The Invisible Girl - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (old books to read .txt) 📗

The Invisible Girl

 

Mary Shelley

 

This slender narrative has no pretensions to the regularity of a story,

or the development of situations and feelings; it is but a slight

sketch, delivered nearly as it was narrated to me by one of the humblest

of the actors concerned: nor will I spin out a circumstance interesting

principally from its singularity and truth, but narrate, as concisely as

I can, how I was surprised on visiting what seemed a ruined tower,

crowning a bleak promontory overhanging the sea, that flows between

Wales and Ireland, to find that though the exterior preserved all the

savage rudeness that betokened many a war with the elements, the

interior was fitted up somewhat in the guise of a summer-house, for it

was too small to deserve any other name. It consisted but of the

ground-floor, which served as an entrance, and one room above, which was

reached by a staircase made out of the thickness of the wall. This

chamber was floored and carpeted, decorated with elegant furniture; and,

above all, to attract the attention and excite curiosity, there hung

over the chimney-piece—for to preserve the apartment from damp a

fire-place had been built evidently since it had assumed a guise so

dissimilar to the object of its construction—a picture simply painted

in water-colours, which seemed more than any part of the adornments of

the room to be at war with the rudeness of the building, the solitude in

which it was placed, and the desolation of the surrounding scenery. This

drawing represented a lovely girl in the very pride and bloom of youth;

her dress was simple, in the fashion of the day—(remember, reader, I

write at the beginning of the eighteenth century), her countenance was

embellished by a look of mingled innocence and intelligence, to which

was added the imprint of serenity of soul and natural cheerfulness. She

was reading one of those folio romances which have so long been the

delight of the enthusiastic and young; her mandoline was at her

feet—her parroquet perched on a huge mirror near her; the arrangement

of furniture and hangings gave token of a luxurious dwelling, and her

attire also evidently that of home and privacy, yet bore with it an

appearance of ease and girlish ornament, as if she wished to please.

Beneath this picture was inscribed in golden letters, “The Invisible

Girl.”

 

Rambling about a country nearly uninhabited, having lost my way, and

being overtaken by a shower, I had lighted on this dreary looking

tenement, which seemed to rock in the blast, and to be hung up there as

the very symbol of desolation. I was gazing wistfully and cursing

inwardly my stars which led me to a ruin that could afford no shelter,

though the storm began to pelt more seriously than before, when I saw an

old woman’s head popped out from a kind of loophole, and as suddenly

withdrawn:—a minute after a feminine voice called to me from within,

and penetrating a little brambly maze that skreened a door, which I had

not before observed, so skilfully had the planter succeeded in

concealing art with nature I found the good dame standing on the

threshold and inviting me to take refuge within. “I had just come up

from our cot hard by,” she said, “to look after the things, as I do

every day, when the rain came on—will ye walk up till it is over?” I

was about to observe that the cot hard by, at the venture of a few rain

drops, was better than a ruined tower, and to ask my kind hostess

whether “the things” were pigeons or crows that she was come to look

after, when the matting of the floor and the carpeting of the staircase

struck my eye. I was still more surprised when I saw the room above; and

beyond all, the picture and its singular inscription, naming her

invisible, whom the painter had coloured forth into very agreeable

visibility, awakened my most lively curiosity: the result of this, of

my exceeding politeness towards the old woman, and her own natural

garrulity, was a kind of garbled narrative which my imagination eked

out, and future inquiries rectified, till it assumed the following form.

 

Some years before in the afternoon of a September day, which, though

tolerably fair, gave many tokens of a tempestuous evening, a gentleman

arrived at a little coast town about ten miles from this place; he

expressed his desire to hire a boat to carry him to the town of about

fifteen miles further on the coast. The menaces which the sky held forth

made the fishermen loathe to venture, till at length two, one the father

of a numerous family, bribed by the bountiful reward the stranger

promised—the other, the son of my hostess, induced by youthful daring,

agreed to undertake the voyage. The wind was fair, and they hoped to

make good way before nightfall, and to get into port ere the rising of

the storm. They pushed off with good cheer, at least the fishermen did;

as for the stranger, the deep mourning which he wore was not half so

black as the melancholy that wrapt his mind. He looked as if he had

never smiled—as if some unutterable thought, dark as night and bitter

as death, had built its nest within his bosom, and brooded therein

eternally; he did not mention his name; but one of the villagers

recognised him as Henry Vernon, the son of a baronet who possessed a

mansion about three miles distant from the town for which he was bound.

