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COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 BRITISH AUTHORS 
 
 VOL. 570. 
 
 A STRANGE STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, Bart. 
 
 IK T WO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. IT. 
 
"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 ((fn?.6uv- 
 9oi riwg), for the subject of mythi is the astonishing and marvellous. 11 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton (after Aristotle), Lectures on 
 Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 78. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, Bart. 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITIOJV. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 BY 
 
 1862. 
 
 The Bight of Trci7islation is reserved. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the schools 
 of France have contributed to the intellectual philo- 
 sophy of our age, Victor Cousin, the most accomplished, 
 assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the most ori- 
 ginal. 
 
 In the successive developments of his own mind, 
 Maine de Biran may, indeed, be said to represent the 
 change that has been silently at work throughout the 
 general mind of Europe, since the close of the last 
 century. He begins his career of philosopher with 
 blind faith in Condillac and Materialism. As an intel- 
 lect, severely conscientious in the pursuit of truth, ex- 
 pands amidst the perplexities it revolves,- phenomena 
 which cannot be accounted for by Condillac's sensuous 
 theories open to his eye. To the first rudimentary life 
 of man, the animal life, 'characterized by impressions, 
 appetites, movements, organic in their origin, and ruled 
 by the Law of Necessity,'* he is compelled to add 'the 
 second or human life, from which Free-will and Self- 
 consciousness emerge.' He thus arrives at the union 
 of mind and matter; but still a something is wanted, 
 some key to the marvels which neither of these condi- 
 tions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last 
 the grand self-completing Thinker arrives at the Third 
 Life of Man in Man's Soul. 
 
 * CEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. i. See Introduction. 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 "There are not," says this philosopher, towards the 
 close of his last and loftiest work — "There are not 
 only two principles opposed to each other in Man, 
 there are three. For there are, in him, three lives and 
 three orders of faculties. Though all should be in 
 accord and in harmony between the sensitive and the 
 active faculties which constitute Man, there would still 
 be a nature superior, a third life which would not be 
 satisfied; which would make felt (ferait sentir) the 
 truth that there is another happiness, another wisdom, 
 another perfection, at once above the greatest human 
 happiness, above the highest wisdom, or intellectual 
 and moral perfection of which the human being is 
 susceptible."* 
 
 Now, as Philosophy and Eomance both take their 
 origin in the Principle of Wonder, so in the Strange 
 Story submitted to the Public, it will be seen that 
 Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest 
 vagaries, conducts its bewildered hero towards the 
 same goal, to which Philosophy leads its luminous 
 Student through far grander portents of Nature, far 
 higher visions of Supernatural Power, than Fable can 
 yield to Fancy. That goal is defined in these noble 
 words, "The relations (rapports) which exist between 
 the elements and the products of the three lives of Man 
 are the subject of meditation, the fairest and finest, but 
 also the most difficult. The Stoic Philosophy shows us 
 all which can be most elevated in active life; but it 
 makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely 
 fails to recognize all which belongs to the life of the 
 spirit. Its practical morality is beyond the forces of 
 humanity. Christianity alone embraces the whole Man. 
 
 * CEuvres inddites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii., p. 546 (Anthropologic). 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 VII 
 
 It dissimulates none of the sides of his nature, and 
 avails itself of his miseries and his weakness in order 
 to conduct him to his end in showing him all the want 
 that he has of a succour more exalted."* 
 
 In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the 
 objects for which this tale has been written; and I cite 
 them, with a wish to acknowledge one of those priceless 
 obligations which writings, the lightest and most fan- 
 tastic, often incur to reasoners the most serious and 
 profound. 
 
 But I here construct a romance which should have, 
 as a romance, some interest for the general reader. 
 I do not elaborate a treatise submitted to the logic 
 of sages. And it is only when "in fairy fiction drest" 
 that Eomance gives admission to "truths severe." 
 
 I venture to assume that none will question my 
 privilege to avail myself of the marvellous agencies 
 which have ever been at the legitimate command of 
 the fabulist. 
 
 To the highest form of romantic narrative, the Epic, 
 critics, indeed, have declared that a supernatural ma- 
 chinery is indispensable. That the Drama has availed 
 itself of the same licence as the Epic, it would be un- 
 necessary to say to the countrymen of Shakespeare, or 
 to the generation that is yet studying the enigmas of 
 Goethe's Faust. Prose Romance has immemorially 
 asserted, no less than the Epic or the Drama, its 
 heritage in the Realm of the Marvellous. The in- 
 terest which attaches to the supernatural is sought 
 in the earliest Prose Romance which modern times 
 take from the ancient, and which, perhaps, had its 
 
 * Ibid., vol. iii., p. 524. 
 
VIII 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 origin in the lost Novels of Miletus;* and the right 
 to invoke such interest has, ever since, been maintained 
 by Eomance through all varieties of form and fancy, 
 from the majestic epopee of Teldmaque to the graceful 
 phantasies of Undine, or the mighty mockeries of 
 Gulliver's Travels, down to such comparatively com- 
 monplace elements of wonder as yet preserve from 
 oblivion the castle of Otranto and the Old English 
 Baron. 
 
 Now, to my mind, the true reason why a super- 
 natural agency is indispensable to the conception of 
 the Epic, is that the Epic is the highest and the com- 
 pletest form in which Art can express either Man or 
 Nature, and that without some gleams of the super- 
 natural, Man is not man, nor Nature, nature. 
 
 It is said by a writer to whom an eminent philo- 
 sophical critic justly applies the epithets of "pious" and 
 profound:** — "Is it unreasonable to confess that we 
 believe in God, not by reason of the Nature which 
 conceals him, but by reason of the Supernatural in 
 Man which alone reveals and proves him to exist? 
 * * * Man reveals God: for Man, by his intelligence, 
 rises above Nature: and in virtue of this intelligence 
 is conscious of himself as a power not only independent 
 of, but opposed to, Nature; and capable of resisting, 
 conquering, and controlling her." f 
 
 If the meaning involved in the argument of which 
 I have here made but scanty extracts be carefully 
 studied, I think that we shall find deeper reasons than 
 the critics who dictated canons of taste to the last 
 
 * The Golden Ass of Apuleius. 
 ** Sir William Hamilton. Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 40. 
 t Jacobi — Von den Gottlichen Dingen; Werke, p. 424-6. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 century discovered — why the supernatural is indis- 
 pensable to the Epic — and why it is allowable to all 
 works of imagination, in which Art looks on Nature 
 with Man's inner sense of a something beyond and 
 above her. 
 
 But the Writer who , whether in verse or prose, would 
 avail himself of such sources of pity or terror as flow 
 from the Marvellous, can only attain his object in 
 proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a kind to 
 excite the curiosity of the age he addresses. 
 
 In the brains of our time the faculty of Causation 
 is very markedly developed. People, nowadays, do not 
 delight in the Marvellous, according to the old child- 
 like spirit. They say in one breath "Very extraordi- 
 nary," and in the next breath, ask, "How do you 
 account for it?" If the Author of this work has pre- 
 sumed to borrow from science some elements of interest 
 for Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful 
 reader — and certainly no true son of science — will 
 be disposed to reproach him. In fact, such illustra- 
 tions from the masters of Thought were essential to 
 the completion of the purpose which pervades the 
 work. 
 
 That purpose, I trust, will develop itself, in pro- 
 portion as the story approaches the close. 
 
 Of course, according to the most obvious principles 
 of art, the narrator of a fiction must be as thoroughly 
 in earnest as if he were the narrator of facts. One 
 could not tell the most extravagant fairy tale so as to 
 rouse and sustain the attention of the most infantine 
 listener, if the tale were told, as if the tale-teller did 
 not believe in it. But when the reader lays down this 
 Strange Story, perhaps he will perceive through all the 
 
X 
 
 TREFACE. 
 
 haze of Romance the outlines of these images suggested 
 to his reason: Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless 
 Nature, such as the materialist had conceived it. 
 Secondly, the image of Intellect, obstinately separating 
 all its inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence 
 and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of per- 
 plexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary specula- 
 tion before it settles at last into the simple faith which 
 unites the philosopher and the infant. And Thirdly, 
 the image of the erring, but pure-thoughted, visionary, 
 seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from 
 mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom, 
 and reason is lost in the space between earth and the 
 stars. Whether in these pictures there be any truth 
 worth the implying, every reader must judge for him- 
 self, and if he doubt or deny that there be any such 
 truth, still, in that process of thought which the doubt 
 or denial enforces, he may chance on a truth which it 
 pleases himself to discover. 
 
 "Most of the fables of iEsop" — thus says Montaigne 
 in his charming essay 'Of Books'* — "have several 
 senses and meanings of which the Mythologists choose 
 some one that tallies with the fable. But for the most 
 part 'tis only what presents itself at the first view, and 
 is superficial; there being others more lively, essential 
 and internal into which they have not been able to 
 penetrate and" — adds Montaigne — "the case is the 
 very same with me." 
 
 * Translation 1776, vol. ii., p. 103. 
 
A STRANGE STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, Bart. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 The belief prevalent in the town ascribed the 
 murder of Sir Philip to the violence of some vulgar 
 robber, probably not an inhabitant of L — . Mr. Vigors 
 did not favour that belief. He intimated an opinion, 
 which seemed extravagant and groundless, that Sir 
 Philip had been murdered, for the sake not of the 
 missing purse, but of the missing casket. It was cur- 
 rently believed that the solemn magistrate had con- 
 sulted one of his pretended clairvoyants , and that this 
 impostor had gulled him with assurances, to which he 
 attached a credit that perverted into egregiously ab- 
 surd directions his characteristic activity and zeal. 
 
 Be that as it may, the coroner's inquest closed 
 without casting any light on so mysterious a tragedy. 
 
 What were my own conjectures I scarcely dared 
 to admit — I certainly could not venture to utter them. 
 But my suspicions centred upon Margrave. That for 
 some reason or other he had cause to dread Sir Philip's 
 presence in L — was clear, even to my reason. And 
 how could my reason reject all the influences which 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 1 
 
2 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 had been brought to bear on my imagination, whether 
 by the scene in the museum or my conversations 
 with the deceased? But it was impossible to act on 
 such suspicions — impossible even to confide them. 
 Could I have told to any man the effect produced on 
 me in the museum, he would have considered me a 
 liar or a madman. And in Sir Philip's accusations 
 against Margrave, there was nothing tangible — no- 
 thing that could bear repetition. Those accusations, if 
 analysed, vanished into air. What did they imply? 
 — that Margrave was a magician, a monstrous prodigy, 
 a creature exceptional to the ordinary conditions of 
 humanity. Would the most reckless of mortals have 
 ventured to bring against the worst of characters such 
 a charge, on the authority of a deceased witness, and 
 to found on evidence so fantastic the awful accusation 
 of murder? But of all men, certainly I — a sober, 
 practical physician — was the last whom the public 
 could excuse for such incredible implications — and 
 certainly, of all men, the last against whom any suspi- 
 cion of heinous crime would be readily entertained 
 was that joyous youth in whose sunny aspect life and 
 conscience alike seemed to keep careless holiday. But 
 I could not overcome, nor did I attempt to reason 
 against, the horror akin to detestation, that had suc- 
 ceeded to the fascinating attraction by which Margrave 
 had before conciliated a liking founded rather on ad- 
 miration than esteem. 
 
 In order to avoid his visits I kept away from the 
 study in which I had habitually spent my mornings, 
 and to which he had been accustomed to so ready an 
 access. And if he called at the front door I directed 
 my servant to tell him that I was either from home 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 8 
 
 or engaged. He did attempt for the first few days 
 to visit me as before, but when my intention to shun 
 him became thus manifest, desisted; naturally enough, 
 as any other man so pointedly repelled would have done. 
 
 I abstained from all those houses in which I was 
 likely to meet him; and went my professional round 
 of visits in a close carriage; so that I might not be 
 accosted by him in his walks. 
 
 One morning, a very few days after Strahan had 
 shown me Sir Philip Derval's letter, I received a note 
 from my old college acquaintance, stating that he was 
 going to Derval Court that afternoon; that he should 
 take with him the memoir which he had found; and 
 begging me to visit him at his new home the next day, 
 and commence my inspection of the manuscript. I con- 
 sented eagerly. 
 
 That morning, on going my round, my carriage 
 passed by another drawn up to the pavement, and I 
 recognised the figure of Margrave standing beside the 
 vehicle, and talking to some one seated within it. I 
 looked back, as my own carriage whirled rapidly by, 
 and saw with uneasiness and alarm that it was Eichard 
 Strahan to whom Margrave was thus familiarly address- 
 ing himself. How had the two made acquaintance? 
 Was it not an outrage on Sir Philip Derval's memory, 
 that the heir he had selected should be thus apparently 
 intimate with the man whom he had so sternly de- 
 nounced? I became still more impatient to read the 
 memoir — in all probability it would give such ex- 
 planations with respect to Margrave's antecedents, as, 
 if not sufficing to criminate him of legal offences, would 
 at least effectually terminate any acquaintance between 
 Sir Philip's successor and himself. 
 
 1* 
 
4 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 All my thoughts were, however, diverted to channels 
 of far deeper interest even than those in which my 
 mind had of late been so tumultuously whirled along; 
 when, on returning home, I found a note from Mrs. 
 Ashleigh. She and Lilian had just come back to L — , 
 sooner than she had led me to anticipate. Lilian had 
 not seemed quite well the last day or two, and had been 
 anxious to return. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 Let me recal it — softly — softly! Let me recal 
 that evening spent with her! — that evening, the 
 last before darkness rose between us like a solid 
 wall. 
 
 It was evening, at the close of summer. The sun 
 had set, the twilight was lingering still. We were in 
 the old monastic garden — garden so quiet, so cool, 
 so fragrant. She was seated on a bench under the one 
 great cedar-tree that rose sombre in the midst of the 
 grassy lawn, with its little paradise of flowers. I had 
 thrown myself on the sward at her feet; her hand so 
 confidingly lay in the clasp of mine. I see her still — 
 how young, how fair, how innocent! 
 
 Strange , strange ! So inexpressibly English ; so 
 thoroughly the creature of our sober, homely life! 
 The pretty delicate white robe that I touch so timor- 
 ously, and the ribbon-knots of blue that so well become 
 the soft colour of the fair cheek, the wavy silk of the 
 brown hair! She is murmuring low her answer to my 
 trembling question — 
 
 "As well as when last we parted? Do you love me 
 as well still?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "There is no * still * written here," said she, softly, 
 pressing her hand to her heart. "Yesterday is as to- 
 morrow in the For ever." 
 
 "Ah! Lilian, if I could reply to you in words as 
 akin to poetry as your own." 
 
 "Fie! you who affect not to care for poetry!" 
 
 "That was before you went away — before I 
 missed you from my eyes, from my life — before I 
 was quite conscious how precious you were to me, 
 more precious than common words can tell ! Yes, 
 there is one period in love when all men are poets, 
 however the penury of their language may belie the 
 luxuriance of their fancies. What would become of 
 me if you ceased to love me?" 
 
 "Or of me, if you could cease to love?" 
 
 "And somehow it seems to me this evening as 
 if my heart drew nearer to you — nearer as if for 
 shelter." 
 
 "It is sympathy," said she, with tremulous eager- 
 ness; "that sort of mysterious sympathy which I have 
 often heard you deny or deride; for I, too, feel drawn 
 nearer to you, as if there were a storm at hand. I 
 was oppressed by an indescribable terror in returning 
 home, and the moment I saw you there came a sense 
 of protection." 
 
 Her head sank on my shoulder; we were silent some 
 moments; then we both rose by the same involuntary 
 impulse, and round her slight form I twined my strong 
 arm of man. And now we are winding slow under the 
 lilacs and acacias that belt the lawn. Lilian has not 
 yet heard of the murder, which forms the one topic of 
 the town, for all tales of violence and blood affected 
 her as they affect a fearful child. Mrs. Ashleigh, there- 
 
6 
 
 A STRANGE STORY- 
 
 fore, had judiciously concealed from her the letters 
 and the journals by which the dismal news had been 
 carried to herself. I need scarcely say that the grim 
 subject was not broached by me. In fact, my own 
 mind escaped from the events which had of late so 
 perplexed and tormented it ; the tranquillity of the 
 scene, the bliss of Lilian's presence, had begun to 
 chase away even that melancholy foreboding which 
 had overshadowed me in the first moments of our 
 reunion. So we came gradually to converse of the 
 future — of the day, not far distant, when we two 
 should be as one. "We planned our bridal excursion. 
 We would visit the scenes endeared to her by song, 
 to me by childhood — the banks and waves of my 
 native Windermere — our one brief holiday before 
 life returned to labour, and hearts now so disquieted 
 by hope and joy settled down to the calm serenity of 
 home. 
 
 As we thus talked, the moon, nearly rounded to 
 her full, rose amidst skies without a cloud. We paused 
 to gaze on her solemn haunting beauty, as where are 
 the lovers who have not paused to gaze? We were 
 then on the terrace walk, which commanded a view 
 of the town below. Before us was a parapet wall, low 
 on the garden side, but inaccessible on the outer side, 
 forming part of a straggling irregular street that made 
 one of the boundaries dividing Abbey Hill from Low 
 Town. The lamps of the thoroughfares, in many a 
 line and row beneath us, stretched far away, obscured, 
 here and there, by intervening roofs and tall church 
 towers. The hum of the city came to our ears, low 
 and mellowed into a lulling sound. It was not dis- 
 pleasing to be reminded that there was a world without, 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 7 
 
 as close and closer we drew each to eacli — worlds to 
 one another! Suddenly, there carolled forth the song 
 of a human voice — a wild, irregular, half-savage 
 melody — foreign, uncomprehended words — air and 
 words not new to me. I recognised the voice and 
 chant of Margrave. I started, and uttered an angry 
 exclamation. 
 
 "Hush!" whispered Lilian, and I felt her frame 
 shiver within my encircling arm. "Hush! listen! Yes; 
 I have heard that voice before — last night — " 
 
 "Last night! you were not here; you were more 
 than a hundred miles away." 
 
 "I heard it in a dream! Hush, hush!" 
 
 The song rose louder; impossible to describe its 
 effect, in the midst of the tranquil night, chiming over 
 the serried roof-tops, and under the solitary moon. It 
 was not like the artful song of man, for it was de- 
 fective in the methodical harmony of tune; it was not 
 like the song of the wild bird, for it had no monotony 
 in its sweetness: it was wandering and various as the 
 sounds from an iEolian harp. But it affected the senses 
 to a powerful degree, as in remote lands and in vast 
 solitudes I have since found the note of the mocking- 
 bird, suddenly heard, affect the listener half with de- 
 light, half with awe, as if some demon creature of the 
 desert were mimicking man for its own merriment. 
 The chant now had changed into an air of defying 
 glee, of menacing exultation; it might have been the 
 triumphant war-song of some antique barbarian tribe. 
 The note was sinister; a shudder passed through me, 
 and Lilian had closed her eyes, and was sighing heavily ; 
 then with a rapid change, sweet as the coo with" which 
 an Arab mother lulls her babe to sleep, the melody 
 
8 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 died away. "There, there, look," murmured Lilian, 
 moving from me, "the same I saw last night in sleep; 
 the same I saw in the space above, on the evening I 
 first knew you!" 
 
 Her eyes were fixed — her hand raised; my look 
 followed hers, and rested on the face and form of Mar- 
 grave. The moon shone full upon him, so full as if 
 concentrating all its light upon his image. The place 
 on which he stood (a balcony to the upper story of a 
 house about fifty yards distant) was considerably above 
 the level of the terrace from which we gazed on him. 
 His arms were folded on his breast, and he appeared 
 to be looking straight towards us. Even at that dis- 
 tance the lustrous youth of his countenance appeared 
 to me terribly distinct, and the light of his wondrous 
 eye seemed to rest upon us in one lengthened, steady 
 ray through the limpid moonshine. Involuntarily I 
 seized Lilian's hand, and drew her away almost by 
 force, for she was unwilling to move, and as I led her 
 back, she turned her head to look round; I, too, 
 turned in jealous rage! I breathed more freely. Mar- 
 grave had disappeared. 
 
 "How came he there? It is not his hotel. Whose 
 house is it?" I said aloud, though speaking to myself. 
 
 Lilian remained silent; her eyes fixed upon the 
 ground as if in deep reverie. I took her hand; it did 
 not return my pressure. I felt cut to the heart when 
 she drew coldly from me that hand, till then so frankly 
 cordial. I stopped short: "Lilian, what is this? you 
 are chilled f owards me. Can the mere sound of that 
 man's voice, the mere glimpse of that man's face, 
 have — " I paused; I did not dare to complete my 
 question. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 9 
 
 Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw at once 
 in those eyes a change. Their look was cold; not 
 haughty, but abstracted. "I do not understand you," 
 she said, in a weary, listless accent. "It is growing 
 late; I must go in." 
 
 So we walked on moodily, no longer arm in arm, 
 nor hand in hand. Then, it occurred to me that, the 
 next day, Lilian would be in that narrow world of 
 society; that there she could scarcely fail to hear of 
 Margrave, to meet, to know him. Jealousy seized 
 me with all its imaginary terrors, and amidst that 
 jealousy a nobler, purer apprehension for herself. Had 
 I been Lilian's brother instead of her betrothed, I 
 should not have trembled less to foresee the shadow 
 of Margrave's mysterious influence passing over a mind 
 so predisposed to the charm which Mystery itself has 
 for those whose thoughts fuse their outlines in fancies; 
 — whose world melts away into Dreamland. There- 
 fore I spoke. 
 
 "Lilian, at the risk of offending you — alas! I 
 have never done so before this night — I must address 
 to you a prayer which I implore you not to regard as 
 the dictate of a suspicion unworthy you and myself. 
 The person whom you have just heard and seen is, at 
 present, much courted in the circles of this town. I 
 entreat you not to permit any one to introduce him to 
 you. I entreat you not to know him. I cannot tell 
 you all my reasons for this petition; enough that I 
 pledge you my honor that those reasons are grave. 
 Trust, then, in my truth as I trust in yours. Be as- 
 sured that I stretch not the rights which your heart has 
 bestowed upon mine in the promise I ask, as I shall 
 
10 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 be freed from all fear by a promise which I know will 
 be sacred when once it is given." 
 
 "What promise?" asked Lilian, absently, as if she 
 had not heard my words. 
 
 "What promise? Why, to refuse all acquaintance 
 with that man; his name is Margrave. Promise me, 
 dearest, promise me." 
 
 "Why is your voice so changed?" said Lilian. 
 "Its tone jars on my ear," she added, with a peevish- 
 ness so unlike her, that it startled me more than it 
 offended-, and, without a word further, she quickened 
 her pace, and entered the house. 
 
 For the rest of the evening we were both taciturn 
 and distant towards each other. In vain Mrs. Ashleigh 
 kindly sought to break down our mutual reserve. I 
 felt that I had the right to be resentful, and I clung 
 to that right the more because Lilian made no attempt 
 at reconciliation. This, too, was wholly unlike herself, 
 for her temper was ordinarily sweet — sweet to the 
 extreme of meekness; saddened if the slightest mis- 
 understanding between us had ever vexed me, and 
 yearning to ask forgiveness if a look or a word had 
 pained me. I was in hopes that, before I went away, 
 peace between us would be restored. But long ere her 
 usual hour for retiring to rest, she rose abruptly, and 
 complaining of fatigue and headache, wished me good 
 night, and avoided the hand I sorrowfully held out to 
 her as I opened the door. 
 
 "You must have been very unkind to poor Lilian," 
 said Mrs. Ashleigh, between jest and earnest, "for I 
 never saw her so cross to you before. And the first 
 day of her return, too!" 
 
 "The fault is not mine," said I, somewhat sullenly; 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 I 1 
 
 "I did but ask Lilian, and that as a humble prayer, 
 not to make the acquaintance of a stranger in this 
 town against whom I have reasons for distrust and 
 aversion. I know not why that prayer should dis- 
 please her." 
 
 "Nor I. Who is the stranger?" 
 
 "A person who calls himself Margrave. Let me at 
 least entreat you to avoid him?" 
 
 "Oh, I have no desire to make acquaintance with 
 strangers. But, now Lilian is gone, do tell me all 
 about this dreadful murder? The servants are full ot 
 it, and I cannot keep it long concealed from Lilian. 
 I was in hopes that you would have broken it to 
 her." 
 
 I rose impatiently, I could not bear to talk thus 
 of an event the tragedy of which was associated in my 
 mind with circumstances so mysterious. I became 
 agitated and even angry when Mrs. Ashleigh persisted 
 in rambling woman-like inquiries — "Who was suspected 
 of the deed? Who did I think had committed it? What 
 sort of a man was Sir Philip? What was that strange 
 story about a casket?" Breaking from such interroga- 
 tions, to which I could give but abrupt and evasive 
 answers, I seized my hat, and took my departure. 
 
12 
 
 A STRANGE ST OK if. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LETTER FROM ALLEN FENWICK TO LILIAN ASHLEIGH. 
 
 "I have promised to go to Derval Court to-day, 
 and shall not return till to-morrow. I cannot bear the 
 thought that so many hours should pass away with one 
 feeling less kind than usual resting like a cloud upon 
 you and me. Lilian, if I offended you, forgive me? 
 Send me one line to say so? — one line which I can 
 place next to my heart and cover with grateful kisses 
 till we meet again?" 
 
 REPLY. 
 
 "I scarcely know what you mean, nor do I quite 
 understand my own state of mind at this moment. It 
 cannot be that I love you less — ■ and yet — but I 
 will not write more now. I feel glad that we shall not 
 meet for the next day or so, and then I hope to be 
 quite recovered. I am not well at this moment. Do 
 not ask me to forgive you. — but if it is I who am in 
 fault — forgive me, oh, forgive me, Allen." 
 
 And with this unsatisfactory note — not worn next to 
 my heart, not covered with kisses, but thrust crumpled 
 into my desk like a creditor's unwelcome bill — 1 
 flung myself on my horse and rode to Derval Court. 
 I was naturally proud-, my pride came now to my aid. 
 I felt bitterly indignant against Lilian, so indignant 
 that I resolved on my return to say to her, "If in 
 those words, 'And yet,' you implied a doubt whether 
 you loved me less, I cancel your vows, I give you 
 back your freedom." And I could have passed from 
 her threshold with a firm foot, though with the cer- 
 tainty that I should never smile again. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 13 
 
 Does her note seem to you who may read these 
 pages to justify such resentment? Perhaps not. But 
 there is an atmosphere in the letters of the one we 
 love, which we alone — we who love — can feel, and 
 in the atmosphere of that letter I felt the chill of the 
 coming winter. 
 
 I reached the park lodge of Derval Court late in 
 the day. I had occasion to visit some patients whose 
 houses lay scattered many miles apart, and for that 
 reason, as well as from the desire for some quick 
 bodily exercise which is so natural an effect of irritable 
 perturbation of mind, I had made the journey on 
 horseback instead of using a carriage, that I could not 
 have got through the lanes and field-paths by which 
 alone the work set to myself could be accomplished in 
 time. 
 
 Just as I entered the park, an uneasy thought 
 seized hold of me with the strength which is ascribed 
 to presentiments. I had passed through my study 
 (which has been so elaborately described) to my stables, 
 as I generally did when I wanted my saddle-horse, 
 and, in so doing, had, doubtless, left open the gate to 
 the iron palisade, and, probably, the window of the 
 study itself. I had been in this careless habit for 
 several years, without ever once having cause for self- 
 reproach. As I before said, there was nothing in my 
 study to tempt a thief; the study shut out from the 
 body of the house, and the servant sure at nightfall 
 both to close the window and lock the gate; — yet 
 now, for the first time, I felt an impulse, urgent, keen, 
 and disquieting, to ride back to the town and see those 
 precautions taken. I could not guess why, but some- 
 thing whispered to me that my neglect had exposed 
 
14 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 me to some great danger. I even checked my horse 
 and looked at my watch; too late! — already just on 
 the stroke of Strahan's dinner-hour as fixed in his note ; 
 my horse, too, was fatigued and spent; besides, what 
 folly! what bearded man can believe in the warnings 
 of a "presentiment?" I pushed on, and soon halted 
 before the old-fashioned flight of stairs that led up to 
 the hall. Here I was accosted by the old steward; he 
 had just descended the stairs, and, as I dismounted, he 
 thrust his arm into mine unceremoniously, and drew 
 me a little aside. 
 
 "Doctor, I was right; it was his ghost that I saw 
 by the iron door of the mausoleum. I saw it again at 
 the same place last night, but I had no fit then. Justice 
 on his murderer! Blood for blood!" 
 
 "Ay!" said I, sternly; for if I suspected Margrave 
 before, I felt convinced now that the inexpiable deed 
 was his. Wherefore convinced? Simply because I now 
 hated him more, and hate is so easily convinced! 
 "Lilian! Lilian!" I murmured to myself that name; 
 the flame of my hate was fed by my jealousy. "Ay!" 
 said I, sternly, "murder will out." 
 
 "What are the police about?" said the old man, 
 querulously; "days pass on days, and no nearer the 
 truth. But what does the new owner care? He has 
 the rents and acres; what does he care for the dead? 
 I will never serve another master. I have just told 
 Mr. Strahan so. How do I know whether he did not 
 do the deed? Who else had an interest in it?" 
 
 "Hush, hush!" I cried; "you do not know what 
 you say so wildly." 
 
 The old man stared at me, shook his head, released 
 my arm, and strode away. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 15 
 
 A labouring man came out of the garden, and 
 having unbuckled the saddle-bags, which contained the 
 few things required for so short a visit, I consigned 
 my horse to his care, and ascended the pen-on. The 
 old housekeeper met me in the hall, conducted me up 
 the great staircase, showed me into a bedroom prepared 
 for me, and told me that Mr. Strahan was already 
 waiting dinner for me. I should find him in the study. 
 I hastened to join him. He began apologising, very 
 unnecessarily, for the state of his establishment. He 
 had, as yet, engaged no new servants. The house- 
 keeper, with the help of a housemaid, did all the 
 work. 
 
 Richard Strahan at college had been as little dis- 
 tinguishable from other young men as a youth neither 
 rich nor poor, neither clever nor stupid, neither hand- 
 some nor ugly, neither audacious sinner nor formal 
 saint, possibly could be. 
 
 Yet, to those who understood him well, he was not 
 without some of those moral qualities by which a youth 
 of mediocre intellect often matures into a superior man. 
 
 He was, as Sir Philip had been rightly informed, 
 thoroughly honest and upright. But with a strong 
 sense of duty, there was also a certain latent hardness. 
 He was not indulgent. He had outward frankness with 
 acquaintances, but was easily roused to suspicion. He 
 had much of the thriftiness and self-denial of the North 
 Countryman, and I have no doubt that he had lived 
 with calm content and systematic economy on an in- 
 come which made him, as a bachelor, independent of 
 his nominal profession, but would not have sufficed, in 
 itself, for the fitting maintenance of a wife and family. 
 He was, therefore, still single. 
 
Hi 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 It seemed to me, even during the few minutes in 
 which we conversed before dinner was announced, that 
 liis character showed a new phase with his new fortunes. 
 He talked in a grandiose style of the duties of station 
 and the woes of wealth. He seemed to be very much 
 afraid of spending, and still more appalled at the idea 
 of being cheated. His temper, too, was ruffled; the 
 steward had- given him notice to quit. Mr. Jeeves, 
 who had spent the morning with him, had said the 
 steward would be a great loss, and a steward, at once 
 sharp and honest, was not to be easily found. 
 
 What trifles can embitter the possession of great 
 goods! Strahan had taken a fancy to the old house; 
 it was conformable to his notions, both of comfort and 
 pomp, and Sir Philip had expressed a desire that the 
 old house should be pulled down. Strahan had in- 
 spected the plans for the new mansion to which Sir 
 Philip had referred, and the plans did not please him; 
 on the contrary, they terrified. 
 
 "Jeeves says that I could not build such a house 
 under seventy or eighty thousand pounds, and then it 
 will require twice the establishment which will suffice 
 for this. I shall be ruined," cried the man who had 
 just come into possession of at least ten thousand a 
 year. 
 
 "Sir Philip did not enjoin you to pull down the 
 old house; he only advised you to do so. Perhaps he 
 thought the site less healthy than that which he pro- 
 poses for a new building, or was aware of some other 
 drawback to the house, which you may discover later. 
 Wait a little and see before deciding. 1 ' 
 
 "But, at all events, I suppose I must pull down 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 17 
 
 this curious old room — the nicest part of the whole 
 house ! " 
 
 Strahan, as he spoke, looked wistfully round at the 
 quaint oak chimney-piece ; the carved ceiling; the well- 
 built solid walls, with the large mullion casement, 
 opening so pleasantly on the sequestered gardens. He 
 had ensconced himself in Sir Philip's study, the cham- 
 ber in which the once famous mystic, Forman, had 
 found a refuge. 
 
 "So cozy a room for a single man!" sighed Strahan. 
 "Near the stables and dog-kennels, too! But I suppose 
 I must pull it down. I am not bound to do so legally ; 
 it is no condition of the will. But in honour and gra- 
 titude I ought not to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive 
 injunction." 
 
 "Of that," said I, gravely, "there cannot be a 
 doubt." 
 
 Here our conversation was interrupted by Mrs. 
 Gates, who informed us that dinner was served in the 
 library. Wine of great age was brought from the 
 long-neglected cellars; Strahan filled and refilled his 
 glass, and, warmed into hilarity, began to talk of bring- 
 ing old college friends around him in the winter season, 
 and making the roof-tree ring with laughter and song 
 once more. 
 
 Time wore away, and night had long set in, when 
 Strahan at last rose from the table, his speech thick 
 and his tongue unsteady. We returned to the study, 
 and I reminded my host of the special object of my 
 visit to him, viz. the inspection of Sir Philip's manu- 
 script. 
 
 "It is tough reading," said Strahan; "better put it 
 off till to-morrow. You will stay here two or three days." 
 
 -4 Strange Story. XL 2 
 
18 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "No; I must return to L to-morrow. I cannot 
 
 absent myself from my patients. And it is the more 
 desirable that no time should be lost before examining 
 the contents of the manuscript, because probably they 
 may give some clue to the detection of the murderer.' 1 
 
 "Why do you think that?" cried Strahan, startled 
 from the drowsiness that was creeping over him. 
 
 "Because the manuscript may show that Sir Philip 
 had some enemy — and who but an enemy could have 
 had a motive for such a crime? Come, bring forth 
 the book. You of all men are bound to be alert in 
 every research that may guide the retribution of justice 
 to the assassin of your benefactor." 
 
 "Yes, yes. I will offer a reward of five thousand 
 pounds for the discovery. Allen, that wretched old 
 steward had the insolence to tell me that I was the 
 only man in the world who could have an interest in 
 the death of his master; and he looked at me as if he 
 thought that 1 had committed the crime. You are 
 right, it becomes me, of all men, to be alert. The as- 
 sassin must be found. He must hang." 
 
 While thus speaking, Strahan had risen, unlocked 
 a desk which stood on one of the safes, and drawn 
 forth a thick volume, the contents of which were pro- 
 tected by a clasp and lock. Strahan proceeded to open 
 this lock by one of a bunch of keys, which he said 
 had been found on Sir Philip's person. 
 
 "There, Allen, this is the memoir. I need not tell 
 you what store I place on it; not, between you and me, 
 that I expect it will warrant poor Sir Philip's high 
 opinion of his own scientific discoveries. That part of 
 his letter seems to me very queer, and very flighty. 
 But he evidently set his heart on the publication of 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 19 
 
 his work, in part if not in whole. And, naturally, I 
 must desire to comply with a wish so distinctly in- 
 timated by one to whom I owe so much. I beg you, 
 therefore, not to be too fastidious. Some valuable hints 
 in medicine, I have reason to believe, the manuscript 
 will contain, and those may help you in your profession, 
 Allen." 
 
 "You have reason to believe! Why?" 
 
 "Oh, a charming young fellow, who, with most of 
 
 the other gentry resident at L , called on me at 
 
 my hotel, told me that he had travelled in the East, 
 and had there heard much of Sir Philip's knowledge 
 of chemistry, and the cures it had enabled him to per- 
 form." 
 
 "You speak of Mr. Margrave. He called on you?" 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You did not, I trust, mention to him the existence 
 of Sir Philip's manuscript." 
 
 "Indeed I did; and I said you had promised to ex- 
 amine it. He seemed delighted at that, and spoke 
 most highly of your peculiar fitness for the task." 
 
 "Give me the manuscript," said I abruptly, "and, 
 after I have looked at it to-night, I may have some- 
 thing to say to you to-morrow in reference to Mr. Mar- 
 grave." 
 
 "There is the book," said Strahan; "I have just 
 glanced at it, and find much of it written in Latin ; and 
 I am ashamed to say that I have so neglected the 
 little Latin I learned in our college days, that I could 
 not construe what I looked at." 
 
 I sat down and placed the book before me; Strahan 
 fell into a doze, from which he was wakened by the 
 housekeeper, who brought in the tea-things. 
 
 2* 
 
20 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Well," said Strahan, languidly, "do you find 
 much in the book that explains the many puzzling 
 riddles in poor Sir Philip's eccentric life and pursuits'?" 
 
 "Yes," said I. "Do not interrupt me." 
 
 Strahan again began to doze, and the housekeeper 
 asked if we should want anything more that night, and 
 if I thought I could find my way to my bedroom. 
 
 I dismissed her impatiently, and continued to read. 
 
 Strahan woke up again as the clock struck eleven, 
 and finding me still absorbed in the manuscript, and 
 disinclined to converse, lighted his candle, and telling 
 me to replace the manuscript in the desk when I had 
 done with it, and be sure to lock the desk and take 
 charge of the key, which he took off the bunch and 
 gave me, went up-stairs, yawning. 
 
 I was alone, in the wizard Forman's chamber, and 
 bending over a stranger record than had ever excited 
 my infant wonder, or, in later years, provoked my 
 sceptic smile. 
 
 CHAPTER, IV. 
 
 The Manuscript was written in a small and peculiar 
 handwriting, which, though evidently by the same per- 
 son whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether 
 from haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more 
 hard to decipher. Those parts of the Memoir which 
 related to experiments, or alleged secrets in Nature, 
 that the writer intimated a desire to submit exclusively 
 to scholars or men of science, were in Latin — and 
 Latin which, though grammatically correct, was 
 frequently obscure. But all that detained the eye and 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 21 
 
 attention on the page, necessarily served to impress the 
 contents more deeply on remembrance. 
 
 The narrative commenced with the writer's sketch 
 of his childhood. Both his parents had died before he 
 attained his seventh year. The orphan had been sent 
 by his guardians to a private school, and his holidays 
 had been passed at Derval Court. Here, his earliest 
 reminiscences were those of the quaint old room, in 
 which I now sat, and of his childish wonder at the in- 
 scription on the chimney-piece — who and what was 
 the Simon Forman who had there found a refuge from 
 persecution? Of what nature were the studies he had 
 cultivated, and the discoveries he boasted to have 
 made? 
 
 When he was about sixteen, Philip Derval had 
 begun to read the many mystic books which the library 
 contained; but without other result on his mind than 
 the sentiment of disappointment and disgust. The im- 
 pressions produced on the credulous imagination of 
 childhood vanished. He went to the university; was 
 sent abroad to travel: and on his return took that place 
 in the circles of London which is so readily conceded 
 to a young idler of birth and fortune. He passed 
 quickly over that period of his life, as one of extra- 
 vagance and dissipation, from which he was first drawn 
 by the attachment for his cousin to which his letter to 
 Strahan referred. Disappointed in the hopes which 
 that affection had conceived, and his fortune impaired, 
 partly by some years of reckless profusion, and partly 
 by the pecuniary sacrifices at which he had effected his 
 cousin's marriage with another, he retired to Derval 
 Court, to live there in solitude and seclusion. On 
 searching for some old title-deeds required for a mort- 
 
22 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 gage, he chanced upon a collection of manuscripts much 
 discoloured and, in part, eaten away by moth or damp. 
 These, on examination, proved to be the writings of 
 Forman. Some of them were astrological observations 
 and predictions; some were upon the nature of the 
 Cabala; some upon the invocation of spirits and the 
 magic of the dark ages. All had a certain interest, for 
 they were interspersed with personal remarks, anecdotes 
 of eminent actors in a very stirring time, and were 
 composed as Colloquies, in imitation of Erasmus; the 
 second person in the dialogue being Sir Miles Derval, 
 the patron and pupil; the first person being Forman, 
 the philosopher and expounder. 
 
 But along with these shadowy lucubrations were 
 treatises of a more uncommon and a more startling 
 character; discussions on various occult laws of nature, 
 and detailed accounts of analytical experiments. These 
 opened a new, and what seemed to Sir Philip a 
 practical, field of inquiry — a true border-land between 
 natural science and imaginative speculation. Sir Philip 
 had cultivated philosophical science at the university; 
 he resumed the study, and tested himself the truth of 
 various experiments suggested by Forman. Some, to 
 his surprise, proved successful — some wholly failed. 
 These lucubrations first tempted the writer of the me- 
 moir towards the studies in which the remainder of his 
 life had been consumed. But he spoke of the lucubra- 
 tions themselves as valuable only where suggestive of 
 some truths which Forman had accidentally approached, 
 without being aware of their true nature and im- 
 portance. They were debased by absurd puerilities, 
 and vitiated by the vain and presumptuous ignorance 
 which characterised the astrology of the middle ages. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 23 
 
 For these reasons the writer intimated his intention (if 
 he lived to return to England) to destroy Forman's 
 manuscripts, together with sundry other books, and a 
 few commentaries of his own upon studies which had 
 for a while misled him — all now deposited in the 
 safes of the room in which I sat. 
 
 After some years passed in the retirement of Derval 
 Court, Sir Philip was seized with the desire to travel, 
 and the taste he had imbibed for occult studies led him 
 towards those Eastern lands in which they took their 
 origin, and still retain their professors. 
 
 Several pages of the manuscript were now occupied 
 with minute statements of the writer's earlier dis- 
 appointment in the objects of his singular research. 
 The so-called magicians, accessible to the curiosity of 
 European travellers, were either but ingenious jugglers, 
 or produced effects that perplexed him by practices 
 they had mechanically learned, but of the rationale of 
 which they were as ignorant as himself. It was not 
 till he had resided some considerable time in the East, 
 and acquired a familiar knowledge of its current lan- 
 guages and the social habits of its various populations, 
 that he became acquainted with men in whom he re- 
 cognised earnest cultivators of the lore which tradition 
 ascribes to the colleges and priesthoods of the ancient 
 world; men generally living remote from others, and 
 seldom to be bribed by money to exhibit their marvels 
 or divulge their secrets. In his intercourse with these 
 sages, Sir Philip arrived at the conviction that there 
 does exist an art of magic, distinct from the guile of 
 the conjuror, and applying to certain latent powers and 
 affinities in nature a philosophy akin to that which we 
 receive in our acknowledged schools, inasmuch as it is 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 equally based upon experiment, and produces from de- 
 finite causes definite results. In support of this startling 
 proposition, Sir Philip now devoted more than half his 
 volume to the detail of various experiments, to the 
 process and result of which he pledged his guarantee 
 as the actual operator. As most of these alleged ex- 
 periments appeared to me wholly incredible, and as all 
 of them were unfamiliar to my practical experience, 
 and could only be verified or falsified by tests that 
 would require no inconsiderable amount of time and 
 care, I passed, with little heed, over the pages in which 
 they were set forth. I was impatient to arrive at that 
 part of the manuscript which might throw light on the 
 mystery in which my interest was the keenest. What 
 were the links which connected the existence of Margrave 
 with the history of Sir Philip Derval? Thus hurrying 
 on, page after page, I suddenly, towards the end of the 
 volume, came upon a name that arrested all my atten- 
 tion — Haroun of Aleppo. He who has read the words 
 addressed to me in my trance may well conceive the 
 thrill that shot through my heart when I came upon 
 that name, and will readily understand how much more 
 vividly my memory retains that part of the manuscript 
 to which I now proceed than all which had gone be- 
 fore. 
 
 "It was," wrote Sir Philip, "in an obscure suburb 
 of Aleppo that I at length met with the wonderful man 
 from whom I have acquired a knowledge immeasurably 
 more profound and occult than that which may be 
 tested in the experiments to which I have devoted so 
 large a share of this memoir. Haroun of Aleppo had, 
 indeed, mastered every secret in nature which the 
 nobler, or theurgic, magic seeks to fathom. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 25 
 
 "He had discovered the great Principle of Animal 
 Life, which had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist: — 
 provided only that the great organs were not irreparably 
 destroyed, there was no disease that he could not cure; 
 no decrepitude to which he could not restore vigour-, 
 yet his science was based on the same theory as that 
 espoused by the best professional practitioners of medi- 
 cine — viz. that the true art of healing is to assist 
 nature to throw off the disease — to summon, as it 
 were, the whole system to eject the enemy that has 
 fastened on a part. And thus his processes, though oc- 
 casionally varying in the means employed, all combined 
 in this — viz. the reinvigorating and recruiting of the 
 principle of life." 
 
 No one knew the birth or origin of Haroun ; no one 
 knew his age. In outward appearance he was in the 
 strength and prime of mature manhood. But, according 
 to testimonies in which the writer of the memoir ex- 
 pressed a belief that, I need scarcely say, appeared to 
 me egregiously credulous, Haroun's existence under the 
 same name, and known by the same repute, could be 
 traced back to more than a hundred years. He told 
 Sir Philip that he had thrice renewed his own life, and 
 had resolved to do so no more — he had grown weary 
 of living on. With all his gifts, Haroun owned himself 
 to be consumed by a profound melancholy. He com- 
 plained that there was nothing new to him under the 
 sun; he said that, while he had at his command un- 
 limited wealth, wealth had ceased to bestow enjoyment; 
 and he preferred living as simply as a peasant: he had 
 tired out all the affections and all the passions of the 
 human heart; he was in the universe as in a solitude. 
 In a word, Haroun would often repeat, with mournful 
 
26 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 solemnity, "The soul is not meant to inhabit this earth, 
 and in fleshly tabernacle, for more than the period 
 usually assigned to mortals; and when by art in re- 
 pairing the walls of the body, we so retain it, the soul 
 repines, becomes inert or dejected. 1 ' "He only," said 
 Haroun, "would feel continued joy in continued existence 
 who could preserve in perfection the sensual part of 
 man, with such mind or reason as may be independent 
 of the spiritual essence; but whom soul itself has 
 quitted! Man, in short, as the grandest of the animals, 
 but without the sublime discontent of earth, which is 
 the peculiar attribute of soul." 
 
 One evening Sir Philip was surprised to find at 
 Haroun's house another European. He paused in his 
 narrative to describe this man. He said that for three 
 or four years previously he had heard frequent mention, 
 amongst the cultivators of magic, of an orientalised 
 Englishman engaged in researches similar to his own, 
 and to whom was ascribed a terrible knowledge in those 
 branches of the art which, even in the East, are con- 
 demned as instrumental to evil. Sir Philip here distin- 
 guished at length, as he had so briefly distinguished in 
 his conversation with me, between the two kinds of 
 magic — that which he alleged to be as pure from sin 
 as any other species of experimental knowledge, and 
 that by which the agencies of witchcraft are invoked 
 for the purposes of guilt. 
 
 The Englishman, to whom the culture of this latter 
 and darker kind of magic was ascribed, Sir Philip 
 Derval had never hitherto come across. He now met 
 him at the house of Haroun; decrepit, emaciated, 
 bowed down with infirmities, and racked with pain. 
 Though little more than sixty, his aspect was that of 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 27 
 
 extreme old age, but still on Lis face there were seen 
 the ruins of a once singular beauty; and still, in his 
 mind, there was a force that contrasted the decay of 
 the body. Sir Philip had never met with an intellect 
 more powerful and more corrupt. The son of a notorious 
 usurer, heir to immense wealth, and endowed with the 
 talents which justify ambition, he had entered upon 
 life burdened with the odium of his father's name. A 
 duel, to which he had been provoked by an ungenerous 
 taunt on his origin, but in which a temperament fiercely 
 vindictive had led him to violate the usages prescribed 
 by the social laws that regulate such encounters, had 
 subjected him to a trial in which he escaped conviction, 
 either by a flaw in the technicalities of legal procedure, 
 or by the compassion of the jury;* but the moral pre- 
 
 * The reader will here observe a discrepancy between Mrs. Poyntz's 
 account and Sir Philip Derval's narrative. According to the former, Louis 
 Grayle was tried in his absence from England, and sentenced to three 
 years' imprisonment, which his flight enabled him to evade. According to 
 the latter, Louis Grayle stood his trial, and obtained an acquittal. Sir 
 Philip's account must, at least, be nearer the truth than the lady's, because 
 Louis Grayle could not, according to English law, have been tried on a 
 capital charge without being present in court. Mrs. Poyntz tells her story 
 as a woman generally does tell a story — sure to make a mistake where 
 she touches on a question of law; and — unconsciously perhaps to herself 
 — the Woman of the World warps the facts in her narrative so as to save 
 the personal dignity of the hero, who has captivated her interest, not from 
 the moral odium of a great crme, but the debasing position of a prisoner 
 at the bar. Allen Fenwick, no doubt, purposely omits to notice the dis- 
 crepancy between these two statements , or to animadvert on the mistake 
 which, in the eyes of a lawyer, would discredit Mrs. Poyntz's. It is con- 
 sistent with some of the objects for which Allen Fenwick makes public his 
 Strange Story , to invite the reader to draw his own inferences from the 
 contradictions by which, even in the most common-place matters (and how 
 much more in any tale of wonder!) , a fact stated by one person is made to 
 differ from the same fact stated by another. The rapidity with which a 
 truth becomes transformed into fable, when it is once sent on its travels 
 from lip to lip, is illustrated by an amusement at this moment in fashion. 
 The amusement is this : In a party of eight or ten persons, let one whisper 
 to another an account of some supposed transaction, or a piece of invented 
 gossip relating to absent persons , dead or alive; let the person, who thus 
 first hears the story, proceed to whisper it, as exactly as he can remember 
 what he has just heard, to the next; the next does the same to his neigh- 
 
28 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 sumptions against him were sufficiently strong to set an 
 indelible brand on his honour, and an insurmountable 
 barrier to the hopes which his early ambition had con- 
 ceived. After this trial he had quitted his country to 
 return to it no more. Thenceforth, much of his life 
 had been passed out of sight or conjecture of civilised 
 men, in remote regions and amongst barbarous tribes. 
 At intervals, however, he had reappeared in European 
 capitals; shunned by and shunning his equals, sur- 
 rounded by parasites, amongst whom were always to 
 be found men of considerable learning, whom avarice 
 or poverty subjected to the influences of his wealth. 
 For the last nine or ten years he had settled in Persia, 
 purchased extensive lands, maintained the retinue, and 
 exercised more than the power, of an Oriental prince. 
 Such was the man who, prematurely worn out, and 
 assured by physicians that he had not six weeks of 
 life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an 
 Eastern satrap, had caused himself to be borne in his 
 litter to the mud-hut of Haroun the Sage, and now 
 called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, 
 to reprieve him from the — grave. 
 
 bour, and so on, till the tale has run the round of the party. Each narrator, 
 as soon as he has whispered his version of the tale, writes down what he 
 has whispered. And though, in this game, no one has had any interest to 
 misrepresent, but, on the contrary, each, for his own credit's sake, strives 
 to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he can, it will be almost in- 
 variably found that the story told by the first person has received the most 
 material alterations before it has reached the eighth or the tenth. Some- 
 times, the most important feature of the whole narrative is altogether 
 omitted; sometimes, a feature altogether new, and preposterously absurd, 
 has been added. At the close of the experiment one is tempted to exclaim, 
 "How, after this, can any of those portions of history which the chronicler 
 took from hearsay, be believed? 1 ' But, above all, does not every anecdote 
 of scandal which has passed, not through ten lips, but perhaps through ten 
 thousand, before it has reached us , become quite as perplexing to him who 
 would get at the truth, as the marvels he recounts are to the bewildered 
 reason of Fenwick the Sceptic? 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 29 
 
 He turned round to Sir Philip when the latter 
 entered the room, and exclaimed in English, "I am 
 here because you are. Your intimacy with this man 
 was known to me. I took your character as the guar- 
 antee of his own. Tell me that I am no credulous 
 dupe. Tell him that I, Louis Grayle, am no needy 
 petitioner. Tell me of his wisdom; assure him of my 
 wealth." 
 
 Sir Philip looked inquiringly at Haroun, who re- 
 mained seated on his carpet in profound silence. 
 
 "What is it you ask of Haroun?" 
 
 "To live on — to live on. For every year of life 
 he can give me, I will load these floors with gold." 
 
 "Gold will not tempt Haroun." 
 
 "What will?" 
 
 "Ask him yourself; you speak his language." 
 
 "I have asked him; he vouchsafes me no answer." 
 
 Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a 
 reverie. He drew from under his robe a small phial, 
 from which he let fall a single drop into a cup of water, 
 and said, "Drink this. Send to me to-morrow for such 
 medicaments as I may prescribe. Return hither your- 
 self in three days; not before!" 
 
 When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, 
 asked Haroun if, indeed, it were within the compass 
 of his art to preserve life in a frame that appeared so 
 thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "A fever 
 may so waste the lamp of life that one ruder gust of 
 air could extinguish the flame, yet the sick man re- 
 covers. This sick man's existence has been one long 
 fever; this sick man can recover." 
 
 "You will aid him to do so?" 
 
 "Three days hence I will tell you." 
 
30 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, 
 at Haroun's request, Sir Philip came also. Grayle 
 declared that he had already derived unspeakable relief 
 from the remedies administered-, he was lavish in ex- 
 pressions of gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, 
 and seemed pained when they were refused. This time, 
 Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's own 
 irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerful intellect. 
 
 I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's 
 share in the dialogue between himself, Haroun, and 
 Derval — recorded in the narrative in words which I 
 cannot trust my memory to repeat in detail — by 
 stating the effect it produced on my own mind. It 
 seemed, while I read, as if there passed before me 
 some convulsion of Nature — a storm, an earthquake. 
 Outcries of rage, of scorn, of despair; a despot's 
 vehemence of will; a rebel's scoff at authority. Yet, 
 ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some burst 
 of passionate genius — abrupt variations from the vaunt 
 of superb defiance to the wail of intense remorse. 
 
 The whole had in it, I know not what, of uncouth 
 but colossal — like the chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, 
 of one of those mythical giants, who, proud of descent 
 from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements, 
 while still crude and conflicting, to be crushed under 
 the rocks, upheaved in their struggle, as Order and 
 Harmony subjected a brightening Creation to the milder 
 Influences personified and throned in Olympus. Bnt it 
 was not till the later passages of the dialogue in which 
 my interest was now absorbed, that the language ascribed 
 to this sinister personage lost a gloomy pathos, not the 
 less impressive for the awe with which it was mingled. 
 For, till then, it seemed to me as if in that tempestuous 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 31 
 
 nature there were still broken glimpses of starry light-, 
 that a character originally lofty, if irregular and fierce, 
 had been embittered by early and continuous war with 
 the social world, and had, in that war, become maimed 
 and distorted; that, under happier circumstances, its 
 fiery strength might have been disciplined to good; that 
 even now, where remorse was so evidently poignant, 
 evil could not be irredeemably confirmed. 
 
 At length all the dreary compassion previously 
 inspired vanished in one unqualified abhorrence. 
 
 The subjects discussed changed from those which, 
 relating to the common world of men, were within the 
 scope of my reason. Haroun led his wild guest to boast 
 of his own proficiency in magic, and, despite my in- 
 credulity, I could not overcome the shudder with which 
 fictions, however extravagant, that deal with that dark 
 Unknown abandoned to the chimeras of poets, will, at 
 night and in solitude, send through the veins of men 
 the least accessible to imaginary terrors. 
 
 Grayle spoke of the power he had exercised through 
 the agency of evil spirits — a power to fascinate and 
 to destroy. He spoke of the aid revealed to him, now 
 too late, which such direful allies could afford, not only 
 to a private revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had 
 he acquired the knowledge he declared himself to pos- 
 sess, before the feebleness of the decaying body made 
 it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that 
 world, which had expelled his youth from its pale! He 
 spoke of means by which his influence could work un- 
 detected on the minds of others, control agencies that 
 could never betray, defy laws that could never discover. 
 He spoke vaguely of a power by which a spectral 
 reflexion of the material body could be cast, like a 
 
32 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 shadow, to a distance; glide through the walls of a 
 prison, elude the sentinels of a camp — a power that 
 he asserted to be — when enforced by concentred will, 
 and acting on the mind, where, in each individual, 
 temptation found mind the weakest — almost infallible 
 in its effect to seduce or to appal. And he closed these 
 and similar boasts of demoniacal arts, which I remember 
 too obscurely to repeat, with a tumultuous imprecation 
 on their nothingness to avail against the gripe of death. 
 All this lore he would communicate to Haroun, in return 
 for what? A boon shared by the meanest peasant — 
 life, common life; to breathe yet a while the air, feel 
 yet a while the sun. 
 
 Then Haroun replied. He said, with a quiet dis- 
 dain, that the dark art to which Grayle made such 
 boastful pretence, was the meanest of all abuses of 
 knowledge, rightly abandoned, in all ages, to the vilest 
 natures. And then, suddenly changing his tone, he 
 spoke, so far as I can remember the words assigned to 
 him in the manuscript, to this effect: 
 
 "Fallen and unhappy wretch, and you ask me for 
 prolonged life! — a prolonged curse to the world and 
 to yourself. Shall I employ spells to lengthen the term 
 of the Pestilence, or profane the secrets of Nature to 
 restore vigour and youth to the failing energies of 
 Crime?" 
 
 Grayle, as if stunned by the rebuke, fell on his 
 knees with despairing entreaties that strangely con- 
 trasted his previous arrogance. "And it was," he said, 
 "because his life had been evil that he dreaded death. 
 If life could be renewed he would repent, he would 
 change: he retracted his vaunts, he would forsake the 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 33 
 
 arts be had boasted, be would re-enter tbe world as 
 its benefactor." 
 
 "So ever tbe wicked man lies to himself when 
 appalled by the shadow of death," answered Haroun. 
 "But know, by the remorse which preys on thy soul, 
 that it is not thy soul that addresses this prayer to me. 
 Couldst thou hear, through the storms of the Mind, the 
 Soul's melancholy whisper, it would dissuade thee from 
 a wish to live on. While I speak I behold it, that 
 soul! Sad for the stains on its essence, awed by the 
 account it must render, but dreading, as the direst 
 calamity, a renewal of years below, — darker stains 
 and yet heavier accounts! Whatever the sentence it 
 may now undergo, it has a hope for mercy in the re- 
 morse which the mind vainly struggles to quell. But 
 darker its doom if longer retained to earth, yoked to 
 the mind that corrupts it, and enslaved to the senses 
 which thou bidst me restore to their tyrannous forces." 
 
 And Grayle bowed his head and covered his face 
 with his hands in silence and in trembling. 
 
 Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion, pleaded 
 for him. "At least could not the soul have longer time 
 on earth for repentance?" And while Sir Philip was 
 so pleading, Grayle fell prostrate in a swoon like that 
 of death. When he recovered, his head was leaning 
 on Haroun's knee, and his opening eyes fixed on the 
 glittering phial which Haroun held, and from which 
 his lips had been moistened. 
 
 "Wondrous!" he murmured; "how I feel life flow- 
 ing back to me. And that, then, is the elixir! it is no 
 fable!" 
 
 His hands stretched greedily as to seize the phial, 
 and he cried, imploringly, "More, more!" Haroun 
 A Strange Story. U. 3 
 
34 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 replaced the vessel in the folds of his robe, and an- 
 swered : 
 
 "I will not renew thy youth, but I will release 
 thee from bodily suffering-, I will leave the mind and 
 the soul free from the pangs of the flesh, to reconcile, 
 if yet possible, their long war. My skill may afford 
 thee months yet for repentance; seek, in that interval, 
 to atone for the evil of sixty years; apply thy wealth 
 where it may most compensate for injury done, most 
 relieve the indigent, and most aid the virtuous. Listen 
 to thy remorse. Humble thyself in prayer." 
 
 Grayle departed, sighing heavily, and muttering to 
 himself. 
 
 The next day Haroun summoned Sir Philip Derval, 
 and said to him: 
 
 "Depart to Damascus. In that city the Pestilence 
 has appeared. Go thither thou, to heal and to save. 
 In this casket are stored the surest antidotes to the 
 poison of the plague. Of that essence, undiluted and 
 pure, which tempts to the undue prolongation of soul 
 in the prison of flesh, this casket contains not a drop. 
 I curse not my friend with so mournful a boon. Thou 
 hast learned enough of my art to know by what sim- 
 ples the health of the temperate is easily restored to its 
 balance, and their path to the grave smoothed from 
 pain. Not more should Man covet from Nature for the 
 solace and weal of the body. Nobler gifts far than 
 aught for the body this casket contains. Herein are the 
 essences which quicken the life of those duplicate sen- 
 ses that lie dormant and coiled in their chrysalis web, 
 awaiting the wings of a future development — the 
 senses by which we can see, though not with the eye, 
 and hear, but not by the ear. Herein are the links 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 35 
 
 between Man's mind and Nature's; herein are secrets 
 more precious even than these — those extracts of 
 light which enable the Soul to distinguish itself from 
 the Mind, and discriminate the spiritual life, not 
 more from life carnal than life intellectual. Where 
 thou seest some noble intellect, studious of Nature, 
 intent upon Truth, yet ignoring the fact that all 
 animal life has a mind, and Man alone on the earth 
 ever asked, and has asked, from the hour his step 
 trod the Earth and his eye sought the Heaven, 'Have 
 I not a soul — can it perish?' — there, such aids to 
 the soul, in the innermost vision vouchsafed to the 
 mind, thou mayst lawfully use. But the treasures con- 
 tained in this casket are like all which a mortal can 
 win from the mines he explores ; — good or ill in their 
 uses as they pass to the hands of the good or the evil. 
 Thou wilt never confide them but to those who will 
 not abuse; and even then, thou art an adept too versed 
 in the mysteries of Nature not to discriminate between 
 the powers that may serve the good to good ends, and 
 the powers that may tempt the good — where less wise 
 than experience has made thee and me — to the ends 
 that are evil; and not even to thy friend, the most 
 virtuous — if less proof against passion, than thou and 
 I have become — wilt thou confide such contents of 
 the casket as may work on the fancy, to deafen the 
 conscience, and imperil the soul." 
 
 Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions 
 for use, which he did not detail. He then spoke to 
 Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspired him with 
 a mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence; of 
 pity and terror. And Haroun answered. Repeating, 
 thus, the words ascribed to him, so far as I can trust, 
 
 3* 
 
36 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 in regard to tliem — as to all else in this marvellous 
 narrative — to a memory habitually tenacious even 
 in ordinary matters, and strained to the utmost extent 
 of its power, by the strangeness of the ideas presented 
 to it, and the intensity of my personal interest in what- 
 ever admitted a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast 
 over my reason, now threatened storm to my affections: 
 
 "When the mortal deliberately allies himself to the 
 spirits of evil, he surrenders the citadel of his being to 
 the guard of its enemies; and those who look from 
 without can only dimly guess what passes within the 
 precincts abandoned to Powers whose very nature we 
 shrink to contemplate, lest our mere gaze should invite 
 them. This man, whom thou pitiest, is not yet ever- 
 lastingly consigned to the fiends; because his soul still 
 struggles against them. His life has been one long 
 war between his intellect which is mighty and his spirit 
 which is feeble. The intellect, armed and winged by 
 the passions, has besieged and oppressed the soul; but 
 the soul has never ceased to repine and to repent. 
 And at moments it has gained its inherent ascendancy, 
 persuaded revenge to drop the prey it had seized, 
 turned the mind astray from hatred and wrath into un- 
 wonted paths of charity and love. In the long desert 
 of guilt, there have been green spots and fountains of 
 good. The fiends have occupied the intellect which 
 invoked them, but they have never yet thoroughly 
 mastered the soul which their presence appals. In the 
 struggle that now passes within that breast, amidst the 
 flickers of waning mortality, only Allah, whose eye 
 never slumbers, can aid." 
 
 Haroun then continued, in words yet more strange 
 and yet more deeply graved in my memory: 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 37 
 
 "There have been men (thou mayst have known 
 such), who, after an illness in which life itself seemed 
 suspended, have arisen, as out of a sleep, with charac- 
 ters wholly changed. Before, perhaps gentle and good 
 and truthful, they now become bitter, malignant, and 
 false. To the persons and the things they had before 
 loved, they evince repugnance and loathing Sometimes 
 this change is so marked and irrational, that their 
 kindred ascribe it to madness. Not the madness which 
 affects them in the ordinary business of life, but that 
 which turns into harshness and discord the moral har- 
 mony that results from natures whole and complete. 
 But there are dervishes who hold that in that illness, 
 which had for its time the likeness of death, the soul 
 itself has passed away, and an evil genius has fixed 
 itself into the body and the brain, thus left void of 
 their former tenant, and animates them in the unac- 
 countable change from the past to the present existence. 
 Such mysteries have formed no part of my study, and 
 I tell you the conjecture received in the East without 
 hazarding a comment whether of incredulity or belief. 
 But if, in this war between the mind which the fiends 
 have seized and the soul which implores refuge of 
 Allah; if, while the mind of yon traveller now covets 
 life lengthened on earth for the enjoyments it had per- 
 verted its faculties to seek and to find in sin, and 
 covets so eagerly that it would shrink from no crime, 
 and revolt from no fiend, that could promise the gift 
 — the soul shudderingly implores to be saved from 
 new guilt, and would rather abide by the judgment of 
 Allah on the sins that have darkened it, than pass for 
 ever irredeemably away to the demons: if this be so, 
 what if the soul's petition be heard — what if it rise 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 from the ruins around it — what if the ruins be left 
 to the witchcraft that seeks to rebuild them? There, 
 if demons might enter, that which they sought as their 
 prize has escaped them; that which they find would 
 mock them by its own incompleteness even in evil. In 
 vain might animal life the most perfect be given to the 
 machine of the flesh; in vain might the mind, freed 
 from the check of the soul, be left to roam at will 
 through a brain stored with memories of knowledge 
 and skilled in the command of its faculties; in vain, in 
 addition to all that body and brain bestow on the 
 normal condition of man, might unhallowed reminiscen- 
 ces gather all the arts and the charms of the sorcery 
 by which the fiends tempted the soul, before it fled, 
 through the passions of flesh and the cravings of mind: 
 the Thing, thus devoid of a soul, would be an instru- 
 ment of evil, doubtless; but an instrument that of itself 
 could not design, invent, and complete. The demons 
 themselves could have no permanent hold on the per- 
 ishable materials. They might enter it for some gloomy 
 end which Allah permits in his inscrutable wisdom; 
 but they could leave it no trace when they pass from 
 it, because there is no conscience where soul is wanting. 
 The human animal without soul, but otherwise made 
 felicitously perfect in its mere vital organisation, might 
 ravage and destroy, as the tiger and the serpent may 
 destroy and ravage, and, the moment after, would 
 sport in the sunlight harmless and rejoicing, because, 
 like the serpent and the tiger, it is incapable of re- 
 morse." 
 
 "Why startle my wonder," said Derval, "with so 
 fantastic an image?" 
 
 "Because, possibly, the image may come into pal- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 39 
 
 pable form! I know, while I speak to thee, that this 
 miserable man is calling to his aid the evil sorcery 
 over which he boasts his control. To gain the end he 
 desires, he must pass through a crime. Sorcery whispers 
 to him how to pass through it, secure from the detec- 
 tion of man. The soul resists, but, in resisting, is weak 
 against the tyranny of the mind to which it has sub- 
 mitted so long. Question me no more. But if I vanish 
 from thine eyes, if thou hear that the death which,' to my 
 sorrow and in my foolishness I have failed to recognise 
 as the merciful minister of Heaven, has removed me at 
 last from the earth, believe that the Pale Visitant was 
 welcome, and that I humbly accept as a blessed release 
 the lot of our common humanity." 
 
 Sir Philip went to Damascus. There, he found the 
 pestilence raging — there, he devoted himself to the 
 cure of the afflicted; in no single instance, so, at least, 
 he declared, did the antidotes stored in the casket fail in 
 their effect. The pestilence had passed; his medica- 
 ments were exhausted; when the news reached him that 
 Haroun was no more. The Sage had been found, one 
 morning, lifeless in his solitary home, and, according 
 to popular rumour, marks on his throat betrayed the 
 murderous hand of the strangler. Simultaneously, 
 Louis Grayle had disappeared from the city, and was 
 supposed to have shared the fate of Haroun, and been 
 secretly buried by the assassins who had deprived him 
 of life. Sir Philip hastened to Aleppo. There, he 
 ascertained that on the night in which Haroun died, 
 Grayle did not disappear alone; with him, were also 
 missing two of his numerous suite; the one, an Arab 
 woman, named Ayesha, who had for some years been 
 his constant companion, his pupil and associate in the 
 
40 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 mystic practices to which his intellect had been debased, 
 and who was said to have acquired a singular influence 
 over him, partly by her beauty, and partly by the ten- 
 derness with which she had nursed him through his 
 long decline: the other, an Indian, specially assigned 
 to her service, of whom all the wild retainers of Grayle 
 spoke with detestation and terror. He was believed 
 by them to belong to that murderous sect of fanatics 
 whose existence as a community has only recently 
 been made known to Europe, and who sti angle their 
 unsuspecting victim in the firm belief that they thereby 
 propitiate the favour of the goddess they serve. The 
 current opinion at Aleppo was, that if these two per- 
 sons had conspired to murder Haroun, perhaps for the 
 sake of the treasures he was said to possess, it was still 
 more certain that they had made away with their own 
 English lord, whether for the sake of the jewels he 
 wore about him, or for the sake of treasures less doubt- 
 ful than those imputed to Haroun — and of which the 
 hiding-place would to them be much better known. "I 
 did not share that opinion," wrote the narrator; "for I 
 assured myself that Ayesha sincerely loved her awful 
 master; and that love need excite no wonder, for Louis 
 Grayle was one whom if a woman, and especially a 
 Avoman of the East, had once loved, before old age 
 and infirmity fell on him, she would love and cherish 
 still more devotedly when it became her task to protect 
 the being who, in his day of power and command, had 
 exalted his slave into the rank of his pupil and com- 
 panion. And the Indian whom Grayle had assigned 
 to her service, was allowed to have that brute kind of 
 fidelity which, though it recoils from no crime for a 
 master, refuses all crime against him. 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 4 J 
 
 "I came to the conclusion that Haroun bad been 
 murdered by order of Louis Grayle — for the sake of 
 the elixir of life — murdered by Juma the Strangler; 
 and that Grayle himself had been aided in his flight 
 from Aleppo, and tended, through the effects of the 
 life-giving drug thus murderously obtained, by the 
 womanly love of the Arab woman, Ayesha. These 
 convictions (since I could not — without being ridiculed 
 as the wildest of dupes — even hint at the vital elixir) 
 I failed to impress on the Eastern officials, or even 
 on a countryman of my own whom I chanced to find 
 at Aleppo. They only arrived at what seemed the 
 common-sense verdict — viz. Haroun might have been 
 strangled, or might have died in a fit (the body, little 
 examined, was buried long before I came to Aleppo); 
 Louis Grayle was murdered by his own treacherous de- 
 pendents. But all trace of the fugitives was lost. 
 
 "And now," wrote Sir Philip, "I will state by what 
 means I discovered that Louis Grayle still lived — 
 changed from age into youth; anew form, a new being; 
 realising, I verily believe, the image which Haroun's 
 words had raised up, in what then seemed to me the 
 metaphysics of phantasy; criminal, without conscious- 
 ness of crime; the dreadest of the mere animal race; 
 an incarnation of the blind powers of Nature — beauti- 
 ful and joyous, wanton, and terrible, and destroying! 
 Such as ancient myths have personified in the idols of 
 Oriental creeds; such as Nature, of herself, might form 
 man in her moments of favour, if man were wholly 
 the animal, and spirit were no longer the essential 
 distinction between himself and the races to which by 
 superior formation and subtler perceptions he would 
 still be the king. 
 
42 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "But this being is yet more dire and portentous 
 than the mere animal man, for in him are not only the 
 fragmentary memories of a pristine intelligence which 
 no mind, unaided by the presence of soul, could have 
 originally compassed, but amidst that intelligence are 
 the secrets of the magic which is learned through the 
 agencies of spirits, to our race the most hostile. And 
 who shall say whether the fiends do not enter at their 
 will this void and deserted temple whence the soul has 
 departed, and use as their tools, passive and unconscious, 
 all the faculties which, skilful in sorcery, still "place a 
 Mind at the control of their malice? 
 
 "It was in the interest excited in me by the strange 
 and terrible fate that befel an Armenian family with 
 which I was slightly acquainted, that I first traced, in 
 the creature I am now about to describe, and whose 
 course I devote myself to watch and trust to bring to 
 a close — the murderer of Haroun for the sake of the 
 elixir of youth. 
 
 "In this Armenian family there were three daugh- 
 ters; one of them — " 
 
 I had just read thus far when a dim Shadow fell 
 over the page, and a cold air seemed to breathe on me. 
 Cold — so cold, that my blood halted in my veins as 
 if suddenly frozen! Involuntarily I started, and looked 
 up, sure that some ghastly presence was in the room. 
 And then, on the opposite side of the wall, I beheld 
 an unsubstantial likeness of a human form. Shadow I 
 call it, but the word is not strictly correct, for it was 
 luminous, though with a pale shine. In some exhibi- 
 tion in London there is shown a curious instance of 
 optical illusion; at the end of a corridor you see, ap- 
 parently in strong light, a human skull. You are con- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 43 
 
 vinced it is there as you approach; it is, however, only 
 a reflexion from a skull at a distance. The image be- 
 fore me was less vivid, less seemingly prominent than 
 is the illusion I speak of. I was not deceived. I felt 
 it was a spectrum, a phantasm, but I felt no less surely 
 that it was a reflexion from an animate form — the 
 form and the face of Margrave: it was there, distinct, 
 unmistakable. Conceiving that he himself must be 
 behind me, I sought to rise, to turn round, to examine. 
 I could not move: limb and muscle were over-mastered 
 by some incomprehensible spell. Gradually my senses 
 forsook me, I became unconscious as well as motionless. 
 When I recovered I heard the clock strike Three. I 
 must have been nearly two hours insensible; the can- 
 dles before me were burning low; my eyes rested on 
 the table; the dead man's manuscript was gone! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The dead man's manuscript was gone. But how? 
 A phantom might delude my eye, a human will, 
 though exerted at a distance, might, if the tales of 
 mesmerism be true, deprive me of movement and of 
 consciousness; but neither phantom nor mesmeric will 
 could surely remove from the table before me the ma- 
 terial substance of the book that had vanished! Was 
 I to seek explanation in the arts of sorcery ascribed 
 to Louis Grayle in the narrative? — I would not pur- 
 sue that conjecture. Against it my reason rose up 
 half alarmed, half disdainful. Some one must have 
 entered the room — some one have removed the ma- 
 nuscript. I looked round. The windows were closed, 
 
44 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 the curtains partially drawn over the shutters, as they 
 were before my consciousness had left me: all seemed 
 undisturbed. Snatching up one of the candles, fast 
 dying out, I went into the adjoining library, the deso- 
 late state-rooms, into the entrance-hall and examined 
 the outer door. Barred and locked! The robber had 
 left no vestige of his stealthy presence. 
 
