“Mignonette, Mignonette,Of all flowers the pet,”—
“Mignonette, Mignonette,Of all flowers the pet,”—
“Mignonette, Mignonette,
Of all flowers the pet,”—
(“O, shameful!” I whispered, and set my lips.)
“O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!Dear, kind little blossom,Soft, soft in the bosom,Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,That I follow, must follow,As the Summer the Spring,Who hides warm in the wingOf its darling the swallow?As love chases the swallowTo the eaves and the leavesHigh up under the roof,Mignonette, so I follow.Ah! to whose little chamber,Sweetheart?As I clamber,I trow not, I know notWhat dream flew before to the room high aloof.But my heart pants delightIn the thought, half a fright,Half delirious sweetness,That the spirit of the flower,That the spirit of the hourShall reveal love’s completeness.”
“O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!Dear, kind little blossom,Soft, soft in the bosom,Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,That I follow, must follow,As the Summer the Spring,Who hides warm in the wingOf its darling the swallow?As love chases the swallowTo the eaves and the leavesHigh up under the roof,Mignonette, so I follow.Ah! to whose little chamber,Sweetheart?As I clamber,I trow not, I know notWhat dream flew before to the room high aloof.But my heart pants delightIn the thought, half a fright,Half delirious sweetness,That the spirit of the flower,That the spirit of the hourShall reveal love’s completeness.”
“O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!
Dear, kind little blossom,
Soft, soft in the bosom,
Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?
Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?
Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?
Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,
That I follow, must follow,
As the Summer the Spring,
Who hides warm in the wing
Of its darling the swallow?
As love chases the swallow
To the eaves and the leaves
High up under the roof,
Mignonette, so I follow.
Ah! to whose little chamber,
Sweetheart?
As I clamber,
I trow not, I know not
What dream flew before to the room high aloof.
But my heart pants delight
In the thought, half a fright,
Half delirious sweetness,
That the spirit of the flower,
That the spirit of the hour
Shall reveal love’s completeness.”
She was as pale as death and trembling all over as I looked up. For the moment my heart withered to her. The shock, the outrage was unendurable.
“Who wrote this?” I demanded, in a hoarse whisper.
She did not answer.
“Speak,” I said. “How did it come to you?”
“I heard it slipped under the door,” she muttered.
“By him? O, you little traitor and wanton!”
She fell on her knees, sobbing and clinging to me in a soft anguish of desperation.
“O, my dear, don’t look at me so! I’m not untrue to you. I never imagined it was me—no, not for one moment—till to-night.”
“And you are shocked, no doubt, to find your precious virtue at fault. O, you little serpent that I have trusted and warmed in my bosom!”
“Diana!” she wept, in a very frenzy of despair. “O, what can I say or do? I thought it was you. It shall be you, Diana!”
“Yes, it shall be me,” I answered, “but no thanks to you. Don’t think that this is anything but a passing mood of his, played upon you for my delectation because I have been cold to him of late.”
“I think it is, I know it is,” she said, brightening.
“And you hope it is, I daresay,” I said scornfully.
“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “There is no love in the world but yours that I care for, Diana!”
“Love!” I exclaimed. “Don’t flatter this poor half-breeched makeshift with the sentiment.”
But I looked down on her more kindly, with a vexed laugh. My good-humour was returning to me. It seemed too comical, the way we three pious spinsters were scrambling for the favour of a sheep’s-eyes. A pair of small-clothes flung into our nunnery had been worse than an apple of discord. Skirts were sode rigueurwith us, that I think even Gogo’s wooden legs seemed a littleoutrés.
“I do believe you were innocent, in everything but your cuddlesome looks,” I said, relenting.
“O yes, Diana!” she answered eagerly. “And I can’t help them.”
“Would you if you could?” I questioned doubtfully. “I don’t know. There is a good deal of method in artlessness. It can always plead itself in excuse for enjoying the pleasures which we sinners must take at the expense of our consciences.”
She knelt at my feet, silently fondling and kissing my hands.
“Are you sure you don’t regret giving him up?” I asked.
“Quite—sure,” she answered, so faintly as to set me off laughing.
“There, Pattymia,” I said; “you are not to be sacrificed to a self-indulgent vapours. You will see some day how kind I am being to you; and you shall have a large family yet.” And with that I kissed and left her, taking the paper with me.
I will admit that the shock to my vanity was for the moment acute, until reflection came to convince me that this rickety light-o’-love, wearying of his one day’s abstinence, and finding me inaccessible, had only palmed off on my friend the reversion of sentiments inspired by me. On further reflection, too, I was not the more angry upon realising that I had acquired a useful weapon for goading him to a definite decision upon an action long deferred—our flight together, that is to say, and, when once emancipated from the stunting influences of Wellcot, the union which, it was understood, was to be conditional on his satisfying me that his ambitions and mine were mutually accommodating partners. But now, if for no other reason, I felt that I owed it to my affection for my poor little friend to precipitate this step, lest she should be led, through her natural incapacity for denying anyone, to making herself miserable for life; and so, armed with mypièce de conviction, I ended by sleeping very soundly and comfortably.
I did not even hesitate the next morning, but, about noon, singing very cheerfully to myself, descended to Mr. de Crespigny’s studio. The door was locked. “Open, please,” I said.
“Go away,” he answered crossly. “I’m at work on the portrait.”
“Yes?” I said; “but I want to come in.”
Perhaps there was something in my tone. Anyhow, after a short interval, during which I heard him wheeling his easel about, he unlocked the door himself. I marched straight in, and, quite radiant, nodded to Gogo, who, busy in a corner, gazed at me with a sort of gloomy alarm.
“Mayn’t I look?” I said, smiling.
“No!” said de Crespigny sharply.
I went and held the paper under his nose.
“Didn’t you slip this under the wrong door last night?” I asked calmly.
