The Portent and Other Stories

I was shown to a room. None of the sensations I had had on first crossing the threshold were revived. I remembered them all; I felt none of them. Mrs. Blakesley came. She did not recognise me. I told her who I was. She stared at me for a moment, seemed to see the same face she had known still glimmering through all the changes that had crowded upon it, held out both her hands, and burst into tears.

“Mr. Campbell,” she said, “you are changed! But not like her. She’s the same to look at; but, oh dear!”

We were both silent for some time. At length she resumed:—

“Come to my room; I have been mistress here for some time now.”

I followed her to the room Mrs. Wilson used to occupy. She put wine on the table. I told her my story. My labours, and my wounds, and my illness, slightly touched as I trust they were in the course of the tale, yet moved all her womanly sympathies.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Campbell?” she said.

“Let me see her,” I replied.

She hesitated for a moment.

“I dare not, sir. I don’t know what it might do to her. It might send her raving; and she is so quiet.”

“Has she ever raved?”

“Not often since the first week or two. Now and then occasionally, for an hour or so, she would be wild, wanting to get out. But she gave that over altogether; and she has had her liberty now for a long time. But, Heaven bless her! at the worst she was always a lady.”

“And am I to go away without even seeing her?”

“I am very sorry for you, Mr. Campbell.”

I felt hurt—foolishly, I confess—and rose. She put her hand on my arm.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, sir. She always falls asleep in the afternoon; you may see her asleep, if you like.”

“Thank you; thank you,” I answered. “That will be much better. When shall I come?”

“About three o’clock.”

I went wandering about the woods, and at three I was again in the housekeeper’s room. She came to me presently, looking rather troubled.

“It is very odd,” she began, the moment she entered, “but for the first time, I think, for years, she’s not for her afternoon sleep.”

“Does she sleep at night?” I asked.

“Like a bairn. But she sleeps a great deal; and the doctor says that’s what keeps her so quiet. She would go raving again, he says, if the sleep did not soothe her poor brain.”

“Could you not let me see her when she is asleep to-night?”

Again she hesitated, but presently replied:—

“I will, sir; but I trust to you never to mention it.”

“Of course I will not.”

“Come at ten o’clock, then. You will find the outer door on this side open. Go straight to my room.”

With renewed thanks I left her and, once again betaking myself to the woods, wandered about till night, notwithstanding signs of an approaching storm. I thus kept within the boundaries of the demesne, and had no occasion to request re-admittance at any of the gates.

As ten struck on the tower-clock, I entered Mrs. Blakesley’s room. She was not there. I sat down. In a few minutes she came.

“She is fast asleep,” she said. “Come this way.”

I followed, trembling. She led me to the same room Lady Alice used to occupy. The door was a little open. She pushed it gently, and I followed her in. The curtains towards the door were drawn. Mrs. Blakesley took me round to the other side.—There lay the lovely head, so phantom-like for years, coming only in my dreams; filling now, with a real presence, the eyes that had longed for it, as if in them dwelt an appetite of sight. It calmed my heart at once, which had been almost choking me with the violence of its palpitation. “That is not the face of insanity,” I said to myself. “It is clear as the morning light.” As I stood gazing, I made no comparisons between the past and the present, although I was aware of some difference—of some measure of the unknown fronting me; I was filled with the delight of beholding the face I loved—full, as it seemed to me, of mind and womanhood; sleeping—nothing more. I murmured a fervent “Thank God!” and was turning away with a feeling of satisfaction for all the future, and a strange great hope beginning to throb in my heart, when, after a little restless motion of her head on the pillow, her patient lips began to tremble. My soul rushed into my ears.

“Mr. Campbell,” she murmured, “I cannot spell; what am I to do to learn?”

The unexpected voice, naming my name, sounded in my ears like a voice from the far-off regions where sighing is over. Then a smile gleamed up from the depths unseen, and broke and melted away all over her face. But her nurse had heard her speak, and now approached in alarm. She laid hold of my arm, and drew me towards the door. I yielded at once, but heard a moan from the bed as I went. I looked back—the curtains hid her from my view. Outside the door, Mrs. Blakesley stood listening for a moment, and then led the way downstairs.

