THE MAGIC SPELL.
"In the Kingdom of Dream strange things are seen,
And the Fate of the Nations are there, I ween."
_From_ "_The Rosie Cross_," _an unpublished Poem by_
P. B. RANDOLPH.
"The regal being was scarcely gone from the chamber ere Hesperina and
the Shadow--which had once more become visible, approached the sleeping
pair--drew nigh unto the woman and the man; and the Fay gently breathed
upon their heads, as if to establish a magnetic _rapport_ between
herself and them. She then calmly took her stand near the bedside, and
folded her beautiful arms across her still more beautiful bosom, and
awaited the action of the tempter. She had not long to wait, for
straightway the Black Presence advanced, and hovered over the
bed--hovered scowlingly over them, glaring down into their souls, as
doth the vampire upon the man she would destroy--the spirit of Wrong
peering wistfully at all beautiful things, and true! Such was the
posture of affairs; and thus they remained until the Thing had also
established some sort of connection with the sleepers. It soon became
evident, from their nervous, uneasy movements and postures, that the
twain were rapidly crossing the mystic boundaries that divide our own
from Dream-land--that they were just entering the misty mid-region--the
Shadow, the Thing, the monstrous IT, ruling the hour, and guiding them
through the strange realm--
"'That lieth sublime, out of Space and out of Time.'
"The man who says that dreams are figments is a fool. Half of our
nightly experiences are, in their subsequent effects upon us, far more
real and positive than our daily life of wakefulness. Dreams are, as a
general thing, save in rare instances, sneered at by the wise ones of
this sapient age. Events, we of Rosicrucia hold, are pre-acted in other
spheres of being. Prophetic dreaming is no new thing. Circumstances are
constantly occurring in the outer life that have been pre-viewed in
Dream-land. Recently, while in Constantinople, I became acquainted with
a famous Dongolese negro, near the Grand Mosque of St. Sophia, in one of
the narrow streets on the left, as you enter the square from toward the
first bridge, and this man had reduced the interpretation of dreams to a
science almost; and many a long hour have I rapidly driven the pen, in
the work of recording what was translated to me from Dongolese and
Arabic into Turkish and English, from his lips, obtaining in this way
not merely the principles upon which his art was founded, but also
explicit interpretations of about twenty-nine hundred different dreams.
"THE DREAM OF THOMAS W.
"Tom Clark was dreaming; and, lo! great changes had taken place in the
fortunes of the sleeping man. No longer a toiler at the anvil or the
plow, he had become a rich and, as times go, therefore an honored
man--honored by the crowd which, as a general thing, sees the most
virtue in the heaviest sack of dollars.
"The wealth of Mr. Thomas W. had come to him in a very singular and
mysterious manner, all since he had become a widower; for Mrs. Thomas
was dead, poor woman, having some time previously met her fate through a
very melancholy accident. An extract from the 'Daily Truth-Teller,' of
Santa Blarneeo, a copy of which paper Tom Clark carried in his pocket
all the time, and which pocket I shall take the liberty of picking of
the journal aforesaid, and of quoting, will tell the story--sad
story--but not the whole of it, quite:
"'FEARFUL AND FATAL CATASTROPHE!--We learn with deep, sincere,
and very profound regret, that another of those fearful
calamities, which no human prudence can guard against, no
foresight prevent, has just occurred, and by means of which a
most estimable woman, an exemplary and loving wife, an
excellent Christian, firm friend, and esteemed person, has been
suddenly cut off in her prime, and sent prematurely to her
final account. It appears that the late heavy rains have
rendered all the roads leading from Santa Blarneeo nearly
impassable, by reason of the rifts, rocks, boulders, and
slides of clay--very dangerous and slippery clay--which they
have occasioned.
"'Especially is this the case along the cliff road, and more
particularly where it skirts the side of the Bayliss Gulch. Of
late it has been exceedingly unsafe to pass that way in broad
daylight, and much more so after dark.
