DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY
PART FIRST
MADEMOISELLE LENORMANT
THE ISLAND
IT was a warm autumn that year—a luminous exception upon which the last summer of the century was borne somewhat oppressively to the very verge of winter. The middle hours of the afternoon could be intolerable enough in a big, busy city well upon the confines of the South. The rush and whirr of looms was carried far upon the air, and even into the quietest streets wandered the noisy echoes of the boulevards.
Yet it was dull and flat for the solitary stranger, without interest in factories, or provincial entertainment in friendship. It was doubly dull for a woman past youth and all its personal excitements to be extracted from fleeting curiosity and thrills of anticipation; denied by reason of sex the stale delights of café lounges, and by reason of station the healthier and livelier hospitalities of cabaret and peasant reunions.
Travelling-bag and portmanteau lay strapped in the hotel hall. The train for Paris would not leave until late that night, and to while away the intervening hours I went forth beyond the town. I chose the farther end of the long boulevard, the middle of which I had not yet passed. Down there the brilliant air lost its clearness in a yellow mist, as if flung from the sky in a fine dust of powdered gold. Upon its edge hung the last visible arms of the trees on either side, lucidly, of unwonted greenness, the green we note in painted French landscapes, brightly touched with yellow. I felt that something fresh, cool, and soft must lie behind that golden veil. It led my imagination as a child is led out of the real, by the illusive promises of fairyland.
Here sound was deadened, and city movements seemed to faint away upon the weariness of the long hot day. I glanced back at the town. Behind me stretched the dusty boulevard, and sharpened above it, against the tremulous pellucid blue of the heaven, the profile of quaint church-spires and heavy masses of buildings. Ahead, my way was blocked by the wide grey river, black where the shadows touched it, silver where the full light shone upon it. A bridge of grey stone spanned it from the end of the boulevard to the other side, the unexplored:—a bridge so old, so worn, so silent and empty, that it might appropriately be the path to the city cemetery.
This bridge I crossed in all its glamour of sad enchantment. One of its arches was broken, and made a dangerous gap above the broad, quiet waters. There were no lamps, no visible indication of life about. I saw that it led to an island encircled by a battered and decayed dark wall, with little castellated ornaments that gave it the look of a feudal fortress of unusual extent and dimensions. Midway I stood upon the bridge, and wondered what sort of land might be before me. At first I believed it to be uninhabited, until much gazing discovered a thin curl of blue smoke far away, beyond a square tower. It was nearing sunset now, and the island lying west, showed out more darkly from a broad band of reddish glory. It wore all the more dead and desolate air because of the floating and quickened light above it.
Have you ever, in some quaint French town washed by a wide river, watched these lovely sunset contrasts on the blackened greyness of stone masses and on the sombre placidity of water? The best effects you will find upon the Loire, and if you can recall them, you will see, better than words of mine can paint, the salient features of that river-view set with towers and a decayed, old grey wall.
I was saturated with the sadness of it, and my glance was still wedded to its dead charm, when a bloused peasant came out of the under shadows and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful commonplace note in the picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not in the least like a ghost from other centuries. Prosperous, too, as befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and mayhap clink free and fraternal glasses with them through an ocean of blood. He came along, whistling a patriotic tune, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat in villainous emphasis cocked over one ear.
‘Can it be,’ I asked myself, in a pang of disappointment, ‘that this enchanted island contains the ubiquitous cabaret, and that the impossible legend of liberty, equality, and fraternity has penetrated, with its attendant train of horrid evils, into this home of silence and poetic decay?’
I interrupted my gloomy moralising, for which, like all persons naturally gay, I flatter myself I have a decided turn, and hat, metaphorically, in hand, sued this roadside rascal for information.
‘Yes, people lived upon the island, not many—mostly women: laundresses upon the side that ran unprotected down to the water edge. I might see their sheds if I made the round of the wall. There was a large Benedictine convent at one end, and a cemetery eastward—but no hotel accommodation, no shops, no vehicles of any sort, and but one miserable little wine-shop, where they sold the worst brandy in all France.’
Of this liquid I concluded the fellow had been drinking somewhat copiously, and left him to push inquiries for myself.
