Publisher's Synopsis
The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabbyappearance met me in an obscure part of the street."Mr. Coverdale," said he softly, "can I speak with you a moment?"As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to mention, for the benefit ofsuch of my readers as are unacquainted with her now forgotten celebrity, that she was aphenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her sisterhood have grown too numerous toattract much individual notice; nor, in fact, has any one of them come before the public under suchskilfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at once mystified and illuminated theremarkable performances of the lady in question. Nowadays, in the management of his "subject,""clairvoyant," or "medium," the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientificexperiment; and even if he profess to tread a step or two across the boundaries of the spiritualworld, yet carries with him the laws of our actual life and extends them over his preternaturalconquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, ofpicturesque disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available, in order toset the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of theVeiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of heridentity, and an absurd rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent)that a beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded within the misty drapery of theveil. It was white, with somewhat of a subdued silver sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud; and, falling over the wearer from head to foot, was supposed to insulate her from the material world, from time and space, and to endow her with many of the privileges of a disembodied spirit.Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have little to do with the presentnarrative-except, indeed, that I had propounded, for the Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a queryas to the success of our Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the bye, was of the true Sibyllinestamp, -nonsensical in its first aspect, yet on closer study unfolding a variety of interpretations, oneof which has certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this riddle in my mind, and tryingto catch its slippery purport by the tail, when the old man above mentioned interrupted me."Mr. Coverdale!-Mr. Coverdale!" said he, repeating my name twice, in order to make up for thehesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it. "I ask your pardon, sir, but I hear you are goingto Blithedale tomorrow."I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red-tipt nose, and the patch over one eye; and likewise sawsomething characteristic in the old fellow's way of standing under the arch of a gate, only revealingenough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaint
