490O £Saq V/ 4 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 064 981 388 B Cornell University 9 Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924064981 388 ISrOYELS OF SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON Etbrarg SEtittton ROMANCES Vol. IV. Her eyes were fixed upon the horizon. A Strange Story, /. 27. A STRANGE STORY. TO -Vl-HICH IS ADDED, THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS. BY EDWAED BULWEE LYTTON {LORD LYTTON.) " To doubt and to be astonished is to recognize our ignorance. Hence it is that the lover of wisdom is in a certain sort a lover of mythi (i^iAoVudo's TTM?), for the subject of mythi is the astonishing and marvellous." — Sib W. Hamilton (after Aristotle), Lect\ires on Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 78. IK TWO VOLUMES. Vol. I. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1893. PR V, If Copyright, 189S, Br Little, Brown, and Company. Z' ,ge.'s 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 wan- derings, resting spellbound 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 bound- less 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 crea- ture has over him a sovereignty more supreme and abso- lute than Orient servitude adores in the symbols of diadem and sceptre 1 What crest so haughty that has 106 A STRANGE STORY. not bowed before a hand which couhl exalt or humble ! What heart so dauntless that has not trembled to call ■ forth the voice at whose sound ope the gates of rapture or despair! That life alone is free which rules, and suffices for itself. That life we forfeit when we love! A STRANGE STORY. 107 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 ou the peace of a cloud- less 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 \Jvnew 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 had 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, 108 A STEANGE STOKY. 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, convul- sively, 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 conMe, 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 fo 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, v^hen 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 vapor or veil Avill sud- denly 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 A STRANGE STORY. 109 themselves 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 T 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 power- ful, 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 — " 110 A STRANGE STOEY. " 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 yoiir 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 vapor, 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 seeil was van- ished. 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 recog- nizing the countenance which had gleamed on me from the skies before the dark vapor 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, A STRANGE STORY, 111 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 gos- samer 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! " 112 A STRANGE STORY. 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 T, 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 1 " 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 A STKANGE STORY. 113 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 foi" 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. " VOL I. — 8 114 A STRANGE STORY. 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 hut one fault, and I rehuked 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 oi this fail- ing 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 suffer- ing, yet many a young lady on the Hill was more actively beneficent, — visiting the poor in their sick- ness, 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, what- ever the world considers to be a sacrifice and privation, — yet I should never have expected her to take her share A STRANGE STOEY. 115 in the troubles of ordinary life. I could never have applied to her the homely but significant name of help- mate. 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 theliabit of reverie 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 pre- mature 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 116 A STEANGE STOKY. 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 af&anced, 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. A STRANGE STORY. 117 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 experi- ments, then new in chemistry, which were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as to the re-invigora- tion 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 pabukim or energy in which the individual organism is constitutionally deficient, and neutralizing or coun- terbalancing that in which it superabounds, — 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 Miiller, of Berlin, has enriched the science of our age, — however inferior, alas! to that august combination of thought and learning in the 118 A STRANGE STORY. judgment which checks presumption, and the genius which adorns speculation. But at that day I was carried away hy the ardor of composition, and I admired my performance because I loved my labor. 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 MS. 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 favored 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 Mtiller 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 2 " ^ 1 Miiller's "Elements of Physiology," vol. ii. p. 134. Trans- lated by Dr. Baley. A STRANGE STORY. 119 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 I 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; fol- low him out into the world; no mistress ever lived for him there! ■' 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 Sab- bath, — what child is so tender, so yielding and soft? ^ 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. 120 A STRANGE STORY. 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 unmis- takable. I started from my seat, looked roufid, 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 colorless 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 Miiller 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 culti- vate 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. A STRANGE STORY. 