 I resolved to go at once to Strahan's room, and 
 tell him of the loss sustained. A deposit had been 
 confided to me, and I felt as if there were a slur on 
 my honour every moment in which I kept its abstrac- 
 tion concealed from him to whom I was responsible for 
 the trust. I hastily ascended the great staircase, grim 
 with faded portraits, and found myself in a long cor- 
 ridor opening on my own bedroom; no doubt also on 
 Strahan's. Which was his? I knew not. I opened 
 rapidly door after door, peered into empty chambers, 
 went blundering on, when, to the right, down a nar- 
 row passage, I recognised the signs of my host's where- 
 abouts — signs familiarly common-place and vulgar, 
 signs by which the inmate of any chamber in lodging- 
 house or inn makes himself known — a chair before 
 a doorway, clothes negligently thrown on it, beside it 
 a pair of shoes. And so ludicrous did such testimony 
 of common every-day life, of the habits which Strahan 
 would necessarily have contracted in his desultory un- 
 luxurious bachelor's existence — so ludicrous, I say, 
 did these homely details seem to me, so grotesquely 
 at variance with the wonders of which I had been 
 reading, with the wonders yet more incredible of which 
 I myself had been witness and victim, that as I turned 
 down the passage, I heard my own unconscious half- 
 hysterical laugh; and, startled by the sound of that 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 45 
 
 laugh as if it came from some one else, I paused, my 
 hand on the door, and asked myself: "Do I dream? 
 Am I awake? And if awake, what am I to say to 
 the common-place mortal I am about to rouse? Speak 
 to him of a phantom! Speak to him of some weird 
 spell over this strong frame! Speak to him of a 
 mystic trance in which has been stolen what he con- 
 fided to me, without my knowledge! What will he 
 say? What should I have said a week since to any 
 man who told such a tale to me?" I did not wait to 
 resolve these questions. I entered the room. There 
 was Strahan sound asleep on his bed. I shook him 
 roughly. He started up, rubbed his eyes — "You, 
 Allen — you! What the deuce? — what's the 
 matter?" 
 
 "Strahan, I have been robbed! — robbed of the 
 manuscript you lent me. I could not rest till I had 
 told you." 
 
 "Robbed, robbed! Are you serious!" 
 
 By this time Strahan had thrown off the bed- 
 clothes, and sat upright, staring at me. 
 
 And then those questions which my mind had sug- 
 gested while I was standing at his door repeated them- 
 selves with double force. Tell this man, this unimagi- 
 native, hard-headed, raw-boned, sandy-haired, North- 
 countryman — tell this man a story which the most 
 credulous school-girl would have rejected as a fable! 
 Impossible. 
 
 "I fell asleep," said I, colouring and stammering, 
 for the slightest deviation from truth was painful to 
 me, "and — and — when I woke — the manuscript 
 was gone. Some one must have entered, and com- 
 mitted the theft — " 
 
46 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Some one entered the house at this hour of the 
 night, and then only steal a manuscript which could 
 be of no value to him! Absurd! If thieves have 
 come in, it must be for other objects — for plate, for 
 money. I will dress; we will see!" 
 
 Strahan hurried on his clothes, muttering to him- 
 self, and avoiding my eye. He was embarrassed. He 
 did not like to say to an old friend what was on his 
 mind, but I saw at once that he suspected I had re- 
 solved to deprive him of the manuscript, and invented 
 a wild tale in order to conceal my own dishonesty. 
 
 Nevertheless, he proceeded to search the house. 
 I followed him in silence, oppressed with my own 
 thoughts, and longing for solitude in my own chamber. 
 We found no one, no trace of any one, nothing to ex- 
 cite suspicion. There were but two female servants 
 sleepiug in the house — the old housekeeper, and a 
 country girl who assisted her. It was not possible to 
 suspect either of these persons, but in the course of 
 our search we opened the doors of their rooms. We 
 saw that they were both in bed, both seemingly 
 asleep: it seemed idle to wake and question them. 
 When the formality of our futile investigation was 
 concluded, Strahan stopped at the door of my bedroom, 
 and for the first time fixing his eyes on me steadily, 
 said: 
 
 "Allen Fen wick, I would have given half the for- 
 tune I have come into rather than this had happened. 
 The manuscript, as you know, was bequeathed to me 
 as a sacred trust by a benefactor whose slightest wish 
 it is my duty to observe religiously. If it contained 
 aught valuable to a man of your knowledge and pro- 
 fession, — why, you were free to use its contents. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 47 
 
 Let nie hope, Allen, that the book will re-appear to- 
 morrow." 
 
 He said no more, drew himself away from the 
 hand I involuntarily extended, and walked quickly 
 back towards his own room. 
 
 Alone once more, I sank on a seat, buried my face 
 in my hands, and strove in vain to collect into some 
 definite shape my own tumultuous and disordered 
 thoughts. Could I attach serious credit to the marvel- 
 lous narrative I had read? Were there, indeed, such 
 poAvers given to man? such influences latent in the 
 calm routine of Nature? I could not believe it; I 
 must have some morbid affection of the brain; I must 
 be under an hallucination. Hallucination? The phan- 
 tom, yes — the trance, yes. But, still, how came the 
 book gone? That, at least, was not hallucination. 
 
 I left my room the next morning with a vague 
 hope that I should find the manuscript somewhere in 
 the study; that, in my own trance, I might have se- 
 creted it, as sleep-walkers are said to secrete things, 
 without remembrance of their acts in their waking 
 state. 
 
 I searched minutely in every conceivable place. 
 Strahan found me still employed in that hopeless task. 
 He had breakfasted in his own room, and it was past 
 eleven o'clock when he joined me. His manner was 
 now hard, cold, and distant, and his suspicion so 
 bluntly shown that my distress gave way to resent- 
 ment. 
 
 "Is it possible," I cried, indignantly, "that you 
 who have known me so well can suspect me of an act 
 so base, and so gratuitously base? Purloin, conceal a 
 book confided to me, with full power to copy from it 
 
43 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 whatever I might desire, use its contents in any way 
 that might seem to me serviceable to science, or use- 
 ful to me in my own calling!" 
 
 "I have not accused you," answered Strahan, sul- 
 lenly. "But what are we to say to Mr. Jeeves; to 
 all others who know that this manuscript existed? 
 Will they believe what you tell me?" 
 
 "Mr. Jeeves," I said, "cannot suspect a fellow- 
 townsman, whose character is as high as mine, of un- 
 truth and theft. And to whom else have you commu- 
 nicated the facts connected with a memoir and a request 
 of so extraordinary a nature?" 
 
 "To young Margrave; I told you so!" 
 
 "True, true "We need not go further to find the 
 thief. Margrave has been in this house more than 
 once. He knows the position of the rooms. You have 
 named the robber!" 
 
 "Tut! what on earth could a gay young fellow 
 like Margrave want with a work of such dry and 
 recondite nature as I presume my poor kinsman's me- 
 moir must be?" 
 
 I was about to answer, when the door was ab- 
 ruptly opened, and the servant girl entered, followed 
 by two men, in whom I recognised the superintendent 
 of the L — police and the same subordinate who had 
 found me by Sir Philip's corpse. 
 
 The superintendent came up to me with a grave 
 face, and whispered in my ear. I did not at first com- 
 prehend him. "Come with you," I said, "and to Mr. 
 Vigors, the magistrate? I thought my deposition was 
 closed." 
 
 The superintendent shook his head. "I have the 
 authority here, Dr. Fenwick." 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Well, I will come, of course. Has anything new- 
 transpired ?" 
 
 The superintendent turned to the servant girl, who 
 was standing with gaping mouth and staring eyes. 
 "Show us Dr. Fenwick's room. You had better put 
 up, sir, whatever things you have brought here. I will 
 go up-stairs with you," he whispered again. "Come, 
 Dr. Fenwick, I am in the discharge of my duty." 
 
 Something in the man's manner was so sinister and 
 menacing that I felt, at once, that some new and 
 strange calamity had befallen me. I turned towards 
 Strahan. He was at the threshold, speaking in a low 
 voice to the subordinate policeman, and there was an 
 expression of amazement and horror in his countenance. 
 As I came towards him he darted away without a 
 word. 
 
 I went up the stairs, entered my bedroom, the 
 superintendent close behind me. As I took up mechan- 
 ically the few things I had brought with me, the 
 police-officer drew them from me with an abruptness 
 that appeared insolent, and deliberately searched the 
 pockets of the coat which I had worn the evening be- 
 fore, then opened the drawers in the room, and even 
 pried into the bed. 
 
 "What do you mean?" I asked, haughtily. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir. Duty. You are — " 
 
 "Well, I am what?" 
 
 "My prisoner; here is the warrant." 
 
 "Warrant! on what charge?" 
 
 "The murder of Sir Philip Derval." 
 
 "I — I! Murder!" I could say no more. 
 
 I must hurry over this awful passage in my mar- 
 vellous record. It is torture to dwell on the details, 
 A Strange Story. II. 4 
 
50 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 and indeed I have so sought to chase them from my 
 recollection, that they only come back to me in hide- 
 ous fragments, like the broken, incoherent remains of 
 a horrible dream. 
 
 All that I need state is as follows: Early on the 
 very morning on which I had been arrested, a man, a 
 stranger in the town, had privately sought Mr. Vigors, 
 and deposed that, on the night of the murder, he had 
 been taking refuge from a sudden storm under shelter 
 of the eaves and buttresses of a wall adjoining an old 
 archway; that he had heard men talking within the 
 archway; had heard one say to the other, "You still 
 bear me a grudge." The other had replied, "I can 
 forgive you on one condition." That he then lost 
 much of the conversation that ensued, which was in a 
 lower voice; but he gathered enough to know that the 
 condition demanded by the one was the possession ot 
 a casket which the other earned about with him. That 
 there seemed an altercation on this matter between the 
 two men, which, to judge by the tones of voice, was 
 angry on the part of the man demanding the casket; 
 that finally, this man said in a loud key, "Do you still 
 refuse?" and on receiving the answer, which the wit- 
 ness did not overhear, exclaimed threateningly, "It is 
 you who will repent;" and then stepped forth from the 
 arch into the street. The rain had then ceased, but, 
 by a broad flash of lightning, the witness saw distinctly 
 the figure of the person thus quitting the shelter ot 
 the arch; a man of tall stature, powerful frame, erect 
 carriage. A little time afterwards, witness saw a 
 slighter and older man come forth from the arch, 
 whom he could only examine by the flickering ray of 
 the gas-lamp near the wall, the lightning having 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 51 
 
 ceased, but whom he fully believed to be the person 
 he afterwards discovered to be Sir Philip Derval. 
 
 He said that" he himself had only arrived at the 
 town a few hours before; a stranger to L — , and indeed 
 to England; having come from the United States of 
 America, where he had passed his life from childhood. 
 He had journeyed on foot to L — , in the hope of 
 finding there some distant relatives. He had put up 
 at a small inn, after which he had strolled through 
 the town, when the storm had driven him to seek 
 shelter. He had then failed to find his way back to 
 the inn, and after wandering about in vain, and seeing 
 no one at that late hour of night of whom he could 
 ask the way, he had crept under a portico and slept 
 for two or three hours. Waking towards the dawn, he 
 had then got up, and again sought to find his way to 
 the inn, when he saw in a narrow street before him 
 two men, one of whom he recognised as the taller of 
 the two, to whose conversation he had listened under 
 the arch, the other he did not recognise at the moment. 
 The taller man seemed angry and agitated, and he 
 heard him say. "The casket; I will have it." There 
 then seemed a struggle between these two persons, 
 when the taller one struck down the shorter, knelt on 
 his breast, and he caught distinctly the gleam of some 
 steel instrument. That he was so frightened that he 
 could not stir from the place, and that though he cried 
 out, he believed his voice was not heard. He then 
 saw the taller man rise, the other resting on the pave- 
 ment motionless, and a minute or so afterwards beheld 
 policemen coming to the place, on which he, the wit- 
 ness, walked away. He did not know that a murder 
 had been committed; it might be only an assault; it 
 
 4* 
 
52 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 was no business of his, he was a stranger. He thought 
 it best not to interfere, the policemen having cognisance 
 of the affair. He found out his inn; for the next few 
 days he was, however, absent from L — in search of 
 his relations, who had left the town, many years ago, 
 to fix their residence in one of the neighbouring vil- 
 lages. 
 
 He was, however, disappointed, none of these rela- 
 tions now survived. He had returned to L — , heard 
 of the murder, was in doubt what to do, might get 
 himself into trouble if, a mere stranger, he gave an 
 unsupported testimony. But, on the day before the 
 evidence was volunteered, as he was lounging* in the 
 streets, he had seen a gentleman pass by on horseback, 
 in whom he immediately recognised the man who, in 
 his belief, was the murderer of Sir Philip Derval. 
 He inquired of a bystander the name of the gentleman, 
 the answer was "Dr. Fenwick." That, the rest of the 
 day, he felt much disturbed in his mind, not liking to 
 volunteer such a charge against a man of apparent 
 respectability and station. But that his conscience 
 would not let him sleep that night, and he had resolved 
 at morning to go to the magistrate and make a clean 
 breast of it. 
 
 This story was in itself so improbable that any 
 other magistrate but Mr. Vigors would, perhaps, have 
 dismissed it in contempt. But Mr. Vigors, already so 
 bitterly prejudiced against me, and not sorry, perhaps, 
 to subject me to the humiliation of so horrible a charge, 
 immediately issued his warrant to search my house. I 
 was absent at Derval Court-, the house was searched. 
 In the bureau in my favourite study, which was left 
 unlocked, the steel casket was discovered, and a large 
 
A. STRANGE STOIU". 
 
 53 
 
 case-knife, on the blade of which the stains of blood 
 were still perceptible. On this discovery I was ap- 
 prehended, and on these evidences, and on the depo- 
 sition of this vagrant stranger, I was, not indeed com- 
 mitted to take my trial for murder, but placed in con- 
 finement-, all bail for my appearance refused, and the 
 examination adjourned to give time for further evidence 
 and inquiries. I had requested the professional aid of 
 Mr. Jeeves. To my surprise and dismay Mr. Jeeves 
 begged me to excuse him. He said he was pre- 
 engaged by Mr. Strahan to detect and prosecute the 
 murderer of Sir P. Derval, and could not assist one ac- 
 cused of the murder. I gathered from the little he 
 said that Strahan had already been to him that morn- 
 ing and told him of the missing manuscript — that 
 Strahan had ceased to be my friend. I engaged 
 another solicitor, a young man of ability, and who 
 professed personal esteem for me. Mr. Stanton (such 
 was the lawyer's name) believed in my innocence; but 
 he warned me that appearances were grave, he im- 
 plored me to be perfectly frank with him. Had I held 
 conversation with Sir Philip under the archway as 
 reported by the witness? Had I used such or similar 
 words? Had the deceased said, "I had a grudge against 
 him?" Had I demanded the casket? Had I threatened 
 Sir Philip that he would repent? And of what? His 
 refusal? 
 
 I felt myself grow pale as I answered, "Yes, I 
 thought such or similar expressions had occurred in 
 my conversation with the deceased. 11 
 
 "What was the reason of the grudge? What was 
 the nature of this casket, that I should so desire its 
 possession? 11 
 
54 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 There, I became terribly embarrassed. What could 
 I say to a keen, sensible, worldly man of law? Tell 
 him of the powder and the fume, of the scene in the 
 museum, of Sir Philip's tale, of the implied identity of 
 the youthful Margrave with the aged Grayle, of the 
 elixir of life, and of magic arts? I — I tell such a 
 romance! I, the noted adversary of all pretended mys- 
 ticism! I — I — a sceptical practitioner of medicine! 
 Had that manuscript of Sir Philip's been available — 
 a substantial record of marvellous events by a man of 
 repute for intellect and learning — I might, perhaps, 
 have ventured to startle the solicitor of L — with my 
 revelations. But the sole proof that all which the so- 
 licitor urged me to confide was not a monstrous fiction 
 or an insane delusion, had disappeared; and its dis- 
 appearance was a part of the terrible mystery that 
 enveloped the whole. I answered, therefore, as com- 
 posedly as I could, that "I could have no serious 
 grudge against Sir Philip, whom I had never seen be- 
 fore that evening; that the words, which applied to 
 my supposed grudge, were lightly said by Sir Philip 
 in reference to a physiological dispute on matters con- 
 nected with mesmerical phenomena; that the deceased 
 had declared his casket, which he had shown me at 
 the mayor's house, contained drugs of great potency in 
 medicine; that I had asked permission to test those 
 drugs myself; and that when I said he would repent 
 of his refusal, I merely meant that he would repent 
 of his reliance on drugs not warranted by the experi- 
 ments of professional science. 
 
 My replies seemed to satisfy the lawyer so far, 
 but "How could I account for the casket and the knife 
 being found in my room?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 55 
 
 "In no way but this; the window of that room 
 was a door- window opening on the lane, from which 
 any one might enter it. I was in the habit, not only 
 of going out myself that way, but of admitting through 
 that door any more familiar private acquaintance." 
 
 "Whom for instance?" 
 
 I hesitated a moment, and then said, with a signi- 
 ficance I could not forbear, "Mr. Margrave! He would 
 know the locale perfectly; he would know that the 
 door was rarely bolted from within during the day- 
 time; he could enter at all hours; he could place, or 
 instruct any one to deposit, the knife and casket in 
 my bureau, which he knew I never kept locked; it 
 contained no secrets, no private correspondence — 
 chiefly surgical implements, or such things as I might 
 want for professional experiments." 
 
 "Mr. Margrave! But you cannot suspect him — a 
 lively, charming young man, against whose character 
 not a whisper was ever heard — of connivance with 
 such a charge against you; a connivance that would 
 implicate him in the murder itself, for if you are ac- 
 cused wrongfully, he who accuses you is either the 
 criminal or the criminal's accomplice; his instigator or 
 his tool." 
 
 "Mr. Stanton," I said firmly, after a moment's 
 pause, "I do suspect Mr. Margrave of a hand in this 
 crime. Sir Philip, on seeing him at the mayor's house, 
 expressed a strong abhorrence of him, more than hinted 
 at crimes he had committed; appointed me to come to 
 Derval Court the day after that on which the murder 
 was committed. Sir Philip had known something of 
 this Margrave in the East — Margrave might dread 
 exposure, revelations — of what I know not; but, 
 
56 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 strange as it may seem to you, it is my conviction that 
 this young man, apparently so gay and so thoughtless, 
 is the real criminal, and in some way, which I cannot 
 conjecture, has employed this lying vagabond in the 
 fabrication of a charge against myself. Reflect: of 
 Mr. Margrave's antecedents we know nothing; of them 
 nothing was known even by the young gentleman who 
 first introduced him to the society of this town. It 
 you would serve and save me, it is to that quarter 
 that you will direct your vigilant and unrelaxing 
 researches. 1 ' 
 
 I had scarcely so said when I repented my candour ; 
 for I observed in the face of Mr. Stanton a sudden re- 
 vulsion of feeling, an utter incredulity of the accusa- 
 tion I had thus hazarded, and for the first time a 
 doubt of my own innocence. The fascination exercised 
 by Margrave was universal; nor was it to be wondered 
 at: for, besides the charm of his joyous presence, he 
 seemed so singularly free from even the errors common 
 enough with the young. So gay and boon a com- 
 panion, yet a shunner of wine; so dazzling in aspect, 
 so more than beautiful, so courted, so idolised by 
 women, yet no tale of seduction, of profligacy, attached 
 to his name! As to his antecedents, he had so frankly 
 owned himself a natural son, a nobody, a traveller, an 
 idler; his expenses, though lavish, were so unostenta- 
 tious, so regularly defrayed. He was so wholly the 
 reverse of the character assigned to criminals, that it 
 seomed as absurd to bring a charge of homicide against 
 a butterfly or a goldfinch as against this seemingly 
 innocent and delightful favourite of humanity and nature. 
 
 However, Mr. Stanton said little or nothing, and 
 shortly afterwards left me, with a dry expression of 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 57 
 
 hope that my innocence would he cleared in spite of 
 evidence that, he was bound to say, was of the most 
 serious character. 
 
 I was exhausted. I fell into a profound sleep early 
 that night; it might be a little after twelve when I 
 woke, and woke as fully, as completely, as much 
 restored to life and consciousness, as it was then my 
 habit to be at the break of day. And, so waking, I 
 saw, on the wall opposite my bed, the same luminous 
 phantom I had seen in the wizard's study at Derval 
 Court. I have read in Scandinavian legends of an ap- 
 parition called the Scin-La3ca, or shining corpse. It is 
 supposed, in the, northern superstition, sometimes to 
 haunt sepulchres, sometimes to foretel doom. It is the 
 spectre of a human body seen in a phosphoric light. 
 And so exactly did this phantom correspond to the 
 description of such an apparition in Scandinavian fable 
 that I know not how to give it a better name than 
 that of Scin-Laeca — the shining corpse. 
 
 There it was before me, corpse-like, yet not dead; 
 there, as in the haunted study of the wizard Forman! 
 — the form and the face of Margrave. Constitutionally, 
 my nerves are strong, and my temper hardy, and now 
 I was resolved to battle against any impression which 
 my senses might receive from my own deluding fancies. 
 Things that witnessed for the first time daunt us, wit- 
 nessed for the second time lose their terror. I rose 
 from my bed with a bold aspect, I approached the 
 phantom with a firm step; but when within two paces 
 of it, and my hand outstretched to touch it, my arm 
 became fixed in air, my feet locked to the ground. I 
 did not experience fear; I felt that my heart beat 
 regularly, but an invincible something opposed itself to 
 
58 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 me. I stood as if turned to stone, and then from the 
 lips of this phantom there came a voice, but a voice 
 which seemed borne from a great distance — very low, 
 muffled, and yet distinct: I could not even be sure that 
 my ear heard it, or whether the sound was not con- 
 veyed to me by an inner sense. 
 
 "I, and I alone, can save and deliver you," said 
 the voice. "I will do so, and the conditions I ask, in 
 return, are simple and easy." 
 
 "Fiend or spectre, or mere delusion of my own brain," 
 cried I, "there can be no compact between thee and 
 me. I despise thy malice, I reject thy services; I 
 accept no conditions to escape from the one or to ob- 
 tain the other." 
 
 "You may give a different answer when I ask 
 again." 
 
 The Scin-Laeca slowly waned, and, fading first into 
 a wan shadow, then vanished. I rejoiced at the reply 
 I had given. Two days elapsed before Mr. Stanton 
 again came to me; in the interval the Scin-Laeca did 
 not re-appear. I had mustered all my courage, all my 
 common sense, noted down all the weak points of the 
 false evidence against me, and felt calm and supported 
 by the strength of my innocence. 
 
 The first few words of the solicitor dashed all my 
 courage to the ground. For I was anxious to hear 
 news of Lilian, anxious to have some message from 
 her that might cheer and strengthen me, and my first 
 question was this: 
 
 "Mr. Stanton, you are aware that I am engaged 
 in marriage to Miss Ashleigh. Your family are not un- 
 acquainted with her. What says, what thinks she of 
 this monstrous charge against her betrothed?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 59 
 
 "I was for two hours at Mrs. Ashleigh's house last 
 evening," replied the lawyer; "she was naturally 
 anxious to see me as employed in your defence. Who 
 do you think was there? Who, eager to defend you, 
 to express his persuasion of your innocence, to declare 
 his conviction that the real criminal would be soon 
 discovered — who but that same Mr. Margrave, whom, 
 pardon me my frankness, you so rashly and groundlessly 
 suspected." 
 
 "Heavens! Do you say that he is received in that 
 house? that he — he is familiarly admitted to her pre- 
 sence?" 
 
 "My good sir , why these unjust prepossessions 
 against a true friend. It was as your friend that, as 
 soon as the charge against you amazed and shocked 
 the town of L — , Mr. Margrave called on Mrs. Ashleigh 
 
 — presented to her by Miss Brabazon — and was so 
 cheering and hopeful that — " 
 
 "Enough!" I exclaimed — "enough!" 
 
 I paced the room in a state of excitement and rage, 
 which the lawyer in vain endeavoured to calm, until 
 at length I halted abruptly: "Well — and you saw 
 Miss Ashleigh? What message does she send to me — 
 her betrothed?" 
 
 Mr. Stanton looked confused. "Message! Consider, 
 sir — Miss Ashleigh's situation — the delicacy — and 
 
 — and — " 
 
 "I understand! no message, no word, from a young 
 lady so respectable to a man accused of murder." 
 
 Mr. Stanton was silent for some moments; and 
 then said quietly, "Let us change this subject; let 
 us think of what more immediately presses. I see 
 
60 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 you have been making some notes ; may I look at 
 them — " 
 
 I composed myself and sat down. "This accuser! 
 have inquiries really been made as to himself, and his 
 statement of his own proceedings? He comes, he says, 
 from America — in what ship ? At what port did he 
 land? Is there any evidence to corroborate his story 
 of the relations he tried to discover — of the inn at 
 which he first put up, and to which he could not find 
 his way?" 
 
 "Your suggestions are sensible, Dr. Fenwick. I 
 have forestalled them. It is true that the man lodged 
 at a small inn — the Rising Sun — true that he made 
 inquiries about some relations of the name of Walls, 
 who formerly resided at L — , and afterwards removed 
 to a village ten miles distant — two brothers — trades- 
 men of small means but respectable character. He at 
 first refused to say at what seaport he landed, in what 
 ship he sailed. I suspect that he has now told a false- 
 hood as to these matters. I have sent my clerk to 
 Southampton — for it is there he said that he was put 
 on shore; we shall see — the man himself is detained 
 in close custody. I hear that his manner is strange 
 and excitable; but that he preserves silence as much 
 as possible. It is generally believed that he is a bad 
 character, perhaps a returned convict and that this is 
 the true reason why he so long delayed giving evidence, 
 and has been since so reluctant to account for himself. 
 But even if his testimony should be impugned, should 
 break down, still we should have to account for the 
 fact that the casket and the case-knife were found in 
 your bureau. For, granting that a person could, in 
 your absence, have entered your study and placed the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CI 
 
 articles in your bureau, it is clear that such a person 
 must have been well acquainted with your house, and 
 this stranger to L — could not have possessed that 
 knowledge." 
 
 "Of course not — Mr. Margrave did possess it!" 
 
 "Mr. Margrave again! — oh, sir." 
 
 I arose and moved away, with an impatient gesture. 
 I could not trust myself to speak. That night I did 
 not sleep ; I watched impatiently, gazing on the opposite 
 wall, for the gleam of the Scin-Lseca. But the night 
 passed away, and the spectre did not appear. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The lawyer came the next day, and almost with a 
 smile on his lips. He brought me a few lines \n pencil 
 from Mrs. Ashleigh; they were kindly expressed, bade 
 me be of good cheer; "she never for a moment believed 
 in my guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so ter- 
 rible a trial; it was an unspeakable comfort to both to 
 receive the visits of a friend so attached to me, and so 
 confident of a triumphant refutation of the hideous ca- 
 lumny — under which I now suffered — as Mr. Mar- 
 grave!" 
 
 The lawyer had seen Margrave again — seen him 
 in that house. Margrave seemed almost domiciled 
 there! 
 
 I remained sullen and taciturn during this visit. I 
 longed again for the night. Night came. I heard the 
 distant clock strike twelve, when again the icy wind 
 passed through my hair, and against the wall stood the 
 Luminous Shadow. 
 
62 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Have you considered?" whispered the voice, still 
 as from afar. "I repeat it — I alone can save you." 
 
 "Is it among the conditions which you ask, in re- 
 turn, that I shall resign to you the woman I love?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Is it one of the conditions that I should commit 
 some crime — a crime perhaps heinous as that of which 
 I am accused?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "With such reservations, I accept the conditions 
 you may name, provided I, in my turn, may demand 
 one condition from yourself." 
 
 "Name it." 
 
 "I ask you to quit this town. I ask you, mean- 
 while, to cease your visits to the house that holds the 
 woman betrothed to me." 
 
 "I will cease those visits. And, before many days 
 are over, I will quit this town." 
 
 "Now, then, say what you ask from me. I am 
 prepared to concede it. And not from fear for myself, 
 but because I fear for the pure and innocent being who 
 is under the spell of your deadly fascination. This is 
 your power over me. You command me through my 
 love for another. Speak." 
 
 "My conditions are simple. You will pledge your- 
 self to desist from all charge or insinuation against my- 
 self, of what nature soever. You will not, when you 
 meet me in the flesh, refer to what you have known of 
 my likeness in the Shadow. You will be invited to 
 the house at which I may be also a guest; you will 
 come; you will meet and converse with me as guest 
 speaks with guest in the house of a host." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 63 
 
 "It is all." 
 
 "Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own." 
 
 "Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you 
 will soon be released from these walls." 
 
 The Shadow waned and faded. Darkness settled 
 back, and a sleep, profound and calm, fell over me. 
 
 The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me. He 
 had received that morning a note from Mr. Margrave, 
 
 stating that he had left L to pursue, in person, an 
 
 investigation which he had already commenced through 
 another, affecting the man who had given evidence 
 against me, and that, if his hope should prove well 
 founded, he trusted to establish my innocence, and con- 
 vict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval. In the 
 research he thus volunteered, he had asked for, and ob- 
 tained, the assistance of the policeman Waby, who, 
 grateful to me for saving the life of his sister, had ex- 
 pressed a strong desire to be employed in my service. 
 
 Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old 
 college friend, Eichard Strahan. For Jeeves had spread 
 abroad Strahan's charge of purloining the memoir which 
 had been entrusted to me; and that accusation had done 
 me great injury in public opinion, because it seemed to 
 give probability to the only motive which ingenuity 
 could ascribe to the foul deed imputed to me. That 
 motive had been first suggested by Mr. Vigors. Cases 
 are on record of men whose life had been previously 
 blameless, who have committed a crime, which seemed 
 to belie their nature, in the monomania of some intense 
 desire. In Spain, a scholar reputed of austere morals, 
 murdered and robbed a traveller for money in order to 
 purchase books; books written, too, by Fathers of his 
 Church! He was intent on solving some problem of 
 
64 
 
 A STRANGE STORY 
 
 theological casuistry. In France, an antiquary es- 
 teemed not more for his learning, than for amiable and 
 gentle qualities, murdered his most intimate friend for 
 the possession of a medal, without which his own col- 
 lection was incomplete. These, and similar anecdotes, 
 tending to prove how fatally any vehement desire, 
 morbidly cherished, may suspend the normal operations 
 of reason and conscience, were whispered about by Dr. 
 Lloyd's vindictive partisan, and the inference drawn 
 from them and applied to the assumptions against my- 
 self, was the more credulously received, because of that 
 over-refining speculation on motive and act which the 
 shallow accept, in their eagerness to show how readily 
 they understand the profound. 
 
 I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of 
 chemical experiments; to be eager in testing the truth 
 of any novel invention. Strahan, catching hold of the 
 magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, went about repeating 
 anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis and dis- 
 covery which had characterised me in youth as a me- 
 dical student, and to which, indeed, I owed the pre- 
 cocious reputation I had acquired. 
 
 Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but 
 according to the direct testimony of his servant, had 
 acquired in his travels many secrets in natural science, 
 especially as connected with the healing art — his ser- 
 vant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effected 
 by the inedicinals stored in the stolen casket — doubtless 
 Sir Philip in boasting of these medicinals in the course of 
 our conversation, had excited my curiosity, influenced my 
 imagination, and thus, when I afterwards suddenly met 
 him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse had acted on a 
 brain heated into madness by curiosity and covetous desire. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 65 
 
 All these suppositions, reduced into system, were 
 corroborated by Strahan's charge that I had made away 
 with the manuscript supposed to contain the explana- 
 tions of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip, 
 and had sought to shelter my theft by a tale so im- 
 probable, that a man of my reputed talent could not 
 have hazarded it if in his sound senses. I saw the web 
 that had thus been spread around me by hostile pre- 
 possessions and ignorant gossip: how could the arts of 
 Margrave scatter that web to the winds? I knew not, 
 but I felt confidence in his promise and his power. 
 Still, so great had been my alarm for Lilian, that the 
 hope of clearing my own innocence was almost lost in 
 my joy that Margrave, at least, was no longer in her 
 presence, and that I had received his pledge to quit the 
 town in which she lived. 
 
 Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on the 
 third day from that night in which I had last beheld 
 the mysterious Shadow, my door was hastily thrown 
 open, a confused crowd presented itself at the threshold 
 
 — the governor of the prison, the police superintendent, 
 Mr. Stanton, and other familiar faces shut out from me 
 since my imprisonment. I knew at the first glance 
 that I was no longer an outlaw beyond the pale of 
 human friendship. And proudly, sternly, as I had 
 supported myself hitherto in solitude and anxiety, when 
 I felt warm hands clasping mine, heard joyous voices 
 proffering congratulations, saw in the eyes of all that 
 my innocence had been cleared, the revulsion of emotion 
 was too strong for me — the room reeled on my sight 
 
 — I fainted. I pass, as quickly as I can, over the 
 explanations that crowded on me when I recovered, and 
 that were publicly given in evidence in Court next 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 5 
 
68 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 morning. I had owed all to Margrave. It seems that 
 he had construed to my favour the very supposition 
 which had been bruited abroad to my prejudice. "For," 
 said he, "it is conjectured that Fenwick committed the 
 crime of which he is accused on the impulse of a dis- 
 ordered reason. That conjecture is based upon the 
 probability that a madman alone could have committed 
 a crime without adequate motive. But it seems quite 
 clear that the accused is not mad; and I see cause to 
 suspect that the accuser is." Grounding this assumption 
 on the current reports of the witness's manner and 
 bearing since he had been placed under official sur- 
 veillance, Margrave had commissioned the policeman, 
 Waby, to make inquiries in the village to which the 
 accuser asserted he had gone in quest of his relations, 
 and Waby had, there, found persons who remembered 
 to have heard that the two brothers named Walls lived 
 less by the gains of the petty shop which they kept 
 than by the proceeds of some property consigned to 
 them as the nearest of kin to a lunatic who had once 
 been tried for his life. Margrave had then examined 
 the advertisements in the daily newspapers. One of 
 them, warning the public against a dangerous maniac 
 who had effected his escape from an asylum in the 
 west of England caught his attention. To that asylum 
 he had repaired. 
 
 There he learned that the patient advertised was 
 one whose propensity was homicide, consigned for life 
 to the asylum on account of a murder, for which he 
 had been tried. The description of this person exactly 
 tallied with that of the pretended American. The me- 
 dical superintendent of the asylum, hearing all parti- 
 culars from Margrave, expressed a strong persuasion 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 67 
 
 that the witness was his missing patient, and had him- 
 self committed the crime of which he had accused an- 
 other. If so, the superintendent undertook to coax 
 from him the full confession of ail the circumstances. 
 Like many other madmen, and not least those whose 
 propensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was ex- 
 ceedingly cunning, treacherous, secret, and habituated 
 to trick and stratagem. More subtle than even the 
 astute in possession of all their faculties, whether to 
 achieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabricate ap- 
 pearances against another. But, while, in ordinary 
 conversation, he seemed rational enough to those who 
 were not accustomed to study him, he had one hallu- 
 cination which, when humoured, led him always, not 
 only to betray himself, but to glory in any crime pro- 
 posed or committed. He was under the belief that he 
 had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for im- 
 plicit obedience, would bear him harmless through all 
 the consequences of such submission, and finally raise 
 him to great power and authority. It is no unfrequent 
 illusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under 
 the influence of the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon. 
 Murderers have assigned as the only reason they them- 
 selves could give for their crime, that "the Devil got 
 into them," and urged the deed. But the insane have, 
 perhaps, no attribute more in common than that of 
 superweening self-esteem. The maniac who has been 
 removed from a garret, sticks straws in his hair and 
 calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance 
 characterise mental aberration, that, in the course of 
 my own practice, I have detected, in that infirmity, the 
 certain symptom of insanity, especially moral insanity, 
 
 5* 
 
68 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 long before the brain had made its disease manifest 
 even to the most familiar kindred. 
 
 Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the dread- 
 ful illusion by which the man I now speak of was 
 possessed. He was proud to be the protected agent of 
 the Fallen Angel. And if that self-esteem were artfully 
 appealed to, he would exult superbly in the evil he 
 held himself ordered to perform, as if a special pre- 
 rogative, an official rank and privilege; then, he would 
 be led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the most 
 cynical of criminals, in whom intelligence was not 
 ruined, would shrink from owning. Then, he would 
 reveal himself in all his deformity with as complacent 
 and frank a self-glorying as some vain good man dis- 
 plays in parading his amiable sentiments and his bene- 
 ficent deeds. 
 
 "If," said the superintendent, "this be the patient 
 who has escaped from me, and if his propensity to 
 homicide has been, in some way, directed towards the 
 person who has been murdered, I shall not be with him 
 a quarter of an hour before he will inform me how it 
 happened, and detail the arts he employed in shifting 
 his crime upon another — all will be told as minutely 
 as a child tells the tale of some schoolboy exploit, in 
 which he counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of 
 your applause." 
 
 Margrave brought this gentleman back to L— - — , 
 took him to the mayor, who was one of my warmest 
 supporters; the mayor had sufficient influence to dictate 
 and arrange the rest. The superintendent was intro- 
 duced to the room in which the pretended American 
 was lodged. At his own desire a select number of 
 witnesses were admitted with him — Margrave excused 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 69 
 
 himself; lie said candidly that he was too intimate a 
 friend of mine to be an impartial listener to aught that 
 concerned me so nearly. 
 
 The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, 
 and verified his promises. My false accuser was his 
 missing patient; the man recognised Dr. *** with no 
 apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension, 
 and in a very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, 
 with a gloating complacency both at the agency by 
 which he deemed himself exalted, and at the dexterous 
 cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the 
 task, that increased the horror of his narrative. 
 
 He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was 
 extremely ingenious, but of which the details, long in 
 themselves, did not interest me, and I understood them 
 too imperfectly to repeat. He had encountered a 
 seafaring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked 
 down with a stone and robbed of his glazed hat and 
 pea-jacket, as well as of a small sum in coin, which 
 last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that con- 
 veyed him eighty miles away from the asylum. Some 
 trifling remnant of this money still in his pocket, he 
 then travelled on foot along the high road till he came 
 
 to a town about twenty miles distant from L ; 
 
 there he had stayed a day or two, and there he said 
 "that the Devil had told him to buy a case-knife, 
 which he did." "He knew by that order that the Devil 
 meant him to do something great." "His Master," as 
 he called the fiend, then directed him the road he 
 
 should take. He came to L , put up, as he had 
 
 correctly stated before, at a small inn, wandered at 
 night about the town, was surprised by the sudden 
 storm, took shelter under the convent arch, overheard 
 
70 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 somewhat more of my conversation with Sir Philip than 
 he had previously deposed — heard enough to excite 
 his curiosity as to the casket: "While he listened, his 
 Master told him that he must get possession of that 
 casket." Sir Philip had quitted the archway almost 
 immediately after I had done so, and he would then 
 have attacked him if he had not caught sight of a 
 policeman going his rounds. He had followed Sir 
 Philip to a house (Mr. Jeeves's). "His Master told him 
 to wait and watch." He did so. When Sir Philip 
 came forth, towards the dawn, he followed him, saw 
 him enter a narrow street, came up to him, seized him 
 by the arm, demanded all he had about him. Sir Philip 
 tried to shake him off — struck at him. What follows, 
 I spare the reader. The deed was done. He robbed 
 the dead man, both of the casket and of the purse that 
 he found in the pockets; had scarcely done so when he 
 heard footsteps. He had just time to get behind the 
 portico of a detached house at angles with the street, 
 when I came up. He witnessed, from his hiding-place, 
 the brief conference between myself and the policemen, 
 and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole un- 
 observed away. He was going back towards the inn, 
 when it occurred to him that it would be safer if the 
 casket and purse were not about his person; that he 
 asked his Master to direct him how to dispose of them ; 
 that his Master guided him to an open yard (a stone- 
 mason's), at a very little distance from the inn; that in 
 this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from the 
 gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving 
 chinks and hollows, in one of which he placed the 
 casket and purse, taking from the latter only two 
 sovereigns and some silver, and then heaping loose 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 71 
 
 mould over the hiding-place. That he then repaired 
 to his inn, and left it late in the morning, on the 
 pretence of seeking for his relatives — persons, indeed, 
 who really had been related to him, but of whose death 
 
 years ago he was aware. He returned to L a few 
 
 days afterwards, and, in the dead of the night, went to 
 take up the casket and the money. He found the purse 
 with its contents undisturbed; but the lid of the casket 
 was unclosed. From the hasty glance he had taken of 
 it before burying it, it had seemed to him firmly locked 
 — he was alarmed lest some one had been to the spot. 
 But his Master whispered to him not to mind, told him 
 that he might now take the casket, and would be 
 guided what to do with it; that he did so, and, opening 
 the lid, found the casket empty; that he took the rest 
 of the money out of the purse, but that he did not take 
 the purse itself, for it had a crest and initials on it, 
 which might lead to discovery of what had been done ; 
 that he therefore left it in the hollow amongst the roots, 
 heaping the mould over it as before; that, in the course 
 of the day, he heard the people at the inn talk of the 
 murder, and that his own first impulse was to get out 
 of the town immediately, but that his Master "made him 
 too wise for that," and bade him stay; that passing 
 through the streets, he saw me come out of the sash- 
 window door, go to a stable-yard on the other side of 
 the house, mount on horseback and ride away; that he 
 observed the sash-door was left partially open; that he 
 walked by it, and saw the room empty; there was only 
 a dead wall opposite, the place was solitary, unobserved ; 
 that his Master directed him to lift up the sash gently, 
 enter the room, and deposit the knife and the casket in 
 a large walnut-tree bureau which stood unlocked near 
 
72 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 the window. All that followed — his visit to Mr. 
 Vigors, his accusation against myself, his whole tale — 
 was, he said, dictated by his Master, who was highly 
 pleased with him, and promised to bring him safely 
 through. And here he turned round with a hideous 
 smile, as if for approbation of his notable cleverness 
 and respect for his high employ. 
 
 Mr. Jeeves had the curiosity to request the keeper 
 to inquire how, in what form, or in what manner, the 
 Fiend appeared to the narrator, or conveyed his infernal 
 dictates. The man at first refused to say, but it was 
 gradually drawn from him that the Demon had no 
 certain and invariable form; sometimes it appeared to 
 him in the form of a rat; sometimes even of a leaf, or 
 a fragment of wood, or a rusty nail; but, that his 
 Master's voice always came to him distinct, whatever 
 shape he appeared in; only, he said, with an air of 
 great importance, his Master, this time, had graciously 
 condescended, ever since he left the asylum, to com- 
 municate with him in a much more pleasing and im- 
 posing aspect than he had ever done before — in the 
 form of a beautiful youth, or, rather, like a bright rose- 
 coloured shadow, in which the features of a young man 
 were visible, and that he had heard the voice more 
 distinctly than usual, though in a milder tone, and 
 seeming to come to him from a great distance. 
 
 After these revelations the man became suddenly 
 disturbed. He shook from limb to limb, he seemed 
 convulsed with terror; he cried out that he had betrayed 
 the secret of his Master, who had warned him not to 
 describe his appearance and mode of communication, or 
 he would give his servant up to the tormentors. Then 
 the maniac's terror gave way to fury; his more direful 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 73 
 
 propensity made itself declared; lie sprang into the 
 midst of his frightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by 
 the throat, and would have strangled him but for the 
 prompt rush of the superintendent and his satellites. 
 Foaming -at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was 
 then manacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and 
 the group so left him in charge of his captors. In- 
 quiries were immediately directed towards such circum- 
 stantial evidence as might corroborate the details he 
 had so minutely set forth. The purse, recognised as 
 Sir Philip's, by the valet of the deceased, was found 
 buried under the wych-elm. A policeman despatched, 
 express, to the town in which the maniac declared the 
 knife to have been purchased, brought back word that 
 a cutler in the place remembered perfectly to have sold 
 such a knife to a seafaring man, and identified the in- 
 strument when it was shown to him. From the chink 
 of a door ajar, in the wall opposite my sash-window, a 
 maid-servant, watching for her sweetheart (a journey- 
 man carpenter, who habitually passed that way on 
 going home to dine), had, though unobserved by the 
 murderer, seen him come out of my window at a time 
 that corresponded with the dates of his own story, 
 though she had thought nothing of it at the moment. 
 He might be a patient, or have called on business; she 
 did not know that I was from home. The only point 
 of importance not cleared up was that which related to 
 the opening of the casket — the disappearance of the 
 contents ; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No 
 one, however, could suppose that some third person had 
 discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket 
 to abstract its contents and then re-bury it. The only 
 probable supposition was, that the man himself had 
 
74 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, 
 had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket 
 and purse, and, in the chaos of his reason, had forgotten 
 that he had so done. Who could expect that every 
 link in a madman's tale would be found integral and 
 perfect? In short, little importance was attached to 
 this solitary doubt. Crowds accompanied me to my 
 door, when I was set free, in open court, stainless-, — 
 it was a triumphal procession. The popularity I had 
 previously enjoyed, superseded for a moment by so 
 horrible a charge, came back to me tenfold, as with 
 the reaction of generous repentance for a momentary 
 doubt. One man shared the public favour — the young 
 man whose acuteness had delivered me from the peril, 
 and cleared the truth from so awful a mystery; but 
 Margrave had escaped from congratulation and compli- 
 ment; he had gone on a visit to Strahan, at Derval 
 Court. 
 
 Alone, at last, in the welcome sanctuary of my 
 own home, what were my thoughts? Prominent amongst 
 them all was that assertion of the madman, which had 
 made me shudder when repeated to me: he had been 
 guided to the murder and to all the subsequent pro- 
 ceedings by the luminous shadow of the beautiful 
 youth — the Scin-Laeca to which I had pledged my- 
 self. If Sir Philip Derval could be believed, Margrave 
 was possessed of powers, derived from fragmentary re- 
 collections of a knowledge acquired in a former state 
 of being, which would render his remorseless intelligence 
 infinitely dire, and frustrate the endeavours of a reason, 
 unassisted by similar powers, to thwart his designs or 
 bring the law against his crimes. Had he then the 
 arts that could thus influence the minds of others to 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 75 
 
 serve his fell purposes, and achieve securely his own 
 evil ends through agencies that could not be traced 
 home to himself? 
 
 But for what conceivable purpose had I been sub- 
 jected as a victim to influences as much beyond my 
 control as the Fate or Demoniac Necessity of a Greek 
 Myth? In the legends of the classic world some august 
 sufferer is oppressed by Powers more than mortal, but 
 with an ethical if gloomy vindication of his chastise- 
 ment — he pays the penalty of crime committed by 
 his ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arro- 
 gating equality with the gods, the mysterious calamity 
 which the gods alone can inflict. But I, no descendant 
 of Pelops, no CEdipus, boastful of a wisdom which 
 could interpret the enigmas of the Sphinx, while igno- 
 rant even of his own birth — what had I done to be 
 singled out from the herd of men for trials and visita- 
 tions from the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers? It 
 would be ludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. Lloyd's 
 dying imprecation could have had a prophetic effect 
 upon my destiny; to believe that the pretences of mes- 
 merism were specially favoured by Providence, and 
 that to question their assumptions was an offence of 
 profanation to be punished by exposure to preternatural 
 agencies. There was not even that congruity between 
 cause and effect which fable seeks in excuse for its 
 inventions. Of all men living, I, unimaginative disciple 
 of austere science, should be the last to become the 
 sport of that witchcraft which even imagination re- 
 luctantly allows to the machinery of poets, and science 
 casts aside into the mouldy lumber-room of obsolete 
 superstition. 
 
 Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve 
 
76 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 — it was with intense and yet with most melancholy 
 satisfaction that I turned to the image of Lilian, re- 
 joicing, though with a thrill of awe, that the promise 
 so mysteriously conveyed to my senses, had, here too, 
 been already fulfilled — Margrave had left the town; 
 Lilian was no longer subjected to his evil fascination. 
 But an instinct told me that that fascination had already 
 produced an effect adverse to all hope of happiness for 
 me. Lilian's love for myself was gone. Impossible 
 otherwise that she — in whose nature I had always 
 admired that generous devotion which is, more or less, 
 inseparable from the romance of youth — should have 
 never conveyed to me one word of consolation in the 
 hour of my agony and trial: that she who, till the last 
 evening we had met, had ever been so docile, in the 
 sweetness of a nature femininely submissive to my 
 slightest wish, should have disregarded my solemn 
 injunction, in admitting Margrave to acquaintance, nay, 
 to familiar intimacy; and at the very time when to 
 disobey my injunctions was to embitter my ordeal, and 
 add her own contempt to the degradation imposed upon 
 my honor! No, her heart must be wholly gone from 
 me; her very nature wholly warped. An union between 
 us had become impossible. My love for her remained 
 unshattered; the more tender, perhaps, for a sentiment 
 of compassion. But my pride was shocked, my heart 
 was wounded. My love was not mean and servile. 
 Enough for me to think that she would be at least 
 saved from Margrave. Her life associated with his! — 
 contemplation, horrible and ghastly! — from that fate 
 she was saved. Later, she would recover the effect of 
 an influence happily so brief. She might form some 
 new attachment — some new tie. But love once with- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 77 
 
 drawn is never to be restored — and her love was 
 withdrawn from me. I had but to release her, with 
 my own lips, from our engagement — she would wel- 
 come that release. Mournful but firm in these thoughts 
 and these resolutions, I sought Mrs. Ashleigh's house. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It was twilight when I entered, unannounced (as 
 had been my wont in our familiar intercourse), the 
 quiet sitting-room in which I expected to find mother 
 and child. But Lilian was there alone, seated by the 
 open window, her hands crossed and drooping on her 
 knee, her eye fixed upon the darkening summer skies, 
 in which the evening star had just stolen forth, bright 
 and steadfast, near the pale sickle of a half-moon that 
 was dimly visible, but gave as yet no light. 
 
 Let any lover imagine the reception he would ex- 
 pect to meet from his betrothed, coming into her pre- 
 sence after he had passed triumphant through a terrible 
 peril to life and fame — and conceive what ice froze 
 my blood, what anguish weighed down my heart, when 
 Lilian, turning towards me, rose not, spoke not — 
 gazed at me heedlessly as if at some indifferent stranger 
 — and — and — But no matter! I cannot bear to 
 recal it even now, at the distance of years! I sat down 
 beside her, and took her hand, without pressing it; it 
 rested languidly, passively in mine — one moment; — 
 I dropped it then, with a bitter sigh. 
 
 "Lilian," I said, quietly, "you love me no longer. 
 Is it not so?" 
 
 She raised her eyes to mine, looked at me wist- 
 
78 
 
 A STRANGE STOUY. 
 
 fully, and pressed her hand on her forehead, then said, 
 in a strange voice, "Did I ever love you? What do 
 you mean?" 
 
 "Lilian, Lilian, rouse yourself; are you not, while 
 you speak, under some spell, some influence which you 
 cannot describe nor account for?" 
 
 She paused a moment before she answered, calmly, 
 "No! Again I ask, what do you mean?" 
 
 "What do I mean? Do you forget that we are 
 betrothed? Do you forget how often, and how recently, 
 our vows of affection and constancy have been ex- 
 changed?" 
 
 "No, I do not forget; but I must have deceived 
 you and myself — " 
 
 "It is true, then, that you love me no more?" 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only 
 closed to me? or is it — oh, answer truthfully — is 
 it given to another? — to him — to him — against 
 whom I warned you, whom I implored you not to 
 receive. Tell me, at least, that your love is not gone 
 to Margrave — " 
 
 "To him — love to him! Oh no — no — " 
 
 "What, then, is your feeling towards him?" 
 
 Lilian's face grew visibly paler — even in that dim 
 light. "I know not," she said, almost in a whisper; 
 "but it is — partly awe — partly — " 
 
 " What?" 
 
 "Abhorrence!" she said, almost fiercely, and rose 
 to her feet, with a wild, defying start. 
 
 "If that be so," I said gently, "you would not 
 grieve were you never again to see him — " 
 
 "But I shall see him again," she murmured, in a 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 79 
 
 tone of weary sadness, and sank back once more into 
 her chair. 
 
 "I think not," said I, "and I hope not. And now 
 hear me and heed me, Lilian. It is enough for me, no 
 matter what your feelings towards another, to hear 
 from yourself that the affection you once professed for 
 me is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks 
 ask why we two henceforth separate the lives we had 
 agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that you 
 could not give your hand to a man who had known 
 the taint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. 
 If that seems to you an ungenerous reason, we will 
 leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! 
 For your own sake I can yet feel happiness — hap- 
 piness to hear that you do not love the man against 
 whom I warn you still more solemnly than before! 
 Will you not give me your hand in parting — and 
 have I not spoken your own wish?" 
 
 She turned away her face, and resigned her hand 
 to me in silence. Silently I held it in mine, and my 
 emotions nearly stifled me. One symptom of regret, 
 of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallen at 
 her feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which 
 our vows should have made indissoluble; heed not my 
 offers — wrung from a tortured heart. You cannot 
 have ceased to love me!" But no such symptom of 
 relenting showed itself in her, and with a groan I left 
 the room. 
 
80 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 I was just outside the garden-door, when I felt an 
 arm thrown round me, my cheek kissed, and wetted 
 with tears. Could it be Lilian? Alas, no! It was her 
 mother's voice, that, between laughing and crying, ex- 
 claimed hysterically: "This is joy, to see you again, 
 and on these thresholds. I have just come from your 
 house; I went there on purpose to congratulate you, 
 and to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen 
 her?" 
 
 "Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this 
 way." I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, 
 along the old winding walk, which the shrubs con- 
 cealed from view of the house. We sat down on a 
 rustic seat, where I had often sat with Lilian, midway 
 between the house and the Monks' Well. I told the 
 mother what had passed between me and her daughter ; 
 I made no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; 
 I did not hint at its cause. "Girls of her age will 
 change," said I, "and all that now remains is for us 
 two to agree on such a tale to our curious neighbours, 
 as may rest the whole blame on me. Man's Name is 
 of robust fibre; it could not push its way to a place in 
 the world, if it could not bear, without sinking, the 
 load idle tongues may lay on it. Not so Woman's 
 Name — what is but gossip against Man, is scandal 
 against Woman." 
 
 "Do not be rash, my dear Allen," said Mrs. Ash- 
 leigh, in great distress. "I feel for you, I understand 
 you; in your case I might act as you do. I cannot 
 blame you. Lilian is changed — changed unaccountably. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 81 
 
 Yet sure I am that the change is only on the surface, 
 that her heart is really yours, as entirely and as faith- 
 fully as ever it was; and that later, when she recovers 
 from the strange, dreamy kind of torpor which appears 
 to have come over all her faculties and all her affections, 
 she would awake with a despair which you cannot 
 conjecture, to the knowledge that you had renounced 
 her." 
 
 "I have not renounced her," said I, impatiently; 
 "I did but restore her freedom of choice. But pass by 
 this now, and explain to me more fully the change in 
 your daughter, which I gather from your words is not 
 confined to me." 
 
 "I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and 
 for that reason came to your house. It was on the 
 morning in which we left her aunt's to return hither 
 that I first noticed something peculiar in her look and 
 manner. She seemed absorbed and absent, so much so 
 that I asked her several times to tell. me what made 
 her so grave, but I could only get from her that she 
 had had a confused dream which she could not recal 
 distinctly enough to relate, but that she was -sure it 
 boded evil. During the journey she became gradually 
 more herself, and began to look forward with delight 
 to the idea of seeing you again. Well, you came that 
 evening. What passed between you and her you 
 know best. You complained that she slighted your 
 request to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Margrave. 
 I was surprised that, whether your wish were rea- 
 sonable or not, she could have hesitated to comply 
 with it. I spoke to her about it after you had gone, 
 and she wept bitterly at thinking she had displeased 
 
 you." 
 
 A Slranae S/on/. //. 6 
 
82 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what 
 a note she returned to mine!" 
 
 "The next day the change in her became very 
 visible to me. She told me, in an excited manner, 
 that she was convinced she ought not to marry you. 
 Then came, the following day, the news of your com- 
 mittal. I heard of it, but dared not break it to her. 
 I went to our friend the mayor, to consult with him 
 what to say, what do; and to learn more distinctly 
 than I had done from terrified, incoherent servants, 
 the rights of so dreadful a story. When I returned, 
 I found, to my amazement, a young stranger in the 
 drawing-room; it was Mr. Margrave — Miss Brabazon 
 had brought him at his request. Lilian was in the 
 room, too, aud my astonishment was increased when 
 she said to me with a singular smile, vague but tran- 
 quil: 'I know all about Allen Fen wick; Mr. Margrave 
 has told me all. He is a friend of Allen's. He says 
 there is no cause for fear.' Mr. Margrave then apo- 
 logised to me for his intrusion in a caressing, kindly 
 manner, as if one of the family. He said he was so 
 intimate with you that he felt that he could best break 
 to Miss Ashleigh an information she might receive 
 elsewhere, for that he was the only man in the town 
 who treated the charge with ridicule. You know the 
 wonderful charm of this young man's manner. I cannot 
 explain to you how it was, but in a few moments I 
 was as much at home with him as if he had been your 
 brother. To be brief, having once come, he came con- 
 stantly. He had moved, two days before you went to 
 Derval Court, from his hotel to apartments in Mr. — 's 
 house, just opposite. We could see him on his balcony 
 from our terrace; he would smile to us and come across. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 83 
 
 I did wrong in slighting your injunction, and suffering 
 Lilian to do so. I could not help it, he was such a 
 comfort to me — to her, too — in our tribulation. He 
 alone had no doleful words, wore no long face; he 
 alone was invariably cheerful. 'Everything,' he said, 
 'would come right in a day or two.'" 
 
 "And Lilian could not but admire this young man, 
 he is so beautiful." 
 
 "Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a 
 jc.ilous feeling you were never more mistaken. Lilian, 
 I am convinced, does more than dislike him; he has 
 inspired her Avith repugnance, with terror. And much 
 as I own I like him, in his wild, joyous, careless, harm- 
 less way, do not think I flatter you if I say that Mr. 
 Margrave is not the man to make any girl untrue to 
 you — untrue to a lover with infinitely less advantages 
 than you may pretend to. He would be an universal 
 favourite, I grant; but there is a something in him, or 
 a something wanting in him, which makes liking and 
 admiration stop short of love. I know not why; per- 
 haps, because, with all his good humour, he is so ab- 
 sorbed in himself, so intensely egotistical — so light; 
 were he less clever, I should say so frivolous. He could 
 not make love, he could not say in the serious tone of 
 a man hi earnest, 'I love you.' He owned as much to 
 me, and owned, too, that he knew not even what love 
 was. As to myself — Mr. Margrave appears rich; no 
 whisper against his character or his honour ever reached 
 me. Yet were you out of the question, and were there 
 no stain on his birth, nay, were he as high in rank 
 and wealth as he is favoured by Nature in personal 
 advantages, I confess I could never consent to trust 
 him with my daughter's fate. A voice at my heart 
 
 6* 
 
84 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 would cry 'No!' It may be an unreasonable prejudice, 
 but I could not bear to see him touch Lilian's hand!" 
 
 "Did she never, then — never suffer him even to 
 take her hand?" 
 
 "Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to 
 suppose that she could be caught by a fair face, a 
 graceful manner. Reflect; just before, she had refused, 
 for your sake, Ashleigh Sumner, whom Lady Haughton 
 said 'no girl in her senses could refuse;' and this 
 change in Lilian really began before we returned to 
 L — ; before she had even seen Mr. Margrave. I am 
 convinced it is something in the reach of your skill as 
 physician — it is on the nerves, the system. I will 
 give you a proof of what I say, only do not betray 
 me to her. It was during your imprisonment, the night 
 before your release, that I was awakened by her coming 
 to my bedside. She was sobbing as if her heart would 
 break. 'Oh, mother, mother!' she cried, 'pity me, 
 help me — I am so wretched.' 'What is the matter, 
 darling?' 'I have been so cruel to Allen, v and I know 
 I shall be so again. I cannot help it. Don't question 
 me; only if we are separated, if he cast me off, or 
 I reject him, tell him some day — perhaps when I 
 am in my grave — not to believe appearances; and 
 that I, in my heart of hearts, never ceased to love 
 him!'" 
 
 "She said that! You are not deceiving me?" 
 
 "Oh no; how can you think so?" 
 
 "There is hope still," I murmured; and I bowed 
 my head upon my hands, hot tears forcing their way 
 through the clasped fingers. 
 
 "One word more," said I; "you tell me that Lilian 
 has a repugnance to this Margrave, and yet that she 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 85 
 
 found comfort in his visits — a comfort that could 
 not be wholly ascribed to cheering words he might say 
 about myself, since it is all but certain that I was not, 
 at that time, uppermost in her mind. Can you explain 
 this apparent contradiction?" 
 
 "I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture whicli 
 you would ridicule." 
 
 "I can ridicule nothing now. What is your con- 
 jecture?" 
 
 "I know how much you disbelieve in the stories 
 one hears of animal magnetism and electro-biology, 
 otherwise — " 
 
 "You think that Margrave exercises some power 
 of that kind over Lilian? Has he spoken of such a 
 power?" 
 
 "Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian 
 possessed a faculty that he called by some hard name, 
 not clairvoyance, but a faculty, which he said, when I 
 asked him to explain, was akin to prevision — to second 
 sight. Then he talked of the Priestesses who had ad- 
 ministered the ancient oracles. Lilian, he said, re- 
 minded him of them, with her deep eyes and mysterious 
 smile." 
 
 "And Lilian heard him? What said she?" 
 
 "Nothing; she seemed in fear while she listened." 
 
 "He did not offer to try any of those arts 
 practised by professional mesmerists and other charla- 
 tans?" 
 
 "I thought he was about to do so, but I fore- 
 stalled him; saying I never would consent to any 
 experiment of that kind, either on myself or my 
 daughter." 
 
 "And he replied — ?" 
 
86 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "With Lis gay laugh, that I was very foolish; that 
 a person possessed of such a faculty as he attributed 
 to Lilian, would, if the faculty were developed, be an 
 invaluable adviser. He would have said more, but I 
 begged him to desist. Still I fancy at times — do 
 not be angry — that he does some how or other be- 
 witch v her, unconsciously to herself; for she always 
 knows when he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure 
 that , he does not bewitch myself, for I by no means 
 justify my conduct in admitting him to an intimacy 
 so familiar, and in spite of your wish; I have re- 
 proached myself, resolved to shut my door on him, or 
 to show by my manner that his visits were unwelcome; 
 yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsy lethargic tone 
 which has come into her voice (her voice naturally 
 earnest and impressive, though always low), 'Mother, 
 he will be here in two minutes — I wish to leave 
 the room and cannot' — I, too, have felt as if some- 
 thing constrained me against my will; £S if, in short, 
 I were under that influence which Mr. Vigors — whom 
 I will never forgive for his conduct to you — would 
 ascribe to mesmerism. But will you not come in and 
 see Lilian again?" 
 
 "No, not to-night; but watch and heed her, and if 
 you see aught to make you honestly believe that she 
 regrets the rupture of the old tie from which I have 
 released her — why you know, Mrs. Ashleigh, that — 
 that — " My voice failed — I wrung the good woman's 
 hand, and went my way. 
 
 I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh — 
 if not as Mrs. Poyntz described her — 'common-place 
 weak' — still of an intelligence somewhat below 
 mediocrity. I now regarded her with respect as well 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 87 
 
 as grateful tenderness-, her plain sense bad divined 
 what all my boasted knowledge had failed to detect in 
 raj earlier intimacy with Margrave — viz. that in him 
 there was a something present, or a something wanting, 
 which forbade love and excited fear. Young, beautiful, 
 wealthy, seemingly blameless in life as he was, she 
 wodd not have given her daughter's hand to him! 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 Tie next day my house was filled with visitors. 
 I had no notion that I had so many friends. Mr. 
 Vigors wrote me a generous and handsome letter, 
 owning his prejudices against me on account of his 
 sympathy with poor Dr. Lloyd, and begging my par- 
 don for vhat he now felt to have been harshness, if 
 not distorted justice. But what most moved me, was 
 the entrance of Strahan, who rushed up to me with the 
 heartiness cf old college days. "Oh, my dear Allen, 
 can you evei forgive me, that I should have disbelieved 
 your word — should have suspected you of abstract- 
 ing my poor cousin's memoir?" 
 
 "Is it fouid, then? 1 ' 
 
 "Oh yes; 7ou must thank Margrave. He, clever 
 fellow, you kiow, came to me on a visit yesterday. 
 He put me at *nce on the right scent. Only guess; 
 but you never cm! It was that wretched old house- 
 keeper who purldned the manuscript. You remember 
 she came into the room while you were looking at the 
 memoir. She heart us talk about it; her curiosity was 
 roused; she longec to know the history of her old 
 master, under his om hand; she could not sleep; she 
 
88 A STJRANGE STORY. 
 
 heard me go up to bed; she thought you might leave 
 the book on the table when you, too, went to rest. 
 She stole down stairs, peeped through the keyhole of 
 the lobby, saw you asleep, the book lying before 70U, 
 entered, took away the book softly, meant to glance at 
 its contents and to return it. You were sleeping so 
 soundly she thought you would not wake for an Lour; 
 she carried it into the library, leaving the door open, 
 and there began to pore over it; she stumbled fiist on 
 one of the passages in Latin ; she hoped to find some 
 part in plain English, turned over the leaves, pitting 
 her candle close to them, for the old womans eyes 
 were dim, when she heard you make some sound in 
 your sleep. Alarmed, she looked round; ym were 
 moving uneasily in your seat, and muttering to your- 
 self. From watching you she was soon diverted by 
 the consequence of her own confounded curiosity and 
 folly. In moving, she had unconsciously Irought the 
 poor manuscript close to the candle; the leives caught 
 the flame; her own cap and haud burnirg first made 
 her aware of the mischief done. She tlnew down the 
 book; her sleeve was in flames; she hal first to tear 
 off the sleeve, which was, luckily for hoc, not sewn to 
 her dress. By the time she recovered p^sence of mind 
 to attend to the book half its leaves v^ere reduced to 
 tinder. She did not dare then to repla<e what was left 
 of the manuscript on your table; retimed, with it, to 
 her room, hid it, and resolved to ke$> her own secret. 
 I should never have guessed it ; J had never even 
 spoken to her on the occurrence; /ut when I talked 
 over the disappearance of the bool to Margrave last 
 night, and expressed my disbelie of your story, he 
 said, in his merry way: 'B ut do y<u think Fenwick the 
 
 1 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 89 
 
 only person curious about your cousin's odd ways and 
 strange history? Why, every servant in the household 
 would have been equally curious. You have examined 
 your servants, of course?' 'No, I never thought of it.' 
 'Examine them now, then. Examine especially that 
 old housekeeper. I observe a great change in her 
 manner since I came here, weeks ago, to look over the 
 house. She has something on her mind — I see it in 
 her eyes.' Then it occurred to me, too, that the 
 woman's manner had altered, and that she seemed al- 
 ways in a tremble and a fidget. I went at once to her 
 room, and charged her with stealing the book. She 
 fell on her knees, and told the whole story as I have 
 told it to you; and as I shall take care to tell it to all 
 to whom I have so foolishly blabbed my yet more 
 foolish suspicions of yourself. But can you forgive 
 me, old friend?" 
 
 "Heartily, heartily! And the book is burned?" 
 
 "See;" and he produced the mutilated manuscript. 
 Strange, the part burned — reduced, indeed, to tinder 
 — was the concluding part that related to Haroun — • 
 to Grayle; no vestige of that part left; the earlier por- 
 tions were scorched and mutilated, but, in some places, 
 still decipherable; but as my eye hastily ran over 
 these places, I saw only mangled sentences of the ex- 
 perimental problems which the writer had so minutely 
 elaborated. 
 
 "Will you keep the manuscript as it is, and as 
 long as you like?" said Strahan. 
 
 "No, no; I will have nothing more to do Avith it 
 Consult some other man of science. And so this is the 
 old woman's whole story? No accomplice — none? 
 No one else shared her curiosity and her task?" 
 
90 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "No. Oddly enough, though, she made much the 
 same excuse for her pitiful folly that the madmau 
 made for his terrible crime; she said 'the Devil put it 
 into her head.' Of course he did, as he puts every- 
 thing wrong into any one's head. That does not mend 
 the matter." 
 
 "How! did she, too, say she saw a Shadow and 
 heard a Voice?" 
 
 "No; not such a liar as that, and not mad enough 
 for such a lie. But she said that when she was in bed, 
 thinking over the book, something irresistible urged 
 her to get up and go down into the study; swore she 
 felt something lead her by the hand; swore, too, that 
 when she first discovered the manuscript was not in 
 English, something whispered in her ear to turn over 
 the leaves and approach them to the candle. But I 
 had no patience to listen to all this rubbish. I sent 
 her out of the house, bag and baggage. But, alas! is 
 this to be the end of all my wise cousin's grand dis- 
 coveries?" 
 
 True, of labours that aspired to bring into the 
 chart of science new worlds, of which even the tradi- 
 tionary rumour was but a voice from the land of fable 
 — nought left but broken vestiges of a daring foot- 
 step! The hope of a name imperishable amidst the 
 loftiest hierarchy of Nature's secret temple, with all 
 the pomp of recorded experiment, that applied to the 
 mysteries of Egypt and Chaldsea the inductions of 
 Bacon, the tests of Liebig — was there nothing left 
 of this but what, here and there, some puzzled student 
 might extract, garbled, mutilated, perhaps unintelligible, 
 from shreds of sentences, wrecks of problems? mind 
 of man, can the works, on which thou wouldst found 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 91 
 
 immortality below, be annulled into smoke and tinder 
 by an inch of candle in the hand of an old woman! 
 
 When Strahan left me, I went out, but not yet to 
 visit patients. I stole through by-paths into the fields; 
 I needed solitude to bring my thoughts into shape and 
 order. What was delusion, and what not? — was I 
 right or the public? Was Margrave really the most 
 innocent and serviceable of human beings, kindly, af- 
 fectionate, employing a wonderful acuteness for benig- 
 nant ends? Was I, in truth, indebted to him for the 
 greatest boon one man can bestow on another? For 
 life rescued, for fair name justified? Or had he, by 
 some demoniac sorcery, guided the hand of the murderer 
 against the life of the person who alone could imperil 
 his own? had he, by the same dark spells, urged the 
 woman to the act that had destroyed the only record 
 of his monstrous being — the only evidence that I 
 was not the sport of an illusion in the horror with 
 which he inspired me? 
 
 But if the latter supposition could be admissible, 
 did he use his agents only to betray them afterwards 
 to exposure, and that, without any possible clue to his 
 own detection as the instigator? Then, there came 
 over me confused recollections of tales of mediaeval 
 witchcraft, which I had read in boyhood. Were there 
 not on judicial record attestation and evidence, solemn 
 and circumstantial, of powers analogous to those now 
 exercised by Margrave? Of sorcerers instigating to sin 
 through influences ascribed to Demons — making their 
 apparitions glide through guarded walls, their voices 
 heard from afar in the solitude of dungeons or monastic 
 cells? subjugating victims to their will, by means 
 which no vigilance could have detected, if the victims 
 
92 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 themselves had not eonfessed the witchcraft that had 
 ensnared — courting a sure and infamous death in 
 that confession — preferring such death to a life so 
 haunted ? Were stories so gravely set forth in the pomp 
 of judicial evidence, and in the history of times com- 
 paratively recent, indeed, to be massed — pell-mell 
 together, as a moles indigesta of senseless superstition, 
 — all the witnesses to be deemed liars? all the victims 
 and tools of the sorcerers, lunatics? all the examiners 
 or judges, with their solemn gradations — lay and 
 clerical — from Commissions of Inquiry to Courts of 
 Appeal, — to be despised for credulity, loathed for 
 cruelty; or, amidst records so numerous, so imposingly 
 attested, — were there the fragments of a terrible 
 truth? And had our ancestors been so unwise in those 
 laws we' now deem so savage, by which the world was 
 rid of scourges more awful and more potent than the 
 felon with his candid dagger? Fell instigators of the 
 evil in men's secret hearts — shaping into action the 
 vague, half-formed desire, and guiding with agencies, 
 impalpable, unseen, their spell-bound instruments of 
 calamity and death. 
 
 Such were the gloomy questions that I — by 
 repute, the sternest advocate of common sense against 
 fantastic errors; — by profession, the searcher into 
 flesh and blood, and tissue, and nerve, and sinew, for 
 the causes of all that disease the mechanism of the uni- 
 versal human frame; — I, self-boasting physician, 
 sceptic, philosopher, materialist — revolved, not amidst 
 gloomy pines, under grim winter skies, but as I paced 
 slow through laughing meadows, and by the banks of 
 merry streams, in the ripeness of the golden August; 
 the hum of insects in the fragrant grass, the flutter of 
 
A STRANG E STORY. 
 
 93 
 
 birds amid the delicate green of boughs chequered by 
 playful sunbeams and gentle shadows, and ever in sight 
 of the resorts of busy work-day man. Walls, roof-tops, 
 church-spires rising high. There, white and modern, 
 the handwriting of our race, in this practical nineteenth 
 century, on its square plain masonry and Doric shafts, 
 the Town-Hall, central in the animated market-place. 
 And I — I — prying into long-neglected corners and 
 dust-holes of memory for what my reason had flung 
 there as worthless rubbish; reviving the jargon of 
 French law, in the proces verbal, against a Gille de 
 Ketz, or an Urbain Grandier, and sifting the equity of 
 sentences on witchcraft! 
 
 Bursting the links of this ghastly soliloquy with a 
 laugh at my own folly, I struck into a narrow path 
 that led back towards the city, by a quiet and rural 
 suburb : the path wound on through a wide and solitary 
 churchyard, at the base of the Abbey-hill. Many of 
 the former dwellers on that eminence now slept in the 
 lowly burial-ground at its foot. And the place, mourn- 
 fully decorated with the tombs which still jealously 
 mark distinctions of rank amidst the levelling demo- 
 cracy of the grave, was kept trim with the care which 
 comes half from piety, and half from pride. 
 
 I seated myself on a bench, placed between the 
 clipped yew-trees that bordered the path from the 
 entrance to the church porch; deeming vaguely that 
 my own perplexing thoughts might imbibe a quiet 
 from the quiet of the place. 
 
 "And oh," I murmured to myself, "oh that I had 
 one bosom friend to whom I might freely confide all 
 these torturing riddles which I cannot solve — one 
 
94 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 who could read my heart, assured of its truthfulness, 
 and wise enough to enlighten its troubles." 
 
 And as I so murmured, my eye fell upon the form 
 of a kneeling child; — at the farthest end of the burial- 
 ground, beside a grave with its new headstone gleam- 
 ing white amidst the older mossgrown tombs, a female 
 child, her head boAved, her hands clasped. I could see 
 but the outline of her small form in its sable dress — 
 an infant beside the dead. 
 
 My eye and my thoughts were turned from that 
 silent figure, too absorbed in my own restless tumult 
 of doubt and dread, for sympathy with the grief or 
 the consolation of a kneeling child. And yet I should 
 have remembered that tomb! Again I murmured with 
 a fierce impatience, "Oh for a bosom friend in whom 
 I could confide!" 
 
 I heard steps on the walks under the yews. And 
 an old man came in sight, slightly bent, with long 
 grey hair, but still with enough of vigour for years to 
 come — in his tread, firm, though slow -■ — in the un- 
 shrunken muscle of his limbs and the steady light of 
 his clear blue eye. I started. Was it possible? That 
 countenance, marked, indeed, with the lines of laborious 
 thought, but sweet in the mildness of humanity, and 
 serene in the peace of conscience! — I could not be 
 mistaken. Julius Faber was before me. The profound 
 pathologist, to whom my own proud self-esteem ac- 
 knowledged inferiority, without humiliation; the generous 
 benefactor to whom I owed my own smoothed entrance 
 into the arduous road of fame and fortune. I had 
 longed for a friend, a confidant; what I sought stood 
 suddenly at my side. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 93 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 Explanation, on Faber's part, was short and simple. 
 The nephew whom he designed as the heir to his wealth, 
 had largely outstripped the liberal allowance made to him 
 — had incurred heavy debts; and, in order to extricate 
 himself from the debts, had plunged into ruinous specu- 
 lations. Faber had come back to England to save his 
 heir from prison or outlawry, at the expense of more 
 than three-fourths of the destined inheritance. To add 
 to all, the young man had married a young lady with- 
 out fortune; the uncle only heard of this marriage on 
 arriving in England. The spendthrift was hiding from 
 his creditors in the house of his father-in-law, in one 
 of the western counties. Faber there sought him; and, 
 on becoming acquainted with his wife, grew reconciled 
 to the marriage, and formed hopes of his nephew's 
 future redemption. He spoke, indeed, of the young 
 wife with great affection. She was good and sensible; 
 willing and anxious to encounter any privation by 
 which her husband might retrieve the effects of his 
 folly. "So," said Faber, "on consultation with this ex- 
 cellent creature — for my poor nephew is so broken 
 down by repentance, that others must think for him 
 how to exalt repentance into reform — my plans were 
 determined. I shall remove my prodigal from all 
 scenes of temptation. He has youth, strength, plenty 
 of energy, hitherto misdirected. I shall take him from 
 the Old World into the New. I have decided on Aus- 
 tralia. The fortune still left to me, small here, will be 
 ample capital there. It is not enough to maintain us 
 separately, so we must all live together. Besides, I feel 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 that, though I have neither the strength nor the ex- 
 perience which could best serve a young settler on a 
 strange soil, still, under my eye, my poor boy will be 
 at once more prudent and more persevering. We sail 
 next week." 
 
 Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not how to 
 express compassion-, yet, at his age, after a career of 
 such prolonged and distinguished labour, to resign the 
 ease and comforts of the civilised state for the hard- 
 ships and rudeness of an infant colony, seemed to me 
 a dreary prospect; and, as delicately, as tenderly as I 
 could to one whom I loved and honoured as a father, I 
 placed at his disposal the fortune which, in great part, 
 I owed to him, — pressing him at least to take from 
 it enough to secure to himself, in his own country, a 
 home suited to his years and worthy of his station. He 
 rejected all my offers, however earnestly urged on him, 
 with his usual modest and gentle dignity; and assuring 
 me that he looked forward with great interest to a 
 residence in lands new to his experience, and affording 
 ample scope for the hardy enjoyments which had al- 
 ways most allured his tastes, he hastened to change the 
 subject. 
 
 "And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate 
 my scapegrace has had the saving good luck to find? 
 A daughter of the worthy man who undertook the care 
 of poor Dr. Lloyd's orphans — the orphans who owed 
 so much to your generous exertions to secure a provision 
 for them — and that child, now just risen from her 
 father's grave, is my pet companion, my darling ewe- 
 lamb — Dr. Lloyd's daughter, Amy." 
 
 Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as 
 she recognised the old man, and nestling to his side as 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 97 
 
 she glanced wistfully towards myself. A winning, can- 
 did, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, some- 
 what more thoughtful than is common to the face of 
 childhood, but calm, intelligent, and ineffably mild. 
 Presently she stole from the old man and put her hand 
 in mine: 
 
 "Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see 
 Him that night when he passed away from us, and 
 who, they all say at home, was so good to my brothers 
 and me? Yes, I recollect you now." And she put 
 her pure face to mine, wooing me to kiss it. 
 
 I kind! I good! I — I! Alas! she little knew, 
 little guessed, the wrathful imprecation her father had 
 bequeathed to me that fatal night! 
 
 I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan daughter, 
 but my tears fell over her hand. She took them as 
 signs of pity, and, in her infant thankfulness, silently 
 kissed me. 
 
 "Oh, my friend!" I murmured to Faber, "I have 
 much that I long to say to you — alone — alone — 
 come to my house with me, be at least my guest as 
 long as you stay in this town." 
 
 "Willingly," said Faber, looking at me more in- 
 tently than he had done before, and, with the true eye 
 of the practised Healer, at once soft and penetrating. 
 
 He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word in 
 the ear of the little girl, she went on before us, turn- 
 ing her head, as she gained the gate, for another look 
 at her father's grave. As we walked to my house, 
 Julius Faber spoke to me much of this child. Her 
 brothers were all at school; she was greatly attached 
 to his nephew's wife ; she had become yet more attached 
 to Faber himself, though on so short an acquaintance; 
 
 A Strange Story, //. 7 
 
98 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 it had been settled that she was to accompany the 
 emigrants to Australia. 
 
 "There," said he, "the sum, that some munificent, 
 but unknown, friend of her father has settled on her, 
 Avill provide her no mean dower for a colonist's wife 
 when the time comes for her to bring a blessing to 
 some other hearth than ours." He went on to say that 
 
 she had wished to accompany him to L , in order 
 
 to visit her father's grave before crossing the wide seas; 
 "and she has taken such fond care of me all the way, 
 that you might fancy I were the child of the two. I 
 come back to this town, partly to dispose of a few poor 
 houses in it which still belong to me, principally to 
 bid you farewell before quitting the Old World, no 
 doubt for ever. So, on arriving to-day, I left Amy by 
 herself in the churchyard while I went to your house, 
 but you were from home. And now I must congratu- 
 late you on the reputation you have so rapidly ac- 
 quired, which has even surpassed my predictions." 
 
 "You are aware," said I, falteringly, "of the ex- 
 traordinary charge from which that part of my reputa- 
 tion dearest to all men has just emerged?" 
 
 He had but seen a short account in a weekly 
 journal, written after my release. He asked details, 
 which I postponed. 
 
 Beaching my home, I busied myself to provide for 
 the comfort of my two unexpected guests; strove to 
 rally myself — to be cheerful. Not till night, when 
 Julius Faber and I were alone together, did I touch on 
 what was weighing at my heart. Then, drawing to 
 his side, I told him all; — all of which the substance 
 is herein written, from the death scene in Dr. Lloyd's 
 chamber to the hour in which I had seen Dr. Lloyd's 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 99 
 
 child at her father's grave. Some of the incidents and 
 conversations which had most impressed me, I had al- 
 ready committed to writing, in the fear that, otherwise, 
 my fancy might forge for its own thraldom the links 
 of reminiscence which my memory might let fall from 
 its chain. Faber listened with a silence only inter- 
 rupted by short pertinent questions; and when I had 
 done, he remained thoughtful for some moments; then 
 the great physician replied thus: 
 
 "I take for granted your conviction of the reality 
 of all you tell me, even of the Luminous Shadow, of 
 the bodiless Voice; but, before admitting the reality it- 
 self we must abide by the old maxim, not to accept as 
 cause to effect those agencies which belong to the mar- 
 vellous, when causes less improbable for the effect can 
 be rationally conjectured. In this case are there not 
 such causes? Certainly there are " 
 
 "There are!" 
 
 "Listen; you are one of those men who attempt to 
 stifle their own imagination. But in all completed in- 
 tellect, imagination exists, and will force its way; deny 
 it healthful vents, and it may stray into morbid chan- 
 nels. The death-room of Dr. Lloyd deeply impressed 
 your heart, far more than your pride would own. This 
 is clear, from the pains you took to exonerate your 
 conscience, in your generosity to the orphans. As the 
 heart was moved, so was the imagination stirred; and, 
 unaware to yourself, prepared for much that subse- 
 quently appealed to it. Your sudden love, conceived 
 in the very grounds of the house so associated with re- 
 collections in themselves strange and romantic; the pe- 
 culiar temperament and nature of the girl to whom 
 your love was attracted; her own visionary beliefs, and 
 
 7* 
 
100 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 the keen anxiety which infused into your love a deeper 
 poetry of sentiment, — all insensibly tended to induce 
 the imagination to dwell on the Wonderful; and, in 
 overstriving to reconcile each rarer phenomenon to the 
 most positive laws of Nature, your very intellect could 
 discover no solution but in the Preternatural. 
 
 "You visit a man who tells you he has seen Sir 
 Philip Derval's ghost: on that very evening, you hear 
 a strange story, in which Sir Philip's name is mixed 
 up with a tale of murder, implicating two mysterious 
 pretenders to magic — Louis Grayle, and the Sage of 
 Aleppo. The tale so interests your fancy that even 
 the glaring impossibility of a not unimportant part of 
 it escapes your notice — viz. the account of a criminal 
 trial (in which the circumstantial evidence was more 
 easily attainable than in all the rest of the narrative, 
 but) which could not legally have taken place as told. 
 Thus it is whenever the mind begins, unconsciously, to 
 admit the shadow of the Supernatural; the Obvious is 
 lost to the eye that plunges its gaze into the Obscure. 
 Almost immediately afterwards you become acquainted 
 with a young stranger, whose traits of character inter- 
 est and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time 
 you are engaged in a physiological work that severely 
 tasks the brain, and in which you examine the intricate 
 question of soul distinct from mind. 
 
 "xlnd, here, I can conceive a cause deep-hid amongst 
 what metaphysicians would call latent associations, for 
 a train of thought which disposed you to accept the 
 fantastic impressions afterwards made on you by the 
 scene in the Museum and the visionary talk of Sir 
 Philip Derval. Doubtless, when at college you first 
 studied metaphysical speculation, you would have 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 101 
 
 glanced over Beattie's Essay on Truth as one of the 
 works written in opposition to your favourite, David 
 Hume." 
 
 "Yes, I read the book, but I have long since for- 
 gotten its arguments." 
 
 "Well, in that essay, Beattie* cites the extra- 
 ordinary instance of Simon Browne, a learned and 
 pious clergyman, who seriously disbelieved the existence 
 of his own soul 5 and imagined that, by interposition of 
 Divine power, his soul was annulled, and nothing left 
 but a principle of animal life, which he held in com- 
 mon with the brutes! When years ago, a thoughtful 
 imaginative student, you came on that story, probably 
 enough you would have paused, revolved in your own 
 mind and fancy what kind of a creature a man might 
 be, if, retaining human life and merely human under* 
 standing, he was deprived of the powers and properties 
 which reasoners have ascribed to the existence of soul. 
 Something in this young man, unconsciously to your- 
 self, revives that forgotten train of meditative ideas. 
 His dread of death as the final cessation of being, 
 his brute-like want of sympathy with his kind, his in- 
 capacity to comprehend the motives which carry man 
 on to scheme and to build for a future that extends 
 beyond his grave, all start up before you at the very 
 moment your reason is overtasked, your imagination 
 fevered, in seeking the solution of problems which, to 
 a philosophy based upon your system, must always 
 remain insoluble. The young man's conversation not 
 only thus excites your fancies, it disturbs your affec- 
 tions. He speaks not only of drugs that renew youth, 
 
 * Beattie's Essay on Truth , part i. c. II. 3. The story of Simon 
 Browne is to be found in The Adventurer. 
 
but of charms that secure love. You tremble for your 
 Lilian while you hear him! And the brain thus tasked, 
 the imagination thus inflamed, the heart thus agitated, 
 you are presented to Sir Philip Derval, whose ghost 
 your patient had supposed he saw weeks ago. 
 
 "This person, a seeker after an occult philosophy, 
 which had possibly acquainted him with some secrets in 
 nature beyond the pale of our conventional experience, 
 though, when analysed, they might prove to be quite 
 reconcilable with sober science, startles you with an 
 undefined mysterious charge against the young man who 
 had previously seemed to you different from ordinary 
 mortals. In a room stored with the dead things of the 
 brute soulless world, your brain becomes intoxicated 
 with the fumes of some vapour which produces effects 
 not uncommon in the superstitious practices of the East ; 
 your brain thus excited, brings distinctly before you 
 the vague impressions it had before received. Margrave 
 becomes identified with the Louis Grayle of whom you 
 had previously heard an obscure and legendary tale, 
 and all the anomalies in his character are explained 
 by his being that which you had contended, in your 
 physiological work, it was quite possible for man to be 
 — viz. mind and body without soul ! You were startled 
 by the monster which man would be were your own 
 theory possible; and in order to reconcile the contra- 
 dictions in this very monster, you account for know- 
 ledge and for powers that mind, without soul, could 
 not have attained, by ascribing to this prodigy broken 
 memories of a former existence, demon attributes from 
 former proficiency in evil magic. My friend, there is 
 nothing here which your own study of morbid idiosyn- 
 crasies should not suffice to solve." 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 103 
 
 "So then," said I, "you would reduce all that have 
 affected my senses as realities into the deceit of illusions! 
 But," I added, in a whisper, terrified by my own 
 question, "do not physiologists agree in this: namely, 
 that though illusory phantasms may haunt the sane as 
 well as the insane, the sane know that they are only 
 illusions, and the insane do not?" 
 
 "Such a distinction," answered Faber, "is far too 
 arbitrary and rigid for more than a very general and 
 qualified acceptance. Muller, indeed, who is, perhaps, 
 the highest authority on such a subject, says with pru- 
 dent reserve, 'When a person who is not insane sees 
 spectres and believes them to be real, his intellect 
 must be imperfectly exercised.'* He would indeed, 
 be a bold physician who maintained that every man 
 who believed he had really seen a ghost was of un- 
 sound mind. In Dr. Abercrombie's interesting account 
 of spectral illusions, he tells us of a servant-girl who 
 believed she saw, at the foot of her bed, the apparition 
 of Curran, in a sailor's jacket and an immense pair of 
 whiskers.** No doubt the spectre was an illusion, and 
 Dr. Abercrombie very ingeniously suggests the associa- 
 tion of ideas by which the apparition was conjured up 
 with the grotesque adjuncts of the jacket and the 
 whiskers; but the servant-girl, in believing the reality 
 of the apparition, was certainly not insane. When I 
 read in the American public journals*** of 'spirit mani- 
 festations,' in which large numbers of persons of at 
 least the average degree of education, declare that they 
 
 * Muller's Physiology of the Senses, p. 394. 
 ** Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 281. (loth edition.) 
 *** At the date of Faber's conversation with Allen Fenwick, the (so- 
 called) spirit manifestations had not spread from America over Europe. 
 But if they had, Faber's views would, no doubt, have remained the same. 
 
104 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 have actually witnessed various phantasms, much more 
 extraordinary than all which you have confided to me, 
 and arrive, at once, at the conclusion that they are 
 thus put into direct communication with departed souls, 
 I must assume that they are under an illusion, but I 
 should be utterly unwarranted in supposing that be- 
 cause they credited that illusion they were insane. I 
 should only say with Miiller, that in their reasoning 
 on the phenomena presented to them, 'their intellect 
 was imperfectly exercised.' And an impression made 
 on the senses, being in itself sufficiently rare to excite 
 our wonder, may be strengthened till it takes the form 
 of a positive fact, by various coincidences which are 
 accepted as corroborative testimony, yet which are, 
 nevertheless, nothing more than coincidences found in 
 every-day matters of business, but only emphatically 
 noticed when we can exclaim, 'How astonishing!' In 
 your case such coincidences have been, indeed, very 
 signal, and might well aggravate the perplexities into 
 which your reason was thrown. Sir Philip Derval's 
 murder, the missing casket, the exciting nature of the 
 manuscript, in which a superstitious interest is already 
 enlisted by your expectation to find in it the key to 
 the narrator's boasted powers, and his reasons for the 
 astounding denunciation of the man whom you suspect 
 to be his murderer; in all this there is much to con- 
 firm, nay, to cause, an illusion, and for that very 
 reason, when examined by strict laws of evidence, in 
 all this there is but additional proof that the illusion 
 was — only illusion. Your affections contribute to 
 strengthen your fancy in its war on your reason. The 
 girl you so passionately love develops, to your dis- 
 quietude and terror, the visionary temperament which, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 105 
 
 at her age, is ever liable to fantastic caprices. She 
 hears Margrave's song, which, you say, has a wildness 
 of charm that affects and thrills even you. Who does 
 not know the power of music? and of all music, there 
 is none so potential as that of the human voice. Thus, 
 in some languages, charm and song are identical ex- 
 pressions; and even when a critic in our own sober 
 newspapers extols a Malibran or a Grisi, you may be 
 sure that he will call her 'enchantress.' Well, this 
 lady, your betrothed, in whom the nervous system is 
 extremely impressionable, hears a voice which, even to 
 your ear, is strangely melodious, and sees a form and 
 face which, even to your eye, are endowed with a 
 singular character of beauty. Her fancy is impressed 
 by what she thus hears and sees, and impressed the 
 more because, by a coincidence not very uncommon, 
 a face like that which she beholds, has before been 
 presented to her in a dream or a reverie. In the 
 nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather 
 than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that 
 would seem to you a treason, you accept the chimera 
 of 'magical fascination.' In this frame of mind you 
 sit down to read the memoir of a mystical enthusiast. 
 Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? 
 A dream! And a dream no less because your eyes were 
 open and you believed yourself awake. The diseased 
 imagination resembles those mirrors which , being 
 themselves distorted, represent distorted pictures as 
 correct. 
 
 "And even this Memoir of Sir Philip Derval's; — 
 can you be quite sure that you actually read the part 
 which relates to Haroun and Louis Grayle ? You say 
 that, while perusing the manuscript you saw the Lu- 
 
106 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 minous Shadow and became insensible. The old wo- 
 man says you were fast asleep. May you not really 
 have fallen into a slumber, and in that slumber have 
 dreamed the parts of the tale that relate to Grayle? 
 dreamed that you beheld the Shadow? Do you re- 
 member what is said so well by Dr. Abcrcrombie, to 
 authorise the explanation I suggest to you: 'A person 
 under the influence of some strong mental impression 
 falls asleep for a few seconds, perhaps without being 
 sensible of it: some scene or person appears in a dream, 
 and he starts up under the conviction that it was a 
 spectral appearance.' " * 
 
 "But," said I, "the apparition was seen by me 
 again, and when I, certainly, was not sleeping." 
 
 "True; and who should know better than a physi- 
 cian so well read as yourself that a spectral illusion 
 once beheld is always apt to return again in the same 
 form. Thus, Goethe was long haunted by one image; 
 the phantom of a flower unfolding itself, and developing 
 
 * Abercrombie on tbe Intellectual Powers, p. 278. (15th edition.) 
 This author, not more to be admired for his intelligence than his candour, 
 and who is entitled to praise for a higher degree of original thought than 
 that to which he modestly pretends , relates a curiou3 anecdote illustrating 
 ' the analogy between dreaming and spectral illusion, which he received 
 from the gentleman to which it occurred — an eminent medical friend: 
 "Having sat up late one evening, under considerable anxiety for one of his 
 children, who was ill, he fell asleep in his chair, and had a frightful 
 dream, in which the prominent figure was an immense baboon. He awoke 
 with the fright, got up instantly, and walked to a table which was in tbe 
 middle of the room. He was then quite awake, and quite conscious of the 
 articles around him; but close by the wall in the end of the apartment he 
 distinctly saw the baboon making the same grimaces which he had seen in 
 his dream ; and this spectre continued visible for about half a minute." 
 Now, a man who saw only a baboon would be quite ready to admit that it 
 was but an optical illusion; but if, instead of a baboon, he had seen an 
 intimate friend, and that friend, by some coincidence of time, had died 
 about that date, he would be a very strong-minded man if he admitted, for 
 the mystery of seeing his friend, the same natural solution which he would 
 readily admit for seeing a baboon. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 107 
 
 new flowers * Thus, one of our own most distinguished 
 philosophers tells us of a lady known to himself, who 
 would see her husband, hear him move and speak, 
 when he was not even in the house.** But instances 
 of the facility with which phantasms, once admitted, 
 repeat themselves to the senses are numberless. Many 
 are recorded by Hibbert and Abercrombie, and every 
 physician in extensive practice can add largely, from 
 his own experience, to the list. Intense self-concentra- 
 tion is, in itself, a mighty magician. The magicians 
 of the East inculcate the necessity of fast, solitude, 
 and meditation for the due development of their ima- 
 ginary powers. And I have no doubt with effect; be- 
 cause fast, solitude, and meditation — in other words, 
 thought or fancy intensely concentred, will both raise 
 apparitions and produce the invoker's belief in them. 
 Spinello, striving to conceive the image of Lucifer for 
 his picture of the Fallen Angels, was at last actually 
 haunted by the Shadow of the fiend. Newton himself 
 has been subjected to a phantom, though to him, Son 
 of Light, the spectre presented was that of the sun! 
 You remember the account that Newton gives to Locke 
 of this visionary appearance. He says that 'though he 
 had looked at the sun with his right eye only, and 
 not with the left, yet his fancy began to make an im- 
 pression upon his left eye as well as his right, for if 
 he shut his right and looked upon the clouds, or a 
 book, or any bright object with his left eye, he could 
 see the sun almost as plain as with the right, if he did 
 but intend his fancy a little while on it;' nay, 'for 
 some months after, as often as he began to meditate 
 
 * See Muller's observations on this phenomenon , Physiology of the 
 Senses, Baley's translation, p. 1395. 
 
 ** Sir David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic , p. 39. 
 
108 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 on the phenomena, the spectrum of the sun began to 
 return, even though he lay in bed at midnight, with 
 his curtains drawn! 1 Seeing, then, how any vivid im- 
 pression once made will recur, what wonder that you 
 should behold in your prison the Shining Shadow that 
 had first startled you in a wizard's chamber when 
 poring over the records of a murdered visionary? The 
 more minutely you analyse your own hallucinations 
 — pardon me the word — the more they assume the 
 usual characteristics of a dream ; contradictory, illogical, 
 even in the marvels they represent. Can any two per- 
 sons be more totally unlike each other, not merely as 
 to form and years, but as to all the elements of char- 
 acter, than the Grayle of whom you read, or believe 
 you read, and the Margrave in whom you evidently 
 think that Grayle is existent still? The one represented, 
 you say, as gloomy, saturnine, with vehement passions, 
 but with an original grandeur of thought and will, 
 consumed by an internal remorse; the other you paint 
 to me as a joyous and wayward darling of Nature, 
 acute yet frivolous, free from even the ordinary passions 
 of youth, taking delight in innocent amusements, in- 
 capable of continuous study, without a single pang of 
 repentance for the crimes you so fancifully impute to 
 him. And now, when your suspicions, so romantically 
 conceived, are dispelled by positive facts, now, when 
 it is clear that Margrave neither murdered Sir Philip 
 Derval nor abstracted the memoir, you still, uncon- 
 sciously to yourself, draw on your imagination in order 
 to excuse the suspicion your pride of intellect declines 
 to banish, and suppose that this youthful sorcerer 
 tempted the madman to the murder, the woman to the 
 theft — " 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "But you forget the madman said ' that he was led 
 on by the Luminous Shadow of a beautiful youth,' that 
 the woman said also that she was impelled by some 
 mysterious agency." 
 
 "I do not forget those coincidences; but how your 
 learning would dismiss them as nugatory were your 
 imagination not disposed to exaggerate them! When 
 you read the authentic histories of any popular illusion, 
 such as the spurious inspirations of the Jansenist Con- 
 vulsionaries, the apparitions that invaded convents, as 
 deposed to in the trial of Urbain Grandier, the confes- 
 sions of witches and wizards in places the most remote 
 from each other, or, at this day, the tales of 'spirit- 
 manifestation' recorded in half the towns and villages 
 of America — do not all the superstitious impressions 
 of a particular time have a common family likeness? 
 What one sees another sees, though there has been no 
 communication between the two. I cannot tell you 
 why these phantasms thus partake of the nature of an 
 atmospheric epidemic; the fact remaius incontestable. 
 And, strange as may be the coincidence between your 
 impressions of a mystic agency and those of some other 
 brains not cognisant of the chimeras of your own, still, 
 is it not simpler philosophy to say, 'They are coin- 
 cidences of the same nature which made witches in the 
 same epoch all tell much the same story of the broom- 
 sticks they rode and the sabbats at which they danced 
 to the fiend's piping,' and there leave the matter, as in 
 science we must leave many of the most elementary and 
 familiar phenomena inexplicable as to their causes — 
 is not this, I say, more philosophical than to insist 
 upon an explanation which accepts the supernatural 
 rather than leave the extraordinary unaccounted for?" 
 
110 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "As you speak," said I, resting my downcast face 
 upon my hand, "I should speak to any patient who 
 had confided to me the tale I have told to you." 
 
 u And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy 
 you? Very likely: to some phenomena there is, as yet, 
 no explanation. Perhaps Newton himself could not ex- 
 plain quite to his own satisfaction why he was haunted 
 at midnight by the spectrum of a sun; though I have 
 no doubt that some later philosopher, whose ingenuity 
 has been stimulated by Newton's account, has, by this 
 time, suggested a rational solution of that enigma.* 
 
 * Newton's explanation is as follows: "This story I tell you to let yon 
 understand, that in the observation related by Mr. Boyle, the man's fancy 
 probably concurred with the impression made by the sun's light to produce 
 that phantasm of the sun which he constantly saw in bright objects, and 
 eo your question about the cause of this phantasm invoices another about 
 the power of the fancy, which I must confess is too hard a knot forme to 
 untie. To place this effect in a constant motion is hard, because the sun 
 ought then to appear perpetually. It seems rather to consist in a disposi- 
 tion of the sensorium to move the imagination strongly, and to be easily 
 moved both by the imagination and by the light as often as bright objects 
 are looked upon." — Letter from Sir L Newton to Locke , Lord King's Life 
 of Locke , vol. i. pp. 405-8. 
 
 Dr. Roget (Animal and Vegetable Physiology Considered with re- 
 ference to Natural Theology. Bridgewater Treatise, pp.524, 525), thus 
 refers to -this phenomenon, which he states "all of us may experience:" 
 
 "When the impressions are very vivid" (Dr. Roget is speaking of 
 visual impressions) "another phenomenon often takes place, namely, 
 their subsequent recurrence after a certain interval, during which they are 
 not felt, and quite independently of any renewed application of the cause 
 which had originally excited them.'''' (I mark by italics the words which 
 more precisely coincide with Julius Faber's explanations.) "If, for 
 example, we look steadfastly at the sun for a second or two, and then 
 immediately close our eyes , the image or spectrum of the sun remains lor 
 a long time present to the mind as if the light were still acting on the 
 retina. It tben gradually fades and disappears ; but if we continue to keep 
 the eyes shut, the same impression will, after a certain time, recur and 
 again vanish', and this phenomenon will be repeated at intervals, the 
 sensation becoming fainter at each renewal. It is probable that these 
 reappearances of the image, after the light which produced the original 
 impression has been withdrawn, are occasioned by spontaneous affections 
 of the retina itself which are conveyed to the sensorium. In other cases 
 where the impressions are less strong, the physical changes producing 
 these changes are perhaps confined to the sensorium." 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To return to your own case. I have offered such inter- 
 pretations of the mysteries that confound you, as appear 
 to me authorised by physiological science. Should you 
 adduce other facts which physiological science wants 
 the data to resolve into phenomena always natural, 
 however rare, still hold fast to that simple saying of 
 Goethe's, — 'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.' 
 And, if all which physiological science comprehends in 
 its experience wholly fails us, I may then hazard cer- 
 tain conjectures which, by acknowledging ignorance, 
 is compelled to recognise the marvellous — (for, as 
 where knowledge enters the marvellous recedes, so 
 where knowledge falters the marvellous advances) — 
 yet still, even in those conjectures, I will distinguish 
 the marvellous from the supernatural. But, for the 
 present, I advise you to accept the guess that may 
 
 It may be said that there is this difference between the spectrum of 
 the sun and such a phantom as that which perplexed Allen Fenwick — viz. 
 that the sun has been actually beheld before its visionary appearance can 
 be reproduced, and that Allen Fenwick only imagines he has seen the 
 apparition which repeats itself to his fancy. "But there are grounds for 
 the suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, Philosophy of Apparitions, p. 250), "that 
 when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation , a corresponding 
 affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion " Mttller (Physiology 
 of the Senses, p. 1392, Baley's translation) states the same opinion still 
 more strongly, and Sir David Brewster, quoted by Dr. Hibbert (p. 251), 
 says: "In examining these mental impressions I have found that they 
 follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like the spectral impressions of 
 luminous objects, and that they resemble them also in their apparent im- 
 mobility when the eye is displaced by an external force. If this result 
 (which 1 state with much diffidence, from having only my own experience 
 in its favour) shall be found generally true by others , it will follow that 
 the objects of mental contemplation may be seen as distinctly as external 
 objects, and will occupy the same local position in the axis of vision , as if 
 they had been formed by the agency of light." Hence the impression of an 
 image once conveyed to the senses, no matter how, whether by actual or 
 illusory vision, is liable to renewal, "independently of any renewed 
 application of the cause which had originally excited it," and can be seen 
 in that renewal "as distinctiy as external objects ," for indeed "the revival 
 of the fantastic figure really does affect those points of the retiua which 
 had been previously impressed." 
 
112 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 best quiet the fevered imagination which any bolder 
 guess would only yet more excite." 
 
 "You are right," said I, rising proudly to the full 
 height of my stature, my head erect and my heart 
 defying. "And so, let this subject be renewed no 
 more between us. I will brood over it no more myself. 
 I regain the unclouded realm of my human intelligence ; 
 and, in that intelligence, I mock the sorcerer and dis- 
 dain the spectre." 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house 
 three days, and in their presence I felt a healthful 
 sense of security and peace. Amy wished to visit her 
 father's house, and I asked Faber, in taking her there, 
 to seize the occasion to see Lilian, that he might com- 
 municate to me his impression of a case so peculiar. 
 I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for this visit by a previous 
 note. When the old man and the child came back, 
 both brought me comfort. Amy was charmed with 
 Lilian, who had received her with the sweetness natural 
 to her real character, and I loved to hear Lilian's 
 praise from those innocent lips. 
 
 Faber' s report was still more calculated to console me : 
 "I have seen, I have conversed with her long and 
 familiarly. You were quite right, there is no tendency 
 to consumption in that exquisite, if delicate, organisa- 
 tion; nor do I see cause for the fear to which your 
 statement had preinclined me. That head is too nobly 
 formed for any constitutional cerebral infirmity. In 
 its organisation, ideality, wonder, veneration are large, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 113 
 
 it is true, but they are balanced by other organs, now 
 perhaps almost dormant, but which will come into play 
 as life passes from romance into duty. Something at 
 this moment evidently oppresses her mind. In con- 
 versing with her, I observe abstraction — listlessness ; 
 but I am so convinced of her truthfulness, that if she 
 has once told you she returned your affection, and 
 pledged to you her faith, I should in your place, rest 
 perfectly satisfied that whatever be the cloud that now 
 rests on her imagination, and for the time obscures the 
 idea of yourself, it will pass away." 
 
 Faber was a believer in the main divisions of 
 phrenology, though he did not accept all the dogmas 
 of Gall and Spurzheim; while, to my mind, the refuta- 
 tion of phrenology in its fundamental propositions had 
 been triumphantly established by the lucid arguments 
 of Sir W. Hamilton.* But when Faber rested on 
 phrenological observations, assurances in honour of 
 Lilian, I forgot Sir W. Hamilton, and believed in 
 phrenology. As iron girders and pillars expand and 
 contract with the mere variations of temperature, so 
 will the strongest conviction on which the human intel- 
 lect rests its judgment, vary * with the changes of the 
 human heart; and the building is only safe where these 
 variations are foreseen and allowed for by a wisdom 
 intent on self-knowledge.** 
 
 There was much in the affection that had sprung 
 
 * The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections to phreno- 
 logy is to be found in the Appendix to vol. i. of Lectures on Metaphysics, 
 p. 404 et seq. Edition 1859. 
 
 ** The, change of length in iron girders caused by variation of tempera- 
 ture , has not unfrequently brought down the whole edifice into which 
 they were admitted. Good engineers and architects allow for such changes 
 produced by temperature. In the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, 
 a self-acting record of the daily amount of its contraction and expanse is 
 ingeniously contrived. 
 
 A Strange Story. //. 8 
 
114 A STRANCJE STOitY. 
 
 up between Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd which 
 touched my heart and softened all its emotions. This 
 man, unblessed, like myself, by conjugal and parental 
 ties, had, in his solitary age, turned for solace to the 
 love of a child, as I, in the prime of manhood, had 
 turned to the love of woman. But his love was with- 
 out fear, without jealousy, without trouble. My sun- 
 shine came to me, in a fitful ray, through clouds that 
 had gathered over my noon; his sunshine covered all 
 his landscape, hallowed and hallowing by the calm of 
 declining day. 
 
 And Amy was no common child. She had no 
 exuberant imagination-, she was haunted by no whispers 
 from Afar; she was a creature fitted for the earth, to 
 accept its duties and to gladden its cares. Her tender 
 observation, fine and tranquil, was alive to all the im- 
 portant household trifles, by which, at the earliest age, 
 man's allotted soother asserts her privilege to tend and 
 to comfort. It was pleasant to see her moving so 
 noiselessly through the rooms I had devoted to her 
 venerable protector, knowing all his simple wants, and 
 providing for them as if by the mechanism of a heart 
 exquisitely moulded to the loving uses of life. Some- 
 times when I saw her setting his chair by the window 
 (knowing, as I did, how much he habitually loved to 
 be near the light) and smoothing his papers (in which 
 he was apt to be unmethodical), placing the mark in 
 his book when he ceased to read, divining, almost 
 without his glance, some wish passing through his 
 mind, and then seating herself at his feet, often with 
 her work — which was always destined for him or for 
 one of her absent brothers — now and then, with the 
 one small book that she had carried with her, a selec- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 115 
 
 tion of Bible stories compiled for children; — some- 
 times when I saw her thus, how I wished that Lilian, 
 too, could have seen her, and have compared her own 
 ideal phantasies with those young developments of the 
 natural heavenly Woman! 
 
 But was there nothing in that sight from which I, 
 proud of my arid reason even in its perplexities, might 
 have taken lessons for myself? 
 
 On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought 
 to him the draft of deeds for the sale of his property. 
 He had never been a man of business out of his pro- 
 fession; he was impatient to sell his property, and dis- 
 posed to accept an offer at half its value. I insisted 
 on taking on myself the task of negotiator: perhaps, 
 too, in this office I was egotistically anxious to prove 
 to the great physician that that which he believed to 
 be my "hallucination" had in no way obscured my 
 common sense in the daily affairs of life. So I con- 
 cluded, and in a few hours, terms for his property that 
 were only just, but were infinitely more advantageous 
 than had appeared to himself to be possible. But, as 
 I approached him with the papers, he put his finger to 
 his lips. Amy was standing by him with her little 
 book in her hand, and his own Bible lay open on the 
 table. He was reading to her from the Sacred Volume 
 itself, and impressing on her the force and beauty of 
 one of the Parables, the adaptation of which had per- 
 plexed her; when he had done, she kissed him, bade 
 him good night, and went away to rest. Then said 
 Faber thoughtfully, and as if to himself more than me, 
 
 "What a lovely bridge between old age and child- 
 hood is religion! How intuitively the child begins with 
 prayer and worship on entering life, and how intuitive- 
 
 8* 
 
116 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 ly on quitting life the old man turns back to prayer 
 and worship, putting himself again side by side with 
 the infant!" 
 
 I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of 
 fines and freeholds, title-deeds and money, and when 
 the business on hand was concluded, asked my learned 
 guest if, before he departed, he would deign to look 
 over the pages of my ambitious Physiological Work. 
 There were parts of it on which I much desired his 
 opinion, touching on subjects in which his special 
 studies made him an authority as high as our land 
 possessed. 
 
 He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted 
 much of that night and the next day to its perusal. 
 
 When he gave it me back, which was not till the 
 morning of his departure, he commenced with eulogies 
 on the scope of its design and the manner of its exe- 
 cution, which nattered my vanity so much that I could 
 not help exclaiming, "Then, at least, there is no trace 
 of 'hallucination' here!" 
 
 "Alas, my poor Allen! here, perhaps, hallucination, 
 or self-deception, is more apparent than in all the 
 strange tales you confided to me. For here is the hal- 
 lucination of the man seated on the shores of Nature, 
 and who would say to its measureless sea, 'So far shalt 
 thou go and no farther!' — here is the hallucination 
 of the creature, who, not content with exploring the 
 laws of the Creator, ends with submitting to his inter- 
 pretation of some three or four laws, in the midst of 
 a code of which all the rest are in language unknown 
 to him — the powers and free-will of the Lawgiver 
 himself; here is the hallucination by whicli Nature is 
 left Godless — because Man is left soulless. What 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 117 
 
 would matter all our speculations on a Deity who 
 would cease to exist for us when we are in the grave? 
 Why mete out, like Archytas, the earth and the sea, 
 and number the sands on the shore that divides them, 
 if the end of this wisdom be a handful of dust sprinkled 
 over a skull: 
 
 ' Nec quidquam tibi prodest 
 Aerias tentasse domos , animuque rotundum 
 Percurrisse polum morituroS 
 
 Your book is a proof of the soul that you fail to dis- 
 cover. Without a soul, no man would work for a Future 
 that begins for his fame when the breath is gone from his 
 body. Do you remember how you saw that little child 
 praying at the grave of her father? Shall I tell you 
 that in her simple orisons she prayed for the benefactor 
 — who had cared for the orphan; who had reared 
 over dust that tomb which, in a Christian burialground, 
 is a mute but perceptible memorial of Christian hopes; 
 that the child prayed, haughty man, for you? And you 
 sat by, knowing nought of this; sat by, amongst the 
 graves, troubled and tortured with ghastly doubts — 
 vain of a reason that was sceptical of eternity, and yet 
 shaken like a reed by a moment's marvel. Shall I 
 tell the child to pray for you no more? — that you 
 disbelieve in a soul? If you do so, what is the efficacy 
 of prayer? Speak, shall I tell her this? Shall the in- 
 fant pray for you never more?" 
 I was silent; I was thrilled. 
 
 "Has it never occurred to you, who, in denying 
 all innate perceptions as well as ideas, have passed on 
 to deductions from which poor Locke, humble Chris- 
 tian that he was, would have shrunk in dismay; has 
 
118 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 it never occurred to you as a wonderful fact, that the 
 easiest thing in the world to teach a child is that 
 which seems to metaphysical schoolmen the abstrusest 
 of all problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling 
 about a First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, 
 and then again deciding that such miracles cannot be; 
 and when one has answered another, and left in the 
 crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then 
 turn your eyes, and look at the infant praying to the 
 invisible God at his mother's knees. This idea, so 
 miraculously abstract, of a Power that the infant has 
 never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and ex- 
 plained to him by the most erudite sage, — a Power, 
 nevertheless, that watches over him, that hears him, 
 that sees him, that will carry him across the grave, 
 that will enable him to live on for ever ; — this double 
 mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul the infant learns 
 with the most facile readiness, at the first glimpse of 
 his reasoning faculty. Before you can teach him a 
 rule in addition, before you can venture to drill him 
 into his hornbook, he leaps, with one intuitive spring 
 of all his ideas, to the comprehension of the truths 
 which are only incomprehensible to blundering sages! 
 And you, as you stand before me, dare not say, 'Let 
 the child pray for me no more!' But will the Creator 
 accept the child's prayer for the man who refuses 
 prayer for himself? Take my advice — Pray! And in 
 this counsel I do not overstep my province. I speak 
 not as a preacher, but as a physician. For health is 
 a word that comprehends our whole organisation, and 
 a just equilibrium of all faculties and functions is the 
 condition of health. As in your Lilian the equilibrium 
 is deranged by the over-indulgence of a spiritual mys- 
 
A STRANGE STOKY. 
 
 119 
 
 ticism which withdraws from the nutriment of duty 
 the essential pabulum of sober sense, so in you, the 
 resolute negation of disciplined spiritual communion 
 between Thought and Divinity robs imagination of its 
 noblest and safest vent. Thus, from opposite extremes, 
 you and your Lilian meet in the same region of mist 
 and cloud, losing sight of each other and of the true 
 ends of life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars and 
 yours only bend to the earth. Were I advising her, 
 1 should say: "Your Creator has placed the scene of 
 your trial below, and not in the stars." Advising you, 
 I say: "But in the trial below, man should recognise 
 education for heaven." In a word, I would draw 
 somewhat more downward her fancy, raise somewhat 
 more upward your reason. Take my advice then — 
 Pray. Your mental system needs the support of prayer 
 in order to preserve its balance. In the embarrassment 
 and confusion of your senses, clearness of perception 
 will come with habitual and tranquil confidence in Him 
 who alike rules the universe and reads the heart. I 
 only say here what has been said much better before 
 by a reasoner in whom all students of Nature recog- 
 nise a guide. I see on your table the very volume of 
 Bacon which contains the passage I commend to your 
 reflection. Here it is. Listen: 'Take an example of 
 a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he 
 will put on when he finds himself maintained by a 
 man who, to him, is instead of a God, or melior natura, 
 which courage is manifestly such as that creature, 
 without that confidence of a better nature than his own, 
 could never attain. So man, when he resteth and as- 
 sureth himself upon divine protection and favour, 
 gathereth a force and faith which human nature could 
 
120 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 not obtain."* You are silent, but your gesture tells 
 me your doubt — a doubt which your heart, so femi- 
 ninely tender, will not speak aloud lest you should rob 
 the old man of a hope with which your strength of 
 manhood dispenses — you doubt the efficacy of prayer! 
 Pause and reflect, bold but candid inquirer into the 
 laws of that guide you call Nature. If there were no 
 efficacy in prayer — if prayer were as mere an illusion 
 of superstitious phantasy as aught against which your 
 reason now struggles — do you think that Nature her- 
 self would have made it amongst the most common 
 and facile of all her dictates? Do you believe that if 
 there really did not exist that tie between Man and 
 his Maker — that link between life here and a life 
 hereafter which is found in what we call Soul, alone 
 — that wherever you look through the universe, you 
 would behold a child at prayer? Nature inculcates 
 nothing that is superfluous. Nature does not impel the 
 leviathan, or the lion, the eagle or the moth, to pray; 
 she impels only man. Why? Because man only has 
 soul, and Soul seeks to commune with the Everlasting, 
 as a fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your 
 book. It would found you a reputation for learning 
 and intellect and courage, I allow; but learning and 
 intellect and courage wasted against a Truth — like 
 spray against a rock! A Truth valuable to the world, 
 the world will never part with. You will not injure 
 the truth, but you will mislead and may destroy many, 
 whose best security is in the Truth which you so 
 eruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter 
 
 * Bacon's Essay on Atheism. This quotation is made with admirable 
 felicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise, on 
 Astronomy and General Physics considered with Reference to Natural 
 Theology. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 121 
 
 are the heritage of all men; the humblest journeyman 
 in those streets, the pettiest trader behind those counters, 
 have in those beliefs their prerogatives of royalty. You 
 would dethrone and embrute the lords of the earth by 
 your theories. For my part, having given the greater 
 part of my life to the study and analysis of facts, I 
 would rather be the author of the tritest homily, of 
 the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishable 
 essence of the soul to which I have neither scalpel 
 nor probe — than be the founder of the subtlest school, 
 or the framer of the loftiest verse, that robbed my 
 fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes the 
 dissecting -knife, in a being that escapes the grave- 
 digger. Burn your book — Accept This Book instead; 
 Read and Pray." 
 
 He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, 
 and, an hour afterwards, the old man and the child 
 left my hearth solitary once more. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 That night as I sat in my study, very thoughtful 
 and very mournful, I revolved all that Julius Faber had 
 said, and the impression his words had produced became 
 gradually weaker and weaker, as my reason, naturally 
 combative, rose up with all the replies which my phi- 
 losophy suggested. No! if my imagination had really 
 seduced and betrayed me into monstrous credulities, it 
 was clear that the best remedy to such morbid ten- 
 dencies towards the Superstitious was in the severe 
 exercise of the faculties most opposed to Superstition; 
 in the culture of pure reasoning; in the science of ab- 
 
122 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 solute fact. Accordingly, I placed before me the very 
 book which Julius Faber had advised me to burn; I 
 forced all my powers of mind to go again over the 
 passages which contained the doctrines that his admo- 
 nition had censured; and, before daybreak, I had 
 stated the substance of his argument, and the logical 
 reply to it, in an elaborate addition to my chapter on 
 "Sentimental Philosophers." While thus rejecting the 
 purport of his parting counsels, I embodied in another 
 portion of my work his views on my own "illusions," 
 and as here my common sense was in concord with 
 his, I disposed of all my own previous doubts in an 
 addition to my favourite chapter "On the Cheats of 
 the Imagination." And when the pen dropped from 
 my hand, and the day-star gleamed through the window, 
 my heart escaped from the labour of my mind, and 
 flew back to the image of Lilian. The pride of the 
 philosopher died out of me, the sorrow of the man 
 reigned supreme, and I shrank from the coming of the 
 sun, despondent. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Not till the law had completed its proceedings and 
 satisfied the public mind as to the murder of Sir Philip 
 Derval, were the remains of the deceased consigned to 
 the family mausoleum. The funeral was, as may be 
 supposed, strictly private, and when it was over, the 
 excitement caused by an event so tragical and singular, 
 subsided. New topics engaged the public talk, and 
 — in my presence, at least — the delicate consider 
 tion due to one whose name had been so painfully 
 mixed up in the dismal story, forbore a topic which 
 
A STRANGE kSTORY. 
 
 123 
 
 I could not be expected to Lear without distressful 
 emotion. Mrs. Ashleigh I saw frequently at ray own 
 house; she honestly confessed that Lilian had not 
 shown that grief at the cancelling of our engagement 
 which would alone justify Mrs. Ashleigh in asking me 
 again to see her daughter, and retract my conclusions 
 against our union. She said that Lilian was quiet, 
 not uncheerful, never spoke of me nor of Margrave, 
 but seemed absent and preoccupied as before, taking 
 pleasure in nothing that had been wont to please her; 
 not in music, nor books, nor that tranquil pastime 
 which women call work, and in which they find excuse 
 to meditate, in idleness, their own fancies. She rarely 
 stirred out — even in the garden — when she did, 
 her eyes seemed to avoid the house in which Margrave 
 had lodged, and her steps the old favourite haunt by 
 the Monks' Well. She would remain silent for long 
 hours together, but the silence did not appear melan- 
 choly. For the rest, her health was more than usually 
 good. Still, Mrs. Ashleigh persisted in her belief that, 
 sooner or later, Lilian would return to her former self, 
 her former sentiments for me, and she entreated me 
 not as yet to let the world know that our engagement 
 was broken off. "For if," said she, with good sense, 
 "if it should prove not to be broken off, only suspended, 
 and afterwards happily renewed, there will be two 
 stories to tell when no story be needed. Besides, I 
 should dread the effect on Lilian, if offensive gossips 
 babbled to her on a matter that would excite so much 
 curiosity as the rupture of a union in which our neigh- 
 bours have taken so general an interest." 
 
 I had no reason to refuse acquiescence in Mrs. 
 AshleigVs request, but I did not share in her hopes; 
 
124 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 I felt that the fair prospects of my life were blasted; 
 I could never love another, never wed another; I re- 
 signed myself to a solitary hearth, rejoiced, at least, 
 that Margrave had not revisited at Mrs. Ashleigh's; 
 had not, indeed, reappeared in the town. He was still 
 staying with Strahan, who told me that his guest had 
 ensconced himself in Forman's old study, and amused 
 himself with reading — though not for long at a time 
 — the curious old books and manuscripts found in the 
 library, or climbing trees like a schoolboy, and fami- 
 liarising himself with the deer and the cattle, which 
 would group round him quite tame, and feed from his 
 hand. Was this the description of a criminal? But if 
 Sir Philip's assertion were really true; if the criminal 
 were man without soul; if without soul, man would 
 have no conscience, never be troubled by repentance, and 
 the vague dread of a future world, — why, then, 
 should not the criminal be gay despite his crimes, as 
 the white bear gambols as friskily after his meal on 
 human flesh? These questions would haunt me despite 
 my determination to accept as the right solution of all 
 marvels the construction put on my narrative by Julius 
 Faber. 
 
 Days passed; I saw and heard nothing of Margrave! 
 I began half to hope that, in the desultory and rapid 
 changes of mood and mind which characterised his 
 restless nature, he had forgotten my existence. 
 
 One morning I went out early on my rounds, when 
 I met Strahan unexpectedly. 
 
 "I was in search of you," he said, "for more than 
 one person has told me that you are looking ill and 
 jaded. So you are! And the town now is hot and 
 unhealthy. You must come to Derval Court for a week 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 125 
 
 or so. You can ride into town every day to see your 
 patients. Don't refuse. Margrave, who is still with 
 me, sends all kind messages, and bade me say that he 
 eutreats you to come to the house at which he also is 
 a guest!" 
 
 I started. What had the Scin-Lseca required of 
 me, and obtained to that condition my promise? "If 
 you are asked to the house at which I also am a guest, 
 you will come; you will meet and converse with me 
 as guest speaks to guest in the house of a host!" Was 
 this one of the coincidences which my reason was 
 bound to accept as coincidences and nothing more? 
 Tut, tut! Was I returning again to my "hallucina- 
 tions?" Granting that Faber and common sense were 
 in the right, what was this Margrave? A man to whose 
 friendship, acuteness, and energy I was under the 
 deepest obligations; to whom I was indebted for active 
 services that had saved my life from a serious danger, 
 acquitted my honour of a horrible suspicion. "I thank 
 you," I said to Strahan, "I will come; not, indeed, for 
 a week, but, at all events, for a day or two." 
 
 "That's right; I will call for you in the carriage at six 
 o'clock. You will have done your day's work by then ? " 
 
 "Yes, I will so arrange." 
 
 On our way to Derval Court that evening, Strahan 
 talked much about Margrave, of whom, nevertheless, 
 he seemed to be growing weary. 
 
 "His high spirits are too much for one," said he; 
 "and then so restless — so incapable of sustained quiet 
 conversation. And, clever though he is, he can't help 
 me in the least about the new house I shall build. He 
 has no notion of construction. I don't think he could 
 build a barn." 
 
126 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "I thought you did not like to demolish the old 
 house, and would content yourself with pulling down 
 the more ancient part of it?" 
 
 u True. At first it seemed a pity to destroy so 
 handsome a mansion; but you see, since poor Sir 
 Philip's manuscript, on which he set such store, has 
 been too mutilated, I fear, to allow me to effect his 
 wish with regard to it, I think I ought, at least, scru- 
 pulously to obey his other whims. And, besides — I 
 don't know — there are odd noises about the old house. 
 I don't believe in haunted houses, still there is some- 
 thing dreary in strange sounds at the dead of night, 
 even if made by rats, or winds through decaying raf- 
 ters. You, I remember at college, had a taste for ar- 
 chitecture, and can draw plans. I wish to follow out 
 Sir Philip's design, but on a smaller scale, and with 
 more attention to comfort." 
 
 Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a 
 silent and attentive listener. We arrived at the mansion 
 an hour before sunset, the westering light shining full 
 against the many windows cased in mouldering pilas- 
 ters, and making the general dilapidation of the whole 
 place yet more mournfully evident. 
 
 It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I 
 went up at once to the room appropriated to me — 
 not the one I had before occupied. Strahan had al- 
 ready got together a new establishment. I was glad 
 to find in the servant who attended me an old ac- 
 quaintance. He had been in my own employ when I 
 
 first settled at L , and left me to get married. He 
 
 and his wife were now both in Strahan's service. He 
 spoke warmly of his new master and his contentment 
 with his situation, while he unpacked my carpet-bag 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 127 
 
 and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief 
 object of his talk and his praise was Mr. Margrave. 
 
 "Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine 
 day in May!" 
 
 When I entered the drawing-room, Margrave and 
 Strahan were both there. The former was blithe and 
 genial, as usual, in his welcome. At dinner, and during 
 the whole evening till we retired severally to our own 
 rooms, he was the principal talker; recounting incidents 
 of travel, always very loosely strung together, jesting, 
 good-humouredly enough, at Strahan's sudden hobby 
 for building, then putting questions to me about mutual 
 acquaintances, but never waiting for an answer, and 
 every now and then, as if at random, startling us with 
 some brilliant aphorism or some suggestion drawn from 
 abstract science or unfamiliar erudition. The whole 
 effect was sparkling, but I could well understand, that 
 if long continued, it would become oppressive. The 
 soul has need of pauses of repose — intervals of es- 
 cape not only from the flesh, but even from the mind. 
 A man of the loftiest intellect will experience times 
 when mere intellect not only fatigues him, but amidst 
 its most original conceptions, amidst its proudest 
 triumphs, has a something trite and common-place com- 
 pared with one of those vague intimations of a spiritual 
 destiny which are not within the ordinary domain of 
 reason; and, gazing abstractedly into space, will leave 
 suspended some problem of severest thought, or uncom- 
 pleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, to in- 
 dulge in hazy reveries that do not differ from those of 
 an innocent quiet child! The soul has a long road to 
 travel — from time through eternity. It demands its 
 halting hours of contemplation. Contemplation is 
 
128 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 serene. But with such wants of an immortal immaterial 
 spirit, Margrave had no fellowship, no sympathy; and 
 for myself, I need scarcely add that the lines I have 
 just traced I should not have written at the date at 
 which my narrative has now arrived. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I had no case that necessitated my return to L — 
 the following day. The earlier hours of the forenoon 
 I devoted to Strahan and his building plans. Margrave 
 flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an April sun- 
 beam, sometimes flinging himself on a sofa and read- 
 ing for a few minutes one of the volumes of the ancient 
 mystics, in which Sir Philip's library was so rich. I 
 remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that 
 crabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that sur- 
 prised me. "I picked up the ancient Greek," said he, 
 "years ago, in learning the modern." But the book 
 soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, 
 archly enjoying Strahan's peevishness at interruption; 
 then he would throw open the window and leap down, 
 chanting one of his wild savage airs; and in another 
 moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of 
 a broad lime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that 
 gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host 
 was called away to attend some visitors of importance, 
 and I found myself on the sward before the house, right in 
 view of the mausoleum, and alone with Margrave. 
 
 I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death 
 wherein rested the corpse of the last lord of the soil, 
 so strangely murdered, with a strong desire to speak 
 out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that tor- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 129 
 
 tured me. But, setting aside the promise to the con- 
 trary, which I had given, or dream.ed I had given, 
 to the Luminous Shadow — to fulfil that desire 
 would have been impossible — impossible to any- 
 one gazing on that radiant youthful face! — I think 
 I see him now as I saw him then; a white doe, that 
 even my presence could not scare away from him, 
 clung lovingly to his side, looking up at him with 
 her soft eyes. He stood there like the incarnate prin- 
 ciple of mythological sensuous life. I have before ap- 
 plied to him that illustration; let the repetition be 
 pardoned. Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that crea- 
 ture, face to face, "Art thou the master of demoniac 
 arts and the instigator of secret murder?" As if from 
 redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, 
 or rather cooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so sweet, 
 so wildly sweet, and so unlike the music one hears 
 from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand 
 over my forehead in bewilderment and awe. 
 
 'Are there," I said, unconsciously — "are there, 
 indeed, such prodigies in Nature?" 
 
 "Nature!" he cried, catching up the word; "talk 
 to me of Nature! Talk of her, the wondrous blissful 
 Mother! Mother I may well call her. I am her spoiled 
 child, her darling — But oh, to die, ever to die, ever 
 to lose sight of Nature! — to rot, senseless, whether 
 under these turfs or within those dead walls — " 
 
 I could not resist the answer: 
 
 "Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by 
 whom?" 
 
 "By whom? I thought that was clearly proved!" 
 "The hand was proved; what influence moved the 
 hand?" 
 
 A Strange Story. II, 9 
 
130 
 
 A STRANGE ,<TORY. 
 
 "Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon! Who 
 can tell? Nature herself is a grand destroyer. See 
 that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm! All 
 Nature's children live to take life;* none, indeed, so 
 lavishly as man. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to 
 satisfy the irresistible sting of hunger, but for the 
 wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely 
 taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying. 
 We speak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast 
 of prey is so dire a ravager as man? So cruel and so 
 treacherous? Look at yon flock of sheep, bred and 
 fattened for the shambles; and this hind that I caress, 
 — if I were the park-keeper, and her time for my 
 bullet had come, would you think her life was the 
 safer because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed her 
 to trust to the hand raised to slay her?" 
 
 "It is true," said I, "a grim truth. Nature, on the 
 surface so loving and so gentle, is full of terror in her 
 deeps when our thought descends into their abyss!" 
 
 Strahan now joined us with a party of country 
 visitors. 
 
 "Margrave is the man to show you the beauties of 
 this park," said he. "Margrave knows every bosk and 
 dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in its 
 intricate, undulating ground." 
 
 Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition, and 
 as he led us through the park, though the way was 
 
 * May I be pardoned, since Allen Fenwick does not confute, in his 
 reply, the trite fallacy contained in Margrave's remarks on the destroying 
 agency of Nature, if I earnestly commend to the general reader the careful 
 perusal of chapter xiii., page 129, of Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise 
 (Geology and Mineralogy) on the "Aggregate of animal enjoyment in- 
 creased and that of pain diminished by the existence of carnivorous races." 
 Nothing to my mind can surpass the terseness and simplicity with which 
 the truth of that proposition is worked out to the vindication of the great 
 drama of universal lite. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 131 
 
 long, though the sun was fierce, no one seemed fatigued. 
 For the pleasure he felt in pointing out detached 
 beauties which escaped an ordinary eye was contagious. 
 He did not talk as talks the poet or the painter: but 
 at some lovely effect of light amongst the tremulous 
 leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet below, 
 he would halt, point it out to us in silence, and with a 
 kind of childlike ecstasy in his own bright face, that 
 seemed to reflect the life and the bliss of the blithe 
 summer-day itself. 
 
 Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature 
 faded away; all my horror, all my hate; it was impos- 
 sible to resist the charm that breathed round him, not 
 to feel a tender, affectionate yearning towards him as 
 to some fair happy child. Well might he call himself 
 the Darling of Nature. Was he not the mysterious 
 likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful as Apollo in 
 one aspect, direful as Typhon in another? 
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 "What a strange-looking cane you have, sir," said 
 a little girl, who was one of the party, and who had 
 entwined her arm round Margrave's. "Let me look 
 at it." 
 
 "Yes," said Strahan; "that cane, or rather walking- 
 staff, is worth looking at. Margrave bought it in 
 Egypt, and declares that it is very ancient." 
 
 This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked 
 at, it seemed light, in the hand it felt heavy; it was 
 of a pale, faded yellow, wrought with black rings at 
 equal distances, and graven with half obliterated char- 
 
 9* 
 
132 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 actors that seemed hieroglyphic. I remembered to have 
 seen Margrave with it before, but I had never noticed 
 it with any attention till now, when it was passed from 
 hand to hand. At the head of the cane there was a 
 large unpolished stone of a dark blue. 
 
 "Is this a pebble or a jewel?" asked one of the 
 party. 
 
 "I cannot tell you its name or nature," said Mar- 
 grave; "but it is said to cure the bite of serpents,* and 
 has other supposed virtues — a talisman, in short." 
 
 He here placed the staff in my hands, and bade 
 
 * The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an 
 antidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent 
 scholar and legal functionary in that island: 
 
 "Description of the Blue Stone. — This stone is of an oval shape, 
 lyk in. long, ^ broad, T * thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now 
 set in gold. 
 
 " When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be 
 opened by a cut of a lancet or razor long ways, and the stone applied 
 within twenty-four hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the 
 wound, and when it has done its office falls off; the cure is then complete. 
 The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison 
 it ha3 absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone 
 is then again fit for use. 
 
 " This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, 
 of Corfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasants imme- 
 diately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by the fracture. 
 Its nature or composition is unknown. 
 
 "In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the 
 stone was applied to one, who recovered , but the other, for whom it could 
 not be used, died. 
 
 "It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
 "Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished from black. 
 
 "P. M. Colquhoun. 
 
 "Corfu, 7th Nov., 1860." 
 
 Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, 
 gives an account of "snake stones " apparently similar to the one at Corfu, 
 except that they are "intensely black and highly polished," and which are 
 applied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by the cobra 
 capella. 
 
 Query — Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical pro- 
 perties of these stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of 
 venom conveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to 
 the bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra capella? 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 me luok at it with care. Then lie changed the con- 
 versation and renewed the way, leaving the staff with 
 me, till, suddenly, I forced it back on him. I could 
 not have explained why, but its touch, as it warmed 
 in my clasp, seemed to send through my whole frame 
 a singular thrill, and a sensation as if I no longer felt 
 my own weight — as if I walked on air. 
 
 Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went 
 away; I re-entered the house through the sash-window 
 of Forman's study; Margrave threw his hat and staff 
 on the table, and amused himself with examining mi- 
 nutely the tracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and 
 myself left him thus occupied, and going into the ad- 
 joining library, resumed our task of examining the 
 plans for the new house. I continued to draw outlines 
 and sketches of various alterations tending to simplify 
 and contract Sir Philip's general design. Margrave 
 soon joined us, and, this time, took his seat patiently 
 beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass 
 with unwonted attention. 
 
 "I wish I could draw," he said, "but I can do 
 nothing useful." 
 
 "Rich men like you," said Strahan, peevishly, "can 
 engage others, and are better employed in rewarding 
 good artists than in making bad drawings themselves." 
 
 "Yes, I can employ others; and — Fenwick, when 
 you have finished witli Strahan, I will ask permission 
 to employ you, though without reward; the task I 
 would impose will not take you a minute." 
 
 He then threw himself back in his chair, and 
 seemed to fall into a doze. 
 
 The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans 
 
134 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 — indeed, they were now pretty well finished and 
 decided on. 
 
 Margrave woke up as our host left the room to 
 dress, and drawing me towards another table in the 
 room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic 
 books, and, pointing to an old woodcut, said: 
 
 "I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to 
 be a fac-simile of Solomon's famous seal. I have a 
 whimsical desire to have a copy of it. You observe 
 two. triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle? The 
 pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add 
 the astrological characters, they are the senseless super- 
 fluous accessories of the dreamer who wrote the book. 
 But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning; it 
 belongs to the only universal language, the language 
 of symbol, in which all races that think — around, 
 and above, and below us — can establish communion 
 of thought. If in the external universe any one con- 
 structive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical; 
 and in every part of the world in which magic pretends 
 to a written character, I find that its hieroglyphics are 
 geometrical figures. Is it not laughable that the most 
 positive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles 
 and circles to the use of — what shall I call it? — 
 the ignorance? — ay, that is the word — the ignorance 
 of dealers in magic!" 
 
 He took up the paper on which I had hastily 
 described the triangles and the circle, and went out of 
 the room, chanting the serpent-charmer's song. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 When we separated for the night, which we did 
 at eleven o'clock, Margrave said: 
 
 "Good night and good-by. I must leave you to- 
 morrow, Strahan, and before your usual hour for rising. 
 1 took the liberty of requesting one of your men to 
 order me a chaise from L — . Pardon my seeming ab- 
 ruptness, but I always avoid long leave-takings, and I 
 had fixed the date of my departure almost as soon as 
 I accepted your invitation." 
 
 "I have no right to complain. The place must be 
 dull, indeed, to a gay young fellow like you. It is 
 dull even to me. I am meditsiing flight already. Are 
 you going back to L — ?" 
 
 "Not even for such things as I left at my lodgings. 
 When I settle somewhere, and can give an address, I 
 shall direct them to be sent to me. There are, I hear, 
 beautiful patches of scenery towards the north, only 
 known to pedestrian tourists. I am a good walker; 
 and you know, Fenwick, that I am also a child of 
 Nature. Adieu to you both; and many thanks to you, 
 Strahan, for your hospitality." 
 
 He left the room. 
 
 "I am not sorry he is going," said Strahan, after a 
 pause, and with a quick breath as if of relief. "Do 
 you not feel that he exhausts one ? An excess of oxygen, 
 as you would say in a lecture." 
 
 I was alone in my own chamber; I felt indisposed 
 for bed and for sleep; the curious conversation I had 
 held with Margrave weighed on me. In that conver- 
 
k STRANGE STORY. 
 
 sation, wc had indirectly touched upon the prodigies 
 which I had not brought myself to speak of with frank 
 courage, and certainly nothing in Margrave's manner 
 had betrayed consciousness of my suspicions; on the 
 contrary, the open frankness with which he evinced his 
 predilection for mystic speculation, or uttered his more 
 unamiable sentiments, rather tended to disarm than 
 encourage belief in gloomy secrets or sinister powers. 
 And he was about to quit the neighbourhood, he would 
 not again see Lilian, not even enter the town of L — . 
 Was I to ascribe this relief from his presence to the 
 promise of the Shadow, or was I not rather right in 
 battling firmly against any grotesque illusion and ac- 
 cepting his departure as a simple proof that my jealous 
 fears had been amongst my other chimeras, and that 
 as he had really only visited Lilian out of friendship 
 to me, in my peril, so he might, with his characteristic 
 acuteness, have guessed my jealousy, and ceased his 
 visits from a kindly motive delicately concealed? And 
 might not the same motive now have dictated the words 
 which were intended to assure me that L — contained 
 no attractions to tempt him to return to it? Thus 
 gradually soothed and cheered by the course to which 
 my reflections led me, I continued to muse for hours. 
 At length, looking at my watch, I was surprised to 
 find it was the second hour after midnight. I was just 
 about to rise from my chair to undress, and secure 
 some hours of sleep, when the well-remembered cold 
 wind passed through the room, stirring the roots of my 
 hair, and before me stood, against the wall, the Luminous 
 Shadow. 
 
 "Rise and follow me," said the voice, sounding 
 much nearer to me than it had ever done before. 
 
A oTltANGE (STORY. 
 
 And at those words I rose mechanically, and like 
 a sleep-walker. 
 
 "Take up the light." 
 I took it. 
 
 The Scin-Lseca glided along the wall towards the 
 threshold, and motioned to me to open the door. I did 
 so. The Shadow flitted on through the corridor. I 
 followed, with hushed footsteps, down a small stair 
 into Forman's study. In all my subsequent proceedings, 
 about to be narrated, the Shadow guided me, sometimes 
 by voice, sometimes by sign. I obeyed the guidance 
 not only unresistingly , but without a desire to resist. 
 I was unconscious either of curiosity or of awe — only 
 of a calm and passive indifference, neither pleasurable 
 nor painful. In this obedience, from which all will 
 seemed extracted, I took into my hands the staff which 
 I had examined the day before, and which lay on the 
 table, just where Margrave had cast it on re-entering 
 the house. I unclosed the shutter to the casement, 
 lifted the sash, and, with the light in my left hand, 
 the staff in my right, stepped forth into the garden. 
 The night was still; the flame of the candle scarcely 
 trembled in the air; the Shadow moved on before me 
 towards the old pavilion described in an earlier part 
 of this narrative, and of which the mouldering doors 
 stood wide open. I followed the Shadow into the pa- 
 vilion, up the crazy stair to the room above, with its 
 four great blank, unglazed windows, or rather arcades, 
 north, south, east, and west. I halted on the middle 
 of the floor: Eight before my eyes, through the vista 
 made by breathless boughs, stood out from the moonlit 
 air the dreary mausoleum. Then, at the command 
 conveyed to me, I placed the candle on a wooden settle, 
 
138 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 touched a spring in the handle of the staff, a lid flew 
 back, and I drew from the hollow, first a lump of 
 some dark bituminous substance, next a small slender 
 wand of polished steel, of which the point was tipped 
 with a translucent material which appeared to me like 
 crystal. Bending down, still obedient to the direction 
 conveyed to me, I described on the floor with the lump 
 of bitumen (if I may so call it) the figure of the 
 pentacle with the interlaced triangles, in a circle nine 
 feet in diameter, just as I had drawn it for Margrave 
 the evening before. The material used made the figure 
 perceptible, in a dark colour of mingled black and red. 
 I applied the flame of the candle to the circle, and 
 immediately it became lambent with a low steady 
 splendour that rose about an inch from the floor, and 
 gradually from this light there emanated a soft grey 
 transparent mist and a faint but exquisite odour. I 
 stood in the midst of the circle, and within the circle 
 also, close by my side, stood the Scin-Laeca; no longer 
 reflected on the wall, but apart from it, erect, rounded 
 into more integral and distinct form, yet impalpable, 
 and from it there breathed an icy air. Then lifting 
 the wand the broader end of which rested in the palm 
 of my hand, the two fore-fingers closing lightly over it 
 in a line parallel with the point, I directed it towards 
 the wide aperture before me, fronting the mausoleum. 
 I repeated aloud some words whispered to me in a 
 language I knew not: those words I would not trace 
 on this paper could I remember them. As they came 
 to a close, I heard a howl fiom the watch-dog in the 
 yard — a dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in the 
 distant village caught up the sound, and bayed in a 
 dirge-like chorus; and the howling went on louder and 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 louder. Again strange words were whispered to me, 
 and I repeated them in mechanical submission; and 
 when they, too, were ended, I felt the ground tremble, 
 beneath me, and as my eyes looked straight forward 
 down the vista, that, stretching from the casement, 
 was bounded by the solitary mausoleum, vague form- 
 less shadows seemed to pass across the moonlight — 
 below, along the sward — above, in the air; and 
 then suddenly a terror, not before conceived, came 
 upon me. 
 
 And a third time words were whispered ; but 
 though I knew no more of their meaning than I did 
 of those that had preceded them, I felt a repugnance 
 to utter them aloud. Mutely I turned towards the 
 Scin-Lseca, and the expression of its face was menacing 
 and terrible; my will became yet more compelled to 
 the control imposed upon it, and my lips commenced 
 the formula again whispered into my ear, when I heard 
 distinctly a voice of warning and of anguish, that 
 murmured "Hold!" I knew the voice; it was Lilian's. 
 I paused — I turned towards the quarter from which 
 the voice had come, and in the space afar I saw the 
 features, the form of Lilian. Her arms were stretched 
 towards me in supplication, her countenance was deadly 
 pale and anxious with unutterable distress. The whole 
 image seemed in unison with the voice; — the look, 
 the attitude, the gesture, of one who sees another in 
 deadly peril, and cries "Beware!" 
 
 This apparition vanished in a moment; but that 
 moment sufficed to free my mind from the constraint 
 which had before enslaved it. I dashed the wand to 
 the ground, sprang from the circle, rushed from the 
 place. How I got into my own room I can remember 
 
140 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 not — I know not-, I have a vague reminiscence of 
 some intervening wanderings, of giant trees, of shroud- 
 like moonlight, of the Shining Shadow and its angry 
 aspect, of the blind walls and iron door of the House 
 of the Dead, of spectral images — a confused and 
 dreary phantasmagoria. But all I can recal with 
 distinctness is the sight of my own hueless face in the 
 mirror in my own still room, by the light of the white 
 moon through the window; and sinking down, I said 
 to myself, "This at least, is, an hallucination or a 
 dream!" 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 A heavy sleep came over me at daybreak, but I 
 did not undress nor go to bed. The sun was high in 
 the heavens when, on waking, I saw the servant, who 
 had attended me, bustling about the room. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, I am afraid I disturbed 
 you; but I have been three times to see if you were 
 not corning down, and found you so soundly asleep I 
 did not like to wake you. Mr. Strahan has finished 
 breakfast, and gone out riding; Mr. Margrave has left 
 — left before six o'clock." 
 
 "Ah, he said he was going early." 
 
 "Yes, sir; and he seemed so cross when he went. 
 I could never have supposed so pleasant a gentleman 
 could put himself into such a passion!" 
 
 "What was the matter?" 
 
 "Why, his walking-stick could not be found; it 
 was not in the hall. He said he had left it in the 
 study; we could not find it there. At last he found it 
 
A STRANGE STOUT 
 
 14,3 
 
 himself in the old summer-house, and said — I beg 
 pardon, he said — 'he was sure you had taken it 
 there: that some one, at all events, had been meddling 
 with it.' However, I am very glad it was found, 
 since he seems to set such store on it." 
 
 "Did Mr. Margrave go himself into the summer- 
 house to look for it?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; no one else would have thought of such 
 a place; no one likes to go there even in the day- 
 time." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Why, sir, they say it is haunted since poor Sir 
 Philip's death; and, indeed, there are strange noises in 
 every part of the house. I am afraid you had a bad 
 night, sir," continued the servant, with evident curiosity 
 glancing towards the bed, which I had not pressed, and 
 towards the evening-dress, which, while he spoke, I 
 was rapidly changing for that which I habitually wore 
 in the morning. "I hope you did not feel yourself 
 ill?" 
 
 "No; but it seems I fell asleep in my chair." 
 
 "Did you hear, sir, how the dogs howled about 
 two o'clock in the morning? They woke me. Very 
 frightful!" 
 
 "The moon was at her full. Dogs will bay the 
 moon." 
 
 I felt relieved to think that I should not find Strahan 
 in the breakfast- room, and hastening through the cere- 
 mony of a meal which I scarcely touched, I went out 
 into the park unobserved, and creeping round the copses 
 and into the neglected garden, made my way to the 
 pavilion. I mounted the stairs — I looked on the floor 
 of the upper room; yes, there, still was the black figure 
 
142 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 of the pentacle — the circle. So, then, it was not a 
 dream! Till then I had doubted. Or might it not 
 still be so far a dream, that I had walked in my sleep, 
 and, with an imagination preoccupied by my conver- 
 sations with Margrave — by the hieroglyphics on the 
 staff I had handled, by the very figure associated with 
 superstitious practices which I had copied from some 
 weird book at his request, by all the strange impres- 
 sions previously stamped on my mind — might I not, 
 in truth, have carried thither in sleep the staff, de- 
 scribed the circle, and all the rest been but visionary 
 delusion? Surely — surely, so common sense and so 
 Julius Faber would interpret the riddles that perplexed 
 me. Be that as it may, my first thought was to efface 
 the marks on the floor. I found this easier than I had 
 ventured to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle 
 away from the boards with the sole of my foot, leaving 
 but an undistinguishable smudge behind. I know not 
 why, but I felt the more nervously anxious to remove 
 all such evidences of my nocturnal visit to that room, 
 because Margrave had so openly gone thither to seek 
 for the staff, and had so rudely named me to the ser- 
 vant as having meddled with it. Might he not awake 
 some suspicion against me? Suspicion, what of? I 
 knew not, but I feared! 
 
 The healthful air of day gradually nerved my 
 spirits and relieved my thoughts. But the place had 
 become hateful to me. I resolved not to wait for 
 
 Strahan's return, but to walk back to L , and leave 
 
 a message for my host. It was sufficient excuse that 
 I c6uld not longer absent myself from my patients; ac- 
 cordingly, I gave directions to have the few things 
 which I had brought with me sent to my house by any 
 
A STRANG K STORY. 
 
 servant who might be going to L , and was soon 
 
 pleased to find myself outside the park gates and on 
 the high road. 
 
 I had not gone a mile before I met Strahan on 
 horseback. He received my apologies for not waiting 
 his return to bid him farewell, without observation, and 
 dismounting, led his horse and walked beside me on 
 my road. I saw that there was something on his 
 mind; at last he said, looking down, 
 
 "Did you hear the dogs howl last night?" 
 
 "Yes! the full moon!" 
 
 "You were awake, then, at the time. Did you hear 
 any other sound? Did you see anything?" 
 
 "What should I hear or see?" 
 
 Strahan was silent for some moments; then he said, 
 with gieat seriousness, 
 
 "I could not sleep when I went to bed last night; 
 I felt feverish and restless. Somehow or other, Mar- 
 grave got into my head, mixed up, in some strange 
 way, with Sir Philip Derval. I heard the dogs howl, 
 and at the same time, or rather a few minutes later, I 
 felt the whole house tremble, as a frail corner-house in 
 London seems to tremble at night when a carnage is 
 driven past it. The howling had then ceased, and 
 ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I felt a vague 
 superstitious alarm; I got up, and went to my window, 
 which was unclosed (it is my habit to sleep with my 
 windows open) — the moon was very bright — and I 
 saw, I declare I saw, along the green alley that leads 
 from the old part of the house to the mausoleum — 
 No I will not say what I saw or believed I saw — 
 you would ridicule me, and justly. But, whatever it 
 might be, on the earth without or in the fancy within 
 
144 
 
 A STRANGE STORY 
 
 my brain, I was so terrified, that I rushed back to my 
 bed, and buried my face in my pillow. I would have 
 come to you; but I did not dare to stir. 1 have been 
 riding hard all the morning in order to recover my 
 nerves. But I dread sleeping again under that roof, 
 and now that you and Margrave leave me, I shall go 
 this very day to London. I hope all that I have told 
 you is no bad sign of any coming disease; blood to 
 the head, eh?" 
 
 "No; but imagination overstrained can produce 
 wondrous effects. You do right to change the scene. 
 Go to London at once, amuse yourself, and — " 
 
 "Not return till the old house is rased to the 
 ground. That is my resolve. You approve? That's 
 well. All success to you, Fenwick. I will canter back, 
 and get my portmanteau ready and the carriage out in 
 time for the five o'clock train." 
 
 So, then, he, too, had seen — what? I did not 
 dare and I did not desire to ask him. But he, at least, 
 was not walking in his sleep! Did we both dream, or 
 neither? 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 There is an instance of the absorbing tyranny of 
 every-day life which must have struck all such of ray 
 readers as have ever experienced one of those portents 
 which are so at variance with every-day life, that the 
 ordinary epithet bestowed on them is "supernatural." 
 
