But I ask your pardon; I should not quote Shakespeare to a foreigner.’
‘Miss Ormesby is mistaken, if she supposes that we Germans are ignorant of the works of her great poet!’ I said, earnestly. ‘Shakespeare—to use the words of a great German critic—was naturalised in Germany the moment that he was known. The same critic—Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel—enjoys the distinction of having first directed the attention of Europe to the philosophical significance of his dramas. Before Schlegel, Lessing wrote upon Shakespeare; Herder has studied him; Tieck began a series of letters upon his plays; and Goethe, in his “Wilhelm Meister”, has spoken of him with reverence and enthusiasm.’
‘This is indeed a pleasant tale for English ears!’ exclaimed the lady, with a flush upon her pale cheek; ‘and we should be proud to hear it. I wish I spoke your language as well as you speak ours.’
And so the conversation changed again, and flowed on into other channels, like a mountain-stream, now winding past a little quiet isle, now dashing over the steep rocks, now murmuring softly through the rushes near a cottage-door, and anon wandering out and losing itself in the deep sea. Thus the hours glided away unnoticed, and it was nearly midnight when I withdrew.
Mine was a large dark room, with an enormous bed, like a hearse, in the centre of the floor. Two ebony cabinets, richly inlaid, stood on either side of the fireplace. An antique Venetian mirror was suspended above the toilette-table, and some high-backed chairs and moyen age fauteuils were scattered about in various directions.
Glancing round at these details, I walked over to one of the casements, threw it open, and, leaning forward into the moonlight, thought of the lady whom I already dared to love. It was long past midnight when I returned into the chamber, and dropped upon a chair:
‘“Benedetto sia ’l giorno, e’l mese, e l’anno,
E la stagione, e’l tempo, e l’ora, e ’l punto,
E’l bel paese, e’l loco, ov’ io fui giunto
Da due begli occhi che legato m’hanno!”*
I exclaimed, in the impassioned words of Petrarch, as I bent my head down upon my hands, and whispered one name softly to myself. After a time I looked up again; my eyes wandered listlessly round the room, and encountered a picture which I had not before observed. I rose; I advanced towards it; I raised the candle . . . a freezing sensation came upon me; my eyes grew dim; my heart stood still. In that portrait I recognised—myself!
Suddenly I turned and rushed to the door; but, as my fingers closed upon the handle, I paused. ‘What folly!’ I said. ‘It can only be a mirror!’
So I nerved myself to return.
Once more I stood before it, and surveyed it steadily. It was no mirror, but a picture—an old oil-painting, cracked in many places, and mellow with the deepened tones of age. The portrait represented a young man in the costume of the reign of James the first, with ruff and doublet. But the face—the face! I sickened as I gazed upon it; for every feature was mine! The long light hair, descending almost to the shoulders; the pallid hue and anxious brow, the compressed lip and fair moustache, the very meaning and expression of the eye—all, all my own, as though reflected from the surface of a mirror!
I stood fascinated, spellbound: my eyes were riveted upon the picture, and its eyes, glance for glance, on mine. At length the tide of horror seemed to burst its bounds; a groan broke from my lips, and dashing my lamp upon the ground that I might behold the face no more, I flew to the window, and leaped out into the garden.
All that night, hour after hour, I wandered through the avenues and glades of the park, startling the red-deer in their midnight covers, and scattering the dewdrops from the ferns as I passed by.
The morning dawned ere long; the sun shone, the lark rose singing, and the day-flowers opened in the grass. At seven o’clock I bent my steps towards the house, weary, haggard, and depressed. Frank met me in the garden.
‘You are early this morning, Heinrich,’ he said, gaily. Then, observing the expression of my countenance, ‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed, ‘what is the matter?’
‘I have not slept at all,’ I replied, in a hollow tone; ‘and I have suffered the torture of a hundred sleepless nights in one. Come with me to my bedchamber, and I will tell you.’
