DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY AND OTHER STORIES

All rights reserved

DR. VERMONT’S FANTASY

BY

HANNAH LYNCH

LONDON J. M. DENT AND COMPANY BOSTON: LAMSON WOLFFE & CO.

MDCCCXCVI

PART FIRST MADEMOISELLE LENORMANT

THE ISLAND

IT was a warm autumn that year—a luminous exception upon which the last summer of the century was borne somewhat oppressively to the very verge of winter. The middle hours of the afternoon could be intolerable enough in a big, busy city well upon the confines of the South. The rush and whirr of looms was carried far upon the air, and even into the quietest streets wandered the noisy echoes of the boulevards.

Yet it was dull and flat for the solitary stranger, without interest in factories, or provincial entertainment in friendship. It was doubly dull for a woman past youth and all its personal excitements to be extracted from fleeting curiosity and thrills of anticipation; [Pg 4] denied by reason of sex the stale delights of café lounges, and by reason of station the healthier and livelier hospitalities of cabaret and peasant reunions.

Travelling-bag and portmanteau lay strapped in the hotel hall. The train for Paris would not leave until late that night, and to while away the intervening hours I went forth beyond the town. I chose the farther end of the long boulevard, the middle of which I had not yet passed. Down there the brilliant air lost its clearness in a yellow mist, as if flung from the sky in a fine dust of powdered gold. Upon its edge hung the last visible arms of the trees on either side, lucidly, of unwonted greenness, the green we note in painted French landscapes, brightly touched with yellow. I felt that something fresh, cool, and soft must lie behind that golden veil. It led my imagination as a child is led out of the real, by the illusive promises of fairyland.

Here sound was deadened, and city movements seemed to faint away upon the weariness of the long hot day. I glanced back at the town. Behind me stretched the dusty boulevard, and sharpened above it, against the [Pg 5] tremulous pellucid blue of the heaven, the profile of quaint church-spires and heavy masses of buildings. Ahead, my way was blocked by the wide grey river, black where the shadows touched it, silver where the full light shone upon it. A bridge of grey stone spanned it from the end of the boulevard to the other side, the unexplored:—a bridge so old, so worn, so silent and empty, that it might appropriately be the path to the city cemetery.

This bridge I crossed in all its glamour of sad enchantment. One of its arches was broken, and made a dangerous gap above the broad, quiet waters. There were no lamps, no visible indication of life about. I saw that it led to an island encircled by a battered and decayed dark wall, with little castellated ornaments that gave it the look of a feudal fortress of unusual extent and dimensions. Midway I stood upon the bridge, and wondered what sort of land might be before me. At first I believed it to be uninhabited, until much gazing discovered a thin curl of blue smoke far away, beyond a square tower. It was nearing sunset now, and the island lying west, showed out more darkly from a broad band of reddish [Pg 6] glory. It wore all the more dead and desolate air because of the floating and quickened light above it.

Have you ever, in some quaint French town washed by a wide river, watched these lovely sunset contrasts on the blackened greyness of stone masses and on the sombre placidity of water? The best effects you will find upon the Loire, and if you can recall them, you will see, better than words of mine can paint, the salient features of that river-view set with towers and a decayed, old grey wall.

I was saturated with the sadness of it, and my glance was still wedded to its dead charm, when a bloused peasant came out of the under shadows and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful commonplace note in the picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not in the least like a ghost from other centuries. Prosperous, too, as befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and mayhap clink free and fraternal glasses with them through an ocean of blood. He came along, whistling a patriotic tune, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat in villainous emphasis cocked over one ear. [Pg 7]

‘Can it be,’ I asked myself, in a pang of disappointment, ‘that this enchanted island contains the ubiquitous cabaret, and that the impossible legend of liberty, equality, and fraternity has penetrated, with its attendant train of horrid evils, into this home of silence and poetic decay?’

I interrupted my gloomy moralising, for which, like all persons naturally gay, I flatter myself I have a decided turn, and hat, metaphorically, in hand, sued this roadside rascal for information.

