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The
Birthmark
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the
latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent
proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our
story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than
any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant,
cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids
from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife.
In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of
electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into
the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the
love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial
aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the
philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps
make new worlds for himself. We know not whether
Aylmer
possessed this degree of
faith in man's ultimate control over Nature. He had devoted himself, however,
too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any
second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and
uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with
truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
soon after their marriage,
Aylmer
sat gazing at his wife with
a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred
to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?"
"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving
the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth
it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it
might be so."
"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied
her husband; "but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so
nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect,
which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being
the visible mark of earthly imperfection."
"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply
hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears.
"Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what
shocks you!"
To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in
the centre of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the
usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate bloom--the mark wore
a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the
surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct,
and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole
cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn
pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
Aylmer
sometimes deemed an almost
fearful distinctness.
Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand,
though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that
some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek,
and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life
for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be
concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual
varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the
beholders.
Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her
own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even
hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue
stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not
heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the
world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the
semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of
the matter before,--
Aylmer
discovered that this was
the case with himself.
Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing
forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that
throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this
one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united
lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or
another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they
are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and
pain.
The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which
mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them
into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their
visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of
soul or sense, had given him delight.
At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably
and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted
to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so
connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that
it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight
Aylmer
opened his eyes upon his
wife's face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat
together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that
wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped.
Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance
with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought
strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray
the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time,
voluntarily took up the subject.
"Do you remember, my dear
Aylmer
," said she, with a
feeble attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last
night about this odious hand?"
"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he
added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it
had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for
she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this
one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it out!' Reflect, my
husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream."
The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to
break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong
to a deeper one.
Aylmer
now remembered his dream.
He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for
the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank
the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of
Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut
or wrench it away.
When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory,
Aylmer
sat in his wife's presence
with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in
robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in
regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking
moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired
by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart
to go for the sake of giving himself peace.
"
Aylmer
," resumed Georgiana,
solemnly, "I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of
this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it
may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is
a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand
which was laid upon me before I came into the world?"
"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the
subject," hastily interrupted
Aylmer
. "I am convinced of
the perfect practicability of its removal."
"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued
Georgiana, "let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing
to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either
remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science.
All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you
remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small
fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to
save your poor wife from madness?"
"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried
Aylmer
, rapturously, "doubt
not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought--thought
which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than
yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of
science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless
as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall
have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion,
when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine
will be."
"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling.
"And,
Aylmer
, spare me not, though you
should find the birthmark take refuge in my heart at last."
Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek--her right cheek--not that which
bore the impress of the crimson hand.
The next day
Aylmer
apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he
might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant watchfulness which
the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy
the perfect repose essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves
in the extensive apartments occupied by
Aylmer
as a laboratory, and where,
during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of
Nature that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in
Europe
. Seated calmly in this
laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest
cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the
causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained
the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright
and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of
the earth.
Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders
of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the
spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter
pursuit, however,
Aylmer
had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the
truth--against which all seekers sooner or later stumble--that our great
creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest
sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of
her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed,
to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to
make.
Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested
them; but because they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path
of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
As he
led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and
tremulous.
Aylmer
looked cheerfully into her
face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow
of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted
Aylmer
, stamping violently on the
floor.
Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low
stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for
that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while
incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of
his master's experiments.
With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect,
and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual
face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said
Aylmer
, "and burn a pastil."
"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking
intently at the lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself,
"If she were my wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself
breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which
had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
like enchantment.
Aylmer
had converted those smoky,
dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite
pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded
abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which
imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of
adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their
rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared
to shut in the scene from infinite space.
For all Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with
his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting
flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now
knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he
was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round
her within which no evil might intrude.
"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and
she placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her
husband's eyes.
"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not
shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single
imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it."
"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife.
"Pray do not look at it again. I never can forget that convulsive
shudder."
In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release
her mind from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary
footsteps on beams of light.
Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these
optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the
belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again,
when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her
thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a
picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When
wearied of this,
Aylmer
bade her cast her eyes upon
a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest at
first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward
from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded
themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.
"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare
not touch it."
"Nay, pluck it," answered
Aylmer
,--"pluck it, and
inhale its brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few
moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be
perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the
whole plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the
agency of fire.
"There was too powerful a stimulus," said
Aylmer
, thoughtfully.
To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to
take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana
assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features
of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand
appeared where the cheek should have been.
Aylmer
snatched the metallic plate
and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.
Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the
intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and
exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing
language of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base.
Aylmer
appeared to believe that,
by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of
possibility to discover this long-sought medium; "but," he added,
"a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would
attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it."
Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir
vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid
that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would
produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of
the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse.
"
Aylmer
, are you in earnest?"
asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement and fear. "It is terrible
to possess such power, or even to dream of possessing it."
"Oh, do not tremble, my love," said her husband.
"I would not wrong either you or myself by working such inharmonious
effects upon our lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in
comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual,
shrank as if a redhot iron had touched her cheek.
Again
Aylmer
applied himself to his
labors. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace room giving directions
to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response,
more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
absence,
Aylmer
reappeared and proposed
that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural
treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which,
he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom.
