White Turrets

“What can be the matter with me?” she said to herself. “I feel poisoned with fear. Dear me, if this sort of thing is the kind of sensation one has in a haunted room, Heaven preserve me from such an experience! But can there be any thing uncanny in this room? I have never felt it before. Oh no, it must all be fancy and nonsense. My nerves are upset, I suppose. I have been taking my friends’ troubles too much to heart.”

But she could not get to sleep again. Indeed, she felt almost afraid of doing so for fear of a repetition of her dream terrors. They grew fainter after a while, but she became increasingly wakeful. And at last she got out of bed, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, she went towards the window, of which the blind was drawn up.

It was the same window where she had sat looking out on the moonlight late the night before. Why did she go back there? Afterwards she could not tell. It seemed as if some invisible power had drawn her thither, and for the moment she had forgotten the slight shiver she had felt at believing she saw something moving in the shrubbery. But no sooner was she seated again at her old post than the remembrance returned to her; she would have liked to move away, but a sort of fascination, partly curiosity, partly a feeling she could not describe, retained her.

The moonlight was much less brilliant now. There seemed a slight haze, scarcely amounting to clouds, over the sky. But the night – for dawn was still some way off – was very calm, and there was no wind at all.

“There is literally nothing moving,” thought Hertha. “The stillness almost frightens me. How quite absurdly fanciful I am becoming!” and, as if in a kind of anticipation of something, she knew not what, she held her breath in an intensity of listening. Then came over her the feeling of being no longer under her own control. She could not have moved had she wished to do so. But she did not wish it. With this new sensation her fears had all disappeared.

It came – the something she was watching for. Far off, at the extreme end of the walk already described, a faint flutter, between light and shadow – a movement– grew perceptible. A presence of some kind was there. It came on and on, slowly but steadily, and the moon came out again more clearly, its rays reflected on the vaguely defined figure, of which the most Hertha could for some moments have said was that it moved, and that it was white.

She sat as if turned to stone, yet she was no longer afraid. Not even when, by degrees, she became aware that the form was undoubtedly that of a woman – a woman, young, graceful, but in dire distress, for as it advanced, with its slow, cadenced step, till within a few yards of the terrace just below her, she saw it lift its pallid arms in their shadowy white drapery, as if in piteous appeal, then wringing its hands, for one fleeting moment its face was raised to her as if her presence were known and realised, and she saw that it was that of a beautiful woman, weeping, weeping sorely, as if her very heart would break, for woe she was powerless to avert.

And a whisper ran through Hertha’s overwrought brain: “It is she – the White Weeper – she is appealing to me.”

But there was no sound, only the intense gaze of the exquisite though death-like and mournful face – and while she felt those eyes upon her, Hertha could have felt nothing beside.

Then they withdrew. Something made her at last able to close her own, and she half fell back on her chair. And when she looked again there was nothing – nothing whatever but the trees and the garden in the moonlight, utterly still, as if in an enchanted sleep.

And Hertha went back to bed, and fell almost at once into sound and perfectly dreamless slumber.

She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds’ joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The question – “Was it all a dream?” – never for one moment occurred to her. Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that had been made upon her.

Yet the fear was all gone – in fact, ever since she had thrown off the nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down which had paced those ghostly steps – the pitiful, shadowy form of the White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had the weird family guardian appeared to her?

“She may be there every night – always, for aught I know,” thought Miss Norreys, “but why were my eyes opened to perceive her? Why did she appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do? Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania for ‘a career,’ and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and strongly than I have done – that is the only response I can make to you, poor troubled spirit!”

And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window, gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would tell, in the first place at least, no one, except Winifred, of what she had seen.

“It shall be a confidence between her and me,” she decided, “and as such it may impress her the more – far more than if I told them all, and she heard every one cross-questioning me about it.” And no sooner had she thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature of the commission entrusted to her to perform.

She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any signs of disturbance.

But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well, etc, which she parried as best she could.

