The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 6, June 1860)

I started, and my heart grew thick, for I thought I saw a movement somewhere—I could neither tell where, nor of what: I only seemed to have been aware of motion. I stood in the first shadow, and gazed, but saw nothing. I sped across the stream of light to the next shadow, and stood again, looking with fearful fixedness of gaze towards the far end of the corridor. Suddenly a white form glimmered and vanished. I crossed to the next shadow—again a glimmer and a vanishing, but nearer. Nerving myself with all my strength, I ceased my stealthy motion, and went straight forward, slowly but steadily. A tall form, apparently of a woman, dressed in a long white loose robe, emerged into one of the streams of light, threw its arms over its head, gave a wild cry—which, notwithstanding its wildness and force, sounded as if muffled by many intervening folds, either of matter or space—and fell at full length along the moonlight track. In the midst of the thrill of agony which shook me at the cry, as a sudden wind thrills from head to foot the leaves of a tree, I rushed forward, and kneeling beside the prostrate figure, soon discovered that, however unearthly the scream which had preceded her fall, it was, in reality, the Lady Alice. Again I trembled, but the tremor was not the same as that which preceded. I saw the fact in a moment: the Lady Alice was a somnambulist. Startled by the noise of my advance, she had awaked; and the usual terror and fainting had followed. She was cold and motionless as death. What was to be done? If I called aloud, the probability was that no one would hear me; or if any one should hear,—but I need not follow the train of thoughts that passed through my mind, as I fruitlessly tried to recover the poor girl. Suffice it to say, that I shrank most painfully, both for her sake and my own, from being found, by common-minded domestics, in such a situation, in the dead of the night.

While I knelt by her side, hesitating as to what I should do, a horror, as from the presence of death suddenly recognized—akin to that feeling which a child experiences when he looks up and sees that his mother, to whom he thought he had been talking for minutes past, is not in the room—fell upon me. I thought she must be dead. At the same moment, I heard, or seemed to hear (how should I know?) the rapid gallop of a horse, and the clank of a loose shoe.

In an agony of fear, which yet I cannot consider cowardice, I caught her up in my arms, and as one carries a sleeping child, sped with her towards that end of the corridor whence I had come. Her head hung back over my arm, and her hair, which had got loose, trailed on the ground. As I fled, I trampled upon it and stumbled. She moaned, and I shuddered. That instant the gallop ceased. Somewhat relieved, I lifted her up across my shoulder, and carried her more easily. How I found my way to the stairs I cannot tell. I know that I groped about for some time, like one in a dream with a ghost in his arms; but at last I reached it, and descending, entered my room, laid her upon one of the old couches, secured the doors, and began to breathe—and think. The first thing that suggested itself was, to try to make her warm—she was so ice-cold. I covered her with my plaid and my dressing-gown, pulled the couch near the fire, and considered what to do next.

But while I hesitated, Nature had her own way, and Lady Alice opened her eyes with a deep-drawn sigh. Never shall I forget the look of mingled bewilderment, alarm, and shame, with which her great dark eyes met mine. In a moment her expression changed to anger. Her eyes flashed; a cloud of roseate wrath grew in her face, till it glowed with the opaque red of a camellia; and she all but started from the couch to her feet. Apparently, however, she discovered the unsuitableness of her dress, for she checked her impetuosity, and remained leaning on her elbow. After a moment’s pause, in which, overcome by her anger, her beauty, and my own confusion, I knelt before her, unable to speak, or to withdraw my eye from hers, she began to question me like a queen, and I to reply like a culprit.

“How did I come here?”

“I carried you.”

Then, with a curling lip—

“Where did you find me, pray?”

“Somewhere in the old house, in a long corridor.”

“What right had you to be there?”

“I heard a cry, and was compelled to go to it.”

“’Tis impossible. I see. Your prying and my infirmity have brought this disgrace upon me.”

She burst into tears. Then, anger reviving, she went on through her sobs:

“Why did you not leave me where I suppose I fell? You had done enough to injure me by discovering my weakness, without rudely breaking my trance, and, after that, taking advantage of the consequences to bring me here.”

