He stopped short at my words, with bent head, his features hidden in the shadow thus cast upon them,--nothing in his motionless form to show what was passing within him.Then he looked up, and turned his face to the moonlight and to me, laying his hand on one of mine.
"Don't be afraid," he said; "it is all right, my little David.You have driven the evil spirit away." And lifting my hand, he pressed it gently to his lips.Then drawing it within his arm, he went on, as he walked forward, "And even when it was on me at its worst, Iwas not meditating suicide, as I think you imagine.I am a very average specimen of humanity,--neither brave enough to defy the possibilities of eternity nor cowardly enough to shirk those of time.No, I was only trying idiotically to persuade a girl of eighteen that life was not worth living; and more futilely still, myself, that I did not wish her to live.I am afraid, that in my mind philosophy and fact have but small connection with each other;and though my theorizing for your welfare may be true enough, yet,--I cannot help it, Evie,--it would go terribly hard with me if anything were to happen to you."His voice trembled as he finished.My fear had gone with his return to his natural manner, but my bewilderment remained.
"Why SHOULD there anything happen to me?" I asked.
"That is just it," he answered, after a pause, looking straight in front of him and drawing his hand wearily over his brow."I know of no reason why there should." Then giving a sigh, as if finally to dismiss from his mind a worrying subject--"I have acted for the best," he said, "and may God forgive me if I have done wrong."There was a little silence after that, and then he began to talk again, steadily and quietly.The subject was deep enough still, as deep as any that we had touched upon, but both voice and sentiment were calm, bringing peace to my spirit, and soon making me forget the wonder and fear of a few moments before.Very openly did he talk as we passed on across the long trunk shadows and through the glades of silver light; and I saw farther then into the most sacred recesses of his soul than I have ever done before or since.
When we reached home the moon had already set; but some of her beams seemed to have been left behind within my heart, so pure and peaceful was the light which filled it.
The same feeling continued with me all through that evening.After dinner some of the party played and sang.As it was Sunday, and Lucy was rigid in her views, the music was of a sacred character.
I sat in a low armchair in a dark corner of the room, my mind too dreamy to think, and too passive to dream.I hardly interchanged three words with Alan, who remained in a still darker spot, invisible and silent the whole time.Only as we left the room to go to bed, I heard Lucy ask him if he had a headache.I did not hear his answer, and before I could see his face he had turned back again into the drawing-room.
V
It was early, and when first I got to my room I felt little inclined for sleep.I wandered to the window, and drawing aside the curtains, looked out upon the still, starlit sky.At least Ishould rest quiet to-night.The air was very clear, and the sky seemed full of stars.As I stood there scraps of schoolroom learning came back to my mind.That the stars were all suns, surrounded perhaps in their turn by worlds as large or larger than our own.Worlds beyond worlds, and others farther still, which no man might number or even descry.And about the distance of those wonderful suns too,--that one, for instance, at which I was looking,--what was it that I had been told? That our world was not yet peopled, perhaps not yet formed, when the actual spot of light which now struck my sight first started from the star's surface!
While it flashed along, itself the very symbol of speed, the whole of mankind had had time to be born, and live, and die!
My gaze dropped, and fell upon the dim, half-seen outline of the Dead Stone.That woman too.While that one ray speeded towards me her life had been lived and ended, and her body had rotted away into the ground.How close together we all were! Her life and mine; our joys, sufferings, deaths--all crowded together into the space of one flash of light! And yet there was nothing there but a horrible skeleton of dead bones, while I--!
I stopped with a shudder, and turned back into the room.I wished that Alan had not told me what lay under the stone; I wished that Ihad never asked him.It was a ghastly thing to think about, and spoilt all the beauty of the night to me.
I got quickly into bed, and soon dropped asleep.I do not know how long I slept; but when I woke it was with the consciousness again of that haunting wind.
It was worse than ever.The world seemed filled with its din.
Hurling itself passionately against the house, it gathered strength with every gust, till it seemed as if the old walls must soon crash in ruins round me.Gust upon gust; blow upon blow; swelling, lessening, never ceasing.The noise surrounded me; it penetrated my inmost being, as all-pervading as silence itself, and wrapping me in a solitude even more complete.There was nothing left in the world but the wind and I, and then a weird intangible doubt as to my own identity seized me.The wind was real, the wind with its echoes of passion and misery from the eternal abyss; but was there anything else? What was, and what had been, the world of sense and of knowledge, my own consciousness, my very self,--all seemed gathered up and swept away in that one sole-existent fury of sound.