I know not why, but the moment I set foot upon the island, and heard the slow swish of the eddying river against its projecting base, thought was checked upon mild and pleasurable suspense. Something unexpected must surely happen, I believed, and step by step destiny seemed to impel me forward in its pursuit. My footfall rang sharply upon the empty path, and I felt it would be ignominy to leave this strange spot until fate had spoken, and its voice been interpreted adequately for me by circumstance.
How still everything was, and how softly the day’s heat was stealing out of the atmosphere! One bright star shone like a lamp over a noble ruin, and for this I made. No sound of living voice, no clang of wooden shoe or beat of hoofs broke the heavy silence, and by this fact I knew that I must still be remote from the washerwomen’s quarter. There was a fearful look about the low rocks that reached behind the ruins down to the black water, whose perilous stillness was unwholesomely revealed by the margin of quivering light shed from the rosy sky.
A few yards farther brought me to the open cemetery gate. Here I entered with a shuddering sense of the romantic appropriateness of its aspect. Did ever churchyard wear so solemn, so forsaken an air of death? Death was breathed in the profuseness and dankness of the weeds that sprawled over and almost enveloped the tombstones; in the grassy walks unworn by tread of foot; in the graves that showed no sacred care of hand, no symbol of fond remembrance or bereaved heart. Who were these dead so forgotten and so alone? So near a busy city, and so remote from living man?
Suddenly my wondering fancy was visibly answered by sight of a slim old woman in black, who slowly came toward me by a narrow side-path. I stopped her with an elaborate apology, and we speedily fell into talk. She had been born on this island sixty years before, when the century was entering into middle life, and now at its close these had been the permanent limits of her vision. About a dozen times she may have crossed the bridge, or walked the streets of the city yonder, and only once had she gone down the river in a barge to have a peep at the real South—the ardent, rose and lavender-smelling South!
‘I pray you, Madame, tell me, who am a restless vagabond, never three months happy in the same place, how life looks to one like you, who have never left the boundary marks of birth, who have grown and lived amid unchanged scenes, and have been satisfied to look for sixty years upon these low grey walls and the spires and chimneys of that distant city?’ I asked, profoundly astonished.
In the old dame’s wrinkled parchment face gleamed a pair of singularly vivid brown eyes that held, I suspect, more wisdom than my dissatisfied and travelled glance. She eyed me curiously one long eloquent moment, and then remarked, with some astuteness and much benevolence, that change brought idle misery, and monotony its own reward of ignorance and content. Further questions about the island led to an offer from her to show me where she lived—an offer I accepted eagerly, and together we left the cemetery, now revealing all its melancholy charm in the last flushed smile of a lovely autumn sunset.
Save for the glimmer of gold upon an upper casement, the grey street was already cast into twilit gloom, and a faint ray here and there seemed to make its own pathway through the dim troubled blue of the atmosphere. Unmistakably evening was upon us, and the ghosts of the imagination would surely soon be abroad among these haunted scenes.
But nobody could be less spectral than my companion, both in speech and in looks. She was communicative to rashness, and when I asked where I could obtain lodging upon the island, for a week or a month, as long as the caprice pleased me—she fixed me in a mild interrogative way, and paused, as if equally in doubt of my discretion and of her own.
There was no hotel, no lodgings that she knew of, but if Madame really desired it—if, in fact, she could trust Madame to be discreet and reserved, she did not know that it might not be managed somehow. But she would not engage herself.
I pressed for an explanation, and so aflame was I with sharp interest and curiosity, that I know not what wild pledges of reserve and discretion and prudent behaviour I proffered. Willingly at that moment would I have undertaken to deny my whole past, and give the lie direct to nature. What more potent than passionate sympathy? and the old woman, I think, must have felt some desperate need for a willing ear in which to pour her pent-up confidences. The cup of silence to which experience had condemned her was full to overflowing, and my voice it seems shook the brim.
She told me then that she was the confidential servant and sole companion of a maiden lady who lived alone with a little niece in a big barrack of a house below the Benedictine monastery. There was a story, of course, which perhaps one day I should hear, if matters could be so arranged that I might sojourn a while beneath their roof. But this also was a promise withheld. Nothing depended on her, though she had influence—naturally, she added, with a look of meaning that set my heart in a flutter. I declare it made me feel young again, and full of thrilling alarm, on the heels of romance, in the quest of breathless adventure. I cannot explain how this old peasant had the knack of accentuating commonplace words, and of lending them a significance far beyond that with which we are accustomed to associate them. But she did so, and there was a nameless charm and tremor conveyed in her added ‘naturally,’ with its accompanying suppressed intimation of glance.
