It was in the same summer of 1842, and near the middle of June, that my
brother John wrote inviting me to come to Oxford for the Commemoration
festivities. I had been spending some weeks with Mrs. Temple, a distant
cousin of ours, at their house of Royston in Derbyshire, and John was
desirous that Mrs. Temple should come up to Oxford and chaperone
her daughter Constance and myself at the balls and various other
entertainments which take place at the close of the summer term. Owing
to Royston being some two hundred miles from Worth Maltravers, our
families had hitherto seen little of one another, but during my present
visit I had learned to love Mrs. Temple, a lady of singular sweetness of
disposition, and had contracted a devoted attachment to her daughter
Constance. Constance Temple was then eighteen years of age, and to great
beauty united such mental graces and excellent traits of character as
must ever appear to reasoning persons more enduringly valuable than even
the highest personal attractions. She was well read and witty, and had
been trained in those principles of true religion which she afterwards
followed with devoted consistency in the self-sacrifice and resigned
piety of her too short life. In person, I may remind you, my dear
Edward, since death removed her ere you were of years to appreciate
either her appearance or her qualities, she was tall, with a somewhat
long and oval face, with brown hair and eyes.
Mrs. Temple readily accepted Sir John Maltravers' invitation. She had
never seen Oxford herself, and was pleased to afford us the pleasure of
so delightful an excursion. John had secured convenient rooms for us
above the shop of a well-known printseller in High Street, and we
arrived in Oxford on Friday evening, June 18, 1842. I shall not dilate
to you on the various Commemoration festivities, which have probably
altered little since those days, and with which you are familiar.
Suffice it to say that my brother had secured us admission to every
entertainment, and that we enjoyed our visit as only youth with its keen
sensibilities and uncloyed pleasures can. I could not help observing
that John was very much struck by the attractions of Miss Constance
Temple, and that she for her part, while exhibiting no unbecoming
forwardness, certainly betrayed no aversion to him. I was greatly
pleased both with my own powers of observation which had enabled me to
discover so important a fact, and also with the circumstance itself.
To a romantic girl of nineteen it appeared high time that a brother of
twenty-two should be at least preparing some matrimonial project; and my
friend was so good and beautiful that it seemed impossible that I should
ever obtain a more lovable sister or my brother a better wife. Mrs.
Temple could not refuse her sanction to such a scheme; for while their
mental qualities seemed eminently compatible, John was in his own right
master of Worth Maltravers, and her daughter sole heiress of the Royston
estates.
The Commemoration festivities terminated on Wednesday night with a grand
ball at the Music-Room in Holywell Street. This was given by a Lodge of
University Freemasons, and John was there with Mr. Gaskell--whose
acquaintance we had made with much gratification--both wearing blue silk
scarves and small white aprons. They introduced us to many other of
their friends similarly adorned, and these important and mysterious
insignia sat not amiss with their youthful figures and boyish faces.
After a long and pleasurable programme, it was decided that we should
prolong our visit till the next evening, leaving Oxford at half-past
ten o'clock at night and driving to Didcot, there to join the mail for
the west. We rose late the next morning and spent the day rambling among
the old colleges and gardens of the most beautiful of English cities.
At seven o'clock we dined together for the last time at our lodgings
in High Street, and my brother proposed that before parting we should
enjoy the fine evening in the gardens of St. John's College. This was
at once agreed to, and we proceeded thither, John walking on in front
with Constance and Mrs. Temple, and I following with Mr. Gaskell. My
companion explained that these gardens were esteemed the most beautiful
in the University, but that under ordinary circumstances it was not
permitted to strangers to walk there of an evening. Here he quoted some
Latin about "aurum per medios ire satellites," which I smilingly made as
if I understood, and did indeed gather from it that John had bribed the
porter to admit us. It was a warm and very still night, without a moon,
but with enough of fading light to show the outlines of the garden
front. This long low line of buildings built in Charles I's reign looked
so exquisitely beautiful that I shall never forget it, though I have not
since seen its oriel windows and creeper-covered walls. There was a very
heavy dew on the broad lawn, and we walked at first only on the paths.
