arose in me while listening to these extraordinary utterances, lest it
should be supposed I was ready to believe all that Margaret narrated or
concluded. I could not help doubting her sanity; but no more could I
help feeling peculiarly moved by her narrative.
Few more words were spoken on either side, but, after receiving renewed
exhortations to carefulness on the way home, I said good-bye to dear old
nurse, considerably comforted, I must confess, that I was not doomed to
be a tutor all my days; for I never questioned the truth of that vision
and its consequent prophecy.
I went out into the midst of the storm, into the alternating throbs of
blackness and radiance; now the possessor of no more room than what my
body filled, and now isolated in world-wide space. And the thunder
seemed to follow me, bellowing after me as I went.
Absorbed in the story I had heard, I took my way, as I thought,
homewards. The whole country was well known to me. I should have said,
before that night, that I could have gone home blindfold. Whether the
lightning bewildered me and made me take a false turn, I cannot tell,
for the hardest thing to understand, in intellectual as well as moral
mistakes, is how we came to go wrong. But after wandering for some time,
plunged in meditation, and with no warning whatever of the presence of
inimical powers, a brilliant lightning-flash showed me that at least I
was not near home. The light was prolonged for a second or two by a
slight electric pulsation; and by that I distinguished a wide space of
blackness on the ground in front of me. Once more wrapt in the folds of
a thick darkness, I dared not move. Suddenly it occurred to me what the
blackness was, and whither I had wandered. It was a huge quarry, of
great depth, long disused, and half filled with water. I knew the place
perfectly. A few more steps would have carried me over the brink. I
stood still, waiting for the next flash, that I might be quite sure of
the way I was about to take before I ventured to move. While I stood, I
fancied I heard a single hollow plunge in the black water far below.
When the lightning came, I turned, and took my path in another
direction. After walking for some time across the heath, I fell. The
fall became a roll, and down a steep declivity I went, over and over,
arriving at the bottom uninjured.
Another flash soon showed me where I was--in the hollow valley, within a
couple of hundred yards from nurse's cottage. I made my way towards it.
There was no light in it, except the feeblest glow from the embers of
her peat fire. "She is in bed," I said to myself, "and I will not
disturb her." Yet something drew me towards the little window. I looked
in. At first I could see nothing. At length, as I kept gazing, I saw
something, indistinct in the darkness, like an outstretched human form.
By this time the storm had lulled. The moon had been up for some time,
but had been quite concealed by tempestuous clouds. Now, however, these
had begun to break up; and, while I stood looking into the cottage, they
scattered away from the face of the moon, and a faint, vapoury gleam of
her light, entering the cottage through a window opposite that at which
I stood, fell directly on the face of my old nurse, as she lay on her
back outstretched upon chairs, pale as death, and with her eyes closed.
The light fell nowhere but on her face. A stranger to her habits would
have thought that she was dead; but she had so much of the appearance
she had had on a former occasion, that I concluded at once she was in
one of her trances. But having often heard that persons in such a
condition ought not to be disturbed, and feeling quite sure she knew
best how to manage herself, I turned, though reluctantly, and left the
lone cottage behind me in the night, with the death-like woman lying
motionless in the midst of it.
I found my way home without any further difficulty, and went to bed,
where I soon fell asleep, thoroughly wearied, more by the mental
excitement I had been experiencing, than by the amount of bodily
exercise I had gone through.
My sleep was tormented with awful dreams; yet, strange to say, I awoke
in the morning refreshed and fearless. The sun was shining through the
chinks in my shutters, which had been closed because of the storm, and
was making streaks and bands of golden brilliancy upon the wall. I had
dressed and completed my preparations long before I heard the steps of
the servant who came to call me.
What a wonderful thing waking is! The time of the ghostly moonshine
passes by, and the great positive sunlight comes. A man who dreams, and
knows that he is dreaming, thinks he knows what waking is; but knows it
so little that he mistakes, one after another, many a vague and dim
change in his dream for an awaking. When the true waking comes at last,
he is filled and overflowed with the power of its reality. So, likewise,
one who, in the darkness, lies waiting for the light about to be struck,
and trying to conceive, with all the force of his imagination, what the
light will be like, is yet, when the reality flames up before him,
seized as by a new and unexpected thing, different from and beyond all
his imagining. He feels as if the darkness were cast to an infinite
distance behind him. So shall it be with us when we wake from this dream
of life into the truer life beyond, and find all our present notions of
being thrown back as into a dim vapoury region of dreamland, where yet
we thought we knew, and whence we looked forward into the present. This
must be what Novalis means when he says: "Our life is not a dream; but
it may become a dream, and perhaps ought to become one."
And so I look back upon the strange history of my past, sometimes asking
myself: "Can it be that all this has really happened to the same _me_,
who am now thinking about it in doubt and wonderment?"
