And then, and then, I knew that it was not I. I had not caused it. Across my scalp my hair crawled as if filled by icy tricklings. Against my will, it seemed to me, yet no more resistible than as if at the pull of a chain of steel, my head turned and tilted back, and I looked up the unmasked face of that house, towards its highest casements.
There was not a creeper left upon any of them. Even the snow had been leached away. But oh, something white there was, which stood at the window, looking out, and out.
I can put down here only what I saw. I saw a woman’s shape. Her gown I cannot detail, nor how her hair was dressed, though it seemed to me that both were disordered. Her features I could not see, and that had nothing to do with distance, and I believe nothing to do with light or shade. She had no features, none. That is, she had only one feature. She had two eyes. But her eyes were set in that featureless whiteness of a shape like two burned holes. They were not eyes at all — but. they were eyes, more eyes than are possible to any thing that lives.
I remember little of my descent of the wall. Perhaps I fell from it. Certainly I think some of it crumbled and broke away too, as I slipped down. And then I fled along the Lane, and this I do recall. I fled and I whimpered like a man pursued by the dogs of hell that are really fiends, and they will tear him, even his soul, if they catch him. But they did not catch me, and I reached the town. And then came maybe the most sinister and curious thing of all.
For running out into Market Gate Street in the wintry dusk, a carriage passed me, and in the carriage a friend of my aunt’s who greeted me as she went by most graciously. And I raised my hat, and nodded, and then walked on to my aunt’s door, like some man who has not just met the devil on the road.
‘Aunt,’ I said to her that evening, ‘why not come up to London for a spell?’
‘Oh, no, dear boy,’ she said. ‘I’m too comfortable here. Why should I wish to be in London?’
‘Well, I am there. And half a dozen theatres and shops and museums that are the envy of the country.’ But she would not be moved, saying it would put me against her, if she encroached upon my ‘London World’.
And so, after another day, I went again away from Steepleford. And naturally, I had spoken to no one of what I had seen, and no one had asked me what I had seen. Nor did I hear a single mention of Hawkins’s house, or its current state, about the town, let alone of anything else.
However, as I sat in the train, I took myself sternly to one side, and told myself that perhaps ghosts did exist, for there are nowadays even photographs of some of them. But of all things, the dead could not harm the living: their power was done.
Less than a month later, I was at a supper given by my then acquaintance, Lord D—. The food was of the best and the wines Olympian, which made up, somewhat, for the conversation. At midnight I well remember we had some music, amongst the rest an attractive rendition, given by a female singer of superb voice, of the words of Alexander Pope’s Pastorals, the melody being, I think, Handel’s. As it finished, one of the servants came discreetly in, and presently handed me a telegram.
To my dismay I read that my aunt had fallen seriously ill, and begged my attendance on her. My own man had taken alarm and brought the message directly on to me.
I hurried to my rooms and flung some things together, and was soon on the train for Steepleford Halt.
I have said that I had great affection for my aunt, and with good reason. My agitation was increased because she had never, until then, that I knew, been afflicted with any ailment not trifling and swiftly over. Other thoughts I believe I dismissed from my mind.
The morning was young when we arrived at the Halt, where her carriage had been sent in readiness. It was a dismal day in February, sleety and cold, with leaden skies. Everything looked horrible to me in the deadly light of it, and in the light of my anxiety, and all the station buildings, the gaunt trees, seemed covered by an air of desuetude and darkness. This impression only increased as we bumped through the wintry woods, and I cannot describe my abrupt unease when I thought we must turn along Salter’s Lane. Then the carriage veered away, and went instead by the other route, to the Crossing. On asking the coachman, he told me that some trees had come down in the Lane, which made it impassable, and I dare say I was ridiculously relieved.
I barely noted the town. No sooner had we reached my aunt’s than I sprang from the carriage and hastened indoors.
In the hall I met her doctor, a solid man, who reassured me somewhat. ‘It is a kind of low fever we’ve been seeing in the town recently. Unfortunately, given your aunt’s age, it has stayed with her longer than one might have hoped.’
Then he frowned, and I asked him why he did so.
He said, ‘Ah, well, there have been rather a lot of such cases in the past month. But there. The old and the very young are always vulnerable. Your aunt, of course, is not yet sixty.’
I said, ‘Have there been fatalities?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’
None of this prepared me for the sight of my aunt, who, lying propped on her pillows, looked white, and seemed, to me, near death. I took her hand, and she murmured at once, ‘I called you here, my dear, because I was afraid I might not be able to remain much longer. But today I feel rather better.’
I told her she was a fraud, and that I was happy to find her so.
Despite my nervousness, my aunt rallied. She improved. But she did not entirely get well. Two weeks later, when pressing concerns of my own urged me to go back to London, she too implored me to leave. ‘I was being very foolish,’ she said. ‘What nonsense. I shall see the New Century, I am determined on it.’ And I realized I made her more uncertain by remaining so faithfully, as if hourly fearful of her collapse.
The doctor too grew confident. ‘She is completely out of danger, or I’d never concur with your departure. And she has the best of care. I’d like to see more progress, but then her age has been against her a little. When the spring weather comes, then we should see a change for the better. Although,’ he added, rather insensitively and ominously, ‘I find that all those who have succumbed to this pernicious malady take a great while over mending. There’s a young woman I have heard of, of only three-and-twenty, of the working families, you understand, but well nourished and fit, and the mother of healthy children, who has been sick with this same fever off and on for eight weeks. She was one of the first to contract it, and again and again she seems to throw it off, only to sink down once more.’
Receiving this news, I was now in two minds whether or not to go. However, in the end a telegram arriving the other way, from the metropolis, forced my hand, and I caught the train.
Truth to tell, it was a relief to escape the atmosphere of a convalescent house, not to mention all Steepleford, which had seemed unbearably dreary and run-down in the rain and mud of a newborn and unfriendly March. Indeed, I had never seen the place look so forlorn; it had depressed me. And when, having been returned to the city only a few days, a firmly written letter came from my aunt, assuring me she had now taken the upward path, and even given a tea party for some friends, I resolved to stay where I was. Soon after this, and in the light of a further optimistic bright epistle from Steepleford, I allowed myself to be lured to France with Nash and his brother, and then was persuaded on to Italy again.
In retrospect I gain a terrible impression of my short time there in the awakening summer, and of that previous more leisurely summer I had spent in Rome, happily wandering among the bronzes and the marbles of both inanimate and human subjects. Because concurrently there ran on and on, behind the veils of distance and inattention, that dreadful horror of which I could know nothing, and yet which I do believe I sensed. For had it not shown itself to me behind its own shadow, brushed me with its noiseless wing?