A Strange Story
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Lord Lytton)



PREFACE.

Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the schools of France have
contributed to the intellectual philosophy of our age, Victor Cousin,
the most accomplished, assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the most
original.

In the successive developments of his own mind, Maine de Biran may,
indeed, be said to represent the change that has been silently at work
throughout the general mind of Europe since the close of the last
century.  He begins his career of philosopher with blind faith in
Condillac and Materialism.  As an intellect severely conscientious in
the pursuit of truth expands amidst the perplexities it revolves,
phenomena which cannot be accounted for by Condillac's sensuous theories
open to his eye.  To the first rudimentary life of man, the animal life,
"characterized by impressions, appetites, movements, organic in their
origin and ruled by the Law of Necessity," [1] he is compelled to add,
"the second, or human life, from which Free-will and Self-consciousness
emerge."  He thus arrives at the union of mind and matter; but still a
something is wanted,--some key to the marvels which neither of these
conditions of vital being suffices to explain.  And at last the
grand self-completing Thinker attains to the Third Life of Man in Man's
Soul.

   "There are not," says this philosopher, towards the close of his last
    and loftiest work,--"there are not only two principles opposed to
    each other in Man,--there are three.  For there are in him three
    lives and three orders of faculties.  Though all should be in accord
    and in harmony between the sensitive and the active faculties
    which constitute Man, there would still be a nature superior, a
    third life which would not be satisfied; which would make felt
    (ferait sentir) the truth that there is another happiness, another
    wisdom, another perfection, at once above the greatest human
    happiness, above the highest wisdom, or intellectual and moral
    perfection of which the human being is susceptible." [2]

Now, as Philosophy and Romance both take their origin in the Principle of
Wonder, so in the "Strange Story" submitted to the Public it will be
seen that Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries,
conducts its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which Philosophy
leads its luminous Student, through far grander portents of Nature, far
higher visions of Supernatural Power, than Fable can yield to Fancy.
That goal is defined in these noble words:--

   "The relations (rapports) which exist between the elements and the
    products of the three lives of Man are the subjects of meditation,
    the fairest and finest, but also the most difficult.  The Stoic
    Philosophy shows us all which can be most elevated in active life;
    but it makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely fails
    to recognize all which belongs to the life of the spirit.
    Its practical morality is beyond the forces of humanity.  Christianity
    alone embraces the whole Man.  It dissimulates none of the sides of
    his nature, and avails itself of his miseries and his weakness in
    order to conduct him to his end in showing him all the want that he
    has of a succor more exalted." [3]

In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the objects for which
this tale has been written; and I cite them, with a wish to acknowledge
one of those priceless obligations which writings the lightest and most
fantastic often incur to reasoners the most serious and profound.

But I here construct a romance which should have, as a romance,
some interest for the general reader.  I do not elaborate a treatise
submitted to the logic of sages.  And it is only when "in fairy fiction
drest" that Romance gives admission to "truths severe."

I venture to assume that none will question my privilege to avail
myself of the marvellous agencies which have ever been at the legitimate
command of the fabulist.

To the highest form of romantic narrative, the Epic, critics, indeed,
have declared that a supernatural machinery is indispensable.  That the
Drama has availed itself of the same license as the Epic, it would be
unnecessary to say to the countrymen of Shakspeare, or to the generation
that is yet studying the enigmas of Goethe's "Faust."  Prose Romance has
immemorially asserted, no less than the Epic or the Drama, its heritage
in the Realm of the Marvellous.  The interest which attaches to the
supernatural is sought in the earliest Prose Romance which modern times
take from the ancient, and which, perhaps, had its origin in the lost
Novels of Miletus; [4] and the right to invoke such interest has, ever
since, been maintained by Romance through all varieties of form and
fancy,--from the majestic epopee of "Telemaque" to the graceful fantasies
of "Undine," or the mighty mockeries of "Gulliver's Travels" down to
such comparatively commonplace elements of wonder as yet preserve
from oblivion "The Castle of Otranto" and "The Old English Baron."

Now, to my mind, the true reason why a supernatural agency is
indispensable to the conception of the Epic, is that the Epic is the
highest and the completest form in which Art can express either Man or
Nature, and that without some gleams of the supernatural, Man is not
man nor Nature, nature.

It is said, by a writer to whom an eminent philosophical
critic justly applies the epithets of "pious and profound:" [5]

   "Is it unreasonable to confess that we believe in God, not by reason
    of the Nature which conceals Him, but by reason of the Supernatural
    in Man which alone reveals and proves Him to exist? . . .  Man reveals
    God: for Man, by his intelligence, rises above Nature; and in virtue
    of this intelligence is conscious of himself as a power not only
    independent of, but opposed to, Nature, and capable of resisting,
    conquering, and controlling her."[6]


If the meaning involved in the argument, of which I have here made
but scanty extracts, be carefully studied, I think that we shall find
deeper reasons than the critics who dictated canons of taste to the last
century discovered,--why the supernatural is indispensable to the Epic,
and why it is allowable to all works of imagination, in which Art looks
on Nature with Man's inner sense of a something beyond and above her.

But the Writer who, whether in verse or prose, would avail himself
of such sources of pity or terror as flow from the Marvellous, can
only attain his object in proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a
kind to excite the curiosity of the age he addresses.

In the brains of our time, the faculty of Causation is very markedly
developed.  People nowadays do not delight in the Marvellous according
to the old childlike spirit.  They say in one breath, "Very extraordinary!"
and in the next breath ask, "How do you account for it?"  If the Author of
this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements of interest for
Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader--and certainly no
true son of science--will be disposed to reproach him.  In fact, such
illustrations from the masters of Thought were essential to the
completion of the purpose which pervades the work.

That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the story
approaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic in
the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable
of perceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story,
essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards
which the incidents that give them the character and interest of
of fiction, have been planned and directed from the commencement.

Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the
narrator of a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were
the narrator of facts.  One could not tell the most extravagant
fairy-tale so as to rouse and sustain the attention of the most
infantine listener, if the tale were told as if the taleteller did not
believe in it.  But when the reader lays down this "Strange Story,"
perhaps he will detect, through all the haze of romance, the outlines of
these images suggested to his reason:  Firstly, the image of sensuous,
soulless Nature, such as the Materialist had conceived it; secondly, the
image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its inquiries from
the belief in the spiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all
kinds of perplexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation
before it settles at last into the simple faith which unites the
philosopher and the infant; and thirdly, the image of the erring but
pure-thoughted visionary, seeking over-much on this earth to separate
soul from mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom, and
reason is lost in the space between earth and the stars.  Whether in
these pictures there be any truth worth the implying, every reader
must judge for himself; and if he doubt or deny that there be any
such truth, still, in the process of thought which the doubt or
denial enforces, he may chance on a truth which it pleases himself
to discover.

   "Most of the Fables of AEsop,"--thus says Montaigne in his
    charming essay "Of Books"[7]--"have several senses and meanings, of
    which the Mythologists choose some one that tallies with the fable.
    But for the most part 't is only what presents itself at the first
    view, and is superficial; there being others more lively, essential,
    and internal, into which they had not been able to penetrate;
    and"--adds Montaigne--"the case is the very same with me."

[1] OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. i.  See introduction.

[2] OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii. p. 546 (Anthropologie).

[3] OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii. p. 524.

[4] "The Golden Ass" of Apuleius.

[5] Sir William Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 40.

[6] Jacobi: Von der Gottlichen Dingen; Werke, p. 424-426.

[7] Translation, 1776, Yol. ii. p. 103.




CHAPTER I.

In the year 18-- I settled as a physician at one of the wealthiest
of our great English towns, which I will designate by the initial L----.
I was yet young, but I had acquired some reputation by a professional
work, which is, I believe, still amongst the received authorities on
the subject of which it treats.  I had studied at Edinburgh and at
Paris, and had borne away from both those illustrious schools of medicine
whatever guarantees for future distinction the praise of professors
may concede to the ambition of students.  On becoming a member of
the College of Physicians, I made a tour of the principal cities of
Europe, taking letters of introduction to eminent medical men, and
gathering from many theories and modes of treatment hints to enlarge
the foundations of unprejudiced and comprehensive practice.  I had
resolved to fix my ultimate residence in London.  But before this
preparatory tour was completed, my resolve was changed by one of
those unexpected events which determine the fate man in vain would work
out for himself.  In passing through the Tyro, on my way into the
north of Italy, I found in a small inn, remote from medical attendance, an
English traveller seized with acute inflammation of the lungs, and
in a state of imminent danger.  I devoted myself to him night and
day; and, perhaps more through careful nursing than active remedies, I
had the happiness to effect his complete recovery.  The traveller
proved to be Julius Faber, a physician of great distinction, contented
to reside, where he was born, in the provincial city of L----, but whose
reputation as a profound and original pathologist was widely spread, and
whose writings had formed no unimportant part of my special studies.  It
was during a short holiday excursion, from which he was about to return
with renovated vigour, that he had been thus stricken down.  The patient
so accidentally met with became the founder of my professional fortunes.
He conceived a warm attachment for me,--perhaps the more affectionate
because he was a childless bachelor, and the nephew who would succeed
to his wealth evinced no desire to succeed to the toils by which the
wealth had been acquired.  Thus, having an heir for the one, he had
long looked about for an heir to the other, and now resolved on finding
that heir in me.  So when we parted Dr. Faber made me promise to
correspond with him regularly, and it was not long before he disclosed
by letter the plans he had formed in my favour.  He said that he was
growing old; his practice was beyond his strength; he needed a partner;
he was not disposed to put up to sale the health of patients whom he had
learned to regard as his children: money was no object to him, but it was
an object close at his heart that the humanity he had served, and the
reputation he had acquired, should suffer no loss in his choice of
a successor.  In fine, he proposed that I should at once come to
L---- as his partner, with the view of succeeding to his entire
practice at the end of two years, when it was his intention to retire.

The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that rarely
presents itself to a young man entering upon an overcrowded profession;
and to an aspirant less allured by the desire of fortune than the hope of
distinction, the fame of the physician who thus generously offered
to me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his cordial
introduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice
is not essential to a national renown.

I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership
had expired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far
more than realized my own expectations.  I was fortunate in effecting
some notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it is
everything in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes for
him that confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthened
experience.  To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some
circumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed.  I was
saved from the suspicion of a medical adventurer by the accidents of
birth and fortune.  I belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the
once powerful border-clan of the Fenwicks) that had for many generations
held a fair estate in the neighbourhood of Windermere.  As an only
son I had succeeded to that estate on attaining my majority, and had
sold it to pay off the debts which had been made by my father, who had
the costly tastes of an antiquary and collector.  The residue on the
sale insured me a modest independence apart from the profits of a
profession; and as I had not been legally bound to defray my father's
debts, so I obtained that character for disinterestedness and integrity
which always in England tends to propitiate the public to the successes
achieved by industry or talent.  Perhaps, too, any professional ability
I might possess was the more readily conceded, because I had cultivated
with assiduity the sciences and the scholarship which are collaterally
connected with the study of medicine.  Thus, in a word, I established a
social position which came in aid of my professional repute, and
silenced much of that envy which usually embitters and sometimes impedes
success.

Dr. Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon.  He went
abroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, and
habits of mind still inquiring and eager, he commenced a lengthened
course of foreign travel, during which our correspondence, at first
frequent, gradually languished, and finally died away.

I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which the labours
of thirty years had secured to my predecessor.  My chief rival was a Dr.
Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not without genius, if genius be present
where judgment is absent; not without science, if that may be science which
fails in precision,--one of those clever desultory men who, in adopting
a profession, do not give up to it the whole force and heat of their
minds.  Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanical
routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their
imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring.
Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold or
inventive,--out of it they are sometimes both to excess.  And when they do
take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with an obstinate
tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet
 philosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with the
sobriety of practised eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or
accept in whole, according as inductive experiment supports or destroys
conjecture.

Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before he was
admitted to be a tolerable physician.  Amidst the privations of his youth
he had contrived to form, and with each succeeding year he had
perseveringly increased, a zoological collection of creatures, not
alive, but, happily for the beholder, stuffed or embalmed.  From what I
have said, it will be truly inferred that Dr. Lloyd's early career as a
physician had not been brilliant; but of late years he had gradually
rather aged than worked himself into that professional authority and
station which time confers on a thoroughly respectable man whom no one
is disposed to envy, and all are disposed to like.

Now in L---- there were two distinct social circles,--that of the
wealthy merchants and traders, and that of a few privileged families
inhabiting a part of the town aloof from the marts of commerce, and
called the Abbey Hill.  These superb Areopagites exercised over the
wives and daughters of the inferior citizens to whom all of L----,
except the Abbey Hill, owed its prosperity, the same kind of mysterious
influence which the fine ladies of May Fair and Belgravia are reported
to hold over the female denizens of Bloomsbury and Marylebone.

Abbey Hill was not opulent; but it was powerful by a concentration of
its resources in all matters of patronage.  Abbey Hill had its own
milliner and its own draper, its own confectioner, butcher, baker, and
tea-dealer; and the patronage of Abbey Hill was like the patronage of
royalty,--less lucrative in itself than as a solemn certificate of
general merit.  The shops on which Abbey Hill conferred its custom were
certainly not the cheapest, possibly not the best; but they were
undeniably the most imposing.  The proprietors were decorously pompous,
the shopmen superciliously polite.  They could not be more so if they had
belonged to the State, and been paid by a public which they benefited and
despised.  The ladies of Low Town (as the city subjacent to the Hill had
been styled from a date remote in the feudal ages) entered those shops
with a certain awe, and left them with a certain pride.  There they had
learned what the Hill approved; there they had bought what the Hill had
purchased.  It is much in this life to be quite sure that we are in the
right, whatever that conviction may cost us.  Abbey Hill had been in the
habit of appointing, amongst other objects of patronage, its own
physician.  But that habit had fallen into disuse during the latter years
of my predecessor's practice.  His superiority over all other medical men
in the town had become so incontestable, that, though he was emphatically
the doctor of Low Town, the head of its hospitals and infirmaries, and by
birth related to its principal traders, still as Abbey Hill was
occasionally subject to the physical infirmities of meaner mortals, so on
those occasions it deemed it best not to push the point of honour to the
wanton sacrifice of life.  Since Low Town possessed one of the most
famous physicians in England, Abbey Hill magnanimously resolved not to
crush him by a rival.  Abbey Hill let him feel its pulse.

When my predecessor retired, I had presumptuously expected that the
Hill would have continued to suspend its normal right to a special
physician, and shown to me the same generous favour it had shown to him,
who had declared me worthy to succeed to his honours.  I had the more
excuse for this presumption because the Hill had already allowed me to
visit a fair proportion of its invalids, had said some very gracious
things to me about the great respectability of the Fenwick family, and
sent me some invitations to dinner, and a great many invitations to tea.

But my self-conceit received a notable check.  Abbey Hill declared
that the time had come to reassert its dormant privilege; it must have a
doctor of its own choosing,--a doctor who might, indeed, be permitted to
visit Low Town from motives of humanity or gain, but who must
emphatically assert his special allegiance to Abbey Hill by fixing his
home on that venerable promontory.  Miss Brabazon, a spinster of
uncertain age but undoubted pedigree, with small fortune but high nose,
which she would pleasantly observe was a proof of her descent from
Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, in spite
of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned to inquire of
me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too much by the
overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, in which
abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was still
popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in
that case the "Hill" would think of me.

"It is a large house for a single man, I allow," said Miss Brabazon,
candidly; and then added, with a sidelong glance of alarming sweetness,
"but when Dr. Fenwick has taken his true position (so old a family!)
amongst us, he need not long remain single, unless he prefer it."

I replied, with more asperity than the occasion called for, that I had
no thought of changing my residence at present, and if the Hill wanted me,
the Hill must send for me.

Two days afterwards Dr. Lloyd took Abbots' House, and in less than a
week was proclaimed medical adviser to the Hill.  The election had been
decided by the fiat of a great lady, who reigned supreme on the sacred
eminence, under the name and title of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.

"Dr. Fenwick," said this lady, "is a clever young man and a
gentleman, but he gives himself airs,--the Hill does not allow any airs
but its own.  Besides, he is a newcomer: resistance to newcomers, and,
indeed, to all things new, except caps and novels, is one of the bonds that
keep old established societies together.  Accordingly, it is by my advice
that Dr. Lloyd has taken Abbots' House; the rent would be too high for his
means if the Hill did not feel bound in honour to justify the trust he
has placed in its patronage.  I told him that all my friends, when they
were in want of a doctor, would send for him; those who are my friends
will do so.  What the Hill does, plenty of common people down there will
do also,--so that question is settled!"  And it was settled.

Dr. Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon extended the range of his
visits beyond the Hill, which was not precisely a mountain of gold to
doctors, and shared with myself, though in a comparatively small degree,
the much more lucrative practice of Low Town.

I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I.  But to my theories
of medicine his diagnosis was shallow, and his prescriptions obsolete.
When we were summoned to a joint consultation, our views as to the proper
course of treatment seldom agreed.  Doubtless he thought I ought to have
deferred to his seniority in years; but I held the doctrine which youth
deems a truth and age a paradox,--namely, that in science the young men
are the practical elders, inasmuch as they are schooled in the latest
experiences science has gathered up, while their seniors are cramped by
the dogmas they were schooled to believe when the world was some decades
the younger.

Meanwhile my reputation continued rapidly to advance; it became more
than local; my advice was sought even by patients from the metropolis.
That ambition, which, conceived in early youth, had decided my career and
sweetened all its labours,--the ambition to take a rank and leave a name
as one of the great pathologists to whom humanity accords a grateful, if
calm, renown,--saw before it a level field and a certain goal.

I know not whether a success far beyond that usually attained at the
age I had reached served to increase, but it seemed to myself to
justify, the main characteristic of my moral organization,--intellectual
pride.

Though mild and gentle to the sufferers under my care, as a necessary
element of professional duty, I was intolerant of contradiction from
those who belonged to my calling, or even from those who, in general
opinion, opposed my favourite theories.  I had espoused a school of
medical philosophy severely rigid in its inductive logic.  My creed was
that of stern materialism.  I had a contempt for the understanding of men
who accepted with credulity what they could not explain by reason.  My
favourite phrase was "common-sense."  At the same time I had no prejudice
against bold discovery, and discovery necessitates conjecture, but
I dismissed as idle all conjecture that could not be brought to a
practical test.

As in medicine I had been the pupil of Broussais, so in
metaphysics I was the disciple of Condillac.  I believed with that
philosopher that "all our knowledge we owe to Nature; that in the
beginning we can only instruct ourselves through her lessons; and that
the whole art of reasoning consists in continuing as she has compelled us
to commence."  Keeping natural philosophy apart from the doctrines of
revelation, I never assailed the last; but I contended that by the first
no accurate reasoner could arrive at the existence of the soul as a third
principle of being equally distinct from mind and body.  That by a
miracle man might live again, was a question of faith and not of
understanding.  I left faith to religion, and banished it from
philosophy.  How define with a precision to satisfy the logic of
philosophy what was to live again?  The body?  We know that the
body rests in its grave till by the process of decomposition its
elemental parts enter into other forms of matter.  The mind?  But the
mind was as clearly the result of the bodily organization as the music of
the harpsichord is the result of the instrumental mechanism.  The mind
shared the decrepitude of the body in extreme old age, and in the
full vigour of youth a sudden injury to the brain might forever destroy
the intellect of a Plato or a Shakspeare.  But the third principle,--the
soul,--the something lodged within the body, which yet was to survive it?
Where was that soul hidden out of the ken of the anatomist?  When
philosophers attempted to define it, were they not compelled to confound
its nature and its actions with those of the mind?  Could they reduce it
to the mere moral sense, varying according to education, circumstances,
and physical constitution?  But even the moral sense in the most virtuous
of men may be swept away by a fever.  Such at the time I now speak of
were the views I held,--views certainly not original nor pleasing; but I
cherished them with as fond a tenacity as if they had been consolatory
truths of which I was the first discoverer.  I was intolerant to those who
maintained opposite doctrines,--despised them as irrational, or disliked
them as insincere.  Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my
ambition predicted,--become the founder of a new school in pathology, and
summed up my theories in academical lectures,--I should have added
another authority, however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the
interest of man to the life that has its close in his grave.

Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was more
nourished than I should have been willing to grant by the self-reliance
which an unusual degree of physical power is apt to bestow.  Nature had
blessed me with the thews of an athlete.  Among the hardy youths of the
Northern Athens I had been preeminently distinguished for feats of
activity and strength.  My mental labours, and the anxiety which is
inseparable from the conscientious responsibilities of the medical
profession, kept my health below the par of keen enjoyment, but had in no
way diminished my rare muscular force.  I walked through the crowd with
the firm step and lofty crest of the mailed knight of old, who felt
himself, in his casement of iron, a match against numbers.  Thus the
sense of a robust individuality, strong alike in disciplined reason and
animal vigour, habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself,
contributed to render me imperious in will and arrogant in opinion.  Nor
were such defects injurious to me in my profession; on the contrary,
aided as they were by a calm manner, and a presence not without that kind
of dignity which is the livery of self-esteem, they served to impose
respect and to inspire trust.




CHAPTER II.

I had been about six years at L---- when I became suddenly involved
in a controversy with Dr. Lloyd.  Just as this ill-fated man appeared at
the culminating point of his professional fortunes, he had the imprudence
to proclaim himself not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism as
a curative process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambular
clairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organizations.
To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself,--the more sternly, perhaps,
because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for the
existence of soul, independent of mind, as of matter, and built thereon a
superstructure of physiological fantasies, which, could it be
substantiated, would replace every system of metaphysics on which
recognized philosophy condescends to dispute.

About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puysegur than
Mesmer (for Mesmer hard little faith in that gift of clairvoyance of
which Puysegur was, I believe, at least in modern times, the first
audacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with the loss of a wife
many years younger than himself, and to whom he had been tenderly
attached.  And this bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoled him
to a world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him more
credulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional proofs of
purely spiritual existence.  Certainly, if, in controverting the
notions of another physiologist, I had restricted myself to that
fair antagonism which belongs to scientific disputants anxious only for
the truth, I should need no apology for sincere conviction and honest
argument; but when, with condescending good-nature, as if to a man
much younger than himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he
nevertheless denied, Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his seances and
witness his cures, my amour propre became aroused and nettled, and it
seemed to me necessary to put down what I asserted to be too gross an
outrage on common-sense to justify the ceremony of examination.  I wrote,
therefore, a small pamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted all the
weapons that irony can lend to contempt.  Dr. Lloyd replied; and as he was
no very skilful arguer, his reply injured him perhaps more than my
assault.  Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries as to the moral character
of his favourite clairvoyants.  I imagined that I had learned enough to
justify me in treating them as flagrant cheats, and himself as their
egregious dupe.

Low Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on my side.
The Hill at first seemed disposed to rally round its insulted physician,
and to make the dispute a party question, in which the Hill would have
been signally worsted, when suddenly the same lady paramount, who had
secured to Dr. Lloyd the smile of the Eminence, spoke forth against him,
and the Eminence frowned.

"Dr. Lloyd," said the Queen of the Hill, "is an amiable creature,
but on this subject decidedly cracked.  Cracked poets may be all the
better for being cracked,--cracked doctors are dangerous.  Besides, in
deserting that old-fashioned routine, his adherence to which made his
claim to the Hill's approbation, and unsettling the mind of the Hill with
wild revolutionary theories, Dr. Lloyd has betrayed the principles on
which the Hill itself rests its social foundations.  Of those principles
Dr. Fenwick has made himself champion; and the Hill is bound to support
him.  There, the question is settled!"

And it was settled.

From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus issued the word of
command, Dr. Lloyd was demolished.  His practice was gone, as well as his
repute.  Mortification or anger brought on a stroke of paralysis which,
disabling my opponent, put an end to our controversy.  An obscure
Dr. Jones, who had been the special pupil and protege of Dr. Lloyd,
offered himself as a candidate for the Hill's tongues and pulses.  The
Hill gave him little encouragement.  It once more suspended its electoral
privileges, and, without insisting on calling me up to it, the Hill
quietly called me in whenever its health needed other advice than that of
its visiting apothecary.  Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner,
often to tea; and again Miss Brabazon assured me by a sidelong glance
that it was no fault of hers if I were still single.

I had almost forgotten the dispute which had obtained for me so
conspicuous a triumph, when one winter's night I was roused from sleep by
a summons to attend Dr.Lloyd, who, attacked by a second stroke a few
hours previously, had, on recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire
to consult the rival by whom he had suffered so severely.  I dressed
myself in haste and hurried to his house.

A February night, sharp and bitter; an iron-gray frost below, a
spectral melancholy moon above.  I had to ascend the Abbey Hill by a
steep, blind lane between high walls.  I passed through stately gates,
which stood wide open, into the garden ground that surrounded the old
Abbots' House.  At the end of a short carriage-drive the dark and
gloomy building cleared itself from leafless skeleton trees,--the moon
resting keen and cold on its abrupt gables and lofty chimney-stacks.
An old woman-servant received me at the door, and, without saying a
word, led me through a long low hall, and up dreary oak stairs, to a
broad landing, at which she paused for a moment, listening.  Round
and about hall, staircase, and landing were ranged the dead specimens
of the savage world which it had been the pride of the naturalist's
life to collect.  Close where I stood yawned the open jaws of the fell
anaconda, its lower coils hidden, as they rested on the floor
below, by the winding of the massive stairs.  Against the dull wainscot
walls were pendent cases stored with grotesque unfamiliar mummies, seen
imperfectly by the moon that shot through the window-panes, and the
candle in the old woman's hand.  And as now she turned towards me,
nodding her signal to follow, and went on up the shadowy passage,
rows of gigantic birds--ibis and vulture, and huge sea glaucus--glared
at me in the false light of their hungry eyes.

So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance told me that my
art was powerless there.

The children of the stricken widower were grouped round his bed, the
eldest apparently about fifteen, the youngest four; one little girl--the
only female child--was clinging to her father's neck, her face pressed
to his bosom, and in that room her sobs alone were loud.

As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his face, which had been
bent over the weeping child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strange
glee, which I failed to interpret.  Then as I stole towards him softly
and slowly, he pressed his lips on the long fair tresses that streamed
wild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who stood beside his pillow to
take the child away, and in a voice clearer than I could have expected in
one on whose brow lay the unmistakable hand of death, he bade the nurse
and the children quit the room.  All went sorrowfully, but silently, save
the little girl, who, borne off in the nurse's arms, continued to sob as
if her heart were breaking.

I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it moved me to the
quick.  My eyes wistfully followed the children so soon to be orphans, as
one after one went out into the dark chill shadow, and amidst the
bloodless forms of the dumb brute nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond
the death-room of man.  And when the last infant shape had vanished, and
the door closed with a jarring click, my sight wandered loiteringly
around the chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on the broken
form, beside which I now stood in all that glorious vigour of frame which
had fostered the pride of my mind.  In the moment consumed by my mournful
survey, the whole aspect of the place impressed itself ineffaceably on
lifelong remembrance.  Through the high, deep-sunken casement, across
which the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn, the moonlight rushed,
and then settled on the floor in one shroud of white glimmer, lost under
the gloom of the death-bed.  The roof was low, and seemed lower still by
heavy intersecting beams, which I might have touched with my lifted hand.
And the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker from the
fire struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on it, threw their
reflection on the ceiling just over my head in a reek of quivering
blackness, like an angry cloud.

Suddenly I felt my arm grasped; with his left hand (the right side was
already lifeless) the dying man drew me towards him nearer and nearer,
till his lips almost touched my ear, and, in a voice now firm, now
splitting into gasp and hiss, thus he said, "I have summoned you to gaze
on your own work!  You have stricken down my life at the moment when it
was most needed by my children, and most serviceable to mankind.  Had I
lived a few years longer, my children would have entered on manhood, safe
from the temptations of want and undejected by the charity of strangers.
Thanks to you, they will be penniless orphans.  Fellow-creatures
afflicted by maladies your pharmacopoeia had failed to reach came to me
for relief, and they found it.  'The effect of imagination,' you say.
What matters, if I directed the imagination to cure?  Now you have mocked
the unhappy ones out of their last chance of life.  They will suffer and
perish.  Did you believe me in error?  Still you knew that my object was
research into truth.  You employed against your brother in art venomous
drugs and a poisoned probe.  Look at me!  Are you satisfied with your
work?"

I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from the dying man's grasp.  I
could not do so without using a force that would have been inhuman.  His
lips drew nearer still to my ear.

"Vain pretender, do not boast that you brought a genius for epigram to
the service of science.  Science is lenient to all who offer experiment
as the test of conjecture.  You are of the stuff of which inquisitors are
made.  You cry that truth is profaned when your dogmas are questioned.
In your shallow presumption you have meted the dominions of nature, and
where your eye halts its vision, you say, 'There nature must close;' in
the bigotry which adds crime to presumption, you would stone the
discoverer who, in annexing new realms to her chart, unsettles your
arbitrary landmarks.  Verily, retribution shall await you!  In those
spaces which your sight has disdained to explore you shall yourself be a
lost and bewildered straggler.  Hist!  I see them already!  The gibbering
phantoms are gathering round you!"

The man's voice stopped abruptly; his eye fixed in a glazing stare;
his hand relaxed its hold; he fell back on his pillow.  I stole from the
room; on the landing-place I met the nurse and the old woman-servant.
Happily the children were not there.  But I heard the wail of the female
child from some room not far distant.

I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, "All is over!" passed again under
the jaws of the vast anaconda, and on through the blind lane between the
dead walls, on through the ghastly streets, under the ghastly moon, went
back to my solitary home.




CHAPTER III.

It was some time before I could shake off the impression made on me by
the words and the look of that dying man.

It was not that my conscience upbraided me.  What had I done?
Denounced that which I held, in common with most men of sense in or out
of my profession, to be one of those illusions by which quackery draws
profit from the wonder of ignorance.  Was I to blame if I refused to
treat with the grave respect due to asserted discovery in legitimate
science pretensions to powers akin to the fables of wizards?  Was I to
descend from the Academe of decorous science to examine whether a
slumbering sibyl could read from a book placed at her back, or tell me at
L---- what at that moment was being done by my friend at the Antipodes?

And what though Dr. Lloyd himself might be a worthy and honest man,
and a sincere believer in the extravagances for which he demanded an
equal credulity in others, do not honest men every day incur the penalty
of ridicule if, from a defect of good sense, they make themselves
ridiculous?  Could I have foreseen that a satire so justly provoked would
inflict so deadly a wound?  Was I inhumanly barbarous because the
antagonist destroyed was morbidly sensitive?  My conscience, therefore,
made me no reproach, and the public was as little severe as my conscience.
The public had been with me in our contest; the public knew nothing of my
opponent's deathbed accusations; the public knew only that I had attended
him in his last moments; it saw me walk beside the bier that bore him to
his grave; it admired the respect to his memory which I evinced in the
simple tomb that I placed over his remains, inscribed with an epitaph that
did justice to his unquestionable benevolence and integrity; above all, it
praised the energy with which I set on foot a subscription for his orphan
children, and the generosity with which I headed that subscription by a
sum that was large in proportion to my means.

To that sum I did not, indeed, limit my contribution.  The sobs of the
poor female child rang still on my heart.  As her grief had been keener
than that of her brothers, so she might be subjected to sharper trials
than they, when the time came for her to fight her own way through the
world; therefore I secured to her, but with such precautions that the
gift could not be traced to my hand, a sum to accumulate till she was
of marriageable age, and which then might suffice for a small wedding
portion; or if she remained single, for an income that would place her
beyond the temptation of want, or the bitterness of a servile dependence.

That Dr. Lloyd should have died in poverty was a matter of
surprise at first, for his profits during the last few years had been
considerable, and his mode of life far from extravagant.  But just before
the date of our controversy he had been induced to assist the brother of
his lost wife, who was a junior partner in a London bank, with the loan
of his accumulated savings.  This man proved dishonest; he embezzled that
and other sums intrusted to him, and fled the country.  The same sentiment
of conjugal affection which had cost Dr. Lloyd his fortune kept him
silent as to the cause of the loss.  It was reserved for his executors to
discover the treachery of the brother-in-law whom he, poor man, would
have generously screened from additional disgrace.

The Mayor of L----, a wealthy and public-spirited merchant, purchased the
museum, which Dr. Lloyd's passion for natural history had induced him to
form; and the sum thus obtained, together with that raised by subscription,
sufficed not only to discharge all debts due by the deceased, but to
insure to the orphans the benefits of an education that might fit at
least the boys to enter fairly armed into that game, more of skill than
of chance, in which Fortune is really so little blinded that we see, in
each turn of her wheel, wealth and its honours pass away from the lax
fingers of ignorance and sloth, to the resolute grasp of labour and
knowledge.

Meanwhile a relation in a distant county undertook the charge of the
orphans; they disappeared from the scene, and the tides of life in a
commercial community soon flowed over the place which the dead man had
occupied in the thoughts of his bustling townsfolk.

