Death, the Knight, and the Lady: A Ghost Story

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

She was not asleep, then. I opened the door. Geraldine was sitting by the open window, dressed; she had not been to bed. The bed lay white—Oh, God, if these tears would only choke me and not fill my throat with this dull, heavy pain—white and uncrumpled. She stretched out her arms to me feebly and as if against her will. And now I had kissed her three times, and was kneeling by her side, I—who had determined to kiss her once and leave her—and her head was upon my shoulder, and she was telling me how she could not go to bed for thinking of me, and how she loved me, loved me as no one had ever been loved before. Oh the innocence and divine sweetness of this love, of this voice, and the terror and anguish of the thought, "You are doomed to kill her, doomed, doomed."

How could I leave her? She had actually put her arm round my neck. I laid my head behind hers, so that I might not see the dawn, and might forget the world. My lips kept murmuring, "It is fate." As if in answer to the muttering of my lips there came a sound, the turret clock was striking six, six melancholy strokes; they brought back to my mind the words of the little black book.

"Geraldine," I cried, holding my face on her knees, "it was this hour, long, long ago, when I killed you; tell me to go, tell me to leave you, it will happen again, for Death is here, oh! listen to the wind." I ceased, and the wind sobbed and sighed in the garden, but no word came from Geraldine, only a tear that fell and burned my hand. "Geraldine," I whispered, "I have betrayed you, turn me away for your own sake."

Then I felt two soft hands seize my hair on either side of my head, and lift my face. I heard a voice whisper, "You are mine, and I will hold you so."

"Ah! then," I cried, "let the past be gone for ever; now, now with this kiss—and this—and this—let us defy Death." But even as our lips clung together, the wind moaned drearily in the trees. I heard Death, I felt him, he was in the garden, his gray misty face was at the window. We clung to each other like people drowning; we seemed to know that the eternal parting was so near; speechless, with lips paralysed, but still pressed together, we seemed listening for help, but no help came, nor sound—only the sound of the wind mourning in the trees.

Then drearily a little bird began to sing somewhere in the garden. Its song pierced my wretched heart and drove me to madness, to passion. I stood up, and, as my arms were round her, I lifted her in my arms. For one moment I held that delightful burthen, so warm and supple and perfumed, then growing dizzy, I laid her on the bed and leaned beside her. She started and drew back from something she saw in my gaze. Her lips grew pale.

"Geraldine," I muttered, "what is the matter, Geraldine?"

The pale lips moved, and a terror shot through me. She was going to faint; no, she was not going to faint, she seemed recovered now, but how weak she seemed.

"Wait," I whispered to her, "wait till I come back."

I left the room and hurried across the hall to the dining-room. Here, on the sideboard was a lock-up case containing brandy and liqueurs, but it was locked, of course; here was a decanter labelled "Roussillon." That would do.