To Be Read at Dusk - Charles Dickens

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To be red at dusk by Charles Dickens one, two, three,
four or five. There were five of them, five couriers
sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit
of the Great Saint Bernard in Switzerland, looking at their
remote heights, stained by the setting sun, as if a
mighty quantity of red wine had been broached upon the
mountain top and had not yet had tied a sink

(00:21):
into the snow. This is not my simile. It was
made for the occasion by the stoutest courier, who was
a German. None of the others took any more notice
of it than they took of me, sitting on another
bench on the other side of the common door, smoking
my cigar, like them, and also like them, looking at
the red and snow, and at the lowly shed tarred
by with the bodies of belated travelers, dug out of it,

(00:42):
slowly with their way, knowing no corruption in that cold region.
The wine upon the mountain top soaked in. As we looked,
the mountain became white, the sky a very dark blue,
the wind rose, and the air turned piercing cold. The
five couriers buttoned their rough coats, there being no safer
man to imitate in all such proceedings than a courier.
I button mine. The mountain in the sunset had stopped

(01:03):
the five couriers in a conversation. It is a sublime
sight likely to stop conversation, the mountain being now out
of the sunset. They resumed, not that I had heard
any part of their previous discourse. For indeed, I had
not then broken away from the American gentleman in the
travelers parlor of the convent, who, sitting with his face
to the fire, had undertaken to realize to me the
whole progress of events which had led to the accumulation

(01:26):
by the Honorable Nannias Dodger of one of the largest
acquisitions of dollars ever made in our country. My God,
said the co Swiss courier, speaking in French, which I
do not hold, as some authors appeared to do, to
be such an all sufficient excuse for a naughty word,
that I have only to write it in that language
to make it innocent. If you talk of ghosts, but

(01:46):
I don't talk of ghosts, said the German of what.
Then asked the Swiss if I knew of what? Then
said the German, I should probably know a great deal more.
It was a good answer, I thought, and it made
me curious. So I moved my position to that quarter
of my bench which was nearest to them, and leaning
my back against the convent wall, heard pervictly without appearing
to attend. Thunder and lightning, said the German. Warming. When

(02:08):
a certain man is coming in to see you unexpectedly
and without his own knowledge, send some invisible messenger to
put the idea of him into your head all day.
What do you call that? When you walk along a
crowded street at Frankfurt, Milan, London, Paris and think that
a passing stranger is like your friend Heindrich, and then
that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and

(02:29):
so begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you'll
meet your friend Heinrich, which you do, though you believed
him at Trieste. What do you call that? It's not
uncommon either, murmured the Swiss. At the other three uncommon,
said the German. It's as common as cherries in the
black forest. It's as common as Macaronian naples, and naples
reminds me when the old marchessa send Zannuma shrieks at

(02:51):
a card player on the chiacha as I heard and
saw her. For it happened in a Bavarian family of mind,
and I was overlooking the service that evening. I say,
when the old mark Cessa starts up at the card table,
white through her rouge and cries, my sister in Spain
is dead. I felt her cold touch on my back.
And when that sister is dead at that moment, what
do you call that? Or when the blood of San

(03:12):
Gennaro liquefies at the request of the clergy, as all
the world knows that it does regularly once a year
in my native city, said the Neapolitan courier, after a pause,
with a comical look. What do you call that? That?
Cried the German. Well, I think I know a name
for that. Miracles, said the Neapolitan, with the same sly face.
The German merely smoked and laughed, and they all smoked
and laughed. Bah, said the German prisonly. I speak of

(03:35):
things that really do happen. When I want to see
the conjuror, I pay to see a professed one and
have my money's worth. Very strange things do happen without ghosts, ghosts,
Giovanni Baptista, tell your story of the English bride. There's
no ghost in that, but something full is strange? Why
any man tell me what? As there was a silence
among them, I glanced around. He whom I've took to

(03:56):
be Baptista, was lighting a fresh cigar. He presently went
on to speak. He was a Genoese. As I dodged
the story of the English bride, said he basta, Why
ought not to call so slight a thing? A story? Well,
it's all one, but it's true. Absorb you well, gentlemen.
It's true that which glitters is not always gold. But
what I am going to tell is true. He repeated

