A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one
day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last met I have
discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."
"Really haunted,----and by what?----ghosts?"
"Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago my
wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street,
we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments, Furnished.'
The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked the rooms, engaged them
by the week,----and left them the third day. No power on earth could have
reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don't wonder at it."
"What did you see?"
"Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious
dreamer,----nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my
affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of
your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or
heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own
excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as
it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by
the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard
anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I
agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,----and allowed, after the
third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house.
Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house
and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and
we would not stay out our week. She said dryly, 'I know why; you have stayed
longer than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a second night; none before
you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you.'
"'They,----who?' I asked, affecting to smile.
"'Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don't mind them. I
remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant;
but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don't care,----I'm old,
and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house
still.' The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness that really it was a sort
of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week,
and too happy were my wife and I to get off so cheaply."
"You excite my curiosity," said I; "nothing I should like better than to
sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you left
so ignominiously."
My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight toward
the house thus indicated.
It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, in a dull but respectable
thoroughfare. I found the house shut up,----no bill at the window, and no
response to my knock. As I was turning away, a beer-boy, collecting pewter
pots at the neighboring areas, said to me, "Do you want any one at that
house, sir?"
"Yes, I heard it was to be let."
"Let!----why, the woman who kept it is dead,----has been dead these three
weeks, and no one can be found to stay there, though Mr. J-------- offered
ever so much. He offered mother, who chars for him, one pound a week just to
open and shut the windows, and she would not."
"Would not!----and why?"
"The house is haunted; and the old woman who kept it was found dead in her
bed, with her eyes wide open. They say the devil strangled her."
"Pooh! You speak of Mr. J--------. Is he the owner of the house?"
"Yes."
"Where does he live?"
"In G-------- Street, No. ----."
"What is he? In any business?"
"No, sir,----nothing particular; a single gentleman."
I gave the potboy the gratuity earned by his liberal information, and
proceeded to Mr. J-------- , in G-------- Street, which was close by the
street that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky enough to find Mr.
J-------- at home,----an elderly man with intelligent countenance and
prepossessing manners.
I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was
considered to be haunted, that I had a strong desire to examine a house with
so equivocal a reputation; that I should be greatly obliged if he would
allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that
privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. "Sir," said Mr. J--------,
with great courtesy, "the house is at your service, for as short or as long
a time as you please. Rent is out of the question,----the obligation will be
on my side should you be able to discover the cause of the strange phenomena
which at present deprive it of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot even
get a servant to keep it in order or answer the door. Unluckily the house is
haunted, if I may use that expression, not only by night, but by day; though
at night the disturbances are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more
alarming character. The poor old woman who died in it three weeks ago was a
pauper whom I took out of a workhouse; for in her childhood she had been
known to some of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances
that she had rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior
education and strong mind, and was the only person I could ever induce to
remain in the house. Indeed, since her death, which was sudden, and the
coroner's inquest, which gave it a notoriety in the neighborhood, I have so
despaired of finding any person to take charge of the house, much more a
tenant, that I would willingly let it rent free for a year to anyone who
would pay its rates and taxes."
"How long is it since the house acquired this sinister character?"
"That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since. The old woman I
spoke of, said it was haunted when she rented it between thirty and forty
years ago. The fact is, that my life has been spent in the East Indies, and
in the civil service of the Company. I returned to England last year, on
inheriting the fortune of an uncle, among whose possessions was the house in
question. I found it shut up and uninhabited. I was told that it was
haunted, that no one would inhabit it. I smiled at what seemed to me so idle
a story. I spent some money in repairing it, added to its old- fashioned
furniture a few modern articles,----advertised it, and obtained a lodger for
a year. He was a colonel on half pay. He came in with his family, a son and
a daughter, and four or five servants: they all left the house the next day;
and, although each of them declared that he had seen something different
from that which had scared the others, a something still was equally
terrible to all. I really could not in conscience sue, nor even blame, the
colonel for breach of agreement. Then I put in the old woman I have spoken
of, and she was empowered to let the house in apartments. I never had one
lodger who stayed more than three days. I do not tell you their
stories,----to no two lodgers have there been exactly the same phenomena
repeated. It is better that you should judge for yourself, than enter the
house with an imagination influenced by previous narratives; only be
prepared to see and to hear something or other, and take whatever
precautions you yourself please."
"Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in that house?"
"Yes. I passed not a night, but three hours in broad daylight alone in that
house. My curiosity is not satisfied, but it is quenched. I have no desire
to renew the experiment. You cannot complain, you see, sir, that I am not
sufficiently candid; and unless your interest be exceedingly eager and your
nerves unusually strong, I honestly add, that I advise you NOT to pass a
night in that house.
"My interest IS exceedingly keen," said I; "and though only a coward will
boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet my nerves
have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have the right to rely
on them,----even in a haunted house."
Mr. J-------- said very little more; he took the keys of the house out of
his bureau, gave them to me,----and, thanking him cordially for his
frankness, and his urbane concession to my wish, I carried off my prize.
Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home, I summoned my
confidential servant,----a young man of gay spirits, fearless temper, and as
free from superstitious prejudice as anyone I could think of.
F--------," said I, "you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not
finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by a
headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have
reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to-night. From
what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen
or to be heard,----something, perhaps, excessively horrible. Do you think if
I take you with me, I may rely on your presence of mind, whatever may
happen?"
"Oh, sir, pray trust me," answered F--------, grinning with delight.
"Very well; then here are the keys of the house,----this is the address. Go
now,----select for me any bedroom you please; and since the house has not
been inhabited for weeks, make up a good fire, air the bed well,----see, of
course, that there are candles as well as fuel. Take with you my revolver
and my dagger,----so much for my weapons; arm yourself equally well; and if
we are not a match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but a sorry couple of
Englishmen.
I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not
leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my
honor. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit.
I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself that
I would take the book with me; there was so much of healthfulness in the
style, and practical life in the subjects, that it would serve as an
antidote against the influences of superstitious fancy.
Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my pocket, and
strolled leisurely toward the haunted house. I took with me a favorite dog:
an exceedingly sharp, bold, and vigilant bull terrier,----a dog fond of
prowling about strange, ghostly corners and passages at night in search of
rats; a dog of dogs for a ghost.
I reached the house, knocked, and my servant opened with a cheerful smile.
We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms,----in fact, they felt so damp and
so chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked the doors
of the drawing-rooms,----a precaution which, I should observe, we had taken
with all the rooms we had searched below. The bedroom my servant had
selected for me was the best on the floor,----a large one, with two windows
fronting the street. The four-posted bed, which took up no inconsiderable
space, was opposite to the fire, which burned clear and bright; a door in
the wall to the left, between the bed and the window, communicated with the
room which my servant appropriated to himself. This last was a small room
with a sofa bed, and had no communication with the landing place,----no
other door but that which conducted to the bedroom I was to occupy. On
either side of my fireplace was a cupboard without locks, flush with the
wall, and covered with the same dull-brown paper. We examined these
cupboards,----only hooks to suspend female dresses, nothing else; we sounded
the walls,---- evidently solid, the outer walls of the building. Having
finished the survey of these apartments, warmed myself a few moments, and
lighted my cigar, I then, still accompanied by F--------, went forth to
complete my reconnoiter. In the landing place there was another door; it was
closed firmly. "Sir," said my servant, in surprise, "I unlocked this door
with all the others when I first came; it cannot have got locked from the
inside, for----"
Before he had finished his sentence, the door, which neither of us then was
touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked at each other a single
instant. The same thought seized both,----some human agency might be
detected here. I rushed in first, my servant followed. A small, blank,
dreary room without furniture; a few empty boxes and hampers in a corner; a
small window; the shutters closed; not even a fireplace; no other door but
that by which we had entered; no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed
very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the
whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in
which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door
by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had before opened; we were
imprisoned.
