To Be Read at Dusk

Prime Video offers the best in entertainment. The end of the world continues with Fallout 2. A global phenomenon, inbegred by Prime. I heard you about what to do in this situation. Look at the epic end of the unwritten story of The Witches of Oz. Buy or buy? Wicked for good now. I'm taking you to see The Wizard. There's no going back. So what you also look, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Prime is advised, especially to buy or buy. Inhoud can be advertised 18+. All the rules are used to be used. The End The End The End The End The End It's Wednesday, January the 15th, 1845. A smart townhouse in Genoa, Italy. In an elegant drawing room, a middle-aged woman reclines on a chaise longue. Her eyes are closed, but her eyelids are quivering restlessly. Her body is stiff as a board, her hands cold to the touch. Standing over her is a 33-year-old man dressed in a smart white shirt and cravat, rhythmically waving his hands in front of her face. He's no doctor. In fact, he's an acclaimed author, Charles Dickens. And this unorthodox pseudo-medical technique known as mesmerism is his latest hobby. Having learned this technique from a professional mesmerist in London, Dickens has been practicing on this particular patient, Auguste de la Rue, for the past few weeks. Her mental health has been fragile for some time, but recently she's been suffering from headaches, insomnia, night terrors, even facial spasms. Thanks to Dickens' trances, it seems her shattered nerves are beginning to heal. But when she's under his hypnotic influence, Madame de la Rue has begun reporting some startling visions, murmuring about seeing her brother looking out to sea, overwhelmed with sadness, about sinister figures rolling stones down a hill at her. She speaks of a barely-glimpced phantom she's too terrified to look at, a bad spirit, as she calls him, that's been haunting her dreams. Dickens is unconvinced. He knows that the ghost in Madame de la Roux's mind is psychological. And yet, as their sessions continue, the sinister phantom continues to haunt Madame de la Rue. She begs Dickens not to speak of it anymore, because by now the phantom has started talking about him as well. Despite writing many supernatural stories, when it came to actual ghosts, Dickens was very much a skeptic. Believing that such paranormal apparitions were hallucinations, conjured by disturbed minds, if not downright humbug. Later in life, he was a founder member of the Ghost Club, an organization dedicated to debunking fake mediums. Dickens himself attended séances in London and published scathing reviews of them in his magazines. But he never lost sight of the literary power of a good ghost story and of the thin veil that separates the supposed spirit world from madness. In our final episode, we delve into one of his most enigmatic ghost stories. Strictly speaking, on the surface at least, it doesn't include any ghosts at all. But of all Charles Dickens' supernatural works, it's the one that leaves the most lingering impression on the mind of the reader. The title gives a suggestion as to when you might like to listen to this final story. To be read at dusk. I'm David Suchet, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories. To be read at dusk. The End been broached upon the mountaintop and had not yet had time to sink 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 convent door, smoking my cigar like them, and also like them, looking at the reddened snow and at the lonely shed hard by, where the bodies of belated travellers dug out of it slowly wither away, knowing no corruption in that cold region. The wine upon the mountaintop 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 buttoned mine. The mountain in the sunset had stopped 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 traveller's parlour of the convent, who, sitting with his face to the fire, had undertaken to realise to me the whole progress of events which had led to the accumulation by the Honourable Ananias Dager of one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made in our country. My God, said the Swiss courier speaking in French, which I do not hold, as some authors appear 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 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. That was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So I moved my position to that corner of my bench, which was nearest to them, and, leaning my back against the convent wall, heard perfectly, without appearing to attend. Thunder and lightning, said the German, warming. When a certain man is coming to see you unexpectedly and, without his own knowledge, sends 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 Heinrich, and then that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and 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 and the other three. Uncommon, said the German. It's as common as Jerry's in the Black Forest. It's as common as macaroni at Naples. Oh, and Naples reminds me when the old Marquise Sensenima shrieks at the card party on the Chiaia, as I heard and saw her, for it happened in a Bavarian family of mine and I was overlooking the service that evening. I say, when the old Marquise Marquisa 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. Ha ha. What do you call that? Or when the blood of San Gennaro liquefies at the request of the clergy, as all the world knows that he 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. Miracle, said the Neapolitan with the same sly face. The German nearly smoked and laughed, and they all smoked and laughed. Bah, said the German presently. I speak of things that really do happen. When I want to see the conjurer, I pay to see a professed one and have my money's worth. Very strange things do happen without ghosts. Ghosts. Giovanni Battista, tell your story of the English bride. There's no ghost in that, but something full of strange. Will any man tell me what As there was a silence among them I glanced around He whom I took to be Baptista was lighting a fresh cigar He presently went on to speak. He was a Genoese, as I judged. The story of the English bride, said he, basta. One ought not to call so slight a thing a story. Well, it's all one. But it's true. Observe me well, gentlemen. It's true. That which glitters is not always gold. But what I am going to tell you is true. He repeated this more than once. Ten years ago, I took my credentials to an English gentleman at Long's Hotel in Bond Street, London, who was about to travel. Oh, 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, very happy. He was enamored 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 on 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 great gardens. 