Author: Mrs. J. H. Riddell
Date: 1866-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Horror; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction
Description: From the golden age of Victorian supernatural fiction, a treasure trove of the writings of one of the very best ghost-story writers of the era, bringing you four novels and thirteen (!) stories. * * * * Here are chilling tales of ghastly intruders into the everyday world of (mostly) everyday folks, seeking revenge, retribution, or reconciliation. So sit you down in a dark and quiet corner, and let Mrs. Riddell tell you a story….
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Text is the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and the works were published prior to 1923.

Shades and Shadows

CLASSIC VICTORIAN GHOST STORIES
BY
Mrs. J. H.  (Charlotte)  Riddell

CONTENTS:
—Short Stories:
The Banshee’s Warning
A Strange Christmas Game
Forewarned, Forearmed
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Sandy the Tinker
The Last of Squire Ennismore
Conn Kilrea
—Novelettes:
A Terrible Vengeance
The Open Door
Walnut-Tree House
Nut Bush Farm
Old Mrs. Jones
Diarmid Chittock’s Story
—Novels:
The Haunted House at Latchford
The Uninhabited House
The Haunted River
The Nun’s Curse
… About This eBook

The Banshee’s Warning

(HERTFORD O’DONNELL’S WARNING)

(1867)

Many a year ago, before chloroform was thought of, there lived in an old rambling house in Gerard Street, Soho, a clever Irishman called Hertford O’Donnell.

After Hertford O’Donnell he was entitled to write, M.R.C.S. for he had studied hard to gain this distinction, and the older surgeons at Guy’s (his hospital) considered him one of the most rising operators of the day.

Having said chloroform was unknown at the time this story opens, it will strike my readers that, if Hertford O’Donnell were a rising and successful operator in those days, of necessity he combined within himself a larger number of striking qualities than are by any means necessary to form a successful operator in these.

There was more than mere hand skill, more than even thorough knowledge of his profession, then needful for the man, who, dealing with conscious subjects, essayed to rid them of some of the diseases to which flesh is heir. There was greater courage required in the manipulator of old than is altogether essential at present. Then, as now, a thorough mastery of his instruments—a steady hand—a keen eye—a quick dexterity were indispensable to a good operator; but, added to all these things, there formerly required a pulse which knew no quickening—a mental strength which never faltered—a ready power of adaptation in unexpected circumstances—fertility of resource in difficult cases, and a brave front under all emergencies.

If I refrain from adding that a hard as well as a courageous heart was an important item in the programme, it is only out of deference to general opinion, which, among other strange delusions, clings to the belief that courage and hardness are antagonistic qualities.

Hertford O’Donnell, however, was hard as steel. He understood his work, and he did it thoroughly; but he cared no more for quivering nerves and shrinking muscles, for screams of agony, for faces white with pain, and teeth clenched in the extremity of anguish, than he did for the stony countenances of the dead, which so often in the dissecting room appalled younger and less experienced men.

He had no sentiment, and he had no sympathy. The human body was to him merely an ingenious piece of mechanism, which it was at once a pleasure and a profit to understand. Precisely as Brunel loved the Thames Tunnel, or any other singular engineering feat, so O’Donnell loved a patient on whom he had operated successfully, more especially if the ailment possessed by the patient were of a rare and difficult character.

And for this reason he was much liked by all who came under his hands, since patients are apt to mistake a surgeon’s interest in their cases for interest in themselves; and it was gratifying to John Dicks, plasterer, and Timothy Regan, labourer, to be the happy possessors of remarkable diseases, which produced a cordial understanding between them and the handsome Irishman.

If he had been hard and cool at the moment of hacking them to pieces, that was all forgotten or remembered only as a virtue, when, after being discharged from hospital like soldiers who have served in a severe campaign, they met Mr. O’Donnell in the street, and were accosted by that rising individual, just as though he considered himself nobody.

He had a royal memory, this stranger in a strange land, both for faces and cases; and like the rest of his countrymen, he never felt it beneath his dignity to talk cordially to corduroy and fustian.

In London, as at Calgillan, he never held back his tongue from speaking a cheery or a kindly word. His manners were pliable enough, if his heart were not; and the porters, and the patients, and the nurses, and the students at Guy’s were all pleased to see Hertford O’Donnell.

Rain, hail, sunshine, it was all the same; there was a life and a brightness about the man which communicated itself to those with whom he came in contact. Let the mud in the streets be a foot deep, or the London fog as thick as pea-soup, Mr. O’Donnell never lost his temper, never muttered a surly reply to the gatekeeper’s salutation, but spoke out blithely and cheerfully to his pupils and his patients, to the sick and to the well, to those below and to those above him.

And yet, spite of all these good qualities—spite of his handsome face, his fine figure, his easy address, and his unquestionable skill as an operator, the dons, who acknowledged his talent, shook their heads gravely when two or three of them in private and solemn conclave talked confidentially of their younger brother.

If there were many things in his favour, there were more in his disfavour. He was Irish—not merely by the accident of birth, which might have been forgiven, since a man cannot be held accountable for such caprices of Nature, but by every other accident and design which is objectionable to the orthodox and respectable and representative English mind.

In speech, appearance, manner, taste, modes of expression, habits of life, Hertford O’Donnell was Irish. To the core of his heart he loved the island which he declared he never meant to re-visit; and among the English he moved to all intents and purposes a foreigner, who was resolved, so said the great prophets at Guy’s, to rush to destruction as fast as he could, and let no man hinder him.

“He means to go the whole length of his tether,” observed one of the ancient wiseacres to another; which speech implied a conviction that Hertford O’Donnell, having sold himself to the Evil One, had determined to dive the full length of his rope into wickedness before being pulled to that shore where even wickedness is negative—where there are no mad carouses, no wild, sinful excitements, nothing but impotent wailing and gnashing of teeth.

A reckless, graceless, clever, wicked devil—going to his natural home as fast as in London a man can possibly progress thither; this was the opinion his superiors held of the man who lived all alone with a housekeeper and her husband (who acted as butler) in his big house near Soho.

Gerard Street was not then an utterly shady and forgotten locality: carriage-patients found their way to the rising young surgeon—some great personages thought it not beneath them to fee an individual whose consulting rooms were situated on what was even then considered the wrong side of Regent Street. He was making money, and he was spending it; he was over head and ears in debt—useless, vulgar debt—senselessly contracted, never bravely faced. He had lived at an awful pace ever since he came to London, a pace which only a man who hopes and expects to die young can ever travel.

Life was good, was it? Death, was he a child, or a woman, or a coward, to be afraid of death’s “afterwards?” God knew all about the trifle which had upset his coach, better than the dons at Guy’s; and he did not dread facing his Maker, and giving an account to Him even of the disreputable existence he had led since he came to London..

Hertford O’Donnell understood the world pretty well, and the ways thereof were to him as roads often traversed; therefore, when he said that at the Day of Judgment he felt certain he should come off as well as many of those who censured him, it may be assumed, that, although his views of post-mortem punishment were vague, unsatisfactory and infidel, still his information as to the peccadilloes of his neighbours was such as consoled himself.

And yet, living all alone in the old house near Soho Square, grave thoughts would intrude into the surgeon’s mind—thoughts which were, so to say, italicized by peremptory letters, and still more peremptory visits from people who wanted money.

Although he had many acquaintances he had no single friend, and accordingly these thoughts were received and brooded over in solitude—in those hours when, after returning from dinner, or supper, or congenial carouse, he sat in his dreary rooms, smoking his pipe and considering means and ways, chances and certainties.

In good truth he had started in London with some vague idea that as his life in it would not be of long continuance, the pace at which he elected to travel could be of little consequence; but the years since his first entry into the Metropolis were now piled one on the top of another, his youth was behind him, his chances of longevity, spite of the way he had striven to injure his constitution, quite as good as ever. He had come to that period in existence, to that narrow strip of tableland, whence the ascent of youth and the descent of age are equally discernible—when, simply because he has lived for so many years, it strikes a man as possible he may have to live for just as many more, with the ability for hard work gone, with the boon companions scattered, with the capacity for enjoying convivial meetings a mere memory, with small means perhaps, with no bright hopes, with the pomp and the circumstance and the fairy carriages, and the glamour which youth flings over earthly objects, faded away like the pageant of yesterday, while the dreary ceremony of living has to be gone through today and tomorrow and the morrow after, as though the gay cavalcade and the martial music, and the glittering helmets and the prancing steeds were still accompanying the wayfarer to his journey’s end.

Ah! my friends, there comes a moment when we must all leave the coach, with its four bright bays, its pleasant outside freight, its cheery company, its guard who blows the horn so merrily through villages and along lonely country roads.

Long before we reach that final stage, where the black business claims us for its own special property, we have to bid good-bye to all easy, thoughtless journeying, and betake ourselves, with what zest we may, to traversing the common of Reality. There is no royal road across it that ever I heard of. From the king on his throne to the labourer who vaguely imagines what manner of being a king is, we have all to tramp across that desert at one period of our lives, at all events; and that period usually is when, as I have said, a man starts to find the hopes, and the strength, and the buoyancy of youth left behind, while years and years of life lie stretching out before him.

The coach he has travelled by drops him here. There is no appeal, there is no help; therefore, let him take off his hat and wish the new passengers good speed, without either envy or repining.

Behold, he has had his turn, and let whosoever will mount on the box-seat of life again, and tip the coachman and handle the ribbons—he shall take that pleasant journey no more—no more forever.

Even supposing a man’s springtime to have been a cold and ungenial one, with bitter easterly winds and nipping frosts biting the buds and retarding the blossoms, still it was spring for all that—spring with the young green leaves sprouting forth, with the flowers unfolding tenderly, with the songs of the birds and the rush of waters, with the summer before and the autumn afar off, and winter remote as death and eternity; but when once the trees have donned their summer foliage, when the pure white blossoms have disappeared, and the gorgeous red and orange and purple blaze of many-coloured flowers fills the gardens, then if there come a wet, dreary day, the idea of autumn and winter is not so difficult to realize. When once twelve o’clock is reached, the evening and night become facts, not possibilities; and it was of the afternoon, and the evening, and the night, Hertford O’Donnell sat thinking on the Christmas Eve, when I crave permission to introduce him to my readers.

A good-looking man, ladies considered him. A tall, dark-complexioned, black-haired, straight-limbed, deeply, divinely blue-eyed fellow, with a soft voice, with a pleasant brogue, who had ridden like a centaur over the loose stone walls in Connemara, who had danced all night at the Dublin balls, who had walked across the Bennebeola Mountains, gun in hand, day after day, without weariness, who had fished in every one of the hundred lakes you can behold from the top of that mountain near the Recess Hotel, who had led a mad, wild life in Trinity College, and a wilder, perhaps, while “studying for a doctor”—as the Irish phrase goes—in Dublin, and who, after the death of his eldest brother left him free to return to Calgillan, and pursue the usual utterly useless, utterly purposeless, utterly pleasant life of an Irish gentleman possessed of health, birth, and expectations, suddenly kicked over the paternal traces, bade adieu to Calgillan Castle and the blandishments of a certain beautiful Miss Clifden, beloved of his mother, and laid out to be his wife, walked down the avenue without even so much company as a gossoon to carry his carpet-bag, shook the dust from his feet at the lodge gates, and took his seat on the coach, never once looking back at Calgillan, where his favourite mare was standing in the stable, his greyhounds chasing one another round the home paddock, his gun at half-cock in his dressing-room and his fishing-tackle all in order and ready for use.

He had not kissed his mother, or asked for his father’s blessing; he left Miss Clifden, arrayed in her brand-new riding-habit, without a word of affection or regret; he had spoken no syllable of farewell to any servant about the place; only when the old woman at the lodge bade him good morning and God-blessed his handsome face, he recommended her bitterly to “look at it well for she would never see it more.”

Twelve years and a half had passed since then, without either Miss Clifden or any other one of the Calgillan people having set eyes on Master Hertford’s handsome face. He had kept his vow to himself; he had not written home; he had not been indebted to mother or father for even a tenpenny-piece during the whole of that time; he had lived without friends; and he had lived without God—so far as God ever lets a man live without him—and his own private conviction was that he could get on very well without either.

One thing only he felt to be needful—money; money to keep him when the evil days of sickness, or age, or loss of practice came upon him. Though a spendthrift, he was not a simpleton; around him he saw men, who, having started with fairer prospects than his own, were, nevertheless, reduced to indigence; and he knew that what had happened to others might happen to himself.

An unlucky cut, slipping on a piece of orange-peel in the street, the merest accident imaginable, is sufficient to change opulence to beggary in the life’s programme of an individual, whose income depends on eye, on nerve, on hand; and, besides the consciousness of this fact, Hertford O’Donnell knew that beyond a certain point in his profession, progress was not easy.

It did not depend quite on the strength of his own bow and shield whether he counted his earnings by hundreds or thousands. Work may achieve competence; but mere work cannot, in a profession, at all events, compass wealth.

He looked around him, and he perceived that the majority of great men—great and wealthy—had been indebted for their elevation, more to the accident of birth, patronage, connection, or marriage, than to personal ability.

Personal ability, no doubt, they possessed; but then, little Jones, who lived in Frith Street, and who could barely keep himself and his wife and family, had ability, too, only he lacked the concomitants of success.

He wanted something or someone to puff him into notoriety—a brother at Court—a lord’s leg to mend—a rich wife to give him prestige in Society; and lacking this something or someone, he had grown grey-haired and fainthearted while labouring for a world which utterly despises its most obsequious servants.

“Clatter along the streets with a pair of fine horses, snub the middle classes, and drive over the commonalty—that is the way to compass wealth and popularity in England,” said Hertford O’Donnell, bitterly; and as the man desired wealth and popularity, he sat before his fire, with a foot on each hob, and a short pipe in his mouth, considering how he might best obtain the means to clatter along the streets in his carriage, and splash plebeians with mud from his wheels like the best.

In Dublin he could, by means of his name and connection, have done well; but then he was not in Dublin, neither did he want to be. The bitterest memories of his life were inseparable from the very name of the Green Island, and he had no desire to return to it.

Besides, in Dublin, heiresses are not quite so plentiful as in London; and an heiress, Hertford O’Donnell had decided, would do more for him than years of steady work.

A rich wife could clear him of debt, introduce him to fashionable practice, afford him that measure of social respectability which a medical bachelor invariably lacks, deliver him from the loneliness of Gerard Street, and the domination of Mr. and Mrs. Coles.

To most men, deliberately bartering away their independence for money seems so prosaic a business that they strive to gloss it over even to themselves, and to assign every reason for their choice, save that which is really the influencing one.

Not so, however, with Hertford O’Donnell. He sat beside the fire scoffing over his proposed bargain—thinking of the lady’s age—her money bags—her desirable house in town—her seat in the country—her snobbishness—her folly.

“It would be a fitting ending,” he sneered, “and why I did not settle the matter tonight passes my comprehension. I am not a fool, to be frightened with old women’s tales; and yet I must have turned white. I felt I did, and she asked me whether I were ill. And then to think of my being such an idiot as to ask her if she had heard anything like a cry, as though she would be likely to hear that, she with her poor parvenu blood, which I often imagine must have been mixed with some of her father’s strong pickling vinegar. What a deuce could I have been dreaming about? I wonder what it really was.” And Hertford O’Donnell pushed his hair back off his forehead, and took another draught from the too familiar tumbler, which was placed conveniently on the chimney-piece.

“After expressly making up my mind to propose, too!” he mentally continued. “Could it have been conscience—that myth, which somebody, who knew nothing about the matter, said, ‘Makes cowards of us all’? I don’t believe in conscience; and even if there be such a thing capable of being developed by sentiment and cultivation, why should it trouble me? I have no intention of wronging Miss Janice Price Ingot, not the least. Honestly and fairly I shall marry her; honestly and fairly I shall act by her. An old wife is not exactly an ornamental article of furniture in a man’s house; and I do not know that the fact of her being well gilded makes her look any handsomer. But she shall have no cause for complaint; and I will go and dine with her tomorrow, and settle the matter.”

Having arrived at which resolution, Mr. O’Donnell arose, kicked down the fire—burning hollow—with the heel of his boot, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, emptied his tumbler, and bethought him it was time to go to bed. He was not in the habit of taking his rest so early as a quarter to twelve o’clock; but he felt unusually weary—tired mentally and bodily—and lonely beyond all power of expression.

“The fair Janet would be better than this,” he said, half aloud; and then, with a start and a shiver, and a blanched face, he turned sharply round, while a low, sobbing, wailing cry echoed mournfully through the room. No form of words could give an idea of the sound. The plaintiveness of the Aeolian harp—that plaintiveness which so soon affects and lowers the highest spirits—would have seemed wildly gay in comparison with the sadness of the cry which seemed floating in the air. As the summer wind comes and goes among the trees, so that mournful wail came and went—came and went. It came in a rush of sound, like a gradual crescendo managed by a skilful musician, and died away in a lingering note, so gently that the listener could scarcely tell the exact moment when it faded into utter silence.

I say faded away, for it disappeared as the coastline disappears in the twilight, and there was total stillness in the apartment.

Then, for the first time, Hertford O’Donnell looked at his dog, and beholding the creature crouched into a corner beside the fireplace, called upon him to come out.

His voice sounded strange even to himself, and apparently the dog thought so too, for he made no effort to obey the summons.

“Come here, sir,” his master repeated, and then the animal came crawling reluctantly forward with his hair on end, his eyes almost starting from his head, trembling violently, as the surgeon, who caressed him, felt.

“So you heard it, Brian?” he said to the dog. “And so your ears are sharper than Miss Ingot’s, old fellow. It’s a mighty queer thing to think of, being favoured with a visit from a Banshee in Gerard Street; and as the lady has travelled so far, I only wish I knew whether there is any sort of refreshment she would like to take after her long journey.”

He spoke loudly, and with a certain mocking defiance, seeming to think the phantom he addressed would reply; but when he stopped at the end of his sentence, no sound came through the stillness. There was a dead silence in the room—a silence broken only by the falling of cinders on the hearth and the breathing of his dog.

“If my visitor would tell me,” he proceeded, “for whom this lamentation is being made, whether for myself, or for some member of my illustrious family, I should feel immensely obliged. It seems too much honour for a poor surgeon to have such attention paid him. Good Heavens! What is that?” he exclaimed, as a ring, loud and peremptory, woke all the echoes in the house, and brought his housekeeper, in a state of distressing dishabille, “out of her warm bed,” as she subsequently stated, to the head of the staircase.

Across the hall Hertford O’Donnell strode, relieved at the prospect of speaking to any living being. He took no precaution of putting up the chain, but flung the door wide. A dozen burglars would have proved welcome in comparison to that ghostly intruder; and as I have said, he threw the door open, admitting a rush of wet, cold air, which made poor Mrs. Coles’ few remaining teeth chatter in her head.

“Who is there? What do you want?” asked the surgeon, seeing no person, and hearing no voice. “Who is there? Why the devil can’t you speak?”

But when even this polite exhortation failed to elicit an answer, he passed out into the night and looked up the street and down the street, to see nothing but the driving rain and the blinking lights.

“If this goes on much longer I shall soon think I must be either mad or drunk,” he muttered, as he re-entered the house and locked and bolted the door once more.

“Lord’s sake! What is the matter, sir?” asked Mrs. Coles, from the upper flight, careful only to reveal the borders of her night-cap to Mr. O’Donnell’s admiring gaze. “Is anybody killed? Have you to go out, sir?”

“It was only a runaway rig,” he answered, trying to reassure himself with an explanation he did not in his heart believe.

“Runaway—I’d run away them!” murmured Mrs. Coles, as she retired to the conjugal couch, where Coles was, to quote her own expression, “snoring like a pig through it all.” Almost immediately afterwards she heard her master ascend the stairs and close his bedroom door.

“Madam will surely be too much of a gentlewoman to intrude here,” thought the surgeon, scoffing even at his own fears; but when he lay down he did not put out his light, and made Brian leap up and crouch on the coverlet beside him.

The man was fairly frightened, and would have thought it no discredit to his manhood to acknowledge as much. He was not afraid of death, he was not afraid of trouble, he was not afraid of danger; but he was afraid of the Banshee; and as he lay with his hand on the dog’s head, he thought over all the stories he had ever heard about this family retainer in the days of his youth.

He had not thought about her for years and years. Never before had he heard her voice himself. When his brother died, she had not thought it necessary to travel up to Dublin and give him notice of the impending catastrophe. “If she had, I would have gone down to Calgillan, and perhaps saved his life,” considered the surgeon. “I wonder who this is for? If for me, that will settle my debts and my marriage. If I could be quite certain it was either of the old people, I would start for Ireland tomorrow.”

Then vaguely his mind wandered on to think of every Banshee story he had ever heard in his life. About the beautiful lady with the wreath of flowers, who sat on the rocks below Red Castle, in the County Antrim, crying till one of the sons died for love of her; about the Round Chamber at Dunluce, which was swept clean by the Banshee every night; about the bed in a certain great house in Ireland, which was slept in constantly, although no human being ever passed in or out after dark; about that General Officer who, the night before Waterloo, said to a friend, “I have heard the Banshee, and shall not come off the field alive tomorrow; break the news gently to poor Carry”; and who, nevertheless, coming safe off the field, had subsequently news about poor Carry broken tenderly and pitifully to him; about the lad, who, aloft in the rigging, hearing through the night a sobbing and wailing coming over the waters, went down to the captain and told him he was afraid they were somehow out of their reckoning, just in time to save the ship, which, when morning broke, they found but for his warning would have been on the rocks. It was blowing great guns, and the sea was all in a fret and turmoil, and they could sometimes see in the trough of the waves, as down a valley, the cruel black reefs they had escaped.

On deck the captain stood speaking to the boy who had saved them, and asking how he knew of their danger; and when the lad told him, the captain laughed, and said her ladyship had been outwitted that time.

But the boy answered, with a grave shake of his head, that the warning was either for him or his, and that if he got safe to port there would be bad tidings waiting for him from home; whereupon the captain bade him go below, and get some brandy and lie down.

He got the brandy, and he lay down, but he never rose again; and when the storm abated—when a great calm succeeded to the previous tempest—there was a very solemn funeral at sea; and on their arrival at Liverpool the captain took a journey to Ireland to tell a widowed mother how her only son died, and to bear his few effects to the poor desolate soul.

And Hertford O’Donnell thought again about his own father riding full-chase across country, and hearing, as he galloped by a clump of plantation, something like a sobbing and wailing. The hounds were in full cry, but he still felt, as he afterwards expressed it, that there was something among those trees he could not pass; and so he jumped off his horse, and hung the reins over the branch of a Scotch fir, and beat the cover well, but not a thing could he find in it.

Then, for the first time in his life, Miles O’Donnell turned his horse’s head from the hunt, and, within a mile of Calgillan, met a man running to tell him his brother’s gun had burst, and injured him mortally.

And he remembered the story also, of how Mary O’Donnell, his great aunt, being married to a young Englishman, heard the Banshee as she sat one evening waiting for his return; and of how she, thinking the bridge by which he often came home unsafe for horse and man, went out in a great panic, to meet and entreat him to go round by the main road for her sake. Sir Edward was riding along in the moonlight, making straight for the bridge, when he beheld a figure dressed all in white crossing it. Then there was a crash, and the figure disappeared.

The lady was rescued and brought back to the hall; but next morning there were two dead bodies within its walls—those of Lady Eyreton and her stillborn son.

Quicker than I write them, these memories chased one another through Hertford O’Donnell’s brain; and there was one more terrible memory than any, which would recur to him, concerning an Irish nobleman who, seated alone in his great town house in London, heard the Banshee, and rushed out to get rid of the phantom, which wailed in his ear, nevertheless, as he strode down Piccadilly. And then the surgeon remembered how that nobleman went with a friend to the opera, feeling sure that there no Banshee, unless she had a box, could find admittance, until suddenly he heard her singing up among the highest part of the scenery, with a terrible mournfulness, and a pathos which made the prima donna’s tenderest notes seem harsh by comparison.

As he came out, some quarrel arose between him and a famous fire-eater, against whom he stumbled; and the result was that the next afternoon there was a new Lord, for he was killed in a duel with Captain Bravo.

Memories like these are not the most enlivening possible; they are apt to make a man fanciful, and nervous, and wakeful; but as time ran on, Hertford O’Donnell fell asleep, with his candle still burning, and Brian’s cold nose pressed against his hand.

He dreamt of his mother’s family—the Hertfords of Artingbury, Yorkshire, far-off relatives of Lord Hertford—so far off that even Mrs. O’Donnell held no clue to the genealogical maze.

He thought he was at Artingbury, fishing; that it was a misty summer morning, and the fish rising beautifully. In his dreams he hooked one after another, and the boy who was with him threw them into the basket.

At last there was one more difficult to land than the others; and the boy, in his eagerness to watch the sport, drew nearer and nearer to the bank, while the fisher, intent on his prey, failed to notice his companion’s danger.

Suddenly there was a cry, a splash, and the boy disappeared from sight.

Next instance he rose again, however, and then, for the first time, Hertford O’Donnell saw his face.

It was one he knew well.

In a moment he plunged into the water, and struck out for the lad. He had him by the hair, he was turning to bring him back to land, when the stream suddenly changed into a wide, wild, shoreless sea, where the billows were chasing one another with a mad demoniac mirth.

For a while O’Donnell kept the lad and himself afloat. They were swept under the waves, and came up again, only to see larger waves rushing towards them; but through all, the surgeon never loosened his hold, until a tremendous billow, engulfing them both, tore the boy from his grasp.

With the horror of that, he awoke to hear a voice quite distinctly:

“Go to the hospital—go at once!”

The surgeon started up in bed, rubbing his eyes, and looked around. The candle was flickering faintly in its socket. Brian, with his ears pricked forward, had raised his head at his master’s sudden jump.

Everything was quiet, but still those words were ringing in his ear—

“Go to the hospital—go at once!”

The tremendous peal of the bell overnight, and this sentence, seemed to be simultaneous.

That he was wanted at Guy’s—wanted imperatively—came to O’Donnell like an inspiration.

Neither sense nor reason had anything to do with the conviction that roused him out of bed, and made him dress as speedily as possible, and grope his way down the staircase, Brian following.

He opened the front door, and passed out into the darkness. The rain was over, and the stars were shining as he pursued his way down Newport Market, and thence, winding in and out in a southeasterly direction, through Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Old Square to Chancery Lane, whence he proceeded to St Paul’s.

Along the deserted streets he resolutely continued his walk. He did not know what he was going to Guy’s for. Some instinct was urging him on, and he neither strove to combat nor control it. Only once had the thought of turning back occurred, and that was at the archway leading into Old Square. There he had paused for a moment, asking himself whether he were not gone stark, staring mad; but Guy’s seemed preferable to the haunted house in Gerard Street, and he walked resolutely on, determined to say, if any surprise were expressed at his appearance, that he had been sent for.

Sent for?—yea, truly; but by whom?

On through Cannon Street; on over London Bridge, where the lights flickered in the river, and the sullen plash of the water flowing beneath the arches, washing the stone piers, could be heard, now the human din was hushed and lulled to sleep. On, thinking of many things: of the days of his youth; of his dead brother; of his father’s heavily encumbered estate; of the fortune his mother had vowed she would leave to some charity rather than to him, if he refused to marry according to her choice; of his wild life in London; of the terrible cry he had heard overnight—that unearthly wail which he could not drive from his memory even when he entered Guy’s, and confronted the porter, who said—

“You have been sent for, sir; did you meet the messenger?”

Like one in a dream, Hertford O’Donnell heard him; like one in a dream, also, he asked what was the matter.

“Bad accident, sir; fire; balcony gave way—unsafe—old building. Mother and child—a son; child with compound fracture of thigh.” This, the joint information of porter and house-surgeon, mingled together, and made a boom in Mr. O’Donnell’s ears like the sound of the sea breaking on a shingly shore.

Only one sentence he understood properly—“Immediate amputation necessary.” At this point he grew cool; he was the careful, cautious, successful surgeon, in a moment.

“The boy, you say?” he answered. “Let me see him.”

The Guy’s Hospital of today may be different to the Guy’s Hertford O’Donnell knew so well. Railways have, I believe, swept away the old operating room; railways may have changed the position of the former accident ward, to reach which, in the days of which I am writing, the two surgeons had to pass a staircase leading to the upper stories.

On the lower step of this staircase, partially in shadow, Hertford O’Donnell beheld, as he came forward, an old woman seated.

An old woman with streaming grey hair, with attenuated arms, with head bowed forward, with scanty clothing, with bare feet; who never looked up at their approach, but sat unnoticing, shaking her head and wringing her hands in an extremity of grief.

“Who is that?” asked Mr. O’Donnell, almost involuntarily.

“Who is what?” demanded his companion.

“That—that woman,” was the reply.

“What woman?”

“There—are you blind?—seated on the bottom step of the staircase. What is she doing?” persisted Mr. O’Donnell.

“There is no woman near us,” his companion answered, looking at the rising surgeon very much as though he suspected him of seeing double.

“No woman!” scoffed Hertford. “Do you expect me to disbelieve the evidence of my own eyes?” and he walked up to the figure, meaning to touch it.

But as he assayed to do so, the woman seemed to rise in the air and float away, with her arms stretched high up over her head, uttering such a wail of pain, and agony, and distress, as caused the Irishman’s blood to curdle.

“My God! Did you hear that?” he said to his companion.

“What?” was the reply.

Then, although he knew the sound had fallen on deaf ears, he answered:

“The wail of the Banshee! Some of my people are doomed!”

“I trust not,” answered the house-surgeon, who had an idea, nevertheless, that Hertford O’Donnell’s Banshee lived in a whisky bottle, and would at some remote day make an end to the rising and clever operator.

With nerves utterly shaken, Mr. O’Donnell walked forward to the accident ward. There with his face shaded from the light, lay his patient—a young boy, with a compound fracture of the thigh.

In that ward, in the face of actual danger or pain capable of relief, the surgeon had never known faltering or fear; and now he carefully examined the injury, felt the pulse, inquired as to the treatment pursued, and ordered the sufferer to be carried to the operating room.

While he was looking out his instruments, he heard the boy lying on the table murmur faintly:

“Tell her not to cry so—tell her not to cry.”

“What is he talking about?” Hertford O’Donnell inquired.

“The nurse says he has been speaking about some woman crying ever since he came in—his mother, most likely,” answered one of the attendants.

“He is delirious then?” observed the surgeon.

“No, sir,” pleaded the boy, excitedly, “no; it is that woman—that woman with the grey hair. I saw her looking from the upper window before the balcony gave way. She has never left me since, and she won’t be quiet, wringing her hands and crying.”

“Can you see her now?” Hertford O’Donnell inquired, stepping to the side of the table. “Point out where she is.”

Then the lad stretched forth a feeble finger in the direction of the door, where clearly, as he had seen her seated on the stairs, the surgeon saw a woman standing—a woman with grey hair and scanty clothing, and upstretched arms and bare feet.

“A word with you, sir,” O’Donnell said to the house-surgeon, drawing him back from the table. “I cannot perform this operation: send for some other person. I am ill; I am incapable.”

“But,” pleaded the other, “there is no time to get anyone else. We sent for Mr. ———, before we troubled you, but he was out of town, and all the rest of the surgeons live so far away. Mortification may set in at any moment and—.”

“Do you think you require to teach me my business?” was the reply. “I know the boy’s life hangs on a thread, and that is the very reason I cannot operate. I am not fit for it. I tell you I have seen tonight that which unnerves me utterly. My hand is not steady. Send for someone else without delay. Say I am ill—dead!—what you please. Heavens! There she is again, right over the boy! Do you hear her?” and Hertford O’Donnell fell fainting on the floor.

He lay in that death-like swoon for hours; and when he returned to consciousness, the principal physician of Guy’s was standing beside him in the cold grey light of the Christmas morning.

“The boy?” murmured O’Donnell, faintly.

“Now, my dear fellow, keep yourself quiet,” was the reply.

“The boy?” he repeated, irritably. “Who operated?”

“No one,” Dr. ——— answered. “It would have been useless cruelty. Mortification had set in and—”

Hertford O’Donnell turned his face to the wall, and his friend could not see it.

“Do not distress yourself,” went on the physician, kindly. “Allington says he could not have survived the operation in any case. He was quite delirious from the first, raving about a woman with grey hair and—”

“I know,” Hertford O’Donnell interrupted; “and the boy had a mother, they told me, or I dreamt it.”

“Yes, she was bruised and shaken, but not seriously injured.”

“Has she blue eyes and fair hair—fair hair all rippling and wavy? Is she white as a lily, with just a faint flush of colour in her cheek? Is she young and trusting and innocent? No; I am wandering. She must be nearly thirty now. Go, for God’s sake, and tell me if you can find a woman you could imagine having once been a girl such as I describe.”

“Irish?” asked the doctor; and O’Donnell made a gesture of assent.

“It is she then,” was the reply, “a woman with the face of an angel.”

“A woman who should have been my wife,” the surgeon answered; “whose child was my son.”

“Lord help you!” ejaculated the doctor. Then Hertford O’Donnell raised himself from the sofa where they had laid him, and told his companion the story of his life—how there had been a bitter feud between his people and her people—how they were divided by old animosities and by difference of religion—how they had met by stealth, and exchanged rings and vows, all for naught—how his family had insulted hers, so that her father, wishful for her to marry a kinsman of his own, bore her off to a far-away land, and made her write him a letter of eternal farewell—how his own parents had kept all knowledge of the quarrel from him till she was utterly beyond his reach—how they had vowed to discard him unless he agreed to marry according to their wishes—how he left home, and came to London, and sought his fortune. All this Hertford O’Donnell repeated; and when he had finished, the bells were ringing for morning service—ringing loudly, ringing joyfully, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.”

But there was little peace that morning for Hertford O’Donnell. He had to look on the face of his dead son, wherein he beheld, as though reflected, the face of the boy in his dream.

Afterwards, stealthily he followed his friend, and beheld, with her eyes closed, her cheeks pale and pinched, her hair thinner but still falling like a veil over her, the love of his youth, the only woman he had ever loved devotedly and unselfishly.

There is little space left here to tell of how the two met at last—of how the stone of the years seemed suddenly rolled away from the tomb of their past, and their youth arose and returned to them, even amid their tears.

She had been true to him, through persecution, through contumely, through kindness, which was more trying; through shame, and grief, and poverty, she had been loyal to the lover of her youth; and before the New Year dawned there came a letter from Calgillan, saying that the Banshee’s wail had been heard there, and praying Hertford, if he were still alive, to let bygones be bygones, in consideration of the long years of estrangement—the anguish and remorse of his afflicted parents.

More than that. Hertford O’Donnell, if a reckless man, was honourable; and so, on the Christmas Day when he was to have proposed for Miss Ingot, he went to that lady, and told her how he had wooed and won, in the years of his youth, one who after many days was miraculously restored to him; and from the hour in which he took her into his confidence, he never thought her either vulgar or foolish, but rather he paid homage to the woman who, when she had heard the whole tale repeated, said, simply, “Ask her to come to me till you can claim her—and God bless you both!”

A Strange
Christmas Game

(1868)

When, through the death of a distant relative, I, John Lester, succeeded to the Martingdale Estate, there could not have been found in the length and breadth of England a happier pair than myself and my only sister Clare.

We were not such utter hypocrites as to affect sorrow for the loss of our kinsman, Paul Lester, a man whom we had never seen, of whom we had heard but little, and that little unfavourable, at whose hands we had never received a single benefit—who was, in short, as great a stranger to us as the Prime Minister, the Emperor of Russia, or any other human being utterly removed from our extremely humble sphere of life.

His loss was very certainly our gain. His death represented to us, not a dreary parting from one long loved and highly honoured, but the accession of lands, houses, consideration, wealth, to myself—John Lester, artist and second-floor lodger at 32, Great Smith Street, Bloomsbury.

Not that Martingdale was much of an estate as country properties go. The Lesters who had succeeded to that domain from time to time during the course of a few hundred years, could by no stretch of courtesy have been called prudent men.

In regard of their posterity they were, indeed, scarcely honest, for they parted with manors and farms, with common rights and advowsons, in a manner at once so baronial and so unbusinesslike, that Martingdale at length in the hands of Jeremy Lester, the last resident owner, melted to a mere little dot in the map of Bedfordshire.

Concerning this Jeremy Lester there was a mystery. No man could say what had become of him. He was in the oak parlour at Martingdale one Christmas Eve, and before the next morning he had disappeared—to re-appear in the flesh no more.

Overnight, one Mr. Wharley, a great friend and boon companion of Jeremy’s, had sat playing cards with him until after twelve o’clock chimes, then he took leave of his host and rode home under the moonlight. After that no person, as far as could be ascertained, ever saw Jeremy Lester alive.

His ways of life had not been either the most regular, or the most respectable, and it was not until a new year had come in without any tidings of his whereabouts reaching the house, that his servants became seriously alarmed concerning his absence.

Then enquiries were set on foot concerning him—enquiries which grew more urgent as weeks and months passed by without the slightest clue being obtained as to his whereabouts. Rewards were offered, advertisements inserted, but still Jeremy made no sign; and so in course of time the heir-at-law, Paul Lester, took possession of the house, and went down to spend the summer months at Martingdale with his rich wife, and her four children by a first husband. Paul Lester was a barrister—an over-worked barrister, who everyone supposed would be glad enough to leave the bar and settle at Martingdale, where his wife’s money and the fortune he had accumulated could not have failed to give him a good standing even among the neighbouring country families; and perhaps it was with such intention that he went down into Bedfordshire.

If this were so, however, he speedily changed his mind, for with the January snows he returned to London, let off the land surrounding the house, shut up the Hall, put in a caretaker, and never troubled himself further about his ancestral seat.

Time went on, and people began to say the house was haunted, that Paul Lester had “seen something,” and so forth—all which stories were duly repeated for our benefit when, forty-one years after the disappearance of Jeremy Lester, Clare and I went down to inspect our inheritance.

I say “our,” because Clare had stuck bravely to me in poverty—grinding poverty—and prosperity was not going to part us now. What was mine was hers, and that she knew, God bless her, without my needing to tell her so.

The transition from rigid economy to comparative wealth was in our case the more delightful also, because we had not in the least degree anticipated it. We never expected Paul Lester’s shoes to come to us, and accordingly it was not upon our consciences that we had ever in our dreariest moods wished him dead.

Had he made a will, no doubt we never should have gone to Martingdale, and I, consequently, never written this story; but, luckily for us, he died intestate, and the Bedfordshire property came to me.

As for the fortune, he had spent it in travelling, and in giving great entertainments at his grand house in Portman Square. Concerning his effects, Mrs. Lester and I came to a very amicable arrangement, and she did me the honour of inviting me to call upon her occasionally, and, as I heard, spoke of me as a very worthy and presentable young man “for my station,” which, of course, coming from so good an authority, was gratifying. Moreover, she asked me if I intended residing at Martingdale, and on my replying in the affirmative, hoped I should like it.

It struck me at the time that there was a certain significance in her tone, and when I went down to Martingdale and heard the absurd stories which were afloat concerning the house being haunted, I felt confident that if Mrs. Lester had hoped much, she had feared more.

People said Mr. Jeremy “walked” at Martingdale. He had been seen, it was averred, by poachers, by gamekeepers, by children who had come to use the park as a near cut to school, by lovers who kept their tryst under the elms and beeches.

As for the caretaker and his wife, the third in residence since Jeremy Lester’s disappearance, the man gravely shook his head when questioned, while the woman stated that wild horses, or even wealth untold, should not draw her into the red bedroom, nor into the oak parlour, after dark.

“I have heard my mother tell, sir—it was her as followed old Mrs. Reynolds, the first caretaker—how there were things went on in these self-same rooms as might make any Christian’s hair stand on end. Such stamping, and swearing, and knocking about on furniture; and then tramp, tramp, up the great staircase; and along the corridor and so into the red bedroom, and then bang, and tramp, tramp again. They do say, sir, Mr. Paul Lester met him once, and from that time the oak parlour has never been opened. I never was inside it myself.”

Upon hearing which fact, the first thing I did was to proceed to the oak parlour, open the shutters, and let the August sun stream in upon the haunted chamber. It was an old-fashioned, plainly furnished apartment, with a large table in the centre, a smaller in a recess by the fireplace, chairs ranged against the walls, and a dusty moth-eaten carpet upon the floor. There were dogs on the hearth, broken and rusty; there was a brass fender, tarnished and battered; a picture of some sea-fight over the mantelpiece, while another work of art about equal in merit hung between the windows. Altogether, an utterly prosaic and yet not uncheerful apartment, from out of which the ghosts flitted as soon as daylight was let into it, and which I proposed, as soon as I “felt my feet,” to redecorate, refurnish, and convert into a pleasant morning-room. I was still under thirty, but I had learned prudence in that very good school, Necessity; and it was not my intention to spend much money until I had ascertained for certain what were the actual revenues derivable from the lands still belonging to the Martingdale estates, and the charges upon them. In fact, I wanted to know what I was worth before committing myself to any great extravagances, and the place had for so long been neglected, that I experienced some difficulty in arriving at the state of my real income.

But in the meanwhile, Clare and I found great enjoyment in exploring every nook and corner of our domain, in turning over the contents of old chests and cupboards, in examining the faces of our ancestors looking down on us from the walls, in walking through the neglected gardens, full of weeds, overgrown with shrubs and birdweed, where the boxwood was eighteen feet high, and the shoots of the rosetrees yards long. I have put the place in order since then; there is no grass on the paths, there are no trailing brambles over the ground, the hedges have been cut and trimmed, and the trees pruned and the boxwood clipped. But I often say nowadays that in spite of all my improvements, or rather, in consequence of them, Martingdale does not look one half so pretty as it did in its pristine state of uncivilised picturesqueness.

Although I determined not to commence repairing and decorating the house till better informed concerning the rental of Martingdale, still the state of my finances was so far satisfactory that Clare and I decided on going abroad to take our long-talked-of holiday before the fine weather was past. We could not tell what a year might bring forth, as Clare sagely remarked; it was wise to take our pleasure while we could; and accordingly, before the end of August arrived we were wandering about the continent, loitering at Rouen, visiting the galleries at Paris, and talking of extending our one month of enjoyment into three. What decided me on this course was the circumstance of our becoming acquainted with an English family who intended wintering in Rome. We met accidentally, but discovering that we were near neighbours in England—in fact that Mr. Cronson’s property lay close beside Martingdale—the slight acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, and ere long we were travelling in company.

From the first, Clare did not much like this arrangement. There was “a little girl” in England she wanted me to marry, and Mr. Cronson had a daughter who certainly was both handsome and attractive. The little girl had not despised John Lester, artist, while Miss Cronson indisputably set her cap at John Lester of Martingdale, and would have turned away her pretty face from a poor man’s admiring glance—all this I can see plainly enough now, but I was blind then and should have proposed for Maybel—that was her name—before the winter was over, had news not suddenly arrived of the illness of Mrs. Cronson, senior. In a moment the programme was changed; our pleasant days of foreign travel were at an end. The Cronsons packed up and departed, while Clare and I returned more slowly to England, a little out of humour, it must be confessed, with each other.

It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and we found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a few late pink roses blooming in the garden. It had been a wet season, and the place looked miserable. Clare would not ask Alice down to keep her company in the winter months, as she had intended; and for myself, the Cronsons were still absent in Norfolk, where they meant to spend Christmas with old Mrs. Cronson, now recovered.

Altogether, Martingdale seemed dreary enough, and the ghost stories we had laughed at while sunshine flooded the rooms became less unreal when we had nothing but blazing fires and wax candles to dispel the gloom. They became more real also when servant after servant left us to seek situations elsewhere; when “noises” grew frequent in the house; when we ourselves, Clare and I, with our own ears heard the tramp, tramp, the banging and the clattering which had been described to us.

My dear reader, you are doubtless free from superstitious fancies. You pooh-pooh the existence of ghosts, and only “wish you could find a haunted house in which to spend a night,” which is all very brave and praiseworthy, but wait till you are left in a dreary, desolate old country mansion, filled with the most unaccountable sounds, without a servant, with no one save an old caretaker and his wife, who, living at the extremest end of the building, heard nothing of the tramp, tramp, bang, bang, going on at all hours of the night.

At first I imagine the noises were produced by some evil-disposed persons who wished, for purposes of their own, to keep the house uninhabited; but by degrees Clare and I came to the conclusion the visitation must be supernatural, and Martingdale by consequence untenantable. Still, being practical people, and unlike our predecessors, not having money to live where and how we liked, we decided to watch and see whether we could trace any human influence in the matter. If not, it was agreed we were to pull down the right wing of the house and the principal staircase.

For nights and nights we sat up till two or three o’clock in the morning, Clare engaged in needlework, I reading, with a revolver lying on the table beside me; but nothing, neither sound nor appearance rewarded our vigil. This confirmed my first ideas that the sounds were not supernatural; but just to test the matter, I determined on Christmas-eve, the anniversary of Mr. Jeremy Lester’s disappearance, to keep watch myself in the red bed-chamber. Even to Clare I never mentioned my intention.

About ten, tired out with our previous vigils, we each retired to rest.

Somewhat ostentatiously, perhaps, I noisily shut the door of my room, and when I opened it half an hour afterwards, no mouse could have pursued its way along the corridor with greater silence and caution than myself. Quite in the dark I sat in the red room. For over an hour I might as well have been in my grave for anything I could see in the apartment; but at the end of that time the moon rose and cast strange lights across the floor and upon the wall of the haunted chamber.

Hitherto I had kept my watch opposite the window; now I changed my place to a corner near the door, where I was shaded from observation by the heavy hangings of the bed, and an antique wardrobe.

Still I sat on, but still no sound broke the silence. I was weary with many nights’ watching; and tired of my solitary vigil, I dropped at last into a slumber from which I was awakened by hearing the door softly opened.

“John,” said my sister, almost in a whisper; “John, are you here?”

“Yes, Clare,” I answered; “but what are you doing up at this hour?”

“Come downstairs,” she replied; “they are in the oak parlour.”

I did not need any explanation as to whom she meant, but crept downstairs, after her, warned by an uplifted hand of the necessity for silence and caution.

By the door—by the open door of the oak parlour, she paused, and we both looked in.

There was the room we left in darkness overnight, with a bright wood fire blazing on the hearth, candles on the chimney-piece, the small table pulled out from its accustomed corner, and two men seated beside it, playing at cribbage.

We could see the face of the younger player; it was that of a man of about five-and-twenty, of a man who had lived hard and wickedly; who had wasted his substance and his health; who had been, while in the flesh, Jeremy Lester. It would be difficult for me to say how I knew this, how in a moment I identified the features of the player with those of a man who had been missing for forty-one years—forty-one years that very night.

He was dressed in the costume of a bygone period; his hair was powdered, and round his wrists there were ruffles of lace. He looked like one who, having come from some great party had sat down after his return home to play at cards with an intimate friend. On his little finger there sparkled a ring, in the front of his shirt there gleamed a valuable diamond. There were diamond buckles in his shoes, and, according to the fashion of his time, he wore knee-breeches and silk stockings, which showed off advantageously the shape of a remarkably good leg and ankle.

He sat opposite to the door, but never once lifted his eyes to it. His attention seemed concentrated on the cards.

For a time there was utter silence in the room, broken only by the monotonous counting of the game. In the doorway we stood, holding our breath, terrified, and yet fascinated by the scene which was being acted before us.

The ashes dropped on the hearth softly and like the snow; we could hear the rustle of the cards as they were dealt out and fell upon the table: we listened to the count—fifteen-one, fifteen-two, and so forth—but there was no other word spoken, till at length the player whose face we could not see, exclaimed, “I win; the game is mine.”

Then his opponent took up the cards, sorted them over negligently in his hand, put them close together, and flung the whole pack in his guest’s face, exclaiming,

“Cheat! Liar! Take that!”

There was a bustle and a confusion—a flinging over of chairs, and fierce gesticulation, and such a noise of passionate voices mingling, that we could not hear a sentence which was uttered.

All at once, however, Jeremy Lester strode out of the room in so great a hurry that he almost touched us where we stood; out of the room, and tramp, tramp up the staircase, to the red room, whence he descended in a few minutes with a couple of rapiers under his arm.

When he re-entered the room, he gave, as it seemed to us, the other man his choice of the weapons, and then he flung open the window, and after ceremoniously giving place to his opponent to pass out first, he walked forth into the night air, Clare and I following.

We went through the garden and down a narrow winding walk to a smooth piece of turf sheltered from the north by a plantation of young fir trees. It was a bright moonlit night by this time, and we could distinctly see Jeremy Lester measuring off the ground.

“When you say ‘three’,” he said to the man whose back was still toward us.

They had drawn lots for the ground, and the lot had fallen against Mr. Lester. He stood thus with the moonbeams falling full upon him, and a handsomer fellow I would never desire to behold.

“One,” began the other; “two,” and before our kinsman had the slightest suspicion of his design, he was upon him, and his rapier through Jeremy Lester’s breast.

At the sight of that cowardly treachery, Clare screamed aloud. In a moment the combatants had disappeared, the moon was obscured behind a cloud, and we were standing in the shadow of the fir plantation, shivering with cold and terror.

But we knew at last what had become of the late owner of Martingdale: that he had fallen, not in fair fight, but foully murdered by a false friend.

When, late on Christmas morning, I awoke, it was to see a white world, to behold the ground, and trees, and shrubs all laden and covered with snow. There was snow everywhere, such snow as no person could remember having fallen for forty-one years.

“It was on just such a Christmas as this that Mr. Jeremy disappeared,” remarked the old sexton to my sister, who had insisted on dragging me through the snow to church, whereupon Clare fainted away and was carried into the vestry, where I made a full confession to the Vicar of all we had beheld the previous night.

At first that worthy individual rather inclined to treat the matter lightly, but when a fortnight after, the snow melted away and the fir plantation came to be examined, he confessed there might be more things in heaven and earth than his limited philosophy had dreamed of.

In a little clear space just within the plantation, Jeremy Lester’s body was found. We knew it by the ring and the diamond buckles, and the sparkling breast-pin; and Mr. Cronson, who in his capacity as magistrate came over to inspect these relics, was visibly perturbed at my narrative.

“Pray, Mr. Lester, did you in your dream see the face of—of the gentleman—your kinsman’s opponent?”

“No,” I answered, “he sat and stood with his back to us all the time.”

“There is nothing more, of course, to be done in the matter,” observed Mr. Cronson.

“Nothing,” I replied; and there the affair would doubtless have terminated, but that a few days afterwards when we were dining at Cronson Park, Clare all of a sudden dropped the glass of water she was carrying to her lips, and exclaiming,

“Look, John, there he is!” rose from her seat, and with a face as white as the tablecloth, pointed to a portrait hanging on the wall. “I saw him for an instant when he turned his head towards the door as Jeremy Lester left it,” she exclaimed; “that is he.”

Of what followed after this identification I have only the vaguest recollection.

Servants rushed hither and thither; Mrs. Cronson dropped off her chair into hysterics; the young ladies gathered round their mamma; Mr. Cronson, trembling like one in an ague fit, attempted some kind of explanation, while Clare kept praying to be taken away—only to be taken away.

I took her away, not merely from Cronson Park, but from Martingdale. Before we left the latter place, however, I had an interview with Mr. Cronson, who said the portrait Clare had identified was that of his wife’s father, the last person who saw Jeremy Lester alive.

“He is an old man now,” finished Mr. Cronson, “a man of over eighty, who has confessed everything to me. You won’t bring further sorrow and disgrace upon us by making this matter public?”

I promised him I would keep silence, but the story gradually oozed out, and the Cronsons left the country.

My sister never returned to Martingdale; she married and is living in London. Though I assure her there are no strange noises now in my house, she will not visit Bedfordshire, where the “little girl” she wanted me so long ago to “think seriously of”, is now my wife and the mother of my children.

Forewarned, Forearmed

(1874)

The story which I am about to tell is not a chapter out of my own life. The incidents which go to furnish it were enacted years before I was born; the performers in it died forty years ago, and have left not son nor heir to inherit the memory.

I question whether the man lives (the woman may, seeing women are more enduring than men) who could identify the names of the persons concerning whom I shall have hereafter to speak, but the facts happened, nevertheless.

Many a time I have heard them rehearsed, many a night I have sat on the hearthrug fascinated, listening to how Mr. Dwarris dreamt a dream, and many a night I have passed through the folding doors that led from the outer to the lesser hall, and walked to bed along the corridors thinking tremblingly of the face which continually re-appeared—of the journey in the coach and the post-chaise—all the particulars of which I purpose in due time to recount. Further, it is in my memory, that I was wont to place a pillow against my back in the night season, lest some vague enemy should enter my room and strike me under the fifth rib; and I went through much anguish when the Storm King was abroad, fancying I heard stealthy footsteps in the long gallery, and the sound of another person’s breathing in the room beside my own.

But in spite of this, Mr. Dwarris’ dream was one of the awful delights of my childhood; and when strangers gathered around the social hearth, and the conversation turned upon supernatural appearances, as it often did in those remote days in lonely country houses, it was always with a thrill of pleasure that I greeted the opening passages of this, the only inexplicable yet true story we possessed.

It was the fact of this possession, perhaps, which made the tale dear to me—other stories belonged to other people; it was their friends or their relatives who had seen ghosts, and been honoured with warnings, but Mr. Dwarris’ dream was our property.

We owned it as we owned the old ash tree that grew on the lawn. Though Mr. Dwarris was dead and gone, though at the age of threescore years and ten he had departed from a world which had used him very kindly, and which he had enjoyed thoroughly, to another world that he only knew anything of by hearsay, that in fact he only believed in after the vague gentlemanly sceptical fashion which was considered the correct thing about the beginning of this century, still he had been a friend of our quiet and non-illustrious family.

In our primitive society he had been considered a man of fashion, a person whose opinions might safely be repeated, whose decisions were not to be lightly contradicted. He was kind enough in the days when postage was very high (would those days could come back again) to write long letters to his good friends who lived far away from Court, and craved for political and fashionable gossip—long letters filled with scraps of news and morsels of scandal, which furnished topics of conversation for many days and weeks, and made pleasant little breaks in the monotony of that country existence.

By my parents, and by the chosen friends who were invited to dinner when he honoured our poor house with his presence, he was looked up to as a learned and travelled man of the world.

He had read everything at a time when people did not read so much as is the case at present. He had not merely made the grand tour, but he had wintered frequently abroad, and the names of princesses, duchesses, and counts flowed as glibly off his tongue as those of the vicar and family doctor from the lips of less fortunate mortals.

The best china was produced, and the children kept well out of the way while he remained in the house.

The accessories of his toilette table were a fearful mystery to our servants, and the plan he had of leaving his vails under his bolster or the soap dish, a more inscrutable mystery still.

He did not smoke, and though that was a time when the reputation of hard drinking carried with it no stigma—quite the reverse indeed—he was temperate to a degree. While not utterly insensible to the charms of female beauty, he regarded the sex rather as a critical than a devoted admirer, and he was wont to consider any unusually handsome woman as practically thrown away on our society.

He used to talk much of the “West End,” and, to sum up the matter, he spoke as one having authority.

Looking back at his pretensions from a point of observation which has not been attained without a considerable amount of acquaintance, pleasant and otherwise, with men of the same rank in life and standing in society, I am inclined to think that Mr. Dwarris was, to a certain extent, a humbug; that he was not such a great man as our neighbours imagined, and that the style in which he lived at home was much less luxurious than that in which my parents considered it necessary to indulge when he honoured us with a visit.

Further, I believe the time he spent with us, instead of proving irksome and uncongenial to his superior mind, were periods of the most thorough enjoyment. Looking over his letters—which still remain duly labelled and tied up—I can see the natural man breaking through the conventional. I can perceive how happy a change it was for him to leave a life passed amongst people, richer, better born, cleverer, more fashionable than himself, in order to stay with friends who looked up to him, and believed in their simplicity that it was an honour to receive so great a man.

I understand that he had no genius, that he had little talent, that he loved the world and the high places thereof, that he had no passion for anything whether in nature or art, but that he had acquired a superficial knowledge of most subjects, and that he affected a fondness for painting, music, sculpture, literature, because he considered such fondness the mark of a refined mind, and because the men and the women with whom he associated were content to think so too.

But when he recalls with words of pleasure the journey he and my father made through the wilds of Connemara, when he speaks with tenderest affection of his old friend Woodville—(my maternal grandfather’s name was Woodville)—when he sends a word of kindly remembrance to each of the servants, who have been always happy to see, and wait upon him, I feel that the gloss and the pretension of learning were but superficial, that the man had really a heart, which, under happier auspices, would have rendered him a more useful and beloved member of society, instead of an individual in whose acquaintance we merely felt a pride, who was, as I have before said, one of our cherished possessions.

He was never married; he had no near relatives so far as we ever knew, and he lived all alone in a large house in a large English town, which, for sufficient reasons, I shall call Callersfield.

In his early youth he had been engaged in business, but the death of a distant relative leaving him independent of his own exertions, he severed all connexion with trade, and went abroad to study whatever may be, in foreign parts, analogous to “Shakespeare and the musical glasses” in England.

To the end of his life—long after travelling became a much easier and safer matter than it was towards the close of the last century—he retained his fondness for continental wanderings, and my mother’s cabinets and my father’s hot-houses bore ample testimony to the length of his journeys and the strength of his friendship. Seeds of rare plants, and bulbs from almost every country in Europe, found their way to our remote home, whilst curiosities of all kinds were sent with the best wishes of “an old friend,” to swell that useless olio of oddities that were at once the wonder and admiration of my juvenile imagination.

But at length all these good gifts came to an end. No more lava snuff-boxes and Pompeian vases; no more corals, or fans, or cameos, or inlaid boxes; no more gorgeous lilies or rare exotics; for news arrived one morning that the donor had started on his last journey, and gone to that land whence no presents can be delivered by coach, railway, or parcels company, to assuage the grief of bereaved relatives. He was dead, and in due time there arrived at our house two of the most singular articles (as the matter appears to me now), that were ever forwarded without accessories of any kind to set them off, to people who had really been on terms of closest intimacy with the deceased.

One was a plaster bust of Mr. Dwarris, the other a lithograph likeness of the same gentleman.

The intrinsic value of the two might in those day have been five shillings, but then, as his heirs delicately put it, they knew my parents would value these mementoes of their lamented friend far beyond any actual worth which they might possess.

Where, when the old home was broken up, and the household gods scattered, that bust vanished I can form no idea, but the lithograph is still in my possession; and as I look at it I feel my mother’s statement to have been utterly true, namely, that Mr. Dwarris was not a man either to be deluded by his imagination, or to tell a falsehood wittingly.

Perhaps in the next world some explanation may have been vouchsafed to him about his dream, but on this side the grave he always professed himself unable to give the slightest solution of it.

“I am not a man,” he was wont to declare, “inclined to believe in the supernatural;” and indeed he was not, whether in nature or religion.

To be sure he was secretly disposed to credit that great superstition which many persons now openly profess—of an universe without a Creator, of a future without a Redeemer—but still this form of credulity proceeds rather from an imperfect development of the reason than from a disordered state of the imagination.

In the ordinary acceptation of the word he was not superstitious. He was hard-headed and he was cold-blooded—essentially a man to be trusted implicitly when he said such and such a thing had happened within his own experience.

“I never could account for it in any way,” he declared—“and if it had chanced to another person, I should have believed he had made some mistake in the matter. For this reason, I have always felt shy of repeating my dream—but I do not mind telling it to you tonight.”

And then he proceeded to relate the story which thenceforth became our property—the most enduring gift he ever gave us.

This is the tale he told while the wind was howling outside, and the snow falling upon the earth, and the wood fire crackling and leaping as a fit accompaniment.

I did not hear him recite his adventures—but I have often sat and listened while the story was rehearsed to fresh auditors—almost in his own words.

•    •    •    •

The first time that I went abroad, (he began), I made acquaintance with Sir Harry Hareleigh. How our acquaintance commenced is of no consequence—but it soon ripened into a close friendship, which was only broken by his death. His father and my father had been early friends also—but worldly reverses had long separated our family from that of the Hareleighs, and it was only by the merest chance I resumed my connection with it. Sir Harry was the youngest son—but his brothers having all died before their father, he came into his title early—though he did not at the same time succeed to any very great amount of property.

A large but unentailed estate, owned by a bachelor Ralph Hareleigh, would, people imagined, ultimately come into his hands—but Sir Harry himself considered this doubtful—for there was a cousin of his own who longed for the broad acres, and spent much of his time at Dulling Court, which was the name of Mr. Ralph Hareleigh’s seat.

“No one,” Sir Harry declared, “should ever be able to say he sat watching for dead men’s shoes;” and so he spent all his time abroad—visiting picture galleries and studios, and mixing much among artists and patrons and lovers of art.

It seemed to me in those days that he was wasting his existence, and that a man of his rank and abilities ought to have remained more in his own country, and associated more with those of his own standing in society—but whenever I ventured to hint this to him, he only answered that—

“England had been a cruel stepdame to him, and that of his own free-will he would never spend a day in his native country again.”

He had a villa near Florence, where he resided when he was not wandering over the earth; and there I spent many happy weeks in his society—before returning, as it was needful and expedient for me to do, to Callersfield.

We had been separated for some years—during the whole of which time we corresponded regularly, when one night I dreamt a dream which is as vivid to me now as it was a quarter of a century ago.

I know I was well in health at the time—that I was undisturbed in my mind—that especially my thoughts had not been straying after Sir Harry Hareleigh. I had heard from him about a month previously, and he said in his letter that he purposed wintering in Vienna, where it would be a great pleasure if I could join him. I had replied that I could not join him at Vienna, but that it was not impossible we might meet the following spring if he felt disposed to spend a couple of months with me in Spain, a country which I then desired to visit.

I was, therefore, not expecting to see him for half a year, at all events—and had certainly no thought of his arrival in England, and yet when I went to bed on the night in question, this was what happened to me. I dreamt that towards the close of an autumn day I was sitting reading by the window of my library—you remember how my house is situated at the corner of two streets, and that there is a slight hill from the town up to it—you may recollect, also, perhaps, that the windows of my library face on this ascent, while the hall door opens into King Charles Street. Well, I was sitting reading as I have said, with the light growing dimmer and dimmer, and the printed characters getting more and more indistinct, when all at once my attention was aroused by the appearance of a hackney coach driven furiously up Martyr Hill.

The man was flogging his horses unmercifully, and they cantered up the ascent at a wonderful pace. I rose and watched the vehicle turn the corner of King Charles Street, when of course it disappeared from my observation. I remained, however, standing at the window looking out on the gathering twilight, and but little curious concerning a loud double knock which resounded through the house. Next moment, however, the library door opened, and in walked Sir Harry Hareleigh.

“I want you to do me a favour, Dwarris,” were almost his first words. “Can you—will you—come with me on a journey? Your man will just have time to pack a few clothes up for you, and then we shall be able to catch the coach that leaves ‘The Maypole’ at seven. I have this moment arrived from Italy, and will explain everything as we go along. Can you give me a crust of bread and a glass of wine?”

I rang the bell and ordered in refreshments. While he was hastily swallowing his food. Sir Harry told me that Ralph Hareleigh was dead and had left him every acre of land he owned and every guinea of money he possessed. “He heard,” it appears, added Sir Harry, “that my cousin George had raised large sums of money on the strength of certainly being his heir, so he cut him out and left the whole to me, saddled with only one condition, namely, that I should marry within six months from the date of his death.”

“And when do the six months expire?” I inquired.

“There’s the pull!” he answered. “By some accident my lawyer’s first letter never reached me; and if by good fortune it had not occurred to him to send one of his clerks with a second epistle, I should have been done out of my inheritance. There is only a bare month left for me to make all my arrangements.”

“And where are you going now?” I asked

“To Dulling Court,” he returned, “and we have not a moment to lose if we are to catch the mail.”

Those were the days in which gentlemen travelled with their pistols ready for use, and you may be sure I did not forget mine. My valise was carried out to the hackney carriage; Sir Harry and I stepped into the vehicle, and before I had time to wonder at my friend’s sudden appearance, we were at the “Maypole,” and taking our places as inside passengers to Warweald, from whence our route lay across country to Dulling.

When we had settled ourselves comfortably, put on our travelling-caps, and buttoned our great coats up to our throats, I looked out to see whether any other passengers were coming.

As I did so, my eye fell on a man who stood back a little from the crowd that always surrounds a coach at starting time, and there was something about him which riveted my attention, though I could not have told why.

He was an evil-looking man, dressed in decent but very common clothes, and he stood leaning up against the wall of the “Maypole,” and, as it chanced, directly under the light of an oil-lamp.

It was this circumstance which enabled me to get so good a view of his face, of his black hair and reddish whiskers, of his restless brown eyes, and dark complexion.

The contrast between his complexion and his whiskers I remember struck me forcibly, as did also a certain discrepancy between his dress and his appearance.

He did not stand exactly as a man of his apparent class would stand, and I noticed that he bit his nails nervously, a luxury I never observed an ordinary working man indulge in.

Further, he stared not at what was going on, but persistently at the coach window until he discovered my scrutiny, when he turned on his heel and walked away down the street.

Somehow I seemed to breathe more freely when once he was gone: but as the coach soon started I forgot all about him, until two or three stages after, happening to get out of the coach for a glass of brandy, I beheld the same man standing at a little distance and watching the coach as before.

My first impulse was to go up and speak to him, but a moment’s reflection showed me that I should only place myself in a ridiculous position by doing so. No doubt the man was merely a passenger like ourselves, and if he chose to lean up against the wall of the inn while the horses were being changed, it was clearly no business of mine.

At the next stage, however, when I looked out for him he was nowhere to be seen, and I thought no more of the matter, till on arriving at Warweald I chanced to put my head out of the window furthest from the inn, when by the light of one of the coach lamps I saw my gentleman drop down from the roof and walk away into the darkness. We went into the inn parlour whilst the post horses were put to, and then I told Sir Harry what I had witnessed.

“Very likely a Bow Street runner,” he said, “keeping some poor wretch well in sight. I should not wonder if the old gentleman who snored so persistently for the last twenty miles, be a hardened criminal on whom your friend will clap handcuffs, the moment he gets the warrant to arrest him.”

The explanation seemed so reasonable that I marvelled it had not occurred to me before, and then I suppose I went off into deeper sleep, for I have only a vague recollection of dreaming afterwards, how we travelled miles and miles in a post chaise, how we ploughed through heavy country lanes, how we passed through dark plantations, and how we stopped at last in front of an old-fashioned way-side house.

It was a fine night when we arrived there, but the wind was high and drifted black clouds over the moon’s face. We alighted at this point and I remember how the place was engraved on my memory.

It was an old inn, with a large deep door-way, two high gables, and small latticed windows. There were tall trees in front of it, and from one of these the sign “A Bleeding Heart” depended, rocking moanfully to and fro in the breeze. There were only a few leaves left on the branches, but the wind caught up those which lay scattered on the ground, and whirled them through the air. Not a soul appeared as our chaise drove up to the door. The postilion, however, applied the butt end of his whip with such vigour to the door that a head was soon thrust from one of the windows, and a gruff voice demanded, “what the devil we wanted.”

Just as he was about to answer, moved by some sudden impulse, I turned suddenly round and beheld stealing away in the shadow, my friend with the dark complexion and the red whiskers.

At this juncture I awoke—always at this juncture I awoke, for I dreamt the same dream over and over again, till I really grew afraid of going to bed at night.

I used to wake up bathed in perspiration with a horror on me such as I have never felt in my waking moments. I could not get the man’s face out of my mind—waking I was constantly thinking of it, sleeping I reproduced it in my dreams—and at length I became so nervous that I had determined to seek relief either in medical advice or change of scene—when one evening in the late autumn as I sat reading in my library—the identical coach I had beheld in my dream drove up Martyr Hill, and next moment Sir Harry and I grasped hands.

Though I had the dream in my mind all the while, something withheld me from mentioning it to him. We had always laughed at warnings and such things as old wives’ tales, and so I let him talk on just as he had talked to me in my dream, and he ate and drank, and we went down together to the Maypole and took our seats in the coach.

You may be sure I looked well up the street, and down the street, to see if there were any sign of my friend with the whiskers, but not a trace of him could I discern. Somewhat relieved by this I leaned back in my corner, and really in the interest of seeing and talking to my old companion again, I forgot all about my dream, until the arrival of another passenger caused me to shift my position a little, when I glanced out again, and there standing under the lamp—with his restless brown eyes, his dark complexion and his red whiskers—stood the person whom I had never before seen in the flesh, biting his nails industriously.

“Just look out for a moment, Hareleigh,” I said, drawing back from the window, “there is a man standing under the lamp I want you to notice.”

“I see no man,” answered Sir Harry, and when I looked out again neither did I.

As in my dream, however, I had beheld the stranger at different stages of our journey, so I beheld him at different stages with my waking eyes.

Standing at the hotel at Warweald, I spoke seriously to my companion concerning the mysterious passenger, when to my amazement he repeated the same words I had heard in my dream.

“Now, Hareleigh,” I said, “this is getting past a joke. You know I am not superstitious, or given to take fancies, and yet I tell you I have had a warning about that man and I feel confident he means mischief,” and then I told Sir Harry my dream, and described to him the inn upon our arrival at which I had invariably awakened.

“There is no such inn anywhere on the road between here and Dulling,” he answered after a moment’s silence, and then he turned towards the fire again and knit his brow, and there ensued a disagreeable pause.

“If I have offended you,” I remarked at last.

“My dear friend,” he replied in an earnest voice, “I am not offended, I am only alarmed. When I left the continent I hoped that I had put the sea between myself and my enemy; but what you say makes me fear that I am being dogged to my death. I have narrowly escaped assassination twice within the last three months, and I know every movement of mine has been watched, that there have been spies upon me. Even on board the vessel by which I returned to England I was nearly pitched overboard; at the time I regarded it as an accident, but if your dream be true, that was, as this is, the result of a premeditated plan.”

“Then let us remain here for the night,” I urged.

“Impossible,” he answered. “I must reach Dulling before tomorrow morning, or otherwise the only woman I ever wanted to marry or ever shall marry will have dropped out of my life a second time.”

“And she,” I suggested.

“Is the widow of Lord Warweald, and she leaves for India tomorrow with her brother the Honourable John Moffat.”

“Then,” said I, “you can have no difficulty in fulfilling the conditions of Mr. Ralph Hareleigh’s will.”

“Not if she agrees to marry me,” he answered.

At that moment the chaise was announced, and we took our places in it.

Over the country roads, along lonely lanes, we drove almost in silence.

Somehow Sir Harry’s statement and the memory of my own dream made me feel anxious and nervous. Who could this unknown enemy be? had my friend played fast and loose with some lovely Italian, and was this her nearest of kin dogging him to his death?

Most certainly the man who stood under the lamp at Callersfield had no foreign blood in his veins; in spite of his complexion, he was English, in figure, habit, and appearance.

“Could there be any dark secret in Sir Harry’s life?” I then asked myself. His reluctance to visit England, his reserve about the earlier part of his existence, almost inclined me to this belief; and I was just about settling in my own mind what this secret might probably be, when the postilion suddenly pulled up, and after an examination of his horses’ feet informed us that one of them had cast a shoe, and that it was impossible the creature could travel the nine miles which still intervened between us and the next stage.

“There is an inn, however,” added the boy, “about a mile from here on the road to London; and if you could make shift to stop there for the night, I will undertake to have you at Dulling Court by nine o’clock in the morning.”

Hearing this, I looked in the moonlight at my friend, and Sir Harry looked hard at me.

“It is to happen so,” he said, and flinging himself back in the chaise, fell into a fit of moody musing.

Meanwhile, as the horses proceeded slowly along, I looked out of the window, and once I could have sworn I saw the shadow of a man flung across the road.

When I opened the door, however, and jumped out, I could see nothing except the dark trees almost meeting overhead, and the denser undergrowth lying to right and left.

It was a fine night when we arrived at our destination, just such a night as I had dreamed was to come—moonlight, but with heavy black clouds drifting across the sky.

There was the inn, there swung the sign, the dead leaves swirled about us as we stood waiting while the post-boy hammered for admittance.

It all came about as I had dreamt, save that I did not see waking as I had done in my sleep a stealing figure creeping away in the shadow of the house.

I saw the figure afterwards, but not then.

We ate in the house, but we did not drink—we made a feint of doing so; but we really poured away the liquor upon the hot ashes that lay underneath the hastily replenished fire, though I believe this caution to have been unnecessary.

We selected our bed chambers, Sir Harry choosing one which looked out on what our host called the Wilderness, and I selecting another that commanded a view of the garden.

There were no locks or bolts to the doors, but we determined to pull up such furniture as the rooms afforded, and erect barricades for our protection.

I wanted to remain in the same apartment with my friend, but he would not hear of such an arrangement.

“We shall only delay the end,” he said stubbornly, in answer to my entreaties, “and I have an ounce of lead ready for anyone who tries to meddle with me.” So we bade each other good-night, and separated.

I had not the slightest intention of going to bed, so I sat and read my favourite poet till, overpowered by fatigue, I dropped asleep in my chair.

When I awoke it was with a start; the candle had burnt out, and the moonlight was streaming through the white blind into the room.

Was it fancy, or did I hear someone actually try my door? I held my breath, and then I knew it was no fancy, for the latch snicked in the lock, then stealthy footsteps crept along the passage and down the stairs.

In a moment my resolution was taken. Opening my window, I crept on to the sill, and closing the casement after me, dropped into the garden.

Keeping close against the wall, I crept to the corner of the house, were I concealed myself behind an arbor vitae.

A minute afterwards the man I was watching for came round the opposite corner, and stood for a second looking at the window of Sir Harry’s room. There was a pear tree trained against the wall on this side of the house, and up it he climbed with more agility than I should have expected from his appearance.

I had my pistol in my hand, and felt inclined to wing him while he was fighting with the crazy fastening, and trying to open the window without noise, but I refrained. I wanted to see the play out; I desired to see his game, and so the moment he was in the room I climbed the pear tree also, and raising my eyes just above the sill, and lifting the blind about an inch, looked in.

Like myself, Hareleigh had not undressed, but he lay stretched on the bed with his right hand under his head, and his left flung across his body.

He was fast asleep, his pistols lay on a chair beside him, and I could see he had so far followed my advice as to have dragged an ancient secretaire across the door.

By the moonlight I got a good view now of the individual who had for so long a time troubled my dreams. As he stealthily moved the pistols he turned his profile a little towards the window, and then I knew what I already suspected, viz., that the man who had travelled with us from Callersfield was identical with the man who now stood beside Sir Harry meaning to murder him.

It was the dream in that hour which seemed the reality, and the reality the dream.

For an instant he stooped over my friend, and then I saw him raise his hand to strike, but the same moment I took deliberate aim, and before the blow could fall, fired and shot him in the right shoulder.

There was a shriek and an imprecation, a rush to the window, where we met, he trying to get out, I striving to get in.

I grappled with him, but having no secure foothold, the impetus of his body was too much for me, and we both fell to the ground together. The force of the fall stunned me, I suppose, for I remember nothing of what followed till I found myself lying on a sofa in the inn, with Hareleigh sitting beside me.

“Don’t talk! for God’s sake don’t talk!” he entreated. “We shall be out of this in five minutes’ time if you think you can bear the shaking. I have made the landlord lend us another horse, and we shall be at Dulling in two hours’ time. There you shall tell me all about it.”

But there I never told him all about it. Before we reached our next stage I was far too ill to travel further, and for weeks I lay between life and death at the Green Man and Still, Aldney.

When I was strong enough to sit up with him, Harry and Lady Hareleigh came over from Dulling to see me, but it was months before I could bear to speak of the events of that night, and though I never dreamed my dream again, it left its traces on me for life.

Till the day of his death, however, Sir Harry always regarded me as his preserver, and the warmest welcome to Dulling Court was given by his wife to one whom she honoured by calling her dearest friend.

When Sir Harry died, he left me joint guardian with Lady Hareleigh of his children. So carefully worded a will, I never read—in the event of the death of his children without issue, he bequeathed Dulling Court to various charitable institutions.

“A most singular disposition of his property,” I remarked to his lawyer.

“Depend upon it, my dear sir, he had his reasons,” that individual replied.

“And those… ” I suggested.

“I must regard as strictly private and confidential.”

•    •    •    •

The most singular part of my narrative has yet to come (Mr. Dwarris continued, after a pause).

Many years after Sir Harry’s death, it chanced I arrived at a friend’s house on the evening before the nomination day of an election, which it was expected would be hotly contested.

“Mr. Blair’s wealth of course gives him a great advantage,” sighed my hostess, “and we all do dislike him so cordially—I would give anything to see him lose.”

Accustomed to such thoroughly feminine and logical sentiments, I attached little importance to the lady’s remarks, and with only a very slight feeling of interest in the matter, next morning accompanied my friend to the county town where the nomination was to take place.

We were rather late in starting, and before our arrival Mr. Blair had commenced his harangue to the crowd.

He was talking loudly and gesticulating violently with his left hand when I first caught sight of him. He was telling the free and independent electors that they knew who he was, what he was, and why he supported such and such a political party.

At intervals he was interrupted by cheers and hisses, but at the end of one of his most brilliant perorations, I, who had been elbowing my way through the crowd, shouted out at the top of my voice—

“How about the man you tried to murder at ‘The Bleeding Heart?’”

For a moment there was a dead silence, then the mob took up my cry—

“How about the man you tried to murder at ‘The Bleeding Heart?’”

I saw him look round as if a ghost had spoken, then he fell suddenly back, and his friends carried him off the platform.

My hostess had her wish, for his opponent walked over the course, and a few weeks afterwards I read in the papers—

Died—At Hollingford Hall, in his forty-sixth year, George Hareleigh Blair, Esq., nephew of the late Ralph Hareleigh, Esq., of Dulling Court.

“He married a Miss Blair, I presume,” I said to my host.

“Yes, for her money,” was the reply, “she had two hundred thousand pounds.”

So the mystery of the “Bleeding Heart” was cleared up at last; but on this side the grave I do not expect to understand how I chanced to dream of a man I had never seen—of places I had never visited—of events of which I was not then cognizant—of conversations which had then still to take place.

The Old House
in Vauxhall Walk

(1882)

I

Houseless—homeless—hopeless!”

Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words—the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of Lambeth Parish; but it is open to question whether they were ever previously spoken with a more thorough conviction of their truth, or with a feeling of keener self-pity, than by the young man who hurried along Vauxhall Walk one rainy winter’s night, with no overcoat on his shoulders and no hat on his head.

A strange sentence for one-and-twenty to give expression to—and it was stranger still to come from the lips of a person who looked like and who was a gentleman. He did not appear either to have sunk very far down in the good graces of Fortune. There was no sign or token which would have induced a passer-by to imagine he had been worsted after a long fight with calamity. His boots were not worn down at the heels or broken at the toes, as many, many boots were which dragged and shuffled and scraped along the pavement. His clothes were good and fashionably cut, and innocent of the rents and patches and tatters that slunk wretchedly by, crouched in doorways, and held out a hand mutely appealing for charity. His face was not pinched with famine or lined with wicked wrinkles, or brutalised by drink and debauchery, and yet he said and thought he was hopeless, and almost in his young despair spoke the words aloud.

It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one’s heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.

Certainly not an evening to be abroad without a home to go to, or a sixpence in one’s pocket, yet this was the position of the young gentleman who, without a hat, strode along Vauxhall Walk, the rain beating on his unprotected head.

Upon the houses, so large and good—once inhabited by well-to-do citizens, now let out for the most part in floors to weekly tenants—he looked enviously. He would have given much to have had a room, or even part of one. He had been walking for a long time, ever since dark in fact, and dark falls soon in December. He was tired and cold and hungry, and he saw no prospect save of pacing the streets all night.

As he passed one of the lamps, the light falling on his face revealed handsome young features, a mobile, sensitive mouth, and that particular formation of the eyebrows—not a frown exactly, but a certain draw of the brows—often considered to bespeak genius, but which more surely accompanies an impulsive organisation easily pleased, easily depressed, capable of suffering very keenly or of enjoying fully. In his short life he had not enjoyed much, and he had suffered a good deal. That night, when he walked bareheaded through the rain, affairs had come to a crisis. So far as he in his despair felt able to see or reason, the best thing he could do was to die. The world did not want him; he would be better out of it.

The door of one of the houses stood open, and he could see in the dimly lighted hall some few articles of furniture waiting to be removed. A van stood beside the curb, and two men were lifting a table into it as he, for a second, paused.

“Ah,” he thought, “even those poor people have some place to go to, some shelter provided, while I have not a roof to cover my head, or a shilling to get a night’s lodging.” And he went on fast,, as if memory were spurring him, so fast that a man running after had some trouble to overtake him.

“Master Graham! Master Graham!” this man exclaimed, breathlessly; and, thus addressed, the young fellow stopped as if he had been shot.

“Who are you that know me?” he asked, facing round.

“I’m William; don’t you remember William, Master Graham? And, Lord’s sake, sir, what are you doing out a night like this without your hat?”

“I forgot it,” was the answer; “and I did not care to go back and fetch it.”

“Then why don’t you buy another, sir? You’ll catch your death of cold; and besides, you’ll excuse me, sir, but it does look odd.”

“I know that,” said Master Graham grimly; “but I haven’t a halfpenny in the world.”

“Have you and the master, then—” began the man, but there he hesitated and stopped.

“Had a quarrel? Yes, and one that will last us our lives,” finished the other, with a bitter laugh.

“And where are you going now?”

“Going! Nowhere, except to seek out the softest paving stone, or the shelter of an arch.”

“You are joking, sir.”

“I don’t feel much in a mood for jesting either.”

“Will you come back with me, Master Graham? We are just at the last of our moving, but there is a spark of fire still in the grate, and it would be better talking out of this rain. Will you come, sir?”

“Come! Of course I will come,” said the young fellow, and, turning, they retraced their steps to the house he had looked into as he passed along.

An old, old house, with long, wide hall, stairs low, easy of ascent, with deep cornices to the ceilings, and oak floorings, and mahogany doors, which still spoke mutely of the wealth and stability of the original owner, who lived before the Tradescants and Ashmoles were thought of, and had been sleeping far longer than they, in St. Mary’s churchyard, hard by the archbishop’s palace.

“Step upstairs, sir,” entreated the departing tenant; “it’s cold down here, with the door standing wide.”

“Had you the whole house, then, William?” asked Graham Coulton, in some surprise.

“The whole of it, and right sorry I, for one, am to leave it; but nothing else would serve my wife. This room, sir,” and with a little conscious pride, William, doing the honours of his late residence, asked his guest into a spacious apartment occupying the full width of the house on the first floor.

Tired though he was, the young man could not repress an exclamation of astonishment.

“Why, we have nothing so large as this at home, William,” he said.

“It’s a fine house,” answered William, raking the embers together as he spoke and throwing some wood upon them; “but, like many a good family, it has come down in the world.”

There were four windows in the room, shuttered close; they had deep, low seats, suggestive of pleasant days gone by; when, well-curtained and well-cushioned, they formed snug retreats for the children, and sometimes for adults also; there was no furniture left, unless an oaken settle beside the hearth, and a large mirror let into the panelling at the opposite end of the apartment, with a black marble console table beneath it, could be so considered; but the very absence of chairs and tables enabled the magnificent proportions of the chamber to be seen to full advantage, and there was nothing to distract the attention from the ornamented ceiling, the panelled walls, the old-world chimney-piece so quaintly carved, and the fireplace lined with tiles, each one of which contained a picture of some scriptural or allegorical subject.

“Had you been staying on here, William,” said Coulton, flinging himself wearily on the settle, “I’d have asked you to let me stop where I am for the night.”

“If you can make shift, sir, there is nothing as I am aware of to prevent you stopping,” answered the man, fanning the wood into a flame. “I shan’t take the key back to the landlord till tomorrow, and this would be better for you than the cold streets at any rate.”

“Do you really mean what you say?” asked the other eagerly. “I should be thankful to lie here; I feel dead beat.”

“Then stay, Master Graham, and welcome. I’ll fetch a basket of coals I was going to put in the van, and make up a good fire, so that you can warm yourself. Then I must run round to the other house for a minute or two, but it’s not far, and I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.”

“Thank you, William; you were always good to me,” said the young man gratefully. “This is delightful,” and he stretched his numbed hands over the blazing wood, and looked round the room with a satisfied smile.

“I did not expect to get into such quarters,” he remarked, as his friend in need reappeared, carrying a half-bushel basket full of coals, with which he proceeded to make up a roaring fire. “I am sure the last thing I could have imagined was meeting with anyone I knew in Vauxhall Walk.”

“Where were you coming from, Master Graham?” asked William curiously.

“From old Melfield’s. I was at his school once, you know, and he has now retired, and is living upon the proceeds of years of robbery in Kennington Oval. I thought, perhaps he would lend me a pound, or offer me a night’s lodging, or even a glass of wine; but, oh dear, no. He took the moral tone, and observed he could have nothing to say to a son who defied his father’s authority. He gave me plenty of advice, but nothing else, and showed me out into the rain with a bland courtesy, for which I could have struck him.”

William muttered something under his breath which was not a blessing, and added aloud: “You are better here, sir, I think, at any rate. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

Left to himself, young Coulton took off his coat, and shifting the settle a little, hung it over the end to dry. With his handkerchief he rubbed some of the wet out of his hair; then, perfectly exhausted, he lay down before the fire and, pillowing his head on his arm, fell fast asleep.

He was awakened nearly an hour afterwards by the sound of someone gently stirring the fire and moving quietly about the room. Starting into a sitting posture, he looked around him, bewildered for a moment, and then, recognising his humble friend, said laughingly:

“I had lost myself; I could not imagine where I was.”

“I am sorry to see you here, sir,” was the reply; “but still this is better than being out of doors. It has come on a nasty night. I brought a rug round with me that, perhaps, you would wrap yourself in.”

“I wish, at the same time, you had brought me something to eat,” said the young man, laughing.

“Are you hungry, then, sir?” asked William, in a tone of concern.

“Yes; I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. The governor and I commenced rowing the minute we sat down to luncheon, and I rose and left the table. But hunger does not signify; I am dry and warm, and can forget the other matter in sleep.”

“And it’s too late now to buy anything,” soliloquised the man; “the shops are all shut long ago. Do you think, sir,” he added, brightening, “you could manage some bread and cheese?”

“Do I think—I should call it a perfect feast,” answered Graham Coulton. “But never mind about food tonight, William; you have had trouble enough, and to spare, already.”

William’s only answer was to dart to the door and run downstairs. Presently he reappeared, carrying in one hand bread and cheese wrapped up in paper, and in the other a pewter measure full of beer.

“It’s the best I could do, sir,” he said apologetically. “I had to beg this from the landlady.”

“Here’s to her good health!” exclaimed the young fellow gaily, taking a long pull at the tankard. “That tastes better than champagne in my father’s house.”

“Won’t he be uneasy about you?” ventured William, who, having by this time emptied the coals, was now seated on the inverted basket, looking wistfully at the relish with which the son of the former master was eating his bread and cheese.

“No,” was the decided answer. “When he hears it pouring cats and dogs he will only hope I am out in the deluge, and say a good drenching will cool my pride.”

“I do not think you are right there,” remarked the man.

“But I am sure I am. My father always hated me, as he hated my mother.”

“Begging your pardon, sir; he was over-fond of your mother.”

“If you had heard what he said about her today, you might find reason to alter your opinion. He told me I resembled her in mind as well as body; that I was a coward, a simpleton, and a hypocrite.”

“He did not mean it, sir.”

“He did, every word. He does think I am a coward, because I—I—” And the young fellow broke into a passion of hysterical tears.

“I don’t half like leaving you here alone,” said William, glancing round the room with a quick trouble in his eyes; “but I have no place fit to ask you to stop, and I am forced to go myself, because I am night watchman, and must be on at twelve o’clock.”

“I shall be right enough,” was the answer. “Only I mustn’t talk any more of my father. Tell me about yourself, William. How did you manage to get such a big house, and why are you leaving it?”

“The landlord put me in charge, sir; and it was my wife’s fancy not to like it.”

“Why did she not like it?”

“She felt desolate alone with the children at night,” answered William, turning away his head; then added, next minute: “Now, sir, if you think I can do no more for you, I had best be off. Time’s getting on. I’ll look round tomorrow morning.”

“Good-night,” said the young fellow, stretching out his hand, which the other took as freely and frankly as it was offered. “What should I have done this evening if I had not chanced to meet you?”

“I don’t think there is much chance in the world, Master Graham,” was the quiet answer. “I do hope you will rest well, and not be the worse for your wetting.”

“No fear of that,” was the rejoinder, and the next minute the young man found himself all alone in the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.

II

Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the mirror at the end of the apartment reflecting fitful gleams of light. He could not understand how it came to pass that, far away as he was from the glass, he was able to see everything in it; but he resigned himself to the difficulty without astonishment, as people generally do in dreams.

Neither did he feel surprised when he beheld the outline of a female figure seated beside the fire, engaged in picking something out of her lap and dropping it with a despairing gesture.

He heard the mellow sound of gold, and knew she was lifting and dropping sovereigns, he turned a little so as to see the person engaged in such a singular and meaningless manner, and found that, where there had been no chair on the previous night, there was a chair now, on which was seated an old, wrinkled hag, her clothes poor and ragged, a mob cap barely covering her scant white hair, her cheeks sunken, her nose hooked, her fingers more like talons than aught else as they dived down into the heap of gold, portions of which they lifted but to scatter mournfully.

“Oh! my lost life,” she moaned, in a voice of the bitterest anguish. “Oh! my lost life—for one day, for one hour of it again!”

Out of the darkness—out of the corner of the room where the shadows lay deepest—out from the gloom abiding near the door—out from the dreary night, with their sodden feet and wet dripping from their heads, came the old men and the young children, the worn women and the weary hearts, whose misery that gold might have relieved, but whose wretchedness it mocked.

Round that miser, who once sat gloating as she now sat lamenting, they crowded—all those pale, sad shapes—the aged of days, the infant of hours, the sobbing outcast, honest poverty, repentant vice; but one low cry proceeded from those pale lips—a cry for help she might have given, but which she withheld.

They closed about her, all together, as they had done singly in life; they prayed, they sobbed, they entreated; with haggard eyes the figure regarded the poor she had repulsed, the children against whose cry she had closed her ears, the old people she had suffered to starve and die for want of what would have been the merest trifle to her; then, with a terrible scream, she raised her lean arms above her head, and sank down—down—the gold scattering as it fell out of her lap, and rolling along the floor, till its gleam was lost in the outer darkness beyond.

Then Graham Coulton awoke in good earnest, with the perspiration oozing from every pore, with a fear and an agony upon him such as he had never before felt in all his existence, and with the sound of the heart-rending cry—“Oh! my lost life”—still ringing in his ears.

Mingled with all, too, there seemed to have been some lesson for him which he had forgotten, that, try as he would, eluded his memory, and which, in the very act of waking, glided away.

He lay for a little thinking about all this, and then, still heavy with sleep, retraced his way into dreamland once more.

It was natural, perhaps, that, mingling with the strange fantasies which follow in the train of night and darkness, the former vision should recur, and the young man ere long found himself toiling through scene after scene wherein the figure of the woman he had seen seated beside a dying fire held principal place.

He saw her walking slowly across the floor munching a dry crust—she who could have purchased all the luxuries wealth can command; on the hearth, contemplating her, stood a man of commanding presence, dressed in the fashion of long ago. In his eyes there was a dark look of anger, on his lips a curling smile of disgust, and somehow, even in his sleep, the dreamer understood it was the ancestor to the descendant he beheld—that the house put to mean uses in which he lay had never so far descended from its high estate, as the woman possessed of so pitiful a soul, contaminated with the most despicable and insidious vice poor humanity knows, for all other vices seem to have connection with the flesh, but the greed of the miser eats into the very soul.

Filthy of person, repulsive to look at, hard of heart as she was, he yet beheld another phantom, which, coming into the room, met her almost on the threshold, taking her by the hand, and pleading, as it seemed, for assistance. He could not hear all that passed, but a word now and then fell upon his ear. Some talk of former days; some mention of a fair young mother—an appeal, as it seemed, to a time when they were tiny brother and sister, and the accursed greed for gold had not divided them. All in vain; the hag only answered him as she had answered the children, and the young girls, and the old people in his former vision. Her heart was as invulnerable to natural affection as it had proved to human sympathy. He begged, as it appeared, for aid to avert some bitter misfortune or terrible disgrace, and adamant might have been found more yielding to his prayer. Then the figure standing on the hearth changed to an angel, which folded its wings mournfully over its face, and the man, with bowed head, slowly left the room.

Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.

It seemed to Graham Coulton that after that he lay for a time in a still, dreamless sleep, upon awaking from which he found himself entering a chamber as sordid and unclean in its appointments as the woman of his previous vision had been in her person. The poorest labourer’s wife would have gathered more comforts around her than that room contained. A four-poster bedstead without hangings of any kind—a blind drawn up awry—an old carpet covered with dust, and dirt on the floor—a rickety washstand with all the paint worn off it—an ancient mahogany dressing-table, and a cracked glass spotted all over—were all the objects he could at first discern, looking at the room through that dim light which oftentimes obtains in dreams.

By degrees, however, he perceived the outline of someone lying huddled on the bed. Drawing nearer, he found it was that of the person whose dreadful presence seemed to pervade the house. What a terrible sight she looked, with her thin white locks scattered over the pillow, with what were mere remnants of blankets gathered about her shoulders, with her claw-like fingers clutching the clothes, as though even in sleep she was guarding her gold!

An awful and a repulsive spectacle, but not with half the terror in it of that which followed. Even as the young man looked he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Then he saw first one man and then his fellow steal cautiously into the room. Another second, and the pair stood beside the bed, murder in their eyes.

Graham Coulton tried to shout—tried to move, but the deterrent power which exists in dreams only tied his tongue and paralysed his limbs. He could but hear and look, and what he heard and saw was this: aroused suddenly from sleep, the woman started, only to receive a blow from one of the ruffians, whose fellow followed his lead by plunging a knife into her breast.

Then, with a gurgling scream, she fell back on the bed, and at the same moment, with a cry, Graham Coulton again awoke, to thank heaven it was but an illusion.

III

“I hope you slept well, sir.” It was William, who, coming into the hall with the sunlight of a fine bright morning streaming after him, asked this question: “Had you a good night’s rest?”

Graham Coulton laughed, and answered: “Why, faith, I was somewhat in the case of Paddy, ‘who could not slape for dhraming.’ I slept well enough, I suppose, but whether it was in consequence of the row with my dad, or the hard bed, or the cheese—most likely the bread and cheese so late at night—I dreamt all the night long, the most extraordinary dreams. Some old woman kept cropping up, and I saw her murdered.”

“You don’t say that, sir?” said William nervously.

“I do, indeed,” was the reply. “However, that is all gone and past. I have been down in the kitchen and had a good wash, and I am as fresh as a daisy, and as hungry as a hunter; and, oh, William, can you get me any breakfast?”

“Certainly, Master Graham. I have brought round a kettle, and I will make the water boil immediately. I suppose, sir”—this tentatively—“you’ll be going home today?”

“Home!” repeated the young man. “Decidedly not. I’ll never go home again till I return with some medal hung to my coat, or a leg or arm cut off. I’ve thought it all out, William. I’ll go and enlist. There’s a talk of war; and, living or dead, my father shall have reason to retract his opinion about my being a coward.”

“I am sure the admiral never thought you anything of the sort, sir,” said William. “Why, you have the pluck of ten!”

“Not before him,” answered the young fellow sadly.

“You’ll do nothing rash, Master Graham; you won’t go ’listing, or aught of that sort, in your anger?”

“If I do not, what is to become of me?” asked the other. “I cannot dig—to beg I am ashamed. Why, but for you, I should not have had a roof over my head last night.”

“Not much of a roof, I am afraid, sir.”

“Not much of a roof!” repeated the young man. “Why, who could desire a better? What a capital room this is,” he went on, looking around the apartment, where William was now kindling a fire; “one might dine twenty people here easily!”

“If you think so well of the place, Master Graham, you might stay here for a while, till you have made up your mind what you are going to do. The landlord won’t make any objection, I am very sure.”

“Oh! nonsense; he would want a long rent for a house like this.”

“I dare say; if he could get it,” was William’s significant answer.

“What do you mean? Won’t the place let?”

“No, sir. I did not tell you last night, but there was a murder done here, and people are shy of the house ever since.”

“A murder! What sort of a murder? Who was murdered?”

“A woman, Master Graham—the landlord’s sister; she lived here all alone, and was supposed to have money. Whether she had or not, she was found dead from a stab in her breast, and if there ever was any money, it must have been taken at the same time, for none ever was found in the house from that day to this.”

“Was that the reason your wife would not stop here?” asked the young man, leaning against the mantelshelf, and looking thoughtfully down on William.

“Yes, sir. She could not stand it any longer; she got that thin and nervous no one would have believed it possible; she never saw anything, but she said she heard footsteps and voices, and then when she walked through the hall, or up the staircase, someone always seemed to be following her. We put the children to sleep in that big room you had last night, and they declared they often saw an old woman sitting by the hearth. Nothing ever came my way,” finished William, with a laugh; “I was always ready to go to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow.”

“Were not the murderers discovered?” asked Graham Coulton.

“No, sir; the landlord, Miss Tynan’s brother, had always lain under the suspicion of it—quite wrongfully, I am very sure—but he will never clear himself now. It was known he came and asked her for help a day or two before the murder, and it was also known he was able within a week or two to weather whatever trouble had been harassing him. Then, you see, the money was never found; and, altogether, people scarce knew what to think.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Graham Coulton, and he took a few turns up and down the apartment. “Could I go and see this landlord?”

“Surely, sir, if you had a hat,” answered William, with such a serious decorum that the young man burst out laughing.

“That is an obstacle, certainly,” he remarked, “and I must make a note do instead. I have a pencil in my pocket, so here goes.”

Within half an hour from the dispatch of that note William was back again with a sovereign; the landlord’s compliments, and he would be much obliged if Mr. Coulton could “step round”.

“You’ll do nothing rash, sir,” entreated William.

“Why, man,” answered the young fellow, “one may as well be picked off by a ghost as a bullet. What is there to be afraid of?”

William only shook his head. He did not think his young master was made of the stuff likely to remain alone in a haunted house and solve the mystery it assuredly contained by dint of his own unassisted endeavours. And yet when Graham Coulton came out of the landlord’s house he looked more bright and gay than usual, and walked up the Lambeth road to the place where William awaited his return, humming an air as he paced along.

“We have settled the matter,” he said. “And now if the dad wants his son for Christmas, it will trouble him to find him.”

“Don’t say that, Master Graham, don’t,” entreated the man, with a shiver; “maybe after all it would have been better if you had never happened to chance upon Vauxhall Walk.”

“Don’t croak, William,” answered the young man; “if it was not the best day’s work I ever did for myself I’m a Dutchman.”

During the whole of that forenoon and afternoon, Graham Coulton searched diligently for the missing treasure Mr. Tynan assured him had never been discovered. Youth is confident and self-opinionated, and this fresh explorer felt satisfied that, though others had failed, he would be successful. On the second floor he found one door locked, but he did not pay much attention to that at the moment, as he believed if there was anything concealed it was more likely to be found in the lower than the upper part of the house. Late into the evening he pursued his researches in the kitchen and cellars and old-fashioned cupboards, of which the basement had an abundance.

It was nearly eleven, when, engaged in poking about amongst the empty bins of a wine cellar as large as a family vault, he suddenly felt a rush of cold air at his back. Moving, his candle was instantly extinguished, and in the very moment of being left in darkness he saw, standing in the doorway, a woman, resembling her who had haunted his dreams overnight.

He rushed with outstretched hands to seize her, but clutched only air. He relit his candle, and closely examined the basement, shutting off communication with the ground floor ere doing so. All in vain. Not a trace could he find of living creature—not a window was open—not a door unbolted.

“It is very odd,” he thought, as, after securely fastening the door at the top of the staircase, he searched the whole upper portion of the house, with the exception of the one room mentioned.

“I must get the key of that tomorrow,” he decided, standing gloomily with his back to the fire and his eyes wandering about the drawing-room, where he had once again taken up his abode.

Even as the thought passed through his mind, he saw standing in the open doorway a woman with white dishevelled hair, clad in mean garments, ragged and dirty. She lifted her hand and shook it at him with a menacing gesture, and then, just as he was darting towards her, a wonderful thing occurred.

From behind the great mirror there glided a second female figure, at the sight of which the first turned and fled, uttering piercing shrieks as the other followed her from storey to storey.

Almost sick with terror, Graham Coulton watched the dreadful pair as they fled upstairs past the locked room to the top of the house.

It was a few minutes before he recovered his self-possession. When he did so, and searched the upper apartments, he found them totally empty.

That night, ere lying down before the fire, he carefully locked and bolted the drawing-room door; before he did more he drew the heavy settle in front of it, so that if the lock were forced no entrance could be effected without considerable noise.

For some time he lay awake, then dropped into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by a noise as if of something scuffling stealthily behind the wainscot. He raised himself on his elbow and listened, and, to his consternation, beheld seated at the opposite side of the hearth the same woman he had seen before in his dreams, lamenting over her gold.

The fire was not quite out, and at that moment shot up a last tongue of flame. By the light, transient as it was, he saw that the figure pressed a ghostly finger to its lips, and by the turn of its head and the attitude of its body seemed to be listening.

He listened also—indeed, he was too much frightened to do aught else; more and more distinct grew the sounds which had aroused him, a stealthy rustling coming nearer and nearer—up and up it seemed, behind the wainscot.

“It is rats,” thought the young man, though, indeed, his teeth were almost chattering in his head with fear. But then in a moment he saw what disabused him of that idea—the gleam of a candle or lamp through a crack in the panelling. He tried to rise, he strove to shout—all in vain; and, sinking down, remembered nothing more till he awoke to find the grey light of an early morning stealing through one of the shutters he had left partially unclosed.

For hours after his breakfast, which he scarcely touched, long after William had left him at mid-day, Graham Coulton, having in the morning made a long and close survey of the house, sat thinking before the fire, then, apparently having made up his mind, he put on the hat he had bought, and went out.

When he returned the evening shadows were darkening down, but the pavements were full of people going marketing, for it was Christmas Eve, and all who had money to spend seemed bent on shopping.

It was terribly dreary inside the old house that night. Through the deserted rooms Graham could feel that ghostly semblance was wandering mournfully. When he turned his back he knew she was flitting from the mirror to the fire, from the fire to the mirror; but he was not afraid of her now—he was far more afraid of another matter he had taken in hand that day.

The horror of the silent house grew and grew upon him. He could hear the beating of his own heart in the dead quietude which reigned from garret to cellar.

At last William came; but the young man said nothing to him of what was in his mind. He talked to him cheerfully and hopefully enough—wondered where his father would think he had got to, and hoped Mr. Tynan might send him some Christmas pudding. Then the man said it was time for him to go, and, when Mr. Coulton went downstairs to the hall door, remarked the key was not in it.

“No,” was the answer, “I took it out today, to oil it.”

“It wanted oiling,” agreed William, “for it worked terribly stiff.” Having uttered which truism he departed.

Very slowly the young man retraced his way to the drawing-room, where he only paused to lock the door on the outside; then taking off his boots he went up to the top of the house, where, entering the front attic, he waited patiently in darkness and in silence.

It was a long time, or at least it seemed long to him, before he heard the same sound which had aroused him on the previous night—a stealthy rustling—then a rush of cold air—then cautious footsteps—then the quiet opening of a door below.

It did not take as long in action as it has required to tell. In a moment the young man was out on the landing and had closed a portion of the panelling on the wall which stood open; noiselessly he crept back to the attic window, unlatched it, and sprung a rattle, the sound of which echoed far and near through the deserted streets, then rushing down the stairs, he encountered a man who, darting past him, made for the landing above; but perceiving the way of escape closed, fled down again, to find Graham struggling desperately with his fellow.

“Give him the knife—come along,” he said savagely; and next instant Graham felt something like a hot iron through his shoulder, and then heard a thud, as one of the men, tripping in his rapid flight, fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.

At the same moment there came a crash, as if the house was falling, and faint, sick, and bleeding, young Coulton lay insensible on the threshold of the room where Miss Tynan had been murdered.

When he recovered he was in the dining-room, and a doctor was examining his wound. Near the door a policeman stiffly kept guard. The hall was full of people; all the misery and vagabondism the streets contain at that hour was crowding in to see what had happened.

Through the midst two men were being conveyed to the station-house; one, with his head dreadfully injured, on a stretcher, the other handcuffed, uttering frightful imprecations as he went.

After a time the house was cleared of the rabble, the police took possession of it, and Mr. Tynan was sent for.

“What was that dreadful noise?” asked Graham feebly, now seated on the floor, with his back resting against the wall.

“I do not know. Was there a noise?” said Mr. Tynan, humouring his fancy, as he thought.

“Yes, in the drawing-room, I think; the key is in my pocket.”

Still humouring the wounded lad, Mr. Tynan took the key and ran upstairs.

When he unlocked the door, what a sight met his eyes! The mirror had fallen—it was lying all over the floor shivered into a thousand pieces; the console table had been borne down by its weight, and the marble slab was shattered as well. But this was not what chained his attention. Hundreds, thousands of gold pieces were scattered about, and an aperture behind the glass contained boxes filled with securities and deeds and bonds, the possession of which had cost his sister her life.

•    •    •    •

“Well, Graham, and what do you want?” asked Admiral Coulton that evening as his eldest born appeared before him, looking somewhat pale but otherwise unchanged.

“I want nothing,” was the answer, “but to ask your forgiveness. William has told me all the story I never knew before; and, if you let me, I will try to make it up to you for the trouble you have had. I am provided for,” went on the young fellow, with a nervous laugh; “I have made my fortune since I left you, and another man’s fortune as well.”

“I think you are out of your senses,” said the Admiral shortly.

“No, sir, I have found them,” was the answer; “and I mean to strive and make a better thing of my life than I should ever have done had I not gone to the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.”

“Vauxhall Walk! What is the lad talking about?”

“I will tell you, sir, if I may sit down,” was Graham Coulton’s answer, and then he told his story.

Sandy the Tinker

(1882)

Before commencing my story, I wish to state it is perfectly true in every particular.”

“We quite understand that,” said the sceptic of our party, who was wont, in the security of friendly intercourse, to characterise all such prefaces as mere introductions to some tremendously exaggerated tale.

On the occasion in question, however, we had donned our best behaviour, a garment which did not sit ungracefully on some of us; and our host, who was about to draw out from the stores of memory one narrative for our entertainment, was scarcely the person before whom even Jack Hill, the sceptic, would have cared to express his cynical and unbelieving views.

We were seated, an incongruous company of ten persons, in the best room of an old manse among the Scottish hills. Accident had thrown us together, and accident had driven us under the minister’s hospitable roof. Cold, wet and hungry, drenched with rain, sorely beaten by the wind, we had crowded through the door opened by a friendly hand, and now, wet no longer, the pangs of hunger assuaged with smoking rashers of ham, poached eggs, and steaming potatoes, we sat around a blazing fire, drinking toddy out of tumblers, whilst the two ladies who graced the assemblage partook of a modicum of the same beverage from wine glasses.

Everything was eminently comfortable, but conducted upon the most correct principles. Jack could no more have taken it upon himself to shock the minister’s ear with some of the opinions he aired in Fleet Street, than he could have asked for more whisky with his water.

“Yes, it is perfectly true,” continued the minister, looking thoughtfully at the fire. “I can’t explain it, I cannot even try to explain it. I will tell you the story exactly as it occurred, however, and leave you to draw your own deductions from it.”

None of us answered. We fell into listening attitudes instantly, and eighteen eyes fixed themselves by one accord upon our host.

He was an old man, but hale. The weight of eighty winters had whitened his head, but not bowed it. He seemed young as any of us—younger than Jack Hill, who was a reviewer and a newspaper hack, and whose way through life had not been altogether on easy lines.

•    •    •    •

Thirty years ago, upon a certain Friday morning in August (began the minister), I was sitting at breakfast in the room on the other side of the passage, where you ate your supper, when the servant girl came in with a letter. She said a laddie, all out of breath, had brought it over from Dendeldy Manse. “He was bidden to run a’ the way,” she went on, “and he’s fairly beaten.”

I told her to make the messenger sit down, and put food before him; and then, when she went to do my bidding, proceeded, I must confess with some curiosity, to break the seal of a missive forwarded in such hot haste.

It was from the minister at Dendeldy, who had been newly chosen to occupy the pulpit his deceased father occupied for a quarter of a century and more.

The call from the congregation originated rather out of respect to the father’s memory than any extraordinary liking for the son. He had been reared for the most part in England, and was somewhat distant and formal in his manners; and, though full of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, wanted the true Scotch accent, that goes straight to the heart of those accustomed to the broad, honest, tender Scottish tongue.

His people were proud of him, but they did not like some of his ways. They could remember him a lad running about the whole countryside, and they could not understand, and did not approve of his holding them at arm’s length, and shutting himself up among his books and refusing their hospitality, and sending out word he was busy when maybe some very decent man wanted speech with him. I had taken it upon myself to point out that I thought he was wrong, and that he would alienate his flock from him. Perhaps it was for this very reason, because I was blunt and plain, he took to me kindly, and never got on his high horse, no matter what I said to him.

Well, to return to the letter. It was written in the wildest haste, and entreated me not to lose a moment in coming to him, as he was in the very greatest distress and anxiety. “Let nothing delay you,” he proceeded. “If I cannot speak to you soon I believe I shall go out of my senses.”

What could be the matter? I thought. What in all the wide earth could have happened?

I had seen him but a few days before and he was in good health and spirits, getting on better with his people, feeling hopeful of so altering his style of preaching as to touch their hearts more sensibly.

“I must lay aside Southern ideas as well as accent, if I can,” he went on, smiling. “men who live such lives of hardship and privation, who cast their seed into the ground under such rigorous skies, and cut their corn in fear and trembling at the end of late, uncertain summers, who take the sheep out of the snowdrifts and carry the lambs into shelter beside their own humble hearths, must want a different sort of sermon from those who sleep softly and walk delicately.”

I had implied something of all this myself, and it amused me to find my own thoughts come back clothed in different fashion and presented to me quite as strangers. Still, all I wanted was his good, and I felt glad he showed such aptitude to learn.

What could have happened, however, puzzled me sorely. As I made my hurried preparations for setting out I fairly perplexed myself with speculation. I went into the kitchen, where his messenger was eating some breakfast, and asked if Mr. Crawley was ill.

“I dinna ken,” he answered. “He mad’ no complaint, but he luked awful bad, just awful.”

“In what way?” I inquired.

“As if he had seen a ghaist,” was the reply.

This made me very uneasy, and I jumped to the conclusion the trouble was connected with money matters. Young men will be young men.

•    •    •    •

And here the minister looked significantly at the callow bird of our company, a youth who had never owed a sixpence in his life or given away a cent; while Jack Hill—no chicken, by the way—was over head and ears in debt, and could not keep a sovereign in his pocket, though spending or bestowing it involved going dinnerless the next day.

“Young men will be young men,” repeated the minister, in his best pulpit manner (“Just as though anyone expected them to be young women!” grumbled Jack to me afterwards), “and I feared that now he was settled and comfortably off some old creditor he had been paying as best he could, might have become pressing. I knew nothing of his liabilities, or, beyond the amount of the stipend paid him, the state of his pecuniary affairs; but, having once in my own life made myself responsible for a debt, I was aware of all the trouble putting your arm out further than you can draw it back involves. And I considered that most probably money, which is the root of all evil” (“and all good” Jack’s eyes suggested to me), “was the cause of my young friend’s agony of mind. Blessed with a large family—every one of whom is now alive and doing well, I thank God, out in the world—you may imagine I had not much opportunity for laying by. Still, I had put aside a little for a rainy day, and that little I placed in my pocket-book, hoping even a small sum might prove of use in case of emergency.”

“Come, you are a trump,” I saw written plainly on Jack Hill’s face; and he settled himself to listen to the remainder of the minister’s story in a manner which could not be considered other than complimentary.

Duly and truly, I knew quite well he had already devoted the first five-guinea cheque he received to the poor of that minister’s parish.

“By the road,” proceeded our host, “Dendeldy is distant from here ten long miles, but by a short cut across the hills it can be reached in something under six. For me it was nothing of a walk, and accordingly I arrived at the manse ere noon.”

He paused, and, though thirty years had elapsed, drew a handkerchief across his forehead before he continued his narrative.

•    •    •    •

I had to climb a steep brae to reach the front door, but before I could breast it my friend met me.

“Thank God you are come,” he said, pressing my hand in his. “Oh, I am grateful.”

He was trembling with excitement. His face was a ghastly pallor.

His voice was that of a person suffering from some terrible shock, labouring under some awful fear.

“What has happened, Edward?” I asked. I had known him since he was a little boy. “I am distressed to see you in such a state. Rouse yourself; be a man; whatever may have gone wrong can possibly be righted. I have come over to do all that lies in my power for you. If it is a matter of money—”

“No, no; it is not money,” he interrupted; “would that it were!” and he began to tremble again so violently that, really, he communicated some part of his nervousness to me, and put me into a state of perfect terror.

“Whatever it is, Crawley, out with it,” I said; “have you murdered anybody?”

“No, it is worse than that,” he answered.

“But that’s just nonsense,” I declared. “Are you in your right mind, do you think?”

“I wish I were not,” he returned. “I’d like to know I was stark staring mad; it would be happier for me—far, far happier.”

“If you don’t tell me this minute what is the matter, I shall turn on my heel and tramp my way home again,” I said, half in anger at what I thought was his folly.

“Come into the house,” he entreated, “and try to have patience with me; for indeed, Mr. Morison, I am sorely troubled. I have been through my deep waters, and they have gone clean over my head.”

We went into his little study and sat down. For a while he remained silent, his head resting upon his hand, struggling with some strong emotion; but after about five minutes he asked in a low subdued voice:

“Do you believe in dreams?”

“What has my belief to do with the matter in hand?” I inquired.

“It is a dream, an awful dream, that is troubling me.”

I rose from my chair.

“Do you mean to say,” I asked, “you have brought me from my business and my parish to tell me you have had a bad dream?”

“That is just what I do mean to say,” he answered. “At least it was not a dream—it was a vision; no, I don’t mean a vision—I can’t tell you what it was; but nothing I ever went through in actual life was half so real, and I have bound myself to go through it all again. There is no hope for me, Mr. Morison. I sit before you a lost creature, the most miserable man on the face of the whole earth.”

“What did you dream?” I inquired.

A dreadful fit of trembling again seized him; but at last he managed to say: “I have been like this ever since, and I shall be like this for evermore, till—till—the end comes.”

“When did you have your bad dream?” I asked.

“Last night, or rather this morning,” he answered. “I’ll tell you all about it. I was as well when I went to bed about eleven o’clock as ever I was in my life. I had been considering my sermon and felt satisfied I should be able to deliver a good one next Sunday morning. I had taken nothing after my tea and I lay down in my bed feeling at peace with all mankind, and satisfied with my lot. How long I slept, or what I dreamt about at first, if I dreamt at all, I don’t know; but after a time the mists seemed to clear from before my eyes, to roll away like clouds from a mountain summit, and I found myself walking on a beautiful summer’s evening beside the River Deldy.”

He paused for a moment, and an irrepressible shudder shook his frame.

“Go on,” I said, for I felt afraid of his breaking down again.

He looked at me pitifully, with a hungry entreaty in his weary eyes, and continued.

“It was a lovely evening and I never thought the earth had looked so beautiful before. I walked on and on, till I came to that point where, as you may perhaps remember, the path, growing very narrow, winds round the base of a great crag, and leads the wayfarer suddenly into a little green amphitheatre, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by rocks, that rise in places sheer to a height of a hundred feet or more.”

“I remember it,” I said; “a little farther on three streams meet and fall with a tremendous roar into the Witches’ Cauldron. A fine sight in the winter time, only there is scarce any reaching it from below, as the path you mention and the little green oasis are mostly covered with water.”

“I had not been there before since I was a child,” he went on mournfully, “but I recollected it as one of the most solitary spots possible; and my astonishment was great, to see a man standing in the pathway, with a drawn sword in his hand. He did not stir as I drew near, so I stepped aside on the grass. Instantly he barred my way.

“‘You can’t pass here,’ he said.

“‘Why not?’ I asked.

“‘Because I say so,’ he answered.

“‘And who are you that say so?’ I inquired, looking full at him.

“He was like a god. Majesty and power were written on every feature, were expressed in every gesture. But, oh, the awful scorn of his smile, the contempt with which he regarded me! The beams of the setting sun fell full upon him, and seemed to bring out, as in letters of fire, the wickedness and terrible beauty of his face.

“I felt afraid; but I managed to say:

“‘Stand out of my way, the river bank is as free to me as to you.’

“‘Not this part of it,’ he answered; ‘this place belongs to me.’

“‘Very well,’ I agreed, for I did not want to stand there bandying words with him, and a sudden darkness seemed to be falling around. ‘It is getting late, and so I’ll turn round.’

“He gave a laugh, the like of which never fell on human ear before, and made reply: ‘You can’t turn back—of your own free will you have come on my ground and from it there is no return.’

“I did not speak; I only just turned round and made as fast as I could for the path at the foot of the crag. He did not pass me, yet before I could reach the point I desired he stood barring my progress, with the scornful smile still on his lips, and his gigantic form assuming tremendous proportions in the narrow way.

“‘Let me pass,’ I entreated, ‘and I will never come here again, never trespass more on your ground.’

“‘No, you shall not pass.’

“‘Who are you that takes such power on yourself?’ I asked.

“‘Come closer, and I will tell you,’ he said.

“I drew a step nearer, and he spoke one word. I never heard it before, but, by some extraordinary intuition, I knew what it meant. He was the Evil One. The name seemed to be taken up by the echoes, and repeated from rock to rock and crag to crag. The whole air seemed full of that one word—and then a great horror of darkness came about us, only the place where we stood remained light. We occupied a small circle walled round with the thick blackness of night.

“‘You must come with me,’ he said.

“I refused and then he threatened me. I implored and entreated and wept, but at last I agreed to do what he wanted if he would promise to let me return. Again he laughed, and said, Yes, I should return—and the rocks and trees and mountains, aye, and the very rivers, seemed to take up the answer and bear it in sobbing whispers away into the darkness.”

He stopped, and lay back in his chair, shivering like one in an ague fit.

“Go on,” I repeated again, “it was only a dream, you know.”

“Was it?” he murmured, mournfully. “Ah, you have not heard the end of it yet.”

“Let me hear it then,” I said. “What happened afterwards?”

“The darkness seemed in part to clear away and we walked side by side across the grass in the twilight, straight up to the bare, black wall of rock. With the hilt of his sword he struck a heavy blow, and the solid rock opened as though it were a door. We passed through and it closed behind us with a tremendous clang—yes, it closed behind us;” and at that point he fairly broke down, crying and sobbing as I had never seen a man even in the most frightful grief cry and sob before.’

•    •    •    •

The minister paused in his narrative. At that moment there came a tremendous blast of wind which shook the windows of the manse, and burst open the hall door, and caused the candles to flicker and the fire to go roaring up the chimney. It is not too much to say that, what with the uncanny story, and the howling storm, we all felt that creeping sort of uneasiness which so often seems like the touch of something from another world—a hand stretched across the boundary-line of time and eternity, the coldness and mystery of which make the stoutest heart tremble.

“I am telling you this tale,” said Mr. Morison, resuming his seat after a brief absence to see that the fastenings of the house were properly attended to, “exactly as I heard it. You must draw your own deductions from the facts I put before you.”

•    •    •    •

Part of that great and terrible region in which he found himself, my friend went on to tell me, he penetrated, compelled by a power he could not resist, to see the most awful sights and the most frightful sufferings. There was no form of vice that had not there its representative. As they moved along, his companion told him the special sin for which such horrible punishment was being inflicted. Shuddering, and in mortal agony, he was unable to withdraw his eyes from the dreadful spectacle. The atmosphere grew more unendurable, the sights more and more terrible, the cries, groans, blasphemies more awful and heartrending.

“I can bear no more,” he gasped at last; “let me go!”

With a mocking laugh, the Presence beside him answered the appeal; a laugh which was taken up, even by the lost and anguished spirits around.

“There is no return” said the pitiless voice.

“But you promised,” he cried, “you promised me faithfully.”

“What are promises here?” and the words were the sound of doom.

Still he prayed and entreated; he fell on his knees and in his agony spoke words that seemed to cause the purpose of the Evil One to falter.

“You shall go,” he said, “on one condition: that you agree to return to me on Wednesday next—or send a substitute.”

“I could not do that,” said my friend. “I could not send any fellow-creature here. Better stop myself than do that.”

“Then stop,” said Satan, with the bitterest contempt; and he was turning away when the poor distracted soul asked for a minute more before he made his choice.

He was in an awful strait: on the one hand, how could he remain himself? on the other, how could he doom another to such fearful torments? Who could he send? Who would come? And then suddenly there flashed into his mind the thought of an old man to whom it could not signify much whether he took up his place in this abode a few days sooner or a few days later. He was travelling to it as fast as he knew how. He was the reprobate of the parish; the sinner without hope that successive ministers had striven in vain to reclaim from the error of his ways; a man marked and doomed—Sandy the Tinker. Sandy, who was mostly drunk and always godless. Sandy, who, it was said, believed in nothing, and gloried in his infidelity. Sandy, whose soul really did not signify much. He would send him. Lifting his eyes, he saw those of his tormentor surveying him scornfully.

“Well, have you made your choice?” he asked.

“Yes, I think I can send a substitute,” was the hesitating answer.

“See you do then,” was the reply; “for if you do not, and fail to return yourself, I shall come for you. Wednesday, remember, before midnight.” And with these words ringing in his ears he was flung violently through the rock, and found himself in the middle of his bedroom floor, as if he had just been kicked there.

•    •    •    •

“This is not the end of the story, is it?” asked one of our party, as the minister came to a full stop, and looked earnestly at the fire.

“No,” he answered, “it is not the end; but before proceeding I must ask you to bear carefully in mind the circumstances already recounted. Especially remember the date mentioned—Wednesday next, before midnight.”

•    •    •    •

Whatever I thought, and you may think, about my friend’s dream, it made the most remarkable impression upon his mind. He could not shake off its influence; he passed from one state of nervousness to another. It was in vain I entreated him to exert his common sense, and call all his strength of mind to his assistance. I might as well have spoken to the wind. He implored me not to leave him, and I agreed to remain. Indeed, to leave him in his then frame of mind would have been an act of the greatest cruelty. He wanted me also to preach in his place on the Sunday following; but this I flatly refused.

“If you do not make an effort now,” I said, “you will never make it. Rouse yourself; get on with your sermon, and if you buckle down to work you will soon forget all about that foolish dream.”

Well, to cut a long story short, the sermon was somehow composed and Sunday came, and my friend, a little better and getting over his fret, walked up into the pulpit to preach. He looked dreadfully ill; but I thought the worst was over now and that he would go on mending.

Vain hope! He gave out the text and then looked over the congregation—and the first person on whom his eyes lighted was Sandy the Tinker. Sandy, who had never before been known to enter a place of worship of any sort; Sandy, whom he had mentally chosen as his substitute, and who was due on the following Wednesday—sitting just below him, quite sober, and comparatively clean, waiting with a great show of attention for the opening words of the sermon.

With a terrible cry, my friend caught the front of the pulpit, then swayed back and fell down in a fainting fit. He was carried home and a doctor sent for. I said a few words, addressed apparently to the congregation, but really to Sandy, for my heart somehow came into my mouth at the sight of him. And then, after I had dismissed the people, I paced slowly back to the manse, almost afraid of what might meet me.

Mr. Crawley was not dead; but he was in the most dreadful state of physical exhaustion and mental agitation. It was dreadful to hear him. How could he go himself? How could he send Sandy?—poor old Sandy whose soul, in the sight of God, was just as precious as his own.

His whole cry was for us to deliver him from the Evil One; to save him from committing a sin which would render him a wretched man for life. He counted the hours and the minutes before he must return to that horrible place.

“I can’t send Sandy,” he would moan. “I cannot. Oh, I cannot save myself at such a price!”

And then he would cover his face with the bedclothes, only to start up and wildly entreat me not to leave him; to stand between the enemy and himself, to save him, or, if that were impossible, to give him the courage to do what was right.

“If this continues,” said the doctor, “Wednesday will find him either dead or a raving lunatic.”

We talked the matter over, the doctor and I, as we walked to and fro in the meadow behind the manse; and we decided, having to make our choice of two evils, to risk giving him such an opiate as should carry him over the dreaded interval. We knew it was a perilous thing to do even with one in his condition, but, as I said before, we could only take the lesser of two evils.

What we dreaded most was his awaking before the time expired, so I kept watch beside him. He lay like one dead through the whole of Tuesday night and Wednesday, and Wednesday evening. Eight, nine, ten, eleven o’clock came and passed—then twelve. “God be thanked!” I said, as I stooped over him and heard he was breathing quietly.

“He will do now, I hope,” said the doctor, who had come in just before midnight, “You will stay with him till he wakes?”

I promised that I would, and in the beautiful dawn of a summer’s morning he opened his eyes and smiled. He had no recollection then of what had occurred; he was as weak as an infant and when I bade him try to go to sleep again, turned on his pillow and sank to rest once more.

Worn out with watching, I stepped softly from the room and passed into the fresh, sweet air. I strolled down to the garden-gate, and stood looking at the great mountains and the fair country, and the Deldy wandering like a silver thread through the green fields below.

All at once my attention was attracted by a group of people coming slowly along the road leading from the hills. I could not at first see that in their midst something was being borne on men’s shoulders; but when at last I made this out, I hurried to meet them and learn what was the matter.

“Has there been an accident?” I asked, as I drew near.

They stopped and one man came towards me.

“Aye,” he said, “the warst accident that could befa’ him, puir fella. He’s deid.”

“Who is it?” I asked, pressing forward; and lifting the cloth they had flung over his face, I saw Sandy the Tinker!

“He had been coming home, I tak ’t,” remarked one who stood by, “puir Sandy, and gaed over the cliff afore he could save himself. We found him just on this side of the Witches’ Caldron, where there’s a bonny strip of green turf, and his cuddy was feeding on the hilltop with the bit cart behind her.”

•    •    •    •

There was silence for a minute—then one of the ladies said softly, “Poor Sandy.”

“And what became of Mr. Crawley?” asked the other.

“He gave up his parish and went abroad as a missionary. He is still living.”

“What a most extraordinary story!” I remarked.

“Yes, I think so,” said the minister. “If you like to go round by Deldy tomorrow, my son, who now occupies the manse, would show you the scene of the occurrence.”

The next day we all stood looking at the frowning cliff and at the Deldy, swollen by recent rains, rushing on its way.

The youngest of the party went up to the rock and knocked upon it loudly with his cane.

“Oh, don’t do that, pray!” cried both the ladies nervously—the spirit of the weird story still brooded over us.

“What do you think of the coincidence, Jack?” I inquired of my friend, as we talked apart from the others.

“Ask me when we get back to Fleet Street,” he answered.

The Last of
Squire Ennismore

(1888)

Did I see it myself? No, sir; I did not see it; and my father before me did not see it; nor his father before him, and he was Phil Regan, just the same as myself. But it is true, for all that; just as true as that you are looking at the very place where the whole thing happened. My great-grandfather (and he did not die till he was ninety-eight) used to tell, many and many’s the time, how he met the stranger, night after night, walking lonesome-like about the sands where most of the wreckage came ashore.”

“And the old house, then, stood behind that belt of Scotch firs?”

“Yes; and a fine house it was, too. Hearing so much talk about it when a boy, my father said, made him often feel as if he knew every room in the building, though it had all fallen to ruin before he was born. None of the family ever lived in it after the squire went away. Nobody else could be got to stop in the place. There used to be awful noises, as if something was being pitched from the top of the great staircase down in to the hall; and then there would be a sound as if a hundred people were clinking glasses and talking all together at once. And then it seemed as if barrels were rolling in the cellars; and there would be screeches, and howls, and laughing, fit to make your blood run cold. They say there is gold hid away in the cellars; but not one has ever ventured to find it. The very children won’t come here to play; and when the men are ploughing the field behind, nothing will make them stay in it, once the day begins to change. When the night is coming on, and the tide creeps in on the sand, more than one thinks he has seen mighty queer things on the shore.”

“But what is it really they think they see? When I asked my landlord to tell me the story from beginning to end, he said he could not remember it; and, at any rate, the whole rigmarole was nonsense, put together to please strangers.”

“And what is he but a stranger himself? And how should he know the doings of real quality like the Ennismores? For they were gentry, every one of them—good old stock; and as for wickedness, you might have searched Ireland through and not found their match. It is a sure thing, though, that if Riley can’t tell you the story, I can; for, as I said, my own people were in it, of a manner of speaking. So, if your honour will rest yourself off your feet, on that bit of a bank, I’ll set down my creel and give you the whole pedigree of how Squire Ennismore went away from Ardwinsagh.”

It was a lovely day, in the early part of June; and, as the Englishman cast himself on a low ridge of sand, he looked over Ardwinsagh Bay with a feeling of ineffable content. To his left lay the Purple Headland; to his right, a long range of breakers, that went straight out into the Atlantic till they were lost from sight; in front lay the Bay of Ardwinsagh, with its bluish-green water sparkling in the summer sunlight, and here and there breaking over some sunken rock, against which the waves spent themselves in foam.

“You see how the current’s set, Sir? That is what makes it dangerous for them as doesn’t know the coast, to bathe here at any time, or walk when the tide is flowing. Look how the sea is creeping in now, like a race-horse at the finish. It leaves that tongue of sand bars to the last, and then, before you could look round, it has you up to the middle. That is why I made bold to speak to you; for it is not alone on the account of Squire Ennismore the bay has a bad name. But it is about him and the old house you want to hear. The last mortal being that tried to live in it, my great-grandfather said, was a creature, by name Molly Leary; and she had neither kith nor kin, and begged for her bite and sup, sheltering herself at night in a turf cabin she had built at the back of a ditch. You may be sure she thought herself a made woman when the agent said, ‘Yes: she might try if she could stop in the house; there was peat and bog-wood,’ he told her, ‘and half-a-crown a week for the winter, and a golden guinea once Easter came,’ when the house was to be put in order for the family; and his wife gave Molly some warm clothes and a blanket or two; and she was well set up.

“You may be sure she didn’t choose the worst room to sleep in; and for a while all went quiet, till one night she was wakened by feeling the bedstead lifted by the four corners and shaken like a carpet. It was a heavy four-post bedstead, with a solid top: and her life seemed to go out of her with the fear. If it had been a ship in a storm off the Headland, it couldn’t have pitched worse and then, all of a sudden, it was dropped with such a bang as nearly drove the heart into her mouth.

“But that, she said, was nothing to the screaming and laughing, and hustling and rushing that filled the house. If a hundred people had been running hard along the passages and tumbling downstairs, they could not have made greater noise.

“Molly never was able to tell how she got clear of the place; but a man coming late home from Ballycloyne Fair found the creature crouched under the old thorn there, with very little on her—saving your honour’s presence. She had a bad fever, and talked about strange things, and never was the same woman after.”

“But what was the beginning of all this? When did the house first get the name of being haunted?”

“After the old Squire went away: that was what I purposed telling you. He did not come here to live regularly till he had got well on in years. He was near seventy at the time I am talking about; but he held himself as upright as ever, and rode as hard as the youngest; and could have drunk a whole roomful under the table, and walked up to bed as unconcerned as you please at the dead of the night.

“He was a terrible man. You couldn’t lay your tongue to a wickedness he had not been in the forefront of—drinking, duelling, gambling,—all manner of sins had been meat and drink to him since he was a boy almost. But at last he did something in London so bad, so beyond the beyonds, that he thought he had best come home and live among people who did not know so much about his goings on as the English. It was said that he wanted to try and stay in this world forever; and that he had got some secret drops that kept him well and hearty. There was something wonderful queer about him, anyhow.

“He could hold foot with the youngest; and he was strong, and had a fine fresh colour in his face; and his eyes were like a hawk’s; and there was not a break in his voice—and him near upon threescore and ten!

“At last and at long last it came to be the March before he was seventy—the worst March ever known in all these parts—such blowing, sheeting, snowing, had not been experienced in the memory of man; when one blusterous night some foreign vessel went to bits on the Purple Headland. They say it was an awful sound to hear the deathery that went up high above the noise of the wind; and it was as bad a sight to see the shore there strewed with corpses of all sorts and sizes, from the little cabin-boy to the grizzled seaman.

“They never knew who they were or where they came from, but some of the men had crosses, and beads, and such like, so the priest said they belonged to him, and they were all buried deeply and decently in the chapel graveyard.

“There was not much wreckage of value drifted on shore. Most of what is lost about the Head stays there; but one thing did come into the bay—a puncheon of brandy.

“The Squire claimed it; it was his right to have all that came on his land, and he owned this sea-shore from the Head to the breakers—every foot—so, in course, he had the brandy; and there was sore ill will because he gave his men nothing, not even a glass of whiskey.

“Well, to make a long story short, that was the most wonderful liquor anybody ever tasted. The gentry came from far and near to take share, and it was cards and dice, and drinking and story-telling night after night—week in, week out. Even on Sundays, God forgive them! The officers would drive over from Ballycloyne, and sit emptying tumbler after tumbler till Monday morning came, for it made beautiful punch.

“But all at once people quit coming—a word went round that the liquor was not all it ought to be. Nobody could say what ailed it, but it got about that in some way men found it did not suit them.

“For one thing, they were losing money very fast.

“They could not make head against the Squire’s luck, and a hint was dropped the puncheon ought to have been towed out to sea, and sunk in fifty fathoms of water.

“It was getting to the end of April, and fine, warm weather for the time of year, when first one and then another, and then another still, began to take notice of a stranger who walked the shore alone at night. He was a dark man, the same colour as the drowned crew lying in the chapel graveyard, and had rings in his ears, and wore a strange kind of hat, and cut wonderful antics as he walked, and had an ambling sort of gait, curious to look at. Many tried to talk to him, but he only shook his head; so, as nobody could make out where he came from or what he wanted, they made sure he was the spirit of some poor wretch who was tossing about the Head, longing for a snug corner in holy ground.

“The priest went and tried to get some sense out of him.

“‘Is it Christian burial you’re wanting?’ asked his reverence; but the creature only shook his head.

“‘Is it word sent to the wives and daughters you’ve left orphans and widows, you’d like?’ But no; it wasn’t that.

“‘Is it for sin committed you’re doomed to walk this way? Would masses comfort ye? There’s a heathen,’ said his reverence; ‘Did you ever hear tell of a Christian that shook his head when masses were mentioned?’

“‘Perhaps he doesn’t understand English, Father,’ says one of the officers who was there; ‘Try him with Latin.’

“No sooner said than done. The priest started off with such a string of aves and paters that the stranger fairly took to his heels and ran.

“‘He is an evil spirit,’ explained the priest, when he stopped, tired out, ‘and I have exorcised him.’

“But next night my gentleman was back again, as unconcerned as ever.

‘And he’ll just have to stay,’ said his reverence, ‘For I’ve got lumbago in the small of my back, and pains in all my joints—never to speak of a hoarseness with standing there shouting; and I don’t believe he understood a sentence I said.’

“Well, this went on for a while, and people got that frightened of the man, or appearance of a man, they would not go near the sand; till in the end, Squire Ennismore, who had always scoffed at the talk, took it into his head he would go down one night, and see into the rights of the matter. He, maybe, was feeling lonesome, because, as I told your honour before, people had left off coming to the house, and there was nobody for him to drink with.

“Out he goes, then, bold as brass; and there were a few followed him. The man came forward at sight of the Squire and took off his hat with a foreign flourish. Not to be behind in civility, the Squire lifted his.

“‘I have come, sir,’ he said, speaking very loud, to try to make him understand, ‘to know if you are looking for anything, and whether I can assist you to find it.’

“The man looked at the Squire as if he had taken the greatest liking to him, and took off his hat again.

“‘Is it the vessel that was wrecked you are distressed about?’

“There came no answer, only a mournful shake of the head.

“‘Well, I haven’t your ship, you know; it went all to bits months ago; and, as for the sailors, they are snug and sound enough in consecrated ground.’

“The man stood and looked at the Squire with a queer sort of smile on his face.

“‘What do you want?’ asked Mr. Ennismore in a bit of a passion. ‘If anything belonging to you went down with the vessel, it’s about the Head you ought to be looking for it, not here—unless, indeed, its after the brandy you’re fretting!’

“Now, the Squire had tried him in English and French, and was now speaking a language you’d have thought nobody could understand; but, faith, it seemed natural as kissing to the stranger.

“‘Oh! That’s where you are from, is it?’ said the Squire. ‘Why couldn’t you have told me so at once? I can’t give you the brandy, because it mostly is drunk; but come along, and you shall have as stiff a glass of punch as ever crossed your lips.’ And without more to-do off they went, as sociable as you please, jabbering together in some outlandish tongue that made moderate folks’ jaws ache to hear it.

“That was the first night they conversed together, but it wasn’t the last. The stranger must have been the height of good company, for the Squire never tired of him. Every evening, regularly, he came up to the house, always dressed the same, always smiling and polite, and then the Squire called for brandy and hot water, and they drank and played cards till cock-crow, talking and laughing into the small hours.

“This went on for weeks and weeks, nobody knowing where the man came from, or where he went; only two things the old housekeeper did know—that the puncheon was nearly empty, and that the Squire’s flesh was wasting off him; and she felt so uneasy she went to the priest, but he could give her no manner of comfort.

“She got so concerned at last that she felt bound to listen at the dining-room door; but they always talked in that foreign gibberish, and whether it was blessing or cursing they were at she couldn’t tell.

“Well, the upshot of it came one night in July—on the eve of the Squire’s birthday—there wasn’t a drop of spirit left in the puncheon—no, not as much as would drown a fly. They had drunk the whole lot clean up—and the old woman stood trembling, expecting every minute to hear the bell ring for more brandy, for where was she to get more if they wanted any?

“All at once the Squire and the stranger came out into the hall. It was a full moon, and light as day.

“‘I’ll go home with you tonight by way of a change,’ says the Squire.

“‘Will you so?’ asked the other.

“‘That I will,’ answered the Squire.

“‘It is your own choice, you know.’

“‘Yes; it is my own choice; let us go.’

“So they went. And the housekeeper ran up to the window on the great staircase and watched the way they took. Her niece lived there as housemaid, and she came and watched, too; and, after a while, the butler as well. They all turned their faces this way, and looked after their master walking beside the strange man along these very sands. Well, they saw them walk on, and on, and on, and on, till the water took them to their knees, and then to their waists, and then to their arm-pits, and then to their throats and their heads; but long before that the women and the butler were running out on the shore as fast as they could, shouting for help.”

“Well?” said the Englishman.

“Living or dead, Squire Ennismore never came back again. Next morning, when the tides ebbed again, one walking over the sand saw the print of a cloven foot—that he tracked to the water’s edge. Then everybody knew where the Squire had gone, and with whom.”

“And no more search was made?”

“Where would have been the use searching?”

“Not much, I suppose. It’s a strange story, anyhow.”

“But true, your honour—every word of it.”

“Oh! I have no doubt of that,” was the satisfactory reply.

Conn Kilrea

(1899)

I

Ever since morning, when the early post brought him a letter, Private Conway Kilray had been in low spirits; not by any means an unusual occurrence, for no man of his regiment could remember ever seeing him in good, but on the evening of the 14th December, 1892, he seemed to have sounded even a lower depth of depression than that wherein he usually dwelt.

He was young—not eight and twenty—fairly good looking, healthy, in full enjoyment of such faculties, bodily and mental, as God gives to most men, and yet possessed by a demon of melancholy, discontent, or unavailing repentance, that made him a mystery to his comrades and the dullest companion possible.

All the men among whom his lot was cast had tried to pierce the mail of his reserve, and retired worsted, feeling as though they had struck against something tougher than chain armour.

They could not make him out; he was always willing to help, always ready to do a good turn, always civil and quiet spoken, but always also grievously depressed, weighed down by some sin or wrong or trouble which lay heavy at his heart.

When, on the evening of that 14th of December, he entered the barrack library at Weyport, the gloom of his expression so awed the few soldiers present that no one spoke while he passed to a desk, followed by a wiry Scotch terrier, who, being indeed nobody’s dog, but only a poor stray, had conceived a fancy for the silent, lonely man.

Private Kilray seemed to have brought a blight into the room with him, which hushed the light chatter of those who were playing cards, and caused others who had selected reading as an amusing way of killing time, to glance constantly at the man who sat writing, cloaked with some strange gloom they could not understand, while the dog lay at his feet silent and self-contained also.

A few of those present winked at each other, or shook their heads gravely, but neither action was of any real import, for they knew nothing of what had put one life out of joint, whether murder, burglary, highway robbery, or forgery.

Some who had once been privileged to see Kilray in a passion held that the first-named crime had driven him into the army, but the most general belief, founded perhaps on his bold and dashing calligraphy, was that signing a name not his own would eventually be found sufficient to account for much that puzzled them.

“Depend upon it, he took to gambling, and then used his pen once too often,” said the oracle of “The Light Bays,” when Kilray first joined. “He is Irish, yet he enlisted in England, as if there were not always regiments enough stationed in his own country, any one of which might have served his turn. No; we’ll hear more about him after a while, and then the whole thing will be plain as a pikestaff.”

At the end of eighteen months, however, things were as dark as at first. No inquiries had been made for Conway Kilray. No friend or foe had asked whether he were living or dead. A few letters arrived, which he answered and posted himself. When first he came among the Light Bays a report soon got about that he knew more concerning horses than the riding-master himself, who was asserted to have said he had nothing to teach the young recruit except how to trot.

Private Kilray had found that piece of learning difficult exceedingly, as most good riders do, but he set his teeth and curbed his temper, and ere very long could trot with the best. For the rest he groomed a horse excellently well; no one found any fault with him, no one said a word against him, but yet he was not popular. He walked a living enigma among his fellows, never making merry, never laughing nor joking, never taking part in any buffoonery nor more sober enjoyment. He was sufficient unto himself, which it may here be said is a peculiarity society—any society, whether high or low—cannot forgive, and naturally, since it is unpleasant to be continually getting figurative slaps in the face in return for well-meant civility.

On the evening when this story opens, Private Kilray had not advanced at all in the favour of his comrades, rather the reverse, as he had chosen to keep himself to himself. They, after some attempts at friendliness, held aloof, and looked at him as he sat at his desk with a certain amount of curiosity and dislike.

Never heeding them, he wrote on, filling sheet after sheet, which he blotted off hastily, folded without once glancing over, and placed in a directed and stamped envelope. Then he pushed the letter from him, and, resting his elbow on the desk, leaned his head upon his hand as though tired.

He sat so long thus that a man who was reading close by suspended his occupation in order to watch him. While he was doing so he became aware of a singular change in Kilray’s manner. At first while engaged in thinking out some evidently unpleasant subject he kept his eyes dreamily fixed on a corner of the room near at hand which lay in shadow.

After a time, however, he lifted his head and peered into the darkness, as though he saw something he could not quite understand. Involuntarily the man who was watching turned to see what his comrade was looking at, but failed to discern any object.

He had withdrawn his attention only for a moment, yet when he glanced again at Kilray he perceived his attitude was totally changed. Both his hands firmly clenched were on the desk, he was sitting bolt upright, his eyes, filled with an expression of incredulous horror, were fixed on something he perceived looming out of the darkness.

He was white as death—he who was never known to fear—and a sort of grey shade came over his face, as with a shudder he rose and tried to pull himself together.

Then, for the first time, the other noticed that Kilray’s terrier was looking into the corner also, every hair on his body standing more upright than ever.

“Hullo! have you seen a ghost, old man?” asked a new-comer who had just lounged up to the little group.

Startled by the question, Kilray turned swiftly round as if to resent it. Instantly recollecting himself, however, he laconically answered “yes,” picked up his letter, and strode out into the night, followed by his dog.

II

Instinctively choosing the least frequented road, Private Kilray, feeling like one in a nightmare, walked on till he reached the seashore, and heard the waves washing in over a sandy beach.

It was a dark night—lit not by moon or star—but none too dark for a man, whose whole mind was filled by thoughts of eternity, to wrestle with the terror of that awful warning which had so lately, as he believed, been delivered to him.

Before he began to write he would have told anyone, and according to his then belief, truly, that he felt his life not worth living, that there was little pleasant in the past to look back upon, and nothing hopeful in the future to look forward to; but now, when it seemed his time was come, he could have prayed for more years to be given unto him—years, whether joyful or sorrowful, that he might live and not go to the grave while it was yet noon.

The love of life is a thanksgiving to God. Which amongst us, having some jewel of price received from some earthly friend, decries its value! If we met with such an ingrate, we should write him down accordingly, and what must we say of the man who fails in his heart of hearts to praise God for placing him in a land overflowing with beauty, rich with colour, fragrant with perfume And why? Because he has to work for his day’s wage of things good and fair and sweet; he is discontented because he wants to choose his wage rather than accept that his Maker bestows!

Standing by the seashore, with the night wind fanning his face, with the waves’ sobbing music sounding in his ears, with heaven’s canopy above him and the dear earth beneath his feet, some dim understanding came to Private Kilray that he had been a very churl—that he had not made the best of life; that like a child in a temper he had refused to smile when Nature was putting out her loveliest playthings for his delight, and turned his back on man’s more clumsy efforts to please and befriend him.

Ah, if he could only have seen sooner—if sight had not come so late! And then and there he bared his soul before God, and talked with the Almighty as he might aforetime have talked with man.

He had thought in the first bitterness of his anguish, he, who was done with life, to tear his letter to bits, and cast it to the winds; but his heart failed him now. That letter lay close to his bosom, close and warm like some throbbing human heart, and he could not fling it to the mercy of the elements as a thing of no account.

It is a sore trial to have to die, but it is a worse trial to die hard, with an angry and rebellious spirit, with a hand which refuses to take its loving Lord’s as guide through the awful darkness of that valley which, willing or unwilling, our feet must tread.

Through the darkness the truth of this came home to one who felt himself standing on the very border of that unseen land whither he was journeying.

“Dear God,” he cried in his agony, where there was no one save God to hear, where the night winds alone stirred, and only the sea-birds and the waves broke the stillness, “dear God, forgive my sins, and grant me courage when Thy appointed time comes, to give my soul back into Thy holy keeping, bravely and without fear, for Christ’s sake—Amen.” And he fell down beside a piece of rock, and covered his face, even though it was night, and dark, and arose comforted!

After a while, hearing some clock strike, he retraced his steps to the barracks, posting that letter by the way. His comrades, who were all acquainted with the fact that Kilray had actually seen a ghost, presumably of someone whose death he would ere long have to answer for, spoke to him with a strange reserve, which did not affect the young man at all.

He knew what they did not know. He was attended to the barrack-room by a face never seen since early childhood, which he had quite forgotten till it looked solemnly at him from out of the darkness of that unlighted corner.

The ghastly inheritance of an old family hovered over his bed, and caused foreboding dreams the while he slept uneasily, surrounded by the careless, the indifferent, the sorrowful, the struggling, the bad and the good till getting-up time came, and awoke with its noisy bustling, memories he would have fain forgotten for a little longer.

It was afternoon before he could snatch a minute in which to write another letter as short as the first had been long.

Dearest Kathleen (he said),

I have bad news for you, love; and yet, perhaps, it is the best I could have to tell you, because it points to the cutting of many a difficulty—to the ending of all anxiety.

I have seen Lord Yiewsley. You know what that means, so I need add no more. I will meet you when and where you appoint to say good-bye. Do not grieve, dear. Fate has settled matters better for us than we could have done for ourselves. God bless you, my faithful darling.

Ever in this world and in the next,
your devoted lover,

Conn.

If I wrote a word yesterday that caused you annoyance, forgive me. I hadn’t seen him then, though the envelope was scarcely closed before he appeared. I thought at one time of tearing up the sheets, but could not—my last love-letter! Oh, sweet! pardon all the pain I have given you—I, who would have died to save you sorrow.

As the day wore on, as the twilight faded and merged into the gloom of evening, the restlessness which had, nearly twenty-four hours previously, driven him out through the night to the sad sea-shore, returned with greater intensity. He could not sit still. He felt like one who, having received sudden marching orders, wants to utilize every moment of the brief time left at his command; who tries to pack, to purchase, to make arrangements, to go and bid farewell, to be at home when someone dear calls, to clasp hands in a parting that may be eternal, to read letters, to write them, to make his will, to speak the tender words which always sound so inadequate. He felt all this; and over and above and beyond he longed for the touch of humanity, to hear the sound of a mortal voice bringing his trouble within the range of possibility. Death and dying in a natural way would have been bad enough, but to have to depart, he knew not how, at the beckoning of a ghostly finger, at the wordless bidding of one from out the world of spirits, added a new horror to the gruesome mandate. He must speak or he should go mad. So, as a sort of forlorn hope, he betook him to the chaplain, though, indeed, he knew rather less of that reverend gentleman than he did of his commanding officer.

At that moment, however, he was not thinking much of incongruities of rank or inequalities of station. He felt only intent on getting a straight-forward answer to a question which was troubling him; therefore, when once he found himself in the clergyman’s presence, and taken a chair, having been politely bidden to sit, he said—

“I am distressed in mind, sir; so I thought I would come round to you.”

“It is my earnest desire that all who are distressed in mind or uneasy in conscience should bring their perplexities and burdensome sins to me, that I may tell them where to find relief,” was the answer.

“You are very kind;” and the pair looked at each other.

“Not at all; I am only doing my duty,” said the chaplain, graciously, though he did not quite like or understand his visitor.

If it be true that there is no bar to human progress like a theory, it is equally true that a foregone conclusion destroys human usefulness.

Mr. Pellock had accepted the charge of military souls without the faintest idea of what those souls were like All he felt sure about was that they were wrong in the lump, and he dealt with them accordingly. They were given to drunkenness, brawling, folly, and many other sins—that is, whole regiments, excepting here and there a picked saint, a brand plucked from the burning, who believed in Mr. Pellock, in his sermons, his ministrations, his exhortations, his rebukes. If ever there was a square peg fitted painfully into a round hole that peg was the Reverend Carus Pellock. Of the British soldier, save as a good fighting creature, he had not the smallest opinion. He said sadly that he knew poor Tommy Atkins too well, but there were officers, old and young, who inclined to the belief he knew him too little. However this might be, Mr. Pellock did not think much either of the raw recruit or the finished warrior.

“A soldier disheartened him,” he was wont to declare in moments of sadness, when the result of all his efforts seemed about as satisfactory as making ropes from sea-sand. That he might be saved seemed to Mr. Pellock possible, but only through a miracle. Nevertheless, the chaplain tried hard to do his duty, preached at, and to, and over the heads of his people, and was always courteous in a highly dignified sort of way.

He did not like anyone presuming on his affability though, and doubted whether Private Kilray had a proper appreciation of the gulf which yawned between a simple unit in her Majesty’s famous regiment, The Light Bays, and the man who had been good enough to undertake the charge of all The Light Bays’ souls.

For this reason he answered “not at all,” politely, yet with a certain frigid restraint, which failed to produce the desired effect.

“You remember, sir, perhaps, preaching a sermon about angels some little time since.”

Remember! as if the Rev. Carus Pellock ever forgot the matter of his sermons. “Really,” he thought, “this is very remarkable—very gratifying to find one of the rank and file so appreciative! But he is Irish evidently from his accent, and the Irish are more open to impressions than the English. I must know more of this poor fellow,” all of which pleasant music Mr. Pellock played to himself the while he answered—

“You are quite right. I rejoice to find you were so attentive.”

“In that sermon you said the angels were always with us.”

“Just so, just so,” purred the chaplain, feeling like a cat whose back is being stroked gently.

“And I suppose you believed what you said?”

Here was a question to be put to a clergyman wont to talk about angels and archangels familiarly, as though he had been brought up amongst them!

“I should certainly not preach anything I did not believe implicitly,” he answered in such a crushing tone that his visitor, humbly apologetic, replied—

“No, sir, I feel certain of that; but it is hard to understand. That was all I meant, I assure you; I intended no offence.”

“It is very odd,” thought the chaplain, appeased, “but this private speaks almost like a gentleman.” Then he said aloud—

“Many things in which we believe most firmly are difficult to understand.”

“No one knows that better than I,” was the answer so sadly spoken Mr. Pellock felt constrained to reply—

“Only tell me your doubts, and I will try to help you to overcome them.”

“I don’t doubt; I only wish I could,” was the unexpected rejoinder. “You preached another sermon, sir, on All Saints’ Eve,” continued Private Kilray, before the clergyman could interpose. “I remember it particularly, because in certain districts in Ireland All Saints’ Eve is kept with religious observance.”

“Very proper, very proper indeed,” said Mr. Pellock, who had not the faintest idea what the observance was, and felt more convinced than ever the Irish must be a charming people to work among.

“And if I did not greatly misunderstand,” went on Private Kilray, as though he had not heard the chaplain’s approving remark, “you are of opinion it is not possible for departed spirits to return to earth.”

“I do not imagine I said impossible—only that such reappearances have never taken place,” answered the chaplain, immensely interested—so greatly interested that he scarcely noticed the wording of Private Kilray’s criticism.

“Never taken place!” repeated that person; “think a moment—only think.”

Mr. Pellock did not need to think, and recovered his mistake by a clever flank movement. “Nearly two thousand years have elapsed,” he said reverently, “since the Divine reappearance, to which, no doubt, you allude. It was miraculous, and we have no right to quote it as a precedent. What I spoke against, and always shall consider my duty to speak against, are the legendary stories inspired by superstitious fear, and the wicked and pernicious falsehoods continually poured forth from the press, more especially at Christmas—Christmas of all times!”

“But if those legends and what you call falsehoods are true, or at least have a substratum of truth? Dead men did appear to living men once—take the case of Samuel, for instance—why should they not do so now?”

“Idle inquiries are always profitless,” was the reply. “Surely it is enough for us to know, that though all things are possible, as a matter of fact the dead do not now return. Tell me the sin or sorrow that is troubling you, and I will do my best to advise and console, but I must decline to discuss abstract questions.”

“Then, if I were to tell you that no later than last night I saw one risen from the dead, what should you say?”

“I should say you need either a confessor or a doctor.”

“In other words, that I am either criminal or mad; but you mistake, sir; the man whom I saw was done to death more than a hundred years before I came into the world, and during the whole of that time he has appeared to every member of my family previous to his or her decease. He came to me because I have been thankless and foolish, and did not value the gift: of life; and now I want to live—I want to live!”

“You want a doctor, your hands twitch, your cheeks are flushed, your lips parched—you are in an overwrought and highly nervous condition. Go to a doctor, and repeat to him what you have told me. He will know how to deal with your complaint. You ought to see him soon, so I won’t keep you longer now, but I should like on a future day to have some more talk with you.”

Hearing this broad hint, Private Kilray rose at once and said, in his best soldier manner—

“I thank you, sir, for your kindness; good-night.” Then, after saluting, he went out. “Clear case of mania,” thought Mr. Pellock. “Religious mania!—worst form of all. An interesting case.” After which, the conversation having suggested an idea to him, he turned to his desk and wrote—

“On the fleshy walls of our earthly tenements a mysterious hand is always writing the solemn warning, ‘This night thy soul shall be required of thee. Let us take heed that we do not neglect it,” with which burst of eloquence he concluded a sermon on the following Sunday—a sermon no single person present understood, for Private Kilray, who might have hazarded a wide conjecture as to its meaning, was not amongst the audience.

III

No. Private Kilray, doubtless to his great disadvantage, did not hear Mr. Pellock’s famous sermon on the text, “Now, the king’s countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him,” which was long remembered among the “Light Bays” by reason of its utter irrelevance to any subject likely to touch or interest that gallant corps.

He was gone on leave. After his interview with the chaplain, he did not seek medical advice; rather, when the proper time came, went to bed feeling sorely depressed, not merely on account of the many things he had from boyhood left undone which he ought to have done, and the many more things he had done which he ought not to have done, but also by reason of the utter impossibility he had always experienced of getting anyone to understand him—except Kathleen.

She was the one sweet exception in a bitter world, and he lay awake a long time, wondering whether there could be anywhere on earth so brave, so patient, so wise, so dear a girl as Kathleen Mawson, once in her little way an heiress, now a homeless orphan, companion to Mrs. Fitz Donnell, widow of Admiral Burke Fitz Donnell, who wrote his name large on the naval history of England? Yes, she was living with that lady in Lowndes Square, and had told him no further back than the previous morning that Mrs. FitzDonnell would not let a private soldier inside her door, not even if that private were her own son. On reading which statement, Private Kilray waxed exceeding wroth, and, not waiting to consider whether there might not be some faint rhyme or reason, or sense, or expediency or anything save prejudice in the amiable old lady’s objection to receive such a visitor, delivered his soul of a passionate tirade against a state of society which had compelled him to accept her Majesty’s shilling, and Miss Mawson a salary.

This was the letter on which he had been engaged while Lord Yiewsley, dead and buried for a century and a half, or thereabouts, was stealing back from wherever he had gone to, in order that he might frighten one of his enemy’s descendants almost out of his wits.

In this amiable intention he succeeded, for Private Kilray, who would have gone into battle with a light heart, was quite demoralized by the sight of that apparition which came he knew not whence, and went he knew not where.

When quite a child, living with his mother on a lonely seashore, he had one night sprung up out of his sleep uttering fearful shrieks and earnest entreaties for his nurse “to take that man away,” which shrieks and entreaties were remembered when news arrived of his father’s death.

Gossips then shook their heads, and observed, “Aye, he has not forgotten; he’ll come, as he promised he would, till there is not one of the stock left to die,” which, indeed, had been his lordship’s threat. In local opinion this threat received remarkable confirmation from the fact that his enemy’s family went on steadily disappearing from the face of the earth. In the ordinary course of events they ought to have multiplied exceedingly, whereas there were now left of an old family but three men and two women.

For which reason it seemed likely Lord Yiewsley’s self-imposed task would soon be completed.

The morning’s post following his interview with Mr. Pellock might have brought an answer to Private Kilray’s letter full of love for Kathleen, and brimful of anger against everyone else, but it did not, and the unhappy young man felt glad to think his darling, having received that despairing second epistle, would not now write to chide him for his first, but despatch instead a tender missive breathing forgiveness, sorrow, pity—

As it is always the unexpected which happens, however, the letter—one of two which reached him in the afternoon—proved quite different from what he had expected.

You silly, silly Conn (began his fair), are you the only one of your name left? Is it because you consider yourself such a great personage that you imagine you must take precedence of the rest of your family If you did see Lord Yiewsley, which I do not for a moment believe, having, as you know, always considered that story on all fours with the mourning coach, the drummer boy, the ghostly funeral procession, the white bird, the wailing banshees, and other cheerful omens proudly claimed by various families, you may live to be ninety notwithstanding. Do try to put away such silly fancies, dear boy. No, I will not meet you anywhere to say good-bye, but I am going to Weyport to bid you hope very much.

I took courage today, and told Mrs. FitzDonnell our story, and what a foolish wrong-headed person my Conn is, prone to give way to little tempers, prone to spoiling his life because the moon won’t come down to him, but the most affectionate, generous, honourable darling living, for all that.

And she? Well, she said, “I should like to see this strange creature, so we will take train for Weyport one day before Christmas, and put up at ‘The Sussex,’ which I know well, and your Conn shall come to us there, and we must think what can be done for him, the poor hot-headed young fellow.” There, sir, is not that better than seeing a hundred Lord Yiewsleys? I feel wild with happiness, for Mrs. FitzDonnell would not even half promise anything she was not able to fulfil.

Ever yours,

Kathleen.

I do hope you will get this soon.

It was a well-meant, nice letter—Kathleen all over—affectionate, encouraging, sensible from beginning to end; but Private Kilray derived no comfort from it.

He knew that he had seen Lord Yiewsley, and though that defunct nobleman’s visits could not be considered agreeable, still, had they ceased, every member of the young soldier’s family would have felt as though some order had been taken from the Kilreas. People who have never owned a banshee, or a white bird, or a phantom drummer, or even a modest mouse, would probably fail to understand either the pride or the fear of possession, but the pride and the fear are both very strong for all that.

Had Miss Mawson been so fortunate as to be able to claim an ancestor who killed his man in the year 1640, she would have cherished his memory just as fondly as anybody else, and respected the family ghost his sin created very much indeed.

Still there was some truth in what she said. Though bad luck had pursued him through life, the summons might not have been specially meant for Private Kilray. His aunts now were getting on into years; one was nearly sixty; perhaps she would like to die; she always said she wished to do so; but, no, he would not think of such a thing; the lot had fallen on him, and he must meet his fate like a man.

While these thoughts and many more were passing through his mind, the second letter lay still unopened. It was disagreeably suggestive of a bill, and though Private Kilray was to die so soon—Lord Yiewsley’s shade never gave his victims longer than a fortnight—he did not care to open that business-like envelope, on which one postmark (Dublin) stood out with painful distinctiveness. Others—London, for instance—were but faintly stamped, while Dublin blackly pointed its accusing finger at a young man never backward in the former days about getting into debt.

How had any creditor discovered his whereabouts? and he turned the letter over gingerly.

If a man were going to the scaffold it would give him a shock to be presented with “my little bill, sir,” on the way. Humanity to its latest breath retains an insuperable objection to such ghastly reminders of happy times departed, and it was some little while before Private Kilray, taking his courage in his hand, tore open the well-gummed envelope, which he found to contain a letter, a memorandum, and a banker’s draft.

The memorandum said—

——— Street, Dublin,

15th December, 1892.

Dear Sir,

By request of Mrs. Kilrea, we beg to enclose draft at sight for ten pounds, and remain your obedient servants,

Kavanagh, Rutland & Co., Ltd.

There are few things capable of producing a more sudden transformation scene than a cheque or its equivalent. Who has not seen sunshine instantly take the place of shade on the receipt of a remittance; the life and joyousness of summer succeed to the cold dulness of winter when, after weeks of shortness, an empty purse is again relined with crisp bank notes? But as every rule has its exception, that ten-pound draft, which, after a fashion, was a fortune to one of her Majesty’s rank and file, caused, when he read the sealed letter which accompanied it, an expression of pained grief and anxiety to overspread his countenance.

Moyle Abbey, Moyle,

14th December, 1892.

My dear Grandson (so ran the epistle),

Directly you receive this I want you, if possible, to come over here. Your grandfather is very ill, and has asked for you, and I do hope will not have to ask long in vain. Perhaps he was too hasty; but remember, Conn, you were hasty also when you ought to have remembered he was an old man who had been very kind to you. How could you leave us for eighteen months without knowledge of your whereabouts? But for Kathleen Mawson I should not even now know where to address this letter. With it Messrs. Kavanagh will enclose ten pounds, as you may be without ready money. COME AT ONCE.

Your affectionate grandmother,

Mary Kilrea.

The young man hardly read this letter—rather his eyes galloped over it.

“My God! it is he then; the dear old man,” he muttered, as he glanced up at the clock. “I shall have time to do it if I get leave,” he thought; “and if I don’t get leave I will take it.”

Having swiftly decided which point, he rushed off in search of his No. 1, who, yielding to the urgency of his entreaties, forthwith accompanied him to his section officer, who in turn took him into the presence of a commanding officer named Captain Dace.

Now, Captain Dace was just going out, and, not feeling pleased at the detention, sharply refused Private Kilray’s request.

He felt that if he granted leave about Christmastime to every man whose father, or grandfather, or sisters, or uncles, or other relatives were ill, he would soon have no men left, and said so in remarkably terse and forcible language.

Everyone, however, knew that Captain Dace’s bark was worse than his bite, and the section officer therefore ventured to remind him that Private Kilray had never asked for leave before.

“Well, he has made up for it now; a whole fortnight, no less!”

“I mightn’t want so long,” said the applicant, in a hoarse whisper.

“Such perpetual applications really cannot be entertained,” returned Captain Dace, brusquely, though touched by something in the private’s tone. “If it had been your father, now”—relenting—“but a grandfather!”

“He was a father to me when my own died. If you would just glance over this letter, captain, perhaps—”

It was all said in little jerks by one evidently striving hard not to break down while the letter got into the officer’s hands, that gentleman himself scarcely knew how.

Much inclined to return it, he nevertheless looked at the written sheet, on the top of which was printed “Moyle Abbey.”

Why, he knew Moyle Abbey—at least, where it was. He had once been staying with a friend who lived a few miles from it—about eight—and what are eight miles in one of the wildest parts of Ireland, where gentlemen’s seats are few and far between, the roads perfect, the horses almost thoroughbred?

He had heard of Moyle Abbey, and the family that lived there, and thought of all this while he read, and the fashion of his face changed.

“Do you mean to say you are one of the Kilreas, of Moyle Abbey?”

“Yes,” answered the young man softly, as though confessing some sin.

“And enlisted under the name of Kilray”—with the accent well on the first syllable, whereas the accent in Kilrea was, the speaker knew, laid on the last.

“No, I gave my right name, ‘Conn Kilrea, but the sergeant thought he knew better how to spell and pronounce the word than I—that is all.”

“But how the—”

Captain Dace got no further in that sentence, and his private, though he was perfectly aware of the nature of the question left unfinished, made no reply.

“I suppose you are the heir?” were the next words spoken.

“No—Major Kilrea, of the Rushers,” a regiment so called because of the wild way in which officers and men had once charged and turned the fortunes of war when defeat seemed inevitable.

“The Rushers, eh?” commented Captain Dace. “Well”—looking at his watch—“you have just an hour before the express for London. You can catch the mail train to Holyhead. I hope you will find your grandfather better,” with which words the interview ended, and Private Kilray left his chief, accompanied by the section officer, who felt deeply convinced men may, and often do, even nowadays entertain angels unawares.

IV

As the Irish mail sped across England, Conn Kilrea thought concerning his past and future as he had never done before, even while the dread of death lay Sore upon him. His own death would have ended the business, written “Finis” to the uncompleted volume, once containing so many hopes, latterly only soiled and blotted by fears, but with the belief that the doom he had shrank from was transferred to another, something for which he could find no name began to struggle within him, and fight with his worse self for mastery.

Looking back, he knew he had been his own most bitter foe—that it was his indifference, his indolence, his love of pleasure, his uncontrolled jealousy, his bursts of passion, which gave a handle to his enemy, while grieving the hearts and wounding the pride of those who loved him best.

He had been given his chance, and neglected it, he bitterly confessed. He thought of his schoolboy days, when he would not learn; of his college career, when he only laughed at opportunity, casting each as it came aside for the sake of some rowdy party or foolish escapade. He had taken life as a jest, and feasted and made merry till the hour of reckoning came, when, solemnly convinced the world was all wrong, or at least Conn Kilrea the only right person in it, he cast himself adrift from old ties, and took refuge amongst those who were but as his father’s “hired servants.”

Then, instead of making the best of a bad business, as even in the ranks a man may, he had allowed a very demon of sullenness to gain possession of him, and repelled the well-meant, though rough attempt at kindness of those who would have tried to make his life better. Voluntarily he had thrown himself out of the rank in which he had been born, and then he resented the fact that people did not know by intuition he was a prince in disguise.

“A prince,” indeed! Nay, rather a humble dependent, who had not been grateful for the money spent, for the money given, for shelter, food, clothing; who had never earned a single penny till he enlisted in the “Light Bays.”

He saw it all at last. While the train swept through the night he recalled the story of his life from youth to manhood, and found it wanting.

“God helping me, I’ll try to mend my ways now,” he thought, “but it’s too late to please the dear old man—too late, too late!”

•    •    •    •

At the very time all this passed through Conn Kilrea’s mind, and he was inaudibly uttering his own heartfelt self-condemnation, another man, who had far more reason than his prodigal cousin to love the owner of Moyle Abbey, stood in a brilliant ballroom, waiting and watching for the arrival of one he believed was not indifferent to him.

At last she entered—his fair, his queen. The expectant lover’s pulse beat a little faster as he advanced to meet a portly lady, magnificently dressed, glittering with jewels, handsome, self-possessed, a thorough woman of society, and one well able to hold her own in it.

“Ah, Major Kilrea,” she said, “we did not expect to see you here tonight.”

“Why not?” he asked gallantly, in a tone addressed more to the daughter than the mother.

“Because I thought you would be in Ireland.”

“I go to Ireland by the early morning mail.”

“Oh!” she returned; and he knew instantly why her manner had changed.

“I was so grieved to hear of Mr. Kilrea’s illness,” Mrs. Gerard went on, after an almost imperceptible pause.

“Yes, but I trust it is not serious,” rejoined Mr. Kilrea’s grandson. “He has had similar attacks before.” And then Mrs. and Miss Gerard were swept away, and their friend the handsome major was left to his own reflections.

“Just my luck,” he thought, “my cursed luck.”

Quite an hour elapsed before Miss Gerard could give him the waltz she had promised a week previously.

“You do not blame me for coming here tonight,” he said tenderly, as they stopped for a moment.

“Oh no,” she returned with a cool ease, which showed she would at some future time be as good a society woman as her mother; “everyone must in such matters judge for himself.”

“You speak as though I ought to have gone.”—reproachfully.

“I should have gone, but, as I said this moment, no one can judge for another.”

The game was up. He felt he had lost her and her fortune as certainly as though a thousand tongues had proclaimed the fact.

“Are you rested? Shall we take another turn?” he asked, and it was not till they paused again that Major Kilrea inquired, “From whom did you hear of my grandfather’s illness?”

“From Admiral Gerard, who was saying also how sorry he had been to learn his old comrade’s son was in the Light Bays, and only a private. He thought something ought to be done for him.”

She spoke quite calmly and distinctly, as if talking about some common matter, but the officer felt there was a sting in every word.

“Conn is an odd fellow, and it is hard to know what to do for him. He has never written me a line since he enlisted.”

“Perhaps he expected a line from you,” she answered. “I hope you will have a good passage, and find Mr. Kilrea better,” she added, as another partner came forward. “Good-bye,” and so left him to consider the irony of fate.

•    •    •    •

This was what was going on a few miles out of London while the Irish express dashed through Wales. The wind had risen, and howled mournfully among the hills.

“Doesn’t omen well,” said one of Conn’s fellow-passengers, and the omen was fulfilled.

But after an awful passage the young man stepped ashore, hurried up to Dublin, and without stopping to eat or drink, crossed the city, and took train for Moyle.

A groom stood outside the station holding two horses. It was like a dream. Conn Kilray had not thought to come home thus or ever!

“How is my grandfather?” he asked the man.

“Very bad, sir; but he’ll be better for the sight of you!”

They rode on fast, and in less than an hour Conn was pressing the sick man’s hand, but could not speak because of tears which were choking him.

“I thought Leo would have been here by now,” said old Mr. Kilrea, feebly.

“I am sure he will come as soon as he can get away,” answered the young man, stinting his grief.

“Can that be Conn who spoke?” thought Mrs. Kilrea—Conn who for years had never uttered a word concerning his cousin without an accent of irritation.

Yes, it was Conn–Conn also who sat up with his grandfather, watched him as a mother might a child, raised him tenderly, and twenty-four hours later broke the news just received by telegram that the reason why Major Kilrea did not come was because he had met with an accident!

Before very long they were obliged to tell the old man that accident was death. He had been pitched from his dogcart while driving a friend home from the ball at Stanmore, and killed on the spot.

Said the friend before the coroner: “He drove so recklessly, I wonder I am alive to tell the tale. The horse bolted; we ran into a market van, were both shot out; Major Kilrea was dead when picked up.”

The catastrophe affected Mr. Kilrea less than might have been expected. He had heard something about his heir’s proceedings, which, perhaps, reconciled him to that heir’s premature death. Besides, he himself was old, and felt life very sweet.

“It was not for me then,” he muttered, “not for me; poor Leo,” and forthwith began to get better.

But Conn took his cousin’s fate greatly to heart, and won golden opinions by the humility with which he assumed his new honours, and his gentle forbearance and kindness to all with whom he came in contact.

“The Light Bays must be a gran’ corps for training a man,” said the old butler to the old cook at Moyle when the spring had come and flowers were blooming, “for it’s not Conn Kilrea they’ve sent back to us, but a saint. He has never rapped out an oath, nor knocked down a single one, nor run over man or woman, child or pig, since he came home! Instead of the biggest divil ever stepped, anybody might think he’d been brought up in a convent—among the holy nuns. Milk is strong compared with him, and if he only holds on as he’s doing he’ll be the best Kilrea ever owned Moyle Abbey, and there never was to say a bad one yet!”

From which it would seem that Lord Yiewsley’s visit had been productive of good, though neither Mrs. Kilrea senior nor junior will permit that nobleman’s name to be mentioned in the house.

A Terrible Vengeance

(1889)

I
VERY STRANGE

Round Dockett Point and over Dumsey Deep the water-lilies were blooming as luxuriantly as though the silver Thames had been the blue Mummel Lake.

It was the time for them. The hawthorn had long ceased to scent the air; the wild roses had shed their delicate leaves; the buttercups and cardamoms and dog-daisies that had dotted the meadows were garnered into hay. The world in early August needed a fresh and special beauty, and here it was floating in its matchless green bark on the bosom of the waters.

If those fair flowers, like their German sisters, ever at nightfall, assumed mortal form, who was there to tell of such vagaries? Even when the moon is at her full there are few who care to cross Chertsey Mead, or face the lonely Stabbery.

Hard would it be, indeed, so near life, railways, civilization, and London, to find a more lonely stretch of country, when twilight visits the landscape and darkness comes brooding down over the Surrey and Middlesex shores, than the path which winds along the river from Shepperton Lock to Chertsey Bridge. At high noon for months together it is desolate beyond description—silent, save for the rippling and sobbing of the currents, the wash of the stream, the swaying of the osiers, the trembling of an aspen, the rustle of the withies, or the noise made by a bird, or rat, or stoat, startled by the sound of unwonted footsteps. In the warm summer nights also, when tired holiday-makers are sleeping soundly, when men stretched on the green sward outside their white tents are smoking, and talking, and planning excursions for the morrow; When in country houses young people are playing and singing, dancing or walking up and down terraces over-looking well-kept lawns, where the evening air is laden with delicious perfumes—there falls on that almost uninhabited mile or two of riverside a stillness which may be felt, which the belated traveller is loth to disturb even by the dip of his oars as he drifts down with the current past objects that seem to him unreal as fragments of a dream.

It had been a wet summer—a bad summer for the hotels. There had been some fine days, but not many together. The weather could not be depended upon. It was not a season in which young ladies were to be met about the reaches of the Upper Thames, disporting themselves in marvellous dresses, and more marvellous headgear, unfurling brilliant parasols, canoeing in appropriate attire, giving life and colour to the streets of old-world villages, and causing many of their inhabitants to consider what a very strange sort of town it must be in which such extraordinarily-robed persons habitually reside.

Nothing of the sort was to be seen that summer, even as high as Hampton. Excursions were limited to one day; there were few tents, few people camping-out, not many staying at the hotels; yet it was, perhaps for that reason, an enjoyable summer to those who were not afraid of a little, or rather a great deal, of rain, who liked a village inn all the better for not being crowded, and who were not heartbroken because their women-folk for once found it impossible to accompany them.

Unless a man boldly decides to outrage the proprieties and decencies of life, and go off by himself to take his pleasure selfishly alone, there is in a fine summer no door of escape open to him. There was a time—a happy time—when a husband was not expected to sign away his holidays in the marriage articles. But what boots it to talk of that remote past now? Everything is against the father of a family at present. Unless the weather help him, what friend has he? And the weather does not often in these latter days prove a friend. In that summer, however, with which this story deals, the stars in their courses fought for many an oppressed paterfamilias. Any curious inquirer might then have walked ankle-deep in mud from Penton Hook to East Molesey, and not met a man, harnessed like a beast of burden, towing all his belongings up stream, or beheld him rowing against wind and tide as though he were a galley-slave chained to the oar, striving ail the while to look as though enjoying the fun.

Materfamilias found it too wet to patronize the Thames. Her dear little children also were conspicuous by their absence. Charming young ladies were rarely to be seen—indeed, the skies were so treacherous that it would have been a mere tempting of Providence to risk a pretty dress on the water; for which sufficient reasons furnished houses remained unlet, and lodgings were left empty; taverns and hotels welcomed visitors instead of treating them scurvily; and the river, with its green banks and its leafy aits, its white swans, its water-lilies, its purple loosestrife, its reeds, its rushes, its weeping willows, its quiet backwaters, was delightful.

One evening two men stood just outside the door of the Ship, Lower Halliford, looking idly at the water, as it flowed by more rapidly than is usually the ease in August. Both were dressed in suits of serviceable dark grey tweed; both wore round hats; both evidently belonged to that class which resembles flowers of the field but in the one respect that it toils not, neither does it spin; both looked intensely bored; both were of rather a good appearance.

The elder, who was about thirty, had dark hair, sleepy brown eyes, and a straight capable nose; a heavy moustache almost concealed his mouth, but his chin was firm and well cut. About him there was an indescribable something calculated to excite attention, but nothing in his expression to attract or repel. No one looking at him could have said offhand, “I think that is a pleasant fellow,” or “I am sure that man could make himself confoundedly disagreeable.”

His face revealed as little as the covers of a book. It might contain interesting matter, or there might be nothing underneath save the merest commonplace. So far as it conveyed an idea at all, it was that of indolence. Every movement of his body suggested laziness; but it would have been extremely hard to say how far that laziness went. Mental energy and physical inactivity walk oftener hand in hand than the world suspects, and mental energy can on occasion make an indolent man active, while more brute strength can never confer intellect on one who lacks brains.

In every respect the younger stranger was the opposite of his companion. Fair, blue-eyed, light-haired, with soft moustache and tenderly cared-for whiskers, he looked exactly what he was a very shallow, kindly, good fellow, who did not trouble himself with searching into the depths of things, who took the world as it was, who did not go out to meet trouble, who loved his species, women included, in an honest way; who liked amusement, athletic sports of all sorts—dancing, riding, rowing, shooting; who had not one regret, save that hours in a Government office were so confoundedly long, “eating the best part out of a day, by Jove;” no cause for discontent save that he had very little money, and into whose mind it had on the afternoon in question been forcibly borne that his friend was a trifle heavy—“carries too many guns,” he considered—and not exactly the man to enjoy a modest dinner at Lower Halliford.

For which cause, perhaps, he felt rather relieved when his friend refused to partake of any meal.

“I wish you could have stayed,” said the younger, with the earnest and not quite insincere hospitality people always assume when they feel a departing guest is not to be over-persuaded to stay. “So do I,“ replied the other. “I should have liked to stop with you, and I should have liked to stay here. There is a sleepy dullness about the place which exactly suits my present mood, but I must get back to town. I promised Travers to look in at his chambers this evening, and tomorrow as I told you, I am due in Norfolk.”

“What will you do, then, till train-time? There is nothing up from here till nearly seven. Come on the river for an hour with me.”

“Thank you, no. I think I will walk over to Staines.”

“Staines! Why Staines in heaven’s name?”

“Because I am in the humour for a walk—a long, lonely walk; because a demon has taken possession of me I wish to exorcise; because there are plenty of trains from Staines; because I am weary of the Thames Valley line, and any other reason you like. I can give you none better than I have done.”

“At least let me row you part of the way.”

“Again thank you, no. The eccentricities of the Thames are not new to me. With the best intentions, you would land me at Laleham when I should be on my railway to London. My dear Dick, step into that boat your soul has been hankering after for the past half-hour, and leave me to return to town according to my own fancy.”

“I don’t half like this,” said genial Dick. “Ah! Here comes a pretty girl—look.”

Thus entreated, the elder man turned his head and saw a young girl, accompanied by a young man, coming along the road, which leads from Walton Lane to Shepperton.

She was very pretty, of the sparkling order of beauty, with dark eyes, rather heavy eyebrows, dark thick hair, a ravishing fringe, a delicious hat, a coquettish dress, and shoes which by pretty gestures she seemed to be explaining to her companion were many—very many—sizes too large for her. Spite of her beauty, spite of her dress, spite of her shoes so much too large for her, it needed but a glance from one conversant with subtle social distinctions to tell that she was not quite her “young man’s” equal.

For, in the parlance of Betsy Jane, as her “young man” she evidently regarded him, and as her young man he regarded himself. There could be no doubt about the matter. He was over head and cars in love with her; he was ready to quarrel—indeed, had quarrelled with father, mother, sister, brother on her account. He loved her unreasonably—he loved her miserably, distractedly; except at odd intervals, he was not in the least happy with her. She flouted, she tormented, she maddened him; but then, after having nearly driven him to the verge of distraction, she would repent sweetly, and make up for all previous shortcomings by a few brief minutes of tender affection. If quarrelling be really the renewal of love, theirs had been renewed once a day at all events, and frequently much oftener.

Yes, she was a pretty girl, a bewitching girl, and arrant flirt, a scarcely well-behaved coquette; for as she passed the two friends she threw a glance at them, one arch, piquant, inviting glance, of which many would instantly have availed themselves, venturing the consequences certain to be dealt out by her companion, who, catching the look, drew closer to her side, not too well pleased, apparently. Spite of a little opposition, he drew her hand through his arm, and walked on with an air of possession infinitely amusing to onlookers, and plainly distasteful to his lady-love.

“A clear case of spoons,” remarked the younger of the two visitors, looking after the pair.

“Poor devil!” said the other compassionately.

His friend laughed, and observed mockingly paraphrasing a very different speech,—

“But for the grace of God, there goes Paul Murray.”

“You may strike out the ‘but,’” replied the person so addressed, “for that is the very road Paul Murray is going, and soon.”

“You are not serious!” asked the other doubtfully.

“Am I not? I am though, though not with such a vixen as I dare swear that little baggage is. I told you I was due tomorrow in Norfolk. But see, they are turning back; let us go inside.”

“All right,” agreed the other, following his companion into the hall. “This is a great surprise to me, Murray: I never imagined you were engaged.”

“I am not engaged yet, though no doubt I shall soon be,” answered the reluctant lover. “My grandmother and the lady’s father have arranged the match. The lady docs not object, I believe, and who am I, Savill, that I should refuse good looks, a good fortune, and a good temper?”

“You do not speak as though you liked the proposed bride, nevertheless,” said Savill dubiously.

“I do not dislike her, I only hate having to marry her. Can’t you understand that a man wants to pick a wife for himself—that the one girl he fancies seems worth ten thousand of a girl anybody else fancies? But I am so situated—Hang it, Dick! What are you staring at that dark-eyed witch for?”

“Because it is so funny. She is making him take a boat at the steps, and he docs not want to do it. Kindly observe his face.”

“What is his face to me?“ retorted Mr. Murray savagely.

“Not much, I daresay, but it is a good deal to him. It is black as thunder, and hers is not much lighter. What a neat ankle, and how you like to show it, my dear. Well, there is no harm in a pretty ankle or a pretty foot either, and you have both. One would not wish one’s wife to have a hoof like an elephant. What sort of feet has your destined maiden, Paul?”

“I never noticed.”

“That looks deucedly bad,” said the younger man, shaking his head. “I know, however, she has a pure, sweet face,” observed Mr. Murray gloomily.

“No one could truthfully make the same statement about our young friend’s little lady,” remarked Mr. Savill, still gazing at the girl, who was seating herself in the stern. “A termagant, I’ll be bound, if ever there was one. Wishes to go up stream, no doubt because he wishes to go down. Any caprice about the Norfolk ‘fair’?”

“Not much, I think. She is good, Dick—too good for me,” replied the other, sauntering out again.

“That is what we always say about the things we do not know. And so your grandmother has made up the match?”

“Yes: there is money, and the old lady loves money. She says she wants to see me settled—talks of buying me an estate. She will have to do something, because I am sure the stern parent on the other side would not allow his daughter to marry on expectations. The one drop of comfort in the arrangement is that my aged relative will have to come down, and pretty smartly too. I would wed Hecate, to end this state of bondage, which I have not courage to flee from myself. Dick, how I envy you who have no dead person’s shoes to wait for!”

“You need not envy me,” returned Dick, with conviction, “a poor unlucky devil chained to a desk. There is scarce a day of my life I fail to curse the service. the office, and Fate—”

“Curse no more, then,” said the other; “rather go down on your knees and thank Heaven you have, without any merit of your own, a provision for life. I wish Fate or anybody had coached me into the Civil Service—apprenticed me to a trade—sent me to sea—made me enlist, instead of leaving me at the mercy of an old lady who knows neither justice nor reason—who won’t let me do anything for myself, and won’t do anything for me who ought to have been dead long ago, but who never means to die—”

“And who often gives you in one cheque as much as the whole of my annual salary,” added the other quietly.

“But you know you will have your yearly salary as long as you live. I never know whether I shall have another cheque.”

“It won’t do, my friend,” answered Dick Savill; “you feel quite certain you can get money when you want it.”

“I feel certain of no such thing,” was the reply. “If I once offended her—” he stopped, and then went on: “And perhaps when I have spent twenty years in trying to humour such caprices as surely woman never had before, I shall wake one morning to find she has left every penny to the Asylum for Idiots.”

“Why do you not pluck up courage, and strike out some line for yourself?”

“Too late, Dick, too late. Ten years ago I might have tried to make a fortune for myself, but I can’t do that now. As I have waited so long, I must wait a little longer. At thirty a man can’t take pick in hand and try to clear a road to fortune.”

“Then you had better marry the Norfolk young lady.”

“I am steadily determined to do so. I am going down with the firm intention of asking her.”

“And do you think she will have you?”

“I think so. I feel sure she will. And she is a nice girl—the sort l would like for a wife, if she had not been thrust upon me.”

Mr. Savill stood silent for a moment, with his hands plunged deep in his pockets.

“Then when I see you next?” he said tentatively.

“I shall be engaged, most likely—possibly even married,” finished the other, with as much hurry as his manner was capable of. “And now jump into your boat, and I will go on my way to—Staines—”

“I wish you would change your mind, and have some dinner.”

“I can’t; it is impossible. You see I have so many things to do and to think of. Good-bye, Dick. Don’t upset yourself—go down stream, and don’t get into mischief with those dark eyes you admired so much just now.”

“Make your mind easy about that,” returned the other, colouring, however, a little as he spoke. “Good-bye, Murray. I wish you well through the campaign.” And so, after a hearty handshake, they parted, one to walk away from Halliford, past Shepperton Church, and across Shepperton Range, and the other, of course, to row up stream, through Shepperton Lock, and on past Dockett Point.

In the grey of the summer’s dawn, Mr. Murray awoke next morning from a terrible dream. He had kept his appointment with Mr. Travers and a select party, played heavily, drank deeply, and reached home between one and two, not much the better for his trip to Lower Halliford, his walk, and his carouse.

Champagne, followed by neat brandy, is not perhaps the best thing to insure a quiet night’s rest; but Mr. Murray had often enjoyed sound repose after similar libations; and it was, therefore, all the more unpleasant that in the grey dawn he should wake suddenly from a dream, in which he thought someone was trying to crush his head with a heavy weight.

Even when he had struggled from sleep, it seemed to him that a wet dead hand lay across his eyes, and pressed them so hard he could not move the lids. Under the weight he lay powerless, while a damp, ice-cold hand felt burning into his brain, if such a contradictory expression may be permitted.

The perspiration was pouring from him; he felt the drops falling on his throat, and trickling down his neck; he might have been lying in a bath, instead of on his own bed, and it was with a cry of horror he at last flung the hand aside, and, sitting up, looked around the room, into which the twilight of morning was mysteriously stealing. Then, trembling in every limb, he lay down again, and fell into another sleep, from which he did not awake till aroused by broad daylight and his valet.

“You told me to call you in good time, sir,” said the man.

“Ah, yes, so I did,” yawned Mr. Murray. “What a bore! I will get up directly. You can go, Davis. I will ring if I want you.”

Davis was standing, as his master spoke, looking down at the floor. “Yes, sir,“ he answered, after the fashion of a man who has something on his mind—and went.

He had not, however, got to the bottom of the first flight when peal after peal summoned him back.

Mr. Murray was out of bed and in the middle of the room, the ghastly pallor of his face brought into full prominence by the crimson dressing-gown he had thrown round him on rising.

“What is that?” he asked. “What in the world is that, Davis?” and he pointed to the carpet, which was covered, Mrs. Murray being an old-fashioned lady, with strips of white drugget.

“I am sure I do not know, sir,” answered Davis. “I noticed it the moment I came into the room. Looks as if someone with wet feet had been walking round and round the bed.”

It certainly did. Round and round, to and fro, backwards and forwards, the feet seemed to have gone and come, leaving a distinct mark wherever they pressed.

“The print is that of a rare small foot, too,” observed Davis, who really seemed half stupefied with astonishment.

“But who would have dared—” began Mr. Murray.

“No one in this house,” declared Davis stoutly. “It is not the mark of a boy or woman inside these doors,” and then the master and the man looked at each other for an instant with grave suspicion.

But for that second they kept their eyes thus occupied; then, as by common consent, they dropped their glances to the floor. “My God!” exclaimed Davis. “Where have the footprints gone?”

He might well ask. The drugget, but a moment before wet and stained by the passage and re-passage of those small restless feet, was now smooth and white, as when first sent forth from the bleach-green. On its polished surface there could not be discerned a speck or mark.

II
WHERE LS LUCY?

In the valley of the Thames early hours are the rule. There the days have an unaccountable way of lengthening themselves out which makes it prudent, as well as pleasant, to utilize all the night in preparing for a longer morrow.

For this reason, when eleven o’clock p.m. strikes, it usually finds Church Street, Walton, as quiet as its adjacent graveyard, which lies still and solemn under the shadow of the old grey tower hard by that ancient vicarage which contains so beautiful a staircase.

About the time when Mr. Travers’ friends were beginning their evening, when talk had abated and play was suggested, the silence of Church Street was broken and many a sleeper aroused by a continuous knocking at the door of a house as venerable as any in that part of Walton. Rap—rap—rap—rap awoke the echoes of the old-world village street, and at length brought to the window a young man, who, flinging up the sash, inquired,

“Who is there?”

“Where is Lucy? What have you done with my girl?” answered a strained woman’s voice from out the darkness of that summer night.

“Lucy?” repeated the young man; “is not she at home?”

“No; I have never set eyes on her since you went out together.”

“Why, We parted hours ago. Wait a moment, Mrs. Heath; I will be down directly.”

No need to tell the poor woman to “wait.” She stood on the step, crying softly and wringing her hands till the door opened, and the same young fellow who with the pretty girl had taken boat opposite the Ship Hotel bade her “Come in.”

Awakened from some pleasant dream, spite of all the trouble and hurry of that unexpected summons, there still shone the light of a reflected sunshine in his eyes and the flush of happy sleep on his cheek. He scarcely understood yet what had happened, but when he saw Mrs. Heath’s tear-stained face, comprehension came to him, and he said abruptly,—

“Do you mean that she has never returned home?”

“Never!”

They were in the parlour by this time, and looking at each other by the light of one poor candle which he had set down on the table.

“Why, I left her,” he said, “I left her long before seven.”

“Where?”

“Just beyond Dockett Point. She would not let me row her back. I do not know what was the matter with her, but nothing I did seemed right.“

“Had you any quarrel?” asked Mrs. Heath anxiously.

“Yes, we had; we were quarrelling all the time—at least she was with me; and at last she made me put her ashore, which I did sorely against my will.”

“What had you done to my girl, then?”

“I prayed of her to marry me—no great insult, surely, but she took it as one. I would rather not talk of what she answered. Where can she be? Do you think she can have gone to her aunt’s?”

“If so, she will be back by the last train. Let us get home as fast as possible. I never thought of that. Poor child! She will go out of her mind if she finds nobody to let her in. You will come with me. O, if she is not there. what shall I do—what ever shall I do?”

The young man had taken his hat, and was holding the door open for Mrs. Heath to pass out.

“You must try not to fret yourself,” he said gently, yet with a strange repression in his voice. “Very likely she may stay at her aunt’s all night.”

“And leave me in misery, not knowing where she is? Oh, Mr. Grantley, I could never believe that.”

Mr. Grantley’s heart was very hot within him; but he could not tell the poor mother he believed that when Lucy’s temper was up she would think of no human being but herself.

“Won’t you take my arm, Mrs. Heath?” he asked with tender pity. After all, though everything was over between him and Lucy, her mother could not be held accountable for their quarrel; and he had loved the girl with all the romantic fervour of love’s young dream.

“I can walk faster without it, thank you,” Mrs. Heath answered. “But Mr. Grantley, whatever you and Lucy fell out over, you’ll forget it, won’t you? It isn’t in you to be hard on anybody, and she’s only a spoiled child. I never had but the one, and I humoured her too much; and if she is wayward, it is all my own fault—all my own.”

“In case she does not return by this train,” said the young man, wisely ignoring Mrs. Heath’s inquiry, “had I not better telegraph to her aunt directly the office opens?”

“I will be on my way to London long before that,” was the reply. “But what makes you think she won’t come? Surely you don’t imagine she has done anything rash?”

“What do you mean by rash?” he asked evasively.

“Made away with herself.”

“That!” he exclaimed. “No, I feel very sure she has done nothing of the sort.”

“But she might have felt sorry when you left her—vexed for having angered you—heartbroken when she saw you leave her.”

“Believe me, she was not vexed or sorry or heartbroken; she was only glad to know she had done with me,” he answered bitterly.

“What has come to you, Mr. Grantley?” said Mrs. Heath, in wonder. “I never heard you speak the same before.”

“Perhaps not; I never felt the same before. It is best to be plain with you,” he went on. “All is at an end between us; and that is what your daughter has long been trying for.”

“How can you say that, and she so fond of you?”

“She has not been fond of me for many a day. The man she wants to marry is not a poor fellow like myself, but one who can give her carriages and horses, and a fine house, and as much dress as she cares to buy.”

“But where could she ever find a husband able to do that?”

“I do not know, Mrs. Heath. All I do know is that she considers I am no match for her; and now my eyes are opened, I see she was not a wife for me. We should never have known a day’s happiness.”

It was too dark to see his face, but his changed voice and words and manner told Lucy’s mother the kindly lad, who a couple of years before came courting her pretty daughter, and offended all his friends for her sake, was gone away forever. It was a man who walked by her side—who had eaten of the fruit of the tree, and had learned to be as a god, knowing good from evil.

“Well, well,” she said brokenly, “you are the best judge, I suppose; but O, my child, my child!”

She was so blinded with tears she stumbled, and must have fallen had he not caught and prevented her. Then he drew her hand within his arm, and said,—

“I am so grieved for you. I never received anything but kindness from you.”

“And indeed,” she sobbed, “you never were anything except good to me. I always knew we couldn’t be considered your equals, and I often had my doubts whether it was right to let you come backwards and forwards as I did, parting you from all belonging to you. But I thought, when your mother saw Lucy’s pretty face—for it is pretty, Mr. Grantley—”

“There never was a prettier,” assented the young man, though, now his eyes were opened, he knew Lucy’s beauty would scarcely have recommended her to any sensible woman.

“I hoped she might take to her, and I’d never have intruded. And I was so proud and happy, and fond of you—I was indeed; and I used to consider how, when you came down, I could have some little thing you fancied. But that’s all over now. And I don’t blame you; only my heart is sore and troubled about my foolish girl.”

They were on Walton Bridge by this time, and the night air blew cold and raw down the river, and made Mrs. Heath shiver.

“I wonder where Lucy is,” she murmured, “and what she’d think if she knew her mother was walking through the night in an agony about her? Where was it you said you left her?”

“Between Dockett Point and Chertsey. I shouldn’t have left her had she not insisted on my doing so.”

“Isn’t that the train?” asked Mrs. Heath, stopping suddenly short and listening intently.

“Yes; it is just leaving Sunbury Station. Do not hurry; we have plenty of time.”

They had: they were at Lucy’s home, one of the small houses situated between Battlecreese Hill and the Red Lion in Lower Halliford before a single passenger came along The Green, or out of Nannygoat Lane.

“My heart misgives me that she has not come down,” said Mrs. Heath.

“Shall I go up to meet her?“ asked the young man; and almost before the mother feverishly assented, he was striding through the summer night to Shepperton Station, where he found the lights extinguished and every door closed.

III
POOR MRS. HEATH

By noon the next day everyone in Shepperton and Lower Halliford knew Lucy Heath was “missing.”

Her mother had been up to Putney, but Lucy was not with her aunt, who lived not very far from the Bridge on the Fulham side, and who, having married a fruiterer and worked up a very good business, was inclined to take such bustling and practical views of life and its concerns as rather dismayed her sister-in-law, who had spent so many years in the remote country, and then so many other years in quiet Shepperton, that Mrs. Pointer’s talk flurried her almost as much as the noise of London, which often maddens middle-aged and elderly folk happily unaccustomed to its roar.

Girt about with a checked apron which lovingly enfolded a goodly portion of her comfortable figure, Mrs. Pointer received her early visitor with the sportive remark, “Why, it’s never Martha Heath! Come along in; a sight of you is good for sore eyes.”

But Mrs. Heath repelled all such humorous observations, and chilled those suggestions of hospitality the Pointers were never backward in making by asking in a low choked voice,—“Is Lucy here?”

“Lor! Whatever put such a funny notion into your head?”

“Ah! I see she is,” trying to smile. “After all, she spent the night with you.”

“Did what?” exclaimed Mrs. Pointer. “Spent the night—was that what you said? No, nor the day either, for this year nearly. Why, for the last four months she hasn’t set foot across that doorstep, unless it might be to buy some cherries, or pears, or apples, or grapes, or suchlike, and then she came in with more air than any lady; and after paying her money and getting her goods went out again, just as if I hadn’t been her father’s sister and Pointer my husband. But there! For any sake, woman, don’t look like that! Come into the parlour and tell me what is wrong. You never mean she has gone away and left you?”

Poor Mrs. Heath was perfectly incapable at that moment of saying what she did mean. Seated on a stool, and holding fast by the edge of the counter for fear of falling, the shop and its contents, the early busses, the people going along the pavement, the tradesmen’s carts, the private carriages, were, as in some terrible nightmare, gyrating before her eyes. She could not speak, she could scarcely think, until that wild whirligig came to a stand. For a minute or two even Mrs. Pointer seemed multiplied by fifty; while her checked apron, the bananas suspended from hooks, the baskets of fruit, the pineapples, the melons, the tomatoes, and the cob-nuts appeared and disappeared. only to reappear and disappear like the riders in a maddening giddy-go-round.

“Give me a drop of water,” she said at last; and when the water was brought she drank a little and poured some on her handkerchief and dabbed her face, and finally suffered herself to be escorted into the parlour, where she told her tale, interrupted by many sobs. It would have been unchristian in Mrs. Pointer to exult; but it was only human to remember she had remarked to Pointer, in that terrible spirit of prophecy bestowed for some inscrutable reason on dear friends and close relations, she knew some such trouble must befall her sister-in-law.

“You made an idol of that girl, Martha,” she went on, “and now it is coming home to you. I am sure it was only last August as ever was that Pointer but here he is, and he will talk to you himself.”

Which Mr. Pointer did, being very fond of the sound of his own foolish voice. He stated how bad a thing it was for people to be above their station or to bring children up above that rank of life in which it had pleased God to place them. He quoted many pleasing saws uttered by his father and grandfather; remarked that as folks sowed they were bound to reap; reminded Mrs. Heath they had the word of Scripture for the fact—than, which, parenthetically, no fact could be truer, as he knew that a man might not gather grapes from thorns or even figs from thistles. Further he went on to observe generally—the observation having a particular reference to Lucy that it did not do to judge things by their looks. Over and over again salesmen had tried to “shove off” a lot of foreign fruit on him, but he wasn’t a young bird to be taken in by that chaff.” No; what he looked to was quality; it was what his customers expected from him, and what he could honestly declare his customers got. He was a plain man, and he thought honesty was the best policy. So as Mrs. Heath had seen fit to come to them in her trouble he would tell her what he thought, without beating about the bush. He believed Lucy had “gone off.”

“But where?” asked poor Mrs. Heath.

“That I am not wise enough to say; but you’ll find she’s gone off. Girls in her station don’t sport chains and bracelets and brooches for nothing—”

“But they did not cost many shillings,” interposed the mother.

“She might tell you that,” observed Mrs. Pointer, with a world or meaning.

“To say nothing,” went on Mrs. Pointer, “of grey gloves she could not abear to be touched. One day she walked in when I was behind the counter, and, not knowing she had been raised to the peerage, I shook hands with her as a matter of course; but when I saw the young lady look at her glove as if I had dirtied it, I said, ‘O, I beg your pardon, miss’—jocularly, you know. ‘They soil so easily,’ she lisped.”

“I haven’t patience with such ways!” interpolated Mrs. Pointer, without any lisp at all. “Yes, it’s hard for you, Martha, but you may depend Pointer’s right. Indeed, I expected how it would be long ago. Young women who are walking in the straight road don’t dress as Lucy dressed, or dare their innocent little cousins to call them by their Christian names in the street. Since the Spring, and long before Pointer and me has been sure Lucy was up to no good.”

“And you held your tongues and never said a word to me!” retorted Mrs. Heath, goaded and driven to desperation.

“Much use it would have been saying any word to you,” answered Mrs. Pointer. “When you told me about young Grantley, and I bid you be careful, how did you take my advice? Why, you blared out at me, went on as if I knew nothing and had never been anywhere. What I told you then, though, I tell you now: young Grantleys, the sons of rectors and the grandsons of colonels. don’t come after farmer’s daughters with any honest purpose.”

“Yet young Grantley asked her last evening to fix a day for their marriage,” said Mrs. Heath, with a little triumph.

“O, I daresay!” scoffed Mrs. Pointer.

“Talk is cheap,” observed Mr. Pointer.

“Some folks have more of it than money,” supplemented his wife.

“They have been, as I understand, keeping company for some time now,” said the fruiterer, with what he deemed a telling and judicial calmness. “So if he asked her to name the day, why did she not name it?”

“I do not know. I have never seen her since.”

“O, then you had only his word about the matter,” summed up Mr. Pointer. “Just as I thought—just as I thought.”

“What did you think?” inquired the poor troubled mother. “Why, that she has gone off with this Mr. Grantley.”

“Ah, you don’t know Mr. Grantley, or you wouldn’t say such a thing.”

“It is true,” observed Mr. Pointer, “that I do not know the gentleman, and, I may add, I do not want to know him; but speaking as a person acquainted with the world—”

“I’ll be getting home,” interrupted Mrs. Heath. “Most likely my girl is there waiting for me, and a fine laugh she will have against her poor old mother for being in such a taking. Yes, Lucy will have the breakfast ready. No, thank you; I’ll not wait to take anything. There will be a train back presently; and besides, to tell you the truth, food would choke me till I sit down again with my girl, and then I won’t be able to eat for joy.”

Husband and wife looked at each other as Mrs. Heath spoke, and for the moment a deep pity pierced the hard crust of their worldly egotism.

“Wait a minute,” cried Mrs. Pointer, “and I’ll put on my bonnet and go with you.”

“No,” interrupted Mr. Pointer, instantly seizing his wife’s idea, and appropriating it as his own. “I am the proper person to see this affair out. There is not much doing, and if there were, I would leave everything to obtain justice for your niece. After all, however wrong she may have gone, she is your niece, Maria.”

With which exceedingly nasty remark, which held a whole volume of unpleasant meaning as to what Mrs. Pointer might expect from that relationship in the future, Mr. Pointer took Mrs. Heath by the arm, and piloted her out into the street, and finally to Lower Halliford, where the missing Lucy was not, and where no tidings of her had come.

IV
MR. GAGE ON PORTENTS

About the time when poor distraught Mrs. Heath, having managed to elude the vigilance of that cleverest of men, Maria Pointer’s husband, had run out of her small house, and was enlisting the sympathies of gossip-loving Shepperton in Lucy’s disappearance, Mr. Paul Murray arrived at Liverpool Street Station, where his luggage and his valet awaited him.

“Get tickets, Davis,” he said; “I have run it rather close,” and he walked towards Smith’s stall, while his man went into the booking-office.

As he was about to descend the stairs, Davis became aware of a very singular fact. Looking down the steps, he saw precisely the same marks that had amazed him so short a time previously, being printed hurriedly off by a pair of invisible feet, which ran to the bottom and then flew as if in the wildest haste to the spot where Mr. Murray stood.

“I am not dreaming, am I?” thought the man; and he shut his eyes and opened them again.

The footprints were all gone!

At that moment his master turned from the bookstall and proceeded towards the train. A porter opened the door of a smoking carriage, but Murray shook his head and passed; on. Mr. Davis, once more looking to the ground, saw that those feet belonging to no mortal body were still following: There were not very many passengers, and it was quite plain to him that wherever his master went, the quick, wet prints went too. Even on the step of the compartment Mr. Murray eventually selected the man beheld a mark, as though someone had sprung in after him. He secured the door, and then walked away, to find a place for himself, marvelling in a dazed state of mind what it all meant; indeed, he felt so much dazed that, after he had found to seat to his mind, he; did not immediately notice an old acquaintance in the opposite corner, who affably inquired,—

“And how is Mr. Davis?”

Thus addressed, Mr. Davis started from his reverie, and exclaimed, “Why, bless my soul, Gage, who’d have thought of seeing you here?” after which exchange of courtesies the pair shook hands gravely and settled down to converse.

Mr. Davis explained that he was going down with his governor to Norwich; and Mr. Gage stated that he and the old general had been staying at Thorpe, and were on their way to Lowestoft. Mr. Gage and his old general had also just returned from paying a round of visits in the West of England. “Pleasant enough, but slow,” finished the gentleman’s gentleman. “After all, in the season or out of it, there is no place like London.”

With this opinion Mr. Davis quite agreed, and said he only wished he had never to leave it, adding,—

“We have not been away before for a long time; and we should not be going where we are now bound if we had not to humour some fancy of our grandmother’s.”

“Deuced rough on a man having to humour a grandmother’s fancy,” remarked Mr. Gage.

“No female ought to be left the control of money,” said Mr. Davis with conviction. “See what the consequences have been in this case—Mrs. Murray outlived her son, who had to ask for every shilling he wanted, and she is so tough she may see the last of her grandson.”

“That is very likely,” agreed the other. “He looks awfully bad.”

“You saw him just now, I suppose?”

“No; but I saw him last night at Chertsey Station, and I could but notice the change in his appearance.”

For a minute Mr. Davis remained silent. “Chertsey Station!” What could his master have been doing at Chertsey? That was a question he would have to put to himself again, and answer for himself at some convenient time; meanwhile he only answered,—

“Yes, I observe an alteration in him myself. Anything fresh in the paper?”

“No,” answered Mr. Gage, handing his friend over the Daily News—the print he affected: “everything is as dull as ditchwater.”

For many a mile Davis read or affected to read; then he laid the paper aside, and after passing his case, well filled with a tithe levied on Mr. Murray’s finest cigars, to Gage, began solemnly,—

“I am going to ask you a curious question, Robert, as from man to man.”

“Ask on,” said Mr. Gage, striking a match.

“Do you believe in warnings?”

The old General’s gentleman burst out laughing. He was so tickled that he let his match drop from his fingers.

“I am afraid most of us have to believe in them, whether we like it or not,” he answered, when he could speak. “Has there been some little difference between you and your governor, then?”

“You mistake,” was the reply. “I did not mean warnings in the sense of notice, but warnings as warnings, you understand.”

“Bother me if I do! Yes, now I take you. Do I believe in ‘coming events casting shadows before,’ as someone puts it’? Has any shadow of a coming event been cast across you?”

“No, nor across anybody, so far as I know; but I’ve been thinking the matter over lately, and wondering if there can be any truth in such notions.”

“What notions?”

“Why, that there are signs and suchlike sent when trouble is coming to anyone.”

“You may depend it is right enough that signs and tokens are sent. Almost every good family has its special warning: one has its mouse, another its black dog, a third its white bird, a fourth its drummer-boy, and so on. There is no getting over facts, even if you don’t understand them.”

“Well, it is very hard to believe.”

“There wouldn’t be much merit in believing if everything were as plain as a pikestalf. You know what the Scotch minister said to his boy: ‘The very devils believe and tremble.’ You wouldn’t be worse than a devil, would you?”

“Has any sign ever appeared to you?” asked Davis.

“Not exactly; but lots of people have told me they have to them; for instance, old Seal, who drove the Dowager Countess of Ongar till the day of her death, used to make our hair stand on end talking about phantom carriages that drove away one after another from the door of Hainault House, and wakened every soul on the premises, night after night till the old Earl died. It took twelve clergymen to lay the spirit.”

“I wonder one wasn’t enough!” ejaculated Davis.

“There may have been twelve spirits, for all I know,” returned Gage, rather puzzled by this view of the question; “but anyhow, there were twelve clergymen, with the bishop in his lawn sleeves chief among them. And I once lived with a young lady’s-maid, who told me when she was a girl she made her home with her father’s parents. On a winter’s night, after everybody else had gone to bed, she sat up to make some griddle-bread—that is a sort of bread the people in Ireland, where she came from, bake over the fire on a round iron plate; with plenty of butter it is not bad eating. Well, as I was saying, she was quite alone; she had taken all the bread off, and was setting it up on edge to cool, supporting one piece against the other, two and two, when on the table where she was putting the cakes she saw one drop of blood fall, and then another, and then another, like the beginning of a shower.

“She looked to the ceiling, but could see nothing, and still the drops kept on falling slowly, slowly; and then she knew something had gone wrong with one dear to her; and she put a shawl over her head, and without saying a word to anybody, went through the loneliness and darkness of night all by herself to her father’s.”

“She must have been a courageous girl,” remarked Mr. Davis.

“She was, and I liked her well. But to the point. When she reached her destination she found her youngest brother dead. Now what do you make of that?”

“It’s strange, but I suppose he would have died all the same if she had not seen the blood-drops, and I can’t see any good seeing them did her. If she had reached her father’s in time to bid brother good-bye, there would have been some sense in such a sign. As it is, it seems to me a lot of trouble thrown away.”

Mr. Gage shook his head.

“What a sceptic you are, Davis! But there! London makes sceptics of the best of us. If you had spent a winter, as I did once, in the Highlands of Scotland, or heard the Banshee wailing for the General’s nephew in the county of Mayo, you wouldn’t have asked what was the use of second sight or Banshees. You would just have stood and trembled as I did many and many a time.”

“I might,” said Davis doubtfully, wondering what his friend would have thought of those wet little footprints.

“Hullo, here’s Peterborough! Hadn’t we better stretch our legs? And a glass of something would be acceptable.”

Of that glass, however, Mr. Davis was not destined to partake . “If one of you is Murray’s man,” said the guard as they jumped out, “he wants you.”

“I’1l be back in a minute,” observed Mr. Murray’s man to his friend, and hastened off.

But he was not back in a minute; on the contrary, he never returned at all.

V
KISS ME

The first glance in his master’s face filled Davis with a vague alarm. Gage’s talk had produced an effect quite out of proportion to its merit, and a cold terror struck to the valet’s heart as he thought there might, spite of his lofty scepticism, be something after all in the mouse, and the bird, and the drummer-boy, in the black dog, and the phantom carriages, and the spirits it required the united exertions of twelve clergymen (with the bishop in lawn sleeves among them) to lay; in Highland second sight and Irish Banshees; and in little feet paddling round and about a man’s bed and following wherever he went. What awful disaster could those footprints portend? Would the train be smashed up? Did any river lie before them? And if so, was the sign vouchsafed as a warning that they were likely to die by drowning? All these thoughts, and many more, passed through Davis’ mind as he stood looking at his master’s pallid face and waiting for him to speak.

“I wish you to come in here,” said Mr. Murray after a pause, and with a manifest effort. “I am not quite well.”

“Can I get you anything, sir?” asked the valet. “Will you not wait and go by another train?”

“No; I shall be better presently; only I do not like being alone.” Davis opened the door and entered the compartment. As he did so, he could not refrain from glancing at the floor, to see if those strange footsteps had been running races there.

“What are you looking for?” asked Mr. Murray irritably. “Have you dropped anything?”

“No, sir; O, no! I was only considering where I should be most out of the way.”

“There,” answered his master, indicating a seat next the window, and at the same time moving to one on the further side of the carriage. “Let no one get in; say I am ill—mad; that I have scarlet fever—the plague—what you please.” And with this wide permission Mr. Murray laid his legs across the opposite cushion, wrapped one rug round his shoulders and another round his body, turned his head aside, and went to sleep or seemed to do so.

“If he is going to die, I hope it will be considered in my wages, but I am afraid it won’t. Perhaps it is the old lady; but that would be too good fortune,” reflected Davis; and then he fell “a-thinkynge, a-thinkynge,” principally of Gage’s many suggestions and those mysterious footprints, for which he kept at intervals furtively looking. But they did not appear; and at last the valet, worn out with vain conjectures, dropped into a pleasant doze, from which he did not awake till they were nearing Norwich.

“We will go to an hotel till I find out what Mrs. Murray’s plans are,” said that lady’s grandson when he found himself on the platform; and as if they had been only waiting this piece of information, two small invisible feet instantly skipped out of the compartment they had just vacated, and walked after Mr. Murray, leaving visible marks at every step.

“Great heavens! What is the meaning of this?” mentally asked Davis, surprised by fright after twenty prayerless and scheming years into an exclamation which almost did duty for a prayer. For a moment he felt sick with terror; then clutching his courage with the energy of desperation, he remembered that though wet footprints might mean death and destruction to the Murrays, his own ancestral annals held no record of such a portent.

Neither did the Murrays’, so far as he was aware, but then he was aware of very little about that family. If the Irish girl Gage spoke of was informed by drops of blood that her brother lay dead, why should not Mr. Murray be made aware, through the token of these pattering footsteps, that he would very soon succeed to a large fortune?

Then any little extra attention Mr. Davis showed his master now would be remembered in his wages.

It was certainly unpleasant to know these damp feet had come down from London, and were going to the hotel with them; but “needs must” with a certain driver, and if portents and signs and warnings were made worth his while, Mr. Davis conceived there might be advantages connected with them.

Accordingly, when addressing Mr. Murray, his valet’s voice assumed a more deferential tone than ever, and his manner became so respectfully tender, that onlookers rashly imagined the ideal master and the faithful servant of fiction had at last come in the flesh to Norwich. Davis’ conduct was, indeed, perfect: devoted without being intrusive, he smoothed away all obstacles which could be smoothed, and even, by dint of a judicious two minutes alone with the doctor for whom he sent, managed the introduction of a useful sedative in some medicine, Which the label stated was to be taken every four hours.

He saw to Mr. Murray’s rooms and Mr. Murray’s light repast, and then he waited on Mr. Murray’s grandmother, and managed that lady so adroitly, she at length forgave the offender for having caught a chill.

“Your master is always doing foolish things,” she said. “It would have been much better had he remained even for a day or two in London rather than risk being laid up. However, you must nurse him carefully, and try to get him well enough to dine at Losdale Court on Monday. Fortunately tomorrow is Sunday, and he can take complete rest. Now Davis, remember I trust to you.”

“I will do my best, ma’am,” Davis said humbly, and went back to tell his master the interview had gone off without any disaster. Then, after partaking of some mild refreshment, he repaired to bed in a dressing-room opening off Mr. Murray’s apartment, so that he might be within call and close at hand to administer those doses which were to be taken at intervals of four hours.

“I feel better tonight,” said Mr. Murray, last thing.

“It is this beautiful air, sir,” answered Davis, who knew it was the sedative. “I hope you will be quite well in the morning.”

But spite of the air, in the grey dawn Mr. Murray had again a dreadful dream—a worse dream than that which laid its heavy hand on him in London. He thought he was by the riverside beyond Dockett Point—beyond where the water-lilies grow. To his right was a little grove of old and twisted willows guarding a dell strewed in dry seasons with the leaves of many autumns, but, in his dream, wet and sodden by reason of heavy rain. There in June wild roses bloomed; there in winter hips and haws shone ruddy against the snow. To his left flowed a turbid river—turbid with floods that had troubled its peace. On the other blank lay a stagnant length of Surrey, while close at hand the Middlesex portion of Chertsey Mead stretched in a hopeless fiat on to the bridge, just visible in the early twilight of a summer’s evening that had followed after a dull lowering day.

From out of the gathering gloom there advanced walking perilously near to Dumsey Deep, a solitary female figure, who, when they met, said, “So you’ve come at last;” alter which night seemed to close around him, silence for a space to lay its hands upon him.

About the same time Davis was seeing visions also. He had lain long awake, trying to evolve order out of the day’s chaos, but in vain. The stillness fretted him; the idea that even then those mysterious feet might in the darkness be printing their impress about his master’s bed irritated his brain. Twice he got up to give that medicine ordered to be taken every four hours, but finding on each occasion Mr. Murray sleeping quietly, he forebore to arouse him.

He heard hour after hour chime, and it was not till the first hint of dawn that he fell into a deep slumber. Then he dreamt about the subject nearest his heart—a public house.

He thought he had saved or gained enough to buy a roadside inn on which he had long cast eyes of affectionate regard—not in London, but not too far out: a delightful inn, where holiday-makers always stopped for refreshment, and sometimes for the day; an inn with a pretty old-fashioned garden filled with fruit trees and vegetables, with a grass-plot around which were erected little arbours, where people could have tea or stronger stimulants; a skittle-ground, where men could soon make themselves very thirsty; and many other advantages tedious to mention. He had the purchase-money in his pocket, and, having paid a deposit, was proceeding to settle the affair, merely diverging from his way to call on a young widow he meant to make Mrs. Davis—a charming woman, who, having stood behind a bar before, seemed the very person to make the Wheatsheaf a triumphant success. He was talking to her sensibly, when suddenly she amazed him by saying, in a sharp, hurried voice, “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!” three times over.

The request seemed so strange that he stood astounded, and then awoke to hear the same words repeated.

“Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!” someone said distinctly in Mr. Murray’s room, the door of which stood open, and then all was quiet.

Only half awake, Davis sprang from his bed and walked across the floor, conceiving, so far as his brain was in a state to conceive anything, that his senses were playing him some trick.

“You won’t?” said the voice again, in a tone which rooted him to the spot where he stood; “and yet, as we are never to meet again, you might Kiss me once,” the voice added caressingly, “only once more.”

“Who the deuce has he got with him now?” thought Davis; but almost before the question was shaped in his mind there came a choked, gasping cry of “Unloose me, tigress, devil!” followed by a sound of desperate wrestling for life.

In a second, Davis was in the room. Through the white blinds light enough penetrated to show Mr. Murray in the, grip apparently of some invisible antagonist, who seemed to be strangling him.

To and fro, from side to side the man and the unseen phantom went swaying in that awful struggle. Short and fast came Mr. Murray’s breath, while making one supreme effort, he flung his opponent from him and sank back across the bed exhausted.

Wiping the moisture from his forehead, Davis, trembling in every limb, advanced to where his master lay, and found he was fast asleep!

Mr. Murray’s eyes were wide open, and he did not stir hand or foot while the man covered him up as well as he was able, and then looked timidly around, dreading to see the second actor in the scene just ended.

“I can’t stand much more of this,” Davis exclaimed, and the sound of his own voice made him start.

There was brandy in the room which had been left overnight, and the man poured himself out and swallowed a glass of the liquor. He ventured to lift the blind and look at the floor, which was wet, as though buckets of water had been thrown over it, while the prints of little feet were everywhere.

Mr. Davis took another glass of brandy. That had not been watered.

“Well, this is a start. he said in his own simple phraseology. “I wonder what the governor has been up to?”

For it was now borne in upon the valet’s understanding that this warning was no shadow of any event to come, but the tell-tale ghost of some tragedy which could never be undone.

VI
FOUND DROWNED

After such a dreadful experience it might have been imagined that Mr. Murray would be very ill indeed; but what we expect rarely comes to pass, and though during the whole of Sunday and Monday Davis felt, as he expressed the matter, “awfully shaky,” his master appeared well and in fair spirits.

He went to the Cathedral, and no attendant footsteps dogged him. On Monday he accompanied his grandmother to Losdale Court, where he behaved so admirably as to please even the lady on whose favour his income depended. He removed to a furnished house Mrs. Murray had taken, and prepared to carry out her wishes. Day succeeded day and night to night, but neither by day nor night did Davis hear the sound of any ghostly voices or trace the print of any phantom foot.

Could it be that nothing more was to come of it—that the mystery was never to be elucidated but fade away as the marks of dainty feet had vanished from floor, pavement, steps, and platform?

The valet did not believe it; behind those signs made by nothing human lay some secret well worth knowing, but it had never been possible to know much about Mr. Murray.

“He was so little of a gentleman” that he had no pleasant, careless ways. He did not leave his letters lying loose for all the world to read. He did not tear up papers, and toss them into a waste-paper basket. He had the nastiest practice of locking up and burning; and though it was Mr. Davis’s commendable custom to collect and preserve unconsidered odds and ends as his master occasionally left in his pockets, these, after all, were trifles light as air.

Nevertheless, as a straw shows how the wind blows, so that chance remark anent Chertsey Station made by Gage promised to provide a string on which to thread various little beads in Davis’ possession.

The man took them out and looked at them: a woman’s fall—white tulle, with black spots, smelling strongly of tobacco-smoke and musk; a receipt for a bracelet, purchased from an obscure jeweller; a Chertsey Lock ticket; and the return half of a first-class ticket from Shepperton to Waterloo, stamped with the date of the day before they left London.

At these treasures Davis looked long and earnestly.

“We shall see,” he remarked as he put them up again; “there l think the scent lies hot.”

It could not escape the notice of so astute a servant that his master was unduly anxious for a sight of the London papers, and that he glanced through them eagerly for something he apparently failed to find—more, that he always laid the print aside with a sigh of relief. Politics did not seem to trouble him, or any public burning question. “He has some burning question of his own,” thought the valet, though he mentally phrased his notion in different words.

Matters went on thus for a whole week. The doctor came and went and wrote prescriptions, for Mr. Murray either was still ailing or chose to appear so. Davis caught a word or two which had reference to the patient’s heart, and some shock. Then he considered that awful night, and wondered how he, who “was in his sober senses, and wide awake, and staring,” had lived through it.

“My heart, and a good many other things, will have to be considered,” he said to himself. No wages could pay for what has been put upon me this week past. I wonder whether I ought to speak to Mr. Murray now?”

Undecided on this point, he was still considering it when he called his master on the following Sunday morning. The first glance at the stained and polished floor decided him. Literally it was interlaced with footprints. The man’s hand shook as he drew up the blind, but he kept his eyes turned on Mr. Murray while he waited for orders, and walked out of the room when dismissed as though such marks had been matters of customary occurrence in a nineteenth century bedroom.

No bell summoned him back on this occasion. Instead of asking for information, Mr. Murray dropped into a chair and nerved himself to defy the inevitable.

Once again there came a pause. For three days nothing, occurred; but on the fourth a newspaper and a letter arrived, both of which Davis inspected curiously. They were addressed in Mr. Savill’s handwriting, and they bore the postmark “Shepperton.”

The newspaper was enclosed in an ungummed wrapper, tied round with a piece of string. After a moment’s reflection Davis cut that string, spread out the print, and beheld a column marked at top with three blue crosses, containing the account of an inquest held at the King’s Head on a body found on the previous Sunday morning, close by the “Tumbling Bay.”

It was that of a young lady who had been missing since the previous Friday week, and could only be identified by the clothes.

Her mother, who, in giving evidence, frequently broke down, told how her daughter on the evening in question went out for a walk and never returned. She did not wish to go, because her boots were being mended, and her shoes were too large. No doubt they had dropped off. She had very small feet, and it was not always possible to get shoes to fit them. She was engaged to be married to the gentleman with whom she went out. He told her they had quarrelled. She did not believe he could have anything to do with her child’s death; but she did not know what to think. It had been said her girl was keeping company with somebody else, but that could not be true. Her girl was a good girl.

Yes; she had found a bracelet hidden away among her girl’s clothes, and she could not say how she got the seven golden sovereigns that were in the purse, or the locket taken off the body; but her girl was a good girl, and she did not know whatever she would do without her, for Lucy was all she had.

Walter Grantley was next examined, after being warned that anything he said might be used against him.

Though evidently much affected, he gave his evidence in a clear and straightforward manner. He was a clerk in the War Office. He had, against the wishes of all his friends, engaged himself to the deceased, who, after having some time professed much affection, had latterly treated him with great coldness. On the evening in question she reluctantly came out with him for a walk; but after they passed the Ship, she insisted he should take a boat. They turned and got into a boat. He wanted to go down the river, because there was no lock before Sunbury. She declared if he would not row her up the river, she would go home.

They went up the river, quarrelling all the way. There had been so much of this sort of thing that after they passed through Shepperton Lock he tried to bring matters to a conclusion, and asked her to name a day for their marriage. She scoffed at him and asked if he thought she meant to marry a man on such a trumpery salary. Then she insisted he should land her; and after a good deal of argument he did land her; and rowed back alone to Halliford. He knew no more.

Richard Savill deposed he took a boat at Lower Halliford directly after the last witness, with whom he was not acquainted, and rowed up towards Chertsey, passing Mr. Grantley and Miss Heath, who were evidently quarrelling. He went as far as Dumsey Deep, where, finding the stream most heavily against him, he turned, and on his way back saw the young lady walking slowly along the bank. At Shepperton Lock he and Mr. Grantley exchanged a few words, and rowed down to Halliford almost side by side. They bade each other good-evening, and Mr. Grantley walked off in the direction of Walton where it was proved by other witnesses he arrived at eight o’clock, and did not go out again till ten, when he went to bed.

All efforts to trace what had become of the unfortunate girl proved unavailing, till a young man named Lemson discovered the body on the previous Sunday morning close by the Tumbling Bay. The coroner wished to adjourn the inquest, in hopes some further light might be thrown on such a mysterious occurrence; but the jury protested so strongly against any proceeding of the sort, that they were directed to return an open verdict.

No one could dispute that the girl had been “found drowned,” or that there was “no evidence to explain how she came to be drowned.”

At the close of the proceedings, said the local paper, an affecting incident occurred. The mother wished the seven pounds to be given to the man “who brought her child home,” but the man refused to accept a penny. The mother said she would never touch it, when a relation stepped forward and offered to take charge of it for her.

The local paper contained also a leader on the tragedy, in the course of which it remarked how exceedingly fortunate it was that Mr. Savill chanced to be staying at the Ship Hotel, so well known to boating-men, and that he happened to go up the river and see the poor young lady after Mr. Grantley left her, as otherwise the latter gentleman might have found himself in a most unpleasant position. He was much to be pitied. and the leader-writer felt confident that everyone who read the evidence would sympathize with him. It was evident the inquiry had failed to solve the mystery connected with Miss Heath’s untimely fate, but it was still competent to pursue the matter if any fresh facts transpired.

“I must get to know more about all this,” thought Davis as he refolded and tied up the paper.

VII
DAVIS SPEAKS

If there be any truth in old saws, Mr. Murray’s wooing was a very happy one. Certainly it was very speedy. By the end of October he and Miss Ketterick were engaged, and before Christmas the family lawyers had their hands full drawing settlements and preparing deeds. Mrs. Murray disliked letting any money slip out of her own control, but she had gone too far to recede, and Mr. Ketterick was not a man who would have tolerated any proceeding of the sort.

Perfectly straightforward himself, he compelled straightforwardness in others, and Mrs. Murray was obliged to adhere to the terms proposed when nothing seemed to her less probable than that the marriage she wished ever would take place. As for the bridegroom, he won golden opinions from Mr. Ketterick. Beyond the income to be insured to his wife and himself, he asked for nothing. Further he objected to nothing. Never before, surely, had man been so easily satisfied.

“All I have ever wanted,” he said, “was some settled income, so that I might not feel completely dependent on my grandmother. That will not be secured, and I am quite satisfied.”

He deferred to Mr. Ketterick’s opinions and wishes. He made no stipulations.

“You are giving me a great prize,” he told the delighted father, “of which I am not worthy, but I will try to make her happy.”

And the gentle girl was happy: no tenderer or more devoted lover could the proudest beauty have desired. With truth he told her he “counted the days till she should be his.” For he felt secure when by her side. The footsteps had never followed him to Losdale Court. Just in the place that of all others he would have expected them to come, he failed to see that tiny print. There were times when he even forgot it for a season; when he did remember it, he believed, with the faith born of hope, that he should never see it again.

“I wonder he has the conscience,” muttered Mr. Davis one morning, as he looked after the engaged pair. The valet had the strictest ideas concerning the rule conscience should hold over the doings of other folks, and some pleasingly lax notions about the sacrifices conscience had a right to demand from himself. “I suppose he thinks he is safe now that those feet are snugly tucked up in holy ground,” proceeded: Davis, who, being superstitious, faithfully subscribed to all the old formulae. “Ah! He doesn’t know what I know—yet;” which last word, uttered with much gusto, indicated a most unpleasant quarter of an hour in store at some future period for Mr. Murray.

It came one evening a week before his marriage. He was in London, in his grandmother’s house, writing to the girl he had grown to love with the great, entire, remorseful love of his life, when Davis, respectful as ever, appeared, and asked if he might speak a word. Mr. Murray involuntarily put his letter beneath some blotting-paper, and, folding his hands over both, answered, unconscious of what was to follow, “Certainly.”

Davis had come up with his statement at full-cock, and fired at once.

“I have been a faithful servant to you, sir.” Mr. Murray lifted his eyes and looked at him. Then knew what was coming. “I have never found fault with you, Davis,” he said, after an almost imperceptible pause.

“No, sir, you have been a good master—a master I am sure no servant who knew his place could find a fault with.”

If he had owned an easy mind and the smallest sense of humour—neither of which possessions then belonged to Murray—he might have felt enchanted with such a complete turning of the tables; but as matters stood, he could only answer, “Good master as I have been, I suppose you wise to leave my service. Am I right, Davis?”

“Well, sir, you are right and you are wrong. I do not want to leave your service just yet. It may not be quite convenient to you for me to go now; only I want to come to an understanding.”

“About what?” Mr. Murray asked, quite calmly; though he could feel his heart thumping hard against his ribs, and that peculiar choking sensation which is the warning of what in such cases must come someday.

“Will you cast your mind back, sir, to a morning in last August, when you called my attention to some extraordinary footprints on the floor of your room?”

“I remember the morning,” said Mr. Murray, that choking sensation seeming to suffocate him. “Pray go on.”

If Davis had not been master of the position, this indifference would have daunted him; as it was, he again touched the trigger, and fired this: “I know all!”

Mr. Murray’s answer did not come so quick this time. The waters had gone over his head, and for a minute he felt as a man might if suddenly flung into a raging sea, and battling for his life. He was battling for his life with a wildly leaping heart. The noise of a hundred billows seemed dashing on his brain. Then the tempest lulled, the roaring torrent was stayed, and then he said interrogatively, “Yes?” The prints of those phantom feet had not amazed Davis more than did his master’s coolness.

“You might ha’ knocked me down with a feather,” he stated, when subsequently relating this interview. “I always knew he was a queer customer, but I never knew how queer till then.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Murray, which reply quite disconcerted his valet.

“I wouldn’t have seen what I have seen, sir,” he remarked. “not for a king’s ransom.”

“No?”

“No, sir, and that is the truth. What we both saw has been with me at bed and at board, as the saying is, ever since. When I shut my eyes I still feel those wet feet dabbling about the room; and in the bright sunshine I can’t help shuddering, because there seems to be a cold mist creeping over me.”

“Are you not a little imaginative, Davis?” asked his master, himself repressing a shudder.

“No, sir, I am not; no man can be that about which his own eyes have seen and his own ears have heard; and I have heard and seen what I can never forget, and what nothing could pay me for going through.”

“Nevertheless?” suggested Mr. Murray.

“I don’t know whether I am doing right in holding my tongue, in being so faithful, sir; but I can’t help it. I took to you from the first, and I wouldn’t bring harm on you if any act of mine could keep it from you. When one made the remark to me awhile ago it was a strange thing to see a gentleman attended by a pair of wet footprints, I said they were a sign in your family that some great event was about to happen.”

“Did you say so?”

“I did, sir, Lord forgive me!” answered Davis, with unblushing mendacity. “I have gone through more than will ever be known over this affair, which has shook me, Mr. Murray. I am not the man I was before ghosts took to following me, and getting into trains without paying any fare, and waking me in the middle of the night, and rousing me out of my warm bed to see sights I would not have believed I could have seen if anybody had sworn it to me. I have aged twenty-five years since last August—my nerves are destroyed; and so, sir, before you got married, I thought I would make bold to ask what I am to do with a constitution broken in your service and hardly a penny put by,” and, almost out of breath with his pathetic statement, Davis stopped and waited for an answer.

With a curiously hunted expression in them, Mr. Murray; raised his eyes and looked at Davis.

“You have thought over all this,” he said. “How much do you assess them at?”

“I scarcely comprehend, sir—assess what at?”

“Your broken constitution and the five-and-twenty years you say you have aged.”

His master’s face was so gravely serious that Davis could take the question neither as a jest nor a sneer. It was a request to fix a price, and he did so.

“Well, sir,” he answered, “I have thought it all over. In the night watches, when I could get no rest, I lay and reflected what I ought to do. I want to act fair. I have no wish to drive a hard bargain with you, and, on the other hand, I don’t think I would be doing justice by a man that has worked hard if I let myself be sold for nothing. So, sir to cut a long story short, I am willing to take two thousand pounds.”

“And where do you imagine I am to get two thousand pounds?”

Mr. Davis modestly intimated he knew his place better than to presume to have any notion, but no doubt Mr. Murray could raise that sum easily enough.

“If I could raise such a sum for you, do you not think I should have raised it for myself long ago?”

Davis answered that he did; but, if he might make free to say so, times were changed.

“They are, they are indeed,” said Mr. Murray bitterly; and then there was silence.

Davis knocked the conversational ball the next time.

“I am in no particular hurry, sir,” he said. “So, long as we understand one another I can wait till you come back from Italy, and have got the handling of some cash of your own. I daresay even then you won’t be able to pay me off all at once; but if you would insure your life—”

“I can’t insure my life: I have tried, and been refused.”

Again there ensued a silence, which Davis broke once more.

“Well, sir,” he began, “I’ll chance that. If you will give me a line of writing about what you owe me, and make a sort of a will, saying I am to get two thousand, I’ll hold my tongue about what’s gone and past. And I would not be fretting, sir, if I was you: things are quiet now, and, please God, you might never have any more trouble.”

Mr. Davis, in view of his two thousand pounds, his widow, and his wayside public, felt disposed to take an optimistic view of even his master’s position; but Mr. Murray’s thoughts were of a different hue. “If I do have any more,” he considered, “I shall go mad;” a conclusion which seemed likely enough to follow upon even the memory of those phantom feet coming dabbling out of an unseen world to follow him with their accursed print in this.

Davis was not going abroad with the happy pair. For sufficient reason Mr. Murray had decided to leave him behind, and Mrs. Murray, ever alive to her own convenience, instantly engaged him to stay on with her as butler, her own being under notice to leave.

Thus, in a semi-official capacity, Davis witnessed the wedding, which people considered a splendid affair.

What Davis thought of it can never be known, because when he left Losdale Church his face was whiter than the bride’s dress; and after the newly-wedded couple started on the first stage of their life-journey, he went to his room, and stayed in it till his services were required.

“There is no money would pay me for what I’ve seen,” he remarked to himself. “I went too cheap. But when once I handle the cash I’ll try never to come anigh him or them again.”

What was he referring to? Just this. As the bridal group moved to the vestry he saw, if no one else did, those wet, wet feet softly and swiftly threading their way round the bridesmaids and the grooms-man, in front of the relations, before Mrs. Murray herself, and hurry on to keep step with the just wed pair.

For the last time the young wife signed her maiden name. Friends crowded around, uttering congratulations, and still through the throng those unnoticed feet kept walking in and out, round and round, backward and forward, as a dog threads its way through the people at a fair. Down the aisle, under the sweeping dresses of the ladies, past courtly gentlemen, Davis saw those awful feet running gleefully till they came up with bride and bridegroom.

“She is going abroad with them,” thought the man; and then for a moment he felt as if he could endure the ghastly vision no longer, but must faint dead away. “It is a vile shame,” he reflected, “to drag an innocent girl into such a whirlpool;” and all the time over the church step the feet were dancing merrily.

The clerk and the verger noticed them at last.

“I wonder who has been here with wet feet?” said the clerk; and the verger wonderingly answered he did not know.

Davis could have told him, had he been willing to speak or capable of speech.

CONCLUSION
HE’D HAVE SEEN ME RIGHTED

It was August once again—August, fine, warm, and sunshiny—just one year after that damp afternoon on which Paul Murray and his friend stood in front of the Ship at Lower Halliford. No lack of visitors that season. Hotels were full, and furnished houses at a premium. The hearts of lodging-house keepers were glad. Ladies arrayed in rainbow hues flashed about the quiet village streets; boatmen reaped a golden harvest; all sorts of crafts swarmed on the river. Men in flannels gallantly towed their feminine belongings up against a languidly flowing stream. Pater and Materfamilias, and all the olive branches, big and little, were to be met on the Thames, and on the banks of Thames, from Richmond to Staines, and even higher still. The lilies growing around Dockett Point floated with their pure cups wide open to the sun; no close folding of the white wax-leaves around the golden centre that season. Beside the water purple loosestrife grew in great clumps of brilliant colour dazzling to the sight. It was, in fact, a glorious August, in which pleasure-seekers could idle and sun themselves and get tanned to an almost perfect brown without the slightest trouble.

During the past twelvemonth local tradition had tried hard to add another ghost at Dumsey Deep to that already established in the adjoining Stabbery; but the unshrinking brightness of that glorious summer checked belief in it for the time. No doubt when the dull autumn days came again, and the long winter nights, full of awful possibilities, folded water and land in fog and darkness, a figure dressed in grey silk and black velvet fichu, with a natty grey hat trimmed with black and white feathers on its phantom head, with small feet covered by the thinnest of openwork stockings, from which the shoes, so much too large, had dropped long ago, would reappear once more, to the terror of all who heard, but for the time being, snugly tucked up in holy ground the girl whose heart had rejoiced in her beauty, her youth, her admirers, and her finery, was lying quite still and quiet, with closed eyes and ears, that heard neither the church bells nor the splash of oars nor the murmur of human voices.

Others, too, were missing from—though not missed by—Shepperton (the Thames villages miss no human being so long as other human beings, with plenty of money, come down by rail, boat, or carriage to supply his place). Paul Murray, Dick Savill, and Walter Grantley were absent. Mrs. Heath, too, had gone, a tottering, heart-broken woman, to Mr. Pointer’s, where she was most miserable, but where she and her small possessions were taken remarkably good care of.

“Only a year agone,” she said one day, “my girl was with me. In the morning she wore her pretty cambric with pink spots; and in the afternoon, that grey silk in which she was buried—for we durst not change a thread, but just wrapped a winding-sheet round what was left. O! Lucy, Lucy, Lucy! to think I bore you for that!” and then she wept softly, and nobody heeded or tried to console her, for “what,” as Mrs. Pointer wisely said, “was the use of fretting over a daughter dead a twelvemonth, and never much of a comfort neither?”

Mr. Richard Savill was still “grinding away,” to quote his expression. Walter Grantley had departed, so reported his friends, for the diamond-fields; his enemies improved on this by carelessly answering,—

“Grantley! O, he’s gone to the devil;” which latter statement could not have been quite true, since he has been back in England for a long time, and is now quite well to do and reconciled to his family.

As for Paul Murray, there had been all sorts of rumours floating about concerning him.

The honeymoon had been unduly protracted; from place to place the married pair wandered—never resting, never staying; alas! For him there was no rest—there could be none here.

It mattered not where he went—east, west, south, or north—those noiseless wet feet followed; no train was swift enough to outstrip them; no boat could cut the water fast enough to leave them behind; they tracked him with dogged persistence; they were with him sleeping, walking, eating, drinking, praying—for Paul Murray in those days often prayed after a desperate heathenish fashion—and yet the plague was not stayed; the accursed thing still dogged him like a Fate.

After a while people began to be shy of him, because the footsteps were no more intermittent; they were always where he was. Did he enter a cathedral, they accompanied him; did he walk solitary through the woods or pace the lakeside, or wander by the sea, they were ever and always with the unhappy man.

They were worse than any evil conscience, because conscience often sleeps, and they, from the day of his marriage, never did. They had waited for that—waited till he should raise the cup of happiness to his lips, in order to fill it with gall—waited till his wife’s dream of bliss was perfect, and then wake her to the knowledge of some horror more agonizing than death.

There were times when he left his young wife for days and days, and went, like those possessed of old, into the wilderness, seeking rest and finding none; for no legion of demons could have cursed a man’s life more than those wet feet, which printed marks on Paul Murray’s heart that might have been branded by red-hot irons.

All that had gone before was as nothing to the trouble of having involved another in the horrible mystery of his own life—and that other a gentle, innocent, loving creature he might just as well have killed as married.

He did not know what to do. His brain was on fire; he had lost all hold upon himself, all grip over his mind. On the sea of life he tossed like a ship without a rudder, one minute taking a resolve to shoot himself, the next turning his steps to seek some priest, and confess the whole matter fully and freely, and, before he had walked a dozen yards, determining to go away into some savage and desolate land, where those horrible feet might, if they pleased, follow him to his grave.

By degrees this was the plan which took firm root in his dazed brain; and accordingly one morning he started for England, leaving a note in which he asked his wife to follow him. He never meant to see her sweet face again, and he never did. He had determined to go to his father-in-law and confess to him; and accordingly, on the anniversary of Lucy’s death, he found himself at Losdale Court, where vague rumours of some unaccountable trouble had preceded him.

Mr. Ketterick was brooding over these rumours in his library, when, as if in answer to his thoughts, the servant announced Mr. Murray.

“Good God!” exclaimed the older man, shocked by the white, haggard face before him, “what is wrong?”

“I have been ill,” was the reply.

“Where is your wife?”

“She is following me. She will be here in a day or so.”

“Why did you not travel together?”

“That is what I have come to tell you.”

Then he suddenly stopped and put his hand to his heart. He had voluntarily come up for execution, and now his courage failed him. His manhood was gone, his nerves unstrung. He was but a poor, weak, wasted creature, worn out by the ceaseless torment of those haunting feet, which, however, since he turned his steps to England had never followed him. Why had he travelled to Losdale Court? Might he not have crossed the ocean and effaced himself in the Far West, without telling his story at all?

Just as he had laid down the revolver, just as he had turned from the priest’s door, so now he felt he could not say that which he had come determined to say.

“I have walked too far,” he said, after a pause. “I cannot talk just yet. Will you leave me for half an hour? No; I don’t want anything, thank you—except to be quiet.” Quiet!—ah, heavens!

After a little he rose and passed out on to the terrace. Around there was beauty and peace and sunshine. He—he was the only jarring element, and even on him there seemed falling a numbed sensation which for the time being simulated rest.

He left the terrace and crossed the lawn till he came to a great cedar tree, under which there was a seat, where he could sit a short time before leaving the Court.

Yes, he would go away and make no sign. Dreamily he thought of the wild lone lands beyond the sea, where there would be none to ask whence he came or marvel about the curse which followed him. Over the boundless prairie, up the mountain heights, let those feet pursue him if they would. Away from his fellows he could bear his burden. He would confess to no man—only to God, who knew his sin and sorrow; only to his Maker, who might have pity on the work of his hands, and someday bid that relentless avenger be still.

No, he would take no man into his confidence; and even as he so decided, the brightness of the day seemed to be clouded over, warmth was exchanged for a deadly chill, a horror of darkness seemed thrown like a pall over him, and a rushing sound as of many waters filled his ears.

An hour later, when Mr. Ketterick sought his son-in-law, he found him lying on the ground, which was wet and trampled, as though by hundreds of little feet.

His shouts brought help, and Paul Murray was carried into the house, where they laid him on a couch and piled rugs and blankets over his shivering body.

“Fetch a doctor at once,” said Mr. Ketterick.

“And a clergyman,” added the housekeeper.

“No, a magistrate,” cried the sick man, in a loud voice.

