The Portent.
II.—“THE OMEN COMING ON.”[4]
I was set down at the great gate of Hilton Hall, in which I was to reside for some indefinite period as tutor to the children of Lord Hilton. I walked up the broad avenue, through the final arch of which, as through a huge Gothic window, I saw the hall in the distance. Everything was rich, lovely, and fairylike about me. Accustomed to the scanty flowers and diminutive wood of my own country, I looked upon all around me with a feeling of majestic plenty, which I can recall at will, but which I have never experienced again. Beyond the trees which formed the avenue, I saw a shrubbery, composed entirely of flowering plants, almost all strange to me. Issuing from the avenue, I found myself amid open, wide, lawny spaces, in which the flower-beds lay like islands of colour. A statue on a pedestal, the only white thing in the surrounding green of the lawn and the avenue, caught my eye. I had seen scarcely any sculpture; and this, attracting my attention by a favourite contrast of colour, retained it by its own beauty. It was a Dryad, or some nymph of the woods, who looked as if she had just glided from the solitude of the trees behind, and had sprung upon the pedestal to look wonderingly around her. A few large brown leaves lay beneath it, left there, no doubt, by the eddying around its base of some wind that had torn them from the trees behind. As I gazed, absorbed in a new pleasure, a drop of rain upon my face made me look up. From a gray fleecy cloud, with sun-whitened border, lo! a light, gracious, plentiful rain was falling. A rainbow sprang across the sky, and the statue stood within the rainbow. At the same moment, from the base of the pedestal, rose a figure in white, graceful as the Dryad above, and neither running, nor appearing to walk with rapid steps, glided swiftly past me at a few paces’ distance, fleet as a ghost; and, keeping in a straight line for the main entrance of the Hall, entered and vanished. All that I saw of her was, that she was young, very pale, and dressed in white.
I followed in the direction of the mansion, which was large, and of several styles and ages. One wing appeared especially ancient. It seemed neglected and out of repair, and had in consequence a desolate, almost sepulchral look, heightened by a number of large cypresses growing along its line. I went up to the central door and knocked. It was opened by a grave elderly butler. I passed under its flat arch, as if into the midst of the waiting events of my story. As I glanced around the hall, my consciousness was suddenly saturated, if I may be allowed the expression, with that strange feeling—known to every one, and yet so strange—that I had seen it before; that, in fact, I knew it perfectly. But what was yet more strange, and far more uncommon, was, that, although the feeling with regard to the hall faded and vanished instantly, and although I could not in the least surmise the appearance of any of the regions into which I was about to be ushered, I yet followed the butler with a kind of indefinable expectation of seeing something which I had seen before; and every room or passage in that mansion affected me, on entering it for the first time, with the same sensation of previous acquaintance which I had experienced with regard to the hall. This sensation, in every case, died away at once, leaving that portion as strange both to eyes and mind as it might naturally be expected to look to one who had never before crossed the threshold of the hall. I was received by the housekeeper, a little prim benevolent old lady, with colourless face and antique head-dress, who led me to the room which had been prepared for me. To my surprise, I found a large wood fire burning on the hearth; but the feeling of the place revealed at once the necessity for it; and I scarcely needed to be informed that the room, which was upon the ground floor, and looked out upon a little solitary grass-grown and ivy-mantled court, had not been used for years, and required to be thus prepared for an inmate. The look of ancient mystery about it, was to me incomparably more attractive than any elegance or comfort of an ordinary kind. My bedroom was a few paces down a passage to the right.
Left alone, I proceeded to make a more critical survey of my room. It was large and low, panelled in oak throughout, which was black with age, and worm-eaten in many parts—otherwise entire. Both the windows looked into the little court or yard before mentioned. All the heavier furniture of the room was likewise of black oak, but the chairs and couches were covered with faded tapestry and tarnished gilding, and seemed to be the superannuated members of the general household of seats. I could give an individual description of each variety, for every atom in that room large enough to be possessed of discernible shape or colour seems branded into my brain. If I happen to have the least feverishness upon me, the moment I fell asleep, I am in that room.
