So brief were those halcyon hours, that, looking back on them now, it is scarcely strange if I am still half inclined to fancy the first days of my married life could have been no more than a dream.
Neither in my days of gloom nor in my days of happiness had I been troubled by the recollection of André’s blasphemous oath. The words which with his last breath he had whispered in my ear were vain and meaningless to me. He had vented his rage in those idle threats, as he might have vented it in idle execrations. That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves, the earth would be peopled with phantoms.
I had lived for three years at Puy Verdun; sitting alone in the solemn midnight by the hearth where he had sat, pacing the corridors that had echoed his footfall; and in all that time my fancy had never so played me false as to shape the shadow of the dead. Is it strange, then, if I had forgotten André’s horrible promise?
There was no portrait of my cousin at Puy Verdun. It was the age of boudoir art, and a miniature set in the lid of a gold bonbonnière, or hidden artfully in a massive bracelet, was more fashionable than a clumsy life-size image, fit only to hang on the gloomy walls of a provincial château rarely visited by its owner. My cousin’s fair face had adorned more than one bonbonnière, and had been concealed in more than one bracelet; but it was not among the faces that looked down from the panelled walls of Puy Verdun.
In the library I found a picture which awoke painful associations. It was the portrait of a De Brissac, who had flourished in the time of Francis the First; and it was from this picture that my cousin André had copied the quaint hunting-dress he wore at the Regent’s ball. The library was a room in which I spent a good deal of my life; and I ordered a curtain to be hung before this picture.
We had been married three months, when Eveline one day asked, “Who is the lord of the château nearest to this?”
I looked at her with astonishment.
“My dearest,” I answered, “do you not know that there is no other château within forty miles of Puy Verdun?”
“Indeed!” she said; “that is strange.”
I asked her why the fact seemed strange to her; and after much entreaty I obtained from her the reason of her surprise.
In her walks about the park and woods during the last month, she had met a man who, by his dress and bearing, was obviously of noble rank. She had imagined that he occupied some château near at hand, and that his estate adjoined ours. I was at a loss to imagine who this stranger could be; for my estate of Puy Verdun lay in the heart of a desolate region, and unless when some traveller’s coach went lumbering and jingling through the village, one had little more chance of encountering a gentleman than of meeting a demigod.
“Have you seen this man often, Eveline?” I asked.
She answered, in a tone which had a touch of sadness, “I see him every day.”
“Where, dearest?”
“Sometimes in the park, sometimes in the wood. You know the little cascade, Hector, where there is some old neglected rock-work that forms a kind of cavern. I have taken a fancy to that spot, and have spent many mornings there reading. Of late I have seen the stranger there every morning.”
“He has never dared to address you?”
“Never. I have looked up from my book, and have seen him standing at a little distance, watching me silently. I have continued reading; and when I have raised my eyes again I have found him gone. He must approach and depart with a stealthy tread, for I never hear his footfall. Sometimes I have almost wished that he would speak to me. It is so terrible to see him standing silently there.”
“He is some insolent peasant who seeks to frighten you.” My wife shook her head.
“He is no peasant,” she answered. “It is not by his dress alone I judge, for that is strange to me. He has an air of nobility which it is impossible to mistake.”
“Is he young or old?”
“He is young and handsome.”
I was much disturbed by the idea of this stranger’s intrusion on my wife’s solitude; and I went straight to the village to inquire if any stranger had been seen there. I could hear of no one. I questioned the servants closely, but without result. Then I determined to accompany my wife in her walks, and to judge for myself of the rank of the stranger.
For a week I devoted all my mornings to rustic rambles with Eveline in the park and woods; and in all that week we saw no one but an occasional peasant in sabots, or one of our own household returning from a neighbouring farm.
I was a man of studious habits, and those summer rambles disturbed the even current of my life. My wife perceived this, and entreated me to trouble myself no further.
“I will spend my mornings in the pleasaunce, Hector,” she said; “ the stranger cannot intrude upon me there.”