“There!” growled Gogo, and throwing down his tools faced about furiously.
De Crespigny’s face went mottled, and he began to shake all over. Then suddenly he rallied, and flamed on me, stuttering.
“Wha-what right have you to ask? I may address whom I like, without requesting your leave. My-my lady shall be informed what spies she’s got in her house.”
“You ass!” roared Gogo.
“From me—yes,” I said. “I’m going straight to tell her.”
Gogo stumped fiercely, and put himself between me and the door. His master collapsed like a pricked bladder.
“You’ll ruin yourself,” he gasped, between tears and bullying. “If you ruin me, you come down too—don’t forget that.”
“O, in a noble cause!” I said mockingly: “to open the eyes of my mistress and my friend.”
He stamped about in a little impotent frenzy, then came and almost prostrated himself before me.
“I—I thought you’d forsaken me,” he cried; “I swear I did, Di; and—and I was as miserable as a dog, and wanted sympathy, I did, in this cursed strait-laced nunnery. Don’t tell on me—don’t; and I’ll go on with your picture here and now.”
In a fever of trepidation, he hurried from me, calling on me not to go, and fetched the canvas from the press and brought it to me.
“See,” he said, “you little injured innocent—yes, you was quite right to be hurt; but—but it’s you I love, Di—it really is—and”—
The canvas fell from his hand. He stood, gaping, as if in the first shock of a stroke. And I turned; and there was madam standing in our midst, every atom of colour gone from her face.
There are some situations, my Alcide, that can only be ended brutally. I don’t know what deadly instinct drove me to the portrait; but to it I ran, and turned it with the easel about. Then, I declare, I felt as if I had committed murder. The wretch, with what fatal purpose I could not tell, had done nothing less than mutilate his own inspiration. In place of the lovely roses of yesterday was the worn, haggard woman of to-day, and the harp in her lap was a tangle of broken strings.
I felt for her. Looking in her face, I almost repented my part. There was a dreadful smile on it, as she went very quiet and breathless, and lifted the “Una” from the ground.
“It is very pretty,” she said, “but hardly proper to a child of the Good Shepherd.”
Then I hated her as I had never done before, and rejoiced in her downfall.
“I was looking for you, Diana,” she said, in her straitened tones, “and heard your voice here. Will you come with me, please?”
And so she went out, deigning not one look at that insult of her own face, nor one word to the hangdog perpetrator of it. She went out, as cold as ice, and I saw Gogo, standing by the door, droop his head as she passed. Tingling with the joy of battle, I followed her. I knew that my long martyrdom was nearing its end.
Outside in the hall she turned to me, quite stiff—I wondered how her limp corsets could support so much dignity—and bade me retire to my room till she should send for me.
“And if it is to find you on your knees,” she said, “why, by so much will the duty I have to perform be made the easier.”
Well, to do her justice, I believe that her heart was as near broken as one can be.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I answered. “Do you want to flog me? ’Twould scarce improve your case, I think, with Mr. de Crespigny.”
I ran up lightly, humming to myself. I heard her give a little gasp, and then go on her way to the parlour. Nobody came near me while I waited, until, in a little while, a servant knocked, to summon me. I went down at once, as jaunty as you please. Father Pope was with her, I saw, as I entered the room.
“I wonder how much of the truth she has told him?” I thought.
She was seated, perfectly colourless, while her companion stood, lowering and uneasy, by a table hard by. She bent a little forward, drawing her breath, I fancied, with difficulty, and addressed me at once.
“You have asked pardon of God, I hope?”
I tossed my head.
“For what, madam? What have I done?”
She appealed to the priest, with a little momentary helpless gesture; then bit her thin lips, as if stung by his silent perversity to resolution.
“For the deceit you have long practised on us,” she said.
“O, madam,” I answered, “do you refer to the gentleman’s attentions to me? I could hardly be so immodest as to confess of them to you, when I did not even know to what end they were advanced.”
She held up her hand dully.
“I allude to your privately sitting to him for—for that—for his model,” she said.
“Why, I had my respected example, madam,” said I. “I didn’t know but what we were expected to accommodate the gentleman, seeing you yourself gave us the lead.”
She rose quickly, striking her hand on the table.
“To make of yourself, pledged to Heaven, a shame and a wanton in his eyes! O, ’twas infamous!—Not that,” she checked herself hurriedly, “I blame him—not altogether. Art is a strange creditor, that makes demands, scarce comprehensible to us, upon those who practise it. But,you”—
“Are you blamingme, madam,” I cried, “because he has not paidyouto your liking?”
She turned away, as if quite sick. Father Pope took up the tale.
“Silence!” he roared, “you little dirty liar and trollop!”
“O, no doubt!” I piped him back, “because I rejectedyourattentions.”
He took a step forward, his great fist clenched, his glasses blazing. I don’t know how he might not have forgotten himself, had not Lady Sophia come quickly between.
“Hush!” she said. “It is all to end here, Father.” She turned quietly on me. “Father Pope is, I am sorry to say, justified. You have deceived us in more things than one, Diana. It is not so long, I must tell you, since I heard from the Sisters of les Madelonnettes that your original story of your unhappy mother’s death was false, she having but a few months ago returned penitent and broken to die in the very convent she had so shamed and disgraced.”
I gazed at her, bewildered, for an instant, and then, as the truth penetrated me, with a horror and passion beyond control.
“O,” I cried, “this is too much! And I believed her long dead of grief; and you never told me—never let me see her: and I think you are the wickedest woman in the world!”
She stood staring at me, silent, as if stricken.
“Cave anguem!” sneered the priest, with a brutal laugh.
I turned upon the pale woman with a furious stamp.
“Why did you never let me know? How dared you keep it from me? I will go to law about it and have you hanged!”
