CHAPTER XXII.
THE LETTER.
When all was still in the house; when dinner was over and the noisyrecreation-hour past; when darkness had set in, and the quiet lamp ofstudy was lit in the refectory; when the externes were gone home, theclashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening; when Madamewas safely settled in the salle-a-manger in company with her mother andsome friends; I then glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for onehalf-hour for a particular occasion, found acceptance of my petition atthe hands of my friend Goton, who answered, ”Mais certainement,chou-chou, vous en aurez deux, si vous voulez;” and, light in hand, Imounted noiseless to the dormitory.
Great was my chagrin to find in that apartment a pupil gone to bedindisposed,--greater when I recognised, amid the muslin nightcapborders, the ”figure chiffonnee” of Mistress Ginevra Fanshawe; supineat this moment, it is true--but certain to wake and overwhelm me withchatter when the interruption would be least acceptable: indeed, as Iwatched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids warned me that thepresent appearance of repose might be but a ruse, assumed to cover slyvigilance over ”Timon's” movements; she was not to be trusted. And Ihad so wished to be alone, just to read my precious letter in peace.
Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought and found my prize in itscasket, I descended. Ill-luck pursued me. The classes were undergoingsweeping and purification by candle-light, according to hebdomadalcustom: benches were piled on desks, the air was dim with dust, dampcoffee-grounds (used by Labassecourien housemaids instead oftea-leaves) darkened the floor; all was hopeless confusion. Baffled,but not beaten, I withdrew, bent as resolutely as ever on findingsolitude _somewhere_.
Taking a key whereof I knew the repository, I mounted three staircasesin succession, reached a dark, narrow, silent landing, opened aworm-eaten door, and dived into the deep, black, cold garret. Here nonewould follow me--none interrupt--not Madame herself. I shut thegarret-door; I placed my light on a doddered and mouldy chest ofdrawers; I put on a shawl, for the air was ice-cold; I took my letter;trembling with sweet impatience, I broke its seal.
”Will it be long--will it be short?” thought I, passing my hand acrossmy eyes to dissipate the silvery dimness of a suave, south-wind shower.
It was long.
”Will it be cool?--will it be kind?”
It was kind.
To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind:to my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than itwas.
So little had I hoped, so much had I feared; there was a fulness ofdelight in this taste of fruition--such, perhaps, as many a human beingpasses through life without ever knowing. The poor English teacher inthe frosty garret, reading by a dim candle guttering in the wintry air,a letter simply good-natured--nothing more; though that good-naturethen seemed to me godlike--was happier than most queens in palaces.
Of course, happiness of such shallow origin could be but brief; yet,while it lasted it was genuine and exquisite: a bubble--but a sweetbubble--of real honey-dew. Dr. John had written to me at length; he hadwritten to me with pleasure; he had written with benignant mood,dwelling with sunny satisfaction on scenes that had passed before hiseyes and mine,--on places we had visited together--on conversations wehad held--on all the little subject-matter, in short, of the last fewhalcyon weeks. But the cordial core of the delight was, a convictionthe blithe, genial language generously imparted, that it had beenpoured out not merely to content _me_--but to gratify _himself_. Agratification he might never more desire, never more seek--anhypothesis in every point of view approaching the certain; but _that_concerned the future. This present moment had no pain, no blot, nowant; full, pure, perfect, it deeply blessed me. A passing seraphseemed to have rested beside me, leaned towards my heart, and reposedon its throb a softening, cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr. John,you pained me afterwards: forgiven be every ill--freely forgiven--forthe sake of that one dear remembered good!
Are there wicked things, not human, which envy human bliss? Are thereevil influences haunting the air, and poisoning it for man? What wasnear me?
Something in that vast solitary garret sounded strangely. Most surelyand certainly I heard, as it seemed, a stealthy foot on that floor: asort of gliding out from the direction of the black recess haunted bythe malefactor cloaks. I turned: my light was dim; the room waslong--but as I live! I saw in the middle of that ghostly chamber afigure all black and white; the skirts straight, narrow, black; thehead bandaged, veiled, white.
Say what you will, reader--tell me I was nervous or mad; affirm that Iwas unsettled by the excitement of that letter; declare that I dreamed;this I vow--I saw there--in that room--on that night--an image like--aNUN.
