Book: A Strange Story, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> A Strange Story, Volume 2.







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 bad 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 them selves 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 reopened 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.

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