CHAPTER XIII. RUSE DE GUERRE.
It must not be supposed that Frederick Brandon
was allowed to pursue this long analysis without frequent
interruptions from his fair companion; frequent questionings,
doubts, and suggestions occurred during his
progress, which we have not thought necessary to
put on record. Nor must the reader fancy that the
lover was, at any time, so abrupt in his expressions,
as, in our anxiety to contract our narrative to certain
dimensions, we may have suffered him sometimes to
appear. His philosophies compassed, also, a much
larger province of thought than it has been within our
desire or ability to exhibit. Many things were said
in order to soften suggestions which might have startled
the superstitious nature; and much soothing was
employed to pacify the timid in her superstitious
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fancies. In all his conversation, Brandon was properly
heedful of all her feelings and distresses. He had
schooled his mind to progress, and, calm himself,
mentally—whatever might be the emotions feverishly
working in his heart, he had been able to address
himself to the woman whom he loved, with a care that
never once forgot the physician in the philosopher.
He had succeeded, certainly, in awakening in the mind
of his hearer some of that skepticism which had justified
his own. This was indicated in her enlivened expression
of countenance—in her anxiety that he should
proceed—and in a certain resumption of her former elasticity
of mood, which at one time had rendered her quite
as volatile and gay as she was susceptible. He was
at no loss to follow up the train of opinion and argument
with which he had begun.
“All this,” said Marie de Berniere, after a pause,
speaking in low tones—scarce breathing, indeed, from
excitement—“all this is certainly very strange, and
very strongly urged. But your argument, Frederick,
with some exceptions, relates only to general speculations
upon the merely probable or possible in such an
affair. In these respects you have made your views
plausible; but how are you to overcome the one great
fact touching the secret revelation?”
“Forgive me, Marie, if I claim to have dealt in
something more than generalities. These I have
employed as subsidiary only to positive arguments
bearing upon decisive points in the case. For example,
the appearance of the spectre, looking neither
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like the living nor the dead, partaking of both in some
degree—a spirit shrouded in corruption—”
“But we are not to know what are the characteristics
of such an apparition—with what purpose
designed—from what condition suffering—under what
necessities made active.”
“You have not examined my objections thoroughly,
Marie. I object that the spectre was, at once, too
much and too little specific; that he showed too
many and too few details; that he so mixed the aspects
of both conditions, of life and death, as properly
to represent neither. But, I pass this particular over.
There is one point which seems a staggering one:
that Colonel de Berniere, who in life was six inches
shorter than myself, should, as a spectre, be my superior
in height; a matter scarcely consistent with the
necessity which he seemed to acknowledge of appearing
to you, as he did, at the first hour of his demise.
Whether a spectre may dilate in one region and not
another, grow in height and not in bulk, is a question,
to determine which we have no absolute criteria.
But, according to all vulgar human thinking, the case
would be an exceedingly anomalous one; and I repeat,
one is at a loss to account for any supernatural necessity
to exhibit the features of the spiritual man, or
living man, at all, in a case of supernatural visitation;
since, in such cases, it is evident that the spectre has
only to rely upon his mission, to find all your instincts
friendly to his recognition. There was no
necessity to appeal to you for the recollection of features
which look like neither death nor life; nor stare
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at you through eyes fixed and glassy; nor speak to
you through lips blue and clammy with corruption.
It would not so much offend our sense of propriety,
that he should appear to you entirely as he did when
alive, or entirely as he did when dead; or not to appear
to you at all, except in a vague outline formed
by cloud and vapor. As he appears to you, it does
not seem that he resembles either condition, that of
the dead, the living, or the spiritual; but as a something
made up of all three. This seems to me to
have been the error of a mountebank, rather than a
ghost.”
“Frederick, you confound me.”
“I do not aim at this, Marie. My desire is only
to enlighten you, and to free you from one of the
most monstrous impositions that cunning ever attempted
upon credulity. The juggler who pulls these
wires, built quite as much upon your imaginative susceptibilities
as upon his own adroitness.”
“I confess myself greatly impressed by what you
have said; but when I remember that dreadful revelation—
that cruel secret—”
“This seems to me scarcely more difficult than any
other portion of the mystery. I little doubt that you
yourself have betrayed this secret a thousand times.”
“How, when, where, to whom?”
“To the night, to the air, to the silence, to the birds!
Persons of the sanguine temperament are continually
talking aloud, particularly in their sleep. This is certain,
where the mind is an imaginative one. It never
sleeps. You have never deliberately designed telling
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this secret. Nay, you have watched your lips with
sleepless anxiety, lest they should prattle unadvisedly.
