After an interview with the maid who came to wait upon me, I

DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY

AND OTHER STORIES

_All rights reserved_

DR. VERMONT’S

FANTASY

BY

HANNAH LYNCH

[Illustration]

LONDON

J. M. DENT AND COMPANY

BOSTON: LAMSON WOLFFE & CO.

MDCCCXCVI

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty

Three of these stories--‘Armand’s Mistake,’ ‘A Page of Philosophy,’

and ‘The Little Marquis’ have already appeared in _Macmillan’s

Magazine_, and I am indebted to Messrs. Macmillan for the kind

permission to republish them.

CONTENTS

DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY--

PART FIRST--MADEMOISELLE LENORMANT PAGE

The Island, 3

A Midnight Vision, 19

The Story of Mademoiselle Lenormant, 36

AN INTERLUDE, 55

PART SECOND--DR. VERMONT

Dr. Vermont and his Guests upon the Island, 74

New Year’s Eve, 90

EPILOGUE, 118

BRASES--

I., 131

II., 152

III., 167

A PAGE OF PHILOSOPHY, 187

ARMAND’S MISTAKE--

I., 227

II., 246

III., 261

MR. MALCOLM FITZROY--

I., 269

II., 292

THE LITTLE MARQUIS, 305

DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY

_To Frederick Greenwood_

_PART FIRST_

MADEMOISELLE LENORMANT

(_Told by the traveller_)

THE ISLAND

IT was a warm autumn that year--a luminous exception upon which the

last summer of the century was borne somewhat oppressively to the very

verge of winter. The middle hours of the afternoon could be intolerable

enough in a big, busy city well upon the confines of the South. The

rush and whirr of looms was carried far upon the air, and even into the

quietest streets wandered the noisy echoes of the boulevards.

Yet it was dull and flat for the solitary stranger, without interest

in factories, or provincial entertainment in friendship. It was doubly

dull for a woman past youth and all its personal excitements to be

extracted from fleeting curiosity and thrills of anticipation; denied

by reason of sex the stale delights of café lounges, and by reason

of station the healthier and livelier hospitalities of _cabaret_ and

peasant reunions.

Travelling-bag and portmanteau lay strapped in the hotel hall. The

train for Paris would not leave until late that night, and to while

away the intervening hours I went forth beyond the town. I chose the

farther end of the long boulevard, the middle of which I had not yet

passed. Down there the brilliant air lost its clearness in a yellow

mist, as if flung from the sky in a fine dust of powdered gold. Upon

its edge hung the last visible arms of the trees on either side,

lucidly, of unwonted greenness, the green we note in painted French

landscapes, brightly touched with yellow. I felt that something fresh,

cool, and soft must lie behind that golden veil. It led my imagination

as a child is led out of the real, by the illusive promises of

fairyland.

Here sound was deadened, and city movements seemed to faint away

upon the weariness of the long hot day. I glanced back at the town.

Behind me stretched the dusty boulevard, and sharpened above it,

against the tremulous pellucid blue of the heaven, the profile of

quaint church-spires and heavy masses of buildings. Ahead, my way was

blocked by the wide grey river, black where the shadows touched it,

silver where the full light shone upon it. A bridge of grey stone

spanned it from the end of the boulevard to the other side, the

unexplored:--a bridge so old, so worn, so silent and empty, that it

might appropriately be the path to the city cemetery.

This bridge I crossed in all its glamour of sad enchantment. One of

its arches was broken, and made a dangerous gap above the broad, quiet

waters. There were no lamps, no visible indication of life about. I saw

that it led to an island encircled by a battered and decayed dark wall,

with little castellated ornaments that gave it the look of a feudal

fortress of unusual extent and dimensions. Midway I stood upon the

bridge, and wondered what sort of land might be before me. At first I

believed it to be uninhabited, until much gazing discovered a thin curl

of blue smoke far away, beyond a square tower. It was nearing sunset

now, and the island lying west, showed out more darkly from a broad

band of reddish glory. It wore all the more dead and desolate air

because of the floating and quickened light above it.

Have you ever, in some quaint French town washed by a wide river,

watched these lovely sunset contrasts on the blackened greyness of

stone masses and on the sombre placidity of water? The best effects

you will find upon the Loire, and if you can recall them, you will

see, better than words of mine can paint, the salient features of that

river-view set with towers and a decayed, old grey wall.

I was saturated with the sadness of it, and my glance was still wedded

to its dead charm, when a bloused peasant came out of the under shadows

and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful commonplace note in the

picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not

in the least like a ghost from other centuries. Prosperous, too, as

befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and

mayhap clink free and fraternal glasses with them through an ocean of

blood. He came along, whistling a patriotic tune, with his hands in his

pockets, and his hat in villainous emphasis cocked over one ear.

‘Can it be,’ I asked myself, in a pang of disappointment, ‘that this

enchanted island contains the ubiquitous _cabaret_, and that the

impossible legend of liberty, equality, and fraternity has penetrated,

with its attendant train of horrid evils, into this home of silence and

poetic decay?’

I interrupted my gloomy moralising, for which, like all persons

naturally gay, I flatter myself I have a decided turn, and hat,

metaphorically, in hand, sued this roadside rascal for information.

