|
CHAPTER 31
It is the night of
the mayor's ball! The guests are assembling fast; county families twelve
miles round have been invited, as well as the principal families of the
town. All, before proceeding to the room set apart for the dance, moved
in procession through the museum,—homage to science before pleasure!
The building was
brilliantly lighted, and the effect was striking, perhaps because
singular and grotesque. There, amidst stands of flowers and evergreens,
lit up with coloured lamps, were grouped the dead representatives of
races all inferior—some deadly—to man. The fancy of the ladies had been
permitted to decorate and arrange these types of the animal world. The
tiger glared with glass eyes from amidst artificial reeds and herbage,
as from his native jungle; the grisly white bear peered from a mimic
iceberg. There, in front, stood the sage elephant, facing a hideous
hippopotamus; whilst an anaconda twined its long spire round the stem of
some tropical tree in zinc. In glass cases, brought into full light by
festooned lamps, were dread specimens of the reptile race,—scorpion and
vampire, and cobra capella, with insects of gorgeous hues, not a few of
them with venomed stings.
But the chief
boast of the collection was in the varieties of the Genus Simia,—baboons
and apes, chimpanzees, with their human visage, mockeries of man, from
the dwarf monkeys perched on boughs lopped from the mayor's shrubberies,
to the formidable ourangoutang, leaning on his huge club.
Every one
expressed to the mayor admiration, to each other antipathy, for this
unwonted and somewhat ghastly, though instructive, addition to the
revels of a ballroom.
Margrave, of
course, was there, and seemingly quite at home, gliding from group to
group of gayly-dressed ladies, and brilliant with a childish eagerness
to play off the showman. Many of these grim fellow-creatures he declared
he had seen, played, or fought with. He had something true or false to
say about each. In his high spirits he contrived to make the tiger move,
and imitated the hiss of the terribly anaconda. All that he did had its
grace, its charm; and the buzz of admiration and the flattering glances
of ladies' eyes followed him wherever he moved.
However, there was
a general feeling of relief when the mayor led the way from the museum
into the ballroom. In provincial parties guests arrive pretty much
within the same hour, and so few who had once paid their respects to the
apes and serpents, the hippopotamus and the tiger, were disposed to
repeat the visit, that long before eleven o'clock the museum was as free
from the intrusion of human life as the wilderness in which its dead
occupants had been born.
I had gone my
round through the rooms, and, little disposed to be social, had crept
into the retreat of a window-niche, pleased to think myself screened by
its draperies,—not that I was melancholy, far from it; for the letter I
had received that morning from Lilian had raised my whole being into a
sovereignty of happiness high beyond the reach of the young
pleasure-hunters, whose voices and laughter blended with that vulgar
music.
To read her letter
again I had stolen to my nook, and now, sure that none saw me kiss it, I
replaced it in my bosom. I looked through the parted curtain; the room
was comparatively empty; but there, through the open folding-doors, I
saw the gay crowd gathered round the dancers, and there again, at right
angles, a vista along the corridor afforded a glimpse of the great
elephant in the deserted museum.
Presently I heard,
close beside me, my host's voice.
"Here's a cool
corner, a pleasant sofa, you can have it all to yourself. What an honour
to receive you under my roof, and on this interesting occasion! Yes, as
you say, there are great changes in L—— since you left us. Society has
much improved. I must look about and find some persons to introduce to
you. Clever! oh, I know your tastes. We have a wonderful man,—a new
doctor. Carries all before him; very high character, too; good old
family, greatly looked up to, even apart from his profession. Dogmatic a
little,—a Sir Oracle,—'Lets no dog bark;' you remember the quotation,—Shakspeare.
Where on earth is he? My dear Sir Philip, I am sure you would enjoy his
conversation."
Sir Philip! Could
it be Sir Philip Derval to whom the mayor was giving a flattering yet
scarcely propitiatory description of myself? Curiosity combined with a
sense of propriety in not keeping myself an unsuspected listener; I
emerged from the curtain, but silently, and reached the centre of the
room before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to me eagerly,
linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman seated on a sofa,
close by the window I had quitted, said,—
"Doctor, I must
present you to Sir Philip Derval, just returned to England, and not six
hours in L——. If you would like to see the museum again, Sir Philip, the
doctor, I am sure, will accompany you."
"No, I thank you;
it is painful to me at present to see, even under your roof, the
collection which my poor dear friend, Dr. Lloyd, was so proudly
beginning to form when I left these parts."
"Ay, Sir Philip,
Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way, but sadly duped in his latter
years; took to mesmerism, only think! But our young doctor here showed
him up, I can tell you."
Sir Philip, who
had acknowledged my first introduction to his acquaintance by the quiet
courtesy with which a well-bred man goes through a ceremony that custom
enables him to endure with equal ease and indifference, now evinced by a
slight change of manner how little the mayor's reference to my dispute
with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his good opinion. He turned away with a
bow more formal than his first one, and said calmly,
"I regret to hear
that a man so simple-minded and so sensitive as Dr. Lloyd should have
provoked an encounter in which I can well conceive him to have been
worsted. With your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into your ballroom. I
may perhaps find there some old acquaintances."
He walked towards
the dancers, and the mayor, linking his arm in mine, followed close
behind, saying in his loud hearty tones,—
"Come along, you
too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there; you have not spoken to them yet."
Sir Philip, who
was then half way across the room, turned round abruptly, and, looking
me full in the face, said,—
"Fenwick, is your
name Fenwick,—Allen Fenwick?"
"That is my name,
Sir Philip."
"Then permit me to
shake you by the hand; you are no stranger, and no mere acquaintance to
me. Mr. Mayor, we will look into your ballroom later; do not let us keep
you now from your other guests."
The mayor, not in
the least offended by being thus summarily dismissed, smiled, walked on,
and was soon lost amongst the crowd.
Sir Philip, still
retaining my hand, reseated himself on the sofa, and I took my place by
his side. The room was still deserted; now and then a straggler from the
ballroom looked in for a moment, and then sauntered back to the central
place of attraction.
"I ain trying to
guess," said I, "how my name should be known to you. Possibly you may,
in some visit to the Lakes, have known my father?"
"No; I know none
of your name but yourself,—if, indeed, as I doubt not, you are the Allen
Fenwick to whom I owe no small obligation. You were a medical student at
Edinburgh in the year ——?"
"Yes."
"So! At that time
there was also at Edinburgh a young man, named Richard Strahan. He
lodged in a fourth flat in the Old Town."
"I remember him
very well."
"And you remember,
also, that a fire broke out at night in the house in which he lodged;
that when it was discovered there seemed no hope of saving him. The
flames wrapped the lower part of the house; the staircase had given way.
A boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the only human being in the crowd
who dared to scale the ladder that even then scarcely reached the
windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes; that boy penetrated into
the room, found the inmate almost insensible, rallied, supported,
dragged him to the window, got him on the ladder,—saved his life then:
and his life later, by nursing with a woman's tenderness, through the
fever caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-creature he had
rescued by a man's daring. The name of that gallant student was Allen
Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearest living relation. Are we
friends now?"
I answered
confusedly. I had almost forgotten the circumstances referred to.
Richard Strahan had not been one of my more intimate companions, and I
bad never seen nor heard of him since leaving college. I inquired what
had become of him.
"He is at the
Scotch Bar," said Sir Philip, "and of course without practice. I
understand that he has fair average abilities, but no application. If I
am rightly informed, he is, however, a thoroughly honourable, upright
man, and of an affectionate and grateful disposition."
"I can answer for
all you have said in his praise. He had the qualities you name too
deeply rooted in youth to have lost them now."
Sir Philip
remained for some moments in a musing silence; and I took advantage of
that silence to examine him with more minute attention than I had done
before, much as the first sight of him had struck me.
He was somewhat
below the common height,—so delicately formed that one might call him
rather fragile than slight. But in his carriage and air there was
remarkable dignity. His countenance was at direct variance with his
figure; for as delicacy was the attribute of the last, so power was
unmistakably the characteristic of the first. He looked fully the age
his steward had ascribed to him,—about forty-eight; at a superficial
glance, more, for his hair was prematurely white,—not gray, but white as
snow. But his eyebrows were still jet black, and his eyes, equally dark,
were serenely bright. His forehead was magnificent,—lofty and spacious,
and with only one slight wrinkle between the brows. His complexion was
sunburnt, showing no sign of weak health. The outline of his lips was
that which I have often remarked in men accustomed to great dangers, and
contracting in such dangers the habit of self-reliance,—firm and quiet,
compressed without an effort. And the power of this very noble
countenance was not intimidating, not aggressive; it was mild, it was
benignant. A man oppressed by some formidable tyranny, and despairing to
find a protector, would, on seeing that face, have said, "Here is one
who can protect me, and who will!"
Sir Philip was the
first to break the silence.
"I have so many
relations scattered over England, that fortunately not one of them can
venture to calculate on my property if I die childless, and therefore
not one of them can feel himself injured when, a few weeks hence, he
shall read in the newspapers that Philip Derval is married. But for
Richard Strahan at least, though I never saw him, I must do something
before the newspapers make that announcement. His sister was very dear
to me."
"Your neighbours,
Sir Philip, will rejoice at your marriage, since, I presume, it may
induce you to settle amongst them at Derval Court."
"At Derval Court!
No! I shall not settle there." Again he paused a moment or so, and then
went on: "I have long lived a wandering life, and in it learned much
that the wisdom of cities cannot teach. I return to my native land with
a profound conviction that the happiest life is the life most in common
with all. I have gone out of my way to do what I deemed good, and to
avert or mitigate what appeared to me evil. I pause now and ask myself,
whether the most virtuous existence be not that in which virtue flows
spontaneously from the springs of quiet everyday action; when a man does
good without restlessly seeking it, does good unconsciously, simply
because he is good and he lives. Better, perhaps, for me, if I had
thought so long ago! And now I come back to England with the intention
of marrying, late in life though it be, and with such hopes of happiness
as any matter-of-fact man may form. But my hope will not be at Derval
Court. I shall reside either in London or its immediate neighbourhood,
and seek to gather round me minds by which I can correct, if I cannot
confide to them, the knowledge I myself have acquired."
"Nay, if, as I
have accidentally heard, you are fond of scientific pursuits, I cannot
wonder, that after so long an absence from England, you should feel
interest in learning what new discoveries have been made, what new ideas
are unfolding the germs of discoveries yet to be. But, pardon me, if in
answer to your concluding remark, I venture to say that no man can hope
to correct any error in his own knowledge, unless he has the courage to
confide the error to those who can correct. La Place has said, 'Tout se
tient dans le chaine immense des verites;' and the mistake we make in
some science we have specially cultivated is often only to be seen by
the light of a separate science as specially cultivated by another.
Thus, in the investigation of truth, frank exposition to congenial minds
is essential to the earnest seeker."
"I am pleased with
what you say," said Sir Philip, "and I shall be still more pleased to
find in you the very confidant I require. But what was your controversy
with my old friend, Dr. Lloyd? Do I understand our host rightly, that it
related to what in Europe has of late days obtained the name of
mesmerism?"
I had conceived a
strong desire to conciliate the good opinion of a man who had treated me
with so singular and so familiar a kindness, and it was sincerely that I
expressed my regret at the acerbity with which I had assailed Dr. Lloyd;
but of his theories and pretensions I could not disguise my contempt. I
enlarged on the extravagant fallacies involved in a fabulous
"clairvoyance," which always failed when put to plain test by
sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the effects of imagination on
certain nervous constitutions. "Mesmerism could cure nobody; credulity
could cure many. There was the well-known story of the old woman tried
as a witch; she cured agues by a charm. She owned the impeachment, and
was ready to endure gibbet or stake for the truth of her talisman,—more
than a mesmerist would for the truth of his passes! And the charm was a
scroll of gibberish sewn in an old bag and given to the woman in a freak
by the judge himself when a young scamp on the circuit. But the charm
cured? Certainly; just as mesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith,
that moves mountains, may well cure agues."
Thus I ran on,
supporting my views with anecdote and facts, to which Sir Philip
listened with placid gravity.
When I had come to
an end he said: "Of mesmerism, as practised in Europe, I know nothing
except by report. I can well understand that medical men may hesitate to
admit it amongst the legitimate resources of orthodox pathology;
because, as I gather from what you and others say of its practice, it
must, at the best, be far too uncertain in its application to satisfy
the requirements of science. Yet an examination of its pretensions may
enable you to perceive the truth that lies hid in the powers ascribed to
witchcraft; benevolence is but a weak agency compared to malignity;
magnetism perverted to evil may solve half the riddles of sorcery. On
this, however, I say no more at present. But as to that which you appear
to reject as the most preposterous and incredible pretension of the
mesmerists, and which you designate by the word 'clairvoyance,' it is
clear to me that you have never yourself witnessed even those very
imperfect exhibitions which you decide at once to be imposture. I say
imperfect, because it is only a limited number of persons whom the eye
or the passes of the mesmerist can effect; and by such means, unaided by
other means, it is rarely indeed that the magnetic sleep advances beyond
the first vague shadowy twilight-dawn of that condition to which only in
its fuller developments I would apply the name of 'trance.' But still
trance is as essential a condition of being as sleep or as waking,
having privileges peculiar to itself. By means within the range of the
science that explores its nature and its laws, trance, unlike the
clairvoyance you describe, is producible in every human being, however
unimpressible to mere mesmerism."
"Producible in
every human being! Pardon me if I say that I will give any enchanter his
own terms who will produce that effect upon me."
"Will you? You
consent to have the experiment tried on yourself?"
"Consent most
readily."
"I will remember
that promise. But to return to the subject. By the word 'trance' I do
not mean exclusively the spiritual trance of the Alexandrian Platonists.
There is one kind of trance,—that to which all human beings are
susceptible,—in which the soul has no share: for of this kind of trance,
and it was of this I spoke, some of the inferior animals are
susceptible; and, therefore, trance is no more a proof of soul than is
the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of our ordinary sleep,
which last has been called a proof of soul, though any man who has kept
a dog must have observed that dogs dream as vividly as we do. But in
this trance there is an extraordinary cerebral activity, a projectile
force given to the mind, distinct from the soul, by which it sends forth
its own emanations to a distance in spite of material obstacles, just as
a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere, sends forth the
particles of its aroma. This should not surprise you. Your thought
travels over land and sea in your waking state; thought, too, can travel
in trance, and in trance may acquire an intensified force. There is,
however, another kind of trance which is truly called spiritual, a
trance much more rare, and in which the soul entirely supersedes the
mere action of the mind."
"Stay!" said I;
"you speak of the soul as something distinct from the mind. What the
soul may be, I cannot pretend to conjecture; but I cannot separate it
from the intelligence!"
"Can you not? A
blow on the brain can destroy the intelligence! Do you think it can
destroy the soul?
'From Marlbro's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driveller and a show.'
"Towards the close
of his life even Kant's giant intellect left him. Do you suppose that in
these various archetypes of intellectual man the soul was worn out by
the years that loosened the strings, or made tuneless the keys, of the
perishing instrument on which the mind must rely for all notes of its
music? If you cannot distinguish the operations of the mind from the
essence of the soul, I know not by what rational inductions you arrive
at the conclusion that the soul is imperishable."
I remained silent.
Sir Philip fixed on me his dark eyes quietly and searchingly, and, after
a short pause, said,—
"Almost every
known body in nature is susceptible of three several states of
existence,—the solid, the liquid, the aeriform. These conditions depend
on the quantity of heat they contain. The same object at one moment may
be liquid; at the next moment solid; at the next aeriform. The water
that flows before your gaze may stop consolidated into ice, or ascend
into air as a vapour. Thus is man susceptible of three states of
existence,—the animal, the mental, the spiritual; and according as he is
brought into relation or affinity with that occult agency of the whole
natural world, which we familiarly call heat, and which no science has
yet explained, which no scale can weigh, and no eye discern, one or the
other of these three states of being prevails, or is subjected."
I still continued
silent, for I was unwilling discourteously to say to a stranger so much
older than myself, that he seemed to me to reverse all the maxims of the
philosophy to which he made pretence, in founding speculations audacious
and abstruse upon unanalogous comparisons that would have been fantastic
even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after another pause, resumed with a half
smile,—
"After what I have
said, it will perhaps not very much surprise you when I add that but for
my belief in the powers I ascribe to trance, we should not be known to
each other at this moment."
"How? Pray
explain!"
"Certain
circumstances, which I trust to relate to you in detail hereafter, have
imposed on me the duty to discover, and to bring human laws to bear
upon, a creature armed with terrible powers of evil. This monster, for
without metaphor, monster it is, not man like ourselves, has, by arts
superior to those of ordinary fugitives, however dexterous in
concealment, hitherto for years eluded my research. Through the trance
of an Arab child, who, in her waking state, never heard of his
existence, I have learned that this being is in England, is in L——. I am
here to encounter him. I expect to do so this very night, and under this
very roof."
"Sir Philip!"
"And if you
wonder, as you well may, why I have been talking to you with this
startling unreserve, know that the same Arab child, on whom I thus
implicitly rely, informs me that your life is mixed up with that of the
being I seek to unmask and disarm,—to be destroyed by his arts or his
agents, or to combine in the causes by which the destroyer himself shall
be brought to destruction."
"My life!—your
Arab child named me, Allen Fenwick?"
"My Arab child
told me that the person in whom I should thus naturally seek an ally was
he who had saved the life of the man whom I then meant for my heir, if I
died unmarried and childless. She told me that I should not be many
hours in this town, which she described minutely, before you would be
made known to me. She described this house, with yonder lights, and yon
dancers. In her trance she saw us sitting together, as we now sit. I
accepted the invitation of our host, when he suddenly accosted me on
entering the town, confident that I should meet you here, without even
asking whether a person of your name were a resident in the place; and
now you know why I have so freely unbosomed myself of much that might
well make you, a physician, doubt the soundness of my understanding. The
same infant, whose vision has been realized up to this moment, has
warned me also that I am here at great peril. What that peril may be I
have declined to learn, as I have ever declined to ask from the future
what affects only my own life on this earth. That life I regard with
supreme indifference, conscious that I have only to discharge, while it
lasts, the duties for which it is bestowed on me, to the best of my
imperfect power; and aware that minds the strongest and souls the purest
may fall into the sloth habitual to predestinarians, if they suffer the
action due to the present hour to be awed and paralyzed by some grim
shadow on the future! It is only where, irrespectively of aught that can
menace myself, a light not struck out of my own reason can guide me to
disarm evil or minister to good, that I feel privileged to avail myself
of those mirrors on which things, near and far, reflect themselves calm
and distinct as the banks and the mountain peak are reflected in the
glass of a lake. Here, then, under this roof, and by your side, I shall
behold him who—Lo! the moment has come,—I behold him now!"
