Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860

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It is, to be sure, much easier and safer to regard Shelley's career
in this way than to justify it, since the customs and opinions of the
great majority must, after all, be the law and rule of the world.
Shelley's apologist would be a bold man. Whether he shall ever have
one is a question. At all events, he has not had a biographer as yet.
His widow shrank from the task. Of those familiar friends of his, we
can say that "no man's thought keeps the roadway better than theirs,"
and all to show how futile is the attempt to measure such a man with
the footrule of the conventions. Shelley was a mutineer on board
ship, and a deserter from the ranks; and he must, therefore, wait for
a biographer, as other denounced and daring geniuses have waited for
their audience or their epitaph.

CLARIAN'S PICTURE.

A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL.

"Turbine raptus ingenii."--Scaliger

[concluded.]

The next morning there was queer talk about Clarian. Mac and I stared
at each other when we heard it at breakfast, but still kept our own
counsel in silence. Some late walkers had met him in the moonlight,
crossing the campus at full speed, hatless, dripping wet, and flying
like a ghost.

"I tell you," said our informant, a good enough fellow, and one not
prone to be violently startled, "he scared me, as he flitted past.
His eyes were like saucers, his hair wet and streaming behind him,
his face white as a chalk-mark on Professor Cosine's blackboard.
Depend on it, that boy's either going mad or has got into some
desperate scrape."

"Pshaw!" growled Mac, "you were drunk,--couldn't see straight."

"Mr. Innocence was returning from some assignation, I suspect",
remarked Zoile.

"If he had been, _you'd_ have encountered him, Mr. Zoile," said Mac,
curtly.

But I noticed my chum did not like this new feature in the case.

After this, until the time of my receiving the lad's invitation, I
neither saw nor had communication with Clarian, nor did any others of
us. If he left his room, it was solely at night; he had his meals
sent to him, under pretence of illness, and admitted no one, except
his own servant. This fellow, Dennis, spoke of him as looking
exceedingly feeble and ill; and also remarked that he had apparently
not been to bed for some days, but was mixing colors, or painting,
the whole time. I went to his door several times; but was invariably
refused admittance, and told, kindly, but firmly, that he would not
be interrupted. Mac also tried to see him, but in vain.

"I caught a glimpse of that boy's face at his window just now," said
he, one day, coming in after recitation. "You may depend upon it,
there's something terribly wrong. My God, I was horrified, Ned! Did
you ever see any one drown? No? Well, I did once,--a woman. She fell
overboard from a Chesapeake steamboat in which I was coming up the
Bay, and sank just before they reached her. I shall never forget her
looks as she came up the last time, turned her white, despairing,
death-stricken face towards us, screamed a wild nightmare scream, and
went down. Clarian's face was just like hers. Depend upon it, there's
something wrong. What can we do?"

Nothing, indeed, save what we did,--wait, until that pleasant morning
came round and brought me Clarian's note. I could scarcely brook the
slow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its own
beauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came,
the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindly
young physician, and a man of much promise, well-read, prompt,
clear-headed, resourceful, and enthusiastically attached to his profession
Mac tucked a volume of Shakspeare under his arm, and we made our way
to Clarian's room forthwith. Here we found about a dozen students,
all known to us intimately. They were seated close to one another,
conversing in low tones, and betraying upon their faces quite an
anxiety of expectation. The door of the bedroom was closed, the
curtain was lowered, and the only light in the room came from a
shaded lamp, which was placed upon a small table in the recess to the
right of the picture.

"What is this for?" inquired Dr. Thorne, pointing to a sort of salver
resting upon a low tripod directly in front of the picture.

"Where is Clarian?" asked I.

"He looks awful," someone began in a whisper, when the lad's feeble
voice called out from the bedroom,--

"Is it Ned and Mac?"

The door was pulled open, and Clarian came towards us.

"I am glad to see you, my friends. Dr. Thorne, you are truly welcome.
Pray, be seated. Mac, here is your place, you and your Shakspeare,"
said he, indicating the chair and table in the recess.

I had held out my hand to the lad, but he turned away without taking
it, and began to adjust the cords that moved the curtain.