One person at L----, and only one, appeared to share and inherit the
rancour with which the poor physician had denounced me on his death-bed.
It was a gentleman named Vigors, distantly related to the deceased, and who
had been, in point of station, the most eminent of Dr. Lloyd's partisans
in the controversy with myself, a man of no great scholastic
acquirements, but of respectable abilities.  He had that kind of power
which the world concedes to respectable abilities when accompanied
with a temper more than usually stern, and a moral character more than
usually austere.  His ruling passion was to sit in judgment upon others;
and being a magistrate, he was the most active and the most rigid of all
the magistrates L---- had ever known.

Mr. Vigors at first spoke of me with great bitterness, as having
ruined, and in fact killed, his friend, by the uncharitable and unfair
acerbity which he declared I had brought into what ought to have been an
unprejudiced examination of simple matter of fact.  But finding no
sympathy in these charges, he had the discretion to cease from making them,
contenting himself with a solemn shake of his head if he heard my
name mentioned in terms of praise, and an oracular sentence or two, such
as "Time will show," "All's well that ends well," etc.  Mr. Vigors,
however, mixed very little in the more convivial intercourse of the
townspeople.  He called himself domestic; but, in truth, he was
ungenial,--a stiff man, starched with self-esteem.  He thought that his
dignity of station was not sufficiently acknowledged by the merchants of
Low Town, and his superiority of intellect not sufficiently recognized by
the exclusives of the Hill.  His visits were, therefore, chiefly confined
to the houses of neighbouring squires, to whom his reputation as a
magistrate, conjoined with his solemn exterior, made him one of
those oracles by which men consent to be awed on condition that the awe is
not often inflicted.  And though he opened his house three times a week,
it was only to a select few, whom he first fed and then biologized.
Electro-biology was very naturally the special entertainment of a man whom
no intercourse ever pleased in which his will was not imposed upon others.
Therefore he only invited to his table persons whom he could stare into
the abnegation of their senses, willing to say that beef was lamb, or
brandy was coffee, according as he willed them to say.  And, no doubt, the
persons asked would have said anything he willed, so long as they had, in
substance, as well as in idea, the beef and the brandy, the lamb and the
coffee.  I did not, then, often meet Mr. Vigors at the houses in which I
occasionally spent my evenings.  I heard of his enmity as a man safe in
his home hears the sough of a wind on a common without.  If now and then
we chanced to pass in the streets, he looked up at me (he was a small man
walking on tiptoe) with a sullen scowl of dislike; and from the height of
my stature, I dropped upon the small man and sullen scowl the affable
smile of supreme indifference.




CHAPTER IV.

I had now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, satisfied with
his progress in the world without, begins to feel in the cravings of
unsatisfied affection the void of a solitary hearth.  I resolved to marry,
and looked out for a wife.  I had never hitherto admitted into my life the
passion of love.  In fact, I had regarded that passion, even in my earlier
youth, with a certain superb contempt,--as a malady engendered by an
effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly imagination.

I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affectionate and
trustworthy friend.  No views of matrimony could be less romantic, more
soberly sensible, than those which I conceived.  Nor were my requirements
mercenary or presumptuous.  I cared not for fortune; I asked nothing from
connections.  My ambition was exclusively professional; it could be
served by no titled kindred, accelerated by no wealthy dower.  I was no
slave to beauty.  I did not seek in a wife the accomplishments of a
finishing-school teacher.

Having decided that the time had come to select my helpmate, I imagined
that I should find no difficulty in a choice that my reason would approve.
But day upon day, week upon week, passed away, and though among the
families I visited there were many young ladies who possessed more than
the qualifications with which I conceived that I should be amply
contented, and by whom I might flatter myself that my proposals would not
be disdained, I saw not one to whose lifelong companionship I should not
infinitely have preferred the solitude I found so irksome.

One evening, in returning home from visiting a poor female patient
whom I attended gratuitously, and whose case demanded more thought than
that of any other in my list,--for though it had been considered hopeless
in the hospital, and she had come home to die, I felt certain that I
could save her, and she seemed recovering under my care,--one evening--it
was the fifteenth of May--I found myself just before the gates of the
house that had been inhabited by Dr. Lloyd.  Since his death the house
had been unoccupied; the rent asked for it by the proprietor was
considered high; and from the sacred Hill on which it was situated,
shyness or pride banished the wealthier traders.  The garden gates stood
wide open, as they had stood on the winter night on which I had passed
through them to the chamber of death.  The remembrance of that death-bed
came vividly before me, and the dying man's fantastic threat rang again in
my startled ears.  An irresistible impulse, which I could not then account
for, and which I cannot account for now,--an impulse the reverse of that
which usually makes us turn away with quickened step from a spot that
recalls associations of pain,--urged me on through the open gates up the
neglected grass-grown road, urged me to look, under the weltering sun of
the joyous spring, at that house which I bad never seen but in the gloom
of a winter night, under the melancholy moon.  As the building came in
sight, with dark-red bricks, partially overgrown with ivy, I perceived
that it was no longer unoccupied.  I saw forms passing athwart the open
windows; a van laden with articles of furniture stood before the door; a
servant in livery was beside it giving directions to the men who were
unloading.  Evidently some family was just entering into possession.  I
felt somewhat ashamed of my trespass, and turned round quickly to retrace
my steps.  I had retreated but a few yards, when I saw before me, at
the entrance gates, Mr. Vigors, walking beside a lady apparently of middle
age; while, just at hand, a path cut through the shrubs gave view of a
small wicket-gate at the end of the grounds.  I felt unwilling not only to
meet the lady, whom I guessed to be the new occupier, and to whom I should
have to make a somewhat awkward apology for intrusion, but still more to
encounter the scornful look of Mr. Vigors in what appeared to my pride a
false or undignified position.  Involuntarily, therefore, I turned down
the path which would favour my escape unobserved.  When about half way
between the house and the wicket-gate, the shrubs that had clothed the
path on either side suddenly opened to the left, bringing into view a
circle of sward, surrounded by irregular fragments of old brickwork
partially covered with ferns, creepers, or rockplants, weeds, or wild
flowers; and, in the centre of the circle, a fountain, or rather well,
over which was built a Gothic monastic dome, or canopy, resting on small
Norman columns, time-worn, dilapidated.  A large willow overhung this
unmistakable relic of the ancient abbey.  There was an air of antiquity,
romance, legend about this spot, so abruptly disclosed amidst the delicate
green of the young shrubberies.  But it was not the ruined wall nor the
Gothic well that chained my footstep and charmed my eye.

It was a solitary human form, seated amidst the mournful ruins.

The form was so slight, the face so young, that at the first
glance I murmured to myself, "What a lovely child!"  But as my eye
lingered it recognized in the upturned thoughtful brow, in the sweet,
serious aspect, in the rounded outlines of that slender shape, the
inexpressible dignity of virgin woman.

A book was on her lap, at her feet a little basket, half-filled
with violets and blossoms culled from the rockplants that nestled amidst
the ruins.  Behind her, the willow, like an emerald waterfall, showered
down its arching abundant green, bough after bough, from the tree-top to
the sward, descending in wavy verdure, bright towards the summit, in the
smile of the setting sun, and darkening into shadow as it neared the
earth.

She did not notice, she did not see me; her eyes were fixed upon the
horizon, where it sloped farthest into space, above the treetops and the
ruins,--fixed so intently that mechanically I turned my own gaze to follow
the flight of hers.  It was as if she watched for some expected, familiar
sign to grow out from the depths of heaven; perhaps to greet, before
other eyes beheld it, the ray of the earliest star.

The birds dropped from the boughs on the turf around her so fearlessly
that one alighted amidst the flowers in the little basket at her feet.
There is a famous German poem, which I had read in my youth, called the
Maiden from Abroad, variously supposed to be an allegory of Spring, or of
Poetry, according to the choice of commentators: it seemed to me as if the
poem had been made for her.  Verily, indeed, in her, poet or painter might
have seen an image equally true to either of those adornments of the
earth; both outwardly a delight to sense, yet both wakening up thoughts
within us, not sad, but akin to sadness.

I heard now a step behind me, and a voice which I recognized to be that
of Mr. Vigors.  I broke from the charm by which I had been so lingeringly
spell-bound, hurried on confusedly, gained the wicket-gate, from which a
short flight of stairs descended into the common thoroughfare.  And there
the every-day life lay again before me.  On the opposite side, houses,
shops, church-spires; a few steps more, and the bustling streets!  How
immeasurably far from, yet how familiarly near to, the world in which we
move and have being is that fairy-land of romance which opens out from the
hard earth before us, when Love steals at first to our side, fading back
into the hard earth again as Love smiles or sighs its farewell!




CHAPTER V.

And before that evening I had looked on Mr. Vigors with supreme
indifference!  What importance he now assumed in my eyes!  The lady with
whom I had seen him was doubtless the new tenant of that house in which
the young creature by whom my heart was so strangely moved evidently had
her home.  Most probably the relation between the two ladies was that of
mother and daughter.  Mr. Vigors, the friend of one, might himself be
related to both, might prejudice them against me, might--Here, starting
up, I snapped the thread of conjecture, for right before my eyes, on the
table beside which I had seated myself on entering my room, lay a card
of invitation:--

            MRS. POYNTZ.
              At Home,
         Wednesday, May 15th.
      Early.


Mrs. Poyntz,--Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, the Queen of the Hill?  There,
at her house, I could not fail to learn all about the newcomers, who
could never without her sanction have settled on her domain.

I hastily changed my dress, and, with beating heart, wound my way up the
venerable eminence.

I did not pass through the lane which led direct to Abbots' House
(for that old building stood solitary amidst its grounds a little apart
from the spacious platform on which the society of the Hill was
concentrated), but up the broad causeway, with vistaed gaslamps; the gayer
shops still-unclosed, the tide of busy life only slowly ebbing from the
still-animated street, on to a square, in which the four main
thoroughfares of the city converged, and which formed the boundary of Low
Town.  A huge dark archway, popularly called Monk's Gate, at the angle of
this square, made the entrance to Abbey Hill.  When the arch was passed,
one felt at once that one was in the town of a former day.  The pavement
was narrow and rugged; the shops small, their upper stories projecting,
with here and there plastered fronts, quaintly arabesque.  An ascent,
short, but steep and tortuous, conducted at once to the old Abbey Church,
nobly situated in a vast quadrangle, round which were the genteel and
gloomy dwellings of the Areopagites of the Hill.  More genteel and less
gloomy than the rest--lights at the windows and flowers on the
balcony--stood forth, flanked by a garden wall at either side, the mansion
of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.

As I entered the drawing-room, I heard the voice of the hostess; it
was a voice clear, decided, metallic, bell-like, uttering these words:
"Taken Abbots' House?  I will tell you."




CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Poyntz was seated on the sofa; at her right sat fat Mrs. Bruce,
who was a Scotch lord's grand-daughter; at her left thin Miss Brabazon,
who was an Irish baronet's niece.  Around her--a few seated, many
standing--had grouped all the guests, save two old gentlemen, who had
remained aloof with Colonel Poyntz near the whist-table, waiting for the
fourth old gentleman who was to make up the rubber, but who was at that
moment spell-bound in the magic circle which curiosity, that strongest of
social demons, had attracted round the hostess.

"Taken Abbots' House?  I will tell you.--Ah, Dr. Fenwick, charmed to
see you.  You know Abbots' House is let at last?  Well, Miss Brabazon,
dear, you ask who has taken it.  I will inform you,--a particular friend
of mine."

"Indeed!  Dear me!" said Miss Brabazon, looking confused.  "I hope I
did not say anything to--"

"Wound my feelings.  Not in the least.  You said your uncle Sir
Phelim employed a coachmaker named Ashleigh, that Ashleigh was an uncommon
name, though Ashley was a common one; you intimated an appalling suspicion
that the Mrs. Ashleigh who had come to the Hill was the coachmaker's
widow.  I relieve your mind,--she is not; she is the widow of Gilbert
Ashleigh, of Kirby Hall."

"Gilbert Ashleigh," said one of the guests, a bachelor, whose parents
had reared him for the Church, but who, like poor Goldsmith, did not think
himself good enough for it, a mistake of overmodesty, for he matured into
a very harmless creature.  "Gilbert Ashleigh?  I was at Oxford with
him,--a gentleman commoner of Christ Church.  Good-looking man, very;
sapped--"

"Sapped! what's that?--Oh, studied.  That he did all his life.  He
married young,--Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls together; married the
same year.  They settled at Kirby Hall--nice place, but dull.  Poyntz and
I spent a Christmas there.  Ashleigh when he talked was charming, but he
talked very little.  Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and she
talked very much.  Naturally, poor thing,---she was so happy.  Poyntz and
I did not spend another Christmas there.  Friendship is long, but life is
short.  Gilbert Ashleigh's life was short indeed; he died in the seventh
year of his marriage, leaving only one child, a girl.  Since then, though
I never spent another Christmas at Kirby Hall, I have frequently spent a
day there, doing my best to cheer up Anne.  She was no longer talkative,
poor dear.  Wrapped up in her child, who has now grown into a beautiful
girl of eighteen--such eyes, her father's--the real dark blue--rare; sweet
creature, but delicate; not, I hope, consumptive, but delicate; quiet,
wants life.  My girl Jane adores her.  Jane has life enough for two."

"Is Miss Ashleigh the heiress to Kirby Hall?" asked Mrs. Bruce, who
had an unmarried son.

"No.  Kirby Hall passed to Ashleigh Sumner, the male heir, a cousin.
And the luckiest of cousins!  Gilbert's sister, showy woman (indeed all
show), had contrived to marry her kinsman, Sir Walter Ashleigh Haughton,
the head of the Ashleigh family,--just the man made to be the reflector of
a showy woman!  He died years ago, leaving an only son, Sir James, who was
killed last winter, by a fall from his horse.  And here, again, Ashleigh
Summer proved to be the male heir-at-law.  During the minority of this
fortunate youth, Mrs. Ashleigh had rented Kirby Hall of his guardian.  He
is now just coming of age, and that is why she leaves.  Lilian Ashleigh
will have, however, a very good fortune,--is what we genteel paupers call
an heiress.  Is there anything more you want to know?"

Said thin Miss Brabazon, who took advantage of her thinness to wedge
herself into every one's affairs, "A most interesting account.  What a
nice place Abbots' House could be made with a little taste!  So
aristocratic!  Just what I should like if I could afford it!  The
drawing-room should be done up in the Moorish style, with
geranium-coloured silk curtains, like dear Lady L----'s boudoir at
Twickenham.  And Mrs. Ashleigh has taken the house on lease too, I
suppose!"  Here Miss Brabazon fluttered her fan angrily, and then
exclaimed, "But what on earth brings Mrs. Ashleigh here?"

Answered Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, with the military frankness by which she
kept her company in good humour, as well as awe,--

"Why do any of us come here?  Can any one tell me?"

There was a blank silence, which the hostess herself was the first to
break.

"None of us present can say why we came here.  I can tell you why
Mrs. Ashleigh came.  Our neighbour, Mr. Vigors, is a distant connection of
the late Gilbert Ashleigh, one of the executors to his will, and the
guardian to the heir-at-law.  About ten days ago Mr. Vigors called on me,
for the first time since I felt it my duty to express my disapprobation of
the strange vagaries so unhappily conceived by our poor dear friend Dr.
Lloyd.  And when he had taken his chair, just where you now sit,
Dr. Fenwick, he said in a sepulchral voice, stretching out two fingers,
so,--as if I were one of the what-do-you-call-'ems who go to sleep when he
bids them, 'Marm, you know Mrs. Ashleigh?  You correspond with her?'
'Yes, Mr. Vigors; is there any crime in that?  You look as if there were.'
'No crime, marm,' said the man, quite seriously.  'Mrs. Ashleigh is a lady
of amiable temper, and you are a woman of masculine understanding.'"

Here there was a general titter.  Mrs. Colonel Poyntz hushed it
with a look of severe surprise.  "What is there to laugh at?  All women
would be men if they could.  If my understanding is masculine, so much the
better for me.  I thanked Mr. Vigors for his very handsome compliment, and
he then went on to say that though Mrs. Ashleigh would now have to leave
Kirby Hall in a very few weeks, she seemed quite unable to make up her
mind where to go; that it had occurred to him that, as Miss Ashleigh was
of an age to see a little of the world, she ought not to remain buried in
the country; while, being of quiet mind, she recoiled from the dissipation
of London.  Between the seclusion of the one and the turmoil of the other,
the society of L---- was a happy medium.  He should be glad of my opinion.
He had put off asking for it, because he owned his belief that I had
behaved unkindly to his lamented friend, Dr. Lloyd; but he now found
himself in rather an awkward position.  His ward, young Sumner, had
prudently resolved on fixing his country residence at Kirby Hall, rather
than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat which had so suddenly passed
to his inheritance, and which he could not occupy without a vast
establishment, that to a single man, so young, would be but a cumbersome
and costly trouble.  Mr. Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain him
possession of Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleigh
did not seem disposed to stir,--could not decide where else to go.  Mr.
Vigors was loth to press hard on his old friend's widow and child.  It was
a thousand pities Mrs Ashleigh could not make up her mind; she had had
ample time for preparation.  A word from me at this moment would be an
effective kindness.  Abbots' House was vacant, with a garden so extensive
that the ladies would not miss the country.  Another party was after it,
but--'Say no more,' I cried; 'no party but my dear old friend Anne
Ashleigh shall have Abbots' House.  So that question is settled.'  I
dismissed Mr. Vigors, sent for my carriage, that is, for Mr. Barker's
yellow fly and his best horses,--and drove that very day to Kirby Hall,
which, though not in this county, is only twenty-five miles distant.  I
slept there that night.  By nine o'clock the next morning I had secured
Mrs. Ashleigh's consent, on the promise to save her all trouble; came
back, sent for the landlord, settled the rent, lease, agreement; engaged
Forbes' vans to remove the furniture from Kirby Hall; told Forbes to begin
with the beds.  When her own bed came, which was last night, Anne Ashleigh
came too.  I have seen her this morning.  She likes the place, so does
Lilian.  I asked them to meet you all here to-night; but Mrs. Ashleigh
was tired.  The last of the furniture was to arrive today; and though dear
Mrs. Ashleigh is an undecided character, she is not inactive.  But it is
not only the planning where to put tables and chairs that would have
tried her today: she has had Mr. Vigors on her hands all the afternoon,
and he has been--here's her little note--what are the words?
No doubt 'most overpowering and oppressive;' no, 'most kind and
attentive,'--different words, but, as applied to Mr. Vigors, they
mean the same thing.

"And now, next Monday---we must leave them in peace till then--you
will all call on the Ashleighs.  The Hill knows what is due to itself; it
cannot delegate to Mr. Vigors, a respectable man indeed, but who does
not belong to its set, its own proper course of action towards those
who would shelter themselves on its bosom.  The Hill cannot be kind and
attentive, overpowering or oppressive by proxy.  To those newborn
into its family circle it cannot be an indifferent godmother; it has
towards them all the feelings of a mother,--or of a stepmother, as
the case may be.  Where it says 'This can be no child of mine,' it is a
stepmother indeed; but in all those whom I have presented to its
arms, it has hitherto, I am proud to say, recognized desirable
acquaintances, and to them the Hill has been a mother.  And now,
my dear Mr. Sloman, go to your rubber; Poyntz is impatient, though he
don't show it.  Miss Brabazon, love, we all long to see you seated
at the piano,--you play so divinely!  Something gay, if you please;
something gay, but not very noisy,--Mr. Leopold Symthe will turn the
leaves for you.  Mrs. Bruce, your own favourite set at vingt-un, with
four new recruits.  Dr. Fenwick, you are like me, don't play cards, and
don't care for music; sit here, and talk or not, as you please, while I
knit."

The other guests thus disposed of, some at the card-tables, some round
the piano, I placed myself at Mrs. Poyntz's side, on a seat niched in the
recess of a window which an evening unusually warm for the month of May
permitted to be left open.  I was next to one who had known Lilian as a
child, one from whom I had learned by what sweet name to call the image
which my thoughts had already shrined.  How much that I still longed to
know she could tell me!  But in what form of question could I lead to the
subject, yet not betray my absorbing interest in it?  Longing to speak, I
felt as if stricken dumb; stealing an unquiet glance towards the face
beside me, and deeply impressed with that truth which the Hill had long
ago reverently acknowledged,--namely, that Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was a very
superior woman, a very powerful creature.

And there she sat knitting, rapidly, firmly; a woman somewhat on
the other side of forty, complexion a bronze paleness, hair a bronze
brown, in strong ringlets cropped short behind,--handsome hair for a man;
lips that, when closed, showed inflexible decision, when speaking, became
supple and flexible with an easy humour and a vigilant finesse; eyes of a
red hazel, quick but steady,--observing, piercing, dauntless eyes;
altogether a fine countenance,--would have been a very fine countenance in
a man; profile sharp, straight, clear-cut, with an expression, when in
repose, like that of a sphinx; a frame robust, not corpulent; of middle
height, but with an air and carriage that made her appear tall; peculiarly
white firm hands, indicative of vigorous health, not a vein visible on the
surface.

There she sat knitting, knitting, and I by her side, gazing now on
herself, now on her work, with a vague idea that the threads in the skein
of my own web of love or of life were passing quick through those
noiseless fingers.  And, indeed, in every web of romance, the fondest, one
of the Parcae is sure to be some matter-of-fact She, Social Destiny, as
little akin to romance herself as was this worldly Queen of the Hill.




CHAPTER VII.

I have given a sketch of the outward woman of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.  The
inner woman was a recondite mystery deep as that of the sphinx, whose
features her own resembled.  But between the outward and the inward woman
there is ever a third woman,--the conventional woman,--such as the whole
human being appears to the world,--always mantled, sometimes masked.

I am told that the fine people of London do not recognize the
title of "Mrs. Colonel."  If that be true, the fine people of London must
be clearly in the wrong, for no people in the universe could be finer than
the fine people of Abbey Hill; and they considered their sovereign had
as good a right to the title of Mrs. Colonel as the Queen of England
has to that of "our Gracious Lady."  But Mrs. Poyntz herself never
assumed the title of Mrs. Colonel; it never appeared on her cards,--any
more than the title of "Gracious Lady" appears on the cards which
convey the invitation that a Lord Steward or Lord Chamberlain is
commanded by her Majesty to issue.  To titles, indeed, Mrs. Poyntz
evinced no superstitious reverence.  Two peeresses, related to her, not
distantly, were in the habit of paying her a yearly visit which
lasted two or three days.  The Hill considered these visits an honour to
its eminence.  Mrs. Poyntz never seemed to esteem them an honour to
herself; never boasted of them; never sought to show off her grand
relations, nor put herself the least out of the way to receive
them.  Her mode of life was free from ostentation.  She had the advantage
of being a few hundreds a year richer than any other inhabitant of
the Hill; but she did not devote her superior resources to the
invidious exhibition of superior splendour.  Like a wise sovereign, the
revenues of her exchequer were applied to the benefit of her subjects, and
not to the vanity of egotistical parade.  As no one else on the Hill
kept a carriage, she declined to keep one.  Her entertainments were
simple, but numerous.  Twice a week she received the Hill, and was
genuinely at home to it.  She contrived to make her parties proverbially
agreeable.  The refreshments were of the same kind as those which the
poorest of her old maids of honour might proffer; but they were better of
their kind, the best of their kind,--the best tea, the best lemonade, the
best cakes.  Her rooms had an air of comfort, which was peculiar to them.
They looked like rooms accustomed to receive, and receive in a friendly
way; well warmed, well lighted, card-tables and piano each in the place
that made cards and music inviting; on the walls a few old family
portraits, and three or four other pictures said to be valuable and
certainly pleasing,--two Watteaus, a Canaletti, a Weenix; plenty of
easy-chairs and settees covered with a cheerful chintz,--in the
arrangement of the furniture generally an indescribable careless elegance.
She herself was studiously plain in dress, more conspicuously free from
jewelry and trinkets than any married lady on the Hill.  But I have heard
from those who were authorities on such a subject that she was never
seen in a dress of the last year's fashion.  She adopted the mode as it
came out, just enough to show that she was aware it was out; but
with a sober reserve, as much as to say, "I adopt the fashion as far as
it suits myself; I do not permit the fashion to adopt me."  In short,
Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was sometimes rough, sometimes coarse, always
masculine, and yet somehow or other masculine in a womanly way;
but she was never vulgar because never affected.  It was impossible
not to allow that she was a thorough gentlewoman, and she could do things
that lower other gentlewomen, without any loss of dignity.  Thus
she was an admirable mimic, certainly in itself the least ladylike
condescension of humour.  But when she mimicked, it was with so
tranquil a gravity, or so royal a good humour, that one could only
say, "What talents for society dear Mrs. Colonel has!"  As she was
a gentlewoman emphatically, so the other colonel, the he-colonel,
was emphatically a gentleman; rather shy, but not cold; hating trouble
of every kind, pleased to seem a cipher in his own house.  If the
sole study of Mrs. Colonel had been to make her husband comfortable,
she could not have succeeded better than by bringing friends about him
and then taking them off his hands.  Colonel Poyntz, the he-colonel,
had seen, in his youth, actual service; but had retired from his
profession many years ago, shortly after his marriage.  He was a
younger brother of one of the principal squires in the country;
inherited the house he lived in, with some other valuable property
in and about L----, from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; and
popular in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs.  He was
punctiliously neat in his dress; a thin youthful figure, crowned with a
thick youthful wig.  He never seemed to read anything but the newspapers
and the "Meteorological Journal": was supposed to be the most weatherwise
man in all L----.  He had another intellectual predilection,--whist;
but in that he had less reputation for wisdom.  Perhaps it requires a
rarer combination of mental faculties to win an odd trick than to
divine a fall in the glass.  For the rest, the he-colonel, many
years older than his wife, despite the thin youthful figure, was an
admirable aide-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs. Colonel; and
she could not have found one more obedient, more devoted, or more
proud of a distinguished chief.

In giving to Mrs. Colonel Poyntz the appellation of Queen of the
Hill, let there be no mistake.  She was not a constitutional sovereign;
her monarchy was absolute.  All her proclamations had the force of laws.

Such ascendancy could not have been attained without considerable
talents for acquiring and keeping it.  Amidst all her off-hand, brisk,
imperious frankness, she had the ineffable discrimination of tact.
Whether civil or rude, she was never civil or rude but what she carried
public opinion along with her.  Her knowledge of general society must
have been limited, as must be that of all female sovereigns; but she
seemed gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, which she
applied to her special ambition of ruling it.  I have not a doubt that if
she had been suddenly transferred, a perfect stranger, to the world of
London, she would have soon forced her way to its selectest circles,
and, when once there, held her own against a duchess.

I have said that she was not affected: this might be one cause of
her sway over a set in which nearly every other woman was trying rather to
seem, than to be, a somebody.

Put if Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was not artificial, she was artful, or
perhaps I might more justly say artistic.  In all she said and did there
were conduct, system, plan.  She could be a most serviceable friend, a
most damaging enemy; yet I believe she seldom indulged in strong likings
or strong hatreds.  All was policy,--a policy akin to that of a grand
party chief, determined to raise up those whom, for any reason of state,
it was prudent to favour, and to put down those whom, for any reason of
state, it was expedient to humble or to crush.

Ever since the controversy with Dr. Lloyd, this lady had honoured me
with her benignest countenance; and nothing could be more adroit than the
manner in which, while imposing me on others as an oracular authority, she
sought to subject to her will the oracle itself.

She was in the habit of addressing me in a sort of motherly way,
as if she had the deepest interest in my welfare, happiness, and
reputation.  And thus, in every compliment, in every seeming mark of
respect, she maintained the superior dignity of one who takes from
responsible station the duty to encourage rising merit; so that, somehow
or other, despite all that pride which made me believe that I needed no
helping and to advance or to clear my way through the world, I could not
shake off from my mind the impression that I was mysteriously patronized
by Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.

We might have sat together five minutes, side by side in silence as
complete as if in the cave of Trophonius--when without looking up from her
work, Mrs. Poyntz said abruptly,--

"I am thinking about you, Dr. Fenwick.  And you--are thinking
about some other woman.  Ungrateful man!"

"Unjust accusation!  My very silence should prove how intently my
thoughts were fixed on you, and on the weird web which springs under your
hand in meshes that bewilder the gaze and snare the attention."

Mrs. Poyntz looked up at me for a moment--one rapid glance of the
bright red hazel eye--and said,--

"Was I really in your thoughts?  Answer truly."

"Truly, I answer, you were."

"That is strange!  Who can it be?"

"Who can it be?  What do you mean?"

"If you were thinking of me, it was in connection with some other
person,--some other person of my own sex.  It is certainly not poor dear
Miss Brabazon.  Who else can it be?"

Again the red eye shot over me, and I felt my cheek redden beneath it.

"Hush!" she said, lowering her voice; "you are in love!"

"In love!--I!  Permit me to ask you why you think so?"

"The signs are unmistakable; you are altered in your manner, even in
the expression of your face, since I last saw you; your manner is
generally quiet and observant,--it is now restless and distracted; your
expression of face is generally proud and serene,--it is now humbled and
troubled.  You have something on your mind!  It is not anxiety for your
reputation,--that is established; nor for your fortune,--that is made; it
is not anxiety for a patient or you would scarcely be here.  But anxiety
it is,--an anxiety that is remote from your profession, that touches your
heart and is new to it!"

I was startled, almost awed; but I tried to cover my confusion with a
forced laugh.

"Profound observer!  Subtle analyst!  You have convinced me that I must
be in love, though I did not suspect it before.  But when I strive to
conjecture the object, I am as much perplexed as yourself; and with you, I
ask, who can it be?"

"Whoever it be," said Mrs. Poyntz, who had paused, while I spoke, from
her knitting, and now resumed it very slowly and very carefully, as if her
mind and her knitting worked in unison together,--"whoever it be, love in
you would be serious; and, with or without love, marriage is a serious
thing to us all.  It is not every pretty girl that would suit Allen
Fenwick."

"Alas! is there any pretty girl whom Allen Fenwick would suit?"

"Tut!  You should be above the fretful vanity that lays traps for a
compliment.  Yes; the time has come in your life and your career when you
would do well to marry.  I give my consent to that," she added with a
smile as if in jest, and a slight nod as if in earnest.  The knitting here
went on more decidedly, more quickly.  "But I do not yet see the person.
No!  'Tis a pity, Allen Fenwick" (whenever Mrs. Poyntz called me by my
Christian name, she always assumed her majestic motherly manner),--"a
pity that, with your birth, energies, perseverance, talents, and, let me
add, your advantages of manner and person,--a pity that you did not choose
a career that might achieve higher fortunes and louder fame than the most
brilliant success can give to a provincial physician.  But in that very
choice you interest me.  My choice has been much the same,--a small circle,
but the first in it.  Yet, had I been a man, or had my dear Colonel been a
man whom it was in the power of a woman's art to raise one step higher in
that metaphorical ladder which is not the ladder of the angels, why,
then--what then?  No matter!  I am contented.  I transfer my ambition to
Jane.  Do you not think her handsome?"

"There can be no doubt of that," said I, carelessly and naturally.

"I have settled Jane's lot in my own mind," resumed Mrs. Poyntz,
striking firm into another row of knitting.  "She will marry a country
gentleman of large estate.  He will go into parliament.  She will study
his advancement as I study Poyntz's comfort.  If he be clever, she will
help to make him a minister; if he be not clever, his wealth will make
her a personage, and lift him into a personage's husband.  And, now that
you see I have no matrimonial designs on you, Allen Fenwick, think if it
will be worth while to confide in me.  Possibly I may be useful--"

"I know not how to thank you; but, as yet, I have nothing to confide."

While thus saying, I turned my eyes towards the open window beside
which I sat.  It was a beautiful soft night, the May moon in all her
splendour.  The town stretched, far and wide, below with all its
numberless lights,--below, but somewhat distant; an intervening space was
covered, here, by the broad quadrangle (in the midst of which stood,
massive and lonely, the grand old church), and, there, by the gardens and
scattered cottages or mansions that clothed the sides of the hill.

"Is not that house," I said, after a short pause, "yonder with the
three gables, the one in which--in which poor Dr. Lloyd lived--Abbots'
House?"

I spoke abruptly, as if to intimate my desire to change the
subject of conversation.  My hostess stopped her knitting, half rose,
looked forth.

"Yes.  But what a lovely night!  How is it that the moon blends
into harmony things of which the sun only marks the contrast?  That
stately old church tower, gray with its thousand years, those vulgar
tile-roofs and chimney-pots raw in the freshness of yesterday,--now,
under the moonlight, all melt into one indivisible charm!"

As my hostess thus spoke, she had left her seat, taking her work
with her, and passed from the window into the balcony.  It was not often
that Mrs. Poyntz condescended to admit what is called "sentiment" into the
range of her sharp, practical, worldly talk; but she did so at
times,--always, when she did, giving me the notion of an intellect much
too comprehensive not to allow that sentiment has a place in this life,
but keeping it in its proper place, by that mixture of affability and
indifference with which some high-born beauty allows the genius, but
checks the presumption, of a charming and penniless poet.  For a few
minutes her eyes roved over the scene in evident enjoyment; then, as they
slowly settled upon the three gables of Abbots' House, her face regained
that something of hardness which belonged to its decided character; her
fingers again mechanically resumed her knitting, and she said, in her
clear, unsoftened, metallic chime of voice, "Can you guess why I took so
much trouble to oblige Mr. Vigors and locate Mrs. Ashleigh yonder?"

