Hall Caine

“ Lucy lay there as I had last seen her, with the tranquil face of a sleeping angel. I thought I had never beheld a human countenance so saintly. There was not a line of evil passion, not a trace of that spiritual alloy which the touch of the world brings to the soul that is fresh from God. The air around her seemed to breathe of heaven.
“Is everything ready, nurse?” said the hypnotist. ”

“ It had got into my head that Lucy was the victim of a conspiracy, and that the two men, the doctor and the clergyman, were at the bottom of everything. With heart and brain aflame I went tramping down the curving path. In my mind's eye I was seeing my dear girl as if by flashes of lightning, first with her beautiful bright eyes full of youth and health and happiness and love, and next in the toils of some hideous and mysterious trouble. ”

“ The orator swaying an assembly, the statesman directing affairs, the king controlling an empire, the pretty woman dictating fashion, the young bride winning to her own way the husband who loves her—what are they all doing but imposing the free will on the will that is not free? Every great man is great in degree as he dictates the wills of other men, and he is the greatest man whom the greatest men are doomed to obey. ”

“ At the next moment the hypnotist was leaning closely over her, with his face close to her face, blowing softly into her eyes.
There was a measureless period of suspense. Lucy lay without a sign of life.
The hypnotist was holding the eyelids wide open and blowing strongly upon the pupils. The pupils were moving; they were coming down.
Then close to the silent face, very close, the hypnotist began to speak. In a loud, deep voice, caressing and yet commanding, he cried, “You're all right!” ”

“ When he was sent to Carlisle the old woman went up to the house of George Clousedale, and asked for the master. He came out to her in the hall, and she railed at him as a traitor and a tyrant. Losing himself at her insults, he snatched a riding whip from the wall, struck her on the head, and told her to be off to hell, and never dare to show her face in his house again. The woman drew herself up to him and cried, “You brutal ruffian, it's yourself that will go to hell, but before you go you will have the fire of hell in your body, and feel a thirst that can never be quenched! ”

“ It brought wealth to the Clousedale family, and was the chief source of Lucy's fortune. Her father died rich, but his last years were years of pain and terror. The unquenchable thirst which tormented him came in periodical attacks which grew more and more frequent, appearing first at intervals of six months, then of three, and then of one. Thus in narrowing circles the burning fever encompassed the man like a deadly serpent, and closed in and throttled him at the end. ”

“ The murderer who lures his victim to a lonely place that he may fall on him and kill him, the Judas who worms himself into the secret of his master that he may betray and sell him, the unjust steward who seeks the care of the widow and fatherless that he may rob them of their bread, the seducer who palters with the love of a weak woman that he may dishonor her and then fling her in the mud—these are the men who try to control the actions of their fellow men, and they are the real Lucifers, for they are in rebellion against God on his real throne—the hearts of his creatures. ”

“ The phenomenon of imagination which you propose to induce is only a form of hysteria. We know what that involves. It involves the danger of madness—incurable madness, not temporary madness such as the victim of drink suffers from. Thus you are trying to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Even if it is possible to put Miss Clousedale into a real sleep of three days' duration—a thing I entirely disbelieve—you would only be reducing her by one form of hysteria—the quiescent form, the most dangerous form—to a condition which must imperil her life. ”

“ But the one deep impression left by the letter was that of a poor human soul—a soul so dear to me—struggling under the domination of the crave for drink.
Dear Robert—If you only knew (but God keep you from all such knowledge) how much I suffer when these periods approach, you would not, as I fear you may, pity me for my weakness, or reproach me for not conquering it. Oh, the terror of the time when I feel this craving come upon me! I give up all work. I write postponing all engagements, I excuse myself to everybody. I lock myself up from every eye. ”

“ I repeated these words also, and the hypnotist replied,
“Do people speak when they have fainted?”
“Of course not,” said the doctor.
“Speak to her,” said the hypnotist to me.
I leaned over the bed again, and looking down at the closed eyelids, cried in a loud tone,
“Lucy!”
“Don't shout,” said the hypnotist. “Her hearing is not duller. It is intensified. She hears all we are saying, as well as the ticking of our watches and the beating of our hearts.” ”

“ What if Lucy could sleep through the days of her awful temptation! What if she could be put into a trance when the craving was coming upon her! Would she bridge over the time of the attack? Would she elude the relentless fiend that was pursuing her? Would she awake with the burning fever gone?
The hour of the experiment arrived, and spectators came trooping into the room. They were chiefly fashionable young men with their women, and they chatted and laughed, and smoked their cigars, throughout the proceedings. ”

“ She was ill, very ill, but she was also worse than ill. I must let her escape from our engagement. It had been the joy and the charm of her life, but now it was the terror and torment of her existence. She must break it, I must go back to London, we must never think of each other again. God forgive her and pity her; God be good to me and keep me and preserve me.
Such a letter could have but one effect. I snatched up my hat, and turned my face towards Clousedale Hall. While going through the village I walked briskly, but on reaching the lanes I set off to run. ”

“ There were only a few minutes left before closing time. Drink, drink—during the next few days it seemed to pursue and haunt me. I saw it everywhere—its wrecks and ruins dogged my footsteps.
Towards the end of the week, a letter came from Lucy. The attack was over, and she was herself again; but she saw more plainly than before in what direction her duty lay. Our engagement must be considered off, at once and forever. “It is only right,” she wrote, “and even if you, in your love or your pity—and I am sure of both—desired to continue it, nothing would prevail with me to agree.” ”