“If I could have thought”—she began, in a whisper; “if I have by chance done wrong”—
“Wrong!” I cried violently, “you have done me nothing but wrong since I came here. You have always misunderstood and disbelieved in me; and now, it seems, you had no right to adopt me at all.”
I ended with a torrent of tears.
“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent, and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”
“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect your duds.”
“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.
“No, don’t touch me—please,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters, who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want—only not stop here.”
I saw her put her hand to her heart as I tottered from the room. Then I ran upstairs, and hurried to put some little properties together.
I quite acquiesced in the movement—was eager to hasten it, in fact. The truth is, that, of Wellcot and the convent, the latter appeared to me by far the less formidable as a present asylum. Any further meeting here between me and Noel was rendered virtually impossible; nor was it likely that the outraged spinster would prove so accommodating to our purposes as the artless little fatties across the valley. One need have no fear of being buried alive in a dovecot.
While I was hastily collecting a few necessaries, my sweet girl crept in, and made a little sweet nuisance of herself, distressing and impeding me.
“There, dearest,” I said, as I wrought preoccupied, “you are the best of loving chickens, and I shall have plenty of use for you by and by. Only at present—there, don’t pout—I am too jubilant in the prospect of escape to cling and kiss and cry with you. I’m not going to Land’s End, only across the way; and mind, no more communications from a certain gentleman, miss, unless on my behalf.”
She promised, with new floods of tears.
“Then,” I said, pushing her playfully away, “find me my vinaigrette, child. Father Pope is going to convey me in the carriage.”
I rememberonce dining in Sorrento with the Marquis de P——, a most exclusive sybarite and dilettante. The table was spread with a flesh silk damask, whose very touch was a caress. Before each of the company—a small and appreciative one—was placed one iridescent Venetian goblet, and a bunch of lavender in a floss silk napkin—nothing else whatever. The room—vaulted into Moorish arabesques, and swimming with a slumberous half-penetrable light, in which the crusted gold of stalactites, high in the groining, alloyed and confused itself with the stain from purple windows—gave upon a dusky pillared court, where zithers and the plash of a fountain wedded in soft music, and the breath of orange blossoms made us a dim impalpable barrier against the world. The plates were served each ready charged, and each with a golden spoon only; for knives were not to be allowed to sever this dream of sensuous rumination. There was but a single wine—the Château Yquem, which is reserved for the nobility of its district, and which never goes beyond but in a few favoured directions. We talked but little and idly, with a mingling of delicious sighs and happy low laughter. Towards the end the zithers ceased; the remote fountain tinkled alone; and a girl, a ghost of loveliness, danced and wreathed herself without in a flood of moonlight. It was all perfect satisfaction without surfeit. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. And yet there are times when I wonder if my host has gone to join Lazarus or Dives.Mon ami, I am often full of such wonders; and then sometimes—when, perhaps, I have not kept the perfect proportion, and my head aches—I think I will end my days in a convent, and purify my wicked digestion on lentils and spring water. Only, where is the convent? I have seen some in my day, and in not one have they cultivated their little paradise on cabbages. I find myself standing aghast on that neutral ground between the world and the Church; and, alas! there are so many other nice people standing there to keep me company. With such, this desert itself becomes an Eden, and on either side I cannot escape from it but into another.
The Convent of Perpetual Invocation received me with open arms from my morose jailer. It conducted me, in the person of its Mother, to the sunny parlour, and there sleeked and patted me fondly.
“You dear,” she said. “I am so glad we have got you at last.”
Her coif looked as if she had slept in it, and her plump hands were by no means over clean. She was a stumpy, beaming little woman, moist with good living. Her skin worked so freely, and in such prosperous folds, it might have made a dyspeptic sigh with envy. I felt at home with her directly.
“There, dear,” she said, “you have brought us many good things in your time, but none so good as yourself; and now we take you in pledge of better.”
It may have been meant as a little sly spiritual reflection, but she smacked her ripe lips over it as if she already tasted in me, as madam’s direct protégée, a very plethora of venison and larded fowls. For many years, I believe, these good little women had been secretly looking forward to the term of my novitiate as their gastronomic millennium. I could laugh, I declare, with remorse to think how the dear pink little pigs were defrauded.
I had been delivered without directions, but with a surly intimation that madam would call on the morrow. It was not my business to enlighten anyone; and so I enjoyed the best of my present favour.
She trotted me out by and by to see her asparagus and strawberry beds, fat in promise, though tucked now and slumbering under their autumn blankets of manure; her hives; her mushroom pits; her stewpond thick with fat carps stuffed up to the neck and something her own shape; her pigeon cotes and rabbit hutches. There was an odd family likeness, a general assimilation to the neckless, apoplectic type amongst them all—Sisters, animals, and vegetables. Perpetual invocation, it was evident, had an obliterating effect on the individual. I shifted my own dimpled shoulders. How long would they be rounding to the contour of these squat little vessels? I thought with a certain terror of my admirable digestion, and determined as long as I remained here to live sparely. What if, like the wolf in the fable, I were to eat so many fat pancakes that I could not escape through the hole in the wall again!
That evening we had a refection of sweet bread and fruit and prayers, and a delightful supper (alas for my resolution!) and comfortable droning prayers again. Then we went each to her cosy cell, which was like a crib for a fat baby, and slept the round of the clock to prayers and breakfast. My fellow-sisters delighted me. I never saw such a community of bow-windows, the most comfortable little parlours one could imagine for the spirit to be entertained in. They had their scapulars made very large, and of flannel, so as to serve the double purpose of tokens and liver pads. At meals we were forbidden to talk—a most fattening proscription, or prescription. Prayer, at all seasons or out of them, was the single ordinance of the society—perpetual invocation on behalf of our unenlightened land. We were safe, perhaps, in not considering the logical result of its efficacy, or, indeed, the prospect of a second reformation might have frightened us into heresy. For, our point once gained, our occupation would be gone, and our creed of self-content be called upon to vindicate itself very likely in self-denial. However, England as yet was far from recanting its heresy of prosperity-worship. Our very fatness was the best argument in the world to it of our right to survive; so it showed no tendency to do other than keep us eternally praying for it.
