The phrase about the garden, in the consul’s cable, came back to me and I thought: “After all, it’s not such an unhappy state. I wonder if she isn’t better off than when she was alive?”
Perhaps she was—but I was sure I wasn’t, in her company. And her way of sidling nearer to the door made me distinctly want to reach it before she did. In a rush of cowardice I strode ahead of her—but a second later she had the latch in her hand and was leaning against the panels, her long white raiment hanging about her like grave-clothes. She drooped her head a little sideways and peered at me under her lashless lids.
“You’re not going?” she reproached me.
I dived down in vain for my missing voice, and silently signed that I was.
“Going—going away? Altogether?” Her eyes were still fixed on me, and I saw two tears gather in their corners and run down over the red glistening circles on her cheeks. “Oh, but you mustn’t,” she said gently. “I’m too lonely....”
I stammered something inarticulate, my eyes on the blue-nailed hand that grasped the latch. Suddenly the window behind us crashed open, and a gust of wind, surging in out of the blackness, extinguished the candle on the nearest chimney-corner. I glanced back nervously to see if the other candle were going out too.
“You don’t like the noise of the wind? I do. It’s all I have to talk to.... People don’t like me much since I’ve been dead. Queer, isn’t it? The peasants are so superstitious. At times I’m really lonely....” Her voice cracked in a last effort at laughter, and she swayed toward me, one hand still on the latch.
“Lonely, lonely! If you knew how lonely! It was a lie when I told you I wasn’t! And now you come, and your face looks friendly ... and you say you’re going to leave me! No—no—no—you shan’t! Or else, why did you come? It’s cruel.... I used to think I knew what loneliness was ... after Grace married, you know. Grace thought she was always thinking of me, but she wasn’t. She called me ‘darling,’ but she was thinking of her husband and children. I said to myself then: ‘You couldn’t be lonelier if you were dead.’ But I know better now.... There’s been no loneliness like this last year’s ... none! And sometimes I sit here and think: ‘If a man came along some day and took a fancy to you?’” She gave another wavering cackle. “Well, such things have happened, you know, even after youth’s gone ... a man who’d had his troubles too. But no one came till tonight ... and now you say you’re going!” Suddenly she flung herself toward me. “Oh, stay with me, stay with me ... just tonight.... It’s so sweet and quiet here.... No one need know ... no one will ever come and trouble us.”
I ought to have shut the window when the first gust came. I might have known there would soon be another, fiercer one. It came now, slamming back the loose-hinged lattice, filling the room with the noise of the sea and with wet swirls of fog, and dashing the other candle to the floor. The light went out, and I stood there—we stood there—lost to each other in the roaring coiling darkness. My heart seemed to stop beating; I had to fetch up my breath with great heaves that covered me with sweat. The door—the door—well, I knew I had been facing it when the candle went. Something white and wraithlike seemed to melt and crumple up before me in the night, and avoiding the spot where it had sunk away I stumbled around it in a wide circle, got the latch in my hand, caught my foot in a scarf or sleeve, trailing loose and invisible, and freed myself with a jerk from this last obstacle. I had the door open now. As I got into the hall I heard a whimper from the blackness behind me; but I scrambled on to the hall door, dragged it open and bolted out into the night. I slammed the door on that pitiful low whimper, and the fog and wind enveloped me in healing arms.