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diff --git a/2165-h/2165-h.htm b/2165-h/2165-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa94bfe --- /dev/null +++ b/2165-h/2165-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2167 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Lifted Veil, by George Eliot—A Project Gutenberg eBook</title> + <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + + </style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lifted Veil, by George Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Lifted Veil</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 2000 [eBook #2165]<br /> +[Most recently updated: March 10, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED VEIL ***</div> + +<h1>THE LIFTED VEIL</h1> + +<p class="poem"> +Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns<br /> +To energy of human fellowship;<br /> +No powers beyond the growing heritage<br /> +That makes completer manhood. +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>The time of my end approaches. I have lately been subject to +attacks of <i>angina pectoris</i>; and in the ordinary course of things, +my physician tells me, I may fairly hope that my life will not be protracted +many months. Unless, then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical +constitution, as I am cursed with an exceptional mental character, I +shall not much longer groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly +existence. If it were to be otherwise—if I were to live +on to the age most men desire and provide for—I should for once +have known whether the miseries of delusive expectation can outweigh +the miseries of true prevision. For I foresee when I shall die, +and everything that will happen in my last moments.</p> + +<p>Just a month from this day, on September 20, 1850, I shall be sitting +in this chair, in this study, at ten o’clock at night, longing +to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions +and without hope. Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame +rising in the fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction +will begin at my chest. I shall only have time to reach the bell, +and pull it violently, before the sense of suffocation will come. +No one will answer my bell. I know why. My two servants +are lovers, and will have quarrelled. My housekeeper will have +rushed out of the house in a fury, two hours before, hoping that Perry +will believe she has gone to drown herself. Perry is alarmed at +last, and is gone out after her. The little scullery-maid is asleep +on a bench: she never answers the bell; it does not wake her. +The sense of suffocation increases: my lamp goes out with a horrible +stench: I make a great effort, and snatch at the bell again. I +long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted for the unknown: +the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be +weary of it: I am content. Agony of pain and suffocation—and +all the while the earth, the fields, the pebbly brook at the bottom +of the rookery, the fresh scent after the rain, the light of the morning +through my chamber-window, the warmth of the hearth after the frosty +air—will darkness close over them for ever?</p> + +<p>Darkness—darkness—no pain—nothing but darkness: +but I am passing on and on through the darkness: my thought stays in +the darkness, but always with a sense of moving onward . . .</p> + +<p>Before that time comes, I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength +in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully +unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to +trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a +chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when +we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven—the +living only from whom men’s indulgence and reverence are held +off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, +bruise it—it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still +turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering +gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary +of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with +hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; +while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, +with the yearning for brotherly recognition—make haste—oppress +it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your +careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still—“ubi +saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit”; the eye will cease +to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all +wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches +may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle +and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; +then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them.</p> + +<p>That is a trivial schoolboy text; why do I dwell on it? It +has little reference to me, for I shall leave no works behind me for +men to honour. I have no near relatives who will make up, by weeping +over my grave, for the wounds they inflicted on me when I was among +them. It is only the story of my life that will perhaps win a +little more sympathy from strangers when I am dead, than I ever believed +it would obtain from my friends while I was living.</p> + +<p>My childhood perhaps seems happier to me than it really was, by contrast +with all the after-years. For then the curtain of the future was +as impenetrable to me as to other children: I had all their delight +in the present hour, their sweet indefinite hopes for the morrow; and +I had a tender mother: even now, after the dreary lapse of long years, +a slight trace of sensation accompanies the remembrance of her caress +as she held me on her knee—her arms round my little body, her +cheek pressed on mine. I had a complaint of the eyes that made +me blind for a little while, and she kept me on her knee from morning +till night. That unequalled love soon vanished out of my life, +and even to my childish consciousness it was as if that life had become +more chill I rode my little white pony with the groom by my side as +before, but there were no loving eyes looking at me as I mounted, no +glad arms opened to me when I came back. Perhaps I missed my mother’s +love more than most children of seven or eight would have done, to whom +the other pleasures of life remained as before; for I was certainly +a very sensitive child. I remember still the mingled trepidation +and delicious excitement with which I was affected by the tramping of +the horses on the pavement in the echoing stables, by the loud resonance +of the groom’s voices, by the booming bark of the dogs as my father’s +carriage thundered under the archway of the courtyard, by the din of +the gong as it gave notice of luncheon and dinner. The measured +tramp of soldiery which I sometimes heard—for my father’s +house lay near a county town where there were large barracks—made +me sob and tremble; and yet when they were gone past, I longed for them +to come back again.</p> + +<p>I fancy my father thought me an odd child, and had little fondness +for me; though he was very careful in fulfilling what he regarded as +a parent’s duties. But he was already past the middle of +life, and I was not his only son. My mother had been his second +wife, and he was five-and-forty when he married her. He was a +firm, unbending, intensely orderly man, in root and stem a banker, but +with a flourishing graft of the active landholder, aspiring to county +influence: one of those people who are always like themselves from day +to day, who are uninfluenced by the weather, and neither know melancholy +nor high spirits. I held him in great awe, and appeared more timid +and sensitive in his presence than at other times; a circumstance which, +perhaps, helped to confirm him in the intention to educate me on a different +plan from the prescriptive one with which he had complied in the case +of my elder brother, already a tall youth at Eton. My brother +was to be his representative and successor; he must go to Eton and Oxford, +for the sake of making connexions, of course: my father was not a man +to underrate the bearing of Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the +attainment of an aristocratic position. But, intrinsically, he +had slight esteem for “those dead but sceptred spirits”; +having qualified himself for forming an independent opinion by reading +Potter’s <i>Æschylus</i>, and dipping into Francis’s +<i>Horace</i>. To this negative view he added a positive one, +derived from a recent connexion with mining speculations; namely, that +a scientific education was the really useful training for a younger +son. Moreover, it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me +was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a public school. +Mr. Letherall had said so very decidedly. Mr. Letherall was a +large man in spectacles, who one day took my small head between his +large hands, and pressed it here and there in an exploratory, auspicious +manner—then placed each of his great thumbs on my temples, and +pushed me a little way from him, and stared at me with glittering spectacles. +The contemplation appeared to displease him, for he frowned sternly, +and said to my father, drawing his thumbs across my eyebrows—</p> + +<p>“The deficiency is there, sir—there; and here,” +he added, touching the upper sides of my head, “here is the excess. +That must be brought out, sir, and this must be laid to sleep.”</p> + +<p>I was in a state of tremor, partly at the vague idea that I was the +object of reprobation, partly in the agitation of my first hatred—hatred +of this big, spectacled man, who pulled my head about as if he wanted +to buy and cheapen it.</p> + +<p>I am not aware how much Mr. Letherall had to do with the system afterwards +adopted towards me, but it was presently clear that private tutors, +natural history, science, and the modern languages, were the appliances +by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied. I +was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with +them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly necessary +that I should study systematic zoology and botany; I was hungry for +human deeds and humane motions, so I was to be plentifully crammed with +the mechanical powers, the elementary bodies, and the phenomena of electricity +and magnetism. A better-constituted boy would certainly have profited +under my intelligent tutors, with their scientific apparatus; and would, +doubtless, have found the phenomena of electricity and magnetism as +fascinating as I was, every Thursday, assured they were. As it +was, I could have paired off, for ignorance of whatever was taught me, +with the worst Latin scholar that was ever turned out of a classical +academy. I read Plutarch, and Shakespeare, and Don Quixote by +the sly, and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts, while +my tutor was assuring me that “an improved man, as distinguished +from an ignorant one, was a man who knew the reason why water ran downhill.” +I had no desire to be this improved man; I was glad of the running water; +I could watch it and listen to it gurgling among the pebbles, and bathing +the bright green water-plants, by the hour together. I did not +want to know <i>why</i> it ran; I had perfect confidence that there +were good reasons for what was so very beautiful.