THE DOUBLE DREAM.
----"and saw within the moonlight of his room----
An angel, writing in a book of gold."--Leigh Hunt.
"And so you like the text, do you? Very well, I will now see how much
better you will be pleased with the sermon. Listen:
"'I cannot and will not stand this any longer. Here am I, yet a young
man--in the very prime and heyday of life, and I do believe that I shall
be a regular corpse in less than no time, if a change for the better
don't very soon take place in my family; that's just as certain as "open
and shut." She, ah, _she_, is killing me by inches--the vampire! Would
that I had been thirty-five million of miles the other side of nowhere
the day I married her. Don't I though, Betsey--Betsey Clark is killing
me! No love, no kindness, not a soft look, never a gentle smile. Oh,
don't I wish somebody's funeral was over; but not mine; for I feel quite
capable of loving, of being happy yet, and of making somebody's daughter
happy likewise. People may well say that marriage is a lottery--a great
lottery; for, if there's one thing surer than another, then it is
perfectly certain that I have drawn the very tallest kind of a blank;
and hang me, if it wasn't for the disgrace of the thing, if I wouldn't
run off and hitch myself for life to one of the Hottentots I have read
about; for anything would be better than this misery, long strung out.
Oh, don't I wish I was a Turk! When a fellow's a Turk he can have ever
so many wives--and strangle all of 'em that don't suit him or come to
Taw--as they ought to. Bully for the Turks! I wish I knew how to turn
myself into one. If I did, I'd be the biggest kind of a Mohammedan afore
mornin'!'
"Such was the substance of about the thousandth soliloquy on the same
subject, to the same purport, delivered by Mr. Thomas W. Clark, during
the last seven years of his wedded life.
"The gentleman named delivered himself of the contented and
philanthropic speech just recited, on the morning of a fine day, just
after the usual morning meal--and quarrel with his--wife, _de
jure_--female attendant would better express the relation _de facto_.
Mr. Clark was not yet aware that a woman is ever just what her husband's
conduct makes her--a thing that some husbands besides himself have yet
to learn.
"Every day this couple's food was seasoned with sundry and divers sorts
of condiments other than those in the castor. There was a great deal of
pickle from his side of the gay and festive board, in the shape of
jealous, spiteful innuendoes; and from her side much delicate _sauce
piquante_, in the form of sweet allusions to a former husband, whom she
declared to have been 'the very best husband that was ever sent to'--a
premature grave by a vixen--she might have added, truthfully, but did
not, finishing the sentence with, 'to be loved by a tender, gentle
wife'--like her! The lady had gotten bravely over all her amiable
weaknesses long ago. Gentle! what are tigresses? Tender! what is a
virago? So far the man. Now for his mate.
"Scarcely had her lord--'Mr. Thomas W.,' as she was wont to call
him--gone out of the house, and slammed the door behind him, at the same
time giving vent to the last bottleful of spleen distilled and concocted
in his soul, than 'Mrs. Thomas W.,' or poor Betsey Clark, as I prefer to
call her--for she was truly, really pitiable, for more reasons than one,
but mainly because she had common sense and would not exercise it
sufficiently to make the best of a bad bargain--threw herself upon the
bed, where she cried a little, and raved a good deal, to the self-same
tune as of yore. Getting tired of both these delightful occupations very
soon, she varied them by striking an attitude before a portrait of the
dear defunct--badly executed--the portrait, not the man--whose name she
bore when she became Mistress Thomas W. This picture of a former husband
Tom Clark had not had courage or sense enough to put his foot through,
but did have bad taste sufficient to permit to hang up in the very room
where he lived and ate, and where its beauties were duly and daily
expatiated upon, and the virtues of its original lauded to the skies, of
course to the intense delight of Mr. Clark.
"Madam had a tongue--a regular patent, venom-mounted, back-spring and
double-actioned tongue, and, what is more, knew well how to use it when
the fit was on, which, to do her justice, was not more than twenty-three
hours and a half each day. Never did an opportunity offer that she did
not avail herself of to amplify the merits of the deceased, especially
in presence of such visitors as chance or business brought to their
house, all to the especial delectation of her living spouse, Mr. Thomas
W. Clark.
"Just look at her now! There she is, _kneeling_ at her shrine, my lady
gay, vehemently pouring forth the recital of her wrongs--forgetful of
any one else's, as usual with the genus grumbler--dropping tears and
maledictions, now on her own folly, then on the devoted head of him she
had promised to love, honor, and obey, Mr. Clark, fruit-grower, farmer,
and horse-dealer. Exhausted at length, she winds up the dramatic scene
by invoking all the blessings of all the saints in all the calendars on
the soul of him whose counterfeit presentment hangs there upon the wall.
"If this couple did not absolutely hate each other, they came so near it
that a Philadelphia lawyer would have been puzzled to tell t'other from
which, and yet nobody but themselves had the least idea of the real
state of things--those under-currents of married life that only
occasionally breach through and extensively display themselves in the
presence of third parties. In the very nature of the case, how absurd it
is for outsiders to presume to know the real _status_ of affairs--to
comprehend the actual facts which exist behind the curtains of every or
any married couple in the land. Hymen is a fellow fond of wearing all
sorts of masks and disguises; and it often happens that tons of salt
exist where people suppose nothing but sugar and lollypops are to be
found.