III
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN'S STORY
By THOMAS HARDY
"There was something very strange about William's death--very strange
indeed!" sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van. It was the
seedman's father, who had hitherto kept silence.
"And what might that have been?" asked Mr Lackland.
"William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel
when he came near 'ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind you
without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air,
as if a cellar door opened close by your elbow. Well, one Sunday, at a
time that William was in very good health to all appearance, the bell
that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton,
who told me o't, said he had not known the bell go so heavy in his hand
for years--it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was on the
Sunday, as I say.
"During the week after, it chanced that William's wife was staying up
late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr and
Mrs Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper, and gone to bed as
usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming
downstairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair-foot, where he
always left them, and then came on into the living-room where she was
ironing, passing through it towards the door, this being the only way
from the staircase to the outside of the house. No word was said on
either side, William not being a man given to much speaking, and his
wife being occupied with her work. He went out and closed the door
behind him. As her husband had now and then gone out in this way at
night before when unwell, or unable to sleep for want of a pipe, she
took no particular notice, and continued at her ironing. This she
finished shortly after, and, as he had not come in, she waited awhile
for him, putting away the irons and things, and preparing the table for
his breakfast in the morning. Still he did not return, but supposing him
not far off, and wanting to go to bed herself, tired as she was, she
left the door unbarred and went to the stairs, after writing on the back
of the door with chalk: _Mind and do the door_ (because he was a
forgetful man).
"To her great surprise, and I might say alarm, on reaching the foot of
the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he
had gone to rest. Going up to their chamber, she found him in bed
sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without
her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only
have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with
the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible
that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She
could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable
about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and
went to bed herself.
"He rose and left for his work very early the next morning, before she
was awake, and she waited his return to breakfast with much anxiety for
an explanation, for thinking over the matter by daylight made it seem
only the more startling. When he came in to the meal he said, before she
could put her question, 'What's the meaning of them words chalked on the
door?'
"She told him, and asked him about his going out the night before.
William declared that he had never left the bedroom after entering it,
having in fact undressed, lain down, and fallen asleep directly, never
once waking till the clock struck five, and he rose up to go to his
labour.
"Betty Privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go out as she
was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not
return. She felt too disturbed to argue with him, and let the subject
drop as though she must have been mistaken. When she was walking down
Longpuddle Street later in the day she met Jim Weedle's daughter Nancy,
and said: 'Well Nancy, you do look sleepy to-day!'
"'Yes, Mrs Privett,' said Nancy. 'Now, don't tell anybody, but I don't
mind letting you know what the reason o't is. Last night, being Old
Midsummer Eve, some of us church porch, and didn't get home till near
one.'
"'Did ye?' says Mrs Privett. 'Old Midsummer yesterday was it? Faith, I
didn't think whe'r 'twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I'd too much work to
do.'
"'Yes. And we were frightened enough, I can tell 'ee by what we saw.'
"'What did ye see?'
"(You may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young,
that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes
of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death's door within
the year can be seen entering the church. Those who get over their
illness come out again after awhile; those that are doomed to die do not
return.)
"'What did you see?' asked William's wife.
"'Well,' says Nancy, backwardly--'we needn't tell what we saw or who we
saw.'
"'You saw my husband,' said Betty Privett in a quiet way.
"'Well, since you put it so,' says Nancy, hanging fire, 'we--thought we
did see him; but it was darkish and we was frightened, and of course it
might not have been he.'
"'Nancy, you needn't mind letting it out, though 'tis kept back in
kindness. And he didn't come out of the church again: I know it as well
as you.'
"Nancy did not answer yes or no to that, and no more was said. But three
days after, William Privett was mowing with John Chiles in Mr Hardcome's
meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to their bit o' nunch
under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of 'em fell asleep
as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and, as he looked
towards his fellow-mower, he saw one of those great white miller's-souls
as we call 'em--that is to say, a miller moth--come from William's open
mouth while he slept and fly straight away. John thought it odd enough,
as William had worked in a mill for several years when he was a boy. He
then looked at the sun, and found by the place o't that they had slept a
long while, and, as William did not wake, John called to him and said it
was high time to begin work again. He took no notice, and then John went
up and shook him and found he was dead.
"Now on that very day old Philip Hookhorn was down at Longpuddle Spring,
dipping up a pitcher of water; and, as he turned away, who should he see
coming down to the spring on the other side but William, looking very
pale and old? This surprised Philip Hookhorn very much, for years before
that time William's little son--his only child--had been drowned in that
spring while at play there, and this had so preyed upon William's mind
that he'd never been seen near the spring afterwards, and had been known
to go half a mile out of his way to avoid the place. On enquiry, it was
found that William in body could not have stood by the spring, being in
the mead two miles off; and it also came out that at the time at which
he was seen at the spring was the very time when he died."