“I begin to think the stranger is only a phantasm of your own romantic brain,” I replied, smiling at the earnest face lifted to mine. “A châtelaine who is always reading romances, may well meet handsome cavaliers in the woodlands. I daresay I have Mdlle. Scuderi to thank for this noble stranger, and that he is only the great Cyrus in modem costume.”
“Ah, that is the point which mystifies me, Hector,” she said. “The stranger’s costume is not modern. He looks as an old picture might look if it could descend from its frame.” Her words pained me, for they reminded me of that hidden picture in the library, and the quaint hunting costume of orange and purple which André de Brissac wore at the Regent’s ball.
After this my wife confined her walks to the pleasaunce; and for many weeks I heard no more of the nameless stranger. I dismissed all thought of him from my mind, for a graver and heavier care had come upon me. My wife’s health began to droop. The change in her was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible to those who watched her day by day. It was only when she put on a rich gala dress which she had not worn fur months that I saw how wasted the form must be on which the embroidered bodice hung so loosely, and how wan and dim were the eyes which had once been brilliant as the jewels she wore in her hair.
I sent a messenger to Paris to summon one of the court physicians; but I knew that many days must needs elapse before he could arrive at Puy Verdun.
In the interval I watched my wife with unutterable fear.
It was not her health only that had declined. The change was more painful to behold than any physical alteration. The bright and sunny spirit had vanished, and in the place of my joyous young bride I beheld a woman weighed down by rooted melancholy. In vain I sought to fathom the cause of my darling’s sadness. She assured me that she had no reason for sorrow or discontent, and that if she seemed sad without a motive, I must forgive her sadness, and consider it as a misfortune rather than a fault.
I told her that the court physician would speedily find some cure for her despondency, which must needs arise from physical causes, since she had no real ground for sorrow. But although she said nothing, I could see she had no hope or belief in the healing powers of medicine.
One day, when I wished to beguile her from that pensive silence in which she was wont to sit an hour at a time, I told her, laughing, that she appeared to have forgotten her mysterious cavalier of the wood, and it seemed also as if he had forgotten her.
To my wonderment, her pale face became of a sudden crimson; and from crimson changed to pale again in a breath.
“You have never seen him since yon deserted your woodland grotto?” I said.
She turned to me with a heart-rending look.
“Hector,” she cried, “I see him every day; and it is that which is killing me.”
She burst into a passion of tears when she had said this. I took her in my arms as if she had been a frightened child, and tried to comfort her.
“My darling, this is madness,” I said. “You know that no stranger can come to you in the pleasaunce. The moat is ten feet wide and always full of water, and the gates are kept locked day and
night by old Masson. The châtelaine of a mediæval fortress need fear no intruder in her antique garden.”
My wife shook her head sadly.
“I see him every day,” she said.
On this I believed that ray wife was mad. I shrank from questioning her more closely concerning her mysterious visitant. It would be ill, I thought, to give a form and substance to the shadow that tormented her by too close inquiry about its look and manner, its coming and going.
I took care to assure myself that no stranger to the household could by any possibility penetrate to the pleasaunce. Having done this, I was fain to await the coming of the physician.
He came at last. I revealed to him the conviction which was my misery. I told him that I believed my wife to be mad. He saw her — spent an hour alone with her, and then came to me. To my unspeakable relief he assured me of her sanity.
“It is just possible that she may be affected by one delusion,” he said; “but she is so reasonable upon all other points, that I can scarcely bring myself to believe her the subject of a monomania. I am rather inclined to think that she really sees the person of whom she speaks. She described him to me with a perfect minuteness. The descriptions of scenes or individuals given by patients afflicted with monomania are always more or less disjointed; but your wife spoke to me as clearly and calmly as I am now speaking to you.
Are you sure there is no one who can approach her in that garden where she walks?”
“I am quite sure.”
“Is there any kinsman of your steward, or hanger-on of your household, — a young man with a fair womanish face, very pale, and rendered remarkable by a crimson scar, which looks like the mark of a blow?”
