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ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1861.

No. 131.]

A STRANGE STORY.

[PRICE 2d.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. Margrave with his wild notions, his strange beauty!

CHAPTER XXX.

I CALLED that day on Mrs. Poyntz, and communicated to her the prospect of the glad news I had received.

She was still at work on the everlasting knitting, her firm fingers linking mesh unto mesh as she listened; and when I had done, she laid her skein deliberately down, and said, in her favourite characteristic formula,

"So at last!-that is settled!"

She rose and paced the room as men are apt to do in reflection-women rarely need such movement to aid their thoughts-her eyes were fixed on the floor, and one hand was lightly pressed on the palm of the other-the gesture of a musing reasoner who is approaching the close of a difficult calculation.

At length she paused, fronting me, and said, dryly,

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Accept my congratulations-life smiles on you now-guard that smile, and when we meet next, may we be, even, firmer friends than we are now!"

"When we meet next-that will be to-nightyou surely go to the mayor's great ball. All the Hill descends to Low Town to-night."

"No; we are obliged to leave L-this afternoon-in less than two hours we shall be gone a family engagement. We may be weeks away; you will excuse me, then, if I take leave of you so unceremoniously. Stay, a motherly word of caution. That friend of yours, Mr. Margrave! Moderate your intimacy with him; and especially after you are married. There is in that stranger, of whom so little is known, a something which I cannot comprehend-a some thing that captivates, and yet revolts. I find him disturbing my thoughts, perplexing my conjectures, haunting my fancies-I, plain woman of the world! Lilian is imaginative: beware of her imagination, even when sure of her heart. Beware of Margrave. The sooner he quits Lthe better, believe me, for your peace of mind. Adieu, I must prepare for our journey." "That woman," muttered I, on quitting her house, "seems to have some strange spite against my poor Lilian, ever seeking to rouse my own distrust of that exquisite nature which has just

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given me such proof of its truth. And yet-and yet is that woman so wrong here? True! -true-true-he might dangerously encourage that turn for the mystic and visionary which distresses me in Lilian. Lilian should not know him. How induce him to leave L-? Ahthose experiments on which he asks my assistance! I might commence them when he comes again, and then invent some reason to send him for completer tests to the famous chemists of Paris or Berlin."

CHAPTER XXXI.

It is the night of the mayor's ball! The guests are assembling fast; county families twelve miles round have been invited, as well as the principal families of the town. All, before proceeding to the room set apart for the dance, move in procession through the museum-homage to science before pleasure!

The building was brilliantly lighted, and the effect was striking, perhaps because singular and grotesque. There, amid stands of flowers and evergreens, lit up with coloured lamps, were grouped the dead representatives of races all inferiorsome deadly--to man. The fancy of the ladies had been permitted to decorate and arrange these types of the animal world. The tiger glared with glass eyes from amidst artificial reeds and herbage, as from his native jungle; the grisly white bear peered from a mimic iceberg. There, in front, stood the sage elephant, facing a hideous hippopotamus; whilst an anaconda twined its long spire round the stem of some tropical tree in zinc. In glass cases, brought into full light by festooned lamps, were dread specimens of the reptile race-scorpion and vampire, and cobra capella, with insects of gorgeous hues, not a few of them with venomed stings.

But the chief boast of the collection was in the varieties of the Genus Simia-baboons and apes, chimpanzees, with their human visage, mockeries of man, from the dwarf monkeys perched on boughs lopped from the mayor's shrubberies, to the formidable ourang-outang, leaning on his huge club.

Every one expressed to the mayor delight; to each other antipathy, for this unwonted and somewhat ghastly, though instructive, addition to the revels of a ball-room.

Margrave, of course, was there, and seemingly

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quite at home, gliding from group to group of gaily-dressed ladies, and brilliant with a childish eagerness to play off the showman. Many of these grim fellow-creatures he declared he had seen, played or fought with. He had something true or false to say about each. In his high spirits he contrived to make the tiger move, and imitated the hiss of the terrible anaconda. All that he did had its grace, its charm; and the buzz of admiration and the flattering glances of ladies' eyes followed him wherever he moved.

