cheerful reflection, or if it had been left behind, when the strange
occurrence came of which I have now to tell. Can I call it an occurrence?
My eyes were on my book, when I thought I heard the sound of a door
opening and shutting, but so far away and faint that if real at all it
must have been in a far corner of the house. I did not move except to
lift my eyes from the book as one does instinctively the better to
listen; when--But I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to describe
exactly what it was. My heart made all at once a sudden leap in my
breast. I am aware that this language is figurative, and that the heart
cannot leap; but it is a figure so entirely justified by sensation, that
no one will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. My heart
leaped up and began beating wildly in my throat, in my ears, as if my
whole being had received a sudden and intolerable shock. The sound went
through my head like the dizzy sound of some strange mechanism, a
thousand wheels and springs circling, echoing, working in my brain. I
felt the blood bound in my veins, my mouth became dry, my eyes hot; a
sense of something insupportable took possession of me. I sprang to my
feet, and then I sat down again. I cast a quick glance round me beyond
the brief circle of the lamplight, but there was nothing there to
account in any way for this sudden extraordinary rush of sensation, nor
could I feel any meaning in it, any suggestion, any moral impression. I
thought I must be going to be ill, and got out my watch and felt my
pulse: it was beating furiously, about one hundred and twenty-five throbs
in a minute. I knew of no illness that could come on like this without
warning, in a moment, and I tried to subdue myself, to say to myself that
it was nothing, some flutter of the nerves, some physical disturbance. I
laid myself down upon my sofa to try if rest would help me, and kept
still, as long as the thumping and throbbing of this wild, excited
mechanism within, like a wild beast plunging and struggling, would let
me. I am quite aware of the confusion of the metaphor; the reality was
just so. It was like a mechanism deranged, going wildly with
ever-increasing precipitation, like those horrible wheels that from time
to time catch a helpless human being in them and tear him to pieces; but
at the same time it was like a maddened living creature making the
wildest efforts to get free.
When I could bear this no longer I got up and walked about my room; then
having still a certain command of myself, though I could not master the
commotion within me, I deliberately took down an exciting book from the
shelf, a book of breathless adventure which had always interested me, and
tried with that to break the spell. After a few minutes, however, I flung
the book aside; I was gradually losing all power over myself. What I
should be moved to do,--to shout aloud, to struggle with I know not what;
or if I was going mad altogether, and next moment must be a raving
lunatic,--I could not tell. I kept looking round, expecting I don’t know
what; several times with the corner of my eye I seemed to see a movement,
as if some one was stealing out of sight; but when I looked straight,
there was never anything but the plain outlines of the wall and carpet,
the chairs standing in good order. At last I snatched up the lamp in my
hand, and went out of the room. To look at the picture, which had been
faintly showing in my imagination from time to time, the eyes, more
anxious than ever, looking at me from out the silent air? But no; I
passed the door of that room swiftly, moving, it seemed, without any
volition of my own, and before I knew where I was going, went into my
father’s library with my lamp in my hand.
He was still sitting there at his writing-table; he looked up astonished
to see me hurrying in with my light. “Phil!” he said, surprised. I
remember that I shut the door behind me, and came up to him, and set down
the lamp on his table. My sudden appearance alarmed him. “What is the
matter?” he cried. “Philip, what have you been doing with yourself?”
I sat down on the nearest chair and gasped, gazing at him. The wild
commotion ceased; the blood subsided into its natural channels; my
heart resumed its place. I use such words as mortal weakness can to
express the sensations I felt. I came to myself thus, gazing at him,
confounded, at once by the extraordinary passion which I had gone
through, and its sudden cessation. “The matter?” I cried; “I don’t
know what is the matter.”
My father had pushed his spectacles up from his eyes. He appeared to me
as faces appear in a fever, all glorified with light which is not in
them,--his eyes glowing, his white hair shining like silver; but his
looks were severe. “You are not a boy, that I should reprove you; but you
ought to know better,” he said.