They had thought him insensible, and, startled, looked at each other. After that he spoke no more, but turned his head away from them and lay quiet.

The doctor was the first to arrive. With quick alertness he stepped across the room, pulled aside the coverings, and took the patient’s hand; then after gently moving the averted face, he said solemnly, like a man whose occupation has gone,—

“I can do nothing here; he is dead.”

It was true. Whatever his secret, Paul Murray carried it with him to a country further distant than the lone land where he had thought to hide his misery.

•    •    •    •

“It is of no use talking to me,” said Mr. Davis, when subsequently telling his story. “If Mr. Murray had been a gentleman as was a gentleman, he’d have seen me righted, dead or not. She was able to come back—at least, her feet were; and he could have done the same if he’d liked. It was as bad as swindling, not making a fresh will after he was married. How was I to know that will would turn out so much waste paper? And then when I asked for my own, Mrs. Murray dismissed me without a character, and Mr. Ketterick’s lawyers won’t give me anything either; so a lot I’ve made by being a faithful servant, and I’d have all servants take warning by me.”

Mr. Davis is his own servant now, and a very bad master he finds himself.

The Open Door

(1882)

Some people do not believe in ghosts. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning that open door at Ladlow Hall. They say it did not stand wide open—that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as Ladlow on the face of the earth; that the first time they are in Meadowshire they will look it up.

That is the manner in which this story, hitherto unpublished, has been greeted by my acquaintances. How it will be received by strangers is quite another matter. I am going to tell what happened to me exactly as it happened, and readers can credit or scoff at the tale as it pleases them. It is not necessary for me to find faith and comprehension in addition to a ghost story, for the world at large. If such were the case, I should lay down my pen.

Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on London Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an emphatic “No” for answer.

But, at this rate, the story of the Open Door will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately.

•    •    •    •

“Sandy!”

“What do you want?”

“Should you like to earn a sovereign?”

“Of course I should.”

A somewhat curt dialogue, but we were given to curtness in the office of Messrs Frimpton, Frampton and Fryer, auctioneers and estate agents, St. Benet’s Hill, City.

(My name is not Sandy or anything like it, but the other clerks so styled me because of a real or fancied likeness to some character, an ill-looking Scotchman, they had seen at the theatre. From this it may be inferred I was not handsome. Far from it. The only ugly specimen in my family, I knew I was very plain; and it chanced to be no secret to me either that I felt grievously discontented with my lot. I did not like the occupation of clerk in an auctioneer’s office, and I did not like my employers.

We are all of us inconsistent, I suppose, for it was a shock to me to find they entertained a most cordial antipathy to me.)

“Because,” went on Parton, a fellow, my senior by many years—a fellow who delighted in chaffing me, “I can tell you how to lay hands on one.”

“How?” I asked, sulkily enough, for I felt he was having what he called his fun.

“You know that place we let to Carrison, the tea-dealer?”

Carrison was a merchant in the China trade, possessed of fleets of vessels and towns of warehouses; but I did not correct Parton’s expression, I simply nodded.

“He took it on a long lease, and he can’t live in it; and our governor said this morning he wouldn’t mind giving anybody who could find out what the deuce is the matter, a couple of sovereigns and his travelling expenses.”

“Where is the place?” I asked, without turning my head; for the convenience of listening I had put my elbows on the desk and propped up my face with both hands.

“Away down in Meadowshire, in the heart of the grazing country.”

“And what is the matter?” I further enquired.

“A door that won’t keep shut.”

“What?”

“A door that will keep open, if you prefer that way of putting it,” said Parton.

“You are jesting.”

“If I am, Carrison is not, or Fryer either. Carrison came here in a nice passion, and Fryer was in a fine rage; I could see he was, though he kept his temper outwardly. They have had an active correspondence it appears, and Carrison went away to talk to his lawyer. Won’t make much by that move, I fancy.”

“But tell me,” I entreated, “why the door won’t keep shut?”

“They say the place is haunted.”

“What nonsense!” I exclaimed.

“Then you are just the person to take the ghost in hand. I thought so while old Fryer was speaking.”

“If the door won’t keep shut,” I remarked, pursuing my own train of thought, “why can’t they let it stay open?”

“I have not the slightest idea. I only know there are two sovereigns to be made, and that I give you a present of the information.”

And having thus spoken, Parton took down his hat and went out, either upon his own business or that of his employers.

There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next St. Lubbock’s Day, counting the hours to Saturday.

For all that we were all very earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. I had twenty pounds a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father.

We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country, but owing to the failure of some bank, I never could understand what bank, it had to be mortgaged; then the interest was not paid, and the mortgages foreclosed, and we had nothing left save the half-pay of a major, and about a hundred a year which my mother brought to the common fund.

We might have managed on our income, I think, if we had not been so painfully genteel; but we were always trying to do something quite beyond our means, and consequently debts accumulated, and creditors ruled us with rods of iron.

Before the final smash came, one of my sisters married the younger son of a distinguished family, and even if they had been disposed to live comfortably and sensibly she would have kept her sisters up to the mark. My only brother, too, was an officer, and of course the family thought it necessary he should see we preserved appearances.

It was all a great trial to my father, I think, who had to bear the brunt of the dunning and harass, and eternal shortness of money; and it would have driven me crazy if I had not found a happy refuge when matters were going wrong at home at my aunt’s. She was my father’s sister, and had married so “dreadfully below her” that my mother refused to acknowledge the relationship at all.

For these reasons and others, Parton’s careless words about the two sovereigns stayed in my memory.

I wanted money badly—I may say I never had sixpence in the world of my own—and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new umbrella. Fancy is a dangerous little jade to flirt with, as I soon discovered.

She led me on and on. First I thought of the two sovereigns; then I recalled the amount of the rent Mr. Carrison agreed to pay for Ladlow Hall; then I decided he would gladly give more than two sovereigns if he could only have the ghost turned out of possession. I fancied I might get ten pounds—twenty pounds. I considered the matter all day, and I dreamed of it all night, and when I dressed myself next morning I was determined to speak to Mr. Fryer on the subject.

I did so—I told that gentleman Parton had mentioned the matter to me, and that if Mr. Fryer had no objection, I should like to try whether I could not solve the mystery. I told him I had been accustomed to lonely houses, and that I should not feel at all nervous; that I did not believe in ghosts, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them.

“I don’t mind your trying,” he said at last. “Of course you understand it is no cure, no pay. Stay in the house for a week; if at the end of that time you can keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, telegraph for me, and I will go down—if not, come back. If you like to take a companion there is no objection.”

I thanked him, but said I would rather not have a companion.

“There is only one thing, sir, I should like,” I ventured.

“And that—?” he interrupted.

“Is a little more money. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have more than two sovereigns.”

“How much more do you think you ought to have?” he asked.

His tone quite threw me off my guard, it was so civil and conciliatory, and I answered boldly:

“Well, if Mr. Carrison cannot now live in the place perhaps he wouldn’t mind giving me a ten-pound note.”

Mr. Fryer turned, and opened one of the books lying on his desk. He did not look at or refer to it in any way—I saw that.

“You have been with us how long, Edlyd?” he said.

“Eleven months tomorrow,” I replied.

“And our arrangement was, I think, quarterly payments, and one month’s notice on either side?”

“Yes, sir.” I heard my voice tremble, though I could not have said what frightened me.

“Then you will please to take your notice now. Come in before you leave this evening, and I’ll pay you three months’ salary, and then we shall be quits.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” I was beginning, when he broke in:

“But I understand, and that’s enough. I have had enough of you and your airs, and your indifference, and your insolence here. I never had a clerk I disliked as I do you. Coming and dictating terms, forsooth! No, you shan’t go to Ladlow. Many a poor chap”—(he said “devil”)—“would have been glad to earn half a guinea, let alone two sovereigns; and perhaps you may be before you are much older.”

“Do you mean that you won’t keep me here any longer, sir?” I asked in despair. “I had no intention of offending you. I—”

“Now you need not say another word,” he interrupted, “for I won’t bandy words with you. Since you have been in this place you have never known your position, and you don’t seem able to realize it. When I was foolish enough to take you, I did it on the strength of your connections, but your connections have done nothing for me. I have never had a penny out of any one of your friends—if you have any. You’ll not do any good in business for yourself or anybody else, and the sooner you go to Australia”—(here he was very emphatic)—“and get off these premises, the better I shall be pleased.”

I did not answer him—I could not. He had worked himself to a white heat by this time, and evidently intended I should leave his premises then and there. He counted five pounds out of his cash-box, and, writing a receipt, pushed it and the money across the table, and bade me sign and be off at once.

My hand trembled so I could scarcely hold the pen, but I had presence of mind enough left to return one pound ten in gold, and three shillings and fourpence I had, quite by the merest good fortune, in my waistcoat pocket.

“I can’t take wages for work I haven’t done,” I said, as well as sorrow and passion would let me. “Good-morning,” and I left his office and passed out among the clerks.

I took from my desk the few articles belonging to me, left the papers it contained in order, and then, locking it, asked Parton if he would be so good as to give the key to Mr. Fryer.

“What’s up?” he asked “Are you going?”

I said, “Yes, I am going”.

“Got the sack?”

“That is exactly what has happened.”

“Well, I’m ———!” exclaimed Mr. Parton.

I did not stop to hear any further commentary on the matter, but bidding my fellow-clerks good-bye, shook the dust of Frimpton’s Estate and Agency Office from off my feet.

I did not like to go home and say I was discharged, so I walked about aimlessly, and at length found myself in Regent Street. There I met my father, looking more worried than usual.

“Do you think, Phil,” he said (my name is Theophilus), “you could get two or three pounds from your employers?”

Maintaining a discreet silence regarding what had passed, I answered:

“No doubt I could.”

“I shall be glad if you will then, my boy,” he went on, “for we are badly in want of it.”

I did not ask him what was the special trouble. Where would have been the use? There was always something—gas, or water, or poor-rates, or the butcher, or the baker, or the bootmaker. Well, it did not much matter, for we were well accustomed to the life; but, I thought, “if ever I marry, we will keep within our means.” And then there rose up before me a vision of Patty, my cousin—the blithest, prettiest, most useful, most sensible girl that ever made sunshine in a poor man’s house.

My father and I had parted by this time, and I was still walking aimlessly on, when all at once an idea occurred to me. Mr. Fryer had not treated me well or fairly. I would hoist him on his own petard. I would go to headquarters, and try to make terms with Mr. Carrison direct.

No sooner thought than done. I hailed a passing omnibus, and was ere long in the heart of the city. Like other great men, Mr. Carrison was difficult of access—indeed, so difficult of access, that the clerk to whom I applied for an audience told me plainly I could not see him at all. I might send in my message if I liked, he was good enough to add, and no doubt it would be attended to. I said I should not send in a message, and was then asked what I would do. My answer was simple. I meant to wait till I did see him. I was told they could not have people waiting about the office in this way.

I said I supposed I might stay in the street. “Carrison didn’t own that,” I suggested.

The clerk advised me not to try that game, or I might get locked up.

I said I would take my chance of it.

After that we went on arguing the question at some length, and we were in the middle of a heated argument, in which several of Carrison’s “young gentlemen”, as they called themselves, were good enough to join, when we were all suddenly silenced by a grave-looking individual, who authoritatively enquired:

“What is all this noise about?”

Before anyone could answer I spoke up: “I want to see Mr. Carrison, and they won’t let me.”

“What do you want with Mr. Carrison?”

“I will tell that to himself only.”

“Very well, say on—I am Mr. Carrison.”

For a moment I felt abashed and almost ashamed of my persistency; next instant, however, what Mr. Fryer would have called my “native audacity” came to the rescue, and I said, drawing a step or two nearer to him, and taking off my hat:

“I wanted to speak to you about Ladlow hall, if you please, sir.”

In an instant the fashion of his face changed, a look of irritation succeeded to that of immobility; an angry contraction of the eyebrows disfigured the expression of his countenance.

“Ladlow Hall!” he repeated; “and what have you got to say about Ladlow Hall?”

“That is what I wanted to tell you, sir,” I answered, and a dead hush seemed to fall on the office as I spoke.

The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger.

“Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office.

“Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood, hat in hand, beside the great table in the middle of the room.

I began—I will say he was a patient listener—at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk, I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk, I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, then he sat silent, thinking.

At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about Ladlow, I suppose?” he remarked.

“No sir; I have heard nothing except what I have told you.”

“And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?”

“If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Two-and-twenty last January.”

“And how much salary had you at Frimpton’s?”

“Twenty pounds a year.”

“Humph! More than you are worth, I should say.”

“Mr. Fryer seemed to imagine so, sir, at any rate,” I agreed, sorrowfully.

“But what do you think?” he asked, smiling in spite of himself.

“I think I did quite as much work as the other clerks,” I answered.

“That is not saying much, perhaps,” he observed. I was of his opinion, but I held my peace.

“You will never make much of a clerk, I am afraid,” Mr. Carrison proceeded, fitting his disparaging remarks upon me as he might on a lay figure. “You don’t like desk work?”

“Not much, sir.”

“I should judge the best thing you could do would be to emigrate,” he went on, eyeing me critically.

“Mr. Fryer said I had better go to Australia or—” I stopped, remembering the alternative that gentleman had presented.

“Or where?” asked Mr. Carrison.

“The ———, sir” I explained, softly and apologetically.

He laughed—he lay back in his chair and laughed—and I laughed myself, though ruefully.

After all, twenty pounds was twenty pounds, though I had not thought much of the salary till I lost it.

We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived, and where we lived, and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember.

“It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at last; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I can’t live in it, and I can’t get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Lord Ladlow. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. You won’t be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, others have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a ten-pound note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what you represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?”

I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. Carrison he was not grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him.

“What!” he said, “Robert Dorland, of Cullum Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.”

And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Cullum Street.

“Do you know this youth, Mr. Dorland?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder.

“Of course I do, Mr. Carrison,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I had been up to. “He is my nephew.”

“And what is your opinion of him—do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?”

My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.”

“A long column of addition, for instance.”

“It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.”

“Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures—worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar.

My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate:

“Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. Carrison, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose or not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.”

In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. Carrison took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered:

“He wants to go and shut the open door at Ladlow for me. Do you think he can do that?”

My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. Carrison, it was quite settled no one could shut it?”

Mr. Carrison shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.”

“Have nothing to do with it, Phil,” advised my uncle, shortly.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Dorland?” asked Mr. Carrison, with a slight sneer.

“Don’t you, Mr. Carrison?” retorted my uncle.

There was a pause—an uncomfortable pause—during the course of which I felt the ten pounds, which, in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For ten pounds, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue.

“If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Dorland,” said Mr. Carrison, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’ ; but it you were to put it to me on a dark night at Ladlow, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet—the door at Ladlow is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.”

“And you can’t Live at Ladlow?” remarked my uncle.

“I can’t live at Ladlow, and what is more, I can’t get anyone else to live at Ladlow.”

“And you want to get rid of your lease?”

“I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Fryer I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Dorland? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of London, but in the Palace of Truth.”

My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When wine is good it needs no bush. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact.

“I don’t think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.”

Mr. Carrison shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which, implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle, could I have stooped to deceive my uncle.

“I can’t stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.”

“What had you been doing, Phil?” asked my uncle.

“I wanted ten pounds to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. Carrison and my uncle broke out laughing.

“Ten pounds!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Phil boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee ten pounds than that thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.”

When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou of his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the world it was Robert Dorland, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down.

“What will you do, Edlyd?” asked Mr. Carrison; “you hear what your uncle says, ‘Give up the enterprise’, and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.”

“I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not such a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained.

Mr. Carrison looked at me curiously. I think he supplied the end of the sentence for himself, but he only answered:

“I should like you to show me that door fast shut; at any rate, if you can stay in the place alone for a fortnight, you shall have your money.”

“I don’t like it, Phil,” said my uncle: “I don’t like this freak at all.”

“I am sorry for that, uncle,” I answered, “for I mean to go.”

“When?” asked Mr. Carrison.

“Tomorrow morning,” I replied.

“Give him five pounds, Dorland, please, and I will send you my cheque. You will account to me for that sum, you understand,” added Mr. Carrison, turning to where I stood.

“A sovereign will be quite enough,” I said.

“You will take five pounds, and account to me for it,” repeated Mr. Carrison, firmly; “also, you will write to me every day, to my private address, and if at any moment you feel the thing too much for you, throw it up. Good afternoon,” and without more formal leave-taking he departed.

“It is of no use talking to you, Phil, I suppose?” said my uncle.

“I don’t think it is,” I replied; “you won’t say anything to them at home, will you?”

“I am not very likely to meet any of them, am I?” he answered, without a shade of bitterness—merely stating a fact.

“I suppose I shall not see you again before I start,” I said, “so I will bid you good-bye now.”

“Good-bye, my lad; I wish I could see you a bit wiser and steadier.”

I did not answer him; my heart was very full, and my eyes too. I had tried, but office-work was not in me, and I felt it was just as vain to ask me to sit on a stool and pore over writing and figures as to think a person born destitute of musical ability could compose an opera.

Of course I went straight to Patty; though we were not then married, though sometimes it seemed to me as if we never should be married, she was my better half then as she is my better half now.

She did not throw cold water on the project; she did not discourage me. What she said, with her dear face aglow with excitement, was, “I only wish, Phil, I was going with you.” Heaven knows, so did I.

Next morning I was up before the milkman. I had told my people overnight I should be going out of town on business. Patty and I settled the whole plan in detail. I was to breakfast and dress there, for I meant to go down to Ladlow in my volunteer garments. That was a subject upon which my poor father and I never could agree; he called volunteering child’s play, and other things equally hard to bear; whilst my brother, a very carpet warrior to my mind, was never weary of ridiculing the force, and chaffing me for imagining I was “a soldier”.

Patty and I had talked matters over, and settled, as I have said, that I should dress at her father’s.

A young fellow I knew had won a revolver at a raffle, and willingly lent it to me. With that and my rifle I felt I could conquer an army.

It was a lovely afternoon when I found myself walking through leafy lanes in the heart of Meadowshire. With every vein of my heart I loved the country, and the country was looking its best just then: grass ripe for the mower, grain forming in the ear, rippling streams, dreamy rivers, old orchards, quaint cottages.

“Oh, that I had never to go back to London,” I thought, for I am one of the few people left on earth who love the country and hate cities. I walked on, I walked a long way, and being uncertain as to my road, asked a gentleman who was slowly riding a powerful roan horse under arching trees—a gentleman accompanied by a young lady mounted on a stiff white pony—my way to Ladlow Hall.

“That is Ladlow Hall,” he answered, pointing with his whip over the fence to my left hand. I thanked him and was going on, when he said:

“No one is living there now.”

“I am aware of that,” I answered.

He did not say anything more, only courteously bade me good-day, and rode off. The young lady inclined her head in acknowledgement of my uplifted cap, and smiled kindly. Altogether I felt pleased, little things always did please me. It was a good beginning—half-way to a good ending!

When I got to the Lodge I showed Mr. Carrison’s letter to the woman, and received the key.

“You are not going to stop up at the Hall alone, are you, sir?” she asked.

“Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the house; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell.

It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the Hall—a square, solid-looking, old-fashioned house, three stories high, with no basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; four windows to the right of the door, four windows to the left; the whole building flanked and backed with trees; all the blinds pulled down, a dead silence brooding over the place: the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under the ample porch; then, remembering the business which had brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered Ladlow Hall.

For a minute—stepping out of the bright sunlight—the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof, a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms.

The floor was of black and white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horns, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figures of men in complete suits of armour.

To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around.

Mr. Carrison had not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber—which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor.

I knew nothing of the story connected with it—if there were a story. On that point I had left London as badly provided with mental as with actual luggage—worse provided, indeed, for a hamper, packed by Patty, and a small bag were coming over from the station; but regarding the mystery I was perfectly unencumbered. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long.

I looked around me—doors—doors—doors I had never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open—one wide, the other slightly ajar.

“I’ll just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.”

The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting, furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed-chambers—some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value—chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics.

I was greatly delighted with the attics. The windows lighting them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Hall, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see that to the right of the Hall the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer park. At the back of the Hall the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waving corn.

“What a beautiful place!” I said. “Carrison must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone.

Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go downstairs again.

In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving them securely fastened.

When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings.

“I’ll take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room—it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that troubled Mr. Carrison could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building.

I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself.

The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me.

The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach Ladlow I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but there was still light enough in the hail to see all objects distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide!

I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it—closed. This, then, was the room—this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frightened.

That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without more ado I shut the door and tried it.

“Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked.

The door stood wide open.

I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution—went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew, because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows.

The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately caned cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with Faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door, I perceived another door. It was fast locked, the only locked door I had as yet met with in the interior of the house. It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall.

“Any crime might have been committed in such a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically.

Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well.

“I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquised. When I came back it stood wide open once more.

“Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I won’t trouble myself any more with you tonight!”

Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then state of my nerves startled me beyond expression.

It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and, while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest post-office was to be found. Not far from the park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock.

I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked:

“Are you going to stop here all alone, master?”

“All alone,” I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.

“That’s the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper.

“Yes, I know,” I replied.

“What, you’ve been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complementary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery.

I cast one glance at the door—it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. Before I did aught else I felt I must write to Mr. Carrison and Patty, so straightway I hurried to one of the great tables in the hall, and lighting a candle my thoughtful link girl had provided, with many other things, sat down and dashed off the two epistles.

Then down the long avenue, with its mysterious lights and shades, with the moonbeams glinting here and there, playing at hide-and-seek round the boles of the trees and through the tracery of quivering leaf and stem, I walked as fast as if I were doing a match against time.

It was delicious, the scent of the summer odours, the smell of the earth; if it had not been for the door I should have felt too happy. As it was—

“Look here, Phil,” I said, all of a sudden; “life’s not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! But for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage!—that is your enemy—conquer it.”

“I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but fail.”

The post-office was at Ladlow Hollow, a little hamlet through which the stream I had remarked dawdling on its way across the park flowed swiftly, spanned by an ancient bridge.

As I stood by the door of the little shop, asking some questions of the postmistress, the same gentleman I had met in the afternoon mounted on his roan horse, passed on foot. He wished me goodnight as he went by, and nodded familiarly to my companion, who curtseyed her acknowledgements.

“His lordship ages fast,” she remarked, following the retreating figure with her eyes.

“His lordship,” I repeated. “Of whom are you speaking?”

“Of Lord Ladlow,” she said.

“Oh! I have never seen him,” I answered, puzzled. “Why, that was Lord Ladlow!” she exclaimed.

You may be sure I had something to think about as I walked back to the Hall—something beside the moonlight and the sweet night-scents, and the rustle of beast and bird and leaf, that make silence seem more eloquent than noise away down in the heart of the country.

Lord Ladlow! my word, I thought he was hundreds, thousands of miles away; and here I find him—he walking in the opposite direction from his own home—I an inmate of his desolate abode. Hi!—what was that? I heard a noise in a shrubbery close at hand, and in an instant I was in the thick of the underwood. Something shot out and darted into the cover of the further plantation. I followed, but I could catch never a glimpse of it. I did not know the lie of the ground sufficiently to course with success, and I had at length to give up the hunt—heated, baffled, and annoyed.

When I got into the house the moon’s beams were streaming down upon the hall; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the world it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep.

With this intention I picked up some of my traps and carried them to a room on the first floor I had selected as small and habitable. I went down for the rest, and this time chanced to lay my hand on my rifle.

It was wet. I touched the floor—it was wet likewise.

I never felt anything like the thrill of delight which shot through me. I had to deal with flesh and blood, and I would deal with it, heaven helping me.

The next morning broke clear and bright. I was up with the lark—had washed, dressed, breakfasted, explored the house before the postman came with my letters.

One from Mr. Carrison, one from Patty, and one from my uncle: I gave the man half a crown, I was so delighted, and said I was afraid my being at the Hall would cause him some additional trouble.

“No, sir,” he answered, profuse in his expressions of gratitude; “I pass here every morning on my way to her ladyship’s.”

“Who is her ladyship?” I asked.

“The Dowager Lady Ladlow,” he answered—“the old lord’s widow.”

“And where is her place?” I persisted.

“If you keep on through the shrubbery and across the waterfall, you come to the house about a quarter of a mile further up the stream.”

He departed, after telling me there was only one post a day; and I hurried back to the room in which I had breakfasted, carrying my letters with me.

I opened Mr. Carrison’s first. The gist of it was, “Spare no expense; if you run short of money telegraph for it.”

I opened my uncle’s next. He implored me to return; he had always thought me hare-brained, but he felt a deep interest in and affection for me, and thought he could get me a good berth if I would only try to settle down and promise to stick to my work. The last was from Patty. O Patty, God bless you! Such women, I fancy, the men who fight best in battle, who stick last to a sinking ship, who are firm in life’s struggles, who are brave to resist temptation, must have known and loved. I can’t tell you more about the letter, except that it gave me strength to go on to the end.

I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the hall, it swung wide.

Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. Well, before two o’clock I confess I was baffled.

At two there came a visitor—none other than Lord Ladlow himself. Sorely I wanted to take his horse round to the stables, but he would not hear of it.

“Walk beside me across the park, if you will be so kind,” he said; “I want to speak to you.”

We went together across the park, and before we parted I felt I could have gone through fire and water for this simple-spoken nobleman.

“You must not stay here ignorant of the rumours which are afloat,” he said. “Of course, when I let the place to Mr. Carrison I knew nothing of the open door.”

“Did you not, sir?—my lord, I mean,” I stammered.

He smiled. “Do not trouble yourself about my title, which, indeed, carries a very empty state with it, but talk to me as you might to a friend. I had no idea there was any ghost story connected with the Hall, or I should have kept the place empty.”

I did not exactly know what to answer, so I remained silent.

“How did you chance to be sent here?” he asked, after a pause.

I told him. When the first shock was over, a lord did not seem very different from anybody else. If an emperor had taken a morning canter across the park, I might, supposing him equally affable, have spoken as familiarly to him as to Lord Ladlow. My mother always said I entirely lacked the bump of veneration!

Beginning at the beginning, I repeated the whole story, from Parton’s remark about the sovereign to Mr. Carrison’s conversation with my uncle. When I had left London behind in the narrative, however, and arrived at the Hall, I became somewhat more reticent. After all, it was his Hall people could not live in—his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon his attention.

But he would have it. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I told him I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghosts generally did not tamper with firearms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with—I was sure of that.

My companion listened attentively. “You are not frightened, are you?” he enquired at length.

“Not now,” I answered. “The door did give me a start last evening, but I am not afraid of that since I find someone else is afraid of a bullet.”

He did not answer for a minute; then he said: “The theory people have set up about the open door is this: as in that room my uncle was murdered, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.”

“Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable.

“Yes—he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, many are of that opinion still.”

“But you did not, sir—there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?”

He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was sorry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair that wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. ‘If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,’ I added.

“‘Thank you, Hal,’ he said. ‘You are a good fellow; we will talk further about this tomorrow.’ And then he bade me goodnight.

“Before morning broke—it was in the summer two years ago—the household was aroused by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing—writing a letter to me. But for that I might have found it harder to clear myself than was in the case; for his solicitors came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me—he was very rich—unconditionally, only three days previously. That, of course, supplied the motive, as my lady’s lawyer put it. She was very vindictive, spared no expense in trying to prove my guilt, and said openly she would never rest till she saw justice done, if it cost her the whole of her fortune. The letter lying before the dead man, over which blood had spurted, she declared must have been placed on his table by me; but the coroner saw there was an animus in this, for the few opening lines stated my uncle’s desire to confide in me his reasons for changing his will—reasons, he said, that involved his honour, as they had destroyed his peace. ‘In the statement you will find sealed up with my will in—’ At that point he was dealt his death-blow. The papers were never found, and the will was never proved. My lady put in the former will, leaving her everything. Ill as I could afford to go to law, I was obliged to dispute the matter, and the lawyers are at it still, and very likely will continue at it for years. When I lost my good name, I lost my good health, and had to go abroad; and while I was away Mr. Carrison took the Hall. Till I returned, I never heard a word about the open door. My solicitor said Mr. Carrison was behaving badly; but I think now I must see them or him, and consider what can be done in the affair. As for yourself, it is of vital importance to me that this mystery should be cleared up, and if you are really not timid, stay on. I am too poor to make rash promises, but you won’t find me ungrateful.”

“Oh, my lord!” I cried—the address slipped quite easily and naturally off my tongue—“I don’t want any more money or anything, if I can only show Patty’s father I am good for something—”

“Who is Patty?” he asked.

He read the answer in my face, for he said no more.

“Should you like to have a good dog for company?” he enquired after a pause.

I hesitated; then I said: “No, thank you. I would rather watch and hunt for myself.”

And as I spoke, the remembrance of that “something” in the shrubbery recurred to me, and I told him I thought there had been someone about the place the previous evening.

“Poachers,” he suggested; but I shook my head.

“A girl or a woman, I imagine. However, I think a dog might hamper me.”

He went away, and I returned to the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door.

If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut—the instant I turned my back, it stood open.

About four o’clock I had another visitor; no other than Lord Ladlow’s daughter—the Honourable Beatrice, riding her funny little white pony.

She was a beautiful girl of fifteen or thereabouts, and she had the sweetest smile you ever saw.

“Papa sent me with this,” she said; “he would not trust any other messenger,” and she put a piece of paper in my hand.

Keep your food under lock and key; buy what you require yourself. Get your water from the pump in the stable-yard. I am going from home; but if you want anything, go or send to my daughter.

“Any answer?” she asked, patting her pony’s neck.

“Tell his lordship, if you please, I will ‘keep my powder dry’ !” I replied.

“You have made papa look so happy,” she said, still patting that fortunate pony.

“If it is in my power, I will make him look happier still, Miss—” and I hesitated, not knowing how to address her.

“Call me Beatrice,” she said, with an enchanting grace; then added, slyly, “Papa promises me I shall be introduced to Patty ere long,” and before I could recover from my astonishment, she had tightened the bit and was turning across the park.

“One moment, please,” I cried. “You can do something for me.”

“What is it?” and she came back, trotting over the great sweep in front of the house.

“Lend me your pony for a minute.”

She was off before I could even offer to help her alight—off, and gathering up her habit dexterously with one hand, led the docile old sheep forward with the other.

I took the bridle—when I was with horses I felt amongst my own kind—stroked the pony, pulled his ears, and let him thrust his nose into my hand.

Miss Beatrice is a countess now, and a happy wife and mother; but I sometimes see her, and the other night she took me carefully into a conservatory and asked:

“Do you remember Toddy, Mr. Edlyd?”

“Remember him!” I exclaimed; “I can never forget him!”

“He is dead!” she told me, and there were tears in her beautiful eyes as she spoke the words. “Mr. Edlyd, I loved Toddy!”

Well, I took Toddy up to the house, and under the third window to the right hand. He was a docile creature, and let me stand on the saddle while I looked into the only room in Ladlow Hall I had been unable to enter.

It was perfectly bare of furniture, there was not a thing in it—not a chair or table, not a picture on the walls, or ornament on the chimney-piece.

“That is where my grand-uncle’s valet slept,” said Miss Beatrice. “It was he who first ran in to help him the night he was murdered.”

“Where is the valet?” I asked.

“Dead,” she answered. “The shock killed him. He loved his master more than he loved himself.” I had seen all I wished, so I jumped off the saddle, which I had carefully dusted with a branch plucked from a lilac tree; between jest and earnest pressed the hem of Miss Beatrice’s habit to my lips as I arranged its folds; saw her wave her hand as she went at a hard gallop across the park; and then turned back once again into the lonely house, with the determination to solve the mystery attached to it or die in the attempt.

Why, I cannot explain, but before I went to bed that night I drove a gimlet I found in the stables hard into the floor, and said to the door:

“Now I am keeping you open.”

When I went down in the morning the door was close shut, and the handle of the gimlet, broken off short, lying in the hall.

I put my hand to wipe my forehead; it was dripping with perspiration. I did not know what to make of the place at all! I went out into the open air for a few minutes; when I returned the door again stood wide.

If I were to pursue in detail the days and nights that followed, I should weary my readers. I can only say they changed my life. The solitude, the solemnity, the mystery, produced an effect I do not profess to understand, but that I cannot regret.

I have hesitated about writing of the end, but it must come, so let me hasten to it. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover, This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several, or even two people occupied the mansion, but that in my solitary position it was impossible to overlook. A chair would be misplaced, for instance; a path would be visible over a dusty floor; my papers I found were moved; my clothes touched—letters I carried about with me, and kept under my pillow at night; still, the fact remained that when I went to the post-office, and while I was asleep, someone did wander over the house. On Lord Ladlow’s return I meant to ask him for some further particulars of his uncle’s death, and I was about to write to Mr. Carrison and beg permission to have the door where the valet had slept broken open, when one morning, very early indeed, I spied a hairpin lying close beside it.

What an idiot I had been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, of course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it, and most certainly a hairpin could not have got into the house without assistance.

I made up my mind what I should do—that I would go to the post early, and take up my position about the hour I had hitherto started for Ladlow Hollow. I felt on the eve of a discovery, and longed for the day to pass, that the night might come.

It was a lovely morning; the weather had been exquisite during the whole week, and I flung the hall door wide to let in the sunshine and the breeze. As I did so, I saw there was a basket on the top step—a basket filled with rare and beautiful fruit and flowers.

Mr. Carrison had let off the gardens attached to Ladlow Hall for the season—he thought he might as well save something out of the fire, he said, so my fare had not been varied with delicacies of that kind. I was very fond of fruit in those days, and seeing a card addressed to me, I instantly selected a tempting peach, and ate it a little greedily perhaps.

I might say I had barely swallowed the last morsel, when Lord Ladlow’s caution recurred to me. The fruit had a curious flavour—there was a strange taste hanging about my palate. For a moment, sky, trees and park swam before my eyes; then I made up my mind what to do.

I smelt the fruit—it had all the same faint odour; then I put some in my pocket—took the basket and locked it away—walked round to the farmyard—asked for the loan of a horse that was generally driven in a light cart, and in less than half an hour was asking in Ladlow to be directed to a doctor.

Rather cross at being disturbed so early, he was at first inclined to pooh-pooh my idea; but I made him cut open a pear and satisfy himself the fruit had been tampered with.

“It is fortunate you stopped at the first peach,” he remarked, after giving me a draught, and some medicine to take back, and advising me to keep in the open air as much as possible. “I should like to retain this fruit and see you again tomorrow.”

We did not think then on how many morrows we should see each other! Riding across to Ladlow, the postman had given me three letters, but I did not read them till I was seated under a great tree in the park, with a basin of milk and a piece of bread beside me.

Hitherto, there had been nothing exciting in my correspondence. Patty’s epistles were always delightful, but they could not be regarded as sensational; and about Mr. Carrison’s there was a monotony I had begun to find tedious. On this occasion, however, no fault could be found on that score. The contents of his letter greatly surprised me. He said Lord Ladlow had released him from his bargain—that I could, therefore, leave the Hall at once. He enclosed me ten pounds, and said he would consider how he could best advance my interests; and that I had better call upon him at his private house when I returned to London.

“I do not think I shall leave Ladlow yet awhile,” I considered, as I replaced his letter in its envelope. “Before I go I should like to make it hot for whoever sent me that fruit; so unless Lord Ladlow turns me out I’ll stay a little longer.”

Lord Ladlow did not wish me to leave. The third letter was from him.

I shall return home tomorrow night (he wrote), and see you on Wednesday. I have arranged satisfactorily with Mr. Carrison, and as the Hall is my own again, I mean to try to solve the mystery it contains myself. If you choose to stop and help me to do so, you would confer a favour, and I will try to make it worth your while.

“I will keep watch tonight, and see if I cannot give you some news tomorrow,” I thought. And then I opened Patty’s letter—the best, dearest, sweetest letter any postman in all the world could have brought me.

If it had not been for what Lord Ladlow said about his sharing my undertaking, I should not have chosen that night for my vigil. I felt ill and languid—fancy, no doubt, to a great degree inducing these sensations. I had lost energy in a most unaccountable manner. The long, lonely days had told upon my spirits—the fidgety feeling which took me a hundred times in the twelve hours to look upon the open door, to close it, and to count how many steps I could take before it opened again, had tried my mental strength as a perpetual blister might have worn away my physical. In no sense was I fit for the task I had set myself, and yet I determined to go through with it. Why had I never before decided to watch in that mysterious chamber? Had I been at the bottom of my heart afraid? In the bravest of us there are depths of cowardice that lurk unsuspected till they engulf our courage.

The day wore on—the long, dreary day; evening approached—the night shadows closed over the Hall. The moon would not rise for a couple of hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted.

I took a light, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly opened the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open door. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened—there was not a sound—the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving—the very mice remained in their holes! Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtain.

The hours passed—were ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not a sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. Ah! a streak in the sky; morning at last, Heaven be praised! Had ever anyone before so welcomed the dawn? A thrush began to sing—was there ever heard such delightful music? It was the morning twilight, soon the sun would rise; soon that awful vigil would be over, and yet I was no nearer the mystery than before. Hush! what was that? It had come. After the hours of watching and waiting; after the long night and the long suspense, it came in a moment.

The locked door opened—so suddenly, so silently, that I had barely time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. She went straight across to the other door and closed it, securing it as I saw with bolt and lock. Then just glancing around, she made her way to the cabinet, and with a key she produced shot back the wards. I did not stir, I scarcely breathed, and yet she seemed uneasy. Whatever she wanted to do she evidently was in haste to finish, for she took out the drawers one by one, and placed them on the floor; then, as the light grew better, I saw her first kneel on the floor, and peer into every aperture, and subsequently repeat the same process, standing on a chair she drew forward for the purpose. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad all in black—not a bit of white about her. What on earth could she want? In a moment it flashed upon me—THE WILL AND THE LETTER! SHE IS SEARCHING FOR THEM.

I sprang from my concealment—I had her in my grasp; but she tore herself out of my hands, fighting like a wild-cat: she hit, scratched, kicked, shifting her body as though she had not a bone in it, and at last slipped herself free, and ran wildly towards the door by which she had entered.

If she reached it, she would escape me. I rushed across the room and just caught her dress as she was on the threshold. My blood was up, and I dragged her back: she had the strength of twenty devils, I think, and struggled as surely no woman ever did before.

“I do not want to kill you,” I managed to say in gasps, “but I will if you do not keep quiet.”

“Bah!” she cried; and before I knew what she was doing she had the revolver out of my pocket and fired.

She missed: the ball just glanced off my sleeve. I fell upon her—I can use no other expression, for it had become a fight for life, and no man can tell the ferocity there is in him till he is placed as I was then—fell upon her, and seized the weapon. She would not let it go, but I held her so tight she could not use it. She bit my face; with her disengaged hand she tore my hair. She turned and twisted and slipped about like a snake, but I did not feel pain or anything except a deadly horror lest my strength should give out.

Could I hold out much longer? She made one desperate plunge, I felt the grasp with which I held her slackening; she felt it too, and seizing her advantage tore herself free, and at the same instant fired again blindly, and again missed.

Suddenly there came a look of horror into her eyes—a frozen expression of fear.

“See!” she cried; and flinging the revolver at me, fled.

I saw, as in a momentary flash, that the door I had beheld locked stood wide—that there stood beside the table an awful figure, with uplifted hand—and then I saw no more. I was struck at last; as she threw the revolver at me she must have pulled the trigger, for I felt something like red-hot iron enter my shoulder, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall.

When the postman came that morning, finding no one stirring, be looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help.

“There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

As they rushed round to the front of the house they saw Lord Ladlow riding up the avenue, and breathlessly told him what had happened.

“Smash in one of the windows,” be said; “and go instantly for a doctor.”

They laid me on the bed in that terrible room, and telegraphed for my father. For long I hovered between life and death, but at length I recovered sufficiently to be removed to the house Lord Ladlow owned on the other side of the Hollow.

Before that time I had told him all I knew, and begged him to make instant search for the will.

“Break up the cabinet if necessary,” I entreated, “I am sure the papers are there.”

And they were. His lordship got his own, and as to the scandal and the crime, one was hushed up and the other remained unpunished. The dowager and her maid went abroad the very morning I lay on the marble pavement at Ladlow Hall—they never returned.

My lord made that one condition of his silence.

Not in Meadowshire, but in a fairer county still, I have a farm which I manage, and make both ends meet comfortably.

Patty is the best wife any man ever possessed—and I—well, I am just as happy if a trifle more serious than of old; but there are times when a great horror of darkness seems to fall upon me, and at such periods I cannot endure to be left alone.

Walnut-Tree House

(1882)

I
THE NEW OWNER

Many years ago there stood at the corner of a street leading out of Upper Kennington Lane a great red brick house, covering a goodly area of ground, and surrounded by gardens magnificent in their proportions when considered in relation to the populous neighbourhood mentioned.

Originally a place of considerable pretention; a gentleman’s seat in the country, probably when Lambeth Marsh had not a shop in the whole of it; when Vauxhall Gardens were still in nubilus; when no South-Western Railway was planned or thought of; when London was comparatively a very small place, and its present suburbs were mere country villages—hamlets lying quite remote from the heart of the city.

Once, the house in question had been surrounded by a small park, and at that time there were fish-ponds in the grounds, and quite a stretch of meadow-land within the walls. Bit by bit, however, the park had been cut up into building ground and let off on building leases; the meadows were covered with bricks and mortar, shops were run up where cows once chewed the cud, and the roar and rumble of London traffic sounded about the old house and the deserted garden, formerly quiet and silent as though situated in some remote part of the country.

Many a time in the course of the generations that had come and gone, been born and buried, since the old house was built, the freehold it covered changed hands. On most estates of this kind round London there generally is a residence, which passes like a horse from buyer to buyer. When it has served one man’s need it is put up for sale and bid for by another. When rows and rows of houses, and line after line of streets, have obliterated all the familiar marks, it is impossible to cultivate a sentiment as regards property; and it is unlikely that the descendants of the first possessors of Walnut-Tree House who had grown to be country folk and lived in great state, oblivious of business people, and entertaining a great contempt for trade, knew that in a very undesirable part of London there still stood the residence where the first successful man of their family went home each day from his counting-house over against St. Mildred’s Church, in The Poultry.

One very wet evening, in an autumn the leaves of which have been dead and gone this many a year, Walnut-Tree House, standing grim and lonely in the mournful twilight, looked more than ordinarily desolate and deserted.

There was not a sign of life about it; the shutters were closed—the rusty iron gates were fast locked—the approach was choked up with grass and weeds—through no chink did the light of a single candle flicker. For seven years it had been given over to rats and mice and blackbeetles; for seven years no one had been found to live in it; for seven years it had remained empty, while its owner wore out existence in fits of moody dejection or of wild frenzy in the madhouse close at hand; and now that owner was dead and buried and forgotten, and the new owner was returning to take possession. This new owner had written to his lawyers, or rather he had written to the lawyers of his late relative, begging them to request the person in charge of the house to have rooms prepared for his arrival; and, when the train drew into the station at Waterloo, he was met by one of the clerks in Messrs Timpson and Co.’s office, who, picking out Mr. Stainton, delivered to that gentleman a letter from the firm, and said he would wait and hear if there were any message in reply.

Mr. Stainton read the letter—looked at the blank flyleaf—and then, turning back to the first words, read what his solicitors had to say all through once again, this time aloud.

“The house has stood empty for more than seven years,” he said, half addressing the clerk and half speaking to himself. “Must be damp and uninhabitable; there is no one living on the premises. Under these circumstances we have been unable to comply with your directions, and can only recommend you to go to an hotel till we are able personally to discuss future arrangements.”

“Humph,” said the new owner, after he had finished. “I’ll go and take a look at the place, anyhow. Is it far from here, do you know?” he asked, turning to the young man from Timpsons’.

“No, sir; not very far.”

“Can you spare time to come over there with me?” continued Mr. Stainton. The young man believed that he could, adding, “If you want to go into the house we had better call for the key. It is at an estate agent’s in the Westminster Bridge Road.”

“I cannot say I have any great passion for hotels,” remarked the new owner, as he took his seat in the cab.

“Indeed, sir?”

“No; either they don’t suit me, or I don’t suit them. I have led a wild sort of life: not much civilisation in the bush, or at the goldfields, I can tell you. Rooms full of furniture, houses where a fellow must keep to the one little corner he has hired, seem to choke me. Then I have not been well, and I can’t stand noise and the trampling of feet. I had enough of that on board ship; and I used to lie awake at nights and think how pleasant it would be to have a big house all to myself, to do as I liked in.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the clerk.

“You see, I have been used to roughing it, and I can get along very well for a night without servants.”

“No doubt, sir.”

“I suppose the house is in substantial repair—roof tight, and all that sort of thing?”

“I can’t say, I am sure, sir.”

“Well, if there is a dry corner where I can spread a rug, I shall sleep there tonight.”

The clerk coughed. He looked out of the window, and then he looked at Messrs. Timpsons’ client.

“I do not think—” he began, apologetically, and then stopped.

“You don’t think what?” asked the other.

“You’ll excuse me, sir, but I don’t think—I really do not think, if I were you, I’d go to that house tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it has not been slept in for nearly seven years, and it must be blue mouldy with damp; and if you have been ill, that is all the more reason you should not run such a risk. And, besides—”

“Besides?” suggested Mr. Stainton. “Out with it! Like a postscript, no doubt, that ‘besides’ holds the marrow of the argument.”

“The house has stood empty for years, sir, because—there is no use in making any secret of it—the place has a bad name.”

“What sort of a bad name—unhealthy?”

“Oh, no!”

“Haunted?”

The clerk inclined his head. “You have hit it, sir,” he said.

“And that is the reason no one has lived there?”

“We have been quite unable to let the house on that account.”

“The sooner it gets unhaunted, then, the better,” retorted Mr. Stainton. “I shall certainly stop there tonight. You are not disposed to stay and keep me company, I suppose?”

With a little gesture of dismay the clerk drew back. Certainly, this was one of the most unconventional of clients. The young man from Timpsons’ did not at all know what to make of him.

“A rough sort of fellow,” he said afterwards, when describing the new owner; “boorish; never mixed with good society, that sort of thing.”

He did not in the least understand this rich man, who treated him as an equal, who objected to hotels, who didn’t mind taking up his abode in a house where not even a drunken charwoman could be induced to stop, and who calmly asked a stranger on whom he had never set eyes before—a clerk in the respectable office of Timpson and Co., a young fellow anxious to rise in the world, careful as to his associates, particular about the whiteness of his shirts and the sit of his collar and the cut of his coats—to “rough” things with him in that dreadful old dungeon, where, perhaps, he might even be expected to light a fire.

Still, he did not wish to offend the new owner. Messrs. Timpson expected him to be a profitable client; and to that impartial firm, the money of a boor would, he knew, seem as good as the money of a count.

“I am very sorry,” he stammered; “should only have felt too much honoured; but the fact is—previous engagement—”

Mr. Stainton laughed.

“I understand,” he said. “Adventures are quite as much out of your line as ghosts. And now tell me about this apparition. Does the ‘old man’ walk?”

“Not that I ever heard of,” answered the other.

“Is it, then, the miserable beggar who tried to do for himself?”

“It is not the late Mr. Stainton, I believe,” said the young man, in tone which mildly suggested that reference to a client of Timpsons’ as a “miserable beggar” might be considered bad taste.

“Then who on earth is it?” persisted Mr. Stainton.

“If you must know, sir, it is a child—a child who has driven every tenant in succession out of the house.”

The new owner burst into a hearty laugh—a laugh which gave serious offence to Timpsons’ clerk.

“That is too good a joke,” said Mr. Stainton. “I do not know when I heard anything so delicious.”

“It is a fact, whether it be delicious or not,” retorted the young man, driven out of all his former propriety of voice and demeanour by the contemptuous ridicule this “digger” thought fit to cast on his story; “and I, for one, would not, after all I have heard about your house, pass a night in it—no, not if anybody offered me fifty pounds down.”

“Make your mind easy, my friend,” said the new owner, quietly. “I am not going to bid for your company. The child and I can manage, I’ll be bound, to get on very comfortably by ourselves.”

II
THE CHILD

It was later on in the same evening; Mr. Stainton had an hour previously taken possession of Walnut-Tree House, dismissed his cab, bidden Timpsons’ clerk good evening, and, having ordered in wood and coals from the nearest greengrocer, besides various other necessary articles from various other tradesmen, he now stood by the front gate waiting the coming of the goods purchased.

As he waited, he looked up at the house, which in the uncertain light of the street lamps appeared gloomier and darker than had been the case even in the gathering twilight.

The long rows of shuttered windows, the silent solemnity of the great trees, remnants of a once goodly avenue that had served to give its name to Walnut-Tree House; the appalling silence of everything within the place, when contrasted with the noise of passing cabs and whistling street boys, and men trudging home with unfurled umbrellas and women scudding along with draggled petticoats, might well have impressed even an unimpressionable man, and Edgar Stainton, spite of his hard life and rough exterior, was impressionable and imaginative.

“It has an ‘uncanny’ look, certainly,” he considered; “but is not so cheerless for a lonely man as the ‘bush’; and though I am not over-tired, I fancy I shall sleep more soundly in my new home than I did many a night at the goldfields. When once I can get a good fire up I shall be all right. Now, I wonder when those coals are coming!”

As he turned once again towards the road, he beheld on its way the sack of fuel with which the nearest greengrocer said he thought he could—indeed, said he would—“oblige” him. A ton—half a ton—quarter of a ton, the greengrocer affirmed would be impossible until the next day; but a sack—yes—he would promise that. Bill should bring it round; and Bill was told to put his burden on the truck, and twelve bundles of wood, “and we’ll make up the rest tomorrow,” added Bill’s master, with the air of one who has conferred a favour.

In the distance Mr. Stainton descried a very grimy Bill, and a very small boy, coming along with the truck leisurely, as though the load had been Herculean.

Through the rain he watched the pair advancing and greeted Bill with a glad voice of welcome.

“So you’ve come at last; that’s right. Better late than never. Bring them this way. I’ll have this small lot shot in the kitchen for the night.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” answered Bill, “I don’t think you will—that is to say, not by me. As I told our governor, I’ll take ‘em to the house as you’ve sold ‘em to the house, but I won’t set a foot inside it.”

“Do you mean to say you are going to leave them out on the pavement?” asked Mr. Stainton.

“Well, sir, I don’t mind taking them to the front door if it’ll be a convenience.”

“That will do. You are a brave lot of people in these parts I must say.”

“As for that,” retorted Bill, with sack on back and head bent forward, “I dare say we’re as brave about here as where you come from.”

“It is not impossible,” retorted Mr. Stainton; “there are plenty of cowards over there too.”

With a feint of being very much afraid, Bill, after he had shot his coals on the margin of the steps, retreated from the door, which stood partly open, and when the boy who brought up the wood was again out with the truck, said, putting his knuckles to his eyebrows:

“Beg pardon, sir, but I suppose you couldn’t give us a drop of beer? Very wet night, sir.”

“No, I could not,” answered Mr. Stainton, very decidedly. “I shall have to shovel these coals into the house myself; and, as for the night, it is as wet for me as it is for you.”

Nevertheless, as Bill shuffled along the short drive—shuffling wearily—like a man who, having nearly finished one day’s hard work, was looking forward to beginning another hard day in the morning, the new owner relented.

“Here,” he said, picking out a sixpence to give him, “it isn’t your fault, I suppose, that you believe in old women’s tales.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” Bill answered; “I am sure I am extremely obliged; but if I was in your shoes I wouldn’t stop in that house—you’ll excuse me, sir, meaning no offence—but I wouldn’t; indeed I wouldn’t.”

“It seems to have got a good name, at any rate,” thought Mr. Stainton, while retracing his steps to the banned tenement. “Let us see what effect a fire will have in routing the shadows.”

He entered the house, and, striking a match, lighted some candles he had brought in with him from a neighbouring oil-shop.

Years previously the gas company, weary of receiving no profit from the house, had taken away their meter and cut off their connections. The water supply was in the same case, as Mr. Stainton, going round the premises before it grew quite dark, had discovered.

Of almost all small articles of furniture easily broken by careless tenants, easily removed by charwomen, the place was perfectly bare; and as there were no portable candlesticks in which to place the lights the new tenant was forced to make his illumination by the help of some dingy mirrors provided with sconces, and to seek such articles as he needed by the help of a guttering mould candle stuck in the neck of a broken bottle. After an inspection of the ground-floor rooms he decided to take up his quarters for the night in one which had evidently served as a library.

In the centre of the apartment there was the table covered with leather. Around the walls were bookcases, still well filled with volumes, too uninviting to borrow, too valueless in the opinion of the ignorant to steal. In one corner stood a bureau, where the man, who for so many years had been dead even while living, kept his letters and papers.

The floor was bare. Once a Turkey carpet had been spread over the centre of the polished oak boards, but it lay in its wonted place no longer; between the windows hung a convex mirror, in which the face of any human being looked horrible and distorted; whilst over the mantle-shelf, indeed, forming a portion of it, was a long, narrow glass, bordered by a frame ornamented with a tracery of leaves and flowers. The ceiling was richly decorated, and, spite of the dust and dirt and neglect of years, all the appointments of the apartment he had selected gave Edgar Stainton the impression that it was a good thing to be the owner of such a mansion, even though it did chance to be situated as much out of the way of fashionable London as the diggings whence he had come.

“And there is not a creature but myself left to enjoy it all,” he mused, as he sat looking into the blazing coals. “My poor mother, how she would have rejoiced tonight, had she lived to be the mistress of so large a place! And my father, what a harbour this would have seemed after the storms that buffeted him! Well, they are better off, I know; and yet I cannot help thinking how strange it all is—that I, who went away a mere beggar, should come home rich, to be made richer, and yet stand so utterly alone that in the length and breadth of England I have not a relative to welcome me or to say I wish you joy of your inheritance.”

He had eaten his frugal supper, and now, pushing aside the table on which the remains of his repast were spread, he began walking slowly up and down the room, thinking over the past and forming plans for the future.

As he was buried in reflection, the fire began to die down without his noticing the fact; but a sudden feeling of chilliness at length causing him instinctively to look towards the hearth, he threw some wood into the grate, and, while the flames went blazing up the wide chimney, piled on coals as though he desired to set the house alight.

While he was so engaged there came a knock at the door of the room—a feeble, hesitating knock, which was repeated more than once before it attracted Mr. Stainton’s attention.

When it did, being still busy with the fire, and forgetting he was alone in the house, he called out, “Come in.”

Along the panels there stole a rustling sort of touch, as if someone were feeling uncertainly for the handle—a curious noise, as of a weak hand fumbling about the door in the dark; then, in a similar manner, the person seeking admittance tried to turn the lock.

“Come in, can’t you?” repeated Mr. Stainton; but even as he spoke he remembered he was, or ought to be, the sole occupant of the mansion.

He was not alarmed; he was too much accustomed to solitude and danger for that; but he rose from his stooping position and instinctively seized his revolver, which he had chanced, while unpacking some of his effects, to place on the top of the bureau.

“Come in, whoever you are,” he cried; but seeing the door remained closed, though the intruder was evidently making futile efforts to open it, he strode half-way across the room, and then stopped, amazed.

For suddenly the door opened, and there entered, shyly and timidly, a little child—a child with the saddest face mortal ever beheld; a child with wistful eyes and long, ill-kept hair; a child poorly dressed, wasted and worn, and with the mournfullest expression on its countenance that face of a child ever wore.

“What a hungry little beggar,” thought Mr. Stainton. “Well, young one, and what do you want here?” he added, aloud.

The boy never answered, never took the slightest notice of his questioner, but simply walked slowly round the room, peering into all the corners, as if looking for something. Searching the embrasures of the windows, examining the recesses beside the fire-place, pausing on the hearth to glance under the library table, and finally, when the doorway was reached once more, turning to survey the contents of the apartment with an eager and yet hopeless scrutiny.

“What is it you want, my boy?” asked Mr. Stainton, glancing as he spoke at the child’s poor thin legs, and short, shabby frock, and shoes well nigh worn out, and arms bare and lean and unbeautiful. “Is it anything I can get for you?”

Not a word—not a whisper; only for reply a glance of the wistful brown eyes.

“Where do you come from, and who do you belong to?” persisted Mr. Stainton.

The child turned slowly away.

“Come, you shall not get off so easily as you seem to imagine,” persisted the new owner, advancing towards his visitor. “You have no business to be here at all; and before you go you must tell me how you chance to be in this house, and what you expected to find in this room.”

He was close to the doorway by this time, and the child stood on the threshold, with its back towards him.

Mr. Stainton could see every detail of the boy’s attire—his little plaid frock, which he had outgrown, the hooks which fastened it; the pinafore, soiled and crumpled, tied behind with strings broken and knotted; in one place the skirt had given from the body, and a piece of thin, poor flannel showed that the child’s under habiliments matched in shabbiness his exterior garments.

“Poor little chap,” thought Mr. Stainton. “I wonder if he would like something to eat. Are you hungry, my lad?”

The child turned and looked at him earnestly, but answered never a word.

“I wonder if he is dumb,” marvelled Mr. Stainton; and, seeing he was moving away, put out a hand to detain him. But the child eluded his touch, and flitted out into the hall and up the wide staircase with swift, noiseless feet.

Only waiting to snatch a candle from one of the sconces, Mr. Stainton pursued as fast as he could follow.

Up the easy steps he ran at the top of his speed; but, fast as he went, the child went faster. Higher and higher he beheld the tiny creature mounting, then, still keeping the same distance between them, it turned when it reached the top storey and trotted along a narrow corridor with rooms opening off to right and left. At the extreme end of this passage a door stood ajar. Through this the child passed, Mr. Stainton still following.

“I have run you to earth at last,” he said, entering and closing the door. “Why, where has the boy gone?” he added, holding the candle above his head and gazing round the dingy garret in which he found himself.

The room was quite empty. He examined it closely, but could find no possible outlet save the door, and a skylight which had evidently not been opened for years.

There was no furniture in the apartment, except a truckle bedstead, a rush-bottomed chair, and a rickety washstand. No wardrobe, or box or press where even a kitten might have lain concealed.

“It is very strange,” muttered Mr. Stainton, as he turned away baffled. “Very strange!” he repeated, while he walked along the corridor. “I don’t understand it at all,” he decided, proceeding slowly down the topmost flight of stairs; but then all at once he stopped.

“It is the child!” he exclaimed aloud, and the sound of his own voice woke strange echoes through the silence of that desolate house. “It is the child!” And he descended the principal staircase very slowly, with bowed head, and his grave, thoughtful face graver and more thoughtful than ever.

III
SEEKING FOR INFORMATION

It was enough to make any man look grave; and as time went on the new owner of Walnut-Tree House found himself pondering continually as to what the mystery could be which attached to the child he had found in possession of his property, and who had already driven tenant after tenant out of the premises. Inclined at first to regard the clerk’s story as a joke, and his own experience on the night of his arrival a delusion, it was impossible for him to continue incredulous when he found, even in broad daylight, that terrible child stealing down the staircase and entering the rooms, looking—looking, for something it never found.

Never after the first horror was over did Mr. Stainton think of leaving the house in consequence of that haunting presence which had kept the house tenantless. It would have been worse than useless, he felt. With the ocean stretching between, his spirit would still be in the old mansion at Lambeth—his mental vision would always be watching the child engaged in the weary search to which there seemed no end—that never appeared to produce any result.

At bed and at board he had company, or the expectation of it. No apartment in the building was secure from intrusion. It did not matter where he lay; it did not matter where he ate; between sleeping and waking, between breakfast and dinner, whenever the notion seized it, the child came gliding in, looking, looking, looking, and never finding; not lingering longer than was necessary to be certain the object of its search was absent, but wandering hither and thither, from garret to kitchen, from parlour to bed-chamber, in that quest which still seemed fresh as when first begun.

Mr. Stainton went to his solicitors as the most likely persons from whom to obtain information on the subject, and plunged at once into the matter.

“Who is the child supposed to be, Mr. Timpson?” he asked, making no secret that he had seen it.

“Well, that is really very difficult to say,” answered Mr. Timpson.

“There was a child once, I suppose—a real child—flesh and blood?”

Mr. Timpson took off his spectacles and wiped them.

“There were two; yes, certainly, in the time of Mr. Felix Stainton—a boy and a girl.”

“In that house?”

“In that house. They survived him.”

“And what became of them?”

“The girl was adopted by a relation of her father’s, and the—boy—died.”

“Oh the boy died, did he? Do you happen to know what he died of?”

“No; I really do not. There was nothing wrong about the affair, however, if that is what you are thinking of. There never was a hint of that sort.”

Mr. Stainton sat silent for a minute; then he said:

“Mr. Timpson, I can’t shake off the idea that somehow there has been foul play with regard to those children. Who were they?”

“Felix Stainton’s grandchildren. His daughter made a low marriage, and he cast her adrift. After her death the two children were received at Walnut-Tree House on sufferance—fed and clothed, I believe, that was all; and when the old man died the heir-at-law permitted them to remain.”

“Alfred Stainton?”

“Yes; the unhappy man who became insane. His uncle died intestate, and he consequently succeeded to everything but the personalty, which was very small, and of which these children had a share.”

“There was never any suspicion you say, of foul play on the part of the late owner?”

“Dear, dear! No; quite the contrary.”

“Then can you throw the least light on the mystery?”

“Not the least; I wish I could.”

For all that, Mr. Stainton carried away an impression Mr. Timpson knew more of the matter than he cared to tell; and was confirmed in this opinion by a chance remark from Mr. Timpson’s partner, whom he met in the street almost immediately after.

“Why can’t you let the matter rest, Mr. Stainton?” asked the Co. with some irritation of manner when he heard the object of their client’s visit. “What is the use of troubling your head about a child who has been lying in Lambeth Churchyard these dozen years? Take my advice, have the house pulled down and let or sell the ground for building. You ought to get a pot of money for it in that neighbourhood. If there were a wrong done, it is too late to set it right now.”

“What wrong do you refer to?” asked Mr. Stainton eagerly, thinking he had caught Timpson’s partner napping. But that gentleman was too sharp for him.

“I remarked if there were a wrong done—not that there had been one,” he answered; and then, without a pause, added, “We shall hope to hear from you that you have decided to follow our advice.”

But Mr. Stainton shook his head.

“I will not pull down the old house just yet,” he said, and walked slowly away.

“There is a mystery behind it all,” he considered. “I must learn more about these children. Perhaps some of the local tradespeople may recollect them.”

But the local tradespeople for the most part were newcomers—or else had not supplied “the house.”

“So far as ever I could understand,” said one “family butcher,” irascibly sharpening his knife as he spoke, “there was not much to supply. That custom was not worth speaking of. I hadn’t it, so what I am saying is not said on my own account. A scrag end of neck of mutton—a bit of gravy beef—two pennyworth of sheep’s liver—that was the sort of thing. Misers, sir, misers; the old gentleman bad, and the nephew worse. A bad business, first and last. But what else could be expected? When people as can afford to live on the fat of the land never have a sirloin inside their doors, why, worse must come of it. No, sir, I never set eyes on the children to my knowledge; I only knew there were children by hearing one of them was dead, and that it was the poorest funeral ever crossed a decent threshold.”

“Poor little chap,” thought Mr. Stainton, looking straight out into the street for a moment; then added, “lest the family misfortunes should descend to me, you had better send round a joint to Walnut-Tree House.”

“Lor’, sir, are you the gentleman as is living there? I beg your pardon, I am sure, but I have been so bothered with questions in regard of that house and those children that I forget my manners when I talk about them. A joint, sir—what would you please to have?”

The new owner told him; and while he counted out the money to pay for it Mr. Parker remarked:

“There is only one person I can think of sir, likely to be able to give any information about the matter.”

“And that is?”

“Mr. Hennings, at the ‘Pedlar’s Dog.’ He had some acquaintance with the old lady as was housekeeper both to Mr. Felix Stainton and the gentleman that went out of his mind.”

Following the advice, the new owner repaired to the ‘Pedlar’s Dog,’ where (having on his first arrival at Walnut-Tree House ordered some creature comforts from that well-known public) he experienced a better reception than had been accorded to him by Mr. Parker.

“Do I know Walnut-Tree House, sir?” said Mr. Hennings, repeating his visitor’s question. “Well, yes, rather. Why, you might as well ask me, do I know the ‘Pedlar’s Dog.’ As boy and man I can remember the old house for close on five-and-fifty years. I remember Mr. George Stainton; he used to wear a skull-cap and knee-breeches. There was an orchard then where Stainton Street is now, and his whole time was taken up in keeping the boys out of it. Many a time I have run from him.”

“Did you ever see anything of the boy and girl who were there, after Mr. Alfred succeeded to the property—Felix Stainton’s grandchildren, I mean?” asked the new owner, when a pause in Mr. Henning’s reminiscences enabled him to take his part in the conversation.

“Well, sir, I may have seen the girl, but I can’t bring it to my recollection; the boy I do remember, however. He came over here two or three times with Mrs. Toplis, who kept house for both Mr. Staintons, and I took notice of him, both because he looked so peaky and old-fashioned, and also on account of the talk about him.”

“There was talk about him, then?”

“Bless you, yes, sir; as much talk while he was living as since he died. Everybody thought he ought to have been the heir.”

“Why?” enquired the new owner.

“Because there was a will made leaving the place to him.”

Here was information. Mr. Stainton’s heart seemed to stand still for a second and then leap on with excitement.

“Who made the will?”

“The grandfather, Felix Stainton, to be sure; who else should make it?”

“I did not mean that. Was it not drawn out by a solicitor?”

“Oh! Yes—now I understand you, sir. The will was drawn right enough by Mr. Quinance, in the Lambeth Road, a very clever lawyer.”

“Not by Timpson, then? How was that?”

“The old man took the notion of making it late one night, and so Mrs. Toplis sent to the nearest lawyer she knew of.”

“Yes; and then?”

“Well, the will was made and signed and witnessed, and everything regular; and from that day to this no one knows what has become of it.”

“How very strange.”

“Yes, sir, it is more than strange—unaccountable. At first Mr. Quinance was suspected of having given it up to Mr. Alfred; but Mrs. Toplis and Quinance’s clerk—he has succeeded to the business now—say that old Felix insisted upon keeping it himself. So, whether he destroyed it or the nephew got hold of it, Heaven only knows; for no man living does, I think.”

“And the child—the boy, I mean?”

“If you want to hear all about him, sir, Mrs. Toplis is the one to tell you. If you have a mind to give a shilling to a poor old lady who always did try to keep herself respectable, and who, I will say, paid her way honourable as long as she had a sixpence to pay it honourable with, you cannot do better than go and see Mrs. Toplis, who will talk to you for hours about the time she lived at Walnut-Tree House.”

And with this delicate hint that his minutes were more valuable than the hours of Mrs. Toplis, Mr. Hennings would have closed the interview, but that his visitor asked where he should be able to find the housekeeper.

“A thousand pardons!” he answered, with an air; “forgetting the very cream and marrow of it, wasn’t I? Mrs. Toplis, sir, is to be found in Lambeth Workhouse—and a pity, too.”

Edgar Stainton turned away, heart-sick. Was this all wealth had done for his people and those connected with them?

No man seemed to care to waste a moment in speaking about their affairs; no one had a good word for or kindly memory of them. The poorest creature he met in the streets might have been of more use in the world then they. The house they had lived in mentioned as if a curse rested on the place; themselves only recollected as leaving everything undone which it befitted their station to do. An old servant allowed to end her days in the workhouse!

“Heaven helping me,” he thought, “I will not so misuse the wealth which has been given me.”

The slight put upon his family tortured and made him wince, and the face of the dead boy who ought to have been the heir seemed, as he hurried along the streets, to pursue and look on him with a wistful reproach.

“If I cannot lay that child I shall go mad,” he said, almost audibly, “as mad, perhaps, as Alfred Stainton.” And then a terrible fear took possession of him. The horror of that which is worse than any death made for the moment this brave, bold man more timid than a woman.

“God preserve my senses,” he prayed, and then, determinedly putting that phantom behind him, he went on to the Workhouse.

IV
BROTHER AND SISTER

Mr. Stainton had expected to find Mrs. Toplis a decrepit crone, bowed with age and racked with rheumatism, and it was therefore like a gleam of sunshine streaming across his path to behold a woman, elderly, certainly, but carrying her years with ease, ruddy cheeked, clear eyed, upright as a dart, who welcomed him with respectful enthusiasm.

“And so you are Mr. Edgar, the son of the dear old Captain,” she said, after the first greetings and explanations were over, after she had wiped her eyes and uttered many ejaculations of astonishment and expressions of delight. “Eh! I remember him coming to the house just after he was married, and telling me about the sweet lady his wife. I never heard a gentleman so proud; he never seemed tired of saying the words, ‘My wife’.”

“She was a sweet lady,” answered the new owner.

“And so the house has come to you, sir? Well, I wish you joy. I hope you may have peace, and health, and happiness, and prosperity in it. And I don’t see why you should not—no, indeed, sir.”

Edgar Stainton sat silent for a minute, thinking how he should best approach his subject.

“Mrs. Toplis,” he began at last, plunging into the very middle of the difficulty, “I want you to tell me about it. I have come here on purpose to ask you what it all means.”

The old woman covered her face with her hands, and he could see that she trembled violently.

“You need not be afraid to speak openly to me,” he went on. “I am quite satisfied there was some great wrong done in the house, and I want to put it right, if it lies in my power to do so. I am a rich man. I was rich when the news of this inheritance reached me, and I would gladly give up the property tomorrow if I could only undo whatever may have been done amiss.”

Mrs. Toplis shook her head.

“Ah, sir; you can’t do that,” she said. “Money can’t bring back the dead to life; and, if it could, I doubt if even you could prove as good a friend to the poor child sleeping in the churchyard yonder as his Maker did when He took him out of this troublesome world. It was just soul rending to see the boy the last few months of his life. I can’t bear to think of it, sir! Often at night I wake in a fright, fancying I still hear the patter, patter of his poor little feet upon the stair.”

“Do you know, it is a curious thing, but he doesn’t frighten me,” said Mr. Stainton; “that is when I am in the house; although when I am away from it the recollection seems to dog every step I take.”

“What?” cried Mrs. Toplis. “Have you, then, seen him too? There, what am I talking about? I hope, sir, you will forgive my foolishness.”

“I see him constantly,” was the calm reply.

“I wonder what it means!—I wonder what it can mean!” exclaimed the housekeeper, wringing her hands in dire perplexity and dismay.

“I do not know,” answered the new owner, philosophically; “but I want you to help me to find out. I suppose you remember the children coming there at first?”

“Well, sir—well, they were poor Miss Mary’s son and daughter. She ran away, you know, with a Mr. Fenton—made a very poor match; but I believe he was kind to her. When they were brought to us, a shivering little pair, my master was for sending them here. Aye, and he would have done it, too, if somebody had not said he could be made to pay for their keep. You never saw brother and sister so fond of one another—never. They were twins. But, Lor’! the boy was more like a father to the little girl than aught else. He’d have kept an apple a month rather than eat it unless she had half; and the same with everything. I think it was seeing that—watching the love they had, he for her and she for him, coming upon them unsuspected, with their little arms round one another’s necks, made the old gentleman alter his mind about leaving the place to Mr. Alfred; for he said to me, one day, thoughtful like, pointing to them, ‘Wonderful fond, Toplis!’ and I answered, ‘Yes, sir; for all the world like the Babes in the Wood;’ not thinking of how lonely that meant—

“Shortly afterwards he took to his bed; and while he was lying there, no doubt, better thoughts came to him, for he used to talk about his wife and Miss Mary, and the Captain, your father, sir, and ask if the children were gone to bed, and such like—things he never used to mention before.

“So when he made the will Mr. Quinance drew out I was not surprised—no, not a bit. Though before that time he always spoke of Mr. Alfred as his heir, and treated him as such.”

“That will never was found,” suggested Mr. Stainton, anxious to get at another portion of the narrative.

“Never, sir; we hunted for it high and low. Perhaps I wronged him, but I always thought Mr. Alfred knew what became of it. After the old gentleman’s death the children were treated shameful—shameful. I don’t mean beaten, or that like; but half-starved and neglected. He would not buy them proper clothes, and he would not suffer them to wear decent things if anybody else bought them. It was just the same with their food. I durs’n’t give them even a bit of bread and butter unless it was on the sly; and, indeed, there was not much to give in that house. He turned regular miser. Hoarding came into the family with Mrs. Lancelot Stainton, Mr. Alfred’s great grandmother, and they went on from bad to worse, each one closer and nearer than the last, begging your pardon for saying so, sir; but it is the truth.”

“I fear so, Mrs. Toplis,” agreed the man, who certainly was neither close nor near.

“Well, sir, at last, when the little girl was about six years old, she fell sick, and we didn’t think she would get over the illness. While she was about at her worst, Mrs. May, her father’s sister, chanced to be stopping up in London, and, as Mr. Alfred refused to let a doctor inside his doors, she made no more ado but wrapped the child up in blankets, sent for a cab, and carried her off to her own lodgings. Mr. Alfred made no objection to that. All he said as she went through the hall was:

“‘If you take her now, remember, you must keep her.’

“‘Very well,’ she replied, ‘I will keep her.’”

“And the boy? the boy?” cried Mr. Stainton, in an agony of impatience.

“I am coming to him, sir, if you please. He just dwindled away after his sister and he were parted, and died in December, as she was taken away in the July.”

“What did he die of?”

“A broken heart, sir. It seems a queer thing to say about a child; but if ever a heart was broken his was. At first he was always wandering about the house looking for her, but towards the end he used to go up to his room and stay there all by himself. At last I wrote to Mrs. May, but she was ill when the letter got to her, and when she did come up he was dead. My word, she talked to Mr. Alfred! I never heard any one person say so much to another. She declared he had first cheated the boy of his inheritance, and then starved him to death; but that was not true, the child broke his heart fretting after his sister.”

“Yes; and when he was dead—”

“Sir, I don’t like to speak of it, but as true as I am sitting here, the night he was put in his coffin he came pattering down just as usual, looking, looking for his sister. I went straight upstairs, and if I had not seen the little wasted body lying there still and quiet, I must have thought he had come back to life. We were never without him afterwards, never; that, and nothing else, drove Mr. Alfred mad. He used to think he was fighting the child and killing it. When the worst fits were on him he tried to trample it under foot or crush it up in a corner, and then he would sob and cry, and pray for it to be taken away. I have heard he recovered a little before he died, and said his uncle told him there was a will leaving all to the boy, but he never saw such a paper. Perhaps it was all talk, though, or that he was still raving?”

“You are quite positive there was no foul play as regards the child?” asked Mr. Stainton, sticking to that question pertinaciously.

“Certain, sir; I don’t say but Mr. Alfred wished him dead. That is not murder, though.”

“I am not clear about that,” answered Mr. Stainton.

V
THE NEXT AFTERNOON

Mr. Stainton was trying to work off some portion of his perplexities by pruning the grimy evergreens in front of Walnut-Tree House, and chopping away at the undergrowth of weeds and couch grass which had in the course of years matted together beneath the shrubs, when his attention was attracted to two ladies who stood outside the great iron gate looking up at the house.

“It seems to be occupied now,” remarked the elder, turning to her companion. “I suppose the new owner is going to live here. It looks just as dingy as ever; but you do not remember it, Mary.”

“I think I do,” was the answer. “As I look the place grows familiar to me. I do recollect some of the rooms, I am sure just like a dream, as I remember Georgie. What I would give to have a peep inside.”

At this juncture the new owner emerged from amongst the bushes, and, opening the gate, asked if the ladies would like to look over the place.

The elder hesitated; whilst the younger whispered, “Oh, aunt, pray do!”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. May to the stranger, whom she believed to be a gardener; “but perhaps Mr. Stainton might object.”

“No; he wouldn’t, I know,” declared the new owner. “You can go through the house if you wish. There is no one in it. Nobody lives there except myself.”

“Taking charge, I suppose?” suggested Mrs. May blandly.

“Something of that sort,” he answered.

“I do not think he is a caretaker,” said the girl, as she and her relative passed into the old house together.

“What do you suppose he is, then?” asked her aunt.

“Mr. Stainton himself.”

“Nonsense, child !” exclaimed Mrs. May, turning, nevertheless, to one of the windows, and casting a curious glance towards the new owner, who was now, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, walking idly up and down the drive.

After they had been all over the place, from hall to garret, with a peep into this room and a glance into that, Mrs. May found the man who puzzled her leaning against one of the pillars of the porch, waiting, apparently, for their reappearance.

“I am sure we are very much obliged to you,” she began, with a hesitation in her manner.

“Pray do not mention it,” he said.

“This young lady has sad associations connected with the house,” May proceeded, still doubtfully feeling her way.

He turned his eyes towards the girl for a moment, and, though her veil was down, saw she had been weeping.

“I surmised as much,” he replied. “She is Miss Fenton, is she not?”

“Yes, certainly,” was the answer; “and you are—”

“Edgar Stainton,” said the new owner, holding out his hand.

“I am all alone here,” he went on, after the first explanations were over. “But I can manage to give you a cup of tea. Pray do come in, and let me feel I am not entirely alone in England.”

Only too well pleased, Mrs. May complied, and ten minutes later the three were sitting round a fire, the blaze of which leapt and flickered upon the walls and over the ceiling, casting bright lights on the dingy mirrors and the dark oak shelves.

“It is all coming back to me now,” said the girl softly, addressing her aunt. “Many an hour Georgie and I have sat on that hearth seeing pictures in the fire.”

But she did not see something which was even then standing close beside her, and which the new owner had witnessed approach with a feeling of terror that precluded speech.

It was the child! The child searching about no longer for something it failed to find, but standing at the girl’s side still and motionless, with its eyes fixed upon her face, and its poor, wasted figure nestling amongst the folds of her dress.

“Thank Heaven she does not see it!” he thought, and drew his breath, relieved.

No; she did not see it—though its wan cheek touched her shoulder, though its thin hand rested on her arm, though through the long conversation which followed it never moved from her side, nor turned its wistful eyes from her face.

When she went away—when she took her fresh young beauty out of the house it seemed to gladden and light up—the child followed her to the threshold; and then in an instant it vanished, and Mr. Stainton watched for its flitting up the staircase all in vain.

But later on in the evening, when he was sitting alone beside the fire, with his eyes bent on the glowing coals, and perhaps seeing pictures there, as Mary said she and her brother had done in their lonely childhood, he felt conscious, even without looking round, that the boy was there once again.

And when he fell to thinking of the long, long years during which the dead child had kept faithful and weary watch for his sister, searching through the empty rooms for one who never came, and then bethought him of the sister to whom her dead brother had become but the vaguest of memories, of the summers and winters during the course of which she had probably forgotten him altogether, he sighed deeply; and heard his sigh echoed behind him in the merest faintest whisper.

More, when he, thinking deeply about his newly found relative and trying to recall each feature in her face, each tone of her voice, found it impossible to dissociate the girl grown to womanhood from the child he had pictured to himself as wandering about the old house in company with her twin brother, their arms twined together, their thoughts one, their sorrows one, their poor pleasures one—he felt a touch on his hand, and knew the boy was beside him, looking with wistful eyes into the firelight, too.

But when he turned he saw that sadness clouded those eyes no longer. She was found; the lost had come again to meet a living friend on the once desolate hearth, and up and down the wide, desolate staircase those weary little feet pattered no longer.

The quest was over, the search ended; into the darksome corners of that dreary house the child’s glance peered no longer.

She was come! Through years he had kept faithful watch for her, but the waiting was ended now.

That night Edgar Stainton slept soundly; and yet when morning dawned he knew that once in the darkness he wakened suddenly and was conscious of a small, childish hand smoothing his pillow and touching his brow.

Sweet were the dreams which visited his rest subsequently; sweet as ought to be the dreams of a man who had said to his own soul—and meant to hold fast by words he had spoken:

“As I deal by that orphan girl, so may God deal with me!”

VI
THE MISSING WILL

Ere long there were changes in the old house. Once again Mrs. Toplis reigned there, but this time with servants under her—with maids she could scold and lads she could harass.

The larder was well plenished, the cellars sufficiently stocked; windows formerly closely shuttered now stood open to admit the air; and on the drive grass grew no longer—too many footsteps passed that way for weeds to flourish.

It was Christmas-time. The joints in the butchers’ shops were gay with ribbons; the grocers’ windows were tricked out to delight the eyes of the children, young and old, who passed along. In Mr. May’s house up the Clapham Road all was excitement, for the whole of the family—father, mother, grown-up sons and daughters, girls still in short frocks and boys in round jackets—were going to spend Christmas Eve with their newly-found cousin, whom they had adopted as a relation with a unanimity as rare as charming.

Cousin Mary also was going—Cousin Mary had got a new dress for the occasion, and was having her hair done up in a specially effective manner by Cissie May, when the toilette proceedings were interrupted by half a dozen young voices announcing:

“A gentleman in the parlour wants to see you, Mary. Pa says you are to make haste and come down immediately.”

Obediently Mary made haste as bidden and descended to the parlour, to find there the clerk from Timpsons’ who met Mr. Stainton on his arrival in London.

His business was simple, but important. Once again he was the bearer of a letter from Timpson and Co., this time announcing to Miss Fenton that the will of Mr. Felix Stainton had been found, and that under it she was entitled to the interest of ten thousand pounds, secured upon the houses in Stainton Street.

“Oh! aunt, Oh! uncle, how rich we shall be,” cried the girl, running off to tell her cousins; but the uncle and aunt looked grave. They were wondering how this will might effect Edgar Stainton.

While they were still talking it over—after Timpsons’ young man had taken his departure, Mr. Edgar Stainton himself arrived.

“Oh, it’s all right!” he said, in answer to their questions. “I found the will in the room where Felix Stainton died. Walnut-Tree House and all the freeholds were left to the poor little chap who died, chargeable with Mary’s ten thousand pounds, five hundred to Mrs. Toplis, and a few other legacies. Failing George, the property was to come to me. I have been to Quinance’s successor, and found out the old man and Alfred had a grievous quarrel, and that in consequence he determined to cut him out altogether. Where is Mary? I want to wish her joy.”

Mary was in the little conservatory, searching for a rose to put in her pretty brown hair. He went straight up to her, and said:

“Mary, dear, you have had one Christmas gift tonight, and I want you to take another with it.”

“What is it, Cousin Edgar?” she asked; but when she looked in his face she must have guessed his meaning, for she drooped her head, and began pulling her sweet rose to pieces.

He took the flower, and with it her fingers.

“Will you have me, dear?” he asked. “I am but a rough fellow, I know; but I am true, and I love you dearly.”

Somehow, she answered him as he wished, and all spent a very happy evening in the old house.

Once, when he was standing close beside her in the familiar room, hand clasped in hand, Edgar Stainton saw the child looking at them.

There was no sorrow or yearning in his eyes as he gazed—only a great peace, a calm which seemed to fill and light them with an exquisite beauty.

Nut Bush Farm

(1882)

I

When I entered upon the tenancy of Nut Bush Farm almost the first piece of news which met me, in the shape of a whispered rumour, was that “something” had been seen in the “long field.”

Pressed closely as to what he meant, my informant reluctantly stated that the “something” took the “form of a man,” and that the wood and the path leading thereto from Whittleby were supposed to be haunted.

Now, all this annoyed me exceedingly. I do not know when I was more put out than by this intelligence. It is unnecessary to say I did not believe in ghosts or anything of that kind, but my wife being a very nervous, impressionable woman, and our only child a delicate weakling, in the habit of crying himself into fits if left alone at night without a candle, I really felt at my wits’ end to imagine what I should do if a story of this sort reached their ears.

And reach them I knew it must if they came to Nut Bush Farm, so the first thing I did when I heard people did not care to venture down the Beech Walk or through the copse, or across the long field after dark, or indeed by day, was to write to say I thought they had both better remain on at my father-in-law’s till I could get the house thoroughly to rights.

After that I lit my pipe and went out for a stroll; when I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and re-entered the sitting-room I had made up my mind. I could not afford to be frightened away from my tenancy. For weal or for woe I must stick to Nut Bush Farm.

It was quite by chance I happened to know anything of the place at first. When I met with that accident in my employers’ service, which they rated far too highly and recompensed with a liberality I never can feel sufficiently grateful for, the doctors told me plainly if I could not give up office work and leave London altogether, they would not give a year’s purchase for my life.

Life seemed very sweet to me then—it always has done—but just at that period I felt the pleasant hopes of convalescence; and with that thousand pounds safely banked, I could not let it slip away from me.

“Take a farm,” advised my father-in-law. “Though people say a farmer’s is a bad trade, I know many a man who is making money out of it. Take a farm, and if you want a helping hand to enable you to stand the racket for a year or two, why, you know I am always ready.”

I had been bred and born on a farm. My father held something like fifteen hundred acres under the principal landowner in his county, and though it so happened I could not content myself at home, but must needs come up to London to see the lions and seek my fortune, still I had never forgotten the meadows and the cornfields, and the cattle, and the orchards, and the woods and the streams, amongst which my happy boyhood had been spent. Yes, I thought I should like a farm—one not too far from London; and “not too big,” advised my wife’s father.

“The error people make nowadays,” he went on, “is spreading their butter over too large a surface. It is the same in business as in land—they stretch their arms out too far—they will try to wade in deep waters—and the consequence is they never know a day’s peace, and end mostly in the bankruptcy court.”

He spoke as one having authority, and I knew what he said was quite right. He had made his money by a very different course of procedure, and I felt I could not follow a better example.

I knew something about farming, though not very much. Still, agriculture is like arithmetic: when once one knows the multiplication table the rest is not so difficult. I had learned unconsciously the alphabet of soils and crops and stock when I was an idle young dog, and liked nothing better than talking to the labourers, and accompanying the woodman when he went out felling trees; and so I did not feel much afraid of what the result would be, more especially as I had a good business head on my shoulders, and enough money to “stand the racket,” as my father-in-law put it, till the land began to bring in her increase.

When I got strong and well again after my long illness—I mean strong and well enough to go about—I went down to look at a farm which was advertised as to let in Kent.

According to the statement in the newspaper, there was no charm that farm lacked; when I saw it I discovered the place did not possess one virtue, unless, indeed, an old Tudor house fast falling to ruins, which would have proved invaluable to an artist, could be so considered. Far from a railway, having no advantages of water carriage, remote from a market, apparently destitute of society. Nor could these drawbacks be accounted the worst against it. The land, poor originally, seemed to have been totally exhausted. There were fields on which I do not think a goose could have found subsistence—nothing grew luxuriantly save weeds; it would have taken all my capital to get the ground clean. Then I saw the fences were dilapidated, the hedges in a deplorable condition, and the farm buildings in such a state of decay I would not have stabled a donkey in one of them.

Clearly, the King’s Manor, which was the modest name of the place, would not do at any price, and yet I felt sorry, for the country around was beautiful, and already the sweet, pure air seemed to have braced up my nerves and given me fresh energy. Talking to mine host at the “Bunch of Hops,” in Whittleby, he advised me to look over the local paper before returning to London.

“There be a many farms vacant,” he said, “mayhap you’ll light on one to suit.”

To cut a long story short, I did look in the local paper and found many farms to let, but not one to suit. There was a drawback to each—a drawback at least so far as I was concerned. I felt determined I would not take a large farm. My conviction was then what my conviction still remains, that it is better to cultivate fifty acres thoroughly than to crop, stock, clean, and manure a hundred insufficiently. Besides, I did not want to spend my strength on wages, or take a place so large I could not oversee the workmen on foot. For all these reasons and many more I came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was nothing in that part of the country to suit a poor unspeculative plodder like myself.

It was a lovely afternoon in May when I turned my face towards Whittleby, as I thought, for the last time. In the morning I had taken train for a farm some ten miles distant and worked my way back on foot to a “small cottage with land” a local agent thought might suit me. But neither the big place nor the little answered my requirements much to the disgust of the auctioneer, who had himself accompanied us to the cottage under the impression I would immediately purchase it and so secure his commission.

Somewhat sulkily he told me a short cut back to Whittleby, and added, as a sort of rider to all previous statements, the remark: “You had best look out for what you want in Middlesex. You’ll find nothing of that sort hereabouts.”

As to the last part of the foregoing sentence I was quite of his opinion, but I felt so oppressed with the result of all my wanderings that I thought upon the whole I had better abandon my search altogether, or else pursue it in some county very far away indeed—perhaps in the land of dreams for that matter!

As has been said, it was a lovely afternoon in May—the hedges were snowy with hawthorn blossom, the chestnuts were bursting into flower, the birds were singing fit to split their little throats, the lambs were dotting the hillsides, and I—ah, well, I was a boy again, able to relish all the rich banquet God spreads out day by day for the delight and nourishment of His too often thankless children.

When I came to a point half-way up some rising ground where four lanes met and then wound off each on some picturesque diverse way, I paused to look around regretfully.

As I did so—some distance below me—along what appeared to be a never-before-traversed lane, I saw the gleam of white letters on a black board.

“Come,” I thought, “I’ll see what this is at all events,” and bent my steps towards the place, which might, for all I knew about it, have been a ducal mansion or a cockney’s country villa.

The board appeared modestly conspicuous in the foreground of a young fir plantation, and simply bore this legend:

TO BE LET, HOUSE AND LAND,

Apply at the “White Dragon.”

“It is a mansion,” I thought, and I walked on slowly, disappointed. All of a sudden the road turned a sharp corner and I came in an instant upon the prettiest place I had ever seen or ever desire to see.

I looked at it over a low laurel hedge growing inside an open paling about four feet high. Beyond the hedge there was a strip of turf, green as emeralds, smooth as a bowling green—then came a sunk fence, the most picturesque sort of protection the ingenuity of man ever devised; beyond that, a close-cut lawn which sloped down to the sunk fence from a house with projecting gables in the front, the recessed portion of the building having three windows on the first floor. Both gables were covered with creepers, the lawn was girt in by a semicircular sweep of forest trees; the afternoon sun streamed over the grass and tinted the swaying foliage with a thousand tender lights. Hawthorn bushes, pink and white, mingled with their taller and grander brothers. The chestnuts here were in flower, the copper beech made a delightful contrast of colour, and a birch rose delicate and graceful close beside.

It was like a fairy scene. I passed my hand across my eyes to assure myself it was all real. Then I thought “if this place be even nearly within my means I will settle here. My wife will grow stronger in this paradise—my boy get more like other lads. Such things as nerves must be unknown where there is not a sight or sound to excite them. Nothing but health, purity, and peace.”

Thus thinking, I tore myself away in search of the “White Dragon,” the landlord of which small public-house sent a lad to show me over the farm.

“As for the rent,” he said, “you will have to speak to Miss Gostock herself—she lives at Chalmont, on the road between here and Whittleby.”

In every respect the place suited me; it was large enough, but not too large; had been well farmed, and was amply supplied with water—a stream indeed flowing through it; a station was shortly to be opened, at about half-a-mile’s distance; and most of the produce could be disposed of to dealers and tradesmen at Crayshill, a town to which the communication by rail was direct.

I felt so anxious about the matter, it was quite a disappointment to find Miss Gostock from home. Judging from the look of her house, I did not suppose she could afford to stick out for a long rent, or to let a farm lie idle for any considerable period. The servant who appeared in answer to my summons was a singularly red armed and rough handed Phyllis. There was only a strip of carpeting laid down in the hall, the windows were bare of draperies, and the avenue gate, set a little back from the main road, was such as I should have felt ashamed to put in a farmyard.

Next morning I betook myself to Chalmont, anxiously wondering as I walked along what the result of my interview would prove.

When I neared the gate, to which uncomplimentary reference has already been made, I saw standing on the other side a figure wearing a man’s broad-brimmed straw hat, a man’s coat, and a woman’s skirt.

I raised my hat in deference to the supposed sex of this stranger. She put up one finger to the brim of hers, and said, “Servant, sir.”

Not knowing exactly what to do, I laid my hand upon the latch of the gate and raised it, but she did not alter her position in the least.

She only asked, “What do you want?”

“I want to see Miss Gostock,” was my answer.

“I am Miss Gostock,” she said; “what is your business with me?”

I replied meekly that I had come to ask the rent of Nut Bush Farm.

“Have you viewed it?” she inquired.

“Yes.” I told her I had been over the place on the previous afternoon.

“And have you a mind to take it?” she persisted. “For I am not going to trouble myself answering a lot of idle inquiries.”

So far from my being an idle inquirer, I assured the lady that if we could come to terms about the rent, I should be very glad indeed to take the farm. I said I had been searching the neighbourhood within a circuit of ten miles for some time unsuccessfully, and added, somewhat unguardedly, I suppose, Nut Bush Farm was the only place I had met with which at all met my views.

Standing in an easy attitude, with one arm resting on the top bar of the gate and one foot crossed over the other, Miss Gostock surveyed me, who had unconsciously taken up a similar position, with an amused smile.

“You must think me a very honest person, young man,” she remarked.

I answered that I hoped she was, but I had not thought at all about the matter.

“Or else,” proceeded this extraordinary lady, “you fancy I am a much greater flat than I am.”

“On the contrary,” was my reply. “If there be one impression stronger than another which our short interview has made upon me it is that you are a wonderfully direct and capable woman of business.”

She looked at me steadily, and then closed one eye, which performance, done under the canopy of that broad-brimmed straw hat, had the most ludicrous effect imaginable.

“You won’t catch me napping,” she observed, “but, however, as you seem to mean dealing, come in; I can tell you my terms in two minutes,” and opening the gate—a trouble she would not allow me to take off her hands—she gave me admission.

Then Miss Gostock took off her hat, and swinging it to and fro began slowly walking up the ascent leading to Chalmont, I beside her.

“I have quite made up my mind,” she said, “not to let the farm again without a premium; my last tenant treated me abominably.”

I intimated I was sorry to hear that, and waited for further information.

“He had the place at a low rent—a very low rent. He should not have got it so cheap but for his covenanting to put so much money in the soil; and well—I’m bound to say he acted fair so far as that—he fulfilled that part of his contract. Nearly two years ago we had a bit of a quarrel about—well, it’s no matter what we fell out over—only the upshot of the affair was he gave me due notice to leave at last winter quarter. At that time he owed about a year-and-a-half’s rent—for he was a man who never could bear parting with money—and like a fool I did not push him for it. What trick do you suppose he served me for my pains?”

It was simply impossible for me to guess, so I did not try.

“On the twentieth of December,” went on Miss Gostock, turning her broad face and curly grey hair—she wore her hair short like a man—towards me, “he went over to Whittleby, drew five thousand pounds out of the bank, was afterwards met going towards home by a gentleman named Waite, a friend of his. Since then he has never been seen nor heard of.”

“Bless my soul!” I exclaimed involuntarily.

“You may be very sure I did not bless his soul,” she snarled out angrily. “The man bolted with the five thousand pounds, having previously sold off all his stock and the bulk of his produce, and when I distrained for my rent, which I did pretty smart, I can tell you, there was scarce enough on the premises to pay the levy.”

“But what in the world made him bolt?” I asked, quite unconsciously adopting Miss Gostock’s expressive phrase; “as he had so much money, why did he not pay you your rent?”

“Ah! Why, indeed?” mocked Miss Gostock. “Young sir, I am afraid you are a bit of a humbug, or you would have suggested at once there was a pretty girl at the bottom of the affair. He left his wife and children, and me—all in the lurch—and went off with a slip of a girl, whom I once took, thinking to train up as a better sort of servant, but was forced to discharge. Oh, the little hussy!”

Somehow I did not fancy I wanted to hear anything more about her late tenant and the pretty girl, and consequently ventured to inquire how that gentleman’s defalcations bore upon the question of the rent I should have to pay.

“I tell you directly,” she said, and as we had by this time arrived at the house, she invited me to enter, and led the way into an old-fashioned parlour that must have been furnished about the time chairs and tables were first invented and which did not contain a single feminine belonging—not even a thimble.

“Sit down,” she commanded, and I sat. “I have quite made up my mind,” she began, “not to let the farm again, unless I get a premium sufficient to insure me against the chances of possible loss. I mean to ask a very low rent and—a premium.”

“And what amount of premium do you expect?” I inquired, doubtfully.

“I want—” and here Miss Gostock named a sum which fairly took my breath away.

“In that case,” I said as soon as I got it again, “it is useless to prolong this interview; I can only express my regret for having intruded, and wish you good morning.” And arising, I was bowing myself out when she stopped me.

“Don’t be so fast,” she cried, “I only said what I wanted. Now what are you prepared to give?”

“I can’t be buyer and seller too,” I answered, repeating a phrase the precise meaning of which, it may here be confessed, I have never been able exactly to understand.

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Miss Gostock—I am really afraid the lady used a stronger term—“if you are anything of a man of business, fit at all to commence farming, you must have an idea on the subject. You shall have the land at a pound an acre, and you will give me for premium—come, how much?”

By what mental process I instantly jumped to an amount it would be impossible to say, but I did mention one which elicited from Miss Gostock the remark: “That won’t do at any price.”

“Very well, then,” I said, “we need not talk any more about the matter.”

“But what will you give?” asked the lady.

“I have told you,” was my answer, “and I am not given either to haggling or beating down.”

“You won’t make a good farmer,” she observed.

“If a farmer’s time were of any value, which it generally seems as if it were not,” I answered, “he would not waste it in splitting a sixpence.”

She laughed, and her laugh was not musical.

“Come now,” she said, “make another bid.”

“No,” I replied, “I have made one and that is enough. I won’t offer another penny.”

“Done then,” cried Miss Gostock, “I accept your offer—we’ll just sign a little memorandum of agreement, and the formal deeds can be prepared afterwards. You’ll pay a deposit, I suppose?”

I was so totally taken aback by her acceptance of my offer I could only stammer out I was willing to do anything that might be usual.

“It does not matter much whether it is usual or not,” she said; “either pay it or I won’t keep the place for you. I am not going to have my land lying idle and my time taken up for your pleasure.”

“I have no objection to paying you a deposit,” I answered.

“That’s right,” she exclaimed; “now if you will just hand me over the writing-desk we can settle the matter, so far as those thieves of lawyers will let us, in five minutes.”

Like one in a dream I sat and watched Miss Gostock while she wrote. Nothing about the transaction seemed to me real. The farm itself resembled nothing I had ever before seen with my waking eyes, and Miss Gostock appeared to me but as some monstrous figure in a story of giants and hobgoblins. The man’s coat, the woman’s skirt, the hobnailed shoes, the grizzly hair, the old straw hat, the bare, unfurnished room, the bright sunshine outside, all struck me as mere accessories in a play—as nothing which had any hold on the outside, everyday world.

It was drawn—we signed our names. I handed Miss Gostock over a cheque. She locked one document in an iron box let into the wall, and handed me the other, adding, as a rider, a word of caution about “keeping it safe and taking care it was not lost.”

Then she went to a corner cupboard, and producing a square decanter half full of spirits, set that and two tumblers on the table.

“You don’t like much water, I suppose,” she said, pouring out a measure which frightened me.

“I could not touch it, thank you, Miss Gostock,” I exclaimed; “I dare not do so; I should never get back to Whittleby.”

For answer she only looked at me contemptuously and said, “D——d nonsense.”

“No nonsense, indeed,” I persisted; “I am not accustomed to anything of that sort.”

Miss Gostock laughed again, then crossing to the sideboard she returned with a jug of water, a very small portion of the contents of which she mixed with the stronger liquor, and raised the glass to her lips.

“To your good health and prosperity,” she said, and in one instant the fiery potion was swallowed.

“You’ll mend of all that,” she remarked, as she laid down her glass, and wiped her lips in the simplest manner by passing the back of her hand over them.

“I hope not, Miss Gostock,” I ventured to observe.

“Why, you look quite shocked,” she said; “did you never see a lady take a mouthful of brandy before?”

I ventured to hint that I had not, more particularly so early in the morning.

“Pooh!” she said. “Early in the morning or late at night, where’s the difference? However, there was a time when I—but that was before I had come through so much trouble. Good-bye for the present, and I hope we shall get on well together.”

I answered I trusted we should, and was half-way to the hall door, when she called me back.

“I forgot to ask you if you were married,” she said.

“Yes, I have been married some years,” I answered.

“That’s a pity,” she remarked, and dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

“What on earth would have happened had I not been married?” I considered as I hurried down the drive. “Surely she never contemplated proposing to me herself? But nothing she could do would surprise me.”

II

There were some repairs I had mentioned it would be necessary to have executed before I came to live at Nut Bush Farm, but when I found Miss Gostock intended to do them herself—nay, was doing them all herself—I felt thunderstruck.

On one memorable occasion I came upon her with a red handkerchief tied round her head, standing at a carpenter’s bench in a stable yard, planing away, under a sun which would have killed anybody but a negro or my landlady.

She painted the gates, and put sash lines in some of the windows; she took off the locks, oiled, and replaced them; she mowed the lawn, and offered to teach me how to mow; and lastly, she showed me a book where she charged herself and paid herself for every hour’s work done.

“I’ve made at least twenty pounds out of your place,” she said triumphantly. “Higgs at Whittleby would not have charged me a halfpenny less for the repairs. The tradesmen here won’t give me a contract—they say it is just time thrown away, but I know that would have been about his figure. Well, the place is ready for you now, and if you take my advice, you’ll get your grass up as soon as possible. It’s a splendid crop, and if you hire hands enough, not a drop of rain need spoil it. If this weather stands you might cut one day and carry the next.”

I took her advice, and stacked my hay in magnificent condition. Miss Gostock was good enough to come over and superintend the building of the stack, and threatened to split one man’s head open with the pitchfork, and proposed burying another—she called him a “lazy blackguard”—under a pile of hay.

“I will say this much for Hascot,” she remarked, as we stood together beside the stream; “he was a good farmer; where will you see better or cleaner land? A pattern I call it—and to lose his whole future for the sake of a girl like Sally Powner; leaving his wife and children on the parish, too!”

“You don’t mean that?” I said.

“Indeed I do. They are all at Crayshill. The authorities did talk of shifting them, but I know nothing about what they have done.”

I stood appalled. I thought of my own poor wife and the little lad, and wondered if any Sally on the face of the earth could make me desert them.

“It has given the place a bad sort of name,” remarked Miss Gostock, looking at me sideways: “but, of course, that does not signify anything to you.”

“Oh, of course not,” I agreed.

“And don’t you be minding any stories; there are always a lot of stories going about places.”

I said I did not mind stories. I had lived too long in London to pay much attention to them.

“That’s right,” remarked Miss Gostock, and negativing my offer to see her home she started off to Chalmont.

It was not half an hour after her departure when I happened to be walking slowly round the meadows, from which the newly mown hay had been carted, that I heard the rumour which vexed me—“Nut Bush Farm haunted,” I thought, “I said the whole thing was too good to last.”

“What, Jack, lost in reverie?” cried my sister, who had some up from Devonshire to keep me company, and help to get the furniture a little to rights, entering at the moment, carrying lights; “supper will be ready in a minute, and you can dream as much as you like after you have had something to eat.”

I did not say anything to her about my trouble, which was then indeed no bigger than a man’s hand, but which grew and grew till it attained terrible proportions.

What was I to do with my wife and child? I never could bring them to a place reputed to be haunted. All in vain I sauntered up and down the Beech Walk night after night; walked through the wood—as a rule selected that route when I went to Whittleby. It did not produce the slightest effect. Not a farm servant but eschewed that path townward; not a girl but preferred spending her Sunday at home rather than venture under the interlacing branches of the beech trees, or through the dark recesses of the wood.

It was becoming serious—I did not know what to do.

One wet afternoon Lolly came in draggled but beaming.

“I’ve made a new acquaintance, Jack,” she said; “a Mrs. Waite—such a nice creature, but in dreadfully bad health. It came on to rain when I was coming home, and so I took refuge under a great tree at the gate of a most picturesque old house. I had not stood there long before a servant with an umbrella appeared at the porch to ask if I would not please to walk in until the storm abated. I waited there ever so long, and we had such a pleasant talk. She is a most delightful ----woman, with a melancholy, pathetic sort of expression that has been haunting me ever since. She apologised for not having called—said she was not strong and could not walk so far. They keep no conveyance she can drive. Mr. Waite, who is not at home at present, rides into Whittleby when anything is wanted.

“I hoped she would not think of standing on ceremony with me. I was only a farmer’s daughter, and accustomed to plain, homely ways, and I asked her if I might walk round and bid her good-bye before I went home.”

“You must not go home yet, Lolly,” I cried, alarmed; “what in the world should I do without you?”

“Well, you would be a lonely boy,” she answered, complacently, “with no one to sew on a button or darn your socks, or make you eat or go to bed, or do anything you ought to do.”

I had not spoken a word to her about the report which was troubling me, and I knew there must be times when she wondered why I did not go up to London and fetch my wife and child to enjoy the bright summertime; but Lolly was as good as gold, and never asked me a question, or even indirectly inquired if Lucy and I had quarrelled, as many another sister might.

She was as pleasant and fresh to look upon as a spring morning, with her pretty brown hair smoothly braided, her cotton or muslin dresses never soiled or crumpled, but as nice as though the laundress had that moment sent them home—a rose in her belt and her hands never idle—forever busy with curtain or blind, or something her housewifely eyes thought had need of making or mending.

About ten days after that showery afternoon when she found shelter under Mr. Waite’s hospitable roof, I felt surprised when, entering the parlour a few minutes before our early dinner, I found Lolly standing beside one of the windows apparently hopelessly lost in the depths of a brown study.

“Why, Lolly,” I exclaimed, finding she took no notice of me, “where have you gone to now? A penny for your thoughts, young lady.”

“They are not worth a penny,” she said, and turning from the window took some work and sat down at a little distance from the spot where I was standing.

I was so accustomed to women, even the best and gayest of them, having occasional fits of temper or depression—times when silence on my part seemed the truest wisdom—that, taking no notice of my sister’s manner, I occupied myself with the newspaper till dinner was announced.

During the progress of that meal she talked little and ate still less, but when I was leaving the room, in order to go out to a field of barley where the reapers were at work, she asked me to stop a moment.

“I want to speak to you, Jack,” she said.

“Speak, then,” I answered, with that lack of ceremony which obtains amongst brothers and sisters.

She hesitated for a moment, but did not speak.

“What on earth is the matter with you, Lolly?” I exclaimed. “Are you sick, or cross, or sorry, or what?”

“If it must be one of the four,” she answered, with a dash of her usual manner, “it is ‘or what,’ Jack,” and she came close up to where I stood and took me sorrowfully by the button-hole.

“Well?” I said, amused, for this had always been a favourite habit of Lolly’s when she wanted anything from one of the males of her family.

“Jack, you won’t laugh at me?”

“I feel much more inclined to be cross with you,” I answered. “What are you beating about the bush for, Lolly?”

She lifted her fair face a moment and I saw she was crying.

“Lolly, Lolly!” I cried, clasping her to my heart, “what is it, dear? Have you bad news from home, or have you heard anything about Lucy or the boy? Don’t keep me in suspense, there’s a darling. No matter what has happened, let me know the worst.”

She smiled through her tears, and Lolly has the rarest smile! It quieted my anxious heart in a moment, even before she said: “No, Jack—it is nothing about home, or Lucy, or Teddy, but—but—but—” and then she relinquished her hold on the button-hole, and fingered each button on the front of my coat carefully and lingeringly. “Did you ever hear—Jack—anybody say anything about this place?”

I knew in a moment what she meant; I knew the cursed tattle had reached her ears, but I only asked: “What sort of thing, Lolly?”

She did not answer me; instead, she put another question.

“Is that the reason you have not brought Lucy down?”

I felt vexed—but I had so much confidence in her good sense, I could not avoid answering without a moment’s delay.

“Well, yes; I do not want her to come till this foolish report has completely died away.”

“Are you quite sure it is a foolish report?” she inquired.

“Why, of course; it could not be anything else.”

She did not speak immediately, then all at once: “Jack,” she said, “I must tell you something. Lock the door that we may not be interrupted.”

“No,” I answered; “come into the barley field. Don’t you remember Mr. Fenimore Cooper advised, if you want to talk secrets, choose the middle of a plain?”

I tried to put a good face on the matter, but the sight of Lolly’s tears, the sound of Lolly’s doleful voice, darkened my very heart. What had she to tell me which required locked doors or the greater privacy of a half-reaped barley field. I could trust my sister—she was no fool—and I felt perfectly satisfied that no old woman’s story had wrought the effect produced on her.

“Now, Lolly,” I said, as we paced side by side along the top of the barley field in a solitude all the more complete because life and plenty of it was close at hand.

“You know what they say about the place, Jack?”

This was interrogative, and so I answered. “Well, no, Lolly, I can’t say that I do, for the very good reason that I have always refused to listen to the gossip. What do they say?”

“That a man haunts the Beech Walk, the long meadow, and the wood.”

“Yes, I have heard that,” I replied.

“And they say further, the man is Mr. Hascot, the late tenant.”

“But he is not dead,” I exclaimed; “how, then, can they see his ghost?”

“I cannot tell. I know nothing but what I saw this morning. After breakfast I went to Whittleby, and as I came back I observed a man before me on the road. Following him, I noticed a curious thing, that none of the people he met made way for him or he for them. He walked straight on, without any regard to the persons on the side path, and yet no one seemed to come into collision with him. When I reached the field path I saw him going on still at the same pace. He did not look to right or left, and did not seem to walk—the motion was gliding—”

“Yes, dear.”

“He went on, and so did I, till we reached the hollow where the nut-bushes grow, then he disappeared from sight. I looked down among the trees, thinking I should be able to catch a glimpse of his figure through the underwood, but no, I could see no signs of him, neither could I hear any. Everything was as still as death; it seemed to me that my ear had a spell of silence laid upon it.”

“And then?” I asked hoarsely, as she paused.

“Why, Jack, I walked on and crossed the little footbridge and was just turning into the Beech Walk when the same man bustled suddenly across my path, so close to me if I had put out my hands I could have touched him. I drew back, frightened for a minute, then, as he had not seemed to see me, I turned and looked at him as he sped along down the little winding path to the wood. I thought he must be some silly creature, some harmless sort of idiot, to be running here and there without any apparent object. All at once, as he neared the wood, he stopped, and, half wheeling round, beckoned to me to follow him.”

“You did not, Lolly?”

“No, I was afraid. I walked a few steps quietly till I got among the beech trees and so screened from sight, and then I began to run. I could not run fast, for my knees trembled under me; but still I did run as far nearly as that seat round the ‘Priest’s Tree.’ I had not got quite up to the seat when I saw a man rise from it and stand upright as if waiting for me. It was the same person, Jack! I recognised him instantly, though I had not seen his face clearly before. He stood quiet for a moment, and then, with the same gliding motion, silently disappeared.”

“Someone must be playing a very nice game about Nut Bush Farm,” I exclaimed.

“Perhaps so, dear,” she said doubtfully.

“Why, Lolly, you don’t believe it was a ghost you met in the broad daylight?” I cried incredulously.

“I don’t think it was a living man, Jack,” she answered.

“Living or dead, he dare not bring himself into close quarters with me,” was my somewhat braggart remark. “Why, Lolly, I have walked the ground day after day and night after night in the hope of seeing your friend, and not a sign of an intruder, in the flesh or out of it, could I find. Put the matter away, child, and don’t ramble in that direction again. If I can ascertain the name of the person who is trying to frighten the household and disgust me with Nut Bush Farm, he shall go to jail if the magistrates are of my way of thinking. Now, as you have told me this terrible story, and we have reduced your great mountain to a molehill, I will walk back with you to the house.”

She did not make any reply: we talked over indifferent matters as we paced along. I went with her into the pleasant sunshiny drawing-room and looked her out a book and made her promise to read something amusing; then I was going, when she put up her lips for me to kiss her, and said—“Jack, you won’t run any risks?”

“Risks—pooh, you silly little woman!” I answered; and so left my sister and repaired to the barley field once more.

When it was time for the men to leave off work I noticed that one after another began to take a path leading immediately to the main road, which was a very circuitous route to the hamlet, where most of them had either cottages or lodgings.

I noticed this for some time, and then asked a brawny young fellow. “Why don’t you go home through the Beech Walk? It is not above half the distance.”

He smiled and made some almost unintelligible answer.

“Why are you all afraid of taking the shortest way,” I remarked, “seeing there are enough of you to put half a dozen ghosts to the rout?”

“Likely, sir,” was the answer; “but the old master was a hard man living, and there is not many would care to meet him dead.”

“What old master?” I inquired.

“Mr. Hascot: it’s him as walks. I saw him as plain as I see you now, sir, one moonlight night, just this side of the wood, and so did Nat Tyler and James Monsey, and James Monsey’s father—wise Ben.”

“But Mr. Hascot is not dead; how can he ‘walk,’ as you call it?” was my natural exclamation.

“If he is living, then, sir, where is he?” asked the man. “There is nobody can tell that, and there is a many, especially just lately, think he must have been made away with. He had a cruel lot of money about him—where is all that money gone to?”

The fellow had waxed quite earnest in his interrogations, and really for the first time the singularity of Mr. Hascot’s disappearance seemed to strike me.

I said, after an instant’s pause, “The money is wherever he is. He went off with some girl, did he not?”

“It suited the old people to say so,” he answered; “but there is many a one thinks they know more about the matter than is good for them. I can’t help hearing, and one of the neighbours did say Mrs. Ockfield was seen in church last Sunday with a new dress on and a shawl any lady might have worn.”

“And who is Mrs. Ockfield?” I inquired.

“Why, Sally Powner’s grandmother. The old people treated the girl shameful while she was with them, and now they want to make her out no better than she should be.”

And with a wrathful look the young man, who I subsequently discovered had long been fond of Sally, took up his coat and his tin bottle and his sickle, and with a brief “I think I’ll be going, sir; good-night,” departed.

It was easy to return to the house, but I found it impossible to shake the effect produced by this dialogue off my mind.

For the first time I began seriously to consider the manner of Mr. Hascot’s disappearance, and more seriously still commenced trying to piece together the various hints I had received as to his character.

A hard man—a hard master, all I ever heard speak considered him, but just, and in the main not unkind. He had sent coals to one widow, kept a poor old labourer off the parish, and then in a minute, for the sake of a girl’s face, left his own wife and children to the mercy of the nearest Union. [poorhouse]

As I paced along, it seemed to me monstrous, and yet how did it happen that till a few minutes previously I had never heard even a suspicion of foul play?

Was it not more natural to conclude the man must have been made away with, than that, in one brief day, he should have changed his nature and the whole current of his former life?

Upon the other hand, people must have had some strong reason for imagining he was gone off with Miss Powner. The notion of a man disappearing in this way—vanishing as if the earth had opened to receive him and closed again—for the sake of any girl, however attractive, was too unnatural an idea for anyone to have evolved out of his internal consciousness. There must have been some substratum of fact, and then, upon the other hand, there seemed to me more than a substratum of possibility in the theory started of his having been murdered.

Supposing he had been murdered, I went on to argue, what then? Did I imagine he “walked” ? Did I believe he could not rest wherever he was laid?

Pooh—nonsense! It might be that the murderer haunted the place of his crime—that he hovered about to see if his guilt were still undetected, but as to anything in the shape of a ghost tenanting the Beech Walk, long meadow, and wood, I did not believe it—I could not, and I added, “if I saw it with my own eyes, I would not.”

Having arrived at which decided and sensible conclusion, I went in to supper. Usually a sound sleeper, I found it impossible that night when I lay down to close my eyes. I tossed and turned, threw off the bedclothes under the impression I was too hot and drew them tight up round me the next instant, feeling cold. I tried to think of my crops, of my land, of my wife, of my boy, of my future—all in vain. A dark shadow, a wall-like night stood between me and all the ordinary interests of my life—I could not get the notion of Mr. Hascot’s strange disappearance out of my mind. I wondered if there was anything about the place which made it in the slightest degree probable I should ever learn to forget the wife who loved me, the boy who was dependent on me. Should I ever begin to think I might have done better as regards my choice of a wife, that it would be nicer to have healthy merry children than my affectionate delicate lad?

When I got to this point, I could stand it no longer. I felt as though some mocking spirit were taking possession of me, which eventually would destroy all my peace of mind, if I did not cast it out promptly and effectually.

I would not lie there supine to let any demon torment me; and, accordingly, springing to the floor, I dressed in hot haste, and flinging wide the window, looked out over a landscape bathed in the clear light of a most lovely moon.

“How beautiful!” I thought. “I have never yet seen the farm by night, I’ll just go and take a stroll round it and then turn in again—after a short walk, I shall likely be able to sleep.”

So saying, I slipped downstairs, closed the hall door softly after me, and went out into the moonlight.

III

As I stood upon the lawn, looking around with a keen and subtle pleasure, I felt, almost for the first time in my life, the full charm and beauty of night. Every object was as clearly revealed as though the time had been noon instead of an hour past midnight, but there lay a mystic spell on tree and field and stream the garish day could never equal. It was a fairy light and a fairy scene, and it would scarcely have astonished me to see fantastic elves issue from the foxglove’s flowers or dart from the shelter of concealing leaves and dance a measure on the emerald sward.

For a minute I felt—as I fancy many and many a commonplace man must have done when first wedded to some miracle of grace and beauty—a sense of amazement and unreality.

All this loveliness was mine—the moonlit lawn—the stream murmuring through the fir plantation, singing soft melodies as it pursued its glittering way—the trees with a silvery gleam tinting their foliage—the roses giving out their sweetest, tenderest perfumes—the wonderful silence around—the fresh, pure air—the soft night wind—the prosperity with which God had blessed me. My heart grew full, as I turned and gazed first on this side and then on that, and I felt vexed and angry to remember I had ever suffered myself to listen to idle stories and to be made uncomfortable by reason of village gossip.

On such a night it really seemed a shame to go to bed, and, acccordingly, though the restlessness which first induced me to rise had vanished, and in doing so left the most soothing calm behind, I wandered on away from the house, now beside the stream, and again across a meadow, where faint odours from the lately carried hay still lingered.

Still the same unreal light over field and copse—still the same witching glamour—still the same secret feeling. I was seeing something and experiencing some sensation I might never again recall on this side of the grave!

A most lovely night—one most certainly not for drawn curtains and closed eyelids—one rather for lovers’ tête-a-tête or a dreamy reverie—for two young hearts to reveal their secrets to each other or one soul to commune alone with God.

Still rambling, I found myself at last beside a stile, opening upon a path, which, winding upwards, led past the hollow where the nut trees grew, and then joined the footway leading through the long field to Whittleby. The long field was the last in that direction belonging to Nut Bush Farm. It joined upon a portion of the land surrounding Chalmont, and the field path continued consequently to pass through Miss Gostock’s property till the main road was reached. It cut off a long distance, and had been used generally by the inhabitants of the villages and hamlets dotted about my place until the rumour being circulated that something might be “seen” or “met” deterred people from venturing by a route concerning which such evil things were whispered. I had walked it constantly, both on account of the time it saved and also in order to set a good example to my labourers and my neighbours, but I might as well have saved my pains.

I was regarded merely as foolhardy, and I knew people generally supposed I should one day have cause to repent my temerity.

As I cleared the stile and began winding my upward way to the higher ground beyond, the thought did strike me what a likely place for a murder Nut Bush Hollow looked. It was a deep excavation, out of which, as no one supposed it to be natural, hundreds and thousands of loads of earth must at some time or other have been carted. From top to bottom it was clothed with nut trees—they grew on every side, and in thick, almost impenetrable masses. For years and years they seemed to have had no care bestowed on them, the Hollow forming in this respect a remarkable contrast to the rest of Mr. Hascot’s careful farming, and, as a fir plantation ran along the base of the Hollow, while the moon’s light fell clear and full on some of the bushes, the others lay in densest shadow.

The road that once led down into the pit was now completely overgrown with nut bushes which grew luxuriantly to the very edge of the Beech Walk, and threatened ere long to push their way between the trunks of the great trees, which were the beauty and the pride of my lovely farm.

At one time, so far as I could understand, the nut bushes had the whole place almost to themselves, and old inhabitants told me that formerly, in the days when their parents were boys and girls, the nuts used to pay the whole of the rent. As years passed, however, whether from want of care or some natural cause, they gradually ceased to bear, and had to be cut down and cleared off the ground—those in the dell, however, being suffered to remain, the hollow being useless for husbandry, and the bushes which flourished there producing a crop of nuts sufficient for the farmer’s family.

All this recurred to my mind as I stood for a moment and looked down into the depths of rustling green below me. I thought of the boys who must have gone nutting there, of all the nests birds had built in the branches so closely interlaced, of the summers’ suns which had shone full and strong upon that mass of foliage, of the winters’ snows which had lain heavy on twig and stem and wrapped the strong roots in a warm covering of purest white.

And then the former idea again asserted itself—what a splendid place for a tragedy; a sudden blow—a swift stab—even a treacherous push—and the deed could be done—a man might be alive and well one minute, and dead the next!

False friend, or secret enemy; rival or thief, it was competent for either in such a place at any lonely hour to send a man upon his last long journey. Had Mr. Hascot been so served? Down, far down, was he lying in a quiet, dreamless sleep? At that very moment was there anyone starting from fitful slumber to grapple with his remorse for crime committed, or shrink with horror from the dread of detection?

“Where was my fancy leading me?” I suddenly asked myself. This was worse than in my own chamber preventing the night watches. Since I had been standing there my heart felt heavier than when tossing from side to side in bed, and wooing unsuccessfully the slumber which refused to come for my asking.

What folly! what nonsense! and into what an insane course of speculation had I embarked. I would leave the eerie place and get once again into the full light of the moon’s bright beams.

Hush! hark! what was that? deep down amongst the underwood—a rustle, a rush, and a scurry—then silence—then a stealthy movement amongst the bushes—then whilst I was peering down into the abyss lined with waving green below, something passed by me swiftly, something which brought with it a cold chill as though the hand of one dead had been laid suddenly on my heart.

Instantly I turned and looked around. There was not a living thing in sight—neither on the path, nor on the sward, nor on the hillside, nor skirting the horizon as I turned my eyes upward.

For a moment I stood still in order to steady my nerves, then reassuring myself with the thought it must have been an animal of some kind, I completed the remainder of the ascent without further delay.

“The ghost, I suspect,” I said to myself as I reached the long field and the path leading back to the farm, “will resolve itself into a hare or pheasant—is not the whirr of a cock pheasant rising, for instance, enough, when coming unexpectedly, to frighten any nervous person out of his wits? And might not a hare, or a cat, or, better still, a stoat—yes, a stoat, with its gliding, almost noiseless, movements—mimic the footfall of a suppositious ghost?”

By this time I had gained the summit of the incline, and slightly out of breath with breasting the ascent, stood for a moment contemplating the exquisite panorama stretched out beneath me. I linger on that moment because it was the last time I ever saw beauty in the moonlight. Now I cannot endure the silvery gleam of the queen of night—weird, mournful, fantastic if you like, but to be desired—no.

Whenever possible I draw the blinds and close the shutters, yet withal on moonlight nights I cannot sleep, the horror of darkness is to my mind nothing in comparison to the terror of a full moon. But I drivel; let me hasten on.

From the crest of the hill I could see lying below a valley of dreamlike beauty—woods in the foreground—a champagne country spreading away into the indefinite distance—a stream winding in and out, dancing and glittering under the moon’s beams—a line of hills dimly seen against the horizon, and already a streak of light appearing above them, the first faint harbinger of dawn.

“It is morning, then, already,” I said, and with the words turned my face homewards. As I did so I saw before me on the path—clearly—the figure of a man.

He was walking rapidly and I hurried my pace in order to overtake him. Now to this part of the story I desire to draw particular attention. Let me hurry as I might, I never seemed able to get a foot nearer to him.

At intervals he paused, as if on purpose to assist my desire, but the moment I seemed gaining upon him, the distance between us suddenly increased. I could not tell how he did it, the fact only remained—it was like pursuing some phantom in a dream.

All at once when he reached the bridge he stood quite still. He did not move hand or limb as I drew near—the way was so narrow I knew I should have to touch him in passing; nevertheless, I pressed forward. My foot was on the bridge—I was close to him—I felt my breath coming thick and fast—I clasped a stick I had picked up in the plantation firmly in my hand—I stopped, intending to speak—I opened my mouth, intending to do so—and then—then—without any movement on his part—I was alone!

Yes, as totally alone as though he had never stood on the bridge—never preceded me along the field-path—never loitered upon my footsteps—never paused for my coming. I was appalled.

“Lord, what is this?” I thought. “Am I going mad?” I felt as if I were. On my honour, I know I was as nearly insane at that moment as a man ever can be who is still in the possession of his senses.

Beyond lay the farm of which in my folly I had felt so proud to be the owner, where I once meant to be so happy and win health for my wife and strength for my boy. I saw the Beech Walk I had gloried in—the ricks of hay it seemed so good to get thatched geometrically as only one man in the neighbourhood was said to be able to lay the straw.

What was farm, or riches, or beech trees, or anything, to me now? Over the place there seemed a curse—better the meanest cottage than a palace with such accessories.

If I had been incredulous before, I was not so now—I could not distrust the evidence of my own eyes—and yet as I walked along, I tried after a minute or two to persuade myself imagination had been playing some juggler’s trick with me. The moon, I argued, always lent herself readily to a game of hide-and-seek. She is always open to join in fantastic gambols with shadows—with thorn bushes—with a waving branch—aye, even with a clump of gorse. I must have been mistaken—I had been thinking weird thoughts as I stood by that dismal dell—I had seen no man walking—beheld no figure disappear.

Just as I arrived at this conclusion I beheld someone coming towards me down the Beech Walk. It was a man walking leisurely with a firm, free step. The sight did me good. Here was something tangible—something to question. I stood still, in the middle of the path—the Beech Walk being rather a grassy glade with a narrow footway dividing it, than anything usually understood by the term walk—so that I might speak to the intruder when he drew near, and ask him what he meant by trespassing on my property, more especially at such an hour. There were no public rights on my land except as regarded the path across the long field and through the wood. No one had any right or business to be in the Beech Walk, by day or night, save those employed about the farm, and this person was a gentleman; even in the distance I could distinguish that. As he came closer I saw he was dressed in a loose Palmerston suit, that he wore a low-crowned hat, and that he carried a light cane. The moonbeams dancing down amongst the branches and between the leaves fell full upon his face, and catching sight of a ring he had on his right hand, made it glitter with as many different colours as a prism.

A middle-aged man, so far as I could judge, with a set, determined expression of countenance, dark hair, no beard or whiskers, only a small moustache. A total stranger to me. I had never seen him nor anyone like him in the neighbourhood. Who could he be, and what in the wide world was he doing on my premises at that unearthly hour of the morning?

He came straight on, never moving to right or left—taking no more notice of me than if he had been blind. His easy indifference, his contemptuous coolness, angered me, and planting myself a little more in his way, I began:

“Are you aware, sir—”

I got no further. Without swerving in the slightest degree from the path, he passed me! I felt something like a cold mist touch me for an instant, and the next, I saw him pursuing his steady walk down the centre of the glade. I was sick with fear, but for all that I ran after him faster than I had ever done since boyhood.

All to no purpose! I might as well have tried to catch the wind. Just where three ways joined I stood still and looked around. I was quite alone! Neither sign nor token of the intruder could I discover. On my left lay the dell where the nut trees grew, and above it the field path to Whittleby showing white and clear in the moonlight; close at hand was the bridge; straight in front the wood looked dark and solemn. Between me and it lay a little hollow, down which a narrow path wound tortuously. As I gazed I saw that, where a moment before no one had been, a man was walking now. But I could not follow. My limbs refused their office. He turned his head, and lifting his hand on which the ring glittered, beckoned me to come. He might as well have asked one seized with paralysis. On the confines of the wood he stood motionless as if awaiting my approach; then, when I made no sign of movement, he wrung his hands with a despairing gesture, and disappeared.

At the same moment, moon, dell, bridge, and stream faded from my sight—and I fainted.

IV

It was not much past eight o’clock when I knocked at Miss Gostock’s hall door, and asked if I could see that lady.

After that terrible night vision I had made up my mind. Behind Mr. Hascot’s disappearance I felt sure there lurked some terrible tragedy—living, no man should have implored my help with such passionate earnestness without avail, and if indeed one had appeared to me from the dead I would right him if I could.

But never for a moment did I then think of giving up the farm. The resolve I had come to seemed to have braced up my courage—let what might come or go, let crops remain unreaped and men neglect their labour, let monetary loss and weary, anxious days be in store if they would, I meant to go on to the end.

The first step on my road clearly led in the direction of Miss Gostock’s house. She alone could give me all the information I required—to her alone could I speak freely and fully about what I had seen.

I was instantly admitted, and found the lady, as I had expected, at breakfast. It was her habit, I knew, to partake of that meal while the labourers she employed were similarly engaged. She was attired in an easy negligé of a white skirt and a linen coat which had formerly belonged to her brother. She was not taking tea or coffee like any other woman—but was engaged upon about a pound of smoking steak which she ate covered with mustard and washed down with copious draughts of home-brewed beer.

She received me cordially and invited me to join in the banquet—a request I ungallantly declined, eliciting in return the remark I should never be good for much till I ceased living on “slops” and took to “good old English” fare.

After these preliminaries I drew my chair near the table and said:

“I want you to give me some information, Miss Gostock, about my predecessor.”

“What sort of information?” she asked, with a species of frost at once coming over her manner.

“Can you tell me anything of his personal appearance?”

“Why do you ask?”

I did not immediately answer, and seeing my hesitation she went on: “Because if you mean to tell me you or anyone else have seen him about your place I would not believe it if you swore it—there!”

“I do not ask you to believe it, Miss Gostock,” I said.

“And I give you fair warning, it is of no use coming here and asking me to relieve you of your bargain, because I won’t do it. I like you well enough—better than I ever liked a tenant; but I don’t intend to be a shilling out of pocket by you.”

“I hope you never may be,” I answered meekly.

“I’ll take very good care I never am,” she retorted; “and so don’t come here talking about Mr. Hascot. He served me a dirty turn, and I would not put it one bit past him to try and get the place a bad name.”

“Will you tell me what sort of looking man he was?” I asked determinedly.

“No, I won’t,” she snapped, and while she spoke she rose, drained the last drop out of a pewter measure, and after tossing on the straw hat with a defiant gesture, thumped its crown well down on her head. I took the hint, and rising, said I must endeavour to ascertain the particulars I wanted elsewhere.

“You won’t ascertain them from me,” retorted Miss Gostock, and we parted as we had never done before—on bad terms.

Considerably perplexed, I walked out of the house. A rebuff of this sort was certainly the last thing I could have expected, and as I paced along I puzzled myself by trying to account for Miss Gostock’s extraordinary conduct, and anxiously considering what I was to do under present circumstances. All at once the recollection of mine host of the “Bunch of Hops” flashed across my mind. He must have seen Mr. Hascot often, and I could address a few casual questions to him without exciting his curiosity.

No sooner thought than done. Turning my face towards Whittleby, I stepped briskly on.

“I ever see Mr. Hascot?” repeated the landlord—when after some general conversation about politics, the weather, the crops, and many other subjects, I adroitly turned it upon the late tenant of Nut Bush Farm. “Often, sir. I never had much communication with him, for he was one of your stand-aloof, keep-your-distance, sort of gentlemen—fair dealing and honourable—but neither free nor generous. He has often sat where you are sitting now, sir, and not so much as said—‘it is a fine day,’ or, ‘I am afraid we shall have rain.

“You had but to see him walking down the street to know what he was. As erect as a grenadier, with a firm easy sort of marching step, he looked every inch a gentleman—just in his everyday clothes, a Palmerston suit and a round hat, he was, as many a one said, fit to go to court. His hands were not a bit like a farmer’s, but white and delicate as any lady’s, and the diamond ring he wore flashed like a star when he stroked the slight bit of a moustache that was all the hair he had upon his face. No—not a handsome gentleman, but fine looking, with a presence—bless and save us all to think of his giving up everything for the sake of that slip of a girl.”

“She was very pretty, wasn’t she?” I inquired.

“Beautiful—we all said she was too pretty to come to any good. The old grandmother, you see, had serious cause for keeping so tight a hold over her, but it was in her, and ‘what’s bred in bone,’ you know, sir.”

“And you really think they did go off together?”

“Oh, yes, sir; nobody had ever any doubt about that.”

On this subject his tone was so decided I felt it was useless to continue the conversation, and having paid him for the modest refreshment of which I had partaken I sauntered down the High Street and turned into the Bank, where I thought of opening an account.

When I had settled all preliminaries with the manager he saved me the trouble of beating about the bush by breaking cover himself and asking if anything had been heard of Mr. Hascot.

“Not that I know of,” I answered.

“Curious affair, wasn’t it?” he said.

“It appears so, but I have not heard the whole story.”

“Well, the whole story is brief,” returned the manager. “He comes over here one day and without assigning any reason withdraws the whole of his balance, which was very heavy—is met on the road homeward but never returns home—the same day the girl Powner is also missing—what do you think of all that?”

“It is singular,” I said, “very.”

“Yes, and to leave his wife and family totally unprovided for.”

“I cannot understand that at all.”

“Nor I—it was always known he had an extreme partiality for the young person—he and Miss Gostock quarrelled desperately on the subject—but no one could have imagined an attachment of that sort would have led a man so far astray—Hascot more especially. If I had been asked to name the last person in the world likely to make a fool of himself for the sake of a pretty face I should have named the late tenant of Nut Bush Farm.”

“There never was a suspicion of foul play?” I suggested.

“Oh, dear, no! It was broad daylight when he was last seen on the Whittleby road. The same morning it is known he and the girl were talking earnestly together beside the little wood on your property, and two persons answering to their description were traced to London, that is to say, a gentleman came forward to say he believed he had travelled up with them as far as New Cross on the afternoon in question.”

“He was an affectionate father, I have heard,” I said.

“A most affectionate parent—a most devoted husband. Dear, dear! It is dreadfully sad to think how a bad woman may drag the best of men down to destruction. It is terrible to think of his wife and family being inmates of the Union.”

“Yes, and it is terrible to consider not a soul has tried to get them out of it,” I answered, a little tartly.

“H—m, perhaps so; but we all know we are contributing to their support,” he returned with an effort at jocularity, which, in my then frame of mind, seemed singularly mal-apropos.

“There is something in that,” I replied with an effort, and leaving the Bank next turned my attention to the Poorhouse at Crayshill.

At that time many persons thought what I did quixotic. It is so much the way of the world to let the innocent suffer for the guilty, that I believe Mr. Hascot’s wife might have ended her days in Crayshill Union but for the action I took in the matter.

Another night I felt I could not rest till I had arranged for a humble lodging she and her family could occupy till I was able to form some plan for their permanent relief. I found her a quiet, ladylike woman, totally unable to give me the slightest clue as to where her husband might be found. “He was just at the stile on the Chalmont fields,” she said, “when Mr. Waite met him; no one saw him afterwards, unless it might be the Ockfields, but, of course, there is no information to be got from them. The guardians have tried every possible means to discover his whereabouts without success. My own impression is he and Sally Powner have gone to America, and that someday we may hear from him. He cannot harden his heart forever and forget—” Here Mrs. Hascot’s sentence trailed off into passionate weeping.

“It is too monstrous!” I considered; “the man never did such a thing as desert his wife and children. Someone knows all about the matter,” and then in a moment I paused in the course of my mediations.

Was that person Miss Gostock?

It was an ugly idea, and yet it haunted me. When I remembered the woman’s masculine strength, when I recalled her furious impetuosity when I asked her a not very exasperating question, as I recalled the way she tossed off that brandy, when I considered her love of money, her eagerness to speak ill of her late tenant, her semi-references to some great trouble prior to which she was more like other women, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, less unlike them—doubts came crowding upon my mind.

It was when entering her ground Mr. Hascot was last seen. He had a large sum of money in his possession. She was notoriously fond of rambling about Nut Bush Farm, and what my labouring men called “spying around,” which had been the cause of more than one pitched battle between herself and Mr. Hascot.

“The old master could not a-bear her,” said one young fellow.

I hated myself for the suspicion; and yet, do what I would, I could not shake it off. Not for a moment did I imagine Miss Gostock had killed her former tenant in cold blood; but it certainly occurred to me that the dell was deep, and the verge treacherous, that it would be easy to push a man over, either by accident or design, that the nut-bushes grew thick, that a body might lie amongst them till it rotted, ere even the boys who went nutting there, season after season, happened to find it.

Should I let the matter drop? No, I decided. With that mute appeal haunting my memory, I should know no rest or peace till I had solved the mystery of Mr. Hascot’s disappearance, and cleared his memory from the shameful stain circumstances had cast upon it.

What should I do next? I thought the matter over for a few days, and then decided to call on Mr. Waite, who never yet had called on me. As usual, he was not at home; but I saw his wife, whom I found just the sort of woman Lolly described—a fair, delicate creature who seemed fading into the grave.

She had not much to tell me. It was her husband who saw Mr. Hascot at the Chalmont stile; it was he also who had seen Mr. Hascot and the girl Powner talking together on the morning of their disappearance. It so happened he had often chanced to notice them together before. “She was a very, very pretty girl,” Mrs. Waite added, “and I always thought a modest. She had a very sweet way of speaking—quite above her station—inherited, no doubt, for her father was a gentleman. Poor little Sally!”

The words were not much, but the manner touched me sensibly. I felt drawn to Mrs. Waite from that moment, and told her more of what I had beheld and what I suspected than I had mentioned to anyone else.

As to my doubts concerning Miss Gostock, I was, of course, silent but I said quite plainly I did not believe Mr. Hascot had gone off with any girl or woman either, that I thought he had come to an unfair end, and that I was of opinion the stories circulated, concerning a portion of Nut Bush Farm being haunted, had some foundation in fact.

“Do you believe in ghosts then?” she asked, with a curious smile.

“I believe in the evidence of my senses,” I answered, “and I declare to you, Mrs. Waite, that one night, not long since, I saw as plainly as I see you what I can only conclude to have been the semblance of Mr. Hascot.”

She did not make any reply, she only turned very pale, and blaming myself for having alarmed one in her feeble state of health, I hastened to apologise and take my leave.

As we shook hands, she retained mine for a moment, and said, “When you hear anything more, if you should, that is, you will tell us, will you not? Naturally we feel interested in the matter, he was such a neighbour, and—we knew him.”

I assured her I would not fail to do so, and left the room.

Before I reached the front door I found I had forgotten one of my gloves, and immediately retraced my steps.

The drawing-room door was ajar, and somewhat unceremoniously, perhaps, I pushed it open and entered.

To my horror and surprise, Mrs. Waite, whom I had left apparently in her ordinary state of languid health, lay full length on the sofa, sobbing as if her heart would break. What I said so indiscreetly had brought on an attack of violent hysterics—a malady with the signs and tokens of which I was not altogether unacquainted.

Silently I stole out of the room without my glove, and left the house, closing the front door noiselessly behind me.

A couple of days elapsed, and then I decided to pay a visit to Mrs. Ockfield. If she liked to throw any light on the matter, I felt satisfied she could. It was, to say the least of it, most improbable her grand-daughter, whether she had been murdered or gone away with Mr. Hascot, should disappear and not leave a clue by which her relatives could trace her.

The Ockfields were not liked, I found, and I flattered myself if they had any hand in Mr. Hascot’s sudden disappearance I should soon hit on some weak spot in their story.

I found the old woman, who was sixty-seven, and who looked two hundred, standing over her washing tub.

“Can I tell you where my grand-daughter is,” she repeated, drawing her hands out of the suds and wiping them on her apron. “Surely sir, and very glad I am to be able to tell everybody, gentle and simple, where to find our Sally. She is in a good service down in Cheshire. Mr. Hascot got her the place, but we knew nothing about it till yesterday; she left us in a bit of a pet, and said she wouldn’t have written me, only something seemed to tell her she must. Ah! she’ll have a sore heart when she gets my letter and hears how it has been said that the master and she went off together. She thought a deal of the master, did Sally; he was always kind and stood between her and her grandfather.”

“Then do you mean to say,” I asked, “that she knows nothing of Mr. Hascot’s disappearance?”

“Nothing, sir, thank God for all His mercies; the whole of the time since the day she left here she has been in service with a friend of his. You can read her letter if you like.”

Though I confess old Mrs. Ockfield neither charmed nor inspired me with confidence, I answered that I should like to see the letter very much indeed.

When I took it in my hand I am bound to say I thought it had been written with a purpose, and intended less for a private than for the public eye, but as I read I fancied there was a ring of truth about the epistle, more especially as the writer made passing reference to a very bitter quarrel which had preceded her departure from the grand-paternal roof.

“It is very strange,” I said, as I returned the letter, “it is a most singular coincidence that your grand-daughter and Mr. Hascot should have left Whittleby on the same day, and yet that she should know nothing of his whereabouts, as judging from her letter seems to be the case.”

“Are you quite sure Mr. Hascot ever did leave Whittleby, sir?” asked the old woman with a vindictive look in her still bright old eyes. “There are those as think he never went very far from home, and that the whole truth will come out someday.”

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed, surprised.

“Least said soonest mended,” she answered shortly; “only I hopes if ever we do know the rights of it, people as do hold their heads high enough, and have had plenty to say about our girl, and us too for that matter, will find things not so pleasant as they find them at present. The master had a heap of money about him, and we know that often those as has are those as wants more!”

“I cannot imagine what you are driving at,” I said, for I feared every moment she would mention Miss Gostock, and bring her name into the discussion. “If you think Mr. Hascot met with any foul play you ought to go to the police about the matter.”

“Maybe I will some time,” she answered, “but just now I have my washing to do.”

“This will buy you some tea to have afterwards,” I said, laying down half-a-crown, and feeling angry with myself for this momentary irritation. After all, the woman had as much right to her suspicions as I to mine.

Thinking over Miss Powner’s letter, I came to the conclusion it might be well to see the young lady for myself. If I went to the address she wrote from I could ascertain at all events whether her statement regarding her employment was correct. Yes, I would take train and travel into Cheshire; I had commenced the investigation and I would follow it to the end.

I travelled so much faster than Mrs. Ockfield’s letter—which, indeed, that worthy woman had not then posted—that when I arrived at my journey’s end I found the fair Sally in total ignorance of Mr. Hascot’s disappearance and the surmises to which her own absence had given rise.

Appearances might be against the girl’s truth and honesty, yet I felt she was dealing fairly with me.

“A better gentleman, sir,” she said, “than Mr. Hascot never drew breath. And so they set it about he had gone off with me—they little know—they little know! Why, sir, he thought of me and was careful for me as he might for a daughter. The first time I ever saw him grandfather was beating me, and he interfered to save me. He knew they treated me badly, and it was after a dreadful quarrel I had at home he advised me to go away. He gave me a letter to the lady I am now with, and a ten-pound note to pay my travelling expenses and keep something in my pocket. ‘You’ll be better away from the farm, little girl,’ he said the morning I left; ‘people are beginning to talk, and we can’t shut their mouths if you come running to me every time your grandmother speaks sharply to you.’”

“But why did you not write sooner to your relatives?” I asked.

“Because I was angry with my grandmother, sir, and I thought I would give her a fright. I did not bring any clothes or anything and I hoped—it was a wicked thing I know, sir—but I hoped she would believe I had made away with myself. Just lately, however, I began to consider that if she and grandfather had not treated me well, I was treating them worse, so I made up a parcel of some things my mistress gave me and sent it to them with a letter. I am glad it reached them safely.”

“What time was it when you saw Mr. Hascot last?” I inquired.

“About two o’clock, sir, I know that, because he was in a hurry. He had got some news about the Bank at Whittleby not being quite safe, and he said he had too much money there to run any risk of loss. ‘Be a good girl,’ were the last words he said, and he walked off sharp and quick by the field path to Whittleby. I stood near the bridge crying for a while. Oh, sir! do you think anything ill can have happened to him?”

For answer, I only said the whole thing seemed most mysterious.

“He’d never have left his wife and children, sir,” she went on; “never. He must have been made away with.”

“Had he any enemies, do you think?” I asked.

“No, sir; not to say enemies. He was called hard because he would have a day’s work for a day’s wage, but no one that ever I heard of had a grudge against him. Except Miss Gostock and Mr. Waite, he agreed well with all the people about. He did not like Miss Gostock, and Mr. Waite was always borrowing money from him. Now Mr. Hascot did not mind giving, but he could not bear lending.”

I returned to Nut Bush Farm perfectly satisfied that Mr. Hascot had been, as the girl expressed the matter, “made away with.” On the threshold of my house I was met with a catalogue of disasters. The female servants had gone in a body; the male professed a dislike to be in the stable-yard in the twilight. Rumour had decided that Nut Bush Farm was an unlucky place even to pass. The cattle were out of condition because the men would not go down the Beech Walk, or turn a single sheep into the long field. Reapers wanted higher wages. The labourers were looking out for other service.

“Poor fellow! This is a nice state of things for you to come home to,” said Lolly compassionately. “Even the poachers won’t venture into the wood, and the boys don’t go nutting.”

“I will clear away the nut trees and cut down the wood,” I declared savagely.

“I don’t know who you are going to get to cut them,” answered Lolly, “unless you bring men down from London.”

As for Miss Gostock, she only laughed at my dilemma, and said, “You’re a pretty fellow to be frightened by a ghost. If he was seen at Chalmont, I’d ghost him.”

While I was in a state of the most cruel perplexity, I bethought me of my promise to Mrs. Waite, and walked over one day to tell her the result of my inquiries.

I found her at home, and Mr. Waite, for a wonder, in the drawing-room. He was not a bad-looking fellow, and welcomed my visit with a heartiness which ill accorded with the discourtesy he had shown in never calling upon me.

Very succinctly I told what I had done, and where I had been. I mentioned the terms in which Sally Powner spoke of her benefactor. We discussed the whole matter fully—the pros and cons of anyone knowing Mr. Hascot had such a sum of money on his person, and the possibility of his having been murdered. I mentioned what I had done about Mrs. Hascot, and begged Mr. Waite to afford me his help and co-operation in raising such a sum of money as might start the poor lady in some business.

“I’ll do all that lies in my power,” he said heartily, shaking hands at the same time, for I had risen to go.

“And for my part,” I remarked, “it seems to me there are only two things more I can do to elucidate the mystery, and those are—root every nut-tree out of the dell and set the axe to work in the wood.”

There was a second’s silence. Then Mrs. Waite dropped to the floor as if she had been shot.

As he stooped over her, he and I exchanged glances, and then I knew. Mr. Hascot had been murdered, and Mr. Waite was the murderer!

•    •    •    •

That night I was smoking and Lolly at needlework. The parlour windows were wide open, for it was warm, and not a breath of air seemed stirring.

There was a stillness on everything which betokened a coming thunderstorm; and we both were silent, for my mind was busy and Lolly’s heart anxious. She did not see, as she said, how I was to get on at all, and for my part I could not tell what I ought to do.

All at once something whizzed through the window furthest from where we sat, and fell noisily to the floor.

“What is that?” Lolly cried, springing to her feet. “Oh, Jack! What is it?”

Surprised and shaken myself, I closed the windows and drew down the blinds before I examined the cause of our alarm. It proved to be an oblong package weighted with a stone. Unfastening it cautiously, for I did not know whether it might not contain some explosive, I came at length to a pocket book. Opening the pocket book, I found it stuffed full of bank notes.

“What are they? Where can they have come from?” exclaimed Lolly.

“They are the notes Mr. Hascot drew from Whittleby bank the day he disappeared,” I answered with a sort of inspiration, but I took no notice of Lolly’s last question.

For good or for evil that was a secret which lay between myself and the Waites, and which I have never revealed till now.

If the vessel in which they sailed for New Zealand had not gone to the bottom I should have kept the secret still.

When they were out of the country and the autumn well advanced, I had the wood thoroughly examined, and there in a gully, covered with a mass of leaves and twigs and dead branches, we found Mr. Hascot’s body. His watch was in his waistcoat pocket—his ring on his finger; save for these possessions no one could have identified him.

His wife married again about a year afterwards and my brother took Nut Bush Farm off my hands. He says the place never was haunted—that I never saw Mr. Hascot except in my own imagination—that the whole thing originated in a poor state of health and a too credulous disposition!

I leave the reader to judge between us.

Old Mrs. Jones

(1882)

I

There could not have been found in his parish, which was a large one, a prouder or happier man than Richard Tippens, on the day when he took possession of the house which had been tenanted by Doctor Jones.

Never a better fellow drew breath than Mr. Richard Tippens. A good son, a loving husband, a fond father, his worst enemy could only say of him he had two faults—one, a tendency to be extra generous; the other, a perhaps undue fondness for an extra glass. But, earning money by the pocketful, as Dick did in those days, when there were fewer cabs and buses than at present, no tramcars, no Metropolitan or daylight route railway, to be free-handed seemed a virtue rather than a sin; whilst a man who had to be out in all weathers, and the period of whose meals was as uncertain as the climate, could scarcely be blamed for yielding to the solicitations of sporting or commercial-gent fares, and his own inclination, in the matter of little “gos” of rum and half-quarterns of gin, and whisky cold without, or with “just a drop of hot water and one lump of sugar, my dear, as my fingers is stiff with cold.”

Mr. Tippens was a cheery fellow, with a jolly, honest, laughing face, merciful to the cattle he drove, proud of his newly-painted cab, of his silver-plated harness, of a fresh horse he had just bought, and—oh, far, far prouder of all—of having got the old house which Doctor Jones lived in, for so many a long and wicked year, for a mere song in the way of rent. It was precisely the sort of place he had been looking out for, he could scarcely remember how long; an old-fashioned house—not a grand old-fashioned house altogether above their position, but a rambling, ramshackle building, with a wide staircase, and lots of cupboards, and plenty of rooms they could let off to great advantage, and large cellars, and a paved yard at the back, where were also stables, and coach-house, and lofts, and wash-house, and brew-house, and ever so many other odd little places, telling unconsciously of the time when people, and things, and ways were different from what they are now; when wood enough for the whole winter had to be laid in at once, and bread was baked at home, and flitches of bacon were laid in the racks, and such modern innovations as tradesmen calling every day for orders, ladies only spending about thirty minutes a week in their kitchens, and no mistress’s store-room, were matters still undreamt of.

“It is a splendid house,” Mr. Richard Tippens joyfully exclaimed, when, opening the door with his own key, he walked into the premises with the old creature who was to do the repairs for him.

“Fit for any gentleman,” capped the person in question, the accuracy of whose ideas on any social subject of that sort was indeed open to doubt, for he had only one definite notion on earth, and that was beer. His point of view was the nearest tap, and any road which led to the desired haven seemed to him filled with better company than the Row in the season.

He had been in a yard where Dick Tippens, then owning no horses of his own, was fain to work under a cab proprietor.

“I have known poor old Mickey,” Dick was wont to say, “for a matter of thirty years, on and off you know, and ever since I was as high as that,” and the great burly fellow would indicate a height a child of five might have scoffed at. But Dick did not add how many a six-pence, and shilling, and half-crown, and good warm dinner had found their way to old Mickey since he met with the accident (when he was drunk) which made him forever after a dependent on the charity of the ratepayers and the liberality of those who could remember him when he was earning from “thirty-three to forty bob a week, besides gettings.” That Mickey, while in receipt of this princely income, might have put aside a trifle to help him over that rainy day, induced by “the cussedest brute that ever lashed out without a sign of warning,” was an idea which never seemed to occur either to the various relieving officers he was under or to the many friends who “stood treat.”

Neither was any weight attached to the horse’s view of the question. How Michael himself would have liked his own toilet performed with the aid of a pitchfork, which was the implement he had taken up, apparently under the impression it was a curry-comb, nobody inquired. All that his own public considered was that Mickey, once the weekly recipient of “thirty-three to forty bob and gettings,” which latter item probably amounted to as much more, had to go on the parish and feel thankful for half-crowns from the Board, and such odd jobs as Heaven, more merciful than the abhorred Board, put in his way.

For the rest he was a drunken, dissolute, lying, discontented, carneying old vagabond, who thrived on the kindness and folly of men like Dick Tippens, who likewise was not laying by a farthing but spending such of his superfluous cash as did not go in the best of good eating and drinking and smoking, in the purchase of useless articles of various kinds, in fine household linen and damask, in a large stock of clothes for himself, which he could not possibly wear out before they grew old-fashioned, in shawls and dresses for his wife, each and all destined eventually to find their way to the pawnbroker as surely and infallibly as the sparks fly upwards.

For apparently a mere trifle, “just a bite of food, or a half-pint of beer, or an old pair of cast-off boots, or a coat you don’t care to be seen about in any longer yourself, even in the worst of weather,” thus, “poor old Mickey” ; “or just whatever you are pleased to give me; or nothing at all, Mr. Tippens. I’ll make the place clean and sweet for you. There is little here I can’t do, except maybe the roof and a bit of bricklaying, that needs standing on a high ladder, or the pipes mending, or the gutter seeing to; but leave that all to me, plenty will be glad to earn a shilling or two, and I know where to go to look for them; don’t you trouble yourself at all. Which had we best make a start with, the house, d’ye think, or the yard?”

Mr. Tippens thought the house. Once he was on the premises he could see to a bit of the loft and stables himself, and give Mike a helping hand; and his wife was all agog to get in, and put the place to rights while the fine weather lasted; and he had some fresh lodgers now, only waiting till he could take them in; and the children, poor things, were wild at the thought of the yard and the out-buildings.

“And fine children they are too,” answered the worthy Michael; “but there, what would hinder them? You’re not an ill-favoured man yourself, Mr. Tippens, and I mind the time when all the girls were setting their caps at you, and the like of your wife for beauty never stepped. The very sight of her seems to do my old eyes good, like the sunshine on a bright May morning. She always minds me somehow of primroses and violets and bluebells, and the scent of the wallflowers that used to grow along on the low wall of my father’s garden down in Surrey,” and as he uttered these poetical similes, Michael’s watery eyes wistfully followed the movements of Mr. Tippens’ right hand while it fumbled in his pocket for a shilling, to bestow on the “poor old fellow, who had neither chick nor child, nor one belonging to him.”

The expenditure of whitewash in that house was something awful; Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London could scarcely have required a larger outlay in whiting.

“You have no idea,” said Mike, “of the quantity of wash them ceilings needs”—which, indeed, Mr. Tippens had not—floors, walls, and Mickey himself also received coat after coat; and the dust, according to the ex-helper’s account, was so awful he was forced to keep a pot of beer constantly beside him, in one of the cupboards, to take a sip of at frequent intervals to prevent his choking.

At last, however, even Mike felt it would be dangerous any longer to defer announcing the completion of the repairs. He was brought to this state of mind by a visit from Mrs. Tippens, who, after declaring in tones not much like the birds in spring that she could have done the work herself in a quarter of the time, said, “Done or undone, she meant to have the ‘cleaning’ begun on the following Monday,” when she requested the favour of Mike’s room instead of his company.

She saw clearly enough that individual was in a fuddled state, and whether the intoxication was produced by beer, or gin, or whitewash, or the lead in the paint, did not signify to her; even the praise of her children only elicited the answer that they were “well enough,” and a more elaborate tribute to her own charms failed to soften the asperity with which she told him to “hold his tongue.”

“I expect that Mickey has taken you in nicely, Dick,” she said to her husband that night.

“Oh, it hasn’t cost me so much,” answered Mr. Tippens easily; “there was a whole lot of things to do.”

As indeed he found when the rainy months and the snow came, and the water poured from the spouts, all of which leaked, and the wet soaked through the broken tiles that had never been replaced; and it was found necessary to open all the drains.

Long before winter arrived, however, Mrs. Tippens discovered that not a lock or bolt in the house worked properly; that the paint had only been smeared on the woodwork; that the whole of the repairs, in fact, had consisted in further dilapidation of the coats of Mr. Mike’s stomach; and that almost all the money paid by her husband for “labour,” “material,” “extra help,” “hire of ladders,” “use of pulley,” and so forth, had been spent over the counter of the “Guy Faux” tavern, situated round a near and convenient corner.

Meeting Mike one day, her just indignation found utterance, and, with feminine frankness, she reproached him for having deceived a man who had been so kind to him as her husband. Mrs. Tippens was in no sense of the word a shrew, but she could upon occasion speak out her mind, and on this occasion she did speak it very plainly.

Mike never attempted to deny the charge, he only tried to turn it into a victory by a strategic movement likely to divert her attention.

“What was the use,” asked the hoary sinner, “of spending good money fitting a house up like a palace I knew you would never be able to live in?”

“What would hinder us living in it?” retorted Mrs. Tippens, more in the way of comment than inquiry.

“What would hinder you?—Why old Mrs. Jones, to be sure; she’ll never let anybody live in the house till her bones are dug up out of the hole where her husband buried her.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me of your Mrs. Joneses!” exclaimed Mrs. Tippens, to whom the name was evidently not new. “At any rate, I never did any harm to the woman—never saw her, to my knowledge, so it’s not likely she would come troubling me.”

“She troubles everybody that tries to live in the house you’re so set up with. Why, the last people did not stop a fortnight. It’s well known she walks the place over, from the second floor down; and, if you take my advice, you won’t go into the back-cellar alone after night.”

II

It was Sunday evening. Mr. Tippens sat on one side of the fire and his wife on the other. They had partaken of tea, and it was not yet quite time for supper; the children were abed, three of them in a little room at the end of the passage Doctor Jones had used as a surgery, while the baby was, for a wonder, fast asleep in its cradle, which stood in a dark corner behind Mrs. Tippens’ chair. The horses had long been fed and littered down. Mr. Tippens always took a look at them last thing, but last thing would not be yet for an hour or more. The house was as quiet as the grave, and through the smoke caused by his pipe Richard Tippens, with a delightful sense of well-being, and doing, and feeling, dreamily regarded his wife, who was certainly an extremely pretty woman, possessing further the reputation of being an extraordinarily good manager; neat in her own person, she always kept her children clean and tidy and well dressed; her rooms were regularly swept and scrubbed, and hearthstoned and blackleaded; she mended her husband’s clothes, and sewed on his buttons, and with the help of a woman who came in to “char,” as it is generally called, did the family washing and the family ironing; she was a very fair cook, not in the least lazy—quite the contrary, indeed—and yet, if I may venture to say so, in the teeth of public opinion, which always favours women of her type, I do not think she was a good manager, for she spent up to the hilt of her income, whatever that might be. She was always considering how to increase her “gettings,” but she never gave a thought as to how she might save them.

Her husband gave her a liberal allowance, and brought home from outlying regions, where he saw such articles marked up cheap, fowls, fish, necks of mutton, vegetables, and other welcome helps to housekeeping. She had a house full of regularly paying lodgers, who found their own latch-keys, and required no attendance. She took in needlework, at which, as she got it by favour, she was able to make a considerable amount of money—and yet, if she had told the truth to her own heart, she would have said, “We are not one bit better off than we were when Dick only gave me a pound certain every week, and paid the rent.”

It is a pity someone, thoroughly up in financial questions, does not inform us why uncertain incomes lead almost invariably to extravagant living.

Your true economist, your excellent manager, your incomparable financier, is a labourer at a given weekly wage, a clerk on starvation salary, the lady left with the poorest of limited incomes. The moment “gettings,” in any shape, enter into the question economy retires, worsted, from the contest. “You have got so much today, you may get so much more tomorrow,” that is the reasoning. Now, why cannot the “gettings” be put aside? Why cannot they be left like an egg in the nest for more to be laid? We know, of course, they never are; but why is it?

Among my own somewhat varied acquaintances, I number, at this moment of writing, two persons—one, a lady whose income, all told, does not reach a hundred a year; on this amount she pays the rent of her rooms, she lives, she dresses; she is not young, and her health requires some few luxuries; yet she is never in debt, and she has always a trifle to spare for those who may be sick or sorry. The other is a youth who I do not think has yet counted eighteen summers; his health is perfect, his rank does not necessitate other than the most moderate expenditure for a bed; his hat covers his family; when he visits, his toilet is easily and perfectly made with a clean collar and a fancy tie; his weekly income has been from thirty to five-and-thirty shillings a week and “gettings” ; and yet, lately, when he had been four days out of work, with the certainty of getting into work again on the next day but one, he had to pawn his watch!

Most certainly political economists of the age now coming towards us will find few more difficult questions to deal with than this of “gettings.” Were an angel to descend from Heaven tonight and tell Mrs. Tippens what I know, that “gettings” had been the curse of herself, her husband, and her children, she would not believe him; so it would be worse than folly for me to speak—even if not cruel impertinence—now the inevitable end has come: the parish; the philanthropic society, the ever-decreasing bounty for which she is able to make interest; such casual help as she can get, and such work as she is able to obtain.

But no one that evening, looking at her and her husband, as they sat beside the fire, at the comfortable, well-furnished room, the bright blaze, the clean-swept hearth, could possibly have thought evil days were looming in the distance for both husband and wife. He, the picture of health and strength; she, a slight and still apparently quite young woman, with a refined style of beauty, and a cast of features altogether unusual in her rank. When her voice was not upraised and her temper tried, both of which had been the case during her encounter with that arch-hypocrite Mike, her mode of speaking accorded with the pure and delicate lines of her countenance. In truth, she had been well brought up, and from her youth knew how, with propriety, to address ladies—real ladies, as she was sometimes almost too careful to add; and since her marriage she had kept herself to herself; and in her own home, her children, her relations, and her husband found all the interest and society she required.

“Dick,” she said, after they had sat in silence for some little time.

“I’m here, Luce,” he answered; “what is it, my girl?”

“You never told me this house was haunted.”

“I told you people said it was haunted,” he answered, “and you laughed at the idea; because, as you wisely remarked, ‘when once people are buried they’ve done with this world, surely.”

“But that’s just what we don’t know—whether old Mrs. Jones was ever buried or not.”

“We don’t know whether she is dead or not, for that matter.”

“Then if she’s not dead, where can she be?”

“And if Doctor Jones isn’t dead, where can he be?” retorted Mr. Tippens.

“There’s dreadful things said about this house, Dick.”

“Well, you just turn a deaf ear to them, and they won’t break your night’s rest. What’s Doctor or Mrs. Jones to us? He was a bad man, we know; and she, if all accounts may be trusted, was a bit of a shrew, and held a tight grip on the money, which he married her for. He did not take her for her good looks, I’m sure; for a plainer, more ordinary woman you couldn’t have met in a day’s walk in London. She was more like a witch than anything else—a little bit of a woman, with eyes like black beads, and a face the colour of mahogany; but there—I’ve described her before, Luce, and I think we might find something pleasanter to talk about now.”

“But they say, Dick—they do, indeed—she walks the house, and—”

“Pack of rubbish,” interrupted Mr. Tippens warmly; “who says it—at least, who says it to you?”

“Why, mostly everybody—the baker, and the bootmaker down the street, and Mike.”

“She didn’t hinder him staying in the house, at any rate,” commented Dick.

“Well, Mr. Mowder lived here, you know.”

“And he was turned out because he wouldn’t pay a farthing of rent.”

“He says,” persisted Mrs. Tippens resolutely; “there was always like a cold air in the passage.”

“You can’t expect the hall to feel exactly sultry with those great underground kitchens and cellars. I’ve a mind to put a few spikes in the door, and so shut the whole of those caverns off the rest of the house.”

“But then, Dick, dear, what should we and our lodgers do about coals?”

“Aye, there you go,” observed Dick. “Every woman’s alike; the moment a man makes a suggestion, she’s sure to raise some difficulty. Then I won’t nail up the door; will that meet your views, Mrs. Tippens?”

“Now, Dick, don’t let us quarrel,” entreated his better half; “there was enough of quarrelling here, if all accounts be true, in the Joneses time, without our beginning the same game, and—”

He did not let her finish the sentence, he took his pipe out of his mouth, and drew his chair nearer to where she sat, and put his arm round her waist, and drew her head down on his shoulder, and stroked her hair tenderly, and said,

“No fear of that, old girl—ghosts or no ghosts; Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Anybodyelse, we’ll not take to quarrelling. Only, you see, I don’t want you to be listening to foolish stories and the envious talk of people who, maybe, think we’re getting on a bit too fast in the world. The house suits me and my business well, and I can’t afford to have you set against it, and, likely as not, wanting to leave, and me bound for the rent for three years. Mind that, my lass,” and he gave her a kiss so loud and hearty, neither of them heard the opening of the front door till the sound of several voices caused Mr. Tippens to exclaim: “What noise is that, Luce?”

“The Pendells coming in,” she answered; “they’ve her brother and sister with them up from the country.”

“It’s about getting on for supper time, then, isn’t it, Luce?” asked Mr. Tippens tentatively. He was always ready for his meals on a Sunday, perhaps because he did not take out his cab and had nothing to do.

“Yes, I’ll bring it in now,” answered his wife; and as she spoke she passed into a lean-to, opening off the sitting-room, which she had metamorphosed into a tiny kitchen, perhaps to avoid the dark loneliness of those underground regions Mr. Tippens well described as caverns.

She had provided a nice little meal, and she looked pretty and graceful as she flitted backwards and forwards, fetching one dish and then another.

“Why, girl, this is a supper fit for the Lord Mayor,” said Mr. Tippens, looking approvingly at the contents of the table; “I don’t think the Queen herself—”

What he was going to say concerning Victoria by the Grace of God will never now be known, for when he arrived at this point in his sentence there echoed through the silent house a shriek, which brought both husband and wife to their feet, followed by a thud, as of something heavy falling to the ground.

“Lord bless and save us!” exclaimed Mr. Tippens, and seizing a light he rushed out into the passage, followed by his wife.

It was a strangely built house: there were only six steps to the first landing, where was a cupboard in the wall which Mrs. Pendell used as a sort of pantry; half-way down this landing there were three steps more, and then the flight that led direct to the rooms where the Pendells lived.

As Dick Tippens and his wife ran up the half-dozen steps leading from the hall, a posse of people came hurrying pell-mell from the upper part of the house. “What is it? What has happened? Is it thieves? Is the house on fire?” No, the house was not on fire, neither had thieves set themselves at the unprofitable task of effecting an entry; it was only that on the landing Mrs. Pendell lay in the deadest faint woman ever fell into, a large dish she had evidently just taken out of the cupboard smashed to atoms beside her, and the remnants of the joint the family had operated upon in the middle of the day a few steps down, where it had rolled when she dropped the dish.

Everything possible and impossible the house contained was brought to revive Mrs. Pendell; everybody was talking at once, and each individual had some pet theory to account for the phenomenon.

“I told her she was a-overdoing of it,” said her husband, a slow, florid, phlegmatic, pig-headed sort of man. “Didn’t I, Bill? Didn’t I say to her just on this side of Whitechapel Church, ‘you’ve been a-over-doing it, Mary, you’ll have a turn of them spasms tomorrow’?”

Meantime, the subject of these remarks had been carried into the inner chamber and laid on her bed, where every recognised experimental and favourite personal expedient was tried in order to restore her to consciousness; she was “poor deared,” her dress was unfastened and her stays loosened, smelling salts of every degree of strength were held to her nostrils, burnt feathers thrust almost up her nose, her hands slapped, cold water dabbed on her forehead, an attempt made to get some brandy down her throat, with various other ingenious efforts at torture, which almost drove Mrs. Tippens, who was in the main a very sensible woman, distracted.

“If you’d only leave her to me and Susie,” she said; “there’s not a breath of air in the room, with so many standing about the bed and the doorway. She’ll be right enough after a little, if you’ll only not crowd about her, and let me open the windows.”

“She’s right,” observed Mr. Pendell, from the doorway. “Come along, all of you, Mrs. Tippens knows what’s what.”

Mrs. Pendell, however, was so long in justifying this flattering eulogy in Mrs. Tippens’ favour, that Susie, the sister, who had come up to see her, was just asking if it would not be better to send Bob for the nearest doctor, when Mrs. Tippens, raising her hand to enforce silence, said:

“Sh—sh—she’s coming to now.”

There was a pause, a pin might have been heard drop, so silent and eager and expectant were the two watchers; then Mrs. Pendell, recovering, opened her eyes a very little, and Mrs. Tippens, holding her left hand, and softly rubbing it, said: “Don’t be frightened, dear, it’s only me.”

“What is it? Where am I?” murmured Mrs. Pendell, adding suddenly, with a gesture of the extremest terror, “Oh! I remember. Keep her away from me, Mrs. Tippens! Mrs. Tippens, won’t you keep her away—that dreadful woman, you know?”

“She’s a bit light-headed,” said her sister; “I’m sure Bob had better go for the doctor.”

“I don’t think there’s any need,” answered Mrs. Tippens, quietly enough, though her very heart seemed to stand still at the words. “There’s nobody shall come near you, dear, but Susie and me. Don’t be looking about the room that way—indeed, there’s no one here but your sister and myself.”

“She has long grey hair streaming over her shoulders. Oh, the wickedest face I ever did see! I know her well, don’t you, Mrs. Tippens?”

“Yes, yes, dear; but never mind her now; keep yourself quiet.”

“She must be the smallest woman in the world,” this after a moment’s silence; “when I turned from the cupboard I felt like a rush of cold air, and then she stood on the top step but one.”

“I think she would be the better for some sort of quieting draught,” remarked Mrs. Tippens, sotto voce to Susan Hay—and it is no disparagement of a courageous woman’s courage to say, after Susie left the room she looked fearfully around, while Mrs. Pendell rambled on about the dreadful sight which had struck her down like one dead.

“I have seen people in their coffins, who didn’t look half so deathlike,” she whispered; “she was that dark, and her face and her eyes were so fierce, and her arms so shrivelled, and her hands so like claws going to make a clutch at me; and she had a red mark round her throat, as if she had been wearing a necklace too tight.”

“Did she say anything to you?” Mrs. Tippens forced herself to ask.

“No; she was just going to speak when I screamed out with horror. Shall I ever forget her?—ever—ever!” and she buried her head despairingly in the pillow.

“Well, Polly, lass, how do you find yourself now?” said Mr. Pendell, coming into the room at this juncture, and causing a welcome diversion, at least to Mrs. Tippens’ fancy. “You’re getting all right now, aren’t you? Ah, I felt afraid what was coming; did I say to you, or did I not, on this side of Whitechapel Church, ‘You’ve been a-overdoing of it, Mary; you’ll have a turn of them spasms tomorrow’?”

For answer Mary only put her hand in her husband’s and lay strangely still and quiet.

“Bob has gone for the doctor,” proceeded Mr. Pendell, nodding across at Mrs. Tippens. In replying, Mrs. Tippens looked at the patient and then nodded back at him.

Before morning broke Mrs. Pendell had brought a child prematurely into the world. That she lived and the baby lived the doctor assured Mr. Pendell was owing entirely to Mrs. Tippens’ extraordinary devotion and excellent nursing; and Mr. Pendell declared solemnly to Mrs. Tippens he would never forget her goodness—“night or day, she had only to say what she wanted, and he would be quite at her service”—a promise he found it convenient to forget when evil days fell upon Dick and his wife.

While these events and exchanges of amenities were passing, there happened a curious experience to Mrs. Tippens one night while she was off duty.

Her husband was out on “a late job,” and had told her not to sit up for him; and Mrs. Tippens having undressed and said her prayers, and placed a box of matches where she could instantly lay hand upon it, was about to blow out the candle and step into bed when from the little room at the end of the passage there came a chorus of “Mother! Mother! MOTHER!” which caused her, without making any addition to her toilet beyond instinctively thrusting her bare feet into a pair of her husband’s slippers, to snatch up the candle and rush to the place where her children slept.

“Now then, what is all this noise about?” she asked, seeing they were every one alive and each sitting bolt upright in bed. Theoretically Mrs. Tippens was nothing if not a disciplinarian, but the young ones twisted her round their little fingers for all that. “You’ll bring all the lodgers down; I have a great mind to give each of you a good whipping.”

“There was a woman in the room, mamma!” said Mrs. Tippens’ second-born.

“And she came and touched me,” added the youngest of the trio.

“Yes, that she did, I see her,” exclaimed the eldest son; “a little woman with hair hanging about her like yours, only grey and not so long, and with eyes as black as Lucy’s new doll’s, the one Mr. Pendell gave her, and as dark as that man with the white turban we saw in the Strand and—”

“Hold your tongue this instant, and never let me hear your nonsense again,” interrupted Mrs. Tippens angrily. “You had too much pudding for supper, that’s what’s the matter with you, and you got the nightmare and woke up thinking you saw all sorts of things.”

“But we couldn’t all have had nightmares,” persisted Dick, who was a sturdy lad, and his father’s pride and hope; “I saw her go up to Effie and lay her hand on her.”

“It was cold, too,” supplemented the child.

“And I saw her as well,” capped Lucy, fearful of lagging behind the others in this little matter of renown and glory.

“You are very naughty children,” answered Mrs. Tippens, in a superior sort of tone; then, descending to details, “it is so very likely, Dicky, you could see anyone in the dark.”

“Oh, but she brought a light with her, a sort of a lamp.”

At this point Mrs. Tippens collapsed. If old Mrs. Jones were able, not merely to go wandering about a house for which she paid no rent or taxes, but also to find her own light, what other feat might that lady not be expected to perform? “Now, never let me hear any more of such folly,” she said, however, valiantly, upon the principle that most noise is to be got out of an empty barrel; “I’ll turn the key in the door, and then you’ll know nobody can get in.”

“No, leave the key inside, and I’ll lock the door, and then, if she comes again, I’ll holloa.”

“You’d better not,” retorted his mother, so sharply that Dick, discomfited, wrapped the bedclothes about his head, and twisting himself up like a hedgehog, lay repeating in a sort of rhyme the description of the woman who had broken in upon his rest.

That Mrs. Tippens did not sleep much during the course of the night—no, not even when her husband was snoring by her side, and the children had long sunk into slumber—will be readily imagined.

III

Few things had ever caused more excitement in a neighbourhood than the disappearance of Doctor and Mrs. Jones. Here today and gone tomorrow; gone, without beat of drum or sound of fife; gone, without the excitement of furniture moving, or cab laden with luggage, or funeral pomp and ceremony; even a one-horse hearse, without plumes or mutes, or decorous wands, or long black cloaks, or hat-bands, or mourning coaches to follow, would have been better than this silent, mysterious flitting.

If the earth had suddenly opened and swallowed up husband and wife, they could not have vanished more utterly. There was the house they had lived in, but where were they?

What secret did that one night hold which all the intelligence of the whole parish failed to elucidate. Where was he? What was more to the point, where was she? Upon this last question public opinion at length became unanimous. She was buried in the cellars. Her husband had murdered her—so it was finally decided—and after killing the “poor dear” had disposed of her remains in the manner indicated. That an industrious course of digging and grubbing brought no body or bones to light proved nothing but that “the doctor was a deep one,” to quote the observations of local wiseacres.

“He used her cruel in her lifetime,” said one.

“Aye, that he did,” capped another. “And he wouldn’t give her the chance of Christian burial. She’s lying hidden away in some dark corner; no wonder the creature can’t rest there. No; I wouldn’t sleep a night in that house, not if you counted me down a hundred pounds in golden sovereigns.”

“Neither would I, was it ever so.”

“For there’s not a doubt she walks.”

“Of course she does. Didn’t my own cousin, when she was coming along the passage one summer’s night, feel like an icy wind at the nape of her neck, and as if a cold hand was laid flat on her shoulders? And she always says she knows if she had looked round she’d have seen the old woman with her grey hair—”

“That he used to drag her about by—”

“Streaming down her back, and her eyes, filled with hunger and ill-treatment, staring through the darkness.”

“The house ought to be pulled to the ground—that’s what ought to be done with it—”

“And not one stone left on another—”

“And those cellars thoroughly examined.”

“It’s my belief there’s some secret place in them that hasn’t been found out yet.”

“Very likely. You know it is reported there used to be a passage big enough for a man to creep along from there to the Thames.”

“Bless and save us—maybe he has put her in the river.”

“No, no; though he was wicked enough for that or anything else, she’s in the house somewhere right enough, and if she could speak she would say so.”

“I wonder where he is?”

“Lord knows. Enjoying himself, most likely, beyond the seas.”

“I suppose he was about the worst man you ever knew.”

“I suppose he was about the worst man anybody ever knew.”

“And the cleverest.”

“Aye, he had brains to do anything, but they all turned to wickedness.” It often happens that a man obtains a reputation for talent in his own immediate circle on very slight and insufficient grounds; but in the case of Dr. Jones, popular rumour did not exaggerate the missing gentleman’s abilities.

He was very clever indeed. He was so clever he might have risen to almost any height in his profession, had he not been at once lazy and self-indulgent. His father having lived and practised before, he succeeded to a prosperous business and a wide connection. When he first started on his own account, all the old houses in the Street where he lived, and all the old houses in many other streets and squares and terraces and groves near at hand, were inhabited by well-to-do City people, by widows amply dowered, by men who had made their money in trade and were now living in affluent retirement.

It was a capital parish for a doctor to settle in; none of your new neighbourhoods, tenanted by mere birds of passage; once a medical man got a patient he had a chance of keeping him for many years. There were names on Dr. Jones’ books of people and families who had been physicked by the Jones for more than half a century. Never a man began life under more auspicious circumstances.

He had the medical ball at his feet. Old ladies adored him, because he ordered them exactly what he knew they liked in the way of eating; old gentlemen were quite sure he understood their complaints, when he declared “a few glasses of sound wine could hurt no one.” He met the best physicians and surgeons in consultation, and people agreed if any man could put a person on his legs again that man was Dr. Jones.

But as time went on, and Dr. Jones waxed more prosperous and less careful, it was found that, in spite of his many admirable virtues, he had grave faults. In no single respect did his moral character attain to that high standard which a doctor, above all other men, ought to try to reach. Things were whispered about him which mothers felt could not be spoken of before the younger members of the family; things indeed, which were, even among matrons, mentioned with chairs drawn close together, and bated breath and much uplifting of eyes and hands.

Fact is, the decency and restraint of respectable English society had become intolerable to the successful practitioner. For a long time he contented himself with sowing his bad wild oats at a distance from his dwelling—drinking, gambling, and leading the loosest of lives in the many disreputable haunts to be found on the north side of the Thames, instead of frequenting those in his own county of Surrey. But by degrees he began to fall into evil habits near home; then into the midst of that very sanctuary presided over by a maiden sister of uncertain age and rigid morality, he introduced all manner of wickedness.

The day came when Miss Jones could endure the drinking and the smoking and the card-playing and the boon-companions no longer. With a certain stately dignity she packed up her belongings and left the house where she had been born. Further, she employed a lawyer to disentangle her pecuniary affairs from those of her brother. Then all their little world knew dreadful things must be going on at Dr. Jones’. His character, or rather lack of character, was discussed both by church and chapel goers. His doings added a fresh zest to parish visiting, for, of course, the poor knew even more about the doctor’s sins than their betters. His tastes led him to prefer bold, flaunting women to their more modest, if not less frail, sisters; and the brazen impudence of the “dreadful creatures” he successively selected for housekeepers furnished as constant a theme for comment and gossip as the shortcomings of Doctor Jones himself.

“He wants a wife to steady him,” said one lady, whose daughter had been marriageable for nearly a third part of the time allotted by the Psalmist to man’s sojourn on earth.

Alas! poor soul, her wishes blinded her. All the wives of all the patriarchs could not have steadied Dr. Jones. He had started on a muck, and was running it blindly, like one possessed. Had he lived in the former days, one might have said that not one devil merely but a legion had taken for habitation the handsome fleshly temple of his body.

In the way of open sin, unblushing audacious wickedness, no medical man, perhaps, ever vied with Dr. Jones.

His house, after his sister’s departure, became a scandal and a reproach, and yet so great was the doctor’s skill he still had patients, and good paying patients too, but they were all of his own sex; the man did not live who would have sent for him to attend wife, or sister, or mother, or daughter.

So his family practice slipped into other and cleaner hands, and another and wiser general practitioner grew rich upon Doctor Jones’ leavings.

All at once society was amazed by the rumour that the Doctor was going to be married to a lady possessed of great wealth; so report said, adding that ere long wonderful changes might be looked upon in the old house.

It was swept and garnished at any rate, the drawing-room smartened up, a brougham purchased, the latest and most utterly objectionable housekeeper dispatched about her business, whatever it might be, two respectable servants engaged, a man hired to look after the horse, answer the door, and prove a general credit to the street. Doctor Jones himself left off smoking pipes and took to cigars instead; he eschewed the local public houses, foreswore billiards, all packs of cards were cleared out of the dwelling; he washed, he shaved; he wore a coat instead of a dressing-gown, and he was to be found, by such patients as desired to see him, before twelve o’clock, till which time he had of late been in the habit of taking his rest in bed.

Things were looking up; the Mrs. Jones who was to be had, people felt, already achieved wonders; she was a credit to her sex; ladies admitted they could not possibly ever have the husband again as a medical man, but they might once more receive him as an acquaintance. Prodigals are always interesting, perhaps because no one ever really believes they will reform, and Doctor Jones was a specially delightful prodigal—so clever, so handsome, so reckless, so wicked, so extravagant.

He had studied at one time at a German University, and it had somehow been ascertained that no wilder spirit ever troubled the peace of the quaint old town that lay under the shadow of the frowning castle.

His world which, a short time previously, failed to find words strong enough to express its reprobation of his conduct, now began to make excuses for him. Perhaps his faults had been exaggerated, possibly there was only a modicum of truth in the reports which had been spread abroad concerning his doings: clever men always make enemies, the tattle of the lower orders could not be exactly depended upon; and in fine, to put the matter in a nutshell, it was at length unanimously decided to call on Mrs. Jones when she returned from the honeymoon.

There was something after these visits for gossips to talk about! What countrywoman could she be?—where had he met her?—what was she?—who was she?—what had she been?

Years seemed to stretch between her and the doctor—on the wrong side, of course. She was little, she was old, she was plain, she was ignorant, and she was most furiously jealous. She could not endure her husband to look at or speak to any other woman. Even the elderly unmarried daughter of her mother, who was a widow, who would have liked Seraphina to undertake the doctor’s case, even this innocent ewe lamb seemed unbearable to the bride.

No use now to think of pleasant little parties to which Mrs. Jones and her reformed husband might be bidden. No card-tables, no carpet-dances, no snug dinners, no safe and harmless social intercourse, which it had been hoped might prove to the repentant doctor as refreshing and non-intoxicating as a course of milk, lemonade, and cocoa to the once infuriated drunkard.

On the whole, perhaps, the matrons, in their hearts, thought Mrs. Jones’ virtues worse than her husband’s vices; tacitly it was agreed not to force acquaintanceship on her. Possibly she had her own set of friends, and it was felt it would be most undesirable to introduce foreigners of no respectable colour into the bosom of British families who had made their money in the City, as everybody knew; and who piqued themselves upon the strictness of their morals, the length of their purses, and the strength of their prejudices.

One gentleman, whose own face was as rosy as a peony, declared, with a mild asseveration, “Jones has married a blackamoor;” but Mrs. Jones was not black, only exceedingly brown, so brown that if she darkened much more, as time went on, she bade fair eventually to outvie the rich splendour of the old Spanish mahogany chairs, which had been re-covered and re-polished to do her honour.

IV

At the end of little more than three years from the date of his marriage, it might have been truly said of Doctor Jones that his last state was worse than his first. How many demons eventually took up their habitation within him it would be impossible to say; but the doings of the Jones’ household, more particularly the doings of its master, became a terror and reproach to the neighbourhood.

How the case really stood no one ever exactly knew; all sorts of rumours and stories passed from mouth to mouth. She would not give him a shilling of her money, so gossip averred. He had stood over her with a cutting whip to compel her to sign papers, and then she would not; a mode of proceeding on the part of Doctor Jones to practise before witnesses, which was, to say the least of the matter, unlikely. Popular report asserted he starved her; but as she generally answered the street door herself, was free to walk in and out if she pleased, and could have told any tradesmen to bring her anything she fancied, this was evidently a libel. At one time an idea got abroad that the whole tale of her fortune had been a myth; that the Doctor had been taken in, and that there were dreadful quarrels between them in consequence; but the boastings of various servants who declared they had seen her with “rolls on rolls” of banknotes and with such diamonds and rubies as the “Queen of Sheba or Solomon himself could have had nothing more splendid,” negatived the truth of this statement.

Money or no money, however, the Jones, were a miserable couple. Mrs. Jones could not and would not endure a female servant about the house; as fast as they were engaged they went: a fortnight was a long time for any woman, young or old, to stop in the situation, and so ere long the house acquired that look of dirt and neglect some houses seem especially able to assume at the shortest notice. Little more than three years married and already the grass growing between the stones in the stableyard was nearly a foot high. The high-stepping horse had long been sold, and the brougham also; the new piano, never opened, followed suit; and about the same time Doctor Jones, giving up all idea of reformation and practice, and abandoning the role of a repentant prodigal, returned to his swine and his husks on the Middlesex side of the river; for he could not enjoy even such companionship and diet on his own side of the water, for fear Mrs. Jones might take it in her head to mar with her presence the delights of an evening in some low public house or lower music hall, or lower depth still; for, if all stories were to be believed, the Doctor went down very low indeed. Accordingly, when Christmas, for the fourth time after that inauspicious and, as some people went so far as to say, unchristian marriage, was approaching, people felt Doctor Jones had run about the length of his tether.

A change of some sort seemed imminent. He was in debt in the neighbourhood, a thing he had never been known to be in before. Even the few things sent into that evil house were not paid for, and hitherto the Doctor’s credit had been so good that he owed in the neighbourhood more than might otherwise have been the case.

Mrs. Jones said she would not pay, and the Doctor said he could not. Nevertheless, after some parley, he promised to do what he could after Christmas—this was remembered afterwards—and the British tradesman, easily irritated, easily appeased, departed.

No joint, no turkey, no anything was ordered in for the 25th of that December. “Let him get his Christmas dinner where he gets his other dinners,” said Mrs. Jones, in answer to a feeble remonstrance from the crone who came in daily to “put the place a bit to rights,” a woman so old, so wrinkled, so ugly, so dirty, and so shabby that even Doctor Jones, his wife felt, was unlikely to chuck her under the chin, or exchange with her repartees more remarkable for wit than refinement. Apprised in due time of the fare he might expect at home, the once again unreformed prodigal announced his intention of accepting an invitation he said he had received to dine at a friend’s house on Christmas Day.

Mrs. Jones tried hard to ascertain where this friend lived, but in vain, and still firm to her intention of providing no feast, even for herself, she told Mrs. Jubb, the charwoman, to bring in the tea tray and the kettle, and then to go.

About the events of that day and evening and the following morning Mrs. Jubb had afterwards much to tell, and she told it.

“As I come up from the kitchen,” she was wont to observe, “and an awful kitchen that was too, full of blackbeetles and slugs—just as I got on the top of the stairs, I saw the master, with his thick coat on, brushing his hat. He put it on and he took his umbrella, and he opened the door and slammed it after him, and that was the last I ever see of Doctor Jones. I took the tea-things into the drawing-room, and set the kettle on the hob, and I asked Mrs. Jones if she was sure I could not do anything else before I went.”

“She said, ‘Quite sure, Mrs. Jubb; good evening.’

“I had a sort of feeling on me, I did not like to leave her, though I knew John’s children would be crying for me at home; and so I made believe to be putting the cup and saucer and plate nearer to her hand, and she looked round in her quick way, and asked sharp, as if I had angered her:

“‘Didn’t you hear me say “good evening,” Mrs. Jubb? You can go.’

“So I went, and that was the last I ever saw of her. Goodness only knows where they both went to. It was not the next day, but the next day but one, the police got into the house through a window at the back that was left half an inch open (for I went down to the station, and told the inspector I was sure as sure murder had been done, for I could not make anybody hear, and the gas was burning, and the cat, poor thing, mewing in the area, and not another sign of life about the place); and there they found the tray just as I’d left it, and the fire out and the kettle on the hob, and high or low, in garret or cellar, not a trace of Doctor or Mrs. Jones.”

There was nothing which gratified Mrs. Jubb’s numerous friends and acquaintances more than to get her started on this theme.

The story was one which, properly managed, lasted for hours. Mrs. Jubb’s feelings, Mrs. Jubb’s doings, Mrs. Jubb’s sayings, the remarks of the police, the fury and dismay of the tradespeople, and the many observations of the sprightly youth and beauty and strength of the neighbourhood, enabled the narrative to be spun out almost to the length of a three-volume novel.

“And after all, where did Doctor and Mrs. Jones go?” once asked an impatient and inquisitive auditor, who chanced to be listening for the first time to the oft-told tale.

“That’ll never be known on this earth,” answered Mrs. Jubb; “my own notion is, she started to follow him—”

“Then she can’t be buried in the cellars,” interposed another.

“You don’t know what a man like that could do,” said Mrs. Jubb; “why, even now, poor as I am, I wouldn’t live in the house as them Tippenses are doing, no, not if you paved the hall with golden guineas.”

“There’s nobody going to tempt you, mother,” remarked an incredulous youth; “I’d chance meeting all the ghosts out of the churchyard, let alone old Mrs. Jones, for a ten-pound note.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Jim,” retorted Mrs. Jubb.

“Well, it was a queer start anyway,” returned the undaunted Jim; “the Kilkenny cats left their tails behind them, but the Doctor and his wife took away every bit of their bodies. And left clothes, and furniture, and bedding, and china, and plate, and linen, and all, just as if they had walked out of the house to spend a day at a friend’s.”

Which statement was, indeed, literally true; when the police entered the house they found no corpse, no confusion, no symptom of murder or premeditated departure. Nothing seemed to have been removed except the master and mistress, who had not taken with them even the typical “comb and toothbrush.”

They were gone. Doctor Jones’ creditors drew their own conclusions; the wealthy and respectable inhabitants did not know what to believe or think; the police felt disposed to consider the whole affair a make-up between the doctor and his wife; the general public, as usual, were not to be convinced by argument, or confounded by facts, they preferred to believe old Mrs. Jones had been murdered and her body what they called “put away” somewhere about the premises. Shortly after there followed a rumour of hidden treasure, then it was known for certain that the house was haunted, and, further, that no one who tried to live in it but was visited by some misfortune.

When the wind howled outside her dwelling, and shook the casements, and whistled through the keyholes, and the rain beat against the windows with a noise like slapping with an open hand, it was a dear delight to gossips to gather round Mrs. Jubb’s fire, to which most who came contributed a billet and hear the whole story again, with additions of what had happened to those venturesome enough to try conclusions with old Mrs. Jones, out of the flesh.

“She was an awful woman to have much to say to when living,” said Mrs. Jubb; “dead, she’ll be a thousand times worse.”

“I wonder what she wants, wandering about the old house,” said the irrepressible Jim; “if all accounts are true, she was none so happy in it.”

“Ah, she knows that best herself, and she’s not going to tell,” returned Mrs. Jubb. “I wouldn’t like to see her, that’s all.”

V

To say that Mrs. Tippens wished to leave the house when her lodgers and children began to see visions is but to say she was a woman. She told her husband she “didn’t know how she felt,” which meant, as he was too well aware, that she desired to move. She likewise casually mentioned that “she seemed all nerves,” and that “she was getting afraid of her own shadow.”

To this Mr. Tippens replied he was very sorry, but he hoped she would try and pull herself together a bit, and not be frightened by a lot of lying stories. If they only held their tongues and stayed in the house for a while, people would soon quit talking about old Mrs. Jones, and then their lodgers would remain and not give notice because a door creaked.

He reminded her how he was answerable for the rent for three years, that he was not likely ever to get such cheap and convenient premises again, and he implored her, like a good girl, not to be foolish and believe the house was haunted just because a parcel of old women, with Mrs. Jubb at their head, chose to give it a bad name.

“But, Dick,” remonstrated Mrs. Tippens, “you know it is said that nobody thrives who stops here. There was old Mrs. Smith broke her leg in two places, and Mrs. Curtiss’s child was run over in the street; and Mr. Perks, that was so respected, fell to robbing his employer, and is in jail now for taking more than a hundred pounds. And John Coombe turned teetotaller, and took to beating his wife—and—”

Mr. Tippens laughed outright. “Make your mind easy, Luce,” he said; “I’m not likely either to turn teetotaller or take to beating you, lass; and as for the children, if you don’t like them sleeping out of your sight, bring them in here till you get some of those notions blown off your mind; and when the days draw out a little, you and they shall have a week at the seaside, and you’ll get so strong and well you’ll laugh at ghosts, and make quite a joke of old Mrs. Jones.”

Poor Mrs. Tippens! She only wished her lodgers could see the joke as well, for they were always going; except one old lady on the top floor who was blind and slightly deaf, not a soul stopped any time with her.

“I don’t know how it is,” she said to them, “for I have never seen anything in the house myself.” Whereupon she was told “she was fortunate,” or reminded “there were none so blind as those that would not see,” or assured “her turn was certain to come,” or advised, “clear out of the house before harm befell her and hers,” “for it is just a-tempting of Providence to stop in it,” said one person.

“Upon the other hand,” as Mr. Tippens, determined to look on the bright side of things, remarked, “if lodgers were always going they were always coming; and you get such long prices for the rooms, Lucy, they can afford to stay empty part of a week now and then; and see how well the children are, having the yard to play in, which gives them plenty of air and keeps them out of the streets; and you are stronger and better yourself, and would be hearty if you would only stir about a bit more and not sit so constant at your needle.” Further, business with Mr. Tippens was so good he had been forced to buy another horse, for which he paid seven pounds. “That very same horse,” he often afterwards stated, “no more nor a month later I sold, as true as I am standing here, for twenty guineas. A fare took a fancy to him and bid me the money, and you may be sure I didn’t say ‘no.’”

It was, perhaps, on the strength of this transaction Mrs. Tippens and family travelled to Southend for the week previously mentioned to eat shrimps and repair dilapidations, returning to Doctor Jones’s former residence, as Mr. Tippens declared, “in the best of health and spirits.”

It was not long, however, after their return before Mrs. Tippens again began to feel her nerves troubling her. She did not say anything to her husband about the matter, but she mentioned to a few friends she had a “sort of weight on her,” as if there was “something wrong, she did not know what,” and “a fluttering round her” and “a weakness in her limbs,” and “a creeping sensation at the back of her neck, when she came along the passage, as though, on the warmest day, a chill, clammy hand was laid there,” after which lucid description of symptoms the whole question of old Mrs. Jones was again thoroughly gone into; the statements of all the lodgers repeated in extenso, and the gossip current in the neighbourhood retailed for the twentieth time.

Small marvel that when, after these conversations, almost exhaustive as they were of the Jones topic, Mrs. Tippens, returning to her house, felt a “waft of raw air” meet her the moment she opened the street door, and something “brush along the hall after her,” as she passed into the sitting-room. She was braver than most women, and would, had she seen anything tangible, have tried to solve the enigma. But this pursuit by a shadow, this terror of the unseen, the feeling that there was a presence in the room with her which yet eluded her sight, began to prey on both her mind and body. She longed to cry out, “Take me away from this evil house or I shall die” ; but when Dick entered, his honest face radiant with smiles, his tongue ready to tell of the gentlemen who had hired him to drive them to Chiswick, and given him about four times his proper fare, and some present in his hands for “Luce, old girl,” the words died away on her lips, and she could only thank Dick for thinking so constantly about her, and hang round his neck with a fervour Mr. Tippens was not accustomed to from a somewhat undemonstrative wife.

“Who do you think I have had a letter from?” he asked one morning in the early summer, as he came in to breakfast, after a stroll down the street in search of a dried haddock or something savoury for Luce, who “seemed a bit peaked and off her feed”—Luce cannot speak of those days, and of her husband’s constant thought for her, now without tears—“why, from my cousin, Anne Jane; I met the postman—and Luce, I couldn’t get anything worth buying for you, only a nasty kipper, but I thought kippers were better than nothing, as you’re tired of rashers; well, as I was saying, I met the postman, and he gave me a letter from Anne Jane. Her mistress and the whole family are going abroad, but they are keeping on Anne Jane, you see, though she doesn’t go with them. While they are away she has a fancy for a change. She’s tired of the sea and Brighton, and thinks she’d like to spend her holiday in London, so she writes to ask if we can take her in; she wants to pay for her board and lodging, but, of course, that’s all nonsense; I shouldn’t let my uncle’s daughter pay a halfpenny for bread as long as I had a penny roll; what do you say, Luce? Shall I tell her to come; she’s a good girl, as you know, and a quiet, and she’d be company for you while I am away. What d’ye say, girl?”

“I’d be only too glad for her to come, Dick; but where is she to sleep; we could only give her the room at the end of the passage, and—”

“If that’s all, make your mind quite easy; she doesn’t come of a family which trouble themselves about what you can’t lay hold of. Then you’re agreeable to have her, my girl; if you’re not, just say the word—”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I should be to have her, only—”

“I’ll make that all right, old woman,” and accordingly that very same day Dick went out and bought three sheets of notepaper for a penny, and three envelopes for the same price; and in the silent seclusion of the stable, while the horsekeeper was away for his dinner, indited an epistle to his cousin, in which he assured her of a warm welcome, of his determination not to take a farthing of her hard-earned wages, and of Lucy’s delight at the prospect of showing her the London sights.

“My wife’s the best wife ever lived,” he finished, “but she’s a bit down at present, and I know you’ll cheer her up.

“So no more at present, from your loving cousin,

“R. Tippens.

“P.S. I hope you’re not afraid of ghosts, for folks will have it this house is haunted, though neither Luce or myself have ever seen anything worse nor ourselves.”

All in good time Miss Anne Jane Tippens arrived at the house tenanted by her cousins from London Bridge Station in a four-wheeler, on the top of which appeared a trunk, encased in a neat holland cover, bound with red, the handiwork of Anne Jane, who paid the cabman his exact fare duly ascertained beforehand, and walked in the hall old Mrs. Jones was supposed to haunt, laden with all the impedimenta perishable creatures of the frailer sex are so fond of carrying whithersoever they go—a withered nosegay, a basket filled with seaweed and shells, a bandbox, another paper-box, oblong, and a few paper parcels were amongst the baggage; but at length everything was stowed away in the room Doctor Jones had used as a surgery, and Mrs. Tippens stood surveying the “very genteel figure” of her husband’s cousin, as that young person, after refreshing laving of her dusty face, stood before the glass, “doing up” her hair.

Miss Tippens was the incarnation of the ideal sewing-maid in a good family. Tall, but not too tall; thin, but not too thin; with pallid face, brown eyes, thick hair brushed back, and tightly plaited till it looked of no account, not pretty or ugly, quiet of movement, soft of voice; a good girl who—at last her toilet finished—turned to Mrs. Tippens and said: “Now, dear, you’ll let me help you all I can while I stay here.”

VI

“I never told her one single word about old Mrs. Jones; there seemed a spell on me,” said Mrs. Tippens, using the approved formula of her class, when speaking, subsequently, concerning the events which rendered Miss Tippens’ visit memorable. “That very first day, as ever was, she said, with that still sort of laugh of hers, Dick had warned her not to come if she felt anyways shy of ghosts. ‘I have always had rather a wish to see a ghost,’ she went on, making my very blood run cold with the light way she talked, and maybe old Mrs. Jones listening to her for aught I could tell. ‘What sort of a ghost is it you keep here, Lucy?’

“‘There has been a lot of chatter about the house,’ I made answer, ‘but I don’t say anything on the subject indoors for fear of the children being frightened. People pretend there is something not right in the place, but nothing has come Dick’s way or mine either’; and then I began talking of something else and Anne took the hint; she was a wonderfully wise, prudent sort of girl, as girls have to be who get into high families and want to keep their situations.”

The day following Miss Tippens’ arrival was devoted to showing her some of the London sights. She had been in London before, but only for a short time when “the family” came up to town, and she being kept hard at work under the eye of an exceedingly strict housekeeper was unable to see any of the wonders of the metropolis, except Kensal Green Cemetery, concerning which cheerful place she spoke with a good deal of enthusiasm. As a foretaste of the delights to come, Mrs. Tippens took her to the Abbey, showed her the exterior of the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, Northumberland House, the fountains in Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Somerset House, Temple Bar, St. Paul’s, and the Monument. By the time they had arrived at Fish Street Hill, Anne Jane was tired out, and declining to climb Pope’s “tall bully,” asked Mrs. Tippens if they were very far from home, “because,” she added, “I don’t think I can walk much more.”

“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Tippens, “I ought to have remembered you were not over-strong; why, you look fit to drop. We’ll go down to the pier and take the boat straight back, and you can rest all day tomorrow, for I shan’t be able to stir out, as our first-floors are leaving, and I must see about getting the rooms fit for anyone to see.”

“You’ll sleep without rocking tonight, young woman,” observed Mr. Tippens, as they all sat together over an early supper.

“I always sleep wonderfully sound,” replied Miss Tippens, stating the fact as if some peculiar merit attached to it.

“And you’d better lie in in the morning, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Tippens, kindly hospitable.

“Aye, make her stop a-bed,” exclaimed Mr. Tippens. “I’ll be bound she gets none too much sleep in service. I’d like well to see a bit of colour in your cheeks before you leave us.”

Next morning Mrs. Tippens took a tray, on which was set out a nice little breakfast, into her visitor’s bedchamber. Anne Jane did not look much the better for her night’s rest and morning’s sleep.

“I woke at five,” she said, “and then went off again, and never roused till you came in, and yet I feel as tired as possible. I am not much accustomed to walking, and we did walk a long way yesterday.”

“Yes, we went too far,” agreed Mrs. Tippens, and then she sat down beside her guest’s pillow, and tucked the sheet under the tray to keep it steady, and hoped she would relish her breakfast, which, Anne declared “she was sure to do, if only because they were so kind to her.”

“We would like to be kind to you,” said Mrs. Tippens; adding, so that no more might be said on the subject, “and you slept well?”

“Yes; but isn’t it funny, all the earlier part of the night I was dreaming about a woman being murdered. It was talking about old times, and wandering about those ancient places and tombs and monuments, I suppose, made me think of such things. I was quite glad to see the sun shining in at the window when I woke, for oh, the dream did appear just like reality!”

And the dreamer paused to drink a little tea, and take a bit of bread and butter, and munch a few leaves of water cress, and taste the delicate slices of ham Dick himself had cut, what he called “Vauxhall fashion,” to tempt her cousin’s poor appetite, while Mrs. Tippens sat silent, afraid, she could not tell why, of what might be coming.

“Dreams are strange things,” proceeded Miss Tippens, after the fashion of a person originating an entirely novel idea, “and mine was a strange dream.”

“Your tea will be stone cold, dear,” interposed Mrs. Tippens. It was but deferring the evil hour, she felt, yet every moment of delay seemed a moment gained.

“I don’t like it very warm,” answered the other, “and I want to tell you my dream. I thought I was in a room I had never seen before, with three windows to the street, and one long, narrow window that looked out I didn’t know on what. The room was wainscotted about two yards from the floor, well furnished with chairs and tables; I could feel a thick carpet under my feet, and see a glass over the chimney-piece, in which a woman was looking at herself. Oh! Luce, she was the strangest woman I ever beheld, so little, she was forced to stand on a footstool to see herself in the glass; she had a brown face and grey hair, and her dress was unfastened, and a necklace, that sparkled and glittered, clasped her neck, and she pinned a brooch, that shone like fire, in the front of her under bodice; and on a little table beside her lay an open jewel case, in which there were precious stones gleaming like green and yellow stars.”

“Do eat your breakfast, Anne, and never mind the dream; you can tell it to me afterwards.”

“There isn’t much more to tell,” answered Anne. “All at once she saw in the glass the door open, and a man come in. With a stifled scream she jumped down from the stool, seized the case, and tried to close her dress up round her throat, and hide the necklace; but he was too quick for her. He said something, I could not hear what; and then, as she cowered down, he caught her and wrenched the case out of her hand, and made a snatch at the necklace just as she flew upon him, with all her fingers bent and uttering the most terrible cries that ever came out of a woman’s lips—I think I hear them now; then, in a minute she fell back, and I could see she was only kept from dropping on the floor by the tight grip he had on the necklace. I seemed to know she was being choked, and I tried to call out, but I could not utter a sound. I strove to rush at the man, but my feet felt rooted where I stood; then there came a great darkness like the darkness of a winter’s night.”

“Let me get you another cup of tea, dear,” said Mrs. Tippens, in a voice which shook a little in spite of all her efforts to steady it; “you’ve let this stand so long it is not fit to drink.”

“It is just as I like my tea, thank you,” answered Miss Tippens, cheerfully, as she devoted herself to the good things provided. “What do you think of my dream?”

“That I shouldn’t have liked to dream it,” replied Mrs. Tippens. “Do let me pour you out some more tea, and then I must run away, for the first-floor lodgers will be wanting me.” Which was a feint on the part of Mrs. Tippens, who felt she could not bear to hear anything more at the moment about the little woman with the brown face and the grey hair, whose portrait she recognised too surely as that of old Mrs. Jones.

“Though why she can’t let us, who never did her any harm, alone, I can’t imagine,” considered Mrs. Tippens. “This is a dreadful house—true enough, there has been murder done in it, and the blood is crying aloud for vengeance. I wonder where that wicked wretch put her. Oh! Mrs. Jones, if you’d only tell us where your poor bones are mouldering, I am sure Dick would have them decently buried, let the cost be what it might.”

The first-floor lodgers were gone, and the rooms scrubbed out before Anne Jane, having dressed and settled up her own bedchamber, made her appearance in her cousin’s parlour; but when she suggested that they might go upstairs and have a look at the apartments just vacated, Mrs. Tippens made the excuse that they were not exactly in order.

“The charwoman is up there still,” she exclaimed; “she’s making half-a-day.”

“What a wonderfully nice house for Dick to have got,” continued Miss Tippens.

“Yes,” answered Dick’s wife faintly. There was nothing to be objected to in the size of the house, if only Mrs. Jones could have been kept out of it!

“If you don’t mind my leaving you, Anne, for half an hour, I think I’ll just run out and get a few things we want,” she said. “Supposing anyone should come after the first-floor, Mrs. Burdock can show it.” Which would have been all very well, had not Mrs. Burdock, ten minutes after Mrs. Tippens’ departure, put her head into the parlour to say that she should like to go home to see to her children’s dinners, and, if it made no difference, she would come back in the afternoon and wipe over the windows and blacklead the grates. “The rooms are quite clean and sweet,” she added, “if anybody by chance do come to look at them.”

The children were out in the yard playing, the meat was cooking beautifully in the oven, the fruit pudding was boiling gently on the trivet, the potatoes were in the saucepan, ready to be put on the fire at a certain time which Mrs. Tippens had indicated; the street was simmering in the noontide heat of a summer’s day, and Anne Jane, making a frock for the baby asleep in its cradle, was thinking Lucy’s lines had fallen into very pleasant places, when there came at the front door a knock, which she instinctively understood meant lodgers.

They were two young gentlemen, attracted by the neat appearance of the house, by the snowy curtains in Mrs. Tippens’ room, the bird-cage hanging in the window, the flowers in bloom, ranged in pots on the sill.

“Could we see the rooms you have to let?” asked the elder, who acted as spokesman.

“Certainly, sir; will you be pleased to walk in?” answered Anne Jane in her best manner; and motioning to the strangers to precede her, she followed them up to the first floor, where she flung wide the door of the principal apartment.

“By Jove!” exclaimed both men, almost simultaneously, “who’d have thought there was such a jolly room in this old house?” and they walked over to one of the windows and looked out into the street, and then turned towards the fireplace, and then—

“Hello! What’s the matter?” cried the first speaker, hurrying towards the door, against the lintel of which Mr. Tippens’ cousin was leaning, looking more like a corpse than a living woman. “Here, hand over that chair, Hal, I believe she is going to faint.”

“No,” she gasped; “no—no—I—shall be better—directly.”

At that moment Mrs. Tippens, who had heard from a neighbour some gentlemen were gone to look at her rooms, put her key in the lock and came hurrying upstairs. The first glance told her what had happened.

“My cousin is not very strong, sir,” she said, in a voice she tried to keep steady, though she was trembling in every limb. “I’ll just take her into the parlour, and be with you in a moment, if you please.”

“Let me help you,” entreated the younger man. “Take my arm, do.—Is she subject to attacks of this sort?” he went on, speaking in a lower tone.

“Not that I know of,” was the reply. “Perhaps, sir,” suggested Mrs. Tippens, “you would not mind looking over the rooms by yourselves. There is no one in but the children; I scarcely like leaving my cousin alone.”

“Is there anything you want—anything I can run out and get for you?” asked the young fellow pleasantly. “Do you think that a little brandy—”

“I have some in the house, thank you, sir,” answered Mrs. Tippens; and so at last she got rid of him, and stood looking at Anne Jane, who, leaning back in Mr. Tippens’ own particular armchair, looked up at her and murmured, “The room.”

“Yes, dear.”

“It was the room of my dream.”

“I thought as much.”

“Did he kill her there?”

“Who’s to tell? Nobody knows whether she is alive or dead, for that matter.”

VII

“No, sir, I won’t deceive you. If you are wanting rooms, as you say, for a permanency, and think of buying good furniture that would get knocked about and ruined in moving, and settling down comfortably in the next lodgings you take, you had better not come here.”

“Why, are you going to leave the house?”

“My husband is answerable for the rent for nearly two years longer,” replied Mrs. Tippens evasively. “No, sir, it is not that; I wish it was.”

“Have you any infectious illness in the place?”

“I’d rather have smallpox,” broke out Mrs. Tippens, who felt she could endure her trouble no longer in silence. “We might get rid of that, but we can’t get rid of old Mrs. Jones.”

“Who is she—a lodger?”

“Worse than the worst of lodgers, sir; a lodger can do no more than owe rent, or at the most take things that don’t belong to him; but Mrs. Jones pays no rent, and wants to live in every room in the house, and as fast as new lodgers come and we think we are going to be a bit comfortable at last, drives them to give notice. Fever and ague would be small evils in comparison to old Mrs. Jones, and why she torments us so I can’t imagine, we never did the woman any injury; and as for her money I am sure if it was lying in bags of gold and silver at my feet I wouldn’t touch a coin of it.”

The two men stared at each other in amazement, then the elder said solemnly: “In Heaven’s name, who is Mrs. Jones?”

“She was the wife of a Doctor Jones, sir. He once rented this house. He and she disappeared the same night, and have never been heard of since.”

“But I thought you said she lived here?”

“No, sir; I don’t know where she lives, if she is living at all; but this is the way of it, one set of lodgers after another say they are very sorry but they can’t stop on account of old Mrs. Jones. They either meet her on the stairs, or she takes a chair at the table when they are having their dinner, or she goes into their bedroom with a light in her hand, and then my cousin must get dreaming about her and, as you saw, was taken bad the moment she crossed the threshold of this room. I am sure, sir, I never did believe in ghosts and suchlike before we came here, but I can’t disbelieve now, after what I’ve heard; and so I tell you not to take the apartments or to go to any expense buying furniture, for you wouldn’t stop—I know you wouldn’t—a fortnight is the longest anybody ever stays now.”

“That settles the matter, we’ll come, and we’ll stay longer. For my own part I have always rather wanted to see a ghost and—”

“Oh, don’t talk that way, please, sir.”

“Well, at any rate, we’ll pay you for the rooms for a month certain, and if you can do our cooking and make us a little comfortable, we won’t quarrel about terms.”

“But I don’t think you exactly understand, sir.”

“Yes I do, and I trust we shall know more about old Mrs. Jones than we do now before we are much older.”

“I hope you won’t buy good furniture, sir, till you have been here a few days; I can spare enough just to make the place tidy for you to come into.” And so it was settled. The young men, after saying they would like to take possession the same evening, put a month’s rent and money to provide grocery and so forth into Mrs. Tippens’ reluctant hand, and departed.

“Let what will happen, they can’t say I did not warn them,” thought Mrs. Tippens, as she hurried off to see whether Anne Jane had been able to attend to the potatoes or if they were boiled to pulp.

Meantime the friends, walking along the street together, remarked, “What a strange-looking girl that young woman who so nearly fainted.”

“Yes, cataleptic, I shouldn’t wonder; did you notice what a faraway, unseeing sort of expression there was in her eyes.”

“I did; and what a thick white complexion, if I may use the term.”

“That is a queer notion about old Mrs. Jones; we must get Mrs. Tippens up to make tea for us some night and hear all the rights of the story.”

“And I’ll take the liberty of putting fresh locks on the doors.”

“You think it is somebody playing tricks, then?”

“Of course; what else can it be. You don’t believe in disembodied spirits taking up their abode in brick and mortar houses, I suppose?”

It was a strange thing, as Mrs. Tippens often subsequently remarked, that from the time the new lodgers, who were medical students, took possession of the first-floor, people seemed able to stay in the other parts of the house. Where old Mrs. Jones had gone, and what old Mrs. Jones was doing, could only, Mrs. Tippens felt, be matter for conjecture; one comfort, she ceased to roam about the rooms and wander up and down the staircase; there were even times when Mrs. Tippens, passing through the hall, forgot to remember that sudden waft of cold air and the chilly hand laid on the back of her neck; she still—force of habit, perhaps—instinctively refrained from looking round, lest she should encounter the streaming grey hair and dark face and fierce black eyes of old Mrs. Jones; but at the end of a fortnight she began to feel, as she expressed the matter, “quite comfortable and easy in her mind.”

She had said something of this sort one evening to her cousin, and was waiting vainly for a reply, when Miss Tippens, without the slightest apparent reason, burst into a despairing fit of tears.

“What, crying? For the Lord’s sake, girl, tell me what you are crying for,” exclaimed Mrs. Tippens. “Do, Anne, dear, if you are in any trouble, only trust it to me, and I’ll help you all I can, and so will Dick. Who has vexed you?”

“It’s—old—Mrs.—Jones ,” sobbed Anne Jane. “I have tried hard for your sake, but I can’t bear her any longer; I must go away—I must—I shall be a raving maniac if I stop in this house much longer. Why has she fastened on me?” asked Miss Tippens, looking at her relation with streaming eyes. “Oh, Lucy, why has she left everyone else in the house to give me no peace of my life—I can’t sleep for dreaming of her—she is at my bedside every night wanting me to do something for her, or go to some place with her; and then the whole day long I keep trying to remember what she said and what she wanted, and I can’t; no, Lucy, for no advantage to you, or any other human being, can I face the horror of her any longer.”

At Anne Jane’s first words, Mrs. Tippens’ work dropped from her hands on to the floor, and during the delivery of this address she remained gazing at the speaker with a sort of fascinated terror; then she cried out:

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! and just when I thought we were all settling down so comfortably; what an awful old woman! But do you ever see her, Anne, except when you are asleep?”

“No, but I feel her round and about me. There’s a chilliness blows on my neck, and a coldness creeps down my spine, and I seem always to know that there’s somebody beside or behind me; it’s dreadful—if it was to go on, I’d rather be dead and out of my misery at once.”

“Suppose I made you up a bed somewhere else,” suggested Mrs. Tippens.

“What would be the good? She’s in every room in the house; she’s up and down the stairs, and on the roof, and along the parapet, and—”

“Don’t talk about her any more, you’ll frighten me,” exclaimed Mrs. Tippens.

“And haven’t I been frightened? How would you like to lie in the dark and know a woman—”

“Mrs. Tippens,” called a voice, which made both women jump.

“Lor!” exclaimed Mrs. Tippens, recovering herself, “you needn’t be frightened, Anne, it’s only Mr. Maldon—(yes, sir, I’m coming)—I remember he left word with little Lucy he wanted to see me before he went out this morning, and what with one thing and another I quite forgot it.” Having tendered which explanation, Mrs. Tippens hurried to the first floor, leaving Anne Jane sitting with her hands tightly folded and her great eyes fixed on vacancy, or—old Mrs. Jones.

“Close the door, if you please, Mrs. Tippens,” said Mr. Maldon, the elder of her two new lodgers, as, after her apologies for her forgetfulness, the nominal mistress of Dr. Jones’ former residence stood waiting to hear what was wanted. “For some days past I have wished to speak to you alone. I only think it right to say—”

“Oh, sir, don’t, for mercy’s sake, say you’ve seen old Mrs. Jones too.” There was such an agony of entreaty in Mrs. Tippens’ voice, the young man, who did not believe in ghosts, and had expressed a wish to see one, might well have been excused smiling, but he did not smile, he only answered:

“No, but I have seen something else.”

“What, sir?”

“Your cousin wandering about the house in her sleep.”

“In her sleep! When, Mr. Maldon?”

“Well, to go no further back, last night. I followed her up to the top of the house, and she was actually going out on the roof, when I gently took her by the arm and walked her down to her own room again. I am afraid she may do herself a mischief. I was careful not to wake her, but if she should be frightened, and wake suddenly, no one can tell what accident might happen. From the first I thought there was something strange in her appearance, but I should not have imagined she was a sleep-walker.”

“And what should you advise me to do, sir?” asked Mrs. Tippens earnestly, for this seemed to her a dreadful thing. For a respectable young woman—and she believed and felt certain Anne Jane to be as respectable a young woman as ever lived, a wise, prudent, sensible, virtuous girl—to go wandering in the middle of the night about a house in which there were lodgers, and be handed down the stairs and back to her own room by any man, young or old, was a matter which appeared in Mrs. Tippens’ eyes so preposterous, so dreadful, she could scarcely realise it; she had not courage to inquire the fashion of the costume in which Anne Jane started to make her uncomfortable pilgrimage.

“I should advise you to take your cousin to some good medical man,” said Mr. Maldon, answering her spoken question. “There is no doubt she is from some cause thoroughly out of health, but meanwhile I should not say anything to her about this walking in her sleep; only you would do well to take the precaution of locking her door outside at night.”

“Oh! I couldn’t do that,” answered Mrs. Tippens, “If she were my worst enemy, instead of my husband’s first cousin, I couldn’t lock her up in a room alone with old Mrs. Jones.”

“Oh, ——— old Mrs. Jones!” exclaimed Mr. Maldon.

“Begging your pardon, sir, I don’t think you would be right to say that about the worst of sinners, let alone a poor, ill-used lady that, if all accounts be true, led a most miserable life in this very house.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” interrupted Mr. Maldon, “but don’t you see, my good soul, this tendency of your cousin’s explains the whole mystery; gets rid, in fact, of Mrs. Jones altogether.”

“In what way?” asked Mrs. Tippens.

“Why, only in one way, of course. Your lodgers had heard the story and thought your cousin walking in her sleep must be old Mrs. Jones.”

“Yes, sir, but my cousin never entered these doors till two days before yourself, and for nine months previous to that my lodgers were fainting and flitting on account of the woman who came into their room and met them on the stairs.”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Maldon, in the tone of a man who feels his theory has no more substantial foundation than an air castle.

“Yes, sir, it is quite true,” answered Mrs. Tippens, a little triumphantly—since no one likes to be dispossessed of a point. “Anne Jane came up from Brighton the day but one before you took these lodgings. All the same, sir, I don’t mind telling you that she can’t get rest neither night nor day, because of old Mrs. Jones.”

“Dreams about her, eh?” suggested the medical student with alacrity.

“She has been crying her eyes out just now because she declares the old lady won’t let her be. Stands at her bedside every night regular, wanting her to do something Anne Jane spends her days trying to remember.”

“Really an interesting case,” thought the future medical man, who added aloud: “Well, Mrs. Tippens, I can but repeat my advice, let your cousin see a good doctor, and lock her door on the outside.”

“I am sure, sir, I feel very thankful to you,” answered Mrs. Tippens, and she went downstairs and tossed up a very pretty little supper for Dick and her cousin, during the course of which meal she announced in a laughing way to her husband that Anne Jane was not very well, and felt a bit nervous, and that she, Luce, meant to sleep with their visitor; which information she accompanied with such sly looks and such a world of meaning in her face, that Tippens, looking up from the crab, cucumber, lettuce, and vinegar he was eating in disastrous quantities, answered shortly:

“All right, old girl.”

Consequently, Mrs. Tippens, for once, leaving the custody of her children with Dick, after having cleared away the supper things retired to rest with Miss Tippens.

Mrs. Tippens took the side of the bed next the door (which she locked), and firmly decided she would not go to sleep that night. For about an hour, or an hour and a half, she lay awake, thinking, as she afterwards said, “of all manner of things” ; then she “fell over,” and did not awaken till the room was full of the light of a summer morning’s early dawn.

For a moment she could not remember where she was; then she remembered, and stretching out her hand, found the place her cousin should have occupied empty and cold.

Anne Jane was gone, and Mrs. Tippens, rushing to the door, found it unlocked.

VIII

Mrs. Tippens, assisted by her husband and Mr. Maldon and his friend Mr. Whipple, and one of the second-floor lodgers, who was out of work, scoured the neighbourhood for Miss Tippens, and scoured it in vain. That young person seemed to have vanished as utterly as old Mrs. Jones. They sought her high, they sought her low; the whole street in confusion; as popular opinion had as yet defined no limit to the powers possessed by Doctor Jones’ wife, little doubt existed that Anne Jane had been carried off bodily by the grey-haired lady as an expiation of the sins of the Tippens’ family in continuing the tenancy of a house on which it was “well-known a curse rested.”

Who had cursed it, on whom it rested, were matters considered quite irrelevant to the general issue. So far sickness had passed over and misfortune shunned the latest dwellers in the haunted dwelling. But now it was felt the day of reckoning had been only deferred in order to inflict a heavier punishment. Old Mrs. Jones was about to vindicate herself at last. “And if you don’t get out of the place quick,” said Mrs. Jubb, who, during the whole of that memorable morning, conducted herself after the manner of some ancient prophetess, “you’ll find far worse to follow. I always told you I couldn’t sleep in the house if the hall was paved with golden guineas.”

“Dick, Dick,” cried Mrs. Tippens, “didn’t I beg and pray of you long ago to move—that very first night the children saw old Mrs. Jones?”

But Dick, not being in a fit state of mind either to argue with his wife or endure her reproaches, mounted to the seat of his neat hansom and drove aimlessly about the streets, asking useless questions of persons totally unable to afford the slightest information as to his cousin’s whereabouts.

About three o’clock, however, Anne Jane, in person, appeared at her cousin’s door, accompanied by a policeman. Early that morning she had been found trying to open the garden gate of a house in the Stratford Road; as, when remonstrated with concerning the impropriety of her conduct, she still continued knocking and pushing the gate, the policeman seized her left arm and told her she couldn’t be allowed to make such a noise; then, for the first time, she turned her face towards him, and he saw, as he expressed himself, “there was something stranger about the matter than he thought.”

Immediately it dawned upon his understanding that though the woman’s eyes were wide open, she did not see him, and that she was not drunk, as he had supposed, but fast asleep.

Therefore he woke her up, and inquired what she was doing there at four o’clock in the morning.

The girl’s terror when suddenly recalled to consciousness—she found herself only partially dressed, in a road perfectly unknown to her, held firmly in the grasp of a stalwart policeman was so great as utterly to deprive her of speech. She tried to collect her senses, she strove to ask him how she came there, but no word passed her parched and trembling lips, in a very agony of shame and distress, she allowed herself to be led to the station-house; but there, when addressed by the inspector, she broke into a passion of weeping, which culminated in a fit of violent hysterics, that in turn was succeeded by a sort of wandering the doctor regarded as a precursor of some severe illness. “The girl is quite overwrought,” he said; “I wonder who this old Mrs. Jones is she talks so much about.”

“Oh, save me from her—oh, Luce!—oh, Dick! don’t let her come near me again.” At that moment Anne Jane again cried in terror.

“No, she shan’t come near you, we won’t let her,” observed the doctor soothingly; and after a time he managed to give this strange patient a quieting draught.

“Anyone,” as Mrs. Tippens observed, when subsequently commenting upon the conduct of the police, “could see Anne Jane was a thoroughly respectable girl, who had been carefully brought up,” and accordingly she did not feel so grateful as she ought to have done to the inspector for sending her cousin home in a cab.

“She’ll be better with her friends than in a hospital,” said the doctor; and accordingly, when she recovered sufficiently to mention Mr. Tippens’ address, she was despatched thither under the care of a staid and respectable member of the force.

But nothing could induce her to enter Dick’s house, till Mrs. Tippens had solemnly promised at once to go out and find a lodging for her elsewhere.

“If I sleep here again she’ll never rest till she has killed me,” declared the girl; which utterance seemed so mysterious to the policeman, that, pressing for an explanation, he was told the whole story of “old Mrs. Jones.”

“And the young woman solemnly declares,” went on the man who repeated the narrative to the inspector, “that Doctor Jones’ wife came to her bedside, and bade her get up and dress, and opened the door of the room, and the front door, and made her walk till she was fit to drop through places and streets she had never seen before, till they came to the garden gate of St. Julian’s; she passed through that and kept beckoning her to follow—‘and I know I tried hard, and then you must have awakened me.’”

“It’s a rather unlikely tale altogether,” observed the inspector, but still he kept the matter in his mind, and thought it worth while to make a few inquiries and set a detective to work; and had a watch kept on Doctor Schloss, the great German chemist, who lived in a very secluded manner at St. Julian’s—the result of all being that one day a policeman appeared at the house, and asking if he could see the doctor, arrested him on the charge of “Wilful Murder.”

“But this is absurd,” said the great chemist, speaking in very broken English. “Who is it that you make believe I have murdered?”

“Your wife, Zillah Jones,” was the answer. Whereupon the doctor shrugged his shoulders and inquired who Zillah Jones might be.

Asked if he would come quietly with the policeman, he laughed, and said, “Oh, yes.” Warned that any statement he made would be used as evidence, he laughed again, and observed he had no statement of any kind to make.

On the way he conducted himself, as was remarked, in a very quiet and gentlemanlike manner; and, arrived at his destination, he requested to be allowed to sit down, as he did not feel very well.

“It is a serious charge to bring against an innocent person,” he said, still speaking in imperfect English. That was the last sentence he uttered. When he was requested to get up, he did not stir. He was dead—dead as the woman whose remains were found, embalmed in a locked box, in his laboratory at St. Julian’s.

No one, however, in the neighbourhood where Doctor Jones once lived believed, or could be persuaded to believe Doctor Schloss and Doctor Jones were one and the same person, or that the embalmed body was that of old Mrs. Jones. Nothing will ever shake the local mind in its conviction that Doctor Jones is still enjoying existence in “foreign parts,” or that his wife was buried in the cellar of that old-fashioned house where evil befell all who tried to live.

In proof of which conviction it is still told in bated breath how Anne Jane was never able to go back to service, but was forced eventually to return to her native village, where to this day she earns a modest living with her needle; and how, on the very night of that day when Mr. Tippens removed his family and goods, cabs and horses excepted, to a dwelling he had taken in the next street, where the lodgers accompanied Mrs. Tippens, a passer-by, looking up at the old house, saw something like the figure of a woman, carrying a torch, flit from window to window, and story to story, and ere he had time to think what it meant, beheld flames bursting from every part of the old building.

Before the engines came the fire had got such a mastery, it was with difficulty Mr. Tippens’ horses were saved, to say nothing of the adjoining houses.

It was indeed a conflagration to be remembered, if for no other reason than that standing on the parapet in the fiercest of the fire a woman, with streaming grey hair, was seen wringing her hands in such an apparent agony of distress that an escape was put up, and one of the brigade nearly lost his life in trying to save her.

At this juncture someone cried out with a loud voice: “It was a witch the doctor married, and fire alone can destroy her!”

Then for a moment there fell a dead silence upon the assembled crowd, while the dreadful figure was seen running from point to point in a mad effort to escape.

Suddenly the roof crashed in, millions of sparks flew upwards from the burning rafters, there was a roar as if the doors of some mighty furnace had been suddenly opened, a blaze of light shot straight towards the heavens, and when the spectators looked again there was no figure to be seen anywhere, only the bare walls, and red flames rushing through the sashless windows of the house once haunted by “Old Mrs. Jones.”

Diarmid Chittock’s Story

(1899)

I

Since the beginning of this century civilization has advanced by such leaps and bounds that we may well ask how much further it can go.

In less than a hundred years we have on the sea learnt how to dispense with sails, and on land to travel at a speed which would have appalled our forefathers. Like Ariel, we have put a girdle round the world, so that messages can be flashed from earth’s remotest corners in a few hours. All the luxuries of the East are brought to our doors. The cottager now possesses a more comfortable house than kings in the old days dreamt of. And yet the curious outcome of all this civilization, all this luxury, all this comfort, is that the natural man—the strongest, bravest, staunchest, most masculine man, the man to whom one’s heart turns instinctively—seems continually trying to escape from their trammels.

In the earlier stages of civilization he liked to dance and attend mild parties, to don gorgeous dress, and, with a similarly minded friend, to lounge up and down Bond Street; but now all these things are to him pain and weariness.

By preference he wears a tweed suit and a pot hat, he shirks afternoon tea, and hostesses are at their wits’ end to find a sufficient number of partners for their “pretty girls.”

Girls themselves have for the most part now to do the love-making, and often fail to do it successfully, while the “natural” man is considering how he can best get away to tempt the ocean, to shoot big game, to explore strange lands, where civilization was never so much as heard of, and camp out, and eat rough food, and lead as wild and savage a life as possible.

It is rare, on the other hand, for women to seek seclusion from the world nowadays.

When they do, it is, as a rule, in company with their fellows, especially their fellows of the male persuasion. With them they will for a time gladly chase the wild deer and follow the roe, climb cliffs, and scale mountains; but they have no fancy for the lonely days and nights men not merely endure but love, which is probably only another proof that Mohammedans are right when they say women are not possessed of souls.

It is perhaps the terrible thoughts that dwell in many a male soul which drive modern men out into desolate lands, as the unimaginable terrors of morbid or stricken consciences drove of old both saints and sinners into hermits cells and awful fastnesses, such as we can at this time of the world only faintly realize.

However this may be, and perhaps a mere teller of stories has no right even to conjecture, it is certain that in the year of our Lord 1883, Mr. Cyril Danson, well known in London society, felt a consuming desire to change his surroundings.

He was sick of them—sick of the men, more sick of the women; sick of the talk, sick of the streets, sick of the newspapers, sick of everything!

In modern society he was one of those individuals who seem to hang between heaven and hell. He was not rich enough to hunt with the hounds or poor enough to run with the hare. He came of good people, and was possessed of an independent income, which he lacked the business ability necessary to increase; he was not a director on the board of any company; it had never occurred to him to speculate; he did not feel inclined to go in for mines, or horses, or gambling, or concessions, or politics—in a word, he was only an honest English gentleman who held strictly by his own notions of honour and had grown tired of everything, merely because the one flower he fancied in that garden of beauty, “London in the season,” was plucked by a newly made lord with a fabulous rent-roll.

He had known and loved her a long time, and thought she loved him.

In the slang of today he was “hit very hard”—hit so hard that at first his brain reeled under the blow.

After the lapse of a few weeks, however, he was able to see things in their true proportions and to feel the lady had been a very happy loss; but “going out into the wilderness” was a fancy which nevertheless came to him and stayed with him, and, unlike his faithless love, refused to leave him.

Yes, he would go into the wilderness—he quite made up his mind on that point—but then a very pertinent question arose, viz. “Into what wilderness should he go?”

It was impossible for him to seek his desert in Africa, or India, or even America.

He had enough money to live at home quietly like a gentleman, but he did not possess such means as would enable him to start as a modern apostle. Things have changed a good deal since St. Paul’s time, besides which the Apostle of the Gentiles throughout his Epistles merely indicates that his expenses were not extravagant, and never tells us the amount to which they totted up.

Mr. Danson could have wished to go round the world—to visit stray groups of almost unknown islands, to spend a summer at the South Pole, to make his way across the interior of Africa, to see Siberia; but as it was necessary to stint his desires and keep them low like a weaned child, he decided to shake the London dust off his feet, and, taking only his soul for companion, talk confidentially with that too long neglected friend, conscience, when they reached some “void place” situated in Wales, Scotland, or—Blackstone Castle, Chittock’s place.

Ah! a capital thought. Chittock’s house was no doubt vacant, for Chittock nearly three years before, very hard hit himself, had tried whether the wilderness of London could not minister to a mind diseased as well as any other desert.

Mr. Danson knew Blackstone Castle well. In the days of his early youth he had spent a month there so pleasantly that the memory remained with him like some sweet tune heard of yore.

No lonelier or lovelier place than Blackstone Castle could well be imagined. It stood on a cliff from which, to the nearest continent, stretched straight as a crow could fly a thousand miles of sea.

There was excellent shooting in the neighbour hood, to say nothing of lake and river fishing, a sandy beach, great stretches of bog land, mountains covered with purple heather, and deep wide valleys, where Fin M’Coul and his children might have been playing “bowls” for centuries with huge fragments of granite for balls.

Yes, Blackstone Castle, situated almost at the world’s end, was, if still lacking a tenant, precisely the hermit’s cell he desired to find, and, having made up his mind on this point, he repaired to the “Cashel Club,” where he thought he should probably meet his man.

As it happened, he did meet him on the threshold, and they walked into St. James’s Park together, Mr. Danson, though “down,” looking much as usual, but Mr. Chittock, after nearly three years’ experience of the great city, appearing so little the better for such a decided change, his companion felt shocked to notice the alteration a comparatively short time had wrought.

Formerly he had been a fine, handsome, jovial fellow, with a hearty ring in his cheery voice and a kind word for everyone.

Now he was thin, haggard, dull, with a far-off sad expression in his blue eyes, seemingly twenty years older than his actual age.

LOVE serves her votaries many a strange trick. She strips the flesh off one, and plumps another up like a Christmas turkey!

In a very few words Mr. Danson explained what he wanted, and in an even shorter sentence Mr. Chittock told him the house had only been let one season for the shooting, and was at that moment empty, and quite at his service.

“Of course,” he went on after an instant’s pause, “I shall be charmed if you will take the place, but it is desolation made visible. It is twelve miles from anywhere. Personally, I would not go back again and live in my old house for any consideration. Had you not better think twice about the matter?”

Mr. Danson would not think twice. He was done up; he craved for quiet; he was tired of people; he desired utter solitude.

“Cannot you compass that in London?” asked Mr. Chittock, with a grave, curious smile.

“No-I must get quite away,” was the answer.

“Is it so bad as that?”

“So bad as that! Just as you, Chittock, found it necessary to leave Ireland, so I feel I cannot stop in London. It is not that I am heart-broken,” he added, moved by some impulse he was unable to resist, “but I want to get to some out-of-the-way place where people won’t look as if they saw ‘JILTED’ printed in big type all over me.”

Mr. Chittock nodded. Though he had not been jilted, he understood.

“I want to change my life, too,” went on Mr. Danson, a little ashamed of his outburst. “I could wish to be of a little use in the world—to know I had made a few persons the happier. If I were to die tomorrow not a creature, except perhaps my man, would be sorry. Did I only possess an estate like yours, even! But such good things are not for poor men.”

Mr. Chittock walked on for about a dozen paces as though he did not hear—or, hearing, failed to understand. Then he said in those slow, melancholy tones, which contrasted so forcibly with his former utterances—

“Things are changed as well as myself, and you might have Blackstone at a very low figure. I do not intend, however, to take any man in, unless indeed a millionaire, such as your lost love’s lord,” he added, with a forced laugh, “Go and try how you like living in my old barrack all alone; then if, after a fair trial, you still desire to buy, I will meet you more than half-way.”

Something he could not comprehend in Mr. Chittock’s voice and manner struck Mr. Danson with a strange surprise, but he only answered—

“All right, old fellow, state your figure. Let the lawyers put all shipshape, and if I can be your man I will—anyhow, I’ll take the place for a twelvemonth. By-the-by-—”

“By-the-by what?”

“Did your young woman marry a lord?”

“Certainly not.”

“Did she marry anybody, then, or what is she doing?”

“She never married at all, and is governessing, I believe.”

“She preferred governessing?”

“Not very complimentary to me,” returned Mr. Chittock, “but a fact. And I loved her, Danson. She had no fortune; I wanted none, I only wanted her, and her father and mother wished her to marry me, but she wouldn’t,” he added with a sort of gasp. “There is something about me women don’t like, I suppose. Anyhow, she would have nothing to do with me—not at any price.”

“Poor old chap! Was she very pretty?”

“I think not—I do not know. She was pretty enough for me, and I loved her. Do not let us talk about it any more.”

Mr. Danson asked no further questions. Here was a trouble deeper than any he had felt—a trouble he failed exactly to understand, and one with which he knew he lacked all right to inter-meddle.

“My dear Chittock, I wish I could bring you balm of Gilead,” he said earnestly.

“If you could I am sure you would,” was the answer, “but not a man living can do that—there is no balm for me anywhere.”

II

Despite its pretentious name, Blackstone Castle was really a rather modest mansion. A few crumbling walls and a ruined tower adjacent to the house bore picturesque testimony to the fact that some sort of fortress had in old, old days occupied its site; but the modern Blackstone Castle was merely a square, roomy country mansion, big enough to hold a large family of small sons and daughters when young, and welcome plenty of high-spirited, laughing, joyous guests when the little people grew old enough to think of love-making—of marriage and giving in marriage!

It was in his “calf days”—which are, after all, the sweetest, pleasantest, most innocent days man can ever know, full of the fresh immaturity of morning and the happy, half-conscious expectation of a glorious noon to come—that Mr. Danson had been made “free” of Blackstone Castle, where he accompanied Diarmid Chittock when both of the young fellows were leaving school.

Forever the recollection of old Mr. Chittock standing on the great doorstep and welcoming first his grandson’s friend and then, well-nigh with tears, his grandson, remained in Mr. Danson’s memory.

Stalwart fellow as he was, his own eyes filled when he beheld once again the well-remembered place where that gracious, old-world man could never welcome friend nor grandson more.

A splendid old man—one of the best breed of gentry this world ever saw, and which it is unlikely the world will ever see again, belonging as it did to an impossible-to-return, long gone-by-a gone-by it is well never can return, but which was a magnificent painting nevertheless, full of gorgeous colouring and soft tender tints, deep shadows, and wrongs, alas! unimaginable.

As he entered the spacious hall—architectural grandeur was at one time a thing no good house in Ireland ever wanted—Mr. Danson felt himself to be a very fortunate hermit, for while seeking solitude it was borne in upon him he need be no anchorite. His own man stood there to wait on him, just as if he had only stepped across Pall Mall; his horses were in the stables; his servants in the kitchen; certainly the rooms lacked all modern aesthetic refinement, but Mr. Danson was weary of aesthetic refinement as well as of many other things.

He knew he was not in the van of civilization, and he did not wish to be; nevertheless, on the other hand, he had not dropped quite to the rear. It was early summer; and while he smoked a quiet cigar after dinner he looked out over thousands of miles of ocean, and felt as if some soft hand were being laid on his heart and drawing something of its bitterness away.

That night, wearied with his journey, and believing he had reached a desired goal, he slept, lulled by the gentle murmur of Atlantic waves, the deep restful sleep of youth.

Next day the rector called, next day the priest, the third the doctor.

The wilderness was not so absolutely desolate as he had intended, but still three visitors in seventy-two hours could not be regarded as exactly a “rush” of society. Besides they were, each in his way, all interesting men, who had something to tell and were willing to hear.

Before the week was over, Mr. Danson had quite settled down to the routine of a dull country life. He who had squirmed at afternoon teas, and garden parties, and days up the river, and four-in-hand expeditions to whatever race might be on; who had objected to assist at the laying of foundation-stones, to hearing of speeches, to receptions, to dinners, to balls; who had grown to detest with a deadly detestation London gossip and even London itself—found himself taking an interest in the post, and walking down to the village each morning for his daily paper, returning the mail-car driver’s salute with ceremonious civility and chatting to the local shopkeeper in the most affable manner possible.

So far as we have ever been told, saints and sinners who in the early days went out into the wilderness of this wicked world did none of these things; but, then, history is silent on many of those subjects about which we should all, no doubt, like to hear a great deal. Distance probably lends a considerable amount of enchantment to the holy men of old. Near at hand they were presumably much like their descendants. They could not have been considering their shortcomings, and contemplating the mysteries of life and death, day and night for forty years. Possibly, among those of the number who were sincere, their voluntary withdrawal from the world was only an attempt to coax back the mental strength of which a too long sojourn in it had temporarily bereft them—just as Nature taught Mr. Danson he ought to leave London and talk quietly with the wise old mother of us all if he wished ever again to have a sane mind located in a sound body. Her remedies are of the simplest; and quite unconsciously this man, who had been turning night into day, burning his candle at both ends, working harder than any horse in a mill, was taking them regularly.

The solitude could not be considered perfect; but though, properly speaking, it was out of character for him to take an interest in the rector’s college reminiscences, in the priest’s stories, or the doctor’s recollections of Ballyragshanan dispensary, the hermit’s cell he had chosen answered its purpose admirably, and

“He ate and drank and slept—what then?

He ate and drank and slept again.”

And there were times when he actually wondered why he had come to the “back of beyond,” and fancied it must have been for pleasure!

The face of his false lady-love and her wealthy lord soon grew faded and blurred like shadowy old photographs. He could read their names in the Times and never turn a hair. That great stretch of sand, that vast expanse of ocean, became pleasanter day by day, and he began to like his “constitutional” beside the Atlantic as he had once never thought to like anything except the “sweet shady side of Pall Mall.”

“Each morning when returning home with my paper” (posted to him regularly from London), Mr. Danson said one day to the constabulary officer, with whom he was on particularly good terms, “I meet a girl—not tall, not pretty, not striking-looking, but yet a girl who attracts me, because she has the quietest, saddest expression I ever saw on a woman’s face, You can tell me who she is, no doubt?”

“Dressed in black Steps out, too?”

“Yes, and walks well.”

“That is Miss Oona Rosterne.”

“Miss—?” suggested Cyril Danson, puzzled. “Oona Rosterne,” repeated Mr. Melsham, “the daughter of my predecessor, who disappeared.”

“Good heavens! I thought that poor lady was a governess somewhere.”

“So she is—daily governess at Fort Cloyne. Walks three miles out and three miles in—hail, shine, or snow-five times a week. If she would leave her mother she might get a large salary, for she can teach everything. As it is, the Mustos pay her fifty pounds a year, which is thought unbounded wealth hereabouts.”

“Was any trace of her father ever discovered?”

“Not a trace.”

“How very strange!”

“Why strange? There are bogs enough about here to engulf a whole army, let alone one inspector.”

“Do you mean that he lost his way?”

“Lost his way on a starlight night! Why, he knew every inch of the country,” scoffed Mr. Melsham. “No; someone knocked him over quietly and put him where he will, maybe, be dug up a couple of hundred years hence.”

“I thought people imagined he had left the country.”

“People over the Channel might, but not a soul about here did. He was over head and ears in debt, to be sure; but a man needs money when starting on foreign travel, and Rosterne never had any. Then he loved both wife and daughter after his fashion, and nobody was pressing for payment, because it was well known Miss Oona had but to say ‘Yes,’ and Chittock would have found every penny that was needed to rid her father of debt.—No; the whole business is a mystery. One day, perhaps, when the fellow who did away with him is dying, or someone who knows gets tired of keeping the secret, we may hear more about the matter; but the likelihood is, not a soul now living will ever learn what it was happened between seven p.m., when he left Letterpass to walk home, and the next morning, when he had not got home. He was seen about two miles from Letterpass striking down to the shore, but never after by anyone we can trace.” A blank ensues. “That is the whole story.”

“It is a terrible story. If his body had been found, dead or alive—”

“But it was not, you see. No wonder Miss Oona looks as she does. Yes”—reflectively—“she walks three Irish miles out and three Irish miles in, five days a week, hail, rain, or shine, and her grandmother was a O’Considine, too!”

“Oh! was she?” said Mr. Danson, who had not the faintest idea the O’Considines had ever been reckoned grand people—in fact, had never even heard of them till that moment.

“Indeed she was,” replied Mr. Melsham, who received the remark as a tribute of respect to the great house mentioned. “Her grandfather was about the last of the race—the last, that is, who could and did stick to the estate—drove his four-in-hand, kept open house, and never wanted for anything as long as there was a shot in the locker or an acre of land to be mortgaged.”

Though Mr. Danson as yet knew but little of the “first gem of the sea,” it seemed to him this had been the practice of many excellent Irish gentlemen, and one apparently that had secured for them the esteem of their contemporaries and even the admiration of posterity. Right royally they had lived on their capital while it lasted.

And for those who came after?

Why, those who came after have ever since been paying for the piper’s merry tune, to which men and women danced such joyous measures in the old days departed.

It was less, however, with those old days Mr. Danson occupied his mind the while he strolled leisurely towards Blackstone Castle than with that girl who walked thirty miles each week and toiled all day, instructing, probably, many young ideas how to shoot, in order to add fifty pounds a year to her mother’s income.