As he spoke these
last words, Sir Philip had risen, and, startled by his action and voice,
I involuntarily rose too. Resting one hand on my shoulder, he pointed
with the other towards the threshold of the ballroom. There, the
prominent figure of a gay group—the sole male amidst a fluttering circle
of silks and lawn, of flowery wreaths, of female loveliness and female
frippery—stood the radiant image of Margrave. His eyes were not turned
towards us. He was looking down, and his light laugh came soft, yet
ringing, through the general murmur.
I turned my
astonished gaze back to Sir Philip; yes, unmistakably it was on Margrave
that his look was fixed. Impossible to associate crime with the image of
that fair youth! Eccentric notions, fantastic speculations, vivacious
egotism, defective benevolence,—yes. But crime! No! impossible!
"Impossible," I
said aloud. As I spoke, the group had moved on. Margrave was no longer
in sight. At the same moment some other guests came from the ballroom,
and seated themselves near us.
Sir Philip looked
round, and, observing the deserted museum at the end of the corridor,
drew me into it.
When we were
alone, he said in a voice quick and low, but decided,—
"It is of
importance that I should convince you at once of the nature of that
prodigy which is more hostile to mankind than the wolf is to the
sheepfold. No words of mine could at present suffice to clear your sight
from the deception which cheats it. I must enable you to judge for
yourself. It must be now and here. He will learn this night, if he has
not learned already, that I am in the town. Dim and confused though his
memories of myself may be, they are memories still; and he well knows
what cause he has to dread me. I must put another in possession of his
secret. Another, and at once! For all his arts will be brought to bear
against me, and I cannot foretell their issue. Go, then; enter that
giddy crowd, select that seeming young man, bring him hither. Take care
only not to mention my name; and when here, turn the key in the door, so
as to prevent interruption,—five minutes will suffice."
"Am I sure that I
guess whom you mean? The young light-hearted man, known in this place
under the name of Margrave? The young man with the radiant eyes, and the
curls of a Grecian statue?"
"The same; him
whom I pointed out. Quick, bring him hither."
My curiosity was
too much roused to disobey. Had I conceived that Margrave, in the heat
of youth, had committed some offence which placed him in danger of the
law and in the power of Sir Philip Derval, I possessed enough of the old
borderer's black-mail loyalty to have given the man whose hand I had
familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape. But all Sir Philip's
talk had been so out of the reach of common-sense, that I rather
expected to see him confounded by some egregious illusion than Margrave
exposed to any well-grounded accusation. All, then, that I felt as I
walked into the ballroom and approached Margrave was that curiosity
which, I think, any one of my readers will acknowledge that, in my
position, he himself would have felt.
Margrave was
standing near the dancers, not joining them, but talking with a young
couple in the ring. I drew him aside.
"Come with me for
a few minutes into the museum; I wish to talk to you."
"What about,—an
experiment?"
"Yes, an
experiment."
"Then I am at your
service."
In a minute more,
he had followed me into the desolate dead museum. I looked round, but
did not see Sir Philip.
CHAPTER 32
MARGRAVE threw
himself on a seat just under the great anaconda; I closed and locked the
door. When I had done so, my eye fell on the young man's face, and I was
surprised to see that it had lost its colour; that it showed great
anxiety, great distress; that his hands were visibly trembling.
"What is this?" he
said in feeble tones, and raising himself half from his seat as if with
great effort. "Help me up! come away! Something in this room is hostile
to me, hostile, overpowering! What can it be?"
"Truth and my
presence," answered a stern, low voice; and Sir Philip Derval, whose
slight form the huge bulk of the dead elephant had before obscured from
my view, came suddenly out from the shadow into the full rays of the
lamps which lit up, as if for Man's revel, that mocking catacomb for the
playmates of Nature which he enslaves for his service or slays for his
sport. As Sir Philip spoke and advanced, Margrave sank back into his
seat, shrinking, collapsing, nerveless; terror the most abject expressed
in his staring eyes and parted lips. On the other hand, the simple
dignity of Sir Philip Derval's bearing, and the mild power of his
countenance, were alike inconceivably heightened. A change had come over
the whole man, the more impressive because wholly undefinable.
Halting opposite
Margrave he uttered some words in a language unknown to me, and
stretched one hand over the young man's head. Margrave at once became
stiff and rigid, as if turned to stone. Sir Philip said to me,—
"Place one of
those lamps on the floor,—there, by his feet."
I took down one of
the coloured lamps from the mimic tree round which the huge anaconda
coiled its spires, and placed it as I was told.
"Take the seat
opposite to him, and watch."
I obeyed.
Meanwhile, Sir
Philip had drawn from his breast-pocket a small steel casket, and I
observed, as he opened it, that the interior was subdivided into several
compartments, each with its separate lid; from one of these he took and
sprinkled over the flame of the lamp a few grains of a powder,
colourless and sparkling as diamond dust. In a second or so, a delicate
perfume, wholly unfamiliar to my sense, rose from the lamp.
"You would test
the condition of trance; test it, and in the spirit."
And, as he spoke,
his hand rested lightly on my head. Hitherto, amidst a surprise not
unmixed with awe, I had preserved a certain defiance, a certain
distrust. I had been, as it were, on my guard.
But as those words
were spoken, as that hand rested on my head, as that perfume arose from
the lamp, all power of will deserted me. My first sensation was that of
passive subjugation; but soon I was aware of a strange intoxicating
effect from the odour of the lamp, round which there now played a
dazzling vapour. The room swam before me. Like a man oppressed by a
nightmare, I tried to move, to cry out, feeling that to do so would
suffice to burst the thrall that bound me: in vain.
A time that seemed
to me inexorably long, but which, as I found afterwards, could only have
occupied a few seconds, elapsed in this preliminary state, which,
however powerless, was not without a vague luxurious sense of delight.
And then suddenly came pain,—pain, that in rapid gradations passed into
a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the body, seemed as
if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto unconjectured Presence in the
vital organization were forcing itself to light with all the pangs of
travail. The veins seemed swollen to bursting, the heart labouring to
maintain its action by fierce spasms. I feel in this description how
language fails me. Enough that the anguish I then endured surpassed all
that I have ever experienced of physical pain. This dreadful interval
subsided as suddenly as it had commenced. I felt as if a something
undefinable by any name had rushed from me, and in that rush that a
struggle was over. I was sensible of the passive bliss which attends the
release from torture, and then there grew on me a wonderful calm, and,
in that calm, a consciousness of some lofty intelligence immeasurably
beyond that which human memory gathers from earthly knowledge. I saw
before me the still rigid form of Margrave, and my sight seemed, with
ease, to penetrate through its covering of flesh, and to survey the
mechanism of the whole interior being.
"View that
tenement of clay which now seems so fair, as it was when I last beheld
it, three years ago, in the house of Haroun of Aleppo!"
I looked, and
gradually, and as shade after shade falls on the mountain side, while
the clouds gather, and the sun vanishes at last, so the form and face on
which I looked changed from exuberant youth into infirm old age,—the
discoloured wrinkled skin, the bleared dim eye, the flaccid muscles, the
brittle sapless bones. Nor was the change that of age alone; the
expression of the countenance had passed into gloomy discontent, and in
every furrow a passion or a vice had sown the seeds of grief.
And the brain now
opened on my sight, with all its labyrinth of cells. I seemed to have
the clew to every winding in the maze.
I saw therein a
moral world, charred and ruined, as, in some fable I have read, the
world of the moon is described to be; yet withal it was a brain of
magnificent formation. The powers abused to evil had been originally of
rare order,—imagination, and scope, the energies that dare, the
faculties that discover. But the moral part of the brain had failed to
dominate the mental,—defective veneration of what is good or great;
cynical disdain of what is right and just; in fine, a great intellect
first misguided, then perverted, and now falling with the decay of the
body into ghastly but imposing ruins,—such was the world of that brain
as it had been three years ago. And still continuing to gaze thereon, I
observed three separate emanations of light,—the one of a pale red hue,
the second of a pale azure, the third a silvery spark.
The red light,
which grew paler and paler as I looked, undulated from the brain along
the arteries, the veins, the nerves. And I murmured to myself, "Is this
the principle of animal life?"
The azure light
equally permeated the frame, crossing and uniting with the red, but in a
separate and distinct ray, exactly as, in the outer world, a ray of
light crosses or unites with a ray of heat, though in itself a separate
individual agency. And again I murmured to myself, "Is this the
principle of intellectual being, directing or influencing that of animal
life; with it, yet not of it?"
But the silvery
spark! What was that? Its centre seemed the brain; but I could fix it to
no single organ. Nay, wherever I looked through the system, it reflected
itself as a star reflects itself upon water. And I observed that while
the red light was growing feebler and feebler, and the azure light was
confused, irregular,—now obstructed, now hurrying, now almost lost,—the
silvery spark was unaltered, un disturbed. So independent was it of all
which agitated and vexed the frame, that I became strangely aware that
if the heart stopped in its action, and the red light died out; if the
brain were paralyzed, that energetic mind smitten into idiotcy, and the
azure light wandering objectless as a meteor wanders over the
morass,—still that silver spark would shine the same, indestructible by
aught that shattered its tabernacle. And I murmured to myself, "Can that
starry spark speak the presence of the soul? Does the silver light shine
within creatures to which no life immortal has been promised by Divine
Revelation?"
Involuntarily I
turned my sight towards the dead forms in the motley collection, and lo,
in my trance or my vision, life returned to them all!—to the elephant
and the serpent; to the tiger, the vulture, the beetle, the moth; to the
fish and the polypus, and to yon mockery of man in the giant ape.
I seemed to see
each as it lived in its native realm of earth, or of air, or of water;
and the red light played more or less warm through the structure of
each, and the azure light, though duller of hue, seemed to shoot through
the red, and communicate to the creatures an intelligence far inferior
indeed to that of man, but sufficing to conduct the current of their
will, and influence the cunning of their instincts. But in none, from
the elephant to the moth, from the bird in which brain was the largest
to the hybrid in which life seemed to live as in plants,—in none was
visible the starry silver spark. I turned my eyes from the creatures
around, back again to the form cowering under the huge anaconda, and in
terror at the animation which the carcasses took in the awful illusions
of that marvellous trance; for the tiger moved as if scenting blood, and
to the eyes of the serpent the dread fascination seemed slowly
returning.
Again I gazed on
the starry spark in the form of the man. And I murmured to myself, "But
if this be the soul, why is it so undisturbed and undarkened by the sins
which have left such trace and such ravage in the world of the brain?"
And gazing yet more intently on the spark, I became vaguely aware that
it was not the soul, but the halo around the soul, as the star we see in
heaven is not the star itself, but its circle of rays; and if the light
itself was undisturbed and undarkened, it was because no sins done in
the body could annihilate its essence, nor affect the eternity of its
duration. The light was clear within the ruins of its lodgment, because
it might pass away, but could not be extinguished.
But the soul
itself in the heart of the light reflected back on my own soul within me
its ineffable trouble, humiliation, and sorrow; for those ghastly wrecks
of power placed at its sovereign command it was responsible, and,
appalled by its own sublime fate of duration, was about to carry into
eternity the account of its mission in time. Yet it seemed that while
the soul was still there, though so forlorn and so guilty, even the
wrecks around it were majestic. And the soul, whatever sentence it might
merit, was not among the hopelessly lost; for in its remorse and its
shame, it might still have retained what could serve for redemption. And
I saw that the mind was storming the soul, in some terrible rebellious
war,—all of thought, of passion, of desire, through which the azure
light poured its restless flow, were surging up round the starry spark,
as in siege. And I could not comprehend the war, nor guess what it was
that the mind demanded the soul to yield. Only the distinction between
the two was made intelligible by their antagonism. And I saw that the
soul, sorely tempted, looked afar for escape from the subjects it had
ever so ill controlled, and who sought to reduce to their vassal the
power which had lost authority as their king. I could feel its terror in
the sympathy of my own terror, the keenness of my own supplicating pity.
I knew that it was imploring release from the perils it confessed its
want of strength to encounter. And suddenly the starry spark rose from
the ruins and the tumult around it,—rose into space and vanished; and
where my soul had recognized the presence of soul, there was a void. But
the red light burned still, becoming more and more vivid; and as it thus
repaired and recruited its lustre, the whole animal form, which had been
so decrepit, grew restored from decay, grew into vigour and youth: and I
saw Alargrave as I had seen him in the waking world, the radiant image
of animal life in the beauty of its fairest bloom.
And over this rich
vitality and this symmetric mechanism now reigned only, with the animal
life, the mind. The starry light fled and the soul vanished, still was
left visible the mind,—mind, by which sensations convey and cumulate
ideas, and muscles obey volition; mind, as in those animals that have
more than the elementary, instincts; mind, as it might be in men, were
men not immortal. As my eyes, in the Vision, followed the azure light,
undulating as before, through the cells of the brain, and crossing the
red amidst the labyrinth of the nerves, I perceived that the essence of
that azure light had undergone a change: it had lost that faculty of
continuous and concentred power by which man improves on the works of
the past, and weaves schemes to be developed in the future of remote
generations; it had lost all sympathy in the past, because it had lost
all conception of a future beyond the grave; it had lost conscience, it
had lost remorse; the being it informed was no longer accountable
through eternity for the employment of time. The azure light was even
more vivid in certain organs useful to the conservation of existence, as
in those organs I had observed it more vivid among some of the inferior
animals than it is in man,—secretiveness, destructiveness, and the ready
perception of things immediate to the wants of the day; and the azure
light was brilliant in cerebral cells, where before it had been dark,
such as those which harbour mirthfulness and hope, for there the light
was recruited by the exuberant health of the joyous animal-being. But it
was lead-like, or dim, in the great social organs, through which man
subordinates his own interest to that of his species, and utterly lost
in those through which man is reminded of his duties to the throne of
his Maker.
In that marvellous
penetration with which the Vision endowed me, I perceived that in this
mind, though in energy far superior to many; though retaining, from
memories of the former existence, the relics of a culture wide and in
some things profound; though sharpened and quickened into formidable, if
desultory, force whenever it schemed or aimed at the animal
self-conservation which now made its master—impulse or instinct; and
though among the reminiscences of its state before its change were arts
which I could not comprehend, but which I felt were dark and terrible,
lending to a will never checked by remorse arms that no healthful
philosophy has placed in the arsenal of disciplined genius; though the
mind in itself had an ally in a body as perfect in strength and
elasticity as man can take from the favour of nature,—still, I say, I
felt that the mind wanted the something without which men never could
found cities, frame laws, bind together, beautify, exalt the elements of
this world, by creeds that habitually subject them to a reference to
another. The ant and the bee and the beaver congregate and construct;
but they do not improve. Man improves because the future impels onward
that which is not found in the ant, the bee, and the beaver,—that which
was gone from the being before me.
I shrank appalled
into myself, covered my face with my hands, and groaned aloud: "Have I
ever then doubted that soul is distinct from mind?"
A hand here again
touched my forehead, the light in the lamp was extinguished, I became
insensible; and when I recovered I found myself back in the room in
which I had first conversed with Sir Philip Derval, and seated, as
before, on the sofa, by his side.
CHAPTER 33
My recollections
of all which I have just attempted to describe were distinct and vivid;
except with respect to time, it seemed to me as if many hours must have
elapsed since I had entered the museum with Margrave; but the clock on
the mantelpiece met my eyes as I turned them wistfully round the room;
and I was indeed amazed to perceive that five minutes had sufficed for
all which it has taken me so long to narrate, and which in their transit
had hurried me through ideas and emotions so remote from anterior
experience.
To my astonishment
now succeeded shame and indignation,—shame that I, who had scoffed at
the possibility of the comparatively credible influences of mesmeric
action, should have been so helpless a puppet under the hand of the
slight fellow-man beside me, and so morbidly impressed by
phantasmagorieal illusions; indignation that, by some fumes which had
special potency over the brain, I had thus been, as it were, conjured
out of my senses; and looking full into the calm face at my side, I
said, with a smile to which I sought to convey disdain,—
"I congratulate
you, Sir Philip Derval, on having learned in your travels in the East so
expert a familiarity with the tricks of its jugglers."
"The East has a
proverb," answered Sir Philip, quietly, "that the juggler may learn much
from the dervish, but the dervish can learn nothing from the juggler.
You will pardon me, however, for the effect produced on you for a few
minutes, whatever the cause of it may be, since it may serve to guard
your whole life from calamities, to which it might otherwise have been
exposed. And however you may consider that which you have just
experienced to be a mere optical illusion, or the figment of a brain
super-excited by the fumes of a vapour, look within yourself, and tell
me if you do not feel an inward and unanswerable conviction that there
is more reason to shun and to fear the creature you left asleep under
the dead jaws of the giant serpent, than there would be in the serpent
itself, could hunger again move its coils, and venom again arm its
fangs."
I was silent, for
I could not deny that that conviction had come to me.
"Henceforth, when
you recover from the confusion or anger which now disturbs your
impressions, you will be prepared to listen to my explanations and my
recital in a spirit far different from that with which you would have
received them before you were subjected to the experiment, which, allow
me to remind you, you invited and defied. You will now, I trust, be
fitted to become my confidant and my assistant; you will advise with me
how, for the sake of humanity, we should act together against the
incarnate lie, the anomalous prodigy which glides through the crowd in
the image of joyous beauty. For the present I quit you. I have an
engagement, on worldly affairs, in the town this night. I am staying at
L——, which I shall leave for Derval Court tomorrow evening. Come to me
there the day after to-morrow, at any hour that may suit you the best.
Adieu!"
Here Sir Philip
Derval rose and left the room. I made no effort to detain him. My mind
was too occupied in striving to recompose itself and account for the
phenomena that had scared it, and for the strength of the impressions it
still retained.
