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+The Project Gutenberg EBook A Strange Story, by E. B. Lytton, Volume 2.
+#121 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: A Strange Story, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7693]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRANGE STORY, LYTTON, V2 ***
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The next day I had just dismissed the last of my visiting patients, and
+was about to enter my carriage and commence my round, when I received
+a twisted note containing but these words:--
+
+   Call on me to-day, as soon as you can.
+
+                                           M. Poyntz.
+
+A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs. Poyntz's drawing-room.
+
+"Well, Allen Fenwick" said she, "I do not serve friends by halves.  No
+thanks!  I but adhere to a principle I have laid down for myself.  I spent
+last evening with the Ashleighs.  Lilian is certainly much altered,--
+very weak, I fear very ill, and I believe very unskilfuly treated by Dr.
+Jones.  I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change of physician; but
+there was something else to consider before deciding who that physician
+should be.  I was bound, as your confidante, to consult your own scruples
+of honour.  Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs.  Ashleigh, 'Dr.
+Fenwick admires your daughter, would you object to him as a son-in-law?'
+Of course I could not touch at all on the secret with which you intrusted
+me; but I have not the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement with my
+previous belief, that not being a woman of the world, Annie Ashleigh has
+none of the ambition which women of the world would conceive for a
+daughter who has a good fortune and considerable beauty; that her
+predominant anxiety is forher child's happiness, and her predominant
+fear is that her child will die.  She would never oppose any attachment
+which Lilian might form; and if that attachment were for one who had
+preserved her daughter's life, I believe her own heart would gratefully
+go with her daughter's.  So far, then, as honour is concerned, all
+scruples vanish."
+
+I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy.  Mrs. Poyntz dryly
+continued: "You value yourself on your common-sense, and to that I address
+a few words of counsel which may not be welcome to your romance.  I said
+that I did not think you and Lilian would suit each other in the long run;
+reflection confirms me in that supposition.  Do not look at me so
+incredulously and so sadly.  Listen, and take heed.  Ask yourself what, as
+a man whose days are devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambition is
+entwined with its success, whose mind must be absorbed in its
+pursuits,--ask yourself what kind of a wife you would have sought to win;
+had not this sudden fancy for a charming face rushed over your better
+reason, and obliterated all previous plans and resolutions.  Surely some
+one with whom your heart would have been quite at rest; by whom your
+thoughts would have been undistracted from the channels into which your
+calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serene companion in the
+quiet holiday of a trustful home!  Is it not so?"
+
+"You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned towards marriage.
+But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture you have
+drawn?"
+
+"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords with the
+picture?  In the first place, the wife of a young physician should not be
+his perpetual patient.  The more he loves her, and the more worthy she may
+be of love, the more her case will haunt him wherever he goes.  When he
+returns home, it is not to a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the
+anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there."
+
+"But, good heavens! why should Lilian Ashleigh be a perpetual patient?
+The sanitary resources of youth are incalculable.  And--"
+
+"Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a physician in love!  I will
+give up that point in dispute, remaining convinced that there is something
+in Lilian's constitution which will perplex, torment, and baffle you.  It
+was so with her father, whom she resembles in face and in character.  He
+showed no symptoms of any grave malady.  His outward form was, like
+Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this, that, like hers, it was too
+exquisitely delicate; but when seemingly in the midst of perfect health,
+at any slight jar on the nerves he would become alarmingly ill.  I was
+sure that he would die young, and he did so."
+
+"Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death was from brain-fever, brought
+on by over-study.  Rarely, indeed, do women so fatigue the brain.  No
+female patient, in the range of my practice, ever died of purely mental
+exertion."
+
+"Of purely mental exertion, no; but of heart emotion, many female
+patients, perhaps?  Oh, you own that!  I know nothing about nerves; but I
+suppose that, whether they act on the brain or the heart, the result to
+life is much the same if the nerves be too finely strung for life's daily
+wear and tear.  And this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilian will
+not suit.  As yet, she is a mere child; her nature undeveloped, and her
+affections therefore untried.  You might suppose that you had won her
+heart; she might believe that she gave it to you, and both be deceived.
+If fairies nowadays condescended to exchange their offspring with those
+of mortals, and if the popular tradition did not represent a fairy
+changeling as an ugly peevish creature, with none of the grace of its
+parents, I should be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of the
+elfin people.  She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think she
+will ever be contented with a prosaic earthly lot.  Now I have told you
+why I do not think she will suit you.  I must leave it to yourself to
+conjecture how far you would suit her.  I say this in due season, while
+you may set a guard upon your impulse; while you may yet watch, and weigh,
+and meditate; and from this moment on that subject I say no more.  I lend
+advice, but I never throw it away."
+
+She came here to a dead pause, and began putting on her bonnet and
+scarf, which lay on the table beside her.  I was a little chilled by her
+words, and yet more by the blunt, shrewd, hard look and manner which aided
+the effect of their delivery; but the chill melted away in the sudden glow
+of my heart when she again turned towards me and said,--
+
+"Of course you guess, from these preliminary cautions, that you are
+going into danger?  Mrs. Ashleigh wishes to consult you about Lilian, and
+I propose to take you to her house."
+
+"Oh, my friend, my dear friend, how can I ever repay you?" I caught her
+hand, the white firm hand, and lifted it to my lips.
+
+She drew it somewhat hastily away, and laying it gently on my shoulder,
+said, in a soft voice, "Poor Allen, how little the world knows either of
+us!  But how little perhaps we know ourselves!  Come, your carriage is
+here?  That is right; we must put down Dr. Jones publicly and in all our
+state."
+
+In the carriage Mrs. Poyntz told me the purport of that conversation
+with Mrs. Ashleigh to which I owed my re-introduction to Abbots' House.
+It seems that Mr. Vigors had called early the morning after my first
+visit! had evinced much discomposure on hearing that I had been summoned!
+dwelt much on my injurious treatment of Dr. Lloyd, whom, as distantly
+related to himself, and he (Mr. Vigors) being distantly connected with the
+late Gilbert Ashleigh, he endeavoured to fasten upon his listener as one
+of her husband's family, whose quarrel she was bound in honour to take up.
+He spoke of me as an infidel "tainted with French doctrines," and as a
+practitioner rash and presumptuous; proving his own freedom from
+presumption and rashness by flatly deciding that my opinion must be
+wrong.  Previously to Mrs. Ashleigh's migration to L----, Mr. Vigors had
+interested her in the pretended phenomena of mesmerism.  He had consulted
+a clairvoyante, much esteemed by poor Dr. Lloyd, as to Lilian's health,
+and the clairvoyante had declared her to be constitutionally predisposed
+to consumption.  Mr. Vigors persuaded Mrs. Ashleigh to come at once with
+him and see this clairvoyante herself, armed with a lock of Lilian's hair
+and a glove she had worn, as the media of mesmerical rapport.
+
+The clairvoyante, one of those I had publicly denounced as an impostor,
+naturally enough denounced me in return.  On being asked solemnly by Mr.
+Vigors "to look at Dr. Fenwick and see if his influence would be
+beneficial to the subject," the sibyl had become violently agitated, and
+said that, "when she looked at us together, we were enveloped in a black
+cloud; that this portended affliction and sinister consequences; that our
+rapport was antagonistic."  Mr. Vigors then told her to dismiss my image,
+and conjure up that of Dr. Jones.  Therewith the somnambule became more
+tranquil, and said: "Dr. Jones would do well if he would be guided by
+higher lights than his own skill, and consult herself daily as to the
+proper remedies.  The best remedy of all would be mesmerism.  But since
+Dr. Lloyd's death, she did not know of a mesmerist, sufficiently gifted,
+in affinity with the patient."  In fine, she impressed and awed Mrs.
+Ashleigh, who returned in haste, summoned Dr. Jones, and dismissed
+myself.
+
+"I could not have conceived Mrs. Ashleigh to be so utterly wanting in
+common-sense," said I.  "She talked rationally enough when I saw her."
+
+"She has common-sense in general, and plenty of the sense most common,"
+answered Mrs. Poyntz; "but she is easily led and easily frightened
+wherever her affections are concerned, and therefore, just as easily as
+she had been persuaded by Mr. Vigors and terrified by the somnambule, I
+persuaded her against the one, and terrified her against the other.  I had
+positive experience on my side, since it was clear that Lilian had been
+getting rapidly worse under Dr. Jones's care.  The main obstacles I had to
+encounter in inducing Mrs. Ashleigh to consult you again were, first, her
+reluctance to disoblige Mr. Vigors, as a friend and connection of Lilian's
+father; and, secondly, her sentiment of shame in re-inviting your opinion
+after having treated you with so little respect.  Both these difficulties
+I took on myself.  I bring you to her house, and, on leaving you, I shall
+go on to Mr. Vigors, and tell him what is done is my doing, and not to be
+undone by him; so that matter is settled.  Indeed, if you were out of the
+question, I should not suffer Mr. Vigors to re-introduce all these
+mummeries of clairvoyance and mesmerism into the precincts of the Hill.  I
+did not demolish a man I really liked in Dr. Lloyd, to set up a Dr. Jones,
+whom I despise, in his stead.  Clairvoyance on Abbey Hill, indeed!  I saw
+enough of it before."
+
+"True; your strong intellect detected at once the absurdity of the whole
+pretence,--the falsity of mesmerism, the impossibility of clairvoyance."
+
+"No, my strong intellect did nothing of the kind.  I do not know whether
+mesmerism be false or clairvoyance impossible; and I don't wish to know.
+All I do know is, that I saw the Hill in great danger,--young ladies
+allowing themselves to be put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretending they
+had no will of their own against such fascination!  Improper and shocking!
+And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. Leopold Smythe
+questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be highly gifted) as to
+all the secrets of her friends.  When I saw this, I said, 'The Hill is
+becoming demoralized; the Hill is making itself ridiculous; the Hill must
+be saved!'  I remonstrated with Dr. Lloyd as a friend; he remained
+obdurate.  I annihilated him as an enemy, not to me but to the State.  I
+slew my best lover for the good of Rome.  Now you know why I took your
+part,--not because I have any opinion, one way or the other, as to the
+truth or falsehood of what Dr. Lloyd asserted; but I have a strong opinion
+that, whether they be true or false, his notions were those which are not
+to be allowed on the Hill.  And so, Allen Fenwick, that matter was
+settled."
+
+Perhaps at another time I might have felt some little humiliation to learn
+that I had been honoured with the influence of this great potentate not as
+a champion of truth, but as an instrument of policy; and I might have
+owned to some twinge of conscience in having assisted to sacrifice a
+fellow-seeker after science--misled, no doubt, but preferring his
+independent belief to his worldly interest--and sacrifice him to
+those deities with whom science is ever at war,--the Prejudices of a
+Clique sanctified into the Proprieties of the World.  But at that moment
+the words I heard made no perceptible impression on my mind.  The gables
+of Abbots' House were visible above the evergreens and lilacs; another
+moment, and the carriage stopped at the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh received us in the dining-room.  Her manner to me, at first,
+was a little confused and shy.  But my companion soon communicated
+something of her own happy ease to her gentler friend.  After a short
+conversation we all three went to Lilian, who was in a little room on the
+ground-floor, fitted up as her study.  I was glad to perceive that my
+interdict of the deathchamber had been respected.
+
+She reclined on a sofa near the window, which was, however, jealously
+closed; the light of the bright May-day obscured by blinds and curtains; a
+large fire on the hearth; the air of the room that of a hot-house,--the
+ignorant, senseless, exploded system of nursing into consumption those who
+are confined on suspicion of it!  She did not heed us as we entered
+noiselessly; her eyes were drooped languidly on the floor, and with
+difficulty I suppressed the exclamation that rose to my lips on seeing
+her.  She seemed within the last few days so changed, and on the aspect of
+the countenance there was so profound a melancholy!  But as she slowly
+turned at the sound of our footsteps, and her eyes met mine, a quick blush
+came into the wan cheek, and she half rose, but sank back as if the effort
+exhausted her.  There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough.
+Was it possible that I had been mistaken, and that in that cough was heard
+the warning knell of the most insidious enemy to youthful life?
+
+I sat down by her side; I lured her on to talk of indifferent
+subjects,--the weather, the gardens, the bird in the cage, which was
+placed on the table near her.  Her voice, at first low and feeble, became
+gradually stronger, and her face lighted up with a child's innocent,
+playful smile.  No, I had not been mistaken!  That was no lymphatic,
+nerveless temperament, on which consumption fastens as its lawful prey;
+here there was no hectic pulse, no hurried waste of the vital flame.
+Quietly and gently I made my observations, addressed my questions,
+applied my stethoscope; and when I turned my face towards her mother's
+anxious, eager eyes, that face told my opinion; for her mother sprang
+forward, clasped my hand, and said, through her struggling tears,--
+
+"You smile!  You see nothing to fear?"
+
+"Fear!  No, indeed!  You will soon be again yourself, Miss Ashleigh, will
+you not?"
+
+"Yes," she said, with her sweet laugh, "I shall be well now very soon.
+But may I not have the window open; may I not go into the garden?  I so
+long for fresh air."
+
+"No, no, darling," exclaimed Mrs. Ashleigh, "not while the east winds
+last.  Dr. Jones said on no account.  On no account, Dr. Fenwick, eh?"
+
+"Will you take my arm, Miss Ashleigh, for a few turns up and down the
+room?" said I.  "We will then see how far we may rebel against Dr. Jones."
+
+She rose with some little effort, but there was no cough.  At first her
+step was languid; it became lighter and more elastic after a few moments.