When the bell rang for dinner, I found my way, though with difficulty, to the drawing-room, where were assembled Lady Hilton, a girl of about thirteen, and the two boys, my pupils. Lady Hilton would have been pleasant, could she have been as natural as she wished to appear. She received me with some degree of kindness; but the half-cordiality of her manner towards me was evidently founded on the impassableness of the gulf between us. I knew at once that we should never be friends; that she would never come down from the lofty tableland upon which she walked; and that if, after being years in the house, I should happen to be dying, she would send the housekeeper to me. All right, no doubt; I only say that it was so. She introduced to me my pupils; fine, open-eyed, manly English boys, with something a little overbearing in their manner, which speedily disappeared in relation to me. They have so little to do with my tale, that I shall scarcely have occasion to mention them again. Lord Hilton was not at home. Lady Hilton led the way to the dining-room; the elder boy gave his arm to his sister, and I was about to follow with the younger; when from one of the deep bay windows glided out, still in white, the same figure which had passed me upon the lawn. I started, and drew back. With a slight bow, she preceded me, and followed the others down the great staircase. Seated at table, I had leisure to make my observations upon them all; but I must say most of my glances found their way to the lady who, twice that day, had affected me like an apparition. Alas! what was she ever to me but an apparition! What is time, but the airy ocean in which ghosts come and go! She was about twenty years of age, rather above the middle height, somewhat slight in form, with a complexion rather white than pale; her face being only less white than the deep marbly whiteness of her most lovely arms. Her eyes were large, and full of liquid night—a night throbbing with the light of invisible stars. Her hair seemed raven-black, and in quantity profuse. Lady Hilton called her Lady Alice; and she never addressed Lady Hilton but in the same ceremonious style.
I afterwards learned from the old housekeeper—who was very friendly, and used to sit with me sometimes of an evening when I invited her—that Lady Alice’s position in the family was a very peculiar one. Distantly connected with Lord Hilton’s family on the mother’s side, she was the daughter of the late Lord Glendarroch, and step-daughter to Lady Hilton, who had become Lady Hilton within a year after Lord Glendarroch’s death. Lady Alice, then quite a child, had accompanied her step-mother, to whom she was moderately attached, and who, perhaps, from the peculiarities of Lady Alice’s mind and disposition, had been allowed to retain undisputed possession of her. Probably, however, she had no near relatives, else the fortune reported to be at her disposal would most likely have roused contending claims to the right of guardianship. Although in many respects very kindly treated by her step-mother, the peculiarities to which I have already referred tended to an isolation from the family engagements and pleasures. Lady Alice had no accomplishments, and never could be taught any. She could neither sing, nor play, nor draw, nor dance. As for languages, she could neither spell, nor even read aloud, her own. Yet she seemed to delight in reading to herself, though, for the most part, what Mrs. Wilson characterized as very odd books. I knew her voice, when she spoke, had a quite indescribable music in it; and her habitual motion was more like a rhythmical gliding than an ordinary walk. Mrs. Wilson hinted at other and even more serious peculiarities, which she either could not, or would not describe; always shaking her head gravely and sadly, and becoming quite silent when I pressed her for further explanation; so that, at last, I gave up all attempts to arrive at an understanding of the mystery, at least by her means. I could not, however, avoid speculating on the subject myself. One thing soon became evident to me: that she was considered by her family to be not merely deficient in the power of intellectual acquirement, but to be—intellectually considered—in a quite abnormal condition. Of this, however, I could see no signs: though there was a peculiarity, almost oddity in some of her remarks, which was evidently not only misunderstood, but misinterpreted with relation to her mental state. Such remarks Lady Hilton generally answered by an elongation of the lips intended to represent a smile. To me, they appeared to indicate a nature closely allied to genius, if not identical with it—a power of regarding things from an original point of view, which perhaps was the more unfettered in its operation from the fact that it was impossible for her to look at them in the ordinary commonplace way. It seemed to me sometimes as if her point of observation was outside of the sphere within which the thing observed took place; and as if what she said had sometimes a relation to things and thoughts and mental conditions familiar to her, but at which not even a definite guess could be made by me. With such utterances as these, however, I am compelled to acknowledge, now and then others mingled, silly enough for any drawing-room young lady; but they seemed to be accepted as proofs that she was not altogether out of her right mind. She was gentle and loving to her brothers and sister, and they seemed reasonably fond of her.
