I found Martelli to be more useful to me than I could have expected.
He had called himself practical, and he was practical. He was used to
the punctilious regularity of schools, to the difficult inattention of
pupils; and the habits these experiences had engendered well qualified
him in one sense for the post I had offered. In one sense I say: by
which I mean my need of an influence to direct my studies and keep me
to them. But in him I missed what I had sought, and would have taken
in preference, could I have found. Sympathies he had in abundance, but
they were commonplace. He shone indeed; but rather with the borrowed
light of letters than the luminous atmosphere of imagination. He could
not comprehend me, though he would never appear puzzled. He would
miss a delicate implication. In taste he was a sensualist, esteeming
the full-blooded, florid, and passionate conceptions of art above her
chaste aerial hints and tender moonlit beauties. Yet he was a good
and sound scholar. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was singularly
exact. He was deeply read in modern literature; and his surprising
memory enabled him to display to the utmost advantage the various and
carefully stored treasures of his mind. But though his erudition might
have enabled him to have edited with accuracy the most obscure work in
the whole range of ancient literature, his imagination would not have
yielded him five lines of poetry.
When together in the library, he would often extort a smile from
me by the recollection he excited of my school days. Brisk in his
movements, energetic in his actions, pungent and austere in his
resolute directions, he recalled to me a French tutor, whom, of all my
early tutors, I most hated for his severity. But the task conned, the
subject discussed, the book closed, his manner would change; he would
be ceremoniously courteous, with almost a hint of obsequiousness in
his behaviour, as though he wished me to understand that his sturdy
discharge of his duty did not prevent him from appreciating the
difference of position between us.
I should have benefited more from his counsels had my thoughts been
less preoccupied with the subject which was hardly ever absent from my
mind.
But I found it impossible wholly to surrender my attention to my tasks.
Memory persistently reverted to the strange and beautiful apparition
that had startled me in my midnight saunter. Every day, nay, every
hour, was increasing my desire to know her. Yet I could hit upon no
means of introduction. To have hung about her house, to have loitered
near her garden, even had the absence of my companion rendered such
a device practicable, would have been unwise; since, if now from no
apparent cause she shunned intrusion or inspection, greater would be
her efforts to maintain her privacy when she discovered a stranger
sought to violate it.
One thing I could not hide from myself--I was in love with her. I am
well aware that under the circumstances the feeling was most absurd;
but I could not help it. The memory of her beauty took shape before me
at all hours, in all moods. And my love was illustrated and confirmed
by my wish to meet, to know, to speak with her.
Martelli noticed my abstraction. More than once I had remarked his
dusky eyes glowing on me with a gaze of interrogative inspection. But
he carefully repressed his curiosity. No observation ever escaped him
to hint his perception of inattentive moods.
Once, meeting his eyes, it occurred to me to take him into my
confidence.
"The Italians," I mused, "are famous for their handling of love
matters. They at least bear the reputation of being subtle and secret
in such adventures. They wind into the most tortuous intrigues like a
snake through the intricacies of a forest. Why not tell him my story?
A young man in love with a woman whom he has seen but once, is an
object neither remarkable nor unique. He might aid me by procuring an
introduction, at all events; and if he can do this, he has my full
consent to think what he likes of the business."
It was evening. We were seated at a table in the library, near the
window, which was wide open to admit the still and sultry air. There
was no moon; but the stars, large, full and liquid, lent a pale
radiance to the gloom. I rose, took a cigar from the mantel-piece and
lighted it.
"Let us close these books for to-night," I said. "The air is
oppressive; and those sweet stars seem to chide us for preferring the
inspiration of other things to theirs."
He smiled, drew a meerschaum from his pocket, and began to smoke. I
pushed the table aside that I might seat myself more fully in the
window.
"There is a line in one of Keats's poems--'Hyperion,'" I said.
"I know it," he interrupted. "A noble poem."
"Noble, indeed. There is a line in that poem which I do not think I
ever thoroughly understood until now. I refer to the line in which he
speaks of
--'tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars.'
Look at those round, moony orbs, tremulous like tears wept by the gods;
the trees yonder seem spell-bound beneath them."
"Truly," he answered.
"Surely theirs is a magical repose: a deeper calm than that of sleep.
Oh, I can forgive much to the superstition of astrology. Those planets
deserve to be influences if they are not. The malignant heart would of
course make their shine sinister; but a generous nature must deem those
clear rays benignant. I do. But it is the common effect of Beauty on
me. I warm, I dilate in her presence. She is a glorious spirit."
"Ay, to a man of taste."