</p> + +<p>There is no need to dwell on this part of my life. I have said +enough to indicate that my nature was of the sensitive, unpractical +order, and that it grew up in an uncongenial medium, which could never +foster it into happy, healthy development. When I was sixteen +I was sent to Geneva to complete my course of education; and the change +was a very happy one to me, for the first sight of the Alps, with the +setting sun on them, as we descended the Jura, seemed to me like an +entrance into heaven; and the three years of my life there were spent +in a perpetual sense of exaltation, as if from a draught of delicious +wine, at the presence of Nature in all her awful loveliness. You +will think, perhaps, that I must have been a poet, from this early sensibility +to Nature. But my lot was not so happy as that. A poet pours +forth his song and <i>believes</i> in the listening ear and answering +soul, to which his song will be floated sooner or later. But the +poet’s sensibility without his voice—the poet’s sensibility +that finds no vent but in silent tears on the sunny bank, when the noonday +light sparkles on the water, or in an inward shudder at the sound of +harsh human tones, the sight of a cold human eye—this dumb passion +brings with it a fatal solitude of soul in the society of one’s +fellow-men. My least solitary moments were those in which I pushed +off in my boat, at evening, towards the centre of the lake; it seemed +to me that the sky, and the glowing mountain-tops, and the wide blue +water, surrounded me with a cherishing love such as no human face had +shed on me since my mother’s love had vanished out of my life. +I used to do as Jean Jacques did—lie down in my boat and let it +glide where it would, while I looked up at the departing glow leaving +one mountain-top after the other, as if the prophet’s chariot +of fire were passing over them on its way to the home of light. +Then, when the white summits were all sad and corpse-like, I had to +push homeward, for I was under careful surveillance, and was allowed +no late wanderings. This disposition of mine was not favourable +to the formation of intimate friendships among the numerous youths of +my own age who are always to be found studying at Geneva. Yet +I made <i>one</i> such friendship; and, singularly enough, it was with +a youth whose intellectual tendencies were the very reverse of my own. +I shall call him Charles Meunier; his real surname—an English +one, for he was of English extraction—having since become celebrated. +He was an orphan, who lived on a miserable pittance while he pursued +the medical studies for which he had a special genius. Strange! +that with my vague mind, susceptible and unobservant, hating inquiry +and given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn towards a youth +whose strongest passion was science. But the bond was not an intellectual +one; it came from a source that can happily blend the stupid with the +brilliant, the dreamy with the practical: it came from community of +feeling. Charles was poor and ugly, derided by Genevese <i>gamins</i>, +and not acceptable in drawing-rooms. I saw that he was isolated, +as I was, though from a different cause, and, stimulated by a sympathetic +resentment, I made timid advances towards him. It is enough to +say that there sprang up as much comradeship between us as our different +habits would allow; and in Charles’s rare holidays we went up +the Salève together, or took the boat to Vevay, while I listened +dreamily to the monologues in which he unfolded his bold conceptions +of future experiment and discovery. I mingled them confusedly +in my thought with glimpses of blue water and delicate floating cloud, +with the notes of birds and the distant glitter of the glacier. +He knew quite well that my mind was half absent, yet he liked to talk +to me in this way; for don’t we talk of our hopes and our projects +even to dogs and birds, when they love us? I have mentioned this +one friendship because of its connexion with a strange and terrible +scene which I shall have to narrate in my subsequent life.</p> + +<p>This happier life at Geneva was put an end to by a severe illness, +which is partly a blank to me, partly a time of dimly-remembered suffering, +with the presence of my father by my bed from time to time. Then +came the languid monotony of convalescence, the days gradually breaking +into variety and distinctness as my strength enabled me to take longer +and longer drives. On one of these more vividly remembered days, +my father said to me, as he sat beside my sofa—</p> + +<p>“When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall +take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, +for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many +new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will +join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by +Prague” . . .</p> + +<p>My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and +he left my mind resting on the word <i>Prague</i>, with a strange sense +that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the +broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were the summer sunshine +of a long-past century arrested in its course—unrefreshed for +ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, +weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale +repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their +regal gold-inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the +broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, +as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with +their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real +inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and +women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting +it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, +who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted +dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the +worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous +length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the +churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be +ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live +on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth +of morning.</p> + +<p>A stunning clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became +conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had +fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart +was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside +me; I would take it presently.</p> + +<p>As soon as I was alone again, I began to ask myself whether I had +been sleeping. Was this a dream—this wonderfully distinct +vision—minute in its distinctness down to a patch of rainbow light +on the pavement, transmitted through a coloured lamp in the shape of +a star—of a strange city, quite unfamiliar to my imagination? +I had seen no picture of Prague: it lay in my mind as a mere name, with +vaguely-remembered historical associations—ill-defined memories +of imperial grandeur and religious wars.</p> + +<p>Nothing of this sort had ever occurred in my dreaming experience +before, for I had often been humiliated because my dreams were only +saved from being utterly disjointed and commonplace by the frequent +terrors of nightmare. But I could not believe that I had been +asleep, for I remembered distinctly the gradual breaking-in of the vision +upon me, like the new images in a dissolving view, or the growing distinctness +of the landscape as the sun lifts up the veil of the morning mist. +And while I was conscious of this incipient vision, I was also conscious +that Pierre came to tell my father Mr. Filmore was waiting for him, +and that my father hurried out of the room. No, it was not a dream; +was it—the thought was full of tremulous exultation—was +it the poet’s nature in me, hitherto only a troubled yearning +sensibility, now manifesting itself suddenly as spontaneous creation? +Surely it was in this way that Homer saw the plain of Troy, that Dante +saw the abodes of the departed, that Milton saw the earthward flight +of the Tempter. Was it that my illness had wrought some happy +change in my organization—given a firmer tension to my nerves—carried +off some dull obstruction? I had often read of such effects—in +works of fiction at least. Nay; in genuine biographies I had read +of the subtilizing or exalting influence of some diseases on the mental +powers. Did not Novalis feel his inspiration intensified under +the progress of consumption?</p> + +<p>When my mind had dwelt for some time on this blissful idea, it seemed +to me that I might perhaps test it by an exertion of my will. +The vision had begun when my father was speaking of our going to Prague. +I did not for a moment believe it was really a representation of that +city; I believed—I hoped it was a picture that my newly liberated +genius had painted in fiery haste, with the colours snatched from lazy +memory. Suppose I were to fix my mind on some other place—Venice, +for example, which was far more familiar to my imagination than Prague: +perhaps the same sort of result would follow. I concentrated my +thoughts on Venice; I stimulated my imagination with poetic memories, +and strove to feel myself present in Venice, as I had felt myself present +in Prague. But in vain. I was only colouring the Canaletto +engravings that hung in my old bedroom at home; the picture was a shifting +one, my mind wandering uncertainly in search of more vivid images; I +could see no accident of form or shadow without conscious labour after +the necessary conditions. It was all prosaic effort, not rapt +passivity, such as I had experienced half an hour before. I was +discouraged; but I remembered that inspiration was fitful.</p> + +<p>For several days I was in a state of excited expectation, watching +for a recurrence of my new gift. I sent my thoughts ranging over +my world of knowledge, in the hope that they would find some object +which would send a reawakening vibration through my slumbering genius. +But no; my world remained as dim as ever, and that flash of strange +light refused to come again, though I watched for it with palpitating +eagerness.</p> + +<p>My father accompanied me every day in a drive, and a gradually lengthening +walk as my powers of walking increased; and one evening he had agreed +to come and fetch me at twelve the next day, that we might go together +to select a musical box, and other purchases rigorously demanded of +a rich Englishman visiting Geneva. He was one of the most punctual +of men and bankers, and I was always nervously anxious to be quite ready +for him at the appointed time. But, to my surprise, at a quarter +past twelve he had not appeared. I felt all the impatience of +a convalescent who has nothing particular to do, and who has just taken +a tonic in the prospect of immediate exercise that would carry off the +stimulus.</p> + +<p>Unable to sit still and reserve my strength, I walked up and down +the room, looking out on the current of the Rhone, just where it leaves +the dark-blue lake; but thinking all the while of the possible causes +that could detain my father.</p> + +<p>Suddenly I was conscious that my father was in the room, but not +alone: there were two persons with him. Strange! I had heard +no footstep, I had not seen the door open; but I saw my father, and +at his right hand our neighbour Mrs. Filmore, whom I remembered very +well, though I had not seen her for five years. She was a commonplace +middle-aged woman, in silk and cashmere; but the lady on the left of +my father was not more than twenty, a tall, slim, willowy figure, with +luxuriant blond hair, arranged in cunning braids and folds that looked +almost too massive for the slight figure and the small-featured, thin-lipped +face they crowned. But the face had not a girlish expression: +the features were sharp, the pale grey eyes at once acute, restless, +and sarcastic. They were fixed on me in half-smiling curiosity, +and I felt a painful sensation as if a sharp wind were cutting me. +The pale-green dress, and the green leaves that seemed to form a border +about her pale blond hair, made me think of a Water-Nixie—for +my mind was full of German lyrics, and this pale, fatal-eyed woman, +with the green weeds, looked like a birth from some cold sedgy stream, +the daughter of an aged river.</p> + +<p>“Well, Latimer, you thought me long,” my father said +. . .</p> + +<p>But while the last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished, +and there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed folding-screen +that stood before the door. I was cold and trembling; I could +only totter forward and throw myself on the sofa. This strange +new power had manifested itself again . . . But <i>was</i> it a power? +Might it not rather be a disease—a sort of intermittent delirium, +concentrating my energy of brain into moments of unhealthy activity, +and leaving my saner hours all the more barren? I felt a dizzy +sense of unreality in what my eye rested on; I grasped the bell convulsively, +like one trying to free himself from nightmare, and rang it twice. +Pierre came with a look of alarm in his face.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur ne se trouve pas bien?” he said anxiously.</p> + +<p>“I’m tired of waiting, Pierre,” I said, as distinctly +and emphatically as I could, like a man determined to be sober in spite +of wine; “I’m afraid something has happened to my father—he’s +usually so punctual. Run to the Hôtel des Bergues and see +if he is there.”