Oubliette

“ You struggle so, or, like a wounded wolf, which, in the depths of its cave, awaits his recovery only in time, wrapped in your solitary suffering, you can, near or far, assign a term to your grief, and hope, at least, in forgetfulness. Forgetfulness,—this only inexorable reality of life! Forgetfulness,—this fathomless ocean, wherein come unceasingly to be lost all sorrow, all love, and all curses. ”

“ I am here as you left me; a guilty, conscience-stricken creature struggling in a world of nightmares. Nothing now seems substantial, permanent, or true. Every time that I stand up before my congregation I am like a shadow addressing shadows; thought and language both fail me, and I know not what platitudes flow from my lips; but when I am left alone again, I awaken as from a dream to the horrible reality of my guilt and my despair. ”

“ And what had I gained in knowledge or in hope by my foolish imaginary quest? Nothing. I had but proved to myself that I was no more exempt than the next man from an insatiable, if hitherto unrecognized desire for this world’s goods and this world’s honors. Nothing less could have kept my thoughts so long in this especial groove at a time of such loss and so much personal sorrow.
My shame was great and to its salutary effect upon my mind I attribute a certain lessening of interest in things material which I date from this day.
My hour of humiliation over, my thoughts reverted to Orpha. ”

“ A very composed life, which had been broken in upon quite suddenly by a bewildering shadow,—tragic fear, doubt, alarm,—sudden mystery no ways explainable, or madness explainable but hopeless. In this pause of dismay and doubt, while the dark, unknown, inexplicable figure had turned away from the door a little, it was hard to turn from its fascination and go quietly back to that quiet life. ”

“ While I dutifully listened, my mind was working out the deception which was to release me, and when I left him it was to take the first step in the complicated plot by which I hoped to recover my lost happiness. And I nearly succeeded. You have seen what I have borne, what difficulties I have faced, what discoveries eluded, but this last, this greatest ordeal, was too much. I could not listen unmoved to a description of my own drowned body. I, who had calculated on all, had not calculated on this. The horror overcame me—I forgot—perhaps because God was weary of my many deceptions! ”

“ Ay, forget—it is a strange truth! we do forget! the summer passes over the furrow, and the corn springs up; the sod forgets the flower of the past year; the battle-field forgets the blood that has been spilt upon its turf; the sky forgets the storm; and the water the noon-day sun that slept upon its bosom. All Nature preaches forgetfulness. Its very order is the progress of oblivion. And I—I—give me your hand, Madeline,—I, ha! ”

“ But it was still too early to disturb the old man—and yet—she must hear a human voice, one word—even if it were a hard word—from the lips of a human being; for the bewildering feeling of distraction which confused her mind, and the misery of abandonment that crushed her heart, were all too cruelly painful to be borne. ”

“ I smile, sadly when I read in my journal, which I have just been looking over, these words repeated so often:
"Never was there greater sorrow—"
"Never was there more happiness—"
"Never can I forget—"
And now new joys have obliterated those sorrows; new troubles have faded those joys. Thus day after day, forgetfulness, that dark, cold tide, creeps up higher, higher, and swallows up in the black abyss of the past the souvenirs that time has discoloured.
My mother! my father! Hélène! Marguerite! Catherine! you to whom I owe so much sorrow and so much felicity! ”

“ The delights and pains of the flesh, the agonies and raptures of the soul, these are fragmentary meteors fallen from thought’s harmonious system. But these burning experiences—how in any sense can they be mere pieces of thought’s heaven? For, if the fall is real, there is a world outside thought’s region, and, if the fall is apparent, then human error itself is not included there. ”

“ And even in those earlier crises, which are but types of death—when we are cut off abruptly from the life we have known, when we can no longer expect tomorrow to resemble yesterday, and find ourselves by some sudden shock on the confines of the unknown—there is often the same sort of lightning-flash through the dark and unfrequented chambers of memory. ”

“ The splintering of glass mingled its small sound with an ominous thud in the thick darkness. It was the end of all things; the falling of an impenetrable curtain over a horror half sensed, yet all the greater for its mystery.
The silence—the terror—the unspeakable sense [Pg 71] of doom which gripped them all was not broken by a heart-beat. All listened for a stir, a movement where they could see nothing. ”

“ May you be purified by the affliction He sends. Good night, once more, and remember that not a sparrow falls to the ground unheeded by Him who made it."
How was it that this feeble child of affliction, went to bed that night in some degree composed? For every earthly hope seemed blighted. Her parents, one by one were re–called; her little patrimony taken away; and she and the little ones left almost friendless. Was it to make her the better feel where she could and must place her sole dependance? ”

“ So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages, as it haunted my life, goes down into the impenetrable gloom. Like a shadow she first came to me in the loneliness of the night. Like a shadow she passes away in the loneliness of the dead. ”

“ No shadows! Nothing real! No assurance of reality! only the dark—unbroken, formless, fearful; the dark which like grief, and forgetfulness, and selfishness, fives for itself only, without regard for the pain or joy or suffering of others; all the world else shut out; a fearful, shadowless thing in which all the beautiful realities of life are lost and blotted out. ”

“ In others, doubt, agony, fear and hope, would in turn take possession of the heart, chasing each other like shadows over the face, as question after question was put, to recall some event or scene familiar to both, till at last a common chord would be touched, when the dormant memory would awake as by an electric shock, a flood of fond recollections sweep away all uncertainty, and the lost one be hurried away amid sobs and cries of joy. ”

“ And I thought any man who had tact enough for that would be my undoing and I should not wonder,” with a swift look from under her long lashes, “if it were true, but you will never tell a soul I told you, will you?” beseechingly. “It’s a secret—the undoing, you know.” ”

