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diff --git a/old/2165.txt b/old/2165.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd975b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2165.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1986 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lifted Veil, by George Eliot + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Lifted Veil + + +Author: George Eliot + +Release Date: April 20, 2005 [eBook #2165] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED VEIL*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1921 Oxford University Press edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE LIFTED VEIL + + + Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns + To energy of human fellowship; + No powers beyond the growing heritage + That makes completer manhood. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The time of my end approaches. I have lately been subject to attacks of +_angina pectoris_; 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 +provision. For I foresee when I shall die, and everything that will +happen in my last moments. + +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? + +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 . . . + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _AEschylus_, and dipping into +Francis's _Horace_. 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-- + +"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." + +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. + +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 +_why_ it ran; I had perfect confidence that there were good reasons for +what was so very beautiful. + +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 _believes_ 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 _one_ 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 _gamins_, 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 Saleve +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. + +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-- + +"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" . . . + +My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he +left my mind resting on the word _Prague_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Well, Latimer, you thought me long," my father said . . . + +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 _was_ 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. + +"Monsieur ne se trouve pas bien?" he said anxiously. + +"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 Hotel des Bergues and see if he is there." + +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 _salon_, 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. + +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. + +"Well, Latimer, you thought me long," my father said . . . + +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-- + +"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." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _bonne et brave femme_, heavy-heeled and freckled. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 minutiae, 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. + +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 _girl_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +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. + +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. + +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." + +One mild morning in the beginning of November, it happened that I was +standing outside the portico patting lazy old Caesar, 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. + +"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!" + +"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." + +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 _him_: if he was not to marry Bertha, it would +be because he had found a lot pleasanter to himself. + +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?" + +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?" + +"How can you ask that, Bertha?" + +"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 _menage_ would be conducted in a very ill-bred +manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of +life." + +"Bertha, that is not your real feeling. Why do you delight in trying to +deceive me by inventing such cynical speeches?" + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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-- + +"Bertha, shall you love me when we are first married? I wouldn't mind if +you really loved me only for a little while." + +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. + +"Forgive me," I said, hurriedly, as soon as I could speak again; "I did +not know what I was saying." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +And she made me believe that she loved me. Without ever quitting her +tone of _badinage_ 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 _hashish_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _tete-a-tete_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _words_ by rote, but not +their meaning; _that_ must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed +in the subtle fibres of our nerves. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"Very well; you may promise her," I said, indifferently, and Bertha swept +out of the library again. + +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. + +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 +provision 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +He came, and as far as possible, I renewed our old pleasure of making +_tete-a-tete_ 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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. + +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-- + +"Is this a very peculiar case of disease, Meunier?" + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +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?" + +"I think there was some misunderstanding between them before her illness. +Why do you ask?" + +"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." + +"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." + +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 it 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. + +The eyelids were lifted no more. Once I looked at Bertha as she watched +the face of the dying one. She wore a rich _peignoir_, 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. + +Meunier said quietly, "She is gone." He then gave his arm to Bertha, and +she submitted to be led out of the room. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + +"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?" + +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? + +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. + +* * * * * + +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. + +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. + +* * * * * + +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 pace in my desk unnumbered times, when the scene of my dying +struggle has opened upon me . . . + +(1859) + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFTED VEIL*** + + +******* This file should be named 2165.txt or 2165.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/6/2165 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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. 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