</p> + +<p>Pierre left the room at once, with a soothing “Bien, Monsieur”; +and I felt the better for this scene of simple, waking prose. +Seeking to calm myself still further, I went into my bedroom, adjoining +the <i>salon</i>, and opened a case of eau-de-Cologne; took out a bottle; +went through the process of taking out the cork very neatly, and then +rubbed the reviving spirit over my hands and forehead, and under my +nostrils, drawing a new delight from the scent because I had procured +it by slow details of labour, and by no strange sudden madness. +Already I had begun to taste something of the horror that belongs to +the lot of a human being whose nature is not adjusted to simple human +conditions.</p> + +<p>Still enjoying the scent, I returned to the salon, but it was not +unoccupied, as it had been before I left it. In front of the Chinese +folding-screen there was my father, with Mrs. Filmore on his right hand, +and on his left—the slim, blond-haired girl, with the keen face +and the keen eyes fixed on me in half-smiling curiosity.</p> + +<p>“Well, Latimer, you thought me long,” my father said +. . .</p> + +<p>I heard no more, felt no more, till I became conscious that I was +lying with my head low on the sofa, Pierre, and my father by my side. +As soon as I was thoroughly revived, my father left the room, and presently +returned, saying—</p> + +<p>“I’ve been to tell the ladies how you are, Latimer. +They were waiting in the next room. We shall put off our shopping +expedition to-day.”</p> + +<p>Presently he said, “That young lady is Bertha Grant, Mrs. Filmore’s +orphan niece. Filmore has adopted her, and she lives with them, +so you will have her for a neighbour when we go home—perhaps for +a near relation; for there is a tenderness between her and Alfred, I +suspect, and I should be gratified by the match, since Filmore means +to provide for her in every way as if she were his daughter. It +had not occurred to me that you knew nothing about her living with the +Filmores.”</p> + +<p>He made no further allusion to the fact of my having fainted at the +moment of seeing her, and I would not for the world have told him the +reason: I shrank from the idea of disclosing to any one what might be +regarded as a pitiable peculiarity, most of all from betraying it to +my father, who would have suspected my sanity ever after.</p> + +<p>I do not mean to dwell with particularity on the details of my experience. +I have described these two cases at length, because they had definite, +clearly traceable results in my after-lot.</p> + +<p>Shortly after this last occurrence—I think the very next day—I +began to be aware of a phase in my abnormal sensibility, to which, from +the languid and slight nature of my intercourse with others since my +illness, I had not been alive before. This was the obtrusion on +my mind of the mental process going forward in first one person, and +then another, with whom I happened to be in contact: the vagrant, frivolous +ideas and emotions of some uninteresting acquaintance—Mrs. Filmore, +for example—would force themselves on my consciousness like an +importunate, ill-played musical instrument, or the loud activity of +an imprisoned insect. But this unpleasant sensibility was fitful, +and left me moments of rest, when the souls of my companions were once +more shut out from me, and I felt a relief such as silence brings to +wearied nerves. I might have believed this importunate insight +to be merely a diseased activity of the imagination, but that my prevision +of incalculable words and actions proved it to have a fixed relation +to the mental process in other minds. But this superadded consciousness, +wearying and annoying enough when it urged on me the trivial experience +of indifferent people, became an intense pain and grief when it seemed +to be opening to me the souls of those who were in a close relation +to me—when the rational talk, the graceful attentions, the wittily-turned +phrases, and the kindly deeds, which used to make the web of their characters, +were seen as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision, that showed +all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the +struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague capricious memories, +and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge +like leaflets covering a fermenting heap.</p> + +<p>At Basle we were joined by my brother Alfred, now a handsome, self-confident +man of six-and-twenty—a thorough contrast to my fragile, nervous, +ineffectual self. I believe I was held to have a sort of half-womanish, +half-ghostly beauty; for the portrait-painters, who are thick as weeds +at Geneva, had often asked me to sit to them, and I had been the model +of a dying minstrel in a fancy picture. But I thoroughly disliked +my own physique and nothing but the belief that it was a condition of +poetic genius would have reconciled me to it. That brief hope +was quite fled, and I saw in my face now nothing but the stamp of a +morbid organization, framed for passive suffering—too feeble for +the sublime resistance of poetic production. Alfred, from whom +I had been almost constantly separated, and who, in his present stage +of character and appearance, came before me as a perfect stranger, was +bent on being extremely friendly and brother-like to me. He had +the superficial kindness of a good-humoured, self-satisfied nature, +that fears no rivalry, and has encountered no contrarieties. I +am not sure that my disposition was good enough for me to have been +quite free from envy towards him, even if our desires had not clashed, +and if I had been in the healthy human condition which admits of generous +confidence and charitable construction. There must always have +been an antipathy between our natures. As it was, he became in +a few weeks an object of intense hatred to me; and when he entered the +room, still more when he spoke, it was as if a sensation of grating +metal had set my teeth on edge. My diseased consciousness was +more intensely and continually occupied with his thoughts and emotions, +than with those of any other person who came in my way. I was +perpetually exasperated with the petty promptings of his conceit and +his love of patronage, with his self-complacent belief in Bertha Grant’s +passion for him, with his half-pitying contempt for me—seen not +in the ordinary indications of intonation and phrase and slight action, +which an acute and suspicious mind is on the watch for, but in all their +naked skinless complication.</p> + +<p>For we were rivals, and our desires clashed, though he was not aware +of it. I have said nothing yet of the effect Bertha Grant produced +in me on a nearer acquaintance. That effect was chiefly determined +by the fact that she made the only exception, among all the human beings +about me, to my unhappy gift of insight. About Bertha I was always +in a state of uncertainty: I could watch the expression of her face, +and speculate on its meaning; I could ask for her opinion with the real +interest of ignorance; I could listen for her words and watch for her +smile with hope and fear: she had for me the fascination of an unravelled +destiny. I say it was this fact that chiefly determined the strong +effect she produced on me: for, in the abstract, no womanly character +could seem to have less affinity for that of a shrinking, romantic, +passionate youth than Bertha’s. She was keen, sarcastic, +unimaginative, prematurely cynical, remaining critical and unmoved in +the most impressive scenes, inclined to dissect all my favourite poems, +and especially contemptous towards the German lyrics which were my pet +literature at that time. To this moment I am unable to define +my feeling towards her: it was not ordinary boyish admiration, for she +was the very opposite, even to the colour of her hair, of the ideal +woman who still remained to me the type of loveliness; and she was without +that enthusiasm for the great and good, which, even at the moment of +her strongest dominion over me, I should have declared to be the highest +element of character. But there is no tyranny more complete than +that which a self-centred negative nature exercises over a morbidly +sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support. The +most independent people feel the effect of a man’s silence in +heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph +in conquering the reverence of a critic habitually captious and satirical: +no wonder, then, that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should +watch and wait before the closed secret of a sarcastic woman’s +face, as if it were the shrine of the doubtfully benignant deity who +ruled his destiny. For a young enthusiast is unable to imagine +the total negation in another mind of the emotions which are stirring +his own: they may be feeble, latent, inactive, he thinks, but they are +there—they may be called forth; sometimes, in moments of happy +hallucination, he believes they may be there in all the greater strength +because he sees no outward sign of them. And this effect, as I +have intimated, was heightened to its utmost intensity in me, because +Bertha was the only being who remained for me in the mysterious seclusion +of soul that renders such youthful delusion possible. Doubtless +there was another sort of fascination at work—that subtle physical +attraction which delights in cheating our psychological predictions, +and in compelling the men who paint sylphs, to fall in love with some +<i>bonne et brave femme</i>, heavy-heeled and freckled.</p> + +<p>Bertha’s behaviour towards me was such as to encourage all +my illusions, to heighten my boyish passion, and make me more and more +dependent on her smiles. Looking back with my present wretched +knowledge, I conclude that her vanity and love of power were intensely +gratified by the belief that I had fainted on first seeing her purely +from the strong impression her person had produced on me. The +most prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent, +a poetic passion; and without a grain of romance in her, Bertha had +that spirit of intrigue which gave piquancy to the idea that the brother +of the man she meant to marry was dying with love and jealousy for her +sake. That she meant to marry my brother, was what at that time +I did not believe; for though he was assiduous in his attentions to +her, and I knew well enough that both he and my father had made up their +minds to this result, there was not yet an understood engagement—there +had been no explicit declaration; and Bertha habitually, while she flirted +with my brother, and accepted his homage in a way that implied to him +a thorough recognition of its intention, made me believe, by the subtlest +looks and phrases—feminine nothings which could never be quoted +against her—that he was really the object of her secret ridicule; +that she thought him, as I did, a coxcomb, whom she would have pleasure +in disappointing. Me she openly petted in my brother’s presence, +as if I were too young and sickly ever to be thought of as a lover; +and that was the view he took of me. But I believe she must inwardly +have delighted in the tremors into which she threw me by the coaxing +way in which she patted my curls, while she laughed at my quotations. +Such caresses were always given in the presence of our friends; for +when we were alone together, she affected a much greater distance towards +me, and now and then took the opportunity, by words or slight actions, +to stimulate my foolish timid hope that she really preferred me. +And why should she not follow her inclination? I was not in so +advantageous a position as my brother, but I had fortune, I was not +a year younger than she was, and she was an heiress, who would soon +be of age to decide for herself.</p> + +<p>The fluctuations of hope and fear, confined to this one channel, +made each day in her presence a delicious torment. There was one +deliberate act of hers which especially helped to intoxicate me. +When we were at Vienna her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was +very fond of ornaments, we all took the opportunity of the splendid +jewellers’ shops in that Teutonic Paris to purchase her a birthday +present of jewellery. Mine, naturally, was the least expensive; +it was an opal ring—the opal was my favourite stone, because it +seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul. I told Bertha +so when I gave it her, and said that it was an emblem of the poetic +nature, changing with the changing light of heaven and of woman’s +eyes. In the evening she appeared elegantly dressed, and wearing +conspicuously all the birthday presents except mine. I looked +eagerly at her fingers, but saw no opal. I had no opportunity +of noticing this to her during the evening; but the next day, when I +found her seated near the window alone, after breakfast, I said, “You +scorn to wear my poor opal. I should have remembered that you +despised poetic natures, and should have given you coral, or turquoise, +or some other opaque unresponsive stone.” “Do I despise +it?” she answered, taking hold of a delicate gold chain which +she always wore round her neck and drawing out the end from her bosom +with my ring hanging to it; “it hurts me a little, I can tell +you,” she said, with her usual dubious smile, “to wear it +in that secret place; and since your poetical nature is so stupid as +to prefer a more public position, I shall not endure the pain any longer.”