right, of causing her to love him before she knew his story. If in the
whole matter there was too much thought of self, my only apology is the
sequel. One day, the ninth from the commencement of her illness, a
letter arrived, addressed to her; which he, thinking he might prevent
some inconvenience thereby, opened and read, in the confidence of that
love which already made her and all belonging to her appear his own. It
was from a soldier--_her lover_. It was plain that they had been
betrothed before he left for the continent a year ago; but this was the
first letter which he had written to her. It breathed changeless love,
and hope, and confidence in her. He was so fascinated that he read it
through without pause.
Laying it down, he sat pale, motionless, almost inanimate. From the
hard-won sunny heights, he was once more cast down into the shadow of
death. The second storm of his life began, howling and raging, with yet
more awful lulls between. “Is she not _mine_?” he said, in agony. “Do I
not feel that she is mine? Who will watch over her as I? Who will kiss
her soul to life as I? Shall she be torn away from me, when my soul
seems to have dwelt with hers for ever in an eternal house? But have I
not a right to her? Have I not given my life for hers? Is he not a
soldier, and are there not many chances that he may never return? And it
may be that, although they were engaged in word, soul has never touched
soul with them; their love has never reached that point where it passes
from the mortal to the immortal, the indissoluble: and so, in a sense,
she may be yet free. Will he do for her what I will do? Shall this
precious heart of hers, in which I see the buds of so many beauties, be
left to wither and die?”
But here the voice within him cried out, “Art thou the disposer of
destinies? Wilt thou, in a universe where the visible God hath died for
the Truth’s sake, do evil that a good, which He might neglect or
overlook, may be gained? Leave thou her to Him, and do thou right.” And
he said within himself, “Now is the real trial for my life! Shall I
conquer or no?” And his heart awoke and cried, “I will. God forgive me
for wronging the poor soldier! A brave man, brave at least, is better
for her than I.”
A great strength arose within him, and lifted him up to depart. “Surely
I may kiss her once,” he said. For the crisis was over, and she slept.
He stooped towards her face, but before he had reached her lips he saw
her eyelids tremble; and he who had longed for the opening of those
eyes, as of the gates of heaven, that she might love him, stricken now
with fear lest she should love him, fled from her, before the eyelids
that hid such strife and such victory from the unconscious maiden had
time to unclose. But it was agony--quietly to pack up his bundle of
linen in the room below, when he knew she was lying awake above, with
her dear, pale face, and living eyes! What remained of his money, except
a few shillings, he put up in a scrap of paper, and went out with his
bundle in his hand, first to seek a nurse for his friend, and then to go
he knew not whither. He met the factory people with whom he had worked,
going to dinner, and amongst them a girl who had herself but lately
recovered from the fever, and was yet hardly able for work. She was the
only friend the sick girl had seemed to have amongst the women at the
factory, and she was easily persuaded to go and take charge of her. He
put the money in her hand, begging her to use it for the invalid, and
promising to send the equivalent of her wages for the time he thought
she would have to wait on her. This he easily did by the sale of a ring,
which, besides his mother’s watch, was the only article of value he had
retained. He begged her likewise not to mention his name in the matter;
and was foolish enough to expect that she would entirely keep the
promise she had made him.
Wandering along the street, purposeless now and bereft, he spied a
recruiting party at the door of a public-house; and on coming nearer,
found, by one of those strange coincidences which do occur in life, and
which have possibly their root in a hidden and wondrous law, that it was
a party, perhaps a remnant, of the very regiment in which he had himself
served, and in which his misfortune had befallen him. Almost
simultaneously with the shock which the sight of the well-known number
on the soldiers’ knapsacks gave him, arose in his mind the romantic,
ideal thought, of enlisting in the ranks of this same regiment, and
recovering, as a private soldier and unknown, that honour which as
officer he had lost. To this determination, the new necessity in which
he now stood for action and change of life, doubtless contributed,
though unconsciously. He offered himself to the sergeant; and,
notwithstanding that his dress indicated a mode of life unsuitable as
the antecedent to a soldier’s, his appearance, and the necessity for
recruits combined, led to his easy acceptance.
The English armies were employed in expelling the enemy from an invaded
and helpless country. Whatever might be the political motives which had
induced the Government to this measure, the young man was now able to
feel that he could go and fight, individually and for his part, in the
cause of liberty. He was free to possess his own motives for joining in
the execution of the schemes of those who commanded his commanders.
With a heavy heart, but with more of inward hope and strength than he
had ever known before, he marched with his comrades to the seaport and
embarked. It seemed to him that because he had done right in his last
trial, here was a new glorious chance held out to his hand. True, it was
a terrible change to pass from a woman in whom he had hoped to find
healing, into the society of rough men, to march with them,
“_mitgleichem Tritt und Schritt_,” up to the bristling bayonets or the
horrid vacancy of the cannon mouth. But it was the only cure for the
evil that consumed his life.
He reached the army in safety, and gave himself, with religious
assiduity, to the smallest duties of his new position. No one had a
brighter polish on his arms, or whiter belts than he. In the necessary
movements, he soon became precise to a degree that attracted the
attention of his officers; while his character was remarkable for all
the virtues belonging to a perfect soldier.
One day, as he stood sentry, he saw the eyes of his colonel intently
fixed on him. He felt his lip quiver, but he compressed and stilled it,
and tried to look as unconscious as he could; which effort was assisted
by the formal bearing required by his position. Now the colonel, such
had been the losses of the regiment, had been promoted from a
lieutenancy in the same, and had belonged to it at the time of the
ensign’s degradation. Indeed, had not the changes in the regiment been
so great, he could hardly have escaped so long without discovery. But
the poor fellow would have felt that his name was already free of
reproach, if he had seen what followed on the close inspection which had
awakened his apprehensions, and which, in fact, had convinced the
colonel of his identity with the disgraced ensign. With a hasty and less
soldierly step than usual the colonel entered his tent, threw himself on
his bed and wept like a child. When he rose he was overheard to say
these words--and these only escaped his lips: “He is nobler than I.”
But this officer showed himself worthy of commanding such men as this
private; for right nobly did he understand and meet his feelings. He
uttered no word of the discovery he had made, till years afterwards; but
it soon began to be remarked that whenever anything arduous, or in any
manner distinguished, had to be done, this man was sure to be of the
party appointed. In short, as often as he could, the colonel “set him in
the forefront of the battle.” Passing through all with wonderful escape,
he was soon as much noticed for his reckless bravery, as hitherto for
his precision in the discharge of duties bringing only commendation and
not honour. But his final lustration was at hand.
A great part of the army was hastening, by forced marches, to raise the
siege of a town which was already on the point of falling into the hands
of the enemy. Forming one of a reconnoitring party, which preceded the
main body at some considerable distance, he and his companions came
suddenly upon one of the enemy’s outposts, occupying a high, and on one
side precipitous rock, a short way from the town, which it commanded.
Retreat was impossible, for they were already discovered, and the
bullets were falling amongst them like the first of a hail-storm. The
only possibility of escape remaining for them was a nearly hopeless
improbability. It lay in forcing the post on this steep rock; which if
they could do before assistance came to the enemy, they might, perhaps,
be able to hold out, by means of its defences, till the arrival of the
army. Their position was at once understood by all; and, by a sudden,
simultaneous impulse, they found themselves halfway up the steep ascent,
and in the struggle of a close conflict, without being aware of any
order to that effect from their officer. But their courage was of no
avail; the advantages of the place were too great; and in a few minutes
the whole party was cut to pieces, or stretched helpless on the rock.
Our youth had fallen amongst the foremost; for a musket ball had grazed
his skull, and laid him insensible.
But consciousness slowly returned, and he succeeded at last in raising
himself and looking around him. The place was deserted. A few of his
friends, alive, but grievously wounded, lay near him. The rest were
dead. It appeared that, learning the proximity of the English forces
from this rencontre with part of their advanced guard, and dreading lest
the town, which was on the point of surrendering, should after all be
snatched from their grasp, the commander of the enemy’s forces had
ordered an immediate and general assault; and had for this purpose
recalled from their outposts the whole of his troops thus stationed,
that he might make the attempt with the utmost strength he could
accumulate.
