The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
THE OPEN DOOR, AND THE PORTRAIT
Stories of the Seen and the Unseen
By Margaret O. Wilson Oliphant's
1881
I
THE OPEN DOOR.
I took the house of Brentwood on my return from India in 18--, for the
temporary accommodation of my family, until I could find a permanent
home for them. It had many advantages which made it peculiarly
appropriate. It was within reach of Edinburgh; and my boy Roland, whose
education had been considerably neglected, could go in and out to
school; which was thought to be better for him than either leaving home
altogether or staying there always with a tutor. The first of these
expedients would have seemed preferable to me; the second commended
itself to his mother. The doctor, like a judicious man, took the midway
between. "Put him on his pony, and let him rile into the High School
every morning; it will do him all the good in the world," Dr. Simson
said; "and when it is bad weather, there is the train." His mother
accepted this solution of the difficulty more easily than I could have
hoped; and our pale-faced boy, who had never known anything more
invigorating than Simla, began to encounter the brisk breezes of the
North in the subdued severity of the month of May. Before the time of
the vacation in July we had the satisfaction of seeing him begin to
acquire something of the brown and ruddy complexion of his
schoolfellows. The English system did not commend itself to Scotland in
these days. There was no little Eton at Fettes; nor do I think, if there
had been, that a genteel exotic of that class would have tempted either
my wife or me. The lad was doubly precious to us, being the only one
left us of many; and he was fragile in body, we believed, and deeply
sensitive in mind. To keep him at home, and yet to send him to
school,--to combine the advantages of the two systems,--seemed to be
everything that could be desired. The two girls also found at Brentwood
everything they wanted. They were near enough to Edinburgh to have
masters and lessons as many as they required for completing that
never-ending education which the young people seem to require nowadays.
Their mother married me when she was younger than Agatha; and I should
like to see them improve upon their mother! I myself was then no more
than twenty-five,--an age at which I see the young fellows now groping
about them, with no notion what they are going to do with their lives.
However; I suppose every generation has a conceit of itself which
elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.
Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country--one of the
richest in Scotland--which lies between the Pentland Hills and the
Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam--like a bent bow,
embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses--of the great estuary
on one side of you, and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like
those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of
the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to
a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate.
Edinburgh--with its two lesser heights, the Castle and the Calton Hill,
its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur's Seat lying
crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his
repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to
take care of itself without him--lay at our right hand. From the lawn
and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape.
The color was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated
and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its color
and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and
blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose.
The village of Brentwood lay almost under the house, on the other side of
the deep little ravine, down which a stream--which ought to have been a
lovely, wild, and frolicsome little river--flowed between its rocks and
trees. The river, like so many in that district, had, however, in its
earlier life been sacrificed to trade, and was grimy with paper-making.
But this did not affect our pleasure in it so much as I have known it to
affect other streams. Perhaps our water was more rapid; perhaps less
clogged with dirt and refuse. Our side of the dell was charmingly
_accidente_, and clothed with fine trees, through which various paths
wound down to the river-side and to the village bridge which crossed the
stream. The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic
houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in
Scotland. The blue slates and the gray stone are sworn foes to the
picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior
of an old-fashioned hewed and galleried church, with its little family
settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire
like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape.
Still a cluster of houses on differing elevations, with scraps of garden
coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening
of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the
slow wagon lumbering along, gives a centre to the landscape. It was
cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. Within ourselves
we had walks in plenty, the glen being always beautiful in all its
phases, whether the woods were green in the spring or ruddy in the
autumn. In the park which surrounded the house were the ruins of the
former mansion of Brentwood,--a much smaller and less important house
than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were
picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were
but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow
reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the
remains of a tower,--an indistinguishable mass of mason-work,
over-grown with ivy; and the shells of walls attached to this were half
filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to
say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the
lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and
underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with
fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths
of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were
some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of building, one of them
suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck
which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of gray wall, all
incrusted with lichens, in which was a common door-way. Probably it had
been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called
"the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered,--pantry and
kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the door-way
open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild
creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a
melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to
nothing,--closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded,
now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so
perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an
importance which nothing justified.
The summer was a very happy period of repose for us all. The warmth of
Indian suns was still in our veins. It seemed to us that we could never
have enough of the greenness, the dewiness, the freshness of the northern
landscape. Even its mists were pleasant to us, taking all the fever out
of us, and pouring in vigor and refreshment. In autumn we followed the
fashion of the time, and went away for change which we did not in the
least require. It was when the family had settled down for the winter,
when the days were short and dark, and the rigorous reign of frost upon
us, that the incidents occurred which alone could justify me in intruding
upon the world my private affairs. These incidents were, however, of so
curious a character, that I hope my inevitable references to my own
family and pressing personal interests will meet with a general pardon.
