adelaïs Cameron
entered Mr Gray's drawing-room that Christmas evening
with her soft white dress
floating about her like a hazy cloud, and a single
bunch of snowdrops in the
coils of her golden hair, Stephen's heart leapt in his
throat, and he said to
himself that never until now had he known how exceeding
perfect and sweet was the
beautiful woman whom he loved with so absorbing a
tenderness. Alas, that life
should be at times such a terribly earnest game of
cross purposes, such an
intensely bitter reality of mistakes and blunders !
Alas, that men and women can
read so little of each other's heart, and yet can
comprehend so well the
language of their own !
All the evening, throughout
the conversation and the forfeits and the
merry-making, Stephen Gray
spoke and moved and thought only for Adelaï's, and
she for Stephen's twin
brother. It was for Maurice that she sang, while Stephen
stood beside her at the
piano, drinking in the tender passionate notes as though
they were sweet wine for
which all his soul were athirst; it was at Maurice that
she smiled, while Stephen's
eyes were on her face, and to Maurice that she
prattled and sported and made
mirthful jests, while Stephen alone heeded all
that she said and did; for
the younger brother was reflected in every purpose
and thought of hers, even as
her own image lay mirrored continually in the heart
and thoughts of the elder.
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[Page 223]
But before the hour of
parting came that night, Stephen drew Adelaï's aside from
the others as they sat
laughing and talking over some long-winded story of the
old wine-merchant's
experiences, and told her what she, in the blindness of her
own wild love, had never
guessed nor dreamed of, — all the deep adoration and
worship of his soul. And when
it was told, she said nothing for a few minutes,
but only stood motionless and
surprised, without a blush or tremor or sigh, and
he, looking earnestly into
her fair uplifted face, saw with unutterable pain
that there was no response
there to the passionate yearning of his own.
"Adelaïs", said he,
presently, "you do not love me?"
"Yes, yes,
Stephen", she answered, softly; "as a brother, as a dear
brother."
"No more?" he asked
again.
She put her hand into his,
and fixing the clear light of her brown eyes full
upon him: "Why",
she said, hurriedly, " do you ask me this ? I cannot give you
more, I cannot love you as a
husband. Let no one know what has passed between us
tonight; forget it yourself
as I shall forget also, and we will always be
brother and sister all our
lives."
Then she turned and glided
away across the room into the warm bright glow of the
fireside, that lay brightest
and warmest in the corner where Maurice sat; but
Stephen stood alone in the
darkness and hid his face in his hands and groaned.
And after this there came a
change over the fortunes of the two households. Day
by day Adelaï's faded and
paled and saddened; none knew why. People said it was
the winter weather, and that
when the spring-time came the girl would be herself
again, and grow brisker and
stronger than ever. But
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[Page 224] when Maurice was
gone back to his college, to
fulfil his last term there before leaving for
India, the only brother of
Adelaïs came up from his home by the sea-side, on a
month's visit to his aunt and
his sister at Kensington. He was a man of middle
age almost, this same Philip
Cameron, tall and handsome and fair-spoken, so that
the old wine-merchant, who
dearly loved good looks and courteous breeding, took
to him mightily from the
first, and made much of his company on all occasions.
But as he stayed on from week
to week at Mrs Lamertine's house, Philip saw that
the pale lips and cheeks of
Adelaïs grew paler and thinner continually, that the
brown eyes greatened in the
dark sockets, and that the fragile limbs weakened
and sharpened themselves more
and more, as though some terrible blight, like the
curse of an old enchantment
or of an evil eye, hung over the sweet girl,
withering and poisoning all
the life and the youth in her veins.
She lay on a sofa one
afternoon, leaning her golden head upon one of her pale
wan hands, and gazing
dreamily through the open casement into the depths of the
broad April sky, over whose
clear blue firmament the drifting clouds came and
went incessantly like
white-sailed ships at sea. And Adelaïs thought of the sea
as she watched them, and
longed in her heart to be away and down by the southern
coast where her brother had
made his home, with the free salt breeze blowing in
her face, and the free happy
waves beating the shore at her feet, and the
sea-fowl dipping their great
strong wings in the leaping surge. Ah to be free, —
to be away, — perhaps then
she might forget, forget and live down her old life,
and bury it somewhere out of sight
in the sea-sand; — forget and grow blithe and
happy and strong
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[Page 225] once more, like the breeze
and the waves and the
wild birds, who have no
memory nor regret for the past, and no thought for any
joy, save the joy of their
present being.