I cried out; I sickened. Had the shape approached me I might haveswooned. It receded: I made for the door. How I descended all thestairs I know not. By instinct I shunned the refectory, and shaped mycourse to Madame's sitting-room: I burst in. I said--
”There is something in the grenier; I have been there: I saw something.Go and look at it, all of you!”
I said, ”All of you;” for the room seemed to me full of people, thoughin truth there were but four present: Madame Beck; her mother, MadameKint, who was out of health, and now staying with her on a visit; herbrother, M. Victor Kint, and another gentleman, who, when I entered theroom, was conversing with the old lady, and had his back towards thedoor.
My mortal fear and faintness must have made me deadly pale. I felt coldand shaking. They all rose in consternation; they surrounded me. Iurged them to go to the grenier; the sight of the gentlemen did me goodand gave me courage: it seemed as if there were some help and hope,with men at hand. I turned to the door, beckoning them to follow. Theywanted to stop me, but I said they must come this way: they must seewhat I had seen--something strange, standing in the middle of thegarret. And, now, I remembered my letter, left on the drawers with thelight. This precious letter! Flesh or spirit must be defied for itssake. I flew up-stairs, hastening the faster as I knew I was followed:they were obliged to come.
Lo! when I reached the garret-door, all within was dark as a pit: thelight was out. Happily some one--Madame, I think, with her usual calmsense--had brought a lamp from the room; speedily, therefore, as theycame up, a ray pierced the opaque blackness. There stood the bougiequenched on the drawers; but where was the letter? And I looked for_that_ now, and not for the nun.
”My letter! my letter!” I panted and plained, almost beside myself. Igroped on the floor, wringing my hands wildly. Cruel, cruel doom! Tohave my bit of comfort preternaturally snatched from me, ere I had welltasted its virtue!
I don't know what the others were doing; I could not watch them: theyasked me questions I did not answer; they ransacked all corners; theyprattled about this and that disarrangement of cloaks, a breach orcrack in the sky-light--I know not what. ”Something or somebody hasbeen here,” was sagely averred.
”Oh! they have taken my letter!” cried the grovelling, groping,monomaniac.
”What letter, Lucy? My dear girl, what letter?” asked a known voice inmy ear. Could I believe that ear? No: and I looked up. Could I trust myeyes? Had I recognised the tone? Did I now look on the face of thewriter of that very letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dimgarret, John Graham--Dr. Bretton himself?
Yes: it was. He had been called in that very evening to prescribe forsome access of illness in old Madame Kint; he was the second gentlemanpresent in the salle-a-manger when I entered.
”Was it _my_ letter, Lucy?”
”Your own: yours--the letter you wrote to me. I had come here to readit quietly. I could not find another spot where it was possible to haveit to myself. I had saved it all day--never opened it till thisevening: it was scarcely glanced over: I _cannot bear_ to lose it. Oh,my letter!”
”Hush! don't cry and distress yourself so cruelly. What is it worth?Hush! Come out of this cold room; they are going to send for the policenow to examine further: we need not stay here--come, we will go down.”
A warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me down to a room where therewas a fire. Dr. John and I sat before the stove. He talked to me andsoothed me with unutterable goodness, promising me twenty letters forthe one lost. If there are words and wrongs like knives, whosedeep-inflicted lacerations never heal--cutting injuries and insults ofserrated and poison-dripping edge--so, too, there are consolations oftone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo:caressing kindnesses--loved, lingered over through a whole life,recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmedshine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself. I have beentold since that Dr. Bretton was not nearly so perfect as I thought him:that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass, andendurance it possessed in my creed. I don't know: he was as good to meas the well is to the parched wayfarer--as the sun to the shiveringjailbird. I remember him heroic. Heroic at this moment will I hold himto be.
He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his letter so very much. Ithought, but did not say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins.I only answered that I had so few letters to care for.
”I am sure you did not read it,” said he; ”or you would think nothingof it!”
”I read it, but only once. I want to read it again. I am sorry it islost.” And I could not help weeping afresh.
”Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god-sister (if there be such arelationship), here--_here_ is your letter. Why is it not better worthsuch tears, and such tenderly exaggerating faith?”