"Tom and his wife--the latter, especially--pretended to a vast deal of
loving-kindness--oh, how great--toward each other--and they were
wise--in the presence of other people. You would have thought, had you
seen them billing and cooing like a pair of 'Turkle Doves'--to quote the
'Bard of Baldwinsville'--that there never was so true, so perfect a
union as their own; and would not have entertained the shadow of a doubt
but that they had been expressly formed for each other from the
foundations of the world, if not before. No sooner did they meet--before
folks, even after the most trifling absence--than they mutually fell to
kissing and 'dearing,' like two swains just mated, all of which made
fools wonder, but wise people to grieve. Physical manifestations are not
quite Love's methods; and it is a safe rule that those who most ape love
externally, have less of it within--and in private, so great a
difference is there between Behind and Before, in these matters of the
heart. Billing and cooing before folks acts as a nauseant upon sensible
men and women, and in this case it did upon a few of the better class of
the city of Santa Blarneeo, within a few miles of which Clark lived.
"Betsey Clark gave a last, long, lingering look at the portrait, saying
the while: 'Don't I wish you were alive and back here again, my love, my
darling, my precious duck?' Lucky for him was it that such could not be;
for had it been possible, and actualized, he would have been finely
plucked, not to say roasted, stewed, perpetually broiled, and in every
way done brown. 'If you were here, I should be happy, because you _was_
a man; but this one (meaning Tom), bah!' and the lady bounced upon her
feet and kicked the cat by way of emphasis. She resumed: 'I can't stand
it, and I won't, there! that's flat! I'm still young, and people of
sense tell me I am handsome--at least, good-looking. I'm certain the
glass does, and no doubt there are plenty who would gladly link their
lot with mine if he was only dead!' And she shuddered as the fearful
thought had birth. 'Dead! I wish he was; and true as I live, I've a
great good mind to accomplish my wish!' And again she shuddered. Poor
woman, she was indeed tempted of the devil! As the horrible suggestion
flashed across the sea of her soul, it illumined many a deep chasmal
abyss, of whose existence, up to that moment she had been utterly
unaware.
"The human soul is a fearful thing, especially when it stands bare
before the Eternal Eye, with myriad snake-forms--its own abnormal
creation, writhing round and near it. A fearful thing! And Betsey Clark
trembled in the ghastly presence of Uncommitted Murder, whose glance of
lurid flame set fire to her heart, and scorched and seared it with
consuming heat. Its flashful light lasted but for a moment; but even
that was a world too long, for it illumined all the dark caverns of her
soul, and disclosed to the horrified gaze of an aerial being
which that instant chanced to pass that way--an abyssmal deep of
Crime-possibility, so dense, black and terrible, that it almost
shrivelled the eyeballs and shrouded the vision of the peerless citizen
of the upper courts of Glory.
"Suddenly the radiant Heaven-born ceased its flight through the azure,
looked pityingly earth and heaven-ward, heaved a deep and soul-drawn
sigh, and stayed awhile to gaze upon the Woman and the Man. Long it
gazed, at first in sorrow, but presently a smile passed across its face,
as if a new and good thought had struck it, and then it darted off into
space, as if intent upon discovering a cure for the desperate state of
things just witnessed. 'Did it succeed?' Wait awhile and see.
"Human nature is a very curious and remarkable institution; so is woman
nature, only a great deal more so--especially that of the California
persuasion. Still it was not a little singular that Tom's wife's mind
should have engendered (of Hate and Impatience) the precise thought that
agitated his own at that very minute--that very identical crime-thought
which had just rushed into being from the deeps of his own spirit--twin
monsters, sibilating 'Murder!' in both their ears.
"There is as close a sympathy between opposites and antagonists, indeed
far greater, than between similarities--as strong attractions between
opposing souls as in those fashioned in the same mould. True, this
affirmation antagonizes many notions among current philosophies and
philosophers; but it is true, notwithstanding, and therefore so much the
worse for the philosophers.
"The same fearful thought troubled two souls at the same time, and each
determined to do a little private killing on their own individual and
separate accounts. As yet, however, only the intent existed. The plans
were yet crude, vague, immature, and only the crime loomed up
indistinctly, like a grim, black mountain through a wintry fog.
"The day grew older by twelve hours, but when the sunset came, ten years
had fastened themselves upon the brows of both the Woman and the Man
since last they had parted at rosy morn.
"Bad thoughts are famous for making men grow old before the weight of
years has borne them earthward. They wrinkle the brow and bring on
decrepitude, senility and grey hairs faster than Time himself can
possibly whirl bodies graveward. The rolling hours and the circling
years are less swift than evil thoughts of evil doing. Right doing,
innocence, and well-wishing make us young; bad thoughts rob us of youth,
vivacity, and manhood! Let us turn to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W.:
"'Night was on the mountain,
Darkness in the valley,
And only stars could guide them now
In the doubtful rally.'
"There _was_ a star hung out in the sky, and she had already determined
to watch their destinies; with what success, and in what manner, will be
apparent before finishing my story, every word of which is true in one
sense, if not precisely in another.
