“What, the deuce is the matter with Rawdie?” he said, sharply.
“It’s the moon, I suppose,” said Godfrey, pulling vainly at the curtain. “He’s got the nightmare this time, instead of you! I never knew him howl at the moon before. Here Rawdie, Rawdie! Hold your noise! Shut up!”
Rawdie jumped into his master’s arms, his howls subsiding into whines and whimpers.
Guy stood leaning against the door, watching them. He set his teeth hard, as, in the broad white streak of moonlight, the Presence which he feared took, as it seemed to him, visible shape. It was not now a face flashing into his own, but a shadowy figure, with averted head, moving across the room, as if in hurried, timorous flight. Guy’s pulses stood still, but this time his nerves held their own. He waited, and the figure, the impression, passed him quickly by, through the doorway, into the room he had just left. Guy shut the door suddenly upon Godfrey and Rawdie, and stood with his back against it—looking. Then the figure turned the never-to-be-forgotten face full upon him, and it was to him as if his own eyes looked back on him, with malicious scorn of himself; as if this scared and hunted creature were an aspect of himself. He crouched and cowered against the wall, and gazed back at the spectre, but he felt that the sight, if sight it were, was as nothing to the inward experience of the soul of which it was the expression, the despair, the degradation of irresistible fear.
Whether it was a second or an hour before the moonlight had gone from the room, and with it the impression, Guy could not tell; but he knew at once when it was gone, and stumbling towards the bed, threw himself down on it.
There was a candle burning, but the room swam and darkened before his eyes, he was deadly faint, and as the life came back to him a little, the panic which was wont to come upon him, overwhelmed him, and he trembled and hid his face. It passed sooner than usual, much sooner than usual self-command came back, though the throbbing of his heart forced him to be quite still, and took all his strength away. As the power of thought slowly came back to him, the memory of Florella’s words came back also. The Presence of the Divine Spirit! Could that become real to the soul?
Guy knew what one spiritual experience was, and he did not deceive himself into thinking that he had ever known this other. If the door of his soul was open to the unseen, no such messenger had ever sought entrance; indeed, he had done his best to bar the way.
But now, over his bewildered spirit there swept another vision, new and fair, the vision of a human sympathy that might make the weak strong. If this wise girl could know—could see? Before the hope of her helpfulness, his foolish pride would give way. He could nerve himself to confession. The next moment he knew that to lay his burden on the innocent soul of another, to seek a love which must suffer in his suffering, would be of all cowardly methods of escape the most contemptible. He must try to think more clearly. He managed to stand up, and to find the brandy, which, with most pitiful foresight, he had brought with him. He had drunk it before he suddenly felt how significant was the eagerness with which he took it. It was another terror, indeed, and he threw himself down again on the bed and lay half dozing, till with the daylight and the singing of the birds, he started awake, with his nerves all ajar, and without energy enough to undress and go to bed properly.
He managed, however, to make his appearance downstairs, where Rawdie’s cheerful bark recalled the poor little dog’s terror of the night before. Guy picked him up, and looked into his cairn-gorm coloured eyes, but no change had come into them. Godfrey, too, was eating his breakfast, and making Jeanie talk about Constancy.
Guy played with his tea-cup, and made critical remarks on the young ladies, till the trap that he had ordered to take him to the station appeared, when he cut short his farewells, and went off hastily, without giving his aunt time to say that she wished him to come back again shortly.