A Bottomless Grave

  ‘But it was such a nose!’ she says, with perfect trembling gravity.

  ‘A bottle nose?’ suggest I, still cackling.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t laugh!’ she says nervously; ‘if you had seen his face, you would have been as little disposed to laugh as I.’

  ‘But his nose?’ return I, suppressing my merriment, ‘what kind of nose was it? See, I am as grave as a judge.’

  ‘It was very prominent,’ she answers, in a sort of awe-struck half-whisper, ‘and very sharply chiselled; the nostrils very much cut out.’ A little pause. ‘His eyebrows were one straight black line across his face, and under them his eyes burnt like dull coals of fire, that shone and yet did not shine; they looked like dead eyes, sunken, half extinguished, and yet sinister.’

  ‘And what did he do?’ asked I, impressed, despite myself, by her passionate earnestness; ‘when did you first see him?’

  ‘I was asleep,’ she said—‘at least, I thought so—and suddenly I opened my eyes, and he was there—there’—pointing again with trembling finger—‘between the window and the bed.’

  ‘What was he doing? Was he walking about?’

  ‘He was standing as still as stone—I never saw any live thing so still—looking at me; he never called or beckoned, or moved a finger, but his eyes commanded me to come to him, as the eyes of the mesmeriser at Penrith did.’ She stops, breathing heavily. I can hear her heart’s loud and rapid beats.

  ‘And you?’ I say, pressing her more closely to my side, and smoothing her troubled hair.

  ‘I hated it,’ she cries, excitedly; ‘I loathed it—abhorred it. I was ice-cold with fear and horror, but—I felt myself going to him.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And then I shrieked out to you, and you came running, and caught fast hold of me, and held me tight at first—quite tight—but presently I felt your hold slacken—slacken—and though I longed to stay with you, though I was mad with fright, yet I felt myself pulling strongly away from you—going to him; and he—he stood there always looking—looking—and then I gave one last loud shriek, and I suppose I awoke—and it was a dream!’

  ‘I never heard of a clearer case of nightmare,’ say I, stoutly; ‘that vile Wiertz! I should like to see his whole Musée burnt by the hands of the hangman to-morrow.’

  She shakes her head. ‘It had nothing to say to Wiertz; what it meant I do not know, but——’

  ‘It meant nothing,’ I answer, reassuringly, ‘except that for the future we will go and see none but good and pleasant sights, and steer clear of charnel-house fancies.’

  III

  Elizabeth is now in a position to decide whether the Rhine is a cocktail river or not, for she is on it, and so am I. We are sitting, with an awning over our heads, and little wooden stools under our feet. Elizabeth has a small sailor’s hat and blue ribbon on her head. The river breeze has blown it rather awry; has tangled her plenteous hair; has made a faint pink stain on her pale cheeks. It is some fête day, and the boat is crowded. Tables, countless camp stools, volumes of black smoke pouring from the funnel, as we steam along. ‘Nothing to the Caledonian Canal!’ cries a burly Scbtsman in leggings, speaking with loud authority, and surveying with an air of contempt the eternal vine-clad slopes, that sound so well, and look so sticky in reality. ‘Cannot hold a candle to it!’ A rival bride and bridegroom opposite, sitting together like love-birds under an umbrella, looking into each other’s eyes instead of at the Rhine scenery.

  ‘They might as well have stayed at home, might not they?’ says my wife, with a little air of superiority. ‘Come, we are not so bad as that, are we?’

  A storm comes on: hailstones beat slantwise and reach us—stone and sting us right under our awning. Everybody rushes down below, and takes the opportunity to feed ravenously. There are few actions more disgusting than eating can be made. A handsome girl close to us—her immaturity evidenced by the two long tails of black hair down her back—is thrusting her knife halfway down her throat.

  ‘Come on deck again,’ says Elizabeth, disgusted and frightened at this last sight. ‘The hail was much better than this !’

  Se we return to our camp stools, and sit alone under one mackintosh in the lashing storm, with happy hearts and empty stomachs.

  ‘Is not this better than any luncheon?’ asks Elizabeth, triumphantly, while the rain-drops hang on her long and curled lashes.