"You favoured us with a full explanation of your reasons."

"Some of my reasons; not the main one.  People who undertake the task
of governing others, as I do, be their rule a kingdom or a hamlet, must
adopt a principle of government and adhere to it.  The principle that
suits best with the Hill is Respect for the Proprieties.  We have not much
money; entre nous, we have no great rank.  Our policy is, then, to set up
the Proprieties as an influence which money must court and rank is afraid
of.  I had learned just before Mr. Vigors called on me that Lady Sarah
Bellasis entertained the idea of hiring Abbots' House.  London has set its
face against her; a provincial town would be more charitable.  An earl's
daughter, with a good income and an awfully bad name, of the best manners
and of the worst morals, would have made sad havoc among the Proprieties.
How many of our primmest old maids would have deserted tea and Mrs. Poyntz
for champagne and her ladyship!  The Hill was never in so imminent a
danger.  Rather than Lady Sarah Bellasis should have had that house, I
would have taken it myself, and stocked it with owls.

"Mrs. Ashleigh turned up just in the critical moment.  Lady Sarah is
foiled, the Proprieties safe, and so that question is settled."

"And it will be pleasant to have your early friend so near you."

Mrs. Poyntz lifted her eyes full upon me.

"Do you know Mrs. Ashleigh?"

"Not in the least."

"She has many virtues and few ideas.  She is commonplace weak, as I am
commonplace strong.  But commonplace weak can be very lovable.  Her
husband, a man of genius and learning, gave her his whole heart,--a heart
worth having; but he was not ambitious, and he despised the world."

"I think you said your daughter was very much attached to Miss
Ashleigh?  Does her character resemble her mother's?"

I was afraid while I spoke that I should again meet Mrs. Poyntz's
searching gaze, but she did not this time look up from her work.

"No; Lilian is anything but commonplace."

"You described her as having delicate health; you implied a hope
that she was not consumptive.  I trust that there is no serious reason for
apprehending a constitutional tendency which at her age would require the
most careful watching!"

"I trust not.  If she were to die--Dr. Fenwick, what is the matter?"

So terrible had been the picture which this woman's words had brought
before me, that I started as if my own life had received a shock.

"I beg pardon," I said falteringly, pressing my hand to my heart; "a
sudden spasm here,--it is over now.  You were saying that--that--"

"I was about to say-" and here Mrs. Poyntz laid her hand lightly
on mine,--"I was about to say that if Lilian Ashleigh were to die, I
should mourn for her less than I might for one who valued the things of
the earth more.  But I believe there is no cause for the alarm my words so
inconsiderately excited in you.  Her mother is watchful and devoted; and
if the least thing ailed Lilian, she would call in medical advice.  Mr.
Vigors would, I know, recommend Dr. Jones."

Closing our conference with those stinging words, Mrs. Poyntz here
turned back into the drawing-room.

I remained some minutes on the balcony, disconcerted, enraged.  With
what consummate art had this practised diplomatist wound herself into my
secret!  That she had read my heart better than myself was evident from
that Parthian shaft, barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over her
shoulder in retreat.  That from the first moment in which she had decoyed
me to her side, she had detected "the something" on my mind, was perhaps
but the ordinary quickness of female penetration.  But it was with no
ordinary craft that the whole conversation afterwards had been so shaped
as to learn the something, and lead me to reveal the some one to whom the
something was linked.  For what purpose?  What was it to her?  What motive
could she have beyond the mere gratification of curiosity?  Perhaps, at
first, she thought I had been caught by her daughter's showy beauty, and
hence the half-friendly, half-cynical frankness with which she had avowed
her ambitious projects for that young lady's matrimonial advancement.
Satisfied by my manner that I cherished no presumptuous hopes in that
quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued from that pleasure in the
exercise of a wily intellect which impels schemers and politicians to an
activity for which, without that pleasure itself, there would seem no
adequate inducement.  And besides, the ruling passion of this petty
sovereign was power; and if knowledge be power, there is no better
instrument of power over a contumacious subject than that hold on his
heart which is gained in the knowledge of its secret.

But "secret"!  Had it really come to this?  Was it possible that the
mere sight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the whole
tenor of my life,--a stranger of whose mind and character I knew nothing,
whose very voice I had never heard?  It was only by the intolerable pang
of anguish that had rent my heart in the words, carelessly, abruptly
spoken, "if she were to die," that I had felt how the world would be
changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it no more!  Yes, secret
it was no longer to myself, I loved!  And like all on whom love descends,
sometimes softly, slowly, with the gradual wing of the cushat settling
down into its nest, sometimes with the swoop of the eagle on his
unsuspecting quarry, I believed that none ever before loved as I loved;
that such love was an abnormal wonder, made solely for me, and I for it.
Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and more turbulent thoughts, as
my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of Lilian's home, and the shimmering
silver of the moonlit willow, under which I had seen her gazing into the
roseate heavens.




CHAPTER VIII.

When I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evidently about to
break up.  Those who had grouped round the piano were now assembled round
the refreshment-table.  The cardplayers had risen, and were settling or
discussing gains and losses.  While I was searching for my hat, which I
had somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doloureux, crept
timidly up to me,--the proudest and the poorest of all the hidalgos
settled on the Hill.  He could not afford a fee for a physician's advice;
but pain had humbled his pride, and I saw at a glance that he was
considering how to take a surreptitious advantage of social intercourse,
and obtain the advice without paying the fee.  The old man discovered the
hat before I did, stooped, took it up, extended it to me with the profound
bow of the old school, while the other hand, clenched and quivering, was
pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and his eyes met mine with wistful
mute entreaty.  The instinct of my profession seized me at once.  I could
never behold suffering without forgetting all else in the desire to
relieve it.

"You are in pain," said I, softly.  "Sit down and describe the
symptoms.  Here, it is true, I am no professional doctor, but I am a
friend who is fond of doctoring, and knows something about it."

So we sat down a little apart from the other guests, and after a
few questions and answers, I was pleased to find that his "tic" did not
belong to the less curable kind of that agonizing neuralgia.  I was
especially successful in my treatment of similar sufferings, for which I
had discovered an anodyne that was almost specific.  I wrote on a leaf of
my pocketbook a prescription which I felt sure would be efficacious, and
as I tore it out and placed it in his hand, I chanced to look up, and saw
the hazel eyes of my hostess fixed upon me with a kinder and softer
expression than they often condescended to admit into their cold and
penetrating lustre.  At that moment, however, her attention was drawn from
me to a servant, who entered with a note, and I heard him say, though in
an undertone, "From Mrs. Ashleigh."

She opened the note, read it hastily, ordered the servant to wait
without the door, retired to her writing-table, which stood near the place
at which I still lingered, rested her face on her hand, and seemed musing.
Her meditation was very soon over.  She turned her head, and to my
surprise, beckoned to me.  I approached.

"Sit here," she whispered: "turn your back towards those people, who are no
doubt watching us.  Read this."

She placed in my hand the note she had just received.  It contained but
a few words, to this effect:--

   DEAR MARGARET,--I am so distressed.  Since I wrote to you a few
   hours ago, Lilian is taken suddenly ill, and I fear seriously.  What
   medical man should I send for?  Let my servant have his name and
   address.

                                                    A.  A.

I sprang from my seat.

"Stay," said Mrs. Poyntz.  "Would you much care if I sent the servant to
Dr. Jones?"

"Ah, madam, you are cruel!  What have I done that you should become my
enemy?"

"Enemy!  No.  You have just befriended one of my friends.  In this world
of fools intellect should ally itself with intellect.  No; I am not your
enemy!  But you have not yet asked me to be your friend."

Here she put into my hands a note she had written while thus speaking.
"Receive your credentials.  If there be any cause for alarm, or if I can
be of use, send for me."  Resuming the work she had suspended, but with
lingering, uncertain fingers, she added, "So far, then, this is settled.
Nay, no thanks; it is but little that is settled as yet."




CHAPTER IX.

In a very few minutes I was once more in the grounds of that old gable
house; the servant, who went before me, entered them by the stairs and
the wicket-gate of the private entrance; that way was the shortest.  So
again I passed by the circling glade and the monastic well,--sward, trees,
and ruins all suffused in the limpid moonlight.

And now I was in the house; the servant took upstairs the note
with which I was charged, and a minute or two afterwards returned and
conducted me to the corridor above, in which Mrs. Ashleigh received me.  I
was the first to speak.

"Your daughter--is--is--not seriously ill, I hope.  What is it?"

"Hush!" she said, under her breath.  "Will you step this way for
a moment?"  She passed through a doorway to the right.  I followed her,
and as she placed on the table the light she had been holding, I looked
round with a chill at the heart,--it was the room in which Dr. Lloyd had
died.  Impossible to mistake.  The furniture indeed was changed, there was
no bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of the high
casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlight
streamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great square
beams intersecting the low ceiling,--all were impressed vividly on my
memory.  The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on
the spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the dying man.

I shrank back,--I could not have seated myself there.  So I remained
leaning against the chimneypiece, while Mrs. Ashleigh told her story.

She said that on their arrival the day before, Lilian had been in more
than usually good health and spirits, delighted with the old house, the
grounds, and especially the nook by the Monk's Well, at which Mrs.
Ashleigh had left her that evening in order to make some purchases in the
town, in company with Mr. Vigors.  When Mrs. Ashleigh returned, she and
Mr. Vigors had sought Lilian in that nook, and Mrs. Ashleigh then
detected, with a mother's eye, some change in Lilian which alarmed her.
She seemed listless and dejected, and was very pale; but she denied that
she felt unwell.  On regaining the house she had sat down in the room in
which we then were,--"which," said Mrs. Ashleigh, "as it is not required
for a sleeping-room, my daughter, who is fond of reading, wished to fit up
as her own morning-room, or study.  I left her here and went into the
drawing-room below with Mr. Vigors.  When he quitted me, which he did very
soon, I remained for nearly an hour giving directions about the placing of
furniture, which had just arrived, from our late residence.  I then went
upstairs to join my daughter, and to my terror found her apparently
lifeless in her chair.  She had fainted away."

I interrupted Mrs. Ashleigh here.  "Has Miss Ashleigh been subject
to fainting fits?"

"No, never.  When she recovered she seemed bewildered, disinclined
to speak.  I got her to bed, and as she then fell quietly to sleep, my
mind was relieved.  I thought it only a passing effect of excitement, in a
change of abode; or caused by something like malaria in the atmosphere of
that part of the grounds in which I had found her seated."

"Very likely.  The hour of sunset at this time of year is trying to
delicate constitutions.  Go on."

"About three quarters of an hour ago she woke up with a loud cry, and
has been ever since in a state of great agitation, weeping violently, and
answering none of my questions.  Yet she does not seem light-headed,
but rather what we call hysterical."

"You will permit me now to see her.  Take comfort; in all you tell me I
see nothing to warrant serious alarm."




CHAPTER X.

To the true physician there is an inexpressible sanctity in the sick
chamber.  At its threshold the more human passions quit their hold on his
heart.  Love there would be profanation; even the grief permitted to
others he must put aside.  He must enter that room--a calm intelligence.
He is disabled for his mission if he suffer aught to obscure the keen
quiet glance of his science.  Age or youth, beauty or deformity, innocence
or guilt, merge their distinctions in one common attribute, human
suffering appealing to human skill.

Woe to the households in which the trusted Healer feels not on his
conscience the solemn obligations of his glorious art!  Reverently as in a
temple, I stood in the virgin's chamber.  When her mother placed her hand
in mine, and I felt the throb of its pulse, I was aware of no quicker beat
of my own heart.  I looked with a steady eye on the face more beautiful
from the flush that deepened the delicate hues of the young cheek, and the
lustre that brightened the dark blue of the wandering eyes.  She did not
at first heed me, did not seem aware of my presence; but kept murmuring to
herself words which I could not distinguish.

At length, when I spoke to her, in that low, soothing tone which we
learn at the sick-bed, the expression of her face altered suddenly; she
passed the hand I did not hold over her forehead, turned round, looked at
me full and long, with unmistakable surprise, yet not as if the surprise
displeased her,--less the surprise which recoils from the sight of a
stranger than that which seems doubtfully to recognize an unexpected
friend.  Yet on the surprise there seemed to creep something of
apprehension, of fear; her hand trembled, her voice quivered, as she
said,--

"Can it be, can it be?  Am I awake?  Mother, who is this?"

"Only a kind visitor, Dr. Fenwick, sent by Mrs. Poyntz, for I was uneasy
about you, darling.  How are you now?"

"Better.  Strangely better."

She removed her hand gently from mine, and with an involuntary modest
shrinking turned towards Mrs. Ashleigh, drawing her mother towards
herself, so that she became at once hidden from me.

Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor even more than the
slight and temporary fever which often accompanies a sudden nervous attack
in constitutions peculiarly sensitive, I retired noiselessly from the
room, and went, not into that which had been occupied by the ill-fated
Naturalist, but downstairs into the drawing-room, to write my
prescription.  I had already sent the servant off with it to the chemist's
before Mrs. Ashleigh joined me.

"She seems recovering surprisingly; her forehead is cooler; she is
perfectly self-possessed, only she cannot account for her own
seizure,--cannot account either for the fainting or the agitation with
which she awoke from sleep."

"I think I can account for both.  The first room in which she
entered--that in which she fainted--had its window open; the sides of the
window are overgrown with rank creeping plants in full blossom.  Miss
Ashleigh had already predisposed herself to injurious effects from the
effluvia by fatigue, excitement, imprudence in sitting out at the fall of
a heavy dew.  The sleep after the fainting fit was the more disturbed,
because Nature, always alert and active in subjects so young, was making
its own effort to right itself from an injury.  Nature has nearly
succeeded.  What I have prescribed will a little aid and accelerate that
which Nature has yet to do, and in a day or two I do not doubt that your
daughter will be perfectly restored.  Only let me recommend care to avoid
exposure to the open air during the close of the day.  Let her avoid also
the room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenon in
nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, without visible cause, be
repeated in the same place where it was first experienced.  You had better
shut up the chamber for at least some weeks, burn fires in it, repaint and
paper it, sprinkle chloroform.  You are not, perhaps, aware that Dr. Lloyd
died in that room after a prolonged illness.  Suffer me to wait till your
servant returns with the medicine, and let me employ the interval in
asking you a few questions.  Miss Ashleigh, you say, never had a fainting
fit before.  I should presume that she is not what we call strong.  But
has she ever had any illness that alarmed you?"

"Never."

"No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks of the chest or lungs?"

"Certainly not.  Still I have feared that she may have a tendency to
consumption.  Do you think so?  Your questions alarm me!"

"I do not think so; but before I pronounce a positive opinion, one
question more.  You say you have feared a tendency to consumption.  Is
that disease in her family?  She certainly did not inherit it from you.
But on her father's side?"

"Her father," said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears in her eyes, "died young,
but of brain fever, which the medical men said was brought on by over
study."

"Enough, my dear madam.  What you say confirms my belief that your
daughter's constitution is the very opposite to that in which the seeds of
consumption lurk.  It is rather that far nobler constitution, which the
keenness of the nervous susceptibility renders delicate but elastic,--as
quick to recover as it is to suffer."

"Thank you, thank you, Dr. Fenwick, for what you say.  You take a load
from my heart; for Mr. Vigors, I know, thinks Lilian consumptive, and Mrs.
Poyntz has rather frightened me at times by hints to the same effect.  But
when you speak of nervous susceptibility, I do not quite understand you.
My daughter is not what is commonly called nervous.  Her temper is
singularly even."

"But if not excitable, should you also say that she is not
impressionable?  The things which do not disturb her temper may, perhaps,
deject her spirits.  Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes, I think I understand your distinction; but I am not quite sure if
it applies.  To most things that affect the spirits she is not more
sensitive than other girls, perhaps less so; but she is certainly
very impressionable in some things."

"In what?"

"She is more moved than any one I ever knew by objects in external
nature, rural scenery, rural sounds, by music, by the books that she
reads,--even books that are not works of imagination.  Perhaps in all this
she takes after her poor father, but in a more marked degree,--at least, I
observe it more in her; for he was very silent and reserved.  And perhaps
also her peculiarities have been fostered by the seclusion in which she
has been brought up.  It was with a view to make her a little more like
girls of her own age that our friend, Mrs. Poyntz, induced me to come
here.  Lilian was reconciled to this change; but she shrank from the
thoughts of London, which I should have preferred.  Her poor father could
not endure London."

"Miss Ashleigh is fond of reading?"

"Yes, she is fond of reading, but more fond of musing.  She will sit by
herself for hours without book or work, and seem as abstracted as if in a
dream.  She was so even in her earliest childhood.  Then she would tell me
what she had been conjuring up to herself.  She would say that she had
seen--positively seen--beautiful lands far away from earth; flowers and
trees not like ours.  As she grew older this visionary talk displeased me,
and I scolded her, and said that if others heard her, they would think
that she was not only silly but very untruthful.  So of late years she
never ventures to tell me what, in such dreamy moments, she suffers
herself to imagine; but the habit of musing continues still.  Do you not
agree with Mrs. Poyntz that the best cure would be a little cheerful
society amongst other young people?"

"Certainly," said I, honestly, though with a jealous pang.  "But here
comes the medicine.  Will you take it up to her, and then sit with her
half an hour or so?  By that time I expect she will be asleep.  I will
wait here till you return.  Oh, I can amuse myself with the newspapers and
books on your table.  Stay! one caution: be sure there are no flowers in
Miss Ashleigh's sleeping-room.  I think I saw a treacherous rose-tree in a
stand by the window.  If so, banish it."

Left alone, I examined the room in which, oh, thought of joy!  I had
surely now won the claim to become a privileged guest.  I touched the
books Lilian must have touched; in the articles of furniture, as yet so
hastily disposed that the settled look of home was not about them, I
still knew that I was gazing on things which her mind must associate with
the history of her young life.  That luteharp must be surely hers, and the
scarf, with a girl's favourite colours,--pure white and pale blue,--and
the bird-cage, and the childish ivory work-case, with implements too
pretty for use,--all spoke of her.

It was a blissful, intoxicating revery, which Mrs. Ashleigh's entrance
disturbed.

Lilian was sleeping calmly.  I had no excuse to linger there any longer.

"I leave you, I trust, with your mind quite at ease," said I.  "You will
allow me to call to-morrow, in the afternoon?"

"Oh, yes, gratefully."

Mrs. Ashleigh held out her hand as I made towards the door.

Is there a physician who has not felt at times how that ceremonious fee
throws him back from the garden-land of humanity into the market-place of
money,--seems to put him out of the pale of equal friendship, and say,
"True, you have given health and life.  Adieu! there, you are paid for
it!"  With a poor person there would have been no dilemma, but Mrs.
Ashleigh was affluent: to depart from custom here was almost impertinence.
But had the penalty of my refusal been the doom of never again beholding
Lilian, I could not have taken her mother's gold.  So I did not appear to
notice the hand held out to me, and passed by with a quickened step.

"But, Dr. Fenwick, stop!"

"No, ma'am, no!  Miss Ashleigh would have recovered as soon without me.
Whenever my aid is really wanted, then--but Heaven grant that time may
never come!  We will talk again about her to-morrow."

I was gone,--now in the garden ground, odorous with blossoms; now in
the lane, inclosed by the narrow walls; now in the deserted streets, over
which the moon shone full as in that winter night when I hurried from the
chamber of death.  But the streets were not ghastly now, and the moon was
no longer Hecate, that dreary goddess of awe and spectres, but the sweet,
simple Lady of the Stars, on whose gentle face lovers have gazed ever
since (if that guess of astronomers be true) she was parted from earth to
rule the tides of its deeps from afar, even as love, from love divided,
rules the heart that yearns towards it with mysterious law.




CHAPTER XI.

With what increased benignity I listened to the patients who visited me
the next morning!  The whole human race seemed to be worthier of love, and
I longed to diffuse amongst all some rays of the glorious hope that had
dawned upon my heart.  My first call, when I went forth, was on the poor
young woman from whom I had been returning the day before, when an
impulse, which seemed like a fate, had lured me into the grounds where I
had first seen Lilian.  I felt grateful to this poor patient; without her
Lilian herself might be yet unknown to rue.

The girl's brother, a young man employed in the police, and whose pay
supported a widowed mother and the suffering sister, received me at the
threshold of the cottage.

"Oh, sir, she is so much better to-day; almost free from pain.  Will
she live now; can she live?"

"If my treatment has really done the good you say; if she be really
better under it, I think her recovery may be pronounced.  But I must first
see her."

The girl was indeed wonderfully better.  I felt that my skill was
achieving a signal triumph; but that day even my intellectual pride was
forgotten in the luxurious unfolding of that sense of heart which had so
newly waked into blossom.

As I recrossed the threshold, I smiled on the brother, who was still
lingering there,--

"Your sister is saved, Wady.  She needs now chiefly wine, and good
though light nourishment; these you will find at my house; call there for
them every day."

"God bless you, sir!  If ever I can serve you--"  His tongue faltered,
he could say no more.

Serve me, Allen Fenwick--that poor policeman!  Me, whom a king could not
serve!  What did I ask from earth but Fame and Lilian's heart?  Thrones
and bread man wins from the aid of others; fame and woman's heart he can
only gain through himself.

So I strode gayly up the hill, through the iron gates, into the fairy
ground, and stood before Lilian's home.

The man-servant, on opening the door, seemed somewhat confused, and
said hastily before I spoke,--

"Not at home, sir; a note for you."

I turned the note mechanically in my hand; I felt stunned.

"Not at home!  Miss Ashleigh cannot be out.  How is she?"

"Better, sir, thank you."

I still could not open the note; my eyes turned wistfully towards the
windows of the house, and there--at the drawing-room window--I encountered
the scowl of Mr. Vigors.  I coloured with resentment, divined that I was
dismissed, and walked away with a proud crest and a firm step.

When I was out of the gates, in the blind lane, I opened the note.  It
began formally.  "Mrs. Ashleigh presents her compliments," and went on to
thank me, civilly enough, for my attendance the night before, would not
give me the trouble to repeat my visit, and inclosed a fee, double the
amount of the fee prescribed by custom.  I flung the money, as an asp that
had stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note into shreds.  Having
thus idly vented my rage, a dull gnawing sorrow came heavily down upon all
other emotions, stifling and replacing them.  At the mouth of the lane I
halted.  I shrank from the thought of the crowded streets beyond; I shrank
yet more from the routine of duties, which stretched before me in the
desert into which daily life was so suddenly smitten.  I sat down by the
roadside, shading my dejected face with a nervous hand.  I looked up as
the sound of steps reached my ear, and saw Dr. Jones coming briskly along
the lane, evidently from Abbots' House.  He must have been there at the
very time I had called.  I was not only dismissed but supplanted.  I rose
before he reached the spot on which I had seated myself, and went my way
into the town, went through my allotted round of professional visits; but
my attentions were not so tenderly devoted, my kill so genially quickened
by the glow of benevolence, as my poorer patients had found them in the
morning.  I have said how the physician should enter the sick-room.  "A
Calm Intelligence!"  But if you strike a blow on the heart, the intellect
suffers.  Little worth, I suspect, was my "calm intelligence" that day.
Bichat, in his famous book upon Life and Death, divides life into two
classes,--animal and organic.  Man's intellect, with the brain for its
centre, belongs to life animal; his passions to life organic, centred in
the heart, in the viscera.  Alas! if the noblest passions through which
alone we lift ourselves into the moral realm of the sublime and beautiful
really have their centre in the life which the very vegetable, that lives
organically, shares with us!  And, alas! if it be that life which we
share with the vegetable, that can cloud, obstruct, suspend, annul that
life centred in the brain, which we share with every being howsoever
angelic, in every star howsoever remote, on whom the Creator bestows the
faculty of thought!




CHAPTER XII.

But suddenly I remembered Mrs. Poyntz.  I ought to call on her.  So I
closed my round of visits at her door.  The day was then far advanced, and
the servant politely informed me that Mrs. Poyntz was at dinner.  I could
only leave my card, with a message that I would pay my respects to her the
next day.  That evening I received from her this note:--

   Dear Dr. Fenwick,--I regret much that I cannot have the pleasure of
   seeing you to-morrow.  Poyntz and I are going to visit his brother, at
   the other end of the county, and we start early.  We shall be away some
   days.  Sorry to hear from Mrs. Ashleigh that she has been persuaded by
   Mr. Vigors to consult Dr. Jones about Lilian. Vigors and Jones both
   frighten the poor mother, and insist upon consumptive tendencies.
   Unluckily, you seem to have said there was little the matter.  Some
   doctors train their practice as some preachers fill their churches,--by
   adroit use of the appeals to terror.  You do not want patients, Dr.
   Jones does.  And, after all, better perhaps as it is.
                           Yours, etc.
                                                 M. Poyntz.

To my more selfish grief, anxiety for Lilian was now added.  I had seen
many more patients die from being mistreated for consumption than from
consumption itself.  And Dr. Jones was a mercenary, cunning, needy man,
with much crafty knowledge of human foibles, but very little skill in the
treatment of human maladies.  My fears were soon confirmed.  A few days
after I heard from Miss Brabazon that Miss Ashleigh was seriously ill,
kept her room.  Mrs. Ashleigh made this excuse for not immediately
returning the visits which the Hill had showered upon her.  Miss Brabazon
had seen Dr. Jones, who had shaken his head, said it was a serious case;
but that time and care (his time and his care!) might effect wonders.

How stealthily at the dead of the night I would climb the Hill and look
towards the windows of the old sombre house,--one window, in which a light
burned dim and mournful, the light of a sick-room,--of hers!

At length Mrs. Poyntz came back, and I entered her house, having fully
resolved beforehand on the line of policy to be adopted towards the
potentate whom I hoped to secure as an ally.  It was clear that neither
disguise nor half-confidence would baffle the penetration of so keen an
intellect, nor propitiate the good will of so imperious and resolute a
temper.  Perfect frankness here was the wisest prudence; and after all, it
was most agreeable to my own nature, and most worthy of my own honour.

Luckily, I found Mrs. Poyntz alone, and taking in both mine the hand
she somewhat coldly extended to me, I said, with the earnestness of
suppressed emotion,--

"You observed when I last saw you, that I had not yet asked you to be
my friend.  I ask it now.  Listen to me with all the indulgence you can
vouchsafe, and let me at least profit by your counsel if you refuse to
give me your aid."

Rapidly, briefly, I went on to say how I had first seen Lilian, and
how sudden, how strange to myself, had been the impression which that
first sight of her had produced.

"You remarked the change that had come over me," said I; "you
divined the cause before I divined it myself,--divined it as I sat there
beside you, thinking that through you I might see, in the freedom of
social intercourse, the face that was then haunting me.  You know what has
since passed.  Miss Ashleigh is ill; her case is, I am convinced, wholly
misunderstood.  All other feelings are merged in one sense of anxiety,--of
alarm.  But it has become due to me, due to all, to incur the risk of your
ridicule even more than of your reproof, by stating to you thus candidly,
plainly, bluntly, the sentiment which renders alarm so poignant, and
which, if scarcely admissible to the romance of some wild dreamy boy, may
seem an unpardonable folly in a man of my years and my sober calling,--due
to me, to you, to Mrs. Ashleigh, because still the dearest thing in life
to me is honour.  And if you, who know Mrs. Ashleigh so intimately, who
must be more or less aware of her plans or wishes for her daughter's
future,--if you believe that those plans or wishes lead to a lot far more
ambitious than an alliance with me could offer to Miss Ashleigh, then aid
Mr. Vigors in excluding me from the house; aid me in suppressing a
presumptuous, visionary passion.  I cannot enter that house without love
and hope at my heart; and the threshold of that house I must not cross if
such love and such hope would be a sin and a treachery in the eyes of its
owner.  I might restore Miss Ashleigh to health; her gratitude might--I
cannot continue.  This danger must not be to me nor to her, if her mother
has views far above such a son-in-law.  And I am the more bound to
consider all this while it is yet time, because I heard you state that
Miss Ashleigh had a fortune, was what would be here termed an heiress.
And the full consciousness that whatever fame one in my profession may
live to acquire, does not open those vistas of social power and grandeur
which are opened by professions to my eyes less noble in themselves,--that
full consciousness, I say, was forced upon me by certain words of your
own.  For the rest, you know my descent is sufficiently recognized as that
amidst well-born gentry to have rendered me no mesalliance to families the
most proud of their ancestry, if I had kept my hereditary estate and
avoided the career that makes me useful to man.  But I acknowledge that on
entering a profession such as mine--entering any profession except that of
arms or the senate--all leave their pedigree at its door, an erased or
dead letter.  All must come as equals, high-born or low-born, into that
arena in which men ask aid from a man as he makes himself; to them his
dead forefathers are idle dust.  Therefore, to the advantage of birth I
cease to have a claim.  I am but a provincial physician, whose station
would be the same had he been a cobbler's son.  But gold retains its grand
privilege in all ranks.  He who has gold is removed from the suspicion
that attaches to the greedy fortune-hunter.  My private fortune, swelled
by my savings, is sufficient to secure to any one I married a larger
settlement than many a wealthy squire can make.  I need no fortune with a
wife; if she have one, it would be settled on herself.  Pardon these
vulgar details.  Now, have I made myself understood?"

"Fully," answered the Queen of the Hill, who had listened to me
quietly, watchfully, and without one interruption, "fully; and you have
done well to confide in me with so generous an unreserve.  But before I
say further, let me ask, what would be your advice for Lilian, supposing
that you ought not to attend her?  You have no trust in Dr. Jones; neither
have I.  And Annie Ashleigh's note received to-day, begging me to call,
justifies your alarm.  Still you think there is no tendency to
consumption?"

"Of that I am certain so far as my slight glimpse of a case that
to me, however, seems a simple and not uncommon one, will permit.  But in
the alternative you put--that my own skill, whatever its worth, is
forbidden--my earnest advice is that Mrs. Ashleigh should take her
daughter at once to London, and consult there those great authorities to
whom I cannot compare my own opinion or experience; and by their counsel
abide."

Mrs. Poyntz shaded her eyes with her hand for a few moments, and seemed
in deliberation with herself.  Then she said, with her peculiar smile,
half grave, half ironical,--

"In matters more ordinary you would have won me to your side long ago.
That Mr. Vigors should have presumed to cancel my recommendation to a
settler on the Hill was an act of rebellion, and involved the honour of my
prerogative; but I suppressed my indignation at an affront so unusual,
partly out of pique against yourself, but much more, I think, out of
regard for you."

"I understand.  You detected the secret of my heart; you knew that Mrs.
Ashleigh would not wish to see her daughter the wife of a provincial
physician."

"Am I sure, or are you sure, that the daughter herself would accept
that fate; or if she accepted it, would not repent?"

"Do you not think me the vainest of men when I say this,--that I cannot
believe I should be so enthralled by a feeling at war with my reason,
unfavoured by anything I can detect in my habits of mind, or even by the
dreams of a youth which exalted science and excluded love, unless I was
intimately convinced that Miss Ashleigh's heart was free, that I could
win, and that I could keep it!  Ask me why I am convinced of this, and I
can tell you no more why I think that she could love me than I can tell
you why I love her!"

"I am of the world, worldly; but I am a woman, womanly,--though I may
not care to be thought it.  And, therefore, though what you say is,
regarded in a worldly point of view, sheer nonsense, regarded in a womanly
point of view, it is logically sound.  But still you cannot know Lilian as
I do.  Your nature and hers are in strong contrast.  I do not think she
is a safe wife for you.  The purest, the most innocent creature
imaginable, certainly that, but always in the seventh heaven; and you in
the seventh heaven just at this moment, but with an irresistible
gravitation to the solid earth, which will have its way again when the
honeymoon is over--I do not believe you two would harmonize by
intercourse.  I do not believe Lilian would sympathize with you, and I am
sure you could not sympathize with her throughout the long dull course of
this workday life.  And, therefore, for your sake, as well as hers, I was
not displeased to find that Dr. Jones had replaced you; and now, in return
for your frankness, I say frankly, do not go again to that house.  Conquer
this sentiment, fancy, passion, whatever it be.  And I will advise Mrs.
Ashleigh to take Lilian to town.  Shall it be so settled?"

I could not speak.  I buried my face in my hands--misery, misery,
desolation!

I know not how long I remained thus silent, perhaps many minutes.  At
length I felt a cold, firm, but not ungentle hand placed upon mine; and a
clear, full, but not discouraging voice said to me,--

"Leave me to think well over this conversation, and to ponder well the
value of all you have shown that you so deeply feel.  The interests of
life do not fill both scales of the balance.  The heart, which does not
always go in the same scale with the interests, still has its weight in
the scale opposed to them.  I have heard a few wise men say, as many a
silly woman says, 'Better be unhappy with one we love, than be happy with
one we love not.'  Do you say that too?"

"With every thought of my brain, every beat of my pulse, I say it."

"After that answer, all my questionings cease.  You shall hear from me
to-morrow.  By that time, I shall have seen Annie and Lilian.  I shall
have weighed both scales of the balance,--and the heart here, Allen
Fenwick, seems very heavy.  Go, now.  I hear feet on the stairs, Poyntz
bringing up some friendly gossiper; gossipers are spies."

