To Be Read At Dusk by Charles Dickens

To Be Read At Dusk by Charles Dickens
One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them.
Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit
of the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote
heights, stained by the setting sun as if a mighty quantity of red
wine had been broached upon the mountain top, and had not yet had
time to sink into the snow.
This is not my simile. It was made for the occasion by the
stoutest courier, who was a German. None of the others took any
more notice of it than they took of me, sitting on another bench on
the other side of the convent door, smoking my cigar, like them,
and - also like them - looking at the reddened snow, and at the
lonely shed hard by, where the bodies of belated travellers, dug
out of it, slowly wither away, knowing no corruption in that cold
region.
The wine upon the mountain top soaked in as we looked; the mountain
became white; the sky, a very dark blue; the wind rose; and the air
turned piercing cold. The five couriers buttoned their rough
coats. There being no safer man to imitate in all such proceedings
than a courier, I buttoned mine.
The mountain in the sunset had stopped the five couriers in a
conversation. It is a sublime sight, likely to stop conversation.
The mountain being now out of the sunset, they resumed. Not that I
had heard any part of their previous discourse; for indeed, I had
not then broken away from the American gentleman, in the
travellers' parlour of the convent, who, sitting with his face to
the fire, had undertaken to realise to me the whole progress of
events which had led to the accumulation by the Honourable Ananias
Dodger of one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made in
our country.
'My God!' said the Swiss courier, speaking in French, which I do
not hold (as some authors appear to do) to be such an allsufficient
excuse for a naughty word, that I have only to write it
in that language to make it innocent; 'if you talk of ghosts - '
'But I DON'T talk of ghosts,' said the German.
'Of what then?' asked the Swiss.
'If I knew of what then,' said the German, 'I should probably know
a great deal more.'
It was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So, I
moved my position to that corner of my bench which was nearest to
them, and leaning my back against the convent wall, heard
perfectly, without appearing to attend.
'Thunder and lightning!' said the German, warming, 'when a certain
man is coming to see you, unexpectedly; and, without his own
knowledge, sends some invisible messenger, to put the idea of him
into your head all day, what do you call that? When you walk along
a crowded street - at Frankfort, Milan, London, Paris - and think
that a passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and then that
another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and so begin
to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you'll meet your
friend Heinrich - which you do, though you believed him at Trieste
- what do you call THAT?'
'It's not uncommon, either,' murmured the Swiss and the other
three.
'Uncommon!' said the German. 'It's as common as cherries in the
Black Forest. It's as common as maccaroni at Naples. And Naples
reminds me! When the old Marchesa Senzanima shrieks at a cardparty
on the Chiaja - as I heard and saw her, for it happened in a
Bavarian family of mine, and I was overlooking the service that
evening - I say, when the old Marchesa starts up at the card-table,
white through her rouge, and cries, "My sister in Spain is dead! I
felt her cold touch on my back!" - and when that sister IS dead at
the moment - what do you call that?'
'Or when the blood of San Gennaro liquefies at the request of the
clergy - as all the world knows that it does regularly once a-year,
in my native city,' said the Neapolitan courier after a pause, with
a comical look, 'what do you call that?'
'THAT!' cried the German. 'Well, I think I know a name for that.'
'Miracle?' said the Neapolitan, with the same sly face.
The German merely smoked and laughed; and they all smoked and
laughed.
'Bah!' said the German, presently. 'I speak of things that really
do happen. When I want to see the conjurer, I pay to see a
professed one, and have my money's worth. Very strange things do
happen without ghosts. Ghosts! Giovanni Baptista, tell your story
of the English bride. There's no ghost in that, but something full
as strange. Will any man tell me what?'
As there was a silence among them, I glanced around. He whom I
took to be Baptista was lighting a fresh cigar. He presently went
on to speak. He was a Genoese, as I judged.
'The story of the English bride?' said he. 'Basta! one ought not
to call so slight a thing a story. Well, it's all one. But it's
true. Observe me well, gentlemen, it's true. That which glitters
is not always gold; but what I am going to tell, is true.'
He repeated this more than once.