  ‘infinitely better,’ reply I, madly struggling with the umbrella to prevent its being blown inside out, and gallantly ignoring a species of gnawing sensation at my entrails.

  The squall clears off by-and-by, and we go steaming, steaming on past the unnumbered little villages by the water’s edge with church spires and pointed roofs, past the countless rocks with their little pert castles perched on the top of them, past the tall, stiff poplar rows. The church bells are ringing gaily as we go by. A nightingale is singing from a wood. The black eagle of Prussia droops on the stream behind us, swish-swish through the dull green water.

  The day steals on; at every stopping place more people come on. There is hardly elbow room; and, what is worse, almost everybody is drunk. Rocks, castles, villages, poplars, slide by, while the paddles churn always the water, and the evening draws greyly on. At Bingen a party of big blue Prussian soldiers, very drunk, ‘glorious’ as Tam o’ Shanter, come and establish themselves close to us. They call for Lager Beer; talk at the tip-top of their strong voices; two of them begin to spar; all seem inclined to sing. Elizabeth is frightened. We are two hours late in arriving at Biebrich. It is half an hour more before we can get ourselves and our luggage into a carriage and set off along the winding road to Wiesbaden. ‘The night is chilly, but not dark.’ There is only a little shabby bit of a moon, but it shines as hard as it can. Elizabeth is quite worn out, her tired head droops in uneasy sleep on my shoulder. Once she wakes up with a start.

  ‘Are you sure that it meant nothing?’ she asks, looking me eagerly in my face; ‘do people often have such dreams?’

  ‘Often, often,’ I answer, reassuringly.

  ‘I am always afraid of falling asleep now,’ she says, trying to sit upright and keep her heavy eyes open, ‘for fear of seeing him standing there again. Tell me, do you think I shall? Is there any chance, any probability of it?’

  ‘None, none!’

  We reach Wiesbaden at last, and drive up to the Hôtel des Quatre Saisons. By this time it is full midnight. Two or three men are standing about the door. Morris, the maid, has got out—so have I, and I am holding out my hand to Elizabeth when I hear her give one piercing scream, and see her with ash-white face and starting eyes point with her fore-finger——

  ‘There he is!—there!—there!’

  I look in the direction indicated, and just catch a glimpse of a tall figure standing half in the shadow of the night, half in the gas-light from the hotel. I have not time for more than one cursory glance, as I am interrupted by a cry from the bystanders, and turning quickly round, am just in time to catch my wife, who falls in utter insensibility into my arms. We carry her into a room on the ground floor; it is small, noisy, and hot, but it is the nearest at hand. In about an hour she re-opens her eyes. A strong shudder makes her quiver from head to foot.

  ‘Where is he? she says, in a terrified whisper, as her senses come slowly back. ‘He is somewhere about—somewhere near. I feel that he is!’

  ‘My dearest child, there is no one here but Morris and me,’ I answer soothingly. ‘Look for yourself. See.’

  I take one of the candles and light up each corner of the room in succession.

  ‘You saw him !’ she says, in trembling hurry, sitting up and clenching her hands together. ‘I know you did—I pointed him out to you—you cannot say that it was a dream this time.’

  ‘I saw two or three ordinary-looking men as we drove up,’ I answer, in a commonplace, matter-of-fact tone. ‘I did not notice anything remarkable about any of them; you know, the fact is, darling, that you have had nothing to eat all day, nothin
g but a biscuit, and you are over-wrought, and fancy things.’

  ‘Fancy!’ echoes she, with strong irritation. ‘How you talk! Was I ever one to fancy things? I tell you that as sure as I sit here—as sure as you stand there—I saw him—him—the man I saw in my dream, if it was a dream. There was not a hair’s breadth of difference between them—and he was looking at me—looking——’

  She breaks off into hysterical sobbing.

  ‘My dear child!’ say I, thoroughly alarmed, and yet half angry, ‘for God’s sake do not work yourself up into a fever: wait till to-morrow, and we will find out who he is, and all about him; you yourself will laugh when we discover that he is some harmless bagman.’

  ‘Why not now?’ she says, nervously; ‘why cannot you find out now —this minute?’

