CHAPTER XIX. THE GHOST’S WALK
Thierry.—‘Tis full of fearful shadows.
Ordella.– So is sleep, sir;
Or anything that’s merely ours, and mortal;
We were begotten gods else. But those fears
Feeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts,
Fly, like the shapes of clouds we form, to nothing.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.—Thierry and Theodoret.
Margaret sat watching the waking of Lady Emily. Knowing how much the first thought colours the feeling of the whole day, she wished that Lady Emily should at once be aware that she was by her side.
She opened her eyes, and a smile broke over her face when she perceived her nurse. But Margaret did not yet speak to her.
Every nurse should remember that waking ought always to be a gradual operation; and, except in the most triumphant health, is never complete on the opening of the eyes.
“Margaret, I am better,” said Lady Emily, at last.
“I am very glad, my lady.”
“I have been lying awake for some time, and I am sure I am better. I don’t see strange-coloured figures floating about the room as I did yesterday. Were you not out of the room a few minutes ago?”
“Just for one moment, my lady.”
“I knew it. But I did not mind it. Yesterday, when you left me, those figures grew ten times as many, the moment you were gone. But you will stay with me to-day, too, Margaret?” she added, with some anxiety.
“I will, if you find you need me. But I may be forced to leave you a little while this evening—you must try to allow me this, dear Lady Emily.”
“Of course I will. I will be quite patient, I promise you, whatever comes to me.”
When Harry woke, after a very troubled sleep, from which he had often started with sudden cries of terror, Hugh made him promise not to increase the confusion of the household, by speaking of what he had seen. Harry promised at once, but begged in his turn that Hugh would not leave him all day. It did not need the pale scared face of his pupil to enforce the request; for Hugh was already anxious lest the fright the boy had had, should exercise a permanently deleterious effect on his constitution. Therefore he hardly let him out of his sight.
But although Harry kept his word, the cloud of perturbation gathered thicker in the kitchen and the servants’ hall. Nothing came to the ears of their master and mistress; but gloomy looks, sudden starts, and sidelong glances of fear, indicated the prevailing character of the feelings of the household.
And although Lady Emily was not so ill, she had not yet taken a decided turn for the better, but appeared to suffer from some kind of low fever. The medical man who was called in, confessed to Mrs. Elton, that as yet he could say nothing very decided about her condition, but recommended great quiet and careful nursing. Margaret scarcely left her room, and the invalid showed far more than the ordinary degree of dependence upon her nurse. In her relation to her, she was more like a child than an invalid.
About noon she was better. She called Margaret and said to her:
“Margaret, dear, I should like to tell you one thing that annoys me very much.”
“What is it, dear Lady Emily?”
“That man haunts me. I cannot bear the thought of him; and yet I cannot get rid of him. I am sure he is a bad man. Are you certain he is not here?”
“Yes, indeed, my lady. He has not been here since the day before yesterday.”
“And yet when you leave me for an instant, I always feel as if he were sitting in the very seat where you were the moment before, or just coming to the door and about to open it. That is why I cannot bear you to leave me.”
Margaret might have confessed to some slighter sensations of the same kind; but they did not oppress her as they did Lady Emily.
“God is nearer to you than any thought or feeling of yours, Lady Emily. Do not be afraid. If all the evil things in the universe were around us, they could not come inside the ring that he makes about us. He always keeps a place for himself and his child, into which no other being can enter.”
“Oh! how you must love God, Margaret!”
“Indeed I do love him, my lady. If ever anything looks beautiful or lovely to me, then I know at once that God is that.”
“But, then, what right have we to take the good of that, however true it is, when we are not beautiful ourselves?”
“That only makes God the more beautiful—in that he will pour out the more of his beauty upon us to make us beautiful. If we care for his glory, we shall be glad to believe all this about him. But we are too anxious about feeling good ourselves, to rejoice in his perfect goodness. I think we should find that enough, my lady. For, if he be good, are not we his children, and sure of having it, not merely feeling it, some day?”
Here Margaret repeated a little poem of George Herbert’s. She had found his poems amongst Mrs. Elton’s books, who, coming upon her absorbed in it one day, had made her a present of the volume. Then indeed Margaret had found a friend.