Madam drove over on the day following my arrival, and was closeted for a considerable time with the Mother. I was not summoned to her presence, but I think she did not dare to vent her full heart of spleen upon me in her report. She could not very well, without compromising herself. She must have revealed, or intimated, however, so much as give the poor woman a hopelessly bewildered impression of my personal contribution to art. For the rest, I think she was satisfied with having scotched her terrible little snake, and did not doubt that, having done so, my own sense of final commitment to my calling would keep me immured out of harm’s way, and hers, to the end of time. It must have been with a feeling of guilty relief that she drove back to conclusions with her inamorato.
The Mother, having sent for me on her withdrawal, looked at me with the most cherubic doubt and dread, and pressed my hand quite speechless.
“Dear,” she whispered, all of a sudden, “so verydécolletée! and think of the draughts!”
“Why more than the angels?” I said, pouting. “They don’t wear underclothes.”
“They are symbols,” she answered doubtfully. “Besides, we don’t know.”
“O,ma mère!” I cried. “What’s the good of being an angel, if one has to?”
“Hush!” she said. “Anyhow, they may take liberties denied to us. Besides, this young person was not an angel.”
“There you are wrong,” I cried. “She was an angel of purity.”
“Is that so?” she asked a little curiously. “Well, it makes a difference, of course. But it would have been more becoming of her to be painted by a woman. There is the respectable Madame Kauffmann, for instance, who, I am told, depicts religion and the virtues. But there, dear, we will say no more about it; only pray to the good Father, now the naughty little episode’s over, that we may be accepted meekly into His fold.”
I heard no more from Wellcot after this for a couple of days, and was beginning already to torment myself with qualms of jealousy of my sweet little vicegerent there, being at the last almost driven to break out and precipitate matters, when I was saved by a call from the darling herself. Our meeting, to which the Mother’s presence gave a conventual sanction, though fond and cordial, would have been barren of result had not my friend, with a finesse which delighted me, and the more because I had thought her incapable of it, rid us of our incumbrance.
“Good lud!” said she, after the first embrace, twinkling through her tears, “if I haven’t left my little basket of cream cheeses for the Sisters melting outside in the sun!”
The bait took instant. The Mother, with a little gentle reproof for her carelessness, waddled out with such a benevolent glare as though she had heard the last trump.
“Wait, dears, and I’ll be with you again!” said she.
The moment she was gone, Patty threw herself upon me.
“I hid it under some bushes,” she said, “just to keep her hunting, and where it wouldn’t melt really.”
Her second reason was characteristic enough. She could never offer the tiniest hurt from one hand without its remedy from the other. I foresaw she’d whip her children by and by with a strap of healing-plaister, the poor little weak creature.
“O, younaughtylittle thing!” I giggled; but was serious the next moment, questioning and urging her.
“Quick!” I said. “What’s he going to do? Have you a letter?”
She shook her head.
“He’ll have a postchaise outside in a night or two, and will let you know; but for the moment he’s watched, and daren’t move, or commit himself to paper.”
“The hero! He’s still there, then, at Wellcot? If it had been me, I’d have had my servants flog him out of the house.”
“O, Diana! How can you say such a thing, and you in love with him!”
“Whom I love I chasten. I’m in love, like Mrs. Sophia, with myself through him. He’s going to make me great. Now, tell me what’s the state of things there.”
She shook her head rather piteously.
“I don’t know. It’s all very sad and lonely without you. I think she wants to forgive him; but he’s proud and angry, and holds aloof.”
I turned up my nose with a sniff.
“It’s nicer to be a healthy sinner. Her fulsomeness makes me sick. And how did you get leave to come and see me?”
“I didn’t get leave at all,” she said. “I daren’t even ask it, feeling sure she’d refuse. I slipped out without telling, hearing cook had something to send. I expect she’ll be very angry when she hears.”
“Ifshe hears,” I corrected her.
She looked at me with sad, puzzled eyes, the comical dear.
“How shall I ever bear with it all after you are gone, Diana?” she said. “You’ll let me come and stay with you sometimes, when you’re married?”
“Now, Patty,” I said, “tell me the truth. Is the creature still making eyes at you?”
“No,” she answered stoutly; then added, conscience-stricken, “At least, I don’t know. I never look at him. But—but—O, Diana! I wish he’d go altogether, and leave us, you and me, as we were.”
“That’s perhaps not a very kind wish, child,” said I. “But you shall come and stay with us when once I’ve got him under control, never fear.” Then, as I heard the step of the Mother returning, “Hush!” I whispered; “tell him I’ve no idea of being buried alive here: that he must arrange it very quickly, or I shall return and give everything away.”
She answered silently, with a hug and a gush of tears. She looked haggard and distraught, poor little wretch; yet I had no alternative but to use her.
I waited two days longer, in an anxiety that rose to distraction. Still no message came from him; and at last I made up my mind, and sent him an upbraiding letter by a misbegotten old beldame, with a leery eye, who helped in the convent laundry. She brought me back an answer—that he would be waiting for me, with a postchaise, in the lane without, at nine o’clock that very night. O, my friend! how dreadful is the first realisation of perfidy in those whom our inexperience trusts! This cursed Hecate was all the time in the pay of the authorities whom my innocence thought to hoodwink. When the time came, I wondered, indeed, to find Fortune so blind in my interest. So far seemed there from being the least suggestion of suspicion, of uneasiness abroad, chance appeared to invite me with open portals. What Sisters I encountered, even the Mother herself, manœuvred, I could have thought, to leave me my way unobstructed. Miserable parasites of power, subordinating their consciences to the lusts of their abominable little stomachs! To pamper those, they were lending themselves without scruple to a deed of unutterable darkness—the consigning of their innocent sister to a living death.