“ Let the dust of oblivion cover them; I would not pain another by the recital. There are sorrows—short ages of agony—into the dark origin of which none would dare to pry: one heart alone feels, hides, and nourishes them for ever! ”

“ Was there ever anyone in the world who was ever missed except by one or two, and that not because he was great or even necessary, but only because he was beloved by some longing, aching heart? The waters of oblivion settle over a memory as quickly as over a puddle which is disturbed by a pebble thrown by a careless hand. ”

“ It smelled of dust and musty stone, of age and disuse. It was sad. It was solemn. It had the look of a place where silence had become master and was now irrevocable and terrible, and could not be broken. ”

“ Back, back, these tumultuous throbbings of the heart, and these tears which vainly rising to the eyelids, fall back upon the heart as wanting power to flow. Who, after an absence of many years, on entering the house where they first inhaled the breath of life, but has been overpowered by conflicting emotions, as the tide of Memory rolled in, like a flood, bearing so much upon its bosom, and where so many associations crowd upon the mind, it is difficult to lend expression to the ideas. ”

“ These mournful spectres do not speak the language of mortals; they weep, they sigh, and make terrible gestures in the shadows. Thus they express their unknown sorrows, their nameless anguish, the suggestions of solitary despair, all that there is of suffering, bitterness, and sorrow in the depths of the human soul. ”

“ She had forgotten that night until lately—forgotten her tears, her doubts, her hesitation; but, as at the day of judgment the scroll of our lives will be unfolded before us, so even in this world there are times when part of the history is remembered by us, when the thoughts and the resolutions of the long ago, appear before us like unwelcome ghosts. ”

“ What if she should be condemned to wander forever among familiar places that knew her no more, appealing for a look, a word, to those who could no longer see her, or hear her cry, or know of her presence? Terror seized upon her, a chill and pang of fear beyond description. She felt an impulse to fly wildly into the dark, into the night, like a lost creature ”

“ He passed the remainder of the night in dreadful agony, sometimes sitting silent and motionless—gazing into vacancy, as if his faculties were bewildered and lost, and then suddenly starting up, amazed and trembling, and staring wildly about, as if seized with a sudden frenzy. ”

“ Painfully, then, I got upon my feet and stole, with no sentiment but a weak curiosity, to the prostrate thing. It was as if I had died and my dissatisfied ghost postponed its departure, seeking the last explanation of things. Thus, while my soul was sensitive to the least expression of the tragedy that absorbed it, in the human world outside it seemed no longer to feel an interest. ”

“ Mine eyes to the hunt, and my soul afar-
I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man.
WHEN ONE FORGETS When one forgets, the old things are as dead things;
The grey leaves fall, and eyes that saw their May
Turn from them now, and voices that have said things
Wherein Life joyed, alas! are still to-day—
When one forgets. ”

“ A sense of hopeless desolation and abandonment settled upon her soul; the distances of universes seemed to separate her from the dead. But to this suddenly succeeded a chill, awful sense of a presence, wrapped in silence and mystery, melting through all material barriers, treading on the impalpable air, not "looking ancient kindness on her pain," but lowering amid the shadows of her chamber, stern, perturbed, unreconciled. ”

“ Not one cloud should ever darken the sunshine of your sky, if I had my way. You are right—I have a secret—a secret of horror, and dread, and dismay—a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart! Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you! ”

“ Thus growing out of the night as we drew nigh, and vanishing as we glided on, based on obscurity, and overhung and bounded by it, the scene was ghostlike,—the very land of unsubstantial things, whither dreams might betake themselves when they quit the slumberer’s brain. ”

“ Instead of her forgetting her bereavement, or the sense thereof waxing weaker by time, she seemed to be drifting toward that ever-present consciousness of loss in which the soul feels itself gradually, but surely, sinking under an insupportable burden—a burden so long borne, so well known, that the mind no longer thinks of it. The heart beats stolidly under its load, and seems to forget the time when it was not so oppressed. ”

“ I confess that an eerie feeling came over me as I unfolded these five closely-written, unsigned and undated little squares of yellow paper, things intended so exclusively for the mere moment of writing and reading, all that long-dead momentary passion of a long-dead man and woman quivering back into reality, filling, as an assembly of ghosts might fill a house, and drive out its living occupants, this present hour which so soon will itself have become, with all its passions and worries, a part of the past, of the indifferent, the passionless. ”

“ And thus the sequence of what followed, proved extraordinarily difficult to remember afterwards. An atmosphere of sadness, of foreboding, of premonition came over me; there was desolation in my heart; there were stabs of horrible presentiment. All these, moreover, were ever vaguely related to one thing⁠—that inexplicable faint odour of burning.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ The boding spirit sunk, with woe distrest,
And down the check, the floods of sorrow prest;
At last my closing eye forgot to weep,
And o'er it past the viewless wand of sleep.
Dark visions came, all broken and distrest,
Uncalled, unsought, the enemies of rest;
Such as wild fever draws in fearful guise,
Before the restless mourner's half-clos'd eyes. ”

“ If it is blind, it gropes its way, in its blindness, through the uttermost gulfs of space and into the nethermost abysses of life. If it is dumb, its silence is the irresistible silence of Fate, the silence of the eternal "Mothers." ”

“ In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. ”

“ To contemplate the procession that passes daily beneath my window, with its ever-shifting pictures of sorrow, of decrepitude ill-matched with want, new motherhood, and mendicancy, with uplifted eye and palm—to look down upon all this with only a passing sigh, as my worthy but material fat landlady does, would imply a spiritual blindness infinitely worse than the pang which the keener perception induces. ”