_STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL_
My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient,but untitled family; and by some event, fault or misfortune, he wasdriven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name ofhis ancestors. He sought the States; and instead of lingering ineffeminate cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploringparty of frontiersmen. He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not onlybrave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and aboveall in botany, which he particularly loved. Thus it fell that, beforemany months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courtedand bowed to his opinion.
They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of theWest. For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans, guidingthemselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons of men andanimals. Then they inclined their route a little to the north, and,losing even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbiddingstillness.
I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock,cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far between; andneither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude. On the fortieth day theyhad already run so short of food that it was judged advisable to call ahalt and scatter upon all sides to hunt. A great fire was built, thatits smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the party mountedand struck off at a venture into the surrounding desert.
My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the onehand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered valedotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city. At length hefound the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks and the hairamong the brush, judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear ofmost unusual size. He quickened the pace of his steed, and stillfollowing the quarry, came at last to the division of two watersheds. Onthe far side the country was exceeding intricate and difficult, heapedwith boulders, and dotted here and there with a few pines, which seemedto indicate the neighbourhood of water. Here, then, he picketed hishorse, and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into thatwilderness.
Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the soundof running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, wasrewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangelyintermixed. The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and windingpassage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles togetherunscalable by man. The water, when the stream was swelled with rains,must have filled it from side to side; the sun's rays only plumbed it inthe hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp funnel, blewtempestuously. And yet, in the bottom of this den, immediately below myfather's eyes as he leaned over the margin of the cliff, a party of somehalf a hundred men, women, and children lay scattered uneasily among therocks. They lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring;their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness andemaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of the stream, afaint sound of moaning mounted to my father's ears.
While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound hisblanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who sat hardby propped against a rock. The girl did not seem to be conscious of theact; and the old man, after having looked upon her with the most engagingpity, returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on theturf. But the scene had not passed without observation even in thatstarving camp. From the very outskirts of the party, a man with a whitebeard and seemingly of venerable years, rose upon his knees, and camecrawling stealthily among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of myfather's indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip fromher both the coverings and return with them to his original position.Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as my fatherimagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had raised himself againupon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and thenswiftly carried his hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth. By themovement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of famine he hadreserved a store of nourishment; and while his companions lay in thestupor of approaching death, secretly restored his powers.
My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle; andbut for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot the fellowdead upon the spot. How different would then have been my history! Butit was not to be: even as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on thebear, as it crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to thehunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that he dischargedhis piece. The bear leaped and fell into a pool of the river; the canyonre-echoed the report; and in a moment the camp was afoot. With criesthat were scarce human, stumbling, falling and throwing each other down,these starving people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father,climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream,many were already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a firewas being built by the more dainty.
His arrival was for some time unremarked. He stood in the midst of thesetottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by their cries;but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass; even those who weretoo weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon thebear; and my father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in thethick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to weep. A touchupon the arm restrained him. Turning about, he found himself face toface with the old man he had so nearly killed; and yet, at the secondglance, recognised him for no old man at all, but one in the fullstrength of his years, and of a strong, speaking, and intellectualcountenance stigmatised by weariness and famine. He beckoned my fathernear the cliff, and there, in the most private whisper, begged forbrandy. My father looked at him with scorn: 'You remind me,' he said,'of a neglected duty. Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, torevive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw yourobbing of her blankets.' And with that, not heeding his appeals, myfather turned his back upon the egoist.
The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk in thefirst stage of death to have observed the bustle round her couch; butwhen my father had raised her head, put the flask to her lips, and forcedor aided her to swallow some drops of the restorative, she opened herlanguid eyes and smiled upon him faintly. Never was there a smile of amore touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet, morehonestly eloquent of the soul! I speak with knowledge, for these werethe same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle. From her who was to behis wife, my father, still jealously watched and followed by the man withthe grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party, andgave the last drainings of his flask to those among the men who seemed inthe most need.
'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with the beard.
'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself in want, letme counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your coat.'
'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me. You think me one who clings tolife for selfish and commonplace considerations. But let me tell you,that were all this caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened ofa weight. These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as May-flies,in the slums of European cities, whom I myself have plucked fromdegradation and misery, from the dung-heap and gin-palace door. And youcompare their lives with mine!'
'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.
