The invisible love..The graveyard

Chapter two: meeting the stranger II

"I am tired," said MissCharlotte .

"I want diversion, and I have

done with men and women. Play."

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on,

fancy that I want to see some play. There, there!" with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; "play, play, play!"

For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's ohaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Charlotte in what I suppose she took for & dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken & good look at each other:

"Are you sullen and obstinate?"

"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so I would do it if I could; but it's so new here, and so strange. and so fine and melancholy.

" I stopped, fearing I might say too

much, or had already said it, and we took another look at each other. Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself imn the looking-glass.

"go new to him," she mattered, "go old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Caroline .

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.

"Call Caroline ," she repeated, flashing a look at me.

"You can do

that. Call Caroline . At the door."

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling Caroline to & scornful young lady neither visible nor respon-sive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But, she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star.

Miss Charlotte beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her pretty brown hair.

"Your own, one day, my dear, and

you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.

"With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring-boy!" I thought I overheard Miss Charlotte answer-unlikely-"Well? You can break his heart."

only it seemed so disdain. "What do you play, boy?" asked Estella of myself, with the greatest

"Nothing but beggar my neighbour, Miss." cards.

"Beggar him," said Miss Charlotte to Estella. So we sat down to It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, & long time ago. I noticed that Miss Charlotte put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Caroline dealt the carda, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of every-thing, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like s shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as wo played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the naturel light of day would have struck her to dust.

"He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!" said Caroline with disdain, before our first game was out.

"And what coarse hands he has! And

what thick boots!"

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them & very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she dew nounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

"You say nothing of her," remarked Miss Charlotte to me, as she looked on. "She says many hard things of you, yet you say nothing of her. What do you think of ber?"

"I don't like to say," I stammered. smell me in my ear,"

' said Miss Charlotte , bending down.

"I think she is very proud," I replied, in a whisper.

"Anything else?"

"I think she is very pretty."

"Anything else?"

"I think she is very insulting." (She was looking at me then with a look of supreme aversion.)

"Anything else?"

"I think I should like to go home."

"And never see her again, though she is so pretty?"

"I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I should like to go home now."

"You shall go soon," said Miss Charlotte aloud. "Play the garne out."

I played the game to an end with Caroline , and she beggered me.

She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.

When shall I have you here again?" said Miss Charlotte me think."

I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand.

"There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?"

"Yes ms'am."

I followed the candle down and she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must necesserily be pight-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange room many hours.

"You are to wait here, you boy," said Caroline ; and disappeared and closed the door.

She came baok, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer.

She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the breed and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were s dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, burt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry--I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart- -God knows what its name was-that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at ber: so, she gave a contemptuous toss--but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure that I was so wounded-and left me.

But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I oried, I kicked the wall, and took a bard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name, that needed counteraction.

I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking them into the brewery-wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I smoothed my face with my sleeve, and came from behind the gate.

The bread and meat were acceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was soon in spirits to look about me.

To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some bigh wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it.

Behind the furthest end of the brewery was a rank garden with an old wall: not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long enough to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the garden of the house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some one sometimes walked there, and that Caroline was walking away from me even then. But she seemed to be everywhere.

For, when I yielded to the temptation presented by the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw her walking on them at the end of the yard of casks. She had her back towards me, and held her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked round, and passed out of moy view directly. So, in the brewery itself_-by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were.-when I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.

It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then,. I turned my eyes a little dimmed by looking up at the frosty light -towards a great wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I sew a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded trimminge of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was Miss Charlotte , with a movement going over the whole oountenance as if she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of being certain that it had not been there & moment before, I at first ran from it and then ran towards it. And my terror was greatest of all when I found no figure there.

Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of people passing beyond the bar of the court-yard gate, and the reviving influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, could have brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon as I did, but that I saw Caroline approaching with the keys to let me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me frightened; and she should have no fair reason.

She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her, when she touched me with a taunting hand.

"Why don't you cry?"

"Because I don't want to."

"You do," said she.

"You have been crying till you are half blind,

and you are near crying again now."

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immensely relieved to find him not at home.