 And be my readers few or many, there will be no 
 small proportion of them to whom, once, at least, in 
 tho course of their existence, a something strange and 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 145 
 
 eirie has occurred — a something which perplexed and 
 baffled rational conjecture, and struck on those chords 
 which vibrate to superstition. It may have been only 
 a dream unaccountably verified, an undefinable pre- 
 sentiment or forewarning; but up from such slighter 
 and vaguer tokens of the realm of marvel — up to 
 the portents of ghostly apparitions or haunted cham- 
 bers, I believe that the greater number of persons ar- 
 rived at middle age, however instructed the class, 
 however civilised the land, however sceptical the pe- 
 riod, to which they belong, have either in themselves 
 experienced, or heard recorded by intimate associates 
 whose veracity they accept as indisputable in all or- 
 dinary transactions of life — phenomena which are not 
 to be solved by the wit that mocks them, nor, perhaps, 
 always and entirely, to the contentment of the reason 
 or the philosophy that explains them away. Such 
 phenomena, I say, are infinitely more numerous than 
 would appear from the instances currently quoted and 
 dismissed with a jest, for few of those who have wit- 
 nessed them are disposed to own it, and they who 
 only hear of them through others, however trustworthy, 
 would not impugn their character for common sense by 
 professing a belief to which common sense is a merci- 
 less persecutor. But he who reads my assertion in the 
 quiet of his own room will, perhaps, pause, ransack his 
 memory, and find there in some dark corner which he 
 excludes from "the babbling and remorseless day" a 
 pale recollection that proves the assertion not untrue. 
 
 And it is, I say, an instance of the absorbing tyran- 
 ny of every-day life that whenever some such startling 
 incident disturbs its regular tenor of thought and oc- 
 cupation, that same every-day life hastens to bury in 
 A Strange Story. II. 10 
 
146 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 its sands the object which has troubled its surface; the 
 more unaccountable, the more prodigious has been the 
 phenomenon which has scared and astounded us; the 
 more, with involuntary effort, the mind seeks to rid it- 
 self of an enigma which might disease the reason that 
 tries to solve it. We go about our mundane business 
 with renewed avidity, we feel the necessity of proving 
 to ourselves that we are still sober practical men, and 
 refuse to be unfitted for the world which we know, by 
 unsolicited visitations from worlds into which every 
 glimpse is soon lost amid shadows. And it amazes us 
 to think how soon such incidents, though not actually 
 forgotten, though they can be recalled — and recalled 
 too vividly for health — at our will, are, nevertheless, 
 thrust, as it were, out of the mind's sight, as we cast 
 into lumber-rooms the crutches and splints that remind 
 us of a broken limb which has recovered its strength 
 and tone. It is a felicitous peculiarity in our organi- 
 sation, which all members of my profession will have 
 noticed, how soon, when a bodily pain is once past, it 
 becomes erased from the recollection, how soon and 
 how invariably the mind refuses to linger over and re- 
 cal it. No man freed an hour before from a raging 
 tooth-ache, the rack of a neuralgia, seats himself in his 
 arm-chair to recollect and ponder upon the anguish he 
 lias undergone. It is the same with certain afflictions 
 of the mind — not with those that strike on our af- 
 fections, or blast our fortunes, overshadowing our whole 
 future with a sense of loss — but where a trouble or 
 calamity has been an accident, an episode in our wonted 
 life, where it affects ourselves alone, where it is attended 
 with a sense of shame and humiliation, where the pain 
 of recalling it seems idle, and if indulged would almost 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 117 
 
 madden us: agonies of that kind we do not brood over 
 as we do over the death or falsehood of beloved friends, 
 or the train of events by which we are reduced from 
 wealth to penury. No one, for instance, who has es- 
 caped from a shipwreck, from the brink of a precipice, 
 from the jaws of a tiger, spends his days and nights 
 in reviviug his terrors past, re-imagining dangers not 
 to occur again, or, if they do occur, from which the ex- 
 perience undergone can suggest no additional safe- 
 guards. The current of our life, indeed, like that of 
 the rivers, is most rapid in the midmost channel, where 
 all streams are alike, comparatively slow in the depth 
 and along the shores in which each life, as each river, 
 has a character peculiar to itself. And hence, those 
 who would sail with the tide of the world, as those who 
 sail with the tide of a river, hasten to take the middle 
 of the stream, as those who sail against the tide are 
 found clinging to the shore. I returned to my habitual 
 duties and avocations with renewed energy; I did not 
 suffer my thoughts to dwell on the dreary wonders that 
 had haunted me, from the evening I first met Sir Philip 
 Derval to the morning in which I had quitted the 
 house of his heir; whether realities or hallucinations, 
 no guess of mine could unravel such marvels, and no 
 prudence of mine guard me against their repetition. 
 But I had no fear that they would be repeated, any 
 more than the man who has gone through shipwreck, 
 or the hairbreadth escape from a fall down a glacier, 
 fears again to be found in a similar peril. Margrave 
 had departed, whither I knew not, and, with his de- 
 parture, ceased all sense of his influence. A certain 
 calm within me, a tranquillising feeling of relief, seemed 
 to me like a pledge of permanent delivery. 
 
 10* 
 
148 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 But that which did accompany and haunt me 
 through all my occupations and pursuits, was the mel- 
 ancholy remembrance of the love I had lost in Lilian. 
 I heard from Mrs. Ashleigh, who still frequently visited 
 me, that her daughter seemed much in the same quiet 
 state of mind — perfectly reconciled to our separation 
 — seldom mentioning my name — if mentioning it, 
 with indifference; the only thing remarkable in her 
 state was her aversion to all society, and a kind of 
 lethargy that would come over her, often in the day- 
 time. She would suddenly fall into sleep, and so re- 
 main for hours, but a sleep that seemed very serene 
 and tranquil, and from which she woke of herself. She 
 kept much within her own room, and always retired to 
 it when visitors were announced. 
 
 Mrs. Ashleigh began reluctantly to relinquish the 
 persuasion she had so long and so obstinately main- 
 tained that this state of feeling towards myself — and, 
 indeed, this general change in Lilian — was but tem- 
 porary and abnormal; she began to allow that it was 
 best to drop all thoughts of a renewed engagement — 
 a future union. I proposed to see Lilian in her pre- 
 sence and in my professional capacity; perhaps some 
 physical cause, especially for this lethargy, might be 
 detected and removed. Mrs. Ashleigh owned to me 
 that the idea had occurred to herself; she had sounded 
 Lilian upon it; but her daughter had so resolutely op- 
 posed it; had said with so quiet a firmness "that all 
 being over between us, a visit from me would be un- 
 welcome and painful;" that Mrs. Ashleigh felt that an 
 interview thus deprecated would only confirm estrange- 
 ment. One day, in calling, she asked my advice 
 whether it would not be better to try the effect of 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 149 
 
 change of air and scene, and, in some other place, 
 some other medical opinion might be taken ? I approved 
 of this suggestion with unspeakable sadness. 
 
 "And," said Mrs. Ashleigh, shedding tears, "if 
 that experiment prove unsuccessful, I will write and 
 let you know, and we must then consider what to 
 say to the world as a reason why the marriage is 
 broken off. I can render this more easy by staying 
 away. I will not return to L — till the matter has 
 ceased to be the topic of talk, and at a distance any 
 excuse will be less questioned and seem more natural. 
 But still — still — let us hope still." 
 
 "Have you one ground for hope?" 
 
 "Perhaps so; but you will think it very frail and 
 fallacious." 
 
 "Name it, and let me judge." 
 
 "One night — in which you were on a visit to 
 Derval Court — " 
 "Ay, that night." 
 
 "Lilian woke me by a loud cry (she sleeps in the 
 next room to me, and the door was left open); I 
 hastened to her bedside in alarm; she was asleep, but 
 appeared extremely agitated and convulsed. She kept 
 calling on your name in a tone of passionate fondness, 
 but as if in great terror. She cried, 'Do not go, Allen! 
 
 — do not go! — you know not what you brave! — 
 
 — what you do!' Then she rose in her bed, clasping 
 her hands. Her face was set and rigid: I tried to 
 awake her, but could not. After a little time, she 
 breathed a deep sigh, and murmured, 'Allen, Allen! 
 dear love! did you not hear? — did you not see me? 
 What could thus baffle matter and traverse space but 
 love and soul? Can you still doubt me, Allen? Doubt 
 
150 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 that I love you now, shall love you evermore? Yonder, 
 yonder, as here below?' She then sank back on her 
 pillow, weeping, and then I woke her." 
 
 "And what did she say on waking?" 
 
 "She did not remember what she had dreamed, 
 except that she had passed through some great terror 
 
 — but added with a vague smile, 'It is over, and I 
 feel happy now.' Then she turned round and fell 
 asleep again, but quietly as a child, the tears dried, 
 the smile resting." 
 
 "Go, my dear friend, go; take Lilian away from 
 this place as soon as you can; divert her mind with 
 fresh scenes. I hope! — I do hope! Let me know 
 where you fix yourself. I will seize a holiday — I 
 need one; I will arrange as to my patients — I will 
 come to the same place; she need not know of it — 
 but I must be by to watch, to hear your news of her. 
 Heaven bless you for what you have said! I hope! 
 
 — I do hope!" 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Some days after, I received a few lines from Mrs. 
 Ashleigh. Her arrangements for departure were made. 
 They were to start the next morning. She had fixed 
 on going into the north of Devonshire, and staying 
 some weeks either at Ilfracombe or Lynton, whichever 
 place Lilian preferred. She would write as soon as 
 they were settled. 
 
 I was up at my usual early hour the next morning. 
 I resolved to go out towards Mrs. Ashleigh's house, 
 and watch, unnoticed, where I might, perhaps, catch 
 
A STRANGE STORY 
 
 a glimpse of Lilian as the carriage that would convey 
 her to the railway passed my hiding-place. 
 
 I was looking impatiently at the clock; it was yet 
 two hours before the train by which Mrs. Ashleigh 
 proposed to leave. A loud ring at my bell! T opened 
 the door. Mrs. Ashleigh rushed in , falling on my 
 breast. 
 
 "Lilian! Lilian!" 
 
 "Heavens! What has happened?" 
 
 "She has left — she is gone — gone away! Oh, 
 Allen! how? — whither? Advise me. What is to be 
 done?" 
 
 "Come in — - compose yourself — tell me all — 
 clearly, quickly. Lilian gone? — gone away? Im- 
 possible! She must be hid somewhere in the house 
 — the garden; she, perhaps, did not like the journey. 
 She may have crept away to some young friend's 
 house. But / talk when you should talk : tell me 
 all." 
 
 Little enough to tell! Lilian had seemed unusually 
 cheerful the night before, and pleased at the thought 
 of the excursion. Mother and daughter retired to rest 
 early: Mrs. Ashleigh saw Lilian sleeping quietly before 
 she herself went to bed. She woke betimes in the 
 morning, dressed herself, went into the next room to 
 call Lilian — Lilian was not there. No suspicion of 
 flight occurred to her. Perhaps her daughter might be 
 up already, and gone down stairs, remembering some- 
 thing she might wish to pack and take with her on 
 the journey. Mrs. Ashleigh was confirmed in this idea 
 when she noticed that her own room door was left 
 open. She went down stairs, met a maid-servant in 
 the hall, who told her, with alarm and surprise, that 
 
152 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 both the street and garden doors were found unclosed. 
 No one had seen Lilian. Mrs. Ashleigh now became 
 seriously uneasy. On remounting to her daughter's 
 room, she missed Lilian's bonnet and mantle. The 
 house and garden were both searched in vain. There 
 could be no doubt that Lilian had gone — must have 
 stolen noiselessly at night through her mother's room, 
 and let herself out of the house and through the 
 garden. 
 
 "Do you think she could have received any letter, 
 any message, any visitor unknown to you?" 
 
 "I cannot think it. Why do you ask? Oh, Allen, 
 you do not believe there is any accomplice in this dis- 
 appearance! No, you do not believe it. But my child's 
 honour! What will the world think?" 
 
 Not for the world cared I at that moment. I could 
 think only of Lilian, and without one suspicion that 
 imputed blame to her. 
 
 "Be quiet , be silent ; perhaps she has gone on 
 some visit, and will return. Meanwhile, leave inquiry 
 to me." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 It seemed incredible that Lilian could wander far 
 without being observed. I soon ascertained that she 
 had not gone away by the railway — by any public 
 conveyance — had hired no carriage; she must, there- 
 fore, be still in the town, or have left it on foot. The 
 greater part of the day was consumed in unsuccessful 
 inquiries, and faint hopes that she would return ; mean- 
 while, the news of her disappearance had spread: how 
 could such news fail to do so? 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 153 
 
 An acquaintance of mine met me under the arch- 
 way of Monks' Gate. He wrung my hand, and looked 
 at me with great compassion. 
 
 "I fear," said he, "that we were all deceived in 
 that young Margrave. He seemed so well conducted, 
 in spite of his lively manners. But — " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "Mrs. Ashleigh was, perhaps, imprudent to admit 
 him into her house so familiarly. He was certainly 
 very handsome. Young ladies will be romantic." 
 
 "How dare you, sir!" I cried, choked with rage. 
 "And without any colouring to so calumnious a sug- 
 gestion! Margrave has not been in the town for many 
 days. No one knows even where he is." 
 
 "Oh yes, it is known where he is. He wrote to 
 order the effects which he had left here to be sent to 
 Penrith." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "The letter arrived the day before yesterday. I 
 happened to be calling at the house where he last lodged 
 when at L — , the house opposite Mrs. Ashleigh's garden. 
 No doubt the servants in both houses gossip with each 
 other. Miss Ashleigh could scarcely fail to hear of 
 Mr. Margrave's address from her maid-, and since ser- 
 vants will exchange gossip, they may also convey 
 letters. Pardon me, you know I am your friend." 
 
 "Not from the moment you breathe a word 
 against my betrothed wife," said I, fiercely. 
 
 I wrenched myself from the clasp of the man's 
 hand, but his words still rang in my ears. I mounted 
 my horse; I rode into the adjoining suburbs, the neigh- 
 bouring villages ; there, however, I learned nothing till, 
 just at nightfall, in a hamlet, about ten miles from 
 
154 
 
 A .STRANGE STORY. 
 
 L — , a labourer declared lie had seen a young lady 
 dressed as I described, who passed by him in a path 
 through the fields a little before noon; that he was sur- 
 prised to see one so young, so well dressed, and a 
 stranger to the neighbourhood (for he knew by sight 
 the ladies of the few families scattered round) walking 
 alone; that as he stepped out of the path to make 
 way for her, he looked hard into her face, and she did 
 not heed him — seemed to gaze, right before her, into 
 space. If her expression had been less quiet and 
 gentle, he should have thought, he could scarcely say 
 why, that she was not quite right in her mind — there 
 was a strange unconscious stare in her eyes, as if she 
 were walking in her sleep. Her pace was very steady 
 — neither quick nor slow. He had watched her till 
 she passed out of sight, amidst a wood through which 
 the path wound its way to a village at some distance. 
 
 I followed up this clue. I arrived at the village 
 to which my informant directed me, but night had set 
 in. Most of the houses were closed, so I could glean 
 no further information from the cottages or at the inn. 
 But the j)olice superintendent of the district lived in 
 the village, and to him I gave instructions which I 
 had not given, and indeed would have been disinclined 
 to give, to the police at L — . He was intelligent and 
 kindly: he promised to communicate at once with 
 the different police-stations for miles round, and with 
 all delicacy and privacy. It was not probable that 
 Lilian could have wandered in one day much farther 
 than the place at which I then was; it was scarcely to 
 be conceived that she could baffle my pursuit and the 
 practised skill of the police. I rested but a few hours, 
 at a small public- house, and was on horseback again 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 155 
 
 at dawn. A little after sunrise, I again heard of the 
 wanderer. At a lonely cottage, by a brick-kiln, in the 
 midst of a wide common, she had stopped the previous 
 evening and asked for a draught of milk. The woman 
 who gave it to her inquired if she had lost her way? 
 She said, "No;" and only tarrying a few minutes, had 
 gone across the common; and the woman supposed 
 she was a visitor at a gentleman's house which was at 
 the further end of the waste, for the path she took led 
 to no town, no village. It occurred to me, then, that 
 Lilian avoided all highroads, all places, even the 
 humblest, where men congregated together. But where 
 could she have passed the night? Not to fatigue the 
 reader with the fruitless result of frequent inquiries, I 
 will but say that at the end of the second day I had 
 succeeded in ascertaining that I was still on her track ; 
 and though I had ridden to and fro nearly double the 
 distance — coming back again to places I had left 
 behind — it was at the distance of forty miles from 
 L — that I last heard of her that second day. She had 
 been seen sitting alone by a little brook only an hour 
 before. I was led to the very spot by a woodman, — 
 it was at the hour of twilight when he beheld her — 
 she was leaning her face on her hand, and seemed 
 weary. He spoke to her; she did not answer, but rose, 
 and resumed her way along the banks of the streamlet. 
 That night I put up at no inn: I followed the course 
 of the brook for miles, then struck into every path 
 that I could conceive her to have taken - — in vain. 
 Thus I consumed the night on foot, tying my horse to 
 a tree, for he was tired out, and returning to him at 
 sunrise. At noon, the third day, I again heard of her, 
 
156 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 and in a remote savage part of the country. The 
 features of the landscape were changed; there was 
 little culture, but the ground was broken into mounds 
 and hollows, and covered with patches of heath and 
 stunted brushwood. She had been seen by a shepherd, 
 and he made the same observation as the first who had 
 guided me on her track, 4 she looked to him "like some 
 one walking in her sleep." An hour or two later, in 
 a dell, amongst the furze-bushes, I chanced on a knot 
 of ribbon. I recognised the colour Lilian habitually 
 wore; I felt certain that the ribbon was hers. Calcu- 
 lating the utmost speed I could ascribe to her, she 
 could not be far off, yet still I failed to discover. The 
 scene now was as solitary as a desert; I met no one 
 on my way. At length, a little after sunset, I found 
 myself in view of the sea. A small town nestled 
 below the cliffs, on which I was guiding my weary 
 horse. I entered the town and while my horse was 
 baiting went in search of the resident policeman. The 
 information I had directed to be sent round the country 
 had reached him; he had acted on it, but without re- 
 sult. I was surprised to hear him address me by name, 
 and looking at him more narrowly I recognised him 
 for the policeman Waby. This young man had al- 
 ways expressed so grateful a sense of my attendance 
 on his sister, and had, indeed, so notably evinced his 
 gratitude in prosecuting with Margrave the inquiries 
 which terminated in the discovery of Sir Philip Der- 
 val's murderer, that I confided to him the name of the 
 wanderer of which he had not been previously in- 
 formed; but which it would be, indeed, impossible to 
 conceal from him should the search in which his aid 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 157 
 
 was asked prove successful, — as he knew Miss Ash- 
 leigh by sight. His face immediately became thought- 
 ful. He paused a minute or two, and then said: 
 
 "I think I have it, but I do not like to say; I 
 may pain you, sir." 
 
 "Not by confidence; you pain me by conceal- 
 ment." 
 
 The man hesitated still; I encouraged him, and 
 then he spoke out frankly. 
 
 "Sir, did you never think it strange that Mr. Mar- 
 grave should move from his handsome rooms in the 
 hotel to a somewhat uncomfortable lodging, from the 
 window of which he could look down on Mrs. Ash- 
 leigh's garden? I have seen him at night in the bal- 
 cony of that window, and when I noticed him going 
 so frequently into Mrs. Ashleigh's house during your 
 unjust detention, I own, sir, I felt for you — " 
 
 "Nonsense; Mr. Margrave went to Mrs. Ashleigh's 
 house as my friend. He has left L — weeks ago. 
 What has all this to do with — " 
 
 "Patience, sir; hear me out. I was sent from L — 
 to this station (on promotion, sir), a fortnight since 
 last Friday — for there has been a good deal of crime 
 hereabouts, it is a bad neighbourhood, and full of 
 smugglers; — some days ago, in watching quietly 
 near a lonely house, of which the owner is a suspi- 
 cious character, down in my books, I saw, to my amaze- 
 ment, Mr. Margrave come out of that house — come 
 out of a private door in it, which belongs to a part of 
 the building not inhabited by the owner, but which 
 used formerly, when the house was a sort of inn, to 
 be let to night lodgers of the humblest description. I 
 followed him; he went down to the sea-shore, walked 
 
158 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 about, singing to himself, then returned to the house, 
 and re-entered by the same door. I soon learned that 
 he lodged in the house, had lodged there for several 
 days. The next morning, a fine yacht arrived at a 
 tolerably convenient creek about a mile from the house, 
 and there anchored. Sailors came ashore, rambling 
 down to this town. The yacht belonged to Mr. Mar- 
 grave, he had purchased it by commission in London. 
 It is stored for a long voyage. He had directed it to 
 come to him in this out-of-the-way place, where no 
 gentleman's yacht ever put in before, though the creek, 
 or bay, is handy enough for such craft. Well, sir, is 
 it not strange that a rich young gentleman should 
 come to this unfrequented sea-shore, put up with ac- 
 commodation that must be of the rudest kind in the 
 house of a man known as a desperate smuggler, 
 suspected to be worse? Order a yacht to meet him 
 here; is not all this strange? But would it be strange 
 if he were waiting for a young lady? And if a young 
 lady has fled at night from her home, and has come 
 secretly along by-paths, which must have been very 
 fully explained to her beforehand, and is now near 
 that young gentleman's lodging, if not actually in it, 
 if this be so, why, the affair is not so very strange 
 after all. And now do you forgive me, sir?" 
 
 "Where is this house? Lead me to it." 
 
 "You can hardly get to it except on foot, rough 
 walking, sir, and about seven miles off by the shortest 
 cut." 
 
 "Come, and at once*, come, quickly. We must be 
 there before — before — " 
 
 "Before the young lady can get to the place. Well, 
 from what you say of the spot in which she was last 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 159 
 
 Seen, L think, on reflection, we may easily do that. I 
 am at your service, sir. But I should warn you that 
 the owners of the house, man and wife, are both of 
 villanous character — would do anything for money. 
 Mr. Margrave, no doubt, has money enough, and if the 
 young lady chooses to go away with Mr. Margrave, 
 you know, I have no power to help it." 
 
 "Leave all that to me; all I ask of you is to show 
 me the house. 1 ' 
 
 We were soon out of the town; the night had 
 closed in; it was very dark in spite of a few stars; 
 the path was rugged and precipitous, sometimes skirt- 
 ing the very brink of perilous cliffs; sometimes delving 
 down to the sea -shore — there stopped by rock or 
 wave — and painfully rewinding up the ascent. 
 
 "It is an ugly path, sir, but it saves four miles; 
 and anyhow the road is a bad one." 
 
 We came, at last, to a few wretched fishermen's 
 huts. The moon had now risen, and revealed the 
 squalor of poverty-stricken ruinous hovels; a couple of 
 boats moored to the shore; a moaning, fretful sea; 
 and, at a distance, a vessel, with lights on board, lying 
 perfectly still at anchor in a sheltered curve of the bold 
 rude shore. The policeman pointed to the vessel: 
 
 "The yacht, sir; the wind will be in her favour if 
 she sails to-night." 
 
 We quickened our pace as well as the nature of 
 the path would permit, left the huts behind us, and, 
 about a mile farther on, came to a solitary house, larger 
 than from the policeman's description of Margrave's 
 lodgment, I should have presupposed: a house that in 
 the wilder parts of Scotland might be almost a laird's; 
 but even in the moonlight it looked very dilapidated 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 and desolate. Most of the windows were closed, some 
 with panes broken, stuffed with wisps of straw; there 
 were the remains of a wall round the house: it was 
 broken in some parts (only its foundation left). On 
 approaching the house, I observed two doors, one on 
 the side fronting the sea, one on the other side facing 
 a patch of broken ground that might once have been 
 a garden, and lay waste within the enclosure of the 
 ruined wall, encumbered with various litter — heaps 
 of rubbish, a ruined shed, the carcase of a worn-out 
 boat. This latter door stood wide open — the other 
 was closed. The house was still and dark, as if either 
 deserted or all within it retired to rest. 
 
 "I think that open door leads at once to the rooms 
 Mr. Margrave hires; he can go in and out without 
 disturbing the other inmates. They used to keep, on 
 the side which they inhabit, a beerhouse, but the ma- 
 gistrates shut it up; still it is a resort for bad char- 
 acters. Now, sir, what shall we do?" 
 
 "Watch separately. You wait within the enclosure 
 of the wall, hid by those heaps of rubbish, near the 
 door; none can enter but what you will observe them. 
 If you see her, you will accost and stop her, and call 
 aloud for me; I shall be in hearing. I will go back 
 to the high part of the ground yonder, it seems to 
 me that she must pass that way; and I would desire, 
 if possible, to save her from the humiliation, the — the 
 shame of coming within the precincts of that man's 
 abode. I feel I may trust you now and hereafter. It 
 is a great thing for the happiness and honour of this 
 poor young lady and her mother, that I may be able 
 to declare that I did not take her from that man, from 
 any man — from that house, from any house. You 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 161 
 
 comprehend me, and will obey? I speak to you as a 
 confidant — a friend." 
 
 "I thank you with my whole heart, sir, for so 
 doing. You saved my sister's life, and the least I can 
 do is to keep secret all that would pain your life if 
 blabbed abroad. I know what mischief folks' tongues 
 can make. I will wait by the door, never fear, and 
 will rather lose my place than not strain all the legal 
 power I possess to keep the young lady back from 
 sorrow." 
 
 This dialogue was interchanged in close hurried 
 whisper behind the broken wall, and out of all hearing. 
 Waby now crept through a wide gap into the enclosure, 
 and nestled himself silently amidst the wrecks of the 
 broken boat, not six feet from the open door, and close 
 to the wall of the house itself. I went back some 
 thirty yards up the road, to the rising ground which 
 I had pointed out to him. According to the best cal- 
 culation I could make — considering the pace at 
 which I had cleared the precipitous pathway, and 
 reckoning from the place and time at which Lilian 
 had been last seen, she could not possibly have yet 
 entered that house — I might presume it would be 
 more than half an hour before she could arrive; I was 
 in hopes that, during the interval, Margrave might 
 show himself, perhaps at the door, or from the 
 windows, or I might even by some light from the latter 
 be guided to the room in which to find him. If, after 
 waiting a reasonable time, Lilian should fail to appear, 
 1 had formed my own plan of action; but it was im- 
 portant for the success of that plan that I should not 
 lose myself in the strange house, nor bring its owners 
 to Margrave's aid - that I should surprise him alone 
 
 A Strange Siory. II, 11 
 
« 
 
 162 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 and unawares. Half an hour, three quarters, a whole 
 hour thus passed — no sign of my poor wanderer; but 
 signs there were of the enemy, from whom I resolved, 
 at whatever risk, to free and to save her. A window 
 on the ground floor to the left of the door, which had 
 long fixed my attention because I had seen light 
 through the chinks of the shutters, slowly unclosed, 
 the shutters fell back, the casement opened, and I 
 beheld Margrave distinctly; he held something in his 
 hand that gleamed in the moonlight, directed not 
 towards the mound on which I stood, nor towards the 
 path I had taken, but towards an open space beyond 
 the ruined wall, to the right. Hid by a cluster of 
 stunted shrubs, I watched him with a heart that beat 
 with rage, not with terror. He seemed so intent in 
 his own gaze, as to be inattentive or unconscious of 
 all else. I stole round from my post, and still, under, 
 cover, sometimes of the broken wall, sometimes of the 
 shaggy ridges that skirted the path crept on, on till I 
 reached the side of the house itself; then, there secure 
 from his eyes, should he turn them, I stepped over the 
 ruined wall, scarcely two feet high in that place, on 
 — ■ on towards the door. I passed the spot on which 
 the policeman had shrouded himself: he was seated, 
 his back against the ribs of the broken boat. I put 
 my hand to his mouth that he might not cry out in 
 surprise, and whispered in his ear ; he stirred not. I 
 shook him by the arm; still he stirred not. A ray of 
 the moon fell on his face. I saw that he was in a 
 profound slumber. Persuaded that it was no natural 
 sleep, and that he had become useless to me, I passed 
 him by. I was at the threshold of the open door; 
 the light from the window close by falling on the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 163 
 
 ground; I was in the passage; a glimmer came through 
 the chinks of a door to the left; I turned the handle 
 noiselessly, and, the next moment, Margrave was 
 locked in my grasp. 
 
 "Call out," I hissed into his ear, "and I strangle 
 you before any one can come to your help!" 
 
 He did not call out; his eye, fixed on mine as he 
 writhed round, saw, perhaps, his peril if he did. His 
 countenance betrayed fear, but as I tightened my grasp 
 that expression gave way to one of wrath and fierceness ; 
 and as, in turn, I felt the gripe of his hand, I knew 
 that the struggle between us would be that of two 
 strong men, each equally bent on the mastery of the 
 other. 
 
 I was, as I have said before, endowed with an unusual 
 degree of physical power, disciplined, in early youth, 
 by athletic exercise and contest. In height and in 
 muscle 1 had greatly the advantage over my antagonist, 
 but such was the nervous vigour, the elastic energy of 
 his incomparable frame, in which sinews seemed springs 
 of steel, that had our encounter been one in which my 
 strength was less heightened by rage, I believe that I 
 could no more have coped with him than the bison 
 can cope with the boa; but I was animated by that 
 passion which trebles for a time all our forces — 
 which makes even the weak man a match for the 
 strong. I felt that if I were worsted, disabled, stricken 
 down, Lilian might be lost in losing her sole protector; 
 and, on the other hand, Margrave had beeii taken at 
 the disadvantage of that surprise which will half un- 
 nerve the fiercest of the wild beasts; while as we 
 grappled, reeling and rocking to and fro in our struggle, 
 I soon observed that his attention was distracted — 
 
 11 * 
 
1C4 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 that his eye was turned towards an object which he 
 had dropped involuntarily when I first seized him. He 
 sought to drag me towards that object, and when near 
 it, stooped to seize. It was a bright, slender, short wand 
 of steel. I remembered when and where I had seen 
 it, whether in my waking state or in vision, and as 
 his hand stole down to take it from the floor I set on 
 the wand my strong foot. I cannot tell by what rapid 
 process of thought and association I came to the belief 
 that the possession of a little piece of blunted steel 
 would decide the conflict in favour of the possessor, 
 but the struggle now was concentred in the attainment 
 of that seemingly idle weapon. I was becoming breath- 
 less and exhausted, while Margrave seemed every moment 
 to gather up new force, when, collecting all my strength 
 for one final effort, I lifted him suddenly high in the 
 air, and hurled him to the farthest end of the cramped 
 arena to which our contest was confined. He fell, and 
 with a force by which most men would have been 
 stunned; but he recovered himself with a quick re- 
 bound, and, as he stood facing me, there was something 
 grand as well as terrible in his aspect. His eyes liter- 
 ally flamed, as those of a tiger; his rich hair, flung 
 back from his knitted forehead, seemed to erect itself 
 as an angry mane; his lips, slightly parted, showed 
 the glitter of his set teeth; his whole frame seemed 
 larger in the tension of the muscles, and as gradually 
 relaxing his first defying and haughty attitude, he 
 crouched as the panther crouches for its deadly spring, 
 I felt as if it were a wild beast whose rush was coming 
 upon me — wild beast, but still Man, the king of the 
 animals, fashioned forth from no mixture of humbler 
 races by the slow revolutions of time, but his royalty 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 165 
 
 stamped on his form when the earth became fit for his 
 coming. * 
 
 At that moment I snatched up the wand, directed 
 it towards him, and, advancing with a fearless stride, 
 cried, 
 
 "Down to my feet, miserable sorcerer!" 
 
 To my own amaze, the effect was instantaneous. 
 My terrible antagonist dropped to the floor as a dog 
 drops at the word of his master. The muscles of his 
 frowning countenance relaxed, the glare of his wrathful 
 eyes grew dull and rayless; his limbs lay prostrate 
 and unnerved, his head resting against the wall, his 
 arms limp and drooping by his side. I approached 
 him slowly and cautiously; he seemed cast into a 
 profound slumber. 
 
 "You are at my mercy now! 1 ' said I. 
 
 He moved his head as in sign of deprecating sub- 
 mission. 
 
 "You hear and understand me? Speak!" 
 
 His lips faintly muttered "Yes." 
 
 "I command you to answer truly the questions I 
 shall address to you." 
 
 "I must, while yet sensible of the power that has 
 passed to your hand." 
 
 "Is it by some occult magnetic property in this 
 wand that you have exercised so demoniac an influence 
 over a creature so pure as Lilian Ashleigh?" 
 
 "By that wand and by other arts which you could 
 not comprehend." 
 
 * "And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul, 
 that immaterial and immortal principle which is for a time united to his 
 body, and view him only in his merely animal character, man is still the 
 most excellent of animals." — Dr. Kidd on the Adaptation of External 
 Nature to the Physical Condition of Man ^Sect. iii. page 18). 
 
16G 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "And for what infamous object? — her seduction, 
 her dishonour? 1 ' 
 
 "No! I sought in her the aid of a gift which would 
 cease, did she cease to be pure. At first I but cast my 
 influence upon her that through her I might influence 
 yourself. I needed your help to discover a secret. 
 Circumstances steeled your mind against me. I could 
 no longer hope that you would voluntarily lend your- 
 self to my will. Meanwhile, I had found in her the 
 light of a loftier knowledge than that of your science-, 
 through that knowledge, duly heeded and cultivated, I 
 hoped to divine what I cannot of myself discover. 
 Therefore I deepened over her mind the spells I 
 command — therefore I have drawn her hither as the 
 loadstone draws the steel, and therefore I would have 
 borne her with me to the shores to which I was about 
 this night to sail. / had cast the inmates of the house, 
 and all around it, into slumber, in order that none 
 might witness her departure; had I not done so, I 
 should have summoned others to my aid, in spite of 
 your threat." 
 
 "And would Lilian Ashleigh have passively ac- 
 companied you, to her own irretrievable disgrace?" 
 
 "She could not have helped it; she would have 
 been unconscious of her acts; she was, and is, in a 
 trance; nor, had she gone with me, would she have 
 waked from that state while she lived; that would not 
 have been long." 
 
 "Wretch! and for what object of unhallowed curio- 
 sity do you exert an influence which withers away the 
 life of its victim?" 
 
 "Not curiosity, but the instinct of self-preservation. 
 
A STRANGE STORY, 
 
 167 
 
 I count on no life beyond the grave. I would defy 
 the grave, and live on." 
 
 "And was it to learn, through some ghastly agencies, 
 the secret of renewing existence that you lured me by 
 the shadow of your own image on the night when we 
 met last?" 
 
 The voice of Margrave here became very faint as v 
 he answered me, and his countenance began to exhibit 
 the signs of an exhaustion almost mortal. 
 
 "Be quick," he murmured, "or I die. The fluid 
 which emanates from that wand in the hand of one 
 who envenoms the fluid with his own hatred and rage 
 will prove fatal to my life. Lower the wand from my 
 forehead; low — low, — lower still!" 
 
 "What was the nature of that rite in which you 
 constrained me to share?" 
 
 "I cannot say. You are killing me. Enough that 
 you were saved from a great danger by the apparition 
 of the protecting image vouchsafed to your eye, other- 
 wise you would — you would — Oh, release me! 
 Away! away!" 
 
 The foam gathered to his lips; his limbs became 
 fearfully convulsed. 
 
 "One question more: Where is Lilian at this mo- 
 ment? Answer that question, and I depart." 
 
 He raised his head, made a visible effort to rally 
 his strength, and gasped out, 
 
 "Yonder. Pass through the open space up the 
 cliff, beside a thorn-tree — you will find her there, 
 where she halted when the wand dropped from my 
 hand. But — but — beware! Ha! you will serve 
 me yet, and through her! They said so that night, 
 though you heard them not, They said it!" Here his 
 
168 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 face became death-like; lie pressed his hand on his 
 heart, and shrieked out, "Away — away! or you are 
 my murderer!' 1 
 
 I retreated to the other end of the room, turning 
 the wand from him, and when I gained the door, 
 looked back; his convulsions had ceased, but he seemed 
 locked in a profound swoon. I left the room — the 
 house — paused by Waby; he was still sleeping. 
 "Awake!" I said, and touched him with the wand. He 
 started up at once, rubbed his eyes, began stammering 
 out excuses. I checked them, and bade him follow 
 me. I took the way up the open ground towards 
 which Margrave had pointed the wand, and there, mo- 
 tionless, beside a gnarled fantastic thorn-tree, stood 
 Lilian. Her arms were folded across her breast; her 
 face, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent and so 
 infantine, that I needed no other evidence to tell me 
 how unconscious she was of the peril to which her 
 steps had been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. 
 "Come with me," I said, in a whisper; and she obeyed 
 me silently, and with a placid smile. 
 
 Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of 
 fatigue. I placed her arm in mine, but she did not 
 lean on it. We got back to the town. I obtained 
 there an old chaise and a pair of horses. At morning 
 Lilian was under her mother's roof. About the noon 
 of that day fever seized her, she became rapidly worse, 
 and, to all appearance, in imminent danger. Delirium 
 set in; I watched beside her night and day, supported 
 by an inward conviction of her recovery, but tortured 
 by the sight of her sufferings. On the third day, a 
 change for the better became visible, her sleep was 
 calm, her breathing regular. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 169 
 
 Shortly afterwards she woke, out of clanger. Her 
 eyes fell at once on me, with all their old ineffable 
 tender sweetness. 
 
 "Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? 
 But I am almost well now. Do not weep; I shall live 
 for you — for your sake." And she bent forward, 
 drawing my hand from my streaming eyes, and kissing 
 me with a child's guileless kiss on my burning fore- 
 head. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Lilian recovered, but the strange thing was this: 
 all memory of the weeks that had elapsed since her 
 return from visiting her aunt was completely obliterated; 
 she seemed in profound ignorance of the charge on 
 which I had been confined; perfectly ignorant even of 
 the existence of Margrave; she had, indeed, a very 
 vague reminiscence of her conversation with me in the 
 garden — the first conversation which had ever been 
 embittered by a disagreement — but that disagreement 
 itself she did not recollect. Her belief was that she 
 had been ill and light-headed since that evening. From 
 that evening to the hour of her waking, conscious and 
 revived, all was a blank. Her love for me was restored, 
 as if its thread had never been broken. Some such 
 instances of oblivion after bodily illness or mental 
 shock are familiar enough to the practice of all medical 
 men;* and I was therefore enabled to appease the 
 
 * Such instances of suspense of memory are recorded in most phy- 
 siological, and in some metaphysical, works. Dr. Abercrorabie notices 
 some, more or less similar to that related in the text: "A young lady who 
 was present at a catastrophe in Scotland, in which many people lost their 
 lives by the fall of the gallery of a church, escaped without any injury, 
 but with the complete loss of the recollection of any of the circumstances; 
 and this extended not only to the accident, but to everything that had 
 
170 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 anxiety and wonder of Mrs. Ashleigli by quoting various 
 examples of loss, or suspension, of memory. We agreed 
 that it would be necessary to break to Lilian, though 
 very cautiously, the story of Sir Philip Derval's murder, 
 and the charge to which I had been subjected. She 
 could not fail to hear of those events from others. 
 How shall I express her womanly terror, her loving 
 sympathising pity, on hearing the tale, which I softened 
 as well as I could? 
 
 "And to think that I knew nothing of this!" she 
 cried, clasping my hand; "to think that you were in 
 peril, and that I was not by your side!" 
 
 Her mother spoke of Margrave as a visitor — an 
 agreeable, lively stranger; Lilian could not even re- 
 collect his name, but she seemed shocked to think that 
 any visitor had been admitted while I was in circum- 
 stances so awful! Need I say that our engagement 
 was renewed? Renewed! To her knowledge and to 
 her heart it had never been interrupted for a moment. 
 But oh, the malignity of the wrong world! Oh, that 
 strange lust of mangling reputations, which seizes on 
 hearts the least wantonly cruel! Let two idle tongues 
 utter a tale against some third person, who never 
 offended the babblers, and how the tale spreads, like 
 fire, lighted none know how, in the herbage of an 
 American prairie! Who shall put it out? 
 
 occurred to her for a certain time betore going to church. A lady whom I 
 attended some years ago in a protracted illness, in which her memory be- 
 came much impaired , lost the recollection of a period of about ten or 
 twelve years, but spoke with perfect consistency of things as they stood 
 before that time." Dr. Abercrombie adds: "As far as I have been able to 
 trace it, the principle in such cases seems to be, that when the memory is 
 impaired to a certain degree , the loss of it extends backward to some event 
 or some period by which a particularly deep impression had been made 
 upon the mind." — Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, pages 118, 
 119 (15th edition). 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 171 
 
 What right have we to pry into the secrets of other 
 men's hearths? True or false, the tale that is gabbled 
 to us, what concern of ours can it be? I speak not of 
 cases to which the law has been summoned, which law 
 has sifted, on which law has pronounced. But how, 
 when the law is silent, can we assume its verdicts? 
 How be all judges, where there has been no witness- 
 box, no cross-examination, no jury? Yet, every day 
 we put on our ermine, and make ourselves judges — 
 judges sure to condemn, and on what evidence? That 
 which no court of law will receive. Somebody has said 
 something to somebody, which somebody repeats to 
 everybody! 
 
 The gossip of L — had set in full current against 
 Lilian's fair name. No ladies had called or sent to 
 congratulate Mrs. Ashleigh on her return, or to inquire 
 after Lilian herself during her struggle between life 
 and death. 
 
 How I missed the Queen of the Hill at this critical 
 moment! How I longed for aid to crush the slander, 
 with which I knew not how to grapple — aid, in her 
 knowledge of the world, and her ascendancy over its 
 judgments. I had heard from her once since her 
 absence, briefly but kindly expressing her amazement 
 at the ineffable stupidity which could for a moment 
 have subjected me to a suspicion of Sir Philip Derval's 
 strange murder, and congratulating me heartily on my 
 complete vindication from so monstrous a charge. To 
 this letter no address was given. I supposed the omis- 
 sion to be accidental, but on calling at her house to 
 inquire her direction, I found that her servants did not 
 know it. 
 
 What, then, was my joy when, just at this juncture, 
 
172 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 I received a note from Mrs. Poyntz, stating that she 
 had returned the night before, and would be glad to 
 see ine. 
 
 I hastened to her house. "Ah," thought I, as I 
 sprang lightly up the ascent to the Hill, "how the 
 tattlers will be silenced by a word from her imperial 
 lips! 1 ' And only just as I approached her door did it 
 strike me how difficult — nay, how impossible to ex- 
 plain to her — the hard positive woman, her who had, 
 less ostensibly but more ruthlessly than myself, de-_ 
 stroyed Dr. Lloyd for his belief in the comparatively 
 rational pretensions of clairvoyance — all the mystical 
 excuses for Lilian's flight from her home? How speak 
 to her — or, indeed, to any one — about an occult 
 fascination and a magic wand? No matter: surely it 
 would be enough to say that, at the time, Lilian had 
 been light-headed, under the influence of the fever 
 which had afterwards nearly proved fatal. The early 
 friend of Anne Ashleigh would not be a severe critic 
 on any tale that might right the good name of Anne 
 Ashleigh's daughter. So assured, with light heart and 
 cheerful face, I followed the servant into the great 
 lady's pleasant but decorous presence-chamber. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Mrs. Poyntz was on her favourite seat by the 
 window, and, for a wonder, not knitting — that classic 
 task seemed done; but she was smoothing and folding 
 the completed work with her white comely hand, and 
 smiling over it, as if in complacent approval, when I 
 entered the room. A.t the fireside sat the he-colonel, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 173 
 
 inspecting a newly-invented barometer; at another win- 
 dow, in the farthest recess of the room, stood Miss J ane 
 Poyntz, with a young gentleman whom I had never 
 before seen, but who turned his eyes full upon me with 
 a haughty look as the servant announced my name. 
 He was tall, well proportioned, decidedly handsome, 
 but with that expression of cold and concentred self- 
 esteem in his very attitude, as well as his countenance, 
 which makes a man of merit unpopular, a man without 
 merit ridiculous. 
 
 The he-colonel, always punctiliously civil, rose from 
 his seat, shook hands with me cordially, and said, 
 " Coldish weather to-day; but we shall have rain to- 
 morrow. Rainy seasons come in cycles. We are about 
 to commence a cycle of them with heavy showers." 
 He sighed, and returned to his barometer. 
 
 Miss Jane bowed to me graciously enough, but was 
 evidently a little confused, a circumstance which might 
 well attract my notice, for I had never before seen 
 that high-bred young lady deviate a hair's breadth 
 from the even tenour of a manner admirable for a 
 cheerful and courteous ease, which one felt convinced 
 would be unaltered to those around her if an earth- 
 quake swallowed one up an inch before her feet. 
 
 The young gentleman continued to eye me loftily, 
 as the heir-apparent to some celestial planet might 
 eye an inferior creature from a half-formed nebula 
 suddenly dropped upon his sublime and perfected star. 
 
 Mrs. Poyntz extended to me two fingers, and said, 
 frigidly, "Delighted to see you again! How kind to 
 attend so soon to my note!" Motioning me to a seat 
 beside her, she here turned to her husband, and said, 
 "Poyntz, since a cycle of rain begins to-morrow, better 
 
174 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 secure your ride to-day. Take these young people 
 with you. I want to talk with Dr. Fenwick." 
 
 The colonel carefully put away his barometer, and 
 saying to his daughter "Corne!" went forth. Jane 
 followed her father; the young gentleman followed 
 Jane. 
 
 The reception I had met chilled and disappointed 
 me. I felt that Mrs. Poyntz was changed, and in her 
 change the whole house seemed changed. The very 
 chairs looked civilly unfriendly, as if preparing to turn 
 their backs on me. However, I Avas not in the false 
 position of an intruder; I had been summoned; it was 
 for Mrs. Poyntz to speak first, and I waited quietly 
 for her to do so. 
 
 She finished the careful folding of her work, and 
 then laid it at rest in the drawer of the table at which 
 she sate. Having so done, she turned to me, and said, 
 
 "By the way, I ought to have introduced to you 
 my young guest, Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. You would 
 like him. He has talents — not showy, but solid. He 
 will succeed in public life." 
 
 "So that young man is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner? I 
 do not wonder that Miss Ashleigh rejected him. 1 ' 
 
 I said this, for I was nettled, as well as surprised, 
 at the coolness with which a lady who had professed a 
 friendship for me mentioned that fortunate young gentle- 
 man, with so complete an oblivion of all the ante- 
 cedents that had once made his name painful to my 
 ear. 
 
 In turn, my answer seemed to nettle Mrs. Poyntz. 
 
 "I am not so sure that she did reject; perhaps she 
 rather misunderstood him; gallant compliments are not 
 always proposals of marriage. However that be, his 
 
A STRANG B STGRr. 
 
 175 
 
 spirits were not much damped by Miss Ashleigh's dis- 
 dain, nor his heart deeply smitten by her charms, for 
 he is now very happy, very much attached to another 
 young* lady, to whom he proposed, throe days ago, at 
 Lady Delafield's, and, not to make a mystery of what 
 all our little world will know before to-morrow, that 
 young lady is my daughter Jane." 
 
 "Were I acquainted with Mr. Sumner, I should 
 offer to him my sincere congratulation." 
 
 Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more 
 complimentary to Miss Jane than to the object of her 
 choice : 
 
 "I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich 
 country gentleman, and Ashleigh Sumner is the very 
 country gentleman I had then in my thoughts. He is 
 cleverer and more ambitious than I could have hoped: 
 he will be a minister some day, in right of his talents, 
 and a peer if he wishes it, in right of his lands. So 
 that matter is settled." 
 
 There was a pause, daring which my mind passed 
 rapidly through links of reminiscence and reasoning, 
 which led me to a mingled sentiment of admiration for 
 Mrs. Poyntz as a diplomatist and of distrust for Mrs. 
 Poyntz as a friend. It was now clear why Mrs. Poyntz, 
 before so little disposed to approve my love, had urged 
 me at once to offer my hand to Lilian, in order that 
 she might depart affianced and engaged to the house 
 in which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence, 
 Mrs. Poyntz's anxiety to obtain all the information I 
 could afford her of the sayings and doings at Lady 
 Haughton's- hence the publicity she had so suddenly 
 given to my engagement ; hence, when Mr. Sumner had 
 gone away, a rejected suitor, her own departure from 
 
J 70 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 L — ; slie had seized the very moment when a vain and 
 proud man, piqued by the mortification received from 
 one lady, falls the easier prey to the arts which allure 
 his suit to another. All was so far clear to me. And 
 I — was my self-conceit less egregious and less readily 
 duped than that of yon gilded popinjay's! How skil- 
 fully this woman had knitted me into her work with 
 the noiseless turn of her white hands ! and yet, forsooth, 
 I must vaunt the superior scope of my intellect, and 
 plumb all the fountains of Nature — I, who could not 
 fathom the little pool of this female schemer's mind! 
 
 But that was no time for resentment to her or re- 
 buke for myself. She was now the woman who could 
 best protect and save from slander my innocent, be- 
 loved Lilian. But how approach that perplexing sub- 
 ject? 
 
 Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual de- 
 cision of purpose which bore so deceitful a likeness to 
 candour of mind. 
 
 "But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked 
 you to call, Allen Fenwick." As she uttered my name, 
 her voice softened, and her manner took that maternal, 
 caressing tenderness which had sometimes amused and 
 sometimes misled me. "No, I do not forget that you 
 asked me to be your friend, and I take, without 
 scruple, the license of friendship. What are these 
 stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, 
 to whom you were once engaged?" 
 
 "To whom I am still engaged." 
 
 "Is it possible? Oh, then, of course the stories 
 I have heard are all false. Very likely, no fiction in 
 scandal ever surprises me. Poor dear Lilian, then, 
 never ran away from her mother's house?" 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 177 
 
 I smothered the angry pain which this mode of 
 questioning caused me; I knew how important it was 
 to Lilian to secure to her the countenance and support 
 of this absolute autocrat; I spoke of Lilian's long pre- 
 vious distemper of mind; I accounted for it as any in- 
 telligent physician, unacquainted with all that I could 
 not reveal, would account. Heaven forgive me for 
 the venial falsehood, but I spoke of the terrible charge 
 against myself as enough to unhinge, for a time, the 
 intellect, of a girl so acutely sensitive as Lilian; 
 I sought to create that impression as to the origin of 
 all that might otherwise seem strange; and in this state 
 of cerebral excitement she had wandered from home 
 — but alone. I had tracked every step of her way; 
 I had found and restored her to her home. A critical 
 delirium had followed, from which she now rose, cured 
 in health, unsuspicious that there could be a whisper 
 against her name. And then, with all the eloquence 
 I could command, and in words as adapted as I could 
 frame them to soften the heart of a woman, herself a 
 mother, I implored Mrs. Poyntz's aid to silence all the 
 cruelties of calumny, and extend her shield over the 
 child of her own early friend. 
 
 When I came to an end, I had taken, with caress- 
 ing force, Mrs. Poyntz's reluctant hands in mine. There 
 were tears in my voice, tears in my eyes. And the 
 first sound of her voice in reply gave me hope, for it 
 was unusually gentle. She was evidently moved. The 
 hope was soon quelled. 
 
 "Allen Fen wick," she said, "you have a noble 
 heart, I grieve to see how it abuses your reason. 
 I cannot, aid Lilian Ashleigh in the way you ask. Do 
 not start pack so indignantly. Listen to me as patiently 
 A Strange Story, //. 12 
 
178 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 as 1 have listened to you. That when you brought 
 back the unfortunate young woman to her poor mother, 
 her mind was disordered, and became yet more dan- 
 gerously so, I can well believe; that she is now re- 
 covered, and thinks with shame, or refuses to think at 
 all, of her imprudent flight, I can believe also; but I 
 do not believe, the World cannot believe, that she did 
 not, knowingly and purposely, quit her mother's roof, 
 and in quest of that young stranger so incautiously, so 
 unfeelingly admitted to her mother's house during the 
 very time you were detained on the most awful ot 
 human accusations. Every one in the town knows that 
 Mr. Margrave visited daily at Mrs. Ashleigh's during 
 that painful period; every one in the town knows in 
 what strange, out-of-the-way place this young man had 
 niched himself; and that a yacht was bought, and 
 lying in wait there. What for? It is said that the 
 chaise in which you brought Miss Ashleigh back to 
 her home was hired at a village within an easy reach 
 of Mr. Margrave's lodging — of Mr. Margrave's yacht. 
 I rejoice that you saved the poor girl from ruin: but 
 her good name is tarnished, and if Anne Ashleigh, 
 whom I sincerely pity, asks me my advice, I can but 
 give her this: 'Leave L — , take your daughter abroad, 
 and if she is not to marry Mr. Margrave, marry her as 
 quietly and as quickly as possible to some foreigner.' " 
 
 "Madam! madam! this, then, is your friendship to 
 her — to me! Oh, shame on you to insult thus an 
 affianced husband! Shame on me ever to have thought 
 you had a heart!" 
 
 "A heart, man!" she exclaimed, almost fiercely, 
 springing up, and startling me with the change in her 
 countenance and voice. "And little you would have 
 
A STRANGE STOItl". 
 
 valued, and pitilessly have crushed this heart, it' I had 
 suffered myself to show it to you! What right have 
 you to reproach me? I felt a warm interest in your 
 career, an unusual attraction in your conversation and 
 society. Do you blame me for that, or should I blame 
 myself? Condemned to live amongst brainless puppets, 
 my dull occupation to pull the strings that moved 
 them, it was a new charm to my life to establish 
 friendship and intercourse with intellect, and spirit, and 
 courage. Ah, I understand that look, half incredulous, 
 half inquisitive." 
 
 "Inquisitive, no! incredulous, yes! You desired 
 my friendship, and how does your harsh judgment of 
 my betrothed wife prove either to me or to her 
 mother, whom you have known from your girlhood, 
 the first duty of a friend, which is surely not that of 
 leaving a friend's side the moment that he needs 
 countenance in calumny, succour in trouble." 
 
 "It is a better duty to prevent the calumny and 
 avert the trouble. Leave aside Anne Ashleigh, a 
 cipher that I can add or subtract from my sum of life 
 as I please. What is my duty to yourself? It is plain. 
 It is to tell you that your honour commands you to 
 abandon all thoughts of Lilian Ashleigh as your wife. 
 Ungrateful that you are! Do you suppose it was no 
 mortification to my pride of woman and friend, that 
 you never approached me in confidence except to ask 
 my good offices in promoting your courtship to an- 
 other? No shock to the quiet plans I had formed as 
 to our familiar though harmless intimacy, to hear that 
 you were bent on a marriage in which my friend would 
 be lost to me?" 
 
 "Not lost! — not lost! On the contrary, the regard 
 
 12* 
 
180 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 I must suppose you had for Lilian would have been a 
 new link between our homes." 
 
 "Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl there 
 could have been no sympathy, there could have grown 
 up no regard. You would have been chained to your 
 fireside, and — and — but no matter. I stifled my 
 disappointment as soon as I felt it — stifled it, as all 
 my life I have stifled that which either destiny or 
 duty — duty to myself as to others — forbids me to 
 indulge. Ah, do not fancy me one of the weak crimi- 
 nals who can suffer a worthy liking to grow into a 
 debasing love. I was not in love witli you, Allen 
 Fenwick ." 
 
 "Do you think I was ever so presumptuous a cox- 
 comb as to fancy it?" 
 
 "No," she said, more softly, "I was not so false to 
 my household ties and to my own nature. But there 
 are some friendships which are as jealous as love. I 
 could have cheerfully aided you in any choice which 
 my sense could have approved for you as wise; I 
 should have been pleased to have found in such a wife 
 my most intimate companion. But that silly child! — 
 absurd! Nevertheless, the freshness and enthusiasm of 
 your love touched me; you asked my aid, and I gave 
 it — perhaps I did believe that when you saw more 
 of Lilian Ashleigh you would be cured of a fancy con- 
 ceived by the eye — I should have known better what 
 dupes the wisest men can be to the witcheries of a fair 
 face and eighteen! When I found your illusion 
 obstinate, I wrenched myself away from a vain regret, 
 turned to my own ambition, and smiled bitterly to 
 think that in pressing you to propose so hastily to 
 Lilian, I made your blind passion an agent in my own 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 181 
 
 plans. Enough of this. I speak thus openly and 
 boldly to you now because now I have not a sentiment 
 that can interfere with the dispassionate soundness of 
 my counsels. I repeat, you cannot now marry Lilian 
 Ashleigh; I cannot take my daughter to visit her; I 
 cannot destroy the social laws that I myself have set 
 in my petty kingdom." 
 
 "Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her while 
 she is still Lilian Ashleigh. I plead for no one to 
 whom I have once given my name. Before the woman 
 whom I have taken from the altar, I can place, as a 
 shield sufficient, my strong breast of man. Who has 
 so deep an interest in Lilian's purity as I have? Who 
 is so fitted to know the exact truth of every whisper 
 against her? Yet when I, whom you admit to have 
 some reputation for shrewd intelligence, — I, who 
 tracked her way, — I, who restored her to her home, 
 — when I, Allen Fen wick, am so assured of her in- 
 violable innocence in thought as in deed, that I trust 
 my honour to her keeping, — surely, surely, I confute 
 the scandal which you yourself do not believe though 
 you refuse to reject and to annul it." 
 
 "Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick," said 
 she, still standing beside me, her countenance now 
 hard and stern. "Look, where I stand, I am The 
 World! The World, not as satirists depreciate or as 
 optimists extol its immutable properties, its all-persua- 
 sive authority. I am The World! And my voice is 
 the World's voice when it thus warns you. Should 
 you make this marriage, your dignity of character and 
 position would be gone! — if you look only to lucre 
 and professional success, possibly they may not ulti- 
 mately suffer. You have skill, which men need; their 
 
18'2 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 need may still draw patients to your door and pour 
 guineas into your purse. But you have the pride, as 
 well as the birth, of a gentleman, and the wounds to 
 that pride will be hourly chafed and never healed. 
 Your strong breast of man, has no shelter to the frail 
 name of woman. The World, in its health, will look 
 down on your wife, though its sick may look up to 
 you. This is not all. The World, in its gentlest 
 mood of indulgence, will say, compassionately, 'Poor 
 man! how weak, and how deceived! What an unfor- 
 tunate marriage!' But the World is not often in- 
 dulgent, it looks most to the motives most seen on the 
 surface. And the World will more frequently say, 
 'No, much too clever a man to be duped. Miss Ash- 
 leigh had money. A good match to the man who 
 liked gold better than honour.' " 
 
 I sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing my 
 rage, and, remembering it was a woman who spoke to 
 me, "Farewell, madam," said I, through my grinded 
 teeth. "Were you, indeed, the Personation of The 
 World, whose mean notions you mouth so calmly, I 
 could not disdain you more." I turned to the door, 
 and left her still standing erect and menacing, the 
 hard sneer on her resolute lip, the red glitter in her 
 remorseless eye. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 If ever my heart vowed itself to Lilian, the vow 
 was now the most trustful and the most sacred. I had 
 relinquished our engagement before, but then her af- 
 fection seemed, no matter from what cause, so estranged 
 from me, that though I might be miserable to lose her. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 183 
 
 I deemed that she would be unhappy in our union. 
 Then, too, she was the gem and darling of the little 
 world in which she lived; no whisper assailed her; 
 now, I knew that she loved me. I knew that her 
 estrangement had been involuntary, I knew that ap- 
 pearances wronged her, and that they never could be 
 explained. I was in the true position of man to woman: 
 I was the shield, the bulwark, the fearless confiding 
 protector! Resign her now because the world babbled, 
 because my career might be impeded, because my good 
 name might be impeached — resign her, and, in that 
 resignation, confirm all that was said against her! 
 Could I do so, I should be the most craven of gentle- 
 men, the meanest of men! 
 
 I went to Mrs. Ashleigh, and entreated her to hasten 
 my union with her daughter, and fix the marriage day. 
 
 I found the poor lady dejected and distressed. She 
 was now sufficiently relieved from the absorbing 
 anxiety for Lilian to be aware of the change on the 
 face of that World which the woman I had just quitted 
 personified arid concentred; she had learned the cause 
 from the bloodless lips of Miss Brabazon. 
 
 "My child — my poor child!" murmured the 
 mother. "And she so guileless — so sensitive! Could 
 she know what is said, it would kill her. She would 
 never marry you, Allen. She would never bring shame 
 to you!" 
 
 "She never need learn the barbarous calumny. 
 Give her to me, and at once; patients, fortune, fame, 
 are not found only at L — . Give her to me at once. 
 But let me name a condition: I have a patrimonial in- 
 dependence — I have amassed large savings — I have 
 my profession and my repute. I cannot touch her for- 
 
184 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 tune — I cannot — never can! Take it while you 
 live; when you die, leave it to accumulate for her 
 children, if children she have; not to me; not to her 
 — unless I am dead or ruined!" 
 
 u Oh, Allen, what a heart! — what a heart! No, 
 not heart, Allen — that bird in its cage has a heart: 
 soul — what a soul!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 How innocent was Lilian's virgin blush when I 
 knelt to her and prayed that she would forestall the 
 date that had been fixed for our union, and be my 
 bride before the breath of the autumn had withered the 
 pomp of the woodland and silenced the song of the 
 birds. Meanwhile, I was so fearfully anxious that she 
 should risk no danger of hearing, even of surmising, 
 the cruel slander against her — should meet no cold 
 contemptuous looks — above all, should be safe from 
 the barbed talk of Mrs. Poyntz — that I insisted on 
 the necessity of immediate change of air and scene. I 
 proposed that we should all three depart, the next day, 
 for the banks of my own beloved and native Winder- 
 mere. By that pure mountain air Lilian's health would 
 be soon re-established; in the church hallowed to me 
 by the graves of my fathers our vows could be plighted. 
 No calumny had ever cast a shadow over those graves. 
 I felt as if my bride would be safer in the neighbour- 
 hood of my mother's tomb. 
 
 I carried my point: it was so arranged. Mrs. Ash- 
 leigh, however, was reluctant to leave before she had 
 seen her dear friend, Margaret Poyntz. I had not the 
 courage to tell her what she might expect to hear from 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 185 
 
 that dear friend, but, as delicately as I could, I in- 
 formed her that I had already seen the Queen of the 
 Hill, and contradicted the gossip that had reached her; 
 but that as yet, like other absolute sovereigns, the 
 Queen of the Hill thought it politic to go with the po- 
 pular stream, reserving all check on its direction till 
 the rush of its torrent might slacken; and that it would 
 be infinitely wiser in Mrs. Ashleigh to postpone con- 
 versation with Mrs. Poyntz until Lilian's return to L — 
 as my wife; slander by that time would have wearied 
 itself out, and Mrs. Poyntz (assuming her friendship to 
 Mrs. Ashleigh to be sincere) would then be enabled to 
 say with authority to her subjects, "Dr. Fenwick alone 
 knows the facts of the story, and his marriage with 
 Miss Ashleigh refutes all the gossip to her prejudice." 
 
 I made, that evening, arrangements with a young 
 and rising practitioner to secure attendance on my 
 patients during my absence. I passed the greater part 
 of the night in drawing up memoranda to guide my 
 proxy in each case, however humble the sufferer. This 
 task finished, I chanced, in searching for a small mi- 
 croscope, the wonders of which I thought might interest 
 and amuse Lilian, to open a drawer in which I kept 
 the manuscript of my cherished Physiological Work, 
 and, in so doing, my eye fell upon the wand which I 
 had taken from Margrave. I had thrown it into that 
 drawer on my return home after restoring Lilian to her 
 mother's house, and, in the anxiety which had subse- 
 quently preyed upon my mind, had almost forgotten 
 the strange possession I had as strangely acquired. 
 There it now lay, the instrument of agencies over the 
 mechanism of nature which no doctrine admitted by 
 my philosophy could accept, side by side with the 
 
186 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 presumptuous work which had analysed the springs by 
 which nature is moved, and decided the principles by 
 which reason metes out, from the inch of its knowledge, 
 the plan of the Infinite Unknown. 
 
 I took up the wand, and examined it curiously. It 
 was evidently the work of an age far remote from our 
 own, scored over with half-obliterated characters in 
 some Eastern tongue, perhaps no longer extant. I 
 found that it was hollow within. A more accurate 
 observation showed, in the centre of this hollow, an 
 exceedingly fine thread-like wire, the unattached end 
 of which would slightly touch the palm when the wand 
 was taken into the hand. Was it possible that there 
 might be a natural and even a simple cause for the 
 effects which this instrument produced? Could it serve 
 to collect, from that great focus of animal heat and 
 nervous energy which is placed in the palm of the 
 human hand, some such latent fluid as that which 
 Keichenbach calls the "odic," and which, according to 
 him, "rushes through and pervades universal Nature?" 
 After all, why not? For how many centuries lay un- 
 known all the virtues of the loadstone and the amber? 
 It is but as yesterday that the forces of vapour have 
 become to men genii more powerful than those con- 
 jured up by Aladdin; that light, at a touch, springs 
 forth from invisible air; that thought finds a messenger 
 swifter than the wings of the fabled Afrite. As, thus 
 musing, my hand closed over the wand, I felt a wild 
 thrill through my frame. I recoiled; I was alarmed 
 lest (according to the plain common-sense theory of 
 Julius Faber) I might be preparing my imagination to 
 form and to credit its own illusions. Hastily I laid 
 down the wand. But then it occurred to me, that 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 187 
 
 whatever its properties, it had so served the purposes 
 of the dread Fascinator from whom it had been taken, 
 that he might probably seek to re-possess himself of 
 it; he might contrive to enter my house in my ab- 
 sence; more prudent to guard in my own watchful 
 keeping the incomprehensible instrument of incompre- 
 hensible arts, I resolved, therefore, to take the wand 
 with me, and placed it in my travelling- trunk with 
 such effects as I selected for use in the excursion that 
 was to commence witli the morrow. I now laid down 
 to rest, but I could not sleep. The recollections of the 
 painful interview with Mrs. Poyntz became vivid and 
 haunting. It was clear that the sentiment she had con- 
 ceived for me was that of no simple friendship — some- 
 thing more or something less — but certainly some- 
 thing else; and this conviction brought before me that 
 proud hard face, disturbed by a pang wrestled against 
 but not subdued, and that clear metallic voice, troubled 
 by the quiver of an emotion which, perhaps, she had 
 never analysed to herself. I did not need her own as- 
 surance to know that this sentiment was not to be con- 
 founded with a love which she would have despised as 
 a weakness and repelled as a crime; it was an inclina- 
 tion of the intellect, not a passion of the heart. But 
 still it admitted a jealousy little less keen than that 
 which has love for its cause; so true it is that jealousy 
 is never absent where self-love is always present. Cer- 
 tainly it was no susceptibility of sober friendship which 
 had made the stern arbitress of a coterie ascribe to her 
 interest in me her pitiless judgment of Lilian. Strangely 
 enough, with the image of this archetype of conven- 
 tional usages and the trite social life, came that of the 
 mysterious Margrave, surrounded by all the attributes 
 
188 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 with which superstition clothes the being of the shadowy- 
 border land that lies beyond the chart of our visual 
 world itself. By what link were creatures so dissi- 
 milar riveted together in the metaphysical chain of as- 
 sociation? Both had entered into the record of my 
 life when my life admitted its own first romance of 
 love. Through the aid of this cynical schemer I had 
 been made known to Lilian. At her house I had heard 
 the dark story of that Louis Grayle, with whom, in 
 mocking spite of my reason, conjectures (which that 
 very reason must depose itself before it could resolve 
 into distempered fancies) identified the enigmatical 
 Margrave. And now both she, the representative of the 
 formal world most opposed to visionary creeds, and he, 
 who gathered round him all the terrors which haunt 
 the realm of fable, stood united against me — foes 
 with whom the intellect I had so haughtily cultured 
 knew not how to cope. Whatever assault I might ex- 
 pect from either, I was unable to assail again. Alike, 
 then, in this, are the Slander and the Phantom; that 
 which appals us most in their power over us is our im- 
 potence against them. 
 
 But up rose the sun, chasing the shadows from the 
 earth, and brightening insensibly the thoughts of man. 
 After all, Margrave had been baffled and defeated, 
 whatever the arts he had practised and the secrets he 
 possessed. It was, at least, doubtful whether his evil 
 machinations would be renewed. He had seemed so 
 incapable of long-sustained fixity of purpose, that it 
 was probable he was already in pursuit of some new 
 agent or victim; and as to this common-place and con- 
 ventional spectre, the so-called World, if it is every- 
 where to him whom it awes, it is nowhere to him who 
 
A STRANOK STORY. 
 
 189 
 
 despises it. What was the good or bad word of a Mrs. 
 Poyntz to me? Ay, but to Lilian? There, indeed, I 
 trembled; but still even in trembling it was sweet to 
 think that my home would be her shelter — my choice 
 her vindication. Ah, how unutterably tender and reve- 
 rential Love becomes when it assumes the duties of the 
 guardian, and hallows its own heart into a sanctuary 
 of refuge for the beloved! 
 
 CHAPTEK XXV. 
 
 The beautiful lake! We two are on its grassy 
 margin. Twilight melting into night; the stars stealing 
 forth, one after one. What a wonderful change is made 
 within us when we come from oar callings amongst 
 men, chafed, wearied, wounded; gnawed by our cares, 
 perplexed by the doubts of our very wisdom, stung by 
 the adder that dwells in cities — Slander; nay, even 
 if renowned, fatigued with the burden of the very 
 names that we have won; what a change is made 
 within us when suddenly we find ourselves transported 
 into the calm solitudes of Nature; — into scenes fami- 
 liar to our happy dreaming childhood; back, back 
 from the dusty thoroughfares of our toil-worn man- 
 hood to the golden fountain of our youth! Blessed is 
 the change, even when we have no companion beside 
 us to whom the heart can whisper its sense of relief 
 and joy. But if the One, in whom all our future is 
 garnered up, be with us there, instead of that weary 
 World which has so magically vanished away from 
 the eye and the thought, then does the change make 
 one of those rare epochs of life in which the charm is 
 the stillness. In the pause from all, by which our own 
 
190 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 turbulent struggles for happiness trouble existence, we 
 feel with a rapt amazement how calm a thing it is to be 
 happy. And so as the night, in deepening, brightened, 
 Lilian and I wandered by the starry lake. Conscious 
 of no evil in ourselves, how secure we felt from evil! 
 A few days more — a few days more, and we two 
 should be as one. And that thought we uttered in 
 many forms of words, brooding over it in the long in- 
 tervals of enamoured silence. 
 
 And when we turned back to the quiet inn at 
 which we had taken up our abode, and her mother, 
 with her soft face, advanced to meet us, I said to 
 Lilian : 
 
 "Would that in these scenes we could fix our 
 home for life, away and afar from the dull town we 
 have left behind us, with the fret of its wearying cares 
 and the jar of its idle babble!" 
 
 "And why not, Allen? Why not? But no, you 
 would not be happy." 
 
 "Not be happy, and with you? Sceptic! by what 
 reasonings do you arrive at that ungracious conclu- 
 sion?" 
 
 "The heart loves repose and the soul contemplation, 
 but the mind needs action. Is it not so?" 
 
 "Where learned you that aphorism, out of place on 
 such rosy lips!" 
 
 "I learned it in studying you," murmured Lilian, 
 tenderly. 
 
 Here Mrs. Ashleigh joined us. For the first time I 
 slept under the same roof as Lilian. And I forgot 
 that the universe contained an enigma to solve or an 
 enemy to fear. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Twenty days — the happiest Hiy life had ever 
 known — thus glided on. Apart from the charm 
 which love bestows on the beloved, there was that in 
 Lilian's conversation which made her a delightful com- 
 panion. Whether it was that, in this pause from the 
 toils of my career, my mind could more pliantly supple 
 itself to her graceful imagination, or that her imagina- 
 tion itself was less vague and dreamy amidst those 
 rural scenes which realised in their loveliness and 
 grandeur its long-conceived ideals, than it had been in 
 the petty garden-ground neighboured by the stir and 
 hubbub of the busy town, — in much that I had once 
 slighted or contemned as the vagaries of undisciplined 
 fancy, I now recognised the sparkle and play of an in- 
 tuitive genius lighting up many a depth obscure to in- 
 structed thought. It is with some characters as with 
 the subtler and more ethereal order of poets. To ap- 
 preciate them we must suspend the course of artificial 
 life. In the city we call them dreamers, on the moun- 
 tain-top we find them interpreters. 
 
 In Lilian, the sympathy with Nature was not, as 
 in Margrave, from the joy and sense of Nature's lavish 
 vitality, it was refined into exquisite perception of the 
 diviner spirit by which that vitality is informed. Thus, 
 like the artist, from outward forms of beauty she drew 
 forth the covert types, lending to things the most fa- 
 miliar exquisite meanings unconceived before. For it 
 is truly said by a wise critic of old, that "the attri- 
 bute of Art is to suggest infinitely more than it ex- 
 presses," and such suggestions, passing from the artist's 
 
192 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 innermost thought into the mind that receives them, 
 open on and on into the Infinite of Ideas, as a moonlit 
 wave struck by a passing oar impels wave upon wave 
 along one track of light. 
 
 So the days glided by, and brought the eve of our 
 bridal morn. It had been settled that, after the cere- 
 mony (which was to be performed by license in the 
 village church, at no great distance, which adjoined 
 my paternal home now passed away to strangers), we 
 should make a short excursion into Scotland; leaving 
 Mrs. Ashleigh to await our return at the little inn. 
 
 I had retired to my own room to answer some 
 letters from anxious patients, and having finished these, 
 I looked into my trunk for a Guide-Book to the North, 
 which I had brought with me. My hand came upon 
 Margrave's wand, and remembering that strange thrill 
 which had passed through me when I last handled it, 
 I drew it forth, resolved to examine calmly if I could 
 detect the cause of the sensation. It was not now the 
 time of night in which the imagination is most liable 
 to credulous impressions, nor was I now in the anxious 
 and jaded state of mind in which sucb impressions may 
 be the more readily conceived. The sun was slowly 
 setting over the delicious landscape-, the air cool and 
 serene; my thoughts collected; heart and conscience 
 alike at peace. I took, then, the wand, and adjusted 
 it to the palm of the hand as I had done before. I felt 
 the slight touch of the delicate wire within, and again 
 the thrill! I did not this time recoil; I continued to 
 grasp the wand, and sought deliberately to analyse my 
 own sensations in the contact. There came over me an 
 increased consciousness of vital power; a certain ex- 
 hilaration, elasticity, vigour, such as a strong cordial 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 193 
 
 may produce on a fainting man. All the forces of my 
 frame seemed refreshed, redoubled; and as such effects 
 on the physical system are ordinarily accompanied by 
 correspondent effects on the mind, so I was sensible of 
 a proud elation of spirits, a kind of defying, superb 
 self-glorying. All fear seemed blotted out from my 
 thought, as a weakness impossible to the grandeur and 
 might which belong to Intellectual Man; I felt as if it 
 were a royal delight to scorn Earth and its opinions, 
 brave Hades and its spectres. Rapidly this new-born 
 arrogance enlarged itself into desires vague but daring; 
 my mind reverting to the wild phenomena associated 
 With its memories of Margrave, I said, half- aloud, "If 
 a creature so beneath myself in constancy of will and 
 completion of thought can wrest from Nature favours 
 so marvellous, what could not be won from her by me, 
 her patient persevering seeker? What if there be 
 spirits around and about, invisible to the common eye, 
 but whom we can submit to our control, and what if 
 this rod be charged with some occult fluid, that runs 
 through all creation, and can be so disciplined as to 
 establish communication wherever life and thought can 
 reach to beings that live and think! So would the 
 mystics of old explain what perplexes me. Am I sure 
 that the mystics of old duped themselves or their 
 pupils? This, then, this slight wand, light as a reed 
 in my grasp, this, then, was the instrument by which 
 Margrave sent his irresistible will through air and 
 space, and by which I smote himself, in the midst of 
 his tiger-like wrath, into the helplessness of a sick 
 man's swoon! Can the instrument at this distance still 
 control him; if now meditating evil, disarm and disable 
 his purpose?" Involuntarily as I revolved these ideas, 
 
 ,1 Slrnmjf Story. II, 13 
 
194 
 
 A STRANGE STORT. 
 
 I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred energy 
 of desire that its influence should reach Margrave and 
 command him. And since I knew not his whereabout, 
 yet was vaguely aware that, according to any con- 
 ceivable theory by which the wand could be supposed 
 to carry its imagined virtues to definite goals in dis- 
 tant space, it should be pointed in the direction of the 
 object it was intended to affect, so I slowly moved the 
 wand as if describing a circle, and thus, in some point 
 of the circle — east, west, north, or south — the direc- 
 tion could not fail to be true. Before I had performed 
 half the circle, the wand of itself stopped, resisting 
 palpably the movement of my hand to impel it onward. 
 Had it, then, found the point to which my will was 
 guiding it, obeying my will by some magnetic sym- 
 pathy never yet comprehended by any recognised 
 science? I know not; but I had not held it thus fixed 
 for many seconds, before a cold air, well remembered, 
 passed by me, stirring the roots of my hair; and, re- 
 flected against the opposite wall, stood the hateful Scin- 
 LaBca. The Shadow was dimmer in its light than when 
 before beheld, and the outline of the features was less 
 distinct, still it was the unmistakable lemur , or image, 
 of Margrave. 
 
