第72章 A VILLAGE HALL(4)

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 Ito 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.

"Come," said he, waving his hand towards her."You are safe!"She threw off the veil, and stood before that multitude of people pale, tremulous, shrinking, as if only then had she discovered that a thousand eyes were gazing at her.Poor maiden! How strangely had she been betrayed! Blazoned abroad as a wonder of the world, and performing what were adjudged as miracles,--in the faith of many, a seeress and a prophetess; in the harsher judgment of others, a mountebank,--she had kept, as I religiously believe, her virgin reserve and sanctity of soul throughout it all.Within that encircling veil, though an evil hand had flung it over her, there was as deep a seclusion as if this forsaken girl had, all the while, been sitting under the shadow of Eliot's pulpit, in the Blithedale woods, at the feet of him who now summoned her to the shelter of his arms.And the true heart-throb of a woman's affection was too powerful for the jugglery that had hitherto environed her.She uttered a shriek, and fled to Hollingsworth, like one escaping from her deadliest enemy, and was safe forever.