And all the while there was a man in London breaking his heart because this sad-faced governess would have nothing to do with him; and Blackstone Castle remained without a mistress, who would have lacked no manner of good thing had she married its owner. Mr. Danson’s soul yearned over the pair; he longed to bring them together and make them happy—aye, even in spite of themselves.

Certainly a remarkable-looking girl, not strictly pretty, perhaps, but a girl not easily to be forgotten for all that. Though Mr. Danson had not spoken to her, he knew those dark grey eyes, that curious melancholy expression, that sensitive, troubled mouth, would never pass quite out of his recollection.

Of course it was the knowledge that she ought to become Chittock’s wife which attracted and riveted his attention.

Without some interest, he told himself, he would never have looked at her twice, and it was a long time before he remembered he had looked at her more than twice before he learned she was the woman of Chittock’s life.

It would be an excellent work, he decided, to make the divided pair one, to bridge the river of their unhappiness, and bring about a happy reconciliation.

He could do this, he felt confident, and then he remembered that Mr. Musto had called a week previously, while the new tenant of Blackstone Castle was exploring the Blackstone caves, and that his visit ought to be returned.

When people have an object in view they can take very prompt action. Accordingly Mr. Danson, having an end to gain, decided to ride over to Fort Cloyne that very afternoon.

Only to meet with a check, however. Mr. and Mrs. Musto, he was informed, had left the same morning for Switzerland, and would be absent for two months, or perhaps longer.

Two months! For the second time that year life stretched before Mr. Danson as a perfect blank.

Foiled both in love and friendship, what could he do?

Why, get acquainted with Mrs. Rosterne. How stupid not to have thought sooner of that simple plan!

“Gorey,” he said, pulling up his horse to a walk, and beckoning the man so called, who was at once his own groom and Mr. Chittock’s foster-brother, to come beside him, “I was talking to Mr. Melsham this morning about Captain Rosterne’s extraordinary disappearance.”

An English servant, had such a piece of information been vouchsafed to him, would have answered vaguely and discreetly, “Yes, sir;” but Gorey replied after a different fashion—

“Mr. Melsham was not here then, sir. He only came when Inspector Hume left.”

“And who was Inspector Hume?” asked Mr. Danson, as utterly ignorant of the whole affair as anyone could be.

“Just about as sharp and clever a gentleman as any poor fellow in trouble would wish not to meet.”

“Meaning, I suppose, anyone who had stolen a sheep or killed a landlord?”

“Or done anything else your honour pleases to think of.”

This was a nice way of putting things! As if his honour was pleased with or had a love for people who stole sheep, or shot a landlord, or did “anything else.”

And yet Mr. Danson felt convinced Gorey could only be considered a willing, faithful, honest, capable servant, and a law-abiding man. Such was the character Mr. Chittock had given him, and such, it may at once be said, was the character he deserved, with higher praise to the back of it.

“I suppose Mr. Hume inquired into the whole matter?”

“He did, sir. He was at it day and night, after a manner of speaking. I don’t think he had right rest all the time he was there, or the master either, for Mr. Hume was forever at the castle.”

“And he never got a clue?”

“Not a one of any good at all. He went here and he went there, but the end was the same as the beginning.”

“And what is your own notion, Gorey Come, now, what do you think became of Captain Rosterne—where did he go? or if he did not go, where was he taken?”

The afternoon sun was blazing into Mr. Danson’s eyes while he asked this question, and he might, he thought, have been in error. Nevertheless, he could not shake off the impression that just for one moment the guard of Gorey’s impassive face changed, that his eyes flickered, as one may say, and the muscles of his mouth twitched.

The whole thing was instantaneous and perfectly incapable of description—a little transformation scene Mr. Danson felt rather than saw—for the sun, as has been said, was in his eyes and blinding him, and when Gorey spoke his voice was calm and natural.

“Indeed, sir, I couldn’t say. I don’t know where he would want to go away from wife and child; and though he wasn’t too well liked, I am very sure nobody ever wished him enough ill to put a bullet in his heart.”

“Oh! he wasn’t well liked, then,” said Mr. Dan son, who felt at the moment as if he were a second Columbus.

“He wasn’t hated, sir, if that is what you are thinking about,” returned Gorey in a moment, taking all the wind out of Mr. Danson’s sails; “for he never did any man a serious wrong, so far as I heard. He was just, and often and often stood up for the poor when they had no other to speak for them. But still and for all that he wasn’t liked. He had come from nothing, yet still took a heap on him. Many a one such as him does that.”

“He was bumptious, in fact?” suggested Mr. Danson.

“People about here said he was an arbitrary gentleman,” said Gorey, substituting what he considered, and what was, a better word. “No man had a keener notion of justice, no man was civiller. If a beggar touched his hat to him, up went his stick or umbrella or finger in return. He had the best of manners, sir; but yet there are those that feel good manners and the height of justice are not a patch on the love of God. And he had no love of God or of God’s creatures.”

“That is a hard saying, Gorey,” remarked Mr. Danson, impressed in spite of himself.

“It’s true, your honour, for all that. Now, I’ll tell you. Supposing he was driving on his car and he saw a string of loaded carts on the wrong side of the road, where it was not metalled, he’d whistle them all to get out of the way—aye, and if they didn’t, summon them. And all the same, I’ve seen her Grace the Duchess when she was driving her pair of cobs sign to the men to make no shift and walk her own horses over the stones, and was there a soul in the barony did not say, God bless her!”

“Still, in Captain Rosterne’s position he might have thought it his duty to see that the rule of the road was observed.”

“Maybe, sir; but the Almighty is much easier with those who go a bit wrong than he was. Still, though nobody much cared for him, I never heard a man, woman, or child that hadn’t the soft word for him when he forgot to come back—aye, and the wet eye too for the wife and child he left lamenting.”

“And what did chance to the unhappy man, Gorey?”

“Not a one was able to say, sir—not a one. Pat Harrigan met him on the shore road walking home, but he never got home, poor gentleman.”

“He did not drink?”

“No, sir, not to say drink; he took his glass like anybody else, but it was never said that he took a glass too much.”

“Or gamble?”

“He might a little, but not beyond the common.”

Mr. Danson wondered what “the common ” might be, but held his tongue. So far he had not made a single point. Of course, if Gorey knew nothing, there could be nothing to tell. If, on the other hand, he suspected foul play, it was quite evident he did not intend to share that suspicion with anyone.

Moreover, the man had been questioned and cross-questioned, and no doubt Mr. Chittock and he had talked the matter over exhaustively. The probability was he really had not a word to say, and yet Mr. Danson could not feel satisfied concerning that strange flicker.

“Mr. Chittock must have taken the affair terribly to heart,” he observed at last.

“He did so, sir; he never to say has been the same man since—and small wonder. There was no one in these parts he was as intimate with as the Captain; he’d have been his son if all had gone as it might have done.”

It was all very well to speak to Gorey about Captain Rosterne’s disappearance, but Mr. Danson felt he could not let a servant talk concerning Captain Rosterne’s daughter.

It seemed to him dreadful that such a girl should be the subject of common gossip. He would have set her on a pedestal high above the reach of vulgar tongues, which looked very much as if Mr. Danson had conceived a marvellously high opinion of his friend’s wife that was, he hoped, to be.

Very possibly he thought Captain Rosterne had for reasons of his own left the country. Some painful scandal, some terrible misfortune, might be at the bottom of the mystery, which he had better not try to search out further.

But it could do no harm to try and bring the divided pair together again, and, full of this intention, he proceeded at a good round trot to Blackstone Castle, followed by Gorey, who had dropped behind to a respectful distance.

III

Mr. Danson did not owe the rector a visit, but he thought he would walk down to the village and call on the rector’s sister, a lady of uncertain age, though certainly not under fifty, who always amused Mr. Danson immensely. Her one great desire, poor soul, was to see London; her one great regret that her brother’s lines had been cast in such a primitive parish as Lisnabeg.

“Ah, if he were only in or near London now,” she said, “where he could mix with men of his own calibre!”

It had never occurred to Mr. Danson that the rector’s intellectual capacities were so great he could hope only to meet with one equally mighty among the most cultured classes in a great city; but it would have needed a much harder heart than that which beat in the Englishman’s breast even to hint that Miss Heath perhaps overrated her brother’s abilities. He contented himself with remarking, therefore—

“Sometimes London proves a little disappointing.”

“But why? How can it? Is not all the thought of the world there?”

“Much of it, certainly; but a person may live a long time in London without meeting with a vast amount of thought, or any indeed,” he added.

“I scarcely understand how that can be at the fountain-head of everything.”

“True; but if you consider the fountain-head has a population almost equal to that of Ireland, you will understand many of the inhabitants have to remain at a considerable distance from the well.”

“Ah! that wouldn’t be the case with Phil; he could make his way to the centre at once.”

“I am sure he would, whenever he was known,” answered Mr. Danson, heartily.

And then Miss Heath went on to tell him how he could not conceive—he who had so recently left “the thought of the whole world, and still felt its invigorating breeze fanning his cheek”—how deadly dull their village really was.

“You have not to live in it, Mr. Danson,” she went on; “you can leave it whenever you like—run over to London or Paris, or New York, for that matter; but we who, fettered by pecuniary trammels, are compelled to tread the same monotonous round week after week and year after year, alone understand its weariness.”

Mr. Danson thought he had felt the full weariness of fashionable London’s monotonous round; but that was a subject on which he did not care to enter, so he seized the opportunity presented of saying—

“The Mustos have taken wing, I find. I rode over today, only to hear they left this morning for Switzerland.”

“Oh, yes,” answered Miss Heath, “and will be away for two months. They always start in this sudden fashion, just as the whim seizes them. We shall miss them very much, because, though they are not exactly—well, you know they are not of the old gentry—”

“I suppose the old gentry were new once also. Everything must have a beginning,” suggested Mr. Danson.

“Quite so; and, as I was about to add, the Mustos are kindness itself—hospitable, charitable, and considerate. Why, the very carriage that took them to the station called on its way back for Mrs. Rosterne.”

“Why for Mrs. Rosterne?” asked Mr. Danson.

“Because she and her daughter always stay at Fort Cloyne when Mr. and Mrs. Musto are absent. They are quite members of the family, I assure you. Mrs. Musto says she has never an anxious thought concerning the children when Oona Rosterne is in the house with them.”

“Miss Rosterne must be a very exceptional young lady,” Mr. Danson forced himself to say, though he felt that day had been but a series of disappointments.

“Indeed she is. My brother says another girl like her could not be found in the three kingdoms, and he ought to know, because he prepared her for confirmation. Still I feel myself I never can forgive Oona the way in which she treated poor Mr. Chittock.”

“But I always understood—and remember, no one can feel more sorry for Chittock than I—that she was straightforward from the first—told him plainly she had no love to give him,” answered Mr. Danson, eagerly.

“And what right had a chit like Oona to set herself up against those older and wiser than she was?” asked Miss Heath. “Look what a match it would have been for her—the salvation, after a fashion, of her heartbroken, overworked father; a husband she could have led about with a string; a home for her mother; the best of marriages any girl need have desired. But no; my lady had her own fancies, and would pay heed neither to father nor mother, lover nor friend. When I was young, Mr. Danson, girls took advice; Oona would take none, and you see the result.”

“But still, if she could not care for Chittock—” pleaded Mr. Danson.

“Could not care, indeed!” repeated Miss Heath. “I have no patience with such nonsense. What was there about the dear kind fellow to dislike?”

“I cannot tell you, Miss Heath. I always liked him, and my dearest wish is to see him married to Miss Rosterne.”

“Then you may give it up, Mr. Danson. So long as the sea ebbs and flows she will have nothing to do with him. Sorrow has not taught her; poverty has not changed her. Since her father’s death—for no one believes the poor man is alive—she has been more set against Mr. Chittock than ever. Would you believe it?—he wanted to allow Mrs. Rosterne an annuity, and the foolish girl wouldn’t let her mother take a penny. What do you think of that in one so young For Oona can’t be reckoned old even now, though she is nearly three and twenty. I call that young even for a governess.”

“If she did not care for Chittock, I think she was right.”

“But why did not she care for him? A man who was, as one may say, a specimen man—quiet and well-living, good to look at, and pleasant to listen to—a man who could not drink if he wished, because a glass of punch got into his head at once. Mrs. Rosterne told me the only reason Oona ever gave for saying ‘no’ was that she felt afraid of his temper; but, then, what is a husband who has no temper? and his was just a flash and over. It’s a saint, I suppose, she’s expecting to get, and I wish she may succeed.”

“Is there some suitor, then, Miss Rosterne favours?”

“I’d like to have seen the man except Diarmid Chittock dare look at, much less speak to her, when her father was alive. And who do you think she’d take up with would throw a thought her way now No, she’s let her chance slip—a grand chance, too. She’ll never get another, so she’ll just have to go on drudging through life. I am sorry for her, but she wouldn’t take advice. You are not going yet, though, Mr. Danson, Surely? You will stop till my brother comes in? He won’t be long.”

No, Mr. Danson was much obliged, but he must get home; in fact, he had only called to bid a short good-bye. He intended to walk through Connemara. He wished to see that part of Ireland particularly, and might probably include in his programme Killarney and the Golden Mountains.

“Tired of Blackstone Castle already,” decided Miss Heath, as she watched him walking fast towards that desirable residence. “Well, it’s natural—no one can say it is not.”

IV

Fashions change, but not to such extent as many people imagine. A stout pair of walking-shoes now represents the picturesque sandal of old, and a well-made knapsack serves the pedestrian’s purpose much better than any wallet ever did that of pilgrim; while the modern tourist is, seen from an artistic point of view, most distinctly merely an improved copy of the long-bearded, not over-clean, very often extremely lazy, peripatetic gentleman who formerly made a living by piously doing nothing.

The same restlessness that drove the devotee into void places and caused him to make his home among the graves now sends his smart, well-set-up, well-dressed, but much happier nineteenth-century prototype to scale mountains, to stem rivers, to cross oceans, and to live in unfamiliar countries.

There is, to put the matter in a sentence, as much human nature running loose about the world now as there was nineteen hundred years since, or, for the matter of that, as when, nearly forty centuries ago, Abraham “sat in the tent door in the heat of the day.”

It was the human nature in Mr. Danson that made him tell Miss Heath he intended to walk through Connemara—an idea which had never entered his mind till the rector’s sister drove him to the verge of desperation by speaking with the voice of the world concerning Oona Rosterne.

He felt he could not endure to hear Chittock’s dear love gossiped about in such fashion, and that he could still less endure waiting two long months before it would be possible to make Mrs. Rosterne’s acquaintance.

Therefore he resolved to go away, and he did; clad in a serviceable suit of frieze, well shod, admirably financed, he tramped from Castlebar to Galway by zigzag routes, which enabled him to see every place of interest in the county; then he took train to Dublin, and returned to Blackstone Castle. He only remained there, however, long enough to find matters were going on as usual, and that likewise, as usual, Time was sitting on the cliff with folded wings brooding over Mr. Rosterne’s disappearance perhaps, but more possibly brooding over nothing.

Having satisfied himself on these points, he went away again, first to Dublin, where, chancing to pick up Le Fanu’s “House by the Churchyard,” he explored Chapelizod reverently and with a deep feeling of sadness, thinking all the while Chittock’s future wife ought to be a second Lilian. Then through the too little-known County Wicklow, and afterwards to beautiful Killarney. From thence he bent his vagrant steps to the Golden Mountains, and finally made his way back to Blackstone Castle, firmly convinced Ireland was the loveliest country on earth.

Nature seemed a pleasant change to this man, who had lived so much in society and been disappointed by it. Perhaps if he had lived as long with Nature she would have disappointed him also cruelly. Who can say?

When he last left Blackstone Castle, sea and land and sky lay bathed in mellow sunshine. It was the “Green Isle’s” golden season, when grain, ready for the sickle, and bound by the reaper into sheaves, was to be seen on every hillside; when the mountains looked purple, clad as they were with heather in full flower; and the Atlantic rippled in over a shell-strewn shore, quietly, as though storms and tempests had never ruffled its peace.

When he returned the whole landscape was changed. Stern mountains looked darkly away to a swelling sea trying in vain to calm itself after wild Equinoctial gales. Afar out the white sea-horses were chasing each other like living things, while on the sunken rocks nearer at hand wild billows expended their fury by dashing over them in showers of spray; black and green, crested as if with snow, they rushed to their doom, succeeding each other with the solemn regularity of an advancing army.

Above, a grey sky kept mournful watch over the scene of desolation.

“Could anything be grander?” thought Mr. Danson, as he walked along the cliffs and surveyed the mighty panorama spread below. “What a magnificent country, what a glorious land!”

He was in excellent spirits—in such spirits as would have caused him to look favourably on even a much humbler picture.

The Mustos were at Fort Cloyne, and Mr. Musto at once hastened to Blackstone Castle, and gratified the new tenant by asking him to join their house party before it broke up.

“Just a few crack shots,” he said; “men who enjoy a country like this, and never mind how long or how far they have to tramp after their game. Do come. We shall be so glad, though we have no inducement to offer beyond good sport. There are only four lady guests—two old friends of my wife, and Mrs. and Miss Rosterne. You have heard of the latter, I dare say?—Yes. Poor Chittock—such a pity! We may expect you, then, tomorrow?”

Mr. Danson said yes, saw his guest off, and then in a state of great exultation took his way along that high path which commanded so fine a prospect.

All things seemed possible to him then. He could see, he could talk to the girl Chittock loved so well. He would be his friend’s ambassador, find out where the trouble lay, and put everything that was wrong right.

As a rule, people who essay meddling in the affairs of others make great mistakes. Perhaps the mere fact of adventuring on such delicate ground proves their unfitness for the self-imposed task. But Mr. Danson knew no fear. The cause was so good, his own intentions so excellent, that success must ensue; and it was, therefore, with a light heart he sat down to dinner next evening, having on his right hand Mrs. Musto and on his left Mrs. Rosterne. Obliquely across the table he saw Miss Rosterne, who looked as though she would have been much happier anywhere else. The dinner was rather a success. People talked freely, and when the ladies left the room and the gentlemen drew closer together, Mr. Danson felt he had assisted at many far more stupid entertainments when the London season was in full swing, in the days before he determined to give up this world’s pomps and adopt the rôle of hermit.

Later on in the drawing-room, after some of the elder ladies had played and sung, a veteran colonel entreating Miss Oona, whom he seemed to know very well indeed, for one Irish ballad, “If it must be only one, my dear,” Mr. Chittock’s obstinate fair, after a few preliminary notes of introduction, began—

“Ah! ’tis all but a dream at the best;” and immediately a hush fell on everyone present, which lasted till the spell of Miss Rosterne’s voice was broken by—utter silence.

The song itself is not specially pathetic, and yet the listeners did not at first seem inclined to speak.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” at last Mrs. Musto asked Cyril Danson almost in a whisper; but that gentleman could only look an answer, because the charm of the girl’s rare voice held him dumb.

When at length he sought his room he did it with the feeling that Chittock’s infatuation was justified. Nevertheless he fell asleep while endeavouring to discover wherein the secret of Miss Rosterne’s curious fascination lay. She was not handsome or beautiful, or even strictly pretty. She had no becks and nods and wreathed smiles for the outside world; she spread no lures to attract; her singing even lacked the little artifices with which quite legitimately many a woman tries to win admiration. No; he could not tell how or why it was she touched all the hidden fountains of his heart and drew virtue from them, only he knew her voice haunted his dreams, that he heard it during the course of an exhaustive conversation with her concerning Mr. Chittock—a conversation that removed all misapprehensions, put all mistakes right!

When he awoke he could not, however, at all remember the arguments he had used, the misconceptions he had explained away. He only knew he had seen those strangely pathetic eyes uplifted to his, and heard that low rich voice assuring him, “I always loved Diarmid—always, from the time I was a little girl.”

Which was well enough as a dream. In waking life, however, Mr. Danson found at the end of seven pleasant days he had not advanced one step. With the other ladies he soon became on terms of friendly intimacy, but with Norah his progress was absolutely nil.

She did not repulse or snub him, it is true, but the masterly inactivity she displayed repelled his advances more effectually than any open antagonism could have done.

“I am afraid Miss Rosterne dislikes me,” said Mr. Chittock’s friend to Mrs. Musto on the day when his visit was to terminate.

“Do you think so?” returned the lady.

“Yes, I do—or rather I am sure she does,” he answered, “and I cannot imagine the reason, for I have always endeavoured to conciliate her.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Musto.

“Cannot you help me to solve the enigma?” he asked. “Ladies understand each other so much better than we do. I most earnestly wish to be on friendly terms with her, for poor Chittock’s sake.”

“I imagine that is where the trouble lies.”

“I beg your pardon—I fear I am very dense.”

“You are thoroughly kind. Still, if you will forgive me for saying so, you made a mistake when you took Miss Heath into your confidence.”

“Miss Heath!” Mr. Danson repeated, mystified; “when did I take her into confidence?”

“You told her the dearest wish of your heart was to see Mr. Chittock and Miss Rosterne man and wife.”

“Did I? Very possibly. I do not remember using such a phrase, but the matter has lain very close to my heart, and Miss Heath and I talked about the trouble once.”

“Precisely, and poor dear Miss Heath is a sad gossip. She does not mean to make mischief, but she is always repeating things that vex people, and I have no doubt what you said in such good faith has been told to Miss Rosterne with the inevitable additions, so that it hurt her very much.”

“I am extremely sorry. What can I do to repair my blunder?”

“Nothing much, I fear; but I should certainly refrain from speaking of Mr. Chittock’s rejected suit to anyone except myself. I except myself.” she added, with a pleasant little laugh, “because I am quite on Oona’s side. I consider she was right; everyone else believes she was wrong.”

“But why do you consider she was right, Mrs. Musto?”

“Because she did not love the man.”

“And why did she not love him?”

“That is a question I am unable to answer positively, but I think because she knew him too well, and also because he wooed her after a some what masterful fashion—took too much for granted, in fact. Till she refused his hand, not once or twice or thrice, Mr. Chittock’s opinion of himself was exactly the opinion of everyone about here—namely, that he had but to ask and have. Now, to a girl brought up in the way Norah Rosterne was, that seemed utterly intolerable. Perhaps you do not know how she was brought up, Mr. Danson?”

“I do not,” he answered humbly.

“Well, I will tell you. It seems to me a strangely pathetic story. Up to her ninth year she was just Oona Rosterne, which meant she was Oona anybody. Then Sir Thomas Glanmyre died in India, and his widow, an O’Considine, returned to Ireland and bethought her of the relative who had married Mr., or, as the people hereabouts always called him, Captain Rosterne. She came down here, took a fancy to the little girl, and adopted her. From that day, for seven years Oona lived amid luxury, saw only people moving in good society, was taught by the best masters and mistresses, and grew to be, to all intents and purposes, a child of the upper ten thousand.”

“Naturally.”

“Lady Glanmyre resided for the most part in Paris,” continued Mrs. Musto, “and only occasionally came to Ireland. It was always understood she would provide for Oona, but a short time before her death the bank in which her husband had invested his money failed, with the result that everything went except Lady Glanmyre’s pension.

“The shock killed her. She left her young relative what she could—her jewellery, plate, furniture—but after the debts were paid only a mere trifle remained, which Captain Rosterne promptly spent.

“Then Mr. Chittock appeared on the scene, and the girl would have none of him. Between her and her father there were several disagreements. Oona felt he was wanting to sell her, and Mr. Chittock’s very kindness about money estranged her more from him.

“After Mr. Rosterne’s death or disappearance, over head and ears in debt, very angry letters from Mr. Chittock, written evidently under great irritation, were found among the missing man’s papers, refusing to lend any more money, and asking why he should be expected to do so. They were disagreeable letters—letters which Mr. Rosterne ought to have burnt at once, but which he did not, and Oona saw them, and the iron entered into her very soul, so Mrs. Rosterne told me.

“I have only given you a mere sketch. You can fill in the details for yourself, and when you have done so you will understand why the way to make Miss Rosterne dislike you is to plead Mr. Chittock’s cause.”

Mr. Danson remained silent for a minute.

“Still I believe, if she could see poor Chittock now,” he began at last.

“It would make no difference whatever,” interrupted Mrs. Musto. “I spoke to her once—only once—on the subject, and gathered nothing could reconcile her to the idea of marrying him. ‘And believe me, Mrs. Musto,’ she said, ‘no one wishes less to marry me now than Mr. Chittock; we quite understand each other.’ What she meant I do not know; but I suppose even a devoted lover may weary of a hopeless pursuit. At all events, what I have told you—in strict confidence—is absolutely correct. If you want Miss Rosterne to treat you more graciously, you must try to be less Mr. Chittock’s friend.”

“I can’t be that,” said Mr. Danson.

“Ah well, then, I am afraid the case is hopeless,” answered Mrs. Musto.

But when she came to think matters over, she did not feel quite certain on that point.

Like a wise woman, however, she said nothing.

V

Finding his scheme for making Mr. Chittock happy was impracticable, Cyril Danson began to consider that a winter enlivened only by an occasional visit to Fort Cloyne and a continual prospect of the Atlantic might, to use Miss Heath’s expression, prove “monotonous,” and accordingly, following Mr. Musto’s excellent example, he wrote to a few men he knew would enjoy the wild sport, the desolate country, and the utter liberty of the life he could offer—for a time.

He was right—each and all, they accepted his invitation. At the moment they were unfortunately engaged; but the moment they had, to quote one Curled Darling’s expression, “done their time,” he might depend on receiving a wire.

“It will be very jolly. Thank you, old fellow. It is good of you, who are off the treadmill, to remember those who are less lucky. We shall like to see your bogs and climb your mountains.”

So said the Curled Darling afore mentioned, and so in effect said the others.

Then, for the first time, Mr. Danson took an exhaustive survey of Blackstone Castle, and considered its capabilities.

“I will change my quarters, and sleep in the oak room as soon as it can be got ready, Chenery,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” answered Chenery, who was that servant Mr. Danson had referred to as the only person likely to miss him. Then, after an almost imperceptible pause, “Gorey says the oak chamber is very cold indeed.”

“Possibly—but I like cold. And, Chenery, you had better have the dining-room put in order.”

“Yes, sir.” And Chenery turned, as if to commence operations forthwith.

If such were ever his intention, he must have changed his mind very speedily, for ere reaching the door he stopped to observe—

“Beg pardon, sir, but Gorey says the wind is amazing blusterous in the dining-room, which is like a barrack in the wintertime.”

“Can you remember anything else Gorey has been pleased to remark?” asked Mr. Danson.

“Well, no, sir, not at the moment, except that the library and the bedroom you occupy at present are the only two comfortable apartments in the house when stormy weather prevails, as it generally does in these parts from September to April.”

In spite of himself Mr. Danson could not help smiling, even while he said—

“You are becoming demoralized, Chenery, I am afraid. Do precisely what I have ordered, without any further reference to Gorey’s opinions.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Chenery meekly, and departed.

But for the fact that he had so peremptorily signified his determination to be master in Blackstone Castle while he rented it, Mr. Danson might within a week have returned to his former sleeping apartment.

Each room in a house, whether the house chance to be in town or country, has its own peculiar set of noises; and Mr. Danson, who had occupied as many rooms in different houses as most men, was perfectly aware of this fact. Nevertheless, all previous experience proved quite insufficient to account for the sounds appertaining to the oak chamber.

They were always varying, yet scarcely with the variation which might well belong to the same family. Such unaccountable noises he had never heard before anywhere; but then he recollected he had never previously slept on the top of a rock within sound of any ocean’s roar.

At last, unable longer to refrain from speech, he said to Gorey one morning—

“I did not know there was any right of way up those steps from the beach.”

“No more there is, sir; but maybe once in a while some poor fellow does make so free as to take them as a short cut. It was done in the old gentleman’s time now and again, and neither he nor Mr. Diarmid made any disturbance more than a shake of the head or ‘I can’t let this go on.’”

“Oh!” returned Mr. Danson, drawing a long breath. “And when all that is settled,” he went on, as if talking to himself, “what I should like to know is why anyone thinks fit to tramp up those steps in the dead of night.”

“Indeed it would be hard to tell, your honour, for the way is none too safe, even in the daytime,” Gorey made answer, though the question had not been addressed to him.

“I wonder sometimes,” observed Mr. Danson, looking speculatively straight in the man’s face, “whether you are very simple or very wise?”

“It would not be becoming in me, sir, to say,” replied the groom modestly, “though there have been some thought I knew as much about horses as any man in the county. Colonel Jerome, that took Blackstone Castle after the master went away, was that well pleased with my handling of his mare -who had, saving your presence, a devil of a temper—he wanted me to go with him to Worcestershire, and offered me good wages too.”

“Why did you not take his offer, then?” asked Mr. Danson.

“I can give you no better reason, sir, than that I thought I would rather stay here.”

“Which, I suppose, was reason enough for you?”

“It was, your honour, and that’s why I didn’t go.”

There ensued a short pause, during the continuance of which Mr. Danson considered the position, and Mr. Chittock’s foster-brother stood at ease.

“Gorey,” began his latest employer at length.

“Yes, sir!”

“I wish very much you would answer me one question straightforwardly—if you can?”

“You may depend I’ll do my uttermost, your honour,” answered the man, unconscious, apparently, of the slur cast on his veracity.

“Then tell me who you suppose would wish to come up those steps after dark, to say nothing of midnight.”

“If I was never to speak another word, I don’t know, sir. At this time of the year there is hardly a man, unless among the gentry, out of his bed after nine o’clock, unless it might be a constable or a gauger.”

“Why, there’s no smuggling here?”

“Not this many a year; but then there would be, the gaugers say, if it wasn’t for them.”

“And do you mean to tell me any exciseman would risk his neck up those steps in such pitch-dark nights as we have been treated to of late?”

“Indeed, it is hard to say where they wouldn’t go, for they are just like cats, and have as many lives. You see, sir, it is not so much smuggling they are keen on now as illicit stills. They got up a story once about there being a still in the dungeons of the old castle.”

“And was there?”

“They never found one, or any dungeons either. All the same, everybody round about these parts believes the ruins are like a rabbit warren, and just burrowed with secret passages.”

“And what is your notion, Gorey?”

“I have none, sir; strange things were done in the old times, Mr. Diarmid always did say. But I know I’ve heard old people sit and tell a parcel of nonsense over the fire till young girls and boys, for that matter, were afraid to turn their heads for fear of what might be standing behind them.”

“But not merely do I hear the sounds mentioned on the steps, but there are the strangest noises in the dining-room.”

“It is all according to the wind, sir, as I made bold to tell Chenery. The east side of Blackstone Castle isn’t fit to live in the whole winter through. Colonel Jerome said he’d as soon try to sleep on the seashore; and indeed, Mr. Danson, if you’d take the lower path any evening after dusk, when the wind sets from the north-east, not even blowing a gale, but just a moderate breeze, you would wonder what could be going on out in the Atlantic. My old grandmother used to say it was the dead—drowned people, I mean—talking to each other, and making ready for the company the coming storm would send them. I’ll take your honour down any night you like, and you can hear for yourself.”

“Thank you; I hear quite enough above,” returned Mr. Danson, coldly. And he went away feeling very doubtful concerning Mr. Daniel Gorey’s strict adherence to truth.

When once a man gives imagination the rein, whether in the matter of love, hope, suspicion, jealousy, or any other master passion, it would be difficult to say where that artful sprite will take him. He may only pause to look at a glorious sunset, and behold, before the pomp of gold and crimson is chased away by clouds of darkness, fancy will have taken him round the world, and shown him such marvels as in his sober moments he never could have so much as thought of.

It was thus with Mr. Danson; from the moment when he saw, or believed he saw, that flicker in Gorey’s expression he began to mistrust the man, and every word he spoke subsequently seemed confirmation that the truth was not in him.

His answers to questions were always shifty, Mr. Danson considered, and hitherto that gentleman, could not understand the reason. Now a light broke upon him–Gorey was engaged in some unlawful enterprise. Gorey wished to keep Blackstone Castle empty. The presence of any stranger interfered with his illegal operations. Possibly the excise officers were not far wrong when they suspected the existence of an illicit still on the premises, and who would be better able to baffle all search for it than a man who had known from childhood the house, the ruins, the caves, the coast, and every inch of the country? Imagination had already taken Mr. Danson on a wild chase, but it was inevitable but that fancy should lead him still further. Evidently, Gorey knew something about Captain Rosterne’s disappearance. What more likely than that the unfortunate inspector had come across the potheen manufacturers and been done to death lest his revelations should stop their trade?

From all he, Mr. Danson, had heard, Captain Rosterne was a man who would have died sooner than make terms with such people, and very probably—nay, very certainly—Gorey knew the whole of the circumstances.

So far, Mr. Chittock’s tenant did not suppose that Gorey assisted at Captain Rosterne’s murder, or was even present at it, but who could tell the length to which imagination might yet take him? Once a man lets that jade get the bit between her teeth, he might as well be mounted on the Phoul-a-Phooka.

Three mornings later, Gorey asked his employer if he could “spare a minute,” and Mr. Danson reluctantly intimating it might be possible for him to do so, the groom led him to the top of that rude flight of steps which gave access to the beach.

“I know now,” said Gorey, “what it was your honour heard. It was that”—and he pointed to an upright piece of iron, to which was fitted a sort of broken wheel, which revolved when caught by the wind, and gave forth a sound as if of many feet hurrying up a stone staircase.

“D’ye hear, sir? Wait a minute, and the wind’ll be on it again.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Danson, thereby freezing the glow of Gorey’s enthusiasm. “And how did that invention come there?”

“No man now living could tell, I am thinking,” was the reply. “It’s bedded in the solid rock, and that is all time has left of it, but I said to myself I’ll never rest till I find out the English for those steps, for I couldn’t make head nor tail of the constant running up and down you said you heard.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Danson, again giving the iron wheel, which would have served well to frighten birds, a careless touch with his stick, when clatter, clatter, clatter, clang it went as if a dozen men in hobnailed boots were running post-haste over the stones.

“Bring round the dog-cart in half an hour; I shall want you to go with me to Letterpass,” he said, in that peremptory-courteous, pleasant English way Gorey had learnt to know and dread.

It was disappointing, the groom felt; but, then, he knew Mr. Danson had long lost confidence in him.

And he was quite right. Since the hour when he, in the dazzling sunlight, first fancied Gorey’s face changed for an instant, the Englishman had not felt at ease concerning Mr. Chittock’s foster-brother.

To use a lovely phrase, he “misdoubted” him, which involves a hard ordeal for the misdoubted man or woman to pass through.

The conclusion Mr. Danson had come to was this: “When first one sees the Irish they seem quite open and above board; they charm by their apparent frankness, and are cheerful to a fault, if cheerfulness ever can be called a fault. As day after day passes, however, the reverse of the shield presents itself, and they show themselves in their true colours—shifty, plausible, false, unreliable, but pleasant—to a certain point,” he mentally finished, “though there is no more reliance to be placed on them than in their climate.”

Poor climate! Poor Ireland! Poor Irish! Poor Gorey!

And yet Mr. Danson’s feelings were natural enough. He had come to Ireland carrying his heart in his hand, and that hand open. He had come prepared to like, prepared to give, wishful to make those he came in contact with happy, desirous most of all to remove a load of care from Mr. Chittock; and of the two persons he thought could best have helped him to compass the last wish, one coldly thwarted his endeavours, while the other evaded his most simple question.

Often he marvelled why he remained amid such unsatisfactory surroundings. But Mrs. Musto did not wonder; she knew!

There is no truer saying than that “it never rains but it pours,” and accordingly the post-bag one morning rained such a number of coming guests that Mr. Danson for the moment felt appalled.

Not merely did the three men he had invited herald their early arrival, but two out of the number proposed to bring a friend with him.

“Adson wants to see your cell so awfully,” said one; “may I bring him?” “Mayford, who is the best fellow on earth, has never been in Ireland; can you take him in? If not, wire at once.”

Mr. Danson telegraphed that he would be glad to see them all, and then set Chenery to work to make things ready for the expected guests. Immediately the whole economy of Blackstone Castle underwent a change—fires blazed in hitherto unoccupied apartments, the housemaid looked up her stores of linen, and asked for assistance. The cook told Chenery she must have more pots and pans, and a woman in to help. Chenery himself had to report an absence of sufficient glass and crockery ware. Gorey spent his time scouring the country in order to bespeak provisions and “making ready” for the moment when he should receive orders to “meet the train” at Letterpass, while to Mr. Danson the bustle and excitement proved delightful after nearly six months’ absence from the hurly-burly, and diverted his attention completely from the noise of mysterious footsteps and the strange wailing sounds that rendered the dining-room well-nigh uninhabitable.

The dining-room at that time really was in the possession of Chenery, who served his master’s meals in the library, and was making many changes which cost little more than a good deal of personal trouble, in the apartments devoted to the reception of company.

Chenery was in his element. His master gave him carte blanche, and he had men up from the village to shake, and clean, and hammer, and tack, as well as arrange goods ordered down from Dublin; and, in short, as the cook joyously expressed herself, “It is like the good old times come again, God bless them!” while Gorey said, though not audibly, “He’ll have something now to take his mind off Captain Rosterne and the din there is about the place sometimes. Lord send these gentlemen may entice him back with them to where he came from!”

Charlie Langley, the curled darling, dreaded by fashionable mothers, beloved of daughters, a sad, unscrupulous detrimental who danced like an angel and was a very bad boy without a bit of harm in him, was the first to arrive at Blackstone Castle.

He appeared one afternoon carrying a modest portmanteau, which, he explained, had, with himself, been “tooled over from Letterpass by a delightful old Presbyterian minister who might have drawn up the Westminster Confession of Faith. He travelled in the compartment with me from Rathstewart, and we got into friendly relations immediately. I told him where I was going, and he told me the distance.

“‘Which I must tramp, I suppose?’ I said, ‘for Mr. Danson doesn’t know I am coming by this train.’

“‘You needn’t do that,’ replied Martin Luther, ‘for if you don’t object to an old-fashioned gig, I can give you a lift.’

“I told him if there were one conveyance I loved more than another it was a gig of the pre-Adamite build; and then he said he liked young people with no nonsense about them, and that he knew you very well.”

“I am afraid I have not the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance,” interposed Mr. Danson.

“By sight, by sight, my arrogant friend,” exclaimed Mr. Langley. “He lives at Cloyne Vale, and has seen you riding over to Fort Cloyne; pray, observe how pat I have your heathenish names already. My divine proceeded to say you were a fine-looking man; ‘would make three of you,’ he remarked so disparagingly that I felt constrained to answer, ‘I know I am very small, but indeed I am very good.’

“He shook his head as if he did not believe my assurance, but only looked at me as a father might at a naughty child, more in sorrow than in anger, and we parted on the best terms. I said I would do myself the honour of calling on him, and I want you to ask him up here.”

“Very well,” agreed Mr. Danson; “only, Langley, there is one warning I must give you—the Irish do not like chaff.”

“I don’t know about chaff,” returned Mr. Langley, gaily, “but they will like me.”

VI

The fulfilment justified Mr. Langley’s prediction. Before the week was out he had conquered the village. No one could be said to have a chance beside him. All the children, and they were many; all the dogs, likewise numerous; all the beggars, ditto, adored the lively young Englishman. Old women rose up and called him blessed. Men would have risked breaking their necks at his bidding. He knew everyone—the rector and the baker, the publican and the sinner, the doctor and his patient. Miss Heath was his sworn ally. Mr. Danson discovered him on one knee holding her worsted while she wound. Mr. and Mrs. Musto and the little Mustos were enchanted with the new-comer, while he walked in and out of Mrs. Rosterne’s cottage as though an inmate of the house, and Miss Rosterne, whom he dubbed the “blessed damosel,” was actually seen to laugh at one of what Mr. Danson in his inmost heart called Langley’s senseless sallies.

It was then a sword pierced Mr. Danson’s soul; then for the first time he asked himself a very serious question; then he began to understand what his feelings had always been towards the girl who held him at such a distance! “And who now encourages that mountebank?” he reflected most unjustly, for Miss Rosterne did not encourage, only laughed, and that but once, as she might at the gambols of a frolicsome child. Then her face grew grave again as was its wont.

How tired Mr. Danson soon felt of his visitors it would be difficult to tell. Their talk, their jokes, their liveliness, jarred upon him like merriment in church. What a roistering set they were to bring to a hermit’s cell! How could he ever return to a world of which they were rather favourable representatives?

For they all could but be considered kindly, honourable men, who were doing nothing wrong except enjoying themselves thoroughly; who would have been quite as ready to condole with the sorrowful as they were to rejoice in their own youth.

“Jolly companions every one,” they tramped across bogs and over heather; they walked long miles; they never grumbled if rain swept down upon their devoted heads; they were charmed with the scenery, delighted with the people; vowed they would ask nothing better than to spend years in Blackstone Castle, and voted their host by acclamation the best fellow living!

They sat up late and rose early; walked and rode when the weather proved propitious; lounged, chatted, and played billiards when it was wet; after dinner they amused themselves with cards, smoked cigars, and drank punch, which the doctor brewed scientifically; they made themselves as contented and happy as children; they declared they would never have such a good time again; and who could say they were mistaken? Christmas—a green Christmas—came and passed; and then one night the storm-fiends, which had been laid to rest for a long time, were let loose in their power and might. Through all the hours of darkness there raged a furious gale from the north-east, and when morning came Mr. Danson saw “what he had never seen.”

“The wild waves tossing their foam to the stormy sky”—earth and heaven seeming to meet, giant billows madly chasing each other and rushing in-shore as if steadily purposed to sweep over and destroy the land.

He stood looking out on the magnificent spectacle in absorbed admiration till he suddenly remembered this was the wind which, according to Gorey, rendered the dining-room as well as his own sleeping apartment unfit for human habitation. Well, he knew what the night had been to him, and he regretted not having told Chenery to lay breakfast in the library.

“Danson,” shouted Mr. Langley up the wide staircase as soon as his host appeared, “have you a cell underneath the dining-room where you keep all the winds that blow! I never heard such a din. Do make haste; the noise is glorious—better by far than anything I ever heard at sea. Just listen;” and he held his friend on the threshold while what one of the others called “an infernal row” broke on his ears and fairly appalled him.

“No one could stand this,” Mr. Danson said at last; “let us go into the library.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t miss the fun for anything,” declared Mr. Langley; “all the powers of hell seem to be warring against us. Talk of the Swine’s Gun! Not to be compared with the concerted music at Blackstone Castle!”

“But what in the name of everything wonderful is it?” asked Mr. Tankerton.

“The cry of the wind,” answered Mr. Danson, feebly.

“Have you ever heard anything like this before?”

“No, but Gorey warned me this room was unfit for occupation during the winter.”

“I am going to occupy it, for one,” said Mr. Langley, seating himself at the table. “Here, who will have toast?”

“I will have potato cake—a good thing, and one I shall probably never taste again,” answered Mr. Adson.

“The strangest part of the affair to me is that, spite of the saturnalia somebody is holding, the house still stands. It does not even rock,” contributed Mr. Mayford to the conversation.

“I do not profess to understand or explain the noises about Blackstone Castle,” said Mr. Danson, “They seem to have been here before I came.”

“After breakfast I shall make it my business to understand them,” declared Mr. Langley, attacking a huge sirloin.

“Gorey knows more about Blackstone than anyone else,” remarked Mr. Danson, not without a feeling of grim satisfaction at the idea of pitting the wits of his guest and his groom against each other.

“Then Gorey shall share his knowledge with me,” was the confident reply.

Mr. Danson went to the sideboard and helped himself to fried cod.

The luncheon hour arrived and found Mr. Langley comparatively silent. Yes, he had talked to Gorey. “Yes,” in answer to pressing questions, Gorey had personally conducted him to that unsafe, rocky staircase leading to the beach, where his hat was blown off instantly, and he had to hold his hair tight lest that should follow also.

Gorey seemed favourably impressed with the devil’s own triangles, which were making the most awful clatter he, the Curled Darling, ever heard. Gorey had offered to take him that evening, after dark, to a place where he would be able to hear quite distinctly the dead talking to the dead, but Mr. Langley had refused the charming invitation.

He did not care for great sensations. He told Gorey, he said, he was young and easily frightened, and liked his bed; so if Gorey of his kindness, instead of dragging him miles along the seashore, would come in and tuck him up and sing him to sleep, and remain beside him during the night lest he should wake up and be terrified at finding himself “all his lone”—a delightful Hibernian phrase—he would feel much more grateful than if taken to the grandest ghost-party ever given by the Atlantic.

“Gorey tells me he knows a lot of ballads,” finished Mr. Langley, “so I intend to make arrangements for a musical evening when next Danson and his rough team are invited to Fort Cloyne.”

“Of which I will give you due notice, and hope you may enjoy your sing-song,” said Mr. Danson.

“I only wish the blessed damosel would come up and assist,” remarked Mr. Langley.

“I should love to hear her rare voice mingling with Gorey’s in ‘Fight on, ye brave heroes, fight on,’” said Munro. “I can just fancy how she would give that line.”

“Miss Rosterne has endured a great trial, and I think we ought to respect her sorrow,” remarked Mr. Danson, severely.

“I respect Miss Rosterne. She seems to me the pluckiest girl I ever met,” answered Mr. Langley. “But concerning her ‘trial’ I am not quite so sure. At one coup it rid her of an unwelcome lover and a father who, if all accounts be true, was the most undesirable of ‘stern parients.’” No one replied. Mr. Danson did not care to do so, and the other men were not sufficiently interested.

“One thing I do like about Gorey,” resumed Mr. Langley, “is that he has the most loyal regard for my ‘dear damosel.’ He says if she and the master, meaning Mr. Chittock, could have ‘sorted matters, it would have been the making of Blackstone Castle and all these parts.”

“Very likely,” assented Mr. Danson. “Judging from appearances, Blackstone Castle as well as poor Chittock want someone badly to ‘make them.’”

“The whole business seems to me so unaccountable!” observed Mr. Tankerton. “I always thought any girl would marry any man if only he were rich enough.”

Mr. Danson winced, but said nothing. Mr. Tankerton remembered and stopped—too late.

Mr. Langley hummed, “I am a loyal subject, brave as any in this nation,” and remarked calmly, “Gorey has certainly a great repertory.”

VII

The storm had sobbed itself to rest. Worn out, the Atlantic lay almost calm under a cold winter sky; the dead were quiet in their ocean graves, or at least no sound of their terrible discourse broke the evening stillness; while Peace seemed for a time at least to have taken up her abode among the headlands of that iron-bound coast.

“But this weather is a delusion,” said the doctor, who, at the earnest desire of Mr. Charles Langley, had, with the priest and Mr. Melsham, been invited to relieve the monotony of Blackstone Castle, and was in the act as he spoke of mixing that famous brew which was known and esteemed within a circuit of fifteen miles—“a complete delusion; it is not going to last. I saw three gulls today on the Cronan Bog, and we know what that means. Eh, Father John?”

“It means mischief,” answered the other. “Are you sure they were gulls?”

“Quite; I was close to them, and I thought to myself, ‘There is a fine storm brewing up at the North Pole, and it’ll be here before Mr. Langley bids us good-bye.’”

“How jolly!” exclaimed that gentleman.

“You would not think it jolly if you were out on the Atlantic with only a plank between you and eternity,” observed the priest, gravely.

“Pooh!” was the reply; “what is between us and eternity sitting in this room? After all, by land or by water, it is but a step from the world we know to the world we don’t know.”

“It is a very serious one, my young friend.”

Mr. Langley did not answer, and as no other person spoke for a few seconds, there ensued a brief silence, which was at last broken by the irrepressible Charlie.

“I am sorely vexed that duty calls,” he began. “I don’t remember ever being so sorry to leave a place in my life. When I am back in London I shall be always thinking of this grim old spot—the lonely mountains, the stretch of sad seashore, and the ‘wild waves raging high.’ And one was able to enjoy it in peace and comfort,” he added, throwing up his arms and laying his head on his hands, clasped lazily behind, “because there were no women to spoil the fun.”

“Hear him!” exclaimed Mr. Tankerton. “Why, the fellow is never happy unless he is making love to half a dozen girls.”

“I don’t like the sport, though—I don’t, upon my word. When a man gets to my age—there is nothing to laugh at,” he added, as his friends grinned in mockery—“when a man gets to my age he begins to tire of all that sort of thing. Wherever I went since the 1st August last there were women, women, women—women, old and young, plain and pretty, women who rode, women who drove, shot, fished, stalked, swam, handled an oar, danced, dressed, spouted on platforms—and never left one a moment in peace. I don’t know what the world is coming to—petticoats here, petticoats there, petticoats everywhere. Enough to make a man go hang himself!”

The last word was barely spoken before there echoed through the room a long, wailing sigh—a sigh as if someone’s suffering heart were being literally rent in twain.

“Heaven preserve us!” said the priest.

“What the ——— is that!” exclaimed the doctor, with such an excess of profane expression that Father John crossed himself, the while Mr. Melsham sprang to his feet—an example followed, indeed, by every person present.

“Was anyone in the room trying to play a bad practical joke?” asked Mr. Adson, sternly. “Good Lord! the house must be coming down,” he suddenly added, as a tremendous crash, followed by the sound of bitter gasping sobs, struck consternation into all present.

Mr. Langley was the first to recover his composure.

“Faith, Danson,” he said, “all the winds of heaven were bad enough, but this is worse. There must be something very wrong somewhere, and you ought to see about it.”

“Gorey warned me this room was uninhabitable during the winter,” said Mr. Danson, trying to speak calmly, though a terrible idea had come into his mind—viz. that Captain Rosterne still lived, and was dragging out a miserable existence in some dungeon known only to his captors.

It was an absurd idea—one he would have felt ashamed to mention. Yet the mystery of the inspector’s disappearance, the crumbling ruins of the old castle, the utter desolation of the new building, the unearthly sounds, the weird stories he had listened to concerning the unquiet dead, had prepared his mind to receive any impression, no matter how wild and impossible.

“It must have grown uninhabitable very lately, then,” said the doctor, in answer to Mr. Danson’s remark, “for many a pleasant evening I have spent here, both in storm and shine, and never heard a sound except of the wind or the rain beating against the glass.”

“If I had not gone into the cellars and found them as quiet as family vaults I’d have sworn there must be one beneath this room, where Mr. Danson kept a few Atlantic tempests for his own especial benefit,” remarked Mr. Langley. “Just hark! Can Gorey’s drowned have come on shore to hold their revel?”

The party had not resumed their chairs, and stood looking stupidly at each other and into the dark corners which the fire and lamplight failed to penetrate.

“I think there is something very suspicious about all this,” said Mr. Melsham, speaking for the first time.

The priest’s lips moved, though no word was audible. The doctor’s glance wandered along the east wall with a curious intentness.

“I wonder—” he began at last.

“What do you wonder?” asked Mr. Melsham.

“Well, there used to be a door behind where that sideboard now stands. It has been papered over, and I was wondering—but that is all nonsense. Old Mr. Chittock was in the habit of opening it often enough, and I never heard an uncanny sound.”

“Where did the door lead to?”

“To the island of Madeira—in other words, to a small cellar where the old gentleman kept some marvellous wine he produced on special occasions only.”

“We will find that door,” said Mr. Langley. “Tankerton, Adson, Mayford, bear a hand. Here you are,” he cried, tapping the wall, from which a heavy sideboard had been dragged. “Has anybody a knife?” And, one being forthcoming, in a trice the canvas over which the paper had been hung was cut away, and some light boarding stood revealed.

“That covers the door,” said the doctor, oracularly.

“We will soon get to that,” declared Mr. Melsham, ripping off a length of the match-boarding.

“There it is, right enough. We must have the rest of this woodwork down, though.”

“I was here for a month when a lad,” observed Mr. Danson, puzzled, “but I never remember noticing that door.”

“A screen always stood in front of it,” said the doctor; “besides, you were not a wine-bibber in those days, I suppose, and if you had been, Mr. Chittock would scarcely have produced his old Madeira for a boy’s benefit.”

“Here we are, then,” interrupted Mr. Langley, “face to face with a locked door, and a deuce of a wind blowing through the keyhole. How it moans, like a lost soul in torment! Who keeps the key?”

“Gorey, I conclude. Let us have him in.”

And Gorey accordingly was summoned.

As he saluted the company, his eye caught the gaping rent in the paper, and his attitude instantly stiffened.

“Where is the key of that door, Gorey!” asked Mr. Danson.

“I never had it, sir.”

“Fetch an axe, then.”

“What for, your honour—if I may make so free?”

“To get into the cellar beyond.”

“Begging your pardon, I can’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am Mr. Chittock’s servant before I am yours, and I dursn’t break any lock in this house without his authority.”

“There is something in that,” muttered Mr. Melsham.

“Of course, if you take that line, Gorey, there is nothing more to be said,” returned Mr. Danson.

“But I am sure Mr. Chittock would not object,” urged Mr. Langley. “Now, seriously, Gorey, do you believe he would wish any gentlemen to sit over a cauldron bubbling such infernal noises as we have been listening to for the last half-hour?”

“I do not suppose he would, sir; but, all the same, there are plenty of other rooms in the house, and it is not likely he would be best pleased to see his property wrecked this way. If Mr. Danson will get my master’s leave, I’ll try to knock down the castle, if that is all.”

“You need say no more; you can go,” remarked Mr. Danson, coldly.

“Might I speak one word, sir, first?” pleaded the man. “It doesn’t take long for a letter to travel from here to London, and maybe you’d be glad afterwards to think you hadn’t destroyed the place.”

“You had better leave the room,” repeated Mr. Danson, more than ever determined not to be thwarted, and Gorey reluctantly departed.

What did Mr. Chittock’s friend expect?

If the truth must be told, he had been straining his ears to catch a cry for help, a word of thankfulness, passionate entreaties for release, and instead there came at intervals only that strange sobbing, that pathetic, long-drawn sigh.

“It is just the wind that’s rising,” said the doctor, “but where it comes from is beyond me. The house was as tight as a drum in the old days.”

“What are we going to do now?” asked Mr. Danson, though indeed he knew perfectly what he meant to do. “What should you advise, Mr. Melsham?”

“I can scarcely advise,” was the reply. “The way that fellow put the matter seems to me right enough. You are not the owner of this house, and it is a risky thing to burst open any place the rightful possessor has locked up. There may be wine in that cellar, or whisky, or—or anything, and indeed I think if I were in your place—”

“You’d see the matter through,” finished Mr. Langley.

“No, nothing of the sort. I should communicate with Mr. Chittock.”

“Well, it is of no use writing till tomorrow, so meantime I vote we have some punch,” cried the young misogamist. “Let me carry the flowing bowl, Danson; the doctor’s brew will taste better in the library. Follow, gentlemen all, please. We are going to make a night of it.”

Despite this assurance, however, the village guests were walking sedately home when the church clock struck eleven, and gravely opining something had given way in the cellar which ought to be seen to. But it could only be considered right and proper in the first instance to communicate with Mr. Chittock, who would probably come over.

“It is a deuced awkward thing to tamper with locks and bolts,” declared Mr. Melsham. “No, it would not have done to break in that door. Put it to yourself, Father John.”

“I should not stand anything in my house being meddled with,” declared that worthy.

“And I am sure you wouldn’t, doctor?”

“No. All the same, I’d like to see the inside of that old cellar. It is built with slabs, which formed part of the original castle, and which look on the outside just like rough pieces of rock flung together anyhow.”

“I suppose there is some foundation for that legend about a secret passage?” said Mr. Melsham, tentatively.

“There may be. Listen to the ‘sea’s trouble,’ as the poor people about here call it, which always seems to me the saddest, most impressive sound on earth,” and the doctor stood still while he spoke. “It is like a deep grief which no words could tell; a lost soul might make such a lament.”

“Well I know it,” capped the priest. “Many a night when I have been coming home from some far-away cabin where my help was needed I have wondered what sore trouble the great deep was trying to express, for hers is an awful wail!”

“Let us get on,” said Mr. Melsham impatiently, “and leave the ocean to manage its own affairs. What a chilly night!”

Whether Mr. Danson found the night chilly or not has never been recorded. One thing only is certain—it seemed very long.

Disturbed by doubt, distracted by conjecture, he sought rest and did not find it. When utterly exhausted he fell into an uneasy slumber, it was but to go over all the old weary ground again.

Ceaselessly Mr. Chittock, Captain Rosterne, Gorey, and Blackstone Castle, with its mysterious noises and various unknown passages, flitted across the field of his dream-seeing eyes.

The real and the imaginary mingled together in such awful fashion that he felt glad when the first faint streak of dawn declared that the time of dreams was over, and the period for action close at hand.

More than once during the passage of an apparently endless night he had, moved by some impulse he could not analyse, risen and bent his steps to that room which, he felt assured, held the key to his perplexity.

Well, if it did contain anything in the shape of a mystery, ere many hours passed the doubts which had taken his mind captive would be either justified or laid to rest.

After the departure of Doctor Gage and his friends, it had been decided at a council composed of the Blackstone Castle house-party at all hazards to force an entrance into what Mr. Langley styled the “mysterious cave.” “And I will go down to the village quite early tomorrow morning,” proceeded that young gentleman, “and get a couple of stalwart fellows, armed with picks and crowbars,” which promise he fulfilled so admirably that even before Mr. Danson left his sleeping apartment he heard sounds in the dining-room betokening preparations were being made for the siege.

On the landing he came face to face with Gorey, who looked as if he had not slept for a month.

“I beg pardon, sir, for making so free to ask,” began the groom, “but is it true you are going to batter in the cellar door without writing to Mr. Chittock?”

“Quite true,” answered Mr. Danson.

“I suppose, then, it is no use my saying a word more?”

“Of no use whatever, unless you give me some good reason for staying my hand. What is the secret you are trying to keep, Gorey?”

“What secret could there be, your honour?”

“That is precisely what I want to know.”

“If you were away on a journey, sir, you would not be best pleased to find when you came home we had picked the lock of your dressing-box.”

“I will account to Mr. Chittock for my present action, but not to anyone else,” replied Mr. Chittock’s friend, passing Gorey with a gesture of dismissal.

“I hope you’ll never rue this morning’s work, sir,” said Gorey, in a voice which struck Mr. Danson unpleasantly even while he replied—

“I must take my chance of that.”

“What am I to do? what am I to do at all?” muttered the groom, as he turned despairingly to leave.

Mr. Danson could not catch the words, but he heard the pitiful sorrow in their tone, and saw the blank hopelessness written on the man’s face.

“Gorey,” he said, retracing his steps so as to speak without being overheard.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there any place you would like to go—never mind where—but should you like to go?”

“What for would I want to go away from Blackstone Castle?”

“You alone can tell that. Understand, however, if you do, I will give you ten pounds. That would take you a long distance.”

“It would, and thank you kindly; but I have no conceit to leave Blackstone Castle. There is only one thing,” he added, “that your honour could do for me this morning, and that is, send word to my master about what you have in your mind.”

“Unless you give me some better reason than I have yet heard I need not trouble your master.”

For a moment Gorey hesitated—then, “I can’t do that, sir,” he said.

“Very well;” and Mr. Danson walked into the dining-room and closed the door.

Already the men had turned back the carpet prior to commencing operations.

“It will be a tough job,” remarked Mr. Langley. “Hillo! where is Gorey off to in such a hurry?”

Mr. Danson turned to one of the windows in time to see Mr. Chittock’s foster-brother running down the castle slope as fast as his legs would take him.

“He has gone,” thought the Englishman, relieved.

But Gorey had not gone far. Ere he reached the village he slackened his speed, and walked sedately enough up to the door of Mrs. Rosterne’s cottage, where he asked if he could see Miss Oona for a minute, and then, when she came into the narrow hall, if he could speak a word with her alone.

“Certainly,” said the girl, taking him into a little drawing-room not much larger than a band-box.

“Are you in trouble Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

“Yes, miss, in sore trouble, and I want you to write a line of a telegraphed message for me.”

“Of course,” producing a slip of paper and a pencil. “What am I to say?”

“It is for Mr. Chittock, miss.”

“Oh! And what am I to write?”

“Mr. Danson is breaking open the door that was papered up in the dining-room—the door leading into the old cellar.”

Gorey stopped. Miss Rosterne was looking at him with a sort of questioning horror—not writing, but resting her elbows on the table and holding the pencil between her fingers.

“For the Lord’s sake, put down what I tell you,” gasped Gorey.

She did not answer. She sat like one deaf, slowly twirling the pencil round and round, round and round.

“You never were hard, Miss Oona. Write, and God’ll reward you. It’s a man’s life,” he added hoarsely.

Still she did not speak or move, save to twirl that pencil slowly, slowly round.

“I thought you’d have done it; I never deemed you would deny me; but I can’t be wasting my time here,” he went on in an access of passionate disappointment. “I’ll go to the Church minister or the doctor. I’ll find somebody that’ll do that much for me;” and he was rushing out of the room, when the girl said—

“Stop, Dan, I will do what you ask. It was not that—no, it was not that.”

“I spoke too sudden, but there’s no time to spare,” Gorey was beginning, with a quick revulsion of feeling, when she made a sign for him to remain silent, while she wrote rapidly without waiting for any dictation.

“Will this do?” she asked, when she had finished reading the message aloud.

“Yes.”

“Then go back to the castle and I will send the telegram from Terrig. Leave all to me. I promise you,” she finished, seeing his hesitation.

And Gorey went out and made his way back to Blackstone by various lonely paths, crying like a child.

Nothing had happened during his absence. When he returned the lock was still intact, Chenery told him, and the hinges had not given. Sitting on some trusses of straw, he trembled in his stable, as even there he heard the thud of the pickaxe, the grind of the crowbar. A mist lay over the Atlantic. The morning was warm and lowering, the gulls were flying inland, and the ocean’s lament sounded mournful as some wild death keen; but Gorey did not see shore or sea or sky, or aught save the interior of that vault, which, during the passage of the last few years, he had often longed to enter.

Suddenly there came one tremendous crash, and then silence. He knew what had happened, and instinctively rose to his feet, placing a hand on one of the stalls to steady himself.

“Why, Gorey, I thought you were out,” cried Mr. Langley, jubilantly rushing in. “We are through, and I have come for the stable lantern.”

“I will bring it in, your honour,” answered the man in a dull, slow voice.

“Come along, then. Never mind stopping to light it; we can do that ourselves.”

Like one walking in some horrible nightmare, Gorey followed the lively young fellow across the yard, through the back passages, into the front hall and the dining-room beyond, where they were met by a rush of strangely chill air, and a sound as of the wash and sob of many waters against the rocks.

In a moment Mr. Langley had taken the lantern out of his hand, lighted it, and disappeared through the gaping doorway into the cavernous darkness beyond.

Every man present followed him save Gorey, who stood by the threshold waiting.

There was a noise as if of the crunching of glass underfoot, then ensued a pause while one stooped apparently to pick up something.

“Why, it is a spoon,” said Mr. Tankerton, which remark caused a laugh that awoke every unearthly echo in the place.

Still, with Mr. Langley as leader, the search-party went forward, squeezing into a passage beyond the cellar, the door opening into which stood ajar.

No one spoke. The darkness and the mystery seemed to daunt even Mr. Langley. Gorey strained his ears to listen. All at once a voice said, “What is this?” then, “My God!”

The long strain was over. The worst had come. Sight and hearing deserted Gorey, and for the first time in his life he fell back in a dead faint.

When he came to himself he was lying on a sofa in the dining-room, where many people were standing around.

Mr. Langley chafed his left hand, while Dr. Burke felt his right pulse, and as from a great distance came the sound of Mr. Melsham’s voice speaking earnestly to Mr. Danson.

“Quiet, gentlemen, if you please,” said the doctor. “He is regaining consciousness.”

Immediately a dead silence ensued, a silence broken at last by Gorey, who, struggling to a sitting position, exclaimed—

“I done it. Take me where you please.”

•    •    •    •

About the time he made this statement a gentleman resident in London sat in a pleasant room overlooking Holland. Park busily engaged in finishing his correspondence for the day.

For more than an hour he wrote on steadily, but at length he laid down his pen, closed and sealed the last envelope, then placed that letter with others in a conspicuous position. He seemed weary. A glass of water stood beside him. Into this he poured a few drops of something which diffused a strange yet not unpleasant odour through the room, and immediately drained the tumbler. After doing so he laid his head back and died. The man was Diarmid Chittock, and the liquid poison.

CONCLUSION

Nearly twenty years have come and gone since that grey dull morning on which the house-party at Blackstone Castle passed gaily into the mysterious darkness of Madeira Island to find a corpse. Yet the story of Mr. Chittock’s crime, and of his foster brother’s loyal attempt to take the burden and the punishment on his own shoulders, remains fresh in the memory of Lisnabeg as the green grass growing on Captain Rosterne’s grave.

Mr. Chittock’s heir-at-law now resides at the castle. He has blocked up the passage leading from the caves to the cellar. He and his friends have drank all the old Madeira. There are boys and girls in the familiar rooms, young men and maidens tread the cliffs and uneven steps, but the tale of their relative’s sin and sorrow means nothing to them save that it gave to their father a property he might never otherwise have owned. On a fair estate in Hampshire Cyril Danson lives the quiet, happy life of an English country gentleman.

Not alone, however. After long and patient wooing he won for his wife the girl who “walked three miles Irish out, and three in, five days a week, and she an O’Considine,” and is the angel of that fair home.

Gorey says there “never was her like for goodness,” and declares the master is not far behind. Yet, though he is happy enough and well-to-do, his heart clings with fond faithfulness to the memory of that poor sinner who received his death-warrant when the telegram carried by Norah Rosterne to Terrig reached its destination.

And yet she had hoped to save him—she did all she could to save him!

The Haunted House
at Latchford

(FAIRY WATER)

(1872)

I

MR. H. STAFFORD TREVOR,
BARRISTER-AT-LAW,
INTRODUCED BY HIMSELF

No one who has met me in society will be in the least degree astonished when he, or haply she, hears I have at length decided to appear before the British, American, Foreign, and Colonial public, as a writer of tales.

I am one of those people concerning whom partial friends remark: “He can do anything he likes.”

Considering the number of people about whom the same observation is made, it is painful to reflect how few must like to do anything.

It is late in life, no doubt, for me to take to a new profession, but having been most courteously asked to contribute to the literature of my country, I feel it impossible to refuse.

Besides, at the present time, literature is the fashion, and I have always tried to be in the fashion. I am perpetually meeting young men, and (more especially) young women, who are the precocious parents of books more or less absurd, inane, objectionable, recondite, who have new views about morals, religion, Moses, and Catherine of Russia, and am expected to derive pleasure from their acquaintance.

For the future when people meet me, they can go home and mention that amongst the company at Mr. So and So’s, was Mr. Stafford Trevor, the author.

At how cheap a rate can we confer pleasure! It gives quite a zest to the idea of writing this story to reflect the amount of gratification friends and enemies (supposing I have any of the latter) will extract from the narrative and the author.

As I have already remarked, the fact of my turning author will surprise no one. Often after I have repeated some of my best stories for the benefit of a single listener, he has inquired:

“Why, Mr. Trevor, do you not reproduce all these good things in a book?”

Had I been quite frank, I should have informed him I refrained from doing so because, in fact, the good things were not mine to reproduce; but as he would have disbelieved my statement, I never thought it worth while to enlighten him on the subject.

Now, however, it so happens I have a little story all my own to relate, I consent to appearing in print.

Besides other people, places, and things, the story concerns a place called Fairy Water, and a lady of whom I was and am very fond, a cousin of mine by marriage—that is to say, she married my cousin Geoffrey Trevor, and he left her a widow, whereon hangs a tale—that I am about to tell.

Naturally, however, before I say much about Mr. Geoffrey Trevor, I wish to state, and the reader wishes to hear, some facts relating to myself.

The world nowadays is extremely curious concerning genius. Whether this curiosity arises from any abstract interest in genius, or a belief that genius is to be caught like small-pox, fever, whooping-cough, or the measles, it would be presumptuous in me to decide.

Certain, however, it is, that the smallest details of the domestic life, habits, manners, modes of thought of eminent people are listened to with a rapt attention wonderful to contemplate; and many of my own later successes in life I can trace to the fact of being able to tell enthusiastic ladies that Mr. A——’s novel, which drew tears from so many eyes, was absolutely a photograph from life—his own; that in spite of the Bohemianism of her plots, Mrs. B—— is a devoted wife and affectionate mother; that Mr. C——, whose style is neat and epigrammatic, suggestive of a quiet study, can write anywhere, under any circumstances.

“Give him a waiting room at the Paddington Station full of people, an express train; the wilds of Connemara, or the snowy peaks of Switzerland; it is immaterial; his sentences will be as finished, his sentences as complete,” I say, in my best manner.

Concerning Mr. D——, I am only able to state, with a reserve which elicits the remark that I am such a dear satirical creature, whenever he brings out a new book he flies to the Continent for fear of seeing a bad review, which is, indeed, a simple impossibility, unless a new race of reviewers should spring up ignorant of the traditions of the elders.

Mrs. F——, I tell my neighbour in strict confidence, draws her ideas of life from going disguised as a sister of mercy through St. Giles’ in the morning, and finishing the day, not disguised, at a supper-house near the theatres. As for Miss F——, I state, when she girds up her loins to write a book, she clothes herself in white, drinks eau sucrée, and refuses to eat her meals like an ordinary mortal.

Thus I go through the alphabet, and each hearer in succession tries, I believe, the white dress, and the eau sucrée, and the sister of mercy business, in hopes that by such eccentricities she too may be able to make some fabulous sum per volume, per page, per line.

And why, then, if the limited public I meet at dinners, at lawn-parties, at kettledrums, at crowded evenings, delight to listen to such weak details of the minor doings of great people; why, I ask, should the general public not care to hear of the great doings of a small man like myself?

If there is one thing about me which ought to win praise, it is this—I am non-assuming.

I never put down a man nor condescend to a woman; I am not clever, or sarcastic, or energetic, or anything except useful.

There you have me in a nutshell. If I have been anything in my life I have been useful. If I have not been useful I have been nothing.

Permit me to explain. I have not been a drudge, not useful in the cart-horse and maid-of-all-work sense, but useful as flowers, as music, as perfume, as colour, as sunshine, as painting, as trees in the distance, as water in the foreground. I have been ornamentally useful; I have filled up corners in the world’s economy which must, otherwise, have remained hideously bare of bud and blossom, and the world has evidenced extreme gratitude for my trouble.

When I am gone to swell the ranks of that “great majority,” of which a daily paper, more funny than any comic periodical, speaks in terms of intimate familiarity, the world will perhaps forget me—indeed, I think it extremely probable the world may then have something else to do than remember me; but whilst I am still “in the lobby,” to quote our comic friend once more, few of my acquaintances forget the fact of my existence; and to those I have not lately had the pleasure of meeting, the advertisement of this Annual will be an agreeable reminder that H. Stafford Trevor is up to the present hour in the minority.

Naturally, those persons whom I have not already the happiness of knowing will wish me to divide my personal explanation into two heads—viz. Who am I? Whence am I?

Truth compels me at this juncture to confess I have heard those two questions propounded ere now from the pulpit, but the reader may rest tranquil; I have no intention of analysing my own position, as an individual: I am about considering it in common with that society for which I live, and move, and have my being.

At the head of this chapter you have my profession. I am H. Stafford Trevor, barrister-at-law.

As a barrister-at-law I have done very little. Law is one of those things in which I might have achieved success had I liked, but then I did not like.

Once I overheard a man ask: “What does Trevor do?” to which his friend replied: “He dines out.”

The creature who said this is a barrister-at-law, and his friends have decided he can do nothing; nevertheless, I am bound to confess he summed up the case neatly.

I do dine out. If I have a profession it is dining out; if upon any settled system I do anything, it is accepting invitations. That is how I am useful. Perhaps, reader, you are inclined to sneer at this; but before you sneer, pause, and let me ask—

“Do you ever dine out?”

“No,” you answer, for two reasons. I may say one, expressed, “You would not if you could”; the second, and more cogent, non-expressed, “You could not if you would.”

Now I can: that is one of the things I have liked to do; and it is an accomplished fact, more dinners have been graced by my presence than you could well count; but as the lesser is included in the greater, there are many things included in the art of dining out.

First, you wish to know how I managed to get invited to so many houses, that my face is as well known to butlers, footmen, and—yes—why should I hesitate?—hired waiters, as that of Mr. Disraeli is to the readers of Punch.

Ah, friend, Rome was not built in a day, and many a year of my life has gone in making myself free of London society.

There is a fate in these things. By all rules, known and unknown, I ought to have been a doctor jingling guineas, or a barrister making his way to the Woolsack, or a professor discovering all sorts of unpleasant natural facts, or solving an equal number of useless scientific problems; but genius knows no law. As Turner was born a painter, Beethoven a composer, Grisi a singer, and Palmer a poisoner, so I was born a diner out.

It is not given to everyone to find out his especial talent in early youth, and there was a period of my life when I not merely studied law, but frequented evening parties.

As we see the needle oscillating violently when its equilibrium is disturbed, so I went from reading to dancing, and dancing to reading, with a distracted mind.

I felt unhappy, restless, dissatisfied; I had not found my vocation. Even when I was first inducted into its mysteries, I failed—such is the occasional modesty of genius—to perceive that success lay that way. I had doubts, qualms, throes. I questioned my own fitness for the career—I overrated the gifts possessed by others—I underrated my own; but that is all gone and passed.

Many men can write, paint, sing, talk, conduct business affairs, shine as orators, rise to eminence at the bar, lead armies to victory or death, command vessels, grow fat oxen and fatter sheep, but there are few, indeed, who can dine out. I can; that inane barrister was right: I dine out. I have dined out since I was twenty-five years of age. I shall go on dining out till Death knocks loudly, and tells me to make haste and come with him; or till I grow old and feeble, and one I wot of brings me gruel and other like abominations, which, however, her gentle voice and my growing infirmities may then make bearable.

But bah! why should I look forward? Has she not but just left me saying I grow younger with the years? Is not her kiss—it seems so strange for a woman’s lips to touch my face, that I feel as if she must have left a mark, still visible on my cheek. It is all about her and somebody else this story has to be told; so I must hasten onward; and to hasten on, as is the way of those who are—well—who are not so young as they were at twenty-five, I must go back.

My father was a wonderfully clever man! He was one of those people whom the world thinks so much of, and his family consider as only a degree better than an idiot. Amongst his fellow-professors he was an authority; at home his second wife treated him like a child. There was not a secret in the heavens above, the earth below, and the waters under the earth, with which he did not believe himself to be au courant; but he never knew where his spectacles were—no, not when they were elevated on his forehead; he did not detect the fraud when I took him a branch of gorse, decked with laurestina blossoms, and introduced it to his notice as a new and curious wild flower I had discovered on Hampstead Heath; he could not imagine why his flute—on which it was his mild pleasure to accompany the pianoforte and harp performances of two limp old maids of our acquaintance—on one occasion refused to give forth any sound save a gurgling groan, till my stepmother found the end of it was plugged up with a cork; in short, a theoretical man who, never having had any business to marry at all, found himself at forty a widower with one son, and then married for the second time a woman utterly dowerless, who bore him various children, who have no connection whatsoever with this narrative.

There are various ways in which a parent may be useful to one. In my capacity the professor has been infinitely useful to me, and has made by his memory many a dinner-party more agreeable than he ever made the social board at home.

His first wife, my mother, had a modest fortune. Happily it was secured to her children. She had no children, only a child, a son; and at twenty-one—father totally indifferent as to what I did or left undone, so long as I did it—I found myself a man easy as regarded money matters, and possessed of a
[missing text]
trouble him with my affairs, or contradict him when any of his pet theories chanced to be on the carpet.

I was a model son. He spent his last breath in blessing me.

“You have never contradicted me, Hercules,” he whispered, pressing my hand. Dear, simple old man. If he only would come back and sit with me in the twilight I would not contradict him, supposing he pleased to tell me fire was not hot or ice cold.

Negative qualities are often accounted great virtues. In the later years of my father’s lifetime, silence and consent seemed grateful where many words usually broke the stillness, and acquiescence was a thing almost unknown.

“I ought never to have married,” he said to me once, piteously.

The result of his first mistake in that line, I profited by his experience. I have never married.

The feminine reader has already decided this point. Had I married I could not have dined out.

But you wish to know how I gained the power of dining out. I tell you it was my speciality; once the opportunity occurred for me to distinguish myself, my genius, not my other self, achieved success.

“What a nice, modest young man Mr. Stafford Trevor is,” said my hostess. She has told me all this since.

That is a long time ago. I have been nice, modest, self-possessed, well-bred, handsome, clever, sarcastic, good-natured in the interim; now I am useful. The world, my world, could little spare a better man. Old friends welcome me for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, to speak in the hideous idiom of a people whose accent I detest, and whose ways are abhorrent to me—one degree less abhorrent only than their primitive ballads, always suggestive of the screech of a bagpipe. Young couples welcome me for the sake of the dead and gone; people whose position is assured, because, like dear Lady Mary, who plays a little part in this story, it is quite safe to whisper secret scandals, and the latest and most wicked bon mot in my ear; and the nouveau riche, because, poor wretches, they believe I must be somebody.

They see me apparently on equal terms with those who dine off silver and gold, and call all the upper ten thousand friends, and some of them relations, and they rush to conclusions.

If I cared much for their heavy repasts, or their insufferable time-serving, I should fear for my future; but both are growing wearisome.

Give me rather impertinent, ugly, vulgar Lady Mary, who calling me, as is her pleasant habit, by my christian-name, will say:

“I always knew you meant to have it out of us, Stafford, but it is of no use. Till we can produce an author—not an outsider—not one like you, introduced by accident and tolerated on sufferance—the English public will not understand the demerits of the nobility. And that will be never. We never have produced a novelist, and, mark my words, Stafford, we never will.”

In which opinion, that I shall certainly hear announced, I quite agree with her ladyship.

Though, upon the whole, I am disposed to doubt whether the lower ten millions have so much the advantage as Lady Mary sometimes seems to imply.

The capacity for producing fools is not, I fear, confined to any class. That, I am convinced, can scarcely, seeing what one sees, be considered a monopoly. Would to heaven it were!

II

I ASSIST AT A WEDDING

It is curious how the traditions of one’s youth influence the actions of our later years.

When I was an extremely small child I heard some person remark that strawberries preserved the whiteness of the teeth. Sedulously, each season since I attained my majority, I have eaten strawberries. When people left London earlier than they do now, I partook of them in the gardens of my father’s cousin, Admiral Trevor; subsequently, when his son succeeded to the small property which gives a title to this story, I went down each summer, and ate strawberries as I might join in some religious rite; and now that Parliament unhappily sits later and later, and that pleasant dinner-parties obtain to the very end of the season, far past Midsummer-day, the fruit—small, sweet, fresh, utterly unlike anything one can buy at Covent Garden—comes to me in dainty baskets, embowered in cool green leaves, from Fairy Water.

“And where is Fairy Water?” you ask.

Dear reader, every person has his secret, and the locale of Fairy Water is mine. About this time in each year I begin to dream of it, but I am not bound to tell my dreams to all the world.

I will describe it to you as I saw it first in the reign of Admiral Trevor, a quaint building seen from the avenue: a long, low cottage, overgrown with wisteria and ivy, with climbing roses, and Virginian creepers, and jasmine, and honeysuckle, all tangled together.

“A poor place, though picturesque,” you say.

Wait a little—wait till having entered the large, though low, square hall, and passed through the drawing-room and conservatory, you emerge on the western front, where all delicious plants climb along the verandah; where myrtles shed their blossoms on grass which slopes down to the loveliest sheet of water ever contrived by human skill; where the ash and the willow droop over lawns smooth and soft as velvet; where great trees shade the winding walks; and within and without peace reigns—such peace as is to be found in very few homes on the face of this quarrelsome earth.

That is where I used to eat my strawberries, that is the place whence they are sent to me now.

There was a time when even at Fairy Water they lost their relish, and I will tell you why. It happened in this wise: one day, in an abrupt note, my second cousin, Captain Trevor, son of the admiral formerly alluded to and deceased, informed me he was about to get married.

To most men this announcement would have been disagreeable. If he died unmarried, Fairy Water must come to me; and to the generality of persons, no doubt, Fairy Water would have seemed a desirable inheritance, but to me certainly not. What should I have done with the place? It would have cost money to keep up; the expense must have proved a source of eternal worry to me. I know within a trifle what I shall have to pay my landlady, at the end of each month, for breakfast, washing, and lodging; but how should I ever know, without employing a professional accountant, or going through the Bankruptcy Court, whether a place in the country, with lawns, flower-gardens—stables, and horses in them—pig-styes, and pigs in them—poultry-houses, and fowls in them—a sheet of water, and swans on it—to say nothing of Aylesbury ducks, were producing a profit or loss?

I want no secluded dwelling before I repair to one quiet enough in all conscience, where the landlord and the collectors may knock till they break their knuckles, without injuring the peace of my repose. Let others have what suits them; for me a first floor in a vague western district is sufficient. I should say a second, but from my youth, climbing many stairs has been distasteful to me.

Further, to revert to the Fairy Water question, I fear I should prove but a poor host if heaven ever gave me the means to enact the part. Some persons can dine out, and others can give dinners; but, as a rule, I do not think the best giver of dinners is the best diner out; a different set of qualities is required in each. An admirable host is often a poor guest; an admirable guest often proves a wretched, incompetent host.

Unless, indeed, in Bohemian society, where the two qualities, like others equally incongruous, are sometimes, though not always, united. But, then, of what use is it referring to that vague, beautiful land, which is as a fairy country to one not free of it by nature or inheritance?

For myself I have visited the place, and am bound to confess I found it exceedingly beautiful, spite of the spectacle of duns, debts, and writs; but I do not know how the inhabitants manage to sustain life. Dining out may seem a mere matter of chance, but I could not dine out if I once proclaimed myself so total a creature of circumstances as the dear delightful inhabitants of the London city of Prague.

Some try to reduce Bohemianism to a science, but they fail, and they will fail. To be liked, Bohemianism must be pure and simple. The Bohemian must have no arrière pensée when he hobnobs with my lord; and his wife, if her husband is to prove successful, had better leave the mutual and to-be-provided-for olive branches hanging to the parent tree if the nobility and others are to be favourably impressed.

I have dined so often at houses in which everything has been solid from the furniture to the plate, that, when I find myself at the table of a man who has to get everything he sets before his guests on credit, and whose chance of ever being able to pay for the repast is extremely remote, an odd sense of wonder is perpetually cropping up in my mind as I watch that man and his friends making merry over a banquet which has for an unbidden guest the skeleton—Debt.

I cannot understand the nature of a host able to eat, drink, make jests, laugh at the jests of others today, when all the time he must feel tolerably certain of being arrested at some not very remote tomorrow; and yet I am bound to say that never, even when gold and silver dishes have lent an unpleasant flavour to food, can I remember such dinners as I have seen served on stone-china, with wit for sauce piquante.

Only in that vague region the meats are secondary to the wine, and the few morning headaches which I ever experienced have always followed excursions into Bohemia.

Perhaps, as one of the race suggested, these may be induced by too much laughter; such exercise being strange to me and unwonted. This remark contained a sneer, no doubt, for at the houses where I dine out ebullitions of merriment would be considered bad form.

As Eastern grandees do not dance for themselves, so people in the upper walks of society in England do not laugh for themselves. It may be all very well for persons who have to earn their livings by laughter and jesting, as it may be well for an acrobat to stand on his head; but the possessor of ten thousand a year and upwards should maintain a gravity of manner and stateliness of deportment commensurate to the dignity fate has conferred upon him, and as a rule he does this.

To add that occasionally he overdoes it is but to say that he is human.

But I am wandering away from Fairy Water. Let me return to the swans of that enchanted lake—to the Aylesbury ducks, which turn up such plump breasts on the hospitable board, and, with a rare generosity, fatten themselves in readiness for that season of the year when green peas are most tender and succulent.

Much as I loved the place I never longed to possess it. I was in the position of the Frenchman, who, having lost his wife, was asked if he intended to marry a lady he had been in the constant habit of visiting.

“Ma foi!” he said, “where should I then spend my evenings?”

And, in faith, had Fairy Water come down, where should I have spent my holidays?

As a guest I delighted in Fairy Water; as a host I should have grown to loathe the place.

It was well I thought so—for I had always expected to step into Captain Trevor’s shoes.

He was that rare phenomenon, a sea-monster—an ugly, ill-tempered, cross-grained brute, who bawled at the servants as if a perpetual hurricane were blowing through the house; and who was as much disliked by all his inferiors in station, as his father, the admiral, had been beloved by those below him in rank.

Further, he was fifteen years older than myself, and had lived fast and drank hard so long as gout, the only thing which ever obtained a mastery over him, would permit.

It would not have astonished me any morning to hear he was dead; but to hear he was about to be married certainly proved a surprise.

He had always been civil to me. So far as he was capable of the feeling, I think he had a liking for Staff—so he persisted in abbreviating my name; and therefore, though his news appeared astounding, his request that I would be the best man on the occasion seemed nothing extraordinary.

I consented; ordered a new suit of clothes, bought a wedding present—the expense of which I secretly grudged; and on the day before that fixed for the wedding went down to Winchelsea, near which cheerful town the lady, as he gave me to understand, resided.

There is a funny little inn at Winchelsea, the windows of which overlook the principal, and I think only, square of the town, which happens to be the churchyard likewise, and here Geoffrey and I took up our quarters for the night.

Naturally I wished to know something about the bride elect, and asked her name.

“Mary Ashwell,” he answered. “Her people, however, call her Polly, and I daresay I shall do the same.”

I thought this over for a moment. There was a friskiness about the sobriquet which gave me an idea of an elderly young lady with a red nose, a flat chest, a long neck, light eyes, and ringlets.

“She has a pot of money, no doubt?” I suggested.

“Not a shilling. Her father was once comfortably off, I believe, but he is as poor now as a church mouse.”

“Oh, then she has a father—”

“And a mother,” he condescended to add.

“Is she young?” I inquired, finding he did not seem inclined to volunteer further information.

“Well, you couldn’t call her old,” he said, wincing, as it seemed to me.

“Is she pretty?”

“I daresay you would not think her so—I do,” was his reply; and this time I distinctly saw a dull red colour appear through the brown of his weather-beaten face, of which sign of emotion he seemed to be conscious, for he put his hand to his forehead so as to hide the flush.

I confess I was puzzled. Evidently he was ashamed of his choice; and yet what could have induced him to make it?

He was no longer young, it is true—indeed, he was growing elderly; but “surely,” I thought, “he might have found somebody willing to marry him more suitable than a plain old maid, possessed of kitten-like proclivities and not possessed of sixpence.”

I was not one half so much surprised to hear of the proposed marriage as I was at his evident dislike to speak of the bride. Of all the men I ever met, Geoffrey was the last I should have supposed likely to be taken in by a woman; but that he had been taken in was impossible to doubt, and I was confirmed in this impression when, in answer to some leading question, he said:

“You will see her tomorrow, and can then judge for yourself what she is like. I am tired now, so do not torment me with questions, Staff.”

No pleasant dreams of Fairy Water visited my pillow that night. I had visions of a mistress not unlike a cruet bottle as to shape, and with mind and temper an even mixture of cayenne and vinegar.

“Stafford Trevor,” I said, addressing myself as I stood next morning brushing my hair, “you will have to look out a new place at which to spend your holidays. No more cakes and ale at Fairy Water; black looks and scant courtesy are all you need expect when the new mistress comes to her own”; and having arrived at this conclusion, I walked into the sitting-room, feeling like a man who knows the worst and is prepared for it.

Geoffrey himself was nervous and uneasy, I could see that. He ate little breakfast, a sure sign with him of uneasiness of mind or sickness of body; and when he pushed away his cup he rose and paced the room, his hands buried deep in his pockets.

It was quite a relief when at last he said we ought to be going.

I looked at my watch, and saw it was twenty-five minutes past eleven, Greenwich time.

“They have a long way to drive, I suppose?” I remarked.

“Two miles,” he answered.

“Madame’s get-up requires both leisure and thought,” was my mental comment as we took our hats and walked from the inn door to the church porch.

I should not care to pass the fifteen minutes which followed over again.

The clergyman was waiting, the clerk in readiness, the sextoness all impatience, Geoffrey working himself up into such a state of mind that although it was not a warm morning, and a pleasant breeze stirred the ivy, the perspiration stood on his forehead, and he grew white and red by turns.

“What time were they to be here?” I asked.

“Half-past eleven; her own hour,” he answered.

We waited a little longer; then I looked at my watch again.

“Quarter to twelve,” I said. “If they do not come soon—”

He put his hand—a great strong hand it was too—over my mouth with such force he actually drove me back against the wall.

“Don’t say that,” he entreated, and his tone was so agitated I should scarcely have recognised his voice. “Ah! here they are!” he cried out next minute, as the hired carriages turned into the square.

The first contained the bride, closely veiled, and her father and mother; the other two elderly spinsters, one of whom officiated as bridesmaid.

I could not catch even a glimpse of the bride’s face as she passed up the aisle, holding down her head, and keeping her veil drawn in folds, as if she wished to remain hidden.

There was a mystery, and I could not penetrate it. She was not old; the walk was that of a young person, and the hand from which her bridesmaid drew the glove belonged most certainly to no lady of a doubtful age. Her answers were almost inaudible, and she trembled so violently when it came to the ring ceremony that Geoffrey could scarcely slip it on her finger.

“She is not old,” I decided, watching her as she knelt; “I am afraid she must be very ugly.”

It was all over; they were man and wife. Still keeping her veil folded over her face, she went with Geoffrey into the vestry, we following.

About this time it occurred to me we had somehow made a mistake, and that instead of witnessing a marriage we had been assisting at a funeral.

As a rule I know how to say the right thing in the right place, but I did not then feel in the right place, and consequently I could not say the right thing.

The churchyard, with a couple of gravediggers hard at work, would have seemed to me a much more fitting locality at that moment than the vestry, with its limp curate, elderly bridesmaid, silent bride, and sulky though triumphant bridegroom.

Still without lifting her veil, the bride, who had to ask, and did ask in an almost inaudible whisper what name she must sign, wrote “Mary Ashwell,” in a shaky, tremulous hand.

When she finished, her father, who had not conducted himself through the ceremony with the same resolute fortitude as his wife, said, with tears in his weak eyes and a suspicious twitching about his mouth:

“Polly darling, kiss me: kiss your poor old father.” Then before she could prevent it he threw back her veil and held her to his heart.

Shall I ever forget the sight of that face?—ever forget the eyes, heavy and swollen with weeping; the cheeks white as death, worn and grief-stained; the expression of utter misery, such as I had never seen in the countenance of a living being before—never anywhere save on the canvas of some old master?

But it was not the heavy eyes, or the white face, or the look of anguish it bore, which caused me to forget where I was; I forgot all sense of propriety, all idea of fitness and decorum—in a word, I forgot myself, and exclaimed out loud—just as if I had been alone and not in a church:

“Good God! why, she is a child!”

In a moment, as though I had uttered some form of incantation, a change took place amongst the company.

With a look at me, which, to say the least of it, was not pleasant, Geoffrey drew his wife’s hand in his arm, and marched out of the vestry with her, leaving us all to follow or not, as we liked.

The curate turned his eyes up to the ceiling, as if he expected it to fall in and crush one at least of the party. Outside of his prayers, I believe he had never heard such an expression before; the two ladies, spinsters, were gazing fixedly on the floor; Mrs. Ashwell was transfixing me with looks like daggers; Mr. Ashwell was in the aisle, sobbing into a white handkerchief.

As for me, I was so stunned that I failed even to apologise for my misdemeanour. I knew of course all these people were standing round and about, but I could see nothing, think of nothing, except my elderly cousin and his child-wife.

Old enough to be her father!—why, he might have been her grandfather!

To this hour I do not know how we got out of the church, and in what form of words I took leave of the curate. I have no distinct memory of anything after I saw the bride’s face, till I found myself sitting on the box beside the coachman, driving along a country road, and feeling like one who, having beheld a vision, is gradually and painfully struggling back to consciousness and recollection.

III

MY COUSIN’S WILL

After all, I had not to find another place in which to spend my holidays, for Geoffrey condoned the offence of which I had been guilty, and, together with his wife, welcomed me to Fairy Water cordially as ever.

But Fairy Water was not now what it had once been. I could not endure the place, yet I was perpetually going there. I always felt thankful to leave it, and yet when I was away, a pleading face, a pair of soft brown eyes, a meek beseeching voice, seemed always dragging first my thoughts and then myself thither.

She was such a mere child, and he such an uncultivated savage, frantically in love with, and equally frantically jealous of her. It was the old story, not an uncommon one, in which the characters are a ruined father, a rich and generous suitor, a worldly mother, a loving, yielding child, willing to sacrifice her young life on the altar of duty.

She had never cared for anyone; that was the solitary consolation I could find in the transaction. She had never seen a man to care for, I fancy, so utterly secluded and nun-like had been her previous experience. She was innocent as an infant; pure as one of the angels; sweet-natured, docile, truthful, loyal; and I believe, after a time, when a child was born, and she had something all her own to pet and care for, and concentrate all her affections upon, the match—unequal and unsuitable, horribly unsuitable as it was—might not have proved altogether miserable, had anyone been clever enough to lay the devil of jealousy with which Geoffrey was possessed.

He could not bear her to have a look or a thought excepting for himself. His affection for his children was weak in comparison to the vehement and unreasoning attachment he bore his wife.

She had loved her father with a clinging devotion beautiful to behold, and so he separated them—would not bid the old man to Fairy Water, or suffer her to visit her former home. When Mr. Ashwell died, he was jealous of her very grief. When she had a new baby, he grudged the caresses she lavished upon it.

Poor Polly! poor little girl! poor child-wife! poor baby-mother! How often has my heart ached for you with a sympathy I feared to show!

But you knew I felt it, my dear! You could tell I was your true friend, and would have stood by you through good and evil, had any advocacy of mine been likely to serve your cause.

Often and often, I felt it hard to stand by silent and see the spirit, and the hope, and the joy crushed out of your young life by slow degrees—to see you growing old almost before you had done growing tall; but what could I do?

He was your husband, you his wife; and you have told me since my very silence gave you strength to bear the inevitable—taught you how hopeless it was to struggle against that which was irrevocable.

I shall never forget one day in the earlier part of her married life, when Mrs. Geoffrey Trevor came to me as I was sauntering along a path through the strawberry-beds.

She was a pretty, dainty creature, I thought, as I watched her tripping along; dress a little uplifted above her small feet; head held erect, as if filled and balanced with a new idea.

“Mr. Stafford,” she began—she was shy, at first, of calling me by my christian-name; and no wonder, for I must have been baptised some five-and-twenty years before she was thought of, and had been knocking about the world, and learning its wickedness, long ere she crossed life’s threshold—“Mr. Stafford, I want to ask you something so much. You have known my husband longer, of course, than I have. Tell me what I can do to make him trust me more.”

She said it all in a breath, like a child who has learned a lesson—conning it over and over till she knows it off by heart.

What a child she was! what an unsuspecting, guileless creature! Thank God, I never, not even for a moment, held a thought in my soul about her I might not have held for a daughter of my own; and, in his blind and stupid way, I believe Geoffrey knew this.

Certainly, however, this appeal—for which I was wholly unprepared—staggered me. It took me, indeed, so much by surprise, that I stared at her till she coloured to her temples. After a moment, her eyes drooped, her cheeks paled, and she stood before me abashed and silent, as though she had done something wrong.

Then I spoke.

“I do not know that you can do anything, Mrs. Trevor,” I answered, “unless you discover some way to make him less fond of you.”

Then the blood flew up again into her face, and she lifted her eyes to mine.

“Do you think he is very fond of me?” she asked, touching unconsciously the strawberry-leaves with her foot, as she moved it restlessly to and fro.

“Yes,” I said. “His love for you is the love of his life.”

She did not say another word. She walked back—not briskly, as she came, but slowly and thoughtfully.

A daughter of whom any man might have been proud—a sweet, tender girl, already developing a woman’s soul.

She never tried to make him less fond. With all her strength, I believe, she tried to please him more, and do her duty better.

I watched her efforts. I saw how futile they were. The more tender, gentle, and patient she strove to be—the more lovable he learned her nature really was—so in precise proportion did his jealousy wax greater. He knew, as well as I knew, that while the sun rose and set she never could love him. What he had hoped or expected when he married her, Heaven alone knows; but it is possible—since men in love are unreasoning animals—he trusted eventually to win from her something besides obedience and sweetness; and, as time passed by, and found her unchanged, save that she grew more still, more tranquil, more submissive, I think his heart must occasionally have stopped beating at the thought that someone might yet win her affection when he was dead and forgotten.

After a couple of children had been born, he asked me if I would object to my name being inserted as one of the executors of his will?

“Mr. Henderson will act with you,” he added.

Mr. Henderson was a very respectable solicitor; and, having no objection to being associated with him, I said so.

“I hope, however,” I went on, “you have done all that is right by your wife.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that I hope you have made ample provision for her.”

“I have left everything to her,” he replied, and I must say I felt surprise, though I did not evince any; “everything except Fairy Water, which, as you know, I cannot will; unless she should marry again.”

“And in that case?” I suggested.

“She has nothing. I suppose you do not expect me to leave my money for the benefit of another man?”

“Well, no,” I replied; “I do not think I should be so philanthropic myself; although I might, for the sake of memory, just as a mere matter of sentiment, leave a woman some trifle a year, settled on herself, of course strictly.”

“I will not do that,” he answered, and the subject dropped.

Time went on; they had been married eight years. Mrs. Trevor called me Stafford and I called her Mary. Somehow, Polly had dropped out of our recollections as it assuredly had out of her face, and there were five children at Fairy Water and one in the churchyard, all boys, all except the very last comer, to whom I stood godfather—to whom, for her mother’s sake, I presented the handsomest conventional mug, knife, fork, and spoon I could possibly afford, and which was called—a graceful piece of thoughtfulness on the part of Mrs. Trevor—Isobel, after my own dear mother.

How this young wife went through those eight years is to me a puzzle even now. How she preserved her amiability, how she kept her temper from souring, how she retained her timid, trembling, and yet certain faith in all things holy, could have been only by reason of God’s great mercy to his weakest and most helpless children.

But there was a slow, gradual change in her which made my heart ache to behold. She was as staid as a matron of forty. The sweet laughter of a happy wife and mother never echoed through the rooms at Fairy Water. She was grave even with her children. Young as she was, she had lost the ability to play with them. Geoffrey had gained his desire, and wedded a young wife whom he loved, pretty, faithful, true, and yet he found no happiness in the years, whilst she—I have told how she was affected by their passage, and can only guess the anguish of soul each day they contained had brought with its dawn.

But a change was very near at hand. One night, Geoffrey, always a bad, reckless whip, managed to upset his dogcart, and in doing so contrived, besides breaking his leg, to inflict serious internal injuries on himself.

That was the beginning of the end. The leg knitted, the injuries were patched up, but he could never hope to be the same man again. He grew thin and worn, and month after month wasted away visibly.

At times also he suffered cruelly; whatever was the matter with him, and the doctors could only vaguely diagnose his disease, there were hours when it seemed to fasten upon him tooth and nail, almost gnawing the life out of that once robust, loud-voiced, strong-limbed boor.

Under this discipline he grew, wonderful to relate, gentle.

In health one of the most discontented, restless, impatient mortals that ever existed, in sickness and in pain he became a different being.

“Spite of his sufferings,” said his wife, tears in her eyes at the thought of them, “we have never been so happy. Oh, Stafford, if he had only been like this always.”

Two years after the accident a letter from Fairy Water told me the end had come. It was the dead of the winter time, and I do not like travelling in winter, or going into residence with a corpse, but I started for the old place at once. The little woman, with her five young children, all alone in the world but for me, would have need of my presence.

I can see her now as she crossed the hall to meet and thank me for coming. Her face was very pale, and thin, and sad, but peaceful.

“He had no pain at the last,” she told me, as we passed into the library together; and then, holding her hand, I sat silent for a minute, thinking—as we all must at some period or another—of the last change, of the awful mystery.

All it was possible to do for her at this juncture I did; and when the short days drew to a close, and we talked quietly by the firelight, she always led the conversation to her late husband—she liked to speak of him, I perceived—liked to tell me how, by almost imperceptible degrees, he had been softened and altered.

“At last,” she said, on the evening before the funeral, and her voice dropped and trembled a little as she spoke, “at last he told me how much he regretted that we had not been so happy as we might have been. He said, poor dear, it was all his fault; he said he had distrusted me once, and made his own life miserable in consequence; and then he would, spite of my entreaties, go on to talk about his will. It would ‘show how I trust you,’ those were his words, ‘what full confidence I place in Stafford and you.’”

At that point she broke down. I had not mixed with my species for a considerable number of years without having had many such utterances confided to me. For a week after his death a man is generally well spoken of, and I ought to have remembered this, and been on my guard as to consequences accordingly; but I was off guard, and, I confess, Mrs. Trevor’s grief for the departed, and her account of Geoffrey’s supposed repentance, touched me exceedingly.

As a rule, I wait to form my opinion of the regret of the survivors and the real character of the deceased until the day after the funeral; but in this case, as has been stated, I was weak and premature, and went to bed with a newly-developed liking and pity for the poor gentleman who lay stiff and stark in unpleasant proximity to my own bedchamber.

“I wonder what his will is?” I marvelled, as I put out my candle; and then a dreadful idea, a most shocking and horrible notion struck me.

“If he has expressed a wish for me to marry his widow, what shall I do?”

What should I do, indeed? I could not sleep for hours, so fearful did I feel that in some mood of maudlin repentance, when his mind was weakened with illness, he might have committed such a desire to paper; and when at last I sank off into slumber it was only to dream I was standing once again in Winchelsea Church, this time as an unwilling bridegroom, with Geoffrey Trevor in his shroud officiating as clergyman, and one of the elderly spinsters vowing as fast and hard as she knew how she would cling to me till death did us part.

I awoke in a cold perspiration, and though day had not yet broken, got up, dressed myself, went out for a walk, and on my return finished my nap, rolled up in a rug on a sofa in the dining-room.

Funerals, like weddings, take place at too early an hour. Though it was an immense relief to me to think Geoffrey was out of his own house, I confess, as we drove back to Fairy Water, I wished his departure had been arranged for at a later period of the day.

I wondered what I could find to do until it was time to retire to rest. I marvelled how long Mrs. Trevor would wish me to remain in the house of mourning; I speculated on the number of invitations which must be by this time lying on my table in town, and through all there was a curious under-current of thought as to what my own end would be like, where I should die, what I should die of, where I should be buried, and who would follow me to the grave.

“Mr. Stafford”—it was Mr. Henderson who thus broke into my reverie—“do you know whether your cousin left any other will than that made some years since?”

“He told Mrs. Trevor,” I answered, “he had made a will which would show how fully he trusted her.”

“Has she got that will?”

“No; at least I should think not.”

“Has she looked for it?”

“Decidedly not, I should say.”

“Have you?”

“No; if I ever thought about the matter, I concluded you had the will in your possession.”

“I have not,” he replied; “and, what is more, I never drew out any but the one which, against my most earnest advice, he executed. I often urged upon him to reconsider the matter, but he always either turned the subject or refused to do so.”

“Then you think my cousin did not make a second will?” I suggested.

“I am afraid he did not.”

“Is that you hold so very bad?” I inquired.

“I think it so,” he replied.

“What is to be done?” I asked.

“His papers had better be examined, to ascertain if he has left a later will before that I hold is produced.”

“There can be no objection to such a course,” I said; “will you examine them?”

“I am in the hands of yourself, and Mrs. Trevor,” he answered, and we drove on in silence.

It was lucky for us that the widow had not the faintest idea that the usual course of procedure ordered a will to be read as soon as possible after the man who made it had been got safely into the churchyard.

Though twenty-six, she remained to that hour as ignorant of worldly affairs as she was when she had to ask what name she should sign in the register at Winchelsea, and she accepted in simple good faith my suggestion that she should give the keys of her late husband’s desks, drawers, boxes, and so forth to Mr. Henderson, on whom the duty of looking over his papers now devolved.

“I fancy he wanted something out of that old oak cabinet, which stood near his bedside,” she said, as she handed me the keys. “He pointed and nodded to it several times just before—before he died, and tried to speak, but he was not able. Perhaps Mr. Henderson may find out what it was.”

“We must look there for the will,” I said, as the lawyer and I ascended the staircase together.

He bowed gravely. He had formed his opinion, which the result of our search justified.

Geoffrey had made no second will. There was no such document to be found.

All the letters and papers in the oak cabinet related to matters stale as the deluge, with the exception, indeed, of some few notes from Geoffrey’s young wife, and a lock of her hair tied with a thread of silver twist. We found also a knot of ribbon and a few flowers pressed in tissue paper. When we showed these to Mrs. Trevor she burst into tears.

“He wanted them buried with him,” said Mr. Henderson to me, sotto voce. “The desire is not uncommon. I assure you, Mr. Stafford, elderly men are often more romantic than young ones.”

“No doubt you speak truly,” I replied; “nevertheless I wish, sentiment notwithstanding, he had forgotten those relics, and executed his will.”

“He did not wish to make another,” said the lawyer; “rely upon that.”

The worst of lawyers is, they are always telling one something one is forced to believe, whether one likes to do so or not.

I was forced to believe, and, indeed, my long experience of his amiable nature made that belief unpleasantly easy, that my cousin Geoffrey had made no second will, and that the document which Mr. Henderson described as containing some curious and stringent clauses was the only keepsake he had left us.

“I will bring it over in a day or two,” said Mr. Henderson, “and read it quietly to you and Mrs. Trevor.”

“Bring it tomorrow,” I suggested, “and let us have done with the matter. If medicine has to be swallowed, the sooner it is taken the better.”

“True,” he commented; but there was a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lip as he took his leave, which seemed to say, “I understand you, Mr. H. Stafford Trevor. You find Fairy Water dull; you are longing for the fleshpots of Egypt—for the cucumbers of course—leeks are not esteemed luxurious now as they were some four thousand years back—which even in December grace the tables of those rich enough to pay for them.”

There was a certain amount of truth in this unspoken sentence. I had eaten too long out of the fleshpots to care very much for anything they contain, but still I was tired of Fairy Water. The country in summer, as a change from town, is delightful; the country in winter is something not delightful, beginning with a d— also.

That night I slept with a quiet heart. I saw a prospect of returning to my beloved London. I had no fear of having to regard any last wishes chronicled by the late owner of Fairy Water.

Dreamily I wondered what Mr. Henderson meant by a bad will; but being too much tired to try to work out the problem, closed my eyes, and left it for him to solve next day.

When I awoke in the night I felt glad to remember I was not the owner of Fairy Water, but that an extremely delicate child, sleeping in a distant wing, would someday be master in it.

Unless, indeed, he died; in which case the other youngsters were ready step into and wait for the vacant shoes.

I never liked Fairy Water so little as on the night following the noon when we helped to lay Geoffrey Trevor under a great slab of granite, there to lie quiet till the Judgment-day.

Men of my temperament generally strive to eschew assisting at these unpleasant ceremonies, but I have always tried to do my duty, however disagreeable it may be; and really, excepting a christening, I know no ceremony so utterly distasteful to me as a funeral.

I have never shirked accompanying any dear brother who had a claim upon me, either of relationship or friendship, to the only home where men can do no more harm to anybody.

Nevertheless it is one thing to perform a duty, and another to like performing it. There are persons who take a positive pleasure in the black business, who do not object to strolling through cemeteries and examining in ancient churchyards old tombs and inscriptions as false as those graven in our own day. To me, however, the whole thing is objectionable, and the idea of Geoffrey sleeping out in a damp piece of consecrated ground, with rank grass waving around his last bed, made me shiver.

Still, as the ceremony had to be gone through, I was glad it was over; and when I rose the next morning I felt sufficiently reconciled to my loss and composed in my mind, to consider how Mr. Geoffrey Trevor’s death would in the future affect my previous relations with Fairy Water. Of course in my capacity as executor I should have to visit the place occasionally, but my knowledge of the world told me it would not do, even for a man old enough to be the widow’s father, to continue free of the house now its master was dead.

True, he had told me she would lose her fortune if she married again. Nevertheless, the children were certain to be well provided for, and in the case of one, at all events, there would be a minority of between eighteen and nineteen years.

For myself, of course any remarks which might be made in a place so utterly remote from the centre of civilisation as Fairy Water, were of no consequence; but it behoved me to be very careful as to what might be said about Mary; and I decided, as I had decided nearly ten years previously, that I must find some other house in which to spend my holidays, recruit my health, and eat my strawberries.

I had never seen Fairy Water look so utterly dreary as it did during that forenoon when I stood watching the rain dripping into the lake, and making the already sodden ground more sodden.

The sky looked as if it had never done anything but rain since the second day of the world, and as if it never meant to do anything except rain till the last day. The leafless forest trees waved their long bare arms slowly to and fro, as though they were burdened with the weight of some speechless agony. The swans looked dirty and draggled, the ducks had collected together under the shelter of a clump of evergreens, and were suggestive of utter misery. Mrs. Trevor was making believe to execute some impossible piece of needlework; the children, as is the pleasing habit of children on wet days, were flattening their unformed noses against the window-panes; while their father, out in the weather, could not tell whether the rain were raining, or the sun shining.

After luncheon Mr. Henderson arrived, Out of consideration for my London habits, Geoffrey had always dined later on the occasion of my visits to Fairy Water.

Ordinarily, I believe, the family partook of that meal with the children at one o’clock.

In honour of the solicitor’s visit, a fire had been lighted in the drawing-room, and thither we three repaired, leaving the heir, his two brothers, and his sister to amuse themselves as they could.

Mrs. Trevor seated herself on a sofa drawn up beside the fire; Mr. Henderson took a chair at a little distance from her, and unfolding the will, laid it solemnly on a table close to his hand.

I stood leaning against the mantelpiece; a long course of after-dinner drawing-room experience having rendered standing a more natural attitude to me than sitting.

“Shall I commence reading, Mrs. Trevor?” inquired Mr. Henderson.

“If you please,” she said softly, and after the lawyer had cleared his throat he began.

It was a long document, copiously interlarded with legal phrases, which were plainly so much Greek to my unsophisticated cousin. There was first a long preamble, setting forth the particulars of the will under which Captain Trevor held Fairy Water, but which left him no power in the devising of it. Then were enumerated the different sources whence his income was derived; then a statement that in the year of grace 18— he married, at Winchelsea Church, Mary, only surviving child of Justin Ashwell, Esq., and Rebecca his wife.

“A will made as much by client as by lawyer,” was my mental comment, while Mr. Henderson turned over folio after folio. “Ah! now we are coming to the gist of the matter.”

His eldest son, Geoffrey Bertrand, being heir to Fairy Water and whatever moneys might accrue from that property during his minority, it was Captain Trevor’s will that the moneys derived from such and such sources, or invested in such and such securities, should be equally divided between such other children as might be born to him, always excluding Geoffrey Bertrand or the son who, in the event of the death of Geoffrey Bertrand, might succeed to the estate called Fairy Water. Subject, however, to an annuity of three hundred pounds per annum to his wife Mary, after the youngest child attained the age of twenty-one, and to a yearly allowance to the said Mary of one hundred pounds per annum for each child of herself and the said Geoffrey Trevor, whom she might undertake to maintain and educate in a manner satisfactory to the before-named executors, viz., Hercules Stafford Trevor, of London, Barrister-at-Law, and Reuben Henderson, Attorney.

In the event of no child, except that son who might at any time be heir to Fairy Water, surviving, one-half the annuity mentioned was to be paid at once to the said Mary, and it was his will that she should continue to reside at Fairy Water, and that the furniture, not including, however, plate and pictures, was to be at her order and disposal.

At this juncture Mr. Henderson paused.

“Come,” I thought, “considering the testator was Geoffrey, the will is not so bad a one.”

“Providing always,” continued the lawyer, and then I found that the sting of the document lay in its tail.

Mrs. Trevor was to be entitled to the sums of money of which mention has been made only in the event of her remaining unmarried. If she married, not merely was she to lose her annuity, and the hundreds per annum to which she was entitled during the minority of her children, but also her children. They were to be placed at such schools as the executors might decide, and all intercourse with their mother was to cease. Further, in the event of her second marriage, she must leave Fairy Water.

There were other clauses, but I forget them; other legacies, but unimportant, including fifty guineas to Mr. Henderson and myself. As I listened to that comprehensive sentence, which must prove, as I knew, a sentence to Mrs. Trevor of perpetual widowhood, I glanced at her for one moment stealthily, and saw the Parthian dart flung at her almost, as it seemed, from eternity, had done its work.

If she grasped no other part of her husband’s will, she did that portion which, while contemplating the possibility of her meeting in the future with someone she might wish to marry, virtually placed an insuperable barrier in the way of her becoming his wife.

She did not utter a word, however. When, having finished the reading of the will, Mr. Henderson asked if she understood its purport, she said:

“I think so,” in that grave, repressed tone which of late years had become habitual to her, but which I had heard less frequently than formerly since my last arrival at Fairy Water.

“If there is anything you do not quite understand, I can explain it to you hereafter.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then after an instant’s pause, “I suppose you do not require me any longer.”

Mr. Henderson at these words rose and bowed. As I opened the door for her to pass out she never once looked at me. She kept her head resolutely bent down, as I remembered seeing it drooped on that bright spring morning at Winchelsea.

Was that day present with her at the moment as it was with me, I wondered, as I watched her slowly move across the hall and enter a little room which she preferred to any other in the house.

“Mrs. Trevor takes it badly, I am afraid,” said Mr. Henderson, when I returned to my position near the fire. “Ah! it is a cruel will.”

“What a pity we cannot put it between the bars,” I remarked, looking longingly at the blazing coals.

Mr. Henderson seized the document as if he imagined I really had some thoughts of disposing of it summarily.

“Geoffrey always was a brute,” I went on, seeming not to notice his gesture, “and he appears to have been true to his character to the last.”

“Mrs. Trevor takes it worse than I expected she would do,” said my companion. “I should not have thought she was the sort of woman to entertain the idea of marrying again, not, at all events, in the first week of her widowhood.”

“She never did entertain an idea of the kind,” I answered resolutely.

“No doubt; how could she? Her husband never allowed her to exchange half-a-dozen words with any man, except myself.”

There was something about this I did not like.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Henderson,” I said, with a little stiffness of manner, “I have exchanged many half-dozen words with her.”

“Of course! of course! I meant also excepting you.”

Although I had, and have, a perfect horror of any woman imagining she has formed an attachment for me, I felt my anger rise at the tone in which Mr. Henderson put the very idea of my being anybody in such affairs aside.

I looked at the man, and a suspicion struck me that perhaps, had Geoffrey’s will been different, Mr. Henderson might have aspired to marrying the widow. He was younger than I, and much better-looking. To Mrs. Trevor, his want of that je ne sais quoi, which produces a freemasonry amongst persons accustomed to mix in good society, would not be apparent.

Well, thank Heaven, there was no necessity to vex myself about the chance of such a mésalliance now. Some man there might be on earth willing to give up her money for the sake of calling her wife, but she would never give up her children.

I expressed this idea very openly to Mr. Henderson, who said, no doubt I was right. At the same time he once more hinted his surprise at the way in which Mrs. Trevor received the intelligence.

“Depend upon it,” I said, “she is not vexed because she cannot marry again. There is some other cause at the bottom of her grief.”

“Well, it has been a miserable business first and last,” he remarked, as he drew on his gloves, and buttoned up his coat, and drank off a couple of glasses of Madeira preparatory to facing the weather. “I have seen so much unhappiness resulting from unsuitable marriages, Mr. Trevor, that, sooner than one of my girls should wed a man like your late lamented cousin, I would put her in a convent or her coffin.”

“You mean a hypothetical girl, I suppose,” was my reply. “You have not any of your own.”

“Haven’t I!” was his answer. “I have a round dozen of children, one sort and another, some of them as tall as Mrs. Trevor.”

“Why, I had no idea you were a married man!” I exclaimed.

He looked at me for a minute, and then broke into a ringing laugh, which he instantly suppressed.

“I beg ten thousand pardons. I forgot, I quite forgot. If Mrs. Trevor unfortunately heard me, assure her I meant no disrespect,” and he was so earnest in this matter that he kept me at least a minute hatless in a damp country air, begging me to believe he would not have done it for the world—he intended no offence.

When at last I got rid of Mr. Henderson, I went to the door of the room I had seen Mrs. Trevor enter, and asked if I might come in.

“Yes,” she answered, and she took her hands away from her face, and greeted me with the same gentle smile which had been growing more gentle ever since I first knew her.

“I do not think I deserved this,” she began. “I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but I think this was a cruel insult to put upon me.”

I ventured to suggest that probably her husband had looked upon it in the light of a precaution.

“As if I was likely to marry again—as if—but there, I will not speak of that—Captain Trevor used to tell me women were not fit to be trusted with anything. I am certain there is one thing with which men cannot be trusted.”

“And that is—?”

“A woman’s happiness.”

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes; then she broke the silence.

“I shall be sorry tomorrow for what I have said to you today; but I was hurt—I was shocked.

When my boys grow up and see their father’s will, they cannot fail to wonder what manner of woman their mother was in her youth that it was necessary to have such restrictions in case she failed in her trust to them. And beyond all that,” she went on, “it was a revulsion. We had seemed so much closer together—he had been so much kinder to me—I seemed to have won his confidence so completely—he appeared so thankful for and pleased with the little things I was able to do to lighten his pain—he had told me so certainly and truly, as I thought—not with a sneer as he might once have done—I should find in his will how thoroughly he trusted me, that I feel I cannot bear the reality of that cruel, cruel paper I heard read today. I feel I cannot understand at all what he meant.”

It was not my place to tell her I believed the late Captain Trevor had, for purposes of his own, improvised the fiction she repeated to me on the evening before his funeral; so I said no doubt he considered he had showed his trust in her by leaving his children almost completely to her care.

“For, of course, Henderson and I will not consider it necessary to interfere with them,” I finished.

“But what did he mean by showing the confidence he placed in you?” she inquired.

“It shows that one man places confidence in another when he asks him to become his executor,” I replied.

“You are trying to make the best of this to me,” she said, “and I shall be grateful to you hereafter for not making the worst, but I know what you think of it all in your heart. Now, we will never talk of it again.”

We had, however, to talk of it again in years to come; but that was not her fault, poor girl, or mine by reason of any intention I had to bring more trouble upon her.

IV

I STRIKE A BARGAIN

For the second time I found I had made a mistake about those strawberries. The little world—heavens! what a diminutive world it was round and about Fairy Water—accepted with a unanimity rare in even smaller communities three facts—one, that Captain Trevor, having treated his wife infamously while living, had treated her still worse when dead; another, that she, being different from most people, would not feel the restrictions placed upon her as a woman of a different type might; the third, that it was a great comfort she had one male relation—myself, to wit—who, in her difficult position, could visit and advise her.

The little world previously referred to took me into its confidence concerning these and many other subjects, and I accepted its opinions.

As for Mary, the idea that her husband’s death should make any difference in my visits to Fairy Water clearly never occurred to her.

She called me Stafford, and the boys Uncle Stafford, and the little girl Godpa Stafford; and if I had suggested taking up my home with them all, I am confident she would have seen no impropriety in the arrangement.

Altogether, the visits I paid at Fairy Water after Geoffrey’s death were not unhappy ones. They would have been happier, but that the eldest lad was developing symptoms which no one, not even the local doctor, understood, and which certainly no one could like.

“The boy will be lame for life, if we do not try some different treatment,” I said to his mother, as we paced the lawn one day side by side. “I wonder what course we ought to pursue? I think we must have some first-rate doctor to see him.”

“Do anything you consider best so long as my darling is cured,” she said. “I never look at him without a feeling of self-reproach. My own sinful fretting after I was first married was the cause of this. I know that perfectly well.”

And Mrs. Trevor spoke so decidedly on the matter that I doubt if the whole College of Physicians could have brought her to a different opinion. Not being one of that body, I never tried. Beyond all things, she was now a mother. Her whole soul, thoughts, interest, hopes were bound up in her children, and if she liked to accuse herself of having induced delicacy in the constitution of her firstborn, why should I deprive her of the pleasure?

“Mary,” said I, and I stopped in my walk suddenly, “I have a notion. I know a man. He is a very dear friend of mine—one of the few dear friends I have in the world. He is also a clever surgeon—wonderfully clever. Should you object to my asking him down to spend a fortnight here? He is ill himself, poor fellow, and wants a change to some quiet place like this, and he would tell us what to do about Geoff—”

Before I knew where I was, she had led me in an ecstasy of excitement into the library, put pen, ink, and paper before me, and commanded that I should write to my friend.

“Make haste,” she said. “You will have just time to catch the post,” and she rang the bell. “Tell Robert,” she added, while I scribbled my note, “to come here directly. I want him to take a letter to the office at once. Valentine Waldrum, Esq.,” she proceeded, taking up my note and reading the address. “What a weak pair of names, Stafford. I am afraid he is not clever. I am indeed.”

“He is one of the cleverest men I know,” I said, with a little pleasant severity of manner, at which she put her finger to her lip and drew back a step or two, and said, “Hush-sh-sh!” to an imaginary audience.

Even at nine-and-twenty, or thereabouts, I could see now and then in such ways and actions as these a spectre of the Polly Ashwell, at whose death and burial I had assisted thirteen years before.

“I suppose he is very old as he is so clever?” she said after the note was despatched.

“He is not at all old,” I answered, at which intelligence she made a moue of disappointment.

One of the oddest traits about her was a fancy for elderly gentlemen.

Considering what her life had been with one of them, I could not understand this, till in a moment of confidence she told me she felt gauche with young ones, never having associated with them.

“Is his wife nice?” she asked.

“He has no wife,” I replied. “He never will have one.”

“Why not?”

“His father died mad, and in consequence he considers it his duty to remain single.”

“Does his mother live with him?”

“No, she is dead too. She did not long survive her husband.”

“How sad. Did you know her?”

“Yes, very well indeed. I knew her when she was no taller than your little Isobel; but I knew her best when she was ten years older than you are now.”

“Were you attached to her?” she asked, with that directness which is as often a proof of want of knowledge of the world as of intimate acquaintance with all its ways.

“If I ever loved a woman it was Val Waldrum’s mother,” I answered; “but make no mistake, Mary; that she married another man has caused no great disturbance in my life. When I began to love her I was at an age when sentiment is paramount. She was to me just what a favourite heroine might have appeared. She was my ideal-love, and for the sake of that romance in the first instance, and because afterwards I found her to be a woman, sweet, true, devoted, I liked her son first for his mother’s sake, and then for his own. I hope you will be very amiable to him, my dear, for he is much to be pitied.”

She took both my hands in hers and kissed first the right and then the left.

“Do you suppose I should not be amiable to any friend of yours?” she answered. “Am I a monster of ingratitude, that I should forget the kindness you have unceasingly showed to me?”

She had her ways and her words, which never permitted me to forget, no, not for a moment, what she might have been under happier auspices, what she might have developed had not Geoffrey decided to celebrate the obsequies of everything which was young, cheerful, light-hearted, about her on her bridal morning. We did two things that noon in Winchelsea, I decided.

We buried the original Polly, and we dragged a resuscitated Mary to the altar, and married her to a man old enough to be her grandfather.

“My dear,” I said, “you are not a monster of ingratitude, neither am I. Nevertheless, if you could find something else to kiss than my hands, I should feel obliged.”

“You wretch,” she said, and boxed my ears, or rather made believe to do so.

I tried to understand, but utterly failed to do so, why on that day, and for several days afterwards, Mrs. Trevor treated me like a person who had just sustained some great loss, or experienced some serious misfortune. Had my first love ascertained her real sentiments towards me in the same hour in which I made my confession, instead of—well it does not particularly matter how many years before—it would have been impossible for Mary to evince a keener sympathy with my disappointment than she showed by a hundred little attentions, by a certain tone of her voice, by a pitying expression in her face.

I could have laughed at her intense simplicity, but that between me and laughter there stood, at the moment, the spectre of that which seems only beautiful to us when we can grasp it no more—youth.

I had been young and I was old, and yet a few words, spoken almost at random, raised a fair illusion from the grave of the past.

Around me were the flowers, and the waters, and the beauty of the long ago; above my head shone a sun, the glory of which had faded many and many a year before; in my ears sounded the voices of the dead and gone; and there is something about phantoms such as these which chills the merriment even of a man of the world.

Nevertheless, the form which Mary’s sympathy took was not disagreeable to me in my last capacity.

Intuition teaches the sex many things wonderful to consider. Intuition taught her that after forty, and sometimes before, men find in creature comforts a marvellous solace for disappointed affections, and therefore when we sat down to dinner I found my tastes had been consulted even more scrupulously than was the case in general; and when dessert appeared, the wine she pressed me so much to try turned out to be taken from a bin that had been held so sacred in Geoffrey’s time, that I never recollect but once his asking any person to share a bottle of the vintage.

That was on the day of his father’s death. I happened to be in the house at the time, and perhaps in honour of his new authority he produced some of this wonderful wine, saying it would do us both good.

Afterwards thinking that what might be enough for one would not be for two, he treated himself on high festivals to a bottle in private. Those high festivals must have occurred frequently, judging from the small quantity left.

“I am so glad I thought of it,” said Mrs. Trevor, when I remonstrated with her on the extravagance of decanting such wine for me. “I cannot imagine what is the use of having things unless they are used.” Which article of faith she had learned, no doubt, from her father, who went on using everything he had till there was nothing left.

When I told her Valentine Waldrum was one of the few dear friends I had left in the world, I spoke the truth. One of the benefits attached to my profession is that it acts as an almost complete deterrent to personal dislikes; on the other hand, it places bars in the way of forming strong attachments. Dear friends being frequently a little exigeant, diners-out can scarcely run the risk of offending non-exigeant friends by making too many of them. I could not, at all events, and the few I did make I took care to keep, by letting none of my useful acquaintances know, if I could help it, of their existence. Each rule has, however, its exception, and Waldrum proved that to mine. From the time he first came to London, I tried to get him into society, but, unfortunately, I could not make him like society; then I tried to get society to recognise his professional merits.

Always graceful, society expressed itself certain Waldrum’s abilities were of the highest order, but at this point it stopped. When it wanted an arm cut off, or any other remunerative operation performed, it sent for some well-known man, even if he were half blind, half deaf, half doting, instead of my protégé.

Do you think I quarrelled with society for this? On the contrary, I only set my wits to work to overcome its prejudices.

The only man whom I asked as a favour to put business in the way of my young friend was an old doctor who had grown grey in feeling pulses, in pocketing guineas, and doing as little for his money as even a fashionable physician was able to manage.

I took Valentine to call upon him, and the young fellow’s good sense, cleverness, and modesty impressed the ancient humbug favourably.

As we rose to take our leave, the latter asked Valentine where he lived? to which he replied he was trying to work up a small practice in Islington.

“Where is Islington?” said the doctor, as though he had never heard of that suburb before.

When I explained its topography to him, and enlarged upon the fact that at one time London physicians sent their consumptive patients to die in its salubrious air, as they send them nowadays for the same purpose to Torquay, Madeira, and other such favourite resorts, he said he had no doubt it must be a charming neighbourhood, and that my anecdotes were most interesting.

Further, he observed, if I happened to be passing in the course of a day or two, he should like to see me.

When I called, he rushed to the point at once. “A fine young fellow,” he remarked, “something in him, should not wonder if he makes his mark; but, my dear sir, get him away from his present quarters. How could I recommend a man who lives in a place of which no one who is anybody ever heard? He ought to rent a house in a good street, furnish it well, set up a carriage and pair, or at least a well-appointed brougham. If he follow my advice he may earn a handsome income ere long; if he do not, he may make up his mind to remain in ‘Merrie Islington’ an unknown surgeon to the end of his days.”

“You are right, very probably,” I replied.

“Right, to be sure I am right! and you, who have been mixing in society for a quarter of a century at least, know I am. It is all very well for those who do not want to live by their fellows to talk about worth, and talent, and genius, and industry, and other nice qualities of a similar description, but we who must get money out of the upper ten thousand, or else starve, comprehend that the aristocracy must be humoured. And quite correct, too,” he added; “if I paid a man a guinea every time he looked at my tongue, I should expect him to find out my especial weakness, and respect it.”

That same evening I went to Islington, and found my young friend domiciled in a house which presented a front of a window and a hall door, adorned with a brass plate, to one street, while round the corner was another door, smaller than the first, adorned by a second and more diminutive plate, on which was engraved, “Surgery.”

One does not grow less sensitive to the value of external appearances as one gets older, and I confess it shocked me very greatly to find Mrs. Waldrum’s son making his professional début in such a locality.

I found him reading the last handbook of surgery, and writing his own opinions on certain passages as he went on.

“Still on the mill, Val,” I remarked.

“Yes,” he said, laughing; “there are some people on whom sentence of ‘hard labour for life’ is passed the moment they enter the world, and I am one of them.”

“Well, we must see that you get something in return for your labour,” I answered; and then I repeated all the words of wisdom which had fallen from the lips of my friend, the ancient humbug, and watched the effect they produced upon Mr. Waldrum.

He took the matter in a different spirit to that I expected. I thought he would pooh-pooh the experience of his elders—break out into invectives against the rottenness of a state of society which looked to what a man seemed, instead of first asking what he was. I imagined it quite possible he would tell me he preferred the poor to the rich, that he asked for no other emolument out of his profession than the power of alleviating pain, of benefiting the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, with much more to the same effect, uttered in the vehement language with which inexperienced persons clothe their crude notions until time has taught them both the fallacy of their ideas, and the folly of expressing them.

Mr. Waldrum, however, disappointed my expectations in the most agreeable manner. He waited quite patiently till I had finished, seemingly listening to and weighing every word; then he looked round his sitting-room with a most suggestive glance—a glance which took in the six second-hand chairs, covered with horsehair; the sofa, upholstered in a like cheerful and comfortable manner; the pembroke table, its deal top concealed by a tablecloth of washing damask, the washing capabilities of which had, however, apparently never yet been put to the test; curtains, ditto, ditto; carpet, neither bright nor new; ornaments on the chimney-piece to match.

When he had completed the survey, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and commenced refilling it, with a smile.

“It is good advice,” he said, “but, like all good advice, impossible to follow. I had trouble enough to gather sufficient money together to buy this excellent practice and superior house of furniture; how, therefore, shall I ever be able to move to the West End, and decorate my rooms as West End rooms should be decorated, and purchase a brougham and horse, and feed the latter, to say nothing of a man in livery to open the door, and another in livery also, to drive me to the dwellings of problematical patients who may require my services, or who may not—very possibly the latter.”

For the time being I ignored the conclusion of his sentence, and inquired:

“Why, when you were short of money, did you not come to me?”

“Well, for one reason—because I am a queer fellow, and have a fancy to be independent.”

“Independence is an excellent virtue, in moderation,” I replied.

“I wonder if you mean, now, by that remark, to imply what I heard a lady say the other day, that people who begin with being extremely independent, usually end by making eminently ungrateful beggars.”

“A sweeping assertion,” was my answer; “but still no virtue ought to be pushed to extremities.”

“You did not ask me what my second reason was,” he remarked.

“I shall be most happy to hear it, nevertheless,” I said, politely.

“Well, the fact is, if I ever thought about the matter, I thought you had no money to speak of. I knew you had a lot of friends, and influence likely to prove useful, say to a young lady whose relatives wanted her brought out and put in the way of making a good marriage, but I never supposed you had a hundred pounds lying at your bankers in your life.”

“I do not suppose I ever had,” I replied, humouring him.

“And that is the reason,” he went on, “that I have liked to know you. I felt you could not imagine I had any ulterior object in visiting you. It was very good of you to get me invited to grand parties, and affairs of that kind, and I am glad to understand, thanks to you, what is going on inside one of the big houses in a fashionable quarter, when I see the windows lighted up, and the carpet laid across the pavement, and carriages driving up, and footmen lounging about; but society and I are not suited for each other and therefore you cannot now think, when I say I like to know and talk to you, it is for anything than for your own sake, and the sake of one who understood you better than I think you do yourself.”

Really an extremely difficult sentence to answer, and as I dislike difficulties, I did not attempt to answer it.

He had refilled and lighted his pipe by this time, and began smoking vigorously. I walked to the window and made some observation about the quietness of the street.

“Yes, it is quiet enough,” he agreed, “if that be an advantage; still, even on that score I think I might have secured a more desirable residence at a lower figure.”

We were on ground now where I felt I could meet him.

“Val,” I observed, “I have a fancy that when you bought this excellent practice and superior house of furniture, you were deceived by someone.”

“I was sold [tricked],” he said, doggedly; whereupon I read him a small lecture. Slang might suit fast young ladies and vulgar young men, I informed my listener, but for anyone who wished to succeed in life it was inadmissible. I suggested that a perusal of Addison might improve his style; that a study of Dr. Johnson would teach him the capabilities of the English language; that Swift would show him the way to apply the axe of satire to everyday doings; and how do you suppose he met this. Really, I grieve to record his answer!

“Damn them all!” he said, “I have read and re-read till I wish no man had ever written, in which case I must have gone out and spent my strength in manual labour instead of vegetating in this cursed hole!”

As a narrator I am bound to be accurate as to conversation; as an individual I must apologise for the vehement language of my friend.

It is as useless to argue with a man who is miserable as one who is angry. Val Waldrum, I saw, was miserable. He had, or he imagined he had, which comes to very much the same thing, capabilities in him for rising to eminence, were a chance given; but no chance seemed likely to present itself.

He had hoped from a small beginning to make a great ending, but there some professions in which small beginnings mean a struggle from first to last, with no end worth speaking about, let a man fight as long and as bravely as he will.

He had spent his small capital in buying a practice which was evidently perfectly valueless, and though he had ample leisure for thought and study, both seemed destined to produce but poor worldly fruits, unless by a miracle he could be translated to some different sphere.

I am not a person who, as a rule, jumps to conclusions very rapidly, and I felt almost startled at the swiftness with which I formed the foregoing opinion.

“I suppose,” I began, “that if by any means it was practicable to follow the advice of our experienced friend, you would not object to do so?”

“Object!” he repeated, with a forced laugh, then went on, “I should not object—that is to say, if the thing could be done without borrowing money or running into debt. I think a man must be a fool who walks into ———” (the reader will excuse my merely indicating the place which this vehement young surgeon mentioned), “with his eyes open. Many a poor devil has, I daresay, done so in ignorance; but I! have I not seen the evils of debt all my life? Am I not, though through no fault of my own, eating its bitter fruits now? And for all these reasons, if anyone assured me I could earn five thousand a year by adopting such and such a course, I would not go into debt to secure it. At the same time I feel—do not think me vain—so certain that I have it in me to make a name, that if I had enough money to stand the racket for twelve months I would risk losing it in order to give myself a chance; but as I have not the money I must e’en content myself in this charming house, in this delightful locality, and try to work up a practice. I might sell the practice now, I daresay, if I could make up my mind to take in some unhappy wretch as I was taken in myself.”

“Is not the old place yours still?” I asked. “I do not, of course, mean the Grange, but the other property, where—”

He stopped me, wincing as if I had touched some unhealed wound.

“Yes; I get fifty pounds a year from the land. Of course, it is let far below its value; but we were glad to let it on any terms.”

“Do you mean that the house is included in the fifty pounds?” I inquired.

“No one would take the house,” he replied. “We had the greatest difficulty to get anyone to live in it, even as caretaker. The woman who does so has the reputation of being a witch.”

“Oh!” I said, and we sat silent for a minute. Then I asked:

“Suppose the house and grounds and farm were let at a fair rental, how much ought the whole thing to produce?”

“A hundred a year at the least,” he answered; “but then it would cost a lot of money to put the house and grounds in order. I wish I could afford to paint and repair it a little, for there is some talk of a railway cutting a corner off the garden, and I might then ask for handsome compensation.”

“If a purchaser could be found, should you mind selling the place?”

“Not if I got anything like a price for it.”

“What should you call a fair price?”

“If a man offered me fifteen hundred pounds he might have it tonight. But, there, what is the use of talking? No one would have it at any price. I did try to raise some money on it, and what do you think was the highest amount offered on mortgage?”

“Five hundred, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Two,” he replied, “and I can’t wonder at it. The land is impoverished, the fences broken down, the gates gone, the barns going to wreck and ruin. If I only could forget,” he went on passionately, “if the horror were ever likely to leave my mind, I should take the land into my own hands, and see if I could not make the property of some value once again. But I cannot—I cannot; the very thought of the place makes me feel not quite right myself. I shall not be able to sleep tonight after talking about it.”

This was a view of the question on which I felt no desire to enlarge. Not from anyone had I ever been able to hear a succinct account of the circumstances which preceded the death of Mr. Waldrum, senior. For years before the Waldrums moved from the Grange to Crow Hall, the latter place had the reputation of being haunted, and all I could elicit from Valentine on the subject of his father’s mania was that he began to “see things” and to talk strangely.

“There was a garden at the back of the house,” the young man told me, “and one day as he was sauntering along the side walk he suddenly stopped, and declared he saw a woman looking out of the window of a room where no living woman was. To all appearance, up to that time he was as sensible as you are,” continued his son; “but after that he got worse and worse to the end.”

There was something more in the affair than I had ever heard, I felt satisfied; but curiosity is not my besetting sin, and I consequently accepted his version as complete, without cross-questioning him about the matter.

The most singular thing to me in the whole business seemed that Mrs. Waldrum could not be induced to speak on the subject at all. If the place were ever mentioned in her presence, she was at once seized with a nervous shuddering that she appeared powerless to control. Valentine accounted for this by stating it was she who had been instrumental in inducing his father to take up his residence at Crow Hall, and that she reproached herself for having done so.

“As if the disease would not have developed itself sooner or later wherever he had been,” said the young man, taking a strictly medical view of the case.

Of course I could form no opinion about it; I could only believe that, from some cause or other, Mr. Waldrum had died raving mad, and that the subject was too painful a one for son or mother to discuss.

Crow Hall was the place of which I had been talking—to return to Islington and business.

“Val,” said I, “suppose I could sell that delightful residence for you—might I reckon on a commission?”

“That you might,” he replied. “I tell you what, if, amongst your friends, you know any eccentric gentleman who wants a haunted house, and is willing to give fifteen hundred pounds for it and the land attached—and to anybody with money the place is honestly worth every penny I have named—you shall have two hundred out of it.”

“Is it a bargain?” I asked, holding out my hand.

“Yes,” he replied, wringing it in a manner which caused me to remonstrate, and—well—to exclaim, “only, the man, whoever he may prove, must be told there is a story attached to the place.”

“Of course,” I agreed. “And now, you had better give me a letter to the witch, instructing her to allow me or any friend to view the premises. I must see the house before I can talk about it, you know.”

“If you do not mind sleeping there for one night,” he said, hesitating, “you could do so. I have always told her to keep a room ready for me, though I have never been able to summon up sufficient courage to cross its threshold since the day we left.”

“I will see about that,” I answered, as I took the letter; “and now continue to work up this practice till you hear from me Crow Hall is—sold.”

V

THE LEGEND OF CROW HALL

The intelligent reader, no doubt, clearly understands that I meant to buy Crow Hall myself. I calculated the cost mentally whilst I sat in the apartment, already—to quote the house-agency lists—“fully described on page 160.”

I am one of those people who may be described as eminently non-speculative. To me promoters post their circulars in vain; for me the prospectuses of new companies have no charm; banks place their dividends before my eyes without dazzling those organs in the least; whilst in mines I have no faith at all.

Naturally, then, you will wish to know in what I have faith? A question easily answered. I believe in ground-rents; I respect the Three per Cents.; and, to a certain extent, I have a liking for land. Not to enlarge, however, on opinions which have little or nothing to do with the progress of this story, I did a little sum in mental arithmetic whilst Valentine Waldrum was talking. Given that fifteen hundred pounds in the Three per Cents, returned me forty-five pounds a year, I certainly could not lose much money supposing Crow Hall only produced forty.

But I intended, if I purchased the place, to make it produce a great deal more.

There are some persons who can make money, and there are others who can take care of it; but the two qualities are rarely combined. My speciality is taking care of money—getting full value for it in some shape or other. It is not easy to delude me into making a bad bargain, and I was certainly not likely to permit Crow Hall to depreciate in the market if I became its possessor.

Before I moved further in the matter, however, I meant to see the place, so I wrote a letter to the woman in charge, informing her I was a friend of Mr. Waldrum’s, who had kindly sanctioned my making use of his house for a few days; and that I should feel obliged by her having a bed in readiness for me by such a date.

When that date came, I started for Essex, in which county Crow Hall was situated.

From Valentine I had received minute directions as to its whereabouts.

I was to go a certain distance by rail, and then a stage by coach; and after that I might post six miles by road, or walk through lanes and across fields (of which he drew me an accurate plan), which lessened the distance by one-third, to Crow Hall.

I have always been a tolerable pedestrian. In one’s own interest, as well as that of one’s friends, it is desirable to follow such rules as conduce to the maintenance of health; and therefore, even when dining out most constantly, the heights of Hampstead, the lanes round Willesden, the banks of the Thames, the windings of the Brent, have found me a frequent visitor.

In the country I always walk, and therefore, of course, I elected to go by the lanes and fields to Crow Hall. It was late in the afternoon of an autumn day when I found myself standing at the entrance-pillars—gate there was none—of that ancient house; and I am bound to state that the eye of man never beheld a picture of more utter desolation than it presented.

A long, straight avenue, overgrown with weeds, led to a sort of semicircle enclosed with hedges of ivy, privet, and thorn, outside of which the drive bore away to the right, and terminated apparently in the farmyard.

To the left of the avenue lay a lawn, on which the grass had seeded and was now rotting; beyond this a belt of trees, chiefly pine; and beyond that the lake of the dismal swamp, which had furnished Crow Hall with no less than two tragedies. Not a place, certainly, to tempt a capitalist possessed of an imaginative mind; but then no one was ever less imaginative than myself.

I merely beheld so much ground which had for years been kept in extremely bad order; a rather good approach; and an old-fashioned two-storey red brick house, with a high pitched roof, and dormer windows projecting from it.

“There are capabilities about the place, certainly,” I decided, as I looked at Valentine’s inheritance with critical eyes; “but the first thing to do will be to alter its character. I shall cut down those fir-trees; drain the lake; fill it up; lay the whole front down in grass; and plant clumps of evergreens here and there to break the monotony—hollies and yews with their red berries for the winter; laurestinas for the spring; Portuguese laurels for the summer; gorse for the autumn; and variegated laurels, the evergreen oak, and arbor vitae for all the year.”

Man proposes! I fully determined to perfect all the plans above enumerated, and many others beside. It pleases me now to remember I did not carry out one of them.

When I reached the enclosure previously mentioned I paused again, and decided to grub up the hedges surrounding it. What to do with the front—at that time ornamented by a garden wilder than any wilderness, which had been laid out originally in the Dutch style, and still presented some traces of the prim, curiously-shaped flower-beds, and rank box-edgings—I had not time to decide; for before I had quite compassed the design of this curious parterre, the front door grated on its hinges, and a woman (who was certainly old enough and ugly enough to answer to Mr. Waldrum’s description) inquired if I was Mr. Trevor.

For some unexplained reason, she called me “Mr. Treevor.” It is a peculiarity of the lower classes in England that they either cannot or will not pronounce a surname properly.

Being, of course, entirely ignorant of the cause of my visit, and having her own reasons for wishing to propitiate her employer, the old creature had done, and did do, her best to make me comfortable.

She made me tea; she toasted bread for my benefit; she fried ham and poached eggs; and, I doubt not, did ample justice to the reversionary interest in the repast which fell to her share.

It had been a lowering afternoon, and the clouds now seemed drawing up for a wet evening and night; so I decided to defer my tour round the premises till the next day, and, drawing up a chair to the fire blazing on the hearth, drew out a book, and began to read.

Towards eight o’clock, the woman—who was, I afterwards discovered, in the habit of going to bed at most proper and most unwitch-like hours—namely, seven in summer and six in winter—tapped at the door to know if I should like to see my room.

“It is well aired, sir,” she took care to assure me. “I always keep it aired in case Mr. Valentine, poor dear, should come back; and the sheets have had a good sight of the fire; and the bed was before it all day yesterday. I hope you will sleep sound, that I do, sir. You are sure there is nothing more I can bring you? Then I’ll wish you ‘Good-night,’ sir.” And she actually went out and shut the door, as if she never expected to see me open it and walk downstairs after her.

Great is the influence of earnest conviction. So satisfied was the woman that I meant to go to bed, that I actually did so; and lay watching the blazing fire, and the flickering shadows it threw on the wall, till the first died out, and the latter, missing their playfellow, fled away into the darkness.

At the same time in London I should probably have been saying, “Sherry,” in answer to some liveried murderer of the English language who had just asked, “’Ock or sherry, sir?” and yet at Crow Hall, only forty miles off, I was, notwithstanding the fact that I had partaken of no soup, no fish, no entrées, no joints, no pudding, no game, no gruyère, no fruit, and, most particularly, no wine—lying contentedly in bed, with the sheet drawn up under my chin, thinking what a very singular thing life is, and what very wonderful, though somewhat monotonous, patterns the kaleidoscope of existence presents for our inspection.

It is needless to say I did not fall asleep for hours. The fire had died out, and the shadows were all hidden away for the night ere slumber condescended to visit my pillow; and when at length I did close my eyes, and forgetting reality, wandered away into the silent dreamland, I found wakefulness perpetually calling me back to discuss with it some utterly unimportant event.

And now I am about to state a singular fact. I never awoke that night, or any other night I spent in the house, with a feeling of being alone.

I have no theory on the subject. I am quite unable to form any just opinion about it. I can only repeat that, sleeping—heavily sleeping, as I always seemed to be—when something dragged me back to consciousness, I always had the sensation of someone moving away from the side of my bed.

So strong did this conviction become at last, that, rising, I struck a light, examined the bolt of the door, looked in the cupboards, and in every conceivable place where any person or thing could be hidden.

“Pshaw!” I thought; “it is the tea and the strange room.”

Shall we say it was the tea and the strange room? Yes—very well—then be it so. I have no wish to argue the point. I only desire to get on with my story, and back into daylight once more.

Next morning, the old woman hoped I rested well, with a look in her face which seemed to express she expected me to say, “No.”

“Admirably,” I told her; which reply she received with a look of mingled disbelief and disappointment.

After breakfast—at which meal more tea, more toast, more ham, and more eggs made their appearance—I went out to view my future property, and found the account Valentine had given of its dilapidated condition by no means exaggerated.

His tenant, an individual of eccentric habits, I found loading manure into a cart, whilst his man stood by the horse’s head.

When I had ingratiated myself with him by the offer of a trifle pour boire [gratuity], which he was not above taking, he informed me, evidently imagining I was a spy sent down by Valentine, that the land was so poor he thought he couldn’t hold it much longer; in fact, he had only paid rent so far out of regard to Mr. Waldrum.

“The garden,” he added, “is running wild like; the seeds blow into the land, and fill it choke up with weeds.” If Mr. Waldrum would throw the gardens in, he wouldn’t mind trying it a bit longer, he wouldn’t. Did I think I should see Mr. Waldrum soon? Yes; then perhaps I wouldn’t mind telling him, with Mr. Dogset’s dooty, that if the garden was throwed in, he would keep them clear of weeds for the fruit.

I replied that I should be most happy to deliver his message.

“And you can tell him how shocking poor the land is.”

“Yes; that I certainly can.”

“And you won’t forget about the garden and the weeds?”

“No; I will tell him all. But don’t you think, Mr. Dogset,” I added, “you could make some use of the house as well?”

“No, sir; that I couldn’t,” replied Mr. Dogset; and he pulled down his shirt-sleeves, and slipped on his coat, and pulled an old straw hat low over his eyes, and gave one defiant glance ere saying “Mornin’,” and turning on his heel.

Clearly, there was some very unpleasant story mixed up with Crow Hall; about that part of the business Mr. Dogset was genuine.

When I re-entered the house, I penetrated to Mrs. Paul’s domain. Paul was the name of the witch, which struck me with a sense of unfitness.

She had selected for her own living apartment a front kitchen, the most comfortable room I had yet beheld in Crow Hall. It looked out on a little grass-plot, which Mrs. Paul informed me she kept clipped with a pair of garden-shears. Beyond this was a privet hedge, which likewise presented a good appearance; and in the broad window-seats the old lady had a goodly collection of geraniums, fuchsias, and musk. Apparently, also, she was not unskilled in the use of the whitewash brush, since the ceiling looked clean and newly done up; and the jambs of the fireplace had received a coat at some not remote period.

In a cage hung near one of the windows a bullfinch was singing away to its heart’s content, whilst on the hearth a black cat with white paws and a very white shirt-front sat gravely watching the operations of his mistress, who was engaged in singeing a fowl I had seen sacrificed an hour before, and off which I dined two hours later.

A man in town selects what he shall eat; a man in the country has to be thankful for anything he can get.

“May I come in, Mrs. Paul?” I asked.

“And welcome, sir; but you must excuse the place being a bit through other.”

I replied, and truly, that I thought the place looked very clean and nice indeed. I could not have said as much for its occupant, but then happily she had not considered it necessary to apologise for her own dilapidated appearance.

“Do you not find it dull here, living all by yourself?” I inquired.

“No, sir; I did at first, but I have got used to it. A lone woman must content herself to be a bit dull at times, or else put up with all sorts of people. I have always tried to keep myself to myself, and folks hate a body that strives to do that. No; it is not particular lonesome here, unless indeed in the long winter nights and days, when the snow is on the ground. I do feel a bit bad then, sir; but, law! I think how much better it is than the work’us, and I thank God I was not afraid to come here when Mrs. Waldrum gave me the chance.”

“As a rule people were afraid, I suppose?”

“You may say that, sir. Before Mrs. Waldrum left, she could not get a servant for love or money to stay a night in the house. I did not know how she was situated, or I would have come to her sooner; for many a half-a-crown, and many a quarter of tea, and many a pound of sugar she has brought down with her own hands when I lived on the other side Latchford Common; and it would have been a wonderful ghost could have frightened me away from her when she was in need of help. At last I happened to hear, and walked over.

“‘Is there anything Betty can do?’ I asked, and then she broke out crying.

“‘Would you be afraid to stay in the house and take care of it after all that has happened?’ she sobbed. ‘I can find nobody to take care of it, and if I cannot get away soon I shall go mad myself.’

“Then I helped her pack up, and she sent for a fly and drove off, and I said to her:

“‘Make your mind easy, missus; I will take care of everything till you come back.’

“But she never did come back. They took away a little of the furniture, and they sold the rest, except what you see is left; and Mr. Valentine, he seems to hate the place worse than his mother did, and what will be the end of it, God knows. I only hope I shan’t have to shift out from the place till I am carried out feet foremost.”

“The house has been haunted for a long time,” I suggested.

“So it is always said, sir,” she replied.

Meanwhile, I should observe, the fowl, in a limp and dejected attitude, was lying between us on the table. I was ensconced on the dresser, and Mrs. Paul, at my earnest entreaty, was seated on a rush-bottomed chair.

“Do you think it is haunted?” I asked.

“I know nothing about the matter, sir. I have lived in the new part ever since I came here.”

“This is the new part?”

“Yes, sir”; and she rose as if about to recommence her work.

“Mrs. Paul,” I began, “to be perfectly frank, it is a matter of importance to me to know exactly what story is connected with this house. I do not want to take up your time without paying for it, but if you can spare me half-an-hour I shall be much obliged.”

I held out five shillings to her as I spoke, at which she looked wistfully.

“I do not think, sir” she said, “Mr. Valentine would like the thing talked about.”

“But, my good friend,” I remonstrated, “everyone has talked about it. Every person speaks of the house as a haunted house, and, even by your showing, shuns it like a pestilence.”

“Besides,” she went on, ignoring my last remark, “I know nothing but at I have been told, just hearsay—a parcel of idle stories. I might have been frightened enough if I had believed one-half the neighbours say.”

“If you do not believe what they say, why need you object to repeat those idle stories?”

“I did not say, sir, I exactly disbelieved. I know nothing about ghosts, and such-like, and I want to know nothing. I have never seen worse than myself in the house since I came to it, nor heard anything except the whistling of the wind, or the creaking of a broken branch, or the hoot of an owl.”

“But what happened in the first instance to give the place such a bad name?” I persisted. “When, for instance, was the man found dead, in that dismal-looking piece of water in the front?”

“I would rather say nothing about it, sir.” And Mrs. Paul took up the fowl and a sharp knife, and looked as if she were going to disembowel the animal before my very eyes.

“As you please,” I said, taking up my hat: “I suppose there is someone in the parish can tell me all I want to know.”

“Oh, sir, if you must know it, I may as well speak as another.” This remark had reference clearly to the crown-piece, and I recognised the fact by placing it on the table. “But I think you had better not ask me to say more as long as you are sleeping in the house.”

For a moment there came over me a strange creeping feeling of chilliness. It was as if, on a warm summer’s day, an icy hand had been passed suddenly, though slowly, down my spine.

Never before had I quite understood to what an extent the force of imagination is capable of carrying one.

I did not hesitate, however, for one-half the time it has required to write the foregoing sentence. Before I ever entered the house I had formed a theory concerning its care-taker, and I felt quite satisfied that, notwithstanding her assumed reticence and apparent reluctance to speak about the phantom residents in Crow Hall, she desired to encourage the belief in their existence.

Of course it was to her interest that the place should remain unlet; and although she spoke as though she had, out of gratitude, conferred upon Mrs. Waldrum the obligation of taking up her abode in extremely comfortable quarters, still I could not be blind to the fact that having no rent to pay, having the run of the neglected gardens, having the use of an orchard where her fowls could almost pick up their own living, having likewise as much wood for the gathering and chopping as she could well burn, not to mention a gift at Christmas and Easter from Mr. Waldrum, was altogether a good thing for Mrs. Paul.

“Thank you,” I said, in answer to her last remark, “but I should prefer to hear the story now. I am not at all afraid of its disturbing my rest.”

The witch sighed—in justice I ought here perhaps to state that on one shelf of the dresser I had ere this time espied a Bible, a tattered hymn-book, and a few tracts—shook her head mournfully, turned up her eyes with an expression which seemed to mean:

“A wilful man must have his way, no matter how bad that way may be for him”; and said:

“I have never seen anything myself, sir, you must remember.”

“My dear soul,” I observed, “you have told me that several times already; and as I have no reason to suppose you are telling me a falsehood, there is not any necessity for you to repeat it again. Somebody, I suppose, must have seen something?”

“Well, yes, sir; the housekeeper who lived here with old Mr. Bragshaw told me herself that one day when he had gone to Chelmsford, and she was quite alone in the house, she was scrubbing the stairs, when all at once she heard a rustling above her, and looking up she saw a lady coming down. She was so astonished she stood on one side to let her pass, and it was not till the figure vanished—‘seeming to melt into air’—those were her very words, that she knew it must be ‘the foreigner.’”

“What foreigner?” I asked.

“The story goes, sir, and is, I believe, quite true, that a couple of hundred years ago this was an old manor-house, where in the time of the troubles, Catholic gentry used to be hidden till they could get safe off to France and other faraway places; and they do say that when old Madam Waldrum lived here, this was like a dower dwelling for the widows of the family—priests and soldiers, and all sorts of people were concealed, one and two at once, and no one knew the secret of where they put them, except madam and her old butler.

“At her death she left him a good bit of money, and her son leased him the house and farm, and he turned the house into an inn, and called it ‘The Black Crow,’ and made a mint of gold; not out of tavern keeping, people said, but by smuggling.

“To this day it is thought there are passages underground that lead away to other houses accessible to the sea and the river, though the secret of them died with the man who was found drowned.

“Well, the old butler died, but his son and his grandson and his great-grandson held the place after him, and kept it still on as an inn. The road ran right up to and past it then, instead of turning off as it does now; and instead of a lawn there was a great strip of common land, and there were larger trees and thicker; almost a wood, indeed, growing round the water.

“Each landlord made money in the place, but all were not careful of it alike, and at last there came one who wasted his substance as fast as he made it by consorting with a lot of wild young men, by betting at races, laying guineas by the handful down at cockfights, and such-like.

“About this time old Squire Waldrum, the old squire, lay a-dying, and as he could leave the property just how he liked, and as the younger son had got an inkling of his eldest brother having a wife and child abroad, what does he do but post off to bring her to England, so as to get his father to leave the estate to him instead of to the son who had married a woman who was two things the old squire couldn’t a-bear—a foreigner and a Papist.

“By some means he did induce her to come to England with him; the child, as I have heard is the fashion in those parts, was out at nurse away from his mother, and she came alone. They had such a frightful passage she was forced to leave her maid sick at the port where they landed, and it was such a night of wind and rain when they got so far as this on their road, that he was fain to seek shelter for the night for himself and the lady at ‘The Black Crow.’

“They had supper together, and the landlord himself waited on them. His wife was dead, but he had a niece who looked after the house, and she often spoke afterwards of the wonderful beauty and value of the rings and other jewels the lady wore.

“They were all set with precious stones—diamonds, I think someone told me. ‘She had more, too, with her,’ she said to her brother-in-law. The niece heard her speak the words.

“‘My dear Filipe’—she had a queer foreign tongue, I am given to understand—‘had usage of being often out of moneys. Since he last left me I have received much value from an aunt who had great jewels. He need have want no more.’

“At which Mr. Francis laughed; perhaps because he was glad to think if his brother did lose The Grange, he would not be a beggar; perhaps for another reason; no one can know anything about it for certain till the Judgment-day.”

Here Mrs. Paul stopped short, as if she never meant to go on again.

“Waiving the day of judgment for the present, will you kindly proceed with your narrative?” I suggested.

Mrs. Paul looked at me. Though she bore the reputation of being a witch, I ascertained subsequently her proclivities were methodistical, and that she refrained from public worship, not merely because of her scanty wardrobe, but also because there was no church in the neighbourhood of the doctrines which she affected.

Whatever her thoughts about me may have been, and I feel satisfied they were not complimentary, she resumed her story.

“Next morning, when they went to call the lady, she was nowhere to be found, neither was the landlord. Mr. Francis behaved like a madman; he sent out people to scour the country, he went to the magistrates, he rode home to The Grange, and tried to make the squire understand his eldest son was married, and that to a foreigner and a Papist; but the old man was nearly gone and wandering, and only said, ‘Good boy, good boy,’ before he died.

“Three days after, the landlord’s body was found floating on the piece of water. The men who rowed out to bring it to land struck the boat on a sunken root, and had some work to save themselves, but the body was after a time recovered.

“Of the lady from that hour to this nothing has been heard. She was Mr. Val’s great-grandmother, and since her disappearance nothing has prospered with the family.

“Mr. Francis was arrested, but as nothing could be proved against him, he was set at liberty, and went to foreign parts, where he died, protesting to the last, as I have heard tell, that in Mrs. Philip Waldrum’s disappearance he had neither act nor part.

“Mr. Philip shut himself up at The Grange, and led the life of a hermit till his death, when the child of the foreign lady—Louis, I think he was called—succeeded to the property.

“He lived much in London and abroad, married a lady of fashion with no money and little sense, and left The Grange—in debt, as I have heard tell, to its very gates—to Val’s father.

“While those things were going on at The Grange, someone took ‘The Black Crow’ and turned it back again to a private dwelling-house. But it often lay empty; people said it was haunted; people could not rest in the old rooms. It was not that they saw anything, or that they heard anything; but they felt as if somebody was there.

“I daresay you know what I mean, sir; I would not need to turn my head or hear a footfall, but still I should know if anybody came into this kitchen.”

“I can quite understand that,” I agreed, remembering my experience of the previous night.

“To people with plenty to do and think about,” proceeded Mrs. Paul, sententiously, “that did not signify much, so long as they kept well; but after a while no one kept well in the place. Some laid it to the water, and some to the drainage, and some to the air, and some to the lake; but none spoke up, though everybody suspected, the place lost its tenants that were able to pay rent, because they found somebody who paid no rent at all had been in possession before they were thought of.

“The man that lived the longest here was a foreigner. He could scarcely speak any English when he came to the place, and he could speak little more when he went away, but he drank a great deal of sour stuff they make in his country, stronger than brandy it is said, smelling of herbs. He gave me a drop of it once, and I felt strange for a week after. He came over on account of something he had done against his own king, Mrs. Waldrum told me, but the people round about would have it he was some friend to the lady Mr. Philip had married, and the place was looked on worse than ever after that; my notion is, when he had taken some of his stuff he would not have seen a dozen ghosts if they had been walking backwards and forwards through the room.”

“And when he left, or died?” I suggested.

“The place stood empty again, till the trouble came at The Grange, and then nothing would content Mrs. Waldrum but to come here and see if they could not live off the farm. Ah! she was a good lady, she was, and clever, but she made a mistake about that. She had a high spirit of her own, and laughed at the idea of ghosts and such-like.

“‘They rise out of the pond,’ she said, ‘and we will drain it.’

“They tried, but they could not drain it. More was the pity.”

Suddenly Mrs. Paul discontinued the “Chronicles of Crow Hall.”

“You must excuse my tongue, sir,” she said; “it has run the last hour away, and the fowl for your dinner is not trussed yet.”

“So I see,” I answered, and walked discreetly out of the kitchen.

It was no use disguising the fact, I relished the bird. He had no adjuncts to speak of. There was no bread sauce, no tongue, no ham, no anything to recommend him to a man who was in the habit of dining well; further, he laboured under the disadvantage of having been seen in almost all steps of preparation, and yet I liked him.

There was not much on his bones, as he had been earning a precarious living in the orchard, but what I found was sweet.

How much the man who stated “Hunger is good sauce,” would have contributed to the happiness of his fellow-creatures had he only given some receipt, stating how hunger was to be compassed short of travelling forty miles into the wilderness to find it.

VI

MAD! MY MASTERS

Dinner over, I went out into the garden, and sat ruminating in a ridiculous arbour, which someone had built evidently for the accommodation of spiders, daddy-long-legs, moths, snails with shells on their backs, and other such creatures.

I could not lie on the grass, because it was a couple of feet high, going to seed, and full of various insects and reptiles even worse than those enumerated above; the dingy, old-fashioned, only quarter-furnished room which had been appropriated to my living use, was not an inviting or exhilarating apartment, and, as has been said, I went out to the arbour, lit a cigar, and began to think.

The roof had disappeared, and, as I thought and smoked, I looked up into the bright green foliage of a chestnut-tree.

I was trying to solve two problems: one which concerned the present, and one which did not; the first, why such an impression of horror should have been left upon the mind of Mrs. Waldrum and her son regarding the manner of Mr. Waldrum’s death; the other, what had really become of that lady. It seemed impossible to acquit Mr. Francis Waldrum of some guilty knowledge in the matter.

As to the landlord’s disappearance, and the subsequent recovery of his body, I felt satisfied he had fallen accidentally in the water, more especially as I could in no way connect the fact of his death with that of the flight or abduction of the foreign lady.

Continuing the family history down to the time of Valentine’s father, I failed to discover why the manner of his death should so powerfully have affected both Mrs. Waldrum and her son.

There seemed nothing very wonderful in the affair after all. A man, with mind no doubt already weakened by long and wearying pecuniary anxieties, came to reside in a house haunted by a ghost related by the closest ties to himself and his family. The loneliness of the life, the change even from excitement to mere vegetation, began in due course to tell. He got low-spirited, and, wandering about the place, began to recall the memories connected with it.

From that point, the distance to dreaming dreams and seeing visions could not be considered remote.

He had fallen into a weak nervous state, and instead of removing from the scene of his delusions, those around tried to argue and reason him out of them, by which treatment the fancy remained impressed more indelibly on him.

All this I went over in my own mind, looking at the matter from various points of view, and dovetailing in the story told me by Mrs. Paul with the few facts furnished by Valentine.

“There is something more in the affair than I know,” I decided; “and Mrs. Paul is not the person to tell it to me, neither is Valentine. To whom then should I apply?”

No answer presenting itself, I resolved to take a walk and think out this question.

Latchford was the nearest village; thither I bent my steps. Half an hour brought me to a small, old-fashioned church shaded by fir and elm trees. A great cypress grew half-way between the church gate and the porch. Under the shade of that cypress, under the green billow of grass, all alone with the daisies and the dead, the birds, and God, Harold Waldrum lay dreamless, an unexplained mystery buried with him.

Who should expose it to me, I wondered, as I stood beside his grave; not the clergyman, no—his province was naturally with the wise and the responsible, not with the mad and the irresponsible. If not the clergyman, who then could repeat to me anything but vague gossip?

Who? why, the doctor of course. How was it I had not thought of that before? I asked the first labourer I met where “The Doctor” lived, and was directed to a house overlooking the village-green, and standing back from the road—a house with a well-established garden surrounding, and creepers, which had evidently been growing for years, not a few almost covering it.

“Come,” thought I, “this looks well”; and I rang the bell, and was answered by a neat maid-servant, who showed me into a sitting-room, where I was soon joined by an extremely limp-looking young man, tall, long-necked, light-haired, blue-eyed, large-mouthed, who evidently thought Heaven had sent him a patient from The Grange.

He looked unaffectedly disappointed when he heard the nature of my business, but bore the disappointment with greater courage than might have been supposed, and set himself to work to give me such assistance as he could, in a manner which, though it has certainly not added to his riches, has probably caused him to partake of more champagne than may, I fear, have been good for a person of habitually abstinent instincts.

“No; he was very sorry—very sorry indeed, but he could tell me nothing about Mr. Waldrum’s last illness. Of course he had heard rumours—vague rumours, but they were not to be depended on. He bought the practice a year previously from Doctor Wickham. It was that gentleman who attended Mr. Waldrum.”

“Could he give me Doctor Wickham’s address?”

“Yes, certainly, with the greatest pleasure: 1, Waterloo Terrace, New North Road, London. He did not himself exactly know where the New North Road was, but most probably it might be on the way to—or beyond Highgate, but perhaps I knew London better than he.”

This I thought extremely likely, but contented myself by saying I did know London tolerably well, and had little doubt but I should be able to find Waterloo Terrace.

Subsequently, under the impression evidently that he had not been able to do as much for me as could be desired, he took his hat, and volunteered to accompany me part of the way back.

When we reached the church he offered to procure the keys, as he thought it contained some monuments and brasses which might interest me. I saw both, and they had not the slightest interest in my eyes.

Once we were out of the churchyard he said he would walk a little way farther, and in fact he did walk so far that he accompanied me to the place where a gate should have been at the entrance to Crow Hall, and indeed left me no resource but to ask him if he would walk in and take a cup of tea.

He partook of several, and he smoked various cigars and several pipes; indeed, he only persuaded himself to leave me when Mrs. Paul, who, I could see, was indignant and uneasy at the turn affairs were taking, brought in my candle, and setting it down with a bang, inquired:

“Will you be pleased, sir, to want anything more?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Paul,” I replied, in my most gracious manner; and when the woman disappeared I availed myself of the opportunity to inform him I had unfortunately forgotten wine, and such-like commodities could not be purchased in the village, but upon the occasion of my next visit to that part of the world I hoped he would do me the pleasure of partaking of a friendly tumbler.

To do the young man justice, I believe it was no thought of either vinous or spirituous liquors which had induced him to prolong his stay, but he took the hint nevertheless, and made many apologies for having remained so late.

It was at this time about half-past eight o’clock.

I do not think I should have cared to invite that young man to pass an evening with me in town, but country life certainly produces a wonderful effect upon one, mentally as well as physically.

Like the simple fowl innocent of town artifices—deprived of all the advantages of skilful cookery and those adjuncts so necessary to his fellow, who makes his appearance in the busy haunts of men—I found the unsophisticated manners and habits of my new acquaintance pleasing rather than otherwise.

Musing about the sort of life he must lead in these remote wilds, I lighted my candle, and following the admirable example set by Mrs. Paul, at a much earlier hour of the evening, proceeded upstairs to bed.

As I did so, with nothing less in my mind, I can declare, at the moment than the ghost, I could have sworn that something brushed past me, and I was sensible of a sudden and chilling change of temperature.

“There is some trick in it,” I mentally exclaimed. After bolting my door, I examined, as on the previous night, every corner and cupboard in my room. “No doubt in an old house like this there are secret panels and passages known only to the initiated. Mrs. Paul looks as if she might have defrauded the Queen a little herself in days gone by.”

Thus I tried to reassure myself, but in vain. In whichever direction I turned it seemed to me there was someone behind me; someone or thing who moved as I moved, who with impalpable presence followed my steps.

Not that I heard a sound. Whatever the thing might be, it did not even breathe. I knew that, because I held my own breath over and over again in order to make certain.

“I am getting nervous,” I thought; and putting out the light, I placed the candlestick and matches ready to hand, got into bed, drew the clothes over me, laid my head on the pillow, and my invisible friend having also apparently retired for the night, fell asleep.

I slept sound until morning—sounder than I ever did in my lodgings, with the familiar and delightful London noises to lull me into peace and oblivion; and when I awoke, as I did with a start, the sun was shining in the east window, having a mind, as it seemed, to make the most of that day.

There was a noise close beside me too. Yes; a noise had awakened me. Turning to the point whence it seemed to proceed, I was surprised, and I may add mortified, to find the disturbance was caused by a mouse, which, seated on the top of the candle, was partaking of an extremely hearty meal.

When he found I was looking at him, he paused for a moment, and returned my stare with interest, his long tail hanging within reach of my hand.

After this greeting he seemed to think the exigencies of politeness satisfied, for he set to work again at the candle.

I made a feint of catching him, and he scuttled off to his hole.

When I woke again I found he had returned during the interval, and eaten one side of the tallow candle off, leaving the wick bare.

“I wonder what may be his opinion on the subject of ghosts,” I thought, as I sprang out of bed, and flinging open the window, looked forth over the country bathed in the morning glory of glittering dew and molten gold.

Perhaps it might have been more to the purpose had I wondered what my own opinion was on the same matter; but I shrank from a strict mental examination at the time.

I would defer analysing my feelings and the conclusions I deduced from them until I returned to London.

All I could bring myself to confess was that I believed there was something the matter with Crow Hall; whether that something was the air, the water, the trees, the drainage, or the story connected with the place, I could not, like others who had preceded me, decide; on one point, however, I experienced no doubts or misgivings—Crow Hall agreed with Mrs. Paul. Let the climate of the place or its invisible inhabitants militate against the health of other people, the house and her company suited that worthy lady.

Clearly I was beginning to suspect Mrs. Paul of a complicity with spirits, not exactly indicated by the term “witch.” On the other hand, there was this in her favour; unless she were really a witch it was impossible she could have been in existence in the time of Philip Waldrum, neither could she have had any hand in getting up the appearances, or non-appearances, which alarmed successive tenants. Neither did it appear she ever was employed about the house in any capacity during the time when Valentine’s father resided at Crow Hall. So far she seemed guiltless in the matter.

But the idea occurred to me, that perhaps she might be a descendant of some of those daring smugglers to whom the runs under and surrounding “The Black Crow” had been familiar.

Supposing the grounds were honeycombed with underground passages, and that Mrs. Paul possessed a knowledge of secret doors and hiding-places in the house, unsuspected by any other living person, it became very clear that unless with her permission, no one would stand a very good chance of living either comfortably or peaceably in Crow Hall.

“I must propitiate her,” I thought; and I did this without meaning to do so, when I stated my intention of returning to London that afternoon.

Her eyes glistened, and one especially ugly tooth, which was eminently distasteful to me, showed more distinctly than ever whilst she listened.

“I hope to return next week,” I went on; hearing which Mrs. Paul evidently thought her exultation had been premature, for her face clouded over, and the tooth retired behind her lips, disappearing totally from view.

Back in London, dirty, delightful, home-like London.

“Dearer art thou to me,” I said, apostrophising the streets, lanes, and houses of the metropolis, “with thy fogs, rain, dust, than the finest country to which man could take me.”

“Better,” I thought, unconsciously parodying the Laureate, but similar ideas do occur to extremely different orders of mind; “better an hour in London than a year in Essex.” Spite of an aptitude for eating lean fowls and ham and eggs, and existing without wine, all acquired at Crow Hall, I should have become nervous had I remained there, I should indeed.

The very sight of the London pavements, the smell of the smoke, the well-remembered blacks settling on my handkerchief—all these things acted upon me like tonics, and I was myself once more. I pooh-poohed the ghosts; I decided Crow Hall might be rendered habitable, and money made of it. I felt certain Mrs. Paul had been only trying to frighten me; and, after all, what was there in her story? Nothing.

I went to my club and dined, and felt better satisfied still. Yes, I could help Val, and still not hurt myself; full of which idea I wrote to him as follows:

Dear Val,—I think I know a man who will buy your place. I have been to see it; kindly let me know, at your convenience, if you will take sixteen hundred and fifty.

Yours faithfully,

Stafford Trevor.

To which he sent this reply by the very next post. I was still in bed when it arrived:

Dear Mr. Trevor,—Yes; I will thankfully take sixteen hundred and fifty pounds, and our agreement can remain as it was, plus commission on the extra one hundred and fifty.

Indeed, I know not how to express my obligations.

Yours truly,

V. Waldrum.

“I am in for it, then,” I considered; “it is said that the woman who deliberates is lost. Surely the converse holds good with men. I have not deliberated, and I am bound in honour, at all events, to buy the place. I will, however, hear Doctor Wickham’s report this evening, though that can make little difference now one way or another.”

At a remote period of my life I had been in the habit of thinking the New North Road one of the dreariest thoroughfares in London; but that was in far-distant days, when my knowledge of modem Babylon was by no means so extensive as is the case at present.

Several localities present themselves at this moment as even less inviting than the road which at St. John’s Church, Hoxton, debouches into a singularly nondescript and undesirable neighbourhood.

Men cannot always choose where they shall reside, more especially men without a large private income and with a large personal family. Can a person ever feel sufficiently thankful for not having a large personal family, if he be not possessed of a large private income?

I, at all events, felt thankful for the fact when I was ushered into Doctor Wickham’s consulting-room.

A creature extremely diminutive in stature and painfully lean in person, clad in tight trousers and a jacket covered with buttons, supposed to represent his rank as a page, answered the door, and informed me that the Doctor would be with me in a minute, ere he shut me into an ailment-inspiring apartment commanding a view over a back garden—the ordinary back garden, in fact, of middle-class London.

Next instant the Doctor himself appeared—a small man, with sandy hair, keen grey eyes, and resolute mouth, who would, I am positive, have made a name in the world, had he not possessed that fatal soft spot in his character which prompted him to marry a wife prematurely.

“I am grieved to disturb you at your dinner-hour,” I said.

Having heard the clatter of cups and saucers, as well as smelt the odour of grilled meat, I knew he must have been assisting at the purely feminine, moral, and domestic institution called a meat tea; but as people always like it to be supposed they dine late, I thought it as well to yield to the popular prejudice.

“A medical man—” he began.

“Is always ready to lend his time to a patient, I am aware,” I added; “but I am not a patient. I have no malady, and yet I want to consult you on a matter which is important to me—the health of a dear friend deceased.”

“Really, sir,” said Doctor Wickham.

“I think my name will tell you I am not a person likely to intrude unnecessarily upon the time or patience of a busy man like yourself,” I replied. “I am the son of Professor Trevor, with whose works you are, doubtless, well acquainted, and I am most anxious to learn a few particulars from you about the illness of Mr. Harold Waldrum, of Crow Hall.”

“I make it a rule never to speak of the cases I attend,” he said, stiffening up in a moment.

“A most admirable rule,” I agreed. “Would that all medical men adhered to it. But, supposing Mr. Valentine Waldrum requested you to be confidential, should you then object to open your mind to me fully about the matter?”

“I apprehend, sir,” he answered, “that Mr. Valentine Waldrum, being a professional man himself, could afford you all the information you desire.”

“Possibly, but the subject is a painful one to him.”

“No doubt, and I can well believe he would wish as little said about it in the future as may be.”

Here was a dilemma. I could not offer this man a five-pound note to bribe him to speak, acceptable as I felt certain such a sum would prove. I could not force him to open his mouth, and so I rose to take my leave without further parley, merely remarking:

“You perhaps imagine you are doing Mr. Waldrum a service in this matter, but I can assure you the contrary is the case. It is my intention to purchase Crow Hall, but I am quite determined not to do so till I know all the particulars of the late owner’s illness and death.”

“Purchase Crow Hall!” repeated the little doctor.

“Yes; is there anything very wonderful about that?” I inquired.

“I should not like to purchase it,” he remarked.

“Why not?” I asked. “Surely the fancies and utterances of a madman ought not to be allowed to prejudice one against so cheap and desirable a property.”

“Perhaps not; but after my experiences at Crow Hall, I would rather you bought it than I,” he persisted.

“Come,” I remarked, “you have said as much against the place as you well can; you may as well tell me the story straightforwardly. I know all about the reputed ghost. I have slept in the house; I shall sleep there again next week.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Take my advice. Buy Crow Hall if you like; pull it down, or let it stand empty, but do not sleep in it—do not.”

“May I ask why?” I said. “You cannot surely expect any sane man to allow his money to remain unproductive, merely because at some remote period a foreign lady disappeared from a strange house; no one knew why or how.”

He motioned me to sit down again, and he took a chair himself, looking with a perplexed expression at the depressing garden, with its two straight bordered walks and its strip of grass, terminating in a dreary-looking summer-house not much larger than a dog-kennel, where, doubtless, he smoked his pipe, and ruminated on ways and means after the youngsters were safely packed away in the sheets.

“Mr. Waldrum is, of course, aware that you mean to buy Crow Hall?” he said, after a pause.

“He fancies I want it for a friend of mine,” I replied; “in fact, there is a note referring to the subject,” and I handed Val’s epistle to the Doctor.

He read it over, folded the paper, and returned the note to me.

“You had heard, of course, there were stories afloat concerning the place?” he suggested.

“Yes, and Mr. Waldrum said he wished no one to purchase it who was ignorant of them.”

“Precisely so, and then—”

“Then I went to the fountain-head and heard all about Philip Waldrum’s wife, and the landlord of ‘The Black Crow,’ and the tenants who could not rest at night, or keep their health in the house.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing except what I had previously heard from Valentine Waldrum—namely, that his father died raving mad; that his disease first indicated itself by seeing visions and faces, and all that kind of thing. I never questioned either him or his mother much about the matter, as they always seemed to avoid it.”

“May I inquire your object in wishing to purchase Crow Hall?”

“Yes; I wish to do the son of my old friend, Mrs. Waldrum, a good turn, if it be possible, without losing much by the transaction.”

Once again he sat silent for a moment, looking out over his small domain, without, I am satisfied, seeing any single thing it contained; then he said:

“Sometimes, Mr. Trevor, I think there may be as much harm done by silence as by speech, and I am satisfied Mr. Waldrum would not wish you or anyone to buy that doomed house ignorant of what has happened in it. I attended Mr. Waldrum at The Grange in the latter days of his residence there; and, naturally, when he removed to Crow Hall, I used frequently to call there non-professionally, and oftener still to meet him and exchange a few words when I was walking about the parish or visiting patients who lived on the other side of Latchford Common. Before he had been in the place very long I was struck by a change in his appearance. It came on gradually, and I did not notice it till one day when he happened to be walking before me on the road; and something in his gait, in the droop of his head, in the slouch of his shoulders, struck me with that sort of uneasiness which a medical man’s instinct feels at any physical alteration for which there is not, so far as he is aware, any actual cause.

“‘You walk as if you were tired,’ I said to him. It was a bracing, frosty day—a day on which a healthy man had no business to feel tired. ‘Are not you well?’

“‘Yes, I am well,’ he answered; ‘but there is something the matter with me. I have always latterly felt weary. I sleep soundly, not to say heavily, and yet I wake in the morning more tired than when I lie down at night; and my head is heavy—it does not ache, you know, but there is a weight across my forehead. I have curious dreams too; and when I wake, as I often do suddenly, I have a feeling as if someone were standing beside my pillow. It is all nonsense of course,’ he finished.

“‘There is something amiss with your liver,’ I observed.

“‘Very likely,’ he agreed; ‘you had better put it to rights for me.’

“We were close by my house at that moment, so I asked him in, and inquired more particularly as to his symptoms, but I could not find out what was the matter with him.

“His forehead was not hot, his tongue was in good order; he did not complain of cold feet, or ache or pain anywhere; his lungs were sound, I knew. I could not discover anything wrong with his liver.

“The only things about him I did not like were his appearance and his pulse. There was an indescribable grey look on his face, and there was a nervous flutter in his pulse that made me ask him:

“‘Have you anything on your mind?’

“‘I have had much on my mind for many a day past,’ he said evasively.

“‘But anything extra—anything unconnected with worldly matters—with money?’

“‘I do not quite understand what you mean.’

“‘I mean, have you any fresh trouble; has anything occurred latterly to annoy you?’

“‘No,’ he said, ‘except that I do not like this feeling in my head.’

“I told him that feeling was a consequence, not a cause, and tried hard to get him to confide to me what he had on his mind. All in vain; he either had nothing at that time to tell, or he was determined not to tell it, so I sent him some medicine, and thought no more about the matter till one day when his son, who was at home at the time, came rushing up to my house to entreat me to go to his father immediately.

“‘He has gone suddenly mad, I think,’ he said; ‘persists he saw a woman’s face at the window, and declares it is Philip Waldrum’s wife come back.’

“‘He must be delirious,’ I said.

“‘He is no more delirious than you are,’ said his son, almost rudely; ‘he is mad, and I have been afraid matters were tending to this for some time past.’

“When we reached Crow Hall, Mrs. Waldrum was sitting in the drawing-room crying, the servants were talking together in whispers, and Mr. Waldrum was standing in that bit of neglected garden lying under the oldest part of the house, staring up at a small window in one of the gables. He greeted me without the slightest evidence of insanity.

“‘Seeing is believing, Doctor,’ he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. ‘Now, you follow my eyes; you will not have long to wait; she has come to that window half-a-dozen times within the last half-hour.’

“I stood beside him for a few minutes, and then observed:

“‘Now, Mr. Waldrum, I cannot see anything, and what is more, I do not believe you can see anything either, and you must not try to frighten your household by talking such nonsense—you must not, really.’

“‘Well, perhaps I had better not talk of it,’ he answered; ‘but, Doctor, one word,’ and he lowered his voice, ‘it is true for all that. She has been haunting me for a long time, and I know who she is at last—Philip Waldrum’s lost wife; you remember her portrait at The Grange. Well, I saw her at that window, looking as if she had stepped out of the frame.’

“Of course it was no use arguing with a man in such a state of mind, so I merely advised Mrs. Waldrum and his son to try the effect of change of air.

“It is easy for a doctor to tell the friends of a patient to take him away, but it is not always so simple a matter for the friends to follow his advice.

“It was difficult for Mrs. Waldrum to adopt my suggestion, I knew; but somehow she managed to get her husband to Hastings.

“They stayed away for three months; at the end of that time they returned, he being, as she, poor soul, imagined, cured. One look was enough for me. I knew the man had come home to die; and I suppose I must have shown something of my dismay, for he said, when his wife left the room:

“‘Doctor, what I saw before I left here was a warning to me. I hope I have taken it to heart.’

“By the same night’s post I wrote to his son, and, after a very short delay, he came and stayed to the end.

“It would have been almost impossible to trace how he sank. Week by week he grew weaker; until one morning a message arrived, asking me to step up to Crow Hall. Mr. Waldrum wanted to see me particularly. He was still in bed, and looked worn and exhausted.

“‘No, I am not so well today,’ he said, in answer to my inquiry; ‘I am tired, tired, tired; but that is no matter. Doctor, I wanted to tell you a curious dream I had last night. I do not speak of any of these things to my wife or Valentine now. They do not like it, and they cannot understand; but I felt I must repeat it to someone. First, I dreamt I was awake; that it was a bright moonlight night; that I could see patches of light on the walls, the floor, the curtains. The door was open between this room and the next, and I could hear by Esther’s light breathing that she was asleep, poor dear. I was lying looking at the moon, and thinking about the past and the future—about the world to which I am travelling so fast, Doctor, and wondering how my wife and boy will get on in this—when feeling that nameless something I have mentioned before, I turned my head, and saw Philip Waldrum’s wife standing in the middle of a patch of moonlight that streamed against the wall. She was dressed all in black, her head was uncovered, round her neck she wore the traditional necklace, and on her hands she had the rings we have heard of so often. They gleamed in the moon’s beams like stars. She beckoned me to follow her, and I could not choose but do so.

“‘She seemed to pass into the wall, and I did the same. Lighted by her diamonds, we went down a narrow winding passage, the stairs rotted away with age, and the walls dirty and covered with mould, and wet with damp. She turned now and then to see if I was following, and at last we found ourselves in a square room that smelt like a charnel-house, and was close and suffocating as the grave. In a passage leading out of it something lay in a heap. She pointed to it; and, looking more closely, I saw these were bones on which jewels sparkled as on the hands and neck of my companion. As I stood, the face of Philip’s wife changed—her cheeks dropped in, her eyes grew lustreless, her mouth fell, the skin tightened over her forehead. While I looked her countenance altered to that of a grinning death’s-head; then the whole body collapsed, and I was alone with a heap of bones. How I got back I do not know. I have forgotten that part of the dream; but when I awoke it was broad day, and I felt weary enough to have been walking half the night.’

“It certainly did not occur to me then that he was describing this vision as a dream, merely because he was afraid to define it even to himself as anything else; so, instead of trying to lead him from the subject, as Mrs. Waldrum and his son always tried to do, I let him talk on, and hark back to the subject as often as he liked.

“While he was, for the third or fourth time, describing to me the very spot in the wall which had seemed to open, and was pointing it out with his hand, I said:

“‘What have you got on your sleeve, Mr. Waldrum?’

“‘On my sleeve?’ he repeated.

“‘Yes; it is one mass of dirt,’ I answered; and turning the folds round, I showed him the marks, as if it had been rubbed against some black, moist substance.

“He looked at it, and then at me. Next instant he fell back on his pillow in a dead faint.

“I thought we never should get him out of it. He lay like one dead, till I began to despair of his recovery; but he did recover.

“Of course, the one idea suggested to me by his story, and the black marks on his sleeve, was that he walked in his sleep; and after telling Valentine he had better be in the room at night instead of his mother, and keep the door locked, I went away, feeling all that could be done had been.

“But he grew more and more restless; as his physical strength decreased, his mental irritability increased, and he was unable to control his speech, or to keep silence concerning the visions he saw, and the terrible sight which had been revealed to him.

“Ill though he was, I urged his being removed from Crow Hall. I offered the use of my own house, if none other were available; but he would not hear of it. If the subject were broached, he burst into a paroxysm of either grief or rage—sometimes weeping like a child again, inveighing against the cruelty of those about him.

“They wanted to take away his last hope; wealth, wealth untold lay hidden away about the house, and he would find it for them. He should never enjoy it himself—that, of course, was a vain hope, a past expectation—but he might leave it for his wife and his son; he would have it if we could only be persuaded to let him alone.

“What were we to do? I put it to you, sir; what were we to do?”

“Humour him,” I suggested.

“We did humour him. Mrs. Waldrum watched him by day, his son by night. The doors were kept locked; the keys removed. I saw him every day. I knew the end was a mere question of weeks; when about four o’clock one morning I was awakened by a tremendous knocking at the door.

“‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

“‘It’s Mr. Waldrum, sir, drownded in the pond!’

“I don’t know how I got my clothes on. I don’t know how I got to Crow Hall. He lay on his bed like one departed, but he was not dead. He spoke to me quite rationally once. I had cleared the room, and we were alone together.

“‘You remember what I told you about Philip’s wife?’ he said.

“I nodded.

“‘She has come often since, but particularly last night. We went down as before, but this time I could not get back. I went groping, groping on till I came to water. Then it caught me, and I shouted for help. It came. You know the rest.’

“After that he lapsed into delirium. He talked of hidden treasures; of a dark, beautiful woman; of bodies buried in subterranean chambers; of passages known to none but himself. And then he died. I was with him when he passed away.

“He stretched out his hands to the phantom which had cursed his later life, and said:

“‘Forgive me! I had not strength—’

“That was all.”

“And the moral you deduce from this,” I said, “is that Crow Hall is an ‘uncanny’ sort of place?”

“It is a weird place,” he answered. “Laugh if you like; it drove me from the neighbourhood.”

“I have no inclination to laugh,” I replied. “Nevertheless, I intend to buy.”

“Do not blame me, then, sir, for anything that may ensue,” he remarked.

“I am not one of the Waldrums,” I replied; “and if I were, I do not think Mrs. Philip could induce me to take nocturnal rambles with her.”

He looked at me, and shook his head gravely.

“I have a good digestion,” I observed.

“There can be no doubt of that, or you would never buy Crow Hall,” he replied.

After all we parted good friends. That is how, when the grand moment arrives, I should like to part with the world; but I think such a desirable exit improbable.

VII

MR. WALDRUM UNDERSTANDS

Crow Hall was mine, and with the purchase-money Valentine Waldrum furnished, not a house, but a waiting and consulting-room—to say nothing of a suite of private apartments—in a mansion once inhabited by nobility, but which had, in due course of time, come into the possession of a retired butler; who, with his wife, an ex-lady’s maid, were very glad indeed to make mutually satisfactory arrangements with so desirable a tenant.

If I may say so without the charge of vainglory being preferred against me, Valentine would never of himself have found any residence or person likely to meet his requirements; consequently, the credit of house, furniture, servants, and moderate charges, may fairly be given to me.

Yet it was not without a struggle I agreed to abandon my first scheme, and permit him to settle down into bachelor chambers.

I wanted him to marry. I wished him to look for a wife before a state of celibacy became chronic. I told him surgeons and doctors ought to be husbands and fathers; and that, if he wished to succeed in his profession, he ought to make it his business to find a lady—if an heiress, so much the better—but in any case a lady, amiable, educated, intelligent; who could order his household, sit at the head of his table, and help him to push his way in society as only a clever woman can.

In answer to these remarks, for some time he only fenced or laughed; but at last he said plainly he never intended to marry.

“If I ever felt myself attracted by a girl, and likely to fall in love with her,” he said, “I should flee away as swiftly as though I knew she were one of the Lorlei. The Waldrums have been a queer lot for many a long day, and I will not perpetuate the evil. Every man, I suppose, has a natural longing to hold his son on his knee—to think his name will be perpetuated through his children; but how should I look my son in the face without a shudder, remembering the legacy I must bequeath him? What delight should I feel thinking of one sprung from my loins ending his days a gibbering idiot, or a raving maniac in an asylum? No; marriage is not for me. I have taken my profession to wife instead of a woman; and, no matter what my own latter years may have in store, I know I shall leave behind me brain-children that may yet do the world good service.”

“Pooh!” I said. “Your father was no more mad than I am. He got into a low state of health; saw visions and dreamt dreams; walked in his sleep, and talked nonsense about hidden wealth and a woman who wrought much trouble in the Waldrum family—as foreigners, male and female, are apt to do in regular, well-conducted British households. That is the sensible, matter-of-fact way of looking at the business.”

At this juncture, Mr. Valentine Waldrum rose from his chair, and, taking my arm in his, held me as if I were in a vice.

“My good fellow,” I observed; “if you are strong, be merciful!” But he never heeded my remonstrance.

“Once for all,” he said, “let this matter end between us. As a medical man, I might be inclined to adopt your view of the question, if what you have stated were all; but it is not all. There is mad blood in the Waldrums, I tell you. I saw that woman too! I never thought to speak of this to living being again; but I saw her. It was before the funeral, and I had gone into the room where he lay to look at him once more. At the foot of the coffin stood a lady. She was dressed all in black, and she was wringing her hands like one in some terrible agony. For a moment I stood still, looking at her. Then she turned her face towards me, and I recognised her as the original of the picture at The Grange—a woman with black hair, and great sorrowful black eyes. She wore the fatal necklace of precious stones, and had diamonds sparkling on her hands. I must have lost consciousness for the time. When I came to myself, I was alone with the dead!”

“And the next time?” I inquired.

“Was the night before we left Crow Hall. I had sat up late, smoking, and, as I went up the staircase to bed, I distinctly felt the skirt of a woman’s dress brush against me. Nothing was visible then; but when I reached the landing, I saw, in the moonlight which streamed through the window, a dark figure standing with her back to me. As before, she slowly turned her head, and I beheld Philip Waldrum’s wife again, with her fatal beauty, with her decking of gems.

“She beckoned me to follow her. I felt something I could not define drawing me into the room where my father died; but with a last effort I called back my reason and fled. I do not mind confessing to you that I spent the whole of the night in prayer; I entreated God to deliver me from the haunting of that terrible presence, and to enable me to keep to my solemn resolution of living single all my days, rather than that child of mine should inherit so fearful a doom.”

I sat for a moment silent, ashamed to confess in that ghostly house I too had felt the something he described sweep past me, and yet I dared not altogether refrain from expressing my belief.

“Val,” I said at last, “do you know I think there really is a ghost at Crow Hall, or else someone who considers it worth while to personate the foreign lady. It could be easily done, you know.”

“No!” he interrupted; “do you suppose I did not exhaust every possible and impossible conjecture before deciding the place was accursed, and we all mad together? By-the-bye, what is your friend going to do with it?”

“He will put it in order, and charge the new railway company a fancy price for spoiling the seclusion of so charming a property.”

“He does not intend to live there, then?”

“No; he buys as a mere speculation. He buys for a rise; if it proves a fall, he must put up with the loss and can afford to do so. By-the-way, I am going to Crow Hall next month. Can I deliver any message to the lady with the diamonds?”

“She will never appear to any but one of our doomed race,” he answered gloomily.

“I fancy she is a lady of an extremely erratic and capricious turn of mind,” was my reply; “and it would, therefore, be extremely difficult to say what she might or might not do.”

Mr. Valentine Waldrum turned away offended: a pet ghost is like a cherished ailment—no man parts with either readily.

So far, however, he proved right. I never saw the lady with the diamonds. Philip Waldrum’s dead wife did not care evidently to exhibit her charms to strangers; nevertheless, I could not sleep comfortably in the house. I always had that sense of a second presence after my door was locked, and I apparently alone, which, I may as well state at once, tried my courage as nothing before or since ever tried it.

Still, I was not going to be beaten. I had bought the place and meant to make money out of it.

To make money, it was absolutely necessary the popular belief in the idea of previous tenants should be shaken, and so I shook it. Once Mrs. Paul understood I was the owner of Crow Hall, all trouble in that quarter ceased. She waited upon me “hand and foot,” to use her own vague phrase. When I suggested that I should like a room with a western aspect, a front apartment was scrubbed and prepared for my reception; and in it no man nor woman, smuggler nor ghost, disturbed my repose.

Further, I at once gave Mr. Dogset notice, that on and after a certain date I should require him to relinquish his tenancy of the Crow Hall acres, which so astonished him, that he offered me a pound au acre more rental, which I accepted, and bound him to keep the fences in a state of proper repair.

For my own part, I had the out and inside of the house painted, the drive gravelled, the grass mown, the gates replaced, the gardens dug over and put in order. Mrs. Paul’s fowls had to confine their scientific researches to their yard and the adjacent paddock, and it came to be rumoured throughout the parish that the Crow Hall ghost was laid.

I did not contradict the rumours, though I knew it was not true. When the railway surveyors came to inspect the property, they found a country-house in good repair, the grounds in order and well kept, the farm let at an increased rental, and better cropped and stocked than had been the case for years.

They were impressed, and offered me a very fair price for the slip of land they wanted.

At once, as an idle man who did not want to be troubled, I accepted their offer. After the purchase-money was paid I felt secure. I was not afraid of the future; I knew I should see my outlay back again, and doubled possibly. In which event I meant Valentine should share in my prosperity.

As has been already stated, I am eminently non-speculative. Perhaps it is for this reason that when I do speculate, fortune favours me.

For example: no worse whist-player ever existed; and yet, when I consent to make a fourth, such cards are dealt to me that success is absolutely certain.

Again: suppose I see, as I sometimes do, a mine or a company in which I feel disposed to buy a few shares, those shares are sure to go up, and then I sell. I do not hold my poor purchase, no matter how promising things look, in the expectation of gaining two hundred per cent. No; I wait for a certain rise, and then find a customer.

Of course I sometimes see the shares of a company, in which I have no further interest, touch a fabulous price, but that does not fret me in the least. More frequently I see the grand programme collapse, and the final scene of the drama played out in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court or else patronised in person by the Chief Judge in Bankruptcy, to say nothing of a host of clamorous creditors.

As I have before remarked, I believe in nothing as a really secure investment except the Three per Cents, and a first mortgage on land.

Nevertheless, occasionally I coquette with the Money Market to the extent of a few hundreds.

To please fair patronesses I buy a lottery-ticket now and then; and for the sake of times long past, I take a little trouble about such a place as Crow Hall, for instance.

To pick up, however, once more the thread of my story.

In a fashionable quarter, in well-furnished rooms, with an unexceptional gentleman in black to show gentlemen and ladies into the apartment, which may well, I think, to borrow a City phrase, be called a sweating-room, by reason of the feverish agony there undergone, Mr. Valentine Waldrum did fairly well. He did not succeed as my friend the medical humbug prophesied; perhaps because he lacked some of the elements of success—perhaps because my friend never sent him but three patients—one a governess, one an artist, and one an eccentric country squire, who screwed him down to perform an operation any old practitioner would have charged fifty guineas for, at, to quote the advertising agents, a nominal price of five.

Nevertheless he succeeded pretty well. He was paying his way and gaining a name, and seemed sufficiently happy. All his leisure moments he devoted to some abstruse studies connected with those parts of the human internal economy which are connected with the spleen, or the lights, or the liver, or the kidneys. I beg to assure the reader I have no feeling of favouritism as regards the internal mechanism of man, and it is quite immaterial to me to which organ Mr. Waldrum directed his attention. A copy of his book containing the author’s autograph is on my bookshelves, but I never read it, and I can conscientiously say I never shall.

All this, however, has nothing to do with the fact that he did make some part of the human body his study; that he discovered something in it, or deduced something from it never previously deduced or discovered; that he wrote a book on the subject which was well reviewed in The Lancet, and which gave him a certain standing in the opinion of his professional brethren.

It is quite one thing, however, to stand well with brother-surgeons, and another to hit the fancy of the general public. Perhaps surgeons are like other men of the world, and like those in their own line best who have not the faculty of climbing very fast or very high. Anyhow, if Valentine Waldrum won favour, he did not make guineas so rapidly as I had hoped would prove the case.

Further, by the time his book was finished, the reviews had appeared, and his brethren had begun to remark: “Waldrum is a clever fellow; he has something in him. He will make his mark yet—”

Waldrum fell ill.

He had tried his sight by staring at unpleasant objects through the microscope. He had been examining and torturing all sorts of animals. He had been reading books, old and new, on the subject nearest his heart. He had been attending people who did not pay him, in the interests of science; and he had been sitting up at night, when he could have done his work just as well in the middle of the day.

All this and more I remarked to him, but he only smiled in answer, as though the production of a book never likely to be read out of his own profession, and by very few of the members composing it, were a more than sufficient off-set against impaired sight, low spirits, and a generally depressed state of health.

This was the position—pecuniary, sanitary, and moral—of Mr. Valentine Waldrum when I left town to pay my usual visit to Fairy Water, and this was how it came to pass I suggested the expediency of inviting him to stay there.

I and one of the boys, a riotous young imp, between whom and the pony there seemed a sort of rapport which carried us up hill, and down dale, and along the level, as fast as the creature could tear, went over to the station to meet our visitor, who mightily astonished Master Ralph by taking the reins from him.

“I have no doubt you are a capital whip,” he remarked, “but for all that I cannot submit to be driven by a lad of your size.”

“All right,” said Master Ralph; “that is, if you can drive.”

“You want your ears boxed, young gentleman,” I observed.

“If I did want them boxed, I don’t know who is to do it,” retorted Ralph, whom I had heard on one occasion call me an old fogy.

“Very likely I shall,” said Valentine, with a genial smile.

The boy looked him over, and then bursting into a hoarse laugh, exclaimed:

“Come, you ain’t a muff, that is one comfort.”

“What would your mamma say if she heard you use such expressions, Ralph?” I inquired.

“Oh! she’d cry; but we never let her hear. She’s a woman, and she does not understand, so we don’t vex mother—none of us.”

“See you never do, my lad,” said Mr. Waldrum. “Time may bring you many good gifts, but it will never bring you a second mother.”

Ralph did not make any direct reply to this, but I saw the young rascal turn up his eyes and clasp his hands, and heard him mutter to himself:

“My! ain’t it better than copy!”

Mrs. Trevor came to the door to meet us. She had seen so little of the world, she was such a child still in many respects, that she thought so distinguished a guest as Valentine ought to be received with all the honours.

She was a staid, quiet little matron; and as I watched her shyly holding out her hand to the new arrival, I felt irresistibly reminded of some plant grown in a cellar, of some creature kept long in confinement, of some bird in its earliest flight, utterly ignorant of the ways and manners of those of its fellows who have been accustomed to liberty from their youth upwards.

Of course she was not, even in her early youth, the sort of woman Valentine was likely to admire. I had not seen him in society without understanding precisely the lady fair to whom he would have inclined had he permitted himself to incline to anybody.

Juno-like beauties were his favourites. To them he directed his eyes, his attention, his discourse. Given a woman with well-developed and better exposed shoulders, full face, decided features, large eyes, red-lipped mouth, filled with regular white teeth, and a fluent tongue, and round and about that shrine my protégé wandered.

Making, however, every due allowance for this proclivity, I felt disappointed at the expression which came over his face when he first saw my cousin.

I could not tell what it implied, whether contempt or derision, or simple astonishment.

At any rate, if I ever felt inclined to pick a quarrel with him it was then; but immediately I reproached myself for the feeling.

“He knows nothing of her past life,” I considered. “He is judging her as he might a woman of society, and thinks her small, plain, gauche. He has no idea of her worth, nor suspicion of what she has suffered, poor darling”; and when she kissed me, as was her innocent mode of receiving her late husband’s cousin, I returned the salute, which was not my innocent mode, as a rule, and glanced at Valentine after I had done so.

He was looking at me, I found, with a very queer twinkle in his eyes, and the desire to pick a quarrel grew almost irresistible.

After the first ten minutes, however, things went on smoothly. Once he saw the sick lad he was in his element. Having met with a human being more than ordinarily ill, whose case nevertheless was not beyond hope, his spirits rose at once. He forgot his own ailments; he forgot that so far he had won less money than fame; he forgot everything save his skill, and devoted it and himself to the heir of Fairy Water.

During the first part of his stay I was his constant companion. We walked, drove, smoked, sat together. Mrs. Trevor and the lads kept themselves to themselves with a pertinacity for which I am only able to account on the ground that they were all, mother and boys, afraid of the new-comer. Miss Isobel had her own views on the subject, however, and haunted my friend with a pertinacity which seemed to be troublesome; but he would not let me send her away.

“There are not many who care for me,” he said with a pathetic break in his voice. “If this little one likes to say she will marry me, where is the harm to either of us?”

Where indeed! And yet there was something in the tiny maiden’s repeated assertion: “I love you; I will marry you when I am a woman,” which seemed to me to be a discord in the calm harmony of that almost monastic home.

I had assisted at the sacrifice of the mother, who might never now hope to love or marry; and yet here was the child, all unconscious of what marrying and giving in marriage had proved to one of the dramatis personae present that morning in Winchelsea church, inventing her own little domestic story, and assigning to herself and this man, whom I could remember running about in short frocks and red shoes before Mrs. Trevor was thought of, the parts of hero and heroine.

After a time there came a change, however, in our order of proceeding. As Valentine recovered his health and spirits, I found myself more alone with Mrs. Trevor and the invalid, whilst Mr. Waldrum and the boys took long rambles over the hills; or hired a boat, and rowed up and down the river; or went fishing or playing cricket.

In a few days after he began to make companions of them, the lads worshipped him, as lads do worship muscular men, whether Christians or sinners. They were never happy except in his presence; they followed him about like dogs; and wearied not in reciting his feats of strength, his acts of valour, and his performances with bat, rod, and oar, for the edification of their mother, Geoffrey, and myself.

Gradually I observed Mrs. Trevor seemed to weary of their ecstasies; the smile with which she listened to their narratives grew forced; and whilst they chatted on she would often look away, as if thinking of something foreign to their conversation.

I could not imagine what was the reason for this. It was natural enough I should feel tired to death both of Valentine and the lads, but with her the case was different. Hitherto, she had been in the habit of evincing the keenest sympathy with their few sports; and when they brought, to my intense disgust, a bottle filled with sticklebacks into the drawing-room, she actually attempted to count the victims.

Now, all this interest had died out. Like me, she seemed to loathe the name of trout, whilst cricket became as great a word of dread to her as to me.

Knowledge came one evening as we sat by the window, looking down on the water which gave its name to the place. The sun was shining through the trees, and threw long patches of shifting and glimmering light upon the lake, making it look a fitting haunt for the most fanciful fairy that ever danced on greensward, or hid herself in the cup of the floating lily. Under a great walnut-tree Valentine sat on a bench, the sick boy lying on a couch near him, and the others grouped around, making the summer stillness hideous with peals of laughter.

People talk of the music of children’s voices, but anything less resembling music than those shouts of merriment I never heard, save, perhaps, the braying of a German band when every instrument is out of tune.

I had been discoursing about the beauty of the landscape, and was pointing out to Mrs. Trevor the perpetual changes that flitted over the face of the water as the sunlight fell now here, now there upon it.

“I do not think I ever saw Fairy Water look so worthy of its name,” I remarked at last, as a stately swan came slowly sailing across a patch of light, which made it seem as though he were floating through a sea of molten gold.

“Yes,” she answered, and there was something in her tone which caused me to turn from my contemplation of the external prospect.

She was not looking at the lake, or the flickering sunbeams, or the heavy foliage of the solemn trees; her eyes were fastened on the group gathered on the lawn, and they were full of unbidden, perhaps unconscious, tears.

“Why, Mary,” I exclaimed, “what is the matter?”

She covered her face with her hands, and wept softly.

“I am very foolish—very wicked, perhaps; but I can’t help it. My children are all I have, and till he came I was first in their hearts. Now they leave me for a total stranger.”

“Don’t be a baby, Mary,” I expostulated; “your boys love you just as much as ever; but it is natural that a man like Mr. Waldrum, who in many ways,” I added, loftily, “seems little more than a lad himself, should attract their fancy. It is far better they should openly show their attachment for a person in their own rank of life, than be sneaking secretly after grooms, rat-catchers, and poachers.”

“I never felt afraid of my boys doing anything of that kind,” she replied, with spirit.

“Nevertheless,” was my answer, “it is precisely what your boys have been doing. When you are present they conduct themselves like saints; but when your back is turned, there are no greater young Turks on earth. I do not say this in any disparagement of the lads. They are fine, spirited children, and though they would not, I believe, vex you for any consideration, still they cannot help their young blood, and light hearts, and muscles asking to be used, and minds wanting to be occupied. You cannot go fishing, shooting, boating, and cricketing with them; and fond as they are of their mother, they delight in the company of any man able to share in their sports. Because I never had any taste for such things, I have heard that young rascal Ralph call me a ‘duffer,’ and other equally opprobrious names. Why, he tried to get the best of Mr. Waldrum the first evening we met him at the station; but Valentine threatened to box his ears, and the boy was delighted.”

She sat thinking for a minute over all I had said, and then she remarked:

“So it comes to this—I shall not be able to bring up my boys myself.”

There was a pathetic quiver about her mouth, a beseeching look in her eyes which tempted me to shirk telling her the truth, but I put aside the temptation. My own views had been enlarged since I saw the influence a man could acquire over the young termagants, and I was not going to run the risk of breaking her heart in the future for the sake of uttering pleasant things in the present.

“My dear,” I said, and I took her hand in mine as I spoke, “I am afraid we ought not to blind ourselves any longer. No woman can, after a certain age, bring up boys properly. She can train them to be hypocrites, selfish tyrants, milksops, absorbed students, shy recluses; but she cannot educate them to be men. The mother’s influence exercised in her own especial province is almighty for good; but another influence is needed, and you must send your boys away that they may be fitted for the battle of life, that when they grow into men you may be proud instead of ashamed of them. The girl is all your own, of course—”

“Ah!” she interrupted, “Isobel is more a boy even than Ralph. She has not an instinct or taste of a girl about her.”

At this I laughed outright.

“Mary,” I said, “when you were Isobel’s age, what were your instincts and tastes?”

“I do not remember,” she answered. “Mamma never let me have any, I think.”

“In my opinion you must have greatly resembled your little girl,” I observed. “But now you must promise me to be brave. You will try not to be jealous of poor Val’s influence over your children; you will, like a wise little woman, remember you cannot alter human nature or—”

At this juncture she suddenly withdrew her hand, which, quite unconsciously, I had retained.

“Here they come,” she said, and the colour rose in her face as if she had been doing something eminently wrong; “I—I will just go upstairs and bathe my eyes.”

And she left the room as Valentine, with that curious expression in his face I had noticed the first evening of his arrival, came up to the open French window, and asked me if I would come out for a stroll and a cigar.

“These lads have quite exhausted me,” he explained. “Let us have a walk for half an hour.”

“I will go with you,” shouted Ralph.

“That you shall not,” declared Mr. Waldrum, with commendable decision; “I have had quite enough of you for one evening”; which statement was a great relief to me—Ralph’s company being about the last thing I should ever have thought of desiring.

For a time we paced along in silence, then said Valentine, knocking the ash off his cigar:

“I suppose Mr. Trevor has not been long dead?”

“Captain Trevor has been dead for many years,” I replied.

“Mrs. Trevor still wears very deep mourning,” he remarked.

“I suppose she will do so till the end,” I replied.

“The end of what?” he asked.

“Her life,” I said shortly, and then ensued another silence.

“It was the old story, I presume,” he began after a pause; “a love-match, an early death.”

“There was no love on her side,” I answered; “and Captain Trevor lived to a sufficient age. It is a tale I have never cared to repeat, but as there is no secret in Mrs. Trevor’s life, I will tell you all I know about it if you like.”

“She puzzles me,” he replied; and then I understood his curiosity was piqued.

It did not take me long to finish the narrative. How bald and naked it seemed when reduced to words, and yet what did the whole thing mean? Simply the loss of the best part of a woman’s life—the annihilation of youth, hope, love.

He comprehended it all now, even to the will which rendered it impossible for her to make a better or a worse of the future than the past had proved. I told him everything, even to my own remorse at the part I had acted in Winchelsea church.

“We won’t talk about this thing again,” he said. “I misjudged you very much; I thought you had a tendresse for la belle cousine, but refrained from speaking, deterred by the idea of losing your liberty and gaining the boys.”

“My dear fellow,” I observed, “I love and honour Mrs. Trevor, but I never was a marrying man; and if I had been, I am a quarter of a century at least older than she.”

“True,” he said, “I had forgotten that;” and we walked back to Fairy Water in silence.

VIII

VALENTINE’S FIRST CHANCE

Shortly after that evening, Mr. Valentine Waldrum began to tire of the country; he grew weary, I could see, of the still, tranquil, stagnant life, of the remorselessly monotonous meals, of the utter lack of congenial society, of the riotous fondness of the children, of the gentle amiability of his hostess, of the uninviting existence, of which nothing disturbed the routine save the advent of a fresh calf, or the hatching of a successful brood of chickens.

His spirits, at first so much improved, fell to zero; his appetite followed suit, his manners grew restrained, and his face gradually assumed an expression of penitential weariness. Altogether I did not feel in the least degree surprised when he announced to me one morning, after breakfast, that he had received letters which compelled him to return to town.

“I shall not forget Geoffrey, though, Mrs. Trevor,” he said to her before his departure; “I will run down as often as I possibly can to see him.”

She knew too little of the world—she was so utterly ignorant of the ways and doings of that London near “which she had once lived,” to understand fully the extent of the kindness already done by Valentine to her boy, but she was of so grateful and humble a nature that intuition stood her in almost as good stead as experience.

With a pretty colour in her cheeks and tears in her eyes, with a sweet simplicity that made me feel very proud of my cousin, and that I am sure touched Mr. Waldrum sensibly, she thanked him for all he had already done.

“You have laid me under a debt of gratitude I can never repay,” she said.

“And Mr. Trevor has laid me under a debt of gratitude I can never repay,” answered Valentine, frankly. “He has done far, far more for me than I could ever hope to do for him or his.”

“Has he, really? I am so glad,” she exclaimed eagerly.

“It was nothing, Mary. He is given to exaggeration,” I remarked, with becoming modesty.

“It is no exaggeration,” said Valentine, with a look which reminded me of his mother. Ah! welladay, that story was indeed an old one.

“Mrs. Trevor, everything I have I owe to your cousin. If I ever achieve any fame or success worth speaking of, I can never forget he gave me the first shove from shore; he found me at Islington, depressed, disgusted, eating my heart out, and he put courage into me at once. I had a poor little place down in Essex, which no one would buy, upon which no one would lend money. He found a friend to purchase it, and on the strength of that purchase I set up as a West End surgeon, tried the experiments in which I was interested, wrote a book, and am a known man, making a fair income. That is all your cousin did for me,” with a satirical expression on the “all”; “and as of course it was not worth remembering, I forgot it immediately.”

“Do not pay any attention to what he says, Mary,” I entreated; “he was a bad boy from the beginning.”

“He has been very good to me and mine,” she answered, holding out her hand, which he took reluctantly, as it seemed to me, and released immediately.

“I will cure the boy if it be in human power to do so,” he said confidently, and thus we parted.

About that time my attention was much engaged concerning a variety of business letters that were perpetually arriving on the subject of Crow Hall, nevertheless it certainly struck me as curious that Mary found nothing to say concerning her late guest.

If I introduced him as a topic of conversation, she listened and tried to seem interested, but she never voluntarily alluded to his existence.

Of course I understood the reason for her silence—she was jealous of his influence over her children.

Well, it was natural; she had only them, and, thanks to my cousin, she had lived out her young life, whilst they might have many another interest beside her; and had, moreover, their lives all before them.

I could not argue the matter with her; nevertheless, I felt hurt. When one introduces a friend to a woman, one expects her to evince some interest in him; more especially when he has tried to serve her and hers.

My cousin Mary was gracious in manner to Mr. Waldrum, but I misdoubted me that she was ungrateful at heart; and he, I think, felt this, for when he did come down to Fairy Water for his promised visits to Geoffrey, he made his stay as short as possible, and, always alleging professional engagements, returned to London with as much speed as might be.

Meanwhile the words I had spoken to Mrs. Trevor about the boys bore fruit. She herself suggested a thing I should never have dared to do—that Ralph should be removed from the mild sway of the neighbouring vicar, and the unrestrained liberty of Fairy Water, to a good school, the selection of which she left to me.

“I cannot part with them all at once,” she said, with a forced smile; “but I want to do my duty by them now I understand clearly which way duty lies.”

“You are a dear, good little woman,” I exclaimed, delighted to find that, even on the subject of her children, she possessed some small share of that common sense so unusual amongst mothers.

At which outbreak she laughed, and asked if I were certain I really thought so, which question I answered in the affirmative with some slight mental reservation.

I had found her good in all relations of life, except it might be in her non-appreciation of my friend; and, after all, was she to be blamed for failing to understand his character?

It rarely happens that a man’s friends take kindly to each other. Why should Mr. Waldrum and Mrs. Trevor prove exceptions to this rule?

Besides the strawberry season, there were other festive occasions and high saint days and holidays which I had been in the habit of spending at Fairy Water for more years than there is any necessity to specify.

Christmas Day, of course; Shrove Tuesday, and Ash Wednesday, generally; Mid-Lent Sunday occasionally; and Good Friday and Easter time, I may say, without exception. Sometimes I ran down about Whitsuntide for a day or two, and since boyhood I had assisted at the sacrifice of the traditional goose, the appearance of which, smoking hot on the domestic board, is supposed to insure good fortune for twelve months to come. I am not certain that these anniversaries were seasons of any real festivity to me, but the habit of observing them had been growing for years; and as Doctor Johnson felt a sense of uneasiness if he passed one of the familiar posts in Fleet Street without touching it, so I should have experienced a sensation of mental discomfort had the days above enumerated come round and found me absent from my accustomed place.

It was the 28th September in the same year when I had first introduced Mr. Waldrum to Fairy Water—how well I remember the day by reason of what followed after—when Valentine, coming to my lodging, found me dawdling over the remains of a late breakfast.

“I have called,” he said, “to know if I can take any message or parcel to Mrs. Trevor. I am going to Fairy Water tomorrow.”

“I am going there this evening,” I answered. “Come with me, and stay over Sunday.”

He demurred to this proposition, but finally agreed that we should travel together, if I would let him return the following afternoon.

“You seem to be as loath to leave London as I am, Val,” I remarked.

“Yes,” he said; “I think it is the only place for a solitary man.”

“You mean, I suppose, that it is the only place where a man need never feel solitary,” I observed.

“You have expressed my meaning better than I did,” he answered, and then fell into a brown study.

“What is the matter?” I asked, at last; “what is preying on your mind now?”

“Only the loss of a patient,” was his reply. “I wonder how old I shall be before people will believe I have sufficient experience to attend the upper ten?”

“Your patient then has left you, not departed this life?” I commented; for at first I really imagined a casualty had occurred.

“Oh! he is not dead,” said Valentine. “You know the man I mean—Keith, who has just become Sir Henry Keith, and succeeded to his uncle’s estates. He could afford now to pay one a decent fee, and I suppose that is the reason why he has thought fit to send for Cock.”

“Never mind, your turn will come someday,” I said consolingly.

“Yes, when I am too old to care whether it does or not.”

“A man is never too old to be indifferent to success,” I replied. “Besides, Keith is not a patient worth fretting after. He used to be a poor snob, and now he is a rich one; that is all. When you begin to attend the Royal Family he will remember he used to consult you, and send a polite note to that effect at once. But you may take my word for it,” I proceeded; “you will do no good for yourself unless you go into general society.”

“I have no inclination to enter into general society,” he answered; and then I understood the old wound was still open, that the previous year had failed to obliterate the memory of that tragedy enacted at Crow Hall.

When we reached Fairy Water, we found the local doctor sitting beside the sick boy.

It was he who had written to tell Mr. Waldrum their patient seemed retrograding, and to judge from the expression of his face, Geoffrey might have been in articulo mortis. Mrs. Trevor looked as though she had been crying night and day for a fortnight previously, and in this cheerful mental atmosphere the lad’s own spirits had fallen to zero.

At a glance almost, Valentine took in the position of affairs.

“You must not distress yourself, Mrs. Trevor,” he said; “Geoffrey does not seem so well as I should like to find him, certainly, but there is nothing the matter that cannot be put right very easily.”

And then he and Dr. Sloane went into another room and had a long chat together, whilst I took the first convenient opportunity of telling Mary what a baby she was, and relieving my own feelings by scolding her.

Next to Isobel, Geoffrey of all the children was my favourite. His health had prevented his indulging in the riotous pastimes which were the delight of Master Ralph, and his constant and enforced companionship with his mother had imparted to him somewhat of her gentle, patient nature; of the mixture of innocence and thoughtfulness, of simplicity and wisdom, which rendered her character in my eyes at once so rare and so attractive.

I was concerned for the lad, and unhappy about his mother, for both of which reasons I was especially hard on Mrs. Trevor for always “looking at the worst side of everything,” and “fancying Geoffrey a great deal more delicate than was really the case,” to all of which she listened with a contented smile.

“You can say what you please now,” she answered. “I am easy now Mr. Waldrum has seen my boy, and assures me he is not dangerously ill.”

We were standing in the conservatory at that moment, she with her white fingers straying amongst the flowers of a great oleander tree, and something, I cannot tell what, prompted me to say:

“You have great faith in Mr. Waldrum, then, Mary?”

She lifted her eyes to mine—sweet, trustful eyes they were too—as she replied:

“Of course I have implicit faith.”

“In that case do you not think you could manage to be a little more civil to him?”

“Civil!” she repeated. “Am I not civil to him?”

“No; and I fancy he feels your coolness when he is trying to do all in his power for your child.”

She swept one look at me from under the shelter of her long lashes, and then there came such a sudden and vivid colour into her face, that for the moment her whole appearance was changed.

“I am very sorry,” she said; “I did not mean to vex you or Mr. Waldrum. I have not been much in society, and I cannot help feeling shy with strangers.”

“But Valentine ought to be no stranger,” I argued; “to me he has always been just like a son.”

“Ah! yes, but you have known him so much longer,” she answered; and then she gathered one of the oleander buds and put it in her belt, and tripped out of my sight with a step as light as though she had been only nineteen instead of nine-and-twenty.

All that evening she did her best, in a timid, nervous kind of way, to be more sociable towards Mr. Waldrum; and she joined me most earnestly—but then this might not have been disinterested—in asking him to remain over Sunday.

As he positively, and, to my thinking, not very courteously, refused our invitation, all she could do was to order that the slaughtered goose should be cooked for an early dinner, so that her guest might partake of the delicacy before leaving for London.

Next morning came clear, crisp, sunshiny. Valentine and I had agreed over night we could have a long walk before breakfast, and by eight o’clock we were standing on an eminence commanding a view of Low Park, one of the very many residences of the Duke of Severn.

“I should think a man who owned a property like that must find dying a difficult business,” remarked my companion.

“The present Duke is quite a young man,” I replied; “I should not think he can be more than three or four and twenty. I know his aunt, Lady Mary Carey, and she has often referred to a long minority, during which the rents have been accumulating, and the young Duke growing older.”

“I wonder how a man feels, who, looking over those woods and lands, feels they are all his own?”

“Very much as we do, only without the envy, I imagine,” was my answer; and then we retraced our steps, talking of indifferent subjects as we did so.

After breakfast, which with me in the country, as in London, is, I regret to say, a mere formality, I retired to the library to write letters. One in especial occupied my attention. It was addressed to the secretary of a charitable institution, the managers of which wished to purchase Crow Hall, or, should I desire to retain the hall in my own possession, a certain number of acres, on which an asylum might be built, the remainder of the land to be converted into a model farm.

Caution having been the coach that has carried me through life, I answered:

Sir,—Your proposal being one requiring serious consideration, I must request the delay of a month before giving a final answer.

Your obedient servant,

H. Stafford Trevor.

This, and some other letters, I determined to post myself—a love of solitary and surreptitious walks being a peculiarity the country always develops in me; and accordingly, without asking anyone else in the house if he or she desired to send any confidential mission by the next day’s mail, I started off to the nearest village all alone.

Just as I was emerging from the entrance gates, a groom in the Severn livery, driving a horse covered with foam, pulled up.

“Beg pardon, sir, but is Mr. Waldrum at your house?”

“I think he is in,” I replied; “what do you want with him?”

Already the horse was trotting up the avenue as fast as he knew how, but the man shouted back:

“Duke! Sloane! Brains!”

“It will keep, whatever the matter may prove,” thought I, and walked on to the office.

When I returned Mary met me in a pretty flutter. “What do you think?” she said, clasping her hands through my arm, “Mr. Waldrum has been sent for to Low Park.”

“What is wrong there?”

“The Duke’s gun exploded. He is dangerously injured.”

“That is a chance at last for Val,” I said.

“How worldly you are,” she expostulated.

“Surely, my dear, if the Duke likes to meet with accidents, my friend may as well have the benefit of them as not.”

“Of course,” she agreed; “but what a dreadful thing to happen.”

“What has happened?” I asked.

“Something to his eyes, and head, and hand,” was the lucid reply.

“Clearly the goose is not roasting in vain.”

“Oh, how can you!” she said, and went away, her handkerchief to her eyes, crying about the injuries of a man she had never seen.

It struck me then, as it has struck me since, that the feminine temperament is one which possesses much more of theoretical than of practical sympathy.

One o’clock chimed, two o’clock in due time followed suit, Valentine came not, and I was growing hungry.

“My dear,” said I, “about that goose?”

“You imagine Mr. Waldrum will be detained,” she remarked.

“Nothing more probable.”

“Shall we wait a quarter of an hour longer?”

“An hour if you like”; which I consider was magnanimous, since hunger was gnawing at my vitals.

Ten minutes, twenty, thirty, forty minutes ticked their way onwards, and Mary was miserable.

She had always considered me and me only, and now another guest claimed her courtesy and her patience.

“Oh!” at last she exclaimed, and that “oh” meant a whole thanksgiving service, as she heard the sound of wheels coming up the drive; “here he is.”

“Softly, my dear,” I remarked, and, arranging my double eye-glass comfortably on my nose, I beheld a phaeton drawn by a pair of ponies dashing over the gravel, containing not Mr. Waldrum, but certainly the very last person I desired to see at Fairy Water—Lady Mary Carey.

I am not often taken with a sudden tremor; it is not a usual thing with me to feel my head shaken down into my heart, and my heart shaken up into my head; but when I beheld that woman lolling back in the phaeton, scanning with her great eyes my cousin’s modest home, my spirit sank within me.

She had thick wiry hair, wide nostrils, eager wondering eyes, and protuberant lips. Her skin was mottle-brown and yellow, her figure like nothing save a bundle of clothes tied up for the laundress; she was acquisitive beyond belief, and impertinent and insolent beyond description.

She could not be in the company of a stranger for an hour without giving utterance to some insult. She never knew a person for a week without soliciting some favour or demanding a present. She had divorced one husband, she had worried another into his grave, expecting he would leave her all his money.

In which expectation she was disappointed. As she told the story to everyone there can be no indiscretion in my repeating it.

Mr. Carey made a will, bequeathing to his dearly beloved wife the whole of his fortune, excepting such and such legacies to such and such people, and he placed this document in Lady Mary’s hands.

A week subsequently he executed another will, which he left in the hands of his solicitors, leaving her ladyship a life annuity of only three thousand a year.

Upon the strength of this annuity of three thousand, and her own small fortune, Lady Mary led, as best she could the life of a fashionable woman.

She had her receptions, her afternoons, her concerts, her evenings, her small dinners, and to them everyone who could obtain an invitation repaired. What did her plainness, her meanness, her insolence matter? Was she not the sister of one duke, the aunt of another? was it not rather an honour to be snubbed by her? whilst to be taken under her especial protection, and addressed by one’s christian-name, were marks of distinction so great that they necessarily produced feelings of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness in those less favoured by fortune.

To me Lady Mary had proved uniformly good-natured. I had been useful to her; I might be useful still. She called me “Stafford.” She got me to dance with girls who knew no one, and girls whom men did not care to know. She commanded my attendance at a new piece, or to the opera.

She took my arm as if she paid me a salary for its use; and she treated me like a friend of the house.

Once she conceived a fancy for my studs, and asked me to give them to her, as they were just what she thought she should like to fasten her cuffs; and within a week she decided some charms I had foolishly attached to my chain were the very things she had been seeking for without success.

After that time she searched my person in vain for any trifle to annex. Except for the benefit of her butler, she could not ask me to give her a coat; and he, indeed, was a gentleman of so corpulent a build, that it would have required three or four of my garments to encase his portly form.

It was not often Lady Mary met with a rebuff. People were too much afraid of her tongue and herself to adventure upon trying the experiment; but once I did see a daring shot between wind and water.

It was fired in this wise. Lady Mary had conceived a violent friendship for an authoress of some literary reputation, who was styled by those who admired her person less than her genius, “Rags and Bones.” “Rags,” because she never had a new gown on her back; “Bones,” because whatever flesh might, in years gone by, have covered the framework of her body had long disappeared.

Accompanied by this eccentric person, my lady went out one evening to a party, where she met a fresh authoress who had not as yet forgotten how to put on her clothes, or ceased to recollect that men had once thought her pretty.

Said my lady, after the first amenities were over: “How strange to think you write! I always was led to believe literary ladies” (and her glance wandered to “Rags and Bones”) “were perfectly indifferent to their personal appearance—indeed, held themselves superior to the adventitious aid of dress.”

Said the authoress, without a change of countenance: “It is never safe to generalise upon a class from an individual; otherwise I might say no lady of quality was acquainted with the most ordinary rules of politeness.”

A dead silence followed after this speech, which Lady Mary broke by a forced laugh.

“You will do, my dear,” she said, patting the fair shoulder with a hand like that of a prize-fighter. “Heaven has given you a tongue, and the wit to use it.”

Next day I beheld my lady and the new favourite driving in the Park, vice poor, clever, modest, unassuming “Rags and Bones,” cashiered.

I met her afterwards.

“You know, dear Mr. Trevor,” she said—and I could not help noticing her ill-fitting boots, her terrible bonnet, her gloves which wanted mending—“I can write much better than that woman; but she has a way of saying things, and Lady Mary has taken her up.”

“Yes,” I replied; “and, after a short time, Lady Mary will let her drop.”

“Ah! Mr. Trevor; you are always so nice,” said the elderly young lady; and she went home better satisfied.

There was one good thing, however, about Lady Mary. If she lashed other people, she never was nice about applying the whip to herself.

“I know what I am,” she would say. “I have always known that. From my earliest youth I have never thought of myself as otherwise than plain—ugly if you will. I do not hate other women because they are pretty, fair, graceful, grateful to men’s eyes. I hate them because they are such fools; because they are so petty, so jealous, so frivolous, so false; because if they are clever, they have no hearts; and if they have hearts, they are utterly destitute of head. Of course, I am obliged to know them, visit, receive them. No woman—not even a woman of my age, my rank, and my appearance—can afford to do without them. But I cannot love le beau sexe; and, as I am unable to do so, it is useless to affect the feeling.”

With all her faults, Lady Mary was no hypocrite, no false friend, no plausible dissembler; and yet, as I said before, it made me turn almost sick to see her drive up to Fairy Water.

Under the circumstances, I would just as soon, or rather, have beheld Beelzebub—horns, tail, cloven hoof, blue flame, and all the other orthodox properties.

“Great Heaven!” I exclaimed. “It is Lady Mary Carey!”

“And who is she?” asked the other Mary, so different from the great woman who had come to invade our modest home.

“She is the Duke’s aunt,” I replied. Of course, in that primitive region, there was but one Duke known to fame. “You must not mind anything she may say, Mary. She means nothing by her random talk.”

At that instant the door opened.

“How do, Stafford?” said my lady, walking across the room as unconcernedly as if she had been in the habit of visiting at Fairy Water all her life. “No, you need not introduce me, thank you. You, I am sure,” she went on, addressing my cousin, “must be Mrs. Trevor; and I am Lady Mary Carey.”

Having finished which sentence, she held out her hand for Mary to take if she liked. Mary did like; but, finding her ladyship made no attempt to shake hers, released the great hand with a promptitude which savoured of fear.

Lady Mary looked at her from the tips of her shoes to the widow’s cap, which she had never laid aside—which I felt satisfied she never would—then turned to me and said:

“So I have found you out at last, sir! This is the meaning of those disappearances which have puzzled everyone; of those mysterious visits you were perpetually paying to vague male relatives. Well, it is said that still waters run deep, with a very undesirable gentleman lying at the bottom; but I would not have believed it of you, Stafford. I never could have credited you would turn out so shy and selfish as to keep your pretty cousin’s existence a secret from all your friends.”

“Lady Mary,” I answered gravely, “my cousin, or indeed, I might almost say my daughter, has been so little in the world, that she is ignorant of the meaning of fashionable badinage, and I am sure you are too good-natured to vex her with it.”

“I am a sweet, good-natured creature when I am not angry,” said Lady Mary, “so I will not vex—your daughter,” with a little ringing emphasis on the word; “Mrs. Trevor,” she went on, “I have come to tell you that Mr. Waldrum cannot return to dinner, or any other meal here today. My precious nephew has somehow managed to rid himself of two fingers, one eye, and narrowly escaped lodging the remaining contents of his fowling-piece in that part of his anatomy which the surgeons politely term his brain. It is, therefore, necessary—at least so his mother thinks—that your friend should remain in attendance for the present. Such a house!” continued Lady Mary, lifting up her hands in horror at the memory. “All the guests who have any place to go, going; those who have not, trying to look unconscious that they are in the way. Miss Vinon, to whom my nephew is engaged, came tearing across country the moment she heard the news, on a great black horse, attended by a frightened groom. She has been crying at intervals, and taking Mr. Waldrum’s hands, and imploring him to save Egerton, ever since her arrival. Of course it is a matter of importance to her, since it is in the last degree improbable she would ever again meet another duke so young, foolish, and desirable as my nephew. Now, Mrs. Trevor, if you will kindly ask me to dine with you, I shall accept the invitation with pleasure. A house of mourning is not, as you are doubtless aware, a house of feasting except to the servants; and I, for one, do not care for tears, swollen eyes, and red cheeks as accompaniments to a banquet.”

Trembling as if she were going to execution, Mary invited her ladyship to stay for dinner, and to take off her bonnet.

When she came down again I considered it my duty to state the proposed repast was not likely to suit her taste. I reminded her the twenty-ninth of September was the feast of St. Michael and all angels.

“I think,” she interrupted, “it is better known amongst modern heathens as quarter-day.”

“When tenants no doubt formerly propitiated their landlords with a present of a young fat goose, fresh from the stubble-fields,” I added, acknowledging her intervention with a bow. “And in the country, to this present day, a sacrifice of one of the birds which saved Rome is deemed propitious to those who assist at the rite, and calculated to ensure a certain amount of good fortune during the ensuing twelve months.”

“Which means, in plain English, you have a goose for dinner, I suppose? What a tiresome prosy creature you are, Stafford. Have you not known me long enough to come to the point at once, without any nonsensical circumlocution? You have a goose, and I am delighted to hear it. I am weary of the orthodox menu, and shall be charmed to meet with a sensible pièce de résistance once more.”

We three dined together. Mary had provided other good things besides that plump bird, of which I believed I should never hear the last; and I am bound to say our visitor did justice to all of them.

“That is where you middle-class people have the advantage over us,” she said calmly, when I had helped her a second time to the dish of the dinner. “You can live as you like, eat as you like, sleep as you like, do what you like. I could not have a dinner such as this served up to me in my own house if I prayed for it. How very thankful you ought to feel, dear Mrs. Trevor, that you were not born in the shadow of the purple.”

“I do feel very thankful,” answered Mary, with a promptness which astonished me.

“I daresay the habits of our rank would seem irksome to you.”

“My experience of any rank but my own has been extremely limited; but judging from that, I should say they would seem irksome in the extreme.”

I looked at Mary imploringly, and our guest caught the look.

“Let her have her say, Stafford,” she observed; “it delights me to listen to the untutored frankness of an unsophisticated mind. What a brute your husband must have been, my dear, to tie you to perpetual widowhood. You, so young, so naive, so pretty.”

“My husband did what he thought was best for me and his children,” retorted Mary, tears filling her eyes, the colour coming up in her cheeks, and all her mind and body rising in battle array against the calm insolence of Lady Mary’s style.

“That is a proposition the truth of which no one, I imagine, would dispute,” answered her ladyship; and then she glanced at me, and laughed as one might at the babble of a child.

“She is very fresh and nice, is she not?” she remarked. “Who can tell what a day may bring forth? I had no idea this day would produce anything like Mrs. Trevor;” and then she changed the subject from personal to general topics, and Mary sat listening in amazement whilst she discussed the latest scandal; told me of the marriages which had been arranged or were to be; retailed the latest anecdote, which had generally something hidden in its point I trusted Mary would fail to understand; and then the wretched meal being over, and dessert placed on the table, she turned to my cousin, and said with that coolness which she always informed me was one of the attributes of good birth:

“I am sure, Mrs. Trevor, you must be longing to get back to your children. Do not let me detain you, not on any account, I beg. I want to have five minutes’ private conversation with your father before I go.”

With a face which somehow combined the expressions of a criminal who has received a reprieve and a child who has been slapped, Mary left the room. Her ladyship waited till I had closed the door after her, and then drew her chair a little nearer to mine.

She lifted her hand, and brought it with no light weight down on my arm.

“Stafford Trevor,” she said, “I never thought you were a fool before. I tell you you are one now.”

I drew away my arm, and looked at her just—so she informed me subsequently—as though I had been a thief, and seen in her a policeman, armed with authority and provided with handcuffs, standing at my elbow.

“No, it is not that,” she went on. “I do not quarrel with the affection you feel for that simple creature. There is no harm in it that I am aware of. Do not fear that I shall ever suggest there is. I can see no fun in putting serpents into dove’s nests. But for you, Stafford—you whom I have always considered, if not a wise man, at least something better than a simpleton—to make the egregious mistake you have done, I feel ashamed of you. There!” and she pushed me away from her with a strength of muscle and freedom of its development which would not have been thought tender in a prize-fighter.

“What have I done, Lady Mary?” I inquired. “Into what mistake have I fallen?”

She brought her head round, and peered in my face curiously. “You really have not an idea?” she said.

“Not the faintest idea, on my honour.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t know that handsome Waldrum is in love with your cousin?”

“Good God, no!” I exclaimed, appalled at the very suggestion.

“Such energy of expression is needless,” she observed, in a tone of quiet banter which almost drove me to the verge of insanity. “Nor,” she went on, “that your pretty cousin is in love with him?”

I covered my face with my hands, and groaned—actually groaned. Never had I known Lady Mary’s intuition in such matters at fault.

“What makes you think this?” I asked at last.

She laughed outright.

“What makes me think the rivers flow to the sea, the sun shines, the rain falls, the wind blows? I see, feel, hear! When he said he wanted to get back to dinner, I noticed an inflection in his voice, a look in his face. When I spoke to her of him, I saw his look reflected in her expression. What have you to say now, sir, why you, a man who ought to know something of the world, have failed so signally in your charge of a young widow entrusted to you for safekeeping?”

“Nothing. If this be so, I have been worse than mad—criminal!”

“If! I tell you it is. What can be done?”

“Nothing.”

“Cannot they marry?”

“No, it is impossible.”

“Well, your young man had better not come here again.”

“He came to see her sick boy.”

“The boy must get well, then.”

“Oh, Mary!” I cried, “I hoped this would never, never be.”

If the aunts of fifty dukes had been present at the moment, I could not have helped that expression of feeling.

“Do you mean to say there is no loophole of escape out of the terms of that man’s ridiculous will?”

“None whatever; and even if there were—”

“Well, what is the other obstacle?”

“I began a sentence I cannot very well finish,” I replied.

“Oh! you mean that story about Waldrum’s father, I suppose? I heard something of it from the Conynghams; and now that brings me to the second object of my visit, or, I suppose I should say, my first, considering it concerns myself. You have got a quiet out-of-the-way sort of little place in Essex.”

“Yes. But, Lady Mary, how does it happen you know everything about my cousin, and me, and the Waldrums?”

She broke into a fit of laughter.

“The explanation is very simple,” she said, when she recovered her composure. “Excuse my laughing, but you look so astonished—so slow, in fact, that the temptation is irresistible. This morning my nephew went out very early with a shooting-party. I do not know whether he hit the animal at which he fired, but he certainly succeeded in maiming himself. We sent at once for Doctor Sloane, and telegraphed to London for a surgeon. Dr. Sloane came, and so did a reply to the telegram—‘Mr. ——— is in Switzerland.’ Before the telegram reached us, however, Doctor Sloane had begged me to send for a Mr. Waldrum, who was staying at Fairy Water, Mrs. Trevor’s place.

The name struck me, and I asked for further information. In five minutes I had turned the poor doctor’s mind inside out. I was acquainted with the contents of your cousin’s will. I had listened to an earnest eulogy of Mrs. Trevor as wife, mother, woman. I heard you were guardian to the children. I knew all about the eldest boy’s illness and Mr. Waldrum’s visits, which he only paid because of his friendship towards you. Then the man himself appeared. After he had seen his patient, and done what he could for him; after he had quieted the Duchess, and released himself from Miss Vinon, who made a great deal more fuss over her grief with him than would have been the case had he been older and uglier, I secured Mr. Waldrum’s ear for a few minutes. I reminded him we had met before, which we had at the Conynghams. I told him I had watched his rise with great interest; that, you know, is always a safe card to play, no matter what the suit may be. I assured him you were the oldest and dearest friend I had in the world; that, in all the troubles and anxieties of my life, I felt I could depend upon you for advice and assistance. That touched him sensibly, I could see,” added Lady Mary.

Of course, I knew her ladyship was now playing what she considered a good card to delude me; but I could only take her remark as a compliment, and bow in acknowledgment.

“Finally, I spoke of Mrs. Trevor, and then I knew what I have confided to your ear. That is the mystery of part one. As to part two: the Conynghams told me you had bought a place to which, when weary of the world, you had for years been in the habit of retiring to enjoy the company of bats, owls, and ghosts. So secret were you in the matter that no one suspected you were the actual owner, until quite recently.”

“Yes,” I said. It was a stupid expression, but I felt so dazed with her ladyship’s flow of words; I felt so tired and harassed by the steady stare of her ladyship’s black eyes; I was so utterly taken by surprise at the nature of her communications and extent of her information, that I could only sit still and listen, and say “Yes” like an idiot, when she paused to take breath.

“And now, Stafford, I want you to do something for me.”

This was a formula with which I had good reason to be well acquainted, and accordingly it landed me on familiar ground at once; but before I could answer her black brows lowered, and she said:

“You are not going to refuse me, I hope.”

“When did I ever refuse to do anything for you, Lady Mary, which it was in my power to accomplish?” I inquired, soothingly.

“Never,” she agreed. “You were always a good kind soul, and I know you will not raise any ridiculous objections to the plan I am about to propose. In a word, I want you to let me rent that hermitage of yours in Essex for three months.”

“What? Crow Hall!” I exclaimed.

“I do not know what the name of the place is, and I do not care. I know it will serve the purpose I have in view. Listen to me, Stafford. I do not mind telling you the whole secret. I have got into a scrape; I have lost a great deal of money. I am in debt to an extent I am afraid to contemplate. I sold my house in town—furniture and all—just as it stood, and came down here two days ago, intending to ask Egerton’s assistance, and then reside abroad for a few years to retrench. Mr. Carey left what he did leave to me so tied up that I cannot sell or anticipate even a year’s income.”

I sat stunned. Mean though she was, Lady Mary had always borne the character of being extremely liberal to and extravagant on herself—further, she was very speculative; but still I had never dreamed she would get into a mess like this.

That she was ruined I understood perfectly; that the accident which had happened to her nephew precluded all hope of assistance from him for a considerable time to come was equally clear; but how she meant to get out of her difficulties was as great an enigma to me as the fancy she had taken for carrying her perplexities and herself to Crow Hall.

“I cannot imagine—” I began, but she immediately interrupted me with:

“I know you cannot, you dear creature; but I will explain everything to you if you only remain quiet. It is clear Egerton is out of the question for a considerable period; so since there is nothing to be expected from that quarter, I have thought of another plan, which, however, I cannot perfect and carry out except in some lonely place like your Crow Hall; so name your rent—we shall not quarrel over a few pounds—and tell me when I can enter into possession.”

“My dear Lady Mary,” said I, fairly floated out of my usual depth by the torrent of her impetuosity, “if I thought you could possibly exist in Crow Hall, I should beg permission to place it at your disposal for any length of time you liked to name, but I am certain you could not.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

“It is utterly removed from civilisation.”

“So much the better for me.”

“There is no furniture in the house suited to your requirements.”

“You do not know what my requirements are, or whether I want any furniture,” she retorted.

“Even if there were accommodation for servants, none of your people would remain at Crow Hall for three days.”

“Andrews would, and I have discharged all the rest. Now, what other objection have you to urge?”

“Only one,” I said. “The place is haunted.”

“That decides the matter. When can I have possession?”

“I am serious,” I persisted. “Indeed I am. Do you imagine, Lady Mary,” I went on, noticing her incredulous smile, “that I would say such a thing in jest? I have never even mentioned my idea to anyone. Naturally, I do not wish to lose money by my purchase, and if it were known I attached any importance to the stories which have so long hung about the place, my chance of eventually disposing of it would be poor indeed. But there is something ‘uncanny’ about Crow Hall. I would not deceive you on that or any other subject.”

Her smile had never departed.

“What have you seen?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“What have you heard?”

“The rustle of a woman’s dress.”

“What have you felt?”

“A sense of oppression as though someone were in the room with me.”

