University of Virginia Library

1. OUT OF HIS HEAD.

1. CHAPTER I.
Dr. Pendegrast.

WHAT is this, Lynde?”

Dr. Pendegrast had walked
to the farther end of my room,
and stood looking at a pale, unbloomed
flower sealed in a glass
globe. The globe rested on a
slight Gothic pedestal, and was
covered by a yard or two of
gauze, thrown over it carelessly. The doctor had
drawn aside the covering, and was regarding the
flower with an air of interest.

“That,” said I, closing one finger in my book,
“is where I keep the soul of Cecil Roylstone —
shut up in the calyx.”

The doctor started.

“The soul — really! That is quite odd, now
You never told me of this, Lynde.”

Dr. Pendegrast is a physician of considerable
repute with whom I have recently become acquainted.
A singular intimacy has sprung up
between us. Dr. Pendegrast labors under the
delusion that he is treating me professionally for
some sort of mental disorder, and I, indulging the
good-natured whim, throw his prescriptions out of
the window, and in the meantime enjoy unrestrained
intercourse with the dector, who is not
only a skillful practitioner, but a thinker, and —
what is seldom the case with thinkers — a fine
conversationalist.

He frequently drops in to spend an hour with
me, and appears to derive much satisfaction in
examining the microscopes, galvanic batteries,
wooden models, and various knick-knacks in fluor
spar — the accumulation of years — with which
my apartment is crowded. The place has quite
the air of a miniature museum.

Dr. Pendegrast stood looking at the imprisoned
flower with fresh curiosity. I drew my chair
nearer to the fire, and fell into a brown study.
The doctor's question had indirectly suggested to
me the expediency of writing out the odd experiences
of my life.

There comes to every man, sooner or later, a
time when he pauses and looks down on his Past,
regarding it as an existence separate from himself.
As one in a dream, stands beside his own coffin,
gazing upon his own features. That moment of
retrospection was mine.

Dr. Pendegrast placed the tip of his forefinger
on the globe.

“And who is Cecil Roylstone?”

“The woman I loved, long ago.”

“Dead?”

“Many years since.”

The doctor mused.

“And her soul, you say —”

“Passed into that flower the day she was
buried.”

“But the flower,” said Dr. Pendegrast, stooping
down, “is as fresh as if it were plucked
yesterday.”

“True. By a process well known to chemists,
I have preserved the lily in its original freshness;
even the dew still glistens on it. See! Cecil's
breath has clouded the glass. The flower is
moving! Mute, mute, — if she would but speak
to me!”

“And you really think this pretty world is inhabited
by a spirit?”

“There's not the slightest doubt of it.”

“Would it not be well,” remarked Dr. Pendegrast,
lifting his eyebrows speculatively, “to look
into this? For our own satisfaction, you know,
to say nothing of the spirit, which must be very
uncomfortable in such snug quarters. Suppose,
for instance, we take a peep in at the petals?”

“Not for worlds! Our grosser sense would fail
to perceive the soul within. I have thought of it.
The thin shell which separates us, has baffled my
endeavor to reach her. Once I dared to dream it

possible to hold communication with Cecil — by
means of a small magnetic telegraph, my own
invention. But the experiment threatened to annihilate
the flower. Since then, it has lain untouched,
sealed hermetically from the air, in its
transparent prison.”

Dr. Pendegrast smiled.

“You are laughing at me, doctor,” said I,
sharply.

“Not I! It's the most interesting circumstance
that ever came under my observation.”

“No doubt it sounds strangely to you, doctor.
I have, before now, encountered people who
thought me a little out on the subject, and said so
flatly.”

“They were very injudicious.”

“To be sure; but I always observed that they
were persons of inferior intellect — believing only
what they could comprehend, they were necessarily
contracted. To metaphysicians, students of life
and death, the facts which I could unfold relative

to this flower and other matters, would afford
material for serious speculation.”

“I believe you,” said Dr. Pendegrast.

“And I am strongly inclined to give the scientifie
world the benefit of my memoirs. Indeed, it
is a part of my destiny to do so.”

“You delight me,” said Dr. Pendegrast. “Do
it at once. It will be a healthful relaxation. You
are working too hard on that infernal machine of
yours.”

“You mean the Moon-Apparatus.”

“I beg your pardon, I meant the Moon-Apparatus.”

“I will commence my memoirs to-morrow.”

“And I shall hold it a privilege,” said the
doctor courteously, drawing on his glove, “to
follow the progress of your work.”

“You shall do so.”

Dr. Pendegrast took his leave.

“O, Lynde, Lynde!” I heard him exclaim as
he went down stairs.

That man appreciates me.

A week has elapsed since this conversation occurred,
and I still linger at the threshhold of my
confessions. I half dread to ring up the curtain on
such a sorrowful play as it is, for the dramatis
personæ are the shades of men and women long
since dead. Their graves lie scattered over the
world, north, south, east, and west. It seems
almost cruel to bring them together on the stage
again. Who that has fretted his brief hour here
would care to return? Yet I must summon
these shadows, for a moment, from the dark.

2. CHAPTER II.
By the Seashore.

IN the summer of 18— I occupied
an old house near the seashore, in
New England. The beach, a mile
off, stretched along the indented
coast, looking as if it were an immense
mottled serpent that had
been suddenly petrified in the midst
of its writhings. On the right, a
ruined fort stared at the ocean, over the chalky
crags. At the back of the house were some two
hundred acres of woodland, moistened here and
there by ponds filled with marvellous white lilies.
The weather-beaten roofs and steeples of the town
glanced through the breezy elm trees on the left;

while far away, over lengths of pastures and sullen
clumps of pines, Mount Agamenticus rose up like
a purple mist.

The scenery has stamped itself into my brain —
the desolate fort, staring with a blind, stunned
look through rain and sunshine; the merciless
coast; the ragged ledges, nurturing only a few
acrid berries; the forest full of gloomy sounds;
the antique spires in the distance; and, over all,
the loose gray clouds.

I had come to the New Hampshire seaboard for
the benefit of my failing health. Having spent
the greater portion of my life in an inland manufacturing
town, than which nothing could be more
common-place, the wild panorama of the coast
opened on me like an enchanted realm. A cold, gray
realm, but enchanted. I avoided society. The
sea and the shifting clouds were society enough.
The solitude that would have driven most men to
distraction, was pregnant with meaning. It left
me free, for once, to breathe, and think, and feel.

At night I wandered along the beach, watching

the points of light that dipt and rose in the distance,
and the sails that shimmered ghost-like, for
a second, in the offing, and vanished. But more
than all I brooded over the broken image of the
moon floating on the water: that filled me like a
picture by Claude; it led me into a region of new
thought, and here I first conceived the project of
of my Moon-Apparatus, which, when completed,
will dissolve the misty theories that have deluded
man for the past five centuries. I haunted the
seashore. I lay on the rocks from sundown till
midnight, shaping the vast Idea that had grown
up within me.

My intercourse with the village, near by, was
restricted to one family — the Roylstones. I
might say restricted to one person; for Captain
Roylstone was always at sea; his wife had long
since been laid at rest in the rustic churchyard;
and only Cecil, who lived with an elderly companion,
a distant connection, I believe, represented
the family.

How we met, or how Cecil's fate and mine

became irrevocably linked, seems so strange and
vague to me, that I shall not attempt to speak of
it. It was this woman's melancholy destiny to
love me: it was mine to return the passion a hundred
fold, and follow her to the very margin of
that mysterious world wherein she eluded me.
Wherein she still eludes me.

Alas! what right had I to love, knowing, as I
have known from boyhood, the doom that hangs
over my head, suspended by a tenure as slight as
that which held the sword of Damocles?

To-morrow it may fall!

The arrogant retina of the eye sometimes refuses
to give back the image it has received. Dissolution
alone can break the charmed picture;
and even after death, objects of terror and beauty
have been seen to fade away reluctantly from this
magical mirror. I have read, somewhere, of a
German oculist, who traced the murderer of a
lady in Göttingen, by discovering, at a postmortem
examination, the likeness of the assassin

photographed on those curious net-like membranes,
the retinæ.

When I am dead, the face of a fair woman will
be found indelibly engraved on my eyes — not in
faint lines and curves, but sharply, as if the features
had been cut out on steel by the burin of an artist.
Yet I can but poorly describe the idyllic grace and
beauty of Cecil Roylstone.

Her hair was dark brown, and, in its most
becoming arrangement, drawn into one massive
coil over the forehead, giving her brows a Greek-like
stateliness. Her eyes were those unusual ojos
verdes, large and lucent, which the Spanish poets
mention as being the finest type. The mouth
would have been perfect, but for a slight blemish,
visible only at times, on the upper lip. Perhaps
her face was a shade too pale, for perfection, may
be too pensive, in repose — but how can I write
of Cecil as a mere portrait, when she, herself, in
her infinite sweetness, seems to pass before me!

Again she is walking, in her simple white dress,
by the seaside. The moon drifts from cloud to

cloud, edging the gray with silver, and, far off, the
sea sparkles. A plain gold cross on her bosom
catches the moonlight. The salt breeze lifts the
braids of her hair, and blows back the folds of her
dress. I sit on the rocks watching her.

Again we are lounging along the sunny road,
on our way to town. It is an afternoon in May;
the trees are in full bloom, peach and apple.
Cecil is laughing, with an accent like music. I
see her lissome form in the checkered sunshine,
her feet, tripping on in front of me, among the
blossoms. I hardly know which are the blossoms.
Now she is walking demurely at my side, her
fingers locked in mine, and the sleepy sea-port
with its brown roofs and whitewashed chimneys,
comes out distinctly against the neutral tint of the
sky, like a picture on a wizard's glass.

Again I am sitting on the porch of the old
house, dreaming of her. I hear the sound of a
horse's hoofs beating on the dusty road, and then
Cecil — as if she had leaped out of my brain —
dashes up to the garden-gate, on the alert black

mare which her father has sent home. In that
sea-green riding-habit and feather, she is a picture,
I take it, for Memory to press in his thumbed and
dog's-eared volume. I pat the sleek neck of the
mustang, as I speak with Cecil. I look up, and
she is gone. I see her riding madly along the
orchard walls, shaking down the blooms, in the
sunset.

Riding away from me!

3. CHAPTER III.
The Estrangement.

WE were unspeakably happy
in that dream which follows
the confessions of two hearts
each all in all to the other.
Our formal engagement was
but delayed until Captain
Roylstone, who was making
an East Indian voyage,
should return and sanction it. The future
lay before us like a map on which each bright
tint melts into one more brilliant. We were
wildly happy; but not long.

