The Gray Nun | Page 4

certainly antique. The pious nun seems to have regaled herself with excessive haste at some sideboard, since the white collar and the front of the gray bodice show oblong dark stains, as though some beverage had been spilt.
"Well, fair mask," finally remark in a mocking tone, although my heart is beating furiously, "you have been waiting for me here, I presume?"
She nods slowly and solemnly.
"Do you imagine, by chance, that I wish to dance another hurricane with you?"
Again she assents, but more emphatically.
"Then," say I, ironically, "see where you can find a new blockhead, my muscular fairy! My shoulders are not well yet!"
Her arms move--hands there are none visible in the long, roomy sleeves--they are stretched out to me as if in mute appeal. A cold shiver runs down my back, I know not why.
"If I dance with you again," I angrily exclaim, "you will not fare quite so well as last time! I am firmer on my feet to-night than I was last week!"
She presses her arms to her breast, something like a tremor agitates the gray shape, and her head is slightly raised. Her position and demeanor, though she utters not a word, denote intense longing.
The blood rushes to my head--I must go a step nearer to her--I must!
"If I dance with you, it will be only on one condition!"
With a profound sigh her bosom heaves, her arms fall to her side, her body is humbly bent forward as if in complete surrender, and as if to say: Ask what you will!
"My condition is that you afterward reveal yourself."
She nods stiffly, like a marionette.
"Swear to it!"
She raises her arm for the oath, but the gray folds still conceal her hand.
"Woe betide you if you deceive me!"
She shakes her head, and repeats the passionate gesture of entreaty. Her slender form trembles with feverish impatience, and the wonderful eyes seem to plead, in extreme urgency: Come quickly!
I put out my arms--
Once more does the terrible woman rush at me, once more am I held in that mad embrace, once more--on the wings of the wind--do we dash round the room! And once more are all my senses lost in the fiendish whirl!
I attempt to struggle, would pit the abounding strength of my youth against the woman and subdue her. In vain! I can think, I can act, no longer. My whole being is in a swoon, and I am conscious of nothing but two icy lips pressed upon mine with a vehemence calculated to draw my very life out of me.
A shudder seizes me, and the fear of death, and then--again that blow on my shoulders--
I feel as if a pair of iron clamps had been taken off me and I had been freed, and I sink down upon a sofa.
A laughing, jeering crowd surrounds me, shouting:
"The sailor is crazy! He has gone out of his mind!"
Have I again been dancing alone in public?
I jump up in a rage, and exclaim, as I toss back my dishevelled hair from my burning brow:
"Abominable trickery! Let me pass! Let me get my hands on her, and unmask her!"
Something rings on the floor. It has fallen from my hand, hitherto clenched and just now opened. Triumphantly I snatch it up, exulting:
"Her cross! Ha! that shall be my clue!"
On this occasion, too, no trace of the mysterious nun was to be found. It was at first superciliously assumed, as before, that I must be drunk or insane, but my serious mood and energetic investigations soon altered that notion. I might myself have doubted my mental soundness had it not been for the cross in my hand, which I at once recognized as being that worn by the nun, and had not a lackey finally confessed to having beheld the strange figure. He was coming from the colonnade with a tray of refreshments when he saw me in conversation with her. The mask had something familiar about her, he said, but he could not remember where he had seen her before. He had been a servant in the palace for forty years.
Nobody thought of a spectre; on the other hand extravagant speculations became rife of a conspirator being at work. It was rumored the king had originally intended to wear a sailor costume.
Of course, it was him the uncanny visitor had designs upon. In view of the fact that the political horizon was very dark and clouded at that time, the conjecture was perhaps not altogether phantastical, and for this reason the report quickly reached the ears of the king and the royal family. I was promptly summoned before His Majesty, and it gave me a sort of revengeful pleasure to relate the incident to that august person. For I was still fully persuaded that some young member of his family had played this obnoxious