THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (18 page)

But she made no answer, and only sat quite pale and still, and downward-looking, like a marble saint.

‘Not one word, Grace—not one?’

Her lips quivered. Slowly she lifted up her face, and fixed her eyes on mine. Oh! how deep they were—how dark—how earnest!

‘Heinrich,’ she said, in a low clear voice, ‘Heinrich, I loved you long ago—I loved you in imagination, for years before we met.’

Surely there was nothing in these words that should not have filled me with delight, and yet they smote upon me with a sensation of indescribable horror.

I had heard them before
—ay, and in that very spot!

With the swiftness of lightning it rushed upon me; and in one passing second, as a landscape flits before us in the flashes of a storm, I recollected, oh! heavens, not only the place, the hour, the summer-house, the garden; but herself—her words—her eyes! all, all as familiar as they were a portion of my own being!

‘Grace! Grace!’ I shrieked, springing to my feet, and clasping my hands wildly above my head, ‘do you not remember?—once before—here, here—centuries ago!—do you not remember?—do you not—do you not remem . . .’

A choking, dreadful feeling arrested my breath; the ground rocked beneath my feet; a red mist swam before my eyes—I staggered—I fell!

I remember nothing of what followed.

* * * * *

Even now it seems to me as if years passed away between that moment and the period when my consciousness returned. Long passionless years—without a thought, without a hope, without a fear; dark as night, and blank as dreamless sleep!

But it was not so. Scarcely three weeks had elapsed since I was seized with the fever; and so far from having lain there in a passive trance, I had all the time been racked by the burning visions of delirium.

Brought to the very confines of the grave, weak, emaciated, and careless of all around me, I permitted two or three days to pass away in this state of listless debility, without asking even a question about the past, or daring to dwell for an instant upon the future. I had no power to think.

Those first days of sanity glided by like waking dreams, and I passed insensibly from drowsy perception to long and frequent slumbers. While awake, I listened idly to the ticking of the clock, and to the passing footsteps on the stairs; watched the sunlight creeping slowly round the walls with the advancing day; followed, like a child, the quiet movements of my nurse: and accepted, without question, the medicines and aliments which she brought me. I was feebly conscious, too, of the frequent visits of the doctor; and when he felt my pulse, and enjoined me not to speak, I was too weak and weary even to reply.

On the morning of the third (or it might have been the fourth) day, I woke from a long sleep which seemed to have lasted all the night, and I felt the springs of life and thought renewed within me. I looked round the room, and, for the first time, wondered where I was.

The nurse was soundly sleeping in an armchair at my bedside. The room was large and airy. The window was shadowed by a tree, the leaves of which rustled with the wind. Some bookshelves, laden with bright new volumes, were suspended against the wall; and a small table, covered with phials and wine-glasses, was placed at the foot of the bed.

I asked myself where I had been before this illness, and in one moment I remembered all, even to the last broken words!

I must have given utterance to some exclamation, for my attendant woke, and turned a startled face upon me.

‘Nurse,’ I said eagerly, ‘where am I?—whose house is this?’

‘Hush, sir! this is Dr Howard’s; but you are to keep quiet. Here is the doctor himself!’

The door opened, and a gentlemanly-looking man entered. Seeing me awake, he smiled pleasantly, and took a seat beside my bed.

‘I see by your face, my young friend, that you are better,’ he said. ‘Did I hear you asking where you are? You are my guest and patient.’

‘How came I here?’

‘You have had a brain fever, and were removed to my dwelling at my request. By that arrangement I have been enabled to give your case more attention. I live in the village of Torringhurst, two miles from Ormesby Park.’

‘And Frank, and—and Miss Ormesby?’ I began hesitatingly.

‘Your friends have been very anxious for you,’ he said, with some irresolution, as if scarce knowing how to reply. ‘Mr Ormesby watched many nights at your bedside. They—they waited till they knew you to be out of danger.’

‘And then?’ I cried eagerly.

‘And then they left Ormesby Park for the Continent.’

‘For the Continent!’ I repeated. ‘Then I must follow them!’

The doctor laid his hand gently on my shoulder. I sank back upon the pillows, utterly powerless; and he resumed:

‘I have promised not to say where they are gone; and—and they do not wish that you should follow.’

‘But I
will
go! Why should I not? What have I done that I should be treated thus? Oh! cruel, cruel!’

I was so weak and wretched that I burst into tears, and sobbed like a child.

He looked at me gravely and compassionately.

‘Herr Professor,’ he said, taking my hand in his, and looking into my eyes, ‘you are a man of education and intellect. I well know that to leave you in doubt would be not only the unkindest, but the unwisest thing that I could do. Now listen to me, and prepare yourself for a great disappointment. Shortly before your seizure, you made some observations (owing probably to the approach of fever) which much shocked and alarmed your friend’s sister. It appears, likewise, that a few weeks before, you expressed yourself very strangely with respect to a picture. These two circumstances, I regret to say, have impressed your friends with the idea that you are the victim, I will not say of unsound mind, but of a delusive theory, highly injurious to your own mental and physical well-being, as well as to the happiness of those connected with you. Such being the case, Mr Ormesby is of opinion that your intimacy with his sister must unavoidably cease; and the better to effect this, he has taken her abroad for a time. Mr Ormesby entrusted me with this letter for you.’

