THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (17 page)

‘My friend has saluted you after our German fashion, Grace,’ said Frank smiling, as he saw her embarrassment and mine. ‘Abroad we kiss the hand of a lady, and we only shake that of a gentleman. If he be a heart-friend, or a brother, we rub our rough beards together in a fraternal embrace.’

A little while afterwards, when we were sitting together in a window overlooking the old park, the lady, after glancing doubtfully towards me twice or thrice, laid her hand gently on her brother’s arm, and said:

‘But where, my dear Frank, is the other gentleman—the Oriental scholar—whom you prepared me to receive?’

A malicious smile hovered over his lips, and danced in his dark eyes.

‘This is the learned Professor in person,’ he replied, laughingly. ‘Speak for yourself, friend; and if Grace still continues to doubt your identity, reply with a spirited harangue in Syriac or Sanskirt! By the way, sister mine, can you discover who it is that Henneberg resembles? From the moment I first saw him, I knew that I had been used to a face strangely like his, “e’en from my boyish days”; yet for my life I cannot tell whose that face may be.’

‘Nor I,’ replied Grace Ormesby. ‘But Professor Henneberg’s face seems not unknown to me.’

‘How beautiful this is!’ I exclaimed, stepping out upon the balcony, and looking over the wide, wooded country, the distant hills, the park, and the quaint, formal garden. The moon was just rising on one side, and the red sun sinking slowly on the other.

‘It is a truly English scene,’ replied the lady; ‘but I suppose it will not bear comparison with your German forests and vineyards. We have, however, many charming drives around, and some points of view that might delight even a poet.’

‘
Even
a poet!’ repeated Frank, smiling. ‘Why, I think poets are more easily delighted than other people. There is no scene so dull, and no subject so dry, but they will contrive to throw a grace and glory upon it. We must take you round tomorrow, Henneberg, to the grotto which we, when children, used to call our Hermitage. And there is the old chapel for you to see; it lies down there in that hollow, within the park boundaries. It is a picturesque old place enough. The tombs of our predecessors are ranged all down the side-aisles, and their rusty armour hangs above them:

‘“The knights’ bones are dust,

And their good swords rust;

Their souls are with the saints I trust!”’

‘Then your library of old folios!’ I exclaimed; ‘I must see that before anything. How delightful to stroll out with some quaint black-letter pamphlet redolent of the dust of centuries, and lie reading in the shade of yonder trees!’

The lady smiled, and added:

‘Where you will moralise, like “the melancholy Jaques”:

‘“Under an oak, whose antique roots peep out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood.”

But I ask your pardon; I should not quote Shakespeare to a foreigner.’

‘Miss Ormesby is mistaken, if she supposes that we Germans are ignorant of the works of her great poet!’ I said, earnestly. ‘Shakespeare—to use the words of a great German critic—was naturalised in Germany the moment that he was known. The same critic—Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel—enjoys the distinction of having first directed the attention of Europe to the philosophical significance of his dramas. Before Schlegel, Lessing wrote upon Shakespeare; Herder has studied him; Tieck began a series of letters upon his plays; and Goethe, in his “Wilhelm Meister”, has spoken of him with reverence and enthusiasm.’

‘This is indeed a pleasant tale for English ears!’ exclaimed the lady, with a flush upon her pale cheek; ‘and we should be proud to hear it. I wish I spoke your language as well as you speak ours.’

And so the conversation changed again, and flowed on into other channels, like a mountain-stream, now winding past a little quiet isle, now dashing over the steep rocks, now murmuring softly through the rushes near a cottage-door, and anon wandering out and losing itself in the deep sea. Thus the hours glided away unnoticed, and it was nearly midnight when I withdrew.

Mine was a large dark room, with an enormous bed, like a hearse, in the centre of the floor. Two ebony cabinets, richly inlaid, stood on either side of the fireplace. An antique Venetian mirror was suspended above the toilette-table, and some high-backed chairs and
moyen age fauteuils
were scattered about in various directions.

Glancing round at these details, I walked over to one of the casements, threw it open, and, leaning forward into the moonlight, thought of the lady whom I already dared to love. It was long past midnight when I returned into the chamber, and dropped upon a chair:

‘“Benedetto sia ’l giorno, e’l mese, e l’anno,

E la stagione, e’l tempo, e l’ora, e ’l punto,

E’l bel paese, e’l loco, ov’ io fui giunto

Da due begli occhi che legato m’hanno!”
^*

I exclaimed, in the impassioned words of Petrarch, as I bent my head down upon my hands, and whispered one name softly to myself. After a time I looked up again; my eyes wandered listlessly round the room, and encountered a picture which I had not before observed. I rose; I advanced towards it; I raised the candle . . . a freezing sensation came upon me; my eyes grew dim; my heart stood still. In that portrait I recognised—
myself!

Suddenly I turned and rushed to the door; but, as my fingers closed upon the handle, I paused. ‘What folly!’ I said. ‘It can only be a mirror!’

So I nerved myself to return.

Once more I stood before it, and surveyed it steadily. It was no mirror, but a picture—an old oil-painting, cracked in many places, and mellow with the deepened tones of age. The portrait represented a young man in the costume of the reign of James the first, with ruff and doublet. But the face—the face! I sickened as I gazed upon it; for every feature was mine! The long light hair, descending almost to the shoulders; the pallid hue and anxious brow, the compressed lip and fair moustache, the very meaning and expression of the eye—all, all my own, as though reflected from the surface of a mirror!