</p> + +<p>She took off the ring from the chain and put it on her finger, smiling +still, while the blood rushed to my cheeks, and I could not trust myself +to say a word of entreaty that she would keep the ring where it was +before.</p> + +<p>I was completely fooled by this, and for two days shut myself up +in my own room whenever Bertha was absent, that I might intoxicate myself +afresh with the thought of this scene and all it implied.</p> + +<p>I should mention that during these two months—which seemed +a long life to me from the novelty and intensity of the pleasures and +pains I underwent—my diseased anticipation in other people’s +consciousness continued to torment me; now it was my father, and now +my brother, now Mrs. Filmore or her husband, and now our German courier, +whose stream of thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not +to be got rid of, though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue +their uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened +sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others +find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary +intrusion into other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of +Bertha, and my growing passion for her; a passion enormously stimulated, +if not produced, by that ignorance. She was my oasis of mystery +in the dreary desert of knowledge. I had never allowed my diseased +condition to betray itself, or to drive me into any unusual speech or +action, except once, when, in a moment of peculiar bitterness against +my brother, I had forestalled some words which I knew he was going to +utter—a clever observation, which he had prepared beforehand. +He had occasionally a slightly affected hesitation in his speech, and +when he paused an instant after the second word, my impatience and jealousy +impelled me to continue the speech for him, as if it were something +we had both learned by rote. He coloured and looked astonished, +as well as annoyed; and the words had no sooner escaped my lips than +I felt a shock of alarm lest such an anticipation of words—very +far from being words of course, easy to divine—should have betrayed +me as an exceptional being, a sort of quiet energumen, whom every one, +Bertha above all, would shudder at and avoid. But I magnified, +as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could produce on others; +for no one gave any sign of having noticed my interruption as more than +a rudeness, to be forgiven me on the score of my feeble nervous condition.</p> + +<p>While this superadded consciousness of the actual was almost constant +with me, I had never had a recurrence of that distinct prevision which +I have described in relation to my first interview with Bertha; and +I was waiting with eager curiosity to know whether or not my vision +of Prague would prove to have been an instance of the same kind. +A few days after the incident of the opal ring, we were paying one of +our frequent visits to the Lichtenberg Palace. I could never look +at many pictures in succession; for pictures, when they are at all powerful, +affect me so strongly that one or two exhaust all my capability of contemplation. +This morning I had been looking at Giorgione’s picture of the +cruel-eyed woman, said to be a likeness of Lucrezia Borgia. I +had stood long alone before it, fascinated by the terrible reality of +that cunning, relentless face, till I felt a strange poisoned sensation, +as if I had long been inhaling a fatal odour, and was just beginning +to be conscious of its effects. Perhaps even then I should not +have moved away, if the rest of the party had not returned to this room, +and announced that they were going to the Belvedere Gallery to settle +a bet which had arisen between my brother and Mr. Filmore about a portrait. +I followed them dreamily, and was hardly alive to what occurred till +they had all gone up to the gallery, leaving me below; for I refused +to come within sight of another picture that day. I made my way +to the Grand Terrace, since it was agreed that we should saunter in +the gardens when the dispute had been decided. I had been sitting +here a short space, vaguely conscious of trim gardens, with a city and +green hills in the distance, when, wishing to avoid the proximity of +the sentinel, I rose and walked down the broad stone steps, intending +to seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as I reached the +gravel-walk, I felt an arm slipped within mine, and a light hand gently +pressing my wrist. In the same instant a strange intoxicating +numbness passed over me, like the continuance or climax of the sensation +I was still feeling from the gaze of Lucrezia Borgia. The gardens, +the summer sky, the consciousness of Bertha’s arm being within +mine, all vanished, and I seemed to be suddenly in darkness, out of +which there gradually broke a dim firelight, and I felt myself sitting +in my father’s leather chair in the library at home. I knew +the fireplace—the dogs for the wood-fire—the black marble +chimney-piece with the white marble medallion of the dying Cleopatra +in the centre. Intense and hopeless misery was pressing on my +soul; the light became stronger, for Bertha was entering with a candle +in her hand—Bertha, my wife—with cruel eyes, with green +jewels and green leaves on her white ball-dress; every hateful thought +within her present to me . . . “Madman, idiot! why don’t +you kill yourself, then?” It was a moment of hell. +I saw into her pitiless soul—saw its barren worldliness, its scorching +hate—and felt it clothe me round like an air I was obliged to +breathe. She came with her candle and stood over me with a bitter +smile of contempt; I saw the great emerald brooch on her bosom, a studded +serpent with diamond eyes. I shuddered—I despised this woman +with the barren soul and mean thoughts; but I felt helpless before her, +as if she clutched my bleeding heart, and would clutch it till the last +drop of life-blood ebbed away. She was my wife, and we hated each +other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library, the candle-light +disappeared—seemed to melt away into a background of light, the +green serpent with the diamond eyes remaining a dark image on the retina. +Then I had a sense of my eyelids quivering, and the living daylight +broke in upon me; I saw gardens, and heard voices; I was seated on the +steps of the Belvedere Terrace, and my friends were round me.</p> + +<p>The tumult of mind into which I was thrown by this hideous vision +made me ill for several days, and prolonged our stay at Vienna. +I shuddered with horror as the scene recurred to me; and it recurred +constantly, with all its minutiæ, as if they had been burnt into +my memory; and yet, such is the madness of the human heart under the +influence of its immediate desires, I felt a wild hell-braving joy that +Bertha was to be mine; for the fulfilment of my former prevision concerning +her first appearance before me, left me little hope that this last hideous +glimpse of the future was the mere diseased play of my own mind, and +had no relation to external realities. One thing alone I looked +towards as a possible means of casting doubt on my terrible conviction—the +discovery that my vision of Prague had been false—and Prague was +the next city on our route.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, I was no sooner in Bertha’s society again than I +was as completely under her sway as before. What if I saw into +the heart of Bertha, the matured woman—Bertha, my wife? +Bertha, the <i>girl</i>, was a fascinating secret to me still: I trembled +under her touch; I felt the witchery of her presence; I yearned to be +assured of her love. The fear of poison is feeble against the +sense of thirst. Nay, I was just as jealous of my brother as before—just +as much irritated by his small patronizing ways; for my pride, my diseased +sensibility, were there as they had always been, and winced as inevitably +under every offence as my eye winced from an intruding mote. The +future, even when brought within the compass of feeling by a vision +that made me shudder, had still no more than the force of an idea, compared +with the force of present emotion—of my love for Bertha, of my +dislike and jealousy towards my brother.</p> + +<p>It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and +sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a +distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after +with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside +them for evermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, +to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path +lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, +with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of +old time.</p> + +<p>My mind speculated eagerly on the means by which I should become +my brother’s successful rival, for I was still too timid, in my +ignorance of Bertha’s actual feeling, to venture on any step that +would urge from her an avowal of it. I thought I should gain confidence +even for this, if my vision of Prague proved to have been veracious; +and yet, the horror of that certitude! Behind the slim girl Bertha, +whose words and looks I watched for, whose touch was bliss, there stood +continually that Bertha with the fuller form, the harder eyes, the more +rigid mouth—with the barren, selfish soul laid bare; no longer +a fascinating secret, but a measured fact, urging itself perpetually +on my unwilling sight. Are you unable to give me your sympathy—you +who react this? Are you unable to imagine this double consciousness +at work within me, flowing on like two parallel streams which never +mingle their waters and blend into a common hue? Yet you must +have known something of the presentiments that spring from an insight +at war with passion; and my visions were only like presentiments intensified +to horror. You have known the powerlessness of ideas before the +might of impulse; and my visions, when once they had passed into memory, +were mere ideas—pale shadows that beckoned in vain, while my hand +was grasped by the living and the loved.</p> + +<p>In after-days I thought with bitter regret that if I had foreseen +something more or something different—if instead of that hideous +vision which poisoned the passion it could not destroy, or if even along +with it I could have had a foreshadowing of that moment when I looked +on my brother’s face for the last time, some softening influence +would have been shed over my feeling towards him: pride and hatred would +surely have been subdued into pity, and the record of those hidden sins +would have been shortened. But this is one of the vain thoughts +with which we men flatter ourselves. We try to believe that the +egoism within us would have easily been melted, and that it was only +the narrowness of our knowledge which hemmed in our generosity, our +awe, our human piety, and hindered them from submerging our hard indifference +to the sensations and emotions of our fellows. Our tenderness +and self-renunciation seem strong when our egoism has had its day—when, +after our mean striving for a triumph that is to be another’s +loss, the triumph comes suddenly, and we shudder at it, because it is +held out by the chill hand of death.