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 seashore. He said it had been so described to him exactly, and he was well pleased that I knew it. For its being a little bear 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, Baptista, said he. Indubitably, Signor, very well. We had a travelling chariot for our journey, newly built for us, and, in all respects, complete. All we had was complete, we wanted for nothing. The marriage took place. Oh, they were happy. I was happy, seeing all so bright, being so well situated, going to my own city, teaching my language in the rumble to the maid, La Bella Carolina, whose heart was gay with laughter, who was young and rosy. The time flew. But I observed. Listen to this, I pray. And here the courier dropped his voice. I observed my mistress sometimes brooding in a manner very strange, in a frightened manner, in an unhappy manner, with a cloudy, uncertain alarm upon her. I think that I began to notice this when I was walking up hills by the carriage side, and the master 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 affectionately 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 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 more mysterious was the pretty little one would not look at me in giving answer, but would look at the view. But one day she told me the secret. If you must know, said Carolina, I find from what I have overheard that Mistress is haunted. How haunted? By a dream. What dream? By a dream of a face. For three nights before her marriage, she saw a face in a dream. Always the same face and only one. A terrible face? No. No, the face of a dark, remarkable-looking man in black, with black hair and a grey moustache. A handsome man except for a reserved and secret heir. 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. And 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 the master's question, said Dabella. She don't know. She wonders why herself. 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 Genoese courier, of our coming to the old palazzo, lest some such ill-starred picture should happen to be there. I knew there were many there, and as we got 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 among the high hills is very loud. The lizards ran in and out of the chinks in the broken stone wall of the garden as if they were frightened. The frogs bubbled and croaked to their loudest. The sea wind moaned and the wet trees dripped. And the lightning! Body of San Lorenzo, how it lightened! We all know what an old palace in or near Genoa is. How time and the sea air have blotted it. How the drapery painted on the outer walls is peeled off in great flakes of plaster. How the lower windows are darkened with rusty bars of iron. How the courtyard is overgrown with grass. How the outer buildings are dilapidated. How the whole pile seems devoted to ruin. Our palazzo was one of the true kind. It had been shut up close 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 grew around the broken fountain had got into the house somehow and had never been able to get out again. There was, in every room, an aged smell, 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 you turned a picture to come back to the pictures, there it still was, clinging to the wall behind the frame like a sort of bat. The lattice of lines were close shot all over the house. There were two ugly, grey old women in the house to take care of it, one of them with a spindle who stood winding and mumbling in the doorway, and would as soon have let the devil in as the heir. Master, mistress, la bella Carolina, and I went all through the palazzo. I went first, though I have named 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, fat, blotchy, genoese spider. When I had let the evening light into a room, Master and Mistress and La Bella Carolina entered. Then we looked round at all the pictures and I went forward again into another room. Mistress secretly had great fear of meeting with the likeness of that face We all had but there was no such thing The Madonna and Bambino San Francisco San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, angels, brigands, friars, temples at sunset, battles, white horses, forests, apostles, doges, all my old acquaintances many times repeated, Yes. Dark, handsome man in black, reserved and secret, with black hair and grey moustache, 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 theatre, open to the sky. The stage, a green slope. The coulisse, with three entrances upon a side, sweet-smelling leafy screens. mistress moved her bright eyes even there as if she looked to see the face coming in upon the scene but all was well now Clara master said in a low voice you see that it is nothing you're happy mistress was much encouraged she soon accustomed herself to that grim palazzo and would sing and 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, Signor. Thank God very well. We kept no company. I took La Bella to the Duomo and Annunciata, to the cafe, to the opera, to the village festa, to the public garden, to the day theatre, 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 La Bella, almost. It was wearing out. One day, Master received a letter and called me. Baptista, Signor, a gentleman who is presented to me will dine here today. He is called the Signor dell'Ombra. Let me dine like a prince. It was an odd name. I did not know that name. But there had been many noblemen and gentlemen pursued by Austria on political suspicions lately, and some names had changed. Perhaps this was one. Altro. Del'Ombra was as good a name to me as another. When the Signor Del'Ombra came to dinner, said the Genoese courier in the low voice into which he had subsided once before, I showed him into the reception room, the great desala of the old palazzo. Master received him with cordiality and presented him to Mistress. As she rose, her face changed. She gave a cry and fell upon the marble floor. Then I turned my head to the Signor de l'Ombra 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 grey moustache. Master raised Mistress in his arms and carried her to her own room, where I sent La Bella Carolina straight. La Bella told me afterwards that Mistress was nearly terrified to death, and she wandered in her mind about her dream all night. Master was vexed and anxious, almost angry and yet full of solicitude. The Signor de l'Hombre was a courtly gentleman and spoke with great respect and sympathy of mistresses being so ill. The African wind had been blowing for some days, they had told him at his hotel of the Maltese cross, and he knew that it was often hurtful. He hoped the beautiful lady would recover soon. He begged permission to retire, and to renew his visit when he should have the happiness of hearing that she was better. But Master would not allow of 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 La Bella Carolina told me, united to explain to me that master had now set his mind on curing mistress of her fanciful terror. 