The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862

PRESENCE

It was a long and terrible conflict,—I will not say where, because that fact has nothing to do with my story. The Revolutionists were no match in numbers for the mercenaries of the Dictator, but they fought with the stormy desperation of the ancient Scythians, and they won, as they deserved to win: for this was another revolt of freedom against oppression, of conscience against tyranny, of an exasperated people against a foreign despot. Every eye shone with the sublimity of a great principle, and every arm was nerved with a strength grander and more enduring than that imparted by the fierceness of passion or the sternness of pride. As I flew from one part of the field to another, in execution of the orders of my superior officer, I wondered whether blood as brave and good dyed the heather at Bannockburn, or streamed down the mountain-gorge where Tell met the Austrians at Morgarten, or stained with crimson glare the narrow pass held by the Spartan three hundred.

Suddenly my horse, struck by a well-aimed ball, plunged forward in the death-struggle, and fell with me, leaving me stunned for a little time, though not seriously hurt. With returning consciousness came the quickened perception which sometimes follows a slight concussion of the brain, daguerreotyping upon my mind each individual of these fiery ranks, in vivid, even painful clearness. As I watched with intensified interest the hurrying panorama, the fine figure and face of my friend Vilalba flashed before me. I noted at once the long wavy masses of brown hair falling beneath the martial cap; the mouth, a feature seldom beautiful in men, blending sweetness and firmness in rare degree, now compressed and almost colorless; but the eyes! the "empty, melancholy eyes"! what strange, glassy, introspective fixedness! what inexplicable fascination, as if they were riveted on some object unseen by other mortals! A glance sufficed to show to myself, at least, that he was in a state of tense nervous excitation, similar to that of a subject of mesmerism. A preternatural power seemed to possess him. He moved and spoke like a somnambulist, with the same insulation from surrounding minds and superiority to material obstacles. I had long known him as a brave officer; but here was something more than bravery, more than the fierce energy of the hour. His mien, always commanding, was now imperial. In utter fearlessness of peril, he assumed the most exposed positions, dashed through the strongest defences, accomplished with marvellous dexterity a wellnigh impossible coup-de-main, and all with the unrecognizing, changeless countenance of one who has no choice, no volition, but is the passive slave of some resistless inspiration.

After the conflict was over, I sought Vilalba, and congratulated him on his brilliant achievement, jestingly adding that I knew he was leagued with sorcery and helped on by diabolical arts. The cold evasiveness of his reply confirmed my belief that the condition I have described was abnormal, and that he was himself conscious of the fact.

Many years passed away, during which I met him rarely, though our relations were always those of friendship. I heard of him as actively, even arduously employed in public affairs, and rewarded by fortune and position. The prestige of fame, unusual personal graces, and high mental endowments gave him favor in social life; and women avowed that the mingled truth and tenderness of his genial and generous nature were all but irresistible. Nevertheless they were chagrined by his singular indifference to their allurements; and many a fair one, even more interested than inquisitive, vainly sought to break the unconquerable reticence which, under apparent frankness, he relentlessly maintained. He had, indeed, once been married, for a few years only; but his wife was not of those who can concentrate and absorb the fulness of another soul, wedding memory with immortal longing. Thus the problem of my friend's life-long reserve continued to provoke curiosity until its solution was granted to me alone, and, with it, the explanation of his mesmeric entrancement on the occasion to which I have alluded. I repeat the story because it is literally true, and because some of its incidents may be classed among those psychological phenomena which form the most occult, the most interesting, and the least understood of all departments of human knowledge.