As the youth’s power of vision returned, he perceived, from the height
where he lay, that the town was already in the hands of the enemy.
But looking down into the level space immediately below him, he started
to his feet at once; for a girl, bare-headed, was fleeing towards the
rock, pursued by several soldiers. “Aha!” said he, divining her
purpose--the soldiers behind and the rock before her--“I will help you
to die!” And he stooped and wrenched from the dead fingers of a sergeant
the sword which they clenched by the bloody hilt. A new throb of life
pulsed through him to his very finger-tips; and on the brink of the
unseen world he stood, with the blood rushing through his veins in a
wild dance of excitement. One who lay near him wounded, but recovered
afterwards, said that he looked like one inspired. With a keen eye he
watched the chase. The girl drew nigh; and rushed up the path near which
he was standing. Close on her footsteps came the soldiers, the distance
gradually lessening between them.
Not many paces higher up, was a narrower part of the ascent, where the
path was confined by great stones, or pieces of rock. Here had been the
chief defence in the preceding assault, and in it lay many bodies of his
friends. Thither he went and took his stand.
On the girl came, over the dead, with rigid hands and flying feet, the
bloodless skin drawn tight on her features, and her eyes awfully large
and wild. She did not see him though she bounded past so near that her
hair flew in his eyes. “Never mind!” said he, “we shall meet soon.” And
he stepped into the narrow path just in time to face her
pursuers--between her and them. Like the red lightning the bloody sword
fell, and a man beneath it. Cling! clang! went the echoes in the
rocks--and another man was down; for, in his excitement, he was a
destroying angel to the breathless pursuers. His stature rose, his chest
dilated; and as the third foe fell dead, the girl was safe; for her body
lay a broken, empty, but undesecrated temple, at the foot of the rock.
That moment his sword flew in shivers from his grasp. The next instant
he fell, pierced to the heart; and his spirit rose triumphant, free,
strong, and calm, above the stormy world, which at length lay vanquished
beneath him.
THE GRAY WOLF
One evening-twilight in spring, a young English student, who had
wandered northwards as far as the outlying fragments of Scotland called
the Orkney and Shetland Islands, found himself on a small island of the
latter group, caught in a storm of wind and hail, which had come on
suddenly. It was in vain to look about for any shelter; for not only did
the storm entirely obscure the landscape, but there was nothing around
him save a desert moss.
At length, however, as he walked on for mere walking’s sake, he found
himself on the verge of a cliff, and saw, over the brow of it, a few
feet below him, a ledge of rock, where he might find some shelter from
the blast, which blew from behind. Letting himself down by his hands, he
alighted upon something that crunched beneath his tread, and found the
bones of many small animals scattered about in front of a little cave in
the rock, offering the refuge he sought. He went in, and sat upon a
stone. The storm increased in violence, and as the darkness grew he
became uneasy, for he did not relish the thought of spending the night
in the cave. He had parted from his companions on the opposite side of
the island, and it added to his uneasiness that they must be full of
apprehension about him. At last there came a lull in the storm, and the
same instant he heard a footfall, stealthy and light as that of a wild
beast, upon the bones at the mouth of the cave. He started up in some
fear, though the least thought might have satisfied him that there could
be no very dangerous animals upon the island. Before he had time to
think, however, the face of a woman appeared in the opening. Eagerly the
wanderer spoke. She started at the sound of his voice. He could not see
her well, because she was turned towards the darkness of the cave.
“Will you tell me how to find my way across the moor to Shielness?” he
asked.
“You cannot find it to-night,” she answered, in a sweet tone, and with a
smile that bewitched him, revealing the whitest of teeth.
“What am I to do, then?”
“My mother will give you shelter, but that is all she has to offer.”
“And that is far more than I expected a minute ago,” he replied. “I
shall be most grateful.”
She turned in silence and left the cave. The youth followed.
She was barefooted, and her pretty brown feet went catlike over the
sharp stones, as she led the way down a rocky path to the shore. Her
garments were scanty and torn, and her hair blew tangled in the wind.
She seemed about five and twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept
clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was
very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and
smooth-skinned. Her thin nostrils were tremulous as eyelids, and her
lips, whose curves were faultless, had no colour to give sign of
indwelling blood. What her eyes were like he could not see, for she had
never lifted the delicate films of her eyelids.
At the foot of the cliff, they came upon a little hut leaning against
it, and having for its inner apartment a natural hollow within. Smoke
was spreading over the face of the rock, and the grateful odour of food
gave hope to the hungry student. His guide opened the door of the
cottage; he followed her in, and saw a woman bending over a fire in the
middle of the floor. On the fire lay a large fish broiling. The daughter
spoke a few words, and the mother turned and welcomed the stranger. She
had an old and very wrinkled, but honest face, and looked troubled. She
dusted the only chair in the cottage, and placed it for him by the side
of the fire, opposite the one window, whence he saw a little patch of
yellow sand over which the spent waves spread themselves out listlessly.
Under this window there was a bench, upon which the daughter threw
herself in an unusual posture, resting her chin upon her hand. A moment
after, the youth caught the first glimpse of her blue eyes. They were
fixed upon him with a strange look of greed, amounting to craving, but,
as if aware that they belied or betrayed her, she dropped them
instantly. The moment she veiled them, her face, notwithstanding its
colourless complexion, was almost beautiful.
When the fish was ready, the old woman wiped the deal table, steadied it
upon the uneven floor, and covered it with a piece of fine table-linen.
She then laid the fish on a wooden platter, and invited the guest to
help himself. Seeing no other provision, he pulled from his pocket a
hunting knife, and divided a portion from the fish, offering it to the
mother first.
“Come, my lamb,” said the old woman; and the daughter approached the
table. But her nostrils and mouth quivered with disgust.
The next moment she turned and hurried from the hut.
“She doesn’t like fish,” said the old woman, “and I haven’t anything
else to give her.”
“She does not seem in good health,” he rejoined.
The woman answered only with a sigh, and they ate their fish with the
help of a little rye bread. As they finished their supper, the youth
heard the sound as of the pattering of a dog’s feet upon the sand close
to the door; but ere he had time to look out of the window, the door
opened, and the young woman entered. She looked better, perhaps from
having just washed her face. She drew a stool to the corner of the fire
opposite him. But as she sat down, to his bewilderment, and even horror,
the student spied a single drop of blood on her white skin within her
torn dress. The woman brought out a jar of whisky, put a rusty old
kettle on the fire, and took her place in front of it. As soon as the
water boiled, she proceeded to make some toddy in a wooden bowl.
Meantime the youth could not take his eyes off the young woman, so that
at length he found himself fascinated, or rather bewitched. She kept her
eyes for the most part veiled with the loveliest eyelids fringed with
darkest lashes, and he gazed entranced; for the red glow of the little
oil-lamp covered all the strangeness of her complexion. But as soon as
he met a stolen glance out of those eyes unveiled, his soul shuddered
within him. Lovely face and craving eyes alternated fascination and
repulsion.
The mother placed the bowl in his hands. He drank sparingly, and passed
it to the girl. She lifted it to her lips, and as she tasted--only
tasted it--looked at him. He thought the drink must have been drugged
and have affected his brain. Her hair smoothed itself back, and drew her
forehead backwards with it; while the lower part of her face projected
towards the bowl, revealing, ere she sipped, her dazzling teeth in
strange prominence. But the same moment the vision vanished; she
returned the vessel to her mother, and rising, hurried out of the
cottage.
Then the old woman pointed to a bed of heather in one corner with a
murmured apology; and the student, wearied both with the fatigues of the
day and the strangeness of the night, threw himself upon it, wrapped in
his cloak. The moment he lay down, the storm began afresh, and the wind
blew so keenly through the crannies of the hut, that it was only by
drawing his cloak over his head that he could protect himself from its
currents. Unable to sleep, he lay listening to the uproar which grew in
violence, till the spray was dashing against the window. At length the
door opened, and the young woman came in, made up the fire, drew the
bench before it, and lay down in the same strange posture, with her chin
propped on her hand and elbow, and her face turned towards the youth. He
moved a little; she dropped her head, and lay on her face, with her arms
crossed beneath her forehead. The mother had disappeared.
