Tom Clark and His Wife Part 4

"As a result of this conversation, Madame became a sort of cross between an Atheist and--G.o.d knows what; for she was neither one thing nor 'tother, but a sort of pseudo-philosophical nondescript, without any set principle of belief whatever. Her conscience froze.

"'Who knoweth the spirit of a man that it goeth upward, or of a beast that it goeth downward? The Spiritualists?--a pack of fanatics! I don't believe in ghosts'--but she shuddered as she gave utterance to the words, and her hair crawled upon her head as if touched with spectral fingers. No man disbelieves his immortality--the thing is impossible, _per se_; for although he may differ with that cla.s.s of people who pretend to very extensive ghostly acquaintances.h.i.+p and commerce, as many do--yet he doubtless always whistles as he pa.s.ses a graveyard in the night! I certainly do! Why? Because I disbelieve in ghosts!--of course.

"She resumed her soliloquy: 'I'm nervous--that's all! I mean to eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow I die--DIE! What of it--isn't Death an eternal sleep? My husband says that it is, to all except the New Lights; but he's a fool, in some things, that's certain.... And after death the _Judgement_!' And she shuddered again, for a cold wind pa.s.sed by her, and she thought it best to light two more candles and run her fingers over the piano, and take a gla.s.s of Sainsevain's best Angelica. 'Bah!

who knows anything about a judgment? There's no such thing. He's dead.

What of it? He can't talk! If he could, what of it? Ghosts can't testify in court! Besides, it was to be--and it's done. Fate is responsible, not I?

"'In spite of Reason, erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever _is_ is right.'

"'Tom was to die. The conditions that surrounded him were just such as had determined the results that followed. I was but the proxy of eternal Fate. Am I to blame? Certainly _not_, for I acted in precise accordance with the conditions that surrounded me--that made me do as I did--tempted me beyond my strength; and, for that reason, the crime, if crime it be, was a foregone conclusion from the foundation of the world!

Hereafter?

"'Come from the grave to-morrow with that story, And I may take some softer path to glory.'

"'Parrhasius was a true philosopher--or Willis. Pshaw! I guess I'll take another drop of Angelica!'

"Poor Betsey! she had been reading Pope and Leibnitz, and Ben Blood--bad, worse and worst, unfairly interpreted; good, better and best, rightly understood--and as the respective writers probably meant.

Weak people read a book as children do Swift's Gulliver--on the surface; others read the great book whose letters are suns, whose words are starry systems, in the self-same manner; and there is still a greater volume--the first edition, to be continued--the Human Soul--which they never read at all. All of these must go to school; they will graduate by-and-by, when Death turns over a new leaf. It is best to study now--there may not be so good a chance presently.

"Betsey Clark believed, or thought she did, that because G.o.d made all things, therefore there could be no wrong in all the world. She accepted Pope's conclusions literally, misread them, and totally overlooked the sublime teachings of the third author named; and her mind went to rest, and her conscience slumbered under the sophisms--for such they are, from one point of view. The opiate acted well. And so she slept for years--long years of peace, wealth, all the world could give her--slept in the belief that there would never be a waking. Was she right? Wait.

Let us see.

"We are still in the little chamber, near the window--the little window at the foot of the bed--whose upper sash was down."

PART V.

TOM CLARK DREAMS AGAIN.

"And now the Shadow--the terrible, monstrous Thing, that had so strangely entered the room through the window--the little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down--hovered no longer over the heads of the woman and the man--the unhappy woman, the misery-laden man, who, when the last sun had set, went to bed with Murder and Revenge--and Hatred--this wretched couple, who had contemplated such dreadful crimes, and who, within the past two hours, had had such strange and marvellous dreams! Only two hours! and yet in that s.p.a.ce had been crowded the events of a lifetime. They say there are no miracles! What, then, is this? What are these strange experiences of soul which we are constantly having--fifty years compressed in an hour of ordinary Dream!--thirty thousand ages in a moment of time, while under the accursed spells of Hasheesh? The soul flying back over unnumbered centuries; scanning the totality of the Present, and grasping a myriad Futurities--sweeping the vortex of unborn epochs by the million!--and all in an instant of the clock, while under the influence of the still more accursed Muust. What are the frogs and b.l.o.o.d.y waves of Egypt, compared to these miracles of the human soul--these Dream-lives that are not Dreams?