The occult power that moulds my thought,
speaks my words, and even times the pulsations of

my heart, glided in between us. We had been engaged
but three weeks, when I became assured
that Cecil had taken a sudden aversion to me. It
was evident she sought to avoid our usual interviews;
and when we met, was constrained and
absent-minded. The color, what little she had,
shrunk from her cheek; the touch of her fingers
was chilly and nerveless. When I questioned
Cecil, she looked at me wearily, and turned away.
Sometimes with an impatient gesture, sometimes
coldly.

One night — I never hear the monotonous wash
of the waves, but I think of it, — we sat on the
rocks. Cecil wrapt in her shawl. It was October,
and the winds were growing frosty. One
star, in a stormy cincture, struggled through the
dark. The sea moaned, as it moans only in
autumn. The clouds leaned down, hungry, tragic
faces, listening. The landscape seemed cut in
granite, sharp and gray. No color anywhere.
There was something of an expression of human

despair in the half twilight that brooded over it.
It was so hopeless.

Presently the moon rose to the surface of the
water, like a drowned body, bleached and swollen.
It distressed me; and when, at length, it lifted its
full disc slowly up among the clouds, I felt a
sense of relief: the cool clean light revived my
spirits, like a draught of wine. I began speaking,
rapidly, half to myself, partly to Cecil. I forget
the train of reflection that led to it, but, at last, I
touched on the invention of the Moon-Apparatus,
to which I had recently given so much study.

Then Cecil, who had been sitting silent and
motionless, abruptly bent forward, and took my
face between her hands.

“Poor Paul!”

She drew back, then, one hand resting on her
lap, inanimate, like a sculptured hand I had seen
somewhere.

“Cecil!”

She turned away hastily.

“You are cruel, Cecil.”

“No. Do not say that. I—I suffer.”

And she uttered a low moan, like a child.

“Suffer?”

“Bitterly!”

“You are hiding some painful news from me.
What is it?”

Cecil made no reply for a moment: then I
heard her murmuring to herself,

“It was an evil day when we met. I wish it
had never been.”

“An evil day, Cecil? You kill me with your
strangeness. Your very breath seems to freeze
me.”

“Let it! I think I am dying—it is so sudden
and terrible—but you do not understand me—
poor Paul!”

“What is sudden and terrible?'

“Nothing.”

My fingers sunk into her arm until she gave a
quick cry of pain.

“Why do you call me `poor Paul?' ”

“I—I cannot tell.”

“For mercy's sake, Cecil, say one word that
has sense in it—if you have any love left for me.”

Cecil threw her arms around my neck, and
locked her fingers, holding me so.

“How you tremble, child! What has happened
to trouble you? Something, I know—
your father? You have had letters from him,
and he is sick? Tell me, little wife.”

“No, no, no!” cried Cecil, recoiling.

For an instant the indistinct blemish on her lip
glowed warmly, like an opal, and faded.

“No, no, no?” I repeated to myself. “How
strange!”

Then the three monosyllables slipped from my
mind, and, oddly enough, I commenced a mental
construction of the Moon-Apparatus, forgetful
of Cecil and our limited world of sorrows.

“The powerful glasses,” said I half aloud,
“shall draw the rays of the moon into the copper
cylinders: the action of the chemicals, let in
through the valves will congeal the atomic matter

then comes the granulating process; and after the
calcina—”

“Merciful heaven!” cried Cecil, breaking in
on me, “is it so? I have waited, and hoped,
and prayed. Paul, look at me; take me in your
arms, once, and kiss me. Look at me long!
Never any more! Poor, poor Paul. O misery!
that I should so love a—”

With this, Cecil tore herself away from me,
and, in spite of my cries, fled toward the town.
She melted into the moonlight, past the churchyard,
and was gone. What could it mean?

Then the terrible truth flashed upon me—
Cecil had lost her mind!

4. CHAPTER IV.
A Catastrophe.

IT is well that providence keeps our
destiny under lock and key, dealing
it out only by morsels. The whole
of it, at once, would kill us. Suppose
a man, verging on the prime
of life, should chance to come
across his full-grown Biography?
It would not be pleasant reading, to
say it mildly.

I walked home that night, bewildered. The
sky was blanched with incessant lightning, and
dull peals of thunder broke in the far east, like
the sound of distant artillery. There was a fearful
gale, afterwards, I was told. A merchantman,

with all on board, went down at daybreak, on the
shoals off Gosport Light.

Spiteful drops of rain whistled by me before I
reached the door of my isolated abode. I hurried
through the grape-arbor, and had entered the
laboratory on the ground-floor, in the right wing
of the building, when an accident occurred to
which I cannot even now refer with composure.

When I reflect on the months of wasting toil and
the lavish outlay, rendered futile by a moment's
awkwardness, I am again plunged into despair.

A candle, with matches, always stood on the
laboratory mantle-piece, for my convenience. In
searching for these matches, which somebody had
removed, I inadvertently came in contact with the
Moon-Apparatus.

It tottered — and fell with a crash!

A sulphuric vapor immediately diffused itself
throughout the apartment, followed by an explosion
that shook the house from garret to basement.
With the flash and concussion, a keen
pain shot through my temples.

Then a darkness came over me.

This darkness must have covered a period of
several months; for when I escaped from it, there
was something in the singing of birds, and the
brushing of foliage against the casement, that told
of spring. I lay in my own chamber, and an old
woman was killing flies with a silk apron.

“What is the time — of year?” I asked faintly.

The woman came to the bedside, and looked at
me.

“Go to sleep.”

I shrunk from her, and turning my face to the
wall, tried to conjecture what had taken place.

I come home one October night from a walk
with Cecil.

I fall over something in the laboratory.

It explodes.

My head aches.

I open my eyes, and it is June! the flowers
growing, the robins singing, an old woman killing
flies. I could make nothing out of it.

When the Doctor came, — Dr. Molineux, of
the village, — he attempted, in a hesitating way,
to explain things. I had, he said, been taken
unexpectedly ill in my work-shop, where I was
discovered, one morning, by the person who
brought me my meals. I was found doubled up
among a confused mass of shattered cog-wheels,
steel pistons, copper cylinders, alembics, and glass
retorts. Somewhat battered and considerably senseless.
It was supposed that I had been stunned by
the explosion of some unknown machine, while
engaged in scientific experiments.

Here the Doctor gave a short dry laugh. I am
sure I don't know why. I had been long and
dangerously ill, he said.

“Non compos ment—” the Doctor paused
abruptly, and coughed. “But you are doing well
now, and will soon be a new man,” he added.

A new man? To be somebody else, the
antithesis of myself, would indeed be a comfort.

The remembrance of all that had happened
gradually dawned on me. Patience, patience. I
could only lie and think of Cecil, while the long
days, and the longer nights, dragged on.

Finally the Doctor gave me permission to walk
the length of our garden. I paced up and down
several times under the arbor, unconcernedly;
for the brownie nurse was on guard. My eyes
roamed off to the town. I could see the square
chimneys of Cecil's house, above the tree-tops, on
the other side of the bridge.

Watching my chance, I unlatched the gate
noiselessly, and stood in the open road.

The crisp grass scarcely bent under my tread,
as I stole swiftly away from my chaperone, who,
I am now convinced, was merely a harmless
lunatic.

5. CHAPTER V.
The Flight.

THE day had opened sunnily, but
one of those sudden fogs which
blow from the sea, had drifted in,
and hung over the town like a pall
of smoke. It caught at the sharp
spires and trailed along the flat
roofs. At intervals, a gleam of
light played through the funeral
folds. I thought the place was burning: it had a
disagreeable habit of catching on fire periodically.
A history of the town would involve a series of
conflagrations.

As I crossed the bridge, the cloud of fog grew
darker and heavier, pressing down on the houses.

The boom of a large bell broke sullenly through
the air. It was tolling.

Something in the sound arrested me, nor me
alone, for a decrepit old man, driving a yoke of
oxen, stopped in the middle of the bridge, and
listened.

“Is it a fire?” I asked, walking at his side.
“A fire in town?”

“Ay, ay,” returned the man, vacantly, like a
deaf person; “for old Mrs. Weston, or Capt'n
Roylstone's child. I dunno which.”

“Cecil Roylstone!”

“Ay; she's bin dyin' this six month.”

“Dead?”

Dead, said the bell.

The bridge reeled under my feet.

“No, old man! you lie to me.”

“Ay, ay,” he said, musingly, “misfortune kind
o' follows some families. Only last fall her father
was wrecked right off Gosport Light here, in sight
o' land.”

I have a dim impression of intending to hurl

him into the mill-dam, among the slippery eelgrass;
but as I glanced up I beheld Cecil quietly
walking at the farther end of the bridge.

She turned and beckoned me.

Loosening the old man's arm, I hastened after
Cecil, who moved leisurely down the hill, and
took the road that made a détour by the house.

“Cecil!”

But she glided on with unaltered gait.

“She will stop at the porch,” I thought; but
no; Dr. Molineux was standing in the door-way.
He hailed me as I hurried by.

“Well, where now, Mr. Lynde?”

“I'll return presently. I wish to speak with
the lady who has just passed.”

“Lady?” said the Doctor, eyeing me anxiously.
“Nobody has passed here this half-hour — no
lady, surely.”

“What!” I exclaimed, halting with amazement
at such a barefaced falsehood, “did not that
lady” — pointing to Cecil, who had paused at a

bend in the road — “did not that lady just pass
within two yards of you?”

And I looked at the Doctor severely.

“I see no one,” replied the Doctor, following
the direction of my finger.

It had been my opinion for sometime that my
poor friend was deranged. This, coupled with
the fact that I once caught him in his sanctum
reading Neville on Insanity, was conclusive.

“I see no one,” he repeated.

“Then you must be blind, or stupid.”

I instantly repented of my brusqueness. Surely,
his infirmity was no fault of his. So I approached
him, and said kindly,

“My dear doctor, you should at once make
your situation known to your friends. You really
should.”

With which words I left him.

Dr. Molineux stared at me.

There stood Cecil. The June air drew back
the clustered coils of hair that fell over her
shoulders, and I then first noticed the unearthly

pallor of her face. It was like a piece of pure
Carrara marble.

Cecil seemed to smile upon me imploringly, as
she turned into a briery path which branched off
from the highway, and led to that tract of woodland
which I mentioned in describing the location
of my dwelling. I followed.

Her pace now became accelerated. It was
with difficulty that I could keep the flying white
dress in sight.

On the verge of the forest she paused, and
faced me with a hectic light in her eyes. It was
but for an instant, then she plunged into the
dense wood.

