The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
play. She had, during our stay in Rome, become a mother, and new
feelings and affections had been awakened in her heart. Her husband had
treated her kindly, forbearingly, but he had much changed, and no longer
favored philanthropy or reform, and it was rumored that he had become
devout. Priscilla evidently began to turn to him with something
approaching the love and esteem she owed him, and would gladly have
broken her _liaison_ with me. But I would not hear of it; she must
return with me.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ULTERIOR PROJECT.
It may be asked why I wished Priscilla to return with me, against her
will, since I had no passion for her, and respected the honor of her
husband. I wished it partly from spite, and partly because it was
necessary to my purpose. She had induced me, or had had more influence
to induce me than any one else, to embark in a cause which I loathed,
and which at the same time I felt myself totally unable to abandon, and
I wished to make her suffer with me. Then, again, I could do nothing
without an accomplice, and that accomplice a woman. I travelled abroad
in the character of a simple American gentleman, not as a mesmerizer, a
magician, or one who commands invisible powers. Nobody abroad, or even
at home, ever suspected me, unless it was good old Mr. Cotton, of any
thing of the sort. In all cases when the mysterious force was to be
exerted, as long as she was connected with me, I employed Priscilla as
my agent. I gave her my orders, which she, without exciting any
suspicion against her or myself, seldom failed to execute to the letter.
Even after her own views and feelings began to change, and she felt the
slavery and degradation of her position, she dared not disobey me. She
stood in awe of my power, and knew well the merciless punishment that
awaited her. Often, often has she begged me, with tears and in the
deepest agony, to undo my spell over her, and to let her go free. I
would not. Had she not declared her spirit eternally wedded to mine? The
truth is, I was half afraid to undo the spell, and emancipate her. She
knew too many of my secrets, might expose me, and defeat all my plans;
and once freed from me, once restored to the empire of reason, she would
feel herself bound in conscience to do so; and when a woman once takes
it into her head to act from conscience, she is, whether she have a good
or a false conscience, as unmanageable as if she were in love. She is as
headstrong under conscience as under passion, and of course absolutely
uncontrollable, because in either case she uses her reason simply in the
service of her feelings. Then, again, I did not like accepting a new
accomplice.
Priscilla, not daring to resist, finally persuaded her husband to
consent to return home. We crossed the Channel to England, and hastened
to embark at Liverpool on board a steamer for New York. We had a stormy
passage, and came near being cast away; but at length arrived in port,
and soon found ourselves in Philadelphia, after an absence of six years
and six months amidst scenes and events of the most exciting character.
We were all changed in looks, but still more in feelings. The fire of
our enthusiasm was extinct, the freshness and sanguine hopes of youth
had fled forever; our labor had been in vain, and there was no bright or
cheering prospect before us. I took my leave of Priscilla at the
public-house where we stopped. When I saw her faded cheek, her sunken
eye and withered form, the wrinkles gathering on her brow, and heard
her, in a broken voice, renew her oft-repeated request, and remembered
what she was some ten or twelve years before, and thought of what I was
too at that time, and what I was now, I had a touch of human feeling,
and pressing her hand to my lips—I had not the heart to refuse—I told
her I would consider it, perhaps I would, and hurried out of the room,
to conceal my emotion, not sorry, after all, to find that I had not
wholly ceased to be human.
The next day, I started for my home in Western New York. Home, alas! no
longer. The house was desolate. During my prolonged absence, my mother
and my only sister had died, and all my family were gone. My library and
my laboratory remained as I had left them. They had no charms for me
now. I looked out upon the familiar scenes of my childhood; they seemed
changed all, and were tame and listless. I met some companions of my
earlier life; there was nothing in common between them and me. Their
voices sounded strange, and grated on my ears. The sad conviction, for
the first time in my life, forced itself upon me, that I was alone, and
deeply I felt my loneness. I had lost my childhood’s faith, which,
though meagre and but a shadow, yet was something. I had no Father in
heaven, no brother or sister on earth. I believed in neither angel nor
spirit. All existence, all being, had dwindled into one invisible,
elemental, impersonal Force, which indeed I could wield, but to what
end?
In my loneness, I felt that the vulgar belief in the devil, in ghosts,
and goblins damned, would be a solace. They would be something, and any
thing is better than nothing. Better is a living dog than a dead lion.
Alas, I had sold myself, and my redemption was far off. Strange enough,
I felt something like passion revive in my guilty breast. I felt, I even
regretted Priscilla’s absence; and it seemed that she was dear to me,
and that I could not endure life without her. I pictured her to myself
as I had first known her, and I wept as I remembered how for long years
I had enslaved her. A voice whispered in my heart, emancipate her. A
momentary feeling of generosity possessed me. I summoned her, as I knew
how, to my presence. She appeared, instantaneously.
“Priscilla,” said I, “I am sad and weary. Life has lost its charms for
me, and I care not how soon I die. I have nothing to live for. You are a
wife and a mother. I absolve you from your pact; be free; return, and
devote yourself to your husband, who is worthy of you, and to your boy.
