The night that followed this conversation was to me a most
uncomfortable one. The episode in the day's occurrences had made so
deep an impression on me, that it excluded all other thoughts from my
mind, which it occupied so intently, that, upon retiring to my
chamber, several hours elapsed before I sought repose. I did so at
last, but in vain. Between the fever attendant upon my indisposition,
and the irksomeness of frame caused by mental inquietude, sleep was
completely banished from my eyelids, or visited them only in short and
broken slumbers, peopled by the distorted images of my waking
thoughts. The mysterious Pair were again before me. I saw them gliding
through the long street, the man hastening on in that attitude, so
strikingly described by Coleridge, like one
"Who walks in fear and dread;
And having once turn'd round, walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread"--
the woman keeping on his track with the constancy of Doom. Or I was
standing a witness to their first meeting in the grim Dark on that
lonely road, their eyes of hate and fear staring wildly into each
other. Sometimes I found myself spellbound between the two, the centre
upon which their fearful sympathies revolved, the object upon which
their long pent-up passions were about to burst. Starting from those
visions, my waking fancies were hardly less tormenting. I was just at
that season of youth, before the calmer and nobler faculties have
acquired maturity and tone; when incidents that vary but little from
the ordinary economy of life, seen through the medium of the
imagination, assume a magnitude of distinctness not properly their
own. On the present occasion, however, my friend's recital was well
calculated to arouse the speculations of a romantic fancy; and mine
was now fully employed in forming a thousand conjectures in
elucidation of the curious circumstances he had repeated to me. What
could be the relation between those strange parties? Was it attachment
in the one and aversion in the other? Or had one, as was commonly
supposed, been the plundered victim--the other the Despoiler? Neither
of these cases could be so. A petty office of police would have
relieved the persecuted--a court of law would have redressed the
robbery. _Monomania_ had been known to instigate persons to a line of
conduct as perseveringly painful as this woman pursued; but then there
could be no motive why the object of her attention should, for years,
resign himself to a system of annoyance that drew upon him so much of
remark and obloquy. Or could the female be the hired instrument of
persecution in the hands of others? The poverty, the utter joylessness
of her solitary life, precluded the supposition. No! crime, I felt
convinced--_crime_ was at the bottom of it all! and crime, too, of no
ordinary quality. Was the man intent upon committing some deadly
offence against society? and was it to prevent its commission that he
was so assiduously watched by his companion? Perhaps he meditated
breaking that instinctive canon which the Most High has so wisely
fixed against "self-slaughter." Or had some hideous deed already been
perpetrated? Was it by one, or both? or was one a soul black with
guilt--the other a spirit of innocence? The more I indulged in those
heated fancies, the wilder they became. Was the woman, after all, a
Being endowed with vitality? The suddenness of her first appearance
before the man watching at the gate--the fearful hour--the lonely
spot--her noiseless tread--her silent demeanour--her sepulchral
dress--almost warranted the contrary opinion. Had she fallen by the
hand of this Maunsell? and was the apparition, which we are told ever
lives by the side of the murderer, thus permitted to haunt him,
embodied before the eyes of men? Such were the troubled thoughts that
disturbed me throughout the night. Long before sunrise I was up,
endeavouring to calm the fever into which I had wrought myself, by
pacing my apartment in the cool of morning. A brilliant sunshine
ushered in the day, and under its enlivening influence my perturbed
spirits gradually subsided to their usual tone. At breakfast, I
confess, I was disposed again to enter on the topic, if an opportunity
occurred; but Sainsbury, occupied in some letters of importance that
had arrived, talked but little, and did not recur to the subject of
the previous evening. This did not assist to allay the interest which
had been so powerfully excited in my bosom. The continuance of my cold
once more served me as a plea for remaining within doors; and, upon
our parting for the day, I did not hesitate to retire to the
dining-parlour, whose windows looked directly on the street, and
there, shutting myself up, I awaited the arrival of the hour at which
the extraordinary pair generally appeared, determined to satisfy
myself by a closer observation than I had hitherto made.