An agonizing fancy occurred to me. I connected
Cecil's wild look with the still deep ponds
which lay within the shadow of the vast woodland.
The thought gave wings to my feet; I
darted after her like an arrow, tearing myself on
the vines and briers that stretched forth a million
wiry fingers to impede my progress.

We were nearing the largest pond in the wood

Unless Cecil should alter her course, that would
prevent farther flight.

This circular piece of water lay, as it were, in
an immense green basin, the banks on every side
sloping to the edge of the pond, where the
cardinal-flowers bent in groups, staring at the
reflection of their flushed faces. At the belt of
maples enclosing the sheet of water, Cecil stopped
irresolutely. I would have clasped her in my
arms, but she escaped me, and ran swiftly toward
the pond. Then I heard a splash not so loud as
would be made by dropping a pebble into the
water. I leaped half-way down the slope.

Cecil had disappeared.

Near the bank, a circle in the pond widened,
and widened, and was lost in space. A single
silver bubble floated among the tangled weeds
that fringed the lip of the shore, and as I
looked, this bubble opened, and out of it indolently
rose a superb white Water-Lily.

It was no use to look for Cecil — there she
was!

“You had better come home now,” said Dr.
Molineux, touching me on the shoulder.

When we reached the main-road, a funeral was
passing along slowly, slowly.

People sometimes smile, half-incredulously, when
I tell them these things: then I point to that
white flower, there, in the glass globe.

6. CHAPTER VI.
Tired to Death.

NOW that I approach the second
important epoch of my life—
the second link in the chain I am
forging—the joy and anguish
which came to me with Cecil
Roylstone, must be laid aside,
like the fragments of a dream
that lie perdu in the memory,
until some odd moment.

I was residing in New Orleans, an invalid. A
perusal of some of W—'s letters by a wood fire
in the north, had drawn me southward in search
of lost vitality. I am not sure it was the most
efficacious move; but mine is a malady full of

surmises, and hopes, and disappointment. Why
do I speak of myself? I am only the walking-gentleman
in this particular act of the melodrame
—the Scaramouch that glides in to darken things.
The hero waits at the side-scenes for his cue.

Enter, A Shadow.

Mark Howland, at twenty-four, was tired to
death. His psychological sickness was not occasioned
by varied experience, like that of the cynic
in the play, who had seen everything, done everything,
and found nothing in it. He came to his
weariness without that painful iteration.

There is a certain kind of woman who becomes
physically perfect long before her heart is developed.

If she chance to have much beauty, she is
dangerous beyond belief, and should not be left
unchained to destroy people.

She goes about, seeking whom she may devour.

It is an uncertain leopardess: it kills with
strokes softer than satin.

Mr. Howland, shortly after leaving college, was

so deserted by good fortune as to find himself, one
day, at the instep of such a creature.

Celeste G—— was poor, in humble life, and
lovely as an ideal. But, at eighteen, she had no
more heart than there was an anatomical necessity
for. She was attracted by Mark—swayed by
her glamour over him, rather than by his influence
over her. Imperious, eighteen, and unchained.
What could be hoped of her?

Howland's family, rich and ever so many years
old, (old enough to know better,) opposed the
match with all that superfluous acrimony which
characterizes a domestic quarrel.

This, for Mark was human, increased his passion.
He only grew firm about the lips as Madam
his mother protested.

“This person Celeste,” remarked Madam, loftily,
“is common and poor.”

And poverty is the unpardonable sin from Dan
to Beersheba.

Matters went wretchedly.

At length the contending forces agreed to an

armistice, and Howland, worn out by tears, consented
to spend two years abroad, and then, at the
expiration of that time, if his purpose remained
unchanged and unchangeable, why, then, perhaps,
it was more than likely, etc. etc.—the antique
story.

The wilful went abroad. He travelled through
Italy, and wintered at Florence; drifted on the
Rhine, and summered at Schwalbach. The large,
languishing eyes of his Andromache went with
him. His thoughts were full of Celeste: he
beheld her everywhere—in every saintly picture,
in every faultless marble: every beautiful thing in
nature and art was an inferior type of Celeste.

When the two years had elapsed, he returned
home, brown and handsome, wondering, on the
passage, why she had written him only two letters
in twice as many months.

Now, one cannot get up one's trousseau, and
write letters, at the same time. A week before
his arrival, Celeste was married.

“This person Celeste,” said Madam, mighty
drily, “has stepped out!”

She had, indeed.

When Howland received the news, he bit his
mustache, and looked steadily at nothing for
twenty minutes. Then he threw a string of cameos
into the grate, whistling an air from Il Giuramento.

As a piece of music, it was a failure.

He was cut to the heart.

For Celeste to wed an opera-singer. Basta!

He smoked uncounted segars that day, and
came out of the clouds a different man. His
chateau had toppled over in one night, and there
was not an atom among the ruins worth picking
up the next morning. In the rush and bubble of
city life, he sought to wring out the remembrance
of his wrong.

But grief is one of the quiet colors that wash.

At this time my health became impaired, and
an immediate visit to some milder climate, was the
only specific. In an evil hour, I urged Howland
to accompany me to New Orleans.

We hired a small, furnished cottage, in a retired
faubourg of the city, and set up our dii penates;

the household consisting of Cip, a negro gardener;
Christina, a pretty quadroon girl, who kept our
ménage as tidy as a snow-drift; and Agnes,
Christina's child.

With the new surroundings, Howland for
awhile left the past to bury its dead. But by
degrees his former restlessness returned. Time
pressed on him like lead. He grew haggard and
careworn, and a dim scar, which he never liked
spoken of, brightened on his lip; he played wildly,
got into debt, and was going to the bad by a
through-train.

Of course my remonstrances were thrown
away. What is the use of advising a man who
is tired to death?

In the meanwhile, my own life passed tranquilly
enough, with the reading of books on metallurgy,
and the drawing of plans for a more systematic
construction of the Moon-Apparatus, which,
I regret to say, had been all but demolished by
the accident related.

7. CHAPTER VII.
An Arrival.

THE fire of my segar glowed in
the dusk like a panther's eye. I
sat in the verandah of our cottage-house
in Rue de —— smoking a
Manilla cheroot, and yielding myself
up to the influences of one of
those southern nights which make
a man forget that he must die.

The stars were heavy and lustrous, and the
clouds sailed through the sky, mere thistle-down.
Every stir of air brought me the odors of orange-blossoms,
and wafted the snaky smoke of my
cheroot among the honeysuckle vines, which
clambered erratically over the portico, shutting me
out from the dense moonlight.

Three stone steps led from the porch into the
garden, where a marble Naiad filled a cup of
lapis lazuli from a slender urn of antique design.
The jets of water, breaking on the rim of the
goblet, and dripping down in shattered crystals on
the gold-fish in the bowl of the fountain, made
drowsy music. It was like the uneasy bubbling
of a narghillé.

A sly, white pelican waded in the dank grass,
and would have liked to split a gold-fish with its
long bill.

What a fairy garden it was, with its shelly walks
leading to nowhere in particular; its dwarfish
fig-trees with their pointed leaves; its beds of
mignonette; its house-pots of fragrant jonquelles
and camelias; its one heavy magnolia, growing
alone like Père Antoine's date-palm; and the
picket of mulberries, just within the lattice-fence,
marking the boundaries of our demesne.

It was not an extensive sweep of land, but the
moonlight created interminable vistas, and destroyed
one's idea of distance. It appeared as if

the whole earth were a tropical forest, stretching
out from our door-step.

The only sounds that broke, or, rather, mingled
with my reverie, were the gurglings of the fountain,
the sleepy rustling of the leaves, and the
inarticulate music of women's voices, blown to me
from neighboring balconies.

The inhabitants of this arid land dwell out of
doors after sundown. As you stroll through the
streets, in the twilight, you see groups, assembled
on the piazzas of the low-roofed French houses, or
sauntering unceremoniously in front gardens; and
many a creole brunette and many a rich southern
blonde, bends tender eyes on you as you pass.
You catch glimpses of charming domestic tableaux
— Old Age in his arm-chair on the porch, and
Youth and Beauty (with cherry-colored ribbons,)
making love under the rose. I think life is an
easy sort of inconvenience in warm latitudes.

The fountain gurgled, the leaves whispered, and
my cheroot went out, a single spark flying upward
— the soul of St. Nicotine! I sat watching a

lithe chameleon that undulated out of the dark,
and clad itself in a suit of moonlight on the stone
step. There it lay, moist, glimmering, dead with
ecstacy. Whether it was the torpor of the animal
that extended itself to me, or the effect of the
opium, sometimes wrapt in cheroots, I am not
able to state; but without warning, a drowsiness
directly overpowered my senses. I slept, and
dreamed.

I scarcely know how to tell the dream which
came to me—if it were a dream.

An unnatural stillness fell upon the world;
the liquid music of the fountain fainted in the
distance; the leaves drooped in the sultry, motionless
air, like velvet. The atmosphere became
strangely oppressive, and the aromas from the pot-plants
grew so penetrating that it was almost pain
to inhale them.

Rising from my seat, I walked with difficulty to
the open end of the verandah. The sky presented
a startling appearance.

The clouds were opaque and stagnant, the stars

shrivelled with waning fires, and a sickly, saffron
tinge around the edge of the moon, made it look
as if it had commenced to decay.

I felt that these phenomena were not the prelude
to one of those tornadoes which frequently
burst upon the breathless quiet of tropical regions;
for there was no electricity in the close air, no
muttering of the elements; but a deep, brooding
silence, infinitely more appalling than any tumult.

A vague apprehension of some awful calamity
took possession of me. I shuddered at being
alone.

The odors grew heavier and heavier, orange,
heliotrope, magnolia — subtle and noxious, they
were, like the exhalations from the poisoned
flowers in Rappaccini's garden. I was faint with
them.

Suddenly the street-gate swung to with a clang.
I heard footfalls on the gravelled walks. Thank
heaven! some one was coming to me.

Cip stumbled up the steps. He saw me, and
paused, resting against the balustrade, his hat
slouched over his face. I called to him.

“Tell me, Cip, do you see that dreadful skv, or
am I still dreaming?”

The negro did not lift his head, but said,
huskily,

“Marster, it has come, It has come!”

“What has come?”

“Lord, look down an' help us,” murmured
the negro solemnly.

“Why don't you answer me! Where is Mr.
Howland? Who has come? What has come?”

“The - the —”

“The — what?”

“The Chol'ra, marster!”