‘Yes, people lived upon the island, not many--mostly women: laundresses

upon the side that ran unprotected down to the water edge. I might

see their sheds if I made the round of the wall. There was a large

Benedictine convent at one end, and a cemetery eastward--but no hotel

accommodation, no shops, no vehicles of any sort, and but one miserable

little wine-shop, where they sold the worst brandy in all France.’

Of this liquid I concluded the fellow had been drinking somewhat

copiously, and left him to push inquiries for myself.

I know not why, but the moment I set foot upon the island, and heard

the slow swish of the eddying river against its projecting base,

thought was checked upon mild and pleasurable suspense. Something

unexpected must surely happen, I believed, and step by step destiny

seemed to impel me forward in its pursuit. My footfall rang sharply

upon the empty path, and I felt it would be ignominy to leave this

strange spot until fate had spoken, and its voice been interpreted

adequately for me by circumstance.

How still everything was, and how softly the day’s heat was stealing

out of the atmosphere! One bright star shone like a lamp over a noble

ruin, and for this I made. No sound of living voice, no clang of wooden

shoe or beat of hoofs broke the heavy silence, and by this fact I knew

that I must still be remote from the washerwomen’s quarter. There was a

fearful look about the low rocks that reached behind the ruins down to

the black water, whose perilous stillness was unwholesomely revealed by

the margin of quivering light shed from the rosy sky.

A few yards farther brought me to the open cemetery gate. Here I

entered with a shuddering sense of the romantic appropriateness of

its aspect. Did ever churchyard wear so solemn, so forsaken an air of

death? Death was breathed in the profuseness and dankness of the weeds

that sprawled over and almost enveloped the tombstones; in the grassy

walks unworn by tread of foot; in the graves that showed no sacred

care of hand, no symbol of fond remembrance or bereaved heart. Who

were these dead so forgotten and so alone? So near a busy city, and so

remote from living man?

Suddenly my wondering fancy was visibly answered by sight of a slim

old woman in black, who slowly came toward me by a narrow side-path. I

stopped her with an elaborate apology, and we speedily fell into talk.

She had been born on this island sixty years before, when the century

was entering into middle life, and now at its close these had been

the permanent limits of her vision. About a dozen times she may have

crossed the bridge, or walked the streets of the city yonder, and only

once had she gone down the river in a barge to have a peep at the real

South--the ardent, rose and lavender-smelling South!

‘I pray you, Madame, tell me, who am a restless vagabond, never three

months happy in the same place, how life looks to one like you, who

have never left the boundary marks of birth, who have grown and lived

amid unchanged scenes, and have been satisfied to look for sixty years

upon these low grey walls and the spires and chimneys of that distant

city?’ I asked, profoundly astonished.

In the old dame’s wrinkled parchment face gleamed a pair of singularly

vivid brown eyes that held, I suspect, more wisdom than my dissatisfied

and travelled glance. She eyed me curiously one long eloquent moment,

and then remarked, with some astuteness and much benevolence, that

change brought idle misery, and monotony its own reward of ignorance

and content. Further questions about the island led to an offer from

her to show me where she lived--an offer I accepted eagerly, and

together we left the cemetery, now revealing all its melancholy charm

in the last flushed smile of a lovely autumn sunset.

Save for the glimmer of gold upon an upper casement, the grey street

was already cast into twilit gloom, and a faint ray here and there

seemed to make its own pathway through the dim troubled blue of the

atmosphere. Unmistakably evening was upon us, and the ghosts of the

imagination would surely soon be abroad among these haunted scenes.

But nobody could be less spectral than my companion, both in speech and

in looks. She was communicative to rashness, and when I asked where I

could obtain lodging upon the island, for a week or a month, as long as

the caprice pleased me--she fixed me in a mild interrogative way, and

paused, as if equally in doubt of my discretion and of her own.

There was no hotel, no lodgings that she knew of, but if Madame really

desired it--if, in fact, she could trust Madame to be discreet and

reserved, she did not know that it might not be managed somehow. But

she would not engage herself.

I pressed for an explanation, and so aflame was I with sharp interest

and curiosity, that I know not what wild pledges of reserve and

discretion and prudent behaviour I proffered. Willingly at that moment

would I have undertaken to deny my whole past, and give the lie direct

to nature. What more potent than passionate sympathy? and the old

woman, I think, must have felt some desperate need for a willing ear

in which to pour her pent-up confidences. The cup of silence to which

experience had condemned her was full to overflowing, and my voice it

seems shook the brim.

She told me then that she was the confidential servant and sole

companion of a maiden lady who lived alone with a little niece in a big

barrack of a house below the Benedictine monastery. There was a story,

of course, which perhaps one day I should hear, if matters could be

so arranged that I might sojourn a while beneath their roof. But this

also was a promise withheld. Nothing depended on her, though she had

influence--naturally, she added, with a look of meaning that set my

heart in a flutter. I declare it made me feel young again, and full of

thrilling alarm, on the heels of romance, in the quest of breathless

adventure. I cannot explain how this old peasant had the knack of

accentuating commonplace words, and of lending them a significance far

beyond that with which we are accustomed to associate them. But she

did so, and there was a nameless charm and tremor conveyed in her added

‘naturally,’ with its accompanying suppressed intimation of glance.