+
+"Let her come out," said I to Mrs. Ashleigh.  "The wind is not in the
+east, and, while we are out, pray bid your servant lower to the last bar
+in the grate that fire,--only fit for Christmas."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Ah, no buts!  He is a poor doctor who is not a stern despot."
+
+So the straw hat and mantle were sent for.  Lilian was wrapped with
+unnecessary care, and we all went forth into the garden.  Involuntarily we
+took the way to the Monk's Well, and at every step Lilian seemed to revive
+under the bracing air and temperate sun.  We paused by the well.
+
+"You do not feel fatigued, Miss Ashleigh?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But your face seems changed.  It is grown sadder."
+
+"Not sadder."
+
+"Sadder than when I first saw it,--saw it when you were seated here!"  I
+said this in a whisper.  I felt her hand tremble as it lay on my arm.
+
+"You saw me seated here!"
+
+"Yes.  I will tell you how some day."
+
+Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and there was in them that same surprise
+which I had noticed on my first visit,--a surprise that perplexed me,
+blended with no displeasure, but yet with a something of vague alarm.
+
+We soon returned to the house.
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh made me a sign to follow her into the drawing-room, leaving
+Mrs. Poyntz with Lilian.
+
+"Well?" said she, tremblingly.
+
+"Permit me to see Dr. Jones's prescriptions.  Thank you.  Ay, I thought
+so.  My dear madam, the mistake here has been in depressing nature instead
+of strengthening; in narcotics instead of stimulants.  The main stimulants
+which leave no reaction are air and light.  Promise me that I may have my
+own way for a week,--that all I recommend will be implicitly heeded?"
+
+"I promise.  But that cough,--you noticed it?"
+
+"Yes.  The nervous system is terribly lowered, and nervous exhaustion is a
+strange impostor; it imitates all manner of complaints with which it has
+no connection.  The cough will soon disappear!  But pardon my question.
+Mrs. Poyntz tells me that you consulted a clairvoyants about your
+daughter.  Does Miss Ashleigh know that you did so?"
+
+"No; I did not tell her."
+
+"I am glad of that.  And pray, for Heaven's sake, guard her against all
+that may set her thinking on such subjects.  Above all, guard her against
+concentring attention on any malady that your fears erroneously ascribe to
+her.  It is amongst the phenomena of our organization that you cannot
+closely rivet your consciousness on any part of the frame, however
+healthy, but it will soon begin to exhibit morbid sensibility.  Try to fix
+all your attention on your little finger for half an hour, and before the
+half hour is over the little finger will be uneasy, probably even
+painful.  How serious, then, is the danger to a young girl, at the age in
+which imagination is most active, most intense, if you force upon her a
+belief that she is in danger of a mortal disease!  It is a peculiarity of
+youth to brood over the thought of early death much more resignedly, much
+more complacently, than we do in maturer years.  Impress on a young
+imaginative girl, as free from pulmonary tendencies as you and I are, the
+conviction that she must fade away into the grave, and though she may not
+actually die of consumption, you instil slow poison into her system.  Hope
+is the natural aliment of youth.  You impoverish nourishment where you
+discourage hope.  As soon as this temporary illness is over, reject for
+your daughter the melancholy care which seems to her own mind to mark her
+out from others of her age.  Rear her for the air, which is the kindest
+life-giver; to sleep with open windows: to be out at sunrise.  Nature
+will do more for her than all our drugs can do.  You have been hitherto
+fearing Nature; now trust to her."
+
+Here Mrs. Poyntz joined us, and having, while I had been speaking, written
+my prescription and some general injunctions, I closed my advice with an
+appeal to that powerful protectress.
+
+"This, my dear madam, is a case in which I need your aid, and I ask it.
+Miss Ashleigh should not be left with no other companion than her mother.
+A change of faces is often as salutary as a change of air.  If you could
+devote an hour or two this very evening to sit with Miss Ashleigh, to talk
+to her with your usual cheerfulness, and--"
+
+"Annie," interrupted Mrs. Poyntz, "I will come and drink tea with you at
+half-past seven, and bring my knitting; and perhaps, if you ask him, Dr.
+Fenwick will come too!  He can be tolerably entertaining when he likes it."
+
+"It is too great a tax on his kindness, I fear," said Mrs. Ashleigh.
+"But," she added cordially, "I should be grateful indeed if he would spare
+us an hour of his time."
+
+I murmured an assent which I endeavoured to make not too joyous.
+
+"So that matter is settled," said Mrs. Poyntz; "and now I shall go to Mr.
+Vigors and prevent his further interference."
+
+"Oh, but, Margaret, pray don't offend him,--a connection of my poor dear
+Gilbert's.  And so tetchy!  I am sure I do not know how you'll manage
+to--"
+
+"To get rid of him?  Never fear.  As I manage everything and everybody,"
+said Mrs. Poyntz, bluntly.  So she kissed her friend on the forehead, gave
+me a gracious nod, and, declining the offer of my carriage, walked with
+her usual brisk, decided tread down the short path towards the town.
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh timidly approached me, and again the furtive hand bashfully
+insinuated the hateful fee.
+
+"Stay," said I; "this is a case which needs the most constant watching.  I
+wish to call so often that I should seem the most greedy of doctors if my
+visits were to be computed at guineas.  Let me be at ease to effect my
+cure; my pride of science is involved in it.  And when amongst all the
+young ladies of the Hill you can point to none with a fresher bloom, or a
+fairer promise of healthful life, than the patient you intrust to my care,
+why, then the fee and the dismissal.  Nay, nay; I must refer you to our
+friend Mrs. Poyntz.  It was so settled with her before she brought me here
+to displace Dr. Jones."  Therewith I escaped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+In less than a week Lilian was convalescent; in less than a fortnight she
+regained her usual health,--nay, Mrs. Ashleigh declared that she had never
+known her daughter appear so cheerful and look so well.  I had established
+a familiar intimacy at Abbots' House; most of my evenings were spent
+there.  As horse exercise formed an important part of my advice, Mrs.
+Ashleigh had purchased a pretty and quiet horse for her daughter; and,
+except the weather was very unfavourable, Lilian now rode daily with
+Colonel Poyntz, who was a notable equestrian, and often accompanied by
+Miss Jane Poyntz, and other young ladies of the Hill.  I was generally
+relieved from my duties in time to join her as she returned homewards.
+Thus we made innocent appointments, openly, frankly, in her mother's
+presence, she telling me beforehand in what direction excursions had been
+planned with Colonel Poyntz, and I promising to fall in with the party--if
+my avocations would permit.  At my suggestion, Mrs. Ashleigh now opened
+her house almost every evening to some of the neighbouring families;
+Lilian was thus habituated to the intercourse of young persons of her own
+age.  Music and dancing and childlike games made the old house gay.  And
+the Hill gratefully acknowledged to Mrs. Poyntz, "that the Ashleighs were
+indeed a great acquisition."
+
+But my happiness was not uncheckered.  In thus unselfishly surrounding
+Lilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jealousy which is
+inseparable from those earlier stages of love, when the lover as yet has
+won no right to that self-confidence which can only spring from the
+assurance that he is loved.
+
+In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian.  I saw her courted
+by the gay young admirers whom her beauty and her fortune drew around
+her,--her soft face brightening in the exercise of the dance, which the
+gravity of my profession rather than my years forbade to join; and her
+laugh, so musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heart as if
+the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my presumptuous dreams.
+But no, suddenly, shyly, her eyes would steal away from those about her,
+steal to the corner in which I sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my
+own gaze, their light softened before they turned away; and the colour on
+her cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came a smile different from
+the smile that it shed on others.  And then--and then--all jealousy, all
+sadness vanished, and I felt the glory which blends with the growing
+belief that we are loved.
+
+In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when ideas of
+perfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start forth and
+concentre themselves round one virgin shape,--that rises out from the sea
+of creation, welcomed by the Hours and adorned by the Graces,--how the
+thought that this archetype of sweetness and beauty singles himself from
+the millions, singles himself for her choice, ennobles and lifts up his
+being!  Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that
+mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for
+a while the illusion has grandeur.  Though it comes from the senses which
+shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at first shrink into shade,
+awed and hushed by the presence that charms them.  All that is brightest
+and best in the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven,
+to greet and to hallow what to him seems life's fairest dream of the
+heavenly!  Take the wings from the image of Love, and the god disappears
+from the form!
+
+Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief
+from it sufficed for my rapture.  But I had a cause for disquiet less
+acute but less varying than jealousy.
+
+Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had more
+immediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as to its cause and
+true nature.  To her mother I gave it the convenient epithet of "nervous;"
+but the epithet did not explain to myself all the symptoms I classified by
+it.  There was still, at times, when no cause was apparent or
+conjecturable, a sudden change in the expression of her countenance, in
+the beat of her pulse; the eye would become fixed, the bloom would vanish,
+the pulse would sink feebler and feebler till it could be scarcely felt;
+yet there was no indication of heart disease, of which such sudden
+lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warning indication.  The change
+would pass away after a few minutes, during which she seemed unconscious,
+or, at least, never spoke--never appeared to heed what was said to her.
+But in the expression of her countenance there was no character of
+suffering or distress; on the contrary, a wondrous serenity, that made her
+beauty more beauteous, her very youthfulness younger; and when this
+spurious or partial kind of syncope passed, she recovered at once without
+effort, without acknowledging that she had felt faint or unwell, but
+rather with a sense of recruited vitality, as the weary obtain from a
+sleep.  For the rest her spirits were more generally light and joyous than
+I should have premised from her mother's previous description.  She would
+enter mirthfully into the mirth of young companions round her: she had
+evidently quick perception of the sunny sides of life; an infantine
+gratitude for kindness; an infantine joy in the trifles that amuse only
+those who delight in tastes pure and simple.  But when talk rose into
+graver and more contemplative topics, her attention became earnest and
+absorbed; and sometimes a rich eloquence, such as I have never before nor
+since heard from lips so young, would startle me first into a wondering
+silence, and soon into a disapproving alarm: for the thoughts she then
+uttered seemed to me too fantastic, too visionary, too much akin to the
+vagaries of a wild though beautiful imagination.  And then I would seek to
+check, to sober, to distract fancies with which my reason had no sympathy,
+and the indulgence of which I regarded as injurious to the normal
+functions of the brain.
+
+When thus, sometimes with a chilling sentence, sometimes with a
+half-sarcastic laugh, I would repress outpourings frank and musical as the
+songs of a forest-bird, she would look at me with a kind of plaintive
+sorrow,--often sigh and shiver as she turned away.  Only in those modes
+did she show displeasure; otherwise ever sweet and docile, and ever, if,
+seeing that I had pained her, I asked forgiveness, humbling herself rather
+to ask mine, and brightening our reconciliation with her angel smile.  As
+yet I had not dared to speak of love; as yet I gazed on her as the captive
+gazes on the flowers and the stars through the gratings of his cell,
+murmuring to himself, "When shall the doors unclose?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+It was with a wrath suppressed in the presence of the fair ambassadress,
+that Mr. Vigors had received from Mrs. Poyntz the intelligence that I had
+replaced Dr. Jones at Abbots' House not less abruptly than Dr. Jones had
+previously supplanted me.  As Mrs. Poyntz took upon herself the whole
+responsibility of this change, Mr. Vigors did not venture to condemn it to
+her face; for the Administrator of Laws was at heart no little in awe of
+the Autocrat of Proprieties; as Authority, howsoever established, is in
+awe of Opinion, howsoever capricious.
+
+To the mild Mrs. Ashleigh the magistrate's anger was more decidedly
+manifested.  He ceased his visits; and in answer to a long and deprecatory
+letter with which she endeavoured to soften his resentment and win him
+back to the house, he replied by an elaborate combination of homily and
+satire.  He began by excusing himself from accepting her invitations, on
+the ground that his time was valuable, his habits domestic; and though
+ever willing to sacrifice both time and habits where he could do good, he
+owed it to himself and to mankind to sacrifice neither where his advice
+was rejected and his opinion contemned.  He glanced briefly, but not
+hastily, at the respect with which her late husband had deferred to his
+judgment, and the benefits which that deference had enabled him to bestow.
+He contrasted the husband's deference with the widow's contumely, and
+hinted at the evils which the contumely would not permit him to prevent.
+He could not presume to say what women of the world might think due to
+deceased husbands, but even women of the world generally allowed the
+claims of living children, and did not act with levity where their
+interests were concerned, still less where their lives were at stake.  As
+to Dr. Jones, he, Mr. Vigors, had the fullest confidence in his skill.
+Mrs. Ashleigh must judge for herself whether Mrs. Poyntz was as good an
+authority upon medical science as he had no doubt she was upon shawls and
+ribbons.  Dr. Jones was a man of caution and modesty; he did not indulge
+in the hollow boasts by which charlatans decoy their dupes; but Dr. Jones
+had privately assured him that though the case was one that admitted of no
+rash experiments, he had no fear of the result if his own prudent system
+were persevered in.  What might be the consequences of any other system,
+Dr. Jones would not say, because he was too high-minded to express his
+distrust of the rival who had made use of underhand arts to supplant him.
+But Mr. Vigors was convinced, from other sources of information (meaning,
+I presume, the oracular prescience of his clairvoyants), that the time
+would come when the poor young lady would herself insist on discarding Dr.