8. CHAPTER VIII.
Dark Days.

THE cholera was upon us; but
not without warning. Year after
year it had pursued its lonely
march through woodland and
desert, as noiseless and implacable
as Fate. For months and months,
rumor had heralded its fell approach.
Now it stole with the
auras of morning into a populous town; now it
glided with the shades of nightfall into some
happy village.

Graves sprung up in its wake, like thistles.

The lank Arab, munching his few dates in the
desert, looked up from the scanty meal, and

beheld those basilisk eyes. His camel wandered
off without a master.

The be-nighted traveller by the Ganges, sunk
exhausted on the banks of the muddy river; but
the beasts of the jungle did not growl over him,
for even the nameless birds flew, shrieking, away.

The English mother sat by the hamlet-door,
singing to her babe. The tiny hand clutched at
the air, and the soft white eyelids were ringed
with violet.

Beauty saw a baleful visage in her mirror. No
rouge, nor pearl-powder nor balm could make it
comely again.

The miser hugged and kissed his money-bags;
but where he went he could not take his idols.

Then Dives died in his palace, and the leper at
the groined gate-way.

The fingers of lovers were unknitted.

The Cholera, the Scourge!

In a single night the Afreet spread his wings
over the doomed city. A woman had been

stricken down while buying a bunch of flowers in
St. Mary's Market. An unknown man fell headlong
from his horse on the levee. Six persons lay
at the point of death in a café on Rue de Baronne.
The hospitals were already filling up; and the red
flag wilted in the languid breeze at the quarantine.
The streets were strewn with lime, and every precaution
taken by the authorities to extirpate the
plague. And then commenced that long procession
of funerals which never ceased to trail by our
door for so many weary months. It is a question
in my mind, though, whether the cholera is contagious.

How hot, and dull, and dead the days were!

The roofs of the houses lay festering in the
canescent heat; the flowers drooped, and died
cankerous deaths; the outer leaves of the foliage
changed to a livid green hue, and the timid grass
crept up, and withered, in the interstices of the
sidewalk. All day a tawny gold mist hung over
the place. At night, the dews fell, and from

cypress swamps, on the skirts of the city, rose
deadly miasma.

No joyous children played at the door-step in
the twilight. The guttural voice of the strolling
marchand was no longer heard crying his creams
and comfits. The small fruit-booths along the
street were tenantless. The St. Charles Theatre
and The Varieties were closed — only the tragedy
of death drew crowded houses. The glittering
bar-rooms, with their fancy glasses, and mirrors,
and snowy drinks, were almost deserted. Even
rondo, roulette, faro, monte and lansquenet, lost
their fascination. Mass was said morning and
evening in the old cathedral at Place d' Armes;
and many of the churches, catholic and protestant,
were open throughout the day.

The wheel of social life was broken.

As to Howland and myself, we were not panic-stricken.
The fine edge of my fear of death had
been blunted by a similar experience, at Cuba,
during a yellow-fever season; and Howland regarded

the workings of chance with stolid indifference.

When the epidemic first broke out, he had
proposed, for my sake only, a trip across Lake
Ponchartrain, to Pass Christian, or Biloxi; but
I would not listen to him. In overruling Howland's
suggestion, I was simply a puppet, moving
in accordance with my wires. It was predestined
we should remain and face the sorrows of that
year.

I am a fatalist, you see; and have reason to
be one.

We changed our mode of living in no particular;
but ate fruit, drank wine, (rank heresy,)
walked, rode, and slept as usual. And even Cip,
who had somewhat recovered from his first fright,
would sit of an evening by the kitchen-door, and
play plaintive negro melodies on his rickety violin.

“Cip,” I used to say, “this Asiatic cholera is
a countryman of yours.”

“O Lord, marster!”

Still the work went on. People died and lay

for days unburied, in obscure garrets. Oftentimes
one cart bore away an entire family — hurried
them off. Lying in my bed, I have been kept
awake by hearses rumbling by — at midnight.
What I write I saw, and was a part of. I would
it were fiction.

Near our house stood a large brick church, the
Church of the Bleeding Heart, I think it was
called. The exterior of the edifice was left in an
elaborate state of unfinish, the costly interior
decorations having, I suppose, exhausted the
parochial funds. It was a habit of mine to pass
an hour, every day, in wandering about the
dimly-lighted aisles, or sitting by the altar and
looking at a painting of the Crucifixion, which
covered a Gothic window back of the dais. The
sun, early in the forenoon, used to rest for five or
ten minutes on the glass directly above the
Savior's head, and, blending with the aureola
which the artist had placed around the angelic
brows, produced a striking effect.

The painting, and the soothing twilight of the
spot, lifted me into holy atmospheres. Here I
came and thought of life and the world — not
this world, or this life; but the Life and the
World beyond.

Out of my visits to the church grew an incident
which I cannot resist recording. A story within
a story, says Goethe, is a flaw in art. But life is
made up of episodes — a story within a story.

One morning I was leaving the church when I
heard somebody sound the keys of the organ in
the loft. There is a rich, gloomy pathos about
the instrument that always impresses me. I stood
listening to the mellow, irregular notes, touched
at random. Presently the musician lingered on
an octave, as if to gather strength for a prolonged
flight — then the splendid Wedding March of
Mendelssohn broke along the aisles, and soared up
to the shadowy dome.

How magically those unseen fingers wrung the
meaning of the great maestro from the inanimate
keys! with what power and delicacy of touch!

As I listened, the sacred candles were suddenly
lighted, and in their lambent glare a thousand
ghosts crowded into the carven pews, thronged the
gallery; the priest stood in the chancel; and then
the bridal pageant swept by, and then the grand
music burst out beyond control, surging away
among the resonant arches in tumultuous waves
of sound; and then — as if to render the illusion
perfect — the clock in the belfry struck twelve.

At the last stroke, the music ceased, the church
was emptied of its ghostly audience, the scented
candles flickered out, and I stood alone. I could
have wept with an undefined, mysterious sorrow,
— wept the loss of something I had never known,
something that might have been!

Again the music rose, but more gently — a
melody of Beethoven. It was left unfinished.
The organ-lid closed abruptly; I heard the fine
click of the key turning in the wards, and hastened
to the vestibule of the church to catch a glimpse
of the musician.

As I gained the door, a young girl, leading a

little boy by the hand, was slowly descending the
broad oaken staircase.

“Were you playing the organ, a moment
since?” I asked, doubtfully.

“Yes.”

“Are you the organist here?”

“No, sir; but my father was.”

“Was?”

“They took papa away last week,” said the
boy simply; “and this is Clara Dujardine, my
sister, who loves him.”

They passed on.

Every morning for several weeks the child-musician
came to the choir. It was not hard to
understand why the poor girl lingered there, day
after day, playing the same glorious music always
— the music which the old organist had loved.

Suddenly her visits ceased.

The sunshine rested on the head of the painted
Christ, and lighted up the stained windows; the
dreary sexton, and, now and then, a priest or two,
found their way into the sanctuary: but I waited

in vain for the girl with her spiritual eyes and
fragile hands.

In the ancient French burying-ground, is a
humble mound which the delicate grass, I like to
think, takes pleasures in making beautiful; before
it touches the other graves. Spring-time had
muffled it in flowers, the day I bent down and
read the simple inscription:

Clara Dujardine.

Aged 17.

Near the head-stone, with a wreath of immortelles
in his shut hand, sat the little boy — asleep.

The sultry, dreadful days; the huge city in its
swoon-like silence; the busy, busy death! — how
these things stay with my thought. Here, in
pleasant New England, sometimes in the twilight,
invisible fingers play for me the sad strains of
Beethoven, the Wedding March of Mendelssohn.

9. CHAPTER IX.
Agnes.

FOR heaven's sake, Lynde,” said
Howland, one evening, “let us have
our coffee and segars on the back
piazza. Human nature cannot stand
ten funerals to one cup of Mocha.”

The hearses crawled by the house
day and night, an interminable train.

“Coffee on the back porch, Christina.”

As Christina placed our bamboo chairs on the
verandah, I saw by her swollen eyelids that she
had been weeping.

“Christina?” said I, inquiringly.

“Little Agnes, sir — I'm afraid she is very
sick.”

Little Agnes! Christina's child, the only
flower that blossomed for one poor life — the little
pale bloom of love that sprung up in the crevice
of a broken heart.

I do not know Christina's history; but I
imagine it would not be impossible to guess. I
think that a page of it was written on the face of
the child.

Agnes was fairer than her mother; she had her
mother's willowy form, the same ductile voice;
but the light hair, thin lips, and sensitive nostrils,
were not of Christina's race. The passions of two
alien natures were welded in that diminutive
frame.

Howland and I had made a pet of the girl, for
she had a hundred pretty womanly ways, and a
certain sadness older than herself — a sadness
peculiar to such waifs.

The sick child lay up stairs, in Christina's
sleeping-room. One glance at the serene face
assured us there was no hope: the radiance of
another world was dawning on the forehead.

That night little Agnes passed away. I was
sorry for Christina, but not for little Agnes!

Christina, in her bereavement, was not noisy
and absurd, like women I have seen. Servitude
had been a hundred years taming the blood in
her veins.

Her grief expressed itself in silent caresses.
She sat by the bedside all day, dressing the child
with flowers. Now she would lay a knot of
pansies on the still heart, now she would smooth
one of the pitiful little hands — yearning, dying
for some faint sign of recognition. Then she
picked off the flowers, one by one, and rearranged
them. Fondly combed the long silk hair over
her fingers, with a sad half-smile, and not a tear
comforting her dry eyelids. There was pathos
in that.

The carriage which was to convey the child to
the cemetery, drew up at our door early in the
afternoon.

When Christina heard the wheels grate on the
curb-stone, her lip quivered, and she reached out
her arms, as if she would fold the babe forever on
the bosom where it could never nestle again.

“Not yet, please — not quite yet!”

The sorrow and supplication of those words
were not to be resisted.

It was almost dark when Cip raised the light
coffin in his arms, and bore it, with a sort of
rough kindness, to the carriage. His violin was
mute, that night, and many a night afterwards.

As the gate shut to, Christina stood on the
piazza, with that same sad half-smile on her lips.

“Good-bye, little Agnes!” she said, with
touching tenderness.

Then Christina went into the house, and closed
the door softly.

10. CHAPTER X.
The Red Domino.

HOWLAND and myself sat on the
back seat, and Cip outside with the
driver. So we moved on.

Saving an occasional hearse,
intersecting our way, the streets
were silent and deserted as usual.
The tall houses, here and there
looming up against the increasing
twilight, were like the ghosts of houses. The
sweet human life in them had fled. Everything
was spectral and unreal, we most of all, with that
slim black box on the front seat. A phantom
carriage, dragged by phantom horses to a graveyard!