The Benedictine monastery lay in massive gloom below, reaching an

aerial coldness of sharp point and spire along its jagged tops. Feudal

gashes in the arches let in large slips of green sky and glimmering

stars, and its rough stone wall along one side was the division

between the convent and the garden of my companion’s mistress. No, not

even the cemetery I had left could, in the dreariest hour, look more

inexpressibly dark, and lifeless, and forsaken than that old garden.

Its beauty was the beauty of death and sadness and neglect. There

were rotten arbours and stone seats, and mossy, weed-grown paths. The

underwood was impenetrably thick, and only the fine old trees lifted

a calm front, indifferent to man’s unkindness. They needed no human

hand to care them, and so they throve, and willingly gave grateful

shade, and the splendour of their foliage, and the majesty of their

form to the dead scene. But of flowers there were none. A coating of

moss, bleached and faded, had grown over the old sun-dial, which now

was hidden under the branching trees. Not a bird sang, nor did any

live thing skurry into hiding upon sound of my footstep, as I wandered

through the dusky alleys, while my guide went inside to consult her

mistress.

The quiet of an empty garden, showing no sign of care or an active

presence about it, while within view of smoke and fierce city

activities, is surely not comparable with any other quiet in nature.

Restriction adds to its intensity. The silence becomes almost palpable

from the hum of existence afar, and the spirit of the place seems more

vividly personal by reason of the narrowness of vision. You may walk

along the loneliest beach man ever trod, and feel less alone than I did

in that garden. The dimness of the biggest forest would be comforting

after the intolerable motionlessness of its leaves and plumy weeds.

I was beginning to wonder if it would be possible for me to fulfil my

contract should the lady of the house consent to share her roof with

me, when I heard a child’s clear, joyous laugh. It was a sound of

heavenly music to me just then, and effectually dispersed the gruesome

mist which was fast enveloping my reason. The desolation of the place,

and the ghastly images which threatened nightmare, could only be

accidental, I wisely concluded, if such laughter--fresh, untroubled,

and sweet--might be heard unrebuked. When the old woman reappeared,

alarm was already soothed, and I was back in the grip of fascinating

excitement.

‘Mademoiselle gives me permission to dispose of the lower

_appartement_, which we never occupy now,’ she said, with a smile so

human and inviting that I could have embraced her on the spot.

We walked toward the house, which, though gloomy enough, showed nothing

to match the mystery of the dark garden. Three broad discoloured

steps led to the hall of the lower story, which was offered for my

occupation, and inside the large stone hall I noted a little carriage

and two wooden horses worked by springs.

‘The sound of Gabrielle’s carriage will not, I hope, disturb Madame?

She generally plays here, as there is not space enough upstairs.’

I expressed myself delighted to be in close neighbourhood with the

child’s playground.

‘These used to be poor Madame’s rooms,’ she added, with a big sigh, as

she opened the door of a fine, chill salon.

‘The mother of Mademoiselle,’ I conjectured.

‘Oh, no; Mademoiselle’s mother always preferred the rooms

upstairs--those which Mademoiselle now lives in. These were her

sister’s--young Madame, Gabrielle’s mother.’

‘She is dead?’

‘Alas! yes. It is unlucky to be too much loved--unlucky for loved

one and for lovers. Dr. Vermont has never been here since his wife’s

death--has never even seen little Gabrielle since she was born, and

Mademoiselle has never once smiled.’

I was content to reserve my curiosity for another moment, and applied

my attention exclusively to the question of my installation. My vanity,

I will own, was something flattered by its magnificence. There were

two handsome salons, a bed- and dressing-room, and a dining-room,

all richly furnished in Empire style. The best taste may not have

prevailed, but there could be no question of substantial effectiveness,

and already an air of other days hung round it, and made a pathetic

appeal to the judgment.

As my companion showed me over the kitchen and pantries and other

domestic offices, I noted on the farther side of the narrow passage,

beyond my bedroom, a closed door which she did not offer to open. My

sympathy with Bluebeard’s wife was instantly awakened, and that door

became an object of burning interest to me.

From the kitchen she conducted me through the dining-room window into

a long glass-roofed gallery, jutting out beyond the house and seeming

to hang over the river, so completely hidden were the rocks below. The

city lights along the opposite bank were visible, and the heavy masses

of boats and barges made moving shadows through the dusk.

‘How lovely!’ I exclaimed, sniffing the soft air delightedly. ‘Here

will I sit and walk and read and muse. A month, did I say! I could

cheerfully end my days here.’

‘We have no servant at your disposal, Madame,’ the old woman said,

phlegmatically checking my enthusiasm by a reminder of the trials of

existence. ‘But until you have procured one, I shall be glad to give

you any assistance in my power.’

I thanked her heartily, and inquired if I could find a fiacre to drive

at once for my luggage to town. There was no such thing on the island,

she calmly informed me. Nothing in the shape of a wheeled object ever

crossed the bridge from the city except the morning vans and the weekly

butcher’s cart. Once a week the laundresses wheeled their barrows of

linen into town and returned on the same day with the supply for the

week’s washing. She could recommend a little maid, whose mother would,

no doubt, be glad to undertake to market for me for a consideration,

and her I could engage on my way to the hotel.

