The Familiar, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [people reading books txt] 📗
- Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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upon the pavement.
There he was found a few minutes afterwards, and conveyed
to his room — the apartment which he was never afterwards
to leave alive. Henceforward a marked and unaccountable
change was observable in the tone of his mind. Captain
Barton was now no longer the excited and despairing man he
had been before; a strange alteration had passed upon
him — an unearthly tranquillity reigned in his mind — it was
the anticipated stillness of the grave.
“Montague, my friend, this struggle is nearly ended now,”
he said, tranquilly, but with a look of fixed and fearful
awe. “I have, at last, some comfort from that world of
spirits from which my punishment has come. I now know that
my sufferings will soon be over.”
Montague pressed him to speak on.
“Yes,” said he, in a softened voice, “my punishment is
nearly ended. From sorrow, perhaps, I shall never, in time
or eternity, escape; but my agony is almost over. Comfort
has been revealed to me, and what remains of my allotted
struggle I will bear with submission — even with hope.”
“I am glad to hear you speak so tranquilly, my dear
Barton,” said Montague; “peace and cheer of mind are all you
need to make you what you were.”
“No, no — I never can be that,” said he mournfully. “I
am no longer fit for life. I am soon to die. I am to see
him but once again, and then all is ended.”
“He said so, then?” suggested Montague.
“He? — No, no: good tidings could scarcely come through
him; and these were good and welcome; and they came so
solemnly and sweetly — with unutterable love and melancholy,
such as I could not — without saying more than is needful, or
fitting, of other long past scenes and persons — fully
explain to you.” As Barton said this he shed tears.
“Come, come,” said Montague, mistaking the source of his
emotions, “you must not give way. What is it, after all,
but a pack of dreams and nonsense; or, at worst, the
practices of a scheming rascal that enjoys his power of
playing upon your nerves, and loves to exert it — a sneaking
vagabond that owes you a grudge, and pays it off this way,
not daring to try a more manly one.”
“A grudge, indeed, he owes me — you say rightly,” said
Barton, with a sudden shudder; “a grudge as you call it.
Oh, my God! when the justice of Heaven permits the Evil one
to carry out a scheme of vengeance — when its execution is
committed to the lost and terrible victim of sin, who owes
his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is
commissioned to pursue — then, indeed, the torments and
terrors of hell are anticipated on earth. But heaven has
dealt mercifully with me — hope has opened to me at last; and
if death could come without the dreadful sight I am doomed
to see, I would gladly close my eyes this moment upon the
world. But though death is welcome, I shrink with an agony
you cannot understand — an actual frenzy of terror — from the
last encounter with that — that DEMON, who has drawn me thus
to the verge of the chasm, and who is himself to plunge me
down. I am to see him again — once more — but under
circumstances unutterably more terrific than ever.”
As Barton thus spoke, he trembled so violently that
Montague was really alarmed at the extremity of his sudden
agitation, and hastened to lead him back to the topic which
had before seemed to exert so tranquillizing an effect upon
his mind.
“It was not a dream,” he said, after a time; “I was in a
different state — I felt differently and strangely; and yet
it was all as real, as clear and vivid, as what I now see
and hear — it was a reality.”
“And what did you see and hear?” urged his companion.
“When I wakened from the swoon I fell into on seeing
him,” said Barton, continuing as if he had not heard the
question, “it was slowly, very slowly — I was lying by the
margin of a broad lake, with misty hills all round, and a
soft, melancholy, rose-coloured light illuminated it all.
It was unusually sad and lonely, and yet more beautiful than
any earthly scene. My head was leaning on the lap of a
girl, and she was singing a song, that told, I know not
how — whether by words or harmonies — of all my life — all that
is past, and all that is still to come; and with the song
the old feelings that I thought had perished within me came
back, and tears flowed from my eyes — partly for the song and
its mysterious beauty, and partly for the unearthly
sweetness of her voice; and yet I knew the voice — oh! how
well; and I was spellbound as I listened and looked at the
solitary scene, without stirring, almost without
breathing — and, alas! alas! without turning my eyes towards
the face that I knew was near me, so sweetly powerful was
the enchantment that held me. And so, slowly, the song and
scene grew fainter, and fainter, to my senses, till all was
dark and still again. And then I awoke to this world, as
you saw, comforted, for I knew that I was forgiven much.”
Barton wept again long and bitterly.