“You made her restless. You see, sir, she never was like other people, poor dear!”

“Her face is not like one insane,” I rejoined.

“I often think she looks more like herself when she’s asleep,” answered she. “And then I have often seen her smile. She never smiles when she’s awake. But, gracious me, Mr. Campbell! what shall I do?”

This exclamation was caused by my suddenly falling back in my chair and closing my eyes. I had almost fainted. I had eaten nothing since breakfast; and had been wandering about in a state of excitement all day. I greedily swallowed the glass of wine she brought me, and then first became aware that the storm which I had seen gathering while I was in the woods had now broken loose. “What a night in the old hall!” thought I. The wind was dashing itself like a thousand eagles against the house, and the rain was trampling the roofs and the court like troops of galloping steeds. I rose to go.

But Mrs. Blakesley interfered.

“You don’t leave this house to-night, Mr. Campbell,” she said. “I won’t have your death laid at my door.”

I laughed.

“Dear Mrs. Blakesley,—” I said, seeing her determined.

“I won’t hear a word,” she interrupted. “I wouldn’t let a horse out in such a tempest. No, no; you shall just sleep in your old quarters, across the passage there.”

I did not care for any storm. It hardly even interested me. That beautiful face filled my whole being. But I yielded to Mrs. Blakesley, and not unwillingly.

CHAPTER XXIII. My Old Room

Once more I was left alone in that room of dark oak, looking out on the little ivy-mantled court, of which I was now reminded by the howling of the storm within its high walls. Mrs. Blakesley had extemporised a bed for me on the old sofa; and the fire was already blazing away splendidly. I sat down beside it, and the sombre-hued Past rolled back upon me.

After I had floated, as it were, upon the waves of memory for some time, I suddenly glanced behind me and around the room, and a new and strange experience dawned upon me. Time became to my consciousness what some metaphysicians say it is in itself—only a form of human thought. For the Past had returned and had become the Present. I could not be sure that the Past had passed, that I had not been dreaming through the whole series of years and adventures, upon which I was able to look back. For here was the room, all as before; and here was I, the same man, with the same love glowing in my heart. I went on thinking. The storm went on howling. The logs went on cheerily burning. I rose and walked about the room, looking at everything as I had looked at it on the night of my first arrival. I said to myself, “How strange that I should feel as if all this had happened to me before!” And then I said, “Perhaps it has happened to me before.” Again I said, “And when it did happen before, I felt as if it had happened before that; and perhaps it has been happening to me at intervals for ages.” I opened the door of the closet, and looked at the door behind it, which led into the hall of the old house. It was bolted. But the bolt slipped back at my touch; twelve years were nothing in the history of its rust; or was it only yesterday I had forced the iron free from the adhesion of the rust-welded surfaces? I stood for a moment hesitating whether to open the door, and have one peep into the wide hall, full of intent echoes, listening breathless for one air of sound, that they might catch it up jubilant and dash it into the ears of—Silence—their ancient enemy—their Death. But I drew back, leaving the door unopened; and, sitting down again by my fire, sank into a kind of unconscious weariness. Perhaps I slept—I do not know; but as I became once more aware of myself, I awoke, as it were, in the midst of an old long-buried night. I was sitting in my own room, waiting for Lady Alice. And, as I sat waiting, and wishing she would come, by slow degrees my wishes intensified themselves, till I found myself, with all my gathered might, willing that she should come. The minutes passed, but the will remained.

How shall I tell what followed? The door of the closet opened—slowly, gently—and in walked Lady Alice, pale as death, her eyes closed, her whole person asleep. With a gliding motion as in a dream, where the volition that produces motion is unfelt, she seemed to me to dream herself across the floor to my couch, on which she laid herself down as gracefully, as simply, as in the old beautiful time. Her appearance did not startle me, for my whole condition was in harmony with the phenomenon. I rose noiselessly, covered her lightly from head to foot, and sat down, as of old to watch. How beautiful she was! I thought she had grown taller; but, perhaps, it was only that she had gained in form without losing anything in grace. Her face was, as it had always been, colourless; but neither it nor her figure showed any signs of suffering. The holy sleep had fed her physical as well as shielded her mental nature. But what would the waking be? Not all the power of the revived past could shut out the anticipation of the dreadful difference to be disclosed, the moment she should open those sleeping eyes. To what a frightfully farther distance was that soul now removed, whose return I had been wont to watch, as from the depths of the unknown world! That was strange; this was terrible. Instead of the dawn of rosy intelligence I had now to look for the fading of the loveliness as she woke, till her face withered into the bewildered and indigent expression of the insane.

