Medusa

by E. H. Visiak

  I inclined to set does this exaltation of the Captain and Mr Huxtable (however you may think me phantastical) to Mr Vertembrex being present with us, feeling in myself an happy correspondency and elation of my soul; and, to my surprise, Mr Huxtable expressed the same opinion.

  This was after Mr Vertembrex retired to his cabin (as he did always after supper, when the cabin-boy entered to clear the board) and while the Captain, having spent the foolish quiver of his wit, drunk his wine, and smoked his pipe of tobacco, was fallen into a doze.

  “Whenever I am with him,” said he, of the little mute man, “I am sensible of an upraising and irradiating of my spirits, as if he bears about him a sort of supernatural lantern.”

  “So it is also with me,” said I.

  “What, do you feel it?” said he. “that’s strange. We have some profit, then, of this odd companion. It cannot be but for some secret virtue, or efficacy, that he has. I do never cease to marvel what his state is, and how he came to be in it; for if Moon does not lie - and I see not why he should in such a point - he was not so when he was with those pirates. Saw man ever the like of one that seems to know, yet, notwithstanding, to be not sensible of what he does; eats, sleeps, goes his ways, as if he was performing actions in a dream?”

  “He is like to one of those shades in the old Greek underworld,” said I; “But yet he is too cheerful for that.”

  “That’s true,” said he; “but, methinks, Mr Falconer would make a fitter picture too such a frame. Now, in this somnambulary state is he cognisant of another life within him to which the outward bears the semblance of a dream?”

  “It must be, then, but a childish life,” said I, “to take his pleasure in threading glass beads. It brings to my thoughts Mr Falconer and his little ships; which is a boy’s business, too; though a boy would never be able to contrive such outlandish strange effigies as he makes at their bows.”

  “’Tis wonderful strange —“ said he, and stopped, falling off into a muse. “I see not how it can bear on the matter,” said he, at length; “But those expressions in the mute’s writing - Sunflower, summer-house, cinnamon and blue - did conjure up old childish recollections in my thoughts - of a house and a spacious large garden and shrubbery in a village near Deal, wherein, being about six years old, I abode two or three months with my parents.

  “This garden abounded with all manner of flowers and shrubs and fruit trees, and I passed my days there with delight; but what principally engaged my mind and now enchants my recollection, was a large summer-house standing in the wall (being shaped in a circle that enclosed the garden); and this summer-house, mark me! had windows stained blue and cinnamon.

  “Many years after, when I was come to years, having occasion to make a journey into these parts, I went to view the place. The garden, though of a good bigness, looked much smaller than I had imagined it to be, which is a common experience in revisiting the haunts of our childhood; but the summer-house was not diminished one jot. The hour was nigh sunset; and while I stood looking upon it from a cornfield without the wall, the dark blue pane over above my head cast a smouldering gleam.

  “Another thing of delectable recollection which the mute’s writing recalled to me, was the sunflowers in the garden, with their great flaming discs, caked with gold, and their honey-sweet fragrance.”

  “What can be thought, or conjectured, from this,” said I, “unless a mere accident? But can it be that Mr Vertembrex was inviting - or at least, intermixing - some recollections of his childhood?”

  “Well thought on, Will,” said he. “Indeed I find you apt; and it’s true such a notion entered my mind, though, perhaps, too phantastical. But, be this what it will, whether or no he was recalling his childhood, he had strangely hinted at mine.

  “This topic of childhood and the enchantment it casts, has powerfully worked in my thoughts, and was the ferment of my philosophy when first I became sensible of its loss and what a brave glittering robe was fallen from me into the past. It’s my first chapter of Genesis, which, in that story of lost Paradise, is a grand fable of the beginning of our life in this world; when we are innocently happy, or, as I may express this harmonious state, happily whole. There is as yet no rift to set body and spirit out of tune in their jangling spheres, and the elements are so mingled in us as that we may truly be called, in those eloquent words, living souls, and, like Adam, before (in a manner of division from himself) there was created his female, Eve - nay, before ever he knew the need of such a complimental mate.

  “I know not if you will be able to understand me, Will,” (said he, smiling on me), “though I have found you of capacity to understand such pieces of philosophy - yea, beyond your years! and some things that are obscure to you, being well planted now, may grow up when you are older. I shall read to you something out of my book. You did not know - did you? - that I was writing a book.”

  Hereupon, after glancing his eyes at the Captain, who continued to slumber, he went and took from his desk a bundle of papers, which he set upon the table. Thereupon, having turned to a place, he began as follows:

  “In that sweet age - I mean of childhood - the light shines in the soul, as it were also of a crystal without flaw, kindling like rays in all external things. Intellect and sense are homogeneal, and to think and be sensible of are as one function. Like unto the Angels of whom Milton sang, All heart, we live, all head, all eye, all ear, all intellect, all sense. But when that sad division is accomplished (sad in its issue, though far other in its end, or object), the bright mould begins to cloud. whereof the effects, at that change signified by the eating of the tree standing in the centre of the garden, are not only the moral perception of good and evil, but also the parting in twain of all things into false and contrary faces.