I sought to find
natural and accountable causes for effects so abnormal.
Lord Bacon
suggests that the ointments with which witches anointed themselves might
have had the effect of stopping the pores and congesting the rain, and
thus impressing the sleep of the unhappy dupes of their own imagination
with dreams so vivid that, on waking, they were firmly convinced that
they had been borne through the air to the Sabbat.
I remember also
having heard a distinguished French traveller—whose veracity was
unquestionable—say, that he had witnessed extraordinary effects produced
on the sensorium by certain fumigations used by an African pretender to
magic. A person, of however healthy a brain; subjected to the influence
of these fumigations, was induced to believe that he saw the most
frightful apparitions.
However
extraordinary such effects, they were not incredible,—not at variance
with our notions of the known laws of nature. And to the vapour or the
odours which a powder applied to a lamp had called forth, I was,
therefore, prepared to ascribe properties similar to those which Bacon's
conjecture ascribed to the witches' ointment, and the French traveller
to the fumigations of the African conjuror.
But, as I came to
that conclusion, I was seized with an intense curiosity to examine for
myself those chemical agencies with which Sir Philip Derval appeared so
familiar; to test the contents in that mysterious casket of steel. I
also felt a curiosity no less eager, but more, in spite of myself,
intermingled with fear, to learn all that Sir Philip had to communicate
of the past history of Margrave. I could but suppose that the young man
must indeed be a terrible criminal, for a person of years so grave, and
station so high, to intimate accusations so vaguely dark, and to use
means so extraordinary, in order to enlist my imagination rather than my
reason against a youth in whom there appeared none of the signs which
suspicion interprets into guilt.
While thus musing,
I lifted my eyes and saw Margrave himself there at the threshold of the
ballroom,—there, where Sir Philip had first pointed him out as the
criminal he had come to L—— to seek and disarm; and now, as then,
Margrave was the radiant centre of a joyous group. Not the young boy-god
Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian frieze or picture, have
seemed more the type of the sportive, hilarious vitality of sensuous
nature. He must have passed unobserved by me, in my preoccupation of
thought, from the museum and across the room in which I sat; and now
there was as little trace in that animated countenance of the terror it
had exhibited at Sir Philip's approach, as of the change it had
undergone in my trance or my fantasy.
But he caught
sight of me, left his young companions, came gayly to my side.
"Did you not ask
me to go with you into that museum about half an hour ago, or did I
dream that I went with you?"
"Yes; you went
with me into that museum."
"Then pray what
dull theme did you select to set me asleep there?"
I looked hard at
him, and made no reply. Somewhat to my relief, I now heard my host's
voice,—
"Why, Fenwick,
what has become of Sir Philip Derval?"
"He has left; he
had business." And, as I spoke, again I looked hard on Margrave.
His countenance
now showed a change; not surprise, not dismay, but rather a play of the
lip, a flash of the eye, that indicated complacency,—even triumph.
"So! Sir Philip
Derval! He is in L——; he has been here to-night? So! as I expected."
"Did you expect
it?" said our host. "No one else did. Who could have told you?"
"The movements of
men so distinguished need never take us by surprise. I knew he was in
Paris the other day. It is natural eno' that he should come here. I was
prepared for his coming."
Margrave here
turned away towards the window, which he threw open and looked out.
"There is a storm
in the air," said he, as he continued to gaze into the night.
Was it possible
that Margrave was so wholly unconscious of what had passed in the museum
as to include in oblivion even the remembrance of Sir Philip Derval's
presence before he had been rendered insensible, or laid asleep? Was it
now only for the first time that he learned of Sir Philip's arrival in
L——, and visit to that house? Was there any intimation of menace in his
words and his aspect?
I felt that the
trouble of my thoughts communicated itself to my countenance and manner;
and, longing for solitude and fresh air, I quitted the house. When I
found myself in the street I turned round and saw Margrave still
standing at the open window, but he did not appear to notice me; his
eyes seemed fixed abstractedly on space.
CHAPTER 34
I walked on slowly
and with the downcast brow of a man absorbed in meditation. I had gained
the broad place in which the main streets of the town converged, when I
was overtaken by a violent storm of rain. I sought shelter under the
dark archway of that entrance to the district of Abbey Hill which was
still called Monk's Gate. The shadow within the arch was so deep that I
was not aware that I had a companion till I beard my own name, close at
my side. I recognized the voice before I could distinguish the form of
Sir Philip Derval.
"The storm will
soon be over," said he, quietly. "I saw it coming on in time. I fear you
neglected the first warning of those sable clouds, and must be already
drenched."
I made no reply,
but moved involuntarily away towards the mouth of the arch.
"I see that you
cherish a grudge against me!" resumed Sir Philip. "Are you, then, by
nature vindictive?"
Somewhat softened
by the friendly tone of this reproach, I answered, half in jest, half in
earnest,—
"You must own, Sir
Philip, that I have some little reason for the uncharitable anger your
question imputes to me. But I can forgive you, on one condition."
"What is that?"
"The possession
for half an hour of that mysterious steel casket which you carry about
with you, and full permission to analyze and test its contents."
"Your analysis of
the contents," returned Sir Philip, dryly, "would leave you as ignorant
as before of the uses to which they can be applied; but I will own to
you frankly, that it is my intention to select some confidant among men
of science, to whom I may safely communicate the wonderful properties
which certain essences in that casket possess. I invite your
acquaintance, nay, your friendship, in the hope that I may find such a
confidant in you. But the casket contains other combinations, which, if
wasted, could not be resupplied,—at least by any process which the great
Master from whom I received them placed within reach of my knowledge. In
this they resemble the diamond; when the chemist has found that the
diamond affords no other substance by its combustion than pure
carbonic-acid gas, and that the only chemical difference between the
costliest diamond and a lump of pure charcoal is a proportion of
hydrogen less than 1/100000 part of the weight of the substance, can the
chemist make you a diamond?
"These, then, the
more potent, but also the more perilous of the casket's contents, shall
be explored by no science, submitted to no test. They are the keys to
masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, which no mortal can pass through
without rousing dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall. The
powers they confer are secrets locked in my breast, to be lost in my
grave; as the casket which lies on my breast shall not be transferred to
the hands of another, till all the rest of my earthly possessions pass
away with my last breath in life and my first in eternity."
"Sir Philip Derval,"
said I, struggling against the appeals to fancy or to awe, made in words
so strange, uttered in a tone of earnest conviction, and heard amidst
the glare of the lightning, the howl of the winds, and the roll of the
thunder,—"Sir Philip Derval, you accost me in a language which, but for
my experience of the powers at your command, I should hear with the
contempt that is due to the vaunts of a mountebank, or the pity we give
to the morbid beliefs of his dupe. As it is, I decline the confidence
with which you would favour me, subject to the conditions which it seems
you would impose. My profession abandons to quacks all drugs which may
not be analyzed, all secrets which may not be fearlessly told. I cannot
visit you at Derval Court. I cannot trust myself, voluntarily, again in
the power of a man, who has arts of which I may not examine the nature,
by which he can impose on my imagination and steal away my reason."
"Reflect well
before you decide," said Sir Philip, with a solemnity that was stern.
"If you refuse to be warned and to be armed by me, your reason and your
imagination will alike be subjected to influences which I can only
explain by telling you that there is truth in those immemorial legends
which depose to the existence of magic."
"Magic!"
"There is magic of
two kinds,—the dark and evil, appertaining to witchcraft or necromancy;
the pure and beneficent, which is but philosophy, applied to certain
mysteries in Nature remote from the beaten tracks of science, but which
deepened the wisdom of ancient sages, and can yet unriddle the myths of
departed races."
"Sir Philip," I
said, with impatient and angry interruption, "if you think that a jargon
of this kind be worthy a man of your acquirements and station, it is at
least a waste of time to address it to me. I am led to conclude that you
desire to make use of me for some purpose which I have a right to
suppose honest and blameless, because all you know of me is, that I
rendered to your relation services which can not lower my character in
your eyes. If your object be, as you have intimated, to aid you in
exposing and disabling man whose antecedents have been those of guilt,
and who threatens with danger the society which receives him, you must
give me proofs that are not reducible to magic; and you must prepossess
me against the person you accuse, not by powders and fumes that disorder
the brain, but by substantial statements, such as justify one man in
condemning another. And, since you have thought fit to convince me that
there are chemical means at your disposal, by which the imagination can
be so affected as to accept, temporarily, illusions for realities, so I
again demand, and now still more decidedly than before, that while you
address yourself to my reason, whether to explain your object or to
vindicate your charges against a man whom I have admitted to my
acquaintance, you will divest yourself of all means and agencies to warp
my judgment so illicit and fraudulent as those which you own yourself to
possess. Let the casket, with all its contents, be transferred to my
hands, and pledge me your word that, in giving that casket, you reserve
to yourself no other means by which chemistry can be abused to those
influences over physical organization, which ignorance or imposture may
ascribe to—magic."
"I accept no
conditions for my confidence, though I think the better of you for
attempting to make them. If I live, you will seek me yourself, and
implore my aid. Meanwhile, listen to me, and—"
"No; I prefer the
rain and the thunder to the whispers that steal to my ear in the dark
from one of whom I have reason to beware."
So saying, I
stepped forth, and at that moment the lightning flashed through the
arch, and brought into full view the face of the man beside me. Seen by
that glare, it was pale as the face of a corpse, but its expression was
compassionate and serene.
I hesitated, for
the expression of that hueless countenance touched me; it was not the
face which inspires distrust or fear.
"Come," said I,
gently; "grant my demand. The casket—"
"It is no scruple
of distrust that now makes that demand; it is a curiosity which in
itself is a fearful tempter. Did you now possess what at this moment you
desire, how bitterly you would repent!"
"Do you still
refuse my demand?"
"I refuse."
"If then you
really need me, it is you who will repent."
I passed from the
arch into the open space. The rain had passed, the thunder was more
distant. I looked back when I had gained the opposite side of the way,
at the angle of a street which led to my own house. As I did so, again
the skies lightened, but the flash was comparatively slight and
evanescent; it did not penetrate the gloom of the arch; it did not bring
the form of Sir Philip into view; but, just under the base of the outer
buttress to the gateway, I descried the outline of a dark figure,
cowering down, huddled up for shelter, the outline so indistinct, and so
soon lost to sight as the flash faded, that I could not distinguish if
it were man or brute. If it were some chance passer-by, who had sought
refuge from the rain, and overheard any part of our strange talk, "the
listener," thought I with a half-smile, "must have been mightily
perplexed."
CHAPTER 35
On reaching my own
home, I found my servant sitting up for me with the information that my
attendance was immediately required. The little boy whom Margrave's
carelessness had so injured, and for whose injury he had shown so little
feeling, had been weakened by the confinement which the nature of the
injury required, and for the last few days had been generally ailing.
The father had come to my house a few minutes before I reached it, in
great distress of mind, saying that his child had been seized with
fever, and had become delirious. Hearing that I was at the mayor's
house, he had hurried thither in search of me.
I felt as if it
were almost a relief to the troubled and haunting thoughts which
tormented me, to be summoned to the exercise of a familiar knowledge. I
hastened to the bedside of the little sufferer, and soon forgot all else
in the anxious struggle for a human life. The struggle promised to be
successful; the worst symptoms began to yield to remedies prompt and
energetic, if simple. I remained at the house, rather to comfort and
support the parents, than because my continued attendance was absolutely
needed, till the night was well-nigh gone; and all cause of immediate
danger having subsided, I then found myself once more in the streets. An
atmosphere palely clear in the gray of dawn had succeeded to the
thunder-clouds of the stormy night; the streetlamps, here and there,
burned wan and still. I was walking slowly and wearily, so tired out
that I was scarcely conscious of my own thoughts, when, in a narrow
lane, my feet stopped almost mechanically before a human form stretched
at full length in the centre of the road right in my path. The form was
dark in the shadow thrown from the neighbouring houses. "Some poor
drunkard," thought I, and the humanity inseparable from my calling not
allowing me to leave a fellow-creature thus exposed to the risk of being
run over by the first drowsy wagoner who might pass along the
thoroughfare, I stooped to rouse and to lift the form. What was my
horror when my eyes met the rigid stare of a dead man's. I started,
looked again; it was the face of Sir Philip Derval! He was lying on his
back, the countenance upturned, a dark stream oozing from the
breast,—murdered by two ghastly wounds, murdered not long since, the
blood was still warm. Stunned and terror-stricken, I stood bending over
the body. Suddenly I was touched on the shoulder.
"Hollo! what is
this?" said a gruff voice.
"Murder!" I
answered in hollow accents, which sounded strangely to my own ear.
"Murder! so it
seems." And the policeman who had thus accosted me lifted the body.
"A gentleman by
his dress. How did this happen? How did you come here?" and the
policeman glanced suspiciously at me.
At this moment,
however, there came up another policeman, in whom I recognized the young
man whose sister I had attended and cured.
"Dr. Fenwick,"
said the last, lifting his hat respectfully, and at the sound of my name
his fellow-policeman changed his manner and muttered an apology.
I now collected
myself sufficiently to state the name and rank of the murdered man. The
policemen bore the body to their station, to which I accompanied them. I
then returned to my own house, and had scarcely sunk on my bed when
sleep came over me. But what a sleep! Never till then had I known how
awfully distinct dreams can be. The phantasmagoria of the naturalist's
collection revived. Life again awoke in the serpent and the tiger, the
scorpion moved, and the vulture flapped its wings. And there was
Margrave, and there Sir Philip; but their position of power was
reversed, and Margrave's foot was on the breast of the dead man. Still I
slept on till I was roused by the summons to attend on Mr. Vigors, the
magistrate to whom the police had reported the murder.
I dressed hastily
and went forth. As I passed through the street, I found that the dismal
news had already spread. I was accosted on my way to the magistrate by a
hundred eager, tremulous, inquiring tongues.
The scanty
evidence I could impart was soon given.
My introduction to
Sir Philip at the mayor's house, our accidental meeting under the arch,
my discovery of the corpse some hours afterwards on my return from my
patient, my professional belief that the deed must have been done a very
short time, perhaps but a few minutes, before I chanced upon its victim.
But, in that case, how account for the long interval that had elapsed
between the time in which I had left Sir Philip under the arch and the
time in which the murder must have been committed? Sir Philip could not
have been wandering through the streets all those hours. This doubt, how
ever, was easily and speedily cleared up. A Mr. Jeeves, who was one of
the principal solicitors in the town, stated that he had acted as Sir
Philip's legal agent and adviser ever since Sir Philip came of age, and
was charged with the exclusive management of some valuable
house-property which the deceased had possessed in L——; that when Sir
Philip had arrived in the town late in the afternoon of the previous
day, he had sent for Mr. Jeeves; informed him that he, Sir Philip, was
engaged to be married; that he wished to have full and minute
information as to the details of his house property (which had greatly
increased in value since his absence from England), in connection with
the settlements his marriage would render necessary; and that this
information was also required by him in respect to a codicil he desired
to add to his will.
He had,
accordingly, requested Mr. Jeeves to have all the books and statements
concerning the property ready for his inspection that night, when he
would call, after leaving the ball which he had promised the mayor, whom
he had accidentally met on entering the town, to attend. Sir Philip had
also asked Mr. Jeeves to detain one of his clerks in his office, in
order to serve, conjointly with Mr. Jeeves, as a witness to the codicil
he desired to add to his will. Sir Philip had accordingly come to Mr.
Jeeves's house a little before midnight; had gone carefully through all
the statements prepared for him, and had executed the fresh codicil to
his testament, which testament he had in their previous interview given
to Mr. Jeeves's care, sealed up. Mr. Jeeves stated that Sir Philip,
though a man of remarkable talents and great acquirements, was extremely
eccentric, and of a very peremptory temper, and that the importance
attached to a promptitude for which there seemed no pressing occasion
did not surprise him in Sir Philip as it might have done in an ordinary
client. Sir Philip said, indeed, that he should devote the next morning
to the draft for his wedding settlements, according to the information
of his property which he had acquired; and after a visit of very brief
duration to Derval Court, should quit the neighbourhood and return to
Paris, where his intended bride then was, and in which city it had been
settled that the marriage ceremony should take place.
Mr. Jeeves had,
however, observed to him, that if he were so soon to be married, it was
better to postpone any revision of testamentary bequests, since after
marriage he would have to make a new will altogether.
And Sir Philip had
simply answered,—
"Life is
uncertain; who can be sure of the morrow?"
Sir Philip's visit
to Mr. Jeeves's house had lasted some hours, for the conversation
between them had branched off from actual business to various topics.
Mr. Jeeves had not noticed the hour when Sir Philip went; he could only
say that as he attended him to the street-door, he observed, rather to
his own surprise, that it was close upon daybreak.
Sir Philip's body
had been found not many yards distant from the hotel at which he had put
up, and to which, therefore, he was evidently returning when he left Mr.
Jeeves,—an old-fashioned hotel, which had been the principal one at L——
when Sir Philip left England, though now outrivalled by the new and more
central establishment in which Margrave was domiciled.
The primary and
natural supposition was that Sir Philip had been murdered for the sake
of plunder; and this supposition was borne out by the fact to which his
valet deposed, namely,—
That Sir Philip
had about his person, on going to the mayor's house, a purse containing
notes and sovereigns; and this purse was now missing.
The valet, who,
though an Albanian, spoke English fluently, said that the purse had a
gold clasp, on which Sir Philip's crest and initials were engraved. Sir
Philip's watch was, however, not taken.
And now, it was
not without a quick beat of the heart that I heard the valet declare
that a steel casket, to which Sir Philip attached extraordinary value,
and always carried about with him, was also missing.