"Phil", she said,
as her brother came softly into the room and sat beside her,
"take me back with you
to the sea-side. I am weary of living always here in
Kensington. It is only London
after all."
"My dearest", he
answered, kindly, " if that is all you wish for, it shall
certainly be. But, Adelaïs,
is there nothing more than this that troubles you ?
There is a shadow in your
eyes and on your lips that used not to be there, and
all day long you sit by
yourself and muse in silence; and you weep too at times,
Adelaïs, when you fancy none
is by to see you. Tell me, sister mine, for the
sake of the love that is
between us, and for the sake of our father and mother
who are dead, what cloud is
this that overshadows you so?"
Long time he pressed and
besought her, pleading by turns his power to help, and
her need of tenderness; but
yet Adelaïs was afraid to speak, for the love that
was breaking her heart was
unreturned. So the next day he found her alone again,
and prayed her to tell him
her sorrow, that even if he could not help nor
comfort her, they might at
least lament together. Then at last she bowed her
head upon his breast, and
told him of Maurice, and of his near departure for
India, and of her own
disregarded love; but not a word she said of Stephen,
because she had promised him
to hold her peace. And when she had told her
brother all, she laid her
arms about his neck and cried, weeping, " Now you know
everything that is in my
heart, Phil; speak to me no more about it, but only
promise to take me away with
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[Page 226] you when you go, that I may
the sooner
forget this place and all the
sorrow and the pain I have suffered here.”
And Philip Cameron kissed her
very tenderly, and answered, “Be at rest, sister,
you shall have your will.”
But when evening came, he went
over to the house of the wine-merchant, and
questioned him about Maurice,
whether he cared for Adelaïs or no, and whether he
had ever said a word to his
father or brother of the matter.
“Ay, ay”, quoth the old
gentleman, musingly, when Philip had ceased. “Tis like
enough if there be anything
of the sort that the boys should talk of it between
them, for, God be thanked,
they were always very fond of each other; yet I never
hear it spoken about. But
then youth has little in common with age, and when
young men make confidences of
this kind, it is to young men that they make them,
and not to grey-beards like
me. But tell me, Cameron, for you know I must needs
divine something from all
this; your sister loves my boy Maurice?”
“If you think so, sir” answered
Philip, “you must keep her secret.”
“Cameron, Cameron,” cried the
wine-merchant, “Adelaïs is failing and sickening
every day. Every day she
grows whiter and sadder, and more silent. Don’t tell me
it’s for love of Maurice!
It’s not possible such a woman as she is can love
anybody in vain! She’s an
angel on earth, — your sister Adelaïs!”
Then because the old man was
kindly and wise and white-headed, Philip told him
all that Adelaïs had said,
and how he had promised to take her home with him,
and had come unknown to any
one to ask before they went whether or not there was
any hope for her of the love
on which she had so set her heart.
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[Page 227]
And when Philip was gone the
old gentleman called his elder son, Stephen, and
asked him - but warily, lest
he should betray Adelaïs - how Maurice bore himself
in Stephen’s presence when
they were alone together and chanced to speak of her,
and if Stephen knew or
guessed anything of what was in his mind towards her.
Then the young man understood
for the first time all the blindness of his eyes
and the dullness of his
heart; and the pain and desolation and the hopelessness
of his life that was to be,
rose up before him, and he knew that from
thenceforth the glory and the
light of it were put out for ever.
“Father”, he said, “I know
nothing whatever of all this. Is it your wish then
that these two should marry?”
“It is my wish, Stephen, and the
wish also of our friend Philip himself. Maurice
could not take him to India a
sweeter or a worthier wife than Adelaïs Cameron.”
“And does she wish it too?”
he asked again. “Tell me, father, for I have guessed
already.” He lifted his eyes
to the old man’s face as he spoke, and perceived at
once the sudden confusion and
surprise that his words had caused there, yet he
said no more, but waited
still for a reply.
“My dear boy”, said the old
gentleman at last, “if you have guessed anything,
that is enough; say no more
about it, but let it rest with yourself. I have
never yet deceived either of
my sons. But when Maurice comes home again you can
help us very much, for you
can question him on the matter more naturally than I
could do, and no doubt he will
tell you his mind about it, as you say he always
does about everything, but
with me he might be reserved and bewildered perhaps.
Ask him, my boy, but keep
your guesses to yourself.”
