The Shadow in the Corner and Other Hauntings
Date: 1859-12-31T22:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Horror; Fantasy; Weird Fiction
Description: A collection of eerie stories from the pen of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of the most popular Victorian authors of “sensation” fiction. Thirteen ghost stories; and additionally, three mysteries (the final titles in the collection) with tendencies to “weird” fiction.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain worldwide

THE

SHADOW
IN  THE  CORNER
AND  OTHER  HAUNTINGS

M. E. BRADDON

MobileRead Edition
2020

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 – 4 February 1915) was a popular English novelist of the Victorian era. Her prolific pen produced more than 80 novels with inventive plots. The most famous is Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), which won her recognition, and a fortune as a bestseller. It has remained in print since its publication and has been dramatised and filmed several times.
Braddon’s legacy is tied to the sensation fiction of the 1860s, but she also wrote a number of ghost stories, and the novel Gerard, or the World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1891), a “pact with the devil” story.

This compilation created by ECM. The contents were originally published 1860 ~ 1896.
The text of this book is in the public domain worldwide.

CONTENTS:

- The Shadow in the Corner
- The Cold Embrace
- The Scene-Painter’s Wife
- Eveline’s Visitant
- My Wife’s Promise
- Sir Philip’s Wooing
- John Granger
- At Chrighton Abbey
- Three Times
- Her Last Appearance
- My Dream
- His Oldest Friends
- The Island of Old Faces
- The Ghost’s Name
- Dr. Carrick
- Good Lady Ducayne

The Shadow in the Corner

(1879)

Wildheath Grange stood a little way back from the road, with a barren stretch of heath behind it, and a few tall fir-trees, with straggling wind-tossed heads, for its only shelter. It was a lonely house on a lonely road, little better than a lane, leading across a desolate waste of sandy fields to the seashore; and it was a house that bore a bad name among the natives of the village of Holcroft, which was the nearest place where humanity might be found.

It was a good old house, nevertheless, substantially built in the days when there was no stint of stone and timber – a good old grey stone house, with many gables, deep window seats, and a wide staircase, long dark passages, hidden doors in queer corners, closets as large as some modern rooms, and cellars in which a company of soldiers might have lain perdu.

This spacious old mansion was given over to rats and mice, loneliness, echoes, and the occupation of three elderly people: Michael Bascom, whose forbears had been landowners of importance in the neighbourhood; and his two servants, Daniel Skegg and his wife, who had served the owner of that grim old house ever since he left the university, where he had lived fifteen years of his life – five as student, and then as professor of natural science.

At three-and-thirty Michael Bascom had seemed a middle-aged man; at fifty-six he looked and moved and spoke like on old man. During that interval of twenty-three years he had lived alone in Wildheath Grange, and the country people told each other that the house had made him what he was. This was a fanciful and superstitious notion on their part, doubtless; yet it would not have been difficult to have traced a certain affinity between the dull grey building and the man who lived in it. Both seemed alike remote from the common cares and interests of humanity; both had an air of settled melancholy, engendered by perpetual solitude; both had the same faded complexion, the same look of slow decay.

Yet lonely as Michael Bascom’s life was at Wildheath Grange, he would not for any consideration have altered its tenor. He had been glad to exchange the comparative seclusion of college rooms for the unbroken solitude of Wildheath. He was a fanatic in his love of scientific research, and his quiet days were filled to the brim with labours that seldom failed to interest and satisfy him. There were periods of depression, occasional hours of doubt, when the goal towards which he strove seemed unattainable, and his spirit fainted within him. Happily such times were rare with him. He had a dogged power of continuity which ought to have carried him to the highest pinnacle of achievement, and which perhaps might ultimately have won for him a grand name and a worldwide renown, but for a catastrophe which burdened the declining years of his harmless life with an unconquerable remorse.

One autumn morning – when he had lived just three-and-twenty years at Wildheath, and had only lately begun to perceive that his faithful butler and body servant, who was middle-aged when he first employed him, was actually getting old – Mr. Bascom’s breakfast meditations over the latest treatise on the atomic theory were interrupted by an abrupt demand from that very Daniel Skegg. The man was accustomed to wait upon his master in the most absolute silence, and his sudden breaking out into speech was almost as startling as if the bust of Socrates above the bookcase had burst into human language.

“It’s no use,” said Daniel; “my missus must have a girl!”

“A what?” demanded Mr. Bascom, without taking his eyes from the line he had been reading.

“A girl – a girl to trot about and wash up, and help the old lady. She’s getting weak on her legs, poor soul. We’ve none of us grown younger in the last twenty years.”