"Beauty of course is a spirit interpenetrating all that delights and
elevates. But she is incarnate too, sometimes; falling, I suppose, from
the heavens like that meteor there," I said, pointing to an exhalation
that rushed with yellow tresses streaming through the dark; "and taking
the shape of a woman when she touches the earth."
"But is not innocence a condition of beauty?" he inquired, turning his
dusky gaze upon me.
"It should be."
"Then do not make your spirit take the shape of woman."
I laughed. "What shape would you have her?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I hardly know," he answered: "unless you
make her a new-born babe."
"I fear you have the scholar's contempt for the _tendre passion_," said
I. "But listen now to a strange story. Do you see those trees yonder?"
"Yes, Sir."
"One night--it was clear with moonlight--I strolled out to breathe
the air. My excursion extended to those fields you can see from your
bedroom window. There I lingered. The village clock struck two. Hardly
had the silvery notes died, when----"
I paused.
"You returned home, Sir?"
"No. But looking, I perceived the Spirit of Beauty walking beneath the
starlight, draped in white, with eyes deep and beautiful, in which the
moon hid itself for love, with a face of marble, passionless as the
feature of the mother of Paphus ere the sculptor's adoration made her
rosy with life."
He showed his gleaming teeth in a smile of which he thought the gloom
would hide the contempt.
"Sir," he said, "you are talking the language of the romancist."
"I am talking the language of truth."
"At two o'clock in the morning," he exclaimed, blowing a white cloud on
the air, "the female shapes one meets abroad are seldom spiritual. How
they may look in the country, and by starlight, I do not know; but by
gaslight their cadaverous complexion is commonly cloaked with paint;
and if their eyes are bright, it is rather with a spirituous than a
spiritual ray."
"Ah, Martelli, you are a cynic--by which I mean, a practical, astute
man, who makes the root and not the flower of fact or fancy his
business. A commendable quality! All the same, I would not part with
my love of illusion. This essential difference of character will make
us get on well together; though, to be plain, before I knew you, my
opinion was that if I hoped to please or be pleased, my comrade must be
a man of sympathies identical with my own."
"A common and generous error," he replied; "but time corrects those
crudities."
"As a proof, I like you none the worse for the misanthropic pleasure
you take in extinguishing the candle in the magic-lantern of fancy--at
the moment when the panoramic reflections most delight me. But
respecting this apparition--here is no illusion; for I have found out
who she is."
He smoked in silence.
"Her name is Mrs. Fraser. She is a widow. She lives in that house
yonder, where the light shines through the trees. I have only seen
her once, and the circumstances of that meeting may have served to
exaggerate my impression of her. But the recollection I carried away
with me is that of a woman of a beauty whose mysteriousness defies
description."
"If you desire to be disenchanted, Mr. Thorburn, you should get to know
her."
"I should be happy to risk my idealism; but how am I to procure an
introduction? Her house is a cloister--she a nun, secret and exclusive
as the austerest of the flannelled sisterhood."
"Were we in Italy, I should advise you to serenade her. There love
is studied as a fine art. It is different here. Yet were I in your
straits--for, Mr. Thorburn, are you not in love with this beautiful
phantom of yours?"
"I confess it."
"If I were in your straits, I say, I should do something hardy; go to
her home, procure admittance at any sacrifice of politeness, and leave
the rest to chance."
"That would be practicable to a man with a temperate pulse and trained
nerves," I replied; "but I believe I could much more easily jump off
the cliff than place myself in the position you suggest."
"But you say you met her, Sir. Did she not see you?"
"No. She stood some yards from me tranquil and statuesque, quite
unconscious of my presence--_that_ I could swear."
"Surely she must have seen you--the moon, you said, was bright."
"She did _not_ see me. It is true I uttered an exclamation of surprise
when I found her so close to me; for I thought she had vanished. She
may have heard that cry."
"But what should this lady be doing in the fields at two o'clock in the
morning?" he asked, with a light smile.
"That is precisely what I wish to know."
He slowly filled another pipe, with his lips moving as though in the
process of rehearsal.
"Mr. Thorburn," said he, "I am sure you will excuse my freedom. I
really think you should banish this subject from your mind. You have
settled here for the purpose of prosecuting a good and lofty purpose,
and you should suffer nothing to seduce you from devoting your whole
energies to its accomplishment. No man can serve two mistresses. And
knowledge, Sir, let me assure you, is a mistress who, if she does not
receive your whole heart, will give you little in return."