Drowsiness crept over him. A movement of the bench roused him, and he
fancied he saw some four-footed creature as tall as a large dog trot
quietly out of the door. He was sure he felt a rush of cold wind. Gazing
fixedly through the darkness, he thought he saw the eyes of the damsel
encountering his, but a glow from the falling together of the remnants
of the fire revealed clearly enough that the bench was vacant. Wondering
what could have made her go out in such a storm, he fell fast asleep.
In the middle of the night he felt a pain in his shoulder, came broad
awake, and saw the gleaming eyes and grinning teeth of some animal close
to his face. Its claws were in his shoulder, and its mouth in the act of
seeking his throat. Before it had fixed its fangs, however, he had its
throat in one hand, and sought his knife with the other. A terrible
struggle followed; but regardless of the tearing claws, he found and
opened his knife. He had made one futile stab, and was drawing it for a
surer, when, with a spring of the whole body, and one wildly contorted
effort, the creature twisted its neck from his hold, and with something
betwixt a scream and a howl, darted from him. Again he heard the door
open; again the wind blew in upon him, and it continued blowing; a sheet
of spray dashed across the floor, and over his face. He sprung from his
couch and bounded to the door.
It was a wild night--dark, but for the flash of whiteness from the waves
as they broke within a few yards of the cottage; the wind was raving,
and the rain pouring down the air. A gruesome sound as of mingled
weeping and howling came from somewhere in the dark. He turned again
into the hut and closed the door, but could find no way of securing it.
The lamp was nearly out, and he could not be certain whether the form of
the young woman was upon the bench or not. Overcoming a strong
repugnance, he approached it, and put out his hands--there was nothing
there. He sat down and waited for the daylight: he dared not sleep any
more.
When the day dawned at length, he went out yet again, and looked around.
The morning was dim and gusty and gray. The wind had fallen, but the
waves were tossing wildly. He wandered up and down the little strand,
longing for more light.
At length he heard a movement in the cottage. By and by the voice of the
old woman called to him from the door.
“You’re up early, sir. I doubt you didn’t sleep well.”
“Not very well,” he answered. “But where is your daughter?”
“She’s not awake yet,” said the mother. “I’m afraid I have but a poor
breakfast for you. But you’ll take a dram and a bit of fish. It’s all
I’ve got.”
Unwilling to hurt her, though hardly in good appetite, he sat down at
the table. While they were eating, the daughter came in, but turned her
face away and went to the farther end of the hut. When she came forward
after a minute or two, the youth saw that her hair was drenched, and her
face whiter than before. She looked ill and faint, and when she raised
her eyes, all their fierceness had vanished, and sadness had taken its
place. Her neck was now covered with a cotton handkerchief. She was
modestly attentive to him, and no longer shunned his gaze. He was
gradually yielding to the temptation of braving another night in the
hut, and seeing what would follow, when the old woman spoke.
“The weather will be broken all day, sir,” she said. “You had better be
going, or your friends will leave without you.”
Ere he could answer, he saw such a beseeching glance on the face of the
girl, that he hesitated, confused. Glancing at the mother, he saw the
flash of wrath in her face. She rose and approached her daughter, with
her hand lifted to strike her. The young woman stooped her head with a
cry. He darted round the table to interpose between them. But the mother
had caught hold of her; the handkerchief had fallen from her neck; and
the youth saw five blue bruises on her lovely throat--the marks of the
four fingers and the thumb of a left hand. With a cry of horror he
darted from the house, but as he reached the door he turned. His hostess
was lying motionless on the floor, and a huge gray wolf came bounding
after him.
There was no weapon at hand; and if there had been, his inborn chivalry
would never have allowed him to harm a woman even under the guise of a
wolf. Instinctively, he set himself firm, leaning a little forward, with
half outstretched arms, and hands curved ready to clutch again at the
throat upon which he had left those pitiful marks. But the creature as
she sprung eluded his grasp, and just as he expected to feel her fangs,
he found a woman weeping on his bosom, with her arms around his neck.
The next instant, the gray wolf broke from him, and bounded howling up
the cliff. Recovering himself as he best might, the youth followed, for
it was the only way to the moor above, across which he must now make his
way to find his companions.
All at once he heard the sound of a crunching of bones--not as if a
creature was eating them, but as if they were ground by the teeth of
rage and disappointment; looking up, he saw close above him the mouth of
the little cavern in which he had taken refuge the day before. Summoning
all his resolution, he passed it slowly and softly. From within came the
sounds of a mingled moaning and growling.
Having reached the top, he ran at full speed for some distance across
the moor before venturing to look behind him. When at length he did so,
he saw, against the sky, the girl standing on the edge of the cliff,
wringing her hands. One solitary wail crossed the space between. She
made no attempt to follow him, and he reached the opposite shore in
safety.
UNCLE CORNELIUS HIS STORY
It was a dull evening in November. A drizzling mist had been falling all
day about the old farm. Harry Heywood and his two sisters sat in the
house-place, expecting a visit from their uncle, Cornelius Heywood. This
uncle lived alone, occupying the first floor above a chemist’s shop in
the town, and had just enough of money over to buy books that nobody
seemed ever to have heard of but himself; for he was a student in all
those regions of speculation in which anything to be called knowledge is
impossible.
“What a dreary night!” said Kate. “I wish uncle would come and tell us a
story.”
“A cheerful wish,” said Harry. “Uncle Cornie is a lively
companion--isn’t he? He cant even blunder through a Joe Miller without
tacking a moral to it, and then trying to persuade you that the joke of
it depends on the moral.”
“Here he comes!” said Kate, as three distinct blows with the knob of his
walking-stick announced the arrival of Uncle Cornelius. She ran to the
door to open it.
The air had been very still all day, but as he entered he seemed to have
brought the wind with him, for the first moan of it pressed against
rather than shook the casement of the low-ceiled room.
Uncle Cornelius was very tall, and very thin, and very pale, with large
gray eyes that looked greatly larger because he wore spectacles of the
most delicate hair-steel, with the largest pebble-eyes that ever were
seen. He gave them a kindly greeting, but too much in earnest even in
shaking hands to smile over it. He sat down in the arm-chair by the
chimney corner.
I have been particular in my description of him, in order that my reader
may give due weight to his words. I am such a believer in words, that I
believe everything depends on who says them. Uncle Cornelius Heywood’s
story told word for word by Uncle Timothy Warren, would not have been
the same story at all. Not one of the listeners would have believed a
syllable of it from the lips of round-bodied, red-faced, small-eyed,
little Uncle Tim; whereas from Uncle Cornie--disbelieve one of his
stories if you could!
One word more concerning him. His interest in everything conjectured or
believed relative to the awful borderland of this world and the next,
was only equalled by his disgust at the vulgar, unimaginative forms
which curiosity about such subjects has assumed in the present day. With
a yearning after the unseen like that of a child for the lifting of the
curtain of a theatre, he declared that, rather than accept such a
spirit-world as the would-be seers of the nineteenth century thought or
pretended to reveal,--the prophets of a pauperised, workhouse
immortality, invented by a poverty-stricken soul, and a sense so greedy
that it would gorge on carrion,--he would rejoice to believe that a man
had just as much of a soul as the cabbage of Iamblichus, namely, an
aerial double of his body.
“I’m so glad you’re come, uncle!” said Kate. “Why wouldn’t you come to
dinner? We have been so gloomy!”
“Well, Katey, you know I don’t admire eating. I never could bear to see
a cow tearing up the grass with her long tongue.” As he spoke he looked
very much like a cow. He had a way of opening his jaws while he kept his
lips closely pressed together, that made his cheeks fall in, and his
face look awfully long and dismal. “I consider eating,” he went on,
“such an animal exercise that it ought always to be performed in
private. You never saw me dine, Kate.”
“Never, uncle; but I have seen you drink;--nothing but water, I must
confess.”