+Fenwick, and when "that person" would appear in a very different light to
+many who now so fondly admired and so reverentially trusted him.  When
+that time arrived, he, Mr. Vigors, might again be of use; but, meanwhile,
+though he declined to renew his intimacy at Abbots' House, or to pay
+unavailing visits of mere ceremony, his interest in the daughter of his
+old friend remained undiminished, nay, was rather increased by compassion;
+that he should silently keep his eye upon her; and whenever anything to
+her advantage suggested itself to him, he should not be deterred by the
+slight with which Mrs. Ashleigh had treated his judgment from calling on
+her, and placing before her conscience as a mother his ideas for her
+child's benefit, leaving to herself then, as now, the entire
+responsibility of rejecting the advice which he might say, without vanity,
+was deemed of some value by those who could distinguish between sterling
+qualities and specious pretences.
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh's was that thoroughly womanly nature which instinctively
+leans upon others.  She was diffident, trustful, meek, affectionate.  Not
+quite justly had Mrs. Poyntz described her as "commonplace weak," for
+though she might be called weak, it was not because she was commonplace;
+she had a goodness of heart, a sweetness of disposition, to which that
+disparaging definition could not apply.  She could only be called
+commonplace inasmuch as in the ordinary daily affairs of life she had a
+great deal of ordinary daily commonplace good-sense.  Give her a routine
+to follow, and no routine could be better adhered to.  In the allotted
+sphere of a woman's duties she never seemed in fault.  No household, not
+even Mrs. Poyntz's, was more happily managed.  The old Abbots' House had
+merged its original antique gloom in the softer character of pleasing
+repose. All her servants adored Mrs. Ashleigh; all found it a pleasure to
+please her; her establishment had the harmony of clockwork; comfort
+diffused itself round her like quiet sunshine round a sheltered spot.  To
+gaze on her pleasing countenance, to listen to the simple talk that lapsed
+from her guileless lips, in even, slow, and lulling murmur, was in itself
+a respite from "eating cares."  She was to the mind what the colour of
+green is to the eye.  She had, therefore, excellent sense in all that
+relates to every-day life.  There, she needed not to consult another;
+there, the wisest might have consulted her with profit.  But the moment
+anything, however trivial in itself, jarred on the routine to which her
+mind had grown wedded, the moment an incident hurried her out of the
+beaten track of woman's daily life, then her confidence forsook her; then
+she needed a confidant, an adviser; and by that confidant or adviser she
+could be credulously lured or submissively controlled.  Therefore, when
+she lost, in Mr. Vigors, the guide she had been accustomed to consult
+whenever she needed guidance, she turned; helplessly and piteously, first
+to Mrs. Poyntz, and then yet more imploringly to me, because a woman of
+that character is never quite satisfied without the advice of a man; and
+where an intimacy more familiar than that of his formal visits is once
+established with a physician, confidence in him grows fearless and rapid,
+as the natural result of sympathy concentrated on an object of anxiety in
+common between himself and the home which opens its sacred recess to his
+observant but tender eye.  Thus Mrs. Ashleigh had shown me Mr. Vigors's
+letter, and, forgetting that I might not be as amiable as herself,
+besought me to counsel her how to conciliate and soften her lost
+husband's friend and connection.  That character clothed him with dignity
+and awe in her soft forgiving eyes.  So, smothering my own resentment,
+less perhaps at the tone of offensive insinuation against myself than at
+the arrogance with which this prejudiced intermeddler implied to a mother
+the necessity of his guardian watch over a child under her own care, I
+sketched a reply which seemed to me both dignified and placatory,
+abstaining from all discussion, and conveying the assurance that Mrs.
+Ashleigh would be at all times glad to hear, and disposed to respect,
+whatever suggestion so esteemed a friend of her husband would kindly
+submit to her for the welfare of her daughter.
+
+There all communication had stopped for about a month since the date of my
+reintroduction to Abbots' House.  One afternoon I unexpectedly met Mr.
+Vigors at the entrance of the blind lane, I on my way to Abbots' House,
+and my first glance at his face told me that he was coming from it, for
+the expression of that face was more than usually sinister; the sullen
+scowl was lit into significant menace by a sneer of unmistakable triumph.
+I felt at once that he had succeeded in some machination against me, and
+with ominous misgivings quickened my steps.
+
+I found Mrs. Ashleigh seated alone in front of the house, under a large
+cedar-tree that formed a natural arbour in the centre of the sunny lawn.
+She was perceptibly embarrassed as I took my seat beside her.
+
+"I hope," said I, forcing a smile, "that Mr. Vigors has not been telling
+you that I shall kill my patient, or that she looks much worse than she
+did under Dr. Jones's care?"
+
+"No," she said.  "He owned cheerfully that Lilian had grown quite strong,
+and said, without any displeasure, that he had heard how gay she had been,
+riding out and even dancing,--which is very kind in him, for he
+disapproves of dancing, on principle."
+
+"But still I can see he has said something to vex or annoy you; and, to
+judge by his countenance when I met him in the lane, I should conjecture
+that that something was intended to lower the confidence you so kindly
+repose in me."
+
+"I assure you not; he did not mention your name, either to me or to
+Lilian.  I never knew him more friendly; quite like old times.  He is a
+good man at heart, very, and was much attached to my poor husband."
+
+"Did Mr. Ashleigh profess a very high opinion of Mr. Vigors?"
+
+"Well, I don't quite know that, because my dear Gilbert never spoke to me
+much about him.  Gilbert was naturally very silent.  But he shrank from
+all trouble--all worldly affairs--and Mr. Vigors managed his estate, and
+inspected his steward's books, and protected him through a long lawsuit
+which he had inherited from his father.  It killed his father.  I don't
+know what we should have done without Mr. Vigors, and I am so glad he has
+forgiven me."
+
+"Hem!  Where is Miss Ashleigh?  Indoors?"
+
+"No; somewhere in the grounds.  But, my dear Dr. Fenwick, do not leave me
+yet; you are so very, very kind, and somehow I have grown to look upon you
+quite as an old friend.  Something has happened which has put me out,
+quite put me out."
+
+She said this wearily and feebly, closing her eyes as if she were indeed
+put out in the sense of extinguished.
+
+"The feeling of friendship you express," said I, with earnestness, "is
+reciprocal.  On my side it is accompanied by a peculiar gratitude.  I am a
+lonely man, by a lonely fireside, no parents, no near kindred, and in this
+town, since Dr. Faber left it, without cordial intimacy till I knew you.
+In admitting me so familiarly to your hearth, you have given me what I
+have never known before since I came to man's estate,--a glimpse of the
+happy domestic life; the charm and relief to eye, heart, and spirit which
+is never known but in households cheered by the face of woman.  Thus my
+sentiment for you and yours is indeed that of an old friend; and in any
+private confidence you show me, I feel as if I were no longer a lonely
+man, without kindred, without home."
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh seemed much moved by these words, which my heart had forced
+from my lips; and, after replying to me with simple unaffected warmth of
+kindness, she rose, took my arm, and continued thus as we walked slowly to
+and fro the lawn: "You know, perhaps, that my poor husband left a sister,
+now a widow like myself, Lady Haughton."
+
+"I remember that Mrs. Poyntz said you had such a sister-in-law, but I
+never heard you mention Lady Haughton till now.  Well!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Vigors has brought me a letter from her, and it is that which
+has put me out.  I dare say you have not heard me speak before of Lady
+Haughton, for I am ashamed to say I had almost forgotten her existence.
+She is many years older than my husband was; of a very different
+character.  Only came once to see him after our marriage.  Hurt me by
+ridiculing him as a bookworm; offended him by looking a little down on me,
+as a nobody without spirit and fashion, which was quite true.  And, except
+by a cold and unfeeling letter of formal condolence after I lost my dear
+Gilbert, I have never heard from her since I have been a widow, till
+to-day.  But, after all, she is my poor husband's sister, and his eldest
+sister, and Lilian's aunt; and, as Mr. Vigors says, 'Duty is duty.'"
+
+Had Mrs. Ashleigh said "Duty is torture," she could not have uttered the
+maxim with more mournful and despondent resignation.
+
+"And what does this lady require of you, which Mr. Vigors deems it your
+duty to comply with?"
+
+"Dear me!  What penetration!  You have guessed the exact truth.  But I
+think you will agree with Mr. Vigors.  Certainly I have no option; yes, I
+must do it."
+
+"My penetration is in fault now.  Do what?  Pray explain."
+
+"Poor Lady Haughton, six months ago, lost her only son, Sir James.  Mr.
+Vigors says he was a very fine young man, of whom any mother would have
+been proud.  I had heard he was wild; Mr. Vigors says, however, that he
+was just going to reform, and marry a young lady whom his mother chose for
+him, when, unluckily, he would ride a steeplechase, not being quite sober
+at the time, and broke his neck.  Lady Haughton has been, of course, in
+great grief.  She has retired to Brighton; and she wrote to me from
+thence, and Mr. Vigors brought the letter.  He will go back to her
+to-day."
+
+"Will go back to Lady Haughton?  What!  Has he been to her?  Is he, then,
+as intimate with Lady Haughton as he was with her brother?"
+
+"No; but there has been a long and constant correspondence.  She had a
+settlement on the Kirby Estate,--a sum which was not paid off during
+Gilbert's life; and a very small part of the property went to Sir James,
+which part Mr. Ashleigh Sumner, the heir-at-law to the rest of the estate,
+wished Mr. Vigors, as his guardian, to buy during his minority, and as it
+was mixed up with Lady Haughton's settlement her consent was necessary as
+well as Sir James's.  So there was much negotiation, and, since then,
+Ashleigh Sumner has come into the Haughton property, on poor Sir James's
+decease; so that complicated all affairs between Mr. Vigors and Lady
+Haughton, and he has just been to Brighton to see her.  And poor Lady
+Haughton, in short, wants me and Lilian to go and visit her.  I don't like
+it at all.  But you said the other day you thought sea air might be good
+for Lilian during the heat of the summer, and she seems well enough
+now for the change.  What do you think?"
+
+"She is well enough, certainly.  But Brighton is not the place I would
+recommend for the summer; it wants shade, and is much hotter than L----"
+
+"Yes; but unluckily Lady Haughton foresaw that objection, and she has a
+jointure-house some miles from Brighton, and near the sea.  She says the
+grounds are well wooded, and the place is proverbially cool and healthy,
+not far from St. Leonard's Forest.  And, in short, I have written to say
+we will come.  So we must, unless, indeed, you positively forbid it."
+
+"When do you think of going?"
+
+"Next Monday.  Mr. Vigors would make me fix the day.  If you knew how I
+dislike moving when I am once settled; and I do so dread Lady Haughton,
+she is so fine, and so satirical!  But Mr. Vigors says she is very much
+altered, poor thing!  I should like to show you her letter, but I bad just
+sent it to Margaret--Mrs. Poyntz--a minute or two before you came.  She
+knows something of Lady Haughton.  Margaret knows everybody.  And we shall
+have to go in mourning for poor Sir James, I suppose; and Margaret will
+choose it, for I am sure I can't guess to what extent we should be
+supposed to mourn.  I ought to have gone in mourning before--poor
+Gilbert's nephew--but I am so stupid, and I had never seen him.  And--But
+oh, this is kind!  Margaret herself,--my dear Margaret!"
+
+We had just turned away from the house, in our up-and-down walk; and Mrs.
+Poyntz stood immediately fronting us.  "So, Anne, you have actually
+accepted this invitation--and for Monday next?"
+
+"Yes.  Did I do wrong?"
+
+"What does Dr. Fenwick say?  Can Lilian go with safety?"
+
+I could not honestly say she might not go with safety, but my heart sank
+like lead as I answered,--
+
+"Miss Ashleigh does not now need merely medical care; but more than half
+her cure has depended on keeping her spirits free from depression.  She
+may miss the cheerful companionship of your daughter, and other young
+ladies of her own age.  A very melancholy house, saddened by a recent
+bereavement, without other guests; a hostess to whom she is a stranger,
+and whom Mrs. Ashleigh herself appears to deem formidable,--certainly
+these do not make that change of scene which a physician would recommend.
+When I spoke of sea air being good for Miss Ashleigh, I thought of our own
+northern coasts at a later time of the year, when I could escape myself
+for a few weeks and attend her.  The journey to a northern watering-place
+would be also shorter and less fatiguing; the air there more
+invigorating."
+
+"No doubt that would be better," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly; "but so far as
+your objections to visiting Lady Haughton have been stated, they are
+groundless.  Her house will not be melancholy; she will have other guests,
+and Lilian will find companions, young like herself,--young ladies--and
+young gentlemen too!"
+
+There was something ominous, something compassionate, in the look which
+Mrs. Poyntz cast upon me, in concluding her speech, which in itself was
+calculated to rouse the fears of a lover.  Lilian away from me, in the
+house of a worldly-fine lady--such as I judged Lady Haughton to
+be--surrounded by young gentlemen, as well as young ladies, by admirers,
+no doubt, of a higher rank and more brilliant fashion than she had yet
+known!  I closed my eyes, and with strong effort suppressed a groan.
+
+"My dear Annie, let me satisfy myself that Dr. Fenwick really does consent
+to this journey.  He will say to me what he may not to you.  Pardon me,
+then, if I take him aside for a few minutes.  Let me find you here again
+under this cedar-tree."
+
+Placing her arm in mine, and without waiting for Mrs. Ashleigh's answer,
+Mrs. Poyntz drew me into the more sequestered walk that belted the lawn;
+and when we were out of Mrs. Ashleigh's sight and hearing, said,--
+
+"From what you have now seen of Lilian Ashleigh, do you still desire to
+gain her as your wife?"
+
+"Still?  Ob, with an intensity proportioned to the fear with which I now
+dread that she is about to pass away from my eyes--from my life!"
+
+"Does your judgment confirm the choice of your heart?  Reflect before you
+answer."