During a period of summer recreation I induced Vilalba to renew our interrupted acquaintance by passing a month with me in my country home. The moonlight of many years had blended its silver with his still abundant locks, and the lines of thought were deepened in his face, but I found him in other respects unchanged. He had the same deep, metallic voice, so musical that to hear him say the slightest things was a pleasure, the same graceful courtesy and happy elasticity of temperament; and was full as ever of noble purposes, and the Roman self-conviction of power to live them out. One of those nights that "are not made for slumber" found us lingering beneath the odorous vines which interlocked their gay blossoms around the slight columns of the veranda, until even the gray surprise of dawn,—the "soft, guileless consolations" of our cigars, as Aeschylus says of certain other incense, the cool, fragrant breezes, gentle as remembered kisses upon the brow, the tremulous tenderness of the star-beams, the listening hush of midnight, having swayed us to a mood of pensiveness which found a reflex in our conversation. From the warning glare of sunlight the heart shuts close its secrets; but hours like these beguile from its inmost depths those subtile emotions, and vague, dreamy, delicious thoughts, which, like plants, waken to life only beneath the protecting shadows of darkness. "Why is it," says Richter, "that the night puts warmer love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness, or is it the exalting separation from the turmoils of life,—that veiling of the world in which for the soul nothing then remains but souls,—that causes the letters in which loved names are written to appear like phosphorus-writing by night, on fire, while day, in their cloudy traces, they but smoke?"

Insensibly we wandered into one of those weird passages of psychological speculation, the border territory where reason and illusion hold contested sway,—where the relations between spirit and matter seem so incomprehensibly involved and complicated that we can only feel, without being able to analyze them, and even the old words created for our coarse material needs seem no more suitable than would a sparrow's wings for the flight of an eagle.

"It is emphatically true of these themes," I remarked, after a long rambling talk, half reverie, half reason, "that language conceals the ideas, or, rather, the imaginations they evolve; for the word idea implies something more tangible than vagaries which the Greek poet would have called 'the dream of the shadow of smoke.' But yet more unsatisfactory than the impotence of the type is the obscurity of the thing typified. We can lay down no premises, because no basis can be found for them,—and establish no axioms, because we have no mathematical certainties. Objects which present the assurance of palpable facts to-day may vanish as meteors to-morrow. The effort to crystallize into a creed one's articles of faith in these mental phantasmagoria is like carving a cathedral from sunset clouds, or creating salient and retreating lines of armed hosts in the northern lights. Though willing dupes to the pretty fancy, we know that before the light of science the architecture is resolved into mist, and the battalions into a stream of electricity."

"Not so," replied Vilalba. "Your sky-visions are a deceit, and you know it while you enjoy them. But the torch of science is by no means incendiary to the system of psychology. Arago himself admits that it may one day obtain a place among the exact sciences, and speaks of the actual power which one human being may exert over another without the intervention of any known physical agent; while Cuvier and other noted scientists concede even more than this."

"Do you, then, believe," I asked, "that there is between the silent grave and the silent stars an answer to this problem we have discussed to-night, of the inter-relation between spirit and matter, between soul and soul? To me it seems hopelessly inscrutable, and all effort to elucidate it, like the language of the Son of Maia, 'by night bringeth darkness before the eyes, and in the daytime nought clearer.' I shall as soon expect to wrest her buried secrets from the Sphinx, or to revive the lost mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood."

"And yet, most of those marvels," answered my friend, "as well as the later oracles of Greece, and the clairvoyance, mesmerism, etc., of modern times, were probably the result of a certain power of the mind to shake off for a time its fetters in defiance of physical impediments, and even to exert its control over the senses and will and perception of another. I do not doubt that in certain conditions of the mind there arise potentialities wonderful as any ever conceived by fiction, and that these are guided by laws unannounced as yet, but which will be found in some future archives, inducted in symmetrical clearness through the proper process of phenomena, classification, and generalized statement. My own experience suffices to myself for both assurance and prophecy. Although the loftiest, sweetest music of the soul is yet unwritten, its faint articulations interblend with the jangling discords of life, as the chimes of distant bells float through the roar of winds and waves, and chant to imperilled hearts the songs of hope and gladness."

His voice fell to the low, earnest tone of one who has found in life a pearl of truth unseen by others; and as his eye gleamed in the starlight, I saw that it wore the same speculative expression as on the battle-field twenty years before. A slight tremor fled through his frame, as though he had been touched by an invisible hand, and a faint smile of recognition brightened his features.