Now I found words. “Lady Alice, how could I leave you lying in the moonlight? Before the sun rose, the terrible moon might have distorted your beautiful face.”

“Be silent, sir. What have you to do with my face?”

“And the wind, Lady Alice, was blowing through the corridor windows, keen and cold, as if it were sister-spirit of the keen and cold moonlight. How could I leave you?”

“You could have called assistance.”

“I knew not whom I should rouse, if any one. And forgive me, Lady Alice, if I erred in thinking you would rather command the silence of a gentleman to whom an evil accident had revealed your secret, than be exposed to the domestics whom a call for help might have gathered round us.”

She half raised herself again, in anger.

“A secret with you, sir!”

“But, besides, Lady Alice,” I cried, springing to my feet, in distress, “I heard the horse with the clanking shoe, and I caught you up in terror and fled with you, almost before I knew what I did. And I hear it now—I hear it now!”

The angry glow faded from her face, and the paleness grew almost ghastly with dismay.

“Do you hear it!” she said, throwing back the coverings I had laid over her, and rising from the couch. “I do not.”

She stood listening, with wide distended eyes, as if _they_ were the gates by which such sounds could enter.

“I do not hear it,” she said, after a pause; “it must be gone now.” Then, turning towards me, she laid her hand on my arm, and looked at me. Her black hair, disordered and entangled, wandered all over her white robe down to her knees. Her face was paler than ever, and she fixed her dark eyes on mine, so wide open that I could see the white all round the unusually large iris.

“Did you hear it? No one ever heard it before but me. I must forgive you—you could not help it. I will trust you too. Help me to my room.”

Without a word of reply, I took my plaid and wrapped it about her; prevailed upon her to put on a pair of slippers which I had never worn; and, opening the doors, led her out of the room, aided by the light of my bedroom candle.

“How is this? Why do you take me this way! I do not know this part of the house in the least.”

“This is the way I brought you in, Lady Alice; and I can promise to find your way no farther than to the spot where I found you. Indeed, I shall have some difficulty even in that, for I groped my way there for the first time this night or morning—whichever it may be.”

“It is past midnight, but not morning yet,” she replied; “I always know by my sensations. But there is another way from your room, of course?”

“There is; but we should have to pass the housekeeper’s door, and she sleeps but lightly.”

“Are we near the housekeeper’s room? Perhaps I could walk alone. I fear it would surprise none of the household to see, or even to meet me. They would say—‘It is only Lady Alice.’ Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink from being seen by them. No—I will try the way I came, if you do not mind accompanying me.”

This conversation passed between us in hurried words, and in a low tone. It was scarcely finished when we found ourselves at the foot of the staircase. Lady Alice trembled a good deal, and drew my plaid close around her. We ascended, and with little difficulty found the corridor. When we left it, she was, as I had expected, rather bewildered as to the right direction; but at last, after looking into several of the rooms, empty all, except for stray articles of ancient furniture, she said, as she entered one, and, taking the candle out of my hand, held it above her head—

“Ah, yes! I am right at last; this is the haunted room: I know my way now.”

By the dim light I caught only a darkling glimpse of a large room, apparently quite furnished; but how, except from the general feeling of antiquity and mustiness, I could not tell. Little did I think then what memories—sorrowful and old now as the ghosts that along with them haunt that old chamber, but no more faded than they—would ere long find their being and take their abode in that ancient room, to forsake it never, never more—the ghosts and the memories flitting together through the spectral moonlight, and weaving strange mystic dances in and out of the storied windows and the tapestried walls. At the door of this room she expressed her wish to leave me, asking me to follow to the spot where she should put down the light, that I might take it back; adding—“I hope you are not afraid of being left so near the haunted room.” Then, with a smile that made me strong enough to meet all the ghosts in or out of Hades, she turned, went on a few paces, and disappeared. The light, however, remained; and, advancing, I found the candle, with my plaid and slippers, deposited on the third or fourth step down a short flight, in a passage at right angles to that she had left. I took them up, made my way back to my room, lay down on the couch on which she had lain so shortly before, and neither went to bed nor slept that night. Before the morning I had fully entered that phase of individual development commonly called _love_; of which the real nature is as great a mystery to me now, as at any period previous to its evolution in myself.