I passed my hand over my eyes, tearless, but how tears would have
relieved the anguish that burdened them! and, without a word, went down
the stairs, meeting at the landing-place Colonel Poyntz and the old man
whose pain my prescription had cured.  The old man was whistling a merry
tune, perhaps first learned on the playground.  He broke from it to thank,
almost to embrace me, as I slid by him.  I seized his jocund blessing as a
good omen, and carried it with me as I passed into the broad sunlight.
Solitary--solitary!  Should I be so evermore?




CHAPTER XIII.

The next day I had just dismissed the last of my visiting patients, and
was about to enter my carriage and commence my round, when I received
a twisted note containing but these words:--

   Call on me to-day, as soon as you can.

                                           M. Poyntz.

A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs. Poyntz's drawing-room.

"Well, Allen Fenwick" said she, "I do not serve friends by halves.
No thanks!  I but adhere to a principle I have laid down for myself.
I spent last evening with the Ashleighs.  Lilian is certainly much
altered,--very weak, I fear very ill, and I believe very unskilfuly
treated by Dr. Jones.  I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change
of physician; but there was something else to consider before deciding
who that physician should be.  I was bound, as your confidante, to
consult your own scruples of honour.  Of course I could not say
point-blank to Mrs. Ashleigh, 'Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter, would
you object to him as a son-in-law?' Of course I could not touch at all on
the secret with which you intrusted me; but I have not the less arrived
at a conclusion, in agreement with my previous belief, that not being a
woman of the world, Annie Ashleigh has none of the ambition which women
of the world would conceive for a daughter who has a good fortune and
considerable beauty; that her predominant anxiety is forher child's
happiness, and her predominant fear is that her child will die.  She
would never oppose any attachment which Lilian might form; and if that
attachment were for one who had preserved her daughter's life, I believe
her own heart would gratefully go with her daughter's.  So far, then, as
honour is concerned, all scruples vanish."

I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy.  Mrs. Poyntz dryly
continued: "You value yourself on your common-sense, and to that I address
a few words of counsel which may not be welcome to your romance.  I said
that I did not think you and Lilian would suit each other in the long run;
reflection confirms me in that supposition.  Do not look at me so
incredulously and so sadly.  Listen, and take heed.  Ask yourself what, as
a man whose days are devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambition is
entwined with its success, whose mind must be absorbed in its
pursuits,--ask yourself what kind of a wife you would have sought to win;
had not this sudden fancy for a charming face rushed over your better
reason, and obliterated all previous plans and resolutions.  Surely some
one with whom your heart would have been quite at rest; by whom your
thoughts would have been undistracted from the channels into which your
calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serene companion in the
quiet holiday of a trustful home!  Is it not so?"

"You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned towards marriage.
But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture you have
drawn?"

"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords with the
picture?  In the first place, the wife of a young physician should not be
his perpetual patient.  The more he loves her, and the more worthy she may
be of love, the more her case will haunt him wherever he goes.  When he
returns home, it is not to a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the
anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there."

"But, good heavens! why should Lilian Ashleigh be a perpetual patient?
The sanitary resources of youth are incalculable.  And--"

"Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a physician in love!  I will
give up that point in dispute, remaining convinced that there is something
in Lilian's constitution which will perplex, torment, and baffle you.  It
was so with her father, whom she resembles in face and in character.  He
showed no symptoms of any grave malady.  His outward form was, like
Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this, that, like hers, it was too
exquisitely delicate; but when seemingly in the midst of perfect health,
at any slight jar on the nerves he would become alarmingly ill.  I was
sure that he would die young, and he did so."

"Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death was from brain-fever, brought
on by over-study.  Rarely, indeed, do women so fatigue the brain.  No
female patient, in the range of my practice, ever died of purely mental
exertion."

"Of purely mental exertion, no; but of heart emotion, many female
patients, perhaps?  Oh, you own that!  I know nothing about nerves; but I
suppose that, whether they act on the brain or the heart, the result to
life is much the same if the nerves be too finely strung for life's daily
wear and tear.  And this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilian will
not suit.  As yet, she is a mere child; her nature undeveloped, and her
affections therefore untried.  You might suppose that you had won her
heart; she might believe that she gave it to you, and both be deceived.
If fairies nowadays condescended to exchange their offspring with those
of mortals, and if the popular tradition did not represent a fairy
changeling as an ugly peevish creature, with none of the grace of its
parents, I should be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of the
elfin people.  She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think she
will ever be contented with a prosaic earthly lot.  Now I have told you
why I do not think she will suit you.  I must leave it to yourself to
conjecture how far you would suit her.  I say this in due season, while
you may set a guard upon your impulse; while you may yet watch, and weigh,
and meditate; and from this moment on that subject I say no more.  I lend
advice, but I never throw it away."

She came here to a dead pause, and began putting on her bonnet and
scarf, which lay on the table beside her.  I was a little chilled by her
words, and yet more by the blunt, shrewd, hard look and manner which aided
the effect of their delivery; but the chill melted away in the sudden glow
of my heart when she again turned towards me and said,--

"Of course you guess, from these preliminary cautions, that you are
going into danger?  Mrs. Ashleigh wishes to consult you about Lilian, and
I propose to take you to her house."

"Oh, my friend, my dear friend, how can I ever repay you?" I caught her
hand, the white firm hand, and lifted it to my lips.

She drew it somewhat hastily away, and laying it gently on my shoulder,
said, in a soft voice, "Poor Allen, how little the world knows either of
us!  But how little perhaps we know ourselves!  Come, your carriage is
here?  That is right; we must put down Dr. Jones publicly and in all our
state."

In the carriage Mrs. Poyntz told me the purport of that conversation
with Mrs. Ashleigh to which I owed my re-introduction to Abbots' House.
It seems that Mr. Vigors had called early the morning after my first
visit! had evinced much discomposure on hearing that I had been summoned!
dwelt much on my injurious treatment of Dr. Lloyd, whom, as distantly
related to himself, and he (Mr. Vigors) being distantly connected with the
late Gilbert Ashleigh, he endeavoured to fasten upon his listener as one
of her husband's family, whose quarrel she was bound in honour to take up.
He spoke of me as an infidel "tainted with French doctrines," and as a
practitioner rash and presumptuous; proving his own freedom from
presumption and rashness by flatly deciding that my opinion must be
wrong.  Previously to Mrs. Ashleigh's migration to L----, Mr. Vigors had
interested her in the pretended phenomena of mesmerism.  He had consulted
a clairvoyante, much esteemed by poor Dr. Lloyd, as to Lilian's health,
and the clairvoyante had declared her to be constitutionally predisposed
to consumption.  Mr. Vigors persuaded Mrs. Ashleigh to come at once with
him and see this clairvoyante herself, armed with a lock of Lilian's hair
and a glove she had worn, as the media of mesmerical rapport.

The clairvoyante, one of those I had publicly denounced as an impostor,
naturally enough denounced me in return.  On being asked solemnly by Mr.
Vigors "to look at Dr. Fenwick and see if his influence would be
beneficial to the subject," the sibyl had become violently agitated, and
said that, "when she looked at us together, we were enveloped in a black
cloud; that this portended affliction and sinister consequences; that our
rapport was antagonistic."  Mr. Vigors then told her to dismiss my image,
and conjure up that of Dr. Jones.  Therewith the somnambule became more
tranquil, and said: "Dr. Jones would do well if he would be guided by
higher lights than his own skill, and consult herself daily as to the
proper remedies.  The best remedy of all would be mesmerism.  But since
Dr. Lloyd's death, she did not know of a mesmerist, sufficiently gifted,
in affinity with the patient."  In fine, she impressed and awed Mrs.
Ashleigh, who returned in haste, summoned Dr. Jones, and dismissed
myself.

"I could not have conceived Mrs. Ashleigh to be so utterly wanting in
common-sense," said I.  "She talked rationally enough when I saw her."

"She has common-sense in general, and plenty of the sense most common,"
answered Mrs. Poyntz; "but she is easily led and easily frightened
wherever her affections are concerned, and therefore, just as easily as
she had been persuaded by Mr. Vigors and terrified by the somnambule, I
persuaded her against the one, and terrified her against the other.  I had
positive experience on my side, since it was clear that Lilian had been
getting rapidly worse under Dr. Jones's care.  The main obstacles I had to
encounter in inducing Mrs. Ashleigh to consult you again were, first, her
reluctance to disoblige Mr. Vigors, as a friend and connection of Lilian's
father; and, secondly, her sentiment of shame in re-inviting your opinion
after having treated you with so little respect.  Both these difficulties
I took on myself.  I bring you to her house, and, on leaving you, I shall
go on to Mr. Vigors, and tell him what is done is my doing, and not to be
undone by him; so that matter is settled.  Indeed, if you were out of the
question, I should not suffer Mr. Vigors to re-introduce all these
mummeries of clairvoyance and mesmerism into the precincts of the Hill.  I
did not demolish a man I really liked in Dr. Lloyd, to set up a Dr. Jones,
whom I despise, in his stead.  Clairvoyance on Abbey Hill, indeed!  I saw
enough of it before."

"True; your strong intellect detected at once the absurdity of the whole
pretence,--the falsity of mesmerism, the impossibility of clairvoyance."

"No, my strong intellect did nothing of the kind.  I do not know whether
mesmerism be false or clairvoyance impossible; and I don't wish to know.
All I do know is, that I saw the Hill in great danger,--young ladies
allowing themselves to be put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretending they
had no will of their own against such fascination!  Improper and shocking!
And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. Leopold Smythe
questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be highly gifted) as to
all the secrets of her friends.  When I saw this, I said, 'The Hill is
becoming demoralized; the Hill is making itself ridiculous; the Hill must
be saved!'  I remonstrated with Dr. Lloyd as a friend; he remained
obdurate.  I annihilated him as an enemy, not to me but to the State.  I
slew my best lover for the good of Rome.  Now you know why I took your
part,--not because I have any opinion, one way or the other, as to the
truth or falsehood of what Dr. Lloyd asserted; but I have a strong opinion
that, whether they be true or false, his notions were those which are not
to be allowed on the Hill.  And so, Allen Fenwick, that matter was
settled."

Perhaps at another time I might have felt some little humiliation to learn
that I had been honoured with the influence of this great potentate not as
a champion of truth, but as an instrument of policy; and I might have
owned to some twinge of conscience in having assisted to sacrifice a
fellow-seeker after science--misled, no doubt, but preferring his
independent belief to his worldly interest--and sacrifice him to
those deities with whom science is ever at war,--the Prejudices of a
Clique sanctified into the Proprieties of the World.  But at that moment
the words I heard made no perceptible impression on my mind.  The gables
of Abbots' House were visible above the evergreens and lilacs; another
moment, and the carriage stopped at the door.




CHAPTER XIV.

Mrs. Ashleigh received us in the dining-room.  Her manner to me, at first,
was a little confused and shy.  But my companion soon communicated
something of her own happy ease to her gentler friend.  After a short
conversation we all three went to Lilian, who was in a little room on the
ground-floor, fitted up as her study.  I was glad to perceive that my
interdict of the deathchamber had been respected.

She reclined on a sofa near the window, which was, however, jealously
closed; the light of the bright May-day obscured by blinds and curtains; a
large fire on the hearth; the air of the room that of a hot-house,--the
ignorant, senseless, exploded system of nursing into consumption those who
are confined on suspicion of it!  She did not heed us as we entered
noiselessly; her eyes were drooped languidly on the floor, and with
difficulty I suppressed the exclamation that rose to my lips on seeing
her.  She seemed within the last few days so changed, and on the aspect of
the countenance there was so profound a melancholy!  But as she slowly
turned at the sound of our footsteps, and her eyes met mine, a quick blush
came into the wan cheek, and she half rose, but sank back as if the effort
exhausted her.  There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough.
Was it possible that I had been mistaken, and that in that cough was heard
the warning knell of the most insidious enemy to youthful life?

I sat down by her side; I lured her on to talk of indifferent
subjects,--the weather, the gardens, the bird in the cage, which was
placed on the table near her.  Her voice, at first low and feeble, became
gradually stronger, and her face lighted up with a child's innocent,
playful smile.  No, I had not been mistaken!  That was no lymphatic,
nerveless temperament, on which consumption fastens as its lawful prey;
here there was no hectic pulse, no hurried waste of the vital flame.
Quietly and gently I made my observations, addressed my questions,
applied my stethoscope; and when I turned my face towards her mother's
anxious, eager eyes, that face told my opinion; for her mother sprang
forward, clasped my hand, and said, through her struggling tears,--

"You smile!  You see nothing to fear?"

"Fear!  No, indeed!  You will soon be again yourself, Miss Ashleigh, will
you not?"

"Yes," she said, with her sweet laugh, "I shall be well now very soon.
But may I not have the window open; may I not go into the garden?  I so
long for fresh air."

"No, no, darling," exclaimed Mrs. Ashleigh, "not while the east winds
last.  Dr. Jones said on no account.  On no account, Dr. Fenwick, eh?"

"Will you take my arm, Miss Ashleigh, for a few turns up and down the
room?" said I.  "We will then see how far we may rebel against Dr. Jones."

She rose with some little effort, but there was no cough.  At first her
step was languid; it became lighter and more elastic after a few moments.

"Let her come out," said I to Mrs. Ashleigh.  "The wind is not in the
east, and, while we are out, pray bid your servant lower to the last bar
in the grate that fire,--only fit for Christmas."

"But--"

"Ah, no buts!  He is a poor doctor who is not a stern despot."

So the straw hat and mantle were sent for.  Lilian was wrapped with
unnecessary care, and we all went forth into the garden.  Involuntarily we
took the way to the Monk's Well, and at every step Lilian seemed to revive
under the bracing air and temperate sun.  We paused by the well.

"You do not feel fatigued, Miss Ashleigh?"

"No."

"But your face seems changed.  It is grown sadder."

"Not sadder."

"Sadder than when I first saw it,--saw it when you were seated here!"  I
said this in a whisper.  I felt her hand tremble as it lay on my arm.

"You saw me seated here!"

"Yes.  I will tell you how some day."

Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and there was in them that same surprise
which I had noticed on my first visit,--a surprise that perplexed me,
blended with no displeasure, but yet with a something of vague alarm.

We soon returned to the house.

Mrs. Ashleigh made me a sign to follow her into the drawing-room, leaving
Mrs. Poyntz with Lilian.

"Well?" said she, tremblingly.

"Permit me to see Dr. Jones's prescriptions.  Thank you.  Ay, I thought
so.  My dear madam, the mistake here has been in depressing nature instead
of strengthening; in narcotics instead of stimulants.  The main stimulants
which leave no reaction are air and light.  Promise me that I may have my
own way for a week,--that all I recommend will be implicitly heeded?"

"I promise.  But that cough,--you noticed it?"

"Yes.  The nervous system is terribly lowered, and nervous exhaustion is a
strange impostor; it imitates all manner of complaints with which it has
no connection.  The cough will soon disappear!  But pardon my question.
Mrs. Poyntz tells me that you consulted a clairvoyante  about your
daughter.  Does Miss Ashleigh know that you did so?"

"No; I did not tell her."

"I am glad of that.  And pray, for Heaven's sake, guard her against all
that may set her thinking on such subjects.  Above all, guard her against
concentring attention on any malady that your fears erroneously ascribe to
her.  It is amongst the phenomena of our organization that you cannot
closely rivet your consciousness on any part of the frame, however
healthy, but it will soon begin to exhibit morbid sensibility.  Try to fix
all your attention on your little finger for half an hour, and before the
half hour is over the little finger will be uneasy, probably even
painful.  How serious, then, is the danger to a young girl, at the age in
which imagination is most active, most intense, if you force upon her a
belief that she is in danger of a mortal disease!  It is a peculiarity of
youth to brood over the thought of early death much more resignedly, much
more complacently, than we do in maturer years.  Impress on a young
imaginative girl, as free from pulmonary tendencies as you and I are, the
conviction that she must fade away into the grave, and though she may not
actually die of consumption, you instil slow poison into her system.  Hope
is the natural aliment of youth.  You impoverish nourishment where you
discourage hope.  As soon as this temporary illness is over, reject for
your daughter the melancholy care which seems to her own mind to mark her
out from others of her age.  Rear her for the air, which is the kindest
life-giver; to sleep with open windows: to be out at sunrise.  Nature
will do more for her than all our drugs can do.  You have been hitherto
fearing Nature; now trust to her."

Here Mrs. Poyntz joined us, and having, while I had been speaking, written
my prescription and some general injunctions, I closed my advice with an
appeal to that powerful protectress.

"This, my dear madam, is a case in which I need your aid, and I ask it.
Miss Ashleigh should not be left with no other companion than her mother.
A change of faces is often as salutary as a change of air.  If you could
devote an hour or two this very evening to sit with Miss Ashleigh, to talk
to her with your usual cheerfulness, and--"

"Annie," interrupted Mrs. Poyntz, "I will come and drink tea with you at
half-past seven, and bring my knitting; and perhaps, if you ask him, Dr.
Fenwick will come too!  He can be tolerably entertaining when he likes it."

"It is too great a tax on his kindness, I fear," said Mrs. Ashleigh.
"But," she added cordially, "I should be grateful indeed if he would spare
us an hour of his time."

I murmured an assent which I endeavoured to make not too joyous.

"So that matter is settled," said Mrs. Poyntz; "and now I shall go to Mr.
Vigors and prevent his further interference."

"Oh, but, Margaret, pray don't offend him,--a connection of my poor dear
Gilbert's.  And so tetchy!  I am sure I do not know how you'll manage
to--"

"To get rid of him?  Never fear.  As I manage everything and everybody,"
said Mrs. Poyntz, bluntly.  So she kissed her friend on the forehead, gave
me a gracious nod, and, declining the offer of my carriage, walked with
her usual brisk, decided tread down the short path towards the town.

Mrs. Ashleigh timidly approached me, and again the furtive hand bashfully
insinuated the hateful fee.

"Stay," said I; "this is a case which needs the most constant watching.  I
wish to call so often that I should seem the most greedy of doctors if my
visits were to be computed at guineas.  Let me be at ease to effect my
cure; my pride of science is involved in it.  And when amongst all the
young ladies of the Hill you can point to none with a fresher bloom, or a
fairer promise of healthful life, than the patient you intrust to my care,
why, then the fee and the dismissal.  Nay, nay; I must refer you to our
friend Mrs. Poyntz.  It was so settled with her before she brought me here
to displace Dr. Jones."  Therewith I escaped.




CHAPTER XV.

In less than a week Lilian was convalescent; in less than a fortnight she
regained her usual health,--nay, Mrs. Ashleigh declared that she had never
known her daughter appear so cheerful and look so well.  I had established
a familiar intimacy at Abbots' House; most of my evenings were spent
there.  As horse exercise formed an important part of my advice, Mrs.
Ashleigh had purchased a pretty and quiet horse for her daughter; and,
except the weather was very unfavourable, Lilian now rode daily with
Colonel Poyntz, who was a notable equestrian, and often accompanied by
Miss Jane Poyntz, and other young ladies of the Hill.  I was generally
relieved from my duties in time to join her as she returned homewards.
Thus we made innocent appointments, openly, frankly, in her mother's
presence, she telling me beforehand in what direction excursions had been
planned with Colonel Poyntz, and I promising to fall in with the party--if
my avocations would permit.  At my suggestion, Mrs. Ashleigh now opened
her house almost every evening to some of the neighbouring families;
Lilian was thus habituated to the intercourse of young persons of her own
age.  Music and dancing and childlike games made the old house gay.  And
the Hill gratefully acknowledged to Mrs. Poyntz, "that the Ashleighs were
indeed a great acquisition."

But my happiness was not uncheckered.  In thus unselfishly surrounding
Lilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jealousy which is
inseparable from those earlier stages of love, when the lover as yet has
won no right to that self-confidence which can only spring from the
assurance that he is loved.

In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian.  I saw her courted
by the gay young admirers whom her beauty and her fortune drew around
her,--her soft face brightening in the exercise of the dance, which the
gravity of my profession rather than my years forbade to join; and her
laugh, so musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heart as if
the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my presumptuous dreams.
But no, suddenly, shyly, her eyes would steal away from those about her,
steal to the corner in which I sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my
own gaze, their light softened before they turned away; and the colour on
her cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came a smile different from
the smile that it shed on others.  And then--and then--all jealousy, all
sadness vanished, and I felt the glory which blends with the growing
belief that we are loved.

In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when ideas of
perfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start forth and
concentre themselves round one virgin shape,--that rises out from the sea
of creation, welcomed by the Hours and adorned by the Graces,--how the
thought that this archetype of sweetness and beauty singles himself from
the millions, singles himself for her choice, ennobles and lifts up his
being!  Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that
mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for
a while the illusion has grandeur.  Though it comes from the senses which
shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at first shrink into shade,
awed and hushed by the presence that charms them.  All that is brightest
and best in the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven,
to greet and to hallow what to him seems life's fairest dream of the
heavenly!  Take the wings from the image of Love, and the god disappears
from the form!

Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief
from it sufficed for my rapture.  But I had a cause for disquiet less
acute but less varying than jealousy.

Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had more
immediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as to its cause and
true nature.  To her mother I gave it the convenient epithet of "nervous;"
but the epithet did not explain to myself all the symptoms I classified by
it.  There was still, at times, when no cause was apparent or
conjecturable, a sudden change in the expression of her countenance, in
the beat of her pulse; the eye would become fixed, the bloom would vanish,
the pulse would sink feebler and feebler till it could be scarcely felt;
yet there was no indication of heart disease, of which such sudden
lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warning indication.  The change
would pass away after a few minutes, during which she seemed unconscious,
or, at least, never spoke--never appeared to heed what was said to her.
But in the expression of her countenance there was no character of
suffering or distress; on the contrary, a wondrous serenity, that made her
beauty more beauteous, her very youthfulness younger; and when this
spurious or partial kind of syncope passed, she recovered at once without
effort, without acknowledging that she had felt faint or unwell, but
rather with a sense of recruited vitality, as the weary obtain from a
sleep.  For the rest her spirits were more generally light and joyous than
I should have premised from her mother's previous description.  She would
enter mirthfully into the mirth of young companions round her: she had
evidently quick perception of the sunny sides of life; an infantine
gratitude for kindness; an infantine joy in the trifles that amuse only
those who delight in tastes pure and simple.  But when talk rose into
graver and more contemplative topics, her attention became earnest and
absorbed; and sometimes a rich eloquence, such as I have never before nor
since heard from lips so young, would startle me first into a wondering
silence, and soon into a disapproving alarm: for the thoughts she then
uttered seemed to me too fantastic, too visionary, too much akin to the
vagaries of a wild though beautiful imagination.  And then I would seek to
check, to sober, to distract fancies with which my reason had no sympathy,
and the indulgence of which I regarded as injurious to the normal
functions of the brain.

When thus, sometimes with a chilling sentence, sometimes with a
half-sarcastic laugh, I would repress outpourings frank and musical as the
songs of a forest-bird, she would look at me with a kind of plaintive
sorrow,--often sigh and shiver as she turned away.  Only in those modes
did she show displeasure; otherwise ever sweet and docile, and ever, if,
seeing that I had pained her, I asked forgiveness, humbling herself rather
to ask mine, and brightening our reconciliation with her angel smile.  As
yet I had not dared to speak of love; as yet I gazed on her as the captive
gazes on the flowers and the stars through the gratings of his cell,
murmuring to himself, "When shall the doors unclose?"




CHAPTER XVI.

It was with a wrath suppressed in the presence of the fair ambassadress,
that Mr. Vigors had received from Mrs. Poyntz the intelligence that I had
replaced Dr. Jones at Abbots' House not less abruptly than Dr. Jones had
previously supplanted me.  As Mrs. Poyntz took upon herself the whole
responsibility of this change, Mr. Vigors did not venture to condemn it to
her face; for the Administrator of Laws was at heart no little in awe of
the Autocrat of Proprieties; as Authority, howsoever established, is in
awe of Opinion, howsoever capricious.

To the mild Mrs. Ashleigh the magistrate's anger was more decidedly
manifested.  He ceased his visits; and in answer to a long and deprecatory
letter with which she endeavoured to soften his resentment and win him
back to the house, he replied by an elaborate combination of homily and
satire.  He began by excusing himself from accepting her invitations, on
the ground that his time was valuable, his habits domestic; and though
ever willing to sacrifice both time and habits where he could do good, he
owed it to himself and to mankind to sacrifice neither where his advice
was rejected and his opinion contemned.  He glanced briefly, but not
hastily, at the respect with which her late husband had deferred to his
judgment, and the benefits which that deference had enabled him to bestow.
He contrasted the husband's deference with the widow's contumely, and
hinted at the evils which the contumely would not permit him to prevent.
He could not presume to say what women of the world might think due to
deceased husbands, but even women of the world generally allowed the
claims of living children, and did not act with levity where their
interests were concerned, still less where their lives were at stake.  As
to Dr. Jones, he, Mr. Vigors, had the fullest confidence in his skill.
Mrs. Ashleigh must judge for herself whether Mrs. Poyntz was as good an
authority upon medical science as he had no doubt she was upon shawls and
ribbons.  Dr. Jones was a man of caution and modesty; he did not indulge
in the hollow boasts by which charlatans decoy their dupes; but Dr. Jones
had privately assured him that though the case was one that admitted of no
rash experiments, he had no fear of the result if his own prudent system
were persevered in.  What might be the consequences of any other system,
Dr. Jones would not say, because he was too high-minded to express his
distrust of the rival who had made use of underhand arts to supplant him.
But Mr. Vigors was convinced, from other sources of information (meaning,
I presume, the oracular prescience of his clairvoyants), that the time
would come when the poor young lady would herself insist on discarding Dr.
Fenwick, and when "that person" would appear in a very different light to
many who now so fondly admired and so reverentially trusted him.  When
that time arrived, he, Mr. Vigors, might again be of use; but, meanwhile,
though he declined to renew his intimacy at Abbots' House, or to pay
unavailing visits of mere ceremony, his interest in the daughter of his
old friend remained undiminished, nay, was rather increased by compassion;
that he should silently keep his eye upon her; and whenever anything to
her advantage suggested itself to him, he should not be deterred by the
slight with which Mrs. Ashleigh had treated his judgment from calling on
her, and placing before her conscience as a mother his ideas for her
child's benefit, leaving to herself then, as now, the entire
responsibility of rejecting the advice which he might say, without vanity,
was deemed of some value by those who could distinguish between sterling
qualities and specious pretences.

Mrs. Ashleigh's was that thoroughly womanly nature which instinctively
leans upon others.  She was diffident, trustful, meek, affectionate.  Not
quite justly had Mrs. Poyntz described her as "commonplace weak," for
though she might be called weak, it was not because she was commonplace;
she had a goodness of heart, a sweetness of disposition, to which that
disparaging definition could not apply.  She could only be called
commonplace inasmuch as in the ordinary daily affairs of life she had a
great deal of ordinary daily commonplace good-sense.  Give her a routine
to follow, and no routine could be better adhered to.  In the allotted
sphere of a woman's duties she never seemed in fault.  No household, not
even Mrs. Poyntz's, was more happily managed.  The old Abbots' House had
merged its original antique gloom in the softer character of pleasing
repose. All her servants adored Mrs. Ashleigh; all found it a pleasure to
please her; her establishment had the harmony of clockwork; comfort
diffused itself round her like quiet sunshine round a sheltered spot.  To
gaze on her pleasing countenance, to listen to the simple talk that lapsed
from her guileless lips, in even, slow, and lulling murmur, was in itself
a respite from "eating cares."  She was to the mind what the colour of
green is to the eye.  She had, therefore, excellent sense in all that
relates to every-day life.  There, she needed not to consult another;
there, the wisest might have consulted her with profit.  But the moment
anything, however trivial in itself, jarred on the routine to which her
mind had grown wedded, the moment an incident hurried her out of the
beaten track of woman's daily life, then her confidence forsook her; then
she needed a confidant, an adviser; and by that confidant or adviser she
could be credulously lured or submissively controlled.  Therefore, when
she lost, in Mr. Vigors, the guide she had been accustomed to consult
whenever she needed guidance, she turned; helplessly and piteously, first
to Mrs. Poyntz, and then yet more imploringly to me, because a woman of
that character is never quite satisfied without the advice of a man; and
where an intimacy more familiar than that of his formal visits is once
established with a physician, confidence in him grows fearless and rapid,
as the natural result of sympathy concentrated on an object of anxiety in
common between himself and the home which opens its sacred recess to his
observant but tender eye.  Thus Mrs. Ashleigh had shown me Mr. Vigors's
letter, and, forgetting that I might not be as amiable as herself,
besought me to counsel her how to conciliate and soften her lost
husband's friend and connection.  That character clothed him with dignity
and awe in her soft forgiving eyes.  So, smothering my own resentment,
less perhaps at the tone of offensive insinuation against myself than at
the arrogance with which this prejudiced intermeddler implied to a mother
the necessity of his guardian watch over a child under her own care, I
sketched a reply which seemed to me both dignified and placatory,
abstaining from all discussion, and conveying the assurance that Mrs.
Ashleigh would be at all times glad to hear, and disposed to respect,
whatever suggestion so esteemed a friend of her husband would kindly
submit to her for the welfare of her daughter.

There all communication had stopped for about a month since the date of my
reintroduction to Abbots' House.  One afternoon I unexpectedly met Mr.
Vigors at the entrance of the blind lane, I on my way to Abbots' House,
and my first glance at his face told me that he was coming from it, for
the expression of that face was more than usually sinister; the sullen
scowl was lit into significant menace by a sneer of unmistakable triumph.
I felt at once that he had succeeded in some machination against me, and
with ominous misgivings quickened my steps.

I found Mrs. Ashleigh seated alone in front of the house, under a large
cedar-tree that formed a natural arbour in the centre of the sunny lawn.
She was perceptibly embarrassed as I took my seat beside her.

"I hope," said I, forcing a smile, "that Mr. Vigors has not been telling
you that I shall kill my patient, or that she looks much worse than she
did under Dr. Jones's care?"

"No," she said.  "He owned cheerfully that Lilian had grown quite strong,
and said, without any displeasure, that he had heard how gay she had been,
riding out and even dancing,--which is very kind in him, for he
disapproves of dancing, on principle."

"But still I can see he has said something to vex or annoy you; and, to
judge by his countenance when I met him in the lane, I should conjecture
that that something was intended to lower the confidence you so kindly
repose in me."

"I assure you not; he did not mention your name, either to me or to
Lilian.  I never knew him more friendly; quite like old times.  He is a
good man at heart, very, and was much attached to my poor husband."

"Did Mr. Ashleigh profess a very high opinion of Mr. Vigors?"

"Well, I don't quite know that, because my dear Gilbert never spoke to me
much about him.  Gilbert was naturally very silent.  But he shrank from
all trouble--all worldly affairs--and Mr. Vigors managed his estate, and
inspected his steward's books, and protected him through a long lawsuit
which he had inherited from his father.  It killed his father.  I don't
know what we should have done without Mr. Vigors, and I am so glad he has
forgiven me."

"Hem!  Where is Miss Ashleigh?  Indoors?"

"No; somewhere in the grounds.  But, my dear Dr. Fenwick, do not leave me
yet; you are so very, very kind, and somehow I have grown to look upon you
quite as an old friend.  Something has happened which has put me out,
quite put me out."

She said this wearily and feebly, closing her eyes as if she were indeed
put out in the sense of extinguished.

"The feeling of friendship you express," said I, with earnestness, "is
reciprocal.  On my side it is accompanied by a peculiar gratitude.  I am a
lonely man, by a lonely fireside, no parents, no near kindred, and in this
town, since Dr. Faber left it, without cordial intimacy till I knew you.
In admitting me so familiarly to your hearth, you have given me what I
have never known before since I came to man's estate,--a glimpse of the
happy domestic life; the charm and relief to eye, heart, and spirit which
is never known but in households cheered by the face of woman.  Thus my
sentiment for you and yours is indeed that of an old friend; and in any
private confidence you show me, I feel as if I were no longer a lonely
man, without kindred, without home."

Mrs. Ashleigh seemed much moved by these words, which my heart had forced
from my lips; and, after replying to me with simple unaffected warmth of
kindness, she rose, took my arm, and continued thus as we walked slowly to
and fro the lawn: "You know, perhaps, that my poor husband left a sister,
now a widow like myself, Lady Haughton."

"I remember that Mrs. Poyntz said you had such a sister-in-law, but I
never heard you mention Lady Haughton till now.  Well!"

"Well, Mr. Vigors has brought me a letter from her, and it is that which
has put me out.  I dare say you have not heard me speak before of Lady
Haughton, for I am ashamed to say I had almost forgotten her existence.
She is many years older than my husband was; of a very different
character.  Only came once to see him after our marriage.  Hurt me by
ridiculing him as a bookworm; offended him by looking a little down on me,
as a nobody without spirit and fashion, which was quite true.  And, except
by a cold and unfeeling letter of formal condolence after I lost my dear
Gilbert, I have never heard from her since I have been a widow, till
to-day.  But, after all, she is my poor husband's sister, and his eldest
sister, and Lilian's aunt; and, as Mr. Vigors says, 'Duty is duty.'"

Had Mrs. Ashleigh said "Duty is torture," she could not have uttered the
maxim with more mournful and despondent resignation.