‘Yes, people lived upon the island, not many—mostly women: laundresses upon the side that ran unprotected down to the water edge. I might see their sheds if I made the round of the wall. There was a large Benedictine convent at one end, and a cemetery eastward—but no hotel accommodation, no shops, no vehicles of any sort, and but one miserable little wine-shop, where they sold the worst brandy in all France.’

Of this liquid I concluded the fellow had been drinking somewhat copiously, and left him to push inquiries for myself. [Pg 8]

I know not why, but the moment I set foot upon the island, and heard the slow swish of the eddying river against its projecting base, thought was checked upon mild and pleasurable suspense. Something unexpected must surely happen, I believed, and step by step destiny seemed to impel me forward in its pursuit. My footfall rang sharply upon the empty path, and I felt it would be ignominy to leave this strange spot until fate had spoken, and its voice been interpreted adequately for me by circumstance.

How still everything was, and how softly the day’s heat was stealing out of the atmosphere! One bright star shone like a lamp over a noble ruin, and for this I made. No sound of living voice, no clang of wooden shoe or beat of hoofs broke the heavy silence, and by this fact I knew that I must still be remote from the washerwomen’s quarter. There was a fearful look about the low rocks that reached behind the ruins down to the black water, whose perilous stillness was unwholesomely revealed by the margin of quivering light shed from the rosy sky.

A few yards farther brought me to the open [Pg 9] cemetery gate. Here I entered with a shuddering sense of the romantic appropriateness of its aspect. Did ever churchyard wear so solemn, so forsaken an air of death? Death was breathed in the profuseness and dankness of the weeds that sprawled over and almost enveloped the tombstones; in the grassy walks unworn by tread of foot; in the graves that showed no sacred care of hand, no symbol of fond remembrance or bereaved heart. Who were these dead so forgotten and so alone? So near a busy city, and so remote from living man?

Suddenly my wondering fancy was visibly answered by sight of a slim old woman in black, who slowly came toward me by a narrow side-path. I stopped her with an elaborate apology, and we speedily fell into talk. She had been born on this island sixty years before, when the century was entering into middle life, and now at its close these had been the permanent limits of her vision. About a dozen times she may have crossed the bridge, or walked the streets of the city yonder, and only once had she gone down the river in a barge to have a peep at the real [Pg 10] South—the ardent, rose and lavender-smelling South!

‘I pray you, Madame, tell me, who am a restless vagabond, never three months happy in the same place, how life looks to one like you, who have never left the boundary marks of birth, who have grown and lived amid unchanged scenes, and have been satisfied to look for sixty years upon these low grey walls and the spires and chimneys of that distant city?’ I asked, profoundly astonished.

In the old dame’s wrinkled parchment face gleamed a pair of singularly vivid brown eyes that held, I suspect, more wisdom than my dissatisfied and travelled glance. She eyed me curiously one long eloquent moment, and then remarked, with some astuteness and much benevolence, that change brought idle misery, and monotony its own reward of ignorance and content. Further questions about the island led to an offer from her to show me where she lived—an offer I accepted eagerly, and together we left the cemetery, now revealing all its melancholy charm in the last flushed smile of a lovely autumn sunset.

Save for the glimmer of gold upon an upper [Pg 11] casement, the grey street was already cast into twilit gloom, and a faint ray here and there seemed to make its own pathway through the dim troubled blue of the atmosphere. Unmistakably evening was upon us, and the ghosts of the imagination would surely soon be abroad among these haunted scenes.

But nobody could be less spectral than my companion, both in speech and in looks. She was communicative to rashness, and when I asked where I could obtain lodging upon the island, for a week or a month, as long as the caprice pleased me—she fixed me in a mild interrogative way, and paused, as if equally in doubt of my discretion and of her own.

There was no hotel, no lodgings that she knew of, but if Madame really desired it—if, in fact, she could trust Madame to be discreet and reserved, she did not know that it might not be managed somehow. But she would not engage herself.

I pressed for an explanation, and so aflame was I with sharp interest and curiosity, that I know not what wild pledges of reserve and discretion and prudent behaviour I proffered. Willingly at that moment would I have undertaken [Pg 12] to deny my whole past, and give the lie direct to nature. What more potent than passionate sympathy? and the old woman, I think, must have felt some desperate need for a willing ear in which to pour her pent-up confidences. The cup of silence to which experience had condemned her was full to overflowing, and my voice it seems shook the brim.