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[Page 228]
"Father," cried
Stephen, pressing his hands together in agony as though his
heart were between them, and
he would fain crush it into dust and destroy it for
ever; " tell me, if I am
to do this, does Adelaï's love my brother?"
"If I tell you at all,
boy", said the wine-merchant, " I shall tell you the
truth; can you hold your
peace like a man of discretion ? "
"I have kept other
secrets, father", he answered, "I can keep this".
Then his father told him.
Early in May, Adelaïs Cameron
went to the Devonshire sea-coast with her brother
and her aunt, and they stayed
there together a long while. But the accounts that
came from week to week to
Kensington were none of the best, for Adelaïs had
borne the long journey but
ill, and her strength did not return.
Then came the summer and the
vacation-time, and Maurice Gray was home again,
full to the brim of schemes
for his future life, and busy all day with head and
hands over his preparations
for leaving England in the autumn. But when Stephen
talked to him of Adelaïs, and
told him she was gone to the sea-side, Maurice
only laughed and answered
lightly, that she was a sweet lovable girl, and that
he grieved to hear of her illness
; no doubt the southern breezes would bring
back the colour to her
cheeks, and he should hear before he had been long gone
that she was quite well and
strong again. At least he hoped so.
"Then, Maurice, you
don't care to see her once more before you sail ? You don't
want to say good-bye ? "
"O well, if she's here,
of course, but that's another thing; I wouldn't for
worlds have her come back to
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[Page 229] Kensington just to bid me
good-bye. And
really you know, Steenie,
I've too much to do just now to be running about and
saying farewells everywhere.
The time that's left me now to be at home with you
and my father is none too
long. What is Adelaïs Cameron to me, when all my world
is here ? "
" Maurice", said
Stephen again, in a voice that sounded strained and hard, like
the voice of an old man
trying to be young; "you're a dear affectionate fellow,
and as things are, perhaps
this is all very well. But supposing Adelaïs loved
you, and my father and — and
— everybody else you know, wished her to be your
wife, how would you feel
towards her then ? Supposing, Maurice — only for the
sake of supposing, of
course."
"What a strange fellow
you are, Steenie! Why, supposing as you say, such a very
wild improbable circumstance
were to occur, I should be heartily sorry for poor
Adelaïs ! Only imagine me
with such a wife as she would make ! Why I wouldn't
have so transparent,
white-skinned a beauty about my house all day for a mine of
gold! I should be seized with
lunacy before long, through mere contemplation of
her very unearthliness, and
be goaded into fancying her a picture, and hanging
her up framed and glazed over
my drawing-room mantelpiece ! No, no, I'll leave
Miss Cameron for you, you're
just her style, I take it; but as for me, I never
thought of marrying yet,
Steenie, for I never yet had the luck or ill-luck to
fall in love, and certainly
you'll allow that nobody ought to think of marriage
until he's really in love. So
I'll wish you all success, old boy, and mind you
write and tell me how the
wooing gets on ! "
O Maurice ! Maurice !
Then, by-and-by, the young
officer sailed, and Adelaïs
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[Page 230] heard of his
going, and her heart died
within her for greatness of sorrow and pain, yet still
she held her peace, and lived
her life in patience.
And so for two whole years
they kept her by the sea, hoping against hope, and
whispering those idle
convictions that affection always suggests, about the
worst being over now, and the
time of convalescence being always tedious and
unpromising. But in the third
year, when the autumn days grew darker, and the
sun set redder in the sea,
and people began to talk again of Christmas, Adelaïs
called her brother one
evening and said: —
"Philip, I have been
here very long, and I know that nothing more on earth can
ever make me well again now.
You will not refuse me the last request I shall
make you, Phil? Take me back
to the old house at Kensington, that I may see dear
old Mr Gray, and my friend
Stephen, once more; and you, Phil, stay with me and
Auntie there until I die, for
it wont be very long now, and I want to see you
near me to the last."
So they brought her back
again to the old house, next door to the wine
merchant's, and they carried
her over the threshold, because she was too weak to
walk now, and laid her on the
old sofa in the old place by the window, for she
would have it, and Philip
Cameron did her bidding in everything. And that same
evening, Stephen Gray came in
to see her, and they met as old friends meet who
have been long parted, and
sat and talked together until past sunset. But at
length Adelaïs asked him for
news of Maurice, what he was doing, and how he was,
and when they heard from him
last, and what he thought of India and of the new
life there, and his
companions, and the climate, and the customs of the place;
for she never guessed that
Stephen knew of her
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[Page 231] hopeless love. But
Stephen turned away his face
and answered her briefly, that his brother was well
and prosperous, and wrote
home constantly. How could he tell her that Maurice
had already found himself a
rich handsome wife in India ?
