CLAIRVOYANT REVELATIONS.
What see you there,
That has so cowarded and chased your blood
Out of appearance?
SHAKSPEARE.
In a good-sized, neatly-furnished apartment, of a large house in Bond
Street, about two weeks after the incidents which were related in
the last chapters, a group was assembled, about nine o’clock in the
evening, which consisted of Manton, the woman Marie Orne, her daughter,
and Dr. E. Willamot Weasel, of whom we have before spoken.
The dark eye of Doctor Weasel glistened with benevolent delight as he
gazed upon the group, from which he sat somewhat apart. Manton was
seated on a chair near the glowing fire, with the mother on a low
stool on one side of him, and the daughter kneeling on the other,
while both with upturned reverential eyes drank in eagerly each word
that fell from his lips. They seemed to be enchained, enchanted, while
he spoke; and the mother, in the almost total speechlessness of her
rapt appreciation, could only venture to trust her trembling voice in
low, whispered exclamations; while the sad eyes of the impish-looking
daughter imitatively stared unutterable things.
The woman’s subtle suggestiveness had roused the brain of Manton,
and fully drawn him out on his favorite themes; whatever of natural
eloquence he possessed, and he possessed much, flowed smoothly now,
for, in spite of himself, his frozen heart had been warmed by the
unwearying deference which he met with from these people.
The lamps burned brightly, the hearth glowed, and the eyes of all were
bent upon him with genial warmth and admiring earnestness. The north
wind howled cold without, to remind him of the long, harsh “winter of
his discontent,” which had for ten weary years been unrelieved by any
approximation to a scene thus flushed with the sanctities of domestic
quiet. Manton always idealised woman—he idealised everything. He was a
poet. The very presence of woman was hallowed to his imagination. There
was a thrill of sweet fancies and gentle memories conveyed to him, in
the very rustle of a silken gown. He adored, he worshipped woman, as
she lived in his memory—the holy attributes with which he invested
her, penetrated and held him enchained in peaceful awe. He could not,
he dare not believe evil of her, if she bore the semblance of good, in
thought, or deed, or life.
He had shrunk thus long from contact with her, not because this
interval of self-inflicted separation had been other than a weary
penance of yearning, but that his fastidious nature dreaded the
common contact, which might degrade or mar that ideal of love, which
woman personated to him, and in the worship of which he had found the
strength for brave deeds.
It was the weakness, the petty flippancy, the commonplaceisms of woman,
from which he shrank. He believed that her spiritual strength should
equalise her with man’s physical strength in disregarding common fears,
paltry conventionalities, and contemptible topics. The miserable
skeleton of soul and body, which the world calls “woman of society,”
was more horrible to him, by far, than the actual contact with her
dry bones in a prepared skeleton would have been—for where one was a
comparatively pleasing object to his eye as a philosopher, the other
was but the painted, dim-eyed, ghastly spectre of a living death.
There was in this woman, at least so far as he could judge, a total
abandon to her natural impulses, which seemed to utterly repudiate
those restrictions which are merely commonplace. This was refreshing to
him, from its novelty, at any rate, in contrast with the insipidities
he so much dreaded, although his taste had from the first been
constantly offended.
Yet she seemed so utterly lawless and quietly defiant of what the
world, that works in harness, might say, he could not help respecting
her for it. It was a new thing in his life, to meet with a woman,
sufficiently heroic, to face the martyrdom that she was daring, for so
elevated and noble an aim as the emancipation of her own sex from the
conditions of utter helplessness, into which their ignorance of the
laws of life had sunk them.
Besides, she had shown so much earnest patience with his rude pride,
had followed up its aberrations with such a matronly tenderness,
exhorting him only, and unceasingly, to be at rest—a rest, the need of
which his proud and fainting soul had confessed so often to his inward
consciousness. And then this fine appreciation—ah, where is the young
poet who can withstand appreciation? And then such delicate deference
in trifles!
He had spoken incidentally of his taste in dress; and now the
mother and daughter were dressed in the most graceful and faultless
simplicity! The heart of Manton was touched. He felt grateful and
pleased with these strange Samaritans to him in a strange land.
On a slight pause in the conversation, the woman, still gazing up
timidly into the face of Manton, changed the theme suddenly, by asking
him,
“What do you think of Clairvoyance?”
“The world is not old enough yet, by twenty years, I think, to answer
that question.”