'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon missionary if youwill! I value not the title. Were I no more than that, I could havedied without a murmur. But with my life as a physician is bound up theknowledge of great secrets and the future of man. This it was, when wemissed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolateravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beardfrom ebony to silver.'
'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his face, 'boundby oath to succour man in his distresses.'
/> 'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson: you will hear that nameagain; and you will then understand that my duty was not to this caravanof paupers, but to mankind at large.'
My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now sufficientlyrevived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to bring helpfrom his own party; 'and,' he added, 'if you be again reduced to suchextremities, look round you, and you will see the earth strewn withassistance. Here, for instance, growing on the under side of fissures inthis cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss. Trust me, it is both edibleand excellent.'
'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'
'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for see wherethese have been scraped away. Am I right? Was that your secret store?'
My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire, hadmade a good day's hunting. They were thus the more easily persuaded toextend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day beheld bothparties on the march for the frontiers of Utah. The distance to betraversed was not great; but the nature of the country, and thedifficulty of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks;and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl whomhe had succoured. I will call my mother Lucy. Her family name I am notat liberty to mention; it is one you would know well. By what series ofundeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refinedby education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among thehorrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you. Let itsuffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heartworthy of her own. The ardour of attachment which united my father andmother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; itknew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my father, for hersake, determined to renounce his ambitions and abjure his faith; and aweek had not yet passed upon the march before he had resigned from hisparty, accepted the Mormon doctrine, and received the promise of mymother's hand on the arrival of the party at Salt Lake.
The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring. My fatherprospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my mother; andthough you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were few happier homesin any country than that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood.We were, indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics andhalf-believers by the more precise and pious of the faithful: Younghimself, that formidable tyrant, was known to look askance upon myfather's riches; but of this I had no guess. I dwelt, indeed, under theMormon system, with perfect innocence and faith. Some of our friends hadmany wives; but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me morethan marriage itself? From time to time one of our rich acquaintanceswould disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses sharedamong the elders of the Church, and his memory only recalled with batedbreath and dreadful headshakings. When I had been very still, and mypresence perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would arise among myelders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer together andlook behind them with scared eyes; and I might gather from theirwhisperings how some one, rich, honoured, healthy, and in the prime ofhis days, some one, perhaps, who had taken me on his knees a week before,had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished like animage from a mirror, leaving not a print behind. It was terrible,indeed; but so was death, the universal law. And even if the talk shouldwax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hearnamed in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understandthese mysteries? I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy childmight hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect andwithout the wish for further information. Life anywhere, in society asin nature, rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a gardenblooming in the desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware ofmy parents' tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my existence; andwhy should I pry beneath this honest seeming surface for the mysteries onwhich it stood?
We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to abeautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, andsurrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rockydesert. The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, whichwent no further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracksimpassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable tothe European. Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson. To my young eyes,after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and theill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there wassomething agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thinwhite hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor. Yet,though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense offear in his presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awfulsolitude in which he lived and the obscurity that hung about hisoccupations. His house was but a mile or two from ours, but verydifferently placed. It stood overlooking the road on the summit of asteep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging bluffs.Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the works of man; forthe slope was even, like the glacis of a fort, and the cliffs of aconstant height, like the ramparts of a city. Not even spring couldchange one feature of that desolate scene; and the windows looked downacross a plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on thenorth. Twice or thrice I remember passing within view of this forbiddingresidence; and seeing it always shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, Iremarked to my parents that some day it would certainly be robbed.
'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a strangeconviction in his tone.
At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, Ichanced to see the doctor's house in a new light. My father was ill; mymother confined to his bedside; and I was suffered to go, under thecharge of our driver, to the lonely house some twenty miles away, whereour packages were left for us. The horse cast a shoe; night overtook ushalfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning when the driverand I, alone in a light waggon, came to that part of the road which ranbelow the doctor's house. The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountainsin this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from itsstation on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not onlyshone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from thegreat chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick andso voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, andits shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali.As we continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb beganto divide the silence. First it seemed to me like the beating of aheart; and next it put into my mind the thought of some giant, smotheredunder mountains and still, with incalculable effort, fetching breath. Ihad heard of the railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to askthe driver if this resembled it. But some look in his eye, some pallor,whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon mylips. We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were closebelow the lighted house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle,there burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth andset the echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff. A pillarof amber flame leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes ofsparks; and at the same time the lights in the windows turned for oneinstant ruby red and then expired. The driver had checked his horseinstinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off among themountains, when there broke from the now darkened interior a series ofyells--whether of man or woman it was impossible to guess--the door flewopen, and there ran forth into the moonlight, at the top of the longslope, a figure clad in white, which began to dance and leap and throwitself down, and roll as if in agony, before the house. I could no morerestrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the horse's flank, andwe fled up the rough track at the peril of our lives; and did not drawrein till, turning the corner of the mountain, we beheld my father'sranch and deep, green groves and
gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.