“Yes that is another affair. According to one eyewitness that is no more
than the disembodied can do. I must confess, however, that, although
well attested, the story is to me scarcely credible. Fancy a glass of
Bavarian beer lifted into the air without a visible hand, turned upside
down, and set empty on the table!--and no splash on the floor or
anywhere else!”
A solitary gleam of humour shone through the great eyes of the
spectacles as he spoke.
“Oh, uncle! how can you believe such nonsense!” said Janet.
“I did not say I believed it--did I? But why not? The story has at least
a touch of imagination in it.”
“That is a strange reason for believing a thing, uncle,” said Harry.
“You might have a worse, Harry. I grant it is not sufficient; but it is
better than that commonplace aspect which is the ground of most faith. I
believe I did say that the story puzzled me.”
“But how can you give it any quarter at all, uncle?”
“It does me no harm. There it is--between the boards of an old German
book. There let it remain.”
“Well, you will never persuade me to believe such things,” said Janet.
“Wait till I ask you, Janet,” returned her uncle, gravely. “I have not
the slightest desire to convince you. How did we get into this
unprofitable current of talk? We will change it at once. How are
consols, Harry?”
“Oh, uncle!” said Kate, “we were longing for a story, and just as I
thought you were coming to one, off you go to consols!”
“I thought a ghost story at least was coming,” said Janet.
“You did your best to stop it, Janet,” said Harry.
Janet began an angry retort, but Cornelius interrupted her. “You never
heard me tell a ghost story, Janet.”
“You have just told one about a drinking ghost, uncle,” said Janet--in
such a tone that Cornelius replied--
“Well, take that for your story, and let us talk of something else.”
Janet apparently saw that she had been rude, and said as sweetly as she
might--“Ah! but you didn’t make that one, uncle. You got it out of a
German book.”
“Make it!--Make a ghost story!” repeated Cornelius. “No; that I never
did.”
“Such things are not to be trifled with, are they?” said Janet.
“I at least have no inclination to trifle with them.”
“But, really and truly, uncle,” persisted Janet, “you don’t believe in
such things?”
“Why should I either believe or disbelieve in them? They are not
essential to salvation, I presume.”
“You must do the one or the other, I suppose.”
“I beg your pardon. You suppose wrong. It would take twice the proof I
have ever had to make me believe in them; and exactly your prejudice,
and allow me to say ignorance, to make me disbelieve in them. Neither is
within my reach. I postpone judgment. But you, young people, of course,
are wiser, and know all about the question.”
“Oh, uncle! I’m so sorry!” said Kate. “I’m sure I did not mean to vex
you.”
“Not at all, not at all, my dear.--It wasn’t you.”
“Do you know,” Kate went on, anxious to prevent anything unpleasant, for
there was something very black perched on Janet’s forehead, “I have
taken to reading about that kind of thing.”
“I beg you will give it up at once. You will bewilder your brains till
you are ready to believe anything, if only it be absurd enough. Nay, you
may come to find the element of vulgarity essential to belief. I should
be sorry to the heart to believe concerning a horse or dog what they
tell you nowadays about Shakespeare and Burns. What have you been
reading, my girl?”
“Don’t be alarmed, uncle. Only some Highland legends, which are too
absurd either for my belief or for your theories.”
“I don’t know that, Kate.”
“Why, what could you do with such shapeless creatures as haunt their
fords and pools for instance? They are as featureless as the faces of
the mountains.”
“And so much the more terrible.”
“But that does not make it easier to believe in them,” said Harry.
“I only said,” returned his uncle, “that their shapelessness adds to
their horror.”
“But you allowed--almost, at least, uncle,” said Kate, “that you could
find a place in your theories even for those shapeless creatures.”
Cornelius sat silent for a moment; then, having first doubled the length
of his face, and restored it to its natural condition, said
thoughtfully, “I suspect, Katey, if you were to come upon an
ichthyosaurus or a pterodactyl asleep in the shubbery, you would hardly
expect your report of it to be believed all at once either by Harry or
Janet.”
“I suppose not, uncle. But I can’t see what--”
“Of course such a thing could not happen here and now. But there was a
time when and a place where such a thing may have happened. Indeed, in
my time, a traveller or two have got pretty soundly disbelieved for
reporting what they saw,--the last of an expiring race, which had
strayed over the natural verge of its history, coming to life in some
neglected swamp, itself a remnant of the slime of Chaos.”
“I never heard you talk like that before, uncle,” said Harry. “If you go
on like that, you’ll land me in a swamp, I’m afraid.”
“I wasn’t talking to you at all, Harry. Kate challenged me to find a
place for kelpies, and such like, in the theories she does me the honour
of supposing I cultivate.”
“Then you think, uncle, that all these stories are only legends which,
if you could follow them up, would lead you back to some one of the
awful monsters that have since quite disappeared from the earth.”
“It is possible those stories may be such legends; but that was not what
I intended to lead you to. I gave you that only as something like what I
am going to say now. What if,--mind, I only suggest it,--what if the
direful creatures, whose report lingers in these tales, should have an
origin far older still? What if they were the remnants of a vanishing
period of the earth’s history long antecedent to the birth of mastodon
and iguanodon; a stage, namely, when the world, as we call it, had not
yet become quite visible, was not yet so far finished as to part from
the invisible world that was its mother, and which, on its part, had not
then become quite invisible--was only almost such; and when, as a
credible consequence, strange shapes of those now invisible regions,
Gorgons and Chimaeras dire, might be expected to gloom out occasionally
from the awful Fauna of an ever-generating world upon that one which was
being born of it. Hence, the life-periods of a world being long and
slow, some of these huge, unformed bulks of half-created matter might,
somehow, like the megatherium of later times,--a baby creation to
them,--roll at age-long intervals, clothed in a mighty terror of
shapelessness into the half-recognition of human beings, whose
consternation at the uncertain vision were barrier enough to prevent all
further knowledge of its substance.”
“I begin to have some notion of your meaning, uncle,” said Kate.
“But then,” said Janet, “all that must be over by this time. That world
has been invisible now for many years.”
“Ever since you were born, I suppose, Janet. The changes of a world are
not to be measured by the changes of its generations.”
“Oh, but, uncle, there can’t be any such things. You know that as well
as I do.”
“Yes, just as well, and no better.”
“There can’t be any ghosts now. Nobody believes such things.”
“Oh, as to ghosts, that is quite another thing. I did not know you were
talking with reference to them. It is no wonder if one can get nothing
sensible out of you, Janet, when your discrimination is no greater than
to lump everything marvellous, kelpies, ghosts, vampires, doubles,
witches, fairies, nightmares, and I don’t know what all, under the one
head of ghosts; and we haven’t been saying a word about them. If one
were to disprove to you the existence of the afreets of Eastern tales,
you would consider the whole argument concerning the reappearance of the
departed upset. I congratulate you on your powers of analysis and
induction, Miss Janet. But it matters very little whether we believe in
ghosts, as you say, or not, provided we believe that we are ghosts--that
within this body, which so many people are ready to consider their own
very selves, their lies a ghostly embryo, at least, which has an inner
side to it God only can see, which says I concerning itself, and which
will soon have to know whether or not it can appear to those whom it has
left behind, and thus solve the question of ghosts for itself, at
least.”
“Then you do believe in ghosts, uncle?” said Janet, in a tone that
certainly was not respectful.
“Surely I said nothing of the sort, Janet. The man most convinced that
he had himself had such an interview as you hint at, would find--ought
to find it impossible to convince any one else of it.”
“You are quite out of my depth, uncle,” said Harry. “Surely any honest
man ought to be believed?”
“Honesty is not all, by any means, that is necessary to being believed.
It is impossible to convey a conviction of anything. All you can do is
to convey a conviction that you are convinced. Of course, what satisfied
you might satisfy another; but, till you can present him with the
sources of your conviction, you cannot present him with the
conviction--and perhaps not even then.”
“You can tell him all about, it, can’t you?”
“Is telling a man about a ghost, affording him the source of your
conviction? Is it the same as a ghost appearing to him? Really,
Harry!--You cannot even convey the impression a dream has made upon
you.”
“But isn’t that just because it is only a dream?”