After that she sat silent for a few moments. Then she said:

“We will strike a bargain, Stafford. I will exorcise your ghost, and you may refer anyone to me for the character of Crow Hall. Upon the other hand, I may inhabit it for twelve months free of rent. Is it agreed?”

I hesitated. I could not be blind to the advantages I might derive from Lady Mary’s tenancy. I did not believe any phantom would trouble her repose, since late dinners, late hours, and a decided liking for good wines are not generally compatible with the seeing of ghosts and viewing of spectres. Nevertheless, I could not choose but hesitate.

“Suppose evil come of it,” I thought; and that thought shows how thoroughly impressed I was with the weird legends circulated concerning Crow Hall.

“Well, is it decided?” said her ladyship.

“Lady Mary,” I replied, “I wish you would not go to Crow Hall. If I had a dozen places they should all, as you know, be at your disposal. But I do not like your going to that house. You might see nothing to alarm you, but you might—”

“What a goose you are, Stafford,” she interrupted. “I shall see nothing half so bad as my debts and my duns, be sure of that. So write to the person in charge. He or she need not leave. Say you have let the place—it is unnecessary to mention my name—and that I may be expected next Thursday. Yes; Thursday will do very well indeed. And now I must go. Where is little Mrs. Trevor? I want to bid her good-bye.”

My cousin came into the hall to see our visitor off.

“Thank you so much for your kindness,” she said to Mary, carelessly; then moved, Heaven only knows by what feeling of pity or sympathy, or perhaps it might be by the sweet, sad repose of that patient face, my lady, stooping from her high estate, kissed her on both cheeks, and saying, “You are a dear little soul,” hurried off to the phaeton, and was driven away.

IX

LADY MARY’S EXPERIENCES

Valentine came next day to Fairy Water to tell us all about his new patient, and to have a look at Geoffrey, who, to Mary’s intense relief, was decidedly better.

Twenty-four hours’ reflection had satisfied me that if I tried to put my oar into the difficulty presented on the previous afternoon, I should probably catch a crab, and I therefore decided to let matters proceed without my interference. Perhaps Lady Mary had been mistaken, perhaps she had not; in either case, what good could my interference effect? In the one, I might put lovelorn ideas into the heads of innocent people; in the other, I might, by precipitate speaking, crystallise a notion which would otherwise have remained permanently in solution.

No; if Val was in love with my cousin, he could not be considered otherwise than old enough and wise enough to keep away from Fairy Water. Thinking the matter over, it occurred to me he had done so as far as he could, and I determined to give him another opportunity.

“I shall be passing through town on Tuesday, Val,” I said. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Thank you, no,” he answered; “I must be in London tomorrow, and was just going to ask you the same question.”

“You want further advice for the Duke?” I suggested; and he said:

“Yes; I think he ought to see someone more experienced than myself. As matters stand, it is a great responsibility.”

“Doubtless,” I remarked, but if he noticed the sneer he refrained from comment.

After all, Val Waldrum was a very nice sort of fellow. No matter how grievously out of sorts a man might be—no matter how rude he proved in consequence, Val took no notice; he talked on just as usual; he either did not or would not see that with all my heart I wished him at Low Park, or anywhere else, so long as it was beyond the gates of Fairy Water.

“Never mind,” I thought; “he cannot, if he have any sense left, come here often in my absence, and by the time I return he will most probably be able to leave his patient to Sloane.”

“Mary,” I said out loud, “I want you to give me a pair of swans.”

Both Mrs. Trevor and Valentine looked at me in amazement. “Swans!” repeated the latter; “where do you propose to keep them?”

“Not in my lodgings, you may be quite certain,” I answered. “But I do not require them yet; I may not require them at all.”

“He is thinking of being married, depend upon it,” exclaimed Valentine.

Mary looked at me curiously.

“No,” I said, “I am certainly not likely to walk into matrimony with my eyes open, and I do not think any man can be held excused who drifts into it.”

“I am not quite certain of that,” said Valentine; “many a good vessel has gone ashore merely because ignorant of the dangers of the coast.”

“Perhaps so,” I answered, “but matrimony is a coast from which I should think any prudent captain would keep at a safe distance.”

A curious look came into Valentine’s eyes. I had said the very thing I had purposed not to say, and he divined there was a second meaning underlying my words.

He rose and walked to one of the windows with a “Humph!” which was, I am sure, involuntary; and I heard him rattling the keys in his pockets, as I feel glad to remember I have often heard him since those days rattling sovereigns.

“Well,” he said at last, “I suppose I must be riding back to my noble patient. I hope we shall save his eyesight after all.”

“Oh! do; pray, pray do!” exclaimed Mary, whose sympathy was of course much exercised in those days in favour of the young man, with whom it was almost a toss-up, whether he would be blind for life or not.

At sight of the eager, pleading face, Valentine smiled, as he answered, “It does not rest with me, but you may be sure I shall do my best for him, if only for the sake of his fiancée, who is the sweetest and most beautiful girl I ever beheld.”

He had spoken without the least thought of what a sweeping assertion his words implied, but I could see Mary’s colour come and go, heighten and fade, at hearing such unqualified admiration expressed concerning another woman.

It was true then; it was. She had escaped all these years, and now, when her youth was fading away, when she might reasonably have been expected to go on living without other than the vaguest ideas of what love meant—through my instrumentality, through my folly and short-sightedness that knowledge had come to her, from which I had vainly hoped she would be kept forever.

I went to the front door with Valentine. When I would have bid him good-bye, he laid his hand on my shoulder, and said:

“A wise man can take a hint; nevertheless you might have spoken plainly to me had you liked. Rest satisfied, when once my latest patient can dispense with my attendance, Fairy Water shall see me no more.”

Next morning I departed for Crow Hall, and remained there until Lady Mary’s arrival.

Although I had made preparations for her comfort and reception, I could not say I felt at all certain she would adhere to her resolution; and it was therefore with feelings of mingled relief and anxiety that I saw the solitary fly, which the nearest town boasted, turn into the drive.

“Now, Stafford, this is kind!” exclaimed her ladyship. “How sweet of you to come all this distance on my account. What a delicious old house!”

“I only hope,” I said, in a low tone, “you will be able to remain in it.”

She laughed in reply; and then, after grumbling a little because I refused to stay for dinner, allowed me to depart in the fly, which I had detained for the purpose.

“I wonder,” I thought, as the wretched vehicle jogged and jolted along the road, “what the next chapter in the history of Crow Hall will bring forth?”

It was a cold, wet, blustering October evening when I returned to Fairy Water. As my movements were uncertain, I had told Mary not to send to the station to meet me; and, as no conveyance of any kind could, in that benighted region, be procured, there was nothing left for me to do except walk every step of the six miles that lay between the railway and my cousin’s house.

Being on foot, it was not necessary for me to make my way through the entrance-gates and up the long avenue, and accordingly opening a door in the fence surrounding that part of the property which abutted on the road leading to the nearest town, I struck into the shrubbery paths, and soon reached Mary’s own especial garden, a funny little place laid out in the Dutch style, which she kept in order herself, and of which she was, as I often told her, extravagantly proud.

Keeping along the gravelled walk, with a thick hedge of yew low and close clipped, I came to what we called the water-side of the house, which brought me in a few seconds to the conservatory I have mentioned.

As usual, the door was unlocked; in that faraway region bolts and bars were at a discount, and turning the handle, I entered.

Cold as I was, and cheerless as had been my walk, the sight of the firelight dancing on the walls of the pleasant drawing-room, reflecting itself from mirrors, gleaming on the pictures, was very pleasant, and gave me a comfortable, home-like feeling; and advancing to the inner door, I pushed the heavy curtains, which were only partially drawn aside, and looked in.

I am not given to play the spy; eavesdropping is a thing repugnant both to my feelings and my principles. What I heard and saw when I thrust back those curtains deprived me of the power of speech and movement. On the hearthrug stood two people: the one Mary, the other Valentine.

“Then you will trust him to me,” he said; and there was sadness as well as tenderness in his tone.

I could not catch her answer, if indeed she uttered one; but I did see her face uplifted for a moment to his; the next he held her in his arms, and her head dropped against his breast. It was only for an instant; then they parted as if by some mutual recoil.

“Forgive me, dear.” I heard that. “For all the world could offer, I F would not this had happened.”

She did not speak a word, she only flitted away. She did not see me, she understood nothing save her joy and her sorrow—I grasped all that.

Straight up to Mr. Waldrum I went. “Do you think this right?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“I trusted you.”

“I think not,” he said; “if you had foreseen this, you would have kept us asunder.”

“That is true.” I almost whispered the words.

“Not” he went on, “that for one moment I wish to throw the blame off my own shoulders and lay it on those of any other. I, and I only, am to blame. I have known what it all meant to me long before you suspected anything. I tried to fight the battle, and this is the result.” He walked to the door.

“Stay a moment,” I entreated.

“Not tonight; I will write to you and her. I will see you soon, but not here,” and he was gone, the son of my heart and my adoption.

Next day the promised letters came—one for Mary, one for me. She took hers away to some safe sanctuary; I read mine where all the world might see. It was simple enough. The few lines it contained were to the effect that, feeling how dangerous his visits to Fairy Water were becoming to himself, how necessary it was to Geoffrey’s recovery he should be under the eye of a surgeon who had made disease a speciality, he rode over to see Mrs. Trevor, and obtain her consent to removing her son to his house in London.

“That is how it all came about,” he finished. “I give you my word—I pledge you my honour.”

“Poor Val!” I sighed, and put the letter in my pocket-book.

An hour afterwards Mary appeared. She was more than usually solicitous for my comfort, she was more than usually kind and gentle.

“Mary dear,” I said, when we were quite alone.

Turning her face away, she answered, “Yes,” and came close up to where I stood. “You had a letter from Valentine Waldrum this morning,” I began, leading her to a seat; “show it to me.”

She hesitated, poor little soul; it was her first love-letter from a man she loved, and it seemed sacred in her eyes, as though she were still a girl, with the world’s cares and the world’s sorrows all before her.

“I want to see it, dear,” I said, firmly, “in order to understand whether the future he and I are to be friends or foes; whether I shall still be able to respect him, or feel for him a contempt no words can express.”

Without another attempt at expostulation, she put the letter in my hand, and then she sat down beside me and watched the expression of my face, like a child or a dog. When I had finished, she put her hand on my hand, laid her face on my arm, and broke out sobbing.

“Do not blame him or me,” she said: “I did not know what it meant; I could not tell what it was. If I had, I should have stopped it long ago.”

I let her cry—crying always does women good; it comforts them, and, in moderation, makes their eyes brighter. While she cried I endeavoured to solve a mental problem:

“Suppose Geoffrey had left her free, should I not have tried to win her?”

Emphatically yes. I understood that now—understood it when she was breaking her heart about a man young enough to be my son, and sobbing out her misery within about four inches of my heart.

Well, we cannot be young always; but the unfortunate thing is the right person for us seems to be born always so long after she ought to come into the world.

“You know what you have to do now, Mary,” I suggested, after a few minutes devoted to sentiment on her part, and abstruse reflections on mine.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“I should prefer hearing it from you,” I remarked.

She clasped her hands together, and said, like a child repeating some easy lesson:

“I must never see him again, or hear from him, or write to him, or think of him, if I can help doing so.”

I drew her to me, lifted the fair, tear-stained face, and kissed it, Heaven be my witness, as a woman might kiss that of her sister, a father that of his child.

“God help you, Mary,” I said; “you will get over this in time, but meanwhile it is hard to bear; your pain must be cruel.”

She put up her hand and stroked my face, as though to assure me, although the pain might be cruel, she could endure.

“Never, my dear, never, have I known so womanly a woman as yourself—as truly feminine a nature as that possessed by you.”

Well, well—I grow garrulous, perhaps. Let me hasten on to the end.

Shortly after that evening I left Fairy Water, Geoffrey in my charge. The easiest chariot from Low Park took him to the station. The Duke of Severn’s footmen, directed and assisted by Valentine, carried the sick lad to the invalid carriage provided for him.

Twice a week I went to Valentine’s house, and saw the invalid—twice a week, I was, after a short time, able to send a good report of the boy back to Fairy Water.

By this time I was once more settled in London. With the exception of a few days at Christmas, I did not intend to leave my lodgings again for six months. The familiar fogs enveloped me, the gaslights which my soul loved tried vainly to dissipate the worse than Egyptian darkness of the deserted streets. Through the dull atmosphere the cries of “Walnuts!” “Muffins!” “Crumpets!” resounded with the effect of muffled drums; and there was a pervading feeling in the air, as if the sun had taken a fancy to remain in a state of perpetual eclipse, while the moon, femininely anxious to follow in the fashion of his wake, had decided to do likewise.

At that period of the year I usually dined with people who thought it somewhat of an honour to secure my company, and therefore, though I rarely spent an evening alone, I was generally bored in the evening.

After all, a man need not be a snob, if he says frankly he prefers the society of people who live west of Bond Street to that of the worthy individuals who keep up ponderous establishments in the central London squares.

From Lady Mary Carey I received letters by the dozen. She was so charmed with the place, the neighbourhood, the people—would I kindly call at so-and-so, and order such-and-such articles to be forwarded to her? She did not apologise; she did not ask pardon for the trouble she gave. How could she? Had she not tested the depth, and breadth, and length of my goodness (all in feminine italics) for a greater number of years than any woman save myself “would care to remember?”

I had told her it was my intention to send down a couple of swans, so as to lessen the weird desolation of the pine-circled pool; but shortly after taking possession of Crow Hall, she wrote, asking me to defer doing so till she discovered whether the water in the lake sunk much lower.

The summer had been unusually dry and warm; all through the country complaints were rife concerning the drying-up of springs and failing of streams; and it did not strike me as singular that the fated pool should suffer as she described.

It seemed, however, very singular to her—so singular, that she sent me bulletins on the subject twice a week, at all events.

“I am told,” she wrote, “that for a century, at all events, the water in this little lake of yours has never been lower than the root of a certain pollard oak. It is now fully three feet lower than that point.”

A day or two afterwards came another note: “Water is sinking rapidly.”

Fast on the heels of this followed a long letter, crossed, in which italics vainly endeavoured to express her ladyship’s astonishment at the phenomenon. “I wish you would come down and see for yourself,” was one of her sentences—as if I suspected her of draining the pool; “it really is most extraordinary. The woman you left in charge here considers it a premonitory symptom of the Day of Judgment, and has begged my acceptance of two tracts. She says, I may take her word for it that, when that lake is empty, something will happen.”

“Only thirty inches of water left,” was the next report—then,

The pool is dry. But I am happy. I know where the water has gone, and so do the railway people, to their cost. Their line is flooded. They will have to make a fresh lake for themselves. Crow Hall is besieged. Even from beyond Latchford Common the population repair to see for themselves that the Black Pool has not a drop of water left in it. A variety of barrels and other curiosities appear to be sunk in the mud at the bottom. Some of the navvies and labourers have kindly offered to remove the rubbish, but, as we do not know of what it may consist, I am having the property watched by the sexton. Not another creature in the parish would consent to remain all night in your haunted grounds.

As may be imagined, I started off for Crow Hall at once, where I found Lady Mary in high spirits, the Black Pool dry, the barrels, whatever they may have contained originally, empty of everything but slime, the railway engineers in despair, and Mrs. Paul shaking her head ominously.

“It is all very well to talk of lower levels, and railway cuttings, and the like; but why should the lake dry up at this time, of all times? Will not the seventh of the next month, if any of us live to see it, be the night when Mr. Philip Waldrum’s wife disappeared—Heaven be merciful to us sinners!”

Thus Mrs. Paul; whilst Mr. Dogset looked wise, and delivered himself of oracular sentences.

“It had all been foretold,” he explained to me: “but where, or when, or by whom, he could not just rightly remember.”

“You will find it a good thing for you in the end,” said Lady Mary to me. “Depend upon it, the railway people will have to buy the late site of the Black Pool.”

“They will have to pay me well for it,” I answered.

“And really you ought to make me a handsome present on the occasion,” she remarked. “I am sure my taking Crow Hall has brought good fortune to it.”

“You have seen nothing to shake your resolution then?” I asked.

“No; if there are ghosts here, they are not from another world,” Lady Mary answered. “I cannot say the house is one I should recommend to a nervous lady. The locks have a way of clicking, the woodwork of cracking, the floors of creaking, the windows of rattling, and the wind of howling in the chimneys, by no means pleasant to a light sleeper. If anyone were disposed to play tricks, it would be easy to frighten even so incredulous a person as myself; but I fancy Mrs. Paul would not like me to leave, and that if she ever has done any conjuring she repents now of her evil deeds.”

“Do you really think then, Lady Mary, that Mrs. Paul had any hand in the appearances which have given the place so evil a repute?”

“Someone must—Mrs. Paul as probably as any other individual; but neither she nor her friends will try to make anything unpleasant for me, or I am greatly mistaken.”

I never saw Lady Mary in better spirits than when we parted that day. Judge then of my consternation when a fortnight later I received the following note from Fairy Water:

Lady Mary Carey is here. She arrived an hour since, very ill, and in a state of utter exhaustion, and entreated me to let her stay with me for a short time. She wishes to see you at once, and begs you will bring Mr. Waldrum with you. I suggested sending for Dr. Sloane, but she said ‘No’; that Mr. Waldrum alone can treat her case, and that she has something important to say to both of you.

I did not fear taking Valentine with me to Fairy Water. I felt he and Mary could now be safely trusted with the keeping of their own peace, and that they were not likely voluntarily—she to give, he to seek—any opportunity of recurring to the one forbidden subject. Nevertheless, with all my heart and soul I wished Lady Mary had carried her ailments and herself anywhere except to my cousin’s house. And further, I dreaded to hear what she might have to tell.

That her illness and her secret both had a common origin at Crow Hall I did not doubt in the least, and as Valentine and I journeyed down from London, I told him frankly the small deceit I had practised, and explained how it happened Lady Mary had taken a fancy to reside at Crow Hall.

He listened with merely slight interruptions to my story, almost in utter silence. When I had quite finished, he said, with a long-drawn sigh:

“If Lady Mary tells me she has seen that woman, it will be the happiest news I have heard since my father’s death.”

We found the invalid sitting in a great arm-chair in Mary’s dressing-room, in a voluminous morning wrapper, her black coarse hair hanging straight down her back, her face destitute of any colour, save the dark hue conferred on it by nature, her nerves so shaken that the tears came into her eyes when she saw us, and the muscles round her mouth twitched when she answered our greeting. What did Lady Mary look like? At that moment she ought to have frightened away any number of ghosts.

Valentine wanted to prescribe for her first, and hear the story afterwards.

I entreated of him not to attempt to talk of anything disagreeable till her health was re-established. “Sit down,” she said, peremptorily. “If I do not speak to someone of what mine eyes have seen, I shall go mad, and I can only speak to you, or you,” indicating each of us with a nod.

“Stafford,” she went on, “when I first went to your place, I suspected that woman Paul of complicity with the noises and repeated appearances. I beg to say I earnestly ask her pardon.

“Now, Mr. Waldrum, before I begin I wish to tell you distinctly that the thing I saw I beheld not in any dream, or while I was labouring under any delusion. It all happened as truly as you sit there. Listen.

“About ten days, Stafford, after you were last at Crow Hall, Mrs. Paul brought me a ring, which she said she had found somewhere about the house, and which she imagined to be one of mine.

“Of course I told her it was mine, and gave her five shillings for her trouble.

“But the ring was not mine; it was one the like of which I had never beheld before, cut, evidently, out of a solid lump of gold, with a good-sized piece of the same metal left solid in the middle like a stone. Into this piece of gold was let on the inner side a cross formed of lapis lazuli, and on the outside, carved most exquisitely, was an alto-relievo of the Crucifixion.

“It was the strangest ring, and about the smallest I ever beheld. I could not get it over the middle joint of my little finger, and so put it on the stand on my dressing-table, after I had thoroughly examined and puzzled my brains over it. In an old house strange things do sometimes however turn up, and I went to bed, thinking I would speak about the matter to you, Stafford, and beg you to allow me to retain the ring as a memorial of Crow Hall.

“About eleven o’clock I went to bed. I had been reading nothing sensational, thinking of nothing exciting. I had dined at seven in the anchorite style I have adopted since I left Low Park.

“Andrews undressed me, made up my fire, lit fresh candles—I always burn two candles at night—left me, and went to her own room, which adjoins mine. Everything was just as usual, everything with the exception of that strange ring, the very existence of which I had forgotten.

“After I had been asleep for perhaps a couple of hours, I woke suddenly, struggling for breath, bathed in perspiration, and with the strangest feeling—instinct I call it—of someone being in the room with me.

“I am not one of those people who can gather their wits together in a moment when roused out of slumber. I always feel more or less dazed when struggling back into real life from the land of dreams; and so I sat up in bed, and shook my mind into consciousness by degrees.

“The fire had burnt black and hollow, the candles were burning dim—as candles for some reason best known to themselves always do in a bedroom—and what made their light appear less bright even than ordinary was the fact that between the bed and the dressing-table stood a woman, searching about amongst the articles lying on the latter, as if for something she had lost.

“‘Andrews,’ I said, ‘what are you doing? what is the matter?’ but no reply came.

“By this time I was wide awake, and had my senses about me. I jumped out of bed, and calling ‘Andrews’ at the top of my voice, put out a hand to seize the intruder.

“As I did so I saw her face reflected in the glass; then it faded away, and my hands, instead of meeting with any corporeal substance, grasped nothing but thin air.

“At that instant Andrews appeared. ‘I have had a bad dream,’ I explained. ‘Make up a good fire, and sleep in the arm-chair, so that if I want anything you will be nearer at hand.’ And then I crept back to bed, but not, you may be sure, to sleep.”

“Can you describe the face you saw, Lady Mary?” Valentine asked, bending eagerly forward.

“Stop a little; let me tell you my story in my own way. Next morning the first thing I did was to look for the ring. It was gone.

“Now, as Andrews always bolted our door on the inside, it was quite clear no one could have entered the room except by some secret staircase. Further, the figure had not disappeared in any possible sort of way, supposing it to have been flesh and blood: it melted out of my sight, it faded into nothing in a second of time, and what was more to the purpose, my hand passed through the spectre as if it had been composed of nothing more tangible than a fog spray.

“I can tell you both I had plenty of food for thought that morning. It would not have suited my plans to leave Essex then, otherwise I should have packed up within the hour, and neither of you should have heard a word of the story.

“Well, we did not pack up, but I changed my room, and once again my doubts of Mrs. Paul were revived by hearing her remark to Andrews, ‘Folks had never slept well in that oak room,’ and further, ‘that those who lived longest would see most.’ However, I could not connect in my innermost heart the face I had seen in the glass with Mrs. Paul, or anyone belonging to her, and I grew so timid, I feared, actually feared, to go upstairs alone, either by day or night.

“I felt so miserable, I asked the doctor and the curate to dine with me, and then when they were gone I relapsed into a state of greater wretchedness than ever.

“The next day I had arranged to spend at The Grange. Mr. Conyngham wished to show me all over the house, and Miss—well, Miss Conyngham thought it might be prudent to humour her brother’s whim; at all events, I stood engaged to go to The Grange. There were several matters about which I wished to consult him, several subjects on which I desired his advice, and full of these worldly matters, and wishing to get rid of the remembrance of my nocturnal visitor, I drove off across Latchford Common, and in proper time arrived at your old home, Mr. Waldrum.

“I had a long chat with Mr. Conyngham while we walked about the grounds and wandered through the conservatories, and I may tell you, Stafford,” added her ladyship, “in strict confidence, that he has, in the kindest manner, promised to arrange those difficulties I mentioned to you.”

“Good heavens!” I thought, “she has secured a third husband, and that was why she wanted to go to Crow Hall.”

“After luncheon Mr. Conyngham asked if I should not like to see the pictures. The dear good soul who owns The Grange has one craze—he fancies he understands art, and the consequence is he has been fleeced right and left, has purchased a large number of pictures at an exorbitant price, and honestly believes he has the finest collection, on a small scale, that can be found in England.

“Now if there is one thing more than another in which it shocks me to find a nice kind creature deficient, it is art; and if you believe me (I did believe her thoroughly) it went to my heart to see all that rubbish hung solemnly in the sight of day, and think of the money which must have been wasted upon it.

“Suddenly, however, I caught sight of something which arrested my attention.

“‘Where did you pick that up, Mr. Conyngham?’ I inquired.

“‘That?’ he repeated, following my glance; ‘when Mr. Waldrum left here, my father bought that portrait, thinking that face a very beautiful one.’

“‘Did you say a portrait?’ I asked; ‘of whom is it a portrait?’

“‘Of the mysterious lady Philip Waldrum married, whose disappearance has never yet been accounted for.’

“By some means I got near an open window, on the plea of feeling faint. I obtained a moment’s quiet, and then afterwards a glass of water.

“What was the matter with me, you want to know, Mr. Waldrum? This: the face I saw in the mirror was not merely like that which, limned on canvas, hung on the walls at The Grange; it was the original of that portrait. You may remember,” she continued, speaking gently to Valentine, “that every trifling detail is carried out in the picture with almost painful minuteness. On the third finger of the left hand above her wedding-ring, that long-lost wife is shown in her picture as wearing another ring, as like that Mrs. Paul brought me as can well be imagined.

“I tell you as I looked my blood ran cold, but I kept the secret, Stafford; no one shall ever know from me that the Crow Hall Ghost is as far from being laid or explained as ever.”

•    •    •    •

I thanked her ladyship very earnestly for the courage and kindness she had displayed, whilst Valentine, so agitated that he could scarcely frame an intelligible sentence, declared she had lifted a load off his heart which had been growing heavier day by day since his father’s death.

I felt glad to hear him say this, but I did not like the expression I saw on his face as we walked together out of the room.

“One word, Val,” I said; “remember that although your position may be different to what it was, Mrs. Trevor is just the same as ever. There are plenty of women in England you can marry now, but you can never marry her.”

He shook my hands off, for the first time in my memory, with an impatient gesture, and stalked across the hall and opened the outer door himself, as though it were through any fault of mine Geoffrey had left his widow so powerless in the matter of a second marriage. Upon that step he turned, and said:

“You are guardian to the children; surely it rests with you; surely, if you liked, you could befriend us.”

“My dear fellow,” I answered, “believe me, I am powerless. I would help you if the will left me a chance of doing so.”

“That is all very fine,” he muttered.

“It is all very true,” I replied.

He stood for a moment irresolute, then remarked: “I am going to Low Park.”

“And I beg to suggest,” I said, decidedly nettled, “that it will be better for you to stay there; or, at least, not return here.”

“I must come here to see Lady Mary.”

“If Lady Mary desires your attendance, she must remove to Low Park. I shall make that quite clear to her ladyship’s comprehension.”

“Do you mean that you would tell her—?”

“I mean that she told me,” I interrupted. “Come, Valentine, it is of no use your being either angry or sulky with me. Mrs. Trevor has suffered enough already, without having the additional trouble of a lover she can never marry hanging about the house. If it were a mere question of money, I should not raise an objection; but you know it is not, and that it is your duty to keep away from Fairy Water.”

He did not answer a word. He either failed to see my outstretched hand, or declined to see it.

He remained looking drearily about him for a few seconds; then pulling his hat down over his forehead, as most men do when trouble has for the nonce completely mastered them, he strode away along the drive; and, for the first time in his life, Valentine Waldrum parted from me in anger—his heart brimful of bitterness, and suspicion, and injustice.

X

THE SECRET OF CROW HALL

As I watched Valentine disappear in the windings of the avenue, I decided upon retracing my road to London without further delay.

If I remained in Fairy Water, I felt that, in his present mood, he would insist on coming to see me, and that it would not be in my power to prevent his doing so without a downright quarrel and open rupture supervening. Old though I might be, lover to his mother as I had been, friend and helper as I had tried to be to both him and Mary, I understood perfectly that for the time being he regarded me with a feeling of the keenest detestation; but I could make allowance for this.

If there be one feeling stronger than another which human beings and the brute creation have in common, it is that of jealousy; and when once a man becomes possessed by it, he is scarcely more responsible for his rudeness and his ill-temper than a cat is, when, seeing a dog patted, she scratches him till he screams again.

It was, of course, ridiculous for Valentine to be jealous, for a moment, of my presence or my influence; but I felt he was, and decided, as I have said, that I would leave Fairy Water forthwith.

To Lady Mary I made no secret of my reason for going.

“Yes,” she said, “it is absurd upon his part, no doubt; but still these fancies are beyond the power of rhyme or reason, and it is better to try to keep peace than come to open war. It seems to me an admirable idea altogether. You go to look after your Essex property, and I stay to prevent Mrs. Trevor feeling lonely. I will remain until after Christmas, and prove a very duenna over your pretty cousin.”

“And when may your friends hope to see your ladyship in London?” I inquired.

“Whenever my nephew is sufficiently recovered to give me away,” she answered. “As no man in his senses would dream of marrying me now, except for my position, it is only fair the kind good soul who gives so much in return for so little should have all the pleasure and éclat out of my relatives it is possible to extract from them.”

Frequently there was a directness about Lady Mary’s high breeding which savoured of simplicity, and produced somewhat the same effect upon unsophisticated people. I cannot say, however, it ever seemed to impress my cousin in that way. Natural and simple herself, she perhaps detected more rapidly than a less unaffected person might have done the false ring in Lady Mary’s conversational coin.

I liked the counterfeit, I confess. It was bright, lively, a trifle sarcastic, never wearisome; and what a man has a weakness for is a woman who does not know how to be dull.

The art of vivacity may be acquired—I believe, indeed, it is never beheld in perfection save when acquired; but it is better than any genius or talent, for all that.

After a time, indeed, my cousin wrote to me that Lady Mary was a delightful companion, and made herself quite one of the household—which, indeed, I could readily credit. “The winter has never before seemed so pleasant at Fairy Water,” continued Mrs. Trevor; “and I hope you will not be vexed, but Lady Mary has looked out several things here she would like to have in her new house, and I have begged her acceptance of them. She offered to buy them, but of course I told her I could not think of allowing anything of the kind. Ladies of fashion—if Lady Mary be a specimen of them—must be curious people to know, I think. Imagine our going to Low Park, and selecting various articles which happened to strike our fancy! And yet that is just what Lady Mary has done here. Do not think, please, that I object to it at all; only I cannot help saying how odd it seems to me.”

When I went down to Fairy Water to partake of the Christmas dinner—which was always a great and wonderful display in that primitive household—I found Lady Mary installed as virtual mistress of the establishment, and my cousin—spite of her cheerful letters, and the fact that Geoffrey had been returned to his home cured of his complaint, if still generally delicate in health—looking thin, pale, and spiritless.

“I am afraid your guest bores you, Mary,” I said.

“Ah! no. She is kindness itself.”

“What, then, is the matter with you? Are you ill?”

“I am quite well, thank you,” she said, shrinking away from me as I had never known her to do before.

Welladay! When Cupid rides, the oldest friend, the wisest man, the ablest scholar, the most profound philosopher, is nowhere in the race.

Said Lady Mary: “That protégé of yours is writing to her perpetually, I am afraid.”

“I wash my hands of them and their affairs,” I answered, with the determination and energy of a man who, dealing straightforwardly with other people himself, likes to be dealt by straightforwardly in return. But I repented me of this speech when, a day or two after, my cousin came to me and said—with the soft colour rising in her face, and her eyes downcast, and head a little drooped:

“Stafford, I am constantly receiving letters from Mr. Waldrum. I try to explain to him how I am situated; but either I cannot be explicit, or else he fails to comprehend. Will you tell him—will you—that I would not give up my children if I loved him a thousand times more than I do?”

“You set me a hard task, my dear,” I answered.

“Is it too hard?” she inquired.

“Not when you ask me to do it,” was my reply, and I left Fairy Water next day.

Before I wrote to Valentine, I furnished myself with a copy of Geoffrey’s will. A perusal of it would, I considered, be more convincing than reams of argument or expostulation from me.

You see she cannot have the children if she marry again (I wrote). She says positively she will not give up the children. Is it manly to continue to importune a woman situated as Mary is? Of course this is a matter in which you must take your own way. I cannot and will not interfere further; so instead of hurling reproaches at your head, or stating that your letters must cease, when I have no power to prevent your sending or Mary receiving them, I simply repeat my question, and ask you if you consider it manly to increase a woman’s troubles?

To which I received this reply:

I do not. She shall be troubled no more by me. Pray assure her of this, and believe, if you can, that I am still yours gratefully,

V. Waldrum.

My heart yearned over Valentine, but I did not mean to take him back into favour all at once. He had been ill-humoured, sulky, obstinate, defiant; and if I welcomed back the penitent at the first sign of contrition, who could tell what liberties he might not indulge in subsequently?

No, he should go his way and I would go mine; mine about that period taking me very frequently, and very much against my will, into Essex.

The fact is, Crow Hall had to my mind become a perfect bête noire. Sometimes, when ensconced in bed, the street noises in my ears, the objects familiar in a superior class of lodging-house meeting my eyes, a sudden memory of that dreary residence would cross my mind, and cause me to vow, incontinently, I would solve the difficulty connected with it by some means.

Already I had made my money out of it. The railway company were compelled to buy the Black Pool, and a very handsome sum they paid me for it.

Before, however, the lake was filled again with water, one of the navvies had discovered a curious fact.

At a place overgrown with brambles, ivy, and periwinkle, choked with weeds, wreathed over in the summer with convolvulus and wild briony, he had found an opening, and not merely an opening, but landing-steps.

“Used for smuggling purposes, doubtless, in years gone by,” said a practical man in the London office of the company.

“No doubt,” I answered, and went straight off to an architect I knew, who upon the strength of our plan contrived to keep a sickly wife and various unnecessary children.

To say he jumped at my proposal is a mild way of expressing his acquiescence. Ghosts! what did he care for ghosts? Ghosts meant bad air, bad drainage, bad water, and twenty other bad things besides. Only let him see the place, and I might rest assured means would be found of ridding Crow Hall of spectres.

“My good friend,” said I, interposing; “there is only one way of laying the ghost. We must pull the old part of the house down, but I want your advice as to how that pulling down had best be accomplished.”

We travelled into Essex together, and took up our quarters at Crow Hall. I did not put him in the “Guest Chamber”—that haunted oak room—neither did I occupy it myself, but directly after breakfast we repaired to that apartment.

He measured it within, he measured the house without. He then went upstairs once more, and sounded one wall that met the fireplace. He went over about three feet of that again and again.

“There is a space here,” he remarked, “not accounted for.”

“How shall we account for it?” I asked.

“Send for a bricklayer”; which I did.

In the most matter-of-fact way my friend told him to open a hole in the wall.

After he had been working for two hours the room was filled with rubbish, and we were able to put a candle and our heads through the aperture.

“Well?” inquired my friend triumphantly.

“There is a staircase, sure enough,” I agreed.

“Shall we go down it?”

“I will not, for any earthly consideration,” was my prompt reply.

“Then I will presently,” he remarked.

“Notwithstanding your wife and family?” I ventured to suggest.

“Notwithstanding twenty wives and twenty families,” he replied, with a firmness born perhaps of his distance from the home atmosphere.

He explored the staircase, and came back baffled, but not despondent.

“We must examine the cellars,” he said; “that way lies success.”

“That way lies madness,” I murmured.

“Eh? what did you say?” he exclaimed.

“I said nothing to the purpose,” I replied, curtly.

We went down into the cellars, but nothing could there be discovered to help us in our difficulty.

“Part of the house,” he remarked, “seems to have been built on the ground; but there is nothing unusual in that—nothing at least so unusual as to justify me in undermining the place to search for further cellarage. With your permission I will work from the staircase.”

I gave permission, and for I suppose three mortal hours, that bricklayer, urged on by my friend, and stimulated with beer, for which his “mate” was being perpetually despatched, chipped away with his cold chisel upon mortar which was more, so he averred, like granite, than honest lime and sand.

By this time the winter’s day had long closed; and the workman, intimating that his arms were a bit stiffish, and that it was tight working where there was no room to work, left us for the night, with the assurance that he would be back again after breakfast the next morning.

After this my friend, whose name was Tuft, and who is at the present moment distinguishing himself by designing various edifices each more ugly, and more uncomfortable, and more thoroughly according to the ethics of modern art than its predecessor, was, like many another busy man, taken with a notion that he must inspect once more the ghost’s battle-field.

“Let the ghost rest for tonight, there’s a good soul,” I entreated; the idea of the ghost being, if I may say so, laid very considerably by the discovery of that secret staircase, but he would listen to no remonstrance.

“Stay here and rest, my dear sir,” he entreated; “but let me, do let me examine once again the work accomplished today.”

He repaired to the scene of his triumphs, and remained there for so long a time that I was thinking of seeing what had become of him, when he burst in upon me, pale but exultant.

“Come with me, come!” he cried; “the secret of Crow Hall is solved at last.”

“Do you mean,” said I, “that you want me to go down those steps tonight?”

“Yes, most decidedly.”

“Then most decidedly I shall do nothing of the kind. Tomorrow morning, if you have anything to show me, I will see it.”

“How very odd you are,” he remarked.

“Perhaps you might be odd if you had seen in Crow Hall the things that have appeared to me and others.”

His enthusiasm died out a little after this. On the whole, Crow Hall was not a nice house in which to be reminded of ghost-stories late at night.

Morning brought, however, fresh courage to Mr. Tuft; the presence of the bricklayer and his mate, who were already, ten minutes after breakfast, thirsting for beer, inspired me with such confidence that I agreed to descend those steps, the very sight of which filled me with dismay.

Mr. Tuft went first, carrying a dark lantern, the bricklayer followed him, bearing an ordinary lantern, with which he lit my steps, and last of all came the man whom he called mate.

What a smell of damp and mould greeted our nostrils as we descended the steps, and at last found ourselves standing in a space about three feet square, one side of which was occupied by a doorway through which I could see a space beyond black as Erebus.

“I ’spose it’s all right, gov’nor?” said the bricklayer, addressing Mr. Tuft; “no foul air, nor nothing of that sort?”

“No foul nonsense,” exclaimed Mr. Tuft; though that gentleman subsequently informed me the idea was not so preposterous as I might imagine from the tone of his reply.

“We began work at the wrong wall yesterday,” he condescended to explain. “We could not tell, because all the sides were plastered over roughly to conceal the entrance, but no doubt the chipping and hammering loosened fastenings, or I might have failed to find and open the door last night. Now shall we go forward?”

“By all means,” I agreed, and we passed into the yawning blackness beyond.

We found ourselves in a cellar, or dungeon, square, except for the little vestibule which had been taken out of one corner; behind us was the concealed door by which we had entered; facing it was another door, which stood open; this latter gave ingress to three other small chambers. Out of one of these opened an archway, leading to what seemed a subterraneous passage; out of another a steep flight of stone steps descended to unknown depths.

“I should say many a brave gentleman has lain perdu here, till he could escape to the coast, in the good old times, when no one could reckon how long he might be permitted to keep his head on his shoulders,” said Mr. Tuft, waving his dark lantern above his head, and flashing the light now on the walls, the ground, the ceiling.

“I have always understood this was a smugglers’ haunt,” I remarked.

“The smuggling came after, doubtless,” agreed Mr. Tuft, graciously.

“There does not seem much in these places to reward our search,” I suggested, trying to speak carelessly, spite of a growing feeling of giddiness and nausea which made me glad to lay my hand on the bricklayer’s shoulder as we moved from place to place.

“No,” said Mr. Tuft, “dirt, dust, damp, mildew, are the usual tenants of concealed apartments nowadays. With the exception of a few empty barrels, there is nothing here to stimulate curiosity.”

At this moment the bricklayer’s mate, who had been lounging about the rooms with a sort of speculative stare, turned from a small heap of dust, which he first turned over with his foot, and then grubbed amongst with his hands, broke across Mr. Tuft’s speech by saying:

“Show a light here, Bill.”

Without troubling Bill, Mr. Tuft skipped across the floor, and threw a glance across the entrance of the subterranean passage.

“It’s bones, ain’t it?” asked the discoverer, looking up in Mr. Tuft’s face, “and bits of glass.”

Mr. Tuft pushed him aside, and kneeling down, took something from the ground and held it to the light.

“Come here, Trevor,” he said, in a voice hoarse with excitement.

Still giddy and sick, I staggered to his side.

“What is that?” he asked, putting something into my hand and flashing his bull’s-eye on it.

“What is it? A diamond to be sure. For Heaven’s sake,” I went on, addressing the bricklayer, “help me into the air—I feel as if I were dying.”

In an instant the men caught me—not too soon—for I almost reeled into their arms.

Though it was a cold winter’s day I prayed them to take me into the open air, anywhere out of the atmosphere of that accursed house.

When I was a little better—when I had sat for awhile with the icy wind cooling my forehead, and swallowed some brandy which Mrs. Paul brought me of her own free will, though ordinarily she disapproved of what she called spiritual liquors, believing that tea was the only beverage “sinful creatures with immortal souls” should indulge in, when I had in a sentence, to quote Bill’s mate, done what he styled, “come to hisself”—Mr. Tuft joined me.

“Shall I close the door again, Trevor,” he said, “till you are well enough to go down with me again? There are jewels there worth a king’s ransom.”

“Collect them,” I answered, “and then come back to me; never again will I set foot in any part of Crow Hall save Mrs. Paul’s kitchen.”

Leaning on his arm I made my way to that pleasant apartment. In it there was an old-fashioned sofa, upholstered in brown moreen, on which I stretched myself.

Mrs. Paul considerately placed a small table beside my couch, on which she left a Bible, hymnbook, Mr. Wesley’s Discourses, and a few tracts before leaving me to repose.

Subsequently, I ascertained she assisted Mr. Tuft in picking up the bright stones that lay amongst the dust and bones, constituting the ghastly heap which had once, so we conjectured, been Philip Waldrum’s wife.

I did not see the gems—I never saw them in fact. Mr. Tuft packed them away in my bag, and saw that and the rest of my luggage, together with my own person, en route for London during the course of the same afternoon.

I signed him a cheque for present expenses before I left, told him to raze Crow Hall with the ground, not to leave one stone of the old house on the other, begged him to send for the clergyman and the doctor, and the sexton and the undertaker, and let the dust and the bones be laid in the churchyard if possible.

Then I travelled back to town, reached Bishopsgate, hired a cab to take me to my lodgings; after which ensues a blank; a part of my life is blotted out of my memory—of the hours, days, weeks which ensued after I got out of the train and entered the cab, memory holds no record.

When I take up the thread of my recollection once again, I am lying in bed in my lodgings, and I have awakened wondering why it is broad daylight and why I feel so tired. I try to ring the bell, but my arm refuses to obey my wish. I see my hands—they are wasted—mere skin and bone, like those of a skeleton.

Someone, hearing me essay to move, comes and stands by my side.

“Mary!” I exclaim, but my voice is weak and hollow.

“Yes, dear.”

“What is it—what does it mean?”

“You have been very ill, but you are better now, thank God.” And to her—His instrument—often and often since that day, has Valentine Waldrum told me her nursing saved my life.

“I tell you honestly,” be said, “I did not think at one time you had a chance left.”

“It was that house,” I murmured.

“Yes, I know,” was his reply; “you must not talk of it.”

“But I must,” I answered. “Ask for the black bag I brought back with me from Essex.” He left the room, and returned with it in his hand.

“The key,” I said wearily, “is on a bunch, which you will find in my pocket.”

He looked for the keys and brought them to me.

“That unlocks the bag,” I remarked, stopping him as he touched a small brass key.

“Shall I open it?” he inquired.

“No; take the bag home with you. For God’s sake never let me see its contents again. You will find there that which will make you a rich man for life.”

He thought I was wandering again, evidently, for he did not take the bag. It was not till I had grown almost well again that we recurred to the subject.

“I hope you got a good price for those diamonds, Val,” I said.

“What diamonds?” he inquired.

“Those in the bag I told you to take away with you some time back.”

“I did not take it. Were you in your right mind when you wished me to do so?” he asked.

“My good fellow,” I answered, “so long as that bag is in the house I shall not get strong. Its contents caused my illness. Take them away.”

And he did. About the same time Mary took me away to the seaside.

When next I saw Valentine Waldrum, I was well again, and leading the old life which I had decided years and years before was the life which suited me best. Crow Hall had meanwhile been levelled with the ground, the Charitable Society had bought the farm, and the railway company had purchased the ground formerly laid out as lawn, orchard, gardens, and drive.

“I shall go abroad,” he said. “Thanks to you I am now rich enough to go where I please.”

I did not answer. I knew it was the best thing he could do, and yet my heart sank within me at his words. In other lands he might forget, and win and woo someone free to return his love. In England he could not forget Mary, and alas! I knew Mary could not forget him.

•    •    •    •

I was leading my old life, as I have said. I was dining out more frequently than ever, when one night, or rather morning, when I was just about letting myself in with a latch-key, which was at once the pain and the pleasure of my landlady’s life, a young fellow, in full evening dress, sprang out of a hansom, and addressing me said:

“Mr. Trevor, Lady Mary Conyngham wants to see you immediately.”

“What, at this hour!”! exclaimed.

“On the instant,” he replied.

“Is Mr. Conyngham dead or dying?” I inquired.

“‘Neither. She has bound me to secrecy, and the torture of the boot should not wring any admission from me.”

We jumped into the cab, and drove to the great town house plebeian Mr. Conyngham had bought and furnished for his well-born bride.

Straight upstairs we went, without announcement, to the drawing-room, where, daylight already fighting its way through the Venetian blinds, Lady Mary, surrounded by a number of excited and expectant guests, stood holding a paper in her fingers.

Seeing me, she thrust it into my hands.

“Read, read,” she said; and the guests, falling back, formed a semicircle round me.

I was so confused, that my glasses fell twice off my nose whilst I was trying to adjust them.

“In the name of Heaven, Stafford,” cried her ladyship, “if you cannot see, why do you not wear spectacles?”

Which was an extremely unjust and cruel speech, inasmuch as her ladyship knew I used glasses not to aid, but merely to preserve my eyesight.

When, however, I beheld the first statement set forth in the paper thrust upon me, I confess I felt like one blind.

The last will and testament of Geoffrey Trevor, of Fairy Water, in the parish of so-and-so, situated in such-and-such county—

“Will someone read it aloud?” I entreated, whereupon a young man, with extremely red hair, at a sign from Lady Mary, took the document from me, and recited its contents aloud.

It was the missing will, the will of which my cousin Geoffrey had spoken to his wife, and that he had laid away in a secret corner of the cabinet he had pointed to in his last agony; that cabinet being one of the articles of furniture Lady Mary had fancied she should like when staying at Fairy Water.

Many and many a time I had examined the secret drawers of that cabinet in hopes of discovering something to Mary’s advantage, but doubtless judicious bumping about on the part of the railway company had loosened the false bottom underneath, on which some curious guest examining the relic had found the will and a letter sealed and directed to Mrs. Trevor.

“That dear little woman can marry Valentine Waldrum now, and be the happiest wife in England!” said Lady Mary, excitedly.

Ill-natured people declare her ladyship was so delighted about the discovery, that she put her arms round my neck and kissed me.

If this be so, I can state solemnly I retain no recollection of her condescension.

And for the rest—

After reading the letter and perusing the will, Mrs. Trevor announced her intention of remaining a widow, and devoting herself to his children for the rest of her life; but after a time we talked her into a better and more rational frame of mind.

I told her it was her duty to marry Valentine Waldrum, and as for once in her life duty proved synonymous with pleasure, she promised to do as she was told.

The Duke of Severn wanted to give her away, but that being a privilege I meant to yield to no man, I asserted my prior claim, and accordingly he accompanied Valentine as best man, whilst Miss Vinon, all smiles and beauty, was sole bridesmaid at the quiet wedding.

I stood at the hall door looking after the newly-married pair as they drove away, and I alone saw Mary put her head out of the window and kiss her hand to me in token of farewell.

Then, my dear, that day, for the first time since I first beheld you, was my heart free from a dull, aching, remorseful pain.

•    •    •    •

Is there anything more to tell? Yes, Valentine and his wife live at Fairy Water, and we hope, when Geoffrey comes of age, to come to some arrangement by which they can continue to reside in the old place.

Valentine has made a name, but by his pen rather than his original profession.

He is wealthy, thanks to the jewels discovered at Crow Hall, and he is happy, thanks to the woman he once thought he should never be able to marry.

The ring which Lady Mary described so graphically, and which was eventually taken off a skeleton finger discovered in that ghastly heap of dust, Valentine offered for her ladyship’s acceptance.

At first she recoiled from the mere mention of the trinket; then she expressed a desire to look at it again; then she remembered Crow Hall was no longer in existence, and that the original owner of the ring was lying in consecrated ground. Finally, she said it was the most curious piece of jewellery she had ever seen or heard of, and that it could be easily enlarged.

After which, she accepted the present. To this hour she wears it. I can honestly say, whenever my eye falls on that ring, I shiver. How she can endure it on her finger passes my comprehension. But then, as her ladyship sometimes is good enough to lucidly explain—

“Different ranks view different things differently.”

In my opinion it is extremely fortunate that they do.

The Uninhabited House

(1875)

I

MISS BLAKE – FROM MEMORY

If ever a residence, “suitable in every respect for a family of position,” haunted a lawyer’s offices, the “Uninhabited House,” about which I have a story to tell, haunted those of Messrs. Craven and Son, No. 200, Buckingham Street, Strand.

It did not matter in the least whether it happened to be let or unlet: in either case, it never allowed Mr. Craven or his clerks, of whom I was one, to forget its existence.

When let, we were in perpetual hot water with the tenant; when unlet, we had to endeavour to find some tenant to take that unlucky house.

Happy were we when we could get an agreement signed for a couple of years—although we always had misgivings that the war waged with the last occupant would probably have to be renewed with his successor.

Still, when we were able to let the desirable residence to a solvent individual, even for twelve months, Mr. Craven rejoiced.

He knew how to proceed with the tenants who came blustering, or threatening, or complaining, or bemoaning; but he did not know what to do with Miss Blake and her letters, when no person was liable for the rent.

All lawyers—I am one myself and can speak from a long and varied experience—all lawyers, even the very hardest, have one client, at all events, towards whom they exhibit much forbearance, for whom they feel a certain sympathy, and in whose interests they take a vast deal of trouble for very little pecuniary profit.

A client of this kind favours me with his business—he has favoured me with it for many years past. Each first of January I register a vow he shall cost me no more time or money. On each last day of December I find he is deeper in my debt than he was on the same date a twelvemonth previous.

I often wonder how this is—why we, so fierce to one human being, possibly honest and well-meaning enough, should be as wax in the hand of the moulder, when another individual, perhaps utterly disreputable, refuses to take “No” for an answer.

Do we purchase our indulgences in this way? Do we square our accounts with our own consciences by remembering that, if we have been as stone to Dick, Tom, and Harry, we have melted at the first appeal of Jack?

My principal, Mr. Craven—than whom a better man never breathed—had an unprofitable client, for whom he entertained feelings of the profoundest pity, whom he treated with a rare courtesy. That lady was Miss Blake; and when the old house on the Thames stood tenantless, Mr. Craven’s bed did not prove one of roses.

In our firm there was no son—Mr. Craven had been the son; but the old father was dead, and our chief’s wife had brought him only daughters.

Still the title of the firm remained the same, and Mr. Craven’s own signature also.

He had been junior for such a number of years, that, when Death sent a royal invitation to his senior, he was so accustomed to the old form, that he, and all in his employment, tacitly agreed it was only fitting he should remain junior to the end.

A good man. I, of all human beings, have reason to speak well of him. Even putting the undoubted fact of all lawyers keeping one unprofitable client into the scales, if he had not been very good he must have washed his hands of Miss Blake and her niece’s house long before the period at which this story opens.

The house did not belong to Miss Blake. It was the property of her niece, a certain Miss Helena Elmsdale, of whom Mr. Craven always spoke as that “poor child.” She was not of age, and Miss Blake managed her few pecuniary affairs.

Besides the “desirable residence, suitable,” etcetera, aunt and niece had property producing about sixty-five pounds a year. When we could let the desirable residence, handsomely furnished, and with every convenience that could be named in the space of a half-guinea advertisement, to a family from the country, or an officer just returned from India, or to an invalid who desired a beautiful and quiet abode within an easy drive of the West End—when we could do this, I say, the income of aunt and niece rose to two hundred and sixty-five pounds a year, which made a very material difference to Miss Blake.

When we could not let the house, or when the payment of the rent was in dispute, Mr. Craven advanced the lady various five and ten pound notes, which, it is to be hoped, were entered duly to his credit in the Eternal Books. In the mundane records kept in our offices, they always appeared as debits to William Craven’s private account.

As for the young men about our establishment, of whom I was one, we anathematised that house. I do not intend to reproduce the language we used concerning it at one period of our experience, because eventually the evil wore itself out, as most evils do, and at last we came to look upon the desirable residence as an institution of our firm—as a sort of cause célèbre, with which it was creditable to be associated—as a species of remarkable criminal always on its trial, and always certain to be defended by Messrs. Craven and Son.

In fact, the Uninhabited House—for uninhabited it usually was, whether anyone was answerable for the rent or not—finally became an object of as keen interest to all Mr. Craven’s clerks as it became a source of annoyance to him.

So the beam goes up and down. While Mr. Craven pooh-poohed the complaints of tenants, and laughed at the idea of a man being afraid of a ghost, we did not laugh, but swore. When, however, Mr. Craven began to look serious about the matter, and hoped some evil-disposed persons were not trying to keep the place tenantless, our interest in the old house became absorbing. And as our interest in the residence grew, so, likewise, did our appreciation of Miss Blake.

We missed her when she went abroad—which she always did the day a fresh agreement was signed—and we welcomed her return to England and our offices with effusion. Safely I can say no millionaire ever received such an ovation as fell to the lot of Miss Blake when, after a foreign tour, she returned to those lodgings near Brunswick Square, which her residence ought, I think, to have rendered classic.

She never lost an hour in coming to us. With the dust of travel upon her, with the heat and burden of quarrels with railway porters, and encounters with cabmen, visible to anyone who chose to read the signs of the times, Miss Blake came pounding up our stairs, wanting to see Mr. Craven.

If that gentleman was engaged, she would sit down in the general office, and relate her latest grievance to a posse of sympathising clerks.

“And he says he won’t pay the rent,” was always the refrain of these lamentations.

“It is in Ireland he thinks he is, poor soul!” she was wont to declare.

“We’ll teach him different, Miss Blake,” the spokesman of the party would declare; whilst another ostentatiously mended a pen, and a third brought down a ream of foolscap and laid it with a thump before him on the desk.

“And, indeed, you’re all decent lads, though full of your tricks,” Miss Blake would sometimes remark, in a tone of gentle reproof. “But if you had a niece just dying with grief, and a house nobody will live in on your hands, you would not have as much heart for fun, I can tell you that.”

Hearing which, the young rascals tried to look sorrowful, and failed.

In the way of my profession I have met with many singular persons, but I can safely declare I never met with any person so singular as Miss Blake. She was—I speak of her in the past tense, not because she is dead, but because times and circumstances have changed since the period when we both had to do with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in consequence—one of the most original people who ever crossed my path.

Born in the north of Ireland, the child of a Scottish-Ulster mother and a Connaught father, she had ingeniously contrived to combine in her own person the vices of two distinct races, and exclude the virtues of both.

Her accent was the most fearful which could be imagined. She had the brogue of the West grafted on the accent of the North. And yet there was a variety about her even in this respect. One never could tell, from visit to visit, whether she proposed to pronounce “written” as “wrutten” or “wretten”; whether she would elect to style her parents, to whom she made frequent reference, her “pawpaw and mawmaw,” or her “pepai and memai.”

It all depended with whom Miss Blake had lately been most intimate. If she had been “hand and glove” with a “nob” from her own country—she was in no way reticent about thus styling her grander acquaintances, only she wrote the word “knob”—who thought to conceal his nationality by “awing” and “hawing,” she spoke about people being “morried” and wearing “sockcloth and oshes.” If, on the contrary, she had been thrown into the society of a lady who so far honoured England as to talk as some people do in England, we had every A turned into E, and every U into O, while she minced her words as if she had been saying “niminy piminy” since she first began to talk, and honestly believed no human being could ever have told she had been born west of St. George’s Channel.

But not merely in accent did Miss Blake evidence the fact that her birth had been the result of an injudicious cross; the more one knew of her, the more clearly one saw the wrong points she threw out.

Extravagant to a fault, like her Connaught father, she was in no respect generous, either from impulse or calculation.

Mean about minor details, a turn of character probably inherited from the Ulster mother, she was utterly destitute of that careful and honest economy which is an admirable trait in the natives of the north of Ireland, and which enables them so frequently, after being strictly just, to be much more than liberal.

Honest, Miss Blake was not—or, for that matter, honourable either. Her indebtedness to our firm could not be considered other than a matter of honour, and yet she never dreamt of paying her debt to Mr. Craven.

Indeed, to do Miss Blake strict justice, she never thought of paying the debts she owed to anyone, unless she was obliged to do so.

Nowadays, I fear it would fare hard with her were she to try her old tactics with the British tradesman; but, in the time of which I am writing, co-operative societies were not, and then the British tradesman had no objection, I fancy, to be gulled.

Perhaps, like the lawyer and the unprofitable client, he set-off being gulled on one side his ledger against being fleeced on the other.

Be this as it may, we were always compounding some liability for Miss Blake, as well as letting her house and fighting with the tenants.

At first, as I have said, we found Miss Blake an awful bore, but we generally ended by deciding we could better spare a better man. Indeed, the months when she did not come to our office seemed to want flavour.

Of gratitude—popularly supposed to be essentially characteristic of the Irish—Miss Blake was utterly destitute. I never did know—I have never known since, so ungrateful a woman.

Not merely did she take everything Mr. Craven did for her as a right, but she absolutely turned the tables, and brought him in her debtor.

Once, only once, that I can remember, he ventured to ask when it would be convenient for her to repay some of the money he had from time to time advanced.

Miss Blake was taken by surprise, but she rose equal to the occasion.

“You are joking, Mr. Craven,” she said. “You mean, when will I want to ask you to give me a share of the profits you have made out of the estate of my poor sister’s husband. Why, that house has been as good as an annuity to you. For six long years it has stood empty, or next to empty, and never been out of law all the time.”

“But, you know, Miss Blake, that not a shilling of profit has accrued to me from the house being in law,” he pleaded. “I have always been too glad to get the rent for you, to insist upon my costs, and, really—.”

“Now, do not try to impose upon me,” she interrupted, “because it is of no use. Didn’t you make thousands of the dead man, and now haven’t you got the house? Why, if you never had a penny of costs, instead of all you have pocketed, that house and the name it has brought to you, and the fame which has spread abroad in consequence, can’t be reckoned as less than hundreds a year to your firm. And yet you ask me for the return of a trumpery four or five sovereigns—I am ashamed of you! But I won’t imitate your bad example. Let me have five more today, and you can stop ten out of the Colonel’s first payment.”

“I am very sorry,” said my employer, “but I really have not five pounds to spare.”

“Hear him,” remarked Miss Blake, turning towards me. “Young man”—Miss Blake steadily refused to recognise the possibility of any clerk being even by accident a gentleman—“will you hand me over the newspaper?”

I had not the faintest idea what she wanted with the newspaper, and neither had Mr. Craven, till she sat down again deliberately—the latter part of this conversation having taken place after she rose, preparatory to saying farewell—opened the sheet out to its full width, and commenced to read the debates.

“My dear Miss Blake,” began Mr. Craven, after a minute’s pause, “you know my time, when it is mine, is always at your disposal, but at the present moment several clients are waiting to see me, and—”

“Let them wait,” said Miss Blake, as he hesitated a little. “Your time and their time is no more valuable than mine, and I mean to stay here,” emphasising the word, “till you let me have that five pounds. Why, look, now, that house is taken on a two years’ agreement, and you won’t see me again for that time—likely as not, never; for who can tell what may happen to anybody in foreign parts? Only one charge I lay upon you, Mr. Craven: don’t let me be buried in a strange country. It is bad enough to be so far as this from my father and my mother’s remains, but I daresay I’ll manage to rest in the same grave as my sister, though Robert Elmsdale lies between. He separated us in life—not that she ever cared for him; but it won’t matter much when we are all bones and dust together—”

“If I let you have that five pounds,” here broke in Mr. Craven, “do I clearly understand that I am to recoup myself out of Colonel Morris’ first payment?”

“I said so as plain as I could speak,” agreed Miss Blake; and her speech was very plain indeed.

Mr. Craven lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders, while he drew his cheque-book towards him.

“How is Helena?” he asked, as he wrote the final legendary flourish after Craven and Son.

“Helena is but middling, poor dear,” answered Miss Blake—on that occasion she called her niece Hallana. “She frets, the creature, as is natural; but she will get better when we leave England. England is a hard country for anyone who is all nairves like Halana.”

“Why do you never bring her to see me?” asked Mr. Craven, folding up the cheque.

“Bring her to be stared at by a parcel of clerks!” exclaimed Miss Blake, in a tone which really caused my hair to bristle. “Well-mannered, decent young fellows in their own rank, no doubt, but not fit to look at my sister’s child. Now, now, Mr. Craven, ought Kathleen Blake’s—or, rather, Kathleen Elmsdale’s daughter to serve as a fifth of November guy for London lads? You know she is handsome enough to be a duchess, like her mother.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” agreed Mr. Craven, and handed over the cheque. After I had held the door open for Miss Blake to pass out, and closed it securely and resumed my seat, Miss Blake turned the handle and treated us to another sight of her bonnet.

“Good-bye, William Craven, for two years at any rate; and if I never see you again, God bless you, for you’ve been a true friend to me and that poor child who has nobody else to look to,” and then, before Mr. Craven could cross the room, she was gone.

“I wonder,” said I, “if it will be two years before we see her again?”

“No, nor the fourth of two years,” answered my employer. “There is something queer about that house.”

“You don’t think it is haunted, sir, do you?” I ventured.

“Of course not,” said Mr. Craven, irritably; “but I do think someone wants to keep the place vacant, and is succeeding admirably.”

The question I next put seemed irrelevant, but really resulted from a long train of thought. This was it:

“Is Miss Elmsdale very handsome, sir?”

“She is very beautiful,” was the answer; “but not so beautiful as her mother was.”

Ah me! two old, old stories in a sentence. He had loved the mother, and he did not love the daughter. He had seen the mother in his bright, hopeful youth, and there was no light of morning left for him in which he could behold the child.

To other eyes she might, in her bright springtime, seem lovely as an angel from heaven, but to him no more such visions were to be vouchsafed.

If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time there could be no beauty left. But oh! greybeard, the beauty remains, though our eyes may be too dim to see it; the beauty, the grace, the rippling laughter, and the saucy smiles, which once had power to stir to their very depths our hearts, friend—our hearts, yours and mine, comrade, feeble, and cold, and pulseless now.

II

THE CORONER’S INQUEST

The story was told to me afterwards, but I may as well weave it in with mine at this juncture.

From the maternal ancestress, the Demoiselles Blake inherited a certain amount of money. It was through no fault of the paternal Blake—through no want of endeavours on his part to make ducks and drakes of all fortune which came in his way, that their small inheritance remained intact; but the fortune was so willed that neither the girls nor he could divert the peaceful tenure of its half-yearly dividends.

The mother died first, and the father followed her ere long, and then the young ladies found themselves orphans, and the possessors of a fixed income of one hundred and thirty pounds a year.

A modest income, and yet, as I have been given to understand, they might have married well for the money.

In those days, particularly in Ireland, men went very cheap, and the Misses Blake, one and both, could, before they left off mourning, have wedded, respectively, a curate, a doctor, a constabulary officer, and the captain of a government schooner.

The Misses Blake looked higher, however, and came to England, where rich husbands are presumably procurable. Came, but missed their market. Miss Kathleen found only one lover, William Craven, whose honest affection she flouted; and Miss Susannah found no lover at all.

Miss Kathleen wanted a duke, or an earl—a prince of the blood royal being about that time unprocurable; and an attorney, to her Irish ideas, seemed a very poor sort of substitute. For which reason she rejected the attorney with scorn, and remained single, the while dukes and earls were marrying and intermarrying with their peers or their inferiors.

Then suddenly there came a frightful day when Kathleen and Susannah learned they were penniless, when they understood their trustee had robbed them, as he had robbed others, and had been paying their interest out of what was left of their principal.

They tried teaching, but they really had nothing to teach. They tried letting lodgings. Even lodgers rebelled against their untidiness and want of punctuality.

The eldest was very energetic and very determined, and the youngest very pretty and very conciliatory. Nevertheless, business is business, and lodgings are lodgings, and the Misses Blake were on the verge of beggary, when Mr. Elmsdale proposed for Miss Kathleen and was accepted.

Mr. Craven, by that time a family man, gave the bride away, and secured Mr. Elmsdale’s business.

Possibly, had Mrs. Elmsdale’s marriage proved happy, Mr. Craven might have soon lost sight of his former love. In matrimony, as in other matters, we are rarely so sympathetic with fulfilment as with disappointment. The pretty Miss Blake was a disappointed woman after she had secured Mr. Elmsdale. She then understood that the best life could offer her was something very different indeed from the ideal duke her beauty should have won, and she did not take much trouble to conceal her dissatisfaction with the arrangements of Providence.

Mr. Craven, seeing what Mr. Elmsdale was towards men, pitied her. Perhaps, had he seen what Mrs. Elmsdale was towards her husband, he might have pitied him; but, then, he did not see, for women are wonderful dissemblers.

There was Elmsdale, bluff in manner, short in person, red in the face, cumbersome in figure, addicted to naughty words, not nice about driving fearfully hard bargains, a man whom men hated, not undeservedly; and yet, nevertheless, a man capable of loving a woman with all the veins of his heart, and who might, had any woman been found to love him, have compassed earthly salvation.

There were those who said he never could compass eternal; but they chanced to be his debtors—and, after all, that question lay between himself and God. The other lay between himself and his wife, and it must be confessed, except so far as his passionate, disinterested love for an utterly selfish woman tended to redeem and humanise his nature, she never helped him one step along the better path.

But, then, the world could not know this, and Mr. Craven, of whom I am speaking at the moment, was likely, naturally, to think Mr. Elmsdale all in the wrong.

On the one hand he saw the man as he appeared to men: on the other he saw the woman as she appeared to men, beautiful to the last; fragile, with the low voice, so beautiful in any woman, so more especially beautiful in an Irish woman; with a languid face which insured compassion while never asking for it; with the appearance of a martyr, and the tone and the manner of a suffering saint.

Everyone who beheld the pair together, remarked, “What a pity it was such a sweet creature should be married to such a bear!” but Mr. Elmsdale was no bear to his wife: he adored her. The selfishness, the discontent, the ill-health, as much the consequence of a peevish, petted temper, as of disease, which might well have exhausted the patience and tired out the love of a different man, only endeared her the more to him.

She made him feel how inferior he was to her in all respects; how tremendously she had condescended, when she agreed to become his wife; and he quietly accepted her estimation of him, and said with a humility which was touching from its simplicity:

“I know I am not worthy of you, Kathleen, but I do my best to make you happy.”

For her sake, not being a liberal man, he spent money freely; for her sake he endured Miss Blake; for her sake he bought the place which afterwards caused us so much trouble; for her sake, he, who had always scoffed at the folly of people turning their houses into stores for “useless timber,” as he styled the upholsterer’s greatest triumphs, furnished his rooms with a lavish disregard of cost; for her sake, he, who hated society, smiled on visitors, and entertained the guests she invited, with no grudging hospitality. For her sake he dressed well, and did many other things which were equally antagonistic to his original nature; and he might just as well have gone his own way, and pleased himself only, for all the pleasure he gave her, or all the thanks she gave him.

If Mr. Elmsdale had come home drunk five evenings a week, and beaten his wife, and denied her the necessaries of life, and kept her purse in a chronic state of emptiness, she might very possibly have been extremely grateful for an occasional kind word or smile; but, as matters stood, Mrs. Elmsdale was not in the least grateful for a devotion, as beautiful as it was extraordinary, and posed herself on the domestic sofa in the character of a martyr.

Most people accepted the representation as true, and pitied her. Miss Blake, blissfully forgetful of that state of impecuniosity from which Mr. Elmsdale’s proposal had extricated herself and her sister, never wearied of stating that “Katty had thrown herself away, and that Mr. Elmsdale was not fit to tie her shoe-string.”

She generously admitted the poor creature did his best; but, according to Blake, the poor creature’s best was very bad indeed.

“It’s not his fault, but his misfortune,” the lady was wont to remark, “that he’s like dirt beside her. He can’t help his birth, and his dragging-up, and his disreputable trade, or business, or whatever he likes to call it; he can’t help never having had a father nor mother to speak of, and not a lady or gentleman belonging to the family since it came into existence. I’m not blaming him, but it is hard for Kathleen, and she reared as she was, and accustomed to the best society in Ireland,—which is very different, let me tell you, from the best anybody ever saw in England.”

There were some who thought, if Mrs. Elmsdale could tolerate her sister’s company, she might without difficulty have condoned her husband’s want of acquaintance with some points of grammar and etiquette; and who said, amongst themselves, that whereas he only maltreated, Miss Blake mangled every letter in the alphabet; but these carping critics were in the minority.

Mrs. Elmsdale was a beauty, and a martyr; Mr. Elmsdale a rough beast, who had no capacity of ever developing into a prince. Miss Blake was a model of sisterly affection, and if eccentric in her manner, and bewildering in the vagaries of her accent, well, most Irish people, the highest in rank not excepted, were the same. Why, there was Lord So-and-so, who stated at a public meeting that “roight and moight were not always convartible tarms”; and accepted the cheers and laughter which greeted his utterance as evidence that he had said something rather neat.

Miss Blake’s accent was a very different affair indeed from those wrestles with his foe in which her brother-in-law always came off worsted. He endured agonies in trying to call himself Elmsdale, and rarely succeeded in styling his wife anything except Mrs. HE. I am told Miss Blake’s mimicry of this peculiarity was delicious: but I never was privileged to hear her delineation, for, long before the period when this story opens, Mr. Elmsdale had departed to that land where no confusion of tongues can much signify, and where Helmsdale no doubt served his purpose just as well as Miss Blake’s more refined pronunciation of his name.

Further, Miss Helena Elmsdale would not allow a word in depreciation of her father to be uttered when she was near, and as Miss Helena could on occasion develop a very pretty little temper, as well as considerable power of satire, Miss Blake dropped out of the habit of ridiculing Mr. Elmsdale’s sins of omission and commission, and contented herself by generally asserting that, as his manner of living had broken her poor sister ‘s heart, so his manner of dying had broken her—Miss Blake’s—heart.

“It is only for the sake of the orphan child I am able to hold up at all,” she would tell us. “I would not have blamed him so much for leaving us poor, but it was hard and cruel to leave us disgraced into the bargain”; and then Miss Blake would weep, and the wag of the office would take out his handkerchief and ostentatiously wipe his eyes.

She often threatened to complain of that boy—a merry, mischievous young imp—to Mr. Craven; but she never did so. Perhaps because the clerks always gave her rapt attention; and an interested audience was very pleasant to Miss Blake.

Considering the nature of Mr. Elmsdale’s profession, Miss Blake had possibly some reason to complain of the extremely unprofitable manner in which he cut up. He was what the lady described as “a dirty money-lender.”

Heaven only knows how he drifted into his occupation; few men, I imagine, select such a trade, though it is one which seems to exercise an enormous fascination for those who have adopted it.

The only son of a very small builder who managed to leave a few hundred pounds behind him for the benefit of Elmsdale, then clerk in a contractor’s office, he had seen enough of the anxieties connected with his father’s business to wash his hands of bricks and mortar.

Experience, perhaps, had taught him also that people who advanced money to builders made a very nice little income out of the capital so employed; and it is quite possible that some of his father’s acquaintances, always in want of ready cash, as speculative folks usually are, offered such terms for temporary accommodation as tempted him to enter into the business of which Miss Blake spoke so contemptuously.

Be this as it may, one thing is certain—by the time Elmsdale was thirty he had established a very nice little connection amongst needy men: whole streets were mortgaged to him; terraces, nominally the property of some well—to—do builder, were virtually his, since he only waited the well-to-do builder’s inevitable bankruptcy to enter into possession. He was not a sixty per cent, man, always requiring some very much better security than “a name” before parting with his money; but still even twenty per cent, usually means ruin, and, as a matter of course, most of Mr. Elmsdale’s clients reached that pleasant goal.

They could have managed to do so, no doubt, had Mr. Elmsdale never existed; but as he was in existence, he served the purpose for which it seemed his mother had borne him; and sooner or later—as a rule, sooner than later—assumed the shape of Nemesis to most of those who “did business” with him.

There were exceptions, of course. Some men, by the help of exceptional good fortune, roguery, or genius, managed to get out of Mr. Elmsdale’s hands by other paths than those leading through Basinghall or Portugal Streets; but they merely proved the rule.

Notably amongst these fortunate persons may be mentioned a Mr. Harrison and a Mr. Harringford—’Arrison and ’Arringford, as Mr. Elmsdale called them, when he did not refer to them as the two Haitches.

Of these, the first-named, after a few transactions, shook the dust of Mr. Elmsdale’s office off his shoes, sent him the money he owed by his lawyer, and ever after referred to Mr. Elmsdale as “that thief” “that scoundrel,” that “swindling old vagabond,” and so forth; but, then, hard words break no bones, and Mr. Harrison was not very well thought of himself.

His remarks, therefore, did Mr. Elmsdale very little harm—a moneylender is not usually spoken of in much pleasanter terms by those who once have been thankful enough for his cheque; and the world in general does not attach a vast amount of importance to the opinions of a former borrower. Mr. Harrison did not, therefore, hurt or benefit his quondam friend to any appreciable extent; but with Mr. Harringford the case was different.

He and Elmsdale had been doing business together for years, “everything he possessed in the world,” he stated to an admiring coroner’s jury summoned to sit on Mr. Elmsdale’s body and inquire into the cause of that gentleman’s death—“everything he possessed in the world, he owed to the deceased. Some people spoke hardly of him, but his experience of Mr. Elmsdale enabled him to say that a kinder-hearted, juster, honester, or better-principled man never existed. He charged high interest, certainly, and he expected to be paid his rate; but, then, there was no deception about the matter: if it was worth a borrower’s while to take money at twenty per cent., why, there was an end of the matter. Business men are not children,” remarked Mr. Harringford, “and ought not to borrow money at twenty per cent, unless they can make thirty per cent out of it.” Personally, he had never paid Mr. Elmsdale more than twelve and a half or fifteen per cent.; but, then, their transactions were on a large scale. Only the day before Mr. Elmsdale’s death—he hesitated a little over that word, and became, as the reporters said, “affected”—he had paid him twenty thousand pounds. The deceased told him he had urgent need of the money, and at considerable inconvenience he raised the amount. If the question were pressed as to whether he guessed for what purpose that sum was so urgently needed, he would answer it, of course; but he suggested that it should not be pressed, as likely to give pain to those who were already in terrible affliction.

Hearing which, the jury pricked up their ears, and the coroner’s curiosity became so intense that he experienced some difficulty in saying, calmly, that, “as the object of his sitting there was to elicit the truth, however much he should regret causing distress to anyone, he must request that Mr. Harringford, whose scruples did him honour, would keep back no fact tending to throw light upon so sad an affair.”

Having no alternative after this but to unburden himself of his secret, Mr. Harringford stated that he feared the deceased had been a heavy loser at Ascot. Mr. Harringford, having gone to that place with some friends, met Mr. Elmsdale on the race-course. Expressing astonishment at meeting him there, Mr. Elmsdale stated he had run down to look after a client of his who he feared was going wrong. He said he did not much care to do business with a betting man. In the course of subsequent conversation, however, he told the witness he had some money on the favourite.

As frequently proves the case, the favourite failed to come in first: that was all Mr. Harringford knew about the matter. Mr. Elmsdale never mentioned how much he had lost—in fact, he never referred again, except in general terms, to their meeting. He stated, however, that he must have money, and that immediately; if not the whole amount, half, at all events. The witness found, however, he could more easily raise the larger than the smaller sum. There had been a little unpleasantness between him and Mr. Elmsdale with reference to the demand for money made so suddenly and so peremptorily, and he bitterly regretted having even for a moment forgotten what was due to so kind a friend.

He knew of no reason in the world why Mr. Elmsdale should have committed suicide. He was, in business, eminently a cautious man, and Mr. Harringford had always supposed him to be wealthy; in fact, he believed him to be a man of large property. Since the death of his wife, he had, however, noticed a change in him; but still it never crossed the witness’s mind that his brain was in any way affected.

Miss Blake, who had to this point postponed giving her evidence, on account of the “way she was upset,” was now able to tell a sympathetic jury and a polite coroner all she knew of the matter.

“Indeed,” she began, “Robert Elmsdale had never been the same man since her poor sister’s death; he mooned about, and would sit for half an hour at a time, doing nothing but looking at a faded bit of the dining-room carpet.”

He took no interest in anything; if he was asked any questions about the garden, he would say, “What does it matter? she cannot see it now.”

“Indeed, my lord,” said Miss Blake, in her agitation probably confounding the coroner with the chief justice, “it was just pitiful to see the creature; I am sure his ways got to be heart-breaking.”

“After my sister’s death,” Miss Blake resumed, after a pause, devoted by herself, the jury, and the coroner to sentiment, “Robert Elmsdale gave up his office in London, and brought his business home. I do not know why he did this. He would not, had she been living, because he always kept his trade well out of her sight, poor man. Being what she was, she could not endure the name of it, naturally. It was not my place to say he shouldn’t do what he liked in his own house, and I thought the excitement of building a new room, and quarrelling with the builder, and swearing at the men, was good for him. He made a fireproof place for his papers, and he fitted up the office like a library, and bought a beautiful large table, covered with leather; and nobody to have gone in would have thought the room was used for business. He had a Turkey carpet on the floor, and chairs that slipped about on castors; and he planned a covered way out into the road, with a separate entrance for itself, so that none of us ever knew who went out or who came in. He kept his affairs secret as the grave.”

“No,” in answer to the coroner, who began to think Miss Blake’s narrative would never come to an end. “I heard no shot: none of us did: we all slept away from that part of the house; but I was restless that night, and could not sleep, and I got up and looked out at the river, and saw a flare of light on it. I thought it odd he was not gone to bed, but took little notice of the matter for a couple of hours more, when it was just getting grey in the morning, and I looked out again, and still seeing the light, slipped on a dressing-wrapper and my slippers, and ran downstairs to tell him he would ruin his health if he did not go to his bed.

“When I opened the door I could see nothing; the table stood between me and him; but the gas was flaring away, and as I went round to put it out, I came across him lying on the floor. It never occurred to me he was dead; I thought he was in a fit, and knelt down to unloose his cravat, then I found he had gone.

“The pistol lay on the carpet beside him—and that,” finished Miss Blake, “is all I have to tell.”

When asked if she had ever known of his losing money by betting, she answered it was not likely he would tell her anything of that kind.

“He always kept his business to himself,” she affirmed, “as is the way of most men.”

In answer to other questions, she stated she never heard of any losses in business; there was plenty of money always to be had for the asking. He was liberal enough, though perhaps not so liberal latterly, as before his wife’s death; she didn’t know anything of the state of his affairs. “Likely, Mr. Craven could tell them all about that.”

Mr. Craven, however, proved unable to do so. To the best of his belief, Mr. Elmsdale was in very easy circumstances. He had transacted a large amount of business for him, but never any involving pecuniary loss or anxiety; he should have thought him the last man in the world to run into such folly as betting; he had no doubt Mrs. Elmsdale’s death had affected him disastrously. He said more than once to witness, if it were not for the sake of his child, he should not care if he died that night.

All of which, justifying the jury in returning a verdict of “suicide while of unsound mind,” they expressed their unanimous opinion to that effect—thus “saving the family the condemnation of felo de se,” remarked Miss Blake.

The dead man was buried, the church service read over his remains, the household was put into mourning, the blinds were drawn up, the windows flung open, and the business of life taken up once more by the survivors.

III

OUR LAST TENANT

It is quite competent for a person so to manage his affairs, that, whilst understanding all about them himself, another finds it next to impossible to make head or tail of his position.

Mr. Craven found that Mr. Elmsdale had effected this feat; entries there were in his books, intelligible enough, perhaps, to the man who made them, but as so much Hebrew to a stranger.

He had never kept a business banking account; he had no regular journal or ledger; he seemed to have depended on memoranda, and vague and uncertain writings in his diary, both for memory and accuracy; and as most of his business had been conducted viva voce, there were few letters to assist in throwing the slightest light on his transactions.

Even from the receipts, however, one thing was clear, viz., that he had, since his marriage, spent a very large sum of money; spent it lavishly, not to say foolishly. Indeed, the more closely Mr. Craven looked into affairs, the more satisfied he felt that Mr. Elmsdale had committed suicide simply because he was well-nigh ruined.

Mortgage-deeds Mr. Craven himself had drawn up, were nowhere to be found; neither could one sovereign of the money Mr. Harringford paid be discovered.

Miss Blake said she believed “that Harringford had never paid at all”; but this was clearly proved to be an error of judgment on the part of that impulsive lady. Not merely did Harringford hold the receipt for the money and the mortgage-deeds cancelled, but the cheque he had given to the mortgagee bore the endorsement—“Robert Elmsdale”; while the clerk who cashed it stated that Mr. Elmsdale presented the order in person, and that to him he handed the notes.

Whatever he had done with the money, no notes were to be found; a diligent search of the strong room produced nothing more important than the discovery of a cash-box containing three hundred pounds; the title-deeds of River Hall—such being the modest name by which Mr. Elmsdale had elected to have his residence distinguished; the leases relating to some small cottages near Barnes; all the letters his wife had ever written to him; two locks of her hair, one given before marriage, the other cut after her death; a curl severed from the head of my “baby daughter”; quantities of receipts—and nothing more.

“I wonder he can rest in his grave,” said Miss Blake, when at last she began to realize, in a dim sort of way, the position of affairs.

According to the River Hall servants’ version, Mr. Elmsdale did anything rather than rest in his grave. About the time the new mourning had been altered to fit perfectly, a nervous housemaid, who began perhaps to find the house dull, mooted the question as to whether “master walked.”

Within a fortnight it was decided in solemn conclave that master did; and further, that the place was not what it had been; and moreover, that in the future it was likely to be still less like what it had been.

There is a wonderful instinct in the lower classes, which enables them to comprehend, without actual knowledge, when misfortune is coming upon a house: and in this instance that instinct was not at fault.

Long before Mr. Craven had satisfied himself that his client’s estate was a very poor one, the River Hall servants, one after another, had given notice to leave—indeed, to speak more accurately, they did not give notice, for they left; and before they left they took care to baptise the house with such an exceedingly bad name, that neither for love nor money could Miss Blake get a fresh “help” to stay in it for more than twenty-four hours.

First one housemaid was taken with “the shivers”; then the cook had “the trembles”; then the coachman was prepared to take his solemn affidavit, that, one night long after everyone in the house to his knowledge was in bed, he “see from his room above the stables, a light a-shining on the Thames, and the figures of one or more a passing and a re-passing across the blind.” More than this, a new page-boy declared that, on a certain evening, before he had been told there was anything strange about the house, he heard the door of the passage leading from the library into the side-road slam violently, and looking to see who had gone out by that unused entrance, failed to perceive sign of man, woman, or child, by the bright moonlight.

Moved by some feeling which he professed himself unable to “put a name on,” he proceeded to the door in question, and found it barred, chained, and bolted. While he was standing wondering what it meant, he noticed the light as of gas shining from underneath the library door; but when he softly turned the handle and peeped in, the room was dark as the grave, and “like cold water seemed running down his back.”

Further, he averred, as he stole away into the hall, there was a sound followed him as between a groan and a cry. Hearing which statement, an impressionable charwoman went into hysterics, and had to be recalled to her senses by a dose of gin, suggested and taken strictly as a medicine.

But no supply of spirituous liquors, even had Miss Blake been disposed to distribute anything of the sort, could induce servants after a time to remain in, or charwomen to come to, the house. It had received a bad name, and that goes even further in disfavour of a residence than it does against a man or woman.

Finally, Miss Blake’s establishment was limited to an old creature almost doting and totally deaf, the advantages of whose presence might have been considered problematical; but, then, as Miss Blake remarked, “she was somebody.”

“And now she has taken fright,” proceeded the lady. “How anyone could make her hear their story, the Lord in heaven alone knows; and if there was anything to see, I am sure she is far too blind to see it; but she says she daren’t stay. She does not want to see poor master again till she is dead herself.”

“I have got a tenant for the house the moment you like to say you will leave it,” said Mr. Craven, in reply. “He cares for no ghost that ever was manufactured. He has a wife with a splendid digestion, and several grown-up sons and daughters. They will soon clear out the shadows; and their father is willing to pay two hundred and fifty pounds a year.”

“And you think there is really nothing more of any use amongst the papers?”

“I am afraid not—I am afraid you must face the worst.”

“And my sister’s child left no better off than a street beggar,” suggested Miss Blake.

“Come, come,” remonstrated Mr. Craven; “matters are not so bad as all that comes to. Upon three hundred a year, you can live very comfortable on the Continent; and—”

“We’ll go,” interrupted Miss Blake; “but it is hard lines—not that anything better could have been expected from Robert Elmsdale.”

“Ah! dear Miss Blake, the poor fellow is dead. Remember only his virtues, and let his faults rest.”

“I sha’n’t have much to burden my memory with, then,” retorted Miss Blake, and departed.

Her next letter to my principal was dated from Rouen; but before that reached Buckingham Street, our troubles had begun.

For some reason best known to himself, Mr. Treseby, the good-natured country squire possessed of a wife with an excellent digestion, at the end of two months handed us half a year’s rent, and requested we should try to let the house for the remainder of his term, he, in case of our failure, continuing amenable for the rent. In the course of the three years we secured eight tenants, and as from each a profit in the way of forfeit accrued, we had not to trouble Mr. Treseby for any more money, and were also enabled to remit some small bonuses—which came to her, Miss Blake assured us, as godsends—to the Continent.

After that the place stood vacant for a time. Various care-takers were eager to obtain the charge of it, but I only remember one who was not eager to leave. That was a night-watchman, who never went home except in the daytime, and then to sleep, and he failed to understand why his wife, who was a pretty, delicate little creature, and the mother of four small children, should quarrel with her bread and butter, and want to leave so fine a place.

He argued the matter with her in so practical a fashion, that the nearest magistrate had to be elected umpire between them.

The whole story of the place was repeated in court, and the night-watchman’s wife, who sobbed during the entire time she stood in the witness-box, made light of her black eye and numerous bruises, but said, “Not if Tim murdered her, could she stay alone in the house another night.”

To prevent him murdering her, he was sent to gaol for two months, and Mr. Craven allowed her eight shillings a week till Tim was once more a free man, when he absconded, leaving wife and children chargeable to the parish.

“A poor, nervous creature,” said Mr. Craven, who would not believe that where gas was,, any house could be ghost-ridden. “We must really try to let the house in earnest.”

And we did try, and we did let, over, and over, and over again, always with a like result, till at length Mr. Craven said to me: “Do you know, Patterson, I really am growing very uneasy about that house on the Thames. I am afraid some evil-disposed person is trying to keep it vacant.”

“It certainly is very strange,” was the only remark I felt capable of making.

We had joked so much about the house amongst ourselves, and ridiculed Miss Blake and her troubles to such an extent, that the matter bore no serious aspect for any of us juniors.

“If we are not soon able to let it,” went on Mr. Craven, “I shall advise Miss Blake to auction off the furniture and sell the place. We must not always have an uninhabited house haunting our offices, Patterson.”

I shook my head in grave assent, but all the time I was thinking the day when that house ceased to haunt our offices, would be a very dreary one for the wags amongst our clerks.

“Yes, I certainly shall advise Miss Blake to sell,” repeated Mr. Craven, slowly.

Although a hard-working man, he was eminently slow in his ideas and actions.

There was nothing express about our dear governor; upon no special mental train did he go careering through life. Eminently he preferred the parliamentary pace: and I am bound to say the life-journey so performed was beautiful exceedingly, with waits not devoid of interest at little stations utterly outside his profession, with kindly talk to little children, and timid women, and feeble men; with a pleasant smile for most with whom he came in contact, and time for words of kindly advice which did not fall perpetually on stony ground, but which sometimes grew to maturity, and produced rich grain of which himself beheld the garnering.

Nevertheless, to my younger and quicker nature, he did seem often very tardy.

“Why not advise her now?” I asked.

“Ah! my boy,” he answered, “life is very short, yet it is long enough to have no need in it for hurry.”

The same day, Colonel Morris appeared in our office. Within a fortnight, that gallant officer was our tenant; within a month, Mrs. Morris, an exceedingly fine lady, with grown-up children, with very young children also, with ayahs, with native servants, with English servants, with a list of acquaintances such as one may read of in the papers the day after a queen’s drawing-room, took possession of the Uninhabited House, and, for about three months, peace reigned in our dominions.

Buckingham Street, as represented by us, stank in the nostrils of no human being.

So far we were innocent of offence, we were simply ordinary solicitors and clerks, doing as fully and truly as we knew how, an extremely good business at rates which yielded a very fair return to our principal.

The Colonel was delighted with the place, he kindly called to say; so was Mrs. Morris; so were the grown-up sons and daughters of Colonel and Mrs. Morris; and so, it is to be presumed, were the infant branches of the family.

The native servants liked the place because Mr. Elmsdale, in view of his wife’s delicate health, had made the house “like an oven,” to quote Miss Blake. “It was bad for her, I know,” proceeded that lady, “but she would have her own way, poor soul, and he—well, he’d have had the top brick of the chimney of a ten-story house off, if she had taken a fancy for that article.”

Those stoves and pipes were a great bait to Colonel Morris, as well as a source of physical enjoyment to his servants.

He, too, had married a woman who was not always easy to please; but River Hall did please her, as was natural, with its luxuries of heat, ease, convenience, large rooms opening one out of another, wide verandahs overlooking the Thames, staircases easy of ascent; baths, hot, cold, and shower; a sweet, pretty garden, conservatory with a door leading into it from the spacious hall, all exceedingly cheap at two hundred pounds a year.

Accordingly, at first, the Colonel was delighted with the place, and not the less so because Mrs. Morris was delighted with it, and because it was also so far from town, that he had a remarkably good excuse for frequently visiting his club.

Before the new-corners, local tradesmen bowed down and did worship. Visitors came and visitors went, carriages appeared in shoals, and double-knocks were plentiful as blackberries. A fresh leaf had evidently been turned over at River Hall, and the place meant to give no more trouble forever to Miss Blake, or Mr. Craven, or anybody. So, as I have said, three months passed. We had got well into the dog-days by that time; there was very little to do in the office. Mr. Craven had left for his annual holiday, which he always took in the company of his wife and daughters—a correct, but possibly a depressing, way of spending a vacation which must have been intended to furnish some social variety in a man’s life; and we were all very idle, and all very much inclined to grumble at the heat, and length, and general slowness of the days, when one morning, as I was going out in order to send a parcel off to Mrs. Craven, who should I meet coming panting up the stairs but Miss Blake!

“Is that you, Patterson?” she gasped. I assured her it was I in the flesh, and intimated my astonishment at seeing her in hers.

“Why, I thought you were in France, Miss Blake,” I suggested.

“That’s where I have just come from,” she said. “Is Mr. Craven in?”

I told her he was out of town.

“Aye—that’s where everybody can be but me,” she remarked, plaintively. “They can go out and stay out, while I am at the beck and call of all the scum of the earth. Well, well, I suppose there will be quiet for me sometime, if only in my coffin.”

As I failed to see that any consolatory answer was possible, I made no reply. I only asked:

“Won’t you walk into Mr. Craven’s office, Miss Blake?”

“Now, I wonder,” she said, “what good you think walking into his office will do me!”

Nevertheless, she accepted the invitation. I have, in the course of years, seen many persons suffering from heat, but I never did see any human being in such a state as Miss Blake was that day.

Her face was a pure, rich red, from temple to chin; it resembled nothing so much as a brick which had been out for a long time, first in the sun and the wind, and then in a succession of heavy showers of rain. She looked weather-beaten, and sun-burnt, and sprayed with salt-water, all at once. Her eyes were a lighter blue than I previously thought eyes could be. Her cheek-bones stood out more prominently than I had thought cheek-bones capable of doing. Her mouth—not quite a bad one, by the way—opened wider than any within my experience; and her teeth, white and exposed, were suggestive of a set of tombstones planted outside a stonemason’s shop, or an upper and lower set exhibited at the entrance to a dentist’s operating-room. Poor dear Miss Blake, she and those pronounced teeth parted company long ago, and a much more becoming set—which she got exceedingly cheap, by agreeing with the maker to “send the whole of the city of London to her, if he liked”—now occupy their place.

But on that especial morning they were very prominent. Everything, in fact, about the lady, or belonging to her, seemed exaggerated, as if the heat of the weather had induced a tropical growth of her mental and bodily peculiarities. Her bonnet was crooked beyond even the ordinary capacity of Miss Blake’s head-gear; the strings were rolled up till they looked like ropes which had been knotted under her chin. A veil, as large, and black as a pirate’s flag, floated down her back; her shawl was at sixes and sevens; one side of her dress had got torn from the bodice, and trailed on the ground leaving a broadly-marked line of dust on the carpet. She looked as if she had no petticoats on; and her boots—those were the days ere side-springs and buttons obtained— were one laced unevenly, and the other tied on with a piece of ribbon.

As for her gloves, they were in the state we always beheld them; if she ever bought a new pair (which I do not believe), she never treated us to a sight of them till they had been long past decent service. They never were buttoned, to begin with; they had a wrinkled and haggard appearance, as if from extreme old age. If their colour had originally been lavender, they were always black with dirt; if black, they were white with wear.

As a bad job, she had, apparently, years before, given up putting a stitch in the ends of the fingers, when a stitch gave way; and the consequence was that we were perfectly familiar with Miss Blake’s nails—and those nails looked as if, at an early period of her life, a hammer had been brought heavily down upon them. Mrs. Elmsdale might well be a beauty, for she had taken not only her own share of the good looks of the family, but her sister’s also.

We used often, at the office, to marvel why Miss Blake ever wore a collar, or a tucker, or a frill, or a pair of cuffs. So far as clean linen was concerned, she would have appeared infinitely brighter and fresher had she and female frippery at once parted company. Her laces were always in tatters, her collars soiled, her cuffs torn, and her frills limp. I wonder what the natives thought of her in France! In London, we decided—and accurately, I believe—that Miss Blake, in the solitude of her own chamber, washed and got-up her cambrics and fine linen—and it was a “get-up” and a “put-on” as well.

Had any other woman, dressed like Miss Blake, come to our office, I fear the clerks would not have been over-civil to her. But Miss Blake was our own, our very own. She had grown to be as our very flesh and blood. We did not love her, but she was associated with us by the closest ties that can subsist between lawyer and client. Had anything happened to Miss Blake, we should, in the event of her death, have gone in a body to her funeral, and felt a want in our lives forever after.

But Miss Blake had not the slightest intention of dying: we were not afraid of that calamity. The only thing we really did dread was that someday she might insist upon laying the blame of River Hall remaining uninhabited on our shoulders, and demand that Mr. Craven should pay her the rent out of his own pocket.

We knew if she took that, or any other pecuniary matter, seriously in hand, she would carry it through; and, between jest and earnest, we were wont to speculate whether, in the end, it might not prove cheaper to our firm if Mr. Craven were to farm that place, and pay Miss Blake’s niece an annuity of say one hundred a year.

Ultimately we decided that it would, but that such a scheme was impracticable, because Miss Blake would always think we were making a fortune out of River Hall, and give us no peace till she had a share of the profit.

For a time, Miss Blake—after unfastening her bonnet-strings, and taking out her brooch and throwing back her shawl—sat fanning herself with a dilapidated glove, and saying, “Oh dear! oh dear! what is to become of me I cannot imagine.” But, at length, finding I was not to be betrayed into questioning, she observed:

“If William Craven knew the distress I am in, he would not be out of town enjoying himself, I’ll be bound.”

“I am quite certain he would not,” I answered, boldly. “But as he is away, is there nothing we can do for you?”

She shook her head mournfully. “You’re all a parcel of boys and children together,” was her comprehensive answer.

“But there is our manager, Mr. Taylor,” I suggested.

“Him!” she exclaimed. “Now, if you don’t want me to walk out of the office and never set foot in it again, don’t talk to me about Taylor.”

“Has Mr. Taylor offended you?” I ventured to inquire.

“Lads of your age should not ask too many questions,” she replied. “What I have against Taylor is nothing to you; only don’t make me desperate by mentioning his name.”

I hastened to assure her that it should never be uttered by me again in her presence, and there ensued a pause, which she filled by looking round the office and taking a mental inventory of everything it contained.

Eventually, her survey ended in this remark, “And he can go out of town as well, and keep a brougham for his wife, and draw them daughters of his out like figures in a fashion-book, and my poor sister’s child living in a two-pair lodging.”

“I fear, Miss Blake,” I ventured, “that something is the matter at River Hall.”

“You fear, do you, young man?” she returned. “You ought to get a first prize for guessing. As if anything else could ever bring me back to London.”

“Can I be of no service to you in the matter?”

“I don’t think you can, but you may as well see his letter.” And diving into the depths of her pocket, she produced Colonel Morris’ communication, which was very short, but very much to the purpose.

“Not wishing,” he said, “to behave in any unhandsome manner, I send you herewith” (herewith meant the keys of River Hall and his letter) “a cheque for one half-year’s rent. You must know that, had I been aware of the antecedents of the place, I should never have become your tenant; and I must say, considering I have a wife in delicate health, and young children, the deception practised by your lawyers in concealing the fact that no previous occupant has been able to remain in the house, seems most unpardonable. I am a soldier, and, to me, these trade tricks appear dishonourable. Still, as I understand your position is an exceptional one, I am willing to forgive the wrong which has been done, and to pay six months’ rent for a house I shall no longer occupy. In the event of these concessions appearing insufficient, I beg to enclose the names of my solicitors, and have the honour, madam, to remain

“Your most obedient servant,

“Hercules Morris.”

In order to gain time, I read this letter twice over; then, diplomatically, as I thought, I said:

“What are you going to do, Miss Blake?”

“What are you going to do, is much nearer the point, I am thinking!” retorted that lady. “Do you imagine there is so much pleasure or profit in keeping a lawyer, that people want to do lawyer’s work for themselves?”

Which really was hard upon us all, considering that so long as she could do her work for herself, Miss Blake ignored both Mr. Craven and his clerks.

Not a shilling of money would she ever, if she could help it, permit to pass through our hands—not the slightest chance did she ever voluntarily give Mr. Craven of recouping himself those costs or loans in which her acquaintance involved her sister’s former suitor.

Had he felt any inclination—which I am quite certain he never did—to deduct Miss Helena’s indebtedness, as represented by her aunt, out of Miss Helena’s income, he could not have done it. The tenant’s money usually went straight into Miss Blake’s hands.

What she did with it, Heaven only knows. I know she did not buy herself gloves!

Twirling the Colonel’s letter about, I thought the position over.

“What, then,” I asked, “do you wish us to do?”

Habited as I have attempted to describe, Miss Blake sat at one side of a library—table. In, I flatter myself, a decent suit of clothes, washed, brushed, shaved, I sat on the other. To ordinary observers, I know I must have seemed much the best man of the two—yet Miss Blake got the better of me.

She, that dilapidated, red-hot, crumpled-collared, fingerless-gloved woman, looked me over from head to foot, as I conceived, though my boots were hidden away under the table, and I declare—I swear—she put me out of countenance. I felt small under the stare of a person with whom I would not then have walked through Hyde Park in the afternoon for almost any amount of money which could have been offered to me.

“Though you are only a clerk,” she said at length, apparently quite unconscious of the effect she had produced, “you seem a very decent sort of young man. As Mr. Craven is out of the way, suppose you go and see that Morris man, and ask him what he means by his impudent letter.”

I rose to the bait. Being in Mr. Craven’s employment, it is unnecessary to say I, in common with every other person about the place, thought I could manage his business for him very much better than he could manage it for himself; and it had always been my own personal conviction that if the letting of the Uninhabited House were entrusted to me, the place would not stand long empty.

Miss Blake’s proposition was, therefore, most agreeable; but still, I did not at once swallow her hook. Mr. Craven, I felt, might scarcely approve of my taking it upon myself to call upon Colonel Morris while Mr. Taylor was able and willing to venture upon such a step, and I therefore suggested to our client the advisability of first asking Mr. Craven’s opinion about the affair.

“And keep me in suspense while you are writing and answering and running up a bill as long as Midsummer Day,” she retorted. “No, thank you. If you don’t think my business worth your attention, I’ll go to somebody that may be glad of it.” And she began tying her strings and feeling after her shawl in a manner which looked very much indeed like carrying out her threat.

At that moment I made up my mind to consult Taylor as to what ought to be done. So I appeased Miss Blake by assuring her, in a diplomatic manner, that Colonel Morris should be visited, and promising to communicate the result of the interview by letter.

“That you won’t,” she answered. “I’ll be here tomorrow to know what he has to say for himself. He is just tired of the house, like the rest of them, and wants to be rid of his bargain.”

“I am not quite sure of that,” I said, remembering my principal’s suggestion. “It is strange, if there really is nothing objectionable about the house, that no one can be found to stay in it. Mr. Craven has hinted that he fancies some evil-disposed person must be playing tricks, in order to frighten tenants away.”

“It is likely enough,” she agreed. “Robert Elmsdale had plenty of enemies and few friends; but that is no reason why we should starve, is it?”

I failed to see the logical sequence of Miss Blake’s remark, nevertheless I did not dare to tell her so; and agreed it was no reason why she and her niece should be driven into that workhouse which she frequently declared they “must come to.”

“Remember,” were her parting words, “I shall be here tomorrow morning early, and expect you to have good news for me.”

Inwardly resolving not to be in the way, I said I hoped there would be good news for her, and went in search of Taylor.

“Miss Blake has been here,” I began. “THE HOUSE is empty again. Colonel Morris has sent her half a year’s rent, the keys, and the address of his solicitors. He says we have acted disgracefully in the matter, and she wants me to go and see him, and declares she will be back here first thing tomorrow morning to know what he has to say for himself. What ought I to do?”

Before Mr. Taylor answered my question, he delivered himself of a comprehensive anathema which included Miss Blake, River Hall, the late owner, and ourselves. He further wished he might be essentially etceteraed if he believed there was another solicitor, besides Mr. Craven, in London who would allow such a hag to haunt his offices.

“Talk about River Hall being haunted,” he finished; “it is we who are witch-ridden, I call it, by that old Irishwoman. She ought to be burnt at Smithfield. I’d be at the expense of the faggots!”

“What have you and Miss Blake quarrelled about?” I inquired. “You say she is a witch, and she has made me take a solemn oath never to mention your name again in her presence.”

“I’d keep her presence out of these offices, if I was Mr. Craven,” he answered. “She has cost us more than the whole freehold of River Hall is worth.”

Something in his manner, more than in his words, made me comprehend that Miss Blake had borrowed money from him, and not repaid it, so I did not press for further explanation, but only asked him once again what I ought to do about calling upon Colonel Morris.

“Call, and be hanged, if you like!” was the reply; and as Mr. Taylor was not usually a man given to violent language, I understood that Miss Blake’s name acted upon his temper with the same magical effect as a red rag does upon that of a turkey-cock.

IV

MYSELF AND MISS BLAKE

Colonel Morris, after leaving River Hall, had migrated temporarily to a fashionable West End hotel, and was, when I called to see him, partaking of tiffin in the bosom of his family, instead of at his club.

As it was notorious that he and Mrs. Morris failed to lead the most harmonious of lives, I did not feel surprised to find him in an extremely bad temper.

In person, short, dapper, wiry, thin, and precise, his manner matched his appearance. He had martinet written on every square foot of his figure. His moustache was fiercely waxed, his shirt-collar inflexible, his backbone stiff, while his shoulder-blades met flat and even behind. He held his chin a little up in the air, and his walk was less a march than a strut.

He came into the room where I had been waiting for him, as I fancied he might have come on a wet, cold morning to meet an awkward-squad. He held the card I sent for his inspection in his hand, and referred to it, after he had looked me over with a supercilious glance.

“Mr. Patterson, from Messrs. Craven and Son,” he read slowly out loud, and then added:

“May I inquire what Mr. Patterson from Messrs. Craven and Son wants with me?”

“I come from Miss Blake, sir,” I remarked.

“It is here written that you come from Messrs. Craven and Son,” he said.

“So I do, sir—upon Miss Blake’s business. She is a client of ours, as you may remember.”

“I do remember. Go on.”

He would not sit down himself or ask me to be seated, so we stood throughout the interview. I with my hat in my hand, he twirling his moustache or scrutinising his nails while he talked.

“Miss Blake has received a letter from you, sir, and has requested me to ask you for an explanation of it.”

“I have no further explanation to give,” he replied.

“But as you took the house for two years, we cannot advise Miss Blake to allow you to relinquish possession in consideration of your having paid her six months’ rent.”

“Very well. Then you can advise her to fight the matter, as I suppose you will. I am prepared to fight it.”

“We never like fighting, if a matter can be arranged amicably,” I answered. “Mr. Craven is at present out of town; but I know I am only speaking his words, when I say we shall be glad to advise Miss Blake to accept any reasonable proposition which you may feel inclined to make.”

“I have sent her half a year’s rent,” was his reply; “and I have refrained from prosecuting you all for conspiracy, as I am told I might have done. Lawyers, I am aware, admit they have no consciences, and I can make some allowance for a person in Miss Blake’s position, otherwise—”

“Yes, sir?” I said, interrogatively.

“I should never have paid one penny. It has, I find, been a well-known fact to Mr. Craven, as well as to Miss Blake, that no tenant can remain in River Hall. When my wife was first taken ill there—in consequence of the frightful shock she received—I sent for the nearest medical man, and he refused to come; absolutely sent me a note, saying, ‘he was very sorry, but he must decline to attend Mrs. Morris. Doubtless, she had her own physician, who would be happy to devote himself to the case.”’

“And what did you do?” I asked, my pulses tingling with awakened curiosity.

“Do!” he repeated, pleased, perhaps, to find so appreciative a listener. “I sent, of course, for the best advice to be had in London, and I went to the local doctor—a man who keeps a surgery and dispenses medicines—myself, to ask what he meant by returning such an insolent message in answer to my summons. And what do you suppose he said by way of apology?”

“I cannot imagine,” I replied.

“He said he would not for ten times over the value of all the River Hall patients, attend a case in the house again. ‘No person can live in it,’ he went on, ‘and keep his, her, or its health. Whether it is the river, or the drains, or the late owner, or the devil, I have not an idea. I can only tell you no one has been able to remain in it since Mr. Elmsdale’s death, and if I attend a case there, of course I say, Get out of this at once. Then comes Miss Blake and threatens me with assault and battery—swears she will bring an action against me for libelling the place; declares I wish to drive her and her niece to the workhouse, and asserts I am in league with someone who wants to keep the house vacant, and I am sick of it. Get what doctor you choose, but don’t send for me.”’

“Well, sir?” I suggested.

“Well! I don’t consider it well at all. Here am I, a man returning to his native country—and a beastly country it is!—after nearly thirty years absence, and the first transaction upon which I engage proves a swindle. Yes, a swindle, Mr. Patterson. I went to you in all good faith, took that house at your own rent, thought I had got a desirable home, and believed I was dealing with respectable people, and now I find I was utterly deceived, both as regards the place and your probity. You knew the house was uninhabitable, and yet you let it to me.”

“I give you my word,” I said, “that we really do not know yet in what way the house is uninhabitable. It is a good house, as you know; it is well furnished; the drainage is perfect; so far as we are concerned, we do not believe a fault can be found with the place. Still, it has been a fact that tenants will not stay in it, and we were therefore glad to let it to a gentleman like yourself, who would, we expected, prove above subscribing to that which can only be a vulgar prejudice.”

“What is a vulgar prejudice?” he asked.

“The idea that River Hall is haunted,” I replied.

“River Hall is haunted, young man,” he said, solemnly.

“By what?” I asked.

“By someone who cannot rest in his grave,” was the answer.

“Colonel Morris,” I said, “someone must be playing tricks in the house.”

“If so, that someone does not belong to this world,” he remarked.

“Do you mean really and seriously to tell me you believe in ghosts?” I asked, perhaps a little scornfully.

“I do, and if you had lived in River Hall, you would believe in them too,” he replied. “I will tell you,” he went on, “what I saw in the house myself. You know the library?”

I nodded in assent. We did know the library. There our trouble seemed to have taken up its abode.

“Are you aware lights have frequently been reflected from that room, when no light has actually been in it?”

I could only admit this had occasionally proved a ground of what we considered unreasonable complaint.

“One evening,” went on the Colonel, “I determined to test the matter for myself. Long before dusk I entered the room and examined it thoroughly—saw to the fastenings of the windows, drew up the blinds, locked the door, and put the key in my pocket. After dinner I took a cigar and walked up and down the grass path beside the river, until dark. There was no light—not a sign of light of any kind, as I turned once more and walked up the path again; but as I was retracing my steps I saw that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I rushed to the nearest window and looked in. The gas was all ablaze, the door of the strong room open, the table strewed with papers, while in an office-chair drawn close up to the largest drawer, a man was seated counting over bank-notes. He had a pile of them before him, and I distinctly saw that he wetted his fingers in order to separate them.”

“Most extraordinary!” I exclaimed. I could not decently have said anything less; but I confess that I had in my recollection the fact of Colonel Morris having dined.

“The most extraordinary part of the story is still to come,” he remarked. “I hurried at once into the house, unlocked the door, found the library in pitch darkness, and when I lit the gas the strong room was closed; there was no office-chair in the room, no papers were on the table—everything, in fact, was precisely in the same condition as I had left it a few hours before. Now, no person in the flesh could have performed such a feat as that.”

“I cannot agree with you there,” I ventured. “It seems to me less difficult to believe the whole thing a trick, than to attribute the occurrence to supernatural agency. In fact, while I do not say it is impossible for ghosts to be, I cannot accept the fact of their existence.”

“Well, I can, then,” retorted the Colonel. “Why, sir, once at the Cape of Good Hope—” but there he paused. Apparently he recollected Just in time that the Cape of Good Hope was a long way from River Hall.

“And Mrs. Morris,” I suggested, leading him back to the banks of the Thames. “You mentioned some shock—”

“Yes,” he said, frankly. “She met the same person on the staircase I saw in the library. He carried in one hand a lighted candle, and in the other a bundle of bank-notes. He never looked at her as he passed—never turned his head to the spot where she stood gazing after him in a perfect access of terror, but walked quietly downstairs, crossed the hall, and went straight into the library without opening the door. She fainted dead away, and has never known an hour’s good health since.”

“According to all accounts, she had not before, or good temper either,” I thought; but I only said, “You had told Mrs. Morris, I presume, of your adventure in the library?”

“No,” he answered; “I had not; I did not mention it to anyone except a brother officer, who dined with me the next evening.”

“Your conversation with him might have been overheard, I suppose,” I urged.

“It is possible, but scarcely probable,” he replied. “At all events, I am quite certain it never reached my wife’s ears, or she would not have stayed another night in the house.”

I stood for a few moments irresolute, but then I spoke. I told him how much we—meaning Messrs. Craven and Son—his manager and his cashier, and his clerks, regretted the inconvenience to which he had been put; delicately I touched upon the concern we felt at hearing of Mrs. Morris’ illness. But, I added, I feared his explanation, courteous and ample as it had been, would not satisfy Miss Blake, and trusted he might, upon consideration, feel disposed to compromise the matter.

“We,” I added, “will be only too happy to recommend our client to accept any reasonable proposal you may think it well to make.”

Whereupon it suddenly dawned upon the Colonel that he had been showing me all his hand, and forthwith he adopted a very natural course. He ordered me to leave the room and the hotel, and not to show my face before him again at my peril. And I obeyed his instructions to the letter.

On the same evening of that day I took a long walk round by the Uninhabited House.

There it was, just as I had seen it last, with high brick walls dividing it from the road; with its belt of forest-trees separating it from the next residence, with its long frontage to the river, with its closed gates and shuttered postern door.

The entrance to it was not from the main highway, but from a lane which led right down to the Thames; and I went to the very bottom of that lane and swung myself by means of a post right over the river, so that I might get a view of the windows of the room with which so ghostly a character was associated. The blinds were all down and the whole place looked innocent enough.

The strong, sweet, subtle smell of mignonette came wafted to my senses, the odours of jessamine, roses, and myrtle floated to me on the evening breeze. I could just catch a glimpse of the flower-gardens, radiant with colour, full of leaf and bloom.

“No haunted look there,” I thought. “The house is right enough, but someone must have determined to keep it empty.” And then I swung myself back into the lane again, and the shadow of the high brick wall projected itself across my mind as it did across my body.

“Is this place to let again, do you know?” said a voice in my ear, as I stood looking at the private door which gave a separate entrance to that evil-reputed library.

The question was a natural one, and the voice not unpleasant, yet I started, having noticed no one near me.

“I beg your pardon,” said the owner of the voice. “Nervous, I fear!”

“No, not at all, only my thoughts were wandering. I beg your pardon—I do not know whether the place is to let or not.”

“A good house?” This might have been interrogative, or uttered as an assertion, but I took it as the former, and answered accordingly.

“Yes, a good house—a very good house, indeed,” I said.

“It is often vacant, though,” he said, with a light laugh.

“Through no fault of the house,” I added.

“Oh! it is the fault of the tenants, is it?” he remarked, laughing once more. “The owners, I should think, must be rather tired of their property by this time.”

“I do not know that,” I replied. “They live in hope of finding a good and sensible tenant willing to take it.”

“And equally willing to keep it, eh?” he remarked. “Well, I, perhaps, am not much of a judge in the matter, but I should say they will have to wait a long time first.”

“You know something about the house?” I said, interrogatively.

“Yes,” he answered, “most people about here do, I fancy—but least said soonest mended”; and as by this time we had reached the top of the lane, he bade me a civil good-evening, and struck off in a westerly direction.

Though the light of the setting sun shone full in my face, and I had to shade my eyes in order to enable me to see at all, moved by some feeling impossible to analyse, I stood watching that retreating figure. Afterwards I could have sworn to the man among ten thousand.

A man of about fifty, well and plainly dressed, who did not appear to be in ill-health, yet whose complexion had a blanched look, like forced sea-kale; a man of under, rather than over middle height, not of slight make, but lean as if the flesh had been all worn off his bones; a man with sad, anxious, outlooking, abstracted eyes, with a nose slightly hooked, without a trace of whisker, with hair thin and straight and flaked with white, active and lithe in his movements, a swift walker, though he had a slight halt. While looking at him thrown up in relief against the glowing western sky, I noticed, what had previously escaped my attention, that he was a little deformed. His right shoulder was rather higher than the other. A man with a story in his memory, I imagined; a man who had been jilted by the girl he loved, or who had lost her by death, or whose wife had proved faithless; whose life, at all events, had been marred by a great trouble. So, in my folly, I decided; for I was young then, and romantic, and had experienced some sorrow myself connected with pecuniary matters.

For the latter reason, it never perhaps occurred to me to associate the trouble of my new acquaintance, if he could be so called, with money annoyances. I knew, or thought I knew, at all events, the expression loss of fortune stamps on a man’s face; and the look which haunted me for days after had nothing in it of discontent, or self-assertion, or struggling gentility, or vehement protest against the decrees of fortune. Still less was it submissive. As I have said, it haunted me for days, then the memory grew less vivid, then I forgot the man altogether. Indeed, we shortly became so absorbed in the fight between Miss Blake and Colonel Morris, that we had little time to devote to the consideration of other matters.

True to her promise, Miss Blake appeared next morning in Bucking-ham Street. Without bestowing upon me even the courtesy of “good morning,” she plunged into the subject next her heart.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

I told her I had. I repeated much of what he said; I assured her he was determined to fight the matter, and that although I did really not think any jury would give a verdict in his favour, still I believed, if the matter came into court, it would prevent our ever letting the house again.

“I should strongly recommend you, Miss Blake,” I finished, “to keep what he offers, and let us try and find another tenant.”

“And who asked you to recommend anything, you fast young man?” she demanded. “I am sure I did not, and I am very sure Mr. Craven would not be best pleased to know his clerks were setting themselves up higher than their master. You would never find William Craven giving himself airs such as you young whipper-snappers think make you seem of some consequence. I just tell him what I want done, and he does it, and you will please to do the same, and serve a writ on that villain without an hour’s delay.”

I asked on what grounds we were to serve the writ. I pointed out that Colonel Morris did not owe her a penny, and would not owe her a penny for some months to come; and in reply she said she would merely inquire if I meant that she and her poor niece were to go to the workhouse.

To this I answered that the amount already remitted by Colonel Morris would prevent such a calamity, but she stopped my attempt at consolation by telling me not to talk about things I did not understand.

“Give me William Craven’s address,” she added, “and I will write to him direct. I wonder what he means by leaving a parcel of ignorant boys to attend to his clients while he is away enjoying himself! Give me his address, and some paper and an envelope, and I can write my letter here.”

I handed her the paper and the envelope, and placed pen and ink conveniently before her, but I declined to give her Mr. Craven’s address. We would forward the letter, I said; but when Mr. Craven went away for his holiday, he was naturally anxious to leave business behind as much as possible.

Then Miss Blake took steady aim, and fired at me. Broadside after broadside did she pour into my unprotected ears; she opened the vials of her wrath and overwhelmed me with reproaches; she raked up all the grievances she had for years been cherishing against England, and by some sort of verbal legerdemain made me responsible for every evil she could recollect as ever having happened to her. Her sister’s marriage, her death, Mr. Elmsdale’s suicide, the unsatisfactory state of his affairs, the prejudice against River Hall, the defection of Colonel Morris—all these things she laid at my door, and insisted on making me responsible for them.

“And now,” she finished, pushing back her bonnet and pulling off her gloves, “I’ll just write my opinion of you to Mr. Craven, and I’ll wait till you direct the envelope, and I’ll go with you to the post, and I’ll see you put the letter in the box. If you and your fine Colonel Morris think you can frighten or flatter me, you are both much mistaken, I can tell you that!”

I did not answer her. I was too greatly affronted to express what I felt in words. I sat on the other side of the table—for I would not leave her alone in Mr. Craven’s office—sulking, while she wrote her letter, which she did in a great, fat, splashing sort of hand, with every other word underlined; and when she had done, and tossed the missive over to me, I directed it, took my hat, and prepared to accompany her to the Charing Cross office.

We went down the staircase together in silence, up Buckingham Street, across the Strand, and so to Charing Cross, where she saw me drop the letter into the box. All this time we did not exchange a syllable, but when, after raising my hat, I was about to turn away, she seized hold of my arm, and said, “Don’t let us part in bad blood. Though you are only a clerk, you have got your feelings, no doubt, and if in my temper I hurt them, I am sorry. Can I say more? You are a decent lad enough, as times go in England, and my bark is worse than my bite. I didn’t write a word about you to William Craven. Shake hands, and don’t bear malice to a poor lonely woman.”

Thus exhorted, I took her hand and shook it, and then, in token of entire amity, she told me she had forgotten to bring her purse with her and could I let her have a sovereign. She would pay me, she declared solemnly, the first day she came again to the office.

This of course I did not believe in the least, nevertheless I gave her what she required—and Heaven knows, sovereigns were scarce enough with me then—thankfully, and felt sincerely obliged to her for making herself my debtor. Miss Blake did sometimes ruffle one’s feathers most confoundedly, and yet I knew it would have grieved me had we parted in enmity.

Sometimes, now, when I look upon her quiet and utterly respectable old age—when I contemplate her pathetic grey hair and conventional lace cap—when I view her clothed like other people and in her right mind, I am very glad indeed to remember I had no second thought about that sovereign, but gave it to her—with all the veins of my heart, as she would have emphasised the proceeding.

“Though you have no name to speak of,” observed Miss Blake as she pocketed the coin, “I think there must be some sort of blood in you. I knew Pattersons once who were connected by marriage with a great duke in the west of Ireland. Can you say if by chance you can trace relationship to any of them?”

“I can say most certainly not, Miss Blake,” I replied. “We are Pattersons of nowhere and relations of no one.”

“Well, well,” remarked the lady, pityingly, “you can’t help that, poor lad. And if you attend to your duties, you may yet be a rich City alderman.”

With which comfort she left me, and wended her homeward way through St. Martin’s Lane and the Seven Dials.

V

THE TRIAL

Next day but one Mr. Craven astonished us all by walking into the office about ten o’clock. He looked stout and well, sunburnt to a degree, and all the better physically for his trip to the seaside. We were unfeignedly glad to see him. Given a good employer, and it must be an extremely bad employé who rejoices in his absence. If we were not saints, we were none of us very black sheep, and accordingly, from the porter to the managing clerk, our faces brightened at sight of our principal.

But after the first genial “how are you” and “good morning,” Mr. Craven’s face told tales: he had come back out of sorts. He was vexed about Miss Blake’s letter, and, astonishing to relate, he was angry with me for having called upon Colonel Morris.

“You take too much upon you, Patterson,” he remarked. “It is a growing habit with you, and you must try to check it.”

I did not answer him by a word; my heart seemed in my mouth; I felt as if I was choking. I only inclined my head in token that I heard and understood, and assented; then, having, fortunately, work to attend to out of doors, I seized an early opportunity of slipping down the staircase and walking off to Chancery Lane. When I returned, after hours, to Buckingham Street, one of the small boys in the outer office told me I was to go to Mr. Craven’s room directly.

“You’ll catch it,” remarked the young fiend. “He has asked for you a dozen times, at least.”

“What can be wrong now?” I thought, as I walked straight along the passage to Mr. Craven’s office.

“Patterson,” he said, as I announced my return.

“Yes, sir?”

“I spoke hastily to you this morning, and I regret having done so.”

“Oh! sir,” I cried. And that was all. We were better friends than ever. Do you wonder that I liked my principal? If so, it is only because I am unable to portray him as he really was. The age of chivalry is past; but still it is no exaggeration to say I would have died cheerfully if my dying could have served Mr. Craven.

Life holds me now by many and many a nearer and dearer tie than was the case in those days so far and far away; nevertheless, I would run any risk, encounter any peril, if by so doing I could serve the man who in my youth treated me with a kindness far beyond my deserts.

He did not, when he came suddenly to town in this manner, stop at his own house, which was, on such occasions, given over to charwomen and tradespeople of all descriptions; but he put up at an old-fashioned family hotel where, on that especial evening, he asked me to dine with him.

Over dessert he opened his mind to me on the subject of the “Uninhabited House.” He said the evil was becoming one of serious magnitude. He declared he could not imagine what the result might prove. “With all the will in the world,” he said, “to assist Miss Blake and that poor child, I cannot undertake to provide for them. Something must be done in the affair, and I am sure I cannot see what that something is to be. Since Mr. Elmsdale bought the place, the neighbourhood has gone down. If we sold the freehold as it stands, I fear we should not get more than a thousand pounds for it, and a thousand pounds would not last Miss Blake three years; as for supposing she could live on the interest, that is out of the question. The ground might be cut up and let for business purposes, of course, but that would be a work of time. I confess, I do not know what to think about the matter or how to act in it.”

“Do you suppose the place really is haunted?” I ventured to inquire.

“Haunted?—pooh! nonsense,” answered Mr. Craven, pettishly. “Do I suppose this room is haunted; do I believe my offices are haunted? No sane man has faith in any folly of the kind; but the place has got a bad name; I suspect it is unhealthy, and the tenants, when they find that out, seize on the first excuse which offers. It is known we have compromised a good many tenancies, and I am afraid we shall have to fight this case, if only to show we do not intend being patient forever. Besides, we shall exhaust the matter: we shall hear what the ghost-seers have to say for themselves on oath. There is little doubt of our getting a verdict, for the British juryman is, as a rule, not imaginative.”

“I think we shall get a verdict,” I agreed; “but I fancy we shall never get another tenant.”

“There are surely as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” he answered, with a smile; “and we shall come across some worthy country squire, possessed of pretty daughters, who will be delighted to find so cheap and sweet a nest for his birds, when they want to be near London.”

“I wish sir,” I said, “you would see Colonel Morris yourself. I am quite certain that every statement he made to me is true in his belief. I do not say, I believe him; I only say, what he told me justifies the inference that someone is playing a clever game in River Hall,” and then I repeated in detail all the circumstances Colonel Morris had communicated to me, not excepting the wonderful phenomenon witnessed by Mr. Morris, of a man walking through a closed door.

Mr. Craven listened to me in silence, then he said, “I will not see Colonel Morris. What you tell me only confirms my opinion that we must fight this question. If he and his witnesses adhere to the story you repeat, on oath, I shall then have some tangible ground upon which to stand with Miss Blake. If they do not—and, personally, I feel satisfied no one who told such a tale could stand the test of cross-examination—we shall then have defeated the hidden enemy who, as I believe, lurks behind all this. Miss Blake is right in what she said to you: Robert Elmsdale must have had many a good hater. Whether he ever inspired that different sort of dislike which leads a man to carry on a war in secret, and try to injure this opponent’s family after death, I have no means of knowing. But we must test the matter now, Patterson, and I think you had better call upon Colonel Morris and tell him so.”

This service, however, to Mr. Craven’s intense astonishment, I utterly declined.

I told him—respectfully, of course: under no possible conditions of life could I have spoken other than respectfully to a master I loved so well—that if a message were to be delivered viva voce from our office, it could not be so delivered by me.

I mentioned the fact that I felt no desire to be kicked downstairs. I declared that I should consider it an unseemly thing for me to engage in personal conflict with a gentleman of Colonel Morris’s years and social position, and, as a final argument, I stated solemnly that I believed no number of interviews would change the opinions of our late tenant or induce him to alter his determination.

“He says he will fight,” I remarked, as a finish to my speech, “and I am confident he will till he drops.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Craven, “I suppose he must do so then; but meantime it is all very hard upon me.”

And, indeed, so it proved; what with Miss Blake, who, of course, required frequent advances to sustain her strength during the approaching ordeal; what with policemen, who could not “undertake to be always a—watching River Hall”; what with watchmen, who kept their vigils in the nearest public-house as long as it was open, and then peacefully returned home to sleep; what with possible tenants, who came to us imagining the place was to let, and whom we referred to Colonel Morris, who dismissed them, each and all, with a tale which disenchanted them with the “desirable residence”—it was all exceeding hard upon Mr. Craven and his clerks till the quarter turned when we could take action about the matter.

Before the new year was well commenced, we were in the heat of the battle. We had written to Colonel Morris, applying for one quarter’s rent of River Hall. A disreputable blackguard of a solicitor would have served him with a writ; but we were eminently respectable: not at the bidding of her most gracious Majesty, whose name we invoked on many and many of our papers, would Mr. Craven have dispensed with the preliminary letter; and I feel bound to say I follow in his footsteps in that respect.

To this notice, Colonel Morris replied, referring us to his solicitors.

We wrote to them, eliciting a reply to the effect that they would receive service of a writ. We served that writ, and then, as Colonel Morris intended to fight, instructed counsel.

Meanwhile the “Uninhabited House,” and the furniture it contained, was, as Mr. Taylor tersely expressed the matter, “Going to the devil.”

We could not help that, however—war was put upon us, and go to war we felt we must.

Which was all extremely hard upon Mr. Craven. To my knowledge, he had already, in three months, advanced thirty pounds to Miss Blake, besides allowing her to get into his debt for counsel’s fees, and costs out of pocket, and cab hire, and Heaven knows what besides—with a problematical result also. Colonel Morris’ solicitors were sparing no expenses to crush us. Clearly they, in a blessed vision, beheld an enormous bill, paid without difficulty or question. Fifty guineas here or there did not signify to their client, whilst to us—well, really, let a lawyer be as kind and disinterested as he will, fifty guineas disbursed upon the suit of an utterly insolvent, or persistently insolvent, client means something eminently disagreeable to him.

Nevertheless, we were all heartily glad to know the day of war was come. Body and soul, we all went in for Miss Blake, and Helena, and the “Uninhabited House.” Even Mr. Taylor relented, and was to be seen rushing about with papers in hand relating to the impending suit of Blake v. Morris.

“She is a blank, blank woman,” he remarked to me; “but still the case is interesting. I don’t think ghosts have ever before come into court in my experience.”

And we were all of the same mind. We girt up our loins for the fight. Each of us, I think, on the strength of her celebrity, lent Miss Blake a few shillings, and one or two of our number franked her to luncheon.

She patronized us all, I know, and said she should like to tell our mothers they had reason to be proud of their sons. And then came a dreadfully solemn morning, when we went to Westminster and championed Miss Blake.

Never in our memory of the lady had she appeared to such advantage as when we met her in Edward the Confessor’s Hall. She looked a little paler than usual, and we felt her general get-up was a credit to our establishment. She wore an immense fur tippet, which, though then of an obsolete fashion, made her look like a three-per-cent. annuitant going to receive her dividends. Her throat was covered with a fine white lawn handkerchief; her dress was mercifully long enough to conceal her boots; her bonnet was perfectly straight, and the strings tied by someone who understood that bows should be pulled out and otherwise fancifully manipulated. As she carried a muff as large as a big drum, she had conceived the happy idea of dispensing altogether with gloves, and I saw that one of the fingers she gave me to shake was adorned with a diamond ring.

“Miss Elmsdale’s,” whispered Taylor to me. “It belonged to her mother.”

Hearing which, I understood Helena had superintended her aunt’s toilet.

“Did you ever see Miss Elmsdale?” I inquired of our manager.

“Not for years,” was the answer. “She bade fair to be pretty.”

“Why does not Miss Blake bring her out with her sometimes?” I asked.

“I believe she is expecting the Queen to give her assent to her marrying the Prince of Wales,” explained Taylor, “and she does not wish her to appear much in public until after the wedding.”

The court was crammed. Somehow it had got into the papers—probably through Colonel Morris’ gossips at the club—that ours was likely to prove a very interesting case, and though the morning was damp and wretched, ladies and gentlemen had turned out into the fog and drizzle, as ladies and gentlemen will when there seems the least chance of a new sensation being provided for them.

Further, there were lots of reporters.

“It will be in every paper throughout the kingdom,” groaned Taylor. “We had better by far have left the Colonel alone.”

That had always been my opinion, but I only said, “Well, it is of no use looking back now.”

I glanced at Mr. Craven, and saw he was ill at ease. We had considerable faith in ourselves, our case, and our counsel; but, then, we could not be blind to the fact that Colonel Morris’ counsel were men very much better known than our men—that a cloud of witnesses, thirsting to avenge themselves for the rent we had compelled them to pay for an uninhabitable house, were hovering about the court—(had we not seen and recognized them in the Hall?)—that, in fact, there were two very distinct sides to the question, one represented by Colonel Morris and his party, and the other by Miss Blake and ourselves.

Of course our case lay in a nutshell. We had let the place, and Colonel Morris had agreed to take it. Colonel Morris now wanted to be rid of his bargain, and we were determined to keep him to it. Colonel Morris said the house was haunted, and that no one could live in it. We said the house was not haunted, and that anybody could live in it; that River Hall was “in every respect suited for the residence of a family of position”—see advertisements in Times and Morning Post.

Now, if the reader will kindly consider the matter, it must be an extremely difficult thing to prove, in a court of law, that a house, by reason solely of being haunted, is unsuitable for the residence of a gentleman of position.

Smells, bad drainage, impure water, unhealthiness of situation, dampness, the absence of advantages mentioned, the presence of small game—more odious to tenants of furnished houses than ground game to farmers—all these things had, we knew, been made pretexts for repudiation of contracts, and often successfully, but we could find no precedent for ghosts being held as just pleas upon which to relinquish a tenancy; and we made sure of a favourable verdict accordingly.

To this day, I believe that our hopes would have been justified by the result, had some demon of mischief not put it into the head of Taylor—who had the management of the case—that it would be a good thing to get Miss Blake into the witness-box.

“She will amuse the jury,” he said, “and juries have always a kindly feeling for any person who can amuse them.”

Which was all very well, and might be very true in a general way, but Miss Blake proved the exception to his rule.

Of course she amused the jury, in fact, she amused everyone. To get her to give a straightforward answer to any question was simply impossible.

Over and over again the judge explained to her that “yes” or “no” would be amply sufficient; but all in vain. She launched out at large in reply to our counsel, who, nevertheless, when he sat down, had gained his point.

Miss Blake declared upon oath she had never seen anything worse than herself at River Hall, and did not believe anybody else ever had.

She had never been there during Colonel Morris’ tenancy, or she must certainly have seen something worse than a ghost, a man ready and anxious to “rob the orphan,” and she was going to add the “widow” when peals of laughter stopped her utterance. Miss Blake had no faith in ghosts resident at River Hall, and if anybody was playing tricks about the house, she should have thought a “fighting gentleman by profession” capable of getting rid of them.

“Unless he was afraid,” added Miss Blake, with withering irony.

Then up rose the opposition counsel, who approached her in an easy, conversational manner.

“And so you do not believe in ghosts, Miss Blake?” he began.

“Indeed and I don’t,” she answered.

“But if we have not ghosts, what is to become of the literature of your country?” he inquired.

“I don’t know what you mean, by talking about my country,” said Miss Blake, who was always proclaiming her nationality, and quarrelling with those who discovered it without such proclamation.

“I mean,” he explained, “that all the fanciful legends and beautiful stories for which Ireland is celebrated have their origin in the supernatural. There are, for instance, several old families who have their traditional banshee.”

“For that matter, we have one ourselves,” agreed Miss Blake, with conscious pride.

At this junction our counsel interposed with a suggestion that there was no insinuation about any banshee residing at River Hall.

“No, the question is about a ghost, and I am coming to that. Different countries have different usages. In Ireland, as Miss Blake admits, there exists a very ladylike spirit, who announces the coming death of any member of certain families. In England, we have ghosts, who appear after the death of some members of some families. Now, Miss Blake, I want you to exercise your memory. Do you remember a night in the November after Mr. Elmsdale’s death?”

“I remember many nights in many months that I passed brokenhearted in that house,” she answered, composedly; but she grew very pale; and feeling there was something unexpected behind both question and answer, our counsel looked at us, and we looked back at him, dismayed.

“Your niece, being nervous, slept in the same room as that occupied by you?” continued the learned gentleman.

“She did,” said Miss Blake. Her answer was short enough, and direct enough, at last.

“Now, on the particular November night to which I refer, do you recollect being awakened by Miss Elmsdale?”

“She wakened me many a time,” answered Miss Blake, and I noticed that she looked away from her questioner, and towards the gallery.

“Exactly so; but on one especial night she woke you, saying, her father was walking along the passage; that she knew his step, and that she heard his keys strike against the wall?”

“Yes, I remember that,” said Miss Blake, with suspicious alacrity. “She kept me up till daybreak. She was always thinking about him, poor child.”

“Very natural indeed,” commented our adversary. “And you told her not to be foolish, I daresay, and very probably tried to reassure her by saying one of the servants must have passed; and no doubt, being a lady possessed of energy and courage, you opened your bedroom door, and looked up and down the corridor?”

“Certainly I did,” agreed Miss Blake.

“And saw nothing—and no one?”

“I saw nothing.”

“And then, possibly, in order to convince Miss Elmsdale of the full extent of her delusion, you lit a candle, and went downstairs.”

“Of course—why wouldn’t I?” said Miss Blake, defiantly.

“Why not, indeed?” repeated the learned gentleman, pensively. “Why not?—Miss Blake being brave as she is witty. Well, you went downstairs, and, as was the admirable custom of the house—a custom worthy of all commendation—you found the doors opening from the hail bolted and locked?”

“I did.”

“And no sign of a human being about?”

“Except myself,” supplemented Miss Blake.

“And rather wishing to find that some human being besides yourself was about, you retraced your steps, and visited the servants’ apartments?”

“You might have been with me,” said Miss Blake, with an angry sneer.

“I wish I had,” he answered. “I can never sufficiently deplore the fact of my absence. And you found the servants asleep?”

“Well, they seemed asleep,” said the lady; “but that does not prove that they were so.”

“Doubtless,” he agreed. “Nevertheless, so far as you could judge, none of them looked as if they had been wandering up and down the corridors?”

“I could not judge one way or another,” said Miss Blake: “for the tricks of English servants, it is impossible for anyone to be up to.”

“Still, it did not occur to you at the time that any of them was feigning slumber?”

“I can’t say it did. You see, I am naturally unsuspicious,” explained Miss Blake, naïvely.

“Precisely so. And thus it happened that you were unable to confute Miss Elmsdale’s fancy?”

“I told her she must have been dreaming,” retorted Miss Blake. “People who wake all of a sudden often confound dreams with realities.”

“And people who are not in the habit of awaking suddenly often do the same thing,” agreed her questioner; “and so, Miss Blake, we will pass out of dreamland, and into daylight—or rather foglight. Do you recollect a particularly foggy day, when your niece, hearing a favourite dog moaning piteously, opened the door of the room where her father died, in order to let it out?”

Miss Blake set her lips tight, and looked up at the gallery. There was a little stir in that part of the court, a shuffling of feet, and suppressed whispering. In vain the crier shouted, “Silence! silence, there!” The bustle continued for about a minute, and then all became quiet again. A policeman stated “a female had fainted,” and our curiosity being satisfied, we all with one accord turned towards our learned friend, who, one hand under his gown, holding it back, and the other raised to emphasise his question, had stood in this picturesque attitude during the time occupied in carrying the female out, as if done in stone.

“Miss Blake, will you kindly answer my question?” he said, when order once again reigned in court.

“You’re worse than a heathen,” remarked the lady, irrelevantly.

“I am sorry you do not like me,” he replied, “for I admire you very much; but my imperfections are beside the matter in point. What I want you to tell us is, did Miss Elmsdale open that door?”

“She did—the creature, she did,” was the answer; “her heart was always tender to dumb brutes.”

“I have no doubt the young lady’s heart was everything it ought to be,” was the reply; “and for that reason, though she had an intense repugnance to enter the room, she opened the door to let the dog out.”

“She said so: I was not there,” answered Miss Blake. Whereupon ensued a brisk skirmish between counsel as to whether Miss Blake could give evidence about a matter of mere hearsay.

And after they had fought for ten minutes over the legal bone, our adversary said he would put the question differently, which he did, thus:

“You were sitting in the dining-room, when you were startled by hearing a piercing shriek.”

“I heard a screech—you can call it what you like,” said Miss Blake, feeling an utter contempt for English phraseology.

“I stand corrected; thank you, Miss Blake. You heard a screech, in short, and you hurried across the hall, and found Miss Elmsdale in a fainting condition, on the floor of the library. Was that so?”

“She often fainted: she is all nairves,” explained poor Miss Blake.

“No doubt. And when she regained consciousness, she entreated to be taken out of that dreadful room.”

“She never liked the room after her father’s death: it was natural, poor child.”

“Quite natural. And so you took her into the dining-room, and there, curled upon the hearthrug, fast asleep, was the little dog she fancied she heard whining in the library.”

“Yes, he had been away for two or three days, and came home hungry and sleepy.”

“Exactly. And you have, therefore, no reason to believe he was shamming slumber.”

“I believe I am getting very tired of your questions and cross-questions,” she said, irritably.

“Now, what a pity!” remarked her tormentor; “for I could never tire of your answers. At all events, Miss Elmsdale could not have heard him whining in the library—so called.”

“She might have heard some other dog,” said Miss Blake.

“As a matter of fact, however, she stated to you there was no dog in the room.”

“She did. But I don’t think she knew whether there was or not.”

“In any case, she did not see a dog; you did not see one; and the servants did not.”

“I did not,” replied Miss Blake; “as to the servants, I would not believe them on their oath.”

“Hush! hush! Miss Blake,” entreated our opponent. “I am afraid you must not be quite so frank. Now to return to business. When Miss Elmsdale recovered consciousness, which she did in that very comfortable easy-chair in the dining-room—what did she tell you?”

“Do you think I am going to repeat her half-silly words?” demanded Miss Blake, angrily. “Poor dear, she was out of her mind half the time, after her father’s death.”

“No doubt; but still, I must just ask you to tell us what passed. Was it anything like this? Did she say, ‘I have seen my father. He was coming out of the strong-room when I lifted my head after looking for Juan, and he was wringing his hands, and seemed in some terrible distress’?”

“God forgive them that told you her words,” remarked Miss Blake; “but she did say just those, and I hope they’ll do you and her as played eavesdropper all the good I wish.”

“Really, Miss Blake,” interposed the judge.

“I have no more questions to ask, my lord,” said Colonel Morris’ counsel, serenely triumphant.

“Miss Blake can go down now.”

And Miss Blake did go down; and Taylor whispered in my ear:

“She has done for us.”

VI

WE AGREE TO COMPROMISE

Colonel Morris’ side of the case was now to be heard, and heads were bending eagerly forward to catch each word of wisdom that should fall from the lips of Serjeant Playfire, when I felt a hand, cold as ice, laid on mine, and turning, beheld Miss Blake at my elbow.

She was as white as the nature of her complexion would permit, and her voice shook as she whispered:

“Take me away from this place, will you?”

I cleared a way for her out of the court, and when we reached Westminster Hall, seeing how upset she seemed, asked if I could get anything for her—“a glass of water, or wine,” I suggested, in my extremity.

“Neither water nor wine will mend a broken heart,” she answered, solemnly; “and mine has been broken in there”—with a nod she indicated the court we had just left.

Not remembering at the moment an approved recipe for the cure of such a fracture, I was cudgelling my brains to think of some form of reply not likely to give offence, when, to my unspeakable relief, Mr. Craven came up to where we stood.

“I will take charge of Miss Blake now, Patterson,” he said, gravely—very gravely; and accepting this as an intimation that he desired my absence, I was turning away, when I heard Miss Blake say:

“Where is she—the creature? What have they done with her at all?”

“I have sent her home,” was Mr. Craven’s reply. “How could you be so foolish as to mislead me as you have done?”

“Come,” thought I, smelling the battle afar off, “we shall soon have Craven v. Blake tried privately in our office,” I knew Mr. Craven pretty well, and understood he would not readily forgive Miss Blake for having kept Miss Helena’s experiences a secret from him.

Over and over I had heard Miss Blake state there was not a thing really against the house, and that Helena, poor dear, only hated the place because she had there lost her father.

“Not much of a loss either, if she could be brought to think so,” finished Miss Blake, sometimes.

Consequently, to Mr. Craven, as well as to all the rest of those connected with the firm, the facts elicited by Serjeant Playfire were new as unwelcome.

If the daughter of the house dreamed dreams and beheld visions, why should strangers be denied a like privilege? If Miss Elmsdale believed her father could not rest in his grave, how were we to compel belief as to calm repose on the part of yearly tenants?

“Playfire has been pitching into us pretty strong,” remarked Taylor, when I at length elbowed my way back to where our manager sat. “Where is Mr. Craven?”

“I left him with Miss Blake.”

“It is just as well he has not heard all the civil remarks Playfire made about our connection with the business. Hush! he is going to call his witnesses. No, the court is about to adjourn for luncheon.”

Once again I went out into Westminster Hall, and was sauntering idly up and down over its stones when Mr. Craven joined me.

“A bad business this, Patterson,” he remarked.

“We shall never get another tenant for that house,” I answered. “Certainly no tenant will ever again be got through me,” he said, irritably; and then Taylor came to him, all in a hurry, and explaining he was wanted, carried him away.

“They are going to compromise,” I thought, and followed slowly in the direction taken by my principal.

How I knew they were thinking of anything of the kind, I cannot say, but intuitively I understood the course events were taking.

Our counsel had mentally decided that, although the jury might feel inclined to uphold contracts and to repudiate ghosts, still, it would be impossible for them to overlook the fact that Colonel Morris had rented the place in utter ignorance of its antecedents, and that we had, so far, taken a perhaps undue advantage of him; moreover, the gallant officer had witnesses in court able to prove, and desirous of proving, that we had over and over again compromised matters with dissatisfied tenants, and cancelled agreements, not once or twice, but many, times; further, on no single occasion had Miss Blake and her niece ever slept a single night in the uninhabited house from the day when they left it; no matter how scarce of money they chanced to be, they went into lodgings rather than reside at River Hall. This was beyond dispute, and Miss Blake’s evidence supplied the reason for conduct so extraordinary.

For some reason the house was uninhabitable. The very owners could not live in it; and yet—so in imagination we heard Serjeant Playfire declaim—“The lady from whom the TRUTH had that day been reluctantly wrung had the audacity to insist that delicate women and tender children should continue to inhabit a dwelling over which a CURSE seemed brooding—a dwelling where the dead were always striving for mastery with the living; or else pay Miss Blake a sum of money which should enable her and the daughter of the suicide to live in ease and luxury on the profits of DECEPTION.”

And looking at the matter candidly, our counsel did not believe the jury could return a verdict. He felt satisfied, he said, there was not a landlord in the box, that they were all tenants, who would consider the three months’ rent paid over and above the actual occupation rent, ample, and more than ample, remuneration.

On the other hand, Serjeant Playfire, whose experience of juries was large, and calculated to make him feel some contempt for the judgment of “twelve honest men” in any case from pocket—picking to manslaughter, had a prevision that, when the judge had explained to Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury, the nature of a contract, and told them supernatural appearances, however disagreeable, were not recognized in law as a sufficient cause for breaking an agreement, a verdict would be found for Miss Blake.

“There must be one landlord amongst them,” he considered; “and if there is, he will wind the rest round his finger. Besides, they will take the side of the women, naturally; and Miss Blake made them laugh, and the way she spoke of her niece touched them; while, as for the Colonel, he won’t like cross-examination, and I can see my learned friend means to make him appear ridiculous. Enough has been done for honour—let us think of safety.”

“For my part,” said Colonel Morris, when the question was referred to him, “I am not a vindictive man, nor, I hope, an ungenerous foe; I do not like to be victimized, and I have vindicated my principles. The victory was mine in fact, if not in law, when that old Irishwoman’s confession was wrung out of her. So, therefore, gentlemen, settle the matter as you please—I shall be satisfied.”

And all the time he was inwardly praying some arrangement might be come to. He was brave enough in his own way, but it is one thing to go into battle, and another to stand legal fire without the chance of sending a single bullet in return. Ridicule is the vulnerable spot in the heel of many a modern Achilles; and while the rest of the court was “convulsed with laughter” over Miss Blake’s cross-examination, the gallant Colonel felt himself alternately turning hot and cold when he thought that through even such an ordeal he might have to pass. And, accordingly, to cut short this part of my story, amongst them the lawyers agreed to compromise the matter thus—Colonel Morris to give Miss Blake a third quarter’s rent—in other words, fifty pounds more, and each side to pay its own costs.

When this decision was finally arrived at, Mr. Craven’s face was a study. Full well he knew on whom would fall the costs of one side. He saw in prophetic vision the fifty pounds passing out of his hands into those of Miss Blake, but no revelation was vouchsafed on the subject of loans unpaid, of costs out of pocket, or costs at all. After we left court he employed himself, I fancy, for the remainder of the afternoon in making mental calculations of how much poorer a man Mrs. Elmsdale’s memory, and the Uninhabited House had left him; and, upon the whole, the arithmetical problem could not have proved satisfactory when solved.

The judge complimented everyone upon the compromise effected. It was honourable in every way, and creditable to all parties concerned, but the jury evidently were somewhat dissatisfied at the turn affairs had taken, while the witnesses were like to rend Colonel Morris asunder.

“They had come, at great inconvenience to themselves, to expose the tactics of that Blake woman and her solicitor,” so they said; “and they thought the affair ought not to have been hushed up.”

As for the audience, they murmured openly. They received the statement that the case was over, with groans, hisses, and other marks of disapproval, and we heard comments on the matter uttered by disappointed spectators all the way up Parliament Street, till we arrived at that point where we left the main thoroughfare, in order to strike across to Buckingham Street.

There—where Pepys once lived—we betook ourselves to our books and papers, with a sense of unusual depression in the atmosphere. It was a grey, dull, cheerless afternoon, and more than one of us, looking out at the mud bank, which, at low water, then occupied the space now laid out as gardens, wondered how River Hall, desolate, tenantless, uninhabited, looked under that sullen sky, with the murky river flowing onward, day and night, day and night, leaving, unheeding, an unsolved mystery on its banks.

For a week we saw nothing of Miss Blake, but at the end of that time, in consequence of a somewhat imperative summons from Mr. Craven, she called at the office late one afternoon. We comprehended she had selected that, for her, unusual time of day for a visit, hoping our principal might have left ere she arrived; but in this hope she was disappointed: Mr. Craven was in, at leisure, and anxious to see her.

I shall never forget that interview. Miss Blake arrived about five o’clock, when it was quite dark out of doors, and when, in all our offices except Mr. Craven’s, the gas was flaring away triumphantly. In his apartment he kept the light always subdued, but between the fire and the lamp there was plenty of light to see that Miss Blake looked ill and depressed, and that Mr. Craven had assumed a peculiar expression, which, to those who knew him best, implied he had made up his mind to pursue a particular course of action, and meant to adhere to his determination.

“You wanted to see me,” said our client, breaking the ice.

“Yes; I wanted to tell you that our connection with the River Hall property must be considered at an end.”

“Well, well, that is the way of men, I suppose—in England.”

“I do not think any man, whether in England or Ireland, could have done more for a client than I have tried to do for you, Miss Blake,” was the offended answer.

“I am sure I have never found fault with you,” remarked Miss Blake, deprecatingly.

“And I do not think,” continued Mr. Craven, unheeding her remark, “any lawyer ever met with a worse return for all his trouble than I have received from you.”

“Dear, dear,” said Miss Blake, with comic disbelief in her tone, “that is very bad.”

“There are two classes of men who ought to be treated with entire confidence,” persisted Mr. Craven, “lawyers and doctors. It is as foolish to keep back anything from one as from another.”

“I daresay,” argued Miss Blake; “but we are not all wise alike, you know.”

“No,” remarked my principal, who was indeed no match for the lady, “or you would never have allowed me to take your case into court in ignorance of Helena having seen her father.”

“Come, come,” retorted Miss Blake; “you do not mean to say you believe she ever did see her father since he was buried, and had the stone-work put all right and neat again, about him? And, indeed, it went to my heart to have a man who had fallen into such bad ways laid in the same grave with my dear sister, but I thought it would be unchristian—”

“We need not go over all that ground once more, surely,” interrupted Mr. Craven. “I have heard your opinions concerning Mr. Elmsdale frequently expressed ere now. That which I never did hear, however, until it proved too late, was the fact of Helena having fancied she saw her father after his death.”

“And what good would it have done you, if I had repeated all the child’s foolish notions?”

“This: that I should not have tried to let a house believed by the owner herself to be uninhabitable.”

“And so you would have kept us without bread to put in our mouths, or a roof over our heads.”

“I should have asked you to do at first what I must ask you to do at last. If you decline to sell the place, or let it unfurnished, on a long lease, to someone willing to take it, spite of its bad character, I must say the house will never again be let through my instrumentality, and I must beg you to advertise River Hall yourself, or place it in the hands of an agent.”

“Do you mean to say, William Craven,” asked Miss Blake, solemnly, “that you believe that house to be haunted?”

“I do not,” he answered. “I do not believe in ghosts, but I believe the place has somehow got a bad name—perhaps through Helena’s fancies, and that people imagine it is haunted, and get frightened probably at sight of their own shadows. Come, Miss Blake, I see a way out of this difficulty; you go and take up your abode at River Hall for six months, and at the end of that time the evil charm will be broken.”

“And Helena dead,” she observed.

“You need not take Helena with you.”

“Nor anybody else, I suppose you mean,” she remarked. “Thank you, Mr. Craven; but though my life is none too happy, I should like to die a natural death, and God only knows whether those who have been peeping and spying about the place might not murder me in my bed, if I ever went to bed in the house; that is—”

“Then, in a word, you do believe the place is haunted.”

“I do nothing of the kind,” she answered, angrily; “but though I have courage enough, thank Heaven, I should not like to stay all alone in any house, and I know there is not a servant in England would stay there with me, unless she meant to take my life. But I tell you what, William Craven, there are lots of poor creatures in the world even poorer than we are—tutors and starved curates, and the like. Get one of them to stay at the Hall till he finds out where the trick is, and I won’t mind saying he shall have fifty pounds down for his pains; that is, I mean, of course, when he has discovered the secret of all these strange lights, and suchlike.”

And feeling she had by this proposition struck Mr. Craven under the fifth rib, Miss Blake rose to depart.

“You will kindly think over what I have said,” observed Mr. Craven.

“I’ll do that if you will kindly think over what I have said,” she retorted, with the utmost composure; and then, after a curt good-evening, she passed through the door I held open, nodding to me, as though she would have remarked, “I’m more than a match for your master still, young man.”

“What a woman that is!” exclaimed Mr. Craven, as I resumed my seat.

“Do you think she really means what she says about the fifty pounds?” I inquired.

“I do not know,” he answered, “but I know I would cheerfully pay that sum to anyone who could unravel the mystery of River Hall.”

“Are you in earnest, sir?” I asked, in some surprise.

“Certainly I am,” he replied.

“Then let me go and stay at River Hall,” I said. “I will undertake to run the ghost to earth for half the money.”

VII

MY OWN STORY

It is necessary now that I should tell the readers something about my own antecedents.

Aware of how uninteresting the subject must prove, I shall make that something as short as possible.

Already it will have been clearly understood, both from my own hints, and from Miss Blake’s far from reticent remarks on my position, that I was a clerk at a salary in Mr. Craven’s office.

But this had not always been the case. When I went first to Buckingham Street, I was duly articled to Mr. Craven, and my mother and sister, who were of aspiring dispositions, lamented that my choice of a profession had fallen on law rather than soldiering.

They would have been proud of a young fellow in uniform; but they did not feel at all elated at the idea of being so closely connected with a “musty attorney.”

As for my father, he told me to make my own choice, and found the money to enable me to do so. He was an easy-going soul, who was in the miserable position of having a sufficient income to live on without exerting either mind or body; and yet whose income was insufficient to enable him to have superior hobbies, or to gratify any particular taste. We resided in the country, and belonged to the middle class of comfortable, well-to-do English people. In our way, we were somewhat exclusive as to our associates—and as the Hall and Castle residents were, in their way, exclusive also, we lived almost out of society.

Indeed, we were very intimate with only one family in our neighbourhood; and I think it was the example of the son of that house which first induced me to think of leading a different existence from that in which my father had grown as green and mossy as a felled tree.

Ned Munro, the eldest hope of a proud but reduced stock, elected to study for the medical profession.

“The life here,” he remarked, vaguely indicating the distant houses occupied by our respective sires, “may suit the old folks, but it does not suit me.” And he went out into the wilderness of the world.

After his departure I found that the life at home did not suit me either, and so I followed his lead, and went, duly articled, to Mr. Craven, of Buckingham Street, Strand. Mr. Craven and my father were old friends. To this hour I thank Heaven for giving my father such a friend.

After I had been for a considerable time with Mr. Craven, there came a dreadful day, when tidings arrived that my father was ruined, and my immediate presence required at home. What followed was that which is usual enough in all such cases, with this difference—the loss of his fortune killed my father.

From what I have seen since, I believe when he took to his bed and quietly gave up living altogether, he did the wisest and best thing possible under the circumstances. Dear, simple, kindly old man, I cannot fancy how his feeble nature might have endured the years which followed; filled by my mother and sister with lamentations, though we knew no actual want—thanks to Mr. Craven.

My father had been dabbling in shares, and when the natural consequence—ruin, utter ruin, came to our pretty country home, Mr. Craven returned me the money paid to him, and offered me a salary.

Think of what this kindness was, and we penniless; while all the time relations stood aloof, holding out nor hand nor purse, till they saw whether we could weather the storm without their help.

Amongst those relations chanced to be a certain Admiral Patterson, an uncle of my father. When we were well-to-do he had not disdained to visit us in our quiet home, but when poverty came he tied up his purse-strings and ignored our existence, till at length, hearing by a mere chance that I was supporting my mother and sister by my own exertions (always helped by Mr. Craven’s goodness), he said, audibly, that the “young jackanapes must have more in him than he thought,” and wrote to beg that I would spend my next holiday at his house.

I was anxious to accept the invitation, as a friend told me he felt certain the old gentleman would forward my views; but I did not choose to visit my relative in shabby clothes and with empty pockets; therefore, it fell out that I jumped at Miss Blake’s suggestion, and closed with Mr. Craven’s offer on the spot.

Half fifty—twenty-five—pounds would replenish my wardrobe, pay my travelling expenses, and leave me with money in my pocket, as well.

I told Mr. Craven all this in a breath. When I had done so he laughed, and said:

“You have worked hard, Patterson. Here is ten pounds. Go and see your uncle; but leave River Hall alone.”

Then, almost with tears, I entreated him not to baulk my purpose. If I could rid River Hall of its ghost, I would take money from him, not otherwise. I told him I had set my heart on unravelling the mystery attached to that place, and I could have told him another mystery at the same time, had shame not tied my tongue. I was in love—for the first time in my life—hopelessly, senselessly, with a face of which I thought all day and dreamed all night, that had made itself in a moment part and parcel of my story, thus:

I had been at Kentish Town to see one of our clients, and having finished my business, walked on as far as Camden Town, intending to take an omnibus which might set me down somewhere near Chancery Lane.

Whilst standing at the top of College Street, under shelter of my umbrella, a drizzling rain falling and rendering the pavement dirty and slippery, I noticed a young lady waiting to cross the road—a young lady with, to my mind, the sweetest, fairest, most lovable face on which my eyes had ever rested. I could look at her without causing annoyance, because she was so completely occupied in watching lumbering vans, fast carts, crawling cabs, and various other vehicles, which chanced at that moment to be crowding the thoroughfare, that she had no leisure to bestow even a glance on any pedestrian.

A governess, I decided: for her dress, though neat, and even elegant, was by no means costly; moreover, there was an expression of settled melancholy about her features, and further, she carried a roll, which looked like music, in her hand. In less time than it has taken me to write this paragraph, I had settled all about her to my own satisfaction.

Father bankrupt. Mother delicate. Young brothers and sisters, probably, all crying aloud for the pittance she was able to earn by giving lessons at so much an hour.

She had not been long at her present occupation, I felt satisfied, for she was evidently unaccustomed to being out in the streets alone on a wet day.

I would have offered to see her across the road, but for two reasons: one, because I felt shy about proffering my services; the other, because I was exceedingly doubtful whether I might not give offence by speaking.

After the fashion of so many of her sex, she made about half a dozen false starts, advancing as some friendly cabby made signs for her to venture the passage, retreating as she caught sight of some coming vehicle still yards distant.

At last, imagining the way clear, she made a sudden rush, and had just got well off the curb, when a mail phaeton turned the corner, and in one second she was down in the middle of the road, and I struggling with the horses and swearing at the driver, who, in his turn, very heartily anathematized me.

I do not remember all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without having first gone through the ceremony of asking whether the girl he had so nearly driven over was living or dead.

Meantime she had been carried into the nearest shop, whither I followed her.

I do not know why all the people standing about imagined me to be her brother, but they certainly did so, and, under that impression, made way for me to enter the parlour behind the shop, where I found my poor beauty sitting, faint and frightened and draggled, whilst the woman of the house was trying to wipe the mud off her dress, and endeavouring to persuade her to swallow some wine-and-water.

As I entered, she lifted her eyes to mine, and said, “Thank you, sir. I trust you have not got hurt yourself,” so frankly and so sweetly that the small amount of heart her face had left me passed into her keeping at once.

“Are you much hurt?” I replied by asking.

“My arm is, a little,” she answered. “If I could only get home! Oh! I wish I were at home.”

I went out and fetched a cab, and assisted her into it. Then I asked her where the man should drive, and she gave me the name of the street which Miss Blake, when in England, honoured by making her abode. Miss Blake’s number was 110. My charmer’s number was 15. Having obtained this information, I closed the cab door, and taking my seat beside the driver, we rattled off in the direction of Brunswick Square.

Arrived at the house, I helped her—when, in answer to my knock, an elderly woman appeared, to ask my business—into the narrow hall of a dreary house. Oh! how my heart ached when I beheld her surroundings! She did not bid me good-bye; but asking me into the parlour, went, as I understood, to get money to pay the cabman.

Seizing my opportunity, I told the woman, who still stood near the door, that I was in a hurry, and leaving the house, bade the driver take me to the top of Chancery Lane.

On the next Sunday I watched No. 15, till I beheld my lady-fair come forth, veiled, furred, dressed all in her dainty best, prayer—book in hand, going alone to St. Pancras Church—not the old, but the new—whither I followed her.

By some freak of fortune, the verger put me into the same pew as that in which he had just placed her.

When she saw me her face flushed crimson, and then she gave a little smile of recognition.

I fear I did not much heed the service on that particular Sunday; but I still felt shy, so shy that, after I had held the door open for her to pass out, I allowed others to come between us, and did not dare to follow and ask how she was.

During the course of the next week came Miss Blake and Mr. Craven’s remark about the fifty pounds; and within four-and-twenty hours something still more astounding occurred—a visit from Miss Blake and her niece, who wanted “a good talking-to”—so Miss Blake stated.

It was a dull, foggy day, and when my eyes rested on the younger lady, I drew back closer into my accustomed corner, frightened and amazed.

“You were in such a passion yesterday,” began Miss Blake, coming into the office, dragging her blushing niece after her, “that you put it out of my head to tell you three things—one, that we have moved from our old lodgings; the next, that I have not a penny to go on with; and the third, that Helena here has gone out of her mind. She won’t have River Hall let again, if you please. She intends to go out as a governess—what do you think of that?—and nothing I can say makes any impression upon her. I should have thought she had had enough of governessing the first day she went out to give a lesson: she got herself run over and nearly killed; was brought back in a cab by some gentleman, who had the decency to take the cab away again: for how we should have paid the fare, I don’t know, I am sure. So I have just brought her to you to know if her mother’s old friend thinks it is a right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale’s daughter to put herself under the feet of a parcel of ignorant, purse-proud snobs?”

Mr. Craven looked at the girl kindly. “My dear,” he said, “I think, I believe, there will be no necessity for you to do anything of that kind. We have found a person—have we not, Patterson?—willing to devote himself to solving the River Hall mystery. So, for the present at all events, Helena—”

He paused, for Helena had risen from her seat and crossed the room to where I sat.

“Aunt, aunt,” she said, “this is the gentleman who stopped the horses,” and before I could speak a word she held my hand in hers, and was thanking me once again with her beautiful eyes.

Miss Blake turned and glared upon me. “Oh! it was you, was it?” she said, ungraciously. “Well, it is just what I might have expected, and me hoping all the time it was a lord or a baronet, at the least.”

We all laughed—even Miss Elmsdale laughed at this frank confession; but when the ladies were gone, Mr. Craven, looking at me pityingly, remarked:

“This is a most unfortunate business, Patterson. I hope—I do hope, you will not be so foolish as to fall in love with Miss Elmsdale.”

To which I made no reply. The evil, if evil it were, was done. I had fallen in love with Miss Blake’s niece ere those words of wisdom dropped from my employer’s lips.

VIII

MY FIRST NIGHT AT RIVER HALL

It was with a feeling of depression for which I could in no way account that, one cold evening, towards the end of February, I left Buckingham Street and wended my way to the Uninhabited House. I had been eager to engage in the enterprise; first, for the sake of the fifty pounds reward; and secondly, and much more, for the sake of Helena Elmsdale. I had tormented Mr. Craven until he gave a reluctant consent to my desire. I had brooded over the matter until I became eager to commence my investigations, as a young soldier may be to face the enemy; and yet, when the evening came, and darkness with it; when I set my back to the more crowded thoroughfares, and found myself plodding along a lonely suburban road, with a keen wind lashing my face, and a suspicion of rain at intervals wetting my cheeks, I confess I had no feeling of enjoyment in my self-imposed task.

After all, talking about a haunted house in broad daylight to one’s fellow-clerks, in a large London office, is a very different thing from taking up one’s residence in the same house, all alone, on a bleak winter’s night, with never a soul within shouting distance. I had made up my mind to go through with the matter, and no amount of mental depression, no wintry blasts, no cheerless roads, no desolate goal, should daunt me; but still I did not like the adventure, and at every step I felt I liked it less.

Before leaving town I had fortified my inner man with a good dinner and some excellent wine, but by the time I reached River Hall I might have fasted for a week, so faint and spiritless did I feel.

“Come, this will never do,” I thought, as I turned the key in the door, and crossed the threshold of the Uninhabited House. “I must not begin with being chicken-hearted, or I may as well give up the investigation at once.”

The fires I had caused to be kindled in the morning, though almost out by the time I reached River Hall, had diffused a grateful warmth throughout the house; and when I put a match to the paper and wood laid ready in the grate of the room I meant to occupy, and lit the gas, in the hall, on the landing, and in my sleeping-apartment, I began to think things did not look so cheerless, after all.

The seals which, for precaution’s sake, I had placed on the various locks, remained intact. I looked to the fastenings of the hall door, examined the screws by which the bolts were attached to the wood, and having satisfied myself that everything of that kind was secure, went up to my room, where the fire was now crackling and blazing famously, put the kettle on the hob, drew a chair up close to the hearth, exchanged my boots for slippers, lit a pipe, pulled out my law-books, and began to read.

How long I had read, I cannot say; the kettle on the bob was boiling, at any rate, and the coals had burned themselves into a red-hot mass of glowing cinders, when my attention was attracted—or rather, I should say, distracted—by the sound of a tapping outside the window-pane. First I listened, and read on, then I laid down my book and listened more attentively. It was exactly the noise which a person would make tapping upon glass with one finger.

The wind had risen almost to a tempest, but, in the interval between each blast, I could hear the tapping as distinctly as if it had been inside my own skull—tap, tap, imperatively; tap, tap, tap, impatiently; and when I rose to approach the casement, it seemed as if three more fingers had joined in the summons, and were rapping for bare life.

“They have begun betimes,” I thought; and taking my revolver in one hand, with the other I opened the shutters, and put aside the blind.

As I did so, it seemed as if some dark body occupied one side of the sash, while the tapping continued as madly as before.

It is as well to confess at once that I was for the moment frightened. Subsequently I saw many wonderful sights, and had some terrible experiences in the Uninhabited House; but I can honestly say, no sight or experience so completely cowed me for the time being, as that dull blackness to which I could assign no shape, that spirit—like rapping of fleshless fingers, which seemed to increase in vehemence as I obeyed its summons.

Doctors say it is not possible for the heart to stand still and a human being live, and, as I am not a doctor, I do not like to contradict their dogma, otherwise I could positively declare my heart did cease beating as I listened, looking out into the night with the shadow of that darkness projecting itself upon my mind, to the impatient tapping, which was now distinctly audible even above the raging of the storm.

How I gathered sufficient courage to do it, I cannot tell; but I put my face close to the glass, thus shutting out the gas and fire-light, and saw that the dark object which alarmed me was a mass of ivy the wind had detached from the wall, and that the invisible fingers were young branches straying from the main body of the plant, which, tossed by the air-king, kept striking the window incessantly, now one, now two, now three, tap, tap, tap; tap, tap; tap, tap; and sometimes, after a long silence, all together, tap-p-p, like the sound of clamming bells.

I stood for a minute or two, listening to the noise, so as to satisfy myself as to its cause, then I laid down the revolver, took out my pocketknife, and opened the window. As I did so, a tremendous blast swept into the room, extinguishing the gas, causing the glowing coals to turn, for a moment, black on one side and to fiercest blaze on the other, scattering the dust lying on the hearth over the carpet, and dashing the ivy-sprays against my face with a force which caused my cheeks to smart and tingle long afterwards.

Taking my revenge, I cut them as far back as I could, and then, without closing the window, and keeping my breath as well as I could, I looked out across the garden over the Thames, away to the opposite bank, where a few lights glimmered at long intervals.

“An eerie, lonely place for a fellow to be in all by himself,” I continued; “and yet, if the rest of the ghosts, bodiless or clothed with flesh, which frequent this house prove to be as readily laid as those ivy—twigs, I shall earn my money—and—my—thanks, easily enough.”

So considering, I relit the gas, replenished the fire, refilled my pipe, reseated myself by the hearth, and with feet stretched out towards the genial blaze, attempted to resume my reading.

All in vain: I could not fix my attention on the page; I could not connect one sentence with another. When my mind ought to have concentrated its energies upon Justice That, and Vice-Chancellor This, and Lord Somebody Else, I felt it wandering away, trying to fit together all the odds and ends of evidence worthy or unworthy concerning the Uninhabited House. Which really was, as we had always stated, a good house, a remarkably good house, well furnished, suitable in every respect, &c.

Had I been a “family of respectability,” or a gentleman of position, with a large number of servants, a nice wife, and a few children sprinkled about the domestic picture, I doubt not I should have enjoyed the contemplation of that glowing fire, and rejoiced in the idea of finding myself located in so desirable a residence, within an easy distance of the West End; but, as matters stood, I felt anything rather than elated.

In that large house there was no human inmate save myself, and I had an attack of nervousness upon me for which I found it impossible to account. Here was I, at length, under the very roof where my mistress had passed all her childish days, bound to solve the mystery which was making such havoc with her young life, permitted to essay a task, the accomplishment of which should cover me with glory, and perhaps restore peace and happiness to her heart; and yet I was afraid. I did not hesitate to utter that word to my own soul then, any more than I hesitate to write it now for those who list to read: for I can truly say I think there are few men whose courage such an adventure would not try were they to attempt it; and I am sure, had any one of those to whom I tell this story been half as much afraid as I, he would have left River Hall there and then, and allowed the ghosts said to be resident, to haunt it undisturbed for evermore.

If I could only have kept memory from running here and there in quest of evidence pro and con the house being haunted, I should have fared better: but I could not do this.

Let me try as I would to give my attention to those legal studies that ought to have engrossed my attention, I could not succeed in doing so: my thoughts, without any volition on my part, kept continually on the move; now with Miss Blake in Buckingham Street, again with Colonel Morris on the river walk, once more with Miss Elmsdale in the library; and went constantly flitting hither and thither, recalling the experiences of a frightened lad, or the terror of an ignorant woman; yet withal I had a feeling that in some way memory was playing me false, as if, when ostentatiously bringing out all her stores for me to make or mar as I could, she had really hidden away, in one of her remotest corners, some link, great or little as the case might be, but still, whether great or little, necessary to connect the unsatisfactory narratives together.

Till late in the night I sat trying to piece my puzzle together, but without success. There was a flaw in the story, a missing point in it, somewhere, I felt certain. I often imagined I was about to touch it, when, heigh! presto! it eluded my grasp.

“The whole affair will resolve itself into ivy-boughs,” I finally, if not truthfully, decided. “I am satisfied it is all—ivy,” and I went to bed.

Now, whether it was that I had thought too much of the ghostly narratives associated with River Hall, the storminess of the night, the fact of sleeping in a strange room, or the strength of a tumbler of brandy-and-water, in which brandy took an undue lead, I cannot tell; but during the morning hours I dreamed a dream which filled me with an unspeakable horror, from which I awoke struggling for breath, bathed in a cold perspiration, and with a dread upon me such as I never felt in any waking moment of my life.

I dreamt I was lying asleep in the room I actually occupied, when I was aroused from a profound slumber by the noise produced by someone tapping at the window-pane. On rising to ascertain the cause of this summons, I saw Colonel Morris standing outside and beckoning me to join him. With that disregard of space, time, distance, and attire which obtains in dreams, I at once stepped out into the garden. It was a pitch-dark night, and bitterly cold, and I shivered, I know, as I heard the sullen flow of the river, and listened to the moaning of the wind among the trees.

We walked on for some minutes in silence, then my companion asked me if I felt afraid, or if I would go on with him.

“I will go where you go,” I answered.

Then suddenly he disappeared, and Playfire, who had been his counsel at the time of the trial, took my hand and led me onwards.

We passed through a doorway, and, still in darkness, utter darkness, began to descend some steps. We went down—down—hundreds of steps as it seemed to me, and in my sleep, I still remembered the old idea of its being unlucky to dream of going downstairs. But at length we came to the bottom, and then began winding along interminable passages, now so narrow only one could walk abreast, and again so low that we had to stoop our heads in order to avoid striking the roof.

After we had been walking along these for hours, as time reckons in such cases, we commenced ascending flight after flight of steep stone-steps. I laboured after Playfire till my limbs ached and grew weary, till, scarcely able to drag my feet from stair to stair, I entreated him to stop; but he only laughed and held on his course the more rapidly, while I, hurrying after, often stumbled and recovered myself, then stumbled again and lay prone.

The night air blew cold and chill upon me as I crawled out into an unaccustomed place and felt my way over heaps of uneven earth and stones that obstructed my progress in every direction. I called out for Playfire, but the wind alone answered me; I shouted for Colonel Morris; I entreated someone to tell me where I was; and in answer there was a dead and terrible silence. The wind died away; not a breath of air disturbed the heavy stillness which had fallen so suddenly around me. Instead of the veil of merciful blackness which had hidden everything hitherto from view, a grey light spread slowly over the objects around, revealing a burial-ground, with an old church standing in the midst—a burial-ground where grew rank nettles and coarse, tall grass; where brambles trailed over the graves, and weeds and decay consorted with the dead.

Moved by some impulse which I could not resist, I still held on my course, over mounds of earth, between rows of headstones, till I reached the other side of the church, under the shadow of which yawned an open pit. To the bottom of it I peered, and there beheld an empty coffin; the lid was laid against the side of the grave, and on a headstone, displaced from its upright position, sat the late occupant of the grave, looking at me with wistful, eager eyes. A stream of light from within the church fell across that one empty grave, that one dead watcher.

“So you have come at last,” he said; and then the spell was broken, and I would have fled, but that, holding me with his left hand, he pointed with his right away to a shadowy distance, where the grey sky merged into deepest black.

I strained my eyes to discover the object he strove to indicate, but I failed to do so. I could just discern something flitting away into the darkness, but I could give it no shape or substance.

“Look—look!” the dead man said, rising, in his excitement, and clutching me more firmly with his clay—cold fingers.

I tried to fly, but I could not; my feet were chained to the spot. I fought to rid myself of the clasp of the skeleton hand, and then we fell together over the edge of the pit, and I awoke.

IX

A TEMPORARY PEACE

It was scarcely light when I jumped out of bed, and murmuring, “Thank God it was only a dream,” dressed myself with all speed, and flinging open the window, looked out on a calm morning after the previous night’s storm.

Muddily and angrily the Thames rolled onward to the sea. On the opposite side of the river I could see stretches of green, with here and there a house dotting the banks.

A fleet of barges lay waiting the turn of the tide to proceed to their destination. The voices of the men shouting to each other, and blaspheming for no particular reason, came quite clear and distinct over the water. The garden was strewed with twigs and branches blown off the trees during the night; amongst them the sprigs of ivy I had myself cut off.

An hour and a scene not calculated to encourage superstitious fancies, it may be, but still not likely to enliven any man’s spirits—a quiet, dull, grey, listless, dispiriting morning, and, being country-bred, I felt its influence.

“I will walk into town, and ask Ned Munro to give me some breakfast,” I thought, and found comfort in the idea.

Ned Munro was a doctor, but not a struggling doctor. He was not rich, but he “made enough for a beginner”: so he said. He worked hard for little pay; “but I mean someday to have high pay, and take the world easy,” he explained. He was blessed with great hopes and good courage; he had high spirits, and a splendid constitution. He neither starved himself nor his friends; his landlady “loved him as her son”; and there were several good-looking girls who were very fond of him, not as a brother.

But Ned had no notion of marrying, yet awhile. “Time enough for that,” he told me once, “when I can furnish a good house, and set up a brougham, and choose my patients, and have a few hundreds lying idle in the bank.”

Meantime, as no one of these items had yet been realized, he lived in lodgings, ate toasted haddocks with his morning coffee, and smoked and read novels far into the night.

Yes, I could go and breakfast with Munro. Just then it occurred to me that the gas I had left lighted when I went to bed was out; that the door I had left locked was open.

Straight downstairs I went. The gas in the hall was out, and every door I had myself closed and locked the previous morning stood ajar, with the seal, however, remaining intact.

I had borne as much as I could: my nerves were utterly unhinged. Snatching my hat and coat, I left the house, and fled, rather than walked, towards London. -

With every step I took towards town came renewed courage; and when I reached Ned’s lodgings, I felt ashamed of my pusillanimity.

“I have been sleep-walking, that is what it is,” I decided. “I have opened the doors and turned off the gas myself, and been frightened at the work of my own hands. I will ask Munro what is the best thing to insure a quiet night.”

Which I did accordingly, receiving for answer—

“Keep a quiet mind.”

“Yes, but if one cannot keep a quiet mind; if one is anxious and excited, and—”

“In love,” he finished, as I hesitated.

“Well, no; I did not mean that,” I said; “though, of course, that might enter into the case also. Suppose one is uneasy about a certain amount of money, for instance?”

“Are you?” he asked, ignoring the general suggestiveness of my remark.

“Well, yes; I want to make some if I can.”

“Don’t want, then,” he advised. “Take my word for it, no amount of money is worth the loss of a night’s rest; and you have been tossing about all night, I can see. Come, Patterson, if it’s forgery or embezzlement, out with it, man, and I will help you if I am able.”

“If it were either one or the other, I should go to Mr. Craven,” I answered, laughing.

“Then it must be love,” remarked my host; “and you will want to take me into your confidence someday. The old story, I suppose: beautiful girl, stern parents, wealthy suitor, poor lover. I wonder if we could interest her in a case of small-pox. If she took it badly, you might have a chance; but I have a presentiment that she has been vaccinated.”

“Ned,” was my protest, “I shall certainly fling a plate at your head.”

“All right, if you think the exertion would do you good,” he answered. “Give me your hand, Patterson”; and before I knew what he wanted with it, he had his fingers on my wrist.

“Look here, old fellow,” he said; “you will be laid up, if you don’t take care of yourself. I thought so when you came in, and I am sure of it now. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing wrong, Munro,” I answered, smiling in spite of myself. “I have not been picking, or stealing, or abducting any young woman, or courting my neighbour’s wife; but I am worried and perplexed. When I sleep I have dreadful dreams—horrible dreams,” I added, shuddering.

“Can you tell me what is worrying and perplexing you?” he asked, kindly, after a moment’s thought.

“Not yet, Ned,” I answered; “though I expect I shall have to tell you soon. Give me something to make me sleep quietly: that is all I want now.”

“Can’t you go out of town?” he inquired.

“I do not want to go out of town,” I answered.

“I will make you up something to strengthen your nerves,” he said, after a pause; “but if you are not better—well, before the end of the week, take my advice, and run down to Brighton over Sunday. Now, you ought to give me a guinea for that,” he added, laughing. “I assure you, all the gold-headed cane, all the wonderful chronometer doctors who pocket thousands per annum at the West End, could make no more of your case than I have done.”

“I am sure they could not,” I said, gratefully; “and when I have the guinea to spare, be sure I shall not forget your fee.”

Whether it was owing to his medicine, or his advice, or his cheery, health-giving manner, I have no idea; but that night, when I walked towards the Uninhabited House, I felt a different being.

On my way I called at a small corn-chandler’s, and bought a quartern of flour done up in a thin and utterly insufficient bag. I told the man the wrapper would not bear its contents, and he said he could not help that.

I asked him if he had no stronger bags. He answered that he had, but he could not afford to give them away.

I laid down twopence extra, and inquired if that would cover the expense of a sheet of brown paper.

Ashamed, he turned aside and produced a substantial bag, into which he put the flour in its envelope of curling-tissue.

I thanked him, and pushed the twopence across the counter. With a grunt, he thrust the money back. I said good-night, leaving current coin of the realm to the amount indicated behind me.

Through the night be shouted, “Hi! sir, you’ve forgotten your change.” Through the night I shouted back, “Give your next customer its value in civility.”

All of which did me good. Squabbling with flesh and blood is not a bad preliminary to entering a ghost-haunted house.

Once again I was at River Hall. Looking up at its cheerless portal, I was amazed at first to see the outside lamp flaring away in the darkness. Then I remembered that all the other gas being out, of course this, which I had not turned off, would blaze more brightly.

Purposely I had left my return till rather late. I had gone to one of the theatres, and remained until a third through the principal piece. Then I called at a supper—room, had half a dozen oysters and some stout; after which, like a giant refreshed, I wended my way westward.

Utterly false would it be for me to say I liked the idea of entering the Uninhabited House; but still, I meant to do it, and I did.

No law-books for me that night; no seductive fire; no shining lights all over the house. Like a householder of twenty years’ standing, I struck a match, and turned the gas on to a single hall-lamp. I did not trouble myself even about shutting the doors opening into the hall; I only strewed flour copiously over the marble pavement, and on the first flight of stairs, and then, by the servant’s passages, crept into the upper story, and so to bed.

That night I slept dreamlessly. I awoke in broad daylight, wondering why I had not been called sooner, and then remembered there was no one to call, and that if I required hot water, I must boil it for myself.

With that light heart which comes after a good night’s rest, I put on some part of my clothing, and was commencing to descend the principal staircase, when my proceedings of the previous night flashed across my mind; and pausing, I looked down into the hall. No sign of a foot on the flour. The white powder lay there innocent of human pressure as the untrodden snow; and yet, and yet, was I dreaming—could I have been drunk without my own knowledge, before I went to bed? The gas was ablaze in the hall and on the staircase, and every door left open over-night was close shut.

Curiously enough, at that moment fear fell from me like a garment which has served its turn, and in the strength of my manhood, I felt able to face anything the Uninhabited House might have to show.

Over the latter part of that week, as being utterly unimportant in its events or consequences, I pass rapidly, only saying that, when Saturday came, I followed Munro’s advice, and ran down to Brighton, under the idea that by so doing I should thoroughly strengthen myself for the next five days’ ordeal. But the idea was a mistaken one. The Uninhabited House took its ticket for Brighton by the same express; it got into the compartment with me; it sat beside me at dinner; it hob-nobbed to me over my own wine; uninvited it came out to walk with me; and when I stood still, listening to the band, it stood still too. It went with me to the pier, and when the wind blew, as the wind did, it said, “We were quite as well off on the Thames.”

When I woke, through the night, it seemed to shout, “Are you any better off here?” And when I went to church the next day it crept close up to me in the pew, and said, “Come, now, it is all very well to say you are a Christian; but if you were really one you would not be afraid of the place you and I wot of.”

Finally, I was so goaded and maddened that I shook my fist at the sea, and started off by the evening train for the Uninhabited House.

This time I travelled alone. The Uninhabited House preceded me.

There, in its old position, looking gloomy and mysterious in the shadows of night, I found it on my return to town; and, as if tired of playing tricks with one who had become indifferent to their vagaries, all the doors remained precisely as I had left them; and if there were ghosts in the house that night, they did not interfere with me or the chamber I occupied.

Next morning, while I was dressing, a most remarkable thing occurred; a thing for which I was in no wise prepared. Spirits, and sights and sounds supposed appropriate to spirithood, I had expected; but for a modest knock at the front door I was not prepared.

When, after hurriedly completing my toilet, I undrew the bolts and undid the chain, and opened the door wide, there came rushing into the house a keen easterly wind, behind which I beheld a sad-faced woman, dressed in black, who dropped me a curtsey, and said:

“If you please, sir—I suppose you are the gentleman?”

Now, I could make nothing out of this, so I asked her to be good enough to explain.

Then it all came out: “Did I want a person to char?”

This was remarkable—very. Her question amazed me to such an extent that I had to ask her in, and request her to seat herself on one of the hall chairs, and go upstairs myself, and think the matter over before I answered her.

It had been so impressed upon me that no one in the neighbourhood would come near River Hall, that I should as soon have thought of Victoria by the grace of God paying me a friendly visit, as of being waited on by a charwoman.

I went downstairs again.

At sight of me my new acquaintance rose from her seat, and began curling up the corner of her apron.

“Do you know,” I said, “that this house bears the reputation of being haunted?”

“I have heard people say it is, sir,” she answered.

“And do you know that servants will not stay in it—that tenants will not occupy it?”

“I have heard so, sir,” she answered once again.

“Then what do you mean by offering to come?” I inquired.

She looked up into my face, and I saw the tears come softly stealing into her eyes, and her mouth began to pucker, ere, drooping her head, she replied:

“Sir, just three months ago, come the twentieth, I was a happy woman. I had a good husband and a tidy home. There was not a lady in the land I would have changed places with. But that night, my man, coming home in a fog, fell into the river and was drowned. It was a week before they found him, and all the time—while I had been hoping to hear his step every minute in the day—I was a widow.”

“Poor soul!” I said, involuntarily.

“Well, sir, when a man goes, all goes. I have done my best, but still I have not been able to feed my children—his children—properly, and the sight of their poor pinched faces breaks my heart, it do, sir,” and she burst out sobbing.

“And so, I suppose,” I remarked, “you thought you would face this house rather than poverty?”

“Yes, sir. I heard the neighbours talking about this place, and you, sir, and I made up my mind to come and ask if I mightn’t tidy up things a bit for you, sir. I was a servant, sir, before I married, and I’d be so thankful.”

Well, to cut the affair shorter for the reader than I was able to do for myself, I gave her half a crown, and told her I would think over her proposal, and let her hear from me—which I did. I told her she might come for a couple of hours each morning, and a couple each evening, and she could bring one of the children with her if she thought she was likely to find the place lonely.

I would not let her come in the day-time, because, in the quest I had set myself, it was needful I should feel assured no person could have an opportunity of elaborating any scheme for frightening me, on the premises.

“Real ghosts,” said I to Mr. Craven, “I do not mind; but the physical agencies which may produce ghosts, I would rather avoid.” Acting on which principle I always remained in the house while Mrs. Stott—my charwoman was so named—cleaned, and cooked, and boiled, and put things straight.

No one can imagine what a revolution this woman effected in my ways and habits, and in the ways and habits of the Uninhabited House.

Tradesmen called for orders. The butcher’s boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter, and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of its produce; the milkman’s yahoo sounded cheerfully in the morning hours; and the letter-box was filled with cards from all sorts and descriptions of people—from laundresses to wine merchants, from gardeners to undertakers.

The doors now never shut nor opened of their own accord. A great peace seemed to have settled over River Hall.

It was all too peaceful, in fact. I had gone to the place to hunt a ghost, and not even the ghost of a ghost seemed inclined to reveal itself to me.

X

THE WATCHER IS WATCHED

I have never been able exactly to satisfy my own mind as to the precise period during my occupation of the Uninhabited House when it occurred to me that I was being watched. Hazily I must have had some consciousness of the fact long before I began seriously to entertain the idea.

I felt, even when I was walking through London, that I was being often kept in sight by some person. I had that vague notion of a stranger being interested in my movements which it is so impossible to define to a friend, and which one is chary of seriously discussing with oneself. Frequently, when the corner of a street was reached, I found myself involuntarily turning to look back; and, prompted by instinct, I suppose, for there was no reason about the matter, I varied my route to and from the Uninhabited House, as much as the nature of the roads permitted. Further, I ceased to be punctual as to my hours of business, sometimes arriving at the office late, and, if Mr. Craven had anything for me to do Cityward, returning direct from thence to River Hall without touching Buckingham Street.

By this time February had drawn to a close, and better weather might therefore have been expected; instead of which, one evening as I paced westward, snow began to fall, and continued coming down till somewhere about midnight.

Next morning Mrs. Stott drew my attention to certain footmarks on the walks, and beneath the library and drawing-room windows—the footmarks, evidently, of a man whose feet were not a pair. With the keenest interest, I examined these traces of a human pursuer. Clearly the footprints had been made by only one person, and that person deformed in some way. Not merely was the right foot-track different from that of the left, but the way in which its owner put it to the ground must have been different also. The one mark was clear and distinct, cut out in the snow with a firm tread, while the other left a little broken bank at its right edge, and scarcely any impression of the heel.

“Slightly lame,” I decided. “Eases his right foot, and has his boots made to order.”

“It is very odd,” I remarked aloud to Mrs. Stott.

“That it is, sir,” she answered; adding, “I hope to gracious none of them mobsmen are going to come burglaring here!”

“Pooh!” I replied; “there is nothing for them to steal, except chairs and tables, and I don’t think one man could carry many of them away.”

The whole of that day I found my thoughts reverting to those foot-marks in the snow. What purpose anyone proposed to serve by prowling about River Hall I could not imagine. Before taking up my residence in the Uninhabited House, I had a theory that some malicious person or persons was trying to keep the place unoccupied—nay, further, imagination suggested the idea that, owing to its proximity to the river, Mr. Elmsdale’s Hall might have taken the fancy of a gang of smugglers, who had provided for themselves means of ingress and egress unknown to the outside world. But all notions of this kind now seemed preposterous.

Slowly, but surely, the conviction had been gaining upon me that, let the mystery of River Hall be what it would, no ordinary explanation could account for the phenomena which it had presented to tenant after tenant; and my own experiences in the house, slight though they were, tended to satisfy me there was something beyond malice or interest at work about the place.

The very peace vouchsafed to me seemed another element of mystery, since it would certainly have been natural for any evil-disposed person to inaugurate a series of ghostly spectacles for the benefit of an investigator like myself; and yet, somehow, the absence of supernatural appearances, and the presence of that shadowy human being who thought it worth while to track my movements, and who had at last left tangible proof of his reality behind him in the snow, linked themselves together in my mind.

“If there is really anyone watching me,” I finally decided, “there must be a deeper mystery attached to River Hall than has yet been suspected. Now, the first thing is to make sure that someone is watching me, and the next to guard against danger from him.”

In the course of the day, I made a, for me, curious purchase. In a little shop, situated in a back street, I bought half a dozen reels of black sewing-cotton.

This cotton, on my return home, I attached to the trellis-work outside the drawing-room window, and wound across the walk and round such trees and shrubs as grew in positions convenient for my purpose.

“If these threads are broken tomorrow morning, I shall know I have a flesh-and-blood foe to encounter,” I thought.

Next morning I found all the threads fastened across the walks leading round by the library and drawing-room snapped in two.

It was, then, flesh and blood I had come out to fight, and I decided that night to keep watch.

As usual, I went up to my bedroom, and, after keeping the gas burning for about the time I ordinarily spent in undressing, put out the light, softly turned the handle of the door, stole, still silently, along the passage, and so into a large apartment with windows which overlooked both the library and drawing-room.

It was here, I knew, that Miss Elmsdale must have heard her father walking past the door, and I am obliged to confess that, as I stepped across the room, a nervous chill seemed for the moment to take my courage captive.

If any reader will consider the matter, mine was not an enviable position. Alone in a desolate house, reputed to be haunted, watching for someone who had sufficient interest in the place to watch it and me closely.

It was still early—not later than half-past ten. I had concluded to keep my vigil until after midnight, and tried to while away the time with thoughts foreign to the matter in hand.

All in vain, however. Let me force what subject I pleased upon my mind, it reverted persistently to Mr. Elmsdale and the circumstances of his death.

“Why did he commit suicide?” I speculated. “If he had lost money, was that any reason why he should shoot himself?”

People had done so, I was aware; and people, probably, would continue to do so; but not hard-headed, hard-hearted men, such as Robert Elmsdale was reputed to have been. He was not so old that the achievement of a second success should have seemed impossible. His credit was good, his actual position unsuspected. River Hall, unhaunted, was not a bad property, and in those days he could have sold it advantageously.

I could not understand the motive of his suicide, unless, indeed, he was mad or drunk at the time. And then I began to wonder whether anything about his life had come out on the inquest—anything concerning habits, associates, and connections. Had there been any other undercurrent, besides betting, in his life brought out in evidence, which might help me to a solution of the mystery?

“I will ask Mr. Craven tomorrow,” I thought, “whether he has a copy of the Times, containing a report of the inquest. Perhaps—”

What possibility I was about to suggest to my own mind I shall never now know, for at that moment there flamed out upon the garden a broad, strong flame of light—a flame which came so swiftly and suddenly, that a man, creeping along the River Walk, had not time to step out of its influence before I had caught full sight of him. There was not much to see, however. A man about the middle height, muffled in a cloak, wearing a cap, the peak of which was drawn down over his forehead: that was all I could discern, ere, cowering back from the light, he stole away into the darkness.

Had I yielded to my first impulse, I should have rushed after him in pursuit; but an instant’s reflection told me how worse than futile such a wild-goose chase must prove. Cunning must be met with cunning, watching with watching.

If I could discover who he was, I should have taken the first step towards solving the mystery of River Hall; but I should never do so by putting him on his guard. The immediate business lying at that moment to my hand was to discover whence came the flare of light which, streaming across the walk, had revealed the intruder’s presence to me. For that business I can truthfully say I felt little inclination.

Nevertheless, it had to be undertaken. So, walking downstairs, I unlocked and opened the library door, and found, as I anticipated, the room in utter darkness. I examined the fastenings of the shutters—they were secure as I had left them; I looked into the strong—room—not even a rat lay concealed there; I turned the cocks of the gas lights—but no gas whistled through the pipes, for the service to the library was separate from that of the rest of the house, and capable of being shut off at pleasure. I, mindful of the lights said to have been seen emanating from that room, had taken away the key from the internal tap, so that gas could not be used without my knowledge or the possession of a second key. Therefore, as I have said, it was no surprise to me to find the library in darkness. Nor could I say the fact of the light flaring, apparently, from a closely-shut-up room surprised me either. For a long time I had been expecting to see this phenomenon: now, when I did see it, I involuntarily connected the light, the apartment, and the stranger together.

For he was no ghost. Ghosts do not leave footmarks behind them in the snow. Ghosts do not break threads of cotton. It was a man I had seen in the garden, and it was my business to trace out the connection between him and the appearances at River Hall.

Thinking thus, I left the library, extinguished the candle by the aid of which I had made the investigations stated above, and after lowering the gaslight I always kept burning in the hall, began ascending the broad, handsome staircase, when I was met by the figure of a man descending the steps. I say advisedly, the figure; because, to all external appearance, he was as much a living man as myself.

And yet I knew the thing which came towards me was not flesh and blood. Knew it when I stood still, too much stupefied to feel afraid. Knew it, as the figure descended swiftly, noiselessly. Knew it, as, for one instant, we were side by side. Knew it, when I put out my hand to stop its progress, and my hand, encountering nothing, passed through the phantom as through air. Knew, it, when I saw the figure pass through the door I had just locked, and which opened to admit the ghostly visitor—opened wide, and then closed again, without the help of mortal hand.

After that I knew nothing more till I came to my senses again and found myself half lying, half sitting on the staircase, with my head resting against the banisters. I had fainted; but if any man thinks I saw in a vision what I have described, let him wait till he reaches the end of this story before expressing too positive an opinion about the matter.

How I passed the remainder of that night, I could scarely tell. Towards morning, however, I fell asleep, and it was quite late when I awoke: so late, in fact, that Mrs. Stott had rung for admittance before I was out of bed.

That morning two curious things occurred: one, the postman brought a letter for the late owner of River Hall, and dropped it in the box; another, Mrs. Stott asked me if I would allow her and two of the children to take up their residence at the Uninhabited House. She could not manage to pay her rent, she explained, and some kind friends had offered to maintain the elder children if she could keep the two youngest.

“And I thought, sir, seeing how many spare rooms there are here, and the furniture wanting cleaning, and the windows opening when the sun is out, that perhaps you would not object to my staying here altogether. I should not want any more wages, sir, and I would do my best to give satisfaction.”

For about five minutes I considered this proposition, made to me whilst sitting at breakfast, and decided in favour of granting her request. I felt satisfied she was not in league with the person or persons engaged in watching my movements; it would be well to have someone in care of the premises during my absence, and it would clearly be to her interest to keep her place at River Hall, if possible.

Accordingly, when she brought in my boots, I told her she could remove at once if she liked.

“Only remember one thing, Mrs. Stott,” I said. “If you find any ghosts in the dark corners, you must not come to me with any complaints.”

“I sleep sound, sir,” she answered, “and I don’t think any ghosts will trouble me in the daytime. So thank you, sir; I will bring over a few things and stay here, if you please.”

“Very good; here is the key of the back door,” I answered; and in five minutes more I was trudging Londonward.

As I walked along I decided not to say anything to Mr. Craven concerning the previous night’s adventures; first, because I felt reluctant to mention the apparition, and secondly, because instinct told me I should do better to keep my own counsel, and confide in no one, till I had obtained some clue to the mystery of that midnight watcher.

“Now here’s a very curious thing!” said Mr. Craven, after he had opened and read the letter left at River Hall that morning. “This is from a man who has evidently not heard of Mr. Elmsdale’s death, and who writes to say how much he regrets having been obliged to leave England without paying his IOU held by my client. To show that, though he may have seemed dishonest, he never meant to cheat Mr. Elmsdale, he encloses a draft on London for the principal and interest of the amount due.”

“Very creditable to him,” I remarked. “What is the amount, sir?”

“Oh! the total is under a hundred pounds,” answered Mr. Craven; “but what I meant by saying the affair seemed curious is this: amongst Mr. Elmsdale’s papers there was not an IOU of any description.”

“Well, that is singular,” I observed; then asked, “Do you think Mr. Elmsdale had any other office besides the library at River Hall?”

“No,” was the reply, “none whatever. When he gave up his offices in town, he moved every one of his papers to River Hall. He was a reserved, but not a secret man; not a man, for instance, at all likely to lead a double life of any sort.”

“And yet he betted,” I suggested.

“Certainly that does puzzle me,” said Mr. Craven. “And it is all against my statement, for I am certain no human being, unless it might be Mr. Harringford, who knew him in business, was aware of the fact.”

“And what is your theory about the absence of all-important documents?” I inquired.

“I think he must have raised money on them,” answered Mr. Craven.

“Are you aware whether anyone else ever produced them?” I asked.

“I am not; I never heard of their being produced: but, then, I should not have been likely to hear.” Which was very true, but very unsatisfactory. Could we succeed in tracing even one of those papers, a clue might be found to the mystery of Mr. Elmsdale’s suicide.

That afternoon I repaired to the house of one of our clients, who had, I knew, a file of the Times newspapers, and asked him to allow me to look at it.

I could, of course, have seen a file at many places in the city, but I preferred pursuing my investigations where no one was likely to watch the proceeding.

“Times! bless my soul, yes; only too happy to be able to oblige Mr. Craven. Walk into the study, there is a good fire, make yourself quite at home, I beg, and let me send you a glass of wine.”

All of which I did, greatly to the satisfaction of the dear old gentleman.

Turning over the file for the especial year in which Mr. Elmsdale had elected to put a pistol to his head, I found at last the account of the inquest, which I copied out in shorthand, to be able to digest it more fully at leisure; and as it was growing dusk, wended my way back to Buckingham Street.

As I was walking slowly down one side of the street, I noticed a man standing within the open door of a house near Buckingham Gate.

At any other time I should not have given the fact a second thought, but life at River Hall seemed to have endowed me with the power of making mountains out of molehills, of regarding the commonest actions of my fellows with distrust and suspicion; and I was determined to know more of the gentleman who stood back in the shadow, peering out into the darkening twilight.

With this object I ran upstairs to the clerk’s office, and then passed into Mr. Craven’s room. He had gone, but his lamp was still burning, and I took care to move between it and the window, so as to show myself to any person who might be watching outside; then, without removing hat or top—coat, I left the room, and proceeded to Taylor’s office, which I found in utter darkness. This was what I wanted; I wished to see without being seen; and across the way, standing now on the pavement, was the man I had noticed, looking up at our offices.

“All right,” thought I, and running downstairs, I went out again, and walked steadily up Buckingham Street, along John Street, up Adam Street, as though en route to the Strand. Before, however, I reached that thoroughfare, I paused, hesitated, and then immediately and suddenly wheeled round and retraced my steps, meeting, as I did so, a man walking a few yards behind me and at about the same pace.

I did not slacken my speed for a moment as we came face to face; I did not turn to look back after him; I retraced my steps to the office; affected to look out some paper, and once again pursued my former route, this time without meeting or being followed by anyone, and made my way into the City, where I really had business to transact.

I could have wished for a longer and a better look at the man who honoured me so far as to feel interested in my movements; but I did not wish to arouse his suspicions.

I had scored one trick; I had met him full, and seen his face distinctly—so distinctly that I was able to feel certain I had seen it before, but where, at the moment, I could not remember.

“Never mind,” I continued: “that memory will come in due time; meanwhile the ground of inquiry narrows, and the plot begins to thicken.”

XI

MISS BLAKE ONCE MORE

Upon my return to River Hall I found in the letter-box an envelope addressed to—Patterson, Esq.

Thinking it probably contained some circular, I did not break the seal until after dinner;
whereas, had I only known from whom the note came, should I not have devoured its contents before satisfying the pangs of physical hunger!

Thus ran the epistle:—

Dear Sir,—

Until half an hour ago I was ignorant that you were the person who had undertaken to reside at River Hall. If you would add another obligation to that already conferred upon me, leave that terrible house at once. What I have seen in it, you know; what may happen to you, if you persist in remaining there, I tremble to think. For the sake of your widowed mother and only sister, you ought not to expose yourself to a risk which is worse than useless. I never wish to hear of River Hall being let again. Immediately I come of age, I shall sell the place; and if anything could give me happiness in this world, it would be to hear the house was razed to the ground. Pray! pray! listen to a warning, which, believe me, is not idly given, and leave a place which has already been the cause of so much misery to yours, gratefully and sincerely,

Helena Elmsdale.

It is no part of this story to tell the rapture with which I gazed upon the writing of my “lady-love.” Once I had heard Miss Blake remark, when Mr. Craven was remonstrating with her on her hieroglyphics, that “Halana wrote an ‘unmaning hand,’ like all the rest of the English,” and, to tell the truth, there was nothing particularly original or characteristic about Miss Elmsdale’s calligraphy.

But what did that signify to me? If she had strung pearls together, I should not have valued them one-half so much as I did the dear words which revealed her interest in me.

Over and over I read the note, at first rapturously, afterwards with a second feeling mingling with my joy. How did she know it was I who had taken up my residence at River Hall? Not a soul I knew in London, besides Mr. Craven, was aware of the fact, and he had promised faithfully to keep my secret.

Where, then, had Miss Elmsdale obtained her information? from whom had she learned that I was bent on solving the mystery of the “Uninhabited House”?

I puzzled myself over these questions till my brain grew uneasy with vain conjectures.

Let me imagine what I would—let me force my thoughts into what grooves I might—the moment the mental pressure was removed, my suspicions fluttered back to the man whose face seemed not unfamiliar.

“I am confident he wants to keep that house vacant,” I decided. “Once let me discover who he is, and the mystery of the ‘Uninhabited House’ shall not long remain a mystery.”

But then the trouble chanced to be how to find out who he was. I could not watch and be watched at the same time, and I did not wish to take anyone into my confidence, least of all a professional detective.

So far fortune had stood my friend; I had learnt something suspected by no one else, and I made up my mind to trust to the chapter of accidents for further information on the subject of my unknown friend.

When Mr. Craven and I were seated at our respective tables, I said to him:

“Could you make any excuse to send me to Miss Blake’s today, sir?” Mr. Craven looked up in utter amazement. “To Miss Blake’s!” he repeated. “Why do you want to go there?”

“I want to see Miss Elmsdale,” I answered, quietly enough, though I felt the colour rising in my face as I spoke.

“You had better put all that nonsense on one side, Patterson,” he remarked. “What you have to do is to make your way in the world, and you will not do that so long as your head is running upon pretty girls. Helena Elmsdale is a good girl; but she would no more be a suitable wife for you, than you would be a suitable husband for her. Stick to law, my lad, for the present, and leave love for those who have nothing more important to think of.”

“I did not want to see Miss Elmsdale for the purpose you imply,” I said, smiling at the vehemence of Mr. Craven’s advice. “I only wish to ask her one question.”

“What is the question?”

“From whom she learned that I was in residence at River Hall,” I answered, after a moment’s hesitation.

“What makes you think she is aware of that fact?” he inquired.

“I received a note from her last night, entreating me to leave the place, and intimating that some vague peril menaced me if I persisted in remaining there.”

“Poor child! poor Helena!” said Mr. Craven, thoughtfully; then spreading a sheet of note-paper on his blotting-pad, and drawing his cheque-book towards him, he proceeded:

“Now remember, Patterson, I trust to your honour implicitly. You must not make love to that girl; I think a man can scarcely act more dishonourably towards a woman, than to induce her to enter into what must be, under the best circumstances, a very long engagement.”

“You may trust me, sir,” I answered, earnestly. “Not,” I added, “that I think it would be a very easy matter to make love to anyone with Miss Blake sitting by.”

Mr. Craven laughed; he could not help doing so at the idea I had suggested. Then he said, “I had a letter from Miss Blake this morning asking me for money.”

“And you are going to let her have some of that hundred pounds you intended yesterday to place against her indebtedness to you,” I suggested.

“That is so,” he replied. “Of course, when Miss Helena comes of age, we must turn over a new leaf—we really must.”

To this I made no reply. It would be a most extraordinary leaf, I considered, in which Miss Blake did not appear as debtor to my employer but it scarcely fell within my province to influence Mr. Craven’s actions.

“You had better ask Miss Blake to acknowledge receipt of this,” said my principal, holding up a cheque for ten pounds as he spoke. “I am afraid I have not kept the account as I ought to have done.”

Which was undeniably true, seeing we had never taken a receipt from her at all, and that loans had been debited to his private account instead of to that of Miss Blake. But true as it was, I only answered that I would get her acknowledgment; and taking my hat, I walked off to Hunter Street.

Arrived there, I found, to my unspeakable joy, that Miss Blake was out, and Miss Elmsdale at home.

When I entered the shabby sitting-room where her beauty was so grievously lodged, she rose and greeted me with kindly words, and sweet smiles, and vivid blushes.

“You have come to tell me you are not going ever again to that dreadful house,” she said, after the first greeting and inquiries for Miss Blake were over. “You cannot tell the horror with which the mere mention of River Hall now fills me.”

“I hope it will never be mentioned to you again till I have solved the mystery attached to it,” I answered.

“Then you will not do what I ask,” she cried, almost despairingly.

“I cannot,” was my reply. “Miss Elmsdale, you would not have a soldier turn back from the battle. I have undertaken to find out the secret attached to your old home, and, please God, I shall succeed in my endeavours.”

“But you are exposing yourself to danger, to—”

“I must take my chance of that. I cannot, if I would, turn back now, and I would not if I could. But I have come to you for information. How did you know it was I who had gone to River Hall?”

The colour flamed up in her face as I put the question.

“I—I was told so,” she stammered out.

“May I ask by whom?”

“No, Mr. Patterson, you may not,” she replied. “A—a friend—a kind friend, informed me of the fact, and spoke of the perils to which you were exposing yourself—living there all alone—all alone,” she repeated. “I would not pass a night in the house again if the whole parish were there to keep me company, and what must it be to stay in that terrible, terrible place alone! You are here, perhaps, because you do not believe—because you have not seen.”

“I do believe,” I interrupted, “because I have seen; and yet I mean to go through with the matter to the end. Have you a likeness of your father in your possession, Miss Elmsdale?” I asked.

“I have a miniature copied from his portrait, which was of course too large to carry from place to place,” she answered. “Why do you wish to know?”

“If you let me see it, I will reply to your question,” I said.

Round her dear throat she wore a thin gold chain. Unfastening this, she handed to me the necklet, to which was attached a locket enamelled in black. It is no exaggeration to say, as I took this piece of personal property, my hand trembled so much that I could not open the case.

True love is always bashful, and I loved the girl, whose slender neck the chain had caressed, so madly and senselessly, if you will, that I felt as if the trinket were a living thing, a part and parcel of herself.

“Let me unfasten it,” she said, unconscious that aught save awkwardness affected my manipulation of the spring. And she took the locket and handed it back to me open, wet with tears—her tears.

Judge how hard it was for me then to keep my promise to Mr. Craven and myself—how hard it was to refrain from telling her all my reasons for having ever undertaken to fight the dragon installed at River Hall.

I thank God I did refrain. Had I spoken then, had I presumed upon her sorrow and her simplicity, I should have lost something which constitutes the sweetest memory of my life.

But that is in the future of this story, and meantime I was looking at the face of her father.

I looked at it long and earnestly; then I closed the locket, softly pressing down the spring as I did so, and gave back miniature and chain into her hand.

“Well, Mr. Patterson?” she said, inquiringly.

“Can you bear what I have to tell?” I asked.

“I can, whatever it may be,” she answered.

“I have seen that face at River Hall.”

She threw up her arms with a gesture of despair.

“And,” I went on, “I may be wrong, but I think I am destined to solve the mystery of its appearance.”

She covered her eyes, and there was silence between us for a minute, when I said:

“Can you give me the name of the person who told you I was at River Hall?”

“I cannot,” she repeated. “I promised not to mention it.”

“He said I was in danger.”

“Yes, living there all alone.”

“And he wished you to warn me.”

“No; he asked my aunt to do so, and she refused; and so I—I thought I would write to you without mentioning the matter to her.”

“You have done me an incalculable service,” I remarked, “and in return I will tell you something.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“From tonight I shall not be alone in the house.”

“Oh! how thankful I am!” she exclaimed; then instantly added, “Here is my aunt.”

I rose as Miss Blake entered, and bowed.

“Oh! it is you, is it?” said the lady. “The girl told me someone was waiting.”

Hot and swift ran the colour to my adored one’s cheeks.

“Aunt,” she observed, “I think you forget this gentleman comes from Mr. Craven.”

“Oh no! my dear, I don’t forget Mr. Craven, or his clerks either,” responded Miss Blake, as, still cloaked and bonneted, she tore open Mr. Craven’s envelope.

“I am to take back an answer, I think,” said I.

“You are, I see,” she answered. “He’s getting mighty particular, is William Craven. I suppose he thinks I am going to cheat him out of his paltry ten pounds. Ten pounds, indeed! and what is that, I should like to know, to us in our present straits! Why, I had more than twice ten yesterday from a man on whom we have no claim—none whatever—who, without asking, offered it in our need.”

“Aunt,” said Miss Elmsdale, warningly.

“If you will kindly give me your acknowledgment, Miss Blake, I should like to be getting back to Buckingham Street,” I said. “Mr. Craven will wonder at my absence.”

“Not a bit of it,” retorted Miss Blake. “You and Mr. Craven understand each other, or I am very much mistaken; but here is the receipt, and good day to you.”

I should have merely bowed my farewell, but that Miss Elmsdale stood up valiantly.

“Good-bye, Mr. Patterson,” she said, holding out her dainty hand, and letting it lie in mine while she spoke. “I am very much obliged to you. I can never forget what you have done and dared in our interests.”

And I went out of the room, and descended the stairs, and opened the front door, she looking graciously over the balusters the while, happy, aye, and more than happy.

What would I not have done and dared at that moment for Helena Elmsdale? Ah! ye lovers, answer!

XII

HELP

“There has been a gentleman to look at the house, sir, this afternoon,” said Mrs. Stott to me, when, wet and tired, I arrived, a few evenings after my interview with Miss Elmsdale, at River Hall.

“To look at the house!” I repeated. “Why, it is not to let.”

“I know that, sir, but he brought an order from Mr. Craven’s office to allow him to see over the place, and to show him all about. For a widow lady from the country, he said he wanted it. A very nice gentleman, sir; only he did ask a lot of questions, surely—”

“What sort of questions?” I inquired.

“Oh! as to why the tenants did not stop here, and if I thought there was anything queer about the place; and he asked how you liked it, and how long you were going to stay; and if you had ever seen aught strange in the house.

“He spoke about you, sir, as if he knew you quite well, and said you must be stout-hearted to come and fight the ghosts all by yourself. A mighty civil, talkative gentleman—asked me if I felt afraid of living here, and whether I had ever met any spirits walking about the stairs and passages by themselves.”

“Did he leave the order you spoke of just now behind him?”

“Yes, sir. He wanted me to give it back to him; but I said I must keep it for you to see. So then he laughed, and made the remark that he supposed, if he brought the lady to see the place, I would let him in again. A pleasant-spoken gentleman, sir—gave me a shilling, though I told him I did not require it.”

Meantime I was reading the order, written by Taylor, and dated two years back.

“What sort of looking man was he?” I asked.

“Well, sir, there was not anything particular about him in any way. Not a tall gentleman, not near so tall as you, sir; getting into years, but still very active and light-footed, though with something of a halt in his way of walking. I could not rightly make out what it was; nor what it was that caused him to look a little crooked when you saw him from behind. Very lean, sir; looked as if the dinners he had eaten done him no good. Seemed as if, for all his pleasant ways, he must have seen trouble, his face was so worn-like.”

“Did he say if he thought the house would suit?” I inquired.

“He said it was a very nice house, sir, and that he imagined anybody not afraid of ghosts might spend two thousand a year in it very comfortably. He said he should bring the lady to see the place, and asked me particularly if I was always at hand, in case he should come tolerably early in the morning.”

“Oh!” was my comment, and I walked into the dining-room, wondering what the meaning of this new move might be; for Mrs. Stott had described, to the best of her ability, the man who stood watching our offices in London; and—good heavens!—yes, the man I had encountered in the lane leading to River Hall, when I went to the Uninhabited House, after Colonel Morris’ departure.

“That is the man,” thought I, “and he has some close, and deep, and secret interest in the mystery associated with this place, the origin of which I must discover.”

Having arrived at this conclusion, I went to bed, for I had caught a bad cold, and was aching from head to foot, and had been sleeping ill, and hoped to secure a good night’s rest.

I slept, it is true, but as for rest, I might as well, or better, have been awake. I fell from one dream into another; found myself wandering through impossible places; started in an agony of fear, and then dozed again, only to plunge into some deeper quagmire of trouble; and through all there was a vague feeling I was pursuing a person who eluded all my efforts to find him; playing a terrible game of hide-and-seek with a man who always slipped away from my touch, panting up mountains and running down declivities after one who had better wind and faster legs than I; peering out into the darkness, to catch a sight of a vague figure standing somewhere in the shadow, and looking, with the sun streaming into my eyes and blinding me, adown long white roads filled with a multitude of people, straining my sight to catch a sight of the coming traveller, who yet never came.

When I awoke thoroughly, as I did long and long before daybreak, I knew I was ill. I had a bad sore throat and an oppression at my chest which made me feel as if I was breathing through a sponge. My limbs ached more than had been the case on the previous evening whilst my head felt heavier than a log of teak.

“What should I do if I were to have a bad illness in that house?” I wondered to myself, and for a few minutes I pondered over the expediency of returning home; but this idea was soon set aside.

Where could I go that the Uninhabited House would not be a haunting presence? I had tried running away from it once before, and found it more real to me in the King’s Road, Brighton, than on the banks of the Thames. No!—ill or well, I would stay on; the very first night of my absence might be the night of possible explanation.

Having so decided, I dressed and proceeded to the office, remaining there, however, only long enough to write a note to Mr. Craven, saying I had a very bad cold, and begging him to excuse my attendance.

After that I turned my steps to Munro’s lodgings. If it were possible to avert an illness, I had no desire to become invalided in Mr. Elmsdale’s Hall.

Fortunately, Munro was at home and at dinner. “Just come in time, old fellow,” he said, cheerily. “It is not one day in a dozen you would have found me here at this hour. Sit down, and have some steak. Can’t eat—why, what’s the matter, man? You don’t mean to say you have got another nervous attack. If you have, I declare I shall lodge a complaint against you with Mr. Craven.”

“I am not nervous,” I answered; “but I have caught cold, and I want you to put me to rights.”

“Wait till I have finished my dinner,” he replied; and then he proceeded to cut himself another piece of steak—having demolished which, and seen cheese placed on the table, he said:

“Now, Harry, we’ll get to business, if you please. Where is this cold you were talking about?”

I explained as well as I could, and he listened to me without interruption. When I had quite finished, he said:

“Hal Patterson, you are either becoming a hypochondriac, or you are treating me to half confidences. Your cold is not worth speaking about. Go home, and get to bed, and take a basin of gruel, or a glass of something hot, after you are in bed, and your cold will be well in the morning.

But there is something more than a cold the matter with you. What has come to you, to make a few rheumatic pains and a slight sore throat seem of consequence in your eyes?”

“I am afraid of being ill,” I answered.

“Why are you afraid of being ill? why do you imagine you are going to be ill? why should you fall ill any more than anybody else?”

I sat silent for a minute, then I said, “Ned, if I tell you, will you promise upon your honour not to laugh at me?”

“I won’t, if I can help it. I don’t fancy I shall feel inclined to laugh,” he replied.

“And unless I give you permission, you will not repeat what I am going to tell you to anyone?”

“That I can safely promise,” he said. “Go on.”

And I went on. I began at the beginning and recited all the events chronicled in the preceding pages; and he listened, asking no questions, interposing no remark.

When I ceased speaking, he rose and said he must think over the statements I had made.

“I will come and look you up tonight, Patterson,” he observed. “Go home to River Hall, and keep yourself quiet. Don’t mention that you feel ill. Let matters go on as usual. I will be with you about nine. I have an appointment now that I must keep.”

Before nine Munro appeared, hearty, healthy, vigorous as usual.

“If this place were in Russell Square,” he said, after a hasty glance round the drawing-room, “I should not mind taking a twenty-one years’ lease of it at forty pounds a year, even if ghosts were included in the fixtures.”

“I see you place no credence in my story,” I said, a little stiffly.

“I place every credence in your story,” was the reply. “I believe you believe it, and that is saying more than most people could say nowadays about their friends’ stories if they spoke the truth.”

It was of no use for me to express any further opinion upon the matter. I felt if I talked for a thousand years I should still fail to convince my listener there was anything supernatural in the appearances beheld at River Hall. It is so easy to pooh—pooh another man’s tale; it is pleasant to explain every phenomenon that the speaker has never witnessed; it is so hard to credit that anything absolutely unaccountable on natural grounds has been witnessed by your dearest friend, that, knowing my only chance of keeping my temper and preventing Munro gaining a victory over me was to maintain a discreet silence, I let him talk on and strive to account for the appearances I had witnessed in his own way.

“Your acquaintance of the halting gait and high shoulder may or might have some hand in the affair,” he finished. “My own opinion is he has not. The notion that you are being watched, is, if my view of the matter be correct, only a further development of the nervous excitement which has played you all sort of fantastic tricks since you came to this house. If anyone does wander through the gardens, I should set him down as a monomaniac or an intending burglar, and in any case the very best thing you can do is to pack up your traps and leave River Hall to its fate.”

I did not answer; indeed, I felt too sick at heart to do so. What he said was what other people would say. If I could not evolve some clearer theory than I had yet been able to hit on, I should be compelled to leave the mystery of River Hall just as I had found it. Miss Blake had, I knew, written to Mr. Craven that the house had better be let again, as there “was no use in his keeping a clerk there in free lodgings forever”: and now came Ned Munro, with his worldly wisdom, to assure me mine was a wild-goose chase, and that the only sensible course for me to pursue was to abandon it altogether. For the first time, I felt disheartened about the business, and I suppose I showed my disappointment, for Munro, drawing his chair nearer to me, laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and said:

“Cheer up, Harry! never look so downhearted because your nervous system has been playing you false. It was a plucky thing to do, and to carry out; but you have suffered enough for honour, and I should not continue the experiment of trying how much you can suffer, were 1 in your shoes.”

“You are very kind, Munro,” I answered; “but I cannot give up. If I had all the wish in the world to leave here tonight, a will stronger than my own would bring me back here tomorrow. The place haunts me. Believe me, I suffer less from its influence, seated in this room, than when I am in the office or walking along the Strand.”

“Upon the same principle, I suppose, that a murderer always carries the memory of his victim’s face about with him; though he may have felt callously indifferent whilst the body was an actual presence.”

“Precisely,” I agreed.

“But then, my dear fellow, you are not a murderer in any sense of the word. You did not create the ghosts supposed to be resident here.”

“No; but I feel bound to find out who did,” I answered.

“That is, if you can, I suppose?” he suggested.

“I feel certain I shall,” was the answer. “I have an idea in my mind, but it wants shape. There is a mystery, I am convinced, to solve which, only the merest hint is needed.”

“There are a good many things in this world in the same position, I should say,” answered Munro. “However, Patterson, we won’t argue about the matter; only there is one thing upon which I am determined—after this evening, I will come and stay here every night. I can say I am going to sleep out of town. Then, if there are ghosts, we can hunt them together; if there are none, we shall rest all the better. Do you agree to that?” and he held out his hand, which I clasped in mine, with a feeling of gratitude and relief impossible to describe.

As he said, I had done enough for honour; but still I could not give up, and here was the support and help I required so urgently, ready for my need.

“I am so much obliged,” I said at last.

“Pooh! nonsense!” he answered. “You would do as much or more for me any day. There, don’t let us get sentimental. You must not come out, but, following the example of your gallant Colonel Morris, I will, if you please, smoke a cigar in the garden. The moon must be up by this time.”

I drew back the curtains and unfastened the shutter, which offered egress to the grounds, then, having rung for Mrs. Stott to remove the supper-tray, I sat down by the fire to await Munro’s return, and began musing concerning the hopelessness of my position, the gulf of poverty and prejudice and struggle that lay between Helena and myself.

I was determined to win her; but the prize seemed unattainable as the Lord Mayor’s robes must have appeared to Dick Whittington, when he stood at the foot of Highgate Hill; and, prostrated as I was by that subtle malady to which as yet Munro had given no name, the difficulties grew into mountains, the chances of success dwarfed themselves into molehills.

Whilst thus thinking vaguely, purposelessly, but still most miserably, I was aroused from reverie by the noise of a door being shut cautiously and carefully—an outer door, and yet one with the sound of which I was unacquainted.

Hurrying across the hall, I flung the hall door wide, and looked out into the night. There was sufficient moonlight to have enabled me to discern any object moving up or down the lane, but not a creature was in sight, not a cat or dog even traversed the weird whiteness of that lonely thoroughfare.

Despite Munro’s dictum, I passed out into the night air, and went down to the very banks of the Thames. There was not a boat within hail. The nearest barge lay a couple of hundred yards from the shore.

As I retraced my steps, I paused involuntarily beside the door, which led by a separate entrance to the library.

“That is the door which shut,” I said to myself, pressing my hand gently along the lintel, and sweeping the hitherto unbroken cobwebs away as I did so. “If my nerves are playing me false this time, the sooner their tricks are stopped the better, for no human being opened this door, no living creature has passed through it.”

Having made up my mind on which points, I re-entered the house, and walked into the drawing-room, where Munro, pale as death, stood draining a glass of neat brandy.

“What is the matter?” I cried, hurriedly. “What have you seen, what—”

“Let me alone for awhile,” he interrupted, speaking in a thick, hoarse whisper; then immediately asked, “Is that the library with the windows nearest the river?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I want to go into that room,” he said, still in the same tone.

“Not now,” I entreated. “Sit down and compose yourself; we will go into it, if you like, before you leave.”

“Now, now—this minute,” he persisted. “I tell you, Patterson, I must see what is in it.”

Attempting no further opposition, I lit a couple of candles, and giving one into his hand, led the way to the door of the library, which I unlocked and flung wide open.

To one particular part Munro directed his steps, casting the light from his candle on the carpet, peering around in search of something he hoped, and yet still feared, to see. Then he went to the shutters and examined the fastenings, and finding all well secured, made a sign for me to precede him out of the room. At the door he paused, and took one more look into the darkness of the apartment, after which he waited while I turned the key in the lock, accompanying me back across the hall.

When we were once more in the drawing-room, I renewed my inquiry as to what he had seen; but he bade me let him alone, and sat mopping great beads of perspiration off his forehead, till, unable to endure the mystery any longer, I said:

“Munro, whatever it may be that you have seen, tell me all, I entreat. Any certainty will be better than the possibilities I shall be conjuring up for myself.”

He looked at me wearily, and then drawing his hand across his eyes, as if trying to clear his vision, he answered, with an uneasy laugh:

“It was nonsense, of course. I did not think I was so imaginative, but I declare I fancied I saw, looking through the windows of that now utterly dark room, a man lying dead on the floor.”

“Did you hear a door shut?” I inquired.

“Distinctly,” he answered; “and what is more, I saw a shadow flitting through the other door leading out of the library, which we found, if you remember, bolted on the inside.”

“And what inference do you draw from all this?”

“Either that someone is, in a, to me, unintelligible way, playing a very clever game at River Hall, or else that I am mad.”

“You are no more mad than other people who have lived in this house,” I answered.

“I don’t know how you have done it, Patterson,” he went on, unheeding my remark. “I don’t, upon my soul, know how you managed to stay on here. It would have driven many a fellow out of his mind. I do not like leaving you. I wish I had told my landlady I should not be back. I will, after this time; but tonight I am afraid some patient may be wanting me.”

“My dear fellow,” I answered, “the affair is new to you, but it is not new to me. I would rather sleep alone in the haunted house, than in a mansion filled from basement to garret, with the unsolved mystery of this place haunting me.”

“I wish you had never heard of, nor seen, nor come near it,” he exclaimed, bitterly; “but, however, let matters turn out as they will, I mean to stick to you, Patterson. There’s my hand on it.”

And he gave me his hand, which was cold as ice—cold as that of one dead.

“I am going to have some punch, Ned,” I remarked. “That is’ if you will stop and have some.”

“All right,” he answered. “Something ‘hot and strong’ will hurt neither of us, but you ought to have yours in bed. May I give it to you there?”

“Nonsense!” I exclaimed, and we drew our chairs close to the fire, and, under the influence of a decoction which Ned insisted upon making himself, and at making which, indeed, he was much more of an adept than I, we talked valiantly about ghosts and their doings, and about how our credit and happiness were bound up in finding out the reason why the Uninhabited House was haunted.

“Depend upon it, Hal,” said Munro, putting on his coat and hat, preparatory to taking his departure, “depend upon it that unfortunate Robert Elmsdale must have been badly cheated by someone, and sorely exercised in spirit, before he blew out his brains.”

To this remark, which, remembering what he had said in the middle of the day, showed the wonderful difference that exists between theory and practice, I made no reply.

Unconsciously, almost, a theory had been forming in my own mind, but I felt much corroboration of its possibility must be obtained before I dare give it expression.

Nevertheless, it had taken such hold of me that I could not shake off the impression, which was surely, though slowly, gaining ground, even against the dictates of my better judgment.

“I will just read over the account of the inquest once again,” I decided, as I bolted and barred the chain after Munro’s departure; and so, by way of ending the night pleasantly, I took out the report, and studied it till two, chiming from a neighbouring church, reminded me that the fire was out, that I had a bad cold, and that I ought to have been between the blankets and asleep hours previously.

XIII

LIGHT AT LAST

Now, whether it was owing to having gone out the evening before from a very warm room into the night air, and, afterwards, into that chilly library, or to having sat reading the report given about Mr. Elmsdale’s death till I grew chilled to my very marrow, I cannot say, all I know is that when I awoke next morning I felt very ill, and welcomed, with rejoicing of spirit, Ned Munro, who arrived about mid-day, and at once declared he had come to spend a fortnight with me in the Uninhabited House.

“I have arranged it all. Got a friend to take charge of my patients; stated that I am going to pay a visit in the country, and so forth. And now, how are you?”

I told him, very truthfully, that I did not feel at all well.

“Then you will have to get well, or else we shall never be able to fathom this business,” he said. “The first thing, consequently, I shall do, is to write a prescription, and get it made up. After that, I mean to take a survey of the house and grounds.”

“Do precisely what you like,” I answered. “This is Liberty Hall to the living as well as to the dead,” and I laid my head on the back of the easy-chair, and went off to sleep.

All that day Munro seemed to feel little need of my society. He examined every room in the house, and every square inch about the premises. He took short walks round the adjacent neighbourhood, and made, to his own satisfaction, a map of River Hall and the country and town thereunto adjoining. Then he had a great fire lighted in the library, and spent the afternoon tapping the walls, trying the floors, and trying to obtain enlightenment from the passage which led from the library direct to the door opening into the lane.

After dinner, he asked me to lend him the shorthand report I had made of the evidence given at the inquest. He made no comment upon it when he finished reading, but sat, for a few minutes, with one hand shading his eyes, and the other busily engaged in making some sort of a sketch on the back of an old letter.

“What are you doing, Munro?” I asked, at last.

“You shall see presently,” he answered, without looking up, or pausing in his occupation.

At the expiration of a few minutes, he handed me over the paper, saying:

“Do you know anyone that resembles?”

I took the sketch, looked at it, and cried out incoherently in my surprise.

“Well,” he went on, “who is it?”

“The man who follows me! The man I saw in this lane!”

“And what is his name?”

“That is precisely what I desire to find out,” I answered. “When did you see him? How did you identify him? Why did—”

“I have something to tell you, if you will only be quiet, and let me speak,” he interrupted. “It was, as you know, late last night before I left here, and for that reason, and also because I was perplexed and troubled, I walked fast—faster than even is my wont. The road was very lonely; I scarcely met a creature along the road, flooded with the moonlight. I never was out on a lovelier night; I had never, even in the country, felt I had it so entirely to myself.

“Every here and there I came within sight of the river, and it seemed, on each occasion, as though a great mirror had been put up to make every object on land—every house, every tree, bush, fern, more clearly visible than it had been before. I am coming to my story, Hal, so don’t look so impatient.

“At last, as I came once again in view of the Thames, with the moon reflected in the water, and the dark arches of the bridge looking black and solemn contrasted against the silvery stream, I saw before me, a long way before me, a man whose figure stood out in relief against the white road—a man walking wearily and with evident difficulty—a man, too, slightly deformed.

“I walked on rapidly, till within about a score yards of him, then I slackened my speed, and taking care that my leisurely footsteps should be heard, overtook him by degrees, and then, when I was quite abreast, asked if he could oblige me with a light.

“He looked up in my face, and said, with a forced, painful smile and studied courtesy of manner:

“‘I am sorry, sir, to say that I do not smoke.’

“I do not know exactly what reply I made. I know his countenance struck me so forcibly, it was with difficulty I could utter some commonplace remark concerning the beauty of the night.

“‘I do not like moonlight,’ he said, and as he said it, something, a connection of ideas, or a momentary speculation, came upon me so Suddenly, that once again I failed to reply coherently, but asked if he Could tell me the shortest way to the Brompton Road.

“‘To which end?’ he inquired.

“‘That nearest Hyde Park Corner,’ I answered.

“As it turned out, no question could have served my purpose better.

“‘I am going part of the way there,’ he said, ‘and will show you the nearest route—that is,’ he added, ‘if you can accommodate your pace to mine,’ and he pointed, as he spoke, to his right foot, which evidently was causing him considerable pain.

“Now, that was something quite in my way, and by degrees I got him to tell me about the accident which had caused his slight deformity. I told him I was a doctor, and had been to see a patient, and so led him on to talk about sickness and disease, till at length he touched upon diseases of a morbid character; asking me if it were true that in some special maladies the patient was haunted by an apparition which appeared at a particular hour.

“I told him it was quite true, and that such cases were peculiarly distressing, and generally proved most difficult to cure—mentioning several well—authenticated instances, which I do not mean to detail to you, Patterson, as I know you have an aversion to anything savouring of medical shop.

“‘You doctors do not believe in the actual existence of any such apparitions, of course?’ he remarked, after a pause.

“I told him we did not; that we knew they had their rise and origin solely in the malady of the patient.

“‘And yet,’ he said, ‘some ghost stories—I am not now speaking of those associated with disease, are very extraordinary, unaccountable—’

“‘Very extraordinary, no doubt,’ I answered; ‘but I should hesitate before saying unaccountable. Now, there is that River Hall place up the river. There must be some rational way of explaining the appearances in that house, though no one has yet found any clue to that enigma.’

“‘River Hall—where is that?’ he asked; then suddenly added, ‘Oh! I remember now: you mean the Uninhabited House, as it is called. Yes, there is a curious story, if you like. May I ask if you are interested in any way in that matter?’

“‘Not in any way, except that I have been spending the evening there with a friend of mine.’

“‘Has he seen anything of the reputed ghost?’ asked my companion, eagerly. ‘Is he able to throw any light on the dark subject?’

“‘I don’t think he can,’ I replied. ‘He has seen the usual appearances which I believe it is correct to see at River Hall; but so far, they have added nothing to his previous knowledge.’

“‘He has seen, you say?’

“‘Yes; all the orthodox lions of that cheerful house.’

“‘And still he is not daunted—he is not afraid?’

“‘He is not afraid. Honestly, putting ghosts entirely on one side, I should not care to be in his shoes, all alone in a lonely house.’

“‘And you would be right, sir,’ was the answer. ‘A man must be mad to run such a risk.’

“‘So I told him,’ I agreed.

“‘Why, I would not stay in that house alone for any money which could be offered to me,’ he went on, eagerly.

“‘I cannot go so far as that,’ I said; ‘but still it must be a very large sum which could induce me to do so.’

“‘It ought to be pulled down, sir,’ he continued; ‘the walls ought to be razed to the ground.’

“‘I suppose they will,’ I answered, ‘when Miss Elmsdale, the owner, comes of age; unless, indeed, our modern Don Quixote runs the ghost to earth before that time.’

“‘Did you say the young man was ill?’ asked my companion.

“‘He has got a cold,’ I answered.

“‘And colds are nasty things to get rid of,’ he commented, ‘particularly in those low-lying localities. That is a most unhealthy part; you ought to order your patient a thorough change of air.’

“‘I have, but he won’t take advice,’ was my reply. ‘He has nailed his colours to the mast, and means, I believe, to stay in River Hall till he kills the ghost, or the ghost kills him.’

“‘What a foolish youth!’

“‘Undoubtedly; but, then, youth is generally foolish, and we all have our crotchets.’

“We had reached the other side of the bridge by this time, and saying his road lay in an opposite direction to mine, the gentleman I have sketched told me the nearest way to take, and bade me a civil good-night, adding, ‘I suppose I ought to say good morning.”’

“And is that all?” I asked, as Munro paused.

“Bide a wee, as the Scotch say, my son. I strode off along the road he indicated, and then, instead of making the detour he had kindly sketched out for my benefit, chose the first turning to my left, and, quite convinced he would soon pass that way, took up my position in the portico of a house which lay well in shadow. It stood a little back from the side-path, and a poor little Arab sleeping on the stone step proved to me the policeman was not over and above vigilant in that neighbourhood.

“I waited, Heaven only knows how long, thinking all the time I must be mistaken, and that his home did lie in the direction he took; but at last, looking out between the pillars and the concealing shrubs, I saw him. He was looking eagerly into the distance, with such a drawn, worn, painful expression, that for a moment my heart relented, and I thought I would let the poor devil go in peace.

“It was only for a moment, however; touching the sleeping boy, I bade him awake, if he wanted to earn a shilling. ‘Keep that gentleman in sight, and get to know for me where he lives, and come back here, and I will give you a shilling, and perhaps two, for your pains.’

“With his eyes still heavy with slumber, and his perceptions for the moment dulled, he sped after the figure, limping wearily on. I saw him ask my late companion for charity, and follow the gentleman for a few steps, when the latter, threatening him with his stick, the boy dodged to escape a blow, and then, by way of showing how lightly his bosom’s lord sat upon him, began turning wheels down the middle of the street. He passed the place where I stood, and spun a hundred feet further on, then he gathered himself together, and seeing no one in sight, stealthily crept back to his porch again.

“‘You young rascal,’ I said, ‘I told you to follow him home. I want to know his name and address particularly.’

“‘Come along, then,’ he answered, ‘and I’ll show you. Bless you, we all knows him—better than we do the police, or anybody hereabouts. He’s a beak and a ward up at the church, whatever that is, and he has building-yards as big, oh! as big as two workhouses, and—’”

“His name, Munro—his name?” I gasped.

“Harringford.”

I expected it. I knew then that for days and weeks my suspicions had been vaguely connecting Mr. Harringford with the mystery of the Uninhabited House.

This was the hiding figure in my dream, the link hitherto wanting in my reveries concerning River Hall. I had been looking for this—waiting for it; I understood at last; and yet, when Munro mentioned the name of the man who had thought it worth his while to watch my movements, I shrunk from the conclusion which forced itself upon me.

“Must we go on to the end with this affair?” I asked, after a pause, and my voice was so changed, it sounded like that of a stranger to me.

“We do not yet know what the end will prove,” Munro answered; “but whatever it may be, we must not turn back now.”

“How ought we to act, do you think?” I inquired.

“We ought not to act at all,” he answered. “We had better wait and see what his next move will be. He is certain to take some step. He will try to get you out of this house by hook or by crook. He has already striven to effect his purpose through Miss Elmsdale, and failed. It will therefore be necessary for him to attempt some other scheme. It is not for me to decide on the course he is likely to pursue; but, if I were in your place, I should stay within doors at night. I should not sit in the dark near windows still unshuttered. I should not allow any strangers to enter the house, and I should have a couple of good dogs running loose about the premises. I have brought Brenda with me as a beginning, and I think I know where to lay my hand on a good old collie, who will stay near any house I am in, and let no one trespass about it with impunity.”

“Good heavens! Munro, you don’t mean to say you think the man would murder me!” I exclaimed.

“I don’t know what he might, or might not do,” he replied. “There is something about this house he is afraid may be found out, and he is afraid you will find it out. Unless I am greatly mistaken, a great deal depends upon the secret being preserved intact. At present we can only surmise its nature; but I mean, in the course of a few days, to know more of Mr. Harringford’s antecedents than he might be willing to communicate to anyone. What is the matter with you, Hal? You look as white as a corpse.”

“I was only thinking,” I answered, “of one evening last week, when I fell asleep in the drawing-room, and woke in a fright, imagining I saw that horrid light streaming out from the library, and a face pressed up close to the glass of the window on my left hand peering into the room.”

“I have no doubt the face was there,” he said, gravely; “but I do not think it will come again, so long as Brenda is alive. Nevertheless, I should be careful. Desperate men are capable of desperate deeds.”

The first post next morning brought me a letter from Mr. Craven, which proved Mr. Harringford entertained for the present no intention of proceeding to extremities with me.

He had been in Buckingham Street, so said my principal, and offered to buy the freehold of River Hall for twelve hundred pounds.

Mr. Craven thought he might be induced to increase his bid to fifteen hundred, and added:

“Miss Blake has half consented to the arrangement, and Miss Elmsdale is eager for the matter to be pushed on, so that the transfer may take place directly she comes of age. I confess, now an actual offer has been made, I feel reluctant to sacrifice the property for such a sum, and doubt whether it might not be better to offer it for sale by auction—that is, if you think there is no chance of your discovering the reason why River Hall bears so bad a name. Have you obtained any clue to the mystery?”

To this I replied in a note, which Munro himself conveyed to the office.

I have obtained an important clue; but that is all I can say for the present. Will you tell Mr. Harringford I am at River Hall, and that you think, being on the spot and knowing all about the place, I could negotiate the matter better than anyone else in the office? If he is desirous of purchasing, he will not object to calling some evening and discussing the matter with me. I have an idea that a large sum of money might be made out of this property by an enterprising man like Mr. Harringford; and it is just possible, after hearing what I have to say, he may find himself able to make a much better offer for the Uninhabited House than that mentioned in your note. At all events, the interview can do no harm. I am still suffering so much from cold that it would be imprudent for me to wait upon Mr. Harringford, which would otherwise be only courteous on my part.

“Capital!” said Munro, reading over my shoulder. “That will bring my gentleman to River Hall—. But what is wrong, Patterson? You are surely not going to turn chickenhearted now?”

“No,” I answered; “but I wish it was over. I dread something, and I do not know what it is. Though nothing shall induce me to waver, I am afraid, Munro. I am not ashamed to say it: I am afraid, as I was the first night I stayed in this house. I am not a coward, but I am afraid.” He did not reply for a moment. He walked to the window and looked out over the Thames; then he came back, and, wringing my hand, said, in tones that tried unsuccessfully to be cheerful:

“I know what it is, old fellow. Do you think I have not had the feeling myself, since I came here? But remember, it has to be done, and I will stand by you. I will see you through it.”

“It won’t do for you to be in the room, though,” I suggested.

“No; but I will stay within earshot,” he answered.

We did not talk much more about the matter. Men rarely do talk much about anything which seems to them very serious, and I may candidly say that I had never felt anything in my life to be much more serious than that impending interview with Mr. Harringford.

That he would come we never doubted for a moment, and we were right. As soon as it was possible for him to appoint an interview, Mr. Harringford did so.

“Nine o’clock on tomorrow (Thursday) evening,” was the hour he named, apologizing at the same time for being unable to call at an earlier period of the day.

“Humph!” said Munro, turning the note over. “You will receive him in the library, of course, Hal?”

I replied such was my intention.

“And that will be a move for which he is in no way prepared,” commented my friend.

From the night when Munro walked and talked with Mr. Harringford, no person came spying round and about the Uninhabited House. Of this fact we were satisfied, for Brenda, who gave tongue at the slightest murmur wafted over the river from the barges lying waiting for the tide, never barked as though she were on the track of living being; whilst the collie—a tawny-black, unkempt, ill-conditioned, savage-natured, but yet most true and faithful brute, which Munro insisted on keeping within doors, never raised his voice from the day he arrived at River Hall, till the night Mr. Harringford rang the visitor’s-bell, when the animal, who had been sleeping with his nose resting on his paws, lifted his head and indulged in a prolonged howl.

Not a nice beginning to an interview which I dreaded.

XIV

A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW

I was in the library, waiting to receive Mr. Harringford. A bright fire blazed on the hearth, the table was strewn with papers Munro had brought to me from the office, the gas was all ablaze, and the room looked bright and cheerful—as bright and as cheerful as if no ghost had been ever heard of in connection with it.

At a few minutes past nine my visitor arrived. Mrs. Stott ushered him into the library, and he entered the room evidently intending to shake hands with me, which civility I affected not to notice.

After the first words of greeting were exchanged, I asked if he would have tea, or coffee, or wine; and finding he rejected all offers of refreshment, I rang the bell and told Mrs. Stott I could dispense with her attendance for the night.

“Do you mean to tell me you stay in this house entirely alone?” asked my visitor.

“Until Mrs. Stott came I was quite alone,” I answered.

“I would not have done it for any consideration,” he remarked.

“Possibly not,” I replied. “People are differently constituted.”

It was not long before we got to business. His offer of twelve hundred pounds I pooh-poohed as ridiculous.

“Well,” he said—by this time I knew I had a keen man of business to deal with—“put the place up to auction, and see whether you will get as much.”

“There are two, or rather, three ways of dealing with the property, which have occurred to me, Mr. Harringford,” I explained. “One is letting or selling this house for a reformatory, or school. Ghosts in that case won’t trouble the inmates, we may be quite certain; another is utilizing the buildings for a manufactory; and the third is laying the ground out for building purposes, thus—”

As I spoke, I laid before him a plan for a tri-sided square of building, the south side being formed by the river. I had taken great pains with the drawing of this plan: the future houses, the future square, the future river—walk with seats at intervals, were all to be found in the roll which I unfolded and laid before him, and the effect my sketch produced surprised me.

“In Heaven’s name, Mr. Patterson,” he asked, “where did you get this? You never drew it out of your own head!”

I hastened to assure him I had certainly not got it out of any other person’s head; but he smiled incredulously.

“Probably,” he suggested, “Mr. Elmsdale left some such sketch behind him—something, at all events, which suggested the idea to you.”

“If he did, I never saw nor heard of it,” I answered.

“You may have forgotten the circumstance,” he persisted; “but I feel confident you must have seen something like this before. Perhaps amongst the papers in Mr. Craven’s office.”

“May I inquire why you have formed such an opinion?” I said, a little stiffly.

“Simply because this tri-sided square was a favourite project of the late owner of River Hall,” he replied. “After the death of his wife, the place grew distasteful to him, and I have often heard him say he would convert the ground into one of the handsomest squares in the neighbourhood of London. All he wanted was a piece of additional land lying to the west, which piece is, I believe, now to be had at a price—”

I sat like one stricken dumb. By no mental process, for which I could ever account, had that idea been evolved. It sprang into life at a bound. It came to me in my sleep, and I wakened at once with the whole plan clear and distinct before my mind’s eye, as it now lay clear and distinct before Mr. Harringford.

