RETURNING to the cottage parlor, I took a chair by the window and opened
my pocket-book at a blank page. I had certain directions to give to my
representatives, which might spare them some trouble and uncertainty
in the event of my death. Disguising my last instructions under the
commonplace heading of "Memoranda on my return to London," I began to
write.
I had filled one page of the pocket-book, and had just turned to the
next, when I became conscious of a difficulty in fixing my attention on
the subject that was before it. I was at once reminded of the similar
difficulty which I felt in Shetland, when I had tried vainly to arrange
the composition of the letter to my mother which Miss Dunross was to
write. By way of completing the parallel, my thoughts wandered now, as
they had wandered then, to my latest remembrance of Mrs. Van Brandt.
In a minute or two I began to feel once more the strange physical
sensations which I had first experienced in the garden at Mr. Dunross's
house. The same mysterious trembling shuddered through me from head to
foot. I looked about me again, with no distinct consciousness of what
the objects were on which my eyes rested. My nerves trembled, on that
lovely summer night, as if there had been an electric disturbance in the
atmosphere and a storm coming. I laid my pocket-book and pencil on
the table, and rose to go out again under the trees. Even the trifling
effort to cross the room was an effort made in vain. I stood rooted to
the spot, with my face turned toward the moonlight streaming in at the
open door.
An interval passed, and as I still looked out through the door, I became
aware of something moving far down among the trees that fringed the
shore of the lake. The first impression produced on me was of two gray
shadows winding their way slowly toward me between the trunks of the
trees. By fine degrees the shadows assumed a more and more marked
outline, until they presented themselves in the likeness of two robed
figures, one taller than the other. While they glided nearer and nearer,
their gray obscurity of hue melted away. They brightened softly with an
inner light of their own as they slowly approached the open space before
the door. For the third time I stood in the ghostly presence of Mrs.
Van Brandt; and with her, holding her hand, I beheld a second apparition
never before revealed to me, the apparition of her child.
Hand-in-hand, shining in their unearthly brightness through the bright
moonlight itself, the two stood before me. The mother's face looked at
me once more with the sorrowful and pleading eyes which I remembered so
well. But the face of the child was innocently radiant with an angelic
smile. I waited in unutterable expectation for the word that was to be
spoken, for the movement that was to come. The movement came first.
The child released its hold on the mother's hand, and floating slowly
upward, remained poised in midair--a softly glowing presence shining out
of the dark background of the trees. The mother glided into the room,
and stopped at the table on which I had laid my pocket-book and pencil
when I could no longer write. As before, she took the pencil and wrote
on the blank page. As before, she beckoned to me to step nearer to her.
I approached her outstretched hand, and felt once more the mysterious
rapture of her touch on my bosom, and heard once more her low, melodious
tones repeating the words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped
from my bosom. The pale light which revealed her to me quivered, sunk,
vanished. She had spoken. She had gone.
I drew to me the open pocket-book. And this time I saw, in the writing
of the ghostly hand, these words only:
_"Follow the Child."_
I looked out again at the lonely night landscape.
There, in mid-air, shining softly out of the dark background of the
trees, still hovered the starry apparition of the child.
Advancing without conscious will of my own, I crossed the threshold of
the door. The softly glowing vision of the child moved away before me
among the trees. I followed, like a man spellbound. The apparition,
floating slowly onward, led me out of the wood, and past my old home,
back to the lonely by-road along which I had walked from the market-town
to the house. From time to time, as we two went on our way, the bright
figure of the child paused, hovering low in the cloudless sky. Its
radiant face looked down smiling on me; it beckoned with its little
hand, and floated on again, leading me as the Star led the Eastern sages
in the olden time.
I reached the town. The airy figure of the child paused, hovering over
the house at which I had left my traveling-carriage in the evening.
I ordered the horses to be harnessed again for another journey. The
postilion waited for his further directions. I looked up. The child's
hand was pointing southward, along the road that led to London. I gave
the man his instructions to return to the place at which I had hired
the carriage. At intervals, as we proceeded, I looked out through
the window. The bright figure of the child still floated on before me
gliding low in the cloudless sky. Changing the horses stage by stage, I
went on till the night ended--went on till the sun rose in the eastern
heaven. And still, whether it was dark or whether it was light, the
figure of the child floated on before me in its changeless and mystic
light. Mile after mile, it still led the way southward, till we left the
country behind us, and passing through the din and turmoil of the great
city, stopped under the shadow of the ancient Tower, within view of the
river that runs by it.
The postilion came to the carriage door to ask if I had further need of
his services. I had called to him to stop, when I saw the figure of the
child pause on its airy course. I looked upward again. The child's hand
pointed toward the river. I paid the postilion and left the carriage.
Floating on before me, the child led the way to a wharf crowded with
travelers and their luggage. A vessel lay along-side of the wharf ready
to sail. The child led me on board the vessel and paused again, hovering
over me in the smoky air.
I looked up. The child looked back at me with its radiant smile, and
pointed eastward down the river toward the distant sea. While my eyes
were still fixed on the softly glowing figure, I saw it fade away upward
and upward into the higher light, as the lark vanishes upward and
upward in the morning sky. I was alone again with my earthly
fellow-beings--left with no clew to guide me but the remembrance of the
child's hand pointing eastward to the distant sea.
A sailor was near me coiling the loosened mooring-rope on the deck. I
asked him to what port the vessel was bound. The man looked at me in
surly amazement, and answered:
"To Rotterdam."