The Benedictine monastery lay in massive gloom below, reaching an aerial coldness of sharp point and spire along its jagged tops. Feudal gashes in the arches let in large slips of green sky and glimmering stars, and its rough stone wall along one side was the division between the convent and the garden of my companion’s mistress. No, not even the cemetery I had left could, in the dreariest hour, look more inexpressibly dark, and lifeless, and forsaken than that old garden. Its beauty was the beauty of death and sadness and neglect. There were rotten arbours and stone seats, and mossy, weed-grown paths. The underwood was impenetrably thick, and only the fine old trees lifted a calm front, indifferent to man’s unkindness. They needed no human hand to care them, and so they throve, and willingly gave grateful shade, and the splendour of their foliage, and the majesty of their form to the dead scene. But of flowers there were none. A coating of moss, bleached and faded, had grown over the old sun-dial, which now was hidden under the branching trees. Not a bird sang, nor did any live thing skurry into hiding upon sound of my footstep, as I wandered through the dusky alleys, while my guide went inside to consult her mistress.
The quiet of an empty garden, showing no sign of care or an active presence about it, while within view of smoke and fierce city activities, is surely not comparable with any other quiet in nature. Restriction adds to its intensity. The silence becomes almost palpable from the hum of existence afar, and the spirit of the place seems more vividly personal by reason of the narrowness of vision. You may walk along the loneliest beach man ever trod, and feel less alone than I did in that garden. The dimness of the biggest forest would be comforting after the intolerable motionlessness of its leaves and plumy weeds.
I was beginning to wonder if it would be possible for me to fulfil my contract should the lady of the house consent to share her roof with me, when I heard a child’s clear, joyous laugh. It was a sound of heavenly music to me just then, and effectually dispersed the gruesome mist which was fast enveloping my reason. The desolation of the place, and the ghastly images which threatened nightmare, could only be accidental, I wisely concluded, if such laughter—fresh, untroubled, and sweet—might be heard unrebuked. When the old woman reappeared, alarm was already soothed, and I was back in the grip of fascinating excitement.
‘Mademoiselle gives me permission to dispose of the lower appartement, which we never occupy now,’ she said, with a smile so human and inviting that I could have embraced her on the spot.
We walked toward the house, which, though gloomy enough, showed nothing to match the mystery of the dark garden. Three broad discoloured steps led to the hall of the lower story, which was offered for my occupation, and inside the large stone hall I noted a little carriage and two wooden horses worked by springs.
‘The sound of Gabrielle’s carriage will not, I hope, disturb Madame? She generally plays here, as there is not space enough upstairs.’
I expressed myself delighted to be in close neighbourhood with the child’s playground.
‘These used to be poor Madame’s rooms,’ she added, with a big sigh, as she opened the door of a fine, chill salon.
‘The mother of Mademoiselle,’ I conjectured.
‘Oh, no; Mademoiselle’s mother always preferred the rooms upstairs—those which Mademoiselle now lives in. These were her sister’s—young Madame, Gabrielle’s mother.’
‘She is dead?’
‘Alas! yes. It is unlucky to be too much loved—unlucky for loved one and for lovers. Dr. Vermont has never been here since his wife’s death—has never even seen little Gabrielle since she was born, and Mademoiselle has never once smiled.’
I was content to reserve my curiosity for another moment, and applied my attention exclusively to the question of my installation. My vanity, I will own, was something flattered by its magnificence. There were two handsome salons, a bed- and dressing-room, and a dining-room, all richly furnished in Empire style. The best taste may not have prevailed, but there could be no question of substantial effectiveness, and already an air of other days hung round it, and made a pathetic appeal to the judgment.
As my companion showed me over the kitchen and pantries and other domestic offices, I noted on the farther side of the narrow passage, beyond my bedroom, a closed door which she did not offer to open. My sympathy with Bluebeard’s wife was instantly awakened, and that door became an object of burning interest to me.
