The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen Part 11

The bishop's wife took the kindest view of it. 'Perhaps you do not have them in the Lutheran Church,' she said; but she did not speak to me again at all, turning her back on me quite this time, and wholly concentrating her attention on the monosyllabic Charlotte.

'My mother,' Ambrose explained in subdued tones, 'meant to say _Kirchenvater_.'

'I am sorry,' said I politely, 'that I was so dull.'

And then he went on with the paragraph--for to me it seemed as though he spoke always in entire paragraphs instead of sentences--he had been engaged upon when I interrupted him; and, for my refreshment, I caught fragments of Mrs. Harvey-Browne's conversation in between.

'I have a message for you, dear Frau Nieberlein,' I heard her say,--'a message from the bishop.'

'Yes?' said Charlotte, without warmth.

'We had letters from home to-day, and in his he mentions you.'

'Yes?' said Charlotte, ungratefully cold.

'"Tell her," he writes,--"tell her I have been reading her pamphlets."'

'Indeed?' said Charlotte, beginning to warm.

'It is not often that the bishop has time for reading, and it is quite unusual for him to look at anything written by a woman, so that it is really an honour he has paid you.'

'Of course it is,' said Charlotte, quite warmly.

'And he is an old man, dear Frau Nieberlein, of ripe experience, and admirable wisdom, as no doubt you have heard, and I am sure you will take what he says in good part.'

This sounded ominous, so Charlotte said nothing.

'"Tell her," he writes,--"tell her that I grieve for her."'

There was a pause. Then Charlotte said loftily, 'It is very good of him.'

'And I can a.s.sure you the bishop never grieves without reason, or else in such a large diocese he would always be doing it.'

Charlotte was silent.

'He begged me to tell you that he will pray for you.'

There was another pause. Then Charlotte said, 'Thank you.'

What else was she to say? What does one say in such a case? Our governesses teach us how pleasant and amiable an adornment is politeness, but not one of mine ever told me what I was to say when confronted by an announcement that I was to be included in somebody's prayers. If Charlotte, anxious to be polite, had said, 'Oh, please don't let him trouble,' the bishop's wife would have been shocked. If she had said what she felt, and wholly declined to be prayed for at all by strange bishops, Mrs. Harvey-Browne would have been horrified. It is a nice question; and it preoccupied me for the rest of the time we sat there, and we sat there a very long time; for although Charlotte was manifestly sorely tried by Mrs. Harvey-Browne I had great difficulty in getting her away. Each time I suggested going back to our lodgings to bed she made some excuse for staying where she was. Everybody else seemed to have gone to bed, and even Ambrose, who had been bicycling all day, had begun visibly to droop before I could persuade her to come home. Slowly she walked along the silent sands, slowly she went into the house, still more slowly into her bedroom; and then, just as Gertrud had blessed me and blown out my candle in one breath, in she came with a light, and remarking that she did not feel sleepy sat down on the foot of my bed and began to talk.

She had on a white dressing-gown, and her hair fell loose about her face, and she was very pale.

'I can't talk; I am much too sleepy,' I said, 'and you look dreadfully tired.'

'My soul is tired--tired out utterly by that woman. I wanted to ask you if you won't come away with me to-morrow.'

'I can't go away till I have explored these heavenly forests.'

'I can't stay here if I am to spend my time with that woman.'

'That woman? Oh Charlotte, don't call her such awful names. Try and imagine her sensations if she heard you.'

'Why, I shouldn't care.'

'Oh hush,' I whispered, 'the windows are open--she might be just outside on the beach. It gives me s.h.i.+vers only to think of it. Don't say it again. Don't be such an audacious German. Think of Oxford--think of venerable things like cathedral closes and bishops' palaces. Think of the dignity and deference that surround Mrs. Harvey-Browne at home. And won't you go to bed? You can't think how sleepy I am.'

'Will you come away with me to-morrow?'

'We'll talk it over in the morning. I'm not nearly awake enough now.'

Charlotte got up reluctantly and went to the door leading into her bedroom. Then she came back and crossed over to the windows and peeped out between the yellow curtains. 'It's bright moonlight,' she said, 'and so quiet. The sea is like a pond. How clear the Sa.s.snitz lights are.'

'Are they?' I murmured drowsily.

'Are you really going to leave your windows open? Any one can get in. We are almost on a level with the beach.'

To this I made no answer; and my little travelling-clock on the table gave point to my silence by chiming twelve.

Charlotte went away slowly, candle in hand. At her door she stopped and looked back. 'It seems,' she said, 'that I have got that unfortunate man's bed.'

So it was the Berlin gentleman who was making her restless.

'And you,' she went on, 'have got the one his daughter was to have had.'

'Is she alive?' I asked sleepily.

'Oh yes, she's alive.'

'Well, that was nice, anyway.'

'I believe you are frightened,' I murmured, as she still lingered.

'Frightened? What of?'

'The Berlin gentleman.'

'Absurd,' said Charlotte, and went away.

I was having a most cheerful dream in which I tried hard to remember the exact words Herbert Spencer uses about effete beliefs that, in the stole, still cling about the necks of priests, and, in gaiters, linger round the legs of bishops, and was repeating the words about the bishops in a rapture of enjoyment--and indeed it is a lovely sentence--when a sudden pause of fear came into my dream, and I felt that some one beside myself was in the room.

The dark to me has always been full of terrors. I can look back through my memories and find past years studded with horrible black nights on which I woke up and was afraid. Till I have lit a candle, how can I remember that I do not believe in ghosts, and in nameless hideousnesses infinitely more frightful than ghosts? But what courage is needed to sit up in all the solid, pressing blackness, and stretch out one defenceless hand into it to feel about for the matches, appalled by the echoing noises the search produces, cold with fear that the hand may touch something unknown and terrible. And so at Binz, dragged out of my pleasant dream to night and loneliness, I could not move for a moment for sheer extremity of fright. When I did, when I did put out a shaking hand to feel for the matches, the dread of years became a reality--I touched another hand. Now I think it was very wonderful of me not to scream. I suppose I did not dare. I don't know how I managed it, petrified as I was with terror, but the next thing that happened was that I found myself under the bedclothes thinking things over. Whose hand had I touched? And what was it doing on my table? It was a nasty, cold hand, and it had clutched at mine as I tore it away. Oh--there it was, coming after me--it was feeling its way along the bedclothes--surely it was not real--it must be a nightmare--and that was why no sound came when I tried to shriek for Charlotte--but what a horrible nightmare--so very, very real--I could hear the hand sliding along the sheet to the corner where I was huddling--oh, why had I come to this frightful island? A gasp of helpless horror did get out, and instantly Charlotte's voice whispered, 'Be quiet. Don't make a sound.

There's a man outside your window.'

At this my senses came back to me with a rush. 'You've nearly killed me,' I whispered, filling the whisper with as much hot indignation as it would hold. 'If my heart had had anything the matter with it I would have died. Let me go--I want to light the candle. What does a man, a real living man, matter?'

Charlotte held me tighter. 'Be quiet,' she whispered, in an agony, it seemed, of fear. 'Be quiet--he isn't--he doesn't look--I don't think he is alive.'

'_What?_' I whispered.