This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed to thevery topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached theage of seventeen. I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended mygarden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought tocoquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in amirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the featuresof my parents. But the fears which had long pressed on others were nowto be laid on my youth. I had thrown myself, one sultry, cloudyafternoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on the verandah, where mymother sat with her embroidery; and when my father joined her from thegarden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so startling anature that it held me enthralled where I lay.
'The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.
I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.
'Yes,' continued my father, 'I have received to-day a list of all that Ipossess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lipsare sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on thebare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then,carry secrets? Are the hills of glass? Do the stones we tread uponpreserve the footprint to betray us? Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should havecome to such a country!'
'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very threateningevent. You are accused of some concealment. You will pay more taxes inthe future, and be mulcted in a fine. It is disquieting, indeed, to findour acts so spied upon, and the most private known. But is this new?Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of grass?'
'Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father. 'But all this is nothing. Hereis the letter that accompanied the list.'
I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.
'I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading: '"Froma believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's goods,"'she continued, '"the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark ofpiety." There lies the sting. Am I not right? These are the words youfear?'
'These are the words,' replied my father. 'Lucy, you remember Priestley?Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of anisolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in anyquarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such astation; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, andthat I heard, his story. He had received a letter such as this; and hesubmitted to my approval an answer, in which he offered to resign a thirdof his possessions. I conjured him, as he valued life, to raise hisoffering; and, before we parted, he had doubled the amount. Well, twodays later he was gone--gone from the chief street of the city in thehour of noon--and gone for ever. O God!' cried my father, 'by what artdo they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do theycommand that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strongarms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should bethus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in thatthought more awful than mere death.'
'Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.
'Dismiss the thought,' replied my father. 'He now knows all that I canteach, and will do naught to save me. His power, besides, is small, hisown danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, livesapart; he leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly citedfor an unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price--butno; I will not believe it: I have no love for him, but I will not believeit.'
'Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of note, 'Butoh, what matters it?' she cried. 'Abimelech, there is but one way open:we must fly!'
'It is in vain,' returned my father. 'I should but involve you in myfate. To leave this land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men areclosed in life; and there is no issue but the grave.'
'We can but die then,' replied my mother. 'Let us at least die together.Let not Asenath {43} and myself survive you. Think to what a fate weshould be doomed!'
My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I couldsee he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his wholeestate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him at the moment,and to flee that night, which promised to be dark and cloudy. As soon asthe servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with provisions; twoothers were to carry my mother and myself; and, striking through themountains by an unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke forliberty and life. As soon as they had thus decided, I showed myself atthe window, and, owning that I had heard all, assured them that theycould rely on my prudence and devotion. I had no fear, indeed, but toshow myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my hand withoutalarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed Heaven forthe courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride and some ofthe joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look forward to theperils of our flight.
Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had left farbehind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certaincanyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoingwith the roar of a tumultuous torrent. Cascade after cascade thunderedand hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces withthe wet wind of its descent. The trail was breakneck, and led tofamine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for morepracticable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod from yearto year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when turning suddenly anangle of the cliffs, we found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under animpending rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely withcharred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.We looked upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into apassion of tears; but not a word was said. The mules were turned about;and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced oursteps in silence. Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at home,condemned beyond reprieve.