"And so the Thing took the glare of its horrible Eye from off the woman and the man. Its mission--its temptations were over. And it floated from off the bed, frown-smiling at Hesperina as it did so; and it pa.s.sed lazily, gloomily, scowlingly through the window at the foot of the bed, through which it had a little previously entered; and it moved through the starlight with a rush and a roar--a sullen rush and roar--as if each star-beam stabbed it with a dagger of flame; and the Thing seemed consciously angry, and it sullenly roared, as doth the wintry blast through the tattered sails of a storm-tossed bark, toilsomely laboring thro' the angry deep: a minute pa.s.sed, and IT was gone; thank G.o.d! IT was gone--at last--that horrible Incubus--that most fearful Thing!

"Simultaneously the sleepers evinced by their movements that their souls, if not their senses, had been relieved by the presence of its absence; and they were apparently on the point of waking, but were prevented by the magic, or magnetic action of the angelic figure at that moment leaning o'er their couch; for she gently, soothingly waved her snowy hands, and, in a voice sweeter than the tones of love, whispered: 'Sleep on; still sleep--softly--sweetly sleep--and dream. Peace, troubled hearts! Peace; be still!' and they slumbered on.

"Tom Clark's dream had changed. All the former troubled and exciting scene had vanished into thin air, leaving only vague, dim memories behind, to remind his soul of what it had been, and what it had seen and suffered. In the former dream he had been on dry, solid land; but now all this was strangely altered, and he found himself tossed on a rough, tumultuous sea; his lot was cast upon the deep--upon a wild and dreary waste of waters. In his dream the rain--great round and heavy drops of rain--fell in torrents; the mad winds and driving sleet--for the rain froze as it fell--raved and roared fiercely, fitfully; and the good s.h.i.+p bent and bellied to the hurricane, and she groaned as if loath to give up the ghost. And she drove before the blast, and she plunged headlong into the foaming billows, and ever and anon shook her head--brave s.h.i.+p!

as if she knew that ruin was before her, and had determined to meet it as a good s.h.i.+p should--bravely, fairly in the face.

"I have yet to disbelieve that every perfect work of man--s.h.i.+p, watch, engine--has a semi-conscious life of its own--a life derived from the immortal soul that gave its idea birth--for all these things--these s.h.i.+ps, watches, engines, are ideas, spiritual, subtle, invisible, till man hides their nakedness with wood, iron, steel, bra.s.s--the fig-leaves of the Ideal World. Some people cannot feel an idea, or be introduced to one, unless it be dressed up in matter. Sometimes we lay it on paper or canvas, and draw pencil lines around, or color it, and then it can be seen; else we take one and plant it out of doors, and then put brick and iron, marble and gla.s.s sides to it, rendering the spirit visible, and then the people see the Idea's Clothing, and fancy they behold the thing itself, just as others, when looking at a human body, imagine they behold the man, the woman, or the child. A mistake! None but G.o.d ever yet beheld a human Soul, and this it is, and not the body or its accidents, that const.i.tutes the Ego.

"And the s.h.i.+p surged through the boiling seas, and her timbers strained and cracked in the combat, and her cordage shrieked as the blast tore through, and the tattered sails cried, almost humanly--like a man whose heart is breaking because his wife loves him not, and all the world for him is robed in mourning--and they cried, as if in deadly fear they were craving mercy at the Storm-King's hands. He heard the cries, but he laughed 'ho! ho!' and he laughed 'ha! ha!' and he tore away another sail and hurled it in the sea, laughing madly all the while; and he blew, and he rattled, and he roared in frightful glee; and he laughed 'ha! ha!'

and he laughed 'ho! ho!' as the bridegroom laughs in triumph.

"And still the storm came down; and the yards bent before the gale, and then snapped asunder, like pipe-clay stems, and the billows leaped and dashed angrily at her sides, like a trained blood-hound at the throat of the mother, whose crime is being black--Chivalrous, well-trained blood-hounds! And the waves swept the decks of the bark--swept them clean, and whirled many a man into the weltering main, and sent their souls to heaven by water, and their bodies to the coral caves of Ocean.

