Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

"What followed this?" I inquired.

"A delusion that has occupied her thoughts ever since. It took such complete possession of her, that all arguments were useless. When she was asked if she believed it to be real, her invariable answer was that it was real to her. I suffered her to indulge this fancy, hoping that one day or another she would recover from what I regarded as a trance of the mind; but I was mistaken. She always said she was sure of your existence; and looked forward to the realization of her destiny, like one who lived under an enchantment. By slow degrees I relinquished all hopes, and resolved to sacrifice my own happiness to hers, if the opportunity should ever arrive. After this she came to London, broken down in health, and rapidly wasting away under the influence of the protracted expectation that was destroying her. Then it was I first met you. I had some misgiving about you from the beginning, and prevailed upon her to describe to me again and again the person of my spectral rival. It was impossible to mistake the portrait. My doubts were cleared up, and the duty I had to perform was obvious. But I determined to make further inquiry before I revealed to either what I knew of both, and having heard you speak of your birth-place and residence, I went into the country, satisfied myself on all points respecting you, and at the same time learned the whole particulars of your life. Still I delayed from day to day my intention of bringing you together, knowing that when it was accomplished my own doom would be sealed forever. While I delayed, however, she grew worse, and I felt that it would be criminal to hesitate any longer. I have now fulfilled my part – it remains for you to act upon your own responsibility. My strength exerted for her has carried me so far – I can go no further."

As he uttered these words he rose and turned away his head. I grasped his hand and tried to detain him. He stood and listened while I expressed the unbounded gratitude and admiration with which his conduct inspired me, and explained, hurriedly, the fascination that had held me in a similar trance to that which he had just described. But he made no observation on what I said. It appeared as if he had resolved to speak no more on the subject; and he exhibited such signs of weariness and pain that I thought it would be unreasonable to solicit his advice at that moment. And so we parted for the night.

VIII

I pondered all night upon the history related to me by Forrester. In the desire to escape from the clouds which still darkened my judgment, I endeavored to persuade myself at one moment that Forrester was trying to impose upon me, and at another that he must be laboring under a mental aberration. The pride of reason revolted from the incredible particulars of that extraordinary narrative; yet certain coincidences, which seemed to confirm their truth, made me hesitate in my skepticism. If I had related to him what had happened to myself, he would have had as good a right to doubt my sanity or veracity as I had to doubt his. This was what staggered me.

I sifted every particle of the story, and was compelled to confess that there was nothing in it which my own experience did not corroborate. The fetch, or wraith, or whatever it was that had appeared to Gertrude, was a counterpart illusion to the figure that had appeared to me. Upon her memory, as upon mine, it had made so vivid an impression, that our recognition of each other was mutual and instantaneous. That fact was clear, and placed the truth of Forrester's statement beyond controversy. It was competent to others, who had no personal evidence of such visitations, to treat with indifference the mysteries of the spiritual world; but I was not free, however much I desired it, to set up for a philosophical unbeliever. All that remained, therefore, was to speculate in the dark on the circumstances which were thus shaping out our destiny, and which, inscrutable as they were, commanded the submission of my reason and my senses.

It occurred to me that, as Gertrude's residence beyond the border might not have been distant many miles from the spot where I imagined I had seen her, it was possible – barely possible – that her appearance there might have been a reality after all. This supposition was a great relief to me, for I would gladly have accepted a natural solution of the phenomenon, and I accordingly resolved to question her upon the subject.

I thought the next day would never come, yet I shuddered at its coming. I was eager to see her again, although I dreaded the interview; and I will frankly acknowledge, that when I approached the house I trembled like a man on the eve of a sentence which was to determine the issue of life or death.

The blinds were down in all the windows, and the aspect of the whole was chill and dismal. Where sickness is, there, too, must be cheerlessness and fear. The passion which had so long possessed me was as strong as ever, but it was dashed with a hideous terror; there was so much to explain and to be satisfied upon before either of us could rightly comprehend our situation.