For the first time I felt a creep of indefinable horror. Not so my servant.
"Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery door
with a kick of my foot."
"Try first if it will open to your hand," said I, shaking off the vague
apprehension that had seized me, "while I unclose the shutters and see what
is without."
I unbarred the shutters,----the window looked on the little back yard I have
before described; there was no ledge without,----nothing to break the sheer
descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any
footing till he had fallen on the stones below.
F--------, meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door. He now turned
round to me and asked my permission to use force. And I should here state,
in justice to the servant, that, far from evincing any superstitious
terrors, his nerve, composure, and even gayety amidst circumstances so
extraordinary, compelled my admiration, and made me congratulate myself on
having secured a companion in every way fitted to the occasion. I willingly
gave him the permission he required. But though he was a remarkably strong
man, his force was as idle as his milder efforts; the door did not even
shake to his stoutest kick. Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then
tried the door myself, equally in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again
that creep of horror came over me; but this time it was more cold and
stubborn. I felt as if some strange and ghastly exhalation were rising up
from the chinks of that rugged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a
venomous influence hostile to human life. The door now very slowly and
quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves into the
landing place. We both saw a large, pale light----as large as the human
figure, but shapeless and unsubstantial----move before us, and ascend the
stairs that led from the landing into the attics. I followed the light, and
my servant followed me. It entered, to the right of the landing, a small
garret, of which the door stood open. I entered in the same instant. The
light then collapsed into a small globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid,
rested a moment on a bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished. We
approached the bed and examined it,----a half-tester, such as is commonly
found in attics devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we
perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent
half repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had belonged
to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this might have been
her sleeping room. I had sufficient curiosity to open the drawers: there
were a few odds and ends of female dress, and two letters tied round with a
narrow ribbon of faded yellow. I took the liberty to possess myself of the
letters. We found nothing else in the room worth noticing,----nor did the
light reappear; but we distinctly heard, as we turned to go, a pattering
footfall on the floor, just before us. We went through the other attics (in
all four), the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to be seen,----nothing
but the footfall heard. I had the letters in my hand; just as I was
descending the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint, soft
effort made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only held them the more
tightly, and the effort ceased.
We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I then remarked that
my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was thrusting himself
close to the fire, and trembling. I was impatient to examine the letters;
and while I read them, my servant opened a little box in which he had
deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring, took them out, placed them
on a table close at my bed head, and then occupied himself in soothing the
dog, who, however, seemed to heed him very little.
The letters were short,----they were dated; the dates exactly thirty- five
years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a husband to
some young wife. Not only the terms of expression, but a distinct reference
to a former voyage, indicated the writer to have been a seafarer. The
spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly educated, but still
the language itself was forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was
a kind of rough, wild love; but here and there were dark unintelligible
hints at some secret not of love,----some secret that seemed of crime. "We
ought to love each other," was one of the sentences I remember, "for how
everyone else would execrate us if all was known." Again: "Don't let anyone
be in the same room with you at night,----you talk in your sleep." And
again: "What's done can't be undone; and I tell you there's nothing against
us unless the dead could come to life." Here there was underlined in a
better handwriting (a female's), "They do!" At the end of the letter latest
in date the same female hand had written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th
of June, the same day as----"
I put down the letters, and began to muse over their contents.
Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell might unsteady
my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state to cope with
whatever of marvelous the advancing night might bring forth. I roused
myself; laid the letters on the table; stirred up the fire, which was still
bright and cheering; and opened my volume of Macaulay. I read quietly enough
till about half past eleven. I then threw myself dressed upon the bed, and
told my servant he might retire to his own room, but must keep himself
awake. I bade him leave open the door between the two rooms. Thus alone, I
kept two candles burning on the table by my bed head. I placed my watch
beside the weapons, and calmly resumed my Macaulay. Opposite to me the fire
burned clear; and on the hearth rug, seemingly asleep, lay the dog. In about
twenty minutes I felt an exceedingly cold air pass by my cheek, like a
sudden draught. I fancied the door to my right, communicating with the
landing place, must have got open; but no,----it was closed. I then turned
my glance to my left, and saw the flame of the candles violently swayed as
by a wind. At the same moment the watch beside the revolver softly slid from
the table,----softly, softly; no visible hand,----it was gone. I sprang up,
seizing the revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other; I was not
willing that my weapons should share the fate of the watch. Thus armed, I
looked round the floor,----no sign of the watch. Three slow, loud, distinct
knocks were now heard at the bed head; my servant called out, "Is that you,
sir?"
"No; be on your guard."
The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving quickly
backward and forward. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a look so strange
that he concentered all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his
hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild stare. I
had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from
his room; and if ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should
not have recognized him had we met in the street, so altered was every
lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying, in a whisper that seemed
scarcely to come from his lips, "Run, run! it is after me!" He gained the
door to the landing, pulled it open, and rushed forth. I followed him into
the landing involuntarily, calling him to stop; but, without heeding me, he
bounded down the stairs, clinging to the balusters, and taking several steps
at a time. I heard, where I stood, the street door open,----heard it again
clap to. I was left alone in the haunted house.
It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether or not to follow
my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a flight. I
re-entered my room, closing the door after me, and proceeded cautiously into
the interior chamber. I encountered nothing to justify my servant's terror.
I again carefully examined the walls, to see if there were any concealed
door. I could find no trace of one,----not even a seam in the dull-brown
paper with which the room was hung. How, then, had the THING, whatever it
was, which had so scared him, obtained ingress except though my own chamber?
I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that opened upon the
interior one, and stood on the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now
perceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the wall, and was pressing
himself close against it, as if literally striving to force his way into it.
I approached the animal and spoke to it; the poor brute was evidently beside
itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its
jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not
seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit,
fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the
anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in
vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as in the
madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table
beside the fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.
Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage, or rather a
coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be pardoned if I
pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks.
As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be precisely
proportioned to familiarity with the circumstances that lead to it, so I
should say that I had been long sufficiently familiar with all experiments
that appertain to the marvelous. I had witnessed many very extraordinary
phenomena in various parts of the world,----phenomena that would be either
totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies.
Now, my theory is that the supernatural is the impossible, and that what is
called supernatural is only a something in the laws of Nature of which we
have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I have
not the right to say, "So, then, the supernatural is possible;" but rather,
"So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to received opinion,
within the laws of Nature,----that is, not supernatural."
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders
which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living
agency is always required. On the Continent you will find still magicians
who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they
assert truly, still the living material form of the magician is present; and
he is the material agency by which, from some constitutional peculiarities,
certain strange phenomena are represented to your natural senses.
Accept, again, as truthful, the tales of spirit manifestation in
America,---- musical or other sounds; writings on paper, produced by no
discernible hand; articles of furniture moved without apparent human agency;
or the actual sight and touch of hands, to which no bodies seem to
belong,----still there must be found the MEDIUM, or living being, with
constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs. In fine, in
all such marvels, supposing even that there is no imposture, there must be a
human being like ourselves by whom, or through whom, the effects presented
to human beings are produced. It is so with the now familiar phenomena of
mesmerism or electro-biology; the mind of the person operated on is affected
through a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true that a mesmerized
patient can respond to the will or passes of a mesmerizer a hundred miles
distant, is the response less occasioned by a material being; it may be
through a material fluid----call it Electric, call it Odic, call it what you
will ---- which has the power of traversing space and passing obstacles,
that the material effect is communicated from one to the other. Hence, all
that I had hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in this strange
house, I believed to be occasioned through some agency or medium as mortal
as myself; and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with which those who
regard as supernatural things that are not within the ordinary operations of
Nature, might have been impressed by the adventures of that memorable night.