"The tripod, Dr. Thorne," said he, with a sickly smile, "is a--a mere
fancy of mine,--childish,--but in the salver I shall burn some
pyrotechnic preparations, while the picture is being exhibited, by
way of substitute for daylight. Excuse me a moment," added he, as he
went into the bedroom again.

"Blount," said Dr. Thorne, in my ear, "why have you permitted this?
What ails that boy? If he is not cared for soon, he will go crazy.
Hush!--here he comes,--keep your eye on him."

Then, as Clarian came out, and stood in the bedroom doorway, quite
near me, I remarked the terrible change since I had last seen him. He
leaned against the door-frame, as if too weak to support himself
erect; and I saw that his knees shook, his hands jerked, and his
mouth twitched in a continual nervous unrest. He had on a handsome
_robe de chambre_ of maroon velvet, which he seldom wore about
college, though it was very becoming to him, its long skirts falling
nearly to his feet, while its ample folds were gathered about his
waist, and secured with cord and tassel. His feet were thrust into
neat slippers, and his collar rolled over a flowing black cravat _a
la Corsaire_. His long hair, which was just now longer than usual,
was evenly parted in the middle, like a girl's, and, combed out
straight, fell down to his shoulders on either side. All this care
and neatness of dress made the contrast of his face stand out the
more strikingly. Its pallor was ghastly: no other word conveys the
idea of it. His lips kept asunder, as we see them sometimes in
persons prostrated by long illness, and the nether one quivered
incessantly, as did the smaller facial muscles near the mouth. His
eyes were sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselves
seemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red,
staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, as
uncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those of
a wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching in
violence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea,
betrayed itself in all his movements, particularly in a way he had of
glancing over his shoulder with a stealthy look of apprehension, and
the frequent starts and shivers that interrupted him when talking.
His voice also was changed, and in every way he gave evidence not
only of disease of mind and body, but of a nervous system shattered
almost beyond hope of reaction and recovery. Trembling for him, I
rose and attempted to speak with him aside, but he waived me off,
saying, with that sickly smile which I had never before seen him
wear,--

"No, Ned,--you must not interrupt me to-night, neither you nor the
rest,--for I am very weak and nervous and ill, and just now need all
my strength for my picture, which, as it has cost me labor and
pain,--much pain,--I wish to show in its best light. Macbeth's
terror--it means more than it did the other night, Ned--but"--

Here he murmured an inarticulate word or two, recovering himself
almost instantly, however, and resuming in a stronger voice,--

"Macbeth's doom is my picture. You will wonder I preferred the solid
wall to canvas, perhaps,--but so did the genuine old artists. Lippo
Lippi, and Giotto, and--why, Orcagna painted on graveyard walls; and
I can almost fancy, sometimes, that this room is a vault, a tomb, a
dungeon, where they torture people. Turn to the place, good Mac,
Shakespeare's tragedy of 'Macbeth,' Act Third, Scene Fourth, and read
the scene to us, as you know how to read; I will manage the
accompaniments."

As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that a
blue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor
lad's face seem more ghastly than ever.

"You must sit down, Clarian," cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.

Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,--

"Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you
shall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasy
about my 'creamfaced' aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentiful
cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and
to-night is not the first time I have worn these 'linen cheeks.' Read
on, Mac."

We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,--for all of us saw
the boy's agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to
understand it,--until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by
its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,--to read as I had
never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and
ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read on
and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed
stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and
busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red
light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a
supernatural effect to the room's deep shadows, the picture's
funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy's countenance,
startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.

"Thou canst not say, I did it! Never shake Thy gory locks at me!"

As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all started
back, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us,
not in Clarian's picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stood
Macbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader,
absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgot
that I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene of
terror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result of
association, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of the
impressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light;
but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was a
life, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It was
not in the posture, grand as that was,--not in the sin-stamped brow,
rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea,--not in the wiry hair,
gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain try
to escape the foot that treads them down,--nor in the mouth, for that
was hid behind the impotent guard of the upraised arm and clenched
fist,--but in those painted eyes, into which, all-fascinated, we ever
gazed, reading in them all that crouching terror, all the punishment
of that spectral presence, all the poignant consciousness of his fate
to whom such things could happen, to whom already his victims rise
again,

"With twenty mortal murders on their crowns And push us from our
stools!"