Poor Sailors! The Storm-King's spirit was roused, and his soul up in arms; and the angry waves danced attendance; the lightning held high revelry, and flashed its applause in the very face of heaven, and lit up the night with terrible, ghastly smiles; and the sullen growl of distant thunder was the only requiem over the dead upon that dismal deep.

"It was night. Day had long left the earth, and gone to renew his youth in his Western bath of fire--as we all must--for death is our West--and the gloomy eidolon had usurped Day's throne, arrayed in black garments, streaked with flaming red, boding no good, but only ill to all that breathed the upper air. And the turmoil woke the North, and summoned him to the wa.s.sail; and he leaped from his couch of snow, with icebergs for his pillow, and he stood erect upon his throne at the Pole, and he blew a triumphant, joyous blast, and sent ten thousand icy deaths to represent him at the grand, tempestuous revel. They came, and as the waters leaped into the rigging, they lashed them there with frost-fetters; and they loaded the fated s.h.i.+p with fantastic robes of pearly, heavy, glittering ice--loaded her down as sin loads down the transgressor.

"And still the n.o.ble s.h.i.+p wore on--still refused the bitter death.

Enshrouded with ma.s.sy sheets and clumps of ice, the good craft nearly toppled with the weight, or settled forever in the yawning deep; for despite her grand endeavors--her almost human will and resolution--her desperate efforts to save her precious freight of human souls--she nearly succ.u.mbed, and seemed ready to yield them to the briny waters below. Lashed to staunch timbers, the trembling remnant of the crew soon found out, while terror crowned their pallid brows, that the tornado was driving them right straight upon a rock-bound coast--foaming and hopeless for them, notwithstanding that from the summit of the bold cliffs, a light-house gleamed forth its eye coldly--cynically upon the night--in mockery lighting the way to watery death and ruin. Steadily, clearly it glimmered out upon the darkness, distinctly showing them the white froth at the foot of the cliff--the anger-foam of the demon of the storm. Ah, G.o.d! Have mercy! have mercy!

"Look yonder, at the stern of the s.h.i.+p! What frightful gorgon is that?

You know not! Well, that is Death sitting on the taffrail. See, he moves about. Death is standing at the cabin door; he is gazing down below, looking up aloft, glaring out over the bleak, into the farther night.

See! he is stalking about the deck--the icy deck--very slippery it is, and where you fall you die, for he has trodden on the spot. Ah, me! ah, me! Woe, woe, a terrible woe is here, Tom Clark! Tom Clark, don't you hear? Death stands glamoring on you! Hark! he is whistling in the rigging; he is swinging on the snapping ends of yonder loosened halliards; if they strike you you are dead, for they are Whips, and Death is snapping them! He is calling you, Tom Clark; don't you hear him?--calling from his throne, and his throne is the Tempest, Tom Clark--the Tempest. Now he is watching you--don't his glance trouble you? Don't you know that he is gazing down into your eyes? How cold is his glance! how colder his breath! It is very, very cold. Ah! I s.h.i.+ver as I think--and Death is freezing you, Tom Clark;--he is freezing your very heart, and turning your blood to ice. He is freezing you, and has tried to freeze me, in various ways. But I bade him stand back--to stay his breath--for, unlike you, Tom Clark, I am a Brother of the Rosie Cross, and I have been over Egypt, and Syria, and Turkey; on the borders of the Caspian, and Arabia's sh.o.r.es; over sterile steppes, and weltered through the Deserts--and all in search of the loftier knowledge of the Soul, that can only there be found; and I found what I sought, Tom Clark--the nature of the Soul, its destiny, and how it may be trained to any end or purpose. And the History and Mystery of Dream, Tom Clark, from the lips of the Oriental Dwellers in the Temple--and Pul Ali Beg--Tom Clark--our Persian Ramus and our lordly Chief--and I learned the worth of Will, and how to say, and _mean_,--'I _will_ be well, and not sick--alive, and not dead!' and achieve the purpose. How? That is our secret--the Rosicrucians'--strange order of men; living all along the ages, _till they are ready to die_--for Death comes only because man will not beat him back. They DIE THROUGH FEEBLENESS OF WILL. But not so with us, Tom Clark; we leave not until our work is done, and mine is not yet finished. We exercise our power over others, too, but ever for their good. Well do I remember, how, when I lived in Charlestown, there was an old man dying, but I bade him live. He exists to-day. And long years before that, there reached me--lightning borne, on the banks of the Hudson, a message saying, 'Come, she is dying!' and I went, and stood beside the bed of the sick child, and I prayed, and I invoked the Adonim of the Upper Temple; and they came and bade her live. And she liveth yet--but how ungrateful!