(04:16):
this more than once. Ten years ago, I took my
credentials to an English gentleman the Lutlong's Hotel in Bond Street, London,
who was about to travel. It might be for one year,
it might be for two. He approved of them, likewise
of me. He was pleased to make inquiry. The testimony
that he received was favorable. He engaged me by the
six months, and my entertainment was generous. He was young, handsome,

(04:38):
very happy. He was inamored of a fair young English
lady with a sufficient fortune, and they were going to
be married. It was the wedding trip, in short, that
we were going to take for three months rest in
the hot weather. It was early summer. Then. He had
hired an old place in the Riviera, at an easy
distance from my city Genoa, on the road to Nice.
Did I know that place? Yes, I told him I
knew it well. It was an old palace with g

(05:01):
It was a little bare, and it was a little
dark and gloomy, being close surrounded by trees. But it
was spacious, ancient, grand, and on the sea shore. He said,
it had been so described to him exactly, and he
was well pleased that I knew it. For it being
a little bare of furniture, all such places were, for
its being a little gloomy. He had hired it principally
for the gardens, and he and my mistress would pass
the summer weather in their shade. So all goes well,

(05:24):
Baptista said he indubedly, Senora, very well. We had a
traveling chariot for our journey, newly built for us, and
on all respects complete. All we had was complete. We
wanted for nothing. The marriage took place. They were happy.
I was happy seeing all so bright, being so was situated,
going to my own city, teaching my language, and the
rumbolt to the maid La Bella Carolina, whose heart was

(05:46):
gay with laughter, who was young and rosy. The time flew.
But I observed, listen to this, I pray, and hear
the courier dropped his voice. I observed my mistress sometimes
brooding in a manner very strange, in a frightened manner,
and in unhappy manner, with a cloud uncertain alarm upon her.
I think that I began to notice this when I
was walking up hills by the carriage side, and Master

(06:06):
had gone on in front. At any rate, I remember
that it impressed itself upon my mind one evening in
the south of France, when she called to me to
call Master back, and when he came back and walked
for a long way, talking encouragingly and affectually to her,
with his hand upon the open window and hers in it.
Now and then he laughed in a merry way, as
if he were bantering her out of something. By and

(06:27):
by she laughed, and then all went well again. It
was curious, I asked La Bella Carolina, the pretty little
one was mistress unwell, no out of spirits, no fearful
of bad roads or brigands. No. And what made it
war mysterious was the pretty little one would not look
at me and giving answer, but would look at the view.
But one day she told me the secret. If you

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must know, said Catalina, I find from what I have overheard,
that mistress is haunted? How haunted by a dream? What? Dream?
By a dream of a face? The three nights before
her marriage she saw a face and a dream. All
was the same face, and only one a terrible face. No,
the face of a dark, remarkable looking man in black,
with black hair and a gray mustache, a handsome man

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except for a reserved and secret air. Not a face
she ever saw, or at all like a face she
ever saw, doing nothing in the dream but looking at
her fixedly out of darkness. Does the dream come back? Never?
The recollection of it is all her trouble. And why
does it trouble her? Carolina shook her head. That's master's question,
said Labella. She didn't know, she won as why herself.

(07:31):
But I heard her tell him only last night that
if she was to find a picture of that face
in our Italian house, which she is afraid she will.
She did not know how she could ever bear it.
Upon my word, I was fearful. After this, said the
genoous courier, of our coming to the old Palazzo, lest
some such ill starred picture should happened to be there.
I knew there were many there, and as we got

(07:52):
nearer and nearer to the place, I wished the whole
gallery in the Crater of Vesuvius to mend the matter.
It was a stormy, dismal evening when we at last
approached that part of the Riviera. It thundered, And the
thunder of my city and its environs, rolling along among
the high hills, is very loud. The lizards ran in
and out of the chinks and the broken stone wall
of the garden, as if they were frightened. The frogs

(08:13):
bubbled and croaked their lattice. The sea wind moaned, and
the wet trees dripped, And the lightning body of sand Lorenzo,
how it lightened. We all know what an old place
in or near Genoa is, how time and the sea
air had blotted it. How the drapery painted on the
outer walls has peeled off in great flakes of plaster.
How the lower windows are darkened with rusty bars of iron.