What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a littlebefore sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the roadin a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad strawhat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer,that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest manand pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he norany one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark ofdiffidence that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, andentered the room where our unhappy family was gathered. My mother andme, he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with myfather laid before him a blank signature of President Young's, andoffered him a choice of services: either to set out as a missionary tothe tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next day, with a party ofDestroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty German immigrants. The last,of course, my father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as apretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife defenceless, and tocollect fresh victims for the tyranny under which he was himselfoppressed, he felt sure he would never be suffered to return. He refusedboth; and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious,at the spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for myfather and his family. He besought him to reconsider his decision; andat length, finding he could not prevail, gave him till the moon rose tosettle his affairs, and say farewell to wife and daughter. 'For,' saidhe, 'then, at the latest, you must ride with me.'
I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast;and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father andMr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey. Mymother, though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shutherself in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in thedark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to saddlemy Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to enjoyone farewell sight of my de
parting father. The two men had set forth ata deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them, when I reached the pointof view. I was the more amazed to see no moving creature in thelandscape. The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and nowhere,under the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a bush, a farm,a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one. From the cornerwhere I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed thedoctor's house; and across the top of that projection the soft night windcarried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable smoke. What fuelcould produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or whatfurnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knewwell enough that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enoughthat my father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, Iconnected in my mind the loss of that dear protector with the ribbon offoul smoke that trailed along the mountains.
Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a weekwent by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father andhusband. As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so inthe ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting my horse andfollowing upon his trail, had that strong and brave man vanished out oflife. Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was nowcertain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defencelessfamily. Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when Ilook back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event. On thelast day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves alonein the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all ourattendants, with one accord, had fled: and as we knew them to begratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight.The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening wewere called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of horse'shoofs.
The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,and saluted us. He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery thanever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.
'Madam,' said he, 'I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would have yourecognise it as an effect of kindness in the President, that he shouldsend as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband's oldestfriend in Utah.'
'Sir,' said my mother, 'I have but one concern, one thought. You knowwell what it is. Speak: my husband?'
'Madam,' returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, 'if youwere a silly child, my position would now be painfully embarrassing. Youare, on the other hand, a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: youhave, by my forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your ownconclusions and to accept the inevitable. Farther words from me are, Iconceive, superfluous.'
My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her myhand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till I couldhave cried aloud. 'Then, sir,' said she at last, 'you speak to deafears. If this be indeed so, what have I to do with errands? What do Iask of Heaven but to die?'
'Come,' said the doctor, 'command yourself. I bid you dismiss allthoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon yourown future and the fate of that young girl.'
'You bid me dismiss--' began my mother. 'Then you know!' she cried.
'I know,' replied the doctor.
'You know?' broke out the poor woman. 'Then it was you who did the deed!I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you are--you,whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes raving--you, theDestroying Angel!'
'Well, madam, and what then?' returned the doctor. 'Have not my fate andyours been similar? Are we not both immured in this strong prison ofUtah? Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye confront youin the canyon? Who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?Not I, at least. Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and themost ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my offices, would thathave spared your husband? You know well it would not. I, too, hadperished along with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his lastmoments, nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the hand ofBrigham Young.'
'Ah!' cried I, 'and could you purchase life by such concessions?'
'Young lady,' answered the doctor, 'I both could and did; and you willlive to thank me for that baseness. You have a spirit, Asenath, that itpleases me to recognise. But we waste time. Mr. Fonblanque's estatereverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some part of it hasbeen reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that person, Ishould perhaps tell you without more delay, is no other than myself.'
At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clungtogether like lost souls.
'It is as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same measuredutterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me toconvince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon viewof women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left theslatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel amongthemselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not theunion I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it. No: you neednot, madam, and my old friend'--and here the doctor rose and bowed withsomething of gallantry--'you need not apprehend my importunities. On thecontrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I amobliged to bid you follow me at once, and that in the name, not of mywish, but of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a commonmind.'
So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had nowfallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.
'What does it mean?--what will become of us?' I cried.
'Not that, at least,' replied my mother, shuddering. 'So far we cantrust him. I seem to read among his words a certain tragic promise.Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserableparents?'
Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to explain herwords; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend the doctor for afriend. 'The doctor!' I cried at last; 'the man who killed my father?'
'Nay,' said she, 'let us be just. I do believe before, Heaven, he playedthe friendliest part. And he alone, Asenath, can protect you in thisland of death.'
At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we were allin the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter to discusswith Mrs. Fonblanque. They came at a foot's pace, eagerly conversing ina whisper; and presently after the moon rose and showed them lookingeagerly in each other's faces as they went, my mother laying her handupon the doctor's arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual custom,making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.