As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented, or would be
presented to my senses, must originate in some human being gifted by
constitution with the power so to present them, and having some motive so to
do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather
philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in as
tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist could be
in awaiting the effects of some rare, though perhaps perilous, chemical
combination. Of course, the more I kept my mind detached from fancy, the
more the temper fitted for observation would be obtained; and I therefore
riveted eye and thought on the strong daylight sense in the page of my
Macaulay.
I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the
light,---- the page was overshadowed. I looked up, and I saw what I shall
find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.
It was a Darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very undefined
outline. I cannot say it was of a human form, and yet it had more
resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else. As it
stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light around it, its
dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching the ceiling. While I
gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An iceberg before me could not
more have chilled me; nor could the cold of an iceberg have been more purely
physical. I feel convinced that it was not the cold caused by fear. As I
continued to gaze, I thought----but this I cannot say with precision----that
I distinguished two eyes looking down on me from the height. One moment I
fancied that I distinguished them clearly, the next they seemed gone; but
still two rays of a pale- blue light frequently shot through the darkness,
as from the height on which I half believed, half doubted, that I had
encountered the eyes.
I strove to speak,---- my voice utterly failed me; I could only think to
myself, "Is this fear? It is NOT fear!" I strove to rise,----in vain; I felt
as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that
of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition,----that sense
of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel
PHYSICALLY in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some
terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt
MORALLY. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its
strength as storm, fire, and shark are superior in material force to the
force of man.
And now, as this impression grew on me,----now came, at last, horror, horror
to a degree that no words can convey. Still I retained pride, if not
courage; and in my own mind I said, "This is horror; but it is not fear;
unless I fear I cannot be harmed; my reason rejects this thing; it is an
illusion,----I do not fear." With a violent effort I succeeded at last in
stretching out my hand toward the weapon on the table; as I did so, on the
arm and shoulder I received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side
powerless. And now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from
the candles,----they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame
seemed very gradually withdrawn; it was the same with the fire,----the light
was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room was in utter
darkness. The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark with that dark
Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a reaction of nerve. In
fact, terror had reached that climax, that either my senses must have
deserted me, or I must have burst through the spell. I did burst through it.
I found voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth
with words like these, "I do not fear, my soul does not fear"; and at the
same time I found strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to
one of the windows; tore aside the curtain; flung open the shutters; my
first thought was----LIGHT. And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I
felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror. There was the
moon, there was also the light from the gas lamps in the deserted slumberous
street. I turned to look back into the room; the moon penetrated its shadow
very palely and partially----but still there was light. The dark Thing,
whatever it might be, was gone,----except that I could yet see a dim shadow,
which seemed the shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.
My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was without
cloth or cover,----an old mahogany round table) there rose a hand, visible
as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much of flesh and blood as
my own, but the hand of an aged person, lean, wrinkled, small too,----a
woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on the two letters that lay on
the table; hand and letters both vanished. There then came the same three
loud, measured knocks I had heard at the bed head before this extraordinary
drama had commenced.
As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly; and
at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules like
bubbles of light, many colored,----green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up and
down, to and fro, hither, thither as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps, the sparks
moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as in the
drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent agency,
and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as forth from the
chair, there grew a shape,----a woman's shape. It was distinct as a shape of
life,---- ghastly as a shape of death. The face was that of youth, with a
strange, mournful beauty; the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of
the form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long, yellow
hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned toward me, but
to the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting. The shadow of the shade
in the background grew darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes
gleaming out from the summit of the shadow,----eyes fixed upon that shape.
As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another shape,
equally distinct, equally ghastly,----a man's shape, a young man's. It was
in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such dress (for
both the male shape and the female, though defined, were evidently
unsubstantial, impalpable,---- simulacra, phantasms); and there was
something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the
elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its
ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpselike aspect and ghostlike
stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the
female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment
wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as
if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and there was a
blood stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on
its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles from the
lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow swallowed them up,----they
were gone. And again the bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated,
growing thicker and thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.
The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the
aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she held
letters,----the very letters over which I had seen THE Hand close; and
behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen, and then
she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder I saw a
livid face, the face as of a man long drowned,----bloated, bleached, seaweed
tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse; and
beside the corpse there cowered a child, a miserable, squalid child, with
famine in its cheeks and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old
woman's face, the wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face of
youth,----hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted forth,
and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the last.
Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently
fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow,----malignant, serpent eyes.
And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered,
irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from
these globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things
burst out; the air grew filled with them: larvae so bloodless and so hideous
that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the
swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of
water,----things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring
each other; forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes
were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very
vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and
faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which
was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I
felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I
felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally
conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I
concentered all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will.
And I turned my sight from the Shadow; above all, from those strange serpent
eyes,----eyes that had now become distinctly visible. For there, though in
naught else around me, I was aware that there was a WILL, and will of
intense, creative, working evil, which might crush down my own.
The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air of some
near conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as things that live in fire. Again
the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured knocks; and again all
things were swallowed up in the darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of
that darkness all had come, into that darkness all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly, as it had been
withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table, again into
the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once more calmly, healthfully
into sight.
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the servant's
room still locked. In the corner of the wall, into which he had so
convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him,----no movement; I
approached,----the animal was dead: his eyes protruded; his tongue out of
his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms; I
brought him to the fire. I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favorite,----acute
self- reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of
fright. But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually
broken. Had this been done in the dark? Must it not have been by a hand
human as mine; must there not have been a human agency all the while in that
room? Good cause to suspect it. I cannot tell. I cannot do more than state
the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own inference.
Another surprising circumstance,----my watch was restored to the table from
which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the very
moment it was so withdrawn, nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker,
has it ever gone since,----that is, it will go in a strange, erratic way for
a few hours, and then come to a dead stop; it is worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had I long to
wait before the dawn broke. Not till it was broad daylight did I quit the
haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in which
my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a strong
impression----for which I could not account----that from that room had
originated the mechanism of the phenomena, if I may use the term, which had
been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it now in the clear
day, with the sun peering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood
on its floors, the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced
the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passed in my
own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half a minute
within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I heard the footfall
before me; and when I opened the street door, I thought I could distinguish
a very low laugh. I gained my own home, expecting to find my runaway servant
there; but he had not presented himself, nor did I hear more of him for
three days, when I received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this
effect:----
"HONORED SIR,----I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely hope
that you will think that I deserve it, unless----which Heaven forbid!----you
saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I can recover myself;
and as to being fit for service, it is out of the question. I am therefore
going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. The ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps
the long voyage may set me up. I do nothing now but start and tremble, and
fancy it is behind me. I humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes,
and whatever wages are due to me, to be sent to my mother's, at
Walworth,----John knows her address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go to
Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up with the
events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that conjecture; rather,
I suggest it as one that would seem to many persons the most probable
solution of improbable occurrences. My belief in my own theory remained
unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house, to bring away in a hack
cab the things I had left there, with my poor dog's body. In this task I was
not disturbed, nor did any incident worth note befall me, except that still,
on ascending and descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in
advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr. J--------'s. He was at home. I
returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity was sufficiently
gratified, and was about to relate quickly what had passed, when he stopped
me, and said, though with much politeness, that he had no longer any
interest in a mystery which none had ever solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as well as
of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared; and I then
inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who had died in
the house, and if there were anything in her early history which could
possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters gave rise. Mr.