+
+"Such selfish judgment as I had before I knew her would not confirm but
+oppose it.  The nobler judgment that now expands all my reasonings,
+approves and seconds my heart.  No, no; do not smile so sarcastically.
+This is not the voice of a blind and egotistical passion.  Let me explain
+myself if I can.  I concede to you that Lilian's character is undeveloped;
+I concede to you, that amidst the childlike freshness and innocence of her
+nature, there is at times a strangeness, a mystery, which I have not yet
+traced to its cause.  But I am certain that the intellect is organically
+as sound as the heart, and that intellect and heart will ultimately--if
+under happy auspices--blend in that felicitous union which constitutes the
+perfection of woman.  But it is because she does, and may for years, may
+perhaps always, need a more devoted, thoughtful care than natures less
+tremulously sensitive, that my judgment sanctions my choice; for whatever
+is best for her is best for me.  And who would watch over her as I
+should?"
+
+"You have never yet spoken to Lilian as lovers speak?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed."
+
+"And, nevertheless, you believe that your affection would not be
+unreturned?"
+
+"I thought so once; I doubt now,--yet, in doubting, hope.  But why do you
+alarm me with these questions?  You, too, forebode that in this visit I
+may lose her forever?"
+
+"If you fear that, tell her so, and perhaps her answer may dispel your
+fear."
+
+"What! now, already, when she has scarcely known me a month.  Might I not
+risk all if too premature?"
+
+"There is no almanac for love.  With many women love is born the moment
+they know they are beloved.  All wisdom tells us that a moment once gone
+is irrevocable.  Were I in your place, I should feel that I approached a
+moment that I must not lose.  I have said enough; now I shall rejoin Mrs.
+Ashleigh."
+
+"Stay--tell me first what Lady Haughton's letter really contains to prompt
+the advice with which you so transport, and yet so daunt, me when you
+proffer it."
+
+"Not now; later, perhaps,--not now.  If you wish to see Lilian alone, she
+is by the Old Monk's Well; I saw her seated there as I passed that way to
+the house."
+
+"One word more,--only one.  Answer this question frankly, for it is one of
+honour.  Do you still believe that my suit to her daughter would not be
+disapproved of by Mrs. Ashleigh?"
+
+"At this moment I am sure it would not; a week hence I might not give you
+the same answer."
+
+So she passed on with her quick but measured tread, back through the shady
+walk, on to the open lawn, till the last glimpse of her pale gray robe
+disappeared under the boughs of the cedar-tree.  Then, with a start, I
+broke the irresolute, tremulous suspense in which I had vainly endeavoured
+to analyze my own mind, solve my own doubts, concentrate my own will, and
+went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that haunted ground,--as
+now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of the neighbouring city
+came full and close into view, divided from my fairy-land of life but by
+the trodden murmurous thoroughfare winding low beneath the ivied parapets;
+and as now, again, the world of men abruptly vanished behind the screening
+foliage of luxuriant June.
+
+At last the enchanted glade opened out from the verdure, its borders
+fragrant with syringa and rose and woodbine; and there, by the gray
+memorial of the gone Gothic age, my eyes seemed to close their unquiet
+wanderings, resting spell-bound on that image which had become to me the
+incarnation of earth's bloom and youth.
+
+She stood amidst the Past, backed by the fragments of walls which man had
+raised to seclude him from human passion, locking, under those lids so
+downcast, the secret of the only knowledge I asked from the boundless
+Future.
+
+Ah! what mockery there is in that grand word, the world's fierce
+war-cry,--Freedom!  Who has not known one period of life, and that so
+solemn that its shadows may rest over all life hereafter, when one human
+creature has over him a sovereignty more supreme and absolute than Orient
+servitude adores in the symbols of diadem and sceptre?  What crest so
+haughty that has not bowed before a hand which could exalt or humble!
+What heart so dauntless that has not trembled to call forth the voice at
+whose sound open the gates of rapture or despair!  That life alone is free
+which rules, and suffices for itself.  That life we forfeit when we love!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+How did I utter it?  By what words did my heart make itself known?  I
+remember not.  All was as a dream that falls upon a restless, feverish
+night, and fades away as the eyes unclose on the peace of a cloudless
+heaven, on the bliss of a golden sun.  A new morrow seemed indeed upon the
+earth when I woke from a life-long yesterday,--her dear hand in mine, her
+sweet face bowed upon my breast.
+
+And then there was that melodious silence in which there is no sound
+audible from without; yet within us there is heard a lulling celestial
+music, as if our whole being, grown harmonious with the universe, joined
+from its happy deeps in the hymn that unites the stars.
+
+In that silence our two hearts seemed to make each other understood, to be
+drawing nearer and nearer, blending by mysterious concord into the
+completeness of a solemn union, never henceforth to be rent
+asunder.
+
+At length I said softly: "And it was here on this spot that I first saw
+you,--here that I for the first time knew what power to change our world
+and to rule our future goes forth from the charm of a human face!"
+
+Then Lilian asked me timidly, and without lifting her eyes, how I had so
+seen her, reminding me that I promised to tell her, and had never yet done
+so.
+
+And then I told her of the strange impulse that bad led me into the
+grounds, and by what chance my steps had been diverted down the path that
+wound to the glade; how suddenly her form had shone upon my eyes,
+gathering round itself the rose hues of the setting sun, and how wistfully
+those eyes had followed her own silent gaze into the distant heaven.
+
+As I spoke, her hand pressed mine eagerly, convulsively, and, raising her
+face from my breast, she looked at me with an intent, anxious earnestness.
+That look!--twice before it had thrilled and perplexed me.
+
+"What is there in that look, oh, my Lilian, which tells me that there is
+something that startles you,--something you wish to confide, and yet
+shrink from explaining?  See how, already, I study the fair book from
+which the seal has been lifted! but as yet you must aid me to construe its
+language."
+
+"If I shrink from explaining, it is only because I fear that I cannot
+explain so as to be understood or believed.  But you have a right to know
+the secrets of a life which you would link to your own.  Turn your face
+aside from me; a reproving look, an incredulous smile, chill--oh, you
+cannot guess how they chill me, when I would approach that which to me is
+so serious and so solemnly strange."
+
+I turned my face away, and her voice grew firmer as, after a brief pause,
+she resumed,--
+
+"As far back as I can remember in my infancy, there have been moments when
+there seems to fall a soft hazy veil between my sight and the things
+around it, thickening and deepening till it has the likeness of one of
+those white fleecy clouds which gather on the verge of the horizon when
+the air is yet still, but the winds are about to rise; and then this
+vapour or veil will suddenly open, as clouds open, and let in the blue
+sky."
+
+"Go on," I said gently, for here she came to a stop.  She continued,
+speaking somewhat more hurriedly,--
+
+"Then, in that opening, strange appearances present them selves to me, as
+in a vision.  In my childhood these were chiefly landscapes of wonderful
+beauty.  I could but faintly describe them then; I could not attempt to
+describe them now, for they are almost gone from my memory.  My dear
+mother chid me for telling her what I saw, so I did not impress it on my
+mind by repeating it.  As I grew up, this kind of vision--if I may so call
+it--became much less frequent, or much less distinct; I still saw the soft
+veil fall, the pale cloud form and open, but often what may then have
+appeared was entirely forgotten when I recovered myself, waking as from a
+sleep.  Sometimes, however, the recollection would be vivid and complete;
+sometimes I saw the face of my lost father; sometimes I heard his very
+voice, as I had seen and heard him in my early childhood, when he would
+let me rest for hours beside him as he mused or studied, happy to be so
+quietly near him, for I loved him, oh, so dearly! and I remember him so
+distinctly, though I was only in my sixth year when he died.  Much more
+recently--indeed, within the last few months--the images of things to come
+are reflected on the space that I gaze into as clearly as in a glass.
+Thus, for weeks before I came hither, or knew that such a place existed, I
+saw distinctly the old House, yon trees, this sward, this moss-grown
+Gothic fount; and, with the sight, an impression was conveyed to me that
+in the scene before me my old childlike life would pass into some solemn
+change.  So that when I came here, and recognized the picture in my
+vision, I took an affection for the spot,--an affection not without awe, a
+powerful, perplexing interest, as one who feels under the influence of a
+fate of which a prophetic glimpse has been vouchsafed.  And in that
+evening, when you first saw me, seated here--"
+
+"Yes, Lilian, on that evening--"
+
+"I saw you also, but in my vision--yonder, far in the deeps of
+space,--and--and my heart was stirred as it had never been before; and
+near where your image grew out from the cloud I saw my father's face, and
+I heard his voice, not in my ear, but as in my heart, whispering--"
+
+"Yes, Lilian--whispering--what?"
+
+"These words,--only these,--'Ye will need one another.'  But then,
+suddenly, between my upward eyes and the two forms they had beheld, there
+rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous,
+and coiling like a vast serpent,--nothing, indeed, of its shape and
+figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread
+luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly
+than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull.  Then my terror
+made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was
+vanished.  But the terror still remained, even when I felt my mother's arm
+round me and heard her voice.  And then, when I entered the house, and sat
+down again alone, the recollection of what I had seen--those eyes, that
+face, that skull--grew on me stronger and stronger till I fainted, and
+remember no more, until my eyes, opening, saw you by my side, and in my
+wonder there was not terror.  No, a sense of joy, protection, hope, yet
+still shadowed by a kind of fear or awe, in recognizing the countenance
+which had gleamed on me from the skies before the dark vapour had risen,
+and while my father's voice had murmured, 'Ye will need one another.' And
+now--and now--will you love me less that you know a secret in my being
+which I have told to no other,--cannot construe to myself?  Only--only,
+at least, do not mock me; do not disbelieve me!  Nay, turn from me no
+longer now: now I ask to meet your eyes.  Now, before our hands can join
+again, tell me that you do not despise me as untruthful, do not pity me as
+insane."
+
+"Hush, hush!" I said, drawing her to my breast.  "Of all you tell me we
+will talk hereafter.  The scales of our science have no weights fine
+enough for the gossamer threads of a maiden's pure fancies.  Enough for
+me--for us both--if out from all such illusions start one truth, told to
+you, lovely child, from the heavens; told to me, ruder man, on the earth;
+repeated by each pulse of this heart that woos you to hear and to
+trust,--now and henceforth through life unto death, 'Each has need of the
+other,'--I of you, I of you! my Lilian! my Lilian!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+In spite of the previous assurance of Mrs. Poyntz, it was not without an
+uneasy apprehension that I approached the cedar-tree, under which Mrs.
+Ashleigh still sat, her friend beside her.  I looked on the fair creature
+whose arm was linked in mine.  So young, so singularly lovely, and with
+all the gifts of birth and fortune which bend avarice and ambition the
+more submissively to youth and beauty, I felt as if I had wronged what a
+parent might justly deem her natural lot.
+
+"Oh, if your mother should disapprove!" said I, falteringly.  Lilian
+leaned on my arm less lightly.  "If I had thought so," she said with her
+soft blush, "should I be thus by your side?"
+
+So we passed under the boughs of the dark tree, and Lilian left me and
+kissed Mrs. Ashleigh's cheek; then, seating herself on the turf, laid her
+head on her mother's lap.  I looked on the Queen of the Hill, whose keen
+eye shot over me.  I thought there was a momentary expression of pain or
+displeasure on her countenance; but it passed.  Still there seemed to me
+something of irony, as well as of triumph or congratulation, in the
+half-smile with which she quitted her seat, and in the tone with which she
+whispered, as she glided by me to the open sward, "So, then, it is
+settled."
+
+She walked lightly and quickly down the lawn.  When she was out of sight I
+breathed more freely.  I took the seat which she had left, by Mrs.
+Ashleigh's side, and said, "A little while ago I spoke of myself as a man
+without kindred, without home, and now I come to you and ask for both."
+
+Mrs. Ashleigh looked at me benignly, then raised her daughter's face from
+her lap, and whispered, "Lilian;" and Lilian's lips moved, but I did not
+hear her answer.  Her mother did.  She took Lilian's hand, simply placed
+it in mine, and said, "As she chooses, I choose; whom she loves, I love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+From that evening till the day Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian went on the
+dreaded visit, I was always at their house, when my avocations allowed me
+to steal to it; and during those few days, the happiest I had ever known,
+it seemed to me that years could not have more deepened my intimacy with
+Lilian's exquisite nature, made me more reverential of its purity, or more
+enamoured of its sweetness.  I could detect in her but one fault, and I
+rebuked myself for believing that it was a fault.  We see many who neglect
+the minor duties of life, who lack watchful forethought and considerate
+care for others, and we recognize the cause of this failing in levity or
+egotism.  Certainly, neither of those tendencies of character could be
+ascribed to Lilian.  Yet still in daily trifles there was something of
+that neglect, some lack of that care and forethought.  She loved her
+mother with fondness and devotion, yet it never occurred to her to aid in
+those petty household cares in which her mother centred so much of
+habitual interest.  She was full of tenderness and pity to all want and
+suffering, yet many a young lady on the Hill was more actively
+beneficent,--visiting the poor in their sickness, or instructing their
+children in the Infant Schools.  I was persuaded that her love for me was
+deep and truthful; it was clearly void of all ambition; doubtless she
+would have borne, unflinching and contented, whatever the world considers
+to be a sacrifice and privation,--yet I should never have expected her to
+take her share in the troubles of ordinary life.  I could never have
+applied to her the homely but significant name of helpmate.  I reproach
+myself while I write for noticing such defect--if defect it were--in what
+may be called the practical routine of our positive, trivial, human
+existence.  No doubt it was this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's harsh
+judgment against the wisdom of my choice.  But such chiller shade upon
+Lilian's charming nature was reflected from no inert, unamiable self-love.