At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to hisdoor, the doctor overtook me at a trot.
'Here,' he said, 'we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to bealone, you and I shall walk together to my house.'
'Shall I see her again?' I asked.
'I give you my word,' he said, and helped me to alight. 'We leave thehorses here,' he added. 'There are no thieves in this stone wilderness.'
The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view. The windows wereonce more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the mostabsolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother veryslowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human soulwithin a range of miles. At the thought, I looked upon the doctor,gravely walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, andthen once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like someindustrious factory. And then my curiosity broke forth. 'In Heaven'sname,' I cried, 'what do you make in this inhuman desert?'
He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion--
'This is not the first time,' said he, 'that you have seen my furnacesalight. One morning, in the small hours, I saw you driving past; adelicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit myself of havingstartled either your driver or the horse that drew you.'
r /> 'What!' cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure,'could that be you?'
'It was I,' he replied; 'but do not fancy that I was mad. I was inagony. I had been scalded cruelly.'
We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of thecountry, was built of hewn stone and very solid. Stone, too, was itsfoundation, stone its background. Not a blade of grass sprouted amongthe broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows.Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudelysculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood;but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance,and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimneytop, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of thebuilding, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in themoon and vanished.
The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold. 'You ask mewhat I make here,' he observed. 'Two things: Life and Death.' And hemotioned me to enter.
'I shall await my mother,' said I.
'Child,' he replied, 'look at me: am I not old and broken? Of us two,which is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?'
I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by agood fire and a shaded reading-lamp. It was furnished only with adresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these thedoctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into theinterior of the house, he left me to myself. Presently I heard the jarof iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed by thesame throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now so nearat hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake the house withevery recurrence of the stroke. I had scarce time to master my alarmwhen the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my motherappeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you the peaceand ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have passed over her headduring that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone,her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel ofecstatic tenderness. I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank alittle back and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yetunearthly. To the doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand asto a friend and helper; and so strange was the scene that I forgot to beoffended.
'Lucy,' said the doctor, 'all is prepared. Will you go alone, or shallyour daughter follow us?'
'Let Asenath come,' she answered, 'dear Asenath! At this hour, when I ampurified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and myaffections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire herpresence. Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she mightmisjudge your kindness.'
'Mother,' I cried wildly, 'mother, what is this?'
But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only 'Hush!' as though I werea child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me besilent and trouble her no more. 'You have made a choice,' he continued,addressing my mother, 'that has often strangely tempted me. The twoextremes: all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon theclock--these have been my incongruous desires. But to accept the middleterm, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burnout--never for an hour, never since I was born, has satisfied theappetite of my ambition.' He looked upon my mother fixedly, much ofadmiration and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profoundsigh, he led the way into the inner room.
It was very long. From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which bythe changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping soundswith which they burned, I have since divined to be electric. At theextreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been alean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to theroom, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors. Thewalls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with theimplements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered inthe light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door, a heavydriving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys,with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In onecorner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiouslywreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisiveswiftness.
'Is this it?' she asked.
The doctor bowed in silence.
'Asenath,' said my mother, 'in this sad end of my life I have found onehelper. Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson. Be not, oh my daughter,be not ungrateful to that friend!'
She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminatedthe arms.
'Am I right?' she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancyof face that I trembled for her reason. Once more the doctor bowed, butthis time leaning hard against the wall. He must have touched a spring.The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jarappeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like oneresigned to weariness. I was at her knees that moment; but her handsfell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the sametouching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.
I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment mytearful face, I met the doctor's eyes. They rested upon mine with such adepth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of mysorrow, I was startled into attention.
'Enough,' he said, 'to lamentation. Your mother went to death as to abridal, dying where her husband died. It is time, Asenath, to think ofthe survivors. Follow me to the next room.'
I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, hegave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began toaddress me--
'You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate watchof Brigham Young. It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances, tobecome the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particularfortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyesof the President himself. Such a fate for a girl like you were worsethan death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily deeperin the mire of this pit of woman's degradation. But is escapeconceivable? Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with whatsecurity his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counteda sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom. Where your fatherfailed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless inthe toils?'
I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed Iunderstood.
'I see,' I cried; 'you judge me rightly. I must follow where my parentsled; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!'