"And what does this lady require of you, which Mr. Vigors deems it your
duty to comply with?"

"Dear me!  What penetration!  You have guessed the exact truth.  But I
think you will agree with Mr. Vigors.  Certainly I have no option; yes, I
must do it."

"My penetration is in fault now.  Do what?  Pray explain."

"Poor Lady Haughton, six months ago, lost her only son, Sir James.  Mr.
Vigors says he was a very fine young man, of whom any mother would have
been proud.  I had heard he was wild; Mr. Vigors says, however, that he
was just going to reform, and marry a young lady whom his mother chose for
him, when, unluckily, he would ride a steeplechase, not being quite sober
at the time, and broke his neck.  Lady Haughton has been, of course, in
great grief.  She has retired to Brighton; and she wrote to me from
thence, and Mr. Vigors brought the letter.  He will go back to her
to-day."

"Will go back to Lady Haughton?  What!  Has he been to her?  Is he, then,
as intimate with Lady Haughton as he was with her brother?"

"No; but there has been a long and constant correspondence.  She had a
settlement on the Kirby Estate,--a sum which was not paid off during
Gilbert's life; and a very small part of the property went to Sir James,
which part Mr. Ashleigh Sumner, the heir-at-law to the rest of the estate,
wished Mr. Vigors, as his guardian, to buy during his minority, and as it
was mixed up with Lady Haughton's settlement her consent was necessary as
well as Sir James's.  So there was much negotiation, and, since then,
Ashleigh Sumner has come into the Haughton property, on poor Sir James's
decease; so that complicated all affairs between Mr. Vigors and Lady
Haughton, and he has just been to Brighton to see her.  And poor Lady
Haughton, in short, wants me and Lilian to go and visit her.  I don't like
it at all.  But you said the other day you thought sea air might be good
for Lilian during the heat of the summer, and she seems well enough
now for the change.  What do you think?"

"She is well enough, certainly.  But Brighton is not the place I would
recommend for the summer; it wants shade, and is much hotter than L----"

"Yes; but unluckily Lady Haughton foresaw that objection, and she has a
jointure-house some miles from Brighton, and near the sea.  She says the
grounds are well wooded, and the place is proverbially cool and healthy,
not far from St. Leonard's Forest.  And, in short, I have written to say
we will come.  So we must, unless, indeed, you positively forbid it."

"When do you think of going?"

"Next Monday.  Mr. Vigors would make me fix the day.  If you knew how I
dislike moving when I am once settled; and I do so dread Lady Haughton,
she is so fine, and so satirical!  But Mr. Vigors says she is very much
altered, poor thing!  I should like to show you her letter, but I had just
sent it to Margaret--Mrs. Poyntz--a minute or two before you came.  She
knows something of Lady Haughton.  Margaret knows everybody.  And we shall
have to go in mourning for poor Sir James, I suppose; and Margaret will
choose it, for I am sure I can't guess to what extent we should be
supposed to mourn.  I ought to have gone in mourning before--poor
Gilbert's nephew--but I am so stupid, and I had never seen him.  And--But
oh, this is kind!  Margaret herself,--my dear Margaret!"

We had just turned away from the house, in our up-and-down walk; and Mrs.
Poyntz stood immediately fronting us.  "So, Anne, you have actually
accepted this invitation--and for Monday next?"

"Yes.  Did I do wrong?"

"What does Dr. Fenwick say?  Can Lilian go with safety?"

I could not honestly say she might not go with safety, but my heart sank
like lead as I answered,--

"Miss Ashleigh does not now need merely medical care; but more than half
her cure has depended on keeping her spirits free from depression.  She
may miss the cheerful companionship of your daughter, and other young
ladies of her own age.  A very melancholy house, saddened by a recent
bereavement, without other guests; a hostess to whom she is a stranger,
and whom Mrs. Ashleigh herself appears to deem formidable,--certainly
these do not make that change of scene which a physician would recommend.
When I spoke of sea air being good for Miss Ashleigh, I thought of our own
northern coasts at a later time of the year, when I could escape myself
for a few weeks and attend her.  The journey to a northern watering-place
would be also shorter and less fatiguing; the air there more
invigorating."

"No doubt that would be better," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly; "but so far as
your objections to visiting Lady Haughton have been stated, they are
groundless.  Her house will not be melancholy; she will have other guests,
and Lilian will find companions, young like herself,--young ladies--and
young gentlemen too!"

There was something ominous, something compassionate, in the look which
Mrs. Poyntz cast upon me, in concluding her speech, which in itself was
calculated to rouse the fears of a lover.  Lilian away from me, in the
house of a worldly-fine lady--such as I judged Lady Haughton to
be--surrounded by young gentlemen, as well as young ladies, by admirers,
no doubt, of a higher rank and more brilliant fashion than she had yet
known!  I closed my eyes, and with strong effort suppressed a groan.

"My dear Annie, let me satisfy myself that Dr. Fenwick really does consent
to this journey.  He will say to me what he may not to you.  Pardon me,
then, if I take him aside for a few minutes.  Let me find you here again
under this cedar-tree."

Placing her arm in mine, and without waiting for Mrs. Ashleigh's answer,
Mrs. Poyntz drew me into the more sequestered walk that belted the lawn;
and when we were out of Mrs. Ashleigh's sight and hearing, said,--

"From what you have now seen of Lilian Ashleigh, do you still desire to
gain her as your wife?"

"Still?  Oh, with an intensity proportioned to the fear with which I now
dread that she is about to pass away from my eyes--from my life!"

"Does your judgment confirm the choice of your heart?  Reflect before you
answer."

"Such selfish judgment as I had before I knew her would not confirm but
oppose it.  The nobler judgment that now expands all my reasonings,
approves and seconds my heart.  No, no; do not smile so sarcastically.
This is not the voice of a blind and egotistical passion.  Let me explain
myself if I can.  I concede to you that Lilian's character is undeveloped;
I concede to you, that amidst the childlike freshness and innocence of her
nature, there is at times a strangeness, a mystery, which I have not yet
traced to its cause.  But I am certain that the intellect is organically
as sound as the heart, and that intellect and heart will ultimately--if
under happy auspices--blend in that felicitous union which constitutes the
perfection of woman.  But it is because she does, and may for years, may
perhaps always, need a more devoted, thoughtful care than natures less
tremulously sensitive, that my judgment sanctions my choice; for whatever
is best for her is best for me.  And who would watch over her as I
should?"

"You have never yet spoken to Lilian as lovers speak?"

"Oh, no, indeed."

"And, nevertheless, you believe that your affection would not be
unreturned?"

"I thought so once; I doubt now,--yet, in doubting, hope.  But why do you
alarm me with these questions?  You, too, forebode that in this visit I
may lose her forever?"

"If you fear that, tell her so, and perhaps her answer may dispel your
fear."

"What! now, already, when she has scarcely known me a month.  Might I not
risk all if too premature?"

"There is no almanac for love.  With many women love is born the moment
they know they are beloved.  All wisdom tells us that a moment once gone
is irrevocable.  Were I in your place, I should feel that I approached a
moment that I must not lose.  I have said enough; now I shall rejoin Mrs.
Ashleigh."

"Stay--tell me first what Lady Haughton's letter really contains to prompt
the advice with which you so transport, and yet so daunt, me when you
proffer it."

"Not now; later, perhaps,--not now.  If you wish to see Lilian alone, she
is by the Old Monk's Well; I saw her seated there as I passed that way to
the house."

"One word more,--only one.  Answer this question frankly, for it is one of
honour.  Do you still believe that my suit to her daughter would not be
disapproved of by Mrs. Ashleigh?"

"At this moment I am sure it would not; a week hence I might not give you
the same answer."

So she passed on with her quick but measured tread, back through the shady
walk, on to the open lawn, till the last glimpse of her pale gray robe
disappeared under the boughs of the cedar-tree.  Then, with a start, I
broke the irresolute, tremulous suspense in which I had vainly endeavoured
to analyze my own mind, solve my own doubts, concentrate my own will, and
went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that haunted ground,--as
now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of the neighbouring city
came full and close into view, divided from my fairy-land of life but by
the trodden murmurous thoroughfare winding low beneath the ivied parapets;
and as now, again, the world of men abruptly vanished behind the screening
foliage of luxuriant June.

At last the enchanted glade opened out from the verdure, its borders
fragrant with syringa and rose and woodbine; and there, by the gray
memorial of the gone Gothic age, my eyes seemed to close their unquiet
wanderings, resting spell-bound on that image which had become to me the
incarnation of earth's bloom and youth.

She stood amidst the Past, backed by the fragments of walls which man had
raised to seclude him from human passion, locking, under those lids so
downcast, the secret of the only knowledge I asked from the boundless
Future.

Ah! what mockery there is in that grand word, the world's fierce
war-cry,--Freedom!  Who has not known one period of life, and that so
solemn that its shadows may rest over all life hereafter, when one human
creature has over him a sovereignty more supreme and absolute than Orient
servitude adores in the symbols of diadem and sceptre?  What crest so
haughty that has not bowed before a hand which could exalt or humble!
What heart so dauntless that has not trembled to call forth the voice at
whose sound open the gates of rapture or despair!  That life alone is free
which rules, and suffices for itself.  That life we forfeit when we love!




CHAPTER XVII.

How did I utter it?  By what words did my heart make itself known?  I
remember not.  All was as a dream that falls upon a restless, feverish
night, and fades away as the eyes unclose on the peace of a cloudless
heaven, on the bliss of a golden sun.  A new morrow seemed indeed upon the
earth when I woke from a life-long yesterday,--her dear hand in mine, her
sweet face bowed upon my breast.

And then there was that melodious silence in which there is no sound
audible from without; yet within us there is heard a lulling celestial
music, as if our whole being, grown harmonious with the universe, joined
from its happy deeps in the hymn that unites the stars.

In that silence our two hearts seemed to make each other understood, to be
drawing nearer and nearer, blending by mysterious concord into the
completeness of a solemn union, never henceforth to be rent
asunder.

At length I said softly: "And it was here on this spot that I first saw
you,--here that I for the first time knew what power to change our world
and to rule our future goes forth from the charm of a human face!"

Then Lilian asked me timidly, and without lifting her eyes, how I had so
seen her, reminding me that I promised to tell her, and had never yet done
so.

And then I told her of the strange impulse that had led me into the
grounds, and by what chance my steps had been diverted down the path that
wound to the glade; how suddenly her form had shone upon my eyes,
gathering round itself the rose hues of the setting sun, and how wistfully
those eyes had followed her own silent gaze into the distant heaven.

As I spoke, her hand pressed mine eagerly, convulsively, and, raising her
face from my breast, she looked at me with an intent, anxious earnestness.
That look!--twice before it had thrilled and perplexed me.

"What is there in that look, oh, my Lilian, which tells me that there is
something that startles you,--something you wish to confide, and yet
shrink from explaining?  See how, already, I study the fair book from
which the seal has been lifted! but as yet you must aid me to construe its
language."

"If I shrink from explaining, it is only because I fear that I cannot
explain so as to be understood or believed.  But you have a right to know
the secrets of a life which you would link to your own.  Turn your face
aside from me; a reproving look, an incredulous smile, chill--oh, you
cannot guess how they chill me, when I would approach that which to me is
so serious and so solemnly strange."

I turned my face away, and her voice grew firmer as, after a brief pause,
she resumed,--

"As far back as I can remember in my infancy, there have been moments when
there seems to fall a soft hazy veil between my sight and the things
around it, thickening and deepening till it has the likeness of one of
those white fleecy clouds which gather on the verge of the horizon when
the air is yet still, but the winds are about to rise; and then this
vapour or veil will suddenly open, as clouds open, and let in the blue
sky."

"Go on," I said gently, for here she came to a stop.  She continued,
speaking somewhat more hurriedly,--

"Then, in that opening, strange appearances present themselves to me, as
in a vision.  In my childhood these were chiefly landscapes of wonderful
beauty.  I could but faintly describe them then; I could not attempt to
describe them now, for they are almost gone from my memory.  My dear
mother chid me for telling her what I saw, so I did not impress it on my
mind by repeating it.  As I grew up, this kind of vision--if I may so call
it--became much less frequent, or much less distinct; I still saw the soft
veil fall, the pale cloud form and open, but often what may then have
appeared was entirely forgotten when I recovered myself, waking as from a
sleep.  Sometimes, however, the recollection would be vivid and complete;
sometimes I saw the face of my lost father; sometimes I heard his very
voice, as I had seen and heard him in my early childhood, when he would
let me rest for hours beside him as he mused or studied, happy to be so
quietly near him, for I loved him, oh, so dearly! and I remember him so
distinctly, though I was only in my sixth year when he died.  Much more
recently--indeed, within the last few months--the images of things to come
are reflected on the space that I gaze into as clearly as in a glass.
Thus, for weeks before I came hither, or knew that such a place existed, I
saw distinctly the old House, yon trees, this sward, this moss-grown
Gothic fount; and, with the sight, an impression was conveyed to me that
in the scene before me my old childlike life would pass into some solemn
change.  So that when I came here, and recognized the picture in my
vision, I took an affection for the spot,--an affection not without awe, a
powerful, perplexing interest, as one who feels under the influence of a
fate of which a prophetic glimpse has been vouchsafed.  And in that
evening, when you first saw me, seated here--"

"Yes, Lilian, on that evening--"

"I saw you also, but in my vision--yonder, far in the deeps of
space,--and--and my heart was stirred as it had never been before; and
near where your image grew out from the cloud I saw my father's face, and
I heard his voice, not in my ear, but as in my heart, whispering--"

"Yes, Lilian--whispering--what?"

"These words,--only these,--'Ye will need one another.'  But then,
suddenly, between my upward eyes and the two forms they had beheld, there
rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous,
and coiling like a vast serpent,--nothing, indeed, of its shape and
figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread
luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly
than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull.  Then my terror
made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was
vanished.  But the terror still remained, even when I felt my mother's arm
round me and heard her voice.  And then, when I entered the house, and sat
down again alone, the recollection of what I had seen--those eyes, that
face, that skull--grew on me stronger and stronger till I fainted, and
remember no more, until my eyes, opening, saw you by my side, and in my
wonder there was not terror.  No, a sense of joy, protection, hope, yet
still shadowed by a kind of fear or awe, in recognizing the countenance
which had gleamed on me from the skies before the dark vapour had risen,
and while my father's voice had murmured, 'Ye will need one another.' And
now--and now--will you love me less that you know a secret in my being
which I have told to no other,--cannot construe to myself?  Only--only,
at least, do not mock me; do not disbelieve me!  Nay, turn from me no
longer now: now I ask to meet your eyes.  Now, before our hands can join
again, tell me that you do not despise me as untruthful, do not pity me as
insane."

"Hush, hush!" I said, drawing her to my breast.  "Of all you tell me we
will talk hereafter.  The scales of our science have no weights fine
enough for the gossamer threads of a maiden's pure fancies.  Enough for
me--for us both--if out from all such illusions start one truth, told to
you, lovely child, from the heavens; told to me, ruder man, on the earth;
repeated by each pulse of this heart that woos you to hear and to
trust,--now and henceforth through life unto death, 'Each has need of the
other,'--I of you, I of you! my Lilian! my Lilian!"




CHAPTER XVIII.

In spite of the previous assurance of Mrs. Poyntz, it was not without an
uneasy apprehension that I approached the cedar-tree, under which Mrs.
Ashleigh still sat, her friend beside her.  I looked on the fair creature
whose arm was linked in mine.  So young, so singularly lovely, and with
all the gifts of birth and fortune which bend avarice and ambition the
more submissively to youth and beauty, I felt as if I had wronged what a
parent might justly deem her natural lot.

"Oh, if your mother should disapprove!" said I, falteringly.  Lilian
leaned on my arm less lightly.  "If I had thought so," she said with her
soft blush, "should I be thus by your side?"

So we passed under the boughs of the dark tree, and Lilian left me and
kissed Mrs. Ashleigh's cheek; then, seating herself on the turf, laid her
head on her mother's lap.  I looked on the Queen of the Hill, whose keen
eye shot over me.  I thought there was a momentary expression of pain or
displeasure on her countenance; but it passed.  Still there seemed to me
something of irony, as well as of triumph or congratulation, in the
half-smile with which she quitted her seat, and in the tone with which she
whispered, as she glided by me to the open sward, "So, then, it is
settled."

She walked lightly and quickly down the lawn.  When she was out of sight I
breathed more freely.  I took the seat which she had left, by Mrs.
Ashleigh's side, and said, "A little while ago I spoke of myself as a man
without kindred, without home, and now I come to you and ask for both."

Mrs. Ashleigh looked at me benignly, then raised her daughter's face from
her lap, and whispered, "Lilian;" and Lilian's lips moved, but I did not
hear her answer.  Her mother did.  She took Lilian's hand, simply placed
it in mine, and said, "As she chooses, I choose; whom she loves, I love."




CHAPTER XIX.

From that evening till the day Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian went on the
dreaded visit, I was always at their house, when my avocations allowed me
to steal to it; and during those few days, the happiest I had ever known,
it seemed to me that years could not have more deepened my intimacy with
Lilian's exquisite nature, made me more reverential of its purity, or more
enamoured of its sweetness.  I could detect in her but one fault, and I
rebuked myself for believing that it was a fault.  We see many who neglect
the minor duties of life, who lack watchful forethought and considerate
care for others, and we recognize the cause of this failing in levity or
egotism.  Certainly, neither of those tendencies of character could be
ascribed to Lilian.  Yet still in daily trifles there was something of
that neglect, some lack of that care and forethought.  She loved her
mother with fondness and devotion, yet it never occurred to her to aid in
those petty household cares in which her mother centred so much of
habitual interest.  She was full of tenderness and pity to all want and
suffering, yet many a young lady on the Hill was more actively
beneficent,--visiting the poor in their sickness, or instructing their
children in the Infant Schools.  I was persuaded that her love for me was
deep and truthful; it was clearly void of all ambition; doubtless she
would have borne, unflinching and contented, whatever the world considers
to be a sacrifice and privation,--yet I should never have expected her to
take her share in the troubles of ordinary life.  I could never have
applied to her the homely but significant name of helpmate.  I reproach
myself while I write for noticing such defect--if defect it were--in what
may be called the practical routine of our positive, trivial, human
existence.  No doubt it was this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's harsh
judgment against the wisdom of my choice.  But such chiller shade upon
Lilian's charming nature was reflected from no inert, unamiable self-love.
It was but the consequence of that self-absorption which the habit of
revery had fostered.  I cautiously abstained from all allusion to those
visionary deceptions, which she had confided to me as the truthful
impressions of spirit, if not of sense.  To me any approach to what I
termed "superstition" was displeasing; any indulgence of fantasies not
within the measured and beaten track of healthful imagination more than
displeased me in her,--it alarmed.  I would not by a word encourage her in
persuasions which I felt it would be at present premature to reason
against, and cruel indeed to ridicule.  I was convinced that of
themselves these mists round her native intelligence, engendered by a
solitary and musing childhood, would subside in the fuller daylight of
wedded life.  She seemed pained when she saw how resolutely I shunned a
subject dear to her thoughts.  She made one or two timid attempts to renew
it, but my grave looks sufficed to check her.  Once or twice indeed, on
such occasions, she would turn away and leave me, but she soon came back;
that gentle heart could not bear one unkindlier shade between itself and
what it loved.  It was agreed that our engagement should be, for the
present, confided only to Mrs. Poyntz.  When Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian
returned, which would be in a few weeks at furthest, it should be
proclaimed; and our marriage could take place in the autumn, when I should
be most free for a brief holiday from professional toils.

So we parted--as lovers part.  I felt none of those jealous fears which,
before we were affianced, had made me tremble at the thought of
separation, and had conjured up irresistible rivals.  But it was with a
settled, heavy gloom that I saw her depart.  From earth was gone a glory;
from life a blessing.




CHAPTER XX.

During the busy years of my professional career, I had snatched leisure
for some professional treatises, which had made more or less sensation,
and one of them, entitled "The Vital Principle; its Waste and Supply," had
gained a wide circulation among the general public.  This last treatise
contained the results of certain experiments, then new in chemistry, which
were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as to the
re-invigoration of the human system by principles similar to those which
Liebig has applied to the replenishment of an exhausted soil,--namely, the
giving back to the frame those essentials to its nutrition, which it has
lost by the action or accident of time; or supplying that special pabulum
or energy in which the individual organism is constitutionally deficient;
and neutralizing or counterbalancing that in which it super-abounds,--a
theory upon which some eminent physicians have more recently improved with
signal success.  But on these essays, slight and suggestive, rather than
dogmatic, I set no value.  I had been for the last two years engaged on a
work of much wider range, endeared to me by a far bolder ambition,--a work
upon which I fondly hoped to found an enduring reputation as a severe and
original physiologist.  It was an Inquiry into Organic Life, similar in
comprehensiveness of survey to that by which the illustrious Muller, of
Berlin, has enriched the science of our age; however inferior, alas! to
that august combination of thought and learning in the judgment which
checks presumption, and the genius which adorns speculation.  But at that
day I was carried away by the ardour of composition, and I admired my
performance because I loved my labour.  This work had been entirely laid
aside for the last agitated month; now that Lilian was gone, I resumed it
earnestly, as the sole occupation that had power and charm enough to rouse
me from the aching sense of void and loss.

The very night of the day she went, I re-opened my manuscript.  I had left
off at the commencement of a chapter Upon Knowledge as derived from our
Senses.  As my convictions on this head were founded on the well-known
arguments of Locke and Condillac against innate ideas, and on the
reasonings by which Hume has resolved the combination of sensations into a
general idea to an impulse arising merely out of habit, so I set myself to
oppose, as a dangerous concession to the sentimentalities or mysticism of
a pseudo-philosophy, the doctrine favoured by most of our recent
physiologists, and of which some of the most eminent of German
metaphysicians have accepted the substance, though refining into a
subtlety its positive form,--I mean the doctrine which Muller himself has
expressed in these words:--

   "That innate ideas may exist cannot in the slightest degree be denied:
    it is, indeed, a fact.  All the ideas of animals, which are induced by
    instinct, are innate and immediate: something presented to the mind, a
    desire to attain which is at the same time given.  The new-born lamb
    and foal have such innate ideas, which lead them to follow their
    mother and suck the teats.  Is it not in some measure the same with
    the intellectual ideas of man?"[1]

To this question I answered with an indignant "No!"  A "Yes" would have
shaken my creed of materialism to the dust.  I wrote on rapidly, warmly.
I defined the properties and meted the limits of natural laws, which I
would not admit that a Deity himself could alter.  I clamped and soldered
dogma to dogma in the links of my tinkered logic, till out from my page,
to my own complacent eye, grew Intellectual Man, as the pure formation of
his material senses; mind, or what is called soul, born from and nurtured
by them alone; through them to act, and to perish with the machine they
moved.  Strange, that at the very time my love for Lilian might have
taught me that there are mysteries in the core of the feelings which my
analysis of ideas could not solve, I should so stubbornly have opposed as
unreal all that could be referred to the spiritual!  Strange, that at the
very time when the thought that I might lose from this life the being I
had known scarce a month had just before so appalled me, I should thus
complacently sit down to prove that, according to the laws of the nature
which my passion obeyed, I must lose for eternity the blessing I now hoped
I had won to my life!  But how distinctly dissimilar is man in his conduct
from man in his systems!  See the poet reclined under forest boughs,
conning odes to his mistress; follow him out into the world; no mistress
ever lived for him there![2]  See the hard man of science, so austere in
his passionless problems; follow him now where the brain rests from its
toil, where the heart finds its Sabbath--what child is so tender, so
yielding, and soft?

But I had proved to my own satisfaction that poet and sage are dust, and
no more, when the pulse ceases to beat.  And on that consolatory
conclusion my pen stopped.

Suddenly, beside me I distinctly heard a sigh,--a compassionate, mournful
sigh.  The sound was unmistakable.  I started from my seat, looked round,
amazed to discover no one,--no living thing!  The windows were closed, the
night was still.  That sigh was not the wail of the wind.  But there, in
the darker angle of the room, what was that?  A silvery whiteness, vaguely
shaped as a human form, receding, fading, gone!  Why, I know not--for no
face was visible, no form, if form it were, more distinct than the
colourless outline,--why, I know not, but I cried aloud, "Lilian!
Lilian!"  My voice came strangely back to my own ear; I paused, then
smiled and blushed at my folly.  "So I, too, have learned what is
superstition," I muttered to myself.  "And here is an anecdote at my own
expense (as Muller frankly tells us anecdotes of the illusions which
would haunt his eyes, shut or open),--an anecdote I may quote when I come
to my chapter on the Cheats of the Senses and Spectral Phantasms."  I
went on with my book, and wrote till the lights waned in the gray of the
dawn.  And I said then, in the triumph of my pride, as I laid myself down
to rest, "I have written that which allots with precision man's place in
the region of nature; written that which will found a school, form
disciples; and race after race of those who cultivate truth through pure
reason shall accept my bases if they enlarge my building."  And again I
heard the sigh, but this time it caused no surprise.  "Certainly," I
murmured, "a very strange thing is the nervous system!"  So I turned on
my pillow, and, wearied out, fell asleep.

[1] Muller's "Elements of Physiology," vol. ii. p. 134.  Translated by Dr.
Baley.

[2] Cowley, who wrote so elaborate a series of amatory poems, is said
"never to have been in love but once, and then he never had resolution to
tell his passion."--Johnson's "Lives of the Poets:" COWLEY.




CHAPTER XXI.

The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoons were
devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attend the
steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat, which was
about five miles from L----.  It was rarely indeed that persons so far
from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked my
services.

But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my profession was
not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, not the
essential.  This case the messenger reported as urgent.  I went on
horseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the village
that skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident care
bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me.  I felt
that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent proprietor.
Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the contrast
between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately Hall and the
smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.

An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated pilasters,
pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs to the
entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured, mildewed,
chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy.  Most of the windows
were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the
casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the shattered
balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds.  The sun glared
hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more painfully
apparent.  I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut the house from
my sight.  Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and
before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently
designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the
blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and
surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with an
iron rail, party-gilt.

The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened
almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the aspect
of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made.  I spurred my horse,
and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair brick
house at the other extremity of the park.

I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust
conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed to
be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out of
immediate danger.  After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, I took
aside the patient's wife, and went with her to the parlour below stairs,
to make some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen and habits of
life.  These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover no apparent
cause for the attack, which presented symptoms not familiar to my
experience.  "Has your husband ever had such fits before?"

"Never!"

"Had he experienced any sudden emotion?  Had he heard any unexpected news;
or had anything happened to put him out?"

The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries.  I pressed them more
urgently.  At last she burst into tears, and clasping my hand, said, "Oh,
doctor, I ought to tell you--I sent for you on purpose--yet I fear you
will not believe me: my good man has seen a ghost!"

"A ghost!" said I, repressing a smile.  "Well, tell me all, that I may
prevent the ghost coming again."

The woman's story was prolix.  Its substance was this. Her husband,
habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morning still earlier
than usual, to give directions about some cattle that were to be sent for
sale to a neighbouring fair.  An hour afterwards he had been found by a
shepherd, near the mausoleum, apparently lifeless.  On being removed to
his own house, he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wife
leave the room, he then told her that on walking across the park towards
the cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at first a pale light
by the iron door of the mausoleum.  On approaching nearer, this light
changed into the distinct and visible form of his master, Sir Philip
Derval, who was then abroad,--supposed to be in the East, where he had
resided for many years.  The impression on the steward's mind was so
strong, that he called out, "Oh, Sir Philip!" when looking still more
intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse.  As he
continued to gaze, the apparition seemed gradually to recede, as if
vanishing into the sepulchre itself.  He knew no more; he became
unconscious.  It was the excess of the poor woman's alarm, on hearing
this strange tale, that made her resolve to send for me instead of the
parish apothecary.  She fancied so astounding a cause for her husband's
seizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man reputed to
have more than ordinary learning; and the steward himself objected to the
apothecary in the immediate neighbourhood, as more likely to annoy him by
gossip than a physician from a comparative distance.

I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by parading too
quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he ad seen;
but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of the fit to
be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, in my
experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and finally
soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearly reducible
to natural causes.  Afterwards, I led her on to talk about Sir Philip
Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent proprietor than
from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to his image as a living man.
The steward had been in the service of Sir Philip's father, and had known
Sir Philip himself from a child.  He was warmly attached to his master,
whom the old woman described as a man of rare benevolence and great
eccentricity, which last she imputed to his studious habits.  He had
succeeded to the title and estates as a minor.  For the first few years
after attaining his majority, he had mixed much in the world.  When at
Derval Court his house had been filled with gay companions, and was the
scene of lavish hospitality; but the estate was not in proportion to the
grandeur of the mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner.  He
had become greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so it was
rumoured) occurring simultaneously with his pecuniary difficulties, he had
suddenly changed his way of life, shut himself up from his old friends,
lived in seclusion, taking to books and scientific pursuits, and as the
old woman said vaguely and expressively, "to odd ways."  He had
gradually by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which
did not preclude much judicious generosity to others, cleared off his
debts; and, once more rich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and
taken to a life of travel.  He was now about forty-eight years old, and
had been eighteen years abroad.  He wrote frequently to his steward,
giving him minute and thoughtful instructions in regard to the employment,
comforts, and homes of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to
spend no money on the grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the
latter might be allowed to fall into decay, his intention to pull it down
whenever he returned to England.

I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at my
patient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, had
removed from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectly
recovered from his attack.

Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, even
pathologically, between man and man.  Here was a brawny inhabitant of
rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the
faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door by his
fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple
causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in a
sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly
to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest
that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous
phenomenon.




CHAPTER XXII.

That evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary
"reception nights," and I felt that she would naturally expect my
attendance as "a proper attention."

I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntz
herself made the centre, knitting as usual,--rapidly while she talked,
slowly when she listened.

Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned the
conversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, and
then incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval?  Is it
not strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?"
The answers I received added little to the information I had already
obtained.  Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man
of large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the
value of property he possessed in the town of L----, and which lay
contiguous to that of her husband.  Two or three of the older inhabitants
of the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his early days, when he was gay,
high-spirited, hospitable, lavish.  One observed that the only person in
L---- whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who
was then without practice, and whom he had employed as an assistant in
certain chemical experiments.

Here a gentleman struck into the conversation.  He was a stranger to me
and to L----, a visitor to one of the dwellers on the Hill, who had asked
leave to present him to its queen as a great traveller and an accomplished
antiquary.

 Said this gentleman: "Sir Philip Derval?  I know him.  I met him in the
East.  He was then still, I believe, very fond of chemical science; a
clever, odd, philanthropical man; had studied medicine, or at least
practised it; was said to have made many marvellous cures.  I became
acquainted with him in Aleppo.  He had come to that town, not much
frequented by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder of
two men, of whom one was his friend and the other his countryman."

"This is interesting," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly.  "We who live on this
innocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is the pleasantest subject
you could have hit on.  Pray give us the details."

"So encouraged," said the traveller, good-humouredly, "I will not hesitate
to communicate the little I know.  In Aleppo there had lived for some
years a man who was held by the natives in great reverence.  He had the
reputation of extraordinary wisdom, but was difficult of access; the
lively imagination of the Orientals invested his character with the
fascinations of fable,--in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularly
considered a magician.  Wild stories were told of his powers, of his
preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures.  Apart from such disputable
titles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that his
learning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of life
irreproachably ascetic.  He appears to have resembled those Arabian sages
of the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted,--a mystic
enthusiast, but an earnest scholar.  A wealthy and singular Englishman,
long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishing
disease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult this sage, who, among his
other acquirements, was held to have discovered rare secrets in
medicine,--his countrymen said in 'charms.'  One morning, not long after
the Englishman's arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparently
strangled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the town, had
disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch on which he habitually
supported himself, were found a few miles distant from Aleppo, near the
roadside.  There appeared no doubt that he, too, had been murdered, but
his corpse could not be discovered.  Sir Philip Derval had been a loving
disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured me he owed not only
that knowledge of medicine which, by report, Sir Philip possessed, but the
insight into various truths of nature, on the promulgation of which, it
was evident, Sir Philip cherished the ambition to found a philosophical
celebrity for himself."

"Of what description were those truths of nature?" I asked, somewhat
sarcastically.

"Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nor did I
much care to ask; for what may be revered as truths in Asia are usually
despised as dreams in Europe.  To return to my story: Sir Philip had been
in Aleppo a little time before the murder; had left the Englishman under
the care of Haroun.  He returned to Aleppo on hearing the tragic events I
have related, and was busy in collecting such evidence as could be
gleaned, and instituting inquiries after our missing countryman at the
time I myself chanced to arrive in the city.  I assisted in his
researches, but without avail.  The assassins remained undiscovered.  I do
not myself doubt that they were mere vulgar robbers.  Sir Philip had a
darker suspicion of which he made no secret to me; but as I confess that I
thought the suspicion groundless, you will pardon me if I do not repeat
it.  Whether since I left the East the Englishman's remains have been
discovered, I know not.  Very probably; for I understand that his heirs
have got hold of what fortune he left,--less than was generally supposed.
But it was reported that he had buried great treasures, a rumour, however
absurd, not altogether inconsistent with his character."

