THE DISTURBED CONSCIENCE.
Mrs. Lander sprang out of bed and ran to the window, resolved to call
her daughter back and revoke the evil promise she had made. She leaned
out into the chill air, careless of the wind, which stirred her night
dress as if it had been snow, searching for her child in the darkness.
As her eyes got accustomed to the gloom, she saw what seemed like a
deeper shadow fluttering on the edge of the terrace, but that was all.
The rattle of a coming train in the far distance kept her at the window.
The noise grew louder, wilder and more impetuous. Then a great burning
eye, fiery and seemingly bloodshot, glared out from the blackness of
crowded trees, lighting them up like the smile of a demon, and a shriek,
horrible in its shrillness, cut through the night, making the woman’s
heart quake in her bosom as if a fiend had mocked her. Then came the
sharp clang of a bell, the rattle of iron, and the train swept away
again, rushing off like a storm.
Mrs. Lander listened to its receding noises with absolute terror. It
seemed as if some awful visitation had left her there trembling and
helpless. Such dreams had visited her before. Mr. Lander himself had
swept down upon her from mountainous waves, dripping wet, and with his
gray hair turned to icicles, clamoring for his property. Her daughter,
too, had haunted her sleep, crying for help from some yawning gulf of
waters, and she had seen Lander’s heiress dancing fantastic flings on
the surface of a calm ocean, bright as quicksilver. All these
apparitions had demanded a restitution of the property she had just
begun to enjoy with such zest. The struggle to retain it, and yet allow
them to come out free from their prison in the great crystal deep, had
often sent her out of these dreams sobbing with dread and bathed in cold
perspiration.
But hard as these dreams had been, nothing could equal the scene that
had just swept past her. Was it real? Could it be a vision, like the
rest, tormenting her sleep? She pressed her bands on the marble
window-sill and leaned out into the night, searching it wildly for some
trace of the presence that had seemed so real. The slow rush of the
Hudson, sweeping toward the ocean just below the terrace, and a soft
shiver of leaves, was all the sound she heard. Nothing was visible save
the outline of the flower-beds and groups of shrubbery merging dimly
into the pale grey light which was just beginning to dawn in the east.
The woman drew back with a sob of grateful relief. A new class of demons
had begun to haunt her. Fiery trains, trailing smoke as they went, out
of which came her daughter, more beautiful than she had ever dreamed of,
to tempt her into new crimes, had been coursing through her sleep. This
vision had driven her out of bed into the chilly night air. All about
her shoulders and bosom the linen robe she wore was wet with dew. She
was shivering with cold in all her limbs. For the world she would not
encounter another vision like that. Such things were getting to be
frightfully real. Eunice should sleep in the next room and that would be
a protection hereafter. She withdrew herself from the window and crept
into bed, shuddering with cold, but rest was impossible; she had been
too severely shocked; all that she could do was to lie there with her
eyes wide open and watch the daylight as it crept across the window. At
last a sunbeam shot through the lace curtains, silvering them like a
cloud and filling her room with light.
It was very strange, but the brilliancy and stir of morning only made
that vision more definite and certain. Before this her dreams had
vanished with the darkness, but this—its distinctness terrified her. She
reached forth her hand, it fell upon a hollow place on the counterpane.
Lifting herself up from the pillows, she examined the spot. It was
pressed down as if some person had been sitting there. She remembered
that figure in the gray cloak with its hood falling back, and a sick
feeling crept over her. Was it reality? Could it be that Cora, in her
natural person, had occupied that place? She started from the bed,
resolved to search for other traces of the strange presence.
Mrs. Lander left her bed, she leaned from the window, looking forth upon
as bright a sunrise as ever blessed the earth. A shimmer of dew lay upon
everything—grass, leaves and branches, were bright with it. A rain of
diamonds trembled on the great drooping willows, and the flowers knew a
double brightness, for the sunshine turned the moisture in their cups to
a living fire. All this dazzled the woman without satisfying her. She
leaned out of the window, searching the grass beneath it. A ladder lay
half-buried in the grass, but near it, slanting down one side, was the
print of all its rounds and supporters pressed into the turf like a
material shadow, if that could be. Straggling out from under this ladder
was a broken rose branch full of sap and fresh at the splintered end.
Away from that, crossing the lawn, a trail of small footprints was
plainly visible leading to the terrace stairs.
The faintness of slow fear fell upon Mrs. Lander as she saw all this.
She could not yet realize that her child was alive, the impression left
by her presence was still so weird. But she knew that the vision of that
night could never be shaken off—that, as a blessing or a curse, she must
meet it with all her intellect and all her strength.
The woman did not go back to her bed. Those wild, bright eyes were too
widely open for that, but she dressed herself in haste, stopping in deep
thought sometimes with the comb drawn half through her hair, and gazing
on herself in the glass, as if that image had been her enemy, for
minutes together; then she would hurry on her garments with sudden
impetuosity and drop into thought as before. The woman had no object in
this; for when she was dressed the whole effort ended in a hurried walk
up and down the room with an energy that was almost appalling, for her
feet gave forth no sound from the moss-like carpet, and the workings of
her face took unnatural force from the stillness, as if the passions
within her were smitten with dumb agony.
Thus it was that Eunice found her mistress when she came to her chamber,
late in the morning. No, not exactly thus, for, at the first sound of a
step in the hall, Mrs. Lander drove the trouble back from her face, and
quietly asking if breakfast were ready, passed down stairs. She had
resolved to keep her own secret, had forced herself to _wait_, the
hardest lesson an ardent nature ever learned.
During the first hours in which this woman was mustering her strength,
Cora Lander, who had haunted her like a ghost, was being whirled toward
the city in the remotest seat of a car filled with passengers, sound
asleep or too drowsy to notice her. There she sat folded in her cloak,
vigilant and thoughtful. So far, her proceedings had passed unnoticed,
but it would be daylight when she reached the city, and great caution
might be needed on entering the hotel. When the train reached its depot
she entered the hotel coach, pausing by the steps a moment to observe if
any passengers were bound for the same destination, and was relieved to
find that half-a-dozen persons, two of whom were ladies, came crowding
in after her. The coach thundered rapidly through the still streets, and
in a brief time sat down its occupants before the hotel Cora went with
the rest to the reception room, but while the travellers entered she
glided away up the stairs to her own chamber, and no human being save
one ever knew positively that she had left it.