I left the amiable old dame to prepare for my reception that night,

and set forth in the dropping twilight in search of the maid and my

portmanteau. I had the wisdom, however, to dine at the hotel before

returning to the gloomy island.

A MIDNIGHT VISION

IT was late when I drove across the bridge from the town. The noise

of rumbling wheels upon the pavement, as the cab clattered past the

arches, was of such unearthly volume as to arouse the soundest sleeper.

In one or two casements lights and alarmed faces showed; but for the

rest, the islanders turned upon their pillows, scarcely vexed by idle

speculation upon the disturbance.

The darkness of the house chilled my heart, as the cab drove up the

grassy pathway, and when the door opened, and the old dame stood in the

hall in the uncertain illumination of a single candle, the solitude

of the place looked so insufferably strange, that I rubbed my eyes to

ascertain if I were really awake and not dreaming. But a substantial

cabman was waiting for his fare, and the woman’s thin yellow hand was

holding mine in a cordial clasp. I believe the honest creature had

already begun to miss me, and had been counting the minutes until my

reappearance.

She led me into the dining-room, where a supper of _pâté_, fruit, and

burgundy was prepared for me, and though I protested that I was not

hungry, she compelled me to make a pretence of eating, for the excuse

of lingering to talk to me. Mademoiselle had long since retired. She

herself had slept a little in order to be fresh for the excitement of

my return.

We sat till far into the night, chatting about the great world, about

Paris, which to her meant all the sin and misery and gaiety of the

entire universe; and about the big town of Beaufort across the river.

This impelled me to stand up and draw the curtain, that I might have

a peep at it from the gallery. The old woman followed me, and stood

leaning beside me against the flat stone balustrade. The lights now

along the water were few and widely spread--but in the heaven they had

multiplied and twinkled, variously-hued, upon their dark ground.

‘Down there lies the road to Beaufort--the road to Paris,’ my companion

murmured wistfully. ‘It is now ten years since Mademoiselle has been

watching it, but never a soul comes by it--never a soul.’

‘Whom is she watching for?’ I asked, in a tone insensibly lowered by

her whisper.

‘For Dr. Vermont--little Gabrielle’s father.’

‘Is he the only relative she has?’

‘The only one. It is a sad story. The poor lady is eating her heart

out with sorrow for the dead, and idle sorrowing for the living. The

dead at least loved her--but the living! Ah, there is nothing harder in

nature than the heart of a man turned from a loving woman.’

‘Does Dr. Vermont know that Mademoiselle loves him?’

‘Know!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Mademoiselle is a proud woman. _I_

know because I divine it. He too might divine it, if feeling could

touch him. But he was always a hard man. He stays away, and he does not

write. He cares no more for his child than he does for Mademoiselle.’

She dropped into silence, and I did not want to scare her by appearing

in any way to force her confidence. I was poignantly wakeful from

interest and the atmosphere of mystery I breathed; nevertheless, I

yielded at once to suggestion that the hours were lengthening towards

morning, and was glad enough to find myself shuddering among the cold

sheets that had lain long in lavender presses, while I listened to the

echo of the old woman’s footsteps upon the stairs and the sound of key

in lock and bolt drawn.

* * * * *

I was sleeping soundly when Joséphine brought me my morning chocolate

and drew up the blind. She informed me that Mademoiselle hoped I

had slept well, and would do me the honour of calling on me in the

afternoon. This courtesy both astonished and gratified me. I had

understood that Joséphine had half smuggled me into the house, and that

her mistress had only given a grudging consent to my admittance.

The morning I devoted to examination of my quarters. I found the door

of the mysterious chamber locked, but as the key was on the outside,

I had the indiscretion to turn it and look in. It was a luxurious

bedroom, and was as blue as one of Lesueur’s paintings. Young Madame

Vermont must indeed have adored the colour to suffer it in such

monotonous excess. The bed, of black polished wood, was hung with blue

silk curtains; the carpet was of blue cloth, and blue prevailed in the

handsome rugs that relieved it. The couches, the chairs, were covered

with blue silk, and blue muslin even draped the long looking-glass.

The bed looked ready for use; the blue embroidered coverlet was

turned down, and across the lace-edged sheet was flung an unrolled

night-dress, as if somebody were momently expected to lift it. On the

dressing-table several dainty objects of feminine toilette lay ready

to hand--even a little crushed lace handkerchief was thrown hastily

against a silver hand-mirror. Beside the bed was a pair of black velvet

slippers, and across a chair a frilled and expensive wrapper. Even the

water in the carafe on the table was fresh, and there were matches

beside the silver-wrought candle-stick. A beautiful jar on an inlaid

table in the window recess contained hot-house flowers that were only

beginning to fade, but their untainted perfume told of water daily

renewed.

It was easy to divine the secret story of that woman’s chamber.

Mademoiselle cherished the delusion, as unsubstantial food for her

hungry heart, that its occupant was merely absent, and might be

expected any day--any hour. She refused to accept the irrevocableness

of death, and kept the chamber ready for the wandering spirit when the

ties of earth should recall it. This was the meaning of the turned-down

bed and unfolded night-dress; of the flowers in the jar sent from the

city and carefully watered each evening; of the little handkerchief

eloquently wisped against the silver mirror. I retreated softly, and

closed the door as if of some sacred place.