The poem is called Dialogue:
“Sweetest Saviour, if my soul
Were but worth the having—”
“Oh, what a comfort you are to me, Margaret!” Lady Emily said, after a short silence. “Where did you learn such things?”
“From my father, and from Jesus Christ, and from God himself, showing them to me in my heart.”
“Ah! that is why, as often as you come into my room, even if I am very troubled, I feel as if the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the birds sang, and the tree-tops went waving in the wind, as they used to do before I was taken ill—I mean before they thought I must go abroad. You seem to make everything clear, and right, and plain. I wish I were you, Margaret.”
“If I were you, my lady, I would rather be what God chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about—born in God’s thoughts—and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking. Is it not, my lady?”
“It is,” said Lady Emily, and was silent.
The shadows of evening came on. As soon as it was dark, Margaret took her place at one of the windows hidden from Lady Emily by a bed-curtain. She raised the blind, and pulled aside one curtain, to let her have a view of the trees outside. She had placed the one candle so as not to shine either on the window or on her own eyes. Lady Emily was asleep. One hour and another passed, and still she sat there—motionless, watching.
Margaret did not know, that at another window—the one, indeed, next to her own—stood a second watcher. It was Hugh, in Harry’s room: Harry was asleep in Hugh’s. He had no light. He stood with his face close against the windowpane, on which the moon shone brightly. All below him the woods were half dissolved away in the moonlight. The Ghost’s Walk lay full before him, like a tunnel through the trees. He could see a great way down, by the light that fell into it, at various intervals, from between the boughs overhead. He stood thus for a long time, gazing somewhat listlessly. Suddenly he became all eyes, as he caught the white glimmer of something passing up the avenue. He stole out of the room, down to the library by the back-stair, and so through the library window into the wood. He reached the avenue sideways, at some distance from the house, and peeped from behind a tree, up and down. At first he saw nothing. But, a moment after, while he was looking down the avenue, that is, away from the house, a veiled figure in white passed him noiselessly from the other direction. From the way in which he was looking at the moment, it had passed him before he saw it. It made no sound. Only some early-fallen leaves rustled as they hurried away in uncertain eddies, startled by the sweep of its trailing garments, which yet were held up by hands hidden within them. On it went. Hugh’s eyes were fixed on its course. He could not move, and his heart laboured so frightfully that he could hardly breathe. The figure had not advanced far, however, before he heard a repressed cry of agony, and it sank to the earth, and vanished; while from where it disappeared, down the path, came, silently too, turning neither to the right nor the left, a second figure, veiled in black from head to foot.
“It is the nun in Lady Euphrasia’s room,” said Hugh to himself.
This passed him too, and, walking slowly towards the house, disappeared somewhere, near the end of the avenue. Turning once more, with reviving courage—for his blood had begun to flow more equably—Hugh ventured to approach the spot where the white figure had vanished. He found nothing there but the shadow of a huge tree. He walked through the avenue to the end, and then back to the house, but saw nothing; though he often started at fancied appearances. Sorely bewildered, he returned to his own room. After speculating till thought was weary, he lay down beside Harry, whom he was thankful to find in a still repose, and fell fast asleep.
Margaret lay on a couch in Lady Emily’s room, and slept likewise; but she started wide awake at every moan of the invalid, who often moaned in her sleep.
CHAPTER XX. THE BAD MAN
She kent he was nae gentle knight,
That she had letten in;
For neither when he gaed nor cam’,
Kissed he her cheek or chin.
He neither kissed her when he cam’
Nor clappit her when he gaed;
And in and out at her bower window,
The moon shone like the gleed.
Glenkindie.—Old Scotch Ballad.
When Euphra recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen—for I need hardly explain to my readers, that it was she who walked the Ghost’s Walk in white—on seeing Margaret, whom, under the irresistible influences of the moonlight and a bad conscience, she took for the very being whom Euphra herself was personating—when she recovered, I say, she found herself lying in the wood, with Funkelstein, whom she had gone to meet, standing beside her. Her first words were of anger, as she tried to rise, and found she could not.
“How long, Count Halkar, am I to be your slave?”
“Till you have learned to submit.”
“Have I not done all I can?”
“You have not found it. You are free from the moment you place that ring, belonging to me, in right of my family, into my hands.”