There were two or three letters for her – one, a large, rather thick one, in Mr Montague’s handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it into her pocket unopened.

“It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got here,” she said to herself. “I am glad he is back in England, but I think I would rather not know what he says till after I have spoken to Winifred.”

A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss Norreys’s society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid, made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend’s society. She did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in thought, that she had been to blame. She “put it all down” to this visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.

“I must wait till we are back in London again,” she said to herself. “Of course she must be civil and pleasant to them all, and they certainly have been very kind and nice. But she is more impressionable than I thought her. Seeing things here as she has done, I am afraid she will never sympathise thoroughly in the monotony and dullness of this narrow home-life. Still, after all, it can’t be helped. I must do without sympathy, I suppose. But – I do wish it had never come into mother’s head to invite Hertha down here.”

She was standing by herself in front of one of the windows of a long corridor, on to which opened several of the principal rooms on the first floor, when these reflections crossed her mind. This window overlooked the entrance to the walk so carefully eschewed by Celia – though not so much of it could be seen as from Miss Norreys’s room, situated in an angle of the house.

The association of the White Weeper’s reputed preference for this walk was always an irritation to Winifred, as was, in fact, everything real or imaginary which had to do with the old story.

She gave herself a little shake when she took in whither her gaze was absently directed.

“Ridiculous nonsense!” she half murmured, as she turned to go, and why she should have started violently, as at that moment a hand was laid upon her shoulder, she could not have told. It was not the sign of a guilty conscience, for, in all good faith, Winifred as yet had barely taken in that she had been at all to blame. “Misunderstood,” “narrowly judged,” she had told herself she had been, and she allowed that to others her conduct might have seemed disingenuous. But she was essentially honest, and it is sometimes as difficult for naturally candid persons to take in that they have put themselves into a crooked position, as for a crafty and calculating character to believe in straightforwardness in itself or others.

Still she started. And she was assuredly not nervous.

It was Hertha’s face she looked up into as she turned: Hertha’s eyes, searching – and what more? Was it reproach or anxiety, or a mingling of both, that Winifred read in their clear depths? And in spite of herself the girl looked away, while her colour deepened a little.

“Did I startle you?” said Miss Norreys. “I am sorry, but – I wanted to speak to you quietly. I have been looking for you.”

“I am only too ready and delighted to have a chance of you,” said Winifred, trying to carry the war into the enemy’s country. “But you know I scarcely see you; mamma and the others monopolise you so.”

There was a touch of truth in the reproach, but Hertha did not feel guilty. She had avoided tête-à-tête conversation with Winifred out of consideration for the girl herself as much as for others.

“It is true that I have not sought for opportunities of being alone with you,” she said. “I am now quite ready to explain why, though I think you must have some idea of what I felt.” Winifred did not at once reply. She was again staring out of the window, and again a feeling of irritation came over her. Did every side of the house look out on that detestable lower terrace?

“I am quite ready for as long a talk as you like,” she said. “I daresay you have felt a little shaken in me, but – I think I can make you understand me.”

And she looked up in Hertha’s face so frankly, that again – and she was glad of it – the conviction of Winifred’s honesty of intention and absence of cunning or calculation returned to Miss Norreys almost as at first.

“Shall we go out for our talk?” Hertha said. “It is a lovely fresh morning, and I have just a little – headache of a kind. At least, I did not sleep well.”

“No, I remember: you did not look like yourself when you came down to breakfast,” said Winifred, with sudden compunction. “And I am keeping you standing about. Are you sure it won’t tire you? After all, we shall have plenty of time for talking in the future, I hope.”

Hertha shook her head.

“I don’t want to put it off,” she said. “Indeed, I cannot. If there were no other reason, you know how seldom I have a free half-day even at home. And there are other reasons. Can you get your hat? The air will do me good. I will wait for you by the sun-dial,” and she moved away as she spoke.

“I will be with you in two minutes,” said Winifred.