Ten years ago, I took my credentials to an English gentleman at
Long's Hotel, in Bond Street, London, who was about to travel - it
might be for one year, it might be for two. He approved of them;
likewise of me. He was pleased to make inquiry. The testimony
that he received was favourable. He engaged me by the six months,
and my entertainment was generous.
He was young, handsome, very happy. He was enamoured of a fair
young English lady, with a sufficient fortune, and they were going
to be married. It was the wedding-trip, in short, that we were
going to take. For three months' rest in the hot weather (it was
early summer then) he had hired an old place on the Riviera, at an
easy distance from my city, Genoa, on the road to Nice. Did I know
that place? Yes; I told him I knew it well. It was an old palace
with great gardens. It was a little bare, and it was a little dark
and gloomy, being close surrounded by trees; but it was spacious,
ancient, grand, and on the seashore. He said it had been so
described to him exactly, and he was well pleased that I knew it.
For its being a little bare of furniture, all such places were.
For its being a little gloomy, he had hired it principally for the
gardens, and he and my mistress would pass the summer weather in
their shade.
'So all goes well, Baptista?' said he.
'Indubitably, signore; very well.'
We had a travelling chariot for our journey, newly built for us,
and in all respects complete. All we had was complete; we wanted
for nothing. The marriage took place. They were happy. I was
happy, seeing all so bright, being so well situated, going to my
own city, teaching my language in the rumble to the maid, la bella
Carolina, whose heart was gay with laughter: who was young and
rosy.
The time flew. But I observed - listen to this, I pray! (and here
the courier dropped his voice) - I observed my mistress sometimes
brooding in a manner very strange; in a frightened manner; in an
unhappy manner; with a cloudy, uncertain alarm upon her. I think
that I began to notice this when I was walking up hills by the
carriage side, and master had gone on in front. At any rate, I
remember that it impressed itself upon my mind one evening in the
South of France, when she called to me to call master back; and
when he came back, and walked for a long way, talking encouragingly
and affectionately to her, with his hand upon the open window, and
hers in it. Now and then, he laughed in a merry way, as if he were
bantering her out of something. By-and-by, she laughed, and then
all went well again.
It was curious. I asked la bella Carolina, the pretty little one,
Was mistress unwell? - No. - Out of spirits? - No. - Fearful of bad
roads, or brigands? - No. And what made it more mysterious was,
the pretty little one would not look at me in giving answer, but
WOULD look at the view.
But, one day she told me the secret.
'If you must know,' said Carolina, 'I find, from what I have
overheard, that mistress is haunted.'
'How haunted?'
'By a dream.'
'What dream?'
'By a dream of a face. For three nights before her marriage, she
saw a face in a dream - always the same face, and only One.'
'A terrible face?'
'No. The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, with
black hair and a grey moustache - a handsome man except for a
reserved and secret air. Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a
face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her
fixedly, out of darkness.'
'Does the dream come back?'
'Never. The recollection of it is all her trouble.'
'And why does it trouble her?'
Carolina shook her head.
'That's master's question,' said la bella. 'She don't know. She
wonders why, herself. But I heard her tell him, only last night,
that if she was to find a picture of that face in our Italian house
(which she is afraid she will) she did not know how she could ever
bear it.'
Upon my word I was fearful after this (said the Genoese courier) of
our coming to the old palazzo, lest some such ill-starred picture
should happen to be there. I knew there were many there; and, as
we got nearer and nearer to the place, I wished the whole gallery
in the crater of Vesuvius. To mend the matter, it was a stormy
dismal evening when we, at last, approached that part of the
Riviera. It thundered; and the thunder of my city and its
environs, rolling among the high hills, is very loud. The lizards
ran in and out of the chinks in the broken stone wall of the
garden, as if they were frightened; the frogs bubbled and croaked
their loudest; the sea-wind moaned, and the wet trees dripped; and
the lightning - body of San Lorenzo, how it lightened!
We all know what an old palace in or near Genoa is - how time and
the sea air have blotted it - how the drapery painted on the outer
walls has peeled off in great flakes of plaster - how the lower
windows are darkened with rusty bars of iron - how the courtyard is
overgrown with grass - how the outer buildings are dilapidated -
how the whole pile seems devoted to ruin. Our palazzo was one of
the true kind. It had been shut up close for months. Months? -
years! - it had an earthy smell, like a tomb. The scent of the
orange trees on the broad back terrace, and of the lemons ripening
on the wall, and of some shrubs that grew around a broken fountain,
had got into the house somehow, and had never been able to get out
again. There was, in every room, an aged smell, grown faint with
confinement. It pined in all the cupboards and drawers. In the
little rooms of communication between great rooms, it was stifling.