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How the courtyard is overgrown with grass, How the outer
buildings are dilapidated. How the whole pile seems devoted to ruin.
Our palaza was one of true kind. It had been
shut up for clothes for months, months, years. It had
an earthy smell like a tomb, the scent of the
orange trees on the broad back terrace, and of the
lemons ripening on the wall, and of some shrubs that

(08:56):
grew around a broken fountain had got into the house
somehow and had never been able to get out again.
There was in every room an aged mill, grown faint
with confinement. It pined in all the cupboards and drawers,
in the little rooms of communication between great rooms, it
was stifling. If he turned a picture to come back
to the pictures there it still was, clinging to the

(09:16):
wall behind the frame, like a sort of bat. The
lattice bliinds were close shut all over the house. There
were two ugly, gray old women in the house to
take care of it. One of them was a spindle,
who stood winding and numbling in the doorway, and who
would as soon have let in the devil as in
the air. Master Mistress Labella Carrona and I went all
through the palazzo. I went first, though I have named

(09:39):
myself last, opening the windows and the lattice blinds, and
shaking down on myself splashes of rain and scraps of mortar,
And now and then a dozing mosquito or a monstrous,
flat blotchy Genoese spider. When I had led the evening
light into a room, Master Mistress and Labella Carolina entered.
Then we looked round at all the pictures, and I
went forward again into another room. Mistress secretly had great

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fear meeting with the likeness of that face. We all had,
but there was no such thing. The Madonna, Bambino, San Francisco,
San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, Angels, brigands, friars, temples at sunset, battles,
white horses, forests, apostles, doge. All my old acquaintances many

(10:21):
times repeated, Yes, dark handsome man in black, preserved in secret,
with black hair and gray mustache, looking fixedly at Mistress
out of darkness. No. At last we got through all
the rooms and all the pictures and came out into
the gardens. They were pretty well kept, being rented by
a gardener, and were large and shady. In one place
there was a rustic theater open to the sky, the stage,

(10:43):
green slope, the coolises, three entrances upon his side, sweet smelling,
leafy screens. Mistressmoothed her bright eyes even there, as if
she looked to see the face come in upon the scene.
But all was well now, Clara Masters said, in a
low voice, You see that it is nothing. You are happy.
Mistress was much encouraged. She soon accustomed herself to that

(11:03):
grim palazzo, and would sing and play the harp, and
copy the old pictures, and stroll with Master under the
green trees and vines all day. She was beautiful. He
was happy. He would laugh and say to me, mounting
his horse for his morning ride before the heat, all
goes well, Baptista, yes, Signory, thank god, very well. We
kept no company. I took Labella to the Duomo and

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Annunciata to the cafe, to the opera, to the village festa,
to the public garden, to the day theater, to the marionette.
The pretty little one was charmed with all she saw
she learned Italian heavens miraculously. Was Mistress quite forgetful of
that dream, I asked Carolina. Sometimes nearly said labella. Almost
it was wearing out. One day Master received the letter

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and called me, baptista signori. A gentleman who is presented
to me will dine here to day. He is called
the Signor de l'ombre. Let me dine like a prince.
It was an odd name I did not know that day.
But there had been many noblemen and gentlemen pursued by
Austria un political suspicions lately, and some names had change.
Perhaps this was one. Altro de loombre was as good

(12:11):
a name to me as another. When the Signor de
Lombrela came to dinner, said the Genoese courier, in the
low voice into which he had subsided once before. I
showed him to the reception room, the great Sala of
the gold Palazzo. Master received him with cordiality and represented
him to Mistress. As she rose, her face changed. She
gave a cry and fell upon the marble floor. Then

(12:33):
I turned my head to the Signor de l'ombre and
saw that he was dressed in black and had a
reserved and secret air, and was a dark, remarkable looking
man with black hair and a gray mustache. Master raised
mistress in his arms and carried her to her own room,
where I sent Labella Carolina straight. Labella told me afterwards
the mistress was merely terrified to death, and that she
wanted in her mind about her dream all night. Master

(12:55):
was vexed and anxious, almost angry, and yet full of solicitude.
The Signor DeLong Umbre was a courtly gentleman and spoke
with great respect and sympathy of mistress's being so ill.
The African wind had been blowing for some days. They
had told him at his hotel the Maltese cross, and
he knew that it was often hurtful. He hoped the
beautiful lady would recover soon. He begged permission to retire

(13:16):
and to renew his visit when he should have the
happiness of hearing that she was better. Master would not
allow this, and they dined alone. He withdrew. Early next
day he called at the gate on horseback to inquire
for mistress. He did so two or three times in
that week. What I observed myself and what Labella Cadelina
told me united to explain to me that Master had
now set his mind on curing Mistress of her fanciful terror.