She was waking. My love with the unknown face was at hand. The reviving flush came, grew, deepened. She opened her eyes. God be praised! They were lovelier than ever. And the smile that broke over her face was the very sunlight of the soul.

“Come again, you see!” she said gently, as she stretched her beautiful arms towards me.

I could not speak. I could only submit to her embrace, and hold myself with all my might, lest I should burst into helpless weeping. But a sob or two broke their prison, and she felt the emotion she had not seen. Relaxing her hold, she pushed me gently from her, and looked at me with concern that grew as she looked.

“You are dreadfully changed, my Duncan! What is the matter? Has Lord Hilton been rude to you? You look so much older, somehow. What can it be?”

I understood at once how it was. The whole of those dreary twelve years was gone. The thread of her consciousness had been cut, those years dropped out, and the ends reunited. She thought this was one of her old visits to me, when, as now, she had walked in her sleep. I answered,

“I will tell you all another time. I don’t want to waste the moments with you, my Alice, in speaking about it. Lord Hilton has behaved very badly to me; but never mind.”

She half rose in anger; and her eyes looked insane for the first time.

“How dares he?” she said, and then checked herself with a sigh at her own helplessness.

“But it will all come right, Alice,” I went on in terror lest I should disturb her present conception of her circumstances. I felt as if the very face I wore, with the changes of those twelve forgotten years, which had passed over her like the breath of a spring wind, were a mask of which I had to be ashamed before her. Her consciousness was my involuntary standard of fact. Hope of my life as she was, there was thus mingled with my delight in her presence a restless fear that made me wish fervently that she would go. I wanted time to quiet my thoughts and resolve how I should behave to her.

“Alice,” I said, “it is nearly morning. You were late to-night. Don’t you think you had better go—for fear, you know?”

“Ah!” she said, with a smile, in which there was no doubt of fear, “you are tired of me already! But I will go at once to dream about you.”

She rose.

“Go, my darling,” I said; “and mind you get some right sleep. Shall I go with you?”

Much to my relief, she answered,

“No, no; please not. I can go alone as usual. When a ghost meets me, I just walk through him, and then he’s nowhere; and I laugh.”

One kiss, one backward lingering look, and the door closed behind her. I heard the echo of the great hall. I was alone. But what a loneliness—a loneliness crowded with presence! I paced up and down the room, threw myself on the couch she had left, started up, and paced again. It was long before I could think. But the conviction grew upon me that she would be mine yet. Mine yet? Mine she was, beyond all the power of madness or demons; and mine I trusted she would be beyond the dispute of the world. About me, at least, she was not insane. But what should I do? The only chance of her recovery lay in seeing me still; but I could resolve on nothing till I knew whether Mrs. Blakesley had discovered her absence from her room; because, if I drew her, and she were watched and prevented from coming, it would kill her, or worse. I must take to-morrow to think.

Yet at the moment, by a sudden impulse, I opened the window gently, stepped into the little grassy court, where the last of the storm was still moaning, and withdrew the bolts of a door which led into an alley of trees running along one side of the kitchen-garden. I felt like a housebreaker; but I said, “It is her right.” I pushed the bolts forward again, so as just to touch the sockets and look as if they went in, and then retreated into my own room, where I paced about till the household was astir.

CHAPTER XXIV. Prison-Breaking

It was with considerable anxiety that I repaired to Mrs. Blakesley’s room. There I found the old lady at the breakfast-table, so thoroughly composed, that I was at once reassured as to her ignorance of what had occurred while she slept. But she seemed uneasy till I should take my departure, which I attributed to the fear that I might happen to meet Lady Alice.