Then I explained to him, so far as I was able, what had happened. Had
happened? Nothing had happened. He did not understand me; nor did I, now
that it was over, understand myself; but he saw enough to make him aware
that the disturbance in me was serious, and not caused by any folly of my
own. He was very kind as soon as he had assured himself of this, and
talked, taking pains to bring me back to unexciting subjects. He had a
letter in his hand with a very deep border of black when I came in. I
observed it, without taking any notice or associating it with anything I
knew. He had many correspondents; and although we were excellent friends,
we had never been on those confidential terms which warrant one man in
asking another from whom a special letter has come. We were not so near
to each other as this, though we were father and son. After a while I
went back to my own room, and finished the evening in my usual way,
without any return of the excitement which, now that it was over, looked
to me like some extraordinary dream. What had it meant? Had it meant
anything? I said to myself that it must be purely physical, something
gone temporarily amiss, which had righted itself. It was physical; the
excitement did not affect my mind. I was independent of it all the time,
a spectator of my own agitation, a clear proof that, whatever it was, it
had affected my bodily organization alone.
Next day I returned to the problem which I had not been able to solve. I
found out my petitioner in the back street, and that she was happy in the
recovery of her possessions, which to my eyes indeed did not seem very
worthy either of lamentation or delight. Nor was her house the tidy house
which injured virtue should have when restored to its humble rights. She
was not injured virtue, it was clear. She made me a great many curtseys,
and poured forth a number of blessings. Her “man” came in while I was
there, and hoped in a gruff voice that God would reward me, and that the
old gentleman’d let ’em alone. I did not like the look of the man. It
seemed to me that in the dark lane behind the house of a winter’s night
he would not be a pleasant person to find in one’s way. Nor was this all:
when I went out into the little street which it appeared was all, or
almost all, my father’s property, a number of groups formed in my way,
and at least half-a-dozen applicants sidled up. “I’ve more claims nor
Mary Jordan any day,” said one; “I’ve lived on Squire Canning’s property,
one place and another, this twenty year.” “And what do you say to me?”
said another; “I’ve six children to her two, bless you, sir, and ne’er a
father to do for them.” I believed in my father’s rule before I got out
of the street, and approved his wisdom in keeping himself free from
personal contact with his tenants. Yet when I looked back upon the
swarming thoroughfare, the mean little houses, the women at their doors
all so open-mouthed and eager to contend for my favor, my heart sank
within me at the thought that out of their misery some portion of our
wealth came, I don’t care how small a portion; that I, young and strong,
should be kept idle and in luxury, in some part through the money screwed
out of their necessities, obtained sometimes by the sacrifice of
everything they prized! Of course I know all the ordinary commonplaces of
life as well as any one,--that if you build a house with your hand or
your money, and let it, the rent of it is your just due; and must be
paid. But yet--
“Don’t you think, sir,” I said that evening at dinner, the subject being
reintroduced by my father himself, “that we have some duty towards them
when we draw so much from them?”
“Certainly,” he said; “I take as much trouble about their drains as I do
about my own.”
“That is always something, I suppose.”
“Something! it is a great deal; it is more than they get anywhere else. I
keep them clean, as far as that’s possible. I give them at least the
means of keeping clean, and thus check disease, and prolong life, which
is more, I assure you, than they’ve any right to expect.”
I was not prepared with arguments as I ought to have been. That is all in
the Gospel according to Adam Smith, which my father had been brought up
in, but of which the tenets had begun to be less binding in my day. I
wanted something more, or else something less; but my views were not so
clear, nor my system so logical and well-built, as that upon which my
father rested his conscience, and drew his percentage with a light heart.
Yet I thought there were signs in him of some perturbation. I met him one
morning coming out of the room in which the portrait hung, as if he had
gone to look at it stealthily. He was shaking his head, and saying “No,
no,” to himself, not perceiving me, and I stepped aside when I saw him so
absorbed. For myself, I entered that room but little. I went outside, as
I had so often done when I was a child, and looked through the windows
into the still and now sacred place, which had always impressed me with
a certain awe. Looked at so, the slight figure in its white dress seemed
to be stepping down into the room from some slight visionary altitude,
looking with that which had seemed to me at first anxiety, which I
sometimes represented to myself now as a wistful curiosity, as if she
were looking for the life which might have been hers. Where was the
existence that had belonged to her, the sweet household place, the infant
she had left? She would no more recognize the man who thus came to look
at her as through a veil, with a mystic reverence, than I could recognize
her. I could never be her child to her, any more than she could be a
mother to me.
