Again I held my breath, and now I thought of the most horrible story Poe ever wrote—“The Fall of the House of Usher”—and I fancied I saw the handle of that door move. I fixed my eyes on it. The fancy passed: and returned.
Then again there was silence. And then the door opened with a soft, silent suddenness, and I saw in the doorway a figure in trailing white. Its eyes blazed in a death-white face. It made two ghostly, gliding steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other ghost—the real one—had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.
The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against the door with its arms across its face.
The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and rolled away under the table.
I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: “Don’t, for Heaven’s sake—it’s all right.”
The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off my cloak and hat.
“I—didn’t—scream,” she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught her in my arms—my poor, pink lady—white now as a white rose.
I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her, extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that night’s folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and at last she sighed and opened her eyes.
“Oh—thank God—thank God!” I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that my mad trick had killed her. “Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are you better?”
She moved her head a little on my arm.