After an interview with the maid who came to wait upon me, I lounged in

the gallery until the midday breakfast. The aspects and surroundings

enchanted me still more by day than they had done the night before.

I felt alone--solemnly alone between large spaces of sky and water.

Underneath, the river flowed broadly, and upon its bosom the big barges

travelled southward, and lighter vessels glided swiftly by to drop

behind the bridge, whence the eye could follow their path no more.

Below the broken arches and towered points of the bridge went the road

to Beaufort and the wide world, a white dust-blown band along the grey

horizon. Under a blazing sun showed the outlines of the city, and the

strained ear might detect the far-off murmur of looms by help of the

factory chimneys. But this needed an effort of imagination in so heavy

and dense a silence.

After breakfast I bethought myself of a visit to the melancholy garden

by way of change. On the stairs I caught the pleasant patter of small

feet and the shrill, sweet notes of a child’s voice. I stepped into the

hall, where Gabrielle was at play. She was not pretty, but so lively

and spirited and quaint, that she gave a fuller notion of the charm of

childhood than any pretty child I have known. She knew neither shyness

nor fear. When she saw me, she stopped her play, and approached me

boldly.

‘You are the strange lady Joséphine says I am not to bore,’ she said

gravely, without any resentment or surprise that she should be asked to

consider me.

‘I hope you will bore me a good deal, little one,’ I replied. ‘I love

children, and am delighted when they take notice of me and chatter to

me.’

‘I like chattering, too, but my aunt is very silent. She is always

learning lessons and reading books. Do you learn lessons still?’

‘Sometimes, when I am not too lazy. But I am like you, I don’t like

lessons and work,--I prefer play.’

‘If you like, I will play with you,’ she offered, with a serious

condescension that was captivating. ‘I have no one to play with except

Minette and Monsieur Con. Wouldn’t you like to see Minette? She is a

little fluffy, white kitten. Monsieur Con is my rabbit. Come and I will

show them to you.’

This was the start of a friendship delightful enough to have moored my

barque to those island shores for an indefinite period, if even there

had been no irresistible interest of environment and personality to

enthral me. But Mademoiselle Lenormant’s character was a character of

unusual fascination--not in the sense of sexual attraction but from

the point of view of study. She came and sat with me for half an hour

late that afternoon. I could not fitly describe her as formal, for she

breathed of austere sadness and study. Her pretensions to beauty, in

the accepted form, can never have been great, but defective features

found an abundant apology in the extreme delicacy of the pallid

face and a certain wistful eagerness and suppressed tenderness of

expression. It was a face to haunt you into the silent watches of the

night, in its mute eloquence of suggestion--like a spirit or a picture.

Having looked once upon it, it dwelt for ever apart in the memory,

constantly provoking thought, conjecture, and raking the fanciful

waters of romance by gliding dreams of sorrow and solitude, and the

tragedy that finds no voice or fraternal sympathy upon the noisy

surface of life.

Silence I should say had been the great feature of her existence.

Even upon the odd impersonal subjects that sprang up for discussion

in our conversations, her talk was scant and weighted with an unusual

intonation, as if speech came to her amiss. She pondered each

commonplace I uttered, and gazed steadfastly into space or down upon

the river before replying, which she did very seriously after a long

pause. At first this eccentricity of hers much disconcerted me. To

exclaim in soft rapture, ‘How lovely the stillness here is!’ and a few

minutes later, when you had quite lost sight of the trite observation,

to have it cast back upon the wavering plain of dialogue in some such

manner, and in tones of musing gravity:

‘You think such stillness as this lovely? It is perhaps the novelty of

it alone that enchants you’--

Or, in response to a previous half-forgotten remark received in

absolute silence, that the way the boats and barges dropped suddenly

out of view as they passed under the bridge was strangely attractive,

to find the idea caught by the heels, and gently forced into earnest

discussion by a word of imperious invitation. For there was an

air of extremely winning command about her, that from the first I

found impossible to resist. Her neck was long, and the head upon it

beautifully set, and her movements, her gestures and looks, were

those of a princess in disguise. An over-wrought imagination might

of course--possibly did--exaggerate this air of command and these

sovereign attitudes, but I came afterwards to see that I was not alone

in my delusion, and that upon ardent youth of the other sex, her

quiescent influence could be potential to salvation.

Of the nature of her occupations and ideas I remained quite in the dark

for some days to come. Regularly, of an afternoon, she would visit

me in the gallery, where we sat and discussed the ‘eternal verities’

in an abrupt, unenthusiastic way. I could see that she purposely

withheld herself, her real self, from intrusion or impertinent survey.

Seclusion had taught her prudence, and reticence was a natural gift.

But how in the name of the marvellous, upon an empty island, where

social intercourse is undreamed of, had she come by knowledge of the

hollowness of casual expansion and the nothingness of ready sympathy?

This is a lesson the cynical society deity teaches us after harsh

and prolonged experiences of considerable variety, and except to its

votaries, could only be known to those hermits who went into the desert

to rest from the vanity of experiment and pleasure.

Joséphine’s garrulity, however, made instructive Mademoiselle’s

reserve. From her I learnt, by meagre instalments, this enigmatic

lady’s story. But not much until a little scene had pushed me upon the

other side of discretion, and driven me to sue for enlightenment.

