_BURIED ALIVE._
[Illustration: Initial]
When I recovered my senses I examined as well as I could the strange place
into which I had been plunged. It must have been broad daylight out of
doors, for there was a kind of twilight about me that revealed plainly the
contour of my dungeon. When evening came on I was shrouded in impenetrable
darkness. Such was the only difference between my day and my night.
The chamber was about ten feet square, and its walls rose to a
considerable height. It was evidently an old secret dungeon partly
underground, damp and mouldy, the scene perhaps of many sufferings and
many crimes. There was an opening into this vault, so that I was not
literally buried alive. The workmen who had sealed up the space by which I
had entered, had left a little square hole like a window about ten feet
above the flooring. I could see a brick wall beyond it, so that there was
evidently a narrow passage by which some rays of light came to me. When a
door, opening into this passage, was left open, the light was
considerable.
If I could have reached that window I could have escaped; for it was large
enough to admit the head and shoulders of a man, as I soon had occasion to
know. I made many frantic efforts to do so, but could barely touch the
edge of it with the tips of my fingers. There was not an object in the
room to assist me in reaching it. My chamber was perfectly bare—not a
stool, not a pallet of straw.
While I was contemplating sadly the frightful fate which was in store for
me, a little lid or trap-door in the ceiling about a foot square was
opened, and a basket was lowered by a cord. This basket contained a loaf
of bread and a bottle of water. I took out the bread and water; the basket
rose again by the cord, and the lid was closed. This was the routine, day
after day, without variation. Not even an arm or a hand could be detected
when the lid was raised. Nothing could be seen or heard.
There was one thing that varied the monotony, and only one. Every day,
about noon, the door in the passage was opened, the light admitted, and
the ugly face and head of Magistus were protruded through the little
window. There he stood gazing at me for some minutes, sometimes for half
an hour, on several occasions for one or two hours. He did not speak. He
glared at me with a stony malignity which is indescribable. When he had
satiated his cruel appetite with a sight of my sufferings, he retired.
Thus passed away week after week, month after month. My sufferings were
horrible. I wasted and weakened day by day both in mind and body. The air
of the dungeon had become foul and sickening. The bread and water had
become tasteless and repulsive. The silence, the solitude, the darkness,
were fearful.
Magistus came every day to enjoy with secret satisfaction the cruel death
he was inflicting on me. I regarded him with such repugnance and scorn,
that I did not speak to him or even look at him. This no doubt inflamed
his hatred. I walked about my narrow prison, whistling or talking to
myself until he went away. My insulting indifference did not seem to
disturb him in the least. He did nothing to attract my attention. He only
looked.
And now a strange and almost incredible thing occurred. I do not believe
any one can comprehend what I have to say, unless he has been shut up
alone in the dark for weeks and months; with the mind preying morbidly on
itself for want of external objects to give it healthful activity; wasted
by low diet and a mephitic atmosphere, by silence whose terror is
indescribable, and by solitude which of itself can drive to madness.
I did not look at the stony, cruel face of Magistus; but the idea that he
was looking at me began to take a singular and painful possession of my
mind. I could not get rid of it. I walked, whistled, talked, sang to
myself, all in vain. The idea that a hideous face was in the window; that
the black, fierce eyes were fixed upon me; that I could not prevent it;
hung over my mind like the vultures gnawing at the heart of the chained
Prometheus. It became a positive torture.
An irresistible desire to look him full in the face seized me. Whether it
was a secret magnetic attraction compelling me to do so, or whether I
thought it might mitigate my painful and absurd tension of thought on the
subject, I yielded at last. From that moment his triumph was complete. It
was veritably the fascination of the bird by the serpent. I could not help
gazing at him. He seemed to absorb my whole nervous life, to suck out the
very spirit of my blood, so that I was left breathless, dizzy, bewildered,
helpless, after each of his terrible visitations.