 And a voice was conveyed to my senses, saying, 
 as from a great distance, and in weaiy yet angry 
 accents, 
 
 "You have summoned me! Wherefore?" 
 
 I overcame the startled shudder with which, at 
 first, I beheld the Shadow and heard the Voice. 
 
 "I summoned you not," said I; "I sought but to 
 impose upon you my will, that you should persecute, 
 with your ghastly influences, me and mine no more. 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 195 
 
 And now, by whatever authority this wand bestows on 
 me, I so adjure and command you!" 
 
 I thought there was a sneer of disdain on the lip 
 through which the answer seemed to come: 
 
 "Vain and ignorant; it is but a shadow you com- 
 mand. My body you have cast into a sleep, and it 
 knows not that the shadow is here; nor, when it wakes, 
 will the brain be aware of one reminiscence of the 
 words that you utter or the words that you hear." 
 
 "What, then, is this shadow that simulates the 
 body? Is it that which in popular language is called 
 the soul?" 
 
 "It is not: soul is no shadow?" 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "Ask not me. Use the wand to invoke Intel- 
 ligences higher than mine." 
 "And how?" 
 
 "I will tell you not. Of yourself you may learn, 
 if you guide the wand by your own pride of will and 
 desire; but in the hands of him who has learned not 
 the art, the wand has its dangers. Again, I say you 
 have summoned me! Wherefore?" 
 
 "Lying shade, I summoned thee not." 
 
 "So wouldst thou say to the demons, did they 
 come in their terrible wrath, when the bungler, who 
 knows not the springs that he moves, calls them up 
 unawares, and can neither control nor dispel. Less 
 revengeful than they, I leave thee unharmed, and 
 depart!" 
 
 "Stay. If, as thou say est, no command I address 
 to thee — to thee, who art only the image or shadow 
 — can have effect on the body and mind of the being 
 whose likeness thou art, still thou canst tell me what 
 
 13* 
 
19G 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 passed now in his brain. Does it now harbour schemes 
 against me through the woman I love? Answer truly." 
 
 "I reply for the sleeper, of whom I am more than 
 a likeness, though only the shadow. His thought speaks 
 thus: 'I know, Allen Fenwick, that in thee is the agent 
 I need for achieving the end that I seek. Through the 
 woman thou lovest I hope to subject thee. A grief 
 that will harrow thy heart is at hand: when that grief 
 shall befal, thou wilt welcome my coming. In me alone 
 thy hope will be placed — through me alone wilt thou 
 seek a path out of thy sorrow. I shall ask my condi- 
 tions: they will make thee my tool and my slave!"' 
 
 The Shadow waned — it was gone. I did not seek 
 to detain it, nor, had I sought, could I have known by 
 what process. But a new idea now possessed me. 
 This Shadow, then, that had once so appalled and con- 
 trolled me, was, by its own confession, nothing more 
 than a Shadow! It had spoken of higher Intelligences; 
 from them I might learn what the Shadow could not 
 reveal. As I still held the wand firmer and firmer in 
 my grasp, my thoughts grew haughtier and bolder. 
 Could the wand, then, bring those loftier beings thus 
 darkly referred to before me? With that thought, in- 
 tense and engrossing, I guided the wand towards the 
 space, opening boundless and blue from the casement 
 that let in the skies. The wand no longer resisted my 
 hand. 
 
 In a few moments I felt the floors of the room 
 vibrate; the air was darkened; a vaporous hazy cloud 
 seemed to rise from the ground without the casement; 
 an awe, infinitely more deep and solemn than that 
 winch the Scin-Lseca had caused in its earliest appari- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 197 
 
 tion, curdled through my veins, and stilled the very 
 beat of my heart. 
 
 At that moment, I heard, without, the voice of 
 Lilian, singing a simple sacred song which I had 
 learned at my mother's knees, and taught to her the 
 day before: singing low, and as with a warning angel's 
 voice. By an irresistible impulse I dashed the wand 
 to the ground, and bowed my head as I had bowed it 
 when my infant mind comprehended, without an effort, 
 mysteries more solemn than those which perplexed me 
 now. Slowly I raised my eyes, and looked round: the 
 vaporous hazy cloud had passed away, or melted into 
 the ambient rose tints amidst which the sun had sunk. 
 
 Then, by one of those common reactions from a 
 period of over-strained excitement, there succeeded to 
 that sentiment of arrogance and daring with which 
 these wild, half-conscious invocations had been fostered 
 and sustained, a profound humility, a warning fear. 
 
 "What!" said I, inly, "have all those sound reso- 
 lutions, which my reason founded on the wise talk of 
 Julius Faber, melted away in the wrack of haggard 
 dissolving fancies! Is this my boasted intellect, my 
 vaunted science! I — I, Allen Fenwick, not only the 
 credulous believer, but the blundering practitioner, of 
 an evil magic! Grant what may be possible, however 
 uncomprehended — grant that in this accursed instru- 
 ment of antique superstition there be some real powers 
 — chemical, magnetic, no matter what — by which 
 the imagination can be aroused, inflamed, deluded, so 
 that it shapes the things I have seen, speaks in the 
 tones I have heard — grant this, shall I keep ever 
 ready, at the caprice of will, a constant tempter to steal 
 away my reason and fool my senses? — or if, on the 
 
198 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 other hand, I force my sense to admit what all sober 
 men must reject — if I unschool myself to believe that 
 in what I have just experienced, there is no mental 
 illusion, that sorcery is a fact, and a demon world has 
 gates which open to a key that a mortal can forge — 
 who but a saint would not shrink from the practice of 
 powers by which each passing thought of ill might 
 find in a fiend its abettor? In either case — in any 
 case — while I keep this direful relic of obsolete arts, 
 I am haunted — cheated out of my senses — unfitted 
 for the uses of life. If as my ear or my fancy informs 
 me, grief — human grief — is about to befal me, 
 shall I, in the sting of impatient sorrow, have recourse 
 to an aid which, the same voice declares, will reduce 
 me to a tool and a slave? — tool and slave to a being 
 I dread as a foe! Out on these nightmares! and away 
 with the thing that bewitches the brain to conceive 
 them!" 
 
 I rose; I took up the wand, holding it so that its 
 hollow should not rest on the palm of the hand. I stole 
 from the house by the back way, in order to avoid 
 Lilian, whose voice I still heard, singing low, on the 
 lawn in front. I came to a creek, to the bank of which 
 a boat was moored, undid its chain, rowed on to a 
 deep part of the lake, and dropped the wand into its 
 waves. It sank at once: scarcely a ripple furrowed the 
 surface, not a bubble arose from the deep. And, as 
 the boat glided on, the star mirrored itself on the spot 
 where the placid waters had closed over the tempter 
 to evil. 
 
 Light at heart I sprang again on the shore, and 
 hastening to Lilian, where she stood on the silvered 
 shining sward, clasped her to my breast. 
 
A STRANGE STOKV. 
 
 199 
 
 "Spirit of my life!" I murmured, "no enchant- 
 ments for me but thine! Thine are the spells by which 
 creation is beautified, and, in that beauty, hallowed. 
 Wha:, though we can see not into the measureless 
 future from the verge of the moment — what though 
 sorrov may smite us while we are dreaming of bliss, 
 let tLe future not rob me of thee, and a balm will be 
 found for each wound. Love me ever as now, oh my 
 Lilian; troth to troth, side by side, till the grave!" 
 
 "And beyond the grave," answered Lilian, softly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ojr vows are exchanged at the altar — the rite 
 which made Lilian my wife is performed — we are 
 returned from the church, amongst the hills, in which 
 my fa hers had worshipped; the joy-bells that rang for 
 my mai-iage had pealed for my birth. Lilian has gone 
 to her -oom to prepare for our bridal excursion; while 
 the cariage we have hired is waiting at the door. I 
 am detuning her mother on the lawn, seeking to cheer 
 and compose her spirits, painfully affected by that 
 sense of change in the relations of child and parent 
 which nukes itself suddenly felt by the parent's heart 
 on the dry that secures to the child another heart on 
 which to lean. 
 
 But Irs. Ashleigh's was one of those gentle wo- 
 manly natires which, if easily afflicted, are easily con- 
 soled. Anl, already smiling through her tears, she 
 was about o quit me and join her daughter, when one 
 of the inn servants came to me with some letters, which 
 had just ben delivered by the postman. As I took 
 them from lie servant, Mrs. Ashleigh asked if there 
 
200 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 were any letters for her? She expected one from her 
 housekeeper at L — , who had been taken ill in her 
 absence, and about whom the kind mistress felt anxious. 
 The servant replied that there was no letter for her, 
 but one directed to Miss Ashleigh, which he had just 
 sent up to the young lady. 
 
 Mrs. Ashleigh did not doubt that her house-keeper 
 had written to Lilian, whom she had known fron the 
 cradle, and to whom she was tenderly attached, in- 
 stead of to her mistress, and saying something 10 me 
 to that effect, quickened her steps towards the hoise. 
 
 I was glancing over my own letters, chiefly from 
 patients, with a rapid eye, when a cry of agony, a cry 
 as of one suddenly stricken to the heart, pierce! my 
 ear — a cry from within the house. "Heavens.' was 
 not that Lilian's voice?" The same doubt strucl Mrs. 
 Ashleigh, who had already gained the door. She 
 rushed on, disappearing within the threshold, and 
 calling to me to follow. I bounded forward — passed 
 her on the stairs — was in Lilian's room before her. 
 
 My bride was. on the floor, prostrate, insensble: So 
 still, so colourless! that my first dreadful thoight was 
 that life had gone. In her hand was a letter, crushed, 
 as with a convulsive sudden grasp. 
 
 It was long before the colour came bacc to her 
 cheek, before the breath was perceptible or her lip. 
 She woke, but not to health, not to sense. 17)urs were 
 passed in violent convulsions, in which I momently 
 feared her death. To these succeeded stupoj lethargy, 
 not benignant sleep. That night, my brictl night, I 
 passed as in some chamber to which I hatfbeen sum- 
 moned to save youth from the grave. At length, at 
 length, life was rescued, was assured! Lift came back, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 201 
 
 but the mind was gone. She knew me not, nor her 
 mother. She spoke little and faintly, in the words she 
 uttered there was no reason. 
 
 I pass hurriedly on ; my experience here was in 
 fault, my skill ineffectual. Day followed day and no 
 ray came back to the darkened brain. We bore her, 
 by gentle stages, to London. I was sanguine of good 
 result from skill more consummate than mine, and 
 more specially devoted to diseases of the mind. I sum- 
 moned the first advisers. In vain! — in vain! 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 And the cause of this direful shock? Not this time 
 could it be traced to some evil spell, some phantasmal 
 influence. The cause was clear, and might have pro- 
 duced effects as sinister on nerves of stronger fibre if 
 accompanied by a heart as delicately sensitive, an 
 honour as exquisitely pure. 
 
 The letter found in her hand was without name; it 
 was dated from L — , and bore the postmark of that 
 town. It conveyed to Lilian, in the biting words 
 which female malice can make so sharp, the tale we 
 had sought sedulously to guard from her ear — her 
 flight, the construction that scandal put upon it. It 
 affected for my blind infatuation a contemptuous pity; 
 it asked her to pause before she brought on the name 
 I offered her an indelible disgrace. If she so decided, 
 she was warned not to return to L — ; or to prepare 
 there for the sentence that would exclude her from the 
 society of her own sex. I cannot repeat more, I can- 
 not minute down all that the letter expressed or im- 
 plied, to wither the orange blossoms in a bride's 
 
202 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 wreath. The heart that took in the venom cast its 
 poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the pre- 
 sence of a thought so deadly to all the ideas which its 
 innocence had heretofore conceived. 
 
 I knew not whom to suspect of the malignity of 
 this mean and miserable outrage, nor did I much care 
 to know. The handwriting, though evidently disguised, 
 was that of a woman, and, therefore, had I discovered 
 the author, my manhood would have forbidden me the 
 idle solace of revenge. • Mrs. Poyntz, however resolute 
 and pitiless her hostility when once aroused, was not 
 without a certain largeness of nature irreconcilable with 
 the most dastardly of all the weapons that envy or 
 hatred can supply to the vile. She had too lofty a self- 
 esteem and too decorous a regard for the moral senti- 
 ment of the world that she typified, to do, or connive 
 at, an act which degrades the gentlewoman. Putting 
 her aside, what other female enemy had Lilian pro- 
 voked? No matter! What other woman at L — was 
 worth the condescension of a conjecture! 
 
 After listening to all that the ablest of my profes- 
 sional brethren in the metropolis could suggest to guide 
 me, and trying in vain their remedies, I brought back 
 my charge to L — . Retaining my former residence for 
 the visits of patients, I engaged, for the privacy of my 
 home, a house two miles from the town, secluded in 
 its own grounds, and guarded by high walls. 
 
 Lilian's mother removed to my mournful dwelling- 
 place. Abbot's House, in the centre of that tattling 
 coterie, had become distasteful to her, and to me it 
 was associated with thoughts of anguish and of terror. 
 I could not, without a shudder, have entered its 
 grounds — could not, without a stab at the heart, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 • 203 
 
 have seen again tlie old fairy land round the Monk's 
 Well, nor the dark cedar-tree under which Lilian's 
 hand had been placed in mine: And a superstitious 
 remembrance, banished while Lilian's angel face had 
 brightened the fatal precincts, now revived in full 
 force. The dying man's curse — had it not been ful- 
 filled! 
 
 A new occupant for the old house was found within 
 a week after Mrs. Ashleigh had written from London 
 to a house-agent at L — , intimating her desire to dis- 
 pose of the lease. Shortly before we had gone to 
 Windermere, Miss Brabazon had become enriched by 
 a liberal life-annuity bequeathed to her by her uncle, 
 Sir Phelim. Her means thus enabled her to move, from 
 the comparatively humble lodging she had hitherto oc- 
 cupied, to Abbot's House; but just as she had there 
 commenced a series of ostentatious entertainments, im- 
 plying an ambitious desire to dispute with Mrs. Poyntz 
 the sovereignty of the Hill, she was attacked by some 
 severe malady which appeared complicated with spinal 
 disease, and after my return to L — I sometimes met 
 her, on the spacious platform of the Hill, drawn along 
 slowly in a Bath chair, her livid face peering forth 
 from piles of Indian shawls and Siberian furs, and the 
 gaunt figure of Dr. Jones stalking by her side, taciturn 
 and gloomy as some sincere mourner who conducts to the 
 grave the patron on whose life he had conveniently lived 
 himself. It was in the dismal month of February that 
 I returned to L — , and I took possession of my blighted 
 nuptial home on the anniversary of the very day in 
 which I had passed through the dead dumb world from 
 the naturalist's gloomy death-room. 
 
204 • 
 
 A STRANGE STORY- 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Lilian's wondrous gentleness of nature did not 
 desert tier in the suspension of her reason. She was 
 habitually calm — very silent; when she spoke it was 
 rarely on earthly things — on things familiar to her 
 past — things one could comprehend. Her thought 
 seemed to have quitted the earth, seeking refuge in 
 some imaginary heaven. She spoke of wanderings with 
 her father as if he were living still; she did not seem 
 to understand the meaning we attach to the word Death. 
 She would sit for hours murmuring to herself; when 
 one sought to catch the words, they seemed in converse 
 with invisible spirits. We found it cruel to disturb 
 her at such times, for if left unmolested, her face was 
 serene — more serenely beautiful than I had seen it 
 even in our happiest hours; but when we called her 
 back to the wrecks of her real life, her eye became 
 troubled, restless, anxious, and she would sigh — oh, 
 so heavily! At times, if we did not seem to observe 
 her, she would quietly resume her once favourite ac- 
 complishments — drawing, music. And in these her 
 young excellence was still apparent, only the drawings 
 were strange and fantastic: they had a resemblance to 
 those with which the painter Blake, himself a visionary, 
 illustrated the Poems of the "Night Thoughts" and 
 "The Grave." Faces of exquisite loveliness, forms of 
 aerial grace, coming forth from the bells of flowers, or 
 floating upwards amidst the spray of fountains, their 
 outlines melting away in fountain or in flower. So 
 with her music: her mother could not recognise the airs 
 she played, for a while so sweetly and with so ineffable 
 
A STRANGE STORY 
 
 i 205 
 
 a pathos, that one could scarcely henr her without 
 weeping; and then would come, as if involuntarily, an 
 abrupt discord, and, starting, she would cease and look 
 around, disquieted, aghast. 
 
 And still she did not recognise Mrs. Ashleigh nor 
 myself as her mother, her husband; but she had by 
 degrees learned to distinguish us botli from others. 
 To her mother she gave no name, seemed pleased to 
 see her, but not sensibly to miss her when away; me 
 she called her brother; if longer absent than usual, me 
 she missed. When, after the toils of the day, I came 
 to join her, even if she spoke not, her sweet face 
 brightened. When she sang, she beckoned me to come 
 near to her, and looked at me fixedly, with eyes ever 
 tender, often tearful; when she drew, she would pause 
 and glance over her shoulder to see that I was watching 
 her, and point to the drawings with a smile of strange 
 significance, as if they conveyed, in some covert alle- 
 gory, messages meant for me; so, at least, I interpreted 
 her smile, and taught myself to say, "Yes, Lilian, I 
 understand ! " 
 
 And more than once, when I had so answered, she 
 rose and kissed my forehead. I thought my heart 
 would have broken when I felt that spirit-like melan- 
 choly kiss. 
 
 And yet how marvellously the human mind teaches 
 itself to extract consolations from its sorrows. The 
 least wretched of my hours were those that I passed 
 in that saddened room, seeking how to establish frag- 
 ments of intercourse, invent signs, by which each might 
 interpret each, between the intellect I had so laboriously 
 cultured, so arrogantly vaunted, and the fancies wander- 
 ing through the dark, deprived of their guide in reason. 
 
206 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 It was something even of joy to feel myself needed for 
 her guardianship, endeared and yearned for still by 
 some unshattered instinct of her heart; and when, 
 parting from her for the night, I stole the moment in 
 which on her soft face seemed resting least of shadow, 
 to ask, in a trembling whisper, "Lilian, are the angels 
 watching over you?" and she would answer "Yes," 
 sometimes in words, sometimes with a mysterious happy 
 smile — then — then I went to my lonely room, com- 
 forted and thankful. 
 
 CHAPTER. XXX. 
 
 The blow that had fallen on my hearth effectually, 
 inevitably killed all the slander that might have troubled 
 me in joy. Before the awe of a great calamity the 
 small passions of a mean malignity slink abashed. I 
 had requested Mrs. Ashleigh not to mention the vile 
 letter which Lilian had received. I would not give a 
 triumph to the unknown calumniator, nor wring forth 
 her vain remorse, by the pain of acknowledging an in- 
 dignity to my darling's honour; yet, somehow or other, 
 the true cause of Lilian's affliction had crept out — 
 perhaps through the talk of servants — and the Public 
 shock was universal. By one of those instincts of 
 justice that lie deep in human hearts, though in or- 
 dinary moments overlaid by many a worldly layer, all 
 felt (all mothers felt, especially) that innocence alone 
 could have been so unprepared for reproach. The ex- 
 planation I had previously given, discredited then, was 
 now accepted without a question. Lilian's present state 
 accounted for all that ill nature had before misconstrued. 
 Her good name was restored to its maiden whiteness 
 
A STRAluiK STORY. 
 
 207 
 
 by the fate that had severed the tics of the bride. The 
 formal dwellers on the Hill vied with the franker, 
 warmer-hearted households of Low Town in the name- 
 less attentions by which sympathy and respect are 
 rather delicately indicated than noisily proclaimed. 
 Could Lilian have then recovered and been sensible of 
 its repentant homage, how reverently that petty world 
 would have thronged around her. And, ah, could, for- 
 tune and man's esteem have atoned, for the blight of 
 hopes that had been planted and cherished on ground 
 beyond their reach, ambition and pride might have 
 been well contented with the largeness of the exchange 
 that courted their acceptance. Patients on patients 
 crowded on me. Sympathy with my sorrow seemed to 
 create and endear a more trustful belief in my skill. 
 But the profession I had once so enthusiastically loved 
 became to me wearisome, insipid, distasteful; the kind- 
 ness heaped on me gave no comfort, it but brought be- 
 fore me more vividly the conviction that it came too 
 late to avail me: it could not restore to me the mind, 
 the love, the life of my life, which lay dark and 
 shattered in the brain of my guileless Lilian. Secretly 
 I felt a sullen resentment. I knew that to ,the crowd 
 the resentment was unjust. The world itself is but an 
 appearance-, who can blame it if appearances guide its 
 laws? But to those who had been detached from the 
 crowd by the professions of friendship — those who, 
 when the slander was yet new, and might have been 
 awed into silence had they stood by my side, — to the 
 pressure of their hands, noiv , I had no response. 
 
 Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore a 
 remembrance of unrelaxed, unmitigable indignation. 
 Her schemes for her daughter's marriage had triumphed: 
 
208 
 
 A STRANGE STORY, 
 
 Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner. Iler mind was, per- 
 haps, softened now that the object which had sharpened 
 its worldly faculties was accomplished; but in vain, on 
 first hearing of my affliction, had this she-Machiavel 
 owned a humane remorse, and, with all her keen com- 
 prehension of each facility that circumstance gave to 
 her will, availed herself of the general compassion to 
 strengthen the popular reaction in favour of Lilian's 
 assaulted honour — in vain had she written to me with 
 a gentleness of sympathy foreign to her habitual 
 characteristics — in vain besought me to call on her — 
 in vain waylaid and accosted me with a humility that 
 almost implored forgiveness; I vouchsafed no reproach, 
 but I could imply no pardon. I put between her and 
 my great sorrow the impenetrable wall of my freezing 
 silence. 
 
 One word of hers at the time that I had so pathet- 
 ically besought her aid, and the parrot-flock that re- 
 peated her very whisper in noisy shrillness, would 
 have been as loud to defend as it had been to defame; 
 that vile letter might never have been written. 
 Whoever its writer, it surely was one of the babblers 
 who took their malice itself from the jest or the nod of 
 their female despot; and the writer might have justified 
 herself in saying she did but coarsely proclaim what 
 the oracle of worldly opinion, and the early friend of 
 Lilian's own mother, had authorised her to believe. 
 
 By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused it- 
 self to the circumference of the circle in which my life 
 went its cheerless mechanical round. That cordial 
 brotherhood with his patients, which is the true physi- 
 cian's happiest gift and humanest duty, forsook my 
 breast. The warning words of Mrs. Poyntz had come 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 209 
 
 true. A patient that monopolised my thoughts awaited 
 me at my own hearth! My conscience became troubled; 
 I felt that my skill was lessened. I said to myself, 
 "The physician who, on entering the sick-room, feels, 
 while there, something- that distracts the finest powers 
 of his intellect from the sufferer's case, is unfit for his 
 calling." A year had scarcely passed since my fatal 
 wedding-day, before I had formed a resolution to quit 
 L — , and abandon my profession: and my resolution 
 was confirmed, and my goal determined, by a letter I 
 received from Julius Faber. 
 
 I had written at length to him, not many days aftei 
 the blow that had fallen on me, stating all circum- 
 stances as calmly and clearly as my grief would allow, 
 for I held his skill at a higher estimate than that ot 
 any living brother of my art, and I was not without 
 hope in the efficacy of his advice. The letter I now 
 received from him had been begun, and continued at 
 some length, before my communication reached him. 
 And this earlier portion contained animated and cheer- 
 ful descriptions of his Australian life and home, which 
 contrasted with the sorrowful tone of the supplement 
 written in reply to the tidings with which I had wrung 
 his friendly and tender heart. In this, the latter, part 
 of his letter, he suggested that if time had wrought no 
 material change for the better, it might be advisable to 
 try the effect of foreign travel. Scenes entirely new 
 might stimulate observation, and the observation of 
 things external withdraw the sense from that brooding 
 over images delusively formed within, which characterised 
 the kind of mental alienation I had described. "Let 
 any intellect create for itself a visionary world, and all 
 reasonings built on it are fallacious; the visionary 
 A Strange Story. II. 
 
210 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 world vanishes in proportion as we can arouse a pre- 
 dominant interest in the actual." 
 
 This grand authority, who owed half his consum- 
 mate skill as a practitioner to the scope of his knowledge 
 as a philosopher, then proceeded to give me a hope 
 which I had not dared, of myself, to form. He said, 
 "I distinguish the case you so minutely detail from 
 that insanity which is reason lost; here it seems rather 
 to be reason held in suspense. Where there is here- 
 ditary predisposition, where there is organic change of 
 structure in the brain — nay, where there is that kind 
 of insanity which takes the epithet of moral, whereby 
 the whole character becomes so transformed that the 
 prime element of sound understanding, conscience itself, 
 is either erased or warped into the sanction of what, in 
 a healthful state, it would most disapprove, it is only 
 charlatans who promise effectual cure. But here I as- 
 sume that there is no hereditary taint; here I am con- 
 vinced, from my own observation, that the nobility of 
 the organs, all fresh as yet in the vigour of youth, 
 would rather submit to death than to the permanent 
 overthrow of their equilibrium in reason; here, where 
 you tell me the character preserves all its moral at- 
 tributes of gentleness and purity, and but over-indulges 
 its own early habit of estranged contemplation; here, 
 without deceiving you in false kindness, I give you 
 the guarantee of my experience when I bid you 'hope!' 
 I am persuaded that, sooner or later, the mind, thus 
 for a time affected, will right itself; because here, in 
 the course of the malady, we do but deal with the 
 nervous system. And that, once righted, and the mind 
 once disciplined in those practical duties which con- 
 jugal life necessitates, the malady itself will never re- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 211 
 
 turn; never be transmitted to the children, on whom 
 your wife's restoration to health may permit you to 
 count hereafter. If the course of travel I recommend 
 and the prescriptions I conjoin with that course fail 
 you, let me know; and though I would fain close my 
 days in this land, I will come to you. I love you as 
 my son. I will tend your wife as my daughter." 
 
 Foreign travel! The idea 'smiled on me. Julius 
 Faber's companionship, sympathy, matchless skill! The 
 very thought seemed as a raft to a drowning mariner. 
 I now read more attentively the earlier portions of his 
 letter. They described, in glowing colours, the wondrous 
 country in which he had fixed his home; the joyous 
 elasticity of its atmosphere; the freshness of its primitive 
 pastoral life; the strangeness of its scenery, with a 
 Flora and a Fauna which have no similitudes in the 
 ransacked quarters of the Old World. And the strong- 
 imp ulse seized me to transfer to the solitudes of that 
 blithesome and hardy Nature a spirit no longer at 
 home in the civilised haunts of men, and household 
 gods that shrunk from all social eyes, and would fain 
 have found a wilderness for the desolate hearth, on 
 which they had ceased to be sacred if unveiled. As if 
 to give practical excuse and reason for the idea that 
 seized me, Julius Faber mentioned, incidentally, that 
 the house and property of a wealthy speculator in his 
 immediate neighbourhood were on sale at a price which 
 seemed to me alluringly trivial, and, according to his 
 judgment, far below the value they would soon reach 
 in the hands of a more patient capitalist. He wrote at 
 the period of the agricultural panic in the colony which 
 preceded the discovery of its earliest gold-fields. But 
 his geological science had convinced him that strata 
 
 14* 
 
212 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 within and around the property now for sale were 
 auriferous, and his intelligence enabled him to predict 
 how inevitably man would be attracted towards the 
 gold, and how surely the gold would fertilise the soil 
 and enrich its owners. He described the house thus to 
 be sold — in case I might know of a purchaser; it 
 had been built at a cost unusual in those early times, 
 and by one who clung to English tastes amidst Austra- 
 lian wilds, so that in this purchase a settler would 
 escape the hardships he had then ordinarily to en- 
 counter: it was, in short, a home to which a man, more 
 luxurious than I, might bear a bride with wants less 
 simple than those which now sufficed for my darling 
 Lilian. 
 
 This communication dwelt on my mind through 
 the avocations of the day on which I received it, and 
 in the evening I read all, except the supplement, aloud 
 to Mrs. Ashleigh in her daughter's presence. I desired 
 to see if Faber's descriptions of the country and its 
 life, which in themselves were extremely spirited and 
 striking, would arouse Lilian's interest. At first, she 
 did not seem to heed me while I read, but when I 
 came to Faber's loving account of little Amy, Lilian 
 turned her eyes towards me, and evidently listened 
 with attention. He wrote how the Child had already 
 become the most useful person in the simple house- 
 hold. How watchful the quickness of the heart had 
 made the service of the eye-, all their associations of 
 comfort had grown round her active noiseless move- 
 ments; it was she who had contrived to monopolise the 
 management, or supervision of all that added to Home 
 the nameless interior charm; under her eyes the rude 
 furniture of the loghouse grew inviting with English 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 213 
 
 neatness; she took charge of the dairy; she had made 
 the garden gay with flowers seleeted from the wild, 
 and suggested the trellised walk, already covered with 
 hardy vine; she was their confidant in every plan of 
 improvement, their comforter in every anxious doubt, 
 their nurse in every passing ailment; her very smile a 
 refreshment in the weariness of daily toil. "How all 
 that is best in womanhood," wrote the old man, with 
 the enthusiasm which no time had reft from his hearty 
 healthful genius, "How all that is best in womanhood 
 is here opening fast into flower from the bud of the 
 infant's soul! The atmosphere seems to suit it — the 
 child-woman in the child- world!" 
 
 I heard Lilian sigh; I looked towards her furtively; 
 tears stood in her softened eyes; her lip was quivering. 
 Presently, she began to rub her right hand over the 
 left — over the wedding-ring — at first, slowly; then 
 with quicker movement. 
 
 "It is not here," she said, impatiently; "it is not 
 here!" 
 
 "What is not here?" asked Mrs. Ashleigh, hanging- 
 over her. 
 
 Lilian leant back her head on her mother's bosom, 
 and answered faintly: 
 
 "The stain ! some one said there was a stain on v 
 this hand. I do not see it — do you?" 
 
 "There is no stain, never was," said I; "the hand 
 is white as your own innocence, or the lily from which 
 you take your name." 
 
 "Hush! you do not know my name. I will whisper 
 it. Soft! — my name is Nightshade! Do you want 
 to know where the lily is now, brother? I will tell 
 you. There, in that letter — you call her Amy - — 
 
214 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 she is the lily — take her to your breast — hide her. 
 Hist! what are those bells? Marriage-bells. Do not 
 let her hear them. For there is a cruel wind that 
 Whispers the bells, and the bells ring out what it whis- 
 pers, louder and louder, 
 
 1 Stain on lily, 
 Shame on lily, 
 Wither lily. 1 
 
 If she hears what the wind whispers to the bells, she 
 will creep away into the dark, and then she, too, will 
 turn to Nightshade." 
 
 "Lilian, look up, awake! You have been in a 
 long, long dream: it is passing away. Lilian, my be- 
 loved, my blessed Lilian!" 
 
 Never till then had I heard from her even so vague 
 an allusion to the fatal calumny, and its dreadful 
 effect; and while her words now pierced my heart, it 
 beat, amongst its pangs, with a thrilling hoj>e. 
 
 But, alas! the idea that had gleamed upon her had 
 vanished already. She murmured something about 
 Circles of Fire, and a Veiled Woman in black gar- 
 ments; became restless, agitated, and unconscious of 
 our presence, and finally sank into a heavy sleep. 
 
 That night (my room was next to hers with the 
 intervening door open), I heard her cry out. I hastened 
 to her side. She was still asleep, but there was an 
 anxious labouring expression on her young face, and 
 yet not an expression wholly of pain — for her lips 
 were parted with a smile — that glad yet troubled 
 smile with which one who has been revolving some 
 subject of perplexity or fear, greets a sudden thought 
 that seems to solve the riddle, or prompt the escape 
 from danger; and as I softly took her hand she re- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 215 
 
 turned my gentle pressure, and inclining towards me, 
 said, still in sleep, 
 "Let us go." 
 
 "Whither?" I answered, under my breath, so a9 
 not to awake her; "is it to see the child of whom I 
 read, and the land that is blooming out of the earth's 
 childhood?" 
 
 "Out of the dark into the light; where the leaves 
 do not change; where the night is our day, and the 
 winter our summer. Let us go — let us go!" 
 
 "We will go. Dream on undisturbed, my bride. 
 Oh, that the dream could tell you that my love has 
 not changed in our sorrow, holier and deeper than on 
 the day in which our vows were exchanged! In you 
 still all my hopes fold their wings: where you are, 
 there still I myself have my dreamland!" 
 
 The sweet face grew bright as I spoke; all trouble 
 left the smile ; softly she drew her hand from my clasp, 
 and rested it for a moment on my bended head, as if 
 in blessing. 
 
 I rose; stole back to my own room, closing the 
 door, lest the sob I could not stifle should mar her 
 sleep. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 I unfolded my new prospects to Mrs. Ashleigh. 
 She was more easily reconciled to them than I could 
 have supposed, judging by her habits, which were na- 
 turally indolent, and averse to all that disturbed their 
 even tenour. But the great grief which had befallen 
 her had roused up that strength of devotion which lies 
 dormant in all hearts that are capable of loving an- 
 
216 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 other more than self. With her full consent I wrote 
 to Faber, communicating my intentions, instructing him 
 to purchase the property he had so commended, and 
 enclosing my banker's order for the amount, on an 
 Australian firm. I now announced my intention to re- 
 tire from my profession; made prompt arrangements 
 with a successor to my practice; disposed of my two 
 houses at L — ; fixed the day of my departure. Vanity 
 was dead within me, or I might have been gratified by 
 the sensation which the news of my design created. 
 My faults became at once forgotten: such good qualities 
 as I. might possess were exaggerated. The public regret 
 vented and consoled itself in a costly testimonial, to 
 which even the poorest of my patients insisted on the 
 privilege to contribute, graced with an inscription 
 nattering enough to have served for the epitaph on 
 some great man's tomb. No one who has served an 
 art and striven for a name, is a stoic to the esteem of 
 others, and sweet indeed would such honours have been 
 to me had not publicity itself seemed a wrong to the 
 sanctity of that affliction which set Lilian apart from 
 the movement and the glories of the world. 
 
 The two persons most active in "getting up" this 
 testimonial were, nominally, Colonel Poyntz — in truth, 
 his wife — and my old disparager, Mr. Vigors! It is 
 long since my narrative has referred to Mr. Vigors. It is 
 due to him now to state that, in his capacity of magis- 
 trate, and in his own way, he had been both active 
 and delicate in the inquiries set on foot for Lilian 
 during the unhappy time in which she had wandered, 
 spellbound, from her home. He, alone of all the more 
 influential magnates of the town, had upheld her inno- 
 cence against the gossip that aspersed it; and during 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 217 
 
 the last trying year of my residence at L — , lie had 
 sought me, with frank and manly confessions of his re- 
 gret for his former prejudice against me, and assurances 
 of the respect in which he had held me ever since my 
 marriage — marriage but in rite — with Lilian. He 
 had then, strong in his ruling passion, besought me to 
 consult his clairvoyants as to her case. I declined this 
 invitation, so as not to affront him — declined it, not 
 as I should once have done, but with no word nor 
 look of incredulous disdain. The fact was, that I had 
 conceived a solemn terror of all practices and theories 
 out of the beaten track of sense and science. Perhaps 
 in my refusal I did wrong. I know not. I was afraid 
 of my own imagination. He continued not less friendly 
 in spite of my refusal. And, such are the vicissitudes 
 in human feeling, I parted from him whom I had re- 
 garded as my most bigoted foe with a warmer senti- 
 ment of kindness than for any of those on whom I had 
 counted for friendship. He had not deserted Lilian. 
 It was not so with Mrs. Poyntz. I would have paid 
 tenfold the value of the testimonial to have erased, 
 from the list of those who subscribed to it, her hus- 
 band's name. 
 
 The day before I quitted L — , and some weeks 
 after I had, in fact, renounced my practice, I received 
 an urgent entreaty from Miss Brabazon to call on her. 
 8 he wrote in lines so blurred that I could with diffi- 
 culty decipher them, that she was very ill, given over 
 by Dr. Jones, who had been attending her. She im- 
 plored my opinion. 
 
218 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 On reacting the house, a formal man-servant, with 
 indifferent face, transferred me to the guidance of a 
 hired nurse, who led me up the stairs, and, before I 
 was well aware of it, into the room in which Dr. Lloyd 
 had died. Widely different indeed, the aspect of the 
 wails, the character of the furniture. The dingy paper- 
 hangings were replaced by airy muslins, showing a 
 rose-coloured ground through their fanciful open-work; 
 luxurious fauteuils, gilded wardrobes, full-length mir- 
 rors, a toilet-table tricked out with lace and ribbons, 
 and glittering with an array of silver gewgaws and 
 jewelled trinkets, — all transformed the sick chamber 
 of the simple man of science to a boudoir of death for 
 the vain coquette. But the room itself, in its high lat- 
 tice and heavy ceiling, was the same — as the coffin 
 itself has the same confines whether it be rich in vel- 
 vets and bright with blazoning, or rude as a pauper's 
 shell. 
 
 And the bed, with its silken coverlid, and its pil- 
 lows edged with the thread- work of Louvain, stood in 
 the same sharp angle as that over which had flickered 
 the frowning smoke-reek above the dying resentful foe. 
 As I approached, a man, who was seated beside the 
 sufferer, turned round his face, and gave me a silent 
 kindly nod of recognition. He was Mr. C, one of the 
 clergy of the town, the one with whom I had the most 
 frequently come into contact wherever the physician 
 resigns to the priest the language that bids man hope. 
 Mr. C, as a preacher, was renowned for his touching 
 eloquence -j as a pastor, revered for his benignant piety; 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 219 
 
 as friend and neighbour, beloved for a sweetness of 
 nature which seemed to regulate all the movements of 
 a mind eminently masculine by the beat of a heart 
 tender as the gentlest woman's. 
 
 This good man, then whispering something to the 
 sufferer which I did not overhear, stole towards me, 
 took me by the hand, and said, also in a whisper, 
 "Be merciful as Christians are." He led me to the 
 bedside, there left me, went out, and closed the door. 
 
 "Do you think I am really dying, Dr. Fenwick?" 
 said a feeble voice. "I fear Dr. Jones has misunder- 
 stood my case. I wish I had called you in at the first, 
 but — but I could not — I could not! Will you feel 
 my pulse? Don't you think you could do me good?" 
 
 I had no need to feel the pulse in that skeleton 
 wrist; the aspect of the face sufficed to tell me that 
 death was drawing near. 
 
 Mechanically, however, I went through the hack- 
 neyed formulae of professional questions. This vain 
 ceremony done; as gently and delicately as I could, I 
 implied the expediency of concluding, if not yet settled, 
 those affairs which relate to this world. 
 
 "This duty," I said, "in relieving the mind from 
 care for others to whom we owe the forethought of 
 affection, often relieves the body also of many a gnaw- 
 ing pain, and sometimes, to the surprise of the most 
 experienced physician, prolongs life itself." 
 
 "Ah," said the old maid, peevishly, "I understand! 
 But it is not my will that troubles me. I should not 
 be left to a nurse from a hospital if my relations did 
 not know that my annuity dies with me; and I fore- 
 stalled it in furnishing this house, Dr. Fenwick, and all 
 these pretty things will be sold to pay those horrid 
 
220 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 tradesmen! — very hard! so hard! — just as I had got 
 things about me in the way I always said I would 
 have them if I could ever afford it. I always said I 
 would have my bedroom hung with muslin, like dear 
 Lady L.'s; and the drawing-room in geranium-coloured 
 silk: so pretty. You have not seen it: you would not 
 know the house, Dr. Fenwick. And just when all is 
 finished, to be taken away, and thrust into the grave. 
 It is so cruel!" And she began to weep. Her emo- 
 tion brought on a violent paroxysm, which, when she 
 recovered from it, had produced one of those startling 
 changes of mind that are sometimes witnessed before 
 death: changes whereby the whole character of a life 
 seems to undergo solemn transformation. The hard 
 will become gentle, the proud meek, the frivolous 
 earnest. That awful moment when the things of earth 
 pass away like dissolving scenes, leaving death visible 
 on the back-ground by the glare that shoots up in the 
 last flicker of life's lamp. 
 
 And when she lifted her haggard face from my 
 shoulder, and heard my pitying, soothing voice, it was 
 not the grief of a trifier at the loss of fondled toys that 
 spoke in the falling lines of her lip, in the woe of her 
 pleading eyes. 
 
 "So this is death," she said. "I feel it hurrying 
 on. I must speak. I promised Mr. C. that I would. 
 Forgive me, can you — can you? That letter — that 
 letter to Lilian Ashleigh, I wrote it! Oh, do not look 
 at me so terribly; I never thought it could do such 
 evil! And am I not punished enough? I truly be- 
 lieved, when I wrote, that Miss Ashleigh was de- 
 ceiving you, and once I was silly enough to fancy 
 that you might have liked me. But I had another 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 221 
 
 motive: I Lad been so poor all my life — I had be- 
 come rich unexpectedly; I set my heart on this house 
 — I had always fancied it — and I thought if I could 
 prevent Miss Ashleigh marrying you, and scare her 
 and her mother from coming back to L — , I could get 
 the house. And I did get it. What for? — to die. 
 I had not been here a week before I got the hurt that 
 is killing me — a fall down the stairs — coming out 
 of this very room; the stairs had been polished. If I 
 had stayed in my old lodging, it would not have hap- 
 pened. Oh, say you forgive me! Say, say it, even 
 if you do not feel you can! Say it!" And the 
 miserable woman grasped me by the arm as Dr. Lloyd 
 1 i.id grasped me. 
 
 I shaded my averted face with my hand; my heart 
 hoaved with the agony of my supprest passion. A 
 wrong, however deep, only to myself, I could have 
 pardoned without effort; such a wrong to Lilian, — 
 no! I could not say, "I forgive." 
 
 The dying wretch was, perhaps, more appalled by 
 my silence than she would have been by my reproach. 
 Her voice grew shrill in her despair. 
 
 "You will not pardon me! I shall die with your 
 curse on my head. Mercy! mercy! That good man, 
 Mr. C, assured me you would be merciful. Have you 
 never wronged another ? Has the Evil One never tempted 
 you f n 
 
 Then I spoke in broken accents: "Me! Oh, had it 
 been me you defamed — but a young creature so 
 harmless, so unoffending, and for so miserable a 
 motive!" 
 
 "But I tell you, I swear to you, I never dreamed 
 
222 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 I could cause such sorrow; and that young man, that 
 Margrave, put it into my head!" 
 
 "Margrave! He had left L — long before that letter 
 was written." 
 
 "But he came back for a day, just before I wrote; 
 it was the very day. I met him in the lane yonder. 
 He asked after you — after Miss Ashleigh; and when 
 he spoke he laughed, and I said, 'Miss Ashleigh had 
 been ill, and was gone away;' and he laughed again. 
 And I thought he knew more than he would tell me, 
 so I asked him if he supposed Mrs. Ashleigh would 
 come back, and said how much I should like to take 
 this house if she did not; and again he laughed, and 
 said, 'Birds never stay in the nest after the young 
 ones are hurt,' and went away singing. When I got 
 home, his laugh and his song haunted me. I thought 
 I saw him still in my room, prompting me to write, 
 and I sate down and wrote. Oh, pardon, pardon me! 
 I have been a foolish poor creature, but never meant 
 to do such harm. The Evil One tempted me There 
 he is, near me now! I see him yonder! there, at the 
 doorway! He comes to claim me! As you hope for 
 mercy yourself, free me from him! Forgive me!" 
 
 I made an effort over myself. In naming Margrave 
 as her tempter, the woman had suggested an excuse 
 echoed from that innermost cell of my mind, which I 
 recoiled from gazing into, for there I should behold las 
 image. Inexpiable though the injury she had wrought 
 against me and mine, still the woman was human — 
 fellow-creature — like myself; — but he? 
 
 I took the pale hand that still pressed my arm, and 
 said, with firm voice, 
 
 "Be comforted. In the name of Lilian, my wife. 
 
A STRANGE STORi r . 
 
 223 
 
 I forgive you for her and for me as freely and as fully 
 as we are enjoined by Him, against whose precepts 
 the best of us daily sin, to forgive — we children of 
 wrath — to forgive one another!" 
 
 u Heaven bless you! — oh, bless you!" she mur- 
 mured, sinking back upon her pillow. 
 
 "Ah!" thought I, "what if the pardon I grant for 
 a wrong far deeper than I inflicted on him whose im- 
 precation smote me in this chamber, should, indeed, be 
 received as atonement, and this blessing on the lips of 
 the dying annul the dark curse that the dead has left 
 on my path through the Valley of the Shadow!" 
 
 I left my patient sleeping quietly, — the sleep that 
 precedes the last. As I went down the stairs into the 
 hall, I saw Mrs. Poyntz standing at the threshold, 
 speaking to the man-servant and the nurse. 
 
 I would have passed her with a formal bow, but 
 she stopped me. 
 
 "I came to inquire after poor Miss Brabazon," said 
 she. "You can tell me more than the servants can: 
 is there no hope?" 
 
 "Let the nurse go up and watch beside her. She 
 may pass away in the sleep into which she has fallen." 
 
 "Allen Fenwick, I must speak with you — nay, 
 but for a few minutes. I hear that you leave L — to- 
 morrow. It is scarcely among the chances of life that 
 we should meet again." While thus saying, she drew 
 me along the lawn down the path that led towards her 
 own home. "I wish," said she, earnestly, "that you 
 could part with a kindlier feeling towards me; but I 
 can scarcely expect it. Could I put myself in your 
 place, and be moved by your feelings, I know that I 
 should be implacable; but I — " 
 
224 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "But you, madam, are The World! and the World 
 governs itself, and dictates to others, by laws which 
 seem harsh to those who ask from its favour the ser- 
 vices which the World cannot tender, for the World 
 admits favourites but ignores friends. You did but acl 
 to me as the World ever acts to those who mistake its 
 favour for its friendship." 
 
 "It is true," said Mrs. Poyntz, with blunt candour-, 
 and we continued to walk on silently. At length, she 
 said, abruptly, "But do you not rashly deprive your- 
 self of your only consolation in sorrow? When the 
 heart suffers, does your skill admit any remedy like 
 occupation to the mind? Yet you abandon that occu- 
 pation to which your mind is most accustomed; you 
 desert your career; you turn aside, in the midst of the 
 race, from the fame which awaits at the goal; you go 
 back from civilisation itself, and dream that all your 
 intellectual cravings can find content in the life of a 
 herdsman, amidst the monotony of a wild! No, you 
 will repent, for you are untrue to your mind." 
 
 "I am sick of the word 'mind!'" said I, bitterly. 
 And therewith I relapsed into musing. 
 
 The enigmas which had foiled my intelligence in 
 the unravelled Sibyl Book of Nature were mysteries 
 strange to every man's normal practice of thought, 
 even if reducible to the fraudulent impressions of out- 
 ward sense: For illusions in a brain otherwise healthy, 
 suggest problems in our human organisation which the 
 colleges that record them rather guess at than solve. 
 But the blow which had shattered my life had been 
 dealt by the hand of a fool. Here, there were no 
 mystic enchantments. Motives the most commonplace 
 and paltry, suggested to a brain as trivial and shallow 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 225 
 
 as ever made the frivolity of woman a theme for the 
 satire of poets, had sufficed, in devastating the field of 
 my affections, to blast the uses for which I had cultured 
 my mind; and had my intellect been as great as heaven 
 ever gave to man, it would have been as vain a shield 
 as mine against the shaft that had lodged in my heart. 
 While I had, indeed, been preparing my reason and 
 my fortitude to meet such perils, weird and marvellous, 
 as those by which tales round the winter fire-side scare 
 the credulous child — a contrivance so vulgar and 
 hackneyed that not a day passes but what some hearth 
 is vexed by an anonymous libel — had wrought a 
 calamity more dread than aught which my dark guess 
 into the Shadow-Land, unpierced by Philosophy, could 
 trace to the prompting of malignant witchcraft. So, 
 ever this truth runs through all legends of ghost and 
 demon — through the uniform records of what wonder 
 accredits and science rejects as the supernatural — lo! 
 the dread machinery whose wheels roll through Hades ! 
 What need such awful engines for such mean results? 
 The first blockhead we meet in our walk to our grocer's 
 can tell us more than the ghost tells us; the poorest 
 envy we ever aroused hurts us more than the demon. 
 How true an interpreter is Genius to Hell as to Earth. 
 The Fiend comes to Faust, the tired seeker of know- 
 ledge ; Heaven and Hell stake their cause in the Mortal's 
 temptation. And what does the Fiend to astonish the 
 Mortal? Turn wine into fire, turn love into crime. 
 We need no Mephistopheles to accomplish these marvels 
 every day! 
 
 Thus silently thinking, I walked by the side of 
 the world-wise woman; and when she next spoke, I 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 15 
 
226 
 
 A STRANGE STORY 
 
 looked up, and saw that we were at the Monks' "Well, 
 where I had first seen Lilian gazing into heaven! 
 
 Mrs. Poyntz had, as we walked, placed her hand 
 on my arm, and, turning abruptly from the path into 
 the glade, I found myself standing by her side in the 
 scene where a new sense of being had first disclosed 
 to my sight the hues with which Love, the passionate 
 beautifier, turns into purple and gold the grey of the 
 common air. Thus, when romance has ended in sorrow, 
 and the Beautiful fades from the landscape, the trite 
 and positive forms of life, banished for a time, re- 
 appear, and deepen our mournful remembrance of the 
 glories they replace. And the Woman of the World, 
 finding how little I was induced to respond to her 
 when she had talked of myself, began to speak in her 
 habitual, clear, ringing accents of her own social 
 schemes and devices: 
 
 "I shall miss you when you are gone, Allen Fen- 
 wick, for though, during the last year or so, all actual 
 intercourse between us has ceased, yet my interest in 
 you gave some occupation to my thoughts when I sat 
 alone — having lost my main object of ambition in 
 settling my daughter, and having no longer any one 
 in the house with whom I could talk of the future, or 
 for whom I could form a project. It is so wearisome 
 to count the changes which pass within us, that we 
 take interest in the changes that pass without. Poyntz 
 still has his weather-glass; I have no longer my Jane." 
 
 "I cannot linger with you on this spot," said I, 
 impatiently, turning back into the path; she followed, 
 treading over fallen leaves. And unheeding my inter- 
 ruption, she thus continued her hard talk: 
 
 "But I am not sick of my mind as you seem to be 
 
A bTRANGE STORY. 
 
 of yours; I ain only somewhat tired of the little cage 
 in which, since it has been alone, it ruffles its plumes 
 against the flimsy wires that confine it from wider 
 space. I shall take up my home for a time with the 
 new-married couple: they want me. Ashleigh Sumner 
 has come into Parliament. He means to attend re- 
 gularly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to 
 go into the world by herself, and he wishes her to go 
 into the world, because he wants a wife to display his 
 wealth for the improvement of his position. In Ash- 
 leigh Sumner's house, I shall have ample scope for my 
 energies, such as they are. I have a curiosity to see 
 the few that perch on the wheels of the State, and say, 
 l It is we who move the wheels!' It will amuse me to 
 learn if I can maintain in a capital the authority I 
 have won in a country town; if not, I can but return 
 to my small principality. Wherever I live I must 
 sway, not serve. If I succeed — as I ought, for in 
 Jane's beauty and Ashleigh's fortune I have materials 
 for the woof of ambition, wanting which here, I fall 
 asleep over my knitting — if I succeed, there will be 
 enough to occupy the rest of my life. Ashleigh Sumner 
 must be a Power; the Power will be represented and 
 enjoyed by my child, and created and maintained by 
 me! Allen Fenwick, do as I do. Be world with the 
 world, and it will only be in moments of spleen and 
 chagrin that you will sigh to think that the heart may 
 be void when the mind is full. Confess, you envy me 
 while you listen. 1 ' 
 
 "Not so; all that to you seems so great, appears 
 to me so smair. Nature alone is always grand, in her 
 terrors as well as her charms. The World for you; 
 Nature for me. Farewell!" 
 
 15* 
 
228 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Nature," said Mrs. Poyntz, compassionately. "Poor 
 Allen Fenwick! Nature indeed — intellectual suicide! 
 Nay, shake hands, then, if for the last time." 
 
 So we shook hands and parted, where the wicket- 
 gate and the stone stairs separated my blighted fairy- 
 land from the common thoroughfare. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 That night as I was employed in collecting the 
 books and manuscripts which I proposed to take with 
 me, including my long-suspended physiological work, 
 and such standard authorities as I might want to con- 
 sult or refer to in the portions yet incompleted, my 
 servant entered to inform me, in answer to the inqui- 
 ries I had sent him to make, that Miss Brabazon had 
 peacefully breathed her last an hour before. Well! my 
 pardon had perhaps soothed her last moments; but how 
 unavailing her death-bed repentance to undo the wrong 
 she had done! 
 
 I turned from that thought, and glancing at the 
 work into which I had thrown all my learning, me- 
 thodized into system with all my art, I recalled the 
 pity which Mrs. Poyntz had expressed for my medi- 
 tated waste of mind. The tone of superiority which 
 this incarnation of common sense accompanied by un- 
 common will, assumed over all that was too deep or 
 too high for her comprehension, had sometimes amused 
 me; thinking over it now, it piqued. I said to myself, 
 "After all, I shall bear with me such solace as intel- 
 lectual occupation can afford. I shall have leisure to 
 complete this labour, and a record that I have lived 
 and thought may outlast all the honours which worldly 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 229 
 
 ambition may bestow upon anAshleigh Sumner!" And, 
 as I so murmured, my hand, mechanically selecting the 
 books I needed, fell on the Bible that Julius Faber 
 had given to me. 
 
 It opened at the Second Book of Esdras, which our 
 Church places amongst the Apocrypha, and is gene- 
 rally considered by scholars to have been written in 
 the first or second century of the Christian era.* But 
 in which, the questions raised by man in the remotest 
 ages, to which we can trace back his desire u to com- 
 prehend the ways of the Most High," are invested with 
 a grandeur of thought and sublimity of word to which 
 I know of no parallel in writers we call profane. 
 
 My eye fell on this passage in the lofty argument 
 between the Angel whose name was Uriel, and the 
 Prophet, perplexed by his own cravings for knowledge : 
 
 "He (the Angel) answered me, and said, I went 
 into a forest into a plain, and the trees took counsel, 
 
 "And said, Come, let us go and make war against 
 the sea, that it may depart away before us, and that 
 we may make us more woods. 
 
 "The floods of the sea also in like manner took 
 counsel, and said, Come, let us go up and subdue the 
 woods of the plain, that there also we may make us 
 another country. 
 
 "The thought of the wood was in vain, for the fire 
 came and consumed it. 
 
 "The thought of the floods of the sea came like- 
 wise to nought, for the sand stood up and stopped 
 them. 
 
 * Such is the supposition of Jahn. Dr. Lee, however, is of opinion 
 that the author was contemporary, and, indeed, identical, with the author 
 of the Book of Enoch. 
 
230 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "If thou wert judge now betwixt these two, whom 
 wouldest thou begin to justify? or whom wouldest thou 
 condemn ? 
 
 "I answered and said, Verily it is a foolish thought 
 that they both have devised; for the ground is given 
 unto the wood, and the sea also hath his place to bear 
 his floods. 
 
 "Then answered he me, and said, Thou hast given 
 a right judgment, but why judgest thou not thyself 
 also ? 
 
 "For like as the ground is given unto the wood, 
 and the sea to his floods: even so they that dwell upon 
 the earth may understand nothing, but that which is 
 upon the earth; and He that dwelleth above the heavens 
 may only understand the things that are above the 
 height of the heavens.''" 
 
 I paused at those words, and, closing the Sacred 
 Volume, fell into deep unquiet thought. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 I had hoped that the voyage would produce some 
 beneficial effect upon Lilian; but no effect, good or 
 bad, was perceptible, except, perhaps, a deeper silence, 
 a gentler calm. She loved to sit on the deck when the 
 nights were fair, and the stars mirrored on the deep. 
 And once, thus, as I stood beside her, bending over 
 the rail of the vessel, and gazing on the long wake of 
 light which the moon made amidst the darkness of an 
 ocean to which no shore could be seen, I said to my- 
 self, "Where is my track of light through the measure- 
 less future? Would that I could believe as I did when 
 a child! Woe is me, that all the reasonings I take from 
 
A STRANGE STORY 
 
 my knowledge should lead me away from the comfort 
 which the peasant who mourns finds in faith! Why 
 should riddles so dark have been thrust upon me? — 
 mo, no fond child of fancy; me, sober pupil of schools 
 the severest. Yet what marvel — the strangest my 
 senses have witnessed or feigned in the fraud they 
 have palmed on me — is greater than that by which 
 a simple affection, that all men profess to have known, 
 has changed the courses of life prearranged by my 
 hopes and confirmed by my judgment? How calmly 
 before I knew love I have anatomized its mechanism, 
 as the tyro who dissects the webwork of tissues and 
 nerves in the dead. Lo! it lives, lives in me; and, in 
 living, escapes from my scalpel and mocks all my 
 knowledge. Can love be reduced to the realm of the 
 senses? No! what nun is more barred by her grate 
 from the realm of the senses than my bride by her 
 solemn affliction? Is love, then, the union of kindred, 
 harmonious minds? No! my beloved one sits by my 
 side, and I guess not her thoughts, and my mind is to 
 her a sealed fountain. Yet I love her more — oh in- 
 effably more! for the doom which destroys the two 
 causes philosophy assigns to love — in the form, in the 
 mind! How can I now, in my vain physiology, say 
 what is love — what is not? Is it love which must 
 tell me that man has a soul, and that in soul will be 
 found the solution of problems, never to be solved in 
 body or mind alone?" 
 
 My self-questionings halted here, as Lilian's hand 
 touched my shoulder. She had risen from her seat, 
 and had come to me. 
 
 "Are not the stars very far from earth?" she 
 said. 
 
232 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Very far." 
 
 "Are they seen for the first time to-night?" 
 
 "They were seen, I presume, as we see them, by 
 the fathers of all human races!" 
 
 "Yet close below us they shine reflected in the 
 waters; and yet, see, wave flows on wave before we 
 can count it!" 
 
 "Lilian, by what sympathy do you read and an- 
 swer my thought?" 
 
 Her reply was incoherent and meaningless. If a 
 gleam of intelligence had mysteriously lighted my 
 heart to her view, it was gone. But drawing her nearer 
 towards me, my eye long followed wistfully the path 
 of light, dividing the darkness on either hand, till it 
 closed in the sloping horizon. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 TfiE voyage is over. At the seaport at which we 
 landed I found a letter from Faber. My instructions 
 had reached him in time to effect the purchase on 
 which his descriptions had fixed my desire. The stock, 
 the implements of husbandry, the furniture of the 
 house, were included in the purchase. All was pre- 
 pared for my arrival, and I hastened from the then 
 miserable village, which may some day rise into one 
 of the mightiest capitals of the world, to my lodge in 
 the wilderness. 
 
 It was the burst of the Australian spring, which 
 commences in our autumn month of October. The air 
 was loaded with the perfume of the acacias. Amidst 
 the glades of the open forest land, or climbing the 
 
A STRANGE STORY, 
 
 233 
 
 craggy banks of winding silvery creeks,* creepers and 
 flowers of dazzling hue contrasted the olive-green of 
 the surrounding foliage. The exhilarating effect of the 
 climate in that season heightens the charm of the 
 strange scenery. In the brilliancy of the sky, in the 
 lightness of the atmosphere, the sense of life is 
 wondrously quickened. With the very breath the Ad- 
 venturer draws in from the racy air, he feels as if in- 
 haling hope. 
 
 We have reached our home — we are settled in it; 
 the early unfamiliar impressions are worn away. We 
 have learned to dispense with much that we at first 
 missed, and are reconciled to much that at first disap- 
 pointed or displeased. 
 
 The house is built but of logs — &e late pro- 
 prietor had commenced, upon a rising ground, a mile 
 distant, a more imposing edifice of stone; but it is not 
 half finished. 
 
 This log-house is commodious, and much has been 
 done, within and without, to conceal or adorn its pri- 
 mitive rudeness. It is of irregular, picturesque form, 
 with verandahs round three sides of it, to which the 
 grape-vine has been trained, with glossy leaves that 
 clamber up to the gable roof. There is a large garden 
 in front, in which many English fruit-trees have been 
 set, and grow fast amongst the plants of the tropics 
 and the orange-trees of Southern Europe. Beyond, 
 stretch undulous pastures, studded with flocks and 
 herds; to the left, soar up, in long-range, the many- 
 coloured hills; to the right, meanders a creek, belted 
 by feathery trees; and on its ^opposite bank a forest 
 
 * Creek ia the name given by Australian colonists to precarious water- 
 courses and tributary streams. 
 
234 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 opens, through frequent breaks, into park-like glades 
 and alleys. The territory, of which I so suddenly 
 find myself the lord, is vast, even for a colonial capi- 
 talist. 
 
 It had been ■ originally purchased as " a special 
 survey," comprising twenty thousand acres, with the 
 privilege of pasture over forty thousand more. In very 
 little of this land, though it includes some of the most 
 fertile districts in the known world, has cultivation 
 been even commenced. At the time I entered into 
 possession even sheep were barely profitable; labour 
 was scarce and costly, licgarded as a speculation, I 
 could not wonder that my predecessor fled in fear from 
 his domain. Had I invested the bulk of ray capital in 
 this lordly purchase, I should have deemed myself a 
 ruined man; but a villa near London, with a hundred 
 acres, would have cost me as much to buy, and thrice 
 as much to keep up. I could afford the investment I 
 had made. I found a Scotch bailiff already on the 
 estate, and I was contented to escape from rural occu- 
 pations, to which I brought no experience, by making 
 it worth his while to serve me with zeal. Two domes- 
 tics of my own, and two who had been for many years 
 with Mrs. Ashleigh, had accompanied us ; they remained 
 faithful, and seemed contented. So the clockwork of our 
 mere household arrangements went on much the same 
 as in our native homes. Lilian was not subjected 
 to the ordinary privations and discomforts that await 
 the wife even of the wealthy emigrant. Alas! would 
 she have heeded them if she had been? 
 
 The change of scene wrought a decided change for 
 the better in her health and spirits, but not such as 
 implied a dawn of reviving reason. But her counte- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 235 
 
 nance was now more rarely overcast. Its usual aspect 
 was glad with a soft mysterious smile. She would 
 murmur snatches of songs, that were partly borrowed 
 from English poets, and partly glided away into what 
 seemed spontaneous additions of her own — wanting 
 intelligible meaning, but never melody nor rhyme. 
 Strange, that memory and imitation — the two earliest 
 parents of all inventive knowledge — should still be so 
 active, and judgment — the after faculty, that com- 
 bines the rest into purpose and method — be annulled! 
 
 Julius Faber I see continually, though his resi- 
 dence is a few miles distant. He is sanguine as to 
 Lilian's ultimate recovery, and, to my amazement and 
 to my envy, he has contrived, by some art which I 
 cannot attain, to establish between her and himself in- 
 telligible communion. She comprehends his questions, 
 when mine, though the simplest, seem to her in un- 
 known language; and he construes into sense her 
 words, that to me are meaningless riddles. 
 
 "I was right," he said to me one day, leaving her 
 seated in the garden beside her quiet, patient mother, 
 and joining me where I lay — listless yet fretful — 
 under the shadeless gum-trees, gazing not on the flocks 
 and fields that I could call my own, but on the far 
 mountain range, from which the arcb of the horizon 
 seemed to spring-, — "I was right," said the great 
 physician; "this is reason suspended, not reason lost. 
 Your wife will recover; but — " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "Give me your arm as I walk homeward, and I 
 will tell you the conclusion to which I have come." 
 
 I rose, the old man leant on me, and we went 
 down the valley, along the craggy ridges of the wind- 
 
236 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 ing creek. The woodland on the opposite bank was 
 vocal with the chirp, and croak, and chatter of Austra- 
 lian birds — all mirthful, all songless, save that 
 sweetest of warblers, which some early irreverent emi- 
 grant degraded to the name of magpie, but whose note 
 is sweeter than the nightingale's, and trills through the 
 lucent air with a distinct ecstatic melody of joy that 
 dominates all the discords; — so ravishing the sense, 
 that, while it sings, the ear scarcely heeds the scream 
 of the paiTots. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVI. 
 
 "You may remember," said Julius Faber, "Sir 
 Humphry Davy's eloquent description of the effect 
 produced on him by the inhalation of nitrous oxide. 
 He states that he began to lose the perception of ex- 
 ternal things: trains of vivid visible images rapidly 
 passed through his mind, and were connected with 
 words in such a manner as to produce perceptions per- 
 fectly novel. 'I existed,' he says, 'in a world of 
 newly-connected and newly-modified ideas.' When he 
 recovered, he exclaimed: 'Nothing exists but thoughts; 
 the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, plea- 
 sures and pains!' 
 
 "Now observe, that thus, a cultivator of positive 
 science, endowed with one of the healthiest of human 
 brains, is, by the inhalation of a gas, abstracted from 
 all external life, enters into a new world, which con- 
 sists of images he himself creates, and animates so 
 vividly that, on waking, he resolves the universe itself 
 into thoughts." 
 
 "Well," said I, "but what inference do you 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 237 
 
 draw from that voluntary experiment, applicable to the 
 malady of which you bid me hope the cure?" 
 
 u Simply this: that the effect produced on a health- 
 ful brain by the nitrous oxide may be produced also 
 by moral causes operating on the blood, or on the 
 nerves. There is a degree of mental excitement in 
 which ideas are more vivid than sensations, and then 
 the world of external things gives way to the world 
 within the brain.* But this, though a suspension of 
 that reason which comprehends accuracy of judgment, 
 is no more a permanent aberration of reason than were 
 Sir Humphry Davy's visionary ecstasies under the in- 
 fluence of the gas. The difference between the two 
 states of suspension is that of time, and it is but an 
 affair of time with our beloved patient. Yet prepare 
 yourself. I fear that the mind will not recover with- 
 out some critical malady of the body." 
 
 "Critical! but not dangerous? — say not danger- 
 ous. I can endure the pause of her reason; I could 
 not endure the void in the universe if her life were to 
 fade from the earth." 
 
 "Poor friend! would not you yourself rather lose 
 life than reason?" 
 
 "I — yes! But we men are taught to set cheap 
 value on our own lives; we do not estimate at the 
 same rate the lives of those we love. Did we do so, 
 Humanity would lose its virtues." 
 
 "What, then! Love teaches that there is something 
 of nobler value then mere mind? yet surely it cannot 
 be the mere body? What is it, if not that continuance 
 of being which your philosophy declines to acknow- 
 
 * See, on the theory elaborated from this principle, Dr. Hibbert'a 
 interesting and valuable work on the Philosophy of Apparitions. 
 
A STRANGE STORTi 
 
 ledge — viz. soul? If you fear so painfully that your 
 Lilian should die, is it not that you fear to lose her 
 for ever?" 
 
 "Oh, eease, cease," I cried, impatiently. "I cannot 
 now argue on metaphysics. What is it that you anti- 
 cipate of harm to her life? Her health has been 
 stronger ever since her affliction. She never seems to 
 know ailment now. Do you not perceive that her 
 cheek has a more hardy bloom, her frame a more 
 rounded symmetry, than when you saw her in Eng- 
 land?" 
 
 "Unquestionably. Her physical forces have been 
 silently recruiting themselves in the dreams which half 
 lull, half amuse, her imagination. Imagination, that 
 faculty, the most glorious which is bestowed on the 
 human mind, because it is the faculty which enables 
 thought to create, is of all others the most exhausting 
 to life when unduly stimulated, and consciously reason- 
 ing on its own creations. I think it probable that, had 
 this sorrow not befallen you, you would have known a 
 sorrow yet graver — you would have long survived 
 your Lilian. As it is now, when she recovers, her 
 whole organization, physical and mental, will have un- 
 dergone a beneficent change. But, I repeat my pre- 
 diction; some severe malady of the body will precede 
 the restoration of the mind; and it is my hope that 
 the present suspense or aberration of the more wear- 
 ing powers of the mind fit the body to endure and 
 surmount the physical crisis. I remember a case, within 
 my own professional experience, in many respects 
 similar to this, but in other respects it was less hope- 
 ful. I was consulted by a young student of a very 
 delicate physical frame, of great mental energies, and 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 239 
 
 consumed by an intense ambition. He was reading for 
 university honours. He Avould not listen to me when 
 I entreated him to rest his mind. I thought that he 
 was certain to obtain the distinction for which he 
 toiled, and equally certain to die a few months after 
 obtaining it. He falsified both my deductions. He so 
 overworked himself that, on the day of examination, 
 his nerves were agitated, his memory failed him; ho 
 passed, not without a certain credit, but fell far short 
 of the rank amongst his fellow-competitors to which he 
 aspired. Here, then, the irritated mind acted on the 
 disappointed heart, and raised a new train of emotions. 
 He was first visited by spectral illusions; then he sank 
 into a state in which the external world seemed quite 
 blotted out. He heeded nothing that was said to him; 
 seemed to see nothing that was placed before his eyes; 
 in a word, sensations became dormant, ideas precon- 
 ceived usurped their place, and those ideas gave him 
 pleasure. He believed that his genius was recognized, and 
 lived amongst its supposed creations, enjoying an imagin- 
 ary fame. So it went on for two years ; during which sus- 
 pense of his reason, his frail form became robust and vigor- 
 ous. At the end of that time he was seized with a fever, 
 which would have swept him in three days to the grave 
 had it occured when I was first called in to attend 
 him. He conquered the fever, and, in recovering, ac- 
 quired the full possession of the intellectual faculties 
 so long suspended. When I last saw him, many years 
 afterwards, he was in perfect health, and the object of 
 his young ambition was realized; the body had sup- 
 ported the mind — he had achieved distinction. Now 
 what had so, for a time, laid this strong intellect into 
 visionary sleep? the most agonizing of human emotions 
 
240 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 in a noble spirit — shame! What has so striken down 
 your Lilian? You have told me the story; shame! — 
 the shame of a nature pre-eminently pure. But ob- 
 serve, that in his case as in hers, the shock inflicted 
 does not produce a succession of painful illusions; on 
 the contrary, in both, the illusions are generally plea- 
 sing. Had the illusions been painful, the body would 
 have suffered — the patient died. Why did a painful 
 shock produce pleasing illusions? because, no matter 
 how a shock on the nerves may originate, if it affects 
 the reason, it does but make more vivid, than impres- 
 sions from actual external objects, the ideas previously 
 most cherished. Such ideas in the young student were 
 ideas of earthly fame; such ideas in the young maiden 
 are ideas of angel comforters and heavenly Edens. 
 You miss her mind on the earth, and, while we speak, 
 it is in paradise." 
 
 "Much that you say, my friend, is authorized by 
 the speculations of great writers, with whom I am not 
 unfamiliar; but in none of those writers, nor in your 
 encouraging words do I find a solution for much that 
 has no precedents in my experience — much, indeed, 
 that has analogies in my reading, but analogies which 
 I have hitherto despised as old wives' fables. I 
 have bared to your searching eye the weird mysteries 
 of my life. How do you account for facts which you 
 cannot resolve into illusions? for the influence which 
 that strange being, Margrave, exercised over Lilian's 
 mind or fancy, so that for a time her love for me was 
 as dormant as is her reason now: so that lie could 
 draw her — her whose nature you admit to be singu- 
 larly pure and modest — from her mother's home? 
 The magic wand! the trance into which that wand 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 241 
 
 threw Margrave himself; the apparition which it con- 
 jured up in my own quiet chamber, when my mind 
 was without a care and my health without a flaw. 
 How account for all this — as you endeavoured, and 
 perhaps successfully, to account for all my impressions 
 of the Vision in the Museum, of the luminous haunting 
 shadow in its earlier apparitions, when my fancy was 
 heated, my heart tormented, and, it might be, even the 
 physical forces of this strong frame disordered?" 
 
 "Allen," said the old pathalogist, "here we approach 
 a ground which few physicians have dared to examine. 
 Honour to those who, like our bold contemporary, El- 
 liotson, have braved scoff and sacrificed dross in seek- 
 ing to extract what is practical in uses, what can be 
 tested by experiment, from those exceptional phenomena 
 on which magic sought to found a philosophy, and to 
 which philosophy tracks the origin of magic." 
 
 "What! Do I understand you? Is it you, Julius 
 Faber, who attach faith to the wonders ascribed to 
 animal magnetism and electro-biology, or subscribe to 
 the doctrines which their practitioners teach?" 
 
 "I have not examined into those doctrines, nor 
 seen with my own eyes the wonders recorded, upon 
 evidence too respectable, nevertheless, to permit me 
 peremptorily to deny what I have not witnessed.* But 
 
 * What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of 
 the most accomplished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W. Hamilton): — 
 
 "Somnambulism is a phenomenon still more astonishing (than dream- 
 ing). In this singular state a person performs a regular series of rational 
 actions , and those frequently of the most difficult and delicate nature ; and 
 what is still more marvellous, with a talent to which he could make no 
 pretension when awake. (Or. Ancillon, Essais Philos. ii. 161.) Hia 
 memory and reminiscence supply him with recollections of words and 
 things which, perhaps, never were at his disposal in the ordinary state — 
 he speaks more fluently a more refined language. And if we are to credit 
 what the evidence on which it rests hardly allows us to disbelieve, he has 
 not only perception of things through other channels than the common 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 16 
 
242 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 wherever I look through the History of Mankind in all 
 ages and all races, I find a concurrence in certain be- 
 liefs which seems to countenance the theory that there 
 is in some peculiar and rare temperaments a power 
 
 You are familiar with the theory of Descartes, 'that 
 those particles of the blood which penetrate to the 
 brain do not only serve to nourish and sustain its 
 substance, but to produce there a certain very subtle 
 Aura, or rather a flame very vivid and pure that ob- 
 
 organs of sense , but the sphere of his cognition is amplified to an extent 
 far beyond the limits to which sensible perception is confined. This sub- 
 ject is one of the most perplexing in the whole compass of philosophy ; for, 
 on the one hand, the phenomena are so remarkable that they cannot be 
 believed, and yet, on the other, they are of so unambiguous and palpable a 
 character, and the witnesses to their reality are so numerous, so intelligent, 
 and so high above every suspicion of deceit, that it is equally impossible 
 to deny credit to what is attested by such ample and unexceptional evi- 
 dence." — Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. ii. 
 p. 274. 
 
 This perplexity, in which the distinguished philosopher leaves the 
 judgment so equally balanced that it finds it impossible to believe, and yet 
 impossible to disbelieve, forms the right state of mind in which a candid 
 thinker should come to the examination of those more extraordinary phe- 
 nomena which he has not himself yet witnessed, but the fair inquiry 
 into which may be tendered to him by persons above the imputation of 
 quackery and fraud. Miiller, who is not the least determined, as he is 
 certainly one of the most distinguished disbelievers of mesmeric phe- 
 nomena, does not appear to have witnessed , or at least to have carefully 
 examined, them, or he would, perhaps, have seen that even the more 
 extraordinary of those phenomena confirm, rather than contradict, his own 
 general theories, and may be explained by the sympathies one sense has 
 with another — "the laws of reflexion through the medium of the brain."' 
 (Physiology of Senses, p. 1311.) And again by the maxim "that the 
 mental principle, or cause of the mental phenomena, cannot be confined to 
 the brain, but that it exists in a latent state in every part of the organism." 
 (Ib. p. 1355.) The "nerve power," contended for by Mr. Bain, also may 
 suggest a rational solution of much that has seemed incredible to those 
 physiologists who have not condescended to sift the genuine phenomena 
 of mesmerism from the imposture to which, in all ages, the phenomena 
 exhibited by what may be called the ecstatic temperament, have been 
 applied. 
 
A STRANGE STOKY. 
 
