J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 | Page 2

uncertainties and cold days before

him; he had to fight his way against sore odds. But he had won the
heart of dear Rose Velderkaust, and that was half the battle. It is
needless to say his exertions were redoubled, and his lasting celebrity
proves that his industry was not unrewarded by success.
These ardent labours, and worse still, the hopes that elevated and
beguiled them, were however, destined to experience a sudden
interruption--of a character so strange and mysterious as to baffle all
inquiry and to throw over the events themselves a shadow of
preternatural horror.
Schalken had one evening outstayed all his fellow-pupils, and still
pursued his work in the deserted room. As the daylight was fast falling,
he laid aside his colours, and applied himself to the completion of a
sketch on which he had expressed extraordinary pains. It was a
religious composition, and represented the temptations of a pot-bellied
Saint Anthony. The young artist, however destitute of elevation, had,
nevertheless, discernment enough to be dissatisfied with his own work,
and many were the patient erasures and improvements which saint and
devil underwent, yet all in vain. The large, old-fashioned room was
silent, and, with the exception of himself, quite emptied of its usual
inmates. An hour had thus passed away, nearly two, without any
improved result. Daylight had already declined, and twilight was
deepening into the darkness of night. The patience of the young painter
was exhausted, and he stood before his unfinished production, angry
and mortified, one hand buried in the folds of his long hair, and the
other holding the piece of charcoal which had so ill-performed its office,
and which he now rubbed, without much regard to the sable streaks it
produced, with irritable pressure upon his ample Flemish inexpressibles.
"Curse the subject!" said the young man aloud; "curse the picture, the
devils, the saint--"
At this moment a short, sudden sniff uttered close beside him made the
artist turn sharply round, and he now, for the first time, became aware
that his labours had been overlooked by a stranger. Within about a yard
and half, and rather behind him, there stood the figure of an elderly
man in a cloak and broad-brimmed, conical hat; in his hand, which was

protected with a heavy gauntlet-shaped glove, he carried a long ebony
walking-stick, surmounted with what appeared, as it glittered dimly in
the twilight, to be a massive head of gold, and upon his breast, through
the folds of the cloak, there shone the links of a rich chain of the same
metal. The room was so obscure that nothing further of the appearance
of the figure could be ascertained, and his hat threw his features into
profound shadow. It would not have been easy to conjecture the age of
the intruder; but a quantity of dark hair escaping from beneath this
sombre hat, as well as his firm and upright carriage served to indicate
that his years could not yet exceed threescore, or thereabouts. There
was an air of gravity and importance about the garb of the person, and
something indescribably odd, I might say awful, in the perfect,
stone-like stillness of the figure, that effectually checked the testy
comment which had at once risen to the lips of the irritated artist. He,
therefore, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered his surprise, asked
the stranger, civilly, to be seated, and desired to know if he had any
message to leave for his master.
"Tell Gerard Douw," said the unknown, without altering his attitude in
the smallest degree, "that Minheer Vanderhausen, of Rotterdam, desires
to speak with him on tomorrow evening at this hour, and if he please, in
this room, upon matters of weight; that is all."
The stranger, having finished this message, turned abruptly, and, with a
quick, but silent step quitted the room, before Schalken had time to say
a word in reply. The young man felt a curiosity to see in what direction
the burgher of Rotterdam would turn, on quitting the studio, and for
that purpose he went directly to the window which commanded the
door. A lobby of considerable extent intervened between the inner door
of the painter's room and the street entrance, so that Schalken occupied
the post of observation before the old man could possibly have reached
the street. He watched in vain, however. There was no other mode of
exit. Had the queer old man vanished, or was he lurking about the
recesses of the lobby for some sinister purpose? This last suggestion
filled the mind of Schalken with a vague uneasiness, which was so
unaccountably intense as to make him alike afraid to remain in the
room alone, and reluctant to pass through the lobby. However, with an

effort which appeared very disproportioned to the occasion,