Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

There was more light in the room now. It came from a pale greyish efflorescence of illumination, globular in shape, that lay apparently over his left breast. It made its immediate neighbourhood quite bright: she could see the stud in his shirt with absolute distinctness. Out of it there came a little wisp of mist that floated up like a stream of smoke above his shoulders. In the air there, independently of this, there was forming another mist-like substance, and the stream that came away from Archie seemed to join this. It began to take shape: it spread upwards and downwards into the semblance of a column, its edges losing themselves in the dark. Lines began to be interwoven within it: it was as if something was forming inside it, like a chicken in an egg. It lost its vagueness of outline, plaiting and weaving itself together: there appeared an arm bare to the shoulder; above that she could see a neck, and slowly above the neck there grew a smiling, splendid face. There seemed to be a grey robe cast about the body, from which the bare arm protruded, but much of this was vague.

Jessie felt as if some awful paralysis of terror lay over her spirit. The whole room, cool and fresh with the night-air passing through the open window, reeked, to her spiritual sense, with evil and unnameable corruption. Over her conscious superficial self, the mechanism that directed her limbs and worked in her brain, she had complete control: for Archie's sake she was learning about this hellish visitor who came to him. But within, her soul cried out in a horror of uttermost darkness. Then her will took hold of that too: whatever God permitted must be faced for the sake of love.

Just then Archie spoke in an odd muffled voice.

"I'm going very deep," he said. "But, Martin, you've made me so happy all day. You've hardly left me at all. You're getting to be part of me, aren't you? Let's talk about Helena. I say, she is a devil, isn't she?"

Jessie had not known that anything could be so horrible as the smiling face that the apparition bent on him.

"But you've ceased hating her," it said. "You love her, don't you?
Always cling to love!"

"I know, I adore her. I believe she loves me too." He laughed and licked his lips and his voice sank, so that Jessie could catch no word of what he said. But he spoke for a long time, laughing occasionally, and making horrible little movements with his arms as if he clasped something. Now and then he would perhaps ask a question, for in the same inaudible manner the apparition answered him, laughing sometimes in response. Once or twice in that devilish colloquy she caught a word or two of hideous and carnal import, and her sickened love nearly withered within her. But because love is immortal, and cannot perish though all the blasts of hell rage against it, it still stood firm, though scorched and beaten upon. If she let it die, she felt that she would be no better than that visible incarnation of evil that smiled and bent over Archie.

Presently that devilish whispering ceased, and she saw that the apparition was beginning to lose its clearness of outline. Slowly it began to disintegrate into the weavings of mist out of which it came, and Archie said, "Good-bye, Martin, but not for long." Some of these streamers seemed to disperse in the air, others, like an eddying water-spout, seemed to draw back into that focus of light which lay over Archie's breast. Then that too began to fade, and in the stillness and quiet she again heard the creaking of his shirt as he lay back in his chair with closed eyes. Then the struggles and moanings, the writhings of his arms began again, and again subsided, and he lay quite still. Outside the night-wind stirred and dropped.

Then Archie spoke in a tired, husky voice.

"Hullo, Jessie," he said, "it's all over. By Jove, it was ripping. But I went awfully deep. I can remember nothing after Martin came. What did he say?"