+It was but the consequence of that self-absorption which the habit of
+revery had fostered.  I cautiously abstained from all allusion to those
+visionary deceptions, which she had confided to me as the truthful
+impressions of spirit, if not of sense.  To me any approach to what I
+termed "superstition" was displeasing; any indulgence of fantasies not
+within the measured and beaten track of healthful imagination more than
+displeased me in her,--it alarmed.  I would not by a word encourage her in
+persuasions which I felt it would be at present premature to reason
+against, and cruel indeed to ridicule.  I was convinced that of
+themselves these mists round her native intelligence, engendered by a
+solitary and musing childhood, would subside in the fuller daylight of
+wedded life.  She seemed pained when she saw how resolutely I shunned a
+subject dear to her thoughts.  She made one or two timid attempts to renew
+it, but my grave looks sufficed to check her.  Once or twice indeed, on
+such occasions, she would turn away and leave me, but she soon came back;
+that gentle heart could not bear one unkindlier shade between itself and
+what it loved.  It was agreed that our engagement should be, for the
+present, confided only to Mrs. Poyntz.  When Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian
+returned, which would be in a few weeks at furthest, it should be
+proclaimed; and our marriage could take place in the autumn, when I should
+be most free for a brief holiday from professional toils.
+
+So we parted-as lovers part.  I felt none of those jealous fears which,
+before we were affianced, had made me tremble at the thought of
+separation, and had conjured up irresistible rivals.  But it was with a
+settled, heavy gloom that I saw her depart.  From earth was gone a glory;
+from life a blessing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+During the busy years of my professional career, I had snatched leisure
+for some professional treatises, which had made more or less sensation,
+and one of them, entitled "The Vital Principle; its Waste and Supply," had
+gained a wide circulation among the general public.  This last treatise
+contained the results of certain experiments, then new in chemistry, which
+were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as to the
+re-invigoration of the human system by principles similar to those which
+Liebig has applied to the replenishment of an exhausted soil,--namely, the
+giving back to the frame those essentials to its nutrition, which it has
+lost by the action or accident of time; or supplying that special pabulum
+or energy in which the individual organism is constitutionally deficient;
+and neutralizing or counterbalancing that in which it super-abounds,--a
+theory upon which some eminent physicians have more recently improved with
+signal success.  But on these essays, slight and suggestive, rather than
+dogmatic, I set no value.  I had been for the last two years engaged on a
+work of much wider range, endeared to me by a far bolder ambition,--a work
+upon which I fondly hoped to found an enduring reputation as a severe and
+original physiologist.  It was an Inquiry into Organic Life, similar in
+comprehensiveness of survey to that by which the illustrious Muller, of
+Berlin, has enriched the science of our age; however inferior, alas! to
+that august combination of thought and learning in the judgment which
+checks presumption, and the genius which adorns speculation.  But at that
+day I was carried away by the ardour of composition, and I admired my
+performance because I loved my labour.  This work had been entirely laid
+aside for the last agitated month; now that Lilian was gone, I resumed it
+earnestly, as the sole occupation that had power and charm enough to rouse
+me from the aching sense of void and loss.
+
+The very night of the day she went, I reopened my manuscript.  I had left
+off at the commencement of a chapter Upon Knowledge as derived from our
+Senses.  As my convictions on this head were founded on the well-known
+arguments of Locke and Condillac against innate ideas, and on the
+reasonings by which Hume has resolved the combination of sensations into a
+general idea to an impulse arising merely out of habit, so I set myself to
+oppose, as a dangerous concession to the sentimentalities or mysticism of
+a pseudo-philosophy, the doctrine favoured by most of our recent
+physiologists, and of which some of the most eminent of German
+metaphysicians have accepted the substance, though refining into a
+subtlety its positive form,--I mean the doctrine which Muller himself has
+expressed in these words:--
+
+   "That innate ideas may exist cannot in the slightest degree be denied:
+    it is, indeed, a fact.  All the ideas of animals, which are induced by
+    instinct, are innate and immediate: something presented to the mind, a
+    desire to attain which is at the same time given.  The new-born lamb
+    and foal have such innate ideas, which lead them to follow their
+    mother and suck the teats.  Is it not in some measure the same with
+    the intellectual ideas of man?"[1]
+
+To this question I answered with an indignant "No!"  A "Yes" would have
+shaken my creed of materialism to the dust.  I wrote on rapidly, warmly.
+I defined the properties and meted the limits of natural laws, which I
+would not admit that a Deity himself could alter.  I clamped and soldered
+dogma to dogma in the links of my tinkered logic, till out from my page,
+to my own complacent eye, grew Intellectual Man, as the pure formation of
+his material senses; mind, or what is called soul, born from and nurtured
+by them alone; through them to act, and to perish with the machine they
+moved.  Strange, that at the very time my love for Lilian might have
+taught me that there are mysteries in the core of the feelings which my
+analysis of ideas could not solve, I should so stubbornly have opposed as
+unreal all that could be referred to the spiritual!  Strange, that at the
+very time when the thought that I might lose from this life the being I
+had known scarce a month had just before so appalled me, I should thus
+complacently sit down to prove that, according to the laws of the nature
+which my passion obeyed, I must lose for eternity the blessing I now hoped
+I had won to my life!  But how distinctly dissimilar is man in his conduct
+from man in his systems!  See the poet reclined under forest boughs,
+conning odes to his mistress; follow him out into the world; no mistress
+ever lived for him there![2]  See the hard man of science, so austere in
+his passionless problems; follow him now where the brain rests from its
+toil, where the heart finds its Sabbath--what child is so tender, so
+yielding, and soft?
+
+But I had proved to my own satisfaction that poet and sage are dust, and
+no more, when the pulse ceases to beat.  And on that consolatory
+conclusion my pen stopped.
+
+Suddenly, beside me I distinctly heard a sigh,--a compassionate, mournful
+sigh.  The sound was unmistakable.  I started from my seat, looked round,
+amazed to discover no one,--no living thing!  The windows were closed, the
+night was still.  That sigh was not the wail of the wind.  But there, in
+the darker angle of the room, what was that?  A silvery whiteness, vaguely
+shaped as a human form, receding, fading, gone!  Why, I know not--for no
+face was visible, no form, if form it were, more distinct than the
+colourless outline,--why, I know not, but I cried aloud, "Lilian!
+Lilian!"  My voice came strangely back to my own ear; I paused, then
+smiled and blushed at my folly.  "So I, too, have learned what is
+superstition," I muttered to myself.  "And here is an anecdote at my own
+expense (as Muller frankly tells us anecdotes of the illusions which
+would haunt his eyes, shut or open),--an anecdote I may quote when I come
+to my chapter on the Cheats of the Senses and Spectral Phantasms."  I
+went on with my book, and wrote till the lights waned in the gray of the
+dawn.  And I said then, in the triumph of my pride, as I laid myself down
+to rest, "I have written that which allots with precision man's place in
+the region of nature; written that which will found a school, form
+disciples; and race after race of those who cultivate truth through pure
+reason shall accept my bases if they enlarge my building."  And again I
+heard the sigh, but this time it caused no surprise.  "Certainly," I
+murmured, "a very strange thing is the nervous system!"  So I turned on
+my pillow, and, wearied out, fell asleep.
+
+[1] Muller's "Elements of Physiology," vol. ii. p. 134.  Translated by Dr.
+Baley.
+
+[2] Cowley, who wrote so elaborate a series of amatory poems, is said
+"never to have been in love but once, and then he never had resolution to
+tell his passion."--Johnson's "Lives of the Poets:" COWLEY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoons were
+devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attend the
+steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat, which was
+about five miles from L----.  It was rarely indeed that persons so far
+from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked my
+services.
+
+But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my profession was
+not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, not the
+essential.  This case the messenger reported as urgent.  I went on
+horseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the village
+that skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident care
+bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me.  I felt
+that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent proprietor.
+Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the contrast
+between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately Hall and the
+smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.
+
+An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated pilasters,
+pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs to the
+entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured, mildewed,
+chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy.  Most of the windows
+were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the
+casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the shattered
+balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds.  The sun glared
+hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more painfully
+apparent.  I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut the house from
+my sight.  Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and
+before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently
+designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the
+blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and
+surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with an
+iron rail, party-gilt.
+
+The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened
+almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the aspect
+of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made.  I spurred my horse,
+and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair brick
+house at the other extremity of the park.
+
+I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust
+conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed to
+be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out of
+immediate danger.  After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, I took
+aside the patient's wife, and went with her to the parlour below stairs,
+to make some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen and habits of
+life.  These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover no apparent
+cause for the attack, which presented symptoms not familiar to my
+experience.  "Has your husband ever had such fits before?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Had he experienced any sudden emotion?  Had he heard any unexpected news;
+or had anything happened to put him out?"
+
+The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries.  I pressed them more
+urgently.  At last she burst into tears, and clasping my hand, said, "Oh,
+doctor, I ought to tell you--I sent for you on purpose--yet I fear you
+will not believe me: my good man has seen a ghost!"
+
+"A ghost!" said I, repressing a smile.  "Well, tell me all, that I may
+prevent the ghost coming again."
+
+The woman's story was prolix.  Its substance was this Her husband,
+habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morning still earlier
+than usual, to give directions about some cattle that were to be sent for
+sale to a neighbouring fair.  An hour afterwards he had been found by a
+shepherd, near the mausoleum, apparently lifeless.  On being removed to
+his own house, he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wife
+leave the room, he then told her that on walking across the park towards
+the cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at first a pale light
+by the iron door of the mausoleum.  On approaching nearer, this light
+changed into the distinct and visible form of his master, Sir Philip
+Derval, who was then abroad,--supposed to be in the East, where he had
+resided for many years.  The impression on the steward's mind was so
+strong, that he called out, "Oh, Sir Philip!" when looking still more
+intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse.  As he
+continued to gaze, the apparition seemed gradually to recede, as if
+vanishing into the sepulchre itself.  He knew no more; he became
+unconscious.  It was the excess of the poor woman's alarm, on hearing
+this strange tale, that made her resolve to send for me instead of the
+parish apothecary.  She fancied so astounding a cause for her husband's
+seizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man reputed to
+have more than ordinary learning; and the steward himself objected to the
+apothecary in the immediate neighbourhood, as more likely to annoy him by
+gossip than a physician from a comparative distance.
+
+I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by parading too
+quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he ad seen;
+but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of the fit to
+be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, in my
+experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and finally
+soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearly reducible
+to natural causes.  Afterwards, I led her on to talk about Sir Philip
+Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent proprietor than
+from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to his image as a living man.
+The steward had been in the service of Sir Philip's father, and had known
+Sir Philip himself from a child.  He was warmly attached to his master,
+whom the old woman described as a man of rare benevolence and great
+eccentricity, which last she imputed to his studious habits.  He had
+succeeded to the title and estates as a minor.  For the first few years
+after attaining his majority, be had mixed much in the world.  When at
+Derval Court his house had been filled with gay companions, and was the
+scene of lavish hospitality; but the estate was not in proportion to the
+grandeur of the mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner.  He
+had become greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so it was
+rumoured) occurring simultaneously with his pecuniary difficulties, he had
+suddenly changed his way of life, shut himself up from his old friends,
+lived in seclusion, taking to books and scientific pursuits, and as the
+old woman said vaguely and expressively, "to odd ways."  He had
+gradually by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which
+did not preclude much judicious generosity to others, cleared off his
+debts; and, once more rich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and
+taken to a life of travel.  He was now about forty-eight years old, and
+had been eighteen years abroad.  He wrote frequently to his steward,
+giving him minute and thoughtful instructions in regard to the employment,
+comforts, and homes of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to
+spend no money on the grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the
+latter might be allowed to fall into decay, his intention to pull it down
+whenever he returned to England.
+
+I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at my
+patient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, had
+removed from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectly
+recovered from his attack.
+
+Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, even
+pathologically, between man and man.  Here was a brawny inhabitant of
+rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the
+faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door by his
+fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple
+causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in a
+sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly
+to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest
+that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous
+phenomenon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+That evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary
+"reception nights," and I felt that she would naturally expect my
+attendance as "a proper attention."
+
+I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntz
+herself made the centre, knitting as usual,--rapidly while she talked,
+slowly when she listened.
+
+Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned the
+conversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, and
+then incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval?  Is it
+not strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?"
+The answers I received added little to the information I had already
+obtained.  Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man
+of large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the
+value of property he possessed in the town of L----, and which lay
+contiguous to that of her husband.  Two or three of the older inhabitants
+of the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his early days, when he was gay,
+high-spirited, hospitable, lavish.  One observed that the only person in
+L---- whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who
+was then without practice, and whom he had employed as an assistant in
+certain chemical experiments.
+
+Here a gentleman struck into the conversation.  He was a stranger to me
+and to L----, a visitor to one of the dwellers on the Hill, who had asked
+leave to present him to its queen as a great traveller and an accomplished
+antiquary.
+
+ Said this gentleman: "Sir Philip Derval?  I know him.  I met him in the
+East.  He was then still, I believe, very fond of chemical science; a
+clever, odd, philanthropical man; had studied medicine, or at least
+practised it; was said to have made many marvellous cures.  I became
+acquainted with him in Aleppo.  He had come to that town, not much
+frequented by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder of
+two men, of whom one was his friend and the other his countryman."