121 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 iive 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 sum- moned; 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 horse- back, 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 accom- modation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I felt that I was on the lands of a rich , intelligent, and benefi- cent 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 discolored, mil- dewed, chipped, half -hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most of the windows were closed with shut- ters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the case- ments the panes were broken; the peacock perched on 122 A STRANGE STORY. 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 T 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, parti-gilt. The suddenness with which this Plouse 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 neighborhood 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 apoplodtic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out of immediate danger. After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, T took aside the patient's wife, and went with her to the parlor below stairs, to make some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen and habits of life. These seemed snificiently 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 outi " A STRANGE STORY. 123 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 aught 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 neighboring fair. An hour afterwards he had been found by a shepherd, near the mausoleum, appar- ently 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 i-niently, 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 uncon- scious. 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 fan- cied so astounding a cause for her husband's seizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man 124 A STRANGE STORY. reputed to have more than ordinary learning. And the steward himself objected to the apothecary in the immediate neighborhood, 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 had 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, he had mixed much in the world. When at Derval Court his house had been filled with gay companions, and was the scene of lavish hospi- tality. But the estate was not in proportion to the grandeur of the mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner. He bad become greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so it was rumored) 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 A STRANGE STORY. 125 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 arm-chair, 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, expli- cable, 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 that no phantom, the ghostliest that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous phenomenon. 126 A STKANQE STORY. 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 morn- ing, I turned the conversation on the different country places in the neighborhood, 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 1 " 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 A STKANGE STORY. 127 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-humoredly, " 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 disput- able 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 128 A STRANGE STORY. 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 road- side. 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 1 " 1 asked somewhat sarcastically. " Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nor did T 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 busied in collecting such evidence as could be gleaned, and instituting inquiries after our missing coun- tryman 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 A STRANGE STORY. 129 had a darker suspicion of which he made no secret to me ; but as I confess that I thought the suspicion ground- less, 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 rumor, 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 cun- ningly 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 neighborhood ; 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 VOL. I. — 9 130 A STRAKGE STOKY. 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 scorn- fully 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 A STEANGE STOBY. 131 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 honor, — but he was taken or sent away ; edu- cated 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 tliB 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 bom with a silver spoon in one's mouth ; so it is when one has one's own family crest on it ; but 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 out- laws 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 well-born acquaintances willing to recover from him some of the plunder his father had extorted from 132 A STKANGE STORY. theirs. He was too wild to distinguish himself by academical honors, 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 Grrayle. 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. Per- haps 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 Eichelieus and Lauzuns the rage; but then Eichelieus 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 Parli- ament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a A STEANGE STORY. 133 Mirabeau, but he rtiiglit 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 high-bred, with a tongue like a rapier, a sneer like an adder. A quarrel of course; Louis Grayle sent a challenge. The fine gen- tleman, 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 cus- tom, 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.' He escaped to the Continent; hurried on to some distant uncivilized lands; could not be traced ; reappeared in England no more. The lawyer 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. .134 A STEANGE STORY. 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 sen- tence emphatically marked the aggravated nature of the homicide, — three years' imprisonment. Grayle eluded the prison, but he was a tnan disgraced and an exile, — his ambition blasted, his career an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty4hree. My father said that he was sup- posed to have changed his name ; none knew what had become of him. And so this creature, brilliant and dar- ing, 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 1 " A STRANGE STORY. 