If you turned a picture - to come back to the pictures - there it
still was, clinging to the wall behind the frame, like a sort of
bat.
The lattice-blinds were close shut, all over the house. There were
two ugly, grey old women in the house, to take care of it; one of
them with a spindle, who stood winding and mumbling in the doorway,
and who would as soon have let in the devil as the air. Master,
mistress, la bella Carolina, and I, went all through the palazzo.
I went first, though I have named myself last, opening the windows
and the lattice-blinds, and shaking down on myself splashes of
rain, and scraps of mortar, and now and then a dozing mosquito, or
a monstrous, fat, blotchy, Genoese spider.
When I had let the evening light into a room, master, mistress, and
la bella Carolina, entered. Then, we looked round at all the
pictures, and I went forward again into another room. Mistress
secretly had great fear of meeting with the likeness of that face -
we all had; but there was no such thing. The Madonna and Bambino,
San Francisco, San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, Angels,
Brigands, Friars, Temples at Sunset, Battles, White Horses,
Forests, Apostles, Doges, all my old acquaintances many times
repeated? - yes. Dark, handsome man in black, reserved and secret,
with black hair and grey moustache, looking fixedly at mistress out
of darkness? - no.
At last we got through all the rooms and all the pictures, and came
out into the gardens. They were pretty well kept, being rented by
a gardener, and were large and shady. In one place there was a
rustic theatre, open to the sky; the stage a green slope; the
coulisses, three entrances upon a side, sweet-smelling leafy
screens. Mistress moved her bright eyes, even there, as if she
looked to see the face come in upon the scene; but all was well.
'Now, Clara,' master said, in a low voice, 'you see that it is
nothing? You are happy.'
Mistress was much encouraged. She soon accustomed herself to that
grim palazzo, and would sing, and play the harp, and copy the old
pictures, and stroll with master under the green trees and vines
all day. She was beautiful. He was happy. He would laugh and say
to me, mounting his horse for his morning ride before the heat:
'All goes well, Baptista!'
'Yes, signore, thank God, very well.'
We kept no company. I took la bella to the Duomo and Annunciata,
to the Cafe, to the Opera, to the village Festa, to the Public
Garden, to the Day Theatre, to the Marionetti. The pretty little
one was charmed with all she saw. She learnt Italian - heavens!
miraculously! Was mistress quite forgetful of that dream? I asked
Carolina sometimes. Nearly, said la bella - almost. It was
wearing out.
One day master received a letter, and called me.
'Baptista!'
'Signore!'
'A gentleman who is presented to me will dine here to-day. He is
called the Signor Dellombra. Let me dine like a prince.'
It was an odd name. I did not know that name. But, there had been
many noblemen and gentlemen pursued by Austria on political
suspicions, lately, and some names had changed. Perhaps this was
one. Altro! Dellombra was as good a name to me as another.
When the Signor Dellombra came to dinner (said the Genoese courier
in the low voice, into which he had subsided once before), I showed
him into the reception-room, the great sala of the old palazzo.
Master received him with cordiality, and presented him to mistress.
As she rose, her face changed, she gave a cry, and fell upon the
marble floor.
Then, I turned my head to the Signor Dellombra, and saw that he was
dressed in black, and had a reserved and secret air, and was a
dark, remarkable-looking man, with black hair and a grey moustache.
Master raised mistress in his arms, and carried her to her own
room, where I sent la bella Carolina straight. La bella told me
afterwards that mistress was nearly terrified to death, and that
she wandered in her mind about her dream, all night.
Master was vexed and anxious - almost angry, and yet full of
solicitude. The Signor Dellombra was a courtly gentleman, and
spoke with great respect and sympathy of mistress's being so ill.
The African wind had been blowing for some days (they had told him
at his hotel of the Maltese Cross), and he knew that it was often
hurtful. He hoped the beautiful lady would recover soon. He
begged permission to retire, and to renew his visit when he should
have the happiness of hearing that she was better. Master would
not allow of this, and they dined alone.
