CHAPTER 5.IV.
Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
Die Einsamkeit belebt;
Wie uber seinen Welten
Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
Uhland.
(I feel thee near to me,
The loneliness takes life,--
As over its world
The Invisible hovers.)
From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than
continuous action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to
exercise the most salutary influence over him. His sister, an
orphan with himself, had resided in the country with her aunt.
In the early years of hope and home he had loved this girl, much
younger than himself, with all a brother's tenderness. On his
return to England, he had seemed to forget her existence. She
recalled herself to him on her aunt's death by a touching and
melancholy letter: she had now no home but his,--no dependence
save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was impatient
till Adela arrived.
This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and
calm exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her
own age, characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a
far purer order, and was restrained within proper bounds, partly
by the sweetness of a very feminine nature, and partly by a
strict and methodical education. She differed from him
especially in a timidity of character which exceeded that usual
at her age, but which the habit of self-command concealed no less
carefully than that timidity itself concealed the romance I have
ascribed to her.
Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of
delicate health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves
rendered her susceptible to every impression that could influence
the health of the frame through the sympathy of the mind. But as
she never complained, and as the singular serenity of her manners
seemed to betoken an equanimity of temperament which, with the
vulgar, might have passed for indifference, her sufferings had so
long been borne unnoticed that it ceased to be an effort to
disguise them. Though, as I have said, not handsome, her
countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there was that
caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her
manners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which
went at once to the heart, and made her lovely,--because so
loving.
Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom
he now so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a
victim to the caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish
and exacting relation. The delicate and generous and respectful
affection of her brother was no less new to her than delightful.
He took pleasure in the happiness he created; he gradually weaned
himself from other society; he felt the charm of home. It is not
surprising, then, that this young creature, free and virgin from
every more ardent attachment, concentrated all her grateful love
on this cherished and protecting relative. Her study by day, her
dream by night, was to repay him for his affection. She was
proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare; the smallest trifle
that could interest him swelled in her eyes to the gravest
affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm,
which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this
one object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which
he had so long sought to occupy his time or distract his
thoughts, the gloom of his calmer hours became deeper and more
continuous. He ever and especially dreaded to be alone; he could
not bear his new companion to be absent from his eyes: he rode
with her, walked with her, and it was with visible reluctance,
which almost partook of horror, that he retired to rest at an
hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was not that
which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,--it was far
more intense; it seemed rather like despair. Often after a
silence as of death--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it
appear--he would start abruptly, and cast hurried glances around
him,--his limbs trembling, his lips livid, his brows bathed in
dew. Convinced that some secret sorrow preyed upon his mind, and
would consume his health, it was the dearest as the most natural
desire of Adela to become his confidant and consoler. She
observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he disliked
her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.
She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She
would not ask his confidence,--she sought to steal into it. By
little and little she felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped
in his own strange existence to be acutely observant of the
character of others, Glyndon mistook the self-content of a
generous and humble affection for constitutional fortitude; and
this quality pleased and soothed him. It is fortitude that the
diseased mind requires in the confidant whom it selects as its
physician. And how irresistible is that desire to communicate!
How often the lonely man thought to himself, "My heart would be
lightened of its misery, if once confessed!" He felt, too, that
in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of
Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him
better than any sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would
have looked on his revelations as the ravings of madness, and
most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras, the optical
delusions, of disease. Thus gradually preparing himself for that
relief for which he yearned, the moment for his disclosure
arrived thus:--
One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited
some portion of her brother's talent in art, was employed in
drawing, and Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less
gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm round
her waist, looked over her as she sat. An exclamation of dismay
broke from his lips,--he snatched the drawing from her hand:
"What are you about?--what portrait is this?"
"Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy
from that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother
used to say so strongly resembled you. I thought it would please
you if I copied it from memory."
"Accursed was the likeness!" said Glyndon, gloomily. "Guess you
not the reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my
fathers!--because I dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--
because--but pardon me; I alarm you!"
"Ah, no,--no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only
when you are silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust;
oh, if you had given me the right to reason with you in the
sorrows that I yearn to share!"
Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her
earnestly. "Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that
such men have lived and suffered; you will not mock me,-- you
will not disbelieve! Listen! hark!--what sound is that?"
"But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,--but the wind."
"Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have
told you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all:
swear that it shall die with us,--the last of our predestined
race!"
"Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,--never!" said Adela,
firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced
his story. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds
prepared to question and disbelieve, may seem cold and
terrorless, became far different when told by those blanched
lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces and
appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily
softened; but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible
and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. "At daybreak,"
he said, "I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had one
hope still,--I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would
force him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With
this intent I journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most
vigilant researches through the police of Italy. I even employed
the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had lately
asserted its ancient powers in the trial of the less dangerous
Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of him could be
discovered. I was not alone, Adela." Here Glyndon paused a
moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely
say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the
reader may surmise to be his companion. "I was not alone, but
the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could
confide,--faithful and affectionate, but without education,
without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather
than cultivated reason; one in whom the heart might lean in its
careless hours, but with whom the mind could have no commune, in
whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide. Yet in the
society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let me explain
yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarse
excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce
excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we
share with the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was
unheard. But whenever the soul would aspire, whenever the
imagination kindled to the loftier ends, whenever the
consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against the
unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my side
in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,--a Darkness visible
through the Dark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams
of my youth woke the early emulation,--if I turned to the
thoughts of sages; if the example of the great, if the converse
of the wise, aroused the silenced intellect, the demon was with
me as by a spell. At last, one evening, at Genoa, to which city
I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly, and when
least expected, he appeared before me. It was the time of the
Carnival. It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise
and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen
saturnalia in the midst of a Christian festival. Wearied with
the dance, I had entered a room in which several revellers were
seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and in their fantastic
dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely human. I
placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of the
spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous
of all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which
had always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks
spoke of the millennium it was to bring on earth, not as
philosophers rejoicing in the advent of light, but as ruffians
exulting in the annihilation of law. I know not why it was, but
their licentious language infected myself; and, always desirous
to be foremost in every circle, I soon exceeded even these
rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty which was
about to embrace all the families of the globe,--a liberty that
should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; an
emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for
themselves. In the midst of this tirade one of the masks
whispered me,--
"'Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!'
"My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who
took no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon
me. He was disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general
whisper that none had observed him enter. His silence, his
attention, had alarmed the fears of the other revellers,--they
only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject, I pursued it,
insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing myself
only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I
did not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off,
and that I and the silent listener were left alone, until,
pausing from my heated and impetuous declamations, I said,--
"'And you, signor,--what is your view of this mighty era?
Opinion without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love
without bondage--'
"'And life without God,' added the mask as I hesitated for new
images.
"The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my
thought. I sprang forward, and cried,--
"'Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!'
"The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the
features of Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed
and repelled me. I stood rooted to the ground.
"'Yes,' he said solemnly, 'we meet, and it is this meeting that I
have sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these
the scenes in which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to
escape the Ghastly Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--
thoughts that would strike all order from the universe--express
the hopes of the sage who would rise to the Harmony of the
Eternal Spheres?'
"'It is thy fault,--it is thine!' I exclaimed. 'Exorcise the
phantom! Take the haunting terror from my soul!'
Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain
which provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--
"'No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and
entire experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is
without Faith climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this
Millennium,--thou shalt behold it! Thou shalt be one of the
agents of the era of Light and Reason. I see, while I speak, the
Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it marshals thy path; it has
power over thee as yet,--a power that defies my own. In the last
days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst the wrecks of
the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment of thy
destiny, and await thy cure.'
"At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated,
reeling, and rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and
separated me from the mystic. I broke through them, and sought
him everywhere, but in vain. All my researches the next day were
equally fruitless. Weeks were consumed in the same pursuit,--not
a trace of Mejnour could be discovered. Wearied with false
pleasures, roused by reproaches I had deserved, recoiling from
Mejnour's prophecy of the scene in which I was to seek
deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air of
my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits,
I might work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left
all whom I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither.
Amidst mercenary schemes and selfish speculations, I found the
same relief as in debauch and excess. The Phantom was invisible;
but these pursuits soon became to me distasteful as the rest.
Ever and ever I felt that I was born for something nobler than
the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally worthless, and
the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as by the
noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment me.
But, but," continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible
shudder, "at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came
that hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before
the volumes of poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in
the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible
whispers uttering temptations never to be divulged." He paused,
and the drops stood upon his brow.
"But I," said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms
around him,--"but I henceforth will have no life but in thine.
And in this love so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away."
"No, no!" exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. "The worst
revelation is to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have
sternly and resolutely refrained from every haunt, every scene in
which this preternatural enemy troubled me not, I--I--have-- Oh,
Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There it stands,--there, by thy side,--
there, there!" And he fell to the ground insensible.