135 " 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 some- thing 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 pru- dent 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 olf. " " I fear no rivals. " " Do you not 1 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 1 " 136 A STRANGE STORY. " 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 Penwick, 1 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 holiday-making 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 cofifee-room your last work on the Vital Principle, which, by-the-by, the bookseller assures me is selling immensely among readers as nonprofessional as myself. Coming into the cofifee-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 A STRANGE STORY. 137 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 to-morrow, — 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 1 Who and what is he ? A medical student ? " " No ; a mere gentleman at ease, hut seems to have a good deal of general information. Very young; appar- ently 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. 138 A STRANGE STORY. CHAPTER XXIII. It was late in the afternoon of the following day hefore 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 neighborhood 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 color 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 some- thing that literally dazzled. As one continued to gaze, it was with surprise : one was forced to acknowledge that A STRANGE STORY. 139 in the features themselves there was no faultless regular- ity; nor was the young man's stature imposing, — ahout the middle height. But the effect of the whole was not less transcendent. Large eyes, unspeakably lustrous; a most harmonious coloring; 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, look- ing 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. Ob, that his wealth could renew to himself one hour of the youth whose incarnation stood beside him, Lord, indeed, of Creation ; its splendor 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 140 A STRANGE STOKY. 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 endeavored, 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 shep- herdess had vexed his heart with a sigh. A STRANGE STORY. 141 CHAPTEE 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 mercan- tile 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 situa- tion sufficiently central to be convenient for patients, and yet free from noise, and favorable 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 j 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 142 A STRANGE STOliY. diploma of a surgeon ; biit 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 morn- ing, 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 house- maid 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 A STRANGE STORY, 143 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 favorably 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 lane 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-Eeymond, so distinguished by his researches into the mysteries of organic elec- tricity. 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 fore-finger 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. ITow 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 144 A STRANGE STORY. of the nervous system, and that, as human will pro- duces the muscular contraction requisite, so is it human, will that causes the deflection of the needle. I imag- ined that if this theory were substantiated by experi- ment, 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 philo.sopher'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 1 " said I. " Yes ; and observing, after I had rung, that all the shutters were still closed, T felt ashamed of my own rash action, and made off rather than brave the reproachful face of some injured housemaid, robbed of her morning A STRANGE STORY. 145 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 io 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 rfver ? " 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 1 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 30 deg. to 40 or even 50 deg., 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 hand a few days VOL. I. — 10 146 A STRANGE STOKY. 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, indepen- dently 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 1 " " 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 A STKANGB STOEr, 147 the teacher's faiilt. 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 148 A STRANGE STORY. its normal action; and, on the same principle, I appre- hend, 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, smil- ing, " 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, how- ever various, there must be one principle in common, — the vital principle itself. What if there be one cer- tain 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.'' And whatever is a gas, chemistry 1 " According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a gas, that is, to an aeriform body." — Liebig, " Organic Chemistry," Playfair's translation, p. 363. It is perhaps not less superfluous to add that Liebig does not support the views " accord- ing to which life must be ascribed to a gas," than it would be to state had Dngald Stewart been quoted as writing, " According to the views we have mentioned the mind is but a Ijundle of impres- sions," 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 reasouers 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 A STRANGE STORY. 149 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 Life-giver face to face. " I could not resist the young man's invitation. In a few minutes we were in the quiet lane under the glint- ing chestnut-trees. Margrave was chanting, low, a wild tune, words in a strange language. " What words are those 1 — no European language, I think; for I know a little of most of the languages 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 vapor, 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 dawn 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 ani- mal 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 up 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. 150 A STRANGE STOKY. 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 sun- light, — 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 A STRANGE STORY. 151 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, Margrave 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 hirn. 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 in- dignantly. 