I STOOD on the rocky eminence in front of the ruins of Saint Anthony's
Chapel, and looked on the magnificent view of Edinburgh and of the old
Palace of Holyrood, bathed in the light of the full moon.
The Well, as the doctor's instructions had informed me, was behind
the chapel. I waited for some minutes in front of the ruin, partly to
recover my breath after ascending the hill; partly, I own, to master
the nervous agitation which the sense of my position at that moment had
aroused in me. The woman, or the apparition of the woman--it might be
either--was perhaps within a few yards of the place that I occupied. Not
a living creature appeared in front of the chapel. Not a sound caught
my ear from any part of the solitary hill. I tried to fix my whole
attention on the beauties of the moonlit view. It was not to be done. My
mind was far away from the objects on which my eyes rested. My mind was
with the woman whom I had seen in the summer-house writing in my book.
I turned to skirt the side of the chapel. A few steps more over the
broken ground brought me within view of the Well, and of the high
boulder or rock from the foot of which the waters gushed brightly in the
light of the moon.
She was there.
I recognized her figure as she stood leaning against the rock, with her
hands crossed in front of her, lost in thought. I recognized her face as
she looked up quickly, startled by the sound of my footsteps in the deep
stillness of the night.
Was it the woman, or the apparition of the woman? I waited, looking at
her in silence.
She spoke. The sound of her voice was not the mysterious sound that
I had heard in the summer-house. It was the sound I had heard on the
bridge when we first met in the dim evening light.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
As those words passed her lips, she recognized me. "_You_ here!" she
went on, advancing a step, in uncontrollable surprise. "What does this
mean?"
"I am here," I answered, "to meet you, by your own appointment."
She stepped back again, leaning against the rock. The moonlight shone
full upon her face. There was terror as well as astonishment in her eyes
while they now looked at me.
"I don't understand you," she said. "I have not seen you since you spoke
to me on the bridge."
"Pardon me," I replied. "I have seen you--or the appearance of
you--since that time. I heard you speak. I saw you write."
She looked at me with the strangest expression of mingled resentment and
curiosity. "What did I say?" she asked. "What did I write?"
"You said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' You wrote, 'When the full moon
shines on Saint Anthony's Well.'"
"Where?" she cried. "Where did I do that?"
"In a summer-house which stands by a waterfall," I answered. "Do you
know the place?"
Her head sunk back against the rock. A low cry of terror burst from
her. Her arm, resting on the rock, dropped at her side. I hurriedly
approached her, in the fear that she might fall on the stony ground.
She rallied her failing strength. "Don't touch me!" she exclaimed.
"Stand back, sir. You frighten me."
I tried to soothe her. "Why do I frighten you? You know who I am. Can
you doubt my interest in you, after I have been the means of saving your
life?"
Her reserve vanished in an instant. She advanced without hesitation, and
took me by the hand.
"I ought to thank you," she said. "And I do. I am not so ungrateful as
I seem. I am not a wicked woman, sir--I was mad with misery when I tried
to drown myself. Don't distrust me! Don't despise me!" She stopped; I
saw the tears on her cheeks. With a sudden contempt for herself, she
dashed them away. Her whole tone and manner altered once more. Her
reserve returned; she looked at me with a strange flash of suspicion and
defiance in her eyes. "Mind this!" she said, loudly and abruptly, "you
were dreaming when you thought you saw me writing. You didn't see me;
you never heard me speak. How could I say those familiar words to a
stranger like you? It's all your fancy--and you try to frighten me by
talking of it as if it was a real thing!" She changed again; her eyes
softened to the sad and tender look which made them so irresistibly
beautiful. She drew her cloak round her with a shudder, as if she felt
the chill of the night air. "What is the matter with me?" I heard her
say to herself. "Why do I trust this man in my dreams? And why am I
ashamed of it when I wake?"
That strange outburst encouraged me. I risked letting her know that I
had overheard her last words.
