The day steals on; at every stopping place more people come on. There is hardly elbow room; and, what is worse, almost everybody is drunk. Rocks, castles, villages, poplars, slide by, while the paddles churn always the water, and the evening draws greyly on. At Bingen a party of big blue Prussian soldiers, very drunk, “glorious” as Tam o’ Shanter, come and establish themselves close to us. They call for Lager Beer; talk at the tip-top of their strong voices; two of them begin to spar; all seem inclined to sing. Elizabeth is frightened. We are two hours late in arriving at Biebrich. It is half an hour more before we can get ourselves and our luggage into a carriage and set off along the winding road to Wiesbaden. “The night is chilly, but not dark.” There is only a little shabby bit of a moon, but it shines as hard as it can. Elizabeth is quite worn out, her tired head droops in uneasy sleep on my shoulder. Once she wakes up with a start.
“Are you sure that it meant nothing?” she asks, looking me eagerly in my face; “do people often have such dreams?”
“Often, often,” I answer, reassuringly.
“I am always afraid of falling asleep now,” she says, trying to sit upright and keep her heavy eyes open, “for fear of seeing him standing there again. Tell me, do you think I shall? Is there any chance, any probability of it?”
“None, none!”
We reach Wiesbaden at last, and drive up to the Hôtel des Quatre Saisons. By this time it is full midnight. Two or three men are standing about the door. Morris, the maid, has got out—so have I, and I am holding out my hand to Elizabeth, when I hear her give one piercing scream, and see her with ash-white face and starting eyes point with her forefinger——
“There he is!—there!—there!”
I look in the direction indicated, and just catch a glimpse of a tall figure, standing half in the shadow of the night, half in the gaslight from the hotel. I have not time for more than one cursory glance, as I am interrupted by a cry from the bystanders, and turning quickly round, am just in time to catch my wife, who falls in utter insensibility into my arms. We carry her into a room on the ground floor; it is small, noisy, and hot, but it is the nearest at hand. In about an hour she re-opens her eyes. A strong shudder makes her quiver from head to foot.
“Where is he?” she says, in a terrified whisper, as her senses come slowly back. “He is somewhere about—somewhere near. I feel that he is!”
“My dearest child, there is no one here but Morris and me,” I answer, soothingly. “Look for yourself. See.”