"Till our work is done! What work? you ask me, and from over the steaming seas I answer, and I tell you through the boundless air that separates us: Our work is to help finish that begun lang syne upon the stony heights of Calvary; in the shade beneath the olive in Gethsemane, where I have stood and wept--begun when Time was thousands of years younger than to-day. Our work, Tom Clark, is to make men, by teaching them to make themselves. We strive to impress a sense upon the world of the priceless value of a MAN!

"And the vessel drove before the gale straight upon the cliff. All hope was at an end; all hope of rescue was dead. There was great sorrowing on board that fated bark. Heads were downcast, hearts beat wildly, ears drank in the mournful monody of the scene, and lo! the strong man lifted up his voice and wept aloud. Did you ever see a man in tears--tears tapped from his very soul? When they laugh at his misery, whose lives he has saved? When he discovers that the man he has loved as a brother, and for whom he has sacrificed his all during long years, was all the while a traitor and a foe, a mean and conscienceless traitor, and a secret, bitter Judas Iscariot, yet wearing a smile on his face continually? G.o.d grant you never may.

"The strong man wept! the very man, too, who, a few brief hours before, had heaped up curses, for trifling reasons, upon the heads of others; but now, in this hour of agony and mortal terror, fell upon his knees in the sublime presence of G.o.d's insulted majesty; who now, in the deadly peril, lashed to the pump, trembling to his soul's deep centre, cried aloud to Him for--Mercy! G.o.d's ears are never deaf! At that moment one of His Angels--Sandalphon--the Prayer-bearer, in pa.s.sing by that way, chanced to behold the sublime and moving spectacle. And his eyes flashed gladness, even through his tears; and he could scarcely speak for the deep emotion that stirred his angel heart; but still he pointed with one hand at the prostrate penitent, and with the other he placed the golden trumpet to his lips, and blew a blast that woke the sleeping echoes throughout the vast Infinitudes; and he cried up, cried up from his very soul: 'Behold! he prayeth!' And the Silence of the upper courts of Heaven started into Sound at the glad announcement, 'Behold! he prayeth!' And the sentence was borne afar on the fleecy pinions of the Light, from Ashtoreth to Mazaroth, star echoing to star. And still the sound sped on, nor ceased its flight until it struck the pearly Gates of Glory--where was an Angel standing--the Recording Angel--writing in a Book; and, oh! _how_ eagerly he penned the sentence, right opposite Tom Clark's name: 'Behold! he prayeth!' and the tears--great, hot, scalding tears, such as, at this moment, I am shedding--rolled out from the angel's eyes, so that he could scarcely see the book--mine own eyes are very dim--but still he wrote the words. G.o.d grant that he may write them opposite your name and mine--opposite everybody's, and everybody's son and daughter--opposite ALL our names!

"'Behold! he prayeth!' And lo! the Angels and the Cherubim, the Seraphs and the Antarphim, caught up the sound, and sung through the Dome; sung it till it was echoed back from Aidenn's golden walls, from the East to the West, and the North and South thereof; until it echoed back in low, melodious cadence from the Veiled Throne, on which sitteth in majesty the Adonai of Adonim, the peerless and ineffable Over Soul, the gracious Lord of both the Living and the Dead! Are there any _Dead_? No! except in sin and guiltiness!... And there was much joy in the Starry World over one sinner that had in very truth repented.

"And still the s.h.i.+p drove on, and on, and on--great heaven! right on to a shelving ledge of rock, where she was almost instantly dashed into a million fragments; masts, hull, sails, freight, men, all, all swept and whirled with relentless fury into one common gulf of waters; and yet, despite the din and roar, there rose upon the air, high and clear, and shrill:

"'The startling shriek--the bubbling cry Of one strong swimmer in his agony.'

