Bruges-la-morte : a romance

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P

OF THEUN IVERSITYOF ILLINOIS

rorn Turner Collection

ObEL6K

BRUGES-LA-MORTE

Li(ieorg-es Rodenbach.

BRUGES-LA-MORTEt 'Ronance

BY

GEORGES RODENBACH

Translated from the rench, with a Critical

Introduction, byTHOMAS DUNCAN

WITH THREE ILLUSTRATIONS

vLONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEJN & CO., LIM.1903

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

IN days when the reputation-mongervigilantly ransacks the most obscure

r by-paths of literary Europe in quest,of new idols whom he may exploit

and adore, it may fairly be regardedas amazing that the works of awriter possessing so unique a charmof individuality as those of Georges"Rodenbach should have so longremained practically unknown toEnglish lovers of Continental

Of Maeterlinck enough, andA

Bruges-la-Morte.

perhaps more than enough has

been written and said. A vividand faithful translation of selec-

tions from the poetical works ofVerhaeren by Miss Alma Strettel

was published in 1879, while in

the preceding year his Les Aubes

had been issued in an English dressthrough the instrumentality of the

pen of Mr. Arthur Symons. Butamong the group of writers whoconstitute what has been describedas the Belgian Renaissance, theclaims of Rodenbach to any formof recognition have almost alone

been regarded as entirely negligible.To anticipate a widespread popu-

larity for either the poems or the2

Critical Introduction.

novels of the author of Bruges-la-Aorte, is possibly enough a vainimagination. Fastidious and aris-tocratic by temperament, he him-self held in but light esteem thesuffrages of the mob. In a recentmasterly study of Rodenbach by M.Huysmans, that most distinguishedof contemporary Catholic writerscharacterizes him felicitously as the" most extraordinary virtuoso ofour time," and it is not altogetherunlikely that his passion for recon-dite similes and analogies-mayrender his works, in a measure,caviare to the general. A consum-mate artist, all that savouredof flamboyance or turgidity was

3

Bruges-la-Morte.

instinctively repugnant to his soul.Only the things appealed to himwhich were calm and old. Missionof any description he had assuredlynone.

It was from the dead towns ofFlanders-these strange survivalsof mediaevalism, that his inspirationcame. The

"Villes aux noms si doux, Audenarde,Malines"

of his own tender if unimpassionedverse.

The pathetic ineffectuality ofaspect which broods over them,combined with their elusive qualityof aesthetic charm to hold in

4


captivity his imagination. In thegrace of a tranquillity which lulledto rest involuntarily all vehemenceof emotion, he beheld the mirror ofwhat was most congenial to hisown moods.

It was Bruges, of covrse, withwhich his name is now inseparablylinked, that became to him anobject of paramount literary con-secration.

"Toujours 'obsession d'un ciel gris deprovince."

It held him almost unintermittentlywithin its grasp, even in the heydayof his hectic Parisian later life.

It is generally assumed by those5

Bruges-la-Morte.

who possess only an imperfectacquaintanceship with the bio-graphical details of Rodenbach'scareer, that Bruges claimed himfor its own; but it was the cityonly of his artistic adoption, andnot of his nativity.

Born in 1855, under the shadowof the great cathedral of the barriertown of Tournai, he was educatedat the University of Ghent, wherehis career was one of almost un-broken distinction, His selection,in the first instance, of a professionso aridly distasteful to the contem-plative imagination as that of law,seems to partake somewhat of thenature of an irony of circumstance.

6


Yet within what was undeniablythe uncongenial arena of the law-courts, his forensic eloquenceproved more than sufficientlyconvincing.

Attracted to Brussels by theenhancement of possibilities whicha capital ever affords, Rodenbachthere flung himself, with all theardour of youth, into the advocacyof the literary crusade that had forits object the emancipation of theintellect of young Belgium fromthe domination of the Philistinism,under the yoke of which it had solong groaned. It was in courseof the controversies engenderedby this uprising against decorated

7

Bruges-la-Morte.

dulness, that his true vocation wasfinally discovered.

Brussels was to him, however,no abiding city. The irresistiblemagnetism of Paris ere long drewhim within the vortex of that febrileexistence, whose blandishments haveever been so fraught with fascina-tion for his countrymen. Here heassociated upon terms of Bohemianintimacy with the members of theliterary remnant, who strove topreserve the flickering tradition ofthe Quarlier Latin. The charmof the "beautiful city of Prague"would seem to have held him in itsthrall in these days. With EmileGaudeau, Maurice Rollinat, Paul

8


Arene, Bastien Lepage, PaulBourget, Sarah Bernhardt, andother celebrities whose names stillserve to invest even decadence witha certain distinction, he inter-changed ideas, declaimed verses,and developed the genius whichwas to find its expression only inthe worship of a sad, gray city.

A voluminous writer, hisbiography exists merely in hisworks. The external record ofhis life is eventless and meagre.His domestic concerns appear tohave remained unillumined by thefierce light which, in these days,beats upon the household of theauthor. To the literary youths

9

Bruges-la-M orte.

of Belguim he was, however,invariably almost effusively sym-pathetic. The closest revelationof his somewhat enigmatic per-sonality seems to be a portraitby Levy-Dhurmer, exhibited atthe Paris Salon of 1896.

The tragic death of GeorgesRodenbach, while yet an inheritorof unfulfilled renown, at the closeof December, I898-bringing withit to the too limited circle of hisadmirers a thrill of passionateregret, amounting almost to asense of personal bereavement-extinguished a career the possi-bilities of which it is difficultadequately to gauge.

10


The refrain of the last andperhaps the most exquisite of hisshorter lyrics, written to greet theadvent of the New Year whichhe was destined never to behold,

"Always the same dream unachieved,"

reveals possibly the dissatisfactionof a temperament essentially in-trospective with the comparativefailure of the imagination to realizethe ideals that the heart cherished.

Of the six novels that Rodenbachhas bequeathed to us, no less thanfive deal directly with the Bruges-la-Morte, which his genius hasinvested with so ineffable a charm.

II

Bruges-la-Morte.

So also do, though in a less

tangible fashion, his solitary drama

and the two best known and least

artificial of his volumes of verse.Even in the sketches which he

was wont to contribute with such

frequency to the Parisian literary

journals, the haze of his obsession

interposed itself with an allurement

of expression that beguiled manyof his readers into setting-forthupon a sentimental pilgrimagefrom which, in the great majority ofinstances, they returned only the

poorer by the loss of an illusion.Though shrinking with a char-

acteristic dread of disenchantmentfrom the deadening potentialities

12


of familiarity with what was to hima city of dream, there is conclusiveenough internal evidence to demon-strate that Rodenbach never ceasedto keep a vigilant eye upon thevandalism of a municipal adminis-tration, which was seemingly everbent upon the vulgarization of hissanctuary. In the Carillonneur,for example-which indisputablyfalls to be reckoned, so far aslocal colour is concerned, as themost realistic of his works-hereveals a fulness of knowledge inregard to the manoeuvres of thecivic fathers, who hold in theircustody the city of Van Eyck andMemling, that renders their refusal

r3

Bruges-la-Morte.

to sanction the erection of a statueto his memory the reverse of anenigma.

That the Bruges of Rodenbach,however,, is not in great measurean idealism, can scarcely be denied.It is not so much Bruges as anabstraction of Bruges, that hishorror of prosaic realism presentsto the imagination. All the un-lovely features which are likelyto jar upon romantic sensibilities,are rigorously excluded fromthe sphere of his perspective.The existence of an egregiousEnglish colony-tawdry, flaunting,brawling, and ubiquitous - the

pinchbeck nature of many of the14


house restorations; the bi-weeklyturmoil of a vast and unsightlymarket; the monthly saturnalia ofa fair of unsurpassable vulgarity,are ignored with sublimity ofindifference. Nothing that iscommon or unclean is permittedto derange the harmony of hisartistic conception.

To Rodenbach the significanceof Bruges lay only in the superbvista of its Lac d'Amour; inthe sombre tranquillity that reignswithin the court of its Beguinage;in the picturesque richness of thegables which embellish the inertwaters of its canals; in the majesticbeauty of its delicately gliding

15

Bruges-la-Morte.

swans; in the towering sublimityof its inscrutable beffroi-perhapsabove all in that odour of thesacristan which still everywherepervades the tangled skein of itsstreets. With a delicate sensitive-ness of perception, he seizes uponevery detail that enhances theaesthetic value of the phenomenawhich constitute his material. Thedrowsy melody of the bells, thetender fogs, the melancholy poplars,the pale Beguines, the water-lilies,which symbolized ever to his imag-ination the hearts of the firstcommunicants.

In the preface to the bestknown of his works, Rodenbach

i6


avows, with characteristic definite-ness, the nature of the Neo-Paganconception which underlies hisromance. It is that of theevocation by a literary processevolved by himself of his belovedtown, as "an essential personageassociated with different conditionsof the soul, counselling, prompting,and determining its action." Thatthe execution is absolutely flawless,not even the most perfervidadmirer of Rodenbach can ventureto maintain. Unhappily for theperfection of the work, the authorwas afflicted with a duality of beingwhich renders it the centre of twoconflicting tendencies. A Fleming

17 B

Bruges-la-Morte.

by birth, Rodenbach was more thanhalf a Parisian by temperament,and the severe spiritual simplicity,which is the birthright of theformer, was curiously blended inhim with the passion for thebizarre that is the most prominentcharacteristic of the latter. Whilethe book regarded from one sideis mystic, devotional, and pessi-mistically tranquil, upon the otherit is weird, erotic, and melodra-matic. It has to be borne in mindin connection with the developmentof the plot that, in mediaeval times,Bruges was a reputed centre ofSatanism, and it is evidently to alatent instigation of this diabolism

i8


that Rodenbach attributes the crimefor which his hero is apparentlyresponsible.

Unrivalled in power of descrip-tion, it must be confessed thatRodenbach is not impeccable inmatters of taste. In the faculty ofextracting the immaterial from thematerial, he stands in the kingdomof letters without a peer. In hishands the inanimate ever becomesinstinct with a gracefully fragilelife. But while unapproachable asa delineator of petrifaction, hismodernity is frequently peculiarlyvulnerable to criticism. As anarena for the allurements of thederni - mondaine, Bruges is the

'9

Bruges-la-Morte.

climax of artistic incongruity. Yetso deeply has the lubricity of theParisian entered into the soul of thenovelist, that he of all men failsto perceive the inappositeness ofsuch a presence in a romance, thescene of which is laid in so sternlyecclesiastical an atmosphere.

None the less, after all deduc-tions have been made, Bruges-la-Morte remains of its kind the mostexquisite study in modern literature.Of the much abused phrase, localcolour, we hear enough and tospare, but the trail of the itineraryis over it all. In its ordinary form,local colour means nothing morethan the sentimentalization of

20


topography. Vitality or romanceit has none. The term is a meresubterfuge for the veneering of anintolerable aridity.

The achievement of Rodenbachis something differing widely fromall this. For him the merelyexternal is devoid of all meaning.It was his supreme literary am-bition to make the dry-bones live.Inhis eyes the artist is the reversein every respect of the photo-grapher, and of all unincarnatedthings the most repugnant to hisimagination must have been thesoullessness of a Baedeker. Yetunlike Pater, the only Englishwriter-with the exception of

21

Bruges-la-Morte.

Hardy-to whom he bears anyresemblance, his word-painting isas precise as it is poetical. Withall its imperfections his idealizationof Bruges will continue to make anenduring appeal, upon the onehand, to that order of imaginationwhich finds an anodyne in the de-piction of a despondent tranquillity;and upon the other, to the typethat succumbs to the fascination ofthe mediaevalism that bequeathedto us the cathedrals we are nowimpotent even to restore.

With the novels of ThomasHardy and those of the authorof Bruges-la-Morte, a certainparallel is easily established. The

22


promptings to action of a sombreenvironment, are portrayed in theReturn of the Native and the

Woodlanders in a manner which

is essentially that adopted byRodenbach. The gloom that

broods over Egdon Heath ispractically identical with that

which overhangs Bruges, though

in the latter instance its ascend-ency is greatly intensified.

In the Carillonneur, whichembodies precisely the samemethod of literary treatment, weencounter at least an incom-parably more robust piece of

handiwork. No longer the refuge

of a sentimental misanthropy,23

Bruges-la-Morte.

Bruges is depicted in its pagesas undergoing the preliminarythroes of an impending aestheticdissolution. The old order ofthings is menaced by the machi-nations of an intriguing coteriebent upon the carrying out of ascheme of iconoclastic utilitarianism.Hating the bourgeois with ahatred which rivals in its intensitythat of a Flaubert, a Maupassant,or a Gautier, Rodenbach herepillories, in a manner whichdisplays more power of touchwith actuality than many of hisown admirers would have creditedhim with possessing, the chicane;the insensibility to all which is

24


not material; the vandalism thatcannot recognize in beauty evena form of revenue which character-izes the administration of aprovincial town harassed by thecustody of an artistic heritage, theloveliness of which it cannotcomprehend, and the value ofwhich it cannot appraise.

That his soul should in thisvolume have been stirred to a redheat of indignation was in no wayastonishing. The handwriting wasupon the wall. The shadow ofthe destroyer, in the shape of amaritime canal, was hoveringaround the effeteness which hehad enshrined. Bruges was to be

25

Bruges-la-Morte.

Bruges-la-Morte no more. Therelentless commercialism, whichlike the grave spares and givesback nothing, now threatened theexistence of what to him wasalmost a religion.

The novel, therefore, inevitablybecomes a species of Hellenictragedy, moving softly and sternlyto the appointed end. Thevictim of an implacable destiny,

J oris Borlutt, the Carillonneur, anuncompromising embodiment of allthe traits of the artistic reactionary,is depicted throughout in Prome-theus fashion, as a mere target forthe buffets of adversity. An object-lesson to all belated enough to run

26


the hazard of excommunication atthe hands of modern progress,almost no particle of alleviationenters into the final tragedy ofhis career. JIn the culmination ofthe doom of the fate-stricken heroof his novel by a sufficientlydramatic suicide within the towerof the Beffroi, it would almost seemas if Rodenbach thus meant, in hisemblematic fashion, to symbolizethe impending annihilation of thebeauty of Bruges.

"Au-dessus de la vie, Au-dessusde la vie" (Above the life, Abovethe life), in this ever - recurrentphrase, which seems almost todominate the book, can be

27

Bruges-la-Morte.

discovered the solution of the

enigma presented by the ineffectua-lity of Rodenbach's protagonists.Striving ever after the unattainable,they fail utterly to adjust them-selves to the actual conditions oftheir existence. The imaginationholds them for its own. In thedominion of art, they can be rankedonly as consecrations of futility.

The lot of Jean Rembrandt, thehero of L'Art en Exile, is no whitless tragic than that of his com-patriots. Like them, his career maybe epitomized in the word frustra-tion. A poet torn from the Paris hisheart loved, and recalled by pres-sure of family conditions to the

28


stagnation of a provincial town,where only Mammon is held inreverence, his life is rendered amartyrdom by the enmity of therancorous mediocrity that surroundshim. The isolation which awaitshim in his own household proves,however, tenfold more dishearten-ing. Suffocated by the influencesof his environment, he relapsesinto complete apathy and inertia.Verily the Pagan of Mr. Swin-burne's "Hymn to Proserpine"stands here justified.

"Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harp-string of gold,

A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God tobehold ?"

29

Bruges-la-M orte.

In Le Musde de Bdguines, wediscover Rodenbach in a lightermood. Endowed with that peculiarmagic of style which renders thecommonplace attractive and the un-

interesting interesting, he analysesin this volume of sketches, withmarvellous delicacy of insight, thetraits that lie hidden within thehearts of that picturesque sister-hood-the members of which re-appear with so remarkable apersistency throughout the wholecourse of his works. In a type ofcharacter that approaches subtletyupon one hand, as closely as itdoes simplicity upon another, hefound a congenial outlet for that

30


love of psychological dissectionwhich was always dear to him.Here no element of violenceobtrudes itself. All trace of Roden-bach the Parisian has vanished.The literary atmosphere is one ofperfect stillness. The recluses withminds as spotless as the snowypurity of their cornettes, are asvividly realized as the virgins inMemling's world-renowned ck6asseof Saint Ursula.

La Vocation, which is the leastpleasing of all Rodenbach's studies,deals with scruples of consciencethat are well-nigh incomprehensibleto the Protestant mind. Yet inthe intensity of its Catholicism,

3'

Bruges-la-Morte.

there subsists a harmony with theaustere religious background inwhich no sin would seem to beheld as venial. For as in Spain,from whence Flanders derived itsfaith, the way of contrition ishard and life-long repentance bearswith it no security of expiation.The descriptions of Bruges arehere characterized by even morethan the writer's ordinary power ofartistic extraction, but the lack ofrelief to the picture of hopelessself-condemnation leaves a painfulimpression upon the mind of thereader.

The destruction of all that is

primitive and Arcadian by the32


intrusion of a railway into aremote district of the island ofZealand, is the subject of Roden-bach's last novel, L'Arbre. Virtu-ally an arraignment of modernprogress, it portrays graphicallythe introduction into a pastoralEden of all that which debasesthe residuum of a large manu-facturing town. The tramplingdown of an idyllic life, which is,however, more than a trifle tooreminiscent of the Golden Agefor acceptance at the hands ofmodern scepticism, by the exe-crated "etrangers," affords thewriter ample room for a more thansufficiently harrowing delineation.

33 C

Bruges-la-Morte.

Convincing enough from an anti-utilitarian standpoint, the bookfails to make the impression uponthe imagination which the natureof the subject demands. Veri-similitude is lacking, and the over-refining of the Dutch peasantcarried to a pitch of excess.

The poetry of Rodenbach ispermeated by the same qualitiesas those which will serve to attractor repel the reader in his proseworks. The process of dematerial-ization, however, of which he wasso deeply enamoured, is naturallycarried in his verse to a fargreater degree of elusiveness thanwas possible in the more circum-

34


scribed region of the novel. Witha Memlingesque minuteness ofobservation, he endeavours in hisstanzas to infuse a soul into eventhe most insignificant of the objectswith which his imagination dallies.The pathos hid in inanimate thingsalways appealed to him, especiallywhen they were humanized byneglect and misuse. Even thepoetry of domestic belongingsinvisible to others was recogniz-able by him. Strenuousness ofany description finds no place inhis world of lassitude. The key-note of his verse, indeed, is notinfrequently that of a Paganismwhich has waxed valetudinarian,

35

Bruges-la-Morte.

and is content to shadow forth

only the things that are plaintiveand frail.

It is again from Bruges that

Rodenbach derives the inspiration

upon which the durability of his

reputation as a poet must chiefly

lodge. The shackles of a

Parisian artificiality, which at

intervals held him in the bondage

of a worship of strange gods, are

rent asunder as he approaches

that " October of stones," which

had ever been to him as a

Mecca in the wilderness.It is consequently upon the two

volumes of his verse-Le Rfigne du

Silence and Le Miroir du Ciel36


Naal, which treat almost exclu-sively of Bruges, that criticalattention will in a great measurebe disposed to concentrate itself.

Intensely subjective in hisadoption of a method, no allure-ment can induce Rodenbach todeviate an iota from it. Even thefaded historical glories of Brugesare included in the rigour of hiseliminations. Such emotions asthose which thrilled Rossetti

"John Memmeling and John van EyckHold state at Bruges. In sore shameI scanned the works that keep their

name ;The carillon, which then did strikeMine ears, was heard of theirs alike:

It set me closer unto them."37

Bruges-la-Morte.

are to him as the commonplaces ofthe tourist.

Wordsworth, it is true, in histwo unforgettable sonnets, has inan imperfect fashion foreshadowed

Rodenbach's interpretation of thesad Northern Venice, but the haloof its mediaevalism has, of the twoinfluences, left an impression uponthe mind of the English poetdeeper than the pathos of itsdecrepitude.

To Rodenbach, Bruges pre-sented itself under a guise akin tothat of Tennyson's

"island-valley of Avillon,Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,Nor ever wind blows loudly."

38


From it, as a fastness of pensivetranquillity, all note of discord isbanished. Clamour is unknown,and the spell of its indolentsweetness is unbroken by theharshness of voices from beyond.

A straining after remote anal-ogies, which are fatiguing tounravel and too far-fetched forfelicity, detract largely from theenjoyment of Rodenbach's verse.Yet in the identification of hisemotions with his surroundings,there is ever a thinly - hidden

significance which contains theindefinable essence of poetry. Theesoteric is not without its magic,and there is witchery in the

39

Bruges-la-Morte.

refinements of a melancholy which

would have ravished the heart of

a Jacques and led him forth a

captive even from the forest of

Arden.For over-subtilized and lacking

in simplicity as the Muse of

Rodenbach may be, her inspiration

serves at least to render justice

with a lulling completeness to the

languid captivation of a city

" from whose towers "-to borrow

the language of Matthew Arnold-" still breathe the enchantments

of the Middle Ages." The innerspirit lying at the heart of itswaters; the eloquence of the

silence emanating from its streets;4o


the floating melody issuing fromits bells; the melancholy air ofancient distinction attached to itshouses; the " reos dominical" ofits Sundays - all indeed thatmakes Bruges a city of the soul-are revealed by him in thesevolumes with an infinitude alike oftenderness and subtlety of insight.Ever poignantly sensitive to thetransitoriness of all things, theineptitudes of age repeatedly findexpression with exquisite felicityin his verse

"La cloche ne sonnePour personne."

(The old bell sounds for no one.)

Upon what may be described41

Bruges-la-Morte.

as the purely Parisian verse ofRodenbach, those of his admirerswho appreciate best the secret ofhis complexity will be littleinclined to linger. The elegantsensuality, which is its most salientfeature, should make little appeal tothe tastes of those for whom the

meretricious exercises no blandish-ments. Rodenbach dwelling with" damnable iteration " upon amievre, which seems to afford hima fatuous self-satisfaction, is simplyto them not Rodenbach at all, buta pinchbeck imitator who has forthe time being usurped his rightfulposition. In L'Hiver Mondain

(a singularly infelicitous title), we42


find the poet's weakest tendenciesdisplaying themselves in their mostundisguised form. Illustrated by

Jan Van Beers and steepedthroughout in an atmosphere of

studied frivolity, it is infected by

the aroma of the music-hall and

will be felt as something of an

imaginative shock by the lovers

of Le Rcgne du Silence and Le

Miroir du Ciel Natal.

Couched in the same vein

of lusciousness, though published

three years earlier, La Mer

El gante may be regarded as a

species of precursor to L'Hiver

Mondain. The affectations here,

however, are less exasperating,43

Bruges-la-Morte.

and the atmosphere of insincerityhardly so cloying.

