“Yes; they were large, wild-looking, dark eyes, with a look in them—a look I cannot describe.”
“A look of terror!” cried the pastor, now greatly agitated. “A look of terror—of remorse—of despair!”
“Yes, it was a look that might mean all that,” I replied, my astonishment increasing at every word. “You seem troubled. Who is he?”
But instead of answering my question, the pastor took off his hat, looked up with a radiant, awe-struck face, and said:—
“All-merciful God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee that I am not mad, and that Thou hast sent this stranger to be my assurance and my comfort!”
Having said these words, he bowed his head, and his lips moved in silent prayer. When he looked up again, his eyes were full of tears.
“My son,” he said, laying his trembling hand upon my arm, “I owe you an explanation; but I cannot give it to you now. It must wait till I can speak more calmly—till tomorrow, when I must see you again. It involves a terrible story—a story peculiarly painful to myself—enough now if I tell you that I have seen the Thing you describe—seen It many times; and yet, because It has been visible to my eyes alone, I have doubted the evidence of my senses. The good people here believe that much sorrow and meditation have touched my brain. I have half believed it myself till now. But you—you have proved to me that I am the victim of no illusion.”
“But in Heaven’s name,” I exclaimed, “what do you suppose I saw in the confessional?”
“You saw the likeness of one who, guilty also of a double murder, committed the deadly sin of sacrilege in that very spot, more than thirty years ago,” replied the Père Chessez, solemnly.
“Caspar Rufenacht!”
“Ah! you have heard the story? Then I am spared the pain of telling it to you. That is well.”
I bent my head in silence. We walked together without another word to the wicket, and thence round to the churchyard gate. It was now twilight, and the first stars were out.
“Good-night, my son,” said the pastor, giving me his hand. “Peace be with you.”
As he spoke the words his grasp tightened—his eyes dilated—his whole countenance became rigid.
“Look!” he whispered. “Look where it goes!”
I followed the direction of his eyes, and there, with a freezing horror which I have no words to describe, I saw—distinctly saw through the deepening gloom—a tall, dark figure in a priest’s soutane and broad-brimmed hat, moving slowly across the path leading from the parsonage to the church. For a moment it seemed to pause—then passed on to the deeper shade, and disappeared.
“You saw it?” said the pastor.
“Yes—plainly.”
He drew a deep breath; crossed himself devoutly; and leaned upon the gate, as if exhausted.
“This is the third time I have seen it this year,” he said. “Again I thank God for the certainty that I see a visible thing, and that His great gift of reason is mine unimpaired. But I would that He were graciously pleased to release me from the sight—the horror of it is sometimes more than I know how to bear. Good night.”
With this he again touched my hand; and so, seeing that he wished to be alone, I silently left him. At the Friedrich’s Thor I turned and looked back. He was still standing by the churchyard gate, just visible through the gloom of the fast deepening twilight.
* * * *
I never saw the Père Chessez again. Save his own old servant, I was the last who spoke with him in this world. He died that night—died in his bed, where he was found next morning with his hands crossed upon his breast, and with a placid smile upon his lips, as if he had fallen asleep in the act of prayer.
As the news spread from house to house, the whole town rang with lamentations. The church-bells tolled; the carpenters left their work in the streets; the children, dismissed from school, went home weeping.
“’Twill be the saddest Kermess in Rheinfelden tomorrow, mein Herr!” said my good host of the Krone, as I shook hands with him at parting. “We have lost the best of pastors and of friends. He was a saint. If you had come but one day later, you would not have seen him!”
And with this he brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and turned away.
Every shutter was up, every blind down, every door closed, as I passed along the Friedrich’s Strasse about mid-day on my way to Basle; and the few townsfolk I met looked grave and downcast. Then I crossed the bridge and, having shown my passport to the German sentry on the Baden side, I took one long, last farewell look at the little walled town as it lay sleeping in the sunshine by the river—knowing that I should see it no more.
M. ANASTASIUS by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Originally published in Nothing New (1857).
Chapter I
I will relate to you, my friend, the whole history, from the beginning to—nearly—the end.
The first time that—that it happened, was on this wise.
My husband and myself were sitting in a private box at the theatre—one of the two large London theatres. The performance was, I remember well, an Easter piece in which were introduced live dromedaries and an elephant, at whose clumsy feats we were considerably amused. I mention this to show how calm and even gay was the state of both our minds that evening, and how little there was in any of the circumstances of the place or time to cause, or render us liable to—what I am about to describe.
I liked this Easter piece better than any serious drama. My life had contained enough of the tragic element to make me turn with a sick distaste from all imitations thereof in books or plays. For months, ever since our marriage, Alexis and I had striven to lead a purely childish, commonplace existence, eschewing all stirring events and strong emotions, mixing little in society, and then, with one exception, making no associations beyond the moment.