Yet the very anxieties of that watch have probably
forced you into speech the moment your observing
faculties were at rest; and you have soliloquized the
apprehensions aloud in respect to the grievous burden
which lay pressing at your heart. Nature has revenged
herself in sleep for the constraints which you
put upon her when you were awake; and your unconscious
lips were compelled to unclose their portals,
nightly, for the escape of that prisoner whom you kept,
during your wakeful hours, under such heavy bonds.
A secret, in this condition, is the most restless of spiritual
things. The deplorable necessity which such a
captive imposed upon the barber of King Midas, you
have not forgotten. The keeper of it, weary of his
task, gladly seeks to transfer his captive to some
other's keeping.”
“But supposing this conjecture to be justly founded;
supposing me to talk in my sleep—which I believe I
do, for I dream a great deal—who is there to watch
the appearance of the prisoner, and take possession
of it when it leaves its captivity? Colonel de Berniere
evidently never knew it while he lived. For months
before his death we slept in separate apartments. In
all that time, and even since his death, I have invariably
slept alone, my maid occupying an adjacent
chamber, in which she could only hear my bell. She
could not, by any possibility, have heard the murmurs
of my voice while I slept, or anything less than my loudest
summons, when awake. That Colonel de Berniere
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never knew or suspected my meditated offence when
alive, I am very sure. He had never spared me the
discovery, the shame, and probably the punishment
due to my unhappy error. And, for my maid—can
it be supposed that, if she had made the discovery, I
should have been able to escape her assumptions in
consequence, and in due degree with the importance
of the secret?”
“My dear Marie, neither Colonel de Berniere nor
your maid effected the discovery. I am very sure that
the latter knows nothing of this, though she may be in
possession of some other secrets not wholly disconnected
with it; and as for the former, whether he
knows now or not, I am quite as sure that he is altogether
innocent of the offence of troubling you. But
if you spoke not your secret in your sleep—if you
suffered or summoned no confidant while you deliberately
revealed it, it is yet most probable that your
own lips have in some way made the revelation first.
You say that you withheld it wholly from the confessional?”
“To my shame and sorrow I did!”
“You have spoken it in your prayers in your
closet, when you fancied you had no other auditor
than God himself, and when you invited him to listen?”
“Surely, Frederick, I have so prayed and so spoken
in my prayers.”
“How easy, then, to suppose that you were heard
by other than spiritual ears.”
“Ha! How?”
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“Nay, I am prepared to believe that you were seen
when you compounded the poison with the wine!”
“Impossible!”
“Not more impossible than the ghost! Nay, Marie,
we are only to believe the ghost, when all human
agencies are shown to be unequal to the mystery.
The miracle is such only, when it is totally beyond
the ability of mortal to achieve. Hearken to me, now,
for this brings me to another of the arguments which
persuade me that you are the victim of a fraud. In
your statement to me, of all the particulars, you
mentioned that when the poison was mixed, and in
your hands for use—when the medicated wine was
about to be placed in the way of Colonel de Berniere,
your better thoughts came to your aid—your soul revolted
at the crime; and with the firmness of a spirit
totally emancipated from the snares of Satan, and
shuddering to have been so far seduced to sin, you
cast away the fatal liquor, and fell upon your knees
in penitence and prayer to God. This was in your
chamber—in your closet—and when you fancied yourself
utterly alone?”
“The door was locked!—what reason have you
to think that I was not alone?”
“The very best of reasons; which I gather from
the revelations of the spectre himself. You may remember,
while telling me of the event, that I asked
you, cursorily—led to the inquiry by a sudden suspicion—
whether the spectre showed an intimate acquaintance
with the details of your meditated crime—
whether, in other words, he distinctly named your
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offence, and showed such a knowledge of the particular
facts, as proved that he did not rely upon a vague
suggestion, made at random, rather with the view to
surprising a guilty conscience of which he had suspicion,
than with the design to chide and denounce for
offences fully known?”
“Yes—and I then told you that he betrayed the
most surprising knowledge of all the particulars;
described the poison; named it (and I myself did not
know the name before); mentioned where I procured
it; how I mixed it; what I did with it; when first
mixed; where I threw it from the window; and of the
prayer which I made by the bedside, prostrate upon
the floor; the very words I spoke; the very tears I
shed!”
“Precisely! Now, then, Marie, this very particularity
assured me that your Egyptian was no ghost;
certainly, none dispatched from heaven. When you
first told me of these details, I could scarce desist
from the exclamation aloud, that he knew too much!
at all events he said too much. He proved to me,
not that he was a prophet, but that he had been a
witness. For why should the spectre do more than
appeal to your conscience for the sufficient proof of
his charge? Are we to suppose that the direct
minister of Heaven, assured of what he says, would
doubt, for a moment, his power to compel your faith
in his mission by a simple general statement of the
guilty act which you had meditated? What need had
he to say more than—`Woman, what hast thou done!