 243 
 
 tains the name of the Animal Spirits;'* and at the 
 close of his great fragment upon Man, he asserts that 
 'this flame is of no other nature than all the fires 
 which are in inanimate bodies.'** This notion does 
 but forestall the more recent doctrine that electricity is 
 more or less in all, or nearly all, known matter. Now, 
 whether, in the electric fluid or some other fluid akin 
 to it of which we know still less, thus equally per- 
 vading all matter, there may be a certain magnetic 
 property more active, more operative upon sympathy 
 in some human constitutions than in others, and which 
 can account for the mysterious power I have spoken of, 
 is a query I might suggest, but not an opinion I would 
 hazard. For an opinion I must have that basis of ex- 
 perience or authority which I do not need when I 
 submit a query to the experience and authority of 
 others. Still the supposition conveyed in the query is 
 so far worthy of notice that the ecstatic temperament 
 (in which phrase I comprehend all constitutional mystics) 
 is peculiarly sensitive to electric atmospheric influences. 
 This is a fact which most medical observers will have 
 remarked in the range of their practice. Accordingly 
 I was prepared to find Mr. Hare Townshend, in his 
 interesting work,*** state that he himself wab of 'the 
 electric temperament,' sparks flying from his hair when 
 combed in the dark, &c. That accomplished writer, 
 whose veracity no one would impugn, affirms that 'be- 
 tween this electrical endowment and whatever mesmeric 
 properties he might possess, there is a remarkable re- 
 lationship and parallelism. Whatever state of the at- 
 mosphere tends to accumulate and insulate electricity 
 
 * Descartes, L'Homme, vol. iv., p. 345. Cousin's Edition. 
 ** Ibid. p. 428. *** Facts in Mesmerism. 
 
 16* 
 
244 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 in the body, promotes equally (says Mr. Townshend) the 
 power and facility with which I influence others mes- 
 merically.' What Mr. Townshend thus observes in him- 
 self, American physicians and professors of chemistry 
 depose to have observed in those modern magicians, 
 the mediums of (so called) 'spirit manifestation.' They 
 state that all such mediums are of the electric tempera- 
 ment, thus everywhere found allied with the ecstatic, 
 and their power varies in proportion as the state of the 
 atmosphere serves to depress or augment the electricity 
 stored in themselves. Here, then, in the midst of 
 vagrant phenomena, either too hastily dismissed as al- 
 together the tricks of fraudful imposture, or too cre- 
 dulously accepted as supernatural portents — here, at 
 least, in one generalized fact, we may, perhaps, find a 
 starting-point, from which inductive experiment may 
 arrive soon, or late, at a rational theory. But, how- 
 ever the power of which we are speaking (a power ac- 
 corded to special physical temperament) may or may 
 not be accounted for by some patient student of nature, 
 I am persuaded that it is in that power we are to seek 
 for whatever is not wholly imposture in the attributes 
 assigned to magic or witchcraft. It is well said by a 
 writer who has gone into the depth of these subjects, 
 with the research of a scholar and the science of a pa- 
 thologist, 'that if magic had exclusively reposed on 
 credulity and falsehood, its reign would never have 
 endured so long. But that its art took its origin in 
 singular phenomena, proper to certain affections of the 
 nerves, or manifested in the conditions of sleep. These 
 phenomena, the principle of which was at first un- 
 known, served to root faith in magic, and often abused 
 even enlightened minds. The enchanters and magicians 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 245 
 
 arrived, by divers practices, at the faculty of provoking 
 in other brains a determined order of dreams, of engen- 
 dering hallucinations of all kinds, of inducing fits of 
 hypnotism, trance, mania, during which the persons so 
 affected imagined that they saw, heard, touched super- 
 natural beings, conversed with them, proved their in- 
 fluences, assisted at prodigies of which magic pro- 
 claimed itself to possess the secret. The public, the 
 enchanters, and the enchanted, were equally dupes.'* 
 Accepting this explanation, unintelligible to no physi- 
 cian of a practice so lengthened as mine has been, I 
 draw from it the corollary that as these phenomena are 
 exhibited only by certain special affections, to which 
 only certain special constitutions are susceptible, so not 
 in any superior faculties of intellect, or of spiritual en- 
 dowment, but in peculiar physical temperaments, often 
 strangely disordered, the power of the sorcerer in af- 
 fecting the imagination of others, is to be sought. In 
 the native tribes of Australasia the elders are instructed 
 in the arts of this so-called sorcery, but only in a very 
 few constitutions does instruction avail to produce 
 effects in which the savages recognize the powers of a 
 sorcerer; it is so with the Obi of the negroes. The 
 fascination of Obi is an unquestionable fact, but the 
 Obi man cannot be trained by formal lessons; he is 
 bom a fascinator, as a poet is born a poet. It is so 
 with the Laplanders, of whom Tornseus reports that of 
 those instructed in the magical art 'only a few are 
 capable of it.' 'Some,' he says, 'are naturally magi- 
 cians.' And this fact is emphatically insisted upon by 
 the mystics of our own middle ages, who state that a 
 
 * La Magie et l'Astrologie dans TAntiquitd et au Moyen-Age. Par 
 L. P. Alfred Maury, Mernbre de l'lnstitut. P. 225. 
 
246 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 man must be born a magician; in other words, that 
 the gift is constitutional, though developed by practice 
 and art. Now, that this gift and its practice should 
 principally obtain in imperfect states of civilisation, 
 and fade into insignificance in the busy social en- 
 lightenment of cities, may be accounted for by re- 
 ference to the known influences of imagination. In 
 the cruder states of social life not only is imagination 
 more frequently predominant over all other faculties, 
 but it has not the healthful vents which the intellectual 
 competition of cities and civilization affords. The man 
 who in a savage tribe, or in the dark feudal ages, 
 would be a magician, is in our century a poet, an 
 orator, a daring speculator, an inventive philosopher. 
 In other words, his imagination is drawn to pursuits 
 congenial to those amongst whom it works. It is the 
 tendency of all intellect to follow the directions of the 
 public opinion amidst which it is trained. Where a 
 magician is held in reverence or awe, there will be 
 more practitioners of magic than where a magician is 
 despised as an impostor or shut up as a lunatic. In 
 Scandinavia, before the introduction of Christianity, 
 all tradition records the wonderful powers of the Vala, 
 or witch, who was then held in reverence and honour. 
 Christianity was introduced, and the early Church 
 denounced the Vala as the instrument of Satan, and 
 from that moment down dropped the majestic prophetess 
 into a miserable and execrated old hag!" 
 
 "The ideas you broach," said I, musingly, "have 
 at moments crossed me, though I have shrunk from 
 reducing them to a theory which is but one of pure 
 hypothesis. But this magic, after all, then, you would 
 place in the imagination of the operator, acting on the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 247 
 
 imagination of those whom it affects. Here, at least, I 
 can follow you, to a certain extent, for here we get 
 back into the legitimate realm of physiology." 
 
 u And possibly," said Faber, "we may find hints to 
 guide us to useful examination, if not to complete so- 
 lution, of problems that, once demonstrated, may lead 
 to discoveries of infinite value — hints, I say, in two 
 writers of widely opposite genius — Van Helmont and 
 Bacon. Van Helmont, of all the mediaeval mystics, is, 
 in spite of his many extravagant whims, the one whose 
 intellect is the most suggestive to the disciplined rea- 
 soners of our day. He supposed that the faculty which 
 he calls Phantasy, and which we familiarly call Imagi- 
 nation, is invested with the power of creating for itself 
 ideas independent of the senses, each idea clothed in a 
 form fabricated by the imagination, and becoming an 
 operative entity. This notion is so far favoured by 
 modern physiologists, that Lincke reports a case where 
 the eye itself was extirpated; yet the extirpation was 
 followed by the appearance of luminous figures before 
 the orbit. And again, a woman, stone blind, com- 
 plained 'of luminous images, with pale colours, before 
 her eyes.' Abercrombie mentions the case 'of a lady 
 quite blind, her eyes being also disorganized and sunk, 
 who never walked out without seeing a little old woman 
 in a red cloak who seemed to walk before her.'* Your 
 favourite authority, the illustrious Miiller, who was him- 
 self in the habit of 'seeing different images in the field 
 of vision when he lay quietly down to sleep,' asserts 
 that these images are not merely presented to the 
 fancy, but that even 'the images of dreams are really 
 
 * She had no illusions when within doors. — Abercrombie on the 
 Intellectual Powers, p. 277. (15th edition.) 
 
248 
 
 A STRANGE STOKY. 
 
 seen J and that 'any one may satisfy himself of this by 
 accustoming himself regularly to open his eyes when 
 waking after a dream, the images seen in the dream 
 arc then sometimes visible, and can be observed to 
 disappear gradually.' He confirms this statement, not 
 only by the result of his own experience; but by 
 the observations made by Spinoza, and the yet higher 
 authority of Aristotle, who accounts for spectral appear- 
 ance as the internal action of the sense of vision* And 
 this opinion is favoured by Sir David Brewster, whose 
 experience leads him to suggest 'that the objects of 
 mental contemplation may be seen as distinctly as ex- 
 ternal objects, and will occupy the same local position 
 in the axis of vision as if they had been formed by 
 the agency of light.' Be this as it may, one fact 
 remains, that images can be seen even by the blind as 
 distinctly and as vividly as you and I now see the 
 stream below our feet and the opossums at play upon 
 yonder boughs. Let us come next to some remarkable 
 suggestions of Lord Bacon. In his Natural Histoiy, 
 treating of the force of the imagination, and the help 
 it receives 'by one man working by another," he cites 
 an instance he had witnessed of a kind of juggler, who 
 could tell a person what card he thought of. He 
 mentioned this 'to a pretended learned man, curious in 
 such things' and this sage said to him, 'It is not the 
 knowledge of the man's thought, for that is proper to 
 God, but the enforcing of a thought upon him, and 
 binding his imagination by a stronger, so that he could 
 
 * Miiller, Physiology of the Senses , Baley 1 s translation, pp. 10C8-1395, 
 and elsewhere. Mr. Bain, in his thoughtful and suggestive work on the 
 Senses and Intellect, makes very powerful use of these statements in 
 support of his proposition, which Faber advances in other words, viz., 
 "the return of the nervous currents exactly on their old track in revived 
 sensations. " 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 249 
 
 think of no other card.' You see this sage anticipated 
 our modern electro-biologists! And the learned man 
 then shrewdly asked Lord Bacon, 'Did the juggler tell 
 the card to the man himself who had thought of it, or 
 bid another tell it?' 'He bade another tell it,' answered 
 Lord Bacon. 'I thought so,' returned his learned 
 acquaintance, 'for the juggler himself could not have 
 put on so strong an imagination; but by telling the 
 card to the other, who believed the juggler was some 
 strange man who could do strange things, — that other 
 man caught a strong imagination.' * The whole story 
 is worth reading, because Lord Bacon evidently thinks 
 it conveys a guess worth examining. And Lord Bacon, 
 were he now living, would be the man to solve the 
 mysteries that branch out of mesmerism or (so called) 
 spiritual manifestation, for he would not pretend to 
 despise their phenomena for fear of hurting his reputa- 
 tion for good sense. Bacon then goes on to state that 
 there are three ways to fortify the imagination. 'First, 
 authority derived from belief in an art and in the man 
 who exercises it; secondly, means to quicken and cor- 
 roborate the imagination; thirdly, means to repeat and 
 refresh it.' For the second and the third he refers to 
 the practices of magic; and proceeds afterwards to 
 state on what things imagination has most force; 'upon 
 things that have the lightest and easiest motions, and, 
 
 * Perhaps it is for the reason suggested in the text, viz. that the 
 magician requires the interposition of a third imagination between his own 
 and that of the consulting believer, that any learned adept in (so called) 
 magic will invariably refuse to exhibit without the presence of a third 
 person. Hence the author of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, printed 
 at Paris, 1852-53 — a book less remarkable for its learning than for the 
 earnest belief of a scholar of our own day in the reality of the art of which 
 he records the history — insists much on the necessity of rigidly observing 
 Le Ternaire, in the number of persons who assist in an enchanter's experi- 
 ments. 
 
250 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 therefore, above all, upon the spirits of men, and, in 
 them, on such affections as move lightest — in love, 
 in fear, in irresolution. And,' adds Bacon, earnestly, 
 in a very different spirit from that which dictates to 
 the sages of our time the philosophy of rejecting without 
 trial that which belongs to the Marvellous, 'and what- 
 soever is of this kind, should be thoroughly inquired into.'' 
 And this great founder or renovator of the sober in- 
 ductive system of investigation, even so far leaves it a 
 matter of speculative inquiry whether imagination may 
 not be so powerful that it can actually operate upon a 
 plant, that he says, 'This likewise should be made 
 upon plants, and that diligently, as if you should tell 
 a man that such a tree would die this year, and will 
 him, at these and these times, to go unto it and see 
 how it thriveth. 1 I presume that no philosopher has 
 followed such recommendations; had some great philo- 
 sopher done so, possibly we should by this time know 
 all the secrets of what is popularly called witchcraft." 
 
 And as Faber here paused there came a strange 
 laugh from the fantastic she oak-tree overhanging the 
 stream — a wild, impish laugh. 
 
 "Pooh! it is but the great kingfisher, the laughing 
 bird of the Australian bush," said Julius Faber, amused 
 at my start of superstitious alarm. 
 
 We walked on for some minutes in musing silence, 
 and the rude log hut in which my wise companion had 
 his home came in view; the flocks grazing on undulous 
 pastures, the kine drinking at a watercourse fringed 
 by the slender gum-trees; and a few fields, laboriously 
 won from the luxuriant grass-land, rippling with the 
 wave of corn. 
 
 I halted, and said, "Rest here for a few moments > 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 251 
 
 till I gather up the conclusions to which your specula- 
 tive reasoning seems to invite me." 
 
 We sat down on a rocky crag, half mantled by 
 luxuriant creepers with vermilion buds. 
 
 "From the guesses," said I, "which you have drawn 
 from the erudition of others aud your own ingenious 
 and reflective inductions, I collect this solution of the 
 mysteries, by which the experience I gain from my 
 senses confounds all the dogmas approved by my judg- 
 ment. To the rational conjectures by which, when we 
 first conversed on the marvels that perplexed me, you 
 ascribed to my imagination, predisposed by mental ex- 
 citement, physical fatigue, or derangement, and a con- 
 currence of singular events tending to strengthen such 
 predisposition, — the phantasmal impressions produced 
 on my senses; to these conjectures you now add anew 
 one, more startling and less admitted by sober physio- 
 logists. You conceive it possible that persons endowed 
 with a rare and peculiar temperament can so operate 
 on the imagination, and, through the imagination, on 
 the senses of others, as to exceed even the powers 
 ascribed to the practitioners of mesmerism and electro- 
 biology, and give a certain foundation of truth to the 
 old tales of magic and witchcraft. You imply that 
 Margrave may be a person thus gifted, and hence the 
 influence he unquestionably exercised over Lilian, and 
 over, perhaps, less innocent agents, charmed or impelled 
 by his will. And not discarding, as I own I should 
 have been originally induced to do, the queries or 
 suggestions adventured by Bacon in his discursive 
 speculations on Nature, to wit 'that there be many 
 things, some of them inanimate, that operate upon the 
 spirits of men by secret sympathy and antipathy,' and 
 
252 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 to which Bacon gave the quaint name of 'imaginants;' 
 so even that wand, of which I have described to you 
 the magic-like effects, may have had properties com- 
 municated to it by which it performs the work of the 
 magician, as mesmerists pretend that some substance 
 mesmerized by them can act on the patient as sensibly 
 as if it were the mesmerizer himself. Do I state your 
 suppositions correctly ? " 
 
 "Yes-, always remembering that they are only sup- 
 positions, and volunteered with the utmost diffidence. 
 But since, thus seated in the early wilderness, we per- 
 mit ourselves the indulgence of child-like guess, may it 
 not be possible, apart from the doubtful question 
 whether a man can communicate to an inanimate 
 material substance a power to act upon the mind or 
 imagination of another man — may it not, I say, be 
 possible that such a substance may contain in itself 
 such a virtue or property potent over certain constitu- 
 tions, though not over all? For instance, it is in my 
 experience that the common hazel-wood will strongly 
 affect some nervous temperaments, though wholly 
 without effect on others. I remember a young girl 
 who, having taken up a hazel stick freshly cut, could 
 not relax her hold of it; and when it was wrenched 
 away from her by force was irresistibly attracted to- 
 wards it, repossessed herself of it, and, after holding it 
 a few minutes, was cast into a kind of trance in which 
 she beheld phantasmal visions. Mentioning this curious 
 case, which I supposed unique, to a learned brother of 
 our profession, he told me that he had known other 
 instances of the effect of the hazel upon nervous tem- 
 peraments in persons of both sexes. Possibly it was 
 some such peculiar property in the hazel that made it 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 253 
 
 the wood selected for the old divining rod. Again, we 
 know that the bay-tree or laurel was dedicated to the 
 oracular Pythian Apollo. Now wherever, in the old 
 world, we find that the learning of the priests enabled 
 them to exhibit exceptional phenomena which imposed 
 upon popular credulity, there was a something or other 
 which it is worth a philosopher's while to explore. 
 And, accordingly, I always suspected that there was 
 in the laurel some property favourable to ecstatic vision 
 in highly impressionable temperaments. My suspicion, 
 a few years ago, was justified by the experience of a 
 German physician who had under his care a cataleptic 
 or ecstatic patient, and who assured me that he found 
 nothing in this patient so stimulated the state of 1 sleep- 
 waking,' or so disposed that state to indulge in the 
 hallucinations of prevision, as the berry of the laurel.* 
 Well, we do not know what this wand that produced 
 a seemingly magical effect upon you was really com- 
 posed of. You did not notice the metal employed in 
 the wire which you say communicated a thrill to the 
 sensitive nerves in the palm of the hand. You cannot 
 tell how far it might have been the vehicle of some 
 fluid force in nature. Or still more probably, whether 
 the pores of your hand insensibly imbibed, and com- 
 municated to the brain some of those powerful narcotics 
 from which the Boudhists and the Arabs make unguents 
 that induce visionary hallucinations, and in which sub- 
 stances undetected in the hollow of the wand, or the 
 handle of the wand itself, might be steeped.** One 
 
 * I may add that Dr. Kerner instances the effect of laurel-berries on 
 the Seeress of Prevorst, corresponding with that asserted by Julius Faber 
 in the text. 
 
 ** See for these unguents the work of M. Maury before quoted, La 
 Magie et TAstrologie, &c, p. 417. 
 
254 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 thing we do know, viz. that amongst the ancients, and 
 especially in the East, the construction of wands for 
 magical purposes was no commonplace mechanical 
 craft — but a special and secret art appropriated to men 
 who cultivated with assiduity all that was then known 
 of natural science in order to extract from it agencies 
 that might appear supernatural. Possibly, then, the 
 rods or wands of the East, and of which Scripture 
 makes mention, were framed upon some principles of 
 which we in our day are very naturally ignorant, since 
 we do not ransack science for the same secrets. And 
 thus in the selection or preparation of the material 
 employed, mainly consisted, whatever may be referable 
 to natural philosophical causes, in the antique science 
 of Rhabdomancy, or divination and enchantment by 
 wands. The staff or wand of which you tell me, was, 
 you say, made of iron or steel and tipped with crystal. 
 Possibly iron and crystal do really contain some pro- 
 perties not hitherto scientifically analysed, and only, 
 indeed, potential over exceptional temperaments, which 
 may account for the fact that iron and crystal have 
 been favourites with all professed mystics, ancient and 
 modern. The Delphic Pythoness had her iron tripod, 
 Mesmer his iron bed-, and many persons, indisputably 
 honest, cannot gaze long upon a ball of crystal but 
 what they begin to see visions. I suspect that a philo- 
 sophical cause for such seemingly preternatural effects 
 of crystal and iron will be found in connection with 
 the extreme impressionability to changes in temperature 
 which is the characteristic both of crystal and iron. But 
 if these materials do contain certain powers over ex- 
 ceptional constitutions, we do not arrive at a super- 
 natural, but at a natural phenomenon. 1 ' 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 255 
 
 "Still," said I, "even granting that your explanatory 
 hypothesis hit or approach the truth — still what a 
 terrible power you would assign to man's will over 
 men's reason and deeds!" 
 
 "Man's will," answered Faber, "has over men's 
 deeds and reason, habitual and daily, power infinitely 
 greater, and, when uncounterbalanced , infinitely more 
 dangerous than that which superstition exaggerates in 
 magic. Man's will moves a war that decimates a race, 
 and leaves behind it calamities little less dire than 
 slaughter. Man's will frames, but it also corrupts laws; 
 exalts, but also demoralizes opinion; sets the world mad 
 with fanaticism, as often as it curbs the heart's fierce 
 instincts by the widsom of brotherlike mercy. You 
 revolt at the exceptional, limited sway over some two 
 or three individuals which the arts of a sorcerer (if 
 sorcerer there be) can effect; and yet, at the very mo- 
 ment in which you were perplexed and appalled by 
 such sway, or by your reluctant belief in it, your will 
 was devising an engine to unsettle the reason and 
 wither the hopes of millions!" 
 
 "My will! What engine?" 
 
 "A book conceived by your intellect, adorned by 
 your learning, and directed by your will to steal from 
 the minds of other men their persuasion of the soul's 
 everlasting Hereafter." 
 
 I bowed my head, and felt myself grow pale. 
 
 "And if we accept Bacon's theory of 'secret sym- 
 pathy,' or the plainer physiological maxim that there 
 must be in the imagination, morbidly impressed by the 
 will of another, some trains of idea in affinity with 
 such influence and preinclined to receive it, no magician 
 could warp you to evil, except through thoughts that 
 
256 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 themselves went astray. Grant that the Margrave, who 
 still haunts your mind, did really, by some occult, 
 sinister magnetism, guide the madman to murder — 
 did influence the servant woman's vulgar desire to pry 
 into the secrets of her ill-fated master — or the old 
 maid's covetous wish and envious malignity — what 
 could this awful magician do more than any common- 
 place guilty adviser, to a mind predisposed to accept 
 the advice?" 
 
 "You forget one example which destroys your ar- 
 gument — the spell which this mysterious fascinator 
 could cast upon a creature so pure from all guilt as 
 Lilian!" 
 
 "Will you forgive me if I answer frankly?" 
 "Speak." 
 
 "Your Lilian is spotless and pure as you deem her, 
 and the fascination, therefore, attempts no lure through 
 a sinful desire; it blends with its attraction no senti- 
 ment of affection untrue to yourself. Nay, it is justice 
 to your Lilian, and may be a melancholy comfort to 
 you, to state my conviction, based on the answers my 
 questions have drawn from her, that you were never 
 more cherished by her love than when that love seemed 
 to forsake you. Her imagination impressed her with 
 the illusion that through your love for her you were 
 threatened with a great peril. What seemed the levity 
 of her desertion was the devotion of self-sacrifice. And, 
 in her strange, dream-led wanderings, do not think that 
 she was conscious of the fascination you impute to this 
 mysterious Margrave: in her belief, it was your own 
 guardian angel that guided her steps, and her pilgrimage 
 was ordained to disarm the foe that menaced you, and 
 dissolve the spell that divided her life from yours! But 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 257 
 
 had she not long before this wilfully prepared herself 
 to be so deceived? Had not her fancies been deliberately 
 encouraged to dwell remote from the duties we are 
 placed on the earth to perform? The loftiest faculties 
 in our nature are those that demand the finest poise, 
 not to fall from their height and crush all the Avails 
 that they crown. With exquisite beauty of illustration, 
 Hume says of the dreamers of 'bright fancies,' 'that 
 they may be compared to those angels whom the 
 Scriptures represent as covering their eyes with their 
 wings.' Had you been, like my nephew, a wrestler for 
 bread with the wilderness, what helpmate would your 
 Lilian have been to you? How often would you have 
 cried out in justifiable anger, 'I, son of Adam, am on 
 earth not in paradise. Oh, that my Eve were at home 
 on my hearth, and not in the skies with the seraphs!' 
 No Margrave, I venture to say, could have suspended 
 the healthful affections, or charmed into danger, the 
 wide-awake soul of my Amy. When she rocks in its 
 cradle the babe the young parents entrust to her heed 
 — when she calls the kine to the milking, the chicks 
 to their corn — when she but flits through my room 
 to renew the flowers on the stand, or range in neat 
 order the books that I read — no spell on her fancy 
 could lead her a step from the range of her provident 
 cares! At day she is contented to be on the common- 
 place earth; at evening, she and I knock together at 
 the one door of heaven, which opes to thanksgiving 
 and prayer, and thanksgiving and prayer send us back, 
 calm and hopeful, to the tasks that each morrow re- 
 news." 
 
 I looked up as the old man paused, and in the 
 limpid clearness of the Australian atmosphere, I saw 
 A Strange Story. II. 17 
 
258 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 the child he thus praised standing by the garden-gate, 
 looking towards us, and, though still distant, she seemed 
 near. I felt wrath with her. My heart so cherished 
 my harmless, defenceless Lilian, that I was jealous of 
 the praise taken from her to be bestowed on another. 
 
 "Each of us," said I, coldly, "has his or her own 
 nature, and the uses harmonious to that nature's 
 idiosyncrasy. The world, I grant, would get on very 
 ill if women were not, more or less, actively useful and 
 quietly good, like your Amy. But the world would 
 lose standards that exalt and refine, if no woman were 
 permitted to gain, through the indulgence of fancy, 
 thoughts exquisite as those which my Lilian conceived, 
 while thought, alas, flowed out of fancy. I do not 
 wound you by citing your Amy as a type of the 
 mediocre. I do not claim for Lilian the rank we accord 
 to the type of genius. But both are alike to such types 
 in this: viz. that the uses of mediocrity are for every- 
 day life, and the uses of genius, amidst a thousand 
 mistakes which mediocrity never commits, are to suggest 
 and perpetuate ideas which raise the standard of the 
 mediocre to a nobler level. There would be fewer 
 Amys in life if there were no Lilian! as there would 
 be far fewer good men of sense if there were no erring 
 dreamer of genius!" 
 
 "You say well, Allen Fenwick. And who should 
 be so indulgent to the vagaries of the imagination as 
 the philosophers who taught your youth to doubt every- 
 thing in the Maker's plan of creation which could not 
 be mathematically proved. 'The human mind,' said 
 Luther, 'is like a drunkard on horseback; prop it on 
 one side, and it falls on the other.' So the man who 
 is much too enlightened to believe in a peasant's reli- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 259 
 
 gion, is always sure to set up some inane superstition 
 of his own. Open biographical volumes wherever you 
 please, and the man who has no faith in religion, is a 
 man who has faith in a nightmare. See that type of 
 the elegant sceptics — Lord Herbert, of Cherbury. He 
 is writing a book against Revelation; he asks a sign 
 from heaven to tell him if his book is approved by his 
 Maker, and the man who cannot believe in the miracles 
 performed by his Saviour, gravely tells us of a miracle 
 vouchsafed to himself. Take the hardest and strongest 
 intellect which the hardest and strongest race of mankind 
 ever schooled and accomplished. See the greatest of 
 great men, the great Julius Caesar! Publicly he asserts 
 in the Senate that the immortality of the soul is a vain 
 chimera. He professes the creed which Roman vo- 
 luptuaries deduced from Epicurus, and denies all divine 
 interference in the affairs of the earth. A great authority 
 for the materialists — they have none greater! They 
 can show on their side no intellect equal to Caesar's! 
 and yet this magnificent free-thinker, rejecting a soul 
 and a Deity, habitually, on entering his chariot, muttered 
 a charm; crawled on his knees up the steps of a temple 
 to propitiate the abstraction called 'Nemesis;' and did 
 not cross the Rubicon till he had consulted the omens. 
 What does all this prove? — a very simple truth. 
 Man has some instincts with the brutes; for instance, 
 hunger and sexual love. Man has one instinct peculiar 
 to himself, found universally (or with alleged exceptions 
 in savage states so rare, that they do not affect the 
 general law*) — an instinct of an invisible power 
 
 * It seems extremely doubtful whether the very few instances in which 
 it has been asserted that a savage race has been found without recognition 
 of a Deity and a future state would bear searching examination. It is set 
 forth, for example, in most of the popular works on Australia, that the 
 
 17* 
 
260 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 without this earth, and of a life beyond the grave, 
 which that power vouchsafes to his spirit. But the best 
 of us cannot violate an instinct with impunity. Resist 
 hunger as long as you can, and, rather than die of 
 starvation, your instinct will make you a cannibal; 
 resist love when youth and nature impel to it, and what 
 pathologist does not track one broad path into madness 
 or crime? So with the noblest instinct of all. Reject 
 the internal conviction by which the grandest thinkers 
 have sanctioned the hope of the humblest Christian, 
 and you are servile at once to some faith inconceivably 
 more hard to believe. The imagination will not be 
 withheld from its yearnings for vistas beyond the walls 
 of the flesh and the span of the present hour. Philo- 
 sophy itself, in rejecting the healthful creeds by which 
 man finds his safeguards in sober prayer, and his guide 
 through the wilderness of visionary doubt, invents 
 systems compared to which the mysteries of theology 
 are simple. Suppose any man of strong, plain un- 
 derstanding had never heard of a Deity like Him whom 
 we Christians adore, then ask this man which he can 
 the better comprehend in his miud, and accept as a 
 natural faith, viz. the simple Christianity of our shepherd 
 or the Pantheism of Spinoza? Place before an ac- 
 complished critic (who comes with a perfectly unpre- 
 judiced mind to either inquiry), first, the arguments of 
 
 Australian savages have no notion of a Deity or a Hereafter, that they only 
 worship a devil, or evil spirit. This assumption, though made more 
 peremptorily, and by a greater number of writers than any similar one 
 regarding other savages, is altogether eiToneous, and has no other founda- 
 tion than the ignorance of the writers. The Australian savages recognize 
 a Deity, but He is too august for a name in their own language; in English 
 they call Him 1 he Great Master — an expression synonymous with " The 
 Great Lord." They believe in a hereafter of eternal joy, and place it 
 amongst the stars. — See Strzelecki's Physical Description of New South 
 Wales. 
 
A STRANGE STORS". 
 
 261 
 
 David Hume against the Gospel miracles, and then the 
 metaphysical crotchets of David Hume himself. This 
 subtle philosopher, not content, with Berkeley, to get 
 rid of matter — not content, with Condillac, to get rid 
 of spirit or mind — proceeds to a miracle greater than 
 any his Maker has yet vouchsafed to reveal. He, being 
 then alive and in the act of writing, gets rid of him- 
 self altogether. Nay, he confesses he cannot reason 
 with any one who is stupid enough to think he has a 
 self. 'What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or 
 collection of different perceptions or objects united to- 
 gether by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, 
 to be endowed with perfect simplicity and identity. If 
 any one upon serious and candid reflection thinks he 
 has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can 
 reason with him no longer.' Certainly I would rather 
 believe all the ghost stories upon record, than believe 
 that I am not even a ghost, distinct and apart from the 
 perceptions conveyed to me, no matter how — just as 
 I am distinct and apart from the furniture in my room 
 no matter whether I found it there or whether I bought 
 it. If some old cosmogonist asked you to believe that 
 the primitive cause of the solar system was not to be 
 traced to a Divine Intelligence, but to a nebulosity, 
 originally so diffuse that its existence can with difficulty 
 be conceived, and that the origin of the present system 
 of organized beings equally dispensed with the agency 
 of a creative Mind, and could be referred to molecules 
 formed in the water by the power of attraction, till, by 
 modifications of cellular tissue in the gradual lapse of 
 ages, one monad became an oyster and another a Man 
 — would you not say this cosmogony could scarcely 
 have misled the human understanding even in the 
 
262 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 earliest dawn of speculative inquiry? Yet such are the 
 hypotheses to which the desire to philosophize away 
 that simple proposition of a Divine First Cause, which 
 every child can comprehend, led two of the greatest 
 geniuses and profoundest reasoners of modern times, 
 La Place and La Marck. * Certainly, the more you 
 examine those arch phantasmagorists, the philosophers, 
 who would leave nothing in the universe but their own 
 delusions, the more your intellectual pride may be 
 humbled. The wildest phenomena which have startled 
 you, are not more extravagant than the grave expla- 
 nations which intellectual presumption adventures on 
 the elements of our own organism and the relations be- 
 tween the world of matter and the world of ideas." 
 
 Here our conversation stopped, for Amy had now 
 joined us, and, looking up to reply, I saw the child's 
 innocent face between me and the furrowed brow of the, 
 old man. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 I turned back alone. The sun was reddening the 
 summits of the distant mountain range, but dark clouds, 
 that portended rain, were gathering behind my way and 
 deepening the shadows in many a chasm and hollow 
 which volcanic fires had wrought on the surface of up- 
 lands undulating like diluvian billows fixed into stone 
 in the midst of their stormy swell. I wandered on, and 
 away from the beaten track, absorbed in thought. Could 
 I acknowledge in Julius Faber's conjectures any bases 
 for logical ratiocination? or were they not the ingenious 
 
 * See the observations on T,a Place and La Marek in the Introduction 
 toKirby's Bridgewater Treatise. 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 263 
 
 fancies of that empirical Philosophy of Sentiment by 
 which the aged, in the decline of severer faculties, 
 sometimes assimilate their theories to the hazy romance 
 of youth? I can well conceive that the story I tell 
 will be regarded by most as a wild and fantastic fable ; 
 that by some it may be considered a vehicle for guesses 
 at various riddles of Nature, without or within us, 
 whicl are free to the licence of romance, though for- 
 bidden to the caution of science. But, I — I — know 
 unmistakably my own identity, my own positive place 
 in a substantial universe. And beyond that knowledge, 
 what d) I know? Yet had Faber no ground for his 
 startling parallels between the chimeras of superstition 
 and the ilternatives to faith volunteered by the meta- 
 physical speculations of knowledge. On the theorems 
 of Condilhc, I, in common with numberless contem- 
 poraneous students (for, in my youth, Condillac held 
 sway in tlr> schools, as now, driven forth from the 
 schools, his opinions float loose through the talk and 
 the scribble tf men of the world, who perhaps never 
 opened his pare) — on the theorems of Condillac I had 
 built up a sysem of thought designed to immure the 
 swathed form Oj material philosophy from all rays and 
 all sounds of a world not material , as the walls of 
 some blind mau^leum shut out, from the mummy 
 within, the whisker of winds, and the gleaming of 
 stars. 
 
 And did not tluse very theorems, when carried out 
 to their strict and completing results by the close 
 reasonings of Hume., resolve my own living identity, 
 the one conscious indyisible me, into a bundle of me- 
 mories derived from ttj senses, which had bubbled and 
 duped my experience, and reduce into a phantom as 
 
264 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 spectral as that of the Luminous Shadow, the whole 
 solid frame of creation? 
 
 While pondering these questions, the storm, whose 
 forewarnings I had neglected to heed, burst forth with 
 all the suddenness peculiar to the Australian climes. 
 The rains descended like the rushing of floods. In the 
 beds of water-courses, which, at noon, seemed dried up 
 and exhausted, the torrents began to swell and to rave; 
 the grey crags around them were animated into living 
 waterfalls. I looked round, and the landscape was as 
 changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the player's 
 stage. I was aware that I had wandered far from my 
 home, and I knew not what direction I should take to 
 regain it. Close at hand, and raised above th« torrents 
 that now rushed in many a gully and tributary creek, 
 around and before me, the mouth of a deep ;ave, over- 
 grown with bushes and creeping flowers tossed wildly 
 to and fro between the rain from above ard the spray 
 of cascades below, offered a shelter from die storm. I 
 entered; scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking 
 against me, blinded by the glare of the lightning that 
 followed me into the cavern; and hasteiing to resettle 
 themselves on the pendants of stalactite*, or the jagged 
 buttresses of primaeval wall. 
 
 From time to time the lightning darted into the 
 gloom and lingered amongst its shadows, and I saw, 
 by the flash, that the floors on wiich I stood were 
 strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the 
 fossilized relics of races destroyed Jy the Deluge. The 
 rain continued for more than two hours with unabated 
 violence; then it ceased almost js suddenly as it had 
 come on. And the lustrous mowi of Australia burst 
 from the clouds, shining, brigb as an English dawn, 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 265 
 
 into the hollows of the cave. And then simultaneously 
 arose all the choral songs of the wilderness — creatures 
 whose voices are heard at night, the loud whirr of the 
 locusts, the musical boom of the bullfrog, the cuckoo 
 note of the morepork, and, mournful amidst all those 
 merrier sounds, the hoot of the owl, through the wizard 
 she oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees. 
 
 I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first 
 instinctively on the heavens, next, with more heedful 
 eye, upon the earth. The nature of the soil bore the 
 evidence of volcanic fires long since extinguished. Just 
 before my feet the rays fell full upon a bright yellow 
 streak in the block of quartz, half embedded in 
 the soft moist soil. In the midst of all the solemn 
 thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon 
 heart and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind 
 into a direction remote from philosophy, quickened the 
 heart to a beat that chimed with no household affec- 
 tions. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck 
 the block with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried 
 habitually about me, for the purpose of marking the 
 trees that I wished to clear from the waste of my broad 
 domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and 
 left disburied its glittering treasure. My first glance 
 had not deceived me. I, vain seeker after knowledge, 
 had, at least, discovered gold. I took up the bright 
 metal; — gold! I paused; I looked round; the land 
 that just before had seemed to me so worthless, took the 
 value of Ophir. Its features had before been as un- 
 known to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now 
 my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled 
 the rough map of my possessions, the first careless ride 
 round their boundaries. Yes, the land on which I stood 
 
266 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 — for miles, to the spur of those farther mountains — 
 the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was 
 gold! I closed my eyes; for some moments, visions of 
 boundless wealth, and of the royal power which such 
 wealth could command, swept athwart my brain. But 
 my heart rapidly settled back to its real treasure. 
 "What matters," I sighed, "all this dross? Could 
 Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian's smile one ray of 
 the light which gave 'glory to the grass and splendour 
 to the flower?'" 
 
 So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that 
 raged below, and went on through the moonlight, sor- 
 rowing silently; only thankful for the discovery that 
 had quickened my reminiscence of the landmarks by 
 which to steer my way through the wilderness. 
 
 The night was half gone, for even when I had 
 gained the familiar track through the pastures, the 
 swell of the many winding creeks, that now intersected 
 the way, obliged me often to retrace my steps; to find, 
 sometimes, the bridge of a felled tree which had been 
 providently left unremoved over the now foaming tor- 
 rent, and, more than once, to swim across the current, 
 in which swimmers less strong or less practised would 
 have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and 
 torn trees went clattering and whirled: for I was in 
 danger of life. A band of the savage natives were 
 stealthily creeping on my track — the natives in those 
 parts were not then so much awed by the white man 
 as now. A boomerang* had whirred by me, burying 
 itself amongst the herbage close before my feet. I had 
 turned, sought to find and to face these dastardly foes; 
 they contrived to elude me. But when I moved on, 
 
 * A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian savages. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 267 
 
 my ear, sharpened by danger, beard tbem moving too 
 in my rear. Once only three hideous forms suddenly 
 faced me, springing up from a thicket, all tangled with 
 honeysuckles and creepers of blue and vermilion. I 
 walked steadily up to them; they halted a moment or 
 so in suspense, but perhaps they were scared by my sta- 
 ture or awed by my aspect; and the Unfamiliar, though 
 Human, had terror for them, as the Unfamiliar, although 
 but a Shadow, had had terror for me. They vanished, 
 and as quickly as if they had crept into the earth. 
 
 At length the air brought me the soft perfume of 
 my well-known acacias, and my house rose before me, 
 amidst English flowers and English fruit-trees, under 
 the effulgent Australian moon. Just as I was opening 
 the little gate which gave access from the pasture-land 
 into the garden, a figure in white rose up from under 
 light feathery boughs, and a hand was laid on my arm. 
 I started; but my surprise was changed into fear when 
 I saw the pale face and sweet eyes of Lilian. 
 
 "Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, 
 what is this?" 
 
 "Hush!" she whispered, clinging to me; "hush! do 
 not tell; no one knows. I missed you when the storm 
 came on; I have missed you ever since. Others went 
 in search of you and came back. I could not sleep, 
 but the rest are sleeping, so I stole down to watch for 
 you. Brother, brother, if any harm chanced to you, 
 even the angels could not comfort me; all would be 
 dark, dark. But you are safe, safe, safe!" And she 
 clung to me yet closer. 
 
 "Ah, Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first 
 beheld you was, indeed, prophetic — 'Each has need of 
 the other. 1 Do you remember?" 
 
268 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Softly, softly," she said, u let me think!" She 
 stood quietly by my side, looking up into the sky, with 
 all its numberless stars, and its solitary moon now 
 sinking slow behind the verge of the forest. "It comes 
 back to me," she murmured, softly — "the Long ago 
 — the sweet Long ago!" 
 
 I held my breath to listen. 
 
 "There — there!" she resumed, pointing to the 
 heavens; "do you see? You are there, and my father, 
 and — and — Oh, that terrible face — those serpent 
 eyes — the dead man's skull! Save me — save me!" 
 
 She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I led her 
 gently back towards the house. As we gained the 
 door, which she had left open, the starlight shining 
 across the shadowy gloom within, she lifted her face 
 from my breast, and cast a hurried fearful look round 
 the shining garden, then into the dim recess beyond 
 the threshold. 
 
 "It is there — there! — the Shadow that lured me 
 on, whispering that if I followed it I should join my 
 beloved. False, dreadful Shadow! it will fade soon, 
 fade into the grinning horrible skull. Brother, brother, 
 where is my Allen? Is he dead — dead — or is it I 
 who am dead to him?" 
 
 I could but clasp her again to my breast, and seek 
 to mantle her shivering form with my dripping gar- 
 ments, all the while my eyes, following the direction 
 which hers had taken — dwelt on the walls of the nook 
 within the threshold, half lost in darkness, half white 
 in starlight. And there I, too, beheld the haunting 
 Luminous Shadow, the spectral effigies of the mysterious 
 being, whose very existence in the flesh was a riddle 
 unsolved by my reason. Distinctly I saw the Shadow, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 269 
 
 but its light was far paler, its outline far more vague, 
 than when I had beheld it before. I took courage, as 
 I felt Lilian's heart beating against my own. I ad- 
 vanced — I crossed the threshold — the Shadow was gone. 
 
 "There is no Shadow here — no phantom to daunt 
 thee, my life's life," said I, bending over Lilian. 
 
 "It has touched me in passing; I feel it — cold, 
 cold, cold!" she answered, faintly. 
 
 I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, 
 struck a light, watched over her. At dawn there was 
 a change in her face, and from that time health gradually 
 left her; strength slowly, slowly, yet to me perceptibly, 
 ebbed from her life away. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Months upon months have rolled on since the night 
 in which Lilian had watched for my coining amidst the 
 chilling airs under the haunting moon. I have said 
 that from the date of that night her health began gra- 
 dually to fail, but in her mind there was evidently at 
 work some slow revolution. Her visionary abstractions 
 were less frequent; when they occurred, less prolonged. 
 There was no longer in her soft face that celestial 
 serenity which spoke her content in her dreams; but 
 often a look of anxiety and trouble. She was even 
 more silent than before; but when she did speak, there 
 were now evident some struggling gleams of memory. 
 She startled us, at times, by a distinct allusion to the 
 events and scenes of her early childhood. More than 
 once she spoke of common-place incidents and mere 
 acquaintances at L — . At last she seemed to recognize 
 Mrs. Ashleigh as her mother; but me, as Allen Fen- 
 
270 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 wick, her betrothed, her bridegroom, no! Once or 
 twice she spoke to me of her beloved as of a stranger 
 to myself, and asked me not to deceive her — should 
 she ever see him again? There was one change in 
 this new phase of her state that wounded me to the 
 quick. She had always previously seemed to welcome 
 my presence; now there were hours, sometimes days 
 together, in which my presence was evidently painful 
 to her. She would become agitated when I stole into 
 her room — make signs to me to leave her — grow 
 yet more disturbed if I did not immediately obey, and 
 become calm again when I was gone. 
 
 Faber sought constantly to sustain my courage and 
 administer to my hopes by reminding me of the pre- 
 diction he had hazarded — viz. that through some 
 malady to the frame the reason would be ultimately 
 restored. 
 
 He said, "Observe! her mind was first roused from 
 its slumber by the affectionate, unconquered impulse of 
 her heart. You were absent — the storm alarmed 
 her — she missed you — feared for you. The love 
 within her, not alienated, though latent, drew her 
 thoughts into definite human tracks. And thus, the 
 words, that you tell me she uttered when you appeared 
 before her, were words of love, stricken, though as yet 
 irregularly, as the winds strike the harp-strings, from 
 chords of awakened memory. The same unwonted ex- 
 citement, together with lengthened exposure to the cold 
 night air, will account for the shock to her physical 
 system, and the languor and waste of strength by which 
 it has been succeeded." 
 
 u Ay, and the Shadow that we both saw within the 
 threshold. What of that?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 271 
 
 "Are there no records on evidence, which most 
 physicians of very extended practice will perhaps allow 
 that then experience more or less tends to confirm — 
 no records of the singular co-incidences between in- 
 dividual impressions which are produced by sympathy? 
 Now, whether you or your Lilian were first haunted 
 by this Shadow I know not. Perhaps before it ap- 
 peared to you in the wizard's chamber, it had appeared 
 to her by the Monks' Well. Perhaps, as it came to 
 you in the prison, so it lured her through the solitudes, 
 associating its illusory guidance with dreams of you. 
 And again, when she saw it within your threshold, 
 your phantasy, so abruptly invoked, made you see 
 with the eyes of your Lilian! Does this doctrine of 
 sympathy, though by that very mystery you two loved 
 each other at first — though, without it, love at first 
 sight were in itself an incredible miracle, — does, I 
 say, this doctrine of sympathy seem to you inadmis- 
 sible? Then nothing is left for us but to revolve the 
 conjecture I before threw out? Have certain organiza- 
 tions like that of Margrave the power to impress, 
 through space, the imaginations of those over whom 
 they have forced a control? I know not. But if they 
 have, it is not supernatural; it is but one of those 
 operations in Nature so rare and exceptional, and of 
 which testimony and evidence are so imperfect and so 
 liable to superstitious illusions, that they have not yet 
 been traced; as, if truthful, no doubt they can be, by 
 the patient genius of science, to one of those secondary 
 causes by which the Creator ordains that Nature shall 
 act on Man." 
 
 By degrees I became dissatisfied with my conver- 
 sations with Faber. I yearned for explanations; all 
 
272 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 guesses but bewildered ine more. In his family, with 
 one exception, I found no congenial association. His 
 nephew seemed to me an ordinary specimen of a very 
 trite human nature — a young man of limited ideas, 
 fair moral tendencies, going mechanically right where 
 not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which 
 had urged him to gamble and speculate when thrown 
 in societies rife with such example, led him, now in 
 the Bush, to healthful, industrious, persevering labour. 
 ,Spes fovet agricolas, says the poet; the same Hope 
 which entices the fish to the hook, impels the plough 
 of the husbandman. The young farmer's young wife 
 was somewhat superior to him; she had more refine- 
 ment of taste, more culture of mind, but, living in his 
 life, she was inevitably levelled to his ends and pursuits. 
 And, next to the babe in the cradle, no object seemed 
 to her so important as that of guarding the sheep from 
 the scab and the dingoes. I was amazed to see how 
 quietly a man whose mind was so stored by life and 
 by books as that of Julius Faber — a man who had 
 loved the clash of conflicting intellects, and acquired 
 the rewards of fame — could accommodate himself to 
 the cabined range of his kinsfolks 1 half-civilized exist- 
 ence, take interest in their trivial talk, find varying 
 excitement in the monotonous household of a peasant- 
 like farmer. I could not help saying as much to him 
 once. "My Mend," replied the old man, "believe me, 
 that the happiest art of intellect, however lofty, is that 
 which enables it to be cheerfully at home with the 
 Real!" 
 
 The only one of the family in which Faber was 
 domesticated in whom I found an interest, to whose 
 talk I could listen without fatigue, was the child Amy. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 273 
 
 Simple though she was in language, patient of labour 
 as the most laborious, I recognized in her a quiet 
 nobleness of sentiment, which exalted above the com- 
 monplace the acts of her commonplace life. She had 
 no precocious intellect, no enthusiastic fancies, but she- 
 had an exquisite activity of heart. It was her heart 
 that animated her sense of duty, and made duty a 
 sweetness and a joy. She felt to the core the kindness 
 of those around her; exaggerated, with the warmth of 
 her gratitude, the claims which that kindness imposed. 
 Even for the blessing of life, which she shared with 
 all creation, she felt as if singled out by the unde- 
 served favour of the Creator, and thus was filled with 
 religion because she was filled with love. 
 
 My interest in this child was increased and deepened 
 by my saddened and not wholly unremorseful re- 
 membrance of the night on which her sobs had pierced 
 my ear — the night from which I secretly dated the 
 mysterious agencies that had wrenched from their 
 proper field and career both my mind and my life. 
 But a gentler interest endeared her to my thoughts in 
 the pleasure that Lilian felt in her visits, in the affec- 
 tionate intercourse that sprang up between the afflicted 
 sufferer and the harmless infant. Often when we failed 
 to comprehend some meaning which Lilian evidently 
 wished to convey to us — ive, her mother and her hus- 
 band, — she was understood with as much ease by 
 Amy, the unlettered child, as by Faber the grey-haired 
 thinker. 
 
 "How is it — how is it?" I asked, impatiently 
 and jealously, of Faber. "Love is said to interpret 
 where wisdom fails, and you yourself talk of the marvels 
 which sympathy may effect between lover and beloved, 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 18 
 
274 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 yet when, for days together, I cannot succeed in un- 
 ravelling Lilian's wish or her thought — and her own 
 mother is equally in fault — you or Amy, closeted 
 alone with her for five minutes, comprehend and are 
 comprehended." 
 
 "Allen," answered Faber, "Amy and I believe in 
 spirit, and she, in whom mind is dormant but spirit 
 awake, feels in such belief a sympathy which she has 
 not, in that respect, with yourself nor even with her 
 mother. You seek only through your mind to con- 
 jecture hers. Her mother has sense clear enough where 
 habitual experience can guide it, but that sense is con- 
 fused, and forsakes her, when forced from the regular 
 pathway in which it has been accustomed to tread. 
 Amy and I, through soul guess at soul, and though 
 mostly contented with earth, we can both rise at times 
 into heaven. We pray." 
 
 "Alas!" said I, half mournfully, half angrily; "when 
 you thus speak of Mind as distinct from Soul, it was 
 only in that Vision which you bid me regard as the 
 illusion of a fancy stimulated by chemical vapours, 
 producing on the brain an effect similar to that of 
 opium, or the inhalation of the oxide gas, that I have 
 ever seen the silver spark of the Soul distinct from 
 the light of the Mind. And holding, as I do, that all 
 intellectual ideas are derived from the experiences of 
 the body, whether I accept the theory of Locke, or 
 that of Condillac, or that into which their propositions 
 reach their final development in the wonderful subtlety 
 of Hume, I cannot detect the immaterial spirit in the 
 material substance; much less follow its escape from 
 the organic matter in which the principle of thought 
 ceases with the principle of life. When the meta- 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 275 
 
 physician, contending for the immortality of the think- 
 ing faculty, analyzes Mind, his analysis comprehends 
 the mind of the brute, nay, of the insect, as well as 
 that of man. Take Eeid's definition of Mind, as the 
 most comprehensive which I can at the moment re- 
 member. 'By the mind of a man we understand that 
 in him which thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills.' 
 But this definition only distinguishes the mind of man 
 from that of the brute by superiority in the same at- 
 tributes, and not by attributes denied to the brute. An 
 animal, even an insect, thinks, remembers, reasons, and 
 wills.* FeAV naturalists will now support the doctrine 
 that all the mental operations of brute or insect are to 
 be exclusively referred to instincts; and even if they 
 do, the word instinct is a very vague word — loose 
 and large enough to cover an abyss which our know- 
 ledge has not sounded. And, indeed, in proportion as 
 an animal, like the dog, becomes cultivated by inter- 
 course, his instincts grow weaker and his ideas, 
 formed by experience (viz. his mind), more developed, 
 often to the conquest of the instincts themselves. Hence, 
 with his usual candour, Dr. Abercrombie, in contend- 
 ing 'that everything mental ceases to exist after death, 
 
 * "Are intelligence and instinct, thus differing in their relative pro- 
 portion in man as compared with all other animals , yet the same in kind 
 and manner of operation in both? To this question we must give at once 
 an affirmative answer. The expression of Cuvier , regarding the faculty of 
 reasoning in lower animals, ' Leur intelligence execute des operations du 
 nieine genre,' is true in its full sense. We can in no manner define reason 
 so as to exclude acts which are at every moment present to our observa- 
 tion, and which we find in many iustances to contravene the natural 
 instincts of the species. The demeanour and acts of the dog in reference 
 to his master, or the various uses to which he is put by man, are as strictly 
 logical as those we witness in the ordinary transactions of life." — (Sir 
 Henry Holland, chapters on Mental Physiology, p. 220.) The whole of the 
 chapter on instincts and habits in this work should be read in connection 
 with the passage just quoted. The work itself, at once cautious and sug- 
 gestive, is not one of the least obligations which philosophy and religion 
 alike owe to the lucubrations of Euglish medical men. 
 
 18* 
 
276 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 when we know that everything corporeal continues to 
 exist, is a gratuitous assumption contrary to every rule 
 of philosophical inquiry,' — feels compelled, by his 
 reasoning, to admit the probability of a future life even 
 to the lower animals. His words are: 'To this mode 
 of reasoning it has been objected that it would go to 
 establish an immaterial principle in the lower animals, 
 which in them exhibits many of the phenomena of 
 mind. I have only to answer, Be it so. There are 
 in the lower animals many of the phenomena of mind, 
 and with regard to these we also contend that they 
 are entirely distinct from anything we know of the 
 properties of matter, which is all that we mean, or can 
 mean, by being immaterial.'* Am I then driven to 
 admit that if man's mind is immaterial and imperish- 
 able, so also is that of the ape and the ant?" 
 
 "I own," said Faber, with his peculiar smile, arch 
 and genial, "that if I were compelled to make that ad- 
 mission, it would not shock my pride. I do not pre- 
 sume to set any limit to the goodness of the Creator; 
 and should be as humbly pleased as the Indian, if in 
 
 ' yonder sky 
 
 My faithful clog should bear mo company.' 
 
 You are too familiar with the works of that Titan in 
 wisdom and error, Descartes, not to recollect the in- 
 teresting correspondence between the urbane philosopher 
 and our combative countryman, Henry More,** on this 
 very subject; in which certainly More has the best of 
 it when Descartes insists on reducing what he calls the 
 soul (l'ame) of brutes into the same kind of machines 
 as man constructs from inorganised matter. The 
 
 * Ahorcrombie's Intellectual Powers, p. 26. Fiftoenth edition. 
 ** CEuvres do Descartes, vol. x. p. 178, et seq. (Cousin's edition). 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 277 
 
 learning, indeed, lavished on the insoluble question in- 
 volved in the psychology of the inferior animals, is a 
 proof at least of the all-inquisitive, redundant spirit ot 
 man.* We have almost a literature in itself devoted 
 to endeavours to interpret the language of brutes.** 
 Dupont de Nemours has discovered that dogs talk in 
 vowels, using only two consonants, G, z, when they are 
 angry. He asserts that cats employ the same vowels 
 as dogs; but their language is more affluent in conso- 
 nants, including m, n, b, r, v, f. How many laborious 
 efforts have been made to define and to construe the 
 song of the nightingale! One version of that song by 
 Bechstein, the naturalist, published in 1840, I re- 
 member t|> have seen. And I heard a lady, gifted 
 with a singularly charming voice, chant the mys- 
 terious vowels with so exquisite a pathos, that one 
 could not refuse to believe her when she declared that 
 she fully comprehended the bird's meaning, and gave 
 to the nightingale's warble the tender interpretation of 
 her own woman's heart. 
 
 "But leaving all such discussions to their proper 
 place amongst the Curiosities of Literature, I come in 
 earnest to the question you have so earnestly raised, 
 and to me the distinction between man and the lower 
 animals in reference to a spiritual nature designed for 
 a future existence, and the mental operations whose 
 uses are bounded to an existence on earth, seems inef- 
 
 * M. Tissot, the distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Dijon, in 
 his recent work, La Vie dans Tllomme, p. 255, gives a long and illustrious 
 list of philosophers who assign a rational soul (aine) to the inferior 
 animals, though he truly adds, "that they have not always the courage of 
 their opinion." 
 
 ** Some idea of the extent of research and imagination bestowed on 
 this subject may be gleaned from the sprightly work of Pierquin de 
 Gemblouz, Idiomologie des Animaux, published at Paris, 1844. 
 
278 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 faceably clear. Whether ideas or even perceptions be 
 innate or all formed by experience is a speculation for 
 metaphysicians, which, so far as affects the question of 
 an immaterial principle, I am quite willing to lay 
 aside. I can well understand that a materialist may 
 admit innate ideas in Man, as he must admit them in 
 the instinct of brutes, tracing them to hereditary pre- 
 dispositions. On the other hand, we know that the 
 most devout believers in our spiritual nature have in- 
 sisted, with Locke, in denying any idea, even of the 
 Deity, to be innate. 
 
 "But here comes my argument. I care not how 
 ideas are formed, the material point is how are the 
 capacities to receive ideas, formed? The ideas may all 
 come from experience, but the capacity to feceive the 
 ideas must be inherent. I take the word capacity as 
 a good plain English word, rather than the more 
 technical word 'receptivity,' employed by Kant. And 
 by capacity I mean the passive power* to receive 
 ideas, whether in man or in any living thing by which 
 ideas are received. A man and an elephant is each 
 formed with capacities to receive ideas suited to the 
 several place in the universe held by each. 
 
 "The more I look through nature the more I find 
 that on all varieties of organized life is carefully be- 
 stowed the capacity to receive the impressions, be they 
 called perceptions or ideas, which are adapted to the 
 uses each creature is intended to derive from them. I 
 find, then, that Man alone is endowed with the capacity 
 to receive the ideas of a God, of Soul, of Worship, of 
 a Hereafter. I see no trace of such a capacity in the 
 
 * "Faculty is active power; capacity is passive power." — Sir W- Ha- 
 milton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. i. p. 178. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 279 
 
 inferior races; nor, however their intelligence may be 
 refined by culture, is such capacity ever apparent in them. 
 
 "But, wherever capacities to receive impressions 
 are sufficiently general in any given species of crea- 
 ture, to be called universal to that species, and yet not 
 given to another species, then, from all analogy 
 throughout Nature, those capacities are surely designed 
 by Providence for the distinct use and conservation of 
 the species to which they are given. 
 
 "It is no answer to me to say that the inherent 
 capacities thus bestowed on Man do not suffice in 
 themselves to make him form right notions of a Deity 
 or a Hereafter; because it is plainly the design of 
 Providence that Man must learn to correct and improve 
 all his ndlions by his own study and observation. He 
 must build a hut before he can build a Parthenon; he 
 must believe with the savage or the heathen before he 
 can believe with the philosopher or Christian. In a 
 word, in all his capacities, Man has only given to him, 
 not the immediate knowledge of the Perfect, but the 
 means to strive towards the Perfect. And thus one of 
 the most accomplished of modern reasoners, to whose 
 lectures you must have listened with delight in your 
 college days, says well: 'Accordingly, the sciences al- 
 ways studied with keenest interest are those in a state 
 of progress and uncertainty; absolute certainty and ab- 
 solute completion would be the paralysis of any study, 
 and the last worst calamity that could befall Man, as 
 he is at present constituted, would be that full and 
 final possession of speculative truth which he now 
 vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intel- 
 lectual happiness.'* 
 
 * Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures, vol. 1. p. 10. 
 
280 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 "Well, then, in all those capacities for the reception 
 of impressions from external Nature, which are given 
 to Man and not to the brutes, I see the evidence of 
 Man's Soul. I can understand why the inferior animal 
 has no capacity to receive the idea of a Deity and of 
 Worship — simply because the inferior animal, even 
 if graciously admitted to a future life, may not therein 
 preserve the sense of its identity. I can understand 
 even why that sympathy with each other which we 
 men possess, and which constitutes the great virtue we 
 emphatically call Humanity, is not possessed by the 
 lesser animals (or, at least, in a very rare and ex- 
 ceptional degree), even where they live in communities, 
 like beavers, or bees, or ants; because men are destined 
 to meet, to know, and to love each other m the life 
 to come, and the bond between the brutes ceases 
 here. 
 
 "Now, the more, then, we examine the inherent 
 capacities bestowed distinctly and solely on Man, the 
 more they seem to distinguish him from the other races 
 by their comprehension of objects beyond his life upon 
 this earth. 'Man alone,' says Miiller, 'can conceive 
 abstract notions:' and it is in abstract notions — such 
 as time, space, matter, spirit, light, form, quantity, es- 
 sence — that man grounds not only all philosophy, 
 all science, but all that practically improves one ge- 
 neration for the benefit of the next. And why? Be- 
 cause all these abstract notions unconsciously lead the 
 mind away from the material into the immaterial ; from 
 the present into the future. But if man ceases to 
 exist when he disappears in the grave, you must be 
 compelled to affirm that he is the only creature in 
 existence whom Nature or Providence has condescended 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 to deceive and cheat by capacities for which there are 
 no available objects. How nobly and how truly has 
 Chalmers said: 'What inference shall we draw from 
 this remarkable law in Nature that there is nothing 
 waste and nothing meaningless in the feelings and 
 faculties wherewith living creatures are endowed? For 
 each desire there is a counterpart object; for each 
 faculty there is room and opportunity for exercise 
 either in the present or in the coming futurity. Now, 
 but for the doctrine of immortality, Man would be an 
 exception to this law — he would stand forth as an 
 anomaly in Nature, with aspirations in his heart for 
 which the universe had no antitype to offer, with 
 capacities of understanding and thought that never 
 were to be followed by objects of corresponding great- 
 ness through the whole history of his being! 
 
 " 'With the inferior animals there is a certain 
 squareness of adjustment, if we may so term it, be- 
 tween each desire and its correspondent gratification. 
 The one is evenly met by the other, and there is a 
 fulness and definiteness of enjoyment up to the capacity 
 of enjoyment. Not so with Man, who, both from the 
 vastness of his propensities and the vastness of his 
 powers, feels himself chained and beset in a field too 
 narrow for him. He alone labours under the discomfort 
 of an incongruity between his circumstances and his 
 powers, and unless there be new circumstances awaiting 
 him in a more advanced state of being, he, the noblest 
 of Nature's products here, would turn out to be the 
 greatest of her failures.'* 
 
 * Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii. pp. 28, 30. Perhaps I should 
 observe that here and elsewhere in the dialogues between Faber and Fen- 
 
282 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "This, then, I take to be the proof of Soul in Man, 
 not that he has a mind — because, as you justly say, 
 inferior animals have that, though in a lesser degree — 
 but because he has the capacities to comprehend, as 
 soon as he is capable of any abstract ideas whatsoever, 
 the very truths not needed for self-conservation on 
 earth, and therefore not given to yonder ox and opos- 
 sum — viz. the nature of Deity — Soul — Hereafter. 
 And in tLe recognition of these truths, the Human 
 society that excels the society of beavers, bees, and 
 ants by perpetual and progressive improvement on the 
 notions inherited from its progenitors, rests its basis. 
 Thus, in fact, this world is benefited for men by their 
 belief in the next, while the society of brutes remains 
 age after age the same. Neither the bee nor the 
 beaver has, in all probability, improved since the 
 Deluge. 
 
 "But, inseparable from the conviction of these 
 truths is the impulse of prayer and worship. It does 
 not touch my argument when a philosopher of the 
 school of Bolingbroke or Lucretius says 'that the 
 origin of prayer is in Man's ignorance of the pheno- 
 mena of Nature.' That it is fear or ignorance which, 
 'when rocked the mountains or when groaned the 
 ground, taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,' 
 my answer is — the brutes are much more forcibly 
 impressed by natural phenomena than Man is; the 
 bird and the beast know before you and I do when the 
 mountain will rock and the ground groan, and their 
 instinct leads them to shelter; but it does not lead 
 
 wick it has generally been thought better to substitute the words of tho 
 author quoted for the mei-e outline or purport of the quotation which me- 
 mory afforded to the interlocutor. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 283 
 
 them to prayer. If my theory be right that Soul is to 
 be sought not in the question whether mental ideas be 
 innate or formed by experience, by the senses, by as- 
 sociation or habit, but in the inherent capacity to re- 
 ceive ideas, — then, the capacity bestowed on Man 
 alone, to be impressed by Nature herself with the idea 
 of a Power superior to Nature, with which Power he 
 can establish commune, is a proof that to Man alone 
 the Maker has made Nature itself proclaim His exist- 
 ence — that to Man alone the Deity vouchsafes 
 the communion with Himself which comes from 
 prayer." 
 
 "Even were this so," said I, "is not the Creator 
 omniscient? if all- wise, all-foreseeing? If all-foreseeing, 
 all pre-ordaining? Can the prayer of His creature alter 
 the ways of His will?" 
 
 "For the answer to a question," returned Faber, 
 "which is not unfrequently asked by the clever men of 
 the world, I ought to refer you to the skilled theologians 
 who have so triumphantly earned the reasoner over 
 that ford of doubt which is crossed every day by the 
 infant. But as we have not their books in the wilder- 
 ness, I am contented to draw my reply as a necessaiy 
 and logical sequence from the propositions I have 
 sought to ground on the plain observation of Nature. 
 I can only guess at the Deity's Omniscience, or His 
 modes of enforcing His power, by the observation of 
 His general laws; and of all His laws, I know of none 
 more general than the impulse which bids men pray — 
 which makes Nature so act, that all the phenomena of 
 Nature we can conceive, however startling and inexpe- 
 rienced, do not make the brute pray; but there is not 
 a trouble that can happen to Man, but what his im- 
 
284 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 pulse is to pray, — always provided, indeed, that lie 
 is not a philosopher. I say not this in scorn of the 
 philosopher, to whose wildest guess our obligations are 
 infinite, but simply because for all which is impulsive 
 to Man, there is a reason in Nature which no philo- 
 sophy can explain away. I do not, then, bewilder my- 
 self by seeking to bind and limit the Omniscience of 
 the Deity to my finite ideas. I content myself with 
 supposing that somehow or other, He has made it quite 
 c-ompatible with His Omniscience that Man should obey 
 the impulse which leads him to believe that, in address- 
 ing a Deity, he is addressing a tender, compassionate, 
 benignant Father, and in that obedience shall obtain 
 beneficial results. If that impulse be an illusion, then 
 we must say that Heaven governs the earth by a lie; 
 and that is impossible, because, reasoning by analogy, 
 all Nature is truthful — that is, Nature gives to no 
 species instinct or impulses which are not of service to 
 it. Should I not be a shallow physician if, where I 
 find in the human organization a principle or a pro- 
 perty so general that I must believe it normal to the 
 healthful conditions of that organization, I should re- 
 fuse to admit that Nature intended it for use? Reason- 
 ing by all analogy, must I not say the habitual neglect 
 of its use must more or less injure the harmonious well- 
 being of the whole human system? I could have much 
 to add upon the point in dispute, by which the creed 
 implied in your question would enthral the Divine 
 mercy by the necessities of its Divine wisdom, and sub- 
 stitute for a benignant Deity a relentless Fate. But here I 
 should exceed my province. I am no theologian. Enough 
 for me that in all my afflictions, all my perplexities, 
 an impulse, that I obey as an instinct, moves me at once 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 285 
 
 to prayer. Do I find by experience that the prayer is 
 heard, that the affliction is removed, the doubt is solved? 
 That, indeed, would be presumptuous to say. But it 
 is not presumptuous to think that by the efficacy of 
 prayer my heart becomes more fortified against the 
 sorrow, and my reason more serene amidst the doubt." 
 
 I listened, and ceased to argue. I felt as if in that 
 solitude, and in the pause of my wonted mental occu- 
 pations, my intellect was growing languid, and its old 
 weapons rusting in disuse. My pride took alarm. I 
 had so from my boyhood cherished the idea of fame, 
 and so glorified the search after knowledge, that I re- 
 coiled in dismay from the thought that I had relin- 
 quished knowledge, and cut myself off from fame. I re- 
 solved to resume my once favourite philosophical pur- 
 suits, re-examine and complete the Work to which I 
 had once committed my hopes of renown; and, simul- 
 taneously, a restless desire seized me to communicate, 
 though but at brief intervals, with other minds than 
 those immediately within my reach — minds fresh from 
 the old world, and reviving the memories of its vivid 
 civilization. Emigrants frequently passed my doors, 
 but I had hitherto shrunk from tendering the hospita- 
 lities so universally accorded in the colony. I could 
 not endure to expose to such rough strangers my 
 Lilian's mournful affliction, and that thought was not 
 less intolerable to Mrs. Ashleigh. I now hastily con- 
 structed a log building a few hundred yards from the 
 house, and near the main track taken by travellers 
 through the spacious pastures. I transported to this 
 building my books and scientific instruments. In an 
 upper story I placed my telescopes and lenses, my 
 crucibles and retorts. I renewed my chemical experi- 
 
286 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 ments — I sought to invigorate my mind by other 
 branches of science which I had hitherto less cultured 
 — meditated new theories on Light and Colour — col- 
 lected specimens in Natural History — subjected ani- 
 malcules to my microscope — geological fossils to my 
 hammer. With all these quickened occupations of 
 thought, I strove to distract myself from sorrow, and 
 strengthen my reason against the illusions of my fan- 
 tasy. The Luminous Shadow was not seen again on 
 my wall, and the thought of Margrave himself was 
 banished. 
 
 In this building I passed many hours of each day, 
 more and more earnestly plunging my thoughts into 
 the depths of abstract study, as Lilian's unaccountable 
 dislike to my presence became more and more decided. 
 When I thus ceased to think that my life cheered and 
 comforted hers, my heart's occupation was gone. I had 
 annexed to the apartment reserved for myself in this 
 log hut a couple of spare rooms, in which I could ac- 
 commodate passing strangers. I learned to look for- 
 ward to their coming with interest, and to see them 
 depart with regret; yet, for the most part, they were 
 of the ordinary class of colonial adventurers: bankrupt 
 tradesmen, unlucky farmers, forlorn mechanics, hordes 
 of unskilled labourers, now and then a briefless bar- 
 rister, or a sporting collegian who had lost his all on 
 the Derby. One day, however, a young man of edu- 
 cation and manners that unmistakably proclaimed the 
 cultured gentleman of Europe stopped at my door. He 
 was a cadet, of a noble Prussian family, which for 
 some political reasons had settled itself in Paris; there, 
 he had become intimate with young French nobles, 
 and, living the life of a young French noble, had soon 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 287 
 
 scandalized his German parents, forestalled his slender 
 inheritance, and been compelled to fly his fathers 
 frown and his tailor's bills. All this he told me with 
 a lively frankness which proved how much the wit of 
 a German can be quickened in the atmosphere of Paris. 
 An old college friend, of birth inferior to his own, had 
 been as unfortunate in seeking to make money as this 
 young prodigal had been an adept in spending it. The 
 friend, a few years previously, had accompanied other 
 Germans in a migration to Australia, and was already 
 thriving; the spendthrift noble was on his way to join 
 the bankrupt trader, at a German settlement fifty miles 
 distant from my house. This young man was unlike 
 any German I ever met. He had all the exquisite 
 levity by which the well-bred Frenchman gives to the 
 doctrines of the Cynic the grace of the Epicurean. He 
 owned himself to be good for nothing with an elegance 
 of candour which not only disarmed censure, but seemed 
 to challenge admiration; and, withal, the happy spend- 
 thrift was so inebriate with hope — sure that he should 
 be rich before he was thirty. How and wherefore rich? 
 — he could have no more explained than I can square 
 the circle. When the grand serious German nature 
 does Frenchify itself, it can become so extravagantly 
 French! 
 
 I listened, almost enviously, to this light-hearted 
 profligate's babble, as we sat by my rude fireside — I, 
 sombre man of science and sorrow, he, smiling child of 
 idlesse and pleasure, so much one of Nature's courtier- 
 like nobles, that there, as he smoked his villanous pipe, 
 in his dust-soiled shabby garments, and with his ruf- 
 fianly revolver stuck into his belt, I would defy the 
 daintiest Aristarch who ever presided as critic over the 
 
288 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 holiday world not to have said, "There smiles the genius 
 beyond my laws, the bom darling of the Graces, who 
 in every circumstance, in every age, like Aristippus, 
 would have socially charmed — would have been wel- 
 come to the orgies of a Caesar or a Clodius, to the 
 boudoirs of a Montespan or a Pompadour — have 
 lounged through the Mulberry Gardens with a Ro- 
 chester and a Buckingham, or smiled, from the death- 
 cart with a Richelieu and a Lauzun — a gentleman's 
 disdain of a mob!" 
 
 I was so thinking as we sat, his light talk frothing 
 up from his careless lips, when suddenly from the 
 spray and the sparkle of that light talk was flung forth 
 the name of Margrave. 
 
 "Margrave!" I exclaimed. "Pardon me. What 
 of him?" 
 
 "What of him! I asked if, by chance, you knew 
 the only Englishman I ever had the meanness to 
 envy?" 
 
 "Perhaps you speak of one person, and I thought 
 of another." 
 
 " Pardieu , my dear host, there can scarcely be two 
 Margraves ! The one of whom I speak flashed like a meteor 
 upon Paris, bought from a prince of the Bourse a palace 
 that might have lodged a prince of the blood royal, 
 eclipsed our Jew bankers in splendour, our jeunesse 
 doree in good looks and hair-brain adventures, and, 
 strangest of all, filled his salons with philosophers and 
 charlatans, chemists and spirit-rappers; insulting the 
 gravest dons of the schools by bringing them face to 
 face with the most impudent quacks, the most ridiculous 
 dreamers — and yet, withal, himself so racy and 
 charming, so bon prince, so bon enfant! For six 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 289 
 
 months he was the rage at Paris: perhaps he might 
 have continued to be the rage there for six years, but 
 all at once the meteor vanished as suddenly as it had 
 Hashed. Is this the Margrave whom you know?" 
 
 "I should not have thought the Margrave whom I 
 knew could have reconciled his tastes to the life of 
 cities." 
 
 "Nor could this man: cities were too tame for him. 
 lie has gone to some far-remote wilds in the East — 
 some say in search of the Philosopher's stone — for 
 he actually maintained in his house a Sicilian adven- 
 turer, who, when at work on that famous discovery, 
 was stifled by the fumes of his own crucible. After 
 that misfortune, Margrave took Paris in disgust, and 
 we lost him." 
 
 "So this is the only Englishman whom you envy! 
 Envy him! Why?" 
 
 "Because he is the only Englishman I ever met 
 who contrived to be rich and yet free from the spleen; 
 I envied him because one had only to look at his face, 
 and see how thoroughly he enjoyed the life of which 
 your countrymen seem to be so heartily tired! But now 
 that I have satisfied your curiosity, pray satisfy mine. 
 Who and what is this Englishman?" 
 
 "Who and what was he supposed at Paris to 
 be?" 
 
 "Conjectures were numberless. One of your coun- 
 trymen suggested that which was most generally 
 favoured. This gentleman, whose name I forget, but 
 who was one of those old roues who fancy themselves 
 young because they live with the young, no sooner set 
 eyes upon Margrave, than he exclaimed, 'Louis Grayle 
 come to life again, as I saw him forty-four years ago! 
 .•1 Strange Slory. II. 19 
 
290 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 But no — still younger, still handsomer — it must he 
 his son!'" 
 
 "Louis Grayle, who was said to be murdered at 
 Aleppo?" 
 
 u The same. That strange old man was enormously 
 rich, but -it seems that he hated his lawful heirs, and 
 left behind him a fortune so far below that which he 
 was known to possess, that he must certainly have 
 disposed of it secretly before his death. Why so dis- 
 pose of it, if not to enrich some natural son, whom, for 
 private reasons, he might not have wished to ac- 
 knowledge, or point out to the world by the signal 
 bequest of his will? All that Margrave ever said of 
 himself and the source of his wealth confirmed this be- 
 lief. He frankly proclaimed himself a natural son, 
 enriched by a father whose name he knew not nor 
 cared to know." 
 
 "It is true. And Margrave quitted Paris for the 
 East? When?" 
 
 "I can tell you the date within a day or two, for 
 his flight preceded mine by a week; and, happily, all 
 Paris was so busy in talking of it, that I slipped away 
 without notice." 
 
 And the Prussian then named a date which it 
 thrilled me to hear, for it was in that very month, and 
 about that very day, that the Luminous Shadow had 
 stood within my threshold. 
 