“Not at all. The impression may be deeper and clearer on your mind than
any fact of the next morning will make. You will forget the next day
altogether, but the impression of the dream will remain through all the
following whirl and storm of what you call facts. Now a conviction may
be likened to a deep impression on the judgment or the reason, or both.
No one can feel it but the person who is convinced. It cannot be
conveyed.”
“I fancy that is just what those who believe in spirit-rapping would
say.”
“There are the true and false of convictions, as of everything else. I
mean that a man may take that for a conviction in his own mind which is
not a conviction, but only resembles one. But those to whom you refer
profess to appeal to facts. It is on the ground of those facts, and with
the more earnestness the more reason they can give for receiving them as
facts, that I refuse all their deductions with abhorrence. I mean that,
if what they say is true, the thinker must reject with contempt the
claim to anything like revelation therein.”
“Then you do not believe in ghosts, after all?” said Kate, in a tone of
surprise.
“I did not say so, my dear. Will you be reasonable, or will you not?”
“Dear uncle, do tell us what you really think.”
“I have been telling you what I think ever since I came, Katey; and you
won’t take in a word I say.”
“I have been taking in every word, uncle, and trying hard to understand
it as well.--Did you ever see a ghost, uncle?”
Cornelius Heywood was silent. He shut his lips and opened his jaws till
his cheeks almost met in the vacuum. A strange expression crossed the
strange countenance, and the great eyes of his spectacles looked as if,
at the very moment, they were seeing something no other spectacles could
see. Then his jaws closed with a snap, his countenance brightened, a
flash of humour came through the goggle eyes of pebble, and, at length,
he actually smiled as he said--“Really, Katey, you must take me for a
simpleton!”
“How, uncle?”
“To think, if I had ever seen a ghost, I would confess the fact before a
set of creatures like you--all spinning your webs like so many spiders
to catch and devour old Daddy Longlegs.”
By this time Harry had grown quite grave. “Indeed, I am very sorry,
uncle,” he said, “if I have deserved such a rebuke.”
“No, no, my boy,” said Cornelius; “I did not mean it more than half. If
I had meant it, I would not have said it. If you really would like--”
Here he paused.
“Indeed we should, uncle,” said Kate, earnestly. “You should have heard
what we were saying just before you came in.”
“All you were saying, Katey?”
“Yes,” answered Kate, thoughtfully. “The worst we said was that you
could not tell a story without--well, we did say tacking a moral to it.”
“Well, well! I mustn’t push it. A man has no right to know what people
say about him. It unfits him for occupying his real position amongst
them. He, least of all, has anything to do with it. If his friends won’t
defend him, he can’t defend himself. Besides, what people say is so
often untrue!--I don’t mean to others, but to themselves. Their hearts
are more honest than their mouths. But Janet doesn’t want a strange
story, I am sure.”
Janet certainly was not one to have chosen for a listener to such a
tale. Her eyes were so small that no satisfaction could possibly come of
it. “Oh! I don’t mind, uncle,” she said, with half-affected
indifference, as she searched in her box for silk to mend her gloves.
“You are not very encouraging, I must say,” returned her uncle, making
another cow-face.
“I will go away, if you like,” said Janet, pretending to rise.
“No, never mind,” said her uncle hastily. “If you don’t want me to tell
it, I want you to hear it; and, before I have done, that may have come
to the same thing perhaps.”
“Then you really are going to tell us a ghost story!” said Kate, drawing
her chair nearer to her uncle’s; and then, finding this did not satisfy
her sense of propinquity to the source of the expected pleasure, drawing
a stool from the corner, and seating herself almost on the hearth-rug at
his knee.
“I did not say so,” returned Cornelius, once more. “I said I would tell
you a strange story. You may call it a ghost story if you like; I do not
pretend to determine what it is. I confess it will look like one,
though.”
After so many delays, Uncle Cornelius now plunged almost hurriedly into
his narration.
“In the year 1820,” he said, “in the month of August, I fell in love.”
Here the girls glanced at each other. The idea of Uncle Cornie in love,
and in the very same century in which they were now listening to the
confession, was too astonishing to pass without ocular remark; but, if
he observed it, he took no notice of it; he did not even pause. “In the
month of September, I was refused. Consequently, in the month of
October, I was ready to fall in love again. Take particular care of
yourself, Harry, for a whole month, at least, after your first
disappointment; for you will never be more likely to do a foolish thing.
Please yourself after the second. If you are silly then, you may take
what you get, for you will deserve it--except it be good fortune.”
“Did you do a foolish thing then, uncle?” asked Harry, demurely.
“I did, as you will see; for I fell in love again.”
“I don’t see anything so very foolish in that.”
“I have repented it since, though. Don’t interrupt me again, please. In
the middle of October, then, in the year 1820, in the evening, I was
walking across Russell Square, on my way home from the British Museum,
where I had been reading all day. You see I have a full intention of
being precise, Janet.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why you make the remark to me, uncle,” said
Janet, with an involuntary toss of her head. Her uncle only went on with
his narrative.
“I begin at the very beginning of my story,” he said; “for I want to be
particular as to everything that can appear to have had anything to do
with what came afterwards. I had been reading, I say, all the morning in
the British Museum; and, as I walked, I took off my spectacles to ease
my eyes. I need not tell you that I am short-sighted now, for that you
know well enough. But I must tell you that I was short-sighted then, and
helpless enough without my spectacles, although I was not quite so much
so as I am now;--for I find it all nonsense about short-sighted eyes
improving with age. Well, I was walking along the south side of Russell
Square, with my spectacles in my hand, and feeling a little bewildered
in consequence--for it was quite the dusk of the evening, and
short-sighted people require more light than others. I was feeling, in
fact, almost blind. I had got more than half-way to the other side,
when, from the crossing that cuts off the corner in the direction of
Montagu Place, just as I was about to turn towards it, an old lady
stepped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, looked at me for a moment,
and passed--an occurrence not very remarkable, certainly. But the lady
was remarkable, and so was her dress. I am not good at observing, and I
am still worse at describing dress, therefore I can only say that hers
reminded me of an old picture--that is, I had never seen anything like
it, except in old pictures. She had no bonnet, and looked as if she had
walked straight out of an ancient drawing-room in her evening attire. Of
her face I shall say nothing now. The next instant I met a man on the
crossing, who stopped and addressed me. So short-sighted was I that,
although I recognised his voice as one I ought to know, I could not
identify him until I had put on my spectacles, which I did instinctively
in the act of returning his greeting. At the same moment I glanced over
my shoulder after the old lady. She was nowhere to be seen.
“‘What are you looking at?’ asked James Hetheridge.
“‘I was looking after that old lady,’ I answered, ‘but I can’t see her.’
“‘What old lady?’ said Hetheridge, with just a touch of impatience.
“‘You must have seen her,’ I returned. ‘You were not more than three
yards behind her.’
“‘Where is she then?’
“‘She must have gone down one of the areas, I think. But she looked a
lady, though an old-fashioned one.’
“‘Have you been dining?’ asked James, in a tone of doubtful inquiry.
“‘No,’ I replied, not suspecting the insinuation; ‘I have only just come
from the Museum.’
“‘Then I advise you to call on your medical man before you go home.’
“‘Medical man!’ I returned; ‘I have no medical man. What do you mean? I
never was better in my life.’
“‘I mean that there was no old lady. It was an illusion, and that
indicates something wrong. Besides, you did not know me when I spoke to
you.’
“‘That is nothing,” I returned. ‘I had just taken off my spectacles, and
without them I shouldn’t know my own father.’
“‘How was it you saw the old lady, then?’
“The affair was growing serious under my friend’s cross-questioning. I
did not at all like the idea of his supposing me subject to
hallucinations. So I answered, with a laugh, ‘Ah! to be sure, that
explains it. I am so blind without my spectacles, that I shouldn’t know
an old lady from a big dog.’
“‘There was no big dog,’ said Hetheridge, shaking his head, as the fact
for the first time dawned upon me that, although I had seen the old lady
clearly enough to make a sketch of her, even to the features of her
care-worn, eager old face, I had not been able to recognise the
well-known countenance of James Hetheridge.