+
+"This is interesting," said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly.  "We who live on this
+innocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is the pleasantest subject
+you could have hit on.  Pray give us the details."
+
+"So encouraged," said the traveller, good-humouredly, "I will not hesitate
+to communicate the little I know.  In Aleppo there had lived for some
+years a man who was held by the natives in great reverence.  He had the
+reputation of extraordinary wisdom, but was difficult of access; the
+lively imagination of the Orientals invested his character with the
+fascinations of fable,--in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularly
+considered a magician.  Wild stories were told of his powers, of his
+preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures.  Apart from such disputable
+titles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that his
+learning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of life
+irreproachably ascetic.  He appears to have resembled those Arabian sages
+of the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted,--a mystic
+enthusiast, but an earnest scholar.  A wealthy and singular Englishman,
+long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishing
+disease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult this sage, who, among his
+other acquirements, was held to have discovered rare secrets in
+medicine,--his countrymen said in 'charms.'  One morning, not long after
+the Englishman's arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparently
+strangled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the town, had
+disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch on which he habitually
+supported himself, were found a few miles distant from Aleppo, near the
+roadside.  There appeared no doubt that he, too, had been murdered, but
+his corpse could not be discovered.  Sir Philip Derval had been a loving
+disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured me he owed not only
+that knowledge of medicine which, by report, Sir Philip possessed, but the
+insight into various truths of nature, on the promulgation of which, it
+was evident, Sir Philip cherished the ambition to found a philosophical
+celebrity for himself."
+
+"Of what description were those truths of nature?" I asked, somewhat
+sarcastically.
+
+"Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nor did I
+much care to ask; for what may be revered as truths in Asia are usually
+despised as dreams in Europe.  To return to my story: Sir Philip had been
+in Aleppo a little time before the murder; had left the Englishman under
+the care of Haroun.  He returned to Aleppo on hearing the tragic events I
+have related, and was busy in collecting such evidence as could be
+gleaned, and instituting inquiries after our missing countryman at the
+time I myself chanced to arrive in the city.  I assisted in his
+researches, but without avail.  The assassins remained undiscovered.  I do
+not myself doubt that they were mere vulgar robbers.  Sir Philip had a
+darker suspicion of which he made no secret to me; but as I confess that I
+thought the suspicion groundless, you will pardon me if I do not repeat
+it.  Whether since I left the East the Englishman's remains have been
+discovered, I know not.  Very probably; for I understand that his heirs
+have got hold of what fortune he left,--less than was generally supposed.
+But it was reported that he had buried great treasures, a rumour, however
+absurd, not altogether inconsistent with his character."
+
+"What was his character?" asked Mrs. Poyntz.
+
+"One of evil and sinister repute.  He was regarded with terror by the
+attendants who had accompanied him to Aleppo.  But he had lived in a very
+remote part of the East, little known to Europeans, and, from all I could
+learn, had there established an extraordinary power, strengthened by
+superstitious awe.  He was said to have studied deeply that knowledge
+which the philosophers of old called 'occult,' not, like the Sage of
+Aleppo, for benevolent, but for malignant ends.  He was accused of
+conferring with evil spirits, and filling his barbaric court (for he lived
+in a kind of savage royalty) with charmers and sorcerers.  I suspect,
+after all, that he was only, like myself, an ardent antiquary, and
+cunningly made use of the fear he inspired in order to secure his
+authority, and prosecute in safety researches into ancient sepulchres or
+temples.  His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in
+his neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetrated
+so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria.  He
+wore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him.  I came to
+the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps
+by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were
+missing), who then at once buried his body, and kept their own secret.  He
+was old, very infirm; could never have got far from the town without
+assistance."
+
+"You have not yet told us his name," said Mrs. Poyntz.
+
+"His name was Grayle."
+
+"Grayle!" exclaimed Mrs. Poyntz, dropping her work.  "Louis Grayle?"
+
+"Yes; Louis Grayle.  You could not have known him?"
+
+"Known him!  No; but I have often heard my father speak of him.  Such,
+then, was the tragic end of that strong dark creature, for whom, as a
+young girl in the nursery, I used to feel a kind of fearful admiring
+interest?"
+
+"It is your turn to narrate now," said the traveller.
+
+And we all drew closer round our hostess, who remained silent some
+moments, her brow thoughtful, her work suspended.
+
+"Well," said she at last, looking round us with a lofty air, which seemed
+half defying, "force and courage are always fascinating, even when they
+are quite in the wrong.  I go with the world, because the world goes with
+me; if it did not--"  Here she stopped for a moment, clenched the firm
+white hand, and then scornfully waved it, left the sentence unfinished,
+and broke into another.
+
+"Going with the world, of course we must march over those who stand
+against it.  But when one man stands single-handed against our march, we
+do not despise him; it is enough to crush.  I am very glad I did not see
+Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen."  Again she paused a moment,
+and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the
+rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth.  Old Grayle desired
+to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton.  Boys are always
+aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he
+struck boys bigger than himself,--fought till he was half killed.  My
+father was at school with him; described him as a tiger-whelp.  One day
+he--still a fag--struck a sixth-form boy.  Sixth-form boys do not fight
+fags; they punish them.  Louis Grayle was ordered to hold out his hand to
+the cane; he received the blow, drew forth his schoolboy knife, and
+stabbed the punisher.  After that, he left Eton.  I don't think he was
+publicly expelled--too mere a child for that honour--but he was taken or
+sent away; educated with great care under the first masters at home.  When
+he was of age to enter the University, old Grayle was dead.  Louis was
+sent by his guardians to Cambridge, with acquirements far exceeding the
+average of young men, and with unlimited command of money.  My father was
+at the same college, and described him again,--haughty, quarrelsome,
+reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave.  Does that kind of creature interest
+you, my dears?" (appealing to the ladies).
+
+"La!" said Miss Brabazon; "a horrid usurer's son!"
+
+"Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silver
+spoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest on it;
+ut when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and
+cry out, 'Stolen from our plate chest,' it is a heritage that outlaws a
+babe in his cradle.  However, young men at college who want money are less
+scrupulous about descent than boys at Eton are.  Louis Grayle found, while
+at college, plenty of wellborn acquaintances willing to recover from him
+some of the plunder his father had extorted from theirs.  He was too wild
+to distinguish himself by academical honours, but my father said that the
+tutors of the college declared there were not six undergraduates in the
+University who knew as much hard and dry science as wild Louis Grayle.  He
+went into the world, no doubt, hoping to shine; but his father's name was
+too notorious to admit the son into good society.  The Polite World, it
+is true, does not examine a scutcheon with the nice eye of a herald, nor
+look upon riches with the stately contempt of a stoic; still the Polite
+World has its family pride and its moral sentiment.  It does not like to
+be cheated,--I mean, in money matters; and when the son of a man who has
+emptied its purse and foreclosed on its acres rides by its club-windows,
+hand on haunch, and head in the air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no
+hyena a laugh more dread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant,
+polite, well-bred World which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so languid
+a friend, and--so remorseless an--enemy.  In short, Louis Grayle claimed
+the right to be courted,--he was shunned; to be admired,--he was loathed.
+Even his old college acquaintances were shamed out of knowing him.
+Perhaps he could have lived through all this had he sought to glide
+quietly into position; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and
+strove to storm his way, not to steal it.  Reduced for companions to
+needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opinion by that
+ostentation of excess, which made Richelieus and Lauzuns the rage.  But
+then Richelieus and Lauzuns were dukes!  He now very naturally took the
+Polite World into hate,--gave it scorn for scorn.  He would ally himself
+with Democracy; his wealth could not get him into a club, but it would buy
+him into parliament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau,
+but he might be a Danton.  He had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and
+with knowledge and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent.
+Possibly, then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure,
+left his mark on his age and his name in history; but in contesting the
+borough, which he was sure to carry, he had to face an opponent in a real
+fine gentleman whom his father had ruined, cool and highbred, with a
+tongue like a rapier, a sneer like an adder.  A quarrel of course; Louis
+Grayle sent a challenge.  The fine gentleman, known to be no coward (fine
+gentlemen never are), was at first disposed to refuse with contempt.  But
+Grayle had made himself the idol of the mob; and at a word from Grayle,
+the fine gentleman might have been ducked at a pump, or tossed in a
+blanket,--that would have made him ridiculous; to be shot at is a trifle,
+to be laughed at is serious.  He therefore condescended to accept the
+challenge, and my father was his second.
+
+"It was settled, of course, according to English custom, that both
+combatants should fire at the same time, and by signal.  The antagonist
+fired at the right moment; his ball grazed Louis Grayle's temple.  Louis
+Grayle had not fired.  He now seemed to the seconds to take slow and
+deliberate aim.  They called out to him not to fire; they were rushing to
+prevent him, when the trigger was pulled, and his opponent fell dead on
+the field.  The fight was, therefore, considered unfair; Louis Grayle was
+tried for his life: he did not stand the trial in person.[1]  He escaped
+to the Continent; hurried on to some distant uncivilized lands; could not
+be traced; reappeared in England no more.  The lawyer who conducted his
+defence pleaded skilfully.  He argued that the delay in firing was not
+intentional, therefore not criminal,--the effect of the stun which the
+wound in the temple had occasioned.  The judge was a gentleman, and summed
+up the evidence so as to direct the jury to a verdict against the low
+wretch who had murdered a gentleman; but the jurors were not gentlemen,
+and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathy for a son of
+the people, whom a gentleman had wantonly insulted.  The verdict was
+manslaughter; but the sentence emphatically marked the aggravated nature
+of the homicide,--three years' imprisonment.  Grayle eluded the prison,
+but he was a man disgraced and an exile,--his ambition blasted, his career
+an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty-three.  My father said that he was
+supposed to have changed his name; none knew what had become of him.  And
+so this creature, brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices
+we might now be all fawning on, cringing to,--after living to old age, no
+one knows how,--dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom."
+
+"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago,"
+said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no idea
+that it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel Poyntz
+has so graphically described.  I have a very vague recollection of the
+trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since.  The
+affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten."
+
+"Soon forgotten," said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not?  Leave your place in
+the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else has taken
+it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that you had ever
+a place even in the parish register?"
+
+"Nevertheless," said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly,
+
+   "'The sun of Homer shines upon us still.'"
+
+"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that we know
+no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homer at all,
+or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man in the
+moon,--if there be one man there, or millions of men.  Now, my dear Miss
+Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts into channels
+less gloomy.  Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I have something to
+say to you."  She drew me towards the window.  "So Annie Ashleigh writes
+me word that I am not to mention your engagement.  Do you think it quite
+prudent to keep it a secret?"
+
+"I do not see how prudence is concerned in keeping it secret one way or
+the other,--it is a mere matter of feeling.  Most people wish to abridge,
+as far as they can, the time in which their private arrangements are the
+topic of public gossip."
+
+"Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due completion of
+private arrangements.  As long as a girl is not known to be engaged, her
+betrothed must be prepared for rivals.  Announce the engagement, and
+rivals are warned off."
+
+"I fear no rivals."
+
+"Do you not?  Bold man!  I suppose you will write to Lilian?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Do so, and constantly.  By-the-way, Mrs. Ashleigh, before she went, asked
+me to send her back Lady Haughton's letter of invitation.  What for,--to
+show to you?"
+
+"Very likely.  Have you the letter still?  May I see it?"
+
+"Not just at present.  When Lilian or Mrs. Ashleigh writes to you, come
+and tell me how they like their visit, and what other guests form the
+party."
+
+Therewith she turned away and conversed apart with the traveller.
+
+Her words disquieted me, and I felt that they were meant to do so,
+wherefore I could not guess.  But there is no language on earth which has
+more words with a double meaning than that spoken by the Clever Woman, who
+is never so guarded as when she appears to be frank.
+
+As I walked home thoughtfully, I was accosted by a young man, the son of
+one of the wealthiest merchants in the town.  I had attended him with
+success some months before, in a rheumatic fever: he and his family were
+much attached to me.
+
+"Ah, my dear Fenwick, I am so glad to see you; I owe you an obligation of
+which you are not aware,--an exceedingly pleasant travelling-companion.  I
+came with him to-day from London, where I have been sight-seeing and
+holidaymaking for the last fortnight."
+
+"I suppose you mean that you kindly bring me a patient?"
+
+"No, only an admirer.  I was staying at Fenton's Hotel.  It so happened
+one day that I had left in the coffee-room your last work on the Vital
+Principle, which, by the by, the bookseller assures me is selling
+immensely among readers as non-professional as myself.  Coming into the
+coffee-room again, I found a gentleman reading the book.  I claimed it
+politely; he as politely tendered his excuse for taking it.  We made
+acquaintance on the spot.  The next day we were intimate.  He expressed
+great interest and curiosity about your theory and your experiments.  I
+told him I knew you.  You may guess if I described you as less clever in
+your practice than you are in your writings; and, in short, he came with
+me to L----, partly to see our flourishing town, principally on my promise
+to introduce him to you.  My mother, you know, has what she calls a
+dejeuner tomorrow,--dejeuner and dance.  You will be there?"
+
+"Thank you for reminding me of her invitation.  I will avail myself of it
+if I can.  Your new friend will be present?  Who and what is he,--a
+medical student?"
+
+"No, a mere gentleman at ease, but seems to have a good deal of general
+information.  Very young, apparently very rich, wonderfully good-looking.
+I am sure you will like him; everybody must."
+
+"It is quite enough to prepare me to like him that he is a friend of
+yours."  And so we shook hands and parted.