Taking my leave for the night, after making arrangements for commencing my instruction in the morning, I returned to my own room, intent upon completing with more minuteness the survey I had commenced in the morning: several cupboards in the wall, and one or two doors, apparently of closets, had especially attracted my attention. The fire had sunk low, and lay smouldering beneath the white ashes, like the life of the world beneath the snow, or the heart of a man beneath cold and gray thoughts. The room, instead of being brightened, when I lighted the candles which stood upon the table, looked blacker than before, for the light revealed its essential blackness.
Casting my eyes around me as I stood with my back to the hearth (on which, for mere companionship sake, I had heaped fresh wood), a slight shudder thrilled through all my frame. I felt as if, did it last a moment longer, I should be sufficiently detached from the body to become aware of a presence besides my own in the room; but happily for me it ceased before it reached that point; and I, recovering my courage, remained ignorant of the causes of my threatened fear, if any there were, other than the nature of the room itself. With a candle in one hand, I proceeded to open the various cupboards and closets. I found nothing remarkable in any of them. The latter were quite empty, except the last I came to, which had a piece of very old elaborate tapestry hanging at the back of it. Lifting this up, I perceived at first nothing more than a panelled wall, corresponding to those which formed the room; but on looking more closely, I soon discovered that the back of the closet was, or had been, a door. There was nothing unusual in this, especially in such an old house; but it roused in me a strong curiosity to know what was behind it. I found that it was secured only by an ordinary bolt, the handle which had withdrawn it having been removed. Soothing my conscience with the reflection that I had a right to know what doors communicated with my room, I soon succeeded, by the help of my deer-knife, in forcing back the rusty bolt; and though from the stiffness of the hinges I dreaded a crack, they yielded at last. The opening door revealed a large waste hall, empty utterly, save of dust and cobwebs which festooned it in all quarters. The now familiar feeling, that I had seen it before, filled my mind in the first moment of seeing it, and passed away the next. A broad right-angled staircase of oak, with massive banisters, no doubt once brilliantly polished, rose from the middle of the hall. Of course this could not have originally belonged to the ancient wing which I had observed on my first approach to the hall, being much more modern; but I was convinced, from the observations I had made with regard to the situation of my room, that I was bordering upon, if not within, the oldest portion of the pile. In sudden horror, lest I should hear a light footfall upon the awful stair, I withdrew hurriedly, and having secured both the doors, betook myself to my bedroom; in whose dingy four-post bed, reminding me of a hearse with its carving and plumes, I was soon ensconced amidst the snowiest linen, with the sweetest and cleanest odour of lavender. In spite of novelty, antiquity, speculation, and dread, I was soon fast asleep; becoming thereby a fitter inhabitant of such regions than when I moved about with restless and disturbing curiosity in the midst of their ancient and death-like repose. I made no use of my discovered door for some time; not even although, in talking about the building to Lady Hilton, I found that I was at perfect liberty to ramble over the deserted portions as I pleased. I scarcely ever saw Lady Alice, except at dinner, or by accidental meeting in the grounds and passages of the house; and then she took the slightest possible notice of me—whether from pride or shyness, I could not tell.
I found the boys teachable, and therefore my occupation was pleasant. Their sister frequently came to me for help, as there happened to be just then an interregnum of governesses: soon she settled into a regular pupil.