I found the chaise waiting in a dusk corner beneath trees. A cloaked and sombre figure, engaging me in the shadow, hurried me within, leapt after, slammed the door, and gave the word to proceed. In a moment we were tearing through the night.
So great was the flurry of my nerves, I had not, until the lamp at the convent gate flashed upon us and was gone, noticed that we were four in company. Then, all at once, I started. The man who sat beside me had removed his hat and was wiping his brow. Two thick-set, motionless figures sat facing me.
“Easy done, sir,” said one of these.
“Ha!” said my companion, “yes.”
In a sudden terror, I struggled to rise. He restrained me.
“Mr. de Crespigny!” I exclaimed.
“Ha!” said my companion again. “You hear that, Willing?”
“I hear,” responded the second of the others gruffly.
My companion turned to me suavely.
“Mr. de Crespigny?” he said. “Yes, and what about him, madam?”
“You are not he!” I cried wildly. “Let me out! He was to have met me!”
With a sort of tacit understanding, they all hemmed me in with their knees, imprisoning and controlling me at once.
“You make a mistake, madam,” said my captor. “He was not to have met you. But, be reconciled; time and judicious treatment, I have not the least doubt, will cure you of this delusion.”
In an instant the whole horror of this snare, of this most wicked scheme, opened like a black gulf before my eyes. The convent—to anticipate an analogy—had been my Elba; now my St. Helena was to be an asylum. She had discovered; or he, the dastard, had betrayed me; and, in the result, she had not hesitated, with the connivance of some sycophant doctor, to stoop to this.
It was night; the chaise drove on by back ways; I sunk back, sick and almost senseless, and abandoned myself to despair.
Dr. Peel’sAsylum was known generically as “The House,” perhaps in cynical allusion to its licensed irresponsibility to any laws but its own. It was conceived on the principle of an eel-pot—the easiest thing to slip, or be driven, into; the hardest to escape from. It was not so much an asylum as an oubliette; never so much a house of correction as of annihilation. There, in addition to the constitutionally weak-minded, troublesome heirs, irreclaimable prodigals, jealous wives, importunate creditors, distinguished blackmailers, chance recipients of deadly secrets—all such, in fact, as threatened the peace of that grand seigniory which has a prescriptive monopoly in it—could be immured bylettre de cachet(it amounted to nothing less) from any accommodating physician, and afterwards “treated,” or disposed of, by private contract. Its methods were delicate, tasteful, and exceedingly sure. With rib-breaking, starvation, strait-waistcoats, all the vulgar apparatus of the ordinarymédecin de fous, it had no commerce. Where the removal of undesirables was in question, it rather killed with kindness; suffocated, like Heliogabalus, with roses; persuaded to the happy despatch with a silken cord. It drove its poor Judases to suicide by putting by, as useless, their moral reparations, and took care to have at hand the seductive means. If one escaped—a rare occurrence—it possessed a kennel of highly trained bloodhounds, whose belling warned the dark nights with menace. It asked no questions, and expected to be asked none. Its formula was a hint and a cheque.
The asylumménagewas perfectly refined, and its cuisine lavish. It entertained none but the nominees of the wealthy. The extensive grounds of the house were a literal maze of beauty, the shrubberies being so disposed as to preclude all thought of restraint. It was only upon piercing them, at any point, that one found oneself opposed by a high boundary wall, which contained between itself and the estate it enclosed a waste interval incessantly patrolled, day and night, by the asylum watch. Then, indeed, one realised the iron hand in the velvet glove, and started back dismayed from the grin of the nearest sentry whom one’s movements had called light-footed to the spot.
“A fine view, mum,” he might say, stepping up between ingratiatory and insolent. “Was you looking for anything?”
Whereupon one would do best to retire, and precipitately; because there was no appeal from any brutality offered, in his own domain, by any servant of, or partner in, this lawless oligarchy.
Rising from my little bed, and mattresses full of fragrance and down, on the morning first after my arrival—rising, fevered and exhausted, to the full realisation of my awful position, my eyes encountered the vision of a wholesome, even luxurious, little chamber, and through an unbarred window a most heavenly prospect. I could hardly believe in the reality of my fate. This was no prison, but an inn, to escape from which it seemed only necessary to pay the score, and have the landlord cry “Bon voyage!” I remembered him the night before—a little tough, square man, drily courteous in manner, with the head and depressed forehead of a burglar. He had been already on the steps to receive me, when we drove up, standing in a patch of light with an expression on his face as if we had caught him in the act of breaking into his own premises. Those we had reached, within two hours of my first kidnapping, by dark and devious roads. They stood, remote from all other homesteads, a little colony self-contained, some six miles south of Shole.
On the way thither I had soon abandoned all thought of resistance, or of appeal to my captors. They may have heard my sobs and prayers with a certain emotion: virtuous distress had no chance to prevail with cupidity. I sunk into a sullen apathy, my heart smouldering with rage, principally against the craven who had either betrayed me to this living death, or, at least, had weakly acquiesced in my doom. The prospect of revenge, though alternating with despair, alone preserved me from a condition of the last prostration. And in this state I was driven up to the House, and to it consigned, the sold slave of madness.
In the first terror, with staring eyes, a storm in my breast that would not rise and break, dishevelled hair, and, it may be, a look of the part I was called upon to play, I shrunk into a corner of the room into which I was introduced, and stood there panting. Dr. Peel went into a thin chuckle of laughter, curiously small and inward from so thick-set a frame.