However, there was a general feeling of relief when the mayor led the way from the museum into the ball-room. In provincial parties guests arrive pretty much within the same hour, and so few who had once paid their respects to the apes and serpents, the hippopotamus and the tiger, were disposed to repeat the visit, that long before eleven o'clock the museum was as free from the intrusion of human life as the wilderness in which its dead occupants had been born.

I had gone my round through the rooms, and, little disposed to be social, had crept into the retreat of a window-niche, pleased to think myself screened by its draperies-not that I was melancholy, far from it-for the letter I had received that morning from Lilian had raised my whole being into a sovereignty of happiness high beyond the reach of the young pleasurehunters, whose voices and laughter blended with that vulgar music.

To read her letter again I had stolen to my nook-and, now, sure that none saw me kiss it, I replaced it in my bosom. I looked through the parted curtain; the room was comparatively empty; but there, through the open foldingdoors, I saw the gay crowd gathered round the dancers, and there again, at right angles, a vista along the corridor afforded a glimpse of the great elephant in the deserted museum.

Presently I heard, close beside me, my host's voice.

linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman seated on a sofa, close by the window I had quitted, said:

"Doctor, I must present you to Sir Philip Derval, just returned to England, and not six hours in L. If you would like to see the museum again, Sir Philip, the doctor, I am sure, will accompany you."

"No, I thank you; it is painful to me at present, to see, even under your roof, the collection which my poor dear friend, Dr. Lloyd, was so proudly beginning to form when I left these parts."

"Ay, Sir Philip - Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way, but sadly duped in his latter years; took to mesmerism, only think! But our young doctor here showed him up, I can tell you."

Sir Philip, who had acknowledged my first introduction to his acquaintance by the quiet courtesy with which a well-bred man goes through a ceremony that custom enables him to endure with equal ease and indifference, now evinced by a slight change of manuer how little the mayor's reference to my dispute with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his good opinion. He turned away with a bow more formal than his first one, and said calmly:

"I regret to hear that a man so simpleminded and so sensitive as Dr. Lloyd should have provoked an encounter in which I can well conceive him to have been worsted. With your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into your ball-room. I may perhaps find there some old acquaintances."

He walked towards the dancers, and the mayor, linking his arm in mine, followed close behind, saying, in his loud hearty tones,

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Come along, you, too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there; you have not spoken to them yet." Sir Philip, who was then half way across the room, turned round abruptly, and looking me full in the face, said:

Fenwick, is your name Fenwick? --- Allen Fenwick ?"

"That is my name, Sir Philip."

"Then permit me to shake you by the hand; you are no stranger, and no mere acquaintance to me. Mr. Mayor, we will look into your ball-room later; do not let us keep you now from your

"Here's a cool corner, a pleasant sofa, you can have it all to yourself; what an honour to receive you under my roof, and on this interesting occasion! Yes, as you say, there are great changes here since you left us. Society is much improved. I must look about and find some persons to introduce to you. Clever! oh, I know your tastes. We have a wonderful man-a new doctor. Carries all before him-very high character, too-good|other guests." old family-greatly looked up to, even apart from his profession. Dogmatic a little-a Sir Oracle'Lets no dog bark;' you remember the quotation-Shakespeare. Where on earth is he? My dear Sir Philip, I am sure you would enjoy his conversation."

Sir Philip! Could it be Sir Philip Derval, to whom the mayor was giving a flattering, yet scarcely propitiatory, description of myself? Curiosity combined with a sense of propriety in not keeping myself an unsuspected listener: I emerged from the curtain, but silently, and reached the centre of the room before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to me eagerly,

The mayor, not in the least offended by being thus summarily dismissed, smiled, walked on, and was soon lost amongst the crowd.

Sir Philip, still retaining my hand, re-seated himself on the sofa, and I took my place by his side. The room was still deserted: now and then a straggler from the ball-room looked in for a moment, and then sauntered back to the central place of attraction.

"I am trying to guess," said I, "how my name should be known to you. Possibly you may, in some visit to the Lakes, have known my father?"

"No; I know none of your name but your

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1 have often remarked in men accustomed to great dangers, and contracting in such dangers the habit of self-reliance; firm and quiet, compressed without an effort. And the power of this very noble countenance was not intimidating, not aggressive; it was mild-it was benignant. A man oppressed by some formidable tyranny, and despairing to find a protector, would, on seeing that face, have said, "Here is one who can protect me, and who will!"