In Les Tristesses (1879), Roden-bach's earliest literary venture, wehave an experiment in simplicityof manner which was never re-peated. Sooth to say, the promiseheld out in it is not very con-siderable ! The Wordsworthianmanner was one peculiarly ill-suitedto the allusive character of hisgenius, and in the pursuit of ithis descriptions frequently degen-erate into the baldness of mereenumerations. From the outset,exclusion bulked largely in Roden-bach's conception of art, and inhis first publication, as always, the

44


redundant meets with scant mercy

at his hands.It is with the appearance of

La Jeunesse Blanche (i886) that

Rodenbach's real personality firstdefinitely unfolds itself. The

germs of the mysticism whichsubsequently expanded into suchmasterpieces of their kind, as the

Carillonneur and Bruges-la-Morte,

are here obvious to even the most

obtuse of literary critics. The

aesthetic charm of common things

to which he ever showed so

delicate a susceptibility, receives

expression in these pages with a

grace that adumbrates the charm

of his more mature work.45

Bruges-la-Morte.

The series of poems brought

together ultimately under the title

of Les Vies Encloses are charac-

terized by a common unity of

treatment, though, superficially con-

sidered, the detachment of their

subjects is absolute. The perfume

which disengages itself from them

is that of the conservatory and the

boudoir. If weighed in the critical

balances and not found wanting, an

anaemic elegance must be accepted

as an indemnification for the absence

of all virility. Satiety, however,

lurks in the air of the hot-house

and the chamber of the conval-

escent, and ere long the reader

becomes desirous of effecting his46


escape into a more invigoratingatmosphere. In spirit, Les Vies

Encloses falls into the circle of

Rodenbach's works which areindebted for their existence to the

influence of Bruges, though no

direct allusion is introduced to the

city of his inspiration.

A triumph over the intangible,

Rodenbach's solitary play, Le Voile

(1894), enjoys the distinction of

being the first work by a Belgianperformed upon the boards of theThdatre Frangais. Shadowy and

elusive with Bruges in the back-ground, the fact that it was accorded

even the measure of recognition

which attaches to a success d'estime47

Bruges-la-Morte.

was achievement enough when thesensation-loving temper of theParisian public is considered. Byhimself it seems to have beenregarded as little more than anexperiment, and the interventionof death has since blasted the hopeof the revelation of the greaterdramatic possibilities which, it isunderstood, were contained in theplay that he had undertaken tofurnish M. Jules Claretie shortlybefore his demise.

Briefly unfolded, the story is thatof an affection which germinatesonly to wither at the first approachof the light of common day. Thehero, if such he can be called,

48


conceives a romantic tendresse foran enigmatic Beguine, ministeringat the pillow of his dying aunt,whose unseen presence impartsthroughout to the play an unde-finable Maeterlinckesque sense ofmystery. Plot, strictly speaking,there is none. A study ratherthan a drama, the only moralgleanable from Le Voile consistsapparently in the discovery thatthe solution of the riddle of fascina-tion lies only in the region of theinscrutable. With the appearanceupon the scene of Sour Gudule,arrayed only in vulgar deskabille,when unexpectedly summoned tothe bedside of the expiring invalid,

49 D

Bruges-la-Morte.

the hero becomes disenchanted,and the curtain falls. It was theBguine, not the woman, that hehad loved. All is over.

"C'est fini. Tout amour brusquements'etoile

De trop savoir. L'amour a besoin d'unsecret."

is his own unriddling of the problem.A marvel of reticence, in which

all is suggested and little is said,the play-though entirely outsidethe range of ordinary sympathies--is, artistically considered, perhapsthe writer's finest and most subtleachievement.

The mere bibliography of50


Rodenbach is almost entirely with-out intellectual significance. In hiscareer there is little of continuousdevelopment. After his emancipa-tion from the experimental stagesillustrated by Les Tristesses, pub-lished as already stated in 1879,and La Mer Ellgance launched in1881, his manner undergoes littlealteration and his mind but slightmodifications. The spell of thede Goncourts evidently fell heavilyupon him about this period, as theformation of his style bears un-mistakable evidence. Bruges-la-Morte saw the light in I890, andwas closely followed by Le Caril-lonneur in 1891. His last novel,

51

Bruges-la-Morte.

L'Arbre, was published in 1898,

almost simultaneously with Le

Miroir du Ciel Natal.

Ostensibly a faithful son of the

Roman Catholic Church, the "pain-ful riddle of the earth" remained to

Rodenbach a problem to which the

human mind was incapable of fur-

nishing an answer. The mysticism,

ever inherent in Catholicism, onlyattracted him. In its dogmas hisspirit found no anchorage. Destiny

throughout the whole course of hisworks appears only as a forceinscrutable and malignant. Thewealth of his ecclesiastical vocabu-

lary often merely disguises the

Hamletism with which his mind is52


saturated. The memorable paradox,by means of which Thiers elucidatedhis theological position in describing

himself as a Papist although not a

Christian, may serve to define

Rodenbach's attitude, at least, so

far as exact doctrine is concerned.

Exhausting the literary possibili-

ties of his own vein, he has escaped

the vulgarization which inevitablypursues the footsteps of the founder

of a cult. The dead towns of

Flanders are transformed intoliterary soil upon which it would

be a species of profanity to tres-

pass. They live now imperishably

enshrined in that inimitable style,

which reflects with such fidelity the53

Bruges-la-Morte.

delicate intricacies of the lace workthat he loved.

That into much of Rodenbach'swork is interwoven the taint of thedecadent, it would be hardihood to

deny. Engulfed in the whirlpool

of Parisian literary life, his assimila-

tive temperament was not proof

against the influences which upon

all sides encompassed him. Yetwhen he returns to the Flanders

which at heart he loved, the neurotic

elements that have been interwoveninto his works undergo a drasticprocess of attenuation.

To the superficial analyst of

Flemish character, the development

of so baffling a personality as that of54


Rodenbach among the phlegmaticcountrymen of Teniers may seemsomething of a psychological puzzle;but for its solution it is necessaryonly to bear in mind that Flanders,alike in a literary and artistic sense,is, and has ever been, a land ofantithesis. To take as entirelyrepresentative, the type of Flemingwhose national qualities displaythemselves only in boisterous

vigour, in kinship with the loweranimals, in breadth and expansive-ness, is to ignore an intensity ofspiritual and imaginative feelingwhich nowhere receives a moreprofound expression than in theliterature and art of Flanders.

55

Bruges-la-Morte.

The land which reckons amongits sons a Rubens and a Jordaens,can also present the wealth of con-trast afforded by the production of

a Memling and a Van Eyck.To-day the distinction remains

as palpable as in the bygonecenturies, when the atmosphere ofmedimevalism pervaded the LowCountries. The two opposingcurrents are represented, upon theone side, by the novels of aGeorges Eekhoud and a CamilleLemonnier, in which the mirror isheld unflinchingly up to nature, andupon the other, by the works ofa Rodenbach and a Maeterlinck,where modernity is transfigured

56


by the infusion of an etherealquality which banishes all taintof the commonplace.

What appears to be the mostbesetting weakness of Rodenbachis a trick of repetition, which occa-sionally cannot prove otherwisethan exasperating to the reader.The re-employment of pet phrasesis doubtless a literary vice, but itis none the less a deliberate partof his method, and is often notwithout a certain impressiveness.A sufficient refutation of theimplied charge of a deficiency inthe faculty of manipulating words,is to be found in the copiousnessof his vocabulary.

57

Bruges-la-Morte.

In France, the country in whichhe died and where the most fertileyears of his literary career werespent, his reputation has remainedunshaken by that most severe.testof the ephemeral, which is death.The circulation of his writings stillextends far beyond the circles ofthose who are fain to make acult of exclusiveness. Among hisbrother men of letters, the eulogiesof an Anatole France, a JulesLemaitre, a Bernard Lazarre, aLucian Muhlfeld, an Achille Segard,a Gaston Deschamps, and a Huys-man, speak for themselves. Sofar as his own countrymen areconcerned, the most adequate

58


critical tribute to his genius hascome from the pen of M. EmileVerhaeren. Throughout Belgiumit may be said without fear ofexaggeration, that his writings areregarded as a national possession.

A unique personality in the worldof letters, Rodenbach's "wooing ofsorrow as a bride" was a primarydistinction of his literary individu-ality. His material was fraughtwith despondency, and the intru-sion of a note of comedy wouldhave signified the destruction ofhis idealism. A high-priest in thetemple of melancholy, his place isamong the immortals, whilst the sad-ness that does not cry out or strivebeats in the heart of humanity.

59

BRUGES-LA-MORTE

PREFA CE

In this impassioned study it has been my

primary ambition to evoke in the form

of an intangible personality the spirit of

a town, endowing it not merely with the

power of entering into all the fluctuatingconditions of the soul, but causing it fur-

ther to be an agency in guiding, counselling

and determining the whole scope of human

action.

Regarded from such a standpoint-

Bruges-which I have chosen for this

experiment, appears in a light almost63

Preface.

human. An indefinable spiritual ascend-

ency establishes itself over the souls of

all those who dwell within its walls.

Unconsciously they become assimilated

into a harmony with the languors of its

waters and its bells.

The conception to which I have striven

to give a certain embodiment is that of

the influence exerted by a town in the

whole character of its details, which are

therefore indefinably linked to all the

incidents contained in the narrative.

This is what constitutes the importance

of the illustrations of Bruges, introduced

at intervals and corresponding to the

sequence of events set forth in the study.

From these reproductions of its quays,64

Preface.

deserted streets, venerable dwellings,

canals, "beguinage," churches, and belfry,

it is alone possible that the imagination

of the reader may be brought into sym-

pathy with the ethos of the town; experi-

ence the spell exercised by its air of brood-

ing mysticism, and realise the impression

conveyed by the hzgh towers which are

elongated in the text.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. -The illustrations re-ferred to in the foregoing Preface have been, forthe most Part, omitted in this translation, as theydo not app~ear to succeed in conveying the imagina-tive impression intended by M. Rodenbach.

65E E

P

~

The Beguiriage.

Y

BR UGES-LA-MORTE

I

THE declining day had darkenedthe corridors of the great, silent

dwelling, and demanded that the

windows should be protected bythe sombre, crape screens.

Hughes Viane made his prepara-tions for the desultory ramble withwhich it was his wont to close theafternoon. Solitary and unoccu-pied, it was his custom to kill theennui of his existence by reading alittle among the old volumes that

67

Bruges-la-Morte.

lined the walls of the vast apart-ment overlooking the romanticwaters of the Quai du Rosairewhich he rarely quitted; smokinga great deal, and dreaming muchat the open window of a bygonehappiness.

For five years he had led thislife of seclusion. Upon the dayfollowing the funeral of the wife inwhom was bound up all his possi-bilities of happiness, he had retiredto Bruges as a fastness of melan-choly and there succumbed to itsfascination. " Five years already!"He repeated the words aloud tohimself. " I am a widower"(veuf). Brief and irremediable

68

Bruges-la-Morte.

word of one syllable and withoutan echo,-a word replete withmournful significance and givingfulness of expression to the agonyof bereavement.

To him the separation had beenterrible. He had experienced allthe felicities of love, not merely indomesticity, but in the luxury oftravel through countries whoseromance had ever meant a fresh

reconstruction of his idyll. Thedelicious tranquillity of an exem-plary conjugal life had been his,while at the same time the fervoursof passion had been retainedundiminished by familiarity. Yetin this perfection of concord the

69

Bruges-la-M orte.

essential individuality of both hus-band and wife had been preservedlike parallel quays of a canal whichmingle in their reflections.

Ten years of this happiness hadflown away with such rapidity, thatthey had remained scarcely realised.

Then upon one unforgettablemorning the young wife lay dead,after an illness of but a few weeks'duration. Faded and white, likedelicately polished wax, she reclinedupon her last resting-place, stillonly on the verge of thirty years.Her husband was left alone togaze for the last time upon, theremains of the consummate beautyof her complexion and the tender-

70

Bruges-la-Morte.

ness of the dark eyes which nowcontrasted so strangely with therichness of the soft, yellow hairthat in life had descended to herwaist undeviatingly. It was of thesame hue as that with which thePrimitives endowed the Virginsthey painted, and fell in the samecalm and unruffled fashion.

Bending across the bier, Hugheshad cut away the long tressesupon the day which was to bethe witness of her interment. Itseemed only an act of homage tothe woman he had so passionatelyadored. All of her that wasmortal was about to vanish, andnothing was left in his power to

71

Bruges-la-Morte.

preserve save the hair that in lifehad been so fondly cherished. Allelse was dust and ashes!Throughout the course of thetedious, leaden-footed years, thehair had retained its pristinefreshness untainted by the lapseof time. It was now the solitaryrelic of her which had survivedthe seasons that ever craved foroblivion, and even the salt of thetears which had been shed aroundit had caused it to pale but little.

The widower reviewed his pastin a sunless light which wasintensified by the greyness ofthe November twilight, whilstthe bells subtly impregnated the

72

Bruges.la-Morte.

surrounding atmosphere with themelody of sounds that faded likethe ashes of dead years.

There was a blackness in thecloud of dejection which restedupon him of exceptional heaviness,and an impulse to disperse itquickened his departure. At theapproach of the evenings, hederived a melancholy solace fromthe analogies which he devisedbetween the mournfulness of hisown destiny and that of the forsakencanals and decaying churches thatinstinctively attracted his footsteps.

In descending to the ground-floor of his dwelling he observedthat the doors, which seemed to

73

Bruges-la-Morte.

multiply themselves along the corri-dors, rigidly closed under ordinaryconditions, were flung wide open.

Through the silence, he calledto his old servant, " Barbara,Barbara !"

The woman appeared almostimmediately, and divining thecause of her master's summonsvolunteered a brief explanation.

" Monsieur," she said, " I haveattended to the salons to - daybecause to-morrow is the fete."

" What fle ? " demandedHughes impatiently.

" What! does Monsieur notknow that it is the fele of the pre-sentation of the Virgin ? I must go

74

Bruges-la- Morte.

to the Mass and to the benedictionat the Be'guinage. It is a day likea Sunday, and as I cannot workto-morrow I have arranged thesalons to-day."

Hughes made no attempt toconceal his dissatisfaction. The oldservant knew well that he longedto supervise the work she had soprematurely undertaken. In orderto allow Barbara an unrestrictedfreedom of movement, all that wasreminiscent of the woman whosememory had become a consecrationhad been consigned to these twoapartments, where her presencewas almost felt as a reality. Whennecessity compelled her to invade

75

Bruges -Ia-Morte.

this sanctuary of bereavement,Hughes's uneasiness was extreme.

He wished to superintend every

step of her encroachment; watch

over the most trivial of her move-ments, and spy upon her sense of

reverence for all that encompassed

her. His desire was to act asguardian of the beloved objects

whilst they were undergoing the,to him, vandal process of purifica-

tion from the dust that had

accumulated upon them. It

seemed to Hughes that the fingersof his domestic were prying

ruthlessly among the souvenirs

transfigured by his imagination.

The fauteuils on which she had76

Bruges-la-Morte.

reclined recalled the memory ofher perfect figure; the curtainskept undisturbed the folds whichshe had bestowed upon them;the

mirrors retained in their depths the

slumbering image of her beauty.Among the memorials which more

vividly disinterred to Hughes theloveliness that now mouldered in

the grave, were the portraits of hiswife taken at different ages and

scattered at various points through-

out the chamber. But treasuredabove all other keepsakes was thehair he had snatched from theclutches of the tomb, and ever

since conserved with unceasing

devotion. Loved better perhaps77

Bruges-la- Morte.

than in life, any injury to it wouldhave plunged him in the uttermostdepths of despair. In certainmoods when apprehension obtaineda sway over him, he longed toconceal it in some obscure hiding-place into which no vulgar eyescould penetrate. But the love ofbeholding always what was to hima visible symbol of the immortalityof his love ever returned to him.

To ensure unforgetfulness hehad placed upon the now silentpiano of his principal salon thelocks which still remained an in-carnation of her, rescued likesalvage from the shipwreck of anargosy. In his dread of their

78

Bruges-la- Morte.

defilement by the slightest con-

tamination and to avert all danger

of their discolouration by the humid

air of the town, he had hit upon

the idea of protecting them through

the medium of a crystal reliquary,

and upon no morning did he fail to

kneel in reverence at this shrine.To Hughes this relic had

assumed almost the form of a

divinity to which not merely his

own fate, but even that of the in-

animate objects he had grouped

around it were inseparably linked.Barbara, the old Flemish servant,

austere of aspect but keenly ob-

servant of the idiosyncrasies of her

master, knew well the nature of79

Bruges-la-Morte.

the precautions she was expectedto exercise in approaching theemblem which, in his eyes, repre-sented the soul of the house.Holding almost no communicationwith her neighbours, she presentedthe appearance, when arrayed inher black dress and bonnet oftulle, of an elderly and asceticnun. The only recreation in whichshe indulged consisted in makingfrequent pilgrimages to the Begin-age, where her only survivingrelative, Sister Rosalie, presidedover one of the convents.

In the course of her untiringdevotions, she had acquired thatnoiselessness of movement which

8o

Bruges-la-Morte.

characterizes only those whose feet

tread in the ways of the sanctuary.

Among the causes which had

induced Hughes Viane to protract

for so lengthened a period his

sojourn in Bruges, his possession

of a domestic endowed with so

great a measure of taciturn calm

was not the least. All dissonances

of sound that marred the atmo-

sphere of stillness which he loved

were distasteful to him. He kept

no other servant, and Barbara had

gradually rendered herself a neces-

sity to him, notwithstanding her

innocent tyrannies, old-maid angu-

larities, and occasional unwarrant-

able assumptions of authority, as81 F

Bruges-la-Morte.

upon this day, when provided withno better justification than that ofa fte, she had deranged the salonsunknown to him and in defianceof his formal orders.

Hughes waited until he hadassured himself that all the con-tents of the salons were restoredto their ordinary positions. Tran-quillized by this re-establishment,he then set out upon his twilightpromenade although the autumnaldrizzle was still descending remorse-lessly, penetrating like needles intothe dull waters of the canals, andcapturing the soul like a birdentrapped in the meshes of a snarethat renders resistance a futility !

82

II

EVERY afternoon at the descent ofdusk, Hughes's footsteps followed aprescribed itinerary. He strolledalong the line of the quays with anindeterminate gait that reflectedthe measure of his self-absorption.Though only upon the verge offorty, the sorrow of his bereavementhad expressed itself externally inunmistakable characters. His hair,already plentifully streaked withgray, had almost receded from thetemples, whilst in walking hestooped heavily. As he threaded

83

Bruges-la-Morte.

his way through the sinuous streets,his dull eyes gazed abstractedlyinto a perspective which had norelation to this material existence.

Bruges itself became to Hughesthe embodiment of an elegy in thepensive decline of these afternoons.The poetry of its stagnationappealed irresistibly to his imagin-ation. The spell that had inducedhim to select as a home the sadNorthern Venice, after the greatdisaster of his life had befallen him,was the charm of its poetic effete-ness. In the bygone years ofwedded happiness, when his exis-tence was spent in the gratificationof every fantasy that presented

84

Bruges-la-Morte.

itself to his mind, no shadow ofdespondency had obtruded itselfinto the sunshine of his days.But afterwards, when calamity hadovertaken him, Bruges revealeditself to his mind by a sympatheticintuition as an oasis in the desert.A mysterious equation establisheditself between his own spirit andthat of the place. In the eternalfitness of things a dead town fur-nished the corresponding analogyto that of a dead wife. Thebitterness of his desolation de-

" manded an environment that har-monized with its poignancy. Lifein any centre of activity wouldhave been insupportable to him.

85

Bruges -la-Morte.

Instinct had guided him to Brugesas the wounded animal to his lair.Elsewhere the world was an arenaof strife in which nothing prevailedbut discord, agitation, and turbu-lence. His longing was for aninfinite silence into which nodisturbing note ever penetrated,and an existence so exempt fromfeverishness that it should resemblea species of Nirvana.

In the treatment of physicalsuffering, the exclusion of all noisefrom the chamber of the invalid isrecognized as the greatest of allevi-ators. Why, then, when theanguish of the heart is concerned,should the re-opening of rankling

86

Bruges-la-Morte.

wounds- and the introduction of

rancorous voices be permitted?Dissonance is as fatal in ailments

of the mind as it is in those of thebody.

In the stillness of the calm

waters and the inanimate streets.

Hughes had discovered a certainnepenthe for the sorrow of his

heart, and an increased assuranceof the serenity of death. His

surroundings yielded him an almostunlimited scope for indulgence in

the reveries with which he beguiled

the tedium of the hours. In the

vistas of the canals he discerned

the face of Ophelia rising resur-

gent from the waters, in all the87

Bruges-la-Morte.

forlornness of her beauty, and inthe frail and distant music of thecarillon there was wafted to himthe sweetness of her voice. Thetown, so glorious of old and still

Sso lovely in its decay, became tohim the ihcarnation of his regrets.Bruges was his dead wife. Hisdead wife was Bruges. Bothunified themselves in a paralleldestiny. It was indeed Bruges-la-Mo rte, with its abandoned stonequays woven into an idealizationof melancholy by the cold arteriesof the canals which had longceased to feel the pulsation of thesea.

Yet upon this evening, as88

Im A

-U.

f

, L

._ _____ _ _ I

Bruges-la-Morte.

engrossed in his musings he

mechanically wended his way

among paths which his imagina-

tion had peopled with sombre

images, a sense of the isolation

of his existence weighed heavily

upon him. From the windows of

the funereal dwellings that stretchedin spectral fashion along the margins

of the canals, with their gable-endsreflected like skeletons of crape in

the waters, a mortuary impression

was conveyed that seemed like

the foreshadowing of a speedy

dissolution.Hughes lounged along the re-

spective lines of the Quai Vert

and the Quai du Miroir, and then89

Bruges-la-Morte.

turned his steps to the bleak out-skirts where the Pont du Moulinlay fringed with its avenue ofpoplars. The black spires of thechurches everywhere projectedthemselves above his head likeholy water sprinklers after ageneral absolution.

As he walked, the sad fadedleaves were driven pitilessly aroundhim by the wind, and under themingling influences of autumn andevening a craving for the quietudeof the grave and a sense ofrebellion at the ineffectuality ofhis own life overtook him withunwonted intensity. The shadowfrom the overhanging towers

90

Bruges-la-Morte.

appeared to fall upon his soul,and a voice from the crumblingwalls seemed to whisper in hisears-the water stretches beforethee as it stretched in front ofOphelia in the most heart-rendingof all tragedies.