  ‘Impossible! Everybody is in bed ! Wait till to-morrow, and all will be cleared up.’

  The morrow comes, and I go about the hotel, inquiring. The house is so full, and the data I have to go upon are so small, that for some time I have great difficulty in making it understood to whom I am alluding. At length one waiter seems to comprehend.

  ‘A tall and dark gentleman, with a pronounced and very peculiar nose? Yes; there has been such a one, certainly, in the hotel, but he left at “grand matin” this morning; he remained only one night.’

  ‘And his name?’

  The garçon shakes his head. ‘That is unknown, monsieur; he did not inscribe it in the visitors’ book.’

  ‘What countryman was he?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘He spoke German, but it was with a foreign accent.’

  ‘Whither did he go?’

  That also is unknown. Nor can I arrive at any more facts about him.

  IV

  A fortnight has passed; we have been hither and thither; now we are at Lucerne. Peopled with better inhabitants, Lucerne might well do for Heaven. It is drawing towards eventide, and Elizabeth and I are sitting hand in hand on a quiet bench, under the shady linden trees, on a high hill up above the lake. There is nobody to see us, so we sit peaceably hand in hand. Up by the still and solemn monastery we came, with its small and narrow windows, calculated to hinder the holy fathers from promenading curious eyes on the world, the flesh, and the devil, tripping past them in blue gauze veils: below us grass and green trees, houses with high-pitched roofs, little dormer-windows, and shutters yet greener than the grass; below us the lake in its ripple-less peace, calm, quiet, motionless as Bethesda’s pool before the coming of the troubling angel.

  ‘I said it was too good to last,’ say I, doggedly, ‘did not I, only yesterday? Perfect peace, perfect sympathy, perfect freedom from nagging worries—when did such a state of things last more than two days?’

  Elizabeth’s eyes are idly fixed on a little steamer, with a stripe of red along its side, and a tiny puff of smoke from its funnel, gliding along and cutting a narrow white track on Lucerne’s sleepy surface.

  ‘This is the fifth false alarm of the gout having gone to his stomach within the last two years,’ continue I resentfully. ‘I declare to Heaven, that if it has not really gone there this time, I’ll cut the whole concern.’

  Let no one cast up their eyes in horror, imagining that it is my father to whom I am thus alluding; it is only a great-uncle by marriage, in consideration of whose wealth and vague promises I have dawdled professionless through twenty-eight years of my life.

  ‘You must not go,’ says Elizabeth, giving my hand an imploring squeeze. ‘The man in the Bible said, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come”; why should it be a less valid excuse nowadays?’

  ‘If I recollect rightly, it was considered rather a poor one even then,’ reply I, dryly.

  Elizabeth is unable to contradict this; she therefore only lifts two pouted lips (Monsieur Taine objects to the redness of English women’s mouths, but I do not) to be kissed, and says, ‘Stay.’ I am good enough to comply with her unspoken request, though I remain firm with regard to her spoken one.

  ‘My dearest child,’ I say, with an air of worldly experience and superior wisdom, ‘kisses are very good things—in fact, there are few better—but one cannot live upon them.’

  ‘Let us try,’ she says coaxingly.

  ‘I wonder which would get tired first?’ I say, laughing. But she only goes on pleading, ‘Stay, stay.’

  ‘How can I stay?’ I cry impatiently; you talk as if I wanted to go! Do you think it is any pleasanter to me to leave you than to you to be left? But you know his disposition, his rancorous resentment of fancied neglects. For the sake of two days’ indulgence, must I throw away what will keep us in ease and plenty to the end of our days?’

  ‘I do not care for plenty,’ she says, with a little petulant gesture. I do not see that rich people are any happier than poor ones. Look at the St Clairs; they have £40,000 a year, and she is a miserable woman, perfectly miserable, because her face gets red after dinner.’

  ‘There will be no fear of our faces getting red after dinner,’ say I, grimly, ‘for we shall have no dinner for them to get red after.’