 The young Count now struck off into other sub- 
 jects of talk: nothing more was said of Margrave. An 
 hour or two afterwards, he went on his way, and I re- 
 mained long gazing musingly on the embers of the fire 
 dying low on my hearth. 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 291 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 My Work, my Philosophical Work — the ambi- 
 tious hope of my intellectual life — how eagerly I re- 
 turned to it again! Far away from my household 
 grief, far away from my haggard perplexities. Neither 
 a Lilian nor a Margrave there! 
 
 As I went over what I had before written, each 
 link in its chain of reasoning seemed so serried, that 
 to alter one were to derange all: and the whole reason- 
 ing was so opposed to the possibility of the wonders I 
 myself had experienced, so hostile to the subtle hypo- 
 theses of a Faber, or the childlike belief of an Amy, 
 that I must have destroyed the entire work if I had 
 admitted such contradictions to its design! 
 
 But the Work was I myself! I, in my solid, sober, 
 healthful mind, before the brain had been perplexed 
 by a phantom. Were phantoms to be allowed as testi- 
 monies against science? No; in returning to my Book, 
 I returned to my former Me! 
 
 How strange is that contradiction between our 
 being as man and our being as author! Take any 
 writer enamoured of a system — a thousand things 
 may happen to him every day which might shake his 
 faith in that system; and while he moves about as 
 mere man, his faith is shaken. But when he settles 
 himself back into the phase of his being as author, the 
 mere act of taking pen in hand and smoothing the 
 paper before him, restores his speculations to their an- 
 cient mechanical train. The system, the beloved sys- 
 tem, re-asserts its tyrannic sway, and he either ignores, 
 or moulds into fresh proofs of his theory as author, all 
 
 19* 
 
292 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 which, an hour before, had given his theory the lie in 
 his living perceptions as man. 
 
 I adhered to my system; I continued my work. 
 Here, in the barbarous desert, was a link between me 
 and the Cities of Europe. All else might break down 
 under me. The love I had dreamed of was blotted 
 out from the world and might never be restored; my 
 hearth might be lonely, my life be an exile's. My rea- 
 son might, at last, give way before the spectres which 
 awed my senses, or the sorrows which stormed my 
 heart. But here, at least, was a monument of my ra- 
 tional thoughtful Me — of my individualized identity 
 in multiform creation. And my mind, in the noon of 
 its force , would shed its light on the earth when my 
 form was resolved to its elements. Alas! in this very 
 yearning for the Hereafter, though but the Hereafter 
 of a Name, could I see only the craving of Mind, and 
 hear not the whisper of Soul? 
 
 The avocations of a colonist, usually so active, had 
 little interest for me. This vast territorial lordship, in 
 which, could I have endeared its possession by the 
 hopes that animate a Founder, I should have felt all 
 the zest and the pride of ownership, was but the run 
 of a common to the passing emigrant, who would leave 
 no son to inherit the tardy products of his labour. I 
 was not goaded to industry by the stimulus of need. 
 I could only be ruined if I risked all my capital in 
 the attempt to improve. I lived, therefore, amongst 
 my fertile pastures, as careless of culture as the Eng- 
 lish occupant of the Highland moor, which he rents for 
 the range of its solitudes. 
 
 I knew, indeed, that if ever I became avaricious, 
 I might swell my modest affluence into absolute wealth. 
 
A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 293 
 
 I bad revisited the spot in which I had discovered the 
 nugget of gold, and had found the precious metal in 
 rich abundance just under the first coverings of the 
 alluvial soil. I concealed my discovery from all. I 
 knew that did I proclaim it, the charm of my Bush- 
 life would be gone. My fields would be infested by 
 all the wild adventurers who gather to gold as the 
 vultures of prey round a carcase; my servants would 
 desert me, my very flocks would be shepherdless! 
 
 Months again rolled on months. I had just ap- 
 proached the close of my beloved Work, when it was 
 again suspended, and by an anguish keener than all 
 which I had previously known. 
 
 Lilian became alarmingly ill. Her state of health, 
 long gradually declining, had hitherto admitted 
 chequered intervals of improvement, and exhibited no 
 symptoms of actual danger. But now she was seized 
 with a kind of chronic fever, attended with absolute 
 privation of sleep, an aversion to even the lightest 
 nourishment, and an acute nervous susceptibility to all 
 the outward impressions, of which she had long seemed 
 so unconscious; morbidly alive to the faintest sound, 
 shrinking from the light as from a torture. Her 
 previous impatience at my entrance into her room be- 
 came aggravated into vehement emotions, convulsive 
 paroxysms of distress. So that Faber banished me 
 from her chamber, and, with a heart bleeding at every 
 fibre, I submitted to the cruel sentence. 
 
 Faber had taken up his abode in my house and 
 brought Amy with him; one or the other never left 
 Lilian, night or day. The great phj^sician spoke 
 doubtfully of the case, but not despairingly. 
 
 "Remember," he said, "that, in spite of the want 
 
A STRANGE STORY, 
 
 of sleep, the abstinence from food, the form has not 
 wasted as it would do, were this fever inevitably mor- 
 tal. It is upon that phenomenon I build a hope that 
 I have not been mistaken in the opinion I hazarded 
 from the first. We are now in the midst of the cri- 
 tical struggle between life and reason; if she preserve 
 the one, my conviction is that she will regain the 
 other. That seeming antipathy to yourself is a good 
 omen. You are inseparably associated with her intel- 
 lectual world; in proportion as she revives to it, must 
 become vivid and powerful the reminiscences of the 
 shock that annulled, for a time, that world to her. So 
 I welcome, rather than fear, the over-susceptibility of 
 the awakening senses to external sights and sounds. A 
 few days will decide if I am right. In this climate the 
 progress of acute maladies is swift, but the recovery 
 from them is yet more startlingly rapid. Wait — en- 
 dure — be prepared to submit to the will of Heaven- 
 but do not despond of its mercy." 
 
 I rushed away from the consoler — away into the 
 thick of the forests, the heart of the solitude. All 
 around me, there, was joyous with life; the locusts 
 sang amidst the herbage; the cranes gambolled on the 
 banks of the creek; the squirrel-like opossums frolicked 
 on the feathery boughs. u And what," said I to myself 
 — "what if that which seems so fabulous in the dis- 
 tant being, whose existence has bewitched my own, be 
 substantially true? What if to some potent medica- 
 ment Margrave owes his glorious vitality, his radiant 
 youth? Oh! that I had not so disdainfully turned 
 away from his hinted solicitations — to what? — to 
 nothing guiltier than lawful experiment. Had I been 
 less devoted a bigot to this vain schoolcraft, which we 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 295 
 
 call the Medical Art, and which, alone in this age of 
 science, has made no perceptible progress since the 
 days of its earliest teachers — had I said in the true 
 humility of genuine knowledge, 'these alchemists were 
 men of genius and thought ; we owe to them nearly all 
 the grand hints of our chemical science — is it likely 
 that they would have been wholly drivellers and idiots 
 in the one faith they clung to the most?' — had I said 
 that, I might now have no fear of losing my Lilian. 
 Why, after all, should there not be in Nature one pri- 
 mary essence, one master substance, in which is stored 
 the specific nutriment of life?" 
 
 Thus incoherently muttering to the woods what my 
 pride of reason would not have suffered me gravely to 
 say to my fellow-men, I fatigued my tormented spirits 
 into a gloomy calm, and mechanically retraced my 
 steps at the decline of day. I seated myself at the 
 door of my solitary log-hut, leaning my cheek upon 
 my hand, and musing. Wearily I looked up, roused 
 by a discord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels 
 on the hollow-sounding grass track. A crazy, groan- 
 ing vehicle, drawn by four horses, emerged from the 
 copse of gum-trees — fast, fast along the road, which 
 no such pompous vehicle had traversed since that which 
 had borne me — luxurious satrap for an early colonist 
 — to ^my lodge in the wilderness. What emigrant 
 rich enough to squander, in the hire of such an equi- 
 page, more than its cost in England, could thus be 
 entering on my waste domain? An ominous thrill shot 
 through me. 
 
 The driver — perhaps some broken-down son of 
 luxury in the Old World, fit for nothing in the New 
 World but to ply, for hire, the task that might have 
 
296 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 led to his ruin when plied in sport — stopped at the 
 door of my hut, and called out, "Friend, is not this 
 the great Fenwick Section, and is not yonder long 
 pile of building the Master's house? 1 ' 
 
 Before I could answer I heard a faint voice, within 
 the vehicle, speaking to the driver; the last nodded, 
 descended from his seat, opened the carnage door, and 
 offered his arm to a man, who, waving aside the prof- 
 fered aid, descended slowly and feebly; paused a mo- 
 ment as if for breath, and then, leaning on his staff, 
 walked from the road, across the sward rank with 
 luxuriant herbage, through the little gate in the new- 
 set fragrant wattle-fence, wearily, languidly, halting 
 often, till he stood facing me, leaning both wan and 
 emaciated hands upon his staff, and his meagre form 
 shrinking deep within the folds of a cloak lined thick 
 with costly sables. His face was sharp, his complexion 
 of a livid yellow, his eyes shone out from their hol- 
 low orbits, unnaturally enlarged and fatally bright. 
 Thus, in ghastly contrast to his former splendour 
 of youth and opulence of life, Margrave stood be- 
 fore me. 
 
 "I come to you," said Margrave, in accents hoarse 
 and broken, "from the shores of the East. Give me 
 shelter and rest. I have that to say which will more 
 than repay you." 
 
 Whatever, till that moment, my hate and my fear 
 of this unexpected visitant, hate would have been in- 
 humanity, fear a meanness — conceived for a creature 
 so awfully stricken down. 
 
 Silently, involuntarily, I led him into the house. 
 There he rested a few minutes, with closed eyes and 
 painful gasps for breath. Meanwhile, the driver 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 297 
 
 brought from the carriage a travelling-bag and a small 
 wooden chest or coffer, strongly banded with iron 
 clamps. Margrave, looking up as the man drew near, 
 exclaimed fiercely, "Who told you to touch that chest? 
 How dare you? Take it from that man, Fenwick! 
 Place it here — here, by my side!" 
 
 I took the chest from the driver, whose rising anger 
 at being so imperiously rated in the land of democratic 
 equality, was appeased by the gold which Margrave 
 lavishly flung to him. 
 
 "Take care of the poor gentleman, squire," he 
 whispered to me, in the spontaneous impulse of grati- 
 tude, "I fear he will not trouble you long. He must 
 be monstrous rich. Arrived in a vessel hired all to 
 himself and a train of outlandish attendants, whom 
 he has left behind in the town yonder! May I bait 
 my horses in your stables? They have come a long 
 way." 
 
 I pointed to the neighbouring stables, and the 
 man nodded his thanks, remounted his box, and 
 drove off. 
 
 I returned to Margrave. A faint smile came to 
 his lips as I placed the chest beside him. 
 
 "Ay, ay!" he muttered. "Safe, safe! I shall soon 
 be well again — very soon! And now I can sleep in 
 peace!" 
 
 I led him into an inner room, in which there was 
 a bed. He threw himself on it with a loud sigh of 
 relief. Soon, half raising himself on his elbow, he 
 exclaimed, "The chest — bring it hither! I need it 
 always beside me! There, there! Now a few hours 
 of sleep; and then, if I can take food, or some such 
 restoring cordial as your skill may suggest, I shall be 
 
298 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 strong enough to talk. We will talk! — we will 
 talk!" 
 
 His eyes closed heavily as his voice fell into a 
 drowsy mutter. A moment more and he was asleep. 
 
 I watched beside him, in mingled wonder and com- 
 passion. Looking into that face so altered, yet still 
 so young, I could not sternly question what had been 
 the evil of that mystic life, which seemed now oozing 
 away through the last sands in the hour-glass. I 
 placed my hand softly on his pulse: it scarcely beat. 
 I put my ear to his breast, and involuntarily sighed, 
 as I distinguished in its fluttering heave that dull, 
 dumb sound, in which the heart seems knelling itself 
 to the greedy grave! 
 
 Was this, indeed, the potent magician whom I had 
 so feared? This the guide to the Eosicrucian's secret 
 of life's renewal, in whom, but an hour or two ago, 
 my fancies gulled my credulous trust? 
 
 But suddenly, even while thus chiding my wild 
 superstitions, — a fear that to most will seem scarcely 
 less superstitious, shot across me. Could Lilian be 
 affected by the near neighbourhood of one to whose 
 magnetic influence she had once been so strangely 
 subjected? I left Margrave still sleeping, closed and 
 locked the door of the hut, went back to my dwelling, 
 and met Amy at the threshold. Her smile was so 
 cheering that I felt at once relieved. 
 
 "Hush!" said the child, putting her finger to her 
 lips, "she is so quiet! I was coming in search of you, 
 with a message from her." 
 
 "From Lilian to me — what! to me?" 
 
 "Hush! About an hour ago, she beckoned me to 
 draw near to her, and then said, very softly, 'Tell 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 299 
 
 Allen, that light is coining back to me, and it all 
 settles on him — on him. Tell him that 1 pray to be 
 spared to walk by his side on earth, hand- in-hand to 
 that heaven which is no dream, Amy. Tell him that; 
 — no dream.'" 
 
 While the child spoke my tears gushed, and the 
 strong hands in which I veiled my face quivered like 
 the leaf of the aspen. And when I could command 
 my voice, I said, plaintively, 
 
 "May I not, then, see her? — only for a moment, 
 and answer her message, though but by a look?" 
 
 "No, no!" 
 
 "No! Where is Faber?" 
 
 "Gone into the forest, in search of some herbs, 
 but he gave me this note for you." 
 
 I wiped the blinding tears from ray eyes, and read 
 these lines: 
 
 "I have, though with hesitation, permitted Amy 
 to tell you the cheering words, by which our beloved 
 patient confirms my belief that reason is coming back 
 to her — slowly, labouringly, but, if she survive, for 
 permanent restoration. On no account, attempt to pre- 
 cipitate or disturb the work of Nature. As dangerous 
 as a sudden glare of light to eyes long blind and 
 newly regaining vision, in the friendly and soothing 
 dark, — would be the agitation that your presence at 
 this crisis would cause. Confide in me." 
 
 I remained brooding over these lines and over 
 Lilian's message, long and silently, while Amy's soothing 
 whispers stole into my ear, soft as the murmurs of a 
 rill heard in the gloom of forests. Sousing myself at 
 length, my thoughts returned to Margrave. Doubtless 
 he would soon awake. I bade Amy bring me such 
 
300 
 
 A STUANOrE STORY. 
 
 slight nutriment as I thought best suited to his enfeebled 
 state, telling her it was for a sick traveller, resting 
 himself in my hut. When Amy returned, I took from 
 her the little basket with which she was charged, and 
 having, meanwhile, made a careful selection from the 
 contents of my medicine -chest, went back to the hut. 
 I had not long resumed my place beside Margrave's 
 pillow before he awoke. 
 
 "What o'clock is it?" he asked, with an anxious 
 voice. 
 
 "About seven." 
 
 "Not later? That is well; my time is precious." 
 "Compose yourself, and eat." 
 
 I placed the food before him, and he partook of it, 
 though sparingly, and as if with effort. He then dozed 
 for a short time, again woke up, and impatiently de- 
 manded the cordial, which I had prepared in the mean 
 while. Its effect was greater and more immediate than 
 I could have anticipated, proving, perhaps, how much 
 of youth there was still left in his system, however 
 undermined and ravaged by disease. Colour came 
 back to his cheek, his voice grew perceptibly stronger. 
 And as I lighted the lamp on the table near us — for 
 it was growing dark — he gathered himself up, and 
 spoke thus: 
 
 "You remember that I once pressed on you certain 
 experiments. My object then was to discover the ma- 
 terials from which is extracted the specific that enables 
 the organs of life to expel disease and regain vigour. 
 In that hope I sought your intimacy. An intimacy 
 you gave, but withdrew." 
 
 "Dare you complain? Who and what was the 
 being from whose intimacy I shrunk appalled?" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 301 
 
 "Ask what questions you please," cried Margrave, 
 impatiently, "later, — if 1 have strength left to answer 
 them. But do not interrupt me, while I husband my 
 force to say what alone is important to me and to you. 
 Disappointed in the hopes I had placed in you, I re- 
 solved to repair to Paris, — that great furnace of all 
 bold ideas. I questioned learned formalists; I listened 
 to audacious empirics. The first, with all their boasted 
 knowledge, were too timid to concede my premises; 
 the second, with all their speculative daring, too 
 knavish to let me trust to their conclusions. I found 
 but one man, a Sicilian, who comprehended the secrets 
 that are called occult, and had the courage to meet 
 Nature and all her agencies face to face. He believed, 
 and sincerely, that he was approaching the grand re- 
 sult, at the very moment when he perished from want 
 of the common precautions which a tyro in chemistry 
 would have taken. At his death the gaudy city be- 
 came hateful; all its pretended pleasures only served 
 to exhaust life the faster. The true joys of youth are 
 those of the wild bird and wild brute, in the healthful 
 enjoyment of Nature. In cities, youth is but old age 
 with a varnish. I fled to the East; I passed through 
 the tents of the Arabs; I was guided — no matter by 
 whom or by what — to the house of a Dervish, who 
 had had for his teacher the most erudite master of 
 secrets occult, whom I knew years ago at Aleppo — 
 why that exclamation?" 
 
 "Proceed. What I have to say will come — 
 later." 
 
 "From this Dervish I half forced and half pur- 
 chased the secret I sought to obtain. I now know 
 from what peculiar substance the so-called elixir of 
 
302 
 
 A STRANGE ft TORY. 
 
 life is extracted; I know also the steps of the process 
 through which that task is accomplished. You smile 
 incredulously? What is your doubt? State it while I 
 rest for a moment. My breath labours; give me more 
 of the cordial." 
 
 "Need I tell you my doubt? You have, you say, 
 at your command the elixir of life of which Cagliostro 
 did not leave his disciples the recipe; and you stretch 
 out your hand for a vulgar cordial which any village 
 chemist could give you!" 
 
 "I can explain this apparent contradiction. The 
 process by which the elixir is extracted from the ma- 
 terial which hoards its essence, is one that requires a 
 hardihood of courage which few possess. This Dervish, 
 who had passed through that process once, was deaf to 
 all prayer, and unmoved by all bribes, to attempt it 
 again. He was poor, for the secret by which metals 
 may be transmuted, is not, as the old alchemists seem 
 to imply, identical with that by which the elixir of 
 life is extracted. He had only been enabled to dis- 
 cover, in the niggard strata of the lands within range 
 of his travel, a few scanty morsels of the glorious sub- 
 stance. From these he had extracted scarcely enough 
 of the elixir to fill a third of that little glass which I 
 have just drained. He guarded every drop for himself. 
 Who that holds healthful life as the one boon above 
 all price to the living, would waste upon others what 
 prolongs and recruits his own being? Therefore, 
 though he sold me his secret, he would not sell me his 
 treasure." 
 
 "Any quack may sell you the information how to 
 make not only an elixir, but a sun and a moon, and 
 then scare you from the experiment by tales of the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 303 
 
 danger of trying it! How do you know that this es- 
 sence which the Dervish possessed was the elixir of 
 life, since it seems you have not tried on yourself 
 what effect its precious drops could produce? Poor 
 wretch! who once seemed to me so awfully potent, do 
 you come to the Antipodes in search of a drug 
 that only exists in the fables by which a child is 
 amused?" 
 
 "The elixir of life is no fable," cried Margrave, 
 with a kindling of eye, a power of voice, a dilation of 
 form, that startled me in one just before so feeble. 
 "That elixir was bright in my veins when we last met. 
 From that golden draught of the life-spring of joy I 
 took all that can gladden creation. What sage would 
 not have exchanged his wearisome knowledge for my 
 lusty revels with Nature? What monarch would not 
 have bartered his crown, with its brain- ache of care, 
 for the radiance that circled my brows, flashing out 
 from the light that was in me? Oh again, oh again, 
 to enjoy the freedom of air with the bird, and the 
 glow of the sun with the lizard; to sport through the 
 blooms of the earth, Nature's playmate and darling; 
 to face, in the forest and desert, the pard and the lion, 
 — Nature's bravest and fiercest, — her first- born, the 
 heir of her realm, with the rest of her children for 
 slaves ! " 
 
 As these words burst from his lips, there was a 
 wild grandeur in the aspect of this enigmatical being 
 which I had never beheld in the former time of his 
 affluent dazzling youth. And, indeed, in his language, 
 and in the thoughts it clothed, there was an earnest- 
 ness, a concentration, a directness, a purpose, which 
 had seemed wanting to his desultory talk in the earlier 
 
304 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 days. I expected that reaction of languor and ex- 
 haustion would follow his vehement outbreak of pas- 
 sion; but, after a short pause, he went on with steady 
 accents. His will was sustaining his strength. He 
 was determined to force his convictions on me, and the 
 vitality, once so rich, rallied all its lingering forces to 
 the aid of his intense desire. 
 
 "I tell you, then," he resumed, with deliberate 
 calmness, "that, years ago, I tested in my own person 
 that essence which is the sovereign medicament. In 
 me, as you saw me at L — , you beheld the proof of 
 its virtues. Feeble and ill as I am now, my state was 
 incalculably more hopeless when formerly restored by 
 the elixir. He, from whom I then took the sublime 
 restorative, died without revealing the secret of its 
 composition. What I obtained was only just sufficient 
 to recruit the lamp of my life, then dying down — 
 and no drop was left for renewing the light which 
 wastes its own rays in the air that it gilds. Though 
 the Dervish would not sell me his treasure, he per- 
 mitted me to see it. The appearance and odour of 
 this essence are strangely peculiar — unmistakable by 
 one who has once beheld and partaken of it. In short, 
 I recognized in the hands of the Dervish the bright 
 life-renewer, as I had borne it away from the corpse 
 of the Sage of Aleppo." 
 
 "Hold! Are you then, in truth, the murderer of 
 Haroun, and is your true name Louis Grayle?" 
 
 "I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did not leave 
 me his name. I again adjure you to postpone for this 
 night, at least, the questions you wish to address 
 to me. 
 
 "Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed that, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 305 
 
 for which the pale owners of millions, at the first touch 
 of palsy or gout, would consent to be paupers, of course 
 I coveted the possession of the essence even more than 
 the knowledge of the substance from which it is ex- 
 tracted. I had no coward fear of the experiment, which 
 this timid driveller had not the nerve to renew. But 
 still the experiment might fail. I must traverse land 
 and sea to find the fit place for it. While, in the rags 
 of the Dervish, the unfailing result of the experiment 
 was at hand. The Dervish suspected my design — he 
 dreaded my power. He fled on the very night in which 
 I had meant to seize wliat he refused to sell me. 
 After all, I should have done him no great wrong; for 
 I should have left him wealth enough to transport 
 himself to any soil in which the material for the elixir 
 may be most abundant, and the desire of life would 
 have given his shrinking nerves the courage to replenish 
 its ravished store. I had Arabs in my pay, who obeyed 
 me as hounds their master. I chased the fugitive. I 
 came on his track, reached a house in a miserable 
 village, in which, I was told, he had entered but an 
 hour before. The day was declining: the light in the 
 room imperfect. I saw in a corner what seemed to me 
 the form of the Dervish — stooped to seize it, and my 
 hand closed on an asp. The artful Dervish had so 
 piled his rags that they took the shape of the form 
 they had clothed, and he had left, as a substitute for 
 the giver of life, the venomous reptile of death. 
 
 "The strength of my system enabled me to survive 
 the effect of the poison; but during the torpor that 
 numbed me, my Arabs, alarmed, gave no chase to my 
 quarry. At last, though enfeebled and languid, I was 
 again on my horse: — again the pursuit — again the 
 
 A Strange Story. II. v 20 
 
306 
 
 A STllANGE STORY. 
 
 track! I learned — but this time by a knowledge 
 surer than man's — that the Dervish had taken his 
 refuge in a hamlet that had sprung up over the site of 
 a city once famed through Assyria. The same voice 
 that informed me of his whereabout warned me not to 
 pursue. I rejected the warning. In my eager im- 
 patience I sprang on to the chase; in my fearless resolve 
 I felt sure of the prey. I arrived at the hamlet, 
 wearied out, for my forces were no longer the same 
 since the bite of the asp. The Dervish eluded me still; 
 he had left the floors, on which I sank exhausted, but a 
 few minutes before my horse stopped at the door. The 
 carpet, on which he had rested, still lay on the ground. 
 I dismissed the youngest and keenest of my troop in 
 search of the fugitive. Sure that this time he would 
 not escape, my eyes closed in sleep. 
 
 "How long I slept I know not — a long dream of 
 solitude, fever, and anguish. Was it the curse of the 
 Dervish's carpet? Was it a taint in the walls of the 
 house, or of the air, which broods sickly and rank over 
 places where cities lie buried? I know not; but the 
 Pest of the East had seized me in slumber. When my 
 senses recovered I found myself alone, plundered of my 
 arms, despoiled of such gold as I had carried about 
 me. All had deserted and left me, as the living leave 
 the dead whom the Plague has claimed for its own. 
 As soon as I could stand I crawled from the threshold. 
 The moment my voice was heard, my face seen, the 
 whole squalid populace rose as on a wild beast — a 
 mad dog. I was driven from the place with impreca- 
 tions and stones, as a miscreant whom the Plague had 
 overtaken, while plotting the death of a holy man. 
 Bruised and bleeding, but still defying, I turned in 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 Wrath on that dastardly rabble; they slunk away from 
 my path. I knew the land for miles around. I had 
 been in that land years, long years, ago. I came at 
 last to the road which the caravans take on their way 
 to Damascus. There I was found, speechless and 
 seemingly lifeless, by some European travellers. Con- 
 veyed to Damascus, I languished for weeks, between 
 life and death. But for the virtue of that essence, 
 which lingered yet in my veins, I could not have sur- 
 vived — even thus feeble and shattered. I need not 
 say that I now abandoned all thought of discovering 
 the Dervish. I had at least his secret, if I had failed 
 of the paltry supply he had drawn from its uses. Such 
 appliances as he had told me were needful, are procured 
 in the East with more ease than in Europe. To sum 
 up, I am here — instructed in all the knowledge, and 
 supplied with all the aids, which warrant me in saying, 
 'Do you care for new life in its richest enjoyments, if 
 not for yourself, for one whom you love and would 
 reprieve from the grave? Then, share with me in a 
 task that a single night will accomplish, and ravish a 
 prize by which the life that you value the most will 
 be saved from the dust and the worm, to live on, ever 
 young, ever blooming, while each infant, new-born 
 while I speak shall have passed to the grave. Nay, 
 where is the limit to life, while the earth hides the 
 substance by which life is renewed?' 1 ' 
 
 I give as faithfully as I can recall them the words 
 in which Margrave addressed me. But who can guess 
 by cold words transcribed, even were they artfully 
 ranged by a master of language, the effect words pro- 
 duce when warm from the breath of the speaker? Ask 
 one of an audience which some orator held enthralled 
 
 20* 
 
308 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 why bis words do not quicken a beat in the reader's 
 pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be, 
 u The words took their charm from the voice and the 
 eye, the aspect, the manner, the man! 11 So it was 
 with the incomprehensible being before me. Though 
 his youth was faded, though his beauty was dimmed, 
 though my fancies clothed him with memories of ab- 
 horrent dread, though my reason opposed his audacious 
 beliefs and assumptions, still he charmed and spell- 
 bound me; still he was the mystical fascinator; still, 
 if the legends of magic had truth for their basis, he 
 was the horn magician; as genius, in what calling soever, 
 25 bom with the gift to enchant and subdue us. 
 
 Constraining myself to answer calmly, I said, "You 
 have told me your story; you have denned the object 
 of the experiment in which you ask me to aid. You 
 do right to bid me postpone my replies or my questions. 
 Seek to recruit by sleep the strength you have so sorely 
 tasked. To morrow — 11 
 
 "To-morrow, ere night, you will decide whether 
 the man whom out of all earth I have selected to aid 
 me, shall be the foe to condemn me to perish! I tell 
 you plainly I need your aid, and your prompt aid. 
 Three days from this, and all aid will be too late! 11 
 
 I had already gained the door of the room, when 
 he called to me to come back. 
 
 "You do not live in this hut, but with your family 
 yonder. Do not tell them that I am here; let no one 
 but yourself see me as I now am. Lock the door of 
 the hut when you quit it. I should not close my eyes 
 if I were not secure from intruders. 1 ' 
 
 "There is but one in my house, or in these parts, 
 whom I would except from the interdict you impose. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 309 
 
 You are aware of your own imminent danger; the life, 
 which you believe the discovery of a Dervish will in- 
 definitely prolong, seems to my eye of physician to 
 hang on a thread. I have already formed my own 
 conjecture as to the nature of the disease that enfeebles 
 you. But I would fain compare that conjecture with 
 the weightier opinion of one whose experience and skill 
 are superior to mine. Permit me, then, when I return 
 to you to-morrow, to bring with me the great physician 
 to whom I refer. His name will not, perhaps, be un- 
 known to you. I speak of Julius Faber." 
 
 "A physician of the schools! I can guess well enough 
 how learnedly he would prate, and how little he could 
 do. But I will not object to his visit, if it satisfies you 
 that, since I should die under the hands of the doctors, 
 I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in pla- 
 cing my hopes in a Dervish. Yet stay. You have, 
 doubtless, spoken of me to this Julius Faber, your 
 fellow-physician and friend? Promise me, if you bring 
 him here, that you will not name me, that you will 
 not repeat to him the tale I have told you, or the hope 
 which has led me to these shores. What I have told 
 to you, no matter whether, at this moment, you consider 
 me the dupe of a chimera, is still under the seal of the 
 confidence which a patient reposes in the physician he 
 himself selects for his confidant. I select you, and not 
 Julius Faber!" 
 
 "Be it as you will," said I, after a moment's re- 
 flection. "The moment you make yourself my patient 
 I am bound to consider what is best for you. And you 
 may more respect, and profit by, an opinion based 
 upon your purely physical condition than by one in 
 which you might suppose the advice was directed 
 
310 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 rather to the disease of the mind than to that of the 
 body." 
 
 "How amazed and indignant your brother physician 
 will be if he ever see me a second time! How 
 learnedly he will prove that, according to all correct 
 principles of science and nature, I ought to be dead! 
 
 He uttered this jest with a faint dreary echo of his 
 old merry, melodious laugh, then turned his face to the 
 wall; and so I left him to repose. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 I found Mrs. Ashleigh waiting for me in our usual 
 sitting-room. She was in tears. She had begun to 
 despond of Lilian's recovery, and she infected me with 
 her own alarm. However, I disguised my participation 
 in her fears, soothed and sustained her as I best could, 
 and persuaded her to retire to rest. I saw Faber for 
 a few minutes before I sought my own chamber. He 
 assured me that there was no perceptible change for 
 the worse in Lilian's physical state since he had last 
 seen me, and that her mind, even within the last few 
 hours, had become decidedly more clear. He thought 
 that, within the next twenty-four hours, the reason 
 would make a strong and successful effort for complete 
 recovery, but he declined to hazard more than a hope 
 that the effort would not exhaust the enfeebled . powers 
 of the frame. He himself was so in need of a few 
 hours of rest that I ceased to harass him with questions 
 which he could not answer, and fears which he could 
 not appease. Before leaving him for the night, I told 
 him briefly that there was a traveller in my hut smitten 
 by a disease which seemed to me so grave that I 
 
A STKANGE STORY. 
 
 311 
 
 would ask his opinion of the case, if he could accom- 
 pany me to the hut the next morning. 
 
 My own thoughts that night were not such as would 
 suffer me to sleep. 
 
 Before Margrave's melancholy state much of my 
 former fear and abhorrence faded away. This being, 
 so exceptional that fancy might well -invest him with 
 preternatural attributes, was now reduced by human 
 suffering to human sympathy and comprehension. Yet 
 his utter want of conscience was still as apparent as in 
 his day of joyous animal spirits. With what hideous 
 candour he had related his perfidy and ingratitude to 
 the man to whom, in his belief, he owed an inestimable 
 obligation, and with what insensibility to the signal 
 retribution which in most natures would have awakened 
 remorse! 
 
 And by what dark hints and confessions did he 
 seem to confirm the incredible memoir of Sir Philip 
 Derval! He owned that he had borne from the corpse 
 of Haroun the medicament to which he ascribed his 
 recovery from a state yet more hopeless than that 
 under which he now laboured! He had alluded, 
 rapidly, obscurely, to some knowledge at his command 
 "surer than man's!" And now, even now, the mere 
 wreck of his former existence — by what strange charm 
 did he still control and confuse my reason! And how 
 was it that I felt myself murmuring, again and again, 
 "But what, after all, if his hope be no chimera, and if 
 Nature do hide a secret by which I could save the life 
 of my beloved Lilian?" 
 
 And again and again, as that thought would force 
 itself on me, I rose, and crept to Lilian's threshold, 
 listening to catch the faintest sound of her breathing. 
 
312 
 
 A STRANGE STOliY. 
 
 All still, all dark! In that sufferer recognized science 
 detects no mortal disease, yet dares not bid me rely on 
 its amplest resources of skill to turn aside from lier 
 slumber the stealthy advance of death; while in yon 
 log-hut one whose malady recognized science could not 
 doubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep con- 
 fident of life! Recognized science! recognized igno- 
 rance! The science of to-day is the ignorance of to- 
 morrow! Every year some bold guess lights up a 
 truth to which, but the year before, the schoolmen of 
 science were as blinded as moles. 
 
 "What then," my lips kept repeating — "what if 
 Nature do hide a secret by which the life of my life 
 can be saved! What do we know of the secrets of 
 Nature? What said Newton himself of his knowledge? 
 'I am like a child picking up pebbles and shells on 
 the sand, while the great ocean of Truth lies all un- 
 discovered around me ! ' And did Newton himself, 
 in the ripest growth of his matchless intellect, hold the 
 creed of the alchemists in scorn? Had he not given 
 to one object of their research, in the transmutation of 
 metals, his days and his nights? Is there proof that 
 he ever convinced himself that the research was the 
 dream, which we, who are not Newtons, call it?* 
 
 * Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labours — the fluxional 
 calculus, physical astronomy, and optics — a very large portion of his 
 time, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of which 
 scarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eager 
 and ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming 
 force. What theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in that labo- 
 ratory where, it is said, the fire was scarcely extinguished for weeks 
 together, will never be known. It is certain that no success attended his 
 labours ; and Newton was not a man — like Kepler — to detail to the world 
 all the hopes and disappointments, all the crude and mystical fancies, 
 
 which mixed themselves up with his career of philosophy Many 
 
 years later we find Newton in correspondence with Locke , with reference 
 to a mysterious red earth by which Boyle , who was then recently dead, 
 had asserted that he could effect the grand desideratum of multiplying 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 313 
 
 And that other great sage, inferior only to Newton — 
 the calculating doubt-weigher, Descartes — had he not 
 believed in the yet nobler hope of the alchemists — 
 believed in some occult nostrum or process by which 
 human life could attain to the age of the Patriarchs?"* 
 
 gold. By this time, however, Newton's faith had become somewhat shaken 
 by the unsatisfactory communications which he had himself received from 
 Boyle on the subject of the golden recipe, though he did not abandon the 
 idea of giving the experiment a further trial as soon as the weather should 
 become suitable for furnace experiments." — Quarterly Review, No. 220. 
 pp. 125-6. 
 
 * Southey, in his Doctor, vol. vi. p. 2, reports the conversation of Sir 
 Kenelm Digby with Descartes, in which the great geometrician said, 
 " That as for rendering man immortal, it was what he could not venture to 
 promise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his life to the standard 
 of the patriarchs." And Southey adds, "that St. Evremond^ to whom 
 Digby repeated this , says that this opinion of Descartes was well known 
 both to his friends in Holland and in France." By the stress Southey lays 
 on this hearsay evidence, it is clear that he was not acquainted with the 
 works and biography of Descartes , or he would have gone to the fountain- 
 head for authority on Descartes's opinions, viz. , Descartes himself. It is 
 to be wished that Southey had done so, for no one more than he would 
 have appreciated the exquisitely candid and lovable nature of the illustrious 
 Frenchman, and the sincerity with which he cherished in his heart what- 
 ever doctrine he conceived in his understanding. Descartes , whose know- 
 ledge of anatomy was considerable, had that passion for the art of medicine 
 which is almost inseparable from the pursuit of natural philosophy. At 
 the age of twenty-four he had sought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into 
 the brotherhood of the Rosicrucians , but unluckily could not discover any 
 member of the society to introduce him. "He desired," says Cousin, "to 
 assure the health of man, diminish his ills, extend his existence. He 
 was terrified by the rapid and almost momentary passage of man upon 
 earth. He believed it was not, perhaps, impossible to prolong its duration." 
 There is a hidden recess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed 
 by Descartes for the execution of his -project were not less grand. In his 
 Discourse on Method, Descartes says, "If it is possible to find some means 
 to render generally men more wise and more able than they have been till 
 now, it is, I believe, in medicine that those means must be sought. * * * 
 I am sure that there is no one , even in the medical profession , who will 
 not avow that all which one knows of the medical art is almost nothing in 
 comparison to that which remains to learn, and that one could be exempted 
 from an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even , perhaps, 
 from the decrepitude of old age, if one had sufficient lore of their causes 
 and of all the remedies which nature provides for them, Therefore, having 
 design to employ all my life in tlie research of a science so necessary , and 
 having discovered a path which appears to me such that one ought infallibly, 
 in following , to find it , if one is not hindered prematurely by the brevity of 
 life or by the defects of experience, I consider that there is no better remedy 
 against those two hindrances than to communicate faithfully to the public 
 the little I have found," &c. (Discours de la Mdthode, vol. i. CEuvres de 
 Descartes, Cousin's edition.) And again, in hi? Correspondence (vol. ix. 
 
314 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 In thoughts like these the night wore away, the 
 moonbeams that streamed through my window lighting 
 up the spacious solitudes beyond — mead and creek, 
 forest-land, mountain-top — and the silence without 
 broken by the wild cry of the night-hawk and the sibi- 
 lant melancholy dirge of the shining chrysococyx ; * — ■ 
 a bird that never sings but at night, and obstinately 
 haunts the roofs of the sick and dying, ominous of woe 
 and death. 
 
 But up sprang the sun, and, chasing these gloomy 
 sounds, outburst the wonderful chorus of Australian 
 groves, the great kingfisher opening the jocund melo- 
 dious babble with the glee of his social laugh. 
 
 And now I heard Faber's step in Lilian's room — 
 heard, through the door, her soft voice, though I could 
 not distinguish the words. It was not long before I 
 saw the kind physician standing at the threshold of my 
 chamber. He pressed his finger to his lip, and made 
 
 p. 341), he says, "The conservation of health has been always the principal 
 object of my studies, and I have no doubt that there is a means of acquiring 
 much knowledge touching medicine which, up to this time, is ignored." 
 He then refers to his meditated Treatise on Animals as only an entrance 
 upon that knowledge. But whatever secrets Descartes may have thought 
 to discover, they are not made known to the public according to his pro- 
 mise. And in a letter to M. Chanut, written 1646 (four years before he 
 died), he says ingenuously, "I will tell you in confidence that the notion, 
 such as it is, which I have endeavoured to acquire, in physical philosophy, 
 has greatly assisted me to establish certain foundations for moral philo- 
 sophy ; and that 1 am more easily satisfied upon this point than I am on 
 many others touching medicine , to which I have, nevertheless, devoted 
 much more time. So that" (adds the grand thinker with a pathetic noble- 
 ness) — "so that, instead of finding the means to preserve life , I hare found 
 another good, more easy and more sure, which is — not to fear death." 
 
 * Chrj'sococyx lucidus — viz., the bird popularly called the shining, 
 or bronzed cuckoo. "Its note is an exceedingly melancholy whistle, 
 heard at night, when it is very annoying to any sick or nervous person 
 who may be inclined to sleep. I have known many instances where the 
 bird has been perched on a tree in the vicinity of the room of an invalid 
 uttering its mournful notes, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that 
 it could be dislodged from its position." — Dr. Bennett's Gatherings of a 
 Naturalist in Australasia. 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 315 
 
 me a sign to follow him. I obeyed, with noiseless 
 tread and stifled breathing. He waited me in the 
 garden under the flowering acacias, passed his arm in 
 mine, and drew me into the open pasture-land. 
 
 "Compose yourself," he then said; "I bring you 
 tidings both of gladness and of fear. Your Lilian's 
 mind is restored: even the memories which had been 
 swept away by the fever that followed her return to 
 her home in L are returning, though as yet indis- 
 tinct. She yearns to see you, to bless you for all your 
 noble devotion, your generous, great-hearted love; but 
 I forbid such interview now. If, in a few hours, she 
 become either decidedly stronger or decidedly more 
 enfeebled, you shall be summoned to her side. Even 
 if you are condemned to a loss for which the sole con- 
 solation must be placed in the life hereafter, you shall 
 have, at least, the last mortal commune of soul with 
 soul. Courage — courage! You are man! Bear as 
 man what you have so often bid other men submit to 
 endure. 1 ' 
 
 I had flung myself on the ground — writhing worm 
 that had no home but on earth! Man, indeed! Man! 
 All, at that moment, I took from manhood was its 
 acute sensibility to love and to anguish! 
 
 But after all such paroxysms of mortal pain, there 
 comes a strange lull. Thought itself halts, like the 
 still hush of water between two descending torrents. I 
 rose in a calm, which Faber might well mistake for 
 fortitude. 
 
 "Well," I said, quietly, "fulfil your promise. If 
 Lilian is to pass away from me, I shall see her, at 
 least, again; no wall, you tell me, between our minds: 
 mind to mind once more — once more!" 
 
316 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Allen," said Faber, mournfully and softly, "why 
 do you shun to repeat my words — soul to soul?" 
 
 "Ay, ay — I understand. Those words mean that 
 you have resigned all hope that Lilian's life will linger 
 here, when her mind comes back in full consciousness; 
 I know well that last lightning flash and the darkness 
 which swallows it up!" 
 
 "You exaggerate my fears. I have not resigned the 
 hope that Lilian will survive the struggle through 
 which she is passing, but it would be cruel to deceive 
 you — my hope is weaker than it was." 
 
 "Ay, ay. Again, I understand! Your science is 
 in fault — it desponds. Its last trust is in the wonder- 
 ful resources of Nature — the vitality stored in the 
 young!" 
 
 "You have said: Those resources of Nature are 
 wondrous. The vitality of youth is a fountain spring- 
 ing up from the deeps out of sight, when, a moment 
 before, we had measured the drops oozing out from the 
 sands, and thought that the well was exhausted." 
 
 "Come with me — come. I told you of another 
 sufferer yonder. I want your opinion of his case. 
 But can you be spared a few minutes from Lilian's 
 side?" 
 
 "Yes; I left her asleep. What is the case that 
 perplexes your eye of physician, which is usually 
 keener than mine, despite all the length of my prac- 
 tice?" 
 
 "The sufferer is young — his organization rare in 
 its vigour. He has gone through and survived assaults 
 upon life that are commonly fatal. His system has 
 been poisoned by the fangs of a venomous asp, and 
 shattered by the blast of the plague. These alone, I 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 317 
 
 believe, would not suffice to destroy him. But lie is 
 one who has a strong dread of death. And while the 
 heart was thus languid and feeble, it has been gnawed 
 by emotions of hope or of fear. I suspect that he is 
 dying, not from the bite of the reptile, not from the 
 taint of the pestilence, but from the hope and the fear 
 that have overtasked the heart's functions. Judge for 
 yourself." 
 
 We were now at the door of the hut. I unlocked 
 it: we entered. Margrave had quitted his bed, and 
 was pacing the room slowly. His step was less feeble; 
 his countenance less haggard than on the previous 
 evening. 
 
 He submitted himself to Faber's questioning with a 
 quiet indifference, and evidently cared nothing for any 
 opinion which the great physician might found on his 
 replies. 
 
 When Faber had learned all he could, he said, 
 with a grave smile, "I see that my advice will have 
 little weight with you; such as it is, at least reflect on 
 it. The conclusions to which your host arrived in his 
 view of your case, and which he confided to me, are, 
 in my humble judgment, correct. I have no doubt that 
 the great organ of the heart is involved in the cause of 
 your sufferings; but the heart is a noble and much- 
 enduring organ. I have known men in whom it has 
 been more severely and unequivocally affected with 
 disease than it is in you, live on for many years, and 
 ultimately die of some other disorder. But then life 
 was held, as yours must be held, upon one condition 
 — repose. I enjoin you to abstain from all violent 
 action; to shun all excitements that cause moral dis- 
 turbance. You are young: would you live on, you 
 
 / 
 
318 
 
 A STRANGE STORVT. 
 
 must live as the old. More than this — it is my duty 
 to warn you that your tenure on earth is very pre- 
 carious; you may attain to many years; you may be 
 suddenly called hence to-morrow. The best mode to 
 regard this uncertainty, with the calm in which is your 
 only chance of long life, is so to arrange all your 
 worldly affairs, and so to discipline all your human 
 anxieties, as to feel always prepared for the summons 
 that may come without warning. For the rest, quit 
 this climate as soon as you can — it is the climate in 
 which the blood courses too quickly for one who should 
 shun all excitement. Seek the most equable atmosphere 
 — choose the most tranquil pursuits — and Fenwick. 
 himself, in his magnificent pride of stature and strength, 
 may be nearer the grave than you are." 
 
 "Your opinion coincides with that I have just 
 heard?" asked Margrave, turning to me. 
 
 "In much — yes." 
 
 "It is more favourable than I should have supposed. 
 I am far from disdaining the advice so kindly offered. 
 Permit me, in turn, two or three questions, Dr. Faber. 
 Do you prescribe to me no drugs from your pharma- 
 copoeia?" 
 
 "Drugs may palliate many sufferings incidental to 
 organic disease; but drugs cannot reach organic disease 
 itself." 
 
 "Do you believe that, even where disease is plainly 
 organic, Nature herself has no alterative and repara- 
 tive powers, by which the organ assailed may recover 
 itself?" 
 
 "A few exceptional instances of such forces in nature 
 are upon record; but we must go by general laws, and 
 not by exceptions." 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 319 
 
 "Have you never known instances, do you not at 
 this moment know one, in which a patient whose malady 
 baffles the doctor's skill, imagines or dreams of a re- 
 medy? Call it a whim if you please, learned sir; do 
 you not listen to the whim, and, in despair of your own 
 prescriptions, comply with those of the patient?" 
 
 Faber changed countenance, and even started. Mar- 
 grave watched him and laughed. 
 
 "You grant that there are such cases, in which the 
 patient gives the law to the physician. Now, apply 
 your experience to my case. Suppose some strange 
 fancy had seized upon my imagination — that is the 
 doctor's cant word for all phenomena which we call 
 exceptional — some strange fancy that I had thought 
 of a cure for this disease for which you have no drugs ; 
 and suppose this fancy of mine to be so strong, so 
 vivid, that to deny me its gratification would produce 
 the very emotion from which you warn me as fatal — 
 storm the heart, that you would soothe to repose, by 
 the passions of rage and despair — would you, as my 
 trusted physician, concede or deny me my whim?" 
 
 "Can you ask? I should grant it at once, if I had 
 no reason to know that the thing that you fancied was 
 harmful?" 
 
 "Good man and wise doctor. I have no other 
 question to ask. I thank you." 
 
 Faber looked hard on the young wan face, over 
 which played a smile of triumph and irony, then turned 
 away with an expression of doubt and trouble on his 
 own noble countenance. I followed him silently into 
 the open air. 
 
 "Who and what is this visitor of yours?" he asked, 
 abruptly. 
 
320 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Who and what! I cannot tell you.' 1 
 
 Faber remained some moments musing, and mutter- 
 ing slowly to himself, "Tut; but a chance coincidence 
 — a haphazard allusion to a fact which he could not 
 have known!" 
 
 "Faber," said I, abruptly, "can it be that Lilian 
 is the patient in whose self-suggested remedies you 
 confide more than in the various learning at command 
 of your practised skill? 1 ' 
 
 "I cannot deny it," replied Faber, reluctantly. "In 
 the intervals of that suspense from waking sense, which 
 in her is not sleep, nor yet altogether catalepsy, she 
 has, for the last few days, stated accurately the precise 
 moment in which the trance — if I may so call it — 
 would pass away, and prescribed for herself the remedies 
 that should be then administered. In every instance 
 the remedies so self-prescribed, though certainly not 
 those which would have occurred to my mind, have 
 proved efficacious. Her rapid progress to reason I 
 ascribe to the treatment she herself ordained in her 
 trance, without remembrance of her own suggestions 
 when she awoke. I had meant to defer communicating 
 these phenomena in the idiosyncrasy of her case until 
 our minds could more calmly inquire into the process 
 by which ideas — not apparently derived as your me- 
 taphysical school would derive all ideas, from precon- 
 ceived experiences — will thus sometimes act like an 
 instinct on the human sufferer, for self-preservation, as 
 the bird is directed to the herb or the berry which 
 heals or assuages its ailments. We know how the 
 mesmerists would account for this phenomenon of 
 hygienic introvision and clairvoyance. But here, there 
 is no mesmerizer, unless the patient can be supposed to 
 
A STRANGE STOHY. 
 
 321 
 
 mesmerize herself. Long, however, before mesmerism 
 was heard of, medical history attests examples in which 
 patients who baffled the skill of the ablest physicians 
 have fixed their fancies on some remedy that physicians 
 wonld call inoperative for good or for harm, and have 
 recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested. 
 And Hippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning 
 rightly, recognizes the powers for self-cure which the 
 condition of trance will sometimes bestow on the sufferer, 
 'where' (says the father of our art) 'the sight being 
 closed to the external, the soul more truthfully perceives 
 the affections of the body.' In short — I own it — in 
 this instance, the skill of the physician has been a 
 compliant obedience to the instinct called forth in the 
 patient. And the hopes I have hitherto permitted 
 myself to give you, were founded on my experience 
 that her own hopes, conceived in trance, had never 
 been fallacious or exaggerated. The simples that I 
 gathered for her yesterday she had described; they are 
 not in our herbal. But as they are sometimes used 
 by the natives, I had the curiosity to analyze their 
 chemical properties shortly after I came to the colony, 
 and they seemed to me as innocent as 'lime-blossoms. 
 They are rare in this part of Australia, but she told 
 me where I should find them — a remote spot which 
 she has certainly never visited. Last night, when you 
 saw me disturbed, dejected, it was because, for the 
 first time, the docility with which she had, hitherto, 
 in her waking state obeyed her own injunctions in the 
 state of trance, forsook me. She could not be induced 
 to taste the decoction I had made from the herbs; and 
 if you found me this morning with weaker hopes than 
 before, this is the real cause — -viz. that when I visited 
 
 A Strange Story. II. 21 
 
322 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 her at sunrise, she was not in sleep but in trance, and 
 in that trance she told me that she had nothing more 
 to suggest or reveal-, that on the complete restoration of 
 her senses, which was at hand, the abnormal faculties 
 vouchsafed to trance would be withdrawn. 'As for my 
 life,' she said quietly, as if unconscious of our tem- 
 porary joy or woe in the term of its tenure here — 'as 
 for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision 
 obscure; on my life a dark and cold shadow is resting. 
 I cannot foresee if it will pass away. When I strive 
 to look around, I see but my Allen 
 
 "And so," said I, mastering my emotions, "in 
 bidding me hope, you did not rely on your own re- 
 sources of science, but in the whisper of nature in the 
 brain of your patient?" 
 
 "It is so." 
 
 We both remained silent some moments, and then, 
 as he disappeared within my house, I murmured: 
 
 "And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, 
 she sees only me ! Is there some prophet-hint of Nature 
 there also, directing me not to scorn the secret which 
 a wanderer so suddenly dropt on my solitude, assures 
 me that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker? 
 And oh, that dark wanderer; has Nature a marvel 
 more weird than himself!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 I strayed through the forest till noon, in debate 
 with myself, and strove to shape my wild doubts into 
 purpose, before I could nerve and compose myself 
 again to face Margrave alone. 
 
 I re-entered the hut. To my surprise Margrave was 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 323 
 
 not in the room in which I had left him, nor in that 
 which adjoined it. I ascended the stairs to the kind 
 of loft in which I had been accustomed to pursue my 
 studies, but in which I had not set foot since my alarm 
 for Lilian had suspended my labours. There I saw 
 Margrave quietly seated before the manuscript of my 
 Ambitious Work, which lay open on the rude table 
 just as I had left it, in the midst of its concluding 
 summary. 
 
 "I have taken the licence of former days, you see, 1 ' 
 said Margrave, smiling, "and have hit by chance on 
 a passage I can understand without effort. But why 
 such a waste of argument to prove a fact so simple? 
 In man, as in brute, life once lost is lost for ever; and 
 that is why life is so precious to man." 
 
 I took the book from his hand, and flung it aside 
 in wrath. His approval revolted me more with my 
 own theories than all the argumentative rebukes of 
 Faber. 
 
 "And now," I said, sternly, "the time has come 
 for the explanation you promised. Before I can aid 
 you in any experiment that may serve to prolong your 
 life, 1 must know how far that life has been a baleful 
 and destroying influence?" 
 
 "I have some faint recollection of having saved 
 your life from an imminent danger, and if gratitude 
 were the attribute of man, as it is of the dog, I should 
 claim your aid to serve mine as a right. Ask me what 
 you will. You must have seen enough of me to know 
 that I do not affect either the virtues or vices of others. 
 I regard both with so supreme an indifference, that I 
 believe I am vicious or virtuous unawares. I know 
 not if I can explain what seems to have perplexed 
 
 21* 
 
324 
 
 A STRANGE STOKV. 
 
 you, but if I cannot explain I have no intention to lie. 
 Speak; I listen! We have time enough now before us." 
 
 So saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching 
 out his limbs wearily. All round this spoilt darling of 
 Material Nature the aids and appliances of Intellectual 
 Science! Books, and telescopes, and crucibles, with 
 the light of day coming through a small circular aper- 
 ture in the boarded casement, as I had constructed the 
 opening for my experimental observation of the prismal 
 rays. 
 
 While I write, his image is as visible before my 
 remembrance as if before the actual eye — beautiful 
 even in its decay, awful even in its weakness, mys- 
 terious as is Nature herself amidst all the mechanism 
 by which our fancied knowledge attempts to measure 
 her laws and analyze her light. 
 
 But at that moment no such subtle reflections de- 
 layed my inquisitive eager mind from its immediate 
 purpose — who and what was this creature boasting 
 of a secret through which I might rescue from death 
 the life of her who was my all upon the earth? 
 
 I gathered rapidly and succinctly together all that 
 I knew and all that I guessed of Margrave's existence 
 and arts. I commenced from my Vision in that mimic 
 Golgotha of creatures inferior to man, close by the 
 scene of man's most trivial and meaningless pastime. 
 I went on; Derval's murder; the missing contents of 
 the casket; the apparition seen by the maniac assassin 
 guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous haunt- 
 ing Shadow; the positive charge in the murdered man's 
 memoir connecting Margrave with Louis Grayle, and 
 accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in 
 the moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful in- 
 
A STRANGE ST011V. 
 
 325 
 
 fluence on Lilian; the struggle between me and him- 
 self in the house by the sea-shore; — The strange All 
 that is told in this Strange Story. 
 
 But, warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce 
 joy to be enabled thus to free my own heart of the 
 doubts that had burdened it, now that I was fairly 
 face to face with the being by whom my reason had 
 been so perplexed, and my life so tortured, I was 
 restrained by none of the fears lest my own fancy de- 
 ceived me, with which in his absence I had striven to 
 reduce to natural causes, the portents of terror and 
 wonder. I stated plainly, directly, the beliefs, the im- 
 pressions which I had never dared even to myself to 
 own without seeking to explain them away. And 
 coming at last to a close, I said: "Such are the 
 evidences that seem to me to justify abhorrence of the 
 life that you ask me to aid in prolonging. Your own 
 tale of last night but confirms them. And why to me 
 — to me — do you come with wild entreaties to lengthen 
 the life that has blighted my own? How did you even 
 learn the home in which I sought unavailing refuge? 
 How — as your hint to Faber clearly revealed — were 
 you aware that, in yon house, where the sorrow is 
 veiled, where the groan is suppressed, where the foot- 
 tread falls ghostlike, there struggles now between life 
 and death my heart's twin, my world's sunshine? Ah! 
 through my terror for her, is it a demon that tells you 
 how to bribe my abhorrence into submission, and supple 
 my reason into use to your ends?" 
 
 Margrave had listened to me throughout with a 
 fixed attention, at times with a bewildered stare, at 
 times with exclamations of surprise, but not of denial. 
 And when I had done, he remained for some moments 
 
326 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 silent, seemingly stupefied, passing bis hand repeatedly 
 over his brow, in the gesture so familiar to him in 
 former days. 
 
 At length he said, quietly, without evincing any 
 sign either of resentment or humiliation: 
 
 "In much that you tell me I recognize myself; in 
 much I am as lost in amazement as you in wild doubt 
 or fierce wrath. Of the effect that you say Philip 
 Derval produced on me I have no recollection. Of 
 himself I have only this; that he was my foe, that he 
 came to England intent on schemes to shorten my life 
 or destroy its enjoyments. All my faculties tend to 
 self-preservation ; there they converge as rays in a focus ; 
 in that focus they illume and — they burn. I willed 
 to destroy my intended destroyer. Did my will enforce 
 itself on the agent to which it was guided? Likely 
 enough. Be it so. Would you blame me for slaying 
 the tiger or serpent — not by the naked hand, but by 
 weapons that arm it? But what could tiger and ser- 
 pent do more against me than the man who would rob 
 me of life? He had his arts for assault, I had mine 
 for self-defence. He was to me as the tiger that 
 creeps through the jungle, or the serpent uncoiling his 
 folds for the spring. Death to those whose life is 
 destruction to mine, be they serpent, or tiger, or man! 
 Derval perished. Yes! the spot in which the maniac 
 had buried the casket was revealed to me — no matter 
 how, the contents of the casket passed into my hands. 
 I coveted that possession because I believed that Derval 
 had learned from Haroun of Aleppo the secret by 
 which the elixir of life is prepared, and I supposed that 
 some stores of the essence would be found in his casket. 
 I was deceived; not a drop! What I there found I 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 327 
 
 knew not how to use or apply, nor did I care to learn. 
 What I sought was not there. You see a luminous 
 shadow of myself; it haunts, it accosts, it compels you. 
 Of this I know nothing. Was it the emanation of my 
 intense will really producing this spectre of myself? or 
 was it the thing of your own imagination — an imagina- 
 tion which my will impressed and subjugated? I know 
 not. At the hours when my shadow, real or supposed, 
 was with you, my senses would have been locked in 
 sleep. It is true, however, that I intensely desired to 
 learn from races always near to man, but concealed 
 from his every-day vision, the secret that I believed 
 Philip Derval had carried with him to the tomb; and 
 from some cause or another I cannot now of myself 
 alone, as I could years ago, subject those races to my 
 command, — I must in that, act through or with the 
 mind of another. It is true that I sought to impress 
 upon your waking thoughts the images of the circle, 
 the powers of the wand, which, in your trance or sleep- 
 walking, make you the involuntary agent of my will. 
 I knew by a dream — for by dreams, more or less 
 vivid, are the results of my waking will sometimes 
 divulged to myself — that the spell had been broken, 
 the discovery I sought not effected. All my hopes 
 were then transferred from yourself, the dull votary of 
 science, to the girl whom I charmed to my thraldom 
 through her love for you and through her dreams of a 
 realm which the science of schools never enters. In 
 her, imagination was all pure and all potent, and tell 
 me, oh, practical reasoner, if reason has ever advanced 
 one step into knowledge except through that imagina- 
 tive faculty which is strongest in the wisdom of igno- 
 rance, and weakest in the ignorance of the wise. Ponder 
 
328 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 this and those marvels that perplex you will cease to 
 be marvellous. I pass on to the riddle that puzzles you 
 most. By Philip Derval's account I am, in truth, 
 Louis Grayle restored to youth by the elixir, and while 
 yet infirm, decrepit, murdered Haroun — a man of a 
 frame as athletic as yours! By accepting this notion 
 you seem to yourself alone to unravel the mysteries 
 you ascribe to my life and my powers. Oh, wise phi- 
 losopher! oh, profound logician! you accept that notion, 
 yet hold my belief in the Dervish's tale a chimera! I 
 am Grayle made young by the elixir, and yet the elixir 
 itself is a fable!" 
 
 He paused and laughed, but the laugh was no longer 
 even an echo of its former merriment or playfulness — 
 a sinister and terrible laugh, mocking, threatening, 
 malignant. 
 
 Again he swept his hand over his brows and re- 
 sumed : 
 
 "Is it not easier to so accomplished a sage as you 
 to believe that the idlers of Paris have guessed the true 
 solution of that problem — my place on this earth? 
 May I not be the love son of Louis Grayle? And 
 when Haroun refused the elixir to him, or he found 
 that his frame was too far exhausted for even the elixir 
 to repair organic lesions of structure in the worn frame 
 of old age, may he not have indulged the common 
 illusion of fathers, and soothed his death pangs with 
 the thought that he should live again in his son? 
 Haroun is found dead on his carpet — rumour said 
 strangled. What proof of the truth of that rumour? 
 Might he not have passed away in a fit? Will it lessen 
 your perplexity if I state recollections? They are 
 vague — they often perplex myself; but so far from 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 329 
 
 a wish to deceive you, my desire is to relate them so 
 truthfully that you may aid me to reduce them into 
 more definite form." 
 
 His face now became very troubled, the tone of his 
 voice very irresolute: the face and the voice of a man 
 who is either blundering his way through an intricate 
 falsehood, or through obscure reminiscences. 
 
 "This Louis Grayle! this Louis Grayle! I re- 
 member him well, as one remembers a nightmare. 
 Whenever I look back, before the illness of which I will 
 presently speak, the image of Louis Grayle returns to 
 me. I see myself with him in African wilds, com- 
 manding the fierce Abyssinians. I see myself with him 
 in the fair Persian valley — lofty, snow-covered moun- 
 tains encircling the garden of roses. I see myself with 
 him in the hush of the golden noon, reclined by the 
 spray of cool fountains; now listening to cymbals and 
 lutes; now arguing with greybeards on secrets be- 
 queathed by the Chaldees. With him, with him in 
 moonlit nights, stealing into the sepulchres of mythical 
 kings. I see myself with him in the aisles of dark 
 caverns, surrounded by awful shapes, which have no 
 likeness amongst the creatures of earth. Louis Grayle! 
 Louis Grayle! all my earlier memories go back to 
 Louis Grayle! All my arts and powers, all that I have 
 learned of the languages spoken in Europe, of the 
 sciences taught in her schools, I owe to Louis Grayle. 
 But am I one and the same with him! No. I am 
 but a pale reflection of his giant intellect. I have not 
 even a reflection of his childlike agonies of sorrow. 
 Louis Grayle! He stands apart from me, as a rock 
 from the tree that grows out from its chasms. Yes, 
 the gossip was right; I must be his son." 
 
330 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 He leant his face on both hands, rocking himself to 
 and fro. At length, with a sigh, he resumed: 
 
 "I remember, too, a long and oppressive illness, 
 attended with racking pains; a dismal journey in a 
 wearisome litter, the light hand of the woman Ayesha, 
 so sad and so stately, smoothing my pillow or fanning 
 my brows. I remember the evening on which my 
 nurse drew the folds of the litter aside, and said, 'See 
 Aleppo! and the star of thy birth shining over its 
 walls!' 
 
 "I remember a face inexpressibly solemn and mourn- 
 ful I remember the chill that the calm of its ominous 
 eye sent through my veins — the face of Haroun, the 
 Sage of Aleppo. I remember the vessel of crystal he 
 bore in his hand, and the blessed relief from my pains 
 that a drop from the essence which flashed through the 
 crystal bestowed! And then — and then — I remember 
 no more till the night on which Ayesha came to my 
 couch and said, 'Rise.' 
 
 "And I rose, leaning on her, supported by her. 
 We went through dim narrow streets, faintly lit by 
 wan stars, disturbing the prowl of the dogs, that slunk 
 from the look of that woman. We came to a solitary 
 house, small and low, and my nurse said, 'Wait.' 
 
 "She opened the door and went in; I seated myself 
 on the threshold. And after a time she came out from 
 the house, and led me, still leaning on her, into a 
 chamber. 
 
 "A man lay, as in sleep, on the carpet, and beside 
 him stood another man, whom 1 recognized as Ayesha's 
 special attendant — an Indian — 'Haroun is dead,' 
 said Ayesha. 'Search for that which will give thee 
 new life. Thou hast seen, and wilt know it, not I.' 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 331 
 
 "And I put my hand on the breast of Haroun — 
 for the dead man was he — and drew from it the vessel 
 of crystal. 
 
 "Having done so, the frown on his marble brow 
 appalled me. I staggered back, and swooned away. 
 
 "I came to my senses, recovered and rejoicing, 
 miles afar from the city, the dawn red on its distant 
 walls. Ayesha had tended me-, the elixir had already 
 restored me. 
 
 "My first thought, when full consciousness came 
 back to me, rested on Louis Grayle, for he, also, had 
 been at Aleppo. I was but one of his numerous train. 
 He, too, was enfeebled and suffering; he had sought 
 the known skill of Haroun for himself as for me; and 
 this woman loved and had tended him as she had loved 
 and tended me. And my nurse told me that he 
 was dead, and forbade me henceforth to breathe his 
 name. 
 
 "We travelled on — she and I, and the Indian, her 
 servant — my strength still renewed by the wondrous 
 elixir. No longer supported by her; what gazelle ever 
 roved through its pasture with a bound more elastic 
 than mine? 
 
 "We came to a town, and my nurse placed before 
 me a mirror. I did not recognize myself. In this 
 town we rested obscure, till the letter, there, reached 
 me by which I learned that I was the offspring of love, 
 and enriched by the care of a father recently dead. 
 Is it not clear that Louis Grayle was this father?" 
 
 "If so, was the woman, Ayesha, your mother?" 
 
 "The letter said that 'my mother had died in my 
 infancy.' Nevertheless, the care with which Ayesha 
 had tended me induced a suspicion that made me ask 
 
332 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 her the very question you put. She wept when I asked 
 her, and said 'No, only my nurse. And now I needed 
 a nurse no more.' The day after I received the letter 
 which announced an inheritance that allowed me to vie 
 with the nobles of Europe, this woman left me, and 
 went back to her tribe." 
 
 "Have you never seen her since?" 
 
 Margrave hesitated a moment, and then answered, 
 though with seeming reluctance, "Yes, at Damascus. 
 Not many days after I was borne to that city by the 
 strangers, who found me half-dead on their road, I 
 woke one morning to find her by my side. And she 
 said, 'In joy and in health you did not need me. I 
 am needed now.'" 
 
 "Did you then deprive yourself of one so devoted? 
 You have not made this long voyage — from Egypt 
 to Australia — alone; you, to whom wealth gave no 
 excuse for privation?" 
 
 "The woman came with me; and some chosen at- 
 tendants. I engaged to ourselves the vessel we sailed 
 in." 
 
 "Where have you left your companions?" 
 
 "By this hour," answered Margrave, "they are in 
 reach of my summons; and when you and I have 
 achieved the discovery — in the results of which we 
 shall share — I will exact no more from your aid. I 
 trust all that rests for my cure to my nurse and her 
 swarthy attendants. You will aid me now, as a matter 
 of course; the physician whose counsel you needed to 
 guide your own skill enjoins you to obey my whim — 
 if whim you still call it, — you will obey it, for on 
 that whim rests your own sole hope of happiness; — 
 you, who can love — I love nothing but life. Has my 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 333 
 
 frank narrative solved all the doubts that stood between 
 you and me, in the great meeting-ground of an interest 
 in common?" 
 
 "Solved all the doubts! Your wild story but makes 
 some the darker, leaving others untouched; the occult 
 powers of which you boast, and some of which I have 
 witnessed; your very insight into my own household 
 sorrows, into the interest I have, with yourself, in the 
 truth of a faith so repugnant to reason — " 
 
 "Pardon me," interrupted Margrave, with that 
 slight curve of the lip which is half smile and half 
 sneer, "if, in my account of myself I omitted what I 
 cannot explain, and you cannot conceive: let me first 
 ask how many of the commonest actions of the com- 
 monest men are purely involuntary and wholly inex- 
 plicable? When, for instance, you open your lips and 
 utter a sentence, you have not the faintest idea before- 
 hand what word will follow another; when you move a 
 muscle can you tell me the thought that prompts to 
 the movement? And, wholly unable thus to account 
 for your own simple sympathies between impulse and 
 act, do you believe that there exists a man upon earth 
 who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of 
 another? Is it not true that not one drop of water, 
 one atom of matter, ever really touches another? 
 Between each and each there is always a space how- 
 ever infinitesimally small. How, then, could the world 
 go on if every man asked another to make his whole 
 history and being as lucid as daylight before he would 
 buy and sell with him? All interchange and alliance 
 rest but on this, — an interest in common; — you and 
 I have established that interest. All else, all you 
 ask more, is superfluous. Could I answer each doubt 
 
334 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 you would raise, still, whether the answer should please 
 or revolt you, your reason would come back to the 
 same starting-point, viz., In one definite proposal have 
 we two an interest in common?" 
 
 And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in 
 mockery. The laugh and the words that preceded it 
 were not the laugh and the words of the young. 
 Could it be possible that Louis Grayle had indeed re- 
 vived to false youth in the person of Margrave, such 
 might have been his laugh and such his words. The 
 whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergone 
 change since I last saw him; more rich in idea, more 
 crafty even in candour, more powerful, more con- 
 centred. As we see in our ordinary experience, that 
 some infirmity, threatening dissolution, brings forth 
 more vividly the reminiscences of early years, when 
 impressions were vigorously stamped, so I might have 
 thought, that as Margrave neared the tomb, the me- 
 mories he had retained from his former existence in a 
 being more amply endowed, more formidably potent, 
 struggled back to the brain, and the mind that had 
 lived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of the dying 
 Margrave. 
 
 "For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles 
 your reason to asign or deny to me," resumed my ter- 
 rible guest, "I will say briefly but this: they come 
 from faculties stored within myself, and doubtless con- 
 duce to my self-preservation — faculties more or less, 
 perhaps (so Van Helmont asserts), given to all men 
 though dormant in most; — vivid and active in me 
 because in me self-preservation has been and yet is the 
 strong master-passion, or instinct; and because I have 
 been taught how to use and direct such faculties by 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 335 
 
 disciplined teachers; some by Louis Grayle, the en- 
 chanter; some by my nurse, the singer of charmed 
 songs. But in much that I will to have done, I know 
 no more than yourself how the agency acts. Enough 
 for me to will what I wished, and sink calmly into 
 slumber, sure that the will would work somehow its 
 way. But when I have willed to know what, when 
 known, should shape my own courses, I could see, 
 without aid from your pitiful telescopes, all objects 
 howsoever afar. What wonder in that? Have you no 
 learned puzzle-brain metaphysicians, who tell you that 
 space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea 
 in the mind and no more! Why am I an enigma as 
 dark as the Sibyl's, and your metaphysicians as plain 
 as a hornbook?" Again the sardonic laugh. "Enough: 
 let what I have said obscure or enlighten your guesses, 
 we come back to the same link of union, which binds 
 man to man, bids states arise from the desert, and 
 foemen embrace as brothers. I need you and you 
 need me; without your aid my life is doomed; without 
 my secret the breath will have gone from the lips of 
 your Lilian before the sun of to-morrow is red on yon 
 hill-tops." 
 
 "Fiend or juggler," I cried in rage, "you shall not 
 so enslave and enthral me by this mystic farrago and 
 jargon. Make your fantastic experiment on yourself 
 if you will: trust to your arts and your powers. My 
 Lilian's life shall not hang on your fiat. I trust it — 
 to — " 
 
 "To what — to man's skill? Hear what the sage of 
 the college shall tell you, before I ask you again for 
 your aid. Do you trust to God's saving mercy? Ah, 
 of course you believe in a God? Who, except a philo- 
 
336 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 soplier, can reason a Maker away? But that the Maker 
 will alter His courses to hear you; that, whether or 
 not you trust in Him, or in your doctor, it will change 
 by a hairbreadth the thing that must be — do you be- 
 lieve this', Allen Fenwiek?" 
 
 And there sat this reader of hearts! a boy in his 
 aspect, mocking me and the greybeards of schools. 
 
 I could listen no more: I turned to the door and 
 fled down the stairs, and heard, as I fled, a low chant; 
 feeble and faint, it was still the old barbaric chant, 
 by which the serpent is drawn from its hole by the 
 charmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIL 
 
 To those of my readers who may seek with Julius 
 Faber to explore, through intelligible causes, solutions 
 of the marvels I narrate, Margrave's confession may 
 serve to explain away much that my own superstitious 
 beliefs had obscured. To them Margrave is evidently 
 the son of Louis Grayle. The elixir of life is reduced 
 to some simple restorative, owing much of its effect to 
 the faith of a credulous patient: youth is so soon 
 restored to its joy in the sun, with or without an elixir. 
 To them Margrave's arts of enchantment are reduced 
 to those idiosyncrasies of temperament on which the 
 disciples of Mesmer build up their theories; exaggerated, 
 in much, by my own superstitions; aided, in part, by 
 such natural, purely physical magic as, explored by the 
 ancient priestcrafts, is despised by the modern philoso- 
 phies, and only remains occult because Science delights 
 no more in the slides of the lantern which fascinated 
 her childhood with stimulated phantoms. To them, 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 337 
 
 Margrave is, perhaps, an enthusiast, but, because an 
 enthusiast, not less an impostor. " U Homme se pique" 
 says Charron. Man cogs the dice for himself ere he 
 rattles the box for his dupes. Was there ever suc- 
 cessful impostor who did not commence by a fraud on 
 his own understanding? Cradled in Orient Tableland, 
 what though Margrave believes in its legends; in a 
 wand, an elixir; in sorcerers or Afrites? that belief in 
 itself makes him keen to detect, and skilful to profit 
 by, the latent but kindred credulities of others. In all 
 illustrations of Duper and Duped through the records 
 of superstition — from the guile of a Cromwell, a 
 Mahomet, down to the cheats of a gipsy — professional 
 visionaries are amongst the astutest observers. The 
 knowledge that Margrave had gained of my abode, of 
 my affliction, or of the innermost thoughts in my mind, 
 it surely demanded no preternatural aids to acquire. 
 An Old Bailey attorney could have got at the one, and 
 any quick student of human hearts have readily 
 mastered the other. In fine, Margrave, thus rationally 
 criticised, is no other prodigy (save in degree and con- 
 currence of attributes simple, though not very common), 
 than may be found in each alley that harbours a for- 
 tune-teller who has just faith enough in the stars or 
 the cards to bubble himself while he swindles his vic- 
 tims; earnest, indeed, in the self-conviction that he is 
 really a seer, but reading the looks of his listeners, 
 divining the thoughts that induce them to listen, and 
 acquiring by practice a startling ability to judge what 
 the listeners will deem it most seer-like to read in the 
 cards or divine from the stars. 
 
 I leave this interpretation unassailed. It is that 
 which is the most probable, it is clearly that which, in 
 A Slramje Story. II. 22 
 
338 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 a case not my own, I should have accepted; and yet I 
 revolved and dismissed it. The moment we deal with 
 things beyond our comprehension, and in which our 
 own senses are appealed to and baffled, we revolt from 
 the Probable, as it seems to the senses of those who 
 have not experienced what we have. And the same 
 principle of Wonder that led our philosophy up from 
 inert ignorance into restless knowledge, now winding 
 back into Shadow-land, reverses its rule by the way, 
 and, at last, leaves us lost in the maze, our knowledge 
 inert, and our ignorance restless. 
 
 And putting aside all other reasons for hesitating 
 to believe that Margrave was the son of Louis Grayle 
 — reasons which his own narrative might suggest — 
 was it not strange that Sir Philip Derval, who had 
 instituted inquiries so minute, and reported them in his 
 memoir with so faithful a care, should not have dis- 
 covered that a youth, attended by the same woman 
 who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the 
 town on the same night as Grayle himself disappeared? 
 But Derval had related truthfully, according to Mar- 
 grave's account, the flight of Ayesha and her Indian 
 servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not even to the 
 existence, of the boy, who must have been of no mean 
 importance in the suite of Louis Grayle, if he were, 
 indeed, the son whom Grayle had made his constant 
 companion, and constituted his principal heir. 
 