Hitherto a mysterious force hadrendered abortive all his longingsto escape from the dreary op-pression of his existence. Theslow persuasion of the stones hadmurmured to him of a lethe into

which the malignity of destinyhad no power to intrude. Hehad realized the appropriatenessof an order of things which lefthim without the right to survive

91

Bruges-la-Morte.

the death that everywhere reignedaround him.

Hughes had many times seri-ously pondered the problem ofsuicide. Ah! this woman, how hehad adored her! Her eyes stillhaunted him in the most trivialmoments of his life. The melodyof her voice still lingered in hisears as if descending from someaerial region into which it wouldbe fatuity for him to hope to enter.Of what unforgiveable offence hadhe been guilty that after havingtransfigured her into an object ofidolatry, he should be precipitatedamong those who sorrow withouthope ? Such a devotion as his fell

92

Bruges-la-Morte.

only to be included among theDead Sea fruits, which leave inthe mouth only the ashes ofdisillusionment.

The resistance he had offered tothe temptation of self-destructionwas another expression of hisreverence for her memory. Thereligious training of his infancyhad combined with this conse-cration to hinder him from theadoption of such a solution of theenigma of his existence. A mysticby temperament, he trusted thatannihilation was not the doom ofhumanity, and that in a hereafterthere might be even for him arenewal of happiness. The church

93

Bruges-la-Morte.

had placed its ban upon avoluntary death. To him suicidenow signified the abandonment ofall hope of reconciliation with Godand the renunciation of any faintpossibility of reunion with thewoman he had so passionately loved.

He continued, therefore, to clingto the frail thread of his life, andeven find in prayer a paradoxicalbalm for the wounds of his spirit.But of all consolatory influencesthe greatest remained the diminteriors of the churches, pervadedby the calm that is inherent inCatholicism, and from which alljarring and prosaic elements wereexcluded.

94

Bruges -la-Morte.

Continuing his devious ramble,Hughes entered the precincts ofthe church of Notre-Dame. Itwas at all times one of his mostfavourite resorts, owing to itssternly mortuary character. Alikeupon the ground and upon thewalls were ranged tumulary slabshalf defaced by time, whosescratched and wrinkled inscriptionsstill bore a blurred testimony tothe achievements of the dead.Death itself was here effaced bydeath!

Yet in this sepulchral atmo-sphere, the harrowing impressionof the nothingness of life wasrelieved by the beatific vision of

95

Bruges-la-Morte.

love perpetuating itself throughdeath. It was the transcendingconsolation of this reflection thatbrought Hughes to meditate sofrequently at this shrine. Lodgedat the foot of a lateral chapel werethe celebrated tombs of Charlesthe Bold and his daughter, Maryof Burgundy. Ah! how exquisitethey were !-the sweet princessespecially, with her hands deli-cately joined, her head restingupon a cushion, and the feetsupported by a dog--symbolizingfidelity. Attired in a copper robe,the figure was extended as in therigidity of death along the surfaceof a massive block. In a similar

96

Bruges-la-Morte.

fashion, the effigy of her fatherwas stretched in a recumbentattitude at her side, impressivein its blackness, and as Hughesgazed at the stately figures, thesoothing reflection entered hismind that the day could not befar distant when his body wouldbe mouldering in the dust besidetheirs, and that the surcease fromsorrow for which his heart cravedwould then be also his portion.Slumber side by side was themost befitting of refuges, ifChristian hope was powerless torealize for wedded lovers a spiritualimmortality.

Hughes quitted Notre-Dame in97 G

Bruges-la-Morte.

a mood more oppressed by melan-choly than that which had weighedupon him on entering it. The hourat which he was accustomed to takehis evening meal had arrived, andhe found himself almost uncon-sciously at the side of his owndwelling. Absorbed in the effort ofendeavouring to revive within hismemory the design of a tombthat his imagination had vividlyconstructed only a short time ago,his material surroundings hadbecome non-existent to him. Inthe slow passage of the years thephysiognomy of his dead wife,which at first had been retainedin all the freshness of its beauty,

98

Bruges-la-Morte.

had little by little become so elu-sive, that now it was in dangerof evaporating like an exposedpastel rendered almost unrecog-nizable by dust. Thus within thedepths of our own souls the deaddie a second time.

Suddenly, whilst engaged in there-composition of the lineamentswhich the perfidy of recollectionhad *half-obliterated, Hughes, to

whom passers-by were no morethan walking shadows, experienceda violent thrill of emotion onobserving the ' features of a girlwho was making her way towardshim. During the course of herprogress from the end of the

99

Bruges-la-Morte.

street, she had escaped Hughes'sattention, and it was only uponher arrival in close proximity thatthe roots of his being were stirred

as if by a convulsion.Upon a closer inspection bewilder-

ment took possession of him. Itseemed as if an apparition from

the grave had returned to benumbhis faculties. Standing as ifriveted to the spot, all else faded

into nothingness. Mechanically heput his hands up to his eyes asif to chase away a dream. Thenrecovering a measure of self-control, he proceeded to retracehis footsteps, and abandoning thequay he was engaged in traversing,

I00

Bruges-la-Morte.

set forth in pursuit of the beingwhose existence was the moststartling of enigmas. He walkedquickly in order to overtake her,and upon approaching stared atthe baffling object of his questwith an intentness that seemed tocompel recognition. Outwardlyunembarrassed, the young womancontinued to march impassivelyonwards, walking with a slow,rhythmical grace of movement andmaking no effort to elude theobservation of her pursuer.Hughes appeared to become moreand more haggard and distractedwith every stage of her advance.He had followed this visitant from

I0I

Bruges-la-Morte.

another sphere for several minutesthrough the network of the Brugesstreets, but invariably retreatingwhen the moment for a decisivediscovery offered itself. He re-sembled a man who on nearinga well shrinks from the contempla-tion of a visage reflected in itswaters.

An accidental lighting up ofthe obscurity left him, however,

without power of incredulity. Theexquisite delicacy of complexion,rivalling the most perfectly executedof pastels, and the intensity of thedark eyes that gleamed, sombreand dilated, from the backgroundof a complexion of ivory, were the

102

Bruges -la-Morte.

same. Whilst he walked furtivelybehind her, conviction was renderedmore absolute by the identity ofthe strangely characteristic amber-coloured hair. There was the samedisaccord between the unfathom-able black eyes and the noontideflamboyance of the tresses.

In his bewilderment, Hughesruminated upon the possibilitythat his long existence as a reclusemight have impaired his sanity.Living always alone with a memory,it was not unlikely that a delusionof identification had betrayed him.The varying traits of the facewhich now often evaded his recol-lection, were suddenly thrust upon

1O3

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him in a frightful conformity. Allhis senses reeled with the shockproduced by the apparition. Socomplete was the resemblance, thatit caused him to question thereality of his own existence.

The similarity was perfect inevery detail. Not merely werethere reproduced the counterpartsof all the features, but the moreintangible reflections of her idio-syncrasy were presented in theirintegrity. All the subtleties ofmovement that in life had givenexpression to the more elusiveshades of the individuality of thedead woman, were here counter-feited with an exactitude that left

10o4

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no apparent room for doubt as toa veritable resurrection from thegrave having taken place.

With the gait of a somnambulist,Hughes continued unreflectinglyto pursue this unearthly visitantthrough the dank labyrinth ofthe streets whose melancholyrendered them so dear to hissoul.

Upon arriving, however, at asquare from which a congeries oftortuous lanes branched off invarious directions, the womanvanished phantom-like from hisside.

Hughes stopped, endeavouringto inventory the emptiness, and

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realizing once more the lonelinessof his destiny.* The tears rose involuntarily to

his eyes. Ah! how closely shehad resembled the wife with whomhis own heart was entombed!

io6

III

THE plan of Hughes's existence wasentirely deranged by the inexpli-cable nature of his encounter. Nowwhen he endeavoured to recall the

image of his dead wife, it wasanticipated by that of the strangerwhom he had beheld for the firsttime only a few days ago. Instead

of being a suggestion of hisbeloved, she supplanted her almost

wholly in his imagination.When engaged in the ritual of

his silent devotions, it was nolonger the image of the dead

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woman that confronted him, butthat of the living who resembledher. How phenomenal was the

identity of those two countenances!

It was like a renewal of summer,

bringing with it a resurrection of

memories that had been dulled

by the long frost of winter. Yet

there emerged from it a likenessupon which a fresh stamp hadbeen impressed, and that ignored

the mists created by the tedious,unending days.

Hughes had now obtained a

clear and unobstructed portrait ofhis beloved. Since the unforgettable

evening upon the old quay, when

there had advanced to him throughio8

Bruges-la-Morte.

the shadows a figure in the guiseof his dead wife, he had beenspared all fatigue of reconstruction.Retrospect had ceased to be astruggle. The haze had vanishedfrom his dreams. His memoryrequired to turn itself back nofarther than the twilight of onlya few days ago when his eye hadre-captured the dear face in all thefulness of its charm. The recentimpression had fused itself into theold with a vividness that nowconveyed the illusion of a realpresence.

Throughout the ensuing days,Hughes felt himself weigheddown by a nightmare. A woman

o109

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apparently existed who was undis-tinguishable from the one he hadlost. Was the catastrophe thathad made a shipwreck of his lifeonly a cruel delusion, and couldthis be interpreted as a return froma phantom-land where, as in theold-time legends, souls are held ashostages for a season ? Conjecturewas only maddening. Yet thereremained the same eyes, the samecomplexion, the same hair-exactand adequate in every particular.How bizarre were the caprices ofNature and of Destiny!

He longed for an opportunity ofverifying this twin-like resemblance.Probably, however, he was fated

IIO

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never to see her again, and theproblem was one foredoomed to

evade solution. The woman hadapparently vanished into an im-

penetrable darkness. Nonetheless,even the fleeting glimpse whichhe had obtained of her served todiminish the acuteness of his senseof isolation. The influence of thegleam had been to render himalike less solitary and less of a

widower. Could he indeed beregarded as a widower at all, if

still linked to a woman who con-tinued to visit the earth at briefand ghostly intervals ?

The hope of alighting upon this

counterpart developed into a con-III

Bruges-la-Morte.

stant preoccupation. He lingered

wistfully around the old quay upon

which he had originally encountered

her, and from thence investigatedthe various quarters which it might

be supposed she would be most

likely to frequent-running the

gauntlet in his journeys of discovery

of the comments of all the un-

occupied women who, ambushedbehind muslin curtains, speculated

on the cause of his explorations.

Occasionally he loitered in the

vicinity of the forbidding lanes

among which she had been

swallowed up, indulging always inan expectation of her reappear-

ance.112

Bruges-la-Morte.

A week glided away in thisfashion, leaving Hughes a preyto the feverishness of frustration.Upon one Monday afternoon,however-precisely at the sameday and hour of the week as thatwhich had witnessed the firstmeeting-just as he had begunto recover something of his formerserenity, she reappeared in frontof him, walking with that balancedrhythm of movement that appar-ently invariably characterized her.The whole being of Hughes wasfilled with an even deeper senseof consternation than that whichhad overwhelmed him on the pre-ceding occasion. The resemblance

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appeared more appalling in thedireness of its significance.

The heart of the widower stoodstill, as if confronted by arevelation of the supernatural.All his surroundings dissolvedinto nothingness. Every atom ofblood in his body appeared tosurge to his brain. A processionof first communicants that chancedto pass at the moment, arrayedin their white muslins and weddingveils, swam before his eyes like amirage. He retained consciousnessonly of the black silhouette soclearly outlined at his side.

The woman had remarked hisagitation, and gazed at him with an

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air of astonishment. Ah! thatgaze so strangely retrieved fromthe dead years. The gaze whichhe had believed it impossible couldever be bent upon him again andthat he imagined had long vanishedinto the meaninglessness of thegrave, was turned upon him againin all its sweetness and tendernessof devotion. To Hughes the lookseemed one such as that which

Lazarus after his recall from deathmight have bestowed upon Jesus.

Deprived of all vestige of energy,he now found himself draggedirresistibly in the wake of theapparition. Hopelessly magnetizedfor the moment, he understood

II5

Bruges-la-Morte.

only that a re-incarnation of hisdead wife was walking in front ofhim, and that it was absolutelyimperative that he should not allowit to escape. It was, therefore, anecessity of the direst magnitudethat he should follow in the rear,inhaling the perfume that seemedto emanate from her personalityand endeavouring to rekindle theflickering taper of his life at thesunlight of her hair. The solitarytask that was now left to him todischarge was to pursue her at allsacrifices, alike to the ends of thetown or to the ends of the earth.

He made no effort to reasonwith himself, but followed in the

II6

Bruges-la-Morte.

track of her footsteps, haunted bya breathless fear that he might

again lose her amid the meanderinglanes of the old town.

In the intensity of his pre-occupation, it never occurred tohim to consider that there was

anything reprehensible in thenature of his chase-to followa woman : but the mind ofHughes had become firmly con-

vinced that it was his wife thathe accompanied in this sorrowfulpromenade, charged with themelancholy duty of escortingher to her tomb.

Wrapped up in his hallucination,the widower walked on in close

I"7

Bruges-la-Morte.

proximity to the unknown withoutperceiving that they had leftbehind them the deserted quays,and had now reached the Market-place where the black and inscru-table Beffroi defied the rapidlyencroaching darkness with its dialand gold-buckler.

The demeanour of the youngwoman made it apparent that shewas wishful to detach herself fromher pursuer. She plunged swiftlyinto the Rue Flamande-so dis-tinguished by its picturesqueand lavishly decorated facades-where the black silhouette ofher figure defined itself moresharply on every occasion that

II8

Bruges-la-Morte.

she passed before the lightedwindows of the shops, whoseglare projected itself beyond thedim illumination afforded by thestreet-lamps.

Finally he saw her cross withequal briskness the interveningspace, and then mount the stepsleading into the theatre, whosedoors opened to receive her.

Her disappearance arrested thefootsteps of Hughes, who thenremained standing in an attitudeof abject helplessness. Duringthe whole course of the girl'sprogress, he had been convertedinto a satellite incapable of inde-pendent action. The movements

I"9

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of the soul possess, however, animpulsion of their own, and

obeying one of these, he in histurn entered the vestibule intowhich the crowd was already

thronging. The face of thewoman he sought had, however,

disappeared like a vision. He

ransacked the office of the

check-taker, hunted throughoutthe staircases, and peered into

every outlying portion of thebuilding. In no quarter couldany vestige of his quarry be

discovered. "In what mysteriousfashion," he asked himself, "had

she contrived to disappear?"

Could it be by means of one120

Bruges-la-Morte.

of the corridors, or had she fledthrough a side door? By virtueof the testimony of his own eyes,he was at least certain of herentrance into the theatre. In allprobability she would be by thistime established in front of thecurtain. Doubtless she would beoccupying one of the fauteuils, ifnot installed in the obscurity ofone of the antiquated boxes. Atall events, he must see her again.The mere possibility of beingallowed to contemplate her facefor an entire evening overpoweredhim. With this thought-con-taining as it did so vast an admix-ture of good and evil-a sensation

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of vertigo swept over him. Utterlyunable to resist the temptation, hedismissed all other considerationsfrom his mind. The anomalywhich must be created by hisappearance at a theatrical repre-sentation attired in the mourning-of which he had habitually refusedto divest himself-did not evensuggest itself to his disorderedmind. All sense of the befittingwas lost in the vehemence of hisinfatuation. Returning unhesita-tingly to the bureau, he secureda fauteuil and descended into theheart of the theatre.

His eyes roved quickly around inall directions, surveying successively

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the various ranges of stalls;theprivate and then the more publicrows of boxes; the galleries intowhich the public streamed in anever-augmenting torrent. Nowherewas there to be discovered anytrace of the woman that he sought.

Foiled, disconcerted and melan-choly, the soul of Hughes rose inrebellion against the perversityof circumstance. How cruellyDestiny had jested with him.What a frightful hallucination wasthis face which appeared andvanished in so phantom-like afashion. It was nothing morethan a bewildering and intermittentapparition, which could be compared

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only to the course of the moonas it pursued its way throughalternating masses of clouds. Thedisturbance created by the late-comers among the audiencehastening to their places amid acorresponding clashing of doorsand grating of feet, jarred upon hisover-wrought nerves. Yet, hopingagainst hope, he lacked theresolution to fly from the arena ofhis mortifications.

She only failed to arrive.He now began to bitterly regret

the rashness of his unreflectingintrusion into such incongruoussurroundings. Many among theaudience had obviously commenced

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to remark his presence, and weremanifesting their astonishmentthrough the medium of aninsistence of levelled opera-glasses.Throughout his sojourn of fiveyears in Bruges, Hughes hadshrunk from forming relations withany family resident in the town.His seclusion had been absolute.None the less everyone knew himby sight and was aware of thenature of the idealism to whichhe had professed to dedicate theremainder of his days. In thismoribund city, with its sparse andunoccupied population, where eachmember of the community pos-sessed a closer acquaintanceship

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with the affairs of his neighboursthan with those of his own, allnew-comers were the objects of asinister solicitude which strove todiscover their antecedents andscatter broadcast the fruits of itsresearches.

The appearance of Hughes amidthe garish lights of the theatreacted as the dissipation of a legend.To many among the audienceit seemed nothing less than averitable triumph of the prosaic.The portion of the audience whohad invariably dismissed with asneer the theme of the inconsolablewidower, were wreathed in smiles.

Hughes, who was incapable of126

Bruges-la-Morte.

diagnosing the impressions of acrowd until the arrival of themoment when they unify them-selves into a collected thought,none the less felt an intuitive

consciousness of degradation over-

power him. There came to himthe experience of a sensation asif a vase which he had striven tomaintain in a condition of unsulliedpurity had been besmirched and

shattered.The orchestra meantime came

to his rescue with the prelude to

the work which was to furnishthe evening's entertainment. He

saw the title inscribed in largeletters upon the programme of his

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neighbour, Robert the Devil, oneof those antiquated operas whichstill continues to maintain its holdupon the affections of provincialaudiences. The opening chordswere struck by the violins.

Hughes still felt himselfextremely ill at ease. Since theday of his wife's death, he hadexcluded music from his life. Thesounds of all instruments terrified

him. Even the tinkle of theaccordion, so pathetic in its

feebleness, wrung tears from hiseyes. When upon Sundays theorgans of Notre-Dame and St.Walburga moaned to the roof theirsense of the sorrow of the world,

128

Bruges-la- M orte.

his own became too deep for

expression.The music of the opera now

intervened and drowned for themoment his perturbations. Hisderanged nerves had been exas-perated by the scraping of theviolins. A paroxysm of grief tookpossession of him, and under itsempire he rose with the intentionof quitting the theatre. As he did

so, however, the idea occurred tohis mind like a flash of inspirationthat the woman he had pursued inso besotted a fashion had not yetnecessarily eluded him. She hadentered the building under hisvery eyes, and yet notwithstanding

129 I

Bruges-la- Morte.

it had been impossible to perceivea solitary evidence of her presencein any region of the theatre. Theexplanation was extremely simple.As she existed neither in frontof the curtain or behind it, theconclusion was inevitable that herappearance upon the boards mustere long be made.

The very presentiment of sucha profanation was revolting to hissoul. All the fastidiousness ofhis temperament arose in horrorat the conception of the belovedface, which had been ever to himlittle less than an object ofadoration, being exposed to theglare of the foot-lights and the

130

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criticism of the mob. Yet this

woman had manifestly effected her

disappearance by some service-

door, and must, in consequence,

be an actress. No other way of

escape from the situation was

possible. He was, therefore,doomed to behold her singing and

gesticulating for the entertainmentof this vulgar and motley audience.The thought of her voice flashed

into his brain with an augmentation

of panic. Was the completenessof this diabolical resemblance tobe demonstrated even in thereproduction of the exquisitely

silvery accents for the music of

which he had yearned throughoutI3I

Bruges-la- M orte.

the expanse of the gray mono-tonous years?

A species of stupor crept overHughes, and it was only apremonition that enabled him tosustain the tediousness of theperformance. The bitterness ofthe end seemed looming upon thenear horizon.

The acts, however, succeededeach other in the most eventlessof fashions. No vestige of hercould be detected either amongthe singers or amid the ranks ofthe bedaubed chorus-girls. Whollyuninterested in the opera, he re-solved to take his final departurefrom the theatre at the close of

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the scene with the Nuns, in whichthe decorative effects attached tothe burying-ground caused hismind to -recur into somethingapproaching its ordinary groove.At the*moment, however, of therecitative of the evocation, whenthe ballet-dancers impersonate thesisters of the cloister recalled fromthe tomb and marching in fullprocession, Hughes experienceda shock resembling that of a manwho awakens from a trance withinthe precincts of a dancing-hall.

Yes! It was she; and after allthis ordeal of torture only a dancer!But the thought instantaneouslyeffaced itself from his mind. This

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Bruges-la- M orte.

was his dead wife ascended fromthe dreariness of the sepulchrewho advanced towards him, smilingand holding forth her arms.

In its very gruesomeness the

environment helped to enhance theresemblance, as the lustre served

to accentuate the dilation of the

eyes, and the lights descended like

a kind of nimbus around theglowing hair.

In the imagination of thewidower, the dancer was trans-formed into the shape of a frightfulapparition from the grave, upon

which the curtain was speedily todescend.

Hughes, with his brain on fire,134

Bruges-la- Morte.

paced wildly along the expansesof the quays-which, through theblackness of the night, the ghostlylights caused ever to stretch infront of him-haunted withoutremission by the miracle which hehad just beheld.

. . . It was in a fashion such

as this that Doctor Faustushungered after the magic mirrorin which the celestial image of hisbeloved disclosed itself.

135

IV

HUGHES had no difficulty indiscovering the identity of thewoman who had played such havocwith the serenity of his days. Thename under which she appearedupon the play-bill was that ofJane Scott. She lived at Lille,and came twice a week withthe company in which she hadbeen allotted a part, to giveperformances at Bruges.

Dancers are not a class re-nowned for the austerity of theirmanners, and one evening, therefore,

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impelled by the fascination of theresemblance, he ventured to accosther.

She replied without the faintestindication of surprise in a tonethat revived for Hughes all thehallowed memories of the days ofhis wedlock. Her voice possessedexactly the same thrill and subtletyof intonation that had erstwhileendowed it with a magic whichten years of unbroken familiarityhad been powerless to dispel.The demon of analogy pursuedhim persistently with its ironies;yet it was part of the natural lawwhich governed the world thatthere should exist a pre-established

'37

Bruges-la-M orte.

harmony of mind that corresponded

in its quality with hair of such a

texture and a voice so perfect in

its modulation.