We left Agnes in the leafy French cemetery;
and, sending the negro home with the barouche,
followed on leisurely, threading the narrow streets,
arm in arm, as speechless as two statues.

We were in what is termed the French part
of the city, one of the lower municipalities — a
district as distinct from the American precincts as
Paris is. Here, in dangerous times, long ago, a
few brave men laid the foundation of the great
and miserable city. The houses, to all appearances,
were built immediately after the Deluge;
and the streets, crowded with the odd-ends of
architecture, branch off into each other in the
most whimsical fashion.

As we wheeled round the angle of one of these
wrinkled thoroughfares, our ears were saluted by
an exclamation of deep satisfaction, and a merry
peal of girlish laughter; at the same instant we
found ourselves face to face with two persons who
were apparently costumed for a bal masque —
one, with a certain uncouth dignity, in the showy
court-dress of the time of Louis Quatorze, and the

other, seemingly a young and pretty woman,
dressed as a page. The faces of both were concealed
by semi-masks, a short fringed curtain
shielding the lower features.

A door at the right of us was thrown open,
and a flood of light fell glitteringly on these two
personages who occupied the confined sidewalk,
and seemed disposed to dispute our passage.[1]

Howland attempted to push by when the page
laid her small gloved hand on his shoulder.

“By your leave, messieurs,” said the page,
“this is Louis XIV! — is n't it, Charley?”

The man nodded.

“We were instructed by our queen,” continued
the mask, “to fill two vacant seats at her royal
board. She gives a banquet to-night; plates were
set for twenty favorites of the ermine. Eighteen
came, and two didn't — they neglected even to

send their regrets. Impolite in them—was n't
it, Charley?”

“Confoundedly,” said the monarch, curtly.

“But they had some slight excuse; they were
quite dead; and we forgive 'em, don't we,
Charley?”

“We forgive 'em.”

“What does all this mummery mean?” said
Howland, impatiently.

“There! don't be cross. It means that we
crave your presence at the feast. O, you must
come! Or we'll have the whole regal household
buzzing at your ears in a pair of seconds!”

While the girl spoke, a dozen maskers—mandarins,
satyrs, and outlandish figures,—crowded
the doorway, and seemed waiting only for the
word to seize us bodily. There was no chance
for retreat.

“Let us go with these jesters,” said Howland,
in a whisper, “since we cannot help ourselves
without trouble. We are among the Romans.
This is a new edition of the Decamerone.”

“How fortunately we met you,” cried the
girl. “Come!”

Her mask slipped aside, and for an instant I
caught a profile view of a pretty, aquiline nose,
one sunny eye, and a mouth llke a moss-rose.

“Now, Mollie,” said the man, thrusting his
arm through mine. The page took coquettish
possession of Howland.

We were conducted throught a bare, uncarpeted
entry, at the end of which a green-baize door
opened into a saloon. The masqueraders whom
we had seen at the entrance, now seated themselves
at the table, which extended nearly the
entire length of the room.

Our appearance on the threshold was greeted
with a shout of laughter.

A woman in a blood-red domino and scarlet
satin mask, half rose from a fauteuil, as we
entered, waved her hand to us graciously, and
sunk back on the downy cushions with such unassumed
grace and majesty, that I involuntarily

removed my hat. Howland bit his lip, and made
a low bow.

“You are welcome, gentlemen,” said the Red
Domino.

The voice was low, and sweet, and tremulous,
like the sound of a harp-string, lightly touched.

The page proceeded to introduce to us the
motley people, half of whom were women, and all
evidently citizens of Bohemia.

“This,” began the girl, with mock gravity,
“is our light-o'-foot, Zephyr, eating caramels;
that dear creature, there, in blue, who is waiting
for a chance to press Jacques' fingers under the
table, is called Next-to-heaven, but she's only
next to Jacques, which is much the same thing.
The young lady with wings, who looks as if she
were going to fly away, and never does, is
L'Amour. Dear me! some of you have characters,
and some of you have n't. This is Rose
Bonbon, and this, Madam la Marquise with the
snowiest shoulder in Louisiana. You should see
them with their masks off—and be unhappy!”

“This,” proceeded the speaker, turning to a
slim harlequin, who resembled the small blade of
a penknife, “is a sentimental gentleman who
writes verses to eyebrows—he makes six copies
of each sonetto, and so kills half a dozen birds
with one stone. This is Robert le—what's-his
name. This is Hamlet, you know him by his
inky cloak: this is Petruchio, the woman-tamer
tamed by a woman, (Mrs. P. lectures him!) and
here is Friar Lawrence, who will confess you for
a picayune, provided, always, you are young,
handsome, and feminine—but you must be the
last, he's so pious!”

“And you,” said Howland, smiling in spite of
himself, “you are—”

“Nobody in particular, very much at your
service!”

And the girl walked archly away on the points
of her toes, like a ballet-dancer.

While this outré introduction was being concluded,
I glanced around the salon. A globed
lamp, suspended by a silver chain, hung like a

full moon over the centre of the table. Projecting
from the frescoed walls on either side were
Chinese lanterns, covered with flat landscapes and
hieroglyphics. Ancient, mediæval and modern
furniture was piled about the room in grotesque
confusion. It was like an antiquary's collection.
No two pieces matching. One window was hung
with blue brocade, alive with an Etruscan vine-work
of gold thread; a second, unpleasantly green
with a Venitian blind. The floor was muffled in
a Turkish carpet, wrought so naturally with
azaleas and ipomeas, that their perfumes seemed
to fill the chamber.

But the lounges, the drapery, and the inlaid
chairs, as I looked at them more closely, proved
to be only clever imitations of the real thing—
the painted and gilded paraphernalia of the stage.
This room, I have since thought, was probably
the green-room of the Italian Opera House, fitted
up for the occasion, from “the properties.”

We took our places at the table, and the wine
went round; jests flew from lip to lip, like

mocking-birds, and “short swallow-flights of
song” from the mouths of mysterious women;
while a band of unseen musicians, somewhere
behind a screen, now and then broke into a
delirious waltz.

All this was so bizarre, so like an ingenious
dream, that I expected every moment to wake up,
and find myself sitting on our verandah, at home,
a burnt-out segar at my feet, and the fountain
laughing in the garden.

Howland alone was silent and distrait, emptying
glass after glass with the mechanical air of an
automaton.

Opposite him sat a bleak, attenuated man clad
in black silk tights, the breast and hips of which
were trimmed with strips of white cloth, in painful
imitation of a skeleton. His hands were long and
bony, and needed no artifice to make them seem
as if they belonged to the pasteboard death's-head
that screened his features.

After some minutes, I became aware that this
singular person regulated his motions by those of

Howland, resting his head on one hand, and
draining his glass at the same time Mark drank.
I wondered if Howland noticed him.

“A toast!” cried the Harlequin, springing up
in his chair, and resting one parti-colored foot on
the edge of the table.

We all stood, excepting the Red Domino, with
fresh glasses. I did not hear what the toast was,
for clink! went a glass; and the sharp splinters
sparkled on the cloth.

“The queen has dropt her goblet,” said Rose
Bonbon.

“Then she must sing us a song to take the
sound out of our ears,” cried the Friar.

“A penalty, a penalty!”

“A song!” shrieked a dozen voices.

The Red Domino rose slowly from the fauteuil,
and the voice which I had longed to hear again,
issued tremulously from beneath the chin-curtain
of the mask. I watched her eyes as she sang:

Here the skeleton-man leaned heavily against
the table, and Howland smiled — but such a bitter
smile. He had won the drinking match!

Two maskers carried the mime, who had merely
fainted, to an adjoining room.

“That was the cantatrice's husband,” said the
Blue Lady to me, in a whisper,

“Her husband? Good heavens! see how
coolly she takes it!”

“Yes. La Reine does n't worship him.”

“No?”

“The Cholera,” said the Harlequin.

“The dark Death,” said Hamlet, “ `a little
more than kin and less than kind!' ”

“The song, give us the song!” cried a man,
covered from head to feet with spangles, looking
as if he had just been dipt into a bath of quicksilver.

“The song, the song!” shrieked the voices.

The Red Domino had not changed her position

during this scene, but stood there like a statue
carved out of a boulder of red chalk-stone.

Howland, with his face deathly pale, bent
forward to listen.

Again that sweet voice, lower and more tremulous
than before, stole into the air.

It was not fancy this time, her eyes burned
through the mask at Mark:

Howland rose wildly from his chair, and staggering
toward the Red Domino, sunk down at her feet.

“I am dying,” said Howland, “but I know
that voice! My heart is breaking with it!”

With an air of love and remorse, she stooped
over Mark, and folded him in her arms.

“Your face!” said Howland. “Your face,
quick! Let me look on your face!”

Then Celeste tore off the mask and rested her
head on his bosom. Then she sobbed and
moaned — the soul that was within her.

So she comes to me out of the gray mists and
shadows of the Past — the woman who found her
heart when it was somewhat late.

This was years ago. But every Mardi Gras, it
is said, a sorrowful queenly lady, robed from foot
to forehead in deep crimson, glides in among the
gayer maskers, and whenever she appears, the
laugh dies on the lip.

11. CHAPTER XI.
The Danseuse.

THE ensuing summer I returned
North depressed by the result of
my sojourn in New Orleans. It
was only by devoting myself, body
and soul, to some intricate pursuit
that I could dispel the gloom which
threatened to seriously affect my
health.

The Moon-Apparatus was insufficient to distract
me. I turned my attention to mechanism,
and was successful in producing several wonderful
pieces of work, among which may be mentioned
a brass butterfly, made to flit so naturally in the
air as to deceive the most acute observers. The

motion of the toy, the soft down and gorgeous
damask-stains on the pinions, were declared quite
perfect. The thing is rusty and wont work now,
I tried to set it going for Dr. Pendegrast, the
other day.

A manikin musician, playing a few exquisite
airs on a miniature piano, likewise excited much
admiration. This figure bore such an absurd,
unintentional resemblance to a gentleman who
has since distinguished himself as a pianist, that
I presented the trifle to a lady admirer of
Gottschalk.

I also became a taxidermist, and stuffed a pet
bird with springs and diminutive flutes, causing it
to hop and carol, in its cage, with great glee.
But my master-piece was a nimble white mouse,
with pink eyes, that could scamper up the walls,
and masticate bits of cheese in an extraordinary
style. My chamber-maid shrieked, and
jumped up on a chair, whenever I let the little
fellow loose in her presence. One day, unhappily,
the mouse, while nosing around after its favorite

aliment, got snapt in a rat-trap that yawned in
the closet, and I was never able to readjust the
machinery.