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 Lombra as an English lady would receive any other guest, it was forever conquered. To make an end, the Signor 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 de Lombra became a constant guest. He was accomplished in pictures, books, and music, and his society in any grim palazzo would have been welcome. I used to notice many times that Mistress was not quite recovered. She would cast down her eyes and droop her head before the Signor de Lombra, or would look at him with a terrified and fascinated glance, as if his presence had some evil influence or power upon her. Turning from her to him, I used to see him in the shaded gardens or the large, half-lighted sala, looking, as I might say, fixedly upon her, out of darkness. But truly, I had not forgotten La Bella Carolina's words describing the face in their dream. After his second visit, I heard Master say, Now see, my dear Clara, it's over. The lumbar has come and gone and your apprehension is broken like glass. Will he ever come again? Asked Mistress Again? Why surely, over and over again Are you cold? She shivered No dear, but he terrifies me Are you sure that he need come again? The surer for the question, Clara 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, senor, thank God. Very well. We were all, said the Genoese courier, constraining himself to speak a little louder, We were all at Rome for the Carnival. I had been out all day with a Sicilian, a friend of mine, and a courier who was there with an English family. As I returned at night to our hotel, I met the little Carolina, who never stirred from home alone, running distractedly along the corso. Carolina, what's the matter? Oh, Baptista, oh, for the Lord's sake, where's 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 come back, broken down the door, and she's 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 for her swooning on my arm as if she had been shot. Master came up in manner face or voice no more the master that I knew than I was he He took me, I laid the little one upon her bed in the hotel and left her with the chamberwomen, in a carriage, furiously through the darkness, across the desolate Campania. 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'Ombra, who had passed there in a carriage with a frightened English lady crouching in one corner. I never heard, said the 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 that dreaded face beside her that she had seen in her dream. The End engagement once, pursued the German courier, with an English gentleman, elderly and 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 judge some sixty years before. His name was James, and he had a twin brother, John, also a bachelor. Between these brothers, there was a great affection. They were in business together at Goodman's Fields, but they did not live together. Mr. James dwelt in Poland Street, turning out of Oxford Street, London. Mr. John resided by Epping Forest. Mr. James and I were to start for Germany in about a week. The exact day depended on business. Mr. John came to Poland Street, where I was staying in the house, to pass that week with Mr. James. But he said to his brother on the second day, I don't feel very well, James. There's not much the matter with me, but I think I'm a little gouty. 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 left it off, well, you will come and see me before you go. Mr. James, of course, said he would, and they shook hands, both hands, as they always did. and Mr. John ordered out 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 Mr. James coming into my bedroom in his flannel gown with a lighted candle. He sat upon the side of my bed and, looking at me, said, Wilhelm, I have reason to think that I've got some strange illness upon me. I then perceived that there was a very unusual expression in his face. Wilhelm, said he, I'm not afraid or ashamed to tell you what I might be afraid or ashamed to tell another man. You come from a sensible country. where mysterious things are inquired into, and are not settled to have been weighed and measured, or to have been unweighable and unmeasurable, 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, Mr. James repeated looking full at me that I might see how collected he was, the phantom of my brother John. 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, glanced at some papers on my writing desk, turned, and still looking earnestly at me as it passed the bed, went out at the door. Now, I'm not in the least mad, and I'm not in the least disposed to invest that phantom with any external existence out of myself. I think it is a warning to me that I'm ill, and I think I had better be bled. 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 myself to the doctor. I was just ready when we heard a loud knocking and ringing at the street door. My room being an attic at the back, and Mr. James's being on the second floor room in the front, we went down to his room and put up the window to see what was the matter. Is that Mr. James? said the man below, falling back to the opposite side of the way to look up. It is? said Mr. James. And you are my brother's man, Robert? Yes, sir. I'm sorry to say, sir, that Mr. John is ill. He's very bad, sir. It's even feared that he may be lying at the point of death. He wants to see you, sir. I have a chaise here. Pray come to him and pray lose no time. Mr. James and I looked at one another. Wilhelm, 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 Mr. James into his brother's room and I saw and heard myself what follows. His brother lay upon his bed at the upper end of a long bedchamber. His old housekeeper was there and others were there. I think three others were there, if not four. And they had been with him since early in the afternoon. He was in white like the figure. Necessarily so because he had his nightdress on. He looked like the figure. Necessarily so because he looked earnestly 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've seen me before tonight. And you know it. And so died. I waited, when the German courier ceased, to hear something said of this strange story. The silence was unbroken. 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 sit alone in that awful scene, with the chill air coming solemnly upon me, or, if I may tell the truth, to sit alone anywhere. So I went back into the convent parlour, And finding the American gentleman still disposed to relate the biography of the Honorable Ananias Dodger. Heard it all out. That was the final episode of Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories. If you enjoyed this series, you might like to check out some other shows from the Noiser Podcast Network, including Hugh Bonneville reading Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Andy Serkis performing Treasure Island, and Dame Julie Andrews reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Thanks for listening. 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