From the kitchen she conducted me through the dining-room window into a long glass-roofed gallery, jutting out beyond the house and seeming to hang over the river, so completely hidden were the rocks below. The city lights along the opposite bank were visible, and the heavy masses of boats and barges made moving shadows through the dusk.
‘How lovely!’ I exclaimed, sniffing the soft air delightedly. ‘Here will I sit and walk and read and muse. A month, did I say! I could cheerfully end my days here.’
‘We have no servant at your disposal, Madame,’ the old woman said, phlegmatically checking my enthusiasm by a reminder of the trials of existence. ‘But until you have procured one, I shall be glad to give you any assistance in my power.’
I thanked her heartily, and inquired if I could find a fiacre to drive at once for my luggage to town. There was no such thing on the island, she calmly informed me. Nothing in the shape of a wheeled object ever crossed the bridge from the city except the morning vans and the weekly butcher’s cart. Once a week the laundresses wheeled their barrows of linen into town and returned on the same day with the supply for the week’s washing. She could recommend a little maid, whose mother would, no doubt, be glad to undertake to market for me for a consideration, and her I could engage on my way to the hotel.
I left the amiable old dame to prepare for my reception that night, and set forth in the dropping twilight in search of the maid and my portmanteau. I had the wisdom, however, to dine at the hotel before returning to the gloomy island.
A MIDNIGHT VISION
IT was late when I drove across the bridge from the town. The noise of rumbling wheels upon the pavement, as the cab clattered past the arches, was of such unearthly volume as to arouse the soundest sleeper. In one or two casements lights and alarmed faces showed; but for the rest, the islanders turned upon their pillows, scarcely vexed by idle speculation upon the disturbance.
The darkness of the house chilled my heart, as the cab drove up the grassy pathway, and when the door opened, and the old dame stood in the hall in the uncertain illumination of a single candle, the solitude of the place looked so insufferably strange, that I rubbed my eyes to ascertain if I were really awake and not dreaming. But a substantial cabman was waiting for his fare, and the woman’s thin yellow hand was holding mine in a cordial clasp. I believe the honest creature had already begun to miss me, and had been counting the minutes until my reappearance.
She led me into the dining-room, where a supper of pâté, fruit, and burgundy was prepared for me, and though I protested that I was not hungry, she compelled me to make a pretence of eating, for the excuse of lingering to talk to me. Mademoiselle had long since retired. She herself had slept a little in order to be fresh for the excitement of my return.
We sat till far into the night, chatting about the great world, about Paris, which to her meant all the sin and misery and gaiety of the entire universe; and about the big town of Beaufort across the river. This impelled me to stand up and draw the curtain, that I might have a peep at it from the gallery. The old woman followed me, and stood leaning beside me against the flat stone balustrade. The lights now along the water were few and widely spread—but in the heaven they had multiplied and twinkled, variously-hued, upon their dark ground.
‘Down there lies the road to Beaufort—the road to Paris,’ my companion murmured wistfully. ‘It is now ten years since Mademoiselle has been watching it, but never a soul comes by it—never a soul.’
‘Whom is she watching for?’ I asked, in a tone insensibly lowered by her whisper.
‘For Dr. Vermont—little Gabrielle’s father.’
‘Is he the only relative she has?’
‘The only one. It is a sad story. The poor lady is eating her heart out with sorrow for the dead, and idle sorrowing for the living. The dead at least loved her—but the living! Ah, there is nothing harder in nature than the heart of a man turned from a loving woman.’
‘Does Dr. Vermont know that Mademoiselle loves him?’
‘Know!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Mademoiselle is a proud woman. I know because I divine it. He too might divine it, if feeling could touch him. But he was always a hard man. He stays away, and he does not write. He cares no more for his child than he does for Mademoiselle.’
She dropped into silence, and I did not want to scare her by appearing in any way to force her confidence. I was poignantly wakeful from interest and the atmosphere of mystery I breathed; nevertheless, I yielded at once to suggestion that the hours were lengthening towards morning, and was glad enough to find myself shuddering among the cold sheets that had lain long in lavender presses, while I listened to the echo of the old woman’s footsteps upon the stairs and the sound of key in lock and bolt drawn.
