He appeared to me as one among many other men, none of whose faces I could plainly discern. They were all lying on the steps of an immense ruined temple. Colossal tropical trees -- with rank creepers twining endlessly about their trunks, and hideous stone idols glimmering and grinning at intervals behind leaves and stalks and branches -- surrounded the temple and shut out the sky, and threw a dismal shadow over the forlorn band of men on the steps. White exhalations twisted and curled up stealthily from the ground, approached the men in wreaths like smoke, touched them, and stretched them out dead, one by one, in the places where they lay. An agony of pity and fear for Walter loosened my tongue, and I implored him to escape.
‘Come back, come back!' I said. ‘Remember your promise to her and to me.
Come back to us before the pestilence reaches you and lays you dead like the rest!'
He looked at me with an unearthly quiet in his face. ‘Wait,' he said, ‘I shall come back. The night when I met the lost Woman on the highway was the night which set my life apart to be the instrument of a Design that is yet unseen. Here, lost in the wilderness, or there, welcomed back in the land of my birth, I am still walking on the dark road which leads me, and you, and the sister of your love and mine, to the unknown Retribution and the inevitable End. Wait and look. The pestilence which touches the rest will pass me.'
I saw him again. He was still in the forest, and the numbers of his lost companions had dwindled to very few. The temple was gone, and the idols were gone -- and in their place the figures of dark, dwarfish men lurked murderously among the trees, with bows in their hands, and arrows fitted to the string. Once more I feared for Walter, and cried out to warn him. Once more he turned to me, with the immovable quiet in his face.
‘Another step,' he said, ‘on the dark road. Wait and look. The arrows that strike the rest will spare me.'
I saw him for the third time in a wrecked ship, stranded on a wild, sandy shore. The overloaded boats were making away from him for the land, and he alone was left to sink with the ship. I cried to him to hail the hindmost boat, and to make a last effort for his life. The quiet face looked at me in return, and the unmoved voice gave me back the changeless reply ‘Another step on the journey. Wait and look. The Sea which drowns the rest will spare me.'
I saw him for the last time. He was kneeling by a tomb of white marble, and the shadow of a veiled woman rose out of the grave beneath and waited by his side. The unearthly quiet of his face had changed to an unearthly sorrow. But the terrible certainty of his words remained the same. ‘Darker and darker,' he said; ‘farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young -- and spares me. The pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave that closes over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End.'
My heart sank under a dread beyond words, under a grief beyond tears.
The darkness closed round the pilgrim at the marble tomb -- closed round the veiled woman from the grave -- closed round the dreamer who looked on them. I saw and heard no more.
I was aroused by a hand laid on my shoulder. It was Laura's.
She had dropped on her knees by the side of the sofa. Her face was flushed and agitated, and her eyes met mine in a wild bewildered manner. I started the instant I saw her.
‘What has happened?' I asked. ‘What has frightened you?'
She looked round at the half-open door, put her lips close to my ear, and answered in a whisper --
‘Marian! -- the figure at the lake -- the footsteps last night -- I've just seen her! I've just spoken to her!'
‘Who, for Heaven's sake?'
‘Anne Catherick.'