J-------- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments, answered, "I am
but little acquainted with the woman's earlier history, except as I before
told you, that her family were known to mine. But you revive some vague
reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and inform you of
their result. Still, even if we could admit the popular superstition that a
person who had been either the perpetrator or the victim of dark crimes in
life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes
had been committed, I should observe that the house was infested by strange
sights and sounds before the old woman died----you smile----what would you
say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of
these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? For what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were to
sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in that sleep
could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not pretend to when
awake,----tell you what money you had in your pocket, nay, describe your
very thoughts,----it is not necessarily an imposture, any more than it is
necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to myself, under a
mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a human being who had
acquired power over me by previous rapport."
"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you suppose
that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects: move chairs,----open
and shut doors?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects,----we never having
been en rapport with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly called
mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to mesmerism, and
superior to it,----the power that in the old days was called Magic. That
such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter, I do not say;
but if so, it would not be against Nature,----it would be only a rare power
in Nature which might be given to constitutions with certain peculiarities,
and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power
might extend over the dead,----that is, over certain thoughts and memories
that the dead may still retain,----and compel, not that which ought properly
to be called the SOUL, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a
phantom of what has been most earth- stained on earth, to make itself
apparent to our senses, is a very ancient though obsolete theory upon which
I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would be
supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which
Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the
'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower perishes; you burn
it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone,
dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect them.
But you can, by chemistry, out of the burned dust of that flower, raise a
spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in life. It may be the same with
the human being. The soul has as much escaped you as the essence or elements
of the flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this phantom, though
in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must
not be confounded with the true soul; it is but the eidolon of the dead
form. Hence, like the best-attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul,----that is,
of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for little or
no object,----they seldom speak when they do come; if they speak, they utter
no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth. American spirit seers
have published volumes of communications, in prose and verse, which they
assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious dead: Shakespeare,
Bacon,----Heaven knows whom. Those communications, taking the best, are
certainly not a whit of higher order than would be communications from
living persons of fair talent and education; they are wondrously inferior to
what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what
is more noticeable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on the earth
before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be
truthful), I see much that philosophy may question, nothing that it is
incumbent on philosophy to deny,---- namely, nothing supernatural. They are
but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet discovered the means)
from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so doing, tables walk of their
own accord, or fiendlike shapes appear in a magic circle, or bodiless hands
rise and remove material objects, or a Thing of Darkness, such as presented
itself to me, freeze our blood,----still am I persuaded that these are but
agencies conveyed, as by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of
another. In some constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and those
constitutions may produce chemic wonders,----in others a natural fluid, call
it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the wonders
differ from Normal Science in this,----they are alike objectless,
purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and
therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated them.
But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the
remote originator; and I believe unconsciously to himself as to the exact
effects produced, for this reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told
you that they experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two
persons ever experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary
imposture, the machinery would be arranged for results that would but little
vary; if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would
surely be for some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my
persuasion is, that they originate in some brain now far distant; that that
brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what does
occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts;
in short, that it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action
and invested with a semisubstance. That this brain is of immense power, that
it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I
believe; some material force must have killed my dog; the same force might,
for aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by
terror as the dog,----had my intellect or my spirit given me no
countervailing resistance in my will."
"It killed your dog,----that is fearful! Indeed it is strange that no animal
can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and mice are
never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a resisting
power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly,----and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and hobgoblins
we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house, the evil is the
same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small, unfurnished room at right angles to the door of the
bedroom which I occupied, forms a starting point or receptacle for the
influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have the
walls opened, the floor removed,---- nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the small
backyard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the building."
"And you think, if I did that----"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I am
right, that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to direct the
operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest allow me to write to
you."
About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J-------- telling me that
he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found the two
letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had taken them;
that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he had instituted a
cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly conjectured they had been
written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago (a year before the date of the
letters) she had married, against the wish of her relations, an American of
very suspicions character; in fact, he was generally believed to have been a
pirate. She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and
had served in the capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She
had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child
of about six years old. A month after the marriage the body of this brother
was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of
violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant
the inquest in any other verdict that that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only
child,----and in event of the child's death the sister inherited. The child
died about six months afterwards,----it was supposed to have been neglected
and ill-treated. The neighbors deposed to have heard it shriek at night. The
surgeon who had examined it after death said that it was emaciated as if
from want of nourishment, and the body was covered with livid bruises. It
seemed that one winter night the child had sought to escape; crept out into
the back yard; tried to scale the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been
found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some
evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband
had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and
perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it
may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before
the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and
never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the
Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow was left in affluence, but reverses
of various kinds had befallen her: a bank broke; an investment failed; she
went into a small business and became insolvent; then she entered into
service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to
maid-of-all-work,----never long retaining a place, though nothing decided
against her character was ever alleged. She was considered sober, honest,
and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing prospered with her. And so
she had dropped into the workhouse, from which Mr. J-------- had taken her,
to be placed in charge of the very house which she had rented as mistress in
the first year of her wedded life.
Mr. J-------- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room
which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread while
there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen anything, that he
was eager to have the walls bared and the floors removed as I had suggested.
He had engaged persons for the work, and would commence any day I would
name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house,---- we went
into the blind, dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors.
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trapdoor, quite large
enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and rivets of
iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the existence of
which had never been suspected. In this room there had been a window and a
flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help
of candles we examined this place; it still retained some moldering
furniture,----three chairs, an oak settle, a table,----all of the fashion of
about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in
which we found, half rotted away, old- fashioned articles of a man's dress,
such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of
some rank; costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court
dresses, a handsome court sword; in a waistcoat which had once been rich
with gold lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found
five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some
place of entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in
a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much
trouble to get picked.
In this safe were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves
were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained
colorless, volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that
they were not poisons,---- phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them.
There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of
iron, with a large lump of rock crystal, and another of amber,----also a
loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man
who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or
forty-eight. It was a remarkable face,----a most impressive face. If you
could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the
human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of
frontal; the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the
deadly jaw; the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the
emerald,----and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness
of an immense power.
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and on
the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a ladder,
and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765. Examining
still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being pressed, opened the
back of the miniature as a lid. Within-side the lid were engraved, "Marianna
to thee. Be faithful in life and in death to --------." Here follows a name
that I will not mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it
spoken of by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a dazzling
charlatan who had made a great sensation in London for a year or so, and had
fled the country on the charge of a double murder within his own
house,----that of his mistress and his rival. I said nothing of this to Mr.
J--------, to whom reluctantly I resigned the miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron safe;
we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not locked, but it
resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the chinks the edge of a chisel.
When we had thus drawn it forth, we found a very singular apparatus in the
nicest order. Upon a small, thin book, or rather tablet, was placed a saucer
of crystal; this saucer was filled with a clear liquid,----on that liquid
floated a kind of compass, with a needle shifting rapidly round; but instead
of the usual points of a compass were seven strange characters, not very
unlike those used by astrologers to denote the planets. A peculiar but not
strong nor displeasing odor came from this drawer, which was lined with a
wood that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this
odor, it produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt it, even the
two workmen who were in the room,----a creeping, tingling sensation from the
tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the
tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went
round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran
through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The
liquid was spilled; the saucer was broken; the compass rolled to the end of
the room, and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant had
swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which we
had descended from the trapdoor; but seeing that nothing more happened, they
were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather, with a
silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on that sheet
were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which
are literally to be translated thus: "On all that it can reach within these
walls, sentient or inanimate, living or dead, as moves the needle, so works
my will! Accursed be the house, and restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr. J-------- burned the tablet and its anathema. He razed
to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room with
the chamber over it. He had then the courage to inhabit the house himself
for a month, and a quieter, better- conditioned house could not be found in
all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no
complaints.