"A rather melancholy story," observed the emigrant, after a minute's
silence.
"Yes, yes. Well, we must take ups and downs together," said the
seedman's father.
IV
A STORY OF RAVENNA
By BOCCACCIO
Ravenna being a very ancient city in Romagna, there dwelt sometime a
great number of worthy gentlemen, among whom I am to speak of one more
especially, named Anastasio, descended from the family of Onesti, who by
the death of his father, and an uncle of his, was left extraordinarily
abounding in riches and growing to years fitting for marriage. As young
gallants are easily apt enough to do, he became enamoured of a very
beautiful gentlewoman, who was daughter of Messer Paolo Traversario, one
of the most ancient and noble families in all the country. Nor made he
any doubt, by his means and industrious endeavour, to derive affection
from her again, for he carried himself like a braveminded gentleman,
liberal in his expenses, honest and affable in all his actions, which
commonly are the true notes of a good nature, and highly to be commended
in any man. But, howsoever, fortune became his enemy; these laudable
parts of manhood did not any way friend him, but rather appeared hurtful
to himself, so cruel, unkind, and almost merely savage did she show
herself to him, perhaps in pride of her singular beauty or presuming on
her nobility by birth, both which are rather blemishes than ornaments in
a woman when they be especially abused. The harsh and uncivil usage in
her grew very distasteful to Anastasio, and so insufferable that after a
long time of fruitless service, requited still with nothing but coy
disdain, desperate resolutions entered into his brain, and often he was
minded to kill himself. But better thoughts supplanting those furious
passions, he abstained from such a violent act, and governed by mere
manly consideration, determined that as she hated him, he would requite
her with the like, if he could, wherein he became altogether deceived,
because as his hopes grew to a daily decaying, yet his love enlarged
itself more and more.
Thus Anastasio persevering still in his bootless affection, and his
expenses not limited within any compass, it appeared in the judgment of
his kindred and friends that he was fallen into a mighty consumption,
both of his body and means. In which respects many times they advised
him to leave the city of Ravenna, and live in some other place for such
a while as might set a more moderate stint upon his spendings, and
bridle the indiscreet course of his love, the only fuel which fed his
furious fire.
Anastasio held out thus a long time, without lending an ear to such
friendly counsel; but in the end he was so closely followed by them, as
being no longer able to deny them, he promised to accomplish their
request. Whereupon making such extraordinary preparation as if he were
to set out thence for France or Spain, or else into some further
country, he mounted on horseback, and accompanied with some few of his
familiar friends, departed from Ravenna, and rode to a country
dwelling-house of his own, about three or four miles distant from the
city, at a place called Chiassi; and there upon a very good green
erecting divers tents and pavilions, such as great persons make use of
in the time of progress, he said to his friends which came with him
thither that there he determined to make his abiding, they all returning
back unto Ravenna, and coming to visit him again so often as they
pleased.
Now it came to pass that about the beginning of May, it being then a
very mild and serene season, and he leading there a much more
magnificent life than ever he had done before, inviting divers to dine
with him this day and as many to-morrow, and not to leave him till after
supper, upon a sudden falling into remembrance of his cruel mistress, he
commanded all his servants to forbear his company, and suffer him to
walk alone by himself a while, because he had occasion of private
meditations, wherein he would not by any means be troubled. It was then
about the ninth hour of the day, and he walking on solitary all alone,
having gone some half a mile distance from the tents, entered into a
grove of pine-trees, never minding dinner-time or anything else, but
only the unkind requital of his love.
Suddenly he heard the voice of a woman seeming to make most mournful
complaints, which breaking off his silent considerations, made him to
lift up his head to know the reason of this noise. When he saw himself
so far entered into the grove before he could imagine where he was, he
looked amazedly round about him, and out of a little thicket of bushes
and briars round engirt with spreading trees, he espied a young damsel
come running towards him, naked from the middle upward, her hair lying
on her shoulders, and her fair skin rent and torn with the briars and
brambles, so that the blood ran trickling down mainly, she weeping,
wringing her hands, and crying out for mercy so loud as she could. Two
fierce bloodhounds also followed swiftly after, and where their teeth
took hold did most cruelly bite her. Last of all, mounted on a lusty
black courser, came galloping a knight, with a very stern and angry
countenance, holding a drawn short sword in his hand, giving her very
dreadful speeches, and threatening every minute to kill her.
