THE APPARITION
Thenceforth Brion avoided the neighbourhood of the old well-house;
he kept that dark cloud of ilex trees at a nervous distance, and did
not even care to let his glance wander their way. This mood of
superstitious fear haunted him for some time, and then began to
weaken, or to change in its constitution. The eternal spirit of
curiosity crept back, like a scared sheep, to examine the cause of its
own panic. He was ashamed of himself for having yielded so abjectly to
a portent existing, perhaps, only in his imagination: he longed to
find it _in_ himself to re-essay the test, and was angry because he
could not at once rise to it. But the thought of the place fascinated
him, and gradually, a little and a little more, drew him to venture
foot again within the radius of its influence. That laugh he had heard
was the laugh of Parthenope to his bewitched senses. It sickened yet
it drew him. He had a feverish lust to fathom its source, and to
grapple with whatever nameless horror it might reveal. That was his
nature. He would come to be a tenacious fighter in his day patient to
the fine limit of forbearance, but difficult to shake from his grasp,
when once fastened on. Yet for long he could not bring his mind to
face the great decision.
Parthenope! the siren of that black pit! What, he wondered, had been
her name in life--the poor unhappy young creature who had been so
foully done to death by her master the miser? Clerivault professed to
scorn the whole story; but then Clerivault was obviously a sceptic
from policy. Pity at last came to alter the quality of Brion’s
feelings; and then he was very near the resolution he uneasily
desired.
But at first, he thought, he would approach it by way of a compromise.
He went out one morning, when a pale mist of sunlight was charming all
the earth with beauty, and, passing through the main gate, crossed the
small bridge and turned to make the circuit of the moat from the
outside. That would bring him presently to the thicket of ilex trees
where it was continued over against the well-house, and would enable
him to view the object of his unquiet infatuation from the rear, and
with the moat between. Somewhere he had heard that ghosts could not
cross running water, and it was a comfort to him to believe that the
water of the moat, fed by the little stream, did, however
imperceptibly, move.
The clump, frowning gigantic in the mist, loomed up before him as he
took an angle of the ditch. The trees here, at least on the outskirts,
were less closely massed than on the other side, and one could
distinguish swords and spars of glimmering light between their trunks.
As he approached in the fair morning, his courage rose with his
spirits, and he began to whistle: and then in an instant all the soul
went out of him like a wind. He had caught sight of a woman’s figure
flitting and vanishing among the shadows.
He stood a full minute, his heart pulsing like the balance spring of a
watch. For a moment he felt quite sick; and then, in the reaction,
furious. A sense of outrage flooded his brain. That he should be
taunted and held up like this before an intangible fancy--a spectrum,
a nothing! He would endure it no longer. Strung to actual passion, he
started running and, desperate, without a thought for consequences,
plunged in among the trees. As their gloom came about him, half
blinding his eyes, he caught glimpse of the apparition, and followed
in pursuit. It fled before him, a diaphanous indistinct shape, silent
and elusive. But his blood was up, and instinct told him that for the
sake of his own sanity he must now persist to the end. If reason could
not explain a horror, it could master by facing it.
In and about the trees went the ghostly chase: one and the other,
phantom and mortal, they took either side of a writhed trunk and met
beyond. With a savage cry, Brion flung out his arms, and something
dropped beneath them. He stooped, and his hands touched warm and
throbbing flesh.
‘God’s ’slid!’ said the boy, taking his oath from Clerivault: ‘Say
what art thou!’
He was panting, with set teeth: in the gloom and the wild flurry of
his mood he could distinguish nothing clearly. Yet the thing under him
moved and seemed material.
‘I have you,’ he said. ‘I shall not let you go till you tell me who
you are. Spirit or goblin, wait while I see your face.’
He flung the hair from his eyes, and bent, and glared down. Nothing
but the obscure crown of a little hat met his vision. His hands still
gripped what they had caught. He thrust the right one into a nest of
warmth, and, feeling a chin, forced it upwards. It brought into view a
face, very white and, in that dimness, spiritual. Its eyes stared
palely into his. He said, but in a tone into which doubt had crept,
with some amazement:--
‘Speak, if mortal speech be thine.’
He was answered, and breathlessly, though not as he expected.
‘And mortal feeling. Will you hurt me so? I am only a girl.’
Brion, releasing his hold, stepped back a pace. This voice was human
to sweetness.
‘Art thou not a spirit?’ he stammered.
‘O! what spirit?’ said the voice.
‘Of her,’ he said, ‘that lies long ages murdered in the well yonder.’
The figure seemed to listen.
‘My shoulders should convince you,’ she said suddenly and plaintively.
‘I thought I felt a wild beast at them.’
He put his hands to his head.
‘Have I done so foul a thing? I took you for a ghost. Alack, what
savage must you think me!’ He held out his arms, entreating: ‘I
prithee let me raise thee’--but she would not accept his help, and got
to her feet unaided. She trembled a little, leaning against the tree,
and held one hand to her bosom. He could see her now quite clearly--a
young girl, something less than his own age.
‘O!’ she said: ‘Methinks I shall faint!’
He was ill with remorse. In the half light her feminine frailty was
even exaggerated to him. She seemed a thing of china a rough touch
might have broken, and he had treated her with barbarous violence.
‘What have I done!’ he cried. ‘Will you ever forgive me!’
He darted forward, and, though she resisted weakly, put an arm about
her.
‘Nay, you will fall else,’ he said.
Still she struggled, panting to free herself.
‘Nay!’ he pleaded.
‘I am well again. It has passed. I entreat you, release me. Are you
all wild men here?’
‘I took you for a ghost, I say.’
‘Mayhap I am one.’
‘Not with this warmth and softness.’
She tore herself free, and backed from him. A ray of the growing
sunlight had found a passage through the green and fastened with its
lips upon her face. It was a very pretty one, sweet as tinted wax; and
the mouth was blushing to that kiss. Gazing on it, some sense,
hitherto unfelt, unknown, opened to life in Brion like a delivered
bud.
‘Boy!’ said the girl, with disdain: ‘Boy!’
‘I shall be a man betimes,’ said Brion; ‘and before you are a woman.’
She opened her lips as if to retort, found nothing to say, and moved
to go. Her manner was all at once stately and self-possessed. She
walked like a proud little lady, and, turning her head over her
shoulder, bade her assailant a stiff good-morrow.
‘May I not see you from the dark wood?’ said Brion; and ‘I forbid you
to come with me,’ she answered, and walked on.
Nevertheless, he followed her at a distance; when, nearing the fringe
of the copse on its east side, what was his surprise to see her
already mounted and riding away upon a little ass, which had
apparently been tethered there awaiting her return all the time. She
never once looked round, but, skirting the moat, vanished in the
direction of the moor.