  A pause. My eyes stray away to the mountains. Pilatus on the right, with his jagged peak and slender snow-chains about his harsh neck; hill after hill rising silent, eternal, like guardian spirits standing hand in hand around their child, the lake. As I look, suddenly they have all flushed, as at some noblest thought, and over all their sullen faces streams an ineffable rosy joy—a solemn and wonderful effulgence, such as Israel saw reflected from the features of the Eternal in their prophet’s transfigured eyes. The unutterable peace and stainless beauty of earth and sky seem to lie softly on my soul. ‘Would God I could stay! Would God all life could be like this!’ I say, devoutly, and the aspiration has the reverent earnestness of a prayer.

  ‘Why do you say, “Would God !”’ she cries passionately, ‘when it lies with yourself? Oh my dear love,’ gently sliding her hand through my arm, and lifting wetly-beseeching eyes to my face, ‘I do not know why I insist upon it so much—I cannot tell you myself—I dare say I seem selfish and unreasonable—but I feel as if your going now would be the end of all things—as if——’ She breaks off suddenly.

  ‘My child,’ say I, thoroughly distressed, but still determined to have my own way, ‘you talk as if I were going for ever and a day; in a week, at the outside, I shall be back, and then you will thank me for the very thing for which you now think me so hard and disobliging.’

  ‘Shall I?’ she answers, mournfully. ‘Well, I hope so.’

  ‘You will not be alone, either; you will have Morris.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And every day you will write me a long letter, telling me every single thing that you do, say, and think.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She answers me gently and obediently; but I can see that she is still utterly unreconciled to the idea of my absence.

  ‘What is it that you are afraid of?’ I ask, becoming rather irritated.

  ‘What do you suppose will happen to you?’

  She does not answer; only a large tear falls on my hand, which she hastily wipes away with her pocket handkerchief, as if afraid of exciting my wrath.

  ‘Can you give me any good reason why I should stay?’ I ask, dictatorially.

  ‘None—none—only—stay—stay!’

  But I am resolved not to stay. Early the next morning I set off.

  V

  This time it is not a false alarm; this time it really has gone to his stomach, and, declining to be dislodged thence, kills him. My return is therefore retarded until after the funeral and the reading of the will. The latter is so satisfactory, and my time is so fully occupied with a multiplicity of attendant business, that I have no leisure to regret the delay. I write to Elizabeth, but receive no letters from her. This surprises and makes me rather angry, but does not alarm me. ‘If she had been ill, if anything had happened, Morris would have written. She never was great at writing, poor little soul. What dear little babyish notes she used to send
me during our engagement! Perhaps she wishes to punish me for my disobedience to her wishes. Well, now she will see who was in the right.’ I am drawing near her now; I am walking up from the railway station at Lucerne. I am very joyful as I march along under an umbrella, in the grand broad shining of the summer afternoon. I think with pensive passion of the last glimpse I had of my beloved—her small and wistful face looking out from among the thick fair fleece of her long hair—winking away her tears and blowing kisses to me. It is a new sensation to me to have anyone looking tearfully wistful over my departure. I draw near the great glaring Schweizerhof, with its colonnaded tourist-crowded porch; here are all the pomegranates as I left them, in their green tubs, with their scarlet blossoms, and the dusty oleanders in a row. I look up at our windows; nobody is looking out from them; they are open, and the curtains are alternately swelled out and drawn in by the softly-playful wind. I run quickly upstairs and burst noisily into the sitting-room. Empty, perfectly empty! I open the adjoining door into the bedroom, crying ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth!’ but I receive no answer. Empty too. A feeling of indignation creeps over me as I think, ‘Knowing the time of my return, she might have managed to be indoors.’ I have returned to the silent sitting-room, where the only noise is the wind still playing hide-and-seek with the curtains. As I look vacantly round my eye catches sight of a letter lying on the table. I pick it up mechanically and look at the address. Good heavens! what can this mean? It is my own, that I sent her two days ago, unopened, with the seal unbroken. Does she carry her resentment so far as not even to open my letters? I spring at the bell and violently ring it. It is answered by the waiter who has always specially attended us.

  ‘Is madame gone out?’

  The man opens his mouth and stares at me.

  ‘Madame! Is monsieur then not aware that madame is no longer at the hotel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the same day as monsieur, madame departed.’