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He was all kindness, but he was sensible and firm.
He reasoned with her that to encourage such fancies was
to invite melancholy, if not madness. That it rested with
herself to be herself. That if she once resisted her
strange weakness so successfully as to receive the Signor de Rombre,
as an English lady would receive any of the guests,
it was forever conquered to make an end. This Signor

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came again, and Mistress received him without marked distress, though
with constraint and apprehension still, and the evening passed serenely.
Master was so delighted with this change, and so anxious
to confirm it, that the Signor di Lombre became a
constant guest. He was accomplished in pictures, books and music.
Any society, and any grim palazzo would have been welcome.

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I used to notice many times that Mistress was not
quite recovered. She would cast out her eyes and droop
her head before the Signor de Lambre, or would look
at him with a terrified and fascinated glance, as if
his presence had some evil influence or power upon her,
turning for her to him. I used to see him
in the shaded gardens or the large half lighted sola, looking,

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as I might say, fixically upon her out of darkness.
But truly I had not forgotten Labella Carlina's words describing
the face in the dream. After his second visit, I
heard Master say, now, see, my dear Clara, it's over.
De lombre has come and gone, and your apprehension is
broken like glass. Will he Will he ever come out again?
Asked Mistress again, Why surely? Over and over again? Are

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you cold? She shivered, No, dear, but he terrifies me.
Are you sure that he need come again? The surer
for the question, Klara, replied Master cheerfully. But he was
very hopeful of her complete recovery now, and grew more
and more so every day. She was beautiful. He was happy.
All goes well, Baptista, he would say to me again, yes, Senora,

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to thank God, very well, we were well, said the
Genoese courier, concerning himself to speak a little louder. We're
all at Rome for the Carnival. I had been out
all day with the Sicilian, a friend of mine, and
a courier who was there with an English family. As
I returned a knight to our hotel, I met the
little Carolina, who never stirred from home, alone, running distractly

(15:45):
along the corso. Carolina, what's the matter, oh Baptista, Oh,
for the Lord's sake, where is my mistress? Mistress Carolina
gone since morning? Told me when Master went out on
his day's journey not to call her, for she was
tired with not resting in the night, having been in pain,
and would lie in bed until the evening, then get
up refreshed. She is gone, She is gone. Master has

(16:06):
come back, broken down the door, and she is gone.
My beautiful, my good, my innocent mistress. The pretty little
one so cried and raved and tore herself that I
could not have held her, but first, swooning on my arm,
as if she had been shot. Master came up in manner,
face or voice. No more the Master than I knew
that I was. He He took me. I laid the

(16:27):
little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left
her with the chamberwoman in a carriage. Furiously through the
darkness across the desolate Campagna. When it was day and
we stopped at a miserable post house. All the horses
had been hired twelve hours ago and sent away in
different directions. Mark me by the signor de l'ombre, who
had passed there in a carriage with a frightened English
lady crouching in one corner. I never heard, said the

(16:50):
Genoese courier, drawing a long breath, that she was ever
traced beyond that spot. All I know is that she
vanished into infamous oblivion, with the dreaded face beside her
that she had seen in her dream. What do you
call that? Said the German courier, triumphantly. Ghosts. There are
no ghosts there. What do you call this that? I
am going to tell you ghosts? There are no ghosts here.