"'At about ten o'clock yesterday morning, as Mr. Ellet, the
Ranchero, was passing that road, along the brink of what is
known as the Scott ravine, his horse shied at some objects in
the path, which proved to be a man's hat and woman's shawl, on
the very edge of the precipice--a clear fall of something like
four hundred feet. It immediately occurred to Farmer Ellet,
that if anybody had tumbled over the cliff, that there was a
great probability that whoever it was must have been
considerably hurt, if nothing more, by the time they reached
the bottom, as he well remembered had been the case with a yoke
of steers of his that had run off at the same spot some years
before, and both of which were killed, very dead, indeed, by
the accident. So, at least, he informed our reporter, who took
down the statement phonographically. Mr. Ellet discovered the
remains of a horse and buggy at the bottom of the ravine, and
at a little to the left, about ten feet down the bank, where he
had, by a miracle, been thrown when the horse went over, Mr.
Ellet found the insensible body of a man, desperately hurt, but
still breathing. His fall had been broken by some stout young
trees and bushes, amidst the roots of which he now lay. Mr. E.
soon rescued the sufferer, who proved to be Mr. Thomas W.
Clark, a well-known, honest, sober man, and a neighbor as well.
Mr. Clark's injuries are altogether internal, from the shock of
falling, otherwise he is almost unscathed. His pains inwardly
are very great, besides which he is nearly distracted and
insane from the loss of his wife and horse, but mainly for the
former. It seems that they had been riding out on a visit to a
sick friend, and the horse had slipped on the wet clay, had
taken fright, and leaped the bank, just as Clark was hurled
from the buggy, and landed where Ellet found him. The horse,
carriage, and the precious freight, instantly plunged headlong
down through four hundred feet of empty air.
"'We learn that the couple were most devotedly attached to each
other, as is notorious from the fact, among others, that
whenever they met, after a day's absence, and no matter where,
nor in what company, they invariably embraced and kissed each
other, in the rich, deep fullness of their impassioned and
exhaustless conjugal love. Poor Clark's loss is irreparable.
His wife had been twice married, but her affection for her
first husband was but as a shallow brook compared to the deep,
broad ocean of love for him who now mourns, most bitterly
mourns, her untimely fate!'
"There! What d'ye think o' that, my lady?--what d'ye think o' that, my
man? That's a newspaper report, the same that Tom Clark carried in his
pocket, and read so often in his dream. Singular, isn't it, that the
ruling passion triumphs, especially Reporters'--even in Death or
Dream-land.
"At the end of two days Mr. Clark recovered sufficiently to go to the
foot of the cliff, and when there his first work was to carefully bury
what was left of his wife--and her first husband's portrait at the same
time--for he had placed that canvas across the backs of two chairs, and
amused himself by jumping through it--like a sensible man.
"There is--do you know it?--an almost uncontrollable fascination in
Danger. Have you never been seized with the desire to throw yourself
down some yawning chasm, into some abyss, over into the ready jaws of a
shark, to handle a tiger, play with a rattlesnake, jump into a foundery
furnace, write a book, edit a paper, or some other such equally wise and
sensible thing? Well, I know many who have thus been tempted--and to
their ruin. Human nature always has a morbid streak, and that is one of
them, as is also the horrible attraction to an execution--to visit the
scene of a homicide or a conflagration--especially if a few people have
been burnt up--and the more the stronger the curiosity; or to look at
the spot where a score or two of Pat-landers have been mumified by the
weakness of walls--and contractors' consciences. With what strange
interest we read how the monarch of some distant lovely isle dined with
his cabinet, off _Potage aux teet de missionaire_--how they banqueted on
delicate slices of boiled evangelist, all of which _viandes_ were
unwillingly supplied by the Rev. Jonadab Convert-'em-all, who had a call
that way to supply the bread of life, not slices of cold missionary--and
did both! So with Tom Clark. One would have thought that the last scene
he would willingly have looked upon, would have been the bottom of the
ravine. Not a bit of it. An uncontrollable desire seized him, and for
his life he could not keep away from the foot of the cliff. He went
there, and day by day searched for every vestige of the poor woman,
whose heart, and head likewise, he at last had succeeded in breaking
into very small fragments. These relics he buried as he found them, yet
still could not forsake his daily haunt. Of course, for a time the
people observed his action, attributed it to grief and love, forbore to
watch or disturb, and finally cared nothing about the matter whatever.
Such things are nothing in California. Well was it for Clark that it was
so--that they regarded him as mildly insane, and let his vagaries have
full swing, for it gave him ample time and opportunity to fully improve
one of the most astounding pieces of good luck that ever befell a human
being since the year One.