"Your candour requires no apology, Martelli," I answered. "I am sure
you speak for my good, and I am grateful for the interest you take
in me. But I must tell you that this woman has occupied my thoughts
so long, that it is become a positive necessity to know her. Don't
smile at what I am about to say--I protest, for my part, I was never
more in earnest--I believe," I said solemnly, "that this woman is to
be an influence on my life--though whether baneful or benignant is
still the secret of the future. Why do you shrug your shoulders? Don't
you believe in presentiments--in the power of the soul to foreshadow
destiny? A few hours before I met her--this lady--she presented
herself to me in a dream. Your sceptical mind would pronounce this
a coincidence--the very dream, you think, might have generated the
subsequent vision. But it was no coincidence. It was the operation of
some mystic agency, to be credited without questioning; an agency as
definite, though inscrutable, as the soul which informs our being with
the knowledge of its existence, but ridicules our efforts to give that
knowledge shape."
"Have you ever sought to meet her again?"
"I have not dared."
"Not _dared_!"
"You are surprised. But I had not Hamlet's resolution:
"'Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such questionable shape,
I _dare not_ speak to thee!'
Martelli, had I met her close again, as I met her that night, I should
have gone mad. Her steady supernatural gaze, her rigid mien, her shape,
which united the two extremes of spectral beauty and human sweetness,
were shocking."
"Would you fear to meet her if you had a companion."
"I hardly know. Pray applaud my candour; you see I confess myself a
coward."
"It is no proof of cowardice. A brave man might reasonably recoil from
encountering such an airy horror as enlivened your midnight ramble. As
for me, I have no fear of ghost or goblin. A questionable shape would
make me curious, not timid. Here, however, we should be dealing with no
shadow. A phantom might, indeed, be a widow, though, it is said, that
owing to the scarcity of priests, there are no marriages in Heaven.
But it would hardly bear the name of 'Mrs. Fraser,' when it has a
magnificent mythology to choose from. At what time did you say you met
her?"
"It was two o'clock in the morning."
"A rather inconvenient hour," he exclaimed with a laugh. "Would not ten
or eleven o'clock suit her as well? But it is enough that she should be
a woman to be perverse. If you think that there is any chance of our
meeting her to-night, I should be glad to accompany you. Two heads are
better than one in a business of this kind."
"I am willing to go. Yet there is no reason why she should be there."
"We shall have the moon with us, at all events," he said; "for there
she is, crawling up yonder, though with a sinister disc."
He pointed to the trees, above which the moon, large, red, and dim,
like a cloud shone on by the expiring sun, was slowly sailing up.
"It is now half-past ten," I remarked. "It may prove after all a fool's
errand. However we can sip our grog and stroll out afterwards, if you
like--go, at all events, to the fields, and linger in the cool till you
shall think proper to return."
He consented, though assuring me it would be no inconvenience to him
to sit through the night. He was anxious, he added, that I should have
my mind cleared of the odd fancies that encumbered it; and very proud
and happy would it make him to believe that he had been instrumental in
solving any problem that perplexed, or helping forward any desires that
agitated me.
I did not doubt, though he was cautious not to suggest, that he
thought me a very odd, fanciful, even half-crazy being. A downright
practical intrigue, a transparent love-affair, he could very readily
have understood; but a passion excited by meeting a woman under
circumstances so strange, a love inflamed by superstition and yet
made imbecile by timidity, it was not in his nature to comprehend. It
was fortunate perhaps that his polite incredulity curbed my natural
tendency to rhapsodise, or I might have written myself down a greater
ass in his eyes than he was disposed to think me.
We left the house at an hour considerably past the appointed time.
Sitting over our brandy-and-water we had fallen into an argument, and
had prosecuted it with an industry and enthusiasm that had made us
forgetful of the clock. He was the first to recall our scheme.
"See!" he exclaimed, "it is twenty minutes to twelve; close upon the
hour when churchyards yawn."
"Come, then," said I; "but lest we encounter more than our nerves--_my_
nerves at all events--are prepared to meet, let us take one glass more."
He refused with a smile. I brimmed a tumbler.
"_Ai mali extremi, extremi remedi_," said he, laughing.
"You may need the remedy yourself yet," I retorted, as I led the way
into the garden.
The air was so silent that, as we marched with soundless tread upon the
velvet lawn, I could hear the rustle of an occasional leaf falling from
the branches. Among the trees the moon threw level beams, that lay like
fallen marble columns. The shadows were swart and stirless.
I was kept silent by my thoughts. He was loquacious. We gained the end
of the grounds, passed through the gate, and entered the fields.
"What an oppressive night!" he exclaimed, removing his hat and fanning
himself with it. "The moon seems hardly able to pierce her light
through the sultry air. I should have thought such a temperature
impossible in fifty-five degrees north."
"It must end in a storm. The stars look white and sick with the heat.
Perhaps they are paling their ineffectual fires before the brilliance
of the lightning which they can see but we cannot."
We had gained the summit of the hillock whereon I had before stood. I
seated myself.