Curious, characteristic manoeuvre! His quick eye had seen the letter onthe floor where I sought it; his hand, as quick, had snatched it up. Hehad hidden it in his waistcoat pocket. If my trouble had wrought with awhit less stress and reality, I doubt whether he would ever haveacknowledged or restored it. Tears of temperature one degree coolerthan those I shed would only have amused Dr. John.
Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited reproach for the teasingtorment; my joy was great; it could not be concealed: yet I think itbroke out more in countenance than language. I said little.
”Are you satisfied now?” asked Dr. John.
I replied that I was--satisfied and happy.
”Well then,” he proceeded, ”how do you feel physically? Are you growingcalmer? Not much: for you tremble like a leaf still.”
It seemed to me, however, that I was sufficiently calm: at least I feltno longer terrified. I expressed myself composed.
”You are able, consequently, to tell me what you saw? Your account wasquite vague, do you know? You looked white as the wall; but you onlyspoke of 'something,' not defining _what_. Was it a man? Was it ananimal? What was it?”
”I never will tell exactly what I saw,” said I, ”unless some one elsesees it too, and then I will give corroborative testimony; butotherwise, I shall be discredited and accused of dreaming.”
”Tell me,” said Dr. Bretton; ”I will hear it in my professionalcharacter: I look on you now from a professional point of view, and Iread, perhaps, all you would conceal--in your eye, which is curiouslyvivid and restless: in your cheek, which the blood has forsaken; inyour hand, which you cannot steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me.”
”You would laugh--?”
”If you don't tell me you shall have no more letters.”
”You are laughing now.”
”I will again take away that single epistle: being mine, I think I havea right to reclaim it.”
I felt raillery in his words: it made me grave and quiet; but I foldedup the letter and covered it from sight.
”You may hide it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don'tknow my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if Iliked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property oftongue and eye; but you never saw that in me--did you, Lucy?”
”Indeed--indeed--when you were a mere boy I used to see both: far morethen than now--for now you are strong, and strength dispenses withsubtlety. But still,--Dr. John, you have what they call in this country'un air fin,' that nobody can, mistake. Madame Beck saw it, and--”
”And liked it,” said he, laughing, ”because she has it herself. But,Lucy, give me that letter--you don't really care for it.”
To this provocative speech I made no answer. Graham in mirthful moodmust not be humoured too far. Just now there was a new sort of smileplaying about his lips--very sweet, but it grieved me somehow--a newsort of light sparkling in his eyes: not hostile, but not reassuring. Irose to go--I bid him good-night a little sadly.
His sensitiveness--that peculiar, apprehensive, detective faculty ofhis--felt in a moment the unspoken complaint--the scarce-thoughtreproach. He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my head asimplying a negative.
”Permit me, then, to speak a little seriously to you before you go. Youare in a highly nervous state. I feel sure from what is apparent inyour look and manner, however well controlled, that whilst alone thisevening in that dismal, perishing sepulchral garret--that dungeon underthe leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with phthisis and catarrh:a place you never ought to enter--that you saw, or _thought_ you saw,some appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the imagination. Iknow that you _are_ not, nor ever were, subject to material terrors,fears of robbers, &c.--I am not so sure that a visitation, bearing aspectral character, would not shake your very mind. Be calm now. Thisis all a matter of the nerves, I see: but just specify the vision.”
”You will tell nobody?”
”Nobody--most certainly. You may trust me as implicitly as you did PereSilas. Indeed, the doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two,though he has not grey hair.”
”You will not laugh?”
”Perhaps I may, to do you good: but not in scorn. Lucy, I feel as afriend towards you, though your timid nature is slow to trust.”
He now looked like a friend: that indescribable smile and sparkle weregone; those formidable arched curves of lip, nostril, eyebrow, weredepressed; repose marked his attitude--attention sobered his aspect.Won to confidence, I told him exactly what I had seen: ere now I hadnarrated to him the legend of the house--whiling away with thatnarrative an hour of a certain mild October afternoon, when he and Irode through Bois l'Etang.
He sat and thought, and while he thought, we heard them all comingdown-stairs.
”Are they going to interrupt?” said he, glancing at the door with anannoyed expression.
”They will not come here,” I answered; for we were in the little salonwhere Madame never sat in the evening, and where it was by mere chancethat heat was still lingering in the stove. They passed the door andwent on to the salle-a-manger.
”Now,” he pursued, ”they will talk about thieves, burglars, and so on:let them do so--mind you say nothing, and keep your resolution ofdescribing your nun to nobody. She may appear to you again: don'tstart.”