The Albanian
described this casket as of ancient Byzantine workmanship, opening with
a peculiar spring, only known to Sir Philip, in whose possession it had
been, so far as the servant knew, about three years: when, after a visit
to Aleppo, in which the servant had not accompanied him, he had first
observed it in his master's hands. He was asked if this casket contained
articles to account for the value Sir Philip set on it,—such as jewels,
bank-notes, letters of credit, etc. The man replied that it might
possibly do so; he had never been allowed the opportunity of examining
its contents; but that he was certain the casket held medicines, for he
had seen Sir Philip take from it some small phials, by which he had
performed great cures in the East, and especially during a pestilence
which had visited Damascus, just after Sir Philip had arrived at that
city on quitting Aleppo. Almost every European traveller is supposed to
be a physician; and Sir Philip was a man of great benevolence, and the
servant firmly believed him also to be of great medical skill. After
this statement, it was very naturally and generally conjectured that Sir
Philip was an amateur disciple of homoeopathy, and that the casket
contained the phials or globules in use among homoeopathists.
Whether or not Mr.
Vigors enjoyed a vindictive triumph in making me feel the weight of his
authority, or whether his temper was ruffled in the excitement of so
grave a case, I cannot say, but his manner was stern and his tone
discourteous in the questions which he addressed to me. Nor did the
questions themselves seem very pertinent to the object of investigation.
"Pray, Dr.
Fenwick," said he, knitting his brows, and fixing his eyes on me rudely,
"did Sir Philip Derval in his conversation with you mention the steel
casket which it seems he carried about with him?"
I felt my
countenance change slightly as I answered, "Yes."
"Did he tell you
what it contained?"
"He said it
contained secrets."
"Secrets of what
nature,—medicinal or chemical? Secrets which a physician might be
curious to learn and covetous to possess?"
This question
seemed to me so offensively significant that it roused my indignation,
and I answered haughtily, that "a physician of any degree of merited
reputation did not much believe in, and still less covet, those secrets
in his art which were the boast of quacks and pretenders."
"My question need
not offend you, Dr. Fenwick. I put it in another shape: Did Sir Philip
Derval so boast of the secrets contained in his casket that a quack or
pretender might deem such secrets of use to him?"
"Possibly he
might, if he believed in such a boast."
"Humph!—he might
if he so believed. I have no more questions to put to you at present,
Dr. Fenwick."
Little of any
importance in connection with the deceased or his murder transpired in
the course of that day's examination and inquiries.
The next day, a
gentleman distantly related to the young lady to whom Sir Philip was
engaged, and who had been for some time in correspondence with the
deceased, arrived at L——. He had been sent for at the suggestion of the
Albanian servant, who said that Sir Philip had stayed a day at this
gentleman's house in London, on his way to L——, from Dover.
The new comer,
whose name was Danvers, gave a more touching pathos to the horror which
the murder had excited. It seemed that the motives which had swayed Sir
Philip in the choice of his betrothed were singularly pure and noble.
The young lady's father—an intimate college friend—had been visited by a
sudden reverse of fortune, which had brought on a fever that proved
mortal. He had died some years ago, leaving his only child penniless,
and had bequeathed her to the care and guardianship of Sir Philip.
The orphan
received her education at a convent near Paris; and when Sir Philip, a
few weeks since, arrived in that city from the East, he offered her his
hand and fortune.
"I know," said Mr.
Danvers, "from the conversation I held with him when he came to me in
London, that he was induced to this offer by the conscientious desire to
discharge the trust consigned to him by his old friend. Sir Philip was
still of an age that could not permit him to take under his own roof a
female ward of eighteen, without injury to her good name. He could only
get over that difficulty by making the ward his wife. 'She will be safer
and happier with the man she will love and honour for her father's
sake,' said the chivalrous gentleman, 'than she will be under any other
roof I could find for her.'"
And now there
arrived another stranger to L——, sent for by Mr. Jeeves, the lawyer,—a
stranger to L——, but not to me; my old Edinburgh acquaintance, Richard
Strahan.
The will in Mr.
Jeeves's keeping, with its recent codicil, was opened and read. The will
itself bore date about six years anterior to the testator's tragic
death: it was very short, and, with the exception of a few legacies, of
which the most important was L10,000 to his ward, the whole of his
property was left to Richard Strahan, on the condition that he took the
name and arms of Derval within a year from the date of Sir Philip's
decease. The codicil, added to the will the night before his death,
increased the legacy to the young lady from L10,000 to L30,000, and
bequeathed an annuity of L100 a year to his Albanian servant.
Accompanying the will, and within the same envelope, was a sealed
letter, addressed to Richard Strahan, and dated at Paris two weeks be
fore Sir Philip's decease. Strahan brought that letter to me. It ran
thus:—
"Richard Strahan, I advise you to pull down the house called Derval
Court, and to build another on a better site, the plans of which, to
be modified according to your own taste and requirements, will be
found among my papers. This is a recommendation, not a command. But
I strictly enjoin you entirely to demolish the more ancient part,
which was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy by fire, without
perusal, all the books and manuscripts found in the safes in my study.
I have appointed you my sole executor, as well as my heir, because I
have no personal friends in whom I can confide as I trust I may do in
the man I have never seen, simply because he will bear my name and
represent my lineage. There will be found in my writing-desk, which
always accompanies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a
record of my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery,
in science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will not
be surprised that before selecting you as my heir and executor, from a
crowd of relations not more distant, I should have made inquiries in
order to justify my selection. The result of those inquiries informs
me that you have not yourself the peculiar knowledge nor the habits of
mind that could enable you to judge of matters which demand the
attainments and the practice of science; but that you are of an
honest, affectionate nature, and will regard as sacred the last
injunctions of a benefactor. I enjoin you, then, to submit the
aforesaid manuscript memoir to some man on whose character for
humanity and honour you can place confidential reliance, and who is
accustomed to the study of the positive sciences, more especially
chemistry, in connection with electricity and magnetism. My desire is
that he shall edit and arrange this memoir for publication; and that,
wherever he feels a conscientious doubt whether any discovery, or hint
of discovery, therein contained would not prove more dangerous than
useful to mankind, he shall consult with any other three men of
science whose names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge, and
according to the best of his judgment, after such consultation,
suppress or publish the passage of which he has so doubted. I own the
ambition which first directed me towards studies of a very unusual
character, and which has encouraged me in their pursuit through many
years of voluntary exile, in lands where they could be best
facilitated or aided,—the ambition of leaving behind me the renown of
a bold discoverer in those recesses of nature which philosophy has
hitherto abandoned to superstition. But I feel, at the moment in
which I trace these lines, a fear lest, in the absorbing interest of
researches which tend to increase to a marvellous degree the power of
man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may have blunted my own
moral perceptions; and that there may be much in the knowledge which I
sought and acquired from the pure desire of investigating hidden
truths, that could be more abused to purposes of tremendous evil than
be likely to conduce to benignant good. And of this a mind
disciplined to severe reasoning, and uninfluenced by the enthusiasm
which has probably obscured my own judgment, should be the
unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have coveted and still do covet
that fame which makes the memory of one man the common inheritance of
all, I would infinitely rather that my name should pass away with my
breath, than that I should transmit to my fellowmen any portion of
a knowledge which the good might forbear to exercise and the bad might
unscrupulously pervert. I bear about with me, wherever I wander, a
certain steel casket. I received this casket, with its contents, from
a man whose memory I hold in profound veneration. Should I live to
find a person whom, after minute and intimate trial of his character,
I should deem worthy of such confidence, it is my intention to
communicate to him the secret how to prepare and how to use such of
the powders and essences stored within that casket as I myself have
ventured to employ. Others I have never tested, nor do I know how
they could be resupplied if lost or wasted. But as the contents of
this casket, in the hands of any one not duly instructed as to the
mode of applying them, would either be useless, or conduce, through
inadvertent and ignorant misapplication, to the most dangerous
consequences; so, if I die without having found, and in writing named,
such a confidant as I have described above, I command you immediately
to empty all the powders and essences found therein into any running
stream of water, which will at once harmlessly dissolve them. On
no account must they be cast into fire!
"This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come under your eyes in case
the plans and the hopes which I have formed for my earthly future
should be frustrated by the death on which I do not calculate, but
against the chances of which this will and this letter provide. I am
about to revisit England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be
there subjected to some peril which I refused to have defined, because
I am unwilling that any mean apprehension of personal danger should
enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I
overcome that peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be
remodelled; this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form
ties which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found,
though it is common to all men,—the affections of home, the caresses
of children, among whom I may find one to whom hereafter I may
bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage than my lands. In
that case, however, my first care would be to assure your own
fortunes. And the sum which this codicil assures to my betrothed
would be transferred to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know why,
never having seen you, I thus select you for preference to all my
other kindred; why my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image?
Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years older than yourself—you
were then a child—was the object of my first love. We were to have
been wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she
returned my affection. With a rare and nobler candour, she herself
informed me that her heart was given to another, who possessed not my
worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my claims to her
hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own choice. I
obtained for her husband the living which he held, and I settled on
your sister the dower which, at her death, passed to you as the
brother to whom she had shown a mother's love, and the interest of
which has secured you a modest independence.
"If these lines ever reach you, recognize my title to reverential
obedience to commands which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational;
and repay, as if a debt due froth your own lost sister, the affection
I have borne to you for her sake."
While I read this
long and strange letter, Strahan sat by my side, covering his face with
his hands, and weeping with honest tears for the man whose death had
made him powerful and rich.
"You will
undertake the trust ordained to me in this letter," said he, struggling
to compose himself. "You will read and edit this memoir; you are the
very man he himself would have selected. Of your honour and humanity
there can be no doubt, and you have studied with success the sciences
which he specifies as requisite for the discharge of the task he
commands."
At this request,
though I could not be wholly unprepared for it, my first impulse was
that of a vague terror. It seemed to me as if I were becoming more and
more entangled in a mysterious and fatal web. But this impulse soon
faded in the eager yearnings of an ardent and irresistible curiosity.
I promised to read
the manuscript, and in order that I might fully imbue my mind with the
object and wish of the deceased, I asked leave to make a copy of the
letter I had just read. To this Strahan readily assented, and that copy
I have transcribed in the preceding pages.
I asked Strahan if
he had yet found the manuscript. He said, "No, he had not yet had the
heart to inspect the papers left by the deceased. He would now do so. He
should go in a day or two to Derval Court, and reside there till the
murderer was discovered, as doubtless he soon must be through the
vigilance of the police. Not till that discovery was made should Sir
Philip's remains, though already placed in their coffin, be consigned to
the family vault."
Strahan seemed to
have some superstitious notion that the murderer might be more secure
from justice if his victim were thrust unavenged into the tomb.
CHAPTER 36
The belief
prevalent in the town ascribed the murder of Sir Philip to the violence
of some vulgar robber, probably not an inhabitant of L——. Mr. Vigors did
not favour that belief. He intimated an opinion, which seemed
extravagant and groundless, that Sir Philip had been murdered, for the
sake not of the missing purse, but of the missing casket. It was
currently believed that the solemn magistrate had consulted one of his
pretended clairvoyants, and that this impostor had gulled him with
assurances, to which he attached a credit that perverted into
egregiously absurd directions his characteristic activity and zeal.
Be that as it may,
the coroner's inquest closed without casting any light on so mysterious
a tragedy.
What were my own
conjectures I scarcely dared to admit,—I certainly could not venture to
utter them; but my suspicions centred upon Margrave. That for some
reason or other he had cause to dread Sir Philip's presence in L—— was
clear, even to my reason. And how could my reason reject all the
influences which had been brought to bear on my imagination, whether by
the scene in the museum or my conversation with the deceased? But it was
impossible to act on such suspicions,—impossible even to confide them.
Could I have told to any man the effect produced on me in the museum, he
would have considered me a liar or a madman. And in Sir Philip's
accusations against Margrave, there was nothing tangible,—nothing that
could bear repetition. Those accusations, if analyzed, vanished into
air. What did they imply?—that Margrave was a magician, a monstrous
prodigy, a creature exceptional to the ordinary conditions of humanity.
Would the most reckless of mortals have ventured to bring against the
worst of characters such a charge, on the authority of a deceased
witness, and to found on evidence so fantastic the awful accusation of
murder? But of all men, certainly I—a sober, practical physician—was the
last whom the public could excuse for such incredible implications; and
certainly, of all men, the last against whom any suspicion of heinous
crime would be readily entertained was that joyous youth in whose sunny
aspect life and conscience alike seemed to keep careless holiday. But I
could not overcome, nor did I attempt to reason against, the horror akin
to detestation, that had succeeded to the fascinating attraction by
which Margrave had before conciliated a liking founded rather on
admiration than esteem.
In order to avoid
his visits I kept away from the study in which I had habitually spent my
mornings, and to which he had been accustomed to so ready an access; and
if he called at the front door, I directed my servant to tell him that I
was either from home or engaged. He did attempt for the first few days
to visit me as before, but when my intention to shun him became thus
manifest, desisted naturally enough, as any other man so pointedly
repelled would have done.
I abstained from
all those houses in which I was likely to meet him, and went my
professional round of visits in a close carriage, so that I might not be
accosted by him in his walks.
One morning, a
very few days after Strahan had shown me Sir Philip Derval's letter, I
received a note from my old college acquaintance, stating that he was
going to Derval Court that afternoon; that he should take with him the
memoir which he had found, and begging me to visit him at his new home
the next day, and commence my inspection of the manuscript. I consented
eagerly.
That morning, on
going my round, my carriage passed by another drawn up to the pavement,
and I recognized the figure of Margrave standing beside the vehicle, and
talking to some one seated within it. I looked back, as my own carriage
whirled rapidly by, and saw with uneasiness and alarm that it was
Richard Strahan to whom Margrave was thus familiarly addressing himself.
How had the two made acquaintance?
Was it not an
outrage on Sir Philip Derval's memory, that the heir he had selected
should be thus apparently intimate with the man whom he had so sternly
denounced? I became still more impatient to read the memoir: in all
probability it would give such explanations with respect to Margrave's
antecedents, as, if not sufficing to criminate him of legal offences,
would at least effectually terminate any acquaintance between Sir
Philip's successor and himself.
All my thoughts
were, however, diverted to channels of far deeper interest even than
those in which my mind had of late been so tumultuously whirled along,
when, on returning home, I found a note from Mrs. Ashleigh. She and
Lilian had just come back to L——, sooner than she had led me to
anticipate. Lilian had not seemed quite well the last day or two, and
had been anxious to return.
CHAPTER 37
Let me recall
it—softly,—softly! Let me recall that evening spent with her!—that
evening, the last before darkness rose between us like a solid wall.
It was evening, at
the close of summer. The sun had set, the twilight was lingering still.
We were in the old monastic garden,—garden so quiet, so cool, so
fragrant. She was seated on a bench under the one great cedar-tree that
rose sombre in the midst of the grassy lawn with its little paradise of
flowers. I had thrown myself on the sward at her feet; her hand so
confidingly lay in the clasp of mine. I see her still,—how young, how
fair, how innocent!
Strange, strange!
So inexpressibly English; so thoroughly the creature of our sober,
homely life! The pretty delicate white robe that I touch so timorously,
and the ribbon-knots of blue that so well become the soft colour of the
fair cheek, the wavy silk of the brown hair! She is murmuring low her
answer to my trembling question.
"As well as when
last we parted? Do you love me as well still?"
"There is no
'still' written here," said she, softly pressing her hand to her heart.
"Yesterday is as to-morrow in the Forever."
"Ah, Lilian! if I
could reply to you in words as akin to poetry as your own!"
"Fie! you who
affect not to care for poetry!"
"That was before
you went away; before I missed you from my eyes, from my life; before I
was quite conscious how precious you were to me, more precious than
common words can tell! Yes, there is one period in love when all men are
poets, however the penury of their language may belie the luxuriance of
their fancies. What would become of me if you ceased to love me?"
"Or of me, if you
could cease to love?"
"And somehow it
seems to me this evening as if my heart drew nearer to you,—nearer as if
for shelter."
"It is sympathy,"
said she, with tremulous eagerness,—"that sort of mysterious sympathy
which I have often heard you deny or deride; for I, too, feel drawn
nearer to you, as if there were a storm at hand. I was oppressed by an
indescribable terror in returning home, and the moment I saw you there
came a sense of protection."
Her head sank on
my shoulder: we were silent some moments; then we both rose by the same
involuntary impulse, and round her slight form I twined my strong arm of
man. And now we are winding slow under the lilacs and acacias that belt
the lawn. Lilian has not yet heard of the murder, which forms the one
topic of the town, for all tales of violence and blood affected her as
they affect a fearful child. Mrs. Ashleigh, therefore, had judiciously
concealed from her the letters and the journals by which the dismal news
had been carried to herself. I need scarcely say that the grim subject
was not broached by me. In fact, my own mind escaped from the events
which had of late so perplexed and tormented it; the tranquillity of the
scene, the bliss of Lilian's presence, had begun to chase away even that
melancholy foreboding which had overshadowed me in the first moments of
our reunion. So we came gradually to converse of the future,—of the day,
not far distant, when we two should be as one. We planned our bridal
excursion. We would visit the scenes endeared to her by song, to me by
childhood,—the banks and waves of my native Windermere,—our one brief
holiday before life returned to labour, and hearts now so disquieted by
hope and joy settled down to the calm serenity of home.
As we thus talked,
the moon, nearly rounded to her full, rose amidst skies without a cloud.
We paused to gaze on her solemn haunting beauty, as where are the lovers
who have not paused to gaze? We were then on the terrace walk, which
commanded a view of the town below. Before us was a parapet wall, low on
the garden side, but inaccessible on the outer side, forming part of a
straggling irregular street that made one of the boundaries dividing
Abbey Hill from Low Town. The lamps of the thoroughfares, in many a line
and row beneath us, stretched far away, obscured, here and there, by
intervening roofs and tall church towers. The hum of the city came to
our ears, low and mellowed into a lulling sound. It was not displeasing
to be reminded that there was a world without, as close and closer we
drew each to each,—worlds to one another! Suddenly there carolled forth
the song of a human voice,—a wild, irregular, half-savage melody,
foreign, uncomprehended words,—air and words not new to me. I recognized
the voice and chant of Margrave. I started, and uttered an angry
exclamation.
"Hush!" whispered
Lilian, and I felt her frame shiver within my encircling arm. "Hush!
listen! Yes; I have heard that voice before—last night—"
"Last night! you
were not here; you were more than a hundred miles away."
"I heard it in a
dream! Hush, hush!"
The song rose
louder; impossible to describe its effect, in the midst of the tranquil
night, chiming over the serried rooftops, and under the solitary moon.