“My God!” I cried, as the light broke in upon me all at once. “And the dress — the strange old-fashioned dress?”
“The man wears a hunting costume of purple and orange,” answered the doctor.
I knew then that André de Brissac had kept his word, and that in the hour when my life was brightest his shadow had come between me and happiness.
I showed my wife the picture in the library, for I would fain assure myself that there was some error in my fancy about my cousin. She shook like a leaf when she beheld it, and clung to me convulsively.
“This is witchcraft, Hector,” she said. “The dress in that picture is the dress of the man I see in the pleasaunce; but the face is not his.”
Then she described to me the face of the stranger; and it was my cousin’s face line for line — André de Brissac, whom she had never seen in the flesh. Most vividly of all did she describe the cruel mark upon his face, the trace of a fierce blow from an open hand.
After this I carried my wife away from Puy Verdun. We wandered far — through the southern provinces, and into the very heart of Switzerland. I thought to distance the ghastly phantom, and I fondly hoped that change of scene would bring peace to my wife.
It was not so. Go where we would, the ghost of André de Brissac followed us. To my eyes that fatal shadow never revealed itself. That would have been too poor a vengeance.
It was my wife’s innocent heart which André made the instrument of his revenge. The unholy presence destroyed her life, constant companionship could not shield her from the horrible intruder. In vain did I watch her; in vain did I strive to comfort her.
“He will not let me be at peace,” she said; “he comes between us, Hector. He is standing between us now. I can see his face with the red mark upon it plainer than I see yours.”
One fair moonlight night, when we were together in a mountain village in the Tyrol, my wife cast herself at my feet, and told me she was the worst and vilest of women. “I have confessed all to my director,” she said; “from the first I have not hidden my sin from Heaven. But I feel that death is near me; and before I die I would fain reveal my sin to you.”
“What sin, my sweet one?”
“When first the stranger came to me in the forest, his presence bewildered and distressed me, and I shrank from him as from something strange and terrible. He came again and again; by and by I found myself thinking of him, and watching for his coming. His image haunted me perpetually; I strove in vain to shut his face out of my mind. Then followed an interval in which I did not see him; and, to my shame and anguish, I found that life seemed dreary and desolate without him. After that came the time in which he haunted the pleasaunce; and — O, Hector, kill me if you will, for I deserve no mercy at your hands! — I grew in those days to count the hours that must elapse before his coming, to take no pleasure save in the sight of that pale face with the red brand upon it. He plucked all old familiar joys out of my heart, and left in it but one weird unholy pleasure — the delight of his presence. For a year I have lived but to see him. And now curse me, Hector; for this is my sin. Whether it comes of the baseness of my own heart, or is the work of witchcraft, I know not; but I know that I have striven against this wickedness in vain.”
I took my wife to my breast, and forgave her. In sooth, what had I to forgive? Was the fatality that overshadowed us any work of hers? On the next night she died, with her hand in mine; and at the very last she told me, sobbing and affrighted, that he was by her side.
FOUND IN THE MUNIMENT CHEST
I WAS three-and-twenty years of age, and I had not long been articled to my father, an old-established family solicitor in the comfortable market-town of Orpingdean, Sussex, when I fell in love with Barbara Ainsleigh at our race-ball. We had a race-meeting and a race-ball at Orpingdean, and we put on our gayest aspect at that ripe meridian of the year, when the corn-fields were growing tawny under the July sunshine.
Miss Ainsleigh was the representative heiress and beauty of Orpingdean, just as my father was the representative family solicitor of that prosperous settlement. She lived with her father in a noble red-brick house of the Queen-Anne period, shut in from the high-road by tall iron gates of ponderous scrollwork, and surrounded on three sides by a garden — a real old-fashioned garden, in the Italian style, with stone terraces and marble balustrades, on which the peacocks used to strut and scream in the quiet summer evenings; and our summer evenings were uncommonly quiet in the roads and lanes about Orpingdean.