"What was his character?" asked Mrs. Poyntz.

"One of evil and sinister repute.  He was regarded with terror by the
attendants who had accompanied him to Aleppo.  But he had lived in a very
remote part of the East, little known to Europeans, and, from all I could
learn, had there established an extraordinary power, strengthened by
superstitious awe.  He was said to have studied deeply that knowledge
which the philosophers of old called 'occult,' not, like the Sage of
Aleppo, for benevolent, but for malignant ends.  He was accused of
conferring with evil spirits, and filling his barbaric court (for he lived
in a kind of savage royalty) with charmers and sorcerers.  I suspect,
after all, that he was only, like myself, an ardent antiquary, and
cunningly made use of the fear he inspired in order to secure his
authority, and prosecute in safety researches into ancient sepulchres or
temples.  His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in
his neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetrated
so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria.  He
wore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him.  I came to
the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps
by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were
missing), who then at once buried his body, and kept their own secret.  He
was old, very infirm; could never have got far from the town without
assistance."

"You have not yet told us his name," said Mrs. Poyntz.

"His name was Grayle."

"Grayle!" exclaimed Mrs. Poyntz, dropping her work.  "Louis Grayle?"

"Yes; Louis Grayle.  You could not have known him?"

"Known him!  No; but I have often heard my father speak of him.  Such,
then, was the tragic end of that strong dark creature, for whom, as a
young girl in the nursery, I used to feel a kind of fearful admiring
interest?"

"It is your turn to narrate now," said the traveller.

And we all drew closer round our hostess, who remained silent some
moments, her brow thoughtful, her work suspended.

"Well," said she at last, looking round us with a lofty air, which seemed
half defying, "force and courage are always fascinating, even when they
are quite in the wrong.  I go with the world, because the world goes with
me; if it did not--"  Here she stopped for a moment, clenched the firm
white hand, and then scornfully waved it, left the sentence unfinished,
and broke into another.

"Going with the world, of course we must march over those who stand
against it.  But when one man stands single-handed against our march, we
do not despise him; it is enough to crush.  I am very glad I did not see
Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen."  Again she paused a moment,
and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the
rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth.  Old Grayle desired
to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton.  Boys are always
aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he
struck boys bigger than himself,--fought till he was half killed.  My
father was at school with him; described him as a tiger-whelp.  One day
he--still a fag--struck a sixth-form boy.  Sixth-form boys do not fight
fags; they punish them.  Louis Grayle was ordered to hold out his hand to
the cane; he received the blow, drew forth his schoolboy knife, and
stabbed the punisher.  After that, he left Eton.  I don't think he was
publicly expelled--too mere a child for that honour--but he was taken or
sent away; educated with great care under the first masters at home.  When
he was of age to enter the University, old Grayle was dead.  Louis was
sent by his guardians to Cambridge, with acquirements far exceeding the
average of young men, and with unlimited command of money.  My father was
at the same college, and described him again,--haughty, quarrelsome,
reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave.  Does that kind of creature interest
you, my dears?" (appealing to the ladies).

"La!" said Miss Brabazon; "a horrid usurer's son!"

"Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silver
spoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest on it;
but when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and
cry out, 'Stolen from our plate chest,' it is a heritage that outlaws a
babe in his cradle.  However, young men at college who want money are less
scrupulous about descent than boys at Eton are.  Louis Grayle found, while
at college, plenty of wellborn acquaintances willing to recover from him
some of the plunder his father had extorted from theirs.  He was too wild
to distinguish himself by academical honours, but my father said that the
tutors of the college declared there were not six undergraduates in the
University who knew as much hard and dry science as wild Louis Grayle.  He
went into the world, no doubt, hoping to shine; but his father's name was
too notorious to admit the son into good society.  The Polite World, it
is true, does not examine a scutcheon with the nice eye of a herald, nor
look upon riches with the stately contempt of a stoic; still the Polite
World has its family pride and its moral sentiment.  It does not like to
be cheated,--I mean, in money matters; and when the son of a man who has
emptied its purse and foreclosed on its acres rides by its club-windows,
hand on haunch, and head in the air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no
hyena a laugh more dread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant,
polite, well-bred World which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so languid
a friend, and--so remorseless an--enemy.  In short, Louis Grayle claimed
the right to be courted,--he was shunned; to be admired,--he was loathed.
Even his old college acquaintances were shamed out of knowing him.
Perhaps he could have lived through all this had he sought to glide
quietly into position; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and
strove to storm his way, not to steal it.  Reduced for companions to
needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opinion by that
ostentation of excess, which made Richelieus and Lauzuns the rage.  But
then Richelieus and Lauzuns were dukes!  He now very naturally took the
Polite World into hate,--gave it scorn for scorn.  He would ally himself
with Democracy; his wealth could not get him into a club, but it would buy
him into parliament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau,
but he might be a Danton.  He had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and
with knowledge and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent.
Possibly, then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure,
left his mark on his age and his name in history; but in contesting the
borough, which he was sure to carry, he had to face an opponent in a real
fine gentleman whom his father had ruined, cool and highbred, with a
tongue like a rapier, a sneer like an adder.  A quarrel of course; Louis
Grayle sent a challenge.  The fine gentleman, known to be no coward (fine
gentlemen never are), was at first disposed to refuse with contempt.  But
Grayle had made himself the idol of the mob; and at a word from Grayle,
the fine gentleman might have been ducked at a pump, or tossed in a
blanket,--that would have made him ridiculous; to be shot at is a trifle,
to be laughed at is serious.  He therefore condescended to accept the
challenge, and my father was his second.

"It was settled, of course, according to English custom, that both
combatants should fire at the same time, and by signal.  The antagonist
fired at the right moment; his ball grazed Louis Grayle's temple.  Louis
Grayle had not fired.  He now seemed to the seconds to take slow and
deliberate aim.  They called out to him not to fire; they were rushing to
prevent him, when the trigger was pulled, and his opponent fell dead on
the field.  The fight was, therefore, considered unfair; Louis Grayle was
tried for his life: he did not stand the trial in person.[1]  He escaped
to the Continent; hurried on to some distant uncivilized lands; could not
be traced; reappeared in England no more.  The lawyer who conducted his
defence pleaded skilfully.  He argued that the delay in firing was not
intentional, therefore not criminal,--the effect of the stun which the
wound in the temple had occasioned.  The judge was a gentleman, and summed
up the evidence so as to direct the jury to a verdict against the low
wretch who had murdered a gentleman; but the jurors were not gentlemen,
and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathy for a son of
the people, whom a gentleman had wantonly insulted.  The verdict was
manslaughter; but the sentence emphatically marked the aggravated nature
of the homicide,--three years' imprisonment.  Grayle eluded the prison,
but he was a man disgraced and an exile,--his ambition blasted, his career
an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty-three.  My father said that he was
supposed to have changed his name; none knew what had become of him.  And
so this creature, brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices
we might now be all fawning on, cringing to,--after living to old age, no
one knows how,--dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom."

"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago,"
said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no idea
that it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel Poyntz
has so graphically described.  I have a very vague recollection of the
trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since.  The
affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten."

"Soon forgotten," said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not?  Leave your place in
the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else has taken
it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that you had ever
a place even in the parish register?"

"Nevertheless," said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly,

   "'The sun of Homer shines upon us still.'"

"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that we know
no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homer at all,
or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man in the
moon,--if there be one man there, or millions of men.  Now, my dear Miss
Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts into channels
less gloomy.  Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I have something to
say to you."  She drew me towards the window.  "So Annie Ashleigh writes
me word that I am not to mention your engagement.  Do you think it quite
prudent to keep it a secret?"

"I do not see how prudence is concerned in keeping it secret one way or
the other,--it is a mere matter of feeling.  Most people wish to abridge,
as far as they can, the time in which their private arrangements are the
topic of public gossip."

"Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due completion of
private arrangements.  As long as a girl is not known to be engaged, her
betrothed must be prepared for rivals.  Announce the engagement, and
rivals are warned off."

"I fear no rivals."

"Do you not?  Bold man!  I suppose you will write to Lilian?"

"Certainly."

"Do so, and constantly.  By-the-way, Mrs. Ashleigh, before she went, asked
me to send her back Lady Haughton's letter of invitation.  What for,--to
show to you?"

"Very likely.  Have you the letter still?  May I see it?"

"Not just at present.  When Lilian or Mrs. Ashleigh writes to you, come
and tell me how they like their visit, and what other guests form the
party."

Therewith she turned away and conversed apart with the traveller.

Her words disquieted me, and I felt that they were meant to do so,
wherefore I could not guess.  But there is no language on earth which has
more words with a double meaning than that spoken by the Clever Woman, who
is never so guarded as when she appears to be frank.

As I walked home thoughtfully, I was accosted by a young man, the son of
one of the wealthiest merchants in the town.  I had attended him with
success some months before, in a rheumatic fever: he and his family were
much attached to me.

"Ah, my dear Fenwick, I am so glad to see you; I owe you an obligation of
which you are not aware,--an exceedingly pleasant travelling-companion.  I
came with him to-day from London, where I have been sight-seeing and
holidaymaking for the last fortnight."

"I suppose you mean that you kindly bring me a patient?"

"No, only an admirer.  I was staying at Fenton's Hotel.  It so happened
one day that I had left in the coffee-room your last work on the Vital
Principle, which, by the by, the bookseller assures me is selling
immensely among readers as non-professional as myself.  Coming into the
coffee-room again, I found a gentleman reading the book.  I claimed it
politely; he as politely tendered his excuse for taking it.  We made
acquaintance on the spot.  The next day we were intimate.  He expressed
great interest and curiosity about your theory and your experiments.  I
told him I knew you.  You may guess if I described you as less clever in
your practice than you are in your writings; and, in short, he came with
me to L----, partly to see our flourishing town, principally on my promise
to introduce him to you.  My mother, you know, has what she calls a
dejeuner tomorrow,--dejeuner and dance.  You will be there?"

"Thank you for reminding me of her invitation.  I will avail myself of it
if I can.  Your new friend will be present?  Who and what is he,--a
medical student?"

"No, a mere gentleman at ease, but seems to have a good deal of general
information.  Very young, apparently very rich, wonderfully good-looking.
I am sure you will like him; everybody must."

"It is quite enough to prepare me to like him that he is a friend of
yours."  And so we shook hands and parted.

[1] Mrs. Poyntz here makes a mistake in law which, though very evident,
her listeners do not seem to have noticed.  Her mistake will be referred
to later.




CHAPTER XXIII.

It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able to
join the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa about two
miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardens
celebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty.  The breakfast had been
long over; the company was scattered over the lawn,--some formed into a
dance on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; others gliding
amidst parterres, in which all the glow of colour took a glory yet more
vivid under the flush of a brilliant sunshine; and the ripple of a soft
western breeze.  Music, loud and lively, mingled with the laughter of
happy children, who formed much the larger number of the party.

Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from the hardier
flowers of the lawn to a rare collection of tropical plants under a lofty
glass dome (connecting, as it were, the familiar vegetation of the North
with that of the remotest East), was a form that instantaneously caught
and fixed my gaze.  The entrance of the arcade was covered with parasite
creepers, in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeous tints,--scarlet,
golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture of man's youth fresh
from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame of blooms.

Never have I seen human face so radiant as that young man's.  There was in
the aspect an indescribable something that literally dazzled.  As one
continued to gaze, it was with surprise; one was forced to acknowledge
that in the features themselves there was no faultless regularity; nor was
the young man's stature imposing, about the middle height.  But the effect
of the whole was not less transcendent.  Large eyes, unspeakably lustrous;
a most harmonious colouring; an expression of contagious animation and
joyousness; and the form itself so critically fine, that the welded
strength of its sinews was best shown in the lightness and grace of its
movements.

He was resting one hand carelessly on the golden locks of a child that had
nestled itself against his knees, looking up to his face in that silent
loving wonder with which children regard something too strangely beautiful
for noisy admiration; he himself was conversing with the host, an old
gray-haired, gouty man, propped on his crutched stick, and listening with
a look of mournful envy.  To the wealth of the old man all the flowers in
that garden owed their renewed delight in the summer air and sun.  Oh,
that his wealth could renew to himself one hour of the youth whose
incarnation stood beside him, Lord, indeed, of Creation; its splendour
woven into his crown of beauty, its enjoyments subject to his sceptre of
hope and gladness.

I was startled by the hearty voice of the merchant's son.  "Ah, my dear
Fenwick, I was afraid you would not come,--you are late.  There is the new
friend of whom I spoke to you last night; let me now make you acquainted
with him."  He drew my arm in his, and led me up to the young man, where
he stood under the arching flowers, and whom he then introduced to me by
the name of Margrave.

Nothing could be more frankly cordial than Mr. Margrave's manner.  In a
few minutes I found myself conversing with him familiarly, as if we had
been reared in the same home, and sported together in the same playground.
His vein of talk was peculiar, off-hand, careless, shifting from topic to
topic with a bright rapidity.

He said that he liked the place; proposed to stay in it some weeks; asked
my address, which I gave to him; promised to call soon at an early hour,
while my time was yet free from professional visits.  I endeavoured, when
I went away, to analyze to myself the fascination which this young
stranger so notably exercised over all who approached him; and it seemed
to me, ever seeking to find material causes for all moral effects, that it
rose from the contagious vitality of that rarest of all rare gifts in
highly-civilized circles,--perfect health; that health which is in itself
the most exquisite luxury; which, finding happiness in the mere sense of
existence, diffuses round it, like an atmosphere, the harmless hilarity of
its bright animal being.  Health, to the utmost perfection, is seldom
known after childhood; health to the utmost cannot be enjoyed by those who
overwork the brain, or admit the sure wear and tear of the passions.  The
creature I had just seen gave me the notion of youth in the golden age of
the poets,--the youth of the careless Arcadian, before nymph or
shepherdess had vexed his heart with a sigh.




CHAPTER XXIV.

The house I occupied at L---- was a quaint, old-fashioned building, a
corner-house.  One side, in which was the front entrance, looked upon a
street which, as there were no shops in it, and it was no direct
thoroughfare to the busy centres of the town, was always quiet, and at
some hours of the day almost deserted.  The other side of the house
fronted a lane; opposite to it was the long and high wall of the garden to
a Young Ladies' Boarding-school.  My stables adjoined the house, abutting
on a row of smaller buildings, with little gardens before them, chiefly
occupied by mercantile clerks and retired tradesmen.  By the lane there
was a short and ready access both to the high turnpike-road, and to some
pleasant walks through green meadows and along the banks of a river.

This house I had inhabited since my arrival at L----, and it had to me so
many attractions, in a situation sufficiently central to be convenient for
patients, and yet free from noise, and favourable to ready outlet into the
country for such foot or horse exercise as my professional avocations
would allow me to carve for myself out of what the Latin poet calls the
"solid day," that I had refused to change it for one better suited to my
increased income; but it was not a house which Mrs. Ashleigh would have
liked for Lilian.  The main objection to it in the eyes of the "genteel"
was, that it had formerly belonged to a member of the healing profession
who united the shop of an apothecary to the diploma of a surgeon; but that
shop had given the house a special attraction to me; for it had been built
out on the side of the house which fronted the lane, occupying the greater
portion of a small gravel court, fenced from the road by a low iron
palisade, and separated from the body of the house itself by a short and
narrow corridor that communicated with the entrance-hall.  This shop I
turned into a rude study for scientific experiments, in which I generally
spent some early hours of the morning, before my visiting patients began
to arrive.  I enjoyed the stillness of its separation from the rest of
the house; I enjoyed the glimpse of the great chestnut-trees, which
overtopped the wall of the school-garden; I enjoyed the ease with which,
by opening the glazed sash-door, I could get out, if disposed for a short
walk, into the pleasant fields; and so completely had I made this
sanctuary my own, that not only my man-servant knew that I was never to be
disturbed when in it, except by the summons of a patient, but even the
housemaid was forbidden to enter it with broom or duster, except upon
special invitation.  The last thing at night, before retiring to rest, it
was the man-servant's business to see that the sash-window was closed,
and the gate to the iron palisade locked; but during the daytime I so
often went out of the house by that private way that the gate was then
very seldom locked, nor the sash-door bolted from within.  In the town of
L---- there was little apprehension of house-robberies,--especially in the
daylight,--and certainly in this room, cut off from the main building,
there was nothing to attract a vulgar cupidity.  A few of the apothecary's
shelves and cases still remained on the walls, with, here and there, a
bottle of some chemical preparation for experiment; two or three
worm-eaten, wooden chairs; two or three shabby old tables; an old
walnut-tree bureau without a lock, into which odds and ends were
confusedly thrust, and sundry ugly-looking inventions of mechanical
science, were, assuredly, not the articles which a timid proprietor would
guard with jealous care from the chances of robbery.  It will be seen
later why I have been thus prolix in description.  The morning after I had
met the young stranger by whom I had been so favourably impressed, I was
up as usual, a little before the sun, and long before any of my servants
were astir.  I went first into the room I have mentioned, and which I
shall henceforth designate as my study, opened the window, unlocked the
gate, and sauntered for some minutes up and down the silent lace skirting
the opposite wall, and overhung by the chestnut-trees rich in the
garniture of a glorious summer; then, refreshed for work, I re-entered my
study, and was soon absorbed in the examination of that now well-known
machine, which was then, to me at least, a novelty,--invented, if I
remember right, by Dubois-Reymond, so distinguished by his researches into
the mysteries of organic electricity.  It is a wooden cylinder fixed
against the edge of a table; on the table two vessels filled with salt and
water are so placed that, as you close your hands on the cylinder, the
forefinger of each hand can drop into the water; each of the vessels has a
metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvanometer with its
needle.  Now the theory is, that if you clutch the cylinder firmly with
the right hand, leaving the left perfectly passive, the needle in the
galvanometer will move from west to south; if, in like manner, you exert
the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from
west to north.  Hence, it is argued that the electric current is induced
through the agency of the nervous system, and that, as human Will produces
the muscular contraction requisite, so is it human Will that causes the
deflection of the needle.  I imagine that if this theory were
substantiated by experiment, the discovery might lead to some sublime and
unconjectured secrets of science.  For human Will, thus actively effective
on the electric current, and all matter, animate or inanimate, having more
or less of electricity, a vast field became opened to conjecture.  By what
series of patient experimental deduction might not science arrive at the
solution of problems which the Newtonian law of gravitation does not
suffice to solve; and--But here I halt.  At the date which my story has
reached, my mind never lost itself long in the Cloudland of Guess.

I was dissatisfied with my experiment.  The needle stirred, indeed, but
erratically, and not in directions which, according to the theory, should
correspond to my movement.  I was about to dismiss the trial with some
uncharitable contempt of the foreign philosopher's dogmas, when I heard a
loud ring at my street-door.  While I paused to conjecture whether my
servant was yet up to attend to the door, and which of my patients was the
most likely to summon me at so unseasonable an hour, a shadow darkened my
window.  I looked up, and to my astonishment beheld the brilliant face of
Mr. Margrave.  The sash to the door was already partially opened; he
raised it higher, and walked into the room.  "Was it you who rang at the
street-door, and at this hour?" said I.

"Yes; and observing, after I had rung, that all the shutters were still
closed, I felt ashamed of my own rash action, and made off rather than
brave the reproachful face of some injured housemaid, robbed of her
morning dreams.  I turned down that pretty lane,--lured by the green of
the chestnut-trees,--caught sight of you through the window, took courage,
and here I am!  You forgive me?"  While thus speaking, he continued to
move along the littered floor of the dingy room, with the undulating
restlessness of some wild animal in the confines of its den, and he now
went on, in short fragmentary sentences, very slightly linked together,
but smoothed, as it were, into harmony by a voice musical and fresh as a
sky lark's warble.  "Morning dreams, indeed! dreams that waste the life
of such a morning.  Rosy magnificence of a summer dawn!  Do you not pity
the fool who prefers to lie abed, and to dream rather than to live?
What! and you, strong man, with those noble limbs, in this den!  Do you
not long for a rush through the green of the fields, a bath in the blue of
the river?"

Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the gray light of the growing
day, with eyes whose joyous lustre forestalled the sun's, and lips which
seemed to laugh even in repose.

But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright, glanced over the
walls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the mechanical inventions, and
then rested full on my cylinder fixed to the table.  He approached,
examined it curiously, asked what it was.  I explained.  To gratify him I
sat down and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success.  The needle,
which should have moved from west to south, describing an angle of from
thirty degrees to forty or even fifty degrees, only made a few troubled,
undecided oscillations.

"Tut," cried the young man, "I see what it is; you have a wound in your
right hand."

That was true; I had burned my hand a few days before in a chemical
experiment, and the sore had not healed.

"Well," said I, "and what does that matter?"

"Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand produces chemical
actions on the electric current, independently of your will.  Let me try."

He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the galvanometer responded
to his grasp on the cylinder, exactly as the inventive philosopher had
stated to be the due result of the experiment.

I was startled.

"But how came you, Mr. Margrave, to be so well acquainted with a
scientific process little known, and but recently discovered?"

"I well acquainted! not so.  But I am fond of all experiments that relate
to animal life.  Electricity, especially, is full of interest."

On that I drew him out (as I thought), and he talked volubly.  I was
amazed to find this young man, in whose brain I had conceived thought kept
one careless holiday, was evidently familiar with the physical sciences,
and especially with chemistry, which was my own study by predilection.
But never had I met with a student in whom a knowledge so extensive was
mixed up with notions so obsolete or so crotchety.  In one sentence he
showed that he had mastered some late discovery by Faraday or Liebig; in
the next sentence he was talking the wild fallacies of Cardan or Van
Helmont.  I burst out laughing at some paradox about sympathetic powders,
which he enounced as if it were a recognized truth.

"Pray tell me," said I, "who was your master in physics; for a cleverer
pupil never had a more crack-brained teacher."

"No," he answered, with his merry laugh, "it is not the teacher's fault.
I am a mere parrot; just cry out a few scraps of learning picked up here
and there.  But, however, I am fond of all researches into Nature; all
guesses at her riddles.  To tell you the truth, one reason why I have
taken to you so heartily is not only that your published work caught my
fancy in the dip which I took into its contents (pardon me if I say dip, I
never do more than dip into any book), but also because young ---- tells
me that which all whom I have met in this town confirm; namely, that you
are one of those few practical chemists who are at once exceedingly
cautious and exceedingly bold,--willing to try every new experiment, but
submitting experiment to rigid tests.  Well, I have an experiment running
wild in this giddy head of mine, and I want you, some day when at leisure,
to catch it, fix it as you have fixed that cylinder, make something of it.
I am sure you can."

"What is it?"

"Something akin to the theories in your work.  You would replenish or
preserve to each special constitution the special substance that may fail
to the equilibrium of its health.  But you own that in a large
proportion of cases the best cure of disease is less to deal with the
disease itself than to support and stimulate the whole system, so as to
enable Nature to cure the disease and restore the impaired equilibrium by
her own agencies.  Thus, if you find that in certain cases of nervous
debility a substance like nitric acid is efficacious, it is because the
nitric acid has a virtue in locking up, as it were, the nervous
energy,--that is, preventing all undue waste.  Again, in some cases of
what is commonly called feverish cold, stimulants like ammonia assist
Nature itself to get rid of the disorder that oppresses its normal action;
and, on the same principle, I apprehend, it is contended that a large
average of human lives is saved in those hospitals which have adopted the
supporting system of ample nourishment and alcoholic stimulants."

"Your medical learning surprises me," said I, smiling; "and without
pausing to notice where it deals somewhat superficially with disputable
points in general, and my own theory in particular, I ask you for the
deduction you draw from your premises."

"It is simply this: that to all animate bodies, however various, there
must be one principle in common,--the vital principle itself.  What if
there be one certain means of recruiting that principle; and what if that
secret can be discovered?"

"Pshaw!  The old illusion of the mediaeval empirics."

"Not so.  But the mediaeval empirics were great discoverers.  You sneer at
Van Helmont, who sought, in water, the principle of all things; but Van
Helmont discovered in his search those invisible bodies called gases.  Now
the principle of life must be certainly ascribed to a gas.[1]  And what
ever is a gas chemistry should not despair of producing!  But I can argue
no longer now,--never can argue long at a stretch; we are wasting the
morning; and, joy! the sun is up!  See!  Out! come out! out! and greet
the great Lifegiver face to face."

I could not resist the young man's invitation.  In a few minutes we were
in the quiet lane under the glinting chestnut-trees.  Margrave was
chanting, low, a wild tune,--words in a strange language.

"What words are those,--no European language, I think; for I know a little
of most of the languages which are spoken in our quarter of the globe, at
least by its more civilized races."

"Civilized race!  What is civilization?  Those words were uttered by men
who founded empires when Europe itself was not civilized!  Hush, is it not
a grand old air?" and lifting his eyes towards the sun, he gave vent to a
voice clear and deep as a mighty bell!  The air was grand; the words had a
sonorous swell that suited it, and they seemed to me jubilant and yet
solemn.  He stopped abruptly as a path from the lane had led us into the
fields, already half-bathed in sunlight, dews glittering on the hedgerows.

"Your song," said I, "would go well with the clash of cymbals or the peal
of the organ.  I am no judge of melody, but this strikes me as that of a
religious hymn."

"I compliment you on the guess.  It is a Persian fire-worshipper's hymn to
the sun.  The dialect is very different from modern Persian.  Cyrus the
Great might have chanted it on his march upon Babylon."

"And where did you learn it?"

"In Persia itself."

"You have travelled much, learned much,--and are so young and so fresh.
Is it an impertinent question if I ask whether your parents are yet
living, or are you wholly lord of yourself?"

"Thank you for the question,--pray make my answer known in the town.
Parents I have not,--never had."

"Never had parents!"

"Well, I ought rather to say that no parents ever owned me.  I am a
natural son, a vagabond, a nobody.  When I came of age I received an
anonymous letter, informing me that a sum--I need not say what, but more
than enough for all I need--was lodged at an English banker's in my name;
that my mother had died in my infancy; that my father was also dead--but
recently; that as I was a child of love, and he was unwilling that the
secret of my birth should ever be traced, he had provided for me, not by
will, but in his life, by a sum consigned to the trust of the friend who
now wrote to me; I need give myself no trouble to learn more.  Faith, I
never did!  I am young, healthy, rich,--yes, rich!  Now you know all, and
you had better tell it, that I may win no man's courtesy and no maiden's
love upon false pretences.  I have not even a right, you see, to the name
I bear.  Hist! let me catch that squirrel."

With what a panther-like bound he sprang!  The squirrel eluded his grasp,
and was up the oak-tree; in a moment he was up the oak-tree too.  In
amazement I saw him rising from bough to bough; saw his bright eyes and
glittering teeth through the green leaves.  Presently I heard the sharp
piteous cry of the squirrel, echoed by the youth's merry laugh; and down,
through that maze of green, Hargrave came, dropping on the grass and
bounding up, as Mercury might have bounded with his wings at his heels.

"I have caught him.  What pretty brown eyes!"

Suddenly the gay expression of his face changed to that of a savage; the
squirrel had wrenched itself half-loose, and bitten him.  The poor brute!
In an instant its neck was wrung, its body dashed on the ground; and that
fair young creature, every feature quivering with rage, was stamping his
foot on his victim again and again!  It was horrible.  I caught him by the
arm indignantly.  He turned round on me like a wild beast disturbed from
its prey,--his teeth set, his hand lifted, his eyes like balls of fire.

"Shame!" said I, calmly; "shame on you!"

He continued to gaze on me a moment or so, his eye glaring, his breath
panting; and then, as if mastering himself with an involuntary effort, his
arm dropped to his side, and he said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon;
indeed I do.  I was beside myself for a moment; I cannot bear pain;" and
he looked in deep compassion for himself at his wounded hand.  "Venomous
brute!"  And he stamped again on the body of the squirrel, already crushed
out of shape.

I moved away in disgust, and walked on.

But presently I felt my arm softly drawn aside, and a voice, dulcet as the
coo of a dove, stole its way into my ears.  There was no resisting the
charm with which this extraordinary mortal could fascinate even the hard
and the cold; nor them, perhaps, the least.  For as you see in extreme old
age, when the heart seems to have shrunk into itself, and to leave but
meagre and nipped affections for the nearest relations if grown up, the
indurated egotism softens at once towards a playful child; or as you see
in middle life, some misanthrope, whose nature has been soured by wrong
and sorrow, shrink from his own species, yet make friends with inferior
races, and respond to the caress of a dog,--so, for the worldling or the
cynic, there was an attraction in the freshness of this joyous favourite
of Nature,--an attraction like that of a beautiful child, spoilt and
wayward, or of a graceful animal, half docile, half fierce.

"But," said I, with a smile, as I felt all displeasure gone, "such
indulgence of passion for such a trifle is surely unworthy a student of
philosophy!"

"Trifle," he said dolorously.  "But I tell you it is pain; pain is no
trifle.  I suffer.  Look!"

I looked at the hand, which I took in mine.  The bite no doubt had been
sharp; but the hand that lay in my own was that which the Greek sculptor
gives to a gladiator; not large (the extremities are never large in
persons whose strength comes from the just proportion of all the members,
rather than the factitious and partial force which continued muscular
exertion will give to one part of the frame, to the comparative weakening
of the rest), but with the firm-knit joints, the solid fingers, the
finished nails, the massive palm, the supple polished skin, in which we
recognize what Nature designs the human hand to be,--the skilled, swift,
mighty doer of all those marvels which win Nature herself from the
wilderness.

"It is strange," said I, thoughtfully; "but your susceptibility to
suffering confirms my opinion, which is different from the popular
belief,--namely, that pain is most acutely felt by those in whom the
animal organization being perfect, and the sense of vitality exquisitely
keen, every injury or lesion finds the whole system rise, as it were, to
repel the mischief and communicate the consciousness of it to all those
nerves which are the sentinels to the garrison of life.  Yet my theory is
scarcely borne out by general fact.  The Indian savages must have a health
as perfect as yours; a nervous system as fine,--witness their marvellous
accuracy of ear, of eye, of scent, probably also of touch; yet they are
indifferent to physical pain; or must I mortify your pride by saying that
they have some moral quality defective in you which enables them to rise
superior to it?"

"The Indian savages," said Margrave, sullenly, "have not a health as
perfect as mine, and in what you call vitality--the blissful consciousness
of life--they are as sticks and stones compared to me."

"How do you know?"

"Because I have lived with them.  It is a fallacy to suppose that the
savage has a health superior to that of the civilized man,--if the
civilized man be but temperate; and even if not, he has the stamina that
can resist for years the effect of excesses which would destroy the savage
in a month.  As to the savage's fine perceptions of sense, such do not
come from exquisite equilibrium of system, but are hereditary attributes
transmitted from race to race, and strengthened by training from infancy.
But is a pointer stronger and healthier than a mastiff, because the
pointer through long descent and early teaching creeps stealthily to his
game and stands to it motionless?  I will talk of this later; now I
suffer!  Pain, pain!  Has life any ill but pain?"

It so happened that I had about me some roots of the white lily, which I
meant, before returning home, to leave with a patient suffering from one
of those acute local inflammations, in which that simple remedy often
affords great relief.  I cut up one of these roots, and bound the cooling
leaves to the wounded hand with my handkerchief.

"There," said I.  "Fortunately if you feel pain more sensibly than others,
you will recover from it more quickly."  And in a few minutes my
companion felt perfectly relieved, and poured out his gratitude with an
extravagance of expression and a beaming delight of countenance which
positively touched me.

"I almost feel," said I, "as I do when I have stilled an infant's wailing,
and restored it smiling to its mother's breast."

"You have done so.  I am an infant, and Nature is my mother.  Oh, to be
restored to the full joy of life, the scent of wild flowers, the song of
birds, and this air--summer air--summer air!"

I know not why it was, but at that moment, looking at him and hearing him,
I rejoiced that Lilian was not at L----.  "But I came out to bathe.  Can
we not bathe in that stream?"

"No.  You would derange the bandage round your hand; and for all bodily
ills, from the least to the gravest, there is nothing like leaving Nature
at rest the moment we have hit on the means which assist her own efforts
at cure."

"I obey, then; but I so love the water."

"You swim, of course?"

"Ask the fish if it swim.  Ask the fish if it can escape me!  I delight to
dive down--down; to plunge after the startled trout, as an otter does; and
then to get amongst those cool, fragrant reeds and bulrushes, or that
forest of emerald weed which one sometimes finds waving under clear
rivers.  Man! man! could you live but an hour of my life you would know
how horrible a thing it is to die!"

"Yet the dying do not think so; they pass away calm and smiling, as you
will one day."

"I--I! die one day--die!" and he sank on the grass, and buried his face
amongst the herbage, sobbing aloud.

Before I could get through half a dozen words I meant to soothe, he had
once more bounded up, dashed the tears from his eyes, and was again
singing some wild, barbaric chant.  Abstracting itself from the appeal to
its outward sense by melodies of which the language was unknown, my mind
soon grew absorbed in meditative conjectures on the singular nature, so
wayward, so impulsive, which had forced intimacy on a man grave and
practical as myself.