CHAPTER 3
Soon after these things, old
Mr Gray fell ill of a violent cold, which attacked
him suddenly one afternoon on
his return from his office. It was Christmas
weather then, and the cold
and the frost of the season were unusually keen, so
that the physician, whom
Stephen called in to see his father, looked very grave
and dubious; and before many
days of his patient's illness were past, he asked
the young man whether there
were any brothers or sisters of his, whom the
merchant might wish to see.
Stephen's heart beat fast when he heard the ominous
question, for he understood
what tidings the grave tone and the strange inquiry
were meant to break to him,
and knew well that the physician who spoke was one
of the wisest and most
skilful in London. But he answered as calmly as he could,
and talked of Maurice, and of
the boy's fondness for his father, and added, that
if there were really imminent
danger, he should like his brother to be called
home, because he was sure
Maurice would wish it; but that otherwise the voyage
was tedious and the need
unimportant.
"Let him be sent
for", said the physician. "There is just time."
So Stephen wrote to his
brother, and bade him leave his wife with her parents in
India, and come home quickly,
if he would see his father again, for the time was
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[Page 232] short, and in those days the
only way open to Maurice was the long
circuitous sea-route.
Maurice arrived only three
days before the old man's death. He had not left his
wife behind him, as Stephen
suggested, for she loved her husband too dearly to
be parted from him, and
Maurice brought her with him to his father's house.
From her place on the sofa by
the window, Adelaïs Cameron looked wearily out,
watching for the coming of
the one she loved most upon earth. And at last the
coach drew up at the old
gentleman's gate, and she saw Maurice dismount from the
box-seat by the driver and
open the coach door to hand out a handsome lady, with
dark hair and bright glowing
eyes.
"Who is that?" she
asked of the maid, who was arranging the tea-table beside
her.
"Don't you know, Miss ?
" said the girl, surprised at the inquiry. " That's Mrs
Maurice, the rich young lady
he married in India a year ago; I was told all
about it by the cook at Mr
Gray's, ever-so-long ago."
But as the words were spoken,
Stephen entered the room with a message for Philip
Cameron, and overheard both
the question and the answer. Adelaïs turned towards
him and said, — "Stephen,
you never told me that Maurice had a wife."
The next week they buried the
old wine merchant very quietly and simply. Only
three mourners attended the
funeral, — Stephen and Maurice and Philip Cameron;
but Adelaïs, looking down on
them from her casement corner, as the coffin was
carried forth from the house,
laid her golden head on her aunt's bosom and
cried, "Auntie, auntie,
I never thought to live so long as this ! Why must those
always die who are needed
most, while
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[Page 233] such as I live on from year
to
year ? I fancied I had only a
few weeks left me upon earth when we came back to
Kensington, and yet here I am
still! "
Then after a little while the
brothers parted once more; Maurice and his wife
went back to India, and
Stephen was left alone, sole successor to his father's
business, and master of the
old house. But Adelaïs Cameron still lived on, like
the shadow of her former self,
fading in the sunset of her womanhood, the beauty
sapped out from her white
death-like face, and the glitter of youth and the
sweetness of hope quenched
for ever in the depths of her luminous eyes.
Then when the days of
mourning were over, Stephen came again to Adelaïs, to
renew the wooing of old
times; for he said to himself, "Now that Maurice is
married, and my father dead,
she may pity me, seeing me so lone and desolate;
and I may comfort her for the
past, and make her amends with my love, for the
pain and the bitterness that
are gone by."
But when he knelt alone by
the couch whereon Adelaïs lay, and held her white
blue-veined hands in his and
told his errand, she turned her face from him and
wept sore, as women weep over
the dead
"Adelaïs, O Adelaïs",
he cried in his despair, "Why will you refuse me always ?
Don't you see my heart is
breaking for love of you ? Come home with me and be my
wife at last!"