'No,' replied the doctor, 'not death for you. The flawed vessel we maybreak, but not the perfect. No, your mother cherished a different hope,and so do I. I see,' he cried, 'the girl develop to the completed woman,the plan reach fulfilment, the promise--ay, outdone! I could not bear toarrest so lively, so comely a process. It was your mother's thought,' headded, with a change of tone, 'that I should marry you myself.' I fear Imust have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he madehaste to quiet me. 'Reassure yourself, Asenath,' he resumed. 'Old as Iam, I have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth. I have passedmy days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils I have notforgotten the tune of a young pulse. Age asks with timidity to be sparedintolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard, demands joy like aright. These things I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenlyfelt, none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed them totheir day. See, then: you stand without support; the only friend left toyou, this old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy. Answer mebut one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the worldcalls love? Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are youfallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?'
I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him,lay with my dead parents.
'It is enough,' he said. 'It
has been my fate to be called on often, toooften, for those services of which we spoke to-night; none in Utah couldcarry them so well to a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my handsa certain share of influence which I now lay at your service, partly forthe sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the interest I bearyou in your own right. I shall send you to England, to the great city ofLondon, there to await the bridegroom I have selected. He shall be a sonof mine, a young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in thatquality of beauty that your years demand. Since your heart is free, youmay well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for much expenseand still more danger: to await the arrival of that bridegroom with thedelicacy of a wife.'
I sat awhile stunned. The doctor's marriages, I remembered to haveheard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress.But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought ofescape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me somedawn of hope; and in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.
He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have lookedfor. 'You shall see,' he cried; 'you shall judge for yourself.' Andhurrying to the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhatcoarsely done in oils. It showed a man in the dress of nearly fortyyears before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor. 'Doyou like it?' he asked. 'That is myself when I was young. My--my boywill be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels mightcondescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind. Thatshould be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand. A manlike that--one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, theforce, the dignity of age--one to fill all the parts and faculties, oneto be man's epitome--say, will that not satisfy the needs of an ambitiousgirl? Say, is not that enough?' And as he held the picture close beforemy eyes, his hands shook.
I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced withthis display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the mostinsolent revolt surged through my arteries. I held him in horror, him,his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice but death or aMormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.
'It is well,' he replied, 'and I had rightly counted on your spirit.Eat, then, for you have far to go.' So saying, he set meat before me;and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned withan armful of coarse raiment. 'There,' said he, 'is your disguise. Ileave you to your toilet.'
The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen;and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements.But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem oftheir origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged. I hadscarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a backwindow, helped me out into the narrow space between the house and theoverhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron footholds mortised inthe rock. 'Mount,' he said, 'swiftly. When you are at the summit, walk,so far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke. The smoke will bringyou, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, and you will find aman with two horses. Him you will implicitly obey. And remember,silence! That machinery, which I now put in motion for your service, mayby one word be turned against you. Go; Heaven prosper you!'
The ascent was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me onthe other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to themoon and the surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage orconcealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I madehaste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimesit swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantialcurtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon theearth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like somemountain fog. But, one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omenedfurnace protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved tothe canyon.
There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair ofsaddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silenceby the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A littlebefore the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at thebottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next night,before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings. Aboutnoon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screenof bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his pack, bade mechange my dress once more. The bundle contained clothing of my own,taken from our house, with such necessaries as a comb and soap. I mademy toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, andsmiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image, themountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness; andwhile I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly increased astorm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds. Shall I own to you,that I fell upon my face and shrieked? And yet this was but the overlandtrain winding among the near mountains: the very means of my salvation:the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!
When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over the bordersin the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reachedthe railway station, half a mile below. 'Here,' he added, 'is yourticket as far as Council Bluffs. The East express will pass in a fewhours.' With that, he took both horses, and, without further words orany salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.
Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train asit swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of themountain. The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbingterror of pursuit--above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance,kept me from any logical or melancholy thought. I had gone to thedoctor's house two nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse thandeath; what had passed, terrible although it was, looked almost brightcompared to my anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a fullnight in the flying palace car, that I awoke to the sense of myirreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about the future. In thismood, I examined the contents of the bag. It was well supplied withgold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as faras Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with afictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, andbidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son. All then had beenarranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and what was tenfoldworse, upon my mother's voluntary death. My horror of my only friend, myaversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the wholecurrent and conditions of my life, were now complete. I was sittingstupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a verypleasant lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the relief; andI was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's letter: how I wasa Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money Ihad, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted myinstructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me with questions,began to embroider on my own account. This soon carried one of myinexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on thelady's face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly addressed me.