It was easy to do this in London; for we had no relations—we two were quite alone and free. Free—free! How wildly I sometimes grasped Alexis’ hand as I repeated that word.
He was young—so was I. At times, as on this night, we would sit together and laugh like children. It was so glorious to know of a surety that now we could think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.
But this had been our lot only for a year—I had recollected the date, shuddering, in the morning—for one year, from this same day.
We had been laughing very heartily, cherishing mirth, as it were, like those who would caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Suddenly, in the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, our laughter died away.
“How cold it is,” said Alexis, shivering. I shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” I said so, jestingly.
“Hush, Isbel,” whispered my husband, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between us.
I should describe the position in which we were sitting, both in front of the box, but he in full view of the audience, while I was half hidden by the curtain. Between us, where the cold draught blew, was a vacant chair. Alexis tried to move this chair, but it was fixed to the floor. He passed behind it, and wrapped a mantle over my shoulders.
“This London winter is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola.”
“Oh, no—oh, no! No more of the sea!” said I, with another and stronger shudder.
He took his former position, looking round indifferently at the audience. But neither of us spoke. The mere word “Hispaniola” was enough to throw a damp and a silence over us both.
“Isbel,” he said at last, rousing himsel
f, with a half-smile, “I think you must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! Half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fellow you ever saw?”
“Oh, Alex!” Yet it was quite true—I had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when I, a girl of sixteen, had my mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when I brought my innocent child’s garlands, and sat me down under one spreading magnificent tree, which seemed to me the king of all the trees of the field, until I felt its dews dropping death upon my youth, and my whole soul withering under its venomous shade.
“Oh, Alex!” I cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “Husband, I thank heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say, I thank heaven that I see in you no likeness to—”
Alexis knew what name I meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to us only a name—we had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible world. We dared not breathe to ourselves, still less to one another, how much brighter, holier, happier, that world was, now that the Divine wisdom had taken—him—into another. For he had been my husband’s uncle, likewise, once my guardian. He was now dead.
I sat looking at Alexis, thinking what a strange thing it was that his dear face should not have always been as beautiful to me as it was now. That loving my husband now so deeply, so wholly, clinging to him heart to heart in the deep peace of satisfied, all-trusting, and all-dependent human affection, I could ever have felt that emotion, first as an exquisite bliss, then as an ineffable terror, which now had vanished away, and become—nothing.
“They are gazing still, Isbel.”
“Who, and where?” For I had quite forgotten what he said about the people staring at me.
“And there is Colonel Hart. He sees us. Shall I beckon him?”
“As you will.”
Colonel Hart came up into our box. He shook hands with my husband, bowed to me, then looked round, half-curiously, half-uneasily.
“I thought there was a friend with you.”
“None. We have been alone all evening.”
“Indeed? How strange!”
“What! That my wife and I should enjoy a play alone together?” said Alexis, smiling.
“Excuse me, but really I was surprised to find you alone. I have certainly seen for the last half-hour a third person sitting on this chair, between you both.”
We could not help starting; for, as I stated before, the chair had in truth been left between us, empty.
“Truly our unknown friend must have been invisible. Nonsense, Colonel; how can you turn Mrs. Saltram pale, by thus peopling with your fancies the vacant air?”
“I tell you, Alexis,” said the Colonel (he was my husband’s old friend, and had been present at our hasty and private marriage), “nothing could be more unlike a fancy, even were I given to such. It was a very remarkable person who sat here. Even strangers noticed him.”
“Him!” I whispered.
“It was a man, then,” said my husband, rather angrily.
“A very peculiar-looking and extremely handsome man. I saw many glasses levelled at him.”
“What was he like?” said Alexis, rather sarcastically. “Did he speak? Or we to him?”
“No—neither. He sat quite still, in this chair.”
My husband turned away. If the Colonel had not been his friend, and so very simple-minded, honest, and sober a gentleman, I think Alexis would have suspected some drunken hoax, and turned him out of the box immediately. As it was, he only said:
“My dear fellow, the third act is beginning. Come up again at its close, and tell me if you again see my invisible friend, who must find so great an attraction in viewing, gratis, a dramatic performance.”
“I perceive—you think it a mere hallucination of mine. We shall see. I suspect the trick is on your side, and that you are harbouring some proscribed Hungarian. But I’ll not betray him. Adieu.”
“The ghostly Hungarian shall not sit next you, love, this time,” said Alexis, trying once more to remove the chair. But possibly, though he jested, he was slightly nervous, and his efforts were vain. “What nonsense this is! Isbel, let us forget it. I will stand behind you, and watch the play.”
