‘If you like, I will play with you,’ she offered, with a serious condescension that was captivating. ‘I have no one to play with except Minette and Monsieur Con. Wouldn’t you like to see Minette? She is a little fluffy, white kitten. Monsieur Con is my rabbit. Come and I will show them to you.’
This was the start of a friendship delightful enough to have moored my barque to those island shores for an indefinite period, if even there had been no irresistible interest of environment and personality to enthral me. But Mademoiselle Lenormant’s character was a character of unusual fascination—not in the sense of sexual attraction but from the point of view of study. She came and sat with me for half an hour late that afternoon. I could not fitly describe her as formal, for she breathed of austere sadness and study. Her pretensions to beauty, in the accepted form, can never have been great, but defective features found an abundant apology in the extreme delicacy of the pallid face and a certain wistful eagerness and suppressed tenderness of expression. It was a face to haunt you into the silent watches of the night, in its mute eloquence of suggestion—like a spirit or a picture. Having looked once upon it, it dwelt for ever apart in the memory, constantly provoking thought, conjecture, and raking the fanciful waters of romance by gliding dreams of sorrow and solitude, and the tragedy that finds no voice or fraternal sympathy upon the noisy surface of life.
Silence I should say had been the great feature of her existence. Even upon the odd impersonal subjects that sprang up for discussion in our conversations, her talk was scant and weighted with an unusual intonation, as if speech came to her amiss. She pondered each commonplace I uttered, and gazed steadfastly into space or down upon the river before replying, which she did very seriously after a long pause. At first this eccentricity of hers much disconcerted me. To exclaim in soft rapture, ‘How lovely the stillness here is!’ and a few minutes later, when you had quite lost sight of the trite observation, to have it cast back upon the wavering plain of dialogue in some such manner, and in tones of musing gravity:
‘You think such stillness as this lovely? It is perhaps the novelty of it alone that enchants you’—
Or, in response to a previous half-forgotten remark received in absolute silence, that the way the boats and barges dropped suddenly out of view as they passed under the bridge was strangely attractive, to find the idea caught by the heels, and gently forced into earnest discussion by a word of imperious invitation. For there was an air of extremely winning command about her, that from the first I found impossible to resist. Her neck was long, and the head upon it beautifully set, and her movements, her gestures and looks, were those of a princess in disguise. An over-wrought imagination might of course—possibly did—exaggerate this air of command and these sovereign attitudes, but I came afterwards to see that I was not alone in my delusion, and that upon ardent youth of the other sex, her quiescent influence could be potential to salvation.
Of the nature of her occupations and ideas I remained quite in the dark for some days to come. Regularly, of an afternoon, she would visit me in the gallery, where we sat and discussed the ‘eternal verities’ in an abrupt, unenthusiastic way. I could see that she purposely withheld herself, her real self, from intrusion or impertinent survey. Seclusion had taught her prudence, and reticence was a natural gift. But how in the name of the marvellous, upon an empty island, where social intercourse is undreamed of, had she come by knowledge of the hollowness of casual expansion and the nothingness of ready sympathy?
This is a lesson the cynical society deity teaches us after harsh and prolonged experiences of considerable variety, and except to its votaries, could only be known to those hermits who went into the desert to rest from the vanity of experiment and pleasure.
Joséphine’s garrulity, however, made instructive Mademoiselle’s reserve. From her I learnt, by meagre instalments, this enigmatic lady’s story. But not much until a little scene had pushed me upon the other side of discretion, and driven me to sue for enlightenment.
It happened thus. In the grip of wakefulness I had gone out to walk about the gallery. There was no moon, and upon the turn of the season, the night was chill and starless. Across the smoke-coloured heaven odd masses wandered, pursued by the wind that blew down from the North. The river below made a stain of exceeding blackness in the dark picture, and beat the rocks in angry protest against the whining uneasiness of the air. For it whined dismally round the island, and blew among the trees of the garden like an army of dreary banshees. A sense of horror of the place grew upon me, and I began to hunger for the big bright world beyond; for gas-lit streets and the sordid aspects of city life. I yearned to jostle my fellows along the highways once more, and listen to the sound of vocal dispute upon the public place. I saw in vision streams of people emerging from illuminated theatres, heard the cheerful roll of carriages, and the noisy murmur of laughter and speech. I longed for it all again—all that I had despised, and told myself in the midst of its enjoyment that I hated. After all, I was but a poor mountebank of a hermit. Town born, I could never hope to free myself permanently from the influences of birth, and I knew that sooner or later nostalgia for city sounds and sights—for the multitudinous accompaniments of its existence, must find me and pursue me into the heart of the most congenial solitude, into the most heavenly of rural retreats.
The gallery ran round the angles of the house, and on the other side looked down into the garden and in upon the window of Madame Vermont’s blue room. I went round it in a thirst for movement, but, fearful of disturbing the sleep of others, I walked very softly. To my complete surprise, and I will not aver without a momentary qualm of terror, I saw the reflection of a stream of light upon the near window of the blue chamber. I hardly believe in ghosts; but it would indeed be rash to hint that it was no vague dread of the supernatural that started my unequal heart-beats just then. I felt the blood gush and swell to bursting the arteries about my temples and throat, and at the back of my ears. Fright was not a check upon curiosity, but rather a strong impetus. Though I might approach in a conflict of emotions, I did not hesitate for one moment to approach, and was confronted with sharp disappointment when I saw that the stream of light upon the floor fell from an earthly candle-stick, and that Mademoiselle was leaning over the polished foot of the bed and gazing steadfastly at the empty pillow.