It happened thus. In the grip of wakefulness I had gone out to walk

about the gallery. There was no moon, and upon the turn of the season,

the night was chill and starless. Across the smoke-coloured heaven odd

masses wandered, pursued by the wind that blew down from the North. The

river below made a stain of exceeding blackness in the dark picture,

and beat the rocks in angry protest against the whining uneasiness

of the air. For it whined dismally round the island, and blew among

the trees of the garden like an army of dreary banshees. A sense of

horror of the place grew upon me, and I began to hunger for the big

bright world beyond; for gas-lit streets and the sordid aspects of city

life. I yearned to jostle my fellows along the highways once more,

and listen to the sound of vocal dispute upon the public place. I saw

in vision streams of people emerging from illuminated theatres, heard

the cheerful roll of carriages, and the noisy murmur of laughter and

speech. I longed for it all again--all that I had despised, and told

myself in the midst of its enjoyment that I hated. After all, I was but

a poor mountebank of a hermit. Town born, I could never hope to free

myself permanently from the influences of birth, and I knew that sooner

or later nostalgia for city sounds and sights--for the multitudinous

accompaniments of its existence, must find me and pursue me into the

heart of the most congenial solitude, into the most heavenly of rural

retreats.

The gallery ran round the angles of the house, and on the other side

looked down into the garden and in upon the window of Madame Vermont’s

blue room. I went round it in a thirst for movement, but, fearful of

disturbing the sleep of others, I walked very softly. To my complete

surprise, and I will not aver without a momentary qualm of terror, I

saw the reflection of a stream of light upon the near window of the

blue chamber. I hardly believe in ghosts; but it would indeed be rash

to hint that it was no vague dread of the supernatural that started

my unequal heart-beats just then. I felt the blood gush and swell to

bursting the arteries about my temples and throat, and at the back of

my ears. Fright was not a check upon curiosity, but rather a strong

impetus. Though I might approach in a conflict of emotions, I did not

hesitate for one moment to approach, and was confronted with sharp

disappointment when I saw that the stream of light upon the floor fell

from an earthly candle-stick, and that Mademoiselle was leaning over

the polished foot of the bed and gazing steadfastly at the empty pillow.

It did not take me an instant to recover my balance and watch the scene

with revived interest. This was my second glimpse of the blue chamber,

and a poignant note was now added to its fascination. There was a more

speaking look about the turned-down sheet, the unrolled night-dress

across it, and the hastily flung wrapper. Not of death--but of an

unwonted disparition and a watched-for return it spoke. Not of anguish

and bereavement was it eloquent, but of the fruitless and undying

hunger of expectation. At such an hour, so sanctified by pervading

sorrow and silence, the blue of the room was no longer garish, but an

appropriate setting for imprisoned regret. Its very uniformity and

depth of colour suggested the solemnity, the profundity of a rich sky

unstained by cloud, and, enveloped in this mystic hue, Mademoiselle

seemed to be the spirit of sorrow resting upon the grave of all

joy--mute, placidly unhopeful, visibly unafraid. For surely such

solitude as hers was calculated to bend the proudest head and break

the strongest heart, and in presence of her indomitable courage I felt

abashed and mean by confrontation with my recent idle terror.

I knew well that it was my duty to turn away my eyes and leave so

sacred a vigil unwatched, but when duty and curiosity, strongly roused,

come into mortal conflict, it is not often that the former conquers.

I waited to see how long Mademoiselle would linger in that room, what

her movements might be, and how she would depart for the upper house.

And as I waited, I saw her come round by the side of the bed with a

quick, sudden step, and gently smooth the pillow. In doing so, her

hand rested heavily in the middle, and made a distinct impression. She

started back, and I could see that desperate emotion stiffened her thin

white face, and the large grey eyes she lifted, in the full light of

the candle upon the table beside her, were full of pain. By a gesture

so slight, it appeared she had startled memory into wakeful protest,

and now she hastened to quiet it, and trod feverishly upon the living

embers to still their fires by giving to the bed its proper aspect

of emptiness. She turned the pillow, gathered up the ruffled sheet,

crushed the night-dress into careless folds, and thrust it beneath the

blue coverlet. As white was hidden under the blue, resignation seemed

to have banished expectation angrily, and brought the curtain down

ruthlessly upon the poor pathetic comedy weakness played for its own

diversion.

She took the candle up, stood near the door, and gazed slowly around

her. The little handkerchief wisped against the silver mirror caught

her eye. She jerked forward and grasped it eagerly; so flimsy was it

that it almost melted in her slight palm. I remembered there was a

faint, subtle odour of violets about the room, which seemed to emanate

from that handkerchief. I can imagine how it must have risen and

tyrannised her senses, can measure the strength of its appeal and its

delicate charm. No women are so astute and penetrative in their use of

scent as Frenchwomen. It is their study to spread their essence with

refined cruelty, and leave an imperishably perfumed trace to check

the wandering imagination, and keep tenanted by a personal odour the

sanctuaries of the heart they have forsaken.