</p> + +<p>Our arrival in Prague happened at night, and I was glad of this, +for it seemed like a deferring of a terribly decisive moment, to be +in the city for hours without seeing it. As we were not to remain +long in Prague, but to go on speedily to Dresden, it was proposed that +we should drive out the next morning and take a general view of the +place, as well as visit some of its specially interesting spots, before +the heat became oppressive—for we were in August, and the season +was hot and dry. But it happened that the ladies were rather late +at their morning toilet, and to my father’s politely-repressed +but perceptible annoyance, we were not in the carriage till the morning +was far advanced. I thought with a sense of relief, as we entered +the Jews’ quarter, where we were to visit the old synagogue, that +we should be kept in this flat, shut-up part of the city, until we should +all be too tired and too warm to go farther, and so we should return +without seeing more than the streets through which we had already passed. +That would give me another day’s suspense—suspense, the +only form in which a fearful spirit knows the solace of hope. +But, as I stood under the blackened, groined arches of that old synagogue, +made dimly visible by the seven thin candles in the sacred lamp, while +our Jewish cicerone reached down the Book of the Law, and read to us +in its ancient tongue—I felt a shuddering impression that this +strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered +remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision. Those +darkened dusty Christian saints, with their loftier arches and their +larger candles, needed the consolatory scorn with which they might point +to a more shrivelled death-in-life than their own.</p> + +<p>As I expected, when we left the Jews’ quarter the elders of +our party wished to return to the hotel. But now, instead of rejoicing +in this, as I had done beforehand, I felt a sudden overpowering impulse +to go on at once to the bridge, and put an end to the suspense I had +been wishing to protract. I declared, with unusual decision, that +I would get out of the carriage and walk on alone; they might return +without me. My father, thinking this merely a sample of my usual +“poetic nonsense,” objected that I should only do myself +harm by walking in the heat; but when I persisted, he said angrily that +I might follow my own absurd devices, but that Schmidt (our courier) +must go with me. I assented to this, and set off with Schmidt +towards the bridge. I had no sooner passed from under the archway +of the grand old gate leading an to the bridge, than a trembling seized +me, and I turned cold under the midday sun; yet I went on; I was in +search of something—a small detail which I remembered with special +intensity as part of my vision. There it was—the patch of +rainbow light on the pavement transmitted through a lamp in the shape +of a star.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>Before the autumn was at an end, and while the brown leaves still +stood thick on the beeches in our park, my brother and Bertha were engaged +to each other, and it was understood that their marriage was to take +place early in the next spring. In spite of the certainty I had +felt from that moment on the bridge at Prague, that Bertha would one +day be my wife, my constitutional timidity and distrust had continued +to benumb me, and the words in which I had sometimes premeditated a +confession of my love, had died away unuttered. The same conflict +had gone on within me as before—the longing for an assurance of +love from Bertha’s lips, the dread lest a word of contempt and +denial should fall upon me like a corrosive acid. What was the +conviction of a distant necessity to me? I trembled under a present +glance, I hungered after a present joy, I was clogged and chilled by +a present fear. And so the days passed on: I witnessed Bertha’s +engagement and heard her marriage discussed as if I were under a conscious +nightmare—knowing it was a dream that would vanish, but feeling +stifled under the grasp of hard-clutching fingers.</p> + +<p>When I was not in Bertha’s presence—and I was with her +very often, for she continued to treat me with a playful patronage that +wakened no jealousy in my brother—I spent my time chiefly in wandering, +in strolling, or taking long rides while the daylight lasted, and then +shutting myself up with my unread books; for books had lost the power +of chaining my attention. My self-consciousness was heightened +to that pitch of intensity in which our own emotions take the form of +a drama which urges itself imperatively on our contemplation, and we +begin to weep, less under the sense of our suffering than at the thought +of it. I felt a sort of pitying anguish over the pathos of my +own lot: the lot of a being finely organized for pain, but with hardly +any fibres that responded to pleasure—to whom the idea of future +evil robbed the present of its joy, and for whom the idea of future +good did not still the uneasiness of a present yearning or a present +dread. I went dumbly through that stage of the poet’s suffering, +in which he feels the delicious pang of utterance, and makes an image +of his sorrows.</p> + +<p>I was left entirely without remonstrance concerning this dreamy wayward +life: I knew my father’s thought about me: “That lad will +never be good for anything in life: he may waste his years in an insignificant +way on the income that falls to him: I shall not trouble myself about +a career for him.”</p> + +<p>One mild morning in the beginning of November, it happened that I +was standing outside the portico patting lazy old Cæsar, a Newfoundland +almost blind with age, the only dog that ever took any notice of me—for +the very dogs shunned me, and fawned on the happier people about me—when +the groom brought up my brother’s horse which was to carry him +to the hunt, and my brother himself appeared at the door, florid, broad-chested, +and self-complacent, feeling what a good-natured fellow he was not to +behave insolently to us all on the strength of his great advantages.</p> + +<p>“Latimer, old boy,” he said to me in a tone of compassionate +cordiality, “what a pity it is you don’t have a run with +the hounds now and then! The finest thing in the world for low +spirits!”</p> + +<p>“Low spirits!” I thought bitterly, as he rode away; “that +is the sort of phrase with which coarse, narrow natures like yours think +to describe experience of which you can know no more than your horse +knows. It is to such as you that the good of this world falls: +ready dulness, healthy selfishness, good-tempered conceit—these +are the keys to happiness.”</p> + +<p>The quick thought came, that my selfishness was even stronger than +his—it was only a suffering selfishness instead of an enjoying +one. But then, again, my exasperating insight into Alfred’s +self-complacent soul, his freedom from all the doubts and fears, the +unsatisfied yearnings, the exquisite tortures of sensitiveness, that +had made the web of my life, seemed to absolve me from all bonds towards +him. This man needed no pity, no love; those fine influences would +have been as little felt by him as the delicate white mist is felt by +the rock it caresses. There was no evil in store for <i>him</i>: +if he was not to marry Bertha, it would be because he had found a lot +pleasanter to himself.</p> + +<p>Mr. Filmore’s house lay not more than half a mile beyond our +own gates, and whenever I knew my brother was gone in another direction, +I went there for the chance of finding Bertha at home. Later on +in the day I walked thither. By a rare accident she was alone, +and we walked out in the grounds together, for she seldom went on foot +beyond the trimly-swept gravel-walks. I remember what a beautiful +sylph she looked to me as the low November sun shone on her blond hair, +and she tripped along teasing me with her usual light banter, to which +I listened half fondly, half moodily; it was all the sign Bertha’s +mysterious inner self ever made to me. To-day perhaps, the moodiness +predominated, for I had not yet shaken off the access of jealous hate +which my brother had raised in me by his parting patronage. Suddenly +I interrupted and startled her by saying, almost fiercely, “Bertha, +how can you love Alfred?”</p> + +<p>She looked at me with surprise for a moment, but soon her light smile +came again, and she answered sarcastically, “Why do you suppose +I love him?”</p> + +<p>“How can you ask that, Bertha?”</p> + +<p>“What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I’m going +to marry? The most unpleasant thing in the world. I should +quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our <i>ménage</i> +would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner. A little quiet contempt +contributes greatly to the elegance of life.”</p> + +<p>“Bertha, that is not your real feeling. Why do you delight +in trying to deceive me by inventing such cynical speeches?”</p> + +<p>“I need never take the trouble of invention in order to deceive +you, my small Tasso”—(that was the mocking name she usually +gave me). “The easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell +him the truth.”</p> + +<p>She was testing the validity of her epigram in a daring way, and +for a moment the shadow of my vision—the Bertha whose soul was +no secret to me—passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful +sylph whose feelings were a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must +have shuddered, or betrayed in some other way my momentary chill of +horror.</p> + +<p>“Tasso!” she said, seizing my wrist, and peeping round +into my face, “are you really beginning to discern what a heartless +girl I am? Why, you are not half the poet I thought you were; +you are actually capable of believing the truth about me.”</p> + +<p>The shadow passed from between us, and was no longer the object nearest +to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming +face looked into mine—who, I thought, was betraying an interest +in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—this warm +breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a +returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant by +the roar of threatening waves. It was a moment as delicious to +me as the waking up to a consciousness of youth after a dream of middle +age. I forgot everything but my passion, and said with swimming +eyes—</p> + +<p>“Bertha, shall you love me when we are first married? +I wouldn’t mind if you really loved me only for a little while.”</p> + +<p>Her look of astonishment, as she loosed my hand and started away +from me, recalled me to a sense of my strange, my criminal indiscretion.</p> + +<p>“Forgive me,” I said, hurriedly, as soon as I could speak +again; “I did not know what I was saying.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, Tasso’s mad fit has come on, I see,” she answered +quietly, for she had recovered herself sooner than I had. “Let +him go home and keep his head cool. I must go in, for the sun +is setting.”</p> + +<p>I left her—full of indignation against myself. I had +let slip words which, if she reflected on them, might rouse in her a +suspicion of my abnormal mental condition—a suspicion which of +all things I dreaded. And besides that, I was ashamed of the apparent +baseness I had committed in uttering them to my brother’s betrothed +wife. I wandered home slowly, entering our park through a private +gate instead of by the lodges. As I approached the house, I saw +a man dashing off at full speed from the stable-yard across the park. +Had any accident happened at home? No; perhaps it was only one +of my father’s peremptory business errands that required this +headlong haste.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless I quickened my pace without any distinct motive, and +was soon at the house. I will not dwell on the scene I found there. +My brother was dead—had been pitched from his horse, and killed +on the spot by a concussion of the brain.</p> + +<p>I went up to the room where he lay, and where my father was seated +beside him with a look of rigid despair. I had shunned my father +more than any one since our return home, for the radical antipathy between +our natures made my insight into his inner self a constant affliction +to me. But now, as I went up to him, and stood beside him in sad +silence, I felt the presence of a new element that blended us as we +had never been blent before. My father had been one of the most +successful men in the money-getting world: he had had no sentimental +sufferings, no illness. The heaviest trouble that had befallen +him was the death of his first wife. But he married my mother +soon after; and I remember he seemed exactly the same, to my keen childish +observation, the week after her death as before. But now, at last, +a sorrow had come—the sorrow of old age, which suffers the more +from the crushing of its pride and its hopes, in proportion as the pride +and hope are narrow and prosaic. His son was to have been married +soon—would probably have stood for the borough at the next election. +That son’s existence was the best motive that could be alleged +for making new purchases of land every year to round off the estate. +It is a dreary thing onto live on doing the same things year after year, +without knowing why we do them. Perhaps the tragedy of disappointed +youth and passion is less piteous than the tragedy of disappointed age +and worldliness.