“‘That’s what comes of reading till the optic nerve is weakened,” he
went on. ‘You will cause yourself serious injury if you do not pull up
in time. I’ll tell you what; I’m going home next week--will you go with
me?’
“‘You are very kind,’ I answered, not altogether rejecting the proposal,
for I felt that a little change to the country would be pleasant, and I
was quite my own master. For I had unfortunately means equal to my
wants, and had no occasion to follow any profession--not a very
desirable thing for a young man, I can tell you, Master Harry. I need
not keep you over the commonplaces of pressing and yielding. It is
enough to say that he pressed and that I yielded. The day was fixed for
our departure together; but something or other, I forget what, occurred,
to make him advance the date, and it was resolved that I should follow
later in the month.
“It was a drizzly afternoon in the beginning of the last week of October
when I left the town of Bradford in a post-chaise to drive to Lewton
Grange, the property of my friend’s father. I had hardly left the town,
and the twilight had only begun to deepen, when, glancing from one of
the windows of the chaise, I fancied I saw, between me and the hedge,
the dim figure of a horse keeping pace with us. I thought, in the first
interval of unreason, that it was a shadow from my own horse, but
reminded myself the next moment that there could be no shadow where
there was no light. When I looked again, I was at the first glance
convinced that my eyes had deceived me. At the second, I believed once
more that a shadowy something, with the movements of a horse in harness,
was keeping pace with us. I turned away again with some discomfort, and
not till we had reached an open moorland road, whence a little watery
light was visible on the horizon, could I summon up courage enough to
look out once more. Certainly then there was nothing to be seen, and I
persuaded myself that it had been all a fancy, and lighted a cigar. With
my feet on the cushions before me, I had soon lifted myself on the
clouds of tobacco far above all the terrors of the night, and believed
them banished for ever. But, my cigar coming to an end just as we turned
into the avenue that led up to the Grange, I found myself once more
glancing nervously out of the window. The moment the trees were about
me, there was, if not a shadowy horse out there by the side of the
chaise, yet certainly more than half that conviction in here in my
consciousness. When I saw my friend, however, standing on the doorstep,
dark against the glow of the hall fire, I forgot all about it; and I
need not add that I did not make it a subject of conversation when I
entered, for I was well aware that it was essential to a man’s
reputation that his senses should be accurate, though his heart might
without prejudice swarm with shadows, and his judgment be a very stable
of hobbies.
“I was kindly received. Mrs. Hetheridge had been dead for some years,
and Laetitia, the eldest of the family, was at the head of the
household. She had two sisters, little more than girls. The father was a
burly, yet gentlemanlike Yorkshire squire, who ate well, drank well,
looked radiant, and hunted twice a week. In this pastime his son joined
him when in the humour, which happened scarcely so often. I, who had
never crossed a horse in my life, took his apology for not being able to
mount me very coolly, assuring him that I would rather loiter about with
a book than be in at the death of the best-hunted fox in Yorkshire.
“I very soon found myself at home with the Hetheridges; and very soon
again I began to find myself not so much at home; for Miss
Hetheridge--Laetitia as I soon ventured to call her--was fascinating. I
have told you, Katey, that there was an empty place in my heart. Look to
the door then, Katey. That was what made me so ready to fall in love
with Laetitia. Her figure was graceful, and I think, even now, her face
would have been beautiful but for a certain contraction of the skin over
the nostrils, suggesting an invisible thumb and forefinger pinching
them, which repelled me, although I did not then know what it indicated.
I had not been with her one evening before the impression it made on me
had vanished, and that so entirely that I could hardly recall the
perception of the peculiarity which had occasioned it. Her observation
was remarkably keen, and her judgment generally correct. She had great
confidence in it herself; nor was she devoid of sympathy with some of
the forms of human imagination, only they never seemed to possess for
her any relation to practical life. That was to be ordered by the
judgment alone. I do not mean she ever said so. I am only giving the
conclusions I came to afterwards. It is not necessary that you should
have any more thorough acquaintance with her mental character. One point
in her moral nature, of special consequence to my narrative, will show
itself by and by.
“I did all I could to make myself agreeable to her, and the more I
succeeded the more delightful she became in my eyes. We walked in the
garden and grounds together; we read, or rather I read and she
listened;--read poetry, Katey--sometimes till we could not read any more
for certain haziness and huskiness which look now, I am afraid,
considerably more absurd than they really were, or even ought to look.
In short, I considered myself thoroughly in love with her.”
“And wasn’t she in love with you, uncle?”
“Don’t interrupt me, child. I don’t know. I hoped so then. I hope the
contrary now. She liked me I am sure. That is not much to say. Liking is
very pleasant and very cheap. Love is as rare as a star.”
“I thought the stars were anything but rare, uncle.”
“That’s because you never went out to find one for yourself, Katey. They
would prove a few miles apart then.”
“But it would be big enough when I did find it.”
“Right, my dear. That is the way with love.--Laetitia was a good
housekeeper. Everything was punctual as clockwork. I use the word
advisedly. If her father, who was punctual to one date,--the
dinner-hour,--made any remark to the contrary as he took up the
carving-knife, Laetitia would instantly send one of her sisters to
question the old clock in the hall, and report the time to half a
minute. It was sure to be found that, if there was a mistake, the
mistake was in the clock. But although it was certainly a virtue to have
her household in such perfect order, it was not a virtue to be impatient
with every infringement of its rules on the part of others. She was very
severe, for instance, upon her two younger sisters if, the moment after
the second bell had rung, they were not seated at the dinner-table,
washed and aproned. Order was a very idol with her. Hence the house was
too tidy for any sense of comfort. If you left an open book on the
table, you would, on returning to the room a moment after, find it put
aside. What the furniture of the drawing-room was like, I never saw; for
not even on Christmas Day, which was the last day I spent there, was it
uncovered. Everything in it was kept in bibs and pinafores. Even the
carpet was covered with a cold and slippery sheet of brown holland. Mr.
Hetheridge never entered that room, and therein was wise. James
remonstrated once. She answered him quite kindly, even playfully, but no
change followed. What was worse, she made very wretched tea. Her father
never took tea; neither did James. I was rather fond of it, but I soon
gave it up. Everything her father partook of was first-rate. Everything
else was somewhat poverty-stricken. My pleasure in Laetitia’s society
prevented me from making practical deductions from such trifles.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you knew anything about eating, uncle,” said
Janet.
“The less a man eats, the more he likes to have it good, Janet. In
short,--there can be no harm in saying it now,--Laetitia was so far from
being like the name of her baptism,--and most names are so good that
they are worth thinking about; no children are named after bad
ideas,--Laetitia was so far unlike hers as to be stingy--an abominable
fault. But, I repeat, the notion of such a fact was far from me then.
And now for my story.
“The first of November was a very lovely day, quite one of the ‘halcyon
days’ of ‘St. Martin’s summer.’ I was sitting in a little arbour I had
just discovered, with a book in my hand,--not reading, however, but
day-dreaming,--when, lifting my eyes from the ground, I was startled to
see, through a thin shrub in front of the arbour, what seemed the form
of an old lady seated, apparently reading from a book on her knee. The
sight instantly recalled the old lady of Russell Square. I started to my
feet, and then, clear of the intervening bush, saw only a great stone
such as abounded on the moors in the neighbourhood, with a lump of
quartz set on the top of it. Some childish taste had put it there for an
ornament. Smiling at my own folly, I sat down again, and reopened my
book. After reading for a while, I glanced up again, and once more
started to my feet, overcome by the fancy that there verily sat the old
lady reading. You will say it indicated an excited condition of the
brain. Possibly; but I was, as far as I can recall, quite collected and
reasonable. I was almost vexed this second time, and sat down once more
to my book. Still, every time I looked up, I was startled afresh. I
doubt, however, if the trifle is worth mentioning, or has any
significance even in relation to what followed.