I stood fascinated, spellbound: my eyes were riveted upon the picture, and its eyes, glance for glance, on mine. At length the tide of horror seemed to burst its bounds; a groan broke from my lips, and dashing my lamp upon the ground that I might behold the face no more, I flew to the window, and leaped out into the garden.

All that night, hour after hour, I wandered through the avenues and glades of the park, startling the red-deer in their midnight covers, and scattering the dewdrops from the ferns as I passed by.

The morning dawned ere long; the sun shone, the lark rose singing, and the day-flowers opened in the grass. At seven o’clock I bent my steps towards the house, weary, haggard, and depressed. Frank met me in the garden.

‘You are early this morning, Heinrich,’ he said, gaily. Then, observing the expression of my countenance, ‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed, ‘what is the matter?’

‘I have not slept at all,’ I replied, in a hollow tone; ‘and I have suffered the torture of a hundred sleepless nights in one. Come with me to my bedchamber, and I will tell you.’

We went, and I told him. He heard me out in silence, and looked frequently from the portrait to my face. When I had done, he laughed aloud and shook his head.

‘I acknowledge,’ he said, ‘that the resemblance is striking; and not only the resemblance, but the coincidence; for, to tell you the truth, this is actually the portrait of one of your countrymen—a Baron von Ravensberg, of Suabia, who married a daughter of our house in the year 1614. At the same time, my dear Heinrich, I cannot hear of anything supernatural in the matter. It is one of those fortuitous circumstances which are of daily occurrence; and, after all, the likeness may be, in a great measure, simply national. We know how strongly the peasantry of Scotland and of Ireland are impressed with one physiognomical stamp; and (not to cite the tribes of coloured men, or even the Chinese and Tartars) how remarkably are these facial characteristics imprinted upon the natives of America! The last instance is, indeed, one which admits of wide physiological inquiry. The Americans, gathered together as they are from all the shores of the world, have, as it were, received a stamp of individuality from the very climate in which they live.’

I heard, but scarcely heeded his words. When he had ceased speaking, I looked up as if from a dream.

‘It may be all very true, Ormesby,’ I replied; ‘but I cannot occupy this room another night.’

‘Nor is there any occasion that you should,’ said he, cheerily. ‘Come down to the breakfast-parlour, and I will order the green bedroom to be prepared for you!’

I felt now as if some destiny were upon me; and many days elapsed before I regained my cheerfulness. By degrees, however, the impression wore away, and as I no longer saw, I ceased to think of the picture.

Oh, thou solitary dream of my life! come back once more, and let me for a brief moment forget the years that have risen up between my soul and thee!

I loved her—shall I say
loved?
Ah, no! I love her still. I shall love her till I die! Let me tell how deep and passionate that love was; how I lived day after day in the sweet air she breathed; how I sat and watched the inner-light of her dark, earnest eyes; how my heart failed within me, listening to her voice!

Her voice! Ah, that sweet low voice! It vibrates even now upon my ear, and brings the stranger tears back to my eyes! How can I paint the long golden days of that dreamy autumn season, when I went forth by her side through the yellow cornfields, and the pleasant lanes? Sometimes we sat beneath the spreading boughs, while I read aloud to her from Shakespeare, or translated a few pages of Schiller. How my voice rose and trembled as the words translated the language of my heart!

Then there were the happy evenings when we sat by the open windows of the old drawing-room, looking out upon the dusky park and the starry sky; when the harvest-moon shone down upon the stirless trees; when the nightingale shook her wild song from her little throat hard by; and the drowsy air hung enchanted over all!

At such times Grace would touch the keys of the piano, and sing the ballads of my native land.

Why do I linger thus? It was but a dream—let me tell of my awakening.

At the extremity of my friend’s garden there stood an old-fashioned summer-house, shaped like a pagoda, with a gilt ball upon the summit. This point commanded an extensive and beautiful prospect. In front stood the old house, with its carven gable ends and burnished weather-cocks; the garden, curiously planted in formal beds, and interspersed with trees of quaintly-cut pyramidal form; the terraced walks; the spreading park; and, beyond the park, the summits of the blue hills far away. In the summer-house stood a table and two rustic chairs; and just before the entrance a simple pedestal was erected, whereon a dial, worn and rusted by the storms of many years, told the silent hours by the sun.

Here it was that I sat one sunny morning, face to face with her. An open volume lay beside me on the table. I had been reading to her, and she was busy with some dainty needlework. I could not see her eyes for the dark curls that fell down her cheeks.

The book was Chaucer—I remember it well. I had been reading the ‘Knight’s Tale’, and we had broken off at the death of Arcite. After a few words of admiration, there came a pause; and as I turned to resume the poem, my eyes rested upon her, and I could not remove them. Very silently I sat there looking at her, watching the flitting of her fingers, and the coming and going of her breath; and I asked myself—‘Can this be life, or is it nothing but a dream?’

Suddenly, I felt the deep love welling upwards from my heart to my lips; and then—then I found myself at her feet, clasping her hands in mine, and saying over and over again, in a quick broken voice, between tears and trembling:

‘Grace! dear, dearest Grace, I love you!’