_The Unpleasant Adventure of the Faithless Woman._
Dr. August Moehrlein, Ph. D., was a professor of the languages andreligions of India. A man of great gravity of countenance and ofimpressive port, he was popularly reputed to have a complete knowledgeof the occult learning of the adepts of India, that nebulous andmysterious philosophy which irreducible to the laws of nature asrecognized by Occidentals, is by them pronounced either magic andfeared as such, or ridiculed and despised as pretentious mummery anddeluding prestidigitation. There was a legend among the students ofhis department that he was wont to project himself into the fourthdimension and thus traveling downtown, effect a substantial saving ofstreet-car fare. This is clearly impossible, for the yogis do not thusmove about in their own persons. It is only the astral self that fliesleagues through the air with the rapidity of thought, only thespiritual essence, the living man's ghost flying abroad while theliving man's corpse lies inanimate at home. But even this, Dr. AugustMoehrlein could not do, for the yogis do not initiate men of Westernnations into their mysteries. Dr. Moehrlein's knowledge of the occultof India was wholly empirical. He knew that certain things were doneand could recount them, but as to how they were done, he could tellnothing. It must not be thought that of all the marvelous andawe-compelling things the yogis of India are accustomed to do, nonecan be assigned to any other origin than cunning legerdemain andhypnotism, or to the exercise of supernatural powers. Many of them aredue to a strange and wonderful knowledge of nature which the scienceof the Occident has not yet reached in all its boasted advance. Yetwhen once explained, the Westerner understands some of these phenomenaand is able to repeat them. Into this region of the penumbra ofscience and exact knowledge the researches of Dr. Moehrlein had takenhim a little way and it was this that had gained him his reputationamong his pupils as a thaumaturgist.
Along with the learning which this country has imported from Germanyhave come some customs to which the savants of both that country andthis ascribe a certain fostering influence, if not a creative impulse,highly advantageous to the national scholarship. It is the habit ofthe university men of Germany to foregather of nights in the genialpursuit of drinking beer, and many of the notable theories whichGerman scholarship has propounded are to be directly attributed tothis stimulating good fellowship known as kommers. Indeed, when onehas imbibed twelve or fourteen steins of beer and sat in an atmosphereof tobacco smoke for some hours, his mind attains a clarity, a senseof proportion, a power of reflection, speculation, and intuition whichenables him to evolve those notable theories for which Germanscholarship is so famous. It is under the intellectual stimulus of thekommers, when the foam lies thick in the steins and blue clouds oftobacco smoke roll overhead, that the great classical scholars ofGermany perceive that the classical epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, theAeneid, are but the typifying of the rolling of the clouds in theempyrean, the warfare of the foam-crested waves dashing upon the land,that the metamorphoses and amours of the gods and all the myths of theelder world, are but the mutations of the clouds and the fancifulfigures they take on and the metamorphoses and hurryings of theever-changing sea with its foam forms and the shadows that lie acrossits unquiet surface. Wonderful indeed is the scientific imaginationthat thus accounts for, classifies, and labels the imagination of thepoets, which otherwise we might think a thing defying classification,an inspiration, a creative genius taking nothing from a dim suggestionof the cold clouds and sea, but weaving its tales from the suggestionof human lives and human passions. Wonderful indeed is the good senseof the rest of the world in accepting unquestioned these importantdiscoveries of German scholars in the beer kellars, which well mightbe called the laboratories of the classical department of the Germanuniversities.
Dr. August Moehrlein was a staunch advocate of the advantage of thekommers as an adjunct to every thoroughly organized university. If hecould not gather others for a kommers, he would hold a kommers all byhimself, or perchance with the barkeeper. Needless to say that thename of Moehrlein was attached to many valuable and plausible theorieswhich America received as the last word on the subject treated;needless to tell you that the various gods of India had beenidentified with the sun, moon, and more important stars, and that itwas conclusively shown that the Sanskrit romancers had written theirtales by merely looking at the clouds and the sea. Would that thisaccomplishment of the ancients had not gone from us and that themoderns might write as the ancients by merely looking at the cloudsand the sea. Dr. Moehrlein was an upholder of the kommers. But hiswife, though German-born, behaved like a very Philistine and objectedto his constant and unwavering attendance upon these occasions ofintellectual uplift. For as the doctor added to the knowledge of theworld, he added to his weight. He had identified Brahma with the sun,but had drunk his face purple in the intellectual effort. In hissearch for the suggestions of the tale of Nala, he had acquired apaunch very like a bag. Mrs. Moehrlein was accustomed to shrink fromthe approach of the victim of the pursuit of knowledge. As for him, hewould have liked to caress and fondle her. To him there was alwayspresent a remembrance of her early beauty and the golden mist ofmemory shone before his eyes and he did not see that she was a heavy,middle-aged woman with coarse features and coarse figure. Animalbeauty she had once had. The beauty had utterly flown, but the animalall remained. She had a shifty and wandering eye, burned out andlusterless, that told of dreams that were of men, men who these manyyears had not included her husband, grotesque figure that he was, uglyas a satyr in one of the myths suggested by the clouds and the sea.