I knocked faintly. There was no answer. I knocked again, more loudly, but still lowly, and with increasing apprehension. The door was opened by Forrester. He looked dreadfully haggard, as if he had been sitting up all night, worn by grief and watching. I spoke to him, something broken and hardly articulate: he bent his head, and, raising his hand in token of silence, beckoned me to follow him. He was evidently much agitated, and a suspicion crossed my mind that he already repented the sacrifice he had made. But I did him wrong.

When we reached the door of the room in which we had seen Gertrude on the preceding night Forrester paused, as if to gather up his manhood for what was to follow; then, putting forward his hand, he pushed open the door.

"Go in – go in," he cried, in a choking voice; and hurrying me on he retreated back into the shadow, as if he wished to avoid being present at our meeting.

The room was in deep twilight. The curtains were drawn together over the windows, and there was less disorder in the apartment than when I had last seen it. The evidences of illness which I had observed scattered about were removed, and the furniture was more carefully arranged. The atmosphere was heavy, and affected me painfully. But I thought nothing of these things, although the slightest incident did not escape me. Gertrude still lay upon the sofa, and appeared to be more tranquil and composed. There was a solemn hush over her as she lay perfectly calm and motionless. I fancied she was asleep, and approached her gently. Her hands were stretched down by her sides, and I ventured to raise one of them to my lips. I shall never forget the horror of that touch. A thrill shot through my veins, as if a bolt of ice had struck upon my heart and frozen up its current at the fountain. It was the hand of a corpse.

In the first feeling of madness and despair which seized upon me I ran my hands wildly over her arms, and even touched her face and lips, doubting whether the form that lay before me was of this world. Some such wild apprehension traversed my brain; but the witnesses of death in the flesh were too palpable in many ways to admit of any superstitious incredulity. The violent surprise and emotion of the night before had proved too much for her wasted strength, and she had sunk suddenly under the fearful re-action.

The shock overwhelmed me. Not only was she taken from me at the very instant of discovery and possession, but all hope of mutual explanation was extinguished forever. Upon one point alone had I arrived at certainty, but that only rendered me more anxious to clear up the rest. I had seen her living, had spoken to her, and heard her voice; and now she was dead, the proof of her actual humanity was palpable. It was some comfort to know that she to whom I had dedicated myself under the influence of a sort of sorcery, was a being actuated by passions like my own, and subject to the same natural laws; but it was the extremity of all conceivable wretchedness to lose her just as I had acquired this consoling knowledge. The phantom had scarcely become a reality when it again faded into a phantom.

A few days afterward, for the second time, I followed a hearse to the grave. The only persons to whom I had consecrated my love were gone; and this last bereavement seemed to me at the time as if it were final, and as if there was nothing left for me but to die. My reason, however, had gained some strength by my rough intercourse with the world; and even in the midst of the desolation of that melancholy scene I felt as if a burden had been taken off my mind, and I had been released from a harassing obligation. At all events I had a consciousness, that as the earth closed over the coffin of Gertrude, I passed out of the region of dreams and deceptions, and that whatever lay in advance of me, for good or evil, was of the actual, toiling, practical world. The exodus of my delusion seemed to open to me a future, in which imagination would be rebuked by the presence of stern and harsh realities. I felt like a manumitted slave, who goes forth reluctantly to the hard work of freedom, and would gladly fall back, if he could, upon the supine repose which had spared him the trouble of thinking for himself.

Forrester bore his agony with heroic endurance. I, who knew what was in his heart, knew what he suffered. But his eyes were still and his lips were fixed, and not a single quiver of his pulses betrayed his anguish to the bystanders. When the last rites were over, and we turned away, he wrung my hand without a word of leave-taking, and departed. A few days afterward he left England. The associations connected with the scenes of his past life – with the country that contained the ashes of all he loved – embittered every hour of his life, and he wisely sought relief in exile. I was hurt at not having received some communication from him before he went away; but I knew he was subject to fits of heavy depression, and his silence, although it pained me at the time, did not diminish the respect and sympathy inspired by his conduct.