Thus I lived a daily death for many weeks; ignorant of all things without;
never hearing the sound of a human voice; buried alive; until hope died in
my bosom, and despair became my bedfellow, and fear my familiar, and even
memory ceased to weave her beautiful airy tissues, consoling me for the
loss of a future by her glorification of the past.
At first I used to love to review all the incidents of my life, both on
earth and in the world of spirits. I spent my long and lonesome leisure in
organizing my knowledge, analyzing my experiences, and building up from
them a grand philosophy of mind and matter.
I saw plainly that such a philosophy was needed to give intellectual
strength and stability to the young church of Christ. I knew that no
height of piety, no fervor of faith, no frenzy of love can secure a church
from the cold and critical assaults of the human understanding. Devotion
may be the soul of a church, but Truth is its body: and no religion
without an impregnable basis of philosophy, can be anything but a
transient fervor. It must inevitably perish by a gradual disintegration.
For this mode of thinking I was indebted to the Athenian philosophers.
The disciples of Christ had no such foundation upon which to erect the
great theological truths they were going to teach. I saw plainly that such
a philosophy cannot be discovered by the human intellect: and moreover
that it can only be revealed to mankind through some one who has lived
consciously for a while in both worlds. By divine permission and
protection I had so lived. I had been put into possession of truths of the
utmost importance to the infant church and the world. Surely I could not
thus perish in a dungeon! Surely the Lord who had raised me from the dead,
would deliver me also from this great snare; so that I could delight and
instruct mankind with what I had seen and heard in the spiritual world.
I therefore arranged all my ideas into philosophical form, and
contemplated with intense pleasure the perfect system of spiritual and
natural truth which I had eliminated from my accumulated materials. It is
astonishing how one spiritual truth leads to another; how all things are
connected together; so that the greatest things are repeated in the least,
and the smallest fragment is an image of the whole.
With increasing debility and despair I ceased to think steadily of these
grand and beautiful subjects. I spent much of the time in praying for
deliverance, and much in brooding over the possible fate and sorrows of my
poor sisters. After a while I discovered that my ideas were strangely
confused, especially after those terrible visits of Magistus, which I
began to regard with absolute horror. I could not distinguish between what
had happened in one world and what in the other; between dreams and
realities; between my hopes and my fears. The awful suspicion broke upon
me that I was losing my reason, that I was on the verge of madness.
Then it was that my courage failed and my pride humbled itself; for when
Magistus next appeared, I raised my hands supplicatingly to him and
exclaimed:
“Oh, my uncle! why do you thus persecute an innocent and helpless
creature? May God have mercy on your soul as you shall have mercy on me!”
He made no reply, but stared fixedly at me. Not a muscle of his face
moved. No ray of emotion was visible on his features. He seemed to be as
deaf and dumb as a statue. I might as well have appealed to a tiger or a
crocodile for pity. I was about to repeat my supplication, but his look
appalled me; and I sank, pale, rigid and stupefied under the old spell of
fascination.
There was no hope.
Let no one suppose that this instance of cruelty is incredible. Its
hereditary germ is concealed in our hearts. It begins developing in the
child when he tortures the dumb creatures in his power. To delight in
witnessing pain is the basest and most infernal of all our passions; but
it is common enough. Every court, every camp, every government, and alas!
almost every religion in the world, has its secret records which could
unfold tales of horror worse even than this. Man invested with
irresponsible power, is naturally a tyrant; and the difference between a
tyrant and a devil consists only in their different degrees of
development.
I learned, moreover, in the spiritual world the singular fact, that men or
women addicted to sensual pleasures unregulated by religious ideas,
however kind and gentle they may seem, have in their hearts a tendency to
the most direful cruelties which rarely come to the surface in this world,
but which rage in hell with unabating fury.
One morning a wonderful thing occurred. How small a thing may seem
wonderful to those who are shut out from the sweet presences of man and
nature!
On taking the bread and water out of the basket, I found a delicate little
rose-bud at the bottom of it. Let those who see every day a thousand
flowers in the golden palaces of the spring, pity and excuse the frantic
pleasure which this tiny one gave to a poor prisoner, who had been shut up
for months in darkness, surrounded by stone walls and demons.