We went, and I told him. He heard me out in silence, and looked frequently from the portrait to my face. When I had done, he laughed aloud and shook his head.
‘I acknowledge,’ he said, ‘that the resemblance is striking; and not only the resemblance, but the coincidence; for, to tell you the truth, this is actually the portrait of one of your countrymen—a Baron von Ravensberg, of Suabia, who married a daughter of our house in the year 1614. At the same time, my dear Heinrich, I cannot hear of anything supernatural in the matter. It is one of those fortuitous circumstances which are of daily occurrence; and, after all, the likeness may be, in a great measure, simply national. We know how strongly the peasantry of Scotland and of Ireland are impressed with one physiognomical stamp; and (not to cite the tribes of coloured men, or even the Chinese and Tartars) how remarkably are these facial characteristics imprinted upon the natives of America! The last instance is, indeed, one which admits of wide physiological inquiry. The Americans, gathered together as they are from all the shores of the world, have, as it were, received a stamp of individuality from the very climate in which they live.’
I heard, but scarcely heeded his words. When he had ceased speaking, I looked up as if from a dream.
‘It may be all very true, Ormesby,’ I replied; ‘but I cannot occupy this room another night.’
‘Nor is there any occasion that you should,’ said he, cheerily. ‘Come down to the breakfast-parlour, and I will order the green bedroom to be prepared for you!’
I felt now as if some destiny were upon me; and many days elapsed before I regained my cheerfulness. By degrees, however, the impression wore away, and as I no longer saw, I ceased to think of the picture.
Oh, thou solitary dream of my life! come back once more, and let me for a brief moment forget the years that have risen up between my soul and thee!
I loved her—shall I say loved? Ah, no! I love her still. I shall love her till I die! Let me tell how deep and passionate that love was; how I lived day after day in the sweet air she breathed; how I sat and watched the inner-light of her dark, earnest eyes; how my heart failed within me, listening to her voice!
Her voice! Ah, that sweet low voice! It vibrates even now upon my ear, and brings the stranger tears back to my eyes! How can I paint the long golden days of that dreamy autumn season, when I went forth by her side through the yellow cornfields, and the pleasant lanes? Sometimes we sat beneath the spreading boughs, while I read aloud to her from Shakespeare, or translated a few pages of Schiller. How my voice rose and trembled as the words translated the language of my heart!
Then there were the happy evenings when we sat by the open windows of the old drawing-room, looking out upon the dusky park and the starry sky; when the harvest-moon shone down upon the stirless trees; when the nightingale shook her wild song from her little throat hard by; and the drowsy air hung enchanted over all!
At such times Grace would touch the keys of the piano, and sing the ballads of my native land.
Why do I linger thus? It was but a dream—let me tell of my awakening.
At the extremity of my friend’s garden there stood an old-fashioned summer-house, shaped like a pagoda, with a gilt ball upon the summit. This point commanded an extensive and beautiful prospect. In front stood the old house, with its carven gable ends and burnished weather-cocks; the garden, curiously planted in formal beds, and interspersed with trees of quaintly-cut pyramidal form; the terraced walks; the spreading park; and, beyond the park, the summits of the blue hills far away. In the summer-house stood a table and two rustic chairs; and just before the entrance a simple pedestal was erected, whereon a dial, worn and rusted by the storms of many years, told the silent hours by the sun.
Here it was that I sat one sunn
y morning, face to face with her. An open volume lay beside me on the table. I had been reading to her, and she was busy with some dainty needlework. I could not see her eyes for the dark curls that fell down her cheeks.
The book was Chaucer—I remember it well. I had been reading the ‘Knight’s Tale’, and we had broken off at the death of Arcite. After a few words of admiration, there came a pause; and as I turned to resume the poem, my eyes rested upon her, and I could not remove them. Very silently I sat there looking at her, watching the flitting of her fingers, and the coming and going of her breath; and I asked myself—‘Can this be life, or is it nothing but a dream?’