"There is her house, or rather there is its position," said I, pointing
to the trees. "Do you see that hedge? She was gliding alongside it
when I saw her. Martelli, picture yourself alone here; disposed by the
drowsy moonlight and vague murmurs in the air to unpleasant thoughts.
Suddenly a white dim shape flits upon the gloom, pauses, vanishes, to
reappear at your elbow--would you not use your legs?"
His white teeth shone beneath his black moustache.
"No. It would probably be the other who would use its legs. I should
seize it--man or woman, angel or goblin!"
"Then your nerves must be of galvanised wire, your muscles iron, your
spirit something more surprising than the timid essence that vitalises
such a lower order of being as I."
He smoked the cheroot I had given him, without response.
I lay back with my head reposing on my arm, my eyes fixed on the stars.
"Look!" he suddenly cried; "there is your spirit!"
I started--rose to my feet at once. She stood, habited as I had before
seen her, at the gate of the garden, motionless.
Martelli advanced, paused, beckoned. I went to him.
"Shall we go to her?" he whispered. "If she sees us she will withdraw."
"She will not see us."
He laughed low.
"She must be blind if she doesn't. But now is your opportunity to speak
with her. Come with me--be bold, Sir. This is a rare chance. Should she
not see us until we are near, and then attempt to withdraw, accost her
bravely. Tell her you have met her here before--acquaint her with your
alarm. The rest is easy."
He moved forward; I followed. The moon gave us sharp, short shadows. I
breathed quickly. He heard my pantings, and took my arm.
She stood confronting us; but she did not stir. We drew near. I who
knew her face, could shape from the countenance, whose lineaments
were yet too dim to discern, the sorrowful sovereign eyes and immobile
beauty.
Suddenly Martelli stopped short. I looked at him. He was staring and
trembling. His breath seemed to die. His eyes were round and lively
with an expression that seemed to me akin to horror. I heard him gasp
"_Dio mio! Dio mio!_" several times.
Somehow the failure of his courage was the renewal of mine. Much of
her mystery had at least fallen from this woman. I knew who she was,
at all events. But how strange, how startling was it to see her gazing
steadfastly in our direction, and not offering to move.
I whispered to Martelli: "Come, come! where are your nerves?" He could
not answer me. There he stood, rooted to the ground, with his face in
the moonlight blanched to the colour of a corpse.
At this moment the figure turned, made a gesture with her right hand
and withdrew.
"I will follow you!" I said, setting my teeth, for the undertaking
was a mighty one to me. Yes! I was mastered now by a resolution
uncontrollable as superstition and passion could make it, to speak to
her. I left Martelli and advanced to the gate. I pushed it open, and
passed up the garden walk. Her white shape floated in front. I trod on
tiptoe, gained her side, and whispered:
"I saw your summons. I am, indeed, grateful to you for this privilege.
I have long wished for an interview, but respected too much your
obvious desire of solitude"----
But here I broke off; for though I spoke in her ear she did not turn.
Had she been a statue, she could not have been more heedless. I was
abreast of her; a stride took me in advance. I looked into her face.
Her eyes were fixed. In their wonderful depth the moon was mirrored;
but they were uninformed and expressionless. They stared from beneath
her brow of ivory, soulless and blank.
I halted abruptly, as Martelli had done. She swept forward, mounted the
steps leading into the house, and vanished. I returned to my friend. I
found him leaning against the gate. When he saw me he stood erect. His
face was still blanched; but he had mastered himself so far as to speak
in a firm voice and to smile.
"She is no ghost," he said briefly.
"I knew that," I replied.
"She was very ghostly though. I can understand your alarm."
"I am glad you can. Your own behaviour justifies mine. But I thought
you were afraid of neither ghost nor goblin?"
"I thought she would move--I thought she would move," he replied. "Her
stillness was fearful--it was unexpected--I found it terrible."
"But the mystery of her is at an end."
"I know what you mean, Sir. Your ghost is nothing more than a
somnambulist. I should have guessed it from the beginning--guessed
either that she was asleep or that she was mad. Anyone in his senses
would have hit upon this."
"I didn't. But perhaps I am not in my senses."
"Remember, Sir, you are in love!" he exclaimed, with a hard laugh.
"Who could help being in love with such a creature? Did you remark her
beauty?"
"As well as I could by the light. She did not strike me as possessing
the charms your enthusiasm would have suggested. To be sure I saw her
at a disadvantage. But I do not admire red-haired women; or if they be
red-haired, let them have at least blue eyes. Beauty should always be
harmonious. And then she walks in her sleep--a qualification I for one
could dispense with."
"Let us go in," I said. "The issue of this adventure has satisfied me.
To-morrow I will introduce myself to her."