I was puzzled how to reconcile so passionate a childishness, so
undisciplined a want of self-control, with an experience of mankind so
extended by travel, with an education desultory and irregular indeed, but
which must, at some time or other, have been familiarized to severe
reasonings and laborious studies.  In Margrave there seemed to be wanting
that mysterious something which is needed to keep our faculties, however
severally brilliant, harmoniously linked together,--as the string by
which a child mechanically binds the wild flowers it gathers, shaping them
at choice into the garland or the chain.

[1] "According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a
gas, that is, to an aeriform body."--Liebig: "Organic Chemistry,"
Mayfair's translation, p.363.--It is perhaps not less superfluous to add
that Liebig does not support the views "according to which life must be
ascribed to a gas," than it would be to state, had Dugald Stewart been
quoted as writing, "According to the views we have mentioned the mind is
but a bundle of impressions," that Dugald Stewart was not supporting, but
opposing, the views of David Hume.  The quotation is merely meant to show,
in the shortest possible compass, that there are views entertained by
speculative reasoners of our day which, according to Liebig, would lead to
the inference at which Margrave so boldly arrives.  Margrave is, however,
no doubt, led to his belief by his reminiscences of Van Helmont, to whose
discovery of gas he is referring.  Van Helmont plainly affirms "that the
arterial spirit of our life is of the nature of a gas;" and in the same
chapter (on the fiction of elementary complexions and mixtures) says,
"Seeing that the spirit of our life, since it is a gas, is most mightily
and swiftly affected by any other gas," etc.  He repeats the same dogma in
his treatise on "Long Life," and indeed very generally throughout his
writings, observing, in his chapter on the Vital Air, that the spirit of
life is a salt, sharp vapour, made of the arterial blood, etc.  Liebig,
therefore, in confuting some modern notions as to the nature of contagion
by miasma, is leading their reasonings back to that assumption in the
Brawn of physiological science by which the discoverer of gas exalted into
the principle of life the substance to which he first gave the name, now
so familiarly known.  It is nevertheless just to Van Helmont to add that
his conception of the vital principle was very far from being as purely
materialistic as it would seem to those unacquainted with his writings;
for he carefully distinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to
a gas, and by which he means the sensuous animal life, from the
intellectual immortal principle of soul.  Van Helmont, indeed, was a
sincere believer of Divine Revelation.  "The Lord Jesus is the way, the
truth, and the life," says with earnest humility this daring genius, in
that noble chapter "On the completing of the mind by the 'prayer of
silence,' and the loving offering tip of the heart, soul, and strength to
the obedience of the Divine will," from which some of the most eloquent of
recent philosophers, arguing against materialism, have borrowed largely in
support and in ornament of their lofty cause.




CHAPTER XXV.

My intercourse with Margrave grew habitual and familiar.  He came to my
house every morning before sunrise; in the evenings we were again brought
together: sometimes in the houses to which we were both invited, sometimes
at his hotel, sometimes in my own home.

Nothing more perplexed me than his aspect of extreme youthfulness,
contrasted with the extent of the travels, which, if he were to be
believed, had left little of the known world unexplored.  One day I asked
him bluntly how old he was.

"How old do I look?  How old should you suppose me to be?"

"I should have guessed you to be about twenty, till you spoke of having
come of age some years ago."

"Is it a sign of longevity when a man looks much younger than he is?"

"Conjoined with other signs, certainly!"

"Have I the other signs?"

"Yes, a magnificent, perhaps a matchless, constitutional organization.
But you have evaded my question as to your age; was it an impertinence to
put it?"

"No.  I came of age--let me see--three years ago."

"So long since?  Is it possible?  I wish I had your secret!"

"Secret!  What secret?"

"The secret of preserving so much of boyish freshness in the wear and tear
of man-like passions and man-like thoughts."

"You are still young yourself,--under forty?"

"Oh, yes! some years under forty."

"And Nature gave you a grander frame and a finer symmetry of feature than
she bestowed on me."

"Pooh! pooh!  You have the beauty that must charm the eyes of woman, and
that beauty in its sunny forenoon of youth.  Happy man! if you love and
wish to be sure that you are loved again."

"What you call love--the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish folly--left
behind me, I think forever, when--"

"Ay, indeed,--when?"

"I came of age!"

"Hoary cynic! and you despise love!  So did I once.  Your time may come."

"I think not.  Does any animal, except man, love its fellow she-animal as
man loves woman?"

"As man loves woman?  No, I suppose not."

"And why should the subject animals be wiser than their king?  But to
return: you would like to have my youth and my careless enjoyment of
youth?"

"Can you ask,--who would not?"  Margrave looked at me for a moment with
unusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt changes common to his
capricious temperament, began to sing softly one of his barbaric
chants,--a chant different from any I had heard him sing before, made,
either by the modulation of his voice or the nature of the tune, so sweet
that, little as music generally affected me, this thrilled to my very
heart's core.  I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when he
paused,--

"Is not that a love-song?"

"No;" said he, "it is the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the
serpent."




CHAPTER XXVI.

Increased intimacy with my new acquaintance did not diminish the charm of
his society, though it brought to light some startling defects, both in
his mental and moral organization.  I have before said that his knowledge,
though it had swept over a wide circuit and dipped into curious,
unfrequented recesses, was desultory and erratic.  It certainly was not
that knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assures us is "the
wing on which we mount to heaven."  So, in his faculties themselves there
were singular inequalities, or contradictions.  His power of memory in
some things seemed prodigious, but when examined it was seldom accurate;
it could apprehend, but did not hold together with a binding grasp what
metaphysicians call "complex ideas."  He thus seemed unable to put it to
any steadfast purpose in the sciences of which it retained, vaguely and
loosely, many recondite principles.  For the sublime and beautiful in
literature he had no taste whatever.  A passionate lover of nature, his
imagination had no response to the arts by which nature is expressed or
idealized; wholly unaffected by poetry or painting.  Of the fine arts,
music alone attracted and pleased him.  His conversation was often
eminently suggestive, touching on much, whether in books or mankind, that
set one thinking; but I never remember him to have uttered any of those
lofty or tender sentiments which form the connecting links between youth
and genius; for if poets sing to the young, and the young hail their own
interpreters in poets, it is because the tendency of both is to idealize
the realities of life,--finding everywhere in the real a something that is
noble or fair, and making the fair yet fairer, and the noble nobler still.

In Margrave's character there seemed no special vices, no special virtues;
but a wonderful vivacity, joyousness, animal good-humour.  He was
singularly temperate, having a dislike to wine, perhaps from that purity
of taste which belongs to health absolutely perfect.  No healthful child
likes alcohol; no animal, except man, prefers wine to water.

But his main moral defect seemed to me in a want of sympathy, even where
he professed attachment.  He who could feel so acutely for himself, be
unmanned by the bite of a squirrel, and sob at the thought that he should
one day die, was as callous to the sufferings of another as a deer who
deserts and butts from him a wounded comrade.

I give an instance of this hardness of heart where I should have least
expected to find it in him.

He had met and joined me as I was walking to visit a patient on the
outskirts of the town, when we fell in with a group of children, just let
loose for an hour or two from their day-school.  Some of these children
joyously recognized him as having played with them at their homes; they
ran up to him, and he seemed as glad as themselves at the meeting.

He suffered them to drag him along with them, and became as merry and
sportive as the youngest of the troop.

"Well," said I, laughing, "if you are going to play at leap-frog, pray
don't let it be on the high road, or you will be run over by carts and
draymen; see that meadow just in front to the left,--off with you there!"

"With all my heart," cried Margrave, "while you pay your visit.  Come
along, boys."

A little urchin, not above six years old, but who was lame, began to cry;
he could not run,--he should be left behind.

Margrave stooped.  "Climb on my shoulder, little one, and I'll be your
horse."

The child dried its tears, and delightedly obeyed.  "Certainly," said I to
myself, "Margrave, after all, must have a nature as gentle as it is
simple.  What other young man, so courted by all the allurements that
steal innocence from pleasure, would stop in the thoroughfares to play
with children?"

The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when I heard a scream of
agony.  Margrave had leaped the railing that divided the meadow from the
road, and, in so doing, the poor child, perched on his shoulder, had,
perhaps from surprise or fright, loosened its hold and fallen heavily; its
cries were piteous.  Margrave clapped his hands to his ears, uttered an
exclamation of anger, and not even stopping to lift up the boy, or examine
what the hurt was, called to the other children to come on, and was soon
rolling with them on the grass, and pelting them with daisies.  When I
came up, only one child remained by the sufferer,--his little brother, a
year older than himself.  The child had fallen on his arm, which was not
broken, but violently contused.  The pain must have been intense.  I
carried the child to his home, and had to remain there some time.  I did
not see Margrave till the next morning.  When he then called, I felt so
indignant that I could scarcely speak to him.  When at last I rebuked
him for his inhumanity, he seemed surprised; with difficulty remembered
the circumstance, and then merely said, as if it were the most natural
confession in the world,

"Oh, nothing so discordant as a child's wail.  I hate discords.  I am
pleased with the company of children; but they must be children who laugh
and play.  Well, why do you look at me so sternly?  What have I said to
shock you?"

"Shock me! you shock manhood itself!  Go; I cannot talk to you now.  I am
busy."

But he did not go; and his voice was so sweet, and his ways so winning,
that disgust insensibly melted into that sort of forgiveness one accords
(let me repeat the illustration) to the deer that forsakes its comrade.
The poor thing knows no better.  And what a graceful beautiful thing this
was!

The fascination--I can give it no other name--which Margrave exercised,
was not confined to me; it was universal,--old, young, high, low, man,
woman, child, all felt it.  Never in Low Town had stranger, even the most
distinguished by fame, met with a reception so cordial, so flattering.
His frank confession that he was a natural son, far from being to his
injury, served to interest people more in him, and to prevent all those
inquiries in regard to his connections and antecedents which would
otherwise have been afloat.  To be sure, he was evidently rich,--at least
he had plenty of money.  He lived in the best rooms in the principal
hotel; was very hospitable; entertained the families with whom he had
grown intimate; made them bring their children,--music and dancing after
dinner.  Among the houses in which he had established familiar
acquaintance was that of the mayor of the town, who had bought Dr. Lloyd's
collection of subjects in natural history.  To that collection the mayor
had added largely by a very recent purchase.  He had arranged these
various specimens, which his last acquisitions had enriched by the
interesting carcasses of an elephant and a hippopotamus, in a large wooden
building contiguous to his dwelling, which had been constructed by a
former proprietor (a retired fox-hunter) as a riding-house; and being a
man who much affected the diffusion of knowledge, he proposed to open this
museum to the admiration of the general public, and, at his death, to
bequeath it to the Athenaeum or Literary Institute of his native town.
Margrave, seconded by the influence of the mayor's daughters, had scarcely
been three days at L---- before he had persuaded this excellent and
public-spirited functionary to inaugurate the opening of his museum by the
popular ceremony of a ball.  A temporary corridor should unite the
drawing-rooms, which were on the ground floor, with the building that
contained the collection; and thus the fete would be elevated above the
frivolous character of a fashionable amusement, and consecrated to the
solemnization of an intellectual institute.  Dazzled by the brilliancy of
this idea, the mayor announced his intention to give a ball that should
include the surrounding neighbourhood, and be worthy, in all expensive
respects, of the dignity of himself and the occasion.  A night had been
fixed for the ball,--a night that became memorable indeed to me!  The
entertainment was anticipated with a lively interest, in which even the
Hill condescended to share.  The Hill did not much patronize mayors in
general; but when a mayor gave a ball for a purpose so patriotic, and on a
scale so splendid, the Hill liberally acknowledged that Commerce was, on
the whole, a thing which the Eminence might, now and then, condescend to
acknowledge without absolutely derogating from the rank which Providence
had assigned to it amongst the High Places of earth.  Accordingly, the
Hill was permitted by its Queen to honour the first magistrate of Low Town
by a promise to attend his ball.  Now, as this festivity had originated in
the suggestion of Margrave, so, by a natural association of ideas, every
one, in talking of the ball, talked also of Margrave.

The Hill had at first affected to ignore a stranger whose debut had been
made in the mercantile circle of Low Town.  But the Queen of the Hill now
said, sententiously, "This new man in a few days has become a Celebrity.
It is the policy of the Hill to adopt Celebrities, if the Celebrities pay
respect to the Proprieties.  Dr. Fenwick is requested to procure Mr.
Margrave the advantage of being known to the Hill."

I found it somewhat difficult to persuade Margrave to accept the Hill's
condescending overture.  He seemed to have a dislike to all societies
pretending to aristocratic distinction,--a dislike expressed with a
fierceness so unwonted, that it made one suppose he had, at some time or
other, been subjected to mortification by the supercilious airs that blow
upon heights so elevated.  However, he yielded to my instances, and
accompanied me one evening to Mrs. Poyntz's house.  The Hill was encamped
there for the occasion.  Mrs. Poyntz was exceedingly civil to him, and
after a few commonplace speeches, hearing that he was fond of music,
consigned him to the caressing care of Miss Brabazon, who was at the head
of the musical department in the Queen of the Hill's administration.

Mrs. Poyntz retired to her favourite seat near the window, inviting me to
sit beside her; and while she knitted in silence, in silence my eye
glanced towards Margrave, in the midst of the group assembled round the
piano.

Whether he was in more than usually high spirits, or whether he was
actuated by a malign and impish desire to upset the established laws of
decorum by which the gayeties of the Hill were habitually subdued into a
serene and somewhat pensive pleasantness, I know not; but it was not many
minutes before the orderly aspect of the place was grotesquely changed.

Miss Brabazon having come to the close of a complicated and dreary sonata,
I heard Margrave abruptly ask her if she could play the Tarantella, that
famous Neapolitan air which is founded on the legendary belief that the
bite of the tarantula excites an irresistible desire to dance.  On that
highbred spinster's confession that she was ignorant of the air, and had
not even heard of the legend, Margrave said, "Let me play it to you, with
variations of my own."  Miss Brabazon graciously yielded her place at the
instrument.  Margrave seated himself,--there was great curiosity to hear
his performance.  Margrave's fingers rushed over the keys, and there was a
general start, the prelude was so unlike any known combination of
harmonious sounds.  Then he began a chant--song I can scarcely call
it--words certainly not in Italian, perhaps in some uncivilized tongue,
perhaps in impromptu gibberish.  And the torture of the instrument now
commenced in good earnest: it shrieked, it groaned, wilder and noisier.
Beethoven's Storm, roused by the fell touch of a German pianist, were mild
in comparison; and the mighty voice, dominating the anguish of the
cracking keys, had the full diapason of a chorus.  Certainly I am no judge
of music, but to my ear the discord was terrific,--to the ears of better
informed amateurs it seemed ravishing.  All were spell-bound; even Mrs.
Poyntz paused from her knitting, as the Fates paused from their web at the
lyre of Orpheus.  To this breathless delight, however, soon succeeded a
general desire for movement.  To my amazement, I beheld these formal
matrons and sober fathers of families forming themselves into a dance,
turbulent as a children's ball at Christmas; and when, suddenly desisting
from his music, Margrave started up, caught the skeleton hand of lean
Miss Brabazon, and whirled her into the centre of the dance, I could have
fancied myself at a witch's sabbat.  My eye turned in scandalized alarm
towards Mrs. Poyntz.  That great creature seemed as much astounded as
myself.  Her eyes were fixed on the scene in a stare of positive stupor.
For the first time, no doubt, in her life, she was overcome, deposed,
dethroned.  The awe of her presence was literally whirled away.  The dance
ceased as suddenly as it had begun.  Darting from the galvanized mummy
whom he had selected as his partner, Margrave shot to Mrs. Poyntz's side,
and said, "Ten thousand pardons for quitting you so soon, but the clock
warns me that I have an engagement elsewhere."  In another moment he was
gone.

The dance halted, people seemed slowly returning to their senses,
looking at each other bashfully and ashamed.

"I could not help it, dear," sighed Miss Brabazon at last, sinking into a
chair, and casting her deprecating, fainting eyes upon the hostess.

"It is witchcraft," said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping her forehead.

"Witchcraft!" echoed Mrs. Poyntz; "it does indeed look like it.  An
amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be endured
by the Proprieties.  Where on earth can that young savage have come from?"

"From savage lands," said I,--"so he says."

"Do not bring him here again," said Mrs. Poyntz.  "He would soon turn the
Hill topsy-turvy.  But how charming!  I should like to see more of him,"
she added, in an under voice, "if he would call on me some morning, and
not in the presence of those for whose Proprieties I am responsible.  Jane
must be out in her ride with the colonel."

Margrave never again attended the patrician festivities of the Hill.
Invitations were poured upon him, especially by Miss Brabazon and the
other old maids, but in vain.

"Those people," said he, "are too tamed and civilized for me; and so few
young persons among them.  Even that girl Jane is only young on the
surface; inside, as old as the World or her mother.  I like youth, real
youth,--I am young, I am young!"

And, indeed, I observed he would attach himself to some young person,
often to some child, as if with cordial and special favour, yet for not
more than an hour or so, never distinguishing them by the same preference
when he next met them.  I made that remark to him, in rebuke of his
fickleness, one evening when he had found me at work on my Ambitious Book,
reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature.

"It is not fickleness," said he,--"it is necessity."

"Necessity!  Explain yourself."

"I seek to find what I have not found," said he; "it is my necessity to
seek it, and among the young; and disappointed in one, I turn to the
other.  Necessity again.  But find it at last I must."

"I suppose you mean what the young usually seek in the young; and if, as
you said the other day, you have left love behind you, you now wander back
to re-find it."

"Tush!  If I may judge by the talk of young fools, love may be found
every day by him who looks out for it.  What I seek is among the rarest of
all discoveries.  You might aid me to find it, and in so doing aid
yourself to a knowledge far beyond all that your formal experiments can
bestow."

"Prove your words, and command my services," said I, smiling somewhat
disdainfully.

"You told me that you had examined into the alleged phenomena of animal
magnetism, and proved some persons who pretend to the gift which the
Scotch call second sight to be bungling impostors.  You were right.  I
have seen the clairvoyants who drive their trade in this town; a common
gipsy could beat them in their own calling.  But your experience must
have shown you that there are certain temperaments in which the gift of
the Pythoness is stored, unknown to the possessor, undetected by the
common observer; but the signs of which should be as apparent to the
modern physiologist, as they were to the ancient priest."

"I at least, as a physiologist, am ignorant of the signs: what are they?"

"I should despair of making you comprehend them by mere verbal
description.  I could guide your observation to distinguish them
unerringly were living subjects before us.  But not one in a million has
the gift to an extent available for the purposes to which the wise would
apply it.  Many have imperfect glimpses; few, few indeed, the unveiled,
lucent sight.  They who have but the imperfect glimpses mislead and dupe
the minds that consult them, because, being sometimes marvellously right,
they excite a credulous belief in their general accuracy; and as they are
but translators of dreams in their own brain, their assurances are no more
to be trusted than are the dreams of commonplace sleepers.  But where the
gift exists to perfection, he who knows how to direct and to profit by it
should be able to discover all that he desires to know for the guidance
and preservation of his own life.  He will be forewarned of every danger,
forearmed in the means by which danger is avoided.  For the eye of the
true Pythoness matter has no obstruction, space no confines, time no
measurement."

"My dear Margrave, you may well say that creatures so gifted are rare;
and, for my part, I would as soon search for a unicorn, as, to use your
affected expression, for a Pythoness."

"Nevertheless, whenever there come across the course of your practice some
young creature to whom all the evil of the world is as yet unknown, to
whom the ordinary cares and duties of the world are strange and unwelcome;
who from the earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit apart and to muse;
before whose eyes visions pass unsolicited; who converses with those who
are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the space landscapes which
the earth does not reflect--"

"Margrave, Margrave! of whom do you speak?"

"Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive, has still a health and a
soundness in which you recognize no disease; whose mind has a truthfulness
that you know cannot deceive you, and a simple intelligence too clear to
deceive itself; who is moved to a mysterious degree by all the varying
aspects of external nature,--innocently joyous, or unaccountably
sad,--when, I say, such a being comes across your experience, inform me;
and the chances are that the true Pythoness is found."

I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one exclamation of
amazement, to descriptions which brought Lilian Ashleigh before me; and I
now sat mute, bewildered, breathless, gazing upon Margrave, and rejoicing
that, at least, Lilian he had never seen.

He returned my own gaze steadily, searchingly, and then, breaking
into a slight laugh, resumed:--

"You call my word 'Pythoness' affected.  I know of no better.  My
recollections of classic anecdote and history are confused and dim; but
somewhere I have read or heard that the priests of Delphi were accustomed
to travel chiefly into Thrace or Thessaly, in search of the virgins who
might fitly administer their oracles, and that the oracles gradually
ceased in repute as the priests became unable to discover the
organization requisite in the priestesses, and supplied by craft and
imposture, or by such imperfect fragmentary developments as belong now to
professional clairvoyants, the gifts which Nature failed to afford.
Indeed, the demand was one that mast have rapidly exhausted so limited a
supply.  The constant strain upon faculties so wearying to the vital
functions in their relentless exercise, under the artful stimulants by
which the priests heightened their power, was mortal, and no Pythoness
ever retained her life more than three years from the time that her gift
was elaborately trained and developed."

"Pooh!  I know of no classical authority for the details you so
confidently cite.  Perhaps some such legends may be found in the
Alexandrian Platonists, but those mystics are no authority on such a
subject.  After all;" I added, recovering from my first surprise, or awe,
"the Delphic oracles were proverbially ambiguous, and their responses
might be read either way,--a proof that the priests dictated the verses,
though their arts on the unhappy priestess might throw her into real
convulsions, and the real convulsions, not the false gift, might shorten
her life.  Enough of such idle subjects!  Yet no! one question more.  If
you found your Pythoness, what then?"

"What then?  Why, through her aid I might discover the process of an
experiment which your practical science would assist me to complete."

"Tell me of what kind is your experiment; and precisely because such
little science as I possess is exclusively practical, I may assist you
without the help of the Pythoness."

Margrave was silent for some minutes, passing his hand several times
across his forehead, which was a frequent gesture of his, and then rising,
he answered, in listless accents,--

"I cannot say more now, my brain is fatigued; and you are not yet in the
right mood to hear me.  By the way, how close and reserved you are with
me!"

"How so?"

"You never told me that you were engaged to be married.  You leave me, who
thought to have won your friendship, to hear what concerns you so
intimately from a comparative stranger."

"Who told you?"

"That woman with eyes that pry and lips that scheme, to whose house you
took me."

"Mrs. Poyntz! is it possible?  When?"

"This afternoon.  I met her in the street; she stopped me, and, after some
unmeaning talk, asked if I had seen you lately; if I did not find you very
absent and distracted: no wonder;--you were in love.  The young lady was
away on a visit, and wooed by a dangerous rival."

"Wooed by a dangerous rival!"

"Very rich, good-looking, young.  Do you fear him?  You turn pale."

"I do not fear, except so far as he who loves truly, loves humbly, and
fears not that another may be preferred, but that another may be worthier
of preference than himself.  But that Mrs. Poyntz should tell you all this
does amaze me.  Did she mention the name of the young lady?"

"Yes; Lilian Ashleigh.  Henceforth be more frank with me.  Who knows?  I
may help you.  Adieu!"




CHAPTER XXVII.

When Margrave had gone, I glanced at the clock,--not yet nine.  I resolved
to go at once to Mrs. Poyntz.  It was not an evening on which she
received, but doubtless she would see me.  She owed me an explanation.
How thus carelessly divulge a secret she had been enjoined to keep; and
this rival, of whom I was ignorant?  It was no longer a matter of wonder
that Hargrave should have described Lilian's peculiar idiosyncrasies in
his sketch of his fabulous Pythoness.  Doubtless Mrs. Poyntz had, with
unpardonable levity of indiscretion, revealed all of which she disapproved
in my choice.  But for what object?  Was this her boasted friendship for
me?  Was it consistent with the regard she professed for Mrs. Ashleigh and
Lilian?  Occupied by these perplexed and indignant thoughts, I arrived at
Mrs. Poyntz's house, and was admitted to her presence.  She was
fortunately alone; her daughter and the colonel had gone to some party on
the Hill.  I would not take the hand she held out to me on entrance;
seated myself in stern displeasure, and proceeded at once to inquire if
she had really betrayed to Mr. Margrave the secret of my engagement to
Lilian.

"Yes, Allen Fenwick; I have this day told, not only Mr. Margrave, but
every person I met who is likely to tell it to some one else, the secret
of your engagement to Lilian Ashleigh.  I never promised to conceal it; on
the contrary, I wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would therein act as my
own judgment counselled me.  I think my words to you were that 'public
gossip was sometimes the best security for the completion of private
engagements.'"

"Do you mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the engagement with
me, and that I should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by calling in
the public to censure them--if--if--Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice
indeed!"

"Be good enough to listen to me quietly.  I have never yet showed you the
letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady Haughton, and delivered by Mr.
Vigors.  That letter I will now show to you; but before doing so I must
enter into a preliminary explanation.  Lady Haughton is one of those women
who love power, and cannot obtain it except through wealth and
station,--by her own intellect never obtain it.  When her husband died she
was reduced from an income of twelve thousand a year to a jointure of
twelve hundred, but with the exclusive guardianship of a young son, a
minor, and adequate allowances for the charge; she continued, therefore,
to preside as mistress over the establishments in town and country; still
had the administration of her son's wealth and rank.  She stinted his
education, in order to maintain her ascendancy over him.  He became a
brainless prodigal, spendthrift alike of health and fortune.  Alarmed, she
saw that, probably, he would die young and a beggar; his only hope of
reform was in marriage.  She reluctantly resolved to marry him to a
penniless, well-born, soft-minded young lady whom she knew she could
control; just before this marriage was to take place he was killed by a
fall from his horse.  The Haughton estate passed to his cousin, the
luckiest young man alive,--the same Ashleigh Sumner who had already
succeeded, in default of male issue, to poor Gilbert Ashleigh's landed
possessions.  Over this young man Lady Haughton could expect no influence.
She would be a stranger in his house.  But she had a niece!  Mr. Vigors
assured her the niece was beautiful.  And if the niece could become Mrs.
Ashleigh Sumner, then Lady Haughton would be a less unimportant Nobody in
the world, because she would still have her nearest relation in a Somebody
at Haughton Park.  Mr. Vigors has his own pompous reasons for approving an
alliance which he might help to accomplish.  The first step towards that
alliance was obviously to bring into reciprocal attraction the natural
charms of the young lady and the acquired merits of the young gentleman.
Mr. Vigors could easily induce his ward to pay a visit to Lady Haughton,
and Lady Haughton had only to extend her invitations to her niece; hence
the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, of which Mr. Vigors was the bearer, and hence
my advice to you, of which you can now understand the motive.  Since you
thought Lilian Ashleigh the only woman you could love, and since I thought
there were other women in the world who might do as well for Ashleigh
Sumner, it seemed to me fair for all parties that Lilian should not go to
Lady Haughton's in ignorance of the sentiments with which she had inspired
you.  A girl can seldom be sure that she loves until she is sure that she
is loved.  And now," added Mrs. Poyntz, rising and walking across the room
to her bureau,--"now I will show you Lady Haughton's invitation to Mrs.
Ashleigh.  Here it is!"

I ran my eye over the letter, which she thrust into my hand, resuming her
knitting-work while I read.

The letter was short, couched in conventional terms of hollow affection.
The writer blamed herself for having so long neglected her brother's widow
and child; her heart had been wrapped up too much in the son she had lost;
that loss had made her turn to the ties of blood still left to her; she
had heard much of Lilian from their common friend, Mr. Vigors; she longed
to embrace so charming a niece.  Then followed the invitation and the
postscript.  The postscript ran thus, so far as I can remember:--

   "Whatever my own grief at my irreparable bereavement, I am no egotist;
    I keep my sorrow to myself.  You will find some pleasant guests at my
    house, among others our joint connection, young Ashleigh Sumner."

"Woman's postscripts are proverbial for their significance," said
Mrs. Poyntz, when I had concluded the letter and laid it on the table;
"and if I did not at once show you this hypocritical effusion, it was
simply because at the name Ashleigh Sumner its object became transparent,
not perhaps to poor Anne Ashleigh nor to innocent Lilian, but to my
knowledge of the parties concerned, as it ought to be to that shrewd
intelligence which you derive partly from nature, partly from the insight
into life which a true physician cannot fail to acquire.  And if I know
anything of you, you would have romantically said, had you seen the letter
at first, and understood its covert intention, 'Let me not shackle the
choice of the woman I love, and to whom an alliance so coveted in the eyes
of the world might, if she were left free, be proffered.'"

"I should not have gathered from the postscript all that you see in it;
but had its purport been so suggested to me, you are right, I should have
so said.  Well, and as Mr. Margrave tells me that you informed him that I
have a rival, I am now to conclude that the rival is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner?"

"Has not Mrs. Ashleigh or Lilian mentioned him in writing to you?"

"Yes, both; Lilian very slightly, Mrs. Ashleigh with some praise, as a
young man of high character, and very courteous to her."

"Yet, though I asked you to come and tell me who were the guests at Lady
Haughton's, you never did so."

"Pardon me; but of the guests I thought nothing, and letters addressed to
my heart seemed to me too sacred to talk about.  And Ashleigh Sumner then
courts Lilian!  How do you know?"

"I know everything that concerns me; and here, the explanation is simple.
My aunt, Lady Delafield, is staying with Lady Haughton.  Lady Delafield is
one of the women of fashion who shine by their own light; Lady Haughton
shines by borrowed light, and borrows every ray she can find."

"And Lady Delafield writes you word--"

"That Ashleigh Sumner is caught by Lilian's beauty."

"And Lilian herself--"

"Women like Lady Delafield do not readily believe that any girl could
refuse Ashleigh Sumner; considered in himself, he is steady and
good-looking; considered as owner of Kirby Hall and Haughton Park, he
has, in the eyes of any sensible mother, the virtues of Cato and the
beauty of Antinous."

I pressed my hand to my heart; close to my heart lay a letter from Lilian,
and there was no word in that letter which showed that her heart was gone
from mine.  I shook my head gently, and smiled in confiding triumph.

Mrs. Poyntz surveyed me with a bent brow and a compressed lip.

"I understand your smile," she said ironically.  "Very likely Lilian may
be quite untouched by this young man's admiration, but Anne Ashleigh may
be dazzled by so brilliant a prospect for her daughter; and, in short, I
thought it desirable to let your engagement be publicly known throughout
the town to-day.  That information will travel; it will reach Ashleigh
Sumner through Mr. Vigors, or others in this neighbourhood, with whom I
know that he corresponds.  It will bring affairs to a crisis, and before
it may be too late.  I think it well that Ashleigh Sumner should leave
that house; if he leave it for good, so much the better.  And, perhaps,
the sooner Lilian returns to L---- the lighter your own heart will be."

"And for these reasons you have published the secret of--"

"Your engagement?  Yes.  Prepare to be congratulated wherever you go.  And
now if you hear either from mother or daughter that Ashleigh Sumner has
proposed, and been, let us say, refused, I do not doubt that, in the pride
of your heart, you will come and tell me."

"Rely upon it, I will; but before I take leave, allow me to ask why you
described to a young man like Mr. Margrave--, whose wild and strange
humours you have witnessed and not approved--any of those traits of
character in Miss Ashleigh which distinguish her from other girls of her
age?"

"I?  You mistake.  I said nothing to him of her character.  I mentioned
her name, and said she was beautiful, that was all."

"Nay, you said that she was fond of musing, of solitude; that in her
fancies she believed in the reality of visions which might flit before her
eyes as they flit before the eyes of all imaginative dreamers."

"Not a word did I say to Mr. Margrave of such peculiarities in Lilian; not
a word more than what I have told you, on my honour!"

Still incredulous, but disguising my incredulity with that convenient
smile by which we accomplish so much of the polite dissimulation
indispensable to the decencies of civilized life, I took my departure,
returned home, and wrote to Lilian.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

The conversation with Mrs. Poyntz left my mind restless and disquieted.  I
had no doubt, indeed, of Lilian's truth; but could I be sure that the
attentions of a young man, with advantages of fortune so brilliant, would
not force on her thoughts the contrast of the humbler lot and the duller
walk of life in which she had accepted as companion a man removed from her
romantic youth less by disparity of years than by gravity of pursuits?
And would my suit now be as welcomed as it had been by a mother even so
unworldly as Mrs. Ashleigh?  Why, too, should both mother and daughter
have left me so unprepared to hear that I had a rival; why not have
implied some consoling assurance that such rivalry need not cause me
alarm?  Lilian's letters, it is true, touched but little on any of the
persons round her; they were filled with the outpourings of an ingenuous
heart, coloured by the glow of a golden fancy.  They were written as if in
the wide world we two stood apart alone, consecrated from the crowd by the
love that, in linking us together, had hallowed each to the other.  Mrs.
Ashleigh's letters were more general and diffusive,--detailed the habits
of the household, sketched the guests, intimated her continued fear of
Lady Haughton, but had said nothing more of Mr. Ashleigh Sumner than I had
repeated to Mrs. Poyntz.  However, in my letter to Lilian I related the
intelligence that had reached me, and impatiently I awaited her reply.