I will not linger on the weary fortnight that passed before I even saw her again. I could teach, but not learn. My duties were not irksome to me, because they kept me near her; but my thoughts were beyond my control. It was not love only, but anxiety also, lest she were ill from the adventures of that night, that caused my distress. As the days went on, and no chance word about her reached me, I felt the soul within me beginning to droop. In vain, at night, I tried to read, in my own room. Nothing could fix my attention. I read and re-read the same page again and again; but although I seemed to understand every word and phrase as I read, I found when I had reached the close of the paragraph, that there lingered in my mind no ghost of the idea embodied in the words. It was just what one experiences in attempting to read when half-asleep. I tried Euclid, and fared a little better with that. A very simple equation I found I could manage, but when I attempted a more complex one—one in which a little imagination, or something bordering upon it, was necessary to find out the undefined object for which to substitute the unknown symbol, that it might be dealt with by thought—I found that the necessary power of concentrating was itself a missing factor.

But it is foolish to dwell upon an individual variety of an almost universal stage in the life-fever.

One night, as I sat in my room, I found, as usual, that it was impossible to read; and throwing the book aside, relapsed into that sphere of thought which now filled my soul, having for its centre the Lady Alice. I recalled her form as she lay on the couch, and a longing to see her, almost unbearable, arose within me.

“Would to heaven,” I said to myself, “that will were power!”

In the confluence of idleness, distraction, and vehement desire, I found myself, before I knew what I was about, concentrating and intensifying within me, until it almost rose to a command, the operative volition (if I may be allowed the phrase) that Lady Alice should come to me. Suddenly I trembled at the sense of a new power which sprang into being within me. I had not foreseen it, when I gave way to such extravagant and apparently helpless wishes. I now actually awaited the fulfilment of my desire, but in a condition ill fitted to receive it; for the effort had already exhausted me to such a degree, that every nerve seemed in a conscious tremor. Nor had I to wait long. I heard no sound of approach. The closet-door in my room folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but sightless, pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like, the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was more terrible to me in that moment, than any pale-eyed ghost could have been. She passed me, walking round the table at which I was seated, went to the couch, laid herself upon it, a little on one side, with her face towards me, and gradually closed her eyes. She lay in something deeper than sleep, and yet not death. I rose, and once more knelt beside her, but dared not touch her. In what far realms of mysterious life might the lovely soul be straying? Thoughts unutterable rose in me, culminated, and sank like the stars of heaven, as I gazed on the present symbol of an absent life—a life that I loved by means of the symbol; a symbol that I loved because of the life. How long she lay thus, how long I gazed upon her thus, I do not know.

Gradually, but without my being able to distinguish the gradations of the change, her countenance altered to that of one who sleeps. But the change did not end there. The slightest possible colour tinged her lips, and deepened to a pale rose; then her cheek seemed to share in the hue, then her brow and her neck, as the cloud the farthest from the sunset yet acknowledges the rosy atmosphere. I watched, as it were, the dawn of a soul on the horizon of the material. As I watched, the first approaches of its far-off flight were manifest; and I saw it come nearer and nearer, till its great, silent, speeding pinions were folded, and it looked forth, a calm, beautiful, infinite woman, from the face and form sleeping beside me. But the world without entering, ruffled its calmness, dimmed its beauty, and dashed its sky with the streaks of earthly vapours. I knew that she was awake for some moments before she opened her eyes. When at last those depths of darkness disclosed themselves, slowly uplifting their white cloudy portals, the same consternation she had manifested on the former occasion, followed by yet greater anger, was the consequence.

“Yet again! Am I your slave, because I am weak?” She rose in the majesty of wrath, and moved towards the door.

“Lady Alice, I have not touched you. Yet I am to blame, though not as you think. Could I help longing to see you? And if the longing passed, ere I was aware, into a will that you should come, and you obeyed it, forgive me.”

I hid my face in my hands, overcome by conflicting emotions. A kind of stupor came over me. When, recovering, I lifted my head, she was standing by the closet-door.