It was not like the artful song of man, for it was defective in the
methodical harmony of tune; it was not like the song of the wild-bird,
for it had no monotony in its sweetness: it was wandering and various as
the sounds from an AEolian harp. But it affected the senses to a
powerful degree, as in remote lands and in vast solitudes I have since
found the note of the mocking-bird, suddenly heard, affects the listener
half with delight, half with awe, as if some demon creature of the
desert were mimicking man for its own merriment. The chant now had
changed into an air of defying glee, of menacing exultation; it might
have been the triumphant war-song of some antique barbarian race. The
note was sinister; a shadow passed through me, and Lilian had closed her
eyes, and was sighing heavily; then with a rapid change, sweet as the
coo with which an Arab mother lulls her babe to sleep, the melody died
away. "There, there, look," murmured Lilian, moving from me, "the same I
saw last night in sleep; the same I saw in the space above, on the
evening I first knew you!"
Her eyes were
fixed, her hand raised; my look followed hers, and rested on the face
and form of Margrave. The moon shone full upon him, so full as if
concentrating all its light upon his image. The place on which he stood
(a balcony to the upper story of a house about fifty yards distant) was
considerably above the level of the terrace from which we gazed on him.
His arms were folded on his breast, and he appeared to be looking
straight towards us. Even at that distance, the lustrous youth of his
countenance appeared to me terribly distinct, and the light of his
wondrous eye seemed to rest upon us in one lengthened, steady ray
through the limpid moonshine. Involuntarily I seized Lilian's hand, and
drew her away almost by force, for she was unwilling to move, and as I
led her back, she turned her head to look round; I, too, turned in
jealous rage! I breathed more freely. Margrave had disappeared!
"How came he
there? It is not his hotel. Whose house is it?" I said aloud, though
speaking to myself.
Lilian remained
silent, her eyes fixed upon the ground as if in deep revery. I took her
band; it did not return my pressure. I felt cut to the heart when she
drew coldly from me that hand, till then so frankly cordial. I stopped
short: "Lilian, what is this? you are chilled towards me. Can the mere
sound of that man's voice, the mere glimpse of that man's face, have—" I
paused; I did not dare to complete my question.
Lilian lifted her
eyes to mine, and I saw at once in those eyes a change. Their look was
cold; not haughty, but abstracted. "I do not understand you," she said,
in a weary, listless accent. "It is growing late; I must go in."
So we walked on
moodily, no longer arm in arm, nor hand in hand. Then it occurred to me
that, the next day, Lilian would be in that narrow world of society;
that there she could scarcely fail to hear of Margrave, to meet, to know
him. Jealousy seized me with all its imaginary terrors, and amidst that
jealousy, a nobler, purer apprehension for herself. Had I been Lilian's
brother instead of her betrothed, I should not have trembled less to
foresee the shadow of Margrave's mysterious influence passing over a
mind so predisposed to the charm which Mystery itself has for those
whose thoughts fuse their outlines in fancies, whose world melts away
into Dreamland. Therefore I spoke.
"Lilian, at the
risk of offending you-alas! I have never done so before this night—I
must address to you a prayer which I implore you not to regard as the
dictate of a suspicion unworthy you and myself. The person whom you have
just heard and seen is, at present, much courted in the circles of this
town. I entreat you not to permit any one to introduce him to you. I
entreat you not to know him. I cannot tell you all my reasons for this
petition; enough that I pledge you my honour that those reasons are
grave. Trust, then, in my truth, as I trust in yours. Be assured that I
stretch not the rights which your heart has bestowed upon mine in the
promise I ask, as I shall be freed from all fear by a promise which I
know will be sacred when once it is given."
"What promise?"
asked Lilian, absently, as if she had not heard my words.
"What promise?
Why, to refuse all acquaintance with that man; his name is Margrave.
Promise me, dearest, promise me."
"Why is your voice
so changed?" said Lilian. "Its tone jars on my ear," she added, with a
peevishness so unlike her, that it startled me more than it offended;
and without a word further, she quickened her pace, and entered the
house.
For the rest of
the evening we were both taciturn and distant towards each other. In
vain Mrs. Ashleigh kindly sought to break down our mutual reserve. I
felt that I had the right to be resentful, and I clung to that right the
more because Lilian made no attempt at reconciliation. This, too, was
wholly unlike herself, for her temper was ordinarily sweet,—sweet to the
extreme of meekness; saddened if the slightest misunderstanding between
us had ever vexed me, and yearning to ask forgiveness if a look or a
word had pained me. I was in hopes that, before I went away, peace
between us would be restored. But long ere her usual hour for retiring
to rest, she rose abruptly, and, complaining of fatigue and headache,
wished me "good-night," and avoided the hand I sorrowfully held out to
her as I opened the door.
"You must have
been very unkind to poor Lilian," said Mrs. Ashleigh, between jest and
earnest, "for I never saw her so cross to you before. And the first day
of her return, too!"
"The fault is not
mine," said I, somewhat sullenly; "I did but ask Lilian, and that as a
humble prayer, not to make the acquaintance of a stranger in this town
against whom I have reasons for distrust and aversion. I know not why
that prayer should displease her."
"Nor I. Who is the
stranger?"
"A person who
calls himself Margrave. Let me at least entreat you to avoid him!"
"Oh, I have no
desire to make acquaintance with strangers. But, now Lilian is gone, do
tell me all about this dreadful murder. The servants are full of it, and
I cannot keep it long concealed from Lilian. I was in hopes that you
would have broken it to her."
I rose
impatiently; I could not bear to talk thus of an event the tragedy of
which was associated in my mind with circumstances so mysterious. I
became agitated and even angry when Mrs. Ashleigh persisted in rambling
woman-like inquiries,—"Who was suspected of the deed? Who did I think
had committed it? What sort of a man was Sir Philip? What was that
strange story about a casket?" Breaking from such interrogations, to
which I could give but abrupt and evasive answers, I seized my hat and
took my departure.
CHAPTER 38
Letter from
Allen Fenwick to Lilian Ashleigh.
"I have promised to go to Derval Court to-day, and shall not return
till to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought that so many hours should
pass away with one feeling less kind than usual resting like a cloud
upon you and me. Lilian, if I offended you, forgive me! Send me one
line to say so!—one line which I can place next to my heart and
cover with grateful kisses till we meet again!"
Reply.
"I scarcely know what you mean, nor do I quite understand my own state
of mind at this moment. It cannot be that I love you less—and
yet—but I will not write more now. I feel glad that we shall not
meet for the next day or so, and then I hope to be quite recovered. I
am not well at this moment. Do not ask me to forgive you; but if it
is I who am in fault, forgive me, oh, forgive me, Allen!"
And with this
unsatisfactory note, not worn next to my heart, not covered with kisses,
but thrust crumpled into my desk like a creditor's unwelcome bill, I
flung myself on my horse and rode to Derval Court. I am naturally proud;
my pride came now to my aid. I felt bitterly indignant against Lilian,
so indignant that I resolved on my return to say to her, "If in those
words, 'And yet,' you implied a doubt whether you loved me less, I
cancel your vows, I give you back your freedom." And I could have passed
from her threshold with a firm foot, though with the certainty that I
should never smile again.
Does her note seem
to you who may read these pages to justify such resentment? Perhaps not.
But there is an atmosphere in the letters of the one we love which we
alone—we who love—can feel, and in the atmosphere of that letter I felt
the chill of the coming winter.
I reached the park
lodge of Derval Court late in the day. I had occasion to visit some
patients whose houses lay scattered many miles apart, and for that
reason, as well as from the desire for some quick bodily exercise which
is so natural an effect of irritable perturbation of mind, I had made
the journey on horseback instead of using a carriage that I could not
have got through the lanes and field-paths by which alone the work set
to myself could be accomplished in time.
Just as I entered
the park, an uneasy thought seized hold of me with the strength which is
ascribed to presentiments. I had passed through my study (which has been
so elaborately described) to my stables, as I generally did when I
wanted my saddle-horse, and, in so doing, had doubtless left open the
gate to the iron palisade, and probably the window of the study itself.
I had been in this careless habit for several years, without ever once
having cause for self-reproach. As I before said, there was nothing in
my study to tempt a thief; the study was shut out from the body of the
house, and the servant sure at nightfall both to close the window and
lock the gate; yet now, for the first time, I felt an impulse, urgent,
keen, and disquieting, to ride back to the town, and see those
precautions taken. I could not guess why, but something whispered to me
that my neglect had exposed me to some great danger. I even checked my
horse and looked at my watch; too late!—already just on the stroke of
Strahan's dinner-hour as fixed in his note; my horse, too, was fatigued
and spent: besides, what folly! what bearded man can believe in the
warnings of a "presentiment"? I pushed on, and soon halted before the
old-fashioned flight of stairs that led up to the Hall. Here I was
accosted by the old steward; he had just descended the stairs, and as I
dismounted he thrust his arm into mine unceremoniously, and drew me a
little aside.
"Doctor, I was
right; it was his ghost that I saw by the iron door of the mausoleum. I
saw it again at the same place last night, but I had no fit then.
Justice on his murderer! Blood for blood!"
"Ay!" said I,
sternly; for if I suspected Margrave before, I felt convinced now that
the inexpiable deed was his. Wherefore convinced? Simply because I now
hated him more, and hate is so easily convinced! "Lilian! Lilian!" I
murmured to myself that name; the flame of my hate was fed by my
jealousy. "Ay!" said I, sternly, "murder will out."
"What are the
police about?" said the old man, querulously; "days pass on days, and no
nearer the truth. But what does the new owner care? He has the rents and
acres; what does he care for the dead? I will never serve another
master. I have just told Mr. Strahan so. How do I know whether he did
not do the deed? Who else had an interest in it?"
"Hush, hush!" I
cried; "you do not know how wildly you are talking."
The old man stared
at me, shook his head, released my arm, and strode away.
A labouring man
came out of the garden, and having unbuckled the saddle-bags, which
contained the few things required for so short a visit, I consigned my
horse to his care, and ascended the perron. The old housekeeper met me
in the hall, and conducted me up the great staircase, showed me into a
bedroom prepared for me, and told me that Mr. Strahan was already
waiting dinner for me. I should find him in the study. I hastened to
join him. He began apologizing, very unnecessarily, for the state of his
establishment. He had as yet engaged no new servants. The housekeeper
with the help of a housemaid did all the work.
Richard Strahan at
college had been as little distinguishable from other young men as a
youth neither rich nor poor, neither clever nor stupid, neither handsome
nor ugly, neither audacious sinner nor formal saint, possibly could be.
Yet, to those who
understood him well, he was not without some of those moral qualities by
which a youth of mediocre intellect often matures into a superior man.
He was, as Sir
Philip had been rightly informed, thoroughly honest and upright. But
with a strong sense of duty, there was also a certain latent hardness.
He was not indulgent. He had outward frankness with acquaintances, but
was easily roused to suspicion. He had much of the thriftiness and
self-denial of the North countryman, and I have no doubt that he had
lived with calm content and systematic economy on an income which made
him, as a bachelor, independent of his nominal profession, but would not
have sufficed, in itself, for the fitting maintenance of a wife and
family. He was, therefore, still single.
It seems to me
even during the few minutes in which we conversed before dinner was
announced, that his character showed a new phase with his new fortunes.
He talked in a grandiose style of the duties of station and the woes of
wealth. He seemed to be very much afraid of spending, and still more
appalled at the idea of being cheated. His temper, too, was ruffled; the
steward had given him notice to quit. Mr. Jeeves, who had spent the
morning with him, had said the steward would be a great loss, and a
steward at once sharp and honest was not to be easily found.
What trifles can
embitter the possession of great goods! Strahan had taken a fancy to the
old house; it was conformable to his notions, both of comfort and pomp,
and Sir Philip had expressed a desire that the old house should be
pulled down. Strahan had inspected the plans for the new mansion to
which Sir Philip had referred, and the plans did not please him; on the
contrary, they terrified.
"Jeeves says that
I could not build such a house under L70,000 or L80,000, and then it
will require twice the establishment which will suffice for this. I
shall be ruined," cried the man who had just come into possession of at
least ten thousand a year.
"Sir Philip did
not enjoin you to pull down the old house; he only advised you to do so.
Perhaps he thought the site less healthy than that which he proposes for
a new building, or was aware of some other drawback to the house, which
you may discover later. Wait a little and see before deciding."
"But, at all
events, I suppose I must pull down this curious old room,—the nicest
part of the old house!"
Strahan, as he
spoke, looked wistfully round at the quaint oak chimneypiece; the carved
ceiling; the well-built solid walls, with the large mullion casement,
opening so pleasantly on the sequestered gardens. He had ensconced
himself in Sir Philip's study, the chamber in which the once famous
mystic, Forman, had found a refuge.
"So cozey a room
for a single man!" sighed Strahan. "Near the stables and dog-kennels,
too! But I suppose I must pull it down. I am not bound to do so legally;
it is no condition of the will. But in honour and gratitude I ought not
to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive injunction."
"Of that," said I,
gravely, "there cannot be a doubt." Here our conversation was
interrupted by Mrs. Gates, who informed us that dinner was served in the
library. Wine of great age was brought from the long neglected cellars;
Strahan filled and re-filled his glass, and, warmed into hilarity, began
to talk of bringing old college friends around him in the winter season,
and making the roof-tree ring with laughter and song once more.
Time wore away,
and night had long set in, when Strahan at last rose from the table, his
speech thick and his tongue unsteady. We returned to the study, and I
reminded my host of the special object of my visit to him,—namely, the
inspection of Sir Philip's manuscript.
"It is tough
reading," said Strahan; "better put it off till tomorrow. You will stay
here two or three days."
"No; I must return
to L—— to-morrow. I cannot absent myself from my patients. And it is the
more desirable that no time should be lost before examining the contents
of the manuscript, because probably they may give some clew to the
detection of the murderer."
"Why do you think
that?" cried Strahan, startled from the drowsiness that was creeping
over him.
"Because the
manuscript may show that Sir Philip had some enemy, and who but an enemy
could have had a motive for such a crime? Come, bring forth the book.
You of all men are bound to be alert in every research that may guide
the retribution of justice to the assassin of your benefactor."
"Yes, yes. I will
offer a reward of L5,000 for the discovery. Allen, that wretched old
steward had the insolence to tell me that I was the only man in the
world who could have an interest in the death of his master; and he
looked at me as if he thought that I had committed the crime. You are
right; it becomes me, of all men, to be alert. The assassin must be
found. He must hang."
While thus
speaking, Strahan had risen, unlocked a desk, which stood on one of the
safes, and drawn forth a thick volume, the contents of which were
protected by a clasp and lock. Strahan proceeded to open this lock by
one of a bunch of keys, which he said had been found on Sir Philip's
person.
"There, Allen,
this is the memoir. I need not tell you what store I place on it,—not,
between you and me, that I expect it will warrant poor Sir Philip's high
opinion of his own scientific discoveries; that part of his letter seems
to me very queer, and very flighty. But he evidently set his heart on
the publication of his work, in part if not in whole; and, naturally, I
must desire to comply with a wish so distinctly intimated by one to whom
I owe so much. I be, you, therefore, not to be too fastidious. Some
valuable hints in medicine, I have reason to believe, the manuscript
will contain, and those may help you in your profession, Allen."
"You have reason
to believe! Why?"
"Oh, a charming
young fellow, who, with most of the other gentry resident at L——, called
on me at my hotel, told me that he had travelled in the East, and had
there heard much of Sir Philip's knowledge of chemistry, and the cures
it had enabled him to perform."
"You speak of Mr.
Margrave. He called on you?"
"Yes."
"You did not, I
trust, mention to him the existence of Sir Philip's manuscript."
"Indeed I did; and
I said you had promised to examine it. He seemed delighted at that, and
spoke most highly of your peculiar fitness for the task."
"Give me the
manuscript," said I, abruptly, "and after I have looked at it to-night,
I may have something to say to you tomorrow in reference to Mr.
Margrave."
"There is the
book," said Strahan; "I have just glanced at it, and find much of it
written in Latin; and I am ashamed to say that I have so neglected the
little Latin I learned in our college days that I could not construe
what I looked at."
I sat down and
placed the book before me; Strahan fell into a doze, from which he was
wakened by the housekeeper, who brought in the tea-things.
"Well," said
Strahan, languidly, "do you find much in the book that explains the many
puzzling riddles in poor Sir Philip's eccentric life and pursuits?"
"Yes," said I. "Do
not interrupt me."
Strahan again
began to doze, and the housekeeper asked if we should want anything more
that night, and if I thought I could find my way to my bedroom.
I dismissed her
impatiently, and continued to read. Strahan woke up again as the clock
struck eleven, and finding me still absorbed in the manuscript, and
disinclined to converse, lighted his candle, and telling me to replace
the manuscript in the desk when I had done with it, and be sure to lock
the desk and take charge of the key, which he took off the bunch and
gave me, went upstairs, yawning.
I was alone in the
wizard Forman's chamber, and bending over a stranger record than had
ever excited my infant wonder, or, in later years, provoked my sceptic
smile.
CHAPTER 39
The Manuscript was
written in a small and peculiar handwriting, which, though evidently by
the same person whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from
haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more hard to decipher. Those
parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, or alleged secrets in
Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submit exclusively to
scholars or men of science, were in Latin,—and Latin which, though
grammatically correct, was frequently obscure. But all that detained the
eye and attention on the page necessarily served to impress the contents
more deeply on remembrance.
The narrative
commenced with the writer's sketch of his childhood. Both his parents
had died before he attained his seventh year. The orphan bad been sent
by his guardians to a private school, and his holidays had been passed
at Derval Court. Here his earliest reminiscences were those of the
quaint old room, in which I now sat, and of his childish wonder at the
inscription on the chimneypiece—who and what was the Simon Forman who
had there found a refuge from persecution? Of what nature were the
studies he had cultivated, and the discoveries he boasted to have made?
When he was about
sixteen, Philip Derval had begun to read the many mystic books which the
library contained; but without other result on his mind than the
sentiment of disappointment and disgust. The impressions produced on the
credulous imagination of childhood vanished. He went to the University;
was sent abroad to travel: and on his return took that place in the
circles of London which is so readily conceded to a young idler of birth
and fortune. He passed quickly over that period of his life, as one of
extravagance and dissipation, from which he was first drawn by the
attachment for his cousin to which his letter to Strahan referred.