Here is a transcript of the letter:

Deeply painful as it is to me thus to address you after so severe an illness, my dear Heinrich, I must write a few lines, entreating your forgiveness for the apparent unkindness of which I am guilty in thus quitting England before you are sufficiently recovered to wish me farewell. I will leave to my kind friend Dr Howard the ungrateful task of explaining my motives for this departure; but I can trust only my own pen to describe to you the deep grief which that determination has cost me. Nothing but the sense of a duty still more imperative than that of friendship could have forced me to inflict upon you a disappointment in which I entreat you to believe I have an equal share. My dear old college friend, forgive and still love me, for my attachment to you must and will ever be the same. Perhaps in time to come, when all that has lately passed shall be, if not forgotten, at least unregretted, you will suffer me to resume my old place in your confidence, and will welcome to your hearth and heart

Your friend,

FRANK ORMESBY.

* * * * *

There are times when this beautiful world seems to put on a mourning garb, as if in sympathy with the grief that consumes us; when the trees shake their arms in mute sorrow, and scatter their withered leaves like ashes on our heads; when the slow rains weep down around us, and the very clouds look old above. Then, like Hamlet the Dane, ‘This goodly frame, the earth, seems to us a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o’er-hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, appears no other thing than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.’

And so it was with me, walking solitary and sad beneath the sighing trees in one of the public gardens of Paris.

The dead leaves rustled as I trod, and the bare branches clashed together in the wind. A little to the right flowed the tide of pleasure-seekers. Overhead the clouds hung low and dark, now and then shedding brief showers.

I was still weak and suffering; but I could not stay in the country she had left. I came hither, seeking change and distraction—perhaps, too, with a vague hope that I might find her. Could I but see her once more; could I but hear the sweet sound of her voice, bidding me (if it must be so) an eternal farewell, I felt I should be more at peace with the world and myself.

But in Paris I had found her not—neither had I found peace, nor hope, nor rest. The clouds had rolled between me and the sun, and every land alike was darkened.

I then felt that I could say with Sir Thomas Browne—‘For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.’ Yet I never reproached her with my sorrow! Nay, I blessed her for the love that had once beamed on me from her eyes, and for the happy, happy times that must return no more.

Think you, my friend, that I have changed since then? No, I love her still, with a love and reverence inexpressible. She believed me mad. It is a hard word—perhaps it was a hard thought—but was it hers?

I cannot tell; yet I think not. At all events, I feel the sweet assurance that she once loved, and that she always pitied me.

Sometimes I feared it might be as she thought. Might not these flashes of strange memory be the fitful precursors of insanity? I reasoned. I examined myself; but I found no inward corroboration. And all this time, even when my heart was breaking, I loved her, and was thankful that I loved. Even then, I would not have changed the memory of that dream for the blank that went before.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved and lost,

Than never to have loved at all.

Fare thee well, sweet Grace Ormesby—fare thee well, dear lady of my love! Go from these pages as from my life, and therein be no more seen. Thy pale face and earnest eyes are still present to me through the mists of many years. Yet doth Time with every season steal somewhat from the distinctness of the vision; and as mine eyes grow dim, so doth thine image recede farther and farther into the dusky chambers of the Past. Peace be with thee, lady, whereso’er thou art—peace be with thee!

* * * * *

The life of a great city accords ill with a great grief; and yet we do well to mingle with our fellow-creatures, though it be only in the streets of a city where we have no friends. Not the most misanthropic can thread that varying tide without feeling that he is a portion of the many, and that it is his duty to be a worker among men. He has a part to play, and he there knows that he is called upon to play it.

Walking in that deserted alley of the Luxembourg Gardens, within hearing, though not within sight of the living stream beyond, this truth became clear to me, and I said—‘I have been idle and a dreamer. Books have been my world. From this present suffering I must be free or die; and in activity alone can I ever find forgetfulness. Now I, too, will work.’

And I made up my mind to do the work for which I was fitted. I resolved to write my long-contemplated book on ‘The Languages and Poetry of the East’.

That night my quiet rooms in the dead, old-fashioned Rue du Mont Parnasse, seemed less dreary. It was now almost winter; it had rained at intervals for many days, and the air was very chill. I found a cheerful fire in my sitting-room. The curtains shut out the dismantled garden. I drew my table to the fireplace, trimmed my lamp, took pen and paper, and sketched the outline of my work.

My evening’s occupation was followed by a night of sound refreshing sleep; and from this day I recovered rapidly. The next morning found me, for the first time, before the gloomy entrance to the old Bibliothèque Royale, then lodged in the ancient Palais du Cardinal.