“My reason for asking the question, was, that I have some strange
premonitions myself, which I cannot explain. You will, no doubt, be
able to explain the mystery at once—”
“Yes!” interrupted Doctor Weasel, eagerly, “do let us have you
examine the matter! Facts have come within my own knowledge,
concerning revelations which have been made by her, that are the most
extraordinary I ever knew. For instance, when she has been brought into
clairvoyant rapport with individuals whom she has never seen or heard
of before, she has revealed to them the whole history of their lives.”
“This unexpected enunciation of their life-secrets to men, must of
course be productive of strange scenes occasionally,” said Manton, in a
tone which had suddenly become cold.
“Oh, very curious and interesting! very curious!” exclaimed the Doctor,
quickly. “Marie, do relate to him that incident of the bloody hand,
that you have so often told me.”
“Well,” said she, “it has been some years since that a number of my
friends, who knew of this gift of mine, were in the habit of inviting
me to their respective houses, to meet friends of distinction, who were
curious to observe the experiments, either upon themselves or upon
others.
“On one occasion I was invited to meet a celebrated physician of this
city, whose reputation for purity of character and life was very high.
There were no parties present but my friend, this physician, and
myself. Such an arrangement, I afterwards understood, had been made at
the particular request of the physician himself, who desired that there
should be no other person present but his host at the interview.
“When the physician placed his hand upon my head, as is the necessary
formula to bring me into spiritual communion with my interrogator, I
relapsed almost immediately into the syncope of the clairvoyant state,
and of course became entirely unconscious of what I uttered in that
condition. But our host, who was his most intimate friend, has given me
many times the following explanation of the scene:—
“He says that when the physician placed his hand upon my head, I first
said from the sleep, ‘I am content! All is pure here—this is a holy
soul—one that is regenerate and will be saved!’ and then that while I
was recounting his many deeds of kindness to the poor and friendless,
and the rich, I suddenly shrank back, exclaiming, ‘Blood! blood! blood!
There is blood upon this hand! This soul is darkened now with blood!
Here is some fearful crime! Murder has been committed by this hand;
everything seems red beneath it!’ My friend says the doctor staggered
back as if he had been shot, on hearing this, turned pale as death,
and swooned on the floor; and after he recovered, acknowledged that he
had committed murder and fled from the consequences; the name by which
he was now known was an assumed one, and he implored his host not to
expose him to the penalty of the gallows by revealing these terrible
facts.
“My friend, of course, did everything he could to relieve him on that
point, and assured him that he would never breathe the fact where it
could injure him; that the purity of his life for so many years had
cancelled the enormity of the crime, so far as society was concerned.
“But in spite of all this, the wretched and guilty man left the house
in overwhelming despair, and the last I have heard of him was that he
had locked himself in his own house, and was killing himself with the
most unheard-of excesses in drinking brandy, to which vice he never
before had been addicted.
“When I realised the tragic results of this fearful insight, with which
I seem to have been mysteriously endowed, my very soul was shaken with
sorrow; and since that time my spirit has wrestled in agonies of prayer
with God, that this poor child of crime and headlong vices might be
‘_saved_!’”
As the woman uttered these last words, Manton recognised, for the
first time, and with a shudder, a peculiar obliquity of the left eye.
His soul was chilled within him; and for the moment, the light of the
glowing room was darkened as if the shadow of drear winter had passed
over and through it.
Doctor Weasel exclaimed gaily, “Is not that extraordinary? I assure
you, I have myself witnessed things in connection with this power of
hers, quite as inexplicable, though happily not so tragic.”
“It sounds strangely enough,” said Manton, shortly.
“I assure you I have no means of accounting for these things,” said the
woman in a meek, deprecatory tone.
“Suppose you demonstrate it, madam, in my case;” and a slight sneer,
which crossed the face of Manton, whose manner had entirely changed,
did not escape the hawk-like quickness of the woman’s eye. “My life, I
am willing to submit to the scrutiny of your inscrutable sense.”
“Oh, by all means!” exclaimed Doctor Weasel, springing to his feet in
a paroxysm of delight. “Let us have the experiment, by all means! Do
please place your hand on the top of her head!”
Manton turned, and with a bow most studiously deferential, seemed to
ask of the lady her permission to do so.
“Oh, yes, yes,” and her head was bowed forward to meet his upraised
hand; while the daughter, who seemed to understand the thing, either
from previous experience, or from some private signal, rose from her
clinging position about his knee, and stepped back, leaving the two
alone, without other contact.