"And that swimmer was Tom Clark. Thrice had he been thrown by the surf upon a jutting ledge of rock; thrice had he, with the strength of despair, clung to it, and seized upon the sea-weed growing on its edges, with all the energy of a drowning man. In vain; the relentless sea swept him off again, broke his hold, and whirled him back into the brine. His strength was almost gone; exhaustion was nigh at hand; and he floated, a helpless, nerveless ma.s.s at the mercy of the tide. And yet, so wonderful a thing is a human soul!--in that dreadful moment, when Hope herself was dead, and he was about to quit forever and forever this earth of sin and sorrow, and yet an earth so fair and bright, so lovely and so full of love, teeming so with all that is heroic and true, so friendly and so kind; his soul, even then, his precious and immortal soul, just pluming its wings for a flight to the far-off regions of the Living Dead--that soul for which G.o.d Himself had put forth all His redemptive energy--had abundant time to a.s.sert its great prerogative, and bid Death himself a haughty, stern defiance. With the speed of Light his mental vision flashed back along and over the valley of the dead years, and saw arrayed before it all the strange phasmaramas of the foretime. Deeds, Thoughts, and Intuitions never die! They are as immortal as the imperishable souls that give them life and being!

"And in that wondrous vision Tom Clark was young again; his childhood, youth, maturity; his sins, sorrows, virtues, and his aspirations, all, all were there, phototyped upon the walls of the mystic lane through which his soul was gazing--a lane not ten inches long, yet stretching away into the immeasurable deeps of a vast Infinitude. A Paradox! I am speaking of the Soul!--a thing whereof we talk so much, and know so very little.

"The spectres of all his hours were there, painted on the Wall of Memory's curved lane; his joys, his weary days of grief--few of the first, many of the latter--were there, like green and smiling oases, standing out in quick relief against the desert of his life. His anxious eyes became preternaturally acute, and seemed to take cognizance both of fact and cause--effect and principle at the same glance. His marriage life--even to its minutest circ.u.mstance--stood revealed before him. He saw Betsey as she had been--a girl, spotless, artless, intelligent, ambitious; beheld her married; then saw her as she was when she joined her lot with his own. He beheld her as she had become--anything but a true wife and woman, for only her surface had been reached by either husband. There was a fountain they had neither tapped nor known. Her heart had been touched, indeed; but her soul, never. He was amazed to find that a woman can give more than a husband is supposed to seek and find. More, did I say? My heaven! not one man in ten thousand can think of a line and plummet long enough to fathom the vast ocean of a woman's affection; cannot imagine the height and depths--the unfathomable riches of a woman's Love. Not a peculiar woman's--but any, every woman's love; your sister's, sir, or your wife's, sir, or mine, or anybody's sister or wife--anybody's daughter.

"It appeared to Clark's vision that a vast deal of his time had been worse than wasted, else had he devoted a portion of it to the attentive study of the woman whom he had, in the presence of G.o.d and man, sworn to love, honor, and protect; for no man is fit for Heaven who does not love his wife, and no man can love his wife unless he carefully studies her nature; and he cannot study her nature unless he renders himself lovable, and thus calls out _her_ love; and until her love _is_ thus called out, the office of husband is a suicidal sham. Thus saith the canons of the Rosicrucian philosophy. Are they bad?

"And he gazed in the depths of her spirit, surprised beyond measure to find that G.o.d had planted so many goodly flowers therein--even in virago Betsey's soul! And he said to himself--as many another husband will, before a hundred years roll by--'What a precious fool I've been!

spending all my time in cultivating thistles--getting p.r.i.c.ked and cursing them--when roses smell so very well, and are so easily raised?

fool! I wish'----and he blamed his folly for not having nurtured roses--for not having duly cultivated the rich garden G.o.d had intrusted him with; execrated himself for not having cherished and nursed this garden, and availed himself of its golden, glorious fruitage. It was as a man who had willfully left down the bars for the free entrance of his neighbor's cattle, and then wondering that his harvest of hay was not quite so heavy as desired.... Clark saw that it had been in his power--as it unquestionably is in that of every married man--by a few kind acts, a few tender, loving words, to have thawed and melted forever the ice collected by ill-usage--and every woman is ill-used who is not truly, purely, loyally loved! He saw that he might easily have warmed her spirit toward himself, therefore toward the world, and consequently toward the Giver. He might have made their life a constant summer-time--that very life that had been by his own short-sighted externalism, confirmed into freezing, stormy, chilling winter.