"The sun had set, and slowly the moon was uprising--blessed moon! God's
Left Eye, wherewith He at night overlooketh the thoughts and deeds of
solitary men and solitary women--for only such are capable of
crime--those only who are, and live alone--and many such there be, even
at their own firesides, surrounded by their own families, own flesh, own
blood--fathers, mothers, wives (as times go), husbands (as they are
conventionally called). Many there be who exist in dreadful solitudes in
the very midst of human crowds--who live alone and pass through life,
from the cradle to the grave, perfect strangers, perfect hermits, wholly
unknowing, totally unknown, like interlopers on the globe, whose very
right to be here all the world disputes. Friends, I have seen many
such--have you? These lonely people, these exotics, these insulars in
the busy haunts of men--the teeming hives of commerce--alone in earth's
well-paced market-towns--in the very saturnalia of TRADE'S gala days;
and they are to be pitied, because they all have human, yearning hearts,
filled to the brim with great strangling sorrows; and they have high and
holy aspirations, only that the world chokes them down--crushes out the
pure, sweet life God gave them. These are the Unloved ones; yet ought
not to be, for are they not somebody's sons and daughters? Yes! Then
they have rights; and the first, greatest, highest right of all is the
right of being loved--loved by the people of the land--our
world-cousins, for what we do, are doing, or have done; and to be loved,
for the sake of the dear soul within, by somebody else's son or
daughter.
"So think we of the Rosicrucian Order; so, one day, will think the
world."
At this point of the Rosicrucian's narrative, Captain Jones, one of his
auditory, interrupted him with:
"Why, I thought the Rosicrucian system had been dead, buried, and
forgotten two centuries ago."
He replied: "The false or pseudo-Rosicrucian system has ceased to be.
Truth herself is deathless. I cannot now stop to explain what interests
you concerning the revived system of Rosicrucianism. You will now please
to allow me to proceed with my story," said he, and then resumed,
saying:
"I repeat that only those who live alone, unloved, unloving, are they
who, becoming morbid, having all their kindly feelings driven back upon
themselves, daily, hourly eating up their own hearts--brooding over
their wrongs, their social and other misfortunes--at length engender
crime, if not against their fellow-men, then against themselves.
"Oh, for something to love, and be loved by, if but a little pet dog!
The unloved ever are wrecked, the unloving ever wreck others. It is
sweet to be loved by even a dumb brute! But, ah, how inexpressibly, how
infinitely better to be endeared for yourself alone!--for your integral
wealth of soul--by a Man, a full, true Man; by a Woman, a full,
gushing-hearted Woman; or, sweeter, dearer still, a child--some glorious
hero of a hobby-horse, some kitten-torturing Cora! Ah, what a chord to
touch! I am very fond of children--dear little Godlings of the Ages.
Those who reciprocate affection truly, are too full of God to keep a
devil's lodging-house. It is a dear thing to feel the great truth--one
of Rosicrucia's truths--that nothing is more certain than that
somewhere, perhaps on earth, perhaps in some one of the innumerable
aromal worlds--star-spangles on God's diadem--or from amidst the
mournful monodies in material creation--some one loves us; and that
there goeth up a prayer, sweet-toned as seraph-harps, to Him for you, my
weary brother, for you, my sister of the dark locks turning prematurely
grey; for all of us whose paths through life have been thickly strewn
with thorns and rocks, sharp boulders and deep and frightful
pit-falls--great threatening, yawning gulfs:
"'Oh, the little birds sing east, and the little birds sing west,
Toll slowly.
And I smile to think God's greatness flows around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness His rest.'
"Somebody loves us for ourselves' sake. Thank God for that!
"And the pale, silver shield of the moon hangs out in the radiant blue,
and myriad gods look down, through starry eyes, upon this little world,
as it floats, a tiny bubble, on Space's vast ocean; and they speak
through their eyes, and bid us all love the Supreme, by loving one
another; and they say, 'Love much! Such is the whole duty of man.' The
moon, God's night-eye, takes note of all ye do, and is sometimes forced
to withdraw behind cloud-veils, that ye may not behold her sweet
features while she weeps at the sad spectacle of thy wrong doing! Luna,
gentle Luna, does not like to peer down into human souls, and there
behold the slimy badness, which will ere long breed deeds of horror to
make her lovely face more pale--things which disfigure the gardens of
man's spirit, and transform them into tangled brakes, where only weeds
and unsightly things do grow. And Luna has a recording angel sitting on
her shield, whose duty is to flash all intelligence up to His deific
brain, in whose service she hath ever been. He is just, inexorably just,
ever rewarding as man sinneth or obeys. And so it is poor policy to sin
by night. It is equally so to sin by day; for then the Sun--God's Right
Eye--fails not to behold you, for he is always shining, and his rays
pierce the clouds and light up the world, even though thick fogs and
dense vapors conceal his radiant countenance from some. He sees man,
though man beholds him not; and he photographs all human thoughts and
deeds upon the very substance of the soul, and that, too, so well and
deeply, that nothing will destroy the picture; no sophistical 'All
Right' lavements can wash it away, no philosophic bath destroy it. They
are indelible, these sun-pictures on the spirit, and they are, some of
them, very unsightly things to hang in the grand Memory-Galleries of the
imperishable human soul; for, in the coming epochs of existence, as man
moves down the corridors of Time, these pictures will still hang upon
the walls, and if evil, will peer down sadly and reproachfully, and
fright many a joy away, when man would fain be rid, but cannot, of
pain-provoking recollections, when his body shall be stranded on the
shores of the grave, and his spirit is being wafted over strange and
mystic seas on the farther brink of Time!
