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To Be Read at Dusk
TO BE READ AT DUSK
* * * * *
By CHARLES DICKENS
* * * * *
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
* * * * *
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 all-sufficient 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 card-party 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
Café, 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 horseback, 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 bed-chamber.
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 convent-parlour, and, finding the American gentleman
still disposed to relate the biography of the Honourable Ananias Dodger,
heard it all out.
***
