In a Glass Darkly Read online

  IN A GLASS DARKLY

  * * *

  SHERIDAN LE FANU

  *

  In a Glass Darkly

  First published in 1872.

  ISBN 978-1-775415-28-2

  © 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.

  While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.

  Visit www.thefloatingpress.com

  Contents

  *

  GREEN TEA

  Prologue — Martin Hesselius, the German Physician

  Chapter I — Dr. Hesselius Relates how He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings

  Chapter II — The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers

  Chapter III — Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books

  Chapter IV — Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage

  Chapter V — Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond

  Chapter VI — How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion

  Chapter VII — The Journey: First Stage

  Chapter VIII — The Second Stage

  Chapter IX — The Third Stage

  Chapter X — Home

  Conclusion — A Word for Those who Suffer

  THE FAMILIAR

  Prologue

  Chapter I — Footsteps

  Chapter II — The Watcher

  Chapter III — An Advertisement

  Chapter IV — He Talks with a Clergyman

  Chapter V — Mr. Barton States His Case

  Chapter VI — Seen Again

  Chapter VII — Flight

  Chapter VIII — Softened

  Chapter IX — Requiescat

  Postscript by the Editor

  MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE

  Prologue

  Chapter I — The Judge's House

  Chapter II — Mr. Peters

  Chapter III — Lewis Pyneweck

  Chapter IV — Interruption in Court

  Chapter V — Caleb Searcher

  Chapter VI — Arrested

  Chapter VII — Chief-Justice Twofold

  Chapter VIII — Somebody Has Got Into the House

  Chapter IX — The Judge Leaves His House

  THE ROOM IN THE DRAGON VOLANT

  Prologue

  Chapter I — On the Road

  Chapter II — The Inn-Yard of the Belle Étoile

  Chapter III — Death and Love Together Mated

  Chapter IV — Monsieur Droqville

  Chapter V — Supper at the Belle Étoile

  Chapter VI — The Naked Sword

  Chapter VII — The White Rose

  Chapter VIII — A Three Minutes' Visit

  Chapter IX — Gossip and Counsel

  Chapter X — The Black Veil

  Chapter XI — The Dragon Volant

  Chapter XII — The Magician

  Chapter XIII — The Oracle Tells Me Wonders

  Chapter XIV — Mademoiselle De La Vallière

  Chapter XV — Strange Story of the Dragon Volant

  Chapter XVI — The Parc of the Château De La Carque

  Chapter XVII — The Tenant of the Palanquin

  Chapter XVIII — The Churchyard

  Chapter XIX — The Key

  Chapter XX — A High-Cauld-Cap

  Chapter XXI — I See Three Men in a Mirror

  Chapter XXII — Rapture

  Chapter XXIII — A Cup of Coffee

  Chapter XXIV — Hope

  Chapter XXV — Despair

  Chapter XXVI — Catastrophe

  CARMILLA

  Prologue

  Chapter I — An Early Fright

  Chapter II — A Guest

  Chapter III — We Compare Notes

  Chapter IV — Her Habits—A Saunter

  Chapter V — A Wonderful Likeness

  Chapter VI — A Very Strange Agony

  Chapter VII — Descending

  Chapter VIII — Search

  Chapter IX — The Doctor

  Chapter X — Bereaved

  Chapter XI — The Story

  Chapter XII — A Petition

  Chapter XIII — The Woodman

  Chapter XIV — The Meeting

  Chapter XV — Ordeal and Execution

  Chapter XVI — Conclusion

  GREEN TEA

  *

  Prologue — Martin Hesselius, the German Physician

  *

  Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.

  In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.

  In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was well-founded.

  For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration.

  Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago.

  It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play.

  The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader.

  These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there I omit some passages, and shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.

  Chapter I — Dr. Hesselius Relates how He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings

  *

  The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and t
hin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy.

  I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing.

  We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him.

  The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.

  There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in, generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly incapacitated.

  When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course. We shall see.

  Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people I think don't remember; or, perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I have said, to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the floor there is something both shy and anxious.

  A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding inquiry.

  There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly scientific paper.

  I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply his extrication from the natural body—a process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection "in power."

  The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts.

  In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my caution—I think he perceived it—and I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then became thoughtful for a few minutes.

  After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer.

  This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by; and in a little time we had got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books and places, having travelled, wish to discourse, it is very strange if they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me, and led him into conversation. He knew German and had read my Essays on Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say.

  This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the world, but his best beloved friends—was cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me.

  I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans respecting myself.

  We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time but at last he said:

  "I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical Medicine—I read them in German, ten or twelve years ago—have they been translated?"

  "No, I'm sure they have not—I should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think."

  "I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print."

  "So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although," I added, laughing, "ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it."

  At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said, guiltily, for a moment.

  I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on, I said: "Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests another, and often sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have still got two or three by me—and if you allow me to present one I shall be very much honoured."

  "You are very good indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment: "I almost despaired—I don't know how to thank you."

  "Pray don't say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire
in a fit of modesty."

  Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his departure.

  Chapter II — The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers

  *

  "I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary," said I, as soon as he was gone. "He has read, travelled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought to be an accomplished companion."

  "So he is, and, better still, he is a really good man," said she. "His advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at Dawlbridge, and he's so painstaking, he takes so much trouble—you have no idea—wherever he thinks he can be of use: he's so good-natured and so sensible."

  "It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in addition to what you have told me, I think I can tell you two or three things about him," said I.

  "Really!"

  "Yes, to begin with, he's unmarried."

  "Yes, that's right—go on."

  "He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some rather abstract subject—perhaps theology."

  "Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I'm not quite sure what it was about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for; very likely you are right, and he certainly did stop—yes."

  "And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes tea, at least, did like it extravagantly."

  "Yes, that's quite true."

  "He drank green tea, a good deal, didn't he?" I pursued.

  "Well, that's very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost to quarrel."

  "But he has quite given that up," said I.

  "So he has."

  "And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?"

  "Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near Dawlbridge. We knew them very well," she answered.

  "Well, either his mother or his father—I should rather think his father, saw a ghost," said I.