In a few weeks, Lord Hilton returned. Though my room was so far from the great hall, I heard the clank of his spurs on its pavement. I trembled; for it suggested the sound of the broken shoe. But I shook off the influence in a moment, heartily ashamed of its power over me. Soon I became familiar enough both with the sound and its cause; for his lordship rarely went anywhere except on horseback, and was booted and spurred from morning till night. He received me with some appearance of interest, which instantly stiffened and froze. He began to shake hands with me as if he meant it, but immediately dropped my hand, as if it had stung him. His nobility was of that sort which always seems to stand in need of repair. Like a weakly constitution, it required keeping up, and his lordship could not be said to neglect it; for he seemed to find his principal employment in administering to his pride almost continuous doses of obsequiousness. His rank, like a coat made for some large ancestor, hung loose upon him; and he was always trying to persuade himself that it was an excellent fit, but ever with an unacknowledged misgiving. This misgiving might have done him good, had he not met it with constantly revived efforts at looking that which he feared he was not. Yet this man, so far from being weak throughout, was capable of the utmost persistency in carrying out any scheme he had once devised. But enough of him for the present: I seldom came into contact with him.
I found many books to my mind in the neglected library of the hall. One night, I was sitting in my own room, devouring an old romance. It was late; my fire blazed brightly, but the candles were nearly burnt out, and I grew rather sleepy over the volume, romance as it was. Suddenly I found myself springing to my feet, and listening with an agony of intension. Whether I had heard anything, I could not tell; but it was in my soul as if I had. Yes: I was sure of it. Far away—somewhere in the great labyrinthine pile, I heard a voice, a faint cry. Without a moment’s reflection, as if urged by instinct, or some unfelt but operative attraction, I flew to the closet door, entered, lifted the tapestry, unfastened the inner door, and stood in the great echoing hall, amid the touches, light and ghostly, of the crowds of airy cobwebs set in motion by the storm of my sudden entrance.
A soiled moonbeam fell on the floor, and filled the place around it with an ancient, dream-like light, which seemed to work strangely on my brain,—filling it, too, as if it were but a sleepy deserted house, haunted by old dreams and memories. Recollecting myself, I re-entered my room, but the candles were both flickering in the sockets, and I was compelled to trust to the moonlight for guidance. I easily reached the foot of the staircase, and began to ascend: not a board creaked, not a banister shook—the whole seemed as solid as rock. I was compelled to grope, for here was no moonlight—only the light, through one window, of the moonlit sky and air. Finding at last no more stairs to ascend, I groped my way on, in some trepidation, I confess; for how should I find my way back? But then the worst result likely to ensue was, that I should have to spend the night without knowing where; for with the first glimmer of morning, I should be able to return to my room. At length, after wandering about, in and out of rooms, my hand fell on the latch of a door, on opening which, I entered a long corridor, with many windows on one side. Broad strips of moonlight lay slantingly across the narrow floor, with regular intervals of shade.
I started, and my heart grew thick, for I thought I saw a movement somewhere—I could neither tell where, nor of what: I only seemed to have been aware of motion. I stood in the first shadow, and gazed, but saw nothing. I sped across the stream of light to the next shadow, and stood again, looking with fearful fixedness of gaze towards the far end of the corridor. Suddenly a white form glimmered and vanished. I crossed to the next shadow—again a glimmer and a vanishing, but nearer. Nerving myself with all my strength, I ceased my stealthy motion, and went straight forward, slowly but steadily. A tall form, apparently of a woman, dressed in a long white loose robe, emerged into one of the streams of light, threw its arms over its head, gave a wild cry—which, notwithstanding its wildness and force, sounded as if muffled by many intervening folds, either of matter or space—and fell at full length along the moonlight track. In the midst of the thrill of agony which shook me at the cry, as a sudden wind thrills from head to foot the leaves of a tree, I rushed forward, and kneeling beside the prostrate figure, soon discovered that, however unearthly the scream which had preceded her fall, it was, in reality, the Lady Alice. Again I trembled, but the tremor was not the same as that which preceded. I saw the fact in a moment: the Lady Alice was a somnambulist. Startled by the noise of my advance, she had awaked; and the usual terror and fainting had followed. She was cold and motionless as death. What was to be done? If I called aloud, the probability was that no one would hear me; or if any one should hear,—but I need not follow the train of thoughts that passed through my mind, as I fruitlessly tried to recover the poor girl. Suffice it to say, that I shrank most painfully, both for her sake and my own, from being found, by common-minded domestics, in such a situation, in the dead of the night.
While I knelt by her side, hesitating as to what I should do, a horror, as from the presence of death suddenly recognized—akin to that feeling which a child experiences when he looks up and sees that his mother, to whom he thought he had been talking for minutes past, is not in the room—fell upon me. I thought she must be dead. At the same moment, I heard, or seemed to hear (how should I know?) the rapid gallop of a horse, and the clank of a loose shoe.
In an agony of fear, which yet I cannot consider cowardice, I caught her up in my arms, and as one carries a sleeping child, sped with her towards that end of the corridor whence I had come. Her head hung back over my arm, and her hair, which had got loose, trailed on the ground. As I fled, I trampled upon it and stumbled. She moaned, and I shuddered. That instant the gallop ceased. Somewhat relieved, I lifted her up across my shoulder, and carried her more easily. How I found my way to the stairs I cannot tell. I know that I groped about for some time, like one in a dream with a ghost in his arms; but at last I reached it, and descending, entered my room, laid her upon one of the old couches, secured the doors, and began to breathe—and think. The first thing that suggested itself was, to try to make her warm—she was so ice-cold. I covered her with my plaid and my dressing-gown, pulled the couch near the fire, and considered what to do next.
But while I hesitated, Nature had her own way, and Lady Alice opened her eyes with a deep-drawn sigh. Never shall I forget the look of mingled bewilderment, alarm, and shame, with which her great dark eyes met mine. In a moment her expression changed to anger. Her eyes flashed; a cloud of roseate wrath grew in her face, till it glowed with the opaque red of a camellia; and she all but started from the couch to her feet. Apparently, however, she discovered the unsuitableness of her dress, for she checked her impetuosity, and remained leaning on her elbow. After a moment’s pause, in which, overcome by her anger, her beauty, and my own confusion, I knelt before her, unable to speak, or to withdraw my eye from hers, she began to question me like a queen, and I to reply like a culprit.
“How did I come here?”
“I carried you.”
Then, with a curling lip—
“Where did you find me, pray?”
“Somewhere in the old house, in a long corridor.”
“What right had you to be there?”
“I heard a cry, and was compelled to go to it.”
“’Tis impossible. I see. Your prying and my infirmity have brought this disgrace upon me.”
She burst into tears. Then, anger reviving, she went on through her sobs:
“Why did you not leave me where I suppose I fell? You had done enough to injure me by discovering my weakness, without rudely breaking my trance, and, after that, taking advantage of the consequences to bring me here.”
Now I found words. “Lady Alice, how could I leave you lying in the moonlight? Before the sun rose, the terrible moon might have distorted your beautiful face.”
“Be silent, sir. What have you to do with my face?”
“And the wind, Lady Alice, was blowing through the corridor windows, keen and cold, as if it were sister-spirit of the keen and cold moonlight. How could I leave you?”
“You could have called assistance.”
“I knew not whom I should rouse, if any one. And forgive me, Lady Alice, if I erred in thinking you would rather command the silence of a gentleman to whom an evil accident had revealed your secret, than be exposed to the domestics whom a call for help might have gathered round us.”
She half raised herself again, in anger.
“A secret with you, sir!”
“But, besides, Lady Alice,” I cried, springing to my feet, in distress, “I heard the horse with the clanking shoe, and I caught you up in terror and fled with you, almost before I knew what I did. And I hear it now—I hear it now!”
The angry glow faded from her face, and the paleness grew almost ghastly with dismay.
“Do you hear it!” she said, throwing back the coverings I had laid over her, and rising from the couch. “I do not.”
She stood listening, with wide distended eyes, as if they were the gates by which such sounds could enter.