“After dinner I strolled out by myself, leaving father and son over
their claret. I did not drink wine; and from the lawn I could see the
windows of the library, whither Laetitia commonly retired from the
dinner-table. It was a very lovely soft night. There was no moon, but
the stars looked wider awake than usual. Dew was falling, but the grass
was not yet wet, and I wandered about on it for half an hour. The
stillness was somehow strange. It had a wonderful feeling in it as if
something were expected--as if the quietness were the mould in which
some event or other was about to be cast.
“Even then I was a reader of certain sorts of recondite lore. Suddenly I
remembered that this was the eve of All Souls. This was the night on
which the dead came out of their graves to visit their old homes. ‘Poor
dead!’ I thought with myself; ‘have you any place to call a home now? If
you have, surely you will not wander back here, where all that you
called home has either vanished or given itself to others, to be their
home now and yours no more! What an awful doom the old fancy has
allotted you! To dwell in your graves all the year, and creep out, this
one night, to enter at the midnight door, left open for welcome! A poor
welcome truly!--just an open door, a clean-swept floor, and a fire to
warm your rain-sodden limbs! The household asleep, and the house-place
swarming with the ghosts of ancient times,--the miser, the spendthrift,
the profligate, the coquette,--for the good ghosts sleep, and are
troubled with no waking like yours! Not one man, sleepless like
yourselves, to question you, and be answered after the fashion of the
old nursery rhyme--
“‘What makes your eyes so holed?’
‘I’ve lain so long among the mould.’
‘What makes your feet so broad?’
‘I’ve walked more than ever I rode!’
“‘Yet who can tell?’ I went on to myself. ‘It may be your hell to return
thus. It may be that only on this one night of all the year you can show
yourselves to him who can see you, but that the place where you were
wicked is the Hades to which you are doomed for ages.’ I thought and
thought till I began to feel the air alive about me, and was enveloped
in the vapours that dim the eyes of those who strain them for one peep
through the dull mica windows that will not open on the world of ghosts.
At length I cast my fancies away, and fled from them to the library,
where the bodily presence of Laetitia made the world of ghosts appear
shadowy indeed.
“‘What a reality there is about a bodily presence!’ I said to myself, as
I took my chamber-candle in my hand. ‘But what is there more real in a
body?’ I said again, as I crossed the hall. ‘Surely nothing,’ I went on,
as I ascended the broad staircase to my room. ‘The body must vanish. If
there be a spirit, that will remain. A body can but vanish. A ghost can
appear.’
“I woke in the morning with a sense of such discomfort as made me spring
out of bed at once. My foot lighted upon my spectacles. How they came to
be on the floor I could not tell, for I never took them off when I went
to bed. When I lifted them I found they were in two pieces; the bridge
was broken. This was awkward. I was so utterly helpless without them!
Indeed, before I could lay my hand on my hair-brush I had to peer
through one eye of the parted pair. When I looked at my watch after I
was dressed, I found I had risen an hour earlier than usual. I groped my
way downstairs to spend the hour before breakfast in the library.
“No sooner was I seated with a book than I heard the voice of Laetitia
scolding the butler, in no very gentle tones, for leaving the garden
door open all night. The moment I heard this, the strange occurrences I
am about to relate began to dawn upon my memory. The door had been open
the night long between All Saints and All Souls. In the middle of that
night I awoke suddenly. I knew it was not the morning by the sensations
I had, for the night feels altogether different from the morning. It was
quite dark. My heart was beating violently, and I either hardly could or
hardly dared breathe. A nameless terror was upon me, and my sense of
hearing was, apparently by the force of its expectation, unnaturally
roused and keen. There it was--a slight noise in the room!--slight, but
clear, and with an unknown significance about it! It was awful to think
it would come again. I do believe it was only one of those creaks in the
timbers which announce the torpid, age-long, sinking flow of every house
back to the dust--a motion to which the flow of the glacier is as a
torrent, but which is no less inevitable and sure. Day and night it
ceases not; but only in the night, when house and heart are still, do we
hear it. No wonder it should sound fearful! for are we not the immortal
dwellers in ever-crumbling clay? The clay is so near us, and yet not of
us, that its every movement starts a fresh dismay. For what will its
final ruin disclose? When it falls from about us, where shall we find
that we have existed all the time?
“My skin tingled with the bursting of the moisture from its pores.
Something was in the room beside me. A confused, indescribable sense of
utter loneliness, and yet awful presence, was upon me, mingled with a
dreary, hopeless desolation, as of burnt-out love and aimless life. All
at once I found myself sitting up. The terror that a cold hand might be
laid upon me, or a cold breath blow on me, or a corpse-like face bend
down through the darkness over me, had broken my bonds!--I would meet
half-way whatever might be approaching. The moment that my will burst
into action the terror began to ebb.
“The room in which I slept was a large one, perfectly dreary with
tidiness. I did not know till afterwards that it was Laetitia’s room,
which she had given up to me rather than prepare another. The furniture,
all but one article, was modern and commonplace. I could not help
remarking to myself afterwards how utterly void the room was of the
nameless charm of feminine occupancy. I had seen nothing to wake a
suspicion of its being a lady’s room. The article I have excepted was an
ancient bureau, elaborate and ornate, which stood on one side of the
large bow window. The very morning before, I had seen a bunch of keys
hanging from the upper part of it, and had peeped in. Finding however,
that the pigeon-holes were full of papers, I closed it at once. I should
have been glad to use it, but clearly it was not for me. At that bureau
the figure of a woman was now seated in the posture of one writing. A
strange dim light was around her, but whence it proceeded I never
thought of inquiring. As if I, too, had stepped over the bourne, and was
a ghost myself, all fear was now gone. I got out of bed, and softly
crossed the room to where she was seated. ‘If she should be beautiful!’
I thought--for I had often dreamed of a beautiful ghost that made love
to me. The figure did not move. She was looking at a faded brown paper.
‘Some old love-letter,’ I thought, and stepped nearer. So cool was I
now, that I actually peeped over her shoulder. With mingled surprise and
dismay I found that the dim page over which she bent was that of an old
account-book. Ancient household records, in rusty ink, held up to the
glimpses of the waning moon, which shone through the parting in the
curtains, their entries of shillings and pence!--Of pounds there was not
one. No doubt pounds and farthings are much the same in the world of
thought--the true spirit-world; but in the ghost-world this eagerness
over shillings and pence must mean something awful! I To think that
coins which had since been worn smooth in other pockets and purses,
which had gone back to the Mint, and been melted down, to come out again
and yet again with the heads of new kings and queens,--that dinners,
eaten by men and women and children whose bodies had since been eaten by
the worms,--that polish for the floors, inches of whose thickness had
since been worn away,--that the hundred nameless trifles of a life
utterly vanished, should be perplexing, annoying, and worst of all,
interesting the soul of a ghost who had been in Hades for centuries! The
writing was very old-fashioned, and the words were contracted. I could
read nothing but the moneys and one single entry--‘Corinths, Vs.’
“Currants for a Christmas pudding, most likely!--Ah, poor lady! the
pudding and not the Christmas was her care; not the delight of the
children over it, but the beggarly pence which it cost. And she cannot
get it out of her head, although her brain was ‘powdered all as thin as
flour’ ages ago in the mortar of Death. ‘Alas, poor ghost!’ It needs no
treasured hoard left behind, no floor stained with the blood of the
murdered child, no wickedly hidden parchment of landed rights! An old
account-book is enough for the hell of the housekeeping gentlewoman!
“She never lifted her face, or seemed to know that I stood behind her. I
left her, and went into the bow window, where I could see her face. I
was right. It was the same old lady I had met in Russell Square, walking
in front of James Hetheridge. Her withered lips went moving as if they
would have uttered words had the breath been commissioned thither; her
brow was contracted over her thin nose; and once and again her shining
forefinger went up to her temple as if she were pondering some deep
problem of humanity. How long I stood gazing at her I do not know, but
at last I withdrew to my bed, and left her struggling to solve that
which she could never solve thus. It was the symbolic problem of her own
life, and she had failed to read it. I remember nothing more. She may be
sitting there still, solving at the insolvable.