Three days after the interview with Mrs. Poyntz, and two days before the
long-anticipated event of the mayor's ball, I was summoned to attend a
nobleman who had lately been added to my list of patients, and whose
residence was about twelve miles from L----.  The nearest way was through
Sir Philip Derval's park.  I went on horseback, and proposed to stop on
the way to inquire after the steward, whom I had seen but once since his
fit, and that was two days after it, when he called himself at my house to
thank me for my attendance, and to declare that he was quite recovered.

As I rode somewhat fast through the park, I came, however, upon the
steward, just in front of the house.  I reined in my horse and accosted
him.  He looked very cheerful.

"Sir," said he, in a whisper, "I have heard from Sir Philip; his letter is
dated since--since my good woman told you what I saw,--well, since then.
So that it must have been all a delusion of mine, as you told her.  And
yet, well--well--we will not talk of it, doctor; but I hope you have kept
the secret.  Sir Philip would not like to hear of it, if he comes back."

"Your secret is quite safe with me.  But is Sir Philip likely to come
back?"

"I hope so, doctor.  His letter is dated Paris, and that's nearer home
than he has been for many years; and--but bless me! some one is coming
out of the house,--a young gentleman!  Who can it be?"

I looked, and to my surprise I saw Margrave descending the stately stairs
that led from the front door.  The steward turned towards him, and I
mechanically followed, for I was curious to know what had brought Margrave
to the house of the long-absent traveller.

It was easily explained.  Mr. Margrave had heard at L---- much of the
pictures and internal decorations of the mansion.  He had, by dint of
coaxing (he said, with his enchanting laugh), persuaded the old
housekeeper to show him the rooms.

"It is against Sir Philip's positive orders to show the house to any
stranger, sir; and the housekeeper has done very wrong," said the steward.

"Pray don't scold her.  I dare say Sir Philip would not have refused me a
permission he might not give to every idle sightseer.  Fellow-travellers
have a freemasonry with each other; and I have been much in the same far
countries as himself.  I heard of him there, and could tell you more about
him, I dare say, than you know yourself."

"You, sir! pray do then."

"The next time I come," said Margrave, gayly; and, with a nod to me, he
glided off through the trees of the neighbouring grove, along the winding
footpath that led to the lodge.

"A very cool gentleman," muttered the steward; "but what pleasant ways he
has!  You seem to know him, sir.  Who is he, may I ask?"

"Mr. Margrave,--a visitor at L----, and he has been a great traveller, as
he says; perhaps he met Sir Philip abroad."

"I must go and hear what he said to Mrs. Gates; excuse me, sir, but I am
so anxious about Sir Philip."

"If it be not too great a favour, may I be allowed the same privilege
granted to Mr. Margrave?  To judge by the outside of the house, the inside
must be worth seeing; still, if it be against Sir Philip's positive
orders--"

"His orders were, not to let the Court become a show-house,--to admit none
without my consent; but I should be ungrateful indeed, doctor, if I
refused that consent to you."

I tied my horse to the rusty gate of the terrace-walk, and followed the
steward up the broad stairs of the terrace.  The great doors were
unlocked.  We entered a lofty hall with a domed ceiling; at the back of
the hall the grand staircase ascended by a double flight.  The design was
undoubtedly Vanbrugh's,--an architect who, beyond all others, sought the
effect of grandeur less in space than in proportion; but Vanbrugh's
designs need the relief of costume and movement, and the forms of a more
pompous generation, in the bravery of velvets and laces, glancing amid
those gilded columns, or descending with stately tread those broad
palatial stairs.  His halls and chambers are so made for festival and
throng, that they become like deserted theatres, inexpressibly desolate,
as we miss the glitter of the lamps and the movement of the actors.

The housekeeper had now appeared,--a quiet, timid old woman.  She excused
herself for admitting Margrave--not very intelligibly.  It was plain to
see that she had, in truth, been unable to resist what the steward termed
his "pleasant ways."

As if to escape from a scolding, she talked volubly all the time, bustling
nervously through the rooms, along which I followed her guidance with a
hushed footstep.  The principal apartments were on the ground-floor, or
rather, a floor raised some ten or fifteen feet above the ground; they had
not been modernized since the date in which they were built.  Hangings of
faded silk; tables of rare marble, and mouldered gilding; comfortless
chairs at drill against the walls; pictures, of which connoisseurs alone
could estimate the value, darkened by dust or blistered by sun and damp,
made a general character of discomfort.  On not one room, on not one
nook, still lingered some old smile of home.

Meanwhile, I gathered from the housekeeper's rambling answers to questions
put to her by the steward, as I moved on, glancing at the pictures, that
Margrave's visit that day was not his first.  He had been to the house
twice before,--his ostensible excuse that he was an amateur in pictures
(though, as I had before observed, for that department of art he had no
taste); but each time he had talked much of Sir Philip.  He said that
though not personally known to him, he had resided in the same towns
abroad, and had friends equally intimate with Sir Philip; but when the
steward inquired if the visitor had given any information as to the
absentee, it became very clear that Margrave had been rather asking
questions than volunteering intelligence.

We had now come to the end of the state apartments, the last of which was
a library.  "And," said the old woman, "I don't wonder the gentleman knew
Sir Philip, for he seemed a scholar, and looked very hard over the books,
especially those old ones by the fireplace, which Sir Philip, Heaven bless
him, was always poring into."

Mechanically I turned to the shelves by the fireplace, and examined the
volumes ranged in that department.  I found they contained the works of
those writers whom we may class together under the title of
mystics,--Iamblichus and Plotinus; Swedenborg and Behmen; Sandivogius, Van
Helmont, Paracelsus, Cardan.  Works, too, were there, by writers less
renowned, on astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, etc.  I began to understand
among what class of authors Margrave had picked up the strange notions
with which he was apt to interpolate the doctrines of practical philosophy.

"I suppose this library was Sir Philip's usual sitting-room?" said I.

"No, sir; he seldom sat here.  This was his study;" and the old woman
opened a small door, masked by false book backs.  I followed her into a
room of moderate size, and evidently of much earlier date than the rest of
the house.  "It is the only room left of an older mansion," said the
steward in answer to my remark.  "I have heard it was spared on account of
the chimneypiece.  But there is a Latin inscription which will tell you
all about it.  I don't know Latin myself."

The chimneypiece reached to the ceiling.  The frieze of the lower part
rested on rude stone caryatides; the upper part was formed of oak panels
very curiously carved in the geometrical designs favoured by the taste
prevalent in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but different from any I
had ever seen in the drawings of old houses,--and I was not quite
unlearned in such matters, for my poor father was a passionate antiquary
in all that relates to mediaeval art.  The design in the oak panels was
composed of triangles interlaced with varied ingenuity, and enclosed in
circular bands inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac.

On the stone frieze supported by the caryatides, immediately under the
woodwork, was inserted a metal plate, on which was written, in Latin, a
few lines to the effect that "in this room, Simon Forman, the seeker of
hidden truth, taking refuge from unjust persecution, made those
discoveries in nature which he committed, for the benefit of a wiser age,
to the charge of his protector and patron, the worshipful Sir Miles
Derval, knight."

Forman!  The name was not quite unfamiliar to me; but it was not without
an effort that my memory enabled me to assign it to one of the most
notorious of those astrologers or soothsayers whom the superstition of an
earlier age alternately persecuted and honoured.

The general character of the room was more cheerful than the statelier
chambers I had hitherto passed through, for it had still the look of
habitation,--the armchair by the fireplace; the kneehole writing-table
beside it; the sofa near the recess of a large bay-window, with book-prop
and candlestick screwed to its back; maps, coiled in their cylinders,
ranged under the cornice; low strong safes, skirting two sides of the
room, and apparently intended to hold papers and title-deeds, seals
carefully affixed to their jealous locks.  Placed on the top of these
old-fashioned receptacles were articles familiar to modern use,--a
fowling-piece here, fishing-rods there, two or three simple flower-vases,
a pile of music books, a box of crayons.  All in this room seemed to
speak of residence and ownership,--of the idiosyncrasies of a lone single
man, it is true, but of a man of one's own time,--a country gentleman of
plain habits but not uncultivated tastes.

I moved to the window; it opened by a sash upon a large balcony, from
which a wooden stair wound to a little garden, not visible in front of the
house, surrounded by a thick grove of evergreens, through which one broad
vista was cut, and that vista was closed by a view of the mausoleum.

I stepped out into the garden,--a patch of sward with a fountain in the
centre, and parterres, now more filled with weeds than flowers.  At the
left corner was a tall wooden summer-house or pavilion,--its door wide
open.  "Oh, that's where Sir Philip used to study many a long summer's
night," said the steward.

"What! in that damp pavilion?"

"It was a pretty place enough then, sir; but it is very old,--they say as
old as the room you have just left."

"Indeed, I must look at it, then."

The walls of this summer-house had once been painted in the arabesques of
the Renaissance period; but the figures were now scarcely traceable.  The
woodwork had started in some places, and the sunbeams stole through the
chinks and played on the floor, which was formed from old tiles quaintly
tessellated and in triangular patterns; similar to those I had observed in
the chimneypiece.  The room in the pavilion was large, furnished with old
worm-eaten tables and settles.  "It was not only here that Sir Philip
studied, but sometimes in the room above," said the steward.

"How do you get to the room above?  Oh, I see; a staircase in the angle."
I ascended the stairs with some caution, for they were crooked and
decayed; and, on entering the room above, comprehended at once why Sir
Philip had favoured it.

The cornice of the ceiling rested on pilasters, within which the
compartments were formed into open unglazed arches, surrounded by a
railed balcony.  Through these arches, on three sides of the room, the eye
commanded a magnificent extent of prospect.  On the fourth side the view
was bounded by the mausoleum.  In this room was a large telescope; and on
stepping into the balcony, I saw that a winding stair mounted thence to a
platform on the top of the pavilion,--perhaps once used as an observatory
by Forman himself.

"The gentleman who was here to-day was very much pleased with this
look-out, sir," said the housekeeper.  "Who would not be?  I suppose Sir
Philip has a taste for astronomy."

"I dare say, sir," said the steward, looking grave; "he likes most
out-of-the-way things."

The position of the sun now warned me that my time pressed, and that I
should have to ride fast to reach my new patient at the hour appointed.  I
therefore hastened back to my horse, and spurred on, wondering whether, in
the chain of association which so subtly links our pursuits in manhood to
our impressions in childhood, it was the Latin inscription on the
chimneypiece that had originally biassed Sir Philip Derval's literary
taste towards the mystic jargon of the books at which I had contemptuously
glanced.




CHAPTER XXIX.

I did not see Margrave the following day, but the next morning, a little
after sunrise, he walked into my study, according to his ordinary habit.

"So you know something about Sir Philip Derval?" said I.  "What sort of a
man is he?"

"Hateful!" cried Margrave; and then checking himself, burst out into his
merry laugh.  "Just like my exaggerations!  I am not acquainted with
anything to his prejudice.  I came across his track once or twice in the
East.  Travellers are always apt to be jealous of each other."

"You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity; but I should have
fancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, when I
found, among his favourite books, Van Helmont and Paracelsus.  Perhaps
you, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?"

"Astrologers?  No!  They deal with the future!  I live for the day; only I
wish the day never had a morrow!"

"Have you not, then that vague desire for the something beyond,--that not
unhappy, but grand discontent with the limits of the immediate Present,
from which man takes his passion for improvement and progress, and from
which some sentimental philosophers have deduced an argument in favour of
his destined immortality?"

"Eh!" said Margrave, with as vacant a stare as that of a peasant whom one
has addressed in Hebrew.  "What farrago of words is this?  I do not
comprehend you."

"With your natural abilities," I asked with interest, "do you never feel a
desire for fame?"

"Fame?  Certainly not.  I cannot even understand it!"

"Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that you had
rendered a service to humanity?"

Margrave looked bewildered; after a moment's pause, he took from the table
a piece of bread that chanced to be there, opened the window, and threw
the crumbs into the lane.  The sparrows gathered round the crumbs.

"Now," said Margrave, "the sparrows come to that dull pavement for the
bread that recruits their lives in this world; do you believe that one
sparrow would be silly enough to fly to a house-top for the sake of some
benefit to other sparrows, or to be chirruped about after he was dead?  I
care for science as the sparrow cares for bread,--it may help me to
something good for my own life; and as for fame and humanity, I care for
them as the sparrow cares for the general interest and posthumous
approbation of sparrows!"

"Margrave, there is one thing in you that perplexes me more than all
else--human puzzle as you are--in your many eccentricities and
self-contradictions."

"What is that one thing in me most perplexing?"

"This: that in your enjoyment of Nature you have all the freshness of a
child, but when you speak of Man and his objects in the world, you talk in
the vein of some worn-out and hoary cynic.  At such times, were I to close
my eyes, I should say to myself, 'What weary old man is thus venting his
spleen against the ambition which has failed, and the love which has
forsaken him?' Outwardly the very personation of youth, and revelling like
a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and the tints of the herbage, why
have you none of the golden passions of the young,--their bright dreams of
some impossible love, their sublime enthusiasm for some unattainable
glory?  The sentiment you have just clothed in the illustration by which
you place yourself on a level with the sparrows is too mean and too gloomy
to be genuine at your age.  Misanthropy is among the dismal fallacies of
gray beards.  No man, till man's energies leave him, can divorce himself
from the bonds of our social kind."

"Our kind!  Your kind, possibly; but I--"  He swept his hand over his
brow, and resumed, in strange, absent, and wistful accents: "I wonder what
it is that is wanting here, and of which at moments I have a dim
reminiscence."  Again he paused, and gazing on me, said with more
appearance of friendly interest than I had ever before remarked in his
countenance, "You are not looking well.  Despite your great physical
strength, you suffer like your own sickly patients."

"True!  I suffer at this moment, but not from bodily pain."

"You have some cause of mental disquietude?"

"Who in this world has not?"

"I never have."

"Because you own you have never loved.  Certainly, you never seem to care
for any one but yourself; and in yourself you find an unbroken sunny
holiday,--high spirits, youth, health, beauty, wealth.  Happy boy!"

At that moment my heart was heavy within me.

Margrave resumed,--

"Among the secrets which your knowledge places at the command of your art,
what would you give for one which would enable you to defy and to deride a
rival where you place your affections, which could lock to yourself, and
imperiously control, the will of the being whom you desire to fascinate,
by an influence paramount, transcendent?"

"Love has that secret," said I,--"and love alone."

"A power stronger than love can suspend, can change love itself.  But if
love be the object or dream of your life, love is the rosy associate of
youth and beauty.  Beauty soon fades, youth soon departs.  What if in
nature there were means by which beauty and youth can be fixed into
blooming duration,--means that could arrest the course, nay, repair the
effects, of time on the elements that make up the human frame?"

"Silly boy!  Have the Rosicrucians bequeathed to you a prescription for
the elixir of life?"

"If I had the prescription I should not ask your aid to discover its
ingredients."

"And is it in the hope of that notable discovery you have studied
chemistry, electricity, and magnetism?  Again I say, Silly boy!"

Margrave did not heed my reply.  His face was overcast, gloomy, troubled.

"That the vital principle is a gas," said he, abruptly, "I am fully
convinced.  Can that gas be the one which combines caloric with oxygen?"

"Phosoxygen?  Sir Humphrey Davy demonstrates that gas not to be, as
Lavoisier supposed, caloric, but light, combined with oxygen; and he
suggests, not indeed that it is the vital principle itself, but the
pabulum of life to organic beings." [1]

"Does he?" said Margrave, his, face clearing up.  "Possibly, possibly,
then, here we approach the great secret of secrets.  Look you, Allen
Fenwick: I promise to secure to you unfailing security from all the
jealous fears that now torture your heart; if you care for that fame which
to me is not worth the scent of a flower, the balm of a breeze, I will
impart to you a knowledge which, in the hands of ambition, would dwarf
into commonplace the boasted wonders of recognized science.  I will do
all this, if, in return, but for one month you will give yourself up to my
guidance in whatever experiments I ask, no matter how wild they may seem
to you."

"My dear Margrave, I reject your bribes as I would reject the moon and the
stars which a child might offer to me in exchange for a toy; but I may
give the child its toy for nothing, and I may test your experiments for
nothing some day when I have leisure."

I did not hear Margrave's answer, for at that moment my servant entered
with letters.  Lilian's hand!  Tremblingly, breathlessly, I broke the
seal.  Such a loving, bright, happy letter; so sweet in its gentle chiding
of my wrongful fears!  It was implied rather than said that Ashleigh
Sumner had proposed and been refused.  He had now left the house.  Lilian
and her mother were coming back; in a few days we should meet.  In this
letter were inclosed a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh.  She was more
explicit about my rival than Lilian had been.  If no allusion to his
attentions had been made to me before, it was from a delicate
consideration for myself.  Mrs. Ashleigh said that "the young man had
heard from L---- of our engagement, and--disbelieved it;"  but, as Mrs.
Poyntz had so shrewdly predicted, hurried at once to the avowal of his own
attachment, and the offer of his own hand.  On Lilian's refusal his pride
had been deeply mortified.  He had gone away manifestly in more anger than
sorrow.

   "Lady Delafield, dear Margaret Poyntz's aunt, had been most kind in
    trying to soothe Lady Haughton's disappointment, which was rudely
    expressed,--so rudely," added Mrs. Ashleigh, "that it gives us an
    excuse to leave sooner than had been proposed,--which I am very glad
    of.  Lady Delafield feels much for Mr. Sumner; has invited him to
    visit her at a place she has near Worthing.  She leaves to-morrow in
    order to receive him; promises to reconcile him to our rejection,
    which, as he was my poor Gilbert's heir, and was very friendly at
    first, would be a great relief to my mind.  Lilian is well, and so
    happy at the thoughts of coming back."

When I lifted my eyes from these letters I was as a new man, and the earth
seemed a new earth.  I felt as if I had realized Margrave's idle
dreams,--as if youth could never fade, love could never grow cold.

"You care for no secrets of mine at this moment," said Margrave, abruptly.

"Secrets!" I murmured; "none now are worth knowing.  I am loved!  I am
loved!"

"I bide my time," said Margrave; and as my eyes met his, I saw there a
look I had never seen in those eyes before, sinister, wrathful, menacing.
He turned away, went out through the sash-door of the study; and as he
passed towards the fields under the luxuriant chestnut-trees, I heard his
musical, barbaric chant,--the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the
serpent,--sweet, so sweet, the very birds on the boughs hushed their carol
as if to listen.

[1] See Sir Humphrey Davy on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light




CHAPTER XXX.

I called that day on Mrs. Poyntz, and communicated to her the purport of
the glad news I had received.

She was still at work on the everlasting knitting, her firm fingers
linking mesh into mesh as she listened; and when I had done, she laid her
skein deliberately down, and said, in her favourite characteristic
formula,--

"So at last?--that is settled!"

She rose and paced the room as men are apt to do in reflection, women
rarely need such movement to aid their thoughts; her eyes were fixed on
the floor, and one hand was lightly pressed on the palm of the other,--the
gesture of a musing reasoner who is approaching the close of a difficult
calculation.

At length she paused, fronting me, and said dryly,--

"Accept my congratulations.  Life smiles on you now; guard that smile, and
when we meet next, may we be even firmer friends than we are now!"

"When we meet next,--that will be to-night--you surely go to the mayor's
great ball?  All the Hill descends to Low Town to-night."

"No; we are obliged to leave L---- this afternoon; in less than two hours
we shall be gone,--a family engagement.  We may be weeks away; you will
excuse me, then, if I take leave of you so unceremoniously.  Stay, a
motherly word of caution.  That friend of yours, Mr. Margrave!  Moderate
your intimacy with him; and especially after you are married.  There is in
that stranger, of whom so little is known, a something which I cannot
comprehend,--a something that captivates and yet revolts.  I find him
disturbing my thoughts, perplexing my conjectures, haunting my
fancies,--I, plain woman of the world!  Lilian is imaginative; beware of
her imagination, even when sure of her heart.  Beware of Margrave.  The
sooner he quits L---- the better, believe me, for your peace of mind.
Adieu!  I must prepare for our journey."

"That woman," muttered I, on quitting her house, "seems to have some
strange spite against my poor Lilian, ever seeking to rouse my own
distrust of that exquisite nature which has just given me such proof of
its truth.  And yet--and yet--is that woman so wrong here?  True!
Margrave with his wild notions, his strange beauty!--true--true--he might
dangerously encourage that turn for the mystic and visionary which
distresses me in Lilian.  Lilian should not know him.  How induce him to
leave L----?  Ah, those experiments on which he asks my assistance!  I
might commence them when he comes again, and then invent some excuse
to send him for completer tests to the famous chemists of Paris or Berlin."




CHAPTER XXXI.

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 had 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 XXXII.

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, undisturbed.  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 Margrave
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 XXXIII.

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
phantasmagorical 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 brain, 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 XXXIV.

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 a 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 XXXV.

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 newcomer, 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 £10,000 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 £10,000 to £30,000, and
bequeathed an annuity of £100 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 before 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 fellow-men 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 from 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 XXXVI.

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 XXXVII.

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 roof-tops, 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 hand; 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 XXXVIII.

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 £70,000 or £80,000,
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 £5,000 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 beg 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 XXXIX.

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 had
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 borderland 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 me 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 XL.

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, he 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 L----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
he 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.




CHAPTER XLI.

The lawyer came the next day, and with something like a smile on his lips.
He brought me a few lines in pencil from Mrs. Ashleigh; they were kindly
expressed, bade me be of good cheer; "she never for a moment believed in
my guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible a trial; it was an
unspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of a friend so attached
to me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation of the hideous calumny
under which I now suffered as Mr. Margrave!"

The lawyer had seen Margrave again,--seen him in that house.  Margrave
seemed almost domiciled there!

I remained sullen and taciturn during this visit.  I longed again for the
night.  Night came.  I heard the distant clock strike twelve, when again
the icy wind passed through my hair, and against the wall stood the
luminous Shadow.

"Have you considered?" whispered the voice, still as from afar.  "I repeat
it,--I alone can save you."

"Is it among the conditions which you ask, in return, that I shall resign
to you the woman I love?"

"No."

"Is it one of the conditions that I should commit some crime,--a crime
perhaps heinous as that of which I am accused?"

"No."

"With such reservations, I accept the conditions you may name, provided I,
in my turn, may demand one condition from yourself."

"Name it."

"I ask you to quit this town.  I ask you, meanwhile, to cease your visits
to the house that holds the woman betrothed to me."

"I will cease those visits.  And before many days are over, I will quit
this town."

"Now, then, say what you ask from me.  I am prepared to concede it.  And
not from fear for myself, but because I fear for the pure and innocent
being who is under the spell of your deadly fascination.  This is your
power over me.  You command me through my love for another.  Speak."

"My conditions are simple.  You will pledge yourself to desist from all
charges of insinuation against myself, of what nature soever.  You will
not, when you meet me in the flesh, refer to what you have known of my
likeness in the Shadow.  You will be invited to the house at which I may
be also a guest; you will come; you will meet and converse with me as
guest speaks with guest in the house of a host."

"Is that all?"

"It is all."

"Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own."

"Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you will soon be released
from these walls."

The Shadow waned and faded.  Darkness settled back, and a sleep, profound
and calm, fell over me.

The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me.  He had received that morning a
note from Mr. Margrave, stating that he had left L---- to pursue, in
person, an investigation which he had already commenced through another,
affecting the man who had given evidence against me, and that, if his
hope should prove well founded, he trusted to establish my innocence, and
convict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval.  In the research he thus
volunteered, he had asked for, and obtained, the assistance of the
policeman Waby, who, grateful to me for saving the life of his sister, had
expressed a strong desire to be employed in my service.

Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old college friend, Richard
Strahan.  For Jeeves had spread abroad Strahan's charge of purloining the
memoir which had been entrusted to me; and that accusation had done me
great injury in public opinion, because it seemed to give probability to
the only motive which ingenuity could ascribe to the foul deed imputed to
me.  That motive had been first suggested by Mr. Vigors.  Cases are on
record of men whose life had been previously blameless, who have committed
a crime which seemed to belie their nature, in the monomania of some
intense desire.  In Spain, a scholar reputed of austere morals murdered
and robbed a traveller for money in order to purchase books,--books
written, too, by Fathers of his Church!  He was intent on solving some
problem of theological casuistry.  In France, an antiquary, esteemed not
more for his learning than for amiable and gentle qualities, murdered his
most intimate friend for the possession of a medal, without which his own
collection was incomplete.  These, and similar anecdotes, tending to prove
how fatally any vehement desire, morbidly cherished, may suspend the
normal operations of reason and conscience, were whispered about by Dr.
Lloyd's vindictive partisan; and the inference drawn from them and applied
to the assumptions against myself was the more credulously received,
because of that over-refining speculation on motive and act which the
shallow accept, in their eagerness to show how readily they understand the
profound.

I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemical experiments;
to be eager in testing the truth of any novel invention.  Strahan,
catching hold of the magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, went about
repeating anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis and discovery
which had characterized me in youth as a medical student, and to which,
indeed, I owed the precocious reputation I had obtained.

Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but to the direct
testimony of his servant, had acquired in the course of his travels many
secrets in natural science, especially as connected with the healing
art,--his servant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effected by
the medicinals stored in the stolen casket.  Doubtless Sir Philip, in
boasting of these medicinals in the course of our conversation, had
excited my curiosity, inflamed my imagination; and thus when I afterwards
suddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse had acted on a brain
heated into madness by curiosity and covetous desire.

All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corroborated by
Strahan's charge that I had made away with the manuscript supposed to
contain the explanations of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip,
and had sought to shelter my theft by a tale so improbable, that a man of
my reputed talent could not have hazarded it if in his sound senses.  I
saw the web that had thus been spread around me by hostile prepossessions
and ignorant gossip: how could the arts of Margrave scatter that web to
the winds?  I knew not, but I felt confidence in his promise and his
power.  Still, so great had been my alarm for Lilian, that the hope of
clearing my own innocence was almost lost in my joy that Margrave, at
least, was no longer in her presence, and that I had received his pledge
to quit the town in which she lived.

Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on the third day from that
night in which I had last beheld the mysterious Shadow, my door was
hastily thrown open, a confused crowd presented itself at the
threshold,--the governor of the prison, the police superintendent, Mr.
Stanton, and other familiar faces shut out from me since my imprisonment.
I knew at the first glance that I was no longer an outlaw beyond the pale
of human friendship.  And proudly, sternly, as I had supported myself
hitherto in solitude and suspense, when I felt warm hands clasping mine,
heard joyous voices proffering congratulations, saw in the eyes of all
that my innocence had been cleared, the revulsion of emotion was too
strong for me,--the room reeled on my sight, I fainted.  I pass, as
quickly as I can, over the explanations that crowded on me when I
recovered, and that were publicly given in evidence in court next morning.
I had owed all to Margrave.  It seems that he had construed to my favour
the very supposition which had been bruited abroad to my prejudice.
"For," said he, "it is conjectured that Fenwick committed the crime of
which he is accused in the impulse of a disordered reason.  That
conjecture is based upon the probability that a madman alone could have
committed a crime without adequate motive.  But it seems quite clear that
the accused is not mad; and I see cause to suspect that the accuser is."
Grounding this assumption on the current reports of the witness's manner
and bearing since he had been placed under official surveillance, Margrave
had commissioned the policeman Waby to make inquiries in the village to
which the accuser asserted he had gone in quest of his relations, and Waby
had there found persons who remembered to have heard that the two brothers
named Walls lived less by the gains of the petty shop which they kept than
by the proceeds of some property consigned to them as the nearest of kin
to a lunatic who had once been tried for his life.  Margrave had then
examined the advertisements in the daily newspapers.  One of them, warning
the public against a dangerous maniac, who had effected his escape from an
asylum in the west of England, caught his attention.  To that asylum he
had repaired.

There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose propensity was
homicide, consigned for life to the asylum on account of a murder, for
which he had been tried.  The description of this person exactly tallied
with that of the pretended American.  The medical superintendent of the
asylum, hearing all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strong
persuasion that the witness was his missing patient, and had himself
committed the crime of which he had accused another.  If so, the
superintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession of all the
circumstances.  Like many other madmen, and not least those whose
propensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was exceedingly cunning,
treacherous, secret, and habituated to trick and stratagem,--more subtle
than even the astute in possession of all their faculties, whether to
achieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabricate appearances against
another.  But while, in ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enough
to those who were not accustomed to study him, he had one hallucination
which, when humoured, led him always, not only to betray himself, but to
glory in any crime proposed or committed.  He was under the belief that he
had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience,
would bear him harmless through all the consequences of such submission,
and finally raise him to great power and authority.  It is no unfrequent
illusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under the influence of
the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon.  Murderers have assigned as the
only reason they themselves could give for their crime, that "the Devil
got into them," and urged the deed.  But the insane have, perhaps, no
attribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem.  The
maniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hair and
calls them a crown.  So much does inordinate arrogance characterize mental
aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have detected, in
that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, long before the brain had
made its disease manifest even to the most familiar kindred.

Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the dreadful illusion by which the
man I now speak of was possessed.  He was proud to be the protected agent
of the Fallen Angel.  And if that self-esteem were artfully appealed to,
he would exult superbly in the evil he held himself ordered to perform, as
if a special prerogative, an official rank and privilege; then, he would
be led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the most cynical of
criminals in whom intelligence was not ruined would shrink from owning;
then, he would reveal himself in all his deformity with as complacent and
frank a self-glorying as some vain good man displays in parading his
amiable sentiments and his beneficent deeds.

"If," said the superintendent, "this be the patient who has escaped from
me, and if his propensity to homicide has been, in some way, directed
towards the person who has been murdered, I shall not be with him a
quarter of an hour before he will inform me how it happened, and detail
the arts he employed in shifting his crime upon another; all will be told
as minutely as a child tells the tale of some school-boy exploit, in
which he counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of your applause."

Margrave brought this gentleman back to L----, took him to the mayor, who
was one of my warmest supporters: the mayor had sufficient influence to
dictate and arrange the rest.  The superintendent was introduced to the
room in which the pretended American was lodged.  At his own desire a
select number of witnesses were admitted with him.  Margrave excused
himself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of mine to be
an impartial listener to aught that concerned me so nearly.

The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, and verified his
promises.  My false accuser was his missing patient; the man recognized
Dr. ---- with no apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension, and
in a very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, with a gloating
complacency both at the agency by which he deemed himself exalted, and at
the dexterous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the task,
that increased the horror of his narrative.

He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely ingenious, but of
which the details, long in themselves, did not interest me, and I
understood them too imperfectly to repeat.  He had encountered a
sea-faring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked down with a stone,
and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jacket, as well as of a small sum in
coin, which last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that conveyed
him eighty miles away from the asylum.  Some trifling remnant of this
money still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along the high-road
till he came to a town about twenty miles distant from L----; there he had
stayed a day or two, and there he said "that the Devil had told him to buy
a case-knife, which he did."  "He knew by that order that the Devil meant
him to do something great."  "His Master," as he called the fiend, then
directed him the road he should take.  He came to L----, put up, as he had
correctly stated before, at a small inn, wandered at night about the town,
was surprised by the sudden storm, took shelter under the convent arch,
overheard somewhat more of my conversation with Sir Philip than he had
previously deposed,--heard enough to excite his curiosity as to the
casket: "While he listened his Master told him he must get possession of
that casket."  Sir Philip had quitted the archway almost immediately after
I had done so, and he would then have attacked him if he had not caught
sight of a policeman going his rounds.  He had followed Sir Philip to a
house (Mr. Jeeves's).  "His Master told him to wait and watch."  He did
so.  When Sir Philip came forth, towards the dawn, he followed him, saw
him enter a narrow street, came up to him, seized him by the arm, demanded
all he had about him.  Sir Philip tried to shake him off,--struck at him.
What follows I spare the reader.  The deed was done.  He robbed the dead
man both of the casket and the purse that he found in the pockets; had
scarcely done so when he heard footsteps.  He had just time to get behind
the portico of a detached house at angles with the street when I came up.
He witnessed, from his hiding-place, the brief conference between myself
and the policemen, and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole
unobserved away.  He was going back towards the inn, when it occurred to
him that it would be safer if the casket and purse were not about his
person; that he asked his Master to direct him how to dispose of them:
that his Master guided him to an open yard (a stone-mason's) at a very
little distance from the inn; that in this yard there stood an old
wych-elm tree, from the gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away,
leaving chinks and hollows, in one of which he placed the casket and
purse, taking from the latter only two sovereigns and some silver, and
then heaping loose mould over the hiding-place.  That he then repaired to
his inn, and left it late in the morning, on the pretence of seeking for
his relations,--persons, indeed, who really had been related to him, but
of whose death years ago he was aware.  He returned to L---- a few days
afterwards, and in the dead of the night went to take up the casket and
the money.  He found the purse with its contents undisturbed; but the lid
of the casket was unclosed.  From the hasty glance he had taken of it
before burying it, it had seemed to him firmly locked,--he was alarmed
lest some one had been to the spot.  But his Master whispered to him not
to mind, told him that he might now take the casket, and would be guided
what to do with it; that he did so, and, opening the lid, found the casket
empty-; that he took the rest of the money out of the purse, but that he
did not take the purse itself, for it had a crest and initials on it,
which might lead to the discovery of what had been done; that he therefore
left it in