“I do not hear it,” she said, after a pause; “it must be gone now.” Then, turning towards me, she laid her hand on my arm, and looked at me. Her black hair, disordered and entangled, wandered all over her white robe down to her knees. Her face was paler than ever, and she fixed her dark eyes on mine, so wide open that I could see the white all round the unusually large iris.
“Did you hear it? No one ever heard it before but me. I must forgive you—you could not help it. I will trust you too. Help me to my room.”
Without a word of reply, I took my plaid and wrapped it about her; prevailed upon her to put on a pair of slippers which I had never worn; and, opening the doors, led her out of the room, aided by the light of my bedroom candle.
“How is this? Why do you take me this way! I do not know this part of the house in the least.”
“This is the way I brought you in, Lady Alice; and I can promise to find your way no farther than to the spot where I found you. Indeed, I shall have some difficulty even in that, for I groped my way there for the first time this night or morning—whichever it may be.”
“It is past midnight, but not morning yet,” she replied; “I always know by my sensations. But there is another way from your room, of course?”
“There is; but we should have to pass the housekeeper’s door, and she sleeps but lightly.”
“Are we near the housekeeper’s room? Perhaps I could walk alone. I fear it would surprise none of the household to see, or even to meet me. They would say—‘It is only Lady Alice.’ Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink from being seen by them. No—I will try the way I came, if you do not mind accompanying me.”
This conversation passed between us in hurried words, and in a low tone. It was scarcely finished when we found ourselves at the foot of the staircase. Lady Alice trembled a good deal, and drew my plaid close around her. We ascended, and with little difficulty found the corridor. When we left it, she was, as I had expected, rather bewildered as to the right direction; but at last, after looking into several of the rooms, empty all, except for stray articles of ancient furniture, she said, as she entered one, and, taking the candle out of my hand, held it above her head—
“Ah, yes! I am right at last; this is the haunted room: I know my way now.”
By the dim light I caught only a darkling glimpse of a large room, apparently quite furnished; but how, except from the general feeling of antiquity and mustiness, I could not tell. Little did I think then what memories—sorrowful and old now as the ghosts that along with them haunt that old chamber, but no more faded than they—would ere long find their being and take their abode in that ancient room, to forsake it never, never more—the ghosts and the memories flitting together through the spectral moonlight, and weaving strange mystic dances in and out of the storied windows and the tapestried walls. At the door of this room she expressed her wish to leave me, asking me to follow to the spot where she should put down the light, that I might take it back; adding—“I hope you are not afraid of being left so near the haunted room.” Then, with a smile that made me strong enough to meet all the ghosts in or out of Hades, she turned, went on a few paces, and disappeared. The light, however, remained; and, advancing, I found the candle, with my plaid and slippers, deposited on the third or fourth step down a short flight, in a passage at right angles to that she had left. I took them up, made my way back to my room, lay down on the couch on which she had lain so shortly before, and neither went to bed nor slept that night. Before the morning I had fully entered that phase of individual development commonly called love; of which the real nature is as great a mystery to me now, as at any period previous to its evolution in myself.
I will not linger on the weary fortnight that passed before I even saw her again. I could teach, but not learn. My duties were not irksome to me, because they kept me near her; but my thoughts were beyond my control. It was not love only, but anxiety also, lest she were ill from the adventures of that night, that caused my distress. As the days went on, and no chance word about her reached me, I felt the soul within me beginning to droop. In vain, at night, I tried to read, in my own room. Nothing could fix my attention. I read and re-read the same page again and again; but although I seemed to understand every word and phrase as I read, I found when I had reached the close of the paragraph, that there lingered in my mind no ghost of the idea embodied in the words. It was just what one experiences in attempting to read when half-asleep. I tried Euclid, and fared a little better with that. A very simple equation I found I could manage, but when I attempted a more complex one—one in which a little imagination, or something bordering upon it, was necessary to find out the undefined object for which to substitute the unknown symbol, that it might be dealt with by thought—I found that the necessary power of concentrating was itself a missing factor.
