Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/264

254[February 13, 1869] was a ghastly image enough without the trembling light, by which the corpse appeared to be swaying to and fro.

It was warm; she would leave the window open all night; the moon was friendly; she could hear the wind stirring the topmost boughs of the forest yonder, where Albrecht was; and that was something. She had double-locked the door, and now she slid off the narrow quaint garment wherein she had been attired, and crept into the great black bed, which looked to her so like a grave, with its headstone and its garland in memory of the departed. The clock struck ten, as she lay down, and turned her face towards the window. The moon itself she could not see, though its light streamed in upon the floor; but there were spaces of clear sky, sprinkled with stars, across which the dusky shadow of a bat every now and then flitted. Except the hoarse croaking of the frogs, there was no other sign of life. For a long time she lay awake she heard eleven strike, and then twelve  a prey to all manner of fancies. Now she thought that Esther stirred from her place upon the wall, and that she heard the rustle of her royal robes; now it was Ahasuerus who was stepping from his throne, and advancing to meet her; now Haman's dead limbs seemed to become animated, and the miscreant was descending from the gallows. But, one by one, these fancies wore themselves out. The woven figures came not to life; no sound, not even that of a mouse behind the wainscot, broke the perfect stillness of the night. The imagination, without aliment, cannot keep up for ever at high-pressure pitch; and when youth and health are in the other scale, nature will sooner or later have its way, and claim its right of rest. She fell asleep.

How long she remained so, she never knew; but she started from her sleep with the horrible consciousness that something was near her—something between her and the window—something bending over her, with its face close, close to hers. She lay there breathless, motionless. She tried to scream, to spring from the bed; she could not stir a muscle, and the thing stood there, immovable, with its glittering eyes looking down into hers. She knew she had been dreaming; she asked herself, in those few doubtful moments, whether this was a continuation of her nightmare? For, paralysed with terror as she was, strange to say, the deadly face of this shadow brought vividly to her mind the picture which had made so deep an impression on her at Prague. Though this was the face of a shadow, white and hollow, there were the same extraordinary eyes, unlike any Magda had ever seen. The rest was shrouded in black, and the moon from behind touched the edges of one white lock of hair with silver. "Louise!" murmured the shadow; and Magda felt a death-cold hand laid upon hers, outside the coverlet. She trembled so that the very bed shook under her, but she gave no other sign of life.

Lower and lower, closer and closer, bent the shadow. And now, indeed, Magda shut her eyes, and felt that life was ebbing fast from her heart; for the corpse-like face touched hers, and those dead lips rained kisses on her cheek. Then, with a great cry, as though something within her had snapped, Magda felt a sudden momentary power given her to spring from the bed, and run shrieking towards the window. It was but momentary; there was another shriek, the piercing echo of her own; she was conscious of the spectre's rushing towards her, white hair flowing, wild arms tossed into the sky; and then Magda sank in a swoon upon the floor.

Bettine was bending over her with sal-volatile, when she opened her eyes. Hanne stood by the bed, whereon something black lay stretched.

"Mein Gott! sie ist todt!" were the first words Magda heard. They came from the lips of the grim Hanne. The door opened quickly at the same moment, and Magda found herself in Albrecht's arms.

But the next minute he turned towards the bed. Hanne and he interchanged looks; it was enough; and then, leaving Magda to Bettine's care, he ran towards the bed, and threw himself on his knees beside it Too late! too late! All his hope, then—his heart's first wish for years past—was now frustrated, at the very moment of fulfilment! He buried his head in the coverlid, and Magda heard a low sob. There was no other sound in the room. Then, after a while, she caught these disjointed sentences, wrung from the agony of the young man's soul:

"Du barmherziger Himmel! Is it all over then?  After so many years, so many!—without one kind look—without a word! It is hard. To go thus from me before the cloud was lifted Ach! mutter—thou knowest now the truth—open thy lips, but once more—only once, to bless me, even me, thy only son, now