I was absent in London when these events began. In London an old Indian
plunges back into the interests with which all his previous life has been
associated, and meets old friends at every step. I had been circulating
among some half-dozen of these,--enjoying the return to my former life in
shadow, though I had been so thankful in substance to throw it
aside,--and had missed some of my home letters, what with going down from
Friday to Monday to old Benbow's place in the country, and stopping on
the way back to dine and sleep at Sellar's and to take a look into
Cross's stables, which occupied another day. It is never safe to miss
one's letters. In this transitory life, as the Prayer-book says, how can
one ever be certain what is going to happen? All was well at home. I knew
exactly (I thought) what they would have to say to me: "The weather has
been so fine, that Roland has not once gone by train, and he enjoys the
ride beyond anything." "Dear papa, be sure that you don't forget
anything, but bring us so-and-so, and so-and-so,"--a list as long as my
arm. Dear girls and dearer mother! I would not for the world have
forgotten their commissions, or lost their little letters, for all the
Benbows and Crosses in the world.
But I was confident in my home-comfort and peacefulness. When I got back
to my club, however, three or four letters were lying for one, upon some
of which I noticed the "immediate," "urgent," which old-fashioned people
and anxious people still believe will influence the post-office and
quicken the speed of the mails. I was about to open one of these, when
the club porter brought me two telegrams, one of which, he said, had
arrived the night before. I opened, as was to be expected, the last
first, and this was what I read: "Why don't you come or answer? For God's
sake, come. He is much worse." This was a thunderbolt to fall upon a
man's head who had one only son, and lie the light of his eyes! The other
telegram, which I opened with hands trembling so much that I lost time by
my haste, was to much the same purport: "No better; doctor afraid of
brain-fever. Calls for you day and night. Let nothing detain you." The
first thing I did was to look up the time-tables to see if there was any
way of getting off sooner than by the night-train, though I knew well
enough there was not; and then I read the letters, which furnished, alas!
too clearly, all the details. They told me that the boy had been pale for
some time, with a scared look. His mother had noticed it before I left
home, but would not say anything to alarm me. This look had increased day
by day: and soon it was observed that Roland came home at a wild gallop
through the park, his pony panting and in foam, himself "as white as a
sheet," but with the perspiration streaming from his forehead. For a long
time he had resisted all questioning, but at length had developed such
strange changes of mood, showing a reluctance to go to school, a desire
to be fetched in the carriage at night,--which was a ridiculous piece of
luxury,--an unwillingness to go out into the grounds, and nervous start
at every sound, that his mother had insisted upon an explanation. When
the boy--our boy Roland, who had never known what fear was--began to talk
to her of voices he had heard in the park, and shadows that had appeared
to him among the ruins, my wife promptly put him to bed and sent for Dr.
Simson, which, of course, was the only thing to do.
I hurried off that evening, as may be supposed, with an anxious heart.
How I got through the hours before the starting of the train, I cannot
tell. We must all be thankful for the quickness of the railway when in
anxiety; but to have thrown myself into a post-chaise as soon as horses
could be put to, would have been a relief. I got to Edinburgh very early
in the blackness of the winter morning, and scarcely dared look the man
in the face, at whom I gasped, "What news?" My wife had sent the
brougham for me, which I concluded, before the man spoke, was a bad sign.
His answer was that stereotyped answer which leaves the imagination so
wildly free,--"Just the same." Just the same! What might that mean? The
horses seemed to me to creep along the long dark country road. As we
dashed through the park, I thought I heard some one moaning among the
trees, and clenched my fist at him (whoever he might be) with fury. Why
had the fool of a woman at the gate allowed any one to come in to disturb
the quiet of the place? If I had not been in such hot haste to get home,
I think I should have stopped the carriage and got out to see what tramp
it was that had made an entrance, and chosen my grounds, of all places in
the world,--when my boy was ill!--to grumble and groan in. But I had no
reason to complain of our slow pace here. The horses flew like lightning
along the intervening path, and drew up at the door all panting, as if
they had run a race. My wife stood waiting to receive me, with a pale
face, and a candle in her hand, which made her look paler still as the
wind blew the flame about. "He is sleeping," she said in a whisper, as if
her voice might wake him. And I replied, when I could find my voice, also
in a whisper, as though the jingling of the horses' furniture and the
sound of their hoofs must not have been more dangerous. I stood on the
steps with her a moment, almost afraid to go in, now that I was here; and
it seemed to me that I saw without observing, if I may say so, that the
horses were unwilling to turn round, though their stables lay that way,
or that the men were unwilling. These things occurred to me afterwards,
though at the moment I was not capable of anything but to ask questions
and to hear of the condition of the boy.
