good fire and a shaded reading-lamp. It was furnished only with a
dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these the
doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into the
interior of the house, he left me to myself. Presently I heard the jar
of iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed by the
same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now so near
at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake the house with
every recurrence of the stroke. I had scarce time to master my alarm
when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother
appeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you the peace
and ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have passed over her head
during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone,
her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman, but the angel of
ecstatic tenderness. I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank a
little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yet
unearthly. To the doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand as
to a friend and helper; and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be
offended.
"Lucy," said the doctor, "all is prepared. Will you go alone, or shall
your daughter follow us?"
"Let Asenath come," she answered, "dear Asenath! At this hour when I am
purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and my
affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her
presence. Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she might
misjudge your kindness."
"Mother," I cried wildly, "mother, what is this?"
But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only "Hush!" as though I
were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade
me be silent and trouble her no more. "You have made a choice," he
continued, addressing my mother, "that has often strangely tempted me.
The two extremes: all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon
the clock--these have been my incongruous desires. But to accept the
middle term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to
burn out--never for an hour, never since I was born, has satisfied the
appetite of my ambition." He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of
admiration and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound
sigh, he led the way into the inner room.
It was very long. From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which by
the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping
sounds with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric. At
the extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been
a lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the
room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors. The
walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with
the implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered
in the light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door a heavy
driving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys,
with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In one
corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously
wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive
swiftness.
"Is this it?" she asked.
The doctor bowed in silence.
"Asenath," said my mother, "in this sad end of my life I have found one
helper. Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson. Be not, O my daughter, be
not ungrateful to that friend!"
She sat upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated
the arms.
"Am I right?" she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancy
of face that I trembled for her reason. Once more the doctor bowed, but
this time leaning hard against the wall. He must have touched a spring.
The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar
appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like one
resigned to weariness. I was at her knees that moment; but her hands
fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the same
touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.
I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my
tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes. They rested upon mine with such a
depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of
my sorrow I was startled into attention.
"Enough," he said, "to lamentation. Your mother went to death as to a
bridal, dying where her husband died. It is time, Asenath, to think of
the survivors. Follow me to the next room."
I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he
gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began
to address me:
"You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate
watch of Brigham Young. It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances,
to become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular
fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes
of the President himself. Such a fate for a girl like you were worse
than death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily deeper
in the mire of this pit of woman's degradation. But is escape
conceivable? Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with what
security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted
a sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom. Where your father
failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless
in the toils?"
I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
understood.
"I see," I cried; "you judge me rightly. I must follow where my parents
led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!"
"No," replied the doctor, "not death for you. The flawed vessel we may
break, but not the perfect. No, your mother cherished a different hope,
and so do I. I see," he cried, "the girl develop to the completed woman,
the plan reach fulfilment, the promise--ay, outdone! I could not bear to
arrest so lively, so comely a process. It was your mother's thought," he
added, with a change of tone, "that I should marry you myself." I fear I
must have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made
haste to quiet me. "Reassure yourself, Asenath," he resumed. "Old as I
am, I have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth. I have passed
my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils I have not
forgotten the tune of a young pulse. Age asks with timidity to be spared
intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard, demands joy like a
right. These things I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly
felt, none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed them to
their day. See, then: you stand without support; the only friend left to
you, this old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy. Answer me
but one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the world
calls love? Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you
fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?"
I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him,
lay with my dead parents.
"It is enough," he said. "It has been my fate to be called on often, too
often, for those services of which we spoke to-night; none in Utah could
carry them so well to a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my hands
a certain share of influence which I now lay at your service, partly for
the sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the interest I
bear you in your own right. I shall send you to England, to the great
city of London, there to await the bridegroom I have selected. He shall
be a son of mine, a young man suitable in age, and not grossly deficient
in that quality of beauty that your years demand. Since your heart is
free, you may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for
much expense and still more danger: to await the arrival of that
bridegroom with the delicacy of a wife."
I sat awhile stunned. The doctor's marriages, I remembered to have
heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress.
But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of
escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me some
dawn of hope; and, in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.