What didst thou design against thy husband's life in
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the moment of his debauchery and security! How
didst thou mingle the deadly potion with his drink,
meaning to dispatch him to judgment with all his sins
upon his head! And wouldst thou now wed another?
Retire thou, rather, into the shades of the convent,
and there deplore thy sins in sackcloth, that thy soul
be not forfeit forever!'—What more would have been
necessary to strike the guilty heart into confession?
and it would have been enough for you! But our
ghost was not content with this; secure in his facts,
he was not satisfied unless he could overwhelm you
with them. He thought you might be stubborn. He
allowed too little for conscience. He aimed to do that
which the true prophet does not think necessary to
attempt—to prove to you the things which your own
soul knew needed no proof whatsoever! The ghost, as
I said before, proved too much. He proves to me, dear
Marie, that he was a living witness of all your proceedings—
all, at least, which were connected with your
meditated offence!”
“Impossible! Oh, Frederick! impossible!”
The nice sensibilities of the woman shrunk at the
idea of a surveillance so audacious and unmanly, as
left her no security even in the sacred recesses of her
chamber.
“Solemnly, dear Marie, I say and believe this to
be the truth. I have labored intently to reason out
this mysterious affair. I may not satisfy you, but I am
myself satisfied. The progress of my inquiry has
brought me, step by step, to these several conclusions:
that the Egyptian is an impostor—that his purpose is
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to separate us—nay, not only to prevent your marrying
with me, but to prevent your marriage altogether,
and with anybody—that he has fathomed your secret
by merely human means—that he has employed
merely human agencies; however obscure and difficult
this may seem to you, in imposing upon you the appearance
of Colonel de Berniere—and (a vital particular
in the future prosecution of our inquiry) that he
had acquired, within your chamber, all the knowledge
which he possesses.”
“In the name of Heaven, Frederick, what is it that
you suspect?”
“That your dwelling is pierced by secret passages,
and that your chamber is accessible from without by
avenues which you do not dream of.”
“I will have it instantly pulled down.”
“Nay, nay; softly: by no means. That would certainly
enable us to prove the facility with which your
chamber might be penetrated, but would leave the
rest still doubtful, to trouble your thoughts with
future misgivings. Besides, it would probably defeat
all our efforts to discover the impostor.”
“But who can this be, Frederick? I see that you
have your suspicions of him, also.”
“I confess it, Marie, but must plead with you to
allow me, for the present, to keep this one conjecture
to myself. It is not improbable, however, that I shall
lead you to him hereafter, by irresistible conclusions.
But let me proceed. It has been one of my frequent
subjects of reverie, the construction of houses for defence
and security, upon plans at once satisfying the
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rigorous selfishness of the feudal Baron, of Gothic
periods, and the no less selfish, but more voluptuous
fancies of the Eastern Caliphs. I must premise,
by telling you that constructiveness is, perhaps, my
most prominent phrenological development. In exercising
it in my dreams, I have indulged in the most
mixed, various, and wonderful problems of architecture;
and, at one time of my life, in the deep shades
of our forest domain in Tennessee, I had planned the
most audacious experiment in castle-building, with the
very materials out of which we frame the common loghouse.
I had towers and bastions, and wings and
keeps, donjon and drawbridge. The wall was, on
one side, to be incorporated with the dwelling, and on
another side the towers were to overhang the dear
little Indian lakelet of Istahkapah, upon which my
infant eyes first opened to the light. I had gardens
of rare luxury, with verandas leading into them, and
these so embowered with vines, fruit, and foliage, that
the memories of Bagdad, and of the great Haroun,
should be forced, irresistibly, upon the mind of all
who entered them. A vast area was to be inclosed
by the fortifications and flanking towers of the castle,
in which I was to practise a thousand sorceries, for
the delight and wonder of the twin spirit whom I
should beguile into my forest empire. Of these dreaming
structures, these wild schemes of a restless fancy,
I trust, dear Marie, that I shall yet be permitted, in
spite of our ghost, to unfold to you, as part proprietor,
the wondrous history; at moments when your heart
shall most easily incline you to forgive the builder for
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his boyish follies. At this moment, however, I have
only to say—as suiting a present purpose—that one
of my favorite studies was the contrivance of secret
passages through the walls of the castle; and stair-flights,
entrances, and facilities for escape, such as
should blind the sharpest conjecture, and baffle the
most vigorous pursuit. You can have no idea of the
degree of perfection which I attained in the prosecution
of these fancies—how admirably I contrived my
avenues in spaces inconceivably small, which I yet
contrived to gain from wall and chimney without leaving
any apparent region unaccounted for; how artfully
I introduced passages into apartments, and sections
of apartments, where it was beyond common
conjecture that such could be; and with what happy
ingenuity I contrived modes of opening the secret entrance
into the apartment, making it easy and difficult
at once—easy of use to him who knew, and when the
emergency required it, and difficult of detection by the
stranger, even where its presence was suspected.