“I have waited,” she said, “only to make one request of you.”

“Do not utter it, Lady Alice. I know what it is; and I give you my word and solemn promise that I will never do so again.” She thanked me, smiled most sweetly, and vanished.

What nights I had after this, in watching and striving lest unawares I should be led to the exercise of my new power! I allowed myself to think of her as much as I pleased in the daytime, or at least as much as I dared; for when occupied with my pupils, I dreaded lest any abstraction should even hint that I had a thought to conceal. I knew that I could not hurt her then; for that only in the night did she enter that state of existence in which my will could exercise authority over her. But at night—at night—when I knew she lay there, and might be lying here; when but a thought would bring her, and that thought was fluttering its wings, ready to wake from the dreams of my heart; then the struggle was fearful. “Bring her yet once, and tell her all—tell her how madly, hopelessly you love her—she will forgive you,” said a voice within me; but I heard it as the voice of the tempter, and kept down the thought which might have grown to the will.

FOOTNOTES

[4] _Hamlet_, Act 1, Scene i.

Studies in Animal Life.

“Authentic tidings of invisible things;— Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.”—THE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER VI.

Every organism a colony—What is a paradox?—An organ is an independent individual, and a dependent one—A branch of coral—A colony of polypes—The Siphonophora—Universal dependence—Youthful aspirings—Our interest in the youth of great men—Genius and labour—Cuvier’s college life; his appearance in youth; his arrival in Paris—Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire—Causes of Cuvier’s success—One of his early ambitions—M. le Baron—_Omnia vincit labor_—Conclusion.

That an animal Organism is made up of several distinct organs, and these the more numerous in proportion to the rank of the animal in the scale of beings, is one of those familiar facts which have their significance concealed from us by familiarity. But it is only necessary to express this fact in language slightly altered, and to say that an animal Organism is made up of several distinct _individuals_, and our attention is at once arrested. Doubtless, it has a paradoxical air to say so; but Natural History is full of paradoxes; and you are aware that a paradox is far from being necessarily an absurdity, as some inaccurate writers would lead us to suppose: the word meaning simply, “contrary to what is thought,”—a meaning by no means equivalent to “contrary to what is the fact.” It is paradoxical to call an animal an aggregate of individuals; but it is so because our thoughts are not very precise on the subject of individuality—one of the many abstractions which remain extremely vague. To justify this application of the word individual to every distinct organ would be difficult in ordinary speech, but in philosophy there is ample warrant for it.

An organ, in the physiological sense, is an _instrument_ whereby certain functions are performed. In the morphological sense, it arises in a _differentiation_, or setting apart, of a particular portion of the body for the performance of particular functions—a group of cells, instead of being an exact repetition of all the other cells, takes on a difference and becomes distinguished from the rest as an organ.[5]

Combining these two meanings, we have the third, or philosophical sense of the word, which indicates that every organ is an individual existence, dependent more or less upon other organs for its maintenance and activity, yet biologically distinct. I do not mean that the heart will live independent of the body—at least, not for long, although it does continue to live and manifest its vital activity for some time after the animal’s death; and, in the cold-blooded animals, even after removal from the body. Nor do I mean that the legs of an animal will manifest vivacity after amputation; although even the legs of a man are not dead for some time after amputation; and the parts of some of the lower animals are often vigorously independent. Thus I have had the long tentacles of a _Terebella_ (a marine worm) living and wriggling for a whole week after amputation.[6] In speaking of the independence of an organ, I must be understood to mean a very dependent independence: because, strictly speaking, absolute independence is nowhere to be found; and, in the case of an organ, it is of course dependent on other organs for the securing, preparing, and distributing of its necessary nutriment. The tentacles of my _Terebella_ could find no nutriment, and they perished from the want of it, as the _Terebella_ itself would have perished under like circumstances. The frog’s heart now beating on our table with such regular systole and diastole, as if it were pumping the blood through the living animal, gradually uses up all its force; and since this force is not replaced, the beatings gradually cease. A current of electricity will awaken its activity, for a time; but, at last, every stimulus will fail to elicit a response. The heart will then be dead, and decomposition will begin.