From this time, as we have said, the prevailing tone of
his mind was one of profound and tranquil melancholy. This,
however, was not without its interruptions. He was
thoroughly impressed with the conviction that he was to
experience another and a final visitation, transcending in
horror all he had before experienced. From this anticipated
and unknown agony he often shrank in such paroxysms of
abject terror and distraction, as filled the whole household
with dismay and superstitious panic. Even those among them
who affected to discredit the theory of preternatural
agency, were often in their secret souls visited during the
silence of night with qualms and apprehensions, which they
would not have readily confessed; and none of them attempted
to dissuade Barton from the resolution on which he now
systematically acted, of shutting himself up in his own
apartment. The window-blinds of this room were kept
jealously down, and his own man was seldom out of his
presence, day or night, his bed being placed in the same
chamber.
This man was an attached and respectable servant; and his
duties, in addition to those ordinarily imposed upon valets,
but which Barton’s independent habits generally dispensed
with, were to attend carefully to the simple precautions by
means of which his master hoped to exclude the dreaded
intrusion of the “Watcher.” And, in addition to attending
to whose arrangements, which amounted merely to guarding
against the possibility of his master’s being, through any
unscreened window or open door, exposed to the dreaded
influence, the valet was never to suffer him to be
alone — total solitude, even for a minute, had become to him
now almost as intolerable as the idea of going abroad into
the public ways — it was an instinctive anticipation of what
was coming.
REQUIESCAT
IT is needless to say, that under these circumstances no
steps were taken toward the fulfilment of that engagement
into which he had entered. There was quite disparity enough
in point of years, and indeed of habits, between the young
lady and Captain Barton to have precluded anything like very
vehement or romantic attachment on her part. Though grieved
and anxious, therefore, she was very far from being
heart-broken.
Miss Montague, however, devoted much of her time to the
patient but fruitless attempt to cheer the unhappy invalid.
She read to him and conversed with him; but it was apparent
that whatever exertions he made, the endeavour to escape
from the one ever waking fear that preyed upon him was
utterly and miserably unavailing.
Young ladies are much given to the cultivation of pets;
and among those who shared the favour of Miss Montague was a
fine old owl, which the gardener, who caught him napping
among the ivy of a ruined stable, had dutifully presented to
that young lady.
The caprice which regulates such preferences was
manifested in the extravagant favour with which this grim
and ill-favoured bird was at once distinguished by his
mistress; and, trifling as this whimsical circumstance may
seem, I am forced to mention it, inasmuch as it is
connected, oddly enough, with the concluding scene of the
story.
Barton, so far from sharing in this liking for the new
favourite, regarded it from the first with an antipathy as
violent as it was utterly unaccountable. Its very vicinity
was unsupportable to him. He seemed to hate and dread it
with a vehemence absolutely laughable, and which, to those
who have never witnessed the exhibition of antipathies of
this kind, would seem all but incredible.
With these few words of preliminary explanation, I shall
proceed to state the particulars of the last scene in this
strange series of incidents. It was almost two o’clock one
winter’s night, and Barton was, as usual at that hour, in
his bed; the servant we have mentioned occupied a smaller
bed in the same room, and a light was burning. The man was
on a sudden aroused by his master, who said:
“I can’t get it out of my head that that accursed bird
has got out somehow, and is lurking in some corner of the
room. I have been dreaming about him. Get up, Smith, and
look about; search for him. Such hateful dreams!”
The servant rose and examined the chamber, and while
engaged in so doing he heard the well-known sound, more like
a long-drawn gasp than a hiss, with which these birds from
their secret haunts affright the quiet of the night.
This ghostly indication of its proximity — for the sound
proceeded from the passage upon which Barton’s chamber-door
opened — determined the search of the servant, who, opening
the door, proceeded a step or two forward for the purpose of
driving the bird away. He had, however, hardly entered the
lobby, when the door behind him slowly swung to under the
impulse, as it seemed, of some gentle current of air; but as
immediately over the door there was a kind of window,
intended in the day-time to aid in lighting the passage, and
through which at present the rays of the candle were
issuing, the valet could see quite enough for his purpose.
As he advanced he heard his master — who, lying in a
well-curtained bed, had not, as it seemed, perceived his
exit from the room — call him by name, and direct him to
place the candle on the table by his bed. The servant, who
was now some way in the long passage, and not liking to
raise his voice for the purpose of replying, lest he should
startle the sleeping inmates of the house, began to walk
hurriedly and softly back again, when, to his amazement, he
heard a voice in the interior of the chamber answering
calmly, and actually saw, through the window which
overtopped the door, that the light was slowly shifting, as
if carried across the room in answer to his master’s call.
Palsied by a feeling akin to terror, yet not unmingled with
curiosity, he stood breathless and listening at the
threshold, unable to summon resolution to push open the door
and enter. Then came a rustling of the curtains, and a
sound like that of one
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