“Twenty years!” echoed Michael Bascom scornfully. “What is twenty years in the formation of a stratum – what even in the growth of an oak – the cooling of a volcano!”

“Not much, perhaps, but it’s apt to tell upon the bones of a human being.”

“The manganese staining to be seen upon some skulls would certainly indicate-” began the scientist dreamily.

“I wish my bones were only as free from rheumatics as they were twenty years ago,” pursued Daniel testily; “and then perhaps I should make light of twenty years. Howsoever, the long and the short of it is, my missus must have a girl. She can’t go on trotting up and down these everlasting passages, and standing in that stony scullery year after year, just as if she was a young woman. She must have a girl to help.”

“Let her have twenty girls,” said Mr. Bascom, going back to his book.

“What’s the use of talking like that, sir? Twenty girls, indeed! We shall have rare work to get one.”

“Because the neighbourhood is sparsely populated?” interrogated Mr. Bascom, still reading.

“No, sir. Because this house is known to be haunted.”

Michael Bascom laid down his book, and turned a look of grave reproach upon his servant.

“Skegg,” he said in a severe voice, “I thought you had lived long enough with me to be superior to any folly of that kind.”

“I don’t say that I believe in ghosts,” answered Daniel with a semi-apologetic air; “but the country people do. There’s not a mortal among ’em that will venture across our threshold after nightfall.”

“Merely because Anthony Bascom, who led a wild life in London, and lost his money and land, came home here broken-hearted, and is supposed to have destroyed himself in this house – the only remnant of property that was left him out of a fine estate.”

“Supposed to have destroyed himself!” cried Skegg; “why the fact is as well known as the death of Queen Elizabeth, or the great fire of London. Why, wasn’t he buried at the crossroads between here and Holcroft?”

“An idle tradition, for which you could produce no substantial proof,” retorted Mr. Bascom.

“I don’t know about proof; but the country people believe it as firmly as they believe their Gospel.”

“If their faith in the Gospel was a little stronger they need not trouble themselves about Anthony Bascom.”

“Well,” grumbled Daniel, as he began to clear the table, “a girl of some kind we must get, but she’ll have to be a foreigner, or a girl that’s hard driven for a place.”

When Daniel Skegg said a foreigner, he did not mean the native of some distant land, but a girl who had not been born and bred at Holcroft. Daniel had been raised and reared in that insignificant hamlet, and, small and dull as the spot was, he considered it the centre of the earth, and the world beyond it only margin.

Michael Bascom was too deep in the atomic theory to give a second thought to the necessities of an old servant. Mrs. Skegg was an individual with whom he rarely came in contact. She lived for the most part in a gloomy region at the north end of the house, where she ruled over the solitude of a kitchen, that looked almost as big as a cathedral, and numerous offices of the scullery, larder, and pantry class, where she carried on a perpetual warfare with spiders and beetles, and wore her old life out in the labour of sweeping and scrubbing. She was a woman of severe aspect, dogmatic piety, and a bitter tongue. She was a good plain cook, and ministered diligently to her master’s wants. He was not an epicure, but liked his life to be smooth and easy, and the equilibrium of his mental power would have been disturbed by a bad dinner.

He heard no more about the proposed addition to his household for a space of ten days, when Daniel Skegg again startled him amidst his studious repose by the abrupt announcement –

“I’ve got a girl!”

“Oh,” said Michael Bascom; “have you?” and he went on with his book.

This time he was reading an essay on phosphorus and its functions in relation to the human brain.

“Yes,” pursued Daniel in his usual grumbling tone; “she was a waif and stray, or I shouldn’t have got her. If she’d been a native she’d never have come to us.”

“I hope she’s respectable,” said Michael.

“Respectable! That’s the only fault she has, poor thing. She’s too good for the place. She’s never been in service before, but she says she’s willing to work, and I daresay my old woman will be able to break her in. Her father was a small tradesman at Yarmouth. He died a month ago, and left this poor thing homeless. Mrs. Midge, at Holcroft, is her aunt, and she said to the girl, Come and stay with me till you get a place; and the girl has been staying with Mrs. Midge for the last three weeks, trying to hear of a place. When Mrs. Midge heard that my missus wanted a girl to help, she thought it would be the very thing for her niece Maria. Luckily Maria had heard nothing about this house, so the poor innocent dropped me a curtsey, and said she’d be thankful to come, and would do her best to learn her duty. She’d had an easy time of it with her father, who had educated her above her station, like a fool as he was,” growled Daniel.