No evidence of oneness could

be more conclusive than the dark

and dilated eyeballs in their setting

of ivory and the gold hair without

a vestige of alloy that was

matchless throughout the world.

Under the microscope of a scrutiny

that never relaxed, not even the

most minute discrepancies could bedetected between the dead womanand the living. Notwithstanding

the coarsening influences ordinarily

exercised by paint, powder, and

the, glare of the foot-lights, the138

Bruges-la- M orte.

natural delicacy of Jane's com-plexion had been retained unim-paired. Throughout her wholebearing there existed nothing ofthe insouciance that betrays theactress. The sobriety of hertoilette appeared to be theexpression of a character thatcombined sweetness with reserve.

In his anxiety to elucidatethe mystery of the resemblance,Hughes visited her several times.The witchcraft of the duality thenmagnetized him. He was careful,however, to refrain from returningto the theatre. Yet he none theless viewed the evening when hehad been drawn by chance within

I39

Bruges-la- Morte.

its walls as a relentance of Destinywhich had brought sunlight intothe bleakness of his days. Atthat encounter, Jane had been tohim merely an illusion into whichno element of flesh or bloodentered-a transitory resuscitationvanishing through a fairyland ofdecoration into the unknown.

But acquaintanceship renderedit impossible for him to regard herfrom such a standpoint, and itbecame his desire that she shouldassume the place of his dead wife,dwelling with him in the shadowand attiring herself only in themost sombre raiment. What mostendangered his illusion was the

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theatrical garishness of Jane'sapparel. A flamboyant costumewas altogether incompatible withthe evocation for which his heartcraved.

Upon every occasion that thecompany in which she playedarrived in Bruges, Hughes formedthe habit of waiting for her atthe hotel upon which she wasquartered. At first the consolingmendacity of her face contentedhim. In the countenance of theliving woman he saw that of thedead. For long periods hescrutinized her features with amelancholy joy-pondering overthe lips, the hair, the complexion.

141

Bruges-la- Morte.

The liquid radiance of the eyesthat he had believed closed forever filled him with ecstasy. Thewaters were no longer stagnantthe mirror lived!

To the words that fell from herlips he listened intently, drinkingin the sound of the voice whichwas identical with that of the oneof whom he had been bereft, withthe exception only of a certaindulness in some of the tones. Itseemed upon certain occasions,as if the melody of the old accentscame from behind thick hangingsof tapestry.

With the increasing frequencyof the widower's visits, another

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memory obtruded itself persistentlyupon him. Such revelations asthose of her alabaster throat; ofthe voluptuousness of her limbs;of the supple contours of her back,rekindled the extinct fires of hisyouth.

A passion of sensuality tookpossession of him.

His mind became more andmore filled with the conviction thathis wife had never really died.She had merely absented herselffor a time, and had now returnedin all the completeness of herpersonality.

When he looked at Jane,Hughes thought of the caresses

143

Bruges-la-Morte.

that he had been wont to lavishin a past that no longer appearedremote. In possessing her, herepossessed his wife. His lifewhich had seemed ended with her

consignment to the grave wasnow about to begin. In his eyes,

Jane was without an existence.It was not her lips that he kissed,but those of his beloved. Socomplete was his hallucination that

it banished all consciousness oftreachery to the memory of thewoman that he had adored. Nofleeting shadow of scepticismdisturbed the blissfulness of his

illusion.The passion to which he had

144

Bruges-la- M orte.

abandoned himself was conse-quently no sacrilege, because forhim the two women had noseparate existence. It was shewhom he had lost and had atlength regained; loved in thepresent as in the past; possessingthe same eyes, the identicalresplendence of hair, an indivisibleflesh and a community of body towhich he dwelt ever faithful.

The afternoons that precededthe evening performances werethe hours which Hughes was inthe habit of spending with Jane.But it was in the unruffled silenceof midnight that he most fullyrealized the beatitude that had

145 K

Bruges-la- M orte.

come with this yielding up by thegrave of its dead. Despite theevidences of mourning that uponall sides surrounded him, hecontrived by slow degrees topersuade himself that the malignityof fate had exhausted itself, andthat there now dawned in front ofhim the prospect of a tranquilfuture of domesticity into whichno harsh note should intrudeitself.

The memory of the deliciousevenings spent in a companionshipwhich caused the exterior worldto recede into nothingness, returnedto Hughes with a vivid intensity.All else effaced itself from his

146

Bruges-la-Morte.

mind. He became oblivious of

the drizzling rain, the forsaken

streets, the desolate canals, the

pervasion of winter-even of the

carillon announcing the death of

the hours.During these nights, he appeared

to have partaken a draught of

poppy and mandragora, which

brought with it the balm of

forgetfulness. Ten years of hislife had glided imperceptibly away,

and now there came before him

the vision of a possible Eternity.

147

V

HUGHES installed Jane into theposition of tenant of a smilinglittle house situated upon theconfines of the town, which he hadacquired for her. It adjoined theold windmills that still invest thatportion of the outskirts with soArcadian a charm.

At the same time, he haddecided to remove her from thetheatre: In this way, he couldretain her always by his side atBruges. The depth of his hallu-cination rendered him insensible

148

Bruges-la- M orte.

to the ridicule which inevitablyattaches itself to the amour ofa man who, after having beendeserted by youth, had ultimatelyadopted the attitude of a dis-consolate widower. For thedancer herself he entertained noaffection. All that he desired wasthe conversion of his mirage intoa reality. In his approaches toJane, he was allured only by acraving to re-discover somethingwhich he had beheld in another-a nuance, a reflection, an attributethe origin of which was containedin the soul.

In other moods he unfastenedher hair which descended like an

149

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inundation around her shoulders,and rearranged it mentally in animaginary skein which made areality of absence.

Jane was utterly unable tocomprehend alike the extraordi-nary vagaries and the prolongedreveries of Hughes. She hadbeen struck, however, at the verycommencement of their relationsby the extreme consternation whichhe exhibited on learning for thefirst time that her hair was dyed,and the eager anxiety which hehad displayed ever since in regardto the exact retention of theshade.

"I do not want to continue150

Bruges-la- Morte.

dyeing my hair," she had observedto him one day suddenly.

He became instantly panic-stricken, and insisted that thereshould be no interference with its

existing golden tint. In his excite-ment he began to fondle thebeloved tresses, plunging his

fingers into their depths like amiser gloating over the recoveryof a treasure which he had believed

irretrievably lost.The incoherence of his ex-

planations only added to thebewilderment of Jane's mind."Do not alter anything!" he had

implored. "It is owing to the

colour of your hair that I love you.151

Bruges-la-M orte.

Ah! you do not understand, youwill never understand, what thishair signifies to me!"

He seemed to be upon thepoint of saying something more,but silenced himself in the mannerof one who is on the brink of arevelation of which he dreads theresults.

Since his settlement of Jane atBruges, Hughes never permitteda day to pass without visiting her.He spent all his evenings at herhouse, and often supped there,notwithstanding the anger ofBarbara, who complained bitterlyof the repasts which she preparedonly to be ignored. The old

152

Bruges-la- M orte.

woman feigned to believe that hermaster had taken his meals ata restaurant, but was in realitythrown into a condition of completeperplexity and failed entirely tounderstand the revolution in thehabits of one who had formerlybeen so punctual and home-keeping.

Hughes now went out a greatdeal, dividing his time between his

own house and that of Jane.He altered, however, the period

of his excursions from the after-noon to the evening. The changewas prompted by his wish toescape from the observation ofany inhabitants of the town he

153

Bruges-la-Morte.might chance to encounter, who,however, were not numerous onthe route that led to the secludedquarter where the dwelling of Janewas situated. No thought ofself-reproach in regard to what heknew the world would view onlyin the light of a common liaison,suggested itself to his mind.Impregnably entrenched in hisillusion of identity, he believedwith absolute sincerity that Janewas his wife in the sight of God.It was impossible, however, atthe same time to disregard theprudishness that was rampant ina provincial town, whose denizenswere always ready to judge with

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inexorable severity any alien who

had the hardihood to defy theirconventions.

In Bruges--though the most

catholic of towns-the ethical

standard which prevails is uncom-

promisingly puritanical. Even the

high towers in the austerity of

their outline cast the shadowof their reprobation upon theMagdalen. From the innumerable

convents there seemed distilled

into the atmosphere, a disdain for

the weaknesses of the flesh andan involuntary glorification of

chastity. At the corners of all

the streets, protected by theirwood and glass coverings, stood

155

Bruges-la-Morte.

figures of the Virgin clothed inmantles of black velvet, bearingin their hands a little flagwith the inscription-" I amthe immaculate ! "

The sexual relations which havenever received the sanctificationof the Church have ever incurredits denunciation, as the mostinsidious of all the paths thatlead to hell and the most subtleof all the evils in the armouryof the devil. Of all sins, thatinterdicted by the sixth and ninthcommandments, bringing as theydo the blush to the cheek ofthe penitent and causing thebroken accents in the confessional,

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Bruges-la- M orte.

is the one which the priest is mostreluctant to condone.

Hughes knew well the Phari-

saical character of Bruges, and he

wished as far as possible to avoid

coming into conflict with it. But

in this town where all is stagnant

save inquisitiveness, curiosity waxesriotous and renders the most elabo-

rate precautions unavailing. Soon,entirely unknown to himself, he

became throughout the town thetarget for an outbreak of virtuous

reprobation. The scandal of hisrelations drew down upon itself

from all quarters the ironies of

the faithful. Even the authorities

of the chapter within the cathedral157

Bruges-la- Morte.

laughed, and the very gargoylesof the building seemed to jeer atthe culprit as he passed, imperviousalike to ridicule and condemnation.

The intrigue of the widowerand the dancer provided Brugeswith a sensation unparalleled in itssocial history. Invective speedilydissolved into ridicule. Hughesdeveloped into the laughing-stockof the town. Raillery of everydescription was manufactured athis expense. No one affectedignorance of this side-splittingamour. A credulity of evil mani-

fested itself from door to door.No story was too preposterousfor acceptance. All the malignant

158

Bruges-la- M orte.

curiosity which in the dead townsflourishes like the grass in theforsaken streets was let looseupon him.

The grim entertainment whichthe population of Bruges derivedfrom the contemplation of theliaison, was enhanced by thehistory of his long despair. Verilybathos had now claimed him forits own! This was the termina-

tion to a life dedicated to sorrowand to thoughts woven togetherin such a pattern as to constitutethe analogy to a bouquet laid upona tomb. To-day the mourning inwhich he still persisted in renderinghimself ridiculous, was the most

159

Bruges-la- M orte.

sardonic of all mockeries upon alove that had been proclaimed tothe town as eternal.

" How melancholy," exclaimeda few of the less censorious," was the infatuation of this poorwidower!" "How mysterious itwas that he should be bewitchedin such a fashion by a strumpet!"All her history was well-knownto them. She had long been a

dancer at the theatre. Upon thestreet the matrons of the townwaxed indignant over her tranquilair, flaunting carriage, and moth-coloured hair. Every one knewwhere she lived and that shewas visited every evening by

I6o

Bruges-la-Morte.

this parody of a disconsolatewidower. A few days more andgossip would be enabled to retailthe exact moments of his arrivals

and departures.As a relief to the lethargy

of their existence, the pryingbourgeoises exercised the mostlynx-eyed surveillance over allthe movements of Hughes.Merely by sitting at the windowthey were enabled through themedium of the little mirrors-which are described as the esfionsand can be discerned at thelattices of every dwelling, fixedinto the exterior support-to captureall the varying expressions of the

161 L

Bruges-la-Morte.

passers-by. Into these oblique-looking glasses all the profiles fromthe streets instantaneously framethemselves. Smiles, thoughts, ges-tures, are alike reproduced in theinteriors of the houses, and furnishmaterial for discussion to theinmates.

All the comings and goings ofHughes were rendered by thetreachery of the mirrors theproperty of every inhabitant ofBruges, and no detail of theconcubinage in which he lived withJane was allowed to pass uncom-mented upon by them. The naiveprecautions with which, in hisignorance of the fury of the

162

Bruges-la-Morte.

tempest of inquisitiveness ragingaround him, he endeavoured tosafeguard himself against exposureonly served to cover with anincrease of absurdity the liaison

that was, however, again passingfrom a subject of comedy into oneof denunciation.

Profoundly unconscious of thevirtuous indignation of which hewas the victim, Hughes continuedat the decline of every afternoon

to pursue his way by means ofelaborate ddltours to where Jane'shouse slept upon the fringe of the

town.His perambulations had now

become less lugubrious than of163

Bruges-la-Morte.

old. He traversed the different

windings of the town, pausing tobrood upon the parapets of theancient bridges, and again losinghimself in reveries upon themortuary quays, from whose watersthere returned to him a sympathy

of despondency. In these Jacques-like moods, the evening bells ever

sounded to him an obit of lamenta-tion. Ah! these bells so lulling

in their melody, and yet distancing

themselves from him into a re-moteness as if in their essencebelonging to another sphere in

which he had been allotted no

portion.After the overflowing of the

164

Bruges-la-M orte.

water-ways, the tunnels of the

bridges seemed saturated in cold

tears, and the poplars at the

edge of the waters quivered plain-

tively like frail spirits threatened

by calamity. Hughes felt no

longer the sorrow which lay at the

heart of all the objects that en-

vironed him. He perceived no

more the town rigid as if in death

and swathed in the countless

intersections of its canals.

This town of old time-this

Bruges-la-Morte - whose destiny

in its utter bereavement had

seemed always to furnish a parallel

to his own, transfigured itself in

his eyes as a veritable temple in165

Bruges-la-Morte.

which melancholy sat enshrined.As his footsteps conducted himslowly homewards, he consoledhimself with the reflection thatBruges had also reascended from

the tomb, and was in reality a newtown that had arisen upon the

relics of its predecessor.It was the cherishing of this

delusion that rendered him through-out the whole course of his visitsto Jane absolutely impervious toany sentiment of remorse. Nosuspicion of the travesty he wasenacting disturbed him. Theclosest approach to a true con-sciousness was a sensation akin tothat experienced by a widower,

1i66

Bruges-la- M orte.

when upon the attire of a fellow-mourner there gleams the incon-gruity of a red rose.

167

VI

HUGHES pondered frequently upon

the mystery of the resuscitationwhich had revolutionized his exis-

tence. Jane corresponded to thetwo contradictory necessities in-

herent in human nature-habit andthe love of novelty. Habit is the

primary law which regulates human

existence, and Hughes had been

so enslaved by it that his destinyhad been fixed irremediably. After

ten years of constant companion-

ship with a woman to whom hei68

Bruges-la-Morte.

had been absolutely devoted, hehad been rendered utterly unableto accommodate himself to her

absence. His only resource was

the attempt to discover suggestions

of her in other countenances.

As a counterbalancing force, the

love of novelty is equally instinc-

tive. Even a monotonous happi-

ness waxes fatiguing. One of theparadoxes of human nature is itspassion for the irreconcilable. Inthe recklessness of our dealingsboth with health and happiness,this craving for mutability exempli-fies itself frequently in our destruc-

tion of both. Love, also, is subjectto these oscillations of feeling, and

169

Bruges-la-Morte.

gains strength in the intermittenceof itself.

Resemblance, however, is thelink which harmonizes these con-flicting tendencies, and reducesthem to their just level of equality.Likeness may thus be described asthe force which assimilates habitand the love of novelty. In theregion of love this subtle amalgamoperates with especial power. Nofascination is more irresistiblethan that of a new woman, whoarrives clothed in a beauty whichformerly had belonged to another.

To Hughes, such reflections hadbeen rendered a source of enjoymentby virtue of the long solitude which

170o

Bruges-la-Morte.

had made him a connoisseur in allnuances of the soul. Was it notfor the underlying sentiment ofanalogy that he had chosen thisNiobe of cities as the most befittingof all refuges in which to live outthe term of his abandonment ?

He was endowed with whatmight be described as the senseof resemblance, which attachestogether by a series of subtleassociations material with invisiblethings-interweaving the boughsof the trees into his conception ofParadise, and creating an immaterialtelegraphy between his own souland that of the inconsolable towers.

The sea, likewise, had withdrawn171

Bruges-la- M orte.

itself from Bruges, and in thatdesertion he perceived anotherconfirmation of the identity of hisown fate with that of the town.

It was nothing less than aphenomenon of resemblance thismerging of his destiny into thatof the grayest of gray towns.

An ineffable charm of melancholyrests always upon the gray Brugesstreets, over which there broodsalways the sentiment of an AllSaints' day. The gray blends andcontrasts with the snowy caps ofthe nuns and the black cassocksof the priests, who pass and repassalmost unintermittingly. The para-mountcy of the colour invested

172

Bruges-la-Morte.

Bruges with the mystery of a half-eternal mourning.

At the ends of the streets, the

facades merged themselves intothe infinite-some of these hadacquired a pale green shade wherethe faded bricks had been paintedwith white, but all around otherswere black, which relieved in theirseverity of character the garishtones of those they adjoined. The

effect of the combination wasanother manifestation of the graywhich stretched in a soft, almostimperceptible haze to where theold walls reveal the shrunkendimensions and faded glories ofthe city.

'73

Bruges-la-Morte.

The very sound of the bells

conveyed an impression of black-

ness to the imagination--descend-

ing into space they finally dissolved

in a crash which died slowly along

the vistas of the canals.

Notwithstanding the multitude

of reflections which were mirrored

in the waters-corners of blue

skies, red tiles of roofs, snow of

swans, green of poplar trees-all

were unified into tracks leaving

the effect of an uncoloured silence.

In Bruges, by virtue of a climatic

miracle, there exists a reciprocal

penetration due to some unknown

chemistry of atmosphere which

neutralizes colours that are too174

Bruges-la- M orte.

accentuated in hue, and subduesthem into an overhanging unityof a nocturne in gray.

It seems as if by the inter-mingling in an occult alliance ofthe ever-recurring fogs;the dulllight that descends from thenorthern skies; the humidity thatensues from the excessive rains;the granite of the quays; thesheddings of the bells; that thereis evolved the colour of the air.Slumbering together also withinthis ancient town, united by thesympathy of a common abandon-ment, repose the ashes accumu-lated by the centuries and thelegacy of the dust of the sands

'75

Bruges-la- M orte.

bequeathed by the retreat of the

sea.It was the influence of this

inarticulate pathos that had been

mainly instrumental in prompting

Hughes to plant his hermitage

within these crumbling walls.

Sheltered here against the hos-

tility of fate, he had been content

that his energies should dwindle

imperceptibly away under the

dominion of the decay that every-

where held empire around him,

until his final dissolution as a wan

soul undistinguishable in colour

from that of the town.

Now a chance encounter had

turned the current of his thoughts176

Bruges-la-Morte.

into an inverse channel. By whatmanoeuvre of Destiny had thereemerged, in this Bruges whichhe had entered as a shipwreckedwidower void of aspiration, somiraculous a resuscitation, renewinga past which he had long deemedto be resting in the grave ?

Occasionally he speculated asto what awaited him in the future,living as he did under the shadowof the supernatural, but the intoxi-cation of the resemblance of Janeto his dead wife again recurred todivert his reflections, strengthenedby the influence of the passion foranalogy which led him to identifyhimself with the dead town.

177 M

VII

DURING the flight of the monthsthat had elapsed since Hughes'sfirst encounter with Jane, nothinghad occurred to dispel the fictionwhich then sprang into being.His attitude towards life had,in consequence, become entirelyaltered. Despondency weighedupon him no longer. Theconception he had formed ofexistence as a solitude in anunpeopled immensity was entirelydissipated. His beloved, whom hehad deemed eternally separated

178

Bruges-la- M orte.

from him, had returned in all therefulgence of her beauty. Hediscovered in Jane what is revealedto the poet by the depths of thewaters or the lustre of the moon:as yet no foreboding of evil,resembling the shivering of theleaves before the chill autumnblast, had cast a shadow upon thisrevival of his happiness.

Yet it was still the dead that he

continued to honour in the shapeof this simulacrum of herself.Never for an instant had hewavered in his fidelity to his cult.Upon the morning of everyanniversary of his wife's death hetendered his devotions-as if along

'79

.Bruges-la- M orte.

stations on the way of the cross

of love-before the relics that he

had so sedulously conserved. In

the hushed silence of the salons,

with the blinds only partially open

and the furniture rigid as statuary,

he passed in a species of adoration

before the different representations

of his dead wife. A photograph

depicting her in the bloom of early

girlhood before the advent of their

betrothal; a large pastel inserted

into the centre of a panel which

the light alternately hid and

exhibited in an intermitting

silhouette ; another photograph

contained in an emerald setting

and placed within an alcove18o

Bruges-la- M orte.

pourtraying her drooping-with the

languor of the lily in its declineunder the etiolated aspect impartedby illness in later years: served tocomprise the collection. Hughes

stooped down and kissed themreverently, like a worshipper beforea table on which are deposited themost sacred reliquaries.

At the commencement of everymorning, he wrapped himself up

in contemplation before the crystal

coffer in which the hair of his deadwife was preserved. It was onlyupon extremely rare occasions

that he ventured even to removethe lid. Merely to expose it hadassumed in his eyes the character

I8i

Bruges-la- M orte.

of a profanity. This hair was theonly memorial from her personwhich had escaped the hunger of

the tomb, and he derived amelancholy gratification from the

thought that it enjoyed a moreperfect repose in this coffer ofglass. To handle it appeared tohim an act of sacrilege. Regard-ing it as he did, as the guardian-angel of the house, the thoughtthat it was present and intact fullysufficed for him.

Profoundly indifferent to thepassage of time, Hughes beguiled

the tedious hours by the re-vivifying of memories which

contrasted luridly with the sombre182

Bruges-la-Morte.

texture intbo which the decline ofhis existence had been woven:

whilst above his head there

emanated from the holy-watersprinkler attached to the chandelier

the germ of a little plaint.Afterwards he went forth to

the house of Jane, which nowconstituted the last station in the

embodiment of his cult. The hair

of Jane was abundant and living in

the fulness of the resplendence

which had enthralled him in thedistant years. In her he saw the

portrait whose features most closely

corresponded to that of his dead

wife. Ever hankering after devices

that might contribute towards183

Bruges-la-Morte.

rendering the illusion more com-plete, a bizarre conception oneafternoon took possession of themind of Hughes. Not merely hadhe preserved in all their integritythe various portraits, trinkets, and

objects of every description belong-ing to his wife, but in compliancewith his orders they had beendistributed throughout the housein the fashion best calculated tocreate the illusion that she was onthe point of returning after a briefabsence. Nothing whatever con-nected with her had been disposedof. A chamber was kept scrupu-lously in readiness for a possiblereturn, with the sprigs of boxwood

184

Bruges-la-Morte.

blessed by the priest upon PalmSunday annually renewed. Thelinen, which in life had formed aportion of her wardrobe, wasstored away in the drawers, andso effectually safeguarded againstmustiness by the perfume-bagsthat it had remained only a littleyellowed by the lapse of years.In the cupboards were suspendedthe dresses - now faded andimmobile-that in life had servedto enhance the beauty of their owner.