  “Henceforth we’re not only banished from our paradise, but, in one way, from the whole world; of which, like a paradise, or enclosed garden (which is the meaning of the word), we behold but the outside. Our eyes are open - but not that internal eye that’s brighter than the sun. We have taken Psyche’s lamp, dropping hot oil, and the god is departed.”

  He broke off, to ask me if I understood what he read. I answered that I understood it very well, except Psyche’s lamp and the god that was departed.

  “Nay, I had forgotten that you did not know,” said he. “This is an elegant Greek fable of love’s young paradise and its loss, and is not unworthy to be compared to the other - I mean, the story of Eden - though in a lower clime. Nay, in one way, it’s the more perspicuous and hath the greater latitude, as you shall hear; for I have related it in another place.”

  Having turned the page, he read:

  “Psyche was a king’s daughter, characterised as a small winged maiden, or else as a butterfly, to signify, as I suppose, a lifted light on love’s pure air. But the goddess, Aphrodite, being jealous, sent her son Eros, or Cupid (as his other name is), with intent to singe those dazzling wings by the kindling of a mortal flame - a design, as it fell out, that quite miscarried. For no sooner, hath Eros beheld her, but himself becomes enamoured of the beauteous maid; and, instead of causing her to love a mortal man, he bears her off to a palace in a vale of Paradise, where they lived with delight.

  “But this Paradise also had its prohibition. Psyche was strictly forbid to look upon Eros with her mortal eyes. Neither did she desire to do so; having her ever in his immortal sight, what could she wish for more?

  “She had continued thus happy, but that, yielding to her sisters’ envious tongues, that aroused her curiosity, one night, taking a lamp, she stole into the chamber where Eros lay sleeping. Whereupon, while she gazed all trembling, a drop of hot oil spilled upon the shoulder of the god; who, awakening and upbraiding her disobedience, immediately betook himself away, leaving her all forsaken.

  “She could no longer continue in that void paradise, where everything she looked on cast a reflection of her dear lost joy; the bright light was more afflicting to her than thick darkness. It was all empty and silent; and sometimes
she heard, or thought she heard, the voice of Eros as hollow falling murmurs, vain and lamentable sounds; which drove her out, as a voice more awful, and more dear, had expelled that guilty twain from Eden.

  “Yea, even as theirs was, her lot is now to labour; for, wandering up and down searching for Eros in vain, she came, at last, to the palace of Aphrodite; by whom she was set to menial service, and finally ordered to descend into the lower world, Pluto’s dark region, to fetch a box of beauty’s ointment from Persephone, his Queen.

  “This heavy and dreadful task she performed; but, on opening the box, sunk, overcome by it odours, to the earth, paying the last penalty of that mortal divided sense, darkly glancing on the outward form; which is beauty’s shape of death, in which she appears as by lamplight, when the spirit sleeps; and a sleeping god thus looked on, is a mortal image (if we rightly consider of it); as, to the eye of faith, the serene look that death casts over a human face, which, in those that have lived worthily is almost divine, may be considered of as an emblem of immortality.

  “And to immortality, indeed, Psyche attained, after Eros, no longer able to contain his love, hastening to her, had restored her life.”2

  While he read, he kept glancing his eyes from the page to observe (in which he was well contented) if I heard and understood. Now, after looking very kindly on me, while I sat silent - being quite out of myself for pleasure - he bade me hear also a wonderful strange Indian fable.

  “I had it,” said he, “from Mr Falconer. I mean, the plain narrative; but it grew in my thoughts and I have commented on it.”

  Thereupon, he read, having turned some pages:

  “There was in farthest antiquity a very large and fertile island lying in those parts of the ocean which are off the south side of the island of Ceylon; the inhabitants whereof, like to those of the huge island of Atlantis, of which Plato writes in his Timaeus, were in the first part exceeding prosperous and wise, and of an upright and noble mind, but afterwards fell off from virtue and declined from wisdom.

  “They enjoyed at first such a divine infusion of super-eminent vision as cannot be imagined, having converse with that bright world whereof this is but a shadow. They did behold the forms, or bodies, of things through their essential irradiations ; thus much more gloriously substantial. They looked not outwards upon the infinite one way, as from a window, but every way, inwards, as from an aerial sphere; and the utterless sweet fragrance and lively fair, glowing colours of things were the raiment and element of their enchanted souls.

  “Love, they knew, one with another, without obstacle of corporeal bars; they mingled soul with soul in virtual union, total harmony. Their affections were of the sun; they knew not, not had occasion to know, its terrestrial and corrosive compound, fire.