"And you remember, also, that a fire broke out at night in the house in which he lodged; Sir Philip was the first to break the silence. that when it was discovered, there seemed no "I have so many relations scattered over Enghope of saving him. The flames wrapt the lower land, that fortunately not one of them can venpart of the house; the staircase had given way.ture to calculate on my property if I die childA boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the only human being in the crowd who dared to scale the ladder, that even then scarcely reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes; that boy penetrated into the room-found the inmate almost insensible-rallied, supported, dragged him to the window-got him on the ladder-saved his life then-and his life later, by "Your neighbours, Sir Philip, will rejoice nursing with a woman's tenderness, through the at your marriage, since, I presume, it may infever caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-duce you to settle amongst them at Derval creature he had rescued by a man's daring. The Court." name of that gallant student was Allen Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearest living relation. Are we friends now ?"

less, and therefore not one of them can feel him- 1 self injured when, a few weeks hence, he shall read in the newspapers that Philip Derval is married. But for Richard Strahan, at least, though I never saw him, I must do something before the newspapers make that announcement. His sister was very dear to me."

I answered confusedly. I had almost forgotten the circumstance referred to. Richard Strahan had not been one of my more intimate companions; and I had never seen nor heard of him since leaving college. I inquired what had become of him.

"At Derval Court! No! I shall not settle there." ." Again he paused a moment or so, and then went on. "I have long lived a wandering life, and in it learned much that the wisdom of cities cannot teach. I return to my native land with a profound conviction that the happiest life is the life most in common with all. I have gone out of my way to do what I deemed good, and to avert or mitigate what appeared to me evil. I pause now and ask myself, whether the most virtuous existence be not that in which virtue flows spon

"He is at the Scotch bar," said Sir Philip, "and of course without practice. I understand that he has fair average abilities, but no applica-taneously from the springs of quiet every-day tion. If I am rightly informed, he is, however, a thoroughly honourable, upright man, and of an affectionate and grateful disposition."

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action;-when a man does good without restlessly seeking it, does good unconsciously, simply because he is good and he lives? Better, perhaps, for me, if I had thought so long ago! And now I come back to England with the intention of marrying, late in life though it be, and with such hopes of happiness as any matter-of-fact man may form. But my home will not be at Derval Court. I shall reside either in London or its immediate neighbourhood, and seek to gather round me minds by which I can correct, if I cannot confide, the knowledge I myself have acquired."

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He was somewhat below the common height. So delicately formed that one might call him rather Nay, if as I have accidentally heard, you are fragile than slight. But in his carriage and air fond of scientific pursuits, I cannot wonder that, there was remarkable dignity. His countenance after so long an absence from England, you was at direct variance with his figure. For as should feel interest in learning what new discodelicacy was the attribute of the last, so power was veries have been made, what new ideas are ununmistakably the characteristic of the first. He folding the germs of discoveries yet to be. But, looked fully the age his steward had ascribed to pardon me, if in answer to your concluding rehim-about forty-eight; at a superficial glance, mark, I venture to say that no man can hope to more; for his hair was prematurely white-not correct any error in his own knowledge, unless grey, but white as snow. But his eyebrows he has the courage to confide the error to those were still jet black, and his eyes, equally dark, who can correct. La Place has said, 'Tout se were serenely bright. His forehead was mag-tient dans la chaîne immense des vérités;' and nificent; lofty, and spacious, and with only one the mistake we make in some science we have slight wrinkle between the brows. His com- specially cultivated is often only to be seen by plexion was sunburnt, showing no sign of weak the light of a separate science as specially cultihealth. The outline of his lips was that which | vated by another. Thus, in the investigation of

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truth, frank exposition to congenial minds is essential to the earnest seeker."

"I am pleased with what you say," said Sir Philip, "and I shall be still more pleased to find in you the very confidant I require. But what was your controversy with my old friend, Dr. Lloyd? Do I understand our host rightly, that it related to what in Europe has of late days obtained the name of mesmerism ?"

as essential a condition of being as sleep or as waking, having privileges peculiar to itself. By means within the range of the science that explores its nature and its laws, trance, unlike the clairvoyance you describe, is producible in every human being, however unimpressible to mere mesmerism."

"Producible in every human being! Pardon me if I say that I will give any enchanter his own terms who will produce that effect upon me."