I looked at him from the door of his room, for we were afraid to go near,
lest we should disturb that blessed sleep. It looked like actual sleep,
not the lethargy into which my wife told me he would sometimes fall. She
told me everything in the next room, which communicated with his, rising
now and then and going to the door of communication; and in this there
was much that was very startling and confusing to the mind. It appeared
that ever since the winter began--since it was early dark, and night had
fallen before his return from school--he had been hearing voices among
the ruins: at first only a groaning, he said, at which his pony was as
much alarmed as he was, but by degrees a voice. The tears ran down my
wife's cheeks as she described to me how he would start up in the night
and cry out, "Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!" with a
pathos which rent her heart. And she sitting there all the time, only
longing to do everything his heart could desire! But though she would try
to soothe him, crying, "You are at home, my darling. I am here. Don't you
know me? Your mother is here!" he would only stare at her, and after a
while spring up again with the same cry. At other times he would be quite
reasonable, she said, asking eagerly when I was coming, but declaring
that he must go with me as soon as I did so, "to let them in." "The
doctor thinks his nervous system must have received a shock," my wife
said. "Oh, Henry, can it be that we have pushed him on too much with his
work--a delicate boy like Roland? And what is his work in comparison with
his health? Even you would think little of honors or prizes if it hurt
the boy's health." Even I!--as if I were an inhuman father sacrificing my
child to my ambition. But I would not increase her trouble by taking any
notice. After awhile they persuaded me to lie down, to rest, and to eat,
none of which things had been possible since I received their letters.
The mere fact of being on the spot, of course, in itself was a great
thing; and when I knew that I could be called in a moment, as soon as he
was awake and wanted me, I felt capable, even in the dark, chill morning
twilight, to snatch an hour or two's sleep. As it happened, I was so
worn out with the strain of anxiety, and he so quieted and consoled by
knowing I had come, that I was not disturbed till the afternoon, when the
twilight had again settled down. There was just daylight enough to see
his face when I went to him; and what a change in a fortnight! He was
paler and more worn, I thought, than even in those dreadful days in the
plains before we left India. His hair seemed to me to have grown long and
lank; his eyes were like blazing lights projecting out of his white face.
He got hold of my hand in a cold and tremulous clutch, and waved to
everybody to go away. "Go away--even mother," he said; "go away." This
went to her heart; for she did not like that even I should have more of
the boy's confidence than herself; but my wife has never been a woman to
think of herself, and she left us alone. "Are they all gone?" he said
eagerly. "They would not let me speak. The doctor treated me as if I were
a fool. You know I am not a fool, papa."
"Yes, yes, my boy, I know. But you are ill, and quiet is so necessary.
You are not only not a fool, Roland, but you are reasonable and
understand. When you are ill you must deny yourself; you must not do
everything that you might do being well."
He waved his thin hand with a sort of indignation. "Then, father, I am
not ill," he cried. "Oh, I thought when you came you would not stop
me,--you would see the sense of it! What do you think is the matter with
me, all of you? Simson is well enough; but he is only a doctor. What do
you think is the matter with me? I am no more ill than you are. A doctor,
of course, he thinks you are ill the moment he looks at you--that's what
he's there for--and claps you into bed."
"Which is the best place for you at present, my dear boy."
"I made up my mind," cried the little fellow, "that I would stand it till
you came home. I said to myself, I won't frighten mother and the girls.
But now, father," he cried, half jumping out of bed, "it's not illness:
it's a secret."
His eyes shone so wildly, his face was so swept with strong feeling, that
my heart sank within me. It could be nothing but fever that did it, and
fever had been so fatal. I got him into my arms to put him back into
bed. "Roland," I said, humoring the poor child, which I knew was the
only way, "if you are going to tell me this secret to do any good, you
know you must be quite quiet, and not excite yourself. If you excite
yourself, I must not let you speak."
"Yes, father," said the boy. He was quiet directly, like a man, as if he
quite understood. When I had laid him back on his pillow, he looked up at
me with that grateful, sweet look with which children, when they are ill,
break one's heart, the water coming into his eyes in his weakness. "I was
sure as soon as you were here you would know what to do," he said.
"To be sure, my boy. Now keep quiet, and tell it all out like a man." To
think I was telling lies to my own child! for I did it only to humor him,
thinking, poor little fellow, his brain was wrong.
"Yes, father. Father, there is some one in the park--some one that has
been badly used." "Hush, my dear; you remember there is to be no
excitement. Well, who is this somebody, and who has been ill-using him?
