Suddenly the white thing moved. The curtain was drawn sharply; the moonlight was blotted out; the room was plunged in darkness—a darkness in which that thing could see!
I turned and stole out of the room. I could have fled, driven by the nameless fear that was upon me.
Only when the morning dawned did the man in me awake, and I cursed myself for my cowardice.
The following evening we were asked to dine out with some neighbours, who lived a few miles off in a wonderful old Norman castle near the sea. During the day neither of us had made the slightest allusion to the incidents of the previous night. We both felt it a relief to go into society, I think. The friends to whom we went—Lord and Lady Melchester—had a large party staying with them, and we were, I believe, the only outsiders who lived in the neighbourhood. One of their guests was Professor Black, whose name I have already mentioned—a little, dry, thin, acrid man, with thick black hair, innocent of the comb, and pursed, straight lips. I had met him two or three times in London, and as he had only just arrived at the castle, and scarcely knew his fellow-visitors there, he brought his wine over to me when the ladies left the dining-room, and entered into conversation. At the moment I was glad, but before we followed the women I would have given a year—I might say years—of my life not to have spoken to him, not to have heard him speak that night.
How did we drift into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. We talked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then to people. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking of a man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose every thought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him, and condemned him for his woman’s demeanour, his woman’s mind; but the Professor thereupon joined issue with me.
“Pity the fellow, if you like,” he uttered, in his rather strident voice; “but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole for not being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, or even to coerce, you may depend upon it.”
Having sipped his port, he drew a little nearer to me, and slightly dropped his voice.
“There would be less censure of individuals in this world,” he said, “if people were only a little more thoughtful. These souls are like letters, and sometimes they are sealed up in the wrong envelope. For instance, a man’s soul may be put into a woman’s body, or vice versâ. It has been so in D———‘s case. A mistake has been made.”
“By Providence?” I interrupted, with, perhaps, just a soupçon of sarcasm in my voice.