Various - Stories of Mystery

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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 of 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 Aylmer reached a
profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
would have woven his mortal life of the self-same 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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