* * * * *
Thus time passed on for several quiet days. There was nothing to make us
give any special heed to the passage of time, life being very uneventful
and its habits unvaried. My mind was very much preoccupied by my father’s
tenants. He had a great deal of property in the town which was so near
us,--streets of small houses, the best-paying property (I was assured) of
any. I was very anxious to come to some settled conclusion: on the one
hand, not to let myself be carried away by sentiment; on the other, not
to allow my strongly roused feelings to fall into the blank of routine,
as his had done. I was seated one evening in my own sitting-room, busy
with this matter,--busy with calculations as to cost and profit, with an
anxious desire to convince him, either that his profits were greater than
justice allowed, or that they carried with them a more urgent duty than
he had conceived.
It was night, but not late, not more than ten o’clock, the household
still astir. Everything was quiet,--not the solemnity of midnight
silence, in which there is always something of mystery, but the
soft-breathing quiet of the evening, full of the faint habitual sounds of
a human dwelling, a consciousness of life about. And I was very busy with
my figures, interested, feeling no room in my mind for any other thought.
The singular experience which had startled me so much had passed over
very quickly, and there had been no return. I had ceased to think of it;
indeed, I had never thought of it save for the moment, setting it down
after it was over to a physical cause without much difficulty. At this
time I was far too busy to have thoughts to spare for anything, or room
for imagination; and when suddenly in a moment, without any warning, the
first symptom returned, I started with it into determined resistance,
resolute not to be fooled by any mock influence which could resolve
itself into the action of nerves or ganglions. The first symptom; as
before, was that my heart sprang up with a bound, as if a cannon had been
fired at my ear. My whole being responded with a start. The pen fell out
of my fingers, the figures went out of my head as if all faculty had
departed; and yet I was conscious for a time at least of keeping my
self-control. I was like the rider of a frightened horse, rendered almost
wild by something which in the mystery of its voiceless being it has
seen, something on the road which it will not pass, but wildly plunging,
resisting every persuasion, turns from, with ever-increasing passion. The
rider himself after a time becomes infected with this inexplainable
desperation of terror, and I suppose I must have done so; but for a time
I kept the upper hand. I would not allow myself to spring up as I wished,
as my impulse was, but sat there doggedly, clinging to my books, to my
table, fixing myself on I did not mind what, to resist the flood of
sensation, of emotion, which was sweeping through me, carrying me away. I
tried to continue my calculations. I tried to stir myself up with
recollections of the miserable sights I had seen, the poverty, the
helplessness. I tried to work myself into indignation; but all through
these efforts I felt the contagion growing upon me, my mind falling into
sympathy with all those straining faculties of the body, startled,
excited, driven wild by something, I knew not what. It was not fear. I
was like a ship at sea straining and plunging against wind and tide, but
I was not afraid. I am obliged to use these metaphors, otherwise I could
give no explanation of my condition, seized upon against my will, and
torn from all those moorings of reason to which I clung with desperation,
as long as I had the strength.
When I got up from my chair at last, the battle was lost, so far as my
powers of self-control were concerned. I got up, or rather was dragged
up, from my seat, clutching at these material things round me as with a
last effort to hold my own. But that was no longer possible; I was
overcome. I stood for a moment looking round me feebly, feeling myself
begin to babble with stammering lips, which was the alternative of
shrieking, and which I seemed to choose as a lesser evil. What I said
was, “What am I to do?” and after a while, “What do you want me to do?”
although throughout I saw no one, heard no voice, and had in reality not
power enough in my dizzy and confused brain to know what I myself meant.