I do not believe that the man really was Count Halkar, although he had evidently persuaded Euphra that such was his name and title. I think it much more probable that, in the course of picking up a mass of trifling information about various families of distinction, for which his position of secretary in several of their houses had afforded him special facilities, he had learned something about the Halkar family, and this particular ring, of which, for some reason or other, he wanted to possess himself.
“What more can I do?” moaned Euphra, succeeding at length in raising herself to a sitting posture, and leaning thus against a tree. “I shall be found out some day. I have been already seen wandering through the house at midnight, with the heart of a thief. I hate you, Count Halkar!”
A low laugh was the count’s only reply.
“And now Lady Euphrasia herself dogs my steps, to keep me from the ring.” She gave a low cry of agony at the remembrance.
“Miss Cameron—Euphra—are you going to give way to such folly?”
“Folly! Is it not worse folly to torture a poor girl as you do me—all for a worthless ring? What can you want with the ring? I do not know that he has it even.”
“You lie. You know he has. You need not think to take me in.”
“You base man! You dare not give the lie to any but a woman.”
“Why?”
“Because you are a coward. You are afraid of Lady Euphrasia yourself. See there!”
Von Funkelstein glanced round him uneasily. It was only the moonlight on the bark of a silver birch. Conscious of having betrayed weakness, he grew spiteful.
“If you do not behave to me better, I will compel you. Rise up!”
After a moment’s hesitation, she rose.
“Put your arms round me.”
She seemed to grow to the earth, and to drag herself from it, one foot after another. But she came close up to the Bohemian, and put one arm half round him, looking to the earth all the time.
“Kiss me.”
“Count Halkar!” her voice sounded hollow and harsh, as if from a dead throat—“I will do what you please. Only release me.”
“Go then; but mind you resist me no more. I do not care for your kisses. You were ready enough once. But that idiot of a tutor has taken my place, I see.”
“Would to God I had never seen you!—never yielded to your influence over me! Swear that I shall be free if I find you the ring.”
“You find the ring first. Why should I swear? I can compel you. You know you laid yourself out to entrap me first with your arts, and I only turned upon you with mine. And you are in my power. But you shall be free, notwithstanding; and I will torture you till you free yourself. Find the ring.”
“Cruel! cruel! You are doing all you can to ruin me.”
“On the contrary, I am doing all I can to save myself. If you had loved me as you allowed me to think once, I should never have made you my tool.”
“You would all the same.”
“Take care. I am irritable to-night.”
For a few moments Euphra made no reply.
“To what will you drive me?” she said at last.
“I will not go too far. I should lose my power over you if I did. I prefer to keep it.”
“Inexorable man!”
“Yes.”
Another despairing pause.
“What am I to do?”
“Nothing. But keep yourself ready to carry out any plan that I may propose. Something will turn up, now that I have got into the house myself. Leave me to find out the means. I can expect no invention from your brains. You can go home.”
Euphra turned without another word, and went; murmuring, as if in excuse to herself:
“It is for my freedom. It is for my freedom.”
Of course this account must have come originally from Euphra herself, for there was no one else to tell it. She, at least, believed herself compelled to do what the man pleased. Some of my readers will put her down as insane. She may have been; but, for my part, I believe there is such a power of one being over another, though perhaps only in a rare contact of psychologically peculiar natures. I have testimony enough for that. She had yielded to his will once. Had she not done so, he could not have compelled her; but, having once yielded, she had not strength sufficient to free herself again. Whether even he could free her, further than by merely abstaining from the exercise of the power he had gained, I doubt much.
It is evident that he had come to the neighbourhood of Arnstead for the sake of finding her, and exercising his power over her for his own ends; that he had made her come to him once, if not oftener, before he met Hugh, and by means of his acquaintance, obtained admission into Arnstead. Once admitted, he had easily succeeded, by his efforts to please, in so far ingratiating himself with Mr. Arnold, that now the house-door stood open to him, and he had even his recognised seat at the dinner-table.
CHAPTER XXI. SPIRIT VERSUS MATERIALISM
Next this marble venomed seat, Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, I touch with chaste palms moist and cold— Now the spell hath lost his hold.
MILTON.—Comas.
Next morning Lady Emily felt better, and wanted to get up: but her eyes were still too bright, and her hands too hot; and Margaret would not hear of it.