"Night had come down, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. retired to bed, each
with thoughts of murder rankling in their hearts. Not a word was spoken,
but they lay with throbbing pulses, gazing out upon the night, through a
little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down--gazing
out upon the starry lamps that skirt the highways of the sky, beacons of
safety placed there to recall and guide all stray and wandering souls
back on their way to Heaven! and they silently looked at the stars as
they twinkled and shimmered in the azure.
"The stars shone; and strange, horrible, ghastly thoughts agitated the
woman and the man. 'Tom _might_ get sick, and he might _die_! Isn't it
possible to feed him with a little arsenic, or some other sort of
poison, and not get caught at it? I think it _is_. He, once dead, I
shall be free--free as the air, and happy as the birds!' Happy! Think of
it!
"'Is it not possible to push Betsey over the cliff, _accidentally_, of
course, and thus rid myself of her and misery together, and forever!'
Forever! Picture it! And thus they lay as the night wore on, two
precious immortal souls, with rank Murder for a bed-fellow.
"At the end of an hour's cogitation, both had reached the desperate
resolution to carry their wishes into execution, and attempt the fearful
crime.
"'Come down in thy profoundest gloom--
Without one radiant firefly's light,
Beneath thine ebon arch entomb
Earth from the gaze of Heaven, O Night.
A deed of darkness must be done,
Put out the moon, roll back the sun.'
"Betsey was to 'season' Tom's coffee; he was very fond of coffee. Tom
was to treat Betsey to a ride in a one-horse shay, and topple the shay,
horse, and Mrs. Thomas W.--all except his mother's only son--over a most
convenient and inviting little precipice, a trifle over four hundred
feet deep, with boulders at the bottom rather thicker than autumn leaves
in Vallambrossa, and a good deal harder. All this was to be the result
of 'accident,' and 'inscrutible Providence,' as a matter of course.
Afterwards he was to buy a 'slashing suit' of mourning, bury what was
left of her in grand style, erect a fine headstone of marble, announcing
that--
"'The Lord gave, and the Lord took away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord!'
an inscription many a spouse would like to read in their own cases!
"The proposed locality of the fall of woman 'luckily' lay right on the
road between their house and Santa Blarneeo. Each thought, 'I may not be
able to achieve the exploit upon which I am bent, but one thing is
certain, which is, that it shall not fail for want of trying. Once
fairly accomplished, freedom comes, and then for a high old time!' So
thought the woman; so thought the man.
"Night has various and strange influences, which are altogether unknown
to the day. The Magi, on the plains of Chaldea, the astrologers of early
Egypt, and the whole ancient world duly acknowledged the power of the
astral bodies. The whole interest of Bulwer's 'Zanoni' hinges on the
soul-expanding potentiality of a star upon Clarence Glyndon, one of the
heroes of that Rosicrucian story. Indeed, the whole august fraternity,
from the neophyte of last week to Ross and Henri More, down to
Appolonius of Tyanae, and away through the Ages to Thothmes, and down
beyond all the Egyptian dynasties to Zytos, and still away into the very
heart of the Pre-Adamite Eras, we know, held strange doctrines
concerning stars; and if the historian of the Order, the great
Mirandolo, be not mistaken, our Brotherhood possesses the key that
reveals the nature of the starry influences, and how they may be gained.
Of my own knowledge--for I am but in the fifth degree, therefore do not
know all these mysteries--there are Destinies in the stars. Well, on
this particular night, the star known as Hesper, she of the pale mild
eye, was looking straight into the room where lay the precious pair, and
it shone through the little window at the foot of the bed. The night was
sultry--a little window--summer was in the ascendant--and the upper sash
was down. Remember this, _the upper sash_ was down.
"And now a strange thing occurred, a very strange and mysterious thing.
Just as Tom Clark and his wife had been magnetized into a sort of
restless sleep from gazing at the star--an uneasy, disturbed, nervous,
but dreamless sleep--as if a heavy, thick and murky cloud just floated
off a stagnant marsh, there descended upon the house a pestilent, slimy
mist, and it gathered over and about the roof; and it entered, rolling
heavily, into the chamber, coming through that little window at the foot
of the bed.
"It was a thick, dense, iron-greyish mist, approaching blackness, only
that there was a sort of turgid redness, not a positive color, but as if
it had floated over the depths of hell, and caught a portion of its
infernal luminosity. And it was thick and dark, and dense and very
heavy; and it swept and rolled, and poured into the room in thick,
voluminous masses--into the very room, and about the couch where tossed
in uneasy slumber the woman and the man. And it filled the apartment,
and hung like a pall about their couch; and its fetor oppressed their
senses; and it made their breath come thick, and difficult, and wheezing
from their lungs. It was dreadful! And their breath mingled with the
strange vapor, apparently endowing it with a kind of horrid life, a sort
of semi-sentience; and gave it a very peculiar and fearful
movement--orderly, systematic, gyratory, pulsing movement--the quick,
sharp breath of the woman, the deep and heavy breath of the man. And it
had come through the window at the foot of the bed, for the upper sash
was down.
