The Purple Cloud Read online

first of all, my _fiancee_----'

  'Ah, the all-important Countess, eh?--Well, but she, as far as I knowthe lady, would be the first to force you to go. The chance of stampingone's foot on the North Pole does not occur to a man every day, my son.'

  'Do talk of something else!' I said. 'There is Peters....'

  'Well, of course, there is Peters. But believe me, the dream I had wasso clear----'

  'Let me alone with your dreams, and your Poles!' I laughed.

  Yes, I remember: I pretended to laugh loud! But my secret heart knew,even _then_, that one of those crises was occurring in my life which,from my youth, has made it the most extraordinary which any creature ofearth ever lived. And I knew that this was so, firstly, because of thetwo dreams, and secondly, because, when Clark was gone, and I wasdrawing on my gloves to go to see my _fiancee_, I heard distinctly theold two Voices talk within me: and One said: 'Go not to see her now!'and the Other: 'Yes, go, go!'

  The two Voices of my life! An ordinary person reading my words wouldundoubtedly imagine that I mean only two ordinary contradictoryimpulses--or else that I rave: for what modern man could comprehend howreal-seeming were those voices, how loud, and how, ever and again, Iheard them contend within me, with a nearness 'nearer than breathing,'as it says in the poem, and 'closer than hands and feet.'

  About the age of seven it happened first to me. I was playing one summerevening in a pine-wood of my father's; half a mile away was aquarry-cliff; and as I played, it suddenly seemed as if someone said tome, inside of me: 'Just take a walk toward the cliff'; and as if someoneelse said: 'Don't go that way at all'--mere whispers then, whichgradually, as I grew up, seemed to swell into cries of wrathfulcontention! I did go toward the cliff: it was steep, thirty feet high,and I fell. Some weeks later, on recovering speech, I told my astonishedmother that 'someone had pushed me' over the edge, and that someone else'had caught me' at the bottom!

  One night, soon after my eleventh birthday, lying in bed, the thoughtstruck me that my life must be of great importance to some thing orthings which I could not see; that two Powers, which hated each other,must be continually after me, one wishing for some reason to kill me,and the other for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do soand so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy likeother boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for--something.Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult andprimitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; sothat 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 Voicewas heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend thatoriginally man had more ears than two; nor should have been surprised toknow that I, in these latter days, more or less resembled those primevalones.

  But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what Ihere 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 todecide as to a profession, who could have suspected the conflict thattransacted itself in my soul, while my brain was indifferent to thematter--that agony of strife with which the brawling voices shouted, theone: 'Be a scientist--a doctor,' and the other: 'Be a lawyer, anengineer, an artist--be _anything_ but a doctor!'

  A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest ofmedical 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, Iremember, in the New Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generallythere. 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 saidsomething about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotlandinterrupted 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 instature, with a Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep hisneck straight, and draw his paunch in. He used to say that the universewas 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 ourparticular planet very favourable to his success; that he had got thebest of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but since then had beenslowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that finally theBlack would win--not everywhere perhaps, but _here_--and would carryoff, if no other earth, at least _this_ one, for his prize.

  This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; andwhile others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divinewith what agony of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank inhis words. Most profound, most profound, was the impression they madeupon me.

  * * * * *

  But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves togo to see my _fiancee_, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the twovoices most clearly.

  Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, thatthere is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid mego.

  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'; andanother shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!'

  It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was inHanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms.

  She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh--thathaughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her leftshoulder. Superb! but ah--I know it now--a godless woman, Clodagh, abitter heart.

  Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history wasLucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well,no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that shelived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, nowI 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 byhers, because, forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. Asister of hers, much older than herself, had married a common countrydoctor, Peters of Taunton, and this so-called _mesalliance_ made theso-called _mesalliance_ with me doubly detestable in the eyes of herrelatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary passion for me was to be stemmedneither by their threats nor prayers. What a flame, after all, wasClodagh! Sometimes she frightened me.

  She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, asalso, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage ofher sister with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who wasto accompany the _Boreal_ expedition as doctor, botanist, andmeteorological assistant.

  On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minuteswith Clodagh, when I said:

  'Dr. Clark--ha! ha! ha!--has been talking to me about the Expedition. Hesays that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man hewould 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 itthan I could fly.

  Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite aminute 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 beennobled. I say nothing of the many millions... I only wish that I wasa man!'

  'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'Iam very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outerCold.'

  '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 NorthPole, am I?'

  'But you _would_ go, I suppose, if y
ou could?'

  'I might--I--doubt it. There is our marriage....'

  'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from asneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.'

  'You mean if _I_ personally were the first to stand at the Pole. Butthere 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 theslightest 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