by Graeme Davis
As moonshine on a wintry hill
Met the fixed, ardent gaze of love—
“Oh! Henry, it is kind to leave
That glad and happy home above,
Where spirits never learn to grieve
To whisper comfort to the ear
That loved thy living words to hear.”
And then she smiled again so sadly,
So soft, so sweet—alas—so MADLY!
Oh—God!—was this a human greeting?
Was this an ardent lover’s meeting?
The wanderer pressed his burning brain,
With marble lip, and eye unweeping
While to its lid the tears were creeping
Hot, slow, like drops of fiery rain!
The tears of manhood!—they are such,
As may not speak of selfish woe,
Beneath some Heaven-directed touch
Like Horeb’s rock alone they flow!
And oh! if man could always wear
That strength of pride which loves—to bear
With a firm lip and blenchless eye
The keenest human agony:—
If the strong spirit might not falter
Beneath the chastening of Heaven,
If ever on affliction’s altar
A tearless sacrifice were given,—
Then might that spirit scorn to seek
Contrition’s narrow path and lonely,
Or kneel in penitence, where—meek
And humble faith availeth only.
Chained down to low material things,
The soul forgetful of its birth—
Forgetful of its upward wings
Would half become a thing of earth—
And hence each blow misfortune gives
But breaks some chain which binds us here
And every shade the heart receives,
But makes the eye of faith more clear!
The twain are wandering on the beach
Beneath the pleasant morning sun,
Now stealing from the billow’s reach,
Now following where its circles run.
It is a strange, yet lovely sight—
That dark eyed wanderer of the sea
Leading beneath the golden light,
The victim of insanity!
She thinks—how strange the thoughts will be
Of those whose mental light is dim!—
That one of that bright company
Who bend in Heaven the seraph’s knee
Is near her in the form of him,
Who bending o’er her lovingly
Would half confirm her childish whim.
And hence her bearing is like one
Who would not seek, who would not shun
the kindness strangely proffered her
By some angelic messenger:
And yet an awe is on her face,
With trusting confidence contending
Either alternate, yielding place,
Like human love with reverence blending.
He chides her not; but soothingly,
And kindly, checks her wayward mood:
And to his gentle guidance, she
Attends with simple gratitude.
The thousand fancies which were nursed
In madness, vanish one by one,
And even as though its clouds will burst
the veiled but triumphant sun,
The brightness of her soul again
Shines through the murky veil of madness,
And once again her spirit’s gladness,
Revives, like sere grass after rain.
Gentle as angels’ ministry
The guiding hand of love should be
Which seeks again those chords to hind
Which human woe hath rent apart—
To heal again the wounded mind,
And bind anew the broken heart.
The hand which tunes to harmony,
The cunning harp whose strings are riven
Must move as light and quietly
As that meek breath of Summer heaven,
Which woke of old its melody
And kindness to the dim of soul,
Whilst aught of rude and stern control,
The clouded heart can deeply feel,
Is welcome as the odors fanned
From some unseen and flowery land,
Around the weary seaman’s keel!
The mist hath vanished from her brain,
Like clouds the sun of noon has met;
And reason lights her eye again;
Again its glance is one of those,
Which, flashing from their calm repose,
Like star-beams at the daylight’s close,
The gazer may not soon forget;—
A glance to haunt him in his sleep,
Wild, beautiful, and like the quiver,
Of moonlight, mirrored in the deep
Dark current of some shadowy river,—
A changeful, but unfading light—
A lustre from the spirit caught,
Varying indeed, but ever bright
With the unshadowed hues of thought!
Again the roses of her heart,
Are in their brightest blossoming:
And, as the frosted root will start,
With fresh, young—lip and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a natural curl,
Of unconfined and flowing hair—
With the moist eye of pitying care,
Is bending like a seraph there:
A seeming child in every thing
Save in her ripening maiden charms,
As nature wears the smile of spring,
When sinking into summer’s arms.
From that long trance of torpid sleep,
Which sometimes on the eve of death,
Binds down the pulses, still and deep,
Unbroken by the passing breath,
The Witch hath roused her, at the tone,
To her old ear so seldom known,
Of pity, murmured faintly o’er her,
By the fair child, who, half in fear,
And half in sorrow, stealing near,
Stands in the dim twilight before her.
Upstarting from her wretched bed,
And pushing back her grizzly hair;
With that dull eye whose rayless glare,
Seems like the vision of the dead,
She peers into that young girl’s face,
Most earnestly, as if to trace
Something which thrills the broken chain
Of memory over, once again.
“Ha—who art thou?—her daughter?”—
She murmurs in those tones of fear,
Which mingle with the gasping breath
Like voices from the tongue of death,—
“She, whom my hate hath cursed so long—
Hath she forgot her deadly wrong?—
And, maiden, hath she bidden thee,
Bend kindly o’er a wretch, like me?—
Nay, then, Heaven bless her! ’’—with some word
Unuttered is that white lip stirred—
Alas—Heaven rest the spirit gone!
Maiden!—thou’rt with the dead alone.
THE BIRTH-MARK
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1843
Nathaniel Hawthorne needs no introduction to American readers. His Puritan morality tale The Scarlet Letter (1850) assured his place in the American literary canon, and much of his other work is colored by his favorite themes of sin and morality.
Born Nathaniel Hathorne, he added the “w” to his name to hide his descent from the Salem judge John Hathorne. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828. Based on Hawthorne’s experiences as a college student, the book was well-reviewed but sold poorly. He published short stories in various periodicals, publishing the collection Twice-Told Tales in 1837. These stories include several moral allegories that foreshado
wed the tone of The Scarlet Letter, but some showed a lightness of touch that was more like the work of Washington Irving. “Doctor Heidegger’s Experiment,” for example, is a satire on human vanity featuring the legendary Elixir of Youth.
Several of Hawthorne’s tales of the uncanny are worth reading, even by those who do not have fond high-school memories of The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s 1846 collection Mosses from an Old Manse includes the gloomy, atmospheric “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” the allegorical “Young Goodman Brown” (which owes something to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and something to the common American folk-tale motif of a meeting with the Devil at a crossroads), and “Drowne’s Wooden Image,” a Pygmalion-like tale set in the port of Boston.
Mosses from an Old Manse also contains “The Birth-Mark,” which was first published in the March, 1843 edition of The Pioneer. While not as heavy-handed as his schoolroom standard The Scarlet Letter, the relentless pursuit of perfection has tragic consequences in this tale of eighteenth-century science and romance. An almost perfect blend of romanticism, allegory, and scientific horror, “The Birth-Mark” can stand alongside the work of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe with its head held high.
In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man’s ultimate control over Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
“Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?”
“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.”
“Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband; “but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection.”
“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. “Then why did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!”
To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of Georgiana’s left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they were exclusively of her own sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing of the matter before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy’s self could have found aught else to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject.
“Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, “have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?”
“None! none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion, “I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm
hold of my fancy.”
“And you did dream of it?” continued Georgiana, hastily; for she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. “A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this one expression?—‘It is in her heart now; we must have it out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream.”
The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace.
“Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana, solemnly, “I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?”
“Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,” hastily interrupted Aylmer. “I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal.”
“If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana, “let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,—life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?”