ancient stone statues, noseless and disfigured, crowned and sceptered
effigies of forgotten lords and ladies of Flanders. High up on the wall
two slitted Gothic windows, through which the violet light of day is
streaming. I hear the gentle coo of pigeons. To the right a low door,
some vanishing steps of stone, and a hanging hand-rope. Before I have
taken a dozen steps upward I am lost in the darkness; the steps are worn
hollow and sloping, the rope is slippery--seems to have been waxed, so
smooth has it become by handling. Four hundred steps and over; I have
lost track of the number, and stumble giddily upward round and round the
slender stone shaft. I am conscious of low openings from time to
time--openings to what? I do not know. A damp smell exhales from them,
and the air is cold upon my face as I pass them. At last a dim light
above. With the next turn a blinding glare of light, a moment's
blankness, then a vast panorama gradually dawns upon me. Through the
frame of stonework is a vast reach of grayish green bounded by the
horizon, an immense shield embossed with silvery lines of waterways, and
studded with clustering red-tiled roofs. A rim of pale yellow
appears--the sand-dunes that line the coast--and dimly beyond a grayish
film, evanescent, flashing--the North Sea.
Something flies through the slit from which I am gazing, and following
its flight upward, I see a long beam crossing the gallery, whereon are
perched an array of jackdaws gazing down upon me in wonder.
I am conscious of a rhythmic movement about me that stirs the air, a
mysterious, beating, throbbing sound, the machinery of the clock, which
some one has described as a "heart of iron beating in a breast of
stone."
I lean idly in the narrow slit, gazing at the softened landscape, the
exquisite harmony of the greens, grays, and browns, the lazily turning
arms of far-off mills, reminders of Cuyp, Van der Velde, Teniers,
shadowy, mysterious recollections. I am conscious of uttering aloud some
commonplaces of delight. A slight and sudden movement behind me, a
smothered cough. A little old man in a black velvet coat stands looking
up at me, twisting and untwisting his hands. There are ruffles at his
throat and wrists, and an amused smile spreads over his face, which is
cleanly shaven, of the color of wax, with a tiny network of red lines
over the cheek-bones, as if the blood had been forced there by some
excess of passion and had remained. He has heard my sentimental
ejaculation. I am conscious of the absurdity of the situation, and move
aside for him to pass. He makes a courteous gesture with one ruffled
hand.
There comes a prodigious rattling and grinding noise from above--then a
jangle of bells, some half-dozen notes in all. At the first stroke the
old man closes his eyes, throws back his head, and follows the rhythm
with his long white hands, as though playing a piano. The sound dies
away; the place becomes painfully silent; still the regular motion of
the old man's hands continues. A creepy, shivery feeling runs up and
down my spine; a fear of which I am ashamed seizes upon me.
"Fine pells, sare," says the little old man, suddenly dropping his
hands, and fixing his eyes upon me. "You sall not hear such pells in
your countree. But stay not here; come wis me, and I will show you the
clavecin. You sall not see the clavecin yet? No?"
I had not, of course, and thanked him.
"You sall see Melchior, Melchior t'e Groote, t'e magnif'."
As he spoke we entered a room quite filled with curious machinery, a
medley of levers, wires, and rope above; below, two large cylinders
studded with shining brass points.
He sprang among the wires with a spidery sort of agility, caught one,
pulled and hung upon it with, all his weight. There came a r-r-r-r-r-r
of fans and wheels, followed by a shower of dust; slowly one great
cylinder began to revolve; wires and ropes reaching into the gloom above
began to twitch convulsively; faintly came the jangle of far-off bells.
Then came a pause, then a deafening _boom_, that well nigh stunned me.
As the waves of sound came and went, the little old man twisted and
untwisted his hands in delight, and ejaculated, "Melchior you haf
heeard, Melchior t'e Groote--t'e bourdon."
I wanted to examine the machinery, but he impatiently seized my arm and
almost dragged me away saying, "I will skow you--I will skow you. Come
wis me."