  “But, in the process of time, this pure and original temper of their souls began to change. Their direct vision with which they enjoyed felicity (for true perception is meeting and union), was turned outwards, and their senses, become mortal, presented to them, instead of real things, both their false and finite shadows. They grew into the likeness of their hearts’ imagination; and, in the delusion of isolation consequent thereupon, they appeared to themselves to be compacted in corporeal bodies, and by the very means of these material shadows - by their contact - they thought to attain union. They did conceive them to be really substantial. as though a man should conceit the form, or body, of a picture to be paint and canvas; or that of a poem ink and paper; which can be destroyed, and yet the poem imprinted again in a hundred such bodies. But the metre and right order of words is the true body, and if it be meddled with, that poem cannot stand. They were taken with appearances, or outsides, erroneously distinguishing for seperate principles what were merely contrary appearances - as body and soul, male and female - making imaginary divisions in spiritual entireness.

  “In like manner, they separated the quality of beauty, or comeliness, from goodness and truth. They came under the power of pride, greed, and passion; their whole commonwealth, their enchanting dear society, was broken up into the anarchy of warring atoms.

  “At last, they began to know and rue their altered state; not wanted there among them some of understanding that admonished them how they should take in hand to correct this sad deviation by right perceptions, and recover: notably, one - an aged philosopher of a fervent and exalted mind.

  “He plainly showed them the nature and operation of their reprobate desires; how empty they were, how false and hurtful: alluring fair in promise; in performance nothing; they only jarred and distempered each particular constitution, and thence the general commonwealth, into anarchy.

  “And that concupiscent seeking after union was frustrate in the very means it took to compass its end; for the sense of touch was not union, nor could the face, or appearance, be divided from the spiritual form (which was also the substance). Bodily propinquity was not spiritual nearness, unless it should be thought that a body, moving any whither, did bear along the intellectual being; but the spirit moved not, and was not, in the confines of space; its region was ethereal. For there was an elemental region and there was an ethereal region: this being traversed by light, the other by love, which was spiritual light; this was infinite, that was finite; this was eternal, the other temporal.

  “He warned them, that, unless they raised themselves out of the illusory and sensual drench into which they were fallen, they would infallibly sink deeper, coming into great darkness, even to a horror.

  “This enlightened teacher found many hearers, and probably would have availed, at last, to have brought about a reformation, had not there arose, on the other side, another of as eminent parts and understanding, but of a perverted will, who presented to them another, easier way (as he called it), if not to regain their lost happiness, at the least, to enlarge the scope of their experience and pleasures with new and delightful discoveries.

  “The adversary was not old, but in the prime; but laborious days and long nightly studies had fretted his countenance and enfeebled his frame (much unlike the other who, in old age, had not lost his healthful vigour). He was deeply learned not only in natural philosophy, but also in those obscure and secret forces of the elemental world of which the operations are called magic, and this to a masterly and incredible degree.

  “He had searched, not only into the hidden properties of earth, water, fire and air, but also into the subtlest qualities of light. He had discovered invisible rays of more than chymical efficacy; for these, beyond drugs upon the body, operated upon the soul.

  “He asserted that the soul had also its various elements of earth, water, fire, and air, correspondent to those without, and that he was able, by the means of some contrivances he had constructed for the combining and producing of rays having sympathetic correspondency with each element (both within and without), to contact and translate his sensible faculties into the limits of which one of those elements and regions he pleased; whereby he had access into the pure essential of the element outwardly corresponding to this, without any admixture of the other elements, with penetration into the natures and motions of those creatures appertaining to that element, experiencing and enjoying new and unimaginable sensations.

  “He asserted, moreover, that certain of these rays discovered many creatures that were ordinarily invisible (being transparent to the eye), of which some were of an incredible oddity and strangeness to amuse and enlarge the mind.

  “He gave large assurance, that, if any of the nobles (for by this time they had such nominal dignities) should present themselves for making trial of his engines, he would be able to satisfy them, and through them, the whole populace, that he had not extenuated in any particular of what he had said.

  “This novel and spacious declaration, which was uttered from a public rostrum, was received with acclamation by the people and approved by the nobility, some of whom were not backward to engage in the experiment; which, having been done, they all, with common ardour, attested it to have been efficacious and of in
comparable excellence and delight.

  “Forthwith were means provided for the setting up of those contrivances in many places of the island; to which, at first the nobles, afterward the common people (as they were multiplied) did resort.

  “The effects, though not at first apparent, were evil more and more. Those miserable victims were become totally under their power. They sunk from deep to deep; and they who had declined from their love of virtue and integral beauty to be taken with the mere outward form now yielded themselves to devils: monstrous and abominable imaginations.

  “On the natural elements and forces, by disrupting them these iniquitous practices at last brought about an inundation; in which most of the island vanished away beneath the sea, and the small part that remained, being highjack of more than ordinary hardness, declined almost to the level of the waves.

  “On this miserable remnant, a few survivors contrived to subsist, though sometimes nigh submerged with the sea waves, by the providence of the fish; and, as there was, constructed in the rock, one of those engines for the producing of rays appertaining to the watery or sea element, so, having regard to the sort of life they were now fated to live, they thought it very commodious; and, tempering and adapting themselves to this element by the single and often employment of the engine, they and their descendants were changed by slow graduations, not only in their minds and souls, but also in their very bodies, to the constitution and condition of a sort of creatures of the sea.”