Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/42

34 Then the invisible presence of which I was conscious came nearer, and, while a soft touch fell upon my head, it answered, "Who should I be but your own—your own beloved, who is ever watching over you! He—the evil man—has been given power over you for a day, but now the morrow has come, and I may help you."

"Do you mean it is he who has taken away my strength and reduced me to this condition?"

"I do. He has sapped the very springs of your life—drawn from you those vital forces whose total loss is the death of the body."

"And how can you help me?"

"By giving you of my life and my magnetism. But I cannot do it alone, for I am spirit and you are mortal. I must do it through a living woman—through her whom you know. She must be your wife; yet it will not be her, but me; and our union will only be a little hastened."

I looked around for my wife and children. They were gone, and so was the room, and the familiar furniture. I was out under the open sky, and from it the stars, like living things, were looking down upon me. I raised my hand and cried for help to resist this temptation. Instantly a voice within me—which was not mine, though it spoke with my lips, and uttered my unconscious feeling—said, "Begone, begone to your home among the shadows."

Then I opened my eyes. The little circle was again about me. My wife was chafing my hands and limbs, and my children were about my neck weeping. "Oh, dear, dear father," said my little girl, "I'm so glad; you were so cold, and you talked so strange, that we feared you were dying."

The following morning passed without my usual trance; but in the evening, as I lay alone in my room, I became conscious of the same invisible presence. "You will not turn away," it said, "not turn away from your own Charlotte."

"Begone," I answered, "begone, and let me die in quiet."

"Die!" it answered. "You will not die! Only the good die young; they whose hearts are dry as Summer's dust burn to the socket."

"I thought I was the best man that ever lived!" I answered. "You can go, for I see your foot again, and it is cloven."

A loud, prolonged, fiendish laugh then rung in my ears, and at its close I heard the words: "Well, I am the devil; but I'll not have the name without the game. I'll torment you to suicide."

"Well, do your worst. I do not fear you. God will not permit me to be tried beyond my strength, and, in his good time and way, he will help me."

There was another fiendish laugh, and then the presence left me.