He stood—I clasping his hand secretly and hard; then I grew quieter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past us. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. And just at that moment we saw Colonel Hart’s and several other glasses levelled as before.
“It is strange,” said Alexis.
“It is horrible,” I said. For I had been cradled in Scottish, and then filled with German superstition; besides the events of my own life had been so wild, so strange, that there was nothing too ghastly or terrible for my imagination to conjure up.
“I will summon the Colonel. We must find out this,” said my husband, speaking beneath his breath, and looking round, as if he thought he was overheard.
Colonel Hart came up. He looked very serious; so did a young man who was with him.
“Captain Elmore, let me introduce you to Mrs. Saltram. Saltram, I have brought my friend here to attest that I have played off on you no unworthy jest. Not ten minutes since, he, and I, and some others saw the same gentleman whom I described to you half an hour ago, sitting as I described—in this chair.”
“Most certainly—in this chair,” added the young captain.
My husband bowed; he kept a courteous calmness, but I felt his hand grow clammy in mine.
“Of what appearance, sir, was this unknown acquaintance of my wife’s and mine, whom everybody appears to see, except ourselves?”
“He was of middle-age, dark-haired, pale. His features were very still, and rather hard in expression. He had on a cloth cloak with a fur collar, and wore a long, pointed Charles-the-First Beard.”
My husband and I clung hand to hand with an inexpressible horror. Could there be another man—a living man, who answered this description?
“Pardon me,” Alexis said faintly. “The portrait is rather vague; may I ask you to repaint it as circumstantially as you can.”
“He was, I repeat, a pale, or rather a sallow-featured man. His eyes were extremely piercing, cold, and clear. The mouth close-set—a very firm but passionless mouth. The hair dark, seamed with gray—bald on the brow—”
“O heaven!” I groaned in an anguish of terror. For I saw again—clear as if he had never died—the face over which, for twelve long months, had swept the merciful sea-waves, off the shores of Hispaniola.
“Can you, Captain Elmore,” said Alexis, “mention no other distinguishing mark? This countenance might resemble many men.”
“I think not. It was a most remarkable face. It struck me the more—because—” and the young man grew almost as pale as we—“I once saw another very like it.”
“You see—a chance resemblance only. Fear not, my darling,” Alexis breathed in my ear. “Sir, have you any reluctance to tell me who was the gentleman?”
“It was no living man, but a corpse that we last year picked up off a wreck, and again committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. It was exactly the same face, and had the same mark—a scar, cross-shape, over one temple.”
“’Tis he! He can follow and torture us still; I knew he could!”
Alexis smothered my shriek on his breast.
“My wife is ill. This description resembles slightly a—a person we once knew. Hart, will you leave us? But no, we must probe this mystery. Gentlemen, will you once more descend to the lower part of the house, whilst we remain here, and tell me if you still see the—the figure,
sitting in this chair.”
They went. We held our breaths. The lights in the theatre were being extinguished, the audience moving away. No one came near our box; it was perfectly empty. Except our two selves, we were conscious of no sight, no sound. A few minutes after Colonel Hart knocked.
“Come in,” said Alexis, cheerily.
But the Colonel—the bold soldier—shrunk back like a frightened child.
“I have seen him—I saw him but this minute, sitting there.”
I swooned away.
Chapter II
It is right I should briefly give you my history up to this night’s date.
I was a West Indian heiress—a posthumous, and, soon after birth, an orphan child. Brought up in my mother’s country, until I was sixteen years old, I never saw my guardian. Then he met me in Paris, with my governess, and for the space of two years we lived under the same roof, seeing one another daily.
I was very young; I had no father or brother; I wished for neither lover nor husband; my guardian became to me the one object of my existence.
It was no love-passion; he was far too old for that, and I comparatively too young, at least too childish. It was one of those insane, rapturous adorations which young maidens sometimes conceive, mingling a little of the tenderness of the woman with the ecstatic enthusiasm of the devotee. There is hardly a prophet or leader noted in the world’s history who has not been followed and worshipped by many such women.
So was my guardian, M. Anastasius—not his true name, but it sufficed then, and will now.
Many may recognize him as a known leader in the French political and moral world—as one who, by the mere force of intellect, wielded the most irresistible and silently complete power of any man I ever knew, in every circle into which he came; women he won by his polished gentleness—men by his equally polished strength. He would have turned a compliment and signed a death-warrant, with the same exquisitely calm grace. Nothing was to him too great or too small. I have known him, on his way to advise that the President’s soldiers should sweep a cannonade down the thronged street—stop to pick up a strayed canary-bird, stroke its broken wing, and confide it with beautiful tenderness to his bosom.
The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack Page 34