I was sleeping soundly when Joséphine brought me my morning chocolate and drew up the blind. She informed me that Mademoiselle hoped I had slept well, and would do me the honour of calling on me in the afternoon. This courtesy both astonished and gratified me. I had understood that Joséphine had half smuggled me into the house, and that her mistress had only given a grudging consent to my admittance.
The morning I devoted to examination of my quarters. I found the door of the mysterious chamber locked, but as the key was on the outside, I had the indiscretion to turn it and look in. It was a luxurious bedroom, and was as blue as one of Lesueur’s paintings. Young Madame Vermont must indeed have adored the colour to suffer it in such monotonous excess. The bed, of black polished wood, was hung with blue silk curtains; the carpet was of blue cloth, and blue prevailed in the handsome rugs that relieved it. The couches, the chairs, were covered with blue silk, and blue muslin even draped the long looking-glass. The bed looked ready for use; the blue embroidered coverlet was turned down, and across the lace-edged sheet was flung an unrolled night-dress, as if somebody were momently expected to lift it. On the dressing-table several dainty objects of feminine toilette lay ready to hand—even a little crushed lace handkerchief was thrown hastily against a silver hand-mirror. Beside the bed was a pair of black velvet slippers, and across a chair a frilled and expensive wrapper. Even the water in the carafe on the table was fresh, and there were matches beside the silver-wrought candle-stick. A beautiful jar on an inlaid table in the window recess contained hot-house flowers that were only beginning to fade, but their untainted perfume told of water daily renewed.
It was easy to divine the secret story of that woman’s chamber. Mademoiselle cherished the delusion, as unsubstantial food for her hungry heart, that its occupant was merely absent, and might be expected any day—any hour. She refused to accept the irrevocableness of death, and kept the chamber ready for the wandering spirit when the ties of earth should recall it. This was the meaning of the turned-down bed and unfolded night-dress; of the flowers in the jar sent from the city and carefully watered each evening; of the little handkerchief eloquently wisped against the silver mirror. I retreated softly, and closed the door as if of some sacred place.
After an interview with the maid who came to wait upon me, I lounged in the gallery until the midday breakfast. The aspects and surroundings enchanted me still more by day than they had done the night before. I felt alone—solemnly alone between large spaces of sky and water. Underneath, the river flowed broadly, and upon its bosom the big barges travelled southward, and lighter vessels glided swiftly by to drop behind the bridge, whence the eye could follow their path no more. Below the broken arches and towered points of the bridge went the road to Beaufort and the wide world, a white dust-blown band along the grey horizon. Under a blazing sun showed the outlines of the city, and the strained ear might detect the far-off murmur of looms by help of the factory chimneys. But this needed an effort of imagination in so heavy and dense a silence.
After breakfast I bethought myself of a visit to the melancholy garden by way of change. On the stairs I caught the pleasant patter of small feet and the shrill, sweet notes of a child’s voice. I stepped into the hall, where Gabrielle was at play. She was not pretty, but so lively and spirited and quaint, that she gave a fuller notion of the charm of childhood than any pretty child I have known. She knew neither shyness nor fear. When she saw me, she stopped her play, and approached me boldly.
‘You are the strange lady Joséphine says I am not to bore,’ she said gravely, without any resentment or surprise that she should be asked to consider me.
‘I hope you will bore me a good deal, little one,’ I replied. ‘I love children, and am delighted when they take notice of me and chatter to me.’
‘I like chattering, too, but my aunt is very silent. She is always learning lessons and reading books. Do you learn lessons still?’
‘Sometimes, when I am not too lazy. But I am like you, I don’t like lessons and work,—I prefer play.’
‘If you like, I will play with you,’ she offered, with a serious condescension that was captivating. ‘I have no one to play with except Minette and Monsieur Con. Wouldn’t you like to see Minette? She is a little fluffy, white kitten. Monsieur Con is my rabbit. Come and I will show them to you.’