“Brava!” said he. “Very well observed, madam! But, if you will look round, you will see there are no bolts, no bars, no locks here, save as the ordinary appurtenances of a domestic household.”
There were not, indeed, to the common view. To most doors, as I came to discover, the locks were inside; and, where it was otherwise, it was—mark this!—to insure from any chance insane attack, especially at night, the lives of those which it was particularly desired should be preserved. To be given the full freedom of the House was always a significant privilege, implying, as it did, one of two things: either that the proprietor had accepted at the outset a round sum down for one’s perpetual incarceration, or a hint that one’s accidental removal would be handsomely acknowledged by those interested.
Now, as I said, waking on that first morning to free prospects, my spirit experienced a rebound to the most delightful reassurance. Surely, I thought, no worse harm could be designed me than the punishment implied in my enforced temporary detention in this charming home, where, it seemed likely, a nominal deprivation of one’s liberty was used to convey a gentle moral or adorn a kindly tale of reproval. I waxed jubilant. If a meek acquiescence in my fate delayed to move my jailers to liberate me, I was confident that my wits would soon find me a way to free myself from so indulgent a thraldom. And in the meantime I would resign myself to the enjoyment of a very novel experience.
A loud bell summoned us all to breakfast,à la table d’hôte, in a pleasant refectory. Dr. Peel took the head of the table, and a plenty of attentive lackeys waited. There was no restriction, nor interference with one’s individual tastes. I accepted silently the place assigned me between a gaunt, supernaturally solemn gentleman, with mended clothes, a wigless head, and prominent fixed eyes, and the tiniest, most conceited-looking creature with humped shoulders I have ever seen. An uproarious gabble of conversation, interspersed with occasional hoots and groans, accompanied the meal throughout. Occasionally my solemn neighbour would turn to me and remark, fiercely, as though daring a contradiction, “Enough is as good as a feast; but more than enough is less than nothing.”
On the third repetition of this formula, the little man on my other side addressed me with an ill-tempered chuckle—
“Bring him down, ma’am, bring him down, or the creature will scorch his head in the moon.”
While I was shrinking back in confusion, Dr. Peel bent to the solemnity.
“Captain,” says he, with an ingratiatory grin, “you’re drinking nothing.”
“I don’t want anything,” said the other, in a loud, bullying voice.
“Nonsense,” answered the doctor. “You must keep up your character. Here, John.”
He spoke to a lackey, who was ready on the moment with a decanter. To my amazement, the man filled up the gentleman’s breakfast cup with raw brandy.
He shifted, glared, hesitated, and caught up the pungent stuff.
“Enough is as good as a feast, but more than enough is less than nothing,” howled he, and swallowed the fire at a draught.
He had hardly consumed it, when he cast the cup into splinters on the board, staggered to his feet, and, moaning to himself, left the room. The conversation died down for a moment, and was instantly resumed more recklessly than ever. I felt suddenly sick.
“He-he!” sniggered my little companion. “He’s been long taking his hint, the fool, and outstaying his welcome. But Peel’s done it at last, I do believe.”
I did not ask him what. My spirit felt engulfed in deep waters of terror. I sat dumb and shivering, till the meal ended, and the company broke up and dispersed itself about the grounds. Many, rude, curious, fantastic, came about me to inquire, mockingly or fulsomely, into my malady. To all their solicitations my little companion, who had appropriated me, turned a rough shoulder and rougher tongue.
“The lady has confided her case to me, you pestilent cranks!” he screamed, and succeeded in extricating and convoying me to a remoter part of the grounds. On the way we encountered two men, like gamekeepers, carrying a ghastly sheet-covered burden on a litter.
“Ho-ho!” said my friend, stopping. “It was arranged for the tower, was it?”
“Now, lookee here, Jimmy,” said one of the carriers, while the two paused for a moment, “you’re too precious fond of poking your nose where you ain’t wanted, you are. You go along to your games, and leave your elders to theirs till you’re growed up.”
“Grown up!” screeched my companion, whose chin, indeed, was thick with a grey bristle, “grown up, you puppy, you calf, you insolent lout!”
Crazy in a moment, he danced in the path, screaming and shaking his fists. The men resumed their way, laughing. Suddenly he caught himself to a sort of reason, white and shaking.
“They want to drive me to it,” he said. “They want me to break a blood-vessel; but I see through them, and I won’t be drawn.”
He wiped his forehead, and looked anxiously up in my face.
“You see it, don’t you?” he said. “The fools are envious of my inches. But you ain’t, are you, being a woman?”
“No, no,” I said, smiling, in a sort of ghastly spasm, in full understanding of his mania. “No, no; or should I select you for my champion in this? Let us go on,please. Was that—?”
“Yes,” he answered, the question that my fainting spirit shrunk from formulating, “yes, it was the Captain—good riddance to a conceited ass.”
He strutted along, pluming himself on my praise. All that I have stated—the truth about this smiling, damned Gehenna—I drew from him then or thereafter. I cannot recall it now without a shudder like death’s.
Once that morning we came, in a retired corner, upon the prettiest, greenest graveyard—the sweetest God’s-acre, God pity it! in all the sad world. It was studded with quiet flowers, screened with fragrant shrubs, thick with graves,each a nameless grassy barrow. What depth of tragedy in it all! I cannot, I vow, dwell any longer on the picture, but must cover the details of it at a gallop.
I was nine weeks, before I found release, in this appalling hell—a time the most stupendous of my life. I will acquit the Lady Sophia of intending the worst; I cannot acquit her of implying it. Whether from jealousy, or a true conviction as to the unpardonable nature of my recreancy, she failed, at least, to assure the instruments of her cruelty that my death-sentence was not intimated in the bond. It is possible she may have been totally ignorant of the real character of the place to which she condemned me. She is none the less responsible for the conclusions the Rhadamanthus of that inferno elected to draw from her dubiety. Anyhow, I am convinced that my destruction was designed, before I had been there many days.
