One had a look of my dead Mary; but the other curdled
my blood, and yet it was the same!”

She had taken hold of my arm, as if to secure herself some human
companionship. She shook all over with the slight, never-ceasing tremor
of intense terror. I told her my tale as I have told it you, sparing
none of the details. How Mistress Clarke had informed me that the resemblance had driven Lucy
forth from her father’s house—how I had disbelieved, until, with mine own
eyes, I had seen another Lucy standing behind my Lucy, the same in form
and feature, but with the demon-soul looking out of the eyes. I told her
all, I say, believing that she—whose curse was working so upon the life
of her innocent grandchild—was the only person who could find the remedy
and the redemption. When I had done, she sat silent for many minutes. “You love Mary’s child?” she asked. “I do, in spite of the fearful working of the curse—I love her. Yet I
shrink from her ever since that day on the moor-side. And men must
shrink from one so accompanied; friends and lovers must stand afar off. Oh, Bridget Fitzgerald! loosen the curse! Set her free!”

“Where is she?”

I eagerly caught at the idea that her presence was needed, in order that,
by some strange prayer or exorcism, the spell might be reversed. “I will go and bring her to you,” I exclaimed. Bridget tightened her
hold upon my arm. “Not so,” said she, in a low, hoarse voice. “It would kill me to see her
again as I saw her this morning. And I must live till I have worked my
work. Leave me!” said she, suddenly, and again taking up the cross. “I
defy the demon I have called up. Leave me to wrestle with it!”

She stood up, as if in an ecstasy of inspiration, from which all fear was
banished. I lingered—why I can hardly tell—until once more she bade me
begone. As I went along the forest way, I looked back, and saw her
planting the cross in the empty threshold, where the door had been. The next morning Lucy and I went to seek her, to bid her join her prayers
with ours. The cottage stood open and wide to our gaze. No human being
was there: the cross remained on the threshold, but Bridget was gone. CHAPTER III. What was to be done next? was the question that I asked myself. As for
Lucy, she would fain have submitted to the doom that lay upon her. Her
gentleness and piety, under the pressure of so horrible a life, seemed
over-passive to me. She never complained. Mrs. Clarke complained more
than ever. As for me, I was more in love with the real Lucy than ever;
but I shrunk from the false similitude with an intensity proportioned to
my love. I found out by instinct that Mrs. Clarke had occasional
temptations to leave Lucy. The good lady’s nerves were shaken, and, from
what she said, I could almost have concluded that the object of the
Double was to drive away from Lucy this last, and almost earliest friend. At times, I could scarcely bear to own it, but I myself felt inclined to
turn recreant; and I would accuse Lucy of being too patient—too resigned. One after another, she won the little children of Coldholme. (Mrs.
Clarke and she had resolved to stay there, for was it not as good a place
as any other, to such as they? and did not all our faint hopes rest on
Bridget—never seen or heard of now, but still we trusted to come back, or
give some token?) So, as I say, one after another, the little children
came about my Lucy, won by her soft tones, and her gentle smiles, and
kind actions. Alas! one after another they fell away, and shrunk from
her path with blanching terror; and we too surely guessed the reason why. It was the last drop. I could bear it no longer. I resolved no more to
linger around the spot, but to go back to my uncle, and among the learned
divines of the city of London, seek for some power whereby to annul the
curse. My uncle, meanwhile, had obtained all the requisite testimonials relating
to Lucy’s descent and birth, from the Irish lawyers, and from Mr.
Gisborne. The latter gentleman had written from abroad (he was again
serving in the Austrian army), a letter alternately passionately
self-reproachful and stoically repellant. It was evident that when he
thought of Mary—her short life—how he had wronged her, and of her violent
death, he could hardly find words severe enough for his own conduct; and
from this point of view, the curse that Bridget had laid upon him and
his, was regarded by him as a prophetic doom, to the utterance of which
she was moved by a Higher Power, working for the fulfilment of a deeper
vengeance than for the death of the poor dog. But then, again, when he
came to speak of his daughter, the repugnance which the conduct of the
demoniac creature had produced in his mind, was but ill-disguised under a
show of profound indifference as to Lucy’s fate. One almost felt as if
he would have been as content to put her out of existence, as he would
have been to destroy some disgusting reptile that had invaded his chamber
or his couch. The great Fitzgerald property was Lucy’s; and that was all—was nothing. My uncle and I sat in the gloom of a London November evening, in our
house in Ormond Street. I was out of health, and felt as if I were in an
inextricable coil of misery. Lucy and I wrote to each other, but that
was little; and we dared not see each other for dread of the fearful
Third, who had more than once taken her place at our meetings. My uncle
had, on the day I speak of, bidden prayers to be put up on the ensuing
Sabbath in many a church and meeting-house in London, for one grievously
tormented by an evil spirit. He had faith in prayers—I had none; I was
fast losing faith in all things. So we sat, he trying to interest me in
the old talk of other days, I oppressed by one thought—when our old
servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without speaking, showed in a
very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had something remarkable
about his dress, betraying his profession to be that of the Roman
Catholic priesthood. He glanced at my uncle first, then at me. It was
to me he bowed. “I did not give my name,” said he, “because you would hardly have
recognised it; unless, sir, when, in the north, you heard of Father
Bernard, the chaplain at Stoney Hurst?”

I remembered afterwards that I had heard of him, but at the time I had
utterly forgotten it; so I professed myself a complete stranger to him;
while my ever-hospitable uncle, although hating a papist as much as it
was in his nature to hate anything, placed a chair for the visitor, and
bade Anthony bring glasses, and a fresh jug of claret. Father Bernard received this courtesy with the graceful ease and pleasant
acknowledgement which belongs to a man of the world. Then he turned to
scan me with his keen glance.