But she made answer very
sadly and slowly: —
"Stephen, ought the
living and the dead to wed with one another ? God forbid
that you in your youth and
manhood should take to wife such a death-like thing
as I! Four years I have lain
like this waiting for the messenger to fetch me
away, and now that at last he
is
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[Page 234] near at hand, shall I array
myself
in a bridal veil for a
face-cloth, and trailing skirts of silk or satin for a
shroud ? Dear Stephen, don't
talk to me any more about this, — we are brother
and sister still, — let
nothing on earth break the sweetness of the bond between
us."
"Not so, Adelaïs",
cried he, passionately; " you cannot, you must not die yet!
You do not know what love can
do, you do not know that love is stronger than
death, and that where there
is love like mine death dare not come ! There is
nothing in all the world that
I will not do for your sake, nothing that I will
leave undone to save you,
nothing that shall be too hard a condition for me to
perform, so that I may keep
you with me still. Live, live my darling, my
beloved, and be my wife! Give
me the right to take you with me, my sweet; let us
go together to Madeira, to
Malta, to Sicily, where the land is full of life, and
the skies are warm, and the
atmosphere clear and pure. There is health there,
Adelaïs, and youth, and air
to breathe such as one cannot find in this dull,
misty, heavy northern
climate, and there you will grow well again, and we will
think no more about death and
sickness. O my darling, my darling, for God's sake
refuse me no longer !"
She laid her thin transparent
palm wearily over her left side, and turned her
calm eyes on the passionate
straining face beside her.
"There is that
here," she said, pressing her wounded heart more tightly, "that I
know already for the touch of
the messenger's hand. Already I count the time of
my sojourn here, not by weeks
nor even by days, — the end has come so very, very
near at last. How do I know
but that even now that messenger of whom I speak may
be standing in our presence,
— even now, while you kneel
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[Page 235] here by my
side and talk to me of life
and youth and health?"
"Adelaïs", pleaded
the poor lover, hoarsely, "you deceive yourself, my darling!
Have you not often spoken
before of dying, and yet have lived on ? O why should
you die now and break my
heart outright ? "
"I feel a mist coming
over me", she answered, "even as I speak with you now. I
hear a sound in my ears that
is not of earth, the darkness gathers before my
face, the light quivers and
fades, the night is closing about me very fast.
Stephen, Stephen, don't you
see that I am dying?"
He bowed his head over the
damp colourless brow, and whispered: " If it be so,
my beloved, be as my wife
yet, and die in my arms."
But while he uttered the
words there came a change over her, — a shadow into the
sweet eyes and a sudden spasm
of pain across the white parted lips. Feebly and
uncertainly she put out her
hands before her face, like one groping in the
darkness, her golden head
drooped on his shoulder, and her breath came sharp and
thick, with the sound of
approaching death. Stephen folded his arms about her
with a cry of agony, and
pressed the poor quivering hands wildly to his bosom,
as though he would fain have
held them there for ever.
"O God !" he
groaned in his unutterable despair; " is there no hope, no
redemption, no retrieving of
the past ? Is this the bitter end of all, and must
I lose my darling so ? O
Adelaïs, Adelaïs, my beloved ! " But even as he spoke,
the gathering shadow broke
softly over all her face, the sobbing, gasping breath
ceased in the stillness of
the darkened room, the golden head fell lower, —
lower yet upon the desolate
heart whose love had been so steadfast
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[Page 236]
and so true; and Stephen
covered his face with the hands of the dead, and wept
such tears as men can only
weep once in a lifetime, — tears that make brown
hairs grey and young men old.
Philip Cameron and his aunt
did not stay long at Kensington. They gave up the
house to strangers, and went
away to the Continent for awhile, where they
travelled about together,
until the old lady grew tired of wandering, and
settled down with her maid in
a little villa near Geneva; and after that,
Stephen heard no more of her
nor of Philip. But Stephen himself stayed on in the
old house until he grew old
too, for he loved the place where Adelaïs had lived,
and could not bear to leave
it for another. And every evening when he came home
from his office, he would sit
alone at the window of his study whence he could
see across the garden into
the little chamber next door, the little
chintz-curtained
old-fashioned chamber where she used to lie in her weakness
years and years ago, where
they two had so often talked and read together, and
where she had died at last in
his arms. But he never wept, thinking of these
things now, for he had grown
into a little withered dried-up old man, and his
tears were dried up also, and
instead of his passionate despair and
heartbreaking, had come the
calm bitterness of eternal regret, and a still
voiceless longing for the
time that every day drew nearer and nearer, and for
the coming of the messenger
from the land that is very far off.