”You think then,” I said, with secret horror, ”she came out of mybrain, and is now gone in there, and may glide out again at an hour anda day when I look not for her?”
”I think it a case of spectral illusion: I fear, following on andresulting from long-continued mental conflict.”
”Oh, Doctor John--I shudder at the thought of being liable to such anillusion! It seemed so real. Is there no cure?--no preventive?”
”Happiness is the cure--a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both.”
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of beingtold to _cultivate_ happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness isnot a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happinessis a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dewwhich the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping uponit from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
”Cultivate happiness!” I said briefly to the doctor: ”do _you_cultivate happiness? How do you manage?”
”I am a cheerful fellow by nature: and then ill-luck has never doggedme. Adversity gave me and my mother one passing scowl and brush, but wedefied her, or rather laughed at her, and she went by.”.
”There is no cultivation in all this.”
”I do not give way to melancholy.”
”Yes: I have seen you subdued by that feeling.”
”About Ginevra Fanshawe--eh?”
”Did she not sometimes make you miserable?”
”Pooh! stuff! nonsense! You see I am better now.”
If a laughing eye with a lively light, and a face bright with beamingand healthy energy, could attest that he was better, better hecertainly was.
”You do not look much amiss, or greatly out of condition,” I allowed.
”And why, Lucy, can't you look and feel as I do--buoyant, courageous,and fit to defy all the nuns and flirts in Christendom? I would givegold on the spot just to see you snap your fingers. Try the manoeuvre.”
”If I were to bring Miss Fanshawe into your presence just now?”
”I vow, Lucy, she should not move me: or, she should move me but by onething--true, yes, and passionate love. I would accord forgiveness at noless a price.”
”Indeed! a smile of hers would have been a fortune to you a whilesince.”
”Transformed, Lucy: transformed! Remember, you once called me a slave!but I am a free man now!”
He stood up: in the port of his head, the carriage of his figure, inhis beaming eye and mien, there revealed itself a liberty which wasmore than ease--a mood which was disdain of his past bondage.
”Miss Fanshawe,” he pursued, ”has led me through a phase of feelingwhich is over: I have entered another condition, and am now muchdisposed to exact love for love--passion for passion--and good measureof it, too.”
”Ah, Doctor! Doctor! you said it was your nature to pursue Love underdifficulties--to be charmed by a proud insensibility!”.
He laughed, and answered, ”My nature varies: the mood of one hour issometimes the mockery of the next. Well, Lucy” (drawing on his gloves),”will the Nun come again to-night, think you?”
”I don't think she will.”
”Give her my compliments, if she does--Dr. John's compliments--andentreat her to have the goodness to wait a visit from him. Lucy, wasshe a pretty nun? Had she a pretty face? You have not told me that yet;and _that_ is the really important point.”
”She had a white cloth over her face,” said I, ”but her eyes glittered.”
”Confusion to her goblin trappings!” cried he, irreverently: ”but atleast she had handsome eyes--bright and soft.”
”Cold and fixed,” was the reply.
”No, no, we'll none of her: she shall not haunt you, Lucy. Give herthat shake of the hand, if she comes again. Will she stand _that_, doyou think?”
I thought it too kind and cordial for a ghost to stand: and so was thesmile which matched it, and accompanied his ”Good-night.”
* * * * *
And had there been anything in the garret? What did they discover? Ibelieve, on the closest examination, their discoveries amounted to verylittle. They talked, at first, of the cloaks being disturbed; butMadame Beck told me afterwards she thought they hung much as usual: andas for the broken pane in the skylight, she affirmed that aperture wasrarely without one or more panes broken or cracked: and besides, aheavy hail-storm had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me veryclosely as to what I had seen, but I only described an obscure figureclothed in black: I took care not to breathe the word ”nun,” certainthat this word would at once suggest to her mind an idea of romance andunreality. She charged me to say nothing on the subject to any servant,pupil, or teacher, and highly commended my discretion in coming to herprivate salle-a-manger, instead of carrying the tale of horror to theschool refectory. Thus the subject dropped. I was left secretly andsadly to wonder, in my own mind, whether that strange thing was of thisworld, or of a realm beyond the grave; or whether indeed it was onlythe child of malady, and I of that malady the prey.