"Will you? You consent to have the experiment tried on yourself?" "Consent most readily."

"I will remember that promise. But to re

not mean exclusively the spiritual trance of the Alexandrian Platonists. There is one kind of trance,-that to which all human beings are susceptible,-in which the soul has no share; for of this kind of trance, and it was of this I spoke, some of the inferior animals are susceptible; and, therefore, trance is no more a proof of soul than is the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of our ordinary sleep, which last has

I had conceived a strong desire to conciliate the good opinion of a man who had treated me with so singular and so familiar a kindness, and it was sincerely that I expressed my regret at the acerbity with which I had assailed Dr. Lloyd; but of his theories and pretensions I could not disguise my contempt. I enlarged on the extra-turn to the subject. By the word trance I do vagant fallacies involved in a fabulous "clairvoyance," which always failed when put to plain test by sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the effects of imagination on certain nervous constitutions. 'Mesmerism could cure nobody; credulity could cure many. There was the well-known story of the old woman tried as a witch; she cured agues by a charm; she owned the impeachment, and was ready to endure gibbet or stake for the truth of her talisman; more than a mes-been called a proof of soul, though any man who merist would for the truth of his passes! And has kept a dog must have observed that dogs the charm was a scroll of gibberish sewn in an dream as vividly as we do. But in this trance old bag and given to the woman in a freak by the there is an extraordinary cerebral activity-a judge himself when a young scamp on the cir- projectile force given to the mind-distinct from cuit. But the charm cured? Certainly; just as the soul,-by which it sends forth its own emanamesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith, tions to a distance in spite of material obstacles, that moves mountains, may well cure agues.' just as a flower, in an altered condition of atmoThus I ran on, supporting my views with anec-sphere, sends forth the particles of its aroma. This dotes and facts, to which Sir Philip listened with placid gravity.

should not surprise you. Your thought travels over land and sea in your waking state; thought, too, can travel in trance, and in trance may acquire an intensified force. There is, however, another kind of trance which is truly called spiritual, a trance much more rare, and in which the soul entirely supersedes the mere action of the mind."

When I had come to an end, he said, "Of mesmerism, as practised in Europe, I know nothing, except by report. I can well understand that medical men may hesitate to admit it amongst the legitimate resources of orthodox pathology; because, as I gather from what you and others "Stay," said I; "you speak of the soul as say of its practice, it must, at the best, be something distinct from the mind. What the far too uncertain in its application to satisfy soul may be I cannot pretend to conjecture. But the requirements of science. Yet an examina-I cannot separate it from the intelligence !" tion of its pretensions may enable you to per- "Can you not! A blow on the brain can deceive the truth that lies hid in the powers stroy the intelligence; do you think it can destroy ascribed to witchcraft; benevolence is but a the soul? It is recorded of Newton that in the weak agency compared to malignity; magnetism decline of his life his mind had so worn out its perverted to evil may solve half the riddles of functions that his own theorems had become to sorcery. On this, however, I say no more at pre-him unintelligible. Can you suppose that Newsent. But as to that which you appear to reject as the most preposterous and incredible pretension of the mesmerists, and which you designate by the word 'clairvoyance,' it is clear to me that you have never yourself witnessed even those very imperfect exhibitions which you decide at once to be imposture. I say imperfect, because it is only a limited number of persons whom the eye or the passes of the mesmerist can affect, and by such means, unaided by other means, it is rarely indeed that the magnetic sleep advances beyond the first vague, shadowy twilight dawn of that condition to which only in its fuller developments I would apply the name of 'trance.' But still trance is

ton's soul was as worn out as his mind? If you cannot distinguish mind from soul, I know not by what rational inductions you arrive at the conclusion that the soul is imperishable."