This strange and uncouth sight bred in him no mean admiration, as also
kind compassion to the unfortunate woman, out of which compassion sprung
an earnest desire to deliver her, if he could, from a death so full of
anguish and horror; but seeing himself to be without arms, he ran and
plucked up the plant of a tree, which handling as if it had been a
staff, he opposed himself against the dogs and the knight, who seeing
him coming, cried out in this manner to him: "Anastasio, put not thyself
in any opposition, but refer to my hounds and me to punish this wicked
woman as she hath justly deserved." And in speaking these words, the
hounds took fast hold on her body, so staying her until the knight was
come nearer to her, and alighted from his horse, when Anastasio, after
some other angry speeches, spake thus to him: "I cannot tell what or who
thou art, albeit thou takest such knowledge of me, yet I must say it is
mere cowardice in a knight, being armed as thou art, to offer to kill a
naked woman, and make thy dogs thus to seize on her, as if she were a
savage beast; therefore, believe me, I will defend her so far as I am
able."
"Anastasio," answered the knight, "I am of the same city as thou art,
and do well remember that thou wast a little lad when I, who was then
named Guido Anastasio, and thine uncle, became as entirely in love with
this woman as now thou art with Paolo Traversario's daughter. But
through her coy disdain and cruelty, such was my heavy fate that
desperately I slew myself with this short sword which thou beholdest in
mine hand; for which rash sinful deed I was and am condemned to eternal
punishment. This wicked woman, rejoicing immeasurably in mine unhappy
death, remained no long time alive after me, and for her merciless sin
of cruelty, and taking pleasure in my oppressing torments, dying
unrepentant, and in pride of her scorn, she had the like sentence of
condemnation pronounced on her, and was sent to the same place where I
was condemned.
"There the three impartial judges imposed this further infliction on us
both--namely, that she should fly in this manner before me, and I, who
loved her so dearly while I lived, must pursue her as my deadly enemy,
not like a woman that had a taste of love in her. And so often as I can
overtake her, I am to kill her with this sword, the same weapon
wherewith I slew myself. Then am I enjoined therewith to open her
accursed body, and tear out her heart, with her other inwards, as now
thou seest me do, which I give to my hounds to feed on. Afterward--such
is the appointment of the supreme powers--that she re-assumeth life
again, even as if she had not been dead at all, and falling to the same
kind of flight, I with my hounds am still to follow her, without any
respite or intermission. Every Friday, and just at this hour, our course
is this way, where she suffereth the just punishment inflicted on her.
Nor do we rest any of the other days, but are appointed unto other
places, where she cruelly executed her malice against me, who am now, of
her dear affectionate friend, ordained to be her endless enemy, and to
pursue her in this manner for so many years as she exercised months of
cruelty towards me. Hinder me not, then, in being the executioner of
Divine justice, for all thy interposition is but in vain in seeking to
cross the appointment of supreme powers."
Anastasio having heard all this discourse, his hair stood upright, like
porcupines' quills, and his soul was so shaken with the terror, that he
stepped back to suffer the knight to do what he was enjoined, looking
yet with mild commiseration on the poor woman, who kneeling most humbly
before the knight, and sternly seized on by the two bloodhounds, he
opened her breast with his weapon, drawing forth her heart and bowels,
which instantly he threw to the dogs, and they devoured them very
greedily. Soon after the damsel, as if none of this punishment had been
inflicted on her, started up suddenly, running amain towards the
seashore, and the hounds swiftly following her, as the knight did the
like, after he had taken his sword and was mounted on horseback, so that
Anastasio had soon lost all sight of them, and could not guess what
could become of them.
After he had heard and observed all these things, he stood a while as
confounded with fear and pity, like a simple silly man, hoodwinked with
his own passions, not knowing the subtle enemy's cunning illusions in
offering false suggestions to the sight, to work his own ends thereby,
and increase the number of his deceived servants. Forthwith he persuaded
himself that he might make good use of this woman's tormenting, so
justly imposed on the knight to prosecute, if thus it should continue
still every Friday. Wherefore setting a good note or mark upon the
place, he returned back to his own people, and at such times as he
thought convenient, sent for divers of his kindred and friends from
Ravenna, who being present with him, thus he spake to them:
"Dear kinsmen and friends, ye have long while importuned me to
discontinue my over-doating love to her whom you all think, and I find
to be my mortal enemy; as also to give over my lavish expenses, wherein
I confess myself too prodigal; both which requests of yours I will
condescend to, provided that you will perform one gracious favour for
me--namely, that on Friday next, Messer Paolo Traversario, his wife,
daughter, with all other women linked in lineage to them, and such
beside only as you shall please to appoint, will vouchsafe to accept a
dinner here with me. As for the reason thereto moving me, you shall then
more at large be acquainted withal." This appeared no difficult matter
for them to accomplish. Wherefore being returned to Ravenna, and as they
found the time answerable to their purpose, they invited such as
Anastasio had appointed them. And although they found it somewhat a hard
matter to gain her company whom he had so dearly affected, yet
notwithstanding, the other women won her along with them.