I will not dwell upon the immediate effect which the dissolution of Gertrude, and the phantoms connected with her, had upon my mind. Shattered and subdued, I re-entered the world, which I was now resolved, out of cowardice and distrust of myself, not to leave again; taking mental exercise, as an invalid, slowly recovering from the prostration of a long illness, tests his returning strength in the open air. I had a great fear upon me of going into the country, and being once more alone. The tranquillity of Nature would have thrown me back into despair, while the crowded haunts of London kept me in a state of activity that excluded the morbid influences I had so much reason to dread. Of my new experiences in the second phase of my life, as different from the former as light from darkness, I shall speak with the same fidelity which I have hitherto strictly observed.

PART THE SECOND – NOON

I

When I had deposited Gertrude in the grave I was a solitary tree, singled out by the lightning, from the rest of the forest, and blasted through every part of its articulation. There was no verdure in my soul. I was dead to the world around me. I lived in what was gone – I had no interest in what was to come. I believed that the fatal spell that had exercised such a power over my thoughts and actions had accomplished its catastrophe, and that there was nothing further for me to fulfill but death. My Idol had perished in her beauty and her love. She had withered before my eyes, destroyed by the supernatural passion which had bound us to each other. How then could I live, when that which was my life had vanished like a pageant in the sky? I thought I could not survive her. Yet I did. And seeing things as I see them now, and knowing the supremacy of time over affliction, I look back and wonder at the thought which desolated my heart under the immediate pressure of a calamity that appeared irreparable, but for which the world offered a hundred appeasing consolations.

I went again into the bustle – the strife of vanities, ambitions, passions, and interests. At first I merely suffered myself to be carried away by the tide; my plank was launched, and I drifted with the current. But in a little time I began to be excited by the roar and jubilee of the waters.

For many months Gertrude was ever present to me, in moments of respite and solitude. As certain as the night returned, the stillness of my chamber was haunted by her smiles. The tomb seemed to give up its tenant in the fresh bloom and sweet confidence of life, and she would come in her star-light brightness, smiling sadly, as if she had a feeling of something wanted in that existence to which death had translated her, and looking reproachfully, but sweetly down upon me for lingering so long behind her. By degrees, as time wore on, her form grew less and less distinct, and, wearied of watching and ruminating, I would fall asleep and lose her; and so, between waking and sleeping, the floating outlines vanished, and she visited me no more. At last I almost forgot the features which were once so deeply portrayed upon my heart. Poor human love and grief, how soon their footprints are washed away!

I resided entirely in London, without any settled plan of life, tossed about upon the living surge, and indifferent whither it swept me. I lived from hour to hour, and from day to day, upon the incidents that chanced to turn up. People thought there was something singular in my manner, and that my antecedents were ambiguous; consequently I was much sought after, and invited abroad. My table was covered with cards. I was plagued with inquiries, and found that ladies were especially anxious to know more about me than I chose to tell. My silence and reserve piqued their curiosity. Had I been a romantic exile, dressed in a bizarre costume, with an interesting head of hair, and an impenetrable expression of melancholy in my face, I could not have been more flattered by their inconvenient attentions. Out of this crush of civilities I made my own election of friends. My acquaintance was prodigious – my intimacies were few. Wherever I went I met a multitude of faces that were quite familiar to me, and to which I was expected to bow, but very few individuals whom I really knew. I had not the kind of talent that can carry away a whole London Directory in its head. I could never remember the names of the mob of people I was acquainted with. I recognized their faces, and shook their hands, and was astonished to find how glibly they all had my name, although I hardly recollected one of theirs, and this round of nods and how-d'ye-do's constituted the regular routine of an extensive intercourse with society. The clatter, frivolous as it was, kept me in motion, and there was health in that; but it was very wearisome. A man with a heart in his body desires closer and more absorbing ties. But we get habituated to these superficialities, and drop into them with surprising indifference; knowing or hoping that the sympathy we long for will come at last, and that, if it never comes, it is not so bad a thing after all, to be perpetually stopped on the journey of life by lively gossips, who will shake you by the hand, and insist upon asking you how you are, just as cordially as if they cared to know.