"Wheat and lentils I have seen in Egypt, taken from a mummy's hand, where they had lain three thousand and four hundred years. Some of that wheat I still possess; some of it I planted in a flower-pot, and it forthwith sprung up, green and beautiful, into life and excellence. The mummy's hand was crisp; the tombs of Beni-Ha.s.san were not the places for wheat to grow, for they are very dry. Do you see the point, the place--the thing I am aiming at? It is to show that the ills of marriage life are to be corrected not by a recourse to law-courts and referees, but by each party resolutely trying to correct them in the heart, the head, the home. Another thing I aim at is to seal the lips--to strike to the earth the brawlers for Divorce--the breakers-up of families, who preach--or prate of--what they have neither brains to comprehend, nor manhood to appreciate--Marriage!

"Clark saw, in the soul of his wife, in an instant, that which takes me an hour to describe; for the soul sees faster than the hand can indite, or the lips utter. He beheld many a gem, pure and translucent as a crystal, shut up in the caverns of her nature; shut up, and barred from the light, all the while yearning for day. What seeds of good, what glorious wheat was there. The milk of human kindness had been changed to ice-froth--sour, and sugar-less, not fit to be tasted. Inestimable qualities had been left totally unregarded, until they were covered up, nearly choked out by noxious weeds. G.o.d plants excellent gardens, and it is man's express business to keep them and dress them, and just as surely as he neglects them, and leaves the bars down, or the gates open, just so surely along comes the Tare-sower, whether his name be 'Harmonial Philosopher,' 'All-Right' preacher, Tom, Harry, d.i.c.k, Devil--or something worse.

"Many good things, saw Tom, that might have been developed into Use and Beauty, that had, in fact, become frightfully coa.r.s.e and abnormal; and all for want of a little Trying.

"'The saddest words of tongue or pen Are these sad words: IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!'

"But that he was not kind, tractable, and confiding; and that he was the reverse of all this. Faults of his own--great and many; tremendous faults they were. He had been curt, short, sarcastic, selfish, exacting, petulant, _offish_, arbitrary, tyrannical, suspicious, peremptory--all of which are contained in the one word MEAN!--and he _was_ mean. Too late he realized that he might have brought to the surface all the delicious, ripe sweets of her woman, and her human nature, instead of the cruel and the bitter. He saw, what every husband ought to see--but don't--that no woman can be truly known who is not truly loved!--and that, too, not with mere lip-homage, nor with nervous, muscular, demonstrative, show-love--for no female on the earth but will soon detect all such--and reckon you up accordingly--at your proper value--less than a straw! She demands true homage, right straight from the heart; from the bottom of the heart--whence springs the rightful homage due from man to woman--right straight from the heart--without deflection. Mind this. Give her _that_, and ah, then, _then_, what a heaven is her presence! and what a fullness she returns! compound interest, a thousand-fold repeated!--a fullness of affection so great that G.o.d's love only exceedeth it!--a love so rich and vast, that man's soul can scarce contain the half thereof. _This truth I know._ This truth I tell, because it is such. You will bless me for it by-and-by, when I am Over the River--if not before--will bless and thank me--despite of what 'They say.' Remember that!

"Tom Clark was drowning, yet he realized all this. He regretted that he had treated his wife as if she were soulless, or a softer sort of man.

He could have so managed as to have been all the world to Betsey--all the world, and something more and better, for there are leaves in wedlock's book which only those can turn and read who truly love each other. Marriage is, to some, a coa.r.s.e brown paper volume, with rough binding, bad ink, and worse type, poorly composed, and badly adjusted, without a page corrected. It may be made a super-royal volume, on tinted paper, gilt-edged, clear type, and rich and durable covers, the whole const.i.tuting the History of two happy lives spent on Hymen Island: Profusely ill.u.s.trated, in full tints, with scenes of Joy in all its phases. Price, The TRYING! Very cheap, don't you think so?