No one spoke, for we were oppressed by the very beauty of the scene, and
by the sadness which an imminent parting from friends and from so sweet
a place combined to cause. John had been silent and depressed the whole
day, nor did Mr. Gaskell himself seem inclined to conversation.
Constance and my brother fell a little way behind, and Mr. Gaskell asked
me to cross the lawn if I was not afraid of the dew, that I might see
the garden front to better advantage from the corner. Mrs. Temple waited
for us on the path, not wishing to wet her feet. Mr. Gaskell pointed out
the beauties of the perspective as seen from his vantage-point, and we
were fortunate in hearing the sweet descant of nightingales for which
this garden has ever been famous. As we stood silent and listening, a
candle was lit in a small oriel at the end, and the light showing the
tracery of the window added to the picturesqueness of the scene.
Within an hour we were in a landau driving through the still warm lanes
to Didcot. I had seen that Constance's parting with my brother had been
tender, and I am not sure that she was not in tears during some part at
least of our drive; but I did not observe her closely, having my
thoughts elsewhere.
Though we were thus being carried every moment further from the sleeping
city, where I believe that both our hearts were busy, I feel as if I had
been a personal witness of the incidents I am about to narrate, so often
have I heard them from my brother's lips. The two young men, after
parting with us in the High Street, returned to their respective
colleges. John reached his rooms shortly before eleven o'clock. He was
at once sad and happy--sad at our departure, but happy in a new-found
world of delight which his admiration for Constance Temple opened to
him. He was, in fact, deeply in love with her, and the full flood of a
hitherto unknown passion filled him with an emotion so overwhelming that
his ordinary life seemed transfigured. He moved, as it were, in an ether
superior to our mortal atmosphere, and a new region of high resolves and
noble possibilities spread itself before his eyes. He slammed his heavy
outside door (called an "oak") to prevent anyone entering and flung
himself into the window-seat. Here he sat for a long time, the sash
thrown up and his head outside, for he was excited and feverish. His
mental exaltation was so great and his thoughts of so absorbing an
interest that he took no notice of time, and only remembered afterwards
that the scent of a syringa-bush was borne up to him from a little
garden-patch opposite, and that a bat had circled slowly up and down the
lane, until he heard the clocks striking three. At the same time the
faint light of dawn made itself felt almost imperceptibly; the classic
statues on the roof of the schools began to stand out against the white
sky, and a faint glimmer to penetrate the darkened room. It glistened on
the varnished top of his violin-case lying on the table, and on a jug of
toast-and-water placed there by his college servant or scout every night
before he left. He drank a glass of this mixture, and was moving towards
his bedroom door when a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, took
the violin from its case, tuned it, and began to play the "Areopagita"
suite. He was conscious of that mental clearness and vigour which not
unfrequently comes with the dawn to those who have sat watching or
reading through the night: and his thoughts were exalted by the effect
which the first consciousness of a deep passion causes in imaginative
minds. He had never played the suite with more power; and the airs,
even without the piano part, seemed fraught with a meaning hitherto
unrealised. As he began the _Gagliarda_ he heard the wicker chair creak;
but he had his back towards it, and the sound was now too familiar to
him to cause him even to look round. It was not till he was playing
the repeat that he became aware of a new and overpowering sensation.
At first it was a vague feeling, so often experienced by us all, of
not being alone. He did not stop playing, and in a few seconds the
impression of a presence in the room other than his own became so strong
that he was actually afraid to look round. But in another moment he felt
that at all hazards he must see what or who this presence was. Without
stopping he partly turned and partly looked over his shoulder. The
silver light of early morning was filling the room, making the various
objects appear of less bright colour than usual, and giving to
everything a pearl-grey neutral tint. In this cold but clear light he
saw seated in the wicker chair the figure of a man.