It was a pleasant day of the last of May, in the mating season ofbirds, when the world was warm and throbbing with young life. Theeminent Asiatic scholar looked across the lunch table, regarding hiswife with wistful sadness as she refreshed herself with boiledcabbage.
"Do you know the day? It is thirty years since Hilsenhoff went intothe box; thirty years since we have been man and--woman."
"Ah, yes, this is the anniversary. Thirty years, thirty years. Pooryoung Hilsenhoff."
She said these words with a tinge of sadness that was almost regretand this did not escape the doctor.
"One might fancy you were sorry. Yet it was your own doing. I wasyoung and handsome then. A Hercules, young, full of life, latechampion swordsman of the university, a rising light in the realm oflearning, as well as a figure in society. You were the beautiful wifeof tutor Hilsenhoff, the buxom girl with the form of a Venus and thepassion of that goddess as well, tied to a thin, pallid bookworm tenyears your senior, neglecting his pouting wife with blood full of firefor the pages of the literature of Hindoostan, prating of the loves ofGanesha and Vishnu, when a goddess awaited his own neglectful arms. Sowhen on the day when he stepped into the box, leaving us the solerepository of the secret of his whereabouts--that the mutton-headedpolice might not interfere with the success of his experiment bypreventing what they might think practically suicide--you said to lethim stay."
"I was twenty and he thirty," mused the woman. "Poor youngHilsenhoff."
"Young! I was twenty-three--and a man."
"Dead or alive, he is young Hilsenhoff to me. He was thirty when lastI saw him."
"Dead or alive? What are you thinking of?"
An idea had been taking shape in the woman's mind without herrealizing it. It had grown from her own words, rather than had thewords sprung from the idea.
"Why, if a man be brought into a condition where all bodily functionsare suspended and he is as he were dead, and remain in this conditionfor months and be brought out of it no more harmed than if he hadslept overnight, why may it not be years, instead of months? Has anyman ever proved that, in this condition, one may not live onindefinitely?" she said.
"No man has ever proved that one cannot, but what is more important,no man has ever proved that one can. No man has ever proved beyondshadow of doubt that one may not fashion wings and fly, but no man hasever demonstrated that one can. In India, only one man has ever triedto continue in a state of suspended animation for over six months, andt
hat was the rajah who, condemned to death by the English, ostensiblydied before the soldiers could come to carry out the sentence and wasbrought out of his tomb and restored to life three days after a newBritish viceroy had proclaimed a general amnesty to all pastoffenders. The period was eight months. If the viceroys had not beenchanged for a number of years, we might have learned more concerningthe length of the period in which a man may continue in the semblanceof death without it becoming reality. No, these twenty-five years hasHilsenhoff been bones."
"Then let us take them out and bury them."
"No, no. Then would I feel like a murderer indeed. I left him in therefor you. Now let his bones rest there for sake of me."
But the woman had become possessed of an idea which in turn possessedher, a dream, for which like all mankind, she would fight harder thanfor any substantiality, for no reality can be so glorious as a dream.
"But there was the man at Sutlej, the man who had himself buried in awheat field for the edification of Alexander the Great, there toremain until a wheat crop had passed through its stages from sowinguntil harvest."
"The man at Sutlej!" exclaimed the doctor impatiently. "That a man wasthus buried, the pages of Quintus Curtius's history show, and theMacedonian armies suddenly retreating from India, he was forgotten andnot one, but two thousand wheat harvests have been garnered over hisburial place."
"But the article in the _Revue Des Deux Mondes_, telling how he hadbeen found," objected the woman faintly.
The doctor looked at her in amazement.
"What will not people do to believe that which they wish to believe.You, you, you!--do you ask me concerning that lie in the _Revue DesDeux Mondes_? Oh, woman, woman! When did your memory of the details ofthat hoax fail you? Not longer ago than ten minutes. A lying Frenchmansaid he was on his way to France with a resuscitated contemporary ofAlexander the Great and that a full account of the matter would bepublished in two or three months. Hilsenhoff left the duration of hisstay in the box at my discretion, enjoining me, however, that heshould not be taken out before the Frenchman had published the fullaccount of the Sutlej case, for we would then have many interestingcomparisons in his behavior and response to the restorative methodsused, and the reaction and response of this man buried two thousandyears to the same methods for restoring suspended animation. TheFrenchman never arrived with his man. It was all a lie. Yet byfollowing Hilsenhoff's solemn injunctions to the letter, we had anexcuse to leave him as dead, and you insisted that we should do so,and I, weak and infatuated with your ripe beauty, I agreed. You saidthat we would leave him in his self-chosen sleep and that he should beour lodger. And so he has been and we have never called him tobreakfast in all these thirty years. We have even brought him toAmerica with us and he sleeps. Ah, no, we did not slay him. We butobeyed his commands."
"Poor young Hilsenhoff. And I am his wife and he is but thirty yearsold and I am fifty. Heigho!"
