I passed 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 grass 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.