Marie St. Pierre by Hume Nisbet

“Marie St. Pierre” is taken from the Hume Nisbet anthology The Haunted Station and Other Stories (1894). Generally overlooked by anthology editors, it doesn’t appear to have been republished until 2021 when it appeared in And Midnight Never Come. “Marie St. Pierre” resurfaced a few years later when it appeared in The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 26.

 

About Hume Nisbet

Hume Nisbet was an artist and novelist who was born in Stirling , Scotland, in 1849. When he was 16 years old, Nisbet traveled to Australia and remained there for around seven years pursuing creative and artistic pursuits.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many of Nisbet’s tales are set in Australia. Although his poetry and stories had a variety of themes, he produced an impressive number of ghost stories, many of which he included in his anthologies The Haunted Station (1894) and Stories Weird and Wonderful (1900).

 

Marie St. Pierre

by Hume Nisbet

(Online Text)

“Many a with’ring thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit who wear them most.”
— Byron.

“We were all assembled, a gay company—a very gay company—and I was the gayest of the gay. How giddy we can appear when the heart is ready to burst with misery! I sang to them alternately comic and sentimental ballads, played for them operatic selections, recited parts of some of my old stage pieces, until they wept with maudlin sympathy, or roared out with vulgar applause. They thought me so light-hearted, so coquettish, so happy. How they admired my beauty, followed with their greedy eyes each graceful motion, watched the ease with which I handled my fan, and envied my vivacity of spirits as I showed them my teeth and laughed! But how they would have shrunk back with horror could they have read the purpose stamped within my wretched and distracted mind!

“I sank back upon a couch with the book in my hand, studying it very carefully, yet taking time to glance up now and then with a placid smile at the poor puns of my brainless companion. Neither did I shudder when he inquired what was the title of the book I was poring so intently over, but replied carelessly as I handed it to him, ‘De Quincy on Opium.’ I laughed in answer to his remark that it was a singular [1] study for a young lady, and turned lightly from him to it again, learning off by heart the deadly recipe—the proper amount of drops required for a girl of my fancied organism to sleep on for ever. I knew the consequences of an over-draught, therefore was all the more careful, for I did not wish to suffer too much pain, nor to disfigure my person in any way. I wished to look as fair and as interesting in that slumber as when awake, that they might all admire me as they had done before, that some might pity the shell who had no pity for Marie St. Pierre when pity would have done her good. I wished him to see me who had so falsely left me to suffer alone the bitters of a weak impulse, that he might also feel to the full the vain regret of a remorseful heart as he gazed upon the lovely morsel which his coldness had thrown from him. This would be my revenge for long nights of sleepless agony, and for this I spent every spare moment upon the pages, and every thought concentrated upon their contents, even as I played, and laughed, and sang.

“I was an actress and ambitious; overmuch so, the managers thought, since they wished to humble my pride by offering to me a subordinate engagement; but they did not know my spirit when they attempted this: I was not to be brought down while the means of escape lay in my little bottle. The funds were ebbing low, with no means of replenishing them except by stooping; yet I could afford to be cheerful when I knew that I should never require to stoop while I kept that little bottle. I loved a man, who had acted well when he could deceive a professional actress, but even his base desertion, my hidden shame, and breaking heart, could not affect my features while I was upheld by the proud consciousness that in my own hands lay my destiny; that in my desk, amongst his billets doux and perfumed love-tokens, reposed a little draught, like the asp of Cleopatra among the roses, waiting but for my consent to waft me away from the memory of mortal woes.

“That night I made myself agreeable, and after a few hours of entertaining misery, my amused visitors departed to their respective and respectable homes, leaving me to myself. Graciously I returned their bows, pleasantly wished them all goodnight and sweet repose; then, as the last disappeared, without a betraying look or tremor, took from the hand of my landlady the candle, and smilingly ascended to the solitudes of my chamber. The hall clock struck three as I locked my chamber door, and laid the candle beside my desk on the dressing table, while I sat down to gaze at the reflection of myself in the mirror. How deadly quiet the space around me seemed, yet how fearfully crammed it felt; it seemed as though ten thousand eyes were fixing themselves upon me to bear witness against the daring and impious purpose of my desperate will; as if the chamber were thronged with shadows who hung about me; as if arms were pressing upon me, and voices striving to shriek out their entreaties for me to pause and reconsider my mad intent. But I was resolved, and their efforts were idle. With a spiteful stamp, I sprang to my feet, and shook off the stupor of horror that was closing upon me, and taking from me my forced courage. While pressing my lips firmly to keep back a shriek, I began my last task upon earth. Opening my desk, I took from thence his letters. One by one I read them through again with a bounding heart and bitter scalding tears; I kissed them passionately; then, kneeling down, gathered them into a little heap on the hearthstone, and applying a light, watched them slowly consume to ashes, as my hopes had done before. These mute witnesses of my unwise love destroyed, I arose, and pouring some water into the basin, carefully bathed my eyes, so that the world might see no trace of the workings of the heart upon my countenance when it came to gaze upon it in the morning. Then, again sitting down to the desk, I commenced to pen a few last directions. I told them to spare the time of the coroner with his jury, for that my own hand had liberated my soul with the aid of laudanum, but to bury the frail prison unbroken, as I had left it; thus, in my conceit, thinking on the looks that had ruined me. I gave no reason for my rash step, but finished the epistle by bidding all a kind farewell, bequeathing all that I did not require for grave purposes to the few friends I had left. This I sealed and left on my desk; then began leisurely to deck myself out for the tomb. I selected the white-satin robe in which he had first beheld me, dressed up my hair in his favourite fashion, and, seating myself upon the bed, arranged the folds of my costume most effectively; after which I reached over, and taking the phial from its perfumed nest, drew out the stopper, and with a silent prayer for pardon, but with a steady hand, I counted out the calculated drops into a wine glass, and quaffed it quickly off. I had time to put back the phial and wine glass, also to stretch myself upon the bed and think, before the poison began to operate. What were my thoughts during those silent moments I will not say; yet although stinging, I do not think they were so agonising as those which had racked my mind for weeks back.

Then the air began to grow thicker and lighter methought. Although the candle was guttering and dying in its socket, silvery clouds rolled upwards from the floor to the ceiling, coming nearer to me, and waxing denser and brighter as they neared. I watched those vapours for some time with curiosity, not unmingled with fear, as I observed starry lights gleam through them and shift about; until, with a wild start, I beheld the cloudy columns burst asunder, and from their centre leap forth shining and dark forms, who surrounded me, and gazed upon me, the brighter ones with benevolent and pitying looks, and the darker ones with malignant leers. Then it flashed across my mind that I was looking on the spirits of the departed, and I felt that my time was drawing nigh. I tried to cry out, to push back the influence of those dark and loathsome phantoms, for it was them who seemed to come nearest me, as if they had the best claim upon my captive soul; but I could not keep them away, and only a low moan broke from my icy lips in place of the shriek that rent my bosom. Nearer they pressed, one upon the other, with ghastly faces, and glowing eyes peering upon me, and the weird fingers spreading out at me, until, in the midst of my awful terror and unexpressed abhorrence, I felt as if lifted up by demon talons and dashed down again into chaotic blackness.”

Hume Nisbet (1849 — 1923)

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1. The word singular can be used in several ways. In the context of the story, it indicates something that is unusual, odd, or peculiar. ↩

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