"Slowly, and with regular, spiracular, wavy motion, with gentle
undulations, like the measured roll of the calm Pacific Sea, the gentle
sea on which I am sailing toward the Pyramids and my Cora--six years
old, and so pretty! Pyramids ten thousand years old, and so grand! Like
the waves of that sea did the cloud begin to move gyrally around the
chamber, hanging to the curtains, clinging to the walls, but as if
dreading the moonlight, _carefully_ avoiding the window through which it
had come, the little window at the foot of the bed--whose upper sash was
down.
"Soon, very soon, the cloud commenced to change the axis of its
movement, and to condense into a large globe of iron-hued nebulae; and it
began a contrary revolution; and it floated thus, and swam like a
dreadful destiny over the unconscious sleepers on the bed, after which
it moved to the western side of the room, and became nearly stationary
in an angle of the wall, where for a while it stood or floated, silent,
appalling, almost motionless, changeless, still.
"At the end of about six minutes it moved again, and in a very short
time assumed the gross but unmistakable outline of a gigantic human
form--an outline horrible, black as night--a frowning human form--cut
not sharply from the vapor, but still distinctly human in its
_shapeness_--but very imperfect, except the head, which was too
frightfully complete to leave even a lingering doubt but that some black
and hideous devilry was at work in that little chamber. And the head was
infamous, horrible, gorgonic; and its glare was terrible, infernal,
blasting, ghastly--perfectly withering in its expression, proportions
and aspect.
"The THING, this pestilent thing was bearded with the semblance of a
tangled mass of coarse, grey iron wire. Its hair was as a serried coil
of thin, long, venom-laden, poison-distilling snakes. The nose, mouth,
chin and brows were ghastly, and its sunken cheeks were those of Famine
intensified. The face was flat and broad, its lips the lips of incarnate
hate and lust combined. Its color was the greenish blue of corpses on a
summer battle-field, suffused with the angry redness of a demon's spite,
while its eyes--great God!--_its_ eye--for there was but one, and that
one in the very centre of its forehead, between the nose and brow--was
bloodshot and purple, gleaming with infernal light, and it glamored down
with more than fiendish malignance upon the woman and the man.
"Nothing about this Thing was clearly cut or defined, except the
head--its hideous, horrible head. Otherwise it was incomplete--a sort of
spectral Formlessness. It was unfinished, as was the awful crime-thought
that had brought it into being. It was on one side apparently a male, on
the other it looked like a female; but, taken as a whole, it was neither
man nor woman, it was neither brute nor human, but it was a monster and
a ghoul--born on earth of human parents. There are many such things
stalking our streets, and invisibly presiding over festal scenes, in
dark cellars, by the lamp, in the cabinet and camp; and many such are
daily peering down upon the white paper on the desks where sit grave and
solemn Ministers of State, who, for Ambition's sake and greed of gold,
play with an Empire's destiny as children do with toys, and who, with
the stroke of a pen, consign vast armies to bloody graves--brave men,
glorious hosts, kept back while victory is possible--kept back till the
foeman has dug their graves just in front of his own stone walls and
impenetrable ramparts--and then sent forward to glut the ground with
human blood. Do you hear me, Ministers of State? I mean you! you who
practically regard men's lives as boys regard the minnows of a brook. I
mean you who sit in high places, and do murder by the wholesale--you who
treat the men as half foes, half friends, tenderly; men whose hands are
gripped with the iron grip of death around the Nation's throat--the
Nation's throat--do you hear?--and crushing out the life that God and
our fathers gave it. Remember Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, Fort Wagner,
and the Black Heroes of the war--Noble men--Black, too, but the bravest
of the brave--yet treated not as heroes ought to be. Forget not
Fredericksburg! and bear in mind that this gorgon of your own creation
will not quit you, day or night--not even on your dying day, when it
will hiss into your ears, 'Father, behold, embrace me!'--and its slime
will fall upon and choke you, as you have choked our country. And the
sheeted ghosts of six hundred thousand heroes, slaughtered by a whim,
will mournfully upbraid, and--perhaps--forgive you. Will the weeping
widows and the countless orphans--pale, blue-cast women, pale with
grief, blue with want; orphans, poor little shrivelled, half-starved
orphans--will they forgive you? will your own conscience? will the
Eternal God of Heaven? Why did you sacrifice these six hundred thousand
men? Why did you not put your guns and swords in the hands of six
hundred thousand men--men who had God's best gifts to fight for and
maintain--Liberty and their wives? Black men, too--brawny, brave,
strong-hearted, Freedom-nerved, God-inspired black men. _No black man
yet ever sold his country!_ Why don't you first remove their
disabilities here in the North? Why don't you bid them rise and be men?
Why grudge freemen the pay of other free men; the bounty, the pension,
of other heroes of the same rank? Do this, let the Negro understand that
you concede his manhood, and appreciate his prowess; let him once know
that you are grateful for all he does for the country, and proclaim it
to the world, and Black men will flock to your standard, not only from
your own soil, but from every spot on earth where civilized black men
exist.
