The
Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality
clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them
into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom
their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as
the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death,
Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark
a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever
Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he
invariably, and without intending it- nay, in spite of a purpose to
the contrary- reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
thought, and modes of feeling, that it became the central point of
all. With the morning twilight, Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's
face, and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat
together at the evening hearth, his eyes wandered stealthily to her
cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the
spectral Hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have
worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed
but a glance, with the peculiar expression that his face often wore,
to change the roses of her cheek into a death-like paleness, amid
which the Crimson Hand was brought strongly out, like a bas-relief
of ruby on the whitest marble.
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