Tenebrae: A Novel (Valancourt Classics) Page 2
[1]The predecessor to Henham’s vampiristic spider is found in Bertram Mitford’s classic The Sign of the Spider (1896), which may have provided Henham with the idea of a spider the size of a bear with a human face. Both Mitford and Henham’s human-faced spiders incorporate features of the death’s head spider (Eriophora ravilla), the crab spider (Misumenoides formosipes), the skull spider (Pholcus phalangioides), and the jumping spider (Phidippus audax).
The narrator believes in an ethereal “Presence” flowing around him, out of which his growing guilt slowly takes its material incarnation, an idea found in Old Norse skaldic and Eddaic poetry. Following in the first part the foreshadowing of vengeance in the form of an everyday spider, the ghostly “under-shadow” of Part II begins as a black “scar” on the wall that feeds fat on crime and guilt to become the embodied vampiric spider, the “living substance of a crime.” The narrator exclaims hysterically: “‘There—huge and horrible in the centre of the wall. Its body is like ebony, except for the silver cross. . . . Why does it bear that mark? Such a sign they erect over graves.’ ” He then recalls the Lord stigmatized Cain: “ ‘It was the mark of the white cross upon the black soul. That was the mark set upon the forehead of Cain.’ ” From a sexual point of view spiders symbolize the core fantasies and conflicts from various developmental levels; they emblematize feelings of repulsion and anxiety, of being “caught in the web” of desires, emotions, and personal feelings of dependence and need. When an intensely ambivalent person battles against a break with reality, the spider often emerges as a symbol of the feared and deeply repressed aspects both of the self’s potentially psychotic core and of the vampire woman who debilitates and drains her prey. Here the narrator’s soi-disant fiancée, suspecting he has murdered his brother, pretends to love him and only marries him to revenge herself on him: “I had resolved to hang over you, like the vampire, the fury, until you should . . . sink to your damnation by the frenzied act of the suicide.” His marriage is grotesquely consummated in his hallucination of the spider that drops from the ceiling onto his face like a massy vagina dentata.
As the protagonist visualizes the spider inexorably advancing to destroy him, his wife enters pursued by the crazy uncle. By now the spider has become a deeply metaphorical image that combines the storm of the older brother’s anger, his younger brother’s deceit, and the wife’s revenge—murder, deceit, revenge are the spiders he sees in the cup. The uncle’s arsenic, laudanum, opium, nicotine, and alcohol are their literal complements. Despite foreshadowing and such analogues as his burned photograph or his uncle’s report of two spiders fighting, “the smaller one wanted to get away . . . but the larger one—he was cowardly, nephew—ran up behind, and attacked him,” the narrator fails to see what has been adumbrated from the beginning. All along he had seen the spider as the Other—as the revenge of his brother, or of the woman, or of his sin itself in ghostly bestial shape: “Each was a child of that Shadow which Crime had made.” But what about himself, not the sin but the sinner? The true spider appeared when he looked at himself in the mirror: “A more hideous face surely had never passed into life from Nature’s mould, for the features were pinched and diabolic, the lips a twisted blue line, the mad eyes were filled with blood. But presently I understood that I was gazing upon myself.” He reluctantly admits: “The Lord had set a mark upon Cain—the mark of the Shadow, the mark of the eternally damned. And I was Cain.” The venomous wife provides a knife to entice her husband into suicide to avoid further agony. After the uncle leaps to his death possessed by the evil spirits of his “new mixture,” the narrator is discovered—with an echo here from The Picture of Dorian Gray—dead with his wife’s knife in his heart, fulfilling Friedrich Nietzsche’s psychological dictum that decadent souls express themselves most creatively in their own self-destruction.
Gerald Monsman
August 29, 2012
NOTE ON THE TEXT
Tenebrae: A Novel was published by Skeffington & Son of London in early 1898. The British Library copy bears a receipt stamp dated March 21, 1898. The first edition was published in crown octavo format, bound in green decorative cloth, and sold for six shillings. The front cover of this edition reproduces the front cover of the original edition. The present edition was set from the copy of the first edition in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and was compared to the copy in the British Library. No differences were noted between these two copies. This edition reprints the original edition verbatim in all respects, with the exception of a couple minor printer’s errors, including one missing period and one comma which should have been a period; these errors have been silently corrected.
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the kind assistance of Mr Robert Brown of Winchester Antiquarian Books, who shared a reproduction of the cover of his copy for use in this edition, and M. S. Corley, who digitally restored that reproduction.
TENEBRAE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
TENEBRAE
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION
PART I
The Foreshadowing
TENEBRAE
CHAPTER I
PEACE
The meek-eyed Peace;
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing.
Milton.
Thursday morning, 10th April.
Song birds rejoiced in every tree, as each sought a mate; upon the odorous earth, scented blossoms were glorious, while the bushes were lined with the fresh green of spring. Beyond rolled small pink clouds, tender as the red lips of early love, marking the eastern spot where the sun had arisen.