"See, yonder is a plain, miles in extent. In its centre there stands an
obelisk. Go, Ministers of State, and plant on its top a banner, upon
which shall be emblazoned this magic sentence: 'Freedom--Personal,
Political, and Social, to the Black man--and protection of his Rights
forever,' and there will be more magnetic power in it than in ten
thousand Ministers, with their little whims; ten thousand 'Fancy
Generals,' with their 'pretty little games,'--and such would be
History's record when she handed you down the ages. If you would live in
the sacred page, and have your names shine brightly, act, act at once,
cut the cords that now bind the Black man. Say to him: 'Come as a man,
not as a chattel! Come with me to Enfranchisement and Victory! Let us
save the Nation!' and the swift-winged winds will bear the sound from
pole to pole, from sea to sea, and from continent, island, and floating
barks, from hills, valleys, and mountains, from hut, hovel, and dismal
swamps, will come a vast and fearful host, in numbers like unto the
leaves of the forest; and they will gather in that plain around that
obelisk, rallying around that banner, and before their victorious march
Rebellion will go down as brick walls before the storm of iron; and if
France, or England, or Austria, or all, combine against them--they, too,
will go out of the battle, nevermore to enter it again.
"This is possible destiny! Think of it, O Ministers of State!
* * * *
"And so the fearful spectre in Tom Clark's room had its origin then and
there--had been created by the morning's wicked thought--a creature
fashioned by their human wills, and drawing its vitality from their life
and pulses--drawing its very soul from out those two beating human
hearts. Tell me not that I am painting a picture, limning the creature
of a distorted fancy. I know better, you know better, we all know that
just such hideous creatures, just such monstrosities, move, viewless,
daily, up and down the crowded streets of Santa Blarneeo, up and down
the streets of the Empire City and Puritanic Boston; but there are
crowds of them in Pennsylvania Avenue, and they wear phantom epaulettes
upon their spectral shoulders! You and I know that just such and other
"'Monstrous, horrid things that creep
From out a slimy sea,'
exist all over the land--but principally in high places begotten of
Treason and lust of Gold.
"Soon the lips began to move; it spoke: 'Father! mother! I am yet weak;
be quick; make me strong! feed me; I am hungry; give me blood--hot
streams--great gouts of blood! It is well. Kill, poison, die; it is
well! Ha! ha! It is well; ho! ho!' and then the Thing began to dissolve
into a filmy mist, until at last only the weight of its presence was
felt, for it floated invisibly but heavily through the room, and, except
the gleam--the fiery gleam of its solitary eye--nothing else of it was
discernible.
"Ten minutes elapsed after it had found voice, and faded away, when
suddenly a fleecy cloud that had for some time past obscured the sky in
the direction of Hesper, shutting out her silvery smiles, broke away,
and permitted her beams and those of the moon to once more enter the
chamber and flood it with a sheeted silver glory--the room where still
lingered the hateful Thing, and where still slept the woman and the man.
"Simultaneously with this auspicious event there came sighing over the
landscape, the musical notes of such a song as only seraphs sing--came
over the wastes like the mystical bells that I have heard at sunset
often while sailing on the Nile--mystical bells which thousands have
heard and marvelled at--soft bells, silvery bells, church bells--bells,
however, not rung by human hands. I have often heard them chiming over
Egypt's yellow, arid sands, and I believe they are rung by angel hands
on the other side of Time. And such a sound, only sweeter, came
floating o'er the lea, and through the still air into the little
chamber. Was it a call to the angels to join in prayer--midnight prayer,
for the sinful souls of men? But it came. Low it was, and clear; pure it
was, and full of saintly pity, like unto the dying cadence of the prayer
that was prayed by the Sufferer on the stony heights of Calvary; that
same Calvary where I have stood within a year, 'midst devout lovers of
their Lord, and the jeering scoffs of Mussulmans! And the music came--so
sweetly, as if 'twould melt the stony heart of Crime itself. And it
proclaimed itself the overture of another act of the eventful drama then
and there performing. And see! look there! the curtain rises. Woman,
Man, behold! Alas! they slumber insensibly on. Gaze steadily at that
upper sash--above it--for it is down; see, the clear space is again
obscured by a cloud; but this time it is one of silver, lined with
burnished gold, and flecked and edged with amethyst and purple. Look
again! What is that at the window? It is a visible music--a glorious
sheet of silvery vapor, bright, clear, and glittering as an angel's
conscience! It is a broad and glowing mantle of woven gossamer, suffused
with rose-blushes, and sprinkled with star-beams; and it flows through
the space, and streams into the chamber, bathing all things in holy
tremulous light, soft, sweet, balmy, and pure as the tears of virgin
innocence weeping for the early dead! That light! It was just such a
light as beamed from your eyes, Woman--beamed from out your soul, when,
after your agony, your eye first fell upon the angel you had borne--the
man-child whom God gave to your heart a little while ago; just such a
light as flashed fitfully from your soul, and fell upon the cradle, O
father of the strong and hopeful heart, wherein the little stranger lay;
just such light as beamed from your eyes, in pride, and hope, and
strange, deep prophecies, as you bent over her languishing form,
heartfully pressing her first-born to her dear woman's bosom, when you
looked so tenderly, kindly, lovingly down through her eyes into
her spirit--the true heart beating for you and it, beneath
folded--contentedly folded, arms--contented, too, through all the deep
anguish, such, O man, as only a woman and a mother can undergo. That
light! It was like that which fell upon the babe she had given you, and
the great Man-wanting world--given first for its coming uses, and then
to Him who doeth all things very well--well, even when He taketh the
best part of our souls away, and transplants the slips in His eternal
and infinite gardens, across the deep dark gulfs that hide the dead;
just such a light as gleamed from her eyes and thine own, when your
hearts felt calm and trustful once more, after the great, deep grief
billows had rolled over them--grief for the loss of one who stayed but a
little while on earth--all too coarse and rough for her--some little,
cooing Winnie--like mine--whose soul nestles afar off, on His breast, in
the blue sky, and whose body they laid in the cold grave, there in
Utica, after they--_he_--had let her starve, perish sadly for want of
proper food and medicine, while I was on the deep--winsome Winnie! child
of my soul, gone, lost, but not forever!--just such a light played in
that little room as streams from angel eyes when God takes back at the
hands of Azrael and Sandalphon, the beautiful angels of Death and of
Prayer, the things you had learned to love too well--to forgetfulness of
God and all true human duty. But they will give back what they took:
they will give back all, more in the clear sunshine of a brighter and a
purer day, than these earthly ones of ours!