Engaged in these useful inventions,—useful.
because no exercise of the human mind is ever in
vain,—my existence for two or three years was
so placid and uneventful, I began to hope that the
shadows which had followed on my path from
childhood, making me unlike other men, had
returned to that unknown world where they
properly belong; but the Fates were only taking
breath to work out more surely the problem of my
destiny. I must keep nothing back. I must
extenuate nothing.

I am about to lift the vail of mystery which,
for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of
Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own
weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not
shrink from the unvailing.

No hand but mine can now perform the task.
There was, indeed, a man who might have done

this better than I. But he went his way ir
silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.

On the corner of Clarke and Crandall streets,
in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house.
It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of
structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy
look, though once it must have been a
blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human
beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful,
according to their experience. The very air of
some front-doors tells their history.

This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy
look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable
number of Irish families, while a picturesque
junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at
the time of which I write, it was a second-rate
boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and
rather largely patronized by poor, but honest,
literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus,
and such like gilt people.

My apartments on Crandall street, were opposite
this building, to which my attention was

directed soon after taking possession of the rooms,
by the discovery of the following facts:

First, that a charming lady lodged on the
second-floor front, and sang like a canary every
morning.

Second, that her name was Mary Ware.

Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and
had two lovers—only two.

Fourth, that Mary Ware and the page, who,
years before, had drawn Howland and myself into
that fatal masquerade, were the same person.

This last discovery moved me strangely, aside
from the fact that her presence opened an old
wound. The power which guides all the actions
of my life constrained me to watch this woman.

Mary Ware was the leading-lady at The
Olympic. Night after night found me in the
parquette. I can think of nothing with which to
compare the airiness and utter abandon of her
dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She
was one of beauty's best thoughts, then. Her
glossy gold hair reached down to her waist,

shading one of those mobile faces which remind
you of Guido's picture of Beatrix Cenci —
there was something so fresh and enchanting in
the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking
out winningly from under their drooping fringes,
were at once the delight and misery of young men.

Ah! you were distracting in your nights of
triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your
elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets
made the pulses leap; but I remember when you
lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank daylight,
with the glory faded from your brow, and “none
so poor as to do you reverence.”

Then I stooped down and kissed you — but
not till then.

Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her
lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of
them was commonplace enough — well-made, well-dressed,
shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets
out of patience with her best works, throws off
such things by the gross, instead of swearing.

He was a lieutenant, in the navy I think. The
gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.

The other was a man of different mould, and
interested me in a manner for which I could not
then account. The first time I saw him did not
seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an
after-impression.

Every line of his countenance denoted character;
a certain capability, I mean, but whether
for good or evil was not so plain. I should have
called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar
which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving
him a sardonic expression when he smiled.

His frame might have set an anatomist wild
with delight — six feet two, deep-chested, knitted
with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to
amble on plush carpets.

“Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride
by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant
out of that second-story window.”

I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two
men Mary Ware loved most — for I think she

loved them both. A woman's heart was the
insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt
the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.

The flirtation, however, was food enough for
the whole neighborhood. But faintly did the
gossips dream of the strange drama that was
being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of
Sophocles, under their noses.

They were very industrious in tearing Mary
Ware's good name to pieces. Some laughed at
the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth;
but they all amiably united in condemning Mary
Ware.

This, possibly, was strictly proper, for Mary
Ware was a woman: the woman is always to
blame in such cases; the man is hereditarily and
constitutionally in the right; the woman is born in
the wrong. That is the world's verdict, that is what
Justice says; but we should weigh the opinion of
Justice with care, since she is represented, by
poets and sculptors, not satirically, I trust, as a
blind Woman.

It was so from the beginning. Was not the
first lady of the world the cause of all our woe?
I feel safe in leaving it to a jury of gentle dames.
But from all such judges, had I a sister on trial
good Lord deliver her.

This state of affairs had continued for five or
six months, when it was reported that Julius
Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The
Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall
street, and Julius waited upon Mary's footsteps
with the fidelity of a shadow.

Mrs. Grundy was somewhat appeased.

Yet. — though Mary went to the Sunday concerts
with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the
Lieutenant's roses in her bosom.

Mrs. Grundy said that.

12. CHAPTER XII.
A Mystery.

ONE drizzly November morning —
how well I remember it! — I was
awakened by a series of nervous
raps on my bed-room door. The
noise startled me from an unpleasant
dream.

“O, sir!” cried the chamber-maid
on the landing, “There's
been a dreadful time across the street. They've
gone and killed Mary Ware!”

“Ah!”

That was all I could say. Cold drops of
perspiration stood on my forehead.

I looked at my watch; it was eleven o'clock;

I had over-slept myself, having sat up late the
previous night.

I dressed hastily, and, without waiting for
breakfast, pushed my way through the murky
crowd that had collected in front of the house
opposite, and passed up stairs, unquestioned.

When I entered the room, there were six people
present: a thick-set gentleman, in black, with a
bland professional air, a physician; two policemen;
Adelaide Woods, an actress; Mrs. Marston, the
landlady; and Julius Kenneth.

In the centre of the chamber, on the bed, lay
the body of Mary Ware — as pale as Seneca's
wife.

I shall never forget it. The corse haunted me
for years afterwards, the dark streaks under the
eyes, and the wavy hair streaming over the
pillow — the dead gold hair. I stood by her for
a moment, and turned down the counterpane,
which was drawn up closely to the chin.

At the head of the bed sat Julius Kenneth,
bending over the icy hand which he held in his
own. He was kissing it.

The gentleman in black was conversing in
undertones with Mrs. Marston, who every now
and then glanced furtively toward Mary Ware.

The two policemen were examining the doors,
closets and windows of the apartment with,
obviously, little success.

There was no fire in the air-tight stove, but the
place was suffocatingly close. I opened a window,
and leaned against the casement to get a breath
of fresh air.

The physician approached me. I muttered
something to him indistinctly, for I was partly
sick with the peculiar mouldy smell that pervaded
the room.

“Yes,” he began, scrutinizing me, “the affair
looks very perplexing, as you remark. Professional
man, sir? No? Bless me! — beg pardon.
Never in my life saw anything that looked so
exceedingly like nothing. Thought, at first, 'twas

a clear case of suicide — door locked, key on the
inside, place undisturbed; but then we find no
instrument with which the subject could have
inflicted that wound on the neck. Queer. Party
must have escaped up chimney. But how?
Don't know. The windows are at least thirty
feet from the ground. It would be impossible for
a person to jump that far, even if he could clear
the iron railing below. Which he could'nt.
Disagreeable things to jump on, those spikes, sir.
Must have been done with a sharp knife. Queer,
very. Party meant to make sure work of it.
The carotid neatly severed, upon my word.”

The medical gentleman went on in this monologuic
style for fifteen minutes, during which time
Kenneth did not raise his lips from Mary's fingers.

Approaching the bed, I spoke to him; but he
only shook his head in reply.

I understood his grief.

After regaining my chamber, I sat listlessly for
three or four hours, gazing into the grate. The
twilight flitted in from the street; but I did not

heed it. A face among the coals fascinated me.
It came and went and came. Now I saw a cavern
hung with lurid stalactites; now a small Vesuvius
vomiting smoke and flame; now a bridge spanning
some tartarean gulf; then these crumbled, each
in its turn, and from out the heated fragments
peered the one inevitable face.

The Evening Mirror, of that day, gave the
following detailed report of the inquest:

“This morning, at eight o'clock, Mary Ware,
the celebrated danseuse, was found dead in her
chamber, at her late residence on the corner of
Clarke and Crandall streets. The perfect order
of the room, and the fact that the door was locked
on the inside, have induced many to believe that
the poor girl was the victim of her own rashness.
But we cannot think so. That the door was
fastened on the inner side, proves nothing except,
indeed, that the murderer was hidden in the
apartment. That the room gave no evidence of a
struggle having taken place, is also an insignificant

point. Two men, or even one, grappling suddenly
with the deceased, who was a slight woman, would
have prevented any great resistance. The deceased
was dressed in a ballet-costume, and was,
as we conjecture, murdered directly after her
return from the theatre. On a chair near the
bed, lay several fresh bouquets, and a water-proof
cloak which she was in the habit of wearing over
her dancing-dress, on coming home from the
theatre at night. No weapon whatever was found
on the premises. We give below all the material
testimony elicited by the coroner. It explains
little.

“Josephine Marston deposes: I keep a boarding
house at No. 131 Crandall street. Miss Ware
has boarded with me for the past two years. Has
always borne a good character as far as I know.
I do not think she had many visitors; certainly no
male visitors, excepting a Lieutenant King, and
Mr. Kenneth to whom she was engaged. I do
not know when King was last at the house; not
within three days, I am confident. Deceased told

me that he had gone away. I did not see her
last night when she came home. The hall-door is
never locked; each of the boarders has a latchkey.
The last time I saw Miss Ware was just
before she went to the theatre, when she asked me
to call her at eight o'clock (this morning) as she
had promised to walk with `Jules,' meaning Mr.
Kenneth. I knocked at the door nine or ten
times, but received no answer. Then I grew
frightened and called one of the lady boarders,
Miss Woods, who helped me to force the lock.
The key fell on the floor inside as we pushed
against the door. Mary Ware was lying on the
bed, dressed. Some matches were scattered under
the gas-burner by the bureau. The room presented
the same appearance it does now.

“Adelaide Woods deposes: I am an actress by
profession. I occupy the room next to that of the
deceased. Have known her twelve months. It
was half-past eleven when she came home; she
stopped in my chamber for perhaps three-quarters
of an hour. The call-boy of The Olympic usually

accompanies her home from the theatre when she
is alone. I let her in. Deceased had misplaced
her night-key. The partition between our rooms
is of brick; but I do not sleep soundly, and should
have heard any unusual noise. Two weeks ago,
Miss Ware told me she was to be married to Mr.
Kenneth in January next. The last time I saw
them together was the day before yesterday. I
assisted Mrs Marston in breaking open the door.
[Describes the position of the body, etc., etc.]

“Here the call-boy was summoned, and testified
to accompanying the deceased home the night
before. He came as far as the steps with her.
The door was opened by a woman; could not
swear it was Miss Woods, though he knows her
by sight. The night was dark, and there was no
lamp burning in the entry.