I have, and will no longer have, power over you.”
A gleam of joy spread over her face, a smile of gratitude played on her
lips, and a look of love shot from her eyes, and the place where she
stood was vacant. She had vanished; but a chattering, as of a thousand
mocking voices, filled my room, and then impish, mocking faces were seen
all around, making mouths at me. I cared not for these. I silenced the
former, and sent away the latter with a word. I retained my magic force
still. But there was joy as well as sorrow in that house in Arch street,
Philadelphia. Priscilla, the day of returning to her own house, had been
taken ill; her husband was alarmed, and called a physician, who could
understand nothing of her case. She grew worse and worse; and during the
time I had summoned her to me, she fell into a sort of stupor, a
complete trance, and to all except her husband, who had seen her in that
state before, and knew that she was subject to trances, she seemed to be
dead. The moment I had absolved her, she came to herself, a sweet smile
on her face, with the hue of perfect health. She arose in bed, embraced
her husband with a warmth and sincerity of affection which he had never
before known, and for the first time since his birth looked upon her boy
with the glad joy of a mother’s heart. But at this moment her husband
was more to her than her babe. She hung on his neck, she pressed him to
her heart, she half-smothered him with kisses, spoke in the terms and
tones of the tenderest and sweetest affection, and it seemed as if she
would pour out upon him, in a single moment, the loaded affections of a
lifetime. “My dear husband, you must forget and forgive the past. I am
yours, yours now, yours alone; heart, soul, and body, forever. The spell
is broken. The delusion is gone; take me, take me, dear James, to your
heart.”
James was a man. He had been dazzled by the beauty and accomplishments
of Priscilla, and thought it enough to be accepted as her husband,
without much scrutiny into the state of her affections. She had, for a
moment, imposed upon him, and he had accepted her notions of woman’s
rights, philanthropy, and world reform. But he did not lack good sense;
he had even a strong mind, firm principles at bottom, and all the
elements of an upright, manly character. A few months’ practical
experience served to cure him of a good deal of his philanthropy, and to
damp the ardor of his zeal for reform. He was, of course, displeased
with my intimacy with Priscilla, and he owed me, it must be owned, no
good will. But his observation pretty soon satisfied him, that whatever
the bond of that intimacy, it was not what directly affected his honor
as a husband, and he resolved that he would seem not to regard it. It
was a bitter trial to him.
His tour abroad, his observation, and his conversations with gentlemen
and ladies, not always of our clique, had opened his eyes to many
things, and made him a stanch conservative. He abandoned all the loose
notions he had previously entertained, renounced his Quaker quietism,
and had become sincerely converted to a real objective Christian faith.
His first thought and care were to reclaim his wife, and, if possible,
to release her from the mysterious power which I seemed to have over
her. He found her as anxious to be released as he was to release her,
and he thought he discovered in her, at times, a growing affection for
himself. It was a difficult case to manage, but he thought it best to be
prudent and discreet, and to avoid every thing that could excite remark,
or that he himself might afterwards regret.
Feeling now that he had himself not been entirely free from blame, that
he was bound to be forgiving, that Priscilla was really his wife, the
mother of his child, and that she probably was freed, though he knew not
how, and did now really love him, he responded with a warmth nearly
equal to her own, to her strong expressions of love, frankly forgave her
all, and pressed her to his heart as his own, his truly beloved wife. It
was for both the happiest moment they had ever known, and in that one
moment James seemed to have been compensated for his patience,
forbearance, and suffering, for so many years.
Priscilla immediately regained her health and cheerfulness, and
resolved, if possible, to recover me from the bondage in which she knew
I was held. How she sped in this, and what new trials, if any, awaited
her, will appear as I proceed in my narrative.
My own feeling of loneness, of desolation, was not relieved by my
release of the woman I had so long held spell-bound, but was aggravated
by the constant annoyance of a passion which I had seldom before
experienced, or which, without much trouble, I had always been able to
subdue. As Priscilla became purified and less unworthy of her husband,
and as she seemed the more completely to have escaped me and to be lost
to me forever, the more did I feel that I could not live without her,
and the more impossible did I find it quietly to endure her absence. I
was mad. I called her. The charm was broken, and she came not; I saw
only a vague, undefined form, flit before my eyes, and heard only a wild
mocking laugh.
Weeks passed, but they seemed ages. Priscilla, in all her loveliness, in
all her gracefulness and dignity, in all the brilliancy of youth and
beauty, was constantly present to my morbid fancy by day, and to my
dreams at night. I was completely unmanned,—wept now as a child over a
lost toy, or now raved as a madman. I could not eat, I could not sleep.
I could endure it no longer. I sold my house and furniture, disposed of
my laboratory and scientific apparatus, packed up my library, and
resolved that henceforth I would take up my residence in Philadelphia.