“I should have felt no inclination, with the broad sun of the squire’s
face, the keen eyes of James, and the beauty of Laetitia before me at
the breakfast table, to say a word about what I had seen, even if I had
not been afraid of the doubt concerning my sanity which the story would
certainly awaken. What with the memories of the night and the want of my
spectacles, I passed a very dreary day, dreading the return of the
night, for, cool as I had been in her presence, I could not regard the
possible reappearance of the ghost with equanimity. But when the night
did come, I slept soundly till the morning.
“The next day, not being able to read with comfort, I went wandering
about the place, and at length began to fit the outside and inside of
the house together. It was a large and rambling edifice, parts of it
very old, parts comparatively modern. I first found my own window, which
looked out of the back. Below this window, on one side, there was a
door. I wondered whither it led, but found it locked. At the moment
James approached from the stables. ‘Where does this door lead?’ I asked
him. ‘I will get the key,’ he answered. ‘It is rather a queer old place.
We used to like it when we were children.’ ‘There’s a stair, you see,’
he said, as he threw the door open. ‘It leads up over the kitchen.’ I
followed him up the stair. ‘There’s a door into your room,’ he said,
‘but it’s always locked now.--And here’s Grannie’s room, as they call
it, though why, I have not the least idea,’ he added, as he pushed open
the door of an old-fashioned parlour, smelling very musty. A few old
books lay on a side table. A china bowl stood beside them, with some
shrivelled, scentless rose-leaves in the bottom of it. The cloth that
covered the table was riddled by moths, and the spider-legged chairs
were covered with dust.
“A conviction seized me that the old bureau must have belonged to this
room, and I soon found the place where I judged it must have stood. But
the same moment I caught sight of a portrait on the wall above the spot
I had fixed upon. ‘By Jove!’ I cried, involuntarily, ‘that’s the very
old lady I met in Russell Square!’
“‘Nonsense!’ said James. ‘Old-fashioned ladies are like babies--they all
look the same. That’s a very old portrait.’
“‘So I see,’ I answered. ‘It is like a Zucchero.’
“‘I don’t know whose it is,” he answered hurriedly, and I thought he
looked a little queer.
“‘Is she one of the family?’ I asked.
“‘They say so; but who or what she was, I don’t know. You must ask
Letty,” he answered.
“‘The more I look at it,’ I said, ‘the more I am convinced it is the
same old lady.’
“‘Well,’ he returned with a laugh, ‘my old nurse used to say she was
rather restless. But it’s all nonsense.’
“‘That bureau in my room looks about the same date as this furniture,’ I
remarked.
“‘It used to stand just there,’ he answered, pointing to the space under
the picture. ‘Well I remember with what awe we used to regard it; for
they said the old lady kept her accounts at it still. We never dared
touch the bundles of yellow papers in the pigeon-holes. I remember
thinking Letty a very heroine once when she touched one of them with the
tip of her forefinger. She had got yet more courageous by the time she
had it moved into her own room.’
“‘Then that is your sister’s room I am occupying?’ I said.
“‘Yes.’
“‘I am ashamed of keeping her out of it.’
“‘Oh! she’ll do well enough.’
“‘If I were she though,’ I added, ‘I would send that bureau back to its
own place.’
“‘What do you mean, Heywood? Do you believe every old wife’s tale that
ever was told?’
“‘She may get a fright some day--that’s all!’ I replied.
“He smiled with such an evident mixture of pity and contempt that for
the moment I almost disliked him; and feeling certain that Laetitia
would receive any such hint in a somewhat similar manner, I did not feel
inclined to offer her any advice with regard to the bureau.
“Little occurred during the rest of my visit worthy of remark. Somehow
or other I did not make much progress with Laetitia. I believe I had
begun to see into her character a little, and therefore did not get
deeper in love as the days went on. I know I became less absorbed in her
society, although I was still anxious to make myself agreeable to
her--or perhaps, more properly, to give her a favourable impression of
me. I do not know whether she perceived any difference in my behaviour,
but I remember that I began again to remark the pinched look of her
nose, and to be a little annoyed with her for always putting aside my
book. At the same time, I daresay I was provoking, for I never was given
to tidiness myself.
“At length Christmas Day arrived. After breakfast, the squire, James,
and the two girls arranged to walk to church. Laetitia was not in the
room at the moment. I excused myself on the ground of a headache, for I
had had a bad night. When they left, I went up to my room, threw myself
on the bed, and was soon fast asleep.
“How long I slept I do not know, but I woke again with that
indescribable yet well-known sense of not being alone. The feeling was
scarcely less terrible in the daylight than it had been in the darkness.
With the same sudden effort as before, I sat up in the bed. There was
the figure at the open bureau, in precisely the same position as on the
former occasion. But I could not see it so distinctly. I rose as gently
as I could, and approached it, after the first physical terror. I am not
a coward. Just as I got near enough to see the account book open on the
folding cover of the bureau, she started up, and, turning, revealed the
face of Laetitia. She blushed crimson.
“‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Heywood,’ she said in great confusion; ‘I
thought you had gone to church with the rest.’
“‘I had lain down with a headache, and gone to sleep,’ I replied.
‘But,--forgive me, Miss Hetheridge,’ I added, for my mind was full of
the dreadful coincidence,--‘don’t you think you would have been better
at church than balancing your accounts on Christmas Day?’
“‘The better day the better deed,’ she said, with a somewhat offended
air, and turned to walk from the room.
“‘Excuse me, Laetitia,’ I resumed, very seriously, ‘but I want to tell
you something.’
“She looked conscious. It never crossed me, that perhaps she fancied I
was going to make a confession. Far other things were then in my mind.
For I thought how awful it was, if she too, like the ancestral ghost,
should have to do an age-long penance of haunting that bureau and those
horrid figures, and I had suddenly resolved to tell her the whole story.
She listened with varying complexion and face half turned aside. When I
had ended, which I fear I did with something of a personal appeal, she
lifted her head and looked me in the face, with just a slight curl on
her thin lip, and answered me. ‘If I had wanted a sermon, Mr. Heywood, I
should have gone to church for it. As for the ghost, I am sorry for
you.’ So saying she walked out of the room.
“The rest of the day I did not find very merry. I pleaded my headache as
an excuse for going to bed early. How I hated the room now! Next
morning, immediately after breakfast, I took my leave of Lewton Grange.”
“And lost a good wife, perhaps, for the sake of a ghost, uncle!” said
Janet.
“If I lost a wife at all, it was a stingy one. I should have been
ashamed of her all my life long.”
“Better than a spendthrift,” said Janet.
“How do you know that?” returned her uncle. “All the difference I see
is, that the extravagant ruins the rich, and the stingy robs the poor.”
“But perhaps she repented, uncle,” said Kate.
“I don’t think she did, Katey. Look here.”
Uncle Cornelius drew from the breast pocket of his coat a black-edged
letter.
“I have kept up my friendship with her brother,” he said. “All he knows
about the matter is, that either we had a quarrel, or she refused
me;--he is not sure which. I must say for Laetitia, that she was no
tattler. Well, here’s a letter I had from James this very morning. I
will read it to you.
“‘MY DEAR MR. HEYWOOD,--We have had a terrible \shock this morning.
Letty did not come down to breakfast, and Lizzie went to see if she was
ill. We heard her scream, and, rushing up, there was poor Letty, sitting
at the old bureau, quite dead. She had fallen forward on the desk, and
her housekeeping-book was crumpled up under her. She had been so all
night long, we suppose, for she was not undressed, and was quite cold.
The doctors say it was disease of the heart.’
“There!” said Uncle Cornie, folding up the letter.
“Do you think the ghost had anything to do with it, uncle?” asked Kate,
almost under her breath.
“How should I know, my dear? Possibly.”
“It’s very sad,” said Janet; “but I don’t see the good of it all. If the
ghost had come to tell that she had hidden away money in some secret
place in the old bureau, one would see why she had been permitted to
come back. But what was the good of those accounts after they were over
and done with? I don’t believe in the ghost.”
“Ah, Janet, Janet! but those wretched accounts were not over and done
with, you see. That is the misery of it.”
Uncle Cornelius rose without another word, bade them good-night, and
walked out into the wind.
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Portent and Other Stories, by George MacDonald