In the meantime—O, my Alcide, pity thy Diane! What had she done to merit this fate, the most awful that could befall a brilliant sanity? Very, very soon that early buoyancy was like nothing but the memory of a bright star, that had exploded and scattered as soon as realised. A sickness, a deadly apprehension, took its place; a sense of some creeping, circumventing terror, which hemmed me in, stealthy and pitiless, concentrating my thoughts on a single point in this cursed paradise. I was inoculated with the disease of the morbid intellects about me. My reason suffered deliberate contamination by the remorseless ghoul my keeper. No fewer than three times during my short sojourn in his inferno did the corpse of a self-destroyer witness to the success of his methods. They went to swell the bloody tally of shrouds under the grass in the little graveyard; and, thinking of them there, their awful waiting testimony, I would look up to find the evil eye of their murderer fixed upon me in covert, lustful speculation.
For long I remained incredulous that my wit could be utterly impotent to devise a means to escape. Gradually, only, the sinister watchfulness which guarded every outlet of this green prison, and the fiendish incorruptibility of its warders, was bitten into my brain. Pleas and graces were accepted for nothing but an encouragement to unwelcome attentions, indeed. It was not supposed that one could be insane and modest. Many sold their virtue for a little surcease from tyranny, bartered their dearer than life for a poor extension of living. At the same time, and for the same reason, a most rigid embargo was placed on all communications with the outside world. Worse than a Russian censorship doomed these utter exiles from hope.
In the worst of my despair I had written to Patty, to de Crespigny, begging them to intercede for me with the cruel woman, who yetcouldnot be aware of the inhuman character of her revenge. Finally, I wrote to madam herself—an appeal that would have melted a heart of stone. My cries were uttered into space. They were never allowed, in spite of all specious pretence, to penetrate the boundaries of my doom. They recoiled only upon my own fated head, precipitating its calamity, and the swifter because I was persistent in justifying my birth-name to my hateful would-be destroyer.
The little craze they called Jimmy was my sole stay and buckler. He attached himself to me vigorously, and by his quickness and waspishness more than made up for his lack of inches. I never knew who he was, or immured at whose instigation. There was warrant, anyhow, for his detention; yet not sufficient, it appeared, for his “removal.” His philosophy of madness was just a counterbuff to that of the deceased Captain. If, in short, more than enough was less than nothing, then less than nothing was more than enough; wherefore Jimmy, twitted with being less than nothing, knew himself really to be greatly better than most, though he could never get over the envy of smaller souls in refusing him the credit of his stature. What is apparently little is relatively great, he often assured me, while bemoaning his inability to knock the truism into the thin asparagus heads that shot above his own sturdy one. He spent the most of his time, and I with him, in what was known as the workshop—a detached ivy-grown shed, buried amongst trees, very private, and with a deep well in it, and furnished with all sorts of dangerous tools for cranks of a mechanical turn. There he wrought incessantly, for he was a capable carpenter; and there, watching and helping him, I strove to forget something of my misery. One morning, entering this shed, we found a little group of employés gathered about the well, talking and laughing, and fishing with a long grapnel. A partition separated us from the obscene crew, whose movements, unobserved by them, we crouched to watch.
“A thousand to one it’s old Star-jelly,” whispered my companion. “’Twas plain from the first the creature was booked.”
They hauled it to the surface while he muttered—a sodden body caught by its waistband and doubled backwards—and slopped their hideous burden on the floor. The white sightless face settled backwards, as if with a sigh of rest, and I could hardly refrain from a scream of terror. I had known this poor thing for the few days since he had been admitted—a wreck so torn, so noisome, so straining the remnant of life through fretted lungs, it should have seemed a mockery to precipitate its end. I had known, and never, till now seeing it clothed in the white uniform of death, had recognised it. It was the mad incubus of “Rupert’s Folly,” caught somehow tripping at last and consigned to his doom. The red earl had succeeded by long waiting in curing himself of this itch. He was one of a deadly persistent family.
That night I could not even cry myself to sleep.
I don’t know how it was that I was at last driven to visit the Suicide Tower. I had caught glimpses, remote in the grounds, of a picturesque, creeper-hung pagoda set in flowering thickets; but had always, since that first morning of deadly association with it, turned with loathing from the sight. Now, somehow, by degrees, the thing began to impress itself with a certain fascination on me. I felt drawn to it by a horrible curiosity, none the less morbidly self-indulgent because I knew that my jailer, a proselyte of the subtle Mesmer, had long been practising to master my will and get me entirely under his influence. Snuffing here, nibbling there, as it were, like a heifer approaching in pretended unconsciousness the stranger in the field, I gradually lost my power of resistance, the circumference of my orbit slowly lessened, until, behold! one day the attraction found me helpless to oppose it, and, with a little cry to myself, I yielded and went rapidly towards the tower. As I approached the spot, I could hardly feel my limbs; my soul, penetrated with a sort of exquisite nausea, seemed already straining to leave the earth; a mist, luminous, vaguely peopled, eddied before my eyes. Perhaps a confidence derived from the possession of my duck-stone—which all this time I had been jealous to preserve, using it even occasionally, in moments of prostration, for a drug to my nerves—conduced to my undervaluing the force of temptations to which I owned such a counter-charm. In any case, I made so little resistance in the end, that the evil thing concealed amongst the thick bushes by the tower, whence and whither he had drawn me by his spells, must have chuckled to see me so easily netted.
The place was perfectly silent and beautiful. A tinkle of water, a twitter of birds reached my ears from some remote height. The tower sprang from a circular platform of stone, went up loftily, and broke at near its top into two or three little tiled flounces. Under the lowest I could see an opening pierced through a rose trellis; and right before me the unlatched door of the building was reached by a shallow flight of steps.