"How can we explain," continued he, after a brief pause, "this mystery of PRESENCE? Are you not often conscious of being actually nearer to a mind a thousand miles distant than to one whose outer vestments you can touch? We certainly feel, on the approach of a person repulsive, not necessarily to our senses, but to our instincts,—which in this case are notes of warning from the remote depths of the soul,—as if our entire being intrenched itself behind a vitally repellent barrier, in absolute security that no power in the universe can break through it, in opposition to our will. For the will does not seem to create the barrier, but to guard it; and, thus defended, material contact with the individual affects us no more than the touch of a plaster statue. We are each, and must remain, mutually unknowing and unknown. On the other hand, does not fixed and earnest thought upon one we love seem to bring the companion-spirit within the sacred temple of our own being, infolded as a welcome guest in our warm charities and gentle joys, and imparting in return the lustre of a serene and living beauty? If, then, those whom we do not recognize as kindred are repelled, even though they approach us through the aid and interpretation of the senses, why may not the loved be brought near without that aid, through the more subtile and more potent attraction of sympathy? I do not mean nearness in the sense of memory or imagination, but that actual propinquity of spirit which I suppose implied in the recognition of Presence. Nor do I refer to any volition which is dependent on the known action of the brain, but to a hidden faculty, the germ perhaps of some higher faculty, now folded within the present life like the wings of a chrysalis, which looks through or beyond the material existence, and obtains a truer and finer perception of the spiritual than can be filtered through the coarser organs of sight and hearing."

"Vilalba, you are evidently a disciple of Des Cartes. Your theory is based on the idealistic principle, 'I think, therefore I am.' I confess that I could never be satisfied with mere subjective consciousness on a point which involves the cooperation of another mind. Nothing less than the most positive and luminous testimony of the senses could ever persuade me that two minds could meet and commune, apart from material intervention."

"I know," answered Vilalba, "that it is easier to feel than to reason about things which lie without the pale of mathematical demonstration. But some day, my friend, you will learn that beyond the arid abstractions of the schoolmen, beyond the golden dreams of the poets, there is a truth in this matter, faintly discerned now as the most dim of yonder stars, but as surely a link in the chain which suspends the Universe to the throne of God. However, your incredulity is commendable, for doubt is the avenue to knowledge. I admit that no testimony is conclusive save that of the senses, and such witness I have received.

"You speak perpetual enigmas, and I suspect you—for the second time—of tampering with the black arts. Do you mean to say that you are a believer in the doctrine of palpable spiritual manifestation?"

"I might say in its favor," was the reply, "that apart from the pretences and the plausibilities of to-day, many of which result from the independent action of the mind through clairvoyance, and others from mere excitation of the nervous sensibilities, the truth of that theory is possibly implied in the wants of the soul; for a want proves the existence of an antidote as effectually as a positive and negative interchangeably bear witness to each other's existence. But if you will have patience to listen to a story of my own life, I can better explain how my convictions have been beguiled into the credence which appears to you unphilosophical, if not absurd."

"I will listen with pleasure,—first lighting another cigar to dispel the weird shapes which will probably respond to your incantation."

Vilalba smiled slightly.

"Do not be disturbed. The phantoms will not visit you, not, I fear, myself either. But you must promise faith in my veracity; for I am about to tell you a tale of fact, and not of fancy.

"It happened to me many years ago,—how flatteringly that little phrase seems to extend the scale of one's being!—when I had just entered on the active duties of manhood, that some affairs called me to New Orleans, and detained me there several months. Letters of friendship gave me admission into some of the most agreeable French families of that quasi Parisian city, and in the reception of their hospitality I soon lost the feeling of isolation which attends a stranger in a crowded mart. My life at that time was without shadows. I had health, friends, education, position,—youth, as well, which then seemed a blessing, though I would not now exchange for it my crown of years and experience. Fortune only I then had not; and because I had it not, I am telling you, to-night, this story.