He withdrew early. Next day he called at the gate, on horse-back,
to inquire for mistress. He did so two or three times in that
week.
What I observed myself, and what la bella Carolina told me, united
to explain to me that master had now set his mind on curing
mistress of her fanciful terror. He was all kindness, but he was
sensible and firm. He reasoned with her, that to encourage such
fancies was to invite melancholy, if not madness. That it rested
with herself to be herself. That if she once resisted her strange
weakness, so successfully as to receive the Signor Dellombra as an
English lady would receive any other guest, it was for ever
conquered. To make an end, the signore came again, and mistress
received him without marked distress (though with constraint and
apprehension still), and the evening passed serenely. Master was
so delighted with this change, and so anxious to confirm it, that
the Signor Dellombra became a constant guest. He was accomplished
in pictures, books, and music; and his society, in any grim
palazzo, would have been welcome.
I used to notice, many times, that mistress was not quite
recovered. She would cast down her eyes and droop her head, before
the Signor Dellombra, or would look at him with a terrified and
fascinated glance, as if his presence had some evil influence or
power upon her. Turning from her to him, I used to see him in the
shaded gardens, or the large half-lighted sala, looking, as I might
say, 'fixedly upon her out of darkness.' But, truly, I had not
forgotten la bella Carolina's words describing the face in the
dream.
After his second visit I heard master say:
'Now, see, my dear Clara, it's over! Dellombra has come and gone,
and your apprehension is broken like glass.'
'Will he - will he ever come again?' asked mistress.
'Again? Why, surely, over and over again! Are you cold?' (she
shivered).
'No, dear - but - he terrifies me: are you sure that he need come
again?'
'The surer for the question, Clara!' replied master, cheerfully.
But, he was very hopeful of her complete recovery now, and grew
more and more so every day. She was beautiful. He was happy.
'All goes well, Baptista?' he would say to me again.
'Yes, signore, thank God; very well.'
We were all (said the Genoese courier, constraining himself to
speak a little louder), we were all at Rome for the Carnival. I
had been out, all day, with a Sicilian, a friend of mine, and a
courier, who was there with an English family. As I returned at
night to our hotel, I met the little Carolina, who never stirred
from home alone, running distractedly along the Corso.
'Carolina! What's the matter?'
'O Baptista! O, for the Lord's sake! where is my mistress?'
'Mistress, Carolina?'
'Gone since morning - told me, when master went out on his day's
journey, not to call her, for she was tired with not resting in the
night (having been in pain), and would lie in bed until the
evening; then get up refreshed. She is gone! - she is gone!
Master has come back, broken down the door, and she is gone! My
beautiful, my good, my innocent mistress!'
The pretty little one so cried, and raved, and tore herself that I
could not have held her, but for her swooning on my arm as if she
had been shot. Master came up - in manner, face, or voice, no more
the master that I knew, than I was he. He took me (I laid the
little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left her with the
chamber-women), in a carriage, furiously through the darkness,
across the desolate Campagna. When it was day, and we stopped at a
miserable post-house, all the horses had been hired twelve hours
ago, and sent away in different directions. Mark me! by the Signor
Dellombra, who had passed there in a carriage, with a frightened
English lady crouching in one corner.
I never heard (said the Genoese courier, drawing a long breath)
that she was ever traced beyond that spot. All I know is, that she
vanished into infamous oblivion, with the dreaded face beside her
that she had seen in her dream.
'What do you call THAT?' said the German courier, triumphantly.
'Ghosts! There are no ghosts THERE! What do you call this, that I
am going to tell you? Ghosts! There are no ghosts HERE!'
I took an engagement once (pursued the German courier) with an
English gentleman, elderly and a bachelor, to travel through my
country, my Fatherland. He was a merchant who traded with my
country and knew the language, but who had never been there since
he was a boy - as I judge, some sixty years before.
His name was James, and he had a twin-brother John, also a
bachelor. Between these brothers there was a great affection.
They were in business together, at Goodman's Fields, but they did
not live together. Mr. James dwelt in Poland Street, turning out
of Oxford Street, London; Mr. John resided by Epping Forest.