I stood thus for a moment, looking blankly round me for guidance,
repeating the question, which seemed after a time to become almost
mechanical, “What do you want me to do?” though I neither knew to whom I
addressed it nor why I said it. Presently--whether in answer, whether in
mere yielding of nature, I cannot tell--I became aware of a difference:
not a lessening of the agitation, but a softening, as if my powers of
resistance being exhausted, a gentler force, a more benignant influence,
had room. I felt myself consent to whatever it was. My heart melted in
the midst of the tumult; I seemed to give myself up, and move as if drawn
by some one whose arm was in mine, as if softly swept along, not
forcibly, but with an utter consent of all my faculties to do I knew not
what, for love of I knew not whom. For love,--that was how it
seemed,--not by force, as when I went before. But my steps took the same
course: I went through the dim passages in an exaltation indescribable,
and opened the door of my father’s room.
He was seated there at his table as usual, the light of the lamp falling
on his white hair; he looked up with some surprise at the sound of the
opening door. “Phil,” he said, and with a look of wondering apprehension
on his face, watched my approach. I went straight up to him and put my
hand on his shoulder. “Phil, what is the matter? What do you want with
me? What is it?” he said.
“Father, I can’t tell you. I come not of myself. There must be something
in it, though I don’t know what it is. This is the second time I have
been brought to you here.”
“Are you going--?” He stopped himself. The exclamation had been begun
with an angry intention. He stopped, looking at me with a scared look, as
if perhaps it might be true.
“Do you mean mad? I don’t think so. I have no delusions that I know of.
Father, think--do you know any reason why I am brought here? for some
cause there must be.”
I stood with my hand upon the back of his chair. His table was covered
with papers, among which were several letters with the broad black border
which I had before observed. I noticed this now in my excitement without
any distinct association of thoughts, for that I was not capable of; but
the black border caught my eye. And I was conscious that he too gave a
hurried glance at them, and with one hand swept them away.
“Philip,” he said, pushing back his chair, “you must be ill, my poor boy.
Evidently we have not been treating you rightly; you have been more ill
all through than I supposed. Let me persuade you to go to bed.”
“I am perfectly well,” I said. “Father, don’t let us deceive one another.
I am neither a man to go mad nor to see ghosts. What it is that has got
the command over me I can’t tell; but there is some cause for it. You are
doing something or planning something with which I have a right to
interfere.”
He turned round squarely in his chair, with a spark in his blue eyes.
He was not a man to be meddled with. “I have yet to learn what can
give my son a right to interfere. I am in possession of all my
faculties, I hope.”
“Father,” I cried, “won’t you listen to me? No one can say I have been
undutiful or disrespectful. I am a man, with a right to speak my mind,
and I have done so; but this is different. I am not here by my own will.
Something that is stronger than I has brought me. There is something in
your mind which disturbs--others. I don’t know what I am saying. This is
not what I meant to say; but you know the meaning better than I. Some
one--who can speak to you only by me--speaks to you by me; and I know
that you understand.”
He gazed up at me, growing pale, and his underlip fell. I, for my part,
felt that my message was delivered. My heart sank into a stillness so
sudden that it made me faint. The light swam in my eyes; everything went
round with me. I kept upright only by my hold upon the chair; and in the
sense of utter weakness that followed, I dropped on my knees I think
first, then on the nearest seat that presented itself, and, covering my
face with my hands, had hard ado not to sob, in the sudden removal of
that strange influence,--the relaxation of the strain.
There was silence between us for some time; then he said, but with a
voice slightly broken, “I don’t understand you, Phil. You must have
taken some fancy into your mind which my slower intelligence--Speak out
what you want to say. What do you find fault with? Is it all--all that
woman Jordan?”
He gave a short, forced laugh as he broke off, and shook me
almost roughly by the shoulder, saying, “Speak out! what--what do
you want to say?”
“It seems, sir, that I have said everything.” My voice trembled more than
his, but not in the same way. “I have told you that I did not come by my
own will,--quite otherwise. I resisted as long as I could: now all is
said. It is for you to judge whether it was worth the trouble or not.”