In the first violent shock of so terrifying a discovery, he could not
appreciate such details as those of features, dress, or appearance. He
was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he knew
himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which bore a
human form. He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he felt
to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited
imagination, but still it sat there. Then my brother put down his
violin, and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an
intensity which he had previously believed impossible. Whether the image
which he saw was subjective or objective, I cannot pretend to say: you
will be in a position to judge for yourself when you have finished this
narrative. Our limited experience would lead us to believe that it was a
phantom conjured up by some unusual condition of his own brain; but we
are fain to confess that there certainly do exist in nature phenomena
such as baffle human reason; and it is possible that, for some hidden
purposes of Providence, permission may occasionally be granted to those
who have passed from this life to assume again for a time the form of
their earthly tabernacle. We must, I say, be content to suspend our
judgment on such matters; but in this instance the subsequent course of
events is very difficult to explain, except on the supposition that
there was then presented to my brother's view the actual bodily form of
one long deceased. The dread which took possession of him was due, he
has more than once told me when analysing his feelings long afterwards,
to two predominant causes. Firstly, he felt that mental dislocation
which accompanies the sudden subversion of preconceived theories,
the sudden alteration of long habit, or even the occurrence of any
circumstance beyond the walk of our daily experience. This I have
observed myself in the perturbing effect which a sudden death, a
grievous accident, or in recent years the declaration of war, has
exercised upon all except the most lethargic or the most determined
minds. Secondly, he experienced the profound self-abasement or mental
annihilation caused by the near conception of a being of a superior
order. In the presence of an existence wearing, indeed, the human form,
but of attributes widely different from and superior to his own, he felt
the combined reverence and revulsion which even the noblest wild animals
exhibit when brought for the first time face to face with man. The shock
was so great that I feel persuaded it exerted an effect on him from
which he never wholly recovered.
After an interval which seemed to him interminable, though it was only
of a second's duration, he turned his eyes again to the occupant of the
wicker chair. His faculties had so far recovered from the first shock
as to enable him to see that the figure was that of a man perhaps
thirty-five years of age and still youthful in appearance. The face was
long and oval, the hair brown, and brushed straight off an exceptionally
high forehead. His complexion was very pale or bloodless. He was clean
shaven, and his finely cut mouth, with compressed lips, wore something
of a sneering smile. His general expression was unpleasing, and from the
first my brother felt as by intuition that there was present some malign
and wicked influence. His eyes were not visible, as he kept them cast
down, resting his head on his hand in the attitude of one listening. His
face and even his dress were impressed so vividly upon John's mind, that
he never had any difficulty in recalling them to his imagination; and he
and I had afterwards an opportunity of verifying them in a remarkable
manner. He wore a long cut-away coat of green cloth with an edge of gold
embroidery, and a white satin waistcoat figured with rose-sprigs, a
full cravat of rich lace, knee-breeches of buff silk, and stockings of
the same. His shoes were of polished black leather with heavy silver
buckles, and his costume in general recalled that worn a century ago.
As my brother gazed at him, he got up, putting his hands on the arms
of the chair to raise himself, and causing the creaking so often heard
before. The hands forced themselves on my brother's notice: they were
very white, with the long delicate fingers of a musician. He showed a
considerable height; and still keeping his eyes on the floor, walked
with an ordinary gait towards the end of the bookcase at the side of the
room farthest from the window. He reached the bookcase, and then John
suddenly lost sight of him. The figure did not fade gradually, but went
out, as it were, like the flame of a suddenly extinguished candle.
The room was now filled with the clear light of the summer morning: the
whole vision had lasted but a few seconds, but my brother knew that
there was no possibility of his having been mistaken, that the mystery
of the creaking chair was solved, that he had seen the man who had come
evening by evening for a month past to listen to the rhythm of the
_Gagliarda_. Terribly disturbed, he sat for some time half dreading and
half expecting a return of the figure; but all remained unchanged: he
saw nothing, nor did he dare to challenge its reappearance by playing
again the _Gagliarda_, which seemed to have so strange an attraction for
it. At last, in the full sunlight of a late June morning at Oxford, he
heard the steps of early pedestrians on the pavement below his windows,
the cry of a milkman, and other sounds which showed the world was awake.
It was after six o'clock, and going to his bedroom he flung himself on
the outside of the bed for an hour's troubled slumber.