Thus my domains were penetrable or impenetrable,
as I myself thought proper; and my privacy might
be guarded by material agents, whose prompt efficiency
was comparable to such as are usually ascribed to
spells of magic. Thus could I escape unseen into the
forest, and from the forest find my way back, equally
unseen, to any quarter of my castle. Vaulted passages
beneath the ground, connected with a secret
stairway in one of my flanking towers, conducted me
out to slopes and gentle swells of earth, which I was
never to clear of umbrage, and my opening from the
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vaulted passage into the ample sunshine was itself a
discovery and an invention, which, were the subterranean
a more desirable realm for the habitation of the
great body of mankind, I hold to be of so much value,
that I should certainly guard its profits by a patent.”
Marie was beguiled into a smile. Her lover proceeded—
“These studies naturally made me observant of
the susceptibilities, for similar purposes, of the ordinary
dwellings of the citizen; and, whenever I was
left to my musings, in a strange house, I caught myself
meditating the dimensions of the walls, the spaces
between them and the chimneys, the depths of fireplaces,
the wainscoting, any apparent inequalities, or
unnecessary enlargement of parts, any want of symmetry
and proportion or adaptation—in short, a thousand
minutiæ which might either provoke doubts or
furnish suggestions of the subject. It will surprise
you, as it did me, to learn that such schemes as I had
only planned in thought, were comparatively common
in practice, and that, in numerous instances, in almost
every large city, human ingenuity has wrought out the
secret passage, and opened the mysterious outlet,
through the walls of the ordinary citizen. Many
houses, thus perforated, I am satisfied exist in this
very place. I suspect several, and have discovered
my conjectures to be right in some instances already.
But I never seem to have thought of the matter when
in your dwelling—having my thoughts always more
gratefully employed; always—until the moment when
the subject flashed upon me, as a direct consequence
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of that statement of details, which the Egyptian
made, when he unfolded to you your painful secret.
It appeared to me conclusive of a human witness
rather than a supernatural visitant, and seemed to me
just the sort of testimony which a person would be
likely to afford, who had been actually present at the
scene. How could he have been present? A single
glance around the apartment led me to the conviction
that it was admirably riddled with secret avenues. I
knew it to be an old Spanish structure, and from its
size and massiveness, I thought it not impossible that
it had once been employed for government or religious
purposes. Tradition may have told you something
on this subject, but the matter is by no means
important. The secret passages are unquestionably
in the dwelling, very possibly connecting all the
apartments; and now the question occurs—how are
we to penetrate the mystery without being discovered
by the enemy, or alarming him in his hiding-places?
It is important not only to discover how your house
is haunted, but by whom. Are you prepared, dear
Marie, to facilitate my examination—which can only
effectually be done by yielding yourself to a series of
regulations, the value of which I have already discussed
to my own satisfaction, though it is probable I
shall not be able, in the case of some of them, to furnish
reasons which will be satisfactory at present to
yourself?”
Marie proposed to be docile, and her lover proceeded
thus—
“You will again ride forth to-morrow with Madame
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de Chateauneuve. We shall again meet here on further
consultation. You will express no suspicions,
and show none. I believe that your servants are
spies upon you. I know that old Andres, your porter,
is hostile to myself. If they are in the employ
of another, your absence to-day will occasion them
great uneasiness and curiosity, particularly as you
disclosed nothing of your purpose previously. Continue
your reserve. Say nothing of your ride to-morrow,
but come—will you not?”
“Will I not, Frederick?”
“There is something further. Make up your mind
to retire for a time into the country—to your plantation.
It will be a sufficient plea, for doing this, that
a change of air is essential to your recovery, and a
change of scene necessary to your peace of mind.
Let your preparations go on openly. It is possible
that some one will come and counsel you against it.
Mark that person. If you persist, it is possible some
person will recommend to you a female companion.
Mark that person also. But among these preparations,
there is one that is to be made for me. Here
is a small case that has the look of a dressing-case.
