Doch wunderbar ergriff mich’s diese Nacht;
Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
Uhland.
(This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
in the power of death.)
A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of
consciousness; and when, by Adela’s care more than the skill of the
physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably
shocked by the change in his sister’s appearance; at first, he fondly
imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his
own. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the
malady was deep-seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and
his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully
impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by the ravings
of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, “It is
there,--there, by thy side, my sister!” He had transferred to her fancy
the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not
by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by
the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look
that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession;
bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there
could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,--to
undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an
overheated brain!
And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often,
as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and
glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if
possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the
change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned
paler if he approached,--she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from
the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between
his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one
whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure,
and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of
joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela’s face, he beheld
when he murmured “Farewell.” He travelled for some weeks through the
wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless
to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of
new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of
mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who
gazed on the Medusa’s head, and felt, without a struggle, the human
being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not
idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as
the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon
had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look
of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the
clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With
difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer
the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour,
and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she
distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice
knocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a
countenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers
on her forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her;
and when she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up
her blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon’s return, and whose
letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner,
ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced
should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the
faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of
cure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the
patient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward
half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of
the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of
all the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the
patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the
delusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes,--he continued to excite
her attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the
time. The hour struck. “Joy, my brother!” she exclaimed, throwing
herself in his arms; “the time is past!” And then, like one released
from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
cheerfulness. “Ah, Clarence!” she whispered, “forgive me for my former
desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!
in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!” And Clarence
smiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed
his stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour that
seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over
Adela’s face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same
restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose,--he
approached her. Adela started up, “look--look--look!” she exclaimed.
“She comes! Save me,--save me!” and she fell at his feet in strong
convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the
half-hour.
The physician lifted her in his arms. “My worst fears are confirmed,”
he said gravely; “the disease is epilepsy.” (The most celebrated
practitioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion
precisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the one
here narrated.)
The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.