I seized the sweet messenger of love, for such I construed it to be;
strained my eyes in the twilight to discover the green and crimson of its
livery; and imagined that its delicate perfume was a little voice
whispering to me of pity and of succor. I wept over it. I kissed it. I
invested it with life. I called it Mercury, Iris, Hebe, Cupid, Apollo—as a
child endows her doll with vitality, speaks to it, caresses it, nurses it.
Perhaps all nature would be alive to us if our hearts were only childlike.
This flower was a link that reconnected me with the great world above, so
long lost to me. It was a delicate thread that led me up into the open air
under the blue sky, and out into the green fields and into the gardens
where the winds wrestled playfully with the trees, and all the flowers
ducked their little heads at the great rough sport of the larger
creatures. The beautiful forms and colors of a luxuriant nature rushed
upon me with a ravishing sweetness. My memory and imagination were
stimulated into rosy life. I wept for joy.
The secret of all this happiness was, that the rose-bud reconnected me
with my fellow-men. Some one had got hold of the basket who knew my sad
story, pitied my fate, and had sent me a message of comfort. I was
confirmed in this idea when I broke open my loaf of bread; for I found a
slice of meat concealed within it, juicy and delicious. This was the first
variation from my diet of slow starvation. It was clearly the secret,
cautious work of a friend. Help was coming; my heart danced with hope.
This little event shed still greater light and blessing upon me. My mind
became clear; my memory acute; the fear of madness left me. My past
sufferings seemed like a dream. With hope I received new life, new
courage. When Magistus came, I found that I was freed from the spell of
his fascination. I did not look at him. I sat down immediately underneath
his window. I repeated comforting verses of Scripture to myself until he
went away.
That day was spent in the most delicious castle-building. At night I
slept, but was visited by a disagreeable dream. I thought Magistus had
taken my rose-bud from me, and buried it in the ground; and I awoke with a
great cry, for I suddenly remembered that what we had called the rose-bud
was my sister Mary.
How eagerly I watched the next descent of the basket, for more comfort,
more tokens of love, more hope! It came; but there was in it only bread
and water. My heart sank within me. I would have called out loudly to my
unseen friend, to know why I was deserted; but I feared my unseen enemy;
for I felt certain that Magistus always watched the person who let down
the basket.
Magistus came as usual; and I sat, not noticing him, underneath the
window. He seemed annoyed at my indifference. He shifted his position
often and stayed a great while. He missed the pleasure of contemplating
his work in my ghastly and pallid face.
The same things occurred the next day and the next. No more flowers; no
more meat; no messages; no hopes; only bread, water and Magistus. Was it
all a hallucination? Again I began to sicken and despair.
One morning the basket came down with only bread in it. No water! I knew
it was a sentence of death. Magistus was revenging my escape from the
fascination of his evil eye. Before night I began to feel the horrors of
thirst. Awful sensation! I dreamed of water; of the fountain in my
father’s courtyard; of the blue Ægean near Athens, so soft, so beautiful;
of the Salt Sea and the tent of Barabbas; of the snow-fields and icebergs
of the frozen zone in the world of spirits.
All, all depended on the next descent of the little basket. I watched its
coming as a prisoner listens to the voice of the judge, for life or death.
Alas! bread alone; no water. Torture, madness, death, were now inevitable.
I took out the loaf, which somehow or other seemed heavier than usual. To
my amazement, the basket did not rise, but was jerked impatiently up and
down by the person holding the cord.
“What can this mean?” said I to myself.
I broke the loaf. It was scooped out and contained, in the cavity thus
formed, a piece of parchment and a very small ink-horn with a pen.
I hastily examined the parchment and found on one side of it in great
sprawling letters, like a child’s writing, these words:
“What shall I do?”
A light came into my mind as brilliant as the sun. I was calm and
self-possessed; my good angel recalled to me the friendly words of Pilate
at our parting:
“Send for me if you get into trouble.”