But the very efforts which he made to banish the inclination, wearied the mind, and induced what he would most avoid; and within an hour he was again unconscious of all external sights and sounds, again terribly alive to those inward sensations which had already terrified him almost beyond endurance.
This time the trance was shorter, but from the symptoms which appeared on his features, fiercer and stronger than before; nor, as before, when he awoke, did the impression pass away which had been made on him before his eyes were opened. No; as he started up erect, and gazed wildly, scarce as yet half awake, around him, the first thing that met, or seemed to meet, his staring eyes, was a gray, misty shadow, standing relieved by a dark mass of gloom in the farthest angle of the chamber. Gradually, as he stared at it with a fascinated gaze, which, had it been to save his life, he could not have withdrawn, the shape, if shape it were, drew nearer, nearer, with a slow, gliding, ghastly motion.
The moon had by this time arisen, and cast a feeble, ineffectual light through the mass of tangled foliage which curtained the large diamond-paned casements of the cottage, streaming in a dim, misty ray across the centre of the chamber. Directly in the middle of this pallid halo, as if it had been a silver glory, paused, or appeared to pause, that thin transparent form—so bodiless, indeed, it seemed, that the outlines of the things which stood beyond it, were visible, as if seen through a gauzy curtain. A cloud passed over the moon’s face, and all was gloom; yet still the boy’s eyes felt the presence of that disembodied visitant, which they could now no longer distinguish in the darkness.
At this moment, as if to add a real terror to that which, even if unreal, needed no addition, the cat, which hitherto had been sleeping undisturbedly by the warm ashes on the hearth, uttered an unusual plaintive cry, most unlike to the natural note of her species, whether of pleasure or of anger, and rushed at two or three long bounds, to the bed on which the boy was sitting up in voiceless horror. Her eyes glared in the darkness, like coals of livid fire, her bristles were set up like the quills of the porcupine, her tail was outspread, till it almost resembled a fox’s brush.
The cloud drifted onward, and the moon shone out brighter than before; and there he still saw, that tall white shape, clearer, distincter, stronger than when he first beheld it. The cat cowered down upon the pillow by his side, with a low wailing cry of terror, her back, bristling in wrath but now, was humbly lowered, dread of something unnatural had quelled all her savage instincts.
Clearer and clearer waxed the vision, and now he might mark the delicate symmetrical proportions of the figure, and now the pale white outlines of the lovely face. It was Theresa Allan. Yet the fair features were set in a sort of rigid cataleptic horror, full of dread, full of agony and consternation; and the blue eyes glared, fixed and glassy, without speculation; and right in the centre of the brow there glowed, like a sanguine star, a great spot of gore.
The thing seemed to raise its arm, and point with a gesture of majestic menace, right toward the terrified beholder. Then the white lips were parted with a slow circular distortion, showing the pearly teeth within, and——if a voice came forth from those ghastly lips, Jasper St. Aubyn knew it not, for he had sunk back on his pillow—if, indeed, he had ever, as he believed to the day of his death, raised himself up from it—in a deep trance, from which he passed into a dead, heavy, dreamless stupor, which continued undisturbed until the sun was high in the heavens, and the whole household were afoot, and busied about their usual avocations.
In the meantime, she whose image, whether in truth it was an eidolon, or merely the idea of a diseased mind and preoccupied spirit, had been so busy during the hours of darkness, had awakened all refreshed by light and innocent slumbers, with the first peep of day, and arising from her couch had descended into the garden, still half enveloped in the dewy vapors of the summer night, half glimmering in the slant radiance of the new-risen sun.
She was the first at her appointment, for Durzil had not yet made his appearance, and she walked to and fro awaiting him, among the flowery thickets and sweet scented shrubberies all bathed in the copious night-dews, half wondering, half-guessing, what it could be that he should so earnestly desire to communicate. And as she walked, she considered with herself all that had occurred during the last three days, and the more she considered, the less was she able to comprehend the workings of her own mind, or to explain to herself wherefore it was that she could not divest herself of the idea that the crisis of her life, the fate of her heart was at hand.
That she had rejected Durzil’s proffered love, his honest, manly love, she knew that she ought not to regret, for she felt surely that she could not love him in return as he ought, as he deserved to be loved; and yet she did almost regret it. Then she began to ask herself why she did not, why she could not love him, endowed eminently as he was with many high and noble qualities; and she was soon answered, when she considered how far he fell short of her standard, in mental and intellectual culture, in all that pertained to the secret sympathies of the heart, to the kindred tastes and sentiments, to that community of hopes and wishes, which, under the head of eadem velle atque nolle, the Roman philosophical historian has declared to be the sole base of true friendship, might he not better have said of true love.