This was the start of a friendship delightful enough to have moored my barque to those island shores for an indefinite period, if even there had been no irresistible interest of environment and personality to enthral me. But Mademoiselle Lenormant’s character was a character of unusual fascination—not in the sense of sexual attraction but from the point of view of study. She came and sat with me for half an hour late that afternoon. I could not fitly describe her as formal, for she breathed of austere sadness and study. Her pretensions to beauty, in the accepted form, can never have been great, but defective features found an abundant apology in the extreme delicacy of the pallid face and a certain wistful eagerness and suppressed tenderness of expression. It was a face to haunt you into the silent watches of the night, in its mute eloquence of suggestion—like a spirit or a picture. Having looked once upon it, it dwelt for ever apart in the memory, constantly provoking thought, conjecture, and raking the fanciful waters of romance by gliding dreams of sorrow and solitude, and the tragedy that finds no voice or fraternal sympathy upon the noisy surface of life.
Silence I should say had been the great feature of her existence. Even upon the odd impersonal subjects that sprang up for discussion in our conversations, her talk was scant and weighted with an unusual intonation, as if speech came to her amiss. She pondered each commonplace I uttered, and gazed steadfastly into space or down upon the river before replying, which she did very seriously after a long pause. At first this eccentricity of hers much disconcerted me. To exclaim in soft rapture, ‘How lovely the stillness here is!’ and a few minutes later, when you had quite lost sight of the trite observation, to have it cast back upon the wavering plain of dialogue in some such manner, and in tones of musing gravity:
‘You think such stillness as this lovely? It is perhaps the novelty of it alone that enchants you’—
Or, in response to a previous half-forgotten remark received in absolute silence, that the way the boats and barges dropped suddenly out of view as they passed under the bridge was strangely attractive, to find the idea caught by the heels, and gently forced into earnest discussion by a word of imperious invitation. For there was an air of extremely winning command about her, that from the first I found impossible to resist. Her neck was long, and the head upon it beautifully set, and her movements, her gestures and looks, were those of a princess in disguise. An over-wrought imagination might of course—possibly did—exaggerate this air of command and these sovereign attitudes, but I came afterwards to see that I was not alone in my delusion, and that upon ardent youth of the other sex, her quiescent influence could be potential to salvation.
Of the nature of her occupations and ideas I remained quite in the dark for some days to come. Regularly, of an afternoon, she would visit me in the gallery, where we sat and discussed the ‘eternal verities’ in an abrupt, unenthusiastic way. I could see that she purposely withheld herself, her real self, from intrusion or impertinent survey. Seclusion had taught her prudence, and reticence was a natural gift. But how in the name of the marvellous, upon an empty island, where social intercourse is undreamed of, had she come by knowledge of the hollowness of casual expansion and the nothingness of ready sympathy?
This is a lesson the cynical society deity teaches us after harsh and prolonged experiences of considerable variety, and except to its votaries, could only be known to those hermits who went into the desert to rest from the vanity of experiment and pleasure.
Joséphine’s garrulity, however, made instructive Mademoiselle’s reserve. From her I learnt, by meagre instalments, this enigmatic lady’s story. But not much until a little scene had pushed me upon the other side of discretion, and driven me to sue for enlightenment.
It happened thus. In the grip of wakefulness I had gone out to walk about the gallery. There was no moon, and upon the turn of the season, the night was chill and starless. Across the smoke-coloured heaven odd masses wandered, pursued by the wind that blew down from the North. The river below made a stain of exceeding blackness in the dark picture, and beat the rocks in angry protest against the whining uneasiness of the air. For it whined dismally round the island, and blew among the trees of the garden like an army of dreary banshees. A sense of horror of the place grew upon me, and I began to hunger for the big bright world beyond; for gas-lit streets and the sordid aspects of city life. I yearned to jostle my fellows along the highways once more, and listen to the sound of vocal dispute upon the public place. I saw in vision streams of people emerging from illuminated theatres, heard the cheerful roll of carriages, and the noisy murmur of laughter and speech. I longed for it all again—all that I had despised, and told myself in the midst of its enjoyment that I hated. After all, I was but a poor mountebank of a hermit. Town born, I could never hope to free myself permanently from the influences of birth, and I knew that sooner or later nostalgia for city sounds and sights—for the multitudinous accompaniments of its existence, must find me and pursue me into the heart of the most congenial solitude, into the most heavenly of rural retreats.