Fond as Lady Emily was in general of Mrs. Elton’s society, she did not care to have her with her now, and got tired of her when Margaret was absent.
They had taken care not to allow Miss Cameron to enter the room; but to-day there was not much likelihood of her making the attempt, for she did not appear at breakfast, sending a message to her uncle that she had a bad headache, but hoped to take her place at the dinner-table.
During the day, Lady Emily was better, but restless by fits.
“Were you not out of the room for a little while last night, Margaret?” she said, rather suddenly.
“Yes, my lady. I told you I should have to go, perhaps.”
“I remember I thought you had gone, but I was not in the least afraid, and that dreadful man never came near me. I do not know when you returned. Perhaps I had fallen asleep; but when I thought about you next, there you were by my bedside.”
“I shall not have to leave you to-night,” was all Margaret’s answer.
As for Hugh, when first he woke, the extraordinary experiences of the previous night appeared to him to belong only to the night, and to have no real relation to the daylight world. But a little reflection soon convinced him of the contrary; and then he went through the duties of the day like one who had nothing to do with them. The phantoms he had seen even occupied some of the thinking space formerly appropriated by the image of Euphra, though he knew to his concern that she was ill, and confined to her room. He had heard the message sent to Mr. Arnold, however, and so kept hoping for the dinner-hour.
With it came Euphra, very pale. Her eyes had an unsettled look, and there were dark hollows under them. She would start and look sideways without any visible cause; and was thus very different from her usual self—ordinarily remarkable for self-possession, almost to coolness, of manner and speech. Hugh saw it, and became both distressed and speculative in consequence. It did not diminish his discomfort that, about the middle of dinner, Funkelstein was announced. Was it, then, that Euphra had been tremulously expectant of him?
“This is an unforeseen pleasure, Herr von Funkelstein,” said Mr. Arnold.
“It is very good of you to call it a pleasure, Mr. Arnold,” said he. “Miss Cameron—but, good heavens! how ill you look!”
“Don’t be alarmed. I have only caught the plague.”
“Only?” was all Funkelstein said in reply; yet Hugh thought he had no right to be so solicitous about Euphra’s health.
As the gentlemen sat at their wine, Mr. Arnold said:
“I am anxious to have one more trial of those strange things you have brought to our knowledge. I have been thinking about them ever since.”
“Of course I am at your service, Mr. Arnold; but don’t you think, for the ladies’ sakes, we have had enough of it?”
“You are very considerate, Herr von Funkelstein; but they need not be present if they do not like it.”
“Very well, Mr. Arnold.”
They adjourned once more to the library instead of the drawing-room. Hugh went and told Euphra, who was alone in the drawing-room, what they were about. She declined going, but insisted on his leaving her, and joining the other gentlemen.
Hugh left her with much reluctance.
“Margaret,” said Lady Emily, “I am certain that man is in the house.”
“He is, my lady,” answered Margaret.
“They are about some more of those horrid experiments, as they call them.”
“I do not know.”
Mrs. Elton entering the room at the moment, Margaret said:
“Do you know, ma’am, whether the gentlemen are—in the library again?”
“I don’t know, Margaret. I hope not. We have had enough of that. I will go and find out, though.”
“Will you take my place for a few minutes first, please, ma’am?”
Margaret had felt a growing oppression for some time. She had scarcely left the sick-room that day.
“Don’t leave me, dear Margaret,” said Lady Emily, imploringly.
“Only for a little while, my lady. I shall be back in less than a quarter of an hour.”
“Very well, Margaret,” she answered dolefully.
Margaret went out into the moonlight, and walked for ten minutes. She sought the more open parts, where the winds were. She then returned to the sick-chamber, refreshed and strong.
“Now I will go and see what the gentlemen are about,” said Mrs. Elton.
The good lady did not like these proceedings, but she was irresistibly attracted by them notwithstanding. Having gone to see for Lady Emily, she remained to see for herself.
After she had left, Lady Emily grew more uneasy. Not even Margaret’s presence could make her comfortable. Mrs. Elton did not return. Many minutes elapsed. Lady Emily said at last:
“Margaret, I am terrified at the idea of being left alone, I confess; but not so terrified as at the idea of what is going on in that library. Mrs. Elton will not come back. Would you mind just running down to ask her to come to me?”
