The Flight of the Shadow

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One day he proposed taking a carriage and a good pair of horses, and
driving to Versailles to see the palace. We agreed, and all went well. I
had not, in my wildest dreams, imagined a place so grand and beautiful.
We wandered about it for hours, and were just tired enough to begin
thinking with pleasure of the start homeward, when we found ourselves in
a very long, straight corridor. I was walking alone, a little ahead of
the rest; my uncle was coming along next, but a good way behind me; a few
paces behind my uncle, came John with Martha, to whom he was more
scrupulously attentive than to myself.

In front of me was a door, dividing the corridor in two, apparently
filled with plain plate-glass, to break the draught without obscuring the
effect of the great length of the corridor, which stretched away as far
on the other side as we had come on this. I paused and stood aside,
leaning against the wall to wait for my uncle, and gazing listlessly out
of a window opposite me. But as my uncle came nearer to open the door for
us, I happened to cast my eyes again upon it, and saw, as it seemed, my
uncle coming in the opposite direction; whence I concluded of course,
that I had made a mistake, and that what I had taken for a clear plate of
glass, was a mirror, reflecting the corridor behind me. I looked back at
my uncle with a little anxiety. My reader may remember that, when he came
to fetch me from Rising, the day after I was lost on the moor,
encountering a mirror at unawares, he started and nearly fell: from this
occurrence, and from the absence of mirrors about the house, I had
imagined in his life some painful story connected with a mirror.

Once again I saw him start, and then stand like stone. Almost immediately
a marvellous light overspread his countenance, and with a cry he bounded
forward. I looked again at the mirror, and there I saw the self-same
light-irradiated countenance coming straight, as was natural, to meet
that of which it was the reflection. Then all at once the solid
foundations of fact seemed to melt into vaporous dream, for as I saw the
two figures come together, the one in the mirror, the other in the world,
and was starting forward to prevent my uncle from shattering the mirror
and wounding himself, the figures fell into each other's arms, and I
heard two voices weeping and sobbing, as the substance and the shadow
embraced.

Two men had for a moment been deceived like myself: neither glass nor
mirror was there--only the frame from which a swing-door had been
removed. They walked each into the arms of the other, whom they had at
first each taken for himself.

They paused in their weeping, held each other at arm's-length, and gazed
as in mute appeal for yet better assurance; then, smiling like two suns
from opposing rain-clouds, fell again each on the other's neck, and wept
anew. Neither had killed the other! Neither had lost the other! The world
had been a graveyard; it was a paradise!

We stood aside in reverence. Martha Moon's eyes glowed, but she
manifested no surprise. John and I stared in utter bewilderment. The two
embraced each other, kissed and hugged and patted each other, wept and
murmured and laughed, then all at once, with one great sigh between them,
grew aware of witnesses. They were too happy to blush, yet indeed they
could not have blushed, so red were they with the fire of heaven's own
delight. Utterly unembarrassed they turned toward us--and then came a
fresh astonishment, an old and new joy together out of the treasure of
the divine house-holder: the uncle of the mirror, radiant with a joy such
as I had never before beheld upon human countenance, came straight to me,
cried; "Ah, little one!" took me in his arms, and embraced me with all
the old tenderness. Then I knew that my own old uncle was the same as
ever I had known him, the same as when I used to go to sleep in his arms.

The jubilation that followed, it is impossible for me to describe; and my
husband, who approves of all I have yet written, begs me not to attempt
an adumbration of it.

"It would be a pity," he says, "to end a won race with a tumble down at
the post!"

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HALF ONE IS ONE.