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. 152 A STRANGE STOKY. " 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 can- not 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 misan- thrope, 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 attrac- tion in the freshness of this joyous favorite of Nature, — an attraction like that of a beautiful child, spoiled 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! " A STRANGE STOEY. 153 I looked at tlie 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 fin- gers, the finished nails, tlie 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 organ- ization 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 indif- ferent 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 1 " "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." 154 A STRANGE STORY. " How do you know f " " 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 temper- ate; 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 extrava- gance of expression and a beaming delight of counte- nance 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. A. STRANGE STOEY. 155 the scent of wild flowers, the song of hirds, 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 1 " " 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 medita- tive conjectures on the singular nature, so wayward. 156 A STRANGE STORY. so impulsive, which had forced intimacy on a man grave and practical as myself. I was puzzled how to reconcile so passionate a child- ishness, 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 wild flowers it gathers, shaping them at choice into the garland or the chain. A STRANGE STORY. 157 CHAPTER XXV. My intercourse with Margrave grew habitual and familiar. He came to my house every morning before sunrise ; in the evenings we were again brought together : sometimes in the houses to which we were both invited, sometimes at his hotel, sometimes in my own home. Nothing more perplexed me than his aspect of extreme youthfulness, contrasted with the extent of the travels, which, if he were to be believed, had left little of the known world unexplored. One day I asked him bluntly, how old he was. " How old do I look 1 How old should you suppose me to be 1 " " I should have guessed you to be about twenty, till you spoke of having come of age some years ago." " Is it a sign of longevity when a man looks much younger than he is ? " " Conjoined with other signs, certainly ! " " Have I the other signs ? " "Yes; a magniiicent, perhaps a matchless, constitu- tional organization. But you have evaded my question as to your age ; was it an impertinence to put it ? " " No. I came of age — let me see — three years ago. " " So long since? Is it possible? I wish I had your secret! " "Secret! What secret?" " The secret of preserving so much of boyish freshness in the wear and tear of man-like passions and man-like thoughts. " 158 A STRAKTGE STOEY. " You are still young yourself, — under forty ? " " Oh , yes ! some years under forty. " " And Nature gave you a grander frame and a finer symmetry of feature than she bestowed on me. " " Pooh ! pooh ! You have the beauty that must charm the eyes of woman, and that beauty in its sunny fore- noon of youth. Happy man! if you love and wish to be sure that you are loved again." " What you call love — the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish folly — I left behind me, I think forever, when — " " Ay, indeed, —; when ? " " I came of age ! " " Hoary cynic ! and you despise love ! So did I once. Your time may come." "I think not. Does any animal, except man, love its fellow she-animal as man loves woman ? " " As man loves woman ? No , I suppose not. " " And why should the subject animals be wiser than their king? But to return, — you would like to have my youth and my careless enjoyment of youth? " " Can you ask, — who would not ? " Margrave looked at me for a moment with unusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt changes common to his capricious temper- ament, began to sing softly one of his barbaric chants, — a chant different from any I had heard him sing before, — made either by the modulation of his voice or the nature of the tune: so sweet that, little as music generally affected me, this thrilled tb my very heart's core. I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when he paused , — " Is not that a love-song ? " "No," said he; " it is th« song by; which the serpent- charmer charms the serpent. " A STRANGE STOKY. 159 CHAPTER XXVI. Increased intimacy with my new acquaintance did not diminish the charm of his society, though it brought to light some startling defects, both in his mental and moral organization. I have before said that his knowl- edge, though it had swept over a wide circuit and dipped into curious, unfrequented recesses, was desultory and erratic. It certainly was not that knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assures us is " the wing on which we mount to heaven." So, in his facilities them- selves there were singular inequalities, or contradic- tions. His power of memory in some things seemed prodigious, but when examined it was seldom accurate; it could apprehend, but did not hold together with a binding grasp what metaphysicians call " complex ideas." He thus seemed unable to put it to any steadfast purpose in the sciences of which it retained, vaguely and loosely, many recondite principles. For the sublime and beautiful in literature he had no taste whatever. A passionate lover of Nature, his imagination had no response to the arts by which Nature is expressed or idealized; wholly unaffected by poetry or painting. Of the fine arts, music alone attracted and pleased him. His conversation was often eminently suggestive, touching on much, whether in books or mankind, that set one thinking; but I never remember him to have uttered any of those lofty or tender sentiments which form the connecting links between youth and genius. For if poets sing to the young, and the young hail their 160 A STRANGE STORY. own interpreters in poets, it is because the tendency of both is to idealize the realities of life, — finding every- where in the real a something that is noble or fair, and making the fair yet fairer, and the noble nobler still. In Margrave's character there seemed no special vices, no special virtues; but a wonderful vivacity, joy- ousness, animal good-humor. He was singularly tem- perate, having