I cannot forbear to mention a thing which happened at this time, so strange, so contrary to reason and experience, so far removed from the ordinary stories of apparitions and phantoms, that, had I not been agitated by a thousand tumultuous joys, I must have been thrown by it into great apprehensions, and perhaps have felt compelled to lay the matter before the Bishop.
The thing is concerned with my maid Jenny, of course. I have already explained that she was an active and faithful maid, clever with her needle, a good hairdresser, modest and respectful in her behaviour to me, whatever she was to others. With all these virtues, it is grievous to remember that if ever a woman was a witch, and had dealings with the devil —— why, even Mr. Hilyard, who is always most cautious in these matters, confesses that the matter is beyond his comprehension, and he knows not how to explain it, or what to say of it. Let us remember that at Blanchland she saw apparitions (though others saw none), to the terror of the village; and there also she was said to lead about a rustic whom she made to do whatever she pleased (this at the time I believed not, though now I know that it may be true). And at Dilston she acted parts either of her own invention, or imitated people, or declaimed what she had heard to such admiration that the men gazed upon her with open mouths, and the kitchen-maids dropped the dishes, and the elder women crossed themselves. Gipsy blood will show, they say; no doubt these outcasts are in some sort more liable than the rest of us to diabolical possession, and it is by this, and no other way, that they are enabled to read the future, predict fortunes, and, above all, to bewitch a man and make him do whatsoever they please.
It was on the morning after this day of gifts —— a gloomy and cloudy morning, with mist lying over the Devilswater and the meadow beneath the Hall; the gentlemen were in the fields shooting; Lady Katharine was, I suppose, in the chapel; Lady Mary was dozing in her chair; the maids were all at work below and in the kitchens. I, having nothing to do, and a heart troubled but full of joy, began to roam by myself about the great house. First I went into the library, where few ever sat. Sometimes my lord went thither to spend an hour; he was a gentleman of parts, and possessed as much learning as befits a man of his rank. An earl must not be a writer of books or a poet by trade, though he may, as Lord Rochester did, write witty and ingenious verses to be given to his mistress or to please the Court. Frank Radcliffe was often there, and sometimes Mr. Howard. To-day when I opened the door I saw the good old priest sleeping beside a great wood fire, on his knees a massive volume in calf, with brass clasps —— no doubt a learned work on theology. So, not to disturb him, I shut the door again quite softly, and went along the passages among the many old rooms, hung with tapestry, and furnished after an antique style. Some of them were occupied, but for the most part they were empty, and I looked curiously into them, half afraid of the deep shadows, in which ghosts might linger. If I entered these silent chambers, I peeped hurriedly into the mirrors, fearful lest, as has happened to many honest people, I might see a second face in addition to my own, or, which is worse than a whole procession of ghosts, not my own face at all, but quite another one —— a strange, a threatening, and an angry face —— or the face of a demon. I have often prayed to be protected from this form of visitation, of which I could tell many stories, but refrain, merely saying that it is a sure indication of great disaster thus to see a strange and angry face in the mirror instead of your own.
The house being so silent, the air without so misty, and the rooms so dark, it is not wonderful that I presently fell into that expectant spirit in which nothing seems strange, so that if all my ancestors on the Radcliffe side had with one consent marched up the corridor to greet me, I should have taken it as nothing out of the way or even unexpected. It is a condition of mind into which it is easy to fall when one is in a reverie.
Now, as I walked along the passage, I became aware of a voice: it was a low voice, which I knew very well, but did not remember whose it was (when one’s head was full of Lord Derwentwater, could one remember the voice of a servant-maid?). Without following or seeking after that voice, I walked by accident straight to the room whence it came, and, the door being open, and I not thinking one way or the other whether I ought to look or whether I ought not, I not only looked in at the door, but I walked into the room. Truly I was as one in a dream.
The thing which I saw awakened me from my dream, and I started and was seized with a horror the like of which I never felt before and hope never to feel again; because I saw with my own eyes the bewitching of a man by a woman.