There was one family I visited more frequently than the rest of my miscellaneous acquaintance. I can hardly explain the attraction that drew me so much into their circle, for there was little in it that was lovable in itself, or that harmonized with my tastes. But antagonisms are sometimes as magnetic as affinities in the moral world. They were all very odd, and did nothing like other people. They were so changeable and eccentric that they scarcely appeared to me for two evenings in succession to be the same individuals. They were perpetually shifting the slides of character, and exhibiting new phases. Their amusements and occupations resembled the incessant dazzle of a magic lantern. They were never without a novelty of some kind on hand – a new whim, which they played with like a toy till they got tired of it – a subtle joke, with a little malicious pleasantry in it – or a piece of scandal, which they exhausted till it degenerated into ribaldry. Their raillery and mirth, even when they happened to be in their most good-natured moods, were invariably on the side of ridicule. They took delight in distorting every thing, and never distorted any thing twice in the same way. They laughed at the whole range of quiet, serious amiabilities, as if all small virtues were foibles and weaknesses; and held the heroic qualities in a sort of mock awe that was more ludicrous and humiliating than open scoffing and derision. In this way they passed their lives, coming out with fresh gibes every morning, and going to bed at night in the same harlequinade humor. It seemed as if they had no cares of their own, and made up for the want of them by taking into keeping the cares of their neighbors; which they tortured so adroitly that, disrelish it as you might, it was impossible to resist the infection of their grotesque satire.

One of the members of this family was distinguished from the rest by peculiarities special to himself. He was a dwarf in stature, with a large head, projecting forehead, starting eyes, bushy hair, and an angular chin. He was old enough to be dealt with as a man; but from his diminutive size, and the singularity of his manners, he was treated as a boy. Although his mental capacity was as stunted as his body, he possessed so extraordinary a talent for translating and caricaturing humanity, that he was looked upon as a domestic mime of unrivaled powers. He could run the circle of the passions with surprising facility, rendering each transition from the grave to the gay so clearly, and touching so rapidly, yet so truly, every shade of emotion, that your wonder was divided between the dexterity, ease, and completeness of the imitation, and the sagacious penetration into character which it indicated. Acting, no doubt, is not always as wise as it looks; and the mimicry that shows so shrewd on the surface is often a mere mechanical trick. But in this case the assumptions were various, distinct, and broadly marked, and not to be confounded with the low art that paints a feeling in a contortion or a grimace. During these strange feats he never spoke a word. He did not require language to give effect or intelligence to his action. All was rapid, graphic, and obvious, and dashed off with such an air of original humor that the most serious pantomime took the odd color of a jest without compromising an atom of its grave purpose. Indeed this tendency to indulge in a kind of sardonic fun was the topping peculiarity of the whole group, and the dwarf was a faithful subscriber to the family principles.

I suffered myself to be most unreasonably amused by this daily extravagance. The dwarf was a fellow after my own fancy: an irresponsible fellow, headlong, irregular, misshapen, and eternally oscillating to and fro without any goal in life. He never disturbed me by attempts to show things as they were, or by over-refined reasoning upon facts, in which some people are in the habit of indulging until they wear off the sharp edge of truths, and fritter them down into commonplaces. In short, he never reasoned at all. He darted upon a topic, struck his fangs into it, and left it, depositing a little poison behind him. His singularities never offended me, because they never interfered with my own. He turned the entire structure and operations of society to the account of the absurd; and made men, not the victims of distaste as I did, but the puppets of a farce. We arrived, however, at much the same conclusion by different routes, and the dwarf and I agreed well together; although there was an unconfessed repulsion between us which prohibited the interchange of those outward tokens of harmony that telegraph the good fellowship of the crowd.