Suddenly, I felt the deep love welling upwards from my heart to my lips; and then—then I found myself at her feet, clasping her hands in mine, and saying over and over again, in a quick broken voice, between tears and trembling:
‘Grace! dear, dearest Grace, I love you!’
But she made no answer, and only sat quite pale and still, and downward-looking, like a marble saint.
‘Not one word, Grace—not one?’
Her lips quivered. Slowly she lifted up her face, and fixed her eyes on mine. Oh! how deep they were—how dark—how earnest!
‘Heinrich,’ she said, in a low clear voice, ‘Heinrich, I loved you long ago—I loved you in imagination, for years before we met.’
Surely there was nothing in these words that should not have filled me with delight, and yet they smote upon me with a sensation of indescribable horror.
I had heard them before—ay, and in that very spot!
With the swiftness of lightning it rushed upon me; and in one passing second, as a landscape flits before us in the flashes of a storm, I recollected, oh! heavens, not only the place, the hour, the summer-house, the garden; but herself—her words—her eyes! all, all as familiar as they were a portion of my own being!
‘Grace! Grace!’ I shrieked, springing to my feet, and clasping my hands wildly above my head, ‘do you not remember?—once before—here, here—centuries ago!—do you not remember?—do you not—do you not remem . . .’
A choking, dreadful feeling arrested my breath; the ground rocked beneath my feet; a red mist swam before my eyes—I staggered—I fell!
I remember nothing of what followed.
* * * * *
Even now it seems to me as if years passed away between that moment and the period when my consciousness returned. Long passionless years—without a thought, without a hope, without a fear; dark as night, and blank as dreamless sleep!
But it was not so. Scarcely three weeks had elapsed since I was seized with the fever; and so far from having lain there in a passive trance, I had all the time been racked by the burning visions of delirium.
Brought to the very confines of the grave, weak, emaciated, and careless of all around me, I permitted two or three days to pass away in this state of listless debility, without asking even a question about the past, or daring to dwell for an instant upon the future. I had no power to think.
Those first days of sanity glided by like waking dreams, and I passed insensibly from drowsy perception to long and frequent slumbers. While awake, I listened idly to the ticking of the clock, and to the passing footsteps on the stairs; watched the sunlight creeping slowly round the walls with the advancing day; followed, like a child, the quiet movements of my nurse: and accepted, without question, the medicines and aliments which she brought me. I was feebly conscious, too, of the frequent visits of the doctor; and when he felt my pulse, and enjoined me not to speak, I was too weak and weary even to reply.
On the morning of the third (or it might have been the fourth) day, I woke from a long sleep which seemed to have lasted all the night, and I felt the springs of life and thought renewed within me. I looked round the room, and, for the first time, wondered where I was.
The nurse was soundly sleeping in an armchair at my bedside. The room was large and airy. The window was shadowed by a tree, the leaves of which rustled with the wind. Some bookshelves, laden with bright new volumes, were suspended against the wall; and a small table, covered with phials and wine-glasses, was placed at the foot of the bed.
I asked myself where I had been before this illness, and in one moment I remembered all, even to the last broken words!
I must have given utterance to some exclamation, for my attendant woke, and turned a startled face upon me.
‘Nurse,’ I said eagerly, ‘where am I?—whose house is this?’
‘Hush, sir! this is Dr Howard’s; but you are to keep quiet. Here is the doctor himself!’
The door opened, and a gentlemanly-looking man entered. Seeing me awake, he smiled pleasantly, and took a seat beside my bed.
‘I see by your face, my young friend, that you are better,’ he said. ‘Did I hear you asking where you are? You are my guest and patient.’
‘How came I here?’
‘You have had a brain fever, and were removed to my dwelling at my request. By that arrangement I have been enabled to give your case more attention. I live in the village of Torringhurst, two miles from Ormesby Park.’
‘And Frank, and—and Miss Ormesby?’ I began hesitatingly.