Mr. Ainsleigh was an elderly widower, and Barbara his only child. It is scarcely necessary to add that he adored her, and that her path from infancy to womanhood had been liberally bestrewn with those metaphorical roses which the hand of affection, when aided by the purse of wealth, can scatter before the footsteps of a household idol. We have no longer our niche for the Penates; but is there not in every home-circle a god or goddess before whom the rest bow the knee in love, or fear? Miss Ainsleigh had the worship of love, and she deserved it.
I can scarcely trust myself to describe her. It is so difficult to avoid hyperbole when one writes of one’s first love. I will only say that she was a noble English beauty — a dark-eyed, dark-haired Juno, with the freshness of Hebe, and the instinctive grace of Diana.
Mr. Ainsleigh had been for the last twenty years of his life a bibliomaniac; and dearly as he loved his only child, there were some who would have been at a loss to say whether his books and the binding of his books did not usurp the larger share of his divided affections. Never till I knew Barbara’s father did I know how much there may be in the outside of a book. The first day I ever spent in Mr. Ainsleigh’s house was a revelation for me in the art of bookbinding. The bevelled edges — the hand-painting sur tranche — the creamy vellum, relieved by red and gold lettering — the thick crinkly morocco, in all shades of sober russet, and glowing crimson, and orange tawny — the grolier, and gothic, and renaissance, — all that is rare and expensive in the art that was in its prime while printing was yet in its cradle. In the little world of Orpingdean it used to be said that if Mr. Ainsleigh had not been a very rich man, he would have been ruined by his bibliomania. But, alas, Orpingdean folks had the vaguest idea of what sums can be squandered on rare old books and exquisite bindings, on Virgils in Italic type, printed at Venice by Aldu
s Manutius — on early in-folio copies of Erasmus — on a Trésor de la langue latine or a Maison Rustique by Robert Estienne — on a Strawberry-Hill Lucan, or diamond editions by Firmin Didot. We knew that Mr. Ainsleigh’s uncle had left him a handsome fortune, but we did not know that it needs the millions of a Huth or a Van de Weyer to support that expensive hobby-horse on which the book-collector prances. Lord Lytton has most truly said that one hobby is a wife, and that half-a-dozen hobbies are mistresses. Mr. Ainsleigh was faithful to his hobby as ever husband to the partner of his choice. But a man may find his ruin even in a wife, if she happen to be expensive and insatiable.
After the race-ball I saw a good deal of Miss Ainsleigh. My father, and his father and grandfather before him, had been received and liked by the best people in and about Orpingdean. We lived in the town, much to the disgust of my two sisters, who had been “finished” at an expensive Parisian school, and who felt a sense of intense degradation in the near neighbourhood of a coal-yard and a wine-merchant. But in this old house in the High-street there were oaken wainscots and spacious rooms, a square paved hall, and a staircase with such ponderous carved banisters as are rarely seen in modern dwellings; and my father refused to exchange the house in which he had been born for the finest and whitest of those new Italian villas, whose campanile towers twinkled in the sunshine on the hills beyond Orpingdean. My sisters protested that the old house smelt of pens and ink, and marvelled that anybody should be so civil as to visit us in such an odious locality.
People did visit us, however, in spite of the coal-yard, which was exactly opposite our drawing-room windows; and in spite of the wine-merchant, our next-door neighbour, who seemed to make his arrangements with a foreknowledge of the days on which we were to have dinner-parties, so surely did he receive wagon-loads of ponderous cases and bumping hogsheads on that very day and at that very hour in which our guests assembled. My sisters declared that this was his scheme of vengeance against us for not visiting him. “I daresay he will contrive to drop a case of Moet and Chandon some day just as old Lady Hetherside is stepping out of that dilapidated brougham of hers,” said my sister Arabella; “and then she will go about saying that she almost met her death upon our door-step, and no one will ever dare to come and see us again.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1087