This mansion was almost abandoned by the family; but Henry had, in a

romantic fit, visited it about three years before, and Sir Peter had

been down there during the previous spring for about a couple of months.

 

The boat did not make so much way as was expected; the breeze failed

them as they got out to sea, and they were fain with oar as well as

sail, to try to weather the promontory that jutted out between them and

the spot they desired to reach. They were yet far distant when the

shifting wind began to exert its strength, and to blow with violent

though unequal puffs. Night came on pitchy dark, and the howling waves

rose and broke with frightful violence, menacing to overwhelm the tiny

bark that dared resist their fury. They were forced to lower every sail,

and take to their oars; one man was obliged to bale out the water, and

Vernon himself took an oar, and rowing with desperate energy, equalled

the force of the more practised boatmen. There had been much talk

between the sailors before the tempest came on; now, except a brief

command, all were silent. One thought of his wife and children, and

silently cursed the caprice of the stranger that endangered in its

effects, not only his life, but their welfare; the other feared less,

for he was a daring lad, but he worked hard, and had no time for speech;

while Vernon bitterly regretting the thoughtlessness which had made him

cause others to share a peril, unimportant as far as he himself was

concerned, now tried to cheer them with a voice full of animation and

courage, and now pulled yet more strongly at the oar he held. The only

person who did not seem wholly intent on the work he was about, was the

man who baled; every now and then he gazed intently round, as if the sea

held afar off, on its tumultuous waste, some object that he strained his

eyes to discern. But all was blank, except as the crests of the high

waves showed themselves, or far out on the verge of the horizon, a kind

of lifting of the clouds betokened greater violence for the blast. At

length he exclaimed—“Yes, I see it!—the larboard oar!—now! if we can

make yonder light, we are saved!” Both the rowers instinctively turned

their heads,—but cheerless darkness answered their gaze.

 

“You cannot see it,” cried their companion, “but we are nearing it; and,

please God, we shall outlive this night.” Soon he took the oar from

Vernon’s hand, who, quite exhausted, was failing in his strokes. He rose

and looked for the beacon which promised them safety;—it glimmered with

so faint a ray, that now he said, “I see it;” and again, “it is

nothing:” still, as they made way, it dawned upon his sight, growing

more steady and distinct as it beamed across the lurid waters, which

themselves be came smoother, so that safety seemed to arise from the

bosom of the ocean under the influence of that flickering gleam.

 

“What beacon is it that helps us at our need?” asked Vernon, as the men,

now able to manage their oars with greater ease, found breath to answer

his question.

 

“A fairy one, I believe,” replied the elder sailor, “yet no less a true:

it burns in an old tumble-down tower, built on the top of a rock which

looks over the sea. We never saw it before this summer; and now each

night it is to be seen,—at least when it is looked for, for we cannot

see it from our village;—and it is such an out of the way place that no

one has need to go near it, except through a chance like this. Some say

it is burnt by witches, some say by smugglers; but this I know, two

parties have been to search, and found nothing but the bare walls of the

tower.

 

All is deserted by day, and dark by night; for no light was to be seen

while we were there, though it burned sprightly enough when we were out

at sea.

 

“I have heard say,” observed the younger sailor, “it is burnt by the

ghost of a maiden who lost her sweetheart in these parts; he being

wrecked, and his body found at the foot of the tower: she goes by the

name among us of the ‘Invisible Girl.’”

 

The voyagers had now reached the landing-place at the foot of the tower.

Vernon cast a glance upward,—the light was still burning. With some

difficulty, struggling with the breakers, and blinded by night, they

contrived to get their little bark to shore, and to draw her up on the

beach: they then scrambled up the precipitous pathway, overgrown by

weeds and underwood, and, guided by the more experienced fishermen, they

found the entrance to the tower, door or gate there was none, and all

was dark as the tomb, and silent and almost as cold as death.

 

“This will never do,” said Vernon; “surely our hostess will show her

light, if not herself, and guide our darkling steps by some sign of life

and comfort.”

 

“We will get to the upper chamber,” said the sailor, “if I can but hit

upon the broken down steps: but you will find no trace of the Invisible

Girl nor her light either, I warrant.”

 

“Truly a romantic adventure of the most disagreeable kind,” muttered

Vernon, as he stumbled over the unequal ground: “she of the beacon-light

must be both ugly and old, or she would not be so peevish and

inhospitable.”

 

With considerable difficulty, and, after divers knocks and bruises, the

adventurers at length succeeded in reaching the upper story; but all was

blank and bare, and they were fain to stretch themselves on