The blow overcame me. It will be best to pass over that time. I shut myself into my room and bore my agony alone. I went once into the room where Helen lay and looked at her face. It was the face of one in peaceful rest, but it had aged twenty years in twelve hours. Her maids, directed by Mrs. Grayson, an old friend of the family, were ready to prepare her for the grave.
“They think,” whispered Mrs. Grayson, “that she had walked in her sleep. Her feet are scratched and torn, as if she had been among briars barefoot, and the doctors say that her convulsions probably came on from the shock of awakening. She was found at daybreak, unconscious, in the hall, and the outer door was wide open.”
I left the plantation a few days after the funeral, and for years neither saw nor heard directly from Robert Glen. I never could forgive his indifference to Helen’s peace of mind while she lived, nor get over a certain disgust with which his lack of self-control at the time of her death inspired me. I never liked him, and, after that sad time, I had less regard for him than ever. I never told him the story I have written. He would only have pronounced me mad, and I did not wish to obtain that reputation for the mere sake of warning him. Besides, I tried with all my mind to believe the experience of that night a dream, but I found that impossible and was always looking for a sequel to it. The sequel came in its appointed time.
Years passed away. At the outbreak of the war, the Graysons came North. From them, I learned that Asenath had disappeared from the plantation long before, and was supposed to have drowned herself in the black creek and to haunt the plantation in the form of a black-and-white snake. Dr. Grayson blamed himself for her death.
“Some of the Glen negroes,” he said, “told some of mine that the girl was turning white, and that, with the exception of her face and hands, her whole body had changed its color. Now I had heard of such cases, but never had seen one, and in spite of what Buffon and other naturalists say on the subject, felt doubtful of the possibility of such a thing taking place. I rode over to Glen’s one day to investigate the matter. Glen was not at home; but, presuming upon old friendship with him, I saw the girl and told her the object of my call. I wish you had seen her; she flew into an outrageous passion, called me vile names, said there was not a white spot on her person, and that if I touched her it should cost me dear. Of course, I paid no attention to her threats, and called that Lucas of Glen’s to help me turn up her sleeves. Her arms really were white, but before I could half-examine them, she broke away from us and tore out of the house. We followed, but lost sight of her in the shrubbery, and to this day she has never been seen again. The negroes say she drowned herself. Glen, when he returned, seemed to believe so. He took me to task in a most ungentlemanly manner for what had happened, and we have not been on speaking terms since. He has now gone abroad to stay until this little war squall blows over, I hear.”
“I trust that he may—and longer,” I said. The doctor chuckled a little and changed the subject. In secret, I said to myself: “I don’t believe the girl is dead, and I do believe that Robert Glen knows where she is. The sequel will come.”
In ’68, Robert returned home, bringing a wife with him. He wrote me a formal announcement of his marriage, to which I replied with equal formality.
It was rumored that the new wife was rich in her own right; that she was of English parentage, but born and reared in Calcutta. Later, I heard that Robert’s old neighbors had not taken to her at all, and that she had an ungovernable temper, being unable to keep any servant under her roof, except a couple of East Indian women, whom she berated continually in their own tongue, but who could not speak English enough to impart any information about their mistress to her neighbors.
The year after Robert’s marriage, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days with the Graysons. Feeling that I owed Robert the courtesy of a call, I rode over to the plantation, not so much to discharge a social duty as to see the new Mrs. Glen, about whom I noticed, on the part of the Graysons, a marked reluctance to speak. They edged away from the subject, when I brought it up, with nervous looks at each other.
Leaving my horse at the outer gate, I walked along the wide avenue nearly to the house. There was a spectral stillness upon the place. Sadness exhaled from everything, to be drawn in with every breath. The old servants were all gone. I had met the once sleek and stolid Lucas, now rheumatic and ragged, begging in the village. Belinda was in the county asylum, and the others were scattered or dead. The scent of the lilacs was gone from the air—the very bushes were rooted up, and lay, sear and dead, by little heaps of earth. A triangle of cloud in the sky cast upon the earth a triangle of shadow, in the midst of which Robert Glen’s home lay as if it were entranced. No sign of happy life met me; but, as I turned aside to look at a certain bench in the shrubbery, a black-and-white snake ran over my foot.