Only at rare intervals didHughes disturb their repose. Yetbent always on the eternalizationof his sorrow, no relic was everwholly neglected by him.

185

Bruges-la-Morte.

Like faith, love nourishes itselfin the fulfilment of small observ-ances. The longing to see Janeattired in one of his wife's olddresses, which had taken suchdeep root in his mind, made restan impossibility to him. By theeffect of the imposition of his wife'scostume to that of her person, theidentification would be renderedcomplete. The resuscitation inits perfection would then representa parallel to the Grecian legendof Alcestis rescued by Herculesfrom the grasp of the King ofTerrors.

It would be the transcendentmoment of his life if he were

186

Bruges-laMorte.

permitted to behold Jane advancingtowards him apparelled in thisfashion, annihilating alike time andreality, and bestowing upon himthe beatitude of forgetfulness.

The picture developed itself intoan obsession within his mind whichhe found himself powerless touproot.

Unable any longer to strugglewith the temptation, he onemorning requested his servant tobring down from the attic a trunkin which he proposed to conveythe dresses from his own houseto that of Jane.

" Is Monsieur going away fromhome ? " demanded Barbara, who

187

Bruges-la- M orte.

was utterly unable to comprehendthe new mode of existence intowhich her master had drifted.After the secluded life which hehad led for so many years, theonly conclusion that she was ableto arrive at was that he wasafflicted with some form of tem-porary derangement.

She assisted him, however, tounhang the dresses and clean fromoff them the dust which accumu-lated so rapidly in the cupboards,where they had remained unmo-lested for so many years.

He ultimately selected the twodresses which had been the lastpurchases made by the dead

188

Bruges-la-Morte.

woman, and, after carefully smooth-ing out the creases, deposited themin the trunk.

Barbara, to whom his entireproceedings were an unfathomablemystery, was none the less shockedto see such handling of garmentswhich she had never been allowedeven to touch. Was he intendingto sell them ? Unable to suppressher feelings, she resolved uponhazarding an observation.

"What would the poor ladyhave said !"

Hughes stared at her, andthen grew pale with a momentaryfeeling of apprehension. Hadshe divined the truth? What

189

Bruges-la-Morte.

was the exact extent of her

knowledge ?"What was that you said ? " he

inquired in a manner that betrayed

his trepidation." I remember," replied old

Barbara, "that in the Flemish

village from where I come, there

was' a tradition that if the clothes

of anyone who had died were not

sold during the following week,it became incumbent upon the re-

lations to keep them during their

own lifetime under the penalty of

having to maintain the soul of

the defunct in purgatory until

the arrival of their own day of

departure."190

Bruges-la-Morte.

" Do not be alarmed," saidHughes reassuringly. " I havenot the slightest intention of sellinganything whatever. I approve verymuch of your legend."

Barbara was overwhelmed withconsternation when a little whileafterwards, notwithstanding all thather master had said, she heard himsummon a fiacre, and drive off onhis incomprehensible errand.

Hughes was reduced to a con-dition of perplexity as to the bestmeans of broaching his extravagantconception to Jane. Restrained bythe reverence which he entertainedfor the memory of his dead wife,he had never spoken to her of his

'9'

Bruges-la-Morte.

past, or made the most distant

allusion to the resemblance whichconstituted the problem of hisexistence.

Upon the depositing of the trunk,

Jane danced around it, breaking outat the same time into a series of

ecstatic little exclamations. "Whata surprise ! Filled, of course!Surely presents! Perhaps adress!"

"Yes, dresses," Hughes answeredmechanically.

"Ah ! this is kind of you. Thenthere are more than one ? "

STwo."

"What are the colours? Quick!Let me see! " continued Jane,

192

Bruges-la-Morte.

rushing up to him with her handsextended for the key.

Hughes was entirely at a loss toknow what to say. He did notdare to speak from the apprehensionthat he might betray the cause ofthe madness of the impulse towhich he had yielded.

Jane proceeded to open thetrunk and extract the dresses.She appraised them with a compre-hensive glance, and then turned toHughes brimful of disappointment.

"Why have you brought suchugly patterns ?-and they are old,old! Are the things that cor-respond to them here also-the petticoat and draperies ?

193 N

Bruges-la-Morte.

Why, it must be ten years sinceanyone has worn them; I thinkthat all you can intend is to turnme into a laughing-stock."

The reception accorded to hisexperiment intensified Hughes'ssense of discontent. He soughtvainly within himself for an explan-ation that might serve to disguisethe real motives that prompted hisgift. The preposterousness of hisidea began to dawn upon him; yetnone the less he clung obstinatelyto it.

The mere possibility of herconsenting to don one of thedresses filled him with rapture.To behold her in the attire of his

'94

Bruges-la-Morte.

dead wife, creating a resemblance soperfect that all sense of incredulityshould be banished, would be tohim nothing less than a foretasteof Paradise.

He endeavoured in cajolingaccents to persuade her. Yes;they were old dresses that hadbeen handed down to him along

with his inheritance .

originally they had belonged tohis mother. He had thought

perhaps that it might give herpleasure to have them. The ideathat they would become her had

occurred to him, and he wishedto see her arrayed in one of them,if only for a minute. Of course

'95

Bruges-la-Morte.

it was ridiculous, but the whimhad taken possession of him.

Jane had no suspicion of thereal nature of the object that hadinduced his phantasy-only theabsurdity of it appealed to her.Amid intermitting outbursts oflaughter, she kept turning andre-turning the different articles that

composed the amazing presentationwhich had just been made to her.The quality of the stuffs in theirfaded richness compelled her ad-miration, but she was plunged intoecstasies of merriment by theobsoleteness of their appearance,which, however, reflected whatwas regarded as the most elegant

196

Bruges-la-Morte.

of modes only ten years previously..Hughes meanwhile continued

to persist in his importunities." It will only lead you to make

the discovery that I am ugly," wasJane's reply.

At first she had been bewilderedby the singularity of the caprice,but at last entered into whatappeared to her the spirit of thejest. Amid continued paroxysmsof merriment, she consented todisrobe and re-attire herself inone of the two dresses, whichwere ddcolletds in their shape.Frolicking in front of the mirror,Jane laughed again at the figureshe cut.

197

Bruges-la-Morte.

"I look," she said, "as if Ihad just walked out of an oldportrait."

Then a freak of strutting minc-ingly around the room, contortingher body at the same time intoa variety of lascivious attitudestook possession of her. From this,in an augmenting effervescence ofanimal spirits, she proceeded tomount upon the table in order tohave a more conspicuous view ofherself; to elevate her petticoatsand shake her throat violently,whilst maintaining at the sametime throughout the whole courseof the pantomime an unceasinggiggle.

198

Bruges-la-Morte.

Hughes contemplated her anticsunflinchingly. The moments whichhe had pictured to himself ascertain to be fraught with rapture,were rapidly dissolving themselvesinto anti-climax and contamination.Jane's enjoyment from the mas-querade in which she had beenpersuaded to indulge began per-ceptibly to increase. She nowresolved upon experimenting withthe other dress, and in a freshebullition of gaiety commenced todance frantically, multiplying thenumber of her Bacchante-likemovements and renewing hergambols after short recurrentintervals of breathlessness.

199

Bruges-la-Morte.

The anguish of soul which thewidower had experienced at thebeginning of the performance, waseffaced :by an impression of assist-ance at some sardonic burlesque.For the first time in the historyof his relations with Jane thephysical conformity had failed tosuffice. The fascination dominatedhim still, but there had been im-printed upon it a foreshadowingof disillusion. Wrapped up in hisconception of identity, the vulgarityof Jane had never been apparentto him. Now, however, there hadbeen engraved indelibly upon hismind a hideous caricature in whichall that he held most sacred was

200

Bruges-la-Morte.

dragged down to the lowest abyssof debasement, and that in defianceof the retention of the same coun-tenance and the same dress. Itwas a similar impression to thatwhich is experienced after daysof pious processions when we en-counter in the course of theevenings the bearers of the Saintsand the Virgin still apparelled intheir costume of the morning, butfallen from the heights of spiritualimpersonation into an anti-climaxof debauchery under the light ofthe street-lamps, whose woundsbleed in the shadow.

201

VIII

UPON Easter Sunday old Barbarawas informed by her masterthat he intended neither to dineor sup at his own house uponthat day, and that, consequently,she was at liberty to dispose of itin whatever way best suited her.The intelligence caused the heartof Barbara to rejoice within her,as this unexpected holiday coin-cided with the celebration of thegrand fete, and she would thus beenabled to go to the Bdguinageand be present at the different

202

Bruges-la-Morte.

offices that appertain to the festival

-the grand mass, the vespers, and

the benediction. Afterwards she

could spend what remained of her

time in the domicile of her kins-

woman, Sister Rosalie, who pre-

sided over one of the largest of

the convents that abound in this

most romantic of enclosures.

It was from these visits to the

Bdguinage that Barbara derived the

chief happiness of her existence.

Every one knew her there. All

the friends that she possessed in

the world were bdguines, and it

was her supreme ambition-towards

the realization of which she made

strenuous economies in order to203

Bruges-la-Morte.

amass the requisite sum demandedby the order-to take the veil andterminate her days in the placidfelicity enjoyed by those whom shesaw around her attired in the capthat accorded so perfectly with theivory hair of age.

The exhilarating crispness ofMarch was in the air as Barbarapursued her way exultingly towardsher beloved Bdguinage, apparelledin her black mantle and a hoodthat oscillated upwards and down-wards as she walked.

From the distance arrived thetollings of the bells that seemedin an indefinable manner to har-monize with her gait, and among

204

1ruges-la-Morte.

them, at intervals of a quarter ofan hour, the tremulous melody ofthe carillon suggesting an airextracted from a keyboard of glass.

The advent of spring had in-vested the environs of Bruges witha pastoral aspect that appealedpassionately to the heart of the oldwoman. Although Barbara hadbeen for more than thirty years theinhabitant of a town, she retainedin her heart like all Flemish rusticsthe memory of her native village-a peasant soul whom the sight ofmeadow or leaf touched to itsinmost depths.

The morning was unsurpassablein its beauty. With a glad step

205

Bruges-la-Morte.

she advanced, buoyed up by all thepervading influences around her-the unflecked clearness of the sky;the joyous warbling of the birds;the fragrance issuing from the

young shoots which were alreadyclothing in a unity of soft greeneryalike this faubourg and the banksof the romantic expanse of the

Minne-water (usually translated asthe lake of love-le lac d'amour-

though more accurately it ought

to be rendered the lake upon whichall love). Fringed by the water-

lilies that seem to symbolize the

hearts of young communicants, the

mere stretched before the eyes of

Barbara like a vision of enchant-206

Bruges-la- M orte.

ment. Alike from the banksgarlanded with flowers; the tenderfoliage of the trees; the windmills

that gesticulated upon the horizon;there radiated an influence thatdispelled the mist of years, and inimagination the feet of the oldwoman were once more traversingthe meadows that she had trod inher childhood.

In the bosom of this pious soulthere burned that type of religiouszeal peculiar to Flanders, wherethere still lingers a remnant of themorose Spanish Catholicism thathas always based the maintenanceof its spiritual ascendency uponthe awakening of a dread of hell

207

Bruges-la-Morte.

rather than upon the arousing ofan aspiration towards Heaven.This element has never, however,been sufficiently powerful toeradicate such attributes as thelove of sumptuous ritual, thepassion for flowers, the delight in

incense, the revelling in gorgeous

costume, which are inborn in theFlemish race. The imagination

of the inarticulate old domestic-coloured as it was by the innatepossession of these qualities-wasstirred into ecstasy by the closeness

of her approach to a temple in

which they received such refine-ment of expression. Her heart

beat high within her as she crossed208

Bruges-la-Morte.

the arched bridge of the Bdguinageand penetrated into the mysticenclosure.

Within the silence of a cathedralprevailed. From the outer worldcame only stifled murmurs dispers-ing themselves in the lake, andarriving within the court only asthe mutter of monks that pray.The walls that encircle the retreatare low, in the fashion that prevailsin regard to the architecture ofconvents, and white as the clothupon which the Sacrament of theLord is dispensed. The centreof the enclosure is occupied by avast plot reflecting the charm thatdisengages itself from a meadow

209 o

Bruges-la-Morte.

imbedded in a canvas painted byJean Van Eyck, in which therebrowses a sheep wearing theaspect of a Paschal Lamb.

The streets-upon every one of

which has been bestowed the title

of a Saint-entangle and elongate

themselves into the form of a re-construction of a hamlet of the

Middle Ages--a little dead townwithin the confines of a dead town,

but more trance-like still. So

perfect was the sovereignty of thestillness that the intruder uncon-sciously spoke low, and trod softly

as if in the chamber of an invalid.So incongruous was the intro-

duction of even a vociferous note210

Bruges-la- M orte.

within the precints, that it conveyedan impression akin to that of pro-fanity. From a standpoint ofabsolute harmony, only bguinesought logically to be permitted theright of movement in this sanctuary.To them only has been impartedthe art of gliding instead of walk-ing, which causes them to be theembodiments of the analogy tothe clusters of swans that glidealong the dark waters of the canals.A few sisters, uncharacteristicallytardy in their devotions, werehurrying along a little avenue ofelms as Barbara neared the church,from which was already emergingthe music of the organ and the

211

Bruges-la- M orte.

chant of the mass. She enteredat the same time that the bdguinestook their accustomed places in thestalls set apart for their use-adouble range carved in wood andsituated at the side of the choir.As the sun traversed the windows,the caps of the sisters seemed fusedtogether in a snowy unity by thecounter-drawing red and blue re-flections which streamed throughthe windows. Barbara gazed withenvious eyes at the kneeling groupsof the community, brides of Jesusand servants of God, in the hopethat at no distant day she might beprivileged to share in their orisons.

The old servant seated herself in212

Bruges-la- M orte.

one of the lower aisles of the church

amid a cluster of the laity, formed

by devout and impoverished families

who had found a shelter within the

walls of the Beguinage, from which

the inhabitants had begun to with-

draw themselves. Barbara, who did

not know how to read, employed

herself in telling her beads upon

a large rosary, praying with extreme

unction, and regarding admiringly

her relative, Sister Rosalie, who

occupied the second place in the

stalls next to the Reverend-Mother.The church was beautifully

illuminated throughout with wax

tapers. At the moment preceding

the arrival of the offertory, Barbara213

Bruges-la-Morte.

purchased one of the little waxcandles from the Sceur Sacristine,who placed them in the neighbour-hood of one of the votive candle-sticks, where soon the offering ofthe old servant burned in its turn.

From time to time she observedthe progress of the consumptionof her taper, which she hadcarefully individualized at theoutset from those kindled at thesuggestion of the others.

Her happiness was without alloy.How true was the lesson that shehad learned from the priests thatthe church was in reality the houseof God, and of all churches of nonewas it so true as of this Bdguinage,

214

Bruges-la-Morte.

where the sisters in the organ-loftsang with voices of such angelic

purity.

Barbara denied herself thegratification of hearkening to the

strains of the harmonium which

unfolded themselves in tones of a

purity that corresponded to thesnowiest of linen.

The mass, however, was quickly

concluded, and the lights extin-guished.

Then with a rustling of theircaps the biguines took their depar-ture in one general movement, likethat of a flock of gulls in search

of another resting-place. Barbara

followed at a respectful distance215

Bruges-la-Morte.

in order to render manifest hersense of regard for her relative,Sister Rosalie; but after havingseen that the swarm had re-enteredthe convent, she quickened hersteps, and a moment after passedthrough the portals in her ownturn.

The beduines are dispersed ingroups of varying number amongthe different dwellings, which arethe property of the community.In one of these habitations onlythree or four may be stationed, andin another the numbers can rangefrom fourteen to twenty. Theconvent to which Sister Rosaliewas attached was one of the largest

216

Bruges-la-Morte.

in the enclosure, and as Barbaramade her appearance all the sisterswere engaged in laughing, talking,and interrogating one another inthe workroom of the building. Inhonour of the fite every quarterof the apartment was embellishedwith designs in needlework andlace. A few had strayed into thelittle garden attached to the work-room, and were examining thegrowth of the tender spring flowers.Several of the younger sisters wereoccupied in discussing the presents,and rejoicing in the Easter-eggswith their coating of sugar thatgave an illusion of hoar-frost.Barbara, who felt a little overawed

217

Bruges-la-Morte.

and dreaded to appear intrusive,went in search of her kinswomanfrom chamber to chamber. Shewas in the habit upon occasionssuch as this of receiving an invita-tion to the dinner, and feared thatit might not be extended to her.A number of relatives often visitedthe convent upon Easter Sunday,and it was possible that no placemight be left for her.

Her apprehension was, however,speedily removed by Sister Rosalie,who came at the request of theSuperior to ask her to remain asusual. She apologized for havingbeen unable to attend to her pre-viously, in explaining that it was

2r8

Bruges-la- M orte.

her week of house-keeping-it beingthe practice among the bdguines toperform this duty in a regular

weekly rotation." At dinner we shall be able to

talk," Sister Rosalie added. "I

have something to tell you which

is of very great importance."' Of great importance ?" queried

Barbara, i n accents of dismay.

"Why cannot you tell me now ?""I have no time. It must wait

till afterwards."She then glided away, leaving

the old servant struck with con-sternation. Something of verygreat importance! What meaningcould underlie such words? It

219

Bruges-la-Morte.

must be some calamity! But shewas rendered proof against calamityby the fact that there was no onein the world to whom she wasattached with the exception of herrelative, Sister Rosalie.

Of what had she been guilty ifretribution was descending uponher ? What could she accuse her-self of? She had never defraudedanyone of a farthing. In the con-fessional, she was frequently at aloss to know what sins to imputeto herself.

Barbara's perturbation increasedwith her reflections. Sister Rosaliehad spoken to her with a severe and

sombre expression of countenance.220

Bruges-la- M orte.

All joy had vanished from thebeautiful day to which she had

looked forward so eagerly. She

had no longer any heart to laugh

or wish to share in the gaiety of

the groups that laughed, chattered,and debated whilst regarding the

novelty of a lace pattern displayedin front of them.

Seated apart and solitary, she

meditated over the nature of therevelation that Sister Rosalie was

about to make to her.The arrival of dinner did nothing

to alleviate the agonies of Barbara's

suspense. It was served in the

long refectory, but after grace had

been said in a sonorous voice, she221

Bruges-la-Morte.

found herself able to eat little, andthat without enjoyment. In thisagain she was altogether excep-tional, as both the relatives whohad been invited in honour ofthe festival and the rosy-cheekedbdguises did ample justice to allthat was placed in front ofthem. In the hope of mitigatingher anxiety, Barbara drank off aglass of the luscious Tours winewhich had been poured out at herelbow, but a headache was the onlyresult of the experiment.

The repast appeared intermin-able. At the moment of its con-clusion, she hurried to SisterRosalie with a look that was an

222

Bruges-la-Morte.

interrogation. The bguine at

once remarked her agitation andendeavoured to calm her.

"It is nothing, Barbara. Donot alarm yourself so."

"What is it ? "

"Oh ! nothing very much; only

a warning that I cannot avoid

giving you.""You have frightened me

terribly."" I may say that the matter is

not one of great importance at thepresent moment, but it may easily

become so. It is this. It is pos-

sible that you may require to leave

your present situation."

" Leave my present situation!223

Bruges-la-Morte.

Why should I do that? I have

been M. Viane's housekeeper for

five years. Through his unhappi-

ness I have become attached to

him, and he leans upon me. There

is not a more honourable man in

the whole world."

"Ah! my poor girl. How

simple you are. Well-he is not

the most honourable man in the

whole world."All trace of colour had vanished

from Barbara's face before she

put the fatal inquiries."What is it that you mean to

say? What wickedness has my

master done ?"

Sister Rosalie then proceeded224

Bruges-la-Morte.

to narrate the history of theliaison, which after becoming thescandal of the town had ultimatelyfound its way even into thechaste enclosure of the B3guinage.All the world had admired thedevotion to a memory of a manwho for its sake had rejected allforms of consolation. Ah, well!he had ended by consoling himselfin a most abominable fashion.He was now maintaining openlya mistress-an old opera dancerand a wicked woman.

Barbara shook from head tofoot. Every sentence awakenedan internal revulsion within her;but she reverenced her kinswoman,

225 P

Bruges-la- M orte.

and these revelations, otherwise soincredible, became authoritative inissuing from her mouth. Here,

then, was to be found the explana-tion of the revolution in her

master's habits which she had so

completely failed to comprehend.This was the solution of the

riddle created by his mysteri-ous departures and returns; his

untasted meals, and nocturnalabsences.

After a pause, the bdguine

continued :" Have you reflected, Barbara,

that it is impossible for you, as

a respectable servant and a

Christian woman, to remain any226

Bruges-la-M orte.

longer in the service of a manwho has degenerated into alibertine?"

At that word, Barbara brokeout in protestations. It waspreposterous. Her relative was

the dupe of a tissue of calumny.Her master still idolized the

memory of his wife! Every

morning with her own eyes she

saw him weeping alike before her

portraits and the reliquary that

contained her hair."I have told you no more

than the truth," answered SisterRosalie calmly. " I know every-thing. I know the house in which

the woman lives. It is situated227

Bruges-la-M orte.

on my way into town, and I haveseen M. Viane both entering andleaving it several times."

This was conclusive. Barbarawas overwhelmed. She made noattempt to reply, and remainedstanding with a puckered forehead,

weighed down with the magnitude

of the revelation."I shall reflect," were the only

words she was able to command.

Meanwhile her relative, harassedby the occupations of office, badeher good afternoon and quittedthe apartment without further

exhortation. The old servant saton alone, prostrated by

disclosure to which she had just.2.28.

Bruges-la-Morte.

listened. To her it was little less

than a catastrophe, deranging herplans for the present and extin-

guishing her hopes for the future.

In the course of her longservice, she had learned to feel

a certain affection for her master,

and the idea of leaving him was

altogether distasteful to her.