I am going to give you the whole story, but not this moment; I want to
talk a little first. I need not say that I had twin uncles. They were but
one man to the world; to themselves only were they a veritable two. The
word _twin_ means one of two that once were one. To _twin_ means to
_divide_, they tell me. The opposite action is, of _twain_ to make one.
To me as well as the world, I believe, but for the close individual
contact of all my life with my uncle Edward, the two would have been but
as one man. I hardly know that I felt any richer at first for having two
uncles; it was long before I should have felt much poorer for the loss of
uncle Edmund. Uncle Edward was to me the substance of which uncle Edmund
was the shadow. But at length I learned to love him dearly through
perceiving how dearly my own uncle loved him. I loved the one because he
was what he was, the other because he was not that one. Creative Love
commonly differentiates that it may unite; in the case of my uncles it
seemed only to have divided that it might unite. I am hardly intelligible
to myself; in my mind at least I have got into a bog of confused
metaphysics, out of which it is time I scrambled. What I would say is
this--that what made the world not care there should be two of them, made
the earth a heaven to those two. By their not being one, they were able
to love, and so were one. Like twin planets they revolved around each
other, and in a common orbit around God their sun. It was a beautiful
thing to see how uncle Edmund revived and expanded in the light of his
brother's presence, until he grew plainly himself. He had suffered more
than my own uncle, and had not had an orphan child to love and be loved
by.

What a drive home that was! Paris, anywhere seemed home now! I had John
and my uncles; John had me and my uncle; my uncles had each other; and I
suspect, if we could have looked into Martha, we should have seen that
she, through her lovely unselfishness, possessed us all more than any one
of us another. Oh the outbursts of gladness on the way!--the talks!--the
silences! The past fell off like an ugly veil from the true face of
things; the present was sunshine; the future a rosy cloud.

When we reached our hotel, it was dinner-time, and John ordered
champagne. He and I were hungry as two happy children; the brothers ate
little, and scarcely drank. They were too full of each other to have room
for any animal need. A strange solemnity crowned and dominated their
gladness. Each was to the other a Lazarus given back from the grave. But
to understand the depth of their rapture, you must know their story. That
of Martha and Mary and Lazarus could not have equalled it but for the
presence of the Master, for neither sisters nor brother had done each
other any wrong. They looked to me like men walking in a luminous mist--a
mist of unspeakable suffering radiant with a joy as unspeakable--the very
stuff to fashion into glorious dreams.

When we drew round the fire, for the evenings were chilly, they laid
their whole history open to us. What a tale it was! and what a telling of
it! My own uncle, Edward, was the principal narrator, but was
occasionally helped out by my newer uncle, Edmund. I had the story
already, my reader will remember, in my uncle's writing, at home: when we
returned I read it--not with the same absorption as if it had come first,
but with as much interest, and certainly with the more thorough
comprehension that I had listened to it before. That same written story I
shall presently give, supplemented by what, necessarily, my uncle Edmund
had to supply, and with some elucidation from the spoken narrative of my
uncle Edward.

As the story proceeded, overcome with the horror of the revelation I
foresaw, I forgot myself, and cried out--

"And that woman is John's mother!"

"Whose mother?" asked uncle Edmund, with scornful curiosity.

"John Day's," I answered.

"It cannot be!" he cried, blazing up. "Are you sure of it?"

"I have always been given so to understand," replied John for me; "but I
am by no means sure of it. I have doubted it a thousand times."

"No wonder! Then we may go on! But, indeed, to believe you her son, would
be to doubt you! I _don't_ believe it."

"You could not help doubting me!" responded John. "--I might be true,
though, even if I were her son!" he added.

"Ed," said Edmund to Edward, "let us lay our heads together!"

"Ready Ed!" said Edward to Edmund.

Thereupon they began comparing memories and recollections,--to find,
however, that they had by no means data enough. One thing was clear to
me--that nothing would be too bad for them to believe of her.

"She would pick out the eye of a corpse if she thought a sovereign lay
behind it!" said uncle Edmund.

"To have the turning over of his rents,--" said uncle Edward, and checked
himself.

"Yes--it would be just one of her devil-tricks!" agreed uncle Edmund.

"I beg your pardon, John," said uncle Edward, as if it were he that had
used the phrase, and uncle Edmund nodded to John, as if he had himself
made the apology.

John said nothing. His eyes looked wild with hope. He felt like one who,
having been taught that he is a child of the devil, begins to know that
God is his father--the one discovery worth making by son of man.

Then, at my request, they went on with their story, which I had
interrupted.

When it was at length all poured out, and the last drops shaken from the
memory of each, there fell a long silence, which my own uncle broke.

