The Lady of the Shroud, Bram Stoker [most life changing books .txt] 📗

little pile of them beside her.

 

“Sit there,” I said, “and rest quietly in the heat.” It may have

been the effect of the glowing heat, but there was a rich colour in

her face as she looked at me with shining eyes. Without a word, but

with a courteous little bow, she sat down at once. I put a thick rug

across her shoulders, and sat down myself on a stool a couple of feet

away.

 

For fully five or six minutes we sat in silence. At last, turning

her head towards me she said in a sweet, low voice:

 

“I had intended coming earlier on purpose to thank you for your very

sweet and gracious courtesy to me, but circumstances were such that I

could not leave my—my”—she hesitated before saying—“my abode. I

am not free, as you and others are, to do what I will. My existence

is sadly cold and stern, and full of horrors that appal. But I DO

thank you. For myself I am not sorry for the delay, for every hour

shows me more clearly how good and understanding and sympathetic you

have been to me. I only hope that some day you may realize how kind

you have been, and how much I appreciate it.”

 

“I am only too glad to be of any service,” I said, feebly I felt, as

I held out my hand. She did not seem to see it. Her eyes were now

on the fire, and a warm blush dyed forehead and cheek and neck. The

reproof was so gentle that no one could have been offended. It was

evident that she was something coy and reticent, and would not allow

me to come at present more close to her, even to the touching of her

hand. But that her heart was not in the denial was also evident in

the glance from her glorious dark starry eyes. These glances—

veritable lightning flashes coming through her pronounced reserve—

finished entirely any wavering there might be in my own purpose. I

was aware now to the full that my heart was quite subjugated. I knew

that I was in love—veritably so much in love as to feel that without

this woman, be she what she might, by my side my future must be

absolutely barren.

 

It was presently apparent that she did not mean to stay as long on

this occasion as on the last. When the castle clock struck midnight

she suddenly sprang to her feet with a bound, saying:

 

“I must go! There is midnight!” I rose at once, the intensity of

her speech having instantly obliterated the sleep which, under the

influence of rest and warmth, was creeping upon me. Once more she

was in a frenzy of haste, so I hurried towards the window, but as I

looked back saw her, despite her haste, still standing. I motioned

towards the screen, and slipping behind the curtain, opened the

window and went out on the terrace. As I was disappearing behind the

curtain I saw her with the tail of my eye lifting the shroud, now

dry, from the hearth.

 

She was out through the window in an incredibly short time, now

clothed once more in that dreadful wrapping. As she sped past me

barefooted on the wet, chilly marble which made her shudder, she

whispered:

 

“Thank you again. You ARE good to me. You can understand.”

 

Once again I stood on the terrace, saw her melt like a shadow down

the steps, and disappear behind the nearest shrub. Thence she

flitted away from point to point with exceeding haste. The moonlight

had now disappeared behind heavy banks of cloud, so there was little

light to see by. I could just distinguish a pale gleam here and

there as she wended her secret way.

 

For a long time I stood there alone thinking, as I watched the course

she had taken, and wondering where might be her ultimate destination.

As she had spoken of her “abode,” I knew there was some definitive

objective of her flight.

 

It was no use wondering. I was so entirely ignorant of her

surroundings that I had not even a starting-place for speculation.

So I went in, leaving the window open. It seemed that this being so

made one barrier the less between us. I gathered the cushions and

rugs from before the fire, which was no longer leaping, but burning

with a steady glow, and put them back in their places. Aunt Janet

might come in the morning, as she had done before, and I did not wish

to set her thinking. She is much too clever a person to have

treading on the heels of a mystery—especially one in which my own

affections are engaged. I wonder what she would have said had she

seen me kiss the cushion on which my beautiful guest’s head had

rested?

 

When I was in bed, and in the dark save for the fading glow of the

fire, my thoughts became fixed that whether she came from Earth or

Heaven or Hell, my lovely visitor was already more to me than aught

else in the world. This time she had, on going, said no word of

returning. I had been so much taken up with her presence, and so

upset by her abrupt departure, that I had omitted to ask her. And so

I am driven, as before, to accept the chance of her returning—a

chance which I fear I am or may be unable to control.

 

Surely enough Aunt Janet did come in the morning, early. I was still

asleep when she knocked at my door. With that purely physical

subconsciousness which comes with habit I must have realized the

cause of the sound, for I woke fully conscious of the fact that Aunt

Janet had knocked and was waiting to come in. I jumped from bed, and

back again when I had unlocked the door. When Aunt Janet came in she

noticed the cold of the room.