Peace! The perfect serenity of a heart unmarked by guilt. What gifts may the world offer in comparison with such? Peace!
Peace! The word rings with the fantastic sound of some soft evening bell over smiling waters—yet dies away in a lingering echo that suggests the death knell.
I leant from my window, inhaling the breath of morning. I noted the slow formation of tiny leaflets upon the grey strands of the creepers, and felt the balm-laden waves of air rolling and rippling upon my features. Suddenly there arose shuffling movements from the garden beneath, while a weird voice cried, in shrill accents of strange anger,—
‘What! What! You won’t take the fly? You won’t eat the breakfast that I have provided for you? I can see you. Yes, there are your black legs showing under the rose leaves. I’m going to kill you. Do you hear that? You’re going to die.’
This was merely my uncle, an old man, who suffered from the fearful malady he had brought upon himself by continual abuse of his body. Formerly he had been a nameless adventurer and wanderer over many lands. Then he had drifted back to me, a human derelict, that contained only a single germ of life. He had destroyed his powers in the gloomy west by internal use of arsenic and laudanum, by external application of morphia; in the bright east he had slept the long opium dream, and had revelled in the mad fever of alcoholism. Now he clung feebly to life, with the old lust still within him, beneath a constant horror that was induced by his insanity.
He was engaged in an occupation which came more as a duty to him than a pastime. He called himself the king of insects, so upon each fine day he might have been seen in the gardens, either capturing flies, or hurrying to some bush in search of a particular subject of his strange kingdom. With a fly between finger and thumb, he would pause before the web of one of those most detestable objects of created life—the spider. Deliberately he would insert his capture between the meshes of the sticky web, and wait for the grim insect to pounce down upon its hapless prey. Then he would stand upon the gravel path, laughing fearfully, and knotting his strange fingers together, while the fly buzzed in its last agony, and the horrid spider glutted its lust upon the victim’s life.
Sometimes he would release the fly at that last moment; at other times he would introduce one spider into the home of another, and watch them fighting to the death. Should one endeavour to run away, he killed it for its cowardice.
On this occasion I knew that the spider refused to stir from its lair, and thus had aroused the anger of its would-be benefactor. He cursed at it, then knocked it from its nest with his stick.
He watched it as it lay curled up at his feet, then squeezed its pulpy body maliciously with the toe of his boot.
‘You will try to deceive me, will you? You have disobeyed me, and now you would feign death. Ah, ah, we shall see. I will punish you. I’m going to torture you; then I shall kill you.’
The insect moved away, but he followed and squashed it slowly beneath his foot. Then I heard other footsteps, and presently my old nurse appeared in sight.
‘Eh, sir, and what are you after now? Plaguing those poor flies and spiders as usual, I’ll be bound.’
The old man looked up with a weird chuckle. ‘I have killed him. See the dead body lying near that stone. It was a disobedient subject, so I have punished him. It is not murder
. No, no. This is justice. It will be a warning to the others.’
‘Come away in, sir. Your breakfast is waiting. Leave the poor things alone.’
But he went along, and hung over a rhododendron bush. ‘I have not finished yet. I must go round and see my subjects.’
She followed and pulled at his arm. ‘Now come along with me. There’s your nice breakfast spoiling, and all for nothing.’
He replied only by a cry of fear. ‘Look where you’re treading! He’s my enemy, for he kills and eats my insects. Come away from the horrid creature.’
She started. ‘What is it? One of your nasty creatures crawling over me?’
‘No, no. The big toad. Look at his red eyes and great speckled mouth. Take care! You will tread upon him.’
Then she understood, and did not step aside. ‘Don’t be afraid, sir. It’s gone away now.’
There was something of interest he had discovered within the rhododendron bush, which was covered thickly with light green buds.
‘Look! look!’ he cried, thrusting his spare body forward. ‘See! Here is a wonderful subject.’
Then he glanced up and saw me at the window. ‘Ah, nephew! Come down here. He is worth looking at.’
‘What is it, uncle?’ I called.
‘He is all in silver and brown,’ cried the old man, bending over more closely. ‘He lies right in the centre of the web, without moving—ah, no, I can see his black jaws stirring, and his eyes—he has fine eyes, nephew.’
Though the morning was warm, I shuddered.
‘Don’t touch it, uncle.’ The words fell from my lips involuntarily.
‘He would not hurt me. He wouldn’t bite me.’
‘Come away inside, sir,’ repeated the old woman, more impatiently.
‘Nephew! This is a good Christian. This is a pious spider. There is a silver cross upon his body. Come down and see.’
Again my fear swept over me. I had noticed this often, for nobody in the world knew more about these insects than I. Always had I wondered and trembled at the dread significance of that sign. Why should this foul and hellish insect be invested for its brief life with the symbol of man’s redemption? What was the meaning in it? What the object?