"When shall we start, Ed?" he said.

"To-morrow, Ed."

"This business of John's must come first, Ed!"

"It shall, Ed!"

"You know where you were born, John?"

"On my father's estate of Rubworth in Gloucestershire, I _believe_"
answered John.

"You must be prepared for the worst, you know!"

"I am prepared. As Orba told me once, God is my father, whoever my mother
may be!"

"That's right. Hold by that!" said my uncles, as with one breath.

"Do you know the year you were born?" asked uncle Edmund.

"My _mother_ says I was born in 1820."

"You have not seen the entry?"

"No. One does not naturally doubt such statements."

"Assuredly not--until--" He paused.

How uncle Edmund had regained his wits! And how young the brothers
looked!

"You mean," said John, "until he has known my mother!"

Now for the story of my twin uncles, mainly as written by my uncle
Edward!

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE STORY OF MY TWIN UNCLES.

"My brother and I were marvellously like. Very few of our friends, none
of them with certainty, could name either of us apart--or even together.
Only two persons knew absolutely which either of us was, and those two
were ourselves. Our mother certainly did not--at least without seeing one
or other of our backs. Even we ourselves have each made the blunder
occasionally of calling the other by the wrong name. Our
indistinguishableness was the source of ever-recurring mistake, of
constant amusement, of frequent bewilderment, and sometimes of annoyance
in the family. I once heard my father say to a friend, that God had never
made two things alike, except his twins. We two enjoyed the fun of it so
much, that we did our best to increase the confusions resulting from our
resemblance. We did not lie, but we dodged and pretended, questioned and
looked mysterious, till I verily believe the person concerned, having in
himself so vague an idea of our individuality, not unfrequently forgot
which he had blamed, or which he had wanted, and became hopelessly
muddled.

"A man might well have started the question what good could lie in the
existence of a duality in which the appearance was, if not exactly, yet
so nearly identical, that no one but my brother or myself could have
pointed out definite differences; but it could have been started only by
an outsider: my brother and I had no doubt concerning the advantage of a
duality in which each was the other's double; the fact was to us a never
ceasing source of delight. Each seemed to the other created such,
expressly that he might love him as a special, individual property of his
own. It was as if the image of Narcissus had risen bodily out of the
watery mirror, to be what it had before but seemed. It was as if we had
been made two, that each might love himself, and yet not be selfish.

"We were almost always together, but sometimes we got into individual
scrapes, when--which will appear to some incredible--the one accused
always accepted punishment without denial or subterfuge or attempt to
perplex: it was all one which was the culprit, and which should be the
sufferer. Nor did this indistinction work badly: that the other was just
as likely to suffer as the doer of the wrong, wrought rather as a
deterrent. The mode of behaviour may have had its origin in the
instinctive perception of the impossibility of proving innocence; but had
we, loving as we did, been capable of truthfully accusing each other, I
think we should have been capable of lying also. The delight of existence
lay, embodied and objective to each, in the existence of the other.

"At school we learned the same things, and only long after did any
differences in taste begin to develop themselves.

"Our brother, elder by five years, who would succeed to the property, had
the education my father thought would best fit him for the management of
land. We twins were trained to be lawyer and doctor--I the doctor.

"We went to college together, and shared the same rooms.

"Having finished our separate courses, our father sent us to a German
university: he would not have us insular!

"There we did not work hard, nor was hard work required of us. We went
out a good deal in the evenings, for the students that lived at home in
the town were hospitable. We seemed to be rather popular, owing probably
to our singular likeness, which we found was regarded as a serious
disadvantage. The reason of this opinion we never could find, flattering
ourselves indeed that what it typified gave us each double the base and
double the strength.

"We had all our friends in common. Every friend to one of us was a friend
to both. If one met man or woman he was pleased with, he never rested
until the other knew that man or woman also. Our delight in our friends
must have been greater than that of other men, because of the constant
sharing.

"Our all but identity of form, our inseparability, our unanimity, and our
mutual devotion, were often, although we did not know it, a subject of
talk in the social gatherings of the place. It was more than once or
twice openly mooted--what, in the chances of life, would be likeliest to
strain the bond that united us. Not a few agreed that a terrible
catastrophe might almost be expected from what they considered such an
unnatural relation.