From a pocket he produced a long brass key and unlocked a door covered
with red leather, disclosing an up-leading flight of steps to which he
pushed me. It gave upon an octagon-shaped room with a curious floor of
sheet-lead. Around the wall ran a seat under the diamond-paned Gothic
windows. From their shape I knew them to be the highest in the tower. I
had seen them from the square below many times, with the framework above
upon which hung row upon row of bells.
In the middle of the room was a rude sort of keyboard, with pedals
below, like those of a large organ. Fronting this construction sat a
long, high-backed bench. On the rack over the keyboard rested some
sheets of music, which, upon examination, I found to be of parchment and
written by hand. The notes were curious in shape, consisting of squares
of black and diamonds of red upon the lines. Across the top of the page
was written, in a straggling hand, "Van den Gheyn Nikolaas." I turned to
the little old man with the ruffles. "Van den Gheyn!" I said in
surprise, pointing to the parchment. "Why, that is the name of the most
celebrated of _carillonneurs_, Van den Gheyn of Louvain." He untwisted
his hands and bowed. "Eet ees ma name, mynheer--I am the
_carillonneur_."
I fancied that my face showed all too plainly the incredulity I felt,
for his darkened, and he muttered, "You not belief, Engelsch? Ah, I show
you; then you belief, parehap," and with astounding agility seated
himself upon the bench before the clavecin, turned up the ruffles at his
wrists, and literally threw himself upon the keys. A sound of thunder
accompanied by a vivid flash of lightning filled the air, even as the
first notes of the bells reached my ears. Involuntarily I glanced out of
the diamond-leaded window--dark clouds were all about us, the housetops
and surrounding country were no longer to be seen. A blinding flash of
lightning seemed to fill the room; the arms and legs of the little old
man sought the keys and pedals with inconceivable rapidity; the music
crashed about us with a deafening din, to the accompaniment of the
thunder, which seemed to sound in unison with the boom of the bourdon.
It was grandly terrible. The face of the little old man was turned upon
me, but his eyes were closed. He seemed to find the pedals intuitively,
and at every peal of thunder, which shook the tower to its foundations,
he would open his mouth, a toothless cavern, and shout aloud. I could
not hear the sounds for the crashing of the bells. Finally, with a last
deafening crash of iron rods and thunderbolts, the noise of the bells
gradually died away. Instinctively I had glanced above when the crash
came, half expecting to see the roof torn off.
"I think we had better go down," I said. "This tower has been struck by
lightning several times, and I imagine that discretion--"
I don't know what more I said, for my eyes rested upon the empty bench,
and the bare rack where the music had been. The clavecin was one mass of
twisted iron rods, tangled wires, and decayed, worm-eaten woodwork; the
little old man had disappeared. I rushed to the red leather-covered
door; it was fast. I shook it in a veritable terror; it would not yield.
With a bound I reached the ruined clavecin, seized one of the pedals,
and tore it away from the machine. The end was armed with an iron point.
This I inserted between the lock and the door. I twisted the lock from
the worm-eaten wood with one turn of the wrist, the door opened, and I
almost fell down the steep steps. The second door at the bottom was
also closed. I threw my weight against it once, twice; it gave, and I
half slipped, half ran down the winding steps in the darkness.
Out at last into the fresh air of the lower passage! At the noise I made
in closing the ponderous door came forth the old _custode_.
In my excitement I seized her by the arm, saying, "Who was the little
old man in the black velvet coat with the ruffles? Where is he?"
She looked at me in a stupid manner. "Who is he," I repeated--"the
little old man who played the clavecin?"
"Little old man, sir? I don't know," said the crone. "There has been no
one in the tower to-day but yourself."
LIGEIA
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
will prevading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
only through the weakness of his feeble will."--JOSEPH
GLANVILL.
I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I
first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since
elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I
cannot _now_ bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the
character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid
caste of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low
musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and
stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I
believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,
decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely heard her
speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of
her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon
me that I have _never known_ the paternal name of her who was my friend
and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally
the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?