My heart was fluttering like a netted butterfly as I mounted them. What sinister design could possibly obtain in this still and fragrant enclosure? A flight of spiral stairs, going up the interior, was set in a very bower of plumy palms, and ferns, and clambering rich mosses, made greener by the light which entered through greenjalousies. Here and there tiny rills of water, lowering themselves down miniature precipices, were fretted into spray that hung in the twinkling emerald atmosphere and was showered on the leaves. Caged cunningly amidst the foliage, birds of brilliant plumage chirped and flirted; or red squirrels sprang and clung, staring at me with glossy eyes; or lizards, liquid green as the sun through lime leaves, raised their pulsing throats, and whisked and were gone. Once a snake, raising a gorgeous enamelled head, lashed its thread of tongue on the glaze of its little prison, seeming to taste my passing beauty in a wicked lust. I felt quite secure and happy. Up and up I climbed, and presently started singing softly, irresistibly, in response to the growing rapture of my flight. New beauties were revealed with every step, until in a moment, passing, at an angle, through a very thicket of blossoms into white daylight, I saw the meaning, and tottered on the brink of it all.
I had emerged upon a little ledge, a foot in width, which ringed the outside of the tower just below the first roof. I was standing there, suddenly, instantly, with not so much as an inch of parapet between my feet and the edge. Behind was the wall of the tower; below, a reeling abyss and the bare, merciless pavement. Dazzled, irresistibly drawn forward, I longed only to reach the stones and be at rest. But in that terrible moment my talisman occurred to me. Swaying, half fainting, fighting for every movement, I succeeded in drawing it from my pocket and lifting it to my nostrils—and instantly my resistance was relaxed, and I floated down on the wings of enchantment.
When I opened my eyes, drugged and smiling, it was to the vision of Dr. Peel standing before me like an awed and baffled demon. He dressed his twitching features, and came and cringed.
“Are—are you much hurt?” he stammered.
“No, sir,” I murmured. “Not at all, I thank you.”
“It was your skirts ballooned,” he said. “I could not have thought it possible.”
I sat up, reordering my hair.
“Do you now?” I said quietly. “Such an escape could hardly come within your calculations, I think.”
“What do you mean?” he began loudly, and as instantly collapsed again. “You had no right to be there at all,” he said.
“Nor should I,” I replied, “but to show you that virtue may have a familiar as well as vice, and one, too, capable of answering to a wicked challenge.”
I got to my feet as I spoke. He stared at me utterly disconcerted, and, as I withdrew, followed me like a scourged dog.
From that time he sought rather to preserve than to destroy me, and I found myself, as one of the elect, locked into my room at night. He had realised, I suppose, that wickedness could over-reach itself in the chance entertainment of spirits potent beyond the worst it could of itself evoke; and, though he still clung to me as a sort of hostage for his own miserable salvation, made many abject efforts towards my conciliation, amongst which I had great reason to reckon a relaxation in the watchfulness which had hitherto dogged my every movement.
Haveyou not noticed, my little friend, how the wicked are always the superstitious? It is because life is to them full of dark corners, in which the unsuspected hides. The atheist will still be for baiting a deity whose existence he denies; he will wring a response from a vacuum, which failing, he fears to canvass emptiness for the reason.
Dr. Peel knew well the impotence of virtue to conquer. He saw it of such poor force in the world as to figure of no moment at all in a contest with vice. He did not fear God, but he feared that the devil was God, and vindictive where the harming of his protégées—of whom he had no thought but that I must be one—was concerned. He had been eye-witness of the, to him unaccountable, foiling of his project; and it struck him as if he had fallen upon an ambush in one of those dark corners. He shrunk back terrified, and thenceforth exchanged his noisome attentions to me for an attitude of propitiation which was as unwelcome, and even more stultifying, in seeming, to my hopes, inasmuch as it included an increased jealous concern for my safeguarding. But there, in the end, his service of his dark master was made to recoil upon his own head, through his very scepticism of the more divinely cunning power which works for good. He would lock me, as I said, into my room at night, thereby securing me not only from prowling evils, but an asylum in which I might ponder undisturbed what plans I could of escape. And it was that security from interruption which enabled me presently to realise on an opportunity of which I was quite unexpectedly made the mistress.
It fell early very cold and wintry that November, but the chill in my heart was colder than any hailstones. Presently such an apathy of despair found me that I would hardly leave my room all day, but would sit in a sullen misery gazing, gazing from my unbarred open window upon the fraction of stiffening world it commanded. It was at a front angle of the house, pretty high above the ground; and under it the stony drive went round an elbow of lofty trees to the fatal unseen gates of the entrance beyond.
One morning, after breakfast, I was seated there, when a chaise rolled up to the steps of the door below, and a moment later Dr. Peel entered and was driven rapidly away, on some fresh marauding devilry, I conjectured. The vehicle, sped by a heart-whole curse from my lips, had disappeared scarce a minute, when round the bend of the shrubs it had taken came striding the oddest figure—an interloper by way of the open portals, it seemed. Such an event had never, in my knowledge, happened before. I stared, and roused myself, elate even over this momentary grotesque vision from the world beyond. It was just a stilt-walker, a monstrous pierrot, with floured absurd face and conical cap, his legs, cased in linen trousers, rising an immense height from the ground. As he came on, ridiculously gyrating, he blew a pipe, and rattled at a little tabor that hung from his neck. In the same moment he saw me where I stood, and danced up, rolling and wallowing—for he was an incomprehensibly great creature for such a trade—and broke into a mad, jerky little chaunt, half French, half English, as he approached—
“O-ha, mamselle! Je vous trouve, je vous salue! A la fin çà, çà, çà!