We will soon put a stop to that."
"All," cried Roland, "but it is not so easy as you think. I don't know
who it is. It is just a cry. Oh, if you could hear it! It gets into my
head in my sleep. I heard it as clear--as clear; and they think that I
am dreaming, or raving perhaps," the boy said, with a sort of
disdainful smile.
This look of his perplexed me; it was less like fever than I thought.
"Are you quite sure you have not dreamed it, Roland?" I said.
"Dreamed?--that!" He was springing up again when he suddenly bethought
himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face. "The
pony heard it, too," he said. "She jumped as if she had been shot. If I
had not grasped at the reins--for I was frightened, father--"
"No shame to you, my boy," said I, though I scarcely knew why.
"If I hadn't held to her like a leech, she'd have pitched me over her
head, and never drew breath till we were at the door. Did the pony dream
it?" he said, with a soft disdain, yet indulgence for my foolishness.
Then he added slowly, "It was only a cry the first time, and all the
time before you went away. I wouldn't tell you, for it was so wretched
to be frightened. I thought it might be a hare or a rabbit snared, and I
went in the morning and looked; but there was nothing. It was after you
went I heard it really first; and this is what he says." He raised
himself on his elbow close to me, and looked me in the face: "'Oh,
mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!'" As he said the words a mist
came over his face, the mouth quivered, the soft features all melted and
changed, and when he had ended these pitiful words, dissolved in a
shower of heavy tears.
Was it a hallucination? Was it the fever of the brain? Was it the
disordered fancy caused by great bodily weakness? How could I tell? I
thought it wisest to accept it as if it were all true.
"This is very touching, Roland," I said.
"Oh, if you had just heard it, father! I said to myself, if father heard
it he would do something; but mamma, you know, she's given over to
Simson, and that fellow's a doctor, and never thinks of anything but
clapping you into bed."
"We must not blame Simson for being a doctor, Roland."
"No, no," said my boy, with delightful toleration and indulgence; "oh,
no; that's the good of him; that's what he's for; I know that. But
you--you are different; you are just father; and you'll do
something--directly, papa, directly; this very night."
"Surely," I said. "No doubt it is some little lost child."
He gave me a sudden, swift look, investigating my face as though to see
whether, after all, this was everything my eminence as "father" came
to,--no more than that. Then he got hold of my shoulder, clutching it
with his thin hand. "Look here," he said, with a quiver in his voice;
"suppose it wasn't--living at all!"
"My dear boy, how then could you have heard it?" I said.
He turned away from me with a pettish exclamation,--"As if you didn't
know better than that!"
"Do you want to tell me it is a ghost?" I said.
Roland withdrew his hand; his countenance assumed an aspect of great
dignity and gravity; a slight quiver remained about his lips. "Whatever
it was--you always said we were not to call names. It was something--in
trouble. Oh, father, in terrible trouble!"
"But, my boy," I said (I was at my wits' end), "if it was a child
that was lost, or any poor human creature--but, Roland, what do you
want me to do?"
"I should know if I was you," said the child eagerly. "That is what I
always said to myself,--Father will know. Oh, papa, papa, to have to
face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never
to be able to do it any good! I don't want to cry; it's like a baby, I
know; but what can I do else? Out there all by itself in the ruin, and
nobody to help it! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" cried my generous
boy. And in his weakness he burst out, after many attempts to restrain
it, into a great childish fit of sobbing and tears.
I do not know that I ever was in a greater perplexity, in my life; and
afterwards, when I thought of it, there was something comic in it too. It
is bad enough to find your child's mind possessed with the conviction
that he has seen, or heard, a ghost; but that he should require you to go
instantly and help that ghost was the most bewildering experience that
had ever come my way. I am a sober man myself, and not superstitious--at
least any more than everybody is superstitious. Of course I do not
believe in ghosts; but I don't deny, any more than other people, that
there are stories which I cannot pretend to understand. My blood got a
sort of chill in my veins at the idea that Roland should be a ghost-seer;
for that generally means a hysterical temperament and weak health, and
all that men most hate and fear for their children. But that I should
take up his ghost and right its wrongs, and save it from its trouble, was
such a mission as was enough to confuse any man. I did my best to console
my boy without giving any promise of this astonishing kind; but he was
too sharp for me: he would have none of my caresses. With sobs breaking
in at intervals upon his voice, and the rain-drops hanging on his
eyelids, he yet returned to the charge.
"It will be there now!--it will be there all the night! Oh, think,
papa,--think if it was me! I can't rest for thinking of it. Don't!" he
cried, putting away my hand,--"don't! You go and help it, and mother can
take care of me."