Exactly as noon sounded, I saw _him_ stop at an opposite door,
and--did I see rightly? Yes--alone. No; I had not approached
sufficiently close to the window; when I did, _she_, too, was there,
at the same slight distance behind, in the same silent, patient,
motionless attitude. He went on, and, steady as his shadow, she
pursued. I now resolved to see them still closer, and for that purpose
proceeded to the hall-door, where I remained carelessly standing until
the man approached it. I could observe that he walked at an even
deliberate pace; and as he carried none of the cumbrous machinery
distinctive of his craft, his step was steady and unimpeded. He was a
low-sized, well-made man, probably somewhat more than forty years of
age. He was neatly dressed; his attire being a suit of some of those
grave colours and primitive patterns which find so much favour in the
eyes of staid Dissenters, and persons of that class. Indeed, I could
see by his whole deportment, that the occupation he pursued was one of
choice, not of necessity. His features were regular, nor was there in
his countenance any thing remarkable, except that it was pale and
subdued, with a look of endurance which peculiar circumstances perhaps
imparted to it. What I chiefly noticed, was an evident consciousness
about the man that some disagreeable object lurked behind him; and
when I caught his eye, which I did once or twice, I could see in its
glance that he quite understood why my attention was directed to him.
He did not utter a word in my hearing, and there was altogether in his
appearance an air of depression and reserve which still further aided
the impression Sainsbury's story had made on my imagination. When he
next paused, his short progress brought his attendant close to me--in
every way a more striking and interesting person. She was a woman tall
in stature, of an erect figure, finely proportioned, as well as the
coarse mourning garments and large dark cloak in which she was muffled
allowed me to judge. She must have been, in youth, very handsome; but
on her thin ashen cheek premature age had already made unusual ravage.
She could not, from the unbroken and graceful outline of her form, be
much more than thirty; but her face was marked with the passionate
traces of nearly double that period. Nothing of life I ever beheld
exhibited the paleness--the monumental paleness of that face. On the
brow, on the cheek, all was the aspect of the grave. Yet
life--intenser life than thrills the soul of Beauty in her bridal
bower, dwelt in the working of those thin compressed lips--lurked
beneath those heavy downcast lids, burned in those dark wild eyes,
whose flashes I more than once arrested ere she passed from before me.
Writing at the interval of time I now do, and disposed as I am to deal
severely with the fantastic imaginations of my youth, I have not in
any way exaggerated the appearance this singular female exhibited.
Should the reader suspect me of such an error, a moment's reflection
will convince him that she who could--from whatever motive it might
be--adopt the strange purpose to which she had devoted her solitary
life, must have been characterized by energies of mind that would of
necessity have filled and informed her frame, and imparted to her an
air that altogether distinguished her from ordinary persons. I
observed that she seemed wholly regardless of what was passing around
her, appearing to be entirely absorbed in one great duty--the business
of her existence--that of attending on the individual whose steps she
so closely followed. He made no movement that, I thought, escaped her.
Insensible, apparently, to every thing else, her glance showed that
never for a moment did she cease to watch him, eager, my fancy
suggested, to catch the slightest indication of his turning round and
encountering her gaze. If so, her vigilance, as long as I beheld the
Pair, was in vain. The man never ventured to look behind him. In half
an hour they had vanished from the street.
They re-appeared in the evening again as usual, and then, and for
several subsequent days, (for I did not feel well enough to undergo
some twenty or thirty hours' sea-sickness in the packet that offered
the Saturday after my arrival,) I took a morbid and eager pleasure in
awaiting the visits and observing the motions of those inscrutable
beings. Sainsbury and his son were amused, but not surprised, at the
anxiety I evinced to obtain a nearer insight into Maunsell's history.
My curiosity and vigilance were, however, fruitless. The Pair
performed their revolutions with a cold uniformity, a silent
perseverance, that I found sufficiently monotonous; and at length,
after one or two baffled attempts to engage the man in conversation,
and which never proceeded beyond a few common-place words, (about his
companion there was a something indefinable that prevented me from
ever addressing _her_,) I relinquished any further hope of penetrating
the mystery. Towards the close of my stay, and as my indisposition
wore away, the Sainsburys complimented me by giving one or two
dinner-parties, and these, with some morning visits and rambles with
the men I met at the house, served to draw my attention from the
matter; so that by the time I had fairly embarked on board the
_Blitzen_, bound for Helvoetsluys, the circumstances which had
occupied me so intently for the last fortnight were beginning to take
their place among the remembrances of the past.