But when Maurice came home
once more to settle in England with his handsome wife
and his children, rich and
happy and prosperous, he would fain have taken some
new house in London to share
with his twin brother, that they might live
together; but Stephen would
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[Page 237] not. Then when Maurice had
reasoned and
talked with him a long time
in vain, pleading by turns the love that had been
between them long ago, the
loneliness of his brother's estate, and his own
desire that they should not
separate now, he yielded the contest, and said
discontentedly, —
"Have your own way,
Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of
yourself, but at least give up
your useless toiling at the wine-office. To what
end do you plod there every
day, — you who are wifeless and childless, and have
no need of money for
yourself? give me up this great house in which you live all
alone, like an owl in an
oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in
the neighbourhood, where I
can often come and see you, and where you may spend
your days in happiness and
comfort."
And the little old man shook
his head and answered, " Nay, brother Maurice, but
I will go away from here to
some country village where I am not known, for I
have toiled long and wearily
all my lire, and I cannot rest in peace beside the
mill where I have ground down
my life so many years. Do not trouble yourself
about me, Maurice, I shall
find a home for myself."
Then they parted. Maurice and
his family came to live in the big house at
Kensington, for they liked to
be near London, and Stephen sold his father's
business to another merchant,
and went away, Maurice knew not whither, to bury
himself and his lost life in
some far-off village, until by-and-by the messenger
for whom he had waited and
yearned so long should come also for him, " and the
day break and the shadows
flee away."
Such, reader mine, is in
substance the story that Dr Peyton told me. The words
in which he related it I
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[Page 238] cannot of course quite
remember now, so I
have put it into words of my
own, and here and there I have added somewhat to
the dialogue. But the facts
and the pathos of the romance are not mine, nor his;
they are true, actual
realities, such as no dressing of fiction can make more
poetical or complete in their
sorrowful interest.
"It was a long history",
said I, " for a dying man to tell".
"Yes"' answered he.
"And several times it was evident enough from his
quick-drawn breath and sudden
pauses, that the recital wearied and pained him.
But he was so set upon telling,
and I, Lizzie, I confess, so much interested in
hearing it, that I did not
absolutely hinder his fancy, but contented myself
with warning him from time to
time not to overtask his strength. He always
answered me that he was quite
strong, and liked to go on, for that it made him
happy even to talk once more
about Adelaïs, and to tell me how beautiful and
sweet and patient she had
been. It was close upon sunset when he ended his
story, and he begged me, that
as his fashion was, he might be lifted out of bed
and carried to his arm-chair
by the window, to look, as he said, for the last
time, at the going down of
the sun. So I called the housekeeper, and we did what
he desired together, and
opened the green Venetian blinds of the casement, which
had been closed all the
afternoon because of the heat. You remember, Lizzie,
what a wonderfully bright and
beautiful sunset it was this evening ? Well, as we
threw back the outer
shutters, the radiant glory of the sky poured into the room
like a flood of transparent
gold and almost dazzled us, so that I fancied the
sudden brilliancy would be
too much for his feeble sight, and I leaned hastily
forward with the intention of
partly reclosing the
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[Page 230] blinds. But he
signed to me to let them be,
so I relinquished my design, and sent the
housekeeper downstairs to
prepare him his tea, which I thought he might like to
take sitting up in his chair
by the window. I had no idea — doctor though I am —
that his end was so near as
it proved to be; for although certainly much
exhausted and agitated with
the exertion of telling me his story, I did not then
perceive any immediate cause
for apprehension. Still less did I understand that
he was then actually dying;
on the contrary, I began to think that my first
impressions of his danger
when I entered the room that afternoon had been
erroneous, and that the
change I had observed in him might possibly be an
indication of temporary
revival. At all events, I fancied the cup of tea which
was then being made ready,
would be of great use in stimulating and refreshing
him after the weariness
caused by his long talk, and I promised myself that if I
could only persuade him to
silence for the rest of the evening, he would be none
the worse for the recent
gratification of his whim. We sat some time by the open
window, watching the sun as
it sank lower and lower into the golden-sheeted
west, and some unconnected
speculations were straying through my mind about '
the sea of glass mingled with
fire,' when the old man's words aroused me in the
midst of my dreaming, and the
voice in which he spoke was so unusual and so soft
that it startled me.
" ' Doctor,' he said, '
I think I am dying.'
"I sprang from my seat
and stood at his side in a moment, but before the
utterance had well passed
from his lips, I perceived that it was no mere
invalid's fancy.