She could not hope to find any

other situation which would be at

once so easy and so lucrative.In her present position of house-keeper, she had been enabled by

means of economies to set aside

a substantial proportion of the sum

that was indispensable before she

could hope to end her days in229

Bruges-la- M orte.

the Bdguinage. None the less,Sister Rosalie was indisputablyright. It was a form of complicitywith sin to continue any longerin the service of a man whose lifewas a scandal to the town.

She knew well that it wasforbidden to serve in the house-holds of the impious who

repudiated the doctrines of theChurch. The prohibition mustapply also to the adulterers. Theycommitted an even grosser sin,and one that she had heard more

frequently anathematized from thepulpit. The gates of Hell-thundered the preachers--yawned

for such evil - doers. Barbara230

Bruges-la- M orte.

blushed scarlet at the thoughtof even tacitly sanctioning suchflagrant licentiousness.

The old servant found it im-possible to arrive at any definitedecision. Her perplexity through-out the whole course of the vespersand the solemn benediction-for

the sake of participating in whichshe had returned to the churchalong with the beguines was

complete. She prayed to the HolyGhost for guidance, and upontaking her way homewards ananswer was vouchsafed to hersupplication.

Finding that the problem withwhich she was called upon to deal

231

Bruges-la- M orte.

was altogether beyond her own

powers of judgment, she resolvedto submit it to her father-confessorin the Church of Notre-Dame, and

abide by whatever solution hearrived at in regard to it.

The priest, to whom she con-

fided every particular, understood

thoroughly by virtue of an experi-

ence of many years, the ruggedand self-torturing nature of thepoor servant who loved to hedgeherself around with scruples and

to whom the crown of thorns wasthe most living of Christian symbols.Anxious to soothe her agitation,

he urged her to do nothing rashly.Even if the rumours bruited abroad

232

Bruges-la- M orte.

in regard to the guilty relationsmaintained by her master weretrue, she was not necessarily calledupon to be cognizant of them.But if, upon the other hand, sucha source of contamination as thisabandoned woman was introducedinto the house upon any pretextwhatever-even to dine or sup-she must immediately repudiate aservice ministering to depravity,and shake the dust of the housefrom off her feet.

Barbara asked him to repeat thedistinction which he had drawnover to her twice, and then feelingsatisfied that she fully comprehendedit, left the confessional, and, after

233

Bruges-la- M orte.

offering up a short prayer withinthe church, returned to the dwell-ing in the Qua Rosaire from whichshe had set forth in the morningso full of joyous anticipation, andthat now she knew well it wasinevitable that she must abandonsooner or later.

Ah! how transitory are ourmoments of happiness! As the

old servant retraced her footstepsalong the disconsolate streets, sor-rowing over the recollection of thegreen meadows, the mass, the whitecanticles- every incident of theday upon which the night fellappeared replete with melancholy.Now all that survived from it was

234

Bruges-la-Morte.

the prospect of new faces; anapprehension of the nearness ofdeath; the picture of her masterliving in a condition of moral sin.She saw herself dispossessed of allhope of entering the Bdguinage anddying upon an evening such asthis in an hospital whose windowsoverlook the stagnant waters of acanal.

235

IX

THE shadow of disillusionment hadrested upon Hughes since the daythat he had indulged in the bizarrecaprice of attiring Jane in one ofthe dresses that had been worn byhis dead wife. He had defeatedhis own aim. Instead of creatinga unity of the two women, the resulthad been merely a diminution ofresemblance. Whilst the distanceof years had intervened betweenthem, delusion was possible, butfused together it became animpossibility. The effect of

236

Bruges-la Morte.

combination was only to constitutedifference.

At the commencement of his

hallucination, he had been over-

come by the re-discovery of thebeloved face, but as time wore onthe desire. of completing the parallelby the establishment of the nuancestormented him.

The resemblances apparent in

faces never extend to the lines orthe minutiae of the countenance.An analysis of the details demon-strates the underlying treachery ofthe similarity. But Hughes, whowas unable to perceive that anyalteration had been effected in

his own standpoint, insisted upon237

Bruges-la-M orte.

regarding Jane as responsible for allthe flaws in the likeness, and heldthat a transformation of her beinghad taken place.

The chief among the consolationsthat survived was the ownership ofthe same eyes. But if it be true,as is reputed, that the eyes are thewindows of the soul, then assuredlyanother soul has ousted that whichbelonged to the dead woman whosememory was a canonization. Jane,who at first had been vigilantlysweet and reserved, began to findthe strain of the attitude extremelyirksome. The habits acquiredduring the course of her theatricaltraining began to reassert them-

238

Bruges-la-M orte.

selves. She was no longer at anypains to repress her love of bois-terous gaiety and reckless badinage.Her discontinued habits of spendingthe day in dishevelled attire with

hair flowing around the shoulders

were resumed. To Hughes the

slovenliness of her ways wereextremely repugnant. None theless he was so enslaved by hisinfatuation that he returned everto the house, endeavouring to

re-establish the resuscitation out

of the mirage into which it hadbetaken itself. The hours other-

wise appeared interminable tohim. During the tedium of the

evenings her voice became a239

Bruges-la-Morte.

necessity to him. Yet all thewords which it uttered filled himonly with suffering.

Jane, to whom life presenteditself under so diametrically opposedan aspect, was profoundly bored bythe prolonged silences and sullenmoods of Hughes. Confinementwas irksome to her, and the wholeattitude of her lover an insolubleenigma. Her absences from homebegan to increase in frequency.Often now Hughes found upon hisarrival that she had not returnedfrom the town, where she wasengaged ostensibly in makingpurchases, gazing into shop-windows, and fitting on dresses.

240

Bruges-la- M orte.

He varied the hours at which hehad been accustomed to make his

appearance, but the house remained

as silent and unresponsive as before.The question-where did she go ?-became ever present to his mind.

Hughes knew no one to whom

he could confide the mystery that

baffled him. Harrowed by mis-

givings of her fidelity, he found it

impossible to remain in the house

alone, and preferred to wander

disconsolately through the maze

of the Bruges streets, while therelingered any hope of her return.

Dreading the unfriendly nature of

the glances that were now bestowed

upon him, he chose as the destina-241 Q

Bruges-la-Morte.

tions of his rambles the most remotequays, from whence, after musingunder the boughs of the sad trees

that fringe the margins of the canals,he lost himself once again in the

tangled skein with which his stepswere so familiar.

To him there was nothing moreexquisite in its eeriness than thecharm of the gray streets of thedead town.

Hughes felt that the subjectionof his soul under this gray influencewas growing more complete. Thetorpor of the streets added to theforce of its ascendency. Oftennothing more was to be seen thana few old women attired in black

242

Bruges-la-Morte.

mantles returning from the chapel

of the Holy-Blood, where theyhad performed their errand of

burning a taper. One of the most

curious of coincidences is thenumber of old women who are

ever to be encountered in the

streets of the dead towns. Withfaces wearing the colour of earth,

they walk so bowed down under the

burden of years that apparently eventhe love of speech has withered

within them.' Absorbed in his oldregrets and his new sorrows, Hughes

pursued his way unconscious of

their existence. Mechanically he

returned to Jane's house. Still it

remained without an occupant.243

Bruges-la-Morte.

He recommenced his lugubriouspromenade through the dirgefulstreets, and from sheer lack of

definiteness of intention found him-

self at the Quai Rosaire in front

of his own house. Resolving to

defer his visit to Jane until a later

hour in the evening, he seated him-

self in an arm-chair and attempted

to read. Finding himself, however,

incapable of concentration, and

experiencing a feeling of oppressionfrom the silence of the long corri-

dors, he discarded the volume and

went out again once more.

Evening had descended, and the

fog, aided by a little gentle rain,

sprinkled moisture upon him as he244

Bruges-la-Morte.

walked. Hughes felt drawn as ifmagnetized towards the dwelling ofJane; but on approaching he shrankfrom entering, feeling now a neces-sity of isolation, and dreading lestshe might perchance have returnedand be anticipating his arrival.

With a quick step he setoff in the opposite direction,returning instinctively to the oldquarters without knowing whyhe did so. The volume of therain increased steadily, saturating

his clothes, and drawing moreclosely together the network of

the town. By degrees Hughesfelt himself relaxing in the enervat-ing atmosphere. His thoughts

245

Bruges-la-Morte.

returned to the reality of things.The image of Jane again presenteditself before him. What descrip-tion of refuge had she found whenaway from her own house in themidst of this desolation? Thethought of his own death thenrecurred to him. This surely couldnot be long delayed. How desolatehis tomb would be-yet what wasthe desolation of the tomb comparedto that of his own life.

The sound of the bells werewafted towards him, muffled andthin. The town itself appeared tohave receded into the distance.It, too, seemed dissolving inthe rain which threatened the

246

Bruges-la- M orte.

submergence of all things. Itwas Bruges -l - More with itshigh towers, only surviving, andsorrowing like himself over theirretrievable.

247

X

IN proportion to the extent thatHughes felt his illusion escapinghim, his mind returned to theparallel of his own life with thatof the town. He strove to bringhis soul into a more perfectharmony with that of Bruges,evolving new analogies in themanner in which he had occupiedthe days during the earlier periodof his widowhood. Now that Janehad ceased to be the counterpartof his dead wife, the identificationof himself with the town became

248

Bruges-la- M orte.

more of a preoccupation. Muchof his time was consumed in

monotonous rambles through its

inert streets.The solitude of his own house

now oppressed him like a night-

mare. All the memories whichmultiplied themselves before his

eyes were fraught with distemper.

The very wailing of the wind in

the chimneys suggested calamity.

Distrustful of Jane and of hisown sentiment towards her, hisonly avenue of escape from himselflay in distracted wanderings.

Often throughout the blank

days, he asked himself the question-did he really love her ?

249

Bruges-la-Morte.

Meanwhile, what was the natureof the treachery she was engagedin dissimulating? Duplicity ap-peared to be a second nature toher? Amid the dolorous ends ofthe abridging winter afternoons,the incertitude racked his inmostbeing. The contagion of the fogentered into his soul, benumbinghis faculties and rendering his lifealmost a gray lethargy.

The influence of the townrecovered its sway over him.From all portions of it, lessons ofendurance suggested themselves.The gospel of silence was urgedby the immobile canals that wereennobled by the presence of the

250

Bruges-la- M orte.

stately swans; an example ofresignation was offered by thetaciturn quays in their calmacquiescence with the inevitability

of decay; from the soaring towersof Notre-Dame and Saint-Sauveurdescended a homily of asceticismwhich poured reprobation uponthe libertine. Obscuring the per-spective in their massiveness,Hughes instinctively lifted up his

eyes to their heights as a refugefrom despair, but there returnedto him only a disdain for hismiserable amour. "Behold us!"the towers appeared to exclaim in

terms of majestic scorn. "Weare guardians of the true faith!

251

Bruges-la-Morte.

Beauty is not ours! Yet we arecitadels in the air defending theascent to Heaven! We are themilitary spires, and against us thepowers of evil contend in vain!"

Ardently did Hughes long tobe as they were, entrenched inrighteousness and dwelling in anethereal atmosphere from whichwere banished all the miseries oflife. But unlike the towers ofBruges, he lacked the fortitude todefy the blandishments of evil. Inhis impotency of will, he wasfrequently tempted to regardhimself as the victim of adiabolical prepossession that ren-dered all struggle unavailing.

252

Bruges-la-M orte.

From past researches in the

history of Satanism, he wasenabled to recall many such

instances of perversion of thisnature. These records appeared

to him to furnish an incontestablebasis for a belief in the existenceof occult powers, and also of

certain kinds of necromancy.There was nothing, however, in

the character of his helplessness

which implied a compact with the

powers of darkness and a subse-quent path to a retributive drama.

Rather with increasing frequency,

there rested upon Hughes a pre-

sentiment that death was not farfrom him.

253

Bruges-la-Morte.

He had endeavoured to baffleand mock at Death through thedevice of this fiction of a resem-blance, and now it was but fittingthat the King of Terrors shouldbe hastening to avenge himself.

Meantime there remained thenecessity of beguiling the slowoppression of the days. As he retraversed the streets that led tothe different quarters of the mystictown, he discovered anodynes in thecommiserative music of the bells; inthe aspiration of the towers; and inthe pitying welcome accorded to himby the images of the Blessed Virginthat stand at the corners of thestreets in a niche surrounded by

254

Bruges-la- Morte.

tapers and artificial roses, and hold-ing forth their arms in an attitudeof forgiveness and absolution.

Hughes pondered daily over theproblem of his infatuation. Aconsciousness of self-abasementrarely quitted him. He had un-

frocked himself of his sorrow; butthrough penitence he would seekredemption. He would becomeagain in the future what he hadbeen in the past. Already he hadsucceeded in re-establishing theparallel of his destiny to that ofthe town. Ere long he wouldreinstate himself as the brother insilence and in melancholy of thiselegiac Bruges, soror dolorosa.

255

Bruges-la-Morte.

What an inspiration it had been tomake his dwelling-place here in theearly days of his mourning. Every-where the mute analogies suggestedthemselves. A reciprocal penetra-tion existed between the soul and theinanimate things that surroundedit. Part of our being enters intothem, whilst theirs unconsciouslypasses within us.

Towns in particular have adistinctive personality of their own,and an exterior character whichcorresponds to the cravings ex-perienced by our souls for suchneeds -as joy, love, sorrow, orrenunciation. Each town repre-sents a 'condition of the soul that

256

Bruges-la- M orte.

unconsciously enters into our own

life, like a fluid which emanates

imperceptibly into the atmosphere.

Hughes had succumbed to the

pallid and softening influence of

Bruges from the very day of his

arrival in the town. Through its

operation he had become resigned

to the extinction of all hope, and

the necessity of living only in the

past. The merciful release of

death was the expectation that his

imagination most fondly cherished.

Yet when the twilight fell in

the depths of its sombre poetry

along the vistas of the canals, he

strove once more to reincarnate

the spirit of the dead town.257 R

XI

THE mediaeval sentiment of faith

enveloped the town as with a

garment. From the roofs of the

convents, the monasteries, and thehospitals, there disengaged itself a

gospel of renunciation. Hughesurged upon himself the necessity

of bringing his life into conformity

with the behests that wereeverywhere issued around him.Bruges became again to him anintangible personality, guiding,

counselling, and determining allhis actions.

In his re-conquest of the town,258

Bruges-la-Morte.

Hughes found that he had escapedin a measure from the thought ofsex and the lie of the resemblance.Their ascendency over him hadperceptibly weakened, and in pro-portion he was able to interpretthe music of the bells.

As he pursued his way alongthe line of the quays, it descendedupon his spirit in recurrent falls ofmelancholy. The permanence of thebells the obit knell, the requiem,the trentaines, the announcementsof mass and vespers, those denotingthe passing of the hours-all com-bined to intensify the despondencywhich had become ingrained withinhis being.

259

Bruges-la- M orte.

Uninterruptedly the bells ofBruges fulfilled their function ofmourners, pouring, without respite,psalmody into the air. With theirmusic was transmitted an aug-mented sense of the vanity of allthings; of the futility of struggle;of the imminence of death.

In the dirgeful streets where thewan lights appeared only at strag-gling intervals, there could bedescried at scattered distancesthe figures of a few women ofthe humbler orders wearing longmantles as black as the bronzebells above them, and oscillatingas they walked in exactly the samemanner, The mantles moved

26o

Bruges-la-Morte.

steadily in the direction of the

churches, as if drawn together by

an irresistible sympathy.

Hughes felt impelled to follow

in the track of this furrow. His

surroundings exercised an uncon-

scious ascendency over him. The

force of example and the will

that is latent in inanimate things

dragged him involuntarily towards

the portals of the old churches.

Until the advent of Jane it hadbeen his custom to meditate daily

during the fall of the afternoons in

the naves of these resting-places.That of Saint-Sauveur had always

possessed an especial fascination

for him, with its black marble261

Bruges-la- M orte.

decorations and emphasized organ-

loft, from which descended themusic in strains alternately appeal-

ing and majestic.Throughout the vastness of the

building, the music rolled in all its

sublimity, over-flowing the flag-

stones and effacing the dust thathad accumulated upon the inscrip-

tions engraven upon the mortuaryslabs which are scattered every-

where throughout the expanse ofthe cathedral. Of this edifice it

may truly be said, that within its

precincts our feet tread upon theashes of the dead!

The gloom that over-shadowed

every portion of the structure262

Bruges-la-Morte.

remained unabated even by thewealth and variety of its pos-sessions. The combined effect,brilliant as it would have appearedin any other building, of suchmarvellous pictures as those ofPourbus, Van Orley, ErasmusQuillyn, Grayer, and Seghers; ofthe lustre of the illuminations uponthe windows; of the richness im-parted by the garlands of tulipslavishly distributed at every coignof vantage, failed to detract fromthe stern impressiveness of itsaspect. In contemplating the trip-tychs and altar-screens, Hughesdislodged from his mind the opu-lence of their colouring and the

263

Bruges-la-Morte.

glow of their romance for the sakeof realizing more vividly the pathosthat emanated from the figures ofthe donators standing with foldedhands, and the donatresses withtheir cornelian eyes, of whom nomemory survived save that of theseportraits. All recollection of thedefiling image of Jane had beenbanished from his mind since hisentrance into the church. A pictureof himself kneeling before God bythe side of his beloved, like thepious donators and donatresses ofold time, fired his imagination.

At the recurrence of thesemystical crises, Hughes loved toretire within the walls of the

264

Bruges-la-Morte.

little Jerusalem chapel. It wasto this diminutive sanctuary thatthe women in the black mantlesnow directed their footsteps, andhe followed them unthinkingly.The nave was so low that theinterior conveyed exactly the im-pression of a crypt. In a recessat the foot of the weird littlebuilding was contained a re-cumbent figure of Christ, modelledupon that enshrined in the HolySepulchre, resting under a shroudwoven from the most delicate lacematerial. Around it the womenin the black mantles lighted littletapers and then retired noiselesslyfrom the building. As the shadow

265

Bruges-la- Morte.

fell heavily upon these wan offerings,they represented to the imaginationof Hughes the stigmata of Jesus

cleansing away the sins of all thosewho came to visit at this shrine.

Among all his resorts, however,that which he loved most was theHospital of Saint-John, wherehave been garnered together acollection of the master-pieces of

Memling.Throughout the march of the

centuries these exquisite canvaseshave retained their freshnessundimmed by time. It was at theportals of this hospital that-according to tradition-the painterfirst presented himself in the

266

Bruges-la-Morte.character of a convalescent. Allfeverishness of spirit seemed toevaporate instantaneously uponentering the sanctuary. Theprofound calm that is inherent inCatholicism emanated from itswhite walls.

The gardens, trimmed withboxwood, that encompassed thebuilding, were bathed in the atmo-sphere of the chamber of thevaletudinarian. The perfection ofthe repose was disturbed only bythe occasional passing and re-passing of nuns, whose movementswere comparable only to that ofthe swans when they create aripple of water in the course of

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their graceful progress along theexpanses of the canals. Fromwithin the outlying portions ofthe building, there was wafted anodour of humid linen; of capswhose freshness had been tarnished

by rain, and of altar-cloths newlyextracted from musty cupboards.

Hughes at length found himselfwithin the apartment in which theworld-renowned clusse of St. Ursulais preserved. Designed in theshape of a little gold Gothic

chapel, it unfolds in three exquisitepanels the history of the sacrifice of

the eleven thousand virgins. Intothe enamelled metal of the roofingare inserted medallions, which

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rival in beauty the finest minia-tures, portraying angelic musicianswith their violins coloured liketheir hair, and their harps trans-mogrified into the guise of wings.

It is in a manner void ofall harshness of realism that themartyrs are depicted as encounter-ing their doom. In an attitude ofinfinite sweetness, the virgins aregrouped together like a mass ofazaleas in the anchored galleywhich is destined to be their lastresting-place. The soldiers aredrawn up along the line of thebeach. Ursula and her com-panions have disembarked fromthe vessel. Though the blood

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flows, it is in the colour of therose. The wounds are merelypetals. The blood does nottrickle, but only adheres rigidly tothe bosom.

The happy and tranquil counte-nances of the virgins are reflectedin the armour of the soldiers,

which shines with the brightnessof mirrors. Even the arrows thatare the messengers of death,

appear to cleave the air as sweetly

as the glide of the moon throughthe heavens.

By the adoption of these

complexities, the artist has given

expression to the mystic conception

that the joyousness of the virgins270

Bruges-la- M orte,

is only a species of transubstantia-tion and a harbinger of the blisswhich in Paradise awaits theredeemed. The tranquillity whichdistinguishes the faces com-municates itself to the landscapeand constitutes a perfection ofharmony.

The picture is in truth not amassacre but an apotheosis. Thedrops of blood crystallize them-selves into the shape of rubiesworthy of a place in an eternaldiadem, whilst the heavens openingfrom above shed upon the scenethe light of a celestial radiance.

The picture is the most sublimeof all depictions of martyrdom.

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It is a vision of Paradise fromthe brush of a painter whose geniusis rivalled only by his piety.

The soul of Hughes wasanimated to its depths as hecontemplated this most ethereal ofcanvases. With the whole forceof his national instincts, he longedafter the recovery of the faith thathad inspired these great Flemishartists, who have bequeathed to uspictures which might be describedwith an equal degree of apposite-ness either as votive-offerings orincarnations of prayer.

From the catalogue of thepossessions that invest the townwith so unique an interest - the

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works of art, the goldsmith's wares,the architecture, the houses wearingan aspect akin to that of cloisters,the mitre-shaped gables, theMadonna-decked streets, the windsupon which were transported themelody of the bells-Hughesextracted teachings that enjoinedlessons of self-abnegation, and

experienced the subtle magic ofan influence which appeared toinstil into the atmosphere thespirit of a mediaeval Catholicismthat indurated itself into the verystones.

A craving for the innocence ofhis childhood overcame him. Thethought of the nearness of death

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brought with it a consciousnessof his guilt before God. Thereloomed before his imagination

with an increase of vividness, thenature of the penalties that attach

themselves to sin.Accidentally entering the cathe-

dral one Sunday evening, promptedby no other motive than a desireto relieve the vacancy of the hours,he found himself placed in theunexpected position of listener to

the conclusion of a sermon.The theme upon which the priest

expatiated was that of death. Itwould have been impossible in themidst of the dead town to selecta subject more perfectly apposite.

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The thought of the grave over-shadowed the very surroundingsof the pulpit, where the hand ofthe preacher had only to stretch

itself forth to grasp a cluster of

the black grapes that at his sidegave substance to the text of his

discourse. In such an atmosphere

the mind was deprived of the

power to turn in any other direction.There existed no problem more

transcendently worthy of investiga-

tion than that of human salvation,

embracing as it does the goal upon

which is concentrated the entire

operations of conscience.

