I

For a long time I could not get to sleep, and kept turning from side to side. 'Confound this foolishness about table-turning!' I thought. 'It simply upsets one's nerves.'... Drowsiness began to overtake me at last....

Suddenly it seemed to me as though there were the faint and plaintive sound of a harp-string in the room.

I raised my head. The moon was low in the sky, and looked me straight in the face. White as chalk lay its light upon the floor.... The strange sound was distinctly repeated.

I leaned on my elbow. A faint feeling of awe plucked at my heart. A minute pa.s.sed, another.... Somewhere, far away, a c.o.c.k crowed; another answered still more remote.

I let my head sink back on the pillow. 'See what one can work oneself up to,' I thought again,... 'there's a singing in my ears.'

After a little while I fell asleep--or I thought I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed--and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound....

I turned over.... The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above.... Before me; impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless.

'Who are you?' I asked with an effort.

A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves: 'It is I ... I ... I ... I have come for you.'

'For me? But who are you?'

'Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak-tree.

I will be there.'

I tried to look closely into the face of the mysterious woman--and suddenly I gave an involuntary shudder: there was a chilly breath upon me. And then I was not lying down, but sitting up in my bed; and where, as I fancied, the phantom had stood, the moonlight lay in a long streak of white upon the floor.

II

The day pa.s.sed somehow. I tried, I remember, to read, to work ...

everything was a failure. The night came. My heart was throbbing within me, as though it expected something. I lay down, and turned with my face to the wall.

'Why did you not come?' sounded a distinct whisper in the room.

I looked round quickly.

Again she ... again the mysterious phantom. Motionless eyes in a motionless face, and a gaze full of sadness.

'Come!' I heard the whisper again.

'I will come,' I replied with instinctive horror. The phantom bent slowly forward, and undulating faintly like smoke, melted away altogether. And again the moon shone white and untroubled on the smooth floor.

III

I pa.s.sed the day in unrest. At supper I drank almost a whole bottle of wine, and all but went out on to the steps; but I turned back and flung myself into my bed. My blood was pulsing painfully.

Again the sound was heard.... I started, but did not look round. All at once I felt that some one had tight hold of me from behind, and was whispering in my very ear: 'Come, come, come.'... Trembling with terror, I moaned out: 'I will come!' and sat up.

A woman stood stooping close to my very pillow. She smiled dimly and vanished. I had time, though, to make out her face. It seemed to me I had seen her before--but where, when? I got up late, and spent the whole day wandering about the country. I went to the old oak at the edge of the forest, and looked carefully all around.

Towards evening I sat at the open window in my study. My old housekeeper set a cup of tea before me, but I did not touch it.... I kept asking myself in bewilderment: 'Am not I going out of my mind?' The sun had just set: and not the sky alone was flushed with red; the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with an almost unnatural purple. The leaves and gra.s.s never stirred, stiff as though freshly coated with varnish. In their stony rigidity, in the vivid sharpness of their outlines, in this combination of intense brightness and death-like stillness, there was something weird and mysterious. A rather large grey bird suddenly flew up without a sound and settled on the very window sill.... I looked at it, and it looked at me sideways with its round, dark eye. 'Were you sent to remind me, then?' I wondered.

At once the bird fluttered its soft wings, and without a sound--as before--flew away. I sat a long time still at the window, but I was no longer a prey to uncertainty. I had, as it were, come within the enchanted circle, and I was borne along by an irresistible though gentle force, as a boat is borne along by the current long before it reaches the waterfall. I started up at last. The purple had long vanished from the air, the colours were darkened, and the enchanted silence was broken. There was the flutter of a gust of wind, the moon came out brighter and brighter in the sky that was growing bluer, and soon the leaves of the trees were weaving patterns of black and silver in her cold beams. My old housekeeper came into the study with a lighted candle, but there was a draught from the window and the flame went out. I could restrain myself no longer. I jumped up, clapped on my cap, and set off to the corner of the forest, to the old oak-tree.

IV

This oak had, many years before, been struck by lightning; the top of the tree had been shattered, and was withered up, but there was still life left in it for centuries to come. As I was coming up to it, a cloud pa.s.sed over the moon: it was very dark under its thick branches. At first I noticed nothing special; but I glanced on one side, and my heart fairly failed me--a white figure was standing motionless beside a tall bush between the oak and the forest. My hair stood upright on my head, but I plucked up my courage and went towards the forest.

Yes, it was she, my visitor of the night. As I approached her, the moon shone out again. She seemed all, as it were, spun out of half-transparent, milky mist,--through her face I could see a branch faintly stirring in the wind; only the hair and eyes were a little dark, and on one of the fingers of her clasped hands a slender ring shone with a gleam of pale gold. I stood still before her, and tried to speak; but the voice died away in my throat, though it was no longer fear exactly I felt. Her eyes were turned upon me; their gaze expressed neither distress nor delight, but a sort of lifeless attention. I waited to see whether she would utter a word, but she remained motionless and speechless, and still gazed at me with her deathly intent eyes. Dread came over me again.

'I have come!' I cried at last with an effort. My voice sounded m.u.f.fled and strange to me.

'I love you,' I heard her whisper.

'You love me!' I repeated in amazement.

'Give yourself up to me, 'was whispered me again in reply.

'Give myself up to you! But you are a phantom; you have no body even.' A strange animation came upon me. 'What are you--smoke, air, vapour? Give myself up to you! Answer me first, Who are you? Have you lived upon the earth? Whence have you come?'

'Give yourself up to me. I will do you no harm. Only say two words: "Take me."'

I looked at her. 'What is she saying?' I thought. 'What does it all mean?

And how can she take me? Shall I try?'

'Very well,' I said, and unexpectedly loudly, as though some one had given me a push from behind; 'take me!'

I had hardly uttered these words when the mysterious figure, with a sort of inward laugh, which set her face quivering for an instant, bent forward, and stretched out her arms wide apart.... I tried to dart away, but I was already in her power. She seized me, my body rose a foot from the ground, and we both floated smoothly and not too swiftly over the wet, still gra.s.s.

V

At first I felt giddy, and instinctively I closed my eyes.... A minute later I opened them again. We were floating as before; but the forest was now nowhere to be seen. Under us stretched a plain, spotted here and there with dark patches. With horror I felt that we had risen to a fearful height.

'I am lost; I am in the power of Satan,' flashed through me like lightning.

Till that instant the idea of a temptation of the evil one, of the possibility of perdition, had never entered my head. We still whirled on, and seemed to be mounting higher and higher.

'Where will you take me?' I moaned at last.

'Where you like,' my companion answered. She clung close to me; her face was almost resting upon my face. But I was scarcely conscious of her touch.

'Let me sink down to the earth, I am giddy at this height.'

'Very well; only shut your eyes and hold your breath.'

I obeyed, and at once felt that I was falling like a stone flung from the hand ... the air whistled in my ears. When I could think again, we were floating smoothly once more just above the earth, so that we caught our feet in the tops of the tall gra.s.s.