“Julius Kenneth deposes: I am a master-machinist.
Reside at No. — Forsythe street.
Miss Ware was my cousin. We were engaged
to be married next — [Here the witness' voice
failed him.] The last time I saw her was on

Wednesday morning, on which occasion we walked
out together. I did not leave my room last
evening: was confined by a severe cold. A
Lieutenant King used to visit my cousin frequently;
it created considerable talk in the
neighborhood: I did not like it, and requested
her to break the acquaintance. She informed me,
Wednesday, that King had been ordered to some
foreign station, and would trouble me no more
Was excited at the time, hinted at being tired of
living; then laughed, and was gayer than she had
been for weeks. Deceased was subject to fits of
depression. She had engaged to walk with me
this morning at eight. When I reached Clark
street I learned that she — [Here the witness,
overcome by emotion, was allowed to retire.]

“Dr. Wren deposes: [This gentleman was
very learned and voluble, and had to be suppressed
several times by the coroner. We furnish
a brief synopsis of his testimony.] I was called
in to view the body of the deceased. A deep
incision on the throat, two inches below the lef-ear,

severing the left common carotid and the
internal jugular vein, had been inflicted with some
sharp instrument. Such a wound would, in my
opinion, produce death almost instantaneously.
The body bore no other signs of violence. A slight
mark, almost indistinguishable, in fact, extended
from the upper lip toward the right nostril —
some hurt, I suppose, received in infancy. Deceased
must have been dead a number of hours,
the rigor mortis having already supervened,
etc., etc.

“Dr. Ceccarini corroborated the above testimony.

“The night-watchman and seven other persons
were then placed on the stand; but their statements
threw no fresh light on the case.

“The situation of Julius Kenneth, the lover of
the ill-fated girl, draws forth the deepest commiseration.
Miss Ware was twenty-four years
of age.

“Who the criminal is, and what could have
led to the perpetration of the cruel act, are questions

which, at present, threaten to baffle the
sagacity of the police. If such deeds can be
committed with impunity in a crowded city, like
this, who is safe from the assassin's steel?”

13. CHAPTER XIII.
Thou art the Man.

I COULD but smile on reading all
this serious nonsense.

After breakfast, the next morning,
I made my toilet with extreme
care, and presented myself at the
sheriff's office.

Two gentlemen who were sitting
at a table, busy with papers, started
nervously to their feet, as I announced myself. I
bowed very calmly to the sheriff, and said,

“I am the person who murdered Mary Ware!”

Of course I was instantly arrested; and that
evening, in jail, I had the equivocal pleasure of
reading these paragraphs among the police items
of the Mirror:

“The individual who murdered the ballet-girl,
in the night of the third inst., in a house on
Crandall street, surrendered himself to the sheriff
this forenoon.

“He gave his name as Paul Lynde, and resides
opposite the place where the tragedy was enacted.
He is a man of medium stature, has restless gray
eyes, chestnust hair, and a supernaturally pale
countenance. He seems a person of excellent
address, is said to be wealthy, and nearly connected
with an influential New England family.
Notwithstanding his gentlemanly manner, there is
that about him which would lead one to select him
from out a thousand, as a man of cool and desperate
character.

“Mr. Lynde's voluntary surrender is not the
least astonishing feature of this affair; for, had he
preserved silence he would, beyond a doubt, have
escaped even suspicion. The murder was planned
and executed with such deliberate skill, that there
is little or no evidence to complicate him. In
truth, there is no evidence against him, excepting

his own confession, which is meagre and confusing
enough. He freely acknowledges the crime, but
stubbornly refuses to enter into any details. He
expresses a desire to be hanged immediately!!

“How Mr. Lynde entered the chamber, and
by what means he left it, after committing the
deed, and why he cruelly killed a lady with
whom he had had (as we gather from the testimony,)
no previous acquaintance, — are enigmas
which still perplex the public mind, and will not
let curiosity sleep. These facts, however, will
probably be brought to light during the impending
trial. In the meantime, we await the dénouement
with interest.”

14. CHAPTER XIV.
Paul's Confession.

ON the afternoon following this
disclosure, the door of my cell
turned on its hinges, and Julius
Kenneth entered.

In his presence I ought to have
trembled; but I was calm and
collected. He, feverish and dangerous.

“You received my note?”

“Yes; and have come here, as you requested.”

I waved him to a chair, which he refused to
take. Stood leaning on the back of it.

“You of course know, Mr. Kenneth, that I
have refused to reveal the circumstances connected

with the death of Mary Ware? I wished to
make the confession to you alone.”

He regarded me for a moment from beneath his
shaggy eyebrows.

“Well?”

“But even to you I will assign no reason for
the course I pursued. It was necessary that Mary
Ware should die.”

“Well?”

“I decided that she should die in her chamber,
and to that end I purloined her night-key.

Julius Kenneth looked through and through me,
as I spoke.

“On Friday night after she had gone to the
theatre, I entered the hall-door by means of the
key, and stole unobserved to her room, where I
secreted myself under the bed, or in that small
clothes-press near the stove — I forget which.
Sometime between eleven and twelve o'clock,
Mary Ware returned. While she was in the act
of lighting the gas, I pressed a handkerchief,
saturated with chloroform, over her mouth. You

know the effect of chloroform? I will, at this
point spare you further detail, merely remarking
that I threw my gloves and the handkerchief in
the stove; but I'm afraid there was not fire
enough to consume them.”

Kenneth walked up and down the cell greatly
agitated; then seated himself on the foot of
the bed

“Curse you!”

“Are you listening to me, Mr. Kenneth?”

“Yes!”

“I extinguished the light, and proceeded to
make my escape from the room, which I did in a
manner so simple that the detectives, through
their desire to ferret out wonderful things will
never discover it, unless, indeed, you betray me.
The night, you will recollect, was foggy; it was
impossible to discern an object at four yards distance
— this was fortunate for me. I raised the
window-sash and let myself out cautiously, holding
on by the sill, until my feet touched on the
moulding which caps the window below. I then

drew down the sash. By standing on the extreme
left of the cornice, I was able to reach the tin
water-spout of the adjacent building, and by that
I descended to the sidewalk.”

The man glowered at me like a tiger, his eyes
green and golden with excitement: I have since
wondered that he did not tear me to pieces.

“On gaining the street,” I continued coolly,
“I found that I had brought the knife with me.
It should have been left in the chamber — it
would have given the whole thing the aspect of
suicide. It was too late to repair the blunder, so
I threw the knife —”

“Into the river!” exclaimed Kenneth, involuntarily.

And then I smiled.

“How did you know it was I!” he shricked.

“Hush! they will overhear you in the corridor.
It was as plain as day. I knew it before I had
been five minutes in the room. First, because
you shrank instinctively from the corpse, though
you seemed to be caressing it. Secondly, when I

looked into the stove, I saw a glove and handkerchief,
partly consumed; and then I instantly accounted
for the faint close smell which had affected
me before the room was ventilated. It was chloroform.
Thirdly, when I went to open the window,
I noticed that the paint was scraped off the
brackets which held the spout to the next house.
This conduit had been newly painted two days
previously — I watched the man at work; the
paint on the brackets was thicker than anywhere
else, and had not dried. On looking at your feet,
which I did critically, while speaking to you, I
saw that the leather on the inner side of each boot
was slightly chafed, paint-marked. It is a way
of mine to put this and that together!”

“If you intend to betray me —”

“O, no, but I don't, or I should not be here —
alone with you. I am, as you may allow, not
quite a fool.”

“Indeed, sir, you are as subtle as —”

“Yes, I would n't mention him.”

“Who?”

“The devil.”

Kenneth mused.

“May I ask, Mr. Lynde, what you intend
to do?”

“Certainly — remain here.”

“I don't understand you,” said Kenneth with
an air of perplexity.

“If you will listen patiently, you shall learn
why I have acknowledged this deed, why I would
bear the penalty. I believe there are vast, intense
sensations from which we are excluded, by the
conventional fear of a certain kind of death.
Now, this pleasure, this ecstacy, this something,
I don't know what, which I have striven for all
my days, is known only to a privileged few —
innocent men, who, through some oversight of the
law, are hanged by the neck! How rich is
Nature in compensations! Some men are born to
be hung, some have hanging thrust upon them,
and some (as I hope to do,) achieve hanging. It
appears ages since I commenced watching for an
opportunity like this. Worlds could not tempt

me to divulge your guilt, nor could worlds have
tempted me to commit your crime, for a man's
conscience should be at ease to enjoy, to the
utmost, this delicious death! Our interview is at
at end, Mr. Kenneth. I held it my duty to say
this much to you.”

And I turned my back on him.

“One word, Mr. Lynde.”

Kenneth came to my side, and laid a heavy
hand on my shoulder, that red right hand, which
all the tears of the angels cannot make white
again.

As he stood there, his face suddenly grew so
familiar to me — yet so vaguely familiar — that I
started. It seemed as if I had seen such a face,
somewhere, in my dreams, hundreds of years ago.
The face in the grate.

“Did you send this to me last month?” asked
Kenneth, holding up a slip of paper on which was
scrawled, Watch them — in my handwriting.

“Yes,” I answered.

Then it struck me that these few thoughtless

words, which some sinister spirit had impelled me
to write, were the indirect cause of the whole
catastrophe.

“Thank you,” he said hurriedly. “I watched
them!” Then, after a pause, “I shall go far
from here. I can not, I will not die yet. Mary
was to have been my wife, so she would have
hidden her shame — O cruel! she, my own
cousin, and we the last two of our race! Life is
not sweet to me, it is bitter, bitter; but I shall live
until I stand front to front with him. And you?
They will not harm you — you are a madman!”

Julius Kenneth was gone before I could reply.
The cell door shut him out forever — shut him
out in the flesh. His spirit was not so easily
exorcised.

After all, it was a wretched fiasce. Two
officious friends of mine, who had played chess
with me, at my lodgings, on the night of the 3rd,
proved an alibi; and I was literally turned out
of the Tombs; for I insisted on being executed.

Then it was maddening to have the newspapers
call me a monomaniac.

I a monomaniac?

What was Pythagoras, Newton, Fulton? Have
not the great original lights of every age, been
regarded as madmen? Science, like religion, has
its martyrs.

Recent surgical discoveries have, I believe, sustained
me in my theory; or, if not, they ought to
have done so. There is said to be a pleasure in
drowning. Why not in strangulation?

In another field of science, I shall probably
have full justice awarded me — I now allude to
the Moon-Apparatus, which is still in an unfinished
state, but progressing.

