The Familiar by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (book club books .TXT) 📖

insensible

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.