The Blithedale Romance - Page 138/170

"You see before you the Veiled Lady," said the bearded Professor,

advancing to the verge of the platform. "By the agency of which I have

just spoken, she is at this moment in communion with the spiritual

world. That silvery veil is, in one sense, an enchantment, having been

dipped, as it were, and essentially imbued, through the potency of my

art, with the fluid medium of spirits. Slight and ethereal as it

seems, the limitations of time and space have no existence within its

folds. This hall--these hundreds of faces, encompassing her within so

narrow an amphitheatre--are of thinner substance, in her view, than the

airiest vapor that the clouds are made of. She beholds the Absolute!"

As preliminary to other and far more wonderful psychological

experiments, the exhibitor suggested that some of his auditors should

endeavor to make the Veiled Lady sensible of their presence by such

methods--provided only no touch were laid upon her person--as they

might deem best adapted to that end. Accordingly, several deep-lunged

country fellows, who looked as if they might have blown the apparition

away with a breath, ascended the platform. Mutually encouraging one

another, they shouted so close to her ear that the veil stirred like a

wreath of vanishing mist; they smote upon the floor with bludgeons;

they perpetrated so hideous a clamor, that methought it might have

reached, at least, a little way into the eternal sphere. Finally, with

the assent of the Professor, they laid hold of the great chair, and

were startled, apparently, to find it soar upward, as if lighter than

the air through which it rose. But the Veiled Lady remained seated and

motionless, with a composure that was hardly less than awful, because

implying so immeasurable a distance betwixt her and these rude

persecutors.

"These efforts are wholly without avail," observed the Professor, who

had been looking on with an aspect of serene indifference. "The roar

of a battery of cannon would be inaudible to the Veiled Lady. And yet,

were I to will it, sitting in this very hall, she could hear the desert

wind sweeping over the sands as far off as Arabia; the icebergs

grinding one against the other in the polar seas; the rustle of a leaf

in an East Indian forest; the lowest whispered breath of the

bashfullest maiden in the world, uttering the first confession of her

love. Nor does there exist the moral inducement, apart from my own

behest, that could persuade her to lift the silvery veil, or arise out

of that chair."

Greatly to the Professor's discomposure, however, just as he spoke

these words, the Veiled Lady arose. There was a mysterious tremor that

shook the magic veil. The spectators, it may be, imagined that she was

about to take flight into that invisible sphere, and to the society of

those purely spiritual beings with whom they reckoned her so near akin.

Hollingsworth, a moment ago, had mounted the platform, and now stood

gazing at the figure, with a sad intentness that brought the whole

power of his great, stern, yet tender soul into his glance.