“It is very extraordinary,” I managed at last to stammer out; “for I can honestly say I never heard even a suggestion of Mr. Elmsdale’s design; indeed, I did not know he had ever thought of building upon the ground.”

“Such was the fact, however,” replied my visitor. “He was a speculative man in many ways. Yes, very speculative, and full of plans and projects. However, Mr. Patterson,” he proceeded, “all this only proves the truth of the old remark, that ‘great wits and little wits sometimes jump together.’”

There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice, as in his words, but I did not give much heed to it.

The design, then, was not mine. It had come to me in sleep, it had been forced upon me, it had been explained to me in a word, and as I asked myself, By whom? I was unable to repress a shudder.

“You are not well, I fear,” said Mr. Harringford; “this place seems to have affected your health. Surely you have acted imprudently in risking so much to gain so little.”

“I do not agree with you,” I replied. “However, time will show whether I have been right or wrong in coming here. I have learned many things of which I was previously in ignorance, and I think I hold a clue in my hands which, properly followed, may lead me to the hidden mystery of River Hall.”

“Indeed!” he exclaimed. “May I ask the nature of that clue?”

“It would be premature for me to say more than this, that I am inclined to doubt whether Mr. Elmsdale committed suicide.”

“Do you think his death was the result of accident, then?” he inquired, his face blanching to a ghastly whiteness.

“No, I do not,” I answered, bluntly. “But my thoughts can have little interest for anyone, at present. What we want to talk about is the sale and purchase of this place. The offer you made to Mr. Craven, I consider ridiculous. Let on building lease, the land alone would bring in a handsome income, and the house ought to sell for about as much as you offer for the whole property.”

“Perhaps it might, if you could find a purchaser,” he answered; “and the land might return an income, if you could let it as you suggest; but, in the meantime, while the grass grows, the steed starves; and while you are waiting for your buyer and your speculative builder, Miss Blake and Miss Elmsdale will have to walk barefoot, waiting for shoes you may never be able to provide for them.”

There was truth in this, but only a half-truth, I felt, so I said:

“When examined at the inquest, Mr. Harningford, you stated, I think, that you were under considerable obligations to Mr. Elmsdale?”

“Did I?” he remarked. “Possibly, he had given me a helping-hand once or twice, and probably I mentioned the fact. It is a long time ago, though.”

“Not so very long,” I answered; “not long enough, I should imagine, to enable you to forget any benefits you may have received from Mr. Elmsdale.”

“Mr. Patterson,” he interrupted, “are we talking business or sentiment? If the former, please understand I have my own interests to attend to, and that I mean to attend to them. If the latter, I am willing, if you say Miss Elmsdale has pressing need for the money, to send her my cheque for fifty or a hundred pounds. Charity is one thing, trade another, and I do not care to mix them. I should never have attained to my present position, had I allowed fine feelings to interfere with the driving of a bargain. I don’t want River Hall. I would not give that,” and he snapped his fingers, “to have the title-deeds in my hands tomorrow; but as Miss Elmsdale wishes to sell, and as no one else will buy, I offer what I consider a fair price for the place. If you think you can do better, well and good. If—”

He stopped suddenly in his sentence, then rising, he cried, “It is a trick—a vile, infamous, disgraceful trick!” while his utterance grew thick, and his face began to work like that of a person in convulsions.

“What do you mean?” I asked, rising also, and turning to look in the direction he indicated with outstretched arm and dilated eyes.

Then I saw no need for him to answer. Standing in the entrance to the strong room was Robert Elmsdale himself, darkness for a background, the light of the gas falling full upon his face.

Slowly, sternly, he came forward, step by step. With footfalls that fell noiselessly, he advanced across the carpet, moving steadily forward towards Mr. Harringford, who, beating the air with his hands, screamed, “Keep him off! don’t let him touch me!” and fell full length on the floor.

Next instant, Munro was in the room. “Hullo, what is the matter?” he asked. “What have you done to him—what has he been doing to you?”

I could not answer. Looking in my face, I think Munro understood we had both seen that which no man can behold unappalled.

“Come, Hal,” he said, “bestir yourself. Whatever has happened, don’t sink under it like a woman. Help me to lift him. Merciful Heaven!” he added, as he raised the prostrate figure. “He is dead!”

To this hour, I do not know how we managed to carry him into the drawing-room. I cannot imagine how our trembling hands bore that inert body out of the library and across the hall. It seems like a dream to me calling up Mrs. Stott, and then tearing away from the house in quest of further medical help, haunted, every step I took, by the memory of that awful presence, the mere sight of which had stricken down one of us in the midst of his buying, and bargaining, and boasting.

I had done it—I had raised that ghost—I had brought the man to his death; and as I fled through the night, innocent as I had been of the thought of such a catastrophe, I understood what Cain must have felt when he went out to live his life with the brand of murderer upon him.

But the man was not dead; though he lay for hours like one from whom life had departed, he did not die then. We had all the genius, and knowledge, and skill of London at his service. If doctors could have saved him, he had lived. If nursing could have availed him, he had recovered, for I never left him.

When the end came I was almost worn out myself.

And the end came very soon.

“No more doctors,” whispered the sick man; “they cannot cure me. Send for a clergyman, and a lawyer, Mr. Craven as well as any other. It is all over now; and better so; life is but a long fever. Perhaps he will sleep now, and let me sleep too. Yes, I killed him. Why, I will tell you. Give me some wine.

“What I said at the inquest about owing my worldly prosperity to him was true. I trace my pecuniary success to Mr. Elmsdale; but I trace also hours, months, and years of anguish to his agency. My God! the nights that man has made me spend when he was living, the nights I have spent in consequence of his death—”

He stopped; he had mentally gone back over a long journey. He was retracing the road he had travelled, from youth to old age. For he was old, if not in years, in sorrow. Lying on his death-bed, he understood for what a game he had burnt his candle to the socket; comprehended how the agony, and the suspense, and the suffering, and the long, long fever of life, which with him never knew a remittent moment, had robbed him of that which every man has a right to expect, some pleasure in the course of his existence.

“When I first met Elmsdale,” he went on, “I was a young man, and an ambitious one. I was a clerk in the City. I had been married a couple of years to a wife I loved dearly. She was possessed of only a small dot [dowry]; and after furnishing our house, and paying for all the expenses incident on the coming of a first child, we thought ourselves fortunate in knowing there was still a deposit standing in our name at the Joint-Stock Bank, for something over two hundred pounds.

“Nevertheless, I was anxious. So far, we had lived within our income; but with an annual advance of salary only amounting to ten pounds, or thereabouts, I did not see how we were to manage when more children came, particularly as the cost of living increased day by day. It was a dear year that of which I am speaking.

“I do not precisely remember on what occasion it was I first saw Mr. Elmsdale; but I knew afterwards he picked me out as a person likely to be useful to him.

“He was on good terms with my employers, and asked them to allow me to bid for some houses he wanted to purchase at a sale.

“To this hour I do not know why he did not bid for them himself. He gave me a five-pound note for my services; and that was the beginning of our connection. Off and on, I did many things for him of one sort or another, and made rather a nice addition to my salary out of doing them, till the devil, or he, or both, put it into my head to start as builder and speculator on my own account.

“I had two hundred pounds and my furniture: that was the whole of my capital; but Elmsdale found me money. I thought my fortune was made, the day he advanced me my first five hundred pounds. If I had known—if I had known—”

“Don’t talk any more,” I entreated. “What can it avail to speak of such matters now?”

He turned towards me impatiently.

“Not talk,” he repeated, “when I have for years been as one dumb, and at length the string of my tongue is loosened! Not talk, when, if I keep silence now, he will haunt me in eternity, as he has haunted me in time!”

I did not answer, I only moistened his parched lips, and bathed his burning forehead as tenderly as my unaccustomed hands understood how to perform such offices.

“Lift me up a little, please,” he said; and I put the pillows in position as deftly as I could.

“You are not a bad fellow,” he remarked, “but I am not going to leave you anything.”

“God forbid!” I exclaimed, involuntarily.

“Are not you in want of money?” he asked.

“Not of yours,” I answered.

“Mine,” he said; “it is not mine, it is his. He thought a great deal of money, and he has come back for it. He can’t rest, and he won’t let me rest till I have paid him principal and interest—compound interest. Yes—well, I am able to do even that.”

We sat silent for a few minutes, then he spoke again.

“When I first went into business with my borrowed capital, nothing I touched really succeeded. I found myself going back—back. Far better was my position as clerk; then at least I slept sound at nights, and relished my meals. But I had tasted of so-called independence, and I could not go back to be at the beck and call of an employer. Ah! no employer ever made me work so hard as Mr. Elmsdale; no beck and call were ever so imperative as his.

“I pass over a long time of anxiety, struggle, and hardship. The world thought me a prosperous man; probably no human being, save Mr. Elmsdale, understood my real position, and he made my position almost unendurable.

“How I came first to bet on races, would be a long story, longer than I have time to tell; but my betting began upon a very small scale, and I always won—always in the beginning. I won so certainly and so continuously, that finally I began to hope for deliverance from Mr. Elmsdale’s clutches.

“I don’t know how”—the narrative was not recited straight on as I am writing it, but by starts, as strength served him—“Mr. Elmsdale ascertained I was devoting myself to the turf: all I can say is, he did ascertain the fact, and followed me down to Ascot to make sure there was no mistake in his information.

“At the previous Derby my luck had begun to turn. I had lost then—lost heavily for me, and he taxed me with having done so.

“In equity, and at law, he had then the power of foreclosing on every house and rood of ground I owned. I was in his power—in the power of Robert Elmsdale. Think of it—. But you never knew him. Young man, you ought to kneel down and thank God you were never so placed as to be in the power of such a devil—

“If ever you should get into the power of a man like Robert Elmsdale, don’t offend him. It is bad enough to owe him money; but it is worse for him to owe you a grudge. I had offended him. He was always worrying me about his wife—lamenting her ill-health, extolling her beauty, glorifying himself on having married a woman of birth and breeding; just as if his were the only wife in the world, as if other men had not at home women twice as good, if not as handsome as Miss Blake’s sister.

“Under Miss Blake’s insolence I had writhed; and once, when my usual prudence deserted me, I told Mr. Elmsdale I had been in Ireland and seen the paternal Blake’s ancestral cabin, and ascertained none of the family had ever mixed amongst the upper thousand, or whatever the number may be which goes to make up society in the Isle of Saints.

“It was foolish, and it was wrong; but I could not help saying what I did, and from that hour he was my enemy. Hitherto, he had merely been my creditor. My own imprudent speech transformed him into a man lying in wait to ruin me.

“He bided his time. He was a man who could wait for years before he struck, but who would never strike till he could make sure of inflicting a mortal wound. He drew me into his power more and more, and then he told me he did not intend to continue trusting anyone who betted—that he must have his money. If he had not it by a certain date, which he named, he would foreclose.

“That meant he would beggar me, and I with an ailing wife and a large family!

“I appealed to him. I don’t remember now what I said, but I do recollect I might as well have talked to stone.

“What I endured during the time which followed, I could not describe, were I to talk forever. Till a man in extremity tries to raise money, he never understands the difficulty of doing so. I had been short of money every hour since I first engaged in business, and yet I never comprehended the meaning of a dead-lock till then.

“One day, in the City, when I was almost mad with anxiety, I met Mr. Elmsdale.

“‘Shall you be ready for me, Harningford?’ he asked.

“‘I do not know—I hope so,’ I answered.

“‘Well, remember, if you are not prepared with the money, I shall be prepared to act,’ he said, with an evil smile.

“As I walked home that evening, an idea flashed into my mind. I had tried all honest means of raising the money; I would try dishonest. My credit was good. I had large transactions with first-rate houses. I was in the habit of discounting largely, and I—well, I signed names to paper that I ought not to have done. I had the bills put through. I had four months and three days in which to turn round, and I might, by that time, be able to raise sufficient to retire the acceptances.

“In the meantime, I could face Mr. Elmsdale, and so I wrote, appointing an evening when I would call with the money, and take his release for all claims upon me.

“When I arrived at Riven Hall he had all the necessary documents ready, but refused to give them up in exchange for my cheque.

“He could not trust me, he said, and he had, moreover, no banking account. If I liked to bring the amount in notes, well and good; if not, he would instruct his solicitors.

“The next day I had important business to attend to, so a stormy interview ended in my writing ‘pay cash’ on the cheque, and his consenting to take it to my bankers himself.

“My business on the following day, which happened to be out of town, detained me much longer than I anticipated, and it was late before I could reach River Hall. Late though it was, however, I determined to go after my papers. I held Mr. Elmsdale’s receipt for the cheque, certainly; but I knew I had not an hour to lose in putting matters in train for another loan, if I was to retire the forged acceptances. By experience, I knew how the months slipped away when money had to be provided at the end of them, and I was feverishly anxious to hold my leases and title-deeds once more.

“I arrived at the door leading to the library. Mr. Elmsdale opened it as wide as the chain would permit, and asked who was there. I told him, and, grumbling a little at the unconscionable hour at which I had elected to pay my visit, he admitted me.

“He was out of temper. He had hoped and expected, I knew, to find payment of the cheque refused, and he could not submit with equanimity to seeing me slip out of his hands.

“Evidentiy, he did not expect me to come that night, for his table was strewed with deeds and notes, which he had been reckoning up, no doubt, as a miser counts his gold.

“A pair of pistols lay beside his desk—close to my hand, as I took the seat he indicated.

“We talked long and bitterly. It does not matter now what he said or I said. We fenced round and about a quarrel during the whole interview. I was meek, because I wanted him to let me have part of the money at all events on loan again; and he was blatant and insolent because he fancied I cringed to him—and I did cringe.

“I prayed for help that night from Man as I have never since prayed for help from God.

“You are still young, Mr. Patterson, and life, as yet, is new to you, or else I would ask whether, in going into an entirely strange office, you have not, if agitated in mind, picked up from the table a letter or card, and kept twisting it about, utterly unconscious for the time being of the social solecism you were committing.

“In precisely the same spirit—God is my witness, as I am a dying man, with no object to serve in speaking falsehoods—while we talked, I took up one of the pistols and commenced handling it.

“‘Take care,’ he said; ‘that is loaded’; hearing which I laid it down again.

“For a time we went on talking; he trying to ascertain how I had obtained the money, I striving to mislead him.

“‘Come, Mr. Elmsdale,’ I remarked at last, ‘you see I have been able to raise the money; now be friendly, and consent to advance me a few thousands, at a fair rate, on a property I am negotiating for. There is no occasion, surely, for us to quarrel, after all the years we have done business together. Say you will give me a helping-hand once more, and—’

“Then he interrupted me, and swore, with a great oath, he would never have another transaction with me.

“‘Though you have paid me,’ he said, ‘I know you are hopelessly insolvent. I cannot tell where or how you have managed to raise that money, but certain am I it has been by deceiving someone; and so sure as I stand here I will know all about the transaction within a month.’

“While we talked, he had been, at intervals, passing to and from his strong room, putting away the notes and papers previously lying about on the table; and, as he made this last observation, he was standing just within the door, placing something on the shelf.

“‘It is of no use talking to me any more,’ he went on. ‘If you talked from now to eternity you could not alter my decision. There are your deeds; take them, and never let me see you in my house again.’

“He came out of the dankness into the light at that moment, looking burly, and insolent, and braggart, as was his wont.

“Something in his face, in the tone of his voice, in the vulgar assumption of his manner, maddened me. I do not know, I have never been able to tell, what made me long at that moment to kill him—but I did long. With an impulse I could not resist, I rose as he returned towards the table, and snatching a pistol from the table—fired.

“Before he could realize my intention, the bullet was in his brain. He was dead, and I a murderer.

“You can understand pretty well what followed. I ran into the passage and opened the door; then, finding no one seemed to have heard the report of the pistol, my senses came back to me. I was not sorry for what I had done. All I cared for was to avert suspicion from myself, and to secure some advantage from his death.

“Stealing back into the room, I took all the money I could find, as well as deeds and other securities. These last I destroyed next day, and in doing so I felt a savage satisfaction.

“‘He would have served them the same as me,’ I thought. All the rest you know pretty well.

“From the hour I left him lying dead in the library every worldly plan prospered with me. If I invested in land, it trebled in value. Did I speculate in houses, they were sought after as investments. I grew rich, respected, a man of standing. I had sold my soul to the devil, and he paid me even higher wages than those for which I engaged—but there was a balance.

“One after another, wife and children died; and while my heart was breaking by reason of my home left desolate, there came to me the first rumour of this place being haunted.

“I would not believe it—I did not—I fought against the truth as men fight with despair.

“I used to come here at night and wander as near to the house as I safely could. The place dogged me, sleeping and waking. That library was an ever-present memory. I have sat in my lonely rooms till I could endure the horrors of imagination no longer, and been forced to come from London that I might look at this terrible house, with the silent river flowing sullenly past its desolate gardens.

“Life seemed ebbing away from me. I saw that day by day the blood left my cheeks. I looked at my hands, and beheld they were becoming like those of someone very aged. My lameness grew perceptible to others as well as to me, and I could distinguish, as I walked in the sunshine, the shadow my figure threw was that of one deformed. I grew weak, and worn, and tired, yet I never thoroughly lost heart till I knew you had come here to unravel the secret.

“‘And it will be revealed to him,’ I thought, ‘if I do not kill him too.’

“You have been within an ace of death often and often since you set yourself this task, but at the last instant my heart always failed me.

“Well, you are to live, and I to die. It was to be so, I suppose; but you will never be nearer your last moment, till you lie a corpse, than you have been twice, at any rate.”

Then I understood how accurately Munro had judged when he warned me to be on my guard against this man—now harmless and dying, but so recently desperate and all-powerful for evil; and as I recalled the nights I had spent in that desolate house, I shivered.

Even now, though the years have come and the years have gone since I kept my lonely watch in River Hall, I start sometimes from sleep with a great horror of darkness upon me, and a feeling that stealthily someone is creeping through the silence to take my life!

XV

CONCLUSION

I can remember the day and the hour as if it had all happened yesterday. I can recall the view from the windows distinctly, as though time had stood still ever since. There are no gardens under our windows in Buckingham Street. Buckingham Gate stands the entrance to a desert of mud, on which the young Arabs—shoeless, stockingless—are disporting themselves. It is low water, and the river steamers keep towards the middle arches of Waterloo. Up aloft the Hungerford Suspension rears itself in mid air, and that spick-and-span new bridge, across which trains run now ceaselessly, has not yet been projected. It is a bright spring day. The sunshine falls upon the buildings on the Surrey side, and lights them with a picturesque beauty to which they have not the slightest title. A barge, laden with hay, is lying almost motionless in the middle of the Thames.

There is, even in London, a great promise and hope about that pleasant spring day, but for me life has held no promise, and the future no hope, since that night when the mystery of River Hall was solved in my presence, and out of his own mouth the murderer uttered his condemnation.

How the weeks and the months had passed with me is soon told. Ill when I left River Hall, shortly after my return home I fell sick unto death, and lay like one who had already entered the Valley of the Shadow.

I was too weak to move; I was too faint to think; and when at length I was brought slowly back to the recollection of life and its cares, of all I had experienced and suffered in the Uninhabited House, the time spent in it seemed to me like the memory of some frightful dream.

I had lost my health there, and my love too. Helena was now further removed from me than ever. She was a great heiress. Mr. Harningford had left her all his money absolutely, and already Miss Blake was considering which of the suitors, who now came rushing to woo, it would be best for her niece to wed.

As for me, Taylor repeated, by way of a good joke, that her aunt referred to me as a “decent sort of young man” who “seemed to be but weakly,” and, ignoring the fact of ever having stated “she would not mind giving fifty pounds,” remarked to Mr. Craven, that, if I was in poor circumstances, he might pay me five or ten sovereigns, and charge the amount to her account.

Of all this Mr. Craven said nothing to me. He only came perpetually to my sick-bed, and told my mother that whenever I was able to leave town I must get away, drawing upon him for whatever sums I might require. I did not need to encroach on his kindness, however, for my uncle, hearing of my illness, sent me a cordial invitation to spend some time with him.

In his cottage, far away from London, strength at last returned to me, and by the autumn my old place in Mr. Craven’s office was no longer vacant. I sat in my accustomed corner, pursuing former avocations, a changed man.

I was hard-working as ever, but hope lightened my road no longer.

To a penny I knew the amount of my lady’s fortune, and understood Mr. Harringford’s bequest had set her as far above me as the stars are above the earth.

I had the conduct of most of Miss Elmsdale’s business. As a compliment, perhaps, Mr. Craven entrusted all the work connected with Mr. Harringford’s estate to me, and I accepted that trust as I should have done any other which he might choose to place in my hands.

But I could have dispensed with his well-meant kindness. Every visit I paid to Miss Blake filled my soul with bitterness. Had I been a porter, a crossing-sweeper, or a potman, she might, I suppose, have treated me with some sort of courtesy; but, as matters stood, her every tone, word, and look, said, plainly as possible, “If you do not know your station, I will teach it to you.”

As for Helena, she was always the same—sweet, and kind, and grateful, and gracious; but she had her friends about her: new lovers waiting for her smiles. And, after a time, the shadow cast across her youth would, I understood, be altogether removed, and leave her free to begin a new and beautiful life, unalloyed by that hideous, haunting memory of suicide, which had changed into melancholy the gay cheerfulness of her lovely girlhood.

Yes; it was the old story of the streamlet and the snow, of the rose and the wind. To others my love might not have seemed hopeless, but to me it was dead as the flowers I had seen blooming a year before.

Not for any earthly consideration would I have made a claim upon her affection.

What I had done had been done freely and loyally. I gave it all to her as utterly as I had previously given my heart, and now I could make no bargain with my dear. I never for a moment thought she owed me anything for my pains and trouble. Her kindly glances, her sweet words, her little, thoughtful turns of manner, were free gifts of her goodness, but in no sense payment for my services.

She understood I could not presume upon them, and was, perhaps, better satisfied it should be so.

But nothing satisfied Miss Blake, and at length between her and Mr. Craven there ensued a serious disagreement. She insisted he should not “send that clerk of his” to the house again, and suggested if Mr. Craven were too high and mighty to attend to the concerns of Miss Elmsdale himself, Miss Blake must look out for another solicitor.

“The sooner the better, madam,” said Mr. Craven, with great state; and Miss Blake left in a huff, and actually did go off to a rival attorney, who, however, firmly declined to undertake her business.

Then Helena came as peacemaker. She smoothed down Mr. Craven’s ruffled feathers and talked him into a good temper, and effected a reconciliation with her aunt, and then nearly spoilt everything by adding:

“But indeed I think Mr. Patterson had better not come to see us for the present, at all events.”

“You ungrateful girl!” exclaimed Mr. Craven; but she answered, with a little sob, that she was not ungrateful, only—only she thought it would be better if I stayed away.

And so Taylor took my duties on him, and, as a natural consequence, some very pretty disputes between him and Miss Blake had to be arranged by Mr. Craven.

Thus the winter passed, and it was spring again—that spring day of which I have spoken. Mr. Craven and I were alone in the office. He had come late into town and was reading his letters; whilst I, seated by a window overlooking the Thames, gave about equal attention to the river outside and a tedious document lying on my table.

We had not spoken a word, I think, for ten minutes, when a slip of paper was brought in, on which was written a name.

“Ask her to walk in,” said Mr. Craven, and, going to the door, he greeted the visitor, and led Miss Elmsdale into the room.

I rose, irresolute; but she came forward, and, with a charming blush, held out her hand, and asked me some commonplace question about my health.

Then I was going, but she entreated me not to leave the room on her account.

“This is my birthday, Mr. Craven,” she went on, “and I have come to ask you to wish me many happy returns of the day, and to do something for me—will you?”

“I wish you every happiness, my dear,” he answered, with a tenderness born, perhaps, of olden memories and of loving-kindness towards one so sweet, and beautiful, and lonely. “And if there is anything I can do for you on your birthday, why, it is done, that is all I can say.”

She clasped her dear hands round his arm, and led him towards a further window. I could see her downcast eyes—the long lashes lying on her cheeks, the soft colour flitting and coming, making her alternately pale and rosy, and I was jealous. Heaven forgive me! If she had hung so trustfully about one of the patriarchs, I should have been jealous, though he reckoned his years by centuries.

What she had to say was said quickly. She spoke in a whisper, bringing her lips close to his ear, and lifting her eyes imploringly to his when she had finished.

“Upon my word, miss,” he exclaimed, aloud, and he held her from him and looked at her till the colour rushed in beautiful blushes even to her temples, and her lashes were wet with tears, and her cheeks dimpled with smiles. “Upon my word—and you make such a request to me—to me, who have a character to maintain, and who have daughters of my own to whom I am bound to set a good example! Patterson, come here. Can you imagine what this young lady wants me to do for her now? She is twenty-one today, she tells me, and she wants me to ask you to marry her. She says she will never marry anyone else.” Then, as I hung back a little, dazed, fearful, and unable to credit the evidence of my senses, he added:

“Take her; she means it—every word, and you deserve to have her. If she had chosen anybody else I would never have drawn out her settlements.”

But I would not take her, not then. Standing there with the spring landscape blurred for the moment before me, I tried to tell them both what I felt. At first, my words were low and broken, for the change from misery to happiness affected me almost as though I had been suddenly plunged from happiness into despair. But by degrees I recovered my senses, and told my darling and Mr. Craven it was not fit she should, out of very generosity, give herself to me—a man utterly destitute of fortune—a man who, though he loved her better than life, was only a clerk at a clerk’s salary.

“If I were a duke,” I went on, breaking ground at last, “with a duke’s revenue and a duke’s rank, I should only value what I had for her sake. I would carry my money, and my birth, and my position to her, and ask her to take all, if she would only take me with them; but, as matters stand, Mr. Craven—”

“I owe everything worth having in life to you,” she said, impetuously, taking my hand in hers. “I should not like you at all if you were a duke, and had a ducal revenue.”

“I think you are too strait-laced, Patterson,” agreed Mr. Craven. “She does owe everything she has to your determination, remember.”

“But I undertook to solve the mystery for fifty pounds,” I remarked, smiling in spite of myself.

“Which has never been paid,” remarked my employer. “But,” he went on, “you young people come here and sit down, and let us talk the affair over all together.” And so he put us in chairs as if we had been clients, while he took his professional seat, and, after a pause, began:

“My dear Helena, I think the young man has reason. A woman should marry her equal. He will, in a worldly sense, be more than your equal someday; but that is nothing. A man should be head of the household.

“It is good, and nice, and loving of you, my child, to wish to endow your husband with all your worldly goods; but your husband ought, before he takes you, to have goods of his own wherewith to endow you. Now, now, now, don’t purse up your pretty mouth, and try to controvert a lawyer’s wisdom. You are both young: you have plenty of time before you.

“He ought to be given an opportunity of showing what he can do, and you ought to mix in society and see whether you meet anyone you think you can like better. There is no worse time for finding out a mistake of that sort, than after marriage.” And so the kind soul prosed on, and would, possibly, have gone on prosing for a few hours more, had I not interrupted one of his sentences by saying I would not have Miss Elmsdale bound by any engagement, or consider herself other than free as air.

“Well, well,” he answered, testily, “we understand that thoroughly. But I suppose you do not intend to cast the young lady’s affections from you as if they were of no value?”

At this juncture her eyes and mine met. She smiled, and I could not help smiling too.

“Suppose we leave it in this way,” Mr. Craven said, addressing apparently some independent stranger. “If, at the end of a year, Miss Elmsdale is of the same mind, let her write to me and say so. That course will leave her free enough, and it will give us twelve months in which to turn round, and see what we can do in the way of making his fortune. I do not imagine he will ever be able to count down guineas against her guineas, or that he wants to do anything so absurd. But he is night in saying an heiress should not marry a struggling clerk. He ought to be earning a good income before he is much older, and he shall, or my name is not William Craven.”

I got up and shook his hand, and Helena kissed him.

“Tut, tut! fie, fie! what’s all this?” he exclaimed, searching sedulously for his double eyeglass—which all the while he held between his finger and thumb. “Now, young people, you must not occupy my time any longer. Harry, see this self-willed little lady into a cab; and you need not return until the afternoon. If you are in time to find me before I leave, that will do quite well. Good-bye, Miss Helena.”

I did not take his hint, though. Failing to find a cab—perhaps for want of looking for one—I ventured to walk with my beautiful companion up Regent Street as far as Oxford Circus.

Through what enchanted ground we passed in that short distance, how can I ever hope to tell! It was all like a story of fairyland, with Helena for Queen of Unreality. But it was real enough. Ah! my dear, you knew your own mind, as I, after years and years of wedded happiness, can testify.

Next day, Mr. Craven started off to the west of England. He did not tell me where he was going; indeed, I never knew he had been to see my uncle until long afterwards.

What he told that gentleman, what he said of me and Helena, of my poor talents and her beauty, may be gathered from the fact that the old admiral agreed first to buy me a partnership in some established firm, and then swore a mighty oath, that if the heiress was, at the end of twelve months, willing to marry his nephew, he would make him his heir.

“I should like to have you with me, Patterson,” said Mr. Craven, when we were discussing my uncle’s proposal, which a few weeks after took me greatly by surprise; “but, if you remain here, Miss Blake will always regard you as a clerk. I know of a good opening; trust me to arrange everything satisfactorily for you.”

Whether Miss Blake, even with my altered fortunes, would ever have become reconciled to the match, is extremely doubtful, had the beau monde not turned a very decided cold-shoulder to the Irish patriot.

Helena, of course, everyone wanted, but Miss Blake no one wanted; and the fact was made very patent to that lady.

“They’ll be for panting you and me, my dear,” said the poor creature one day, when society had proved more than usually cruel. “If ever I am let see you after your marriage, I suppose I shall have to creep in at the area door, and make believe I am some faithful old nurse wanting to have a look at my dear child’s sweet face.”

“No one shall even separate me from you, dear, silly aunt,” said my charmer, kissing first one of her relative’s high cheek-bones, and then the other.

“We’ll have to jog on, two old spinsters together, then, I am thinking,” replied Miss Blake.

“No,” was the answer, very distinctly spoken. “I am going to marry Mr. Henry Patterson, and he will not ask me to part from my ridiculous, foolish aunt.”

“Patterson! that conceited clerk of William Craven’s? Why, he has not darkened our doors for fifteen months and more.”

“Quite true,” agreed her niece; “but, nevertheless, I am going to marry him. I asked him to marry me a year ago.”

“You don’t mane that, Halana!” said poor Miss Blake. “You should not talk like an infant in arms.”

“We are only waiting for your consent,” went on my lady fair.

“Then that you will never have. While I retain my powers of speech you shall not marry a pauper who has only asked you for the sake of your money.”

“He did not ask me; I asked him,” said Helena, mischievously; “and he is not a beggar. His uncle has bought him a partnership, and is going to leave him his money; and he will be here himself tomorrow, to tell you all about his prospects.”

At first, Miss Blake refused to see me; but after a time she relented, and, thankful, perhaps, to have once again anyone over whom she could tyrannise, treated her niece’s future husband—as Helena declared—most shamefully.

“But you two must learn to agree, for there shall be no quarrelling in our house,” added the pretty autocrat.

“You needn’t trouble yourself about that, Halana,” said her aunt. “He’ll be just like all the rest. If he’s civil to me before marriage, he won’t be after. He will soon find out there is no place in the house, or, for that matter, in the world, for Susan Blake”; and my enemy, for the first time in my memory, fairly broke down and began to whimper.

“Miss Blake,” I said, “how can I convince you that I never dreamt, never could dream of asking you and Helena to separate?”

“See that, now, and he calls you Helena already,” said the lady, reproachfully.

“Well, he must begin sometime. And that reminds me the sooner he begins to call you aunt, the better.”

I did not begin to do so then, of that the reader may be quite certain; but there came a day when the word fell quite naturally from my lips.

For a long period ours was a hollow truce, but, as time passed on, and I resolutely refused to quarrel with Miss Blake, she gradually ceased trying to pick quarrels with me.

Our home is very dear to her. All the household management Helena from the first hour took into her own hands; but in the nursery Miss Blake reigns supreme.

She has always a grievance, but she is thoroughly happy. She dresses now like other people, and wears over her grey hair caps of Helena’s selection

Time has softened some of her prejudices, and age renders her eccentricities less noticeable; but she is still, after her fashion, unique, and we feel in our home, as we used to feel in the office—that we could better spare a better man.

The old house was pulled down, and not a square, but a fine terrace occupied its site. Munro lives in one of those desirable tenements, and is growing rich and famous day by day. Mr. Craven has retired from practice, and taken a place in the country, where he is bored to death though he professes himself charmed with the quiet.

Helena and I have always been town-dwellers. Though the Uninhabited House is never mentioned by either of us, she knows I have still a shuddering horror of lonely places.

My experiences in the Uninhabited House have made me somewhat nervous. Why, it was only the other night—

“What are you doing, making all that spluttering on your paper?” says an interrupting voice at this juncture, and, looking up, I see Miss Blake seated by the window, clothed and in her right mind.

“You had better put by that writing,” she proceeds, with the manner of one having authority, and I am so amazed, when I contrast Miss Blake as she is, with what she was, that I at once obey!

The Haunted River

(1877)

I

MY SISTER AND I

How we came to live there was in this wise.

The old story, eternally old, eternally new, of death and ruin, had been wrought out for our disadvantage amongst the Yorkshire moors; and thus it happened that at the beginning of the year 18—, Georgie and I found ourselves in London, frequenting house-agents’ offices in search of a detached residence, and fearing we should never meet with what we wanted within a reasonable distance of the metropolis.

For there are residences and residences; and the sort of habitation we had mentally in our view differed materially from the kind of place people sent us to look at.

We did not know exactly at first what Londoners understand by a detached house, but we soon learnt.

They mean a building not attached to any other, it is true; but they mean also a house overlooked possibly, and a garden overlooked certainly, a front entrance commanded by the eyes of all the neighbours, and with no privacy even in the drawing-room worth mentioning.

In fact, the phrase at once conjures up before the Cockney imagination the Cit’s usual box at Streatham, Clapham, Peckham, or Clapton—the desirable villa residence, built of half-burnt bricks, road mud, green timber, and stucco—trim and tidy, brand-new, cold and comfortless—with a small, arid desert at the rear called a garden, with a little fence to right and left, dividing its borders from those of next door—with a morsel of green in front of each window, adorned probably by a puzzle-monkey and a stone vase, or a hungry-looking flower-bed laid out as an open tart, or arranged to resemble a dish of trifle.

The only other item required to render this detached habitation a paradise is a summer-house designed after the fashion of a booth in a suburban tea-garden, in which the happy tenant can smoke late of a summer’s evening, and the children carry their toys and quarrel to their hearts’ content on a wet day.

On the other hand, what we wanted was a cottage, no matter how small, surrounded by its own little territory, and isolated, to all practical intents and purposes, from its kind.

Whether it were one or two-story—whether it were thatched or slated—whether we had to enter the living rooms through the kitchen, or reach the hall door through the parlour, signified not a bit.

If, to use the graphic expression of an Irish lady, we were obliged to “open the door to put on our stockings,” seemed a matter of small consequence so long as out of doors we had some elbow-room, some walk, some grass-plot we could pace up and down without our movements being observed from a back window or the steps leading to a neighbour’s balcony.

Moorland, common, farm, heath, it signified not, so long as the rent we paid gave us the free use of “plenty of out of doors;” but neither on moorland, common, farm, nor heath, could we find anything like what we wanted at anything like a rent we could afford to pay.

North, east, south, and west, we sought for some suitable abode. We advertised, we answered advertisements; we felt we must be getting known at railway-stations, and we could not help noticing that estate-agents fought shy of giving us “orders to view.”

“The sort of thing you require, madam,” said a managing clerk one day, “can only be had a few hundred miles from London. You will never find a place such as you indicate, at the rent you propose as a limit, within easy distance of the metropolis. If a place of the kind ever existed within an hour of town, it has been snapped up long ago. In all my experience, I can only say I never met with it. Trouble, madam! Oh, pray do not mention that! No trouble—most happy, I am sure. Only regret we have nothing on our books, and are not likely to have anything. What I was about to advise was, that if you could fix upon a locality—say, in Wales, or Cornwall, or Sark (now, Sark is not a bad place! for you, I should imagine, just the thing), or Scotland, or Ireland, or Cumberland, or—or, in fact, anywhere a little remote—you should go down there, take lodgings, and look about you. You would be certain to find something; but places of that kind do not come into our hands—they would not pay for advertising. Assure you, I feel really grieved that we have not had the pleasure of finding you a residence. Lovely place to be sold tomorrow; quite what you would appreciate, if matters had all been otherwise. The sweetest place! Beautiful house, splendid gardens, and one hundred acres of land! In strict confidence, I believe that estate will go for an old song—eighteen thousand or thereabouts. Well, well! as you very truly remark”—we had not uttered a syllable—“it is not everyone who has eighteen thousand pounds lying loose in his waistcoat pocket. I only wish you had, ladies; for this is a property I can recommend. If you do not meet with anything to suit you, perhaps you will look round again. We might have something, though I fear it is not likely. No, no! Pray do not say another word. Only too delighted if we could have done anything for you. Good morning.”

“My dear Georgie,” I remarked to my sister, a week later on, as I took off my bonnet after another fruitless expedition, “we must give it up, I am afraid. All this gadding about costs money and wastes time. We had better look out for a little house in Camden or Kentish Town, and pitch our tent amongst bricks and mortar at once. It must come to that eventually, for I cannot go hundreds of miles from London, and no house such as we want is to be had within fifty miles, at any rate.”

“Poor old Peg, you are tired as tired can be,” remarked my pretty sister, who, seated upon our mutual bed, surveyed me quite dispassionately from the vantage grounds of coolness and beauty the while I laved, and brushed, and talked.

“Tired! I should think I am tired,” was the rejoinder; “and so would you have been had you walked along miles of dusty roads, been scorched by the heat, aggravated by care-takers, robbed by fly-drivers, and—”

“Come and have some tea,” suggested Georgie.

Never, I think, never since the world began did two sisters so love each other as Georgie and myself; and yet we are not “own” sisters. Georgie’s mother was not my mother; I am years older and ever so much plainer than the girl Benjamin of my father’s later life; but I love her—I have always loved her—I shall go on loving her till many things cease for me altogether.

Aye, my dear, both our mothers died while we were yet too young to know what for us died with them; and when I was eight, and you a baby in arms, we foregathered, as the Scotch say, and our friendship—I use the word in its highest, noblest sense—has survived all sorts of shoals and hidden dangers—prosperity, adversity, the flattery of acquaintances, the coldness of so-called friends.

We have been rich, we have been poor, we have been joyous, we have been sorrowful together.

In the English language there is no word which should have power to destroy our affection for one another.

I love you, dear. I have always loved you; I always shall; though you will call me Peg—a name I utterly abhor.

“Come and have some tea, then,” says my pretty sister, putting her soft hand in mine, and rubbing her sweet face against my cheek; and, as usual, I succumb and obey.

As Georgie well knows, tea exercises upon me a benignant influence.

Were I a lion before partaking of one soothing cup, I should be a lamb before a second could be offered.

The crafty little witch is so well aware of the fact that, even to this day, she manages me as she manages her husband—with pleasant words and a lure of the thing we most delight in.

“Are you good and Christian now, Peg?” asked she of the lovely face, when I had finished my tea and the account of my adventures—results arrived at simultaneously.

“I am always good and always Christian,” I answered, not feeling, by the way, at all sure of being either. “What is it you want, Georgie? So much coaxing must be intended as a preliminary to persuasion.”

“You are right, as usual, Peg. Let us make one journey more. There is a house advertised in today’s paper that I feel satisfied is the very place we have been looking for.”

“Now, my dear—”

“Now, Peg—”

“How often before have you felt the same conviction?”

“Not the same conviction; not the absolute certainty, at all events, which possesses me that this cottage is the cottage which has been standing vacant for us, possibly for years.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

“Listen to what the advertisement says,” entreated my sister. “‘To be let on lease or otherwise, a detached cottage, containing three sitting and four bedrooms, kitchen, wash-house, good garden, and paddock—altogether about 1 ½ acres’”

“What a capacious cottage it must be!” I interrupted.

“Do be quiet, captious critic. ‘Within ten minutes’ walk of Maytree Station, whence Waterloo Station is reached in three-quarters of an hour. Pump of excellent water. Taxes low. Rent £25. For address, apply to Mr. Gridge, Station-master, Maytree.’

“Now, that,” said my sister, as she concluded, “is, I am satisfied, the place we have been in search of. Let us go and see it.”

“But, Georgie, consider,” I remonstrated, “it will cost us ten shillings, at the very least; and only think of all the ten shillings we have spent on these wild-goose chases. We are only losing valuable time and wasting money we ought to be saving. Believe me, we had far better make up our minds at once to a house in a row, or one of a pair. We shall be able to make a comfortable home for ourselves even amongst bricks and mortar, never fear.”

For a moment the bright face clouded, the lovely eyes dimmed; but then Georgie mastering her disappointment, said bravely:

“Don’t mind my folly, Peg. If we have to live in town, I will try to think town delightful; but humour my fancy about this Maytree place. If it should prove unsuitable, I will not speak about the country again. Perhaps, after all, London would be best for us; but, still, it is such a change—it does seem a little hard after dear old Grangedale.”

“It does,” I agreed, feeling the change for her as I had never felt it for myself; “and I would never cross your fancy did the £ s. d. not obtrude itself. Each journey we take seems but so much money thrown away. Half a sovereign more, however, cannot make much difference; so we will go to Maytree, and see this wonderful cottage tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” she entreated; “you are tired and out of sorts, and—”

“And you think that might affect my estimate of the house containing a garden and paddock,” I laughed. “No, my dear, I am not so foolish as all that comes to. If you like the place and the neighbourhood, we will take the house. Make your mind quite easy on that point.”

“How you spoil me, Peg.”

“I am afraid I do, Georgie. And now let us see where Maytree is.”

The very next forenoon we were travelling down the South Western line, through the fair, serene county of Surrey, so dear to the hearts of Londoners, for which, indeed, every Londoner seems to entertain a passionate and, to my mind, unaccountable attachment.

Well, it is as difficult to assign any reason for a man’s love for one description of scenery, as for his infatuation for one style of beauty in woman.

So far as I am concerned, all I can say is, there are counties in England, and near the great metropolis also, I consider as lovely as tender, winsome Surrey; but that has nothing to do with this story!

We found Maytree a dull, quiet, unromantic station.

As a rule, the stations on the South Western line have nothing specially interesting in their appearance; and Maytree, spite its rural name, did not present tree or flower or shrub for our contemplation.

Had, in fact, a slice from one of the Vauxhall platforms been sent down by goods-train and set up in a yard well strewed over with rough and unpleasant gravel, the result could not have looked less like the country than the place which was our destination.

In blank disappointment, Georgie stared about her, while I, stepping up to the station-master, who chanced to be on the platform, questioned him about the advertisement which had brought us to Maytree.

At first he looked aggrieved, then perplexed; but light dawning upon him, he at length said,

“Oh! I know. You mean Holly Cottage—it is straight down the road. You can’t miss it. Here, Jim, you are going that way; show these ladies Donaldson’s place—the key is next door, at Mrs. Gibbs’s. If you just mention my name, she will let you have it,” he added, speaking to us.

What an arid bit of road that was along which Jim, evidently unversed in the usages of polite society, preceded us!

Building operations had been going on near the station, and the highway—naturally composed of sand—was plentifully strewed with pieces of broken brick, over which we picked our steps gingerly.

On our right hand were the “carcases”—that is, I believe, the correct and technical expression—of various shops and houses in a more or less forward state of incompleteness; while on the left lay scrubby hedgerows, dusty as to foliage, meagre as to undergrowth, not a twig in their length and breadth reaching higher than one’s waist.

“Cheer up,” I whispered to Georgie; “roads near a station are always like this.”

“What horrid roads they must be, then!” answered my sister.

Nevertheless we persevered in our intention, Jim, shod in very heavy boots, tramping on in front, and leaving behind for our benefit a number of odours in which those of an ill-kept farm-yard, corduroy, tobacco, and mortar were most prominent.

Certainly it was a hideous thoroughfare. I did not like to look at Georgie—poor disappointed Georgie, as, under a broiling sun, we plodded along a road destitute of grass, beauty, or promise, so kept my eyes fastened upon Jim, and took such a mental photograph of every stain and patch in that young fellow’s garments, that he has really proved a mine of wealth to me in the way of reproduction.

“There be Donaldson’s,” said our guide at last, pointing an extremely dirty finger towards a low, new, mean-looking house, standing in its own little garden, and flanked to right and left by a smithy and a carpenter’s workshop.

The shrubs in the garden looked as if they had been planted about half an hour, and the very mortar stood out from between the bricks as if expostulating about being presented in all its juvenile nakedness to a criticising public.

“Need we go in?” asked Georgie, faintly—poor, pretty Georgie, who had so pinned her faith to that advertisement!

“I think we may as well see it through,” I answered.

Accordingly, after recompensing Jim, who being evidently unaccustomed to a dole of more than the value of a pint of inferior ale, at once touched his hat and waxed gracious exceedingly, we proceeded to the residence of Mrs. Gibbs, mentioned Mr. Gridge’s name, and were at once presented with the right of entrée to Donaldson’s Holly Cottage.

For myself, having expected nothing, I was not disappointed.

I unlocked the front door, went over the cottage, paced the garden, looked out upon the paddock, and then returned to Georgie, who stood by a side-window disconsolately surveying some gigantic sun-flowers.

“Peg,” she said, solemnly, “I am disgusted. I should like to make Donaldson refund our fare and the value of your lost day; but as that is impossible, let us take the next train back to town, and secure the first house we see at a possible rent in a decently respectable street. I only wish Mr. Donaldson were here, that I might tell him what I think of his cottage and his advertisement.”

I put my hands on her shoulders—Georgie was a little apt to be impetuous—a quality, indeed, she retains to this hour, and said:

“My dear, be just; look around. Wherein has Donaldson deceived us? Is not the cottage detached—is there not the one acre and a half of land? For gardening purposes is not the garden admirably adapted? The place certainly does not realize our imaginings, but is that the fault of Donaldson? Don’t you see, Georgie, that we have been running after an idea—and—”

“We had better give up the race.”

“I fancy we must. But as we have gone to some expense this morning, let us explore the neighbourhood—let us try to obtain some return for our money. We may just as well make a day of it, and see all that there is to be seen round and about.”

“You dear old darling!” said my sister, slipping her hand around my arm.

Ah! Georgie, how good God was when, though He took many, many other blessings away, He left me you.

II

A SHORT LOVE STORY

The farther we got from the station, the prettier became the road.

Very soon we had left behind the unfinished houses, the nursery grounds, the mean shops, the paltry cottages, and found ourselves in a rich valley, where the grass grew long and thick, where meadow sweet scented the air, where the lark sang high and clear, where the note of the corn-crake seemed to make silence audible, where everything was so calm and peaceful that Georgie’s face clouded at the thought of returning to dusty streets, and small rooms, and the close, confined atmosphere of our London lodgings.

For the home which was home to us no longer had been spacious and beautiful; set in goodly grounds, surrounded by many a fair acre of park, and wood, and water; and though neither of us was so cowardly as to repine for the loss of mere material advantages, still we could not help feeling the change from wealth in the country to poverty in the town.

“This is delicious, Peg, isn’t it?” said my sister, standing quite still, and drawing in a long breath of sweet, pure undefiled air. “How I wish we could stay here forever.”

“Perhaps you would like to take Mr. Donaldson’s desirable residence,” I suggested, laughing; but she shook her head.

“I am afraid, dear, it must be town for us after all As you rightly say, this eternal house-hunting means loss of time, and loss of money. I mean to be good and contented now. I shall not look at another advertisement of a house to let, and you shall not hear another word from me in disparagement of the great metropolis.”

I looked at her winsome face, and remembering the brilliant future I had planned for her, the proud delight our dead father had taken in her beauty, and her winning, graceful ways, there came over me the sad, sick feeling, which often seemed to weigh down my heart, when I contrasted all that now appeared possible with what had once been well nigh certain.

As she spoke we were standing near a lane or by-road diverging from the highway.

It seemed to be a very pretty road, shaded by arching trees, and crossed by a trickling stream, spanned by a tiny foot-bridge, rustic and picturesque to an extent.

“Let us go down there,” suggested my sister, and so, quite idly and unconscious of what we were doing, we turned aside from the main road, and went forward to meet our fate.

If I had known all that would come of setting our faces towards that bridge, could I have gone on?

Hardly, I think.

Though years have come, and years have departed, and the past, with its terror and horror, is replaced by a bright and happy present, there are times when I cannot bear to be alone—when the old dread and fright return, and are too much for me—when I could scream if anyone came near shod with silence—when if I am spoken to or touched by a person approaching unawares, I have to constrain myself, or I should shriek aloud.

It was not any sudden alarm that produced this; it was an hourly, daily wear and tear that destroyed my nervous system, and which, while producing at the time apparently little effect, really undermined my constitution and sapped my courage.

For I am not courageous now.

I, who once feared neither burglar nor ghost, dread the darkness as if it were an enemy—see spectres in the fitful shadows, and feel my heart beat nervously, whenever the slightest unwonted noise breaks the stillness of the night watches.

A lovely road, certainly.

Elm trees are not plentiful in some parts of Surrey, but they bordered that lane, and their branches, interlacing, formed a roof of vivid green above our heads.

It was leafy June, and the wild roses were blossoming in the hedgerows, while the starry flowers of the convolvulus covered the hawthorn trees, which had lost their glory of flower and fragrance.

Even the ditches by the wayside were masses of almost tropical luxuriance and beauty.

Docks and nettles—the bane and the antidote—massed themselves together; tansy was knotting itself for flower. Ragged Robin was running in and about the beech hedge, dotted at intervals by the elm trees, and every now and then a vivid bit of colour was supplied by the gorse which is never out of blossom, save when kissing is out of fashion.

It was exquisite—the calmness, the brooding peace, the soft Surrey air, the blue sky seen at intervals through a tracery of greenery, the ripple of the tiny stream over the stones, the plash of a larger body of water in the distance; my own soul seemed filled with the beauty of the place, while Georgie could only squeeze my hand at intervals, to express her delight by a silence more eloquent than words.

After a little time the way widened; to right and left there began to stretch patches of grass land by the road-side.

The elm trees ceased to shade us; we no longer walked beside the ditches filled with rank vegetation, and we could see over the hedgerows a land of plenty, of meadows where the grass grew knee-deep, of cornfields where the green wheat was dotted with brilliant poppies, stretching away as far as the eye could follow.

Closer came the regular plash, plash, of the water.

We could not see it, but the sound seemed to draw us onward.

“There must be a river not far off. That is the noise of a weir,” said my sister; but she was wrong as to her latter conjecture.

All at once the road took a sudden bend, and then we found that the sound we had heard was the waste water from a mill-pond, rushing down a paved incline into an artificial course which had been made for it.

As for the mill, it was closed, falling to decay, in parts roofless—in all places rotten—silent, neglected.

Still and useless was the broken wheel, no bucket of which could have held water.

An uprooted willow-tree lay across the stream, and from the opposite bank some solitary pines, their crests twisted northward with the force of the south winds, looked sombrely upon the desolation which had been wrought.

Years must have passed since a sack of wheat was carried through those closed doors.

The very spirit of loneliness seemed to pervade the place.

There was not a child, a dog, or any other living creature, besides ourselves and a few cows, within earshot of the spot.

I have often sketched it since.

From many points of view the old mill figures in various landscapes the public is good enough to admire; but I have never been able to reproduce to my own satisfaction, or to convey to the mind of the spectator, even a portion of the brooding mystery which, on first seeing the place, seemed to me to hang over it.

“What an eerie spot!” remarked my sister, after we had looked at the rushing water, and the sad pine-trees, and the broken wheel, and the silent mill, for many minutes in silence. “Don’t let us stand here any longer, Peg;” and she slipped her hand again within my arm, and led me forward.

“It is an eerie spot,” I agreed. “What tale is there attached to it, I wonder?”

“Only that the miller made his fortune, and left off grinding, most likely,” she answered, laughing. “But look, Peg, there is a house to let. Is not that sufficiently detached to meet your views?”

“Yes; and so is Windsor Castle, no doubt,” was my scoffing reply; for the place towards which Georgie’s forefinger pointed was, indeed, one of those residences which are described in house-agents’ advertisements as “suitable for a gentleman of position.”

Here was no modest cottage with garden fenced roughly in from a waste of moorland—no small house built on the side of a lonely moor, but a proper edifice enclosed by brick walls and well-grown hedges, with glimpses of conservatories, with stacks of chimneys, with yards and stabling, and all those other appurtenances which say as plainly as inanimate objects can sometimes speak:

“This is no place for poor people—a long rent is asked for this most desirable residence, which requires, in addition, a handsome income to keep it up.”

“This residence,” however, had clearly not been kept up; the brick walls wanted pointing, the fences tarring, the moss scraping from the roofs of the outbuildings, the branches of the overhanging trees sawing off, the weeds clearing away from the edges of the footpath.

The very board on which appeared the notice “To be let” was rotten, and had shifted from its position, whilst the paint of the lettering had cracked and peeled till the statement was almost illegible.

The entrance-gates, which were high and closely boarded, had evidently not been opened for a considerable period; but by standing on tiptoe, and looking over a portion of the wall where parts of the coping was broken down, we managed to get a sight of the house, a square edifice only two stories high, with a broad veranda shading the lower rooms upon two sides.

Above and below, the windows were French, opening to the floor.

On the drive grass was growing; in fact, it was difficult to say where the gravel began and the lawn ended.

Closed and shuttered were the casements, silent as the grave the house.

Not a curl of smoke issued from one of the chimneys; not a trace of life appeared about the premises.

Under the blue sky of that bright June day, the old house, where once upon a time children must have laughed and lovers whispered soft nothings, stood desolate.

To me there has always been something sad exceedingly about the aspect of an empty house.

People exist, I am told, indeed I am aware, who, the moment they see vacant rooms and uncurtained windows, at once enter into a calculation as to the number of yards of carpet and lengths of drapery necessary to cover the floors and festoon the curtains; but to my sorrow, my extreme sorrow, my order of mind is different.

To a vivid imagination and sympathising soul, what are the carpets, and the hangings, and the furniture, and the drapery, and the napery of any house on earth?

’Tis the people that have lived in the house—filled it with joy and sorrow, with smiles and tears, with the tragedy and comedy of life—who supply the interest; the people that have loved and rejoiced and sorrowed and died, or gone away and left the old home desolate, like some deserted human being.

We looked at the house silently for a little time; then espying a door ajar in the fence, we pushed it open and entered the grounds.

For their size they were simply lovely.

Water, water everywhere—gardens sloping down to a clear, glassy river—lawns reflected in the limpid mirror.

Roses hanging over the stream, and swaying lightly backwards and forwards, as if moved by the sight of their own beauty.

Willow-trees dipping their branches in the flood—not a large place; afterwards we found the whole area enclosed was something under three acres, but so situated and so arranged as to give the idea of greater extent.

We had noticed that the road took another abrupt turn just beyond the entrance-gates—a turn so abrupt, in fact, that at first one might have imagined the house was built across the end of the highway.

Once in the gardens, we discovered the reason for this—viz., that the river took a sudden bend immediately behind the outbuildings.

On one side the premises were thus entirely bounded by water, while the mill-stream, diverted from its original source at a higher level further up the river, came flowing down a channel cut for it through the garden, thus, after a fashion, forming an island on which the mill and house were situated.

Yes, it was lovely.

What though the roses bloomed in the midst of weeds—what though sunflowers flared under the apple-trees laden with fruit—what though the globe artichoke had grown into a giant shrub, and was opening its lively bloom amid the sweet peas and convolvuli which were climbing over it—what though the docks beside the mill-stream were like palm in their stately growth and deep rich foliage?

The place was beautiful, exceedingly; more beautiful to my eyes than it ever seemed with the grass close-mown, and the weeds destroyed, and the sunflowers grubbed up, and the smooth hand of civilization and cultivation passed over the glorious picturesqueness, the prodigal generosity, the profuse wealth of vegetation in which, when Nature once says, “This land shall be covered with greenery,” the kind mother revels.

“When you have made your fortune, Peg, we will rent this place,” said my sister, breaking the silence at length.

“When the prince comes, Georgie, he shall buy it, and you must, both of you, make me free of a couple of rooms.”

“If the prince mean to do one half of the things you are always planning for him to execute, I wish he would come at once,” said Georgie, without a blush or the faintest sign of shamefacedness.

She was heart-whole, this sister of mine, and the prince existed solely in my own hope and imagination.

With all my soul I trusted he would come while she was young and fair.

I wanted him.

I longed for the lover—good, rich, handsome, clever, devoted, who should rescue my darling from the sordid life so unsuited for one like her, and transplant my flower from amongst the stinging nettles and pricking thorns to a soil where the graces and the beauties of her mind and body might have scope full and free for development.

For me there could be no prince forever; not merely was I that fatal eight years older than my sister, and plain, so that beside her I looked as delft when contrasted against porcelain; but there was a story in my past—a little story that may seem small and poor enough to you who read, but which to me meant the dimming of life’s sunshine through all the years to come.

I was young when it all happened—only seventeen; but I loved him with a depth, an entirety, and a constancy which I know is rare at any age.

We had been brought up almost together, for he was my cousin, and my father looked upon him almost as his own son. He it was who would have succeeded to the broad lands and the fair acres of our Yorkshire home had he lived.

In these three words you have the story.

He was young; he was full of life and spirits; he longed to see the worlds beyond the ocean, and he returned to us no more.

I can see him now, my boy lover—for he was but a boy—his blue eyes full of tears, his lips wearing a forced smile, the fair, uncovered locks of his curly hair, glistening like gold in the sunshine, holding me in his arms the morning he left, and whispering: “Be true, Maggie, till I come back.”

And he never came back; from the day he sailed we never heard tale nor tiding of his fate.

The vessel never entered port after it left England, and he—well, he was but one of many who were waited for, prayed for, longed for, hoped for, and at last given up as lost.

Ah! no, he never came back.

There is more vitality in the bunch of wild flowers he gathered for me the last evening we walked together over the moors, and that now lie withered and colourless in my desk, than in the blue eyes which were so clear and frank; in the cheeks still smooth as those of a girl; in the voice whose every tone was familiar to me; in the hands that used to hold mine; in the heart once so warm, now colder than Greenland’s snows.

I have been true to you, and the love which never changed nor grew weary is as fresh in its intensity, as keen in the bitterness of its anguish as on the bright summer’s morning when though you tried to bear up bravely, you almost broke down, and said, in the dear voice so long silent—ah! so long—

“Be true to me, Maggie, till I come back.”

III

WHY WE CAME TO LONDON

We had almost reached the limit of the flower garden, and were approaching the low fence, which, covered with climbers and creepers, divided the ornamental from the useful portion of the grounds, when we were met by a woman coming through a little gate formed of trellis-work, who carried some cabbages in her hand, and who started nervously when she perceived our presence.

Recovering herself, she curtsied, and would have passed on, but I stopped her, saying:

“I fear we are trespassing, and have alarmed you.”

“Oh! you are quite welcome,” she answered. “I was frightened just for the minute. I didn’t hear you coming, and it is but seldom we see strangers so far down the lane. I thought perhaps, too, you might have come to see the house, and I was just cutting a cabbage. These are all going to waste now.”

I looked around the place.

Could it be possible there was anyone careful enough to consider whether the vegetables were gathered or not?

From the woman’s manner I decided that there was, and yet it seemed incredible in the face of such utter neglect, such wonderful wildness.

“The place does not seem to have had much money spent upon it lately,” I remarked, more in order to say something than from any other cause.

“Money!” repeated the woman, scornfully; “the master’s the wrong sort for that. He’d let the wood rot before he would let my husband spend sixpence for paint, unless it was out of his own wages. No; there ain’t much spend about him.”

“But surely he is very foolish,” interposed Georgie. “It is such a pity to see so sweet a spot going to wreck and ruin; besides, it would let sooner if it were in good repair.”

“I don’t think it will let in a hurry,” said the woman. “At first there used to be plenty of gentlefolk come to see it, but they didn’t like the loneliness or the amount of water, or the boats passing (they used to pass up here once), or the rooms was too small, or the ceilings too low; there was always something they didn’t like, and so the master at last wouldn’t advertise it in the papers no more, and it is quite a rarity for anybody to ask to go over. Perhaps, ladies, you would like to take a look through the house.”

“If not giving you too much trouble,” I was beginning, when she interrupted me.

“As for that, it aren’t no trouble, if you don’t mind going over by yourselves, and only hanging up the key again when you come out. I must go home to get my husband’s dinner. He works on the line, and he’ll be back shortly. I’ll just unlock the door, and then you can go where you please and take your time.”

“I suppose the owner asks a very high rent?” said Georgie, interrogatively, probably with a prospective eye to the time when I should have made my fortune.

“Well, Miss, it do sound a tidyish bit of money, but I have heard folk say that to anybody as would care to live in it, the place is dirt-cheap. Fifty pounds a year the master told my husband he would take. He used to ask more than that after he first left it.”

Georgie squeezed my hand, and I confess my own pulses beat quicker.

Fifty pounds a year was much more than I had intended to expend upon rent; but if there were not some mistake, about which my mind misgave me, this house, with its productive gardens, its sloping lawns, its drooping willows, its delicious quiet, its wealth of waters, should be ours.

Yes; here Georgie would not feel the change from wealth to poverty as she had done in our confined London lodgings; here the roses which had faded a little from her cheeks would bloom once more; here, whatever private economies we might have to practise, we should retain some, at all events, of the externals of a better time; here, last also, but by no means least, I should find space, leisure, rest, and light in which to pursue the art that was to provide us with food and shelter and clothing in the days to come, when the small sum of money I possessed through my mother must be at length exhausted, and nothing save the one talent vouchsafed to me remained between us and starvation.

It may save perplexity hereafter if I say at once I was then and am now an artist.

From my childhood I possessed a certain gift of reproducing what my eyes beheld, and had a passion for doing so.

In the merest spirit of indulgence, without the faintest foreboding that one day I should have to turn to brush and palette for a subsistence, my father permitted me to cultivate such genius as had been given me to the uttermost.

I learned from such instructors as were available.

We travelled—we haunted old collections, we visited churches and galleries and palaces, till the very spirit of painting seemed to enter into my life.

Through all the time of my brief happiness, through all the weary time when I looked for the return of the lover who never came back, when I was glad, when I was sorry, this one talent stood my friend.

And thus it came about that when we were thrown almost penniless—by comparison with what had been—on the world, the first idea which occurred to me was—

“I have a means of livelihood within my reach if I like to use it. I have painted for my pleasure; I must now paint for profit.”

As I thought, so I determined.

Now that our father was dead, our fortune shattered, our home in the hands of a stranger, little remained to tie us to our birthplace.

Yet still it had been our birthplace, and we had friends there true and tried, who looked upon it as right and natural that we should stay amongst them, and in the neighbourhood which had known our prosperity be safe and respected in our adversity.

It is a mistaken sentiment, I fancy, to continue under altered circumstances where old traditions bind one, but I felt chary of expressing this opinion; and it was only when we were fairly away upon what ostensibly seemed a mere visit to London that I summoned sufficient courage to say we should return as permanent residents to the old familiar haunts no more.

Many friends were offended, some hurt—all astonished at our foolhardiness. At least, as most were candid enough to point out, we had left our acknowledged position behind us.

As the remembered daughters of Grangedale, we should always have been received at the best houses, received invitations to parties, been certain of society; but in any other district who would know or care who our father had been, or remember in our poverty we were once looked upon as heiresses?

There was the curate who had already placed himself—his stipend, his correct ear for music, and his hundred a year allowed by an elder brother—quite at my disposal.

There was Sir Roger Newmarket, who only wanted the slightest word of encouragement to “enter” for Georgie, and make her free of his hall, his stables, his fortune, his cellar, his dogs, and the holy state of matrimony, from which already he had divorced one wife, and might, sensible men hinted, find means to divorce another.

There was old Mrs. Trumpington, who asked me to reside with her, “as an equal,” which meant I was to receive no payment for any services I might render, and passe Lady Ramdon, who wanted to take Georgie with her to town in the season, that she might provide a new attraction—sorely needed—to her house.

These, and other things of the same sort, were, as our friends justly pointed out, advantages which did not fall in the way of most girls, and they entreated us to pause ere relinquishing them.

“As to your idea of making money by painting,” wrote one adviser, “I really am astonished that so-otherwise-sensible a person should have permitted herself to entertain such a delusion. Your pictures were certainly very pretty, and nice, and all that sort of thing, but when you remember that men who have devoted their lives to this ‘profession,’ as it is now called, are only able to earn bread and cheese, you cannot imagine that you, who, as Mrs. Trumpington says, are ignorant of the very rudiments of the art, will make enough even to purchase your materials. Reflect, my dear, ere reflection be too late; and if you still persist in severing yourself from all your friends, at least do not be so self-willed and selfish as to drag Georgina down with you into the pit you are digging.”

All of which would have been hard on me had I not felt pretty sure of ultimately succeeding, and possessed reasons for my faith, because Mrs. Trumpington and the writer had been amongst the most audacious of my flatterers.

Mrs. Trumpington indeed once went so far as to say a little moorland study I was engaged upon when she called, bleak, grey, sad, and lonely, “might have been done by Rubens,” and it was discouraging to know that so profound a criticism had its origin in the flimsiest spirit of polite compliment!

Before stating our intentions, however, I had taken the precaution of surveying the London field of operations, and knew I could make something more than “would supply me with materials,” and therefore if the opinion of our friends was in its very frankness trying, the faith which was in us enabled Georgie and myself to smile genuinely, if sadly, at the advice which was so practically useless, even though kindly intended.

Our friends thought us rash simpletons, and perforce we had to hear the expressions of their opinions to that effect.

Was there ever a man or a woman yet, I wonder, who, having the ability to strike out a course for him or herself, and the will to support that ability, has not been compelled in like manner to stand firm, lest the power of the criticism which really means, “After all you are a very poor, feeble creature, clever and wise though you consider yourself,” should prove strong enough to undermine convictions that, formed almost unconsciously, in silence and in solitude, after long deliberation and weary mental argument, are destined sooner or later to bear much fruit.

I had known how it would be perfectly, and taken up a coign of vantage before declaring my intentions.

I was strong to fight, patient to wait, confident in my own powers, but I was weak to argue.

That was the defenceless part of my armour; through it a child might have killed the most valiant of my intentions dead with a single thrust.

Accordingly I did not argue; I accepted the criticisms on my want of capacity resignedly, and simply stating I meant to “try my fortune,” made up in obstinacy what I felt I lacked in decision.

“You will be back amongst us before the end of the year,” was the encouraging prophecy with which one letter concluded, but the prophecy proved false.

The story I have to tell commenced for us on the Midsummer day of that year which our friends believed must find us convinced of our folly and converted from the evil of our ways, and every link in the chain binding us to the Haunted River is connected, more or less, with the lonely house, on the threshold of which the caretaker, having unlocked the door, left us standing, while she hurried away to cook the cabbages she had, in the weed-filled garden, cut for her husband’s dinner.

IV

THE MILL HOUSE

Consciously on the threshold of a strange house, we paused ere entering; then we passed into the hall, and in that moment unconsciously entered upon a new epoch in our lives.

A large square hall, with four doors opening off it, two facing us, a third to our right hand, a fourth to our left; when compared with the size of the hall, the staircase leading to the first floor appeared mean and insignificant.

Originally, as we afterwards learned, the house had been a much smaller edifice, and the staircase, fitting enough for its former surroundings, had not been changed with the increase of space around.

Here was one reason, I perceived at once, why the place might not be “everybody’s money,” and as we proceeded in our survey, other causes were not slow to suggest themselves.

As a residence for a family, the place was inconvenient in almost every respect; as a home for Georgie and myself, it seemed simply perfect.

Let me take it in detail, however, and describe the house as it appeared to us on that day when we first went to Maytree.

The hall was lighted not merely by a domelight above, but from two narrow windows, one on each side of the wide front door. It was a spacious hall, a hall calculated to raise undue expectations with regard to the rest of the house, but it delighted Georgie, who, skipping over the squares of black and white marble which formed the pavement, cried aloud—

“It cannot be, Peg. The woman must have meant one hundred and fifty and some enormous premium.”

By this time we were au fait at house-hunting—understood all the evils and pitfalls which attached to “desirable residences,” all the tricks of landlords, all the devices of house-agents, and out of the fulness of our experience my sister opened her mouth and spoke.

“I think it is fifty,” I answered.

For the fact is, the moment I set foot within the threshold I felt we should eventually live in the place.

There came to me a strange sense of familiarity which could only have been bred by some spirit of prophecy.

As I walked forward to open the door of the drawing-room, the action did not seem strange. Somehow I knew all about the house.

Nothing was inharmonious—nothing unwonted. It was all as though the abode had been mine from infancy—as though I were at length taking possession of a property which was mine own—with which I had either formerly been well acquainted, or in which I had dwelt in some previous state of existence.

The drawing-room was a good-sized, ill-proportioned apartment, one window of which commanded the drive, while the other two opened on the verandah and the sloping lawn beyond.

The chimney-piece was of grey marble inlaid with white, and on the wide hearth were dogs for burning billetwood.

To the right hand of the fireplace was a door opening into a small withdrawing-room, a mere atom of a room, provided, however, with two windows, completing the four opening on to the lawn.

There was no means of ingress from the house to this small room except through the larger apartment, but from without it could be entered by either of the windows, or by a glass door which faced the north.

Retracing our steps into the hall, we looked at the room on the left hand of the hall as we entered.

Judging from the bookshelves which lined the spaces on each side of the fireplace, and from a lumbering old writing-table occupying a recess opposite the front and only window the apartment boasted, this room had been used as a library; and indeed it looked dingy enough to have served as a study to some magician engaged in unholy investigations.

To right and left of the recess were doors which, when opened, only disclosed two perfectly dark closets, fitted up with shelves, and smelling uncomfortably of blackbeetles and damp.

But still nothing seemed strange to me.

“I must have been in this house before, or seen one exactly like it,” I thought, with a shiver I could not repress.

“What is the matter?” asked my sister. “Are you cold? Why, Peg, you look quite white!”

“Nonsense!” I answered. “It is the shade of this horrid paper.”

“It is a horrid paper,” she agreed. “Do look at those hideous patches like yellow frogs sprawling over that bilious green ground. It is not a bad room, though, if the walls were differently covered; and that is a fine chimney-piece, Peg; how beautifully it is carved! Oh, I do hope and trust there may be no hitch about the place, and that we shall be able to live here! Must not it be lovely in the mornings, with the sun falling aslant on all that rich flat country on the other side of the stream, and should not we have lovely saunters up and down the garden-paths in the moonlight? Peg, I can’t believe it real. I fancy it must be all a dream.”

It was like a dream to me.

Could it have been in my sleep that I had beheld just such another house, and entered similar rooms?

To that dark heavy writing-table, to the crouching lions that supported the irons for the logs to lie across, to the wreaths of flowers, the dead game, the elaborate leaves carved upon the high oak mantel-piece—everything was familiar to me as the remembered decorations in my father’s house.

Nay, even a crack across one of the squares of white marble in the hall seemed to have some meaning attached to it, so persistently did my eye seek and single it out from its fellows.

“I wonder how that got broken,” remarked Georgie, as we once again entered the hall; “and why ‘the master’ does not have it replaced?”

Afterwards, when we learned how it had got broken, we marvelled all the more that another square had not been substituted.

“This is the room for you, Peg,” said my sister, as she turned the handle and entered the apartment which lay at the back of the hall. “North aspect, I should say; a good cheerless view of a sullen river and a sunken barge, plenty of withies, plenty of rushes, plenty of rank vegetation, plenty of sky! Here is the place for your easel; there a snug corner for my work-table. Is the floor oak, or merely stained and varnished? Well, it does not much matter which. We shall require no furniture except a square of carpet and a large glass fire-screen. Talk of subjects—why, you have only to paint that barge half full of water, that desolate-looking river, those tropical weeds, those dreamy waterlilies, and our fortune is made. Peg, you cannot give up this place. We shall come and live here, shall we not?”

“Yes, dear, if we can get it,” I answered.

I confess that painting-room recommended itself to me.

Already my fingers itched to sketch that dreary scene on the details of which Georgie had enlarged.

If I could only manage to catch the combined colour of the reeds and the grasses, the willows, the river, the trees in the distance, the dingy barge with only one bright tint about it (a band of red painted across its stern), I knew the picture ought to sell; I felt certain it ought to procure me profitable orders.

“Let us have a look at the kitchens, and then go upstairs,” I suggested; and accordingly, leaving the future studio, we opened the fourth door leading out of the hall, and found ourselves in a passage, or vestibule, that gave admittance into the offices, and also into a small inner yard, which seemed to have once been used as a drying-ground, but which was now knee-deep with weeds and grass.

One side of the yard, which was of a triangular shape, was bounded by the kitchens; another by the back wall of the dining-room and a laundry; while, on the third, lay what appeared to have been a towing-path [for barges and boats on the river]—indeed, we afterwards learned that at one time a towing-path had run along the whole length of the gardens and yards.

At the extreme corner of the laundry, and completely blocking out the light from the small window beside the stove, grew two immense yew-trees, the lower branches of which formed an archway through which one could see the river flowing quietly, darkly on.

As for the kitchens, they were small, dingy, and inconvenient, but certainly large enough for all the cooking Georgie and I were likely to require; and when we went upstairs, we discovered that the house only boasted two even tolerable bed-chambers, though there were eight in all.

The space over the hall was wasted in a broad passage, two small dressing-rooms, and the staircase.

“A house originally built without a plan, and subsequently enlarged without judgment,” was the criticism I once heard passed upon the place; but, after all, what a blessing it is there are people content to set all architectural rules at defiance, and to build apparently grand houses, suitable really for only very little folk!

What would the possessors of small incomes do if it were impossible for them to find other habitations than the dreary houses in a dreary street, designed by builders for those who are content to find a roof to cover them, instead of a home to satisfy their hearts?

We stayed so long—Georgie and I—examining the house—peeping into all the cupboards, inspecting the empty stables, wandering up and down the lawns, dreaming beside the water, idly eating the fruit we had been told we might gather—that when we re-entered the lower rooms to close the shutters I had opened, the sun was westering, and the evening close at hand.

“I am sorry to leave it,” said Georgie, as she hung up the key, wistfully eyeing the house; “I do hope we shall come to live here.”

“Depend upon it, this is the place which has been standing vacant for us,” I answered; and yet the while I spoke I shivered, I could not tell why. I liked the house; I hoped we should be able to take it; and yet, thrice since we stood within its boundaries, I had experienced that sensation which is described as “feeling someone walking over one’s grave.”

After all, however, that might mean nothing more alarming than the damp of an unaired house long tenantless.

To such signs and tokens I am apt to be a little indifferent; nor is this much to be wondered at when we remember there are people who shiver so often and so unreasonably as to suggest the idea that their final place of repose will be the junction of four cross roads.

V

MRS. SHOOTER’S NARRATIVE

At the gate which had given us admission, we found the caretaker, who was come to make all secure for the night.

“I dursn’t leave it unlocked,” she explained, turning the key as she spoke, “or all the lads from Maytree would be down before daybreak after the fruit. It is lucky for us they are afraid of being about the place after nightfall, or my husband would have to sit up when the moon shone.”

“What are they afraid of?” asked Georgia

We were by this time pacing along the road in the direction of the river, side by side with Mrs. Shooter, who resided in a small cottage which had once been a lock-house, from which, as she informed us, there was a field-path leading direct to Maytree station, and cutting off all the long corner round which we had walked.

“You can see now where the station is,” remarked Mrs. Shooter, pointing to where a line of smoke marked the progress of a down train.

“Why are the boys afraid to come here after nightfall?” repeated Georgie, who was not to be diverted from her question by fifty Maytrees or a hundred trains.

The woman hesitated.

“It is all just nonsense, you know, Miss, and I do not think Mr. Lauston would like to have it talked about; but I do not mind mentioning to you, ladies (who are ladies—this parenthesis was caused by the value of the coin of the realm with which we had recompensed her civility)—“that they are afraid of the miller’s ghost.”

“The miller’s ghost!” echoed Georgie. “Tell us all about it, do. I love ghost stories; I like hearing of ghosts; I delight in reading about them. There is to me a fearful joy in being frightened out of my wits—in feeling ‘creepy’ all over. What had the miller done? Why has he a ghost? Did he live up at the mill where the water comes down as it does at Lodore? Did he hang himself to one of the pine-trees, or did he kill somebody and grind the bones up into flour?”

We had reached Mrs. Shooter’s house by this time.

At one side there stretched a weil-stocked garden, where Mr. Shooter, in the abandon of home life—dressed in shirt and trousers, with braces hanging artistically loose, his throat bare, and very old carpet slippers’ on his feet—was employed in sticking peas.

On the other side was an enclosure devoted to the use of such live stock as hens, ducks, pigeons, and so forth; whilst in front a bit of greensward sloped down to the lock, through which the water now slipped unceasingly without let or hindrance.

“Will you be pleased to step inside, ladies?” asked Mrs. Shooter. “The kettle is boiling, and I could make you a cup of tea in a minute.”

“We do not want any tea, thank you,” answered Georgie; “we have been eating fruit ever since you left us. But I do want to hear all about the miller. Who was he, and why did he hang himself?”

“He didn’t hang himself,” said the woman, smiling, in spite of her natural solemnity, at Georgie’s impulsiveness; “and it is all an old story now.”

“The older the better,” quoth my sister, seating herself on one of the wooden levers of the lock, and motioning me to do likewise. “Pray begin, Mrs. Shooter. First, what was the miller’s name?”

“Dingley, Miss. He was a stranger to these parts. Came up from Gloucestershire, or some of them outlying places, to learn the business from Tom Snelling, who then owned the mill. I have heard my grandfather say, a better-looking nor a cheerier young man no person need have wished to see.”

“And how did he get the mill?” asked Georgina.

“Mr. Snelling had a daughter, and they made a match of it; and they all lived together in that very house you have been over today. It was not so big then as it is now, but it was considered a wonderful fine place for the likes of them to own. They planted most of the trees, and laid out the gardens, and built the stabling for their horses. They meant to make a mansion of it, and thought they were going to be great folks. Ah! deary me! My grandfather helped lay them squares of marble in the hall; you noticed one of them was cracked, maybe. That was done the morning they carried Mr. Dingley in stiff and stark, but with all the weeds tangled about his clothes just as they took him out of the water.”

“Then he drowned himself?” suggested my sister.

“Well, Miss, the rights of it never will be known now,” was the answer. “For years and years things went well at the mill. Everything Tom Snelling and his son-in-law touched seemed to prosper. I have heard my grandfather say, if they bought a horse he turned to gold in their hands, and the same with everything else. They got land cheap, and then the railway came and put up its value.

“They took houses for bad debts, and in a few years’ time got three times the rent they were let at by the old owners.

“Mr. Dingley had a troop of young children; and finer children, I believe, nobody need have desired. They were to be brought up quite ladies and gentlemen. The girls had a piano, and learnt foreign languages; and the boys went to boarding-school, and were to go afterwards to college.

“I don’t know how it came about—I don’t think anybody ever quite understood how it happened—but the word began to go round that Dingley was hard up.

“The old man had been dead then some time, and people did say Dingley was grown too much of a gentleman to attend to his business, and that he would one day repent having left the management to his foreman while he rode after the hounds.

“He got to be too fond of horses and betting, and suchlike; and when he found out how he had been robbed, and began to stick to business again, it was too late.”

“He was ruined, I suppose,” said Georgie.

“He was robbed, I believe. My father worked for him, and said if ever a man slaved like a negro, it was Dingley. He put down his horses; he took out his old coat again, and was at the mill before anybody came of a morning, and stayed writing up his books long after everyone had gone of a night. Many a time, when I was a child, I have seen the lights in Dingley’s mill still burning after I was abed, and heard my father say to my mother, ‘The master is still at it; wonder when he sleeps.’”

“Poor fellow! and he was beaten after all—”

“Aye, Miss, cheated and hunted to death, they do say. He had to raise money, and somehow, I don’t myself understand the rights of it, but he gave too much power into the hands of the people who advanced what he wanted. He signed some paper he ought not to have signed; and just when he thought he saw his way clear, he was beggared.”

“And so he drowned himself?”

“Well, Miss, as I said before, nobody ever knew the rights of it.

“It was one 31st of December, when the winter had set in uncommon early and severe, and the ground was like iron, and the river frozen over, and the trees white, and the earth white, and a cold moon shining over all, that the notice was served on him at the house yonder.

“My aunt was housemaid there, and she answered the door to the little dark fellow who came down from London to see the master.

“Mr. Dingley rose from supper, and went into the hall She heard what he said. Many a time I have listened to her repeating the very words.

“‘What is it?’ says the master.

“And then the other handed him a folded paper.

“Mr. Dingley opened it and asked what it meant.

“The little man made some answer she could not understand, and then the master said, ‘My God! you can’t mean it.’ After that they went into the parlour together, the master taking a lamp from the hall to light them, and the stranger talked on for a while.

“My aunt could distinguish his voice, though she could not hear what he said, and in about five minutes the door opened, and the little man came out, and seeing her, said—‘You had better send somebody to him.’

“My aunt went into the room, and found him sitting beside the table—the paper before him, and his face covered with his hands.

“Just then the front door banged after the little man, and he lifted his head at the sound, and noticed my aunt.

“‘Can I get you anything, sir?’ she asked.

“‘No; go away,’ he said, ‘and keep everyone from me.’

“But she went and told her mistress, and she went to him, and the two of them—the husband and the wife—saw their old year out and their new year in, sitting there shut in together.

“My aunt sat up in the kitchen till the mistress came out and told her to go to bed.

“The poor lady’s face, she said, was changed with grief, and when she answered my aunt and said she could do nothing more, her voice was quite hoarse and thick with tears.

“Well, my aunt went to bed, and at last fell asleep.

“She did not know how long she had been asleep, but it must have been some time, for the moon had sailed right round, and was looking in at her window, when she was awoke by someone shaking her.

“‘Polly, wake up,’ says her mistress; ‘wake up, I want you.’

“Then between sleeping and waking, my aunt sat up, and rubbed her eyes, and asked what was the matter.

“‘I can’t find your master anywheres,’ says her mistress; ‘and I am afraid to go out by myself to look for him. I want you to come with me.’

“So it all came back to my aunt, and she got out of bed and huddled some clothes on her, and the pair of them went out together—all round the garden and the yard, and along the towing path, but ne’er a sign of the master could they light on.

“It was clear he hadn’t been off the premises, for the gates all locked inside, and they were fast enough.

“Well, morning broke at last, and then they sent far and near in search of him.

“People did not know what to think. Some said he had run away, others that he had gone to murder the man who had bested him. Mrs. Dingley was like one distracted.

“My aunt began to fancy she heard queer noises after dark, and got into the habit of waking all of a sudden thinking the master was calling her.

“A young gentleman from London came and took the lead at the mill, and a dirty-looking old man arrived one day at the house, and stayed there.

“Mrs. Dingley herself was asked how soon she could make it convenient to move; and still the frost held, and the snow lay—hard, and white, and stiff, on the ground, and the water, and the trees—and there was ne’er a line or sign of the master.”

Clearly it was not the first time, by many, Mrs. Shooter had recounted this story.

Practice had made her perfect, and there was really quite a dramatic rendering in the unconscious parallel she drew between the silence of nature bound in a grip of iron and the silence of Mr. Dingley lying dead under the ice.

I could not help watching the woman’s face as, in utter ignorance of the point she was making, she paused for an instant to take breath; but Georgie’s eyes were now following the stream—picturing, on that lovely summer’s evening, the secret it had once, when the snow lay, and the frost held—drifted on with, slowly, sluggishly.

With his hands in his pocket, at this juncture, Mr. Shooter came sauntering towards us.

He had evidently heard the latter part of his wife’s utterances, for, after vouchsafing a curt greeting, expressed in the words, “Servant, ladies,” he remarked:

“So you’re on about Dingley again, Sophy. Well, it don’t matter to me. What we get out of the old house is no such fortune that I need try to stop your tongue when once it is set wagging.”

And having so spoken, he surveyed the three of us with a broad and benevolent smile, as one who should say:

“You are but a parcel of poor women, and if it is a pleasure to you, as I know it is, to talk, and listen to a parcel of nonsense, go ahead, I won’t prevent you.”

“When did they hear of him?” asked my sister, lifting her eyes from the river, and turning them on Mrs. Shooter.

They are lovely eyes. Even Mr. Shooter, I have been since given to understand, likened them that evening to stars.

“They gave the poor lady no peace, my aunt told me, till she named a day for leaving.

“She sent to the lawyers, and she sent to her own friends; but lawyers and friends could do nothing for her.

“The house and the mill had been signed away, and the people they belonged to were a-goading of her to quit, and leave them to enjoy their ill-gotten goods in peace and comfort.

“But what my aunt said, and what I says” (this with a defiant look towards burly Mr. Shooter), “is, as no good comes to them as robs the widow and the orphan, and so it turned out.”

“You can go on, Sophy, as you’re started. I won’t hinder you,” observed Mr. Shooter, pulling a blade of grass, and commencing to chew it with an air of considerable relish.

“They called an auction, Miss,” proceeded Mrs. Shooter, addressing my sister, and turning one shoulder upon her bigger half, “and from far and near folks gathered to the sale.

“Some came from prying, but most from pity.

“They had lived there, and never done harm to living creature—good master, good mistress.

“If a man was sick, neither old Tom Snelling nor his son-in-law said, ‘Let him go on the parish.’

“There was something of his wages for him every week, and always soup, or a bit of meat, or a quart of milk, or a nice pudding from the house, if one of the children ran up for it.

“As for the mistress—well, you should have heard my aunt talk about her.”

Was I mistaken?

Could it be that at this juncture Mr. Shooter vouchsafed me something as near a wink as was compatible with good manners?

I do not think I was mistaken.

Mr. Shooter replied to my gaze of inquiry with a smile, and, culling another blade of grass, began chewing it also with a relish.

“And Mr. Dingley?” asked my sister.

“I am coming to him, Miss. It wanted two days of the auction when a thaw began—a ground thaw, if you know what that means.”

Georgie nodded.

“The snow melted off the trees, and the earth grew soft, and the ice broke up and floated down stream.

“At the house, bills were all over the place; the lots were laid out, the buyers had been to view, the children were all away—some sent to this relative, and some to that. My aunt had packed up all Mrs. Dingley’s clothes and her own, and most persons—even Mrs. Dingley and my aunt—had a notion the master was gone foreign, and would write where the mistress was to meet him.

“Well, the auction morning came: it was a grey, drizzling morning, with a south wind blowing, and everybody in the house was astir early.

“The mistress was walking from room to room, holding a cup of tea in her hand.

“She had been round the garden and the stable-yard, and bidden good bye to everything, when there came a pull at the front bell.

“My aunt went to the door, and saw one of the bargemen.

“‘We’ve brought back the master,’ he said. ‘Will ye break it to the mistress?’

“They’re rough, you know, them bargemen; but many a pint of beer they’d drank at the house—and they was sorry.

“Just then Mrs. Dingley came out of the parlour.

“‘What is it?’ she asks, as he had done.

“‘Mistress, they’ve brought him back,’ says my aunt.

“‘Brought who back?’ and then she looked out, and see something carried on men’s shoulders nearing the house.

“Nobody rightly knew what happened after that.

“She stepped forward as they crossed the threshold, and flung back the sail that covered him, and then, with a scream enough to rend your heart, fell into the arms of my aunt, who caught her.

“But that scream frightened one of the bearers, and he, dropping his end of the load, broke that square of marble you may have noticed, Miss.

“Ah! poor Mr. Dingley, he had come home for the last time, with the rushes and the reeds tangled about him, and a spray of yew tightly grasped in his right hand.

“You may have noticed them yews, Miss, in the back yard. Well, he must have met his death under them—walked in, Miss, unknowing—walked in a purpose; nobody can tell how.”

“Anyhow, he was drowned,” said Mr. Shooter oracularly.

“And his widow died broken-hearted, and the children emigrated or went to the bad,” supplemented Mrs. Shooter, after which remark there ensued a dead silence.

VI

WHAT IKE TOSER BEHELD

“I suppose,” I hazarded, at length breaking the silence,“that is the reason the house remains vacant.”

“Not a bit of it,” answered Mr. Shooter, cheerfully. “The Dingleys is an old story now, and it is only here and there one that minds aught about them. Why, Mr. Lauston lived nigh upon seven year at the Mill House; and if once you saw him, you would know there wouldn’t be room for him and a ghost under one roof.”

“Who is Mr. Lauston?” I inquired.

“Why, him as owns the place you have been looking over and the ground the mill stands on, and the farm land round and about.”

“Then if people have forgotten the story of Mr. Dingley’s death, why doesn’t the house let?”

“Well, there must be some reason; but I can’t tell you what it is exactly. For one thing, the place is lonesome; it would be dull for a small family, and ’tain’t just big enough for a large one. Then some folk don’t like the look of the old mill, and others can’t abear the water.

“They will have it the house must be damp, which it ain’t, and that the ground-floor must be flooded in the winter, which has never happened yet; and some ladies are afraid of their children falling into the river, and others that their sons and daughters will go boating and get upset. Then some people won’t pay a big rent, and yet think there must be something against the place for such a low rent to be asked.

“They will have it that robbers could come up the stream, and it is no use telling them there has not been a house broken into about Maytree for twenty year; or else they fancy the water must make the situation aguish, as if a running stream could ever be unwholesome. Then some wants land, and the farm is let off; and others think the gardens would cost a mint of money to keep up—there is no end to the objections folk make; and then the place do look dull—there ain’t no doubt of that; and it is known there have been queer stories about the mill. But, ladies, if so be as you want a house, I’ll say this much: you might search Surrey through, and not find a quieter, nor a healthier, nor a cheaper place than that identical one down yonder.”

“I am inclined to agree with you,” I answered. “How did it happen the mill was allowed to go to ruin?”

“That I cannot say. Some says it has gone to ruin for this reason, and some for another.”

“It seems odd, though, does it not?”

“It does,” agreed Mr. Shooter, and he plucked and chewed a fresh blade of grass without looking at me; then he said—

“Look here, ladies, I don’t want to deal one bit unfair by you; I can see you’re sweet on the house, now ain’t you?”

“Well, my good woman has told you her story,” he went on, after we had confessed to the soft impeachment of which his previous sentence accused us. “And an old story it is, and worth nothing as against the house. But the mill, that’s quite a different matter.”

“We don’t want to rent the mill,” interrupted Georgie.

“All the better perhaps for you, Miss,” said Mrs. Shooter; “there have been queer things about that mill.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“All old women’s tales, most like,” her husband answered; “but still folk do say Mr. Dingley he walks there to this hour. Mind, Miss, I can’t speak to the truth one way or other, only—”

“What he means,” said Mrs. Shooter, taking up the unfinished parable, “is, that when Byers first took the mill, the day he got possession he found a man sitting in the office as vanished into air when he looked at him. Next morning the men saw an arm and hand stretched right across the door, barring it from staple to staple, an arm covered with a coat sleeve of dark grey tweed—a hand long and genteel, with a gold ring on the little finger—a gold ring set with a red stone.”

This was too much.

I could not avoid glancing towards Georgie with a smile.

“I don’t wonder at your making light of it, ladies,” said Mrs. Shooter; “but Byers found it no laughing matter. Men won’t work where something that ain’t flesh and blood is always meeting and aggravating them. Now the stones had great lumps chipped off them. Next time the sluice would be broken; after that the machinery would be thrown out of gear, or the flour put overnight ready for loading found scattered all about the floor. They had in the police from Ettonfold, and then the detectives down from London, but they saw such sights, as I’m told made them old men. Did Jim Horne’s father say, Steve, that the parson’s fortune would be made if he only could see what a couple of them who sat up watching beheld with their own four eyes?”

“Aye, wife,” answered Steve; “but then Jim Horne’s father was a liar, as I have heard.”

“I don’t believe it; but at any rate the detectives from London warn’t, and one of them, as I’ve been given to understand by them as ain’t liars either, said as how one morning early, he, hearing a rap-rapping at the mill door, went down and opened it to a gentleman dressed all in dark grey tweed, who walked straight past him up the stairs, and into the counting-house, where he melted into thin air. Don’t you forget that, Steve.”

“I ain’t likely to forget,” said Steve, sulkily, “with that good-for-nothing mill and broken sluice always afore my eyes, and the water pouring and pouring adown that paved causeway, enough to deafen a fellow after heavy rain; but I mind just as well as I forget, and I know there’s a big mill not far beyond the station on this very stream, that never would have been the concern it is if Dingley’s wheel had still been turning Dingley’s machinery. I blame nobody, and I says nothing; but I has my own opinions, and one of them is, if I had the money to do it, I’d work the old mill, Dingleys or no Dingleys, ghostes or no ghostes.”

“Well, Steve, all I have got to say is simple, and it’s this—’tis a merciful blessing you ain’t got the means to go tempting Providence, or I b’lieve you’d do it.”

“Aye, that I would, if you means by Providence the fellow as owns the mill on the Upper Water—a mean scrub of a chap, who sets himself up for a gentleman. Why, I lugged a parcel along to his house this arternoon that weighed a quarter of a hundred if it weighed an ounce, and he never was man enough to say—‘Will you have a glass of beer?’ he warn’t.”

Although some remark seemed to be expected in answer to the foregoing statement, Georgie and I remained silent.

No observation worth uttering presenting itself with respect to the manners of the gentleman at the mill up the stream, we held our peace and watched the water gliding away, on past the old house, between green banks, under drooping willows, circling round bosky aits, through the heart of a vast city, to the distant sea.

“I believe myself there ain’t a word of truth in any story of the lot,” said Mr. Shooter, harking back to the ghostly traditions connected with Dingley’s Mill. “Why, I have been round the pond and down the race and tail, and past the ruins, at all hours of the night and early morning, and I never see nothing worse nor a rat nor a rabbit, and I never heard nothing more frightensome than the owls a-hooting. I don’t hold with the notion of ghostes walking. What I says is, if a man has made a poor thing of his business while he’s living ’tain’t likely he can make a better by terrifying honest folk after he’s dead.”

“Aye; but what about them as ain’t honest?” inquired Mrs. Shooter, pertinently.

“Pooh!” retorted Mr. Shooter, who, despite the prosperous miller’s stinginess, I began to notice, must have partaken of more than one glass of beer before his return home.

“That’s all very well,” persisted his wife; “and it’s all very well to say because you ain’t happened to see nothing, nobody else ain’t seen nothing either; but do you mind what Ike Toser said he’d take his davy upon? He were a bargeman, Miss, and it was a matter of nigh upon fourteen years agone, afore this lock was broken, and the tow-path on the opposite side washed away, and the foot-bridge that joined the two banks on the other side the mill-house carried down stream.”

“She means afore the railway came to Maytree,” explained Mr. Shooter, putting the case in a nut-shell.

“It were the last night in the year.

“Ike, he were taking his horses over the bridge, when he hears something go crack! crack! up the water, and he stopped his horses and stood still to listen.

“There were no frost; it was a dull, heavy winter’s night, with but a glimmer of starlight, but still, through being used to the darkness, Ike could see almost as well as if it had been daylight.

“As I were saying, he listened, and then he heard another tremendous crack and splashing and struggling under the yew-trees at the back of the Mill House.

“‘Anybody in the water? Keep yourself up; help’s coming!’ he shouts out, and ran off the bridge and up stream as hard as he could go.

“Then all in a minute, as he tore on, the moon shone out—mind this, there was no moon at all that night!—and he saw the river lying before him one sheet of ice, white and glittering—all white and glittering, except just in one place, where there was a hole, and the water looked dark and threatening.

“I’ve heard Ike tell the story myself.

“‘I came out all over in a sweat,’ he said, ‘for I know there was no ice nor no moon; and while I was standing, too frightened to move, I see a hand and arm rise out of the water where the hole was—a hand with a gold ring on one of the fingers which clutched hold of the ice; and then the ice gave and broke the weight, and I heard a great cry, and the ice closed over the hole again, and the moon disappeared; and I fell on my knees and prayed, or leastways tried to pray, for the only bit of Scripture I could remember was what I learned at Sunday school—

“‘“What’s your name?”

“‘“Ike Toser.”

“‘“Who gave ye that name?”’—

“You may laugh, Steve, but it is quite true, for the very next Sunday Ike went to church, and his going was the talk of the parish.

“Aye, and something more was the talk of the parish when he tried to drown his boy Billy.

“He said he saw wings growing out of Billy’s shoulders, and the child flying away to be an angel—and a nice angel Billy would have made; so he caught him and held him under water till the brat was black in the face.

“I’m thinking the magistrate didn’t pay much heed to Ike’s story about the wings when they give him a month and a talking to. No!” proceeded Mr. Shooter, “what I say is—there’s the house, and it’s a good house; and Mr. Lauston, he lived there nigh upon seven year, and all that time nobody saw a ghost nor heard tell on one; and if these ladies take it, they’ll have the cheapest house in the county of Surrey.”

“Who is the landlord?” I asked, for the duet between husband and wife was becoming monotonous, and Mr. Shooter’s tone towards his better-half aggressive, besides which even a June day must have its evening sometime.

“The landlord! Mr. Lauston. Who else should it be?”

“And where does he live?” I inquired, begging a question, it seemed, as unnecessary as impossible for me to answer.

“I don’t rightly know where he lives now,” said Mr. Shooter. “Out Teddington or Twickenham, or Richmond way; but his office is in Godliman Street, over against Saint Paul’s, in London City. Anybody will tell you where he is to be found.”

“And the rent you say, is fifty pounds a year. You are sure of that?”

“Sure and certain, Miss. And if so be as you should come to live nigh us, and you want an odd job done at any time, when I’ve an hour or two to spare I’ll be glad to oblige you. Thank you, Miss. Yes, that’s the best way to the station from here. You can’t go wrong; there’s a straight path takes you right out on the platform.”

“What do you think of it, Peg?” asked my sister, when we were out of earshot of Mr. Shooter’s habitation.

“I don’t know what to think of them,” I answered, with a backward glance towards the old lock-house. “He wants us to take the place, and she, I fancy, does not.”

“Are you afraid of Mr. Dingley’s ghost objecting to us as tenants?” she inquired, with a smile.

“No; I am not afraid of ghosts,” I said; “but, after all, Georgie, it is a lonely spot.”

“Not an atom too lonely,” said my sister, enthusiastically. “Oh, Peg! only contrast that place at fifty pounds a year with our present lodgings at sixteen shillings a week!”

VII

OUR NEW LANDLORD

Next day, Georgie, who was always overrating her strength, and consequently overexerting it, could scarcely move from the sofa; and I therefore proceeded to Godliman Street all alone.

I had no difficulty in finding Mr. Lauston’s place of business. A postman of whom I made inquiry directed me as to the number, and when I arrived at the doorstep, “Ground-floor—R. D. Lauston,” were the first words that met my eyes.

Mr. Lauston was within, and disengaged, said a clerk, in answer to my questions; if I would favour him with my name, he would take it to his principal.

Having handed the young man a card, which he carefully studied as though there were some mystery attached to it or me, he disappeared through an inner door, and left me to contemplate the plans, maps, advertisements of insurance companies, posters of properties to be sold, representations of emigrant ships in full sail, and other such evidences of various businesses, which decorated the walls.

There was a very fine old chimney-piece—Sienna marble, most elaborately carved. On it were placed a City of London Directory, a tumbler and water-bottle (the latter furnished with a glass vase containing the regulation filter), a few volumes of the Bankers’ Magazine, a letter-weight, and a few geological specimens—designed, doubtless, to impress and deceive the unwary.

The furniture of the apartment consisted of two office desks, well bespattered with ink, three office-stools, two old-fashioned arm-chairs, and three small chairs, upholstered in faded crimson velvet.

A safe occupied one corner of the room, and on the top of it, propped against an old mahogany knife-box, was an exceedingly small, dirty, and inferior oil painting, which Mr. Lauston subsequently informed me he believed to be of almost priceless value.

I was examining this work of art with professional interest—it represented the Annunciation; and anything like the expression of the faces I had never seen before, and have never seen since—when the door behind the spot where I stood opened, and the clerk, holding it wide for me to enter, said:

“Mr. Lauston will see you, madam.”

I walked into the inner office.

There, behind a large library table, strewed with papers, sat Mr. Lauston.

He did not rise when I entered, but merely acknowledged my presence with an inclination of his head.

Waving his hand towards a chair, he begged me to be seated, and then continued his instructions to a different clerk from the one who announced me.

This young man stood beside the table, hat in hand, deferentially listening to the words of wisdom which fell from his employer’s lips.

“You had better call at Allington’s as you come back. It will be all on your way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t forget to tell Difford he must be prepared by ten o’clock tomorrow, without fail.”

“No, sir.”

“And be sure you ask Mr. Marston the limit we are not to exceed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you got those papers of Colwig’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you happen to know if Farthingley has returned from the north?”

“He has not, sir.”

“Ah! well, you might just look in there as you pass, and remind his brother that on Saturday the first, the next instalment will be due.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think there is anything else, except to call at the Bank, and ask Mr. Newton if he has had any advice from New Orleans.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is all, I fancy. Can you remember any other matter?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you had better be getting on. Oh! Durphy!”

Durphy was by this time at the door.

“Yes, sir.”

“Take these papers round to the Poultry, and beg Mr. Horricks to sign and return them. Don’t forget they must be witnessed.”

“No, sir.”

“Oh! And, Durphy!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just ask Marrion to let me have particulars of that little estate at Cheshunt. I beg a thousand pardons, Miss—Miss Vernam, ah! yes, Vernam! but this is such a busy day with us, and time and tide—as you remember, no doubt—wait for no man. And now, what can I do for you?”

And he turned his chair a little, crossed one leg over the other, put the tips of his fingers together, and looked at me with an expression of benignant patronage.

“I came to make some inquiries about a house of yours at Maytree which is to let.”

“Maytree,” he repeated; “Maytree—where is Maytree?”

“It is in Surrey,” I answered; “and the house I mean is situated on a river, and near the ruins of an old mill.”

“I remember now; thank you, I remember now,” he said. “Yes—yes—yes—yes—yes, to be sure. And you want an order to view?”

“No, I have been over the place. We met a caretaker—a Mrs. Shooter, who allowed us to look at the house and grounds.”

“Ah! very true. Shooter is the name of the person who lives in a cottage somewhere near there; worthy people, he and his wife,” said Mr. Lauston, genially.

“I dare say,” I answered. “The rent is fifty pounds, I believe.”

“Guineas,” corrected Mr. Lauston, promptly; “fifty guineas subject to certain conditions.”

“Will you kindly tell me what those conditions are?”

“With the greatest of pleasure; but first permit me to ask you one question: are you making these inquiries for yourself or for a friend?”

Though the words did not, the tone said so plainly Mr. Lauston thought it impossible I could pay fifty pounds a year, that I felt the colour rising in my face as though I had been detected in some attempt at fraud.

“I want to rent your house, or a similar house, myself,” I answered. “Perhaps I had better explain exactly how I am situated.”

“If not disagreeable,” suggested Mr. Lauston with a considerate smile.

Mine was so short and commonplace a story that I could tell it in a few sentences.

There were no complications, no wheels within wheels about the ruins which had been wrought.

It was simple as it was complete.

The estate had passed into the hands of a distant relative, upon whose generosity—if he possessed any—we had no claim.

The personality had been claimed by creditors, from whose charity it would have been vain to expect assistance.

But for the small fortune inherited from my own mother, Georgie and I could only have gone out into the world as paupers.

That money, however, being secured to me, no one had been able to touch it; and such few debts as I encroached upon the principal to pay were liquidated merely as matters of feeling and honour.

The amount which remained was, I explained to Mr. Lauston, sufficient to maintain us for some years, even without the exercise of my profession; but as I intended to devote myself to art, I hoped to be able ere long to live without drawing anything except the interest of the money.

To all which -particulars Mr. Lauston listened without a change of countenance; then, when I had quite finished, he began to question me.

To cross-examine me, rather; for though the process of testing my truthfulness was delicate, it was likewise searching.

He wanted to know why we had not remained in Yorkshire; why I wished to take a place so remote from society as the Mill House; why I had not canvassed all my friends for commissions; what encouragement I had received from the dealers in London.

How we had heard of our present lodgings; from what source we learned the Mill House was vacant—these questions, and many more, Mr. Lauston put to me, not baldly as I have set them down, but lightly and skilfully leading our talk to the points he desired to reach, and turning me inside out as easily as a lady might her glove.

There was fortunately nothing in our past or present, or in our plans for the future, that I desired to conceal from anyone, and Mr. Lauston might have achieved his end with one quarter the trouble he gave himself.

He was at length moved by a sort of reluctant admiration of my frankness, or it served his purpose to say he was, for he remarked,

“You are certainly one of the most straightforward young ladies I ever met, and I should like greatly to have you for a tenant; but still business is business, and I must have a premium for that place. I could not think of letting it for fifty guineas unless a premium were paid.”

I thought of Georgie lying on that uncomfortable sofa in our stuffy parlour full of flies and sunshine, and my purpose failed me; but next moment I remembered the folly of undertaking an expenditure I might be unable to meet, and said boldly,

“Then I fear that settles the matter. Fifty pounds is a higher rent than I proposed giving; but still I could manage to pay it. A premium, however, I could not pay. Pray, do not think I am unwilling, Mr. Lauston—I am unable.”

“Pray be seated, Miss Vernam; do not run away yet,” he remonstrated, for I had risen to go, and with one hand resting on the edge of the table was standing looking wistfully in his face. “I will meet you if I can. I will consider how it is possible to obviate the difficulty. Though I am a man of business, I am not grasping—I hope you will believe that.”

As he spoke he laid his hand on mine, without thought or premeditation, as I believed at the time, but such marks of earnestness were new to me, and I drew my hand away a little hastily, the while I blushed in a manner for which I could have slapped myself.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Lauston, with a deep air of apology, as though but just sensible it was neither a book nor a parcel he had touched. “Now let me think,” and he knit his brows and pursed up his lips, and went through all those gestures I have since learnt many men consider necessary adjuncts of apparently profound deliberation.

“I can’t see my way at present,” he remarked, at length, abruptly; “but I am sure there must be a way—leave it to me—I am not quite alone in this affair, or perhaps I might feel tempted to say ‘Yes’ at once; there is another person to consult; but I will try to arrange it—I will arrange it somehow, in fact. By the bye, you had better give me the name of a friend or two. A mere matter of form, but still usual; and we may as well be regular. Any person will do—the clergyman of the parish, the family doctor, your father’s solicitor, or his bankers—it does not much signify who so long as he is a reference. Let me see, could you conveniently call the day after tomorrow, or shall I write? You will call; thank you very greatly. Allow me.”

And he rose and was moving forward to open the door, when I stopped him.

“I forgot to mention that the house is greatly out of repair; but perhaps you are aware of the fact?”

“Oh yes, certainly; it must be, of course, and will have to be seen to. No one, I suppose, could live in this place as it is.”

“It wants painting and papering thoroughly. Many of the hinges and handles are off, the wet seems to have come through some of the ceilings, and the gardens are less gardens than wildernesses of weeds.”

“So I should suppose; but all these things are mere matters of detail. Half a dozen tradespeople and two or three labourers would soon reduce chaos into order. You desire to take immediate possession, I presume, if matters can be arranged satisfactorily.”

“As soon as possible,” I answered. “My sister is anxious to be in the country, and I am anxious to be at work.”

“For Mr. Bernard, you said, I think?”

“No; Mr. Berners.”

“To be sure. How stupid I am about names. Berners of Alie Street.”

“Not Alie Street,” I answered, smiling leniently at his lack of memory, which, of course, I attributed to the engrossing nature of his own affairs; “Hanway Street.”

“Hanway Street—true—pray forgive me; but really, unless I see an address in writing, I never can remember. That is the worst of accustoming oneself to an artificial memory. One’s natural memory becomes useless. My memory is a Letts’s Diary. Good day, Miss Vernam. I shall expect to see you on Friday, and I hope to have satisfactory news for you. Good morning;” and he held open the door of the outer office, to which point we had been slowly progressing; and as I bent my head, bowed his with a gesture of the most profound deference and respect.

I did not offer any more cordial leave-taking, and neither did he.

Clearly, therefore, the little episode of placing his hand on mine had taken place quite inadvertently!

VIII

MR. LAUSTON DOES ALL HE CAN FOR ME

On the Friday appointed, I repaired once more to Godliman Street. Georgie had quite lost her headache, and in high spirits at the prospect of matters being finally arranged, offered to accompany me; but though I felt assured Mr. Lauston never intended touching my hand, and that the whole affair was quite a mistake on his part, and a misapprehension on mine, I still decided to leave my pretty sister at home.

I had the same jealous care for her as a mother might have cherished; and I could not help feeling that till we were differently situated—fenced in again with some of the externals of our former rank—it would be a relief to have Georgie in the country, far away from the men who, as we walked along, stared at her with bold or admiring eyes.

For the ordinary paths of life my sister was, indeed, far too pretty. I had never quite realized this until we came to London, and saw for myself that, though her beauty was not astonishing to me, it surprised strangers.

I had grown with it, watched its development, become familiar with each varying tint—each lovely turn of expression; but to others it seemed almost like a revelation.

Even the poor little drab, who toiled up and downstairs at our lodgings, turned round her untidy head, and looked wistfully at my sister, as she passed her on the way in or out.

To be sure, Georgie had always a smile and kindly look for the uncomely, hard-worked drudge; but I could see by the light which came into the girl’s eyes, and the fatuous expression of pleasure which illumined her generally stupid face, that the gratification she derived from my sister’s presence was one of pure admiration.

For I, too, was always kind and courteous to both our landlady and her servant, and yet neither of them ever assumed a look of beaming satisfaction when they gave me admittance.

On account of good looks, no lover had ever sought me—not even the lover so gay, so handsome, so fond, who could never return to me more; but it was otherwise with Georgie.

She possessed every beauty of colour, feature, expression, that captivates the eye, and enchants the imagination.

Since our departure from Yorkshire, this fact had been impressing itself more and more upon me, and so I decided to leave her behind when I went to seek my second interview with Mr. Lauston.

That gentleman was all graciousness.

He received me standing—he handed me a chair with as great a show of deference as if I had been a duchess.

He talked about the weather, and the London season, and the different places of amusement ladies were supposed to affect, as though we had met for an hour’s sociable conversation. After a little, he began to speak about pictures, and casually mentioned the fact that he had a “gem” in the outer office.

“I am not a judge of such things myself,” he said artlessly; “but I am told by connoisseurs the painting is most valuable. Perhaps you have noticed it?”

I answered that I had.

“And what is your opinion? But perhaps you are not sufficiently conversant with the works of the old masters to form a judgment.”

I agreed that perhaps I was not.

“I have thought of sending it to be cleaned,” he went on; “but one is loath to trust valuable pictures out of one’s sight.”

Here, at last, was a point on which we were at one, and I said very decidedly that if I owned good old paintings, I should require to be thoroughly satisfied both as to the capability and probity of any cleaner to whom I sent them.

“I wonder, Mr. Lauston,” I went on, “that believing the work you mention to be so valuable, you let it lie about in a public office. Surely it would be safer at your own home.”

“My dear young lady, a bachelor has no home. If I were so fortunate as to possess a wife, I should indeed be foolish to keep such a painting here! but a housekeeper at Twickenham is very much the same thing as a housekeeper in London. I wonder men do not marry—when we see all we lose we cannot help feeling—”

He paused.

I had brought this confidence as to his single state upon myself, but I did not wish him to enlarge upon the subject; and something in my face, I suppose, told him so, for he never completed his sentence.

Instead, he remarked—

“I shall be glad to congratulate you, Miss Vernam, when your pictures also become exceedingly valuable.”

“Thank you,” I answered. “I am afraid they will never be that; but I hope to earn bread and salt, and perhaps something more. My ideas on the subject of moneymaking are not extravagant; nevertheless, I hope to make a moderate income, and then I love my art. There is no labour in it for me—it is all pleasure.”

“How heartily you speak,” he said. “It is delightful to meet with anyone so thoroughly in earnest, and so simply downright as you are. I suppose, indeed—though it seems unintelligible to a mere business machine, such as I have become—there is a satisfaction in work for the sake of work. This is the case with you, I presume, for I imagine you do obtain high prices for your drawings.”

“On the contrary,” I replied.

“That is bad,” he said, shaking his head; “but you will be demanding large sums ere long.”

In turn I shook my head.

“I do not think so,” I answered. “I know pretty well what I can do, and believe competency is only to be achieved, in my case, by patient industry. I am very thankful to feel assured I can compass even that. Many women, as you are aware, would be overjoyed could they be certain of earning a hundred a year by selling one little sketch a week.”

“Most,” he agreed. “But are you satisfied, young lady?”

“Thoroughly. I should, indeed, be ungrateful if I were not. It may be,” I added, smiling, “that, perhaps, hereafter, I hope to be able either to make more than a hundred a year, or to make that hundred by selling one sketch a fortnight instead of one a week; but my ambitions are as modest as my expectations. Imagination has never run away with me yet.”

“Then you really believe you are not destined to achieve a grand success?”

“I have great faith that I never shall,” I replied.

“You make what I have to propose very easy,” he said. “Since you were here, I have been exercising my mind how to get over the premium difficulty. As I, perhaps, explained, I am less owner than trustee as regards the Mill House; and it is, therefore, necessary for me to follow duty rather than inclination. The plan I thought might meet all objections is this. You shall take the Mill House, garden, and so forth, for a term of seven years. Would that suit you?”

“It is a long time to look forward to,” I said, faintly.

“When you have lived as many seven years as I, you will know how short a time it seems in the retrospect,” he answered. “So far as the Mill House is concerned, I do not see how I can make an arrangement for any shorter period. Under the circumstances, the term ought to be fourteen or twenty-one years; but I do not wish to be too strict or to frighten you. Shall we say seven years? You would not like to have to turn out at the end of three.”

“We will say seven,” I agreed.

During the time he was speaking I had hurriedly glanced over the position, and felt it was better we should be bound to the house for some considerable period.

If I were to do any good at all, I decided my time must be filled with hard, honest work, and my attention not distracted with questions as to whether we “ought to move,” where “it would be best to live,” and if we could “venture to afford a house nearer town,” or at all events in a “more accessible position.”

“You are quite clear about that?”

“Quite,” was my answer.

“Then to reward you for your prompt decision, I will meet you as regards the rent. You shall have the place for fifty pounds a year, and in lieu of premium, you shall pay three years’ rent in advance, and paint me half a dozen pictures. There, will that do? I have turned the matter over and over, looked at it from every conceivable point of view, and I believe I have made a capital bargain for you. I do not wish to say anything which may sound like a compliment, for I can see you do not care for the speeches most young ladies consider as merely their due, but it is a fact that there is not another woman for whom I would have taken so much trouble, and to whom I would have yielded so much. Your courage, your self-reliance, your industry—but there, I promised not even to seem to flatter—those traits have touched me. I shall say no more.”

And with nervous fingers he moved some papers that lay before him, and making a feint of arranging them, gave himself and me the opportunity of recovering our self-possession.

“You are very kind, I am sure,” I said at last, “and I feel greatly obliged to you, but—”

“Do not mention it, I entreat,” he interrupted. “If it were in my power, I would do more, far more than that, to serve you. Now, how shall we arrange matters? I think you said you wanted to take possession as soon as possible. Yes; very well, you shall do so. I will just jot down the heads of our agreement, and send them on for your approval. Then they can be put into shape. And you must call here and sign the papers; or, if that should be inconvenient, I will call upon you, and have the matter settled immediately.”

“If you let me know when the agreement is ready, I will call here,” I decided. “And, to save time, I will post to you, when I get home, a list of the repairs which are most necessary and pressing.”

“Pray do,” he answered, “though they can be done after you are in the house. I suppose you will want to get rid of the expense of lodgings as quickly as may be. At Eddingfold there are some good tradespeople who do their work well and economically. I will write to them on the subject. Yes; you post me the list, and leave the rest to me. As for the pictures, finish them quite at your leisure. I shall not prove a hard task-master; but if ever you are down in Yorkshire, I think I should prefer to have some landscapes taken in that part of the country. You see, I am so familiar with Surrey!”

“There is a ruined mill near the house,” I suggested; “that would make a good subject.”

“My dear young lady, have mercy!” he exclaimed. “I hate and detest the very name of the mill. For seven long years it annoyed my eyes, troubled me by day, and ‘prevented the night watches.’ I have had more difficulty about that mill than about all the rest of my business put together. One of these days I shall go down with a few pounds of gunpowder, and blow it up—leave no stone standing on the other. Not any sketch of that cheerful edifice for me, thank you.”

“Very well,” I said, laughing at his earnestness; “I will look over my portfolio, and see if I cannot find some landscapes of a different kind of country.”

“You are goodness itself,” he remarked, adding, “I shall hear from you, then, and you will hear from me.”

As we parted, he held out his hand, and I gave him mine in return without any hesitation.

He had behaved, as I considered, with great kindness; and yet, as I wended my way back to our lodgings and Georgie, I was unable to divest myself of an uneasy feeling that Mr. Lauston was not quite so sincere as his words and manner implied.

IX

MR. BERNERS IS TAKEN IN

It was on a dull evening, in the latter part of July, that I walked across the fields from Maytree station towards the Mill House.

Not an ideal evening by any means—not the sort of evening one would have selected for the purpose of taking possession of a new house—but in such wise events had fallen out, and I was too much accustomed to nature’s moods to be seriously affected by a grey sky, low-lying clouds, a drizzling rain, and the moist steaming mist which was beginning to rise over the meadows on the other side of the river.

After all, it was home, to which each step was taking me nearer—and not a homely home either—a wonderful home, I reflected, remembering what had happened to us, and what might have happened—a home to be proud of, to grow fond of, to regard with affection, and to feel thankful for having been permitted to find.

And I was thankful.

I could have found no words in which to express all the gratitude lying deep in my heart, but my whole nature seemed steeped in a gentle content, and to the hymn of praise my soul was singing, the gliding river, the murmuring reeds, the rustling leaves, and the songs of the birds, which never in that neighbourhood seem really to cease by day or night, formed a fitting accompaniment.

I was tired.

I had spent a long and weary day in London, and how pleasant, after the hot streets, the close smoky atmosphere, the babel of noise, and the strain upon my mental capacities, the change to that pure air seemed, may be imagined by those who love the sights and tones of nature, to whom woods and fields and streams are as the remembered faces of cherished friends, the rush of waters, the sighing of the wind, the rain dripping through the trees, the gentle waving of the meadow grass, as the sounds of familiar voices, the greetings of the bygone days when there was not a change of season, a variation of weather, a fall of snow, or a burst of sunshine but brought rapture with it to hearts still innocent of care.

When I rang the bell my sister opened the door in person.

“Welcome home, Peg,” she said, giving me a sisterly hug, and an honest, loving kiss. “May you spend many a happy year in this sweet spot;” and then, without giving me time to return her hearty greeting, she rushed on to say that the place was prettier—a hundred thousand times prettier—than she imagined it on the occasion of our first visit.

“The garden is in a state of ranker luxuriance than ever,” she finished, laughing; “and we have lit fires of billet-wood in every room in the house, and there is not a stick of furniture in its proper place; and you have not an idea, Peg, how deliciously uncomfortable everything is.”

How pretty she looked—prettier than ever, with her skirt pinned back, her sleeves tucked up, her hair a little rumpled, her colour a little deepened, her eyes sparkling with pleasurable excitement, and her feet dancing a measure to the melody which was echoing in her heart.

“Come upstairs, Peg. No; first you shall see the drawing-room. No; while it is daylight you must come round the place, now it is all our own. Never mind the rain. It cannot spoil our dresses. You shall see the artichokes. It is all very well for you to say you do not care to paint flowers, but you shall paint that flower with a lovely branch. Oh! such a branch of the genuine old-fashioned fuchsia drooping over the plant! I mean to set you about it tomorrow. Mary and I have settled up the studio, and the room is cosy beyond belief. We are going to have tea there. Mrs. Shooter has baked us some scones, and I have asked her to make inquiries about poultry, so that we may ‘grow’ new-laid eggs. Oh, Peg, we ought to be able to live on almost nothing here.”

“My dear girl, I have no desire to live on nothing.”

“I meant for nothing. There are heaps of vegetables in the garden, and lots of fruit; Mrs. Shooter says there is plenty of fish in the river, and surely we can rear our own chickens. I think we ought not to spend a pound a week. I am going to be housekeeper, remember, and mean to be so economical. You must do nothing but paint and amuse yourself. How did you get on with Mr. Berners today?”

It was in consequence of an intimation from that gentleman of his wish to see me before I left London that Georgie and our newly engaged domestic had started for Maytree by an early train, while I followed in the evening.

As I had called upon my patron only a few days previously, I was somewhat at a loss to imagine why he desired me to pay him another visit; but Mr. Berners soon made that point clear.

When I entered the office at the rear of his shop, I found him, as usual, seated on a high office stool, tilted well back, his hat half on his head and half on his shoulders, one leg tucked up on the rail of the stool, the other stretched out on the rail under his desk, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his coat flying wide open, himself in a state of profuse perspiration, one hand hanging listlessly by his side, the other grasping a short ruler, with which at intervals he hit himself and the stool and the desk purposeless raps.

There had been a time when Mr. Berners removed his hat at sight of me, descended from his stool, and stood at “Attention;” but that was before he quite realized the fact I was the daughter of Mr. Vernam of Grangedale, who bought pictures from him, no longer, but only a vague Miss Vernam painting pictures herself, and feeling very grateful to anyone who would buy them from her.

It was not that Mr. Berners meant to be either uncivil or familiar. It was merely that finding there no longer existed any necessity to put himself out of the way on my account, he received me as he would have done any one of his intimate acquaintances, except I am thankful to say that he never addressed me, as he did all of them, by my Christian name.

“So here you are!” was his greeting.

“Yes, Mr. Berners, here I am, punctual to the hour you named. For the future, when you wish to see me, I wish you could manage to permit me some choice as to the time.”

“I had to attend a sale this morning,” he explained, “and as you said you were leaving town today, I did not know when I might have another chance of seeing you. Won’t you sit down? there is a chair behind you.”

“No, thank you; I wish to catch the next train from Waterloo, and I can do so if you will kindly say at once why you sent for me.”

“Oh! it is not a matter of much consequence, only if you are going to throw me over, you may as well tell me so at once.”

“Throw you over! what do you mean?”

“Just what I say. Naturally, if this new patron of yours is going to make your fortune, you won’t care to bring much more of your work here.”

“New patron—make my fortune!” I repeated in bewilderment, for I could see the man was not joking; that he was, on the contrary, very seriously in earnest. “Mr. Berners,” I went on, “pray, be a little more explicit. I assure you I have not the faintest clue to your meaning. I have not the slightest intention of taking my drawings elsewhere; I have found no new patron; I have not looked out for one; none has come to me.”

Mr. Berners made a savage cut at his desk with the ruler; then tilting back his hat till it was almost off his head, turned and looked me straight in the face.

In blank amazement I looked at him.

“You are like all the rest,” he remarked, after a moment’s scrutiny; “you’d almost make a man believe black was white. Why, to look at you, anybody might feel almost compelled to think you were speaking truth.”

“I am speaking the truth, Mr. Berners,” I answered with a little natural vexation in my voice. “If I had found a new patron, I should tell you so; if I were going to leave you, I should tell you that also.”

“Well, then, what about that order for pictures you have taken lately?”

“I have taken no order—” I was beginning, when suddenly the recollection of my agreement with Mr. Lauston recurred to me. “Oh! I know what you are thinking of,” I cried, “though how in the world you heard anything about it I cannot imagine. I would not pay a premium for the new house we have taken; so the landlord proposed I should let him have half a dozen landscapes instead.”

“What sort of a looking fellow is he?” asked Mr. Berners.

“He is an elderly man,” I answered; “rather above the middle height.”

“A little taller than me,” said Mr. Berners, taking up the narrative eagerly; “and a trifle stouter, with iron-grey hair, scarce about the temples and top of his head, big ears, keen brown eyes, bushy overhanging eyebrows, a nose that would be somewhat hooked if it had not been flattened into a sort of droop at the end; clean-shaved, except a fringe of whisker on each cheek; not a bad mouth, but shows a bit of the inside of the lower lip; has lost a piece of one of his front teeth, carries a silver snuff-box, and has a few hairs on the first joint of each finger.”

“You ought to have been a detective, Mr. Berners,” I exclaimed, in involuntary admiration of his perceptive faculties. “That is the very man.”

“Pooh!” said Mr. Berners, in depreciation rather of the united company of detectives than of my compliment. “If I saw a person once, I would know him again in twenty years’ time if I met him among a thousand people, and so I would an artist’s touch on a picture. You could not deceive me.”

And laying aside the ruler, he buried his hands deep in his pockets, and began see-sawing the stool backwards and forwards till I trembled lest he should upset it, and himself with it.

“Where did you see—the—gentleman?” I inquired, after a pause.

“In the shop first,” answered Mr. Berners, moodily. “I was busy at the time with a customer from the Black Country; but I had an eye on this gent, and I confess he took me in. When I saw him walking about with my man, a pair of gold glasses on his nose, a quiet diamond ring on his little finger, and a matter of a hundred pounds in his watch and chain, I decided, ‘There is a party who has made his money easy, and now wants to spend it handsome.’ I made sure of a cheque for a round sum, and when I had done with the Staffordshire gentleman, and your friend asked if I was at leisure and he could speak with me, I considered the money as good as lodged in the bank.”

“And what did he want to speak to you about?” I asked, in a perfect agony of curiosity.

“Want! Why, he wanted to pump me about you,” and as if he had sounded the deepest depth of the contemptible and ridiculous, Mr. Berners relapsed into despairing silence.

“What did he want to know about me?” I persisted, for the subject was becoming more than interesting.

“He wanted to know about your prospects of success; said he was aware you had done work for me; asked if you were likely to make a name, and all the rest of it.”

“And what did you say, Mr. Berners?” I asked.

“Oh! I was quite fair to you, don’t be afraid. I told him you were a very painstaking young woman, conscientious in your work, and so forth; that I considered, given fair play, you might turn out some very creditable drawings, and that I felt satisfied none of your friends or relations need be alarmed concerning the career you had chosen; you see, I didn’t know who he might be, and if there was any money to be given, or legacy left, I thought it only right to put in a word for you.”

“Well—and then—”

“Then he asked if I had any of your drawings about that he could see, and I told him ‘No.’”

“No! Mr. Berners, and with that little landscape hanging within a yard of the door?”

“If fifty landscapes had been hanging under his nose, I’d have said the same. I know my business, and how to manage it. If I didn’t, it would soon manage me, and precious soon, too.”

“What did he say when you told him you had none?”

“He said it was unfortunate, because he could have wished to form an idea of what you were able to turn out. So then I put a question to him; I said, ‘May I make so bold as to ask why you want to know what the lady can turn out?’ We were walking down the shop at this time together, so he just lifted his double glasses, and fixing them well on his nose, pulls up right opposite that bit of moorland yonder, and says—

“‘Certainly. I am interested in Miss Vernam’s success because I have, without ever seeing one of her productions, given her an order to paint me half a dozen pictures.’ Those were his words.

“After he went away, I asked my man whether that gent had taken any particular notice of the Yorkshire Moor, and he told me he had examined it close, asked the name of the artist, and whether we could give him his address. Catters—that’s my man—said the artist was gone to Rome, or Florence, or South America, he wasn’t quite sure which. You see, Catters is an innocent sort of chap, and it never entered into his mind we were being done. However, that can’t be helped now. I have no doubt he went straight away from this place and got you to sign that agreement How much premium did he want?”

“Fifty pounds,” I answered. “So you see, at your prices, Mr. Berners, he has made a considerable loss.”

“Ah! he’s a very different sort of fellow to what I am,” said Mr. Berners; “he’ll make his money out of those drawings, never fear. He’ll crack them up sky-high. He’ll show them off as the early, or careless work of some well-known artist. I’d rather, yes, that I would, have been the fifty pounds out of pocket, myself, than have been bested by such a plausible old beggar.”

“Then the next time I have to choose between paying fifty pounds and painting half a dozen landscapes, I will come to you before I decide,” was my artless comment.

“Humph!” said Mr. Berners, in disparaging notice of this suggestion.

“I suppose that was all you wished to say to me?” I remarked.

“Yes; that was all.”

“Then I will go—as I particularly want to catch the six o’clock train.”

“Very well. By the bye, what did you tell me was the name of that fellow?”

“Lauston.”

“What is he?”

“I haven’t an idea. He owns the house we have taken at Maytree, and his offices are in Godliman Street.”

“He is a precious old scoundrel; I think we may be sure of that.”

“Possibly. There are some persons who believe it to be a safe rule to think the worst of everyone till convinced to the contrary.”

“I know nothing about that,” grumbled Mr. Berners; “but take my advice, Miss Vernam, and don’t be led away by him. It is no concern of mine, to be sure, and it won’t put a penny in my pocket that I am aware of; but still, don’t you get into Mr. Lauston’s power, or you will repent your rashness. Now, remember, I warned you.”

“I will remember. Thank you. Good-bye.” Mr. Berners descended from his stool, and, with his hands still deep in his pockets, lounged gloomily down with me to the outer door.

“I will bring you up some drawings shortly,” I remarked, ere stepping into the street.

“All right,” he said, as if his weakness were yielding a belief his reason denied.

X

THE MAN IN DARK GREY TWEED

This, and much more, of no interest to the reader, I told Georgie, as we two paced round the gardens.

Except as regarded any little difficulty created by my sister’s pretty face, I kept no secrets from her.

If I were troubled, she knew the cause—if I were pleased, she understood the source of my gladness; and for this reason, though I confess Mr. Berners’ revelation had surprised and perplexed my mind in no slight degree, still, in my bewilderment, I confided in Georgie—as she, dear girl, in every babyish sorrow, in every childish grief, had confided in me.

“You had better come in now, Peg,” said my sister, at last. “This rain, though light, is wetting; and you must be both tired and hungry.”

“I am tired,” I answered; “but I don’t think I am hungry.”

“You will be tomorrow,” said Georgie. “I have been eating dry bread today—with an appetite.”

“How does it happen,” I asked, as we crossed the ivy-covered bridge, spanning the waste water from the ruined mill, “that the grass has not been mown on the lawn, or the weeds grubbed up in the garden? How dilatory Mr. Lauston’s people seem to be!”

“He told them everything had better remain as it was till you came down and gave them instructions,” answered Georgie; “at least, that is Mrs. Shooter’s version of the matter.”

“Is she here now?”

“No; she left an hour—two hours ago, to prepare Shooter’s tea. Come in, Peg; ours must be ready.”

We partook of that meal in the room which Georgie had set apart for the future studio.

Upon the hearth faggots blazed cheerfully; outside the windows, open to the ground, a lawn sloped down to the river.

As I lay back in an easy-chair, with my slippered feet touching the fender, there came over me that sense of warmth and rest and peace of mind which, with those whose circumstances are the down-balls of fortune, proves usually the precursor of anxiety and grievous annoyance.

“I feel as happy as a queen tonight,” I said to Georgie, as I handed over my cup for a second cup of tea.

“Spite of Mr. Berners?” she asked, smiles dimpling her lovely face.

“Spite of everybody,” I answered. “How glad I shall be when it is time to go to bed!”

“We shall all be glad to go to bed, I fancy, dear,” said Georgie, yawning. “May we violate the proprieties by ‘retiring’ before half-past ten; or must we put on the clock, like the man who did not wish to ‘break the Sabbath,’ but thought it would be a sin to let his less scrupulous neighbours carry off the whole of the booty from a wreck?”

•    •    •    •

The next morning was lovely.

The sun shone brightly, and the birds sang loud and high.

The drops of rain were still glittering on the foliage, and everything looked fresh and bright after the showers which had fallen at intervals all through the night.

Leaning out of the window, I drank in the clear, pure air, the perfume of some recently cut hay, the mingled scents of roses and mignonette, and gladdened my eyes with the sight of a calm, peaceful country landscape—waving crops, luxuriant meadows, stately trees, gleaming water, cows knee-deep in rich pasturage, idly munching the sweet grasses springing in the low-lying fields across the river, which stole on calmly, tranquilly, with an even, steady flow.

Early though it was, Georgie’s voice greeted me from the garden.

“What do you think of this?” she asked. “Isn’t it an ideal morning? I have been up ever since four o’clock. The kettle is boiling; shall I bring you a cup of tea?”

Answering in the negative, I dressed as rapidly as possible, and hurried downstairs, where I found breakfast laid in the same room where we had on the previous evening partaken of tea.

“After this morning we will reform, and do everything decently and in order,” observed Georgie; “but the river looked so lovely, I could not resist the temptation of having our coffee here. What is the programme for today?”

“Mine is very simple,” I answered. “I shall get to work at once. I do not want to lose one hour of the fine weather.”

“Then you mean to go out sketching?”

“Yes. I shall do that old mill first. It is just the sort of thing Mr. Berners will like.”

An hour later I was wandering about the ruined building, trying to decide from which point the grey, moss-covered walls, the broken wheel, the foaming water, the precipitate banks, the weird, solemn-looking pines, grouped themselves most effectively.

At length I was satisfied, and began my sketch.

By noon I had made satisfactory progress.

I had caught some good effects of light; and I felt that under my fingers, not merely a landscape, but a story was growing—a story of wrong, of mystery, and disaster.

The first time I looked upon the mill it impressed me with a sense of desolate sadness; and when Mrs. Shooter told me the tale of Mr. Dingley’s misfortune and death, my imagination began to surround the scene with a sense of tragic interest.

What almost unconsciously I wanted—what I desired—was to give to my picture a meaning beyond that contained in the mere natural components which constituted the actual details.

If I could only reproduce even a part of the impression borne in on my own mind, everyone who looked hereafter at the scene depicted would understand each adjunct said, “As plain as whisper in the ear! The place is haunted!”

The pathos of the broken wheel, the water rushing down unheeded, the desolate silence of the mill, the unchanging gloom of the pines, needed no interpreter; but that which required a deeper inspiration, a truer translation, was the tale of anguish, of struggle, of weary, useless contention against adverse fortune, which ended in silence and ruin.

How could I convey all this to the spectator?—by what cunning touch of gloom heighten the desolation of that desolate building—bring out in stronger contrast the bright sunshine lying athwart the landscape in the distance, and the brooding shadows dwelling around the ruined walls?

I had sketched in the empty barrels stained with exposure to the weather, the hoops dropping off, the staves falling out.

I had added the rusty chain hanging from the loop-hole in the top story, the chain which had drawn up its last sack of wheat, lowered its last bag of flour.

I had shown how rotten was the platform on which no more busy feet might ever tread, and I was sitting with suspended brush looking at the mill, and wondering what it was my sketch still lacked, what of human interest and human sorrow, when I became aware that I was not alone.

I felt this. Of knowledge I could not be said to understand there was another person beside myself looking on the scene, because I was aware of his presence ere my eyes beheld him.

Not a sound had broken the silence, not a shadow had fallen across the grass or the water, and yet he was there.

I looked up.

Clear against the sky, clear as the pine tree against the trunk of which he leaned, stood the figure that supplied the one thing I had felt my sketch wanted.

With arms folded, with head slightly bent, his attitude indicative of despair, or melancholy, or both, he, motionless as a statue, remained looking down upon the ruined mill.

With his back towards the water and the foam bubbles, and the sunshine lying warm on the bank behind, with the darkling clouds closing up about him, and the utter desolation of that silent building lying below, he seemed to my fancy the very embodiment of the spirit pervading the scene, the representative of the story I had myself lacked genius to tell.

I never worked so fast, I think, as I did while filling in this final and most important detail.

I never threw such heart and energy into any labour before.

Each time I lifted my eyes I trembled lest my model should have vanished or changed his position; but no, he stood there immovable.

As if, understanding my purpose, he was humouring it.

Darker grew the clouds, all brightness disappeared from the sky, from the greensward the dancing sunshine vanished, but still I worked on.

I had just finished, just put one last touch to the pose of the solitary figure in the landscape, when Georgie’s hands were placed on my shoulders, Georgie’s voice sounded in my ear.

“It is going to rain, Peg,” she said; “you had better come home. Dinner will soon be ready, and Mr. Wimple’s man from Eddingfold has ‘brought over some patterns of papers, if you please, Miss, for Miss Vernam to select which she will be good enough to order.’ What a lovely thing you have made of it!” she went on, pointing to my drawing; “and oh! Peg, where did you get that man? his attitude is simply perfection.”

“Hush!” I entreated; “do not speak so loud. He will hear you. Remember how distinctly sound travels uphill.”

“Where is he, then?” asked my sister, lowering her voice almost to a whisper.

“Where!” I repeated; “standing under the pine, tree, as I have drawn him.”

Georgie opened her eyes in amazement, then her keen swift gaze scoured the landscape in all directions.

“You are jesting,” she said, at last. “There is no person in sight.”

“What a stupid little mole you are!” I exclaimed. “Do you see those pine trees that seem almost to overhang that stream?”

“Perfectly.”

“Well, carry your eye to the fourth and last of them, that on the top of the rising ground, the one the trunk and foliage of which is so clearly denned against the sky.”

“I have done so. Where must my eyes wander next?”

“Nowhere. You see him now, do you not?”

“Do you mean that he is standing near that tree?”

“Yes—leaning against it.”

“My dear Peg, either I am blind, or you are mad; there is no man standing there.”

“There are none so blind—” I was beginning, exasperated, when Georgie stopped me.

“I assure you,” she persisted, “there is not a living thing in sight, not even a crow. You have been looking so long at your drawing that your eyes are full of the objects it contains.”

“Do you want me to doubt the evidence of my own senses?” I asked a little angrily.

“Well, my dear, it is almost as broad as it is long,” she answered, with an amused smile, “and if I must choose between the two, I should prefer doubting the evidence of your senses to suspecting the accuracy of mine.”

I was too much provoked to argue the matter further.

“I do not care who he may be, or what he may think,” I said, rising. “I shall go and speak to him.”

“And dispel an optical delusion,” answered my sister. “Peg, do you really and truly believe there is a man standing there?”

But I would vouchsafe no answer.

Up the narrow, unused path beside the stream I wended my way, past the mill, across the narrow plank spanning the mill pit, and so beyond the weir to the further pine trees.

Scarcely for a second did I remove my gaze from the figure of the man who with folded arms and bowed head still stood looking down upon the desolate scene below.

All the way I kept my eyes upon him, and as I approached nearer and nearer I could see first one detail of his dress and then another.

Even his features became distinctly visible, and though I could not boast Mr. Berners’ keen faculty of observation, still I felt certain I should recognise that dark, sad face wherever, whenever, and however I chanced to meet it again.

For a moment the deep, sunk eyes were lifted from the distant mill and raised to mine, with a weary, wistful expression, and then instantly the place he had occupied was vacant; between myself and the tree was a space of green turf, without a human being on it.

Where he had leaned against the pine was the trunk covered with rugged bark, but of the person I had seen not a trace remained.

At the same moment I remembered Mrs. Shooter’s reference to the man who had walked into the mill dressed in a suit of dark grey tweed; the man who disappeared from the sight of those who admitted him, as this man had disappeared from mine.

“Well,” said Georgie, when I rejoined her, “which of us was right?”

“I found no one there,” I answered curtly.

Already that mysterious house was casting its shadow between us; not twenty-four hours in possession, and already my heart carried the burden of a secret I could not share with my sister!

XI

IN THE SUMMER WEATHER

The samples of paper-hangings submitted for our approval by Mr. Wimple’s managing man were of that order of art which finds favour in the eyes of the million.

Anything more astonishing and trying than the majority of the patterns he unrolled before us cannot well be imagined; and Mr. Wimple’s representative evidently conceived a poor opinion of our taste, as design after design heralded as “chaste,” “elegant,” “marvellously effective,” the “very latest triumph of combination,” was rejected, if not with contumely, at least with a silence which pronounced us destitute of artistic sensibility.

Half a dozen less offensive than those we had heard lauded so highly were placed on one side for further consideration.

“I think that might do for the drawing-room,” I remarked to Georgie, taking up one of these more modest patterns, and holding it in a light favourable for the contemplation of its beauties.

“It is a very neat thing, very neat, indeed,” said the man; “but if you would not object to a little more money, we have something at the warehouse I think might suit you better than that. I do not know how I chanced to overlook it. A very superior article indeed. Quiet, but good; exactly your style, I should say, ladies; and we could put it in for you low; that is, low considering the quality. We had it down for a gentleman, a large customer, who afterwards preferred another, and so it was thrown on our hands. It is too good for the bulk of our work; and it is almost too quiet for houses where something first-class is required. If you will make a selection for the dining-room, I think, subject to your approval, ladies, it might be well to leave the drawing-room question open till you have seen this paper.”

“Very well,” I agreed; “but about price. I suppose you know the limit Mr. Lauston would not wish exceeded.”

“I believe, madam, he told Mr. Wimple that would be entirely a matter for your consideration.”

“What a model landlord!” said Georgie, sotto voce.

“I beg pardon, ladies; I hope you will excuse the liberty I am taking; my intentions are good, I do assure you; but, begging pardon again, do you expect Mr. Lauston to pay for these decorations?”

“Of course,” I said, and Georgie echoed “Of course” also.

“Mr. Wimple thought there might perhaps be some misapprehension, and desired me to explain to you that Mr. Lauston’s instructions to him were perfectly clear. If honoured by your commands, we were to execute the work, in every respect, as if for Mr. Lauston; but the bill—excuse me, ladies, speaking so very bluntly—was- to be sent in to you.”

“To me!” I repeated, in bewilderment. “Why, this is not my house. I never heard of such an idea as expecting a tenant to pay the cost of repairs; besides, I gave Mr. Lauston a list of the work it was absolutely necessary should be executed, and he agreed with me there was not a thing I had set down but might be considered essential for ordinary comfort.”

“Of course, madam, it is not my business, but I think you will find that Mr. Lauston does not mean to pay even for the repairing of a lock. In fact, we know that he has mentioned to several tradespeople at Eddingfold that you were likely to prove a very good customer, as the house was considerably out of repair.”

“Out of repair! I should think so, indeed!”

Mr. Wimple’s man, with his head a good deal on one side, slowly rolled up some pieces of paper.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you would like to see Mr Wimple. I am sure he would come round with the greatest of pleasure.”

“No, thank you,” I answered. “I will write to Mr. Lauston, today—at once. What time does the next post go out?”

Mr. Wimple’s man said the post had gone out from Maytree; but he, returning immediately to Eddingfold, would be most happy to take charge of my letter—thereby saving a delay of some hours.

It took me but a very few minutes to dash off a note to Mr. Lauston, expressing my astonishment at the idea taken up by the local tradespeople, that I meant to pay the expense of the needful painting, papering, plumbing, and so forth.

I said I felt certain there must be some misapprehension on their part, and begged Mr. Lauston to write to them immediately he received my letter, in order to disabuse their minds of the absurd crotchet I had mentioned, and request that the work might be begun at once, and finished without delay.

“At present,” I added, “the house is almost uninhabitable,” and I signed myself, “yours truly,” having commenced the note with “Sir.”

By return of post an answer arrived from Mr. Lauston.

He was not to be daunted by coldness or annoyed by feminine petulance.

He began, “My dear Miss Vernam,” and subscribed himself, “Most faithfully yours.”

As for the letter, its tone was mild, conciliatory, and explanatory.

He regretted, more than he could express, that there had been any misunderstanding about the matter.

Throughout the transaction he had been influenced but by one wish—viz., the desire to do anything and everything possible for me, compatible with the duty he owed to others.

With this view he had written to the local tradespeople, and begged them to put me upon their very best terms; “in fact, I told them to treat you as they would treat me. I also added, that when the work was completed I should examine it myself to see it was properly done.”

“The disadvantage,” proceeded Mr. Lauston, in his clear, legible, gentlemanly handwriting, “of doing business with ladies usually, is their utter lack of the most rudimentary commercial knowledge.

“Things which men accept as matters of course fill the minds of the better sex with astonishment.

“You, however, who are possessed of more solid common sense than any lady I ever previously had the happiness of meeting, will, I am convinced, accept my assurances that I have acted throughout the whole of this transaction rather as if you were my client than my tenant.

“I have endeavoured to make matters as pleasant and easy for you as possible; and when you comprehend more thoroughly the exceeding cheapness of the place you have rented, you will, I trust, do me justice, and restore me to that place in your esteem which, from some chance expressions in your note, I fear I have, through no fault of my own, forfeited.

“Believe me, however, I have your interests earnestly at heart, and that it will give me the greatest satisfaction at all times to be of any service to you or yours.

“I am, my dear Miss Vernam,

“Most faithfully yours,

“R. D. Lauston.”

“What’ll we do now?” asked my sister.

I made no immediate answer, but opened my desk, and taking out the duplicate agreement which Mr. Lauston had handed to me, read it carefully over.

This I had not done previously. The “heads” Mr. Lauston sent us we carefully considered and discussed; but the more formal document was signed in faith and haste.

“Should you care to look it over?” Mr. Lauston had suggested lightly.

“It is not necessary, I suppose?” was my foolish answer.

“Not necessary, of course. It merely embodies the terms we agreed upon, and if not signed today, it cannot be done for a fortnight, as I am going out of town, and must be at London Bridge Station in a quarter of an hour. Jones, fetch me a cab. Shall we let the matter stand over, Miss Vernam?”

“We had better settle the affair now, I think,” I answered; and before I could think again a pen was placed in my fingers, the papers were signed and witnessed, and Mr. Lauston was putting on his gloves.

“Good-bye, Miss Vernam,” he said; “I must be off now. Be sure and let me know if I can assist you in any way. Good-bye, again.”

It had never occurred to me that the document I signed might contain very different provisions from those agreed upon between Mr. Lauston and myself; but now, as I conned the paragraphs slowly and at my leisure, I began to think that the Mill House might prove an expensive residence.

“I am afraid, Georgie, that I have been very foolish,” I remarked at length; and then she came and sat down beside me, and we went carefully over the paper together; I pointing out such passages as filled me with dread forebodings, Georgie shaking her head, and sighing at not infrequent intervals.

“I wonder if Mr. Lauston is an honest man,” she said at last, meditatively.

“I am sure I cannot tell,” I answered. “All I know is, I have been a very silly woman.”

“Mrs. Shooter says,” proceeded my sister, ignoring my remark as irrelevant, “that when Shooter asked if fifty pounds rent was to include the gardens, Mr. Lauston said ‘Yes,’ and never mentioned a word about premium. Mr. Lauston did say he would not be troubled letting the place for less than seven years; but, first or last, a premium was never named.”

“And the inference you draw, Georgie?”

“Is that I believe Mr. Lauston has cheated you.”

“But, my dear, consider. Half a dozen drawings are not an enormous premium to pay for such a place as this. Mr. Berners would only give me ten, or at most twelve pounds for all of them.”

“I think Mr. Berners is cheating you also.”

“That is the evil, you see, of once beginning to suspect people, and attribute bad motives to them,” I remarked sagely. “I confess this business about the repairs does trouble and perplex me; but still, I prefer to imagine there has been some misunderstanding rather than a deliberate system of deceit. As for Mr. Berners, of course he gets more money for my work than he gives me. If he did not, how could he afford to pay me at once, and keep his shop open, and meet rent and taxes, and the wages of his employés? For the present, Georgie, I am satisfied about Mr. Berners, and in a few days I intend to satisfy myself also about Mr. Lauston.”

“What do you mean, Peg?”

“Why, I shall see a solicitor.”

“Oh!” said my sister, and in that “oh!” she managed to concentrate an amount of fear, admiration, and despair, which could only have had its origin in a spirit of prophecy, since legal perplexities were just those which hitherto had never troubled our repose.

“Now, I have got an idea in the way of a picture, which I mean to realize,” I said, not caring to pursue the Lauston question further.

“A moment first, Peg,” said Georgie, “I did not repeat all Mrs. Shooter told me. Her words were, ‘Though I am glad to see the place occupied, I am main sorry you ladies, which are ladies, has took it. I am afraid he’ (Mr. Lauston) ‘will get you into trouble of some sort. My husband, he would be mad if he knew I was speaking to you as I am, for the master promised him a golden sovereign the day the house were let, but I feel as if I can’t contain myself. He’s a bad man, Mr. Lauston, a cruel bad man, and if your sister wants to know what I mean, let her come and ask me.’”

“It happens,” I remarked, “that my ideal picture cannot be completed without Mrs. Shooter’s assistance, so I can ascertain her meaning when I go to implore her help.”

“Peg.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Because I was foolish enough to fall in love with this place, we are not to grow different to each other.”

Different! ah, no, unless, indeed, my sister, to love you a hundred times more, to think better of you in every respect, were to grow different!

“You naughty girl,” I said, “to make me cry.”

“Poor me!” she answered, “to have made you cry.”

And so we embraced and kissed, and wiped away the tears drawn from a deeper fount of sorrow than our light words might have seemed to touch, and I said,

“Now I am going for Mrs. Shooter’s baby.”

“What in the world, Peg, can you want with Mrs. Shooter’s baby?”

“I am going to make a picture; wait until you see it. If Mr. Lauston has troubled me with doubts, his place has inspired me with ideas.”

“May I come with you?”

“If you like.”

So together we set out, wandering down the road and across the meadows, hand clasped in hand, like a couple of children.

I do not know, Georgie, how it was you seemed to grow so inexpressibly dear to me all of a sudden.

Perchance it was some fresh charm of manner developed, some fresh grace of mind become more prominent, perhaps it might be that seeing you after months of repression in a more fitting frame-work, your beauty seemed to me more beautiful!

I know not, my sister, how it was, unless—indeed, it might be the prescience that you could not remain mine only much longer—but you grew to my thinking sweeter and fairer with each passing hour.

I can pause in my story, and look at you just as you were then. Such as was the talent given me, it did not lie much in the direction of figure-drawing, yet I had in those days a knack of catching a likeness which I sometimes search for in vain amongst the portraits limned by those who have taken high rank in their profession.

Slight as the sketch is, I have but to lift my eyes, and see you, my sister, as you were then, in the lovely summer weather, when, for mere delight in reproducing your beauty, I painted your dear self.

There, with the rose-blush colour on your cheek and a laughing light in your sweet eyes, with a gossamer scarf thrown over your head, just as by the merest charm it arranged itself, with a tangle of vine tendrils and climbing convolvuli, and clustering berberries and starry-white roses, all massed together for a background, and the rippling stream at your feet, you look down at me with the merry loving glance of old; and the past, when you were still all mine own, comes back to me, and whilst I rejoice to know you are happy with one who fills your life as I never could have done, I cannot refrain sometimes from sighing when I think of my own existence, which would oftentimes be dreary and empty were it not for the Art that even in the darkest and loneliest hours has stood so steadfastly my friend.

The water was pouring through the holes in the picturesque but useless old lock as Georgie and I approached Mr. Shooter’s cottage.

The bees were humming in the garden, the flowers were all ablaze with colour, the peace of the scene was wonderful, even the two small children turned out “to play” seemed infected by it, and stood quietly gazing at the river floating away.

Mrs. Shooter herself was in an agony of cleaning, the parlour furniture blocked up the passage, and the kitchen chairs and tables were out in the yard.

“I am in a terrible muddle, ladies,” she explained; “I had the sweep here last night and a bit of whitewashing done this morning. Steve, he be gone to Eddingfold, to take the turn of one of his mates as have met with an accident, and I thought it was a rare good chance to have a turn-out. There is no place to ask you to sit indoors, but it’s pleasant out on the grass.”

She was dusting and bringing out chairs for us as she spoke, but I stopped her hospitable intentions.

“I have only come to borrow your baby, Mrs. Shooter,” I explained, “I want to sketch him. We will take the greatest care of him and bring him back to you safe and sound in less than an hour.”

“As for that, Miss,” answered Mrs. Shooter, her face dimpling with delight, “you’re welcome to him for the day. I’ll just clean him up and put a tidy frock on him, and Marianne shall carry him round.”

“We can carry him ourselves, Mrs. Shooter, thank you; and as for dress, I want him just as he is lying now in his cradle, all tumbled and happy. You shall have a portrait of him to hang up in your parlour. There, you see what a nurse my sister is!”

For already Georgie had the lovely little fellow in her arms, his face all flushed with recent sleep, his hair tossed about his forehead, his dimpled fists clenched in the exuberance of his delight at being tossed deftly backward and forward, his fat little legs and pink toes appearing under the short white gown his mother had wished to change.

Simply he was beautiful, as so often the very young children of the poor are.

Not very long ago, I saw him again, an ungainly youth with large ears and a shock head, and his other belongings to match, and I thought if his mother’s eyes saw him as mine did, it had been a false kindness to present her with that picture of infantile grace and beauty.

“What are you going to do with him, Peg?” asked Georgie, as we left the lock-house behind.

“Wait and see,” I answered, laughing; and so we walked on, my sister talking to the child, and cooing over him with that instinct of maternity which was a part and parcel of her nature from the time when she had her first rag doll, and went to sleep with the limp creature clasped in her arms, for fear any evil should happen to it in the night.

“Mrs. Shooter was too busy today to enlarge upon her antipathy to Mr. Lauston,” I remarked, during a pause in Georgie’s lavish caresses. “And I am rather glad matters so turned out; for I feel as if I would rather not hear evil of our landlord. For good or for ill, we must be his tenants for seven years, and it is as well not to begin with a prejudice against him.”

“But about the repairs?” suggested my sister, who in some matters was wonderfully practical.

I feel as I look around on this beautiful country—as I listen to the murmuring of the streams—as I perceive something urging me on to work, something I never understood before stirring whatever of energy and talent there is in me—that I can forgive the landlord many a sin for the sake of his place.

“After all, you see, Georgie,” I went on, “it is a mere question of money, and if I am strong to labour, if I can turn out work which must sell, what is the use of fretting about money?”

“Oh, do look at that woman!” whispered Georgie, shrinking close to me, and directing my attention to an old hag who was walking on the grass on the further side of the road, and regarding my sister and the child she carried with a curious and evil gaze; “is not she like a witch?”

“Poor soul!” I said; “if she be a witch, her craft has not done much for her. She seems half starved.”

Immediately, moved by a sudden impulse, Georgie turned back.

The woman was standing still gazing after us; and when Georgie advanced towards her, she remained quite motionless, waiting.

“What is this for?” she asked, looking first at the piece of silver offered to her, and then at my sister’s face.

“I beg your pardon; I did not know; I thought perhaps you might be in want of it; I did not mean to annoy you.”

“Oh! I won’t refuse it, bless you,” she said, but her tone had no sound of blessing in it. “If but for the rarity of anybody offering aught to me, I’ll take your money and thank you. That’s not your own baby you are covering up so snug, is it?”

“Mine! oh, no!” and Georgie laughed at the idea, blushing, as was her pretty habit, also.

“I thought you looked too happy for it to be your own,” answered the woman bitterly. “Well, I thank you, miss. Though I am not a beggar, I can use your gift, and I hope you’ll never be the poorer for it;” and with these words, and a parting scowl at me, she wended her way along the path we had just traversed.

“Not a very gracious sort of personage,” observed Georgie.

“She has once been better off,” I answered; “people talk a good deal of nonsense, I fancy, about the ‘uses of adversity.’ As a rule, I do not think those uses tend much to increase geniality of manner.”

“Now I shall see what you are going to do with Master Shooter,” said Georgie, as I opened the gate leading into the garden.

“Yes, give him to me now;” and I led her to a shady spot beside the stream, where there was quite a little thicket formed of reeds and rank grass, and meadow-sweet, and foxglove, and water-bitney, and forget-me-not, and in the middle of this, with the bells of the foxglove nodding over him, and the rushes murmuring a plaintive lullaby, I laid the child on a cushion of yielding moss.

“Now, Georgie,” I said.

My sister clasped her hands together in delight, and I knew my idea would be a success.

It was.

Here I may as well get rid of that portion of my story which relates merely to pecuniary matters.

After we went to the Mill House we prospered. Whatsoever my mind conceived and my fingers executed seemed at once to turn into gold.

A cluster of fern leaves, a waggon loaded with felled trees, a curve of the river where reeds grow unheeded, and broken branches torn in the winter from ancient willow trees lay across the water, forming unwonted eddies in the stream!

Whatever I touched proved successful.

For my models I did not then go far afield. Round and about our dwelling lay material in plenty. The Surrey landscape, as it appears and reappears in Academy pictures, I left untouched.

I chose humbler and more virgin soil.

I tried to arrest the thousand varying effects of light, to press the changing cloud illusions into my service, to depict the flecked sky as it appeared mirrored in the rivers.

Very unambitious were my subjects, but I fancy I understood them, and perhaps the public liked their very simplicity.

At any rate, the drawings sold, and I, with the fever of work upon me, toiled on at my labour of love, knowing no weariness, desiring no rest.

I was prospering, and the summer days seemed all too short for the completion of the tasks I set myself.

In an old portfolio I found some sketches made in Yorkshire, and from these I elaborated half a dozen landscapes, which enabled me to pay Mr. Lauston his pound of flesh without delay.

I paid also for the paper-hangings, the repairs of various locks, and the replacement of numerous slates.

Further, I settled the costs of preparing that lease which Mr. Lauston hoped would deliver me over bound into his hands.

“You see, Miss Vernam, the danger of contracting engagements without consulting a solicitor,” remarked the legal gentleman whose advice I sought concerning the papers I had signed.

As he, however, managed to run up a tolerably heavy bill on the foundation of this indiscretion, a bill which seemed to me like a ten-page piece of music cunningly constructed upon an air only sixteen bars long, I could not avoid considering whether it might not be as dangerous sometimes to take a gentleman versed in the law into one’s confidence as to refrain from doing so.

XII

MR. LAUSTON IS OFFENDED

Before we had been two months in the new home I offended Mr. Lauston, and our servant suddenly left our service.

Of these events I must speak in the order in which they occurred.

Although it seemed impossible to doubt that Mr. Lauston had exercised a considerable amount of diplomacy in that matter of the premium, and that other matter of the repairs, to say nothing of getting me to pay three years’ rent in advance, still I did not quarrel with him Concerning his sharp practice.

In fact, unless a woman had developed the temper and courage of a perfect virago, I fail to see how, so long as he chose to preserve peace, war could have been declared.

Never was there a man so full of pleasant utterances—never did there exist a man more gifted with delusive frankness of manner and the happy facility of always placing himself in the right.

I did not believe in him—not one bit.

Even when he was telling me something which sounded like truth, I put no faith in his utterances.

His compliments vexed me, his offers of service annoyed me, his advice irritated me; and yet I could not quarrel with him.

He was always so plausibly friendly, so suavely courteous, that to repel him I felt it would be necessary to become rude myself.

Nevertheless, that difficulty had eventually to be encountered.

Mr. Lauston began to come too often, far too often, to the Mill House.

Under the pretence that “tradespeople would be tradespeople,” that “we, of course, knew nothing about how work should be done,” that “it was improbable we understood anything about cropping a kitchen garden, or the sort of vegetables our ground was capable of growing,” he “dropped in” upon us continually.

True, he said he had business in the neighbourhood, a statement which I, at the time, imagined to be utterly false, but which I understood subsequently was perfectly correct.

“How are you getting on, my dear Miss Vernam?” he was wont to say. “I found I had an hour to spare at Maytree, and so just ran over to see whether Wimple’s people were treating you fairly. Ah, a pretty paper, a very sweet, pretty paper, indeed. But I fear they have been charging you high for it.”

And so on ad libitum.

On these occasions, if I did not invite Mr. Lauston to partake of a cup of tea, he asked me to give him one, or rather he asked Georgie, and she, whom he amused and pleased (in spite of all her prepossessions to the contrary) with his talk, which was indeed plausible enough to have “wiled a bird off the tree,” was wont with her own hands to bring in a tiny tray, which Mr. Lauston said “delighted his eyes.”

It was my pretty sister who accomplished that feat, however—my dear, innocent, unsuspecting darling! and sometimes, when I caught his eyes following her lissom figure, his glance riveted upon her lovely face, my heart seemed to stand still in an agony of apprehension.

For by this time I had heard much about Mr. Lauston, of his evil life, his vindictiveness, his habit of overreaching—heard more fully how he had robbed the Dingleys—robbed and cast them forth. How he had sent an old servant, and a young girl, his niece, to reside for seven years in a house around which the evil aroma of the sins he had committed clung with a curious persistency. How the old servant was a woman of an unscrupulous nature, who conformed to all his whims; how, between them and the loneliness of her life, the niece was driven mad, and had to be conveyed to an asylum.

“He would drive me mad if I were connected with him,” I thought, looking one day at his face, so blandly calm, so beamingly civil, “and even as matters are, I must end this.”

“Will you walk round the garden, Miss Vernam?” said the subject of my thoughts at this juncture; “I should like to show you the border I consider best adapted for sowing early peas.”

We went out together, over the lawn across the bridge.

“You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Lauston,” I suggested, as we paced the walk by the river.

“Nay, Miss Vernam; was it not rather you who wished to speak to me?” and he removed a piece of bramble from my path with the courtesy of a Raleigh.

“I imagined you wished to speak to me,” he repeated, finding I did not immediately answer.

“You have a singular knack of reading one’s thoughts,” I remarked.

“Yours is such an expressive countenance, that it would be difficult to avoid reading your thoughts,” he answered.

These were the sort of speeches he always made to me when we were alone, and I felt the treacherous colour rising in my cheeks as I said:

“Then you have read also, I presume, what it is I desire to say to you.”

“Ah! your manner told me that more certainly even than your face.”

“I hope—I trust—” I was beginning to stammer, when he interrupted me.

“You have only been what you must always be, charming. If anything could increase my regret for the sentence of banishment which I feel is going to be pronounced, it would be the tender grace that has striven to prepare me for the shock.”

I felt strong enough and brave enough by the time he had finished this sentence to say what I deemed it only right to tell him.

“You must see clearly,” I remarked, “how we are situated, and how imprudent it would be for two young women—”

“Young girls,” he amended, with a pensive smile.

“Living quite alone, to act in direct defiance to the opinions of the world.”

“You are perfectly right,” he replied. “Though you know no one in the neighbourhood, and are not likely to know anyone, for this is not a place where people develop much friendly feeling towards strangers; though it is most improbable that a single human being is aware of my visits, though I am old enough to be your grandfather, and have never entertained a thought concerning you and your sister inconsistent with the highest respect and esteem it is possible for one human being to feel for another, still you are perfectly right. Ladies should always consider, and I fancy always do consider, rather what ‘might be’ than what ‘is.’”

“I am not quite certain that I fully understand your meaning,” I said, answering rather the covert sneer in his tone than the words he spoke, “but I understand my own meaning perfectly, and it is this—that as a woman can never afford to despise the opinion even of strangers, she should act more circumspectly when surrounded by persons who know nothing of her antecedents, than when living amongst her own friends.”

“In plain English, the Misses Vernam consider it right and necessary to be more particular as to the visitors they tolerate in Surrey than they would in Yorkshire.”

“I think that is my idea.”

“And as we have become acquainted here instead of there, I am to be the sufferer. Nay, I am not going to pain you by asking for a mitigation of my sentence. Your friendship has been very pleasant to me—how pleasant you can never know. I am a lonely man, Miss Vernam; when I leave my office, there are no bright faces to welcome my return home. I had a niece once, but—No, I shall never pass such hours again—yet you are right, as you always must be right. Keep a kindly recollection of me if you can, and remember if I can ever serve you that my time and everything I possess is at your disposal. With your permission, I will not go into the house again. I feel myself unequal to formal leave-taking. I may pass out of Paradise through this gate, may I not? Thank you—a thousand times, thank you. Good-bye. God bless you.”

He took my hand in both of his and pressed it tenderly. This time I was not mistaken, and I had not been mistaken as to the incident in his office.

Yet after that he had cheated me; and though a woman may forgive being made love to, even though the love be made in a most offensive fashion, or being cheated, if it so happens that the love-making and the cheating have been enacted by the same person, she never forgives and she never forgets!

As I closed the gate behind Mr. Lauston, I seemed to breathe more freely.

At last I acknowledged to myself that I had been afraid of him, afraid to speak openly, afraid of giving offence.

“He took it very well,” I thought, “and I am glad he will not have an opportunity of holding my hand again for some time to come.”

This interview occurred on a Tuesday. On the Saturday following, Mr. Lauston was again announced.

When he entered, I was alone in the room overlooking the river, painting busily.

“Do not condemn me unheard,” he said, deprecatingly, answering the astonishment he must have seen written on my face.

“I am here on business, strictly upon business,” he went on. “I did not like to write to you, because one never knows into whose hand a letter may fall; but Wimple was with me this morning.”

“Indeed!” I remarked.

“Yes; you know how stupid country people are. I make no apology for telling you his business, because you have such excellent sense. You are in every respect—”

“If Mr. Wimple’s business with you concerned me, I wish you will tell me at once what he said,” I interrupted, ruthlessly cutting across the familiar formula.

“Well, the fact is, he had got a little frightened about his account, and so he came to me to make inquiries. I need not repeat what I said, but if you have had any trouble with him, you will have no more; you can take your own time about settling his account.”

For a moment I sat stupefied, amazed at the deceit of the man who told me all this without a change of countenance.

“I really was more annoyed than I can express, Miss Vernam,” he resumed, but I stopped him with a question—

“Mr. Wimple was with you yesterday, did you say?”

“I really did not imagine you would allow so slight a matter to vex you so much, or I should never have mentioned it.”

I did not answer; I felt too thoroughly disgusted for words.

Walking across the room, I opened a cabinet, and took from thence a folded paper, which I handed to Mr. Lauston.

It was Mr. Wimple’s receipt, dated a week previously.

“You have made some mistake,” I said, as quietly as I was able, but I heard that my voice trembled when I spoke the words.

He opened the paper and looked at it, and I saw his face change.

If I had dealt him a blow, it would not have altered his face one half so much.

He did not expect it; the last thing he imagined possible was in fact what had occurred.

The very day Mr. Wimple sent in his bill I had paid it.

The account arrived in the morning, and having to purchase some goods at Eddingfold in the afternoon, I called and got rid of that debt at the same time.

After such a fiasco even Mr. Lauston was silent for a few moments; then he said

“There has been, as you remark, some great mistake. I must see Wimple about the matter.”

“I do not think that can be necessary,” I said with a sneer I was at no pains to repress.

“Pardon me, Miss Vernam, I consider it quite necessary,” and rising, he thrust his hands in his pockets, and strode towards one of the windows.

To reach it he was compelled to pass by a small music-stand on which that very morning I had placed a drawing elaborated for my own satisfaction.

He was not thinking of paintings at the moment, but this chanced to catch his eye.

“Good heavens! where did you know that man?” he exclaimed, pausing suddenly before it.

“Why?” I asked.

He did not answer for a moment; then:

“Bah! it is nonsense,” he said; but I could see he eyed me furtively, and wiped drops of perspiration off his forehead as he spoke. “You never could have known him. He was dead when—he died, that is, years ago.”

“Possibly,” I answered, the while I experienced a grovelling sort of terror which almost deprived me of speech. “Nevertheless, I saw him the day after we came down here.”

“Saw him—where?”

“Standing under a pine tree, looking down on the old mill.”

“Ah! Miss Vernam, it is your turn to make mistakes now,” he answered, with a sickly smile. “That man has been dead enough this many a day.”

“Then he must have risen from the dead,” I retorted, “for I saw him distinctly the very first day I sketched the mill.”

“Really, for a lady possessed of such marvellous good sense and remarkable talent—”

“Mr. Lauston,” I interrupted, “on the very day after we came down here to live I saw that man as distinctly as I see you now—so distinctly that, as you observe, I have painted his features from memory. The original sketch I sold to Mr. Berners.”

“He gave you a good price for it, I trust?”

“I was satisfied,” was my answer.

“I must beg a thousand pardons for having wasted so much of your valuable time,” said Mr. Lauston, who still looked white, even to his lips.

“I pray you will not mention it,” I said.

“You are always kind, Miss Vernam, but I feel I ought to intrude no longer.”

I did not ask him to remain; I felt I could not do so.

“Good-bye,” he said, with that smile I both feared and detested curling his lips.

“Good-bye,” I answered.

Then he just touched the hand I offered—offered in spite of myself—and was gone, and I understood I had made an enemy for life.

“Never mind,” thought I, courageously; “an open enemy is better than a false friend any day.”

XIII

A CRY IN THE NIGHT

When Mary brought in the kettle for tea, I said to her:

“Mary, if Mr. Lauston should call again, will you say I am engaged?”

The girl turned round with the kettle still in her hand, her manner very confused, her face very red, and answered:

“Oh! miss, if you please, miss, I am very sorry, miss, I am sure, but I should like to leave.”

“Like to leave!” I repeated, stupefied.

My experiences hitherto had not lain in those pastures where servants, merely coming in to graze, leave at the shortest notice.

With us at Grangedale, nothing save marriage or death, or the misfortunes which finally cast us adrift, had parted any faithful servant from our service, and really, Mary being a nice trim maiden, willing and useful, I had looked upon her as a fixture for some time to come, at all events.

“If you please, miss,” said Mary, in reply, and sat down the kettle, “and, miss—”

“Yes, Mary.”

“If it won’t ill-convenience you very much, I’d like to go this evening.”

“This evening, Mary! why, you must be mad!”

“No, miss—I think not, miss—leastways not now,” said Mary, recovering herself, and hitting hard at what she considered the vulnerable part of our armour. “I don’t object, miss, to a country place as is country, with the houses of gentlefolk all about, and gentlefolk a-coming and a-going, but I never before did take a situation in a wilderness, and I never will again.”

“That will do, Mary,” I answered. “You can, of course, go as soon as you like.”

“What in the world are we to do?” said Georgie, in despair, after the girl had left the room.

“Look our position in the face,” I said, ruefully, but still, I trust, with some trace of the courage which had stood us Vernams in good stead when fighting for king and country, when standing at bay for God and the right.

Yes, I can honestly say, I never before felt the blood tingle so sharply at my fingers’ ends; never comprehended with what a wealth of daring it might fill even a woman’s veins, as when I fully realized I had made an enemy, and understood the defection of Mary to mean the beginning of a war of petty annoyances.

I was but a woman, yet I had come of “decent people,” and I did not mean to bring discredit on my ancestry.

Thoroughly I understood Mr. Lauston meant to weary us of the Mill House; thoroughly I made up my mind that I would starve sooner than surrender.

Nevertheless, that night my nerves did receive a fearful shock.

Remember we were quite alone in the house, Georgie and I.

Our sleeping apartments joined, and as we had heaps of spare apartments, the dressing-rooms lay to right and left of our bed-chambers.

Thus, I slept and dressed over the studio, and Georgie lodged in greater state, went to bed in the apartment above the drawing-room, and adorned her sweet loveliness in a little chamber looking out over the drive.

I had so planned it.

Any front view seemed more cheerful for my darling than that sorrowful water and drear expanse of meadow land.

About eleven we went to bed, and I soon fell asleep.

In Surrey, sleep came to me easily, if not pleasantly, as it does to most who live there. Were I a doctor, I would make my fortune by buying up property in the Surrey lowlands, and sending all patients suffering from insomnia to that air.

Sleep! Dear friends, there amongst the reeds is the true Lotus-land. There you may fling chloral to the winds, and scoff at morphia.

The trouble is not to go to sleep, but to keep awake—at least, so I have ever found it—and the change is great from London, where most people toss restlessly through the night watches, to those dreamy valleys where fanned by southwest breezes, and hushed by the murmur of many waters, and the whispering of the rushes, the eyelids close naturally, and the spirit floats away without an effort into the realm of unreality.

Well, I slept, for a time soundly, heavily; then I began to dream.

I dreamt it was a wild, wet evening; with grey clouds lying across a lowering sky, and night coming on, that night which we see in sleep but never when we are awake.

I could feel the rain beating upon my face, and the wind tossing my hair, and I seemed to stand on a shelving piece of greensward, sloping down to a broad sheet of water, in the middle of which was an island covered with willows, and wild flowers and weeds.

Close upon the brink grew a great tree, and to that tree was moored a punt, the bottom of which was full of water.

The wind was bringing it round, with its broadside almost against the bank, and as I stepped into it I could hear the suck, suck of the water coming in through the leak beside the locker.

I do not know when the boat was unfastened, or how it chanced that all at once the current seemed to turn, but in a moment we glided from shore, and the punt swung round, as in the manner of punts, into deeper water, then the wind rose again, and the rain began to fall more heavily.

I could see the great drops splashing into the water around, and into that lying at the bottom of the boat, and I was wondering what I should do, when another current caught the boat, spun it round, and dashed it broadside once more against the bank, some distance from the tree whence we had started.

With a great sense of relief, I was in the very act of picking up the chain, ere springing to land, when the distance between the punt and the bank widened; in another second we were out in the widest part of the lake, the wind howling and the rain pouring in torrents, the punt now turning this way, now that, so that one minute I saw the island and the next the tree and the bank; the water began to rise in the boat, the further end was dipping down to its gunwale, then the gunwale was under water.

In desperation I threw all my weight back on the seat, endeavouring to right the boat, but the water came over it.

I could feel it soaking my feet, then splashing above my ankles, then touching my knees, then there was a lurch, another turn, a fiercer blast of wind than ever, followed by rain which seemed to be poured out of buckets, then the boat went from under me, and in semi-darkness I was struggling in the midst of the flood, reaching out my hands for something to grasp, and meeting nothing, nothing save the water in which I was sinking.

At that moment I awoke, with the sound of a shriek ringing in my ears.

Could I have uttered it?

I was still half asleep—and had the confused feeling of being still out in the water clinging to me; the wind had changed, and was howling down the chimney, and the rain was beating against the window facing the north.

I sat up in bed and listened.

My hair was dripping just as if I had been in the river, and my linen wet and clammy.

I never remembered to have been in such a perspiration in all my life before.

Hark!—what on earth could it be?—a shrill, penetrating cry, which rose above the noise of the wind and the rain.

“Peg,” cried my sister at this juncture; “Peg, are you awake? did you hear that? what can it be?”

She came running from her room to mine, her bare feet falling noiselessly on the carpet, her near presence only to be guessed by the tones of her voice as she crossed to my side.

“I heard it twice; did you?” she went on. “The first time I was asleep, and it woke me; what can it be?”

“Someone in great distress,” I answered, hurriedly slipping on a dressing wrapper, and then rushing to the window overlooking the river.

Thrusting the curtains aside and drawing up the blind, I threw the sash wide and looked out, Georgie leaning over my shoulder and striving to look out also.

Not a sound to be heard save the pelting of the rain and the howling of the wind.

Nothing to be seen save the rushing river and the meadows beyond, and the gardens, where not even a bird was yet astir.

Far away in the east there appeared some streaks of light, showing that morning would soon be breaking; but it was still impossible to discern far-away objects distinctly, and it was only through a blurred grey misty atmosphere I could make out the half-dead willow tree on the opposite bank, with its broken branches trailing in the river, the line of distant hedges, the sunken barge three parts under water, and the sullen, swollen stream flowing faster than I had ever before beheld it, speeding along.

“Did anyone call?” I cried as loud as I could shout; but the wind caught the sound of my voice and flung it back to me, and the dripping rain alone returned an answer.

“Let me try,” said Georgie, and putting both her hands to her mouth, like a boy, she sent a clear, sharp cry out into the grey wet morning.

Thrice more she repeated her signal, and then a fourth time she essayed to make herself heard.

“Does anyone want help?”

“So many thousands that no one will answer,” I remarked. “It must have been some bird; let us shut the window.”

But at that moment there rose and stood on the top of the cabin of the sunken barge a human figure; it rose dark and indistinct in the uncertain light, half obscured by the willow branches drooping over the old boat, but certainly a human figure.

“What is that, Georgie?” I asked; “there, standing on the barge?”

“I see nothing,” she answered.

“Right under the furthest branch; it is moving now again.”

“There is nothing whatever on the barge,” she persisted.

“But, Georgie, just look steadily at that willow for a minute. Stand where I am; now you can better see the part of the barge which is out of the water.”

“I can see it distinctly, and there is nothing on it, not even a rat. Your sight is not so long as mine, and it has confused the shadows. Shut your eyes for a moment, and you will see for yourself; there is not a living creature in sight.”

I did as she advised, I turned my back to the wind and the rain and closed my eyes, then turning suddenly, I opened them again.

There lay the barge, solitary, desolate, there dropped the willow boughs, but sign of life there was none.

And yet I had seen that figure distinctly, as distinctly as I had beheld the lonely watcher under the pine trees.

Good heavens! was it that in the stories told about the place there lay some germ of truth?

Was it that the river refused to hold its mysteries; that the dead who had been sinned against could not rest quiet, though the trouble was past and over; was it that to me was given the power of seeing things to others mercifully invisible; that to this silent lonely house I had come with the purpose, all unknown to myself, of righting some wrong still remediable, of frustrating some wickedness still in progress?

I closed the window and stood silent.

“You look quite pale, dear,” said my sister, “and you are shivering with cold.”

I did not answer, I could not speak a word.

To avoid further discussion I let her lead me back to bed and wrap the clothes around me.

“Poor old darling, you are still shivering,” cried Georgie, as she kissed my lips, and then, instead of returning to her own room, she lay down beside me, and all through the morning watches I could look at her sweet face, placid in slumber, with a feeling of rest to my own tired eyes, to which no sleep would come.

XIV

A VERY DREARY SUNDAY

The whole of that day it rained, rained with a good even persistency which might have excited admiration even in a native of Ireland.

There was not a gleam of sunshine, not a break in the gloom of that leaden sky.

About eleven the wind lulled, but the rain poured down in fiercer torrents than ever.

Across the meadows came the sound of the church bells, but nothing else broke the stillness.

Even the usually irrepressible thrushes were silent, and as for our cocks, they had not a crow left in them.

A few adventurous chickens ventured out and crossed the yard in search of stray worms, but they soon retreated to the shelter of an empty barn with drooping tails and saturated plumage.

“I wish we had some ducks to look at,” sighed Georgie. “The pleasure ducks take in being out in the wet is quite inspiriting.”

How lonely the house seemed!

I never imagined one servant could have made such a difference.

When I went through the kitchen to the larder, my footsteps awakened hollow echoes—echoes I could not recollect having noticed on a few occasions Mary had been absent during her residence with us.

“I shall get afraid!” I thought, “if I give way to these feelings,” so although there existed no real necessity for me to do anything of the sort, I kindled a large fire in the range, and kept myself busy with faddling about this piece of work and that.

Neither Georgie nor I understood much about cooking, but still I determined to provide just the dinner Mary should have served for us.

With the best intentions, however, the repast did not prove quite a success.

The meat was raw, and the tart burnt, and the potatoes—well, the potatoes were not mealy.

“It is quite clear that I had better not abandon the pencil for the spit,” I remarked to Georgie, whose offers of assistance I had rejected with scorn; but though we laughed at my failure, I imagine the utter badness of our mid-day meal did not tend to raise our spirits.

“Do not let us ever try to do anything more in that way,” suggested Georgie. “We had better stick to tea; we can make that, and I am sure we don’t want meat and pastry.”

“It is to be hoped we do not, unless we can manage to eat both uncooked,” I replied.

“What could have induced Mary to serve us such a trick?” marvelled my sister.

“Possibly the monotony of Sundays without a young man. Most likely she is now walking with some favoured swain through the Park under the shelter of his umbrella.”

“I wonder when we shall be able to hear of someone else.”

“Before we are starved, it is to be hoped. Meantime, let us be thankful we know how to light a fire.”

The whole of that afternoon I sat with a book in my hand, reading, ostensibly, but really thinking—thinking.

Little as it may say either for my Christianity or my courage, I devoted most of the hours of one of the most wretched Sundays I ever spent in considering ways and means—in mentally adding and subtracting—in marvelling whether I could afford to quit the house, and leave Mr. Lauston, and the men and women he had wronged, to settle matters for themselves.

I was answerable for seven years’ rent, and I paid one hundred and fifty pounds down in cash.

I had also spent as much as was prudent in furniture, and although that, of course, could be removed, still, I reflected, considerable expense would be incurred in doing so.

Then Mr Wimple’s account, and the accounts of various other local tradespeople, had encroached still further upon the money I possessed; and last, but not least, if we left the Mill House, where were we to go?

Remembering the difficulty we had previously experienced in meeting with a residence to our minds, I shrank from encountering such an ordeal again.

Besides, where should we ever find another residence—so cheap, so pretty, so retired, and, after all, what were its drawbacks?

Summing them all up, I found they only amounted to these:

An evil reputation, caused by the evil doings of its owner.

For years the place had lain empty; and even around a house which has never been inhabited—never been tenanted by a sin or a sorrow, there always, if it remain long vacant, creeps some story of gloom and mystery to account for its avoidance.

What were the Dingleys to me, that I should dread to live in the place which had been theirs?

We were honest people—honestly paying our way, honestly working as hard, perhaps, as any Dingley ever worked; and, further, if wrong had been done, it had not been done by us.

Walking on the earth, or lying in their graves, what right had the Dingleys to interfere with our peaceable possession of their old residence?

Further, had they really interfered?

Seated before a magnificent wood fire, and soothed by the cup of tea which, as before hinted, never fails to exercise a soothing influence on my nerves and temper, I began to think I had been very foolish to permit myself to be disturbed by my imaginings, and by the stories Mrs. Shooter had repeated to me. If we were to believe every old woman’s tale, it would be impossible for us to reside long in any house in England.

Taking my own senses as the only experience worth considering, what had I seen, heard, or felt, in the way of ghostly occupation, since we entered into possession of Mr. Lauston’s eligible residence?

“Now, Margaret Vernam, be accurate,” I said to myself; “what are the items, and what is the sum total of the evidence you have to offer in support of there being anything connected with this house besides the fancies of a foolish woman?”

Leaning back in my chair, looking at Georgie, half asleep sitting opposite to me, thinking of the pleasant haven we had found, after the confinement and discomfort of London lodgings, and the greater trial of advice from sympathizing friends, I could not but confess that the drawbacks attached to the Mill House were few and the advantages many.

The place was lonely—true; but was not that precisely the quality we had most desired? The place had an evil name. Yes; but was not that the reason why we were able to rent it for an almost nominal sum? The owner was a man with whom it was unpleasant to have close relations. That fact need not influence my reflections much, one way or other. I had managed, I felt, to put a stop to his visits; and as to money matters, why, the lease, which was strong to bind me, must bind him also. I had paid the premium in the form stipulated. I had paid three years’ rent. For the present, at all events, we would put Mr. Lauston out of the question, more especially as, in searching for a better landlord, we might only be exchanging the frying-pan for the fire.

Well, and what remained?

I had seen a man whom Georgie could not see. A man who disappeared when I drew near him—a man who certainly answered to the description given me of Mr. Dingley—a man whose portrait I felt satisfied Mr. Lauston recognised.

The delusion, if it were a delusion, of beholding a man where no man stood, was remarkable; but then, all my life, imagination had been largely developed in me.

When I was quite a tiny little creature, I used to see figures in the clouds, faces in the fire, mountains in the evening darkness, waves and water where was nothing really save grass bending before the wind.

Where actual vision ended, and the tricks of fancy began, I never could tell for certain. First, because of this tendency to create spectres for myself; and secondly, because Georgie’s sight was so much longer and surer than my own, that if, at a distance, I fancied I beheld, say a sister of charity, arrayed in spotless head-gear, I never could be quite certain till it drew close to me that the sister would not turn out a short-horn [cow], with a snow-white face.

My eyes were quite good enough to serve all purposes for which eyes are usually wanted, but I could not see a “crow flying over Hindir,” as Georgie sometimes, in boastful jest, said she could do; and if circumstances had compelled me to set up for a wild Indian, I should have been nowhere.

Granting, however, that I was mistaken—that no man stood under the pine tree—that the whole affair had been a delusion of my senses, what became of the likeness to his former tenant which had so evidently shocked Mr. Lauston?

Distinctly I knew I had seen the man’s features—so distinctly that I was able to transfer his face to canvas. Now, to what trick of the senses could I attribute this circumstance? Either I beheld the man, Dingley, in the flesh, or I did not. If I did, where did he come from? How did it chance a man, who had been dead for years, appeared before my eyes on the rising ground above the ruined mill? If I did not, whence came my knowledge of his face and of his dress? Even to a shoe-string, which was untied and hanging loose, I noticed his attire. Did I dream him? Did I imagine him? Had I, out of my own internal consciousness, unassisted by aught save vague descriptions, evolved the likeness of a man whose fortunes had been ruined, whose heart had been broken, whose life had been cut short, while I was still a child?

“I will leave that,” I said half aloud.

“Eh?—leave what?” asked Georgie, dreamily. “Did you speak, Peg?”

“Not to you,” I answered. “Go to sleep again.”

Well, if I left that, what remained to disquiet me?—a cry before dawn—a figure standing on the submerged barge.

The first might have been the call of a bird, or the shout of a boy crossing the fields. How boys can shout!—how boys do scream! the hideous noises they are able to produce at will were idiosyncrasies in nature of which I had some knowledge.

As for the figure, Georgie failed to see it at all—and I could only see it dimly—so dimly, that when I came to think the matter over coolly, I decided it might have been an illusion produced by a mist wreath.

Or if not an illusion, it might have been the figure of some real person. Shooter said he believed a good deal of netting went on in this river. What more likely than that a poacher, having set his snares overnight, came down early to see what he had caught?

Why had not this idea occurred to me before—this easy and natural solution of the difficulty? Simply because I was nervous; because my interview with Mr. Lauston, and Mary’s defection, had disturbed my mental equilibrium.

“We will not give up the house,” I decided, looking out into the gathering gloom. “We will not run away beaten either by Mr. Lauston or a maid-of-all-work, so long as Georgie is not frightened. So long as the ghosts leave her in peace, and the Haunted River flows on, bringing no trouble to her, carrying no joy away from her, I will remain here, work hard, make money, and try to do the best I can. Last night I thought I would be courageous—now I say—‘There, I give you my hand, Margaret Vernam, upon it.’ You shall not turn coward, even if you feel inclined to do so. You shall stay and fight all enemies that may arise, and conquer Mr. Lauston, were he fifty times more anxious to get rid of you than he is.”

For my instinct had told me Mr. Lauston did desire to get rid of me, and, ere long, I found my instincts were right.

As I ended my reverie and formed my decision, I fancied I heard a sound at the further end of the room. Turning round, it seemed to me that a shadow passed across the further window, that something flitted away when I rose from my chair.

“I do not believe it was anything, and at all events I shall not go out in this rain to see,” I muttered; so without further incident that day drew to a close, and was succeeded by other days that passed likewise without adventure, save that one evening, when I was walking in the garden quite late, I saw a boat steal out from among the rushes, lower down the stream, and pull noiselessly up the river.

There were three men in it; through the gloom I could just distinguish so much—one steering, two rowing.

But what astonished me was that their oars made no sound; if I had been nervous then and inclined to be fanciful, I should have run in full of the idea that a phantom boat pulled by phantom rowers was gliding silently up the ghostly water.

As matters were, myself concealed, I stood and watched their progress, peering through the darkness.

For a minute it seemed as if they were intending to land on our side the river, but then the direction of the boat was changed. It shot right across the stream, the rowers shipped their oars, one of them laid his hand on the portion of the barge still above water, and another, I could discern, scrambled on the poop, and was lost amongst the willows.

Instantly almost he reappeared, carrying something in his arms.

“Take hold,” he said, in a low tone, but the words came quite distinct across the water.

Carefully, as it seemed, the burden was laid down in the bows.

“All right, give way,” someone said, and silently as it had come the boat disappeared, the darkness grew deeper; I could hear the sob of the water as it passed by the barge and got entangled amongst the willow branches.

“If ever I take a house again,” I thought, “there shall not be a river within miles of it. On a bright summer’s morning the water may be all very well, but on the dreary winter afternoons, in the gathering twilight, and through the long, long nights, it is terrible, in its mystery, its silence, and its strength.”

XV

POOR AND FRIENDLESS

Autumn, so far as the time of the year was concerned; summer, as regards the weather—summer only with crisp mornings and chilly evenings, with the russet colours on leaf, and stem, and trunk—with the faint-dying odour which, at the sinking of the sap, fills the air where pine woods abound—with blackberries darkening in the hedgerows, in lieu of buds opening into blossom—with nuts covering the trees in the copse where but a few months previously birds were building their nests!

Oak-apples and acorns were littering the ground, the bracken was turning brown, the rushes had all been cut down—the promise of the year had long been over—its fruition was almost done—a little while, and the rest of winter would be come.

It was just the weather for my work, not too warm for walking, not too cold for sketching.

The drawing I had done after we first came to Maytree was, though profitable, in some respects unsatisfactory.

Musician, author, painter, has at heart some ideal of a great labour to be undertaken, of a great success to be achieved; and just like the rest of my fellows, I had grown discontented with my more modest efforts, and desired to commence and finish something more ambitious than the “studies,” “sketches,” and so forth, which were bringing such good grist to the domestic mill.

I was difficult to please, I suppose; or else the very luxury of choice provided rendered selection hard; at all events, we walked far and wide before I could decide on a subject for the great work.

Sketches were made in abundance; sketches sufficient to give me employment for the whole winter, and if I could succeed in disposing of them, maintain us for a twelvemonth; but somehow I felt there must be that very landscape waiting for me somewhere; as a man sometimes feels just the face he could marry is dimpling, or laughing, or weeping, all unconscious of the heart-longings that will never be appeased till it becomes part and parcel of hope, and memory, and life.

At last we came upon it suddenly; a hill crowned with pine-trees, an old church nestling under their gloomy shadow, a stretch of sloping heath land, with a sandy road winding in wonderful curves beneath.

To the left a broad belt of common land, on which grew dwarf bushes of thorn, tangled all over with blackberry-canes, great masses of bracken, and dock, and thistle.

Elm-trees and a deep ditch, with a tall hedge of holly, beech, and red-wood, divided this strip of every-man’s land from the fenced fields beyond, while for living interest, from a few cottages in the distance, where the road narrowed and the pines and the elms seemed to draw near together, the smoke rose straight into the clear evening air—some children were coming shouting down the hill from amongst the heather—a patient donkey was contemplating the scene from that strip of land which, for the nonce, was his, poor brute! and in the more immediate foreground a woman bent under a burden of bracken held by one hand across her shoulders, drawing with the other, by the aid of a rope, another great bundle along the yellow road behind her.

There were also the felled trees, the waiting waggon, the twisted branches hacked from the parent trunks, without which all woodland scenery seems more or less imperfect.

“This is what I have been looking for,” I remarked to Georgie, and finding a lichen-covered root that served for a seat, I instantly opened my sketch-book, and began in all haste to trace the crone who gave at once additional picturesqueness and individuality to the scene.

“Oh, Georgie, she is going to turn down that lane!” I cried in an agony. “Run and tell her, if she will remain where she is for five minutes I will give her a shilling.”

In our palmiest days my sister had been too much accustomed to execute errands of this description to hesitate about such a matter. Before I had finished my sentence she was off, and in another minute she waved her hand, by way of signal that she was successful.

I worked on: the woman showed no sign of haste or impatience. Georgie was talking to her; Georgie had the happy art of “talking to” people, and making them forget the passage of many five minutes.

At last, however, I called to her; then she turned and nodded, arranged the commercial part of the business, and came back to me walking slowly.

At the same time the children, who had paused on their way to skirmish through the heather at some game of running, and hiding, and catching, began to race down the declivity.

I could not have believed that such a small number of children could have made so great a noise.

At sound of the clatter behind her, the woman laden with and dragging the bracken looked behind, and immediately one of the girls—a bold, wild, impudent little brat—shouted out:

“Where are you taking that bracken, missus? where did you steal the bracken, witch?” questions which were gleefully echoed by the other children, some of whom began to dance up to and around the old creature they addressed.

“Go home, go home!” she said, raising her skinny arm, and threatening them with her fist.

“Go home yourself,” answered a lad, mocking her voice, and then they all opened their mouths, and addressed her in language I never conceived could have been used by creatures of so tender an age.

They did not confine themselves to verbal abuse either: they flung twigs at her and dirt; they tore the bracken from its fastenings, and a regular mêlée was impending, for the woman had flung down the burden from her shoulders, when Georgie walked between the victim and her tormentors.

“Are you not ashamed of yourselves, you naughty children?” she cried; and at her words the little imps drew back a step or two.

But they soon rallied.

“Who are you?” asked one of the ringleaders derisively.

“Who are you?” echoed the girl who had commenced the attack, putting out her tongue.

“Never mind who we are,” I said, reinforcing Georgie at this juncture; “but be quiet, and go home, or I shall call presently and see your mother, and complain to her about your behaviour.”

“She ain’t got no mother,” jeered a small elfish-looking boy.

“Well, I suppose she and you, too, have got somebody who can give you a good whipping,” I answered.

“Don’t trouble yourself about them, miss,” said the person who had excited their ire. “Stand aside for a minute while I curse them. They won’t get up so lively in the morning after that, I can promise them.”

I was shocked.

However admirable an institution cursing may have been at one period of the world’s history, when, indeed, it seems to have been pretty freely resorted to, I had no desire to hear those thoughtless little children cursed at bed and at board, sleeping or waking, although they were sadly naughty, and had used some very dreadful expressions indeed.

“They will be good now, I think,” I was commencing, when the woman interrupted me.

“Good! they will never be good, and they will never be quiet, till they are lying stretched out in their coffins. Let me speak to them, miss. They don’t heed parent nor parson, but they will have to heed me. You, Bill Jakes, and you, Louisa Wisley—”

“What are you doing to the children?” interposed a man’s voice, and uttering a fearful oath, a giant oath, compared to which the blasphemies of the smaller fry seemed like feeble pygmies, a man strode over a stile I had not before noticed, and came towards us.

Never, no never before had I imagined that such language could be addressed by one human being to another.

Georgie grew quite white with terror, and I felt myself shrinking as if a hail-storm was in progress.

But the woman at whom the words were hurled did not quail under them.

She stood looking at the speaker, while he piled epithet upon epithet, imprecation on imprecation, but she never attempted to arrest the torrent of his eloquence.

Indeed, it was noticeable, and I remarked the fact afterwards, though too horror-stricken to do so at the time, that she used no oaths herself, that except in an ecclesiastical and scriptural kind of way she never swore at all.

“Have you nearly done, Bob Adams?” she asked, when at length he paused to take breath. That was a group to contemplate at the time and recollect in the future.

“If I could ha’ my will, I’d never ha’ done till I saw you drownded in the pond, or burnt wi’ faggots for th’ witch ye are, you ——— you ——— you—;” blanks, which the reader, if he has ever resided in rural districts, can perhaps fill in for himself.

“Do you remember breaking your leg in the first frost last winter?” asked the woman.

“Aye, ——— you, it was your ——— doing.”

“Take care, then,” she said menacingly, her eyes flashing with an evil light, “that you don’t break the other before the new year’s in, and be sure, if you do, it is not in Squire Hartrey’s woods looking after his longtails.”

The man stood cowed and crestfallen.

She had hit some sore spot, I could see.

As for the children, they had backed a little from the centre of the battle-field, and were now watching the combatants with round eager eyes, and dirty fingers in most of their open mouths.

“Take care, Bob Adams. There are things done in your house you think nobody knows on but you and your wife and your wife’s cousin, but I know them. I know where your last Sunday’s dinner came from. I was there.”

The man was beaten; nevertheless, he picked up courage enough to fling at her a parting oath.

“When you are hung, mother,” he added, “I’ll see you swing, if I have to tramp my way and beg my bread, and if I can get near enough, I’ll give your legs a pull.”

“The tree is cut down,” she answered, gazing into the distance as though she beheld something tangible in the future, “and the saws are set for cutting it, and the place is ready for the gallows to be made firm and strong, but not for me. There is a man as is jealous of his wife—”

But Bob Adams waited to hear no more.

Muttering some profanity, he bade the children go home or it “would be the worse for them,” and then, without looking once behind, climbed up the hill through the heather, and disappeared from sight.

The woman looked after him with a curious smile, but made no comment on what had occurred.

She began gathering her bracken together, and Georgie stooped to help tighten the rope which had slipped off.

“Have you far to take it?” I asked.

“Nearly a mile,” was the answer.

“We will walk with you,” I said, feeling it might be scarcely right for her to be left alone.

“No, thank you, miss; there’s not one, unless it might be a senseless child, would lay a finger on me by day or by night. I am safe enough; but how could you tell what ill might happen to you if you got into company with an old witch.”

“You don’t suppose we believe in any of that sort of nonsense,” exclaimed Georgie impulsively.

“Don’t you, miss, or in ghosts, or anything of the kind?”

“No, certainly I do not.”

“Nor your sister neither?” and she fastened her keen eyes on me.

“Oh! my sister is far braver than I am,” answered Georgie, laughing.

She looked from Georgie to me, from me to Georgie again; then the wild expression left her face, and her voice softened as she answered—

“You have both of you courage enough, now. I hope you may always have it when you need it most. Though I am but a poor ignorant creature, I have often thought cowardice is the sin of the world; at any rate, I am sure it makes most of the trouble that is in the world. Now, I’ll wish you good evening, and God take care of you.”

I pressed more money upon her, but she refused to take it.

“Money is a great deal, but it is not everything,” she said oracularly, and we parted.

“Peg,” observed Georgie, as we turned our backs on the pine-wood and the heath, and the strip of common land, “that is the same woman we met the day you painted Mrs. Shooter’s baby.”

“I recognised her at once,” I replied, “and am confirmed in my belief that she has known better days.”

“What a dreadful man Bob Adams is.”

“You must remember he believes her to be a witch, and, indeed, she did her best to make him think her one,” was my charitable answer.

XVI

AN UNEXPECTED OFFER

If the poor creature whose reputation as a witch seems to have stood her in such wretched stead, if she, I say, had known exactly how we were situated, she might with more reason have commended our courage.

For we were living quite alone—we two, in the old Mill House—lighting our own fires, cooking our own meals, performing, in fact, the whole of our own manual labour.

After a few weeks’ experience, we had been obliged to relinquish even the hope of procuring a reliable servant.

There was something against the place, which seemed to prevent our keeping a respectable domestic.

If we hoped we had secured a treasure, we either never heard from her again, or else only heard that she was sorry “she could not oblige us,” or “was forced to decline the situation.”

The maimed, the halt, the incompetent—girls to whom all other places were closed—came to us at first in shoals, but at last even the very outcasts refused to remain at the Mill House.

I had never before believed the country mind could be so fertile in excuses.

We, or rather I, did not yield the point without a struggle; but as there seemed little use in people entering our service merely in order to leave it immediately, I resigned myself after a time to the inevitable.

Worse trials had befallen us than serving ourselves, and if we only could have found one female willing to sleep under our roof, all other annoyances might have been overlooked.

But those nights! shall I ever forget them? shall I ever lose the memory of awakening in the darkness and the silence, and recollecting we were all alone?

I did not know what I feared; that was the worst of it.

I did not dare acknowledge to myself it was less flesh and blood I dreaded to encounter, than an indefinite something I could not grasp, or feel, or hold.

Work—I would have worked like a lodging-house drudge, cheerfully, willingly, if thereby I could have earned her sound repose!

My sleep grew fitful, my sense of hearing sharpened; between dozing and waking, I beheld strange visions and dreamed curious dreams. I could never get the ruined mill out of my sight.

Thinking to exorcise its evil influence, I sketched the place from every imaginable and unimaginable point of view, but I might as well have spared my trouble.

In the watches of the night I was there in spirit, or else standing beside the yew-trees, and seeing that arm, of which Mrs. Shooter had spoken, clutching the broken ice; that arm clothed in a sleeve of dark grey tweed.

I shall never be able to endure the sight of a dark tweed suit so long as I live.

And through all the sound of the water mingled—water rippling, water dashing, water gliding in and in over the land, water flowing swiftly, water falling over weirs.

No matter how late I sat up, no matter how far I walked, my rest was certain to be broken with some horror to which I could give no name, which scarcely had form or shape.

Terror assailed me; the touch of any living thing might have proved some comfort, some reassurance, but I could not infect my sister with my fears, and accordingly I was wont to rise from bed, and with my own heart throbbing, so that it seemed to me I could hear its beats, listen to Georgie’s regular breathing, trying to comfort myself with the knowledge of her sound repose.

The thousand noises which break the stillness of the night, the rustlings of the branches, the cracking of the old woodwork, the creaking of the stairs, the banging of some door outside, the wailing of strange cats, the plunging of the water-rats—all these things affected me with an unconquerable dread.

Stealthy steps seemed to creep along the passages, soft fingers to touch the panels and try the handles of the doors.

In fancy I could see Dingley sitting in the gloomy dining-room, his brows bent, his hands in his pockets, thinking over the ruin which had been wrought; and at the very same moment I could picture the men coming through the gate carrying their ghastly burden, and bearing it beneath the porch into the marble-paved hall.

Sobbings, too, seemed sometimes to mingle with the other noises of the night, and once I could have declared I heard the crying of an infant; in fact, my sleep more resembled the wanderings of delirium than the rest of a healthy body.

Every story I had heard about the Mill House, every ghastly tale that vulgar fears or lying imagination had conjured up concerning it, used to begin to recur to me the moment darkness drew near.

Things I had laughed at, things I had ridiculed, statements I felt even too absurd for repetition, assumed importance directly the sun went down.

All this I am careful to chronicle, though aware it detracts from that personal courage to which I think I may still lay some claim, because I wish to draw a line, broad and wide and deep, between the fears which may have been creatures born but of my own imagination, and those events which certainly happened, and as certainly influenced the course of several lives.

I have been told since by persons who call themselves “practical,” that irregular meals, an insufficient supply of butcher’s meat, an undue quantity of tea made too strong, and partaken of always three and sometimes four times a day, were the causes of what they are pleased to term all my nervous fancies.

To this I have but to reply that Georgie’s fare was the same as my own, and that Georgie’s sleep was never broken, and further, that subsequent occurrences proved my fitful dreams, my troubled fancies, had been but the shadows announcing the coming of events that were facts, not fancies.

Aye! even the figure standing so still under the gloomy pine tree had its significance; the appearance which might have been mist or imagination, but was neither; the boat with muffled oars, the two oarsmen and he who steered, were all parts and parcel of a drama soon to be played out.

After restless nights, during which I was too heavy and weary not to sleep, and yet which left me almost as tired as when I lay down, I usually rose whenever daylight had fairly come.

There was one thing I could not have done, I believe; namely, go downstairs by myself in the grey twilight of morning.

Unconsciously perhaps, but most certainly, I must have felt the house held secrets, of which as yet I knew nothing, but which even in the noontide made the air oppressive, for sometimes when it was necessary for me to cross the hall, and enter the apartment where the Dingley family had been wont to assemble, I have stood in my painting-room with the handle of the door held in my fingers for some seconds before I have sufficiently mastered my dread to turn the lock, and look and see—nothing.

This is all beside my real story.

I shrink a little as the end approaches, the end which was drawing so nigh.

One morning, not long after our meeting with the witch, Bob Adams, Bill Jakes, Louisa Wisley, and the rest of the dramatis personae treated of in the last chapter—seeing the sun shining cheerily and brightly through the curtains I never of late had drawn close, I rose, and dressing hurriedly, went downstairs without awaking Georgie.

I had a set purpose in my mind; I wanted before breakfast to finish a little drawing I had begun, little in its details, though of a sufficient size, I desired to send off to Mr. Berners.

In itself the affair was the merest trifle; a magnificent poplar tree, a very steep, very picturesque wooden bridge, with foot-holds for horses upon it, a scrap of dreary canal, a once farm-house, with peaked gables, tiled roof, and diamond windows, now converted into a pair of cottages, tenanted by labourers, whose red-petticoated children supplied the needed piece of brilliant colour to the picture.

This was what I wanted to get off my mind.

The reader who has followed me so far, and who possesses any artistic instincts, will understand precisely what I mean when I say that unless I could do my work while the fit was on me, it always seemed to lack brilliancy and life.

Each detail might be accurate; with the arrangement of each colour it might be impossible to critically find a fault, and yet I knew the subtle influence was all the difference; made all the change between—may I venture to institute such a comparison?—champagne up and champagne down.

What a pother about a poplar tree! ejaculates some impatient reader.

True, my dear friend, and yet I have been only trying to exemplify why some paintings succeed, and some do not; why some books are asked for, and some left neglected on the shelves; why you make a fortune, and some other man equally clever in his own conceit dies a bankrupt.

At my birth, talent of a certain sort was vouchsafed to me, but no genius.

Had I seen less, travelled less, heard less, read less, it might be I should have imagined God had dowered me with the ability to make myself very great and very famous; but as matters stood, I knew the world and comprehended the position He had seen fit to assign me in it.

I had a gift, a somewhat adaptable gift, since my poor skill in painting enabled me to catch a likeness, to repeat the delicate tracery of delicate grasses and springing ferns, to sketch a landscape people cared to return and look upon, to portray cattle standing knee-deep in water, and make the beholder feel the day was very hot, and the animals greatly in need of the relief afforded by the stream.

Artists, great artists, have done each one of these things, and done them superlatively well.

I did them all just well enough to give pleasure, but I owe whatever of success I have achieved first, of course, to the gift heaven had bestowed, and last to the system I adopted of finishing my work while the influence of expression, scene, season, was strong upon me.

I possessed, in a word, so little genius that I had to make the most of what had been given me.

Poor singers sometimes make up in expression what they lack in voice; and so in like manner I had to try to make up in freshness what I wanted in vigour.

It is something, you understand, to be able to reproduce even a blade of grass with a dew-drop hanging on it.

Now, that was precisely what I could do; but then I dare scarcely let the dew-drop dry in reality ere transferring it.

I feel I am a poorer writer even than a painter; and yet there may be those who, reading, will understand.

So on this particular morning, having still every accessory of that poplar tree vividly before me, I arose to finish my sketch.

It was getting late in the autumn, so late that we were quite in the winter quarter, according to the signs of the weather, though still wanting more than a month of the season, if we could think the almanack correct.

At all events, the Indian summer of which I have spoken elsewhere was over, and if I wished to reproduce that which I had seen in the pleasantest time of the year, it behoved me to finish it at once.

Therefore, leaving Georgie asleep, I went down, and without entering dining or drawing room, passed straight to my studio.

Just as I had left it overnight, just without change of feature, putting to shame of course with its prosaic face my overnight fears, my morning dreams.

Through chinks in the shutters the light streamed across the room on the ashes of the wood fire which had blazed so cheerfully the preceding evening, on my easel, on Georgie’s work-basket, the arm-chair I had drawn up beside the hearth, and the book I only laid down when we went to bed.

When I opened the shutters, however, something caught my eyes which was quite new, namely, a woman seated on a bench placed close to the brink of the river.

She had her back towards me, and at first I did not recognise her.

Some noise I made, however, aroused her attention, and she rose and advanced to the window.

Then I saw that, decently clad, with her grey hair combed smoothly back, with a tidy cap covering her head, the woman of the brackens stood before me.

She came forward without any hesitation, and also without hesitation I opened the window and stepped out to meet her.

“I hope you won’t be offended, miss,” she said, “but I came down to know if I could not help you a bit. I heard you were without a servant, and I thought you might like to have someone to light a fire and clear up a little. I am not very young, but I am strong.”

I could not doubt that fact, after the burden I had seen her carry.

“Do you mean to stop altogether?” I asked, in amazement.

“No, miss, not that; but I could come for a few hours, two or three times a week. You have been very good to me, and I’d like—that is, it would be a pleasure—if I could do aught for you in return.”

Prudence might have suggested some inquiry into the antecedents of a person who made such an offer; but, I confess, a long course of fire-lighting and kettle-boiling had done much to destroy that sentiment.

In fact, I was so weary of domestic labour, that I at once seized the chance of being relieved from my duties for even one morning.

Oh! the delight of being able to paint right on, without ever a thought of the impending breakfast.

Very deftly this strange hand-maiden set about her work.

Swiftly and noiselessly she laid the fires and then kindled them.

Without direction from me, she found such things as she required, and when Georgie made her appearance, everything was in order—everything we had been in the habit of doing for ourselves, and everything we had systematically left undone, completed.

“Well, this is comfortable,” exclaimed my sister, after I told her what had occurred; “if this is witches’ work, commend me to those ladies.”

“She has been a servant almost all her life,” I explained.

“How did she come to be a witch?” asked Georgie.

“I did not ask her,” was my reply.

When I had finished my drawing, I thought it would be well to come to some explanation with our self-constituted domestic, and accordingly opened the proceedings by observing that I feared she would find the distance from her home an obstacle to doing our work.

“I have moved, miss,” she answered. “I have got a house over at Eddingfold.”

“May I inquire,” I said, “how you got in this morning? I thought I locked all the gates?”

“I dare say, miss; but there are ways of getting in without coming through the gates.”

“Oh! are there?”

“Yes, miss. I came across the river.”

“How could you do that?”

“There is a ford just down there by that pollard oak. When the water is low it is quite easy to wade across it into your garden.”

“You seem to know this place very well.”

“I do, miss—few better.”

“Have you lived in this immediate neighbourhood, then?”

“I have lived in this house.”

“With—”

“With poor Miss Lauston.”

“Then you must be—” I stopped.

I had been going to say—“that wicked old woman who drove the girl out of her mind,” but I recollected myself in time, and remained silent.

“The woman that has been almost as much talked about as you ladies,” she finished, not without a certain malicious emphasis. “Anybody who lives in this house is sure to get a bad name.”

“Have we got a bad name?” I asked, amazed.

“Mr. Lauston has given you one, at any rate,” she replied. “People do say he would give anything to get you out of the house. Perhaps you know why.”

“Indeed I do not,” I answered. “I offended him, certainly.”

“Well, he never forgives.”

“I thought he and you were friends.”

“No, miss. I am afraid of him; and he—I used to think he was a bit afraid of me; but we were never friends.”

“Yet you lived in his service for many years.”

“Not for love of him—be sure of that. It is a long story, and I will tell it to you someday, perhaps.”

“If you lived here for so many years, you must know whether there is any truth in the stories which are told about this house,” I said, after a pause.

“What stories?”

“Well, people say it is haunted.”

“And what do you say, miss?”

“I do not know what to say.”

“And neither do I,” was the answer. “If there are ghosts, they never did harm to me; and I misdoubt whether anybody could live almost alone in a big house like this without hearing queer noises and being frightened by strange sounds.”

“Then you never saw anything?” I persisted.

“I did not say that, miss; but I have always tried to think I was mistaken.”

“What did you see?”

“Perhaps I had better not tell you; but there, likely as not, it was my fancy. One night, between sleeping and waking, something seemed to force me to rise and look out of the window. It was a winter’s night, but not dark, for there was a bit of a moon, and frosty besides.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, miss, as I looked out, a man seemed to walk right, across the yard, to those yew trees—they were not so high or so thick then as they are now.”

“Yes.”

“When he got to them, he turned his face, so that I could see it—turned, and looked up at the moon; then he lifted up his right hand as if in a sort of despair, and plunged right into the water.”

“And what did you do?”

“I did nothing, miss. I could not even cry out, for I knew it was Mr. Dingley, and that Mr. Dingley was dead.”

“Oh! you knew Mr. Dingley, then?”

“Yes; I had often seen him.”

I went to my portfolio, and took out the drawing which had so surprised our landlord.

“Was Mr. Dingley anything like this?” I asked, laying it before her.

She looked at the sketch—then at me, and I knew.

“I have said nothing to my sister,” I remarked, and we spoke of the matter no more.

XVII

ANNE’S STORY

A fortnight passed—and so far from Anne—as she asked us to call her—slackening in her efforts, she seemed to strain every nerve to please.

For Georgie, she appeared to have conceived a feeling amounting to affection. I could see how her face lighted up at sight of my pretty sister—how her eyes used to follow every movement of the lithe, graceful figure.

One day I asked if she reminded her of Miss Lauston; but she shook her head.

“Your sister is full of life and spirits, miss; but my poor young lady never had even a chance of being happy. She was very beautiful, and had a timid, tender, winning way with her, but she was not like Miss Georgie. She was sly from a child,” went on Anne, after a moment’s hesitation; “the simplest thing she would try to hide; and she took after her uncle in one thing—you could not believe a word she said. She was far more like him than like her father.”

“You knew her father?”

“Father and mother both. I would not have stayed with Mr. Lauston, if it had not been for love of Miss Clara’s dead mother.”

“Was she nice?”

“She was an angel, miss;” and unbidden tears came into the eyes I had seen gleam with so evil a light, and the woman turned away abruptly, as if ashamed of her emotion.

Later on in the day, when I was working at the landscape, in which she, now so different a figure, formed so principal an object, and Georgie was absent upon a shopping expedition, Anne came and asked if she could speak to me for a few minutes.

“I have thought and thought about it, miss,” she said, when I laid down my brush, “and loath as I am to trust my secret to anybody, I can see no way out of my trouble except to tell you.”

The words were not complimentary, but I have never been over-ready to take offence, so I answered—

“If you do not want to tell me your secret, you have only to say how I can help you in your trouble, and I will try to do it.”

“Ah! miss, if rich folks was all like you, there would be less heart-burning than there is.”

“I do not think heart-burning will ever cease out of the world,” I answered; “but, at any rate, we need not discuss that matter, for I am not rich, Perhaps, however, I can help you.”

She did not say anything more for a minute, then she broke out

“Miss, when you asked me the first morning if I meant to stay here altogether, I said ‘No,’ and it was not quite true. I could have stayed, and I want to stay.”

“Has that anything to do with your secret?” I asked.

“Yes, miss, all,” was the answer. “That morning I could not just make up my mind; but now you and Mr. Lauston are two, and I want to tell you the whole story.”

“Then Mr. Lauston has to do with the matter?”

“I’ll begin at the beginning—I’ll tell you about it as straight as I can.

“When I was a little over thirty, it so happened that Mrs. Lauston—that is, Mr. Frederick Lauston’s wife—was in want of a housemaid. She had one little girl, Miss Clara; the place was a good place and a light one.

“I had not been in good places before.

“I had not lived with kind mistresses.

“Mrs. Lauston was an angel; and her husband, who had been out in India and made a lot of money there, was a different gentleman indeed from the Mr. Lauston you know.

“First as housemaid, then as maid, I lived and travelled with them.

“They resided mostly abroad; and it was at Nice my master died; my mistress never held up her head after his death, and six months later, Miss Clara and me came alone to England, to Mr. Lauston.

“He asked me to stop on, and I did.

“He told me his brother had met with great losses before his death, and that Miss Clara would be poor unless he could manage to put something by for her.

“We had not been with him long before he said he must give up his house in town; that Mr. Dingley, who used often to come to his house, had committed suicide, and let him in for some great loss; that nobody would stay at the Mill, and that he must go himself and live down at Maytree, in order to get the bad name off the place.

“He was always just what you have seen him, hard to believe, harder not to believe.”

I nodded as she paused for confirmation of her statement. She had described Mr. Lauston to a nicety.

“Well, we came down.

“Miss Clara had a governess then, but you may be sure she did not stay long.

“Mr. Lauston did not stay long either.

“He was said to live here, but he did not.

“I always think he saw something that gave him a turn, for once when he came in out of the garden, he crossed over to the sideboard in the dining-room where I was laying the cloth, and drank off near upon a tumbler full of raw spirits.

“It was said he ‘bested’ the Dingleys, and that Mr. Dingley could not rest in his grave.

“At last there was nobody left in the place but Miss Clara and me, and a dull life it was.

“I was not afraid of the ghosts myself, because I knew I had done nothing to anger anybody, but still it was lonesome, awful.

“Miss Clara was not like you or Miss Georgie. There was not a bit of life in her. She had been kept down ever since her mother’s death. She was not educated as a young lady ought to be; she had no pretty dresses; she had no one of her own rank to speak to. It was not her fault, being poor, but I do think Mr. Lauston grudged her even food and shelter.

“Except the wind and the rain, nothing seemed much to please her.

“The finest morning that ever broke never made her look a bit brighter; but let a regular gale be blowing, and she would dance about the house and clap her hands, and go singing upstairs and down.

“Many a time I felt frightened to see her!

“Well, she grew up; we had been here six years, and there came a change over her. She was brisker and kinder, and seemed to have outgrown her fondness for listening to all the stupid stories that were told about the mill and the river, and reading queer books concerning ghosts and such like.

“She used to talk about what we would do when we left this place, ‘for I am not going to stay here forever, Nan,’ she often said.

“‘But where are we to go?’ I asked her, and then she would make answer—

“‘Where, oh! anywhere; we will seek our fortunes.’

“My poor dear, she did seek a terrible fortune.

“After a while, however, all her spirits forsook her, she began to mope, and lost her appetite. Her mother had died of consumption, and I thought that was what ailed her, and begged Mr. Lauston to let her have change of air.

“I should not wish to wrong anybody, miss, but I do think he hoped she would die. He had never seemed able to bear the sight of her!

“However, he took her away, went with her himself, which I thought very odd, to some place in Wales.

“She was away five weeks, but she looked worse than ever when she came back.

“‘I do not think she is long for this world,’ Mr. Lauston said to me. ‘Be sure she wants for nothing,’ and he put five sovereigns in my hand and started straight off to London.

“I went into the drawing-room after he left, and found her standing near one of the windows.

“It all came upon me like a flash; the dreadful ‘all’ that was the matter with her.

“‘Oh! Miss Clara—Miss Clara!’ I cried out, but she only said in answer—

“‘Keep it from my uncle. Help me how to keep it from him.’

“You would scarcely believe it, I suppose, miss, but first and last she never parted with any of her secret she could hide from me. She said she was married, but I did not believe her.

“I begged and prayed her to give me her confidence, but she would not.

“She fell into a dreadful weak way after the child was born, and I was at my wits’ end to know what to do with her and the baby. She would not hear of it being sent away, and I did not dare to face Mr. Lauston’s anger, if he knew of her disgrace.

“Miss Clara had money—whoever the father was, seemed to have thought about that—and so one day I trimmed up a little basket, and pinned a twenty-pound note inside a fine cashmere cloak, and made believe a child had been left in the porch.

“I wrote to Mr. Lauston about it, said I had taken it in and was doing for it; that poor Miss Clara—who got no better—seemed to have a fancy for the little thing, and might I keep it so long as she lived.

“Mr. Lauston came down and had a look at the clothes, and basket, and the few lines we had written in a feigned hand, saying, ‘whoever took care of the infant would be well paid for doing so.’

“Then he hummed and hawed a little, but ended by putting the twenty pounds in his purse, and saying that he supposed it could not do any harm to give it shelter for a little while.

I do not know how it was—whether some suspicion crossed him or not, but when we thought we had got rid of him, and over the worst of our troubles, he came back, and let himself in by the garden-gate, and went quietly up to Miss Clara’s room, where she was nursing the child.

“When she saw him she gave a scream that brought me upstairs. I do not know what had passed between them, but as I crossed the threshold I heard her say—

“‘I am married, uncle—I am, indeed!’ and then he struck her and cursed her, and called her vile names, and snatched the child out of her arms, and pushed me out of the room, and locked the door, leaving the poor creature alone.

“He was like a madman. I thought he would have killed her and the child too.

“He had flung the key of Miss Clara’s room in the river, but I found another that would unlock the door and went to her.

“She was terribly ill after that. She had fever. We were obliged to have a doctor to her. Mr. Lauston brought one down from London; and, I suppose, told him some story of his own, for the gentleman always spoke as if the baby was dead.

“But I knew it was not dead.

“He had sent it to the workhouse. Poor Miss Clara got better in health at last, but her mind was quite gone.

“I wanted to take care of her—for she was harmless as a child; but he said, ‘No; if I had looked after her properly before, all this trouble would never have happened,’ and so she was taken off to an asylum, where she died about six months ago.”

“What a terrible story!” I exclaimed. “And the child—what became of it?”

“That is what I am coming to, miss,” answered the woman, wiping her eyes.

“At first, Mr. Lauston was for turning me out on the world without a shilling, except the few pounds I had saved out of my wages; but I said I would not let him have everything his own way. I had lost my health in his service I was getting old, I would scarce be able to keep another place, and I told him he must give me enough to hold body and soul together.

“After a good deal of trouble, he agreed to allow me seven shillings a week, and I was to keep a silent tongue about Miss Clara, and the disgrace she had brought upon him.

“I went up to London first, but after I had been there for a while I began to think about my old mistress, and her poor daughter, and the little child, and so I came back here, and it entered into my mind that I would get the baby out of the workhouse, and try to do for it myself.

“I was afraid of Mr. Lauston knowing, so I put the child to nurse, and paid for it.”

“Out of the seven shillings?”

“Yes, miss. At first it was not such hard work. I got a little employment—cleaning, and such like, and I had the few pounds put by; but as the child got older, I was forced to pay more for him, and the notion was put about that I had ill-treated my young mistress, and people would not have me in their houses, and I got poorer, and poorer, and poorer.

“It is strange, isn’t it, how folks all seem to think that everybody that is poor must be wicked except themselves?

“I know that as I got poorer everybody almost said I grew wickeder.

“Squire Hartrey, who is not a bad sort of gentleman, let me have a cottage rent free, for keeping the stray cattle out of his young plantations, and what with living there all by myself, and the very children hooting me, I seemed to get like one apart.

I could hardly keep life in me sometimes; but I thought I’d struggle on for the sake of the boy. I could not take him to live with me up on the heath because the children would have frightened him, or done him an injury, so a short time ago I moved to Eddingfold.

“I thought out all I would do that night after I met you on the common. I had guessed who you were before, and I knew that you could get no servant to stop in this house.”

“You have not finished all you were going to say,” I remarked, as she paused and hesitated.

“No, miss. I do not know why it is that Mr. Lauston has been making inquiry about the child, but he told me to see if it was living or dead.

“He was so eager that I took fright—he always frightened me; and the story I made up was that the boy had been adopted, and nobody knew anything more about him.

“This morning he sends me a letter, saying he can’t afford to pay the seven shillings a week any longer.”

“But he is a rich man, is he not?”

“I don’t think it. He had always too many ways for his money to be very rich. He was a fast-living gentleman in my time, and from all I hear he is living fast now.”

“And what do you want me to do?” I asked.

“The house is large enough, miss; if you could only give me and the child shelter and food, I would work or you for nothing, and I would bless you on my bended knees.”

“I will think the matter over,” I answered.

As the woman reached the door, she turned and said:

“It is a strange story, miss, is it not?”

“So strange from first to last that I cannot, at the moment, make anything of it,” was my reply.

XVIII

I AM FRIGHTENED

From the time we went to the Mill House, it had always been my habit to walk almost every evening in the garden, sometimes with Georgie for a companion, but more frequently alone.

What I desired to do was to cultivate such an acquaintance with the effects of twilight and water as might enable me to produce a satisfactory picture.

I may say at once I have never yet succeeded in doing so—the sadness always overpowers the solemnity—the gloom of the coming night is greater than the tender tones of the expiring day.

It may be that I learned something useful to me, though not the precise lesson I desired to master.

At all events, whenever the evening was fairly fine, I paced the garden paths slowly, watching and thinking as the evening closed and the darker shadows stole on.

Beside the stream which flowed from the old mill there grew a thick tangle of shrub and parasite.

Even in the daytime one could scarcely distinguish where the ivy began and the laurels ended; where the barberries had their roots and the rhododendrons fought with clustering briony and the fatal convolvulus for life; but when twilight came the whole corner of the bridge resolved itself into one dark mass of dense foliage.

Two or three times on the evening after Anne told me Miss Lauston’s story, I fancied I heard a stir and movement amongst this greenery, that when I stopped to listen I felt something more animate than the leaves was moving in the cover.

Each time I passed I gave the boughs a shake, so strong was the fancy upon me, and at last I parted the branches, and thrust my arm amongst the tangled creepers.

As I did so, something rushed out, so swiftly, so suddenly, that I started back affrighted.

Something soft and cold touched my cheek. Something brushed my dress.

Something lithe and shadowy flitted between me and the imperfect twilight in the open garden beyond, and then was gone.

There was a splash as if a water-rat had left its hole; there was a sound as of the breaking of a few rotten twigs, and then I knew whatever it might have been which had lain perdu was gone.

For a minute I felt sick and giddy; for a minute sight seemed to leave my eyes; then my strength returned, and I fled into the house, determined that never again, never would I wander out save when the sun was high, and each object as clear as the noon-day.

“What a simpleton I have been,” I thought, “to go out evening after evening in the twilight, and leave these doors unfastened, Anybody or anything might have slipped in.”

A rational reflection, and yet my mind misgave me—that it was no body and no thing locks could exclude I dreaded.

What was the secret of the Mill House? What was the mystery which surrounded it?

Between sleeping and waking, as I lay that night in bed, I tried to piece together the various stories I had heard, to make a connected whole of the disjointed fragments.

All in vain; the Dingleys mixed themselves up with Clara Lauston, and she and her boy kept watch and ward over the ruined mill.

In the darkness I could still see the broken wheel, the rotten woodwork, the dreary procession bearing Mr. Dingley through the grey light of morning home, and then I must have fallen asleep, for I imagined I was in the drawing-room below, looking at a face pressed close up against the window; a poor, pale, haggard woman’s face, with a pinched hungry expression.

A chilliness seemed to pervade the atmosphere; the strange light of dreams was before my eyes, and I woke suddenly, with the words, “Nan, Nan,” ringing in my ears.

Again I fell asleep, and again I dreamt of the pale face pressed up against the glass; this time, however, an unseen hand unfastened the window catch, and opened the sash wide for the woman to enter.

Then I could see there were two figures—one, that of the female, clad in garments dripping wet; the other, that of the man clothed in a suit of dark grey tweed.

I must at this time have either fallen into some great abyss of slumber, or fainted where I lay, for I heard no more, and saw no more, till I woke with the cold light of a winter’s morning shining in upon my bed.

XIX

WHAT I BEHELD

It was evening on Christmas Day.

We had kept that festival in sober and orthodox fashion, thanking the Almighty for all the mercies He had granted to us, left almost destitute, and relishing the good fare provided for our feast all the more because a desolate little child and an elderly woman, on whom fortune had not smiled, were safe and sheltered, and happy beneath our roof.

Some may smile when I say it seemed as though a blessing had entered with the pair—as though the old house lost some of its grimness when the woman, fast growing so bitter against the world, so at odds with her fellows, cast aside with her painful poverty the burden and the repression of years.

Often I asked myself, beholding her moving cheerfully about the rooms, “Can this be the same human being who scowled not long ago at sight of Georgie’s bright face, who was mocked by the children, and insulted by that man, who trailed her bundle of brackens wearily along the winding road, and whose shoulders were bowed by the weight of the load she bore across them?”

As for the Mill House, though the dark days were come, it looked brighter than I had ever seen it. Fires kindled by willing hands burned in the grates—not a room seemed lonely or uninhabited. Where ghostly steps had flitted was heard the pattering of a child’s restless feet, the ringing sound of a child’s laughter. It was little human fingers that now touched the panels, and rattled the handles of the doors. It was something very full of life indeed that played at bo-peep up the stairs, and along the corridors, and in the hall, which had seemed so silent and ghastly.

The smell of damp and mould was banished even from every cupboard, and throughout the house there was not only a sense of occupation, but a savoury odour of generous fare.

As a rule, the smell of cooking is not one perhaps to be desired, but after a lengthened diet, scarcely too luxurious for the strictest observer of Lent, Georgie and I were not above rejoicing in the goodly scents which saluted our nostrils as we crossed the hall.

We had been asked to spend our Christmas in Yorkshire, but there were reasons why we decided to keep the holiday-time at home.

“Next year, perhaps,” remarked Georgie; “but really the house seems so bright and pleasant now, I don’t think I shall ever care to leave it.”

Yes, there was life about the house at last.

We had dogs and cats and pigeons, and a goat, the ducks Georgie once longed for, and a goodly assortment of hens of all ages.

Two or three men thrown out of work by the season called to know if we could not give them a job, and I had seized the opportunity to have the garden trimmed up a little, the rotten wood cut out of the trees, the parasites grubbed up, and the rank luxuriance of the evergreens lopped.

It was bad taste, perhaps, but I could not endure those thickets of sodden greenery. In vain Georgie expostulated when she beheld long wreaths of ivy floating away down stream. I had memories I never meant to share with her, of abject terrors, of horrors to which I could give no name.

For the future, all about the place should be bright and open and cheerful.

If I could have put gas in every room, the house would nightly have been illuminated, but there was no gas nearer than the station.

“The house is like a changed place,” said Anne. “When Miss Clara and me lived here, I used sometimes to feel as if no churchyard could be duller and sadder than this kitchen; and now, in the evenings, with Miss Georgie at the piano, and the child running in and out, it seems hard to remember the place ever had a bad name, or that the Dingleys ever were turned out of it.”

We were at the moment standing at the door giving on the back-yard. I had opened it to let the dogs out, and remained looking at the stars which were twinkling clear and bright.

“Winter is come at last, Miss,” said Anne, taking down a towel which had been hanging on the line. “This is stiff as a board. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was ice on the river by morning. The wind has been blowing up from the north all day.”

It had. I felt it then cold and keen on my forehead; and as Anne stooped to pat one of the dogs, I stepped across the space intervening between the house and the water, and looked over the darkling river and the long fields beyond.

I do not know of what I had been thinking, of how far away fancy had carried me, when there was a smothered exclamation from Anne and a low frightened howl from the dogs.

Turning instantly, I saw the figure of a man disappear beneath the yew-trees; then there came a splash, as of some heavy body being thrown into the water, while at the same moment, from far down the stream, there came a wild, piercing shriek, followed by the words, “Nan, Nan.”

“What is it?—what on earth is it?” I asked.

“Come in, Miss; come in!” cried the woman, laying a trembling hand on my arm.

I had recovered myself by this time.

“No, Anne; I must know what it is,” I answered. “Some poor creature may have fallen into the river.”

“Aye, Miss; but not tonight,” was the answer.

But I could not be satisfied.

The natural always fights against belief in the supernatural; and I felt confident that shriek, that cry had been uttered by a living being in deadly anguish.

I ran down to the river, and called in answer; but no sound returned to me save the wailing of the wind.

For half an hour at least I and Anne and the dogs—the latter creeping after us reluctantly with tails drooping and ears slouched—walked backwards and forwards along the old towing-path. We lit lanterns, and shot their gleams over the water; but it went rippling on—ever on—silent and mysterious to the sea.

“I thought we had done with all that,” I remarked, as we re-entered the house once more; but Anne only shook her head in answer.

That night I could not rest; I lay tossing from side to side. If I fell asleep, it was only for an instant—only to rind myself in some terrible peril, from which I awoke with a cry and a start.

At last I could bear it no longer, so rose and went downstairs with the intention of finding a book. Georgie had been reading a new novel in the drawing-room; and I entered that apartment accordingly to get the volume which I knew lay on the centre table.

As I did so the candle I carried blew out, and the door slammed behind me; the window opposite was wide open, and I could perceive by the light of the stars a figure standing under the verandah, which was like that of a woman clad in dripping garments.

If my life had depended upon flight, I must have died; for my feet seemed rooted to the ground. If I had been turned to stone I could not have felt less capable of movement than in the first horror of that sight.

Very slowly the woman entered, and moved towards me.

Though there was no moon, a light streamed across the apartment, and showed me the same pale haggard face I had beheld in my dream pressed close against the glass. At each step I could see wet dripping from her garments, oozing from her shoes.

Beckoning me to follow, she passed into the hall; whether I in my flight opened the door, or it opened with another gust of wind, I cannot tell; all I know is, we were in the hall—I was ascending the stairs after her.

I was treading the passage above with tread as light and soft as hers.

Turning her head to see if I was still close at hand, she passed into a small room full of our boxes, and of lumber belonging to the house. Here she came to a pause, and looked at me pitifully.

Still the strange light—that light such as we see in dreams; still that sensation of a horror, too mighty to be real.

In one corner of the room there was a cupboard, which Georgie and I had examined when we took possession, and found empty.

This cupboard the woman opened, still keeping her sorrowful eyes fastened on me, then softly, noiselessly, she raised the bottom shelf, and disclosed a hollow beneath it.

Then there was a great crash.

Something fell, and utter darkness closed around.

•    •    •    •

When I came to my senses, Georgie was standing on one side of my bed, and Anne on the other. Georgie had been crying, and Anne was looking at me with grave inquiring eyes. The room seemed full to suffocation of a mingled odour of burnt feathers, eau de cologne, and vinegar.

“Open the window,” I gasped, and Georgie threw it wide.

In swept the crisp frosty air, bringing strength with its very breath.

I struggled up on my pillow and said, “Now what is it?” then all at once memory gave me back what I had for the moment lost, and I added, “Oh, I recollect!”

“You must have been walking in your sleep, Miss,” said Anne, with a meaning glance. “We found you in the lumber-room lying on the floor, with a picture-frame a top of you.”

“I should like a cup of coffee,” was my somewhat irrelevant observation. “Georgie, would you make it for me?”

Always ready, always active, before the words were well spoken, my sister was off to fetch what I wanted; then said Anne:

“What ever, Miss, were you doing in that room?”

I could not tell her.

I could not then.

All the answer I made was:

“You know that old cupboard in the corner; go to it, will you, and see whether the bottom shelf lifts up. If it does, look if there is anything in the hollow beneath.”

In about ten minutes she returned, holding a small box in her hand.

“It was Miss Clara’s,” she said, all of a tremble, “and I have opened it, Miss, and there are her marriage lines, and her wedding-ring and all, poor dear—poor, poor dear!”

“Then she was married,” I said.

“Aye, poor soul, and to the son of some great gentleman. Here are letters from him. How ever did you come to know about it, Miss?”

“Anne, if I do not leave this house, I shall die. I cannot tell you what I saw last night. I cannot,” was my irrelevant answer.

But in an hour or two I was better and calmer, able to rise and sit before the bright wood fire, while I thought out the mystery of the Mill House.

“There has been a wrong somewhere,” I considered, “and shall I faint and falter because it seems to have fallen to me to put it right? No, I will see it out. No matter what may happen, I will see it out.”

Just then there was a ring at the hall door. Georgie answered it, Anne being busy.

“A gentleman,” she explained, afterwards, “wanted to know if we had seen anything of a lady about twenty-five years of age, middle height, slight figure, dressed in grey, very pale face, long light hair, not quite in her right senses. He had heard she was somewhere in the neighbourhood. Of course I told him we had seen nothing of such a person, and he went away.”

This inquiry decided my plans.

Before post-time on that afternoon, I wrote a letter to the “great person,” whose name was mentioned often in the love-letters, short, sad, and passionate, which had lain so long in the hidden box.

I told him I supposed his son was dead, but that there still lived a little boy who would never have left the shelter of the workhouse but for the devotion of an old servant, herself most miserably poor.

I said there were circumstances connected with the case I could not understand, but which I implored him to investigate, and I added that till I received a reply to my letter, I should not speak about the matter to anyone, or take any steps to place the boy in his rightful position.

Anne carried the letter to the post-office, and evening again came on.

Night closed, but I could not bear to be alone; therefore Miss Lauston’s faithful servant slept on a sofa in my room, and the little child with Georgie.

And so for the next night, and for many more nights while the frost grew keener and the wind colder; then just before dawn, I raised myself on my elbow, and said—

“Anne, are you asleep?”

For answer, she at once arose and came to my side.

“I think,” I began, “I comprehend the matter at last. Mr. Lauston’s brother did not die poor; his daughter must have been an heiress, and her boy would have succeeded to her money—Mr. Lauston has spent it.

“He wanted her to die,” I went on; “she was not dead when he told you she had died. The man who came the other day belonged to the asylum. My mind is not very clear, still I can piece the facts together in my mind—the shriek—that wild, wild night—the boat with men who pulled with muffled oars—the presence haunting this house—oh! no, she was not dead!”

“But now, Miss,” sobbed Anne, “she couldn’t have been living when she passed through bolts and bars—for though you thought the window was open, I found it close shut—when she showed you where her secret lay; when she came to save her boy. I know the minute she died, Miss; may Heaven forgive me my awful cowardice—on Christmas night, when Dingley walked underneath the yew trees and you heard her crying out, ‘Nan, Nan.’”

I have little more to tell. On the New Year’s morning, stiff and cold, the men who found the body bore her to our house.

There she lay till after the inquest, with white upturned face, with dripping garments, weary and worn, poor creature; but quiet and at rest at last.

Afterwards it transpired she had escaped from the asylum more than once, and sheltered herself in the half-sunken barge; about the Mill House—aye, in the very mill itself.

There were found scraps of bread, bones, raw potatoes, apples, all sorts of odds and ends we had missed from time to time, and blamed the rats for taking.

The news was telegraphed to London and to the “great gentleman,” whose son loved and married the poor lady.

Within twelve hours news was returned to us that Mr. Lauston had committed suicide, and Miss Lauston’s husband—himself at last the great gentleman—was standing beside the body of the wife he had long believed dead.

My theory proved correct: the boy was heir to the money his mother had been kept out of, and heir to the vast estates his father now owned.

“Her uncle told me she was dead,” moaned the widower; “the first thing I did when I returned to England was to try and find her. I never knew she had a child. I had not the faintest idea she herself was living.”

XX

CONCLUSION

For the rest, do you wish to know what became of the house by the “Haunted River”?

We hesitated about it; but at last, in solemn conclave, decided to right, so far as we could, the evil wrought, by devoting the place to some work of charity.

If, therefore, reader, you ever go to Maytree, and ask for The Old Mill House, you will find, when you have walked down the lane described in an early chapter, a board setting forth that here is the “Clara Refuge for Orphan Children.”

And within the fence you can at certain hours hear the gleeful shouts of little creatures who have never known what it is to be sad and comfortless, sick and lonely; but who are tended and cared for, and taught and loved by those less than kin perhaps, but more, far more than kind.

Near at hand, where stood the ruined mill, is a beautiful church. Beside it the water splashes, above it the pine trees wave.

To God and His destitute people the estate has been dedicated, and in the once desolate rooms of the old Mill House, children sleep tranquilly where their elders were once afraid to rest.

For me?—for us?

Well, I live almost entirely abroad. I have as much money as I require for my modest needs. An old, very old, woman looks after my small household.

At intervals, a tall stripling, who will soon leave Eton, runs over to criticise the latest work lying on the easel of one whom he styles his “dear Aunt Peg.”

He is a good lad, and a clever; but sometimes Anne and I, after he has gone, look at each other and sigh, remembering the mother who went distraught; who died, no one can ever exactly say how, in some depth of the Haunted River.

But Georgie is happy.

If ever a woman was blessed in husband, children, home, worldly means, worldly consideration, the goodwill of the rich, the thankful word of the poor, it is my beautiful sister, who, two years after we left that ill-omened Mill House, married the “great gentleman,” and who still loves me just as much as she did on that summer morning when she had her wilful way about travelling to Maytree in order to view Donaldson’s cottage.

The Nun’s Curse

(1888)

I

A DEAD LION

Thirty-four years ago there was joy in Donegal—joy too deep to find expression in jesting and laughter; which was felt rather than spoken; which could be traced in looks and tones, in the way men went about their daily work and exchanged greetings with one another.

Did they but remark, “It is a rough day, or a ‘saft’ day, or a wild day,” the melodies of hope and thankfulness ran through the words; when they bade their horses “ga-an,” a geniality underlay the command that form of address often lacked; while those natives of Donegal who had been absent for a short time from the country could tell by a sort of stir in the air, like the rising of the sap in spring, that something unusual had occurred.

“Any news going?” was the question put by one such returned traveller to his neighbour.

“Not much—only old Duke Conway is gone at last—”

“No! Is he, now?”

“He is so. They say he was a week dying; his was a fearsome death-bed.”

“Well, he had more nor eighty years of life.”

“He had that.” And then both went on their way, content because one man had passed to his long account.

There was joy in Donegal, deep joy and no sorrow. From Derry to Donegal Bay, from Malin Head to Fermanagh, there prevailed but one feeling—thankfulness. Not a voice was raised in lamentation; not a mourner cried, “Ah, my brother, or my master, or my friend!”

He had been powerful, and he used his power to oppress; he had been rich, and he used his wealth to scourge; and now he was dead, and the people were glad. The sky, and the ocean, and the stern mountains, and the stony unfruitful land all looked to them different; all bore a softer and lovelier aspect because Marmaduke Conway was sleeping that sleep which knows no waking; but they did not talk much about him or what had happened. Even to this present day they are a reticent race that dwell in Donegal among such fastnesses as the English mind can scarcely conceive—self-contained, chary of speech, not to be lightly inveigled into conversation by friend or foe.

Have they not the great hills, and fearful ravines and defiles which make a stranger shudder, and dreadful headlands, and sunlit bays, and darksome lakes hidden away like secret treasure under the shadow of the mountains, to exchange deep thoughts with, to take into their very souls and feed upon?

To the core of their being they are superstitious also—how, dwelling in such a land, could they be otherwise?—and to them Duke Conway had ever seemed more a demon than a man.

Times there were when, in their desperation at some act of harder tyranny than any which had preceded it, they turned to the wild hills or to the raging sea, and mutely asked if the God who planted the one and set bounds to the other was still powerful to save, and if His hand were indeed not shortened why He failed to send an avenging angel to succour His down-trodden people and destroy their oppressor; and now it seemed too much to believe that at last! at last the tyrant was dead, that he lay with less power for harm than the child just born, that the meanest peasant was of more account than he, and that, crowning miracle of all, he had actually died in his bed after a painful and lingering malady instead of on some lonely road, or barren heath, murdered.

That was the end everyone had expected must come; yet no one had raised his hand against the shrivelled, puny old man, who, out of pure wickedness, went on day after day and year after year adding to the awful sum of his transgressions against his fellows. Innocent were those creatures for the most part: they had done him no harm, they were flesh and blood, they toiled hard for their scanty bite and sup, they rose early, they crept weary to rest; in the main they were honest, faithful, patient under privation, long-suffering of wrong; but had they been the vilest scum of towns vile as the Cities of the Plain, he could not have hated them worse or wreaked a heavier vengeance upon them.

And yet he had died in his bed, well nursed to the last, doctors coming and going, the “clergy”—by which phrase was meant Mr. Malet, the Vicar of Calgarry—“praying constant,” the lawyer to put a last codicil to his will, everything quite correct. He had gone just like any other of the “quality,” and the people did not know what to make of it.

If anyone had told them he was carried off wrapped in sheets of blue flame the hour before dawn, just when night is coldest, they would have seen a fitness in his exit which the actual manner of his departure failed to fulfil.

Yet who could tell what sights and sounds he saw during that final week, while life still held and death struggled for him? Ann Patterson, who was possessed “of that strong a heart she wasn’t feared to watch her lone beside the old man night after night,” never saw fit to enlighten Donegal with any detailed account of aught which occurred during those vigils. She came from Kilrea, which, being but thirteen miles from Bellymena, may be considered quite in the world when compared with Donegal; but she had not spent forty years amongst a strange people without acquiring somewhat of their ways, and in any case she was loyal to the house she served, and of the passage of that sin-burdened soul from time to eternity no one heard from her.

What she did say were merely “words of course,” and let in only a glimmer of light on the tremendous question how Duke Conway met the end.

“He suffered cruel,” said Ann; “for an old man he was wonderful strong, and kept a powerful grip of life to the very last.” “He held to this world in a surprising manner considering all he had gone through.” “No, I never heard him make any complaint, though his pain must have been often hard to thole.” “Yes, it was an awesome death-bed.” And that was all she could or would say on the subject.

If she did not speak, however, there were those who, equally silent, let their imaginations run riot over the old man’s death-bed: down the long avenue, across the wide lawns, up the great staircase, into the very room where he lay, it was believed there hurried a ghostly throng to keep him dreadful company at the last.