"I think you must already be able to foresee from what the first
difference between us would arise: discord itself was rooted in the very
unison--for unison it was, not harmony--of our tastes and instincts; and
will now begin to understand why it was so difficult, indeed impossible
for me, not to have a secret from my little one.

"Among the persons we met in the home-circles of our fellow-students,
appeared by and by an English lady--a young widow, they said, though
little in her dress or carriage suggested widowhood. We met her again and
again. Each thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but
neither was much interested in her at first. Nor do I believe either
would, of himself, ever have been. Our likings and dislikings always
hitherto had gone together, and, left to themselves, would have done so
always, I believe; whence it seems probable that, left to ourselves, we
should also have found, when required, a common strength of abnegation.
But in the present case, our feelings were not left to themselves; the
lady gave the initiative, and the dividing regard was born in the one,
and had time to establish itself, ere the provoking influence was brought
to bear on the other.

"Within the last few years I have had a visit from an old companion of
the period. I daresay you will remember the German gentleman who amused
you with the funny way in which he pronounced certain words--one of the
truest-hearted and truest-tongued men I have ever known: he gave me much
unexpected insight into the evil affair. He had learned certain things
from a sister, the knowledge of which, old as the story they concerned by
that time was, chiefly moved his coming to England to find me.

"One evening, he told me, when a number of the ladies we were in the
habit of meeting happened to be together without any gentleman present,
the talk turned, half in a philosophical, half in a gossipy spirit, upon
the consequences that might follow, should two men, bound in such strange
fashion as my brother and I, fall in love with the same woman--a thing
not merely possible, but to be expected. The talk, my friend said, was
full of a certain speculative sort of metaphysics which, in the present
state of human development, is far from healthy, both because of our
incompleteness, and because we are too near to what we seem to know, to
judge it aright. One lady was present--a lady by us more admired and
trusted than any of the rest--who alone declared a conviction that love
of no woman would ever separate us, provided the one fell in love first,
and the other knew the fact before he saw the lady. For, she said, no
jealousy would in that case be roused; and the relation of the brother to
his brother and sister would be so close as to satisfy his heart. In a
few days probably he too would fall in love, and his lady in like manner
be received by his brother, when they would form a square impregnable
to attack. The theory was a good one, and worthy of realization. But,
alas, the Prince of the Power of the Air was already present in force,
in the heart of the English widow! Young in years, but old in pride
and self-confidence, she smiled at the notion of our advocate. She said
that the idea of any such friendship between men was nonsense; that she
knew more about men than some present could be expected to know: their
love was but a matter of custom and use; the moment self took part in
the play, it would burst; it was but a bubble-company! As for love
proper--she meant the love between man and woman--its law was the
opposite to that of friendship; its birth and continuance depended on the
parties _not_ getting accustomed to each other; the less they knew each
other, the more they would love each other.

"Upon this followed much confused talk, during which the English lady
declared nothing easier than to prove friendship, or the love of
brothers, the kind of thing she had said.

"Most of the company believed the young widow but talking to show off;
while not a few felt that they desired no nearer acquaintance with one
whose words, whatever might be her thoughts, degraded humanity. The
circle was very speedily broken into two segments, one that liked the
English lady, and one that almost hated her.