Mr. James and I were to start for Germany in about a week. The
exact day depended on business. Mr. John came to Poland Street
(where I was staying in the house), to pass that week with Mr.
James. But, he said to his brother on the second day, 'I don't
feel very well, James. There's not much the matter with me; but I
think I am a little gouty. I'll go home and put myself under the
care of my old housekeeper, who understands my ways. If I get
quite better, I'll come back and see you before you go. If I don't
feel well enough to resume my visit where I leave it off, why YOU
will come and see me before you go.' Mr. James, of course, said he
would, and they shook hands - both hands, as they always did - and
Mr. John ordered out his old-fashioned chariot and rumbled home.
It was on the second night after that - that is to say, the fourth
in the week - when I was awoke out of my sound sleep by Mr. James
coming into my bedroom in his flannel-gown, with a lighted candle.
He sat upon the side of my bed, and looking at me, said:
'Wilhelm, I have reason to think I have got some strange illness
upon me.'
I then perceived that there was a very unusual expression in his
face.
'Wilhelm,' said he, 'I am not afraid or ashamed to tell you what I
might be afraid or ashamed to tell another man. You come from a
sensible country, where mysterious things are inquired into and are
not settled to have been weighed and measured - or to have been
unweighable and unmeasurable - or in either case to have been
completely disposed of, for all time - ever so many years ago. I
have just now seen the phantom of my brother.'
I confess (said the German courier) that it gave me a little
tingling of the blood to hear it.
'I have just now seen,' Mr. James repeated, looking full at me,
that I might see how collected he was, 'the phantom of my brother
John. I was sitting up in bed, unable to sleep, when it came into
my room, in a white dress, and regarding me earnestly, passed up to
the end of the room, glanced at some papers on my writing-desk,
turned, and, still looking earnestly at me as it passed the bed,
went out at the door. Now, I am not in the least mad, and am not
in the least disposed to invest that phantom with any external
existence out of myself. I think it is a warning to me that I am
ill; and I think I had better be bled.'
I got out of bed directly (said the German courier) and began to
get on my clothes, begging him not to be alarmed, and telling him
that I would go myself to the doctor. I was just ready, when we
heard a loud knocking and ringing at the street door. My room
being an attic at the back, and Mr. James's being the second-floor
room in the front, we went down to his room, and put up the window,
to see what was the matter.
'Is that Mr. James?' said a man below, falling back to the opposite
side of the way to look up.
'It is,' said Mr. James, 'and you are my brother's man, Robert.'
'Yes, Sir. I am sorry to say, Sir, that Mr. John is ill. He is
very bad, Sir. It is even feared that he may be lying at the point
of death. He wants to see you, Sir. I have a chaise here. Pray
come to him. Pray lose no time.'
Mr. James and I looked at one another. 'Wilhelm,' said he, 'this
is strange. I wish you to come with me!' I helped him to dress,
partly there and partly in the chaise; and no grass grew under the
horses' iron shoes between Poland Street and the Forest.
Now, mind! (said the German courier) I went with Mr. James into his
brother's room, and I saw and heard myself what follows.
His brother lay upon his bed, at the upper end of a long bedchamber.
His old housekeeper was there, and others were there: I
think three others were there, if not four, and they had been with
him since early in the afternoon. He was in white, like the figure
- necessarily so, because he had his night-dress on. He looked
like the figure - necessarily so, because he looked earnestly at
his brother when he saw him come into the room.
But, when his brother reached the bed-side, he slowly raised
himself in bed, and looking full upon him, said these words:
'JAMES, YOU HAVE SEEN ME BEFORE, TO-NIGHT - AND YOU KNOW IT!'
And so died!
I waited, when the German courier ceased, to hear something said of
this strange story. The silence was unbroken. I looked round, and
the five couriers were gone: so noiselessly that the ghostly
mountain might have absorbed them into its eternal snows. By this
time, I was by no means in a mood to sit alone in that awful scene,
with the chill air coming solemnly upon me - or, if I may tell the
truth, to sit alone anywhere. So I went back into the conventparlour,
and, finding the American gentleman still disposed to
relate the biography of the Honourable Ananias Dodger, heard it all
out.