“ Now, if I could oppose the one superstition against the other! If I could only believe what my mother had believed, as Lucy believed what her grandfather had believed! If imagination could bring about the fate it feared, why could it not also bring about the fortune for which it hoped?
My father slept that night in my bed, and I made shift with the couch in my study. ”

“ I asked.
“She's beautiful!” he answered. “Beautiful!” he said again, with a long, warm utterance of the word, and after a moment, “She's a good woman,” he said tenderly.
We sat late and talked on every subject except one subject, and that was the subject nearest to my heart. Of Lucy's illness I could tell my father nothing, and I occupied myself at every pause in devising subterfuges by which I could prevent Sir George Chute from telling him. Somewhere in the early hours of morning my father unwittingly struck at an angle the thought that was dominant in my mind. ”

“ It was horror of the power which the animal part of one human creature can, by the mysterious processes of nature, wield over the animal part of another. It was sickening horror of the power which man as man can wield over woman as woman, putting the soul to sleep and for a time, at all events, to death. ”

“ To subjugate the free will of a fellow creature, to act upon her by suggestion, to compel her to do that which she must and not that which she would, was to attempt to uproot the moral law, to unseat religion, and to shake our trust in the supremacy of God himself. ”

“ The new scene, the new life, our engagement and our parting, had played upon her nerves, and she had begun to show symptoms of hysteria. Then the doctor had ordered egg and brandy twice daily to build up the burned out nervous system. The nurse had been horrified. She had reminded him of the death of Lucy's father and grandfather, and of the curse that hung over the family. The doctor had only laughed. Did she expect any sensible man of modern ideas to be influenced in his practice by such foolish superstitions? The young lady required a stimulant, and she must have it. ”

“ Lucy's eyes grew dimmer, their vision seemed to be obscured, her breathing became short and difficult as if she were beginning to suffer from an attack of nervous suffocation.
“The room is going round and round,” she said in a thick, low voice; and again in a half articulate murmur, “it is going faster and faster.” ”

“ Since I wrote last I have been thinking that, as I have only one son in the world, and am soon to lose him in that old cruel battle of father's love against woman's love, the least I can do is to show my front to the enemy and die with a brave face. ”

“ It was the chapel of ease that had been built and endowed by Lucy. I recognized it by its foundation stone, which bore a gilt lettered inscription in my dear one's honor. There were lights burning, the door was open, and I glanced within. Some ladies were decorating the windows, and the timbers of the open roof, from ladders held by two or three miners.
When I got back to the Wheatsheaf, I asked if there was any message from Clousedale Hall. There was no letter, but a gentleman was waiting to see me. It was the clergyman. ”

“ Lucy had come up to London from her home in Cumberland to consult him as a solicitor in relation to the mining estate which was her inheritance. She was two and twenty, and both her parents were long dead. Her only companion throughout life had been an old nurse, who was a maiden lady, but was always addressed as Mrs. Hill. The friendlessness of the orphan girl had touched Sir George, and he had invited her to his house in Cheyne Walk. It was there that I had met her. To meet her was to admire her, for surely no lovelier woman ever lived. ”

“ Breakfast was ready for me at the inn, but I could not touch it until I had written to Lucy. I told her with what concern I heard of her illness, how I hoped for her speedy recovery, how grievous was my disappointment at not seeing her immediately on my arrival in her country, with much beside of too intimate a nature to be repeated here. After this letter had been despatched by hand, I sat down to breakfast, and the landlady herself waited upon me as I ate. ”

“ She took the candle from the man servant and asked me into a room without a fire. Then, closing the door and speaking in whispers, she delivered herself of many apologies and excuses, saying it was a grief to her to be so inhospitable, and that this was a cause of unhappiness to Lucy also. When I asked if I might see my darling, she appeared to be thrown into a state of extreme perturbation, declaring that it would be impossible, and that the doctor had forbidden all visits whatever except those of the clergyman. ”

“ At that moment, by the light of the window, I saw her face. It was a horrible shock. The face bore an ugly resemblance to the face of Lucy. When I looked again the woman was gone.
I recovered myself and called after her. Her footsteps were rapidly going off in the darkness.
“Wait,” I cried, and I swung round to follow. I saw the woman turn in at the gate of Clousedale Hall. ”

“ Make her sit up and talk to us in the common way of life.”
The doctor accepted the challenge promptly. He raised Lucy in his arms and spoke to her, but she dropped back as one without bodily power.
“Raise her eyelids. Look at the pupils,” said the hypnotist.
The doctor did so. “She is asleep,” he muttered.
“But only in the somnambulistic phase,” said the hypnotist.
Then he touched her eyebrows and her temples with a hard downward pressure. Her breathing became slower and less audible, her face settled to a serene expression, and a faint tinge of color rose to her cheeks. ”

“ She was a worthy Cumberland woman in middle life, very staid and serious, but somewhat more talkative than the generality of her race. Her name was Tyson; her husband was something of a sportsman; they were living on the Clousedale property.
Mrs. Tyson had much to say about Lucy, whom she had known since earliest childhood, of her goodness to the poor, her personal sweetness to everybody, her generosity (exhibited in many ways) , and generally of the qualities of mind and heart which had endeared her beyond all others to the people of the district wherein she had been born and reared. ”

“ The drunkard drinks because he thinks he cannot help it. Drink is the hypnotist, and every time the victim yields to his sway his influence becomes more powerful. The beginning of his attempts upon Lucy was at the moment when she first tasted, for then the bulwark of her will was broken down. Imagination may bring to pass the thing it fears, and Lucy's imagination, dominated by the thought of a curse inherited from her grandfather, was working out the results which the curse predicted. ”