It was a large low room without much furniture, and I think it had once been used for a children’s room, for there were little chairs about, and broken toys. There were only two persons in the room: one of the two was Frank Radcliffe, and the other was none other, if you please, than Jenny, my own maid. That Frank should condescend to hold conversation at all with this blackeyed gipsy girl might have filled me with wonder; yet I was not so young or so innocent (what country girl is?) as not to know that young gentlemen will often stoop to rustic wenches, to their own shame and the just ruin of the latter. But Frank was not like many of our young bloods, a mere hunting and shooting creature, born to destroy vermin for the farmers and provide game for the table. He was a gentleman of high breeding and polished, nay, delicate manners, no more capable, one would think, of being led out of himself by the flashing eyes of a village beauty than my lord himself; a scholar too, and man of books. Yet here he was; and with him, Jenny. The girl was sitting on a high chair with her back to the door, and therefore saw me not; nor did she hear my footsteps. Before her, like a boy at school before his master, stood the young man. To think that she should sit, and he be standing! But oh, heavens! what ailed him? His eyes were open, and he gazed straight before him, so that he looked into my face, but he seemed to see nothing; his arms were hanging motionless; he stood erect, like a soldier with a pike in waiting for the word of command; his cheek was pale: he seemed as one whose soul had fled while his body waits for its return, or as one entranced, or as one who walks in his sleep. Yet, for the strange feeling upon me, as if anything might happen and nothing was wonderful, I stood where I was and looked on in silence, though what I saw was beyond the power of the mind to conceive.
Were they play-acting? But in no play-acting that ever I heard of does the actor go through his performance with face so motionless. The play-acting was nothing. Jenny lifted her finger, Frank did the same. Jenny folded a paper into a kind of narrow tube and gave it him, muttering something in a low voice. Then he put the tube to his lips and made as if he were smoking a pipe.
Then Jenny made another gesture, and he dropped the paper.
‘Think next,’ she said imperiously, ‘of my own people, the gipsies. I want to know what old granny is doing, and what she is saying. If she is making a charm, tell me how she makes it.’
‘There is a gipsy camp,’ he replied slowly, but with no change in his eyes, ‘outside the houses of a village. They have drawn their carts round an open space, where there is a great fire and a pot upon it.’
‘And granny —— what is granny doing?’
‘I see an old woman lying upon the boards in one of the carts. A young man lies beside her, groaning and twisting about.’
‘What does granny say?’
‘She bids him cheer up; for what is a simple flogging at the cart-tail when once ’tis over? And what is a sore back to the rheumatism in every bone?’
‘It is my cousin, Pharaoh Lee,’ said Jenny. ‘Poor Pharaoh! He has been stealing poultry, no doubt. The back of him should be of leather by now, unless backs get the softer for flogging, like a beefsteak. Well —— Leave the camp, and think of my lord, your brother. So —— where is he?’
‘He is walking beside Tom Forster, fowling — piece on shoulder. But he looks neither to right nor left, and he is not thinking of the birds.’
‘What is he thinking of, then?’
‘He is thinking,’ replied Frank, ‘of Dorothy. His mind is quite full of her. He can think of nothing else. He has told her that he loves her, and before she goes away he will tell her so again. “Sweet Dorothy!” he says in his mind. “Fair Dorothy! There is none like Dorothy Forster.”
Now, when I heard these words it seemed to me as if the things I saw and heard were ghostly and sent from the other world, wherefore I fell into the deadly terror which seizes those who behold such things and receive such messages, and I shrieked aloud and fell into a swoon, which lasted I know not how long.
When I came to myself, I was sitting in the chair where Jenny (unless it was a vision) had been exercising her witcheries. She was kneeling at my feet, beating my palms, and putting a cold, wet towel to my forehead, with a face full of terror and surprise.
‘Ah!’ she said, ‘you are better now, my lady.’
‘What is it, Jenny?’ I cried, clutching her hand and looking around. ‘What is it? Where is he?’
‘Where is he?’ she repeated. ‘Why —— who?’
‘Mr. Francis Radcliffe.’
‘Mr. Frank? Indeed, your ladyship, I know not. I suppose he may have gone out with the gentlemen shooting, or perhaps, because he is a studious gentleman, he is in the library, or talking, maybe, to Mr. Hilyard. What should Mr. Frank be doing here?’
‘Nay —— but I saw him!’
‘Where did you see him? Oh, madam! rest a while. Your poor head is wandering. You must have had a shock.’
‘I saw him, I say —— here with you —— wicked girl! with your sorceries.’ I pushed her from me; but she looked astonished and not guilty at all —— which was most strange.
‘Alas! madam, what sorceries? I know not what you mean. I was in your own room hard by, putting up the lace for your hair, which I shall dress by-and-by’—— my own room was close at hand, but I had forgotten it ——‘when I heard a loud cry and a something fall, and ran to help —— and oh dear! —— oh dear! —— it was your ladyship lying on the fl............