It contains, however, nothing but a few folds of cloth
thickly coated with an impressible wax. Contrive to
send out your porter on some business that will keep
him a couple of hours absent. When he is gone, suddenly
dispatch your maid to my sister, who will detain
her. You will instruct her to wait for an answer to
your note, which may be written on any pretext you
please. When they are withdrawn, take the
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impression of all the keys in your house, leading to every
chamber, in the waxed cloths, and restore them to
the case, which you see has a curious lock. It is one
that cannot be tampered with. Here is the key.
Keep it in your bosom unseen. The task of taking
the impressions, I beg that you will execute between
the hours of nine and eleven to-morrow morning.
Your servants will return by twelve, and, at half-past
twelve, my sister will come for you. You will take
the box with you into the carriage.”
“But why this, Frederick; and why are you so particular
about the hours of nine and eleven?”
“The first question I will readily answer. When
you are in the country I will take possession of your
house, through keys that I will have manufactured
from the impressions in wax. They will give ingress
at any hour. You must pardon me if I decline, for
the present, giving an answer to your second question.
All shall be explained hereafter. Do you trust me,
Marie?”
“Oh, willingly, Frederick. I have no doubts of
you.”
“Something further, then, Marie. Here is a letter,
addressed to yourself, written with my hand and
sealed with my initials. But the seal, as you perceive,
is broken. You are to take it, place it in your
bosom, allow yourself to be seen with it by your servants,
and then lock it away in your desk. You are
by no means to read it. It is written, and thus confided
to you, as a snare to any one who may tamper
with your cabinet. It contains matter totally un
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known to you, which is, however, so expressed, as to
seem to originate with yourself. If your ghost pries
into your secret places, he will probably possess himself
of the contents of this letter. If so, you will hear
of him again. The bait is one that he will fasten
upon fiercely, if he be the impostor I suspect. In
this case, he will revisit you within the next fortyeight
hours—do not be alarmed—for he will then only
approve himself to you as as impostor, for he will
charge you with that of which you know nothing,
showing, clearly, that he gathers his intelligence
from any but spiritual sources. But if he be a sagacious
ghost, he may make you hear rather than see
him. He will avoid endangering his first impression,
by a repetition of the experiment. Still, this is possible.
At all events, I am confident that he will, within
the space I have mentioned, revisit you in some guise.
Even without this letter, he will have reason to seek
you—your movement to-day will have alarmed him,
particularly as you have gone forth with my sister.
It will be naturally conjectured that you have seen
and been with me. It will be apprehended that, with
recovering health and spirits, you are losing the impression
of terror, the wholesome effect of which was
to decree me to banishment, and you to widowhood.
A fear lest his victim should escape him, lest his design
should be defeated, will make the enemy anxious
and active. I repeat my convictions, that you will
either see or hear of him. In that event, it is another
argument against his supernatural pretension, since it
is so easy to predict his movements. Yours, I feel
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very sure, are regularly watched and reported. I,
too, have my spies upon the alert, to ascertain if this
be the case. If it be, it affords us another reason to
doubt the ghost's honesty. But, we must spare no
pains-taking, to render our proofs ample for conviction.
You will see, from what has been said, how important
it is to watch every movement, every word,
every emotion, lest anything escape us to make the
offender vary, and to awaken his suspicions that ours
are aroused.”
I have really only given the heads of this long and
important conference—just enough to show how thorough
were the investigations of Brandon—in what
way he was preparing to work—how cool were his
speculations—with what severity he probed the argument—
and what determined earnestness distinguished
his character. I have forborne all that was digressive
in the interview between the parties—the varying
emotions of Marie de Berniere, and the tender solicitude
of her lover. The expressions and passages of
affection that took place, are equally suppressed.
The reader will conjecture them from a first appreciation
of Brandon's manliness, and of the warmth and
soul of Marie. It is enough now, if I add that the
result of the conference was to awaken in the fair
widow suspicions not dissimilar to those of Brandon,
in regard to this mystery. His ingenious analysis
seemed to prove already that she had been made the
dupe of her fears. Her indignation was greatly
awakened by the idea that a gross and brutal imposition
had been practised upon her senses; and the
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gratitude which she felt for him who had done thus
much for her enlightenment, added greatly to the
strength of those sympathies which she had felt for
him before. She frankly promised to obey him in all
respects, and with a last exhortation to be wary, to
show no eagerness or agitation, and express no suspicions,
he assisted her to the carriage, when she was
accompanied by Madame de Chateauneuve to the
dwelling within whose walls harbored the whole secret
of her painful and absorbing mystery. To this, it is
probable that a few more chapters will afford us all
the clues.
Simms, William Gilmore, 1806-1870 [1853], Marie de Berniere: a tale of the Crescent City (Lippincott, Grambo and Co., Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf685T].