In a few moments after the hand of Manton had rested upon the meek,
submissive head of the woman before him, she commenced exhibiting the
common and preliminary attitudes, muscular retchings of the throat,
nervous twitchings of the lips and limbs, accompanied by the apparently
palpable, organic changes, which are recognised to be symptomatic with
well-known conditions of the mesmeric sleep.
Manton watched all these phenomena with the sharpest attention, and
then, as the lips began to move as if in inarticulate enunciation, he
leant forward over her, and asked—
“What can you tell us of the soul, with which you are now in
communication?”
After several preluding and spasmodic efforts to articulate sounds, the
Clairvoyant at length said, in a voice only distinct above a whisper—
“I see light! all light!—pure, holy light. It fills the universe with
a mild radiance! I can see no blurs, no clouds in the foreground. I
can see only angels, seraphs, and seraphim, and all forms of light
revolving in the sphere of this mighty soul!”
“Is there no evil there?” said Manton.
“No, I see none; I see only white light.”
“But look close—perhaps you might find something dark. Look long and
steadily into the world you visit—see if there be not clouds there.”
There was a pause. The lips moved without articulation again; and again
Manton asked—“What do you see now?”
“I see, I see, the light is parting on either side; out in the far
distance, between those walls of light, a giant form uprears itself in
shadow. Down the long vista stands this darkened giant. He is fierce
and stern, and wears a cold, hard front, with flaming eyes, that
scare the ministering angels all away. He strikes around him with the
imperious sway of his huge, knotted club, and all the bright forms
flee. He seems the savage Hercules of pride!”
There is a pause; and after a stillness of some moments, Manton asked
again—
“What now is the vision, to your sense?—is the giant gone?”
“No, he is humbled but not subdued; and from afar behind him, down this
darkened vista, a light has grown up, like a rising star. It advances
slowly, rising over his head. The splendor increases as it comes.
Now, the dark and wrathful giant has fallen on his knees—the flood of
glory overcomes him. His club is dropped. His eyes, upturned in awe,
seem dimmed by the sudden glory of an angel’s presence. Ha! I see! the
features of that angel are like his whose soul I see! The giant is
subdued! His pride has bowed its forehead in the dust, before the angel
radiance of a visiting mother!”
Manton felt his flesh creep as this was spoken, and as the Clairvoyant
paused for some moments, he asked: “What does this spirit of the mother
say?”
The slow answer was—
“She seems to rebuke this pride even more with her effulgence, and
to say, My son, I am with thee in the spirit, but I cannot be with
thee through the medium of the flesh which thou hast so poisoned and
corrupted, since I passed from thee into this higher sphere. Make
thy body clean and purify thy life, and I shall be always with thee
present, in the spirit. It is necessary for your usefulness in your
present life that you should accept of human sympathies. It is only
through such that you can establish a true community with the material
world of which you form a part. Accept human love—accept a moral
representative of myself—believe in the possibility of its chasteness
as well as utility, and you will yet be strong, powerful of good, and
happy.”
Here Manton, who had become intensely excited during the progress of
this scene, removed his hand with a vehement gesture from the head of
the woman, and springing to his feet, seized his cap, and with scarce
the ordinary adieus, hastily left the room. He rushed hurriedly through
the dark storm, which careered along the street, muttering as he went:—
“Eternal curses on this infernal woman! What can it mean? She dares
to speak of my mother again. Hah! does not this account for the
inexplicable disturbance of my papers in my trunk? Is it possible that
this can be the accursed and despicable wretch who has stolen into
the privacies of my life? But think, think! I may have been hasty.
This whole subject of Clairvoyance is an impenetrable mystery. That
strange story of the bloody hand has impressed me. For all we know, as
yet, such things may be within the possibilities of Clairvoyance. That
myth she uttered as if she were in a dream, was strangely significant
to me—supposing her to be ignorant of all my past life; and then
she seemed so patient, so disinterested, so gentle and so kind, so
matronly, so tender, and so heroic, too. I cannot altogether distrust
her, nor can I believe; I can only wait. I must see more; I must
know more; I must comprehend the whole. There is a something here I
cannot understand—a something betwixt heaven and hell, which I must
bide my time to fathom. Curses on all mysteries!” and, rushing onward
through the storm, like one hag-ridden, or pursued by stern, accusing
ghosts, the bewildered Manton soon reached his cheerless room, all
storm-drenched and depressed.