"It fell out upon a certain day, that, after attending to other duties,
Tom Clark, as usual, wound his way, by a zig-zag and circuitous path, to
the foot of the hill, and took his accustomed seat near by the rock
where it was evident Mrs. C. had landed--the precise spot where her
flight had been so rudely checked. There he sat for a while, like
Volney, in deep speculative reverie and meditation--not upon the ruins
of Empires, but upon those of his horse, his buggy, and his wife.
Suddenly he started to his feet, for a very strange fancy had struck
upon his brain. I cannot tell the precise spot of its impingement, but
it hit him hard. He acted on the idea instantly, and forthwith resolved
to dig up all the soil thereabouts, that had perchance drank a single
drop of her blood. It was not conscience that was at work, it was
destiny. This soil, that had been imbrued with the blood of the horse
and buggy--no, the woman, I mean--he resolved to bury out of sight of
man and brute, and sun and moon, and little peeping stars; for an
instinct told him that the gore-stained soil could not be an acceptable
spectacle to anything on earth, upon the velvet air, or in the blue
heaven above it; and so he scratched up the mould and buried it out of
sight, in a rift hard by, between two mighty rocks, that the earthquake
had split asunder a million years before.
"And so he threw it in, and then tried to screen it from the sun with
leaves and grass, great stones and logs of wood; after which he again
sat down upon the rock to rest.
"Presently he arose to go, when, as he did so, a gleam of sunshine
flashed back upon his eyes from a minute spiculae of, he knew not what.
He stooped; picked up the object, and found, to his utter astonishment,
that he held in his hand a lump of gold, solid gold--an abraded,
glittering lump of actual, shining gold.
"Tom Clark nearly fainted! The lump weighed not less than a pound. Its
sides had been scratched by him as he dug away the earth at the foot of
the cliff where his wife had landed, after a brief flight through four
hundred feet of empty air--a profitable journey for him--but not for
her, nor the horse, nor buggy!
"For a minute Clark stood still, utterly bewildered, and wiping the
great round beads of sweat from off his brow. He wept at every pore. But
it was for a minute only: in the next he was madly, wildly digging with
the trowel he always carried with him, for Tom was Herb-Doctor in
general for the region roundabout, and was great at the root and herb
business, therefore went prepared to dig them wherever chance disclosed
them.
"Five long hours did he labor like a Hercules, in the soft mould, in the
crevices of the rocks--everywhere--and with mad energy, with frantic
zeal. Five long hours did he ply that trowel with all the force that the
hope of sudden wealth inspired, and then, exhausted, spent, he sank
prostrate on the ground, his head resting on a mass of yellow gold--gold
not in dust, or flecks, or scales, but in great and massy lumps and
wedges, each one large enough for a poor man's making.
"That morning Thomas Clark's worldly wealth, all told, could have been
bought thrice over for any five of the pieces then beneath his head, and
there were scores of them. His brain reeled with the tremendous
excitement. He had struck the richest 'Lead' ever struck by mortal man
on the surface of the planet, for he had already collected more than he
could lift, and he was a very strong and powerful man. There was enough
to fill a two-peck measure, packed and piled as close and high as it
could be; and yet he had just begun. Ah, Heaven, it was too much!
"Alas, poor Tom! poor, doubly poor, with all thy sudden, boundless
wealth! Thou art even poorer than Valmondi, who, the legends say, gave
his soul to the service of the foul fiend--for he, like thee, had riches
inexhaustible; but, unlike Valmondi, and the higher Brethren of the
Rosie Cross, thou hast not the priceless secret of Perpetual youth. Thou
wilt grow old, Tom Clark--grow old, and sick, and grey hairs and
wrinkles will overtake thee. And see! yonder is an open grave, and it
yearns for thee, Tom Clark, it yearns for thee! And there's Blood upon
thy hands, Tom Clark, red gouts of Blood--and gold cannot wash it off.