Or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no
inquiries upon this point? Or was it rather a caprice of my own--a
wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have
utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance--if ever she,
the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt--presided, as
they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is
the _person_ of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and,
in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible
lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a
shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study,
save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble
hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It
was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and spirit-lifting vision
more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering
souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that
regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the
classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says
Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and _genera_
of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet,
although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic
regularity--although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed
exquisite and felt that there was much of strangeness pervading it--yet
I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own
perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and
pale forehead; it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied
to a majesty so divine--the skin rivalling the purest ivory; the
commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above
the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and
naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric
epithet, "hyacinthine"! I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose,
and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface,
the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same
harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the
sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly--the
magnificent turn of the short upper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of
the under, the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke, the
teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of
the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most
exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the
chin, and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness
and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality of the Greek--the
contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the
son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been,
too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord
Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the
gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at
intervals--in moments of intense excitement--that this peculiarity
became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was
her beauty--in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps--the beauty of
beings either above or apart from the earth--the beauty of the fabulous
Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
and far over them hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly
irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however,
which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation,
or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be
referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning, behind whose vast
latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the
spiritual! The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have
I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
struggled to fathom it! What was it--that something more profound than
the well of Democritus--which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
What _was_ it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes,
those large, those shining, those divine orbs--they became to me twin
stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the
science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact--never, I
believe, noticed in the schools--that in our endeavors to recall to
memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very
verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And
thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I
felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression--felt it
approaching, yet not quite be mine--and so at length entirely depart!
And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found in the commonest
objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I
mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived from many
existences in the material world a sentiment such as I felt always
around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more
could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a
rapidly-growing vine, in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a
chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean, in
the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged
people. And there are one or two stars in heaven, (one especially, a
star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the
large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made
aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from
stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among
innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of
Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness--who shall
say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will
therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by
nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace,
indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English
moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in
thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result or at least an
index of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,
failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of
all the women whom I have ever known, she--the outwardly calm, the
ever-placid Ligeia--was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous
vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate,
save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so
delighted and appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation,
distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, and by the fierce
energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of
utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia; it was immense, such as I have
never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply
proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the
modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon
any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the
boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How
singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has
forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her
knowledge was such as I have never known in woman--but where breathes
the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of
moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now
clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were
astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to
resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the
chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily
occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a
triumph, with how vivid a delight, with how much of all that is ethereal
in hope, did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little
sought--but less known--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding
before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path I might at
length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
be forbidden!
How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some
years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting
the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew
duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild
eyes blazed with a too, too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became
of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the
lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most
gentle emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in
spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife
were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had
been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to
her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are
impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with
which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable
spectacle. I would have soothed, I would have reasoned, but, in the
intensity of her wild desire for life--for life--_but_ for life--solace
and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last
instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was
shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more
gentle--grew more low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild
meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened,
entranced, to a melody more than mortal, to assumptions and aspirations
which mortality had never before known.
That she loved me I should not have doubted, and I might have been
easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no
ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the
strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she
pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate
devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by
such confessions? How had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of
my beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon this subject I
cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than
womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily
bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing, with so
wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly
away. It is this wild longing--it is this eager vehemence of desire for
life--but for life--that I have no power to portray, no utterance
capable of expressing.
At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me
peremptorily to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by
herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theater, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama!--oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot;
And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror, the soul of the plot!
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out--out are the lights--out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm--
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
"O God!" half-shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her
arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines,
"O God! O Divine Father! Shall these things be undeviatingly so? Shall
this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in
Thee? Who--who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man
doth not yield him to the angels, _nor unto death utterly_, save only
through the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to
fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her
last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
bent to them my ear, and distinguished again, the concluding words of
the passage in Glanvill: "_Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor
unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will._"