"Woman, you will drive me crazy," said the great annotator of theUpanishads, and he left for a kommers with the nearest barkeeper.
"As if you did not drive me crazy, you obese, misshapen wine skin! youbloated, blue-faced sot!" said the woman. "I deserted young Hilsenhofffor you, Hilsenhoff with his delicate cheeks and his soft yellow hair,and he is mine and I am his and I will let him out of the box and wewill live together in love, the dear young thing. What if he doesstudy sometimes? I shall not mind. He need not always sit with me inlove's dalliance."
All at once it came home to her that if Moehrlein maintained theresuscitation of Hilsenhoff was impossible and charged her withbelieving it possible because she wished to believe it so, it mightalso be true that he did not believe it possible because he did notwish to so believe. The burned out eyes that told of dreams of men,men who these many years had not included her husband, smoldered witha sudden fire. With a song in her heart, she was up and bustlingabout. She filled a brazier with coals and got a frying-pan andwheat-cake batter, and a razor and a crocheting hook--ah, she knew howthe process of restoring suspended animation was practised. Shelumbered up into the third story with her burdens, into the room whereslept the lodger. Not for fifteen years had anyone looked into thatsleeping chamber. The blinds and curtains, all were drawn, the dustlay thick under foot. She let in the light of day at every window.There sat the box in the middle of the floor, hooped with bands ofiron and with the great seal of the University of Bonn stamped uponthe lock. She broke the seal and turned the lock and then sank down ina sudden faintness of heart. Indeed, how loath she was to put an endto the dream that had just now filled her whole being with rapture,and what else would it be but to put an end to it when she delved intothat box? She would go away and let herself dream on a few days morebefore putting the matter to its final test, perhaps never doing so.Thus she reasoned, and yet her hand, as she sat before the box withaverted face, rose as if impelled by the volition of anotherintelligence, over the edge of the box, down to the mass of wool andwadding, through it to the wrappings and swathings in the middle,through the wrapping, and felt--the thrill of unimaginable joy ranthrough her. It was not bones, it was not bones!
Into the room of the lodger came Dr. August Moehrlein. The coals ofthe brazier were out, the batter had been turned into cakes, the razorwas covered with hair, four waxen plugs lay by the crocheting hook.The process was over. The sleeper was awake and there he stood, hisdelicate face yet pinched with sleep and his eyes heavy, but alive andyoung, young Hilsenhoff with his soft yellow hair and mild blue eyes.On the floor before him in an attitude of adoration, knelt the womanwho in the view of the law, was his wife, her eyes burned out nolonger, but aflash with youthful passion. But in her eyes alone wasthere youth. Nothing of youthful archness and coquetry was there inher gaze, only greed, the sickening fondness of an aging woman for ayoung man. In a daze, he stared at her and heard her clumsycompliments, her vulgar protestations of love, things which the ripebeauty of her youth might have condoned, but now were nauseating. Hesaw her heavy jowls and sensual lips, the thick nose and all therevenges of time upon a once beautiful body that had clothed an uglysoul. He looked at his own rusty clothing, stiff and hard and creasedin a thousand wrinkles, and into the mildewed nest where the mouldfrom the moisture of his own body grew thick and green and horrible.He gazed at Dr. Moehrlein, the one-time Adonis of Bonn, and heshuddered, and which of what he looked at, or whether all, made him doso, he could not tell.
Old men like young women, but so do old women hanker after young men.The life companion of Moehrlein embraced Hilsenhoff's knees. Withsmirkings and grimacings and leers that started his shudders afresh,she told him all. She confessed her crime and abased herself, but nowthey would begin life again, and she croaked forth a string ofallurements from a throat that had known too many rich puddings. Oh,who shall describe her transports! Never before had every fiber of herbeing been so penetrated with joy! A young husband, oh, a younghusband! By as much as Moehrlein had once surpassed him, didHilsenhoff now surpass Moehrlein a hundred fold. And young, young,young! She was like to fall on her face in her ecstasy. The discardedand despised Moehrlein stood by and paid, if never before, the priceof his villainy. There is a contempt of man for man and a contempt ofwoman for woman, but the contempt of woman for man----
One sleeps and is unconscious, but nonetheless by some subtle sense isaware of the passage of time, and the thirty years that he had slept,pressed upon young Hilsenhoff and his soul yearned to take up lifeagain. He looked at the companions of his youth, that youth which wasstill his and had gone from them, and he looked at the place where hehad lain for a third of a century, thick with damp green mould.Outside the song of birds was calling him, the rustle of green leavesand the glorious sunlight, the world renewing its life with the warmthrobs of the year's youth, and putting from him forever his livinggrave and the woman and her paramour, he rushed into the joyousspringtide.
Now why, my friend, descend into the hell of repinings and rage andheart-gnawings of that woman he left behind? Or why tell of the miseryof the lea
rned Dr. Moehrlein? She has no comfort whatsoever, but thedoctor has the solace of his kommers, so let us wish that his beer maybe forever flat, his wieners mildewy, and the mustard mouldy like thehorrible nest of young Hilsenhoff.
The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton Page 12