"Valmondi repented, and died a beggar, but thy heart is cased in golden
armor, and the shafts of Mercy may not reach its case, and wake thee up
to better deeds, and high and lofty daring for the world and for thy
fellow-men. Gold! Ah, Tom, Tom, thou hadst better have been a humble
Rosicrucian--better than I, for weakness has been mine. It is better to
labor hard with brain and tongue and hands, for mere food and raiment,
than be loaded down with riches, that bear many a man earthward, and
fill untimely graves! It is better to live on bread, and earn it, than
to be a millionaire. Better to have heaped up wealth of Goodness, than
many bars of Gold. Poor Tom! Rich you are in what self-seeking men call
wealth; but poor, ah, how poor! in the better having, which whetteth the
appetite for knowledge, and its fruitage, Wisdom, and which sendeth man,
at night, to Happy Dream land, upon the viewless pinions of sweet and
balmy Sleep! Every dollar _above_ labor brings ten thousand evils in its
train.
"Well, night was close at hand, and Tom buried his God, and went home.
Home, did I say? Not so. He went to his bed, to sleep, and in that sleep
he dreamed that it was raining double eagles, while he held his hat
beneath the spout. But he was not home, for home is where the heart is,
and we have seen the locality of Clark's.
"For days, weeks, months, he still worked at his 'Lead,' studiously
keeping his own counsel, and managing the affair, from first to last,
with the most consummate tact; so that no one even suspected that the
richest man in California, and on the entire continent, was Mr. Thomas
W. By degrees he conveyed to, and had vast sums coined at the mint, as
agent for some mining companies. A few hogsheads he buried here and
there, and sprinkled some dozens of barrels elsewhere about the ground.
This he continued to do until at last even _his_ appetite for gold was
doubly, _triply_ glutted; and then he sprung the secret, sold his claim
for three millions, cash in hand, and forthwith moved, and set up an
establishment close under Telegraph Hill, in the best locality in all
Santa Blarneeo.
"And now everybody and his wife bowed to Mr. Thomas W., and did homage
to--his money. Curious, isn't it, how long some gods _will_ live? About
three thousand years ago a man of Israel fashioned one out of borrowed
jewelry, fashioned it in the form of a _veal_, after which he proclaimed
it, and all the human calves fell down straightway, and a good many are
still bent on worshipping at the self-same shrine. That calf has
retained to this day '_eleven-tenths_' of earth's most zealous
adoration! So now did men reverence Clark's money. Women smiled upon
him, ambitious spinsters ogled, and hopeful maidens set their caps to
enthrall him. He could carry any election, gave tone to the Money
Market, reigned supreme and undisputed king on ''Change,' and people
took him for a happy man; and so he was, as long as daylight lasted, and
he was steadily employed; but, somehow or other, his nights were
devilishly unpleasant! He could not rest well, for in the silence of the
night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, an unsheeted ghost passed
before his face, bearing a most damnably correct similitude to a former
female acquaintance of his, now, alas! deceased; and not unfrequently,
as he hurried along the streets, did he encounter persons who bore
surprising and unmistakable resemblances to the 'dear departed.'
"'Black clouds come up, like sinful visions,
To distract the souls of solitary men.'
"Was Tom Clark mistaken? Was it Fancy? Was it Fear?... One night he went
to a theatre, but left it in a hurry, when the actor, who was playing
Macbeth, looked straight into his private box and said:
"'The times have been that, when the brains were out
The man would die--and there an end;
But _now_ they rise again, with twenty mortal murders
On their crowns, to push us from our seats!'
And the words pushed Clark out of the house, deadly sick--fearfully
pale; for the avenging furies, roused at last, were at that very moment
lashing his guilty soul to madness--and Shakspeare's lines, like
double-edged daggers, went plunging, cutting, leaping, flying through
every vault and cavern of his spirit. He rushed from the place, reached
his house, and now: 'The bowl, the bowl! Wine, give me wine, ruby wine.'
They gave it, and it failed! Stronger drink, much stronger, now became
his refuge, and in stupefying his brain he stultified his conscience.
His torture was not to last forever, for by dint of debauchery his
sensitive soul went to sleep, and the brute man took the ascendant.
Conscience slept profoundly. His heart grew case-hardened, cold and
callous as an ice-berg. He married a Voice, and a Figure, as heartless
as himself; became a politician--which completely finished him; but
still, several handsome donations to a fashionable church--just think of
it!--had the effect of procuring him the reputation of sanctity, which
lie he, by dint of repetition, at last prevailed upon himself to
believe. Thus we leave him for awhile, and return to the chamber in
which was the little window whose upper sash was down.