a dislike to wine, perhaps from that purity of taste which belongs to health absolutely per- fect. No healthful child likes alcohol; no animal, except man, prefers wine to water. But his main moral defect seemed to me, in a want of sympathy, even where he professed attachment. He who could feel so acutely for himself, be unmanned by the bite of a squirrel, and sob at the thought that he should one day die, was as callous to the sufferings of another as a deer who deserts and butts from him a wounded comrade. I give an instance of this hardness of heart where I should have least expected to find it in him. He had met and joined me as I was walking to visit a patient on the outskirts of the town, when we fell in with a group of children, just let loose for an hour or two from their day-school. Some of these children joyously recognized him as having played with them at their homes; they ran up to him, and he seemed as glad as themselves at the meeting. He suff'ered them to drag him along with them, and became as merry and sportive as the youngest of the troop. " Well," said I, laughing, " if you are going to play at leap-frog, pray don't let it be on the highroad, or you will be run over by carts and draymen ; see that meadow just in front to the left, — off with you there! " A STRANGE STORY. 161 "With all my heart," cried Margrave, "while you pay your visit. Come along, boys." A little urchin, not above six years old, but who was lame, began to cry, he could not run, — he should be left behind. Margrave stooped. " Climb on my shoulder, little one, and I '11 be your horse." The child dried its tears, and delightedly obeyed. "Certainly," said I to myself, " Margrave, after all, must have a nature as gentle as it is simple. What other young man, so courted by all the allurements that steal innocence from pleasure, would stop in the thor- oughfares to play with children ? " The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when I heard a scream of agony. Margrave had leaped the railing that divided the meadow from the road, and, in so doing, the poor child, perched on his shoul- der, had, perhaps from surprise or fright, loosened its hold and fallen heavily, — its cries were piteous. Mar- grave clapped his hands to his ears, uttered an exclama- tion of anger, and not even stopping to lift up the boy, or examine what the hurt was, called to the other chil- dren to come on, and was soon rolling with them on the grass, and pelting them with daisies. When I came up, only one child remained by the sufferer, — his little brother, a year older than himself. The child had fallen on his arm, which was not broken, but violently contused. The pain must have been intense. I carried the child to his home, and had to remain there some time. I did not see Margrave till the next morning. When he then called, I felt so indignant that I could scarcely speak to him. When at last I rebuked him for his inhumanity, he seemed surprised; with difficulty remembered the circumstance, and then merely said, VOL. I. — 11 162 A STRANGE STORY. — as if it were the most natural confession in the world, — " Oh, nothing so discordant as a child's wail. I hate discords. I am pleased with the company of children; but they must be children who laugh and play. Well, why do you look at me so sternly ? What have I said to shock you ? " "Shook me, — you shock manhood itself! Go; I cannot talk to you now. I am busy." But he did not go; and his voice was so sweet, and his ways so winning, that disgust insensibly melted into that sort of forgiveness one accords (let me repeat the illustration) to the deer that forsakes its comrade. The poor thing knows no better. And what a graceful, beautiful thing this was! The fascination — I can give it no other name — which Margrave exercised, was not confined to me, it was universal, — old, young, high, low, man, woman, child, all felt it. Never in Low Town had stranger, even the most distinguished by fame, met with a reception so cordial, so flattering. His frank confession that he was a natural son, far from being to his injury, served to interest people more in him, and to prevent all those inquiries in regard to his connections and antecedents which would otherwise have been afloat. To be sure, he was evidently rich; at least he had plenty of money. He lived in the best rooms in the principal hotel ; was very hospitable; entertained the families with whom he had grown intimate; made them bring their children, — music and dancing after dinner. Among the houses in which he had established familiar acquaintance was that of the mayor of the town, who had bought Dr. Lloyd's collection of subjects in natural history. To that collection the mayor had added largely by a very A STRANGE STORY. 163 recent purchase. He had arranged these various speci- mens, which his last acquisitions had enriched by the interesting carcases of an elephant and a hippopotamus, in a large wooden building contiguous to his dwelling, which had been constructed by a former proprietor (a retired fox-hunter) as a riding-house. And being a man who much affected the diffusion of knowledge, he proposed to open this museum to the admiration of the general public, and at his death, to bequeath it to the AthensBum or Literary Institute of his native town. Margrave, seconded by the influence of the mayor's daughters, had scarcely been three days at L before he had persuaded this excellent and public-spirited functionary to inaugurate the opening of his museum by the popular ceremony of a ball. A temporary corridor should unite the drawing-rooms, which were on the ground floor, with the building that contained the collection; and thus the fete would be elevated above the frivolous character of a fashionable amusement, and consecrated to the solemnisation of an intellectual institute. Dazzled by the brilliancy of this idea, the mayor announced his intention to give a ball that should include the surrounding neighborhood, and be worthy, in all expensive respects, of the dignity of himself and the occasion. A night had been fixed for the ball, — a night that became memorable indeed to me! The entertainment was anticipated with a lively interest, in which even the Hill condescended to share. The Hill did not much patronize mayors in general ; but when a mayor gave a ball for a purpose so patriotic, and on a scale so splendid, the Hill liberally acknowl- edged that Commerce was, on the whole, a thing which the