</p> + +<p>As I saw into the desolation of my father’s heart, I felt a +movement of deep pity towards him, which was the beginning of a new +affection—an affection that grew and strengthened in spite of +the strange bitterness with which he regarded me in the first month +or two after my brother’s death. If it had not been for +the softening influence of my compassion for him—the first deep +compassion I had ever felt—I should have been stung by the perception +that my father transferred the inheritance of an eldest son to me with +a mortified sense that fate had compelled him to the unwelcome course +of caring for me as an important being. It was only in spite of +himself that he began to think of me with anxious regard. There +is hardly any neglected child for whom death has made vacant a more +favoured place, who will not understand what I mean.</p> + +<p>Gradually, however, my new deference to his wishes, the effect of +that patience which was born of my pity for him, won upon his affection, +and he began to please himself with the endeavour to make me fill any +brother’s place as fully as my feebler personality would admit. +I saw that the prospect which by and by presented itself of my becoming +Bertha’s husband was welcome to him, and he even contemplated +in my case what he had not intended in my brother’s—that +his son and daughter-in-law should make one household with him. +My softened feelings towards my father made this the happiest time I +had known since childhood;—these last months in which I retained +the delicious illusion of loving Bertha, of longing and doubting and +hoping that she might love me. She behaved with a certain new +consciousness and distance towards me after my brother’s death; +and I too was under a double constraint—that of delicacy towards +my brother’s memory and of anxiety as to the impression my abrupt +words had left on her mind. But the additional screen this mutual +reserve erected between us only brought me more completely under her +power: no matter how empty the adytum, so that the veil be thick enough. +So absolute is our soul’s need of something hidden and uncertain +for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the +breath of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond +to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that +lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning +and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the Exchange for our +last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment: we should +have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or a no-crisis +within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. Conceive +the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were +self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close +of a summer’s day, but in the meantime might be the subject of +question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature +and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had +the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their +enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, +no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than +the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles.</p> + +<p>Bertha, the slim, fair-haired girl, whose present thoughts and emotions +were an enigma to me amidst the fatiguing obviousness of the other minds +around me, was as absorbing to me as a single unknown to-day—as +a single hypothetic proposition to remain problematic till sunset; and +all the cramped, hemmed-in belief and disbelief, trust and distrust, +of my nature, welled out in this one narrow channel.</p> + +<p>And she made me believe that she loved me. Without ever quitting +her tone of <i>badinage</i> and playful superiority, she intoxicated +me with the sense that I was necessary to her, that she was never at +ease, unless I was near her, submitting to her playful tyranny. +It costs a woman so little effort to beset us in this way! A half-repressed +word, a moment’s unexpected silence, even an easy fit of petulance +on our account, will serve us as <i>hashish</i> for a long while. +Out of the subtlest web of scarcely perceptible signs, she set me weaving +the fancy that she had always unconsciously loved me better than Alfred, +but that, with the ignorant fluttered sensibility of a young girl, she +had been imposed on by the charm that lay for her in the distinction +of being admired and chosen by a man who made so brilliant a figure +in the world as my brother. She satirized herself in a very graceful +way for her vanity and ambition. What was it to me that I had +the light of my wretched provision on the fact that now it was I who +possessed at least all but the personal part of my brother’s advantages? +Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions, like effects +of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken glass, and rags.</p> + +<p>We were married eighteen months after Alfred’s death, one cold, +clear morning in April, when there came hail and sunshine both together; +and Bertha, in her white silk and pale-green leaves, and the pale hues +of her hair and face, looked like the spirit of the morning. My +father was happier than he had thought of being again: my marriage, +he felt sure, would complete the desirable modification of my character, +and make me practical and worldly enough to take my place in society +among sane men. For he delighted in Bertha’s tact and acuteness, +and felt sure she would be mistress of me, and make me what she chose: +I was only twenty-one, and madly in love with her. Poor father! +He kept that hope a little while after our first year of marriage, and +it was not quite extinct when paralysis came and saved him from utter +disappointment.</p> + +<p>I shall hurry through the rest of my story, not dwelling so much +as I have hitherto done on my inward experience. When people are +well known to each other, they talk rather of what befalls them externally, +leaving their feelings and sentiments to be inferred.</p> + +<p>We lived in a round of visits for some time after our return home, +giving splendid dinner-parties, and making a sensation in our neighbourhood +by the new lustre of our equipage, for my father had reserved this display +of his increased wealth for the period of his son’s marriage; +and we gave our acquaintances liberal opportunity for remarking that +it was a pity I made so poor a figure as an heir and a bridegroom. +The nervous fatigue of this existence, the insincerities and platitudes +which I had to live through twice over—through my inner and outward +sense—would have been maddening to me, if I had not had that sort +of intoxicated callousness which came from the delights of a first passion. +A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, +hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their solitary +moments with hastily-snatched caresses, are prepared for their future +life together as the novice is prepared for the cloister—by experiencing +its utmost contrast.</p> + +<p>Through all these crowded excited months, Bertha’s inward self +remained shrouded from me, and I still read her thoughts only through +the language of her lips and demeanour: I had still the human interest +of wondering whether what I did and said pleased her, of longing to +hear a word of affection, of giving a delicious exaggeration of meaning +to her smile. But I was conscious of a growing difference in her +manner towards me; sometimes strong enough to be called haughty coldness, +cutting and chilling me as the hail had done that came across the sunshine +on our marriage morning; sometimes only perceptible in the dexterous +avoidance of a <i>tête-à-tête</i> walk or dinner +to which I had been looking forward. I had been deeply pained +by this—had even felt a sort of crushing of the heart, from the +sense that my brief day of happiness was near its setting; but still +I remained dependent on Bertha, eager for the last rays of a bliss that +would soon be gone for ever, hoping and watching for some after-glow +more beautiful from the impending night.</p> + +<p>I remember—how should I not remember?—the time when that +dependence and hope utterly left me, when the sadness I had felt in +Bertha’s growing estrangement became a joy that I looked back +upon with longing as a man might look back on the last pains in a paralysed +limb. It was just after the close of my father’s last illness, +which had necessarily withdrawn us from society and thrown us more on +each other. It was the evening of father’s death. +On that evening the veil which had shrouded Bertha’s soul from +me—had made me find in her alone among my fellow-beings the blessed +possibility of mystery, and doubt, and expectation—was first withdrawn. +Perhaps it was the first day since the beginning of my passion for her, +in which that passion was completely neutralized by the presence of +an absorbing feeling of another kind. I had been watching by my +father’s deathbed: I had been witnessing the last fitful yearning +glance his soul had cast back on the spent inheritance of life—the +last faint consciousness of love he had gathered from the pressure of +my hand. What are all our personal loves when we have been sharing +in that supreme agony? In the first moments when we come away +from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, +to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common +destiny.</p> + +<p>In that state of mind I joined Bertha in her private sitting-room. +She was seated in a leaning posture on a settee, with her back towards +the door; the great rich coils of her pale blond hair surmounting her +small neck, visible above the back of the settee. I remember, +as I closed the door behind me, a cold tremulousness seizing me, and +a vague sense of being hated and lonely—vague and strong, like +a presentiment. I know how I looked at that moment, for I saw +myself in Bertha’s thought as she lifted her cutting grey eyes, +and looked at me: a miserable ghost-seer, surrounded by phantoms in +the noonday, trembling under a breeze when the leaves were still, without +appetite for the common objects of human desires, but pining after the +moon-beams. We were front to front with each other, and judged +each other. The terrible moment of complete illumination had come +to me, and I saw that the darkness had hidden no landscape from me, +but only a blank prosaic wall: from that evening forth, through the +sickening years which followed, I saw all round the narrow room of this +woman’s soul—saw petty artifice and mere negation where +I had delighted to believe in coy sensibilities and in wit at war with +latent feeling—saw the light floating vanities of the girl defining +themselves into the systematic coquetry, the scheming selfishness, of +the woman—saw repulsion and antipathy harden into cruel hatred, +giving pain only for the sake of wreaking itself.</p> + +<p>For Bertha too, after her kind, felt the bitterness of disillusion. +She had believed that my wild poet’s passion for her would make +me her slave; and that, being her slave, I should execute her will in +all things. With the essential shallowness of a negative, unimaginative +nature, she was unable to conceive the fact that sensibilities were +anything else than weaknesses. She had thought my weaknesses would +put me in her power, and she found them unmanageable forces. Our +positions were reversed. Before marriage she had completely mastered +my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown +thought before which I trembled as if it were hers. But now that +her soul was laid open to me, now that I was compelled to share the +privacy of her motives, to follow all the petty devices that preceded +her words and acts, she found herself powerless with me, except to produce +in me the chill shudder of repulsion—powerless, because I could +be acted on by no lever within her reach. I was dead to worldly +ambitions, to social vanities, to all the incentives within the compass +of her narrow imagination, and I lived under influences utterly invisible +to her.