I was the first to approach the open door. I stopped, checked in my advance by an unexpected discovery. The summer-house was no longer empty as we had left it. A lady was seated at the table with my pencil in her hand, writing in my sketch-book!
After waiting a moment, I advanced a few steps nearer to the door, and stopped again in breathless amazement. The stranger in the summer-house was now plainly revealed to me as the woman who had attempted to destroy herself from the bridge!
There was no doubt about it. There was the dress; there was the memorable face which I had seen in the evening light, which I had dreamed of only a few nights since! The woman herself--I saw her as plainly as I saw the sun shining on the waterfall--the woman herself, with my pencil in her hand, writing in my book!
My mother was close behind me. She noticed my agitation. "George!" she exclaimed, "what is the matter with you?"
I pointed through the open door of the summer-house.
"Well?" said my mother. "What am I to look at?"
"Don"t you see somebody sitting at the table and writing in my sketch-book?"
My mother eyed me quickly. "Is he going to be ill again?" I heard her say to herself.
At the same moment the woman laid down the pencil and rose slowly to her feet.
She looked at me with sorrowful and pleading eyes: she lifted her hand and beckoned me to approach her. I obeyed. Moving without conscious will of my own, drawn nearer and nearer to her by an irresistible power, I ascended the short flight of stairs which led into the summer-house.
Within a few paces of her I stopped. She advanced a step toward me, and laid her hand gently on my bosom. Her touch filled me with strangely united sensations of rapture and awe. After a while, she spoke in low melodious tones, which mingled in my ear with the distant murmur of the falling water, until the two sounds became one. I heard in the murmur, I heard in the voice, these words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped from my bosom; a momentary obscurity pa.s.sed like a flying shadow over the bright daylight in the room. I looked for her when the light came back. She was gone.
My consciousness of pa.s.sing events returned.
I saw the lengthening shadows outside, which told me that the evening was at hand. I saw the carriage approaching the summerhouse to take us away. I felt my mother"s hand on my arm, and heard her voice speaking to me anxiously. I was able to reply by a sign entreating her not to be uneasy about me, but I could do no more. I was absorbed, body and soul, in the one desire to look at the sketch-book. As certainly as I had seen the woman, so certainly I had seen her, with my pencil in her hand, writing in my book.
I advanced to the table on which the book was lying open. I looked at the blank s.p.a.ce on the lower part of the page, under the foreground lines of my unfinished drawing. My mother, following me, looked at the page too.
There was the writing! The woman had disappeared, but there were her written words left behind her: visible to my mother as well as to me, readable by my mother"s eyes as well as by mine!
These were the words we saw, arranged in two lines, as I copy them here:
When the full moon shines On Saint Anthony"s Well.
CHAPTER IX. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL.
I POINTED to the writing in the sketch book, and looked at my mother. I was not mistaken. She _had_ seen it, as I had seen it. But she refused to acknowledge that anything had happened to alarm her--plainly as I could detect it in her face.
"Somebody has been playing a trick on you, George," she said.
I made no reply. It was needless to say anything. My poor mother was evidently as far from being satisfied with her own shallow explanation as I was. The carriage waited for us at the door. We set forth in silence on our drive home.
The sketch-book lay open on my knee. My eyes were fastened on it; my mind was absorbed in recalling the moment when the apparition beckoned me into the summer-house and spoke. Putting the words and the writing together, the conclusion was too plain to be mistaken. The woman whom I had saved from drowning had need of me again.
And this was the same woman who, in her own proper person, had not hesitated to seize the first opportunity of leaving the house in which we had been sheltered together--without stopping to say one grateful word to the man who had preserved her from death! Four days only had elapsed since she had left me, never (to all appearance) to see me again. And now the ghostly apparition of her had returned as to a tried and trusted friend; had commanded me to remember her and to go to her; and had provided against all possibility of my memory playing me false, by writing the words which invited me to meet her "when the full moon shone on Saint Anthony"s Well."
What had happened in the interval? What did the supernatural manner of her communication with me mean? What ought my next course of action to be?
My mother roused me from my reflections. She stretched out her hand, and suddenly closed the open book on my knee, as if the sight of the writing in it were unendurable to her.
"Why don"t you speak to me, George?" she said. "Why do you keep your thoughts to yourself?"
"My mind is lost in confusion," I answered. "I can suggest nothing and explain nothing. My thoughts are all bent on the one question of what I am to do next. On that point I believe I may say that my mind is made up." I touched the sketch-book as I spoke. "Come what may of it," I said, "I mean to keep the appointment."
My mother looked at me as if she doubted the evidence of her own senses.
"He talks as if it were a real thing!" she exclaimed. "George, you don"t really believe that you saw somebody in the summer-house? The place was empty. I tell you positively, when you pointed into the summer-house, the place was empty. You have been thinking and thinking of this woman till you persuade yourself that you have actually seen her."
I opened the sketch-book again. "I thought I saw her writing on this page," I answered. "Look at it, and tell me if I was wrong."
My mother refused to look at it. Steadily as she persisted in taking the rational view, nevertheless the writing frightened her.
"It is not a week yet," she went on, "since I saw you lying between life and death in your bed at the inn. How can you talk of keeping the appointment, in your state of health? An appointment with a shadowy Something in your own imagination, which appears and disappears, and leaves substantial writing behind it! It"s ridiculous, George; I wonder you can help laughing at yourself."
She tried to set the example of laughing at me--with the tears in her eyes, poor soul! as she made the useless effort. I began to regret having opened my mind so freely to her.
"Don"t take the matter too seriously, mother," I said. "Perhaps I may not be able to find the place. I never heard of Saint Anthony"s Well; I have not the least idea where it is. Suppose I make the discovery, and suppose the journey turns out to be an easy one, would you like to go with me?"
"G.o.d forbid" cried my mother, fervently. "I will have nothing to do with it, George. You are in a state of delusion; I shall speak to the doctor."
"By all means, my dear mother. Mr. MacGlue is a sensible person. We pa.s.s his house on our way home, and we will ask him to dinner. In the meantime, let us say no more on the subject till we see the doctor."
I spoke lightly, but I really meant what I said. My mind was sadly disturbed; my nerves were so shaken that the slightest noises on the road startled me. The opinion of a man like Mr. MacGlue, who looked at all mortal matters from the same immovably practical point of view, might really have its use, in my case, as a species of moral remedy.
We waited until the dessert was on the table, and the servants had left the dining-room. Then I told my story to the Scotch doctor as I have told it here; and, that done, I opened the sketch-book to let him see the writing for himself.
Had I turned to the wrong page?
I started to my feet, and held the book close to the light of the lamp that hung over the dining table. No: I had found the right page. There was my half-finished drawing of the waterfall--but where were the two lines of writing beneath?
Gone!
I strained my eyes; I looked and looked. And the blank white paper looked back at me.
I placed the open leaf before my mother. "You saw it as plainly as I did," I said. "Are my own eyes deceiving me? Look at the bottom of the page."
My mother sunk back in her chair with a cry of terror.
"Gone?" I asked.
"Gone!"
I turned to the doctor. He took me completely by surprise. No incredulous smile appeared on his face; no jesting words pa.s.sed his lips. He was listening to us attentively. He was waiting gravely to hear more.
"I declare to you, on my word of honor," I said to him, "that I saw the apparition writing with my pencil at the bottom of that page. I declare that I took the book in my hand, and saw these words written in it, "When the full moon shines on Saint Anthony"s Well." Not more than three hours have pa.s.sed since that time; and, see for yourself, not a vestige of the writing remains."
"Not a vestige of the writing remains," Mr. MacGlue repeated, quietly.