She told me then that she was the confidential servant and sole companion of a maiden lady who lived alone with a little niece in a big barrack of a house below the Benedictine monastery. There was a story, of course, which perhaps one day I should hear, if matters could be so arranged that I might sojourn a while beneath their roof. But this also was a promise withheld. Nothing depended on her, though she had influence—naturally, she added, with a look of meaning that set my heart in a flutter. I declare it made me feel young again, and full of thrilling alarm, on the heels of romance, in the quest of breathless adventure. I cannot explain how this old peasant had the knack of accentuating commonplace words, and of lending them a significance far beyond that with which we are accustomed to [Pg 13] associate them. But she did so, and there was a nameless charm and tremor conveyed in her added ‘naturally,’ with its accompanying suppressed intimation of glance.

The Benedictine monastery lay in massive gloom below, reaching an aerial coldness of sharp point and spire along its jagged tops. Feudal gashes in the arches let in large slips of green sky and glimmering stars, and its rough stone wall along one side was the division between the convent and the garden of my companion’s mistress. No, not even the cemetery I had left could, in the dreariest hour, look more inexpressibly dark, and lifeless, and forsaken than that old garden. Its beauty was the beauty of death and sadness and neglect. There were rotten arbours and stone seats, and mossy, weed-grown paths. The underwood was impenetrably thick, and only the fine old trees lifted a calm front, indifferent to man’s unkindness. They needed no human hand to care them, and so they throve, and willingly gave grateful shade, and the splendour of their foliage, and the majesty of their form to the dead scene. But of flowers there were none. A coating of moss, bleached and faded, had [Pg 14] grown over the old sun-dial, which now was hidden under the branching trees. Not a bird

sang, nor did any live thing skurry into hiding upon sound of my footstep, as I wandered through the dusky alleys, while my guide went inside to consult her mistress.

The quiet of an empty garden, showing no sign of care or an active presence about it, while within view of smoke and fierce city activities, is surely not comparable with any other quiet in nature. Restriction adds to its intensity. The silence becomes almost palpable from the hum of existence afar, and the spirit of the place seems more vividly personal by reason of the narrowness of vision. You may walk along the loneliest beach man ever trod, and feel less alone than I did in that garden. The dimness of the biggest forest would be comforting after the intolerable motionlessness of its leaves and plumy weeds.

I was beginning to wonder if it would be possible for me to fulfil my contract should the lady of the house consent to share her roof with me, when I heard a child’s clear, joyous laugh. It was a sound of heavenly music to me just then, and effectually dispersed the [Pg 15] gruesome mist which was fast enveloping my reason. The desolation of the place, and the ghastly images which threatened nightmare, could only be accidental, I wisely concluded, if such laughter—fresh, untroubled, and sweet—might be heard unrebuked. When the old woman reappeared, alarm was already soothed, and I was back in the grip of fascinating excitement.

‘Mademoiselle gives me permission to dispose of the lower appartement, which we never occupy now,’ she said, with a smile so human and inviting that I could have embraced her on the spot.

We walked toward the house, which, though gloomy enough, showed nothing to match the mystery of the dark garden. Three broad discoloured steps led to the hall of the lower story, which was offered for my occupation, and inside the large stone hall I noted a little carriage and two wooden horses worked by springs.

‘The sound of Gabrielle’s carriage will not, I hope, disturb Madame? She generally plays here, as there is not space enough upstairs.’

I expressed myself delighted to be in close neighbourhood with the child’s playground. [Pg 16]

‘These used to be poor Madame’s rooms,’ she added, with a big sigh, as she opened the door of a fine, chill salon.

‘The mother of Mademoiselle,’ I conjectured.

‘Oh, no; Mademoiselle’s mother always preferred the rooms upstairs—those which Mademoiselle now lives in. These were her sister’s—young Madame, Gabrielle’s mother.’

‘She is dead?’

‘Alas! yes. It is unlucky to be too much loved—unlucky for loved one and for lovers. Dr. Vermont has never been here since his wife’s death—has never even seen little Gabrielle since she was born, and Mademoiselle has never once smiled.’