</p> + +<p>She was really pitiable to have such a husband, and so all the world +thought. A graceful, brilliant woman, like Bertha, who smiled +on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of +that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was +secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, +and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our +house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there +were no audible quarrels between us; our alienation, our repulsion from +each other, lay within the silence of our own hearts; and if the mistress +went out a great deal, and seemed to dislike the master’s society, +was it not natural, poor thing? The master was odd. I was +kind and just to my dependants, but I excited in them a shrinking, half-contemptuous +pity; for this class of men and women are but slightly determined in +their estimate of others by general considerations, or even experience, +of character. They judge of persons as they judge of coins, and +value those who pass current at a high rate.</p> + +<p>After a time I interfered so little with Bertha’s habits that +it might seem wonderful how her hatred towards me could grow so intense +and active as it did. But she had begun to suspect, by some involuntary +betrayal of mine, that there was an abnormal power of penetration in +me—that fitfully, at least, I was strangely cognizant of her thoughts +and intentions, and she began to be haunted by a terror of me, which +alternated every now and then with defiance. She meditated continually +how the incubus could be shaken off her life—how she could be +freed from this hateful bond to a being whom she at once despised as +an imbecile, and dreaded as an inquisitor. For a long while she +lived in the hope that my evident wretchedness would drive me to the +commission of suicide; but suicide was not in my nature. I was +too completely swayed by the sense that I was in the grasp of unknown +forces, to believe in my power of self-release. Towards my own +destiny I had become entirely passive; for my one ardent desire had +spent itself, and impulse no longer predominated over knowledge. +For this reason I never thought of taking any steps towards a complete +separation, which would have made our alienation evident to the world. +Why should I rush for help to a new course, when I was only suffering +from the consequences of a deed which had been the act of my intensest +will? That would have been the logic of one who had desires to +gratify, and I had no desires. But Bertha and I lived more and +more aloof from each other. The rich find it easy to live married +and apart.</p> + +<p>That course of our life which I have indicated in a few sentences +filled the space of years. So much misery—so slow and hideous +a growth of hatred and sin, may be compressed into a sentence! +And men judge of each other’s lives through this summary medium. +They epitomize the experience of their fellow-mortal, and pronounce +judgment on him in neat syntax, and feel themselves wise and virtuous—conquerors +over the temptations they define in well-selected predicates. +Seven years of wretchedness glide glibly over the lips of the man who +has never counted them out in moments of chill disappointment, of head +and heart throbbings, of dread and vain wrestling, of remorse and despair. +We learn <i>words</i> by rote, but not their meaning; <i>that</i> must +be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of +our nerves.</p> + +<p>But I will hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified +at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never +understand.</p> + +<p>Some years after my father’s death, I was sitting by the dim +firelight in my library one January evening—sitting in the leather +chair that used to be my father’s—when Bertha appeared at +the door, with a candle in her hand, and advanced towards me. +I knew the ball-dress she had on—the white ball-dress, with the +green jewels, shone upon by the light of the wax candle which lit up +the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on the mantelpiece. Why did +she come to me before going out? I had not seen her in the library, +which was my habitual place for months. Why did she stand before +me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous eyes fixed +on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon, on her breast? +For a moment I thought this fulfilment of my vision at Vienna marked +some dreadful crisis in my fate, but I saw nothing in Bertha’s +mind, as she stood before me, except scorn for the look of overwhelming +misery with which I sat before her . . . “Fool, idiot, why don’t +you kill yourself, then?”—that was her thought. But +at length her thoughts reverted to her errand, and she spoke aloud. +The apparently indifferent nature of the errand seemed to make a ridiculous +anticlimax to my prevision and my agitation.</p> + +<p>“I have had to hire a new maid. Fletcher is going to +be married, and she wants me to ask you to let her husband have the +public-house and farm at Molton. I wish him to have it. +You must give the promise now, because Fletcher is going to-morrow morning—and +quickly, because I’m in a hurry.”</p> + +<p>“Very well; you may promise her,” I said, indifferently, +and Bertha swept out of the library again.</p> + +<p>I always shrank from the sight of a new person, and all the more +when it was a person whose mental life was likely to weary my reluctant +insight with worldly ignorant trivialities. But I shrank especially +from the sight of this new maid, because her advent had been announced +to me at a moment to which I could not cease to attach some fatality: +I had a vague dread that I should find her mixed up with the dreary +drama of my life—that some new sickening vision would reveal her +to me as an evil genius. When at last I did unavoidably meet her, +the vague dread was changed into definite disgust. She was a tall, +wiry, dark-eyed woman, this Mrs. Archer, with a face handsome enough +to give her coarse hard nature the odious finish of bold, self-confident +coquetry. That was enough to make me avoid her, quite apart from +the contemptuous feeling with which she contemplated me. I seldom +saw her; but I perceived that she rapidly became a favourite with her +mistress, and, after the lapse of eight or nine months, I began to be +aware that there had arisen in Bertha’s mind towards this woman +a mingled feeling of fear and dependence, and that this feeling was +associated with ill-defined images of candle-light scenes in her dressing-room, +and the locking-up of something in Bertha’s cabinet. My +interviews with my wife had become so brief and so rarely solitary, +that I had no opportunity of perceiving these images in her mind with +more definiteness. The recollections of the past become contracted +in the rapidity of thought till they sometimes bear hardly a more distinct +resemblance to the external reality than the forms of an oriental alphabet +to the objects that suggested them.</p> + +<p>Besides, for the last year or more a modification had been going +forward in my mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. +My insight into the minds of those around me was becoming dimmer and +more fitful, and the ideas that crowded my double consciousness became +less and less dependent on any personal contact. All that was +personal in me seemed to be suffering a gradual death, so that I was +losing the organ through which the personal agitations and projects +of others could affect me. But along with this relief from wearisome +insight, there was a new development of what I concluded—as I +have since found rightly—to be a prevision of external scenes. +It was as if the relation between me and my fellow-men was more and +more deadened, and my relation to what we call the inanimate was quickened +into new life. The more I lived apart from society, and in proportion +as my wretchedness subsided from the violent throb of agonized passion +into the dulness of habitual pain, the more frequent and vivid became +such visions as that I had had of Prague—of strange cities, of +sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright +constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the +afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, +and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty +shapes—the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For +continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the +utterly miserable—the unloving and the unloved—there is +no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And +beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death—the +pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped +at in vain.</p> + +<p>Things were in this state near the end of the seventh year. +I had become entirely free from insight, from my abnormal cognizance +of any other consciousness than my own, and instead of intruding involuntarily +into the world of other minds, was living continually in my own solitary +future. Bertha was aware that I was greatly changed. To +my surprise she had of late seemed to seek opportunities of remaining +in my society, and had cultivated that kind of distant yet familiar +talk which is customary between a husband and wife who live in polite +and irrevocable alienation. I bore this with languid submission, +and without feeling enough interest in her motives to be roused into +keen observation; yet I could not help perceiving something triumphant +and excited in her carriage and the expression of her face—something +too subtle to express itself in words or tones, but giving one the idea +that she lived in a state of expectation or hopeful suspense. +My chief feeling was satisfaction that her inner self was once more +shut out from me; and I almost revelled for the moment in the absent +melancholy that made me answer her at cross purposes, and betray utter +ignorance of what she had been saying. I remember well the look +and the smile with which she one day said, after a mistake of this kind +on my part: “I used to think you were a clairvoyant, and that +was the reason why you were so bitter against other clairvoyants, wanting +to keep your monopoly; but I see now you have become rather duller than +the rest of the world.”</p> + +<p>I said nothing in reply. It occurred to me that her recent +obtrusion of herself upon me might have been prompted by the wish to +test my power of detecting some of her secrets; but I let the thought +drop again at once: her motives and her deeds had no interest for me, +and whatever pleasures she might be seeking, I had no wish to baulk +her. There was still pity in my soul for every living thing, and +Bertha was living—was surrounded with possibilities of misery.</p> + +<p>Just at this time there occurred an event which roused me somewhat +from my inertia, and gave me an interest in the passing moment that +I had thought impossible for me. It was a visit from Charles Meunier, +who had written me word that he was coming to England for relaxation +from too strenuous labour, and would like too see me. Meunier +had now a European reputation; but his letter to me expressed that keen +remembrance of an early regard, an early debt of sympathy, which is +inseparable from nobility of character: and I too felt as if his presence +would be to me like a transient resurrection into a happier pre-existence.</p> + +<p>He came, and as far as possible, I renewed our old pleasure of making +<i>tête-à-tête</i> excursions, though, instead of +mountains and glacers and the wide blue lake, we had to content ourselves +with mere slopes and ponds and artificial plantations. The years +had changed us both, but with what different result! Meunier was +now a brilliant figure in society, to whom elegant women pretended to +listen, and whose acquaintance was boasted of by noblemen ambitious +of brains. He repressed with the utmost delicacy all betrayal +of the shock which I am sure he must have received from our meeting, +or of a desire to penetrate into my condition and circumstances, and +sought by the utmost exertion of his charming social powers to make +our reunion agreeable. Bertha was much struck by the unexpected +fascinations of a visitor whom she had expected to find presentable +only on the score of his celebrity, and put forth all her coquetries +and accomplishments. Apparently she succeeded in attracting his +admiration, for his manner towards her was attentive and flattering. +The effect of his presence on me was so benignant, especially in those +renewals of our old <i>tête-à-tête</i> wanderings, +when he poured forth to me wonderful narratives of his professional +experience, that more than once, when his talk turned on the psychological +relations of disease, the thought crossed my mind that, if his stay +with me were long enough, I might possibly bring myself to tell this +man the secrets of my lot. Might there not lie some remedy for +me, too, in his science? Might there not at least lie some comprehension +and sympathy ready for me in his large and susceptible mind? But +the thought only flickered feebly now and then, and died out before +it could become a wish. The horror I had of again breaking in +on the privacy of another soul, made me, by an irrational instinct, +draw the shroud of concealment more closely around my own, as we automatically +perform the gesture we feel to be wanting in another.