They were of inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and,
as he said so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room
with piercing and invigorating delight.
"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small
crystal globe containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to
the eye that I could imagine it the elixir of life."
"In one sense it is," replied
Aylmer
; "or, rather, the
elixir of immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted
in this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom
you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would determine whether
he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on
his guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my private station, should
deem that the welfare of millions justified me in depriving him of it."
"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in
horror.
"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband,
smiling; "its virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But
see! here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A stronger
infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a
pale ghost."
"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my
cheek?" asked Georgiana, anxiously.
"Oh, no," hastily replied her husband; "this
is merely superficial. Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
In his interviews with Georgiana,
Aylmer
generally made minute
inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms and
the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a
particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already
subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant
air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether
fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system--a strange, indefinite
sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half
pleasurably, at her heart.
Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there
she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped
upon her cheek. Not even
Aylmer
now hated it so much as
she.
To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found
it necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes she
met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works of
philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa,
Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head.
All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their
centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were
believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the
investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway over the
spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of
the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the members, knowing little of
the limits of natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or
proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought.
But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large
folio from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment
of his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which
either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and
emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious
life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet
spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong
and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of
earth assumed a soul.
Georgiana, as she read, reverenced
Aylmer
and loved him more
profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his
most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the
ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and
felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay
hidden beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won
renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had
penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working
in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself
so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in
whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in
Aylmer
's journal.
So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was found by
her husband.
"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books,"
said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased.
"Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance
over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
"It has made me worship you more than ever," said
she.
"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he,
"then worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it.
But come, I have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me,
dearest."
So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench
the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of
gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and
that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana
felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform
Aylmer
of a symptom which for two
or three hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in
the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout
her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time into
the laboratory.
The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that
hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages.
There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were
retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical
research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere
felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been
tormented forth by the processes of science.
The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its
naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had
become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed
almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of
Aylmer
himself.
He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was
distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How
different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for
Georgiana's encouragement!
"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine;
carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered
Aylmer
, more to himself than his
assistant. "Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all
over."
"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master!
look!"
Aylmer
raised his eyes hastily,
and at first reddened, then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He
rushed towards her and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his
fingers upon it.
"Why
do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he,
impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over my
labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!"
"Nay,
Aylmer
," said Georgiana with
the firmness of which she possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not you
that have a right to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the
anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so
unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I
shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own."
"No, no, Georgiana!" said
Aylmer
, impatiently; "it must
not be."
"I submit," replied she calmly. "And,
Aylmer
, I shall quaff whatever
draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce
me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
"My noble wife," said
Aylmer
, deeply moved, "I knew
not the height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed.
Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its
grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I
have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change
your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail
us we are ruined."
"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked
she.
"Because, Georgiana," said
Aylmer
, in a low voice,
"there is danger."
"Danger? There is but one danger--that this horrible
stigma shall be left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it,
remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
"Heaven knows your words are too true," said
Aylmer
, sadly. "And now,
dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."
He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn
tenderness which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake.
After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
character of
Aylmer
, and did it completer
justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at
his honorable love--so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than
perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than
he had dreamed of.
She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake,
and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to
the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a
single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer
than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the
march, ever ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the
scope of the instant before.
The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a
crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
the draught of immortality.
Aylmer
was pale; but it seemed
rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
than of fear or doubt.
"The concoction of the draught has been perfect,"
said he, in answer to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have
deceived me, it cannot fail."
"Save on your account, my dearest
Aylmer
," observed his wife,
"I might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing
mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which
I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it
might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of
all mortals the most fit to die."
"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!"
replied her husband "But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot
fail. Behold its effect upon this plant."
On the
window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which had
overspread all its leaves.
Aylmer
poured a small quantity of
the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of
the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be
extinguished in a living verdure.
"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly.
"Give me the goblet I joyfully stake all upon your word."
"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed
Aylmer
, with fervid admiration.
"There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame,
too, shall soon be all perfect."
She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile.
"Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I
know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish
thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of
a rose at sunset."
She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it
required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was
lost in slumber.
Aylmer
sat by her side, watching
her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose
existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this
mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the
cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly
perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details which, as the
moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its
stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the thoughts of years were
all concentrated upon the last.
While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the
fatal hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and
unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled,
however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep,
moved uneasily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again
Aylmer
resumed his watch. Nor was
it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible
upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more faintly outlined.
She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that
came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness.
Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful
still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and you will know
how that mysterious symbol passed away.
"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said
Aylmer
to himself, in almost
irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across
her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of
natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
Aminadab's expression of delight.
"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried
Aylmer
, laughing in a sort of
frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and heaven
--have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have
earned the right to laugh."
These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly
unclosed her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for
that purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with
such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her
eyes sought
Aylmer
's face with a trouble and
anxiety that he could by no means account for.
"My poor
Aylmer
!" murmured she.
"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
"My poor
Aylmer
," she repeated, with a
more than human tenderness, "you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly.
Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best
the earth could offer.
Aylmer
, dearest
Aylmer
, I am dying!"
Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the
mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in
union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that
sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting breath of
the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a
moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling
laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its
invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half
development, demands the completeness of a higher state.
Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not
thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of
the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too
strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and,
living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
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