But it is foolish to dwell upon an individual variety of an almost universal stage in the life-fever.
One night, as I sat in my room, I found, as usual, that it was impossible to read; and throwing the book aside, relapsed into that sphere of thought which now filled my soul, having for its centre the Lady Alice. I recalled her form as she lay on the couch, and a longing to see her, almost unbearable, arose within me.
“Would to heaven,” I said to myself, “that will were power!”
In the confluence of idleness, distraction, and vehement desire, I found myself, before I knew what I was about, concentrating and intensifying within me, until it almost rose to a command, the operative volition (if I may be allowed the phrase) that Lady Alice should come to me. Suddenly I trembled at the sense of a new power which sprang into being within me. I had not foreseen it, when I gave way to such extravagant and apparently helpless wishes. I now actually awaited the fulfilment of my desire, but in a condition ill fitted to receive it; for the effort had already exhausted me to such a degree, that every nerve seemed in a conscious tremor. Nor had I to wait long. I heard no sound of approach. The closet-door in my room folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but sightless, pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like, the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was more terrible to me in that moment, than any pale-eyed ghost could have been. She passed me, walking round the table at which I was seated, went to the couch, laid herself upon it, a little on one side, with her face towards me, and gradually closed her eyes. She lay in something deeper than sleep, and yet not death. I rose, and once more knelt beside her, but dared not touch her. In what far realms of mysterious life might the lovely soul be straying? Thoughts unutterable rose in me, culminated, and sank like the stars of heaven, as I gazed on the present symbol of an absent life—a life that I loved by means of the symbol; a symbol that I loved because of the life. How long she lay thus, how long I gazed upon her thus, I do not know.
Gradually, but without my being able to distinguish the gradations of the change, her countenance altered to that of one who sleeps. But the change did not end there. The slightest possible colour tinged her lips, and deepened to a pale rose; then her cheek seemed to share in the hue, then her brow and her neck, as the cloud the farthest from the sunset yet acknowledges the rosy atmosphere. I watched, as it were, the dawn of a soul on the horizon of the material. As I watched, the first approaches of its far-off flight were manifest; and I saw it come nearer and nearer, till its great, silent, speeding pinions were folded, and it looked forth, a calm, beautiful, infinite woman, from the face and form sleeping beside me. But the world without entering, ruffled its calmness, dimmed its beauty, and dashed its sky with the streaks of earthly vapours. I knew that she was awake for some moments before she opened her eyes. When at last those depths of darkness disclosed themselves, slowly uplifting their white cloudy portals, the same consternation she had manifested on the former occasion, followed by yet greater anger, was the consequence.
“Yet again! Am I your slave, because I am weak?” She rose in the majesty of wrath, and moved towards the door.
“Lady Alice, I have not touched you. Yet I am to blame, though not as you think. Could I help longing to see you? And if the longing passed, ere I was aware, into a will that you should come, and you obeyed it, forgive me.”
I hid my face in my hands, overcome by conflicting emotions. A kind of stupor came over me. When, recovering, I lifted my head, she was standing by the closet-door.
“I have waited,” she said, “only to make one request of you.”
“Do not utter it, Lady Alice. I know what it is; and I give you my word and solemn promise that I will never do so again.” She thanked me, smiled most sweetly, and vanished.
What nights I had after this, in watching and striving lest unawares I should be led to the exercise of my new power! I allowed myself to think of her as much as I pleased in the daytime, or at least as much as I dared; for when occupied with my pupils, I dreaded lest any abstraction should even hint that I had a thought to conceal. I knew that I could not hurt her then; for that only in the night did she enter that state of existence in which my will could exercise authority over her. But at night—at night—when I knew she lay there, and might be lying here; when but a thought would bring her, and that thought was fluttering its wings, ready to wake from the dreams of my heart; then the struggle was fearful. “Bring her yet once, and tell her all—tell her how madly, hopelessly you love her—she will forgive you,” said a voice within me; but I heard it as the voice of the tempter, and kept down the thought which might have grown to the will.