“‘Seen what?’ asked the other, drawing closer, and looking distrustfully into every corner of the room.
“‘Seen—’ repeated the widow, still looking into vacancy.
“‘Seen what?’ repeated her auditor, drawing still nearer, and looking with still greater scrutiny into all the dark nooks of the apartment.
“But the expected speech still hung half-way between conception and utterance, as if some impalpable auditor were present, who might convey the tale to the ears of the object of both her aversion and fear.
“The sad moaning of the wind filled up the chasm in the conversation, and the subtle influences of the place, and their loneliness, seemed to be rapidly gathering about the two lonely women. The speech was still unspoken, when the thread of the proceedings was broken short by the abrupt entrance of Mistress Hamersley’s son. Whether or not the embryo disclosure might have embodied new and startling developments, or only old statements re-hashed, we cannot tell; but, certain it is that, the vein of mystery was explored no further that night. The son piled new fagots on the fire—the widow refilled and relighted her pipe, and the conversation took a more cheerful turn, and the place took again that air of rude pleasantness which belongs particularly to a farm-house-kitchen, while the weird lady was, for the moment, forgotten.
“As may have been gathered from the remarks in the preceding conversation, Lisette had disappeared, lost, it was supposed, in the forest, into which she sometimes strayed alone; for, as to superstition, she had none of it, and wild animals had mostly retired to a safe distance before the advance of civilization. Every possible means had been tried for her recovery, seconded by apparently every effort of Dame Burton and her son. They seemed inconsolable, and some of those who looked upon her as a slandered person affirmed that she spent the nights for a week in weeping. Esther was now alone and friendless, thrown entirely into the power of these protectors. Surmises and ill-boding opinions passed occasionally from mouth to mouth, but never reached her ears. She wept in silent sorrow away from all intercourse. Thus matters went on for some weeks, until one night, at dusk, Andrew was brought to his mother a corpse. He had been accidentally shot in a hunting excursion. Her sorrow at this occurrence was real. Every other tie had been to her nothing, while this had absorbed all her soul’s capability of affection. She had indulged him in every thing, and had attempted to gratify his every wish. Now that he was gone, all that she possessed was gone, and all her thoughts and deeds glared upon her in all their malignity. She had nothing now to take from herself those hell-hound thoughts which bred in her a bitter remorse. One night she lay by his coffin—another by his grave, and a third she would have spent thus, but they led her away. She yielded as pliantly as a child. Thenceforth, she was completely broken down. She could do nothing more, and all day she sat like a fixture in the chimney-corner, while all the house-affairs fell into Esther’s hands. But, at dusk, the dame would be gone mysteriously for an hour. Esther never questioned concerning it, nor cared; but the ignorant neighbors whispered, wondered, surmised, and told of strange things that happened at these times, until it became so much a matter of course, that nothing more could be said. At the end of a year she married my grandfather Bromley. The portrait of the lost sister was taken from the painter’s studio, and hung in her room. Each succeeding year added a new balm to her wounds, until they seemed so far back in the past, that sometimes she would almost question with herself whether or not they had had actual existence.
“Thus twenty years of married life passed calmly and pleasantly. Sons and daughters were growing up around her in full bloom, and all promised that the afternoon of her life should be peace. Dame Burton had grown old and decrepit, and bent nearly double. Her hair was white as snow, and her face had a sort of blank, passive expression, except at times, when her eyes would glow like half-extinguished coals, and she would start as if some frightful object looked in upon her visions. Through all the long day she sat in the chimney-corner, and never stirred until the bats wheeled in the dusk, and the rude noises of day were displaced by a stillness, so still that the bark of life might be said to move down the noiseless river of time with muffled oars.
“One night, in the early autumn, my grandfather was gone, and my grandmother was left alone with the family. All were quietly at rest before she retired. That day she had been laboring hard and was overwearied, and now a strange restlessness and loneliness of feeling came across her. It was just at the moonrise. The moon came up looking red and angrily over the ripening fields, glistening with dew, near at hand, the mill-pond still and large further off, and the black and massive woods in the distance. Those weird influences were at work, which incline every mind at times to retrospection. And now, as over a dim sea, from a dim seen island, came the memories of the past. She saw, as in a dream, the mother of her childhood, who pressed her childish hand in hers. A few years past, and she saw her die, and felt the intense agony of that moment. A few years more were gone, and she saw the deathbed of her other parent, and felt the keener and more enduring pain which maturer minds must feel. Still farther, and she saw the sister-branch, which had grown side by side with her upon the parental tree, torn rudely away. And now she could think no more. It was too much pain. Turning from the window, she hastily disrobed herself, and dropped wearily upon the bed. It was some time before slumber came, and when it did come it brought a dream. Memory, in the guise of a headless figure with a lantern, seemed to lead her through all the past, which was nothing more than a field covered with brambles and underbrush, and filled with pitfalls into which she continually fell. Her flesh was torn and bloody; but still she went on, and on, and on, and still there was no end.
“She might have slept thus nearly an hour, when she became conscious that there was another presence in the room. She stirred a little, and the village-clock drowsily clanged to tell the midnight. She opened her eyes. The moon was far up, and poured a flood of white light through the casement. A tall, attenuated figure, in a long, loose, and tattered gown, which showed ghostly white, stooped over her.
“The shape stood between the bed and the window, and yet so ethereal was it, that she seemed to see the casement, the climbing moon, and the white church spire, as though nothing intervened. But the face, so ghastly white, so thin with want and woe—cross-lined and interlined—and the eyes—so faded and expressionless, she had never seen any thing like it.