While I yet gazed, a sickening terror pervading me in the presence of
these ghastly eyes, there came a voice, as if from afar,--"Read
on!"--so consonant with the tone of my emotions, that I looked to see
the figure itself take speech, until Mac, with a gasp, resumed.
Still, as he read, the nightmare-spell possessed me, till a
convulsive clutch upon my arm roused me, and instinctively, with the
returning sense, I turned to Clarian.

Not too soon,--for then, in his own person, and in that strange
glare, he was interpreting the picture to us. He stood, not thrown
back like Macbeth, but drawn forward, on tiptoe, with neck reached
out, form erect, but lax, one arm extended, and one long diaphanous
finger pointing over our heads at something he saw behind us, but
towards which, in the extremity of our terror, we dared not turn our
eyes. _He saw it_,--more than saw it,--we knew, as we noted the
scream swelling in his throat, yet dying away into an inarticulate
breath ere it passed the blue and shaken lips,--he saw it, and those
eyes of his, large enough in their wont, waxed larger still, wilder,
madder with desperate affright, till every one of us, save the
absorbed reader, recognized in them the nightmare horror of the
picture,--knew that in Macbeth Clarian had drawn his own portrait!
There he stood, drawn on, staring, pointing--

"Stop!" shouted Dr. Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident with
emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine
and subtile emotion of scorn into the words,--

"O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear:
This"----

"Triple fool! be silent!" cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to his
feet,--while we, spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end.
"Cease! do you not see?" cried he, seizing Mac.

But there stood Clarian yet, that red light upon his cheek and brow,
that fixed stare of a real, unpainted horror in his speechless face,
that long finger still pointing and trembling not,--there he stood,
fixed, while one might count ten. Then over his blue lips, like a
ghost from its tomb, stole a low and hissing whisper, that curdled
our blood, and peopled all the room with dreadful things,--a low
whisper that said,--

"Prithee, see there! behold! it comes! it comes!" Now he beckoned in
the air, and called with a shuddering, smothered shriek,--"Come! I
did it! come! Ha!" yelled he, plucking the spell from his limbs like
a garment, and springing madly forward towards the door,--"Ha! touch
me not! Off, I say, off!" He paused, gazed wildly round, flung his
hand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but their
whites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole-tracks in
his forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, he
tossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,--"O
Christ! it is gone! it is gone!" and fell to the floor with a bound.

We sprang to him,--Thorne first of any.

"This is my place, gentlemen," said he, in quick, nervous tones.
Then, taking the prostrate child into his arms, he carried him to his
bed, laid him down, felt his pulse, and placed his head in Mac's
arms. Returning then, he veiled the picture, flung the salver out of
the window, and dismissed the huddled throng of frightened students,
warning them to be silent as to the night's events. "Very likely
Clarian will never see to-morrow; so be careful, lest you soil his
memory."

"What does it mean, Thorne?" asked Mac, as the Doctor and I came
again to the bedside. "It is nothing more than an overdose of
_cannabis_ or opium upon an excited nervous system, is it?"

Thorne looked at the delicate-limbed child who lay there in Mac's
strong arms, wiped away the gathering froth from the lips, replaced
the feebly quivering limbs, and, as he lingered over the pulse,
replied,--

"He has been taking _hashish_?"

"He _has_ taken it,--I do not say he is under its influence now."

"No,--he has not touched any stimulant. This is much worse than
that,--this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to choose between
death and idiocy."

He was still examining the boy, and showing Mac how to hold him most
comfortably.

"If I could only get at the _causes_ of this attack,--those, I mean,
which lie deeper than the mere physical disorder,--if I could only
find out what it is he has been doing,--and I could, easily, were I
not afraid of directing suspicion towards him, or bringing about some
unfortunate embarrassment"--

"What is it you suspect?" thundered Mac.