A drowning man clutching at a straw----such is Dr. Fenwick, hero of
Bulwer-Lytton's "Strange Story" when he determines to lend himself to
alleged "magic" in the hope of saving his suffering wife from the physical
dangers which have succeeded her mental disease. The proposition has been
made to him by Margrave, a wanderer in many countries, who has followed the
Fenwicks from England to Australia. Margrave declares that he needs an
accomplice to secure an "elixir of life" which his own failing strength
demands. His mysterious mesmeric or hypnotic influence over Mrs. Fenwick had
in former days been marked; and on the basis of this undeniable fact, he has
endeavored to show that his own welfare and Mrs. Fenwick's are, in some
occult fashion, knit together, and that only by aiding him in some
extraordinary experiment can the physician snatch his beloved Lilian from
her impending doom.
As the first chapter opens, Fenwick is learning his wife's condition from
his friend, Dr. Faber.
Bulwer-Lytton
The Incantation
I
"I believe that for at least twelve hours there will be no change in her
state. I believe also that if she recover from it, calm and refreshed, as
from a sleep, the danger of death will have passed away."
"And for twelve hours my presence would be hurtful?"
"Rather say fatal, if my diagnosis be right."
I wrung my friend's hand, and we parted.
Oh, to lose her now; now that her love and her reason had both returned,
each more vivid than before! Futile, indeed, might be Margrave's boasted
secret; but at least in that secret was hope. In recognized science I saw
only despair.
And at that thought all dread of this mysterious visitor vanished---- all
anxiety to question more of his attributes or his history. His life itself
became to me dear and precious. What if it should fail me in the steps of
the process, whatever that was, by which the life of my Lilian might be
saved!
The shades of evening were now closing in. I remembered that I had left
Margrave without even food for many hours. I stole round to the back of the
house, filled a basket with elements more generous than those of the former
day; extracted fresh drugs from my stores, and, thus laden, hurried back to
the hut. I found Margrave in the room below, seated on his mysterious
coffer, leaning his face on his hand. When I entered, he looked up, and
said:
"You have neglected me. My strength is waning. Give me more of the cordial,
for we have work before us tonight, and I need support."
He took for granted my assent to his wild experiment; and he was right.
I administered the cordial. I placed food before him, and this time he did
not eat with repugnance. I poured out wine, and he drank it sparingly, but
with ready compliance, saying, "In perfect health, I looked upon wine as
poison; now it is like a foretaste of the glorious elixir."
After he had thus recruited himself, he seemed to acquire an energy that
startlingly contrasted with his languor the day before; the effort of
breathing was scarcely perceptible; the color came back to his cheeks; his
bended frame rose elastic and erect.
"If I understood you rightly," said I, "the experiment you ask me to aid can
be accomplished in a single night?"
"In a single night----this night."
"Command me. Why not begin at once? What apparatus or chemical agencies do
you need?"
"Ah!" said Margrave. "Formerly, how I was misled! Formerly, how my
conjectures blundered! I thought, when I asked you to give a month to the
experiment I wish to make, that I should need the subtlest skill of the
chemist. I then believed, with Van Helmont, that the principle of life is a
gas, and that the secret was but in the mode by which the gas might be
rightly administered. But now, all that I need is contained in this coffer,
save one very simple material----fuel sufficient for a steady fire for six
hours. I see even that is at hand, piled up in your outhouse. And now for
the substance itself----to that you must guide me."
"Explain."
"Near this very spot is there not gold----in mines yet undiscovered---- and
gold of the purest metal?"
"There is. What then? Do you, with the alchemists, blend in one discovery,
gold and life?"
"No. But it is only where the chemistry of earth or of man produces gold,
that the substance from which the great pabulum of life is extracted by
ferment can be found. Possibly, in the attempts at that transmutation of
metals, which I think your own great chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, allowed
might be possible, but held not to be worth the cost of the
process----possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this substance
were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with grains of the metal as
niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature's stupendous laboratory; and
from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps, have been drawn
forth, to add a few years of existence to some feeble graybeard----granting,
what rests on no proofs, that some of the alchemists reached an age rarely
given to man. But it is not in the miserly crucible, it is in the matrix of
Nature herself, that we must seek in prolific abundance Nature's grand
principle----life. As the loadstone is rife with the magnetic virtue, as
amber contains the electric, so in this substance, to which we yet want a
name, is found the bright life-giving fluid. In the old gold mines of Asia
and Europe the substance exists, but can rarely be met with. The soil for
its nutriment may there be well nigh exhausted. It is here, where Nature
herself is all vital with youth, that the nutriment of youth must be sought.
Near this spot is gold; guide me to it."
"You cannot come with me. The place which I know as auriferous is some miles
distant, the way rugged. You cannot walk to it. It is true I have horses,
but----"
"Do you think I have come this distance and not foreseen and forestalled all
that I want for my object? Trouble yourself not with conjectures how I can
arrive at the place. I have provided the means to arrive at and leave it. My
litter and its bearers are in reach of my call. Give me your arm to the
rising ground, fifty yards from your door."
I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had made my resolve, and
admitted no thought that could shake it.
When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, which sloped from the road
that led to the seaport, Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted
up his voice, in a key, not loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half
cry and half chant, like the nighthawk's. Through the air----so limpid and
still, bringing near far objects, far sounds----the voice pierced its way,
artfully pausing, till wave after wave of the atmosphere bore and
transmitted it on.
In a few minutes the call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so cheerily, that
for the moment I thought that the note was the mimicry of the shy mocking
lyre bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in its coverts, from
the whir of the locust to the howl of the wild dog.
"What king," said the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he carelessly rested
his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled to feel that this dread son of
Nature, Godless and soulless, who had been----and, my heart whispered, who
still could be----my bane and mind darkener, leaned upon me for support, as
the spoiled younger-born on his brother----"what king," said this cynical
mocker, with his beautiful boyish face----"what king in your civilized
Europe has the sway of a chief of the East? What link is so strong between
mortal and mortal as that between lord and slave? I transport you poor fools
from the land of their birth; they preserve here their old
habits----obedience and awe. They would wait till they starved in the
solitude----wait to hearken and answer my call. And I, who thus rule them,
or charm them----I use and despise them. They know that, and yet serve me!
Between you and me, my philosopher, there is but one thing worth living
for----life for oneself."
Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my solemn
completeness of man? Perhaps, in great capitals, young men of pleasure will
answer, "It is youth; and we think what he says!" Young friends, I do not
believe you.
II
Along the grass track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a strange
procession----never seen before in Australian pastures. It moved on,
noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on the way; a
sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments; two other
servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and silver-hilted pistols in
their belts, preceded this somber equipage. Perhaps Margrave divined the
disdainful thought that passed through my mind, vaguely and
half-unconsciously; for he said with a hollow, bitter laugh that had
replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth:
"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too, will have
the tastes of a pasha."
I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter. To me
his whole being was resolved into one problem: had he a secret by which
death could be turned from Lilian?
But now, as the litter halted, from the long, dark shadow which it cast upon
the turf, the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us. The outlines of
her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle, and the features
of her face were hidden by a black veil, except only the dark-bright, solemn
eyes. Her stature was lofty, her bearing majestic, whether in movement or
repose.
Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me. She replied in what
seemed to me the same tongue. The tones of her voice were sweet, but
inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered appeared intended to
warn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they called to Margrave's brow a
lowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst of unmistakable anger. The
woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of voice. And Margrave then,
leaning his arm upon her shoulder, as he had leaned it on mine, drew her
away from the group into a neighboring copse of the flowering
eucalypti----mystic trees, never changing the hues of their pale-green
leaves, ever shifting the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark. For some
moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the glinting moonlight
through the gaps in the foliage. Then turning away my eyes, I saw, standing
close at my side, a man whom I had not noticed before. His footstep, as it
stole to me, had fallen on the sward without sound. His dress, though
Oriental, differed from that of his companions, both in shape and color----fitting
close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to the elbow, and of a uniform
ghastly white, as are the cerements of the grave. His visage was even darker
than those of the Syrians or Arabs behind him, and his features were those
of a bird of prey: the beak of the eagle, but the eye of the vulture. His
cheeks were hollow; the arms, crossed on his breast, were long and
fleshless. Yet in that skeleton form there was a something which conveyed
the idea of a serpent's suppleness and strength; and as the hungry, watchful
eyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively with that inward
warning of danger which is conveyed to man, as to inferior animals, in the
very aspect of the creatures that sting or devour. At my movement the man
inclined his head in the submissive Eastern salutation, and spoke in his
foreign tongue, softly, humbly, fawningly, to judge by his tone and his
gesture.
I moved yet farther away from him with loathing, and now the human thought
flashed upon me: was I, in truth, exposed to no danger in trusting myself to
the mercy of the weird and remorseless master of those hirelings from the
East----seven men in number, two at least of them formidably armed, and
docile as bloodhounds to the hunter, who has only to show them their prey?
But fear of man like myself is not my weakness; where fear found its way to
my heart, it was through the doubts or the fancies in which man like myself
disappeared in the attributes, dark and unknown, which we give to a fiend or
a specter. And, perhaps, if I could have paused to analyze my own
sensations, the very presence of this escort---- creatures of flesh and
blood----lessened the dread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a
hundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves----I, haughty son
of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds----than
have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless shadow!
Besides: Lilian----Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild
and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the
march of an army.
Thus reassured and thus resolved, I advanced, with a smile of disdain, to
meet Margrave and his veiled companion, as they now came from the moonlit
copse.
"Well," I said to him, with an irony that unconsciously mimicked his own,
"have you taken advice with your nurse? I assume that the dark form by your
side is that of Ayesha!"
* * Margrave's former nurse and attendant.
The woman looked at me from her sable veil, with her steadfast, solemn eyes,
and said, in English, though with a foreign accent: "The nurse born in Asia
is but wise through her love; the pale son of Europe is wise through his
art. The nurse says, 'Forbear!' Do you say, 'Adventure'?"
"Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the ground. "I take no
counsel from either; it is for me to resolve, for you to obey, and for him
to aid. Night is come, and we waste it; move on."
The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my arm and walked back to the
hut. The barbaric escort followed. When we reached the door of the building,
Margrave said a few words to the woman and to the litter bearers. They
entered the hut with us. Margrave pointed out to the woman his coffer, to
the men the fuel stowed in the outhouse. Both were borne away and placed
within the litter. Meanwhile I took from the table, on which it was
carelessly thrown, the light hatchet that I habitually carried with me in my
rambles.
"Do you think that you need that idle weapon?" said Margrave. "Do you fear
the good faith of my swarthy attendants?"
"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold from the
quartz in which we may find it imbedded, or to clear, as this shovel, which
will also be needed, from the slight soil above it, the ore that the mine in
the mountain flings forth, as the sea casts its waifs on the sands."
"Give me your hand, fellow laborer!" said Margrave, joyfully. "Ah, there is
no faltering terror in this pulse! I was not mistaken in the man. What
rests, but the place and the hour?----I shall live, I shall live!"
III
Margrave now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman drew the black
curtains round him. I walked on, as the guide, some yards in advance. The
air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of the Australasian
sirocco.
We passed through the meadow lands, studded with slumbering flocks; we
followed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source in the
mountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom of stunted,
misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which makes one of the signs
of the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in all her pomp
of light, mid-heaven among her subject stars, gleamed through the fissures
of the cave, on whose floor lay the relics of antediluvian races, and rested
in one flood of silvery splendor upon the hollows of the extinct volcano,
with tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler sward, covering the
gold below----gold, the dumb symbol of organized Matter's great mystery,
storing in itself, according as Mind, the informer of Matter, can
distinguish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing.
Hitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the rear, with the white- robed,
skeletonlike image that had crept to my side unawares with its noiseless
step. Thus, in each winding turn of the difficult path at which the convoy
following behind me came into sight, I had seen, first, the two gayly
dressed, armed men, next the black, bierlike litter, and last the
Black-veiled Woman and the White- robed Skeleton.
But now, as I halted on the tableland, backed by the mountain and fronting
the valley, the woman left her companion, passed by the litter and the armed
men, and paused by my side, at the mouth of the moonlit cavern.
There for a moment she stood, silent, the procession below mounting upward
laboriously and slow; then she turned to me, and her veil was withdrawn.
The face on which I gazed was wondrously beautiful, and severely awful.
There was neither youth nor age, but beauty, mature and majestic as that of
a marble Demeter.
"Do you believe in that which you seek?" she asked in her foreign,
melodious, melancholy accents.
"I have no belief," was my answer. "True science has none. True science
questions all things, takes nothing upon credit. It knows but three states
of the mind----denial, conviction, and that vast interval between the two
which is not belief but suspense of judgment."
The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a crag
above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first
discovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had
given the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in the drought and
the hush of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones.
The litter now ascended the height: its bearers halted; a lean hand tore the
curtains aside, and Margrave descended leaning, this time, not on the
Black-veiled Woman, but on the White-robed Skeleton.
There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form; on his face,
resolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed outlines and sicklied
hues. He raised his head, spoke in the language unknown to me, and the armed
men and the litter bearers grouped round him, bending low, their eyes fixed
on the ground. The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came to his side, motioning
away, with a mute sign, the ghastly form on which he leaned, and passing
round him silently, instead, her own sustaining arm. Margrave spoke again a
few sentences, of which I could not even guess the meaning. When he had
concluded, the armed men and the litter bearers came nearer to his feet,
knelt down, and kissed his hand. They then rose, and took from the bierlike
vehicle the coffer and the fuel. This done, they lifted again the litter,
and again, preceded by the armed men, the procession descended down the
sloping hillside, down into the valley below.
Margrave now whispered, for some moments, into the ear of the hideous
creature who had made way for the Veiled Woman. The grim skeleton bowed his
head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through the long
grasses----the slender stems, trampled under his stealthy feet, relifting
themselves as after a passing wind. And thus he, too, sank out of sight down
into the valley below. On the tableland of the hill remained only we
three----Margrave, myself, and the Veiled Woman.
She had reseated herself apart, on the gray crag above the dried torrent. He
stood at the entrance of the cavern, round the sides of which clustered
parasital plants, with flowers of all colors, some among them opening their
petals and exhaling their fragrance only in the hours of night; so that, as
his form filled up the jaws of the dull arch, obscuring the moonbeam that
strove to pierce the shadows that slept within, it stood now----wan and
blighted----as I had seen it first, radiant and joyous, literally "framed in
blooms."
IV
"So," said Margrave, turning to me, "under the soil that spreads around us
lies the gold which to you and to me is at this moment of no value, except
as a guide to its twin-born----the regenerator of life!"
"You have not yet described to me the nature of the substance which we are
to explore, nor the process by which the virtues you impute to it are to be
extracted."
"Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing the life- amber, so
let me call it, I will point it out to your own eyes. As to the process,
your share in it is so simple that you will ask me why I seek aid from a
chemist. The life-amber, when found, has but to be subjected to heat and
fermentation for six hours; it will be placed in a small caldron which that
coffer contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed. To give effect to
the process, certain alkalies and other ingredients are required; but these
are prepared, and mine is the task to commingle them. From your science as
chemist I need and ask naught. In you I have sought only the aid of a man."
"If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all? Why not confide in those
swarthy attendants, who doubtless are slaves to your orders?"