Disappointed in the hopes which that affection had conceived, and his
fortune impaired, partly by some years of reckless profusion, and partly
by the pecuniary sacrifices at which he had effected his cousin's
marriage with another, he retired to Derval Court, to live there in
solitude and seclusion. On searching for some old title-deeds required
for a mortgage, he chanced upon a collection of manuscripts much
discoloured, and, in part, eaten away by moth or damp. These, on
examination, proved to be the writings of Forman. Some of them were
astrological observations and predictions; some were upon the nature of
the Cabbala; some upon the invocation of spirits and the magic of the
dark ages. All had a certain interest, for they were interspersed with
personal remarks, anecdotes of eminent actors in a very stirring time,
and were composed as Colloquies, in imitation of Erasmus,—the second
person in the dialogue being Sir Miles Derval, the patron and pupil; the
first person being Forman, the philosopher and expounder.
But along with
these shadowy lucubrations were treatises of a more uncommon and a more
startling character,—discussions on various occult laws of nature, and
detailed accounts of analytical experiments. These opened a new, and
what seemed to Sir Philip a practical, field of inquiry,—a true
border-land between natural science and imaginative speculation. Sir
Philip had cultivated philosophical science at the University; he
resumed the study, and tested himself the truth of various experiments
suggested by Forman. Some, to his surprise, proved successful, some
wholly failed. These lucubrations first tempted the writer of the memoir
towards the studies in which the remainder of his life had been
consumed. But he spoke of the lucubrations themselves as valuable only
where suggestive of some truths which Forman had accidentally
approached, without being aware of their true nature and importance.
They were debased by absurd puerilities, and vitiated by the vain and
presumptuous ignorance which characterized the astrology of the middle
ages. For these reasons the writer intimated his intention (if he lived
to return to England) to destroy Forman's manuscripts, together with
sundry other books, and a few commentaries of his own upon studies which
had for a while misled him,—all now deposited in the safes of the room
in which I sat.
After some years
passed in the retirement of Derval Court, Sir Philip was seized with the
desire to travel, and the taste he had imbibed for occult studies led
him towards those Eastern lands in which they took their origin, and
still retain their professors.
Several pages of
the manuscript were now occupied with minute statements of the writer's
earlier disappointment in the objects of his singular research. The
so-called magicians, accessible to the curiosity of European travellers,
were either but ingenious jugglers, or produced effects that perplexed
him by practices they had mechanically learned, but of the rationale of
which they were as ignorant as himself. It was not till he had resided
some considerable time in the East, and acquired a familiar knowledge of
its current languages and the social habits of its various populations,
that he became acquainted with men in whom he recognized earnest
cultivators of the lore which tradition ascribes to the colleges and
priesthoods of the ancient world,—men generally living remote from
others, and seldom to be bribed by money to exhibit their marvels or
divulge their secrets. In his intercourse with these sages, Sir Philip
arrived at the conviction that there does exist an art of magic,
distinct from the guile of the conjuror, and applying to certain latent
powers and affinities in nature,—a philosophy akin to that which we
receive in our acknowledged schools, inasmuch as it is equally based on
experiment, and produces from definite causes definite results. In
support of this startling proposition, Sir Philip now devoted more than
half his volume to the details of various experiments, to the process
and result of which he pledged his guarantee as the actual operator. As
most of these alleged experiments appeared to me wholly incredible, and
as all of them were unfamiliar to my practical experience, and could
only be verified or falsified by tests that would require no
inconsiderable amount of time and care, I passed with little heed over
the pages in which they were set forth. I was impatient to arrive at
that part of the manuscript which might throw light on the mystery in
which my interest was the keenest. What were the links which connected
the existence of Margrave with the history of Sir Philip Derval? Thus
hurrying on, page after page, I suddenly, towards the end of the volume,
came upon a name that arrested all my attention,—Haroun of Aleppo. He
who has read the words addressed to mee in my trance may well conceive
the thrill that shot through my heart when I came upon that name, and
will readily understand how much more vividly my memory retains that
part of the manuscript to which I now proceed, than all which had gone
before.
"It was," wrote Sir Philip, "in an obscure suburb of Aleppo that I at
length met with the wonderful man from whom I have acquired a
knowledge immeasurably more profound and occult than that which may be
tested in the experiments to which I have devoted so large a share of
this memoir. Haroun of Aleppo had, indeed, mastered every secret in
nature which the nobler, or theurgic, magic seeks to fathom.
"He had discovered the great Principle of Animal Life, which had
hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist. Provided only that the great
organs were not irreparably destroyed, there was no disease that he
could not cure; no decrepitude to which he could not restore vigour:
yet his science was based on the same theory as that espoused by the
best professional practitioner of medicine, namely, that the true art
of healing is to assist nature to throw off the disease; to summon, as
it were, the whole system to eject the enemy that has fastened on a
part. And thus his processes, though occasionally varying in the
means employed, all combined in this,—namely, the re-invigourating
and recruiting of the principle of life."
No one knew the
birth or origin of Haroun; no one knew his age. In outward appearance he
was in the strength and prime of mature manhood; but, according to
testimonies in which the writer of the memoir expressed a belief that, I
need scarcely say, appeared to me egregiously credulous, Haroun's
existence under the same name, and known by the same repute, could be
traced back to more than a hundred years. He told Sir Philip that he had
thrice renewed his own life, and had resolved to do so no more; he had
grown weary of living on. With all his gifts, Haroun owned himself to be
consumed by a profound melancholy. He complained that there was nothing
new to him under the sun; he said that, while he had at his command
unlimited wealth, wealth had ceased to bestow enjoyment, and he
preferred living as simply as a peasant; he had tired out all the
affections and all the passions of the human heart; he was in the
universe as in a solitude. In a word, Haroun would often repeat, with
mournful solemnity: "'The soul is not meant to inhabit this earth and in
fleshy tabernacle for more than the period usually assigned to mortals;
and when by art in repairing the walls of the body we so retain it, the
soul repines, becomes inert or dejected. He only," said Haroun, "would
feel continued joy in continued existence who could preserve in
perfection the sensual part of man, with such mind or reason as may be
independent of the spiritual essence, but whom soul itself has
quitted!—man, in short, as the grandest of the animals, but without the
sublime discontent of earth, which is the peculiar attribute of soul."
One evening Sir
Philip was surprised to find at Haroun's house another European. He
paused in his narrative to describe this man. He said that for three or
four years previously he had heard frequent mention, amongst the
cultivators of magic, of an orientalized Englishman engaged in
researches similar to his own, and to whom was ascribed a terrible
knowledge in those branches of the art which, even in the East, are
condemned as instrumental to evil. Sir Philip here distinguished at
length, as he had so briefly distinguished in his conversation with me,
between the two kinds of magic,—that which he alleged to be as pure from
sin as any other species of experimental knowledge, and that by which
the agencies of witchcraft are invoked for the purposes of guilt.
The Englishman, to
whom the culture of this latter and darker kind of magic was ascribed,
Sir Philip Derval had never hitherto come across. He now met him at the
house of Haroun; decrepit, emaciated, bowed down with infirmities, and
racked with pain. Though little more than sixty, his aspect was that of
extreme old age; but still on his face there were seen the ruins of a
once singular beauty, and still, in his mind, there was a force that
contrasted the decay of the body. Sir Philip had never met with an
intellect more powerful and more corrupt. The son of a notorious usurer,
heir to immense wealth, and endowed with the talents which justify
ambition, he had entered upon life burdened with the odium of his
father's name. A duel, to which he had been provoked by an ungenerous
taunt on his origin, but in which a temperament fiercely vindictive had
led him to violate the usages prescribed by the social laws that
regulate such encounters, had subjected him to a trial in which he
escaped conviction either by a flaw in the technicalities of legal
procedure, or by the compassion of the jury;(1) but the moral
presumptions against him were sufficiently strong to set an indelible
brand on his honour, and an insurmountable barrier to the hopes which
his early ambition had conceived. After this trial he had quitted his
country, to return to it no more. Thenceforth, much of his life had been
passed out of sight or conjecture of civilized men in remote regions and
amongst barbarous tribes. At intervals, however, he had reappeared in
European capitals; shunned by and shunning his equals, surrounded by
parasites, amongst whom were always to be found men of considerable
learning, whom avarice or poverty subjected to the influences of his
wealth. For the last nine or ten years he had settled in Persia,
purchased extensive lands, maintained the retinue, and exercised more
than the power of an Oriental prince. Such was the man who, prematurely
worn out, and assured by physicians that he had not six weeks of life,
had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an Eastern satrap, had
caused himself to be borne in his litter to the mud-hut of Haroun the
Sage, and now called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, to
reprieve him from the—grave.
He turned round to
Sir Philip, when the latter entered the room, and exclaimed in English,
"I am here because you are. Your intimacy with this man was known to me.
I took your character as the guarantee of his own. Tell me that I am no
credulous dupe. Tell him that I, Louis Grayle, am no needy petitioner.
Tell me of his wisdom; assure him of my wealth."
Sir Philip looked
inquiringly at Haroun, who remained seated on his carpet in profound
silence.
"What is it you
ask of Haroun?"
"To live on—to
live on! For every year of life he can give me, I will load these floors
with gold."
"Gold will not
tempt Haroun."
"What will?"
"Ask him yourself;
you speak his language."
"I have asked him;
he vouchsafes me no answer."
Haroun here
suddenly roused himself as from a revery. He drew from under his robe a
small phial, from which he let fall a single drop into a cup of water,
and said, "Drink this; send to me tomorrow for such medicaments as I may
prescribe. Return hither yourself in three days; not before!"
When Grayle was
gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked Haroun if, indeed, it were within
the compass of his art to preserve life in a frame that appeared so
thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "A fever may so waste the lamp of
life that one ruder gust of air could extinguish the flame, yet the sick
man recovers. This sick man's existence has been one long fever; this
sick man can recover."
"You will aid him
to do so?"
"Three days hence
I will tell you."
On the third day
Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request, Sir Philip came also.
Grayle declared that he had already derived unspeakable relief from the
remedies administered; he was lavish in expressions of gratitude;
pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemed pained when they were refused.
This time Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's own irregular,
perverted, stormy, but powerful intellect.
I can best convey
the general nature of Grayle's share in the dialogue between himself,
Haroun, and Derval—recorded in the narrative in words which I cannot
trust my memory to repeat in detail—by stating the effect it produced on
my own mind. It seemed, while I read, as if there passed before me some
convulsion of Nature,—a storm, an earthquake,—outcries of rage, of
scorn, of despair, a despot's vehemence of will, a rebel's scoff at
authority; yet, ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some burst
of passionate genius,—abrupt variations from the vaunt of superb
defiance to the wail of intense remorse.
The whole had in
it, I know not what of uncouth but colossal,—like the chant, in the old
lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who, proud of descent
from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements, while still crude
and conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks, upheaved in their
struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening Creation to the
milder influences throned in Olympus. But it was not till the later
passages of the dialogue in which my interest was now absorbed, that the
language ascribed to this sinister personage lost a gloomy pathos not
the less impressive for the awe with which it was mingled. For, till
then, it seemed to me as if in that tempestuous nature there were still
broken glimpses of starry light; that a character originally lofty, if
irregular and fierce, had been embittered by early and continuous war
with the social world, and had, in that war, become maimed and
distorted; that, under happier circumstances, its fiery strength might
have been disciplined to good; that even now, where remorse was so
evidently poignant, evil could not be irredeemably confirmed.
At length all the
dreary compassion previously inspired vanished in one unqualified
abhorrence.
The subjects
discussed changed from those which, relating to the common world of men,
were within the scope of my reason. Haroun led his wild guest to boast
of his own proficiency in magic, and, despite my incredulity, I could
not overcome the shudder with which fictions, however extravagant, that
deal with that dark Unknown abandoned to the chimeras of poets, will, at
night and in solitude, send through the veins of men the least
accessible to imaginary terrors.
Grayle spoke of
the power he had exercised through the agency of evil spirits,—a power
to fascinate and to destroy. He spoke of the aid revealed to him, now
too late, which such direful allies could afford, not only to a private
revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had he acquired the knowledge he
declared himself to possess before the feebleness of the decaying body
made it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that world which had
expelled his youth from its pale! He spoke of means by which his
influence could work undetected on the minds of others, control agencies
that could never betray, and baffle the justice that could never
discover. He spoke vaguely of a power by which a spectral reflection of
the material body could be cast, like a shadow, to a distance; glide
through the walls of a prison, elude the sentinels of a camp,—a power
that he asserted to be when enforced by concentrated will, and acting on
the mind, where in each individual temptation found mind the
weakest—almost infallible in its effect to seduce or to appall. And he
closed these and similar boasts of demoniacal arts, which I remember too
obscurely to repeat, with a tumultuous imprecation on their nothingness
to avail against the gripe of death. All this lore he would communicate
to Haroun, in return for what? A boon shared by the meanest
peasant,—life, common life; to breathe yet a while the air, feel yet a
while the sun.
Then Haroun
replied. He said, with a quiet disdain, that the dark art to which
Grayle made such boastful pretence was the meanest of all abuses of
knowledge, rightly abandoned, in all ages, to the vilest natures. And
then, suddenly changing his tone, he spoke, so far as I can remember the
words assigned to him in the manuscript, to this effect,—
"Fallen and
unhappy wretch, and you ask me for prolonged life!—a prolonged curse to
the world and to yourself. Shall I employ spells to lengthen the term of
the Pestilence, or profane the secrets of Nature to restore vigour and
youth to the failing energies of Crime?"
Grayle, as if
stunned by the rebuke, fell on his knees with despairing entreaties that
strangely contrasted his previous arrogance. "And it was," he said,
"because his life had been evil that he dreaded death. If life could be
renewed he would repent, he would change; he retracted his vaunts, he
would forsake the arts he had boasted, he would re-enter the world as
its benefactor."
"So ever the
wicked man lies to himself when appalled by the shadow of death,"
answered Haroun. "But know, by the remorse which preys on thy soul, that
it is not thy soul that addresses this prayer to me. Couldst thou hear,
through the storms of the Mind, the Soul's melancholy whisper, it would
dissuade thee from a wish to live on. While I speak, I behold it, that
Soul,—sad for the stains on its essence, awed by the account it must
render, but dreading, as the direst calamity, a renewal of years below,
darker stains and yet heavier accounts! Whatever the sentence it may now
undergo, it has a hope for mercy in the remorse which the mind vainly
struggles to quell. But darker its doom if longer retained to earth,
yoked to the mind that corrupts it, and enslaved to the senses which
thou bidst me restore to their tyrannous forces."
And Grayle bowed
his head and covered his face with his hands in silence and in
trembling.
Then Sir Philip,
seized with compassion, pleaded for him. "At least, could not the soul
have longer time on earth for repentance?" And while Sir Philip was so
pleading, Grayle fell prostrate in a swoon like that of death. When he
recovered, his head was leaning on Haroun's knee, and his opening eyes
fixed on the glittering phial which Haroun held, and from which his lips
had been moistened.
"Wondrous!" he
murmured: "how I feel life flowing back to me. And that, then, is the
elixir! it is no fable!"
His hands
stretched greedily as to seize the phial, and he cried imploringly,
"More, more!" Haroun replaced the vessel in the folds of his robe, and
answered,—
"I will not renew
thy youth, but I will release thee from bodily suffering: I will leave
the mind and the soul free from the pangs of the flesh, to reconcile, if
yet possible, their long war. My skill may afford thee months yet for
repentance; Seek, in that interval, to atone for the evil of sixty
years; apply thy wealth where it may most compensate for injury done,
most relieve the indigent, and most aid the virtuous. Listen to thy
remorse; humble thyself in prayer."
Grayle departed,
sighing heavily and muttering to himself. The next day Haroun summoned
Sir Philip Derval, and said to him,—
"Depart to
Damascus. In that city the Pestilence has appeared. Go thither thou, to
heal and to save. In this casket are stored the surest antidotes to the
poison of the plague. Of that essence, undiluted and pure, which tempts
to the undue prolongation of soul in the prison of flesh, this casket
contains not a drop. I curse not my friend with so mournful a boon. Thou
hast learned enough of my art to know by what simples the health of the
temperate is easily restored to its balance, and their path to the grave
smoothed from pain. Not more should Man covet from Nature for the solace
and weal of the body. Nobler gifts far than aught for the body this
casket contains. Herein are the essences which quicken the life of those
duplicate senses that lie dormant and coiled in their chrysalis web,
awaiting the wings of a future development,—the senses by which we can
see, though not with the eye, and hear, but not by the ear. Herein are
the links between Man's mind and Nature's; herein are secrets more
precious even than these,—those extracts of light which enable the Soul
to distinguish itself from the Mind, and discriminate the spiritual
life, not more from life carnal than life intellectual. Where thou seest
some noble intellect, studious of Nature, intent upon Truth, yet
ignoring the fact that all animal life has a mind and Man alone on the
earth ever asked, and has asked, from the hour his step trod the earth,
and his eye sought the Heaven, 'Have I not a soul; can it
perish?'—there, such aids to the soul, in the innermost vision
vouchsafed to the mind, thou mayst lawfully use. But the treasures
contained in this casket are like all which a mortal can win from the
mines he explores,—good or ill in their uses as they pass to the hands
of the good or the evil. Thou wilt never confide them but to those who
will not abuse! and even then, thou art an adept too versed in the
mysteries of Nature not to discriminate between the powers that may
serve the good to good ends, and the powers that may tempt the
good—where less wise than experience has made thee and me—to the ends
that are evil; and not even to thy friend the most virtuous—if less
proof against passion than thou and I have become—wilt thou confide such
contents of the casket as may work on the fancy, to deafen the
conscience and imperil the soul."
