Chapter VIII: 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.