Eminence might, now and then, condescend to acknowledge without absolutely derogating from the 164 A STRANGE STOKY. rank which Providence had assigned to it amongst the High Places of earth. Accordingly the Hill was per- mitted by its Queen to honor the first magistrate of Low Town by a promise to attend his ball. Now, as this festivity had originated in the suggestion of Margrave, so, by a natural association of ideas, every one, in talk- ing of the ball, talked also of Margrave. The Hill had at first affected to ignore a stranger whose debut had been made in the mercantile .circle of Low Town. But the Queen of the Hill now said, sententiously, " This new man in a few days has become a Celebrity. It is the policy of the Hill to adopt Celeb- rities, if the Celebrities pay respect to the Proprieties. Dr. Fenwick is requested to procure Mr. Margrave the advantage of being known to the Hill. " I found it somewhat difficult to persuade Margrave to accept the Hill's condescending overture. He seemed to have a dislike to all societies pretending to aristocratic distinction, — a dislike expressed with a fierceness so unwonted that it made one suppose he had, at some time or other, been subjected to mortification by the supercilious airs that blow upon heights so elevated. However, he yielded to my instances, and accompanied me one evening to Mrs. Poyntz's house. The Hill was encamped there for the occasion. Mrs. Poyntz was exceedingly civil to him, and after a few commonplace speeches, hearing that he was fond of music, consigned him to the caressing care of Miss Brabazon, who was at the head of the musical department in the Queen of the Hill's administration. Mrs. Poyntz retired to her favorite seat near the window, inviting me to sit beside her; and while she knitted in silence, in silence my eye glanced towards Margrave in the midst of the group assembled round the piano. • A STRANGE STORY. 165 Whether he was in more than usually high spirits, or ■whether he was actuated by a malign and impish desire to upset the established laws of decorum by which the gayeties of the Hill wer& habitually subdued into a serene and somewhat pensive pleasantness, 1 know not ; but it was not many minutes before the orderly aspect of the place was grotesquely changed. Miss Brabazon having come to the close of a compli- cated and dreary sonata, I heard Margrave abruptly ask her if she could play the Tarantella, that famous Nea- politan air which is founded on the legendary belief that the bite of the tarantula excites an irresistible desire to dance. On that high-bred spinster's confes- sion that she was ignorant of the air, and had not even heard of the legend, Margrave said, "Let me play it to you, with variations of my own." Miss Brabazon graciously yielded her place at the instrument. Mar- grave seated himself, — there was great curiosity to hear his performance. Margrave's fingers rushed over the keys, and there was a general start, the prelude was so unlike any known combination of harmonious sounds. Then he began a chant, — song I can scarcely call it, — words certainly not in Italian, perhaps in some uncivilized tongue, perhaps in impromptu gibberish. And the torture of the instrument now commenced in good earnest : it shrieked, it groaned, wilder and noisier. Beethoven's Storm, roused by the fell touch of a Ger- man pianist, were mild in comparison; and the mighty voice, dominating the anguish of the cracking keys, had the full diapason of a chorus. Certainly I am no judge of music, but to my ear the discord was terrific, — to the ears of better informed amateurs it seemed rav- ishing. All were spell-bound; even Mrs. Poyntz paused from her knitting, as the Fates paused from 166 A STRANGE STORY. their web at the lyre of Orpheus. To this breathless delight, however, soon succeeded a general desire for movement. To my amazement, I beheld these formal matrons and sober fathers of families forming them- selves into a dance, turbulent as a children's ball at Christmas. And when, suddenly desisting from his music. Margrave started up, caught the skeleton hand of lean Miss Brabazon, and whirled her into the centre of the dance, I could have fancied myself at a witch's sabbat. My eye turned in scandalized alarm towards Mrs. Poyntz. That great creature seemed as much astounded as myself. Her eyes were fixed on the scene in a stare of positive stupor. For the first time, no doubt, in her life, she was overcome, deposed, dethroned. The awe of her presence was literally whirled away. The dance ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Darting from the galvanized mummy whom he had selected as his partner. Margrave shot to Mrs. Poyntz's side, and said, " Ten thousand pardons for quitting you so soon, but the clock warns me that I have an engagement elsewhere. " In another moment he was gone. The dance halted, people seemed slowly returning to their senses, looking at each other bashfully and ashamed. " I could not help it, dear," sighed Miss Brabazon, at last, sinking into a chair, and casting her deprecating, fainting eyes upon the hostess. " It is witchcraft,'' said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping her forehead. " Witchcraft! " echoed Mrs. Poyntz; " it does indeed look like it. An amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be endured by the Proprie- lies. Where on earth can that young savage have come from 1 " A. STKANGE STOEY. 167 " From savage lands," said I. " So he says." " Do not bring him here again, " said Mrs. Poyntz. " He would soon turn the Hill topsy-turvy. But how charming! I should like to see more of him," she added in an under-voioe, " if he would call on me some morning, and not in the presence of those for whose Proprieties I am responsible. Jane must be out in her ride with the colonel." Margrave never again attended the patrician festivi- ties of the Hill. Invitations were poured upon him, especially by Miss Brabazon aad the other old maids, but in vain. " Those people," said he, " are too tamed and civilized for me ; and so few young persons among them. Even that girl Jane is only young on the surface; inside, as old as the world or her mother. I like youth, real youth, — I am young, I. am young! " And, indeed, I observed he would attach himself to some young person, often to some child, as if with cordial and special favor, yet for not more than an hour or so, never distinguishing them by the same preference when he next met them. I ma