"It chanced, one day, that I was invited to dine at the house of an aristocratic subject of the old French régime. I did not know the family, and a previous engagement tempted me to decline the invitation; but one of those mysterious impulses which are in fact the messengers of Destiny compelled me to go, and I went. Thus slight may be the thread which changes the entire web of the future! After greeting my host, and the party assembled in the drawing-room, my attention was arrested by a portrait suspended in a recess, and partly veiled by purple curtains, like Isis within her shrine. The lovely, living eyes beamed upon me out of the shrine, radiant with an internal light I had never before seen on canvas. The features were harmonious, the complexion pure and clear, and the whole picture wore an air of graceful, gentle girlhood, glowing, like Undine, with the flush of 'the coming soul.' I hardly knew whether the face was strictly beautiful according to the canons of Art; for only a Shakspeare can be at the same time critical and sympathetic, and my criticism was baffled and blinded by the fascination of those wondrous eyes. They reminded me of what a materialist said of the portraits of Prudhon,—that they were enough to make one believe in the immortality of the soul. Life multiplied by feeling into a limitless dream of past and future was mirrored in their clear depths; the questful gaze seemed reading the significance of the one through the symbols of the other, and pondering the lesson with sweetness of assent and ever-earnest longing for fuller revelation.

"As I lingered before this fair shadow, I heard my name pronounced, and, turning, beheld the not less fair original, the daughter of my host. Now do not fear a catalogue of feminine graces, or a lengthened romance of the heart, tedious with such platitudes as have been Elysium to the actors, and weariness to the audience, ever since the world began. The Enchanted Isles wear no enchantment to unanointed vision; their skies of Paradise are fog, their angels Harpies, perchance, or harsh-throated Sirens. Besides, we can never describe correctly those whom we love, because we see them through the heart; and the heart's optics have no technology. It is enough to say, that, from almost the first time I looked upon Blanche, I felt that I had at last found the gift rarely accorded to us here,—the fulfilment of a promise hidden in every heart, but often waited for in vain. Hitherto my all-sufficing self-hood had never been stirred by the mighty touch of Love. I had been amused by trivial and superficial affections, like the gay triflers of whom Rasselas says, 'They fancied they were in love, when in truth they were only idle.' But that sentiment which is never twice inspired, that new birth of

'A soul within the soul, evolving it sublimely,'

had never until now wakened my pulses and opened my eyes to the higher and holier heritage. Perhaps you doubt that Psychal fetters may be forged in a moment's heat; but I believe that the love which is deepest and most sacred, and which Plato calls the memory of divine beings whom we knew in some anterior life, that recognition of kindred natures which precedes reason and asks no leave of the understanding, is not a gradual and cautious attraction, like the growth of a coral reef, but sudden and magnetic as the coalescence of two drops of mercury.

"During several following weeks we met many times, and yet, in looking back to that dream of heaven, I cannot tell how often, nor for how long. Time is merely the measure given to past emotions, and those emotions flowed over me in a tidal sweep which merged all details in one continuous memory. The lone hemisphere of my life was rounded into completeness, and its feverish unrest changed to deep tranquillity, as if a faint, tremulous star were transmuted into a calm, full-orbed planet. Do you remember that story of Plato's—I recall the air-woven subtilties of the delightful idealist, to illustrate, not to prove—that story of the banquet where the ripe wines of the Aegean Isles unchained the tongues of such talkers as Pausanias and Socrates and others as witty and wise, until they fell into a discourse on the origin of Love, and, whirling away on the sparkling eddies of fancy, were borne to that preëxistent sphere which, in Plato's opinion, furnished the key to all the enigmas of this? There they beheld the complete and original souls, the compound of male and female, dual and yet one, so happy and so haughty in their perfection of beauty and of power that Jupiter could not tolerate his godlike rivals, and therefore cut them asunder, sending the dissevered halves tumbling down to earth, bewildered and melancholy enough, until some good fortune might restore to each the alter ego which constituted the divine unity. 'And thus,' says Plato, 'whenever it happens that a man meets with his other half, the very counterpart of himself, they are both smitten with strong love; they recognize their ancient union; they are powerfully attracted by the consciousness that they belong to each other; and they are unwilling to be again parted, even for a short time. And if Vulcan were to stand over them with his fire and forge, and offer to melt them down and run them together, and of two to make them one again, they would both say that this was just what they desired!'