The effect of the faded sweetness of the handkerchief was to irritate

her to what I concluded to be a resolution to have done with this

miserable comedy of expectation. She held it from her fiercely, and

threw back her head to get further away from its insidious appeal,

and then approached it to the flame of the candle. It needed but a

flutter of light against it, and the flimsy thing was a brief yellow

flare. She watched until the flame had burnt itself out, and then threw

the charred rag upon the marble top of the night-table, and swayed

unsteadily towards the door. By the way she grasped her throat with one

frail, nervous hand, I could divine how the thick sobs shook her, and I

wondered more and more upon the mystery of her life, and what elements

combined to form the mimic tragedy of that midnight solitude.

Outside the breath of winter was upon us, and the wind bit and stung

with the sharpness of ice. It was December now, and vigils upon the

terrace, once the sun was gone down and the stars were out, were a

forbidden pleasure in careful middle-age.

THE STORY OF MADEMOISELLE LENORMANT

THE month of December ran itself out with a more ruffled mildness than

November had done. For one thing, it was cold, blustering weather, and

for days together ice sheeted the broad river. The boats and barges

plied less frequently, and foot-passengers now rarely threaded the long

boulevard from the city to the island bridge. Only the morning vans

relieved us of a complete sense of separation from our fellows, and

at odd intervals, the postman came, and carried a whiff of the outer

world into our retreat. On Saturday we had the excitement of watching

the laundresses wheel their barrows of linen across the bridge, and

diminish with the distance upon the chill, bleak road, sometimes

brightened by rays of winter sunshine. But for the rest we shared such

desert stillness as might be found in the heart of an empty forest,

instead of upon the edge of a busy and populous town.

Within the walls, life went pleasantly enough. My presence downstairs

had served to tame Mademoiselle somewhat. She stood less impenetrably

apart, and her discourse grew daily less impersonal. When walks upon

the terrace and musing under the roof of the gallery meant perilous

exposure, she would invite me upstairs to her own _appartement_. This

I enjoyed. It gave me a sense of fraternity in silence as well as

companionable speech at discretion.

Her rooms were less spacious than those I occupied, but more

comfortable, and not without a surprising effort at cosiness. In her

salon a wood fire burned brightly, and the deep worn arm-chairs had an

inviting aspect. Everything was faded, often frayed and rent, but the

pictures were old and of some value, and books bulged out beyond their

natural shelves, and overflowed upon the floor, and crowded the tables.

Books, books everywhere,--old books, tattered books, dog-eared, dusty,

and moth-eaten; wearing all a heavy, learned look, and suggestive of

historical research. I laughingly remarked this to her one day, as I

removed a big tome from the low chair I wished to sit upon. She blushed

that soft pink flush belonging to faces habitually pallid. It made her

look delightfully young and interesting, and conveyed the hope to me

that the last barrier of her glacial reserve was about to break down.

‘I have been for many years engaged upon research among these volumes,’

she admitted slowly, after a pause; ‘I am writing an important book.’

‘An important book?’ I cried interrogatively.

‘Yes: the life of the Emperor Julian. I regard him as the great

Misunderstood of the Christian world, and I wish to rehabilitate him,’

she said; and there was such a touching and simple prayer for sympathy

and encouragement in the glance she fixed on mine, that I had not the

heart to remember that others had attempted the same task, and that no

amount of learned eloquence and indignation would teach the Christian

world to regard as desirable a better understanding of him they call

the great Apostate.

‘Would it be an indiscretion to solicit information upon your plan

of defence?’ I asked insidiously, with intent to force her into

self-exposure. To me the character of the Emperor Julian was of

comparative insignificance beside her own, but this fact I naturally

kept to myself.

‘I shall bring him into noble relief by means of Frederick the Great

as a background--Frederick, that other famous and less reputable

disciple of Marcus Aurelius. Have you ever remarked how alike and how

unlike they were--one so sincere and the other so cynically insincere?’

Upon a dead island, without new books, or newspapers, or theatres,

and but little out-door life, because of the ferocity of the weather,

the Emperor Julian and Frederick the Great were as good subjects

of discussion as any others, and I entered the lists in combative

mood, fully equipped in argument and opinion, and captivated by the

grim earnestness and complete guilelessness of the Imperial Pagan’s

defender. Of modern literature she was, perhaps not unwisely, ignorant,

and knew not of a man named Ibsen who, some years earlier, had

also strayed upon this ground. She had been chiefly inspired by an

abominable novel of a French Jesuit, over which she waxed exceedingly

hot. Her anger was splendid, and I should have rejoiced to see the

Jesuit, Julian’s traducer, confronted with this thin spiritual-looking

lady, who thrilled from head to foot with generous hatred of all

meanness and unfairness.

‘As a Christian, my defence will have more weight than if I were imbued

with the cold agnosticism of the day,’ she added naïvely.

‘Surely,’ I assented, full of admiration, and more pleased to think

of her as a Catholic eager to make atonement to an ancient enemy of

her faith, than ‘the cold agnostic’ she dismissed in a tone of implied

disapproval.

‘You wonder, perhaps, at the serious nature of my studies and labour,’

she observed. And then, upon a little explanatory nod and arch of

delicate brow, ‘You see my father was a scholar, and as we lived here

quite alone and rarely received visitors, it was impossible for him to

avoid taking me into his confidence. And then, when his health began to

fail him, it naturally devolved upon me to help him, as far as I could,

and spare his eyes.’