He got up from his seat in a hurried way. “You would have me as--mad as
yourself,” he said, then sat down again as quickly. “Come, Phil: if it
will please you, not to make a breach,--the first breach between us,--you
shall have your way. I consent to your looking into that matter about the
poor tenants. Your mind shall not be upset about that, even though I
don’t enter into all your views.”
“Thank you,” I said; “but, father, that is not what it is.”
“Then it is a piece of folly,” he said angrily. “I suppose you mean--but
this is a matter in which I choose to judge for myself.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, as quietly as I could, “though I don’t
myself know; that proves there is good reason for it. Will you do one
thing for me before I leave you? Come with me into the drawing-room--”
“What end,” he said, with again the tremble in his voice, “is to be
served by that?”
“I don’t very well know; but to look at her, you and I together, will
always do something for us, sir. As for breach, there can be no breach
when we stand there.”
He got up, trembling like an old man, which he was, but which he never
looked like save at moments of emotion like this, and told me to take the
light; then stopped when he had got half-way across the room. “This is a
piece of theatrical sentimentality,” he said. “No, Phil, I will not go. I
will not bring her into any such--Put down the lamp, and, if you will
take my advice, go to bed.”
“At least,” I said, “I will trouble you no more, father, to-night. So
long as you understand, there need be no more to say.”
He gave me a very curt “good-night,” and turned back to his papers,--the
letters with the black edge, either by my imagination or in reality,
always keeping uppermost. I went to my own room for my lamp, and then
alone proceeded to the silent shrine in which the portrait hung. I at
least would look at her to-night. I don’t know whether I asked myself,
in so many words, if it were she who--or if it was any one--I knew
nothing; but my heart was drawn with a softness--born, perhaps, of the
great weakness in which I was left after that visitation--to her, to look
at her, to see, perhaps, if there was any sympathy, any approval in her
face. I set down my lamp on the table where her little work-basket still
was; the light threw a gleam upward upon her,--she seemed more than ever
to be stepping into the room, coming down towards me, coming back to her
life. Ah, no! her life was lost and vanished: all mine stood between her
and the days she knew. She looked at me with eyes that did not change.
The anxiety I had seen at first seemed now a wistful, subdued question;
but that difference was not in her look but in mine.
* * * * *
I need not linger on the intervening time. The doctor who attended us
usually, came in next day “by accident,” and we had a long conversation.
On the following day a very impressive yet genial gentleman from town
lunched with us,--a friend of my father’s, Dr. Something; but the
introduction was hurried, and I did not catch his name. He, too, had a
long talk with me afterwards, my father being called away to speak to
some one on business. Dr.---- drew me out on the subject of the dwellings
of the poor. He said he heard I took great interest in this question,
which had come so much to the front at the present moment. He was
interested in it too, and wanted to know the view I took. I explained at
considerable length that my view did not concern the general subject, on
which I had scarcely thought, so much as the individual mode of
management of my father’s estate. He was a most patient and intelligent
listener, agreeing with me on some points, differing in others; and his
visit was very pleasant. I had no idea until after of its special object;
though a certain puzzled look and slight shake of the head when my father
returned, might have thrown some light upon it. The report of the medical
experts in my case must, however, have been quite satisfactory, for I
heard nothing more of them. It was, I think, a fortnight later when the
next and last of these strange experiences came.
This time it was morning, about noon,--a wet and rather dismal spring
day. The half-spread leaves seemed to tap at the window, with an appeal
to be taken in; the primroses, that showed golden upon the grass at the
roots of the trees, just beyond the smooth-shorn grass of the lawn, were
all drooped and sodden among their sheltering leaves. The very growth
seemed dreary--the sense of spring in the air making the feeling of
winter a grievance, instead of the natural effect which it had conveyed a
few months before. I had been writing letters, and was cheerful enough,
going back among the associates of my old life, with, perhaps, a little
longing for its freedom and independence, but at the same time a not
ungrateful consciousness that for the moment my present tranquillity
might be best.