Sir Philip took
the casket, and with it directions for use, which he did not detail. He
then spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspired him with a
mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity and terror. And
Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to him, so far as I
can trust, in regard to them—as to all else in this marvellous
narrative—to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary matters, and
strained to the utmost extent of its power, by the strangeness of the
ideas presented to it, and the intensity of my personal interest in
whatever admitted a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast over my
reason, now threatened storm to my affections,—
"When the mortal
deliberately allies himself to the spirits of evil, he surrenders the
citadel of his being to the guard of its enemies; and those who look
from without can only dimly guess what passes within the precincts
abandoned to Powers whose very nature we shrink to contemplate, lest our
mere gaze should invite them. This man, whom thou pitiest, is not yet
everlastingly consigned to the fiends, because his soul still struggles
against them. His life has been one long war between his intellect,
which is mighty, and his spirit, which is feeble. The intellect, armed
and winged by the passions, has besieged and oppressed the soul; but the
soul has never ceased to repine and to repent. And at moments it has
gained its inherent ascendancy, persuaded revenge to drop the prey it
had seized, turned the mind astray from hatred and wrath into unwonted
paths of charity and love. In the long desert of guilt, there have been
green spots and fountains of good. The fiends have occupied the
intellect which invoked them, but they have never yet thoroughly
mastered the soul which their presence appalls. In the struggle that now
passes within that breast, amidst the flickers of waning mortality, only
Allah, whose eye never slumbers, can aid."
Haroun then
continued, in words yet more strange and yet more deeply graved in my
memory,—
"There have been
men (thou mayst have known such), who, after an illness in which life
itself seemed suspended, have arisen, as out of a sleep, with characters
wholly changed. Before, perhaps, gentle and good and truthful, they now
become bitter, malignant, and false. To the persons and the things they
had before loved, they evince repugnance and loathing. Sometimes this
change is so marked and irrational that their kindred ascribe it to
madness,—not the madness which affects them in the ordinary business of
life, but that which turns into harshness and discord the moral harmony
that results from natures whole and complete. But there are dervishes
who hold that in that illness, which had for its time the likeness of
death, the soul itself has passed away, and an evil genius has fixed
itself into the body and the brain, thus left void of their former
tenant, and animates them in the unaccountable change from the past to
the present existence. Such mysteries have formed no part of my study,
and I tell you the conjecture received in the East without hazarding a
comment whether of incredulity or belief. But if, in this war between
the mind which the fiends have seized, and the soul which implores
refuge of Allah; if, while the mind of yon traveller now covets life
lengthened on earth for the enjoyments it had perverted its faculties to
seek and to find in sin, and covets so eagerly that it would shrink from
no crime and revolt from no fiend that could promise the gift, the soul
shudderingly implores to be saved from new guilt, and would rather abide
by the judgment of Allah on the sins that have darkened it than pass
forever irredeemably away to the demons,—if this be so, what if the
soul's petition be heard; what if it rise from the ruins around it; what
if the ruins be left to the witchcraft that seeks to rebuild them?
There, if demons might enter, that which they sought as their prize has
escaped them; that which they find would mock them by its own
incompleteness even in evil. In vain might animal life the most perfect
be given to the machine of the flesh; in vain might the mind, freed from
the check of the soul, be left to roam at will through a brain stored
with memories of knowledge and skilled in the command of its faculties;
in vain, in addition to all that body and brain bestow on the normal
condition of man, might unhallowed reminiscences gather all the arts and
the charms of the sorcery by which the fiends tempted the soul, before
it fled, through the passions of flesh and the cravings of mind: the
Thing, thus devoid of a soul, would be an instrument of evil,
doubtless,—but an instrument that of itself could not design, invent,
and complete. The demons themselves could have no permanent hold on the
perishable materials. They might enter it for some gloomy end which
Allah permits in his inscrutable wisdom; but they could leave it no
trace when they pass from it, because there is no conscience where soul
is wanting. The human animal without soul, but otherwise made
felicitously perfect in its mere vital organization, might ravage and
destroy, as the tiger and the serpent may destroy and ravage, and, the
moment after, would sport in the sunlight harmless and rejoicing,
because, like the serpent and the tiger, it is incapable of remorse."
"Why startle my
wonder," said Derval, "with so fantastic an image?"
"Because,
possibly, the image may come into palpable form! I know, while I speak
to thee, that this miserable man is calling to his aid the evil sorcery
over which he boasts his control. To gain the end he desires, he must
pass through a crime. Sorcery whispers to him how to pass through it,
secure from the detection of man. The soul resists, but in resisting, is
weak against the tyranny of the mind to which it has submitted so long.
Question me no more. But if I vanish from thine eyes, if thou hear that
the death which, to my sorrow and in my foolishness I have failed to
recognize as the merciful minister of Heaven, has removed me at last
from the earth, believe that the pale Visitant was welcome, and that I
humbly accept as a blessed release the lot of our common humanity."
Sir Philip went to
Damascus. There he found the pestilence raging, there he devoted himself
to the cure of the afflicted; in no single instance, so at least he
declared, did the antidotes stored in the casket fail in their effect.
The pestilence had passed, his medicaments were exhausted, when the news
reached him that Haroun was no more. The Sage had been found, one
morning, lifeless in his solitary home, and, according to popular rumour,
marks on his throat betrayed the murderous hand of the strangler.
Simultaneously, Louis Grayle had disappeared from the city, and was
supposed to have shared the fate of Haroun, and been secretly buried by
the assassins who had deprived him of life. Sir Philip hastened to
Aleppo. There he ascertained that on the night in which Haroun died,
Grayle did not disappear alone; with him were also missing two of his
numerous suite,—the one, an Arab woman, named Ayesha, who had for some
years been his constant companion, his pupil and associate in the mystic
practices to which his intellect had been debased, and who was said to
have acquired a singular influence over him, partly by her beauty and
partly by the tenderness with which she had nursed him through his long
decline; the other, an Indian, specially assigned to her service, of
whom all the wild retainers of Grayle spoke with detestation and terror.
He was believed by them to belong to that murderous sect of fanatics
whose existence as a community has only recently been made known to
Europe, and who strangle their unsuspecting victim in the firm belief
that they thereby propitiate the favour of the goddess they serve. The
current opinion at Aleppo was, that if those two persons had conspired
to murder Haroun, perhaps for the sake of the treasures he was said to
possess, it was still more certain that they had made away with their
own English lord, whether for the sake of the jewels he wore about him,
or for the sake of treasures less doubtful than those imputed to Haroun,
and of which the hiding-place would be to them much better known.
"I did not share that opinion," wrote the narrator, "for I assured
myself that Ayesha sincerely loved her awful master; and that love
need excite no wonder, for Louis Grayle was one whom if a woman, and
especially a woman of the East, had once loved, before old age and
infirmity fell on him, she would love and cherish still more devotedly
when it became her task to protect the being who, in his day of power
and command, had exalted his slave into the rank of his pupil and
companion. And the Indian whom Grayle had assigned to her service was
allowed to have that brute kind of fidelity which, though it recoils
from no crime for a master, refuses all crime against him.
"I came to the conclusion that Haroun had been murdered by order
of Louis Grayle,—for the sake of the elixir of life,—murdered by
Juma the Strangler; and that Grayle himself had been aided in his
flight from Aleppo, and tended, through the effects of the
life-giving drug thus murderously obtained, by the womanly love of the
Arab woman Ayesha. These convictions (since I could not, without
being ridiculed as the wildest of dupes, even hint at the vital
elixir) I failed to impress on the Eastern officials, or even on a
countryman of my own whom I chanced to find at Aleppo. They only
arrived at what seemed the common-sense verdict,—namely, that Haroun
might have been strangled, or might have died in a fit (the body,
little examined, was buried long before I came to Aleppo); and that
Louis Grayle was murdered by his own treacherous dependents. But all
trace of the fugitives was lost.
"And now," wrote Sir Philip, "I will state by what means I discovered
that Louis Grayle still lived,—changed from age into youth; a new
form, a new being; realizing, I verily believe, the image which
Haroun's words had raised up, in what then seemed to me the
metaphysics of fantasy,—-criminal, without consciousness of crime;
the dreadest of the mere animal race; an incarnation of the blind
powers of Nature,—beautiful and joyous, wanton and terrible and
destroying! Such as ancient myths have personified in the idols of
Oriental creeds; such as Nature, of herself, might form man in her
moments of favour, if man were wholly the animal, and spirit were no
longer the essential distinction between himself and the races to
which by superior formation and subtler perceptions he would still be
the king.
"But this being is yet more dire and portentous than the mere animal
man, for in him are not only the fragmentary memories of a pristine
intelligence which no mind, unaided by the presence of soul, could
have originally compassed, but amidst that intelligence are the
secrets of the magic which is learned through the agencies of spirits
the most hostile to our race. And who shall say whether the fiends do
not enter at their will this void and deserted temple whence the soul
has departed, and use as their tools, passive and unconscious, all the
faculties which, skilful in sorcery, still place a mind at the
control of their malice?
"It, was in the interest excited in me by the strange and terrible fate
that befell an Armenian family with which I was slightly acquainted,
that I first traced—in the creature I am now about to describe, and
whose course I devote myself to watch, and trust to bring to a
close—the murderer of Haroun for the sake of the elixir of youth.
"In this Armenian family there were three daughters; one of them—"
I had just read
thus far when a dim shadow fell over the page, and a cold air seemed to
breathe on me,—cold, so cold, that my blood halted in my veins as if
suddenly frozen! Involuntarily I started, and looked up, sure that some
ghastly presence was in the room. And then, on the opposite side of the
wall, I beheld an unsubstantial likeness of a human form. Shadow I call
it, but the word is not strictly correct, for it was luminous, though
with a pale shine. In some exhibition in London there is shown a curious
instance of optical illusion; at the end of a corridor you see,
apparently in strong light, a human skull. You are convinced it is there
as you approach; it is, however, only a reflection from a skull at a
distance. The image before me was less vivid, less seemingly prominent
than is the illusion I speak of. I was not deceived. I felt it was a
spectrum, a phantasm; but I felt no less surely that it was a reflection
from an animate form,—the form and face of Margrave; it was there,
distinct, unmistakable. Conceiving that he himself must be behind me, I
sought to rise, to turn round, to examine. I could not move: limb and
muscle were overmastered by some incomprehensible spell. Gradually my
senses forsook me; I became unconscious as well as motionless. When I
recovered, I heard the clock strike three. I must have been nearly two
hours insensible! The candles before me were burning low. My eyes rested
on the table; the dead man's manuscript was gone!
(1) The reader
will here observe a discrepancy between Mrs. Poyntz's account and Sir
Philip Derval's narrative. According to the former, Louis Grayle was
tried in his absence from England, and sentenced to three years'
imprisonment, which his flight enabled him to evade. According to the
latter, Louis Grayle stood his trial, and obtained an acquittal. Sir
Philip's account must, at least, be nearer the truth than the lady's,
because Louis Grayle could not, according to English law, have been
tried on a capital charge without being present in court. Mrs. Poyntz
tells her story as a woman generally does tell a story,—sure to make a
mistake when she touches on a question of law; and—unconsciously perhaps
to herself—the woman of the World warps the facts in her narrative so as
to save the personal dignity of the hero, who has captivated her
interest, not from the moral odium of a great crime, but the debasing
position of a prisoner at the bar. Allen Fenwick, no doubt, purposely
omits to notice the discrepancy between these two statements, or to
animadvert on the mistake which, in the eyes of a lawyer, would
discredit Mrs. Poyntz's. It is consistent with some of the objects for
which Allen Fenwick makes public his Strange Story, to invite the reader
to draw his own inferences from the contradictions by which, even in the
most commonplace matters (and how much more in any tale of wonder!), a
fact stated by one person is made to differ from the same fact stated by
another. The rapidity with which a truth becomes transformed into fable,
when it is once sent on its travels from lip to lip, is illustrated by
an amusement at this moment in fashion. The amusement is this: In a
party of eight or ten persons, let one whisper to another an account of
some supposed transaction, or a piece of invented gossip relating to
absent persons, dead or alive; let the person, who thus first hears the
story, proceed to whisper it, as exactly as he can remember what he has
just heard, to the next; the next does the same to his neighbour, and so
on, till the tale has run the round of the party. Each narrator, as soon
as he has whispered his version of the tale, writes down what he has
whispered. And though, in this game, no one has had any interest to
misrepresent, but, on the contrary, each for his own credit's sake
strives to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he can, it will be
almost invariably found that the story told by the first person has
received the most material alterations before it has reached the eighth
or the tenth. Sometimes the most important feature of the whole
narrative is altogether omitted; sometimes a feature altogether new and
preposterously absurd has been added. At the close of the experiment one
is tempted to exclaim, "How, after this, can any of those portions of
history which the chronicler took from hearsay be believed?" But, above
all, does not every anecdote of scandal which has passed, not through
ten lips, but perhaps through ten thousand, before it has reached us,
become quite as perplexing to him who would get at the truth, as the
marvels he recounts are to the bewildered reason of Fenwick the Sceptic?
CHAPTER 40
The dead man's
manuscript was gone. But how? A phantom might delude my eye, a human
will, though exerted at a distance, might, if the tales of mesmerism be
true, deprive me of movement and of consciousness; but neither phantom
nor mesmeric will could surely remove from the table before me the
material substance of the book that had vanished! Was I to seek
explanation in the arts of sorcery ascribed to Louis Grayle in the
narrative? I would not pursue that conjecture. Against it my reason rose
up half alarmed, half disdainful. Some one must have entered the room,
some one have removed the manuscript. I looked round. The windows were
closed, the curtains partly drawn over the shutters, as they were before
my consciousness had left me: all seemed undisturbed. Snatching up one
of the candles, fast dying out, I went into the adjoining library, the
desolate state-rooms, into the entrance-hall, and examined the outer
door, barred and locked! The robber had left no vestige of his stealthy
presence.
I resolved to go
at once to Strahan's room and tell him of the loss sustained. A deposit
had been confided to me, and I felt as if there were a slur on my honour
every moment in which I kept its abstraction concealed from him to whom
I was responsible for the trust. I hastily ascended the great staircase,
grim with faded portraits, and found myself in a long corridor opening
on my own bedroom; no doubt also on Strahan's. Which was his? I knew
not. I opened rapidly door after door, peered into empty chambers, went
blundering on, when to the right, down a narrow passage. I recognized
the signs of my host's whereabouts,—signs familiarly commonplace and
vulgar; signs by which the inmate of any chamber in lodging-house or inn
makes himself known,—a chair before a doorway, clothes negligently
thrown on it, beside it a pair of shoes. And so ludicrous did such
testimony of common every-day life, of the habits which Strahan would
necessarily have contracted in his desultory unluxurious bachelor's
existence,—so ludicrous, I say, did these homely details seem to me, so
grotesquely at variance with the wonders of which I had been reading,
with the wonders yet more incredible of which I myself had been witness
and victim, that as I turned down the passage, I heard my own
unconscious half-hysterical laugh; and, startled by the sound of that
laugh as if it came from some one else, I paused, my hand on the door,
and asked myself: "Do I dream? Am I awake? And if awake what am I to say
to the common place mortal I am about to rouse? Speak to him of a
phantom! Speak to him of some weird spell over this strong frame! Speak
to him of a mystic trance in which has been stolen what he confided to
me, without my knowledge! What will he say? What should I have said a
few days ago to any man who told such a tale to me?" I did not wait to
resolve these questions. I entered the room. There was Strahan sound
asleep on his bed. I shook him roughly. He started up, rubbed his eyes.
"You, Allen,—you! What the deuce?—what 's the matter?"
"Strahan, I have
been robbed!—robbed of the manuscript you lent me. I could not rest till
I had told you."
"Robbed, robbed!
Are you serious?"
By this time
Strahan had thrown off the bed-clothes, and sat upright, staring at me.
And then those
questions which my mind had suggested while I was standing at his door
repeated themselves with double force. Tell this man, this
unimaginative, hard-headed, raw-boned, sandy-haired North
countryman,—tell this man a story which the most credulous school-girl
would have rejected as a fable! Impossible!
"I fell asleep,"
said I, colouring and stammering, for the slightest deviation from truth
was painful to me, "and-and—when I awoke—the manuscript was gone. Some
one must have entered and committed the theft—"
"Some one entered
the house at this hour of the night and then only stolen a manuscript
which could be of no value to him! Absurd! If thieves have come in it
must be for other objects,—for plate, for money. I will dress; we will
see!"
Strahan hurried on
his clothes, muttering to himself and avoiding my eye. He was
embarrassed. He did not like to say to an old friend what was on his
mind; but I saw at once that he suspected I had resolved to deprive him
of the manuscript, and had invented a wild tale in order to conceal my
own dishonesty.
Nevertheless, he
proceeded to search the house. I followed him in silence, oppressed with
my own thoughts, and longing for solitude in my own chamber. We found no
one, no trace of any one, nothing to excite suspicion. There were but
two female servants sleeping in the house,—the old housekeeper, and a
country girl who assisted her. It was not possible to suspect either of
these persons; but in the course of our search we opened the doors of
their rooms. We saw that they were both in bed, both seemingly asleep:
it seemed idle to wake and question them. When the formality of our
futile investigation was concluded, Strahan stopped at the door of my
bedroom, and for the first time fixing his eyes on me steadily, said,—
"Allen Fenwick, I
would have given half the fortune I have come into rather than this had
happened. The manuscript, as you know, was bequeathed to me as a sacred
trust by a benefactor whose slightest wish it is my duty to observe
religiously. If it contained aught valuable to a man of your knowledge
and profession, why, you were free to use its contents. Let me hope,
Allen, that the book will reappear to-morrow."
He said no more,
drew himself away from the hand I involuntarily extended, and walked
quickly back towards his own room.
Alone once more, I
sank on a seat, buried my face in my hands, and strove in vain to
collect into some definite shape my own tumultuous and disordered
thoughts. Could I attach serious credit to the marvellous narrative I
had read? Were there, indeed, such powers given to man, such influences
latent in the calm routine of Nature? I could not believe it; I must
have some morbid affection of the brain; I must be under an
hallucination. Hallucination? The phantom, yes; the trance, yes. But
still, how came the book gone? That, at least, was not hallucination.
I left my room the
next morning with a vague hope that I should find the manuscript
somewhere in the study; that, in my own trance, I might have secreted
it, as sleep-walkers are said to secrete things, without remembrance of
their acts in their waking state.