 

“Save us, laddie, but ye’ll get your death o’ cold in this room.”

Then, as she looked round and noticed the ashes of the extinct fire

in the grate:

 

“Eh, but ye’re no that daft after a’; ye’ve had the sense to light

yer fire. Glad I am that we had the fire laid and a wheen o’ dry

logs ready to yer hand.” She evidently felt the cold air coming from

the window, for she went over and drew the curtain. When she saw the

open window, she raised her hands in a sort of dismay, which to me,

knowing how little base for concern could be within her knowledge,

was comic. Hurriedly she shut the window, and then, coming close

over to my bed, said:

 

“Yon has been a fearsome nicht again, laddie, for yer poor auld

aunty.”

 

“Dreaming again, Aunt Janet?” I asked—rather flippantly as it seemed

to me. She shook her head:

 

“Not so, Rupert, unless it be that the Lord gies us in dreams what we

in our spiritual darkness think are veesions.” I roused up at this.

When Aunt Janet calls me Rupert, as she always used to do in my dear

mother’s time, things are serious with her. As I was back in

childhood now, recalled by her word, I thought the best thing I could

do to cheer her would be to bring her back there too—if I could. So

I patted the edge of the bed as I used to do when I was a wee kiddie

and wanted her to comfort me, and said:

 

“Sit down, Aunt Janet, and tell me.” She yielded at once, and the

look of the happy old days grew over her face as though there had

come a gleam of sunshine. She sat down, and I put out my hands as I

used to do, and took her hand between them. There was a tear in her

eye as she raised my hand and kissed it as in old times. But for the

infinite pathos of it, it would have been comic:

 

Aunt Janet, old and grey-haired, but still retaining her girlish

slimness of figure, petite, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face

lined with the care of years, but softened and ennobled by the

unselfishness of those years, holding up my big hand, which would

outweigh her whole arm; sitting dainty as a pretty old fairy beside a

recumbent giant—for my bulk never seems so great as when I am near

this real little good fairy of my life—seven feet beside four feet

seven.

 

So she began as of old, as though she were about to soothe a

frightened child with a fairy tale:

 

“‘Twas a veesion, I think, though a dream it may hae been. But

whichever or whatever it was, it concerned my little boy, who has

grown to be a big giant, so much that I woke all of a tremble.

Laddie dear, I thought that I saw ye being married.” This gave me an

opening, though a small one, for comforting her, so I took it at

once:

 

“Why, dear, there isn’t anything to alarm you in that, is there? It

was only the other day when you spoke to me about the need of my

getting married, if it was only that you might have children of your

boy playing around your knees as their father used to do when he was

a helpless wee child himself.”

 

“That is so, laddie,” she answered gravely. “But your weddin’ was

none so merry as I fain would see. True, you seemed to lo’e her wi’

all yer hairt. Yer eyes shone that bright that ye might ha’ set her

afire, for all her black locks and her winsome face. But, laddie,

that was not all—no, not though her black een, that had the licht o’

all the stars o’ nicht in them, shone in yours as though a hairt o’

love an’ passion, too, dwelt in them. I saw ye join hands, an’ heard

a strange voice that talked stranger still, but I saw none ither.

Your eyes an’ her eyes, an’ your hand an’ hers, were all I saw. For

all else was dim, and the darkness was close around ye twa. And when

the benison was spoken—I knew that by the voices that sang, and by

the gladness of her een, as well as by the pride and glory of yours—

the licht began to glow a wee more, an’ I could see yer bride. She

was in a veil o’ wondrous fine lace. And there were orange-flowers

in her hair, though there were twigs, too, and there was a crown o’

flowers on head wi’ a golden band round it. And the heathen candles

that stood on the table wi’ the Book had some strange effect, for the

reflex o’ it hung in the air o’er her head like the shadow of a

crown. There was a gold ring on her finger and a silver one on

yours.” Here she paused and trembled, so that, hoping to dispel her

fears, I said, as like as I could to the way I used to when I was a

child:

 

“Go on, Aunt Janet.”

 

She did not seem to recognize consciously the likeness between past

and present; but the effect was there, for she went on more like her

old self, though there was a prophetic gravity in her voice, more

marked than I had ever heard from her:

 

“All this I’ve told ye was well; but, oh, laddie, there was a

dreadful lack o’ livin’ joy such as I should expect from the woman

whom my boy had chosen for his wife—and at the marriage coupling,

too! And no wonder, when all is said; for