Doubly false

Mrs. Lander sprang out of bed and ran to the window, resolved to call her daughter back and revoke the evil promise she had made. She leaned out into the chill air, careless of the wind, which stirred her night dress as if it had been snow, searching for her child in the darkness. As her eyes got accustomed to the gloom, she saw what seemed like a deeper shadow fluttering on the edge of the terrace, but that was all.

The rattle of a coming train in the far distance kept her at the window. The noise grew louder, wilder and more impetuous. Then a great burning eye, fiery and seemingly bloodshot, glared out from the blackness of crowded trees, lighting them up like the smile of a demon, and a shriek, horrible in its shrillness, cut through the night, making the woman’s heart quake in her bosom as if a fiend had mocked her. Then came the sharp clang of a bell, the rattle of iron, and the train swept away again, rushing off like a storm.

Mrs. Lander listened to its receding noises with absolute terror. It seemed as if some awful visitation had left her there trembling and helpless. Such dreams had visited her before. Mr. Lander himself had swept down upon her from mountainous waves, dripping wet, and with his gray hair turned to icicles, clamoring for his property. Her daughter, too, had haunted her sleep, crying for help from some yawning gulf of waters, and she had seen Lander’s heiress dancing fantastic flings on the surface of a calm ocean, bright as quicksilver. All these apparitions had demanded a restitution of the property she had just begun to enjoy with such zest. The struggle to retain it, and yet allow them to come out free from their prison in the great crystal deep, had often sent her out of these dreams sobbing with dread and bathed in cold perspiration.

But hard as these dreams had been, nothing could equal the scene that had just swept past her. Was it real? Could it be a vision, like the rest, tormenting her sleep? She pressed her bands on the marble window-sill and leaned out into the night, searching it wildly for some trace of the presence that had seemed so real. The slow rush of the Hudson, sweeping toward the ocean just below the terrace, and a soft shiver of leaves, was all the sound she heard. Nothing was visible save the outline of the flower-beds and groups of shrubbery merging dimly into the pale grey light which was just beginning to dawn in the east.

The woman drew back with a sob of grateful relief. A new class of demons had begun to haunt her. Fiery trains, trailing smoke as they went, out of which came her daughter, more beautiful than she had ever dreamed of, to tempt her into new crimes, had been coursing through her sleep. This vision had driven her out of bed into the chilly night air. All about her shoulders and bosom the linen robe she wore was wet with dew. She was shivering with cold in all her limbs. For the world she would not encounter another vision like that. Such things were getting to be frightfully real. Eunice should sleep in the next room and that would be a protection hereafter. She withdrew herself from the window and crept into bed, shuddering with cold, but rest was impossible; she had been too severely shocked; all that she could do was to lie there with her eyes wide open and watch the daylight as it crept across the window. At last a sunbeam shot through the lace curtains, silvering them like a cloud and filling her room with light.

It was very strange, but the brilliancy and stir of morning only made that vision more definite and certain. Before this her dreams had vanished with the darkness, but this—its distinctness terrified her. She reached forth her hand, it fell upon a hollow place on the counterpane. Lifting herself up from the pillows, she examined the spot. It was pressed down as if some person had been sitting there. She remembered that figure in the gray cloak with its hood falling back, and a sick feeling crept over her. Was it reality? Could it be that Cora, in her natural person, had occupied that place? She started from the bed, resolved to search for other traces of the strange presence.

Mrs. Lander left her bed, she leaned from the window, looking forth upon as bright a sunrise as ever blessed the earth. A shimmer of dew lay upon everything—grass, leaves and branches, were bright with it. A rain of diamonds trembled on the great drooping willows, and the flowers knew a double brightness, for the sunshine turned the moisture in their cups to a living fire. All this dazzled the woman without satisfying her. She leaned out of the window, searching the grass beneath it. A ladder lay half-buried in the grass, but near it, slanting down one side, was the print of all its rounds and supporters pressed into the turf like a material shadow, if that could be. Straggling out from under this ladder was a broken rose branch full of sap and fresh at the splintered end. Away from that, crossing the lawn, a trail of small footprints was plainly visible leading to the terrace stairs.

The faintness of slow fear fell upon Mrs. Lander as she saw all this. She could not yet realize that her child was alive, the impression left by her presence was still so weird. But she knew that the vision of that night could never be shaken off—that, as a blessing or a curse, she must meet it with all her intellect and all her strength.

The woman did not go back to her bed. Those wild, bright eyes were too widely open for that, but she dressed herself in haste, stopping in deep thought sometimes with the comb drawn half through her hair, and gazing on herself in the glass, as if that image had been her enemy, for minutes together; then she would hurry on her garments with sudden impetuosity and drop into thought as before. The woman had no object in this; for when she was dressed the whole effort ended in a hurried walk up and down the room with an energy that was almost appalling, for her feet gave forth no sound from the moss-like carpet, and the workings of her face took unnatural force from the stillness, as if the passions within her were smitten with dumb agony.

Thus it was that Eunice found her mistress when she came to her chamber, late in the morning. No, not exactly thus, for, at the first sound of a step in the hall, Mrs. Lander drove the trouble back from her face, and quietly asking if breakfast were ready, passed down stairs. She had resolved to keep her own secret, had forced herself to wait, the hardest lesson an ardent nature ever learned.

During the first hours in which this woman was mustering her strength, Cora Lander, who had haunted her like a ghost, was being whirled toward the city in the remotest seat of a car filled with passengers, sound asleep or too drowsy to notice her. There she sat folded in her cloak, vigilant and thoughtful. So far, her proceedings had passed unnoticed, but it would be daylight when she reached the city, and great caution might be needed on entering the hotel. When the train reached its depot she entered the hotel coach, pausing by the steps a moment to observe if any passengers were bound for the same destination, and was relieved to find that half-a-dozen persons, two of whom were ladies, came crowding in after her. The coach thundered rapidly through the still streets, and in a brief time sat down its occupants before the hotel Cora went with the rest to the reception room, but while the travellers entered she glided away up the stairs to her own chamber, and no human being save one ever knew positively that she had left it.