Arrived at my inn, I kept my room, my dim-seen plans rendering it desirable that I should attract as little attention in the neighbourhood as might be. I had now to concentrate these plans, and make them definite to myself. It was clear that there was no chance of spending another night at Hilton Hall by invitation: would it be honourable to go there without one, as I, knowing all the outs and ins of the place, could, if I pleased? I went over the whole question of Alice’s position in that house, and of the crime committed against her. I saw that, if I could win my wife by restoring to her the exercise of reason, that very success would justify the right I already possessed in her. And could she not demand of me to climb over any walls, or break open whatsoever doors, to free her from her prison—from the darkness of a clouded brain? Let them say what they would of the meanness and wickedness of gaining such access to, and using such power over, the insane—she was mine, and as safe with me as with her mother. There is a love that tears and destroys; and there is a love that enfolds and saves. I hated mesmerism and its vulgar impertinences; but here was a power I possessed, as far as I knew, only over one, and that one allied to me by a reciprocal influence, as well as long-tried affection.—Did not love give me the right to employ this power?

My cognitions concluded in the resolve to use the means in my hands for the rescue of Lady Alice. Midnight found me in the alley of the kitchen-garden. The door of the little court opened easily. Nor had I withdrawn its bolts without knowing that I could manage to open the window of my old room from the outside. I stood in the dark, a stranger and housebreaker, where so often I had sat waiting the visits of my angel. I secured the door of the room, struck a light, lighted a remnant of taper which I found on the table, threw myself on the couch, and said to my Alice—“Come.”

And she came. I rose. She laid herself down. I pulled off my coat—it was all I could find—and laid it over her. The night was chilly. She revived with the same sweet smile, but, giving a little shiver, said:

“Why have you no fire, Duncan? I must give orders about it. That’s some trick of old Clankshoe.”

“Dear Alice, do not breath a word about me to any one. I have quarrelled with Lord Hilton. He has turned me away, and I have no business to be in the house.”

“Oh!” she replied, with a kind of faint recollecting hesitation. “That must be why you never come to the haunted chamber now. I go there every night, as soon as the sun is down.”

“Yes, that is it, Alice.”

“Ah! that must be what makes the day so strange to me too.”

She looked very bewildered for a moment, and then resumed:

“Do you know, Duncan, I feel very strange all day—as if I was walking about in a dull dream that would never come to an end? But it is very different at night—is it not, dear?”

She had not yet discovered any distinction between my presence to her dreams and my presence to her waking sight. I hardly knew what reply to make; but she went on:

“They won’t let me come to you now, I suppose. I shall forget my Euclid and everything. I feel as if I had forgotten it all already. But you won’t be vexed with your poor Alice, will you? She’s only a beggar-girl, you know.”

I could answer only by a caress.

“I had a strange dream the other night. I thought I was sitting on a stone in the dark. And I heard your voice calling me. And it went all round about me, and came nearer, and went farther off, but I could not move to go to you. I tried to answer you, but I could only make a queer sound, not like my own voice at all.”

“I dreamed it too, Alice.”

“The same dream?”

“Yes, the very same.”

“I am so glad. But I didn’t like the dream. Duncan, my head feels so strange sometimes. And I am so sleepy. Duncan, dearest—am I dreaming now? Oh! tell me that I am awake and that I hold you; for to-morrow, when I wake, I shall fancy that I have lost you. They’ve spoiled my poor brain, somehow. I am all right, I know, but I cannot get at it. The red is withered, somehow.”

“You are wide awake, my Alice. I know all about it. I will help you to understand it all, only you must do exactly as I tell you.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then go to bed now, and sleep as much as you can; else I will not let you come to me at night.”

“That would be too cruel, when it is all I have.”

“Then go, dearest, and sleep.”

“I will.”

She rose and went. I, too, went, making all close behind me. The moon was going down. Her light looked to me strange, and almost malignant. I feared that when she came to the full she would hurt my darling’s brain, and I longed to climb the sky, and cut her in pieces. Was I too going mad? I needed rest, that was all.

Next morning, I called again upon Mrs. Blakesley, to inquire after Lady Alice, anxious to know how yesterday had passed.

“Just the same,” answered the old lady. “You need not look for any change. Yesterday I did see her smile once, though.”