I remained silent. Sir Philip fixed on me his dark eyes quietly and searchingly, and after a short pause, said:

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Almost every known body in nature is susceptible of three several states of existence-the solid, the liquid, the aëriform. These conditions depend on the quantity of heat they contain. The same object at one moment may be liquid; at the next moment, solid; at the next, aëriform. The water that flows before your gaze

may stop consolidated into ice, or ascend into | freely unbosomed myself of much that might well air as vapour. Thus is man susceptible of three make you, a physician, doubt the soundness of states of existence-the animal, the mental, the my understanding. The same infant, whose vision spiritual-and according as he is brought into has been realised up to this moment, has warned relation or affinity with that occult agency of the me also that I am here at great peril. What whole natural world, which we familiarly call that peril may be I have declined to learn, as I HEAT, and which no science has yet explained; have ever declined to ask from the future, what which no scale can weigh, and no eye discern; affects only my own life on this earth. That life one or the other of these three states of being I regard with supreme indifference, conscious prevails, or is subjected." that I have only to discharge, while it lasts, the duties for which it is imposed on me, to the best of my imperfect power; and aware that minds the strongest and souls the purest may fall into the sloth habitual to predestinarians, if they suffer the actions due to the present hour to be awed and paralysed by some grim shadow on the future! It is only where, irrespectively of aught that can menace myself, a light not struck out of my own reason can guide me to disarm evil or minister to good, that I feel privileged to avail myself of those mirrors on which things, near and far, reflect themselves calm and distinct as the banks and the mountain peaks are reflected in the glass of a lake. Here, then, under this roof, and by your side, I shall behold him whoLo! the moment has come-I behold him now!"

I still continued silent, for I was unwilling discourteously to say to a stranger, so much older than myself, that he seemed to me to reverse all the maxims of the philosophy to which he made pretence, in founding speculations audacious and abstruse upon unanalogous comparisons that would have been fantastic even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after another pause, resumed with a half-smile:

"After what I have said, it will perhaps not very much surprise you when I add that but for my belief in the powers I ascribe to trance, we should not be known to each other at this moment."

"How-pray explain !"

"Certain circumstances which I trust to relate to you in detail hereafter, have imposed on me the duty to discover, and to bring human laws to bear upon a creature armed with terrible powers of evil. This monster, for, without metaphor, monster it is, not man like ourselves, has, by arts superior to those of ordinary fugitives, however dexterous in concealment, hitherto, for years, eluded my research. Through the trance of an Arab child, who, in her waking state, never heard of his existence, I have learned that this being is in England-is in L- I am here to encounter him. I expect to do so this very night, and under this very roof."

"Sir Philip!"

As he spoke these last words, Sir Philip had risen, and, startled by his action and voice, I involuntarily rose too.

Resting one hand on my shoulder, he pointed with the other towards the threshold of the ballroom. There, the prominent figure of a gay group-the sole male amidst a fluttering circle of silks and lawn, of flowery wreaths, of female loveliness, and female frippery-stood the radiant image of Margrave. His eyes were not turned towards us. He was looking down, and his light laugh came soft, yet ringing, through the general

murmur.

I turned my astonished gaze back to Sir Philip "And if you wonder, as you well may, why I have-yes, unmistakably it was on Margrave that his been talking to you with this startling unreserve, look was fixed. know that the same Arab child, on whom I thus Impossible to associate crime with the image implicitly rely, informs me that your life is mixed of that fair youth! Eccentric notions-fantastic up with that of the being I seek to unmask and speculations-vivacious egotism-defective bedisarm-to be destroyed by his arts or his agents -or to combine in the causes by which the destroyer himself shall be brought to destruction." "My life!—your Arab child named me, Allen Fenwick ?"

"My Arab child told me that the person in whom I should thus naturally seek an ally was he who had saved the life of the man whom I then meant for my heir, if I died unmarried and childless. She told me that I should not be many hours in this town, which she described minutely,—before you would be made known to me. She described this house, with yonder lights, and yon dancers. In her trance she saw us sitting together, as we now sit. I accepted the invitation of our host, when he suddenly accosted me on entering the town, confident that I should meet you here, without even asking whether a person of your name were a resident in the place; and now you know why I have so

nevolence-yes. But crime!-No-impossible.

"Impossible," I said, aloud. As I spoke, the group had moved on. Margrave was no longer in sight. At the same moment some other guests came from the ball-room, and seated themselves near us.

Sir Philip looked round, and, observing the deserted museum at the end of the corridor, drew me into it.

When we were alone, he said in a voice quick and low, but decided:

"It is of importance that I should convince you at once of the nature of that prodigy which is more hostile to mankind than the wolf is to the sheepfold. No words of mine could at present suffice to clear your sight from the deception which cheats it. I must enable you to judge for yourself. It must be now, and here. He will learn this night, if he has not learned already, that I am in the town. Dim and confused though

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