"If you trust me in your dreams, you only do me justice," I said. "Do
me justice now; give me your confidence. You are alone--you are in
trouble--you want a friend's help. I am waiting to help you."
She hesitated. I tried to take her hand. The strange creature drew it
away with a cry of alarm: her one great fear seemed to be the fear of
letting me touch her.
"Give me time to think of it," she said. "You don't know what I have got
to think of. Give me till to-morrow; and let me write. Are you staying
in Edinburgh?"
I thought it wise to be satisfied--in appearance at least--with this
concession. Taking out my card, I wrote on it in pencil the address of
the hotel at which I was staying. She read the card by the moonlight
when I put it into her hand.
"George!" she repeated to herself, stealing another look at me as the
name passed her lips. "'George Germaine.' I never heard of 'Germaine.'
But 'George' reminds me of old times." She smiled sadly at some passing
fancy or remembrance in which I was not permitted to share. "There is
nothing very wonderful in your being called 'George,'" she went on,
after a while. "The name is common enough: one meets with it everywhere
as a man's name And yet--" Her eyes finished the sentence; her eyes said
to me, "I am not so much afraid of you, now I know that you are called
'George.'"
So she unconsciously led me to the brink of discovery!
If I had only asked her what associations she connected with my
Christian name--if I had only persuaded her to speak in the briefest and
most guarded terms of her past life--the barrier between us, which the
change in our names and the lapse of ten years had raised, must have
been broken down; the recognition must have followed. But I never even
thought of it; and for this simple reason--I was in love with her. The
purely selfish idea of winning my way to her favorable regard by taking
instant advantage of the new interest that I had awakened in her was the
one idea which occurred to my mind.
"Don't wait to write to me," I said. "Don't put it off till to-morrow.
Who knows what may happen before to-morrow? Surely I deserve some little
return for the sympathy that I feel with you? I don't ask for much. Make
me happy by making me of some service to you before we part to-night."
I took her hand, this time, before she was aware of me. The whole woman
seemed to yield at my touch. Her hand lay unresistingly in mine; her
charming figure came by soft gradations nearer and nearer to me; her
head almost touched my shoulder. She murmured in faint accents, broken
by sighs, "Don't take advantage of me. I am so friendless; I am so
completely in your power." Before I could answer, before I could move,
her hand closed on mine; her head sunk on my shoulder: she burst into
tears.
Any man, not an inbred and inborn villain, would have respected her at
that moment. I put her hand on my arm and led her away gently past the
ruined chapel, and down the slope of the hill.
"This lonely place is frightening you," I said. "Let us walk a little,
and you will soon be yourself again."
She smiled through her tears like a child.
"Yes," she said, eagerly. "But not that way." I had accidentally taken
the direction which led away from the city; she begged me to turn toward
the houses and the streets. We walked back toward Edinburgh. She eyed
me, as we went on in the moonlight, with innocent, wondering looks.
"What an unaccountable influence you have over me!" she exclaimed.
"Did you ever see me, did you ever hear my name, before we met that
evening at the river?"
"Never."
"And I never heard _your_ name, and never saw _you_ before. Strange!
very strange! Ah! I remember somebody--only an old woman, sir--who might
once have explained it. Where shall I find the like of her now?"
She sighed bitterly. The lost friend or relative had evidently been dear
to her. "A relation of yours?" I inquired--more to keep her talking than
because I felt any interest in any member of her family but herself.
We were again on the brink of discovery. And again it was decreed that
we were to advance no further.
"Don't ask me about my relations!" she broke out. "I daren't think of
the dead and gone, in the trouble that is trying me now. If I speak of
the old times at home, I shall only burst out crying again, and distress
you. Talk of something else, sir--talk of something else."
The mystery of the apparition in the summer-house was not cleared up
yet. I took my opportunity of approaching the subject.
"You spoke a little while since of dreaming of me," I began. "Tell me
your dream."
"I hardly know whether it was a dream or whether it was something else,"
she answered. "I call it a dream for want of a better word."