From out the from across the ocean, from lowly graves on the lonely mountain sides, they may have swiftly to remind him of the past: starving mothers holding dying babies in their skeleton arms; old men and women, youths and maidens, driven forth in the bitter winter weather, when it only needed a few pounds to save them from starvation and death; little children wasting day by day, till they grew too weak to cry for the food their parents could not give them. During all the famine-time, when the most selfish were moved to compassion, the meanest untied their purse-strings, he remained adamant. He saw droves of the people wending their way like cattle along the roads to the nearest port, and smiled. He beheld the strength and backbone of the country leaving it, and rejoiced. He turned men gaunt with hunger from his doors; during the whole of that never-to-be-forgotten visitation he did not give a shilling of money or a pound of meal in help; no, though he had great possessions.

Surely, to speak of nothing which had gone before the famine, he must have found ghosts and to spare appearing to appal him as he lay never to rise again.

And there had been much before. He was of those against whose name a black mark stood for having sold their country. He was young in years then, but little over thirty-one, yet old in political as well as in every other sin. At the Court of the First Gentleman in Europe he out-heroded Herod in wickedness. It was a gay life he led there, a life of which he liked well to talk, when times changed, and he found it expedient to retire into private life. Thrice married, his last wife did not complacently die and leave him to look out a fourth bride. Neither did she divorce him, which she could have done: she left him without sound of legal trumpet or beat of judicial drum, and told such stories about her wedded life as virtually settled Mr. Conway’s social career. He tried residing abroad for awhile; but finding that younger generations were pressing unpleasantly close to his heels, he decided on taking up his abode where he could be sole lord of all he surveyed.

He had played for high stakes twice, and been beaten: once when the Irish Parliament was closed, and once when Catholic Emancipation came on the carpet. Each time he expected to be made a peer, and each time he was disappointed. All which things were remembered.

If the peasantry were silent about many like incidents in an eventful career, not so the newspapers. When his death was announced, simultaneously also there appeared leaders upon the man who had lived through many reigns and seen such a number of political surprises. Some, recollecting the rarely acted-on proverb, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” merely mentioned his ancient lineage, his vast estates, his great age, his varied experiences; but others were not so considerate: all his sins of omission and commission, all his superhuman cruelty and well-nigh incredible callousness, all his private affairs and public doings, were dragged forth from dingy closets with the dust of half a century upon them, and descanted on in the light of day.

“At that bar,” said one eloquent gentleman, in concluding a leading article, “where all men are judged by their works, Marmaduke Conway, the traitor, the turncoat, and the tyrant, now stands, with the snows of eighty-three sinful years heavy on his head. Many talents were given to him, which through life he employed exclusively in causing misery. Great will be his punishment!”

There never surely was such homage paid to pure wickedness as at the funeral.

Had Marmaduke Conway been a good man sinking to his rest, surrounded by children’s children and a crowd of attached tenants and devoted retainers, he might have gone to the grave and been laid in it without any extraordinary fuss. But this man had for so long held himself aloof from his fellows in a sort of isolated state, that the news of his death fell with a thunderclap on society; more, perhaps, because it reminded it he was, till a day previously, still living than for any other cause.

From all parts of the country his equals came flocking. It was accounted a great burying, even in a land where large funerals are the rule. The day was bitter; a high, cutting wind, accompanied by driving sleet, made the long slow drive from Calgarry to the lonely graveyard lying under the shadow of Muckish a terrible undertaking even for those who occupied their own or hired carriages. Behind the carriages followed the tenants on the Calgarry estate, all with white hat-bands and white scarfs, in which were fastened shoulder-knots of black ribbon, as is the fashion of the country. They walked two and two up the steep road, men of grave mien and hard features; but they exchanged no word about the dead.

There were some who scarcely believed he was dead, and, at all events they had proved poetically that Solomon was right when he said, “Curse not the rich in thy bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.”

Often it had seemed to those who bowed under his yoke that Duke Conway was able to read what was passing in their minds, and knew the words they muttered over their peat fires, with closed doors and no living creature within a mile of them; and though he was now dead, and they following him to his long rest, who could measure the power of a bad man even in the next world? Besides which, there were other rich people and powerful people left, and it was hard to guess the sort of landlord who would come after him. Young Terence was reported well of; but there had never been a good landlord of the name at Calgarry yet, and it seemed unlikely there ever would be.

For which reason and many more, the tenantry and peasantry trudged in well-nigh utter silence up the road that wound through desolate bogs stretching to right and left as far as the eye could see.

It was a solemn and imposing procession that, all in the bleak January weather, accompanied the dead man to his long home. There were no spectators—only a few women looked from the doors of their cabins and watched the long cavalcade go by; while their children, barefooted, barelegged, and only partially clothed as regarded their lithe, active young bodies, stood open-mouthed as the black coach, drawn by four horses, and the long line of carriages, and the longer line of human beings, toiled on to the lonely graveyard where so many Conways lay.

Even now men will tell how they “mind when they were no higher than a ‘turf’ seeing old Marmaduke’s funeral. It was a piercing day, their fathers said, with the wind gathering up for a storm blowing straight in off the Atlantic; the cannon were firing at Malin [*] all the previous night, so they heard, and they remembered that the horses’ manes were fluttering in the gale like ribbons.”

Up at the graveyard, a few sheep that had been driven out of “God’s acre” stood huddled together under the lee of a rough stone wall falling to ruin; for a while they watched the strange cavalcade, the like of which had not come that way before for best part of a century, and then, suddenly taking alarm, fled with the speed of deer to the hills.

Once upon a time there had been a church in the middle of the graves, but it was now roofless, and stood the mere shell of a building, with skeleton windows reflecting their tracery against the sky. Into what had been the chancel the coffin was borne, preceded by Archdeacon Conway, who, looking up at the stormy sky, at the grey wild hurrying clouds, declared, in tones that seemed to be echoed from the great mountains which towered sternly above, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” But, alas! in whom had the dead man trusted his life long but himself?

It was a strange thing to see that roofless church, situated in the midst of desolation, usually lonely with a loneliness well-nigh inconceivable, filled full of living men, who stood bareheaded in the bitter blast while the service proceeded. All present were men save one; and it may safely be said that most eyes in the assemblage were turned upon her, not merely because it was unusual to see a woman of any degree at a funeral, but also because she was something very well worth looking at. She had come from Calgarry House in the same carriage with her uncle, General Sir Henry Beecham, renowned for having helped Wellington to beat Boney; and common report stated that Duke Conway “favoured” a match between her and young Terence, his heir. She was English, enormously rich, and young—all good reasons for staring at her; but her rare beauty proved a better reason still. She was pale as a living and healthy woman could well be; her hair was gold, not light and dull, but warm with the glow of the sunset colour; her eyes were dark grey, with black lashes and eyebrows; and her features might have been cut by a sculptor, so perfect was each separate detail, and so harmonious the whole. Tall and slight, the long black cloak she wore made her look even taller and slighter than was actually the case. Her crape bonnet, from which the veil was thrown back, intensified her pallor, till her face looked more like something carved in pure white marble than flesh and blood; and she was calm and almost motionless as a statue the while she stood beside the coffin, listening with bent head and devout attention to the glorious service read over our “dear brother departed,” who had “brought nothing into the world,” and had certainly “carried nothing out.”

She bowed herself reverently whenever the name of our Lord was mentioned, and her soft amen was heard at intervals clear above all other responses; also she repeated with the clerk the few sentences that are ordered to be “said or sung” while the corpse is being made ready to be laid into the earth, and generally amazed the tenantry, who had never before witnessed such “religion” in a Protestant.

“She might be a saint come down from the old chapel at Shanalore,” said one man to his fellow; “did you ever see such holiness in one so young?”

“No, nor in one old,” was the answer.

By this time they had placed Marmaduke Conway in the family vault, which was quarried out of solid rock, among his ancestors, a goodly company. There were plenty of them, “all bad,” observed the gravedigger to the clerk when the great company had departed, “but this last was the worst of all.”

“He is gone,” said the clerk, in a tone of reproof.

“And a good job too,” retorted the gravedigger, who had partaken of that which renders the wisest foolish.

“They are going back faster than they came,” remarked the clerk, wishing to change the conversation to some topic less personal to the dead.

“They are leaving the one behind that didn’t care to travel fast, at least not here,” answered the other, with a grin; “besides, they want to hear the will read.”

“I wonder who’ll get his money?”

“It wouldn’t be easy to say. Neither of us has a chance, I’m afraid,” and the man laughed again.

•    •    •    •

He was quite right—all Mr. Conway’s relations were most anxious to hear his will read.

Calgarry, they knew, must go to Terence, the last of the entail, but it was notorious that the old man had always hated his heir-apparent for the time being, whoever that heir might be; and no one imagined he would leave his freehold property in England, of the whole even of his personality, to his young kinsman.

There were several among his connections who would value large legacies, and who were entitled to be remembered.

No one except the lawyers knew exactly how rich Marmaduke Conway had been, but everybody entertained a shrewd guess he left enough money to bequeath large sums to many an attached relative, and still not unduly cripple the next owner of Calgarry.

“Most probably,” remarked one sapient gentleman, “he will leave a large sum in settlement for Miss Dutton and her children.”

“He may,” was the doubtful reply. “He always spoke as if he wished the marriage.”

“He did—but I don’t think that proves much. However, we shall soon know all about it.”

The horses were trotting hard downhill, as though they too hoped the dead man had left them a competency. Hot iron never touched their hoofs, and no mountain goat was surer-footed than they. The roads were like granite, their blood was up, and they turned into the Queen’s highway, and then dashed along the Calgarry avenue at a pace which was scarcely seemly, considering the nature of the ceremony just performed.

But none of the mourners gave a thought to the rate at which they were being driven. What everyone wanted to know was how old Conway had left his money; they were so anxious to have this point settled, that wonderful unanimity prevailed as to the expediency of getting the legal business over as soon as possible. One and all had the most pressing reason for wishing to leave Calgarry with speed. They could not wait for luncheon—they must get off; and so it was settled that the will should take precedence even of a biscuit and glass of wine.

“Though it will not require long to read,” said the lawyer, untying the document and laying it flat on the table before him. Then he swept a comprehensive glance round the room and began.

A pin might have been heard fall; a silence as great as that in which they had left Marmaduke Conway was broken only by the sound of Mr. Twysden’s voice, which proved to most present the very knell of hope.

For, saving a few small legacies which were left in various codicils, the entire wealth which the testator had to dispose of was willed to his “beloved kinsman and godson, Marmaduke Frederick Conway.” Not a penny to any other relative or connection; not a shilling to Terence Conway; the very furniture in Calgarry House belonged to Captain Marmaduke Conway; and the proprietor of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, rendered almost valueless and tenantless by the action of the dead man, did not even own the chair he sat on in his own mansion.

The horses in the stable, the wine in the cellar, the carpets under his feet, and the pictures on the wall, belonged to a man he had never imagined to be even in the running.

“That is all, gentlemen,” said Mr. Twysden, when he had finished the last paragraph.

No one knew what to answer; no one was equal to the occasion except Sir Henry Beecham, who, having fought Boney, even old Duke Conway could not surprise.

“Had we not better go to luncheon?” he suggested. “I think there is ample time for everyone to have some slight refreshment.”

Like one stunned, Terence rose to do the honours of his house, but Captain Conway laid a hand on his arm.

“Sir Henry will attend to that,” he said; “and I want to speak to you.”

“Did you know—was this news to you?” asked Terence when they were alone. His lips were so parched, he had to moisten them before he could frame any articulate sound.

“I did not know, I was led to believe; but then, one never could tell.”

“No, one never could tell,” Terence repeated mechanically.

“It is very hard on you, I feel.”

“It is very hard.”

“I am stopping at Dunfanaghy, but must leave tomorrow morning early. Suppose you come back with me after these people are gone, and let us talk matters over?”

“What is the use of talking matters over? No talking can make me anything but a beggar.”

“Come, come! a man can’t be a beggar who owns such a property as this.”

“What is the use of owning property if you have not a penny to keep it up with?”

“At all events, let us discuss the position; we may yet find a way out of the difficulty.”

“That is so very likely,” said the younger man bitterly; but he consented to go to Dunfanaghy nevertheless—perhaps because he felt anything was better than staying in Calgarry House.

[*] At Malin Head, the wash of the Atlantic resembles the roar of cannon for twenty-four hours before a storm.

II

IN THE HEART OF DONEGAL

Even at high noon on a summer’s day that person must indeed be hard to satisfy who would desire to see a more lonely stretch of country than is to be found among the fastnesses of the most northerly county in Ireland; while, given a wild winter’s night, when the storm spirits are abroad, howling among the hills and shrieking out at sea, the land seems one abandoned by its Maker, and given over to utter desolation and destruction.

Such a night succeeded to the boisterous day on which Marmaduke Conway was carried to his grave. Straight from the North Pole a cutting wind blew direct on the giant headlands that guard, and up the many bays which indent, the coast of Donegal. Out in the Atlantic the white ocean-horses were running mad races with none to see, dashing against Tory Island and the Horn, swooping round Malin, tearing into Lough Swilly, and flinging themselves over sunken rocks into every little treacherous harbour that lends a fresh danger to that perilous shore.

There was a storm brewing, but it might still be hours before it broke in its full strength over Donegal. Meanwhile, vessels were giving the land a clear berth, and making as well and fast as they could for some place of safety; in the east; a faint sickly moon was trying to rise above a bank of dense black cloud. By the time she had succeeded, and was sailing westward, Heaven only could tell on what scenes of struggle and misery she might not have looked. Not a night to be abroad if one could help it, though there may be worse things to encounter, even when snugly housed and warmly sheltered, than a cutting wind on the wild coast or in the lonely passes of Donegal.

Walking along a boreen, over which distant but ubiquitous Muckish frowned heavily, was a man, who, though he did not seem to care much for the weather, appeared anxious with regard to his bearings, for he paused from time to time, and looked around as if in search of some landmark or dwelling where he might make inquiry. Not even a glimmer of light, however, rewarded his scrutiny. If there were cottages it was too dark to see them; and reflecting that probably there were no cottages, he trudged resolutely on till he came to a point where the boreen, was intersected by a more beaten road.

Here he paused. He had his choice of three ways, two of which must probably be wrong. If he went straight on, he would be but pursuing the boreen, along which he had for some miles been painfully ploughing his way. If he turned to his right, he believed he should only be plunging further among the hills. He inclined to go to the left, but he felt weary, and wanted to be sure; so, for a minute, he stood still, peering through the darkness, trying to discover whether there were not on this fresh thoroughfare, lonely and deserted though it seemed, some sign of life.

There was not a sign—the roaring of the wind over the waste of rock and turf, the dash of water not far distant, were the only sounds that met his ear—and he was about to make the best of a bad business, when he caught the faint echo of footsteps coming down the old coach-road. At times they were lost, swept inland by the wind, but in the lulls of the gale he could hear them approaching nearer and nearer, heavy nailed shoes striking hard against the metal of the highway.

“Which is the road to Dunfanaghy?” he asked, as the man came abreast of him.

There was not light enough for either clearly to distinguish the other, yet the wearer of those heavy shoes answered, “I am going most of the way to Dunfanaghy myself, sir, and can show you the road if you like.”

“Thank you,” said the traveller, who had lost his bearings; and they walked on side by side.

“It’s a rough night,” observed he who seemed to know that country.

“Very, and it is going to be worse. I fear it will be a bad night at sea.”

“It will that. I wouldn’t care to be outside the Horn just now. They are shaking the stone at Tory, I’m thinking.”

If the speaker expected his companion to ask what stone, and who the “they” were that employ themselves shaking it in such weather, he was disappointed. The man who did not wear heavy shoes either knew all about the stone, or did not care to hear. On the whole, there did not seem much chance of friendly conversation.

“You’ll be stopping at Maclean’s?” hazarded the individual who was going most of the way to Dunfanaghy, after a few minutes’ silence.

“No, I am not staying there.”

“I thought you might. A heap of the quality has been in the house this week. I never mind it so thronged. They have been put to it to find beds. That’s a real comfortable hotel.”

“So I am told.”

Was there ever such a provoking companion on a wild night in January, particularly when a man, having taken a little whisky—not much, but enough to unloose his tongue—wanted somebody to talk to? Nothing venture, however, nothing have. He would try again.

“You had lost your way, I am thinking?” he said.

“Yes; I lost my way. I took the wrong road out of Dunfanaghy, and have been walking since six o’clock.”

“See that, now! And you might have walked further if I had not chanced to be coming along; and it’s not a pleasant country this to lose yourself in. You are English, by your tongue?”

“No: I have been a good deal in England; but I am Irish, like yourself.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it, now.”

“It is the fact, nevertheless.”

Certainly this was not a genial person with whom to travel the miles that lay long between the travellers and Dunfanaghy, nevertheless he was better than nobody. There were but two classes of strangers, as the man knew well, likely to be journeying through Donegal at that time of the year—commercial men and sportsmen.

No bagman in his senses was likely to be found “walking loose” about the country after dark. Moreover, some instinct told him, that whatever else his companion had to do with, it was not trade; accordingly Mr. Donelly—for such chanced to be the name of the heavily-shod individual—tried the reserved man beside him “on sport” He talked about shooting and fishing, about golden plovers and sea birds, about the trout in the lake above Dunfanaghy, and the salmon in the Claddy and the Garry.

He talked about whales, and sharks, and seals, and otter, about deep-sea fishing and wild-duck shooting, about grouse and the red-legged partridge, about choughs and gulls, hawks and penguins, and he might as well have held his tongue. The young man—for young he was, as Mr. Donelly knew, both by his voice and his walk, and also by “a squint he got at him once when the moon lifted herself a bit”—seemed to know as much concerning game, and tackle, and dogs, and guns as anybody, and care nothing for any of them.

“Blest,” thought Mr. Donelly, “if I can make out what I are at all at all! You are a queer one, though, wherever come from;” and, fairly at his wit’s end, he walked on a short way without speaking.

But he could not keep silent long. Either the whisky was too potent or his curiosity too great for him to abstain from speech. He began whistling a tuneless air, and then, stopping in the middle of a bar, said,

“I’d never have taken you to be Irish.”

“No?”

“Be shot if I would! I’d as soon have taken myself to be English.”

“You are not a Donegal man, though.”

“No, I’m not; but how you guessed that beats me. I’m from Down.”

“Then how does it happen that you are here?”

“Just by the height of bad luck. I’d a bit of a shop and a trifle of land, out of which I was making what kept us, and more, when I got a letter from a far-off cousin of my wife’s that her husband was going to America, and they had a good farm here I might have for the taking—a hundred acres, no less, and turf for the cutting. They had done well on the land, they said, till the famine year; but with so big a family they thought they had best go to America, as they’d the chance. All they wanted was a matter of ten pounds for a harrow and a plough, and a horse and a cow and calf, and twenty cocks and hens, and the chairs and tables, and suchlike. The house wasn’t, to speak the truth, grandly furnished, but it had all we could need; only I must make up my mind at once, because they were keeping an offer of eight pounds open till they knew if I would rise the other two. A man in Letterkenny wrote all this for David, who was no scholar himself, and well it was put together.

“I had just been having a fall out with my own landlord, and when David’s letter came my wife made sure it was predestined for us to go to Donegal; and so, to make a long story short, I sent the ten pounds, sold my shop, auctioned off my stock, and started here, where I had sent our eldest son to take possession. O dear! O dear! it was a possession! I’ll never forget the day I first set eyes on that hundred acres—never to my dying day. I walked over the bog, for it was nothing better, with Phil—that’s my son—and I saw the stock I wouldn’t have bid ten shillings for, let alone pounds, and the cabin not fit to put a pig in, to say nothing of a Christian, and I went out and sat down on a big flat stone. If it hadn’t been for shame, I could have cried like a child, and, faith, with reason, too.”

“But I hope your venture has not turned so badly after all?”

“It couldn’t have turned out much worse,” was the answer. “You might as well try to raise crops off the foundations of the earth as Donegal. What isn’t peat is stone, and if by chance an ear of corn does spring up, the wind cuts it off clean as a razor. I’ve lost all I brought with me here. It is like flinging money into a moss-hole to lay it out on such a soil as this.”

“But it is not all bad land, surely?”

“So some says; but I don’t see much difference myself, and I don’t believe there is any—Man, but this is going to be an awful night,” he broke off to say, as a gust of wind nearly carried away his hat. “I wonder if the old fellow up yonder is sleeping through it?”

His companion did not inquire who the old fellow might be, for again he had relapsed into silence, so Mr. Donelly proceeded:

“I don’t know if you heard tell of the grand funeral we had here today?”

“Do you mean Mr. Conway’s?”

“Aye; strangers do call him that, but the people hereabouts never spoke of him except as the Duke, or the old Duke.”

“Were you at the funeral?”

“Troth, no; I had to go to the burying of a sort of relation of my own, or I’d been proud to see the last of the old villain.”

“What do you mean by using such an expression?”

“What do I mean, is it? Just what I say. He was an old villain—the worst of villains.”

“Did you hold under him?”

“No; things are bad enough with me, but they’d have been worse if I’d been unfortunate enough to own him for landlord.”

“Why do you speak of the dead man, then, in that way, if you had nothing to do with him?”

“Because it is the truth, and there is not a man, woman, or child in the country wouldn’t tell you the same if they weren’t afraid. My landlord! My conscience! he’d never have seen his eighty-third birthday if he had served me the way he served others. No, I’d have swung cheerfully for him. Look you here, sir, I don’t mind telling you because I see You’re a gentleman, and maybe never heard much about the old heathen; but he was a divil—that is what he was, a divil—I can’t put it stronger nor that, can I?”

“It is strong enough—too strong, indeed.”

“Too strong! No, that it’s not, I’ll swear. If I began on the first day of the year and went on to the last, I still wouldn’t be able to tell half nor a quarter of his wickedness. But there! many a one says he couldn’t help it—that a power beyond himself was ever and always spurring him on to evil. There was a spell over him; let him do what he would he couldn’t pet rid of the Nun’s Curse, and I’m afraid it’s lying heavy on him where he is now.”

“The Nun’s Curse!” repeated the other, and his voice sounded like one who has taken a sudden chill; “what was it?”

“Did you never hear of the Nun’s Curse? Think of that, now! It was a mark set on every Conway that came to own Calgarry; and it has stuck to them—aye, for hundreds of years. Why, the very children knew the old Duke was under a curse.”

“I have heard of the Curse, but what was the cause of it?”

“Now, that I can’t exactly tell you; they’re a queer people hereabouts, and even though they know a thing right well, they let on they are ignorant of it as a newborn baby. All I have ever been able to put together is that long, and long, and long ago, when the nuns were driven out of their house on the mountain side—where the ruins are, a bit beyond Shanalore—one of them fell to cursing, and laid a ban on the Conways of Calgarry, and it has stuck to them ever since.”

“But that must be nonsense.”

“I am not prepared myself to say so. For one thing, the estate has never passed from father to son; and for another, no man that owned it—no matter how rich or how grand—found happiness like anybody else. I don’t hold with nuns and monks, and can’t see why their prayers should be granted when better people have to shift without what they ask for; but whatever the reason, you may depend the Conways are marked. They make trouble for themselves, and, what is worse, for every soul they come across. And talking of that, I wonder where old Duke’s sinful soul is tonight? Wouldn’t you think, to listen to the storm, the devils were making merry over him? Maybe they’ll not let him rest in his grave.”

“Whatever he was,” said the other hoarsely, “and God knows I never heard much good of him, let us talk no more about his faults. He is gone where I hope he will be judged mercifully.”

“He won’t, sir, if there is justice in Heaven,” replied Donelly with dogged conviction.

“This is the Dunfanaghy road, isn’t it?” said the younger man. “O! I know now where we are; my way lies in the other direction. I am much obliged. Won’t you get yourself a glass of something?” he added with a natural hesitation, for it seemed to him that Mr. Donelly had already partaken of more glasses than were beneficial.

“Not at all, sir. What! just for telling you your road? and I am sure it was a real pleasure to have company on such a night. Well, if I must—thank you; I’ll drink to your good health, and good luck to you.”

“Thank you;” and the stranger turned and walked away.

For a moment Donelly stood still; then getting to the lee of a stone wall, he struck a match and looked at the coin in his hand.

“My faith!” he exclaimed; then cautiously followed after his late companion, who, stopping at the gate leading to Calgarry House, rang the bell. There was a delay while the lodge-keeper, roused from sleep, put on some clothing, and made his way, lantern in hand, to the wicket, which he unlocked to give ingress to the late visitor, after whom he looked intently.

As he was turning away he heard someone entreating him to stop.

“Peter, Peter dear, wait, for any sake, man! It’s me, John Donelly: you know me, don’t you?”

“What do you want?” asked Peter surlily. He had been wakened up out of his first sleep, and wished old Duke back again.

“Not much,” answered Mr. Donelly; “only come here a minute. Who was that you just let through?”

“Who?” grumbled Peter; “who would it be but the new master, young Terence?” and he passed into the lodge, slamming his door after him.

“I am afraid, John Donelly,” said that individual, standing out all alone in the weather, and haranguing his respected self—“I am afraid you have made a mistake this night, for once in your life, and let your tongue outrun your wit.”

III

COLD COMFORT

“That’s a rough night you’ve brought home with you, Mr. Terence,” said Ann Patterson, as she helped the “new master” off with his topcoat. “God help all poor fellows on the sea!”

The owner of Calgarry stood for a second as if he scarcely understood the gist of her remark; but then he gloomily answered,

“I hope God will help all poor fellows on land, too.”

“Amen to that, sir, for there are heaps of sore and sorrowful and sinful hearts every night in the year; and where would they get comfort if it wasn’t from their Maker?”

Apparently Mr. Terence Conway was too much engrossed in the consideration of his own troubles to care to enter into the wide field of misery suggested, for, without speaking, he turned towards the great oak staircase which had been the pride of many a Conway long dead and gone, and would have proceeded straight to his room, but that Ann interposed:

“You’ll have something to eat, sir? Byrne was so tired I made bold to tell him to go to bed and I would sit up. We scarce knew whether you’d be back or not; but supper is spread, there is game and other things; be seated, Mr. Terence, and take a bite. You must be fairly famished after such a drive.”

“I walked, and I’m not in the mood for eating,” said the young man, pausing, however, irresolutely.

“Well, sir, a glass of wine, at any rate; you must need one: or, maybe, punch would be best. I’ll see if I can get some hot water.”

“No, Ann, no,” said Mr. Terence, now fully persuaded, descending the easy steps and entering the dining-room. “I will have a glass of wine to set your mind at ease; but I can’t take spirits: my head is not strong enough.”

“I suppose it is just as you’re used, sir. I have heard some say they dursn’t touch wine, and then there’s others can taste nothing, and they, like as not, are the safest.” And all the time she talked, Ann was offering tempting dishes, probably the remains of the funeral meats, spread for the young heir’s meal.

Even in early girlhood Ann Patterson had never been comely. Angular in person, hard-featured, with the pronounced Scottish face so often to be seen in the North of Ireland, she was yet always good to look at: kindly, wholesome, honest, there lurked no shadow of turning in her expression. She was true as steel, faithful as a dog, and though, as regarded book-learning, almost uneducated, still shrewd and wise beyond most women in any rank of life. To see her moving about the room, to hear her homely voice urging him to eat, to find her eyes fixed upon him with a tender sorrow, filled Terence Conway’s heart with a vague comfort he could not have defined, but that was very real, nevertheless.

She was not changed, though all else might be. It seemed to him she had never changed since the first day he could remember her: when they went together and picked up wonderful shells on the seashore—shells which were to him then as treasures from the enchanted isles. No, she had not changed, save from youth to age. She was young when she came to Calgarry House as own maid to Marmaduke Conway’s daughter-in-law: forty years had passed since then, and, after going through all the successive stages of service which might entitle her to the proud position of housekeeper, she attained that post.

But she was Ann Patterson at the end as at the beginning. No one called her miss or mistress. She could make her own sufficiently respected without insisting upon such outward homage, neither did she rustle in silken sheen, as might well have beseemed her position, but she wore plain stuff gowns and white aprons, and white linen caps, adorned with goffered frills of miraculous stiffness; and pinned round her throat and tucked within her dress was a muslin handkerchief, pure and soft-looking as driven snow. Many and many a time had Terence sobbed out his childish sorrows on her faithful breast. It all came back to him as he looked at her; and, but for shame, he felt he could do the same thing again and derive consolation from it.

“I am sorry Mr. Conway left you nothing, Ann,” he said at last. “And I am afraid I can’t make it up to you.”

“I want nothing, Mr. Terence, nothing,” she answered. “Why should the master have thought of me? Haven’t I always had my wages, and good wages, too? Have I ever, since I came here, wanted food to eat, or a roof to shelter me, or a soft bed to lie on, or a fine fire to sit at when I was so minded? It is no grief to me that my name is not down in the will. It’s over you I’m fretting; for you expected, and you’d a right to expect, and it’s no wonder you’re cast down at the way things are left. But you may be sure it’s all for the best: wait till a few years are past and gone, and you’ll find, if you walk straight and keep calm, it was for your good the money didn’t follow the land.”

“I do not know what I shall do,” declared the young fellow, meaning that his position seemed hopeless.

“Still, it is a fine property you’ll have.”

The owner shook his head. “Fine enough for a man possessed of means, but not for a poor beggar like me.”

“There’s many a one would jump for joy if he had the refusal of Calgarry; and besides, Mr. Terence, sure you’re no worse off than you were?”

“I am, because I built on the money.”

“That wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t, but I did it, for all that. Who’d have thought,” went on the disappointed heir, “of any man in his senses leaving what was needed to keep up Calgarry away from Calgarry?”

“But still, sir, you’re no poorer, are you?” urged Ann, who could have given a shrewd guess years before that the money would not go with Calgarry.

“Yes; for I borrowed on the strength that the bulk of what he left at any rate would come to me. I am heavily in debt, and now I shall have to pay up without an available penny to pay with.”

“You were rash, surely, to run into debt without seeing how you were to pay.”

“What was I to do—how was I to live?” asked young Conway, pushing aside his wineglass and filling a tumbler with his dead kinsman’s Madeira. “From the time John Conway died we were the next heirs, weren’t we?”

“I have always been given to understand so,” said Ann.

“We were; my father was the next heir, and I came after him. If he had succeeded he could have sold this place; and it wasn’t very likely he was going to pinch himself, with only an old man of seventy-three between him and the property.”

“He didn’t, as I’ve heard tell, anyway,” commented the housekeeper.

“He did not,” said the young man defiantly; “and I am glad to remember he did not. He borrowed money—plenty of it—and he spent freely and had some enjoyment. When he died the insurances on his life paid everybody—do you understand?”

“I think so, sir; he couldn’t pay them without dying.”

“Precisely—at least, unless Marmaduke Conway had died first. I was just of age when my father went, and, of course, I found no more trouble about borrowing money than he did.”

“Dear a dear!” moaned Ann. She knew gentry had, many of them, these pleasant sort of ways; but it appalled her to hear from his own mouth that the child she could remember gathering shells and running little races with the waves, and making daisy chains, and with bowed head and folded hands saying his infant prayers at her knee, should have come into the estate of manhood and folly almost on the same day.

“But I am not dead.”

He was talking less to her than to himself; his heart was so full, and he had kept silence so long, once the barriers of restraint were broken, he seemed as though he could go on forever. “Nor am I likely to die; and instead of the insurance people wiping off my debts I shall have to meet them myself; that is where the shoe pinches, Ann.”

“But it need not pinch long, Mr. Terence. If Calgarry is hardly what it was before the famine, it is as fine a domain as any in Donegal. If you live quiet and peaceable here for a while, you need not spend much, and you could soon put by enough to rid you of all your troubles.”

“That’s all you know about the matter,” he answered, emptying his tumbler and filling it again. “The amount I have actually had I might be able to repay with pinching; but there is interest on it—high interest—and more interest on every bill that wasn’t met, and insurance premiums, and law costs, till I haven’t a notion what I owe.”

“O! but that’s a cruel thing,” exclaimed Ann, “eating the grain out of the growing corn.”

“It is,” agreed young Mr. Conway, with the air of a man on whom the process had been forced by the shortcomings or evil doings of others; “there is nothing more cruel than finding only chaff when you come to thresh out your crop. I am sure I ought to know, for I have been threshing mine out tonight till I am about mad.”

He laid down his knife and fork, with which he had been merely making believe to eat, and, leaning back in his chair, looked at Ann, who looked anxiously and mournfully at him.

She was well aware how faithfully the “goings on” of Mr. Terence’s father had been transmitted to Calgarry, and the extravagances of young Terence himself in due order reported, but of the length and breadth of filial and parental delinquencies she had even yet merely the faintest idea. One thing, however, seemed clear before her: viz. that the young heir was in grievous trouble, and that as there was a way out of it, he ought to consider his circumstances.

“Mr. Terence,” she began at last, “you said a while ago if your father had lived to be master of Calgarry he’d have sold it; why wouldn’t you do the same?”

“Perhaps because I’ve a reason for keeping it he hadn’t.”

“They say Mr. Norbury, the gentleman that had the shooting for three years past, would like well to buy it,” went on Ann, not in the least discomposed by his answer.

“I know he would, and so would Captain Conway; he made me a bid tonight.”

“For the Lord’s sake, then, take it, sir.”

“Why should I take it?” he asked. “Why should this Marmaduke have everything, as the other had?”

“If you don’t want him to have it, let Mr. Norbury buy the place. Wouldn’t either of them give you enough to lead a grand life with Miss Dutton in Dublin, or London, or any place you’ve a liking for? This is but a wild sort of country for gentlefolks that have seen other parts to stop in, and Donegal is not what it was; the best of the people, God pity them, are dead or emigrated. Ah! but they suffered sore, Mr. Terence, and there is suffering among those that are left. And Mr. Norbury is an open-handed gentleman, and has plenty to be open-handed with. It would be Heaven’s mercy to sell the place to him. He’d keep it up as it ought to be kept, and he’d give employment to many a poor starving creature—”

“And the Conways would be forgotten, as if they had never been.”

“You needn’t think that, sir; the Conways will never be forgotten,” said Ann, with unconscious sarcasm.

“No one shall have the chance—at all events while I am alive,” retorted the young man, flushing angrily as he spoke.

“You’re maybe right, but I wouldn’t be in too big a hurry to say so,” persisted the housekeeper. “Sometimes a good offer doesn’t come a second time when people want it; and after you’ve had Calgarry a while you’ll find there is something about the place you’d rather there wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?” asked the new heir. “What are you talking about?”

“What I would rather not talk about, Mr. Terence: The Nun’s Curse.”

That was the second time in one night young Conway had heard reference made to this old story; and precisely because the phrase impressed and disquieted him more than he would have cared to own, he said jeeringly to the housekeeper,

“I never thought, Ann, to hear you, a good Protestant, reviving that ridiculous legend.”

“I am a good Protestant, sir, I hope—at least, I try to be a good Presbyterian, which Mr. Malet says is much the same thing; but for all that I believe there is a curse over this place, and everyone of your name as comes to own it. I can’t go against the evidence of my own senses, and I’ve seen enough here to know there is something upon Calgarry might well make a stout heart fear to keep it.”

“If there be a curse on it I shall have to face it, as others of my race have done,” answered Terence, with a thrill of pride. Not to the lot of everyone does it fall to succeed to a big estate and the doom of misfortune—an ancient estate that for nearly three centuries had lain under a curse. If there had only been money sufficient to back up both, what a happy man Terence Conway had been that night! As it was, he immediately remembered his debts, and wondered if the Curse would invade Calgarry in the visible form of Jews clamouring for their money.

“You won’t mind old Ann speaking plain to you, Mr. Terence, will you?” said the housekeeper tentatively.

“Why, you always have done that; it is too late to object now,” replied the heir, with an uneasy laugh. “Go on: what is it you have in your mind to say?”

“Just this, sir: there never was before, and there maybe never will be again, such a chance for lifting the Nun’s Curse off your name and Calgarry as you have now. If I’m told what is right it is not the place itself that was cursed, but—every Conway that should own it. And see now how things are. You want money, and there’s a stranger—no drop’s blood to you—wants the property. If you sell it to him you can go away and enjoy your riches, and he can stay and give no end of employment, and lift the hearts of the poor; and the Nun, whoever she was, can lie at rest in her grave; and there will be peace and happiness where there has been nothing but strife and trouble.”

The woman spoke with a subdued passion which seemed to have its effect on the old Duke’s successor, for he made no answer; only employed himself in arranging some crumbs of bread in a methodical line on the tablecloth.

Ann looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and then turned her eyes towards a japanned screen which shut off all draught from the hall.

Behind it she saw a lady standing, who had evidently heard some portion of the conversation, for she made eager signs to Ann that it met with her unqualified approval. In dumb-show those gestures said:

“Strike home—strike hard! you are doing good work. God grant you may persuade him;” and then, with an imploring look, the eavesdropper, seeing she was only distracting a faithful adviser, stole away noiselessly as she had entered.

The young heir had at last settled the crumbs to his satisfaction, and lifted his head as she went.

“Ann,” he said, “between me and you, do you think Mr. Conway we buried today felt anything of this Curse?”

“Think, sir? I know! It was always with him, always and ever; and at the Last. If you had sat up with him as I did, you would not doubt the strength and power of the Nun’s Curse.”

“Who was she, Ann? And what made her curse us all?”

For a second Ann stood silent, looking with brooding mournful eyes at the young man.

“Mr. Terence,” she answered, “don’t ask me, please. There wasn’t a servant who came into this house, not a tenant ever called Mr. Conway landlord, would have dared tell the story in his lifetime; and I wouldn’t like even for you to be the one to repeat it the night he was put in his grave.”

“I won’t ask you,” said the new master; and he fell to thinking once more.

“Sir,” said the housekeeper, “I would like to speak only one other word: I was here, you know, when Mr. Gilbert died, quite sudden. Though the eldest son, Mr. Conway that you buried today never liked him, but made much of Mr. Patrick.

“Well, the minute Mr. Gilbert was underboard, his father took a hatred to Mr. Patrick, who could do no wrong till he stood next to Calgarry.

“Forever after there was strife and bickering; then he died, leaving two beautiful sons.

“Your father got into favour all at once. He was asked here and your mother and you, and the grandsons, who lived at Calgarry, got plenty of sour looks. You know what happened: they went out one day in a curragh, and never set foot more on land alive. They were carried here dead, and as he crossed the doorstep with them, I knew your father had got The Nun’s Curse, for he looked glad. He was glad, too, may the Lord pardon him! And, Mr. Terence, sir, you know the rest, since—”

“No, Ann, I do not know the rest, as you read it. Before God I never desired the old man’s death, and if you think the Nun’s Curse will rest upon me because I did, you are wrong!”

“No, sir, I am not,” replied Ann. “You knew you must succeed. Your father had little chance of succeeding if either of those poor young men had lived and married, and—”

“Do not go on,” entreated the new master.

“Sir, I must, because it was not he was glad, but the Nun through him. She was proud and happy to see the poor young fellows stiff and stark. Mr. Terence, it is a cursed estate (God forgive me for calling any inch of His ground cursed!), and get rid of it, do. I am only a foolish old woman, I know; but take better advice nor mine, and see what it will be.”

There ensued a dead silence, during which the wild fury of the gale became painfully audible.

“Hark!” said the young man at last, “what an awful storm!”

“The Lord have mercy on any that’s out at sea this night!” ejaculated the housekeeper; and they kept mute for a few minutes again.

“I suppose everyone has gone to bed?” hazarded Mr. Terence Conway, in a pause of the tempest.

“No, sir, they are all in the drawing-room; but Sir Henry doesn’t know you are back, or Miss Dutton, either. They made sure you would stop at Dunfanaghy till morning.”

“Well, then, I think I will go quietly away to bed, Ann, and consider your counsel.”

“May He who sends all wisdom guide you to a good decision!”

“You look tired,” said Mr. Conway, which, indeed, the poor soul might well do. “Have a glass of wine; it will do you good.”

“No, thank you, sir: it would be better than any wine to me if I thought you would let Mr. Norbury have Calgarry.”

“Or Captain Conway?”

“No, Mr. Terence; I had far and away rather hear you had sold it to Mr. Norbury, instead of only shifting the Curse on to another of your name.”

IV

A GUARDIAN ANGEL

The drawing-room at Calgarry was a goodly apartment, wainscoted in dark oak, and lighted by four deeply-recessed windows, overlooking lawns sloping to a river that flowed in front of the house, merging its waters a mile further on in the Atlantic, which twice in every twenty-four hours swept the smooth sands of Calgarry Bay.

According to the taste of that year when Terence Conway came into possession of his own, the room wanted everything in the way of furniture and decoration. According to the taste of today it needed nothing, except to be spoiled by the addition of gorgeous draperies mocking the tropics, and “old” china fresh from Staffordshire.

For more than a century, the hand of improvement had mercifully spared its spider tables, its spindly chairs, its brass fireplaces and fenders, its old spinet, its Turkey carpet, its tabinet curtains, its capacious sofas, its great china bowls filled with shrivelled rose-leaves, that still in death emitted a faint odour like the memory of the just; its japanned cabinets, supported on bowed legs and looking like superior plate-warmers; its footstools covered with fine needlework wrought long before Berlin wool was thought of; its window-seats where the hue of the once crimson cushions had faded to a picturesque brown; its great round centre table made from the root of the oak, and revealing to the imaginative observer endless fantastic faces in the polished surface; its card-tables lined with arbutus-wood instead of baize; its carved ivory boxes, its two chimney-pieces of grey marble, each large enough for a modern mausoleum, its painted ceiling—all, all were still there, even as in the time when that lady in light attire, whose portrait filled up the middle panel on the wall opposite the windows, brought great trouble to Calgarry with her. She was not any good; but she had been suffered to remain for a hundred and fifty years or thereabouts, smiling from her frame, because of the fatal beauty that caused a worthy gentleman’s death.

Out on those sands, covered twice a day by Atlantic waves, he looked his last on the sun; and many believed, though millions of tons of water had since washed over it, that his blood ever rose as the tide receded, and reddened the spot where he fell. ’Twas an eerie portrait, even to those who did not know the story.

“I always like to sit facing her,” said Mrs. Mark Barry. “If I do not, I feel as though she were creeping out of the canvas, and coming to lay her hands on me.”

On the night after Marmaduke Conway’s funeral, the portrait lay in shadow. Turf fires make no leaping flame, illuming distant objects and dark corners; but from each end of the apartment they threw out an intense and steady glow, the while the wind roared round the house and the rain beat against the windows.

Three persons were seated around the hearth which was furthest from the door, all of whom had been connected by blood or marriage with the dead man. They were Mrs. Mark Barry, a “far out” cousin, as she frequently explained; Miss Dutton, whose claim to relationship was so slight that she could scarcely find a pretext for perching on the family tree; and Sir Henry Beecham, who, having fought Boney, and won great distinction in subsequent campaigns, and married Miss Dutton’s aunt, and been appointed guardian and trustee to the heiress, had always stood so high in old Marmaduke’s estimation, that people felt surprised when told he was no kin to the Calgarry people, “only a friend.”

In person Sir Henry was an ideal “man about town.” From his hat, which he wore a trifle on one side, to his boots, not a fault could be found with his appearance. Always perfectly dressed, always unruffled, always in thorough possession of his wits, Sir Henry was an acquisition to any society.

“He may not be very clever,” said old Mr. Conway on one occasion, summing him up for Mr. Malet’s benefit; “but he knows his way about better than anyone I ever met.” And Sir Henry did—he had found his way to success in the army while better men died without acknowledgment or promotion. William the the Fourth knighted him, and Queen Victoria would have made him a baronet, had he not from prudential motives humbly declined that honour; he had known the way to find a wife better off than himself, who made his comfort the sole study of her life; and Mr. Dutton chose him from out the whole human race as the one person fit to be intrusted with the care of his daughter and quarter of a million in hard cash. Further, old Duke considered him so delightful a companion, that the gates of Calgarry seemed to open of their own accord when he claimed admittance, while every domestic about the place rejoiced to think Sir Henry was staying with “the master.”

That master was now lying very quiet out in the night, with Muckish brooding over his resting-place, and the wild winds howling a fitting requiem. Perhaps Sir Henry might have been considering how his former friend and entertainer liked his new quarters, for he looked very grave as he sat with the glow from a huge turf fire slightly colouring his pale face.

By the corner of the mantelpiece Miss Dutton was resting her fair head against the marble, and waving a great fan made of white peacock’s feathers backwards and forwards with a slow rhythmical movement, which proved intensely irritating to Mrs. Mark Barry—a brown-eyed, dark-haired, vivacious little lady, who was possessed of a temper and a will of her own.

Of the latter she had given abundant proof when, against the wishes of all her friends, she insisted on marrying Mark Barry, who thought her the best and most charming woman in the world; and those that once had a taste of her quality when in a passion never after entertained any doubt as to whether Mrs. Mark Barry were or were not a spitfire.

Warm-hearted, impulsive, courageous, generous, she yet had made quite as many enemies as friends. She was either hated or loved, and it is only fair to add, she could in her own person hate and love most thoroughly. It was she who had listened to Ann Patterson’s statement concerning the doom which lay over Calgarry, and as she re-entered the drawing-room and walked past the likeness of that dead woman, for whom blood—which people thought still cried out to Heaven—had been shed, her heart felt very full of the subject: so full, she longed to enter upon it at once. But she said nothing, though silence was always grief and pain to her, more especially when Miss Dutton chanced to be present.

The heiress was ever good to Mrs. Barry, but Mrs Barry very often was anything but good to the heiress. Old Mr. Conway had as thoroughly enjoyed his “far out” kinswoman’s attempts to annoy Miss Dutton as he had formerly appreciated seeing a dog try to draw a badger. Personally, he did not love Mrs. Barry, whose tongue was sometimes as sharp as her temper; but she amused him.

“Yes,” he would say to Sir Henry, “bring Philippa with you, and make Lettie come too. Philippa is a very good girl, a credit to any establishment; but I can’t stand her alone.” While, on the contrary, though Sir Henry liked Mrs. Barry very much indeed, he could cheerfully have dispensed with her society when he was blessed with that of his ward.

“Written all your letters?” he asked the little lady when she had selected her place opposite to Miss Dutton, and where she would have no “creepy” feelings about the wicked beauty in her panel.

“Yes, everyone,” she answered; “and put them in the post-bag.”

“I wonder what your husband will think?” marvelled Sir Henry.

“I know what he will say,” she returned, with great animation.

Sir Henry did not ask for further information. Experience had taught him that Mrs. Barry’s reports of her husband’s utterances were sometimes too verbatim, and whatever his own opinion of Mr. Conway’s will, he did not care to discuss it.

“Terence must have stopped at Dunfanaghy,” he remarked, with a stifled yawn. “No use sitting up any longer for him, I suppose.”

“He has been back for nearly an hour,” said Mrs. Barry.

“Indeed!” and Sir Henry rose to put on some more turf, which he took from a huge brass box placed near Mrs. Barry’s favourite corner. “Why does he not favour us with his society? Has he gone to bed, or what is he doing?”

“Eating some supper, and drinking a good deal of wine,I fancy,” answered Mrs. Barry; “and he is listening to some very sound advice from Ann, which I only hope he will follow.”

Sir Henry laid down the tongs, and, drawing himself up, stood in front of the fire, looking at the speaker.

Then, for the first time, a spectator might have noticed one sign of age which neither tailor nor hairdresser could succeed in disguising.

“Getting groggy about the legs,” was Mr. Mark Barry’s coarse style of criticism (fact being the Knight’s knees were a “over,” after the fashion of a horse that has been hard driven). “Wants to go to a carpenter and have a new pair turned,” added the ingenious Mark when dilating on the subject; and even in the midst of her anxiety Mrs. Barry could not help thinking of the remark as she regarded her distinguished relative.

“What is the advice our good friend Mrs. Patterson offers her favourite tonight?” he asked. “Does she suggest that he should take the pledge?”

“I did not hear anything about the pledge, but she is entreating him to sell the property.”

“What property?”

“This property—Calgarry; and I hope to mercy she may get him to do it. He was listening to her most earnestly; and, Philippa, I do beg if he refers the plan to you, that no cold water may be thrown upon it.”

Just for a second the movement of the fan ceased; then it went on again with the same maddening monotony as before.

“Sell Calgarry, eh!” exclaimed Sir Henry; “that would be a great pity. Never tasted such salmon as one gets here; and that turbot we had at dinner simply left nothing to be desired.”

“I suppose turbot and salmon could still be brought to Calgarry House even if there were not a Conway left on earth?” said Mrs. Barry.

“Ah! but I should not be here to enjoy them.”

“A clause might be inserted in the transfer stipulating that Sir Henry Beecham was to be invited so many times in the year to stay at Calgarry House,” suggested Mrs. Barry.

“It would not be the same thing; the cook would perhaps be one of those sent by the devil, instead of having enjoyed the advantages of Mrs. Patterson’s training. There is only one thing in which she fails—frying. I do hope Terence will bring his influence to bear on that question.”

“And I heartily hope Terence may find something better to occupy himself about. I trust he will sell Calgarry, and leave this evil place. Do you hear me, Sir Henry?”

“My dear Letitia, you need not raise your voice to such a pitch. I am not deaf.”

“And do you hear me, Philippa?”

“I hear you,” said Miss Dutton, with calm indifference. “Well, I trust neither of you will oppose Terence’s resolution”

“We have still to learn it is his resolution,” said Sir Henry.

“That is true—that is too true,” sighed Mrs. Barry; “but you won’t try to dissuade him. You wouldn’t like, now, to see the Nun’s Curse settling down on this poor boy, as it has done on those who have gone before him?”

“I think we had better leave the worthy lady you have mentioned out of the question. I very much doubt whether she goes with the land.”

“She does! she does!” exclaimed Mrs. Barry. “Terence can get rid of her by selling Calgarry.”

“You are satisfied on that point?”

“I am quite satisfied.”

“The only reason I asked,” went on Sir Henry, “is that there is no precedent to guide us. Hitherto it has not been possible for any Conway to dispose of his inheritance; therefore I imagine it must be difficult, if not impossible, to predicate offhand what the effect of a sale would be. Time, I should have fancied, could only have settled the point. However, no doubt you know best. I am aware you always know best.”

“A Conway ought, at all events, to know more about the Nun than anybody else,” retorted Mrs. Barry.

“No doubt,” agreed the individual who was not a Conway; “and in this matter of selling Calgarry I am not disposed to set up an opinion against that you have so strongly expressed. All I say is, it seems to me impossible to decide such an important point offhand. It might be a good thing for Terence to get rid of his inheritance, but, on the other hand, it might not.”

“Which is merely another way of stating there are two sides to every question.”

“Sometimes there are more, my dear Letitia. But to revert to Terence, the question of selling this property is one which requires grave consideration on his part, and I do not see my way to meddle in it at all.”

“I do not want you to meddle,” retorted Mrs. Barry. “What I desire is,” speaking really to Miss Dutton, though ostensibly addressing Sir Henry, “that no one shall try to dissuade him from selling Calgarry if he feels inclined to do so.”

“For one I certainly should not care to undertake such a responsibility. Calgarry is a fine property, but burdened as it is to be, it will require great prudence and self-denial to keep his head above water. Were Calgarry mine, I should not sell it; but then—”

“It is not yours, and you are not a young man,” interrupted Mrs. Barry impatiently.

“Calgarry is not mine, and I am not a young man, though it was scarcely polite, Letitia, to remind me of the latter circumstance. Had I been young and single when I first saw you, Mr. Mark Barry might not have won such a prize so easily.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” entreated the lovely Letitia; “you know how much I dislike that sort of talk, more especially when I am aware people are only laughing at me.”

“On my word,” said Sir Henry, “I have always admired you immensely, while my regard is as great as my respect.”

The object of this complimentary speech tossed her head impatiently as it proceeded; and a monosyllable very like “Stuff!” escaped her lips when the knight ended by laying his hand on his heart and bowing low.

Further and more forcible comments were about to follow, when Miss Dutton came to her uncle’s rescue.

“If you two are going to quarrel, I will say good-night,” she observed. “I hope you will not sit up till morning.”

“You will not, at any rate,” snapped Mrs. Barry.

“That I most assuredly shall not,” answered the beauty. “Pleasant dreams, Lettie; sound sleep, uncle;” and she left the room and went slowly up the wide easy staircase.

From the first landing two corridors opened, one to the north, the other to the south, dividing that portion of Calgarry House in half.

Miss Dutton’s apartments were situated in the part furthest from the great end window, which commanded a distant view of the Atlantic; but as she was in the act of turning towards her own room, the fitful moonbeams made her look towards the light. Having once looked in that direction, she looked again. Gazing out at the night, listening to the sound of the tempest as it roared inland from the ocean, to the thunder of the wild waves dashing against the headland and breaking over the sunken rocks, was a man standing still and solitary. Remembering what had been carried so lately out of the mansion, the sight would have unnerved many a girl; but Miss Dutton was made of sterner stuff.

Setting down her candle, which waned and flickered in the draughty corridor, she passed with swift quiet steps to the side of the watcher.

“Terence,” she said, “my poor boy, is it you?” and she laid her hand on his arm. “Why are you not in bed?” she proceeded; “after such a day you need rest.”

“I cannot rest,” he answered, “I am miserable; I do not know what to do.”

“I will tell you,” said Miss Dutton. “Let no one persuade you to part with Calgarry. Do not, like Esau, sell your birthright for any mess of pottage. Your duty lies here; your inheritance has come to you by the will of God, not by the gift of man. It is not for you to fling it from you as a thing of naught.”

“You bid me keep it, Philippa?”

“I bid you do what your own conscience will tell you is right if you listen to its dictates. It is for you to make a great and good thing of your life and this estate. You cannot get rid of your responsibilities by handing them over to another. Be a man, be a Christian, Terence. Make me and all your friends proud of you. Show what a Conway of Calgarry can do; take the ban off your name and the Curse off your house. Make your tenantry happy, and your estate, instead of a desert, a smiling plain. We will talk more about this tomorrow. Now, good-night.”

“Good-night, my angel—my better angel!” said the young man, with passionate fervour. “You have saved me; you have tranquillised me; you have lulled the storm.”

“I cannot stop longer,” she interrupted “Lettie will be coming up directly. Only one last word: let nothing induce you to sell Calgarry.”

“Nothing shall.”

“You promise me that?”

“I promise,” he said, “faithfully.”

V

MRS. BARRY AS ADVISER

It is one thing for a man to say he will absolutely refuse to advise, and quite another to find he is not asked to advise.

Sir Henry Beecham had felt certain nothing could induce him to illumine with the light of his long experience such a dense darkness as the latest Conway difficulty; but he never anticipated that difficulty not being laid before him.

He was so accustomed to be consulted by all sorts of people about all sorts of questions, that Terence Conway’s silence seemed to him little short of a revolt. The owner of Calgarry did not drop a hint concerning his intentions.

He said not one word about Captain Conway’s offer, or Mr. Norbury’s, or his own plans, or his own perplexities. Sir Henry could not understand his action at all; and the awful weather, which continued for weeks after the old Duke’s funeral, did not tend either to clear up the matter or to make the house pleasanter.

Never, indeed, had the valiant General spent so absolutely disagreeable a time at Calgarry.

The mansion was too well built to rock, but whenever a door was opened the wind rushed in and played mad pranks, till it lay down exhausted in some remote corner.

“I wonder none of your predecessors ever thought of building a porch,” said Sir Henry one morning, when the hats were blown off the stand and the wind went dancing up the staircase whistling in glee.

“A porch would spoil the appearance of Calgarry,” answered Terence.

“I am surprised any man in his senses should in such a situation have placed the hall door facing east.”

“East is better than north here, at any rate,” replied the owner; which was a very true statement, but one that did not show whether he meant to sell the place or keep it.

“Do you not think hot-water pipes would make the house more habitable?” tried Sir Henry on another occasion.

“I have no doubt they would.”

What could a gentleman who had quite decided that nothing should induce him to advise do under such circumstances as these?

“In the whole world it would be impossible to find a less inquisitive individual than myself,” Sir Henry frequently remarked; therefore it proved infinitely annoying to know he felt really curious as to Terence’s intentions.

About the wine he professed himself anxious. “You know, my boy,” he said one evening after dinner, while pouring out a glass of old Madeira, “this wine belongs really to Captain Conway. I am afraid we are not doing right.”

“Captain Conway and I have made an arrangement convenient to both about the wine and other matters,” answered Terence.

“He means to sell,” decided Sir Henry.

“He means to stay,” concluded Mrs. Barry.

“Heigho!” sighed Sir Henry next morning.“I wonder when the weather will mend?”

“Are you anxious for the weather to mend?” asked his host gloomily.

“Well, yes; I should think everyone must wish for a sight of the sun.”

“I don’t,” returned Terence, in a tone which suggested suicide.

“Dear me! what is the matter with you?” exclaimed Mrs. Barry. “Anybody would think you had just lost an estate instead of succeeding to one.”

The fortunate young man did not answer; he only walked out of the room, with head bent and hands plunged deep in his pockets.

“I fancy there is some hitch about the purchase,” observed Sir Henry.

“I don’t,” returned Mrs. Barry. “I believe he is not going to sell, and that Philippa knows the reason why.”

“What reason do you suppose there is?”

“That she won’t let him.”

“Not a very likely idea. Why should she wish to prevent him?”

“I cannot tell; perhaps because it would be a good thing for him to get rid of Calgarry.”

“I think that very doubtful. If he were paid a large sum of money down for the place, I am much afraid he would soon run through it.”

“And will it not be quite as easy for him to run through Calgarry?”

“Not quite so easy.”

Mrs. Barry did not answer this remark save by a short contemptuous laugh. Her manners, as Sir Henry often told his wife, left much to be desired.

“Come Letitia.” he resumed, “be frank. If it were not for that ridiculous legend about the Nun, should you wish Terence to leave Calgarry?”

“I would not; for I love Calgarry—love every shell on its shore, and every bunch of heather that grows on its wretched soil.”

“H’m!” said the knight, “I am getting a little disenchanted with Calgarry.”

“You think, perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Barry, “the late Mr. Conway was a more agreeable host than the present?”

“It is hardly fair to judge of a man’s qualities when he is anxious and unhappy.”

“I wonder why he is so anxious and unhappy?”

“I imagine because he doubts the prudence of selling his patrimony.”

“More likely because he doubts the prudence of keeping his patrimony.”

“You are convinced he does mean to keep it?”

“As certain as I can be of anything.”

“I should rather like to know, one way or other,” said Sir Henry reflectively.

“Then why do you not ask him?”

“It is an awkward question to ask, more especially as he might inquire how I had come to know there was any proposition about buying;” and the knight looked at Mrs. Barry with a sort of “Had you there, madam!” expression which was very irritating.

“If that is what is preventing you,” retorted Mrs. Barry, “I will ask him myself. I will go and ask him now;” and she instantly jumped up and went in search of her relative, whom she found standing at one of the library windows, looking out at a wild grey sky and a tempest-swept earth.

“Terence,” she began, “I want you to tell me something.”

“What is it?”

“Are you going to let Captain Conway have Calgarry?”

“How do you happen to know he wants Calgarry?”

“That is making believe, Terence; you know quite well how I know. Phil told you I heard you and Ann Patterson talking together the other night.”

“A pretty confession, I am sure!”

“It is of no use trying to put me off on any side issue. Answer me straightforwardly: are you going to sell Calgarry or not?”

“I am not.”

“That is Phil’s doing. She is always putting in her oar where nobody wants her.”

“If you speak of Philippa at all, I must ask you to speak in a proper manner.”

“I do not want to say anything about her. I implored, entreated, adjured her not to meddle with the business, and this is the result. Terence, if you follow her advice instead of mine, you will rue it to your dying day.”

“What a pleasant prophecy for a fellow to hear!”

“Pleasant or unpleasant, it is true. What can you do with Calgarry? What will you do at Calgarry? Take what Captain Conway offers; or if he does not offer enough, see what Mr. Norbury will give, and leave the country—pay your debts, go to India or New Zealand or—”

“The North Pole, perhaps?”

“The North Pole by all means, if you like; only don’t stop at Calgarry or in London.”

“I have not the slightest intention of leaving Calgarry.”

“And what does Philippa intend to do? Is she going to stop at Calgarry, and devote her money to clearing your estate and making a second Garden of Eden in the wilds of Donegal, with you for Adam and herself for Eve?”

“I have not asked her.”

“And she has not told you?”

“She could scarcely do that, could she?”

“Terence, won’t you reconsider the matter? Won’t you take advice?”

“No. I have fully and finally made up my mind.”

“You do not seem much the happier for having done so.”

“Surely that is a matter which concerns no one but myself.”

“It concerns me very much indeed; for I cannot bear to see you miserable, and I know you are wretched now, and storing up more wretchedness for yourself hereafter. Do not get angry; it is of no use being angry with me. Haven’t we known each other since we were babies? Have we not loved and hated, quarrelled and made up friends again, all the days our lives? There is not one of my own brothers so dear to me as you; and—O, what a goose I am!” she went on, dashing tears from her eyes. “Terence, I entreat of you not to decide in such a hurry; take time to think out the matter. Consult someone—Sir Henry; some honest lawyer, if you know one; Mark, even, though you and he do not always agree.”

“We never agree,” edged in her relative.

“I know you don’t, and it is a pity, because Mark has such wonderful sense, if he would only wrap it up in more elegant language. Who else is there? O! Mr. Malet. Why do not you discuss your affairs with Mr. Malet?”

“In the first place, because my affairs are not very pleasant to discuss; and in the next, because Mr. Malet has not thought it worth his while to call on me.”

“Do you know the reason? He is afraid you might think he wanted something from you. If you are not a rich man, Terence, you are a great man now; you have much in your power: you have many things to give.”

“I shall probably have the living of Mostrene to give someday, if that is what you are talking about.”

“That is one of the things. It is a good living, and Mr. Malet was promised it. Patrick Conway promised it to him—you know he did.”

“I know nothing about the matter more than that it was not his to promise.”

“Perhaps not, but the Duke also led him to believe he should have it. Mr. Malet has been shamefully treated. No one can deny that.”

“He has not been treated shamefully by me, at all events.”

“He was forbidden Calgarry—told never to set his foot inside the gates again; and then the minute Mr. Conway needed somebody to talk to about his wicked old soul, a special messenger was despatched for Mr. Malet, who got out of his comfortable bed to come here. I wouldn’t have done it, I know.”

“No one who has the pleasure of your acquaintance, Lettie could suppose that you would.”

“O! I never set up for a saint!” answered Mrs. Barry.

“Perhaps it is just as well.”

“Though I believe I am quite as good, and a great deal more sincere than some who do. I know I don’t fast twice a week; and as I possess nothing I cannot give tithes; neither do I stand at street corners praying—”

Sad as he was, the ceremony indicated proved too much for Terence, and he burst out laughing.

“That is right. I am glad I have said something at last to make you laugh,” exclaimed Mrs. Barry, in no wise annoyed. “And now, to please me, Terry, go, like a good boy, and call on Mr. Malet. I have not asked you to do a single thing for me since I came here this time, you know I have not; and you might do that, remembering how kind he was to us in the happy, happy long ago.”

“He was very kind,” agreed Terence, a rush of olden memories for a moment overflowing and sweetening the bitter waters lying stagnant and sullen in the depths of his heart. “No one could have been more kind; and I will go over and see him.”

“And I will go with you, for I want to get a peep of Audna.”

“Just as you like,” said her relative, with resignation; “but it is not a pleasant sort of day for a lady to pay visits. Your bonnet will be off your head, and your skirts over it, before we are half-way up the avenue.”

“What! do you mean to go now?” exclaimed Mrs. Barry.

“I do, this minute!” and he smiled maliciously.

“You are hateful, Terry!” she cried. “No, you are not. You are a dear kind creature; and I won’t say another disagreeable word to you for a week.”

“I wouldn’t promise too much, if I were you. It is hard to tell what may happen during the course of a week.”

“It is, indeed,” she agreed; “but at any rate I will try not to be spiteful, though I know well enough you are only going this morning to get rid of me. I declare,” she added, “I have a great mind to be your companion, though it is blowing great guns.”

“As I said before, you must please yourself.”

“So I will, by staying at home, and listening to Sir Henry’s lamentation about there being no fish,” she answered, rapidly changing her tactics. “I was only jesting. I would not put my nose outside the door on such a day. But look! Who in the world is this worthy fellow coming jig-jogging up to the hall door?”

“He is a stranger to me,” answered the owner of Calgarry, turning a little pale; perhaps he thought the Chosen People were already sending emissaries after him to Donegal.

“No, he is not,” exclaimed Mrs. Barry, who had at last recognised the visitor. “You know him quite well by sight, or, at least, you used to do. It is Mr. McKye.”

“What, the Presbyterian minister?”

“Yes. Grown fat and a little grey.”

“What can he want at Calgarry?”

“Money, most likely. They say the wind stripped half the roof off his meeting-house the other night.”

“If he hopes to get money here, he must be the only man within twenty miles who has not heard all about Mr. Conway’s will.”

“People are certain not to believe the owner of Calgarry can by any possibility be short of five-pound notes.”

“They will have to learn to believe it. Ask Mr. McKye to walk in here, Byrne,” he added, as he took that divine’s card from the butler. “Now, my clear Lettie, unless it is your wish to stop through the interview—”

“I am going instantly. But O! I am sorely afraid this will put an end to your proposed visit.”

“Quite the contrary, I assure you.” And next moment Mr. McKye was making an elaborate bow to Mrs. Barry on her way to the door, and Mr. Terence, feeling for the first time a sense of his dignified position, stood, with hand extended, as the visitor said afterwards, “most affably.”

“Do I intrude, Mr. Conway?” asked Mr. McKye.

“Not in the least,” answered the young man. “I am at leisure, and very happy to see you.”

“Thank you. In that case I may perhaps venture to say I am anxious to have a few minutes’ private conversation with you.”

“He certainly wants a subscription,” thought Mr. Conway, beginning to feel very doubtful whether he could refuse to give one; but he only begged Mr. McKye to take a seat, and said he was quite at his visitor’s service, whatever might be the nature of the communication he had to make.

Mr. McKye, who was a stout man with a short throat, and a particularly mellow, not to add oily, voice, thereupon deposited his hat on a convenient table, placed his gloves in it; and having, after ceremoniously asking permission to do so, divested himself of a heavy topcoat, accepted the offered chair, pulled it close to Mr. Conway, and began.

VI

THE NUN’S CURSE

“It would be as idle as useless for me to affect ignorance of the fact that your late relative’s testamentary dispositions have left you very differently situated from what we all hoped would be the case.”

Though he felt considerably surprised at this opening, Terence said “it was very kind of Mr. McKye to express himself in such terms. My relative’s will, I cannot deny, proved a disappointment to me,” he added; “but after all, Mr. Conway had a right to do what he liked with his own.”

“I deny that, sir, totally. Nothing in this world belongs so absolutely to any man that he has a right to do wrong with it. We are only leaseholders for the term of our natural lives, and when our time expires, we are bound to deliver up the property we have held, not merely in as good a state as when we entered into possession, but in a better. If the parable of the talents means anything, it means that nothing here is ours—not our money, or our mental capacities, or our physical powers; not our worldly station or our comeliness—”

Terence, looking at the pudgy little speaker, could scarcely forbear smiling as the contrast between his appearance and the sonorous comprehensiveness of the last word struck him forcibly; but he bowed in acquiescence, while Mr. McKye went on:

“Therefore, I say, the late Mr. Conway had no more right to leave his money as he liked than he had to lay waste Calgarry; to let the land that had been brought into cultivation by the sweat of men’s brows and the labour of men’s hands slip back into a state of nature, while he drove those very men off his estate—his only for life, mind you—and saw them sail for America, go to the poor house, and die in the ditch. I don’t speak without warrant, Mr. Conway; there have been awful doings here: sins of omission and sins of commission; offences against God and God’s creatures—”

“Is it necessary to speak of these things at all?” asked Terence. “While Mr. Conway lived it was competent for anyone to accuse him; but now he has gone before a tribunal where man’s praise or blame cannot affect him—”

“You are quite right there,” returned Mr. McKye, “and it gladdens my heart to hear you talk so fitly about serious things. At the same time, let me remind you that the evil wrought by any human being lives after him. When all that is mortal of our fleshly frames has mouldered into dust, the ill seed we have sown will be growing, and flowering, and fruiting, and scattering more ill seed, so that at last we can scarce tell in what spot of earth the wrong may not spring up and yield its fitting crop.”

“I have no doubt all you say is perfectly true, Mr. McKye, but I really do not see any object to be gained by continuing such a theme. If my late kinsman did evil, it is too late to talk about the matter. It is impossible for us to bring him back in order to make atonement.”

“That is just the point I have been aiming at. I want you to get thoroughly into your mind two facts: one, that Mr. Marmaduke Conway had many, many talents intrusted to him; and the next, that he misused them all. Great were the treasures confided to him, and because he buried some in a napkin, and scattered others to the winds of heaven, great will be his punishment.”

“Are you not going a little too far?” suggested Terence, in a tone of remonstrance.

“No, sir, not one bit; and so you will see before you are much older. Have you been over the Calgarry estate lately?”

“Not for a long time; but I know pretty well what it is.”

“Pardon me, you do not know what it is: a desert, a howling waste; a land forsaken save by the wild birds and beasts that fly from man. Go where you will—east, north, south, west—so long as your foot is on Calgarry ground, you will scarce come across a dwelling inhabited by man or land cultivated by man. There the red foxes wander unmolested, and the vulture makes his home. You will see a country desolate as Judea—made desolate, not by its Maker, but by one who within the last month was borne to his grave, followed by a train of mourners over a mile long.”

“I always understood the potato blight depopulated Ireland,” was Terence’s comment on this flight of eloquence; “and certainly Mr. Conway could in no way be considered answerable for that.”

“If a man were standing on the shore, and saw another drowning before his eyes that he could without peril, without trouble, save by stretching forth his hand, and still let him go down, what should you call that spectator?”

“I should call him an inhuman wretch,” answered Terence, although he guessed what was coming.

“Then out of your own mouth your kinsman is condemned. A tithe of his yearly income would have fed every man, woman, and child on his estate till the famine was overpast; and he would not give it—he would not give a penny. No, not a dole of bread or handful of meal. He would allow none to come nigh him to tell their story of misery and want; but a certain woman, maddened by starvation, got somehow as far as the point you were looking out on just now. She stood there—it is a true story I am telling you, true as the gospel I believe in—and held up two babies in her skinny arms, and prayed Mr. Conway for the love of God to take pity on them. He told his servants to drive her away, but they wouldn’t; and she stood there till she dropped down dead of starvation. Then he bade his men to take her off the premises more coolly than if she had been a heap of autumn leaves. That was the wife of as good a tenant as landlord ever had.”

“What you tell me is horrible,” said the young man—“so horrible, I can but hope you are labouring under some mistake—”

“Under no mistake, sir. The whole countryside would confirm my statement.”

“But, Mr. McKye,” asked Terence, recovering himself, “granting that there is no exaggeration in your story—granting that Mr. Conway was guilty of every sin in the Decalogue—I am driven to ask you what it has to do with me? I am not responsible for what went on here during the famine any more than I am answerable for events that occurred before I was born. If Mr. Conway wronged his tenants, where is the use of telling me? I never wronged them in the past, and I do not want to wrong them now.”

“And I heartily hope you never may.”

“I hope not, very earnestly. These are early days for me to talk, Mr. McKye,” proceeded the young man, with a certain graceful hesitation; “but so far as my lights and my means allow me, I desire to do my duty towards every tenant on the Calgarry estate.”

There ensued a pause. For the moment, Mr. Terence Conway had, if in such a connection one may be pardoned a nautical phrase, taken the wind out of Mr. McKye’s sails; but that reverend gentleman was far too old a sailor over many a controversial sea to let such a temporary check disconcert him in the least.

He knew he had but to tack, and after that pause he tacked accordingly.

“Your lights, Mr. Conway, are, I am sure, clear as youth and energy can make them; but your power, or, in other words, your means, seem to me more doubtful.”

The new owner of Calgarry lifted his eyebrows.

“Pardon me, Mr. McKye,” he said; “but I do not think your knowledge of my means is sufficient to warrant that remark.”

“I imagine it is, quite,” was the calm reply. “Today, I suspect, there’s not a man, woman, or child in Donegal but Knows just as much about your affairs as you do yourself. No one in the position you occupy can hide his light under a bushel. Publicity is one of the penalties you, and such as you, pay for being great people. I hope my plain speech does not offend?”

“Not at all,” answered Terence; “I like plain speaking.”

“Then you do not ‘strain after’ most of your family, for there has not been a Conway of Calgarry—well, I wouldn’t like to say offhand for how long—that could bear to hear the truth.”

“Really, sir, your knowledge of my family, their peculiarities, and their shortcomings, seems exhaustive,” observed the latest Conway of Calgarry.

“It is no thanks to me that I could tell you all about those who have sat here before you root and branch, leaf and acorn. Yes, though I never as much as spoke to one of your name till this day, I am acquainted with your story from cover to cover.”

Without committing himself to ask a question, Terence was forced to maintain silence; but Mr. McKye had no idea of being checked by any artifice of that sort, and went on.

“When I was ‘called’ here” (“What can the man mean?” thought Mr. Conway, who chanced to be ignorant of Dissenting phraseology), “I couldn’t be reckoned as other than a very young man, only a few years older than you are now.”

Mr. Terence merely inclined his head. Though the minister meant no offence in thus bracketing himself, his listener felt offended.

“You may be sure,” proceeded Mr. McKye, unconscious of having given annoyance, “when I took up my abode in such a wilderness I hoped and believed I wouldn’t have to stop in it long; and it is wretched and dissatisfied I should be this day, having through all the years been offered nothing better, if it hadn’t so happened I was forced to bring my father along with me. At the time it went against the grain, for it fell to my lot to support him, and I had my notions, I can’t deny, and thought to be rich and well considered; but nothing better could have befallen me. He is a man who never did a day’s good for himself, but he has done good for me.”

Mr. McKye stopped, and Mr. Conway politely expressed his pleasure at hearing such agreeable news.

“He never could manage his own workmen,” explained Mr. McKye, starting again quite refreshed; “but he looked well after my labourers. While I was, I hope, scattering spiritual grain, he saw to the sowing and reaping of my temporal crops.

“Perhaps you have passed by Mountain View, sir, my little place? No? Ah, well, to you, fresh from fertile England, it would seem as nothing, yet people hereabouts speak as if it were a veritable oasis. All the credit belongs to my father. He found out the right trees to plant—the shrubs that would stand the winter—the crops to suit the soil. He is a wonderful man, though, as I tell you, he never succeeded in a solitary venture he made for himself.”

Bored to death, Terence nevertheless felt constrained to say, “That is very remarkable.”

“Isn’t it, now?” returned Mr. McKye; “and he has, besides, the most wonderful turn for old histories of all sorts. It was he found out all about your family: spelled and put together till he made quite a book. He was going to publish it once, but the man who had taken the idea up failed. Bless you, I might have heard about the Nun’s Curse forever before I could have found out the meaning of it. He even had to spend a long time before he could be sure how the notion originated. The inhabitants of this part are a silent and secret lot; also it’s my belief they were afraid of old—I mean the late Mr. Conway hearing they had let drop a whisper. It was reserved for my father to trace the whole story to its source.”

“And what was its source?” asked Terence hoarsely.

“You don’t mean to say you are ignorant?” said Mr. McKye, with a surprise which, if feigned, was very well assumed.

“Were I not ignorant I should not ask for information,” was the reply. “I have been hearing of The Nun’s Curse till I am weary; but I can obtain no information. Was there ever a nun? Did she curse the Conways? and, if so, for what reason? I should really feel obliged for any enlightenment on these points.”

“My dear sir—my dear sir,” almost gasped Mr. McKye, “I shall be delighted—or rather, it is more fitting I should say—It would cause me profound pain to open for your sad satisfaction the sealed history of the Conway family.”

“I do not want to hear about the Conway family,” interrupted Terence; “all I wish to know is, how the Nun comes in and who she was.”

“I do not know who she was,” said Mr. McKye. “In the convent, as you are aware, nuns on taking the veil resign, with other things, their ordinary names, and are forever after known by some purely fanciful designation. This poor creature seems to have taken the appellation of Agnes.”

“Yes; pray go on, Mr. McKye.”

“I must for one moment advert to the mode in which this estate came into the hands of its present possessors. It was given to a certain Maurice Conway as a mark of royal favour. Calgarry and Gilcarry too were handed to that gentleman in those days with rather less fuss that now accompanies the giving of an order.”

“Did Gilcarry, then, at one time also belong to the Conways?” asked Terence, with much surprise.

“Most undoubtedly. How proud my poor old father will feel when he hears his researches are new to you, Mr. Conway!”

“I hope one day to make my acknowledgment in person,” said the young man. “Meantime, Mr. McKye, I hope you will not think me impatient if I ask you to tell me as shortly as may be about Sister Agnes. There is a visit I must pay this afternoon, and—”

“No single moment shall be lost. As I was saying, Maurice Conway received the lands of Calgarry and Gilcarry and a good round sum of money to boot. His son succeeded him, but then there were only two daughters—twins. The elder by a few minutes married a Mr. Kirwan, who took the name of Conway. She got Calgarry as her dowry. The other wed a Mr. Florence: she had Gilcarry given to her—Gilcarry, which is nearly waste land even to this day, and marches on Shanalore, that lies sheltered from the winds, and has some of the best pasture in Donegal.”

“What has become of the Florences? I never heard of them before.”

No, they were wiped out clean; there is nothing to tell they ever existed but an old tombstone in Mostrene graveyard, and it is tumbling to pieces. They were great people once, till, in the time of Patrick Conway, Christian, the then head of the house, took a notion he would like the fat meadows of Shanalore thrown inside the boundaries of Gilcarry. It has always been easy enough to remove landmarks when the man who wants to remove them is rich and powerful. Christian Florence was both, so you may guess the nuns and the priests had not much chance against him. Yes, it was the case of Ahab over again. The owners of the soil did not want to give it up any more than Naboth did his vineyard; but they had to do it, without even the offer of money for the wrong put on them.

“They were smoked out like bees, and when the Catholic inhabitants resisted, were driven across to the Horn, praying every step of the way; and there, those that did not care to turn on the pikes behind were forced to jump into the sea. It was steel or drowning. Men and women, priests and flock—neither age nor sex was spared. There’s a stream you pass on the road called Red Brook to this day, because about a score made a stand there and were cut to pieces.”

“But why should the Nun curse my people for that?” asked Terence. “We had nothing to do with the matter.”

“Wait a bit—wait a bit. Patrick Conway had no hand, as you observe, in the raid on Shanalore; likely for this reason, that in those days, if a man took part in a game he generally wanted his share of the stakes, as people do in these days, for that matter. Christian Florence was not one to stand anyone picking plums out of his pie; so he burnt down Shanalore village, chapel, and nunnery, and got rid of the owners by himself.

“Patrick Conway, however, and he were great friends—boon companions, and one day the master of Calgarry went up to Gilcarry to a sort of banquet. It was a fine summer’s evening as he came down the hill with his dogs beside him; in those times they dined early, and the sun had not sunk behind Muckish when he got to the ancient burying-ground that has your family vault in it.”

“You mean old Calgarry.”

“Just that, but it was not so old then by nearly three hundred years, and your vault was not so full. Do you remember a clump of trees a little to the left of the graveyard as you face north?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“There used to be a house there—the foundations can still be traced, though the weeds and the grass have grown over them. Well, as I was saying, Patrick Conway came down the hill with his dogs, all walking orderly enough till of sudden the dogs started off like mad, and made for a bit of shed that had been put up in the corner of a field to shelter me cattle. Mr. Conway stood still to watch what they were after, and as he stood he saw a woman fly out of the shed and run like a mad creature up the hill.

“It was one of the nuns, the only one that had escaped slaughter; and as she ran, winged with fear, he broke into a great laugh, and shouted the dogs on her. He had been drinking heavily, and maybe scarce knew what he was doing; but anyhow, on that lovely calm summer evening he stood there, laughing and clapping his hands, and shouting, ‘Have at her, Fleet! pull her down, Spring!’ all the while fear was winging the poor creature’s feet as she fled before them like a hare.”

Mr. McKye stopped; but this time Patrick Conway’s descendant did not speak a word.

“That pace could not last,” went on Mr. McKye. “The dogs were just on her. She could hear their panting and the swish of their bodies as they tore through the bents and the rushes; and she had given herself up for lost when the house door opened, and the mistress pulled her inside and shut out the savage brutes. The whole thing did not take a minute in the acting. It was only as if Patrick Conway had stood on his step for an instant. Then he called the dogs, who would not come at first; and they went down the hill, lower, and lower, and lower, till they got to Calgarry House.”

“What happened after that?” asked Terence.

“When he woke the next morning in his sober senses he began to think and feel sorry—for he was not all bad, only wild and headstrong, not to say cruel, except when the drink was in him—and he made up his mind to go and ask if the woman had taken any hurt. A lovelier day never dawned. The sun had not got up very high when he left here, and he was skirting the burying-ground before five o’clock. Not a sound broke the quiet but the songs of the birds and the chirp of the grasshoppers, for it was the height of summer.”

“Well?”

“As he turned to go up to the house—it was but a cabin, I believe—he saw the Nun kneeling before it, with her hands and arms spread out, as if in the act of blessing; but she was not blessing, she was cursing, and in a shrill shriek she bade him come nigh, and hear while she prayed Heaven to grant that every owner of Calgarry might have no good of his wealth and no happiness in his home.

“‘May sorrow pursue you and those that come after you as your hounds pursued me! May no hand be stretched out to save you when the breath of trouble is hot on your cheek, and its fangs deep in your heart! May you all be childless or unhappy in your children! May division come between you and your wives! May your gold eat into your hearts and your lands be a snare to you! May you, when you are old, be caught in the trap you set for others in your youth, because you despise mercy and contemn judgement, and only follow wickedness! Amen.’ And after she had said Amen, with a loud cry she gave up the ghost.

“The people of the house lifted and carried her in. Patrick Conway followed them, and looked on her as she lay dead. She was a young woman, and beautiful; and he went away in the sweet morning, with the fresh air blowing on his face, down and down the hill, like one stricken, with the doom on him.”

VII

MR. MCKYE’S OPINIONS

There was silence for a few seconds after the minister had finished; then Patrick Conway’s descendant asked,

“Do you believe all that, Mr. McKye?”

Mr. McKye looked astonished at the question.

“I do, implicitly,” he answered; “it is perfectly true; it is, if I may so express myself, historically true.”

“O!” said Terence.

“My father can give you chapter and verse for every circumstance.”

“I do not wish to dispute that matter,” answered the young man; “but I should like to put it to you whether you think it probable, or possible, the curse of a frenzied woman, even though ‘young and beautiful,’ can have power to influence the whole future of a person who comes into possession of Calgarry nearly three centuries after her death?”

“If anyone had put such a question to me before I came to Donegal, my answer would have been an immediate ‘No!’” returned Mr. McKye, with commendable frankness. “Now, however, I am forced to say it is difficult to get over facts; and the history of the men who since that evil day have entered into Possession of Calgarry contains the most marvellous fulfilment, the Nun’s denunciation. A curse seems literally to have dogged their steps.”

“Do you consider, then, that more misfortunes have come to us than fall to the lot of most families in our rank of life?”

“I do—more misfortunes of a peculiar and inexplicable nature; bad misfortunes, so to speak. The heads of other families have lost their estates, died on the scaffold, been banished, beggared, ruined; but in no other case that I can recall has personal sin immediately followed on the accession to an estate. Instances have been known where a son never succeeded his father. In your house not merely does no son succeed his father, but the father hates his son, and the owner the man likely to come after him. The Nun did not pray that your race might die out, as the Florences did, who are gone root and branch, bough and twig; but she asked that there might be division: and ever since there has been division.”

“There was no shadow of division between my father and me,” said Terence.

“Your father never owned Calgarry,” was the reply.“It is hard to tell what might have come had he outlived the late Mr. Conway.”

Terence knew one thing which in that event would have come to pass, if Mr. McKye did not. After him no Conway again forever would have been harassed by the Nun’s Curse. On that point he felt quite satisfied, but he did not deem it necessary to make confession of his faith.

There was something in the idea, however, which kept him silent for a moment, then—

“So you think there is no hope for me?” he observed, with a poor attempt at a smile.

“On the contrary, I think there is every hope for you,” returned Mr. McKye. “No man ever had a finer chance than you at this moment. I feel convinced the whole happiness of your existence is now trembling in the balance, and that is why I have made so bold as to come here today. My father and I talked the matter over earnestly and anxiously, and at last, sorely against my will, I resolved to face your possible displeasure in the exercise of what I consider a plain duty. If I saw a man walking straight forward to the edge of a dangerous precipice, ought I not to warn him of his peril? There is a precipice before you, Mr. Conway, and I implore you to avoid it.”

In face, in figure, in voice, and manner, Mr. McKye was common as common could be; but he was in earnest, and the strength of his conviction conferred upon him somewhat of eloquence and dignity, which produced an uncomfortable impression on his auditor.

His was as the voice of doom. So might a seer of old have stood by the roadside, and, though aged, hungry, and in rags, by reason of his gift of second sight warned some king of the evil to come. History and legend abound in such stories: the poor and unconsidered in the glory of morning prophesying to the mighty, beside whom they seemed but as the dust of the earth, and the prophecy fulfilling itself before night!

What was before him? Whom was he destined to betray? Whom should he injure or destroy? What tragedy would link itself with his name? What dark page would shadow the whole of his story? To what abyss of shame would the Nun, her skeleton hand clasping his, lead him, even against his will? Pshaw! life lay before him to make a good or a bad thing out of, whether he kept Calgarry or sold it.

Not a Conway before him but came into possession of the estate and splendid possibilities at the same time—possibilities each man in succession deliberately threw away. He knew all that, but he meant to act differently. It was in his power—in his, the last and least fortunate of the Conways of Calgarry—to add to the family story some lines that should retrieve the narrative of selfishness, wrong, and oppression there set forth. Though Mr. Conway had practically disinherited him—left him with a large estate burdened by debts of his own making—he could and would make a better thing of life than any of his predecessors had tried to do.

Philippa had said this in those soft sweet tones, which were surely softer and sweeter than any ever heard before. He had a great future before him, if he were strong and brave enough to stay at Calgarry and conquer circumstances. He need not look beyond his county, he need not strain his eyes further than Gweedore, to see what one man could do—had done. Why should he not be such another man? Why should the poor not rise up and bless him? Why—

“Mr. McKye,” he said, “I am sure you have intended nothing but good towards me, and I thank you very heartily for your visit and your advice. My mind, however, is quite made up. I shall not sell Calgarry. For weal or for woe, I mean to keep the estate which has come to me.”

It is a great blow to anyone to hear he has lost his case, and Mr. McKye felt it peculiarly hard as he fancied young Conway was considering his words, what time that gentleman’s fancy was wandering over the career that stretched before him. But the minister did not yet give up his cause. One shot still remained in his locker. He would appeal to that sense of right which he firmly believed lay deep down in the hearts of even the worst of men. One chance was left for Terence and for Donegal. In a vision he, too, saw a downtrodden peasantry sprinkled with the beneficent dew of wealth and justice springing up into grace and beauty like grass after summer rain; he heard blessings invoked on a benefactor; he beheld quays built and harbours made; in spirit he followed produce to the English markets, he welcomed Saxon tourists to a peaceful and happy land where smiling content dwelt in well-thatched cottages, and he even read in that sweet dream the title-page of a book which bore his father’s name as the author of An Irish Eden, washed by the Atlantic and watered by the Garry, on which no curse rested, from whence the Nun had been driven, and that knew not the name of Conway, save as a memory and a tradition.

“I am afraid I seem troublesome,” he began, again taking up his parable and his courage, “but I should like to say a few words more.”

“Say them, then, by all means,” answered Terence good-naturedly.

“It is scarcely necessary for me to ask whether you have seriously considered this question as affecting yourself.”

“I could not have considered it more seriously as affecting myself,” was the reply. “Situated as I am, there is no one else left whom it can affect very materially.”

“Thank you; that is just the point I was trying to get at. The question you have debated, in fact, is—pardon me if I speak too plainly—whether you can contrive to make an impoverished estate maintain itself and you, and pay any debts for which you may be liable.”

“You do speak very plainly, Mr. McKye,” said the young man, colouring, “and I will emulate your lead so far as not to beat about the bush. You have correctly stated the question that has occupied me.”

“Did you ever hear an old proverb which says, ‘When women and cats starve, God help men and dogs’?”

“I cannot recall to mind that I have. What does it mean? or rather how do you intend to apply it to my case?”

“We know the embarrassed owner of an estate that wants a lot of money laid out on it won’t starve, if he can help it; but how about the tenants? I have witnessed such misery among the people hereabouts, till I am sure the man who undertakes such a responsibility as you are about to do, without the will and the means to benefit those dependent on him, is just in the same case as a farmer who buys a horse, when well aware he has nothing to feed him on. I have seen animals die of starvation, I have seen human beings die of starvation—the process is not pleasant to witness, and I do not think you will care to watch it.”

“But, good heaven, Mr. McKye, though a man may be bound to feed his horse, a landlord is not bound to feed his tenants!”

“A landlord is bound to enable his tenants to feed themselves.”

“It is not my intention to ask extortionate rents.”

“There is land even on your estates not worth any rent at all.”

“I really do not think I can undertake to recreate Donegal, if that is what you mean,” returned Terence banteringly.

“Then it is clearly your duty to sell the property to someone who will undertake to help the people to help themselves. Capital is what is wanted at Calgarry as elsewhere. Money put into the soil, so that money may be got out of the soil. There is nothing so grateful as the earth (unless it may be earth’s poorest children). Give her ever so little nourishment, and she rests not by night or day till she has repaid the kindness a hundredfold.”

“I believe that statement is in the main quite accurate, and I must see what I can do.”

“What you can do, Mr. Conway, lies now within your grasp. If you let your chance slip, it may never return to you. Thousands of pounds are no more to the man who wants this place than a farthing to me. There is nothing he won’t do for the property and the tenants. He is one of the sort Ireland needs badly. I would like well for you to think it over before you finally deny him, if deny him you must. It is for the poor I speak; for the honest, hard-working, long-suffering poor, who have no friends able to speak for them. As a servant of their God and mine, Mr. Conway, I am constrained to say you will sin if you do not try to raise them from the slough of despair in which they are sinking. If I offend I can’t help it. My Master has sent me to you with this message. It is for you to attend to it or not.”

When two messages, diametrically opposite in their terms, though purporting to come from the same source, are delivered to one person, it is difficult for him to decide which to accept as genuine.

Miss Dutton had told the new owner duty clearly pointed that he should remain at Calgarry. Mr. McKye declared duty as clearly commanded him not to stay, but sell and go forth. It was difficult to see how he could adopt both courses, even if he wished to do so; but, happily, there existed no necessity for him to attempt any impossibility of the sort.

He had given his promise to Philippa, and the matter was consequently settled. Wrong or right, message or no message, he meant to retain his inheritance; but there could be nothing gained by making a fuss over this determination, therefore he answered his visitor’s appeal with diplomatic courtesy.

“It is impossible for me to take offence because a gentleman feels so strongly and speaks so straightforwardly as you do, Mr. McKye; at the same time, I am satisfied this is a question I—and I only—can, or ought, to decide. Further, it strikes me you are not quite impartial; you hold a brief, or I am much mistaken, for the other side.”

“I confess it, sir. I have never sought to conceal the fact,” said the minister valiantly; “but if you imagine my brief, as you call it, involves any retaining fee, that I expect directly or indirectly to reap any advantage for myself from the advice I have ventured to offer, you are utterly mistaken—utterly.”

“Believe me, such an idea never crossed my mind. I am not in the habit of attributing sinister motives to those who speak as though they wish me well. Till a man gives me cause to suspect his sincerity, I prefer to believe in it. I believe in yours, and I hope we shall come eventually to know each other so long and so well that you will admit even a Conway of Calgarry may have some redeeming qualities. Now, let me offer you some refreshment. Nay, I will take no refusal;” and he rang the bell.

“Lay luncheon for Mr. McKye and myself immediately, Byrne,” he said; and, as the butler had already commenced preparations for the second great meal of the day, in five minutes—nay, in two—Mr. Conway was able to marshal his guest into the dining-room.

Though he had deemed it right to enter a protest against such unexpected hospitality, Mr. McKye would have felt sorely disappointed to be taken at his word.

The minister was not one of those uncomfortable Christians who think to please God by despising the food He provides. No man ever asked a blessing on a good dinner with a fuller sense of pleasure to come than Mr. McKye, and when he returned thanks for a bad one, he felt that in some way the designs of Providence had been strangely thwarted. His fault, if fault it were, lay in quite the opposite direction to asceticism.

“There is a rich feast spread,” he was wont to say, “and it would be a poor return to the Giver not to enjoy it.”

Sir Henry Beecham himself had not a finer taste in culinary matters than Mr. McKye.

“If it is only half a round of dry toast, let me have it properly made,” he said to his wife in the early days of their married life, since which period he had educated her up to a very pretty proficiency in the great art.

Common report hinted he ran the priest very hard in the concoction of a jorum of punch, while everyone who enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance affirmed that a beefsteak grilled under the personal superintendence of Mr. McKye was a thing not to be lightly rejected.

To such a man it may well be imagined the luncheon table at Calgarry House afforded exquisite pleasure.

“There was everything almost you could name,” he told his father afterwards; “and yet young Conway apologised for the fare. As for the wine, it was the best out of old Duke’s cellar. Well, curse or no curse, he’s a fine fellow, the new owner, and I’ll be sorry to see harm fall on him.”

Certainly Terence did do all that lay in his power to make Mr. McKye feel at his ease, and Mr. McKye was not ungrateful. He had never been made free of great men’s houses, or asked to partake of refreshment in a friendly way with them, and when he parted from this exceptional host it was with sentiments of great respect and sorrow.

He would have saved him from the evil to come if he could—saved him and benefited Donegal; but as Terence was resolved to rush on to destruction, he felt it was vain to interfere further except in one way.

“You shall have my prayers,” thought the minister; but he had sufficient tact not to state his intentions aloud. “He who heareth prayer can help His creatures, no matter along what road they are travelling; and it may be He sees it well to let this young man do as he has determined.”

Mr. McKye’s faith was strong as faith could be. God to him was not merely an actual but an active Presence, and he felt sure the Almighty merely used men to work out His purposes, which He could still perfect without their aid, in any way He chose.

His was the power and the glory: man could only do what his Maker permitted. Nevertheless he would have liked to save this kindly and gracious young Conway had it been possible, and it was with a very sad heart he rose (after an excellent meal) to take his leave.

“As you know, Mr. McKye,” said Terence, “I am not a rich man.”

The minister bowed in acquiescence, even while his eyes wandered over the luncheon table and his mind considered how differently lots were apportioned.

“But I should like to help you if in my power. The late storms, I understand, did considerable damage to your meeting-house. What will the repairs cost?”

Mr. McKye did not speak for a moment. With real delicacy he was trying to frame an answer which should not hurt the young man, whose heart, he felt, must, spite of his lineage, be in the right place.

“I am beholden to you, Mr. Conway,” he said at last. “In your position I should scarce have thought you’d have heard of my perplexity. But the wreckage is not so great as was at first put about, and a friend is going to make it right.”

Terence did not smile. Though new to his great position, he had sufficient knowledge of the world to hide his suspicion of whom the friend must be.

“Some other time, then, Mr. McKye,” he said.

“Yes. I’ll be thankful to you for the schools,” answered the minister. “They’re in great need. We want to—”

“Perhaps you will explain all that to me when next you favour me with a visit. I am so sorry to have to cut our present interview short, but I must this afternoon manage to call on Mr. Malet.”

“A very thorough gentleman,” said Mr. McKye, putting on his comforter and buttoning up his overcoat; “and, I hope, a Christian.”

“Surely there can be no doubt on that point!” exclaimed Mr. Conway, in surprise.

“I don’t know; I wouldn’t like to be too sure,” answered Mr. McKye, surveying his hat thoughtfully; “a Christian should be lowly.”

“Who could be more meek than Mr. Malet?” asked Terence, mentally considering how the Calgarry incumbent, condoning all slights, had hurried to his kinsman’s death-bed.

“It is not for me to say; for I have ever found Mr. Malet a perfect gentleman—courteous, liberal, and, considering all things, full kindly. But I am of opinion a Christian ought to be more than courteous, liberal, and kindly. He should not be worldly-minded—”

“You think Mr. Malet worldly-minded, then?” suggested Terence.

“As you ask me, sir, I do;” after which statement Mr. McKye took his leave.

VIII

MR. MALET ADVISES

It was blowing half a gale when Terence turned out of the teeth of an icy north wind into a shrubbery walk which led straight up to Mr. Malet’s cottage.

Originally the merest cabin, years of that gentleman’s tenancy had transformed it into a most lovely little dwelling. Well Terence remembered it—well he knew it. Many a happy day he and Mr. Barry had spent under its thatched roof. On many a wet morning the wide corridor that ran along the back of the house had echoed with their noisy romps and childish laughter. They had sat together over the turf fire in the kitchen eating hot buttered potato-cakes, an experience which then possessed the charm of a sin. They had between them carried Audna, when a mere toddling infant, “lady to London” up the rocks that shielded the cottage from the wild Atlantic gales, and watched the foam-maned sea-horses rushing squadron after squadron madly on the cliffs. And to the westward lay a tiny bay—he could see it as he stood at the front door—where they had gathered shells by the thousand in the happy, happy long ago. They had run out after the waves as they ebbed, and run faster in shore as they flowed, and told each other stories, and sat on the great stones looking up at the blue heaven, their hearts full of the beautiful fancies and unutterable content that can never return again, never forever.

All recurred to him as he stood looking down into the bay, now full of boiling angry billows that had been lashed to fury during the late storms. The pleasant past came back with smiling face and soft tender hands, that touched his heart with a yearning indefinable sorrow, and brought from some deep well of feeling a mist of tears to his eyes which dimmed the dark landscape for a moment, and merged headland and breakers and ocean and brown bare earth in a confused blurred mass.

Mr. Malet was at home, and—“Will you be pleased to walk in, sir?” said the woman who answered his inquiry, opening the dining-room door, beyond which lay the little study the visitor knew so well.

As the visitor was ushered in with the simple announcement, “A gentleman to see you, sir,” Mr. Malet, who was seated in an easy-chair nearer the fire, rose, and came forward with the exclamation,

“Terence! is it really you?”

“Really Terence, and no other,” answered the young man; and the pair clasped hands rather than shook them.

“I am very glad you have come.”

“And I am very glad to have come.”

“Now you are here you will stop for dinner at the same old hour, half-past four.”

“Nothing I should like better. There never could be any hour for dinner nearly so pleasant as half-past four.”

Just as if he were in his own home, the owner of Calgarry returned into the hall, hung up his hat, took off his topcoat, and hung it up too, smiling at Mr. Malet, who looked on thoughtfully.

“This is like old times,” he remarked. “They were happy old times.”

“I hope the new are not very unhappy,” said the clergyman.

“I do not know—they are very perplexing: I have come to you for comfort.”

“About what? Succeeding to Calgarry?”

They were ensconced at last one on each side an upheaped peat fire in the small study, which was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, filled full as they could hold.

“No, not exactly; but you know the terms of Mr. Conway’s will?”

“Yes—Captain Conway takes everything except the estate.”

“Precisely.”

“And did you expect to get anything Mr. Conway could keep from you?”

“Well, yes, I did.”

“I do not see why.”

“Neither do I now, but I did expect.”

“Then, of course, his will must have been a serious disappointment.”

“It was, and it is one which does not grow less; on the contrary, each day seems to increase the difficulty of my position.”

“I am afraid I fail to catch your meaning; in what does the difficulty consist?”

“Everyone seems to think Calgarry, without money, is a white elephant.”

“Who is everyone?”

“Several people—most people. I have been harassed to death about the matter. Scarcely a day passes but I am told it is my duty to sell the property.”

“Your duty to whom?”

“To the tenants and myself.”

“And what do you think?”

“I do not think so at all.”

“Neither do I. Always supposing there is nothing in the background with which I am unacquainted.”

“The case in a nutshell is this: Here is a big estate, a huge estate, and here am I without a penny.”

“That won’t last. Pennies will come to you. Meanwhile I suppose money can be raised?”

“I don’t know about that. You see there is no rent-roll to speak of. Mr. Conway has left the property a prairie.”

“All the better for you. If he has cleared it of a few good industrious men, he has also cleared it of whole families—grandparents, parents, children, cousins, uncles, and relations by marriage—starving on land which they had divided and subdivided and divided again till literally they had not a rig of potatoes apiece. I do not suppose Mr. Conway meant to do you a good turn, but he has.”

“Perhaps in that way. But I am told I ought to put capital into the soil.”

“I feel I am groping in the dark,” said Mr. Malet, much perplexed. “It would simplify matters a good deal if you would tell me who the persons are that have taken upon themselves to offer you advice for which you do not seem to be thankful.”

“I am not thankful at all. Since the day Mr. Conway was buried, first one and then another has been advising me to sell, till I am weary of the word. And I have had no one to talk to freely and unreservedly as I am talking to you now. I should have been here sooner, only I kept hoping you would come to me.”

“If you think for a moment, you will see there were sufficient reasons why I stayed away.”

“I see them now. I did not see them in the same light yesterday.”

If he thought Mr. Malet would enter into the subject of his own personal wrongs, Terence instantly was undeceived.

“And now who are these excellent persons who take such an interest in the sale of Calgarry?” went on the clergyman. “Mr. Norbury of course heads the list?”

“Strange to say, I have not heard a word direct from him. I am told he would buy, but I have no knowledge of any such desire except what is derived from mere gossip.”

“He does wish to buy, I think; but probably imagines it prudent to wait for some sign from you.”

“He will have to wait a long time, then,” answered Terence. “Captain Conway, on the other hand, made an offer to me the day of the funeral.”

“Which you—”

“Which I said I would consider.”

“Have you given him your answer yet?”

“Yes. There was no purpose to be served by delaying it, so I wrote to him almost immediately to say I should not sell.”

“Will that make any awkwardness about the furniture? It all belongs to him, does it not?”

“He has behaved very well. When I went with him to Danfanaghy he proposed leaving everything as it stood till I came to some decision. Then if I did not wish to part with the estate I might take over the contents of the house at a low valuation. I rather fancy he thinks the furniture may be useful to him when he gets the place eventually.”

“You imagine, then, he believes you will change your mind?”

Terence nodded, and remained silent for a minute, during which Mr. Malet also refrained from speech.

“When I returned home after my interview with Captain Conway, Ann Patterson began begging and praying of me to get rid of Calgarry. Next morning, Letitia followed suit; and today, just as I was about to come here, Mr. McKye appeared on the scene.”

“The son or the father?”

“The son. He was very much in earnest. He made me feel rather ashamed of my family, and of standing in the way of a good rich man who would repair all our shortcomings; indeed, he said so much and to such admirable purpose that I believe if I had not given my promise to keep the property I might have been tempted to sell it.”

“O! you have bound yourself by a promise not to yield to these tempters?”

“I have.”

“It would be indiscreet, I suppose, to guess at the name of the individual who exacted such a pledge?”

“Not at all. I do not mind telling you it was Philippa Dutton.”

“That strikes me as very important and satisfactory.”

“In what way?”

“Why, surely it shows that the terms of Mr. Conway’s will have not affected her sentiments,” said Mr. Malet, looking hard at Terence.

“I do not suppose her feelings are changed in the least; but on the other hand, I have not the faintest idea what her feelings are.”

Mr. Malet looked at the young man in amazement.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you and she have come to no understanding?”

“We are not engaged,” answered Terence.

“Then what are you? What have you been all this time?”

“The very best of friends—the closest of friends. At first, I supposed the late Mr. Conway would arrange everything; then when he cooled towards me I did not like to open the subject myself during his lifetime.”

“And have you never proposed to her—never told her—” Mr. Malet paused, for he could not think of the precise word he wanted.

“I have never yet asked her to be my wife,” answered Terence, “but she knows she is sun, moon, stars, and planets, earth and heaven, to me.”

Mr. Malet sat looking at the fire. He was thinking of a time when one he should see here no more had been as the whole host of heaven to him.

“Why do you not speak plainly to Miss Dutton?” he asked at last.

“How can I, now, as things have turned out?”

“You are the owner of Calgarry, even though she be an heiress.”

“That is true; but—”

“You have no expectation, I suppose, that she will propose to you?” suggested Mr. Malet a little sarcastically.

“Certainly not; still—”

“You lost a splendid opportunity when she advised you not to sell your estate. She could scarcely have told you more plainly she had an interest in it.”

“If you had heard her, you could not have taken that meaning out of what she said. She has no thought for anything but duty. She believes we ought not to consider what we like—only what is right. Hers is such a grand, noble nature. When I listen to her she makes me feel mean and selfish; there are so many things I want for myself; and she never thinks of herself, only of others.”

“I do not see why her unselfishness should keep you silent. As you like to have matters put on that ground, I may say I consider it is your duty to let Miss Dutton know exactly what you feel towards her, and ascertain her feelings in return.”

“I am afraid she would not like me to speak so soon after Mr. Conway’s death; it might seem to her unfeeling: she was very fond of him.”

“O, indeed! I was not aware.”

At that moment the door opened, and a girl came in. The short day in that northern latitude had already faded, and in the dusk she did not at first recognise the stranger, at sight of whom she stopped surprised.

“Surely you have not forgotten me, Audna?” said the owner of Calgarry, making but one step across the room, taking her by both hands and kissing her.

“Why, you are Terence!” she cried, not a bit abashed by his demonstrative greeting. “O! I am glad you have come at last! I am so glad!”

He did not ask her why she was so glad, for as he led her forward into the light of the fire he knew by the way she laid a caressing hand on her father’s arm she rejoiced at this healing of old sores for his sake.

This was the Audna, the motherless child, he and his cousin had carried “lady to London,” that they had cared for, fondled, loved in the old bright days departed; and he looked down on her, as she stood on the hearth between her father and himself, with a curious sense that everything was passing away from him—that in a world of change nothing can stand still, not even the years in Donegal.

“How you have grown!” he said.

“How you have changed!” she answered; “you are quite a man.”

“I have been quite a man this many a day,” he observed, with a rueful laugh.

“And my little girl has almost shot up into a woman,” added Mr. Malet, a little perplexed frown puckering his forehead as he spoke.

“I wish we were all young enough to go gathering shells again,” said Terence, as if he felt the weight of his own age and his own sorrows too much for him as he spoke. “I was thinking about those old expeditions of ours as I came along the hickory walk.”

“Which is the laurel walk now,” amended Miss Malet, who did not know how pretty she looked with her bonnet hanging a little back and her nut-brown hair blown a little about her forehead, and a rich colour in her fresh young face, and her dark blue eyes shining in the firelight like stars, and an indefinable gentleness and sadness in her manner, which was due perhaps to always living alone with her father, who might almost as well have been cast away on a desert island as stranded in the wilds of Donegal.

“Letitia wanted to come over and see you today,” went on Mr. Conway, “but the wind was so rough I made her stay at home. The first fine afternoon, however—”

“We will call on Mrs. Barry,” interposed Mr. Malet. “Please tell her so with our kind regards. And now, Audna, run away. Mr. Conway and I are discussing weighty matters.”

“Why do you call me Mr. Conway?” asked Terence when they were left alone.

“I scarcely know,” answered Mr. Malet, “unless because it has been suddenly brought home to me that you are quite a man.”

“I hope I shall never be anything but Terence to you, if I live to be a hundred,” was the impulsive reply.

“It would be difficult to say what may happen before you are half that age,” replied Mr. Malet, with a smile. “What I desire now is to give you that comfort you asked for a while ago You ought, I think, to settle on some plan of action, and act to it. You have taken one step in that direction by determining not to sell your property. The next thing is to speak frankly and fully to Miss Dutton.”

“I should not like to speak to her here. A man ought never to make love to his guest.”

“There is something in that. I am old-fashioned enough to be of the same opinion.”

“You see,” went on Terence, “if a girl wanted to say ‘No’ it would place her in such an uncomfortable position.”

“But you do not anticipate an answer of that sort.”

“I scarcely know what I expect. At any rate, I would rather not put my fortune to the test at Calgarry. When Sir Henry leaves, I shall go to London also, and then if I can pluck up enough courage—we shall see.”

“Why are you returning to London so soon?”

“I want to talk over my position with some people there.”

“Creditors?”

“Yes,” admitted Terence.

“Do you owe much?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Have you been discounting Mr. Conway’s death?”

“You could not state the case more exactly.”

“Humph! Then, of course, all the bills drawn on that event will come back dishonoured.”

“Every one. I have not a word to say in my own excuse; and if I had I should not say it;” and Terence let his head fall forward on his hands covering his face.

Mr. Malet rose and took a turn up and down the room. “My poor boy,” he began at last, “I am heartily sorry for you. This is the key to the whole of your trouble. I suppose your liabilities are very heavy?”

“So heavy that I do not know how I am ever to meet them and keep Calgarry,” answered the unlucky owner of that property.

IX

AILEEN

When the storms had exhausted their fury, and the ocean sobbed itself for a while to rest, there came to Donegal a morning borne on the wings of the sweet west wind, with azure blue in its eyes and sunshine on its face, and the fresh, hopeful scent of spring accompanying its joyous progress. The waves rippled gently in over the sands of Calgarry Bay; the headlands, no longer tormented with the attack of besieging billows, showed a proud, calm front to the Atlantic; the sea-birds preened themselves on jagged spurs of rock, or else dived after their prey into water clear as a mirror; men, who for weeks previously had not dared to adventure on the deep, carried their curraghs across the beach, and launched their frail barks in hopes of a good haul. Light and shadow played at hide-and-seek over Muckish, overtaking and passing each other with such incessant change that the landscape never for a single moment remained the same. The beautiful wagtails, which haunt the sterile waysides of that part of Ireland, were alert and busy; while in the plantations surrounding Calgarry House, thrushes and blackbirds sang to the accompaniment made by the river flowing swiftly over stone and gravel, between boulder and rock, to the sea, in which its bright waters were lost.

A morning to put anyone in good spirits, and yet not a single person gathered round the breakfast-table in Calgarry House seemed in the least elated by it.

Sir Henry Beecham tried his best to appear cheerful. He spoke in commendatory terms of the weather, saying it showed an evident intention of “taking up” at last. He mentioned that, for the first time, he had ventured to open his bedroom window during the process of dressing, and found the air quite balmy. He suggested that possibly the crocuses would soon be pushing their yellow heads above ground, and remarked the birds apparently knew St. Valentine’s Day was not far distant. Further, he observed they really appeared likely to have a fine passage after all; and when he uttered these last words, it was patent to those who heard that his previous statements had been merely polite flatteries; that all he at that moment desired was to get away from Donegal, and remain away for an indefinite period.

Never before in this world, perhaps, were guests so bored as the three who had been badly enough advised to come to the late Mr. Conway’s funeral, and remain at Calgarry after it. Sir Henry could not be considered a person usually difficult to entertain or hard to amuse; but at Calgarry there was not even the pretence at entertainment or an attempt to amuse. Weeks of wretched weather, days when it was impossible to get out of doors, the pall of death still lying over the house, and a gloom like the grave shrouding the new heir’s brow, were surely enough to try the temper of any man, more especially of one accustomed to live and move and have his being amongst people who hid their skeletons out of sight, and considered it good form to ignore the possible existence of such unpleasant things in the cupboards of their neighbours.

Breakfast, luncheon, and dinner were the only breaks in the deadly monotony he had borne with scarce a murmur; and really, after a time, breakfast, luncheon, and dinner begin to pall when they are partaken of day after day in the same company, amid the same surroundings. News from the outer world there was none: the post came twice a day, certainly, but it brought nothing to excite or interest any human being. When the last subscription to the Times expired, Marmaduke Conway had ceased to concern himself in politics as well as other mundane matters; consequently not even a paper, save the Dublin General Advertiser, found its way along the lonely highroads to Calgarry. Visitors, also, there were none. Even if a gentleman had felt disposed to stir abroad in such weather, he would have thought many times before taking his horses out also. There was nothing to turn to in the house. Miss Dutton had essayed to play some masses on the old spinet; but the discord was so horrible she could only close the instrument with a sad smile. Mrs. Barry’s vivacity turned generally to snappishness; and as for games, though, on one evening, a card-table was got out, and the four miserable wretches took hands at whist round it, their attempt at jollity proved such a signal failure that by common consent trumps were not again mentioned.

Sir Henry had never dissipated the great forces of his own mind by reading the thoughts of other persons, but, in despair, he did saunter into the study, where he had spent many a pleasant hour with the late owner, and looked at the shelves, to see if he could find something to while away the time.

There were ranged all those admirable works without which no gentleman’s library can be considered complete, and there were also a vast number of books which ought not to be in any gentleman’s library at all. From both the instructive and the destructive Sir Henry turned away. What had become of the light literature with which the late Mr. Conway always seemed to surround himself—Fraser and Blackwood, Colbourn’s New Monthly, and sometimes the Quarterly or Edinburgh? Where the green leaves that in the golden days departed made a pleasant springtime even at the dead of winter, that month by month brought, folded between their covers, happiness to thousands of homes? Where the Art Journal and the Athenaeum? where everything that formerly caused the old house to seem modern as London? Not a trace of these remained; and when Sir Henry put a question to Mrs. Patterson concerning their whereabouts, he found they had all been sent by friends, who took them away again when they visited their dear kinsman. “A boxful of books used to come regularly from Mrs. Bagenal Conway, the Captain’s mother,” Ann went on. “After her second marriage she was often staying at Mostrene Castle.”

“O!” said the General thoughtfully; “that accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.”

He did not explain this dark utterance further, but Ann perfectly understood it had reference to Mr. Terence’s name being left out of the will. For her own part, she had always thought Mrs. Bagenal Conway “a wonderful clever lady, even when she had scarcely a decent gown to her back; and she, for one, was not a bit surprised when the news came that the widow had managed to catch Mr. Boyne, who was first cousin to the Mostrene people.”

Foiled in his forlorn hope of finding relief in elegant literature from the deadly dulness of Calgarry House, Sir Henry was fain to seek change in those high-walled gardens, which, though most hideously ugly, were sheltered from the wind, and had been the pride of many a Conway. The gardener imparted a great deal of information on many subjects. “When he came first to Donegal, he had as many as four men under him; latterly he was not allowed help even to wheel in dung; indeed, he was not allowed dung, for that matter, so he needed nobody to wheel it.”

“Yes; and perhaps Sir Henry would look at the hot-houses—a finer range there was not at one time in the county, and now he had not a stove-plant, or a vine, or a peach; the woodwork was rotten for want of paint, and the panes of glass had fallen out from want of putty. He could not get fuel to keep up the fires, and he himself was under notice when old Mr. Conway died. Mr. Terence Conway had said nothing to him yet, but he hoped the garden would now be kept up as gardens ought to be.”

Next day Sir Henry managed to get as far as the stables, which were in perfect order, and there, on many subsequent days, he spent a considerable amount of time not altogether unprofitably.

He did not know so much about horses as he might have done had his chanced to be a cavalry regiment, but he liked to hear talk concerning them, and it was an agreeable change from the monotony of the drawing-room to sit on a little hillock of hay or the corn bin, listening to anecdotes about the various animals that had stood in the stalls and been famous in the county.

He quite won the hearts of the few men employed by his easy manners—by the pleasant way in which he ate oats and chewed straw, and told them how equine matters were managed in Spain and France, and other outlandish countries, and gave them silver, and remarked on the qualities of the horses they groomed, bought by the late owner.

“He was a rare judge of cattle,” said one fellow, after he and the General had got on confidential terms, referring to old Duke. “The dealer that took him in would have had to rise pretty early.”

“So I have always understood,” answered Sir Henry.

“And a rare whip, too. God help the horse he took the notion of driving!”

“Made him go a pace?”

“You may say that. Why, he thought no more of—”

“Ah! be easy, now,” interrupted another. “What’s the good of talking about such things, when he’ll never touch reins more?”

“Why wouldn’t I talk?” returned the first speaker, who was from Fermanagh, and less under the ban of silence than his fellows. “Sure, it’s a blessing to be able to speak at last.”

“You’re never backward about that,” answered the other, as he walked out of the stable. There was a moment’s silence after he went, during which Sir Henry carefully selected along spike of hay for his delectation.

“I was going to observe,” resumed the Fermanagh groom, “that old Mr. Conway thought no more of a horse’s life nor if it had been something of no sort of value. Did you ever hear how he served Aileen?”

“Well, I hope,” said the General, who felt uncomfortable, though curious.

“I’ll tell you. It was in old Teague’s time; he had the whole management here before the master came back to live at Calgarry entirely, and the horses were more like his own children nor dumb brutes. There was one beauty he had reared, and broke, and driven, and called Aileen, after a sweetheart of his that died. She was a bay, with black legs and a coat like satin, and a straight neck and a head like a greyhound, and her like wasn’t in all this country for speed, and temper, and kindliness. She would follow Teague like a dog, and put her nose into his pockets—rub her head against his sleeve, fondling him.

“She was just about five years old when Mr. Conway broke up his London house and said he had come back to live on the soil, and Teague was mighty proud to show the stables and the horses; and you may be sure he did not forget to sing Aileen’s praises in his song.

“‘Put her in the T-cart, and we’ll see what she’s made of,’ said the master. ‘I’m going over to Mostrene, and you had better come with me.’

“Well, sir, whatever it was ailed the mare that day, the Lord alone knows; but when they got her out, it was as much as they could do to harness her. She, that hadn’t a bit of vice in her, reared and plunged while they were getting her into the shafts; and then, as I’ve heard tell, once they had hooked the traces, fell to shivering as if she was in some great trouble.

“By the time Teague got his coat on, and took her round to the hall door, she seemed right enough, only a bit fidgety, till the Squire came out, when she wanted to turn round and make for the stables again.

“Teague took her by the head, but just as Mr. Conway had his foot on the step she backed, and he was nearly down. However, he got into the cart and took the reins; Teague jumped up beside him, and away she went like the wind.

“‘Wants some of the nonsense taken out of her!’ said the Squire to Teague; who answered, frightened, he did not know why,

“‘I don’t know what is the matter with her. She never was like this before.’

“After a while the Squire got her in hand, and she quieted down, and they passed through the gates, and she went along the road, trotting as none other ever knew how to trot. She was not a high-stepper: she threw her feet straight out, and covered as much at one stride as another would at three.

“Teague’s spirits rose, and he took a sly look at his master: Mr Conway was smiling the queerest smile. At sight of that smile Teague’s heart dropped like lead. They say the devil got up into the T-cart with the Squire that day.”

Sir Henry had never put the piece of hay into his mouth; he sat with it between his first and second fingers, looking at the man.

“Well?” he asked.

“They passed the turn to Mostrene, but Teague dared not let on he knew. They went mile after mile, up hill and down dale; whenever the mare slackened speed, Mr. Conway gave her a cut with the whip that made her jump almost out of her skin.

“Afterwards, Teague said it seemed to him they had been going at that pace for days, till he felt that dazed and struck he could not open his lips; but at last he did say,

“‘Aren’t you afraid of doing her a damage, master?’

“Mr. Conway made never an answer: he only brought the whip across her back with a swish that left a wale that’ll last his life across Teague’s heart, and made him cry out,

“‘For God’s sake, sir, what has the mare done?’

“And still Mr. Conway said nothing, only thrashed the poor brute on.

“She was flagging now at every few paces, and the more she flagged the more he put the torture on her.

“‘Is it to kill her, sir, you’re trying?’ asked Teague. But Mr. Conway kept his white set face straight forward, and spoke not a word—only raised himself a bit that he might use the whip to better purpose. ‘Because if it’s that you’re set for,’ went on Teague, ‘master or no master, you’re not going to do it!’ and with that he made a grab at the reins and the whip, and next minute was out of the cart and lying on the hard turnpike road.

“He must have been stunned, for when he came to himself and got upon his feet he could see no sign of cart, or mare, or master.

“He started running as hard as he could, with his cheek cut open and one eye closed up, and himself all shaken with the force of the fall. It was a steep hill before him, and at the top the road took a turn, so that he couldn’t see very far; but he hadn’t run more nor half a mile before he came on the T-cart, with the shafts broken and the mare lying dead.

“A couple of men stood by, and they said the way Teague lay down beside her, and cursed and swore and lamented, was something awful.

“He cried like a child. He never did a day’s good after. I mind him a broken old man before he went to America.”

Sir Henry made no immediate remark; a deadly sickness came over him, and instinctively he placed his hand flat on the hay to keep from falling over; then a sort of fog cleared away, and he managed to say,

“It seems most remarkable that Mr. Conway should have treated a valuable animal in such a manner. There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake at all, sir. That is just the man Mr. Conway was. Sure, if he thought nothing whether women and children died, why would he care about dumb brutes? He was heart-cruel. He took a spite against a dog that used to follow a poor natural who often brought fish to the house, a dog that never did him or anybody else harm, and one day it was missing, and not a soul could hear tale or tiding of it. Well, a while after that, the gardener heard a strange noise in the old stone summer-house down by the garry, and he called to David Blake—that was the idiot creature’s name—and said he thought his dog must be inside. Davy whistled and called, and there was a sort of feeble whine; and then they tried to open the door, but it was locked. They sent into the house for the key, but nobody had it; and, while they were standing there, Mr. Conway came past, and ordered them all off. Then they knew he had shut the dog in there himself. When it got dark, Davy made his way into the grounds down the bed of the river, and tried to break the door in, but it was thick and solid; he beat on the panels till they were covered with his blood. The windows were too narrow to let a child through, let alone a man; so at last in desperation he fell on the roof and tore a hole, and let himself down, and carried away the dog, which was barely living and no more. It died in his arms as he carried it home; and he broke his heart thinking of the days and the nights it lay starving to death, and him coming and going to the house not a quarter of a mile away.”

“Do you mean that the idiot died as well as the dog?”

“I do, sir, just that; and only the people about here don’t like to talk, there’s lots of the same sort of stories you might near. They say Mr. Conway could not help it; that there was something inside him, when he took a hatred to anyone, gave him no rest till he had wreaked his vengeance. I don’t know much about it myself, but I wouldn’t mind wagering five shillings if a poor man had let his hatreds get the better of him in the same way, he’d have been taught different;” and the speaker shot a measure of corn into one of the mangers with a decision which was equivalent to booking his bet.

Sir Henry did not say anything. Indeed, what could he say?

It is a difficult thing for a man decently brought up to tell even a groom that he is a liar. Besides, Sir Henry did not think this groom was lying. Though he wanted currying and dandy-brushing more than his own horses, though his speech was rude and his manners were uncouth, what he said had a ring of truth.

There seemed no valid reason to disbelieve him. Common rumour and popular belief had long held old Duke Conway was as one possessed, and whether that chanced to be by one devil or a legion, appeared to the General a question as useless as hopeless to investigate.

Accordingly, at last he put that long stalk of hay between his lips, and rose from his seat, remarking as he did so,

“I suppose I never shall understand why you do not cut your hay out in trusses like the English.”

“Maybe we’d cut it out in trusses like the English if we could,” was the scorching reply. “If we’d a climate like England, and could put up our grass green almost, as they do over there, and hadn’t to keep it in cocks to dry for weeks before we dare stack it, we might do heaps of things.”

“I see, the climate is the difficulty,” said Sir Henry, hastening with a mild answer to turn away wrath.

“That is it, sir,” returned the man, mollified. “We haven’t any weather to speak of here. No weather at all.”

“I cannot say I agree with you,” remarked the General. “It seems to me you have plenty of weather—such as it is.”

Having scored which trick, and elicited an appreciative “Faith, you’re in the right of it there, sir!” he left the stables, which he took particularly good care not to revisit.

As he made his way back to the house he looked up at Muckish frowning from afar, canopied in mist, half shrouded by sullen driving clouds that swept heavily over its dark outline, and he wondered how the latest Conway lying under its shadow slept.

Was he sleeping? All the terrible legends about the dead Sir Henry had ever heard crowded into his mind at that instant. He remembered that awful story about the vault hewn out of solid rock, and hermetically sealed, whence there came a noise as if all the demons in hell were holding high revel there; so the stone that held the entrance was removed, and the sight which met the horror-stricken spectators proved more appalling than the noise. For the coffins were in splinters, and the dead bruised and disfigured, as though they had been flung backward and forward in some horrible sport. Where they had been laid in lead, the lead was doubled up, and shreds of velvet and cloth and linen, and battered coffin-plates bearing a coronet, and twisted handles, strewed the ground, as flowers and lace litter a floor after some ball.

Tremblingly they placed the dead again as decently and as well in order as they could, and replaced the entrance-stone, building it in with cement; but before the work was well finished the infernal orgie began again; thuds were heard as if of the coffins being thrown lengthwise against the rocky walls, and a tremendous uproar caused by dragging the dead up and down the vault.

What was going on then—what had been going on during all those awful nights—in the old graveyard lying under the shadow of Muckish?

As has been said, in such a country, amidst such utter desolation, everything seemed possible. Why should not a devilish riot be even then in full progress in the Conway vault? Why should the evil spirits that, as Sir Henry knew, were supposed to haunt all death-beds, not be still clamouring for the dead man’s sinful soul? What had assailed it? Had Duke Conway a guardian angel to fight against the fiends? had he one friend who, in the supreme moment, prayed his good spirit might come forth victorious?

It was really shocking for a man who attended his parish church pretty regularly, and belonged to an old-established club, and moved in the best society, to be assailed by such phantasmagoria. Sir Henry had borne a great deal, but he felt he could not bear much more. The misdeeds of a family with which he had the honour not to be connected were getting too much for him. The groom’s stories had produced an impression beyond their merits. They had shaken Sir Henry’s nerves; and though he was not so young as when he helped to extinguish “Boney,” Sir Henry’s nerves were not easily shaken. He had endured a considerable amount of trouble, both in his own person and in the person of his friends, with commendable courage, particularly that trouble which specially concerned his friends. But there are limits to courage, and Sir Henry felt he was reaching the limits of his.

“If half what I have lately heard about the Conways is true,” he considered, “it is a pity the Atlantic does not walk a mile or so inland, and sweep Calgarry and the family that own it off the face of the earth;” in which sentence the gallant officer merely put into a concrete form the thought that had for many a year been passing through the minds of frenzied men and anguished women, who dared not give utterance to it.

X

SIR HENRY SPEAKS

“I wish to make one observation,” said Mrs. Barry.

“By all means,” agreed her cousin; “but why only one, Lettie? We should like to hear any number of observations from you.”

It was the evening of the same day on which Sir Henry had learnt those pleasing traits of the late Duke Conway, which caused him to utter that remark relative to the Atlantic and Calgarry. He had not yet got over his idea that perhaps the world could do without the Conways, and be all the better for their extinction; and though he was sitting at table and ostensibly enjoying his dinner, he could not quite dismiss the memory of that lonely graveyard lying all by itself, dark and uncanny, under the black canopy of night, or persuade himself that even at that very minute high revels were not being held in honour of the latest and wickedest Conway laid amongst his own.

From some cause everyone at table seemed more or less preoccupied. Soup, joint, entrée, sweet, game, cheese, had been discussed with little or no conversation, and the cloth was removed, and dessert placed on the table, before Mrs. Barry thought fit to deliver the broadside she had been preparing for some hours.

With a fine scorn she received Mr. Conway’s amendment to her proposition and went calmly on, “I have been considering that if our letters can get to Derry, so can I.”

Her cousin looked up from the pear he was peeling and said, “The journey may be all very well for the mails to take, but I don’t think you would much like it in such weather.”

“Are you trying to make a pun, Terence?” asked Mrs. Barry; “because if so, I may tell you at once I decline to continue the conversation.”

“I do not believe he had any intention of the sort,” interposed Sir Henry, “though I once did see ROYAL M-A-L-E painted on one of her Majesty’s post-cars in Sligo. Pray continue the conversation, Letitia.”

“If the letters can get to Derry, so can I. If the steamers can cross from Derry to Liverpool, I can cross in them. We came here for a week, and we have stayed four, weatherbound. Terence must be tired to death of us.”

“You know, Lettie, I should like you to remain here forever,” put in her cousin hastily.

“That is very good of you, and I like being here—I need not tell you that. But I am getting fidgety about my home—I must go. I cannot leave my three babies to take care of themselves any longer.”

“Three babies!” repeated Miss Dutton. “Why, you have only two, Letitia!”

“Two little babies and one big one,” explained Mrs. Barry. “How do you suppose Mark is getting on without me?”

“As you ask the question,” answered Terence mischievously, “I should say, very well indeed.”

“That is all you know,” retorted Mrs. Barry. “At any rate, I have made up my mind. With thanks for your hospitality, Terence, and wishing you well through your troubles, blow hail, blow snow, I shall go home next week.”

Sir Henry could scarcely credit the evidence of his own ears. He had been almost praying for deliverance from Calgarry, without dreaming that deliverance would come, and behold, when he least expected it, a way of escape seemed to open before him.

Really Mrs. Barry was an admirable person. Though flighty and often waspish, though steeped to the lips in superstition, a fault on which at that moment Sir Henry did not feel inclined to bear too hardly, she was constantly achieving some triumph of common sense.

“But, my dear Letitia,” he said, “if you must go home, why by Derry? Why not let us all return together by the short route?”

“Because it is not short, and I hate getting up in the middle of the night. I want a good long sleep.”

“Have you not slept here?” asked her cousin.

“Yes, but I shouldn’t if I went by Dublin. No, I have thought the whole affair out. I do not want to drag anybody else away from Calgarry, or persuade anyone to travel my way; but I shall bid you all farewell next week, and ‘ship myself in good order and condition’ from Derry for England.”

“No appeal, Lettie? no use in asking you to take pity upon us a little longer?”

“Not a bit, Terence,” she answered, laying her hand with a caressing gesture on his arm. “I’m sorry to go in one way: but I want to see my children; and besides—”

“Besides what?” asked her cousin.

“Never mind—nothing. I must see Mark is not getting into any scrape.”

“Upon my word, I do not know: if it were not for the long sea passage, it seems to me we might all take our departure together, Terence,” said Sir Henry. “We have, indeed, prolonged our visit most unreasonably, and there seems little use in waiting for fine weather. With post-horses and short stages we could manage as regards the land journey; but that Derry route!” and the worthy gentleman shook his head mournfully.

“I do not mind the long sea passage, miss,” put in Dutton softly.

“When ladies are so brave I must not prove a laggard, eh, Terence?” exclaimed Sir Henry. “As the idea originated with you, Letitia, suppose you give us our final orders in the morning. Think your plan well out—”

“I have,” interrupted Mrs. Barry; “and I can give you your final orders now—that is, if you like to travel with me. I shall go by the first boat that sails next week. Which is the first boat, Terence?”

“I will look,” said her cousin. And then the ladies left the dining-room, and Sir Henry remained, amazed at the suddenness and completeness of the deliverance which had been wrought for him.

Another week and he would be in London—in clubland and gaslight, in the pleasant region of good, wholesome, familiar, exhilarating black and yellow fogs; far away from gloomy Muckish, and ghostly graveyards, and Nun-cursed Calgarry, and a land given over to storm and tempest, to mourning and desolation and woe. How delightful to stand on English ground once more, to hear even the worst English accent again, to feel within the bills of mortality, to see Policeman X at the street corner! The General went to his room that night feeling as though he had won a victory, and not even the torrents of rain with which he was awakened next morning damped his spirits.

Mrs. Barry had said she would go, and, let the weather be what it would, he knew she would carry out her resolve. Perhaps the weather knew that too, because it suddenly changed, and dawn, as has been said, one day unexpectedly opened blue sunshiny eyes on a smiling earth, swept by wild gales no longer.

Yes, Mrs. Barry’s resolution was about to be rewarded; they were going to have a quiet passage and fine weather for their journey.

“Donegal seems cheering up,” said the little lady; “it will be so glad to get rid of us.”

“Nay,” answered Terence, “it wants to tempt you back again.”

“Do not be afraid; I shall come back often.”

“I think we shall all feel only too glad to return,” added Sir Henry; but he knew he was not telling the truth—at least, as regarded one of the company.

“I have a letter from Mark,” said Mrs. Barry to her cousin, “and he sends a message to you—see, that is it;” and she marked the sentence with her finger as she handed the open sheet across the table.

As Mr. Conway read he turned crimson. Why could Letitia not have kept the message over until they were alone? He knew Miss Dutton’s eyes were on him, and Sir Henry’s also, as he glanced over this sentence:

“Tell Conway I met Amos the other day, and gave the rascal such an account of the old Duke’s will, the deplorable condition of Calgarry, and the fearful state of Irish property generally, that he will, I fancy, be thankful to take whatever he can get. Terence is wise not to come to London at present. I am glad he has decided to place his affairs in the hands of a Dublin lawyer. With good management he need not fear any trouble.”

“We have not had a walk since I came here,” said Sir Henry to his host, when Mrs. Barry, having taken back her letter, was dispensing second cups of tea. “If you can spare the time, shall we take a stroll round the bay?”

“I think it would be very pleasant,” answered Terence, who knew perfectly well Sir Henry’s amiable suggestion meant a talk on business.

Well it was very right they should talk. He ought to have taken the initiative himself, but a man cannot always summon up courage to bare his own neck against the axe.

“A most delightful change in the weather,” said Sir Henry as they left the house; “it is really a charming morning.”

Terence assented dumbly; he wondered what was to follow.

As the crow flies, Calgarry Bay lay less than a mile from Calgarry House, but the winding walks through shrubbery and wilderness, and the broader cart-road down to the beach, almost doubled the distance.

There was a short cut across the fields, delightful in summer, but in the depth of winter impassable. Terence remembered that short cut well. Many a time he and little Letitia and Miss Dutton had traversed it in the days when his father never thought to stand next in succession to Calgarry. They had been good days. Happy days, perhaps because the expectation of a great property was not then overshadowing him.

They passed through the shrubbery and almost through the wilderness before Sir Henry spoke again. He had taken out a cigar which he seemed to find some trouble in keeping alight, but at length he succeeded, and when they emerged upon the open path, their later route might have been tracked by a fragrant odour, pungent, penetrating, yet not strong.

Already they could see the ocean. Though still afar off, it was perfectly visible, lying calm, sunlit, smiling, safe within the keeping of grim headlands, at the base of which certain death lay in watch for any unwary vessel.

The bay was about three miles across from point to point of these stern landmarks, and swept inward in a graceful curve about the same distance. On the other side the waves which ebbed from its sands washed the shores of Labrador. Terence owned Calgarry Bay. All the shore rights were his; the seaweed the storm fiends brought in their giant hands and flung on the beach, the wreckage that often strewed it, the shells which twice a day the tide brought there and left, as a child leaves and forgets its shoes, the gravel tempests in their boisterous sports tossed up to the verge of the fields bordering the bay,—all these things, which so short a time before were grasped by old Duke Conway, now belonged to him.

It was a proud possession—one which in its vast extent, the position it conferred, the, in a way, almost unlimited power it represented, might well have made any man’s heart rejoice.

But Terence at that moment was not rejoicing—apprehensively waiting for what Sir Henry might say.

With kindly appreciation—born, perhaps, of the thought that ere long he would, far away from it, be looking on the dear, dirty, familiar, always charming London streets—the General regarded Mr. Conway’s inheritance.

The sea sparkled and glittered in the morning sun, the profiles of the dark headlands were cut clearly against the sky, the dark fields even seemed to hold a sort of promise in their aspect, and the birds sang loud in gladness, because the storms were overpast and hope of better weather had come upon the earth. The whole scene was indescribably lonely, yet not sad, for the earth lay smiling up to heaven, as if thankful for the peace vouchsafed at last; white sails were following one another round the frowning cliffs, dipping and glinting like seagulls, as the light curraghs danced over the waves, scudding before the wind and disappearing behind the rocks; but there can be little doubt Sir Henry heaved a deep sigh of relief at the reflection he should soon see it no more—at least not for a considerable period.

“Time is getting short with us now,” he said at last, turning to his companion.

“Yes, and I am heartily sorry I have not been able to make your visit pleasanter,” answered Terence.

“My dear fellow, we did not come here for pleasure,” returned the General; “we came to pay a last tribute of—respect to your late kinsman. Your hospitality has failed in no single respect, and I thank you for it. If ever you are kind enough to ask me here again, I could wish for nothing more than you have given—save better weather and to see you a little happier.”

“It is difficult to be happy while smarting under such a disappointment as that Mr. Conway’s will proved to me. But the first bitterness is passing, and I mean now to set my shoulder to the wheel, and try whether I cannot make a good thing out of Calgarry, even without the money I expected.”

“I suppose you mean me, then, to understand you have decided not to sell Calgarry?”

“You knew I had made up my mind not to sell?” said the young man, in a tone which was irritable and inquiring.

“Letitia said you intended to do so; but many of the things Letitia says are born entirely of her own fancy.”

“This, at all events, is not her fancy. I told her distinctly I should refuse to sell my inheritance; and I concluded she would repeat my statement to you.”

“She did,” replied Sir Henry; “but I make it a rule never to believe statements unless I hear them first-hand.”

To this remark Terence made no rejoinder; except as a matter of courtesy, there was none needed. The General had at length heard the statement first-hand, and he could do as he liked about believing it.

“I have no desire to force your confidence,” he said, after he had walked on a few steps, “but I should like to ask one question: What next?”

“I do not quite comprehend,” answered Terence, really puzzled.

“In other words, what are your plans?”

“I have none except to make the estate as profitable as may be.”

“You intend to reside here?”

“Most certainly.”

“You have changed your mind about accompanying us to London. When are we likely to welcome you there?”

“If I tell you what I am about to do, Sir Henry, you will see it is rather difficult for me to say when I shall be able to go to London. As I have been advised to put my affairs into the hands of an Irish rather than an English solicitor, I must proceed to Dublin without much more delay. It will be necessary for me at once to get enough ready money to furnish me with funds to meet immediate needs here and elsewhere. That may take some time; then I have to find an agent, since the gentleman who nominally acted in that capacity for Mr. Conway does not wish to retain the post, and if he did I cannot say I should feel much inclined to retain him.”

“I see,” said the General. He had nodded his head at each point as if checking off an item; “a very good programme so far; well, go on.”

“There is nothing more in the programme, I believe, at present,” replied Terence.

“O!” observed Sir Henry; “but about Philippa?”

“About Philippa?” repeated Terence.

“Yes. Is she to be left out of the playbill altogether?”

“I scarcely know what you mean,” stammered the young man. “Of course Philippa is the central figure in every dream of my future life.”

“Now we are getting at the point I wanted to reach.”

“She is associated with every plan; she is joined in every hope,” went on Terence, gathering courage as he spoke. “Without her Calgarry would be valueless to me; for her sake I am prepared to make any sacrifice—”

“You want to marry her, in fact,” interrupted Sir Henry, ruthlessly cutting the thread of the lover’s eloquence. “We are within sight of land at last.”

“Was there ever a time when I did not want to marry her?” asked Terence indignantly.

“And does she want to marry you?” asked the General.

“How can I tell? I hope—I fear—she is always kind, but—”

“May I inquire why you do not ask her?”

They were standing on the shore now. Before them lay the broad expanse of Calgarry Bay rippling in the sunshine, but the light which shone on the waters was less bright than that lying in the depths of Terence Conway’s eyes as he thought of his beautiful love.

“Why do you not ask her?” repeated Sir Henry.

“I am afraid,” confessed the young man. “Who am I that I should hope to win such a prize?”

“Pooh!” said the General, as he took out a fresh cigar.

It was an extremely unkind exclamation, one calculated to hurt any lover’s feelings. Nevertheless, it emboldened Terence to proceed.

“I intended to put my fortune to the test if things had gone right; but in face of Mr. Conway’s will—”

“There is all the greater need for you to know soon and certainly how you are likely to be situated,” finished Sir Henry as the timid suitor paused. “I am about to talk very plainly to you, my good fellow. For your own sake it would be well for you to speak. For Philippa’s sake it is necessary for you to speak. Nothing can be more unfair to a girl than for a man to adore her in silence. You have been silent quite long enough. The match is not an unequal one. If you love each other, in God’s name make up your minds to become husband and wife. You have a large estate and come of a good family. She comes of no family and has a fine fortune. You are both young. She is a handsome girl. You are not bad-looking. There is the case in a nutshell.”

Terence’s pulses beat fast. He had not expected this. He had, on the contrary, anticipated objection.

“I have been foolish, perhaps,” he hesitated, “but I desired to show her I am made of better stuff than perhaps she imagined. I do not mean to let the loss of Mr. Conway’s money ruin my future, and I thought when she saw I had made some progress in undoing the wrong he wrought, I might stand a better chance of gaining her love. You know how high her ideal is; how little she considers any worldly advantage when compared with doing one’s duty.”

“She has the highest ideal of any woman I ever met, and lives up to it,” said Sir Henry, when Terence ended his sentence, if not his rhapsody. “Yes, she lives up to it.”

The General’s tone so absolutely contradicted his words that his companion stood silent.

“And if you think over the matter dispassionately,” went on Sir Henry, holding his cigar still unlighted in his hand, “it is not a bad thing to live up to one’s ideal, when that ideal is to do exactly what one chooses, and get all one wishes for oneself. The only objection to it is that such an ideal is hard on other people.”

“But you don’t—you can’t mean to imply that Philippa has a trace of selfishness? She is the grandest, noblest woman I ever met.”

“She is indeed most grand in her conception of her neighbour’s duty—truly noble if a trifle unpractical; but it is useless talking to a man in love about any defect in the mental constitution of his fair; so I will get on to what I really desire to say. While I entertain no insuperable objection to the match projected, for reasons with which he never favoured me, by your deceased relative, I think it necessary to state that, being Philippa’s guardian, it will be my duty to have her money settled strictly on herself; further, to see that it is as safely invested as it has always been. I may tell you at once, however, I should decline to invest it in any mortgage on Calgarry. Without meaning any disparagement to your property, I do not think much of it as an investment or a security. I have hitherto always considered Calgarry a very charming estate; but now, I must say frankly, Calgarry with no money behind it, seems to me quite a different place from Calgarry with a large private income.”

Sir Henry paused, but Terence said not a syllable.

“Now that we understand each other,” went on the General—“or rather now that you understand me—if you choose to marry my ward you can do so—that is, if she will marry you. I have a notion she will not. Letitia says she is sure she will not. But that is not my affair; only were I you I would come to some definite explanation with her—your mind will then be settled. All shilly-shallying in affairs of this kind is greatly to be deprecated. If she wishes to marry you there is no just cause or impediment why she should not. You are not a fit husband for her, however, any more than she is a fit wife for you. She would not let you be a bit the better for her money. She would want her whole income for herself, and yours too—that is, supposing you ever have any. Philippa ought to marry a man who showed at once he meant to be her master. In her case it is a matter of tyrant or slave; there is no medium, and I know which you would be.”

Having finished which exhaustive speech, Sir Henry at length cut the end of his cigar, lighted it, and, seemingly satisfied there was no more to be said, on the Philippa subject or any other, remarked that he thought he would stroll on a little further, and walked away, leaving Terence at leisure to survey the beauties of Calgarry Bay if he felt disposed to do so.

XI

PHILIPPA’S ANSWER

The walls of Derry, though not perhaps a promenade to be rashly selected on a winter’s day, have at least the merit of being admirably adapted for a tête-à-tête. Except the Cathedral, there is no other place in what has been called a “town of back streets” suitable for confidential talk, but the walls are silent and lonely enough for all purposes of privacy.

They are a mile in circuit, and a great deal can be said in a mile. There, however, as elsewhere, the first conversational step often proves difficult. It proved so difficult to Terence Conway that as he surveyed the wide expanse of country, on which the “’Prentice Boys” once looked down, filled with an opposing army, his heart failed him, and he would have spoken some platitudes about the siege, the glorious defence, the intrepid Walker, the breaking of the Boom, but that he knew Miss Dutton’s sympathies were all with the good and intrepid King James, and that her gentle bosom held a very sufficient hatred for the glorious and immortal memory of him who delivered a country that did not want to be delivered, from “Popery, prelacy, bad money, and wooden shoes.”

She had no liking for “the usurper William of Orange or his undutiful wife.” She regarded those who shouted “No surrender!” and fought, and starved, and died in defence of their “stern unbeautiful faith,” as rebels and stiff-necked fanatics. She would have lent a willing ear to any legend of the building of the abbey for canons of the Augustinian Order founded by St. Columba, or the Cistercian Monastery endowed by Turbagh Leinigh, or the Dominican Friary built half a century later; but of these things Terence knew nothing. Indeed, he was as ignorant as any gentleman need to be of the history of his native land. He was quite prepared to take the country as he found it, and very wisely too. If many people at the present time were only willing to follow so excellent an example, and let the dead past bury its dead, a vast amount of trouble would be saved and good effected.

It was no tale about nun or saint Terence longed to tell, that he seduced Philippa out to hear, but a love story, concerning himself and her which he had made up his mind to pour forth ere she returned to England; and now time was flying, and the steamer lying at the quay, and not a word would come—not one, though he had thought when they were in the Diamond, if he could only entice Miss Dutton on the walls, his lips would be opened and the string of his tongue loosed.

They had come to Derry from Calgarry in one of the old Duke’s carriages, posting. It was a long journey, and at that period and at such a season a most wretched one.

They stopped for one night at Letterkenny, and then pushed on to the maiden city, where they had the worst luncheon Sir Henry could ever remember having tasted since his campaigning days were over. Nothing but the knowledge that he would soon be in England enabled him to put a cheerful face on the matter.

“And one can get a decent meal on board the steamer,” said Mrs. Barry, as she drew her chair up close beside a blazing fire, and declined to stir out for anybody till it was time to start.

“We’ll keep each other company, then, Letitia,” remarked Sir Henry, “and if these two want to see the Cathedral, let them go alone.”

He knew Terence had not spoken, and he wished to give him this last chance of doing so.

Terence had mentally vowed he would speak, just as a man might make up his mind to have a tooth out.

A man may desire to have a tooth out very much, and yet dread facing the dentist. Mr. Conway greatly desired to come to some understanding with Philippa, but he misdoubted what that understanding might prove.

He was in the “Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall” mood; and this is a mood which grows the longer a man defers making the attempt.

“Don’t you think it is a little chilly?” suggested his fair at last. She was wrapped to the throat in soft furs, her face was protected by a thick veil, her hands buried in the depths of a sable muff; yet she shivered prettily as she spoke, and so accentuated the purport of her words.

“Are you cold?” he asked anxiously. “If so, we will go back to the hotel at once; only there was something I wanted to say to you very much.”

“Then let us walk on,” she answered amiably, willing to meet his views. “I am not really cold; still the afternoon is getting late, and we have a journey, you must recollect.”

“I know—I know,” said Terence ruefully; “but there is something I did want to talk to you so much about. We have had no opportunity for speaking quietly together,” he went blundering on, unmindful of the fact that love can generally make opportunities, and that plenty had presented themselves to him; “and besides, I did not like to say anything at Calgarry just after Mr. Conway’s death.”

“The dear old man, I was so fond of him.”

“I know you were,” returned Terence, inwardly wondering why; for he was ignorant of the fact that rich people generally like rich people, just as Scotchmen always like the Scotch. “So I could not well say what was on my mind there, and then I intended to speak to you in London; but now I may have to stay here—I cannot tell for how long.”

“It is very hard for you,” she replied softly; “but you are doing what is right, and you will be helped in your loneliness.”

“O Philippa, if you only say one word, I shall not mind my loneliness at all. Will you—”

“You must tell me what it is, first,” she returned, as if she were a simple little girl of ten. Terence had always felt this wonderful simplicity was one of her greatest charms, and he thought so now.

“You remember what Mr. Conway’s wishes were?” he began.

“About what?” she asked, with a sweet unconsciousness infinitely preferable to the guilty modesty of so many of her sex.

“About you and me. Don’t be vexed, Philippa; I feel I must speak now.”

“I am not vexed,” she replied, “only I do not quite understand. Of course, it would be mere affectation in me to pretend I do not know what he wished at one time. Is that what you are referring to?”

It seemed to Terence as if the wind chopped suddenly round to the east, and went through him like a knife.

“At one time!” he repeated: “do you suppose that he did not continue to wish it.”

“If he had, I fancy he would have left his money to you.”

Here in a concrete form was the idea that had been floating through Terence’s mind all along. She saw plainly the “dear old man” had not latterly set his righteous heart on the match, and it flashed across his mind like an inspiration he had never wished it at all; that the whole thing was a deliberate plan to mislead and mortify; that many a time Marmaduke must have laughed in his sleeve at the folly which believed in such benevolent intentions.

At that moment it was revealed to him that he never had a chance of the money; that his kinsman had not deceived him more than he, Terence, had deceived himself.

“Perhaps you are right,” he made an effort to answer; “indeed, I am sure you are.” And he walked on a few steps in silence, thinking what he had better say next, and choking back a passionate desire to brand the departed Conway as a scoundrelly and malevolent hypocrite.

Suddenly taking his courage in his hand he stopped—they had reached a quiet and sheltered little corner—and said,

“Philippa, we may leave his intentions, whatever they were, out of the question. Whether I had once a chance of the money or not, I have no chance of it in the future. You know if he had left me millions I should have prayed you to share them with me; and I do not think you ought to misjudge me if I ask you to take me, though I have only Calgarry, and that burdened by debts of my own contracting.”

“Dear Terence, have I ever misjudged you?”

“Never,” he answered; “and that makes me hope you will not do so when I entreat you to say the one word I spoke of a minute ago. I have been afraid to ask you, afraid of seeming to want your money, and God knows if you had not a penny you would be dearer to me, were such a thing possible, than you are now.”

“It is so good of you,” she murmured.

“It is not good at all,” he returned. “There is nothing and no one in this world good enough for you. I wonder at my own presumption in asking you if you can care for me at all.”

“I have always cared for you,” said Philippa. “There is no friend for whom I entertain a greater regard.”

“But I don’t want to be regarded as a friend; that is, I want to be your friend, and a great deal more—I want you to love me as I love you—no, that is impossible; but to love me a little—to love me well enough to make me the happiest fellow on earth.”

She did not answer immediately, and he could not well read the expression on her face, by reason of the shadows which were gathering, and her closely-drawn veil; perhaps if he had, it would not have helped him much.

The pause was effective, but inexpressibly trying.

“Speak, dearest!” he entreated, when he could bear the suspense no longer. “Speak, if it be my death warrant!” His breath came short and fast, as if he had been running hard, and his face was pale, and set like that of a man who waits to hear the worst.

Had Sir Henry been there, he would have said, and said truly, he was but a cowardly lover—one who almost deserved failure.

But Philippa did not crush him. She only answered,

“I hoped you would not speak of this for the present.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not think we know our own minds.”

“I know mine,” he returned.

“It is so sudden,” she pleaded.

“Sudden! There has not been a day since I first saw you I have not longed to say, ‘I love you.’”

“Yes! but that is different.”

“Do you mean you cannot love me? If that is it, say so at once—stab me to the heart; take away every hope and object in life; but O! dear, you cannot be so cruel! You, who are kind and tender to all others, be a little kind to me.”

“My poor Terence, how could anyone be unkind to you.”

“You ought not to be,” he answered, “for you must know how I love you. Yet you are unkind because of your very goodness: perhaps you are afraid to give me pain; you cannot bear to cast me out into utter darkness.”

Whatever might be her motive, Philippa did not explain, and the young man went on,

“You torture me—you cannot imagine what your silence means to me. For Heaven’s sake, end this suspense. If it is to be ‘no,’ I must bear the trouble as I may.”

“I do not wish to say ‘no,’ and yet I cannot quite say ‘yes,’” she faltered.

“God bless you, dear, for that!”

“You see,” she went on, not striving to release the hand he had seized, “we have never been exactly—I mean we have always been like friends, and—”

“You want time to accustom yourself to the truth that I can only think of you as the one woman I love—the one woman I desire to marry.”

“Yes; that is partly what I mean.”

“And what else do you mean?” he asked, insanely caressing the small hand which lay so warm and quiet in his. He was beside himself with joy; yet he feared to show his joy, lest he should, as he told himself, frighten this “lovely timid bird.”

“There are so many things to consider.”

“What things, sweetest?”

“Please not to say that; I know you will not vex me;” and she made a movement to withdraw her hand.

“Nay,” he entreated, “let me keep it. Well, if you will have it so!” a most obedient lover. “An absurd creature!” Mrs. Barry would have called him. Mark’s wooing of the vivacious Letitia had been of a very different description; but then she knew her own mind, which it certainly seemed as if Miss Dutton did not. “You were saying there are many things to consider,” he went on after this little interlude. “Will you tell me what they are?”

“I will try,” she answered gently, “as we walk back. I think we ought not to stay out any longer. It is getting late, and the steamer—”

“Will not start for hours yet,” he interposed.

“O, Terence, how can you?” she exclaimed, “especially when you know Sir Henry would rather almost leave me behind than remain a night in Derry.”

“I only wish he would,” thought Terence; but he was too wise to say so.

“I am selfish,” he answered. “I cannot bear to part with you; but let us go back to these great things we have to consider.”

“They are great to me,” she answered with a pretty humility. “In the first place, I do not value money in the least.”

“I know you do not, my—darling,” he was going to add, but bit back the proscribed word ere it passed his lips.

“Except,” added his darling, “as a means to an end.”

Terence had not the faintest idea what she meant; the only thing of which he felt sure was that something very great and grand underlay her utterance.

“I have always considered the fortune my dear father left me as a sacred trust, to be used for the benefit of my fellow-creatures. He, I am sure, would have wished me to do so.”

Besotted as he was, a thought did cross Terence’s mind that the old army contractor, who had made his money, according to Sir Henry’s account, by supplying the worst possible goods at the highest possible price, had never cared much about his fellow-creatures’ weal or woe so long as he could make a profit out of them; and he did not even try to say anything pleasant about that gentleman.

“My guardian,” resumed Miss Dutton, who had paused, perhaps for the clapping which did not come, “is the kindest person possible, and my aunt most amiable; yet it would be useless to disguise that there are many points on which we are not in sympathy. Some of my most cherished convictions they, I know, regard as silly fancies.”

“All your convictions should be mine,” said Terence rashly; “and as for your fortune, of course it would remain entirely at your control. You never imagined I wanted that, I hope?”

“I never did—never, never. Only I could not tell whether your ideas as to how it might best bear fruit were quite in accord with mine. I have suffered so much from want of comprehension on the part of those of my own household that—”

“I comprehend you; I sympathise with you. I love to hear you talk concerning the poor and needy. I could listen forever while you discourse like an angel about the duties of the wealthy and their responsibilities.”

This was quite true. Terence would have listened joyfully to the Newgate Calendar or a volume of Blair’s Sermons had Philippa been the reader.

“And then as to yourself?” she ventured.

“O, never mind me,” he entreated.

“But I must,” she said; “for you are placed in a far more difficult position than I am. It is no light matter to be a great landowner; to have tenants whom you can make prosperous or the reverse, a large estate it is competent for you to use or misuse. I tremble when I think of all that has devolved upon you; but you will try to prove yourself worthy, will you not?”

“I will do anything you bid me, if you will only give me hope,” he answered.

“I think I have given you great hope,” she replied.

“You have not said yes to what I asked you.”

Time was flying, and Terence growing desperate.

“It would be wrong for me to say yes unless I felt quite sure of myself and you. It is early days for you yet at Calgarry, and you may not do all you now intend. It would almost break my heart to see you fail—to see you waste or neglect to improve the glorious opportunity that has come to you.”

Perhaps it was because his present opportunity seemed slipping away unimproved, that Terence waxed not unnaturally impatient.

“I should have thought you had known me long enough to be able to decide whether you could care for me or not; but no doubt you are wise to refuse to engage yourself till you see exactly what stuff I am made of. Perhaps you have been kinder to me than I deserve. Anyhow, I am grateful you do not cast me into the depths of despair. But I want more. No; I am not going to ask you to pledge yourself. What I do ask you is to fix a limit to my probation. If I put my affairs in train; if I do my best to be a fair landlord and a good master, will you marry me? With that hope to look forward to, I shall be strong enough to do anything. Dear Philippa, will you not be merciful?”

She hesitated for a second, then answered, “I do not know what to say—this has all come upon me unawares. An engagement is not a thing which should be lightly entered into—the end of a few months, perhaps—”

He stamped his foot impatiently. “A few months! Why not say a few years at once?”

“Now, Terence!”

“I beg your pardon. But, after all, a man is only flesh and blood.”

“A few months will pass quickly,” she returned, with dignity. “If you wish you can speak to me about this again in the summer. It is impossible for me to say more now; I think I have already said more than I ought;” and with that the lover had to rest content.

“Well,” asked Sir Henry, as he and Terence stood at the hotel door waiting for the ladies, “have you put your fortune to the test?”

“Yes.”

“With what result?”

“Leave to renew the subject at midsummer.”

“She has not refused you, then?”

“No; and she has not accepted me.”

“Still, you have made more progress than I expected.”

Which might well be, although Terence did not feel at all satisfied.

“Here we are!” exclaimed Mrs. Barry at that moment. She was quite in cheerful spirits at the prospect of seeing her babies so soon again.

And then they drove through the narrow, dirty streets to the quay, and in a few minutes were on the deck of the Liverpool steamer.

“We shall see you in London ere long, I suppose?” said Sir Henry.

“I shall see you as soon as I possibly can, you may be very sure,” answered Terence, who had partially recovered his spirits, feeling confident Philippa’s small hand had pressed a little heavily on his arm as he escorted her across the gangway.

“How is it?” asked Mrs. Barry, in a whisper, drawing him for a moment apart.

“She allows me to hope,” he answered, in the same low key.

“You could have hoped without her permission,” she retorted, in that tone which made Sir Henry often think Letitia quite as objectionable a person as her husband, of whom, in spite of his cleverness, the whole Conway connection was deeply ashamed.

XII

MR. MARK BARRY

Messrs. Bray & Lucan, solicitors, Kildare Street, Dublin, stood at the very top of their profession. They held as sacred legacies those traditions which had been handed down to them from times when the world was not so full and practice was not quite so sharp as both have since become.

They were agreeable gentlemen, possessed of courtly manners, who had mixed with the best society, read, travelled, and seen a good deal of life.

Wise enough not to despise business when it was making a large income, they yet confined their attention almost exclusively to the concerns of those set by Providence in high places.

The nobility and landed gentry were their clients. Lords were ordinary visitors in Kildare Street, and the chief dignitaries of the Church as well known to the clerks as their own parents. It was on the occasion when his wife came into some little property, that Mr. Malet made the firm’s acquaintance; and he had always after retained a pleasant memory of both partners, who refused to accept any remuneration for what they termed such trifling services.

In those days Mr. Malet was a poor man, and the kindness was welcome. Since then he had made judicious investments which had turned out profitably, and rendered him easy concerning the pecuniary welfare of his daughter; but he never forgot Messrs. Bray & Lucan’s consideration towards him.

Mr. Bray, who was fond of fishing, had once, when visiting Donegal, found his way to Calgarry Vicarage, and remained there for a few days; and it was therefore natural that Mr. Malet, when talking with Terence as to his affairs, should have mentioned the solicitors in Kildare Street, and advised the young man to take them into his confidence.

Acting on Sir Henry Beecham’s dictum, that “there is nothing so confoundedly dear as a cheap hotel,” the owner of Calgarry had, on his arrival in Dublin, caused himself to be driven to Morrison’s. There he repaired the effects of travel, and after eating a more substantial breakfast than he felt inclined to dispose of since the reading of Marmaduke Conway’s will, sallied forth to seek the counsel of Messrs. Bray & Lucan. In addition to the letter of introduction with which he furnished his young friend, Mr. Malet had thought well to write privately to Mr. Bray, and give such a general idea of young Conway’s position as might obviate the necessity for much preliminary conversation and subsequent questioning.

The dislike a man in difficulties entertains to confiding fully and freely in anyone is the greatest bar to his getting out of them.

Mr. Malet knew this, and knew also the whole of the circumstances would have to be wrung out of Terence, unless some preliminary explanation were offered.

“I have sketched out the position of affairs,” were almost his last words before he bade the new owner “good-bye and God-speed.” “You must fill it in, and for Heaven’s sake be frank with them. Don’t let there be any after-clap.”

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Conway,” said Mr. Bray, when Terence entered his private office. “Any friend of Mr. Malet’s must always be welcome here.” And then Mr. Lucan appeared, and made a remark to the effect that “the name of Conway was well known in Ireland.”

“Better known than trusted, probably,” thought Terence, but he did not give expression to this opinion.

“And so you find yourself in a little difficulty?” began Mr. Bray.

Terence amended the phrase by stating that he found himself in a great deal of difficulty. He could not tell what to do, and he had come to them for advice.

After that they went to work, estimating roughly, of course, the incomings and the outgoings, and giving deep consideration to the liabilities.

“You have no intention of disputing the will?” asked Mr. Lucan.

“Certainly not,” was the reply.

“You think all the money must go, then?”

“Must go—there is not a shadow of pretext for stirring in the matter.”

“We may as well have a look at the will, though,” suggested Mr. Bray.

“Now, what about these debts?” said Mr. Lucan. “Let us see how much they amount to.”

And he took out his pencil and set down the sums from Terence’s dictation, and afterwards totted them up. Mr. Malet had done the same thing before, but in neither case did the debtor find that addition made the total much less.

“Humph!” remarked Mr. Lucan.

Mr. Bray looked at the figures over his partner’s shoulder, and said “O!”

Terence alone remained silent—those figures presented no novelty to him.

“Do you think it would be any use fighting these fellows?” asked Mr. Bray at last. “According to your statement it is the interest which has run the amount up so enormously.”

“Yes, and insurances.”

“Will they take less?”

“I am sure they won’t.”

“Will they consent to instalments?”

“Yes, Mr. Conway thought they might do that, but he did not feel sure. Mr. Lucan, perhaps, would write to them.”

“It is a very large sum of money,” observed Mr. Bray. “I cannot imagine how you contrived to run up such an amount of debt in so short a time.”

“Neither can I,” argued Terence, “for I had nothing hardly out of it.”

“You went to races, I suppose?”

“O yes! I went to some races.”

“And you played at cards, doubtless?”

“Yes; but I didn’t lose very much.”

“Perhaps you bought jewellery?”

“A little—not a great deal.”

“And entertained your friends?”

“Of course. When my friends asked me I had to ask them back again.”

“I see; the old story—”

“Of a fool and his money?”

“I should not have put it quite so rudely; besides, it was not your money.”

“No; but I made sure of it.”

“And, contrary to the old adage, you did not go barefoot while wailing for the dead man’s shoes?”

“I only wish I had,” returned Terence; “I should not be walking on flints now.”

“You will have to turn over a new leaf if you are to do any good,” suggested Mr. Lucan kindly.

“I have turned it,” declared the young man; but even while the words were on his tongue he thought of Morrison’s, and wondered what the bill there would be.

“Well, we will do all in our power to help you out of your troubles,” said Mr. Bray. “And that reminds me, Mr. Malet mentioned you were embarrassed for want of ready money. Am I right?”

He certainly was right; but it was hard for Terence to answer yes straightforwardly.

“I have—a few—pounds,” he hesitated. “Mr. Malet kindly lent me enough for present needs.”

“We had better put that right, then, at once. Perhaps you will not mind coming with me to Latouche’s—we bank there, and you cannot do better than place your account with them.”

It all seemed like a dream. A few days before he had not the wherewithal to pay his expenses to Dublin; and now, in the twinkling of an eye, he was a customer of one of the oldest banks in Dublin, with an amount lying to his credit which sounded like affluence. At last he felt in very truth how good it is to be the owner of a large estate, and his heart was almost light when he parted with Mr. Bray, who said,

“It might be well for you to call upon us the day after tomorrow; there are many matters into which we have not gone. By the bye, where are you staying?”

An hour previous, Terence would have been ashamed to reply, “I am at Morrison’s,” but now he was glad. As usual, Sir Henry proved to be quite right; and, satisfied on this point, the young man decided he would take a stroll about Dublin, and consider the changed aspect of affairs. He felt almost another person from the impecunious individual who had on the previous day paced the walls of Derry: for it is most sadly true there is no trouble in this wicked world which cannot be lightened by a heavy balance at one’s bank.

He was walking along Nassau Street, when someone accosted him from behind, and turning, he recognised a man he neither expected nor desired to see.

“What, Barry!” he exclaimed. “You in Dublin?”

“Even so—well met,” answered the other. “I was obliged to come here on business last night, but did not expect the luck of running across you. Where’s Lettie?”

“On her way to London. She will be sadly disappointed to find you absent when she gets there.”

“I don’t think so; and, between ourselves, I am just as well pleased to be out of the way. She is like a whirlwind when she returns home after a long absence. Two, if not more, of the servants always receive notice; from garret to cellar nothing is right; figuratively, trees are uprooted and roofs blown off; but she quiets down after a few days, and affairs resume their normal condition. She kept to her plan of going by Derry, I suppose?”

“Yes, they all went that way. The General wanted to stop a few days in Liverpool.”

“No doubt he did, the sly old fox. An old flame of his is living in the neighbourhood. Where are you putting up?”

“Morrison’s. You are with your mother, I suppose?”

“No; I am too busy to devote any time to my family. And now tell me about your affairs. Have you got a decent lawyer?”

“Yes; I have just come from Messrs. Bray & Lucan.”

“Bray & Lucan, eh? Good slow old family coach, that firm; but respectable—most respectable. They ought to be able to manage an advance for you from the Bank of Ireland.”

“They have got me one from Latouche’s.”

“Just for pocket-money, I suppose. I meant something on a different scale. You’ll want it when you come to settle with Amos and that lot.”

“Mr. Bray is going to write to them.”

“What about?”

“Proposing throwing payment of the debts over a term of years.”

“Proposing the devil!” exclaimed Mr. Mark Barry so loudly that the passers-by turned and stared at him. “Terence, are you mad? Do you want to be worried to death? Never to get out of debt as long as you live?”

“No; but—”

“But you are in a fair way of tying a nether millstone round your neck. Thank Heaven I met you. Come back with me this minute to Kildare Street, and let me tell Messrs. Bray & Lucan about old Amos and his gang.”

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort.”

“Then if you won’t, I swear to you I will go alone. I will not see Letitia’s cousin put his head into the lion’s mouth if I can help it. You had no business to go to people like Bray & Lucan for such a matter as this. You want the most unscrupulous blackguard you can find to deal with those dirty scoundrels, Amos & Co. It is of no use, Terence, fuming and fretting. To Kildare Street I am going this instant; and you can either come with me if you please, or stay behind if you choose.”

“God help me!” ejaculated Terence: “where shall I find peace?”

“Not in being an idiot,” answered the other. “Now, come along. If you don’t find your friends in Kildare Street take my view, I’ll unsay my words and apologise into the bargain.”

With a heavy heart the owner of Calgarry suffered his relation to drag him back to the office he had so lately quitted. Mark left him no option; his energy and resolution were terrible.

“Mr. Bray in?” he asked a clerk, not giving Terence the chance of speaking.

“Yes, sir.”

“Just tell him, then, will you, that Mr. Conway would like to speak to him again for a moment?”

“Like!” thought Terence, but he refrained from speech; and the next instant they were in Mr. Bray’s presence.

“You remember me, I hope?” began Lettie’s husband, forestalling any attempt at interference on Terence’s part. “I am Mark Barry.”

Mr. Bray intimated that he remembered Mr. Mark Barry very well indeed, and not pleasantly, his tone implied. He had known him slightly when Mark was a very racketty, impudent, and idle young barrister, lounging about the Four Courts, before his father’s property was sold under the Encumbered Estates Court, and he himself migrated to England, where he had in due course settled down to hard work in painful earnest.

“I thought it better to bring Mr. Conway back here, Mr. Bray,” went on the other, “because he tells me you propose to treat his creditors as if they were human beings possessed of souls and hearts. They are not; they must be met like wild beasts, and I really do not think that is a sort of business in your line. Once they are out of the way, I know you will put everything that is wrong right about Calgarry; but I must say you will not be wise to attempt to deal with Amos and the rest. I have given them such an account of Conway’s position, and of the waste the old Duke left his property, that they will be glad to take what they can get, supposing they are bullied into it. If Conway will only kindly keep his finger out of the pie, and you do not show in the matter, I think he may get off for a sum which will surprise you. O! here is Mr. Lucan. I am glad he will hear my views—”

“Mr. Mark Barry,” said Mr. Bray with emphasis, “advises that we should leave Mr. Conway’s creditors to be dealt with by someone else than ourselves.”

“If that could be done, I should certainly not regret the change of arrangement,” answered Mr. Lucan. “What solicitor do you suggest, Mr. Barry?”

“I have not thought the matter out fully yet, but I know a suitable man may be found. What I should propose is this: draw a broad line between Mr. Conway’s past and present. You take his present, and I will deal with his past somehow, and for a moderate sum start him fair.

“The pull he has over his creditors is that they one and all dread publicity, dread a trial, dread being badgered in the witness-box; and unless they believe a large amount is to be made out of it they won’t fight. They know Conway has no money; they can see the will when it is proved, and meantime I will get them a copy. They know nothing of Ireland, and are willing enough to believe they will find it hard to recover anything here.

“They think we are all in Ireland, gentle and simple, a set of rogues, liars, and assassins; and I for one don’t intend to disabuse their minds. I told Amos in a country where we every one leagued together it would be useless to attempt to recover a halfpenny; but I threw out a hint that Mr. Conway was so just a gentleman, I felt sure he would, if fairly dealt with, try to pay his creditors something.”

“I am glad to hear you say even that much, Mr. Barry,” observed Mr. Lucan.

“If I had the means to pay I would defraud no man of his just due,” answered the virtuous Mark, “neither would I advise another man to wriggle out of any fair liability. But this is robbery. Amos has a character to keep up. He has a handsome wife, and goes in for society. I am sure we can manage him if we go about the matter properly. I wish you could have seen his face when I told him a perfectly true story about the way the Queen’s writ runs in Connemara.

“I was sitting one morning at breakfast with a friend in the hotel at Maam, when a fellow came into our room and said, ‘I’ve got a bit of paper for your honour.’

“‘What is it?’ asked my friend.

“‘Deed a writ—what will I do with it?’

“‘Put it in the fire,’ said my friend, ‘and say you could not find me.’

“The man did put it in the fire, and went off a sovereign the richer. When I got back here I had the curiosity to examine the return, and found the cause for non-service was stated, and sworn to precisely as my friend suggested.

“‘And you call yours a Christian country!’ said Amos, who is a converted Jew, in pious horror.”

XIII

THE VERY MAN

“I do not quite see the relevancy of your interesting anecdote,” remarked Mr. Lucan, when Letitia’s lord and master at last “ran down.”

“I never expected you would,” answered Mr. Barry, with that cool impudence which always made Terence feel as though a stream ice-cold water were deluging his spine; “but Amos did;” and the speaker looked at his audience, and his audience looked at him.

“If I gather your meaning correctly,” said Mr. Bray, “you led Mr. Benaron to believe it might be wise for him to take what Mr. Conway felt able to offer, since the law would afford him little or no assistance in Ireland.”

“You have put the case in a nutshell, and I impressed him with the truth of what I said. I did not leave the nail half in, half out: I hammered the fact into his rascally old head, till there was no fear of it getting out again—unless someone is foolish enough to take it out,” he added, with a withering expression of scorn at the presumed imbecility of everyone present passing over his handsome face.

Mr. Barry was very handsome. In the length of a day’s journey, no one need have desired to meet a handsomer man. His voice was pleasant, too. He had that soft, melting brogue which might wile a bird off the tree; and when he chose, a tender, wistful smile that had won many a girl’s heart, and haunted her memory when she ought to have been devoting her attention to better things.

“There is a sort of business,” he went on after a pause, intended to let the surprise and admiration caused by his tactics subside a little, “which can be best managed by letting respectable firms render themselves useful by non-interference.”

“I quite agree with you there,” said Mr. Lucan, as he hoped, sarcastically.

“It is painfully true,” returned Mr. Barry. “For, joking apart—”

“Allow me to assure you I had not the very slightest intention of joking,” interrupted Mr. Lucan.

“I believe you—I do indeed,” observed Mark, with a comical twinkle in his eyes, which contradicted the demure gravity of his tone. “Why, you are not offended, are you? It is only my way.”

“I am aware of that, Mr. Barry,” said Mr. Lucan stiffly. It is a strange thing, a man would rather be accused of a crime than of a deficient sense of humour.

“And a bad one too, you would have added, but that you are too polite. I heartily beg your pardon.”

“No need for that,” answered the other; “but affairs are not progressing. Had we not better be—”

“Getting back to our sheep? Yes, only, you see, Amos is not a sheep, but a confoundedly ugly wolf, with as nasty a set of teeth as you would ever desire to have nothing to do with. Well, as I was saying just now, there are cases in which a respectable solicitor is useless—indeed, worse than useless.”

Mr. Lucan bowed. Mark probably hoped he would accept the statement as a compliment, but some people are never satisfied.

“Take, for instance,” proceeded Mr. Barry, “the case of a lady about to be married. No firm would draw her marriage settlements tighter or better than you—nay, on special occasions, you might even go to the wedding breakfast, and return thanks for the bridesmaids in a neat little speech.”

Though he was a bachelor, Mr. Lucan looked rather indignant at this suggestion.

“But supposing the case not one of marriage, but another matter, that required to be handled in quite a different manner—eh, Mr. Lucan? eh, Mr. Bray? I think—”

“I think, Mr. Barry,” interrupted the senior partner, with great distinctness, “that we need only discuss Mr. Conway’s position and affairs, or rather our position with respect to Mr. Conway’s affairs. He sought us. We were willing to advise him, and have done so to the best of our ability. But, of course, if he thinks it expedient to remove his business, and place the whole of his difficulties in other hands more competent than ours, we shall make no objection.”

“Nothing can be further from my intention than to make any change of the sort,” interrupted Terence.

“And, believe me, I had not the smallest desire to interfere with the legitimate drama,” added Mr. Barry, now speaking in his character as a man of sense, and not as a mere buffoon. “Messrs. Bray & Lucan are precisely the firm to undertake the law business of Mr. Conway of Calgarry. My cousin” (Terence winced, and mentally cursed Mr. Barry’s familiarity, while anathematising Letitia for selecting him for her husband out of the wide world of men), “in his new capacity as landed proprietor, will never find sounder lawyers than yourselves; but I tell you candidly I don’t want you to do anything or know anything about the good Amos Benaron. I can tell exactly what will happen if you do. Here is the action of the play—characters you are acquainted with, scene is familiar to you. Amos writes to our friend here; our friend hands his letter to you. You instruct some eminently respectable gentleman in London; he answers Amos. Amos goes to his own sharpest of sharp practitioners, who in the first interview learns that Terence is afraid of a writ, and accordingly threatens to issue one immediately. He refuses to accept a penny less than the whole extortionate amount; and the upshot of the matter is you ultimately effect a mortgage on Calgarry, and pay off one of the greatest blackguards in England, and Terence and his tenants have a millstone hung round their necks for life.”

Mr. Barry stopped. He felt he could not add to the force of the picture himself had drawn, and waited for someone else to continue the conversation.

It was Mr. Lucan who stepped into the breach.

“Then, in a word, you wish Mr. Conway—”

“To act exactly as he would have done had he come into Calgarry unencumbered,” said Mark, accepting the half-finished sentence as a question. “I advise him to place his affairs as regards the estate unreservedly in your hands, and then to go straight back to the north and try to make a good business out of a bad. When he hears from Amos let him send the letter to me. I will find a lawyer not afraid of touching pitch—a lawyer whom pitch can’t defile, in fact. Then I suppose some money must be found, but sufficient for the day—”

“All this is very irregular,” suggested Mr. Bray.

“I can’t say how it may be with you, but I find people do irregular things every day,” answered Mark. “They have to do them—necessity is stronger than will. At all events, take comfort, it is not you who are irregular—you need know nothing of my cousin’s little embarrassments. We can all of us all round make-believe he does not owe a penny, but enters into possession of Calgarry as clean and guileless as any young rascal just soaped and oiled and combed for Sunday-school.”

“Well, what is your idea, Mr. Conway?” asked Mr. Lucan.

“I leave the matter entirely to you,” answered Terence.

“Now, suppose you all leave it to me!” exclaimed Mr. Barry; “you will save yourselves a lot of trouble and a lot of unpleasantness, and, who knows, set a certain young man in the straight road to marry a beautiful heiress.”

“Ah, indeed! is that on the cards?” said Mr. Bray, interested.

“It is on the cards—don’t blush, Terence—but, of course, we never can tell exactly how the cards may play. I can tell you this, however, that if Mr. Conway does not make some arrangement with Amos now he may bid good-bye forever to Miss Dutton. Sir Henry Beecham, her guardian, is a very astute gentleman—far too fond of his ease to run the risk of any unpleasant complications hereafter with his ward. I think I can hear him if once events obliged him to take notice of our friend’s position! He can be as blind as a bat if he likes, but no one can see further through a millstone when he has the mind.

“‘My dear Conway,’ he would say—he eases the near foot a little when he is very much in earnest, which detracts somewhat from the dignity of his attitude—‘my dear Conway, as you put it to me, I really do not think, as the what-d’ye-call-him in the Bible observed, that the land will bear you and Amos. I am afraid you will have to go to the wall. Confounded pity, too, for it is a fine estate; but Calgarry unencumbered is one thing, and Calgarry with a monkey riding it quite another. Of course, it is incumbent upon me—’ That is the style, gentlemen—perhaps you have had the pleasure of meeting with it before.”

Mark’s mimicry was perfect, and, as he did not like Sir Henry, it had just that dash of bitterness which adds character and flavour to any social salad.

The respectable solicitors would not even have smiled could they have avoided doing so; but they looked at Terence, who, though angry, was forced to laugh, and something in his face proved irresistible to both partners.

“Come, that is better,” commented Mark. “I suppose I may go away now and take the Conway puzzle with me to work out at my leisure?”

“We should really like to hear what Mr. Conway thinks about the whole matter,” said Mr. Bray, who felt they were totally in the dark as to Terence’s own wishes.

“All I think and all I hope is that no one else will consider it necessary to advise me any more!” exclaimed the much-badgered young man. “If I meet with a single other person who expresses an opinion on my affairs, I shall shoot myself!”

“You had better make your will, then,” recommended Mr. Barry. “It would be a pity to leave everything at loose ends.”

“And remember, Mr. Conway, we have it on excellent authority that in a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom,” said Mr. Lucan, with a good church-going expression of countenance.

“Someone said that meant safety for the counsellors, not the counselled,” observed Terence so ruefully everyone laughed again.

Really, it seemed as though, spite of their protests, Messrs. Bray & Lucan felt quite relieved to find the moneylender was to be dealt with by someone else.

“Fact is,” explained Mark afterwards, “they can’t bear that sort of work. Family lawyers are like old duchesses: so eaten up with pride and grandeur, they do not care to affect the common herd. Now, what shall we do? Will you ask me to dinner, or shall I ask you?”

There was nothing Terence at that moment less desired than to dine with Mr. Barry anywhere; but making a virtue of necessity, he invited that gentleman to be his guest at Morrison’s.

“I was only trying you,” said Mark, and he laughed for some reason best known to himself. “You shall come to me, I’m a better caterer than you. Six—seven—eight—name your own time; only be punctual.”

“Six, then,” chose Terence; “and perhaps we can go to the play afterwards.”

“You will see nothing so good in Hawkins Street as has been put on the boards at Calgarry,” answered Letitia’s husband; “but as you like, I am your man. Till six, then.”

And he hurried away, perfectly conscious that, though Terence wanted to be out of the moneylenders’ hands, he did not in the least thank his relation for his interference.

“Ah, well, he will one day,” said the barrister to himself, “when he has not married Philippa, or mortgaged Calgarry up to the hilt, or sold it to Marmaduke the Second. We’ll see many changes in his ideas ere we are much older, I fancy.”

He was crossing Carlisle Bridge, where traitors’ heads used to rot, just as other traitors’ heads were wont to rot above Temple Bar, when, seeing a face he recognised, he stopped to speak to the owner.

“How is it you are in Dublin, Stirling?” he asked.

“I have been here for some time.”

“Got a holiday?”

“Yes, a longer one than I like.”

“You don’t mean to say you have left Mount Philip?”

“It has left me, unfortunately. The property is going to be sold.”

“No!”

“Indeed, it is, stock, lock, and barrel. The furniture has been disposed of, and the land follows shortly.”

“Encumbered Estates Court, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

“That Court will play the devil with the country.”

“Sir Francis does not think so. He is only too pleased to get rid of his property.”

“What a fool!” And Mr. Barry added nothing more, but stood considering in an impartial sort of way how foolish most people were.

“I should not sell, if I stood in his shoes,” said Mr. Stirling; “but I fancy it is as much Lady Straffan’s doing as his. She and the young ladies hanker after the delights of London.”

“I wonder how many delights they will find when Sir Francis has run through every penny of the money he receives? The whole thing, Stirling, is a gigantic mistake. Because a man won’t put his shoulder to the wheel, Government steps in and auctions the cart and horse for him. There never was a madder thing than enabling all the old landlords to uproot themselves.”

“That would not signify in the least if we could only uproot the old tenants too, and start afresh. As it is, our wise legislators will find before twenty years have passed the last state of Ireland worse than the first.”

Mr. Barry did not answer. He was thinking about an estate almost in the precise state Mr. Stirling desired.

Famine, disease, and the “Duke” had so uprooted the old tenants, that but few remained to uphold the traditions of an epoch which the Encumbered Estates Court was fast bringing to a close. At Calgarry everything could be worked on fresh lines, without interfering with any vested interests. The “accursed root” was recovering from its mysterious disease. Those who had suffered from the “blight” were dead or in another country. A clear field lay before any man strong enough to till it without fear or favour.

Terence wanted such a man, and here in bodily presence he stood before Terence’s cousin.

“Have you anything in view?” asked Mr. Barry, after thus deliberating.

“No; nothing suitable. I was offered an agency in Clare, but it won’t do at any price.”

“I know one that would fit you to a T.”

“Where is it?”

“Donegal—what’s the matter? Don’t howl till you’re hit, man; there is nothing wrong about Donegal. It is a poor county.”

“I should think so, indeed!”

“But free from crime; they are a fine sturdy industrious people.”

“O!”

“They are, I tell you; there can be no tickling of the ground there, and reaping a harvest. Everything has to be fought for with Nature, and—”

“You are not in court, Barry, so all this eloquence is wasted. To whom does the property belong?”

“To my cousin, Terence Conway. He has just come into it; the late agent resigned, a new one is wanted. Calgarry is a howling wilderness, the old tenants are dead or beyond sea; Terence is a right good fellow—a fellow anybody could work with. He is to dine with me at six; come and meet him, and we’ll settle the matter offhand.”

“If it is Calgarry, that puts a different aspect on the business.”

“It is Calgarry, and you are the man to take the agency.”

“Thank you; it is well worth consideration, anyway.”

“You will find it well worth taking,” answered Mr Barry. “And now I think of it, do not come to dinner. I have today been helping Conway against his will, and there is no time when a man is less disposed to take advice from a friend than when that friend has done him a service. No; I will tell you the best course to take: run down, as soon as possible, to Donegal; you can put up at Dunfanaghy; drive over to Calgarry House, where you will not find the owner; instead you will see a very respectable old woman, who is sure to send you for information to the clergyman, a Mr. Malet; get him on your side and the matter is settled. Say you heard the agency was vacant—you need not explain from whom. I had better not appear in the business. Now, will you go?”

“Yes; I like the notion of Calgarry.”

“And you’ll like the reality, too. Work enough there for half a dozen men.”

Altogether Mr. Mark Barry felt he was getting his cousin’s affairs rapidly into train.

XIV

MR. BENARON

In the earlier days of his sinful life, when a worthy son was being trained in the ways of profitable usury by an equally worthy father, the gentleman Mr. Barry referred to as Amos was known amongst a wide circle of acquaintances as “young Aaron.”

Old Aaron, till the day of his death, held court in a dingy office in Hart Street, Lower Thames Street, hard by the ancient church of St. Olave, where Pepys sleeps very quietly; and for many years his firstborn, Amos Benjamin, there assisted him to spoil the Egyptians.

Amos was ambitious, however. He saw there lay westward of the City boundaries a goodly land well watered, fertile, where gold was to be found, and he longed to go in and possess it. The old man, his father, was still alive, hale and hearty, ready and willing to welcome and fleece fools as ever; and the place had consequently grown strait for the young man also eager for prey. Thus it happened that he looked out a ground floor in Soho, and after receiving his parent’s blessing—a good man’s blessing, how good it is!—betook him westward with a light heart to do battle with the Philistine. While he was making a change, it occurred to him he might as well effect a slight alteration in his name; wherefore henceforth he figured before the world as A. Benaron, after the fashion of those persons who at this present day have a knack of connecting their Christian name, if it be well and high-sounding, with the surname by a hyphen. Amos dispensed with the hyphen and one tiny little a; Benaron bound him to nothing; Aaron tied him to a great deal. “A rose by any other name,” we all know; yet the gentleman from Hart Street felt he smelt sweeter as Benaron, and Benaron he therefore became and remained.

The world prospered with him exceedingly. In due time he married well, forsook the faith of his fathers, and in doctrine became, to quote Sheridan’s well-known simile, “like the blank sheet between the Old and New Testament.” He took a house in Baker Street, where his wife “received;” he sent his sons to college, and his daughters to expensive schools. There was no limit to the grandeur and greatness of Benaron, who helped more young fellows gently and lovingly along the road to ruin than will ever be known here.

There was a certain tavern just out of Fleet Street where this estimable person generally repaired for dinner. He ate another dinner at home later in the day, but he rarely missed looking in for a chop or steak at his favourite resort, where he was greatly respected by the landlord and honoured by the waiter, whom he never “forgot,” and who was in the habit of informing Mr. Benaron, in a confidential whisper, of any delicacy procurable likely to gladden the heart of so excellent a customer.

On his return from Dublin, Mr. Barry did not seek Mr. Benaron in his Soho lair; in fact, he did not seek him at all, but he allowed Amos to find the person he desired to see at the tavern mentioned, where Mark also often assuaged the pangs of hunger and the pains of thirst. When Mr. Benaron entered, Mr. Conway’s cousin was studying a pamphlet which he had propped up before him, and affected not to notice the moneylender.

Mr. Benaron, however, instantly perceived him, and, walking over to Mark’s particular corner, hung his hat on a peg, and then observed to the student, who still remained wrapped in his pamphlet:

“How d’ye do, Mr. Barry? I have not seen you for a long time.”

Thus accosted, Mr. Barry looked round, and answered,

“O! it is you, is it? Anything fresh?”

“I was just about to ask you the same question.” And Mr. Benaron seated himself beside Mr. Barry, who, though obliged to make way for him, did so with no unseemly haste.

“I have been out of town, and am in arrears in the way of news. So far as I know, however, the British Constitution is in about the same state as it was when I went away. St. Paul’s and the Abbey I see are still standing, and the Thames is as dirty as ever.”

“And Mr. Mark Barry is the same as ever, too,” remarked Mr. Benaron politely; “he will have his little joke. A small steak, potatoes, and a pint of bitter,” he said to the waiter. “Well, and where have you been?” he went on, turning again to his companion.

“I have been in Ireland,” Mark answered.

“In Donegal, I presume?”

“I don’t know why you should presume anything of the kind. What the ——— should I go to Donegal for?”

Mr. Barry really put the matter very forcibly. Mr. Benaron, who was a smooth-spoken, mild-mannered individual, felt almost too forcibly. He did not like strong language, and he always deprecated strong measures.

“I thought perhaps you might have gone there to visit your—to see young Mr. Conway, in fact,” he explained.

“It is not a habit of mine to go where I am not asked,” said Mr. Barry in an aggressive tone, as though he meant to imply Mr. Benaron’s practice was different.

“Have you not been asked to Calgarry, then?”

“A plain question, to which I will give you as plain an answer,” replied Mark. “No.”

“Dear me! that is very sad.”

“I do not see any sadness about the matter; or any gladness either,”—and Mr. Barry went on with his chop and kidney. Just at that moment the steak ordered was placed before Mr. Benaron, who proceeded in a dignified way to do justice to it.

He did not in the least resemble the usual idea of a usurer. He dressed well and carefully; shaved punctually; trimmed his whiskers regularly; wore a good hat; and was particular as to the make and quality of his boots. Personally he was rather good-looking, and did not betray many signs of his Jewish origin—at least, such signs as we are accustomed to associate with the descendants of the Hebrew race.

He was fair; his eyes were steely-blue; his features regular and clean-cut; he affected quiet colours; and the only noticeable thing about his dress—save its uniformly admirable quality—consisted in his affection for white cravats—not white handkerchiefs tied, as in the manner of some, like a bandage round the throat, but narrow ties, such as clergymen of the Church as by law established wear by right prescriptive.

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Mr. Barry often declared: and to those who knew Mr. Benaron there seemed a beautiful fitness in the statement.

“If it is the least pleasure for you to know the fact,” resumed the former, after a telling pause, “I have, however, seen Mr. Conway lately. I ran across him in Nassau Street.”

“Which Nassau Street?” inquired Mr. Benaron, helping himself to a fresh supply of mustard. “There are three in London.”

“There may be thirty, for all I care,” retorted Mark. “I meant, as you might have known, Nassau Street, Dublin.”

“And how was he looking?” asked the other, wisely declining to notice the brusqueness of his opponent’s manner.

“Much as usual,” answered the barrister. “I perceived no difference. There seems small chance of the insurances falling in.”

“I should have said fear, Mr. Barry,” suggested Mr. Benaron in expostulation.

“I have no doubt!” scoffed Mark. “Well, I must be going.”

“Pray spare me a minute,” entreated the other. “I so seldom have a chance of speaking to you. Thank you,” as Mr. Barry, after making a feint of rising, sat down again with apparent irresolution. “Did Mr. Conway say anything about me?”

“Very little.”

“But to the purpose, I trust?”

“I don’t know what you call to the purpose. Of course he is aware he is in Queer Street, and his creditors with him. A man does not feel very lively, I should fancy, or inclined to talk much, after such a blow as he has had.”

“But there is the estate?”

“O, yes! there is the estate,” agreed Mr. Barry, with a nasty smile.

“And unmortgaged?”

“If that be so, there is a reason, I suppose.”

“What reason beyond the obvious one can there be?”

“I don’t clearly comprehend the result you are driving at,” said Mark; “and it is rather a trouble to me trying to make out. When we last met I told you Calgarry was not of much more value than an estate in the desert. If you do not like to believe me I can’t help it.”

“But, my dear sir, Calgarry must be of value.”

“Stick to your own opinion. Calgarry has nothing to do with me.”

“Even if the land be poor such an acreage must be worth money.”

“You had better go and see it; I can give you no sounder advice.”

“And the rent-roll cannot be inconsiderable?”

“There is no rent-roll, as I formerly explained.”

“But this is madness!”

“Possibly; nevertheless it is truth.”

“Mr. Conway—that is, Mr. Terence’s father—always spoke of the estate as very productive.”

“You did not take his word for the fact, I conclude?”

“No; of course I made inquiries.”

“Of course you did—before the famine; before the late most Christian owner began to smite and spare not. Calgarry may have been worth something then; it is worth nothing now—bog, and stone, and heather. You have rich materials to work on, Mr. Benaron, and I wish you joy of the fortune you will reap.”

“But there is money in stone, and bog, and heather?”

“I hope you will get it, then.”

“And if the late Mr. Conway did clear the land of tenants, why, there must be plenty more willing and glad to take their place?”

“Again, Mr. Benaron, I advise you to go and see for yourself.”

“No, pray do not rise yet—this is no laughing matter to me.”

“It is no laughing matter to anybody, I should imagine,” said Mr. Barry; “my cousin looks as if he had lost a shilling and found sixpence.”

“If what you say be true—” began Mr. Benaron.

“If what I say be true!” repeated Mark indignantly. “What I say is true.”

“Well—no doubt, perhaps so; at all events, I have been most grossly deceived.”

“I have not deceived you, anyhow.”

“Of course, of course; but—”

“You mean Terence Conway deceived you, I suppose? But I don’t think he did a bit more than you deceived yourself. He made sure of getting the old man’s money—you made sure he would get the old man’s money, and neither he nor you could have said why. Then as to the property, it had once, I suppose, tenants and a rent-roll. It is not my cousin’s fault that the tenants are gone, and the rent-roll with them. He did not blight the potato; he did not evict the people, level their cottages, lay waste their farms. His case is but an old story repeated. Did you ever know about the Duke of Shetland and his heir?”

No; Mr. Benaron had never heard about the Duke of Shetland or his heir either.

“He hated his probable successor just as Marmaduke Conway hated his heir; but, unlike Mr. Conway, he had great forests—pine forests—forests wide and valuable.”

“Yes?” Mr. Benaron felt that somewhere there lay an interest for him in the anecdote, though he could not yet trace it.

“The trees were not entailed, so he had the right to cut down as many as he chose.”

“That is unusual, surely?”

“Unusual or not, he had it and exercised it. The stroke of the axe was heard from morning till night, and fell like sweetest music on his ear.

“At last the head forester came to him, and said:

“‘Your Grace, we have cut down everything the axe will touch.’

“‘Take the scythe, then,’ answered his Grace. Now you know exactly the spirit in which Marmaduke Conway has dealt with his heir. Famine did not clear the ground quickly enough for his desire, or plague or pestilence, so he tried every artifice to leave the land bare. The people were down, and he trampled on them; they were poor, and he persecuted them; he brought charges against them which, though false, served as good a purpose as if they had been true. He said innocent men maimed his horses and killed his sheep, and got compensation over and over again for injuries inflicted at his own instigation. The district was burdened to pay for losses he only sustained because he chose to sustain them. He tried to transport innocent men, who had eventually to leave their country because he owed them a grudge—the grudge of breathing the same air as himself.”

“But, Mr. Barry, such things could not have happened?”

“Couldn’t they! You know better than I, doubtless?”

“In a civilised country!”

“Should you call a country civilised where three men held shares in one horse, where each of the three shod a hoof and let the fourth go unshod, and the poor brute fell lame; where, when Lord George Hill, wishing to give employment, directed some shirts to be made for him, there was found to be but one needle in the parish, and the point of that was broken? Rather than lose the order, the point was reground on a stone. There is plenty of stone in Donegal,” added Mark, with bitter emphasis.

“I must try whether there is not something else,” observed Mr. Benaron.

“You will find plenty of other things, but little of value,” answered Mr. Barry, getting up and taking his hat.

“And about that girl—that heiress?”

Mark laughed.

“You must be very hopeless indeed when you fall back on such a forlorn hope as the lady in question. I should not like to be the man who would suggest to her guardian that her fortune might well pay my cousin’s debts.”

“Do you mean to tell me, then, Mr. Conway has no chance of marrying her?”

“I think his chance is so remarkably small as to be invisible even to the eye of faith.”

“Then perhaps you will kindly tell me where I am to look for my money?”

“I could not think of being so presumptuous,” answered Mark; and, having managed to say all he wished to say then, Mr. Barry, with a careless nod, left Mr. Benaron to his reflections.

XV

DALLYING

When Sir Henry Beecham said, as he often did say, that “Letitia’s husband possessed every sense but common sense,” he was mistaken.

Mr. Mark Barry had plenty of common sense, worldly sense, extraordinary sense, what he lacked was tact, which is quite a different matter: for though he chanced to be wholly deficient in that delicate sense of touch which prevents a man rubbing his neighbour’s fur the wrong way, he knew the odd corners and queer crannies in other people’s minds exhaustively, and his advice to Mr. Stirling about the Conway agency was, therefore, good as advice could be.

Terence Conway had borne almost more in the way of interference than he was likely to bear patiently. There comes a time when even a worm will turn, and Mark’s surmise that such a period had nearly arrived for the owner of Calgarry was undeniably correct.

The young man felt after leaving Latouche’s that he had cast all his cares on the shoulders of Messrs. Bray & Lucan; but then Mark Barry, with his suggestions and his insistence, came upon him like a moral volcano, destroying all the crops and flowers which were ready to spring.

He felt he hated Mark, and he would have liked to quarrel with him once and for all. There are some people, however, to whom it does not come naturally to quarrel, and Terence was one of them. He had his own ideas of life, and having a “row all round,” often the very best thing a person so situated can do, did not enter into his scheme of happiness. Still, in the state of mind which possessed him when he partook of that unwished-for dinner with Mark, had a future agent, chaperoned by Letitia’s husband, appeared before him, he would have nipped all chances of negotiation at once.

As matters turned out, he spent rather a pleasant evening. Mark, with an unsuspected king up his sleeve, made himself delightful. The dinner was capital and the wine excellent.

Afterwards they went to Hawkins Street in time to see a very fair play well acted; and Mark, who met some friends at the theatre, insisted on everybody returning to a supper which proved one of the merriest affairs at which Terence had assisted for many a day.

He left in the best of high spirits, half persuaded “Mark was not a bad fellow after all,” and when he awoke next morning reflected pleasantly he had a “thumping sum” in hand and a decent credit at Latouche’s on which he could draw. No need to repent having put up at Morrison’s now—no need to stint himself in any way: was he not Conway of Calgarry, a name once to conjure with? and if times were changed and he had dipped the estate a little, what then?

It was his to do what he liked with—it was his slave. He could sell—he could mortgage up to the hilt, if he chose; but he had no intention of taking that evil path: instead, he was fully determined to make an excellent thing out of the property and his future. He would show Philippa the stuff he was made of. He had been foolish, mad; but looking on the clean new leaf just turned over, he felt determined nothing should be written there but what was honest and of good repute. Full of which excellent resolves, he dressed, breakfasted, and with a light heart sallied forth into the Dublin streets about the time Mr. Stirling had reached Drogheda on his way to the north.

To him, after he arrived in Donegal, everything fell out almost precisely as Mr. Barry had foretold. Ann Patterson said Mr. Malet would be sure to know for how long a time Mr. Conway would be away; and Mr. Malet, when he heard the stranger’s business, offered at once to write to his friend about the matter, espousing Mr. Stirling’s cause from the first glance in his keen, sensible face, and taking it up with great enthusiasm when he learned that Messrs. Bray & Lucan, who, curiously enough, had the management of Sir Francis Straffan’s affairs, also knew the ex-agent well, and would report favourably concerning him.

Had Mark Barry been aware of this, he would not have recommended his friend to go a step beyond Kildare Street. As it was, if he had ever known who the Baronet’s lawyers were, he had forgotten; and Mr. Stirling felt perfectly satisfied to find himself in Donegal, where, according to his instructions, he put up at the only hotel Dunfanaghy boasts.

He could not have gone to a better place in order to gain information about Calgarry. No one imagined who he was or what he wanted, and he had not spent long years as an agent in Ireland for nothing.

Though Mr. Malet was naturally reticent about Mr. Conway’s property, other persons, amongst them the Messrs. McKye, had no such reasons for silence. Mr. Stirling professed himself much interested in soils; he had, in fact, in his own mind the germ of an idea which has since been scientifically worked in England (whether profitably or not is quite another question), and believed it was chemically possible to supply to any soil the precise ingredients necessary to render it fertile.

That Nature has not always been so grateful for such attentions as she might, perhaps only proves her to be a little self-sufficient. At the time Mr. Stirling evolved his theory the land had not been dosed much with any foreign stimulant except guano; and though to this day there are those who believe the potato blight owed its origin to that manure, just as there are others who maintain it was entirely attributable to the Maynooth Grant, the notion which has been steadily growing ever since had even then begun to influence the minds of thoughtful agriculturists, that Mother Earth, understanding her business very imperfectly, can by no means be safely left to her own devices.

Mr. Stirling therefore amused himself by making inquiries about soils and fertilisers (they were not called fertilisers at that time, but the same thing precisely was meant). He heard a great deal concerning “wrack,” of which he had no experience, but that nevertheless found favour in his eyes; also shells; also spade labour, which latter had, according to the elder McKye’s statement, converted Mountain View from a sort of Sahara to a luxuriant Delta.

With a modest pride Mr. McKye senior, who made the stranger’s acquaintance in the commercial room at McLean’s—in its way a sort of Rialto, where men do congregate, or at least eat and drink—finding the visitor interested in the reclamation of land, invited him to inspect what had been done with the expenditure of a little money and a considerable amount of thought on “as unpromising a piece of ground as any in Donegal.”

Nothing loth, Mr. Stirling gladly accepted the invitation. He was asked to stay the night, and he did so. The rule at Mountain View was a strict Calvinism tempered by a keen appreciation of the Egyptian fleshpots and a liberal consumption of Irish whisky. No better house to stay in could have been desired by anyone fond of creature comforts. There was that plenty about it which is appreciatively called by servants on the other side of St. George’s Channel a “roughness,”—not a man, woman, or child, dog, cat, or animal of any sort but had enough and to spare; and the result was a certain geniality and breadth of charity, both of thought and speech never to be found where people affect a pulse and water diet, or even the charming monotony of ham, eggs, and potatoes. The Reverend Mr. McKye professed himself extremely sorry for the owner of Calgarry.

“As goodly a young fellow as you would meet in a day’s journey,” he said; “pleasant, straightforward, and not at all set up. All the same, I wish he could be induced to sell; the thing is too big for him—too big for any man who has not an income at his back. The house and grounds alone would require a little fortune to keep up properly. I don’t see what he is to do unless he marries that heiress, and then she’ll be wanting to spend all her money in England.”

So the affairs of the rich are criticised by a whole county, just as the affairs of the poor are gossiped over by their needy fellows.

Not one of us escapes. No matter how lowly, no matter how exalted, we are all reckoned fit objects to be put in the social microscope and examined, till there is no weak spot left of which Jack Oakes and Tom Styles have not the fullest cognisance.

Long before, the McKyes—having exhausted their ingenuity in fruitless efforts to discover what Mr. Stirling’s business with Mr. Conway might be—had decided he was either the emissary from someone who wanted to get a “long lease,” or a confidential agent despatched by a possible mortgagee to spy out the land. They inclined to the former notion, both on account of Mr. Stirling’s interest in the ground, and his anxiety to ascertain whether there were any likely harbours and where. He went poking all about the shore, holding conversations with boatmen, interviewing the coastguardsmen, and obtaining information concerning English and Scotch ports.

He visited Gweedore, where Lord George Hill’s El Dorado did not meet with his unqualified approval. He thought though much had been done, more might with a less expenditure have been effected. This is the way all the world over. It is more easy to criticise a house than to build it. He had not seen Gweedore before roads were made, farms parcelled out, that vile system, “a cow’s grass,” abolished, and the natives shown a path to civilisation, whether they chose to tread it or not.

Wild enough, desolate enough, remote enough from even the echoes of this world’s business and pleasure, Gweedore is to this present day; but it is a seat of learning and very centre of polite life in comparison with what it was when a man who wanted to benefit his poorer brethren took in hand to improve their condition and amend their, ways, and met with the usual fate which attends those who try to do people good against their will.

Mr. Stirling, as an impartial outsider, at once hit on the blot in the plan.

“Too patriarchal,” he said to Mr. McKye. “Too much of the father and children business; inhabitants too much helped instead of being taught to walk alone.”

“Ah well,” answered Mr. McKye, “we must give him credit for the best of intentions.”

“Poor Lord George!” thought Mr. Malet, who chanced to be present. “Surely if he could hear such praise it would amply repay him for all his outlay!”

These visits were not paid or inquiries instituted within the space of a few days; in fact, they spread themselves over three weeks, during the whole of which time Mr. Stirling held to his headquarters in Dunfanaghy.

•    •    •    •

The Calgarry Vicar had written once, twice, thrice to Terence without eliciting any reply.

After his interview with Messrs. Bray & Lucan the young man wrote fully explaining the position, and returning Mr. Malet’s loan; and this letter was supplemented by a communication from Kildare Street, from which the Vicar gathered the lawyers were not quite satisfied with the turn affairs had taken. He did not exactly know himself whether to be pleased or displeased with Mark’s interference. He saw the motive which prompted it, and was quick to recognise that rogues cannot always be dealt with by honourable men; yet in his heart he wished the boisterous unscrupulous barrister had not got mixed up with Terence’s business.

“I hope it will turn out well,” he considered, solacing himself by remembering he should hear all the reasons for so sudden a change of front when Mark returned.

As days and weeks passed by, however, a new cause for anxiety arose. Where could Terence be? What could have happened to detain him? When he left Calgarry it was with the fixed intention of remaining in Dublin as short a time and returning home as speedily as might be; indeed, so decided was he on this point that Ann Patterson received strict orders to forward no letters.

And now, when after three weeks a formidable pile had accumulated in the library at Calgarry, a pile daily growing larger, Mr. Malet became uneasy. Terence could not have gone to London, because letters from London were constantly arriving for him; he could scarcely be ill, or Morrison’s people would have communicated the fact. Could he have met with an accident, and be lying, unknown and badly injured, in one of the Dublin hospitals? He took Mr. Stirling’s opinion on this point, which that gentleman gave to the effect: “Mr. Conway was likely amusing himself.”

“Amusing himself!” repeated the Vicar indignantly: “with such an estate as this lying unproductive; with people asking for land and no one to let it to them; with May little more than six weeks off and not a crop in the ground; with letters I am sure ought to be attended to lying unread and unanswered! No, Mr. Stirling, you must make a better guess than that.”

“Well, of course,” answered the other, “I have no knowledge of Mr. Conway; but I have had a long experience of men in his position, and, to tot up the whole thing, I believe you’ll find I’m right.”

“If you are—” but there Mr. Malet stopped. Mr. Stirling did not know all the circumstances, and he was wrong, of course.

“And it is a shame to keep you here,” went on the Vicar, after he had not said what he meant to do in case he found Terence was playing truant.

“I am in no hurry,” answered Mr. Stirling. “I am enjoying myself very well, and can wait awhile longer with great satisfaction. If you are anxious, though, why do you not write to Kildare Street? They know there where Mr. Conway is, I’ll be bound.”

As this seemed a more likely suggestion than the last, Mr. Malet sent off a letter by the same day’s post, asking Mr. Bray to forward him Terence’s address.

“He cannot be at Morrison’s,” he explained, “as I have written there three times without receiving an answer.”

More fortunate in his appeal to Kildare Street, the Vicar received a reply in return, saying—

“Mr. Conway had gone on a visit to some relations—his address was enclosed.”

Mr. Malet happened to be alone when he read that address: “Monksborough, Queen’s Co.,” therefore no one ever knew what he said.

Mr. McKye, a shrewd judge of character, was wont to declare, “Mr. Malet might be a Christian last, but he was a man first,” and it was probably in the latter character he spoke.

He felt deeply injured—mortally angry. Before he could at all calm himself he had to climb to the top of the cliffs where Letitia and Terence had so often carried Audna, and compose his mind by a look over the wide ocean lying calm as a mirror below. Then he bethought him whose servant he was, and how it behoved the servant of such a Master to have toleration even to a man who could so far forget himself as to rush off at the turning-point of his career to the Foyles of Monksborough.

“People he should have avoided like a pestilence,” thought the clergyman; “people who never claimed him for kin while he was poor and unconsidered, who would let him starve rather than ask him inside their doors if he did not own Calgarry. Ah, Terence, Terence!” and the Vicar’s face softened and saddened as his eyes strayed over the glittering sea. “I am afraid for you—sorely afraid that, ‘unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,’ though you now hold your future, humanly speaking, in the hollow of your hand.”

As he turned to retrace his steps he saw Mr. Stirling advancing to meet him.

“You were right,” said the Vicar, assuming an air of indifference he was far from feeling; “Mr. Conway is staying with some friends.”

“I expected that was the way of it,” replied the other. “I wonder when he will be back?”

“I shall write to him today, and endeavour to ascertain,” rejoined Mr. Malet, who probably never put a much greater constraint upon himself than subsequently when inditing that letter.

“If your absence is likely to be much prolonged,” he said, with chilling politeness, “would it not be well to order your letters to be forwarded? There are upwards of two hundred awaiting you now, and some amongst them may require attention.”

Then he went on to say Mr. Stirling had been hoping to see him for three weeks, and referred to Messrs. Bray & Lucan. He did not add any encomiums on Mr. Stirling, or proffer any advice from himself. The letter was as cold as snow, but reading it in the full swing of a gay country house, Terence did not notice its reserve.

“By Jove! two hundred letters!” he muttered. “There must be some confoundedly unpleasant among that lot! I shall have to face them soon;” and while his friends were calling for him to “Come along; the horses are at the door,” he dashed off a hasty note:

Please arrange with Mr. Stirling for me; let him step into the agency at once, if you approve; beg him not to stop in Dunfanaghy, but take up his abode at Calgarry till we can see about a house for him. Do not forward any letters. Sufficient for the day, etc. Shall be home before the end of the week.

—Yours affectionately,

Terence.

“Mr. Conway thinks you might be more comfortable at Calgarry House,” remarked Mr. Malet tentatively, when he had said the owner would be at home in a few days, and left Terence’s other suggestions unnamed.

“It is very good of Mr. Conway,” replied Mr. Stirling, “but I have no reason to complain of my present location; and anyhow I think, as there is no chance of coming to a conclusion just yet, I will take a run over to Derry, and get back about the week’s end.”

XVI

WELCOME HOME

When Mr. Malet’s next communication arrived at Monksborough, Terence was dressing for a ball. He had tied his cravat just to his mind, and was about to put on his waistcoat, when the letter reached him.

This time there could be no mistake as to its tenor. The Vicar could be very bitter when he liked, and it was the man more than the Christian who came to the front in that epistle. Not a sentence but ended with a stinging cut, not a remark but was finished by a lash. Nothing undignified or brutal; the workmanship as neat as work could be; yet Terence, when he came to the last word, felt himself indeed the very chief of sinners.

Mr. McKye was wont, Sunday after Sunday, to deal out the most fearful threatenings against his flock. He never got into the pulpit without making the dry bones shake in a truly terrible manner, but at the last he always held before them some faint hope of ultimate salvation.

In his letter to Terence, Mr. Malet failed utterly to imitate this excellent example. No grain of comfort, no hope of grace was to be extracted from beginning to end, and Mr. Conway consequently completed his toilette in a very different frame of mind from that with which he had begun it.

The castigation was not at all too severe; even while smarting he admitted that. What business had he at the Foyles’? Would they pay his debts, settle his difficulties, let his land, get in his rents? He came thinking no harm, and he stayed because staying was so pleasant.

Life had seemed delightful to him when he met Larry Foyle accidentally in Dublin and allowed himself to be spirited away. And the weeks had passed like a dream. Charming people were staying in the house, where an incessant stream of visitors caused constant change. Driving parties, riding parties, dancing parties, dinner parties made existence in the country seem more delightful than existence in town ever had done. The Foyles were a most agreeable family. On the verge of ruin, they would have spread a feast and invited their friends to partake of it, could they only have procured the wherewithal for the feast on credit. No one except the servants did anything useful at Monksborough, or thought of doing anything.

The family toiled not, neither did they spin. The estate was mortgaged to the last shilling. Foyle père was in debt up to his eyes, his sons were in debt also up to their eyes; and yet they ate of the best, slept softly, dressed fashionably, entertained handsomely, and lived “according to their rank.”

After a while there would be a deluge, probably before Mr. Foyle’s grey hairs were brought with sorrow to the grave; but they had great faith that the waters would leave them high and dry somewhere, and meantime, unless they meant to abandon themselves to despair, they could not alter their mode of living.

Truly a brilliant example for the owner of Calgarry—for a young fellow whose heart beat time to music, who loved the tones of singing men and singing women, who only felt he lived when amusing himself, who was a favourite with ladies and popular among men; whose nature was good, but whose training had been bad; and who ought, more than most men, to have turned a deaf ear to the blandishments of that terrible siren who lies in wait for foolish folk, and while calling herself Pleasure, knows full well her name is Death.

Yes, he had enjoyed himself. There was a lady in the house, who, being engaged, felt consequently she might flirt with “that silly, stupid, sentimental Terence” to her heart’s content. She took him entirely under her wing, she constituted him her cavalier, they rode side by side, he drove her out; they sat apart talking confidentially, she of her Philip, he of his Philippa, and the whole burden of their lay was love, still love.

The interchange of ideas, the communion of souls had been delightful. She was not in the least like Philippa, any more than he resembled Philip, but what did that signify? It made their friendship all the more piquant. How beautifully she danced! what light hands she had in riding! Her voice was full of melody, her figure perfect, nothing statuesque about her: quite the contrary—she was full of life, merriment, and mischief, and so sympathetic; she would sit with her dark blue eyes fixed on his face, listening for half an hour at a stretch to the confidences he poured forth concerning Philippa. And now all this was to end!

He had eaten his cake, and he must brush away the crumbs, and go back to Donegal at once.

He made up his mind on that point before he went downstairs. In the ballroom he broke the news to Miss Poler, who took the news badly. That evening—spite of the absent Philip and Philippa, they were more sympathetic than ever—she gave him a flower from her bouquet, in return for which, says report, he kissed her hand. Who knows? They were both making believe, yet sometimes make-believe is a game which feigns reality passably well. At any rate, it was all over, the business of life will not wait for laggards, and Terence knew he must get home without delay.

He remained a night in Dublin, in order to see his solicitors and ascertain their opinion of Mr. Stirling, which proved extremely favourable.

“Heaven be praised for that!” thought the young man; “my mind is now at rest about an agent;” and hailing a car, he drove to Morrison’s in order to pick up his luggage, whence he proceeded to Amiens Street, and took his ticket for the Black North.

The mellow voices of his Southern friends, the warm greetings, the honeyed compliments had been dangerously pleasant to him. He knew as well as he knew anything that the Foyles were not to be trusted—that with them it was out of sight out of mind; but they were delightful people to be with, and he dreaded the greetings which awaited him at home.

In truth, a lonely home for any man to return to, even had those letters not been lying in the library, ready to spring at his throat the moment he entered Calgarry.

With a great effort he went and looked at them before looking at anything else. It was a fine afternoon in March, and the sun shone cool and bright through the windows, and upon the great table where the letters were ranged. He drew a chair forward, and sitting down, began to cut open the envelopes desperately.

Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills—bills for everything a man might rationally have been supposed not to want—bills little, bills great, bills forgotten, bills remembered, bills delivered and re-delivered, notes drawing his attention to previous applications, bills accompanied by a request for further orders, bills which the sender “felt astonished” had not been attended to, bills which came more modestly, requesting that Mr. Conway would attend to them. Then followed a sort of lull, filled by letters from acquaintances: some notes from Letitia; a gossiping epistle from Sir Henry, in which he mentioned that Philippa had gone to Hastings with her dear friend Mrs. Vivian Rawson: a few hasty lines written in good spirits by Mark after his interview with Amos; and then Terence was led gradually onward to envelopes which could never have been directed anywhere but in a solicitor’s office. There were not many of these, but they sufficed. Four of the largest creditors had already invoked the aid of law. Four gentlemen, dating from different addresses, stated they were instructed to apply for sums which ran into five heavy figures, and unless such sums, together with costs (so trifling as to appear, when contrasted against the debt, absolutely ridiculous) were paid within seven days, proceedings would be taken without further notice.

This was scarcely agreeable—but worse remained behind. Terence had not yet exhausted all the treasures of his correspondence. These epistles had arrived while he was amusing himself at Monksborough, and the lawyers and creditors, not being similarly employed, had waxed wroth at Mr. Conway’s silence, and jumped simultaneously, as it appeared, to the one conclusion which for some inscrutable reason always seems to occur at once to such gentlemen, namely, that the debtor is “trifling with them.”

There is nothing much more annoying than the idea that one is being trifled with, and accordingly four further letters were despatched to Donegal, begging to be favoured with the name of Mr. Conway’s solicitor, and informed whether he would receive service of four writs. When he had arrived at that point Terence looked at his watch, and found by sending a man off on horseback he could still catch the evening mail from a town lying out of the Dunfanaghy and Letterkenny route. Ringing the bell, he ordered one of the grooms to get ready while he dashed off a hurried line to Mark, and enclosed the letters.

When he had sealed up the wrapper, and despatched his messenger, he drew a long breath, and nerved himself to wait for Mark’s reply and the next move in the game. He knew Mark would instruct his man, whoever he might be, to receive service, though he would be very angry at matters having been allowed to proceed so far. That could not be helped now, however; but still Terence wished with all his heart he had not stayed so long at Monksborough.

“I will go out and get a breath of fresh air before dinner,” he said to himself; in truth, he felt almost stifled. O, that he were out of debt, that he had never got into debt, that he had been wise in time! But Mark would put everything right for him after a little while: and if he remained at home, and began the great work of reclaiming Calgarry and himself, there was really no cause for despair.

The March air was keen and bracing, and his spirits rose at he walked. He would go across and make his peace with Mr. Malet, and tell him what Mr. Bray said about the new agent. Matters would go well, now he possessed an agent; for, though Mr. Stirling and he had not yet met or concluded any arrangement, he nevertheless felt assured matters would be settled between them immediately.

So thinking, he had nearly reached the gates, when he saw a stranger advancing towards him.

He was young—too young, surely, for Mr. Stirling; but it probably was some messenger from him; a good-looking young man—not a gentleman, but well-dressed and well-mannered.

As Terence drew near, he stopped, and, raising his hat, said respectfully,

“Mr. Conway?”

“I am Mr. Conway,” answered Terence pleasantly.

“I have a—a—letter for you,” went on the young man, putting his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and drawing forth a folded paper. “I do not think there is any answer, but—”

Terence made no answer, at all events. He had opened the paper, and stood staring at it, while he read:

“Victoria, by the Grace of God.”

What did Victoria, by the grace of God, want with him, Terence Conway? Only his presence in eight days’ time before one of her right honourable judges.

A couple of hours’ later, Terence was sitting, after his untasted dinner had been removed, beside a table on which wine and dessert still stood.

Mr. Malet, seated on his right side, looked at him in grave silence. Mr. Stirling, on his left, engaged in mixing a tumbler of punch, seemed lost in thought.

They had walked over together to learn if Mr. Conway were back, and found him in a state of mind which beggared description.

“There is a curse on me,” he broke out at last; “don’t you believe that now?” he added, turning with fierce earnestness on Mr. Malet.

“I am afraid there is,” answered the Vicar dryly; “but not the Nun’s.”

XVII

“WHAT ARE WE TO DO?”

Unlike Mr. Malet on a somewhat similar occasion, Mr. Mark Barry was not alone when he received the half-frenzied letter Terence indicted on his return to the house after his interview with that well-mannered young man from Belfast, who had been intrusted by his employers, acting as agents for Mr. Quinion of London, with the due delivery of Victoria Dei Gratia’s pressing invitation to Mr. Conway.

Letitia and the elder of the infant babies were present at the time, but no stranger, which proved extremely fortunate, for Mark’s tirade was violent.

“I assure you,” Mrs. Barry told Sir Henry afterwards, “it was quite unfit for publication;” to which Sir Henry, in perfect good faith, replied,

“I can well believe that, my dear.”

“Dolt, ass, scoundrel, blackguard, inconceivable idiot, drivelling fool!” were the mildest terms hurled at the erring Terence.

Mark’s language was indeed dreadful. Like the Scotch nobleman, “he stood and swore at lairge,” till even Letitia, accustomed as she was to her husband’s flights of fancy and flowers of rhetoric, entreated him to “moderate the rancour of his tongue.”

“Terence may be foolish—I don’t say he is not sometimes,” pleaded Mrs. Barry, who was always ready to take up the cudgels for any one against any other. “But he is not a rogue, and I won’t sit by and hear him called one.”

“I only wish he were a rogue,” retorted Mark. “Better be a rogue—a thief—a forger—a murderer—than a fool. I would rather have to do with the greatest scoundrel unhung than with a fellow so destitute of sense, gratitude, and common decency as that precious cousin of yours. He is mad—stark, staring mad!—madder than any maniac in Bedlam! That’s where he ought to be. If I had any voice in the matter, I’d have him chained there, and put on bread and water—I would!”

“They don’t chain lunatics now, or diet them on bread and water either, for that matter,” said Letitia, with sublime contempt.

“Much you know about what they do!” returned Mark, pleasantly relieving his speech with light and sportive expletives. “At any rate, I know what I am going to do, and that is wash my hands of Terence Conway and his concerns. By ———! the Duke was right not to leave him a penny, and I honour the old villain for his discrimination. The money he sold his soul to get has gone where it won’t be squandered, anyhow. As for Terence, he is not fit to be trusted across the street alone. I only hope Philippa Dutton will take precious care not to marry him.”

“So do I,” edged in Mark’s wife. “What is my darling crying for?” turning to the hope of the house of Barry. “Papa is not angry with you.”

“Look here, Letitia,” said her lord, “if I thought that child of yours would grow up to be such a thundering fool as Terence Conway, I’d twist his neck now—I would! It might save the hangman a job hereafter.”

“Whatever he grows up, I hope he will use better language than his father,” observed Mrs. Barry. “If you can manage to speak half a dozen sentences without swearing, Mark, tell me what poor Terence has done; nothing, I daresay, to make such a rout over.”

“O, no! nothing to speak of—nothing worth mentioning! He has only done such a ——— day’s work that he’ll have to quit Calgarry. He has danced himself out of an estate and a position a lord might envy. Damn the Foyles! What business had he to go to them at all? But there—as he has made his bed, he must lie on it! I won’t stir a finger again to help him.”

“Yes, you will,” said Letitia, with conviction.

“No, I won’t,” returned Mark, with greater conviction.

And so the discussion went on to the tune of “You will,” and “I won’t,” till Mr. Barry banged the door behind him preparatory to writing such a letter to Calgarry as made Terence’s hair almost stand on end.

It was a sort of epistolary commination which Mark recited over young Conway’s head. The ban laid on the Jackdaw of Rheims was a mere bagatelle compared with the woes prophesied as impending over the owner of Calgarry. Everything a creditor could do Mr. Barry, with a fiendish pleasure, explained as certain to happen. Again he went through the washing process mentioned to Letitia. Again he repeated his admiration for the old Duke’s wisdom. Again he remarked that all his sympathies were with the man who had made so wise a will and the girl who would, he hoped, be wise in time, and send her imbecile suitor to the right about.

“But Sir Henry will see she does not throw herself away,” said Mark, summing up the many agreeable incidents in store for Terence. “His head is screwed on right enough; besides, Philippa is wide awake. She knew what she was about when she refused to engage herself to you. She never will now: so, having got your affairs into this confounded mess, you had better go back to the Foyles for an indefinite period. Tell them you are ruined; of course, under such circumstances, they will be delighted to see you.”

What Terence might have done, or where he might have gone, had he been alone when this letter reached him it is useless to surmise, for, as it happened, he was not alone, but seated at breakfast, with Mr. Stirling as vis-à vis.

“That is pleasant,” throwing Mark’s epistle across the table; and then he rose and went to the window, and considered all the disasters which were closing around him. At the end of eight days, the royal command had said, he ought to appear; and now it was the fifth morning, and Mr. Barry, having washed his hands of Calgarry and Terence over and over again, meant to do nothing; and there remained no time for anybody else to do anything, and the Philistines, armed and ready for the battle, would be upon him before he could even secure legal assistance in the fray.

Mr. Terence Conway had been brought up in a different school and among different people from Mark Barry. He was not naturally foul-mouthed, and in his conversation he observed that moderation of language which usually distinguishes gentlemen; but, however well educated, the heart, we know, is desperately wicked, and, deep down in his, Terence heartily cursed Letitia’s husband. If only he had not meddled in affairs which in no wise concerned him, if he had left matters to the sole management of Messrs. Bray & Lucan, things need never have come to such a pass.

What in the wide world was to be done now? Terence felt like a man cut off from help—drowning in sight of land—perishing before a friend could reach him. The Garry flowed peacefully on before his eyes; the sloping lawns lay fair and tranquil in the morning sunshine. And these things, together with many, many more, were to pass away from him, so Mark said; all because he had dallied at Monksborough—stopped, as a child might with other children at play!

Meantime Mr. Stirling had time to read the letter through twice before Terence, having reached this point in his cogitations, returned to the breakfast-table, and asked in a tone of absolute despair,

“Is there any way out of this?”

“Of course there is,” answered Mr. Stirling.

“What way?” demanded Terence.

“I am not just prepared to say that at a minute’s notice,” was the reply.

“I never thought Barry would pitch me over.”

“I don’t believe he has,” said Mr. Stirling. “This letter amounts to nothing—it is only his way—I mean,” went on the Scotchman, remembering what he had for the moment quite forgotten—the fact of his being supposed to have no acquaintance with Mr. Barry; “that he evidently was in a great passion when he wrote to you. I suppose his bark is worse than his bite. No one worth calling a friend would leave another in such a lurch, no matter how foolishly he might be thought to have acted.”

“Mark is a very queer fellow, though,” observed Mr. Conway, in a tone of deep despondency.

No one knew that better than Mr. Stirling. In good truth, the whole affair looked to him ugly enough. That Mr. Benaron and the rest of the tribes meant business was obvious; and if even one judgment were allowed to go by default, Mr. Conway’s insecure position would immediately become serious. Time had been allowed to run so short also, any further delay might prove fatal. Even if Messrs. Bray & Lucan were sufficiently Christian to take up the matter again, Mr. Stirling doubted their capabilities at the crisis which was now imminent, as much as Mark Barry had questioned their power at an earlier stage of the proceedings.

“It will play the deuce if Benaron gets judgment signed,” thought Terence’s new friend, but he did not say so. He sat thinking that it would not do to invoke assistance from the magnates in Kildare Street till it could be ascertained exactly what Mr Barry had left undone, and then their assistance would probably be too late.

A “telegraph message”—the word “telegram” had not then been invented—to Mark certainly, at the first blush, seemed a feasible way of finding out whether an appearance had been put in or not, but difficulties surrounded even this apparently simple proceeding.

“You see there is really no time to spare. Though I cannot believe Mr. Barry has failed to instruct a solicitor on your behalf, still we ought to be sure.”

“He says he will do nothing. You see that in his letter.”

“Ah, but the letter was written in anger. Likely as not you will have another in the morning set to a different tune; but we ought not to depend on tomorrow. What should you think if I were to start right away to London, and see whether Mr. Barry s back is still up? It would not take me long to find out the lie of the land; and, supposing the worst, I could employ some lawyer to stave matters off till we have time to get our breath.”

“The very thing!” exclaimed Terence eagerly. “Will you go? I shall never forget your kindness!”

“I’ll go fast enough; and don’t be vexing yourself, all will came right after a while;” and, having so spoken, Mr. Stirling poured out another cup of coffee, and addressed himself in good earnest to making a substantial meal before setting out for England.

“I do not much relish leaving you here alone,” he said, as he finished, looking at Terence, who was walking restlessly up and down the room.

“Why, do you suppose I am likely to get into any mischief?” returned the young man, with a doleful laugh.

“As to that, it is hard to know,” was the reply, “but I was not thinking of mischief. I am afraid you will worry yourself into a fever. You’ll have to put in a long time of suspense, and there is nothing here to occupy your mind while you are waiting for news.”

“I know I shall have a long time of suspense, but I must bear it as best I can.”

Mr. Stirling eyed the young man doubtfully. Already he had grown very fond of him. When we see this sort of thing, we say some persons have a remarkable faculty for attaching others to them, and think we have solved a mystery apparently inexplicable on ordinary lines, all the time blinding ourselves to the fact that the whole thing is a kindly arrangement of Nature, who likes to make the strong useful to the weak.

“Providence,” says the old proverb, “takes care of drunken people and fools,” and the same Providence has implanted an extraordinary tenderness in most hearts for those unable from any cause to look after themselves. An absolutely incapable mistress generally secures most excellent servants, such as the careful and clever housewife yearns for in vain. This is perfectly easy of proof, because when through any miracle the incapable mistress becomes capable, she no longer is blessed with domestic paragons: they go elsewhere, being more wanted, perhaps, across the road or round the corner, or in another county; at all events, they leave her. It was precisely on this principle that Mr. Stirling brooded over Terence Conway.

“You would not do well to be seen about London, perhaps, just now,” he said tentatively; “but you might do worse, I think, than travel there with me. You could keep yourself quiet, and you’d be on the spot to hear what was going on, and refer to in case of need, instead of hanging on the tenterhooks here. The notion pleases you, does it?”

“Pleases me! I should say so indeed!” cried Terence, who had, with a glad exclamation, sprung to his feet before Mr. Stirling’s speech was finished. “When shall you be ready to start? Surely Heaven sent you to me in my hour of need!”

Mr Stirling was sufficient of a Calvinist to believe the whole matter of his coming to Donegal must be regarded as one of predestination; but even he could scarcely forbear smiling when he remembered that Mark Barry had played the part of Heaven’s messenger.

“I must contrive to see him alone first,” he thought; “for if Mr. Conway found out he sent me here, we should never do another day’s good together.”

And this would have seemed a very grievous mischance to Mr. Stirling, who believed that in Calgarry he had discovered a place where he could rest and be thankful. Terence’s shortcomings did not trouble him at all as they troubled Mr. Malet. The Scotchman was one of those excellent people, never sufficiently to be admired, who was quite content to do his own duty, without troubling himself about the way other people did, or failed to do, theirs. He had, moreover, the widest toleration for landlords and the upper ten thousand generally. If they were not very bad, he accounted them good.

He did not see any use in looking at any human being, gentle or simple, through a magnifying glass. He found it easier and better altogether to take broad views of things. He had been a faithful agent to Sir Francis Straffan, “gathered” as much rent as he could for that baronet, and made things, at the same time, as light as might be for the tenants; and if affairs did not in the end turn out exactly as Mr. Stirling could have wished, why, that was his employer’s concern more than his.

“Do your best, and don’t fret,” was, in effect, Mr. Stirling’s simple creed, and who shall say he had not formed a good one for all temporal purposes?

When a man once begins to sit in judgment on his employers, and to lament that those set above him do not do their best also, he soon becomes a nuisance to everyone, for there is nothing which grows so fast as a habit of criticism. Mr. Stirling was perfectly clear of all tendency in this direction, and the relief Terence found in his society after the vivisection to which he had been morally subjected since he succeeded to Calgarry can only be imagined by those who have suffered from the candid comments of conscientious friends.

“You are too hard upon him—far,” said the new agent to Mr. Malet. “He is young, and it is natural he should like to enjoy himself. Maybe it would have been more prudent to have had his letters forwarded, but I have known men double his age who wouldn’t open letters when they got them, if they thought there was anything bad inside.”

It was this catholic spirit which proved so consolatory to Terence, and rendered even the dreary journey to London not wholly one of despair.

“Now, we will put up at a quiet house I know of,” said Mr. Stirling, taking the conduct of affairs, “and I will let you know all that is going on. You have nothing to do but sit still.”

Terence did not find it easy to sit still, but he got on better after Mr. Stirling brought Mark, clothed and in his right mind, comparatively speaking, to talk matters over.

“Of course, I told Reynolds to enter an appearance,” said Mr. Barry sulkily; “then I thought you could please yourself. I can’t advise now. The matter has gone clean beyond me.”

In spite of which statement, very little persuasion was needed in order to induce him to advise again.

“You must declare you are determined to fight, and you must fight if need be,” he finished. “If you don’t, Benaron and the rest will trample you like dust under their feet. Quinion is a very nasty customer; but he can’t sail quite so close to the wind as Reynolds. I don’t think Amos will much like Reynolds, but we shall see.”

Mr. Barry’s conjecture proved so right that next evening a special messenger arrived at the quiet hotel where Terence and his agent had put up, stating Mr. Benaron had sent a flag of truce, and then the diplomatic fight began in earnest.

Mr. Quinion possessed Mr. Benaron’s authority to say it would grieve him greatly to proceed to extremities against a gentleman for whom he entertained so friendly a feeling as he did for Mr. Conway. He could not consider Mr. Conway had treated him, after all his kindness, with proper consideration, but he was still willing to make allowances. He believed he had been badly advised—not of course by Mr. Reynolds, whom it was impossible to suppose conversant with all the circumstances, but by others. It was a thousand pities affairs could not be amicably arranged.

Mr. Reynolds thought so too, but he really saw nothing for it but to let a jury try the case.

A man with means might be willing to pay an extortionate demand rather than let the public know the full extent of his folly; but a man without means was differently situated. Mr. Conway had no option; all he could do was to set his back against the wall and fight.

“That is the position, Mr. Quinion,” finished Mr. Reynolds, who was careful, except by inference, not to say an unpleasant word concerning Terence’s creditors.

The whole matter promised to be disagreeable—very disagreeable indeed, Mr. Benaron felt. Mr. Quinion had been quite unable to see Mr. Reynolds’ cards. The only certainty with which he came away was that Mr. Conway’s solicitor firmly believed the owner of Calgarry could not pay, and that nobody could make him pay, precisely for the same reason that a Highlandman cannot be stripped of those articles of general attire which form no part of his costume.

Negotiations, if such the proceedings could be called, continued after this fashion for some days, till at last Mr. Quinion was reduced to asking helplessly,

“Then what are we to do?”

“Go on, I suppose—I really see no other course open.”

“Neither do I,” answered Mr. Benaron’s adviser; “but it is a pity.”

XVIII

QUITE BY ACCIDENT

It was “such a pity” that the eleventh hour still found Mr. Quinion still hesitating. There are times in all games when it seems better anyone should lead than ourselves. In the state of his cards Mr. Benaron’s solicitor most heartily wished the privilege had not chanced to lie with him.

“After you, sir,” he would most gladly have said; only he knew it was not for Mr. Reynolds to take the initiative, even had he desired to do so, which he did not.

From the first Mark Barry had summed up the position quite accurately. Mr. Benaron did not want to fight. To put on his war-paint, and get out his bows and arrows, and sharpen his tomahawk, as he had done, was one thing; but to run the chance of being shot, or scalped, or besmirched by an opponent, quite another.

He was daunted, not so much by the memory of his own many iniquities, as by a worrying doubt whether some forgotten sin might not be raised from the depths of his past to crush him in court.

If liars require good memories, rogues who go to law need even better; and Mr. Benaron could not but feel uneasy at a certain calm superiority in Mr. Reynolds’ manner, which implied that gentleman knew how to play his game, and felt confident as to its result.

He did not say a word; but each time Mr. Quinion met him (and he contrived to do so often) it was just as though Terence’s lawyer had drawn back with a bow and a smile, and observed with stately courtesy, “The next move is yours, sir.”

He had tried to see his hand, and failed. And now, in face of the trumps their opponent might hold, he scarcely liked to advise his client.

“Reynolds is hiding something good, or I am much mistaken,” he remarked to Mr. Benaron. “Have you any notion what it can be?”

Mr. Benaron had not the faintest notion. There were so many things, spite of all his caution, an adversary might have contrived to pick up, it was difficult to hazard an even wide conjecture as to the nature of the little damaging trifle Mr. Reynolds intended to keep till the last moment as an agreeable surprise all round.

“Well, when are you going to do anything in Mr. Conway’s matter?” asked Terence’s solicitor one day, with the easy air of a man who is quite ready for battle. He knew he held no honours; still it was not necessary to tell Mr. Quinion that. He was quite aware of all the weak points in his client’s case; but his tactics were to persuade the opposite side that Terence had a strong defence, which would fill those whom it might concern with amazement.

“As I have said more than once, we should have pressed matters on ere now,” Mr. Quinion answered, “but we have waited because we feel it is in some respects a hard case. As you know, Mr. Benaron is a kindly man, most forbearing, and he is averse to proceeding to extremities, though Mr. Conway seems disposed to leave us no alternative.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Reynolds, compressing his lips and shaking his head; “it is a hard case. You see, the young fellow expected so much.”

“If he had not led Mr. Benaron to believe he was certain to get a great deal, he would never have been advanced such amounts.”

“It is not Mr. Conway’s fault that he was left out of the will,” returned Mr. Reynolds, with a smile Mr. Quinion might interpret just as he pleased.

“Perhaps not. At any rate, it was not Mr. Benaron’s.”

“No,” said Mr. Reynolds, smiling again.

“And then, as to the value of the property we have been entirely misled.”

“It does not seem to be worth much, certainly,” agreed Mr. Reynolds.

“Though the property is the only thing we have now to look to.”

“Yes, that is a matter about which you must entirely please yourselves; and try to get as much as the law will let you.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is always such an amount of uncertainty in these cases—anyhow, you’ll have a deuce of a lot of bother before you secure a halfpenny.”

“Bother of what sort?”

“O, all sorts; there will be no end to the litigation.”

“I am afraid that is true enough.”

“I know it is true; I said so from the first. I can’t tell exactly who will get the bulk of the cheese. All I am sure of is that there won’t be much left for either plaintiff or defendant.”

“My own view exactly. What a pity your client has been so badly advised!”

“Thank you! I always appreciate flattery, even though it be somewhat barefaced.”

“My dear sir—my good Mr. Reynolds, you could not possibly think my remark had any reference to yourself.”

“To whom, then, did you refer?”

“To Mr. Mark Barry, of course; he is the moving spirit—the leader, if I may so express myself, of the whole conspiracy,” returned Mr. Quinion.

“You can express yourself, as you have done before now, as you choose, of course,” answered the other; “but I must say your mode of doing so seems to me singularly infelicitous. I am advising the owner of Calgarry, and it is perfectly absurd to suppose Mr. Barry is advising me.”

“At all events, I suppose he will appear for Mr. Conway,” continued Mr. Quinion, by no means convinced of Mark’s neutrality.

“Time enough to instruct counsel when you force us to do so. To be quite frank, I had another gentleman in my mind till this morning; but after Barry’s cross-examination of Stark yesterday I am not so sure—you have read it, of course?”

“No; I left home in a hurry, and have been busy ever since. What was the case?”

“Why, you must have heard of it,” said Mr. Reynolds, not in the least taken in by Mr. Quinion s affectation of childlike innocence. “Stark v. Slade—before Mr. Justice Jones and a special jury. Barry was for the defendant, and danced on Stark.”

“Did he, now?” said Mr. Quinion, who in a prophetic vision saw a similar performance being enacted on the body of his own client.

“He did, by Jove; you read the report through carefully,” advised Mr. Reynolds, as earnestly as though he did not know Mr. Quinion had read it through hours before. “Yes; Barry’s a wonderful fellow. This case, which he won clean against evidence, will bring him a lot of work. I don’t know that I can do better than retain him for Mr. Conway—I mean if you insist on our defending an action. You see he’s Irish, and knows all the ins and outs of the Conways and Calgarry; and, talking of Calgarry, I had a man with me yesterday I think you would have liked to see.”

“Indeed! who was that?”

“Mr. Conway’s agent.”

“A fine thing to have an agent when we are told the estate has no tenants and no rent-roll!”

“I suppose he will try to get some tenants. Anyhow, I am sure you ought to have heard his account of the estate.”

“Set to the same old tune?”

“Precisely to the same old tune, which I fear we shall have to sing in court.”

“O, you rely on him for a witness?”

“I did not when I entered our appearance, because I was not aware such a person lived; but I certainly rely on him now; also on the former agent who saw Calgarry depopulated, and helped largely to carry out the late owner’s wishes. The present man has only just put on his harness, and ran over to London on some business before beginning work. Seems a capable fellow. I wish you had seen him. Good-morning.” And Mr. Reynolds went on his way, thinking he need not plant or water any more seed for the present in Mr. Quinion’s receptive mind.

“He did not like the notion,” said Mr. Reynolds, the same afternoon, to Mark, who had looked in to hear if there were anything new. “He did not like it a bit. Your yesterday’s performance scared him. I never read a stiffer cross-examination, and I congratulate you. It was an immense success, though you were all wrong in your law.”

“My good fellow, drop it, please. If you only knew how I abominate that sort of thing!”

“What sort of thing?” asked Mr. Reynolds, surprised, for he thought his praise would have given the barrister pleasure.

“The talk of people about matters they do not understand.”

“O, you refer to what I said about your law. Well, you were all wrong.”

“I was not,” returned Mr. Barry.

“Yes, you were; and I will prove it to you.”

“No—do not, I entreat, expose your ignorance. That is the worst of all solicitors—they think they can teach their grandmothers.”

“I could teach you some of the first rudiments of law, at any rate,” retorted Mr. Reynolds.

“You flatter yourself, my friend: there is no single thing you could teach me, upon my word there is not;” and the barrister looked straight in the solicitor’s face with an expression there was no misunderstanding.

“Do you mean to say—” asked the latter.

“Yes, that is precisely what I do say,” returned Mark, nodding.

“Well, you are a cool hand,” said Mr. Reynolds, with a touch of respectful admiration, adding, after a pause, as though it were an outcome of his remark, as indeed it was, “Quinion did not like it at all.”

“He will probably like something else worse before he has done with me,” observed Mr. Barry, with careless superiority.

“Do you think he will want to see Stirling?”

“Yes, I do. I suspect I shall have a note to that effect in the morning.”

“There is nothing I should like better than to fight it out,” aids Mark valiantly.

Mr. Reynolds shook his head. “We haven’t a leg to stand on,” he answered.

“Nether has Amos,” retorted Mr. Barry, in reply to which statement the solicitor shook his head again.

“That is what I have always said, and what I intend to stick to,” went on Mark. “If you only repeat a thing often enough and with sufficient confidence, you will come eventually to believe it yourself.”

“I should think that depended on the nature of the thing,” objected Mr. Reynolds.

“Nature has nothing whatever to do with the matter,” persisted Mr. Barry. “There would be no use in Art if it did not entirely supersede Nature. Anyhow, I have indicated the tactics to be observed with regard to Amos—‘the wicked man, you know.’”

Unfortunate Mr. Benaron was precisely in a like plight with that oft-quoted individual. All through his career he had tried to eschew law when law assumed the form of publicity.

He believed in mild and gentle squeezing of the human orange till every drop of juice was extracted.

Persuasion is so much better than force. Very few of his clients were in a position to go to law when matters came to a final settlement—most cases, indeed, were never settled at all.

After Mr. Benaron had received one way or other not only a thousand, but a hundred thousand per cent, the time arrived when that gentleman was seen to the best advantage.

He could then be Christian, forgiving to an extent, generous beyond the dreams of fancy. He was wont to say to some foolish pigeon left without a feather, “I will never say another word about your debt to me. I know you would pay me if you could.” Nay, he, even more than once, was known to give to the naked, ruined wretch out of his “own property.” And then he would thank God he was not like Gideon or Ephraim in the City, who, after taking all he could get, still wanted more.

“Ah! I might have been a rich man,” he was in the habit of saying, “but for my tender heart. It is death to me to see the trouble these foolish young fellows bring on themselves.”

“In which case,” said Mark Barry on one occasion, “you must have died many deaths.”

The enmity between these worthies arose over some bill transactions which resulted in the disgrace and suicide of a young officer who was to have been married to Mark’s sister. Ever since, the barrister had, figuratively speaking, been thirsting for the usurer’s blood; and though in the matter referred to Mr. Benaron knew it was impossible for any old ashes to be raked into fire, he had an uneasy feeling that somehow, somewhere, Mark might have a rod in pickle for his benefit.

There were things which, if they could but be proved, or, indeed, if they could not be quite proved, would touch him in his tenderest point. He had thought to frighten Terence, and bring him at once within reach of the holy influences of Soho. As a rule, writs do frighten people; there is a majesty about the mandates of Victoria, when thus received, which seems almost equivalent to being collared by a policeman; and as Mr. Conway boasted no more stoicism than his fellows, it had seemed reasonable to suppose that the Royal command would at once bring him to his knees.

But, so far from being on his knees, Terence appeared to be standing very erect indeed. This alone was extremely disappointing, for Mr. Benaron had expected better things from a man under such deep obligations to himself; but when to this was added Mr. Reynolds’ calm attitude of indifference, and that detestable smile, which always seemed to say, “Ah, if you knew what I know you would not be gambolling about, unaware a wolf is watching you!” he became so uneasy as to be anxious.

“I do not like pushing matters to extremity,” he said to Mr. Quinion.

“Neither do I,” answered that gentleman. “I always told you I felt certain they had something in reserve.”

“And yet I am so perfectly in the right.”

“That will not prevent Mr. Barry from making you appear entirely in the wrong.”

Mr. Benaron looked down with a slightly troubled look on his usually calm countenance ere he answered:

“He is a dangerous fellow, that—a pestilent fellow!”