" ' Thirty-five years
ago,' he continued, speaking still in that new unusual
voice, — 'thirty-five years
ago this
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[Page 240] very selfsame day, my Adelaïs
died in my arms as the sun
went down. Today, as the sun goes down, I shall die
also.'
"Surely" cried I,
"this is a very singular incident! Does it not seem so to you
! This evening, then, was
actually the anniversary of poor Miss Cameron's death
! How strange !"
"It certainly appeared
so to me at first", he rejoined. "But when my mind
reverted to it afterwards, I
thought it exceedingly probable that his own
knowledge of the fact had
itself hastened his end, for he had no doubt been long
brooding over it, and maybe
desired that his death should occur that particular
day and hour. In his
enfeebled condition, such a desire would have great
physical effect; I have known
several similar cases. But however that may have
been, I of course have no
certain means of deciding. I have already told you,
that immediately on my
entering his chamber in the afternoon, he expressed to me
his conviction that tonight
he should go to his long rest, and in the certainty
of that conviction, related
to me the story you have heard. But though it has
been the necessary lot of my
calling to be present at so many death-beds, I
never before witnessed a
calmer or a more peaceful end than Stephen Gray's. In
his changed face, in his
watchful eyes, in every placid feature of his
countenance, I beheld the quiet
anticipation of that long rest about which he
had spoken so contentedly an
hour or two since.
"He took no further heed
of me whatever, — I doubt if he was even aware of my
presence. Wearily he laid his
head back upon the white pillows I had placed in
the arm-chair behind him,
folded his hands together, and kept his eyes fixed
steadfastly, and — I thought
— even
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[Page 241] reverently, upon the setting
sun
that was now fast sinking
like a globe of fire, towards the blue ridge of the
Malvern hills, and my heart
beat violently as I saw it touch the topmost peak.
While I watched, there broke
suddenly forth from between the low lines of sunset
cloud, a long ray of golden
light, that fell full on the uplifted face of the
little old man. He did not
turn his head, or shrink from its intense brightness,
but his lips moved, though
the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and
indistinct, that I stooped to
hear them.
" ' Adelaïs, — O my lost
darling, — my Adelaïs, — let me come to thee and be
beloved at last!'
"Then I looked again at
the western sky, and saw that the sun had gone down."
Next morning I gathered my
June roses and sweet jasmin, and took them over to
the house of the little old
man. I went upstairs into the darkened chamber where
they had laid him, and
bestowed the flowers reverently about the white-draped
bed. All the wrinkles were
wiped out of his pallid face now, and he looked so
wondrously calm and peaceful,
lying there with his closed eyelids and crossed
hands, in the unbroken
silence of the room, that the tears of pity I thought I
should have wept at the sight
never rose in my eyes; but instead, as I turned
away, there came to my memory
certain closing lines of a most beautiful poem,
written not very long ago by
a master-hand that surely held God's commission to
write. It is a dead hand now,
but the written words remain, and the singer
herself has gone to the land
of the Hereafter, where the souls of the poets
float for ever in the full
light of their recovered Godhead, singing such songs
as mortal ear hath not yet
heard, nor mortal heart
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[Page 242] conceived of. And
the poem of which I spoke,
has this ending: —
" 'Jasper first,' I
said, '
And second, sapphire; third,
chalcedony;
The rest in order, — last, an
amethyst.' "
- 7 - THE NIGHTSHADE
" But silence is most
noble till the end."
— Atalanta in Calydon.
CHAPTER 1
Somebody, the other day,
presented me with a bunch of crimson roses and purple
nightshade, tied together.
Roses and nightshade!
I thought the combination
worthy of a poem !
For the rose, as all the
world conceives, is the emblem of love; and the
nightshade typifies silence.
I put my posy in a little
vase filled with water, and when night came, I lay
down to rest, with my head
full of vague rhymes and unfledged ideas, whose theme
was still my eccentric
nosegay. Sleep, however, overtook the muse, and the soft
divinities of darkness,
weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my
contemplated sonnet into a
dream.
It seemed to my sleeping
fancy that I stood in a deep, serene light of shadowy
purple, grave and sombre, — a
light which suggested to me the sound of low minor
chords, the last notes of
some organ voluntary, dying beneath a master's touch,
and rolling down the hazy aisles
of an empty cathedral, out into the gloomy
night, upward to the stars.
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[Page 243]