“I would go with pleasure,” said Margaret; “but I don’t want to be seen.”
Margaret did not want to be seen by Hugh. Lady Emily, with her dislike to Funkelstein, thought Margaret did not want to be seen by him.
“You will find a black veil of mine,” she said, “in that wardrobe—just throw it over your head, and hold a handkerchief to your face. They will be so busy that they will never see you.”
Margaret yielded to the request of Lady Emily, who herself arranged her head-dress for her.
Now I must go back a little.—When Mrs. Elton reached the room, she found it darkened, and the gentlemen seated at the table. A running fire of knocks was going on all around.
She sat down in a corner. In a minute or two, she fancied she saw strange figures moving about, generally near the floor, and very imperfectly developed. Sometimes only a hand, sometimes only a foot, shadowed itself out of the dim obscurity. She tried to persuade herself that it was all done, somehow or other, by Funkelstein, yet she could not help watching with a curious dread. She was not a very excitable woman, and her nerves were safe enough.
In a minute or two more, the table at which they were seated, began to move up and down with a kind of vertical oscillation, and several things in the room began to slide about, by short, apparently purposeless jerks. Everything threatened to assume motion, and turn the library into a domestic chaos. Mrs. Elton declared afterwards that several books were thrown about the room.—But suddenly everything was as still as the moonlight. Every chair and table was at rest, looking perfectly incapable of motion. Mrs. Elton felt that she dared not say they had moved at all, so utterly ordinary was their appearance. Not a sound was to be heard from corner or ceiling. After a moment’s silence, Mrs. Elton was quite restored to her sound mind, as she said, and left the room.
“Some adverse influence is at work,” said Funkelstein, with some vexation. “What is in that closet?”
So saying he approached the door of the private staircase, and opened it. They saw him start aside, and a veiled dark figure pass him, cross the library, and go out by another door.
“I have my suspicions,” said Funkelstein, with a rather tremulous voice.
“And your fears too, I think. Grant it now,” said Mr. Arnold.
“Granted, Mr. Arnold. Let us go to the drawing-room.”
Just as Margaret had reached the library door at the bottom of the private stair, either a puff of wind from an open loophole window, or some other cause, destroyed the arrangement of the veil, and made it fall quite over her face, She stopped for a moment to readjust it. She had not quite succeeded, when Funkelstein opened the door. Without an instant’s hesitation, she let the veil fall, and walked forward.
Mrs. Elton had gone to her own room, on her way to Lady Emily’s. When she reached the latter, she found Margaret seated as she had left her, by the bedside. Lady Emily said:
“I did not miss you, Margaret, half so much as I expected. But, indeed, you were not many moments gone. I do not care for that man now. He can’t hurt me, can he?”
“Certainty not. I hope he will give you no more trouble either, dear Lady Emily. But if I might presume to advise you, I would say—Get well as soon as you can, and leave this place.”
“Why should I? You frighten me. Mr. Arnold is very kind to me.”
“The place quite suits Lady Emily, I am sure, Margaret.”
“But Lady Emily is not so well as when she came.”
“No, but that is not the fault of the place,” said Lady Emily. “I am sure it is all that horrid man’s doing.”
“How else will you get rid of him, then? What if he wants to get rid of you?”
“What harm can I be doing him—a poor girl like me?”
“I don’t know. But I fear there is something not right going on.”
“We will tell Mr. Arnold at once,” said Mrs. Elton.
“But what could you tell him, ma’am? Mr. Arnold is hardly one to listen to your maid’s suspicions. Dear Lady Emily, you must get well and go.”
“I will try,” said Lady Emily, submissive as a child.
“I think you will be able to get up for a little while tomorrow.”
A tap came to the door. It was Euphrasia, inquiring after Lady Emily.
“Ask Miss Cameron to come in,” said the invalid.
She entered. Her manner was much changed—was subdued and suffering.
“Dear Miss Cameron, you and I ought to change places. I am sorry to see you looking so ill,” said Lady Emily.
“I have had a headache all day. I shall be quite well to-morrow, thank you.”
“I intend to be so too,” said Lady Emily, cheerfully.
After some little talk, Euphra went, holding her hand to her forehead. Margaret did not look up, all the time she was in the room, but went on busily with her needle.
That night was a peaceful one.