+
+[1] Mrs. Poyntz here makes a mistake in law which, though very evident,
+her listeners do not seem to have noticed.  Her mistake will be referred
+to later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able to
+join the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa about two
+miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardens
+celebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty.  The breakfast had been
+long over; the company was scattered over the lawn,--some formed into a
+dance on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; others gliding
+amidst parterres, in which all the glow of colour took a glory yet more
+vivid under the flush of a brilliant sunshine; and the ripple of a soft
+western breeze.  Music, loud and lively, mingled with the laughter of
+happy children, who formed much the larger number of the party.
+
+Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from the hardier
+flowers of the lawn to a rare collection of tropical plants under a lofty
+glass dome (connecting, as it were, the familiar vegetation of the North
+with that of the remotest East), was a form that instantaneously caught
+and fixed my gaze.  The entrance of the arcade was covered with parasite
+creepers, in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeous tints,--scarlet,
+golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture of man's youth fresh
+from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame of blooms.
+
+Never have I seen human face so radiant as that young man's.  There was in
+the aspect an indescribable something that literally dazzled.  As one
+continued to gaze, it was with surprise; one was forced to acknowledge
+that in the features themselves there was no faultless regularity; nor was
+the young man's stature imposing, about the middle height.  But the effect
+of the whole was not less transcendent.  Large eyes, unspeakably lustrous;
+a most harmonious colouring; an expression of contagious animation and
+joyousness; and the form itself so critically fine, that the welded
+strength of its sinews was best shown in the lightness and grace of its
+movements.
+
+He was resting one hand carelessly on the golden locks of a child that had
+nestled itself against his knees, looking up to his face in that silent
+loving wonder with which children regard something too strangely beautiful
+for noisy admiration; he himself was conversing with the host, an old
+gray-haired, gouty man, propped on his crutched stick, and listening with
+a look of mournful envy.  To the wealth of the old man all the flowers in
+that garden owed their renewed delight in the summer air and sun.  Oh,
+that his wealth could renew to himself one hour of the youth whose
+incarnation stood beside him, Lord, indeed, of Creation; its splendour
+woven into his crown of beauty, its enjoyments subject to his sceptre of
+hope and gladness.
+
+I was startled by the hearty voice of the merchant's son.  "Ah, my dear
+Fenwick, I was afraid you would not come,--you are late.  There is the new
+friend of whom I spoke to you last night; let me now make you acquainted
+with him."  He drew my arm in his, and led me up to the young man, where
+he stood under the arching flowers, and whom he then introduced to me by
+the name of Margrave.
+
+Nothing could be more frankly cordial than Mr. Margrave's manner.  In a
+few minutes I found myself conversing with him familiarly, as if we had
+been reared in the same home, and sported together in the same playground.
+His vein of talk was peculiar, off-hand, careless, shifting from topic to
+topic with a bright rapidity.
+
+He said that he liked the place; proposed to stay in it some weeks; asked
+my address, which I gave to him; promised to call soon at an early hour,
+while my time was yet free from professional visits.  I endeavoured, when
+I went away, to analyze to myself the fascination which this young
+stranger so notably exercised over all who approached him; and it seemed
+to me, ever seeking to find material causes for all moral effects, that it
+rose from the contagious vitality of that rarest of all rare gifts in
+highly-civilized circles,--perfect health; that health which is in itself
+the most exquisite luxury; which, finding happiness in the mere sense of
+existence, diffuses round it, like an atmosphere, the harmless hilarity of
+its bright animal being.  Health, to the utmost perfection, is seldom
+known after childhood; health to the utmost cannot be enjoyed by those who
+overwork the brain, or admit the sure wear and tear of the passions.  The
+creature I had just seen gave me the notion of youth in the golden age of
+the poets,--the youth of the careless Arcadian, before nymph or
+shepherdess had vexed his heart with a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The house I occupied at L---- was a quaint, old-fashioned building, a
+corner-house.  One side, in which was the front entrance, looked upon a
+street which, as there were no shops in it, and it was no direct
+thoroughfare to the busy centres of the town, was always quiet, and at
+some hours of the day almost deserted.  The other side of the house
+fronted a lane; opposite to it was the long and high wall of the garden to
+a Young Ladies' Boarding-school.  My stables adjoined the house, abutting
+on a row of smaller buildings, with little gardens before them, chiefly
+occupied by mercantile clerks and retired tradesmen.  By the lane there
+was a short and ready access both to the high turnpike-road, and to some
+pleasant walks through green meadows and along the banks of a river.
+
+This house I had inhabited since my arrival at L----, and it had to me so
+many attractions, in a situation sufficiently central to be convenient for
+patients, and yet free from noise, and favourable to ready outlet into the
+country for such foot or horse exercise as my professional avocations
+would allow me to carve for myself out of what the Latin poet calls the
+"solid day," that I had refused to change it for one better suited to my
+increased income; but it was not a house which Mrs. Ashleigh would have
+liked for Lilian.  The main objection to it in the eyes of the "genteel"
+was, that it had formerly belonged to a member of the healing profession
+who united the shop of an apothecary to the diploma of a surgeon; but that
+shop had given the house a special attraction to me; for it had been built
+out on the side of the house which fronted the lane, occupying the greater
+portion of a small gravel court, fenced from the road by a low iron
+palisade, and separated from the body of the house itself by a short and
+narrow corridor that communicated with the entrance-hall.  This shop I
+turned into a rude study for scientific experiments, in which I generally
+spent some early hours of the morning, before my visiting patients began
+to arrive.  I enjoyed the stillness of its separation from the rest of
+the house; I enjoyed the glimpse of the great chestnut-trees, which
+overtopped the wall of the school-garden; I enjoyed the ease with which,
+by opening the glazed sash-door, I could get out, if disposed for a short
+walk, into the pleasant fields; and so completely had I made this
+sanctuary my own, that not only my man-servant knew that I was never to be
+disturbed when in it, except by the summons of a patient, but even the
+housemaid was forbidden to enter it with broom or duster, except upon
+special invitation.  The last thing at night, before retiring to rest, it
+was the man-servant's business to see that the sash-window was closed,
+and the gate to the iron palisade locked; but during the daytime I so
+often went out of the house by that private way that the gate was then
+very seldom locked, nor the sash-door bolted from within.  In the town of
+L---- there was little apprehension of house-robberies,--especially in the
+daylight,--and certainly in this room, cut off from the main building,
+there was nothing to attract a vulgar cupidity.  A few of the apothecary's
+shelves and cases still remained on the walls, with, here and there, a
+bottle of some chemical preparation for experiment; two or three
+worm-eaten, wooden chairs; two or three shabby old tables; an old
+walnut-tree bureau without a lock, into which odds and ends were
+confusedly thrust, and sundry ugly-looking inventions of mechanical
+science, were, assuredly, not the articles which a timid proprietor would
+guard with jealous care from the chances of robbery.  It will be seen
+later why I have been thus prolix in description.  The morning after I had
+met the young stranger by whom I had been so favourably impressed, I was
+up as usual, a little before the sun, and long before any of my servants
+were astir.  I went first into the room I have mentioned, and which I
+shall henceforth designate as my study, opened the window, unlocked the
+gate, and sauntered for some minutes up and down the silent lace skirting
+the opposite wall, and overhung by the chestnut-trees rich in the
+garniture of a glorious summer; then, refreshed for work, I re-entered my
+study, and was soon absorbed in the examination of that now well-known
+machine, which was then, to me at least, a novelty,--invented, if I
+remember right, by Dubois-Reymond, so distinguished by his researches into
+the mysteries of organic electricity.  It is a wooden cylinder fixed
+against the edge of a table; on the table two vessels filled with salt and
+water are so placed that, as you close your hands on the cylinder, the
+forefinger of each hand can drop into the water; each of the vessels has a
+metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvanometer with its
+needle.  Now the theory is, that if you clutch the cylinder firmly with
+the right hand, leaving the left perfectly passive, the needle in the
+galvanometer will move from west to south; if, in like manner, you exert
+the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from
+west to north.  Hence, it is argued that the electric current is induced
+through the agency of the nervous system, and that, as human Will produces
+the muscular contraction requisite, so is it human Will that causes the
+deflection of the needle.  I imagine that if this theory were
+substantiated by experiment, the discovery might lead to some sublime and
+unconjectured secrets of science.  For human Will, thus actively effective
+on the electric current, and all matter, animate or inanimate, having more
+or less of electricity, a vast field became opened to conjecture.  By what
+series of patient experimental deduction might not science arrive at the
+solution of problems which the Newtonian law of gravitation does not
+suffice to solve; and--But here I halt.  At the date which my story has
+reached, my mind never lost itself long in the Cloudland of Guess.
+
+I was dissatisfied with my experiment.  The needle stirred, indeed, but
+erratically, and not in directions which, according to the theory, should
+correspond to my movement.  I was about to dismiss the trial with some
+uncharitable contempt of the foreign philosopher's dogmas, when I heard a
+loud ring at my street-door.  While I paused to conjecture whether my
+servant was yet up to attend to the door, and which of my patients was the
+most likely to summon me at so unseasonable an hour, a shadow darkened my
+window.  I looked up, and to my astonishment beheld the brilliant face of
+Mr. Margrave.  The sash to the door was already partially opened; he
+raised it higher, and walked into the room.  "Was it you who rang at the
+street-door, and at this hour?" said I.
+
+"Yes; and observing, after I had rung, that all the shutters were still
+closed, I felt ashamed of my own rash action, and made off rather than
+brave the reproachful face of some injured housemaid, robbed of her
+morning dreams.  I turned down that pretty lane,--lured by the green of
+the chestnut-trees,--caught sight of you through the window, took courage,
+and here I am!  You forgive me?"  While thus speaking, he continued to
+move along the littered floor of the dingy room, with the undulating
+restlessness of some wild animal in the confines of its den, and he now
+went on, in short fragmentary sentences, very slightly linked together,
+but smoothed, as it were, into harmony by a voice musical and fresh as a
+sky lark's warble.  "Morning dreams, indeed! dreams that waste the life
+of such a morning.  Rosy magnificence of a summer dawn!  Do you not pity
+the fool who prefers to lie a bed, and to dream rather than to live?
+What! and you, strong man, with those noble limbs, in this den!  Do you
+not long for a rush through the green of the fields, a bath in the blue of
+the river?"
+
+Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the gray light of the growing
+day, with eyes whose joyous lustre forestalled the sun's, and lips which
+seemed to laugh even in repose.
+
+But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright, glanced over the
+walls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the mechanical inventions, and
+then rested full on my cylinder fixed to the table.  He approached,
+examined it curiously, asked what it was.  I explained.  To gratify him I
+sat down and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success.  The needle,
+which should have moved from west to south, describing an angle of from
+thirty degrees to forty or even fifty degrees, only made a few troubled,
+undecided oscillations.
+
+"Tut," cried the young man, "I see what it is; you have a wound in your
+right hand."
+
+That was true; I had burned my band a few days before in a chemical
+experiment, and the sore had not healed.
+
+"Well," said I, "and what does that matter?"
+
+"Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand produces chemical
+actions on the electric current, independently of your will.  Let me try."
+
+He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the galvanometer responded
+to his grasp on the cylinder, exactly as the inventive philosopher had
+stated to be the due result of the experiment.
+
+I was startled.
+
+"But how came you, Mr. Margrave, to be so well acquainted with a
+scientific process little known, and but recently discovered?"
+
+"I well acquainted! not so.  But I am fond of all experiments that relate
+to animal life.  Electricity, especially, is full of interest."
+
+On that I drew him out (as I thought), and he talked volubly.  I was
+amazed to find this young man, in whose brain I had conceived thought kept
+one careless holiday, was evidently familiar with the physical sciences,
+and especially with chemistry, which was my own study by predilection.
+But never had I met with a student in whom a knowledge so extensive was
+mixed up with notions so obsolete or so crotchety.  In one sentence he
+showed that he had mastered some late discovery by Faraday or Liebig; in
+the next sentence he was talking the wild fallacies of Cardan or Van
+Helmont.  I burst out laughing at some paradox about sympathetic powders,
+which he enounced as if it were a recognized truth.
+
+"Pray tell me," said I, "who was your master in physics; for a cleverer
+pupil never had a more crack-brained teacher."
+
+"No," he answered, with his merry laugh, "it is not the teacher's fault.
+I am a mere parrot; just cry out a few scraps of learning picked up here
+and there.  But, however, I am fond of all researches into Nature; all
+guesses at her riddles.  To tell you the truth, one reason why I have
+taken to you so heartily is not only that your published work caught my
+fancy in the dip which I took into its contents (pardon me if I say dip, I
+never do more than dip into any book), but also because young ---- tells
+me that which all whom I have met in this town confirm; namely, that you
+are one of those few practical chemists who are at once exceedingly
+cautious and exceedingly bold,--willing to try every new experiment, but
+submitting experiment to rigid tests.  Well, I have an experiment running
+wild in this giddy head of mine, and I want you, some day when at leisure,
+to catch it, fix it as you have fixed that cylinder, make something of it.
+I am sure you can."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Something akin to the theories in your work.  You would replenish or
+preserve to each special constitution the special substance that may fail
+to the equilibrium of its health.  But you own that in a large
+proportion of cases the best cure of disease is less to deal with the
+disease itself than to support and stimulate the whole system, so as to
+enable Nature to cure the disease and restore the impaired equilibrium by
+her own agencies.  Thus, if you find that in certain cases of nervous
+debility a substance like nitric acid is efficacious, it is because the
+nitric acid has a virtue in locking up, as it were, the nervous
+energy,--that is, preventing all undue waste.  Again, in some cases of
+what is commonly called feverish cold, stimulants like ammonia assist
+Nature itself to get rid of the disorder that oppresses its normal action;
+and, on the same principle, I apprehend, it is contended that a large
+average of human lives is saved in those hospitals which have adopted the
+supporting system of ample nourishment and alcoholic stimulants."