He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked
for. "You shall see," he cried; "you shall judge for yourself." And
hurrying to the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat
coarsely done in oils. It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty
years before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor. "Do
you like it?" he asked. "That is myself when I was young. My--my boy
will be like that, like, but nobler; with such health as angels might
condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind. That
should be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand. A man
like that--one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the
force, the dignity of age--one to fill all the parts and faculties, one
to be man's epitome--say, will that not satisfy the needs of an
ambitious girl? Say, is not that enough?" And as he held the picture
close before my eyes, his hand shook.
I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced with
this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the most
insolent revolt surged through my arteries. I held him in horror, him,
his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice but death or a
Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.
"It is well," he replied, "and I had rightly counted on your spirit.
Eat, then, for you have far to go." So saying, he set meat before me;
and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned with
an armful of coarse raiment. "There," said he, "is your disguise. I
leave you to your toilet."
The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen;
and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements.
But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings was the problem of
their origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged. I had
scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a back
window, helped me out into the narrow space between the house and the
overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron foot-holds mortised
in the rock. "Mount," he said, "swiftly. When you are at the summit,
walk, so far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke. The smoke will
bring you, sooner or later, to a canon; follow that down, and you will
find a man with two horses. Him you will implicitly obey. And remember,
silence! That machinery which I now put in motion for your service may
by one word be turned against you. Go; Heaven prosper you!"
The ascent was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me
on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to
the moon and the surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage or
concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made
haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimes
it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial
curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the
earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like some
mountain fog. But, one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened
furnace protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to
the canon.
There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of
saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence
by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A little
before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the
bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next night,
before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings. About
noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screen
of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his pack, bade me
change my dress once more. The bundle contained clothing of my own,
taken from our house, with such necessaries as a comb and soap. I made
my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing and
smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image,
the mountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness;
and where I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly
increased a storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds. Shall I
own to you that I fell upon my face and shrieked? And yet this was but
the overland train winding among the near mountains: the very means of
my salvation: the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!
When I was dressed the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,
both money and papers; and, telling me that I was already over the
borders in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I
reached the railway station, half a mile below. "Here," he added, "is
your ticket as far as Council Bluffs. The East express will pass in a
few hours." With that, he took both horses and, without further words or
any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.
Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train as
it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of the
mountains. The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbing
terror of pursuit--above all the astounding magic of my new conveyance,
kept me from any logical or melancholy thought. I had gone to the
doctor's house two nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse
than death; what had passed, terrible although it was, looked almost
bright compared to my anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a
full night in the flying palace car that I awoke to the sense of my
irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about the future. In this
mood I examined the contents of the bag. It was well supplied with gold;
it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far as
Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with a
fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, and
bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son. All then had been
arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and, what was
tenfold worse, upon my mother's voluntary death. My horror of my only
friend, my aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against
the whole current and conditions of my life, were now complete. I was
sitting stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a
very pleasant lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the
relief; and I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's
letter: how I was a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an
uncle, what money I had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had
exhausted my instructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me
with questions, began to embroider on my own account. This soon carried
one of my inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a
shadow on the lady's face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly
addressed me:
"Miss Gould, I believe?" said he; and then, excusing himself to the lady
by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of the
Pullman car. "Miss Gould," he said in my ear, "is it possible that you
suppose yourself in safety? Let me completely undeceive you. One more
such indiscretion and you return to Utah. And, in the meanwhile, if this
woman should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
'Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me
to choose my own associates.'"
Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myself
drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult; and
thenceforward, through all that day I sat in silence, gazing on the bare
plains and swallowing my tears. Let that suffice: it was the pattern of
my journey. Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the ocean
steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller but
I was certain to be interrupted. In every place, on every side, the most
unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors to
forward me upon my journey or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.
Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still
following my movements; and when at length a cab had set me down before
that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this morning, I had
already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.
The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was
expecting my arrival. A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon
the garden; there were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and
there (I had almost said with contentment, and certainly with
resignation) I saw month follow month over my head. At times my landlady
took me for a walk or an excursion, but she would never suffer me to
leave the house alone; and I, seeing that she also lived under the
shadow of that widespread Mormon terror, felt too much pity to resist.