From the first moment of our acquaintance I had a secret distrust about my friend the dwarf. I shrank from him instinctively when I felt his breath upon me, which was as hot as if it came from a furnace. I felt as if he was a social Mephistophiles, exercising a malignant influence over my fate. Yet, in spite of this feeling, we became intimate all at once. As I saw him in the first interview, I saw him ever after. We relaxed all formalities on the instant of introduction, when he broke out with a gibe that put us both at our ease at once. We were intimates in slippers and morning-gowns, while the rest of the family were as yet on full-dress ceremony with me.

II

After I had known this family a considerable time, a lady from a distant part of the country, whom I had never seen or heard of before, came on a visit to them. She was a woman of about twenty-five years of age, with a handsome person, considerable powers of conversation, and more intellect than fine women usually take the trouble to cultivate or display, preferring to trust, as she might have safely done, to the influence of their beauty. Her form was grand and voluptuous; her head, with her hair bound up in fillets, had a noble classical air; and her features were strictly intellectual. She had never been married; and exhibiting, as she did at all times, a lofty superiority over the people by whom she was surrounded in this house, it opened a strange chapter of sprightly malevolence to observe how they criticised her, and picked off her feathers, whenever she happened to be out of the room. They affected the most sublime regard for her, and the way they showed it was by wondering why she remained single, and trying to account for it by sundry flattering inuendos, with a sneer lurking under each of them.

The men had no taste – this was said so slily as to make every body laugh – or perhaps they were afraid of her; she was hard to please; her mind was too masculine, which made her appear more repulsive than she really was; she did not relish female society, and men are always jealous of women who are superior to themselves, and so, between the two – hem! – there was the old adage! Then she aimed at eccentricity, and had some uncommon tastes; she was fond of poetry and philosophy, and blue stockings are not so marketable as hosiery of a plainer kind: in short, it was not surprising that such a woman should find it rather difficult to suit herself with a husband. But whoever did succeed in overcoming her fastidiousness would get a prize!

These criticisms, probably, awakened an interest in my mind about this lady. She was evidently not understood by her critics; and it was by no means unlikely that, in attributing peculiarities to her which did not exist, they might have overlooked the true excellencies of her character. In proportion as they depreciated her, she rose in my estimation, by the rule of contrarieties. It had always been a weakness of mine to set myself against the multitude on questions of taste, and to reverse their judgment by a foregone conclusion. I then believed, and do still in a great measure believe, that persons of genius are not appreciated or comprehended by the mob; but I occasionally committed the mistake of taking it for granted that persons who were depreciated by the mob must of necessity be persons of genius.

Astræa – for so she was familiarly called, at first in the way of covert ridicule, but afterward from habit – was thoroughly in earnest in every thing she said and did. She could adapt herself to the passing humor of vivacity or sarcasm without any apparent effort, but her natural manner was grave and dominant. Beneath the severity of her air was an unsettled spirit, which a close observer could not fail to detect. It was to carry off or hide this secret disquietude of soul (such, at least, it appeared to me), that, with a strong aversion to frivolity, she heeded all the frivolous amusements; but then it was done with an effort and excess that showed how little her taste lay in it, and that it was resorted to only as an escape from criticism. She had no skill in these relaxations, and blundered sadly in her attempts to get through them; and people tried to feel complimented by her condescension, but were never really satisfied. And when she had succeeded in getting up the group to the height of its gayety, and thought that every body was fully employed, she would take advantage of the general merriment and relapse into her own thoughts. It was then you could see clearly how little interest she took in these things. But she was too important a person to be allowed to drop out, and as she was well aware of the invidious distinction with which she was treated, she would speedily rally and mix in the frivolity again. All this was done with a struggle that was quite transparent to me. She never played that part with much tact. Yet her true character baffled me, notwithstanding. There was an evident restlessness within; as if she were out of her sphere, or as if there were a void to be filled, a longing after something which was wanted to awaken her sympathies, and set her soul at repose. Of that I was convinced; but all beyond was impenetrable obscurity.