"Either some cruel trick has been played upon the boy, or he has been
guilty of some act of madness"--

"Impossible!" cried we in a breath; "Clarian is as pure as Heaven."

"Look at him, Thorne!" said my good chum,--"look at the child's
baby-face, so frank and earnest!--look at him! You dare not say an impure
thought ever awoke in that brain, an impure word ever crossed those
lips."

Dr. Thorne smiled sadly.

"There is no standard of reason to the enthusiast, my dear Mac; and
here is one, of a surety. However, time will reveal; I wish I knew.
Come, Ned, help me to mix some medicines here. Be careful to keep his
head right, Mac, so as to have the circulation as free as possible."

While we were occupied in the front room, there came a stout double
knock at the door, and when I opened it, Hullfish, the weather-beaten
old constable of the borough, made his hesitating appearance. The
Doctor gave me a quick glance, as if to say, "I told you so," and
then returned the old man's bluff salutation. As soon as Hullfish saw
him, he came forward with something like a sigh of relief, and
said,--

"Ah, Doc, you here? 'Tar'n't a hoax, then, though I was mightily
'feared it was. Them students is the Devil for chivying of a
feller,--beggin' your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder,
Doctor?" said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian in the back
room.

"What do you mean, Hullfish? Got whom?" asked Thorne, making me a
sign to be quiet.

"The party, Sir, that was to be copped. I've got a blank warrant
here, all right, and a pair of bracelets, in case of trouble."

"What fool's errand is this, old man?" asked the Doctor, sternly.

"What! you don't know about it? Lord! p'raps it's a sell, after all,"
said he, quite chopfallen. "But I've got my pay, anyhow, and there's
no mistake in a V on the Princeton Bank. And here's the papers," said
he, handing a note to the Doctor. "If that's slum, I'm done, that's
all."

The Doctor glanced at the scrap of paper, then handed it to me,
asking, "Is that his handwriting?"

It was a note, requiring Mr. Hullfish. to privately arrest a person
guilty of a capital offence, until now concealed. If he was not
brought to Hullfish's house between nine and ten that night, then
Hullfish was to proceed to No.--North College, where he would be
certain to find the party. The arrest must be made quietly. The
handwriting was undoubtedly Clarian's, and I told Thorne as much.

"You see, gentlemen," said Hullfish, "I wouldn't 'a' taken no notice
of it, ef it hadn't been for the money; but, thinks I, them students
a'n't in the habit of sech costly jokes, and maybe there'll be some
pinching to do, after all. So you mean to say it's a gam, do you,
Doctor? May I be so bold as to inquire what yonder chap's holding on
to 'tother about?"

"'Tother' is dangerously ill,--has a fit, Hullfish. He is the author
of that note,--very probably was out of his mind when he wrote it."

"So? Pity! Very sick? Mayn't I see him?"

But, as he stepped forward, Thorne stood in the way and effectually
intercepted his view. The constable smiled cunningly, as he drew
back, and said,--

"You're sure 'ta'n't nothing else, then? Nobody's been getting rapped
on the' head? Didn't see no blood, though,--that's true. Well, I
don't like to be sold, that's a fact,--but there's no help for it.
Here's the young man's change, Doctor,--warrant sixty-six, my fees
one dollar."

Thorne carelessly asked if there had been any rows lately,--if he had
heard of any one being hurt,--if they had been quiet recently along
the canal; and being assured that there had been no disturbance of
moment,--"only a little brush between Arch and Long Tobe, down to
Gibe's,"--he handed the money back to Hullfish.

"Keep that yourself,--it is yours by rights. And, look you, mum's the
word in this case, for two reasons: there's danger that the poor
little fellow there is going to croak before long, and you'd be sorry
to think you'd given trouble to a dead man; and what's more, if the
boys get hold of this, there'll be no end of their chaffing. There's
not a few of them would like to cook your goose for you,--I needn't
tell you why; so, if you don't want them to get the flashest kind of
a pull over you, why, you'll take my advice and keep dark."