The phase upon which the priest

more especially dwelt was that of275

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death in the arms of the Redeemer,when it signifies no more than ajoyous passage and a return tothe fold of the Heavenly Father.From that standpoint, however, hediverged with all the fervour ofconviction to the peril of mortalsin-by which was implied allthat converts death into a damna-tion and excludes any hope ofdeliverance from the retributionthat awaits the offender in theworld to come.

Ensconced behind a massivepillar, Hughes listened in a con-dition of profound inward emotionto the words that fell from thepreacher. Dimly lighted by a few

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lamps and tapers, darkness almostprevailed throughout the enormouschurch. The congregation had

drawn itself together into a sombremass, that was almost incorporatedwith the shadow. It seemed toHughes that he was the only soul

in the building to whom the wordsof the priest possessed any personal

application. To his morbidlysensitive conscience it becameluridly apparent that this terriblephrase-mortal sin-was a pro-

clamation of his own condemnation.It would be mere idle sophistryto attempt a denial of the truth of

the charge that he was livingunder this ban. He had deluded

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himself into the toils of a guilty

amour by the mendacity of aresemblance. The doom that was

in store for the sensualist rested

upon him. He had violated the

commandment which the Church

holds to be the most sacred. His

life was spent in a species of

concubinage.It was clear, therefore, that if

the Christian religion was therepository of divine truth, further

indulgence in spiritual hope wasonly a mockery. Death wouldnow render eternal the separation

which he had hitherto regardedas only temporary.

The dream of spiritual reunion278

Bruges-la-Morte.

had been with him the only hope

that survived hopelessness. Now

that, too, was vanishing away

among the futilities of aspiration

which constitutes the chief irony

of human existence.

Hughes departed from the

church overweighed with a sense

of spiritual trepidation. From

that momentous evening, a con-

sciousness of the oppression of sin

rested upon him like an incubus.

He longed for absolution, but

could perceive no way of obtaining

it. The thought of his confessor

thrust itself into his mind as a

potential ladder of escape from

the perdition into which his soul279

Bruges-la- M orte.

was sinking. The adoption ofthis course, however, would involverepentance and the amendment ofhis life. Before such desperateremedies his heart failed. Not-withstanding the grief which Janedaily heaped upon him, he wasunable to break asunder the tiesthat bound him to her, and re-commence his old life of solitude.

The town, however, clothed inits aspect of belief, insisted andreproached him with his infirmity ofpurpose. It opposed to his feeble-ness the model of its own chastityand uncompromising severity ofbelief. During the course of hisperambulations, his. mind was

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profoundly agitated by the blacknessof the shadows that rested uponit. To the perturbations of hisinfatuation for Jane; his apprehen-sion of the closeness of death; hisdread of sin and ultimate damnation,the bells added to the sum of hisinward torture by the persistencyof their appeals to the dormancyof his conscience. At first theiraccents were persuasive and re-proachful, but as the days wore onthey became pitiless in their wrath-denouncing his vacillation; incar-nating themselves above his headlike rooks in high towers; derangingthe tenor of his thoughts, andcommanding him in an ever-

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augmenting fury of behest towithdraw from the meshes of thedegrading amour which was steadilydragging his soul downwards toGehenna.

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XII

THE dissimilarities between the

two women daily accentuated

themselves, to the infinite suffering

of Hughes. Notwithstanding thecloseness of the physical resem-blance, illusion was being rapidly

rendered an impossibility. Jane'sface had acquired a certain harsh-ness of expression, which resultedin the formation of a furrow underthe eye, that cast itself like ashadow upon the perfect corre-spondence of the ivory whichencased the jet pupils. The tastes

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implanted by her theatrical lifebegan to reassert themselves withall the force that is derived fromlong suppression, and she nowbegan to powder her cheeks,darken her eyebrows, and adornher mouth with carmine.

Hughes vainly endeavoured todissuade her from the adoption ofthese artifices, which created aviolent disaccord with the naturaland chaste face that lived in thedepths of his memory. Indignantat his interference, Jane waxedironical, then derisive, and ulti-mately became furious. To himthese outbreaks brought back theunvarying sweetness, the perfect

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balance of temper, the graces ofexpression that had so distin-guished his dead wife. Into an

experience of ten years of wedlock,there had never been obtrudedeven the shadow of a misunder-standing, and no estranging wordwhich rankles in the mind like adark stain imprinted upon a crystalvase had ever been permittedutterance.

The contrasts presented by thetemperaments of the two womenwere emphasized by Jane's steadyreturn to her true self. In norespect did the dead womanresemble the living. The over-flowing evidences of this lowered

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him still further in his ownestimation by denuding him of allpretext for indulgence in a liaison,of which he commenced now torealize only the degradation. Asense of the impossibility ofextenuation rarely quitted him.

When visiting the salons inwhich he still diurnally strove toreanimate the recollection of hisbeloved, a sentiment of reproachappeared to emanate from thedifferent relics. Standing beforethe portraits, a consciousness ofinfidelity rested upon him. Thehair was allowed to repose inits glass coffer almost uncaredfor, while the dust accumulated

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around in heaps of little grayashes.

Never before had his tergiversa-tion caused him such disquietude.

The perpetual oscillations offeeling to which he was a victimwere rapidly converting his lifeinto a prolonged emotional agony.

Drawn by an irresistible longingto the house of Jane, he wasoverwhelmed by a revulsion ofregret, remorse, and self-contemptupon arriving at its portals.

Irregularity now took the place

of regularity in all that related tohis household. Punctuality wasentirely cast to the winds. Heissued orders apparently only for

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the sake of countermanding them,and everything was subordinatedto his infatuation. Driven to dis-traction by his vagaries and findingany routine an impossibility,Barbara ended by abandoningany serious attempt at house-keeping. Sorrowful and disquieted,she found her only solace inpraying to God on behalf of hermaster, knowing as she did thecause of the shipwreck which hadovertaken him.

Constantly there were handedin to the house invoices solicitingpayment of enormous sums, re-presenting the costly purchasesincurred by a harpy. Barbara,

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who opened them in the absence

of her master, was dumfounded

at the rapacity which they

exhibited. Unending toilettes,

costly jewels, dainty knick-knacks

were obtained on credit by this

Phryne, who appeared to spend

the greater part of her time in

using and abusing the credit of

Hughes in all the different shops

of the town.Hughes submitted to all her

caprices without even venturing

upon a remonstrance. His indul-

gence, however, failed to elicit

the faintest sentiment of gratitude.

She continued to multiply her

departures-absenting herself not289 T

Bruges-la- M orte.

merely -for entire days, but failingto return even at nightfall. Theappointments that she was com-pelled to make with Hughes werefrequently postponed, in the curtestand most unaffectionate of epistles.

She now began not only to formfriendships, but to discover rela-tions. "Was it to be expected,"became the truculent daily demand,"that she was to be buried alivein a town such as this?" Onemorning she abruptly announcedto him that a sister, of whoseexistence no previous mention hadever been made, was ill at Lille.It was absolutely necessary, nonethe less, that she should go at once

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to attend to her. She remainedaway for several days, and returnedonly to recommence the samedescription of manoeuvres. In theflux and reflux of these arrivalsand departures, the existence ofHughes found itself suspended.

Suspicion at length began togerminate in his mind. The spiritof espionage entered into him. Inthe evenings, he roamed around herdwelling like a nocturnal phantomescaped from the tomb. Amongthe dolorous experiences that fatehad reserved for him, was to beenumerated that of the detectivedissimulating his vigilance. Theignominy of furtive stoppages and

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midnight ambuscades were added

to the list of his humiliations.Every peal of the little bells that

died quickly along the long corri-dors thrilled him with misgiving.

The protracted vigils of the night,

spent before a brilliantly lighted

window, along the blind of which

flitted in ombres cinoises a sil-

houette that seemed ever to hisimagination to be on the point ofdoubling itself, became an excruci-ating series of agonies.

The memory of his dead wife

now began to recede into the

background. It was Jane, whosecourtesan charm had bewitched

him: by imperceptible degrees that292

Bruges-la-Morte.

he dreaded to lose. The elusivefascination of the countenance hadrelaxed its spell, but the voluptu-ousness of the flesh continued tohold him in thrall. Yet as hegazed upwards towards the foldsof the white curtains in which thepossibility of a shadow concealedin their depths yet lurked, aconsciousness of degradation im-penetrated his being. It was lovedegenerating into jealousy thathad sent him forth upon thisdeplorable task of surveillance.As he contemplated the miseriesof the evening, lashed by the con-stantly recurring showers of rain-which in the bleak north are ever

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ready to descend from the cloudsthat are never distant from thehorizon-and the ever interjectedwail of the carillon, a sense ofthe forlornness of his destinyoverpowered him.

Throughout the rigours of thenight, he remained spying fromthe vantage-ground of a largecourt that in extent resembled ameadow-walking restlessly aroundin an unceasing circuit and solilo-quizing to himself in the inarticulatetones of the somnambulist; regard-less of the rain now swollen intoa deluge; the melting snow ; thescowling blackness of the heavens;the desolation that distilled itself

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from even the most minute ofthe objects that composed hissurroundings.

The elucidation of the mystery

that so completely baffled him

served to absorb the whole energies

of his mind. Into what an extremedepth of frivolous callousness, hebitterly reflected, must be sunk the

entire being of this woman whohad made such havoc of his exis-tence-whilst at the same time, asif to render more glaring thecontrast, the spirit of antithesispresented through the envelopingbleakness the face of his deadwife in all its mild benignity regard-ing him with compassionate eyes.

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Hughes had ceased to be thedupe of .this daughter of thehorse-leech. He had been unablefrom the outset to shut hiseyes to the incredibility of manyof Jane's explanations, and subse-quently there had been showeredupon him - in accordance witha usage prevalent in small pro-vincial towns - a profusion of

letters describing all her move-ments in the pettiest of their details,and confirming the worst of thesuspicions that he had harbouredin the very blackest of his moods.In these epistles were furnishednames, accompanied by proofs ofso circumstantial a character that

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any lingering hope of her fidelityhad perforce to be relinquished.A supplement of anonymous cardspacked with insults and ironies atthe expense of his besotmentwere, in like manner, rained in uponhim. This, then, was the culmina-tion of an intrigueintowhich hehad been betrayed through themedium of a casual encounter thatthe demon of coincidence hadprompted. The repudiation ofJane was a simple matter enough,but the problem of self-retrievalremained. The very mourningwhich he wore had become atarget for street ridicule. Thecult of his despair had been

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vulgarized beyond remedy, andwas only an object of publicderision.

As Hughes meditated in thedepths of his contrition, it seemedobvious that Jane must go out ofhis life. Yet this signified theendurance of the agonies of asecond separation. His heartrevolted within him, as he medi-tated upon the quagmire ofwretchedness into which he hadbeen dragged by the wantonnessand duplicity of this woman.

In his indignation, he resolvedupon holding only one more inter-view with her. Accordingly he be-took himself to her house, bent upon

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upbraiding her with all the un-happiness she had inflicted uponhim before a final severance couldbe effected.

It was, however, without a traceof anger, and only in tones ofinfinite sorrow, that he detailed toher the particulars of the revelationswhich had been thrust upon him.Assuming an air of bravado,Jane contemptuously demanded thenature of his proofs. In reply,Hughes merely handed to her thecommunications which had been soabundantly lavished upon him.

"You are then enough of anidiot to believe in the infallibilityof anonymous letters," Was the

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only observation which she vouch-safed to make after reading them,bursting at the same time into acruel and discordant fit of laughterthat served to display her strongivory teeth which exactly resembledthose of a beast of prey.

"The whole history of your pro-ceedings is certainly a very edifyingchapter," answered Hughes.

Jane's only reply was a transportof fury in which she rushed back-wards and forwards, slamming thedoors vehemently and beating theair with her petticoats.

"Very well then, what if allthis be true?" she suddenlyinquired, pausing in her gyrations;

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"I am bored to death with livingin this place, and want nothingbetter than to leave it."

The interval had been occupiedby Hughes in making an elaboratescrutiny of her entire person.

In the radiance diffused by thestrong light of the lamp, he beheldthe black pupils of her eyes, thesham complexion, the false hair-both alike as unreal as her heartand her love. No shadow ofaffinity of character had ever existedbetween this woman and that ofhis beloved, who now perhapslooked down upon him fromParadise. Yet despite the dis-tended throat and figure quivering

301

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with vulgar rage, there still remained

the woman whom he had embraced,and when he heard her exclaim"I want nothing better than to go

away," a panic of the soul over-

whelmed him, leaving only darkness

around.At this crisis, he realized that

underneath this illusion of identity

there had been masked the lust

of the senses-a tardy survival of

passion rendered charmless and

repellent by the lack of the rosesof youth.

The confusion of his ideas was

so absolute that even consciousness

nearly deserted him. He knew

only that he suffered and that302

Bruges-la-Morte.

his suffering would be intensified ifJane executed her threat of leavinghim. Notwithstanding all that shewas, his heart still clung to her.Despite the bitterness of his self-contempt, he was powerless tobreak the Circean fetters whichbound him to her. After all-he asked himself the question-what did it matter? The worldwas steeped in wickedness! Whyshould he-one among so many-endeavour to justify himself? Thewoman at his side had scorned tomake to him even the most paltryof excuses.

With the recognition of thedissipation of his dream, Hughes

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felt another wave of agony sweepover him-for the ruptures of loveresemble a little death in as much

that they are departures withoutan adieu. But it was neither the

thought of separation from Jane

or that of the destruction of hisillusion which at the moment so

completely shattered him. His

imagination was appalled by the

apprehension that he might neveragain find himself face to face with

the spirit of the town, whose implied

prohibitions he had violated. Thegray melancholy of Bruges still heldhim in its thrall, but the weight of

its towers lay too heavily upon hisspirit. The very frivolity of Jane

304

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had dissipated the density of the

shadows which rested upon hissoul. Now he longed to subjecthis spirit to them, in all thecrushing force of their severity.He resolved that he would seekto recover his old self, and becomeagain a victim to the magic ofthe bells. In this reconciliationhe would forget all, and enterintrepidly upon a second widower-ship. The town appeared to hisimagination more dead even thanformerly.

Suddenly, however, impelled byan irresistible impulse, he dartedtowards Jane, possessed himselfof her hand, and exclaimed in

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supplicating accents, "Remain!Remain! I was mad." His eyesbecame filled with tears and hisvoice thrilled passionately in anecstasy of entreaty.

Yet as he once again retook hishomeward way along the line ofthe old quays, the dread ofan unknown peril accompaniedhim. He became a victim to thedirest forebodings. A vision ofdeath haunted him. It appearedfloating in a remote perspectiveswathed in a shroud, but ap-proaching steadily through the fog.Hughes deemed that its intentionstowards him were more sinisterthan ever. At this stage of his

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reverie, however, the wind sud-denly uplifted itself. The quiver-ing boughs of the poplars thatlined the canal began to pourforth a complaint. A feverishnessappeared to be widespread amongthe swans, ordinarily so distin-guished by their tranquillity-thesebeautiful swans whose presence inthe waters commemorates an ex-piation through which the townreceived absolution for the perpe-tration of the perfidious murder ofa Seigneur, who had been placedas a hostage in the custody of itsguardians.

Upon this evening, however,they exhibited every symptom of

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agitation, swimming wildly aroundin a condition of phenomenalperturbation. One of the birdslifted itself out of the water andbeat its wings plaintively like aninvalid who strives to quit thecouch upon which he has beenreposing.

The swan was clearly in thethroes of a profound agony. Atintervals it cried piteously. In itsflight, however, the wail sweeteneditself as it penetrated into thedistance. There survived thenonly an almost human strain,which softly modulated itself intoa death-song.

Hughes listened spell-bound.308

Bruges-la- M orte.

The poetic legend that the swansang at the hour of its departurereturned to his mind. An impal-pable suggestion of the presenceof the Angel of Death diffuseditself throughout the atmosphere.

Hughes shuddered involuntarily.The presage appeared designed asa warning to himself. Jane'sthreat of deserting him and theviolence of the scene throughwhich he had just passed, hadflung him into a condition ofnervous disturbance that easilyrendered his mind a prey to theblackest misgivings. As hecontinued his way homewards,conjectures as to the possibilities

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of calamity that awaited him inthe near future tortured his brain.It was in vain that he endeavouredto disembarrass himself of thenocturnal phantoms that had im-printed themselves upon hisimagination. The portents of asecond widowership were rapidlymultiplying themselves around him.

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XIII

JANE profited to the full from theprofession of weakness whichHughes had made at the con-clusion of their last interview.With the keen scent of theadventuress, she at once recognizedthat her power of domination overthe man was absolute, and that sofor as the future was concernedhe was as clay in the hands ofthe potter.

It had been an easy matter toregain her former ascendency. Afew caressing words had sufficed.

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She had arrived at the conclusionthat Hughes's life was not one likelyto be of long duration. Already pre-maturely old, and with his vitalitysapped by disappointment, hishealth had declined rapidly underthe tribulations of the last fewmonths. Throughout the town,he was reputed to be wealthy.He had taken up his residence inBruges as a relationless stranger,and during the whole term of hissojourn had held himself rigidlyaloof from all denizens of the town.She reproached herself bitterlyupon not having realized earlier thepossibilities of exploitation thatlay so close to her, and the ease

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with which by dint of only alittle manipulation she might haveacquired a fortune.

With this design ever uppermostin her mind, Jane altered, in agreat measure, her line of conduct.She checked the recklessness ofher expenditure; provided herselfwith plausible excuses for suchdisappearances as she made, andadopted conciliatory tactics in sofar as these did not conflictmaterially with her own amuse-ment.

What most excited her cupiditywas the contents of the vast andancient mansion situated upon theQuai du Rosaire, in which Hughes

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had so long dwelt. Screened bythe impenetrability of the lacecurtains and the elaborate tattoo-ings in the shape of hoar-frostupon the windows, it was impos-sible to arrive at any impressionof the character of the interior.

By means of a device of anydescription whatever, Jane deter-mined to penetrate within its walls,trusting that in this way she wouldbe enabled to arrive at someestimate of the wealth of its owner.Coveting ardently all that belongedto him, she wished to satisfy herselffully regarding the value of thefurniture, the silver ware, the jewels,

and all minor accessories. Provided314

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with such a mental inventory, itwould be easier to safeguard herinterests in the future.

Hughes, however, continuedobstinately to refuse to receiveher.

Jane tried the expedient ofblandishments. Superficially theirintercourse seemed a renewal oflove which resembled that of abouquet of artificial roses. Withthe advent of May, an opportunitythat favoured the execution ofJane's project presented itself.Upon the Monday following wasto take place the procession of theHoly-Blood-an annual ceremonialthat commemorates the arrival in

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Bruges of a drop of the blood ofthe Saviour pierced on Calvary bythe fatal lance, and since reverentlypreserved within a reliquary in thechapel that bears its name.

The route of the processionlay along the Quai du Rosaire,and defiled exactly under thewindows of Hughes's house. Jane,who had never seen the cere-monial before, now set her heartupon witnessing it. Her owndwelling, however, lay remote inthe outskirts, and she absolutelyrefused to view it from the streets,which would be packed by crowdshailing from all the different townsin Flanders.

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"I long so much to see yourhouse," she implored in the mostwheedling tones at her command,"and afterwards we can dinetogether. Do say that you wish it!"

Hughes vainly urged objectionson the ground of the gossip towhich it would give rise.

"But I shall arrive early beforethe world is out of bed," was theinvariable counter-argument.

The thought of the prudish anddevout Barbara, who would becertain to take her for an emissaryof the devil, plunged him into aquandary.

Jane, however, continued to plyhim with her importunities.

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Her voice possessed that in-definably cajoling quality, which atcertain decisive moments womencan ever summon to their assist-ance. It is the expression of theattribute of the temptress in which,since the age of Eve and Delilah,their power of persuasion hasmainly resided. Alternately cooingand passionate, the man is sweptby the subtlety of the intonationsinto an eddy which leaves himabandoned to the fatality of hisallurement.

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XIV

UPON the morning of the Mondaythat was to be distinguished bythe passing of the procession,Barbara rose betimes in order tohave the house adorned in themanner best calculated to do honourto the magnitude of the occasion.

After communicating with fervourat the first mass, she commencedher preparations vigorously on herreturn. All the paraphernalia thatcould be utilized for the purpose

of reflecting distinction upon thedwelling, was extracted from the

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cupboards. Barbara rubbed everyobject with an energy that renderedthem as polished as mirrors. Shebrought down from their repositoriesthe finest table-cloths wherewith todecorate the little tables, which shethen placed in front of the windows.Around them she dispersed littlealtars symbolizing the month ofMary; a crucifix lighted withcandles, and a statuette of theVirgin.

Upon the occasion so distinctivein its character, when the piouszeal of the inhabitants expresseditself in a rivalry of embellishment,the external ornamentation of thehouse became a matter demanding

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from Barbara grave consideration.Along the line of the facades therehad already been attached, accord-ing to an established custom, adecoration of firs relieved bybranches of the green bronze thatpeasants carry from door to door.Together they formed a species ofhedge along the line of the street.

Upon the balcony, Barbara hadarranged to her own satisfactionpurple-coloured draperies against astainless white background. Fromthe foot there descended an appro-priate row of streamers in chastefolds. The old woman hurriedbackwards and forwards upon herrespective missions, full of unction

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and solicitude. Every object was

handled by her with the reverence

due to the sanctity demanded by

the solemnity of the day. Through

the constancy of her devotions, her

fingers had acquired a touch identi-

cal in its nature with that of the

priests. So absolute was her par-

ticipation in the celebration that

her whole being appeared to pass

into it like a distillation of the

Holy Oil used in the course of

the ceremonies. In appearanceshe was perfectly congruous only

with the surroundings of a sacristie.All that eventually remained for

the completion of her labour of

love, was to store the baskets with322

Bruges-la-Morte.

their complements of herbs and cutflowers-a fleeting mosaic of which,however, every fragment lent itsaid in imparting a colour to thestreet at the moment the procession

passed. Barbara, to whom theincense of the flowers-composedas they were of roses, lilies, daisies,rosemary, sages, and reeds cut intothe shape of ribbons-was a speciesof intoxication, hastened in theconclusion of her preparations. Asshe plunged her hands into theoverflowing baskets, the heart ofthe old woman was refreshed bythe befitting character of this floralmassacre.