"From that moment, the English widow set before her the devil-victory of
alienating two hearts that loved each other--and she gained it for a
time--until Death proved stronger than the Devil. People said we could
not be parted: _she_ would part us! She began with my brother. To tell
how I know that she began with him, I should have to tell how she began
with me, and that I cannot do; for, little one, I dare not let the tale
of the treacheries of a bad woman toward an unsuspecting youth, enter
your ears. Suffice it to say, such a woman has well studied those regions
of a man's nature into which, being less divine, the devil in her can
easier find entrance. There, she knows him better than he knows himself;
and makes use of her knowledge, not to elevate, but to degrade him. She
fills him with herself, and her animal influences. She gets into his
self-consciousness beside himself, by means of his self-love. Through the
ever open funnel of his self-greed, she pours in flattery. By
depreciation of others, she hints admiration of himself. By the slightest
motion of a finger, of an eyelid, of her person, she will pay him a
homage of which first he cannot, then he will not, then he dares not
doubt the truth. Not such a woman only, but almost any silly woman, may
speedily make the most ordinary, and hitherto modest youth, imagine
himself the peak of creation, the triumph of the Deity. No man alive is
beyond the danger of imagining himself exceptional among men: if such as
think well of themselves were right in so doing, truly the world were ill
worth God's making! He is the wisest who has learned to 'be naught
awhile!' The silly soul becomes so full of his tempter, and of himself in
and through her, that he loses interest in all else, cares for nobody but
her, prizes nothing but her regard, broods upon nothing but her favours,
looks forward to nothing but again her presence and further favours. God
is nowhere; fellow-man in the way like a buzzing fly--else no more to be
regarded than a speck of dust neither upon his person nor his garment.
And this terrible disintegration of life rises out of the most wonderful,
mysterious, beautiful, and profound relation in humanity! Its roots go
down into the very deeps of God, and out of its foliage creeps the old
serpent, and the worm that never dies! Out of it steams the horror of
corruption, wrapt in whose living death a man cries out that God himself
can do nothing for him. It is but the natural result of his making the
loveliest of God's gifts into his God, and worshipping and serving the
creature more than the creator. Oh my child, it is a terrible thing to
be! Except he knows God the saviour, man stands face to face with a
torturing enigma, hopeless of solution!

"The woman sought and found the enemy, my false self, in the house of my
life. To that she gave herself, as if she gave herself to me. Oh, how she
made me love her!--if that be love which is a deification of self, the
foul worship of one's own paltry being!--and that when most it seems
swallowed up and lost! No, it is not love! Does love make ashamed? The
memories of it may be full of pain, but can the soul ever turn from love
with sick contempt? That which at length is loathed, can never have been
loved!

"Of my brother she would speak as of a poor creature not for a moment to
be compared with myself. How I could have believed her true when she
spoke thus, knowing that in the mirror I could not have told myself from
my brother, knowing also that our minds, tastes, and faculties bore as
strong a resemblance as our bodies, I cannot tell, but she fooled me to a
fool through the indwelling folly of my self-love. At other times,
wishing to tighten the bonds of my thraldom that she might the better
work her evil end, proving herself a powerful devil, she would rouse my
jealousy by some sign of strong admiration of Edmund. She must have acted
the same way with my brother. I saw him enslaved just as I--knew we were
faring alike--knew the very thoughts as well as feelings in his heart,
and instead of being consumed with sorrow, chuckled at the _knowledge_
that _I_ was the favoured one! I suspect now that she showed him more
favour than myself, and taught him to put on the look of the hopeless
one. I fancied I caught at times a covert flash in his eye: he knew what
he knew! If so, poor Edmund, thou hadst the worst of it every way!

"Shall I ever get her kisses off my lips, her poison out of my brain!
From my heart, her image was burned in a moment, as utterly as if by
years of hell!

"The estrangement between us was sudden; there were degrees only in the
widening of it. First came embarrassment at meeting. Then all commerce of
wish, thought, and speculation, ended. There was no more merrymaking
jugglery with identity; each was himself only, and for himself alone.
Gone was all brother-gladness. We avoided each other more and more. When
we must meet, we made haste to part. Heaven was gone from home. Each yet
felt the same way toward the other, but it was the way of repelling, not
drawing. When we passed in the street, it was with a look that said, or
at least meant--'You are my brother! I don't want you!' We ceased even to
nod to each other. Still in our separation we could not separate. Each
took a room in another part of the town, but under the same pseudonym.
Our common lodging was first deserted, then formally given up by each.
Always what one did, that did the other, though no longer intending to
act in consort with him. He could not help it though he tried, for the
other tried also, and did the same thing. One of us might for months have
played the part of both without detection--especially if it had been
understood that we had parted company; but I think it was never
suspected, although now we were rarely for a moment together, and still
more rarely spoke. A few weeks sufficed to bring us to the verge of
madness.

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