‘Ah, ah. I will bring you down to see this wonder presently, nephew. He is the largest I have seen for a long time. His great body is covered thickly with long hairs. Then there is the cross. You cannot help seeing it. It is a white cross, and very distinct.’
He began to grow excited. Presently I saw him led away, muttering incoherent remarks to invisible occupants in every bush he passed. The morning seemed brighter when he had gone, but my peace of mind had been terribly disturbed. I went to my breakfast, and afterwards walked out in company with my reflections.
I passed along the wide extent of garden, until I came to a rustic seat, around which blossomed pale yellow aconites, with many another of the season’s flowers. Here I seated myself.
I was a young man—standing only upon the threshold of the thirtieth year. When a man of that age seeks isolation in the heart of Nature, finds rapture in the murmuring of the trees and soft song of the birds, it is generally because he finds himself overwhelmed by the subtle passion of love.
I was happy on that spring morning, I say. Happy! The trivial word has no weight in diagnosing the rapture at my heart. Joy formed a glorious environment, which bathed my body in its pure golden waves of feeling. For I loved, and knew myself to be loved. When a man may make such a pure confession to the confidence of his soul, he has lived and known the pleasure of life. Then lies nothing beyond in the years to come, but the mere shadow of that bliss.
Yet what a fury is that inexplicable power! How it thrills its fiery course through the veins! How the heart burns, how the brain throbs with the delight of life! Yet, withal, what a grim monster of jealousy is there!
Such is an old story, time-worn as the grey earth itself, yet ever young in the minds of all. I loved, and what did it matter that thousands were placed even as I? That millions of dead witnessed to the fleeting nature of this transitory passion? That eternity hovered behind, with its selfish message of salvation? I loved. That sufficed for me. Others might go their way, and sway this mighty world with their discoveries of Nature’s hidden secrets. But such had no affinity with me. All I sought for was peace—and the realisation of my heart’s desire.
And she, whom I had endowed with the poor gift of myself, she who was photographed in both my eyes, was indeed fair. Only the painter may inadequately delineate beauty with his dim eloquence of silence; the art is withheld from him who guides the pen. Description of a graceful curve, a wondrous colouring, is impossible. Imagination flies from the lifeless touch of words. Only the lover may describe the perfections of his particular mistress, and then only to his own heart. So let it suffice to say that she was a woman, and I loved her.
From selfish consideration, I turned to thoughts of others. There were three, who had enwrapped themselves round my life, three strangely dissimilar in every way, apart from a single common characteristic—their affection for me, the master of the house.
Surely, in the matter of love, Fortune had blessed me with singular favour. Above all stood my brother, who was in age but a year my junior. Here was one who possessed for me all that wealth of devotion which Jonathan of old showered upon David.[1] Here was a man who loved his brother as he did himself, who had, moreover, no thought apart from that brother’s happiness. He was a man with a great heart, and he loved—my God! what has come over my eyes? The ink turns red upon the paper. The pen is dripping blood. Blood, I say. God! My brain is in flames. There it is again. The horror surges up before my eyes. Ah! leave me—leave me.
[1] See Chapter II epigraph.
Peace. I was forgetting. I am calm again now. I am curiously liable to such fits when I think of my brother. For he is dead now. Ages have rolled away since we buried him. His was a strange, a mysterious sinking into death. Many wondered why he departed so suddenly, and abandoned the brother he loved. But the world is full of greater mysteries. Of what account is the life or death of one unknown man from the myriads that walk upon the earth? Nothing—nothing at all.
Then there came the memory of my old nurse, a faithful woman who had been for years in the family of which I was now the head. She had led up my brother and myself from infancy, with that loving attention which is so often wanting in the mother. Now she was the general guardian of all my domestic affairs. And lastly, I thought of my uncle, whom I pitied.
These, then, were the three of the home circle with whom my life was bound up—the loving brother, the faithful housekeeper, the drivelling uncle. A curious family, perhaps, yet peaceful and happy. My God! how peaceful and happy!
I remained upon the rustic seat, in peace with my own mind, until I became suddenly disturbed. Over my head was rough woodwork, where ivy twisted and fell in graceful festoons of shining green. The sun rays pierced the tree branches and struck full upon my face, causing me to move slightly to one side. But as I did so, without warning, without the least sound, a horrible creature dropped from the tangled mesh above, swung upon a glistening silver strand, with hideous legs working through the air, then dropped in grim silence upon the seat. It would have fallen upon my hand, had I not withdrawn it with a shock of sickening terror.
The creature was a black spider, bloated and ungainly.
For some seconds repugnance at this grim visitant impaired each sense. My eyes were fixed upon the hairy body, which swayed slowly from side to side. There was no cross there, but I noticed other markings upon that dark skin, yellow lines and tracings, which seemed to me—I may have been in error, for my imagination was fevered—to represent the ghastly form of a human skull, that symbol of all things solemn, and of death.