Through the open windows323

Bruges-la- M orte.

arrived the prelude of the bells

attached to the parish churches,

which followed each other rapidly

in a seeming ardour of emulation.Notwithstanding the gray inde-

cisiveness that is so frequently a

characteristic of early May weather,

there was a buoyancy in the air

which served to diffuse a feelingof exhilaration throughout the mul-

titude. The clamour of the bellsresounded from every quarter of the

venerable city-bells of convents,

monasteries, and those suspended

in old towers. Superannuated bellswhich remain motionless all the

year, and break their taciturnity

only when the procession of the324

Bruges-la-Morte.

Holy-Blood defiles through the

densely lined streets. The glad-

dening influences that universally

pervaded the scene appeared to

extend even to the atmosphere,

where they softened the grimness

of the bronze colouring of the

bells, and seemed to introduce above

their heads a canopy of joyous

white surplices bedecked with fan-

like folds. Eclipsing all other

strains, Barbara heard the great

bourdon of the cathedral that

never tolled save upon such

occasions as those of the grand

ftes. She could even behold it

in the distance-slow and black

-cutting the air like a crozier.325

Bruges-la-Morte.

The minor bells from within theadjoining turrets aided in swellingthe silvery chorus, whilst organizingthemselves at the same time in theheavens like a suggestion of a rivalprocession.

The piety of Barbara exalteditself with the stimulus that issuedfrom her surroundings. To herimagination it appeared that uponthis memorable morning the airwas surcharged with fervour andthat an heavenly ecstasy was ani-mating the peals of the bells. Therustle of invisible wings suggestingthe flight of angels was audible inher ears.

In the intensity of her spiritual326

Bruges-la-M orte.

longing, a living consciousness of

the presence of Jesus rested upon

her. Disentangling itself from the

mists of a divine obscurity, His

image appeared to shine radiantly

before her, bringing with it a con-

viction as absolute as that of her

belief in his presence in the mass

of the morning.With her mind still dwelling upon

the mercy of Jesus, the old servant,

after having crossed herself rever-

ently, began afresh to pray, inspired

by the memory and retaining in

her mouth the taste of the Blessed

Sacrament.Meantime, however, her master

had sounded his bell for ddjeuner.327

Bruges-la- M orte.

Upon her appearance he tookadvantage of the opportunity toannounce that he had invited anacquaintance to dine with him andordered her to make preparationsaccordingly.

Barbara was thunderstruck.During the term of her five yearsof service, no one had ever beenrequested to cross the threshold ofthe dwelling. Suddenly, however,a frightful explanation of theenigma flashed into her mind.The moment which she had so longdreaded had arrived. She divinedintuitively that the woman in regardto whom she had received so imper-ative a warning from Sister Rosalie

328

Bruges-la-Morte.

was to pollute the house by herpresence upon this sacred morning.

A sensation of horror at themere thought of such turpitude,thrilled to the inmost fibres of thebeing of the old devotee. In theevent of the truth of her presenti-ment, no dubiety could exist inregard to her course of action.The prohibition of her father-confessor leaped back into hermind. That towards the end ofher own long and blameless life,she should be called upon to throwopen a door at the summons of soprofligate a creature; serve her attable; obey her orders; and asso-ciate herself with such lewdness

329

Bruges-la- M orte.

was revolting to Barbara's moralsense. The coincidence of such ademand with the day upon which

the blessed blood of Jesus was tobe carried before the house furtheraffrighted her, whilst the recollec-tion that she had just returnedfrom participation in the Holy

Sacrament rendered her loathingof this act of profanity, if possible,more complete. It was clear thatthe moment for final separation wasrapidly approaching.

With the familiarity which, inprovincial towns, is frequently

assumed by domestics in their

relations with old bachelors and

widowers, she boldly inquired:330

Bruges-la-Morte.

" Who is the gentleman that hasbeen invited to dinner ? "

Hughes replied that the questionwas an impertinence, and that it wassufficient for her to learn when theguest should make his appearance.

But Barbara, feeling more andmore convinced of the truth ofher supposition, determined to risk

everything sooner than the jeopard-izing of her immortal soul, andagain demanded:

"Is it then a lady that isexpected here to-day ?."

"Barbara!" exclaimed Hughes,in an accent of angry astonishment.

But the old woman stood her

ground undauntedly.331

Bruges-la- Morte.

"I require to know beforehand,"she continued, "because if it is alady that is to be brought withinthe house, I am obliged to say thatit will be impossible for me to servethe dinner."

Hughes sat overwhelmed withconsternation, and unable to arriveat any more adequate explanation ofhis housekeeper's conduct than thata sudden outbreak of lunacy hadovertaken her.

But Barbara's long-pent-up feel-ings now found vent in energeticexpression. She assured her masterthat the advent of this day hadlong been foreseen by her, and thather confessor had strictly forewarned

332

Bruges-la- M orte.

her to quit the house the momentthat its threshold was crossed by a

woman who was little better than aharlot. It was impossible for her

to disobey him, and thereby plunge

herself into a condition of mortal

sin, with its possibilities of sudden

death and damnation.At first Hughes was - unable to

comprehend the significance of her

words, but by degrees he succeeded

in linking together the differentstages of the progress of the scandalto which he had given rise, with its

variegated embroideries and ulti-mate development within the walls

of his own house. It had reached

the ears of Barbara sooner than he333

Bruges-la-Morte.

had anticipated! The first resultof Jane's proposal to invade hisdwelling had been the withdrawalfrom it of the servant who, during

the period of a service of five years'duration, had become attached tohim alike by ties of interest andby the thousand links that everyday weaves between two existencesdwelling side by side. Now,seemingly without a regret, sheabandoned him!

Crushed by this thunderboltwhich entirely extinguished theprospect of any happiness during

the day, Hughes merely said in a

tone of resignation.

" Very well, Barbara. You can334

Bruges-la- M orte.

go away immediately if youwish."

The old servant gazed at himpityingly, comprehending in her

heart the bitterness of his suffer-ing, and in that chanting voicewith which Nature has endowedwomen for the lullabies of thecradle, exclaimed in shaking herhead:

" Oh, Jesus! my poor master!And for the sake of a wicked womanwho deceives him!"

In defiance of the deadeninginfluence of years, the maternalinstinct, ennobled by an element ofdivine pity, welled up within her,and a cry broke forth as if issuing

335

Bruges-la-Morte.

from a fountain whose waters retain

a healing virtue.Hughes, however, was only

exasperated at her interferenceand at her referring to Jane in suchterms. She had been dismissed

by him upon the very spot. To-

morrow she could return andremove all that belonged to her,

but to-day she must leave withouta moment's delay.

The irritation which her master

so openly displayed removed anylingering scruples that remainedin Barbara's mind regarding theabruptness of her departure. Shereattired herself in her beautiful

black cap and mantle, supported by336

Bruges-la-Morte.

the reflection that she was a sacri-fice for righteousness, as centuriesago had been her great Master,Jesus.

Then calmly and with no traceof emotion, she quitted the dwellingwhich had been her home for fiveyears. Before doing so, however,she strewed the middle of the streetwith the flowers contained in thebaskets, as that portion alone offeredno tribute in honour of theprocession.

337

XV

THE day had commenced in a

manner ominous of calamity.

There exists in the nature of

things a certain inscrutable malig-

nity which delights in shattering

our prospects of happiness. Ex-

posed as our anticipations are to

the driftings of time, the malevo-

lence of Destiny avails itself of

the opportunity to change the eggs

in the nest of assumption, and we

are left to realize only the bitter-

ness which the world condemns us

to conceal.338

Bruges-la-M orte.

Upon hearing the clanging ofthe door that served as theannouncement of Barbara's de-parture, Hughes experienced an

impression of the most profoundgloom. During the course of hissolitary life, the old servant hadgrown gradually into the positionof a necessity to him. This was

an additional augmentation to the

catalogue of sufferings which hehad endured at the hands of thiscruel and inconstant creature whowas so supremely indifferent to themisery that she caused.

He began now to hope thatsomething had occurred to pre-vent her from coming. In his

339

Bruges-la-Morte.

distracted condition of mind, herealized that her 'society wouldprove only an infliction. Hismind again unconsciously revertedto the subject of death. Oncemore he examined himself as tothe nature of the process of decep-tion, by means of which he hadgiven evidence to this veneer ofa likeness. What, too, must shewhose soul now dwelt in Paradisethink of him, beholding from afarthis debasement of her outward selfreposing in the fauteuils in whichshe had reposed, and introducingher impure face into the depths ofthe mirrors in which the purity ofher own still lingered ?

34o

Bruges-la- M orte.

Upon the sounding of the bell,

however, Hughes was none the

less compelled to open the door.

Jane entered the house brusquely

and imperiously, surveying all that

it contained with the eye of the

auctioneer. Her face, which had

become violently flushed by the

exertion of walking quickly,

awakened in Hughes a thrill of

antipathy. The distant strains

of the music were already

announcing the approach of the

procession, which was advancing

uninterruptedly.

Hughes had already lit the

candles which Barbara, prior to

her departure, had placed upon341

Bruges-la-Morte.

the little tables in front of thewindows. He conducted Jane tothe first landing, on which wassituated his own chamber. Theblinds were closed, and Janeadvanced evidently with the inten-tion of opening one of them.

" Leave it alone!" exclaimedHughes.

"Why?"He endeavoured to explain to

her the impropriety of showingthemselves together so publiclyupon such an occasion as thepassage of the procession. In atown so subject to priestlyinfluences as Bruges, little servedto create a scandal.

342

Bruges-la-Morte.

Jane, meantime, divested herselfof her hat before the looking-glass,and rubbed a little powder uponher face from an ivory box whichnever quitted her possession.

She then returned obtrusivelyto the window, displaying as con-spicuously as she could her copper-coloured hair upon which the lightplayed.

The crowd that thronged thestreet gazed up with astonishedeyes at this flaunting woman, whoresembled in no respect anythingthat existed in the town.

Hughes now began to protestimpatiently. Vainly he urged upother that the procession could be

343

Bruges-la- M orte.

seen quite as well from behind the

curtain as in front of it. At length,

losing all mastery of his temper, he

closed the window violently.Becoming infuriated in her turn,

Jane flung herself down upon asofa, where she remained, anembodiment of hardness and im-penetrability.

The procession chanted as itadvanced. From the increasingvolume of the canticles it wasevidently close at hand. Pro-foundly depressed by his encounterwith Jane, Hughes now turned hisback upon her and supported hisburning forehead against thewindows. The breeze that entered

344

Bruges-la-Morte.

from off the waters of the canal

alleviated the fever in his brain.

The premiers enfants de chceur

who heralded the procession now

passed with bare heads, holding

candles in their hands, and reciting

monotonously.From his vantage-ground in front

of the window, Hughes discerned

clearly the more outstanding figures

in the cortege as they detached

themselves from their surroundings

like painted robes in the religious

pictures of Flemish artists.

The lay-brotherhoods next de-

filed in pre-arranged order, carrying

pedestals with statues representing

the Sacred Heart, displaying gold345

Bruges-la-Morte.

banners as indurated as the paintedglass in church windows. Opening

up as it progressed, the procession

next disclosed what appeared to

the more distant onlookers to be

an orchard of white robes or an

archipelago of muslins, from which

incense unfolded itself in the shape

of little blue clouds. The impres-

sion conveyed was akin to that

created by an assemblage of

children around a Paschal Lamb

as white as themselves, and ap-parently formed out of curled snow.

Hughes turned for an instant in

the direction of Jane, who still

remained sulking obstinately and

wearing an aspect which suggested346

Bruges-la-Morte.

the hatching of some sinisterproject.

The music from the serpentsand the ophicleides now ascendedinto the sky, almost drowning thefrail, intermittent strains of the

soprano.

At his elevation in the corner of

the window there next appeared

before Hughes, in fixed order of

precedence, the knights of the HolyLand; the Crusaders attired inarmour and cloth of gold; theprincesses renowned in the annalsof Burgundy; and in varying stagesall that associated itself with thename of Thierry of Alsace, who

originally conveyed from Jerusalem347

Bruges-la- Morte.

this priceless relic of the Holy-Blood. In their respective rdles

also appeared the daughters of the

Flemish aristocracy, arrayed in

hereditary costumes, which were

embellished with lace and jewels.In its vividness, the procession

appeared for the moment to anni-

hilate the present. The obscuring

mists of the centuries were rolled

away, and by a miracle of resusci-

tation saints, warriors, and elders,reincarnating the figures that dwell

immortal in the pictures of the Van

Eycks and of Memling, visualized

themselves before the eyes of the

spectator.Hughes, however, lost all power

348

Bruges-la-Morte.

of appreciating the spectacle. Illu-sion was rendered an impossibilityto him. All that he now realizedwas the obduracy of Jane. Hemade an attempt to pacify her,but at the first word that fell fromhis lips her smouldering rancourfound vent in vituperation, whilsther eyes gleamed simultaneouslywith an animosity that suggestedhands loaded with missiles thatthey were upon the point of hurlingat a detested adversary.

Striving to find a means ofescape from the increased burdenof the dejection which now weighedupon him, Hughes returned to thewindow and listened intently to the

349

Bruges-la-Morte.

surge of the music that still eddiedthrough the streets.

At this point appeared repre-sentatives of all the various ordersof clergy-Dominicans, Redemp-torists, Franciscans, Carmelites.In their train followed theSeminarists, apparelled in foldedsurplices; the priests of eachparish in the same scarlet costumeas that worn by the enfants dechcur, and finally a miscellaneoussuccession of vicars, curds, andcanons, attired in their chasublesand embroidered dalmatiques thatsparkled like gardens of preciousstones.

The clankings of the censers350

Bruges-la-.Morte.

now rendered themselves audiblein dispersing upwards towards thearches clouds of blue smoke that

only failed to reach them, whilst allthe little bells united in a sonorous

acclamation that resounded through

the air.The final stage of the procession

was arrived at by the appearance

of the bishop with his mitre uponhis head, carrying the chasse-alittle cathedral fashioned in gold

and surmounted with a cupola in

the midst of which, encircledby a thousand cameos, diamonds,

emeralds, amethysts, topazes, pearls,and enamels, rested the uniquetreasure which had for so many

351

Bruges-la-Morte.

centuries reflected its lustre uponthe chapel of the Holy-Blood.

The imagination of Hughes wasprofoundly stirred as he beheldthe fervour imprinted upon all theupturned faces. He realized indescrying the magnitude of thethrong which diffused itself, notmerely through the streets, butextended to the boundaries of thetown, the depth of the faith con-tained within the Flemish heart.As the people knelt in prayer atthe approach of the reliquary, hisheart unified itself with theirs inan attitude of adoration.

The dismal actuality of Hughes'sexistence had been obliterated from

352

Bruges-la-Morte.

his mind by his spiritual exalta-

tions, when Jane, remarking the

completeness of his absorption,

broke into a shrill outbreak of

laughter.He affected unconsciousness of

her presence, suppressing by a

violent exercise of will any out-

ward manifestation of the repug-

nance which the woman was

rapidly awakening within him.

With an Arctic frigidity of

demeanour she replaced her hat,

bent, apparently, upon immediately

quitting the house. Hughes lacked

the courage to break the hardsilence in which the room was

enveloped, now that the procession353 z

Bruges-la- M orte.

had passed on to its destination.

The street was already almost

deserted, and the quietude that

reigned throughout it was en-

hanced by the melancholy survival

of a departed gladness.

Jane glacially descended the

staircase without uttering a word.

Upon reaching the ground-floor,

however, she was devoured by a

fever of curiosity upon obtainingglimpses of the salons through their

open doors. After peering in, she

retreated as if repelled by the

austerity of aspect which distin-

guished the two apartments that

communicated with one another.

For rooms, like individuals, possess354

Bruges-la- M orte.

a physiognomy that is exclusivelytheir own. They arouse within usthe same instinctive sympathiesand antipathies. Jane had aconsciousness that the receptionaccorded her by the salons was

one of silent hostility. Void of allaesthetic sensitiveness, everythingthat they contained appeared toher to be distasteful and abnormal.Jane felt dimly that there subsisteda disaccord between the mirrorsand her own personality, whilst theimmutable attitude of the oldfurniture disconcerted and irritatedher.

Making, however, a tour of in-

vestigation through the apartments,355

Bruges-la- M orte.

she glanced indifferently atthe portraits of the dead wifestationed at different points alongher line of inspection.

" Ah ! after all you keepportraits of women! " she re-marked, with a bitterly ironicallaugh.

As she spoke, her eye restedupon the mantelpiece.

"Why, here is one which isvery like me!" she exclaimed inastonishment, taking possession atthe same time of one of theportraits.

Hughes, to whom all her move-

ments constituted a growing sourceof exasperation, experienced a

356

Bruges-la- M orte.

feeling of intense suffering at theatrocious badinage and jeering

insouciance that vulgarized the

memory of his dead wife."Put that down!" he said with

sudden imperiousness.

Jane, who was utterly unable to

comprehend his standpoint, merely

continued to laugh extravagantly.

Angered beyond endurance,Hughes stepped forward and took

roughly from her hands theportrait that the mere touch ofher fingers seemed to profane. To

him all these objects of his cult

were as sacred as the monstranceand the chalice are to the priest.

His sorrow had been transformed357

Bruges-la-Morte.

into a religion. Yet at this verymoment of desecration, the unex-tinguished candles which stillcontinued to burn at the windowsupports where they had beenplaced in honour of the procession,blazed up with a final effect thatilluminated the salons as if theyhad been chapels.

Jane, whose vindictiveness hadtaken the form of entertaining itselfat the expense of the manifestirritation of Hughes, now becomingset upon further exasperationpassed into the other apartment,touching everything, displacing therelics, and ruffling the costumes.Every stage in her orgie of

358

Bruges-la-Morte.

defilement was signalized by aprovocative outbreak of merriment.

At length she arrived in frontof the piano, upon which wasplaced the precious glass coffer,and recognizing another possibilityof venting her spleen, removed thelid, extracted the adored hair, andshook it wildly backwards andforwards with the delight of agamin.

Hughes became livid with fury.This was blasphemy. An impres-sion of being compelled to witnessan hideous act of sacrilege tookhold of him. Throughout thelong years of his widowership,he had never ventured to unidealize

359

Bruges-la- M orte.

even by touch this symbol whichrepresented in his eyes a fragmentof divinity. After all the tearsthat had daily been shed aroundthe reliquary in which these lockswere enshrined, the thought thatthey should be degraded into thetoy of a courtesan, whose chiefhappiness in life was apparentlyderived from his own befoolment,transported him with fury. For

what a length of time had hetamely permitted her to inflictsuffering and indignity upon him.All the mortifications which hadbeen rankling within his bosomwelled up fiercely within him. Herecollected the ignominy of the

360

Bruges-la- M orte.

midnight prowlings spent in tramp-ing the mire underneath herwindows. The memories of hertreacheries, mendacities, insults,prodigalities, and infidelities, rushedtogether like a cataract into hismind. He determined to spurnher from the house.

Jane, however, when he advancedtowards her, darted round the table,regarding the movement merelyas an introduction to some speciesof frolic, and after flourishing thetresses in the air while assumingat the same time the attitude ofa serpent-charmer, she entwinedthem firmly around her ownneck, where they were transformed

361

l3ruges-la- M orte.

into an exact suggestion of aboa made from the plumes of a

gold-bird."Return that to me! Return that

to me!" cried Hughes, in accents

vibrating with passion.Regardless of his indignation,

Jane merely whirled backwardsand forwards around the table.

Infuriated by the stream of gibesand flouts which were levelled athim by his tormentor during thecourse of her evolutions, Hugheslost every vestige of self-control.At length he overtook her. Withthe hair still coiled around her neckshe struggled convulsively, un-

willing to surrender it, and enraged362

Bruges-la-Morte.

by the ferocity expressed in the

grasp that clutched her.

' Will you? "" No," she replied with a nervous

laugh, writhing at the same time

in his hold.

A paroxysm of fury swept overHughes, extinguishing all power

of reflection. The blood rushed to

his eyes, and his head swam as if

with a vertigo. In his frenzy, a

craving for the destruction of some-

thing became an over-masteringimpulse. He experienced a sensa-

tion that caused a crispation of thefingers, endowing them at the sametime with the irresistible force of a

vice. In his delirium he seized363

Bruges-la-Morte.

the hair that Jane still retainedentwined around her neck, andfrightful in his abandonment, drewthe tresses together until they wereas stiff as a cable.

Jane laughed no more. Sheonly lifted up a little cry followedby a sigh like that of a bubbleexpiring within a water-flower.Then she fell prone upon thefloor-strangled.

She was dead-having failed todivine the mystery that withinthe chamber there was preservedan object that could not be touchedwithout sacrilege. In her hand shehad carried vindictively the hair

364

Bruges-la-Morte.

which had symbolized-to thosewhose purity of soul permits themto commune with the unseen-asanctity that, violated, made theviolator the instrument of her owndeath.

Thus all the inmates of thehouse had perished. Barbara haddeparted; Jane lay extended athis feet a corpse-the dead wifewas more dead than ever.

Hughes alone was left, and hehad become oblivious to all thatsurrounded him.

The two women identified them-selves into a perfect unity. Re-sembling each other in life, theydid so to an infinitely greater

365

Bruges-la- M orte.

degree in death. The pallor whicheffaces even the most marked dis-

tinctions, rendered it impossible todistinguish the one face from theother-for his wife there existedbut one countenance. Into thecorpse of Jane was incarnated the

phantom of his dead wife, though

she was visible to him alone.

Hughes, whose soul was in all

directions retrogressive, now re-

called only memories from a distant

past. His mind reverted to the

epoch of his early widowership, to

which period he believed himself

transported. . . Tranquilly hereposed in a fauteuil, unconscious

of all element of tragedy.366

Bruges-la-Morte.

The windows continued open as

they had been left by Barbara.Through them again floated the

clamour of the bells, all resounding

in unison to celebrate the return

of the procession from the chapelof the Holy-Blood. The resurrec-

tion of a morning had run its course

and faded into nothingness. All

that had made a brief summer had

fled, leaving only apathy andsilence. The streets were desolate

once more. Solitude again broodedover the town.

Isolated in the midst of an iso-

lation, Hughes remained alone,

repeating mechanically, Morte . . .

morte . . . Bruges-la-Morte. . .367

Bruges-la- M orte.

Instinctively he endeavoured toattune his voice to the level of aharmony with the rhythm of thebells. Morte . . . morle .

Bruges- la-Morfe. . . . But it was

only with the music of the little,old superannuated bells, which sym-bolized to the ear of the listeneriron flowers languidly sheddingtheir leaves that there was producedany adjustment of concord.

THE END

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Bruges-la-morte : a romance