To the child born on Mormon soil, as to the man who accepts the
engagements of a secret order, no escape is possible; so I had clearly
read, and I was thankful even for this respite. Meanwhile, I tried
honestly to prepare my mind for my approaching nuptials. The day drew
near when my bridegroom was to visit me, and gratitude and fear alike
obliged me to consent. A son of Dr. Grierson's be he what he pleased,
must still be young, and it was even probable he should be handsome; on
more than that I felt I dared not reckon; and in moulding my mind
towards consent I dwelt the more carefully on these physical attractions
which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes from moral or
intellectual considerations. We have a great power upon our spirits; and
as time passed I worked myself into a frame of acquiescence, nay, and I
began to grow impatient for the hour. At night sleep forsook me; I sat
all day by the fire, absorbed in dreams, conjuring up the features of my
husband, and anticipating in fancy the touch of his hand and the sound
of his voice. In the dead level and solitude of my existence, this was
the one eastern window and the one door of hope. At last I had so
cultivated and prepared my will, that I began to be besieged with fears
upon the other side. How if it was I that did not please? How if this
unseen lover should turn from me with disaffection? And now I spent
hours before the glass, studying and judging my attractions, and was
never weary of changing my dress or ordering my hair.
When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort
of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must
now stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the
most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the
swelling rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence,
starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow. Love is not to be
prepared, I know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when
the cab at last rattled to the door, and I heard my visitor mount the
stairs, such was the tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself
might have been proud to own their parentage. The door opened, and it
was Dr. Grierson that appeared. I believe I must have screamed aloud,
and I know, at least, that I fell fainting to the floor.
When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. "I
have startled you," he said. "A difficulty unforeseen--the impossibility
of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity--has forced me to resort
to London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more
without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to
me are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth is
but a state, as passing as that syncope from which you are but just
awakened, and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I
find, Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant. Since my first
years I have devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task;
and the time of my success is at hand. In these new countries, where I
was so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what
was a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a
son of mine I did so in a figure. That son--that husband, Asenath, is
myself--not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy of
youth. You think me mad? It is the customary attitude of ignorance. I
will not argue; I will leave facts to speak. When you behold me
purified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image--when
you recognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect expression of
the powers of mankind--I shall be able to laugh with a better grace at
your passing and natural incredulity. To what can you aspire--fame,
riches, power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age--that I
shall not be able to afford you in perfection? Do not deceive yourself.
I already excel you in every human gift but one: when that gift also has
been restored to me you will recognise your master."
Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to
myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he
withdrew. I had not the courage to move; the night fell, and found me
still where he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands,
my soul drowned in the darkest apprehensions. Late in the evening he
returned, carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade
me rise and sup. "Is it possible," he added, "that I have been deceived
in your courage? A cowardly girl is no fit mate for me."
I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought
him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice
was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his
hopeless and derisible inferior.
"Why, certainly," he replied. "I know you better than yourself; and I am
well enough acquainted with human nature to understand this scene. It is
addressed to me," he added with a smile, "in my character of the still
untransformed. But do not alarm yourself about the future. Let me but
attain my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face of
the earth becomes my willing slave."
Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;
helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable host; and
it was not till a late hour that, bidding me courteously good-night, he
once more left me alone to my misery.
In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I
scarce knew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil. If
his hopes reposed on any base of fact, if, indeed, by some abhorrent
miracle, he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that
most unnatural, that most ungodly union. If, on the other hand, these
dreams were merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute,
my pity would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt against
the marriage. So passed the night, in alternations of rebellion and
despair, of hate and pity; and with the next morning I was only to
comprehend more fully my enslaved position. For though he appeared with
a very tranquil countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of
grief upon my brow than an answering darkness gathered on his own.
"Asenath," he said, "you owe me much already; with one finger I still
hold you suspended over death; my life is full of labour and anxiety;
and I choose," said he, with a remarkable accent of command, "that you
shall greet me with a pleasant face." He never needed to repeat the
recommendation: from that day forward I was always ready to receive him
with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a good deal of his
company, and almost more than I could bear of his confidence. He had set
up a laboratory in the back part of the house, where he toiled day and
night at his elixir, and he would come thence to visit me in my parlour:
now with passing humours of discouragement; now, and far more often,
radiant with hope. It was impossible to see so much of him, and not to
recognise that the sands of his life were running low; and yet all the
time he would be laying out vast fields of future, and planning, with
all the confidence of youth, the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and
ambition. How I replied I know not; but I found a voice and words to
answer, even while I wept and raged to hear him.