Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/557

 nothing: her hands clutching the shawl, her eyes dilated.

“Have nothing to do with Lewis Carlton,” went on the voice; “if you care for your own happiness, perhaps your life, have nothing to do with him. Ask him what he did to Clarice. Ask him if he deals in poison.”

With the faintest possible rustling, the figure and the voice died away to her sight and hearing. Laura Chesney felt as if her own heart, almost her life, were dying with it.

Now it happened that Mr. Carlton, after letting himself out at the gate, remembered a word he had forgotten to say to Laura, touching those plans of theirs for the following evening. He had gone a few paces down the road when he thought of it; but he retraced his steps, put his hand over the gate, pressed the spring, and turned in again. But a few yards from him, right in front of the path, enveloped in what looked like a travelling cloak and cap, stood a man, a stout and very short man—as it seemed to Mr. Carlton. He supposed it to be some traveller coming perhaps from a journey, who might have business at the house; he supposed he had passed in at the gate in the minute that had elapsed since he himself had passed out of it. Conscious that he was not upon Captain Chesney’s premises on pursuits of the most honourable nature, the surgeon felt somewhat embarrassed. At that moment the stranger turned and raised his cap, and to Mr. Carlton’s horror he saw beneath it the face he had seen once before.

It was the same face he had seen on the staircase in Palace Street, the night of his patient’s death; the same severe face, with its intensely black whiskers, and its ghastly white skin. A creeping horror, as if the dead were about him, overspread Mr. Carlton: he knew not whether the figure before him was ghostly or human; he leaned his brow on his hand for one single instant to recover self-possession; and when he looked up, the figure was gone.

Gone where? Mr. Carlton could not say, could not think. That it had not come down the path, was certain, because it must have brushed passed him; and it was equally certain it had not gone on to the house, or it would not yet have been out of sight; neither was he disposed to think it had disappeared amidst the trees, for he had heard no sound of their being moved. He had hitherto considered himself a brave man, a man bolder than the common run, but he was strangely shaken now. The same undefined terror which had unnerved him that other night, unmanned him this. It was not a fear that he could take hold of and grapple with: it was a vague, shadowy dread, perfectly undefined to his mind, partly indistinct; one moment presenting the semblance of a real tangible fear, that might be run from or guarded against; the next, wearing to his conviction but the hues of a fanciful superstition. Never, in all his life, had Mr. Carlton believed in ghostly appearances; he would have been the first to laugh at and ridicule those who did believe in them; most singular, then, was it that the face he had seen that ill-fated night should have conjured up any superstitious fear in his mind of its being a visitant from the other world; it was singular that the same idea should arise, uncalled for, now.

With a face quite as ghastly as the one he had seen,—with shaking nerves that he strove in vain to steady,—with a sickening fear that ran through every fibre of his frame, Mr. Carlton stood still as death, taking a few moments’ respite; and then he penetrated to the spot where he had left Laura Chesney. Not to her did he purpose breathing a syllable of what had passed; what then was his astonishment to find her dart up to him, clasp him tightly for protection, and burst into deep sobs of terror, a terror as great as his own!

“Laura, my love, what means this?”

“Oh, Lewis, did you see it? I did you see it?” she sobbed. “That figure which has been here?”

Mr. Carlton’s heart beat more violently than before; but still he would not betray that he knew anything.

“What figure, Laura?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know who or what it was, It was behind me, amidst the trees, and I saw it when I turned to look after my shawl. At the first moment I thought it was a woman, its voice sounded like a woman’s, but afterwards I thought it was a man; I don’t know which it was.”

“Its voice!” repeated Mr. Carlton. “Did it speak?”

“It spoke, and that was the worst; it warned me against you. Otherwise I might have thought it some curious passer-by, who had heard us speaking, and came intruding in at the gate to look. Oh, Lewis!” she added, with a burst of agitation that almost shook Mr. Carlton as well as herself, “it is not true, is it? Lewis! Lewis!”

Her emotion was so excessive that she lost all self-control, all recollection of the necessity for secrecy. Another fear attacked Mr. Carlton—that they might be betrayed.

“Hush, hush!” he whispered. “Be calm, and tell me what you mean. Is what true?”

“It—I say ‘it', because I don’t know whether it was a man or a woman—it warned me against you,” panted Laura. “It told me