</p> + +<p>When Meunier’s visit was approaching its conclusion, there +happened an event which caused some excitement in our household, owing +to the surprisingly strong effect it appeared to produce on Bertha—on +Bertha, the self-possessed, who usually seemed inaccessible to feminine +agitations, and did even her hate in a self-restrained hygienic manner. +This event was the sudden severe illness of her maid, Mrs. Archer. +I have reserved to this moment the mention of a circumstance which had +forced itself on my notice shortly before Meunier’s arrival, namely, +that there had been some quarrel between Bertha and this maid, apparently +during a visit to a distant family, in which she had accompanied her +mistress. I had overheard Archer speaking in a tone of bitter +insolence, which I should have thought an adequate reason for immediate +dismissal. No dismissal followed; on the contrary, Bertha seemed +to be silently putting up with personal inconveniences from the exhibitions +of this woman’s temper. I was the more astonished to observe +that her illness seemed a cause of strong solicitude to Bertha; that +she was at the bedside night and day, and would allow no one else to +officiate as head-nurse. It happened that our family doctor was +out on a holiday, an accident which made Meunier’s presence in +the house doubly welcome, and he apparently entered into the case with +an interest which seemed so much stronger than the ordinary professional +feeling, that one day when he had fallen into a long fit of silence +after visiting her, I said to him—</p> + +<p>“Is this a very peculiar case of disease, Meunier?”</p> + +<p>“No,” he answered, “it is an attack of peritonitis, +which will be fatal, but which does not differ physically from many +other cases that have come under my observation. But I’ll +tell you what I have on my mind. I want to make an experiment +on this woman, if you will give me permission. It can do her no +harm—will give her no pain—for I shall not make it until +life is extinct to all purposes of sensation. I want to try the +effect of transfusing blood into her arteries after the heart has ceased +to beat for some minutes. I have tried the experiment again and +again with animals that have died of this disease, with astounding results, +and I want to try it on a human subject. I have the small tubes +necessary, in a case I have with me, and the rest of the apparatus could +be prepared readily. I should use my own blood—take it from +my own arm. This woman won’t live through the night, I’m +convinced, and I want you to promise me your assistance in making the +experiment. I can’t do without another hand, but it would +perhaps not be well to call in a medical assistant from among your provincial +doctors. A disagreeable foolish version of the thing might get +abroad.”</p> + +<p>“Have you spoken to my wife on the subject?” I said, +“because she appears to be peculiarly sensitive about this woman: +she has been a favourite maid.”</p> + +<p>“To tell you the truth,” said Meunier, “I don’t +want her to know about it. There are always insuperable difficulties +with women in these matters, and the effect on the supposed dead body +may be startling. You and I will sit up together, and be in readiness. +When certain symptoms appear I shall take you in, and at the right moment +we must manage to get every one else out of the room.”</p> + +<p>I need not give our farther conversation on the subject. He +entered very fully into the details, and overcame my repulsion from +them, by exciting in me a mingled awe and curiosity concerning the possible +results of his experiment.</p> + +<p>We prepared everything, and he instructed me in my part as assistant. +He had not told Bertha of his absolute conviction that Archer would +not survive through the night, and endeavoured to persuade her to leave +the patient and take a night’s rest. But she was obstinate, +suspecting the fact that death was at hand, and supposing that he wished +merely to save her nerves. She refused to leave the sick-room. +Meunier and I sat up together in the library, he making frequent visits +to the sick-room, and returning with the information that the case was +taking precisely the course he expected. Once he said to me, “Can +you imagine any cause of ill-feeling this woman has against her mistress, +who is so devoted to her?”</p> + +<p>“I think there was some misunderstanding between them before +her illness. Why do you ask?”</p> + +<p>“Because I have observed for the last five or six hours—since, +I fancy, she has lost all hope of recovery—there seems a strange +prompting in her to say something which pain and failing strength forbid +her to utter; and there is a look of hideous meaning in her eyes, which +she turns continually towards her mistress. In this disease the +mind often remains singularly clear to the last.”</p> + +<p>“I am not surprised at an indication of malevolent feeling +in her,” I said. “She is a woman who has always inspired +me with distrust and dislike, but she managed to insinuate herself into +her mistress’s favour.” He was silent after this, +looking at the fire with an air of absorption, till he went upstairs +again. He stayed away longer than usual, and on returning, said +to me quietly, “Come now.”</p> + +<p>I followed him to the chamber where death was hovering. The +dark hangings of the large bed made a background that gave a strong +relief to Bertha’s pale face as I entered. She started forward +as she saw me enter, and then looked at Meunier with an expression of +angry inquiry; but he lifted up his hand as if to impose silence, while +he fixed his glance on the dying woman and felt her pulse. The +face was pinched and ghastly, a cold perspiration was on the forehead, +and the eyelids were lowered so as to conceal the large dark eyes. +After a minute or two, Meunier walked round to the other side of the +bed where Bertha stood, and with his usual air of gentle politeness +towards her begged her to leave the patient under our care—everything +should be done for her—she was no longer in a state to be conscious +of an affectionate presence. Bertha was hesitating, apparently +almost willing to believe his assurance and to comply. She looked +round at the ghastly dying face, as if to read the confirmation of that +assurance, when for a moment the lowered eyelids were raised again, +and it seemed as if the eyes were looking towards Bertha, but blankly. +A shudder passed through Bertha’s frame, and she returned to her +station near the pillow, tacitly implying that she would not leave the +room.</p> + +<p>The eyelids were lifted no more. Once I looked at Bertha as +she watched the face of the dying one. She wore a rich <i>peignoir</i>, +and her blond hair was half covered by a lace cap: in her attire she +was, as always, an elegant woman, fit to figure in a picture of modern +aristocratic life: but I asked myself how that face of hers could ever +have seemed to me the face of a woman born of woman, with memories of +childhood, capable of pain, needing to be fondled? The features +at that moment seemed so preternaturally sharp, the eyes were so hard +and eager—she looked like a cruel immortal, finding her spiritual +feast in the agonies of a dying race. For across those hard features +there came something like a flash when the last hour had been breathed +out, and we all felt that the dark veil had completely fallen. +What secret was there between Bertha and this woman? I turned +my eyes from her with a horrible dread lest my insight should return, +and I should be obliged to see what had been breeding about two unloving +women’s hearts. I felt that Bertha had been watching for +the moment of death as the sealing of her secret: I thanked Heaven it +could remain sealed for me.</p> + +<p>Meunier said quietly, “She is gone.” He then gave +his arm to Bertha, and she submitted to be led out of the room.</p> + +<p>I suppose it was at her order that two female attendants came into +the room, and dismissed the younger one who had been present before. +When they entered, Meunier had already opened the artery in the long +thin neck that lay rigid on the pillow, and I dismissed them, ordering +them to remain at a distance till we rang: the doctor, I said, had an +operation to perform—he was not sure about the death. For +the next twenty minutes I forgot everything but Meunier and the experiment +in which he was so absorbed, that I think his senses would have been +closed against all sounds or sights which had no relation to it. +It was my task at first to keep up the artificial respiration in the +body after the transfusion had been effected, but presently Meunier +relieved me, and I could see the wondrous slow return of life; the breast +began to heave, the inspirations became stronger, the eyelids quivered, +and the soul seemed to have returned beneath them. The artificial +respiration was withdrawn: still the breathing continued, and there +was a movement of the lips.</p> + +<p>Just then I heard the handle of the door moving: I suppose Bertha +had heard from the women that they had been dismissed: probably a vague +fear had arisen in her mind, for she entered with a look of alarm. +She came to the foot of the bed and gave a stifled cry.</p> + +<p>The dead woman’s eyes were wide open, and met hers in full +recognition—the recognition of hate. With a sudden strong +effort, the hand that Bertha had thought for ever still was pointed +towards her, and the haggard face moved. The gasping eager voice +said—</p> + +<p>“You mean to poison your husband . . . the poison is in the +black cabinet . . . I got it for you . . . you laughed at me, and told +lies about me behind my back, to make me disgusting . . . because you +were jealous . . . are you sorry . . . now?”</p> + +<p>The lips continued to murmur, but the sounds were no longer distinct. +Soon there was no sound—only a slight movement: the flame had +leaped out, and was being extinguished the faster. The wretched +woman’s heart-strings had been set to hatred and vengeance; the +spirit of life had swept the chords for an instant, and was gone again +for ever. Great God! Is this what it is to live again . +. . to wake up with our unstilled thirst upon us, with our unuttered +curses rising to our lips, with our muscles ready to act out their half-committed +sins?</p> + +<p>Bertha stood pale at the foot of the bed, quivering and helpless, +despairing of devices, like a cunning animal whose hiding-places are +surrounded by swift-advancing flame. Even Meunier looked paralysed; +life for that moment ceased to be a scientific problem to him. +As for me, this scene seemed of one texture with the rest of my existence: +horror was my familiar, and this new revelation was only like an old +pain recurring with new circumstances.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Since then Bertha and I have lived apart—she in her own neighbourhood, +the mistress of half our wealth, I as a wanderer in foreign countries, +until I came to this Devonshire nest to die. Bertha lives pitied +and admired; for what had I against that charming woman, whom every +one but myself could have been happy with? There had been no witness +of the scene in the dying room except Meunier, and while Meunier lived +his lips were sealed by a promise to me.</p> + +<p>Once or twice, weary of wandering, I rested in a favourite spot, +and my heart went out towards the men and women and children whose faces +were becoming familiar to me; but I was driven away again in terror +at the approach of my old insight—driven away to live continually +with the one Unknown Presence revealed and yet hidden by the moving +curtain of the earth and sky. Till at last disease took hold of +me and forced me to rest here—forced me to live in dependence +on my servants. And then the curse of insight—of my double +consciousness, came again, and has never left me. I know all their +narrow thoughts, their feeble regard, their half-wearied pity.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is the 20th of September, 1850. I know these figures I have +just written, as if they were a long familiar inscription. I have +seen them on this page in my desk unnumbered times, when the scene of +my dying struggle has opened upon me . . .</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED VEIL ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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