In a Glass Darkly (3 page)

I was reading some pages which refer to "representatives" and
"correspondents," in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had
arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits, when
seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, present
themselves, by "correspondence," in the shape of the beast (
fera
)
which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and
atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those
bestial forms.

I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it,
and something caused me to raise my eyes.

Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I
saw reflected the tall shape of my friend, Mr. Jennings, leaning over my
shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so
dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.

I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a
little, saying:

"I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking
you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very
impertinently, I'm afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your
first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg,
no doubt, long ago?"

"Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces
of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good
as to remember."

Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush
in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed.

"I'm scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I've only
had them a fortnight," he answered, "and I think they are rather likely
to make a solitary man nervous—that is, judging from the very little I
have read—I don't say that they have made me so," he laughed; "and I'm
so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?"

I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers.

"I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours," he
continued. "I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded. Do
you know Dr. Harley?" he asked, rather abruptly.

In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of
the most eminent who had ever practised in England.

I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great
courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.

"I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,"
said Mr. Jennings.

This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of
anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.

"Really! and in what way?" I asked.

"In his profession," he answered.

I smiled.

"I mean this," he said: "he seems to me, one half, blind—I mean one
half of all he looks at is dark—preternaturally bright and vivid all
the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems
wilful
. I can't get him—I
mean he won't—I've had some experience of him as a physician, but I
look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an
intellect half dead. I'll tell you—I know I shall some time—all about
it," he said, with a little agitation. "You stay some months longer in
England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time,
would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?"

"I should be only too happy," I assured him.

"Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley."

"A little leaning to the materialistic school," I said.

"A
mere
materialist," he corrected me; "you can't think how that sort
of thing worries one who knows better. You won't tell any one—any of my
friends you know—that I am hippish; now, for instance, no one knows—not
even Lady Mary—that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other doctor. So
pray don't mention it; and, if I should have any threatening of an
attack, you'll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have a
little talk with you."

I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes
gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said:

"I see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a
conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the
rest of your life, you will never hit on it."

He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud
suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men
do in pain.

"Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any
of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you
that your confidence is sacred."

He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful
way and after a little time, I took my leave.

We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are
certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit—the human
face—which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor's
nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me. It
had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my plans
for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a change of
ideas.

I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his
hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had
been for some little time so much better—quite well, in fact—that he
was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to
his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up.
There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude for his
restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.

A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had
announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having
resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, "I begin to think
that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the
matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy
there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and
he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did
not come back for a year."

Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this
note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:

Dear Sir,—I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all
able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At
present, I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish
to say. Pray don't mention my name to my friends. I can see no one.
By-and-by, please God, you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run
into Shropshire, where some of my people are. God bless you! May we,
on my return, meet more happily than I can now write.

About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last
person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for
the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from
Mr. Jenning's niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be
gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In
those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of
suffering is sometimes hidden!

Nearly five weeks had passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings.
At the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote:

"I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of
scene, change of faces, change of everything—and in everything—but
myself
. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature
on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements
will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but,
pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I
have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage
to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea. You shall have no
trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank Street, who takes this
note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am
always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. I have
tried everything. Come and see."

I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening,
which accordingly I did.

He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought,
as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very
old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which
overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for
nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found,
belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it
for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being
furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of
selection, by coming here.

The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky
illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all
familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawing-room,
whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light.

I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in
the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The
corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the
gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was
sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place.
The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure
of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet
stealthy steps, into the room.

We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still
light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down beside
me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface
began his narrative.

The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of
Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on
the stony face of the sufferer—for the character of his face, though
still gentle and sweet, was changed—rested that dim, odd glow which
seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though
faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The
silence, too, was utter: not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from
without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's
house.

I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of
the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of
suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of
Schalken's, before its background of darkness.

"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven
weeks ago, and two days—I keep very accurate count, for every day is
torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.

"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much
thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the
ancients."

"I know," said I, "the actual religion of educated and thinking
paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting
field."

"Yes, but not good for the mind—the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is
all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their
religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is
a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me!

"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on
the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly
infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected
with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself
delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care."

He sighed heavily.

"I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his
work, as a friend of mine phrased it,
on
something—tea, or coffee, or
tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly
supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and
the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded
often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I
felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion—at first the
ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a
good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced
an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I
found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of
thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one
might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so
quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a
habit with me to sip my tea—green tea—every now and then as my work
proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp,
and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three
in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every
day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a
library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I
was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty
much as usual and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence
had never been, I think, so pleasant before.

"I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in
mediaeval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to
them. This obliging person's books were in the City, a very
out-of-the-way part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and,
on coming out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus
which used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time
the 'bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars
at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got
out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in
my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.