I knew she was not, but I did not say so. I thought it would be better
for her to think herself under some such delusion.
"You were dozing," said I. "If you had seen a woman here, you could tell
me how she looked."
"And I can," my wife broke in excitedly. "She was like the ghosts we
read of, only that her dress and the veil or drapery she wore were all
gray. Didn't you see her? You must have seen her. She went right by
you--a gray woman, all gray; a lady, Wilbur, and slightly lame. Could I
have dreamed all that?"
"You must have!" I cried, shaking the one door communicating with the
hall, so she might see it was locked, and even showing her the key of
it, lying in its accustomed place behind the bureau cushion. Yet I
was in no satisfied condition myself, for she had described with the
greatest accuracy the very person I had myself seen. Had we been alike
the victims of a spiritual manifestation?
This was Tuesday. On Friday my question seemed to receive an answer. I
had been down town, as usual, and on returning found a crowd assembled
in front of my lodging-house. A woman had been run over and was being
carried into our rooms. In the glimpse I caught of her I saw that she
was middle-aged and was wrapped in a long black cloak. Later, this cloak
fell off, as her hat had done long before, and I perceived that her
dress was black and decent.
She was laid on our bed and every attention paid her. But she had been
grievously injured about the head and gradually but surely sank before
our eyes. Suddenly she roused and gave a look about her. It was a
remarkable one--a look of recognition and almost of delight. Then she
raised one hand and, pointing with a significant gesture into the empty
space before her, sank back and died.
It was a sudden ending, and, anxious to see its effect upon my wife, who
was standing on the other side of the bed, I glanced her way with some
misgiving. She showed more feeling than I had anticipated. Indeed her
countenance was a study, and when, under, the influence of my scrutiny
she glanced my way, I saw that something of deeper import than this
unexpected death in our rooms lay at the bottom of her uneasy look.
What that was, I was soon to know, for catching up from amid the folds
of the woman's gray-lined cloak a long gray veil which had fallen at
the bedside, she disposed it softly about the woman's face, darting me a
look full of significance.
"You remember the vision I had the morning when I was sick?" she
whispered softly in my ear.
I nodded, secretly thrilled to my very heart's core.
"Well, it was a vision of this woman. If she were living and on her
feet and wrapped, as I have shown you, in this veil, you would behold
a living picture of the person I saw passing out of this room that
morning."
"I shall not dispute you," I answered. Alas, I had myself perceived the
likeness the minute the veil had fallen about the pinched but handsome
features!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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