"And the light streamed through and into the chamber where lay the woman
and the man; and it radiated around, and bathed every object in a
crystalline luminescence; and it carried a sadness with it--just such a
sadness as we feel when parting from those who love us very well; as I
felt on the day I parted from ----, Brother of my soul! when we parted
at the proud ship's side--the ocean courser, destined to bear me over
the steaming seas to Egypt's hoary shrines. It bore a sadness with it
like unto that which welled up from my soul, tapping the fountains of
friendship--and tears upon its way, in the memorable hour wherein I left
the Golden Gate, and began my perilous journey to the distant
Orient--across the bounding seas. What an hour!--that wherein our bodies
move away, but leave our sorrowing souls behind!
"Well, a holy light, sadness-bearing light, like this now rested on the
bodies of the sleeping pair. At first, this silvery radiance filled the
room, and then the fleecy vapor began to condense slowly. Presently it
formed into a rich and opalescent cloud-column, which speedily changed
into a large globe, winged, radiant and beautiful. Gradually there
appeared in the centre of this globe a luminous spot, momentarily
intensifying its brilliance, until it became like unto a tiny sun, or as
the scintillae of a rare diamond when all the lamps are brightly shining.
Slowly, steadily, the change went on in this magic crystal globe, until
there appeared within it the diminutive figure of a female, whose
outlines became more clear as time passed on, until, at the end of a few
minutes, the figure was perfect, and stood fully revealed and
complete--about eighteen inches high, and lovely--ah, how lovely!--that
figure; it was more than woman is--was all she may become--_petite_, but
absolutely perfect in form, feature and expression; and there was a
love-glow radiating from her presence sufficiently melting to subdue the
heart of Sin itself, though robed in Nova Zembla's icy shroud. Her
eyes!--ah, her eyes!--they were softer than the down upon a ring-dove's
breast!--not electric, not magnetic--such are human eyes; and she was
not of this earth--they were something more, and higher--they were
tearful, anxious, solicitous, hopeful, tender, beaming with that snowy
love which blessed immortals feel. Her hair was loose, and hung in
flowing waves adown her pearly neck and shoulders. Such a neck and
shoulders!--polished alabaster, dashed with orange blossoms, is a very
poor comparison; it would be better to say that they resembled petrified
light, tinted with the morning blush of roses! Around her brow was a
coronet of burnished, rainbow hues; or rather the resplendent tints of
polarized light. In its centre was the insignia of the Supreme Temple of
the Rosie Cross--a circle inclosing a triangle--a censer on one side, an
anchor fouled on the other, the centre-piece being a winged globe,
surmounted by the sacred trine, and based by the watchword of the Order,
'TRY,' the whole being arched with the blazon, 'ROSICRUCIA.' To attempt
a minute description of this peerless fay, on my part, would be
madness:--her chin, her mouth, her bust, her lips! No! I am not so vain
as to make the essay. I may be equal to such a task a century or two
from this, but am not equal to it now.
"There, then, and thus stood the crowned beauty of the Night, gazing
down with looks of pity upon the restless occupants of that humble
couch; for during all these transactions they had been asleep. She stood
there, the realization and embodiment of Light; and there, directly
facing her, glowered, and floated the eye of that hateful, scowling,
frowning Thing--scowling with malignant joy upon the woman and the man.