(17:11):
I took an engagement once, pursued the German courier with
an English gentleman, elderly in a bachelor to travel through
my country, my fatherland. He was a merchant who traded
with my country and knew the language, but who had
never been there since he was a boy, as I judged,
some sixty years before. His name was James, and he
had a twin brother, John, also a bachelor. Between these

(17:31):
brothers there was a great affection. They were imprisoned together
a Goodman's Fields, for they did not live together. Mister
James dwelt in Poland Street, turning out of Oxford Street, London,
Mister John resided by Epping Forest. Mister James and I
were to start for Germany in about a week. The
exact day depended on business. Mister John came to Poland
Street where I was staying in the house to pass

(17:53):
that week with mister James. But he said to his
brother on the second day, I don't feel very well, James.
That's not much the matter with me, but I think
I am a little galley. I'll go home and put
myself under the care of my old housekeeper, who understands
my ways. If I get quite better, I'll come back
and see you before you go. If I don't feel
well enough to resume my visit where I leave it off,

(18:14):
why you will come and say me before you go.
Mister Janes of course said he would, and they shook hands,
both hands as they always did, and mister John ordered
out of his old fashioned chariot and rumbled home. It
was on the second night after that, that is to say,
the fourth in the week, when I was awoke out
of my sound sleep by mister James coming into my
bedroom in his flannel gown with a lighted candle. He

(18:37):
sat upon the side of my bed and looking at me,
said Willelm, I have reason to think I have got
some strange illness upon me. I then perceived that there
was a very unusual expression in his face. Willem said
he I am not afraid or ashamed to tell you
that I might be afraid or ashamed to tell another
man you come from a sensible country, where my mysterious
things are inquired into, and are not settled to be

(18:59):
weighed and measured order have been unweighable and immeasurable, or
in either case, to have been completely disposed of for
all time ever so many years ago. I have just
now seen the phantom of my brother, I confess, said
the German courier, that it gave me a little tingling
of the blood to hear it. I have just now seen,
mister James, repeated, looking full of me, that I might
see how collected he was. The phantom of my brother John.

(19:22):
I was sitting up in bed, unable to sleep, when
it came into my room in a white dress, and
regarding me earnestly, passed up to the end of the room,
glassed at some papers on my writing desk, turned and
still looking earnestly at me, as it passed the bed,
went out the door. Now, I am not in the
least mad, and I am not in the least disposed
to invest that phantom with any external existence out of myself.

(19:43):
I think it is a warning to me that I
am ill. I think I had better be led. I
got out of bed directly, said the German courier, and
began to get on my clothes, begging him not to
be alarmed, and telling him that I would go to
myself to the doctor. I was just ready when we
heard a loud knocking and ringing at the street door.
My room an attic at the back, and mister James
as being the second floor room in the front. We

(20:04):
went down to his room and put out the window
to see what was the matter. Is that, mister James,
said a man below, falling back to the opposite side
of the way to look up. It is said mister James,
and you are my brother's man, Robert. Yes, sir, I
am sorry to say, sir, that mister John is ill.
He is very bad, sir. It is even feared that
he may be lying at the point of death. He

(20:24):
wants to see you, Sir. I have a chaise here.
Pray come to him, pray lose no time. Mister James
and I looked at one another will elm. He said
he this is strange. I wish you to come with me.
I helped him to dress, partly there and partly in
the chaise, and no grass grew under the horse's iron
shoes between Poland Street and the forest. Now mind, said
the German courier. I went with mister James into his

(20:46):
brother's room, and I saw and heard myself what follows.
His brother lay upon his bed at the upper end
of a long bed chamber. His old housekeeper was there,
and others were there. I think three others were there,
if not four, and they had been with him so
earlier in the afternoon. He was in white, like the figure,
necessarily so, because he had his night dress on. He
looked like the figure, necessarily so, because he looked earnestly

(21:09):
at his brother when he saw him come into the room.
But when his brother reached the bedside, he slowly raised
himself in bed, and looking full upon him, said these words, James,
you have seen before tonight, and you know it. And
so died. I waited when the German couriers ceased to
hear something said over this strange story. This silence was unbroken.

(21:30):
I looked round, and the five couriers were gone, so
noiselessly that the ghostly mountain might have absorbed them into
its eternal snows. By this time, I was by no
means in a mood to still alone in that awful scene,
with the chill air cling solemnly upon me, or if
I may tell the truth, to sit alone anywhere. So
I went back into the convent parlor, and, finding the

(21:51):
American gentleman still disposed to relate the biography of the
Honorable Anonius Dodger, heard it all out end up to
be read at dusk by Charles Dickens.