“He is, when on the other side.”

“On any side! I should not care to have him on mine.”

“I would rather have him for me than against me,” returned Mr. Quinion with conviction. “Well, what do you say? Had I better see this agent man or not?”

“What do you say? that is more the question.”

Mr. Benaron was clearly getting very anxious indeed.

The lawyer did not answer for a minute; then he suggested:

“Suppose you were to see him yourself? As you wish to arrange matters in an amicable way, why not propose a friendly and informal meeting? It is a thing I don’t much like; for it always seems to me a man, when once he barks, ought to be prepared to bite, and bite sharp. However, as you clearly do not want to go on, we may as well know what this agent has to say. If Reynolds had not wished us to see him, he would not have mentioned his name.”

“Very well, I am in your hands,” said Mr. Benaron resignedly; and thus it came about that Mr. Quinion despatched a note, written “without prejudice,” proposing he and his client should meet the agent for Calgarry either at his own or Mr. Reynolds’ office. “After leaving you,” he said, “it occurred to me I had better let Mr. Benaron know the gentleman mentioned was in London. As I told you, though my client does not think he has been well treated, he has no vindictive feeling whatever towards Mr. Conway—quite the contrary; and I am sure I could easily persuade him to give time if once his position were recognised.”

Very triumphantly Mr. Reynolds showed this note to Mark. Before doing so he had despatched an answer (also without prejudice), appointing a time for the great powers to meet, but refraining from taking any notice of Mr. Quinion’s feeler about a compromise.

“Remember I disapprove altogether of these irregular proceedings,” said Mark, with great distinctness. “When a man serves a writ he ought either to go on with the matter or drop it. The proper time for negotiations is before service, not after.”

“But, my dear sir!” expostulated Mr. Reynolds.

“O yes; I know all you would say—exceptional circumstances, unfortunate position, and so forth; but what I say is, fight it out to the end. Remember that is my advice.”

“Which is very good, I daresay; but please recollect the point I insist on is that the time for asking your professional assistance has not yet arrived, and, frankly, I do not want it ever to arrive in this case.”

“No doubt you understand your own business,” answered Mark, as if a little hurled, “and I do not much care how you manage it; only pray bear in mind I protested against any olive branch being held forth for Amos to seize.”

Having delivered himself of which statement with much dignity, Mark departed, his hat considerably to one side, and a curious expression on his face that puzzled Mr. Reynolds a good deal.

Some thought of asking Mr. Barry to make a fifth at the friendly little party had crossed his mind, but in view of that gentleman’s uncompromising attitude the lawyer decided they were likely after all to get on better without him.

When the day and the hour arrived, however, Mr. Barry came up to time almost as punctually as any of those invited to be present.

He appeared with laurels clustering thick around his forehead, for by sheer dint of talk and audacity he had won another case literally in a canter.

Carelessly supercilious to the two lawyers, he nodded in a distant sort of manner to Mr. Stirling, and then playfully addressing Mr. Benaron as Shylock, asked him if he was expecting to get his pound of flesh.

“I expect to get my money,” answered the gentleman from Soho.

“Which you shall never have, if I can prevent it,” replied Mark.

“Are you come in the character of Portia?” inquired Mr. Stirling, which suggestion caused a laugh. “Because, if so, you ought to act more up to the character.”

For an instant Mr. Barry stared at the speaker as if astonished at his assurance, but then he bowed and said, “Faith, you are in the right, sir. I am only here to watch matters, so I will speak no further word till it is asked for. Now, go ahead.”

After that the “palaver” began. Mr. Stirling told all he knew about the state of Calgarry, about the depreciation of property, the absolute impecuniosity of Mr. Conway, the total uselessness of trying to get money out of the bogs and stones of Donegal.

“Where, I assure you, Mr. Benaron,” he added, “there are no gold mines, even if we had capital to work them.”

“But the estate can be sold,” remarked Mr. Benaron.

“It can, at a price,” answered Mr. Stirling, “were Mr. Conway willing to sell—which, however, he is not.”

“I apprehend the option is not with him,” said Mr. Benaron.

“Yon mean that you will force him to fight?”

“I should feel most reluctant to do so.”

“Or perhaps,” suggested Mr. Stirling, “you think of keeping him hanging between heaven and hell till all the spirit has died out of him; but I fancy we can prevent that.”

“Hear, hear!” exclaimed Mr. Barry.

“My attitude towards Mr. Conway is, spite of all that has passed, most friendly,” said Mr. Benaron, “and if he will only meet me fairly I am quite prepared to give him time.”

“For the whole of the debt?”

“For the whole of the debt.”

Mr. Stirling smiled a little sarcastically.

“I do not think that will do,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Quinion.

“He means, of course, that we don’t admit the debt,” explained Mr. Reynolds.

“Then, gentlemen, you leave me no alternative?” asked Mr. Benaron.

“That is exactly the position in a nutshell,” answered Mark; “we leave you no alternative.”

“If Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Quinion will pardon my remark,” observed Mr. Benaron, “it does seem to me a suicidal policy to spend a small fortune in fighting a matter which might be arranged so amicably.”

“We do not want to fight,” answered Mr. Reynolds.

“I beg your pardon, that is precisely what we do want,” put in Mark.

“It seems to me,” ventured Mr. Stirling, “that the old ground is being traversed and re-traversed in a very useless sort of manner; that is a matter, however, of which, being no lawyer, I am, perhaps, scarcely a judge; but there is a point on which I have formed a very decided opinion, and with your permission, Mr. Reynolds, I will now mention it.”

“I do not like to give permission till I know what the point is,” answered Mr. Reynolds cautiously.

“It relates to the insurances—to the heavy insurances—on Mr. Conway’s life. May I proceed?”

“What do you say, Mr. Barry?” asked Mr. Reynolds.

“You are not going to put a weapon into the hands of the enemy, are you?” said Mr. Barry jocosely.

“I hope not.”

“Then let us hear your remarks.”

“You may imagine, Mr. Benaron,” proceeded Mr. Stirling, thus encouraged, “as recently appointed agent for the Calgarry estate, I feel a very serious responsibility rests upon me.”

“I can well understand that,” said Mr. Benaron politely.

“And with the feeling of responsibility strong upon me, I shall use every means in my power to induce Mr. Conway to let those insurances lapse.”

Mark Barry dropped the newspaper he had been pretending to read, and looked at Mr. Stirling in genuine astonishment; so did Mr. Quinion and Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Benaron alone betrayed no surprise or disquietude.

“Pardon me,” he observed, “but as regards those insurances Mr. Conway has no choice.”

“In other words, it is your intention for the future, as heretofore, to pay the premiums on his behalf, and charge him with the amount? Several of them are coming due now.”

“Yes, and he has no power of evading those premiums except by paying me my debt.”

“A man can always find one way to avoid paying anything he does not want to pay.”

“And that is?”

“Bankruptcy. I am sorry, Mr. Reynolds, to have said what perhaps I ought not to have done. But about these insurances I feel so strongly that I cannot hold my peace. No man ought to go about—particularly in Ireland—with such a price on his head.”

If Mr. Stirling had thrown a shell amongst the company, a greater sensation could scarcely have been produced. In a moment Mr. Barry was on his feet, asking furiously,

“What do you mean, sir, by saying ‘particularly in Ireland’? Have you the audacity to imply that Mr. Conway’s life is not as safe there as in England?” while both Mr. Benaron and Mr. Quinion essayed to speak, but their words were borne away by the barrister’s indignation as chaff is borne before the wind.

“As you ask me,” said Mr. Stirling, when peace was restored, in a perfectly unmoved manner, and in a voice which only changed into a stronger Scottish accent, “I do not think Mr. Conway’s heavily-insured life is so safe in Ireland as in England, and for this reason: it could be ended there with much greater impunity than here. If someday there appeared in the Times a statement that he had been found dead with a bullet through him, it would be at once concluded the crime was agrarian. Suspicion would fall on the tenantry—”

“Stop!” interposed Mr. Benaron. “Are you aware your words imply that I would connive at murder?”

“If my words bear any such meaning to your mind I cannot help, however much I may regret, your interpretation,” returned Mr. Stirling. “I say no man is safe who has such a price on his head. You, Mr. Benaron, are doubtless superior to such a temptation; but supposing you were to fall into difficulties—”

“I cannot suppose such a thing,” interrupted the other.

“And that one of your creditors,” pursued Mr. Stirling calmly, “were—unlike you—bound by no scruples, and, perhaps, hard pressed himself—”

“Mr. Reynolds, I appeal to you,” insisted Mr. Benaron.

“I think the subject had better drop, Mr. Stirling; I do indeed,” said the solicitor.

“Very well: only I ask you to take notice that I protested and do protest against those insurances with all the might I possess, and I shall not rest till I have delivered Mr. Conway from what I cannot but consider a very dangerous position. As I have disburdened my mind of one great source of anxiety, and answered Mr. Benaron’s question to the best of my ability, perhaps I had better leave. If I have given offence I am sorry; but my conscience would not let me keep silence. I will go now, Mr. Reynolds.”

“No, you won’t—and nobody shall go till we have come to some conclusion about this matter,” declared Mark determinedly. “My cousin, though nearly seven-and-twenty, is, in comparison with all of us, a mere stripling, and I do not intend to let him be run down by a pack of wolves, or left to creep through life with such a sword of Damocles as these iniquitous debts suspended over his head.”

Mr. Benaron rose. “Our interview has not proved quite a success, Mr. Reynolds,” he said, “though I believe we both meant that good should come of it. I feel it due to myself to end it now.”

“Why did you come here, then,” asked Mark, “if you neither wanted to hear the truth nor intended to make any proposition when you had heard it?”

“I came here,” answered Mr. Benaron, with great command of temper, “hoping Mr. Conway’s friends had thought of some plan whereby they could extricate him from his difficulties, and would discuss it temperately. Had I known my intentions were to be misjudged and my conduct commented on in such language as you and Mr. Stirling have been pleased to use, I should have stayed away.”

“I heartily wish you had,” said Mr. Quinion, in a sort of parenthesis.

“If any language of mine has been the cause of hindering a better understanding, I am honestly sorry,” observed Mr. Stirling, answering the first speaker; “but I think in common fairness my situation with regard to this matter should be considered. I come fresh into a strange agency in a strange part of the country, and find myself confronted with almost every conceivable difficulty. I want to be faithful to an employer who has done me the honour to explain his circumstances, and I can but repeat what I said before, that I shall employ every means to prevent Mr. Conway continuing those insurances. There is no necessity for them now. They were all very well, perhaps, while the late owner of Calgarry lived; but he is dead, and Mr. Conway has come into the property—”

“Which you tell me is valueless.”

“It will need years of hard work to make it worth much; and we certainly shall not mend matters by recklessly flinging the money out of one pocket that we may manage to scrape into the other.”

“There is no object in prolonging this discussion,” said Mr. Benaron stiffly. “I shall certainly keep Mr. Conway’s life insured till he or the law gives me my due.”

“Shylock at his best,” observed Mark.

“But you are not the only creditor, sir,” persisted Mr. Stirling, unmindful of the interruption.

“The more reason why I should look sharply after myself,” retorted Mr. Benaron.

“In the case of Reuben against Pittis,” went on Mr. Stirling, trying desperately to make his view of affairs intelligible, “the question of insurance cropped up. You can’t remember that, Mr. Barry; it was before your time. But my father had a great deal to do with it.”

Mr. Stirling, as he spoke, turned towards Mark, who was not looking at him, however, but straight past the agent at Mr. Benaron, over whose face there had come suddenly a grey shadowy pallor.

“What case was that? I never remember to have met with it,” asked Mr. Barry.

“It was the case of a young idiot who had been raising money on the anticipation of his grandfather’s death. They were not so particular about insurance matters in those days, and the grandson managed to insure the old man’s chances as against his. Nice arrangement, wasn’t it?”

“Do you think the history of affairs that happened in the dark ages will assist us much in the present instance?” inquired Mr. Benaron, with a strained smile.

“I think it might, for, in some ways, it was on all fours with Mr. Conway’s case. My father was factor to old Mr. Pittis of Blairwinning, and when he got an inkling of the way things were in—”

“Even as a matter of politeness, Mr. Quinion, is it necessary for us to stop any longer?” asked Mr. Benaron.

“We have stopped too long already,” replied Mr. Quinion; “our only course, I see, is now to push matters on as rapidly as possible.”

“I suppose, Mr. Reynolds, we shall be able to get time to go into the account,” said Mr. Stirling; “I have only been able to glance at it, yet that glance showed me—”

With an impatient gesture Mr. Benaron moved towards the door.

“You will have whatever the law allows you—no less, no more,” he said defiantly.

“So will you! What is sauce for the goose, etcetera,” retorted Mark.

“Before I leave I wish to say I believe the whole matter might have been amicably arranged had it not been for the presence of Mr. Barry, and the interference of this—this—gentleman.”

“He means that, but for us, they would have flayed Conway clean, and sold the skin,” explained Mark, for the benefit of all whom it might concern.

“I greatly regret that a meeting in your office suggested by myself should have terminated in such a painful scene,” said Mr. Quinion, with elaborate politeness, to Mr. Reynolds.

“I regret it too,” answered that gentleman; “there seems nothing to be done now except allow the law to act as umpire.”

“There is no other course open. Good-afternoon, Mr. Reynolds—good-afternoon, gentlemen;” and Mr. Quinion followed his client, who had already, without any ceremony of leave-taking, left the room.

Scarcely had the door closed after him before Mark, taking Mr. Stirling by the arm, asked eagerly,

“Now what the deuce was Reuben v. Pittis?”

“It was a bad case—a very bad case indeed—but the whole of the circumstances were never made public, as the matter was arranged after coming into court.”

“Confound those arrangements!” exclaimed Mr. Barry, who had, however, spite of their strain on his principles, assisted to compass several.

“I happen to know to know all about the matter, though,” went on Mr. Stirling, “because my father had a great deal to do with it. Old Mr. Pittis despatched him to London, and he managed to find out circumstances which practically caused the arrangement I spoke about”

“Who was Reuben?”

“Only the ostensible plaintiff; a fellow named Aaron was the moving spirit.”

Mark executed a pas seul.

“Heaven and earth! why did you not tell me all this long ago?” he asked. “Our friend Amos is Aaron’s son—his only son.”

“You do not mean that?”

“Don’t I! you’ll see.”

“How strange, how very strange! It was quite without design I mentioned the case at all today, though, for some reason or other, I have had it much in my mind lately.”

“You drew at a bow at a venture, eh?” interposed Mr. Reynolds, emerging from the depths of despair, into which the exit of Mr. Quinion had plunged him.

“Just so,” answered Mr. Stirling, quite simply. As for Mark, his exultation was so great it almost reduced him to quietness.

“Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” he said to himself. Then with a delighted grin he answered,

“Yes, Amos—yes, my friend—I have.”

XIX

SORELY DISAPPOINTED

After the Scriptural pleasantries which ended the last chapter, Mr. Barry lost no time in carrying the ally who had come up to turn the tide of battle off to his chambers in Old square, where he insisted on receiving an exhaustive report of “Reuben v. Pittis.”

When he put his heart in a matter, Mark was one of the best of listeners, which could not be considered other than fortunate, since Mr. Stirling was at times the most prolix of narrators.

“Reuben against Pittis” had been the one great event preserved in the Stirling archives, and Mr. Barry heard the agent at his prosiest when descanting upon its many iniquities and peculiarities.

With knitted brow, sitting in the most unprofessional of attitudes—nursing his right ankle on his left knee—Mark listened to the stream of earnest Scotch, and at the same time hooked with his swift keen brain each fish as it floated past.

Mr. Barry was one of those men about whom it is impossible to predicate anything.

He might make a spoon, he might spoil a horn: he might sit on the Bench, he might trail his barrister’s gown through mud unspeakable, and end his career in prison or exile.

So many who, after starting life with as great advantages, social, intellectual, physical, as he, have failed in the race because of some weakness or vice perfectly capable of being cured at an early stage in their career, that it seemed, to quote his own expression, a mere “toss up” whether he would sober down before it was too late, or finally, taking the bit between his teeth, bolt for a terrible locality of which Mr. Barry too often spoke with the freedom of intimate acquaintance.

Quite certainly, with talents such as his, and plenty of courage and confidence to back them (lacking which often-times the finest genius may be constrained to beg its bread) there were not many positions beyond his reach, if only—only—

But, unhappily, that “only” meant so much that the few wise friends Mark possessed felt chary about prophesying for him any stable success.

There were times when even Letitia had her doubts. She would almost have torn any other person’s eyes out who had ventured to express an adverse opinion concerning her husband’s future; but yet, undoubtedly, at intervals she wished Mark could see more clearly the beauty and holiness of conforming to English ideas (wrong though most of them might be, and undoubtedly were).

Upon the other hand, many “medium people” (that is, people who can see as far as their neighbours, though without setting themselves up to possess any specially keen gift of sight) inclined to the opinion that a man capable of doing so much, and giving up so much, as Mark Barry had done and given up, might accomplish wonders.

Brought up in utter idleness, he had buckled to work with a will when the pressing need came. Born to expect a fortune, and bred in such habits of recklessness as would have rendered it easy for him to spend two or three—nevertheless, the day he understood his position he faced it without flinching.

To many and many an Irish gentleman, the potato blight came as did the Deluge to those of old time. Up to that period they ate, they drank, they married and were given in marriage; and then in a moment the flood was on them. The long pleasant years of feasting and spending, of credit and mortgaging, were over, and suddenly—in a minute, as it seemed—a day of terrible reckoning arrived.

Plenty there were who endured their reverses with pitiable patience, but few could be found possessed of courage and strength enough to recognise their danger and do battle with it.

“Not one in ten,” said Mark Barry afterwards, “need have gone to the wall had they only taken their hands out of their empty pockets and turned to with a will;” but it was hard for those who, for generations, had never done anything, nor thought of doing anything, to run counter to their traditions, and regard life seriously instead of as a play.

Mr. Barry’s father, for instance, need not have let his property slip out of his fingers had it been possible to look at the state of his affairs rationally, alter his style of living, and put his shoulder to the wheel.

Every possession passed from him because he would do none of these things, or let anyone else do them for him.

As a landowner in Ireland, he was ruined for precisely the same reason that thousands are bankrupt each year in England—he got faint and tired. Anything seemed to him better than the life he was leading; and as he had no knowledge of how much worse it was possible for a life to be, he let everything go from him, and walked from his mortgaged acres into lodgings, where, after having sounded those depths of humiliation men who have once held a good position are perhaps alone able to plumb, he died quite resignedly, leaving his widow and two daughters a charge on his son.

Ere that event happened, however, Mark had shown the stuff he was made of. He lost no time in useless lamentations, but at once set to work to make money. What he went through in the struggle he never told anyone, not even his wife.

“It was a tough fight,” he explained—and with that statement his reminiscences began and ended; but the experiences of those days always made him assert that the man who did not think his property worth a battle was unworthy of having any.

“Stick to your land; it is easier and pleasanter to starve on your own ground than on any other person’s,” was one of his favourite axioms; and thus it chanced that he joined issue with his wife on the subject of Calgarry.

“Sell!” he repeated. “Are you mad, Lettie? How long do you suppose it would take Terence to run through three times over all he could get for it? And he would be nobody then. The Nun, did you say? My dear child, go and nurse your baby, and don’t talk folly! If that good woman has taken a fancy to Terence, getting rid of Calgarry won’t get rid of her so long as he has a halfpenny to waste or spend. Besides, there is no money can make up to a man for the loss of his estate. Once it is gone, he knows it was meat and drink, wife, child, friends, and parents to him.”

“I believe,” declared Lettie in a fury, “if you could only get that horrid place of your father’s back again you would not care if I and the babies were dead and buried!”

“There is no hope of my ever having to make a choice,” answered Mr. Barry, in a tone of regret; “and as for the rest, if you and the babies were dead I would take very good care you were buried.”

“And I will take remarkably good care you never have a chance of doing anything of the kind!” retorted Lettie; and she went off, banging the door after her, resolutely refusing Mark’s proposal to “kiss and be friends.”

“No, Conway shall not make ducks and drakes of Calgarry through any d——d foolery if I can prevent him,” he said to Mr. Stirling, when that gentleman called upon him after his arrival in London; and when to this feeling was added an absolute detestation of the chief creditor, it will be understood that Mark was very much in earnest about the affair.

To the last word he heard Mr. Stirling’s narrative, then he sat for a few minutes silent before he remarked:

“Amos won’t let the matter come into court if he can help it; but I think that is the only pull we have. After all, though your case was a confoundedly bad one, it never got threshed out; and it happened a long time ago, and it was not this man, but his father. Juries are getting to like retrospective mud-throwing less and less. Be hanged, if I don’t think after a while there will be a statute of limitations for rascality as well as for debt, and that we sha’n’t be allowed to rake up any scandal about even the worst of scoundrels after a few years! What we must do now, I am afraid, is make a proposal. I’ll talk things over with Reynolds, and get him to write a letter. Meanwhile, you need not stay here any longer. You and Conway had better go back to Donegal, and plant your crops and find tenants, or whatever your hands find to do. Yes, you may as well start at once. I’d rather Conway was out of London—and you too now, for that matter.”

“We’ll go, then,” agreed the agent; “but won’t you let Mr. Conway have a word with Miss Dutton while he is here? No man could have been more docile, but I am sure he is fairly wearying for a sight of the lady. Quite natural, too. Put it to yourself, Mr. Barry; it is hard for him to be in the same town with the girl he loves and not see her.”

“Someday, perhaps,” retorted Mark, “he will find it harder to be in the same town and have to see her. However, if you and he leave in the morning, tell him he is at liberty to drive—drive, mind you—to Sir Henry’s this evening. It is as well, perhaps, he should go there—help to keep the soup warm.”

“There seems little likelihood of it cooling on his side,” said Mr. Stirling.

“Ah! I was thinking of the other side,” answered Mark.

“Do you not think she is fond of him, then?”

“I do not know. She is remarkably fond of herself.”

“And yet he is a man I should have imagined any woman might fancy.”

“I do not consider myself an utter idiot, or you either,” answered Mr. Barry; “but I believe it would take someone a vast deal cleverer than either of us to discover what this woman fancies. There is something about Terence she does like, I suppose, or she would not let the affair drift on. I confess, however, I cannot imagine what that something is—not himself, I am very sure.”

“How I wish I could see her!”

“Seeing her would not help you much to a conclusion. She is very handsome, though,” Mark added reflectively, “and she has such a deuce of a lot of money.”

“So I understand,” remarked Mr. Stirling, thinking, as he spoke, how very useful some of that money would prove at the present juncture.

Perhaps Mr. Barry conjectured what was passing through the agent’s mind, for he said,

“If Conway married her tomorrow, however—or rather, to put the matter differently and better, if she married Conway, say the day after tomorrow—Calgarry would not be a halfpenny the better for all her money.”

“No! how is that?”

“Wherever Miss Dutton is she will want all her money for herself—and more, too, if she can get it. On the whole, I imagine Terence may find himself just as well without her; but that is neither your business nor mine.”

“It certainly is not mine,” returned Mr. Stirling, a good deal crestfallen.

“And you may take your oath I don’t intend to make it mine,” rejoined Mark. “And now, if Conway is to see his young woman tonight, you had better be getting back to him. I’ve a mass of work to get through before I go home, so you will forgive my not asking you to stay. Good-bye, old fellow; you’ve done a lot of service by coming to London. Stick to Conway. I don’t think you’ll repent it, even if you are never a farthing the richer. Good-bye again; God speed you at Calgarry. I’ll try my hardest to put things straight here.”

And the two men, both after their fashion so loyal and so strong, wrung hands and parted—the one to hasten back to Terence with a report of the day’s work, and the other to reconsider this last change in the aspect of the game.

No man ever heard from Mark what it cost him to give up the pleasure he had proposed to himself of baiting Mr. Benaron in the witness-box—of “putting the old blackguard through his paces,” and stretching him on the rack to confess his sins, but he felt this renunciation keenly. Before Mr. Stirling’s story was finished he had decided the only course to adopt in Terence’s interest was to see how little Mr. Benaron would accept, and how much pressure that gentleman could be induced to exercise in the way of settling matters all round.

“If we brag and threaten any more, instead of doing our spiriting gently, we shall only have the others on us tooth-and-nail, tearing Conway and the estate to pieces. I wonder what Amos will let us off for? If only those confounded Scotch people had fought to the bitter end, whatever that means, what a screw I could have put upon him!

“As far as I can judge, however, it was very likely six of one and half a dozen of the other. A charming scoundrel young Mr. Pittis seems to have been. Let us see: he first obtains money by misrepresentation, then he tries to repudiate the liability. When that won’t do, he gets more money, and insures the life of an old gentleman, who is not the owner of Blairwinning at all. When, through a pure accident, Mr. Pittis senior discovers the pretty little game, and takes fright about his life—which would have been in a great deal more danger had Young Hopeful known for a certainty whether the elder’s will were in his favour—he adopts the character of a simple innocent, and says he should have never thought of doing anything wrong if that naughty, naughty man, that vile moneylender, that infamous Jew, had not suggested sin after sin, and compelled him to commit them. Faugh! I’d like to have had the cutting of a pound of flesh off his body! No! it won’t do to depend on Reuben v. Pittis, black as our venerable Aaron’s share in the matter undoubtedly was.

“We can do better for Conway, I think, but I shall never have such a chance of getting my knife into Amos again—never! Well, we must see what can be done for Calgarry. I think it may be saved, though man never had a greater simpleton to pull out of a pit of debt than Terence. I’d rather any day have to do with fifty rogues than one fool.” After which testimony to the power of wisdom, Mark heaved a deep sigh at being constrained to forego his vengeance for the sake of the one worldly good he esteemed more highly.

Just as, in the old days, to be in at the death, first at the winning-post, bring down his bird, land his fish, seemed to him the thing most, for the time, desirable in life; so now, when he had forsworn every triumph which could be achieved, save in his profession, a legal victory attained in his eyes the dimensions of a gloriously won battle.

To victory, the next best result, halting far behind a bad second, was a successful arrangement. Defeat he could not brook. No good lawyer ought ever to be defeated, he maintained; and, in justice to Mr. Barry, it may be said he was never particular about the character of the weapons that gained him the day.

“I’ll drop a note to Reynolds, and advise him to make an offer. Our doing so now will prove to Amos that we know our strength, and can afford to come to terms. After all, it is only going back to the point I should have started from, if that ninny had not perilled his chances by paying his foolish visit to Monksborough. Amos, you old thief, you shall see what you shall see before any of us are much older—wiser some among us could not well be.”

And having shaken hands with himself in this appreciative fashion, Mr. Barry settled down in earnest to his work.

XX

ON THE WAY TO CHURCH

Driving even in a jingling, rackety four-wheeler over the London stones, Terence Conway, released at length from durance vile in the quiet hotel Mr. Stirling wot of, felt jubilant, like a prisoner let loose.

He was in the highest spirits: he laughed out of the exuberance of his heart—he made jesting remarks, the gist of which his companion generally failed to catch. He enjoyed the ceaseless stir and hubbub of London as a child might: everything pleased—nothing disturbed him. His mind had been kept for so long a time on the stretch that, after a period of sustained despondency, the young man went at once to the opposite extreme. In the course of that happy journey he saw even the dark side of metropolitan life through rose-coloured glass, and came to the conclusion this was the best of all possible worlds, and he a most fortunate unit in it. In the fullness of his joy he had insisted on carrying Mr. Stirling off to see the dearest and most beautiful of all lovely girls; and now, seated beside the owner of Calgarry, Mr. Stirling listened to his gay talk, and thought about many things, with most of which Miss Dutton had to do.

To Mr. Malet, Terence’s light-heartedness would have seemed full of evil omen for his future; but Mr. Stirling felt no uneasiness. He did not want old heads on young shoulders. He had not been brought up to approve overmuch of masters making themselves too busy about affairs which it was the business of someone else to see managed properly.

Just as servants like a mistress who does not adventure into the kitchen, so Mr. Stirling’s sympathies were with an employer who could at a moment’s notice throw the burden of an estate off his shoulders, and enjoy possession without troubling himself unduly about responsibility. The agent knew he had ever been a faithful steward, and he did feel his position was likely to be much pleasanter for the fact that Mr. Conway’s temperament differed most materially from his own.

Mr. Stirling asked no truer happiness, no greater enjoyment, than hard work, and plenty of it. To Terence work of any sort seemed an absolute waste of life;—inclination, duty, Philippa’s excellent sermons about high aims, a desire to come up to her standard, and a secret though unacknowledged feeling that if a man had to be always considering what he ought to do, instead of what he should like to do, existence must eventually become a great bore, were almost continually now tearing the owner of Calgarry to pieces. Ever since his arrival in London he had been abjectly wretched—a prey to anxiety, a sincere penitent—a man willing to enter into almost any compact that promised to insure peace; and now in a moment his cage door was set open, and he fluttered out into that good world of hope and love and happiness where alone he seemed to breathe.

“We shall soon be there,” he said, in a pleasant flutter of excitement, to his companion, as they passed Tattersall’s, and kept along the Brompton Road.

“Yes, we are close to Sloane Street now,” agreed Mr. Stirling. “At which end does Sir Henry live?”

“Close to the Square, overlooking it.”

“That must make the house fine and pleasant?”

“It does, it does,” answered Terence eagerly. “Many a happy day I have spent there watching the trees putting on their spring dress of green.”

“Aye, and with one beside, I suppose, watching the trees as well as you?”

Terence could not help laughing. “There were generally two of us, if not more, assisting at Nature’s toilette,” he replied. “I wonder, Stirling, what you will think of her?”

“Of Nature—or of Nature’s noblest work, a fine woman?” asked Mr. Stirling. “If it is the last you mean, I make no doubt I shall think the young lady as handsome as other people do.”

“And she is good as she is beautiful,” went on the lover rapturously.

“Beauty and goodness do not always walk hand-in-hand; but I am sure in this case they are always out together.”

“And always at home together, which is better still,” returned Terence, with assured conviction.

“Indeed, your way of it is far the most sensible,” agreed Mr. Stirling. “Isn’t this the place? We are in the Square.” But even as he spoke the cab stopped, and Terence precipitated himself on to the pavement, and knocked loudly at the door of a modest house. It was not Sir Henry’s trusty butler that answered the summons, but a maidservant, who knew Terence very well, though he did not know her.

Lady Beecham was in the drawing-room, she said; and then Mr. Stirling found himself following the owner of Calgarry up a quaint old-fashioned staircase, occupying the whole middle of the house, and next instant he was bowing low to Sir Henry Beecham’s wife—most of whose life chanced to be spent in saying to her liege lord: “Yes, dear,” “No, dear,” “How wonderful!” “Well, to be sure!”—remarks which answered their purpose better than the most exhaustive argument or learned commentary.

Not that Lady Beecham was without opinions and convictions of her own, which she never hesitated to express, especially when Sir Henry chanced to be absent. She was not of those too-easily-satisfied persons who believe “whatever is, is best.” Quite the contrary. Lady Beecham always, after playing some soft little verbal prelude, proceeded to inform her auditors that whatever had been was the only thing worth talking about. She belonged to that order of woman who, if her lot had been cast among our early ancestors, would have gone on painting herself blue forever rather than throw such discredit on the wiseacres of old as take to wearing clothes or even selecting another shade of colour. For Lady Beecham, the clock of the world had stopped more years ago than she would have cared to count; and it certainly was never likely to go on again. No girls were so pretty, no men so chivalrous, no fashions so becoming, no homes so comfortable, as the girls, men, fashions, and homes of the lady’s youth. For the rest, she was a kindly, simple, unselfish body—full of prejudices, possessed of no grasp of mind—who liked to see everyone about her, even to a scullion-maid, happy: who loved her ease, adored her husband, and occasionally, by chance, hit upon some great truth which wiser intellects might have toiled to discover. Still, in a feeble refined sort of way, a lovely and charming woman, with a low soft voice and tender caressing manners, strangers were always delighted with her, and left Sir Henry’s house with the true impression that matrimonially he had been as fortunate as many other equally worthy people are not.

“Why, Terence, my dear, this is a pleasure!” she exclaimed, as that young gentleman entered; and she stretched out both her white delicate hands in greeting, which he took and held while he kissed her soft cheek, that had still a pretty pink flush in it, which deepened a little with gladness at sight of “her boy.”

For the owner of Calgarry had been always a favourite with her. Long before there was any thought of his succeeding to such a kingdom he might have been a son of the house, so freely did its doors open to admit him. Yes, without doubt, Lady Beecham felt very glad to see his pleasant frank face now he had “come into his own.”

“I was in London on business, and I could not go away without even a glimpse of you,” he explained; “let me introduce Mr. Stirling, who is going to put everything right for me about Calgarry.”

“I am most happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Stirling,” said Lady Beecham, with that sweet smile which was, in its way, famous amongst those who knew her; and then she gave a delicate jewelled hand to the agent, who took to the lady at once, as everybody did.

“And how is Sir Henry?” asked Terence, looking round the room in quest of something he did not find.

“Quite well; but I am so vexed and sorry, dear boy.”

“About what?” he inquired, a little nervously.

“Because I cannot invite you to dinner—there is, in fact, no dinner to invite you to.”

“Is that all?” returned Terence, relieved; “I don’t think Stirling or I care much if we never had any dinner.”

“Speak for yourself, young man,” thought Mr. Stirling; but he felt constrained to follow Terence’s lead, and say dinner was a subject on which he was perfectly indifferent, which statement seemed to him hard; for he had eaten nothing since breakfast, and Terence, before hurrying away from their hotel, had assured him they would arrive at Sloane Street in time for a meal Sir Henry took care was always as good as its importance deserved.

“The fact is,” said Lady Beecham, after listening to these statements, which long experience of mankind compelled her to receive only for what they might be worth, “this chances to be a saint’s eve at Mr. Rawson’s church” (as if it had been something quite different elsewhere), “and dear Philippa prefers on such occasions to have early dinners, and then a little supper in the evening. So Sir Henry has gone to his club; but I have no doubt cook can find something for you now, and if you will remain for supper we shall be delighted.”

“Is Philippa gone to church, then?” asked Terence, too deeply disappointed to take any notice of these hospitable suggestions.

“Not yet. She will be down directly. How surprised she will be to find you here!”

“Won’t you—will you—let her know?” hesitated Terence.

“Certainly, if you wish; but she will not go without coming in. However—” and Lady Beecham rang the bell.

Before it could be answered the door opened, and Philippa herself appeared—a glorious vision—still mourning for her dead kinsman, but in thick corded silk, the richness of which bore testimony at once to the extent of her wealth and her woe; her bonnet also was of a lighter material than when she stood in old Calgarry churchyard, and her fair face not hidden by a veil.

A beautiful woman truly: no marvel both men gazed at her enchanted.

“Do you see who this is, Philippa?” said Lady Beecham, a little nervously.

“I had not the slightest idea you were here,” said Miss Dutton to her lover, shaking hands with the greatest propriety and bowing graciously to Mr. Stirling; “when did you come?”

“A few minutes since,” he answered.

“I was just going to send Simmons to tell you,” added Lady Beecham.

“Now what will she do?” wondered the agent.

“What a pity your uncle is not at home!” again remarked that uncle’s wife.

“Yes; but he will be back ere long,” said Miss Dutton. “You are going to stop, I suppose?” to her love.

“Yes—I—I believe so,” answered Terence; “you will be able to stay, won’t you?” turning to Mr. Stirling.

“With many thanks to Lady Beecham for her kindness.”

“You are going to church?” hazarded the young man, addressing his adored one.

“Yes,” said Philippa, with a seraphic smile, while taking up a Church Service correct in every detail of binding. “I promised Mrs. Rawson,” she added, as if it had suddenly occurred to her as within the bounds of possibility that some apology might be expected: “a friend of hers is to preach on behalf of Bishop Lindsay’s mission.”

Terence, who knew nothing of Bishop Lindsay or his mission either, stood silent, feeling a little chilled and a good deal disappointed.

He never was equal to these occasions; much as he always desired to learn the language of Philippa’s thought, he never had been able, perhaps for want of an instructor, to master even its ABC. For instance, this Bishop Lindsay, if he got him up it would be somebody else next time; and his ignorance about such matters made him seem so stupid!

“Perhaps you would like to go with Philippa and hear the sermon, too,” suggested Lady Beecham, grieved to see the rebuffed expression Terence’s face wore.

“Yes, if I may,” he answered eagerly. “May I?”—speaking to Philippa—“or would you rather—”

“I shall be glad to have you with me,” she said sweetly. “Only I am afraid sermons tire you a little, do they not?”

“No; I delight in sermons,” asserted the young man mendaciously.

“Then I think, as it is getting late, we had better—” suggested Miss Dutton.

“I am ready,” said Terence, understanding the ellipsis.

“Do you care about sermons, Mr. Stirling?” asked Lady Beecham courteously.

“Only on Sundays,” he answered with a quaint smile; “but I need not intrude longer. I can go back to the hotel.”

That, however, was a course his hostess would not hear of.

“Stay and keep me company,” she said; “we two will nave a cosy chat all by ourselves while the young people are hearing about the mission. And that reminds me,” she added—as the hall door closed behind the lover and his fair—“I never asked that boy to have anything to eat.”

“I think you have done far better for him,” remarked Mr. Stirling dryly; and the pair smiled at each other with such perfect understanding that the ice of fresh acquaintanceship broke at once.

“How does it happen you have not the brougham this evening?” asked Terence, as he and Philippa, followed by a maid and man, walked in the direction of Mr. Rawson’s church —a new one, known to the initiated, the police, and postmen, as St. Hilda, Virgin and Martyr.

The young man put the question more because he longed to say something than from any curiosity about the brougham; but, as it happened, he could not have selected a more suitable topic, or one that lay at the moment much nearer Miss Dutton’s heart.

“When there is only one brougham, and several persons wish to make use of it, someone must occasionally walk,” she answered in her even measured voice. “Today I believe the horse is lame; but there is always a reason why I cannot have the carriage.”

“What a shame!” exclaimed Terence, not exactly knowing against whom his exclamation was levelled, but feeling sure if he had fifty conveyances, all, from a low-backed car to the family chariot, should be at her command.

“O! pray do not imagine I am complaining,” she entreated; “only it is often so difficult to make Sir Henry understand.”

“He is very hard to convince,” said Terence, remembering his own experiences.

“And do not you think aunt is the same?” asked Miss Dutton tentatively.

Terence would have liked to answer “Yes” without hesitation, but he had not tried to make Lady Beecham comprehend those several things which Sir Henry could not be brought to see, and besides the memory of many, many kindnesses was too present in his mind at the moment to allow him to be false to his friends, even for the sake of pleasing his ladylove.

“It has not seemed so to me,” he said, weakly, temporising.

“You have not lived with her, you know,” observed Miss Dutton, as if excusing some fault in the man who adored her; “but she is really sometimes—difficult, I suppose,” went on the beauty. “It is all owing to their being old; they forget what they felt when they were young.”

“Most old people do, I fancy,” answered Terence, with a dreadful sense of disloyalty. “By the bye, what has become of Morland?”

“O, poor Morland—he has been such a trouble to us! You know, I have a very nice maid, so trustworthy and well educated—quite a superior person, in fact, and devoted to her religious duties. Unhappily, Morland could not agree with her; said the most dreadful things—things no woman who respected herself would have been justified in enduring—so uncle had to give him notice, and we have now a most worthy creature. That is he walking with Dickson. But I do feel truly grieved about Morland. Uncle believed there was no one like him.”

“He was a very faithful servant.”

“I am not so sure of that. He had got into uncle’s ways; but whether he was faithful is, I fear, quite another question.”

Terence said nothing. He had an honest gentleman’s dislike to seeing an old servant sent to the right-about; but who was he to doubt the soundness of his adored one’s judgment? Besides, if Sir Henry had not thought Morland in fault, he would never have let him go. Nevertheless, he felt vexed, and made no comment—only wondered whether the new butler were as much devoted to his religious duties as Miss Dutton’s maid, and if that were the reason General Beecham dined on saint’s eves at his club.

“So you have been enjoying yourself greatly?” said Philippa, finding no remark was hazarded about her last statement.

“Where?” asked Terence. He had been through such rough waters lately, that for the time all memory of Monks-borough was wiped clean off his mind.

“At the Foyles’. I heard you spent a delightful time there.”

“I had forgotten. Yes, it was a very good time with them, and I enjoyed myself as much as I could enjoy myself anywhere away from you.”

“That is a very pretty speech,” said Miss Dutton, who, to Terence’s surprise, did not seem offended.

“It is a very true one,” he answered earnestly.

“Then I think I must in return tell you something very pleasant.”

“That I may ask you to like me?”

“Why, I have always liked you.”

“To love me, then?” he amended.

“Now, Terence, what was the compact between us?”

“I beg your pardon—you made me forget it; only—but never mind all that. I won’t offend again.”

“Thank you,” she answered. “Now you shall hear my good news. I am likely to be quite near you this summer.”

“Really? Then Sir Henry intends coming to Calgarry.”

“I do not know—I cannot say—but, at all events, I hope to be in Donegal. It came about in the strangest way. When Mrs. Rawson and I were at Hastings we met a Mrs. Boyne, who turned out to be Captain Conway’s mother—such a charming creature—we became quite attached; and, as she is going to Mostrene Castle in July, she procured an invitation for me, which I have accepted. Now, are not you pleased?”

It was a mild April evening, with a light south-west wind, and a suspicion of coming rain in the air, yet it seemed to Terence that he was met with a wild blast from the north, while at the same moment the ice fiends laid hold of him.

Yet his sense told him there was no just cause or reason why Philippa should eschew Captain Conway’s mother, or refuse an invitation to Mostrene, or affect indifference because it had been given.

If she chose to be friends with the people who had ousted him—if she liked to accept a “procured” offer of hospitality from persons who had been proud to know the Conways of Calgarry on terms of more than equality in days gone by, and might possibly be glad in the future to know them on any terms again—it was not for him to object.

There is always—whether we recognise the fact or not—a beginning to everything, and the beginning to a little tiny rift within the lute of his mistress’s perfections came about when Terence noticed the gratified tone in which Philippa spoke of having been bidden to Mostrene.

“Little as anyone might suppose it, pride is that weak young Conway’s strong point,” confided astute Mr. McKye to his father on one occasion; and it was that pride Miss Dutton’s communication hurt even more than his love.

But he was only conscious of a bitter chill and a feeling of cruel disappointment and mortification.

The Conways of Calgarry had always thought themselves much greater folk than the Boynes—they were known all through Ulster, when the Boynes were not known anywhere. Calgarry was a cultivated estate, while Mostrene was “wild land,” where anyone could shoot that liked—where the mountain sheep pastured at will, and mares with foals by their sides tasted the sweets of liberty. Mostrene Castle was then an old ruin, of which only one tottering end remained.

It had once, rumour said, belonged to the Swines, who seemed to have owned many and curious things in Donegal; but, however that may be, the Boynes had nothing to do with it till about 1760. Then a certain Robert, who had gone out to India from some poor home in the county Wicklow, returned laden with riches and a wife, who, though stated to be a native princess, was received doubtfully in Ireland, and called the “black.”

She had plenty of money, “however she came by it,” as the matter was charitably put; and when Mr. Boyne bought Mostrene Castle, and began building a wonderful new erection on the old site, there “was no standing still for anything,” as might well have happened had he been one of the “old stock.” Mrs. Boyne’s dresses and Mrs. Boyne’s jewels were the talk of the county, but the county never took to her. Prejudices are as hard to kill as annuitants, and the prejudice against the native princess’s colour never died away.

Donegal had rarely felt more sure of anything than that the Boynes were not like other people; and this was probably one reason why they spent so little time in Mostrene, and “flung their money away” in England and other “foreign” places. Terence himself was not superior to the vulgar sentiment which deemed the Boynes’ regal blood inherited from the “blackamoor” a much worse fluid than that flowing even in the veins of a peasant; and it was a great shock to him when he heard a certain ring of exultation in Philippa’s voice the while she recited what great things Mrs. Boyne, widow of Bagenal Conway, had done for her.

“You do not say you are glad,” she said, finding her lover made no remark; “I thought you would be delighted.”

“I am delighted, of course, that you are coming to Donegal; but I wish it were to Calgarry instead of Mostrene.”

Miss Dutton did not. Her last visit to Calgarry had by no means been a surfeit of delights. Till the house was swept and garnished, refurnished, equipped with a proper retinue of servants, and filled with desirable guests, she earnestly hoped she might never see it. She felt, however, it would be better to defer the expression of this opinion, so she only answered:

“I do not imagine my uncle means to go to Ireland this year.”

“No?”

“I fancy not; and that was the reason I thought you would be pleased to hear about Mostrene.”

“I am greatly afraid I shall not see much more of you than if you were in London.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I know scarcely anything of the Boynes.”

“But you can become intimate with them.”

“I am not quite sure that I should care to become intimate with them.”

“Now, Terence, you really must not speak in that way. It is not right. They are most kind people, and move in the best society. The girls were presented last season, and one of them is quite a belle. Personally, as you know, I do not value such matters as perhaps I ought, but still it does seem to me persons in our rank ought not wholly to despise social and worldly advantages. They enable one to do so much more good. Mrs. Rawson says Mr. Boyne is building and endowing a church at his place in Wiltshire.”

“I do not care where he builds one,” returned Terence, stung to madness, “so long as it is not in Donegal.”

“And that is the very thing I was wishing he would do,” said Miss Dutton. “Now, you will not be setting yourself against the Boynes—people you acknowledge you scarcely know, and who can make themselves most desirable neighbours?”

“With Marmaduke Conway’s mother as an agreeable reminder of all her son has cost me!”

“Why, Terence, what is the matter?” asked Miss Dutton in pained surprise. “I never before had any reason to think you were covetous or grasping!”

“Do you expect me to say the old Duke’s will delighted me?”

“No; but that is all past and done with, and you must not bear malice towards Captain Conway.”

“Is it necessary to bear malice towards a man because one does not want to see his mother constantly?”

“If you could only imagine how this way of speaking grieves me!” said Philippa pathetically. “You were not nearly so bitter when we were at Calgarry.”

“Perhaps because I had not fully realised my position then.”

“But you are getting over all your troubles. Letitia told me everything was coming right.”

“I cannot exactly see how she should know; but, yes—things are coming right by slow degrees.”

“Then do try to feel kindly towards Captain Conway. You know he is not to blame.”

“I never said he was.”

“And family feuds are such dreadful things. There is the church—before we go in, do assure me that you will keep on good terms with all your relations.”

“I will do anything—everything, Philippa, you wish,if—”

“H—s—h!” whispered Philippa; and with eyes devoutly cast down, she meekly entered St. Hilda’s, Terence following.

XXI

MR. VIVIAN’S TEXT

In those days Mr. Rawson’s church was thought very High; in these it would probably be considered rather Low. We have gone on a long way since then, and public worship as well as everything else is more ornate than it used to be. Probably matters have not altered so much in reality as many excellent people imagine. Women are still women, though they are clothed by Worth; houses are still houses, spite of the fact that the world seems laid under tribute to make them uncomfortable; and religion is still religion, though black gowns have gone out, and good music is no longer considered a snare of Satan.

From feelings of deep piety, a revolt against the old “high and dry” mode of conducting the Church service had long been in progress. Many earnest Christians really believed that when they had swept away “three-decker” pulpits, parish clerks, lofty pews, Tate and Brady, choirs of charity children, and other similar “hindrances to worship,” a sort of millennium would ensue, and people find balm for their moral wounds, and help to amend their sinful lives, and comfort and happiness generally, in believing in the ecclesiastical millinery and upholstery, which, like all other millinery and upholstery, has since been brought to such a pitch of perfection. The “lowest Churchman” would feel astounded could he be carried back through the years and see the Church of his youth exactly as it was then. Clerical fashions have changed as much as any other: but the world itself is not very different, and the human heart remains as deceitful as ever, and desperately wicked.

We are going to do away with all distinctions of rank in the house of Him before Whom all men are equal, by cutting up the old oak pews for firewood, and substituting rush-bottomed chairs; yet it is not often anyone sees Dives, in his purple and fine linen, and Lazarus, with all his sores, sitting comfortably side by side. It was Mr. Rawson’s boast—if so truly good a man could be said to boast—that everyone who entered St. Hilda’s had full and free right to choose his own place; which was probably the reason that Miss Dutton chose hers close to the pulpit, while Dickson and her pious companion remained near the door.

How sweet and pure and holy Philippa looked, as she sank on her knees! How beautiful she was!—how incredible it seemed that she could be a “miserable sinner!”—that a woman like an angel, with so exquisite a complexion and such perfect features, could possibly have “left undone those things which she ought to have done, and done those things which she ought not to have done!”

Gazing at her, Terence felt it was he in whom there was no health—he who had been guilty of manifold sins and wickedness, discontent, envy (of Captain Conway), hatred (of Captain Conway’s clever mamma), malice (as regarded the Boynes), and uncharitableness towards the world in general.

It was from Philippa’s fervent and distinct following of the service that Terence—though a good Protestant (perhaps, as was wittily remarked about Lord Eldon, “a buttress of the Church rather than a pillow”—gathered, as the clergyman and choir proceeded, “where they were.”

Indeed, even to a much more accustomed worshipper than any Conway of Calgarry had ever been, it would have proved a matter of some difficulty to follow the reading of lights which then seemed, except to the initiated, very new and strange.

The then new lights have grown dull and old since those days, but to many they were once very dazzling and distracting, and had not his fair companion been quite conversant with the order and ceremony observed at St. Hilda’s, Terence must have confessed himself lost before the Nunc Dimittis.

This was not his fault, however—gladly would he have sat at Mr. Rawson’s feet (with his mistress) and learnt the mysteries dear to Miss Dutton’s heart, had that young lady only intimated her wish that he should do so—but Philippa in common with many other excellent persons, loved to keep her money, her religion, and her friends to herself. Her lover considered her harmless as a dove, but in some respects she certainly was wise as a serpent, and most assuredly, had her good-will been consulted, Terence would not have knelt at her side within St. Hilda’s on that mild evening in April.

He was there, however—trying his best to keep pace with the service. Wisely, he did not attempt audibly to join in it, What he had to say was uttered to God—not spoken for the ear of man to criticise. Terrible indeed would have been the discord had Conway of Calgarry confessed or implored in a key not quite in harmony with the well drilled choristers. His need, probably, was as great, his belief as sincere as that of any present, yet he did well to keep silent. The place and the circumstances affected Terence deeply. For the time being it seemed to him almost as though he and Philippa were married, and that he had come to St. Hilda’s with her to return thanks for signal mercies vouchsafed.

In many ways, the young man was very, very far from being a perfect Christian. In most respects he failed terribly as regarded those things Mr. Rawson deemed as essential as the Lord High Chamberlain no doubt considers Court etiquette; but he had firm faith and deep veneration, and though he so often failed, so often went hopelessly wrong, it was not from any hardness of heart or disloyalty to his God.

If he loved the creature more than the Creator, who is there among us that may venture to cast a stone? Beyond all things—beyond himself—he did love Philippa; but his affection was as much for the qualities he believed her to possess, or for the beauty he delighted to gaze on.

He looked up to her as something higher, purer, nearer heaven than he could ever hope to be.

The one humble hope of his life was that someday she might learn to love him as he loved her. He breathed a petition—not in the liturgy—praying that he might grow better worthy of being mated to so noble and beautiful a wife.

By some accident her scent-bottle slipped to the ground. Absorbed in her devotions, Philippa failed to notice the mischance till Terence—whose fingers had lingered for a moment about the pretty toy—quietly restored it to her.

He was rewarded by O, such a smile! A smile not unfitting even that holy place—serious, sweet, compassionate, sympathetic. Two of the choir-boys noticed that smile and nudged each other, while Terence’s heart was filled with rapture. He had never won such a look from her before, and it made him unutterably happy.

From that moment, all through the mystic monotoning and intoning of Mr. Rawson, and the plaintive and jubilant responding of the choir, Terence wafted onwards by the sweet low winds of fancy, was borne over golden seas in a dream barque that carried no freight save bliss.

He felt unutterably content—heart and soul were for the time fully satisfied. He forgot his anxieties—his unproductive estate, his debts, Benaron—everything save that Philippa had been kind, and that she was near him.

If he wished at all, it was for the service to go on thus forever—poor foolish Terence!—and already Nemesis followed on his track, marked him as he knelt sunk in a stupor of happy forgetfulness, and went with the clergyman, whose words were to awaken him, up into the pulpit.

All unconscious of what lay before him, Terence, his eyes still heavy with the sleep of bliss, looked up at Mrs. Rawson’s nephew, and saw one of those faces that stamp themselves forever after on the memory.

Had his mind been as great as his faith, his brain as strong as his will, few preachers would have exercised a more powerful influence than Mr. Vivian, who, robed in a white surplice—then an infrequent departure from established custom—stood gazing over the congregation after the manner of a messenger who brings tidings of import. Where Terence sat, he could see a worn young ascetic face: sharp-cut aquiline features, which looked as though chiselled out of stone; eager brown eyes, that yet held an expression of pathetic sadness in their depths; a high thoughtful forehead, partly shaded by straight black hair, that intensified the singularity of this fresh apostle’s appearance.

Instantly there crept a chill over Miss Dutton’s lover, the same which had seized him the while he walked beside Philippa in the mild spring evening. Even while he lifted his head the glory seemed to fade off the sea; his barque, heavily freighted with care, was tossing among stormy billows; the winds of fancy changed and brought up heavy clouds and a darkling heaven. He glanced towards Philippa, but no reassuring smile spoke peace to his heart.

She was gazing with a rapt expression at the preacher, who, speaking as one having authority, gave out his text:

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”

Yes; there in a concrete form was the shadow Terence always felt following him; the shadow bound sooner or later to overtake and keep even step with him along the road of life. No need for the divine, even had he been competent to amplify those striking words of warning, to try to do so.

Deep down in young Conway’s nature lay a chord ready enough to vibrate in answer to them; a chord that often, even of itself, as if touched by some unseen power, sounded a note of “dismal foreboding.” It was in his nature keenly to enjoy; it was also in his nature keenly to suffer; and more keenly than both to dread. His temperament’s balance was so lightly poised that the scales of happiness and misery were forever fluctuating. One moment he felt as if no one before had ever been so blessed, and the next it seemed to him as if “judgment” were close at hand.

Is it to be accounted a sin to a man that he is constituted after the fashion in which it pleased God to create him?

If he cannot by thought add a span to his stature, how much less can he choose the disposition he shall bring into this world with him! Ah! could the preacher only have told him something about the great problem of man’s impotence and man’s free will—shown where the first ended and the last began—Terence might have gone home that evening hopeful instead of wretched: comforted by assurances from Him who cannot lie, rather than crushed by the consciousness of his own weakness, daunted by the fear of self-created evils lurking to spring at his throat.

But spite of his intellectual face and eager yearning eyes, and voice which held in its tones the culture of generations—his desire, which ceased not day or night, to help the weary and heavy laden, to arouse the sluggish, to warn the careless—Mr. Vivian was utterly incapable of grappling with so vast a subject.

He was a player who, without any power of grasping how such a theme should be handled, essays, though possessed of no sort of expression, no facility of execution, to render one of Beethoven’s sonatas. He believed himself capable—yet his sermon, save for the text, was without form and void. He would have wept tears almost of blood had anyone told him he had failed during his discourse to touch one hardened heart, to soothe one troubled soul; yet it is true. The words which were none of his pierced like a sword; but he added no thought to them which either deepened the wound or poured oil upon it.

Nevertheless, there was nothing—literally nothing—he would not have relinquished and done if through self-sacrifice and courage he could have saved his fellow-sinners. Privately his influence for good was incalculable. When men came to know his sweet humility, his willingness—nay, his ardent wish to abnegate self, the delight he felt it to follow, even at a vast distance, the painful footsteps of his Lord and Master—there was no sceptic but felt there must be something in a religion which could produce such results.

“By their fruits ye shall know them:” and the fruit this Christian bore was so beautiful and gracious it refreshed all those privileged to know how good it was.

Wretched women, degraded men, had been partially healed by the virtue which went forth from him; but he could not preach—he knew no more how to preach than an infant in arms.

Unlearned, unlettered, uncultured Mr. McKye, spite of his homely features, his common accent, could by some subtle power of eloquence given to him by his God, from the pulpit save souls, where this refined scholar merely mentioned the mortal diseases from which his auditors were suffering, without healing one of them.

He owned no skilful hand with which to sweep the keys of man’s complex heart; a child might have tried as successfully to awaken its deep and terrible harmonies. About so earnest a labourer in the sacred vineyard, it seems a cruel thing to say that he talked mere drivel. Yet the statement is correct. His sermon was made up of the stock platitudes which have befriended incompetence, probably, since men began to preach—foolish examples that could not have incited a schoolboy to emulation—anecdotes silly enough to arouse contempt instead of wonder; numerous, if not always apposite, quotations from the old fathers; and many scholarly, though useless, dissertations concerning the mistranslation of various Scriptural passages.

For a time Terence listened in hopes of hearing some word of comfort, some passage that might help and strengthen; but as the stream of barren talk ran on his attention flagged, and he gave himself over to considering how swiftly judgment had overtaken his errors, and wondering how it was that, having two roads before him, he elected to take the wrong one.

As the world regards such things, he had not on the whole been a bad young fellow. If he never posed for a saint, at least he did not of his own free will elect to be a sinner; retribution had not overtaken others a thousand times worse than he—who drank heavily and gambled extravagantly, who thought all women fair prey and would have duped any man. Why—O why—had the old Duke misled him? Why had his father, from the first day he stood next to the succession, rested not till he had expounded the beauty and holiness of enjoying life at whatever price? Why had he (Terence) accepted the same doctrine only too kindly, and plunged into the mire of debt for the sake of plucking a few wretched flowers growing on its surface that withered as he grasped them?

Even without Mr. Conway’s money, had he entered into Calgarry free, he might have been very happy. It was this awful load of liabilities, incurred out of the merest folly, for which he was being called to account. O! if he could only live the past over again: he would not borrow money; he would give a wide berth to Amos and all the Israelitish fraternity; he would consider his ways and amend his life, and refuse all invitations to Monksborough; and—

Mr. Vivian’s passionless discourse was over; the whole congregation had risen and sat down again; a hymn was given out, and everyone present devoted his or her attention to considering how much or how little could be given to Bishop Lindsay’s mission, on behalf of which Mrs. Rawson’s nephew had pleaded with such exhaustive eloquence. Philippa looked sweetly at Terence, who took out a five pound note he could extremely ill spare, and placed, when the proper time came, in one of the beautifully-embroidered bags dedicated at St. Hilda’s to such mundane, if necessary, uses.

Then the blessing was pronounced, the choir sang the final A-men, the organist began the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and everybody was free to go.

As she had passed up the aisle with eyes meekly cast down, so Philippa passed back, Terence following. She did not look to right or left; she did not glance at any person within the church, or exchange a word with anyone outside. Quietly she threaded her way amongst the throng, and in a moment more she and her lover were out of the crowd and pacing the almost deserted pavements of a then quite new district, maid and man walking at a discreet distance behind.

“I hope you have not been very much tired,” said Miss Dutton softly.

“Tired?” repeated Terence. “O, no; not at all.”

“Was it not a wonderful sermon?”

From anyone else this remark might have been deemed satirical; but Philippa made it in perfect good faith.

“I am afraid I did not quite understand it,” answered Terence, diplomatically.

“Ah! that is very likely. There were times when even I failed to grasp Mr. Vivian’s meaning. He is so deep—so entirely different from the preachers one generally hears.”

“I suppose he is,” agreed her lover. As far as he had followed Mr. Vivian’s discourse, it was very different indeed from anything he had ever heard.

“And has he not a striking face?”

“Most striking,” and Terence sighed—he could not have told why.

“His illustrations were so beautiful. That story about the young boy in Italy was simply marvellous.”

“It was indeed.”

“Bishop Lindsay must be very proud of his relative.”

“Is he a relative?”

“Yes, a second cousin. Mr. Vivian is well connected on both sides. His friends are amongst the highest in the land; but he has given up everything for the sake of doing good.”

“Given up his friends, do you mean?”

“Not all his friends; but society—wealth—advancement—home.”

“He looks like a man willing to deny himself,” said Terence, wishing he, personally, had found it easy to do so.

“He has a beautiful nature. Mrs. Rawson is never weary of talking about him.”

“Is he married?”

“He will never marry.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as Mrs. Boyne sweetly says, he has espoused the Church: he has taken to himself the best bride a man can choose.”

Terence walked on very mute, feeling greatly subdued. He did not see his way to make any answer. He did not see his way, in fact, out of Mr. Vivian at all. His mind was full of the text; Philippa’s full of the expounder. She talked on more freely than her wont about the good Mrs. Rawson’s nephew did: how he gave away most of his income, reserving only enough for the barest necessaries; how he laboured among the poor and ignorant in the dreadful East End of London; how his father and mother had renounced him because he loved a full ritual; how Mr. Vivian senior was little better, if at all better, than a Dissenter; and how Mrs. Vivian a worldly woman who, having set her heart on a match between her son and a certain Miss Maynton, was almost heart-broken because he refused to second her plans.

“As I told you,” finished Philippa, “he has relinquished parents, home, and position for conscience’ sake. I could but think this evening how much he must have suffered.”

Terence sadly wondered whether Mr. Vivian had experienced such misery as Benaron could inflict, and then remembered a man so constituted would never have placed himself in the power of such a person.

Why was not he similarly constituted? Why had he got into Benaron’s clutches? Why had he no gift for preaching, or wish to labour at the East End—or comprehension of Bishop Lindsay—or fancy for living a life of celibacy—or turn for telling goodly stories about Italian beggars?

It was very hard, he felt, that, with all the will in the world to sympathise with Philippa’s high aims and beautiful fancies, he always seemed to be grovelling on the earth, while she was soaring towards heaven. The fault was in him, he knew, but he did not see how to change his nature.

He admired—he worshipped—Philippa, but he could not care for the things which lay nearest her heart. Would matters ever come right? he marvelled. How did it happen that, though he was always longing for a quiet talk with his beloved, they seemed further apart when his wish was gratified than he ever felt when other persons were present?

What, for instance, was there about this Mr. Vivian that Philippa should go into ecstasies over him? He might be devoted, and unselfish, and willing to renounce society, and separate from his father and mother; yet still—

“How thoughtful you are tonight!” said Miss Dutton, interrupting his reverie. “Where is your mind wandering? Have you gone back in spirit to Monksborough?”

“No,” answered Terence, a little surprised at this fresh reference to the Foyles. “I was in spirit with Mr. Vivian, wondering why he says cowld and showld and wowld.”

“You ignoramus!” exclaimed his fair, laughing softly. “That is the pronunciation of the school of old English divinity to which he belongs.”

“Is it,” said Terence, a good deal mystified, and wishing he had not spoken. “I did not know.”

XXII

SO UNSATISFACTORY

Though he had dined, Sir Henry Beecham by no means despised the supper he found awaiting his return. Cheered, but not inebriated, (the General never was inebriated) by the modest quantity of sound wine he had ordered and drank at the club, his greeting of Terence and Mr. Stirling was characterised by a genial pleasure which produced an extremely cheering effect on both the owner of Calgarry and Calgarry’s agent.

To Terence in especial the gallant knight’s warm manner was very grateful. He had been out among the hard frost and deep snow of the friends Miss Dutton yearned after, and the forms and ceremonies her soul loved, and as the heat of a fire is pleasant after exposure to cold, so he felt a delightful glow diffusing itself over his chilled senses as he came within the influence of Philippa’s guardian.

The young lady herself also seemed different when seen in in the home circle. With her bonnet she laid aside some of the terrible propriety which was an integral part of the proceedings at St. Hilda’s.

At a church in which a millionaire carried one of the embroidered bags, and a baronet gave the clergyman such attendance as circumstances demanded, the whole congregation naturally tried to stand on the same high social platform.

Terence had no fault to find with such things; but he felt glad to find himself safe on his mother earth again, only five pounds the worse for that short journey into the upper realms of fashionable religion.

Lady Beecham asked a few polite questions about the sermon and the preacher, which Terence answered as favourably as he could, and Philippa as shortly as possible—though sweetly. Too well she knew both the General and her aunt were deaf adders whom it was not of the slightest use for her to try to charm. The one thing she most longed for in this world, as she told Mrs. Rawson, was “peace;” so when the subject of St. Hilda’s dropped without criticism from Lady Beecham or remark from the General, everyone seemed pleased.

Mr. Stirling made himself unexpectedly amusing as well as agreeable. Sir Henry with a choice bottle of port produced many well-worn anecdotes, quite old acquaintances of Terence, but pleasantly new to the agent. The viands were admirable; the new butler understood his duties; and all went merry as a marriage-bell. Merry, indeed, Miss Dutton scarcely could be called, but her spirits were better than usual, and when the General spoke to Terence concerning his visit to the Foyles, and rallied him about his doings at Monksborough, Philippa’s eyes said as plainly as eyes could say:

“I am not hurt or convinced by what this frivolous person says. I do not believe you lost your heart to Miss Poler. You were true to me all through that gay time, I feel certain.”

And Terence’s eyes replied that he had been true; that he would be true forever; that the woman did not exist, no matter how beautiful, how accomplished, how charming, who possessed the power to wean him from his allegiance.

“I will walk a few steps with you,” said Sir Henry, when his guests, with many expressions of regret, declared they really must leave. “I am sorry you have to go so soon,” he added, laying his hand on Terence’s shoulder. “It is quite like old times seeing you here once more.”

“You must not forget us for so long again,” added Lady Beecham..

“It is not quite hop-step-and-jump from Donegal to London, my dear,” observed the General.

“I have a notion Mr. Conway would not think much of travelling twice the distance with your house at the end of it,” put in Mr. Stirling diplomatically.

“You are right there,” was Sir Henry’s answer. “The object makes all the difference in the way a man looks at a journey.”

“I shall be in London again soon, I hope,” returned Terence; and with one last lingering look behind he passed into the night with his host.

“If you will excuse me, Mr. Conway,” said the agent, when they had proceeded some half-dozen yards, “I think I’ll be getting on. I want to put some matters in order tonight, that I mayn’t have them on my mind in the morning; and Sir Henry and you must have a good deal to say to one another that you’ll be better able to talk over wanting a third in the conversation.”

“I like that man,” remarked the Waterloo hero, as with smiling amiability he watched Mr. Stirling’s retreating figure. “He has sense and tact, things you do not always meet with nowadays.”

“What I should have done without him I cannot imagine!” said Terence, full of gratitude.

“You have been wading in rather deep water lately, I am afraid.”

“Very deep,” answered Terence.

“Near land now, I hope.”

“Mr. Stirling thinks so.”

“Ah, well! remember it is only on your account I put the question. From a business point of view your affairs are no concern of mine. I know you are the owner of Calgarry—a fine estate, delightful place to stay at—that is enough for me; so whenever you can induce Philippa to go to Donegal with you, I shall settle her money strictly on herself and invest it on good security not in Ireland. If you recollect, I said something to the same effect when we were strolling along the sands of Calgarry Bay.”

“I recollect perfectly.”

“And you recognised the fact that it would be impossible for me to invest her money otherwise than in the soundest manner. You made no objection to my views, I think.”

“No, indeed; why should I?”

“Why should you, indeed? Only many men might.”

“What I want is Philippa, not her money.”

“I am sure of it, though some persons would prefer the money to Philippa.”

“There are mere fortune hunters in all ranks who think of nothing but money,” said Terence sententiously.

“That is too true; yet it is difficult to dissociate a girl from her money. Your feeling towards my ward is, I believe, perfectly disinterested, so far as you are aware; but yet I wonder if you have ever separated Philippa from her money?”

“I do not know what you mean, Sir Henry.”

“I mean, if she lost her money she could not dress so well; she would not look so well. You see her now surrounded by every comfort and adjunct of wealth; but if she were reduced to poverty—”

“Sir Henry, are you leading up to anything?” asked Terence suddenly, with his brain in a whirl. “Do you want to break it to me that Philippa’s fortune has gone? If so, there is no need to beat about the bush. Dear as she has been to me while I thought her an heiress, she would be a thousand times dearer were she stripped of every penny. All I have in the world is hers—myself; Calgarry, such as it is; Calgarry, such as Mr. Stirling hopes to make the rent-roll.”

“Philippa’s fortune is safe enough,” answered the elder man. “I should not care to be the person who had to break the news to her were it not; all I was leading up to can be told in a sentence. I want to know if you are sure of yourself—sure you want her in health or in sickness, poverty or wealth. It is a very serious matter for you to undertake the whole future responsibility of such a girl.”

“I am quite aware of that, but I will try to discharge my trust faithfully. All I desire—hope for—long for—is Philippa.”

“Think again,” said Sir Henry. “Pause and consider. Take the word of one who knows more than you know. Philippa poor would be a serious burden; Philippa rich, believe me, will prove a more serious one still.”

“It is one I am willing to bear,” answered Terence, in a tone as grave as the General’s own.

“Well, I shall not try to dissuade you, especially as I cannot even dimly see how such a marriage is likely to turn out. You may be happy—you may be wretched; but you must not blame me should your venture turn out different from what you expect.”

“Even should I be wretched, I shall blame no man. If through my own misfortune or fault I prove unworthy of her love—which I do not think possible, because I shall try so hard to deserve such happiness—I will know where the fault lies—and keep silence.”

“And you won’t ask me to meddle or put matters straight?”

“Between me and my wife?” returned Terence, in astonishment. “Assuredly not. Come weal, come woe, I shall not trouble you.”

“Then how do affairs stand between you?”

“Exactly as they did the day you left Derry?”

“Have you said nothing to her this evening?”

“No; I was not to speak again till midsummer.”

“Humph! Did she tell you she is going to the Boynes?”

“She did.”

“The object of that invitation is to secure her for Captain Conway.”

“Do you imagine so?”

“I am sure of it; but you need not feel very uneasy. In the first place, you know the old saying about taking a horse to the water. Mrs. Boyne may take her son to the water many times and to spare before he will propose to Philippa or anyone like her; and, in the second place, we are going to have war, when he and a good many others will have even more serious matter to think of than marrying and giving in marriage. No, I do not think you need feel uneasy about him.”

“You seem to imagine I ought to feel uneasy about someone. Who is he? Mr. Vivian?”

Sir Henry laughed, and answered; “I have no reason to suppose Mr. Vivian is in the field, or Mr. Rawson either.”

“Is there not a Mrs. Rawson?”

“Yes; she is his mother, however. I do not imagine there is any scheme afloat there; but wherever Mrs. Boyne is, you will do well to be careful. I should have the matter put on some proper footing before Philippa goes to Mostrene. If you do not—”

“If I do not, what will happen?”

“That I cannot tell; but I believe you may never get affairs in fair train for your marriage if you delay much longer. Can you not stay and clinch the business now?”

“No; I must go home. I have promised Barry not to remain in London; and besides, I should not like to speak before the time agreed upon.”

“My opinion is you will do well to speak now. She is jealous. Lettie has been telling her all sorts of stories about Monksborough and the greatness and glory of the Foyles. There is only one thing in the world besides herself Philippa loves more than money, and that is rank. She wants to be a great lady. Do you suppose she would care one atom about all this ritual business if it were not the fashion? Do you imagine she would have crossed the doorstep to hear that young Vivian if his grandfather had not been a lord and his mother an earl’s daughter? Do you think she regards St. Hilda’s save as a ladder by which she may climb into grand society? And her doubt about you since the old Duke’s death has been whether, with your embarrassments and your ideas, she could ever as your wife take her ‘proper place’ in fashionable life.”

“Sir Henry, I will not listen to this!” cried Terence, who had hitherto kept silence merely because he was too much astonished and shocked to speak.

“On your own head be it, then. Only, if you determine to marry her, bind her to an engagement now. She won’t be content with us very much longer. I know exactly what she will do after a while. She will find some lady to live with and chaperon her. She will take a grand house in a fashionable locality. She will gather all the advanced Church party round her. She will keep you dangling on till she finds a suitor she considers more desirable, and then you may go where you like. She advised you not to sell Calgarry both because she wanted to be what the lower orders call an ‘estated lady’ if she married you, and also because she wished to keep you away from London till she found whether she could not make a better match.”

“Why do you talk in this way to me about the woman I love and honour—a woman who is but little lower than the angels?”

“I have talked in this way because I do not want you hereafter to think I have kept anything back from you. When we were in Ireland I did not believe she would marry you, so I said but little on the subject. Now I consider it extremely likely, if you press the point, she may marry you, because she knows you would let her do as she pleased. You have often thought in a vague sort of way—at all events, if you have not, Philippa has—that I did not wish her to marry; that the sum allowed for her support was of importance to me.”

“I never thought anything of the kind,” answered Terence hotly.

“At all events, several persons have thought, and said, something very much to the same purpose; and I desire to tell you at once that, while we never formerly were much in pocket with the four hundred a year we received under her father’s will, we are actual losers now. And in a word, not to pursue so unpleasant a subject, relations between Philippa and ourselves have become of late so strained I should feel thankful to hear she was going to be married tomorrow.”

“And I wish with all my heart she was to be married to me, that I might take her to a home where she would be prized beyond every earthly treasure.”

“Well, as you are so satisfied she will prove a blessing, try to secure her, in Heaven’s name. All I personally desire is to see some hope of ultimate release for ourselves. I want to be able to keep my own servants without continual bickering; to drive in my own carriage when I please; have my meals at regular hours, and get rid of all this religious dissipation. I am a quiet man, Conway—a man very easily satisfied—a man given to make the best of things; but I tell you fairly, the last few months have tried me almost beyond endurance, and if ever you marry my ward you will see very little of me.”

“And if I ever have to choose between my wife and my friends, I shall certainly not desert the former,” retorted Terence.

“You will assuredly be compelled to desert the latter,” rejoined Sir Henry, with a good deal of acrimony. “And now, having said my ray, I will turn my face homewards. I shall expect this matter to be brought to some sort of conclusion ere long, remember.”

“You may depend that I will do all in my power to meet your wishes.” And so, without any attempt at leave-taking—without even going through the ceremony of shaking hands—the General and Terence Conway parted, for the first time at daggers drawn, Sir Henry feeling he had acted a most disinterested part towards an extremely foolish young man, and the extremely foolish young man convinced that, on the face of this earth, there never was so selfish, prejudiced, blind, altogether intolerable, an old humbug as Sir Henry Beecham.

He walked about the streets for hours after parting with Philippa’s guardian. Perfectly unmindful of Mr. Barry’s strict injunctions, he roamed through all sorts of places; but it was late, and by good fortune he met no one who knew him, and arrived at his hotel, pale, fagged, and moody, just when Mr. Stirling was becoming seriously uneasy at his prolonged absence.

“You look terribly put out about something,” remarked the agent, after he had watched Terence in silence for a few minutes. “I am vexed to see you so down. Is there any way in which I can help you?”

“No, Stirling, no,” answered the young man, touched more by his companion’s manner than his words. “There are troubles for which there is no help possible.”

“I’d be glad to try, at any rate.”

“I am sure you would; but we cannot put people right, and everybody and everything seems so unsatisfactory.”

“Bless my soul!” muttered Mr. Stirling under his breath.

“You think a great deal about sermons in Scotland, don’t you?” went on Terence.

“They take a great hold of us,” answered the agent, wondering greatly.

“Well, do you know a text in which Solomon tells the young man he shall be brought to account for all his doings?”

“I think there are a good many texts to that effect.”

“Did you ever hear any preacher take one of them and discourse on it?”

“I can’t call to mind that ever I did.”

“O! I thought you might. I wonder if the statement is true?”

“You need have no doubt about that. It wouldn’t be in the Bible if it wasn’t true—as you will find out long before you come to die.”

“Before I come to die,” repeated Terence dreamily; “many things will have happened between this and that.”

“Many! We’ll put your affairs right for one thing, and you will marry, I hope, and have sons and daughters grown up about you, and—”

“Stirling,” interrupted Mr. Conway, “you have seen Miss Dutton?”

“Yes, indeed, and a handsomer lady no person could wish to look at.”

“And good as she is beautiful.”

“I do not think anyone so beautiful could be other than good.”

“Thank you; I’ll go to bed now—I am tired.”

“I wonder what has been up?” thought Mr. Stirling, as he too sought his room. “Some flank movement of Sir Henry’s, I’ll be bound. My mind misgave me tonight; things at Sloane Street were not all as they seemed. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the young woman is one too many for the old General.”

XXIII

A HUNDRED TO ONE

“No, Mr. Barry, either I am solicitor in this matter, or I am not.”

“Why, how now? Am I Giles, or am I not?” mocked Mr. Barry, with irritating composure. “If he, I’ve lost—”

“Probably Giles followed your advice, and so lost many things; but I have not lost, and do not intend to lose, or allow my client to lose,” interrupted Mr. Reynolds; for it was he who, at length goaded to madness, had rejected Mr. Barry’s counsel, nailed his colours to the mast, and determined to assert his independence.

“May I inquire the cause for this change of front?” asked Mark, seating himself on the corner of Mr. Reynolds’ table, and disarranging a pile of papers in order to make himself more comfortable.

“Whose change of front?” demanded the solicitor.

“Yours,” replied Mr. Barry, coolly taking a piece of sealing-wax out of the inket, and beginning to break it. “When I put this Calgarry matter into your hands you would not move a step without my sanction, and applied constantly to me to know what the next move should be.”

“This is too ridiculous,” observed Mr. Reynolds. “I have asked you for information, never for advice. So long as we were both travelling the same road, I would gladly have kept step with you; but I will not abandon the plan originally determined on at your bidding. Do you think merely because you have got tired of the game, and feel disinclined to play it out, I am to give it up?”

“Who says I am tired of the game?”

“I do,” persisted Mr. Reynolds. “If you had not been, you would never have suggested sending a flag of truce to the enemy. That is the worst of all you Irish—you are going to do wonders at first, but you can’t hold on.”

“Can’t we!” said Mark grimly.

“No, you can’t; you knock under, not because you are likely to be beaten, but because you get sick of steady work. I had a gentleman here yesterday, who told me he was in Ireland at the time of the famine, and he had a hole—”

“My good creature,” interrupted Mr. Barry, “I know what you are going to tell me; but please don’t. I can stand as much as anyone in an ordinary way, but I really will not undertake to listen patiently again to that stock lie about the pit that never was filled. It never was filled, certainly, for a sufficient reason—because it never could be. It was the bottomless pit. Don’t you see, my dear fellow, the whole thing is an allegory?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Mr. Reynolds.

“Ah, well, I am not bound to give you understanding. There is mystical meaning underlying that apocryphal tale, if you could only be brought to comprehend the full beauty of it. But as you were saying—”

“I was saying the Irish always get tired too soon—they are eternally longing for change.”

“In so humdrum a world I think that can hardly be accounted a sin. Besides, it is possible to have too much of a good thing—even law.”

Mr. Reynolds laughed; it was difficult to remain angry with Mark Barry. He was so handsome, so gay, so impudent; even the judges secretly welcomed his effrontery as a break in the deadly monotony of their lives.

“You are begging the question at issue,” said the solicitor. “What I assert, and what I will stand to, is that the Irish cannot stick to anything as the English do.”

“O, if you are going to hold up the English as models, the argument must come to an end! Politeness would forbid me to say what I think of them.”

“But surely, Mr. Barry, you will admit, steady, patient work is the work of all others your country people detest? Even your animals do not like pursuing a straight road. I had a little horse from the County Cork, and the moment he saw a mile of highway ahead of him his spirit died away, and he wanted to turn down any by-lane rather than go on.”

“Small blame to him!” muttered Mark.

“Is not that a fair instance of what I say?”

“No; what we detest is useless work. We will take any short cut rather than go round four sides of a square, as the English are so fond of doing. No doubt the little horse from Cork knew there was a far quicker way to his destination than you ever dreamed of. You like work for work’s sake, and we hate work for work’s sake. We want to finish it out of hand and get to play.”

“Precisely so; that is exactly what I said. You want to finish Mr. Benaron out of hand and get to play.”

“No, on my soul you are wrong there,” returned Mark; “it must be a long day’s hunt that would tire me if Amos were the fox I was after. Personally, I could ask from Heaven no purer happiness than baiting the old villain in the witness-box; but—”

“But what has occurred to make you think a change of tactics desirable? Before that meeting here you believed a quiet defiance was our wisest course, in which idea I quite agreed with you, because, though we knew we had not a court card in our hand, Quinion did not know that. Now, the position has not altered since then, save that we, if anything, count more honours; yet you wish me to offer a compromise, and are angry because I decline to do anything of the sort.”

“The explanation, Reynolds, of what you falsely call my change of front is that I feel we are strong enough to propose terms without being accused of fear.”

“Then all I have to say is that, since you had any, your feelings never led you more utterly astray.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Just put the whole matter fairly before your mind. Up to this time our hold over Benaron has been that he is not aware we know really nothing much against him, except his amiable habit of charging Heaven only can tell how much per cent, for Mr. Conway seems quite unable to give us reliable information as to what he paid. Benaron is afraid because he is ignorant of what allies we may have behind us; but surely you do not imagine it will make him more afraid if we say, ‘We have threatened each other long enough; let us now, for a change, make terms.’ Our policy is, as I always said, a waiting one. There is no reason in the world why we should hurry ourselves.”

“I am anxious my cousin should have his mind settled.”

“Why should you be anxious? It is just as well his mind should not be settled about money matters. I had some talk with Mr. Stirling, and he will take care the lands are let and ploughed and sown as they would be if there were no such person as Benaron on earth. The great mistake people who are in trouble of any sort generally make is that they incline to believe the world stands still in consequence. And, though the earth is turning round, they refuse to turn with it, and so come to grief. Now, Mr. Stirling recognises that seed-time and harvest, darkness and night, shall never cease, no matter who is sick or who is sorry; therefore he will find tenants and improve Calgarry, let Benaron and Quinion roar like bulls of Bashan. It may seem strange, but, believe me, we are not standing on the verge of creation, looking into space, because Mr. Terence Conway has been a great simpleton.”

“That he was—that he is,” interposed Mr. Barry, in tones of the sincerest conviction.

“And every day the matter is kept out of court, our position improves.”

“I don’t see how,” returned Mark, on whom, since his disappointment in that little anticipated triumph connected with Reuben versus Pittis, the mantle of some pessimist had apparently fallen.

“That is because cases come to you at the end; they come to me at the beginning. Every day is a gain, because in the morning we never know what it may bring forth, and in the evening Quinion never knows what it has brought forth. Mr. Stirling will look over Mr. Conway’s papers, which that young gentleman seems to have preserved, not from any idea of their being necessary or useful, but merely because he was too idle to destroy them. We cannot tell what may turn up in his archives, neither is it possible for us to forecast what piece of luck fortune may have in store for us—tomorrow, say. Thus you observe, Mr. Barry, there are a thousand reasons for not showing the white feather yet, and not a single one in favour of doing so.”

“I suppose I must trust the affair in your hands,” hesitated Mark, who began to see that in dealing with Mr. Reynolds discretion was the better part of valour.

“You must, if you would only kindly recognise the fact, till Mr. Conway requests me not to act for him; which brings me back to what I said at starting, that as his solicitor I must do what I consider best for him, even if I offend you.”

“You do not offend me. Only you are so confoundedly fond of your own way.”

“Ah! Mr. Barry, do you think it is good policy for the pot to call the kettle black?”

“I shall call you something worse than black if your policy in this matter turns out badly,” said Mark, who had a way of thus switching off a discussion when it seemed likely to go against him. “I wonder what Benaron’s next move will be, and how soon he is likely to make it?”

“Nothing will be done while he is ill, I imagine.”

“Ill!” repeated Mark. “Is he ill?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Heard it.”

“But how—when—why?”

“I hear a good many unconsidered trifles,” answered Mr. Reynolds, with the provoking reticence of a man who has really nothing more to tell.

“Do you call that a trifle?” asked Mr. Barry. “What is the matter with him?”

“Gout, it is said.”

“And what do you say?”

“It may be gout; but, if so, I think your friend’s agent had some share in bringing on the attack.”

“Why did you not tell me he was ill sooner?”

“My dear sir, you gave me no opening. You assailed me the moment you entered because I had refused to reverse the whole of our former line of conduct for a mere whim. I would sooner throw the whole business up than be a party to any suggestion of the sort. My notion is, a man ought to fight to the end, if he once says he will fight; yes, even though it seems probable he may be beaten. And I mean to fight this thing through, unless Mr. Conway takes it out of my hands.”

“I brought the matter to you, Mr. Reynolds.”

“But you are not my client.”

“Well, we need not go over all that again,” said Mark.

“If a man takes his friend to a doctor he does not tell the doctor what to prescribe,” persisted Mr. Reynolds.

“The patient might often recover far more quickly if he did,” remarked Mr. Barry. “However, to end this part of the subject, since you think you are so much cleverer than I, manage Conway’s affairs as you like, in Heaven’s name.”

“I am going to do so, taking any help or hint I can get as I go along thankfully; and the very first thing to which I shall turn my attention is making terms with those creditors who have not yet commenced proceedings.”

“In that I do not think I can be of much use to you,” said Mark.

“You cannot be of any,” replied Mr. Reynolds decidedly. “No, Mr. Barry, if we want you at all, save in the character of ‘bogey,’ which you have performed very well indeed, it will be later on. No one can sing all the parts even in one opera. You see what I mean?”

“I am neither hard of hearing nor stone blind,” answered Mark, as pleasantly as though Mr. Reynolds’ speech had implied a compliment. “What you want to say is, ‘Don’t try to be solicitor and barrister too.’”

“You have exactly expressed my meaning.”

“Precisely; ever so much better than you could have done. Well, I am off. Is there anything else you want to ask me before I go?”

“Nothing occurs to me.”

“Did you ever hear the story—”

“No; and I don’t want to hear it,” returned Mr. Reynolds. “I am busy. I have far more to do than I can get through without listening to stories. Keep any you wish to tell for your juries; they have plenty of time to enjoy them.”

“Faith, there’s sense in that at any rate,” answered Mark; and leaving Mr. Reynolds to take what meaning he pleased out of this utterance, he said good-morning, and departed.

He had not, however, traversed half the distance which intervenes between Knightrider Street and Old Square before a sudden thought caused him to stop just as he was ascending the steps leading into St. Bride’s Churchyard.

“By Jove!” he said; “by Jove!” and he struck his umbrella on the flags, and wheeled round with a celerity which caused a printer’s devil to laugh loudly, and follow the barrister, mocking in a fashion that would have resulted in condign chastisement had Mark happened to notice him. But Mark was far too much engrossed in his new idea to notice anything.

Mr. Reynolds had got fairly into work when, without a preliminary knock, the door of his office opened, and a handsome mischievous face was thrust inside.

“Bet you fifty to one,” said its owner.

“O, confound you, Barry!” exclaimed the solicitor. “What ill wind has blown you back here again?”

“Bet you fifty to one,” repeated Mark, undisturbed by the coolness of his reception.

“Don’t talk such gibberish. If you have anything to say, say it and go.”

By way of reply, Mark entered, and closed the door.

“Bet you fifty to one,” he said, for the third time.

“On what?”

“Will you take it?”

“I don’t mind if I do.”

“That Amos is not ill.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that is not all. I will bet you, further, a hundred to one he has gone to Ireland—to Donegal.”

Mr. Reynolds moved at last, laid down his pen, and looked at Mr. Barry. Mr. Barry looked at him.

“I should not be in the least surprised,” said the solicitor, after a moment’s pause.

XXIV

MR. STIRLING’S PROCLAMATION

Some persons like to erect a flagstaff near their dwellings, in order to inform a world, probably indifferent on the subject, that they are at home by running up a banner, which gaily intimates the fact to all whom it may or may not concern.

When Mr. Conway returned to Calgarry, however, he soon found no need existed for him to announce his presence in any such fashion.

The mail-car deposited him and Mr. Stirling late one afternoon at the lodge gates, and before nightfall every man, woman, and child in the barony knew “the master” had come home, and the agent with him.

Then throughout that part of Donegal there ensued a gentle, nameless stir, as though a soft rain had fallen on the earth, and watered and blessed the seeds lying in its bosom. Hope and expectancy put forth tiny green leaves, full of promise, like the young blades of blessed corn just then in many a field putting timid shoots above ground.

Surely now something would be done. The land would lie fallow no longer. Men would be allowed to till, and women to help; and even the children—God bless them!—might be found something to do.

It had been long perfectly well known not only that Mr. Conway had gone to London, but also why; further, that the strange gentleman, whose ways and business proved at one time such a puzzle, was the new agent.

About Mr. Stirling from the time Terence returned from Monksborough secrecy was not attempted—no need existed for any; but concerning the visit of that gentlemanly young man no one said anything at Calgarry—perhaps for the reason no one of the household knew anything connected with it.

Birds of the air, however, have, as we are all aware, a pretty habit of repeating what goes on in kings’ palaces; and when it is mentioned that the messenger from Mr. Quinion’s agents in Belfast, knowing he must push on to Dunfanaghy if he wished to get bed and supper, asked for a lift to that town in the priest’s gig, and next morning on his return journey, travelled by the mail-car as far as Kilmacrennan with the Dunfanaghy sergeant of police, the reader will easily under-stand how rapidly the news spread that already hawks were after Mr. Conway.

At first it was believed he had left the country never to return. Other gentlemen had “done the like;” other properties had been sold, and the names of their possessors wiped clean out. Why, therefore, should a man new to the soil stay, “once trouble came upon him”?

But, by degrees, wiser ideas prevailed. When Mr. McKye heard some supposed Terence meant to “make for France and stay there,” he said, in his loudest pulpit tones, “No, no, no; not at all, I tell you. If ever Mr. Conway leaves here, it will be in a very different fashion;” and when, a few days afterwards, he received a letter from Mr. Stirling, stating he hoped to be at Calgarry shortly, and stay there, he “made it his business” to repeat the gist of the communication in all places where men were to be found.

The tide then took a turn, and Donegal’s only anxiety seemed to be how soon “anything would likely be settled about the farms.” Already the people felt that Terence would be a very different person to deal with from the old Duke, and they believed if they could only “get at him” they would have things pretty well their own way, which is, all the world over, a tenant’s idea of happiness.

Delusions of that nature, however, received a rude shock when Mr. Stirling proved to be acting as “agent and owner all in one.”

The very day he returned to Calgarry, before he ate or drank, or washed or rested himself, he sallied forth to inspect the outbuildings, and see which of them he could fit up as a temporary office for the transaction of business.

To all Terence’s entreaties that he would use the library as a reception room he turned a deaf ear.

“No,” he said, “you must let me have my own way. I’ll need to be at it early and late for awhile, and I won’t disturb your household more than I can help;” in consequence of which determination it was that those who came to see the agent were directed to a barn, where, with the slates perfectly visible and the grey stone walls bare even of whitewash, they found Mr. Stirling seated before a great kitchen table placed in the middle of a beaten clay floor, issuing his royal proclamation.

“Sit down, Mr. McGurk,” and the agent referred to a paper spread open at his left hand; “you want to rent the Greystone Farm, I see: that will be twenty pounds a year.”

“Twice too much, your honour. It’s nothing but ling [wasteland] and stones.”

“Well, that is a matter for you to consider. Twenty pounds is the lowest rent for which it will be let; you can take it either from year to year or have a seven years’ lease, just as you like.”

“Seven years! and at the end of that time you’d maybe be raising the rent on me.”

“At the end of seven years we shall certainly raise the rents all round.”

“See that, now! The old Duke—God preserve us from harm!—could say no worse than that.”

“Mr. Conway wishes to take an advantage of no man. If you rent the farm you rent it with your eyes open. At two shillings an acre you can make a good living out of the land, which is not all ling and stones, but as sweet sheep pasture as I would desire to see.”

“Ah, sir! you don’t know—”

“Don’t I? Then I ought to know, that is all.”

“I wouldn’t mind ten pounds a year.”

“Perhaps you would mind five, or even three, still less.”

“In course I would like it for just as little as I could get it for; but I have said I’ll go to ten, and I will. No one can say with truth I ever made an offer and tried to back out of it;” and Mr. McGurk waved his hat to and fro with a slow satisfied movement, as if he were purring.

“You will pay twenty pounds per annum, if you have it at all,” answered the agent.

“See that, now, and the land nothing but a bare skin! Sure you couldn’t stick a spade in it without touching rock.”

“If you want to stick a spade in it, Mr. McGurk, that settles the matter. We are not going to have the grass meddled with.”

“Well, this beats all! How do you suppose a poor man is to live, or rather starve, off the land, if he is not to turn it over?”

“If you wish for arable land, we can find you some.”

“That is not exactly. It’s pasture I need; but what would I feed on such a barren bit of ground likely to bring me in ten pounds, to say nothing of twenty?”

“You probably know perfectly well. At any rate, there is the farm, which you can take if you please at twenty pounds. If you don’t, you can leave.”

“It’s an awful rent you’re asking. I never heard anything to come up to it.”

“Why, Greystone is better worth four shillings an acre than some of the land about Mostrene is worth sixpence.”

“Indeed, and sixpence is just about the value of Greystone.”

“If you think so, I certainly should advise you not to have anything to do with it.”

“I never thought to meet another as sore to deal with as the old Duke! It’s taking advantage of me you are, Mr. Stirling, on account of Greystone lying convenient to my bit of land.”

“No; the rent would be the same to anyone—no less, no more.”

“You are terrible hard, sir—as hard as the rocks at Greystone.”

“When we have known each other a long time, which I hope we shall,” replied Mr. Stirling, perfectly unruffled by this cutting taunt, “you will find we do not get on any the worse because I am not a fool;” and the agent took up a pen, looked at it, and dipped it in the ink, as a hint that the interview might conveniently end.

“Your honour’ll speak a word for me to Mr. Conway?” suggested McGurk, who had watched this proceeding with gloomy interest.

“I shall do no such thing,” was the uncompromising reply.

“Maybe if you told him how good a tenant I was, working hard and late—never sparing myself—spending nothing but for the bare bite and sup—always plotting and planning how I can make off enough for the next gale day, he would let me have Greystone for a shilling an acre,” went on the would-be tenant, perfectly regardless of Mr. Stirling’s answer.

The agent laid down his pen, folded his hands together, placed them on the desk, and said:

“Look here, Mr. McGurk—one word is as good as ten. If you were not mentioned in this list”—nodding to the paper at his elbow—“as a good tenant, I should have told you at once you could not have the land. The rent is a fair rent, as you very well know, and I don’t intend to haggle about it. It is not my practice to say one thing, meaning to do another. So, if you like to take Greystone at twenty pounds, you can have it; if not, well and good.”

“I never heard of anything to come up to this. Do you think, sir, a man can bind himself to such a rent as rashly and with as light a heart as he might go to the shop and buy a stone of meal?”

“As you ask me, Mr. McGurk—if he understands his business, I do think so.”

“Well, I suppose there is no help for it,” said the man, rising slowly yet with an air of great determination. “I am sorry not to get the slip of grazing, it lies so handy for me; but a sum such as you say I dursn’t take in hand. It would keep me lying awake all night, instead of resting myself after a hard day’s labour.”

“And I am sorry,” answered Mr. Stirling politely, “not to have you for a tenant; but I should not like you to lose your sleep, and I cannot take a shilling less.”

“I’ll bid your honour good-morning, then.”

“Good-morning, Mr. McGurk,” returned Mr. Stirling, rising and walking to the barn door with his visitor: a mark of attention which simply amazed the farmer, for it had ever been a principle with the old Duke and his agents to treat the tenants as if they were dirt.

“I think you are wrong, sir,” said McGurk, as he departed; “but I wish you well.”

“I am sure you do,” answered the other; “but I know I am right.”

By the time Mr. McGurk had got across the great stable-yard, built by a former Conway possessed of princely ideas on the subject of horses, and who carried those ideas into practice, he “took another thought,” and decided if he did not want to lose Greystone altogether he had better go back and what he called “clinch” the bargain.

Loitering about were “heaps of neighbours,” each and all hungering after the soil. They were there, decently clad, and almost in rags, waiting for an interview with the agent—standing talking in groups, or sitting singly “considering matters” on barrow, cart-shaft, steps, bucket, stone, turf, creel—anything that seemed handy for the purpose.

“Larry, just ask Mr. Stirling if I could have speech of him for a minute,” said Mr. McGurk, who after reaching the yard gates had turned back again; “I forgot a word I had to say.”

Larry, a stalwart, stolid young fellow, who owned a quiet tongue and a strong arm, and had, for these and other gilts, been told off to attend on Mr. Stirling’s levées and keep intruders at bay, alter cautioning Mr. McGurk to “stand by the latch and let nobody lift it,” passed in himself to deliver the message.

“Yes, I can see him; but only for a minute,” answered the agent, guarding his time against possible contingencies.

“I’ve been thinking,” began the would-be tenant, “I must have that bit of ground, sir, though the rent you want is like paving it with golden guineas; you’ll bate me something off it, surely.”

“No, Mr. McGurk—not a shilling.”

“Well, well, well! I never thought things would be like this when the young master came among us.”

Very wisely Mr. Stirling declined to be led into any further controversy, and resolutely kept silence while Mr. McGurk waited for the answer which did not come.

“I suppose I must make an end of the matter, then,” he said at last desperately; “I’ll take Greystone. As the season is so far through, you’ll count the entry as from November, of course?”

“Your rent will begin from the first of next month,” replied the agent, with calm decision.

“May I never, if ever I came across your honour’s like!” exclaimed the man; “but I am so situated I ought to have that land even at a loss, as it will be. I’ll take it for a year, and if I find I am able anyhow to make off the rent, you’ll grant me a seven years’ lease come next May twelvemonth.”

“That, practically, will be letting you the farm for eight years,” remarked Mr. Stirling, who could not help smiling at the man’s barefaced attempt to trap him; “but I believe I may say ‘yes’ to that—Mr. Conway leaves me a certain discretion in these matters.”

“Faith, and he could not leave it with a better, if he wants to get his pockets filled;” which was a compliment of so dubious a nature, Mr. Stirling did not attempt to accept it.

“And when may I turn the poor beasts in, your honour?” asked Mr. McGurk, after vainly waiting for a reply.

“Today, if you like; and I hope they will find the pasture better than you seem inclined to admit”

“There’s not much to be said against the pasture, what there is of it Nobody expects meadow-grass on a bare hillside.”

“From your tone, anyone might have thought you did,” returned Mr. Stirling, who was engaged filling up a printed from. “Do not go for a moment, please,” he added, as Mr. McGurk rose and looked thoughtfully into his hat. “I must trouble you to sign this before you take possession.”

“The Lord be between me and harm! What is it, sir?”

“It is only a memorandum of the terms on which we agree to let and you agree to take Greystone.”

“And you want me to put my name to that?”

“I do,” answered Mr. Stirling.

“Well, if ever I heard anything to come up to this!”

“I do not intend,” went on Mr. Stirling, “to have any loose verbal agreement. I am not going hereafter to have my time taken up and my temper tried by being told I said what I never thought of saying. There are certain things we do not mean to allow on this estate, and I have had a form printed which every tenant who wants to rent land here will have to sign.”

“Well, this is beyond the beyonds! And you expect me to put pen to that paper, when I know no more nor the dead what is in it?”

“I don’t expect you to do anything of the sort. Read it over carefully, and if you are not satisfied, show it to anyone you can trust—the priest, for instance. You go to chapel, I suppose?”

“No man ever saw me inside of a chapel, or ever will. I am as good a Presbyterian as yourself.”

“There can’t be too many good Presbyterians for my taste,” answered the agent.

“Indeed! then for that very reason you ought to let me have the bit of waste land for half what you are asking.”

“I will not go over that argument again, Mr. McGurk,” said the agent severely. “For the other matter, as you attend meeting, you cannot do better than take that document to Mr. McKye and ask his opinion about it.”

“I never came across the equal of this.”

“That is not my fault,” replied Mr. Stirling; “and now as I have a great deal to do, perhaps you will kindly go away. If you wish to rent Greystone, bring the paper back to be signed, and I will exchange it for one signed by myself.”

“This caps all,” observed Mr. McGurk. “I’ve held land the last thirty years, and it’s the first time any gentleman put the disgrace on me of doubting my word.”

“I do not doubt your word,” said Mr. Stirling, “and if I can help it no one shall mistake any word of mine. In the course of a few days I hope to have some bills posted where every intending tenant can read them, and I am besides sending advertisements to the Derry papers, so that there may be no misunderstanding as the practice which I mean to obtain on the Calgarry estate.”

“It’s a good job any way it is—maybe not just what Mr. Conway means,” retorted the man, with a dash of insolence.

“Do not fall into any error on that point,” advised the agent, who had step by step been dexterously manoeuvring Mr. McGurk to the door. “I will keep Greystone for you till twelve o’clock tomorrow, but not an hour longer. Good-morning;” and the next moment the irate Presbyterian found himself given over to the tender mercies of Larry, while Mr. Stirling attempted to finish his proclamation and a letter to the Derry editors.

All day long, for many, many days, that ran eventually into weeks, would-be tenants came and talked and haggled, and “better haggled.” Heaven and the saints and the Almighty were adjured to witness that the Calgarry land wasn’t fit to feed a goat, let alone support a Christian.

The people would have been quite content to pay the rent demanded, or even a higher sum, had Mr. Stirling asked more at first and allowed himself to be beaten down. All the traditions of the people, all their practice for generations, were diametrically opposed to Mr. Stirling’s “nonsensical notions.”

If a man sold a cow he would waste a whole afternoon over half-a-crown, which he afterwards contentedly spent in treating himself and his friends. About Calgarry time seemed literally of no value, and to a man like the new agent, who could find employment for every second in the day, it was especially annoying to have to waste hours and hours over matters which could have been settled in ten minutes.

But he remained firm to his principles, and bated not one sixpence of the price he originally demanded.

“They will find eventually,” he said to Mr. Malet, “that it is useless trying to tire me out. Mr. Conway would give in, so I have asked him to go and see his relation the Archdeacon.”

“A very excellent move,” answered the Vicar; “but do not most of your farmer friends purpose putting off any settlement till his return?”

“They have tried that on, but I told them it was quite useless. A fellow called Donelly has almost broken my heart. There is not a rule that I have laid down but he has wished to infringe, not a point he would yield without a fight. He argues by the hour—by the day together. The fact is, much as they all hate a fair rent, they hate being bound in black and white still more. Each man wants something I am not willing to concede. Beyond all, they desire to build their own cabins; and because I won’t let them, they believe they are all wronged men.”

“You think it was worth while contesting that point?”

“Well worth while, though it has caused an enormous amount of bad feeling, which that leader in yesterday’s paper will increase. It is very funny; the Tory editor says Mr. Conway is pursuing a wise and generous policy, while the Whig stigmatises my letter and advertisement as the most outrageous and brazen exposition of landlord despotism carried into effect by an unscrupulous agent it has ever been his lot to comment on—even in Ireland. But you have read the article, of course?”

“No; I have heard of, but not seen, it.”

“It is a very wonderful composition. The writer likens the new owner of Calgarry to Rehoboam, and says he is being guided to his ruin—not, indeed, by a young man, but by one quite old enough to know better. Duke Conway, he reminds everybody, laid a grievous yoke on the people of Donegal, who rejoiced when the tyrant died, and came with hope to the new owner, thinking he would lighten their burden, and determined to serve him loyally. Up to a certain point, everything went well: but then I came, and, advised by me, Mr. Conway now tells a downtrodden peasantry that he will add to their yoke; that whereas the man who is gone to his account chastised them with whips, he will chastise them with scorpions. They are not to be allowed the fruits of their labour because they will not be allowed to labour at all. All their rights are to be taken away; the very stones on their holdings are claimed by their landlord, who means to rule them with a rod of iron. I am going to insert the article, with my remarks on it, as a double column advertisement.”

“Are you? Would is not, perhaps, be prudent to let the matter drop?”

“No. This is only the beginning of the battle, which will have to be fully fought out sometime—years hence perhaps.”

“I know that. I see the object you have in view. But I am not at all sure the course you are taking is strictly legal.”

“Mr. Donelly says it is not.”

“To which you answered?”

“That if he wished we would try the question when the time came.”

“And he?”

“Said that wouldn’t help him much, because in Ireland there was one law for the poor and another for the rich.”

“Practically, I suppose there is,” remarked Mr. Malet thoughtfully.

“There is; but not exactly in your sense, and so I told him. I said, ‘I know there is a law for the poor; and if I am forced to it I’ll try if there is not one for the rich too. We have heard such a confounded lot of talk about tenant-right that it is about time somebody considered landlord-right.’ Then he made the usual remark concerning ‘wanting nothing but justice,’ and sang such a song over it, I could not help telling him one of Mr. Barry’s stories.”

“What was that?”

“O, only about a fellow standing his trial for murder, who said to his counsel, ‘All I want, your honour, is justice.’

“‘And that,’ answered the barrister, ‘is exactly what I am afraid you won’t get, for the jury have a mistaken objection to hanging!’”

“Did Donelly understand?”

“He did; he was greatly offended. He did not come near me again for two days, when, after a great deal of haggling, he agreed to take a farm at a rent which he declared was not a bit better than highway robbery. No, Mr. Malet. I have lived best part of my life in Ireland, and I know the thing the Irish like least is what you and I would call justice. Were this estate in England, and I dealing with English tenants, is there a single item in what that newspaper fellow calls my Royal Proclamation to which objection would be taken?”

“I don’t know that there is, except the short leases.”

“Those are the natural outcome of Mr. Conway’s straitened circumstances. We can’t improve the land as we wish to do now, and of course when we have improved it we shall raise our rents.”

“But why don’t you let the tenants improve it for themselves?”

“Because they won’t. One tenant in fifty, perhaps, might leave his holding better than he found it; but the majority put as little as they can help into the ground and take all they can out. At the end of seven years, if we did nothing, take my word for it the rushes would be growing in the grazing land just as they are growing now; in wet weather the cows would be standing up to their hocks in water, as you can see them any day; the crops of grain would be as poor as they have always been, the dwellings as wretched, and the fields as badly fenced. I am going to change all that”

“I fancy I know as much of Ireland as you, and I think you will tire of the task you have set yourself before many years are over.”

“Perhaps I may; but I must just get rested again. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

Mr. Malet smiled; he was a man who rarely laughed.

“I can more easily tell you what I should not do,” he answered. “I should not build, or drain, or crop, or fence, or reclaim. If I had the chance of getting tenants like McGurk and Donelly, I should not interfere much with them. You can get a very fair rental out of Calgarry as it stands, and it is extremely doubtful whether you could get a penny more if you changed it into a model farm tomorrow.”

“I mean to try, anyhow,” said the agent valiantly.

“Well, I hope better fortune will reward your efforts than has attended previous attempts of the same nature. It is a difficult task for one man to civilise a nation; but if you feel you are strong enough, far be it from me to discourage you. Only I should advise you not to spend too much money in striving to compel a change time will eventually bring about by some gradual and simple process. And that reminds me. How are Mr. Conway’s pecuniary affairs arranging themselves, or being arranged? Is there a chance of any satisfactory settlement?”

“I do not know. I suppose so,” answered Mr. Stirling. “We have heard nothing since we left London, and the old proverb says no news is good news.”

“Humph!” remarked the Vicar.

“You do not seem to agree with the old proverb?”

“I was not thinking about that. I should like to hear whatever news there might be, whether good or bad.”

“We most of us would like the same, I suppose; but neither wishing nor wanting will materially hurry the course of events,” answered the agent. “Won’t you come up to the house, Mr. Malet? It is not very comfortable here, and I have about done business for the day.”

“I am comfortable enough where we are,” was the reply; “and I must shortly be wending my way home. Before I go, however, there is one remark I should—What is it, Larry?”

“A gentleman, sir, would be glad to speak to Mr. Stirling,” answered Larry, whose entrance at this supreme moment lost the world forever that one remark with which Mr. Malet had proposed to enlighten it.

“A gentleman—what gentleman? Ask his name,” returned the agent a little nervously.

“You know my name, I think,” said the stranger, pushing open the door Larry had left ajar, and advancing to the table with a bow and the pleasant smile of one secure of his welcome.

It is no exaggeration to say a child might have knocked the agent down at that moment.

“Mr. Benaron!” he said, rising and resting both hands on the table.

“Yes, even so—Mr. Benaron,” answered Amos, in his most genial tone.

“Talk of an angel and you hear his wings,” muttered Mr. Malet; only his quotation did not run exactly on such complimentary lines.

“Mr. Malet, this is—” began Mr. Stirling, in his confusion scarcely knowing what he was doing or what he meant to say.

But it did not signify in the least, for while the words were still on his lips the Vicar passed by Larry and crossed the great stable-yard.

XXV

OPINIONS DIFFER

“I did not expect to have the pleasure of seeing you so soon again,” said Mr. Stirling, making a clutch at his presence of mind, and fortunately seizing it.

Whatever ill wind it might have been that had blown Mr. Benaron so far out of his usual latitude, matters could not be made any worse by civility.

“And nothing could have been further from my idea than that we should meet again here,” answered Mr. Benaron with suave composure. “Fact is, I had some premonitory symptoms of gout; and as my doctor told me to leave town, I thought I could not do better than take a run across the Channel.”

“There is not much gout in Donegal,” said Mr. Stilling sententiously.

“None from overfeeding, I should think, at any rate. I know I have not sat down to a decent meal since I left London.”

“Then I may venture to hope your symptoms have disappeared?”

“Quite; they could no more live in such a country as this than in a dead man.”

“From your tone, I fear your impressions of this country are not very favourable.”

Mr. Benaron shrugged his shoulders. “Do not let us talk of it, please,” he entreated. “At the beginning Nature turned Donegal out in the rough, and has forgotten ever since such a place existed. No; in my wildest dreams I could not have imagined such stony desolation, such grim, man-defying solitudes.”

The agent made no reply to this stern denunciation of Donegal. He could not see where Mr. Benaron was going, and so wisely kept his peace.

“If I do not give him a lead, he will have to take his jumps for himself,” considered Mr. Stirling, who had quite recovered his self possession. “This visit can’t mean mischief? I wonder what has passed between him and Reynolds.” And a great longing for five minutes’ chat with Mr. Barry came over the agent, while Mr. Benaron took his first leap in good style by saying:

“I am disappointed, though not altogether surprised, to find Mr. Conway from home.”

“It is not with his own goodwill he is away just at present,” answered Mr. Stirling; “fact is, I find I can get on here better without him for a while.”

“I think I understand.” And Mr. Benaron added nothing further.

“Do you want particularly to see Mr. Conway?” asked Mr. Stirling, after a pause.

“If I did not, should I be in Donegal?” returned the visitor.

“I cannot tell. You might be exploring the country.”

“Or I might be exploring Siberia,” retorted Mr. Benaron with infinite contempt. “No, my dear sir, if it suited my purpose I could pretend I came to these wilds for pleasure, but as between you and me there is no need for disguise, I tell you frankly I came to spy out the land—to discover for myself whether it was flowing with milk and honey, as the Conways, father and son, always led me to believe, or a howling desert, such as you graphically described at our last agreeable interview.”

“And which picture do you think the more faithful?” asked the agent.

“How can you put such a question?” said Mr. Benaron, “and we sitting here surrounded by desolation, silence, gloomy mountains, and a raving ocean. This is one of the waste places of the earth into which all the rubbish from out the fair valleys we wot of has been thrown through the ages.”

“Then you do not admire Donegal?”

“Certainly not. I would not live in it for a hundred thousand a year!”

“O!” said Mr. Stirling, utterly mystified, not so much by the Londoner’s ideas as by his candour.

“How long do you think it will be before Mr. Conway returns?” inquired Mr. Benaron, after a minute’s silence.

“I really could not say," answered the agent. “But I can write and let him know you are in Donegal,” added Mr. Stirling; reflecting, if needful, a line might be added to such a message telling Mr. Conway to remain absent.

“I will consider about that,” answered Mr. Benaron. “Meanwhile, as I am here, should you mind my having a look round the grounds? I confess to a little curiosity concerning the place where the late Mr. Conway held his court.”

“And wielded a powerful sceptre,” finished the agent. “You are quite at liberty, Mr. Benaron, to go where you like. There is nothing to conceal. I do not believe my employer ever made a better statement of his position than he was at one time justified in doing, and I know I have not made a worse. If you can occupy yourself for an hour—and there are worse places for a stroll than Calgarry Bay on a fine evening—I’d be pleased to have your company at dinner. I am staying for the present in Mr. Conway’s house, but I know I may take it on myself to invite a guest—more, I know Mr. Conway would be vexed if anyone was allowed to leave Calgarry without partaking of refreshment, so I hope you will excuse ceremony and take share of what may be going.”

Just for a moment Mr. Benaron hesitated, like one surprised and in doubt, but then he said,

“Thank you, I will; I have always had a friendly feeling towards Mr. Conway, and though we are not now on the terms I should like, I feel I can receive hospitality under his roof without any sense of treachery. But perhaps before I leave you now, you will tell me how I can get back to Dunfanaghy after dinner.”

“How did you come?” asked Mr. Stirling.

“On a jaunting-car, I think they called the infernal contrivance, that was returning to Letterkenny. I suppose I can hire some sort of conveyance hereabouts.”

“I don’t know where,” said the agent.

“Then I had better not go for that stroll, but husband my strength. If I have to walk back I shall need it all before I can hope to see the Stewart Arms again.”

“You could not walk, it is not to be thought of,” answered Mr. Stirling. “Let me consider—no, I don’t see what is to be done. There is not a horse we have, except Mr. Conway’s own riding mare, has not had a hard day’s work today and won’t have another harder day’s work tomorrow; we have them all on the land, every one but Duchess. See here, Mr. Benaron, you had better make up your mind to stop the night with us. We will do our best to make you comfortable.”

If Mr. Benaron had looked surprised before, he looked absolutely amazed at this fresh proposition.

“Mr. Stirling, are you serious?” he said.

“Serious about what?”

“About asking me to stop here—to sleep under Mr. Conway’s roof?”

“Of course I am. Though you may feel you want to turn us out of house and home, I can tell you it is not in Celtic blood to turn a stranger out to walk all the long miles that stretch between here and Dunfanaghy.”

“This seems very strange to me, knowing as you must know, as indeed you have said, that even in spite of my own inclinations I may find it impossible to avoid going to extremities.”

“We’ll thresh that grain out, if need be, elsewhere. We have a power of fighting in us, but in all campaigns civilities have been exchanged. Won’t you take this small civility from Mr. Conway, even if we have to fight to the death, as very likely we may ere long?”

“Yes, I will,” said Mr. Benaron; “but clearly understand it binds me to nothing.”

“And if there be a less than nothing, it binds me to that,” answered Mr. Stirling.

“Having settled which point, let me tell you I am infinitely obliged for your courtesy.”

“And I am obliged to you for yours.”

It is possible that just for a moment Mr. Benaron’s arid heart was softened by the agent’s kindly-meant and frankly-made offer; but, if so, that feeling soon wore off.

“Is not it Irish all over,” he thought, “first to cheat a man out of his money, and then insist on entertaining him with it? And the agent has lived in this country so long he seems to have forgotten he ever was a Scot. Well, he has not lied, any-how, about the estate—Heaven save the mark! Good God! to think of anyone calling this a property! Why, I might as well have made advances on prairie-land! I suppose that is Calgarry Bay. Building sites might be worth something if I could transport it to Ramsgate or Margate; but here—O Lord!” and Mr. Benaron disgustedly surveyed the Atlantic waves that came sweeping in on the sand.

“I daresay it would not be safe to bathe here either, so villas would only prove a drug,” he said. “Well, this is a place!” And, turning his back on the ocean, he looked at Muckish, and the long stretch of desolate land lying between the shore and the mountain.

Anything sadder than the whole prospect could scarcely be conceived. The sun was dropping slowly down to his rest, leaving long trails of gloomy cloud behind. It was not a cheerful evening; everything betokened a rainy and, perhaps, rough night. Muckish was black and threatening. Here and there the lonely expanse of country was flecked with sunshine, but over most of the landscape there lay that grey sorrowful light which is one of the peculiarities of that part of Donegal.

The sea-birds were returning to their homes on that rock-bound coast, and at intervals their shrill mournful cry added an additional element of weird melancholy to the lonely scene.

A man had need to be at peace with God and God’s creatures to walk solitary on such an evening by the sea, with the rush of the Atlantic in his ears, and a sorrowful sunset brooding over the water. It was an hour and a spot for Memory to give back her dead, and marshal her pallid ghosts; for imagination to give form to the thousand nameless fears we can always, when peering into the dim future, conjure up out of the darkness for ourselves; and for depression to seize the heart and crush it.

Mr. Benaron shivered as he went on. There was a raw chill in the air, a keen wind whistled over the barren earth, the headlands stood bare and cold against the sky, and the wash of the waves, as they swept in over the sands, sounded loud in its sad monotony.

“Worse places for a stroll!” thought Mr. Benaron; “that there could not be. A curse over Calgarry—I should think so, indeed; there is a curse over everything, it seems to me, in these dreary regions. How any human being can choose to live here passes my comprehension. I should go mad.” And, like Sir Henry Beecham, the good Amos turned his mind with a sense of relief to the gas-lit streets of London, and to the streams of men and women constantly passing through them—whither?

Ah! that was just what he did not want to consider; but the moaning sea, and the stern headlands, and the gloomy mountain, and the lonely deserted land would not allow him to forget. For, after all, even to usury—to this world’s success—to money getting and money having—there comes an end. His father had gone down into the grave, and for himself there must come a time when he too would have to set out alone on a more gloomy and solitary journey than even Calgarry Bay at eventide prefigured.

“I will go no further,” he muttered; “I wish I had not come so far.” And he turned back to behold a line of mournful rocks jutting out into the ocean, where the sea was fretting itself into white foam.

“And this is fine scenery!”—so ran his scornful thought. “Give me the Strand—which man has made—from Northumberland House to St. Clement’s Church, and whoever loves this sort of thing may have it and welcome. I wonder if the old Duke, as they call him, ever came here? Why did he bury himself among these fastnesses? He who might have lived and died in Piccadilly if he had chosen!” And greatly exercised as to what could have been Marmaduke Conway’s reason for retreating to such a lair, Mr. Benaron passed onwards. If Calgarry had been the home of some wild beast he could not have entertained a greater contempt for it; and the interior of the house did not at all raise his opinion of the Conway position.

It almost seemed a pity he and Miss Dutton could not have exchanged confidences concerning the “dreadful furniture,” for on that point they were quite in accord.

When he looked round the chamber to which he was conducted before dinner, he could not repress a thrill of exultation as he contrasted its appointments with the superior taste displayed in his own home.

No Arabian bedstead, elegantly upholstered; no plate-glass doors to the wardrobe, reflecting back his own gentlemanly figure; no polished steel fender, no brilliant new carpet, no damask curtains, no modern dressing-table: everything old—old and dingy. It was precisely the same downstairs. The dining-room seemed to him funereal with its great sideboard of Spanish mahogany, underneath which stood a huge sarcophagus big enough to have contained Duke Conway’s mortal remains; a dumb-waiter occupied one corner, and a japanned plate-warmer was conspicuous on the hearthrug. On the walls hung some portraits of Conways long dead and gone; the gilding of the frames had waxed dull, and the faces on the canvas were well-nigh undistinguishable.

It was a relief to turn from them to the table, lighted by a four-branched candelabra, and to note that the details seemed to promise a good dinner, which promise was abundantly fulfilled.

“Some fine old silver here,” thought the guest; but later on Mr. Stirling reminded him that not an article of furniture, not a book, painting, or spoon, belonged to Mr. Terence Conway.

“He has the use of everything till it suits Captain Conway to claim his own,” said the agent; “but of course you know all about that.”

“Yes, I know all about that,” answered Mr. Benaron gloomily.

He felt, as he spoke, like a banker who, after having advanced a tithe, as he supposes, of its value on a deed, finds his security worthless: or like a man who discovers the diamonds he has contrived to get into his hands are mere paste. Till the old Duke’s death not a doubt had troubled the smooth surface of Mr. Benaron’s faith. There was Calgarry—a known estate; and there, likewise, Mr. Marmaduke’s money. There, also, was Mr. Terence Conway’s baptismal certificate; and there, further, were those policies judiciously effected on his life.

Mr. Benaron had come so remarkably well out of his transactions with Mr. Terence’s father that he might be excused for supposing he should come off equally well when accounts between himself and the younger Conway came to be squared up.

He had only done what men of his stamp are perpetually doing—viz. taking too much on trust; and while he sat in what he called “that old dungeon of a dining-room,” Mr. Benaron cursed himself for having been a fool.

He had believed in the picture of Calgarry as painted by the fluent tongue and roseate imagination of his first client; but he had found it very hard to believe in the gloomy land-scape sketched at his desire by Mr. Stirling.

Then, too late, he thought he would see for himself: and he had seen, and he had heard.

It was not his fault that he failed to get even an approximate idea of what Calgarry would fetch if brought to the hammer. In answer to his questions he could only elicit:

“’Deed, it’s hard to say.”

“Land is not what it was, even in my memory.”

“Yes, the Captain did want to buy Calgarry; but it was never told what he offered, nor if he offered anything.”

“Calgarry was not everybody’s money. Likely, if he could have got a bid worth while, Mr. Conway might have been glad to get shut of the place.”

“Mr. Norbury had a great conceit of it on account of the game. It was in his mind, too, to do a lot of good—he had money enough and to spare—but it was said he wouldn’t make a big offer for Calgarry; he wanted to get it cheap, and then lay out what he could spare on benefiting the people.”

“Maybe Mr. Conway is just as wise to hold on. There are heaps of properties in the court—some of them going for an old song.”

“There are those as think anybody that wants Calgarry will keep a quiet tongue for a bit. It’ll maybe go cheaper yet”

“It was a fine place once, well kept up, with plenty of tenants and cattle, and sheep by the hundred—aye, and young horses, too; but the old Duke took the notion—whatever possessed him—to lay the land waste. There wasn’t one dare say him nay; and whenever he got rid of a tenant he would let the house go to wreck and ruin, and the ground too. God forgive him! He was a terrible man.”

“This Mr. Conway mightn’t have done so bad either if he had chanced on a knowledgeable agent; but what can a gentleman from down in the South comprehend about Donegal? There, though, when all is said and done, what does it come to? Back to the Nun. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. They won’t lift the curse off Calgarry by disallowing men putting their strength into the soil.”

“It’s likely Mr. Conway will find old ways weren’t the worse ways before many years have gone over his head.”

It was of these and similar utterances, extracted painfully and diplomatically during a three weeks’ sojourn in the heart of Donegal, Mr. Benaron was thinking as he sat, after dinner, drinking the friendly tumbler of punch his gouty tendency compelled him to accept rather than that old wine of which there was but little left in the Calgarry cellars, most of the bins having been emptied, and their contents forwarded to Captain Conway. He had dined well, if plainly; he had been pressed to partake of the Madeira, worth Heaven knows how much a bottle; he had been waited on by Byrne, whose noiseless step and low voice and deferential manner had won the hearts of many guests of high degree in the old Duke’s time—and yet he was dissatisfied.

He looked disparagingly at what he accounted the shabby surroundings of the Conways. He did not think much of the house, or the grounds, or the furniture, or the servants. His candid opinion of Ireland was, that a less inviting country man never beheld. His feeling towards the inhabitants was one of keen antipathy; he considered himself a wronged and swindled individual. He had come across the Channel to see for himself whether Donegal was as Terence’s father always led him to believe—a veritable land of Canaan flowing with milk and honey, and producing, if not grapes and pomegranates and figs, such equivalents thereto as might reasonably be expected; and this—this—was the result.

“It is an awful country,” he afterwards declared; “cursed by God, and hateful to man. It grows nothing but stone, and mountain, and bog, and rain. ‘Green Isle,’ indeed! I saw nothing green on my travels, except myself, who had been such a fool as to go there!”

No; he did not want to fight. Still, if he had found Calgarry a smiling plain—where corn waved, and grass grew, and cattle wandered—he would have fought even Mark Barry, if needful, “to get his own,” which meant a vast amount that was not his at all, only what he regarded as his lawful perquisite.

But an Irish Petrea—a stony wilderness—where the only variety was dreary bog, frowning mountain, or raving ocean; desolated by the two plagues of famine and emigration; unhappy in its soil and in its climate; given over to dirt, Rome, and whisky—who in his senses, possessed of means to buy a property elsewhere, would purchase, and such an one, so far removed from civilisation? Perhaps there was really something in that statement about the gout; perhaps Mr. Stirling’s bow, drawn quite at a venture, had shot an arrow nearer some vital part of Mr. Benaron’s person than he cared to hear whizzing towards him again. Whatever the reason—and doubtless there were many, with which this history has no need to concern itself—Mr. Benaron felt very much out of sorts. His credulous faith in human nature—more especially that human nature which goes borrowing—had received such a shock that he decided to take what he could get, and half determined to retire from so thankless a business as lending money.

He knew a very rising young man, with as old a head on his shoulders as anybody need desire, who was on the look-out to improve his fortunes.

He could trust that young man; they could row in the same boat, and it was quite on the cards that, ere long, the name of Benaron might fade out from Soho, and the name of Schloss appear elsewhere. He could make a very good income by finding the money and acting as “friend in the City” to Schloss. Yes, he did not want any more such affairs as that of Calgarry, which he now meant to settle.

It is hard even for a Christian to part with any portion of the pound of flesh he holds to be his due; and Mr. Benaron was not exactly a Christian—though as much that as anything—still, “needs must when the devil drives,” and he felt Mark Barry was a very nasty devil indeed. Such thoughts made Amos a little bitter, and the smile with which he opened his parallels was anything but pleasant.

“I feel rather inclined to congratulate myself,” he began, “for having met a man as much disliked in Donegal as I am by some persons in London.”

“It is not much to congratulate yourself on, I should have thought,” answered Mr. Stirling, a good deal surprised. “But if you are pleased, that is the main point. Is the gentleman in the same line of business as yourself?”

“Not exactly. He is an agent.”

“And if not indiscreet, may I ask who he is?”

“Really, Mr. Stirling, if you are unable to identify him, it would be almost a pity to enlighten you.”

“Do you mean me?”

“As you put the question so direct, I am compelled to confess I do.”

“Well, that need not trouble me.”

“I am glad you look at the position so bravely.”

“What would make me look at it any other way?”

“Agents have been shot before now.”

“And agents have not been shot—so there you are.”

“You take a very philosophical view of the situation. I hope your life is not heavily insured?”

“It is not insured for the benefit of my creditors, you may be sure of that, or at the rate you charged Mr. Conway. Come, I had you that time.”

“No. I charged nothing exorbitant for whatever advances I made; my conscience is quite clear on that score.”

“Then all I have to remark is, yours must be a wonderful conscience.”

“It is,” said Mr. Benaron, with such hearty agreement that Mr. Stirling was forced to laugh.

“But really, you know,” went on the former, with the manner of a man who has just won and taken up a trick, “you are very much disliked—in fact, I fear I may go so far as to say hated—and I should imagine it is more dangerous to be hated in Donegal than in London.”

“Not at all—if one man has a spite against another he can find a way to serve him out, whether it is in London or on Horn Head.”

“You are contradicting your argument in the matter of Mr. Conway.”

“The cases are different. Nobody would want to put me out of the way for the sake of the insurance money.”

“Not even your wife?” asked Mr. Benaron, with a ghastly cynicism.

“I have no wife,” answered the agent.

“Happy individual!” exclaimed Mr. Conway’s creditor.

“Each individual has his own notions of happiness,” said Mr. Stirling sententiously, “and if it is yours to be without a wife, I have no right to quarrel with it. There is one remark, though, I think I may make. You did not come over to Donegal to tell me I am scarcely as well liked as I might be or to hint my life is in jeopardy. Now, what did bring you, if I may make so bold as to ask?”

“I have told you—to spy out the land.”

“Well, you have spied it out. I suppose you know as much about the land now as you’ll ever know, unless you like to come and take a farm here.”

“God forbid!” ejaculated Mr. Benaron.

“You have said,” proceeded the agent, quite unmoved by this vehement expression of distaste for Donegal, “what you came to Ireland for, and now I hope you won’t be offended if I further ask what brought you to Calgarry. It was not, I conclude, to let Mr. Conway know your mind about his country and his agent?”

“No,” answered Mr. Benaron, “it was not, though both subjects would have been mentioned incidentally, probably.”

“O!” said Mr. Stirling; and he said no more. “I will first give him rope enough,” he thought, “and he’ll have to speak out.”

The good Amos did not seem to find it very easy to speak out. Even when admonishing a borrower who failed to meet his acceptances, Mr. Benaron always preferred a devious to a straight rebuke, and though he had begun well with Mr. Stirling, and been plain almost to offensiveness, he experienced a difficulty in opening the real business which was the cause of his appearance in the wilds of Donegal.

He sat looking at the fire idly, wondering what the future could hold for a people who burnt a fuel that never blazed. When a man is dissatisfied, there are few things which fail to give offence, and the glow of the peat seemed to fill the cup of Irish iniquity to the brim.

“May I ask you a plain question, Mr. Stirling?” he at last said, breaking a stillness which had become oppressive.

“Certainly.”

“Well, Mr. Conway seems to have started you in Donegal as a sort of Joseph—a long way after the original, perhaps—still, he has got you over his house, and without you no man may dare to lift up his hand or foot in all the land—”

“Just stop a minute, will you, please?” interrupted Mr. Stirling. “Do you want to pick a quarrel with me?”

“Quarrel! Dear me, no! What could induce you to think so?”

“Your words, which are insulting, and your manner, which is offensive. We are plain people here, Mr. Benaron, and we like to see which way we are going. Now we may proceed. You had a question to ask me. What is it?”

“Being placed so high in authority,” proceeded Mr. Benaron with imperturbable calmness, “have you power in Mr. Conway’s absence to attend to Mr. Conway’s affairs?”

“I should like to know what affairs you are referring to before I answer that. If you mean his business with you, I have no authority to attend to it; but I would take it on myself to do so if I thought any good was like to come of my venturing on such a responsibility.”

“That is enough. You asked me a while ago what brought me to Calgarry. I will tell you. I am tired of this game the lawyers are playing, and I come to try if we cannot agree to some settlement among ourselves.”

“Does your lawyer know you are here?” asked Mr. Stirling.

He had not expected this inquiry, and for a moment Mr. Benaron paused, considering whether it would be better to tell the truth or a lie; then he said, “There are some questions it is wiser not to put.”

“That is enough. He does know, and that places us at a bit of a disadvantage; but, however, go on. What is your proposal?”

“What is yours?”

“I don’t know that we have any. I never heard of any. You see the land. Mr. Conway has nothing else. You can’t reap when there is no corn, or sell cattle if you have none.”

“You can get money. How much will you pay to be done with me and Quinion?”

“Answering for myself, I would pay a good deal if I could get it,” replied Mr. Stirling. “If I couldn’t I’d have to put up with you and Mr. Quinion, and that is about what I am afraid Mr. Conway must do.”

“Fighting takes money,” observed Mr. Benaron sententiously.

“That is true, but we expect it won’t be ours.”

“Are you really so mad as to think you will get off scot-free?”

“I am sure I can’t tell—law is very uncertain.”

“Do you mean that Mr. Conway will go into the witness-box and deny he had any money from me?”

“He could not well do that, for he had some”

“O! you admit he had some. Perhaps you can tell me how much?”

“No, but I could tell you some he hadn’t.”

“Well, that is one step forward, at any rate. What is the amount he had not?”

“He had not a penny of the bills he accepted two days after he came of age.”

“Does Mr. Conway say that?”

“When you see him you can ask him, or your lawyer can. Meantime I say he had not.”

“Is there anything else which occurs to you?”

“I have not had time to go into the matter. You see, I am an agent, not exactly an accountant, and I must attend to the estate before I look to anything else; but I may tell you this much—I see quite enough in the affair to make me sure Mr. Conway won’t come out of it second best.”

The way in which Mr. Stirling figuratively unsheathed his dirk, and showed he had such a weapon by him, without attempting to use it unless need should arise, was simply beautiful.

“Here we are, all ready,” Mr. Conway’s agent seemed to say; “but you need not have three inches of cold steel in your body unless you like. It is quite optional.”

“He won’t come out of it well,” remarked Mr. Benaron, after considering this.

“I am afraid I don’t quite follow you.”

“What I mean is, Mr. Conway had better agree to terms with me. I always laugh if I see a novice playing with law. ‘My good young greenhorn,’ I think, when a man tells me he will go to his solicitor, ‘you don’t know that the end of these things is death.’ For my part—and you know I am not young nor a greenhorn—I feel afraid to say good-morning to my lawyer when I meet him in the street, lest I should find something in his bill of costs after this style:

“To advising Mr. Benaron about the weather, remarking it was certain to rain, and combating his remark that it was a good morning,—at great length…. £168”

Mr. Stirling did not laugh. He had no heart left in him for laughing. He was at his wits’ end to know what to say. He would cheerfully have given fifty pounds out of his own pocket if by such a sacrifice it had been possible to transport Mr. Reynolds from the great metropolis to Calgarry.

“Like yourself, Mr. Benaron,” he observed, “I am no novice. I have seen, one way and another, a good deal of law and lawyers, and my experience of the latter has been, I am happy to say, much more fortunate than yours. My last employer’s solicitors were gentlemen of the highest character, and I fancy Mr. Conway is in very good hands.”

“You have not yet had Mr. Reynolds’ little bill?”

“There will be a great deal more added on it, I fancy, before anyone has to pay that,” answered Mr. Stirling diplomatically.

“There need not be, if you would only meet me in the same spirit which brought me here. I came to try to settle this matter amicably. Let us talk the business over in a business manner. I know well enough you cannot agree to any terms without Mr. Conway’s consent; but you, I feel sure, may practically close the account. How much do you say?”

“It is impossible for me to say anything,” answered the agent: “first, because I have not the power; and second, because I have not the will to do what might seriously compromise Mr. Conway.”

“Are you not putting your power a little too high?” asked Mr. Benaron.

“A very small person can often do a heap of mischief,” answered the agent. “No; I should not care to make any suggestion, even if I had one in my mind to make, which I have not. But if you choose to put a figure on what is in your mind, I’ll tell you what I think of it.”

“That is absurd,” said the creditor. “I can’t be buyer and seller too.”

“And I can’t be either one or the other; so between us it seems we are unlikely to get much further.”

“Well, if I must open the ball,” returned Amos, with a natural modesty, “what would you think if I offered to take off ten per cent?”

Mr. Stirling smiled. “You’ll have to do a good deal better than ten per cent.”

“That is your notion.”

“That is my conviction.”

Mr. Benaron made a further statement—Mr. Stirling smiled again; and so the matter proceeded, like a cheap-jack’s sale, the various offers on the creditor’s part being treated by the agent with a stony contempt, which would have been infinitely annoying to Mr. Benaron if he had not fully expected it.

At last he stopped. “Now,” he declared, “I will not abate another farthing.”

“And why could you not have said that at first?” asked Mr. Stirling.

“Are you prepared to close at the price?” asked Mr. Benaron, ignoring this question.

“It is about twice too much, in my opinion,” observed the agent; “but I will put it before Mr. Conway.”

“And advise him to close?”

“Yes, I’ll go so far as that.”

“Then with your permission I think I will go to bed. Time lengthens itself out here in an extraordinary manner.”

Mr. Stirling did not take any notice of this remark; he accompanied Mr. Benaron to his chamber, said he hoped he would rest well, bade him good-night, and then went straight to the stables, where he bade one of the men get up at dawn, clap a saddle on Mr. Conway’s mare, ride with a telegraph message to the nearest office, and wait for an answer; after that he too sought his pillow, which seemed to him that night very soft indeed.

It was late the next afternoon before the man returned. Mr. Conway had telegraphed the message on to Mark, who merely answered, “Yes.”

“What do you think?” asked the barrister, rushing into Mr. Reynold’s office, on his way to Westminster Hall; “Amos has come to his senses, and proposed a compromise, which Conway has accepted! and—suspend the exclamation of your astonishment, please, till you hear the end—Captain Conway is willing to lend a thumping slice of his legacy on Calgarry!”

“O!” said Mr. Reynolds. He did not seem so much delighted with the news as Mark thought he might have been.

“Was there ever such a lucky beggar as Conway?” went on Mr. Barry. “It is right enough what they say—there is a providence over drunken people and fools!”

“And in which category should you place the owner of Calgarry?”

“Both,” answered Mark joyously. “I have seen him confoundedly tipsy—he can’t carry his liquor like anybody else—no head! and as for the other, if he is not a fool, tell me!”

“How pleased he would be to hear the terms in which you speak of him!”

“That’s nothing. I’m as fond of Terence as if he was my brother; and, maybe, he’ll get on all right now. He can make a fresh start. ‘The Devil does take care of his own,’ eh, Reynolds?”

“You ought to know,” replied Mr. Reynolds dryly.

XXVI

GOLDEN HOURS

There is one difficulty in making a fresh start people always overlook, namely, that before starting a man cannot get rid of himself. For this reason it is always safe to prophesy, if a person has failed once he will fail again. He remains unchanged, though circumstances may alter. When the blight of non-success is in the human tree, how can anyone expect fruit? When a bad jockey rides, it is idle to hope to win a race; and circumstances are like horses: that man who would pass the winning-post needs a good seat, a cool head, and a light hand, otherwise the best steed Heaven can send him may fail even to secure a place.

The great financier who said he never would associate himself with a man that had failed merely expressed the same idea from a different point of view. Never have any business transactions with an unlucky individual; never buy an unlucky ship, nor take an unlucky house; not because there is really such a thing as luck or ill-luck, but because there must be a reason why the person, the ship, the house came to grief.

One animal will fatten where another starves; one man will heap up riches where his fellow loses the little he hath. It is in the animal to fatten, in the man to grow rich; and just so it is in some natures to mar the best chances opportunity offers.

“He has the ball at his foot now,” said Mark to his wife, speaking of Terence.

“Poor boy, I am so glad,” answered Letitia; but they both forgot a ball may as well be a mile off as at a man’s foot, if he does not know what to do with it.

It really seemed, though, as if the new Conway of Calgarry meant to play his game well. At first he could scarcely believe in the extent of his good fortune.

For a little while he was as one dazed. He wandered aimlessly about the place, he paced the sands, he looked at the headlands with eyes from which the shadow of a haunting trouble had been brushed away; he was gravely happy—too happy and thankful for laughter or light jest; but when he met Mr. Stirling, he smiled, and the agent smiled back, well content.

He was indeed in the height of his glory. No man ever felt more utterly satisfied than Mr. Stirling then. He was busy, and everyone about the estate except the owner was busy too. Never, even at Gweedore, had such a sudden spurt of industry been seen as was then to be beheld any day about Calgarry. People said it would not last, and resigned themselves accordingly. The tenants even were busy in a regular sort of way, which is saying a great deal. Out on the land the women and children were hard at work, while most of the men were engaged in putting up houses and outhouses for wages, “if ever anybody heard the like!”

They felt it all the harder to be paid because they could not even laugh at Mr. Stirling’s folly in spending “good money for labour when he might have had every stick and stone put in place far better for nothing;” because they knew this new departure was only another form of landlord tyranny. Further, they could not have things to their mind. The sweet simplicity of their old cabins was far and away more homelike than all the English notions with which Mr. Stirling bothered them. What was the good of it all? “Where were the hens—God bless them!—so well as roosting up on the beams among the smoke? It kept vermin and disease off them; and the pigs, it was the height of folly to think they would ever thrive in a sty after having been used to the run of the house.” “If Mr. Stirling had a mind to build stables and dairies and byres, he could do it if he liked, of course; but everybody knew a lean-to—not too high in the roof, and convenient to get at—was far better for the poor beasts than those cold barracks, where they would be shivering through the winter nights.”

Well, there was one comfort—no man, agent or no agent, could be everywhere; and before the bad weather came, he’d be tired of riding about, and would, maybe, have something better to do than putting things all wrong, and they could run up a bit of a shed beside the turf stack, where nobody would be any the wiser, and keep the cow fine and handy.

Thus Donegal consoled itself. Like Brer Rabbit it “sot up and said nothing,” but it thought a vast deal.

It was getting its wages regularly, and could afford to remain silent; precisely as in England old women who are in the receipt of doles remain politely mute while “the dear kind ladies” instruct them in their duties, and then do exactly what they please when the ladies’ backs are turned.

A general opinion, however, prevailed that Mr. Stirling was an awful sort of a man. If he saw a poor fellow herding an old cow or maybe a heifer by the roadside, he was off his horse in a minute, wanting to know if he could find no better use for his time than sitting on the top of a ditch wasting his day—as if it was waste to let the poor dumb brute pick a bit of grass! They mocked quietly at the agent’s notions, and remarked,

“Ach! he’s sthrange yit to the counthry, and he knows but little about crops or he’d never be sowing corn now. He’s all on for improved breeds, too, as if his Maker hadn’t put the sort of breed here fittest for the climate.” Even Mr. McKye entertained the opinion that Mr. Stirling was going a little too fast.

“You are nearer the sea than Mountain View, remember,” he said. “You’ll not get those things to live.”

“Then they must die,” answered the agent, who had the greatest belief in the soundness of his own judgment.

“You need never hope that those crops will ripen,” remarked Mr. Malet, who from long and sad experience knew it was as useless striving to get the better of the Irish climate as to fight against the prejudices of his flock; “what will you do with them?”

“You will see,” answered Mr. Stirling, which was about all the explanation he vouchsafed to anyone.

He would have told Mr. Conway his plans had he not found Terence only cared for results, and was perfectly indifferent to details. In every form and shape he hated business. If he refrained from saying in so many words “Don’t pester me,” his weariness when money matters came on the tapis was so evident Mr. Stirling very soon ceased to speak of them.

No human being could have been nicer and kinder to another than Terence to his agent; yet it was not long ere Mr. Stirling became uneasily conscious of some vague want in his employer.

“Look here,” said Mark Barry, when he met the agent one day by appointment at Messrs. Bray & Lucan’s office in Dublin, and dined with him afterwards, “Terence is as good a fellow as ever lived, but I wouldn’t advise you to trust him too far. It is in the Conways to throw people over when their turn is served. I don’t say Terence has that in him, but you’ll be wise to have as binding agreement with the landlord as the tenants. I’m not sure, indeed, I wouldn’t trust the tenants more than the landlord. After all, what is bred in the blood must come out in the bone. That is true. I know how I have had to battle against my own blood. Men don’t care to talk about such things, but they’re true, no matter how much we’d like to disbelieve them. At any rate, put your position at Calgarry in black and white.”

“A nod is as good as a wink,” and Mr. Stirling, even while he said confidently to himself, “That young fellow is as good as gold,” thought it prudent to hint to his employer the advisability of some legal arrangement. He felt a great delicacy about the matter, and mentioned it to Terence with the greatest reluctance, though it was certainly his right to do so.

The manner in which the young man received his request, however, increased the great liking Mr. Stirling had already conceived for him.

“Why did you not speak to me before?” he asked. “Of course your position ought to be put on a sure footing. You know I leave all business details to you; but in this case I will write to Mr. Bray, and ask him to draw up the sort of paper we want. You have been a very faithful friend to me, and I hope I shall never prove ungrateful.” And in accordance with this statement, he directed his solicitors to deal so liberally by Mr. Stirling that the agent was fairly overcome, and set his brains to work how he could best make some return for Mr. Conway’s kindness.

Clearly the first thing was to put matters in good train with Miss
Dutton, and he strongly advised Terence to write at once, and, without going into minutiae let his love understand affairs were going remarkably well with him.

“The young lady is most beautiful, and her fortune is very large,” he went on; “but for every advantage she brings, you can lay down another. Don’t be faint-hearted, and we may welcome a bride at Calgarry before the winter.”

If there be times, as we know there are, when the stars in their courses seem to fight against a man, so occasionally each circumstance, as it comes, proves, directly or indirectly, a chance in his favour.

Just about the time when Mr. Benaron decided to pay his visit to Donegal, it happened that Mrs. Boyne of Mostrene began to feel that it might be well to set up some sort of opposition to Captain Conway’s mother, who was fast growing a little more than any lady could be expected to stand. Quarrels are not always desirable in families, but it seemed to Mrs. Boyne that a friendly alliance with Calgarry would prove a check to the absurd pretensions of Mr. Bagenal Conway’s widow.

For this reason, after that invitation to Miss Dutton, of which mention has been made, she elected to call on Sir Henry and Lady Beecham, and make Philippa’s personal acquaintance, taking it quite for granted she and that young lady would one day be neighbours in Donegal.

This visit, which was paid with a great clatter of horses and a suitable array of servants in the Mostrene livery, impressed Miss Dutton greatly.

Mrs. Boyne felt quite sure Terence had been abominably treated, and said how very glad Mr. Boyne was when he heard Mr. Conway intended to keep the property.

“It would be a thousand pities,” she said, “for a known estate like Calgarry to pass away from the direct heir; for her part, she quite longed to go to Ireland and make young Mr. Conway’s acquaintance, she thought he had behaved so well. Many a man would have disputed the old Duke’s will, if only for the sake of stirring up mud and making matters disagreeable for the person who had supplanted him;” and then Mrs. Boyne and Lady Beecham talked pleasantly about Terence’s past and Terence’s future, and both prophesied great things, for him, and Miss Dutton’s heart inclined more favourably towards her lover than it had ever done since the day when she knew he was disinherited.

For this reason Terence received a much more cordial reply to his letter than he had dared to hope.

“Now,” advised Mr. Stirling, “go to London and settle matters;” and as this advice tallied exactly with the lover’s own desires, he at once followed it.

“Wish me joy,” he wrote to his agent: “Miss Dutton has accepted me, and I am the happiest man alive.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Stirling, as he thoughtfully folded up the hurried scrawl. “I wonder how it will turn out? After all, there is one point about which there can be no uncertainty: she has money, and we shall want all the money we can get at Calgarry.”

What a golden summer that seemed to the old Duke’s successor! What happy months those were that sped by on the wings of a great content! what plans for good, what wise resolutions he formed! how unutterably thankful he felt! how thoroughly at peace he was with all the world, and for once with himself!

It was lucky for the estate that such a glorious burst of sunshine had not succeeded to the winter’s chill at an earlier period of the year, otherwise Terence felt so infinitely blessed he would infallibly have granted the tenants precisely what they pleased to ask.

Never, perhaps, before had so happy a Conway watched the Garry as its waters found their way to the ocean, or paced beside the Atlantic, thanking God for everything, more especially for his wife that was to be. The Nun had no terror, no meaning for him then. If he ever remembered the ban laid on his race, it was but to feel certain it was removed.

He meant to do such wonderful things for Donegal, that surely if ever there were a case in which good intentions could be accepted as an expiation for the sins of those who had gone before, this might be considered one. Save on a like cheerful occasion—perhaps, indeed, not even then—was it to be expected that similar festivities to those which had celebrated Mr. Marmaduke Conway’s decease would again obtain in Donegal. Nevertheless, during the course of that pleasant summer, when all things were going well with Terence, Calgarry and Mostrene and the parts adjacent presented to an admiring world a creditable appearance of life and jollity. Riding parties, driving parties, walking parties, were sights which came to be regarded without amazement. The gates of Calgarry stood wide. “What’s the good of clashing them to,” asked the lodge-keeper, “when they would have to be opened again next minute?” Once more Sir Henry Beecham sauntered along the avenue, in much better weather than on the occasion of his previous visit. All things looked brighter to him. Trout from the lake and salmon from the river lent a joy to life absent in the winter, whilst the knowledge that the days of his guardianship were numbered gave a peace to his soul that curious part of the General’s being had lacked for some time past.

Lady Beecham remained in London. She was one of those delightful old ladies who never go visiting, who, preferring their own homes to the homes of other people, stay in them to their own great advantage. But if the hero’s wife were conspicuous by her absence, Letitia was in the fullest evidence—Letitia with all her babies, Mark included; for Terence, even had he wished to ignore the barrister, could scarcely have done so after the friendly part Mr. Barry had acted towards him.

But Terence’s heart at that time seemed large enough to take in the whole world, and to make allowances for the shortcomings of everyone. He was so thankful for mercies vouchsafed, he felt he could not sufficiently try to show his gratitude to God and man. He had actually overpowered Mr. Stirling with his liberality and consideration. He had “stood by the meeting-house” in a manner Mr. McKye described as “princely.” He did not forget the priest or the priest’s congregation; and, as has been stated, he would pretty nearly have enfranchised all his tenantry had Mr. Stirling not already settled their affairs on a far different footing.

That golden summer Calgarry’s master was seen at his very best, if not his very wisest. He proved a delightful host. He gave Lettie carte blanche. He virtually said to Mark, “All I have is under your hand—my horses, my carriages, my servants, my house itself;” and Mark rose equal to the occasion. He behaved himself as no one had ever known him to behave before. He forswore bad language—(“D——d if I didn’t,” he said afterwards), except amongst the grooms and stable-boys, who did not believe the horses would have understood what they meant had their ordinary conversation not been plentifully bestrewn with oaths. Mark did not swear much. He was delighted with everything. He listened to all Mr. Stirling’s plans, and walked day after day over to the place where the agent’s house was being built. He took Sir Henry long drives, and heard interminable anecdotes about the Duke and Boney and various other people, without breaking across the narrative. He climbed rapidly into esteem with the Boynes, and made himself quite necessary to Philippa, who, having determined to become a rival lady of the county and eventually cut out her hostess, was delighted with Mr. Barry’s suggestion that she might at once make a mark by restoring old Calgarry Church.

“I scarcely see what necessity there is to restore it,” ventured Terence; “not half a dozen people would ever go to it. Nineteen-twentieths of the population are Roman Catholics.”

“Then let us give the old Calgarry Church back to them!” exclaimed Philippa enthusiastically.

“I do not think you could do that,” said Mark; “but I’ll tell you what you might do. Get Terence to find you a site, and build them a beautiful chapel—one after your own heart. Why, Donegal would worship you!”

Meanwhile, there was but one man who held himself aloof from the picnic, and boating, and dinner, and breakfast parties, which caused “such a stir” at Mostrene. Mr. Malet would have none of them. The county had never made much of him; and after the old Duke’s favour was withdrawn very few persons seemed to remember his existence till Terence’s reign began. Mrs. Boyne asked him to let Audna come and stay at the Castle.

“Such a dear sweet girl; and I am sure, Mr. Malet, the little change would be good for her.”

“It is very kind of you, indeed,” answered the clergyman; “but Audna is too young to go visiting. She leads such a simple life; she is quite unfitted to mix with grand people.”

“Grand!” repeated Mrs. Boyne. “Why, we are the most primitive creatures on the face of the earth! She will feel at home with my girls at once, and you need not be afraid of trusting her to my care. Now, pray do show that you can be good-natured as well as everything else which is charming.”

But Mr. Malet declined to be good-natured; therefore Mrs. Boyne had to content herself with kissing her hand when her carriage met the Vicar and his daughter riding side by side along the road.

“I wonder if he wanted to catch young Conway?” thought the lady; but such an idea never crossed Mr. Malet’s mind. On the contrary, ever since Terence’s succession he constantly endeavoured to keep Audna and him apart.

“If the child lost her heart, I should break mine,” he considered. That kiss, though given and accepted as a matter of course, had put him on his guard. Till Philippa came home to Calgarry there should not be much intimacy; and he knew perfectly well there would not be much after.

But no one, except, perhaps, Letitia and Ann Patterson, missed Audna very greatly. She was essentially a flower to beautify her home rather than adorn society—a dear girl with merry little kindly ways and tender thoughts and loving sympathies, who sang simple ballads prettily in the twilight, and kept herself occupied and happy the whole day long. Mr. Malet was right—it would have been a pity to spoil her.

Sir Henry and Mark had many long talks in those days concerning the settlements, which were to be drawn by a great firm of solicitors well versed in such matters. The General, spite of many declarations to the contrary, would not have kept Terence so completely out in the cold as his former statements implied. He seemed to think a husband had claims which ought to be considered, and hinted to Philippa that if she wished to act a little generously, her wishes should, if possible, be met.

“As far as I am concerned,” replied Philippa sweetly, “it would be a relief if Terence had all my money; but we need not mention such a thing, for he will not hear of taking a penny. I think you can understand his feelings. I know I can.”

“Well, there is one certainty,” answered Sir Henry, a little nettled: “if you are going to live in London half the year, you must pay your expenses there. Conway does not wish to have a town house.”

“O, he does,” interrupted Philippa. “You are mistaken—indeed you are.”

“I am not mistaken, at all events, in saying he cannot afford one. But you can; so it is only fair that you should pay the piper.”

“He will not like my paying anything, I am afraid,” she said plaintively.

“That is a dislike he will get over,” returned the General.

And so, indeed, it proved. Terence did not wish to live in London, and if they were to go there for six months in each year, he knew perfectly well someone other than himself would have to find the money.

What heaps of things there were to do! A house would have to be found, and bought, and furnished, carriages to be selected, horses to be chosen. Then Philippa’s trousseau was not an affair to be lightly spoken of. The details of the wedding-breakfast and the wedding also would require most anxious deliberation. The last matter Philippa seemed to wish to decide was when the marriage should take place, and that was almost the only part of the business Terence concerned himself about.

“I wish we could be married without so much fuss,” he said one day.

“So do I,” sighed Miss Dutton.

“Then why have the fuss?” asked Letitia, who chanced to be present—Philippa disliked being tête-à-tête with her betrothed—“why not do as Mark and I did? we slipped out and got married without anyone being the wiser.”

“I know you did,” said Miss Dutton, who, in common with all the rest of Mrs. Barry’s acquaintances, had heard the particulars of that lady’s wedding frequently.

“Then why not follow so good an example?”

“There is something due to our rank,” answered Philippa.

Mark’s wife glared at her—“Your rank, indeed!” she thought; but she refrained from speech.

“No, we cannot do as we wish,” said Terence, anxious to make peace; “I only wish we could.”

“You will give a great feast to the tenantry, I suppose?” suggested Letitia. “If you arranged to be married about Hallowe’en, we might get up a very pleasant entertainment.”

“What! on the eve of All Saints!” exclaimed Miss Dutton, in horror.

“Yes, why not?” returned the unabashed Letitia. “Terence, do you remember burning nuts in the drawing-room at Calgarry? I blazed with you splendidly till we mouldered away to ashes. I have those ashes still somewhere.”

“With a lock of his hair, perhaps?”

“No, I do not remember cutting off a lock of his hair. If he likes to give me one now, I will keep it.”

“Cut for yourself, then, like a good girl,” said Terence; which Letitia at once proceeded to do, the while Philippa looked on with grave disapproval.

XXVII

NORAH CREINA

The cakes were eaten, the ale was drunk, the “quality” had left Ireland lamenting, and betaken themselves and their money to foreign parts. Miss Dutton was in Scotland with her dear friend Mrs. Rawson; Letitia alone—except for her children—in London, Mark, tired probably by his long spell of propriety, having gone on a cruise. Sir Henry found himself where he loved to be in the season or out of it, and after the summer’s wild revelry, Donegal returned to the silence and solitude which are its usual characteristics.

Terence felt like a child left behind when his schoolfellows have gone home for the holidays. He did not know what to do, or how to occupy himself. He too might have gone pleasuring, but for the fact that money was just then a great object at Calgarry. He had spent freely while his friends were with him: from the time Philippa came to Ireland till she left it his hand had never been out of his pocket. Mostrene proved in a small way a perfect morass. Its capability of swallowing money was simply marvellous. Like many another, the young man could economise well enough when he had no temptation to spend, but he had still to learn how to eke out a small income and spread his butter over the largest possible surface of bread. His practice was, indeed, to use it all up at once, and leave not a scrap for the remainder of his loaf. So money was very scarce with him that autumn, and as a natural consequence he was thrown much on his own company for society, and truth to tell, he did not find that company specially agreeable.

“I wonder,” he remarked one day to Mr. Stirling, “how it is you are so constantly cheerful?”

“I have not time to be anything else,” answered the agent; “when a man’s hands are as full as mine he can’t find much leisure to grizzle in, even if he had the inclination.”

“That is the secret, I suppose. I wish my hands were full.”

“So they will be ere long. Wait until you get your house in London, and your young wife, and a seat in Parliament, and you’ll find you have enough to do.”

“I have not the slightest desire to go into Parliament.”

“That will come—a great many things will come by and by that you have little thought of now.”

“l am sure I never should be able to make a decent speech.”

“My own opinion is if there were no speeches at all we should get on a great deal better, but you will find yourself able to speak right enough when the time comes. Just take two subjects and stick to them—railways and harbours. If Ireland had railways and good harbours, in another century she would be as prosperous as England.”

“Mr. Boyne is bitterly opposed to railways.”

“No doubt there was a time when people opposed high roads. It is a cruel thing the way Mr. Boyne and men like him set themselves against every proposal for improving the condition of those below them. To hear him talk anybody might think the earth was his and the fullness thereof, and that not another living creature had a right to lift a voice. It is all very well for him, who can afford horses and servants and carriages, to say we are better without railways, but if he had produce he wanted to sell we should hear a different tune. No, Mr. Conway; what Ireland wants is easier communication, and we’ll never do much good till we have it.”

Pending that time Terence found it rather difficult to occupy himself. Possibly, if there had been easier communication, his plight would not have proved much better, for, after all, railway travelling is an amusement of which it is possible to tire.

He had nothing to do. A man who is one day to own a large estate needs training just as much as one who is to be a mechanic; and Terence had never been trained. With all his heart he wanted to do right, but he had no idea how to set about it. If Mr. Stirling did not in so many plain words tell him not to interfere in any question which concerned the tenants, he allowed it to be clearly understood any inter-meddling would be fatal to Calgarry. Terence was quite inclined to adopt this opinion; but then he felt distracted by the fact that other people thought differently.

For example, all the tenants considered Mr. Stirling was dealing most hardly by them, while Mr. McKye felt certain the agent was acting foolishly by his master. Mr. Malet also seemed disposed to take the same view; and Philippa had wondered whether, “bearing all things in mind, Mr. Stirling were the best man he could have chosen to hold the scales evenly.”

What Miss Dutton really meant was that she doubted whether the new agent were a man likely to wring the last farthing out of an “ignorant, poverty-stricken, and priest-ridden people.” But she had the happy art of very prettily sugar-coating nauseous pills. Terence did not possess that faculty: he could mentally paint the ordinary affairs of life in rainbow hues or in the very darkest tints, but his genius failed altogether to make black look like white even to himself.

And, in truth, just about that time things to his mind looked very black indeed.

He was enchanted at the prospect of at last calling Philippa his very own. Wandering along the sands, skimming the Atlantic in a corragh, riding under the shadow of Muckish, roaming over that desolate country in quest of game, he would half whisper to himself, “My wife!” and then, growing more courageous, say the words aloud, for the breeze to bear away.

But he was not at all enchanted with the prospect of living in London on Philippa’s money. Each day showed him more clearly her fortune would remain hers, not in the sense that Calgarry could remain his, but as something in which he could have no part.

He had never wanted her money; but it is one thing not to want a thing, and quite another to feel one can never have it. The whole business of Philippa’s marriage settlement was odious to him. He had to do so much—to give up so much. It would have been the purest pleasure to him to relinquish every possession to her of his own free will, but he did not like being forced to relinquish anything at the bidding of others.

It was not the dear girl’s fault of course, and he did not think it was wholly Sir Henry’s; but when solicitors are paid to look after their client’s interests, matters often become very stiff indeed for the other client who is disposed to let himself go to the wall. Day by day matters became more stiff for Terence. His solicitors were so satisfied the match was one for which it was worth while conceding many things, that little by little all his interests were thrown overboard, and he was left as bare of free will as the staunchest follower of Calvin.

He had to resettle the estate; he had to saddle it with a jointure; he had to consent to his second son adding the honoured name of Dutton to his own; and acquiesce in an arrangement whereby that son should succeed to two-thirds of Philippa’s money. In consideration also of the fact that he was not in a position to secure dowries to his daughters, he bound himself to an agreement which covenanted that, if needful, the husbands of such daughters should be called on to add “Dutton” to their own cognomen. He was to allow his wife to reside for six months out of the year in London or “elsewhere” at her pleasure, and he was to interfere in no way with her enjoyment of her fortune—with other things, all to the effect that Philippa was to be guarded at every point against her husband as if he were her natural enemy.

“Where is Conway in all this?” asked Mark of Sir Henry.

“I do not know,” answered the General. “I only know where I should be were it my case—out of it.”

“Perhaps,” said Mark thoughtfully. He was considering that, settlement or no settlement, were he in Terence’s shoes it would go hard if, after marriage, he did not contrive to finger most of the cash.

“Whose doing is it?” he asked.

“Not mine,” was the reply.

“It is a scandal. Philippa ought to be spoken to.”

“The whole trouble,” explained Sir Henry, “arises from her deep respect for her father’s memory.”

“Damn her father!” interrupted Mark. “If Terence had not a halfpenny of money, or a rood of ground, she could not have had her fortune tied up tighter. I don’t say anything against a woman and her children being secured against a husband’s extravagance or folly; but—hang it all!—fair play is a jewel, and there is no fair play in leaving a man totally out in the cold after stripping him even of his own clothing.”

“Messrs. Bray & Lucan do not make many objections.”

“No, they look only at the ten thousand a year; but I am much mistaken if we do not find Philippa a very dear bargain even at that price.”

“Well, she is giving him plenty of time to consider that question,” replied Sir Henry. “She won’t consent now to be married till after Easter.”

“I thought the match was to come off before Christmas.”

“So did we all; but it seems we were all mistaken.”

“Humph!” said Mark. “Do you believe, candidly now, that it will ever take place?”

“I do not; for the reason that she does not, and never has, cared two straws about Conway. She is not in love with him; she is always happier when he is absent than when he is near. If anyone more eligible came in her way tomorrow she would find some excellent reason for giving Terence his dismissal.”

“I wonder how it is he does not see this.”

“He won’t see it: he is besotted about her. In his eyes everything she does is right.”

But, besotted though Terence might be, a doubt was beginning to trouble his mind. Coyness may be an admirable quality, but it is one of which it is possible to have too much.

Why could they not be married at once? What was the need for all this delay? Why did she so insist on living in London for that six months? He could be happy with her anywhere—in Donegal, on Tory Island, in a desert—and they could not be much together in London. Besides, how should he employ himself there, away from his estate, with no money, no interests, no friends?—for he had resolutely cut himself adrift from all those pleasant acquaintances with whom he had sailed so far down the river to ruin.

What could a woman want more than a husband who adored her, a property like Calgarry, pleasant society such as lay within their reach, and scenery grand and romantic beyond imagination?

Had Terence propounded this question to Sir Henry Beecham, he would have heard that one woman, at all events, would want very many other things. The finest view is weariness to a person mentally blind. Man’s meanest work was more to Philippa than ocean or mountain, or headland or sky; Nature had no charm for her. She was as one born deficient in all love for everything which was not conventional—an accident much more common in these latter days than is generally imagined.

As for Terence, the greatness and grandeur of the land in which his lot was cast had produced a wonderful impression on him. During the unrest which succeeded after Philippa’s departure, he began exploring the country as he had never dreamt of doing before.

It was the time of the year when Ireland looks her very best. Just as spring is the season to see England in her loveliest dress, so autumn adds another beauty to the isle of saints.

Mellow then falls the golden sunshine on grain standing in stooks—on meadows dotted with the small stacks that weeping climate renders needful—on black peat piled high for the winter’s use—on mountains across which light and shadow flit constantly, and headlands that seemed bathed in purple.

Thankful was Conway of Calgarry then that he had not parted with his birthright—that he and no other owned the smiling land skirting Calgarry Bay—the desolate uplands to which Muckish formed a fitting background, and the heather-clad heights where the game lay hidden.

There is no feeling perhaps which can be so fully satisfied as that of possession; and often as he looked over the wide tracts of barren land he called his, Terence felt the pride of ownership swelling in his breast.

He tried to express something of all this when writing to Philippa. Her answer was very sweet and sympathetic. She spoke much of dear Donegal, and how she loved it; but matters nevertheless remained much as they would have done had she not loved it.

“She has never seen it in the autumn,” thought Terence, as he stood one day in October looking from the top of Horn Head over the miles of ocean that stretched between that point and Bloody Foreland. “She has never seen this country really at all. After a time she will grow to understand and think of it as her own.”

He had taken the mail-car that morning from Calgarry to a point on the way to the Cross Roads, whence he could strike across to the sandhills which lie a little to the left of that house so snugly sheltered from the north winds, so pleasantly placed above what may be called the backwater of the Atlantic running inland from Dunfanaghy.

In this way he was doing much of Donegal exhaustively—tiring himself out, not unpleasantly; walking immense distances, and with weary limbs lying down at night to awake refreshed and vigorous in the morning. He was learning his county by heart—a task many people might, with advantage, set themselves. He had gone westward, further than the town of Donegal, and penetrated in a southerly direction to the shores of Lough Erne—beautiful Lough Erne—but when all was said and done, his heart came back to his own especial corner of the land; and he decided, ere “the winter day” came, to know every nook and cranny of the wild desolate country that lies between Kilmacrennan and Dunfanaghy, is frowned on by Muckish, and has on one side its bounds set by the great and terrible ocean.

There were those who, meeting him wandering thus aimlessly as they thought, shook their heads and said, “The Nun is driving him;” and yet never in all his still young life had Terence less fear of the Curse than then.

Nature, God’s helpmaid, was doing all she could for him, taking him gently by the hand and leading him, like a favourite son who had gone a little wrong (not much), quietly home.

All he then needed was a woman’s face on the threshold, the touch of a woman’s hand in welcome—mother, sister, wife, it would not have mattered greatly which, so long as her pulses thrilled in sympathy with his own; but it was not to be yet—ah! no. Westward—drawn by what attraction who can say?—he turned his steps, walking ever and ever towards the setting sun, the glory of which lured him, as it might a child, over ling and bog, till at last he pulled up suddenly, wondering where he was.

How many miles between himself and Dunfanaghy? He knew the miles that stretched between Dunfanaghy and home. He felt very tired. In the west, following the track of the setting sun, was that many-hued glory which seems extracted from the radiance of departed rainbows, but at the same time there stole up a swift cold wind in company with a black cloud—signs not to be disregarded, whether on sea or land, in Donegal. He had utterly lost his way. Without retracing every step traversed he could not even hazard a conjecture as to how to regain the tract leading to the sandhills. At no time is Donegal a promising county in which to lose one’s way.

Houses are few and far between, often lying long miles apart, and human beings, save on the beaten high-roads, are rarely to be met with. Certainly the great tract lying between Horn Head and Swine’s Gun was not a likely place on which to meet man, woman, or child, with the sun sinking to his rest, and the shades of evening gathering in the east. Yet at that moment, when he paused to look around him, wondering what he ought to do, Terence became conscious of a figure on the horizon standing motionless. Turning his steps, he made his way through ling and heather, across stones, through boggy ground in which his feet often sank over the boot tops, towards this unexpected apparition. As he got nearer he shouted lest the forlorn hope should fail him—shouted and waved his hat, till at length, after some apparent hesitation, the girl—for it was a girl—jumped off the low wall made of loose stones on which she had been perched, and advanced to meet him with a free, graceful, springing tread.

“Norah Creina, by Jove!” thought Terence; “Norah Creina in the flesh!”

Certainly not Lesbia. If not precisely the Norah Creina of Moore’s imagination, a copy better than the original. Norah Creina young, scarcely having reached that point where the brook and river meet; Norah Creina fresh from Nature’s mint, bearing stamped on her face the lovely image and superscription of her great mother.

Graceful as a fawn, active as a mountain goat, scarcely bending the rushes under her light weight, springing over the soft spongy bits of morass with accustomed feet, she came on and on, till at last Terence absolutely started with surprise.

He had never seen anyone before so beautiful as this girl out thus late among the heather. There is beauty and beauty, and to Miss Dutton it need be accounted no disparagement to say that, though more statuesque, she was not nearly so lovely as this Donegal maiden.

Norah had not the wild-rose complexion of so many Irish-women. She was dark, like the natives of Galway, and her cheeks were dyed a rich yet delicate damask. Her eyes were Irish blue (that looked, as has been said, as if they had been put in by smutty fingers), shaded by long and silky dark lashes. Over her head she wore a scarlet shawl, which had fallen back a little, and brought down with it a profusion of black wavy hair. In his dreams still Terence sees that scene reproduced—the coming night, the wild waste of desolate country, and the last rays of the setting sun falling full on that young girl’s loveliness.

To a woman in the better class of life the beauty of a peasant girl is a thing to be approved of from an art point of view, or condemned as a mistake socially; a man, on the contrary, does not trouble himself about either art or society. He sees the daughter of Eve is fair, and that is sufficient for him.

“Can you tell me the road to Dunfanaghy?” Terence asked, ere he had quite recovered from his astonishment.

“O, you passed it long and long ago,” she said. “It lies behind you.”

“But I can’t go back all the way,” he answered, even while thinking the girl’s voice did not spoil her face; though uneducated, it was low and soft and pleading—a voice to haunt the memory; it often haunts his. “There must be some other path.”

“I doubt if you’d find it by yourself,” said the girl; “and it’s no shorter. But if you’ll come with me I can take you as far as our house, and then maybe my father could put you into the straight road.”

“Is your house far from here?” asked Terence.

“Not so very far; it won’t take us more nor thirty minutes to get there.”

“And what are you doing out at this hour all alone in this solitary place?”

“I am used to it, sir. I wouldn’t mind walking about the Head at midnight. I’ve come up here many a time with my father when vessels have been putting up signals at Tory, and nearer in shore, too. You didn’t see a mare and colt, did you, sir, as you came along?”

“No—nothing of the sort.”

“Then they’re down in the hollow someplace. We’d better step out, sir; there’s a squall coming, and it will be heavy, too; the sky was awful black at the sun-going—”

Even as she spoke, a few large drops of rain plashed in their faces, and, involuntarily, Terence quickened his pace, slipping and tripping over the stones and ling.

“Is your gun loaded?” asked the girl, after a worse stumble than usual.

“Yes.”

“Then you had better fire her. If you fall, she might go off and hurt you.”

It was very practical advice, and Terence followed it. Not a minute too soon, for the squall was on them, and Terence, unused to the path, made one false step in every dozen.

“Give me hold of your hand, sir,” said Norah, “or you may do yourself a damage. It is a terrible bad road for a stranger.”

It was all very well to call that a road which had not been even trodden down by the sheep. Over gaps in the rude walls—over bogs—over grass so slippery, Terence had much ado to keep his footing, always keeping down hill, getting lower and lower, the pair hurried on hand clasped in hand, while the wind blew, and the rain beat on them.

“You’ll be fairly drownded, sir,” said the girl.

“It does not matter about me,” gasped Terence; “but you—”

“O, it makes no odds to me! I’m used to it.” After all, it does seem hard to consider the way Norah Creinas are buffeted in this world. On the whole, although poets flout her, it is better, perhaps, to be Lesbia.

“We’re close at home now,” remarked Norah, at last, as they turned the corner of a long low wall formed of the same rough stones, over which they had been forced to clamber so often. “Take care how you step, sir; there’s a puddle there.” And, next moment, half-blinded by the rain, and beaten by the wind, Terence stepped across the threshold of a cabin, where a glorious fire of peat glowed on the hearth.

A woman stood before the fire, frying bacon, and a man sat on the settle, who rose when Terence entered.

“I am afraid you’ve got a bad wetting, sir,” he remarked, taking the stranger’s hat and letting the water drip from it. “Dear-a-dear, this is an evening to be out! Let me wipe down your coat; best take it off, though. Couldn’t you get into shelter any place before the storm broke? Have some whisky—you’ll take your death if you don’t”

“I am ashamed of giving you so much trouble,” answered Terence. “I wandered on from Horn Head and lost myself. What I should have done had I not met your daughter, I cannot imagine.”

“It’s just as well you met somebody,” returned the man, “for it’s not good walking about here after night, particularly for a stranger; but now I look at you fair, sir, aren’t you young Mr. Conway? Aye, I thought I wasn’t wrong. Many a time I’ve seen you in Dunfanaghy, pulling up at the Stewart Arms.”

“Which is precisely where I think of stopping for the night. Can you tell me how I am to get there?”

“’Deed and I can’t,” answered the other, “unless the weather moderates. It’s hard to tell how long this means to last. You’ve got a roof over your head, and you won’t do well to leave it while the rain comes down as it’s doing now. Gracie, you’re as wet as a drowned rat! Haven’t you got any other clothes you can change yourself with?”

So Gracie was the name Norah Creina was known by in the home circle. Terence looked after her as she vanished to “change herself,” and then Mr. Walley, as his host was called, insisted on Mr. Conway putting on a suit of black he kept laid by for funerals, and in which he had, indeed, beheld the last anyone saw of the old Duke.

He was evidently a farmer in a much better position than farmers usually are in Donegal. The family all worked, but their labour seemed to make them comfortable. They had meal in the barrel and milk in the tub. Their rashers were cut from a fine flitch, and the potatoes looked as though a blight never had been heard of.

Having tasted nothing since morning, Terence brought a fine appetite to bear on the bacon and eggs, and, contrary to his practice, allowed Mrs. Walley to mix him a stiff tumbler of punch.

After the meal was finished, Mrs. Walley and Grace sat down to knit stockings, and the head of the house told his guest about his own doings.

“I’m from a mile of Portadown, and my wife was bred and born in Galway. I go all over Ireland, for I deal in horses.” And so the talk ran on, while the rain poured down, till at last even Terence gave up the notion of going further that night.

Spite of all entreaties, he declined a bed, but, wrapping himself in a rug when the others had left the kitchen, lay down on the settle, and in five minutes was sound asleep.

When he awoke it was grey cold dawn; the rain was over, and the wind had lulled. Softly opening the door, he passed out into the haggard, and stood looking down at the sea which lay close below. Sheltered though the little bay was, the waves made a continual and angry moaning, which sounded in Terence’s ears long after he had again stretched himself on the settle. There was something in the notion of having the wide Atlantic at his very hand which seemed very wild and eerie.

Through the years he has never forgotten that night. The merest trifle recalls it to him, just as when we put a shell to our ear we can, though the sea be thousands of miles distant, hear its murmur.

XXVIII

THE DOWNWARD PATH

If the Nun herself had dwelt at Goblin Bay, close beside which Mr. Walley lived, she could scarcely have proved a more terrible fascination than Terence seemed to find there.

As all roads lead to Rome, so it seemed that every high-way, every mountain pass, every bridle-path in Donegal had for its termination that little bay within a bay, which was almost landlocked, like many lying still further west close to Bunbeg.

Whether Terence started to go to Kilmacrennan or Filcarry, Strabane or Dunfanaghy, the result was the same. If he turned his horse’s head to the left when he went through Calgarry gates, he was certain ere long to remember some pressing matter which necessitated going to the right.

A man had better lie to any human being than himself. In those days the number of untruths Terence told his own conscience was simply appalling.

Very likely, after all, the Nun had taken up her residence at Goblin Bay for the time being, and smiled each time she saw the young man tying his mare up to the old sallow tree, which stood so convenient for the purpose; or, from her lair beside the sea, watched him coming down from the heather-clad Head, gun in his hand and dog at his heel. It needed no power of divination to tell the bird he was after, and doubtless the Nun laughed quietly in her sleeve, knowing all about the matter, and how it would end, far better than Conway of Calgarry.

There was so much Terence, in his search for information, wanted to know, and which he could learn nowhere save at Goblin Bay; for instance, why the little cove was so called.

“Well,” explained Mr. Walley, “it is by reason the way the shadows fall when the moon is at her height; they look like men and women and children chasing one another along the shore. The people here don’t care to talk about such things; but there’s many a one believes the Wizard and his crew come over from Tory in the fine nights, and sport themselves on the sands. You know, Tory is a queer place. Nobody knows where the stone is, and yet everybody is certain sure there is a stone in the island which, when rocked by the right person, raises an awful storm.”

“And you, Mr. Walley, what do you say?” demanded Terence.

“O, I don’t say much; but I can think what I like.”

“Is there much smuggling going on hereabouts now?”

“Not at all, sir—nothing of the sort,” answered Mr. Walley, who, though he kept a straight face before the world, was suspected by the Excise officers of having made as much by lucky runs as ever he did by horse-dealing. “I do not know what may have gone on, of course, in the old days; but not a one could land a cargo now, for the gaugers are everywhere. And best so. There used to be wild work on this very shore. Calgarry Bay wasn’t a bit behind, either. They do say the old Duke had many a keg of the finest French brandy brought him just for holding his tongue—aye, and lace, and the best of wine; but those times are all past and gone—there’s no such doings on the coast now.”

“There are some caves about here, aren’t there, where brandy used to be stowed?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir, and I think I have searched from here to Horn Head as well as anyone could, both by land and sea, and I never found any caves but what everybody is acquainted with. There was great talk awhile ago of some secret place, and the Excise thought to find it, and, indeed, made boast they had found it; but it was nothing but a hole, where there was once some sort of a still that hadn’t been used in the memory of living mortal. No, what with the cutters on the Atlantic, and the gaugers on shore, and the sort of country this is, it wouldn’t be easy to cheat the revenue now.”

For an honest man, Mr. Walley owned some singular possessions, amongst them a lurcher that could do everything but speak, and that certainly understood what his master said to him. He had also a most rascally little cocker, trained to the highest pitch of perfection; a collection of traps, and gins, and snares, and nets, which would not have disgraced a poaching museum. If required, he could at any moment have produced from his capacious coat-pockets ferrets equal to any emergency; and when he went south he usually took with him a wire cage full of rats, in order to complete the polite education of a number of young gentlemen who were being trained up in the way they should go at a seminary to which Mr. Walley had the entrée.

Likewise, he owned an old badger that sulked in a tub, and, had he lived nearer a salmon-river, many of the appliances he kept merely as “curiosities” might have been calculated to arouse suspicion.

But even in those days Ireland was a free country, though not, perhaps, so one-sidedly free as it is now, and if on some likely night a dealer in horses chanced to be in Munster and Donegal at the same time, an informer might have found the fact of such ubiquity somewhat difficult to prove. More especially in the case of a man who both ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds: who, though a Presbyterian by baptism, had married a Papist, allowed his daughter to be brought up in the same faith, and recognised her engagement to a very worthy young fellow who went to mass and made his confession regularly.

On all sides he had friends, and it was besides reported he owned a “full stocking,” a circumstance which did not detract from his many merits.

The Irish are, as a rule, an exceedingly generous and impulsive nation. But it would be quite idle to deny that among them, as among other people, the man who has had the sense to put by for a “sore foot” is not more considered than he who limps by with no dressing of golden ointment to assuage his smart.

Mr. Walley was reputed to have money—“however he came by it,” a point on which Donegal did not feel disposed to be critical; and as every Irishman is a gamester and speculator at heart, none of his neighbours viewed his little peculiarities with disfavour.

No one could say he ever refused to help a friend, and he reaped his reward. His friends were not near or troublesome, and their goodwill was quite at his service. He was “a decent man,” so said the countryside, with “no harm in him,” “fair dealing and much respected.” A man as kept himself to himself, and was always careful for his wife and Gracie—which last phrase meant that he held a very tight hand over wife and daughter.

Such was the individual Mr. Conway of Calgarry chose from out the world for his instructor in the lore of Donegal.

Walley showed the young man where the red foxes had their home, where seals could be found, where he had been surrounded by a school of whales. He discoursed to him at length about “scarts,” “arabnas,” “whurrins,” and “murrins,” pointed out where the hares were most plentiful, and laughed at the notion of shooting rabbits.

“We’ve things better worth firing at than them in Donegal,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “You’ll find no better game in Ireland nor hereabouts. There’s most everything your tongue could name round these parts in its season.”

What wonder, then, that Terence, in his dual character of an explorer and a sportsman, should find the charm of Mr. Walley’s society irresistible, and feel a thirst for it continually, which only draughts from Goblin Bay could satisfy?

Mr. Walley was not, however, always at home, and then the owner had to rest satisfied with Mrs. Walley’s reminiscences, or such stories as Gracie’s experience furnished of wreck and disaster, of stray lambs, and nests stolen by the hens amongst the heather. Tory Island also furnished an inexhaustible library of romance when other spoken romance failed. Often now, as he looks on some calm evening over the blue Atlantic at that dangerous rock, there comes to Terence Conway with the memory of his wasted youth an anguished sense of shame and remorse.

For the past can never be wiped out, nor blotted even with tears wrung from the deepest founts of a man’s heart!

Mr. Walley’s stories, relating as they mostly did to curious transactions in connection with horse-dealing, were, as a rule, much more interesting than edifying. If Terence had wished to start as a “coper,” or even as a betting-man, no doubt the hints then received would have proved of inestimable value. But his tastes not tending in either direction, all the remarkable anecdotes of fair, field, and racecourse served no useful purpose whatsoever.

“I do not think much of that dealer fellow you have got hold of,” said Mr. Stirling. “If ever a man had ‘ROGUE’ written across his face, he has. I’d advise you to be careful in any transactions with him.”

“Why,” exclaimed Terence, “what is the matter with him? You told me yourself there was not a fault to be found with that pair of carriage horses.”

“I have not a fault to find with the carriage horses, but I have with the seller of them. Did you never hear of throwing a sprat to catch a herring? That was what Mr. Walley had in his mind, or I never was more mistaken.”

“Do you not think you are a little unjust?” asked Terence.

“No, I do not,” was the uncompromising reply. “If I had been a little less sharp than I am, he would have made an excellent deal for himself yesterday. He is up to every trick of his trade, and I am heartily sorry you have ever had anything to do with him.”

“Well, I am not,” retorted Terence. “I have got a most excellent pair of horses, and very cheap too.”

“You do not know what they may cost you in the long run,” said Mr. Stirling sturdily. “For one thing, you have now got a coachman of Mr. Walley’s choosing.”

“I chose him for myself,” answered Terence, “and I am sure a better driver never sat on a box.”

“He may be a good driver, but I would not have had a relation of Walley’s about the place.”

“It is not Corrigan’s fault that Walley is a relation.”

“Perhaps not, but it’s his misfortune, and he is going to be married to Walley’s daughter after a while, so you may as well say at once you’ve taken the whole family. Walley’s no good, and he’ll get the better of you in some way before you have done with him.”

Though his heart was very hot within him, Terence did not care to pursue the subject further, and he turned away for the first time with a feeling of angry and impotent hostility towards his agent.

What right had Mr. Stirling to dictate what he should or should not do? It was most insolent of him to object to Corrigan, a young fellow who promised to be the smartest, likeliest, pleasantest servant that ever set foot in Calgarry stables.

Why, even Ann Patterson said it did her good to see him, he was so willing, and well-mannered, and industrious. No day was too long for him, no night too short; and in his new livery he looked a credit to any establishment.

“He has the best of manners,” remarked Ann; and Byrne, who was considered an authority on such subjects, echoed her opinion.

And, indeed, even Mr. Stirling could find no fault with Pat Corrigan, save on the ground of his relationship (by marriage) with Mr. Walley.

Exceedingly handsome—dark haired, dark eyed, slim, straight, active—he was the ideal of a gentleman’s groom. That Terence had elected to install him as coachman was a mere accident. A groom was what Nature meant him for. Years would have needed to pass over his head before it was likely he could quite look the part allotted to him; but that seemed the only drawback. He knew his business thoroughly. He was quick, honest, proud of his new position, and devoted to his master. He had taken to Terence at first sight, and it is no exaggeration to say before he had been in his service two months he would have gone through fire and water for him. He loved Mr. Conway—all the more, perhaps, because he firmly believed the Curse was on him.

Very few persons of other persuasions, and not a single Roman Catholic, throughout Donegal doubted that. In lonely cabins, beside piled-up peat fires; on desolate hill-sides, when two men chanced to meet, THE DOOM was then talked about as it had never been before.

Before a storm there is a vague something in the air which tells of the approach of danger, and so, in like manner, all through that autumn and winter there was a feeling in Donegal that Mr. Conway had got the Nun’s Mark. Even the little bare-footed, bare-legged children grew to regard him strangely, as one set apart, while speculation wearied itself in wondering how and when the stroke of Fate would fall.

If Captain Conway were killed in “foreign parts,” as seemed very possible, and Terence died childless, the race would be at an end, and the Curse lifted.

Would the new Conway meet his doom before he married? Considering how the wedding had been put off and off, it did not seem at all impossible.

He was a “solitary” man and a changed one since he entered into possession of Calgarry.

Everyone knew the Nun would never be satisfied till restitution had been made and guilt purged by alms and prayer and fasting, and as there did not seem much signs of alms or prayer or fasting with young Conway, no doubt he would be slain, or his heart broken, or he left only to run the full riot of sin, after the manner of those who had gone before him.

This was the reason why Patrick Corrigan never looked in his master’s face without a vague sense of wonder and pity. Lately it had grown a sad face, as more than one person noticed, thoughtful and dissatisfied; and yet the world was going fairly well with Terence, and the spring was to give him Philippa for his wife. And so the months went by, and it was February again—the second February after Marmaduke Conway’s death.

It had been wild weather at Horn Head—wild weather, too, in the Irish Channel, which Terence chanced to have just crossed on his return from London—where all preliminaries being at last happily settled to the satisfaction of Miss Dutton’s solicitors, and presumably of Miss Dutton herself, nothing remained but to induce Philippa to fix the day, decide where the honeymoon should be spent, and arrange such details about their future household as it seemed necessary and expedient to determine before the marriage.

Once again Philippa pushed the wedding a little further off. She had arranged to spend Easter week in Donegal with her friends the Boynes, but she was graciously pleased to agree to a proposal made by Sir Henry that the ceremony should take place exactly a month after her return home.

“We can then, if you wish, spend some time at Calgarry after we return from the Continent,” she said to Terence with her sweetest smile, “and pay some visits before settling down in London for the winter.”

“At last!” thought Terence, as he walked home to his hotel that night. “At last! Would to God we had been married six months ago! Would to God I—”

There was only one thing to be done, and he knew he would have to do it at once. All the long way to Holyhead—all the long way from Holyhead to Dublin—from Dublin to Derry—from Derry to Calgarry—he revolved the question which was troubling him without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. For two days he wandered about the house and paced the shore, seeming to find relief in the strong blast which buffeted him.

He exchanged no confidence with anyone; though the time had arrived when the old house must be swept and garnished, and put in order for his beautiful bride, he said nothing to Mr. Stirling on the subject; but when the third morning came he ordered his mare to be saddled.

“Will you want Corrigan, sir?” asked Byrne.

“No,” answered Mr. Conway, so sharply that the old butler said afterwards to Ann Patterson, “I wonder what’s gone wrong in London? The master is not like himself since he came home.”

“You’ll find it very rough out today, sir,” remarked Corrigan, as he held the stirrup.

Terence made no reply; he only looked straight into the frank handsome face upturned to his. Talk of ghosts! Is there any need to go into the spirit world in search of them, since not a man but has one, at all events, haunting him?

So long as he lives, till his feet touch the waters of that ocean across which none return, Terence will always remember Corrigan’s face.

Not as he saw it that February morning, however, but with the prison stain branded upon that broad open forehead, with a haunting look of patient suffering in the soft dark eyes and the thick hair thinned and streaked with white.

XXIX

WHAT TERENCE HAD TO DO

Mr. Conway did not turn to right or left when he passed through the Calgarry gates; instead, he rode straight forward up the road along which more than a year ago the old Duke had been borne to his rest.

When he arrived at the graveyard wall he pulled in the mare, and sat for a few minutes motionless in his saddle. There before him was an epitome of the family history.

He could see the vault where those lay who had sinned and caused much suffering; beyond rose the hillock on which the Nun had knelt to curse his house.

Looking over the graveyard and the wild desolate land-scape, he sat the present Conway of Calgarry, living his life as his predecessors had lived theirs, writing his story on the tablets of time and eternity as they had written theirs, working out his own condemnation as they had done likewise.

Gray and dark were his thoughts as the storm-swept sky—a doomed race with a ban laid on them from birth, with that ruined church and dreary burial-place as a fitting end.

What would be his end?—he who had begun so badly—he who, though helped by Heaven, had deliberately chosen the worse—who, in every important act of his life, had gone wrong—so far wrong now that he never could make a quite right thing of life again.

Well, there was but one course open, and he had started to take it. He would take it.

“Now, my lady, we must get on,” he said; and Duchess, as he touched her lightly with the whip, tossed her beautiful head and broke into a canter, which ere long sobered down into a long swinging trot.

He turned into the highway he had traversed that night when he walked back after his interview with Captain Conway, and rode steadily on till, after skirting Dunfanaghy, he struck the coach-road to Filcarry; then he again slackened speed, and let the mare choose her own pace till they reached Goblin Bay. Even in that quiet nook he could hear the Atlantic fuming and fretting, as if moaning its heart out. At Horn Head the waves were running in like racehorses, their manes white with foam, shouting to each other as they came wildly rushing one on the top of another, crying aloud in their savage mirth the while they hastened to hurl themselves against the awful cliffs, when they were dashed into a thousand jets of spray.

A sad, dreary day, even at Goblin Bay, with a leaden stormy sky brooding overhead, and the earth lying grey and spiritless under it, like one dead.

No golden sun overhead, no purple heather underfoot; nothing the same as Terence could remember it, not even his own heart, which was worst of all.

He fastened his bridle to the sallow tree, as he had done so many times before; and then, crossing the haggard, where not a soul was visible, went to the front door, which was closed, and knocked upon it with his riding-whip.

After a brief interval he heard someone crossing the kitchen, and next moment Grace uttered a little cry of surprise, and bade her visitor enter.

“Where is your father?” he asked.

“He’s gone to Dublin about a law case,” answered the girl.

“And your mother?”

“She is away at Bunbeg.”

“Are you all alone, then?”

“All, my lone,” she said, lifting her eyes shyly and then dropping them again.

He moved a step nearer to her.

“Gracie,” he began hoarsely, “Gracie,”—but Gracie did not speak or move.

“Have you not a word for me?” he asked; and then, without giving her time to answer, he caught her to his heart and kissed her passionately over and over again.

“My little girl,” he said; “my poor little girl!”

“I think I am a poor little girl,” she answered, and then she began to cry.

“Don’t do that, for Heaven’s sake,” he entreated; “don’t make what I have to say harder for me.”

No need to ask how it had been with them—the silence which ensued proved what it was which made speech so difficult to both.

There ensued a long pause, during which she strove to stifle her sobs, and he tried to master his emotion.

“You know what I have come to say to you,” he found voice to ask at last.

She made a gesture of assent, and then added, “I heard you were in London.”

“Yes, I have been in London, and—”

She stepped to the door and opened it.

“I’m choking in here,” she said. “Tell me what you want outside, where I can breathe, with the fresh air blowing about me.” And she led the way among the corn-ricks till they stood looking at the Atlantic tossing and fretting on the sands of Goblin Bay.

Poor Norah Creina, poor child! where had the damask tint faded to? Pale and worn and drawn was the face, once fresh as morning. Heavy the eyes that had been so bright; weary the step, lighter when Terence first saw her than the fawn’s; sorrowful the voice that yet still gave out some of the old music, sweet and low as the ringing of fairy bells.

“You’re going to be married, I suppose?” she said at last, finding he did not speak.

“Yes—”

“May the Lord help me, then!”

It was despair, not passion, which caused her tones to thrill with such an agony of pathos that Terence felt he could not endure that terrible reproach.

“But, Gracie, I never—” he was beginning, when she cut across his sentence:

“No, you never—I know that; but O, what is to become of me!”

“What is to become of both of us?” he asked weakly.

“Both of us!” she repeated, not angrily, but with an unconscious scorn, which cut him to the heart. “What can it signify to you? When you are married and happy, and content, you’ll never waste a thought on the girl whose heart is broken. O, what’ll I do! What’ll I ever do! My father’ll kill me. It is the one thing he always said. If a child of his shamed herself he’d turn her out, and let her die by the road-side like a dog.”

“But, my darling—”

“No; I’m not your darling now. Never no more, forever—O, holy Jesus, that I forgot what is to become of me! Sweet Christ, show me what to do, for there is no help in man!”

“Grace, are you trying to drive me mad? Do you think I could ever desert you—ever let you want?”

“It is not that I care for,” she answered. “What’s meat or drink or a roof to shelter by comparison with disgrace? If I was an honest girl do you think it would trouble me to lie down by the roadside and die there peaceably? O, I wish I’d never seen you! I wish—no, I don’t; for I have loved you, loved you, loved you!” and she threw her arms over the gate against which she was leaning, and, resting her head upon them, burst into passionate weeping.

He could bear it no longer. Snatching her to him, once again he kissed her as men do kiss women they love much, though not perhaps well or wisely.

“I’ll never forget you; I’ll never forsake you,” he said. “You will always be dear to me. My pretty Norah, my sweet Gracie, my kind fond girl, don’t cry any more. I was a brute to speak as I did. We will think what is to be done. No, love, let your head rest there. If you could read my heart you would know—”

At that moment he was stopped by a noise, as though time and eternity had come together in collision; there was a roar as if of the discharge of many cannon, a wild hissing sound and a din, in comparison with which a whole park of artillery would have been silence.

“My God!” exclaimed Terence, while the girl extricated herself from his embrace and stood pale and trembling, scarcely less frightened than he. “What was that?”

“It is Swine’s Gun,” grasped Grace; “they say people can hear it as far as Derry.”

“I should think they might hear it at the other side of the world,” rejoined Terence, who was still shaking in every limb. “What an awful noise! For a minute I thought the day of judgment was at hand.”

And then, as what he had said struck back on his ear, he and the girl looked at each other, perhaps considering whether a day of judgment were not very close at hand for them.

“I must go and find the mare,” remarked Terence, after that pause.

It is strange to think how the practical affairs of life interrupt and jostle the most terrible tragedies in which human beings play their little parts. At that instant the mare, who, more alarmed by the explosion, for such it really was, even than her master, had slipped her bridle, was disappearing in the distance, and the necessity for following her put a period to a conversation fast becoming dangerously compromising.

What he might have said, what he would have promised, Terence never afterwards exactly knew himself. All he could tell was that at the end of that half-hour, during which Duchess led him a weary dance, he remembered distinctly he had come to bid Grace good-bye, and that it was needful he should adhere to his intention.

As he led the mare down the hill the poor child came to meet him, with a hunted imploring look in her beautiful eyes that was inexpressibly touching—that once would have been sharp as the stab of a dagger to Terence Conway.

Easy and pleasant, however, is the slope of hell, fair are the flowers growing upon it, sweet their scent, intoxicating their perfume: only when the very verge of the abyss is reached do men realise there was death in every step of the way.

That knowledge had come then to the girl, but not to Terence. Upon him there was an ashamed sense of relief at having got a bad business partly over. He did not tie his mare again to the sallow tree, but putting one arm through her bridle, passed the other round Gracie’s waist.

“Don’t fret, my darling,” he said; “I’ll find means to let you hear from me very soon.” She did not say a word.

“I do not like leaving you here all by yourself,” he went on.

“That’s nothing,” she murmured. “All I am afraid of now is being among people.”

“I must go now,” he said, stooping and kissing her gently.

She did not return his caress. She let his hand slip out of hers. She watched him mount and ride perhaps fifty yards; then, with a bitter cry, ran after him along the rude cart-track.

“I am not going to keep you,” she panted. “I only want—” And she laid her small brown hands on the mare’s neck and pressed her lips on the shining coat.

“Good-bye, good-bye, Duchess; I’ll never see you more.”

In an instant Terence was on the ground beside her.

“What do you mean, Gracie? You are not going to—to—” and then he stopped, unable to finish his sentence.

“I am going to do nothing rash, if that is what you mean,” she answered, meeting his gaze with something of the old fearlessness of their first acquaintance. “Whatever chastisement God sends me here I’ll just have to bear as best I can. I’ll not fly from it to be punished eternally. Do not make yourself uneasy—I’ll pray the Lord to forgive us both. Maybe for His holy Mother’s sake He will have mercy someday;” and crossing herself as if half afraid to make that sign, she ran back to the house and closed the door, bolting it after her.

XXX

SWINE’S GUN

Mr. Terence Conway’s conscience was of that not uncommon description which for all practical purposes is more plague than profit.

A conscience of less use at any crisis no gentleman need have desired to have. It had a knack of falling half asleep at those times when it was most important a conscience should keep wide awake, and of opening its eyes precisely when the wrong winked at could not be undone. It never, like a reasonable and useful conscience, said with some decent show of determination, “You must not;” but when such an utterance could do no good, it declared, “You ought not,” and kept on repeating those words till the listener sickened of their iteration.

Now, if in the affairs of this world a conscience is to prove of any good at all, it should pursue a very different policy. Repentance, of course, is better than no conviction of sin; but prevention is much better. As child, as boy, as man, Terence had been always mourning over some lapse from virtue: but why in the world did not that stupid conscience of his contrive to keep him virtuous? Why, indeed? But then so many nice questions are involved in this matter that perhaps it is better to get on with his story.

When he rode from Calgarry to Goblin Bay to tell Grace Walley they must part, conscience kindly accompanied him; and when he settled himself in his saddle after their interview, conscience, thoroughly aroused as to necessity of action on her part, mounted on the crupper.

“Think of that poor girl as you first saw her,” ran the useless reproach, “and then consider the wreck she is. What a sinful wretch you are! what a wicked simpleton you have been! How will you ever unravel this tangle? Keep the matter quiet? Pooh! you know perfectly well there was something she wanted to tell you she felt ashamed to say. Yes, indeed; though shame between you might have been thought to be a thing of the past.”

All his life long this was the way in which Terence’s conscience first indulged, and then punished him. He had never been taught to deny himself any cake he took a fancy to; but when it was eaten to the last scrap he straightway began to lament having touched it. As he rode home with that unwelcome companion perched behind, he bemoaned himself bitterly that he had ever met Norah Creina—poor pretty Norah, whom he ought to have spared, whom he was bound to protect by the claim the weak have over the strong, the lowly over those of high estate. What did it matter that she had met him half-way? Her innocence, not her boldness, was to blame for that. She was so young, so guileless, so ignorant of the pleasantness of sin, so cloistered in her free wild life from wrong and the knowledge of how fatally easy the downward path is, that he who was not innocent or ignorant should have been as a shield to her—the hero she in her girlish admiration believed him to be, instead of the coward he was.

When she took his hand in hers to guide him down the slippery hillside, she had no more notion than a child she was doing ill, and according to her lights she was doing no ill. No evil would have come of it had he only let her alone, never come backwards and forwards to Goblin Bay, never listened to her stories of warlock and witch, never put his arm round her waist, never stroked her hair, never looked in her eyes till they drooped beneath his gaze, never begun to teach her the alphabet of love, the mysteries of which Pat Corrigan in his honest simplicity believed love itself would explain to his darling as she grew a little older. The young fellow had been careful over her as a mother might; he had set his flower apart, and tended it like some rare and precious possession, and this was the end. Another had stepped and ruthlessly despoiled it of the beauty and purity which not all the dews of Heaven could ever restore to it again, while the morning dawned, and the sun rose, and the sun set in this world upon its lost glory.

What was to be done? Terence did not know. In every preceding trouble of his life it had been possible for him to seek counsel—to ask for help; but in this case he could have no confidant save Grace, and she was indeed a broken reed.

Why had he so sinned? Why had he been so mad? With conscience digging its spurs into him he rode on, silently revolving this question.

Now that the gloss of novelty was worn off his toy, the gilding tarnished, the colour faded, he was able to ask himself why he had ever longed to possess a thing of so little account.

In that hour, when his eyes were fully opened, he could only admit the bauble had never been worth the price he must pay for it. For any satisfaction or delight he was ever likely to feel, he might as well have gathered from the hedge a wild rose, which fades on the instant. Just as children in mere wantonness pluck field-flowers merely to throw away as valueless, so he had snatched this poor bud, which he did not know what to do with now he had got it.

There have been cases where the greatness of the passion weighed down for the time being all other considerations; but there was nothing of the sort here. Terence had never felt a great passion except for Philippa. He had loved Grace very much; but that flame was, in comparison with an absorbing affection, a mere taper flickering to its end.

Grace was a dear little thing. How fond she had been of him! She never hid her love from his knowledge—indeed, if anything, she showed it too plainly. How she worshipped him, how meek she was, how docile, and yet how tiresome he had often found her latterly! That man must be most exceptionally constituted who does not eventually weary of love and yet more love, especially when that love comes to mean great discomfort to himself. Terence did not see his way out of the maze at all. He could discern no light in the blackness which encompassed Goblin Bay. The matter must be kept secret—but then, what if it should prove impossible to do anything of the kind? A more unpleasant and difficult person to deal with than Mr. Walley, if knowledge of what had occurred ever came to his ears, Terence could not imagine.

Altogether that ride back to Calgarry, with the roar of Swine’s Gun still ringing in his ears, and the sight of Grace’s haggard face and anguished tears before his eyes, was anything but agreeable.

“I shall have to do something,” he thought; but the question was what—and a very important question too.

The next day being Sunday, Mr. Conway went to church. He had not been to church before for a long time. So far as he possessed the smallest knowledge of his own nature, he was not a hypocrite, and while he was sinning he felt it would be wicked and hypocritical to set foot across the threshold of God’s house.

Now, however, that he had ceased sinning and begun repenting, he conceived there was a fitness in returning, as did the prodigal. O! that like him he might meet with a welcome, and be shown some way to safety for Grace! His mind was busy with her as he walked to church. Had she been to mass? No, she would not go to mass; and yet if she continued to absent herself, what excuse could she make?

Clearly the only course was to get her from home: but how was that plan to be compassed?

Mr. Malet’s sermons were more scholarly than eloquent; he had none of the rugged fervour, the passion and fury, the homely faith that distinguished Mr. McKye; but the absence of these things and the presence of learning, which was quite wasted on the small flock of Evangelical sheep he tended in that Donegal wilderness, signified nothing to Terence. He was preaching his own sermon to himself, and it had for its text those words which he heard that evening when he went to service with Philippa, and which now recurred to him with somewhat of the force of a fulfilled prophecy.

“Come and have some dinner with me—you can call it luncheon,” said Mr. Malet, as they paced together through the graveyard after coming out of church; and glad to escape from himself even for a little space, Terence thankfully consented.

“Where is Audna?” he asked, as he observed that covers were only laid for two.

“In Dublin with her aunt,” said Mr. Malet.

“It is a long time since I have seen her.”

“She has been away all winter,” answered the Vicar, and then the conversation dropped. Mr. Malet had his own ideas about his daughter, and those ideas certainly did not include being patronised by Philippa when that lady came to reign at Calgarry.

The dinner was cold and plain, such as might have been expected in the house of a man whose means were moderate, and who had no tastes to cater for save his own; but had it been a feast spread with every dainty the result would have proved the same to Terence. He made a pretence of eating, but could not eat. He would have drunk freely, had he cared to do so with the Vicar’s grave eyes upon him.

They talked of many things, though Terence brought as poor a heart into the talk as he brought appetite to the food; but nothing was said about Philippa till Mr. Malet remarked:

“You have been to London?”

“Yes,” answered Terence.

“All right there, I hope?”

“O, yes,” answered Terence again.

“When are you to be married?”

“Exactly a month after Easter.”

“Where?”

“In London.”

“How do you feel about giving up your liberty?”

“Thankful.”

All which replies might be very satisfactory, yet were scarcely of a nature to encourage anyone to pursue the dialogue further; and accordingly Mr. Malet, almost as if one subject were the natural sequence of the other, went on to speak of Swine’s Gun and the tremendous effect produced on the previous day by that piece of natural artillery.

“Old Mr. McKye, who seems to have devoted his mind to every possible subject except his own business,” went on the clergyman, “tells me those who heard the report yesterday—and that means every person not stone deaf within a radius of twenty miles—may account themselves fortunate, not merely because the noise of the explosion was much greater than it has ever been known before, but because it is extremely unlikely to recur. His theory is—and I am not at all inclined to dispute it—that Swine has long been preparing his forces for a final effect, which should transcend all previous effects. The shock of yesterday’s volley was probably felt more or less over the greater part of Donegal, and Mr. McKye believes that now, to quote his own words, ‘Swine will retire from business.’ He is preparing an account of what he suggests has occurred for the papers, and considers, if examination subsequently confirms his idea, that he will be covered with glory.”

“What is his idea?” asked Terence.

“Put roughly, you know, the report of Swine’s Gun was merely the effort made by the waves to find a vent through too small an aperture. Mr. McKye’s notion is that yesterday a larger body of water had to force its way out, and in doing so blasted enough of the solid rock to open a passage sufficiently large to let any flood escape for the future without much noise. I must say the sound exceedingly resembled that of blasting. For a moment the noise was absolutely appalling. One of the coastguardsmen, who, having recently arrived from England, had never heard the gun before, ran home to his wife and child, thinking it was the last trump.”

“It was indeed awful,” agreed Terence.

“I may say I was close to it—not a couple of miles off, at any rate. Old Sweeny, whom you perhaps remember—he lived close by here when you were a lad—sent an imperative message that he was dying, and could not go without seeing me, otherwise I should certainly not have been in the neighbourhood on such a day. I had got about a third of the way back to Dunfanaghy when the crash came, and I declare, what with the dismal day, the effect of the old man’s death-bed confessions, and the fearful noise, it seemed to me that the end of the world might be at hand.”

“I am sure I thought it was,” remarked Terence, who had turned very pale, wondering exactly which route Mr. Malet might have chanced to take back from the residence of old Sweeny’s son.

“I remember once,” proceeded Mr. Malet, “in the old days, just after I came here first, being invited to dinner at Calgarry, when a party of men were staying with the old Duke. It was in the late autumn, and there had been heavy gales, and though the wind calmed suddenly, the Atlantic still ran mountains high. We had just gone in to dinner, and the then Rector of Mostrene was in the act of saying grace when Swine’s Gun went off.

“I never saw men so frightened in my life as the guests. They were all men of the world. Most of them had fought many duels, many had faced death on land and sea. Yet in one second there was a rout amongst them as if they had been a rabble army.

“‘Don’t be alarmed, my friends,’ said the old Duke; ‘it is only one of the Donegal lions roaring.’ And then he tried to explain what had happened.

“But he might as well have spoken to the wind; a regular stampede ensued. They must have thought an earthquake was imminent, for they started in such conveyances as could be most speedily got ready for the nearest town, and posted thence to Dublin.

“I never shall forget seeing those men crowding into the yard, shouting for the ostlers, running hither and thither and impeding the grooms, their faces looking strange under the influence of terror and excitement, the flashing of the stable lanterns, the stamping of the horses. The old Rector came to the hall door, and cried as they drove past:

“‘Gentlemen, remember when the seven angels sound their trumpets it will be vain to trust in horses and chariots;’ and Mr. Conway shouted out, ‘You might just as well stay here. When your Master calls for you, He won’t make as much noise as Swine; but wherever you are, you’ll have to answer.’ I am not a man, as you know, who approves of anything sensational in connection with religion, and yet, remembering that evening and the terror of those present, the lives they lived afterwards, and the deaths many of them died, I should be tempted to preach a sermon on the transient effect of the most awful warnings God can give us.”

Terence did not speak. He was still wondering by which route Mr. Malet had returned, and whether any part of the Vicar’s sentence was intended as a hint for him.

“Now, old Sweeny,” went on the clergyman, as if arguing out some question, “how many hundred times he must have been in peril of his life! He has stood looking straight in the face of death over and over again. Yet no danger escaped, no mercy vouchsafed, made him amend his ways. Yesterday, however, he was in an agony of terror at the near approach of Eternity—ready to clutch at any straw—grasp any hand. He would not let me go till I promised to return tomorrow—when ‘I’ll have more to tell you,’ he said; as though there was literally no end to the roll of his wickedness; but he will never tell me anything more now, for the shock of Swine’s Gun killed him—so Mr. McKye informs me.”

“It was enough to kill anyone,” was Terence’s trite re-mark. Old Sweeny was nothing to him, while his own affairs were very much.

“We have afternoon instead of evening service till the first of May,” said Mr. Malet, rising, after a pause. “So I must ask you to excuse me. Shall I find you here on my return? No. Then let me tell you how glad I feel you have found your way to church again. May you walk as far as the grave-yard with me? Of course you may; I am always pleased when you give me your company.”

The Vicar was almost tenderly kind in his manner. Since the previous day he had been pondering a great problem, and, though far as ever from solving it, the mental exercise had made him more tolerant than usual. His mind was indeed full of a very perplexing question, and he desired, moreover, to speak a word of warning to Terence. It was one he found very hard to speak; indeed, he might be accounted a man who at all times found it quite as difficult to offer advice as to bring his tastes into unison with sensational religion.

They walked together under a grey dull leaden sky till the churchyard was reached—that churchyard which, at his own expense, the Vicar kept in decent order—where he would not let nettles grow, or sheep graze, or foul weeds shroud the resting-places of the dead. At the gate Mr. Malet stopped, and said:

“Good-bye again, Terence.” He held the young man’s hand for a moment; then, as he released it, added, “Take care.”

“Of what?” asked Terence.

“Of Goblin Bay. I do not consider the air there wholesome for you.”

It had come. The blow he had been expecting all the afternoon was dealt at last, and Terence, flushing to his temples, tried to look his friend in the face and failed.

“I never intend to go there again,” he stammered.

“That is right,” said Mr. Malet; “adhere to your resolution. Believe me, it will be better. Now I must leave you;” and he was gone, leaving Terence in a state of perplexity impossible to describe.

If secrecy be the life of love, mystery is the crowning agony of all warning. What a man knows he can usually face, what he does not marches upon him accompanied by a thousand terrors. Why could not Mr. Malet have said either less or more, spoken out fully or else remained silent?

If he had broken ground earlier Terence would probably have made an almost full confession, and received such advice as he was quite incapable of giving to himself.

As matters stood he could not follow the Vicar into church and explain in what a predicament he stood, neither did he feel one whit better inclined to wait till the conclusion of service, and pour out his sorrows into an ear which certainly did not incline to over-sympathy with weak sinners like himself.

No; whatever he did he must do alone, and at once. Others beside Mr. Malet might already have a glimmering of the folly that had been going on; and if matters came to the worst it would be better for Grace’s father to hear the truth from Terence’s own lips than from the lips of anyone else. But need he ever hear the truth? He would not be an easy person to deal with, and Terence felt he would much rather not deal with him.

Suppose he took Mrs. Walley into confidence? For a short time he determined to adopt this course; then another plan suddenly occurred to him, and when it did so he quickened his pace and strode rapidly on, maturing his scheme as he walked, and growing to like it better and regard it as more feasible with every step.

“Is Corrigan about the place, Byrne, do you know?” he asked the butler, while the latter was taking his coat and hat.

“Yes, sir, he’s in the kitchen.”

“Tell him I want him; send him to the library;” and Mr. Conway, entering that apartment, threw some fresh turfs on the fire and stood before it, waiting for the coming of the handsome young fellow.

XXXI

MASTER AND MAN

“As I walked back from Mr. Malet’s today, I thought a good deal about you, Corrigan,” said Mr. Conway, standing in an inelegant attitude, with his back against the chimney-piece, and one foot placed on the brass fender the old Duke had never cared sufficiently for fashion to change.

With a cynical smile he had watched the latest generation he lived to see airing its folly, pulling out high grates and replacing them with low, tearing down the wooden wainscoting that is now imitated in paper and called a dado, flinging good brass contemptuously on the dustheap and welcoming with effusion chilly steel, substituting marble for the old quaintly-carved oak chimney-pieces and overmantels, and making matters all round what is called very good for trade; but he himself changed nothing, less because he much cared for the old than because he was indifferent to the new.

Now he had gone out of a world where the old order is always changing, and his successor stood on the hearth which should know its former master no more.

With a great effort the new owner, having stated that undoubted truth concerning the amount of thought he had devoted to his servant that day as he walked home from Calgarry church, finding no answer came, lifted his eyes, and met those of Patrick Corrigan.

The latter were of that sunny brown we see in dogs and children with no thought and little care behind them—brimful only with affection and faith and devotion. In good truth, Pat was devoted to his master, whom he trusted implicitly. He thought there never had been before, and never could be again, such a gentleman as the gentleman he served. Terence’s manners were very pleasant—dependents found them especially so—and Pat Corrigan but echoed the popular sentiment when he said Mr. Conway’s like could not be found in Ireland.

Terence had no nasty knack of putting a grievance in his pocket, and in after days flinging it at an unsuspecting servant’s head.

If things that he did not approve of were done, or things he did approve of not done as he wished, he had his say out, and there the matter ended. About a large place as about a small one, a master’s temper must often be provoked, but Terence never let the sun go down upon his anger. It was not his practice to send for a man and read him a lecture, to look out for grievances, and preach a long sermon to the effect that the sooner all the people he employed mended their ways the better. With him rebuke followed offence as fast as thunder does lightning; and for this reason, if for no other, Patrick Corrigan felt sure his master had been thinking no harm about him: rather, as Mr. Conway was often considering how he could do some kindness to his people, the man did not doubt but that his employer might have been remembering his coachman wanted another stable-boy—as, indeed, he did—or stood in need of a new set of double harness (silver-plated), or a better whip; in fact, the number of things the owner of Calgarry might have been thinking they required at Calgarry could only have been reckoned by the score. Pat could have made out a list as long as his arm, but till Mr. Conway “said the word” he meant to “make shift.” He knew money was not over plentiful, or likely to be till the young mistress came home, and he “would not be the one to bother his master till such times as the things as were needed about Calgarry could be had just for the asking—‘lashins and lavings,’ and no trouble at all.”

For these reasons, “and more to the back of them,” Pat did not answer his master’s remark, but looked at him with a fearless honest light in his sunny eyes.

It was a hard light for Terence to face, but “needs must when the devil drives;” and just then about the most powerful devil that can obtain possession over a man—the instinct of self-preservation—was urging the owner of Calgarry along the road to Wrong.

“Yes; I thought a great deal about you,” he repeated. “While I was in London—” but there Mr. Conway stopped, and, amending the form of his sentence, said, “The date for my marriage is fixed.”

“I am right glad to hear it, sir. God send you happiness!”

Terence had to swallow a lump which rose in his throat ere he could go on. Just then his heart was full to overflowing with a feeling of most despicable self-pity. Thrice-accursed hour when he first beheld Goblin Bay! Some chance of happiness, spite of the Doom upon him, he might have had but for the evil chance which threw Grace across his path.

“We shall have a house in London,” he went on to explain, “and we do not purpose—What I mean is this: I shall not take you to England; we intend you to keep the establishments quite separate.”

“Yes, sir.” Pat tried to look as if he understood quite well what his master meant, though he had not the faintest idea.

“My wife” (what it cost Terence to say those words!) “wishes to have married men about us in London, and though she does not make a point of the coachman here not being single, I know she would be glad if—You see what I want?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Well, it came into my mind, as I walked home just now, that—You are engaged, are you not?”

“Yes, sir—promised.”

“To Walley’s daughter, I think?”

“Yes—to the only one he has.”

“Then you are thinking of getting married soon?”

“I can’t say we are, sir. She’s young yet.”

“She will get older every day,” remarked Terence with a ghastly smile.

“We’ll all do that, sir,” answered Pat, readily returning the supposed pleasantry.

“Then you may as well get married at once,” rejoined his master, rather illogically.

“I doubt if her father would be willing,” answered the proposed bridegroom. “He always told me—and I wouldn’t say he is wrong—that no man should have his daughter unless he could take her to a good home. Now, in a manner of speaking, I have no home, and if I had I’ve nothing to put in it. I have never been able to save. While she was with me, I had to help my mother—God rest her soul;” and the poor fellow crossed himself. “After she went, I was out of work, and then when I got into work I took ill; and till I had the good fortune to come to Calgarry it was not possible for me to save.”

“But you would like to be married?”

“Indeed, and I would that! A man’s lonesome till he gets a wife—lost like when he’s fond of a girl and dursn’t take her; but there’s no use fretting, for though Walley has money put past, he’s not the man to take off his clothes before he goes to bed—and sure nobody can blame him.”

“I suppose not,” said Mr. Conway absently. “I should have thought, though—However, we need not trouble ourselves about that; there is no necessity to ask Walley for anything, because—you have his consent, I suppose?”

“O yes, sir. It’s with his full will we’re promised.”

“Then you had better see him and tell him what I say. I should like you to get married at once. You can have Mullan’s old house, and I will provide whatever may be required in the way of furniture.”

“I don’t know what to say to you, sir. I never thought to come across such goodness.”

“I am not unselfish in the matter,” returned Mr. Conway, with unintentional truthfulness. “I want to get everything settled as soon as possible, if Walley makes no objection.”

“There is not much fear of that.”

“You could get married at once?”

“We could, sir, at Easter.”

“Easter is a long way off.”

“We are close on Lent now.”

“What has that to do with the matter?”

“We couldn’t be married in Lent.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t rightly know, but people doesn’t marry then.”

It was all Terence could do to restrain a furious exclamation. This was such a dead check, and he had felt so sure. Safety had seemed close at hand, and now who could tell what might happen within the weeks that stretched drearily out between that night and Easter? He must get Walley, who believed in nothing, to put a pressure on. If the priest refused to marry them, Mr. McKye would make no objection—that he would see to. The thing to attend to first was to make all sure about the wedding—to let Grace know he had opened a door of safety for her, through which she need only carry her sin, and no one ever be the wiser.

He did not feel very sorry, though the man he was wronging stood before him with a grateful smile still on his face—though not one of the wicked Conways who owned Calgarry since the Nun cursed his race ever conceived a more evil deed than he, out of folly and weakness, was planning.

Had anyone told Terence then he was a coward and selfish, he would indignantly have denied the accusation—yet what is vice but selfishness? what is the attempt to shirk the consequences but cowardice? Though he tried to deceive himself by saying he only desired to shield Grace, if he had but plucked up courage enough to look into the depths of his heart he could not have remained blind to the truth that he was simply striving to save her because her danger was his.

“At all events,” he said, when he spoke again, “you had better go over to Walley’s, and put matters in train for the wedding. I will do all I can to help to make you comfortable.”

“I have no words, sir, to thank you,” answered the young fellow. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to show I am grateful.”

“I wish I had thought of this earlier,” proceeded Mr. Conway, putting aside Corrigan’s expressions of gratitude with a little movement of his hand, “and then you might have gone to Goblin Bay this morning. However, you can arrange to get over there tomorrow. I shall not require you.”

The interview was over. Next moment the door closed, and Terence stood alone breathing a deep sigh of relief. All would be right. He would hurry on the marriage if it were possible to hurry it; if not—sufficient for the day was the evil thereof; he need not anticipate any trouble; he did not mind spending money to keep matters quiet. Still, he did wish Mr. Malet had not chanced to suspect any folly. Why could not old Sweeny have chosen any other day for desiring the Vicar’s presence? and why should he have sent for Mr. Malet instead of the Dunfanaghy clergyman?

Certainly, ill-fortune did pursue him—Terence—in the most unaccountable way. Events seemed quite to go out of their ordinary course in order to cause him annoyance. But surely this idea of his would put everything right. He might have done wrong; indeed, he did not disguise from himself the fact that he could not well have done more wrong; but now he felt very sorry, and was trying to make matters smooth and pleasant all round. Poor Grace! he would try to make her future very easy; she and Pat might be happy in Mullan’s old house. It had grown rather too small for Mullan—or rather, his family had grown too large for it—and he was moving over to the West Lodge, which Mr. Stirling decided ought, after years, to be again occupied by a gate-keeper. Mullan’s cottage would do very well indeed for Pat and his wife. It was near the stable-yard, and still some little distance from Calgarry House: quite sufficiently out of the way, indeed, to enable Mrs. Corrigan that was to be to keep quite out of sight of the household—a great point. Terence felt he did not wish to see much of Grace when she became Mrs. Corrigan—or before, indeed, for that matter.

Yes, Mullan’s cottage would suit admirably; as a matter of fact Terence felt the whole plan, though struck out at a white heat, was better than any other plan could have been, even had he thought it over for a month; and feeling quite satisfied on this point, he ate his solitary dinner and solaced himself afterwards with what he once said—and truly—he could not stand: some punch.

With his constitution, temperament, and habits, he might as well have begun to drink poison as whisky; but since the old Duke’s wine left Calgarry, his successor had fallen into the habit of thinking he might as well learn to like the liquor of his country, which in those days had many advantages it does not now possess. It was cheap, for one thing; and though the economy of drinking it at all might be open to question, Mr. Conway believed he was doing a rather praiseworthy action in accustoming himself to a nightcap which cost so little.

There was no one now to see how it affected him. Mr. Stirling had gone to his new house, where a widowed sister looked after the establishment and his motherless sons and daughters.

The coast was being made quite clear for Philippa; and Terence, as he sipped his punch, sat ruminating over the changes he must immediately set about making at Calgarry. It would be necessary to have workmen from Dublin or Belfast; paint had not touched the walls for a quarter of a century, at any rate. He knew pretty well what Miss Dutton wanted. Was Mostrene not close at hand as an example?

True, Calgarry was as unlike Mostrene as it was well possible for any place to be—a fact Miss Dutton felt she could never sufficiently deplore; but still, as she had at last made up her mind to marry its owner, her policy was to change it, if possible, beyond recognition. Terence did not in any way fulfil her idea of a good match; but it had been borne in upon her that it was as good as she was likely to get. Somehow, though no one could deny she possessed many excellent gifts—amongst them youth, beauty, and wealth—she did not succeed as she ought to have done.

There were plenty of inquiries for her in the matrimonial market, but it had somehow got known she or Sir Henry was inclined to be stiff in the matter of money, and impecunious young men who aspire to heiresses generally prefer moneyed ladies who have more liberal views on so important a subject. Except Terence, no one had ever been in love with her; let her make what acquaintances she would, very little benefit accrued.

Her own sex did not care for her. Even her greatest friend thought in her heart Miss Dutton was mean, and; for so young a person, singularly shrewd. Philippa’s views as regarded her own future were large. She had thought of belted earls—whoever they may be—and in waking dreams considered strawberry-leaves would be becoming; but no duke came her way—not even a marquis sought for her sake an introduction to Sir Henry.

What can a girl do when her guardians are not “in society,” and when her friends know no eligible men? Everyone assured her Terence was by no means a match to be despised; and though Miss Dutton had her own ideas on this subject, she felt she might as well bow to the inevitable, and make the best of a bad bargain, for which the old Duke and Sir Henry Beecham were alone responsible.

One way of bowing to the inevitable was to remodel Calgarry on the new Mostrene pattern: and she had sweetly hinted to Terence that she thought the drawing-room would look lovely if decorated like Mrs. Boyne’s; and O! had he noticed the paper in the dining-room? No? Well, she felt sure Mr. Boyne would not mind his riding over and looking at it; and when he was at the Castle he might as well see if did not think the pink bedchamber simply lovely; and he must not forget Mrs. Boyne’s boudoir—the draperies in it were really perfection!

Of these and many other utterances of a similar nature Terence thought as he sat by the upheaped turf fire, marvelling dreamily whether in the new grates that were to be Philippa would wish to burn coal, and if so, where he could best procure it; and all the time the waves washing in on Goblin Bay seemed moaning at his ear. He felt again the chill of that early morning when, in the grey light, he passed out and looked at the waters fretting below, and saw the dark rocks and the lonely desolate land, and heard the noise of the great Atlantic, where deep called to deep, and the billows were racing madly to their doom.

“I have been too much alone lately,” he muttered at last. “I will go to Dublin for a week or so after tomorrow.”

After tomorrow! But how was he to pass the hours till tomorrow should be over? After tomorrow all would be well. An eternity of time seemed, however, to stretch before him till tomorrow should be over and done with and after tomorrow had-come.

As one means of passing the weary hours he went early to bed—but not to sleep. He could not sleep: the din of the Atlantic seemed to fill the room—the murmur of the sea sounded like distant and continuous thunder in his ear. If for a second he dropped from sheer exhaustion into dreamland, it was but to imagine he was stumbling amid heather and stones, with a dark sky overhead, a keen wind blowing, and the rain descending pitilessly; and then he would start from that broken slumber, to find a gale shaking the doors and torrents of rain beating against the glass.

A gruesome night for a man to lie awake with only troubled thoughts for company. O, that he had never seen Grace; that Walley had never had a daughter; that he had never looked in her eyes and taken her hand, and walked with her—they two together—along that broad highway, the end of which is Ruin!

XXXII

AFTER TO-MORROW

It was morning before Terence at last fell into a sound sleep, from which he did not awake till long after his usual hour for rising. When he rose and looked out, he saw a grey storm-swept sky, a sad earth without a vestige of a smile on leaf, or grass, or stream. The rain had fallen in torrents, and everything looked sodden and wretched. Terence shivered as he thought of the mournful waves, making music as monotonous as a death-chant in Goblin Bay; but he had one comfort: tomorrow was come—ere many hours were over, it would be after tomorrow, and he could breathe freely. Already it was late; a considerable part of the weary day had passed. Corrigan must have been on the road long previously—that was a comfort. Terence dressed himself and went downstairs, where, after eating a wretched breakfast and looking at his letters, he considered what he should do with himself till that anxious day wore to its close.

Putting on his hat, he strolled slowly down to the stables, where he heard Pat had started off early to catch the mail-car to Dunfanaghy. So far, so well; he must at that instant be sitting in Walley’s kitchen, or standing in Walley’s haggard, or pacing the “bit of a causeway” which ran beside the bay, telling his news. Would Walley be back? Both he and his wife were expected home on the previous evening; but if not, Grace was sure not to have gone far afield. She had a woman friend who stayed with her on those rare occasions when her parents were both absent, but she could not remain all day with the girl, so there could be no doubt that Grace would be at her post.

Some of the contracting powers, at all events, Corrigan would find, and it really did not much matter which so long as the girl herself understood a way of deliverance was being provided.

Terence felt he could not go far away from Calgarry till his own mind was at rest. What should he do to pass the time?—walk over and talk to Mr. Stirling about the yearling cattle; about the heifers, the young bullocks; about the sheep and the lambs, the wheat and the clover, the potatoes and the great experiment in flax, the ploughing and draining and trenching, the harrowing and rolling and planting and manuring, which formed the staple of the agent’s conversation? No; another day, perhaps—but not that morning. He would wait till he could discuss the great changes he wanted made for Philippa, and take the Scotchman into counsel about ways and means.

But how was he to occupy himself?

Surely never before did day appear so long as that which was by this time half over.

To read seemed impossible, to write even more so; he could walk the length of Calgarry Bay and back again—that would kill three hours at least—and then he might be able to eat some luncheon; and then—why, then the afternoon must draw on and in; and if Pat did not come back by the mail-car, he would not at the worst drive his return till very late. He was proud of his horses, and always liked to see they were cleaned, and littered, and watered, and fed properly. Nay, coachman though he felt proud to be, he never thought himself too exalted a person to “put to” his hand and attend himself to any duty left unfulfilled.

Yes; Terence felt he could not do better than take that walk along the shore. The tide was ebbing; he could keep on the sands both going and returning. They were strewn with millions of shells: empty homes now, but once each inhabited—a strange matter to consider. Deep as anyone chose to dig, the result was still sand and shells—sand dry and firm to tread, though covered twice a day by the Atlantic waves; shells to which more were being added each time the water swept in upon the shore.

Out near the frowning headlands the ocean broke ceaselessly over sunken rocks, and fretted itself into foam with a noise that soothed the ear by its endless repetition; the white gulls were abroad, but not a sail was to be seen.

Land and sea both seemed enveloped in the gloom of a depressing despair; the dark fields stretched down to meet an ocean the colour of mud, and over all—distant headlands, shore, water, fields, and mountains—a grey sky lowered, and a sad low wind swept.

The sadness was in keeping with Terence’s thoughts; but not the stillness. He would have liked storm and tempest—a raving ocean and the white sea-horses running wild races in shore; instead, the tide ebbed quietly, like a dying man leaving life by almost imperceptible degrees.

An unutterable melancholy took possession of this latest Conway of Calgarry. How many Conways must have paced those lands with the same tumult of unrest warring in their breasts! Was there to be no end to it? Must they forever go on working out an inevitable doom?

The very sands were full of memories. Here two Conways—brothers—who had never agreed in life, were cast up by the sea, dead; here one had been thrown from his horse, and crippled for all the future days of his existence; here that other, who brought home the fair and frail and wicked original of the picture which Mrs. Barry did not like, had measured swords with the injured husband, who, at the sun-rising, stood branded with the mark of Cain.

“I will have no more of this,” thought Terence, as he paused by the spot whence—so ran the legend—that stain of blood would never be washed while a Conway held Calgarry. “I will go home. If we are cursed, we had better be so beside a blazing fire than this mournful ocean.” And, turning, he swiftly retraced his steps, passing as he did so the spot where Sir Henry had opened his mind about Philippa.

As he drew near to the stable-yard one of the men was going to his dinner.

“Corrigan’s back, sir,” he said.

“What, so soon?”

“Yes, sir—he got a lift.”

Just for a moment a nameless dread came over Terence—an unreasoning fear which his senses at once put aside as absurd.

“Walley was not at home, so they settled nothing,” he considered; “or, perhaps,” he went on, “Walley was at home and they arranged matters in five minutes.” But Mr. Conway did not turn into the yard.

“I must not seem anxious,” he thought, and kept straight on.

An hour passed, and Corrigan did not appear. “He is having something to eat,” concluded Mr. Conway; “he will be here presently;” and even as he comforted himself with this assurance the door opened.

“Luncheon is ready, sir,” announced Byrne. So Terence, with what appetite he might, went in to luncheon. Was there ever so endless a day? How wearisome meals were—more particularly meals which had to be eaten!

When he was about to rise from the table, Byrne said, “Corrigan came, sir, just now, wanting a word with you. I told him you were engaged, and that he had better stop in the kitchen till you were at leisure, but Ann Patterson bid me let him wait in the breakfast-room.”

A dim sort of wonder as to why Ann Patterson had bid Byrne do anything of the sort crossed Terence’s mind; but he did not stop to argue the matter out then. There was a decanter of wine close at his hand, filled not with that old Madeira judges approved of so greatly, but with a far inferior sherry Mr. Conway did not care for, and had left untouched during luncheon. Now, however, he poured out a tumblerful, and swallowed it at a draught, while Byrne, busying himself about his duties, tried to look as if he did not see.

In his time he had beheld as much hard drinking as any butler need have desired; but Mr. Conway was the first gentleman he ever saw commit such a solecism, and the old man more than once expressed a hope to Ann Patterson that the new mistress would break Mr. Terence of so bad a habit.

“I have known him drink that Madeira as if it were clear spring water,” observed Byrne: which remark happened to be painfully true; indeed, on that day, which he found so long—so very long—Terence had his hand on the decanter to help himself again, when he thought better of his intention, and crossed to the breakfast-room.

Corrigan rose as he entered.

“You are back early,” said Mr. Conway.

“I am, sir,” was the answer; and then there came a pause.

Already it was afternoon in that room which faced the east—the same room where Mr. Conway and his guests had sat at breakfast on the sweet spring morning which came borne on the wings of the west wind to Donegal—only a year before, only a year!

Coming out of the stronger light, Terence at first only noticed that, in some way, his man looked different; but now he saw in what that difference consisted.

Corrigan was dressed in quite shabby clothes, the sunny brightness had died out of his eyes, and his whole attitude and expression conveyed an idea of utter despondency. What could have happened? what in the world could have induced a man to go wooing in the very worst attire he owned—garments long since relegated, as Terence believed, to some old dealer?

“Did you see Walley?” Mr. Conway inquired, breaking that awkward pause.

“I did not, sir; he was away, and his wife, too.”

“O, then you settled everything with their daughter?” This at a venture.

Corrigan kept silent for a minute. Then he said very slowly,

“Yes, I settled everything with her, but not just as you think.”

“How then?”

“We’ll never get married.”

“Why not?” What could be coming? Terence wondered with a sick terror. What could have happened?

“Because she has told me all!”

It was said, and though the man scarce spoke above a whisper, the noise of Swine’s Gun had not sounded so awful to Terence.

“She has told you all!” he repeated. He would have given anything to be able to make some other reply, but that parrot echo escaped him in spite of his own will.

“Aye!” The rush of tears was in that one word, though the man’s eyes were dry.

Terence stood silent for an instant, collecting himself; then he said,

“Will you tell me exactly what you mean?”

“There’s no need, sir; you know as well as I could tell you: the girl’s heart was full, and she showed me all that was in it. I wouldn’t have believed it, Mr. Conway, had another told me; I couldn’t have believed it of you. It is hard enough,” went on the poor fellow passionately, “to lose the only one I ever loved; but I think it’s worse to know the master I served faithful would have put such a disgrace on me, just to answer his own turn.”

Not when Nathan said to David, “Thou art the man,” could the sweet singer of Israel have been smitten with a deeper shame than Terence felt then.

With everything at stake—character, home, future—weak, childish, erring Norah Creina had been more honourable than he. His first sin was bad enough, but it was white as snow when compared with his second; and he stood mute beneath the reproach of his own hired servant, as David did before the messenger of the Lord.

“I will go now, sir,” observed Corrigan. “I have left the livery in Ann Patterson’s care, and I will make up my book with Mr. Stirling. I have said nothing to living soul about why I am parting my place; there is no call for me to tell all the world I had but one ewe lamb and you took her, and thought to give her back ruined and disgraced, and that I’d never know—never be a bit the wiser.” With which accusation Corrigan departed.

And what an accusation that was for Terence to face now tomorrow had gone and after tomorrow had come!

XXXIII

BEFORE THE STORM

Nothing proves more trying to what is erroneously called a man’s egotism, but which is really a man’s sense of individuality, than the absolute indifference of Nature to events that are of the supremest importance to him.

The sun rises and sets, seed-time and harvest come and go, the snowdrop and the rose bloom and fade, the winds howl, the rain descends, the stars shine, and the moon fulfils her appointed course, no matter who is sick or who is well, who mourns or who rejoices, who sins or who repents even with tears.

It seems to most men—to those, at all events, whose sense of self-importance has not been utterly crushed by adverse circumstances—that when they are in great trouble the order of creation should stop for a time altogether, till they feel inclined to go on with it again. When eyes are dim with grief, or heavy with shame, it is hard to look without a feeling of impotent resentment at Nature pursuing her accustomed way; and it may be—indeed, very probably is—true that the vivid descriptions of hurricanes and tempests, of thunders and lightnings, earthquakes and portents, in which writers formerly revelled, were rather suggestions to Nature of the way she ought to behave under special circumstances, than any accurate account of the manner in which our impassive Mother ever demeaned herself while her children, great or lowly, were sinning or suffering.

When, on the next morning after his interview with Corrigan, Mr. Terence Conway walked out of Calgarry House, it seemed strange to him that everything looked precisely as it had done twenty-four hours previously. Muckish was in the same place as of yore; the Garry had not varied its course; no whirlwind had swept over the lawns and shrubberies: the only change was in himself. His men touched their hats and spoke to him as usual; the horses were groomed, although the directing head was gone; a cart laden with Mullan’s final odds and ends had just left the cottage where Pat might have lived so happily, but where he would never live now. As he thought of this a dumb rage filled Mr. Conway’s heart.

“If the girl could but have held her tongue”—it was not “poor Grace” now with Terence. By her independent action she had removed herself out of the depths of helplessness to the platform of equality, and as she had not chosen to let him save her, she must sink or swim as best she could.

As she had made her bed she must lie: no matter how much he regretted that it should be an uneasy couch, Mr. Conway did not see how he could make it more comfortable. With Walley the matter must eventually come to a question of money; and though no doubt everyone concerned would have a very bad quarter of an hour with the horse-dealer, there seemed no way to escape him now.

“If only Grace had been wise,” what a world of trouble she might have saved everybody, herself included—so ran Mr. Conway’s mental argument; but beyond a certain point he could not proceed in his discourse, because he failed even to conjecture the form that world of trouble was likely to assume. He did not see how he could help her or himself. If he tried to help her again most probably she would thwart him again. A wild thought of taking Ann Patterson into his confidence and appealing to her for help occurred to him, but he rejected the idea as soon as formed; then casting about, he remembered the aid rendered so short a time before by Mark Barry and Mr. Stirling. They had been very kind then, and Terence considered that they might have been equally kind in this extremity but for his action about Corrigan. Unfortunate Conway of Calgarry! he had meant to deceive his servant with the best intentions, but he saw when it was too late the view which his truest friends were likely to take of his conduct.

As he had sowed, he was reaping—it was impossible to dispute that; yet it seemed to him terrible a man should be called upon to garner, whether he liked it or not, such an awful crop.

And all the time Muckish was frowning over the landscape with as sullen a grandeur as ever; and as his feet drew near and nearer to the shore he saw the Atlantic flowing with as deep a depth of gloom on its waves as they had borne yesterday when the tide was ebbing. There were the gulls circling and diving as when he paced the sands before; the same grey sky lowered overhead; the same sad wind touched his cheek sorrowfully. He had not lost hope when he looked on all these things last; now his heart held only the blackness of despair. He felt he must get away from Calgarry, if only for a few days, and even then he was on his way to ask his Donegal banker, Mr. Stirling, for money.

The agent had now everything exactly to his mind as regarded details—house, offices, yards, haggard, homestead, bailiff, “under a tablecloth,” as he was wont often jubilantly to remark; all had been planned by him and erected under his own supervision, and the result justified his boast, that he meant to have model farm-buildings at Calgarry. They lay, long and low, under the lee of a rocky mound that Mr. Stirling had marked from the first day he passed it as a protection against the wind. Not another landlord in Donegal could point to such a collection of shed, stables, barns, and straw-yards; but then, as one of that class said truly enough:

“We don’t want to point to them. They are no good at all, as Conway will find out before he’s much older.”

Mr. Stirling, however, knew, or thought he knew, better. He had seen the results of merely trying to get in rents without showing people how to make money to pay those rents; and now when, for the first time in his life, he met with an employer willing to leave all things under his hand, he meant to carry into practice his favourite theory, that on an estate the landlord’s sheep ought to be the fattest, his cows the best, his milk the richest, his pigs the most sought after, his butter the finest, his hens the greatest layers, his broods of chickens the earliest.

“It is to be done,” he said, “and I will do it.” And it may as well be added at once that, though he found the work very much more uphill than he expected, still he did do it. That he never succeeded in persuading many of his Irish tenants to follow the admirable example he showed them of wisdom, thrift, patience, and industry was no fault of his, or of his Irish tenants perhaps.

Habits which have their roots deep in the heart of a nation; which have grown with the centuries; which have been fostered by every evil system successive generations of legislators could devise; which well-meant help from relations in America, and the practice of repairing eleven months of shiftless “it will do well enough” with one month’s hard work in England, bid fair to render inveterate, cannot be counteracted by the efforts of any one man, or, indeed, by any number of men; but though his experiments in the way of improving the distressful country have failed, even at the present moment Mr. Stirling, in common with those who know her best, does not care to hear Ireland reviled.

“Train up a child in the way he should go,” he replies to all disparaging critics. “I suppose you’ll admit Solomon had sound sense and good reason for saying, the same child, when he was old, would not depart from that way.

“Well, then, I’ll thank you to tell me what training poor Ireland ever had. Why, she was kissed and cuffed; blessed and cursed; spoiled and kicked; one minute called beautiful, and the next devilish; according to the whim of the speaker, an angel or a demon; laughed at and scolded; patted on the back for being clever, and then punished for not knowing what she was never taught—how to work steadily.

“Without a thing in the shape of real disease the matter with her, she has, with perpetual doses of medicine, been brought to such a pass that she is in a worse state than England was before the Conquest; and if she ever develops a wholesome frame of mind and body in the future, it will be no thanks to the doctors, who won’t let her alone. Just as children keep always pulling up the trees they plant, to see if they are growing, so nothing good is ever given a chance of taking hold of the soil here. It is heart-breaking to think of the money and thought that have been wasted in Ireland in doing harm. One mile of railroad would do more good than fifty Acts of Parliament.”

Thus at great length Mr. Stirling expresses his opinions—naturally a man likes a country he has laboured in and for; and as for the people, he asks pertinently if a perfect people is to be found anywhere.

All through that February when Mr. Conway was so miserable, his agent, on the contrary, felt particularly happy. Things had gone better with him than might have been expected. Great part of the land was let on his own terms, at his own price; he had shown scoffers what could be done with corn that refused to ripen; he had proved that good breeds would thrive in Donegal just as well as bad if sufficient food were provided for them; he had satisfied himself that the soil at Calgarry was not a sort of Goodwin Sands, which would swallow any amount of manure and return nothing: on the contrary, he discovered the soil to be more grateful and tractable than the people.

“We’ll do yet—we’ll do wonders yet,” he remarked to Terence, when the new year found the new-comers still at Calgarry, with their heads well above water; and if Mr. Conway did not receive this assurance with the enthusiasm his agent expected, Mr. Stirling set his apparent absence of joy down to the fact of his feeling dull—“as well he may, all alone in that big house, with nothing to do from morning to night, and no one to keep him company.”

From the shore a road had been made, which considerably shortened the distance from Calgarry Mansion to Calgarry Farm. Originally but a rough field-path, it was now so wide and smooth and straight, Mr. McKye could not resist the remark it reminded him of that one which leads to destruction. Many indeed were the jests and sneers indulged in at Mr. Stirling’s expense; even those who, having gone far along the highway of progress, might have been expected to honour any explorer who went further still, set their faces steadily against the folly of stall-feeding, and the madness of ploughing up old pastures, and experimenting—of all crops in the farmer’s calendar—with flax and lucerne.

Nor was the local anger at all appeased when Mr. Stirling got in his flax without rotting and “sold it at a profit, and made money of his stock,” though everybody knew he ought to have lost on both. Wiseacres regarded his temporary success as one of those devices of Satan which lure a man on and on to the brink of some pecuniary precipice, in order to pitch him over into those abysses of poverty that he thought to escape by being cleverer than his neighbours.

Donegal might have been decently sorry had it seen the Evil One hurling Mr. Stirling to destruction; but it certainly was not even ordinarily glad to hear that his management prospered—comforting itself with the remark:

“The time is young yet. He’ll find before he has done with Calgarry old ways are the best ways.”

That pleasantry of Mr. McKye’s concerning the broad road had passed into a colloquialism, and the highway from shore to farm was known far and near as Destruction.

It was wide enough for two carts, had a good side-path, and might have vied with any other new road in Ireland for ugliness, which is saying a great deal. But Terence, as he turned off the shore and entered the treeless avenue, gave no thought as to whether it was beautiful or the reverse. In front of him loomed ever-present Muckish, and under its shadow, though too far away to distinguish, lay the old ruined church, surrounded by its graveyard, where lay those of his doomed race who had gone before.

He was in a very bitter and gloomy frame of mind, and his mood must have been reflected in his face, for the first words Mr. Stirling, who met him, uttered were, “What is the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter,” answered Terence—“only I feel a little out of sorts.”

“What has put you out of sorts?”

“I do not know; the weather, I suppose.”

“If it is only the weather, you’ll get over that. I was just on my way to the house to see you.”

“And I was just on my way to the office to see you. I must go to Dublin this afternoon, and I want some money.”

“There is nothing wrong in Dublin, is there?” asked Mr. Stirling anxiously. Dublin being the source whence Calgarry derived its pecuniary supplies, there was always to the agent a certain amount of uneasiness suggested even by the mere mention of that capital.

Terence laughed. “I daresay there is a good deal wrong there, as there is everywhere; but there is nothing that concerns us. No. I want to go to Dublin to make some inquiries about furniture. We shall have to begin setting our house in order immediately, Mr. Stirling.”

“Do you mean that in all seriousness?”

“I do indeed. The date for the marriage is fixed.”

“God be praised!” exclaimed Mr. Stirling devoutly.

“And as I feel in rather a vagabond humour and unable to settle to anything,” went on Terence, with the air of a man every minute of whose day was ordinarily spent in study or the discharge of business, “I mean to go up to Dublin and have a look at the furniture shops and hear what the decorators say, and then when I come back we can get to work in earnest.”

“When is the wedding to be?” asked Mr. Stirling.

“A month after Easter.”

“My word! we will have to put our best foot foremost, then. I am right glad. It is what I have long been wishing for.”

Terence did not answer. He was thinking how earnestly he wished matters had been settled and he married a year before.