'Miss Gould, I believe?' said he; and then, excusing himself to the ladyby the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of thePullman car. 'Miss Gould,' he said in my ear, 'is it possible that yousuppose yourself in safety? Let me completely undeceive you. One moresuch indiscretion and you return to Utah. And, in the meanwhile, if thiswoman should again address you, you are to reply with these words:"Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me tochoose my own associates."'
Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myselfdrawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult; andthenceforward, through all that day, I sat in silence, gazing on the bareplains and swallowing m
y tears. Let that suffice: it was the pattern ofmy journey. Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the oceansteamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller butI was certain to be interrupted. In every place, on every side, the mostunlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors toforward me upon my journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye stillfollowing my movements; and when at length a cab had set me down beforethat London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this morning, I hadalready ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.
The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was expectingmy arrival. A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon the garden;there were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and there (I hadalmost said with contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw monthfollow month over my head. At times my landlady took me for a walk or anexcursion, but she would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I,seeing that she also lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormonterror, felt too much pity to resist. To the child born on Mormon soil,as to the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no escape ispossible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful even for thisrespite. Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for myapproaching nuptials. The day drew near when my bridegroom was to visitme, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent. A son of DoctorGrierson's, be he what he pleased, must still be young, and it was evenprobable he should be handsome; on more than that, I felt I dared notreckon; and in moulding my mind towards consent I dwelt the morecarefully on these physical attractions which I felt I might expect, andaverted my eyes from moral or intellectual considerations. We have agreat power upon our spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into aframe of acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow impatient for the hour.At night sleep forsook me; I sat all day by the fire, absorbed in dreams,conjuring up the features of my husband, and anticipating in fancy thetouch of his hand and the sound of his voice. In the dead level andsolitude of my existence, this was the one eastern window and the onedoor of hope. At last, I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that Ibegan to be besieged with fears upon the other side. How if it was Ithat did not please? How if this unseen lover should turn from me withdisaffection? And now I spent hours before the glass, studying andjudging my attractions, and was never weary of changing my dress orordering my hair.
When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort ofhopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must nowstand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the mostsickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swellingrumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting,shrinking, and colouring to the brow. Love is not to be prepared, Iknow, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at lastrattled to the door and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was thetumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself might have been proudto own their parentage. The door opened, and it was Doctor Grierson thatappeared. I believe I must have screamed aloud, and I know, at least,that I fell fainting to the floor.
When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. 'Ihave startled you,' he said. 'A difficulty unforeseen--the impossibilityof obtaining a certain drug in its full purity--has forced me to resortto London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once morewithout those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to meare no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth is buta state, as passing as that syncope from which you are but just awakened,and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find,Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant. Since my firstyears, I have devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task;and the time of my success is at hand. In these new countries, where Iwas so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; Ihave fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; whatwas a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you ason of mine I did so in a figure. That son--that husband, Asenath, ismyself--not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy ofyouth. You think me mad? It is the customary attitude of ignorance. Iwill not argue; I will leave facts to speak. When you behold mepurified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image--when yourecognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect expression of thepowers of mankind--I shall be able to laugh with a better grace at yourpassing and natural incredulity. To what can you aspire--fame, riches,power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age--that I shallnot be able to afford you in perfection? Do not deceive yourself. Ialready excel you in every human gift but one: when that gift also hasbeen restored to me you will recognise your master.'
Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me tomyself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, hewithdrew. I had not the courage to move; the night fell and found mestill where he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands,my soul drowned in the darkest apprehensions. Late in the evening hereturned, carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bademe rise and sup. 'Is it possible,' he added, 'that I have been deceivedin your courage? A cowardly girl is no fit mate for me.'
I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besoughthim to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardicewas abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was hishopeless and derisible inferior.
'Why, certainly,' he replied. 'I know you better than yourself; and I amwell enough acquainted with human nature to understand this scene. It isaddressed to me,' he added with a smile, 'in my character of the stilluntransformed. But do not alarm yourself about the future. Let me butattain my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face ofthe earth becomes my willing slave.'
Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable host; andit was not till a late hour, that, bidding me courteously good-night, heonce more left me alone to my misery.
In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I scarceknew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil. If hishopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some abhorrent miracle,he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that mostunnatural, that most ungodly union. If, on the other hand, these dreamswere merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my pitywould become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt against themarriage. So passed the night, in alternations of rebellion and despair,of hate and pity; and with the next morning I was only to comprehend morefully my enslaved position. For though he appeared with a very tranquilcountenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of grief upon my browthan an answering darkness gathered on his own. 'Asenath.' he said, 'youowe me much already; with one finger I still hold you suspended overdeath; my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I choose,' said he,with a remarkable accent of command, 'that you shall greet me with apleasant face.' He never needed to repeat the recommendation; from thatday forward I was always ready to receive him with apparent cheerfulness;and he rewarded me with a good deal of his company, and almost more thanI could bear of his confidence. He had set up a laboratory in the backpart of the house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and hewould come thence to visit me in my parlour: now with passing humours ofdiscouragement; now, and far more often, radiant with hope. It wasimpossible to see so much of him, and not to recognise that the sands ofhis life were running low; and yet all the time he would be laying outvast fields of future, and planning, with all the confidence of youth,the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and ambition. How I replied Iknow not; but I found a voice and words to answer, even while I wept andraged to hear him.
A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of greatexhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness. 'Asen
ath,' saidhe, 'I have now obtained the last ingredient. In one week from now theperilous moment of the last projection will draw nigh. You have oncebefore assisted, although unconsciously, at the failure of a similarexperiment. It was the elixir which so terribly exploded one night whenyou were passing my house; and it is idle to deny that the conduct of sodelicate a process, among the million jars and trepidations of so great acity, presents a certain element of danger. From this point of view, Icannot but regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts;but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularlyunstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is duerather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients; and as allare now of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have little fear for theresult. In a week then from to-day, my dear Asenath, this period oftrial will be ended.' And he smiled upon me in a manner unusuallypaternal.
I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest andmost unbridled terror. What if he failed? And oh, tenfold worse! whatif he succeeded? What detested and unnatural changeling would appearbefore me to claim my hand? And could there, I asked myself with adreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured victory overmy reluctance? I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at asign. Suppose, then, this experiment to succeed; suppose him to returnto me, hideously restored, like a vampire in a legend; and suppose that,by some devilish fascination . . . My head turned; all former fearsdeserted me: and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference to this.
My mind was instantly made up. The doctor's presence in London wasjustified by the affairs of the Mormon polity. Often, in ourconversation, he would gloat over the details of that great organisation,which he feared even while yet he wielded it; and would remind me, thateven in the humming labyrinth of London, we were still visible to thatunsleeping eye in Utah. His visitors, indeed, who were of every sort,from the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to belong toevery rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled me with unmixedrepulsion and alarm. I knew that if my secret were to reach the ear ofany leader my fate were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in my presentpass of horror and despair, it was to these very men that I turned forhelp. I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man ofa low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce rememberwhat elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his intermediacyentered into correspondence with my father's family. They recognised myclaim for help, and on this very day I was to begin my escape.
Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the doctor'slabours, and prepared against the worst. The nights at this season andin this northern latitude are short; and I had soon the company of thereturning daylight. The silence in and around the house was only brokenby the movements of the doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened,watch in hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and yet consumed byanxiety about the strange experiment that was going forward overhead.Indeed, now that I was conscious of some protection for myself, mysympathies had turned more directly to the doctor's side; I caught myselfeven praying for his success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cryreached my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control myimpatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.
The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a large,round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a brightamber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude and joyunspeakable. As he saw me he raised the flask at arm's length.'Victory!' he cried. 'Victory, Asenath!' And then--whether the flaskescaped his trembling fingers, or whether the explosion were spontaneous,I cannot tell--enough that we were thrown, I against the door-post, thedoctor into the corner of the room; enough that we were shaken to thesoul by the same explosion that must have startled you upon the street;and that, in the brief space of an indistinguishable instant, thereremained nothing of the labours of the doctor's lifetime but a few shardsof broken crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours thatpursued me in my flight.