LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

– died. His dairies, which I fancy were lucrative things enough, were immediately sold, and taken by a person who, we were informed, would not only continue to supply Walworth with their produce, but, from motives of caprice or economy, would deliver it himself. Accordingly, the man you have seen pass this evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few days, however, he came, attended by that mysterious female, dogged precisely as you have seen him an hour ago, and at once the heart of every cook and kitchen-maid in the parish was on fire with curiosity and suspicion. From the kitchen the contagion spread to the drawing-room, and commissions of enquiry, in the shape of tea-parties, were held in every house relative to the strange milk-vender and his stranger shadow. To those who asked him any questions on the matter, and very few ventured to do so – for his manner, though civil, had reserve and sullenness, and there was in his deportment a decent propriety, that repulsed, or rather prevented, enquiry – he usually answered that he 'knew nothing of the woman who followed him;' 'that he dared to say it was from some whim;' 'that she was welcome to do so if she pleased;' 'she had the same right of highway as any other person,' and suchlike evasive replies."

      "But his companion – I should rather say, his attendant – from her sex, she would, at least, be something more communicative?"

      "Not at all. She was very seldom spoken to upon any subject. She kept aloof from all who seemed disposed to be inquisitive; and if she ever came within range, as the sailors say, of a question, she never gave an intelligible, or at least satisfactory, answer. Besides, as she was never seen save in the track of him whom she lives but to pursue, her own sex have had no opportunity of conciliating her into an acquaintanceship, and their patience and curiosity have long consumed themselves away."

      "Then, after all, it may be only the whim of an eccentric woman that leads her thus to persecute an inoffensive, industrious person?"

      "I cannot think so. I am persuaded there is some peculiar occurrence in their past lives that has thus mysteriously associated them – some conscious secret that, by its influence, draws them forcibly into contact. What the nature of this strange sympathy may be, I cannot form the least idea."

      "Has no one attempted to unriddle it before now?"

      "Not with any prospect of success. Of course there have been a thousand conjectures. Among the lower orders of people, the prevalent opinion is, that the woman once possessed a large sum of money, out of which this Maunsell (for such is his name) contrived to cheat her; and that she has ever since haunted him, as they very appropriately term it. But this offence I am inclined to think infinitely too light a one to draw upon him the grievous punishment which has been so many years inflicted on him. One of our neighbours, Rochfort, a very matter-of-fact sort of man, not at all given to the marvellous, asserts, that he witnessed by accident what he is sure was the first meeting of the Pair after the man's arrival in this quarter. It was late in the evening; Rochfort was standing, he says, in the shadow of a gateway that breaks up the long blank wall of a large timber-yard that belongs to him, at some distance from this, and which skirts a lonely and unfrequented road leading to Kennington. He is positive there was not a human being but himself within sight or hearing, when he perceived the milkman coming along by the wall, his footsteps echoing loudly up the dusty path. Not choosing to encounter a stranger at the moment in such a spot, my friend withdrew further into the shadow of the gateway. The man, in passing it, happening to drop some pieces of money from his hand, stooped to recover then; and while so engaged, a female, who, Rochfort asserts, must have risen out of the earth on the instant, suddenly appeared standing at the searcher's side, perfectly motionless, and muffled in those dark funereal garments that have since been so familiar to our eyes. On lifting his head the man perceived her, started, but, my informant says, it was more the subdued start of one accustomed to face horror, than the overwhelming dismay of a person terrified for the first time: he folded his arms, as if endeavouring to collect himself, but his whole frame shook convulsively. He was about to speak, when a noise of workmen approaching up the archway stopped him, and, turning away, he hastened on – that dark spectral woman gliding noiselessly after him."

      "Perhaps," I said, with a forced laugh – for, despite of myself, the story was exciting my imagination as well as curiosity – "she really is a visitant from another world."

      "There are not wanting those who say so," replied my friend; "but however ghost-like her mission and appearance may be, I believe there is no doubt that as yet she is a denizen in the flesh."

      "And this Pair – where and how do they reside?"

      "The man lives at his dairies, a considerable way from here, and although he has, I am told, an extensive establishment, never goes out but on his daily business. He is of a serious, methodistical disposition, and, I understand, affects devotional reading a good deal; yet he is never seen at a place of worship. He is unmarried, nor does any relative or companion reside with him. The woman – it is hardly known where she lives; in some miserable lonely room far away, buried in the heart of one of those dismal courts that lurk in the outlets of London, her way of life and means of support equally unknown, the one object of her existence palpable to all – to come forth at the grey of daybreak in winter and summer, in storm or shine, and seat herself at a little distance from that man's abode, until he makes his appearance: when he was passed her, to rise, to follow, to track him through the livelong day with that unflagging constancy poets are fond of ascribing to unquenchable love, which the early Greeks attributed to their impersonations of immortal Hate."

      "Surely the wild and doubtful surmises that those circumstances have raised in people's minds must have had an injurious effect on Maunsell's business?"

      "Not at all; on the contrary, I think it has assisted it. Every neighbourhood loves to have a mystery of its own, and we, you must confess, have got a superlative one. The man has been found scrupulously honest, regular, and exact in his dealings; and were we to lose him now, and get a mere common-place person to succeed him, half the housewives of Walworth would perish of inanition. And now," said Sainsbury, rising, "That I have imparted to you all I know respecting the milkman and his familiar, let us to the drawing-room and seek some coffee."

      Chapter II

      The night that followed this conversation was to me a most uncomfortable one. The episode in the day's occurrences had made so deep an impression on me, that it excluded all other thoughts from my mind, which it occupied so intently, that, upon retiring to my chamber, several hours elapsed before I sought repose. I did so at last, but in vain. Between the fever attendant upon my indisposition, and the irksomeness of frame caused by mental inquietude, sleep was completely banished from my eyelids, or visited them only in short and broken slumbers, peopled by the distorted images of my waking thoughts. The mysterious Pair were again before me. I saw them gliding through the long street, the man hastening on in that attitude, so strikingly described by Coleridge, like one

      "Who walks in fear and dread;

      And having once turn'd round, walks on,

      And turns no more his head,

      Because he knows a frightful fiend

      Doth close behind him tread" —

      the woman keeping on his track with the constancy of Doom. Or I was standing a witness to their first meeting in the grim Dark on that lonely road, their eyes of hate and fear staring wildly into each other. Sometimes I found myself spellbound between the two, the centre upon which their fearful sympathies revolved, the object upon which their long pent-up passions were about to burst. Starting from those visions, my waking fancies were hardly less tormenting. I was just at that season of youth, before the calmer and nobler faculties have acquired maturity and tone; when incidents that vary but little from the ordinary economy of life, seen through the medium of the imagination, assume a magnitude of distinctness not properly their own. On the present occasion, however, my friend's recital was well calculated to arouse the speculations of a romantic fancy; and mine was now fully employed in forming a thousand conjectures in elucidation of the curious circumstances he had repeated to me. What could be the relation between those strange parties? Was it attachment in the one and aversion in the other? Or had one, as was commonly supposed, been the plundered victim – the other the Despoiler? Neither of these cases could be so. A petty office of police would have relieved the persecuted

Скачать книгу