I was content to reserve my curiosity for another moment, and applied my attention exclusively to the question of my installation. My vanity, I will own, was something flattered by its magnificence. There were two handsome salons, a bed- and dressing-room, and a dining-room, all richly furnished in Empire style. The best taste may not have prevailed, but there could be no question of substantial effectiveness, and already an air of other days hung round it, and made a pathetic appeal to the judgment. [Pg 17]

As my companion showed me over the kitchen and pantries and other domestic offices, I noted on the farther side of the narrow passage, beyond my bedroom, a closed door which she did not offer to open. My sympathy with Bluebeard’s wife was instantly awakened, and that door became an object of burning interest to me.

From the kitchen she conducted me through the dining-room window into a long glass-roofed gallery, jutting out beyond the house and seeming to hang over the river, so completely hidden were the rocks below. The city lights along the opposite bank were visible, and the heavy masses of boats and barges made moving shadows through the dusk.

‘How lovely!’ I exclaimed, sniffing the soft air delightedly. ‘Here will I sit and walk and read and muse. A month, did I say! I could cheerfully end my days here.’

‘We have no servant at your disposal, Madame,’ the old woman said, phlegmatically checking my enthusiasm by a reminder of the trials of existence. ‘But until you have procured one, I shall be glad to give you any assistance in my power.’ [Pg 18]

I thanked her heartily, and inquired if I could find a fiacre to drive at once for my luggage to town. There was no such thing on the island, she calmly informed me. Nothing in the shape of a wheeled object ever crossed the bridge from the city except the morning vans and the weekly butcher’s cart. Once a week the laundresses wheeled their barrows of linen into town and returned on the same day with the supply for the week’s washing. She could recommend a little maid, whose mother would, no doubt, be glad to undertake to market for me for a consideration, and her I could engage on my way to the hotel.

I left the amiable old dame to prepare for my reception that night, and set forth in the dropping twilight in search of the maid and my portmanteau. I had the wisdom, however, to dine at the hotel before returning to the gloomy island. [Pg 19]

A MIDNIGHT VISION

IT was late when I drove across the bridge from the town. The noise of rumbling wheels upon the pavement, as the cab clattered past the arches, was of such unearthly volume as to arouse the soundest sleeper. In one or two casements lights and alarmed faces showed; but for the rest, the islanders turned upon their pillows, scarcely vexed by idle speculation upon the disturbance.

The darkness of the house chilled my heart, as the cab drove up the grassy pathway, and when the door opened, and the old dame stood in the hall in the uncertain illumination of a single candle, the solitude of the place looked so insufferably strange, that I rubbed my eyes to ascertain if I were really awake and not dreaming. But a substantial cabman was waiting for his fare, and the woman’s thin yellow hand was holding mine in a cordial [Pg 20] clasp. I believe the honest creature had already begun to miss me, and had been counting the minutes until my reappearance.

She led me into the dining-room, where a supper of pâté, fruit, and burgundy was prepared for me, and though I protested that I was not hungry, she compelled me to make a pretence of eating, for the excuse of lingering to talk to me. Mademoiselle had long since retired. She herself had slept a little in order to be fresh for the excitement of my return.

We sat till far into the night, chatting about the great world, about Paris, which to her meant all the sin and misery and gaiety of the entire universe; and about the big town of Beaufort across the river. This impelled me to stand up and draw the curtain, that I might have a peep at it from the gallery. The old woman followed me, and stood leaning beside me against the flat stone balustrade. The lights now along the water were few and widely spread—but in the heaven they had multiplied and twinkled, variously-hued, upon their dark ground.

‘Down there lies the road to Beaufort—the road to Paris,’ my companion murmured wistfully. [Pg 21] ‘It is now ten years since Mademoiselle has been watching it, but never a soul comes by it—never a soul.’

‘Whom is she watching for?’ I asked, in a tone insensibly lowered by her whisper.

‘For Dr. Vermont—little Gabrielle’s father.’

‘Is he the only relative she has?’

‘The only one. It is a sad story. The poor lady is eating her heart out with sorrow for the dead, and idle sorrowing for the living. The dead at least loved her—but the living! Ah, there is nothing harder in nature than the heart of a man turned from a loving woman.’