+
+"Your medical learning surprises me," said I, smiling; "and without
+pausing to notice where it deals somewhat superficially with disputable
+points in general, and my own theory in particular, I ask you for the
+deduction you draw from your premises."
+
+"It is simply this: that to all animate bodies, however various, there
+must be one principle in common,--the vital principle itself.  What if
+there be one certain means of recruiting that principle; and what if that
+secret can be discovered?"
+
+"Pshaw!  The old illusion of the mediaeval empirics."
+
+"Not so.  But the mediaeval empirics were great discoverers.  You sneer at
+Van Helmont, who sought, in water, the principle of all things; but Van
+Helmont discovered in his search those invisible bodies called gases.  Now
+the principle of life must be certainly ascribed to a gas.[1]  And what
+ever is a gas chemistry should not despair of producing!  But I can argue
+no longer now,--never can argue long at a stretch; we are wasting the
+morning; and, joy! the sun is up!  See!  Out! come out! out! and greet
+the great Lifegiver face to face."
+
+I could not resist the young man's invitation.  In a few minutes we were
+in the quiet lane under the glinting chestnut-trees.  Margrave was
+chanting, low, a wild tune,--words in a strange language.
+
+"What words are those,--no European language, I think; for I know a little
+of most of the languages which are spoken in our quarter of the globe, at
+least by its more civilized races."
+
+"Civilized race!  What is civilization?  Those words were uttered by men
+who founded empires when Europe itself was not civilized!  Hush, is it not
+a grand old air?" and lifting his eyes towards the sun, he gave vent to a
+voice clear and deep as a mighty bell!  The air was grand; the words had a
+sonorous swell that suited it, and they seemed to me jubilant and yet
+solemn.  He stopped abruptly as a path from the lane had led us into the
+fields, already half-bathed in sunlight, dews glittering on the hedgerows.
+
+"Your song," said I, "would go well with the clash of cymbals or the peal
+of the organ.  I am no judge of melody, but this strikes me as that of a
+religious hymn."
+
+"I compliment you on the guess.  It is a Persian fire-worshipper's hymn to
+the sun.  The dialect is very different from modern Persian.  Cyrus the
+Great might have chanted it on his march upon Babylon."
+
+"And where did you learn it?"
+
+"In Persia itself."
+
+"You have travelled much, learned much,--and are so young and so fresh.
+Is it an impertinent question if I ask whether your parents are yet
+living, or are you wholly lord of yourself?"
+
+"Thank you for the question,--pray make my answer known in the town.
+Parents I have not,--never had."
+
+"Never had parents!"
+
+"Well, I ought rather to say that no parents ever owned me.  I am a
+natural son, a vagabond, a nobody.  When I came of age I received an
+anonymous letter, informing me that a sum--I need not say what, but more
+than enough for all I need--was lodged at an English banker's in my name;
+that my mother had died in my infancy; that my father was also dead--but
+recently; that as I was a child of love, and he was unwilling that the
+secret of my birth should ever be traced, he had provided for me, not by
+will, but in his life, by a sum consigned to the trust of the friend who
+now wrote to me; I need give myself no trouble to learn more.  Faith, I
+never did!  I am young, healthy, rich,--yes, rich!  Now you know all, and
+you had better tell it, that I may win no man's courtesy and no maiden's
+love upon false pretences.  I have not even a right, you see, to the name
+I bear.  Hist! let me catch that squirrel."
+
+With what a panther-like bound he sprang!  The squirrel eluded his grasp,
+and was up the oak-tree; in a moment he was up the oak-tree too.  In
+amazement I saw him rising from bough to bough; saw his bright eyes and
+glittering teeth through the green leaves.  Presently I heard the sharp
+piteous cry of the squirrel, echoed by the youth's merry laugh; and down,
+through that maze of green, Hargrave came, dropping on the grass and
+bounding up, as Mercury might have bounded with his wings at his heels.
+
+"I have caught him.  What pretty brown eyes!"
+
+Suddenly the gay expression of his face changed to that of a savage; the
+squirrel had wrenched itself half-loose, and bitten him.  The poor brute!
+In an instant its neck was wrung, its body dashed on the ground; and that
+fair young creature, every feature quivering with rage, was stamping his
+foot on his victim again and again!  It was horrible.  I caught him by the
+arm indignantly.  He turned round on me like a wild beast disturbed from
+its prey,--his teeth set, his hand lifted, his eyes like balls of fire.
+
+"Shame!" said I, calmly; "shame on you!"
+
+He continued to gaze on me a moment or so, his eye glaring, his breath
+panting; and then, as if mastering himself with an involuntary effort, his
+arm dropped to his side, and he said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon;
+indeed I do.  I was beside myself for a moment; I cannot bear pain; "and
+he looked in deep compassion for himself at his wounded hand.  "Venomous
+brute!"  And he stamped again on the body of the squirrel, already crushed
+out of shape.
+
+I moved away in disgust, and walked on.
+
+But presently I felt my arm softly drawn aside, and a voice, dulcet as the
+coo of a dove, stole its way into my ears.  There was no resisting the
+charm with which this extraordinary mortal could fascinate even the hard
+and the cold; nor them, perhaps, the least.  For as you see in extreme old
+age, when the heart seems to have shrunk into itself, and to leave but
+meagre and nipped affections for the nearest relations if grown up, the
+indurated egotism softens at once towards a playful child; or as you see
+in middle life, some misanthrope, whose nature has been soured by wrong
+and sorrow, shrink from his own species, yet make friends with inferior
+races, and respond to the caress of a dog,--so, for the worldling or the
+cynic, there was an attraction in the freshness of this joyous favourite
+of Nature,--an attraction like that of a beautiful child, spoilt and
+wayward, or of a graceful animal, half docile, half fierce.
+
+"But," said I, with a smile, as I felt all displeasure gone, "such
+indulgence of passion for such a trifle is surely unworthy a student of
+philosophy!"
+
+"Trifle," he said dolorously.  "But I tell you it is pain; pain is no
+trifle.  I suffer.  Look!"
+
+I looked at the hand, which I took in mine.  The bite no doubt had been
+sharp; but the hand that lay in my own was that which the Greek sculptor
+gives to a gladiator; not large (the extremities are never large in
+persons whose strength comes from the just proportion of all the members,
+rather than the factitious and partial force which continued muscular
+exertion will give to one part of the frame, to the comparative weakening
+of the rest), but with the firm-knit joints, the solid fingers, the
+finished nails, the massive palm, the supple polished skin, in which we
+recognize what Nature designs the human hand to be,--the skilled, swift,
+mighty doer of all those marvels which win Nature herself from the
+wilderness.
+
+"It is strange," said I, thoughtfully; "but your susceptibility to
+suffering confirms my opinion, which is different from the popular
+belief,--namely, that pain is most acutely felt by those in whom the
+animal organization being perfect, and the sense of vitality exquisitely
+keen, every injury or lesion finds the whole system rise, as it were, to
+repel the mischief and communicate the consciousness of it to all those
+nerves which are the sentinels to the garrison of life.  Yet my theory is
+scarcely borne out by general fact.  The Indian savages must have a health
+as perfect as yours; a nervous system as fine,--witness their marvellous
+accuracy of ear, of eye, of scent, probably also of touch; yet they are
+indifferent to physical pain; or must I mortify your pride by saying that
+they have some moral quality defective in you which enables them to rise
+superior to it?"
+
+"The Indian savages," said Margrave, sullenly, "have not a health as
+perfect as mine, and in what you call vitality--the blissful consciousness
+of life--they are as sticks and stones compared to me."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because I have lived with them.  It is a fallacy to suppose that the
+savage has a health superior to that of the civilized man,--if the
+civilized man be but temperate; and even if not, he has the stamina that
+can resist for years the effect of excesses which would destroy the savage
+in a month.  As to the savage's fine perceptions of sense, such do not
+come from exquisite equilibrium of system, but are hereditary attributes
+transmitted from race to race, and strengthened by training from infancy.
+But is a pointer stronger and healthier than a mastiff, because the
+pointer through long descent and early teaching creeps stealthily to his
+game and stands to it motionless?  I will talk of this later; now I
+suffer!  Pain, pain!  Has life any ill but pain?"
+
+It so happened that I had about me some roots of the white lily, which I
+meant, before returning home, to leave with a patient suffering from one
+of those acute local inflammations, in which that simple remedy often
+affords great relief.  I cut up one of these roots, and bound the cooling
+leaves to the wounded hand with my handkerchief.
+
+"There," said I.  "Fortunately if you feel pain more sensibly than others,
+you will recover from it more quickly."  And in a few minutes my
+companion felt perfectly relieved, and poured out his gratitude with an
+extravagance of expression and a beaming delight of countenance which
+positively touched me.
+
+"I almost feel," said I, "as I do when I have stilled an infant's wailing,
+and restored it smiling to its mother's breast."
+
+"You have done so.  I am an infant, and Nature is my mother.  Oh, to be
+restored to the full joy of life, the scent of wild flowers, the song of
+birds, and this air--summer air--summer air!"
+
+I know not why it was, but at that moment, looking at him and hearing him,
+I rejoiced that Lilian was not at L----.  "But I came out to bathe.  Can
+we not bathe in that stream?"
+
+"No.  You would derange the bandage round your hand; and for all bodily
+ills, from the least to the gravest, there is nothing like leaving Nature
+at rest the moment we have hit on the means which assist her own efforts
+at cure."
+
+"I obey, then; but I so love the water."
+
+"You swim, of course?"
+
+"Ask the fish if it swim.  Ask the fish if it can escape me!  I delight to
+dive down--down; to plunge after the startled trout, as an otter does; and
+then to get amongst those cool, fragrant reeds and bulrushes, or that
+forest of emerald weed which one sometimes finds waving under clear
+rivers.  Man! man! could you live but an hour of my life you would know
+how horrible a thing it is to die!"
+
+"Yet the dying do not think so; they pass away calm and smiling, as you
+will one day."
+
+"I--I! die one day--die!" and he sank on the grass, and buried his face
+amongst the herbage, sobbing aloud.
+
+Before I could get through half a dozen words I meant to soothe, he had
+once more bounded up, dashed the tears from his eyes, and was again
+singing some wild, barbaric chant.  Abstracting itself from the appeal to
+its outward sense by melodies of which the language was unknown, my mind
+soon grew absorbed in meditative conjectures on the singular nature, so
+wayward, so impulsive, which had forced intimacy on a man grave and
+practical as myself.
+
+I was puzzled how to reconcile so passionate a childishness, so
+undisciplined a want of self-control, with an experience of mankind so
+extended by travel, with an education desultory and irregular indeed, but
+which must, at some time or other, have been familiarized to severe
+reasonings and laborious studies.  In Margrave there seemed to be wanting
+that mysterious something which is needed to keep our faculties, however
+severally brilliant, harmoniously linked together,--as the string by
+which a child mechanically binds the wildflowers it gathers, shaping them
+at choice into the garland or the chain.
+
+[1] "According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a
+gas, that is, to an aeriform body."--Liebig: "Organic Chemistry,"
+Mayfair's translation, p.363.--It is perhaps not less superfluous to add
+that Liebig does not support the views "according to which life must be
+ascribed to a gas," than it would be to state, had Dugald Stewart been
+quoted as writing, "According to the views we have mentioned the mind is
+but a bundle of impressions," that Dugald Stewart was not supporting, but
+opposing, the views of David Hume.  The quotation is merely meant to show,
+in the shortest possible compass, that there are views entertained by
+speculative reasoners of our day which, according to Liebig, would lead to
+the inference at which Margrave so boldly arrives.  Margrave is, however,
+no doubt, led to his belief by his reminiscences of Van Helmont, to whose
+discovery of gas he is referring.  Van Helmont plainly affirms "that the
+arterial spirit of our life is of the nature of a gas;" and in the same
+chapter (on the fiction of elementary complexions and mixtures) says,
+"Seeing that the spirit of our life, since it is a gas, is most mightily
+and swiftly affected by any other gas," etc.  He repeats the same dogma in
+his treatise on "Long Life," and indeed very generally throughout his
+writings, observing, in his chapter on the Vital Air, that the spirit of
+life is a salt, sharp vapour, made of the arterial blood, etc.  Liebig,
+therefore, in confuting some modern notions as to the nature of contagion
+by miasma, is leading their reasonings back to that assumption in the
+Brawn of physiological science by which the discoverer of gas exalted into
+the principle of life the substance to which he first gave the name, now
+so familiarly known.  It is nevertheless just to Van Helmont to add that
+his conception of the vital principle was very far from being as purely
+materialistic as it would seem to those unacquainted with his writings;
+for he carefully distinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to
+a gas, and by which he means the sensuous animal life, from the
+intellectual immortal principle of soul.  Van Helmont, indeed, was a
+sincere believer of Divine Revelation.  "The Lord Jesus is the way, the
+truth, and the life," says with earnest humility this daring genius, in
+that noble chapter "On the completing of the mind by the 'prayer of
+silence,' and the loving offering tip of the heart, soul, and strength to
+the obedience of the Divine will," from which some of the most eloquent of
+recent philosophers, arguing against materialism, have borrowed largely in
+support and in ornament of their lofty cause.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRANGE STORY, LYTTON, V2 ***
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