The gallery ran round the angles of the house, and on the other side looked down into the garden and in upon the window of Madame Vermont’s blue room. I went round it in a thirst for movement, but, fearful of disturbing the sleep of others, I walked very softly. To my complete surprise, and I will not aver without a momentary qualm of terror, I saw the reflection of a stream of light upon the near window of the blue chamber. I hardly believe in ghosts; but it would indeed be rash to hint that it was no vague dread of the supernatural that started my unequal heart-beats just then. I felt the blood gush and swell to bursting the arteries about my temples and throat, and at the back of my ears. Fright was not a check upon curiosity, but rather a strong impetus. Though I might approach in a conflict of emotions, I did not hesitate for one moment to approach, and was confronted with sharp disappointment when I saw that the stream of light upon the floor fell from an earthly candle-stick, and that Mademoiselle was leaning over the polished foot of the bed and gazing steadfastly at the empty pillow.
It did not take me an instant to recover my balance and watch the scene with revived interest. This was my second glimpse of the blue chamber, and a poignant note was now added to its fascination. There was a more speaking look about the turned-down sheet, the unrolled night-dress across it, and the hastily flung wrapper. Not of death—but of an unwonted disparition and a watched-for return it spoke. Not of anguish and bereavement was it eloquent, but of the fruitless and undying hunger of expectation. At such an hour, so sanctified by pervading sorrow and silence, the blue of the room was no longer garish, but an appropriate setting for imprisoned regret. Its very uniformity and depth of colour suggested the solemnity, the profundity of a rich sky unstained by cloud, and, enveloped in this mystic hue, Mademoiselle seemed to be the spirit of sorrow resting upon the grave of all joy—mute, placidly unhopeful, visibly unafraid. For surely such solitude as hers was calculated to bend the proudest head and break the strongest heart, and in presence of her indomitable courage I felt abashed and mean by confrontation with my recent idle terror.
I knew well that it was my duty to turn away my eyes and leave so sacred a vigil unwatched, but when duty and curiosity, strongly roused, come into mortal conflict, it is not often that the former conquers. I waited to see how long Mademoiselle would linger in that room, what her movements might be, and how she would depart for the upper house. And as I waited, I saw her come round by the side of the bed with a quick, sudden step, and gently smooth the pillow. In doing so, her hand rested heavily in the middle, and made a distinct impression. She started back, and I could see that desperate emotion stiffened her thin white face, and the large grey eyes she lifted, in the full light of the candle upon the table beside her, were full of pain. By a gesture so slight, it appeared she had startled memory into wakeful protest, and now she hastened to quiet it, and trod feverishly upon the living embers to still their fires by giving to the bed its proper aspect of emptiness. She turned the pillow, gathered up the ruffled sheet, crushed the night-dress into careless folds, and thrust it beneath the blue coverlet. As white was hidden under the blue, resignation seemed to have banished expectation angrily, and brought the curtain down ruthlessly upon the poor pathetic comedy weakness played for its own diversion.
She took the candle up, stood near the door, and gazed slowly around her. The little handkerchief wisped against the silver mirror caught her eye. She jerked forward and grasped it eagerly; so flimsy was it that it almost melted in her slight palm. I remembered there was a faint, subtle odour of violets about the room, which seemed to emanate from that handkerchief. I can imagine how it must have risen and tyrannised her senses, can measure the strength of its appeal and its delicate charm. No women are so astute and penetrative in their use of scent as Frenchwomen. It is their study to spread their essence with refined cruelty, and leave an imperishably perfumed trace to check the wandering imagination, and keep tenanted by a personal odour the sanctuaries of the heart they have forsaken.
The effect of the faded sweetness of the handkerchief was to irritate her to what I concluded to be a resolution to have done with this miserable comedy of expectation. She held it from her fiercely, and threw back her head to get further away from its insidious appeal, and then approached it to the flame of the candle. It needed but a flutter of light against it, and the flimsy thing was a brief yellow flare. She watched until the flame had burnt itself out, and then threw the charred rag upon the marble top of the night-table, and swayed unsteadily towards the door. By the way she grasped her throat with one frail, nervous hand, I could divine how the thick sobs shook her, and I wondered more and more upon the mystery of her life, and what elements combined to form the mimic tragedy of that midnight solitude.
Outside the breath of winter was upon us, and the wind bit and stung with the sharpness of ice. It was December now, and vigils upon the terrace, once the sun was gone down and the stars were out, were a forbidden pleasure in careful middle-age.