"I dare say you have read—unless your partiality for the soft Southern tongues has chased away your Teutonic taste—that exquisite poem of Schiller's, 'Das Geheimnitz der Reminiscenz,' the happiest possible crystallization of the same theory. I recall a few lines from Bulwer's fine translation:—

"'Why from its lord doth thus my soul depart?Is it because its native home thou art?Or were they brothers in the days of yore,Twin-bound both souls, and in the links they boreSigh to be bound once more?"'Were once our beings blent and intertwining,And therefore still my heart for thine is pining?Knew we the light of some extinguished sun,—The joys remote of some bright realm undone,Where once our souls were ONE?"'Yes, it is so! And thou wert bound to meIn the long-vanished eld eternally!In the dark troubled tablets which enrollThe past my Muse beheld this blessed scroll,—'One with thy love, my soul'!"

"Now the Athenian dreamer builded better than he knew. That phantom which perpetually attends and perpetually evades us,—the inevitable guest whose silence maddens and whose sweetness consoles,—whose filmy radiance eclipses all beauty,—whose voiceless eloquence subdues all sound,—ever beckoning, ever inspiring, patient, pleading, and unchanging,—this is the Ideal which Plato called the dearer self, because, when its craving sympathies find reflex and response in a living form, its rapturous welcome ignores the old imperfect being, and the union only is recognized as Self indeed, complete and undivided. And that fulness of human love becomes a faint type and interpreter of the Infinite, as through it we glide into grander harmonies and enlarged relations with the Universe, urged on forever by insatiable desires and far-reaching aspirations which testify our celestial origin and intimate our immortal destiny.

"'Lo! arm in arm, through every upward grade,From the rude Mongol to the starry Greek,everywhere we seekUnion and bond, till in one sea sublimeOf love be merged all measure and all time!"

"I never disclosed in words my love to Blanche. Through the lucid transparency of Presence, I believed that she knew all and comprehended all, without the aid of those blundering symbols. We never even spoke of the future; for all time, past and to come, seemed to converge and centre and repose in that radiant present. In the enchantment of my new life, I feared lest a breath should disturb the spell, and send me back to darkness and solitude.

"Of course, this could not last forever. There came a time when I found that my affairs would compel me to leave New Orleans for a year, or perhaps a little longer. With the discovery my dream was broken. The golden web which had been woven around me shrank beneath the iron hand of necessity, and fell in fragments at my feet. I knew that it was useless to speak to Blanch of marriage, for her father, a stern and exacting man in his domestic relations, had often declared that he would never give his daughter to a husband who had no fortune. If I sought his permission to address her now, my fate was fixed. There was no alternative, therefore, but to wait until my return, when I hoped to have secured, in sufficient measure, the material passport to his favor. Our parting was necessarily sudden, and, strange as it may seem, some fatal repression sealed my lips, and withheld me from uttering the few words which would have made the future wholly ours, and sculptured my dream of love in monumental permanance. Ah! with what narrow and trembling planks do we bridge the abyss of misery and despair! But be patient while I linger for a moment here. The evening before my departure, I went to take leave of her. There were other guests in the drawing-room, the atmosphere was heated and oppressive, and after a little time I proposed to her to retreat with me, for a few moments, to the fragrant coolness of the garden. We walked slowly along through clustering flowers and under arching orange-trees, which infolded us tenderly within their shining arms, as in tremulous silence we waited for words that should say enough and yet not too much. The glories of all summer evenings seemed concentred in this one. The moon now silvered leaf and blossom, and then suddenly fled behind a shadowing cloud, while the stars shone out with gladness brief and bright as the promises of my heart. Skilful artists in the music-room thrilled the air with some of those exquisite compositions of Mendelssohn which dissolve the soul in sweetness or ravish it with delight, until it seems as if all past emotions of joy were melted in one rapid and comprehensive reëxperience, and all future inheritance gleamed in promise before our enraptured vision, and we are hurried on with electric speed to hitherto unsealed heights of feeling, whence we catch faint glimpses of the unutterable mysteries of our being, and foreshadowings of a far-off, glorified existence. The eloquence of earth and sky and air breathed more than language could have uttered, and, as my eyes met the eyes of Blanche, the question of my heart was asked and answered, once for all. I recognized the treasured ideal of my restless, vagrant heart, and I seemed to hear it murmuring gently, as if to a long-lost mate, 'Where hast thou stayed so long?' I felt that henceforth there was for us no real parting. Our material forms might be severed, but our spirits were one and inseparate.