"Confide in slaves, when the first task enjoined to them would be to
discover, and refrain from purloining gold! Seven such unscrupulous knaves,
or even one such, and I, thus defenseless and feeble! Such is not the work
that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the
reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice of assistant on
you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger which the Dervish declared
no bribe I could offer could tempt him a second time to brave?"
"I remember now; those words had passed away from my mind."
"And because they had passed away from your mind, I chose you for my
comrade. I need a man by whom danger is scorned."
"But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible danger unless the
ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes."
"It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons."
"What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves? But, if so,
why lead them to these solitudes; and, if so, why not bid me be armed?"
"The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my summons, where
their eyes cannot see what we do. The danger is of a kind in which the
boldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps, that the daintiest
Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a panther and laugh at a ghost. In
the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that realm of Nature
which is closed to philosophy and open to magic, there are races in the
magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the world of a drop. For the
tribes of the drop science has its microscope. Of the host of yon azure
Infinite magic gains sight, and through them gains command over fluid
conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these races, some are
wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and some deadly hostile. In
all the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal being, this magic realm
seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers
beyond the rude functions by which man plies the clockwork that measures his
hours, and stops when its chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to pass
over those boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends'----then, he
is like all other travelers in regions unknown; he must propitiate or brave
the tribes that are hostile----must depend for his life on the tribes that
are friendly. Though your science discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your
learning informs you that all alchemists were not ignorant impostors; yet
those whose discoveries prove them to have been the nearest allies to your
practical knowledge, ever hint in their mystical works at the reality of
that realm which is open to magic----ever hint that some means less familiar
than furnace and bellows are essential to him who explores the elixir of
life. He who once quaffs that elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright
fluid by which he transmits the force of his will to agencies dormant in
Nature, to giants unseen in the space. And here, as he passes the boundary
which divides his allotted and normal mortality from the regions and races
that magic alone can explore, so, here, he breaks down the safeguard between
himself and the tribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and
man? Let a race the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a
river or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it
pass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. But if
ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, with design to
subdue and enslave the population they boldly invade, then all the invaded
arise in wrath and defiance----the neighbors are changed into foes. And
therefore this process----by which a simple though rare material of Nature
is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life which brings, with its
glorious resistance to Time, desires and faculties to subject to its service
beings that dwell in the earth and the air and the deep----has ever been one
of the same peril which an invader must brave when he crosses the bounds of
his nation. By this key alone you unlock all the cells of the alchemist's
lore; by this alone understand how a labor, which a chemist's crudest
apprentice could perform, has baffled the giant fathers of all your dwarfed
children of science. Nature, that stores this priceless boon, seems to
shrink from conceding it to man----the invisible tribes that abhor him
oppose themselves to the gain that might give them a master. The duller of
those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance,
trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of
fruition; some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the
sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a
pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace.
The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they
can frustrate the bungler as they mock at his toils from their ambush. But
the mightier adventurers, equally foiled in despite of their patience and
skill, would have said, 'Not with us rests the fault; we neglected no
caution, we failed from no oversight. But out from the caldron dread faces
arose, and the specters or demons dismayed and baffled us.' Such, then, is
the danger which seems so appalling to a son of the East, as it seemed to a
seer in the dark age of Europe. But we can deride all its threats, you and
I. For myself, I own frankly I take all the safety that the charms and
resources of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have the cultured and
disciplined reason which reduces all fantasies to nervous impressions; and I
rely on the courage of one who has questioned, unquailing, the Luminous
Shadow, and wrested from the hand of the magician himself the wand which
concentered the wonders of will!"
To this strange and long discourse I listened without interruption, and now
quietly answered:
"I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on my guard
against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapor can scarcely
bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain land. I believe in no
races like those which you tell me lie viewless in space, as do gases. I
believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For
the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage----the courage that comes
from despair. I submit to your guidance, whatever it be, as a sufferer whom
colleges doom to the grave submits to the quack who says, 'Take my specific
and live!' My life is naught in itself; my life lives in another. You and I
are both brave from despair; you would turn death from yourself----I would
turn death from one I love more than myself. Both know how little aid we can
win from the colleges, and both, therefore, turn to the promises most
audaciously cheering. Dervish or magician, alchemist or phantom, what care
you and I? And if they fail us, what then? They cannot fail us more than the
colleges do!"
V
The gold has been gained with an easy labor. I knew where to seek for it,
whether under the turf or in the bed of the creek. But Margrave's eyes,
hungrily gazing round every spot from which the ore was disburied, could not
detect the substance of which he alone knew the outward appearance. I had
begun to believe that, even in the description given to him of this
material, he had been credulously duped, and that no such material existed,
when, coming back from the bed of the watercourse, I saw a faint, yellow
gleam amidst the roots of a giant parasite plant, the leaves and blossoms of
which climbed up the sides of the cave with its antediluvian relics. The
gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removing the loose earth round the roots
of the plant, we came on---- No, I will not, I dare not, describe it. The
gold digger would cast it aside; the naturalist would pause not to heed it;
and did I describe it, and chemistry deign to subject it to analysis, could
chemistry alone detach or discover its boasted virtues?
Its particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming readily to crystallize
with each other; each in itself of uniform shape and size, spherical as the
egg which contains the germ of life, and small as the egg from which the
life of an insect may quicken.
But Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms upcast by the light of the
moon. He exclaimed to me, "Found! I shall live!" And then, as he gathered up
the grains with tremulous hands, he called out to the Veiled Woman, hitherto
still seated motionless on the crag. At his word she rose and went to the
place hard by, where the fuel was piled, busying herself there. I had no
leisure to heed her. I continued my search in the soft and yielding soil
that time and the decay of vegetable life had accumulated over the pre-Adamite
strata on which the arch of the cave rested its mighty keystone.
When we had collected of these particles about thrice as much as a man might
hold in his hand, we seemed to have exhausted their bed. We continued still
to find gold, but no more of the delicate substance to which, in our sight,
gold was as dross.
"Enough," then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting. "What we have gained
already will suffice for a life thrice as long as legend attributes to
Haroun. I shall live----I shall live through the centuries."
"Forget not that I claim my share."
"Your share----yours! True----your half of my life! It is true." He paused
with a low, ironical, malignant laugh, and then added, as he rose and turned
away, "But the work is yet to be done."
VI
While we had thus labored and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel where the
moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the tableland----a part of it already
piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at hand; and by
the pile she had placed the coffer. And, there she stood, her arms folded
under her mantle, her dark image seeming darker still as the moonlight
whitened all the ground from which the image rose motionless. Margrave
opened his coffer, the Veiled Woman did not aid him, and I watched in
silence, while he as silently made his weird and wizard-like preparations.
VII
On the ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently
with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a
pale, lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it,
burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring,
like that which, in our lovely native fable talk, we call the "Fairy's
ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. On the
ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the
same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was
more vivid and brilliant than that which circled round the ring.
Within the circumference, and immediately round the woodpile, Margrave
traced certain geometrical figures, in which----not without a shudder, that
I overcame at once by a strong effort of will in murmuring to myself the
name of "Lilian"----I recognized the interlaced triangles which my own hand,
in the spell enforced on a sleepwalker, had described on the floor of the
wizard's pavilion. The figures were traced like the circle, in flame, and at
the point of each triangle (four in number) was placed a lamp, brilliant as
those on the ring. This task performed, the caldron, based on an iron
tripod, was placed on the woodpile. And then the woman, before inactive and
unheeding, slowly advanced, knelt by the pile and lighted it. The dry wood
crackled and the flame burst forth, licking the rims of the caldron with
tongues of fire.
Margrave flung into the caldron the particles we had collected, poured over
them first a liquid, colorless as water, from the largest of the vessels
drawn from his coffer, and then, more sparingly, drops from small crystal
phials, like the phials I had seen in the hand of Philip Derval.
Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these proceedings,
curious yet disdainful, as one who watches the mummeries of an enchanter on
the stage.
"If," thought I, "these are but artful devices to inebriate and fool my own
imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not, this
time, sleep at her post!"
"And now," said Margrave, "I consign to you the easy task by which you are
to merit your share of the elixir. It is my task to feed and replenish the
caldron; it is Ayesha's to feed the fire, which must not for a moment relax
in its measured and steady heat. Your task is the lightest of all: it is but
to renew from this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and on the
ring. Observe, the contents of the vessel must be thriftily husbanded; there
is enough, but not more than enough, to sustain the light in the lamps, on
the lines traced round the caldron, and on the farther ring, for six hours.
The compounds dissolved in this fluid are scarce----only obtainable in the
East, and even in the East months might have passed before I could have
increased my supply. I had no months to waste. Replenish, then, the light
only when it begins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part
of the outer ring----no, not an inch----and no lamp of the twelve, that are
to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment in darkness."
I took the crystal vessel from his hand.
"The vessel is small," said I, "and what is yet left of its contents is but
scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish the lights I cannot
guess----I can but obey your instructions. But, more important by far than
the light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or Africa might scare
away the wild beasts unknown to this land----more important than light to a
lamp is the strength to your frame, weak magician! What will support you
through six weary hours of night watch?"
"Hope," answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style. "Hope! I
shall live----I shall live through the centuries!"
VIII
One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in the
sullen, sultry air. The materials within began to seethe, and their color,
at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; from time to time
the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had done so reseating
herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees, and her face
hid under her veil.
The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now began to
pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel. As yet nothing
strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the circle----nothing
audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-like click of the locusts,
and, farther still, in the forest, the howl of the wild dogs that never
bark; nothing visible, but the trees and the mountain range girding the
plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of the cavern, the flush of wild
blooms on its sides, and the gleam of dry bones on its floor, where the
moonlight shot into the gloom.
The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the side of
Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the caldron, when I felt
the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and looking up, it seemed as if
all the plains beyond the circle were heaving like the swell of the sea, and
as if in the air itself there was a perceptible tremor.
I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered, "To me earth and air
seem to vibrate. Do they seem to vibrate to you?"
"I know not, I care not," he answered impetuously. "The essence is bursting
the shell that confined it. Here are my air and my earth! Trouble me not.
Look to the circle----feed the lamps if they fail!"
I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked toward a place in the ring in which
the flame was waning dim; and I whispered to her the same question which I
had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly around and answered, "So is it
before the Invisible make themselves visible! Did I not bid him forbear?"
Her head again drooped on her breast, and her watch was again fixed on the
fire.
I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light where it waned.
As I did so, on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond the line of the
ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity. The arm fell to my side
numbed and nerveless, and from my hand dropped, but within the ring, the
vessel that contained the fluid. Recovering my surprise or my stun, hastily
with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some of the scanty liquid
was already spilled on the sward; and I saw with a thrill of dismay, that
contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference with which I had first
undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now left.
I went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of its consequence
in the waste of the liquid.
"Beware," said he, that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the foot,
pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted,
reserve all that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer
lamps! See how the Grand Work advances, how the hues in the caldron are
glowing blood-red through the film on the surface!
And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had gradually recovered its
strength. Neither the ring nor the lamps had again required replenishing;
perhaps their light was exhausted less quickly, as it was no longer to be
exposed to the rays of the intense Australian moon. Clouds had gathered over
the sky, and though the moon gleamed at times in the gaps that they left in
blue air, her beam was more hazy and dulled. The locusts no longer were
heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in the forest. Out of the
circle, the stillness was profound.
And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast Eye. It drew
nearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the height of some
lofty giant. Its gaze riveted mine; my blood curdled in the blaze from its
angry ball; and now as it advanced larger and larger, other Eyes, as if of
giants in its train, grew out from the space in its rear----numbers on
numbers, like the spearheads of some Eastern army, seen afar by pale warders
of battlements doomed to the dust. My voice long refused an utterance to my
awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud:
"Look, look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions. And hark! that tramp
of numberless feet; THEY are not seen, but the hollows of earth echo the
sound of their march!"
Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in which, from time to time,
he kept dropping powders or essences drawn forth from his coffer, looked up,
defyingly, fiercely:
"Ye come," he said in a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding hollow
and laboring, but fearless and firm----"ye come----not to conquer, vain
rebels!----ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb where my
spell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, the Chaldee! Earth
and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still I remember the war
song that summons them up to confront you! Ayesha, Ayesha! recall the wild
troth that we pledged among the roses; recall the dread bond by which we
united our sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though my scepter is
broken, my diadem reft from my brows!"
The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her veil now was withdrawn, and
the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself flushed, as with the rosy
bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her softened face. It was seen,
detached, as it were, from her dark- mantled form; seen through the mist of
the vapors which rose from the caldron, framing it round like the clouds
that are yieldingly pierced by the light of the evening star.
Through the haze of the vapor came her voice, more musical, more plaintive
than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender: still in her
foreign tongue; the words unknown to me, and yet their sense, perhaps, made
intelligible by the love, which has one common language and one common look
to all who have loved----the love unmistakably heard in the loving tone,
unmistakably seen in the loving face.
A moment or so more and she had come round from the opposite side of the
fire pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed it quietly,
solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her crest rose erect: it was
the lioness protecting her young. She stretched forth her arm from the black
mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent over the
caldron----stretched it toward the haunted and hollow-sounding space beyond,
in the gesture of one whose right hand has the sway of the scepter. And then
her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant, not loud yet far-
reaching; so thrilling, so sweet and yet so solemn that I could at once
comprehend how legend united of old the spell of enchantment with the power
of song. All that I recalled of the effects which, in the former time,
Margrave's strange chants had produced on the ear that they ravished and the
thoughts they confused, was but as the wild bird's imitative carol, compared
to the depth and the art and the soul of the singer, whose voice seemed
endowed with a charm to inthrall all the tribes of creation, though the
language it used for that charm might to them, as to me, be unknown. As the
song ceased, I heard from behind sounds like those I had heard in the spaces
before me----the tramp of invisible feet, the whir of invisible wings, as if
armies were marching to aid against armies in march to destroy.
"Look not in front nor around," said Ayesha. "Look, like him, on the caldron
below. The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will tell you when the
light again fails."
I dropped my eyes on the caldron.
"See," whispered Margrave, "the sparkles at last begin to arise, and the
rose hues to deepen----signs that we near the last process."
IX
The fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me, "Lo! the circle is
fading; the lamps grow dim. Look now without fear on the space beyond; the
eyes that appalled thee are again lost in air, as lightnings that fleet back
into cloud."
I looked up, and the specters had vanished. The sky was tinged with
sulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed. I replenished the lamps
and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully; but when I came to the sixth
lamp, not a drop in the vessel that fed them was left. In a vague dismay, I
now looked round the half of the wide circle in rear of the two bended
figures intent on the caldron. All along that disk the light was already
broken, here and there flickering up, here and there dying down; the six
lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, as stars
shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading shine in that
half of the magical ring which daunted my eye and quickened with terror the
pulse of my heart; the Bush-land beyond was on fire. From the background of
the forest rose the flame and the smoke----the smoke, there, still half
smothering the flame. But along the width of the grasses and herbage,
between the verge of the forest and the bed of the water creek just below
the raised platform from which I beheld the dread conflagration, the fire
was advancing----wave upon wave, clear and red against the columns of rock
behind; as the rush of a flood through the mists of some Alp crowned with
lightnings.
Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by the mind
I had steeled against far rarer portents of N |