“You are not looking just the thing, Mr. Conway,” observed the agent, glancing at his companion as they strode along.“Are you well enough?”

“I do not feel very well,” was the reply; “but I shall be all right when I have had a few days in Dublin. London, you know, never does suit me.”

“No; you had too much of it a while ago. Have you breakfasted?”

“I took a cup of tea; but I could not eat anything.”

“This will never do,” said Mr. Stirling; “we must not have you laid up when everything is promising so fair. Come into the cottage, and while I am getting the money, my sister will make ready some coffee and have a cod cutlet broiled. That will perhaps tempt you—it is off as fine a fish as ever swam.”

Terence murmured something about being ashamed to give so much trouble, but finally allowed Mr. Stirling to have his way. They passed together into a comfortable sitting-room, where the agent wheeled a deep armchair forward to the inevitable turf fire for his guest, and then departed to order breakfast, and extract from his safe as many Bank of Ireland notes as he thought Mr. Conway ought to require. He counted them over rather reluctantly, thinking to himself:

“We’ll have to be careful, though we are going to marry an heiress.” But when he placed the roll in Terence’s hand, he remarked, as though rather repenting of his parsimony, “If there is not enough there, Mr. Conway, I’ve more for the fetching.”

Terence took the roll, and, detaching twenty pounds, put back the remainder. “That will be plenty,” he said, in so dull a tone that Mr. Stirling could not help observing:

“I am sorry to see you so ill like. A man in your position ought to be as gay as a lark.”

“Perhaps,” was the answer, “I should have been gay enough had this come sooner, but the long waiting has tired me.”

“Better late than never, you know,” replied Mr. Stirling. “You’ll be none the worse for this run to Dublin. I see plainly you have been taking too much out of yourself.”

“I suppose that is it,” said Terence, not quite hypocritically; and then he attacked the good things provided with more appetite than might have been expected.

“What’s all this about Corrigan going off in such a hurry?” asked Mr. Stirling, putting at last the question Terence had been waiting for. “He would give no reason for throwing up the place, neither would he hear of stopping—not that I wanted him to stop,” added the agent.

“I knew you never liked him.”

“I liked him well enough; but I did not like his father-in-law that is to be. You are well out of the whole connection. Walley could be as dangerous a man as any in Ireland, I think, if he gave his mind to being nasty.”

“There was no fault to find with Corrigan; I am very sorry he would not stop.”

“You will get another just as good in his place—an older man—that will save all jealousy. There was a lot of jealousy about Corrigan. My only astonishment is he got leave to stay so long. He must have had some mortal affront put upon him, because he would not open his lips on the subject more than to say he was better away from Calgarry. He waited two long hours last evening till I was ready to make up his book, and then, though it was dark as pitch, he took himself off.”

As Mr. Stirling spoke the room he was sitting in faded away from Terence’s eyes, and a vision took its place of that lonely figure plodding through the darkness, carrying a load of sorrow, going forth solitary, friendless, almost penniless, into the blackness of night, and for the first time remorse which had in it no self-pity fastened its fangs in his soul.

“I felt really sorry for him,” went on Mr. Stirling, “for I think he had been hurt in some way as well as offended; and he was a good servant, and attached to you. Still, I am glad he is gone, and hope we shall see nothing in the future of Walley. He will not bring any more horses to me, I know.”

XXXIV

THE BEGINNING OF THE STORM

As Mr. Conway felt no doubt now as to the propriety of staying at Morrison’s Hotel, he put up there as a matter of course, and from thence despatched long letters to London and Calgarry concerning upholstery and other kindred subjects, in which, truth to tell, he could not take the slightest interest.

For it is a solemn fact that we cannot leave trouble behind so long as we take ourselves. It is ready for the road as soon as we are; it requires no luggage, needs no ticket; wherever we lead it follows—it does not stay at home patiently awaiting our return; nobly indifferent to such mere details, it will travel by any conveyance, in any class, so long as it can give us the pleasure of its society: all it asks is our company—but that it must have, whether we are in tune for such devoted attendance or not.

If Terence thought to get rid of his particular care by leaving Donegal, he was mistaken; it did not stay a minute after him beside Goblin Bay, or even rest itself for a little at Calgarry. No; it got on the mail-car beside Terence, took share of his rug, and said to him quite plainly and cheerfully: “Now, old fellow, we are going to Dublin together.” For this reason he soon began to see he might as well have stayed at home. Sticking closer than a brother, Care went to Morrison’s with him, accompanied him through the streets, waited outside the furniture shops, and caught him the instant he came forth. Nay, it even went to Kildare Street, and though Mr. Bray did not know it, sat staring at him one day in his own office for full half an hour, patiently waiting that good time in the future when Grace Walley’s affairs might demand and obtain a hearing, and take their place among the chronicles in those tin boxes, labelled in painted letters two inches long, “Terence Conway, Esq., Calgarry.”

Messrs. Bray & Lucan had by no means yet done with Terence Conway, Esq. There was a pleasant lull in his affairs, but no one knew better than he it was only a lull, and pleasant merely in outward seeming.

Deeply penetrated with a sense of the great future Conway of Calgarry had secured for himself, and alive to the fact that Miss Dutton’s fortune had more than once trembled in the balance, Mr. Bray assumed for the nonce a “bless you my children” manner, “and I told you everything would come right if you only showed a bold front,” which would have been, under different circumstances, eminently satisfactory to his client. In quite a royal manner, though tempered with great affability, he intimated his willingness to be present at the ceremony—“to see,” as Mark Barry afterwards expressed the matter, “fair play all round.”

As some great physicians only attend the obsequies of their highest patients, so Messrs. Bray & Lucan did not ordinarily assist at any wedding which could not be described as an “alliance.”

Things were made very pleasant for Terence in Dublin, and he might have enjoyed his visit enormously but for the hag Care, who would not let him out of her sight for more than a moment at a time.

“We may as well go home,” she said at last. “We shall have to go back sometime; and though you may stay away from Calgarry, other people will not stay away. Walley’s wife has been with Mr. Stirling already, as you are aware, wanting Corrigan’s address. It will not be long before Walley goes there too. We had better return and face whatever there may be to face. You cannot exactly tell what is going on, and we may as well know.” And accordingly Terence left the delights of a capital which, though even at that time shorn of most of its former glory, was still pleasant, and took train for the bleak, black North.

Mr. Stirling came to Calgarry on the evening of his return, to hear what he had done in Dublin, and to know when the Duke’s old abode was to be delivered over to an army of workpeople.

“There is no time to lose,” he remarked, “though you won’t be coming here with your wife to stay for any time till the summer.”

“No; but everything must be finished by then,” answered Terence dreamily. He was not thinking so much of marriage or wedding tour, or home or Philippa, as of Goblin Bay, as of the trouble in store for him from there. He had reached a state in which he longed to face the worst—to know no deeper depth awaited him. He wanted to see Mrs. Walley; in that direction lay safety, probably—the mother loved and would shield her child. He wished he had not gone to Dublin, but remained on the spot ready to receive Grace’s mother when she came. Ought he to go over to Goblin Bay? No, he must not do that; it would be madness to set people’s tongues wagging; and even in that lonely place there were, he knew now, eyes to see he had not dreamed of, ears to hear that had been quite beyond his thoughts.

“By the bye,” said Mr. Stirling, when he rose to leave, “Mrs. Walley was over with me again yesterday, to know if you could tell her where Corrigan was gone. I said I was very sure you know nothing about him, but she feels certain he would never have left without giving you at least a notion of his whereabouts. It seems I was wrong in imagining some of the men in the yard had offended him. The whole trouble is some quarrel between him and Walley’s daughter. Perhaps you guessed as much?”

“Yes; he gave me some hint to that effect,” answered Terence. There were but nine short words in the sentence, yet a dictionary could not have cost him more labour to produce.

“I wish he had not. But now, mind my advice. Don’t take sides; don’t mix yourself up in the matter at all. You will get into a mess if you do. I am sure they are a bad lot, root and branch. Let them settle their own affairs. If you know where Corrigan is—”

“I have not the faintest idea where he is,” interrupted Terence eagerly.

“That is a good hearing. Just tell Mrs. Walley so, and send her about her business. You have no call to meddle in the concerns of such people, and Walley is a dangerous scoundrel, I am sure—a man no one can be too careful about dealing with.”

O, if he could have helped dealing with him in the future! Mr. Stirling meant his advice well, but Terence felt it to be as useless as advice after the event usually is.

“Keep your stable door locked, my friend; remember to keep it locked,” people are too fond of saying, and think they have done the owner excellent service merely because he does not care to tell them it is no use locking the door when the steed is stolen.

Every word of Mr. Stirling’s homely counsel knocked at the door of Terence’s heart and made dents in it; but what was the use? He must mix himself up in the matter; he had no choice but to meddle in the concerns of such people; he could never keep clear of Walley if ever an inkling of what was wrong came to his ears.

“Woe is me, for I am undone,” thought the wretched young man. His only hope now was in Mrs. Walley; so those who are incapable of helping themselves go on trusting in one broken reed after another, till the inevitable result follows.

“Mrs. Walley would like to speak to you, sir, if you can spare her a minute.” Terence was finishing breakfast when Byrne made this announcement next morning. The ball was opened, then; hostilities had begun. Who would come off the field victorious at the end?

“Send her in here,” said Mr. Conway. He had held his two important interviews with Corrigan, one in the library, the other in the breakfast room; so almost unconsciously he decided to try a third interior for the next scene.

She came in, looking worn and jaded. She had been beautiful once—more beautiful than her daughter; but in such a climate, women who live and work hard soon lose all pretensions to good looks, and Mrs. Walley had lived hard and worked hard under the iron rule, not of poverty, but of a more inexorable taskmaster still.

One glance in her haggard face showed Terence that she knew nothing yet. It held no purpose in its lines. So far, she was only anxious and worried; the whole burden rested on her. Walley had been home, but he did not stay long enough to be “bothered with women’s stories” ere he was off again. Mrs. Walley felt afraid in his then state of mind to open hers to him, and the horsedealer, full of his own legal affairs, had departed, unaware anything “beyond the common” was wrong in his home.

Grace’s “ill looks” were satisfactorily accounted for by a “terrible cold” contracted during her mother’s absence; and as colds were things Mr. Walley wisely took “no account of,” the girl’s swollen eyes and pale cheeks were allowed to pass without comment.

“Sit down, Mrs. Walley,” said Terence, looking at the woman’s troubled face with a compunctious qualm. “How are you?”

“Well, indeed, sir, I’m not very well, and that is the truth. I am sorely vexed about Pat. He has gone away for the first time without telling us where. He and Grace have parted in anger; and as she won’t tell the rights of the quarrel, I want to find him. His mother was the only sister I ever had, and I was always as fond of him as if he’d been my own son—as I made sure he would be one day.”

“I do not know where he is,” answered Terence. “He did not give me the slightest clue as to where he was going.”

“Then I have had my journey for nothing,” said Mrs. Walley wistfully.“I made sure you would be able to help me, sir.”

“Indeed, I would help you if I could,” returned Terence.

“I wanted to find him,” she went on, “before any word of all this came to my husband’s knowledge. I hoped I could put things right. He always was a good boy, and listened to me; and if I only could have seen him I might have saved a lot of mischief. Grace says she wouldn’t marry him if he came back tomorrow—that the fault is hers—that she huffed him; but it’ll be hard to make her father believe that. He’ll not sit quiet and see her put upon.”

No, Walley was not the man to sit quiet; and Terence turned faint and sick as he thought what would come if ever Walley saw cause to get up and exert himself.

“I do not know where Corrigan has gone,” he repeated; “I wish I did.” And this was true. At that awful juncture he would have liked to take counsel with Corrigan as to what could be done; but, of set purpose, the young man had disappeared that he might be asked no questions—that whatever happened might not be caused or hastened by speech of his.

“I am sure I am very thankful to you, Mr. Conway,” said Grace’s mother, humbly grateful; “and if you do hear any word of him, may I make so bold as to ask you to let me know?”

“I will send you a message at once,” promised Terence.

“I don’t know what to say to you, sir; but you’ve always been beyond the common good to us. I mustn’t take up more of your time, so I’ll say good-morning;” and she rose wearily.

“How did you get here?” asked Terence.

“By the car, sir.”

“And how are you going back?”

“Maybe I might get a lift; if not, I’ll walk.”

“No, you must not do that,” said Mr. Conway hastily. “I am sending one of the men to Dunfanaghy, and you can go with him. He will be ready presently, and meantime Ann shall give you something to eat. I am sure you are faint after coming so far, and so early.” And he rang the bell and gave the poor woman into Byrne’s charge; and then went down to the shore, considering what a very pretty kettle of fish there was cooking for his own delectation, and wondering whether he might not have done better to tell Mrs. Walley everything, and let the whole murder out at once.

Meanwhile, Grace’s mother was explaining her trouble to Ann Patterson, and, indeed, to the whole sympathetic house-hold, every member of which said the thing was beyond the beyonds, and that they wouldn’t have evened it to Pat that he would have served anybody such a trick.

“He’ll be back again before long,” declared Ann Patterson, who always tried to make peace; “you’ll see if he won’t; and then, when you know the rights of why he went away, you’ll find he wasn’t so much to blame. I wouldn’t fret myself; he was a good young fellow, and he has done no harm wherever he is.”

“But it is Gracie—our Gracie—I’m thinking about.”

“He’ll come back to her after a bit; sure, lovers must have their quarrels—better wrangle before marriage than after, you know. He could not stay from her long—he thought Ireland did not contain her like. The maids used to laugh at him about his Grace, till sometimes he was not too well pleased.”

“Aye, we said to him often, ‘What’s your Grace more than anybody else’s Grace?’ and then he’d make answer, ‘Ah! you haven’t seen her.’” observed one of the servants.

The mother looked from one to another, as if striving to take in the comfort they meant to give her.

“She’s a purty creature,” she observed at last, with a slow proud smile, “and a better daughter mother need not wish for.”

“Sure, then, what would you want more?” asked the woman who had spoken before. But Ann Patterson said nothing—only turned aside, and busied herself with some trifle.

While she drove back to Dunfanaghy beside the same groom who had told Sir Henry the story of Aileen, Mrs. Walley heard the whole “genesis” of Corrigan’s departure.

“He spruced himself up as if he was going to a wedding, and started to meet the mail-car. He had not a contrary word with one of us. He seemed in the height of good spirits, laughing and joking, and warning us to see after the horses, or we’d see what he would do to us when he came back. But when he did come, he had not a word to throw to a dog; it seemed as if the heart had died out of him; he went into his room and we heard him moving about, and then he went up to the house with a big bundle, and not a one of us ever set eyes on him after. He never said he was going, or God be with us, or a mortal word. The whole thing beats me entirely.”

It beat Mrs. Walley also—the more utterly, perhaps, because she could not, on her return home, extract a remark of any sort from Grace on the subject.

“We’ll see what your father’ll have to say to you when he comes back,” she observed; and still Grace kept silence.

Long after she was in bed, however, Mrs. Walley heard her crying softly, catching her breath in low gasping sobs she strove vainly to control; but at last she fell asleep, and then the mother went to sleep too.

In the early dawn, however, the latter awoke, with a terrible horror overmastering her. Getting up, she stole noiselessly to her daughter’s bedside, and stood looking at the girl till Grace opened her eyes and beheld who was standing there.

“Mother,” she said pitifully, “what is it?”

Then Mrs. Walley fell on her knees and wailed out in very agony, “O, my child! my mind misgives me about Mr. Conway—I am afraid he has come over here once too often. Tell me if I am right; is that what is troubling you?”

XXXV

A MORNING CALL

Ignorant of that question asked at the day-dawning, Mr. Conway was dressing himself leisurely, when he became aware of a tapping, “like someone rapping softly,” at his chamber door.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It is Ann Patterson, sir,” answered his henchwoman, her homely accents coming muffled through the oak. “Can I speak a word?”

“Yes, come in;” and, arrayed in his dressing-gown, and with razor in hand, Terence turned to receive the housekeeper.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she began, “but Mrs. Walley is here again, wanting to see you; so I made bold to step up and ask if you wouldn’t like me to send for Mr. Stirling?”

The razor in Terence’s hand shook, and the drapery of his brilliant dressing-gown—bought when he fully counted on the old Duke’s money, and his own expectations were large as his tailor’s hopes—trembled while he asked,

“Why should I wish you to send for Mr. Stirling, Ann?”

“Don’t be vexed with me, Mr. Terence dear; but if there are any matters to be settled between you and the Walleys, maybe Mr. Stirling could put them in better shape than yourself.”

“What matters,” inquired her master, “do you suppose I can have to arrange with the Walleys Mr. Stirling could put in better shape than I?”

“It is not for me, sir, of course,” said Ann Patterson, looking her young master straight in the face, “to know what correspondence you may have with anybody. I only conceited you might like me to send for Mr. Stirling. What will I tell Mrs. Walley?”

“Tell her I shall be down directly. No; second thoughts are best,” amended Terence, nerving himself to face the worst. “Tell her to come up here.”

“Here, sir, to this room?” exclaimed Ann Patterson aghast.

“Here, to this room,” returned Terence, who felt he could not wait an unnecessary moment to know what the woman wanted.

It seemed to him he had not stirred hand or foot while Ann went on his errand; but he must have done both, for he had shaved, and his razor was in its case by the time his housekeeper returned, accompanied by Grace’s mother.

“Mrs. Walley, sir,” she said, in brief announcement. Then she closed the door, and left them.

The first glance in Mrs. Walley’s face would have told Terence she knew all, even had she not opened her batteries with,

“You might have saved me this journey, Mr. Conway.”

“How so?”

“By telling me yesterday there was no call to go after Pat; that the one we wanted was yourself. This morning between the lights Gracie made her confession to me. The Lord help us!” and then she fell to crying.

Terence let her cry. The trouble was not new to his comprehension. He had survived the stage when any tears could much affect him. She wept on, not demonstratively, but bitterly, her face hidden in the corner of her shawl, which, thick as it was, failed to deaden the sound of her gasping sobs.

Poor woman! poor mother! a worse agony than death was rending her then.

And all the time Terence was going on one of those purposeless mental excursions which had latterly become so familiar to him.

There was no one to disturb the pair; they might have remained standing there till the woman’s tears ran dry, had not Terence, returning suddenly from that long quest in search of something he certainly failed to find, said,

“Perhaps it is best that you do know.”

“Best!” repeated Mrs. Walley, with a moan. “There is no best. There’ll never be a best for us now while the salt tide ebbs and flows. And what to do beats me entirely,” she went on, trying to control her grief. “O, sir, there’s not a one in the wide world can help us but you. Sure, you’ll have pity on the girl whose only fault was trusting you over-much? You always had a kind heart, Mr. Conway; you won’t harden it now!”

“Only tell me what I can do,” answered Terence eagerly, “and—”

“There is only one way you can right the wrong,” cried the mother, a flash of hope lighting up her features. “Marry her, sir; make an honest woman of her; lift this trouble from off us, and the Lord will look down upon you, the blessed Virgin will love you, and the saints take you in their holy keeping.”

She was on the carpet, poor soul, before him, with her hands clasped round his knees, kissing his feet in a frenzied entreaty for mercy.

“You’ll do it, you will do it, Mr. Conway! She’d never ask to see you again; she’d never trouble you; she’d stay content in any corner, if you take the shame off her. I came here with my heart broke. What’ll I do for joy as I go home, knowing you’ll right her, as I said you would!”

It is always the unexpected which happens. In his wildest imaginings it had never occurred to Terence that anyone could possibly conceive he should marry miserable forlorn Norah Creina. He, Conway of Calgarry; he, engaged to Lesbia; he—

“Mrs. Walley, please to rise,” he said, in anything but a yielding manner. “You must not kneel to me. And as for Grace—”

“As for Grace, sir?” She unclasped her hands and raised her head; but she did not otherwise change her position, as she repeated his words, and lifted her tear-stained face to his, dumbly praying for her child.

Her coarse bonnet had fallen back, and her hair, becoming unfastened, streamed in long tresses—black, plentifully sprinkled with grey—down her back, as, unmindful of everything save Grace’s trouble, she looked at the man who alone could help her.

In that moment he saw her as she was, a middle-aged superior class of peasant, who had been a beauty in her own low rank. How could he ever have found an attraction in a daughter of hers? Why had he gone to Goblin Bay, sat by the Walley’s fire, ate of their fare, drank of their whisky, which he always knew was not honestly come by?

“Because I was mad,” he thought, as the last scale dropped from his eyes, and the length and breadth and height and depth of the social gulf which yawned between Calgarry and Goblin Bay disclosed itself to him.

“I must ask you to get up,” he repeated, taking her by the arm and compelling her to change her position. “Sit down and let us talk reasonably. This is a very serious matter—”

“It is that!” she interpolated.

“But we won’t mend it by refusing to look at it rationally.”

Though she did not know exactly what he meant, she gathered that he had no intention of doing what she asked, so she repeated doggedly,

“There is only one way you can do her justice. She was young and soft, and you deceived her.”

“No, I never did in that way. I never deceived her at all.”

“Not when you said you were fond of her?”

“No, for I was fond of her.”

“And what fault has she done that you should change of that? She trusted you, and yet you say you have not deceived her. You said you were fond, and now you want to throw her off like an old glove.”

“I don’t want to throw her off. I am quite ready to provide for her.”

“There is only one way you can provide for her. Put a ring on her finger and she won’t ask you for bread if she was starving, or for water if she was dying of thirst.”

“Good Heavens! you don’t suppose I should let her thirst or hunger! I want to provide for her. I mean to provide for her.”

“Aye, by bestowing her on the man that would, but for the shame you’ve brought on her, have married my girl, and kept her honest and respected all her days. Who’ll ever respect her now? O Gracie, it’s low, low you have fallen! Little did I think when I held you to my breast, and your baby eyes laughed up in mine, I’d ever look on you with the sore heart I’ve done this day!”

Upon the whole Terence felt rather sorry he had not allowed Ann Patterson to send for Mr. Stirling. Personally, he did not know in the least how to deal with Mrs. Walley. Grace’s simple resignation, and the excessive brevity of Corrigan’s parting interview, had been a bad preparation for what he was now encountering.

“It’s well seen there’s a Curse on you,” proceeded Grace’s mother with passionate candour; “but I never thought any part of it would fall on us. What had we done—O, what had we done—that our only child, the only one that ever called me mother, should be cut down like this? We were too proud of her, we made too much of her, and now it has come home to us! And how I’m to break this to her father, tell him our Gracie’s no better nor lost, I do not know! He’ll murder me: he’ll say it’s my fault; that if I had looked after her she couldn’t have come to such shame. But I never thought a gentleman like you would do her wrong. Not a Conway before you, heart-wicked as many of them, as all of them, have been, ever ruined a poor man’s daughter. Even the old Duke, and there was little in the way of villainy daunted him, stopped at that. It was always noted, whatever else the Conways might be, no girl had cause to lament seeing one of them till you came, and—O, why was it our daughter you cast your eye on!”

Terence would not have answered this question if he could, but he could not. At that moment he was wishing most earnestly he had followed the excellent example set him by his predecessors, who were in the habit of pursuing their vices at a distance, or, if unfortunate circumstances compelled them to stay at home, invariably imported their pleasant sins, as they did their rare wines, from other countries.

He had set himself up to be better than his predecessors, and this was what had come of it. If he had only striven to cultivate a little of the admirable sense for which his progenitors were “noted,” how much better it would have been for everybody! “After all,” he thought, “it is a mistake, as Mark Barry often told me, for a young man to try to be wiser than his neighbours.”

The good old track of original sin, wide and worn with the passage of millions of feet, is oftentimes safer than any new-fangled path leading over fantastical heights of impossible virtue, let it seem as alluring as it will.

Yes, it was true, though he had done so badly, this young man had meant to do well; he had honestly wanted to make everybody happy, himself included, and behold this was the end—a woman weeping, a girl broken-hearted, and he mute, because he did not know what to say, how to undo the coil he himself had wound.

“Mrs. Walley,” he began at last, “perhaps it is a hard thing to ask you to believe, but I regret most deeply the wrong I have done, and am most anxious to make such reparation as lies in my power. If you only tell me what you want done, I will provide for Grace. I am not a rich man, but I will settle a yearly sum on her, and—”

“It’s easy talking,” interrupted the woman: “but all the Queen’s fortune could not give her back what she has lost. And she but a child, after a manner of speaking, that you might have spared, because she was so young and tender and ignorant of the craft of men. O my Grace, my little Grace, that I’d rather see in her coffin than as she is this day!” And the tears welled up into her eyes again, and coursed slowly down her cheeks, which were soft and lovely no longer, but all the more pathetic for that very reason.

Terence was at his wits’ end.

“What can I say or do, Mrs. Walley?” he asked. “I offer to provide for the girl handsomely, and still you seem to think I am acting like a scoundrel.”

“And so you are,” she returned; “and that is God’s truth. There are things no money can buy and no money can pay for. What you might have done you won’t; and it’s proud the young lady you are set to marry will be when she knows the desolation you have brought to an honest man’s house. Well, I carried a heavy heart here; but I must carry a heavier back. God help me! How am I ever to face my husband’s anger when he hears my news?”

Terence could not tell her this any more than he could solve any other of the many problems she had propounded. The only thing which occurred to him was to take out money, all he had in hand, and offer it to her; but she waved it from her scornfully.

“I won’t touch it,” she said. “I dursn’t, even if I was willing, and I am not. We’re not beggars. It wasn’t charity I came to ask, but justice, and that you refuse. I’ll go my sorrowful way now; but mind this, Mr. Conway, there’s still Grace’s father to settle with, and after him there’s your Maker. Your sin will come home to you yet. You may forget, but there’s One above that’ll remember.”

Having uttered which augury, in its way as full of evil as the Nun’s Curse, Mrs. Walley tucked up her hair, pulled on her bonnet, and departed, figuratively shaking the dust of Calgarry from off her feet.

XXXVI

MR. WALLEY TAKES COMMAND

“What the ——— took you to Calgarry at all?”

It was four days later. Mr. Walley, returning to Goblin Bay in a very bad humour, had duly received the communication which waited him there; and, after a furious outburst of rage, set himself down to consider at his leisure each link in the great chain of events. Naturally he looked about for some crow to pluck with his wife, and, having found one in her fruitless journey, proceeded to feather it.

Grace was out. She had fled up the hillside after receiving all the vials of her father’s wrath on her devoted head; and at that precise moment stood not twenty yards from Swine’s Gun, considering the worst was over, and, in her weak little heart, tremblingly thanking God life, sweet life, still remained. For she did expect to be almost killed; it never entered her mind she would escape without personal violence. She had cringed, from long experience expecting blows; but, though Mr. Walley swore terribly, he received his wife’s tidings with, for him, wonderful patience. Grace had witnessed worse scenes over the loss of a calf, and she failed to understand what such forbearance meant.

Mr. Walley’s natural language did not err on the side of mildness. Whatever its faults, it was usually forcible enough, and therefore Mrs. Walley considered his question as a most ordinary one.

“I was that put about—that through-other,” she answered; “I hardly can tell you. I went first to get news of Pat, and I went last to see if Mr. Conway wouldn’t marry her.”

“I always did say I took a fool for a wife,” returned Mr. Walley, with uncomplimentary candour; “but you’re a worse fool even nor I thought you.”

“Why, sure, I done no harm, Dan?”

“That’s all you know,” retorted her husband, wisely declining to enter into particulars. Then, to his wife’s great relief, as well as amazement, he took his pipe off the shelf, filled it, and began to smoke.

He smoked for a long time in utter silence, while Mrs. Walley pursued her ordinary household avocations, venturing no observation, only occasionally stealing a look at the man seated in the chimney corner, who, with bent brows and clasped hands, remained thinking—thinking.

“He has a heap on his mind,” she thought with a sense of exultant admiration. Yes, for the wrong done Terence had still to settle with Grace’s father.

“Lord send he may not shed blood,” prayed Mrs. Walley; “but I don’t like his steadfast look and the quietness of him. In a way it would be better to hear him cursing and swearing.” But apparently Mr. Walley was determined not to grant her even this small measure of relief, for when he spoke at last he said with marvellous self-control:

“Now I want to know how all this began. I don’t mean the courting, for I can see how that came about. When she was a child she might have been killed fifty times for all the care or thought you gave to her, and it stands to sense she needed more care and thought when she was growing to be a woman. No, that’s passed and over; it’s what is just beginning I want to be at.”

“I don’t know rightly what you mean, Dan.”

“I didn’t expect you would, rightly or wrongly either, for the matter of that,” retorted Mr. Walley, with profound contempt.

From Victoria down to the meanest of her female subjects he entertained the lowest opinion of women, and it was too much to expect he should veil his sentiments when addressing his wife. At all events, he did not do so, and his caustic utterances had often added another charm to those which in the evil days Terence found attracting him to Goblin Bay.

“Maybe you’ll tell me what it is you do mean,” suggested his wife humbly.

“Well, I’ll try to drive it into you,” he returned. “When you went away to Donegal town, and left Gracie here alone with only the widow Wortley coming in and out for company, and to stop the night, you had no thought anything was wrong beyond the common?”

“May the holy saints witness for me I never thought anything was wrong even in the common! The cows were well, and the fowls laying grand, the pigs getting on bravely, and the biggest goose sitting day and night.”

“Everything was right indeed but your daughter—the one thing you never thought it worth while to look after,” interposed Mr. Walley with a sneer; “and so you went away and you came back and you saw Gracie was heartsore about something, and you put it to her what was it—”

“And she said Pat and her had a bit of a tiff, and all was over betwixt them; that it was her fault, but that, even if he came back a king’s son rolling in gold, she wouldn’t have him.”

“We’d have seen about that,” commented Mr. Walley grimly.

“Well, I hooted her, and said that boys and girls must have their tiffs; that the best kisses always followed on after a quarrel; that Pat and her would have a fine wedding when she got old enough to take the care of a house in hand—”

“Yes, I see; and after that?”

“She seemed to dwine away. The colour went out of her cheeks, and the flesh fell off her body, and she had a look in her eyes that hurt me, because I had seen the same before when my sister Jane was going in a decline. And at long and at last I could bear it no longer, and I went off to Calgarry to see Pat and bring him here.”

“And you found him gone?”—very categorically.

“And that he’d left neither tale nor tiding behind,” continued Mrs. Walley, turning a piece of potato-cake on the griddle as she spoke. “It was Mr. Stirling I saw; so then I said, if I make so bold as to ask Mr. Conway maybe he’d know more.”

“What did Mr. Stirling tell you?”

“He said Mr. Conway was away; and if he wasn’t he knew no more nor himself.”

“And then you heard that Mr. Conway had got home again, and Sweeney gave you a lift to Calgarry on his road to Kilmacrennan, and you ’lighted at the Old Lodge and walked down the Avenue, and knocked at the very hall door itself?”

“I did just that, Dan; for I thought I’d maybe stand a better chance of getting speech of the master. And I saw him setting at his breakfast—silver and china all about—as grand as grand could be; and he made believe to be very sorry for me, and wouldn’t let me away till I had broken my fast; and he said he was sending to Dunfanaghy, and that I must go in the cart; and anybody might have made sure he was the kindest gentleman in all Donegal, and him the biggest cheat. But what’s the use of going over all the story again. Sure I’ve told it to you before.”

“That makes no odds; a good story is none the worse for twice telling. And I am greatly interested in this one. Go on. If I remember me, as you came along Larry told you the whole genesis of Pat’s leaving: of how in the morning he was light as a feather.”

“Aye, and in a few hours later heavier nor lead. How he went off to meet the car heartsome as a bridegroom, and how when he came back he had not as much as a word to throw to a dog; how he took off his good clothes and put on the old suit which was all he had when he came to Calgarry, and went with a big bundle, they guessed afterwards was his fine livery, into the house; and how he never set foot in the yard after. And Larry said none of them could make out the rights of what had happened, and for his part he was heart sorry he was gone, for he liked him well.”

“Now you’re coming to what I want most to hear. When you got home you told Gracie all Larry said, and laid your command on her that she should let you know what they had quarrelled about?”

“Yes; and not a word, good nor bad, could I get out of her, though I dared her to hold her tongue, and threatened her with what you would do on her when you came back.”

“And after that she went to bed, and you heard her crying very soft, and sobbing till she fell off to sleep; and then you fell off too, and slept for a while; but between the lights you woke in a fright, and it came into your mind Terence Conway was more mixed up in the matter than Pat?”

“That’s right. And as I lay watching the streaks of dawn in the sky I seemed to put it all together, and I got up and went into Gracie’s room and stood looking at her changed face till she opened her eyes, and I said sudden, ‘My mind misgives me Mr. Conway has been here too often.’ So he had! So he had!” And as she reached the climax, Mrs. Walley’s tears, hitherto restrained, began to fall, and she wept bitterly.

“There’s more I want to know, but I can wait a bit; don’t hurry yourself,” remarked Mr. Walley with philosophical forbearance.

“I’ll make a finish now. I’d rather,” said the mother; and she wiped her eyes and choked back her sobs, and went on: “The child was fairly taken aback; she thought she had her secret too snug and safe for anyone to suspect what she was keeping hidden, and in her fright she let out the whole murder. She was like one out of her mind; but I lay down beside her and took her in my arms—O! dear, a dear—and then when she could rightly speak I got her to tell me everything.”

“Now you’re just at what I want most to hear. See if I’ve the right way of it all;” and Mr. Walley laid down his pipe beside him on the settle and turned so as to face his wife, while he said slowly, as if he were repeating a lesson: “On the Saturday before you came home from Donegal, Terence Conway rode over here and gave Grace to understand he so rode for the last time—that he had been to London and was going to be married soon; that he wanted to start fair. I don’t mean,” noticing Mrs. Walley made a gesture of dissent, “he put his notion into just such words, but the plain English or Irish of the matter was he didn’t intend being bothered with Grace any longer. Tell me if I’m wrong as I go on,” he added, with the satisfied manner of a man who never had been wrong from the time of his birth onwards.

“’Deed you’re not wrong,” returned his wife, in a tone of genuine admiration. Mr. Walley, at all events, was a prophet honoured among his own people. “His talk was maybe different, but that is what it came to.”

“Aye, though I only heard the story once, I thought I had got it pat enough,” he answered complacently. As if any human being would be at all likely in the course of an hour or so to forget such a narrative! “And she let him go without any sort of objection, and went and sat on a bare rock beside the sea.”

“She did so. It was then she got the cough she had when you came back the first time. I wonder she did not catch her death sitting there till she was starved with the cold.”

“That was on the Saturday Swine’s Gun went off,” continued Mr. Walley, with a legal precision which originated probably in some memory of the stiff cross-examination out of which he had quite recently not come at all triumphantly.

“We heard it at Donegal,” said his wife inconsequently.

“You might have heard it if you’d been at Derry; but that’s neither here nor there. What I want is to fix the time, so that we mayn’t forget it.”

“No fear of forgetting,” said Mrs. Walley.

“I wouldn’t say so much about that,” answered her husband, in a tone of one meaning to suggest she might calmly leave her head on the roadside some morning if it were loose. “But, at any rate, it was on the Saturday Swine’s Gun blew off, Terence Conway came over and parted her, and early on the next Monday Pat unlatches the door and walks in, and tells Grace the whole rigmarole about his master’s goodness, and all the rest of it, and that he’d like his coachman to be married to Grace—devil a doubt of that!—and would let them have Mullan’s house to live in, and lend a hand with the furnishing, and not let the young couple be beat for a pound or two.”

“You have got it complete, Dan; let yourself alone for laying a story out.”

“And he kept pressing Grace to name the day, but she wouldn’t; and he asked her if she had changed to him, and she didn’t speak; and he said, joking like, maybe she’d seen somebody she fancied more, and told her he’d be loth to go back to Mr. Conway and tell him he’d been to Goblin Bay on a fool’s errand, and come back with a fool’s answer; and he kept bothering her till Grace cried out Mr Conway was the last ought to have sent him on such a journey, for that he knew well enough she could be wife to no honest man—”

“Aye, and she spoke so calm, for she hadn’t a tear left,” continued Mrs. Walley, eager to have her turn at narrative, “that he couldn’t make any meaning out of her at all, and asked, ‘Wasn’t she making a bit of diversion?’”

“And then she said,” broke in Mr. Walley, taking up the running, “that it would be a queer sort of diversion for any girl to let on she wasn’t fit to go into a decent house; that as Mr. Conway had bid him come, she’d tell him why he mustn’t stay: that she wouldn’t be the one to act the Judas by him; that she had given all her heart, before it broke, to his master, and that he’d best go back and tell him she’d deceive no man to save herself a hundred times.”

“And that if her father liked to kill her for what she had done he might,” added Mrs. Walley, in order to fitly cap the sentence; “for she could but die once, and she’d nearly as soon be dead as alive.”

“After a while Pat left, very sore and sorrowful,” pursued Mr. Walley, judiciously ignoring the last remark as irrelevant; “and now your part comes in. After you had talked for a long time with Gracie—till the sun was near his rising, indeed—you got up and put on your clothes, and, never waiting to break your fast with bite nor sup, started for Calgarry. When you knocked at the hall door, Bryne told you the master wasn’t up, and bid you step inside; and you waited on the mat till Ann Patterson came and spoke to you, and asked, ‘Wouldn’t you sit down off your feet?’ and you thanked her kindly, and said you’d rather stand; and she wanted you to go into the kitchen, and you made answer you’d like best to stay where you were.”

“I did that,” agreed Mrs. Walley, in a tone which lent emphasis to the words her husband had just repeated.

There might not have been much in the words, but there was a great deal in the manner.

“And Ann, after looking hard at you, offered to go and see if the master was stirring, and she went; and after a while she came back and said you were to go upstairs; and she opened the door of his dressing-room, no less, and you walked in and found yourself face to face with Mr. Terence Conway. Now, how did he begin?”

“He never began at all. Though you might have thought it would put me about finding myself in his very bedchamber almost, standing before him dressed in the splendidest robe you ever set eyes on—splendider than even a king wears, I am right sure—”

“Babbles, woman! how would you know what a king wears?”

“Well, at any rate, it was all red and gold, and tied round his middle with a silken cord and big tassels that might have answered a bell-rope hanging down in front, and everything in the room according; a big glass you could see the whole length of yourself in, and china dishes and silver-headed bottles set out on the table, and the very air scented. But, for all that, I was not a bit daunted, and said what I’d come to say right out—that there was no need to go beyond Calgarry to find the one we wanted; that Gracie had told me the whole of her trouble; that he alone could lift up her head bowed with shame; and I went down on my bended knees and prayed him to have mercy on her for the love of God.”

“I said before you were a fool,” repeated Mr. Walley, in that spirit of candour which often renders family intercourse so agreeable.

“’Deed, and I’m much afraid I was,” answered his wife, who could not deny her intercession had “done no manner of good.”

“Women have no knowledge of any sort,” said Mr. Walley with dispassionate criticism, stating what he obviously believed to be a well-known fact, “and that’s the reason they always do more harm nor good when they get to meddling. But go on with your story.”

“There’s not much more of it. Mr. Conway was very civil, and as good as said he was sorry; but as to marriage, he did not seem willing to hear of it. He offered to provide for the girl, and wanted to buy me with money; but I wouldn’t take it. I told him we weren’t beggars; that we asked nothing but justice; that if he wouldn’t hear me he’d have to hear you. And so at long and at last I came away and walked every step of the long road home, fasting from everything but sin and sorrow.”

Mr. Walley mechanically took up his pipe, but immediately laid it down again.

“What beats me,” he observed at last, “is that he did not deny the whole thing.”

“He couldn’t do that,” observed his wife.

“Why couldn’t he?”

“Because it would have been a lie,” she answered.

“Tuts! what odds does that make?” retorted Mr. Walley with supreme contempt.

“He did not deny it, anyhow,” she said; “he had not the face.” Mr. Walley smiled grimly; probably he was thinking the owner of Calgarry could not be accounted a lesser fool than his own wife.

“Now do you know why I have made you go over the whole story again?” he asked after a pause.

“Because you misdoubted you had not just got the rights of the whole of it, I suppose,” answered his wife innocently.

“Not at all—not at all. That only shows your ignorance. I made you go over it all again so as you could swear to it if need arise.”

“It’s law he’s thinking of, and not murder,” thought Mrs. Walley, with a pardonable feeling of disappointment.

Where she came from, passions are more vehement, if not more dangerous, than in the colder North, and she had reasoned from her knowledge of what her father’s first impulse, and probable act, would have been under similar circumstances. She knew Walley too well, however, to venture on any sentence of disapproval, and taking refuge in complimentary generalities, merely remarked, “It’s you has the head, Dan. It’s just wonderful how you can see your way where another would be groping, or, maybe, standing still.”

Mr. Walley did not deign to take the slightest notice of this compliment. He was so much accustomed to adulation in his home circle that his wife’s remarks merely seemed to him as words of course.

“I’ll be starting now,” he said; and, suiting the action to the word, rose and began putting on his coat.

“Where are you going?” asked his wife in amazement.

“Never you mind,” he answered.

“But you’ll surely wait till you have had a cup of tea and some of the hot cake. It’s been soaking the last quarter of an hour, and there is nothing to do but spread the butter.”

“I’ll wait for nothing,” returned Mr. Walley; “and you needn’t be stopping up for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, or the day or the minute I may be back. And now mind what I’m saying to you—keep a quiet tongue in your head, or it’ll be worse for you, and try not to do more harm than you have done.”

It was not a very ardent leave-taking; yet to have seen Mrs. Walley go out, with a shawl over her head, and help Mr. Walley draw forth the old gig and harness the horse and hand him a worn piece of tarpaulin, which did duty for a rug, and hold the rickety gate open for him while he passed forth, and stand watching the crazy vehicle as it rocked its way from side to side out of sight, anyone might have supposed the most affectionate husband in Donegal was leaving a home of which he constituted the delight.

XXXVII

MR. WALLEY GOES TO HIS LAWYER

The Love of Law and Earth Hunger run in Ireland a neck-and-neck race for the goal of Ruin. It would be impossible to say that one ever really outstrips the other, because after an Irishman has spent his last penny in law to gain a few acres of land, he will mortgage those acres up to the hilt in order to indulge in the pleasure of going to law again.

In the favoured isle—which for some hitherto unexplained reason is accounted specially blessed by God—there are few misfortunes a “good suit” cannot assuage. To most it is as satisfying as meat, as stimulating as drink, as comforting as fire, more consoling than religion, while very often it is nearer than a wife and dearer than many children.

It is an interest, an excitement, an object, a speculation, an employment, all rolled into one.

Like virtue, it brings its own reward; the happy possessor of a “case” has a joy the world wots not of; while he who is fortunate enough to have obtained a “favourable opinion” cherishes it as a miser does his gold.

The Love of Law is indigenous to the moral nature of Irishmen as shamrock is to the soil. If Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught agree in nothing else—and it has never been said that they do—they agree in their affection for the “Courts.” That affection, far more than laziness, or climate, or politics, or even religion, is the curse of the country. It is the opium, the absinthe, the champagne of Ireland; against it common sense and legislation battle in vain. It is the Monte Carlo, the Derby, the Stock Exchange of Erin, and till that pernicious weed can be dug up and burnt, and its roots destroyed, there can be no peace for England.

It has caused more feuds than Green and Orange—more poverty than the potato blight—more ruin than perpetually recurring rebellion. It needs to be stamped out like the rinderpest—to be trampled down by the march of civilisation, which does not seem even to try to take Ireland on its road anywhere.

Around this passion for law there springs a class of amateur lawyer, which bears the same resemblance to a respectable family solicitor that quack doctors do to those gentlemen who, having passed through The College ordeal, may eventually aspire to to be Physicians to her Majesty.

Each countryside used to possess one at least of these pests—cunning, idle, ignorant, unscrupulous; wise enough to perceive a “point,” and sufficiently tenacious to stick to it; with no grasp of mind to take in the whole of a case, but gifted with that order of sight which can see clearly things not worth considering, but fails utterly to perceive matters of the greatest importance. Hanging about the courts, they pick up enough legal jargon to pass for “knowledgeable” men, and by appealing to their neighbours’ pugnacity, they contrive to keep alive a strife which rarely finishes till the grave closes over one of the combatants.

Had circumstances not made Mr. Walley a horsedealer, he would have been this sort of hedge-lawyer. His was the kind of cleverness which has no deeper root than a conscience devoid of all scruple; and as his good roan mare left mile after mile behind at a long swinging trot, he amused himself by considering all the ins and outs of Mr. Conway’s transgression, where “he would have him,” how he could make him smart, and how he (Walley) might make himself a man for life if he only worked things the right way.

Nature, he believed, after she fashioned him, broke the mould. No doubt she understands her own business best; but, unfortunately, this was not the case. For some occult reason Nature is found of repeating undesirable patterns; and Mr. Walley, spite his opinion to the contrary, did not at all exhaust her manufactured stock of shrewd self-conceited rogues.

Night had fallen before the dealer arrived at his destination—a small town, containing a fair hotel, where he thought Corrigan might be heard of. He knew the landlord, and, leaving his mare in charge of a lad, he walked straight up to the bar, and after passing the “time of day” all round, asked confidently, “Is Pat about?”—not in the least expecting Pat was, but merely to learn if they knew anything of his whereabouts.

“He has taken a gentleman to Rathmelton,” was the unexpected answer; “but he’ll not be long away—he is a good one for not letting any grass grow under his feet.”

“You may say that,” returned Mr. Walley in cordial approval. “From the time he was a lad he never stayed his errands.”

“Won’t you take a seat?” asked the landlord. “A glass of whisky did you want?”

“If not troubling you too much.”

“With water?”

“No, thank you; water is too strong for me.” After which witticism Mr. Walley tossed off his liquor, and then remarked “That is good stuff.”

“It is,” was the reply. “You’d best sit down and rest yourself till Pat comes in.”

“I’ve further to go,” answered Mr. Walley, “so I’ll call as I come back, and take my chance. As I was so near, I thought I would like a word with him.”

“He wants somebody to speak a word to him,” said the landlady, striking in, “for never was anyone so changed. I am fairly sorry to see him. He goes about as if he’d no heart. What has come to him, Mr. Walley?—and why did he leave the good place where he thought he was a made man?”

“I haven’t seen him since,” was the cautious answer; “maybe if he is back before I’ve done my business, you’ll tell him I’ll look in again.” And having received an assurance that his message should be delivered, Mr. Walley went out of the inn, gave the boy who was holding his horse a halfpenny, got into the gig, gathered up the reins, and set off at a trot—only to stop a minute or two afterwards before a low sort of public-house, where the accommodation was likely to suit his means and tastes much better than the inn he had just left.

There he gave the mare into the care of a shock-headed ostler, whom he charged to feed and bed her down properly, and set out to walk along the Rathmelton Road to meet Pat.

He had not to walk far. Ere he had got a quarter of a mile out of the town, he heard a horse and car advancing towards him, and a voice he knew exclaiming, “Ga up!” “Get along wid you, do!” “Ah, you lazy thief, I’d be as soon driving an old cow as yourself.”

The voice belonged to Pat, but all life had left it. Mr. Walley did not stop or accost him, but permitted car and driver to pass unnoticed; then he “turned on his step,” and slowly retraced the way he had come.

“I need not hurry myself,” he reflected; “he’ll not be expecting me yet”

He was right. Pat, who had received the message, did not expect Mr. Walley back for an hour or two, and considered he would have ample time to clean down his horse and get out of the way before Grace’s father, having finished what-ever business brought him to that part of the world, again appeared.

Mr. Walley did not go into the stable; he lounged about the gateway, exchanging remarks with idlers and passersby, till Pat appeared, when he stepped under the lamp, and said, “I’m in the nick of time, it seems; you’re the very man I was wanting.”

Pat stopped and looked at him. By the light which flared above their heads Walley could see the change a few weeks had wrought in the once brisk and handsome young fellow. His face was wan and haggard, and his appearance careless and shabby. A handkerchief was knotted about his neck, and he wore an old coat patched in many places with different coloured cloth. A contrast indeed from the spruce trim man the Calgarry livery had “set off” so well.

“What do you want with me?” he asked.

“Some talk,” was the answer. “Where can we go to be quiet?”

“The street is quiet enough for all you can have to say to me.”

“That is just what it is not,” retorted Mr. Walley, “and I misdoubt me Ned McQuitty’s, where I shall put up tonight, won’t be much better. Come on the bridge; there won’t be many to disturb us there.”

They went on the bridge that spanned a narrow stream, and over which one road out of the town led. It was lonely enough, and the stars shone coldly down on the swift little river, hurrying away beneath the three arches that spanned it.

Mr. Walley seated himself on the rude stone parapet, and motioned Corrigan to follow his example; but the younger man took no notice of his gesture, and stood waiting for what was to come.

“You know what brought me here, I suppose?” began the horse-dealer.

“How can I know till you tell me?” replied Pat.

“I want to speak to you about Grace.”

“What have you got to say about her?”

“A good lot, if you’ll listen to me.”

“O, I’ll listen, if that’s any good.”

“It is no secret to me what has parted you.”

“Well?”

“Man! you fairly doated on her once.”

Pat shifted his position, but remained silent.

“Didn’t you, now?” asked Mr. Walley insinuatingly.

“That can make no odds,” answered Pat hoarsely.

“It makes all the odds,” returned the other. “Once a man loves a girl it is hard to forget her.”

“Who says I forgot her?”

“And if you don’t forget it comes natural to forgive.”

“I forgive Grace as I hope to be forgiven,” was the answer.

“Then the rest is easy; you’ll mind how young she is and how soft, and you’ll overlook the mistake she made, and come home with me in the morning, and all will be the same as ever it was.”

“Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Troth, do I! Grace, that you’ve liked all your life, and were promised to—”

“Yes, and she was promised to me, and what has been the upshot?”

“Tuts, Pat, you mustn’t be hard on her; after all, what is she but a child?”

“That is where we were wrong, every one of us. She is no child—she’s far from that; still, child or woman,” and his voice softened to a tone of inexpressible tenderness, “I wouldn’t be hard on Grace.”

“That’s what I mean—that’s just what I wanted to come at,” said Grace’s father eagerly. “You’d like to put everything straight for my girl.”

“Aye, that I would if I could.”

“You can, you know. You’d have had time to get over the first smart, and not a living creature but ourselves and the one man knows, or need ever know, anything about what’s gone wrong. Let bygones be bygones, Pat; Gracie’ll make none the worse wife because the man that loved her was too generous to cast up that she had gone astray.”

There was a pause, during which Mr. Walley could hear the stream below fretting over the stones, while to Corrigan the sound was lost, because of the noisier torrent sweeping through his own heart.

Till he could speak calmly he did not want to speak at all. He was thinking how to answer best, how to explain what he meant, and not arouse fully the demon he knew lurked unchained in Walley’s nature.

Perhaps, altogether, his silence did not last a minute, but it seemed to the other man endless.

“Maybe I’m not right,” began Pat at last; “but it seems as if you wanted me to marry Gracie.”

“Not at all,” returned Mr. Walley, too wise to be trapped into such an admission; “I only thought, spite of all that’s come and gone, you would like to marry her.”

Pat swallowed something in his throat bigger than Adam’s apple.

“I’d have liked well to do that once,” he answered; “but that’s past and done with, and my heart is as empty of all save grief as last year’s nests of birds. It is best for me to be plain with you. I’ll never take a wife now; I’ll live and die a bachelor.”

“You’d be foolish to do that,” said Mr. Walley, “and you’d best think twice before refusing Grace, for she’ll bring a fine fortune to you.”

“I never had fortune much in my mind when I first set my heart on her; and it’s not for poverty I’d refuse or for riches I’d take her now. No, if she came to me this minute with a hundred pounds in her hand I wouldn’t put out mine for it—I couldn’t. Do you think I would marry a wife and have the thought of another man always standing between us? I’d never cast up what she’s done to my poor girl; but it is not in me to forget. We’re two now, and my last word is, we must stay two. I am heart-sorry—still, I can’t say different.”

“You’ll be sorrier when it is too late to say different;” and Mr. Walley paused for a reply, which did not come. “Just now you mentioned a hundred pounds,” he went on, “as if you considered that a heap of money.”

“So I do; why wouldn’t I?” asked Pat, who had never owned ten.

“But five hundred is more.”

“That is very sure.”

“And Gracie might be worth as much as that to you.”

“I am glad to hear you are so rich.”

“I never said I was rich, but if you were wise you might be.”

“How might I?”

“Why, do you think it is five hundred pounds the man we know about would grudge to see her safely married?”

“You don’t mean it’s in your mind to take money from him?”

“What would hinder me? There is only one way you can make people like them suffer, and that’s in their pocket; and Conway’s purse shall smart for the evil he has wrought, or my name’s not Daniel Walley.”

“I’ll have neither part nor lot in the matter. I’ve spoken my last word, as I told you. If that was all you had to say, I wish you had left it unsaid.”

“Indeed, and I might just as well; but though you threw yourself out of a good place, where you could live like a fighting cock, and dress equal to any prince of the blood, and sleep soft and earn good money, I never deemed but you had some glimmering of sense left. Look at what you were and look at what you are. Well may the remark be made that you are a changed man when you’ll wear a coat like that on your back, and go about as if you were a beggar—you that were a credit to look at.”

“It’s not for you, at any rate, to cast up what coat I put on my back. I’ve wages to buy a coat as good as your own; but I’m saving my money till I’ve enough to go to America, or some other place where I’m not likely to meet man, woman, or child I have been acquainted with in Ireland.”

“If that is what you want, you’d best go out of this world at once; the journey will cost you nothing, and when a man has neither sense nor wit it is little use he’s here. It’s well seen you’re no kin to me.”

“You’re right there,” answered the younger man. “Well, I’ll be going,” he added. “Good-night to you.”

Mr. Walley did not answer. He felt far too angry. He had counted on Pat as an important factor in the scheme he contemplated; and now he would have to carry it through alone. The horse-dealer was in a most evil frame of mind as he sat alone on the bridge, listening to the sound of Pat’s retreating footsteps.

“I’ll take Calgarry on the road home, anyhow,” he said to himself; and then he got up from his hard seat, and after one last look at the stream hurrying away under the starlight, turned his face in the direction of Ned McQuitty’s public-house, where it was stated on the signboard “entertainment” could be had “for man and beast.”

Before sunrise next morning he was driving along the interminable Donegal roads to Calgarry, where the owner was not.

“I’m vexed not to see Mr. Conway,” he said to Mr. Stirling, “for I’ve a horse here would suit him well.”

“I don’t think he needs any more horses; but, at any rate, he is not at home.”

“When will he be back?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Is he in Dublin?”

“I’m sure I can’t say.”

“He has not gone to get married?”

“What the devil business is that of yours?” was the reply which rose to Mr. Stirling’s lips; but there was something so peculiar in Walley’s tone that he bit back the words ere they escaped, and substituted, “Not so far as I am aware.”

“When you are writing to him you might tell him about the horse.”

“You had better tell him yourself when he returns.”

“Maybe it would be best. I know you are the reverse of friendly to me, sir.”

“I would rather have nothing to do with any of your bargains, if that is what you mean.”

“Yes, that is about what I do mean; but you are wrong, Mr. Stirling. There is a horse would be cheap at any money; he has not a fault but his colour.”

“I do not dislike roan myself,” said the agent.

“Ah! but the English do, and that is why I want to sell him here. If that horse was a good bay with black legs, now, I could get—indeed, I don’t know what I couldn’t get for him.”

“It is a bad job he is not bay,” observed Mr. Stirling politely.

“It’ll be a good job for the one that gets him, though,” returned Mr. Walley.

The agent said no more, though he mentally determined Terence should not be that “one” if he could prevent it.

“I’ll bring him round when I think the master is back,” promised Walley ere he left, which he did believing Terence had stolen a march on him, and marvelling how he should outgeneral that unlucky young man.

If he had known Mr. Conway’s thoughts, he could not have guessed much nearer the mark than was the case. Immediately after Mrs. Walley’s last visit Terence started for London on what could but be regarded as the forlorn hope of persuading Philippa to abandon her visit to Mostrene, and fix an earlier day for the marriage.

He might as well have addressed his petition to the wind.

“How can you be so preposterous?” asked Miss Dutton; “after all dear Mrs. Boyne’s kindness, how could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to go with her to Donegal? And as for hurrying on the marriage, I could not if I would, and I certainly would not if I could. Do be more reasonable, Terence. As it is, Sir Henry thinks he will have quite a scramble to get everything ready by the date named.”

After which gentle rap over the knuckles, Terence, of course, could do nothing save wish that the marriage-day were come and gone, and pray no little bird of the air might carry to his queen’s chamber a hint of his pretty doings at Goblin Bay.

He thought he could manage Mr. Walley: he was prepared to pay a long price for any screw or screws that astute individual chose to sell him. As usual, he was very short of money, and his agent, owing to the many drains on his resources, chanced to be in like case. Still, Terence believed he could scrape together sufficient to keep Grace’s father quiet. His own intentions were so excellent, he felt sure Walley would believe in his good faith, and not drive too hard a bargain. He meant fully also to make some sufficient and separate pecuniary arrangement so as to secure Grace from want: but about these matters there was no hurry. He could pay a small sum down, and the remainder might well stand over till after his marriage.

His marriage! There seemed a strange unreality about the phrase; and yet it was true. The day was fixed, the guests were bidden, the wedding garments ordered, the clergymen, from the highest to the lowest bespoke, the desire of his life was about to be fulfilled, and nothing remained to do but make terms with Walley.

“That will be quite easy,” he decided, after reading Mr. Stirling’s letter, which said the dealer had brought a roan horse over for him to look at.

“A good-looking thing enough,” went on the agent, “but I told him you had plenty of horses.”

Terence felt it would be almost a comfort to have to do with so wise and practical a person as Grace’s father after his previous experiences.

What might have been the result had he stayed at home, and met Mr. Walley before that individual’s ideas had time fully to develop, it is hard to say; but as during the whole period of Mr. Conway’s absence the horsedealer’s notion of what was “due to him” went on growing as rapidly as Jack’s bean-stalk, that interview which both had hoped would prove decisive terminated very badly.

“Not a farthing less,” said Mr. Walley: “I’ll not bate one penny.”

“Then it is of no use our talking any more,” answered Terence; “for even had I the will I have not the means to give you what you ask.”

“And you going to marry thousands upon thousands!” retorted the other.

“Those thousands are not mine, and never will be mine,” said Mr. Conway. “But let that pass; it has nothing to do with the matter. I have offered to provide for your daughter handsomely. I can do no more.”

“We’ll see about that,” answered Mr. Walley.

“What under Heaven do you mean?”

“We’ll see if the law can’t better matters for poor people wronged as we have been.”

“I know nothing about law,” said Terence; and, indeed, in such a connection he did know nothing about that universal friend and foe; “but I cannot believe it will do much more for you than I am ready to do of my own accord.”

“That remains to be seen,” replied Mr. Walley. “I’ll just put to you what has happened. I’m made the talk of the countryside—at any rate, I will be. My daughter has lost a husband, who would have kept her well for life. I have lost her services. What do you make of all that?”

“I think, supposing always money can meet the case, that what I am willing to pay would more than cover anything you mention.”

“You do, do you?”

“Yes; and however that may be, I can pay no more. I am a man heavily burdened, as you are aware.”

“If you are, it’s by what you spent on yourself, as all the world knows, and, burdened or not, you can get everything you need or desire. To pleasure your own fancy, you took from me what was more than houses or lands, and now you shall pay for it. I’ll take the law of you, and we’ll see what twelve honest men will assess my loss at.”

“You must do as you please,” answered Terence, goaded beyond endurance.

“I will, and you can’t prevent me,” retorted Grace’s father. “Now, let one telling serve for all. I am not going to come trailing over here again. You know my terms; and if I don’t get word from you by this time tomorrow, I’ll put the whole thing into a lawyer’s hands.”

“Very well,” said Terence.

“You’ll find it anything but well if you drive me into law,” declared Walley; with which threat he departed, leaving Mr. Conway to consider the position at his leisure.

“Let him consult a lawyer,” he thought with the desperation of despair. “If he does, I must consult one too, and then—”

He did not finish his sentence, but his idea was, “then it will go hard, but we shall be able to put the matter off until after my marriage.”

It had come to that. If he could only put any publicity off till Philippa and he were one—only defer the evil day even for a few weeks—only gain sufficient time to get out of Ireland till the affair blew over! Besides, perhaps a solicitor could arrange to keep the business quiet. After all, principals were not the best people in the world to settle their differences. Upon the whole, Mr. Conway felt it a relief to know outside aid was to be invoked.

He had done all he could to prevent such a necessity; and there comes a time when, for very weariness, a man is thankful to feel he is no longer responsible, that he is forced to ship his oars and float with the stream.

Next day he sent no message to Walley. Neither did he remain at home to receive that individual in case he elected to pay him another visit. Instead, saying nothing to anyone concerning where he was going, he rode up to Mostrene Castle, at which place Miss Dutton had arrived.

When no “word,” good, bad, or indifferent, reached Goblin Bay, the horse-dealer began to feel he was “being trifled with,”—to use a phrase very often in the mouths of irate creditors who want their money and cannot get it.

In effect he conceived he was being trifled with so much that next morning he rose at what he called streak of day, in order to take the mail-car for Letterkenny, where a lawyer he knew well resided. Nursing his wrath, he thought over his grievances till he could hardly contain himself, and it was in the worst of tempers he entered Mr. Morson’s offices.

“What is wrong, Mr. Walley?” asked that gentleman cheerily. “Nothing very bad, I hope.”

“It’s bad enough,” answered Mr. Walley; and then he told his story.

“Conway of Calgarry, eh!” exclaimed Mr. Morson. “I am sorry to hear this of him. Won’t he do anything for the girl? I should have thought such a matter might have been easily arranged. Have you seen him?”

“I have that.”

“And does he make no proposal?”

“O, yes he made a sort of one.”

“What sort of one?”

Mr. Morson was a person who asked plain questions and expected plain answers; therefore Walley replied with but little circumlocution, winding up by saying, “That was his offer, if ever you heard the like.”

“He meant it, I suppose?”

“He meant it right enough.”

“Then why didn’t you take it?”

“Just because it’s nothing near what I’m looking for.”

“Perhaps you expect him to buy you an estate?”

Mr. Walley did not exactly expect Mr. Conway to buy him an estate, yet Mr. Morson had made a very shrewd shot at his notion.

“Why, man, you must be mad,” went on the lawyer; “you should have closed with his offer at once.”

“What would I do that for when I am wanting about ten times as much?”

Mr. Morson smiled and shook his head so significantly that Walley said,

“I don’t think, sir, you rightly understand all my girl has lost.”

“O, yes, I do; but these things never run into so many figures. No jury would give her more than Mr. Conway has offered, even for breach of promise.”

“Then I am not to get justice?”

“That depends on what you consider justice.”

“I only want my due.”

“But you are all wrong about the amount of your due.”

“I don’t believe I am,” retorted Mr. Walley doggedly.

“My good fellow, your belief won’t affect the matter in the least. I don’t wish to speak offensively, but I am forced to say that if you imagine you are going to make your fortune out of your daughter’s misfortune, you are confoundedly mistaken. Mr. Conway’s offer is a most liberal one; you can’t do better than take it.”

“I’ll have the law of him if it costs me the last shilling I have.”

“When your last shilling is gone you will find you had much better have kept clear of law. Judges and jurors have a way of looking at affairs of this kind from a very prosaic point of view. Mr. Conway has done your daughter a very great wrong, but he offers a very handsome reparation.”

“That is your notion, maybe.”

“I don’t see how any unprejudiced person could have any other. Let your girl be what she may; she is not free from blame; and no one will believe you are either. You or her mother ought to have looked after her, Mr. Walley. Young gentlemen do not go to houses like yours for love of the parents, especially when the parents chance to have pretty daughters. My advice is, accept what Mr. Conway is ready to give without delay; once he is married he won’t be so willing to repeat such an offer. He can only have made it because he wants to keep the matter quiet, and there won’t exist such a necessity to keep it quiet after a few weeks.”

“That is the very reason he ought to be made to smart now.”

“That is the very reason you should take what he offers. You will never get such terms again.”

“I’ll never believe but what twelve honest men could be found to get me justice.”

“You will never find twelve honest men to believe what you want is justice,” retorted Mr. Morson. “Don’t be an ass, Walley; take what you can get while you can, or some of these days you will be mourning over a lost chance.”

“I never deemed you were one of that sort, sir,” said the horse-dealer reproachfully.

“One of what sort?”

“It never crossed my mind you would turn against a poor man and take the part of a rich villain.”

“Pooh!” returned Mr. Morson. “I tell you what the whole thing comes to, Walley: in plain words, you thought your Calgarry lottery ticket was value for a big fortune, and now that you find it is not you are angry.”

“Well, at any rate, I’m thinking the Calgarry ticket is worth powder and shot, come now, Mr. Morson.”

“It is not; it is not worth spending sixpence on—you may take my word for that.”

XXXVIII

THE STORM BURSTS

The lock that a golden key fails to open must be stiff indeed; and though he could not be persuaded his own idea was wrong, Walley left Mr. Morson’s offices in the vilest of humours and the most depressed of moods. He did not know what to do. It oftentimes seems an easier matter to give up a wide estate than a great hope. There are boundaries and fixed fences to the one, but there seem no limits to the other. Since he understood Conway of Calgarry was “under his thumb,” Mr. Walley had practically regarded himself as an “estated gentleman:” not that he wanted to be one precisely, but he thought he had but to ask and to have, without stint or trouble. He did not see his way. True, lawyers were not scarce in Donegal, and the adjacent counties swarmed with them; but unless he could select his man in Belfast or Dublin, Walley felt some misgivings that they would be all in one story. Mr. Morson’s temper had been so much exercised by his would-be client’s persistence, that he was provoked ere the interview terminated into saying, “There is not a girl in any rank of life worth the price you set on your daughter,” after which statement a very stormy five minutes ensued.

The truth was, Mr. Walley did not settle the amount of his own damages so much on the worth of his daughter as what he called the “desperateness” of young Conway’s fix; and he was quite wise enough to know there must come a time when that “desperateness” would not be so great. If he failed to make his hay now, he could never hope to save such another crop; but he did not see how to make it unless he could get someone on his side.

Wild ideas of taking Mr. Malet into confidence occurred to him; but he had never got on well with the Vicar. Then he thought of Sir Henry Beecham, and had almost decided to go to London in quest of that great General, when the mail-car on which himself and his fortunes were jolting back to Dunfanaghy was hailed by old Mr. McKye, who, greeting the horse-dealer with a sort of tempered familiarity, climbed up and took a seat beside him.

Mr. McKye, always ready to talk and to hear, spoke of the weather and the crops, and politics, and local news, till, finding Walley remained unusually silent, he asked:

“You do not seem just yourself today. Aren’t you very well?”

“I am well enough in health,” answered Walley, “but I’ve a bit of bother I don’t just see my way through.”

“That is bad; maybe a door will open for you.”

“I don’t care how soon one does, then,” was the reply, spoken in such a tone that conversation became difficult.

They had passed the road leading to Mostrene, and were jogging steadily on, when a private jaunting-car met and flashed by them. It was a beautifully-appointed vehicle, as different from cars which ply for hire as an ordinary conveyance which delivers the family joint is from the dashing dog-cart, with trim groom seated behind, that whirls along English roads.

A horse three-parts bred, with a noble stride, a coat like silk, plated harness that shone in the spring sunshine; a servant in the Mostrene livery—blue and silver, chocolate-coloured cushions; the Mostrene crest painted on the back; two ladies, one on each side, leaning across the well talking to each other; altogether a pleasant sight on that lonely country road. Every passenger on the mail-car lifted or touched his hat at the same moment, as if moved by one common impulse, and Mr. McKye’s wrinkled old face literally beamed with smiles.

“That is the sort of thing I like to see,” he said to his fellow-traveller. “It is a pity we haven’t such gentry oftener among us. This’ll be the last time, I suppose, we’ll have Miss Dutton here. When she comes next—”

“Was that Miss Dutton?” interrupted Walley. “I did not see her face.”

“She was the one, on the near side, with her back to us,” explained Mr. McKye. “It will be a proud day for Calgarry when she comes home as its mistress.”

“When is she to be married?” asked Walley.

“In a month’s time; then they go travelling abroad. But we’ll have them here before the fine weather is over.”

“And she really has the heap of money they say?”

“A quarter of a million, or thereabouts. I know it on the best authority,” stated Mr. McKye, after the manner of one who could not err.

“Dear-a-dear! And how much do you suppose that brings her in a year?”

“Twelve thousand pounds, at any rate.”

“Every year of her life?”

“It seems a great deal, doesn’t it?” answered Mr. McKye tolerantly.

“Indeed it does so—a terrible heap of money,” answered the horse-dealer. “What would that give her each day?”

“Each twenty-four hours, I suppose you mean?” answered the other, falling in with Walley’s humour, which, indeed, just suited him; “let me see.” And he pulled out a piece of paper and began doing his little sum.

“She has thirty-two pounds twelve shillings, as near as possible, to put in her pocket every morning she rises,” said Mr. McKye at last, rolling his words out with great gusto.

“Lord be between us and harm!” exclaimed Mr. Walley; “it’s sinful, that’s what it is. Many a man hasn’t as much as thirty-two pounds twelve in a whole year.”

“Many a man has not half as much,” answered Mr. McKye.

“It’s not right—it can’t be right,” said the horse-dealer, who, like many other persons, was a Socialist as regarded the possessions of his neighbour, and a strict Conservative where his own belongings were concerned.

“If either of us found thirty odd pounds lying on the pillow every morning, I have a notion it would seem the rightest thing that ever was,” returned Mr. McKye, who had more than a suspicion of Walley’s little peculiarity.

“That might make a difference.” And there came a pause, which Grace’s father ended by remarking: “What gets over me fairly is why a woman with such a dreadful heap of money marries young Conway.”

“She would have to travel a long way before she would find his like.”

“But if she is that rich she might have her pick and choice among the first in the land.”

“And where else is Conway of Calgarry?” demanded Mr. McKye in a tone of surprised rebuke.

Even nowadays there are some persons who prefer old blood to new gold, and when the century was middle-aged the sentiment which believed more in family than in money was stronger still.

“I see you don’t just understand me,” said Walley with clever readiness, putting his companion in the wrong; “but it’s of no consequence. I suppose the young lady’s heart s set on the marriage.”

“There can be no doubt of that.”

“It’s a wonder she didn’t step in and pay his debts last year.”

“She would if her guardian had only let her,” said Mr. McKye, eagerly anxious, by means of superior information, to regain the position he had lost. “I heard she prayed and beseeched him to give all her money, if need be, to Mr. Conway, but he made answer, ‘I must guard your fortune for you and your children.’”

“Maybe he was in the right,” remarked Walley; “but still, I suppose if Mr. Conway ever wanted a few thousands he’d only need to ask and have.”

“I should say he wouldn’t need to ask—she’ll be pressing money on him; but, please God, he may have enough of his own. Though I can’t say I feel quite easy about Mr. Stirling’s goings-on, still the estate is improving.”

“So they say.”

“And the agent is finding the people a lot of employment.”

“He’s paying a heap of wages.”

“Well, well, we must hope for the best; and, at any rate, in a month’s time there’ll be no call to fret over sixpences at Calgarry.”

“I’m thinking, then, the wedding will be here after all. Have you heard who’s to tie the knot?”

“No; somebody in London, where they are to be married. Miss Dutton is only among us now on a flying visit: here today, and gone tomorrow. When she comes next it’ll be for longer. But I must get down now. Hi, Charley! hold hard! Good-bye t’ye all!”—and a moment after Mr. McKye was left a solitary speck on the lonely road.

“I’m not for anything to eat,” said Mr. Walley when he returned to his house about an hour later; “but I want you and Grace to come with me for a bit of a drive. Put on your things now as quick as you can, and I’ll shove the horse in the shafts, and be ready before you are. Come to me in the stable for a minute when you have your bonnet tied; I’ve a word to say I don’t want Gracie to hear.”

Never Eastern potentate ruled more autocratically over his subjects than did Mr. Walley over the members of his household. With them to hear was to obey. Mrs. Walley would no more have dared to refuse compliance with her husband’s commands than a criminal, bound and helpless, would try to escape from the executioner. He had one simple code, “You’ll just do as I bid ye,” which, enforced with the blows Mr. Walley had not the slightest hesitation in dealing, proved as stringent as all the laws treated of in Blackstone.

“But how’ll we ever get speech with the lady at all?” asked Mrs. Walley. “Mostrene’s not like Calgarry. I’ve heard tell of Mrs. Boyne sending even quality away without sight of her when she was not in the humour for talking.”

“Leave that to me,” returned her husband. “There is no call for you to do anything but tell Miss Dutton how affairs are, and how we feel loth to bring Mr. Conway to open shame; but, though we are willing to keep a still tongue even while our hearts are hot and sore, we ask for some sort of justice. We can’t give up our farm and our living, and go away vagabonds over the earth, unless we’ve money to make a home elsewhere. We wish to hide our heads in a strange land, and what would we do in any place unless we’d means to keep us?”

“But, Daniel dear, what would we ever do in a strange land?”

“Need we go unless we like, no matter what we tell her?” retorted Walley savagely. “Do what you’re bid, and no fault’ll be found with you. Tell her how Grace is the only child you ever had, how you’re fairly broken down with grief, and then, if you need me to explain what we’re willing to take to keep matters quiet, I’ll be outside. Now, don’t make any bungling—mind, I’ve warned you.”

The soft spring day was drawing to its close as the good roan trotted under gloomy Muckish, and so round to the height on which Mostrene Castle stood, conspicuous from all points and commanding some of the finest views in Donegal.

“Man alive!” murmured Mrs. Walley, as she looked up at tower and pinnacle, lines of windows, and the floating flag, which denoted “the family” was at home.

“What ails you now?” asked her husband, giving the roan a flick.

“Nothing, nothing—only it’s terrible grand.”

“Here, take the reins a minute,” said Mr. Walley, passing over this statement with supreme contempt, “and I’ll go up to the house.”

They watched him walking away towards the back gates till he disappeared from view. Then Grace caught her mother’s arm, and exclaimed,

“What are we doing here?”

“No harm, girl,” answered Mrs. Walley, though she was trembling with apprehension. “Your father wants to ask the lady a favour, that’s all.”

“I wonder will he be long; it’s dreadful cold sitting here,” said Grace, shivering.

“Wrap a piece of my shawl round you,” urged Mrs. Walley, suiting the action to the word; and so they sat, the girl huddling under the shawl, with her face resting on her mother’s breast, till the horse-dealer returned, and remarking, “It’ll be all right; you’d best get down here,” disturbed them.

“Sure, there’s no need for me to stir?” said Grace imploringly.

“Ye’d best go with your mother. Ye’ll never, maybe, have the chance again of seeing as fine a house,” answered Walley, lifting her out; and next moment both the women were passing along a shrubbery walk, escorted by a servant in livery.

At the end of the walk they reached a glass door, which their guide pushed open and invited them to enter. Then he showed them into a small waiting-room, where saying, “Miss Dickson will be with you in a moment,” he finally disappeared.

Miss Dickson was Miss Dutton’s own maid; but when she entered, dressed in black silk, wearing a lace collar and lace sleeves, a fine silver chain round her neck, a bow of pale pink ribbon at her throat, and carrying herself like one having authority, Mrs. Walley curtsied low, as though in the presence of Mrs. Boyne herself, and poor dazed Gracie followed her example.

To look at her certainly no one could have imagined she had been engaged half an hour previously in a fierce discussion with the Mostrene butler on the vexed question of beer; yet it was greatly owing to the wild Irish notions held by that functionary as to women drinking malt liquors at all, which brought about the interview Mr. Walley desired.

Great effects spring, we know, from little causes; and had Miss Dickson, mourning over the absence of her national beverage on draught inadequately replaced by Guinness’s stout in diminutive bottles, not been told by a functionary, enraged by the lady’s strictures on his country, that in Donegal a woman “wouldn’t be thought just the thing who could drink two glasses to her dinner,” Mr. Walley probably must have sought to compass his wishes by some far different method than that of an interview with Miss Dutton.

As matters were, in response to Mrs. Walley’s obeisance, the maid remarked, with lofty condescension, “if you come this way my mistress will see you.”

She took them up a back staircase, and then through two short passages which brought the party into a wide corridor, where their feet fell noiselessly upon carpets deep and soft as moss.

Many doors opened off this corridor, at one of which the maid stopped and knocked.

“Come in,” said a clear low voice; and next minute Grace was looking with dazzled eyes on the vision of a beautiful woman in evening dress.

The room was warm and comfortable, a wood fire burned on the hearth, wax candles threw a soft light on rich curtains and easy-chairs, and tables on which lay books, and walls covered by a delicate paper that showed up to the fullest advantage the water-colour drawings in deep gold frames.

A subtly exquisite scent pervaded the apartment; an open piano stood in one of the recesses beside the fire, and, seated at the other side, with a fan to screen her face from the blaze, sat a lady who, to Mrs. Walley’s fancy, seemed nothing less than “a heavenly angel.”

The angel gazed kindly at the new-comers.

“Good evening,” she began, in low trained tones. “What can I do for you?”

The sweetness of this reception took Mrs. Walley fairly aback. The perfume, the luxury, the grandeur almost deprived her of the power of speech. Nevertheless, she did manage to get out, “O, your lady’s ladyship’s too good to me! You could do a heap for us, only—”

“Do not be afraid of speaking to me,” entreated Philippa gently. “I will help you if it is in my power. Tell me all your trouble.”

“I don’t know what to say,” cried poor Mrs. Walley, wringing her hands; but then, as a thought of her husband standing out in the dusk waiting for the return of his ambassadress occurred to her, she added, almost in desperation, “My lady, may I speak a word to you your lone?”

Philippa was in more than a gracious mood. She felt like a queen on her throne listening to the petition of her subject.

“Wait in the next room, Dickson,” she said to that excellent young person. “I will call if I require you.” And as she thus dismissed her maid, Mrs. Walley noticed jewels glistening on her white neck and sparkling amid the lace across her bosom, and glinting on her round beautiful arms. Perhaps the sight of so much wealth gave her courage; at all events, as the inner door closed behind Miss Dickson, she began:

“It’s just this, your ladyship. We are in sore trouble, and you are the only one—” She paused as if the words choked her, and then added, “I don’t know how to go on.”

“My poor woman, take courage. What is your trouble? Have you got into difficulties with your landlord, or—”

At that point Grace made a noiseless backward movement, which caused Mrs. Walley to catch her hand and hold it fast.

“You’ll have to stay, my girl,” she said, with a curious wail; “there is no help for either of us. We must go through with it to the end. You guess now what our trouble is, my lady, don’t you? It is our Gracie—the only child we ever had, we who have always lived honest and hardworking and respected, and in debt to no man; all we want is justice; for it is hard, hard on decent people to stand up against the shame has come on us.”

“Has your daughter, then—” Philippa hesitated.

“A better one never drew breath,” said Mrs. Walley, “till she was led astray. Look at her, your ladyship. Lift up your head, my darling, and show the face, so changed now, that once was bright as the morning.”

But her darling turned that face—bright no longer—from Miss Dutton’s observation, and, plucking the elder woman’s dress, whispered,

“Come away, mother, come away.”

“No, my darling, I can’t do that,” returned Mrs. Walley. “I am here to do your father’s bidding, and I dursn’t stir till I’ve done it. Don’t cry, Gracie. Sure this lady will see you righted, as far as righted you ever can be; and we’ll go away where not a one need know the blight that has come upon you so young.”

“I deeply grieve for what I fear is your trouble,” said Philippa, “and I do not like even to seem to hurry you; but I am afraid I must ask you to explain how it is possible for me to help you. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, and—”

At Miss Dutton’s words once again the vision of Walley, waiting out in gathering night for her return, appeared before his wife. Already she had wasted too much time, shivering on the brink of that terrible flood into which sooner or later she was bound to plunge. She felt she must not let her opportunity slip, and therefore, all of a tremor, she exclaimed, “The way of it was this, my lady,” and rushed onward to the catastrophe.

Philippa had no more idea than a child of what was coming. She expected to hear some tale of villainy and cruel deception which would end in an appeal for a few pounds. It was her desire to make a good impression in Donegal, to leave the memory of a trail of sweetness behind her. She thought she had discovered it needed very little money to pose as a benefactress, for she did not know that once a person begins almsgiving even in a small way, if he is at all to maintain a character for kindness and charity he must expect before he has finished to spend a great deal. Miss Dutton had been comprehensively blessed by about a hundred people at a cost of about a couple of sovereigns, and she was considering how large—or rather how small—an amount would be required to “right” Mrs. Walley’s Gracie during the recital of Gracie’s wrongs.

“And will not this person marry your daughter?” she asked, when the narrative seemed finished.

“It is not much of marriage a gentleman is thinking when he gets a poor girl into trouble,” answered Mrs. Walley. “And, anyhow, he was promised before; and the lady is that fond of him my husband makes sure she would give a fortune almost to keep the shame secret.”

“And will she not?” inquired Philippa innocently.

“That is just what I have come to you to know,” returned her visitor.

“But how can I tell you? Had you not better go to her at once?”

“Come away, mother, come away. Ah, don’t say any more, mother darling!” entreated Grace.

“Who can tell me better nor your ladyship?” returned Mrs. Walley, deaf to her daughter’s entreaty. “And where would I go away from here to get an answer? Sure, it is Mr. Conway I have been talking about; and who is there in the wide world thinks as much of him as you?”

If the words had turned her into stone Philippa could not have sat more still, could not have looked more like a statue. The blood even left her lips, leaving them white as death.

“Don’t look like that! O, what have I done at all!” exclaimed Mrs. Walley, frightened. “Don’t take on;” and she took a step forward, but Philippa waved her imperiously back, and there ensued a dead silence, while Terence’s promised wife struggled to recover her composure.

“There must be some mistake,” she said at last, when she could frame the words.

“It is natural you should think so, my lady; and it is heart sorry I am to vex you. If Mr. Conway would have done us justice, and given us enough to take us away and hide ourselves, my husband would have cut his hand off before sending me to you; but what was left for us but to do as we have done?”

“I do not believe a word of your story,” said Philippa, with excusable rudeness. “It is a shameful attempt to obtain money.”

“I’d be the happy woman if you could make me out a liar, miss,” Mrs. Walley retorted. “But it’s easy for you to make sure. Ask Mr. Conway himself, and see if he has the face to deny what he’s done.”

“I will!” And Philippa rose, and sweeping past Mrs. Walley, opened the inner door and called “Dickson.”

Then she returned to her seat, her rich dress rustling and her deep lace flounces swaying as she moved, her jewels flashing and changing in the light, and an exquisite fragrance filling the air as though shaken out of her floating draperies.

Dickson had come into the room, and stood waiting to learn her mistress’s pleasure.

“You said, I think, that Mr. Conway had arrived?” began. Philippa.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let him be told that I wish to see him.”

“Here, ma’am?”

“Here.”

Not a sound disturbed the silence while they waited for Terence’s coming.

The interview was not turning out exactly as Mrs. Walley expected; but she had done her part, and she could do no more. With a vague wonder as to what would happen next, she looked at the motionless figure beside the fire, and listened, as she afterwards said, with “one ear laid back” for Mr. Conway’s footstep.

But she could hear nothing. The house was too well built and the carpets too thick for the noise of any step to reach her.

All at once the door opened, and Terence appeared.

“You sent for me, Philippa,” he began in a joyous tone; but as his glance fell on Grace and her mother he stopped dead.

Someone—Miss Dickson, presumably—closed the door, which he had left open; and the four, so strangely brought together, were alone.

“You see these women?”

It was Miss Dutton who spoke, pointing to them.

He did not answer; he could only look stupidly at the people he least desired to behold.

“I sent for you to vindicate yourself; but your face tells me you cannot do so. Thank God, this knowledge has come to me before it is too late;”

“Philippa, I swear to you—”

“What, that the charge is untrue! It is impossible for you to do so. If you did, I should not now believe you.”

“I have sinned—” he began falteringly.

“You have,” she interrupted; “but you can still repent and make reparation.”

“Only show me how,” he answered, with eager haste; “and I will do whatever lies in my power.”

“Marry her; marry the poor girl you have betrayed and deserted, who, trusting in, has been deceived by you.”

“Marry her?” repeated Terence.

“Yes; make her you wife, She is the only woman who has a right to be your wife. I will forgive, and try to forget, the insult you have put on me if, at this the eleventh hour, you make amends for the evil you have wrought.”

“You—you bid me do this?”

“I do, most solemnly. Between us all is over.”

“Philippa, you cannot mean it!” he cried passionately. “You have heard the accusation: you have not heard my defence. Let me explain—”

“Explain!” she repeated, rising and facing him with a gesture of infinite contempt, of scorn too deep for speech. “No, sir: I will listen to no explanation. I have already listened to too many from you. I know now why you were so anxious I should not come here, why you desired to hurry our marriage. You wanted to make sure of me before any whisper of this matter reached my ears. You wished to obtain possession of my money to retrieve your own ruined fortunes. Any honourable man would, on learning his actual position, have released me from a vague engagement, contracted under far different circumstances, and which I only ratified out of respect to the dead; but you are not an honourable man. You are a fortune-hunter, an unprincipled coward, who, after betraying a wretched girl, are not ashamed to leave her to bear alone the trouble you have caused. Marry you! I would sooner—”

There came a cry and a rush, and next instant Grace was on her knees before Miss Dutton, holding her delicate skirt with damp trembling hands.

“O, miss dear, don’t be hard on him! don’t be calling him bad names when he’s the best and kindest gentleman ever drew breath. Sure, he worships the ground you step on; he just fairly adores you! If I’ve come to harm it is not his fault: it was through my own ill-doing. I was that fond of him, I’d have walked the world through to save his finger aching. Don’t be angry with him because of me! It was nobody’s blame but mine. I always knew what the end of it would be. He never deceived me. Such a thing as marrying was never as much as mentioned between us; and, O Mr. Conway, don’t you know it was none of my doing coming here at all? and I’ll go off, miss, this very night, where the sight of me will never trouble you more; and you’ll make it up with him, won’t you? Sure, there is not a one in the world but may go astray;” and, in the extremity of her unselfish distress, the poor child clutched Miss Dutton’s gown with a convulsive grasp, all unmindful of the mischief she was doing.

Over Philippa’s face there swept a swift curious expression of dislike—almost hatred; but it was gone in a moment, and the tone in which she answered Grace’s appeal was cold and passionless, as though no emotion had stirred her.

“Pray rise,” she said; “it is to the God you have so grievously offended you should kneel, and not to me. I must beg you not to hold my dress in that manner; it is impossible for me to remain here longer;” and she strove to release her flounce from the grasp of Grace’s little toil-soiled hands, while she looked down at the pretty face flushed with emotion, the soft pleading eyes upturned to hers, the dark hair falling in rich disorder over her shoulders, with a distaste and loathing which were, perhaps, only natural.

Altogether the girl was a Magdalen to have enchanted an artist, but she excited quite a different feeling in Miss Dutton’s breast.

“Get up, Grace,” said Terence hoarsely, and no man or woman had ever before seen the fire that burned in his eyes or the tone that rang in his voice then; “the lady is right: it is no good keeling to her, if anyone wanted good to be done by her. Do not cling to her, child; come to me. Whether she meant her advice as a jest or not I cannot tell; but I am going to follow it, and marry you—”

“Marry her!” cried Mrs. Walley, starting forward; “is it in earnest you are, sir? Queen of Heaven! Sure, that’s what I asked you to do at the first—but—”

“I did not see my way then,” finished Terence. “I see it now, though. If I do not get a fortune with my wife,” he added, looking steadily at Philippa, “I shall at least get a heart, which may prove not so bad a substitute.” And, bending down, he unclasped Grace’s hands, and took them in his own, while he observed, “There is nothing more to say—let us go.” Then crossing the room he threw the door wide so suddenly that he almost upset Miss Dickson, who had been standing very close to it indeed, and passed out, leaving Mrs. Walley to make such apologies as she could think of to Philippa, who did not, however, give her time to utter many. “She vanished from my gaze like a spirit,” said Mrs. Walley, when subsequently recalling the interview; “and how I ever got away from that house, my lone, I am sure I could not tell,” she added, lost in wonder at the instinct which guided her safely through such a maze.

Outside, Terence stood waiting for her. “You shall hear from me tomorrow,” he said, still with that hoarse constraint and strange ring in his voice.

“And, O sir, do you really mean it?” asked the woman wistfully; “was it only words of course, or do you purpose to marry our girl?”

“I purpose to marry your daughter,” he answered in quite a steady tone, and as calmly as though wild war was not raging within him.

“Don’t ever as much as name such a thing again, Mr. Terence,” cried Grace. “I won’t have you spoil your life that a-way.”

“Hold your tongue!” interrupted her mother sharply, and dragged her to the spot where Walley awaited the return of his womenkind.

“Well?” he asked.

“O Daniel, what in the wide world do you think has happened?” gasped his wife. “The lady sent for Mr. Conway, and they are parted, and he is going to marry our Grace.”

“WHAT!” exclaimed Mr. Walley; and amazement, incredulity, and disgust were beautifully mingled in that one word.

“Miss Dutton told him it was what he ought to do, and he said he would.”

“I wish to the Lord I had gone myself!” declared Mr. Walley, with the desperation of utter disappointment. “It just serves me right for trusting you, for I knew you would boggle the thing some way.”

“But, Daniel, what more could you want?” cried Mrs. Walley, amazed. “Our Gracie’ll be righted, and made a lady of.”

“A lot you know about ladies!” retorted her husband with withering irony; and he did not open his lips again as they drove back through the night to Goblin Bay.

XXXIX

PAST RECALL

“I am not in the habit of giving advice, particularly unasked; but it is impossible for me to remain silent when you talk of taking a step you can never retrace, and that you will repent to your dying day.”

Mr. Malet was very much in earnest. If he had been warning a sinner back from the mouth of hell, he could not have spoken with greater gravity.

He and Terence were alone in that room where Audna had come with the freshness of her young beauty more than a year before; and Mr. Malet was looking with an anxiety he did not attempt to conceal at the young fellow, who, with haggard face and heavy eyes and dogged mien, had just announced his intention to be married as soon as possible—as soon as ever the law would let him.

“I will take my chance of that,” answered Terence.

“But why all this hurry? When last we talked, you were going to be married to Miss Dutton. Now you are not going to be married to her. Do let a decent interval elapse before you tie yourself to any other person.”

“I have repeated to you what passed. After being told I am a fortune-hunter, a coward, and dishonourable, I suppose you do not expect me to try to repair that breach?”

“No; but I cannot see why, because Miss Dutton has thrown you over, you should insist on marrying a girl you never previously intended to make your wife.”

“She is an unselfish, loving little soul; and I will repair the injury I have done her.”

“Wait a little. Give yourself time to consider the affair in all its aspects.”

“You say that because you think if I consider the affair I shall run back from my promise.”

“I should have worded my meaning differently, perhaps; but you express it very fairly.”

“And you a clergyman—a minister of the Gospel, who preaches against sin every Sunday of your life, counsel me not to right the wrong I have done.”

“I have yet to learn,” answered Mr. Malet, quite unmoved by so nasty a sneer, “that one wrong can be righted by committing another. A wrong can never be righted; and if you persist in marrying this unfortunate girl, you will be sinning almost as much as you did when you led her astray.”

“Well, that is a wonderful doctrine!”

“It is a perfectly true one. Every man has a duty to himself—he is answerable to his God for what he does with himself; and I say deliberately that he who either from passion, or weakness, or obstinacy, or resentment wrecks the whole future which his Maker gave him for usefulness here and happiness hereafter is guilty of a great crime.”

“If you won’t marry us, Mr. Malet, I must find some person who will,” answered Terence sullenly. “It is the first time on record, I suppose, that any clergyman ever called repentance a crime.”

“You are not penitent,” was the reply; “you are angry—you are hurt, and sore, and disappointed—you do not know what it is which is impelling you to a course which, if persisted in, must lead to absolute ruin. For God’s sake, Terence—and you know I am not one to use that holy name lightly—consider you have only one life. If you mar it, no one can give you another to make a better thing of. O, my poor fellow, recollect that the chain you are so feverishly anxious to rivet can only be broken by death, and pause before you bind yourself irrevocably.”

“You do not take the girl into account at all, then?”

“I have taken the girl into account. If you make her your wife, what are you going to do with her? No one in your own rank will associate with her. You may separate her from her class, but you cannot raise her to a higher. All that has happened is perfectly well known by this time throughout the county. A woman with such antecedents will never be received into society. As there is unhappily no law to prevent your marrying her, so there is happily no law which can compel your neighbours to accept her. Will you condemn her to a life of utter seclusion, a life most lonely for a woman utterly destitute of education and without mental resources of any sort?”

“I will take care she is not lonely.”

“You cannot be always with her, and if you could you would not. No, not if you were marrying her for love, instead of out of spite, which is really the case. Have pity on the girl; have mercy on yourself; take compassion on your children yet unborn. You have been proud to be a Conway of Calgarry. How will you endure to remember your wife was so ignorant she could not write her name in the marriage register, but had to make a cross?”

“Mr Malet, it is useless to argue any more. I have made up my mind; I have passed my word. I am not going to change the first, or to break the second.”

“Which, so far as I can understand, no one except the mother wishes you to keep. Mr. Stirling tells me Walley wants money, and nothing but money; that he is quite ready to accept the amount he refused before; that he professes his willingness to go to any lawyer you like to name and put the agreement in black and white; and that he says openly, you had far better come to terms with him than marry his daughter, who has as little sense as his wife.”

“Why do you harass me in this manner?” asked Terence. “If I have determined to marry the girl, why cannot you leave me to go my own way and bear the consequences?”

“Because you do not realise what those consequences must prove. You have had a narrow escape from a woman who did not care for you; and instead of being thankful for your deliverance, you desire to rush into an even worse danger and marry a woman for whom you do not care. Do you know what our Church says about marriage? It is not a matter to be ‘taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, but soberly and in the fear of God. It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other both in prosperity and adversity.’ The words are not mine, Terence; they were written by wise men who had fully weighed their meaning, and I ask you as a rational being to ponder them. What mutual society, help, or comfort can you ever hope to have in a marriage with a peasant, a girl scarcely more intelligent than the cattle she has spent greatest part of her life in herding?”

“It is of my future wife you are speaking.”

“I will say nothing more, then, except to remind you that she does not even profess the same religion as yourself. If you are determined to hear no argument, to yield to no persuasion, will you at least do me a favour—come and stop here for three days? It is not much to ask. You have stayed here before for three months at a stretch—give me but three days.”

“Why do you ask me to do anything of the sort?” demanded Terence angrily.

“Because I believe if you stayed here for three days you would never ask me to marry you to Grace Walley,” returned Mr. Malet with unflinching composure.

“You need not marry me to anyone,” retorted Terence. “Another parson can be found, I suppose, able to tie the knot as well as you. No, Mr. Malet; with many thanks for your invitation, I will not accept your proffered hospitality.”

Mr. Malet’s face flushed, and for a moment pride and Christianity had a sharp tussle; then he inclined his head and said with a restraint infinitely touching, “I force my hospitality, as you call it, on no man—least of all on a Conway of Calgarry; yet I am sorry, dear boy, that even for old times’ sake you will not rest and take counsel under my poor roof.”

There are physical ailments to which the lightest touch proves positive torture, and it is more than true that when a man’s mind is shrouded with the darkness of despair he cannot bear that even the kindest hand should be laid upon his trouble.

In the after days, then all to come, Terence knew how true had been Mr. Malet’s sympathy, how good his advice: but at that time, wild with pain, he resented any attempt to benefit him, and again declined the Vicar’s invitation, if possible, more ungraciously than before.

Just then he was engaged in the occupation which is called “cutting off his nose to spite his chin”—one that more men indulge in than is generally supposed. He had said he would marry Grace out of mere bravado. Smarting under the sting of Philippa’s words; mad to find her coolness had its root in indifference, or worse; anxious to do the one thing he believed would annoy her, when the hope of his life failed, he eagerly cut himself off from hope forever. Mr. Malet was quite right: he did not know what he was doing. No principle of morality, no desire to remedy a wrong, no seed of contrition underlay his determination to marry the girl he had ruined.

As a child strikes the table against which it has knocked its head, so Terence was going to take to wife a woman he did not love, because the woman he loved would not have him.

His fancy for the poor girl, who was being tossed like a shuttlecock from one player to another, as whim or circumstance dictated, had vanished long before. Snow in harvest was not more distasteful than the memory of that brief infatuation. Snow in summer could not have lain a shorter time on the ground than his passion for that poor, loving, erring soul lasted. And yet he was going to marry her because his heart was sore and full of bitterness against Philippa—or rather because, as Mr. Malet said, he did not know what he was doing, because for the time being he was deaf and blind as though born without sight or hearing.

Reason had forsaken him. He was as one whirled—without his wish or consent—along a stream too rapid for him to resist. For a long time, too, he had been drinking steadily—drinking not to get drunk, but to secure a temporary forgetfulness—drinking even sometimes, to Ann Patterson’s and Byrne’s great horror, whisky undiluted by a single drop of water.

“And it’s that strong,” observed the butler, “he might as well be taking liquid fire into his stomach.”

He might as well certainly, with his temperament, have been taking liquid fire into his brain. Everyone who knew anything of Mr. Terence Conway was aware his head could not bear any indulgence of the sort. Mark Barry, who was by no means a teetotaller, had often warned him that way danger lay.

“When a man can’t take a tumbler or two without making a fool of himself, it is time he signed the pledge,” said Letitia’s astute husband; and many persons besides Mark had hinted to Mr. Conway that he would do wisely to observe moderation in his drinks.

“He’ll never have a head like the old Duke,” said Byrne sadly: “it would be telling him if he had.”

“It would be telling him if he had a head would not let him touch a drop of spirits,” amended Ann Patterson with some asperity.

“Come, now,” returned the old butler, “you wouldn’t want him to be as poor a sort of man as that?”

“Drink is the head curse of the world,” stated Ann, with this semi-truism evading a direct reply. “And I wish the master would either quit it altogether or else take enough to lay him by for a while.”

“That might be a right good thing,” said Byrne. “If he had to go away for the benefit of his health, it’s not of marrying he’d be thinking when we saw him back again.”

“Not of marrying Daniel Walley’s daughter, at any rate,” agreed Ann.

“Lord be between us and harm, but it’s just awful!” exclaimed the other. “Little did I ever dream a girl like her would cross this doorstep as mistress.”

“They must have laid a charm on him,” returned Ann with conviction. “Likely as not he’s had a love-draught. There was a girl lived close to my mother’s who gave one to a young fellow she had a notion of, and he went out of his mind and died raving mad. You know when any spell like that is cast over man or woman, they either go wild for love or lose their senses.”

“I believe that is true,” said Byrne gravely, “so we can take some comfort to ourselves after all, for it’s better for Mr. Conway to bring home even Grace Walley than have to be taken to a madhouse.”

“Aye, it’s better; but, O Byrne dear, bad’s the best.” And Ann turned away with a sob and the corner of her apron held to her eyes, for her heart was heavy by reason of the disgrace that had come upon Calgarry.

And this feeling was general in the neighbourhood. Speaking broadly, there was not a creature in Donegal cognisant of the matter, except Mrs. Walley, that “wished to see justice done.”

Even those who did not say much thought all the more. The extraordinary match, sprung with such suddenness on the county, seemed so out of all proportion that few people liked to talk about it. Against hope it was hoped the project was either not true or that it might be abandoned.

The gentry could not endure the idea of a Conway stooping so low—the commonalty were offended at the notion of Grace Walley rising so high.

That sweet young lady Miss Dutton made no absurd mystery of the reasons which induced her to leave Mostrene almost at cock-crow on the morning after her interview “with all persons concerned.” In vain Mrs. Boyne tried to soothe her; Philippa, though angelic, remained inflexible.

“My only feeling is gratitude,” said the saint. “Had I heard this revelation after marriage, how should I have borne it?”

She was very quiet, but very resolute; she did not lose her presence of mind for a moment, or make any moan over her faithless lover. On the contrary, after telling Mrs. Boyne she felt she could bear her cross better in solitude, and giving Dickson minute instructions about the morrow, she went to bed and slept with a calm satisfaction virtue unrewarded never knows. She felt very thankful indeed. The way was clear before her. Terence at last had done her an excellent turn, and in her inmost soul she was as happy as jealousy would let her be.

To be jealous of a man, it is not in the least necessary to love him. Even though one does not much want to be preferred, it is galling to know another person has entered into successful competition. Besides, it seemed dreadful to Philippa to have such a practical demonstration of the fact that we are all sinners thrust under her pretty little aquiline nose. Nevertheless she felt, as has been said, very happy. She slept as soundly as a child; while Dickson, who did not even attempt to take any rest, packed on till it was time to see that the Mostrene servants were preparing an early cup of tea. With what secret joy that admirable lady’s lady hailed the near prospect even of a sea voyage, and anticipated the delights of returning to London, need not be told here.

With admirable skill she dissembled her feelings, and went about Mostrene in the grey dawn with as subdued and downcast an air as if she and her mistress had been going to execution. No one could say that she had told the sad tale of Terence’s defection and the subsequent “split,” yet when she went everyone knew the whole story.

When she went!—nay, hours before the final departure. Mrs. Walley had not left the house two minutes when, by spelling and putting together, aided, perhaps, by a look and a sigh from Dickson, the whole household knew the great match was off, and that Terence had, as Mark Barry subsequently phrased the matter, “done for himself.”

That news, however, was as nothing when compared with the tidings which speedily followed: “Mr. Conway is going to marry Dan Walley’s girl.” People at first openly scoffed at such an idea; then they kept silence.

Deep in their hearts they felt this must be the beginning of the end. Heavily the Nun’s Curse had been laid on the Conways aforetime; but when it fell on successive members of that doomed house it was in some great and lordly fashion.

Hitherto the troubles and vices of Patrick Conway’s descendants were such as might be accounted, after a fashion, lofty. In their wickedness, in their folly, in their sin, in their punishment, the owners of Calgarry had stood above the common run of humanity; yet now here was the last of them—a kindly, well-meaning young man—about to marry the daughter of a horse-dealer, with whom he had gone wrong! No Conway forever could fall lower than that. It was an old name and a proud he meant to drag through the dirt; but he could not help himself. “It was ‘well seen’ that no Conway of Calgarry but must wreck his life some way.”

“The Curse is in them,” considered Mr. Malet, pondering the question; “it is bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh—can it ever be divorced?”

His heart was very heavy for Terence. He had loved him greatly at a time when there was no thought of the boy succeeding to Calgarry, and he still liked the man, often as the man provoked him.

“Though he has sinned so grievously, though he has lost at one blow the love of his youth and the woman who might have revived the glories of Calgarry, what a good and fine thing he could still make of his life if he had only common sense and some notion of responsibility!”

Much as the Vicar objected to meddling in affairs which were none of his, so greatly did the pity of Terence’s folly affect him that he wrote on the subject not merely to Mr. Barry, but also to Sir Henry Beecham, urging them to arrest, if possible, the fatal step Terence Conway was contemplating. Never in his life before had Mr. Malet so interfered; never had he written so strongly or at such length, but for all the good he accomplished he might as well have restrained his pen.

“Mark is dangerously ill,” scrawled Mrs. Barry, “so he can’t go to Ireland; and I can’t go, as it is impossible for me to leave my husband, but I have written to Terence praying and beseeching him not to break all our hearts, though (between ourselves) I think he has quite as good a chance of happiness with a peasant girl as he would have had with Philippa. Only why need he marry at all? Can nobody put him in a madhouse? It is impossible to believe he is in his right mind.”

Sir Henry Beecham’s letter was longer, but as little to the point Mr. Malet wished to reach.

“I have arrived at a time of life,” finished the gallant veteran, “when a man feels, if he is ever to enjoy any rest, he must take measures to insure it. For years I have been thinking and working for other people; now I must consider myself. No words could tell how zealously I laboured to bring Mr. Conway’s matrimonial affairs to a satisfactory conclusion. By day and night I taxed my brain considering how, with a due regard to the interests of my ward, I might compass his wishes. At length, after encountering and surmounting incredible difficulties, I succeeded. The settlements were drawn, the time for the marriage fixed—you know with what result. Pardon me when I say I decline totally to interfere further in Mr. Conway’s affairs. A man who could deliberately play at pitch and toss with such a chance as his deserves never to have another.

“You urge me to remonstrate with him on the fresh folly he is about to commit. My dear sir, why should I? And even were I disposed to do so—which I am not—what good can you suppose I should effect? If a man is resolved to go to the deuce, it matters little which road he takes. The kindest course his friends can pursue is to let him get there as quickly as possible. Again, what would be the use of thwarting his desire to marry this objectionable young person? She does not exhaust her class by any means, and in a month or two we should find him marrying some young person more objectionable still. No—I wash my hands of Mr. Terence Conway and his affairs. The longer I live, and the more I see, the higher is my opinion of Solomon’s wisdom. If you remember, the only people he regards as hopeless are fools, and I am quite at one with him. Terence Conway is a fool, and were you to bray [grind] him in a mortar, yet would not his folly depart from him.’”

The same day on which this decided negative to his request reached Mr. Malet he also received a note from the owner of Calgarry, asking whether the Vicar still objected to marrying him (Terence) and Grace Walley.

“In case you do,” went on the writer, “may I ask another clergyman to officiate in your church, or will you force me to have the ceremony performed elsewhere? I only wish to know in order that I may make my arrangements accordingly.”

To this Mr. Malet replied, “If you insist, of course I will marry you,” and awaited Terence’s next communication. He felt he had gone as far as he could. Knowledge of the world had taught him that no one can help a man against his will.

Nevertheless, his heart felt very heavy when, one sunshiny morning not three weeks after Easter, he stood in the homely little church and asked, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?”

Then Mr. Walley stepped forward. It was he who gave his daughter away, and if Mr. Malet had before failed to realise the full meaning of what Terence was doing, he understood it then. There were but six of them in the church, all told—Walley and his daughter, the Vicar, the clerk and sexton, and the happy bridegroom.

Just for a second Mr. Malet paused ere he went on to the end.

It turned out as he had foretold. The bride could not write her name when, in the vestry, the time came for signing it, and the curious may see in the Calgarry register, “Grace Walley, her mark,” which she made with awkward trembling fingers. Poor child! there was little triumph in her downcast face, and the hand Mr. Malet took in his while he tried to utter some words of congratulation shook like that of one in an ague.

She looked but a slight, timid, fragile thing as Terence led her down the churchyard-path to the gate where his brougham, a purchase in Philippa’s interest, was waiting. Terence opened the door for her himself, handed her in, and then instantly laid his arm across the opening to bar Mr. Walley’s attempt to follow.

“Where are you going?” asked the bridegroom sternly.

Mr. Walley drew back a step or two and looked at him, then he said slowly, “I thought maybe you were going to give us something in the way of a treat.”

“You were mistaken,” answered Terence, entering the brougham and banging the door close. “Home,” he said to the coachman.

“Home, Larry,” echoed his father-in-law; and he laughed nastily, the while he turned away without perceiving Mr. McKye, who had been a spectator of Terence’s declaration of war.

The minister entered the graveyard, and stood looking at the few head-stones scattered among the graves till Mr. Malet came out.

“You’ve been marrying Mr. Conway, then?” he remarked.

“I have,” the Vicar answered, not adding “I am sorry to say,” which would, if he had spoken his thoughts, have ended the sentence.

“It is a great reparation,” observed Mr. McKye.

“The greatness of a reparation is a secret which must lie between God and a man’s own conscience,” returned Mr. Malet.

“Now, I wonder what he means by that?” puzzled Mr. McKye as he wended his way to Mountain View.

Terence could have told him had he felt any desire to explain; but there was nothing further from Mr. Conway’s wish than to face any unpleasant mental problem at any time, and just then he was besides vaguely conscious that his senses were returning, and doubts which had better never have obtruded themselves beginning to arise whether, after all, the mode he had chosen to show his resentment would affect Philippa in the faintest degree.

It was of her he was thinking during the whole of that dreary drive, not of the shrinking figure by his side, till a sob aroused him from his reverie. Then, gently and not without tenderness, he put his arm round Grace and drew her towards him. At the moment the carriage was turning into Calgarry gates, but the bride never lifted her head, which she had laid on his shoulder.

“Welcome home, dear,” he said, but no courage revived in the girl, as they whirled onward to the house.

The door stood wide, and Bryne bowed gravely to his master when Terence sprang out.

In the hall Ann Patterson waited to receive her new mistress.

“I’ll show you to your room, ma’am,” she said after Mr. Conway had confided Grace to her, and she followed the poor girl, who wanted to give her precedence up the great staircase.

Into the chamber where many a great lady had, in the days gone by, been ushered, the young wife passed.

“Let me help you, ma’am,” entreated Ann; and she took the thin cloak and cheap bonnet, and laid them aside.

Then a strange thing happened. The young wife ran to Ann, and, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, exclaimed, “Be good to me—O, be good to me!”

“’Deed and I will that,” answered Ann, stirred with a deep compassion. “I don’t know who could be off being good to you!”—and she smoothed the dark hair, and stroked the tear-stained cheek gently as a mother might have done.

Half an hour later Terence was looking moodily out of the library window, when his housekeeper appeared.

“Well, Ann?” he asked.

“I have persuaded Mrs. Conway to lie down for a little while, sir,” said Ann. “She is very tired, and needs a rest.”

He did not answer, but waited, seeing in Ann’s face that there was something more to come.

“She’s a pretty creature,” went on the faithful servant; and then added softly, “And O, Mr. Terence, you’ll make the best of it now, won’t you?”

XL

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

It is always so much easier to make the worst than the best of things, that the manner in which Terence not merely promised to follow Ann Patterson’s pithily excellent advice, but strove to do so, could not but be accounted worthy of all praise.

From the first, however, it proved hard work; his heart was not in the matter, and Mr. Conway had always found it difficult to perform any task in which he did not chance to be interested. He wished to do everything that was right, but somehow, when the right failed to coincide with his wishes, he always selected the pleasanter way, even if it were wrong.

Upon the other hand, he was the kindest young man in the world. Unless he were very angry indeed, he found it difficult to act discourteously to anyone. Just as some persons find it hard to be civil, Terence Conway found it hard to be uncivil. He had the fatal gift of manner which is so misleading, which, seeming to mean everything, really binds to nothing. That was the charm which, even more than his face or his voice, had beguiled poor Grace. She gave herself up to it like one fascinated. She would have followed him through the world had he but whispered her to do so, and asked no return. She loved him—O, how she loved him!—but it was beyond her power to satisfy him. She felt that in a thousand ways she offended his taste, but she could not tell how to please it. The knowledge that she was doing wrong never helped to set her right, and only rendered her awkward, which in the days gone by she had never been. It is a mistake to suppose that love must necessarily win love. Much more generally love induces aversion. Terence never got to this pass; but ere long there certainly came distaste, and the more he tried to combat this feeling the stronger it grew.

At Goblin Bay, Grace had never irritated him. There every thread of her poor attire lent a fresh charm to her beauty: even when she wept passionately, and asked what was to become of her, and called earth and sea and heaven to witness to her misery, there hung a wild picturesqueness about her and her utterances that her homely words and plaintive accent only intensified. Beyond all, she had not feared him then—in every tone, gesture, movement, sentence, she was beautifully natural; but now everything was changed, save that the same heart beat beneath her silken bodice that had throbbed within her cotton gown.

Aye, and yet even her heart was changed. It had been light, fearless once; but now it had learned to throb and grieve at trifles, which must a year before have failed to stir its pulses. The old life had gone, and the girl was not clever and cold enough to adapt herself to the new life that had come.

Many a woman raised as suddenly to even loftier heights has managed to adapt herself with wonderful rapidity to her elevation. But Grace could not do this; she was too humble, too nervous, and, besides, she had passed through a long torture. Save herself and God, none might ever know the agonies of dread she endured when she faced the fact that her fault had found her out—that her shame was passing beyond her own keeping and could not be concealed.

No brazen sinner this, flaunting along with a newly-acquired marriage mantle covering her former lapses from virtue, but a weak Magdalen, sorrowing not so much for her fall as for the love she had believed eternal and possessed no more.

It was not the loss of Terence that struck her with the chill which numbed all vitality. No; it was the death of his affection that could be born never again. She had always known he must leave her someday, but she never thought he could so cast her out as to bid another man marry her. It was then the iron entered into her soul; then she felt she had given herself for naught; then she began to taste the bitterness of sin.

She came down to dinner on her wedding-day clad in the muslin dress Mr. Walley’s taste had selected as suitable for the morning ceremony.

It was not unbecoming: red predominated in the pattern, and red suited the girl’s dark hair and rich style of beauty.

Beside Goblin Bay on an August afternoon, with the sun throwing long shadows across the hillside and a background of grey rock and purple heather, Grace’s attire might have looked appropriate and picturesque enough. There, too, she would have worn it with the careless ease which first attracted Terence’s admiration; but the lofty hall and grand staircase at Calgarry refused to give the shrinking girl a fitting setting.

Scarcely daring to touch the steps with her ill-shod little feet, so sadly accustomed to the clumsiest of boots, she seemed a mere stray who had got into the great house by mistake, and who was being shown the way out by Ann following close behind.

Terence, meeting his young wife, took her into the drawing-room; and if it seemed like a dream to Grace that for the future she was to live amid such splendour, it appeared no less a delusion to the owner of Calgarry that this indeed was the queen he had brought there to reign with him.

He had not realised what it would be. He had thought of her only as they met in innocence, as they parted sinners and sorrowful, with the subtle distinction of rank for the time obscured—with the feelings and the passions that make all men and women temporarily equal in full prominence. Mr. Malet was right. Terence Conway had not the smallest conception how Norah Creina’s beauty would pale and her charms fade when she crossed the magic circle, outside of which she was natural and free, and timidly stepped into the holy of holies, where haughty gentlewomen, trailing their velvets and brocades, had brought their fans and their patches, their powder and their pride, their loveliness—aye, and not seldom their vices, too!

For, indeed, the record of many of the ladies who had stood before the huge fireplaces and trifled with the ornaments on the mantelshelves, and put their dainty slippers on the brass fenders, and looked at their features critically as reflected from the steel mirrors which curiously simulated glass, would not have borne too close investigation. The Conways had a knack in the former days of often making Calgarry unpleasant to their own wives and pleasant to the wives of other people; but then, frail or otherwise, those wives were of the world and understood its ways.

In its whole dictionary, there was no shibboleth they failed accurately to pronounce. Its language was familiar to them—not a habit or a custom of that land but they had been acquainted with all their lives.

And every habit and custom seemed strange to Grace; not a word of its language did she know; its ways were not her ways, nor its thoughts her thoughts; she felt herself a stranger in a strange land, and a very desolate stranger indeed.

What are two people to talk about who have no single idea in common, who have no past memories to help them, except the recollection of a mutual transgression?

Grace would have liked to speak, but she could think of nothing to say save what bore reference to matters she knew must be far from pleasing to her husband.

It was on her lips to remark that though Mostrene was a finer place, Calgarry seemed to her grander—for indeed the child’s tastes were far more refined than those of many a great lady; but, recalling the only occasion on which she had seen Mostrene, the words froze ere she could utter them.

When she looked—as she did look, like one fascinated—at the portrait of that wicked beauty who had proved the very embodiment of the Nun’s Curse to the Conway of her day, something in the rich attire and snowy shoulders recalled the memory of Miss Dutton, the only lady Grace had ever seen in evening dress; but knowing what she did, she could not say so. The same thing recurred over and over again; her life had been so monotonous, and as regarded external events so narrow, that all she saw and all she heard served only to suggest scenes and people it was impossible for her to mention, and while Terence, with the kindliest intentions, personally conducted that remarkable tour from one fireplace to the other in Calgarry drawing-room, his experiences much resembled those of a Londoner who rashly takes some exceedingly rustic country cousin for a long day’s pleasure through the British Museum.

Grace hesitated about expressing admiration lest she should expose her ignorance, and she was afraid of not expressing any because she felt that would seem ungracious; consequently their progress was marked by little statements from Terence, which the girl acknowledged by such observations as—

“Aye, they’re brave grates!” “It’s awful fine!” “She’s terbly pretty.” “I don’t know how they can make such things!”—and so da capo.

By the time they had reached the further end of the room, Byrne threw wide the door and announced dinner in a subdued and plaintive tone, as if remonstrating with Heaven.

Greatly relieved, Terence drew his wife’s hand within his arm and conducted her across the hall to the dining-room, where a meal, probably the simplest ever served in Calgarry House, was on the table.

Out of her own head, or rather heart, Ann had arranged a repast which she hoped would tempt and not confuse the new mistress; but Grace was as ignorant of dishes as of grammar, and though she strove to comport herself so as not to annoy her husband, it was only by preserving a sort of armed neutrality amid the spoons and forks and knives and glasses and plates arrayed against her that she was preserved from utter discomfiture.

She knew nothing. Where should she have learned anything? Watching Terence furtively, she copied his actions as nearly as she was able, but withal she felt herself a miserable failure; and when the cloth was drawn and dessert placed on the polished mahogany, in which she could see her face, and Byrne, after having put more fuel on the fire, left the room, she felt as if she had been through some long campaign, from which she was returning beaten.

Terence wanted her to have some fruit, but she declined so mournfully that he asked if she were not well.

At the question she collapsed. Holding the table tight with both her little hands, she cried,

“My head is fairly splitting, and the room seems going round and round! O dear!”

“Poor Grace,” exclaimed Terence, “you are tired out!” and, ringing the bell, he sent for Ann to come immediately.

“Mrs. Conway is quite done up,” he explained. “Will you attend to her, please? You will be better in bed, dear,” he added, and, stooping, he kissed her forehead.

Unmindful of the housekeeper’s presence, Grace threw her arms round him and pressed her lips passionately on that part of Terence’s waistcoat which she supposed covered his heart.

It was a little outburst of which next instant she felt painfully ashamed.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said to Ann afterwards. “I couldn’t help it; but I am sorely afraid I angered him.”

“You must not take notions like that,” answered Ann soothingly.

“I wonder what the young lady would have done he was promised to?” observed Grace, moving her head uneasily on the pillow.

“It does not signify what she would have done,” was the reply.

“Ah! but it does, for he thinks there was never her like. It was an ill turn my father did parting them; for I am very sure she just doted on him as much as he doted on her.”

“If she had,” returned Ann decidedly, “she would not have felt such pity for you. And now, child dear, put her out of your mind and go to sleep, and don’t be letting Mr. Terence see you with swelled eyes and white cheeks in the morning. Only be wise and brave, and there is nothing to hinder you both being happy as the day is long.”

Grace knew better than that: love never found an apter pupil, and love taught her had Philippa instead of herself been in question, Terence would have come with her to the very chamber door and kissed, not merely that beautiful lady’s white forehead, but the coral lips which had seemed to the little outcast so perfect.

No, Terence did not love her, not even as he had when they sat together on the hillside, and stood looking over the Atlantic and walked beside the waves plashing in over the sands on Goblin Bay.

No, even that love, poor though it had been, was gone never to return, and she—Spite of Ann’s injunction, the young wife cried herself to sleep.

When he found himself alone, Terence Conway first stood for a minute dazed, like one roused from a dream; he looked at the untouched dessert, at the unfilled wine-glasses, then he lifted one of the decanters and set it down again.

After that he walked over to the fireplace and remained with his eyes fixed on the glowing peat, as though he could read a story in it. Perhaps he was there reading a story of many talents worse than buried; of wasted opportunities; of gifts misused; of mercies despised; of deliverances for which he had felt no gratitude.

No man had ever cause to sing a louder Te Deum than Terence Conway. Yet what word of thankfulness did his tongue speak? That night some glimmering of this truth seemed to dawn upon him. For the first time it crossed his mind that Fate was less to blame than he. No man had counselled or compelled him to travel that wide road the end of which is ruin. It was by his own act he found himself where he was, contemplating his life wrecked by mad passion and pure folly.

Who, save Terence Conway and his wife, was a bit the worse for his marriage? No one. And who was the better? No one, again. Certainly not Terence Conway, who meant to make the “best of it,” and unfortunate Grace Walley, who was to be “made the best of.”

In a letter received that morning on his return from church from Letitia, who hoped Terence was now in his right mind, and had given up all idea of marrying the peasant-girl, he read that, so far from Philippa grieving over their estrangement, it seemed the greatest relief possible to her.

Mrs. Barry was not a person likely to refrain from reminding her correspondent that “she had told him so,” and, accordingly, she proceeded, with her accustomed candour, to state, “If you remember, I always said she did not care two straws about you;” which, indeed, was very true. “You have had a marvellous escape,” she added. “Now, do not go and get yourself into another and worse scrape; but wait a little, and look out for some nice girl, like Audna Malet, who would make Calgarry a paradise. When Mark is stronger, we will come over and see you if we may, and then I can tell you all about Philippa and the Beechams.”

As he recalled this agreeable epistle, Terence involuntarily took out a cigar, bit the end off it, placed it between his teeth unlit, walked into the hall, put on his hat, and went forth into the night.

Then he struck a match, and applying it to his cigar, began to smoke vehemently, while he pursued a straight line to the shore.

When he started, the way seemed somewhat dark, for the moon was in her last quarter, and had not risen high enough to give much light, but with every step Terence’s eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, and just as he reached the beach a silvery gleam on the water told him sea and land, sky and cliff, would soon be clear before his gaze.

A cold wind was blowing straight in from the Atlantic, grey wild clouds were chasing each other across the heavens; it was just the hour and the night for a man whose soul was not at peace to pace beside the ocean, and try whether his mother Nature had no soothing draught wherewith to quiet an erring and restless child.

As he walked—strange though it may seem—Terence felt some balm was laid upon his wounds.

For the first time since he entered into Calgarry he could look fairly at his position. If a scale had fallen from his eyes, his view of things could not have been much more different. A glimmering of his own defects, of the possibilities that still remained, had come with that rift of moonlight, and standing almost on the very spot where a gallant gentleman’s life had been cut short by the act of a Conway departed, he murmured a wordless appeal, which winged its way to God, for sight to see the right and strength to do it.

Alone there on the desolate seashore, surrounded by the mighty works wrought by the One Infinite, “slow to anger and of great mercy,” it came upon Terence like a revelation that he had done something most awful—sinned lightly, and with no fear of retribution, a sin he could never repair; and then, as if this were not enough, out of mere bravado entered into the most solemn engagement a man can take upon himself without the smallest thought of what that engagement would entail.

“No man can get rid of his responsibilities by shutting his eyes to them,” Mr. Malet one day remarked, and Terence had at the time accepted this statement as a sort of general proposition which concerned him personally not at all, Now, however, he remembered the words with a startled surprise that they should ever have seemed meaningless to him, and almost at the same moment the Vicar’s solemn warning to the effect that a man has only a single life, which, if he spoils, no one can give him another to make or mar, recurred to his memory.

Supposing this true—and he could not doubt it—true as death and sorrow, life and joy—what lay before him?

Was it too late for him to unravel the skein he had tangled—to gather up some of the threads he had broken, and strive to weave some fair and useful pattern with them? There were things he could never undo, but, on the other hand, there were things he could do. For instance, he might follow Ann’s advice, and make the best of his marriage; and if that, so far as his portion was concerned, proved well-nigh impossible, he could at least make matters happy for poor Grace.

Yes, he would try. Heaven helping him, he would try to do well by and for her. A great pity for her took possession of him, which opened the fountains of his heart and watered it. For the first time he felt more sorry for another than for himself: and O, what rich grass, what healing herbs, what fair flowers spring where the stream of sympathy flows! She should not be lightly esteemed or despitefully treated; she should take her place as his wife, and be considered as much as any lady in the land. He had gained more than he had lost. A woman who despised him, who thought her fortune weighed down his love, was not a wife to be regretted.

After all, Grace’s ignorance was capable of enlightenment. She was a dear affectionate child, and he would make the best of her—make a very good thing indeed. He would on the morrow ask Mr. Stirling’s sister to go to Derry for him and purchase such raiment as was fitting for the mistress of Calgarry; it would be a pleasure as well as a duty to buy pretty dresses for Grace, and ornaments to set off her beauty. He would teach her himself. She should learn everything needful for the station to which he had raised her. He would try with all his strength to repair the evil he had wrought—to “make the best of it,” in fact; and so, with a kind of exaltation, he turned, and, looking up to the sky, saw the moon struggling westward through a mass of stormy grey cloud that betokened storm.

O, unhappy Terence! O, poor well-meaning, wrong-doing Conway of Calgarry! Through what masses of tempestuous cloud had you not to pass onward to the end!

XLI

“MOTHER!”

A man usually finds a sufficient difficulty in carrying his best theories into practice against the will of his own prejudices and incapacity; but it would be well-nigh impossible to name the figure whereby that difficulty must be multiplied when the prejudices and incapacity of another person have likewise to be taken into account.

Terence Conway found that figure an unknown quantity. Grace did not set herself in opposition to him—on the contrary, she tried hard to fall in with his views; and yet the result of their joint efforts proved about as satisfactory as pouring water into a sieve, or the labour of Sisyphus with his refractory stone.

Even if the young wife had been as quick as she was slow, if she had been naturally clever as she was undoubtedly dull, if Terence had loved her as truly as he faithfully desired to do his duty by her, the weeks which succeeded after her marriage must have proved sadly irksome, while as matters stood each day but seemed a fresh misery. Congenial occupations she had none. When Terence was out and Ann busy she could but walk round the great rooms, and look at the objects she was beginning to know by heart, while she sighed for liberty. No caged bird ever sickened for freedom as did Norah Creina. No longer her robe flowed “wild as mountain breezes.” No more her tresses fell loose. Never again should she wake with a light heart and look forth to the coming day with pleasure.

If Terence were tied, so was she; they were coupled, two most unsuitable. It was all very well for Moore to sing about being “pillowed on his Norah’s heart;” but plain prose told a very different story. Grace knew all about the matter now—knew that even in sorrow and shame she would have been far happier on the hillside tending her father’s sheep and her favourite cow than she could ever hope to be at Calgarry, where she felt, as she told Ann, “lonesome, lonesome, lonesome!” The great house seemed to her like a prison; the meals were a penance. She would not walk or drive for fear of meeting someone; and the mornings, in which Terence essayed to teach her, and the evenings, when, dressed in all the bravery that had come to her from Derry, she sat in the drawing-room pretending to be a grand lady, were positive torture.

It was a hopeless case—one with which even Ann Patterson’s strong common sense confessed itself unequal to cope.

“God help the master!” she thought. “What’ll he ever do with her at all? There’s many a beggar girl would make a better mistress for Calgarry nor Mrs. Conway. Never did I see the like of her. Not a blessed thing can she do except croon a ballad. She has a sweet voice of her own, and can turn a tune well enough; but there’s no song she can sing will ever lift up Mr. Terence’s heart, and she is breaking her own. If her child, when it is born, does not bring some comfort, I don’t know what’s to become of us all.”

The first visitor (after Mr. Malet) who called at Calgarry was Mr. Boyne. He did not see Mrs. Conway; but Mr. and Mrs. Regan from Mostrene were more fortunate. The latter were the curate and the curate’s wife, and their visit passed off much better than could have been hoped; perhaps they came determined to be delighted. No one else came, however; not even curiosity brought a single county lady to Calgarry; and Terence was forced to content himself with the assurance that Mrs. Boyne was looking forward with great pleasure to making Mrs. Conway’s acquaintance when she came to Ireland in August.

This social ostracism stung Terence to the quick. It is one thing for any reason voluntarily to relinquish society, but quite another to be relinquished by society; and the action of his peers seemed to the old Duke’s descendant almost a greater punishment than he could bear. He looked at his wife—his, mind you, and not another man’s—and his soul waxed hot and indignant. By what right did these people refuse to recognise her? They would all have come fast enough to call on Philippa; but of what use was it being a Conway of Calgarry unless he could compel civility to the woman he had chosen? They should not flout her. They would have to decide between him and her. If he could not teach her, he could teach them a lesson; and so he fumed and fretted, the while all Grace desired was to steal away and hide herself in some corner where she would never be heard of again.

“I hope you are soon going to bring Audna over to call on my wife,” Terence said to Mr. Malet next time he met the Vicar, who, looking a little embarrassed, made no reply.

“When may we expect to see you?” persisted Grace’s husband, with a ring in his voice which meant he was prepared to do battle. “I should like to be at home.”

It was open to Mr. Malet to take refuge in “You are very kind,” or “I fear we have been rather remiss,” or “Audna is too young to visit,” or any other subterfuge. But the Vicar was not a man to skulk behind subterfuges when plain speaking was forced on him.

He would have avoided hitting Terence if Terence had not courted the blow; as it was, he said, “Surely you cannot suppose I should take my daughter to Calgarry?”

“Why not? Mrs. Boyne means to call.”

“Mrs. Boyne is no rule for me.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you will not bring Audna to call on my wife?”

“I think, Terence, you might have spared me the pain of answering that I cannot—”

In a moment a torrent of passion swept over the younger man.

“She is not good enough for you, I suppose!” he said, in a voice hoarse with anger; “a peasant girl, even though my wife, is beneath the notice of Mr. Malet’s daughter.”

“You forget yourself,” replied the Vicar. “I have surely a right to choose with whom my daughter shall associate.”

“And I have a right to choose the next Rector of Mostrene,” retorted Terence.

“In exercising which right you will but follow the example of your predecessors,” returned Mr. Malet; then adding, “I do not think we need prolong this discussion,” he held out his hand, which Terence refused to take, rejoining hotly,

“And I do not think we need go through that farce.”

Just for a moment Mr. Malet stood looking at him with an expression of grave and sad anxiety; then he lifted his hat, said “Good-morning,” and walked away.

Nothing that had yet occurred touched the young man so keenly as this action of Mr. Malet. It seemed to cut him adrift from all the better memories of his life, from the friends of his boyhood, from the happy, happy days he had spent at the Vicarage. But for shame he could have sat down by the wayside and wept tears of sorrow as well as of anger. “Mr. Malet did not understand Grace, he did not know what a help and comfort Audna would have been to her; it was his pride, his cursed pride,” thought Terence, “which prevented his being a Christian.”

Mr. McKye was quite right—the Vicar could not but be regarded as worldly-minded. He had dissuaded him, Terence, from trying to make reparation. Such a man was not fit for his office. The old Duke might have been wrong in many things, but who can say he committed an error in passing over the Vicar’s claims? Claims? He had none.

“Why, Mr. Malet must be mad; pride must have bereft him of his senses! There was Mostrene, a rectory well worth having—a rectory which conferred social advantages as well as a substantial income—a rectory the mouths of many men watered for; and between it and the next fortunate incumbent there intervened but one feeble life—a life so feeble its faint flicker might be extinguished any day. Common prudence might well have counselled the Vicar to please a patron who had so valuable a gift to bestow. It was like his confounded impudence to think he would be allowed to call at Calgarry in his merely clerical capacity, just as if the owner were a farmer or a labourer. He wanted his crest lowered, and he, Conway of Calgarry, would lower it.” There was a good deal of the old Adam still rampant in this young Melancthon, who had stood by the ocean and prayed his prayer and formed his resolve to make a better use of his wasted life, and steadfastly purposed to commit no more sins and dig for himself no future pitfalls. As he strode homeward it might well have seemed as if the Nun, kneeling as on that sunny morning long agone above old Calgarry church, were cursing his race anew; for many demons took possession of him in lieu of the one cast out beside the vast Atlantic, and truly the last state of that man was thus worse than the first.

Such a summer as that proved at Calgarry! Never, surely, were golden days so long, never did human beings hail their dawn less gladly, or watch their close with a feeling of greater weariness.

There are times when the most enthusiastic adviser is compelled to hold his peace, and such a time had come for Terence. No man said to him “You had better do this,” “It would be well for you to do that.” Mrs. Boyne drove over in great state, prepared to give excellent counsel and extend a helping hand to the little beggar-maid; but when she saw how things were she could but drive home again, without advancing any opinion, very thoughtful.

“I do not see what he can do,” she said to her husband.

“Neither do I—except drown himself,” he answered.

“It is earnestly to be hoped the child may not be a boy,” observed Mrs. Boyne.

Her husband made no reply—he did not care to express the thought which was passing through his mind: that it was most earnestly to be hoped the child would not live to complicate matters still further.

“I wonder what the end of it all will be?” went on Mrs. Boyne.

“It is impossible to form even a wide conjecture; but I fancy there may be a good deal more trouble ahead. The Nun has not done her worst yet—at least, that is my notion.”

“Was there ever a Nun really?”

“You mean was there ever one who cursed the Conways? Yes, I imagine so. I don’t see any reason to suppose the whole story is a myth; and, however that may be, it is absolutely true that we have each our Nun in the shape of some sin or weakness. In the case of the Conways, different as has been the doom of every man who owned Calgarry, it is very curious to trace how the same cause brought them all to grief.”

“And what was the cause?”

“An utter absence of all sense of responsibility. There has never been a Conway yet, so far as I can ascertain, who ever was deterred from any sin or cruelty by the thought of consequences. Some of them—our young friend, for instance—have meant to do most admirably well; but, nevertheless, they have one and all done extremely badly. They never seem able to see beyond today; tomorrow has no meaning for them.”

“I feel very sorry for this poor fellow,” said Mrs. Boyne thoughtfully.

“So do I, but I am afraid that will not do him much good.”

“I only wish we could do him some good. I shall always lament asking Miss Dutton here.”

“Well, I cannot think he would have been very happy with her. He would soon have found out his idol had feet of clay, and then there must have followed a great revulsion.”

“Still, nothing could have been so bad as this.”

“This is very bad, certainly. What a curious taste he has for ignorant women! Miss Dutton struck me as the dullest and least intelligent girl I ever talked to.”

“She talked so little I wonder you found that out. She is utterly selfish, too. I can see the Beechams are delighted at the prospect of being rid of her.”

“She really means, then, to set up housekeeping on her own account?”

“Yes, with Mrs. Rawson. That will be a singular ménage.”

From which remarks it follows Miss Dutton had lost no time in settling her plans. Very earnestly she begged that no one would ever mention Mr. Conway’s name to her. “She always felt a doubt of him,” she explained; “always trembled at the idea of putting her future in his hands. She forgave him fully, and earnestly hoped he would be kind to the poor girl he led so sadly far astray; but she was trying to forget how nearly her own life had been wrecked, and hoped her friends would assist her in the endeavour. The General and Lady Beecham, who knew the extent of her sufferings, and felt most indignant at the manner in which Mr. Conway had tried to deceive her, were kindness itself, but others were less considerate. That was the sole reason she felt compelled to drop Mrs. Barry’s acquaintance. She was deeply attached to her—they were both fondly attached, in fact; but her cousin—so she called Letitia—wanted tact, and in justice to herself she found it necessary to end an intimacy which recalled so much that was painful.”

With these and many similar utterances Philippa—looking more lovely than ever, perfectly dressed, and not a whit the poorer or the worse for her terrible experience—produced a great effect.

People said she had behaved beautifully, that she was “a saint, an angel,” and told each other “what a blessing she would prove to some good man.”

On the whole, perhaps Miss Dutton was not so dull as Mr. Boyne imagined.

Certainly she was much cleverer than “the poor girl who had been led so sadly astray,” and who was so stupid as to feel no exultation at being promoted to the rank Miss Dutton was to have occupied.

Grace was in the dreadful position of remaining still while everything about her changed. She could not adapt herself to the new life, neither was it possible for her to believe an impossibility, and imagine Terence loved, and was glad he had married, her.

The mythical lady of Burghley, who found the weight of her husband’s rank and riches a burden too great to bear, had at least the support of knowing she was chosen by her lover from out the world to grace his home; but Norah Creina could not lay this flattering unction to her soul. She knew she was not chosen from out the world: had she not been forced upon him, probably she was almost the last wife Terence would have selected.

She thought of this as, white and spiritless, she crept up the stairs and along the galleries of Calgarry, and hoped it was not a sin to wish in the hour of her trial she might die, and take her child with her to a world where, as she mentally phrased matters, they would both be “out of the road.”

Ann Patterson, kind as kind could be, was always urging her to “keep up a good heart, for the baby will bring new life to you;” but Grace’s heart refused to keep up.

“I am tired, tired,” she said; and, in the innermost recesses of her mind, Ann thought, “It’s no wonder you’re tired. Who wouldn’t be, doing nothing?”

Listlessly she looked at and turned over the pretty things Terence, out of his kindness—certainly not out of his plenty—purchased for her. She did not care for them; she would have bartered all his presents for one of the old looks, one of the smiles and one of the fond words with which he had won her heart less than a year before, “not a twelvemonth gone.”

“What can I do to make her life happier?” Terence once asked helplessly.

“You will see a great alteration in her after a while,” Ann answered, with a cheerfulness which belied her feelings. “Think of what a sore time she went through in the winter, and she not over strong. That cold has never rightly left her yet. The doctor says when she can get away she would be the better for a change, and, indeed, I think that myself.”

Nothing to equal the deadly dulness of Calgarry during this time can be conceived. The shadow of a great sorrow or a great crime seemed resting over the old house, darkening the rooms, which remained just the same as when the old Duke died; for the workmen, who had been busy repairing and beautifying the exterior of the mansion up to Easter, were summarily discharged when the match with Philippa was broken off.

As the time of her trial drew nearer, Grace gradually fell into the habit of coming down to dinner at rarer and rarer intervals, and, if he had cross-examined his own heart, Terence would have found her absence proved an immense relief.

“When he sees covers are laid only for one, the master looks something like himself again,” remarked Byrne, in a spirit of pathetic irony: and the observation was true.

It is absolutely impossible to say all that may be passing through a man’s mind when covers laid for two make dinner seem uneatable.

More swiftly than is usually the case, Terence Conway’s sin had found him out. It had come home, not in any quiet and bearable fashion, but after the manner of a dog gone mad, or some inconceivable horror crouching on the hearth. As a greater sorrow kills the memory of a lesser, so the trouble of his marriage blotted every other out of the young man’s thoughts. Mr. Malet’s words often recurred to him. He had not realised—he had never tried to realise—what the consequences would be. He had never seen poor Grace as she was—never conceived what life with her would prove.

He had thought to teach, but he only succeeded in frightening. He was not an able instructor, and she but a sorry pupil. Her heart was great, but her mental capacity small. Application of any sort made her ill. It was as difficult for her to learn the most ordinary lesson as for one who has not been taught music in early life to run through a scale.

Terence had to abandon lessons, and relinquish even the attempt to instruct his wife in the ordinary usages of society, not because her sweet nature resented such teaching, but because knowledge of her deficiencies only resulted in increased awkwardness.

His world seemed so vast to her that she felt lost in it. She thought so little of herself—she was so humble, so stricken by what she considered the grandeur of his surroundings and mode of life, so conscious she was unfit to be his wife, so certain she had been forced on him, and that he had acted rashly in marrying her—it grew impossible for her to make any effort to stem the current against which she had to contend.

And she always felt so ill, so down-hearted, so broken, that her imagination became morbid. She saw slights where none were given, and, naturally superstitious, she began to brood over the Nun’s Curse, and believe she had been the one unfortunate chosen to work it out.

With divine patience impatient Terence bore his cross. He was gentle with her, as a tender father with a sickly child; he refrained from noticing defects in breeding; he bore as, it might have been supposed, love alone could have induced him to bear. If the angels wept over him at that period of his life, they must have smiled through their tears, for he was striving with all his might to make his wife happy, even to the extent of affecting a love for her he had long ceased to feel.

If he felt anger, it was directed against himself. No wayward fate had impelled him to marry an unmeet wife; he could not blame anyone, save only Terence Conway, for the act which caused him to find covers for two a burden almost greater than he could bear.

Probably, had he asked Mr. McKye senior to partake of dinner in a friendly way—a thing he certainly never should have thought of doing—that gentleman would, before the meal was ended, have committed quite as many solecisms as Grace; but then Mr. McKye was not his wife. It is only when a man or a woman becomes part of ourselves that we feel keenly any lapses from social virtue.

There is no magnifying-glass like relationship; it transforms a mote into a beam with absurd celerity, and the number of motes that in Grace’s case were so transformed three volumes would scarce suffice to enumerate.

On a certain evening in August, Terence sat alone at dinner. He was not thinking of anything in particular, save that the grouse, to a portion of which he had just helped himself, was very well cooked, when Ann Patterson came into the room and crossed over to his side.

As she entered she made a sign to Byrne, who, understanding, went into the hall, leaving master and servant alone.

“Mrs. Conway is very bad, sir,” said the housekeeper.

It was noticeable that she never framed her tongue to speak the then usual and familiarly respectful words, “the mistress.” She could not do it. Too many gracious ladies—ladies bred and born—had been so styled in that house for her to feel it possible to designate Walley’s daughter, even though Mr. Terence’s wife, by such a title.

“Is she?—I will go to her at once,” exclaimed the master, springing up from table; but Ann detained him.

“The doctor is with her, and the nurse, and you’d best stop here, sir. But what I came to tell you is that she is always and ever crying for her mother.”

“Good Heavens! then let her have her mother,” exclaimed Terence. “You do not imagine I would keep mother and daughter apart?”

“No, Mr. Terence, I didn’t think that; but still—”

“She must be sent for instantly. Why was I not told of this before?”

“I would not have told you now, sir,” answered Ann boldly, “only Dr. Keenan says she ought not to be crossed.”

“Certainly not. She must have everything she desires that we can give her. Tell Denny to go over to Goblin Bay at once—or stay; I will drive there myself.”

“You, Mr. Terence?”

“Yes, I should like to be doing something. Let Denny put O’More in the dog-cart; he is the fastest thing in the stable. Poor child! I suppose this is what she has been wanting all along.”

Ann shook her head. “I do not think so, sir. She would not want it now if she was just right. But she is a little light-headed, and scarce knows what she is saying.”

Terence laid his hand on the bell-rope. “Byrne,” he began hoarsely, “tell them to put O’More in the dog-cart, and I shall require Denny.”

“But that’s an awful long way for you to drive, sir,” expostulated Ann as the butler departed on his mission. “Couldn’t Denny bring Mrs. Walley as well as you?”

“Do you think I would mind going ten times the distance to please my wife?” asked Terence. “Answer me truly,” he went on with feverish excitement; “since I brought the poor girl home have I left undone a single thing I thought might please her?”

“The dear knows you haven’t, sir,” answered the woman, using the curious ellipsis customary in her rank across the Channel, which probably was once filled with that most holy name the Irish use all too freely. “No, if it was my last word on earth, I’d say you’d been beyond the beyonds a good husband.”

“Thank God for that, at any rate,” murmured Terence.

“And, sir, you’ll not think me too bold, will you? Sure you weren’t a year old when I held you in my arms, and it’s only old Ann that loves you—once Mrs. Conway gets over this just take her away where nobody knows what has gone before, and where the poor darling won’t be always trying to hide her head. And if you could get a knowledgeable lady to be with her and tell her the things she’s not rightly acquainted with, it would be a real blessing to the mother of your child.”

Terence shivered; Ann’s words put the whole position in a concrete form before him. His child—his—born, whether son or daughter, to some sort of portion in Calgarry; and the mother—poor Grace. Most unhappy Norah Creina, most unfit wife for himself, most unfit parent for his children!

Good Lord! What would be the end of it? Better ten thousand times, he felt, that he was sounding the depths of the Atlantic with a millstone round his neck than contemplating the future that lay before him. But he was obliged to contemplate it; no one could bear this burden in his stead. Voluntarily he had taken it, and he knew he must carry it to the end.

“I believe your advice is good, Ann,” he answered, “and will see how I can follow it. Here comes the dogcart; I shall not be long away.”

Terence had never been to Goblin Bay since the afternoon when he went to tell Grace they must part; and as he drove along his thoughts were busy recalling all that had passed in the interim. After crossing the bridge above Dunfanaghy the road was lonely in the extreme, and he experienced a feeling of relief when the distant wash and sob of the Atlantic told him Walley’s farm lay near at hand.

Pulling up at some distance from the house, he bade Denny follow him slowly, and then walked forward over the rough uneven cart-track.

Mrs. Walley, who was knitting stockings by the light of the fire, turned as he entered. For the first moment she did not recognise him, but as he drew closer to the glowing turf she exclaimed, “Mr. Conway!” and stood up trembling, too agitated for further speech.

Then Walley raised himself from the settle on which he had been stretched, and asked,

“Is anything wrong with Grace?”

In a few words Terence explained what had brought him so far.

“Don’t stand staring there when you hear the girl wants you, woman!” exclaimed Walley. “Clap on your bonnet, and throw a shawl round you, and be off.”

Suiting his actions to his words, he passed into the inner room, and, returning with the articles mentioned, helped Mrs. Walley to array herself in them; then saying, “Now, Mr. Conway, she’s ready if you are,” walked with them to the dog-cart.

“Where’ll she sit?” he asked; and when Terence intimated “Beside me,” he seized his wife’s arm, and telling her to “put a firm foot on the step,” hoisted the bewildered creature into the front seat.

“Give him his head, and mind the stones,” he said; and in five minutes from the time of his arrival at Goblin Bay, Terence found himself driving back to Calgarry with his wife’s mother.

Later on the same night, worn out with suspense, anxious and unsettled, finding the loneliness of the library more than he could endure, Mr. Conway opened the front door and passed into the open air.

It was very dark and very still, yet as he walked along the front of the house he had an idea someone was crouching against the wall.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“It’s me, sir,” was the answer.

“What, Walley! How did you get here?”

“I rode over, Mr. Conway—no offence, I hope, but I couldn’t rest behind; and I was just standing here thinking I might get news of Grace. After all, she’s my child, you know, and we never had but the one. How is she, sir?”

“About the same,” Terence replied. “Come inside; you must not stand out here;” and leading the way into the house, he opened the door of the breakfast-room, where he told Byrne to take lights and some whisky.

“Dear-a-dear!” ejaculated the old man, recounting the circumstance to Ann, “that I should ever have lived to see such goings-on! There he was sitting as unconcerned as you please in the old Duke’s own easy-chair, and when I carried in the hot water and spirits he bid me take a seat opposite him and mix for myself. The impudent blackguard! As if I’d drink, in or out of Calgarry, with the like of him!”

Next morning, when the housemaid went into the breakfast-room and opened the shutters, she saw Mr. Walley in a deep sleep—his head well back, his legs stretched out, a decanter empty by his side, while a smell as if of a stable pervaded the apartment.

XLII

AN UNINVITED GUEST

After the birth of her son Mrs. Conway remained for some months in an ailing condition, which necessitated a considerable amount of care, and precluded any scheme for mental or social improvement being carried out.

During this time Mrs. Walley remained what Mr. Walley described as “off and on” at Calgarry.

Whether her daughter liked this arrangement no one knew. Mrs. Walley naturally supposed she did; but Ann had her doubts on this point.

She was beginning to understand Mrs. Conway better, and believed that while Mrs. Walley’s absence would have been more valued than her presence, Mr. Terence’s wife had her own good reason for affecting pleasure in her mother’s constant society.

When Mrs. Walley was at Calgarry the owner felt free to leave a place where he was more solitary than when alone. He went away often in those days, and it may at once be said Grace felt happier then than she ever did while he remained at home. She knew herself more thoroughly than many wise persons knew themselves. She had all that veneration for learning and culture and high breeding which is so fine a trait in even the humblest Irish peasant; but it is one thing to admire learning, and quite another to become learned. Some persons might have accounted Grace’s inaptitude perverseness, but it really arose from a deficiency as impossible to alter as lameness or blindness, or any other visitation of God. She was, as Terence had sorrowfully to admit, a little dunce. Not merely had she not been educated, but she could not be educated. She might be instructed in the mere ABC of learning, but certainly no one could ever hope to take her much beyond that stage.

Ann Patterson never changed her opinion that a “heap might be made of Mrs. Conway if some knowledgeable ‘fond’ sort of lady lived at Calgarry to put her in the way.” Terence fully intended at some near period to adopt his housekeeper’s suggestion, but gentlewomen suitable for such a post are difficult to meet with anywhere; and besides, he felt a natural repugnance to exposing Grace’s deficiencies to unsympathetic eyes.

“When the spring comes we will see about it,” he thought. And so autumn and winter passed, and Terence spent more and more time away from Donegal.

In Dublin he was always sure of a warm welcome from the Foyles, who had gaily camped in that city on their road to destruction.

They were over head and ears in debt; their estate was in “the Court;” they were as poor as church mice: in the blackness of their surroundings no one save themselves could discern even the smallest rift; yet Terence found them as lively and pleasant as ever. Their talk was of balls, concerts, hunting, racing; they attended every reception at the Castle, were acquainted with the whole staff, knew all the people it was right to know; went to Patrick’s, or Christ’s, or the College, or the most notorious new church, to see the fashions and meet their friends, and prayed at home for appointments for the sons and husbands for the girls. Mr. Foyle himself entertained hopes of getting “something abroad,” and Mrs. Foyle was ready to go anywhere out of the way of their creditors. Meanwhile, they lived in a very good house, and entertained in a modest way with a hospitality which spoke volumes for the Dublin tradespeople.

They were always delighted to see Terence; and as a good joke, Mr. Foyle was wont to remark he might one day ask for a thousand acres of land at Calgarry. “If the boys have to take off their coats and work, they may as well turn labourers in Donegal as in Texas,” the genial gentleman remarked. “What do you say, Conway? Would you accept us as tenants?”

Mr. Conway said he would very gladly. “But remember, my agent will insist upon your improving the land,” he added.

“Then you must grant us a ninety-nine years’ lease,” replied Mr. Foyle. At which they all laughed heartily. They were, indeed, an extraordinarily merry family, and had a way of laughing at nothing which was considered very charming.

“And when the old Rector at Mostrene dies,” observed Mrs. Foyle, putting a diplomatic oar into the conversation, “and Mr. Malet leaves Calgarry, you might give Herbert that little living. Arabella and he could begin housekeeping so pleasantly there.”

“He would make you a first-rate private chaplain, Terence,” said one of the young men.

Now “Herbert” was a curate Arabella had ensnared just before the deluge swept over her family. He proposed, thinking she would have some fortune; and when he found she had none did not dare to back out of his engagement, which really bound him to nothing, as they could not possibly be married on his stipend.

“The Rector is not dead yet,” answered Terence, thinking he would rather give Mostrene to Mr. Herbert Blair—a well-meaning, well-bred, silly young man—than to Mr. Regan, who had scented the goodly prey with rather too keen a nose.

“No; but he will die someday,” said Mrs. Foyle, in a light and agreeable manner, “and then you must not forget us: Perhaps it may be pleasant for your wife to have Arabella for such a near neighbour.”

Terence thought it would be very pleasant for him, at all events; but he did not say anything about Mostrene on the occasion of that visit. The idea that he held such a card in reserve was pleasant to him. What a number of birds he should be able to kill with that one presentation! At a single blow he could repay the Foyles all their kindness a hundred-fold, secure an agreeable neighbour, punish Mr. Malet, gratify his own spite, and annoy Mr. Regan. He felt this was power worth having, and he longed, if not for the Rector’s death, at the least for the time when it would lie with him to dispose of the living.

He crossed to Chester, where likewise he had friends who were always glad to welcome him: and on his way back through Dublin received a letter from Mr. Regan, who “hastened to give him the earliest tidings of the sad blow which had deprived them of their beloved Rector, who, after much suffering, passed away early this morning.”

Terence was on a hack-car, driving to Amiens Street Terminus, when he read this communication, which caused him to tell the man to go round by Upper Pembroke Street, where he at once conferred the rectory of Mostrene on the Rev. Herbert Blair, who was holding a skein of silk while his lady-love wound it.

Never was a man more amazed. Never did a family express wilder delight and greater gratitude.

The girls hung about him in a frenzy of delight. Mrs. Foyle wept, and Mr. Foyle blew his nose sonorously. The young men shook hands effusively with this splendid benefactor; and Mr. Blair, who could scarcely credit such good fortune, observed, “I don’t know what to say, ’pon my word I don’t,” and so helplessly tangled the skein of silk, Arabella never wound it at all.

Two of the sons accompanied Terence to the station, and the rest of the family stood at the windows, waving handkerchiefs and kissing hands till he was out of sight.

“A very handsome thing for Conway to do,” said Foylepère—“very handsome indeed.”

“No anxiety now about ways and means, my dear Herbert,” remarked Mrs. Foyle.

“He was an old man, and full of years,” remarked Mr. Blair, referring to the Rector.

“Yes, it was time he went,” said Dick Foyle, who, so his mother declared, had no veneration, and she might well have added, sometimes no decency; and then they all resolved themselves cheerfully into a committee of ways and means, and probably in the whole of Dublin there could not that day have been found a happier set of people than the Foyles.

It would be too much to say that Terence, as the train whirled northwards, felt at all happy. As was its wont, his conscience served him the nasty trick of waking up, when, for all practical purposes, it might just as well have remained asleep. It had not interfered to prevent Terence committing a very ungenerous and a very mean action, and now, when his word was pledged beyond recall to Mr. Blair, conscience began to prick. Once again he found himself in the position of a man who sits down to build a tower without counting the cost. He had not counted the cost; but in this, as in other instances, he would have to pay the bill.

That was a long and dreary journey back to Calgarry. Nowadays he always felt the northward journey dreary, but his thoughts were more sombre than usual as he posted in the darkness of night through the fastnesses of Donegal.

It was past midnight when he reached home, where he was not expected, and he had to rap and ring for some time before the wild barking of the dogs aroused Byrne, who put his head out of an upper window and inquired what was wanted.

“I want you to let me in,” shouted Terence in reply; and the old man went downstairs and undid the bolts and unfastened the chain, and admitted the master.

“You’re welcome home, your honour,” he said; “we didn’t think you would be back this week.”

“Well, I am back, you see,” answered “his honour” good-humouredly, “and very hungry. Bring me up something to eat—I don’t care what it is;” and, taking a candle, before Byrne could step forward, he walked into the dining-room.

Then he suddenly stopped.

“What is all this?” he asked—as indeed he well might.

Strewed over a table, pulled up close to the hearth, were the remains of supper—a fowl stripped to its bones, the end of a tongue, crusts of bread, and a dish from which every morsel of pudding had been scraped. The confusion was indescribable; two candles had burned down to their sockets and then gone out; over a fire, in which no spark of life lingered, a brass kettle had fallen into a rakish position; while on the sofa a man was lying fast asleep.

For once Byrne was not equal to the occasion. With the best intentions, he and Ann had refrained from letting him know any of Mr. Walley’s numerous iniquities, and the butler was so completely taken aback by Terence’s sudden arrival and the catastrophe which had ensued that, in his confusion, he could not evolve either an apology or a lie.

“What is all this?” repeated Terence; “what is the meaning of it all?”

“Indeed, I can’t rightly say, sir,” answered Byrne deprecatingly.

Mr. Conway made a step forward as if with the intention of arousing the sleeper not very gently, but a hand laid on his arm arrested his purpose.

“I wouldn’t meddle him, Mr. Terence,” advised Ann, who had just come upon the scene, looking in her snowy cap and fair linen apron as perfect a picture of neatness as Walley, sprawling on the sofa, amid the wreck of his debauch, did of disorder.

“No, I wouldn’t,” supplemented Byrne, not speaking to anyone in particular, but making a general sort of statement. “When he’s like this he’s dangerous.”

“O!” said Mr. Conway, drawing a long breath; “and is he often like this—here?”

He looked at Ann for an answer, and she gave it without hesitation.

“Maybe we were wrong, Mr. Terence, but we kept quiet for fear of vexing you. It’s best to speak out now, though. Ever since that night you gave him leave to stop—the minute your back was turned he came straight over; and many and many’s the time we’ve found it hard work tholing with him.”

“That’s true enough,” observed Byrne with a groan.

“Do you mean that whenever I left home he took up his quarters at Calgarry?” asked Terence.

“That is just what I do mean, sir, and as he was getting beyond the beyonds, it is, maybe, as well you came back as you did tonight.”

“Yes, I think it was about time,” answered the young man, looking like one fascinated at his father-in-law, who lay, unconscious that anyone was guarding his slumbers, sunk in a drunken stupor.

“You’ll only hurt yourself standing there, Mr. Terence,” said his housekeeper. “The library is ready for you; I have kept it locked; and Byrne will bring a tray there. Do come away, sir.”

Almost mechanically Terence complied, and, flinging himself into an easy-chair, watched Ann as she put a match to the bog fire and, with the aid of a pair of bellows, soon made up a glorious fire.

“What did Mrs. Walley say to her husband’s doings?” asked Mr. Conway, as Ann rose from the hearth.

“What could she say, sir?—and where was the use of anybody saying anything?”

“And do you actually mean to tell me he has been living here?”

“I do, Mr. Terence. Just that.”

“And where did he sleep?”

“Whiles one place and whiles another, but mostly where he is now. Byrne hoped he would drink himself to death; and I used to steal down and see he wasn’t setting the house on fire. I feel glad you know, at last; though I am sure, if you hadn’t fathomed the whole thing out for yourself, I never could have found it my heart to tell you.”

“The scoundrel!” exclaimed Terence, springing to his feet “Drunk or sober, I am in ten minds to kick him out of the house this minute.”

“You’d best not,” was the reply. “Wait till morning, and he’ll go fast and quietly enough: but he’s like a wild beast when the drink is in him—Mrs. Conway is afraid of her life of him then. He’s an awful man! I don’t know I ever came across his equal.”

For a long time after Byrne had removed his almost untasted supper, Terence Conway sat looking at the fire, and seeing in it every hope of his life dropping away as the glowing peat inch by inch faded to a less vivid colour and then died out altogether.

He felt too tired, too sad, to analyse where the fault lay. It was enough for his thought that youth, with its splendid possibilities, was gone never to return; that he was eight-and-twenty; that the spring could not again send up its sap for him; that, in a word, one part of his life was ended, and that, to quote Mr. Malet, no person could restore it—no man born of woman say, “Here it is for the second time; try to make a better thing of it.”

Mr. Malet had been right, as usual. Plain common sense usually is right. But this knowledge did not incense Terence then, because he was conscious he had done the Vicar a great wrong—the culminating wrong, indeed, of those inflicted on him by the Conways.

As in a dream he saw the young proud Englishman planted by his kinsman on an alien soil. He saw the long struggle between poverty and pride, when pride ever came out victorious. He saw death borne as a Christian should bear God’s divinest ordnance (for what an awful place this world would be were there no death in it!) He saw his daughter brought up just as a gentleman’s—not to say a clergyman’s—daughter should be: with a complete knowledge of the duties appertaining to her own class, and a sympathetic understanding likewise of the joys and sorrows of those born to labour.

Mr. Malet had been wise. He did not interfere too far; he left, perhaps unconsciously, the pure, sweet, womanly nature full play, and the result was as natural, as charming, as pleasing to God (speaking with man’s words) a young girl as ever was sent on the earth. There was nothing, so far as her light and means went, Audna would not have done for any fellow-creature. She had no high notions concerning herself—no scornful feelings regarding other people. Her face was the index of her mind—pure, sweet, bright, tender, spirited.

“She grows every day more like her mother.” Mr. Malet once said; and though that likeness awoke many an old sad memory, it was full of beautiful hope, nevertheless.

And it was this young girl, so fresh, so fair, he (Terence) in his utter egotism, his intense selfishness, would fain have compelled to visit at a house where such scenes had become possible as those shadowed forth by Ann Patterson.

Mr. Malet’s refusal did him no wrong. He was in the right to guard his daughter from such contamination; yet the price Terence had made him pay for doing his duty could scarcely be reckoned.

At one blow, again a Conway had slighted him, crushed his natural ambition, destroyed his hopes of social and pecuniary advancement. Shame on the man who had done this!—who, forgetful of kindness, unmindful of friendship, careful for nothing save his own ill way, was coward enough to give Mostrene to one perfectly undeserving such a gift, and, heedless of all his implied promises, ignore the claims of Audna’s father, whose only fault was care for an only child.

Dark was the record Terence gazed on as he sat looking at the dying fire; long the list of his follies; well-nigh hopeless the prospect the future unrolled. He was too sad and sick even for repentance, even to ask for help against himself. Surely he felt in his soul that night no Conway need ever desire a worse enemy than his own nature, and it was with a heavy groan he at last passed out of the library and went upstairs.

Early next morning he rose, after an almost sleepless night, fully determined to come to an understanding with Mr. Walley.

Byrne, however, had been beforehand with that individual, and when Mr. Conway entered the dining-room he found it empty.

In the open air the misdemeanant was waiting to make his apologies.

“I’m heart-sorry I so far forgot myself, Mr. Conway,” he said very humbly, “I hope you will look over the offence. I’ll take care it sha’n’t occur again.”

“It certainly shall not in my house,” returned Terence.

“I came over with the best intentions.”

“Whatever your intentions, your performances seem to have been of the worst.”

“Ah, sir, you mustn’t heed all that servants tell you. I have done wrong; but maybe not as much wrong as you’ve heard.”

“Clearly understand this, Walley. You must never attempt to enter my doors again.”

“Well, well, Mr. Conway, that’s for you to order, of course.”

“I do order it; and your wife must go home also.”

“I have no objection to that. Sure, it was to suit your own pleasure she came.”

“And the amount I have been allowing you for the loss of her services I will continue.”

“I am beholden to you. I only asked just the bare money it cost me to get an old woman to take her place.”

“You paid good wages, then,” remarked his son-in-law.

“Nothing so out of the way. However, that’s neither here nor there; will I come for my wife, or will you pay her fare back by the car?”

“I will send her home.”

“Then we’ve no need to say more to one another; and I may bid you good-morning.”

“Good morning,” answered Terence; but before he went Walley paused for a moment, and then said with a jeer,

“I’m thinking, Mr. Conway, you’ve wished many’s the time you had paid me what I asked and got shut of the lot of us. It’s my notion you lost more nor you saved.”

XLIII

A BAD SHOT

Remembering the natural horror a man feels at the idea of “things being known,” it is strange to consider the relief he experiences when “things are known.”

Miserable though in most respects he was, Conway of Calgarry had at least this one consolation: that the world—his world—knew the worst which could be told concerning him.

There are few trials a man can be called on to endure equal to being thought better, cleverer, more truthful, more courageous than he is; and it seems to such a one like casting aside a burden when he comes down from some tottering pedestal on which he has been placed by himself, accident, or the partiality of friends, and feels the firm ground of actual fact beneath his feet once more.

A man had much better have his real life regarded as his ideal than have his ideal taken for his real; and Terence Conway felt an actual sense of ashamed satisfaction when at last everyone knew him for what he was.

No need to walk on stilts any more, no necessity to stand on tiptoe, no use in feigning himself great or even well-principled. He was, after all, spite of his good resolutions and avowedly excellent intentions, a very sorry fellow, unstable as water, weak, sinful, revengeful; ungrateful to God and his best friends, one whom his best friends knew at last as his Maker had always known him. Now the need for concealment was over, there was nothing to conceal. His mind held no hidden infirmity of which those about him were ignorant. Nothing he could do in the future ought greatly to surprise them or his own soul. There was not a depth of folly to which he could sink, there was not a height of malice to which he could climb, that would in the future take any human being unawares.

There is a story told of a lawyer who, in the troublous times of ’93 never would defend a client who asserted his innocence. Over and over again, it is stated, he was sent for by prisoners who persisted in declaring they were not guilty, till he sometimes left them, saying, “I can be of no use to you.”

And then there followed him a little message, “another word before you go,” and he went back, and the confession was made, and more often than not he brought those who, if they had greatly sinned, had been greatly sinned against, from the very foot of the gallows back to hope and life.

Every day this story has its counterpart in each human experience. Till the last moment people will not speak the truth, and how is it possible to help those who persistently deceive themselves and their best friends? It is not pleasant to stand naked and ashamed before the world, but that may well be a far lesser evil than walking through the streets wrapped in fair garments that any moment may be rent open, revealing what the man so clothed really is.

For so long a time Terence, once full of good resolutions, once determined to show how clear a conscience even a Conway could carry within his breast, had been conscious of his own shortcomings and of his fatal weakness, that even in the midst of his shame and regret it was a comfort to him to know man had nothing more to find out. When he asked advice from Mr. Stirling—and he had left himself no other adviser—that gentleman, aware of the disease preying on him, could freely give counsel and consider how best to give relief.

After Mr. Conway’s return from Dublin, owner and agent talked very openly together. Many times in a week they held long consultations, and Mr. Stirling, wherever he might be and whatever he might be doing, was devoting his mind to thinking what Terence’s better course would be.

He inclined to letting Calgarry House with the fishing and shooting. “The money will be useful, and it will break the strength of the Walley connection. When you’ve been away for a while, and your wife has seen more of the world, things will be quite different. After two or three years Mrs. Conway will be able to hold her own with anybody. By that time Walley might be out of Donegal. I heard the other day that Corrigan is going to America, and that Walley did tell a friend he thought after a while he might follow his example. Fact is, Walley is doing about as badly as he can. He lost a lot of money indirectly over that warranty case in Meath, and he has been neglecting his business for a year past. I think he’ll want to be bought off before we’re much older; but anyhow I’ve a notion you would do well to let Calgarry and go clean away.”

The idea found favour with Terence, and it may be known how keen was the arrow which had pierced him and how deep it had penetrated when he, the poor, proud, cursed descendant of a haughty and doomed race, could think with pleasure of letting the old home even for a couple of years to strangers.

“Other times other manners.” Many people, even great people, think no more of letting their home now than of hiring a cab, but it was different in 1856. Whether it has been well for the chalk mark which drew a line between the doings of Vere de Vere and Gubbins say, to be rubbed out, is scarcely a matter to be decided here. It has been rubbed out, but it had not been then, and Terence ought to have objected to such a process.

That he did not only proves how deeply the Nun had branded her Curse.

Yes, he liked Mr. Stirling’s commonplace and sensible advice. In his soul he did not see any real good following it would do him, but the course proposed might at least open up a fresh chance in a fresh place.

Of course, while he lived it would be always Terence Conway as chief figure on the boards; but on new boards—strange boards—with a different audience and a stronger company, he might compass satisfactory results.

There seemed to him scarcely hope; but there was a chance of being able to hope in the prospect of such a change. At all events, for many reasons the advice recommended itself to him.

And he was not then distracted by a multitude of counsellors. He had cut each rope to its final strand; he had burnt every boat of his life’s flotilla, save Mr. Stirling. Without this man’s help he must be ruined, he would have been ruined; and he knew in everything his agent proposed there was good sound sense, if not sentiment.

And this man remained, though so many were gone from him. By his own act he had estranged the one friend he valued more highly than any other. All the countryside knew the Mostrene loaves and fishes had been given to Mr. Blair—“a man strange to them all,” as the primitive Donegal folks expressed the matter—and that Mr. Malet was no further forward than when he came, a “well-looking foreigner,” to Calgarry, with the old Duke’s then heir. They had not liked him much then—they had not, indeed, liked him at all; his ways were not their ways, or his accent either. It was well known potatoes at the Vicarage were peeled for table, though real quality thought them never worth eating unless hot out of their jackets; and any fool in Donegal could, if he liked, speak better English than a man who called Hennery Henry, and ellum elm; who “conceited” himself it was right to say peril and not perl, and who, generally speaking, was an ignorant though self-opinionated person.

Nevertheless, in the long-run—often as in this case, the very long-run—cleverness, honesty, thoroughness, and independence must produce some effect, even on the most prejudiced.

Mr. Malet was high and proud, and hard to get at the bottom of; but he had not been guilty of a single mean action since he came to Calgarry. His word was his bond; he was slow to promise, but sure to perform; he was not one person today and another tomorrow. If he had his “notions,” he did not go about interfering with other people’s notions. He would have his work done as he liked, but he never hinted his neighbours might not have theirs done or left undone to their mind. There was a heap to be said for him, and not much against him; and Mr. Conway had acted unjustly in passing by Mr. Malet, and giving Mostrene to a stranger.

Everyone knew it was as good as promised to him; and if a man got a promise of anything, whether of land or living, he ought to get it.

“I was over at Mostrene yesterday,” said Mr. Stirling to Terence, some little time after the latter’s return from Dublin, “and I saw Mr. Regan. He told me he understood Mr. Blair was to have the living, and seemed a good deal surprised Mr. Malet had not got it.”

“Mr. Regan wanted it himself, I suspect,” answered Terence, begging the reference to Mr. Malet.

“Very likely; he’s a pushing man, and will never lose anything by forgetting to put himself forward. I told him I didn’t believe Mr. Malet ever really thought he would get the living; at any rate, I said I knew he had been wise enough not to build any plans upon Mostrene.”

“Mr. Malet might have had the living,” returned Terence shortly.

“Very likely; but then he is not a man to kneel down and worship anybody.”

“Do you mean that I wished him to kneel down and worship me?” asked Terence.

“Not exactly; but you wanted him always to say you were right, and he wouldn’t do it.”

“He certainly did not, at any rate.”

“And I am sure he meant well by you, Mr. Conway, and I am heart-sorry you passed him by; though, as I said before, I feel sure he set no great faith that he would ever get Mostrene.”

Which last statement contained such a plain hint, little importance could be attached to Terence’s most solemnly implied promises that the owner of Calgarry did not think fit to continue the subject.

On the whole, Mr. Stirling was glad he had adopted Mark’s suggestion, and bound his employer in legal fetters. He knew now the point where the Terence Conway barque was unseaworthy.

“Faith, I am beginning to think,” he considered, “that employers are all alike, and that there is no dependence to be placed on one of them. It is a deuced nasty trick to pitch Mr. Malet over, and all because he would not let his daughter visit Walley’s daughter; as if any man worth the name would like his daughter to visit that poor little baggage! I shall be very glad when she is away from Calgarry;” and he worked on to accomplish this end so assiduously that at length advertisements appeared in the London Times, and in some of the Dublin and Belfast papers, stating that Calgarry House, replete with every convenience, was to be let furnished from year to year or for a term. Then all the world who cared to read or know learned about the fishing and the shooting, the trout and the salmon in the Garry, and the cod and turbot, to say nothing of whales and other sea-monsters that afforded extraordinary excitement in Calgarry Bay. By the end of April he had so worked on Terence as to induce him to take a house in the county Cork, for Mrs. Conway did not much care about going to England, or France, or Italy, or any other “foreign country.”

One lovely morning in May, Conway of Calgarry sat in his library, turning out and destroying such papers as he did not intend to preserve.

He had made his will some time before, and there was about the revision of the past and preparation for the uncertain future such a warning concerning the shortness of this life and the nearness of another, that not all the sweet spring sunshine could banish the deep sense of depression which comes over most of us when we are called upon to meet those ghosts that linger among old letters, clothing themselves in faded ink and yellow paper, scented with scores of different perfumes that recall the time when such scents meant much to us.

Terence turned over the papers, and, as he did so, the hopes, the follies, the disappointments, the loves of his life sprang into being again. Letters from his mother, his father, from uncles and aunts long dead and well-nigh forgotten; from the old Duke; from schoolmates scattered far and wide; from duns, from moneylenders, from friends, from Lettie, from Mr. Malet, from Audna, from Sir Henry, from Philippa—not many from her, or important in the least—but O, with what tender care they had been cherished!

That old ghost—that love for the sake of which he had suffered so terribly—which he thought worth all the world—which in reality was worth nothing—he could have taken by the throat, and, dead though it was, shaken in his fury. All her letters—every one—he destroyed mercilessly. Never again should that phantom with the saintlike face and heart of stone arise in this form to mock him; and it fared the same with all other papers save those which it seemed essential to keep. Basket after basket he filled with what now were mere waste scraps, and basket after basket Byrne carried out to be destroyed, till at last, opening a drawer where lay some late correspondence, he saw a letter which he had thrust aside unopened many weeks previously.

It was from Mr. Malet, written after Mr. Blair’s appointment to Mostrene, and Terence had not cared to break the seal and read the reproaches he knew he deserved. He never intended to read them, in fact, and he was holding the envelope in both hands preparatory to tearing it and its enclosure in two, when a feeling he could not analyse restrained him.

He laid the letter down again and looked at the well-known writing, which, when a lad, he had often been so glad to see. As the salt Atlantic waves swept twice in each twenty-four hours over the sands of Calgarry Bay, cleansing and purifying them, so now the memory of a thousand kindnesses rushed through Terence’s heart, softening his hardness and sweetening the bitter waters that stagnated there.

No; whatever of sarcasm or anger that letter might contain, he could not destroy it thus contemptuously.

“I am beginning a new life,” so the young fellow’s thought ran, “and I won’t begin it by being a coward.” Then, nerving himself as if to face a blow, he cut the wrapper, took up the written sheet and read:

My dear Terence,—

I can bear to lose what was never mine, but I cannot bear to lose you; so now that you have given Mostrene to a man who, I hope, is far worthier than myself, and that you cannot think I have any ulterior worldly object to serve, I ask you to resume the old friendship which I am vain enough to believe you found pleasant once. Will you come to me, or shall I go to you? I want to speak to you. I hear you are arranging to leave Calgarry; and before doing so, I would entreat you to pause. You have made many mistakes—be very sure before you take another step you cannot recall that you are not adding another to the number. At the risk of again offending you, I must tell you that no human being can change himself by changing his residence. Wherever we go we carry with us our means, our ailments, our weaknesses, our burdens, our temptations. We cannot get rid of our natures by flight. There is no spot of God’s earth on which we may not fight a battle with ourselves, and, with His help, win. It seems to me you ought to fight yours at Calgarry. When you came into the property you purposed to do great things for others—begin to do even small things now, and you will soon find yourself stronger, better, happier. At least, let us talk your difficulties over; and believe that I am, as I have always been, your faithful friend,

A. Malet.

This was the letter Terence had left for weeks unopened, which he had intended never to open. For a moment he remained stunned, like one who, expecting to meet a peremptory demand for money, finds instead a receipt in full. Then he thrust the papers still strewed about back into the drawers; and, after no further delay than that involved in putting on his hat, flung the outer door wide, and passed joyously out.

How delightful the spring sunshine seemed to him! how warm its glow—how exhilarating its brightness! Ah! after all there were no friends like old friends—slow to take offence, quick to forget injury. He had behaved as badly and ungratefully as it was possible for a man to behave. Once again he had done that which he could never undo; yet he was going, with something of the sap of hope which must have stirred in the repentant prodigal’s heart, to make ample confession, and to say with deep abasement, “I have sinned against Heaven and before thee. I have loved my own way, and found it a bad way. I know now that for all the troubles that have come upon me I have only myself to thank. I have done ill in the past, but I mean to try to do better in the future, God helping me.”

Aloud these words he well knew would never be spoken, but he felt audible utterance was not necessary for Mr. Malet to understand the spirit of them.

By the touch of his hand, by the look in his face, by the tone of his voice, his old friend would know the contrite thoughts that lay deep in his soul.

Never had his home seemed to him so fair; never had Calgarry Bay looked more serenely beautiful; never had the headlands appeared to him one half so sternly grand, or the bare earth, which had but recently donned its fresh robe of vivid green, so lovely—as on that May morning when he strode rapidly along the sands.

The mirror of his mind, which for long had shown him all objects strangely distorted, reflected nothing then save what was beautiful. The gulls flying like white spirits to and fro their dizzy resting-places; the soft west wind, bringing health and freshness with it; the sunlight lying upon Muckish, as though halting there for a noontide rest; horses and men busy in the fields close at hand; a great sense of peace pervading the landscape, and an infinite joy in Terence’s heart. He was so glad, so thankful, so confident there had come with Mr. Malet’s letter some sort of turning-point in his life, that he could have shouted like a boy in answer to the roar of distant breakers, and imitated the shrill cry of the sea-birds as they circled and wheeled above the great Atlantic, dropping every now and then to dive into its depths or to skim as if in play over its rippling waves.

He had stood for a moment to look, with quite a new feeling of sympathy and interest, at his own great farm, which Mr. Stirling was already making profitable. From those broad pastures he heard the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep; the whinnying of mares, running with colts by their side; the strange “come back—come back” of scores of guinea-fowl; the busy prating of hens, and the endless conversation ducks maintain over meals which never seem concluded—course succeeding to course so long as succulent snails and ill-advised worms can be discovered by any one of the party.

A new sense of property came over Terence as he looked and listened. Even so might one of the patriarchs of old have gazed over a land where his herds wandered free by the grace of no man, and all that his eyes beheld belonged to him.

Those thousands of acres which were so rapidly being brought under cultivation—those vast grazing grounds whereon his sheep, his cows, his horses, his goats were roaming at will, all belonged to Conway of Calgarry—the very sand under his feet, carpeted by millions of tiny shells wrought into a pattern no human artificer could copy, was his possession. With a thrill of pleasure he thought of the changes Mr. Stirling had already effected, and of the still greater changes it seemed reasonable to believe he would effect in the future, and for the first time a desire to take some active part in the management of his estate quickened within him. Perhaps, after all, he need not leave Calgarry for any lengthened period—perhaps if he and Grace went away to that house in county Cork, he could so arrange as to come often to Donegal.

He and Mr. Malet would talk matters over. How glad he felt to be going to the Vicarage once more! It was time he left the shore, and, striking across a wild waste stretch of ground, strewed with great boulders, tufted with rushes—tiring to walk over on account of the quantities of coarse ling which covered it—gain a path which led to the back of Mr. Malet’s house.

He had not traversed that path for many a long day; never, in fact, since he entered into possession of Calgarry. But he would follow it now; he was in the mood for reviving old associations.

The farm and Mr. Stirling’s house were left a good way in the rear; there was a great silence all round. Not a sound, save the distant wash of the breakers, disturbed the stillness. And Terence walked on through the ling, among the boulders, over the turf which often sank and sobbed under the weight of his springing feet.

Suddenly the report of a gun rang through the air—then, without a cry, Terence fell forward full length on the ground. As he did so, a man who had been following him ever since he left the shore—a man who there seemed to have sprung out of the ground—ran hurriedly to the spot, and stooped down over the prostrate figure. Then he raised himself and uttered a great shout for help.

Through that lonely country the news of what had happened flew like wild-fire. It ran up the hillsides and along the valleys. Before night fell there was not a soul from Gweedore to Letterkenny—aye, and farther still—but knew “young Mr. Conway lay for dead at Calgarry Vicarage, where they carried him.”

“God save us!” cried the people, “what had he ever done to be shot down like a dog?” and they thought of the old Duke, who died in his bed, full of years, after a life of wickedness.

“Lord be between us and harm, it is the Nun!” said one, at last giving expression to what was passing through the minds of his fellows.

“It is the Nun!”—and as the peasants stood in groups beside their cabin doors, or drew close around their glowing turf fires, every story and legend that had during centuries gathered about the name of Conway was repeated with bated breath, and in those awe-stricken tones people employ when they speak of matters that belong to the dim borderland which faintly divides this world from the next.

In one cottage, however, which stood lonely beside Goblin Bay, a greater horror even than the Nun had crept in with the story.

“You’re sure and certain he’s not dead?” said Mrs. Walley, standing with blanched face and shaking limbs in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“He wasn’t when I left Mr. Malet’s,” answered her husband. “The doctor gave hopes of him, though he’s sorely torn and knocked about. It was an awful bad shot, whoever fired it.”

“The thing that gets over me,” observed Mrs. Walley, “is what Pat was doing about Calgarry; he had no call to be there at all.”

“Will you hold your tongue, woman?” retorted Mr. Walley. “Do you want to put a rope round the lad’s neck?”

XLIV

AT SUNRISE

If the stern heart of Donegal had felt its pulses quicken with joy when the old Duke was at last called to deliver up the stewardship he had so long misused, it was stirred to its depths with pity for the young Conway stricken down in such a fashion.

A man is always liked in proportion to his faults. Though he may be admired and respected for his virtues, people have a much greater sympathy with and tolerance for error than is generally supposed.

There is nothing offensive to any one of us in the individual who often goes wrong, but it tries us very hard to be tolerant towards the person who invariably goes right. We feel there must be something greatly amiss about him if we only knew it; and even if there be not, his very perfection seems an offence to us.

Probably it was because everybody understood Terence Conway could lay no claim to pose as a model his neighbours ought to copy, that the tide of popular sympathy set so strongly in his favour. Though a landlord, the people mourned over him; though a Protestant, Roman Catholics remembered him in beautiful words of prayer. Though suspected of Orange proclivities, Ribbonmen hoped with all their souls he would recover. His few good actions were talked about as the old Duke’s countless evil deeds had never been.

“He was always freehanded, God help him! And his heart was soft and tender to the poor.”

“He hadn’t a bit of pride in him. I mind me one day I was carrying the child and a big basket, and he came along riding, and pulled up beside me and says, ‘Now which will I take, Mrs. Beattie, for I’m afraid I can’t manage both?’—and he lifted the child, bare feet and petticoats, on to the saddle before him.”

“If he had his failings, who’s without them?”

“That’s true enough; and though he did bring trouble on the girl, he married her, and what could he do more?”

“There’s many a one wouldn’t have done as much.”

“Aye, it would be telling him if he’d never clapped eyes on Walley’s daughter.”

“It’s an ill day when for a wild slip like Grace Walley one man is lying at death’s door and another in gaol. What call poor Pat had to meddle in the matter now beats me entirely.”

Precisely the same thing “beat” many people; but the unreasonableness of Pat’s conduct did not, unhappily, induce any belief in his innocence. Walley’s injunctions concerning reticence, which his wife religiously observed, had no effect whatever in stopping the tongues of other people, who kept always asking, “But what took him to Calgarry?”

The police, who arrested Corrigan as he was stepping on board a vessel bound for America, were supposed to know all about the matter, but they vouchsafed no information; and, even if inclined, Pat could not. He was a prisoner, with the chances very much against him—black against him, indeed. There was every reason why he should be guilty; and though it may truly be said there was not a soul in all those parts who wished to see him convicted, neither was there a creature who believed him innocent.

Mr. Conway knew nothing about this. While the buds were opening in May, and the few roses Donegal boasts being drenched by the June showers, he lay as one who could never rise again.

When he was at his worst, Mr. Boyne came over and took his deposition, which simply amounted to this—that he knew nothing about the matter. He had met no one, spoken to no one, from the time he left Calgarry till he “felt something like a hot iron in his back. Ere he lost consciousness he remembered making a wild attempt to save himself from falling, and then going down, down. After that a blank ensued. He did not think there was a creature in Donegal who would have attempted his life. What good could his death do anyone? He believed the whole thing to be an accident. He knew he was in serious danger; he did not think he could recover. The doctor had told him he had no hope. He felt very tired.

He had nothing more to add.” And then he made a movement to put out his hand, which Mr. Boyne wrung, and exclaimed, “My dear fellow, my dear fellow!” twice over, not knowing exactly what he was saying.

All that night Mr. Malet sat by him, keeping the doctor in the house; but towards dawn there came a change. Just as the tide began to flow Terence fell into a quiet natural sleep, and when the sun rose he was sleeping still. With a sigh of amazed relief, the Vicar turned from the bedside, to see framed in the doorway a poor, pathetic, pretty, frightened, pleading face.

“Don’t be angry, please,” whispered Grace, when he went out on the landing to speak to her. “I didn’t come all these hours, though I have been wide awake, because you told me not, and I trusted to you. Is he still alive?”

“He is still alive, my dear, and asleep.”

“O, God be praised! O, Lord be praised! Blessed Mother, I thank thee!” and the poor child raised her clasped hands to heaven.

“Now go back to your bed,” said Mr. Malet very softly.

She had touched his heart. Whose heart, indeed, would poor loving Grace not have touched?

“Mayn’t I stop here just for a bit?” she entreated.

“Yes,” answered the Vicar, after an instant’s hesitation; “but you must promise me not to speak to him if he wakes.”

“’Deed, an’ I’ll do that,” she said. “What wouldn’t I do to cure him?”

“I believe you would do anything in your power,” said Mr. Malet, laying his hand on her shoulder; for he felt bitterly sorry for the poor young thing, who could never be a wife meet for Conway of Calgarry.

So far as his lights went—and they went a long way—the Vicar was not a man to shirk any duty, no matter how unpleasant.

He had felt it his duty to declare his daughter should not call on Mrs. Conway; but when Terence was stricken down he opened his doors as freely to the wife as to the husband. He foresaw difficulty in the future; but that did not prevent him doing what he thought right in the present.

Letitia also was at the Vicarage. Mark read the news in the Times at breakfast; and within an hour Mrs. Barry was on her way to Belfast, whence she travelled to Donegal as fast as railways and post-horses could take her. She made an altogether forced march, and reached her destination to be welcomed as even Mr. Malet had never welcomed her before.

“My dear Lettie—my dear, dear Lettie, how glad I am to see you!” he exclaimed; and then she put her arms round his neck and wept, and there was silence between them.

What a host she was in herself! What a nurse! How wise! How useful!

The Vicar, whose ideal of what a gentlewoman ought to be was high, had often wished Mrs. Barry different in many respects; but during those long and weary weeks, when life and death waged a continual war over Terence, he felt no desire for change in her, but could only agree with Ann Patterson when she said, “Mrs. Barry is worth her weight in gold.”

Regarding the young wife as the cause of Terence’s latest misfortune, she regarded her at first with distinct disfavour; but ere long what she styled “the silliness of the stupid little thing” won her over, and she set herself to work to repair Grace’s deficiencies. She treated Mrs. Conway just like a child. “You must not do that,” “You ought to do this;” and the girl was so docile, so sweet, the nature must indeed have been hard that could be angry because of her many shortcomings.

If it had been possible to remould Grace, she must have changed during that time of kindly and intimate association with two such natures as Mrs. Barry and the Vicar’s daughter.

For the latter Grace’s admiration and affection knew no bounds. She followed her about like a dog, and would sit looking at her in a sort of enthusiastic trance.

“She’s just like an angel,” she said to Mrs. Barry.

“She’s like what is much better,” retorted Letitia, whose opinion was that the Conways’ experience of angels had been unfortunate—“a good true woman.”

And then Grace went away with a little sigh. She could never be such a woman—“so graceful, so gracious, so winning, so learned.”

“The Nun knew what she was about when she lured Terence to Goblin Bay,” observed Letitia to the Vicar. “I suppose if he had searched Ireland through he could scarcely have selected a more hopeless wife than the one he married.”

“I feel I would rather not talk about her,” replied Mr. Malet. “She has so many virtues which must be pleasing in the sight of God that I am ashamed to think how valueless they seem to one who calls himself God’s servant.”

“You see, she is the right thing in the wrong place,” said Mrs. Barry.

“What would be the right place for her?”

“A hillside, with a cow to herd. And I am not at all sure, Mr. Malet, that Mrs. Terence Conway can be so pleasing in the sight of God. If she were a perfect mine of virtues her uselessness would make them of not the slightest avail. She might as well be a mine of vices—better, because then one could hate her.”

Which sentence was so completely “pretty Fanny’s way” that the Vicar did not think it worth while to rebuke the speaker.

“I can’t imagine what Terence will do with her,” went on Mrs. Barry.

“Neither can I,” answered Mr. Malet. “We may feel thankful his future is in the hands of One wiser than either of us.”

His companion did not answer. She was given to little bursts of irreverent criticism, and the speech which rose to her lips she wisely refrained from uttering.

Then, shortly after, there came the relapse, which nearly proved fatal, and that long night when the Vicar alone of all the weary household kept watch beside Terence.

Never was man more glad to see the dawn, never did anyone greet the sun rising with a more thankful heart. Weary in body and mind, Mr. Malet, leaving everyone save Grace asleep in the cottage he had made so pretty, walked down the steps cut in the rocks that led to the shore, and pacing round the tiny headland, from the top of which Terence and Letitia and Audna had so often looked across the wide Atlantic, found himself in Calgarry Bay.

It was a great sweep. Any man standing there could enjoy such a landscape as is not often to be met with. Mr. Malet knew it by heart; but never before had he gazed on that expanse of ocean and land in the solitude of early morning, and for a moment he stood entranced, looking upon a scene which seemed, as has been beautifully said, to have “God’s smile upon it.”

He had never loved Donegal—he felt that his heart throbbed in unison with the heart of its people; and yet what a country it was, and how fine many of its people were! Had he done his duty among them? He had tried. But now a light came to him—that his trial was not made in quite the right way. Never did there live a man less disposed to blind himself; and gazing out over the waters of God’s most imposing work, the mighty ocean, he saw, as in a glass dimly, that he had erred in coming to Calgarry at all for the sake of loaves and fishes, since twice given to other men.

Yes, all his life he had been longing for that he voluntarily cast aside; not for rich meats or drinks, not for carriages and a retinue of servants, but for culture, social position, and a competence.

What for more than twenty years had his life been? A long hope doomed to disappointment, a long self-denial made for his daughter, not his Master. Now he saw what an example he might have set, the employment he might have given, the hopes he—whose hopes had been disappointed—might have satisfied.

It was too late for him to recall the past, but not to improve the future. Many hours possibly had still to strike before the eleventh chimed in his life; and God in His mercy told him, as He told others, even then it was not too late to labour in earth’s vineyard. If it pleased the Almighty to cure Terence Conway, he would help him heart and soul to make every man on the Calgarry estate happier, holier.

He was not at all an excitable man, but at that moment he experienced a great exaltation: a feeling came over him that even as he was placed it might please his Master to make him still an instrument for good, a missionary of civilisation to the most beautiful and most unhappy land God ever created.

Just then he saw a yacht which, in the early dawn, had come past Bloody Foreland, and with full canvas sailed before the sweet west wind that had brought the change to Terence Conway, between Tory Island and Horn Head, drop anchor outside Calgarry Bay. Such a thing had never happened before since the early days of his residence in Donegal, and the sight stirred his pulses strangely.

What did not that yacht speak of to him? Of the long, long past; of a time when he lived and moved and had his being amongst those to whom such things, and things like unto them, were considered not the luxuries but the necessaries of existence. Take it as you will—let a man be constituted as he may, let him keep as stern a grip over nature as he can, there come occasions when the contest between what is and what has been must try him sorely; and such an occasion came to Mr. Malet when he saw that shapely yacht drop her anchor, the while all her white sails shone in the sunlight of that glorious morning.

But he was not a man to allow discontent to master him. He lifted his eyes to gloomy Muckish, then let his gaze run swiftly over the low-lying land beside the shore, till it fell on Horn Head, proudly breasting the blue Atlantic, when it reverted to the rippling calm of Calgarry Bay.

“Lord, what is man,” he said humbly, “that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou regardest him?” What was he, in fact, that he hid been permitted to live a life with so little of real trouble in it—so comparatively easy a life, which he was beginning to feel he had not used quite as he might?

As he retraced his steps, Mr. Malet saw Mrs. Barry coming along the sands. She was dressed in a pretty pink gown, and looked fresh and fair as the day.

“Terence is alive!” she cried, running to meet him; “and the doctor says he is likely to live. Now what will he do with his life?”—and she passed her hand through the vicar’s arm with the confident air of a person seeking information from one who could give it.

Mr. Malet looked down at her gravely. “It is all very dark to me, Lettie,” he answered; “but He who has given Terence back his life will, I hope and believe, show him how to make a good thing of it. He will, however, have to face a great trouble—that poor fellow—”

“Yes,” she interrupted; “I cannot get him out of my mind day or night. O, Mr. Malet, do you really think he is guilty?”

“I fear there can be no doubt of it,” answered the Vicar; and they walked on slowly and in silence.

Shortly after noon a stranger called to see Mr. Malet. The visitor was shown into the study, where Terence had made his confession of extravagance and impecuniosity, and as he entered looked round the room with an expression of grave and pained astonishment. He remained standing till the clergyman appeared, when he held out his hand, saying,

“My dear Malet—”

“I ought to remember you,” was the reply; “but I confess—”

“No; don’t tell me you have forgotten Jack Mulgrave?”

“I have not forgotten Jack Mulgrave,” answered the Vicar, warmly grasping the hand he still held; “but I scarcely recognize him in you.”

“Never mind; you will presently;” and the two looked each in the other’s face wistfully.

“How many, many years have passed since we met?” said the Vicar at length.

“Aye, indeed, we were young then;” and again they looked at one another, sadly realising they could never be young any more.

“And what has brought you to Donegal, of all unlikely places?” asked Mr. Malet, after a pause.

“The wish to see you,” answered the other. “It is the fact,” he went on. “I had quite lost sight of you—to speak frankly, you had become a dim memory to me, when this sad business of Mr. Conway’s, all about which I read in Vienna, recalled the past vividly to me.”

“‘Malet—Malet,’ I thought; ‘that must be my old chum. I remember he went with one of the Conways to Ireland. Good heavens! can he really have stayed there ever since?’”

“You say that,” remarked Mr. Malet, with a grave smile, “as if I might as well have been in Siberia.”

“Well, at the first blush I did think so; but second thoughts, you know, are best, and I began to consider a man could as readily spend twenty years of his life in Ireland as in China and Japan, where I have been for nearly the same time.”

“Doing well, I hope.”

“I have made my fortune, if that is doing well—and you?”

“I have not made mine,” was the answer.

Then ensued another pause. Mr. Mulgrave did not like to ask any further questions, and Mr. Malet felt he could add nothing to his answer. Then the former, recovering himself, walked to the window and remarked that the view from it was very beautiful.

“The scenery about here is marvellously grand,” said Mr. Malet.

“I should imagine so. I hope to know it well ere long, for my brother-in-law has an idea of renting Calgarry House; in fact, he is with the agent now. When he told me he intended to take a run round the west coast of Ireland in his yacht, and stop at Calgarry on his way back to Scotland, I asked him to let me be one of the company.”

“Then I suppose that was his yacht I stood admiring this morning as she lay just outside Calgarry Bay?”

“Yes; we arrived shortly after sunrise, and here I am.”

“Is it possible that Mr. Norbury is your brother-in-law?”

“It is not merely possible, but certain. He is a splendid fellow; he tells me he would have liked to buy the property.”

“Perhaps he would like to buy it still?” suggested Mr. Malet.

“I think that is very probable. But now I want to know why for all these years you have kept aloof from all your former friends, and buried yourself here?”

XLV

POOR PAT

The little town where Donegal holds her assizes was crowded when the day came on which Patrick Corrigan was to stand his trial. All the world was there—and if the world’s wife did not also put in her appearance, it was simply because fashion, at that benighted period, had not set a hall-mark on many things which are considered quite proper and delightful now.

Many of the persons we have met had secured or been secured high seats and humbler standing-room.

The Calgarry folk mustered in force. Mr. McKye, junior, had left his flock for the day, and Mr. McKye, senior, his farm. Byrne had got a good place, and Mr. Stirling squeezed himself into a corner. A select party from Mostrene drove over sufficiently early to take seats before the rush began.

Sir Henry did not cross the Channel in order to give Terence the comfort of his presence. He told Lady Beecham he felt he had already sacrificed himself to such an extent on the altar of her family that, if he were to live, the Conways must for the future stand or fall on their own merits.

“If the old Duke had been in question, he’d have been off like a shot,” said Mr. Mark Barry, when, with a view of combining “duty with pleasure,” as he told all whom the statement might concern, he was going to Lifford to hear that “poor beggar’s trial,” and to bring home his wife.

“And which is the pleasure?” asked Mr. Benaron, who was one of the individuals to whom Mark imparted this information when they met on the platform at Euston.

“I will leave that for you to find out,” returned the barrister. “Aren’t you glad now you are out of it all? What an awkward position you might be in now if you had not taken advice in time!”

“It is a pity,” answered the other, who was bent on an errand of mercy at Harrow, “you did not give some advice to Mr. Conway when you were scattering words of wisdom about.”

“Ah! there are people it’s no good advising, and my foolish cousin is one of them. What d’ye say, will you run over with me and hear the fun?”

“The spectacle of a man on his trial for attempted murder would be no fun to me, I assure you,” was the solemn reply.

“It runs your own stand-and-deliver business too close, eh? As far as I can hear, he has no defence worth a snap of my fingers, so most likely his friends will get up an alibi. The feeling in Donegal, my wife tells me, is that, though no one doubts his guilt, no one wants him to be found guilty.”

“What a delightful country!” remarked Mr. Benaron.

“It is—when you don’t want to get any money out of the people,” answered Mark. “You won’t be persuaded to come? Well, then, good-bye for the present. Heaven guard you!” and with a smile that instantly faded as he turned away, Mr. Barry jumped into the train, and departed to “see the fun.”

There had not been much fun in the position for Pat. At first, when he was taken into custody, he kept up a good heart, for he had never studied the papers, possibly because he could not read, and was deficient in that law lore amid which Mr. Walley loved to riot. He believed that on the Crown lay the burden of proving him guilty. In common with many others, matters changed their aspect greatly in his eyes when he found it would be necessary for him to show his innocence.

It presses very hardly on a man when even his own lawyer entertains grave doubts as to the truthfulness of his statements, and wishes him to explain things that cannot possibly be explained on any reasonable grounds.

“What took you to Calgarry?” asked his adviser.

“Just what I said from the first—to see Mrs. Conway.”

“And what induced you to follow Mr. Conway?”

“I wanted to mind him of the past, and to ask him to be good to her in time to come.”

“That was a mighty foolish notion.”

“Maybe so, but I thought he might heed me.”

“Did you meet anybody by the way?”

“Not a one—man, woman, or child.”

“And you saw no one when you heard the shot?”

“No, the gun was fired from among the rocks.”

“When, as you say, you had just stepped off the shore.”

“I might have walked thirty or forty yards across the heather.”

“Humph!” said the lawyer; “you see what we have to do is, prove you were not among the rocks.”

“I was not, sir; I never set foot among them in my life.”

“That may be.”

“You don’t think I am telling you a lie, sir, do you?” asked Pat, struck by something in the solicitor’s tone.

“O no, of course not!” was the polite reply, which struck the prisoner with a cold shudder as jeering. “But let me impress upon you, all we have to consider now is—what the jury will think.”

“Sure, they can’t be off believing me when I tell them the truth?”

“Do you know of any enemy Mr. Conway had who might have been lying in wait for him?”

“There are few as haven’t some enemy; but as to saying I know anyone that wanted his life, I couldn’t—and if I could I wouldn’t; for maybe I might be as wrong then as the police are about me now.”

This was the net result of all the interviews between client and solicitor; and Mr. Duffern felt himself finally in a very awkward position.

He and the means to fee counsel had been provided for the prisoner by an anonymous gentleman, who employed other solicitors to guide him in his selection of a good lawyer. With the best intentions, Corrigan’s Good Samaritan made a mistake by thus keeping in the background; for Mr. Duffern naturally jumped to the conclusion that another motive influenced this benevolence besides pity for Pat’s forlorn condition—namely, a desire to prevent any reference to Terence’s shortcomings in court. Those shortcomings had been referred to by every paper in the kingdom; but the solicitor felt rather in a difficulty as to how he should perform his duty towards his client and at the same time refrain from allusions that could not but be unpleasant to Mr. Terence Conway. He brought, in a word, what is absolutely fatal—a prejudiced mind—to bear on the case, and, as a result, he himself said to Corrigan:

“I should advise you to plead guilty and have done with it.”

“I can’t do that, sir, when I’m innocent.”

Mr. Duffern paused. He did not like exactly to tell the man he felt sure he was nothing of the sort—that is always an impolitic as well as impolite thing to do. Yet he conscientiously believed no jury could fail to convict, and—

“Anyhow, I strongly advise you to plead guilty,” he repeated. “You see, things look very black against you; we have not a single shred of evidence in your favour, except that no one saw you with a gun in your hand or knew you to possess a gun. But you need not build on this; only proving that you might be innocent, not that you are, leaves us in as unsatisfactory a position as before. On the other hand, everybody knows you sustained the strongest provocation, and I believe from my heart, if you do as I say, you may get off very easily. You’ll have the benefit of a kindly old judge, inclined to look favourably on you because, as he will explain, ‘you have not wasted the time of the Court’ He will know Mr. Conway robbed you of your sweetheart, and in consequence your sentence will be light. If my own brother stood in your shoes I could give him no better counsel.”

Pat looked at the lawyer with a white scared face, and swallowed what seemed to him a great lump in his throat before he could reply.

“Often, sir, my mind misgives me that you don’t believe a word I tell you.”

“We need not go into that,” said Mr. Duffern.

“Asking your pardon, we can’t help going into it—because, sir, if you had done no wrong (I hope you are not offended at my evening myself with you just for a minute), how would you like to be asked to say you had? And I never lifted my hand against Mr. Conway; when I felt sorest about the harm he’d done me, and one I thought more of nor myself, it never entered into my mind to do him an injury—so that is why I can’t say I’m guilty, and I am heart-vexed Mr. Conway should deem me guilty. I never served a master I liked better—and, God help me, though he has done me all the wrong one man can do another, I like him still.”

Making bricks without straw seemed to Mr. Duffern a mere bagatelle when compared with defending a man who could keep up such a game as this. Nevertheless, he instructed the best counsel he could find, and kept a bold front before the enemy, not knowing what a day or an hour might bring forth.

Never before in his life had poor Pat been the centre of such universal interest and observation as when he stood in the dock at Lifford, with the eyes of the county fastened on him.

Pale, thin, worn, and poorly dressed, he was but a shadow of the spruce, well-cared-for young fellow who appeared in answer to his master’s summons on that Sunday evening ere the hope of his life was killed. Yet he had made an effort to set himself and his shabby clothing off to as much advantage as possible, and he held his head up, and strove to meet the compassionate and curious gaze of his fellows without flinching.

“He brazens it out well,” thought Mr. Duffern, whose last words to Pat had been a repetition of his former advice; but Pat only shook his head and answered, “I’ll stand or fall by what I said.”

“Never surely was there so obstinate a client,” lamented the solicitor.

Not a long trial—drawn out for days—artificially lengthened by prosy statements and needless cross-examination. Counsel for the Crown took at once all the wind out of the sails of his learned friend on the other side by mentioning every matter which could possibly be raised, not indeed to prove Corrigan’s innocence, but in mitigation of his offence.

“Had it been possible,” he said, “he would have kept a lady’s name out of the question; but as she would have to be examined, he wished at once to concede a number of points on which there could be no dispute, so as to spare, if possible, his learned friend the pain of putting questions that must of necessity prove exquisitely unpleasant.

“Told simply,” so he remarked, “this is but an everyday story of weakness, of sin, of folly, of punishment, of a late expiation, and, finally, of a wild vengeance. He did not wish to raise a prejudice in the minds of the jury against the prisoner, who had been very hardly done by—very hardly, gentlemen—but he knew before his short statement was finished he should make it plain to their intelligence that Mr. Conway had well-nigh lost his life at the hand of a desperate man, who, after long brooding over his wrongs, had determined to wreak his vengeance ere taking his departure for America. No doubt that man thought he had laid his plans well in order to escape detection. He was the first to proffer help, to cry aloud for assistance; he even lent his aid to staunch the blood, and to carry his former master to the Vicarage.

“In consequence of his actions so little suspicion was excited that no one tried to detain him, and had it not been for a member of that admirable and active body whose vigilance never slept, and whose intuition was rarely at fault—he meant, of course, the Irish Constabulary—the unhappy man who now stood before them would long since have escaped to America, and vanished from the ken of justice. In a firm voice and with a resolute manner Corrigan had pleaded not guilty, but the unhappy duty devolved upon him, the prosecuting counsel, to make his guilt clear as the sun in Heaven.”

Whereupon the sun, as if feeling Mr. Shaen, Q.C., had taken a great liberty in making any comparison of the sort, ill-naturedly ducked behind a cloud, and left the court for a time without the slightest brightness.

And all the while poor Pat stood alert, as if waiting by his horse’s head for his master to come out. He did not feel so “over and above” anxious—yet.

But with the calling of the witnesses his confidence began to waver, and those who looked at him—and that may be said to have been everyone in court—saw a visible change come over his face when “Daniel Walley” answered to his name, and took the oath after the manner of a man who has a weight of trouble on him, and does not know what to do by reason of the burden he is compelled to carry.

He glanced very sadly over at Pat, and then turned his face towards Mr. Shaen, as if challenging him to “come on.”

Counsel had literally to wring his evidence out of him. He tried to fence, but was ignominiously baulked. Asked if Corrigan bore himself like an unhappy man, he could not deny the fact. “He seemed sorely down-hearted—he ate hardly a bite—though pressed, he would not drink any spirits—he comported himself as if he had some great care on his mind.

“They talked a heap among themselves—babbles not worth troubling his honour about. Well, if his lordship wanted to know what they spoke of, he would tell all his memory would let him; there was no harm in what they said.” And then it came out that Terence and Calgarry—the Nun and her Curse—Mrs. Conway and her child, were the sole topics about which they discoursed.

“Did he ask you if Mrs. Conway was looking well?”

“He did so, and I had to tell him the air of Calgarry did not suit her as the air of Goblin Bay had done.”

“Did you say you thought she had rued her marriage but once?”

“I might have done so. I wouldn’t like to swear I didn’t.”

A pin might have been heard fall in court; and, when Mr. Walley was obliged to confess he had told Pat it would be best for him to take the mail-car straight through, and not set foot inside Calgarry gates, a marked sensation was produced.

Cross-examination only elicited that Pat had no gun when he came to and left Goblin Bay.

Re-examined by Mr. Shaen: “Pat had been used to handling firearms from a boy. He was a fine shot.”

On the conclusion of this evidence, Mark Barry, who was near Mr. Stirling, whispered,

“If anybody wants a few nails driven into his coffin, he had better send for that fellow.”

“A bad lot—stock, lock and barrel,” returned the agent, who had never liked Pat’s introduction to the Calgarry stables.

After Mr. Walley, his wife next came on the scene, and every nail he had driven home, Mr. Shaen with her unconscious assistance rivetted.

Never was any creature in such a state of grief and terror—never did any woman before make such appeals to counsel to be “let off” giving evidence against “her own.”

She looked as if she had spent her days in fasting and her nights in weeping, so haggard were her cheeks—so heavy and red her eyes. Pat, she assured the Court, was her own flesh and blood—she had known him from a child; there was not a bit of harm in him, he wouldn’t hurt a fly; and, no matter what anybody thought, she didn’t care how bad things might be made to look against him, she, for one, would never believe he had done an injury to Mr. Conway.

Aye, she did mind Pat said he wished he had not come to bid them good-bye, because it brought back things he’d like to forget. He told them he stood looking at Calgarry as he came along, taking two thoughts if he’d try to get speech of her daughter. He had been terribly fond of Grace; the loss of her changed him into an old man after a fashion. He did not seem to get over the trouble. He was afraid she wasn’t happy; he knew Mr. Conway went a great deal from home; but she told him a better gentleman never drew breath, as why wouldn’t she? It was her right to speak well of Mr. Conway, for kind was no word for what he’d been to her. Walley advised Pat to get out of Donegal as soon as possible, not to stop hovering round Calgarry. He said, “the girl’s going on well enough, and she’ll have to get used to gentlefolk and their ways.”

Mr. Conway was fond of her, no doubt, and she couldn’t look for everything. Hadn’t she the best of food, and a grand house, and servants to wait on her, and clothes for the asking, and it was impossible her husband could be always with her; and as for the child, if Mr. Conway did not greatly care for it, had ever one of his name felt a liking for his heir?

All which little items were skilfully elicited by Mr. Shaen from Mrs. Walley, who sobbed and moaned most pitifully as she gave her evidence, which Mr. Barry felt was garnishing Pat’s coffin with a double row of nails.

“Somebody has got up this case who knows his business,” he remarked sotto voce to Mr. Stirling; and in reply came the one word “Police!”

“Ah! but who is behind the police?” asked Mark. Who, indeed!

The crowning sensation of the day was when Mrs. Conway appeared, gravely escorted by Mr. Malet, who had already told all he had to tell. How he was riding along the high road, when, hearing cries and shouts, he put his horse at the ditch and rode across the waste ground to the spot whence the sounds proceeded, where he found Mr. Conway lying on the ground, bleeding apparently to death, Corrigan kneeling beside him. How further help soon arrived, when he ordered a gate to be taken off its hinges, on which Mr. Conway was carried to the Vicarage near at hand, Corrigan assisting. Asked if Pat seemed cool or excited, said he seemed greatly upset, but not more so than anyone would naturally be under such extraordinary circumstances.

“Was his manner suggestive of innocence?” was the sole question Pat’s counsel put.

“I should say so—not of guilt assuredly. His manner was natural, and he seemed, and, I believe, felt, genuinely grieved.”

When Mrs. Conway stood in the witness-box, whither Mr. Malet had conducted her, a faint sound was heard through the court like that produced on a still day by the rush of an incoming wave over a flat coast.

Everyone present craned forward to look at her, and everyone did so with quiet gentleness, owing to a manly pity and sympathy which was very real.

Never, surely, did so many persons experience at the same moment such a shock of surprise.

Could that insignificant little creature, with white worn face and heavy eyes, and lips once like coral, from which the colour had faded, terrified and shrinking, be really the girl whose beauty had tempted Conway of Calgarry, and brought him that day low as a man could well be brought?

Here was no flaunting sinner brazening out her shame and confronting its outcome with indifference; no imperial woman such as many who have risen from even lower estate, for whose sake lovers ere now have in their madness deemed the world well lost; but only a poor faded wild flower that might have been, in its humble way, lovely once, but was lovely no more.

One man in court, remembering the desolate hill-side where Terence first met her, felt his heart wrung with a great sorrow when he looked at the child, for she, who was the central figure amongst all those men, really seemed little more.

Pat fixed his sad hungry eyes on her—his poor young lost love—and muttered an imprecation which the recording angel refused to hear, but she never saw him. Her frightened gaze did not wander round that sea of strange faces: from first to last she looked but at the men who spoke to her, and answered them as though no audience listened.

“Yes,” in reply to Mr. Shaen’s insinuating questions—addressed to her not merely as a witness, but as a woman who had played a principal part, however unintentional, in a real tragedy—“she remembered the day her husband was shot down. She remembered the morning of that day when Patrick Corrigan came to bid her good-bye. He said he was going to America, and would never return home any more unless she had need of him.”

“Just so,” remarked Mr. Shaen, nodding. “Now, Mrs. Conway, why did he make use of such a strange expression to you?”

“It did not sound strange to me, sir,” she answered, “for we had been together most of our lives, and were like brother and sister.”

There came a mist over Pat’s eyes, and for a moment he did not see judge or jury, counsel or witness.

“But what did he mean by it?”

“That if I was ever in any trouble or sore strait, he’d come back from the ends of the world to protect me.”

“To protect you from whom?”

She paused for a moment before replying, and then she did so in her own way:

“Someone seemed to have been telling him I wasn’t happy, and he thought—”

“That your husband was not so kind to you as he might be, eh?” prompted Mr. Shaen; whereupon Pat’s counsel indignantly protested against words being put in the witness’s mouth; and they wrangled over this matter till the judge interposed and put the same question himself in a slightly different form.

“I suppose, Mrs. Conway, there was no ground for the idea that your husband was in any way unkind!”

“O, no, no, no!” she said eagerly. “The best, the kindest—I could not tell anybody one half his goodness; but, as I told Pat, it all seemed strange to me. I had not been used to such a big house, or to grand ways—”

“And, in short, he came to the conclusion that what he had heard was true?”

“Maybe he did; but I said if I ever felt lonesome it was my own fault—that I had everything money would buy or I could think to wish for—that my child was made a king of.”

“Possibly Corrigan had heard Mr. Conway was not a very fond father?”

Again Pat’s counsel interposed, and again his objection was set aside; but the interruption gave Grace time to compose herself.

“He had heard some foolish story,” she said, “and I told him many fathers don’t make much of their children when infants—that once the boy could talk and run he would take more notice of him.”

“And then there was some mention made of the Nun’s Curse?”

“There was; but I said that was foolish wicked talk, and I asked him not to be bringing up that terrible old story over an innocent baby.”

“Did he say anything more?”

“Not much; he was in sore grief.”

“No doubt. Likely the sight of Calgarry brought all the old trouble back again?”

“It did so,” she answered in a broken voice.

“Was that what he said?”

“Something like that—I don’t just remember his words.”

“Do you know what he wanted to see your husband for?”

“To bid him be good to me.” (“Now she has done it!” observed Mr. Barry in a swift aside.) “But I told him there was no call why he should, for no gentleman could be better to a wife than he had always been to me.”

“He insisted, however, on seeing Mr. Conway?”

“He did; he said he would like well to speak a word to him; and then I rang the bell and asked Byrne could he tell me where his master was, and he said Mr. Conway had gone out about ten minutes.”

“After that did Corrigan go at once?”

“He did very soon; he bid me good-bye and hoped God would bless and keep me, and—” she put her handkerchief before her face and sobbed aloud.

As Grace was turning to leave the witness-box, defendant’s counsel stopped her. “One moment, please, Mrs. Conway: did Corrigan use any threats in speaking of your husband?”

“Threats! No; why would he? Pat was always moderate.”

“Then you do not think it was he who fired at Mr. Conway?”

“I am sure it wasn’t,” answered Grace; “sure and certain;” and there came a singular change over her face; she flushed crimson, and just for one fleeting moment those who were looking at her realised how beautiful she must have been when she and that ill-starred Terence met for the first time.

The court drew a long compassionate breath, and Mr. McKye senior nudged his son as a way was made for Mr. Malet to pass out with Grace on his arm.

“I never thought to see that—” whispered the elder man.

As a mere matter of form, after the fashion in which a meagre dessert is often placed before guests who have been feasted royally, Terence was put in the box. He had no evidence to give, no story to tell.

His voice was weak, his movements languid, his face pinched and wan; it needed no doctor to assure those who saw him his wound had been well-nigh mortal; but there was no vindictive ring in his tone, no look of anger in his eyes. From the very brink of the grave, from out almost the valley of the shadow itself, he had come back at peace with all the world except himself, at rest save for the dread that Pat might not escape.

“May I make one statement, my lord?” he said in his pleasant voice, that still, though exhausted, held such a charm for those who heard it.

“Certainly, Mr. Conway.”

“Then, as I stand here scarcely out of sight of that other world into which I have been for so long a time looking, I declare most solemnly I believe Patrick Corrigan to be innocent of the crime for which he is being tried.”

“May the Lord Almighty bless you, Mr. Conway!” came from the dock, and across the court the eyes of master and man met straight. “God love him!” said one old peasant; and Terence felt in his very soul that Donegal had taken him into the innermost recesses of its silent and lonely heart.

The judge’s summing up was merely a lengthy analysis of the feelings which must have prompted, and the unchecked passions which had fiercely urged, Corrigan’s revenge. He had struggled against temptation, but at length it mastered him. He did not think much importance could be attached to the fact that no one had seen the prisoner with a gun. He did not wish to press hardly on any man; but it would be for the jury to decide whether that fact did not rather tend to show premeditation. Everything which could be said in Corrigan’s favour had been put before them in the eloquent speech of his counsel, but they had a clear duty to perform, uninfluenced by pity or sentiment.

During the interval that followed Pat might well have said the terrors of death encompassed him, and the pains of hell got hold on him. He felt it an absolute relief when, after half an hour’s absence, the jury returned into court. The worst was over; he could face what was to come. He knew pretty well how it would be, and when the verdict was given—guilty, with a strong recommendation to mercy—it seemed to him but the realisation of a dream.

The kindly old judge looked down at the young man and paused for a moment ere he began his address to the prisoner; then—“Patrick Corrigan,” he said, “you have been found guilty of a dark and foul crime; and I am bound to say I quite agree in the justice of that verdict. I will not add by any words of mine to the pain and remorse I am sure you are enduring. Your offence is one to which the extremest penalty of the law attaches; but taking into consideration the wrong you undoubtedly suffered, and the frenzied state of mind in which there is every reason to believe you were, and giving due weight to the recommendation of the jury, I feel the justice of the case may be met by a punishment which, while sufficiently severe to act as a warning to those who permit themselves to be governed by their own unbridled passions, is so lenient as to give you hope for a future I trust you will study to make a better thing of than you have of the past. The sentence of the court is that you are kept in penal servitude for a period of fifteen years.”

As the judge’s voice died into silence there came through the hush that followed the noise of a heavy fall. Someone had fainted—not the prisoner. Already he was practically on his way to that fifteen years of penal servitude, which was to help him to make a better thing of his life, and fainting or any other show of emotion would not have availed him much.

“It is Mr. Conway!” ran round the court; and then “Stand back!” “Give air, will you?” “Don’t be crowding about him!” followed instantly.

But Mark Barry did not fight his way towards Letitia’s cousin; indeed, it may be doubtful whether he knew of his collapse.

His mind was intent on the trial.

“Well, of all the duffers I ever heard,” he said to Mr. Malet, “that counsel of Corrigan’s was the worst. I only wish I’d had the cross-examining of some of the witnesses—that grinning fool of an inspector, for instance. I’m ———” here Mark expressed himself with exceeding strength, “if I wouldn’t have made them laugh on the wrong side of their mouths, ——— if I wouldn’t! Lord, if this is the way men’s lives are played with in Ireland, I’ll forswear my native country. Fifteen years!—pah! I wouldn’t have convicted a dog on such evidence—no, nor a cat either.”

“I fancy his counsel did all that was possible for the unfortunate man,” urged Mr. Malet mildly.

“Perhaps you will tell me next that you think Corrigan is guilty?”

“I am very glad I was not on the jury; but it seems to me the presumption is all against his innocence. What was he doing on the spot at the critical instant?”

“If you come to that, what were you doing on the spot?” retorted Mark, with a savage quickness which made Mr. Malet feel very thankful Mr. Barry had not been able to ask him in court, “There was a sore feeling on your part against Mr. Conway, was there not, concerning the living of Mostrene?”

XLVI

WELCOME HOME

A week later Terence Conway was still lingering at Strabane, where his friends had persuaded him to rest ere returning to Calgarry. “And if you can induce him not to go back there at all for some time, so much the better,” added his doctor.

By common consent to Letitia was intrusted the delicate task of reconciling Terence to this arrangement, and, after gradually preparing the ground for a decisive attack, she opened fire one morning when the invalid was lying on a hard couch covered with haircloth, looking wearily out of window, and the rest of the party were employing themselves as best they might.

“I want to know, Terence—” she began.

He turned his eyes towards her, and saying, “What is it now?” resigned himself.

“I want to know why you need go back to Calgarry at all?”

“Ever?” he asked.

“No, not ever—but now. You are not required there. Is he, Mr. Stirling?”

“Not so far as I am aware,” answered that gentleman. “Everything is satisfactorily arranged with Mr. Norbury. Everything is satisfactorily arranged all round, I believe.”

“Then, Terence, what on earth do you want to go back for?” demanded Mrs. Barry.

“I should like to see the old place again,” he answered.

“You would like to see folly,” retorted the fair Letitia. “Anyone else would be glad to see some new place, by way of a change. What is the use of taking such a journey for nothing? You are going for a long sea-voyage; you have no house in Donegal; your own is let, thank goodness, and I am sure it would be most inconvenient for Mr. Malet to have you on a visit again at present.”

“By the bye, where is Mr. Malet?” asked Terence. “He was to have been with us on Monday, and he has not come.”

“He has got something better to do,” answered Mrs. Barry, so significantly that her relative exclaimed,

“He’s surely not going to be married, is he?”

“I should call that having something worse to do,” returned his cousin, quite forgetful of the special maladroitness of her retort, which called a swift colour into Mrs. Conway’s face. “He has to think about his new living.”

“What new living?”

“The one Mr. Mulgrave’s uncle has given him in Worcestershire: seven hundred a year—nothing to do—a beautiful house, and good society.”

This Letitia felt was a regular cannonade, and it so stunned Terence that he kept silence for full a minute afterwards.

“That was the reason then,” he began at last, “you said it would be inconvenient to take me in at Calgarry Vicarage?”

“That was the reason. So now I hope you will not think of going back to Donegal, but follow the doctor’s advice, and come with us straight to London. If you are to take that sea voyage at all which you have agreed to take, the sooner you start the better. I suppose you want to get well, and not to be an invalid for the rest of your days, and everyone knows you will never be strong as long as you stay mooning here.”

“But, my dear Letitia, though it may not be necessary for me to return to Calgarry, I must go to Cork.”

“Why must you go to Cork?” asked Mrs. Barry. “Do you suppose no one can put things to right there except yourself? If you do you never made a greater mistake, I can tell you. Ann has gone there to make the house comfortable for Grace and Mrs. Ranger, and—”

“Tell me at once what you have all been settling you wish me to do?” said Terence. “I know you are only spokeswoman.”

“We want you to come to London, and take the first ship which sails for Australia. The sooner you go the sooner you will be back—”

“And Grace?” he asked.

“Grace will be very happy with Mrs. Ranger while you are away. She will come to London and see you off, and stay for a little while with me afterwards—unless, as I propose, she will go with you.”

“Will you, Grace?” cried her husband eagerly.

The poor child flushed to her temples, and said,

“I’m feared of the sea, as I told you before.”

Mark and Letitia looked across at each other, while Terence took the little brown hand timidly outstretched in his, and answered never a word.

“What a story-teller you are!” observed Mrs. Barry afterwards. “You know you are no more afraid of the sea than I am.”

“What does that matter?” returned the other. “He’ll be better and happier without me, and that you are right sure of.”

So it was all settled. Terence travelled by slow stages to London, where he saw a great physician, who confirmed his humbler brother’s opinion that a long sea voyage would be the best tonic he could take; and while Pat Corrigan was beginning that fifteen years the judge regarded as a good preliminary for making a capital thing of his life, his former master was preparing to go to Australia.

Mr. Malet met him at the docks to say good-bye.

“If I ever see Calgarry again,” said Terence, “it will not seem Calgarry to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will not be Calgarry without you; but I am glad for your sake, and I know it is all my own fault.”

“I am not going to leave Calgarry,” answered the Vicar.

“Why, Letitia told me you had been offered a living in Worcestershire.”

“So I was—but I refused it. After thinking the matter over, I came to the conclusion I ought to stay in Donegal;” and after looking straight each in the other’s face, they shook hands and parted; and Terence sailed away, and Grace remained for a little while as Mrs. Barry’s guest.

“Never,” said Letitia to her husband, “never was woman so weary as I. For no other person in the world except Terence would I have gone through what I have, and I never will for him again. The only thing that creature saw in London which interested her was, I verily believe, Philippa, in all her glory, driving through the Park. O dear! O dear!’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘There’s Miss Dutton in that grand carriage. O my! but she’s handsome.’”

“She’s the Honourable Mrs. Hazard now,” I answered, “and ‘handsome is that handsome does.’ The little fool came home with a bad headache and went to bed.”

“What a future Terence has to look forward to, poor devil!” said Mark. “Sometimes I almost am inclined to think it is a bad job his Donegal friend did not take a better aim.”

Often and often, as he lay awake in his berth, as he sat looking over the wide waste of ocean through which the good vessel ploughed her way, Terence felt he too wished the bullet intended to take his life had found its mark. He could see no hope in the future, he could find no satisfaction in the past; forever Pat’s face as he saw it in the dock was present to him, and beside that face dwelt a horrible doubt. The stronger he grew the more vivid became these phantoms, till he felt he should know no rest till he had retraced his steps and stood on Irish soil once more.

He could not tell what he should do when he got there.

He was only sure every moment seemed an hour that passed ere that torturing dread could be resolved.

For a time on the homeward journey the vessel was becalmed, and he really thought he should go mad.

If he had been returning to a wife he adored, to a life bright with happiness, he could not have yearned more to see land.

At last they sighted it. He had been absent nearly a year. A September sun was shining over the fields once again; over the pleasant English fields, whence the grain had been carried; over the Irish fields, where the wheat and the oats were ranged in picturesque stooks.

It was late one afternoon ere he arrived at the nearest station to the place he desired to reach. There he took a car and drove through the gathering twilight home.

He knocked loudly at the door, but no answer came, save those strange echoes which resound through an empty house.

At last an old man came from some outbuilding, who said Mrs. Conway had long been gone, and her father too.

“Her father?” repeated Terence.

“Yes, sir; he only stayed till he got rid of the furniture. Mrs. Conway took her child and left one night unbeknown to anyone.”

Terence did not answer—he could not. He had returned to find the terror which journeyed with him to Australia and back in possession of his hearth.

“Drive me to the station,” he said hoarsely to the carman, after putting he never knew how much silver into the old fellow’s hand, who wrapped the rug round Terence’s feet, while muttering, “God preserve your honour!” “Sir,” he added, as the driver jumped on the car, “Mr. Walley had started everyone about the place before Mrs. Conway—Lord help her!—went.”

Stung with scorpions, lashed with furies, Terence travelled through the night.

Nor resting, nor staying, he reached Calgarry next afternoon. “Mr. Malet will know,” he thought; and unconsciously walked softly.

Into the remembered library a servant he had never before seen ushered him.

Mr. Malet was there, and rose at his entrance.

“My dear Terence! Thank God! But how is this? You could not have had my letter.”

“I have had no letter; but something stronger brought me home at once.”

“Thank God, once more!—with all my heart I thank Him!”

“Why?” That was all Terence could say.

Mr. Malet hesitated for a minute, then he answered, “Because your wife is here very ill, and wants to see you. Come.”

He led the way upstairs, but on the landing paused.

“Stop here till I come back,” he said; and entered a bedroom in which Terence had slept many and many a time in his happy youth.

“Mrs. Conway.”

“Yes, Mr. Malet,” replied a voice which held a tone Terence had never heard in that voice before.

“A friend is here who wants to see you. May he come in?”

“Surely,” answered the voice, “it is Mr. Conway;” and then with a great pang Terence remembered he had never tried to make her call him “Terence.”

One step and he was in the room, and, kneeling by the bed-side, kissed Grace with a passion of sorrowful remorse such as had never stirred his heart before.

“My poor child, my darling, what is all this?” he said; and then she drew his head down upon her breast and answered never a word.

Long before, Audna and her father had left the room noiselessly, and husband and wife were quite alone.

“You have been very ill?” Terence murmured at last.

“Aye,” she replied.

“I came back as soon as I could,” he went on. “You must make haste and get well.”

“Can you raise me up a bit?” she asked. “That’ll do.” And she sank back on the pillow he smoothed for her. “I’m thinking I’ll soon be right well now.”

He looked at her as she lay with the light falling on her face, where death had already begun to trace his royal signature.

A terrible pang shot through Terence’s heart, which had never been a hard one. Could this poor pale thing, this shadow of a woman, be one with the Norah Creina who scarce three years before had made such a brilliant bit of colour on that wild hill-head? He could see her again, O Lord! just as he saw her then. It all came back—the wild afternoon, the sun going down in his glory, the lonely expanse of ocean, grass, and heather, lighted up only by a girl in the full beauty of her early youth.

Terence’s senses reeled. He felt then, if he had never felt before, that there must—judging even from what we are capable of suffering here—be a terrible hereafter, wherein men shall be judged according to their works.

This was his work. All of a tremor, he took her in his arms, murmuring such words of love as he had never, after the first, whispered in her ear. But a Mightier than he was speaking to her also, and earth and the things of earth were growing as nothing now. All the night long he watched beside her; all the night long the Atlantic waves washed in on the shore, but at dawn the ebb came, and at dawn she went.

About the sunrising, when weeping women were decently composing her wasted limbs and lovingly performing the last offices women could perform for poor Grace, Mr. Malet walked with Terence beside Calgarry Bay.

Dashing tears of brine from his eyes, Terence brokenly reproached himself for leaving her.

“My dear boy,” said the Vicar, “you could not have lived had you stayed here, and it would have made no difference as regarded this end, save that she was happier for your absence, believing that you were happier too.”

Then he went on to expound this apparent paradox concerning the lowly, loving creature who had gone where earthly grandeur and worldly distinctions could never trouble her again.

“No more unselfish spirit ever dwelt in a woman’s body,” said Mr. Malet with conviction. “She felt she was not a suitable wife for you, and that as the years went on her unfitness would trouble you increasingly, so she was glad to go ‘before you rightly knew what a burden you had.’ Her whole talk was about you. She never expressed a wish to live; but she did long to see you once more, ‘just for a minute. But he can’t be back in time, and, maybe, it’s quite as well, for you’ll tell him about the child—not that he’ll need any telling.’”

“What of the child?” asked Terence hoarsely.

“She bade me say she hoped and prayed you would never let his grandfather get hold of him.”

“Walley? Poor darling! She might have been sure I would not.”

“‘Ask Mr. Conway,’ she said, ‘to leave some piece of writing, so that wherever he goes my little boy will be left with someone fit to take care of him.’”

“I will do it today,” cried Terence.

“Yes, I think you ought,” answered Mr. Malet, both because he did think so, and because he hailed with joy the idea of any employment on that day for his friend. “Let us sit down for a moment; I have more to tell you. Not quite three months ago the poor girl arrived at the Vicarage, utterly exhausted. She told me her father had been ‘carrying on, till she dursn’t stop in the house;’ that she ran away with the child when he was dead drunk; that he would kill her if he ever got sight of her; that she was very bad, and all she wanted was to die in peace.”

“God help me!” murmured Terence.

“I took her in, of course. If she had been the poorest and most lost of her sex, instead of your wife and, I believe, a woman utterly pure at heart, I should have done the same; and when I found that, in spite of rest and quiet, she was getting worse, I sent first for the doctor and then for the priest.”

“O, what can I say to you?” asked Terence, putting out his hand impulsively, which Mr. Malet grasped, while he went on:

“The first said her case was hopeless—he found lung mischief of long standing, which probably accounted for what Mrs. Barry thought apathy; while the last went away looking very grave indeed. Knowing you would like no expense spared, I was about to write to Messrs. Bray &Lucan to send down the best Dublin physician they knew, when Mr. Norbury told me a great doctor from London was coming to stay with him. When he did come, he confirmed Dr. Callan’s report. He said he feared little could be done to defer the end beyond a very brief period; but after a few visits he told me if she could be persuaded to divulge some trouble that was weighing on her mind, she might last a little longer. Acting on this hint, I spoke to her. I entreated of her to be frank with me; all in vain. Then I went to the priest. ‘Poor child,’ he said, ‘she’s sorely beset. Of course I know what is the matter with her, but I can’t tell you. I’ll advise her to do so, however; it is only right she should.’”

“Well, did she tell you?” asked Terence; “was it any trouble I could have saved her, my poor wife? Why did I not know? But I tried to do my best, I did!” And he turned his eyes towards the Atlantic, which he could not see by reason of the mist which blinded him.

“No, it was nothing you did or left undone. Told in brief, this is the substance of her story. It was not Corrigan who attempted your life, but Walley.”

For a second or two Terence did not speak; then he said, “Mr. Malet, you may think what I am saying strange; but I have known that for months. I should have known it from the first if I had been well enough to think.” After which, covering his face with his hands, he talked to God in silence.

“We must see to this at once,” he added aloud; “not an hour must be lost in setting that wrong right;” and he started up as if to open Pat’s prison door then and there.

“Sit down again,” said Mr. Malet. “When I had once put matters into form, I did not lose a minute. I knew so well,” he went on delicately, “what your wishes would be, I felt no hesitation in acting on them. The poor soul who has just left us knew nothing of what was being done, but after I once got her to make her statement before a magistrate I at once offered a reward of £200 for Daniel Walley. Of course he understood well enough why his daughter had left him: his wife would tell him, that in one of his drunken rages he told precisely what he had done, and why. (His idea was, once you were dead, the boy must succeed to Calgarry, and that he would have the handling of his grandson’s cash). I thought all this over, and felt confident he had months before put the ocean between himself and Ireland. I knew we did not want to catch him, but at the same time saw we must seem anxious to do so. Then I employed all the influence I could, and the consequence is that very shortly I hope Corrigan will receive a free pardon.”

“For what?” asked Terence; “for being unjustly imprisoned?”

“That is the technical way of saying a man is innocent,” answered Mr. Malet, with perhaps a little irony. “Now we had better be going home; it is time you tried to get some sleep.”

“I feel as though I never should sleep again,” answered Terence; and in truth he rested but little till “all that was mortal” of his poor low-born young wife, who could never more offend his taste, who could never more try “sore to learn” and fail, who could never more sit wearily down by the wayside of life, was laid to rest among the proud Conways under the shadow of Muckish.

She had been but little considered while she stayed in their midst, yet now she was dead all the best families in Donegal attended her funeral.

Poor Grace, she had nothing to leave—her will could not be read, for the simple reason that she was leaving a world out of which she could take nothing, as poor as when she entered it, bringing nothing with her; yet when the death of Grace—wife of Terence Conway, Esq, of Calgarry, aged nineteen—was announced, a great pity stirred the heart of that stern land, and every mansion and many a cottage sent forth its representative. Archdeacon Conway was not present, but Mr. Malet stood beside Terence while a Roman Catholic priest, for the first time in the Conway annals, committed dust to dust in that vault hewn out of solid rock.

“It was a great burying,” the peasantry said; “a terrible honour for the like of her to have the best of the county following, and Mr. Boyne and Mr. Norbury among the bearers.”

Had Sir Henry been present, he would have seen that to all appearance the old Duke, with the rest of the Conways, slept quietly in their last earthly habitation. How it had fared with their sinful souls no one could say; but presumably their bodies were mouldering away quite peacefully.

All the way back to the Vicarage, Terence did not speak. Perhaps he was thinking of that other afternoon when he first met Grace, who made such a lovely figure in the landscape, and whose light feet would never press grass or heather more.

Greatly to Mr. Malet’s surprise, quite a little crowd was gathered around the Vicarage gate on their return. He did not attach any significance to the fact, though he wondered till he was met in the walk by one of his servants, who exclaimed:

“O, God be thanked, sir, that you are back!”

“Why?”

“Because the child is gone.”

“Gone where?” he asked, in his bewilderment.

“Not a one of us knows. It was stolen out of its cradle; and Miss Audna is almost beside herself.”

It was true—the child had disappeared. Fairies never took anything more silently, or concealed their stolen treasure more effectually.

“This is Walley’s doing,” said the Vicar with conviction; and next morning Donegal was placarded over with bills offering £1000 for the recovery of the child, and £1000 for the apprehension of Daniel Walley.

XLVII

CONCLUSION

Neither reward was ever claimed; but though day succeeding to day brought no tidings to Calgarry, Terence for a long time did not feel quite hopeless.

“Mark says, once we get poor Pat free, he will ferret Walley out—he knows all his haunts.” But Mr. Malet shook his head.

“Don’t build too much on Corrigan,” he answered. “You must remember the Governor of the prison wrote to me he had met with a nasty accident, and he may not be able to help.”

“O yes, he will. Mark has promised to telegraph the moment the order for his release is issued, and I shall go down for the poor fellow myself and take him to Dublin, and then he must come back here. Mr. Stirling will find him a post.”

“Do you think he will care to come back here?” asked Mr. Malet; and then Terence, pausing after the manner of one who has met with an unexpected check, replied:

“If not, some other place must be found, where he will care to go.”

How that case of Patrick Corrigan was cursed in many departments of Government it would be useless to tell.

How hated Mark Barry made himself can be, perhaps, imagined. What a weary, weary time of waiting Terence Conway had to get through somehow will be understood; but, at length, a happy hour came when he found himself in the presence of the Governor asking for Pat—brimful of plans, eager to right a wrong he had not caused—anxious to see his old servant once again.

“He is in the infirmary,” said the Governor.

“We will soon have him out,” answered Terence, literally trembling with excitement.

“It is my painful duty to tell you he is very ill.”

“I hope he will soon get well away from here.”

“I think he likes being here,” was the reply; “but you had better speak to him yourself.”

There was no prevision then in Terence’s mind about what he had come so far to see.

Near the fire a man sat, who rose as he entered, and, touching his forelock, smiled faintly. His face was worn, his hair grey, his figure bowed, and Terence did not recognise him—did not even imagine who it was.

“Do you not know me, sir?” he asked. “It is Pat.”

“My God!” said Terence, in an agony of remorse; and then he stood speechless, holding Corrigan’s hand in his.

Pat recovered himself first.

“You’re in black, Mr. Conway. Is it for—”

“My wife,” said Terence, finishing the sentence; and then came another silence.

After that they talked freely—about matters which lay close to both their hearts.

“I always deemed it was Walley put the police on me,” said Pat. “If I had opened my lips maybe I’d never have been here. But how could I speak against her father? I did not think that morning when I set out for Calgarry I was starting on so long a journey; but this is far better nor America.”

“What do you mean?” asked Terence.

“That I am near the end now. Ah, sir, didn’t they tell you? I’ll never be better in this world, and I’m right happy to leave it.”

“Don’t talk in that way; you must get better—we will go to Dublin—we will go to London together. There we can get the best advice in the world!” cried Terence, scarcely knowing what he said. “How soon shall you be ready to leave this place? Can’t you come away now?”

Pat shook his head.

“Where could I be as well as here?” he answered. “They’ve been kind to me beyond the common. I’m quite content, sir, so don’t be fretting about me. I’m glad you know it wasn’t me wanted your life. No, not even at the first such a thought never entered my mind.”

“O Pat! O, my poor fellow!” said Terence. “I meant to make you happy, and this is the end.”

“I am happy, sir,” was the answer. “I’m right happy, as I told you before. Where I am going is a far better country nor America, and I am not a bit afraid of the journey.”

•    •    •    •

More than eight-and-twenty years have passed since Terence Conway returned to Donegal without Pat—humbled and, as he thought, broken-hearted. But Time lays balm on the deepest wounds, brings a strange comfort on its silent wings.

Calgarry Bay is as beautiful as it ever was. Down on the landscape Muckish frowns darkly as of yore. The wash of the waves over the sunken rocks has never ceased during all those years, and Horn Head presents as stern and grand a front to the ocean as when we saw it first; but there have been great changes at Calgarry—where all the land Mr. Stirling brought into cultivation has yielded rich returns to the man who, spite of the wild winds and the barren soil, made almost a garden of that once howling wilderness.

But the farms are as wretchedly tilled, and the people and their cattle almost as miserably housed, as ever. It was useless to build, it was useless to reclaim and improve the soil for those who desired nothing more than to be allowed to go on in the old ways their fathers had trodden.

At the end of the seven years rents were not raised nor tenants evicted, but all the agent’s energies were concentrated on bringing under cultivation vast tracts of land where previously the mountain sheep had found bare pasture or the wild fowl had nested and brought forth young.

And into Calgarry House, Audna Malet took with her sweet face sunshine and happiness a quarter of a century since.

For long her choice was a source of sorrow to her father; he had other views, and quite different hopes. He could not help being distrustful of Terence—it was impossible for him to avoid wishing his daughter’s future should be linked with a past less sad than that which had graven lines on Terence Conway’s heart.

But at last he gave his consent to a marriage which has brought to the owner of Calgarry all the content he can ever know.

Many children were born to him in the old house, who played by the ocean and ran races over the sands, unknowing of the dread which was ever in their father’s heart concerning them.

For he utterly failed to learn whether Walley was living or dead; and he has gone through existence with the constant conviction that an enemy followed him, biding his time.

And though he had not loved his firstborn, whose being was associated with all the misery of his life, he never could look on the children he did love without a pang rending him because of poor Grace’s boy, who, to his fancy, was out in the furious storm and the beating rain, while his brothers and sisters were housed and snug and warm.

After Captain Conway died, when Terence was left the whole of the mortgage money and a large sum besides, the owner of Calgarry became an exceedingly wealthy and prosperous man.

It was just about that time he received a letter from a firm of London solicitors, informing him that Mr. Brian Conway, now of age, had placed his affairs in their hands, and asking what arrangement he proposed to make about the future of his eldest son. They were prepared to furnish Mr. Conway with proofs of his identity, and hoped the whole matter might be arranged in a friendly spirit.

Terence adopted the best plan he could think of—the only sensible plan, indeed. He sent the letter to Mr. Reynolds, who, being eventually satisfied on the subject of identity, suggested a meeting between father and son.

But the son declined to meet his father; all he desired to know was what income he had to expect. Mr. Reynolds said Mr. Conway would invest for him such a sum as would return five hundred a year, and provide funds for him to enter any profession he chose.

“Then practically my father disinherits me,” said the youth.

“I don’t know what you call disinheriting. Many a man would think a great deal of five hundred a year.”

“One may be of some use to one’s fellow creatures with that income, certainly,” was the reply, which made Mr. Reynolds stare.

“About the profession, then?” he said.

“I have been always intended for the priesthood,” was the answer.

“Phew!” exclaimed Mark Barry, when Mr. Reynolds told him this. “I only hope he will not select Donegal as the scene of his ministry.”

“You may be very sure that is precisely what he will do,” returned Mr. Reynolds.

Bond or free, in Ireland, America, or the next world, Walley had taken good care to secure an ample revenge for all wrongs real and supposed!

There are those who, seeing Terence Conway prosperous, happily married, blessed with children, given to all good works, leading a quiet and useful life, say that at last the Nun’s Curse is lifted from Calgarry—but the owner himself holds a different opinion.

With a son, almost at his gates, whose face is that of long-dead Grace, but whose nature resembles his maternal grandfather—who has come to preach no gospel of peace, but one of vengeance, bitterness, and all uncharitableness—who, under the cloak of love for the poor, incites the poor to hate the rich—Terence must be deaf indeed if he failed to hear the faint mutterings of a storm which will one day burst in all its fury over doomed Calgarry, and very possibly uproot the Conways from their native soil.

About this eBook

SHADES AND SHADOWS

CLASSIC VICTORIAN GHOST STORIES
BY
MRS. J. H. RIDDELL
(1832–1906)

From the golden age of Victorian supernatural fiction, a treasure trove of the writings of one of the very best ghost-story writers of the era, bringing you four novels and thirteen (!) stories.

Here are chilling tales of ghastly intruders into the everyday world of (mostly) everyday folks, seeking revenge, retribution, or reconciliation. So sit you down in a dark and quiet corner, and let Mrs. Riddell tell you a story….

(This collection of Riddell’s weird fiction contains all but two titles: the novel The Disappearance of Mr. Jeremiah Redworth, and the short story “Why Dr. Cray Left Southam.”)

* * * *

Charlotte Riddell, known also as Mrs J. H. Riddell (30 September 1832 – 24 September 1906), was a highly popular and influential Irish-born writer in the Victorian period. The author of 56 books (novels and short story collections), she was also part-owner and editor of St. James’s Magazine, a prominent London literary journal in the 1860s. Mrs. Riddell, by making commerce the theme of many of her novels, introduced a new element into English fiction, and was renowned as the novelist of The City of London.

She was also one of the best Victorian authors of the supernatural, and was well regarded by some of the genre’s severest critics, including M. R. James. Her stories are noted for true-to-life descriptions of people and places, and deal realistically with the financial struggles of the middle class. This realism, interwoven with the supernatural, makes her ghost stories the more effective.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, September 2018, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1867 ~ 1899. Text is in the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and the works were published prior to 1923.

Click here for editing notes.

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EDITING NOTES

>>TOC     >>ABOUT

This is my own compilation. Transcripts were obtained from Project Gutenberg, Gutenberg Australia, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, Google Books, gothictexts.wordpress.com, vaultofghastlytales.com, womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu.

PDF scans were not available to proof every title.
Obvious textual errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted. Because source PDFs seemed to indicate that double quotation marks predominated, punctuation was regularized to reflect that. Double emdashes as breaks in narrative were converted to single emdash.

Hyphenation was regularized to provide consistency, with instances of the following being changed to match other text:

love-story —» love story
night-watches —» night watches
street-corner —» street corner
hyphenated doors —» plain doors, ie:
hall-door —» hall door
ball-room —» ballroom
bed-room —» bedroom
child-like —» childlike
flesh-pots —» fleshpots
head-quarters —» headquarters
hence-forth —» henceforth
money-lender —» moneylender
new-born —» newborn
sea-gull —» seagull
short-coming —» shortcoming
spring-time —» springtime
top-coat —» topcoat
wood-work —» woodwork
up-hill —» uphill
up-stairs —» upstairs
down-stairs —» downstairs
today, tonight, tomorrow —» today, tonight, tomorrow

any one —» anyone
any thing —» anything
every one —» everyone
for ever —» forever
some day —» someday
some one —» someone
made belief —» made believe

Story titles are cross-linked to table of contents.

Embedded fonts “Fontin” by Jos Buivenga used for titling; “Mirkwood Chronicle” by Bill Roach used for initial caps.

Cover element “The Hex” by lostknightkg at DeviantArt.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.