I searched
minutely in every conceivable place. Strahan found me still employed in
that hopeless task. He had breakfasted in his own room, and it was past
eleven o'clock when he joined me. His manner was now hard, cold, and
distant, and his suspicion so bluntly shown that my distress gave way to
resentment.
"Is it possible,"
I cried indignantly, "that you, who have known me so well, can suspect
me of an act so base, and so gratuitously base? Purloin, conceal a book
confided to me, with full power to copy from it whatever I might desire,
use its contents in any way that might seem to me serviceable to
science, or useful to me in my own calling!"
"I have not
accused you," answered Strahan, sullenly. "But what are we to say to Mr.
Jeeves; to all others who know that this manuscript existed? Will they
believe what you tell me?"
"Mr. Jeeves," I
said, "cannot suspect a fellow-townsman, whose character is as high as
mine, of untruth and theft. And to whom else have you communicated the
facts connected with a memoir and a request of so extraordinary a
nature?"
"To young
Margrave; I told you so!"
"True, true. We
need not go farther to find the thief. Margrave has been in this house
more than once. He knows the position of the rooms. You have named the
robber!"
"Tut! what on
earth could a gay young fellow like Margrave want with a work of such
dry and recondite nature as I presume my poor kinsman's memoir must be?"
I was about to
answer, when the door was abruptly opened, and the servant-girl entered,
followed by two men, in whom I recognized the superintendent of the L——
police and the same subordinate who had found me by Sir Philip's corpse.
The superintendent
came up to me with a grave face, and whispered in my ear. I did not at
first comprehend him. "Come with you," I said, "and to Mr. Vigors, the
magistrate? I thought my deposition was closed."
The superintendent
shook his head. "I have the authority here, Dr. Fenwick."
"Well, I will
come, of course. Has anything new transpired?"
The superintendent
turned to the servant-girl, who was standing with gaping mouth and
staring eyes.
"Show us Dr.
Fenwick's room. You had better put up, sir, whatever things you have
brought here. I will go upstairs with you," he whispered again. "Come,
Dr. Fenwick, I am in the discharge of my duty."
Something in the
man's manner was so sinister and menacing that I felt at once that some
new and strange calamity had befallen me. I turned towards Strahan. He
was at the threshold, speaking in a low voice to the subordinate
policeman, and there was an expression of amazement and horror in his
countenance. As I came towards him he darted away without a word.
I went up the
stairs, entered my bedroom, the superintendent close behind me. As I
took up mechanically the few things I had brought with me, the
police-officer drew them from me with an abruptness that appeared
insolent, and deliberately searched the pockets of the coat which I had
worn the evening before, then opened the drawers in the room, and even
pried into the bed.
"What do you
mean?" I asked haughtily.
"Excuse me, sir.
Duty. You are-"
"Well, I am what?"
"My prisoner; here
is the warrant."
"Warrant! on what
charge?"
"The murder of Sir
Philip Derval."
"I—I! Murder!" I
could say no more.
I must hurry over
this awful passage in my marvellous record. It is torture to dwell on
the details; and indeed I have so sought to chase them from my
recollection, that they only come back to me in hideous fragments, like
the incoherent remains of a horrible dream.
All that I need
state is as follows: Early on the very morning on which I had been
arrested, a man, a stranger in the town, had privately sought Mr. Vigors,
and deposed that on the night of the murder, he had been taking refuge
from a sudden storm under shelter of the eaves and buttresses of a wall
adjoining an old archway; that he had heard men talking within the
archway; had heard one say to the other, "You still bear me a grudge."
The other had replied, "I can forgive you on one condition." That he
then lost much of the conversation that ensued, which was in a lower
voice; but he gathered enough to know that the condition demanded by the
one was the possession of a casket which the other carried about with
him; that there seemed an altercation on this matter between the two
men, which, to judge by the tones of voice, was angry on the part of the
man demanding the casket; that, finally, this man said in a loud key,
"Do you still refuse?" and on receiving the answer, which the witness
did not overhear, exclaimed threateningly, "It is you who will repent,"
and then stepped forth from the arch into the street. The rain had then
ceased, but by a broad flash of lightning the witness saw distinctly the
figure of the person thus quitting the shelter of the arch,—a man of
tall stature, powerful frame, erect carriage. A little time afterwards,
witness saw a slighter and older man come forth from the arch, whom he
could only examine by the flickering ray of the gas-lamp near the wall,
the lightning having ceased, but whom he fully believed to be the person
he afterwards discovered to be Sir Philip Derval.
He said that he
himself had only arrived at the town a few hours before; a stranger to
L——, and indeed to England, having come from the United States of
America, where he had passed his life from childhood. He had journeyed
on foot to L——, in the hope of finding there some distant relatives. He
had put up at a small inn, after which he had strolled through the town,
when the storm had driven him to seek shelter. He had then failed to
find his way back to the inn, and after wandering about in vain, and
seeing no one at that late hour of night of whom he could ask the way,
lie had crept under a portico and slept for two or three hours. Waking
towards the dawn, he had then got up, and again sought to find his way
to the inn, when he saw, in a narrow street before him, two men, one of
whom he recognized as the taller of the two to whose conversation he had
listened under the arch; the other he did not recognize at the moment.
The taller man seemed angry and agitated, and he heard him say, "The
casket; I will have it." There then seemed to be a struggle between
these two persons, when the taller one struck down the shorter, knelt on
his breast, and he caught distinctly the gleam of some steel instrument.
That he was so frightened that he could not stir from the place, and
that though he cried out, he believed his voice was not heard. He then
saw the taller man rise, the other resting on the pavement motionless;
and a minute or so afterwards beheld policemen coming to the place, on
which he, the witness, walked away. He did not know that a murder had
been committed; it might be only an assault; it was no business of his,
he was a stranger. He thought it best not to interfere, the police
having cognizance of the affair. He found out his inn; for the next few
days he was absent from L—— in search of his relations, who had left the
town, many years ago, to fix their residence in one of the neighbouring
villages.
He was, however,
disappointed; none of these relations now survived. He had now returned
to L——, heard of the murder, was in doubt what to do, might get himself
into trouble if, a mere stranger, he gave an unsupported testimony. But,
on the day before the evidence was volunteered, as he was lounging in
the streets, he had seen a gentleman pass by on horseback, in whom he
immediately recognized the man who, in his belief, was the murderer of
Sir Philip Derval. He inquired of a bystander the name of the gentleman;
the answer was "Dr. Fenwick." That, the rest of the day, he felt much
disturbed in his mind, not liking to volunteer such a charge against a
man of apparent respectability and station; but that his conscience
would not let him sleep that night, and he had resolved at morning to go
to the magistrate and make a clean breast of it.
The story was in
itself so improbable that any other magistrate but Mr. Vigors would
perhaps have dismissed it in contempt. But Mr. Vigors, already so
bitterly prejudiced against me, and not sorry, perhaps, to subject me to
the humiliation of so horrible a charge, immediately issued his warrant
to search my house. I was absent at Derval Court; the house was
searched. In the bureau in my favourite study, which was left unlocked,
the steel casket was discovered, and a large case-knife, on the blade of
which the stains of blood were still perceptible. On this discovery I
was apprehended; and on these evidences, and on the deposition of this
vagrant stranger, I was not, indeed, committed to take my trial for
murder, but placed in confinement, all bail for my appearance refused,
and the examination adjourned to give time for further evidence and
inquiries. I had requested the professional aid of Mr. Jeeves. To my
surprise and dismay, Mr. Jeeves begged me to excuse him. He said he was
pre-engaged by Mr. Strahan to detect and prosecute the murderer of Sir
P. Derval, and could not assist one accused of the murder. I gathered
from the little he said that Strahan had already been to him that
morning and told him of the missing manuscript, that Strahan had ceased
to be my friend. I engaged another solicitor, a young man of ability,
and who professed personal esteem for me. Mr. Stanton (such was the
lawyer's name) believed in my innocence; but he warned me that
appearances were grave, he implored me to be perfectly frank with him.
Had I held conversation with Sir Philip under the archway as reported by
the witness? Had I used such or similar words? Had the deceased said, "I
had a grudge against him"? Had I demanded the casket? Had I threatened
Sir Philip that he would repent? And of what,—his refusal?
I felt myself grow
pale, as I answered, "Yes; I thought such or similar expressions had
occurred in my conversation with the deceased."
"What was the
reason of the grudge? What was the nature of this casket, that I should
so desire its possession?"
There, I became
terribly embarrassed. What could I say to a keen, sensible, worldly man
of law,—tell him of the powder and the fumes, of the scene in the
museum, of Sir Philip's tale, of the implied identity of the youthful
Margrave with the aged Grayle, of the elixir of life, and of magic arts?
I—I tell such a romance! I,—the noted adversary of all pretended
mysticism; I,—I a sceptical practitioner of medicine! Had that
manuscript of Sir Philip's been available,—a substantial record of
marvellous events by a man of repute for intellect and learning,—I might
perhaps have ventured to startle the solicitor of I—with my revelations.
But the sole proof that all which the solicitor urged me to confide was
not a monstrous fiction or an insane delusion had disappeared; and its
disappearance was a part of the terrible mystery that enveloped the
whole. I answered therefore, as composedly as I could, that "I could
have no serious grudge against Sir Philip, whom I had never seen before
that evening; that the words which applied to my supposed grudge were
lightly said by Sir Philip, in reference to a physiological dispute on
matters connected with mesmerical phenomena; that the deceased had
declared his casket, which he had shown me at the mayor's house,
contained drugs of great potency in medicine; that I had asked
permission to test those drugs myself; and that when I said he would
repent of his refusal, I merely meant that he would repent of his
reliance on drugs not warranted by the experiments of professional
science."
My replies seemed
to satisfy the lawyer so far, but "how could I account for the casket
and the knife being found in my room?"
"In no way but
this; the window of my study is a door-window opening on the lane, from
which any one might enter the room. I was in the habit, not only of
going out myself that way, but of admitting through that door any more
familiar private acquaintance."
"Whom, for
instance?"
I hesitated a
moment, and then said, with a significance I could not forbear, "Mr.
Margrave! He would know the locale perfectly; he would know that the
door was rarely bolted from within during the daytime: he could enter at
all hours; he could place, or instruct any one to deposit, the knife and
casket in my bureau, which he knew I never kept locked; it contained no
secrets, no private correspondence,—chiefly surgical implements, or such
things as I might want for professional experiments."
"Mr. Margrave! But
you cannot suspect him—a lively, charming young man, against whose
character not a whisper was ever heard—of connivance with such a charge
against you,—a connivance that would implicate him in the murder itself;
for if you are accused wrongfully, he who accuses you is either the
criminal or the criminal's accomplice, his instigator or his tool."
"Mr. Stanton," I
said firmly, after a moment's pause, "I do suspect Mr. Margrave of a
hand in this crime. Sir Philip, on seeing him at the mayor's house,
expressed a strong abhorrence of him, more than hinted at crimes he had
committed, appointed me to come to Derval Court the day after that on
which the murder was committed. Sir Philip had known something of this
Margrave in the East; Margrave might dread exposure, revelations—of what
I know not; but, strange as it may seem to you, it is my conviction that
this young man, apparently so gay and so thoughtless, is the real
criminal, and in some way which I cannot conjecture has employed this
lying vagabond in the fabrication of a charge against myself. Reflect:
of Mr. Margrave's antecedents we know nothing; of them nothing was known
even by the young gentleman who first introduced him to the society of
this town. If you would serve and save me, it is to that quarter that
you will direct your vigilant and unrelaxing researches."
I had scarcely so
said when I repented my candour, for I observed in the face of Mr.
Stanton a sudden revulsion of feeling, an utter incredulity of the
accusation I had thus hazarded, and for the first time a doubt of my own
innocence. The fascination exercised by Margrave was universal; nor was
it to be wondered at: for besides the charm of his joyous presence, he
seemed so singularly free from even the errors common enough with the
young,—so gay and boon a companion, yet a shunner of wine; so dazzling
in aspect, so more than beautiful, so courted, so idolized by women, yet
no tale of seduction, of profligacy, attached to his name! As to his
antecedents, he had so frankly owned himself a natural son, a nobody, a
traveller, an idler; his expenses, though lavish, were so
unostentatious, so regularly defrayed; he was so wholly the reverse of
the character assigned to criminals, that it seemed as absurd to bring a
charge of homicide against a butterfly or a goldfinch as against this
seemingly innocent and delightful favourite of humanity and nature.
However, Mr.
Stanton said little or nothing, and shortly afterwards left me, with a
dry expression of hope that my innocence would be cleared in spite of
evidence that, he was bound to say, was of the most serious character.
I was exhausted. I
fell into a profound sleep early that night; it might be a little after
twelve when I woke, and woke as fully, as completely, as much restored
to life and consciousness, as it was then my habit to be at the break of
day. And so waking, I saw, on the wall opposite my bed, the same
luminous phantom I had seen in the wizard's study at Derval Court. I
have read in Scandinavian legends of an apparition called the Scin-Laeca,
or shining corpse. It is supposed in the northern superstition,
sometimes to haunt sepulchres, sometimes to foretell doom. It is the
spectre of a human body seen in a phosphoric light; and so exactly did
this phantom correspond to the description of such an apparition in
Scandinavian fable that I knew not how to give it a better name than
that of Scin-Laeca,—the shining corpse.
There it was
before me, corpse-like, yet not dead; there, as in the haunted study of
the wizard Forman!—the form and the face of Margrave. Constitutionally,
my nerves are strong, and my temper hardy, and now I was resolved to
battle against any impression which my senses might receive from my own
deluding fancies. Things that witnessed for the first time daunt us
witnessed for the second time lose their terror. I rose from my bed with
a bold aspect, I approached the phantom with a firm step; but when
within two paces of it, and my hand outstretched to touch it, my arm
became fixed in air, my feet locked to the ground. I did not experience
fear; I felt that my heart beat regularly, but an invincible something
opposed itself to me. I stood as if turned to stone. And then from the
lips of this phantom there came a voice, but a voice which seemed borne
from a great distance,—very low, muffled, and yet distinct; I could not
even be sure that my ear heard it, or whether the sound was not conveyed
to me by an inner sense.
"I, and I alone,
can save and deliver you," said the voice. "I will do so; and the
conditions I ask, in return, are simple and easy."
"Fiend or spectre,
or mere delusion of my own brain," cried I, "there can be no compact
between thee and me. I despise thy malice, I reject thy services; I
accept no conditions to escape from the one or to obtain the other."
"You may give a
different answer when I ask again."
The Scin-Laeca
slowly waned, and, fading first into a paler shadow, then vanished. I
rejoiced at the reply I had given. Two days elapsed before Mr. Stanton
again came to me; in the interval the Scin-Laeca did not reappear. I had
mustered all my courage, all my common-sense, noted down all the weak
points of the false evidence against me, and felt calm and supported by
the strength of my innocence.
The first few
words of the solicitor dashed all my courage to the ground; for I was
anxious to hear news of Lilian, anxious to have some message from her
that might cheer and strengthen me, and my first question was this,—
"Mr. Stanton, you
are aware that I am engaged in marriage to Miss Ashleigh. Your family
are not unacquainted with her. What says, what thinks she of this
monstrous charge against her betrothed?"
"I was for two
hours at Mrs. Ashleigh's house last evening," replied the lawyer; "she
was naturally anxious to see me as employed in your defence. Who do you
think was there? Who, eager to defend you, to express his persuasion of
your innocence, to declare his conviction that the real criminal would
be soon discovered,—who but that same Mr. Margrave; whom, pardon me my
frankness, you so rashly and groundlessly suspected."
"Heavens! Do you
say that he is received in that house; that he—he is familiarly admitted
to her presence?"
"My good sir, why
these unjust prepossessions against a true friend? It was as your friend
that, as soon as the charge against you amazed and shocked the town of
L——, Mr. Margrave called on Mrs. Ashleigh, presented to her by Miss
Brabazon, and was so cheering and hopeful that—"
"Enough!" I
exclaimed,—"enough!"
I paced the room
in a state of excitement and rage, which the lawyer in vain endeavoured
to calm, until at length I halted abruptly: "Well, and you saw Miss
Ashleigh? What message does she send to me—her betrothed?"
Mr. Stanton looked
confused. "Message! Consider, sir, Miss Ashleigh's situation—the
delicacy—and—and—"
"I understand, no
message, no word, from a young lady so respectable to a man accused of
murder."
Mr. Stanton was
silent for some moments, and then said quietly, "Let us change this
subject; let us think of what more immediately presses. I see you have
been making some notes: may I look at them?"
I composed myself
and sat down. "This accuser! Have inquiries really been made as to
himself, and his statement of his own proceedings? He comes, he says,
from America: in what ship? At what port did he land? Is there any
evidence to corroborate his story of the relations he tried to discover;
of the inn at which he first put up, and to which he could not find his
way?"
"Your suggestions
are sensible, Dr. Fenwick. I have forestalled them. It is true that the
man lodged at a small inn,—the Rising Sun; true that lie made inquiries
about some relations of the name of Walls, who formerly resided at L——,
and afterwards removed to a village ten miles distant,—two brothers,
tradesmen of small means but respectable character. He at first refused
to say at what seaport he landed, in what ship he sailed. I suspect that
he has now told a falsehood as to these matters. I sent my clerk to
Southampton, for it is there he said that he was put on shore; we shall
see: the man himself is detained in close custody. I hear that his
manner is strange and excitable; but that he preserves silence as much
as possible. It is generally believed that he is a bad character,
perhaps a returned convict, and that this is the true reason why he so
long delayed giving evidence, and has been since so reluctant to account
for himself. But even if his testimony should be impugned, should break
down, still we should have to account for the fact that the casket and
the case-knife were found in your bureau; for, granting that a person
could, in your absence, have entered your study and placed the articles
in your bureau, it is clear that such a person must have been well
acquainted with your house, and this stranger to L—— could not have
possessed that knowledge."
"Of course not.
Mr. Margrave did possess it!"
"Mr. Margrave
again! oh, sir!"
I arose and moved
away with an impatient gesture. I could not trust myself to speak. That
night I did not sleep; I watched impatiently, gazing on the opposite
wall for the gleam of the Scin-Laeca. But the night passed away, and the
spectre did not appear.
Go to Next Page |