The mystery that hovered about her manner, her looks, her words, attracted me insensibly toward her. She was an enigma to the world as I was myself; and a secret feeling took possession of me that there were some latent points of unison in our natures which would yet be drawn out in answering harmony. This feeling was entirely exempt from passion. Gertrude had absorbed all that was passionate and loving in my nature – at least, I thought so then. And the difference between them was so wide, that it was impossible to feel in the same way about Gertrude first and Astræa afterward. Simplicity, gentleness, and timidity, were the characteristics of Gertrude; while Astræa was proud, grand, almost haughty, with a reserve which I could not fathom. If it be true that the individual nature can find a response only in another of a certain quality, then it would have been absurd to delude myself by any dreams of that kind about Astræa. If I had really loved Gertrude, I could not love Astræa. They were essentially in direct opposition to each other. As for Astræa, she appeared inaccessible to the weaknesses of passion; her conversation was bold, and she selected topics that invited argument, but rarely awakened emotion. Energetic, lofty, and severe, her very bearing repelled the approaches of love. He would have been a brave man who should have dared to love Astræa. I wondered at her beauty, which was not captivating at a glance, but full of dignity. I wondered, admired, listened, but was not enslaved.

She treated me with a frankness which she did not extend to others. This did not surprise me in the circle in which I found her. It was natural enough that she should avail herself of any escape that offered from that atmosphere of persiflage. I was guided by a similar impulse. But the same thing occurs every day in society. People always, when they can, prefer the intercourse which comes nearest to their own standard. It does not follow, however, that they must necessarily fall in love. Such a suspicion never entered my head.

I soon discovered that her knowledge was by no means profound; and that her judgment was not always accurate. Setting aside the showy accomplishments which go for nothing as mental culture she was self-educated. She had been an extensive reader, but without method. She touched the surface of many subjects, and carried away something from each, to show that she had been there, trusting to her vigorous intellect for the use she should make of her fragmentary acquisitions. It was only when you discussed a subject fully with her that you discovered her deficiencies. In the ordinary way, rapidly lighting upon a variety of topics, she was always so brilliant and suggestive that you gave her credit for a larger field of acquirements than she really traversed. This discovery gave me an advantage over her; and my advantage gave me courage.

One evening we were talking of the mythology, one of her favorite themes.

"And you seriously think," I observed, in answer to something she said, "that the story of Hercules and the distaff has a purpose?"

"A deep purpose, and a very obvious moral," she replied.

"Will you expound it to me?"

"It is quite plain – the parable of strength vanquished by gentleness. There is nothing so strong as gentleness."

This reply took me by surprise, and I observed, "I should hardly have expected that from you." I was thinking more of the unexpected admission of the power of gentleness from the lips of Astræa, than of the truth or depth of the remark.

"Do you mean that as a compliment?" she inquired.

"Well – no. But from a mind constituted like yours, I should have looked for a different interpretation."

"Then you think that my mind ought to prostrate itself before a brawny development of muscles?"

"No, no; remember, you spoke of gentleness."

"That is the mind of woman," she answered, "taking its natural place, and asserting its moral power. For gentleness, like beauty, is a moral power."

"Beauty a moral power?" I exclaimed.

"That is its true definition, unless you would degrade it by lowering it to the standard of the senses," she replied, kindling as she spoke. "It elevates the imagination; we feel a moral exaltation in the contemplation of it; it is the essential grace of nature; it refines and dignifies our whole being; and appreciated in this aspect, it inspires the purest and noblest aspirations."

This creed of beauty was very unlike any thing I had anticipated from her. If any body in a crowded drawing-room had spoken in this style, I should have expected that she would have smiled somewhat contemptuously upon them.