Thus stood the Shadow: thus stood the Light. But soon there came a
change o'er the spirit of the scene; for now an occurrence took place of
a character quite as remarkable as either of those already recounted;
for in a very short time after the two Mysteries had assumed their
relative positions, there came through the window--the same little
window at the foot of the bed--the tall and stately figure of a man--a
tall and regal figure, but it was light and airy--buoyant as a summer
cloud pillowed on the air--the figure of a man, but not solid, for it
was translucent as the pearly dew, radiant as the noontide sun, majestic
as a lofty mountain when it wears a snowy crown!--the royal form of a
man, but evidently not a ghost, or wraith, or a man of these days, or
of this earth, or of the ages now elapsing. He was something more than
man; he was supramortal; a bright and glorious citizen of a starry land
of glory, whose gates I beheld, once upon a time, when Lara bade me
wait; he was of a lineage we Rosicrucians wot of, and only we!--a
dweller in a wondrous city, afar off, real, actual--whose gates are as
the finest pearl--so bright and beautiful are they.... The stately
figure advanced midway of the room until he occupied the centre of a
triangle formed by the shadowy Thing, the female figure, and the bed;
and then he waved his hand, in which was a staff or truncheon--winged at
top and bottom; and he spake, saying:
"'I, Otanethi, the Genius of the Temple, Lord of the Hour, and
servant of the Dome, am sent hither to thee, O Hesperina,
Preserver of the falling; and to thee, dark Shadow, and to
these poor blind gropers in the Night and gloom. I am sent to
proclaim that man ever reacheth Ruin or Redemption through
himself alone--strengthened by Love of
Him--self-sought--reacheth either Pole of Possibility as he,
fairly warned, and therefore fully armed, may elect! Poor, weak
man!--a giant, knowing not his own tremendous power!--Master
both of Circumstance and the World--yet the veriest slave to
either!--weak, but only through ignorance of himself!--forever
and forever failing in life's great race through slenderness of
Purpose!--through feebleness of Will! Virtue is not virtue
which comes not of Principle within--that comes not of will
and aspiration. That abstinence from wrong is not virtue which
results from external pressure--fear of what the speech of
people may effect! It is false!--that virtue which requires
bolstering or propping up, and falls when left to try its
strength alone! Vice is not vice, but weakness, that springs
not from within--which is the effect of applied force. Real
vice is that which leaves sad marks upon the soul's escutcheon,
which the waters of an eternity may not lave away or wash out;
and it comes of settled purpose--from within, and is the thing
of Will. The virtue that has never known temptation--and
withstood it, counts but little in the great Ledger of the Yet
to Be! True virtue is good resolve, better thinking, and action
best of all! That man is but half completed whom the world has
wholly made. They are never truly made who fail to make
themselves! Mankind are not of the kingdom of the Shadow, nor
of the glorious realm of Light, but are born, move along, and
find their highest development in the path which is bounded on
either side by those two eternal Diversities--the Light upon
this side--the Shadow upon that:
"'The road to man and womanhood lies in the mean:
Discontent on either side--happiness between.'
"'Life is a triangle, and it may be composed of Sorrow, Crime,
Misery; or Aspiration, Wisdom, Happiness. These, O peerless
Hesperina, are the lessons I am sent to teach. Thou art here to
save two souls, not from loss, assailings or assoilings from
without, but from the things engendered of morbid
thought--monstrous things bred in the cellars of the soul--the
cesspools of the spirit--crime-caverns where moral newts and
toads, unsightly things and hungry, are ever devouring the
flowers that spring up in the heart-gardens of man--pretty
flowers, wild--but which double and enhance in beauty and aroma
from cultivation and care. We are present--I to waken the wills
of yonder pair; thou to arouse a healthy purpose and a normal
action; and the Shadow is here to drag them to Perdition. Man
cannot reach Heaven save by fearlessly breasting the waves of
Hell! Listen! Thou mayest not act directly upon the woman or
the man, but are at liberty to effect thy purpose through the
instrumentality of DREAM! And thou,' addressing the Thing,
'thou grim Shadow--Angel of Crime--monstrous offspring of man's
begetting--thou who art permitted to exist, art also allowed to
flourish and batten on human hearts. I may not prevent
thee--dare not openly frustrate thee--for thus it is decreed.
Thou must do thy work. Go; thou art free and unfettered. Do thy
worst; but I forbid thee to appear as thou really art--before
their waking senses, lest thy horrible presence should strike
them dumb and blind, or hurl Will and Reason from their
thrones. Begone! To thy labor, foul Thing, and do thy work also
through the powerful instrumentality of DREAM!'
"Thus spoke the genius of the Order and the Hour; and then,
turning him toward the couch, he said, yearningly, with tearful
mien and outstretched arms: 'Mortals, hear me in thy
slumber--let thy souls, but not thy senses, hear and
understand. Behold, I touch thee with this magic wand of
Rosicrucia, and with it wake thy sleeping wills--thus do I
endow thee with the elements, Attention, Aspiration,
Persistence--the seeds of Power--of resistless Might, which,
will--if such be thy choice, enable thee to realize a moral
fortress, capable of defying the combined assaults of all the
enginery Circumstance can bring to bear against thee. The
citadel is Will. Intrenched within it, thou art safe. But
beware of turning thy assaulting power against thyselves. Will,
normal, ever produceth Good: Abnormal, it hurls thee to the
Bad! Remember! Wake not to the external life, but in thy
slumber seize on the word I whisper in thine ears; it is a
magic word--a mighty talisman, more potent than the seal of
Solomon--more powerful than the Chaldean's wand--but it is
potential for ill as for Good. See to it, therefore, that it is
wisely used. The word is,
"TRY!" As thou shalt avail thyselves of its power, so be it
unto thee. I now leave thee to thy fate, and the fortunes that
may befall thee. TWO dreams each shalt thou have this night;
one of them shall be overruled by thy good, the other by thy
evil genius. God help thee! Farewell!' and in another instant,
the tall and stately figure passed through the moonlight, out
upon the deep bosom of the Night; and he floated, accompanied
by the same soft music heard before, away off into the blue
empyrean; and he passed through the window--the little window
at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down.