The Purple Cloud. M. P. Shiel
to kill me, and the other for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do so and so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy like other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for—something. Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult and primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; so that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' have hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice was heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that originally man had more ears than two; nor should have been surprised to know that I, in these latter days, more or less resembled those primeval ones.
But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what I here state that I was. I seemed the ordinary youth of my time, bow in my 'Varsity eight, cramming for exams., dawdling in clubs. When I had to decide as to a profession, who could have suspected the conflict that transacted itself in my soul, while my brain was indifferent to the matter—that agony of strife with which the brawling voices shouted, the one: 'Be a scientist—a doctor,' and the other: 'Be a lawyer, an engineer, an artist—be anything but a doctor!'
A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest of medical schools—Cambridge; and there it was that I came across a man, named Scotland, who had a rather odd view of the world. He had rooms, I remember, in the New Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generally there. He was always talking about certain 'Black' and 'White Powers, till it became absurd, and the men used to call him 'black-and-white-mystery-man,' because, one day, when someone said something about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotland interrupted him with the words: 'the black-and-white mystery.'
Quite well I remember Scotland now—the sweetest, gentle soul he was, with a passion for cats, and Sappho, and the Anthology, very short in stature, with a Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep his neck straight, and draw his paunch in. He used to say that the universe was being frantically contended for by two Powers: a White and a Black; that the White was the stronger, but did not find the conditions on our particular planet very favourable to his success; that he had got the best of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but since then had been slowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that finally the Black would win—not everywhere perhaps, but here—and would carry off, if no other earth, at least this one, for his prize.
This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; and while others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divine with what agony of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank in his words. Most profound, most profound, was the impression they made upon me.
But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to go to see my fiancée, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two voices most clearly.
Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that there is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me go.
I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square, and all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear: 'Since you go, breathe no word of the Boreal, and Clark's visit'; and another shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!'
It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in Hanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms.
She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh—that haughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her left shoulder. Superb! but ah—I know it now—a godless woman, Clodagh, a bitter heart.
Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now I think of it, how completely did Clodagh enthral me!
Our proposed marriage was opposed by both my family and hers: by mine, because her father and grandfather had died in lunatic asylums; and by hers, because, forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. A sister of hers, much older than herself, had married a common country doctor, Peters of Taunton, and this so-called mésalliance made the so-called mésalliance with me doubly detestable in the eyes of her relatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary passion for me was to be stemmed neither by their threats nor prayers. What a flame, after all, was Clodagh! Sometimes she frightened me.
She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as also, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of her sister with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who was to accompany the Boreal expedition as doctor, botanist, and meteorological assistant.
On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minutes with Clodagh, when I said:
'Dr. Clark—ha! ha! ha!—has been talking to me about the Expedition. He says that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he would run to. He has had an absurd dream … '
The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the wickedness of me—the crooked wickedness. But I could no more help it than I could fly.
Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way:
'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions … I only wish that I was a man!'
'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'I am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outer Cold.'
'Don't let me think little of you!' she answered pettishly.
'Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North Pole, am I?'
'But you would go, I suppose, if you could?'
'I might—I—doubt it. There is our marriage. … '
'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.'
'You mean if I personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But there are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that I, personally—'
'For me you will, Adam—' she began.
'"Will," Clodagh?' I cried. 'You say "will"? there is not even the slightest shadow of a probability—!'
'But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say … '
She stopped, she stopped.
'They say what?'
Her voice dropped:
'That Peter takes atropine.'
Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, and turned the leaves of a book, without reading. We were silent, she and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly a little—a dry, mad laugh.
'Why did you start when I said that?' she asked, reading now at random.
'I! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I did not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?'
'He is my nephew: I should know. But don't look dumbfoundered in that absurd fashion: I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you a multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm. … '
'My dearest Clodagh!'
'I easily might, however. He will be here presently. He is bringing Mr. Wilson for the evening.' (Wilson was going as electrician of the expedition.)
'Clodagh.' I said, 'believe me, you jest in a manner which does not please me.'
'Do I really?' she answered with that haughty, stiff half-turn of her throat: 'then I must be more exquisite. But, thank