ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
.
Читать онлайн.
I was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which Mary, in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty sepulchre, accosted the figure standing near.
“Your mamma is alive, but too far away to see or hear us; but Swedenborg, standing here, can see and hear her, and tells me all he sees, just as I told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage, and the trees and flowers which you could not see, but believed in when I told you. So I can tell you now as I did then; and as we are both, I hope, walking on to the same place, just as we did to the trees and cottage, you will surely see with your own eyes how true is the description which I give you.”
I was very frightened, for I feared that when he had done his narrative we were to walk on through the wood into that place of wonders and of shadows where the dead are visible.
He leaned his elbow on his knee, and his forehead on his hand, which shaded his downcast eyes, and in that attitude described to me a beautiful landscape, radiant with a wondrous light, in which, rejoicing, my mother moved along an airy path, ascending among mountains of fantastic height, and peaks, melting in celestial colouring into the air, and peopled with human beings translated into the same image, beauty, and splendour. And when he had ended his relation, he rose, took my hand, and smiling gently down on my pale, wondering face, he said in the same words he had spoken before —
“Come, dear, let us be going.”
“Oh! no, no, no — not now,” I said, resisting, and very much frightened.
“Home, I mean, dear. We cannot walk to the place I have described. We can only reach it through the gate of death, to which we are all tending, young and old, with sure steps.”
“And where is the gate of death?” I asked in a sort of whisper, as we walked together, holding his hand very fast, and looking stealthily. He smiled sadly and said —
“When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagar’s eyes were opened in the wilderness, and she beheld a fountain of water, so shall each of us see the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed.”
For a long time after this walk I was very nervous; the more so for the awful manner in which Mrs. Rusk received my statement — with stern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation: “I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the wood with that limb of darkness. It is a mercy he did not show her the devil, or frighten her out of her senses, in that lonely place!”
Of these Swedenborgians, indeed, I know no more than I might learn from good Mrs. Rusk’s very inaccurate talk. Two or three of them crossed in the course of my early life, like magic-lantern figures, the disk of my very circumscribed observation. All outside was and is darkness. I once tried to read one of their books upon the future state — heaven and hell; but I grew after a day or two so nervous that I laid it aside. It is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or fancied he saw amazing visions, which, so far from superseding, confirmed and interpreted the language of the Bible; and as dear papa accepted their ideas, I am happy in thinking that they did not conflict with the supreme authority of holy writ.
Leaning on my hand, I was now looking upon that solemn wood, white and shadowy in the moonlight, where, for a long time after that ramble with the visionary, I fancied the gate of death, hidden only by a strange glamour, and the dazzling land of ghosts, were situate; and I suppose these earlier associations gave to my reverie about my father’s coming visitor a wilder and a sadder tinge.
Chapter 4.
Madame De La Rougierre
ON A SUDDEN, on the grass before me, stood an odd figure — a very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon, courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically.
I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrilly — I could not distinctly hear what through the window — and gesticulating oddly with her long hands and arms.
“There’s a woman at the window!” I gasped; “turn her away, please.”
If I had said a man, I suppose fat Branston would have summoned and sent forward a detachment of footmen. As it was, he bowed gravely, with a —
“Yes,‘m — shall’m.”
And with an air of authority approached the window.
I don’t think that he was pleasantly impressed himself by the first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short some steps of the window, and demanded rather sternly —
“What ye doin’ there, woman?”
To this summons, her answer, which occupied a little time, was inaudible to me. But Branston replied —
“I wasn’t aware, ma’am; I heerd nothin’; if you’ll go round that way, you’ll see the hall-door steps, and I’ll speak to the master, and do as he shall order.”
The figure said something and pointed.
“Yes, that’s it, and ye can’t miss of the door.”
And Mr. Branston returned slowly down the long room, and halted with out-turned pumps and a grave inclination before me, and the faintest amount of interrogation in the announcement —
“Please, ‘m, she says she’s the governess.”
“The governess! What governess?”
Branston was too well-bred to smile, and he said thoughtfully —
“P’raps, ‘m, I’d best ask the master.”
To which I assented, and away strode the flat pumps of the butler to the library.
I stood breathless in the hall. Every girl at my age knows how much is involved in such an advent. I also heard Mrs. Rusk, in a minute or two more, emerge I suppose from the study. She walked quickly, and muttered sharply to herself — an evil trick, in which she indulged when much “put about.” I should have been glad of a word with her; but I fancied she was vexed, and would not have talked satisfactorily. She did not, however, come my way; merely crossing the hall with her quick, energetic step.
Was it really the arrival of a governess? Was that apparition which had impressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of me — to sit alone with me, and haunt me perpetually with her sinister looks and shrilly gabble?
I was just making up my mind to go to Mary Quince, and learn something definite, when I heard my father’s step approaching from the library: so I quietly re-entered the drawing-room, but with an anxious and throbbing heart.
When he came in, as usual, he patted me on the head gently, with a kind of smile, and then began his silent walk up and down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point that just then engrossed me so disagreeably; but the awe in which I stood of him forbade.
After a time he stopped at the window, the curtain of which I had drawn, and the shutter partly opened, and he looked out perhaps with associations of his own, on the scene I had been contemplating.
It was not for nearly an hour after, that my father suddenly, after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, and feared her.
I had more than an apprehension of her temper and fear of possibly abused authority. The large-featured, smirking phantom, saluting me so oddly in the moonlight, retained