And was that nothing?

In her case there was a reversal of the usual facts of nature—(I say facts, not laws): the dreams of most people are more or less insane; those of Lady Alice were sound; thus, with her, restoring the balance of sane life. That smile was the sign of the dream-life beginning to leaven the waking and false life.

“Have you heard of young Lord Hilton’s marriage?” asked Mrs. Blakesley.

“I have only heard some rumours about it,” I answered. “Who is the new countess?”

“The daughter of a rich merchant somewhere. They say she isn’t the best of tempers. They’re coming here in about a month. I am just terrified to think how it may fare with my lamb now. They won’t let her go wandering about wherever she pleases, I doubt. And if they shut her up, she will die.”

I vowed inwardly that she should be free, if I carried her off, madness and all.

CHAPTER XXV. New Entrenchments

But this way of breaking into the house every night did not afford me the facility I wished. For I wanted to see Lady Alice during the day, or at least in the evening before she went to sleep; as otherwise I could not thoroughly judge of her condition. So I got Wood to pack up a small stock of provisions for me in his haversack, which I took with me; and when I entered the house that night, I bolted the door of the court behind me, and made all fast.

I waited till the usual time for her appearance had passed; and, always apprehensive now, as was very natural, I had begun to grow uneasy, when I heard her voice, as I had heard it once before, singing. Fearful of disturbing her, I listened for a moment. Whether the song was her own or not, I cannot be certain. When I questioned her afterwards, she knew nothing about it. It was this,—

      Days of old,  Ye are not dead, though gone from me;        Ye are not cold,  But like the summer-birds gone o’er the sea.  The sun brings back the swallows fast,        O’er the sea:  When thou comest at the last,  The days of old come back to me.

She ceased singing. Still she did not enter. I went into the closet, and found that the door was bolted. When I opened it, she entered, as usual; and, when she came to herself, seemed still better than before.

“Duncan,” she said, “I don’t know how it is, but I believe I must have forgotten everything I ever knew. I feel as if I had. I don’t think I can even read. Will you teach me my letters?”

She had a book in her hand. I hailed this as another sign that her waking and sleeping thoughts bordered on each other; for she must have taken the book during her somnambulic condition. I did as she desired. She seemed to know nothing till I told her. But the moment I told her anything, she knew it perfectly. Before she left me that night she was reading tolerably, with many pauses of laughter that she should ever have forgotten how. The moment she shared the light of my mind, all was plain; where that had not shone, all was dark. The fact was, she was living still in the shadow of that shock which her nervous constitution had received from our discovery and my ejection.

As she was leaving me, I said,

“Shall you be in the haunted room at sunset tomorrow, Alice?”

“Of course I shall,” she answered.

“You will find me there then,” I rejoined—“that is, if you think there is no danger of being seen.”

“Not the least,” she answered. “No one follows me there; not even Mrs. Blakesley, good soul! They are all afraid, as usual.”

“And you won’t be frightened to see me there?”

“Frightened? No. Why? Oh! you think me queer too, do you?”

She looked vexed, but tried to smile.

“I? I would trust you with my life,” I said. “That’s not much, though—with my soul, whatever that means, Alice.”

“Then don’t talk nonsense,” she rejoined coaxingly, “about my being frightened to see you.”

When she had gone, I followed into the old hall, taking my sack with me; for, after having found the door in the closet bolted, I was determined not to spend one night more in my old quarters, and never to allow Lady Alice to go there again, if I could prevent her. And I had good hopes that, if we met in the day, the same consequences would follow as had followed long ago—namely, that she would sleep at night.

It was just such a night as that on which I had first peeped into the hall. The moon shone through one of the high windows, scarcely more dim than before, and showed all the dreariness of the place. I went up the great old staircase, hoping I trod in the very footsteps of Lady Alice, and reached the old gallery in which I had found her on that night when our strangely-knit intimacy began. My object was to choose one of the deserted rooms in which I might establish myself without chance of discovery. I had not turned many corners, or gone through many passages, before I found one exactly to my mind. I will not trouble my reader with a description of its odd position and shape. All I wanted was concealment, and that it provided plentifully. I lay down on the floor, and was soon fast asleep.