‘Your friends have been very anxious for you,’ he said, with some irresolution, as if scarce knowing how to reply. ‘Mr Ormesby watched many nights at your bedside. They—they waited till they knew you to be out of danger.’
‘And then?’ I cried eagerly.
‘And then they left Ormesby Park for the Continent.’
‘For the Continent!’ I repeated. ‘Then I must follow them!’
The doctor laid his hand gently on my shoulder. I sank back upon the pillows, utterly powerless; and he resumed:
‘I have promised not to say where they are gone; and—and they do not wish that you should follow.’
‘But I will go! Why should I not? What have I done that I should be treated thus? Oh! cruel, cruel!’
I was so weak and wretched that I burst into tears, and sobbed like a child.
He looked at me gravely and compassionately.
‘Herr Professor,’ he said, taking my hand in his, and looking into my eyes, ‘you are a man of education and intellect. I well know that to leave you in doubt would be not only the unkindest, but the unwisest thing that I could do. Now listen to me, and prepare yourself for a great disappointment. Shortly before your seizure, you made some observations (owing probably to the approach of fever) which much shocked and alarmed your friend’s sister. It appears, likewise, that a few weeks before, you expressed yourself very strangely with respect to a picture. These two circumstances, I regret to say, have impressed your friends with the idea that you are the victim, I will not say of unsound mind, but of a delusive theory, highly injurious to your own mental and physical well-being, as well as to the happiness of those connected with you. Such being the case, Mr Ormesby is of opinion that your intimacy with his sister must unavoidably cease; and the better to effect this, he has taken her abroad for a time. Mr Ormesby entrusted me with this letter for you.’
Here is a transcript of the letter:
Deeply painful as it is to me thus to address you after so severe an illness, my dear Heinrich, I must write a few lines, entreating your forgiveness for the apparent unkindness of which I am guilty in thus quitting England before you are sufficiently recovered to wish me farewell. I will leave to my kind friend Dr Howard the ungrateful task of explaining my motives for this departure; but I can trust only my own pen to describe to you the deep grief which that determination has cost me. Nothing but the sense of a duty still more imperative than that of friendship could have forced me to inflict upon you a disappointment in which I entreat you to believe I have an equal share. My dear old college friend, forgive and still love me, for my attachment to you must and will ever be the same. Perhaps in time to come, when all that has lately passed shall be, if not forgotten, at least unregretted, you will suffer me to resume my old place in your confidence, and will welcome to your hearth and heart
Your friend,
FRANK ORMESBY.
* * * * *
There are times when this beautiful world seems to put on a mourning garb, as if in sympathy with the grief that consumes us; when the trees shake their arms in mute sorrow, and scatter their withered leaves like ashes on our heads; when the slow rains weep down around us, and the very clouds look old above. Then, like Hamlet the Dane, ‘This goodly frame, the earth, seems to us a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o’er-hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, appears no other thing than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.’
And so it was with me, walking solitary and sad beneath the sighing trees in one of the public gardens of Paris.
The dead leaves rustled as I trod, and the bare branches clashed together in the wind. A little to the right flowed the tide of pleasure-seekers. Overhead the clouds hung low and dark, now and then shedding brief showers.
I was still weak and suffering; but I could not stay in the country she had left. I came hither, seeking change and distraction—perhaps, too, with a vague hope that I might find her. Could I but see her once more; could I but hear the sweet sound of her voice, bidding me (if it must be so) an eternal farewell, I felt I should be more at peace with the world and myself.
But in Paris I had found her not—neither had I found peace, nor hope, nor rest. The clouds had rolled between me and the sun, and every land alike was darkened.
I then felt that I could say with Sir Thomas Browne—‘For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.’ Yet I never reproached her with my sorrow! Nay, I blessed her for the love that had once beamed on me from her eyes, and for the happy, happy times that must return no more.
Think you, my friend, that I have changed since then? No, I love her still, with a love and reverence inexpressible. She believed me mad. It is a hard word—perhaps it was a hard thought—but was it hers?
THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories Page 14