 Not many minutes did I give myself up to the 
 cloud of reflections through which no sunbeam of light 
 forced its way. One thought over-mastered all; Mar- 
 grave had threatened death to my Lilian, and warned 
 me of what I should learn from the lips of Faber, "the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 339 
 
 sage of the college." I stood, shuddering at the door 
 of my home; I did not dare to enter. 
 
 "Allen," said a voice, in which my ear detected 
 an unwonted tremulous faltering, "be firm — be calm. 
 I keep my promise. The hour is come in which you 
 may again see the Lilian of old — mind to mind, soul 
 to soul." 
 
 Faber's hand took mine, and led me into the 
 house. 
 
 "You do, then, fear that this interview will be too 
 much for her strength?" said I, whisperingly. 
 
 "I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and 
 I dare not refuse it." 
 
 CHAPTEK XLIII. 
 
 I left Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door 
 of Lilian's room. The door opened suddenly, noiselessly, 
 and her mother came out with one hand before her 
 face, and the other locked in Amy's, who was leading 
 her as a child leads the blind. Mrs. Ashleigh looked 
 up, as I touched her, with a vacant dreary stare. 
 She was not weeping, as was her womanly wont in 
 every pettier grief, but Amy was. No word was ex- 
 changed between us. I entered, and closed the door; 
 my eyes turned mechanically to the corner in which 
 was placed the small virgin bed, with its curtains 
 white as a shroud. Lilian was not there. I looked 
 around, and saw her half reclined on a couch near the 
 window. She was dressed, and with care. Was not 
 that her bridal robe? 
 
 "Allen — Allen," she murmured. "Again, again 
 my Allen — again, again your Lilian!" And, striving 
 
 22* 
 
340 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 in vain to rise, she stretched out her arms in the yearn- 
 ing of reunited love. And as I knelt beside her, 
 those arms closed round me, for the first time in the 
 frank, chaste, holy tenderness of a wife's embrace. 
 
 "Ah!" she said, in her low voice (her voice, like 
 Cordelia's, was ever low), "All has come back to me — 
 all that I owe to your protecting, noble, trustful, 
 guardian, love!" 
 
 "Hush! hush! the gratitude rests with me — it is 
 so sweet to love, to trust, to guard! — my own, my 
 beautiful, still my beautiful! Suffering has not dimmed 
 the light of those dear eyes to me! Put your lips to 
 my ear. Whisper but these words: 'I love you, and 
 for your sake I wish to live ! 1 " 
 
 "For your sake, I pray — with my whole weak 
 human heart — I pray to live. Listen. Some day 
 hereafter, if I am spared, under the purple blossoms of 
 yonder waving trees I shall tell you all, as I see it 
 now; all that darkened or shone on me in my long 
 dream, and before the dream closed around me, like a 
 night in which cloud and star chase each other! Some 
 day hereafter, some quiet, sunlit, happy, happy day. 
 But now, all I would say is this: Before that dreadful 
 morning — " Here she paused, shuddered, and passion- 
 ately burst forth, "Allen, Allen! you did not believe 
 tli at slanderous letter! God bless you! God bless 
 you! Great-hearted, high-souled — God bless you, my 
 darling! my husband! And He will! Pray to him 
 humbly as I do, and He will bless you." She stooped 
 and kissed away my tears, then she resumed, feebly, 
 meekly, sorrowfully : 
 
 "Before that morning I was not worthy of such a 
 heart, such a love as yours. No, no; hear me. Not 
 
A STRANGE STOUV. 
 
 341 
 
 that a thought of love for another ever crossed me! 
 Never while conscious and reasoning, was I untrue to 
 you — even in fancy? But I was a child — wayward 
 as the child who pines for what earth cannot give, and 
 covets the moon for a toy. Heaven had been so kind 
 to my lot on earth, and yet with my lot on earth I was 
 secretly discontented. When I felt that you loved me, 
 and my heart told me that I loved again, I said to 
 myself, 'Now the void that my soul finds on earth will 
 be filled.' I longed for your coming, and yet when you 
 went I murmured, 'But is this the ideal of which I 
 had dreamed?' I asked for an impossible sympathy. 
 Sympathy with what? Nay, smile on me, dearest! — 
 sympathy with what? I could not have said. Ah! 
 Allen, then, then, I was not worthy of you: Infant 
 that I was, I asked you to understand me : now I know 
 that I am woman, and my task is to study you! Do I 
 make myself clear? do you forgive me? I was not 
 untrue to you; I was untrue to my own duties in life. 
 I believed, in my vain conceit, that a mortal's dim 
 vision of heaven raised me above the earth; I did not 
 perceive the truth that earth is a part of the same 
 universe as heaven! Now, perhaps in the awful afflic- 
 tion that darkened my reason, my soul has been made 
 more clear. As if to chastise, but to teach me, my 
 soul has been permitted to indulge its own presumptuous 
 desire; it has wandered forth from the trammels of 
 mortal duties and destinies; it comes back, alarmed 
 by the dangers of its own rash and presumptuous escape 
 from the tasks which it should desire upon earth to 
 perform. Allen, Allen, I am less unworthy of you 
 now! Perhaps in my darkness one rapid glimpse of 
 the true world of spirit has been vouchsafed to me. 
 
342 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 If so, how unlike to the visions my childhood indulged 
 as divine! Now, while I know still more deeply that 
 there is a world for the angels, I know, also, that the 
 mortal must pass through probation in the world of 
 mortals. Oh, may I pass through it with you: — 
 grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joys!" 
 
 Here language failed her. Again the dear arms 
 embraced me, and the dear face, eloquent with love, 
 hid itself on my human breast. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 That interview is over! Again I am banished from 
 Lilian's room; the agitation, the joy of that meeting 
 has overstrained her enfeebled nerves. Convulsive 
 tremblings of the whole frame, accompanied with vehe- 
 ment sobs, succeeded our brief interchange of sweet 
 and bitter thoughts. Faber, in tearing me from her 
 side, imperiously and sternly warned me that the sole 
 chance yet left of preserving her life was in the merciful 
 suspense of the emotions that my presence excited. He 
 and Amy resumed their place in her chamber. Even 
 her mother shared my sentence of banishment. So Mrs. 
 Ashleigh and I sat facing each other in the room 
 below, over me a leaden stupor had fallen, and I heard, 
 as a voice from afar or in a dream, the mother's mur- 
 mured wailings: 
 
 "She will die — she will die! Her eyes have the 
 same heavenly look as my Gilbert's on the day on which 
 his closed for ever. Her very words are his last words 
 — 'forgive me all my faults to you.' She will die — 
 she will die!" 
 
 Hours thus passed away. At length, Faber entered 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 343 
 
 the room; lie spoke first to Mrs. Ashleigh — meaning- 
 less soothings, familiar to the lips of all who pass from 
 the chamber of the dying to the presence of mourners, 
 and know that it is a falsehood to say "hope," and a 
 mockery, as yet, to say "endure." 
 
 But he led her away to her own room docile as a 
 wearied child led to sleep, stayed with her some time, 
 and then returned to me, pressing me to his breast, 
 father-like. 
 
 "No hope — no hope!" said I, recoiling from his 
 embrace. "You are silent. Speak! speak! Let me 
 know the worst." 
 
 "I have a hope, yet I scarcely dare to bid you share 
 it; for it grows rather out of my heart as man, than 
 my experience as physician. I cannot think that her 
 soul would be now so reconciled to earth, so fondly, 
 so earnestly cling to this mortal life, if it were about 
 to be summoned away. You know how commonly even 
 the sufferers who have dreaded death the most become 
 calmly resigned to its coming, when death visibly 
 reveals itself out from the shadows in which its shape 
 has been guessed and not seen. As it is a bad sign 
 for life when the patient has lost all will to live on, so 
 there is hope while the patient, yet young and with no 
 perceptible breach in the great centres of life (however 
 violently their forts may be stormed), has still intense 
 faith in recovery, perhaps drawn (who can say?) from 
 the whispers conveyed from above to the soul. 
 
 "I cannot bring myself to think that all the uses for 
 which a reason, always so lovely even in its errors, has 
 been restored, are yet fulfilled. It seems to me as if 
 your union, as yet so imperfect, has still for its end 
 that holy life on earth by which two mortal beings 
 
344 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 strengthen each other for a sphere of existence to which 
 this is the spiritual ladder. Through yourself I have 
 hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that rank you 
 high in the manifold orders of man; thoughtful, 
 laborious, and brave; with a heart that makes intellect 
 vibrate to every fine touch of humanity; in error itself, 
 conscientious; in delusions, still eager for truth; in 
 anger, forgiving; in wrong, seeking how to repair; 
 and, best of all, strong in a love which the mean would 
 have shrunk to defend from the fangs of the slanderer 
 — a love, raising passion itself out of the realm of the 
 senses, made sublime by the sorrows that tried its devo- 
 tion; with all these noble proofs in yourself, of a 
 being not meant to end here — your life has stopped 
 short in its uses, your mind itself has been drifted, a 
 bark without rudder or pilot, over seas without shore, 
 under skies without stars. And wherefore? Because 
 the Mind you so haughtily vaunted has refused its 
 companion and teacher in Soul. 
 
 "And therefore, through you, I hope that she will 
 be spared yet to live on. She, in whom soul has been 
 led dimly astray, by unheeding the checks and the 
 definite goals which the mind is ordained to prescribe 
 to its wanderings while here; the mind taking thoughts 
 from the actual and visible world, and the soul but 
 vague glimpses and hints from the instinct of its ulti- 
 mate heritage. Each of you two, seems to me as yet 
 incomplete, and your destinies yet uncompleted. 
 Through the bonds of the heart, through the trials of 
 time, ye have both to consummate your marriage. I 
 do not — believe me — I do not say this in the fanciful 
 wisdom of allegory and type, save that, wherever deeply 
 examined, allegory and type run through all the most 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 345 
 
 commonplace phases of outward and material life. I 
 hope, then, that she may yet be spared to you; hope it, 
 not from my skill as physician, but my inward belief 
 as a Christian. To perfect your own being and end, 
 each of you has need of the other!'''' 
 
 I started — the very words that Lilian had heard 
 in her vision! 
 
 "But," resumed Faber, "how can I presume to 
 trace the numberless links of effects up to the First 
 Cause, far off — oh, far off — out of the scope of my 
 reason. I leave that to philosophers, who would 
 laugh my meek hope to scorn. Possibly, probably, 
 where I, whose calling has been but to save flesh 
 from the worm, deem that the life of your Lilian is 
 needed yet, to develop and train your own convictions 
 of soul, Heaven in its wisdom may see that her death 
 would instruct you far more than her life. I have 
 said: Be prepared for either; wisdom through joy; or 
 wisdom through grief. Enough that looking only 
 through the mechanism by which this moral world is 
 impelled and improved, you know that cruelty is im- 
 possible to wisdom. Even a man, or man's law, is 
 never wise but when it is merciful. But mercy has 
 general conditions; and that which is mercy to the 
 myriads may seem hard to the one; and that which 
 seems hard to the one in the pang of a moment may 
 be mercy when viewed by the eye that looks on through 
 eternity." 
 
 And from all this discourse — of which I now, at 
 calm distance of time, recall every word — my human, 
 loving heart bore away for the moment but this sentence, 
 "Each has need of the other;" so that I cried out, 
 "Life, life, life! Is there no hope for her life? Have 
 
346 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 you no hope as physician? I am physician, too; I will 
 see her. I will judge. I will not be banished from my 
 post." 
 
 "Judge then, as physician, and let the lesponsibility 
 rest with you. At this moment, all convulsion, all 
 struggle has ceased, the frame is at rest. Look on her, 
 and perhaps only the physician's eye could distinguish 
 her state from death. It is not sleep, it is not trance, 
 it is not the dooming coma from which there is no 
 awaking. Shall I call it by the name received in our 
 schools? Is it the catalepsy in which life is suspended, 
 but consciousness acute? She is motionless, rigid; it 
 is but with a strain of my own sense that I know that 
 the breath still breathes, and the heart still beats. 
 But I am convinced that though she can neither 
 speak nor stir, nor give sign, she is fully, sensitively, 
 conscious of all that passes around her. She is like 
 those who have seen the very coffin carried into their 
 chamber, and been unable to cry out, 'Do not bury 
 me alive!' Judge then for yourself, with this in- 
 tense consciousness and this impotence to evince it, 
 what might be the effect of your presence — first an 
 agony of despair, and then the complete extinction of 
 life!" 
 
 "I have known but one such case. A mother whose 
 heart was wrapped up in a suffering infant. She had 
 lain for two days and two nights, still, as if in her 
 shroud. All, save myself, said, 'Life is gone.' I 
 said, 'Life still is there.' They brought in the infant, 
 to try what effect its presence would produce; then her 
 lips moved, and the hands crossed upon her bosom 
 trembled." 
 
 "And the result?" exclaimed Faber, eagerly. "If 
 
A STRANGE STORY 1 . 
 
 347 
 
 the result of your experience sanction your presence, 
 come; the sight of the babe rekindled life?" 
 
 "No; extinguished its last spark! I will not enter 
 Lilian's room. I will go away; away from the house 
 itself. That acute consciousness! I know it well! 
 She may even hear me move in the room below, hear 
 me speak at this moment. Go back to her, go back! 
 But if hers be the state which I have known in another, 
 which may be yet more familiar to persons of far 
 ampler experience than mine, there is no immediate 
 danger of death. The state will last through to-day, 
 through to-night; perhaps for days to come. Is it so?" 
 
 "I believe that for at lea^t twelve hours there will 
 be no change in her state. 1 believe also that if she 
 recover from it, calm and refreshed, as from a sleep, 
 the danger of death will have passed away." 
 
 "And for twelve hours my presence would be hurt- 
 ful?" 
 
 "Rather say fatal, if my diagnosis be right." 
 
 I wrung my friend's hand, and we parted. 
 
 Oh, to lose her now! now that her love and her 
 reason had both returned, each more vivid than before! 
 Futile, indeed, might be Margrave's boasted secret; 
 but at least in that secret was hope. In recognized 
 science I saw only despair. 
 
 And, at that thought, all dread of this mysterious 
 visitor vanished — all anxiety to question more of his 
 attributes or his history. His life itself became to me 
 dear and precious. What if it should foil me in the 
 steps of the process, whatever that was, by which the 
 life of my Lilian might be saved! 
 
 The shades of evening were now closing in. I 
 remembered that I had left Margrave without even 
 
348 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 food for many hours. I stole round to the back of the 
 house, filled a basket with aliments, more generous 
 than those of the former day; extracted fresh drugs 
 from my stores, and, thus laden, hurried back to the 
 hut. I found Margrave in the room below, seated on 
 his mysterious coffer, leaning his face on his hand. 
 When I entered, he looked up and said: 
 
 "You have neglected me. My strength is waning. 
 Give me more of the cordial, for we have work before 
 us to-night, and I need support. 1 ' 
 
 He took for granted my assent to his wild experi- 
 ment; and he was right. 
 
 I administered the cordial. I placed food before 
 him, and this time he did not eat with repugnance. I 
 poured out wine, and he drank it sparingly, but with 
 ready compliance, saying, "In perfect health I looked 
 upon wine as poison, now it is like a foretaste of the 
 glorious elixir." 
 
 After he had thus recruited himself, he seemed to 
 acquire an energy that startlingly contrasted his lan- 
 guor the day before; the effort of breathing was scarcely 
 perceptible; the colour came back to his cheeks; his 
 bended frame rose elastic and erect. 
 
 "If I understood you rightly," said I, "the experi- 
 ment you ask me to aid can be accomplished in a 
 single night?" 
 
 "In a single night — this night." 
 
 "Command me. Why not begin at once? What 
 apparatus or chemical agencies do you need?" 
 
 "Ah," said Margrave. "Formerly, how I was 
 misled! Formerly, how my conjectures blundered! 
 I thought, when I asked you to give a month to the 
 experiment I wish to make, that I should need the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 340 
 
 subtlest skill of the chemist. I then believed, with 
 Van Hclmont, that the principle of life is a gas, and 
 that the secret was but in the mode by which the gas 
 might be rightly administered. But now, all that I 
 need is contained in this coffer, save one very simple 
 material — fuel sufficient for a steady fire for six hours. 
 I see even that is at hand, piled up in your outhouse. 
 And now for the substance itself — to that you must 
 guide me." 
 "Explain." 
 
 "Near this very spot is there not gold — in mines 
 yet undiscovered? — and gold of the purest metal?" 
 
 "There is. What then? Do you, with the alche- 
 mists, blend in one discovery — gold and life?" 
 
 "No. But it is only where the chemistry of earth 
 or of man produces gold, that the substance from which 
 the great pabulum of life is extracted by ferment, can 
 be found. Possibly, in the attempts at that transmuta- 
 tion of metals, which I think your own great chemist 
 — Sir Humphry Davy — allowed might be possible, 
 but held to be not worth the cost of the process, — 
 possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this 
 substance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, 
 with grains of the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful 
 mimicry of Nature's stupendous laboratory, and from 
 such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps, have 
 been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to 
 some feeble greybeard, — granting what rests on no 
 proofs, that some of the alchemists reached an age 
 rarely given to man. But it is not in the miserly 
 crucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we 
 must seek in prolific abundance Nature's grand prin- 
 ciple — life. As the loadstone is rife with the magnetic 
 
350 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 virtue, as amber contains the electric, so in this sub- 
 stance, to which we yet want a name, is found the 
 bright life-giving fluid. In the old gold-mines of Asia 
 and Europe the substance exists ; but can rarely be 
 met with. The soil for its nutriment may there be 
 well-nigh exhausted. It is here, where Nature herself 
 is all vital with youth, that the nutriment of youth 
 must be sought. Near this spot is gold — guide me 
 to it." 
 
 "You cannot come with me. The place which I 
 know as auriferous is some miles distant ; the way 
 rugged. You cannot walk to it. It is true, I have 
 horses, but " 
 
 "Do you think I have come this distance, and not 
 foreseen and forestalled all that I want for my object? 
 Trouble yourself not with conjectures how I can arrive 
 at the place. I have provided the means to arrive at, 
 and leave it. My litter and its bearers are in reach 
 of my call. Give me your arm to the rising ground, 
 fifty yards from your door." 
 
 I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had 
 made my resolve, and admitted no thought that could 
 shake it. 
 
 When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, 
 which sloped from the road that led to the seaport, 
 Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up 
 his voice in a key, not loud, but shrill and slow and 
 prolonged, half cry and half chant, like the night- 
 hawk's. Through that air, so limpid and still, bring- 
 ing near far objects, far sounds — the voice pierced 
 its way, artfully pausing, till wave after wave of the 
 atmosphere bore and transmitted it on. 
 
 In a few minutes the call seemed re-echoed, so 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 351 
 
 exactly, so cheerily, that for the moment I thought that 
 the note was the mimicry of the shy mocking Lyre- 
 Bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in its 
 coverts, from the whirr of the locust to the howl of the 
 wild dog. 
 
 "What king," said the mystical charmer, and as he 
 spoke he carelessly rested his hand on my shoulder, — 
 so that I trembled to feel that this dread son of Nature, 
 Godless and soulless, who had been — and my heart 
 whispered, who still could be — my bane and mind- 
 darkener, leant upon me for support, as the spoilt 
 younger-born on his brother — "what king," said this 
 cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face, — "what 
 king in your civilized Europe has the sway of a chief 
 of the East? What link is so strong between mortal and 
 mortal, as that between lord and slave? I transport 
 yon poor fools from the land of their birth — they 
 preserve here their old habits ; obedience and awe. 
 They would wait till they starved in the solitude — ■ 
 wait to hearken and answer my call. And I, who thus 
 rule them, or charm them — I use and despise them. 
 They know that, and yet serve me! Between you and 
 me, my philosopher, there is but one thing worth living 
 for — life for oneself." 
 
 Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, 
 in my solemn completeness of man? Perhaps, in great 
 capitals, young men of pleasure will answer, "It is 
 youth; and we think what he says!" Young friends, 
 I do not believe you. 
 
352 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 Along the grass track I saw now, under the moon, 
 just risen, a strange procession — never seen before in 
 Australian pastures. It moved on, noiselessly but 
 quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on the 
 way. A sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar 
 Eastern garments; two other swarthy servitors, more 
 bravely dressed, with yataghans and silver-hilted pistols 
 in their belts, preceding this sombre equipage. Perhaps 
 Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed 
 through my mind, vaguely and half-consciously ; for he 
 said, with the hollow, bitter laugh that had replaced 
 the lively peal of his once melodious mirth: 
 
 "A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw 
 colonist, too, will have the tastes of a pacha." 
 
 I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and 
 what was my tempter. To me his whole beiug was 
 resolved into one problem: Had he a secret by which 
 Death could be turned from Lilian? 
 
 But now, as the litter halted, from the long dark 
 shadow which it cast upon the turf, the figure of a 
 woman emerged, and stood before us. The outlines 
 of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black 
 mantle, and the features of her face were hidden by a 
 black veil, except only the dark-bright, solemn eyes. 
 Her stature was lofty, her bearing majestic, whether in 
 movement or repose. 
 
 Margrave accosted her in some language unknown 
 to me. She replied in what seemed to my ear the 
 same tongue. The tones of her voice were sweet, but 
 inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 353 
 
 appeared intended to warn, or deprecate, or dissuade, 
 for they called to Margrave's brow a lowering frown, 
 and drew from his lips a burst of unmistakable anger. 
 The woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of 
 voice. And Margrave then, leaning his arm upon her 
 shoulder, as he had leant it on mine, drew her away 
 from the group into a neighbouring copse of the flower- 
 ing eucalypti — mystic trees, never changing the hues 
 of their pale green leaves, ever shifting the tints of 
 their ash-grey, shedding, bark. For some moments, I 
 gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the 
 glinting moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. 
 Then, turning away my eyes, I saw, standing close at 
 my side, a man whom I had not noticed before. His 
 footstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on the sward 
 without sound. His dress, though Oriental, differed 
 from that of his companions, both in shape and colour ; 
 fitting close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to the 
 elbow, and of an uniform ghastly white, as are the 
 cerements of the grave. His visage was even darker 
 than those of the Syrians or Arabs behind him, and 
 • his features were those of a bird of prey — the beak of 
 the eagle, but the eye of the vulture. His cheeks 
 were hollow, the arms, crossed on his breast, were long 
 and fleshless. Yet in that skeleton form there was a 
 something which conveyed the idea of a serpent's sup- 
 pleness and strength; and as the hungry, watchful 
 eyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively 
 with that inward warning of danger which is conveyed 
 to man, as to inferior animals, in the very aspect of 
 the creatures that sting or devour. At my movement 
 the man inclined his head in the submissive Eastern 
 salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly, 
 A Si range Story. II. 23 
 
354 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 humbly, fawningly, to judge by liis tone and his ges- 
 ture. 
 
 I moved yet farther away from him with loathing, 
 and now the human thought flashed upon me: was I 
 in truth exposed to no danger in trusting myself to the 
 mercy of the weird and remorseless master of those 
 hirelings from the East: — seven men in number, two 
 at least of them formidably armed, and docile as blood- 
 hounds to the hunter, who has only to show them their 
 prey. But fear of man like myself is not my weak- 
 ness; where fear found its way to my heart it was 
 through the doubts or the fancies in which man like 
 myself disappeared in the attributes, dark and un- 
 known, which we give to a fiend or a spectre. And, 
 perhaps, if I could have paused to analyze my own 
 sensations, the very presence of this escort — creatures 
 of flesh and blood — lessened the dread of my incom- 
 prehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front 
 and defy those seven Eastern slaves — I, haughty son 
 of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he 
 fears no odds — than have seen again on the walls of 
 my threshold, the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Be- 
 sides; Lilian — Lilian! for one chance of saving her 
 life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, 
 I would have shrunk not a foot from the march of an 
 army. 
 
 Thus reassured, and thus resolved, I advanced with 
 a smile of disdain, to meet Margrave and his veiled 
 companion, as they now came from the moonlit copse. 
 
 "Well,' 1 I said to him, with an irony that uncon- 
 sciously mimicked his own, "have you taken advice 
 with your nurse? I assume that the dark form by 
 your side is that of Ayesha!" 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 355 
 
 The woman looked at me from her sable veil, with 
 her steadfast, solemn eyes, and said, in English, though 
 with a foreign accent, "The nurse born in Asia is but 
 wise through her love; the pale son of Europe is wise 
 through his art. The nurse says 'Forbear! 1 Do you 
 say 'Adventure?'" 
 
 "Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot 
 on the ground, "I take no counsel from either; it is 
 for me to resolve, for you to obey, and for him to aid. 
 Night is come, and we waste it; move on." 
 
 The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my 
 arm and walked back to the hut. The barbaric escort 
 followed. When we reached the door of the building, 
 Margrave said a few words to the woman and to the 
 litter-bearers. They entered the hut with us. Mar- 
 grave pointed out to the woman his coffer; to the men, 
 the fuel stowed in the outhouse. Both were borne 
 away and placed within the litter. Meanwhile, I took 
 from the table, on which it was carelessly thrown, the 
 light hatchet that I habitually carried with me in my 
 rambles. 
 
 "Do you think that you need that idle weapon?" 
 said Margrave. "Do you fear the good faith of my 
 swarthy attendants ? " 
 
 "Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever 
 the gold from the quartz in which we may find it 
 imbedded, or to clear, as this shovel, which will also be 
 needed, from the slight soil above it, the ore that the 
 mine in the mountain flings forth, as the sea casts its 
 waifs on the sands." 
 
 "Give me your hand, fellow-labourer!" said Mar- 
 grave, joyfully. "Ah, there is no faltering terror in 
 this pulse. I was not mistaken in the Man. What 
 
 23* 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 rests, but the Place and the Hour? — T shall live — 
 I shall live!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 Margrave now entered the litter, and the Veiled 
 Woman drew the black curtains round him. I walked 
 on, as the guide, some yards in advance. The air was 
 still, heavy, and parched with the breath of the Aus- 
 tralasian sirocco. 
 
 We passed through the meadow-lands, studded with 
 slumbering flocks ; we followed the branch of the creek 
 which was linked to its source in the mountains by many 
 a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom of stunted, 
 misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which 
 makes one of the signs of the strata that nourish gold; 
 and at length the moon, now in all her pomp of light, 
 mid-heaven amongst her subject stars, gleamed through 
 the fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay the relics of 
 antediluvian races, and rested in one flood of silvery 
 splendour upon the hollows of the extinct volcano, with 
 tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler sward, 
 covering the gold below — Gold, the dumb symbol of 
 organized Matters great mystery, storing in itself, 
 according as Mind, the informer of Matter, can distin- 
 guish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing. 
 
 Hitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the 
 rear with the white-robed skeleton-like image that had 
 crept to my side unawares with its noiseless step. 
 Thus, in each winding turn of the difficult path at 
 which the convoy, following behind me, came into 
 sight, I had seen first the two gaily-dressed armed 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 357 
 
 men, next the black bier-like litter, and last the Black- 
 veiled Woman and the White-robed Skeleton. 
 
 But now, as I halted on the table-land, backed by 
 the mountain and fronting the valley, the woman left 
 her companion, passed by the litter and the armed 
 men, and paused by my side, at the mouth of the 
 moonlit cavern. 
 
 There for a moment she stood, silent; the pro- 
 cession below mounting upward laboriously and slow 
 then she turned to me, and her veil was withdrawn. 
 
 The face on which I gazed was wondrously beau- 
 tiful, and severely awful. There was neither youth 
 nor age; but beauty mature and majestic as that of a 
 marble Demeter. 
 
 "Do you believe in that which you seek?" she 
 asked, in her foreign melodious, melancholy accents. 
 
 "I have no belief," was my answer. "True science 
 has none. True science questions all things, takes 
 nothing upon credit. It knows but three states of 
 the mind — Denial, Conviction, and that vast interval 
 between the two, which is not belief, but suspense of 
 judgment." 
 
 The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and 
 seated herself on a crag above that cleft between 
 mountain and creek, to which, when I had first dis- 
 covered the gold that the land nourished, the rain 
 from the clouds had given the rushing life of the 
 cataract; but which now, in the drought and the hush 
 of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones. 
 
 The litter now ascended the height; its bearers 
 halted; a lean hand tore the curtains aside, and Mar- 
 grave descended, leaning, this time, not on the Black- 
 veiled Woman but on the White-robed Skeleton. 
 
358 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his 
 wasted form; on his face, resolute, cheerful, and proud, 
 despite its hollowed outlines and sicklied hues. He 
 raised his head, spoke in the language unknown to 
 me, and the armed men and the litter-bearers grouped 
 round him, bending low, their eyes fixed on the 
 ground. The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came 
 to his side, motioning away, with a mute sign, the 
 ghastly form on which he leant, and passing round 
 him silently, instead, her own sustaining arm. Mar- 
 grave spoke again, a few sentences, of which I could 
 not even guess the meaning. When he had concluded, 
 the armed men and the litter-bearers came nearer to 
 his feet, knelt down, and kissed his hand. They then 
 rose, and took from the bier-like vehicle the coffer 
 and the fuel. This done, they lifted again the litter, 
 and again, preceded by the armed men, the procession 
 descended down the sloping hill-side, down into the 
 valley below. 
 
 Margrave now whispered, for some moments, into 
 the ear of the hideous creature who had made way for 
 the Veiled Woman. The grim skeleton bowed his 
 head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through 
 the long grasses; the slender stems, trampled under 
 his stealthy feet, relifting themselves, as after a passing 
 wind. And thus he, too, sank out of sight down into 
 the valley below. On the table-land of the hill re- 
 mained only we three — Margrave, myself, and the 
 Veiled Woman. 
 
 She had reseated herself apart, on the grey crag 
 above the dried torrent. He stood at the entrance of 
 the cavern, round the sides of which clustered parasital 
 plants, with flowers of all colours, some amongst them 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 359 
 
 opening their petals and exhaling their fragrance only 
 in the hours of night; so that, as his form filled up 
 the jaws of the dull arch, obscuring the moonbeam 
 that strove to pierce the shadows that slept within, 
 it stood now — wan and blighted — as I had seen it 
 first, radiant and joyous, "literally framed in blooms." 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 "So," said Margrave, turning to me, "under the 
 soil that spreads around us, lies the gold which to you 
 and to me is at this moment of no value, except as a 
 guide to its twin-born — the regenerator of life ! " 
 
 "You have not yet described to me the nature of 
 the substance which we are to explore, nor of the pro- 
 cess by which the virtues you impute to it are to be 
 extracted.'' 
 
 "Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing 
 the life-amber, so let me call it, I will point it out to 
 your own eyes. As to the process, your share in it is 
 so simple, that you will ask me why I seek aid from 
 a chemist. The life-amber, when found, has but to be 
 subjected to heat and fermentation for six hours; it 
 will be placed in a small caldron which that coffer 
 contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed To 
 give effect to the process, certain alkalies and other 
 ingredients are required. But these are prepared, and 
 mine is the task to commingle them. From your science 
 as chemist I need and ask nought. In you I have 
 sought only the aid of a man." 
 
 "If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all? why 
 not confide in those swarthy attendants who doubtless 
 are slaves to your orders?" 
 
:)G0 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "Confide in slaves! when the first task enjoined to 
 them would be to discover, and refrain from purloining, 
 gold. Seven such unscrupulous knaves, or even one 
 such, and I, thus defenceless and feeble! Such is not 
 the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. 
 But that is the least of the reasons which exclude :hem 
 from my choice, and fix my choice of assistant on you. 
 Do you forget what I told you of the danger which 
 the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt 
 him a second time to brave?" 
 
 "I remember, now; those words had passed away 
 from my mind." 
 
 "And because they had passed away from your 
 mind, I chose you for my comrade. I need a man by 
 whom danger is scorned." 
 
 "But in the process of which you tell me I see no 
 possible danger, unless the ingredients you mix in your 
 caldron have poisonous fumes." 
 
 "It is not that. The ingredients I use are not 
 poisons." 
 
 "What other danger, except you dread your own 
 Eastern slaves? But, if so, why lead them to these 
 solitudes? and, if so, why not bid me be armed?" 
 
 "The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait 
 for my summons, where their eyes cannot see what we 
 do. The danger is of a kind in which the boldest son 
 of the East would be more craven, perhaps, than the 
 daintiest Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a 
 panther and laugh at a ghost. In the creed of the 
 Dervish, and of all who adventure into that realm of 
 nature which is closed to philosophy and open to 
 magic, there are races in the magnitude of space un- 
 seen as animalcules in the world of a drop. For the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 361 
 
 tribes of the drop, science has its microscope. Of the 
 hosts of yon azure Infinite magic gains sight, and 
 through them gains command over fluid conductors 
 that link all the parts of creation. Of these races, 
 some are wholly indifferent to man; some benign to 
 him, and some dreadly hostile. In all the regular and 
 prescribed conditions of mortal being, this magic realm 
 seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But 
 when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by 
 which man plies the clockwork, that measures his hours 
 and stops when its chain reaches the end of its coil, — 
 strives to pass over those boundaries at which philo- 
 sophy says, 'Knowledge ends;' then, he is like all 
 other travellers in regions unknown; he must propitiate, 
 or brave, the tribes that are hostile, must depend for 
 his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your 
 science discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning 
 informs you that all alchemists were not ignorant im- 
 postors ; yet those whose discoveries prove them to have 
 been the nearest allies to your practical knowledge, 
 ever hint in their mystical works at the reality of that 
 realm which is open to magic — ever hint that some 
 means less familiar than furnace and bellows, are es- 
 sential to him who explores the elixir of life. He 
 who once quaffs that elixir, obtains in his very veins 
 the bright fluid by which he transmits the force of his 
 will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants unseen in 
 the space. And, here, as he passes the boundary 
 which divides his allotted and normal mortality from 
 the regions and races that magic alone can explore, so, 
 here, he breaks down the safeguard between himself, 
 and the tribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus 
 between man and man? Let a race, the most gentle 
 
362 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 and timid and civilized dwell on one side a river or 
 mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, 
 each, if it pass not the intervening barrier, may with 
 each live in peace. But, if ambitious adventurers scale 
 the mountain, or cross the river, with design to subdue 
 and enslave the populations they boldly invade, then 
 all the invaded arise in wrath and defiance — the neigh- 
 bours are changed into foes. And, therefore, this 
 process by which a simple though rare material of 
 nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life 
 which brings with its glorious resistance to Time, 
 desires, and faculties to subject to its service beings 
 that dwell in the earth, and the air, and the deep, has 
 ever been one of the same peril which an invader must 
 brave when he crosses the bounds of his nation. By 
 this key alone, you unlock all the cells of the alchemist's 
 lore; by this alone, understand how a labour, which a 
 chemist's crudest apprentice could perform, has baffled 
 the giant fathers of all your dwarfed children of science. 
 Nature, that stores this priceless boon, seems to shrink 
 from conceding it to man — the invisible tribes that 
 abhor him, oppose themselves to the gain that might 
 give them a master. The duller of those, who were 
 the life-seekers of old, would have told you how some 
 chance, trivial, unlooked for, foiled their grand hope 
 at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, 
 some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a 
 wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bel- 
 lows, or a pupil, who had but to replenish the fuel, 
 fell asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom 
 vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they can 
 frustrate the bungler, as they mock at his toils from 
 their ambush. But, the mightier adventurers, equally 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 363 
 
 foiled in despite of their patience and skill, wonld Lave 
 said, 'Not with us rests the fault; we neglected no 
 caution, we failed from no oversight. But out from the 
 caldron dread faces arose, and the spectres or demons 
 dismayed and baffled us.' Such, then, is the danger 
 which seems so appalling to a son of the East, as it 
 seemed to a seer in the dark age of Europe. But we 
 can deride all its threats, you and I. For myself, I 
 own frankly I take all the safety that the charms and 
 resources of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have 
 the cultured and disciplined reason which reduces all 
 phantasies to nervous impressions, and I rely on the 
 courage of one who has questioned, unquailing, the 
 Luminous Shadow, and wrested from the hand of the 
 magician himself the wand which concentred the wonders 
 of will!" 
 
 To this strange and long discourse I listened with- 
 out interruption, and now quietly answered. 
 
 "I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage-, 
 but I am now on my guard against the cheats of the 
 fancy, and the fumes of a vapour can scarcely bewilder 
 the brain in the open air of this mountain land. I 
 believe in no races like those which you tell me lie 
 viewless in space, as do gases. I believe not in magic; 
 I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For the 
 rest, I am confident of one mournful courage — the 
 courage that comes from despair. I submit to your 
 guidance, whatever it be, as a sufferer whom colleges 
 doom to the grave submits to the quack, who says, 
 'Take my specific and live!' My life is nought in 
 itself; my life lives in another. You and I are both 
 brave from despair; you would turn death from your- 
 self, I would turn death from one I love more than 
 
3Gi 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 myself. Both know how little aid we can win from the 
 colleges, and both, therefore, turn to the promisers most 
 audaciously cheering: Dervish or magician, alchemist 
 or phantom, what care you and I? And if they fail 
 us, what then? They cannot fail us more than the 
 colleges do!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 The gold has been gained with an easy labour. I 
 knew where to seek for it, whether under the turf or 
 in the bed of the creek. But Margrave's eyes, hun- 
 grily gazing round every spot from which the ore was 
 disburied, could not detect the substance of which he 
 alone knew the outward appearance. I had begun to 
 believe that even in the description given to him of this 
 material he had been credulously duped, and that no 
 such material existed; when, coming back from the 
 bed of the watercourse, I saw a faint yellow gleam 
 amidst the roots of a giant parasite plant, the leaves 
 and blossoms of which climbed up the sides of the cave 
 with its antediluvian relics. The gleam was the gleam 
 of gold, and on removing the loose earth round the 
 roots of the plant , we came on — No, I will not — I 
 dare not, describe it. The gold-digger would cast it 
 aside, the naturalist would pause not to heed it, and 
 did I describe it, and chemistry deign to subject it to 
 analysis, could chemistry alone detach or discover its 
 boasted virtues? 
 
 Its particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming 
 readily to crystallize with each other, each in itself of 
 uniform shape and size, spherical as the egg which 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 365 
 
 contains the germ of life, and small as the egg from 
 which the life of an insect may quicken. 
 
 But Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms 
 upcast by the light of the moon. He exclaimed to me, 
 "Found! I shall live!" And then, as he gathered 
 up the grains with tremulous hands, he called out to 
 the Veiled Woman, hitherto still seated motionless on 
 the crag. At his word she rose and went to the place 
 hard by, where the fuel was piled, busying herself 
 there. I had no leisure to heed her. I continued my 
 search in the soft and yielding soil that time and the 
 decay of vegetable life had accumulated over the Pre- 
 Adamite strata on which the arch of the cave rested its 
 mighty keystone. 
 
 When we had collected of these particles about 
 thrice as much as a man might hold in his hand, we 
 seemed to have exhausted their bed. We continued still 
 to find gold, but no more of the delicate substance, to 
 which, in our sight, gold was as dross. 
 
 "Enough," then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting. 
 "What we have gained already will suffice for a life 
 thrice as long as legend attributes to Haroun. I shall 
 live — I shall live through the centuries." 
 
 "Forget not that I claim my share." 
 
 "Your share — yours! True — your half of my 
 life! it is true." He paused, with a low, ironical, ma- 
 lignant laugh, and then added, as he rose and turned 
 away, "But the work is yet to be done." 
 
366 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 While we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha 
 had placed the fuel where the moonlight fell fullest on 
 the sward of the table-land — a part of it already piled 
 as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at 
 hand — and by the pile she had placed the coffer. 
 And there she stood, her arms folded under her mantle, 
 her dark image seeming darker still as the moonlight 
 whitened all the ground from which the image rose 
 motionless. Margrave opened his coffer, the Veiled 
 Woman did not aid him, and I watched in silence, 
 while he as silently made his weird and wizard-like 
 preparations. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 On the ground a wide circle was traced by a small 
 rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some 
 combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent 
 flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided 
 it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and 
 leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely 
 native fable-talk, we call the "Fairy's Ring," but yet 
 more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. 
 On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small 
 lamps fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and 
 lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the 
 lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which 
 circled round the ring. 
 
 Within the circumference, and immediately round 
 the wood pile, Margrave traced certain geometrical 
 figures in which, not without a shudder, that T over- 
 
A STRANGE STORY". 
 
 3G7 
 
 came at once by a strong effort of will in murmuring 
 to myself the name of "Lilian," I recognized the inter- 
 laced triangles which my own hand, in the spell 
 enforced on a sleep-walker, had described on the floor 
 of the wizard's pavilion. The figures were traced, like 
 the circle, in flame, and at the point of each triangle 
 (four in number) was placed a lamp, brilliant as those 
 on the ring. This task performed, the caldron, based 
 on an iron tripod, was placed on the wood pile. And 
 then the woman, before inactive and unheeding, slowly 
 advanced, knelt by the pile, and lighted it. The dry 
 wood crackled and the flame burst forth, licking the 
 rims of the caldron with tongues of fire. 
 
 Margrave flung into the caldron the particles we 
 had collected, poured over them first a liquid colourless 
 as water, from the largest of the vessels drawn from 
 his coffer, and then, more sparingly, drops from small 
 crystal phials, like the phials I had seen in the hand 
 of Philip Derval. 
 
 Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I 
 watched these proceedings, curious yet disdainful, as 
 one who watches the mummeries of an enchanter on 
 the stage. 
 
 "If," thought I, "these are but artful devices to 
 inebriate and fool my own imagination, my imagina- 
 tion is on its guard, and reason shall not, this time, 
 sleep at her post!" 
 
 "And now," said Margrave, "I consign to you the 
 easy task by which you are to merit your share of the 
 elixir. It is my task to feed and replenish the cal- 
 dron; it is Ayesha's to heed the fire, which must not 
 for a moment relax in its measured and steady heat. 
 Your task is the lightest of all: it is but to renew from 
 
368 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and on 
 the ring. Observe, the contents of the vessel must be 
 thriftily husbanded; there is enough, but not more than 
 enough, to sustain the light in the lamps, on the lines 
 traced round the caldron, and on the farther ring for 
 six hours. The compounds dissolved in this fluid are 
 scarce — only obtainable in the East, and even in the 
 East months might have passed before I could have 
 increased my supply. I had no months to waste. Ke- 
 plenish then the light only when it begins to flicker or 
 fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer 
 ring — no, not an inch — and no lamp of the twelve, 
 that are to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment 
 in darkness." 
 
 I took the crystal vessel from his hand. 
 
 "The vessel is small," said I, "and what is yet left 
 of its contents is but scanty, whether its drops suffice 
 to replenish the lights I cannot guess, I can but obey 
 your instructions. But, more important by far than 
 the light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or 
 Africa might scare away the wild beasts unknown 
 to this land — more important than light to a lamp, 
 is the strength to your frame, weak magician! What 
 will support you through six weary hours of night- 
 watch?" 
 
 "Hope," answered Margrave, with a ray of his old 
 dazzling smile. "Hope. I shall live — I shall live 
 through the centuries." 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 369 
 
 OK AFTER LI. 
 
 One hour passed away, the fagots under the cal- 
 dron burned clear in the sullen sultry air. The mate- 
 rials within began to seethe, and their colour, at first 
 dull and turbid, changed into a pale rose hue; from 
 time to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, 
 after she had done so reseating herself close by the 
 pyro, with her head bowed over her knees, and her 
 face hid under her veil. 
 
 The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the 
 triangles now began to pale. I resupplied their nutri- 
 ment from the crystal vessel. As yet nothing strange 
 startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the circle. 
 Nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel- 
 like click of the locusts, and, farther still in the forest, 
 the howl of the wild dogs that never bark. Nothing 
 visible, but the trees and the mountain-range girding 
 the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of the 
 cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the 
 gleam of dry bones on its floor where the moonlight 
 shot into the gloom. 
 
 The second hour passed like the first. I had taken 
 my stand by the side of Margrave, watching with him 
 the process at work in the caldron, when I felt the 
 ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and, looking 
 up, it seemed as if all the plains beyond the circle 
 were heaving like the swell of the sea, and as if in 
 the air itself there was a perceptible tremor. 
 
 I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and 
 whispered, "To me earth and air seem to vibrate. Do 
 they seem to vibrate to you?" 
 
 "I know not, I care not, 1 ' he answered impetuously. 
 A Strange Story. IL f& 
 
370 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 "The essence is bursting the shell that confined it. 
 Here are my air and my earth! Trouble me not. Look 
 to the circle — feed the lamps if they fail." 
 
 I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked to- 
 wards a place in the ring in which the flame was wa- 
 ning dim. And I whispered to her the same question 
 which I had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly 
 around and answered, "So is it before the Invisible 
 make themselves visible! Did I not bid him forbear?" 
 Her head again drooped on her breast, and her watch 
 was again fixed on the fire. 
 
 I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish 
 the light where it waned. As I did so, on my arm, 
 which stretched somewhat beyond the line of the ring, 
 I felt a shock like that of electricity. The arm fell to 
 my side numbed and nerveless, and from my hand 
 dropped, but within the ring, the vessel that contained 
 the fluid. Recovering my surprise or my stun, hastily 
 with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some 
 of the scanty liquid was already spilled on the sward; 
 and I saw with a thrill of dismay that contrasted, 
 indeed, the tranquil indifference with which I had first 
 undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now 
 left. 
 
 I went back to Margrave, and told him of the 
 shock, and of its consequence in the waste of the 
 liquid. 
 
 "Beware," said he, "that not a motion of the arm, 
 not an inch of the foot, pass the verge of the ring; 
 and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted, reserve all 
 that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer 
 lamps. See how the Grand Work advances! how the 
 
A BTftANGE STORY. 
 
 371 
 
 hues in the caldron are glowing blood-red through the 
 film on the surface!" 
 
 And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm 
 had gradually recovered its strength. Neither the ring 
 nor the lamps had again required replenishing; per- 
 haps their light was exhausted less quickly, as it was 
 no longer to be exposed to the rays of the intense 
 Australian moon. Clouds had gathered over the sky, 
 and though the moon gleamed at times in the gaps 
 that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy 
 and dulled. The locusts no longer were heard in the 
 grass nor the howl of the dogs in the forest. Out of 
 the circle, the stillness was profound. 
 
 And about this time I saw distinctly in the dis- 
 tance a vast Eye! It drew nearer and nearer, seeming 
 to move from the ground at the height of some lofty 
 giant. Its gaze riveted mine; my blood curdled in the 
 blaze from its angry ball; and now as it advanced 
 larger and larger, other Eyes, as if of giants in its 
 train, grew out from the space in its rear: numbers on 
 numbers, like the spear-heads of some Eastern army, 
 seen afar by pale warders of battlements doomed to 
 the dust. My voice long refused an utterance to my 
 awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud: 
 
 "Look — look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on 
 legions. And hark! that tramp of numberless feet; 
 they are not seen, but the hollows of earth echo the 
 sound of their march!" 
 
 Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in 
 which, from time to time, he kept dropping powders or 
 essences drawn forth from his coffer, looked up, defy- 
 ingly, fiercely: 
 
 "Ye come," he said in a low mutter, his once 
 
 24* 
 
372 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 mighty voice sounding hollow and labouring, but fear- 
 less and firm — "ye come, — not to conquer, vain 
 rebels! — ye whose dark chief I struck down at my 
 feet in the tomb where my spell had raised up the 
 ghost of your first human master, the Chaldee! Earth 
 and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still 
 I remember the war-song that summons them up to 
 confront you! Ayesha — Ayesha! recall the wild troth 
 that we pledged amongst roses; recall the dread bond 
 by which we united our sway over hosts that yet own 
 thee as queen, though my sceptre is broken, my dia- 
 dem reft from my brows!" 
 
 The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her 
 veil now was withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire be- 
 tween Margrave and herself flushed, as with the rosy 
 bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her softened face. 
 It was seen, detached as it were, from her darkmantled 
 form; seen through the mist of the vapours which rose 
 from the caldron, framing it round like the clouds 
 that are yieldingly pierced by the light of the evening 
 star. 
 
 Through the haze of the vapour came her voice 
 more musical, more plaintive than I had heard it be- 
 fore, but far softer, more tender; still in her foreign 
 tongue ; the words unknown to me, and yet their sense, 
 perhaps, made intelligible by the love, which has one 
 common language and one common look to all who 
 have loved — the love unmistakably heard in the 
 loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face. 
 
 A moment or so more, and she had come round 
 from the opposite side of the fire pile, and bending 
 over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed it quietly, 
 solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 373 
 
 crest rose erect; it was the lioness protecting her 
 young. She stretched forth her arm from the black 
 mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent 
 over the caldron; stretched it towards the haunted and 
 hollow-sounding space beyond, in the gesture of one 
 whose right hand has the sway of the sceptre. And 
 then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant 
 not loud, yet far reaching; so thrilling, so sweet and 
 yet so solemn, that I could at once comprehend how 
 legend united of old the spell of enchantment with the 
 power of song. All that I recalled of the effects which, 
 in the former time, Margrave's strange chants had pro- 
 duced on the ear that they ravished and the thoughts 
 they confused, was but as the wild bird's imitative 
 carol, compared to the depth, and the art, and the soul 
 of the singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a 
 charm to enthral all the tribes of creation, though the 
 language it used for that charm might to them, as to 
 me, be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, from 
 behind, sounds like those I had heard, in the spaces 
 before me: the tramp of invisible feet, the whirr of in- 
 visible wings, as if armies were marching to aid against 
 armies in march to destroy. 
 
 "Look not in front nor around," said Ayesha. 
 "Look, like him, on the caldron below. The circle and 
 the lamps are yet bright; I will tell thee when their 
 light again fails." 
 
 I dropped my eyes on the caldron. 
 
 "See," whispered Margrave, "the sparkles at last 
 begin to arise, and the rose-hues to deepen; signs that 
 we near the last process." 
 
374 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER LIL 
 
 The fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said 
 to me, "Lo! the circle is fading; the lamps grow dim. 
 Look now without fear on the space beyond; the eyes 
 that appalled thee are again lost in air, as lightnings 
 that fleet back into cloud." 
 
 I looked up, and the spectres had vanished. The 
 sky was tinged with sulphurous hues, the red and the 
 black intermixed. I replenished the lamps and the 
 ring in front, thriftily, needfully; but when I came to 
 the sixth lamp, not a drop in the vessel that fed them 
 was left. In a vague dismay, I now looked round the 
 half of the wide circle in rear of the two bended figures 
 intent on the caldron. All along that disc the light 
 was already broken, here and there flickering up, here 
 and there dying down; the six lamps in that half of 
 the circle still twinkled, but faintly as stars shrinking 
 fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading 
 shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted 
 my eye and quickened with terror the pulse of my 
 heart; the Bush-land beyond was on fire. From the 
 background of the forest rose the flame and the smoke ; 
 the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But 
 along the width of the grasses and herbage, between 
 the verge of the forest and the bed of the water creek 
 just below the raised platform from which I beheld the 
 dread conflagration, the fire was advancing; wave upon 
 wave, clear and red against the columns of rock behind ; 
 as the rush of a flood through the mists of some Alp 
 crowned with lightnings. 
 
 Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger 
 not foreseen by the mind I had steeled against far 
 rarer portents of nature, I cared no more for the lamps 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 375 
 
 and the circle. Hurrying back to Ayeslia, I exclaimed, 
 "The phantoms have gone from the spaces in front; 
 but what incantation or spell can arrest the red march 
 of the foe, speeding on in the rear! While we gazed 
 on the caldron of life, behind us, unheeded, behold the 
 Destroyer!" 
 
 Ayesha looked and made no reply, but, as by in- 
 voluntary instinct, bowed her majestic head, then rearing 
 it erect, placed herself yet more immediately before the 
 wasted form of the young magician (he, still bending 
 over the caldron, and hearing me not in the absorption 
 and hope of his watch): placed herself before him, as 
 the bird whose first care is her fledgling. 
 
 As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, 
 we heard Margrave behind us, murmuring low, "See 
 the bubbles of light, how they sparkle and dance — I 
 shall live, I shall live!" And his words scarcely died 
 in our ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of 
 the age-long trees in the forest ; and nearer, all near us, 
 through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the serpents, the 
 scream of the birds, and the bellow and tramp of the herds 
 plunging wild through the billowy red of their pastures. 
 
 Ayesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and 
 wrenched him, reluctant and struggling, from his watch 
 over the seething caldron. In rebuke of his angry ex- 
 clamations, she pointed to the march of the fire, spoke 
 in sorrowful tones a few words in her own language, 
 and then, appealing to me in English, said: 
 
 "I tell him that, here, the Spirits who oppose us have 
 summoned a foe that is deaf to my voice, and " 
 
 "And," exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp 
 and effort, but with the swell of a voice which drowned 
 •ill the discords of terror and of agony sent forth from 
 the Phlegethon burning below — "and this witch, 
 
37G 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 whom I trusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more 
 desiring my death than my life. She thinks that in 
 life I should scorn and forsake her, that in death I 
 should die in her arms! Sorceress, a vaunt! Art thou 
 useless and powerless now when I need thee most? 
 Go! Let the world be one funeral pyre! What to me 
 is the world if I perish? My world is my life. Thou 
 knowest that my last hope is here, that all the strength 
 left me this night will die down, like the lamps in the 
 circle, unless the elixir restore it. Bold friend, spurn 
 that sorceress away. Hours yet ere those flames can 
 assail us! A few minutes more, and life to your Lilian 
 and me!" 
 
 Thus having said, Margrave turned from us, and 
 cast into the caldron the last essence yet left in his 
 emptied coffer. 
 
 Ayesha silently drew her black veil over her face; 
 and turned, with the being she loved, from the terror 
 he scorned, to share in the hope that he cherished. 
 
 Thus left alone, with my reason disenthralled, dis- 
 enchanted, I surveyed more calmly the extent of the 
 actual peril with which we were threatened, and the 
 peril seemed less, so surveyed. 
 
 It is true, all the Bush-land behind, almost up to 
 the bed of the creek, was on fire; but the grasses, 
 through which the flame spread so rapidly, ceased at 
 the opposite marge of the creek. Watery pools were 
 still, at intervals, left in the bed of the creek, shining 
 tremulous, like waves of fire, in the glare reflected from 
 the burning land; and even, where the water failed, the 
 stony course of the exhausted rivulet was a barrier 
 against the march of the conflagration. Thus, unless 
 the wind, now still, should rise, and waft some sparks 
 to the parched combustible herbage immediately around 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 377 
 
 us, we were saved from the tire, and our work might 
 yet be achieved. 
 
 I whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came. 
 
 "Thinkest thou," she answered, without raising her 
 mournful head, "that the Agencies of Nature are the 
 movements of chance? The Spirits I invoked to his aid 
 are leagued with the hosts that assail. A Mightier than 
 I am has doomed him!" 
 
 Scarcely had she uttered these words before Mar- 
 grave exclaimed, "Behold how the Rose of the alche- 
 mist's dream enlarges its bloom from the folds of its 
 petals! I shall live, I shall live!" 
 
 I looked, and the liquid which glowed in the caldron 
 had now taken a splendour that mocked all comparisons 
 borrowed from the lustre of gems. In its prevalent 
 colour it had, indeed, the dazzle and flash of the ruby, 
 but, out from the mass of the molten red, broke corus- 
 cations of all prismal hues, shooting, shifting, in a play 
 that made the wavelets themselves seem living things 
 sensible of their joy. No longer was there scum or 
 film upon the surface; only ever and anon a light rosy 
 vapour floating up, and quick lost in the haggard, 
 heavy, sulphurous air, hot with the conflagration, rush- 
 ing towards us from behind. And these coruscations 
 formed, on the surface of the molten ruby, literally the 
 shape of a Rose, its leaves made distinct in their 
 outlines by sparks of emerald, and diamond, and 
 sapphire. 
 
 Even while gazing on this animate liquid lustre, a 
 buoyant delight seemed infused into my senses; all 
 terrors, conceived before, were annulled; the phantoms, 
 whose armies had filled the wide spaces in front, were 
 forgotten; the crash of the forest behind was unheard. 
 In the reflection of that glory, Margrave's wan cheek 
 
378 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 seemed already restored to the radiance it wore when I 
 saw it first in the framework of blooms. 
 
 As I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched 
 my own. 
 
 "Hush!" whispered Ayesha, from the black veil, 
 against which the rays from the caldron fell blunt, and 
 absorbed into Dark. "Behind us, the light of the 
 circle is extinct, but, there, we are guarded from all 
 save the brutal and soulless destroyers. But, before! 
 — but, before! — see! two of the lamps have died 
 out! — see the blank of the gap in the ring! Guard 
 that breach — there, the demons will enter." 
 
 "Not a drop is there left in this vessel by which 
 to replenish the lamps on the ring." 
 
 "Advance, then; thou hast still the light of the soul, 
 and the demons may recoil before a soul that is daunt- 
 less and guiltless. If not, Three are lost! — as it is, 
 One is doomed." 
 
 Thus adjured, silently, involuntarily, I passed from 
 the Veiled Woman's side, over the sere lines on the 
 turf which had been traced by the triangles of light 
 long since extinguished, and towards the verge of 
 the circle. As I advanced, overhead rushed a dark 
 cloud of wings, birds dislodged from the forest on fire, 
 and screaming, in dissonant terror, as they flew towards 
 the furthermost mountains ; close by my feet hissed and 
 glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing 
 coverts, and glancing through the ring, unscared by its 
 waning lamps; all undulating by me, bright-eyed and 
 hissing; all made innocuous by fear: even the terrible 
 Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the 
 verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept 
 harmless away. I halted at the gap between the two 
 dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 379 
 
 crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, no lingering drops 
 yet left, if but to recruit the lamps for some priceless 
 minutes more? As I thus stood, right into the gap be- 
 tween the two dead lamps, strode a gigantic Foot. All 
 the rest of the form was unseen; only, as volume after 
 volume of smoke poured on from the burning land be- 
 hind, it seemed as if one great column of vapour, 
 eddying round, settled itself aloft from the circle, and 
 that out from that column strode the giant Foot. And, 
 as strode the Foot, so with it came, like the sound of 
 its tread,- a roll of muttered thunder. 
 
 I recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the 
 lurid air. 
 
 "Courage!" said the voice of Ayesha. "Trembling 
 soul, yield ot an inch to the demon!" 
 
 At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of 
 the Veiled Woman's voice, my will seemed to take a 
 force more sublime than its own. I folded my arms 
 on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the spot, con- 
 fronting the column of smoke and the stride of the 
 giant Foot. And the Foot halted, mute. 
 
 Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I 
 heard a voice — it was Margrave's. 
 
 "The last hour expires — the work is accomplished! 
 Come! come! — aid me to take the caldron from the 
 fire — and, quick! or a drop may be wasted in vapour, 
 the Elixir of Life from the caldron!" 
 
 At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced. 
 
 And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from be- 
 hind, I was stricken down. Over me, as I lay, swept 
 a whirlwind of trampling hoofs and glancing horns. 
 The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures 
 had rushed over the bed of the watercourse — scaled 
 the slopes of the banks. Snorting and bellowing, they 
 
380 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 plunged their blind way to the mountains. One cry 
 alone more wild than their own savage blare pierced 
 the reek through which the Brute Hurricane swept. 
 At that cry of wrath and despair I struggled to rise, 
 again dashed to earth by the hoofs and the horns. 
 But was it the dream-like deceit of my reeling senses, 
 or did I see that giant Foot stride past through the 
 close-serried ranks of the maddening herds? Did 
 I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of animal 
 terror, the roll of low thunder which followed the stride 
 of that Foot? 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 When my sense had recovered its shock, and my 
 eyes looked dizzily round, the charge of the beasts had 
 swept by; and of all the wild tribes which had invaded 
 the magical circle, the only lingerer was the brown 
 Death-adder, coiled close by the spot where my head 
 had rested. Beside the extinguished lamps which the 
 hoofs had confusedly scattered, the fire, arrested by the 
 watercourse, had consumed the grasses that fed it, and 
 there the plains stretched black and desert as the 
 Phlegrsean field of the Poet's Hell. But the fire still 
 raged in the forest beyond. White flames, soaring up 
 from the trunks of the tallest trees, and forming, through 
 the sullen dark of the smoke-reek, innumerable pillars 
 of fire, like the halls in the City of Fiends. 
 
 Gathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the 
 terrible pomp of the lurid forest, and looked fearfully 
 down on the hoof-trampled sward for my two com- 
 panions. 
 
 I saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still 
 bending, as I had seen it last. I saw a pale hand 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 381 
 
 feebly grasping the rim of the magical caldron, which 
 lay, hurled down from its tripod by the rush of the 
 beasts, yards away from the dim fading embers of the 
 scattered wood-pyre. I saw the faint writhings of a 
 frail wasted frame, over which the Veiled Woman was 
 bending. I saw, as I moved with bruised limbs to the 
 place, close by the lips of the dying magician, the 
 flash of the ruby-like essence spilt on the sward, 
 and, meteor-like, sparkling up from the torn tufts ot 
 herbage. 
 
 I now reached Margrave's side; bending over him 
 as the Veiled Woman bent; and as I sought gently to 
 raise him, he turned his face, fiercely faltering out, 
 "Touch me not, rob me not. You share with me! 
 Never — never. These glorious drops are all mine! 
 Die all else! I will live — I will live!" Writhing him- 
 self from my pitying arms, he plunged his face amidst 
 the beautiful, playful flame of the essence, as if to lap 
 the elixir with lips scorched away from its intolerable 
 burning. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he fell back, his 
 face upturned to mine, and on that face unmistakably 
 reigned Death. 
 
 Then Ayesha tenderly, silently drew the young 
 head to her lap, and it vanished from my sight behind 
 her black veil. 
 
 1 knelt beside her, murmuring some trite words of 
 comfort; but she heeded me not, rocking herself to 
 and fro as the mother who cradles a child to sleep. 
 Soon, the fast-flickering sparkles of the lost elixir died 
 out on the grass, and with their last sportive diamond- 
 like tremble of light, up, in all the suddenness of 
 Australian day, rose the sun, lifting himself royally 
 above the mountain-tops, and fronting the meaner blaze 
 of the forest as a young king fronts his rebels. And as 
 
382 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 there where the bush fires had ravaged, all was a 
 desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all 
 was a garden. Afar, at the foot of the mountains, 
 the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking 
 back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their 
 gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half 
 in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome 
 the morn — which in Europe is night — alighted bold 
 on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white 
 with the bones of races, extinct before, formed to "walk 
 erect and to gaze upon the stars," rose — so helpless 
 through instincts, so royal through Soul, — rose Man! 
 
 But there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir 
 had wasted its virtues, — there the herbage already 
 had a freshness of verdure which, amid the duller sward 
 round it, was like an oasis of green in a desert. And, 
 there, wild flowers, whose chill hues the eye would 
 have scarcely distinguished the day before, now glit- 
 tered forth in blooms of unfamiliar beauty. Towards 
 that spot were attracted myriads of happy insects, 
 whose hum of intense joy was musically loud. But 
 the form of the life -seeking sorcerer lay rigid and 
 stark; — blind to the bloom of the wild flowers, deaf 
 to the glee of the insects — one hand still resting 
 heavily on the rim of the emptied caldron, and the 
 face still hid behind the Black Veil. What! the 
 wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well-nigh 
 achieved through such dread, fleeting back to the earth 
 from which its material was drawn, to give bloom, in- 
 deed, — but to herbs; joy indeed, — but to insects! 
 
 And now in the flash of the sun, slowly wound up 
 the slopes that led to the circle, the same barbaric pro- 
 cession which had sunk into the valley under the ray 
 of the moon. The armed men came first, stalwart and 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 383 
 
 tall, their vests brave with crimson and golden lace; 
 their weapons gaily gleaming with holiday silver. Af- 
 ter them, the Black Litter. As they came to the place, 
 Ayesha, not raising her head, spoke to them in their own 
 Eastern tongue. A wail was their answer. The armed 
 men bounded forward, and the bearers left the litter. 
 
 All gathered round the dead form with the face 
 concealed under the black veil — all knelt, and all 
 wept. Far in the distance, at the foot of the blue 
 mountains, a crowd of the savage natives had risen up 
 as if from the earth, they stood motionless, leaning on 
 their clubs and spears, and looking towards the spot 
 on which we were; strangely thus brought into the 
 landscape, as if they, too, the wild dwellers on the 
 verge which Humanity guards from the Brute, were 
 among the mourners for the mysterious Child of mys- 
 terious Nature! And still, in the herbage, hummed 
 the small insects, and still, from the cavern laughed 
 the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha, "Farewell, 
 your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living. 
 You are now with your own people, they may console 
 you — say if I can assist." 
 
 "There is no consolation for me! What mourner 
 can be consoled if the dead die for ever? Nothing for 
 him is left but a grave; that grave shall be in the land 
 where the song of Ayesha first lulled him to sleep. 
 Thou assist me — thou — the wise man of Europe! 
 From me ask assistance. What road wilt thou take to 
 thy home?" 
 
 "There is but one road known to me through the 
 maze of the solitude ; that which we took to this upland." 
 
 "On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee! Blind 
 dupe, couldst thou think that if the grand secret of 
 life had been won, he whose head rests on my lap 
 
384 
 
 A STRANGE STORV. 
 
 would have yielded thee one petty drop of the essence 
 which had filched from his store of life but a moment? 
 Me, who so loved and so cherished him — me he 
 would have doomed to the pitiless cord of my servant, 
 the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a 
 hairbreadth the span of his being. But what matters 
 to me his crime or his madness?. I loved him — I 
 loved him!" 
 
 She bowed her veiled head lower and lower; per- 
 haps under the veil, her lips kissed the lips of the dead. 
 Then she said, whisperingly : 
 
 "Juma, the Strangler, whose word never failed to 
 his master, whose prey never slipped from his snare, 
 waits thy step on the road to thy home! But thy 
 death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved. And 
 thou hast had pity for him who took but thine aid to 
 design thy destruction. His life is lost, thine is saved!" 
 
 She spoke no more in the tongue that I could in- 
 terpret. She spoke, in the language unknown, a few 
 murmured words to her swarthy attendants, then the 
 armed men, still weeping, rose, and made a dumb sign 
 to me to go with them. I understood by the sign that 
 Ayesha had told them to guard me on my way; but 
 she gave no reply to my parting thanks. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 I descended into the valley; the armed men fol- 
 lowed. The path, on that side of the water-course not 
 reached by the flames, wound through meadows still 
 green, or amidst groves still unscathed. As a turning 
 in the way brought in front of my sight the place I had 
 left behind, I beheld the black litter creeping down the 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 385 
 
 descent, with its curtains closed, and the Veiled Woman 
 walking by its side. But soon the funeral procession 
 was lost to my eyes, and the thoughts that it roused 
 were erased. The waves in man's brain are like those 
 of the sea, rushing on, rushing over the wrecks of the 
 vessels that rode on their surface, to sink, after storm, 
 in their deeps. One thought cast forth into the future 
 now mastered all in the past. "Was Lilian living 
 still?" Absorbed in the gloom of that thought, hur- 
 ried on by the goad that my heart in its tortured im- 
 patience, gave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow 
 stride of the armed men, and, midway between the 
 place I had left and the home which I sped to, came, 
 far in advance of my guards, into the thicket in which 
 the bushmen had started up in my path on the night 
 that Lilian had watched for my coming. The earth at 
 my feet was rife with creeping plants and many-co- 
 loured flowers, the sky overhead was half-hid by mo- 
 tionless pines. Suddenly, whether crawling out from 
 the herbage or dropping down from the trees, by my 
 side stood the white-robed and skeleton form — Aye- 
 sha's attendant, the Strangler. 
 
 I sprang from him in shuddering, then halted and 
 faced him. The hideous creature crept towards me, 
 cringing and fawning, making signs of humble good- 
 will and servile obeisance. Again I recoiled — wrath- 
 f Lilly, loathingly •, turned my face homeward, and fled 
 on. I thought I had baffled his chase, when, just at 
 the mouth of the thicket, he dropped from a bough in 
 my path close behind me. Before I could turn, some 
 dark muffling substance fell between my sight and the 
 sun, and J felt a fierce strain at my throat. But the 
 words of Ayesha had warned me; with one rapid hand 
 A Slrange Slory. II. 25 
 
386 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 I seized the noose before it could tighten too closely, 
 with the other I tore the bandage away from my eyes, 
 and, wheeling round on the dastardly foe, struck him 
 down with one spurn of my foot. His hand, as he fell, 
 relaxed its hold on the noose; I freed my throat from 
 the knot, and sprang from the copse into the broad 
 sunlit plain. I saw no more of the armed men or the 
 Strangler. Panting and breathless, I paused at last 
 before the fence, fragrant with blossoms, that divided 
 my home from the solitude. 
 
 The windows of Lilian's room were darkened — 
 all within the house seemed still. 
 
 Darkened and silenced Home! with the light and 
 sounds of the jocund day all around it. Was there 
 yet Hope in the Universe for me? All to which I had 
 trusted Hope, had broken down; the anchors I had 
 forged for her hold in the beds of the ocean, her stay 
 from the drifts of the storm, had snapped like the reeds 
 which pierce the side that leans on the barb of their 
 points, and confides in the strength of their stems. No 
 hope in the baffled resources of recognized knowledge! 
 No hope in the daring adventures of Mind into regions 
 unknown; vain alike the calm lore of the practised 
 physician, and the magical arts of the fated Enchanter. 
 I had fled from the commonplace teachings of Nature, 
 to explore in her Shadow-land marvels at variance 
 with reason. Made brave by the grandeur of love, I 
 had opposed without quailing the stride of the Demon, 
 and my hope, when fruition seemed nearest, had been 
 trodden into dust by the hoofs of the beast! And yet, 
 all the while, I had scorned, as a dream more wild 
 than the word of a sorcerer, the hope that the old man 
 and child, the wise and the ignorant, look from their 
 souls as in-born! Man and fiend had alike failed a 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 387 
 
 mind, not ignoble, not skilless, not abjectly craven; 
 alike failed a heart not feeble and selfish, not dead to 
 the hero's devotion, willing to shed every drop of its 
 blood for a something more dear than an animal's life 
 for itself! What remained — what remained for man's 
 hope? — man's mind and man's heart thus exhausting 
 their all with no other result but despair? What re- 
 mained but the mystery of mysteries, so clear to the 
 sunrise of childhood, the sunset of age, only dimmed 
 by the clouds which collect round the noon of our 
 manhood? Where yet was Hope found? In the soul; 
 in its every-day impulse to supplicate comfort and 
 light, from the Giver of soul, whereever the heart is 
 afflicted, the mind is obscured. 
 
 Then the words of Ayesha rushed over me: "What 
 mourner can be consoled, if the Dead die for ever?" 
 Through every pulse of my frame throbbed that dread 
 question. All Nature around seemed to murmur it. 
 And suddenly, as by a flash from Heaven, the grand 
 truth in Faber's grand reasoning shone on me, and 
 lighted up all, within and without. Man alone, of all 
 earthly creatures, asks "Can the Dead die for ever?" 
 and the instinct that urges the question is God's an- 
 swer to man! No instinct is given in vain. 
 
 And, born with the instinct of soul is the instinct 
 that leads the soul from the seen to the unseen, from 
 time to eternity, from the torrent that foams towards 
 the Ocean of Death, to the source of its stream, far 
 aloft from the Ocean. 
 
 "Know thyself," said the Pythian of old. "That 
 precept descended from Heaven." Know thyself! is 
 that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. But never 
 yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul, 
 
 25* 
 
388 
 
 A. STRANGE STORY. 
 
 but what he acknowledged the sovereign necessity of 
 prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts 
 seemed enlarged and illumed and exalted. I prayed 
 — all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, 
 with its pride and presumption and folly, grew distinct 
 as the form of a penitent, kneeling for pardon before 
 setting forth on the pilgrimage vowed to a shrine. 
 And, sure now, in the deeps of a soul first revealed 
 to myself, that the Dead do not die for ever, my 
 human love soared beyond its brief trial of terror and 
 sorrow. Daring not to ask from Heaven's wisdom that 
 Lilian, for my sake, might not yet pass away from the 
 earth, I prayed that my soul might be fitted to bear 
 with submission whatever my Maker might ordain. 
 And, if surviving her, without whom no beam from 
 yon material sun could ever warm into joy a morrow in 
 human life — so to guide my steps that they might 
 rejoin her at last, and, in rejoining, regain for ever! 
 
 How trivial now became the weird riddles that, a 
 little while before, had been clothed in so solemn an 
 awe. What mattered it to the vast interests involved 
 in the clear recognition of Soul and Hereafter, — 
 whether or not my bodily sense, for a moment, obscured 
 the face of the Nature I should one day behold as a 
 spirit? Doubtless the sights and the sounds which 
 had haunted the last gloomy night, the calm reason of 
 Faber would strip of their magical seemings; — the 
 Eyes in the space, and the Foot in the circle might be 
 those of no terrible Demons, but of the wild's savage 
 children whom I had seen, halting, curious and mute, 
 in the light of the morning. The tremour of the 
 ground (if not, as heretofore, explicable by the illusory 
 impression of my own treacherous senses) might be but 
 the natural effect of elements struggling yet under a 
 
A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 389 
 
 soil unmistakably charred by volcanoes. The luminous 
 atoms dissolved in the caldron might as little be fraught 
 with a vital elixir as are the splendours of naphtha or 
 phosphor. As it was, the weird rite had no magic 
 result. The magician was not rent limb from limb by 
 the fiends. By causes as natural as ever extinguished 
 life's spark in the frail lamp of clay, he had died out 
 of sight — under the black veil. 
 
 What mattered henceforth to Faith, in its far 
 grander questions and answers, whether Keason, in 
 Faber, or Fancy, in me, supplied the more probable 
 guess at a hieroglyph which, if construed aright, was 
 but a word of small mark in the mystical language of 
 Nature? If all the arts of enchantment recorded by 
 Fable were attested by facts which Sages were forced 
 to acknowledge, Sages would sooner or later find some 
 cause for such portents — not supernatural. But what 
 Sage, without cause supernatural, both without and 
 within him, can guess at the wonders he views in the 
 growth of a blade of grass, or the tints on an insect's 
 wing? Whatever art Man can achieve in his progress 
 through time, Man's reason, in time, can suffice to 
 explain. But the wonders of God? These belong 
 to the Infinite ; and these, Immortal! will but develop 
 new wonder on wonder, though thy sight be a spirit's, 
 and thy leisure to track and to solve, an eternity. 
 
 As I raised my face from my clasped hands, my 
 eyes fell full upon a form standing in the open door- 
 way. There, where on the night in which Lilian's 
 long struggle for reason and life had begun, the 
 Luminous Shadow had been beheld in the doubtful 
 light of a dying moon and a yet hazy dawn; there, on 
 the threshold, gathering round her bright locks the 
 auriole of the glorious sun, stood Amy, the blessed 
 
390 
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 
 
 child! And as I gazed, drawing nearer and nearer 
 to the silenced house, and that Image of Peace on its 
 threshold, I felt that Hope met me at the door — 
 Hope in the child's steadfast eyes — Hope in the child's 
 welcoming smile! 
 
 "I was at watch for vou," whispered Amy. "All 
 is well." 
 
 "She lives still — she lives! Thank God — thank 
 God!" 
 
 "She lives — she will recover!" said another voice, 
 as my head sunk on Faber's shoulder. "For some 
 hours in the night her sleep was disturbed — convulsed. 
 I feared, then, the worst. Suddenly, just before the 
 dawn, she called out aloud, still in sleep. 
 
 "The cold and dark shadow has passed away from me, 
 and from Allen — passed away from us both for ever!" 
 
 "And from that moment the fever left her; the 
 breathing became soft, the pulse steady, and the colour 
 stole gradually back to her cheek. The crisis is past. 
 Nature's benign Disposer has permitted Nature to restore 
 your life's gentle partner, heart to heart, mind to mind — " 
 
 "And soul to soul," I cried, in my solemn joy. 
 "Above as below, soul to soul!" Then, at a sign from 
 Faber, the child took me by the hand and led me up 
 the stairs into Lilian's room. 
 
 Again those dear arms closed round me in wife-like 
 and holy love, and those true lips kissed away my 
 tears; — even as now, at the distance of years from 
 that happy morn, while I write the last words of this 
 Strange Story, the same faithful arms close around me, 
 the same tender lips kiss away my tears. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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