"Did it happen at night?"
"No. In the daytime--in the afternoon."
"Late in the afternoon?"
"Yes--close on the evening."
My memory reverted to the doctor's story of the shipwrecked passenger,
whose ghostly "double" had appeared in the vessel that was to rescue
him, and who had himself seen that vessel in a dream.
"Do you remember the day of the month and the hour?" I asked.
She mentioned the day, and she mentioned the hour. It was the day when
my mother and I had visited the waterfall. It was the hour when I had
seen the apparition in the summer-house writing in my book!
I stopped in irrepressible astonishment. We had walked by this time
nearly as far on the way back to the city as the old Palace of Holyrood.
My companion, after a glance at me, turned and looked at the rugged old
building, mellowed into quiet beauty by the lovely moonlight.
"This is my favorite walk," she said, simply, "since I have been in
Edinburgh. I don't mind the loneliness. I like the perfect tranquillity
here at night." She glanced at me again. "What is the matter?" she
asked. "You say nothing; you only look at me."
"I want to hear more of your dream," I said. "How did you come to be
sleeping in the daytime?"
"It is not easy to say what I was doing," she replied, as we walked on
again. "I was miserably anxious and ill. I felt my helpless condition
keenly on that day. It was dinner-time, I remember, and I had no
appetite. I went upstairs (at the inn where I am staying), and lay down,
quite worn out, on my bed. I don't know whether I fainted or whether I
slept; I lost all consciousness of what was going on about me, and I got
some other consciousness in its place. If this was dreaming, I can only
say it was the most vivid dream I ever had in my life."
"Did it begin by your seeing me?" I inquired.
"It began by my seeing your drawing-book--lying open on a table in a
summer-house."
"Can you describe the summer-house as you saw it?"
She described not only the summer-house, but the view of the waterfall
from the door. She knew the size, she knew the binding, of my
sketch-book--locked up in my desk, at that moment, at home in
Perthshire!
"And you wrote in the book," I went on. "Do you remember what you
wrote?"
She looked away from me confusedly, as if she were ashamed to recall
this part of her dream.
"You have mentioned it already," she said. "There is no need for me to
go over the words again. Tell me one thing--when _you_ were at the
summer-house, did you wait a little on the path to the door before you
went in?"
I _had_ waited, surprised by my first view of the woman writing in my
book. Having answered her to this effect, I asked what she had done or
dreamed of doing at the later moment when I entered the summer-house.
"I did the strangest things," she said, in low, wondering tones. "If you
had been my brother, I could hardly have treated you more familiarly.
I beckoned to you to come to me. I even laid my hand on your bosom. I
spoke to you as I might have spoken to my oldest and dearest friend. I
said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' Oh, I was so ashamed of myself when
I came to my senses again, and recollected it. Was there ever such
familiarity--even in a dream--between a woman and a man whom she had
only once seen, and then as a perfect stranger?"
"Did you notice how long it was," I asked, "from the time when you lay
down on the bed to the time when you found yourself awake again?"
"I think I can tell you," she replied. "It was the dinner-time of the
house (as I said just now) when I went upstairs. Not long after I had
come to myself I heard a church clock strike the hour. Reckoning from
one time to the other, it must have been quite three hours from the time
when I first lay down to the time when I got up again."
Was the clew to the mysterious disappearance of the writing to be found
here?
Looking back by the light of later discoveries, I am inclined to think
that it was. In three hours the lines traced by the apparition of her
had vanished. In three hours she had come to herself, and had felt
ashamed of the familiar manner in which she had communicated with me in
her sleeping state. While she had trusted me in the trance--trusted me
because her spirit was then free to recognize my spirit--the writing had
remained on the page. When her waking will counteracted the influence of
her sleeping will, the writing disappeared. Is this the explanation? If
it is not, where is the explanation to be found?
We walked on until we reached that part of the Canongate street in which
she lodged. We stopped at the door.