For sure, I have no interest inany man, nor female either, save their history comes to me within the covers ofa book. By concentration only I see my tormentors leave, one fine day’s break,passing away down the hill, unsightly outlines, as of sacks of vaporous skinthat walk and talk, yet fainter with each beat of my silent heart, and so theyvanish into the view, as water soaks in earth. Thank God, I say, nought elsebut ten thousand praises be upon the Lord.
Thisthen of myself I will say: my father inherited this house from my grandsire, onthe death of the same. My mother dwelled selectly, by then, in London, andsince I was nine years I saw but little of her, nor wished more. For myschooling, my father, Francis Hollander, engaged tutors to lesson me privately,and though I liked none of them, and two were perfect clodpolls, I learnedsufficient for my purpose, and did not need to mingle with other persons. Myfather, here, had some understanding of my preference. Nay, I am sure hehimself had no fondness for company, not mine, nor my mother’s, nor that of anyother one. Perhaps I shall expand briefly on this theme. I have one short memoryof the woman, my dam, spurning a painting of the Virgin Mother and Jesus, herSon, She holding the Messiah in a loving coil of light, to protect and worship,both. My mother’s contempt was not, it seems, for religion. Rather this womandisliked merely the concept of maternal love. To this hour, I carry marks whichattest to that theory. Her personal harshness to me was of such vividity that evenas a ghost, I keep the scars. For him, the man I must assume had sired me, besthe liked to walk about the grounds here, to shoot a little, and now and then tofish from the quiet pools. Unlike myself, he was not much drawn to reading.Instead he would write out books himself, for perchance he felt no other scribecould match him in awarding to him pleasure. Some of his works, I believe, hepublished, under some one or two false nom de plume, as the Frenchrabble have it. I remember that we did not breakfast, nor dine together, but Iwould meet him sometimes in the house; our exchange at this, for my partcarefully respectful, and voiceless on his, would last no longer than a minute,if so great a while. At occasion, he might have music. But he would then havethe musicians taken to a certain room, and there let a servant serve them withfood and alcohol, and after this they would play, out of his sight, but themusic to be heard by him, elsewhere. This wise custom of his I too adopted, inmy adult years, when he in turn had gone to earth in his grave. Like him, also,I had a favourite coat, mine of a greenish brocade, which I would wear when inmy library, though more sober clothes at supper; during which, as with my sire,only one servant waited upon me, and silent as the tempered night. So I livednicely in my house, but in my own order must at length meet that fatallest Hourof Death. So I woke from a peaceful slumber in my forty-ninth year, and gettingup from my bed, learned yet I lay in it. Some time I was bemused, but then farless, seeing no demand had come with my end that I rush elsewhere, into someHeaven or Hell awash with dead humanity at its loudest and least desired of me.Then too, I gave my thanks to God. Yes, even though I could no longer open mybooks to read them, for I was secure enough, and so required them less, havingno otherwhere from which to flee to them in fear.
Later also, when a descendant ofour line infected the house with himself, and thence a brood of some sixteenchildren, seeing I never noted them after my first dismay, nor they took heedof me, there also I gave thanks. The first years of my Bliss scarcely everdisturbed – save, and this not of frequency, by the ancient warrior ghost inmail, from whom I hid. My horror at the later invasion therefore, by thoseother phantom Children of Adam, may now be better apprehended. And thus, as soit has fallen all are gone – my ecstasy and true relief.
Now and forever, let me be alone.It is all I ask.
VillainousFate! O pitiless Contrivance! Tell me only how a dead man may die, and I willwork it for me! Must I, still sensible of All, crawl under the earth into agrave! So then it shall be.
Inthe last sunset of a month of leaf fall, when the castle ruin and the sinkinghouse glowed yellow as tarnished ormolu, from a high window, I saw a shape uponthe sward. Let me be plain in what I saw. Much of a year had passed since myliberation. I had counted it in days and even in hours, like a miser with hishoard of precious coins. During this while also, the soulless prowling of thoseother dead-living things about the grounds had eased. For, despite beingsomewhat unaware of them, their general absence did make itself felt by me.Such happiness this gave me, at all lack of company.
On that night, however, as thegolden glister faded into twilight, I saw, as clearly as the drawn blade of aknife, what wended toward my sanctuary. And yet, too, not quite clear enough.For what might it be that the figure was? And, too, what strayed about with itas it came on, winding around it somewhat, and now pulling in close, or elseunwound a little distance off, yet the larger figure always keeping it by, soit would seem held upon some kind of flimsy rope? Is it that the greater form isthat of a woman? And is it too that she has a hound upon a leash? But she, andit also, the dog, are phantasmal, for though solid enough when stared upon byme, yet the last ray of the sun gleams through them both, and sceptic