Her glance travelled wistfully round the room, and a ray of mild

recognition fell upon each big volume. It was not difficult to

understand how vividly of the past they spoke to her, how eloquent

of association was their wild disorder. In the high embrasure of the

back window, which looked down upon the river, and showed a glimpse

of the chimney-tops and tall spires of Beaufort, there was a dainty,

blue-lined work-table, and near it a revolving book-stand and a

rocking-chair. From where I sat, I could note that the books were

modern--some of them were bound coquettishly, but the greater number

were paper-covered. I was not wrong in supposing this to have been

the favourite recess of the late Madame Vermont. The blue satin of

the work-table betrayed her, and a hurried inspection of the backs of

the books convinced me that her taste in literature was all that is

most correct and elegant. No ancient tomes these. No bramble-strewn

paths to historic research. Nothing whatever about the Emperor Julian;

still less about Marcus Aurelius. Bourget, Feuillet, Gyp, Loti, Marcel

Prévost, Anatole France and company: these were the friends of pretty

Madame Vermont’s solitude, the entertainers of her frugal leisure.

From the start, without description, word, or hint, I had understood

Madame Vermont to be uncommonly pretty. I pictured her small, blonde,

charmingly coquettish, and self-conscious. I endowed her with every

conventional fascination, and felt sure that if I had been a man

I should have adored her, like the rest. As a matter of fact, my

imagined picture of her came very near reality. Only instead of fair

hair, she had the loveliest brown that made a flossy network round

a little rosebud of a face; her eyes were bewitchingly blue, limpid

like a child’s, and her cheek was adorably hued. Just the conventional

angelic being to turn male heads, and set their hearts in a flutter;

just the sort of home idol to keep nurses and sisters--especially

elder, grave, and sensible sisters--perpetually on their knees, and

the domestic incensor perpetually filled with the freshest of perfumed

flattery swung by the most abject adorers.

Now that the icy winds prevented us from sitting out in my gallery,

Mademoiselle had grown accustomed to receive me upstairs. For there

was no conquering her repugnance to my rooms. She found it less hard

to walk with Joséphine to the cemetery than to sit and talk of other

matters with a stranger in her dead sister’s house. Of me, however,

she had grown fond:--at first in a furtive way, as if not quite sure

that she was right in yielding to the weakness. Gradually she emerged

from this quaint and insular uncertainty; saw that there was no shame

attached to the discovery that a new face could delight her, and

graciously abandoned herself to the influence of a full-blown affection.

Every morning Joséphine came down with Mademoiselle’s compliments,

and her desire to be informed if I had slept well. Every afternoon I

mounted to drink a cup of English tea with her, and listen to her last

pages on the great Misunderstood, and sometimes maliciously spur her

into passion by some sceptical raillery, which always brought pained

reproach to her sad eyes and a slight flush to her pale face. She took

everything in earnest, even my feeble jokes, which after a while, when

she began to understand them, she would proceed to discuss in her own

quaint, slow way.

‘I suppose it must be a matter of temperament, or perhaps it is an

Irish peculiarity,’ she would say, and inspect me very seriously.

I assured her that the Irishman was not born who could not change his

opinion at a moment’s notice for the fun of the thing, and in the midst

of comedy fall foul upon tragedy for pure diversion’s sake. She shook

her head despondently, and decided at once that there could be found

no earnest scholars, no born leaders of men, in a band of amiable

buffoons.

My moments of recreation and distraction were enjoyed with Gabrielle,

when we walked round the desert island in search of adventures, or with

elaborate care, tried to make each other understand the caprices of our

wandering fancies in the alleys of the sad, mysterious garden. It was

pure joy to feel the little hand clinging to my arm or lost in my palm

like a soft, small bird, and hear the pretty patter of running steps

alongside of my brisk strides. For, to atone for its late appearance,

the winter was mortally cold, and there was no dallying with frozen

toes and frost-bitten ears. But to make up for this foolish superiority

of mine in the matter of steps, Gabrielle was indulgence itself to my

decided inferiority upon imaginative ground. I certainly could not

imagine so many things out of nothing, and it was clear that I could

not make up so many charming adventures for Minette and Monsieur Con.

But in my gross grown-up way, I was not an unsympathetic confidante

for the grievances and perplexities of solitary childhood. Indeed,

Gabrielle admitted, with off-hand majesty of look and deportment,

that I was rather a nice and entertaining person for a little girl to

talk to, not above the simple pleasures of play, and not beneath the

romantic joys of story-telling. Now she loved her aunt; oh, yes, she

certainly loved her aunt above and beyond all the world. But her aunt,

you see, was so very solemn, and then she read so many books, she was

quite _entichée_ of those big, hard-looking books. _Entichée_, she

admitted, in answer to my amused and not altogether edified surprise,

was an expression she had caught from my servant Marie. It was Marie,

she repeated imperiously, who said her aunt was _entichée_ of books,

and she was pleased to find it a very good word. She was the quaintest

and drollest little philosopher and playmate melancholy middle-age

could desire, and I am not without shrewd suspicion that I learnt more

from her than she from me.

Of an evening, as I sat alone downstairs over my coffee, and snoozed

comfortably over one of Mademoiselle’s books, or puffed a meditative

cigarette in front of the bright wood fire, Joséphine would come down

for a chat on her own account. It amused me to draw her out upon the

subject of Mademoiselle, and bit by bit I pieced her story together.

* * * * *