15. CHAPTER XV.
A Long Journey.

JULIUS KENNETH disappeared
from the city. If his sudden departure
was noticed, it excited no
comment. No one suspected the
important rôle he had played in
the tragedy; and the public
ceased to be interested, as new
events crowded it off the stage.
If anybody recalled the circumstance, it was only
to wonder, and be lost in the impenetrable darkness
which wrapt the story of Mary Ware.

I think that twelve months, or more, had
passed when I first got tidings of Julius Kenneth
— he had sailed out of New Bedford, or Marble-head,
or somewhere, in a whaling ship.

For two years I lost all trace of him. Then he
abruptly turned up at Panama, on the way to
California.

Then I heard of him in a small town on the
coast of South America.

Then in India.

Then in Switzerland.

Afterwards in Egypt, and Syria.

Always wandering.

Travellers, when they came home, spoke of a
tall gaunt man that went stalking about the ends
of the earth.

And I pictured him to myself — roaming moodily
from place to place, incessant, tireless, urged on;
and ever before him flew a frightened little Shape
that was ready to drop dead, whenever it paused
to look back, and saw this perpetual man at
its heels.

And the man, too, I fancied, sometimes looked
back — and then he pressed on more rapidly.
Always wandering.

Whether Julius Kenneth ever caught up with

this Shape, or even if he were ever searching for
any one in these weary journeys, I never knew:
but I know that the chief trouble of my life, at
that time, was the thought of this man coming
and going, so ceaselessly.

Always wandering. No resting spot. No
tranquil fireside. But on through snow-storms.

Whipped by the sleet.

Burnt by the sun.

Blinded by the bronzed dust of the desert.

I used to lie in bed, and think of him, —
prowling about the Pyramids, in the gray dawn;
or standing alone in the Arctic midnight; or
gazing up at the crags of Ben Nevis; or among
the Caffre huts; or sitting by the camp-fires of
the Bedouins — as fine an Arab as any of them.
Then he drifted down reedy rivers in more boats,
and tossed on the ocean in more ships than were
ever built in the world.

I was unable, even for an hour, to rid myself of
the magnetic influence he exerted over me. I
always knew where he was, or thought I knew.

If I took up a volume of Travels, this man
went with me from beginning to end — always
the hero of every perilous adventure, always
doing everything but stopping.

If, by any chance, I looked in at Matelli's shop-window,
where there used to be an Alpine landscape,
composed of confectionary, Julius Kenneth,
in chocolate, was always sure to be scaling sugar
precipices, setting my hair on end with terror.

He became an irrepressible torment to me, an
incubus day and night. I am not clear as to how
many years this lasted.

But one summer morning, I woke up refreshed
from a dream in which he did not intrude. A
weight seemed lifted off my mind; a cloud gone;
and I knew that Julius Kenneth, somewhere and
somehow, had ended his wanderings — or, rather,
that he had started on a very long pilgrimage!

16. CHAPTER XVI.
Out of His Head.

THE thought that I shall be insane,
some day, that I shall be taken
from the restless world outside, to
some quiet inner retreat where I
can complete the Moon-Apparatus,
and fold my arms, like a man
who has fulfilled his mission; the
thought of this, my probable destiny,
is rather pleasant to me than otherwise.

I say probable destiny, because a certain trivial
aberration of mind has been handed down in our
family from generation to generation, with the
dented silver bowl in which Miles Standish
brewed many a punch in the olden time. This

punch, I fancy, must have somehow got into the
heads of our family, and put us out. Dr. Pendegrast
thinks so.

At all events, I am to be insane. I have made
up my mind to that.

But not yet.

I am as reasonable and matter-of-fact as a man
may well be. This house in which I pass my
days and nights, writing, is not an asylum: this
mullioned window, I grant you, is substantially
barred; but that is to keep mad folks out. I sit
here, by the grating, and watch them — princes
and beggars, going up and down. Am I to
become mellow in the head like these?

Ay; but not yet.

The man who brings me food three times a day,
is not my keeper; the refined and cheerful
gentlemen with whom I converse in our high-walled
garden, are not monomaniacs.

There is Sir Philip Sidney, who occupies an
elegant suit of drawing-rooms on my left — the
pathetic dandy! I like him, though. When he

takes off his kids, he has pluck. There is the
learned Magliabechi, on my right, busy with his
rare folios. There is the moon-painter, Claude
Lorraine (fifth floor, back,) who talks in pigments,
as if he had swallowed a spear of the
northern lights. And there is young John Keats,
down stairs, pondering over a vellum-bound missal,
illumined by some monk of the middle ages.
(Keats informs me that he seriously thinks of
finishing that fragment of Hyperion.)

They are not idiots, as the times go; they are
glorious poets and philanthropists whose thoughts
are the blood of the world.

The shadow of the church-steeple has slanted
across the street. It is twilight. The air is full
of uncertain shapes and sounds; the houses over
the way, look as if they were done in sepia;
people are walking dreamily through the hushed
streets, like apparitions; and the agile apothecary,
on the corner, has fired up the amber and emerald
jars in his show-case.

The girl in the tailor's shop, opposite, leans out
of the window, brown in the dusk, a mere crayon
outline of a girl; she fastens back the blind, showing
me how prettily she is made. Now the lamps
are lighted. The grocery-man's boy lounges,
looking up at her window. I wonder if he is
watching the plump little figure that comes and
goes on the curtain?

It is twilight. Everything is comforted and
subdued: a gentle spirit lays its finger on the lips
of care.... even on my lips...

Here comes that genial man, with the wire-covered
candle, and my supper.

“How do you find yourself, sir?” says the
man, smiling benignantly at the ceiling.

“Extremely well, thank you, what's-your-name,”
I reply. “By the way, I wish you'd
tell Magliabechi that I'd like to have a word
with him.”

“Now, could n't you be so kind as to wait till
morning?” says the man, pleasantly.

I look upon this as very considerate in him, and
conclude to wait.

I wonder who he is?

He certainly takes great interest in me. I will
do something for him, when the Moon-Apparatus
is completed. He deserves it. Dr. Pendegrast
must know him. If I should ever get out of my
head, and I shall, some day, I know, it would be
pleasant to have such a well-bred, affable fellow
for my —

Alas! how can I speak thus confidently of the
future, when — if my calculations are correct, and
everything assures they are — the long-expected
crisis is at hand? How can I pen these worse
than idle words, when I have barely time to conclude
the task which I dare not leave undone or
slighted?

What people are these hovering silently in the
shadow of my bookcases? Who is the slight girl
that looks upon me with such serious eyes? and
who is she that seems so woe-begone in her

tinselled dress? There are two men in the group
— a pale, sad man, like one I knew long ago: a
tall, brawny man, stained with travel, his face
scorched by the sun, and his feet red with desert
sand. The end must be near since these have
come to me.

Hasten back, wayworn pilgrims, to the dim
confines of the world we are to share together.

17. CHAPTER XVII
Burning a Witch.

THE incongruous events of my
life will no longer appear inexplicable,
when read by the light of
the revelation which I am on the
point of copying from this creased
and yellowed manuscript — this
manuscript which I have worn in
my bosom, and read a thousand
times, since the fatal morning when a boyish
curiosity — ah, it was something more than that!
— tempted me to seek for hidden treasures among
my father's papers, in the chest, where they had
lain mouldering years after his death.

That day I became possessed of the secret
which has tinctured all my life. That day I read
my doom, written out by his own hand — the
hand that was no more lifted up in battle against
the world.

The words are half obliterated, the tattered
pages are falling to pieces. Quick! let me copy
them.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
Two Hundred Years Old.

SUCH is the key to the meaning
of this sombre chronicle.

In new shapes old spirits are
breathed into the world, and I
am that pale Arthur Jocelyn
whom the Elders persecuted centuries
ago, when bigotry and
superstition fell like a blight on
the Colony — I, Paul Lynde.

Bitterly has the prophecy been fulfilled. Without
my own will, and unconsciously, I have woven
the black threads of my life with the fate of
those who came of a generation that hated me
and mine.

Cecil is dead. Mark Howland sleeps in an ill-starred
city. Mary Ware is dead; and Kenneth
— the last of his race. Kenneth? Kenneth?
I think it was Reuben Walforde that went stalking
about the ends of the earth!

They are gone — the white spirits and the gray.
And the time draws near, ah, so near! when my
grim ancestor shall appear, and take me into that
darkness which awaits us all.

Again I shall behold Sir Godfrey, clad in the
garb of a by-gone age, as I beheld him that
memorable night in John Jocelyn's library.

I shall hear his echoing voice, feel the humid
touch of his hand!

* * * * * *

Listen! — no, the wind brushes the elm-tree
against the house, and the stair-case creaks with
the frost.

Heaven, how the moments whirl by!

People are dancing to dulcet music in fragrant
rooms: lovers are whispering together in shadowy
alcoves: mothers are caressing their children:

there are millions of happy souls in the world,
and I —

Listen! — I wish the wind would'nt groan so
in the flue. I wish the elm-tree would n't stand
out there, in the night, frantically tossing up its
arms like an old witch at the stake.

Only an hour, now. Only sixty minutes! I
would they were so many centuries: for life is
still sweet, still youth clings to it, and I am young,
though I am Two Hundred Years Old —

Hark! — the clock is striking!

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

Mr. Lynde, like the author of The Anatomy,
seems to have predicted the time of his own demise;
but his prediction, unlike that of the melancholy
Burton, proved inaccurate.

Two years after the preceding chapter was penned,
I find Mr. Lynde besieging the Patent Office
at Washington, with a Nautical Self-Speaking
Trumpet, which, on being inflated by an air-pump,
would deliver all the orders necessary for working
a ship, allowing the skipper, in the meanwhile, to
stow himself snugly away in his bunk below.
This, as Mr. Lynde modestly remarked in his letter
to the Department, would be very convenient,
especially in “nasty weather.” As the walls of
that respectable institution, the Patent Office, enclose
the skeletons of numerous inventions nearly
as rational, I fail to see why Mr. Lynde's Trumpet

was denied a niche in the collection. The Department
refused to listen to it.

The precise date of this unfortunate gentleman's
death is unknown to me, his relatives, with strange
reticence, having declined to furnish me with the
slightest information concerning his last hours.
Dr. Pendegrast, also, when I applied to him, dealt
in such ambiguous and unsatisfactory assertions,
that I left the Asylum more than half convinced
that Mr. Lynde had not died at all; but was still
living and ready to smile, perhaps, over his own
obituary. That he was alive as late as 1861 is
proved by one of the papers in his Sketch-Book,
— a collection of MS placed at my disposal since
this romance went to press. I print the papers
here. As an illustration of a different phase of
Mr. Lynde's mind, I trust they will not prove uninteresting.