"Nothing like slang, Ned, with the police or the prigging gentry. It
gives them a wonderful respect for your opinion," said the Doctor,
when Hullfish was gone. But his serious, almost stern look returned
immediately, as he continued,--"Now to solve this mystery, and find
out what this wretched boy has been doing. Come, you and Mac, help me
to understand him."

When we had told the Doctor all we knew of the lad, he pondered long
over our recital.

"One thing is certain," said he: "the boy is innocent in intention,
whatever he has done, and we must stand by him,--you two
particularly; for you are to blame, if he has got himself into any
predicament."

"The boy has done nothing wrong, Thorne," said Mac, sturdily; "he may
have been trapped, or got himself involved somehow, but he never
could have committed any crime capable of superinducing such an
attack as this."

The Doctor shook his head.

"You may be right, my friend,--and I hope you are, for the child's
sake, for it will certainly kill him, if he has. But I never trust an
intense imagination when morbidly excited, and I have read of some
strange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal
_hashish_. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matter
before long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fast
now, and all we have to do is to avert another attack."

Thank Heaven, in a day or two Clarian was pronounced to be out of
danger, and promising rapid recovery. We had removed him to our
rooms, as soon as the violence of the convulsion left him, in order
to spare him the associations connected with his own abode. Still,
the lad continued very weak, and Thorne said he had never seen so
slight an attack followed by such extreme prostration. Then it did my
heart good to see how my chum transformed himself into the tenderest,
the most efficient of nurses. He laid aside entirely his brusque
manner, talked in the softest tones, stole noiselessly about our
rooms, and showed all the tender solicitude, all the quiet
"handiness" of a gentle woman. I could see that Clarian loved to have
him at his bedside, and to feel his caressing hand.

"You see, Ned," Mac would say, in a deprecatory tone that amused me
vastly, "I really pity the poor little devil, and can't help doing
all in my power for him. He's such a soft little ass,--confound
Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!--and then the boy
is out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of
a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of ale flagons and
battered quart-cups."

But, though we rejoiced to see that Clarian's health promised to be
better than it had been for months, we did not fail to notice with
regret and apprehension, that, as he grew physically better and
mentally clearer, a darkening cloud settled over his whole being,
until he seemed on the point of drowning in the depths of an
irremediable dejection and despair. Besides this, he was ever on the
point of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to put
into words; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were all
seated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, mournful
eyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, his
fingers upon Clarian's pulse,--

"You have something to say to us,--a confession to make, Clarian."

The boy flushed and shuddered, but did not falter, as he replied,
"Yes."

"You must withhold it until you are well again. I know what it is."

Clarian quickly withdrew his hand from the Doctor's grasp.

"You know it, and yet here, touching me? Impossible! entirely
impossible!"

"Oh, as to that," said Thorne, with a cool shrug of the shoulders,
"you must remember that _our_ relations are simply those of physician
and patient. Other things have nought to do with it. And, as your
physician, I require you to withhold the matter until you are well
enough to face the world."

"No,--I must reap where I have sown. I have no right to impose upon
my friends any longer."

"Bad news travel fast enough, Clarian, and there is no wisdom in
losing a friend so long as you can retain him."

"I do not see the force of your reasoning, Dr. Thorne. I have enough
to answer for, without the additional contumely of being called an
impostor."

"For your mother's sake, Clarian, I command you to wait. Spare _her_
what pain you can, at least."

"My mother! Oh, my God, do not name her! do not name her!"

And he burst into the only tears I ever saw him shed, hiding his face
in the bed-clothes, and sobbing piteously.

"What does this mean?" said Mac, as soon as we were where Clarian
could not hear us. "What have you found out?"

"Positively nothing more than you know already," answered Thorne.

"Nothing?" echoed Mac, very indignantly; "you speak very confidently
for one having such poor grounds."

"My dear Mac," said Thorne, kindly, "do you think I am not as much
concerned about Clarian as you are? Positively, I would give half I
own to arrive at a satisfactory solution of this mystery. But what
can we do? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not see
at once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insist
upon taking himself out of our keeping,--commit suicide, get himself
sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing
influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and
composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all
means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill
him to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anything
serious has happened, shall be sure to find out his connection with
it."

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