“By your own account I’m afraid you’ve made a bad bargain,” said Michael. “You don’t want a young lady to clean kettles and pans,”

“If she was a young duchess, my old woman would make her work,” retorted Skegg decisively.

“And pray where are you going to put this girl?” asked Mr. Bascom, rather irritably; “I can’t have a strange young woman tramping up and down the passages outside my room. You know what a wretched sleeper I am, Skegg. A mouse behind the wainscot is enough to wake me.”

“I’ve thought of that,” answered the butler, with his look of ineffable wisdom. “I’m not going to put her on your floor. She’s to sleep in the attics.”

“Which room?”

“The big one at the north end of the house. That’s the only ceiling that doesn’t let water. She might as well sleep in a shower-bath as in any of the other attics.”

“The room at the north end,” repeated Mr. Bascom thoughtfully; “isn’t that – ?”

“Of course it is,” snapped Skegg; “but she doesn’t know anything about it.”

Mr. Bascom went back to his books, and forgot all about the orphan from Yarmouth, until one morning on entering his study he was startled by the appearance of a strange girl, in a neat black and white cotton gown, busy dusting the volumes which wore stacked in blocks upon his spacious writing-table – and doing it with such deft and careful hands that he had no inclination to be angry at this unwonted liberty. Old Mrs. Skegg had religiously refrained from all such dusting, on the plea that she did not wish to interfere with the master’s ways. One of the master’s ways, therefore, had been to inhale a good deal of dust in the course of his studies.

The girl was a slim little thing, with a pale and somewhat old-fashioned face, flaxen hair, braided under a neat muslin cap, a very fair complexion, and light blue eyes. They were the lightest blue eyes Michael Bascom had ever seen, but there was a sweetness and gentleness in their expression which atoned for their insipid colour.

“I hope you do not object to my dusting your books, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsey.

She spoke with a quaint precision which struck Michael Bascom as a pretty thing in its way.

“No; I don’t object to cleanliness, so long as my books and papers are not disturbed. If you take a volume off my desk, replace it on the spot you took it from. That’s all I ask.”

“I will be very careful, sir.”

“When did you come here?”

“Only this morning, sir.”

The student seated himself at his desk, and the girl withdrew, drifting out of the room as noiselessly as a flower blown across the threshold. Michael Bascom looked after her curiously. He had seen very little of youthful womanhood in his dry-as-dust career, and he wondered at this girl as at a creature of a species hitherto unknown to him. How fairly and delicately she was fashioned; what a translucent skin; what soft and pleasing accents issued from those rose-tinted lips. A pretty thing, assuredly, this kitchen wench! A pity that in all this busy world there could be no better work found for her than the scouring of pots and pans.

Absorbed in considerations about dry bones, Mr. Bascom thought no more of the pale-faced handmaiden. He saw her no more about his rooms. Whatever work she did there was done early in the morning, before the scholar’s breakfast.

She had been a week in the house, when he met her one day in the hall. He was struck by the change in her appearance.

The girlish lips had lost their rose-bud hue; the pale blue eyes had a frightened look, and there were dark rings round them, as in one whose nights had been sleepless, or troubled by evil dreams.

Michael Bascom was so startled by an undefinable look in the girl’s face that, reserved as he was by habit and nature, he expanded so far as to ask her what ailed her.

“There is something amiss, I am sure,” he said. “What is it?”

“Nothing, sir,” she faltered, looking still more scared at his question. “Indeed, it is nothing; or nothing worth troubling you about.”

“Nonsense. Do you suppose, because I live among books, I have no sympathy with my fellow-creatures? Tell me what is wrong with you, child. You have been grieving about the father you have lately lost, I suppose.”

“No, sir; it is not that. I shall never leave off being sorry for that. It is a grief which will last me all my life.”

“What, there is something else then?” asked Michael impatiently. “I see; you are not happy here. Hard work does not suit you. I thought as much.”

“Oh, sir, please don’t think that,” cried the girl, very earnestly. “Indeed I am glad to work – glad to be in service; it is only—”

She faltered and broke down, the tears rolling slowly from her sorrowful eyes, despite her effort to keep them back.

“Only what?” cried Michael, growing angry. “The girl is full of secrets and mysteries. What do you mean, wench?”

“I – I know it is very foolish, sir; but I am afraid of the room where I sleep.”

“Afraid! Why?”

“Shall I tell you the truth, sir? Will you promise not to be angry?”

“I will not be angry if you will only speak plainly; but you provoke me by these hesitations and suppressions.”

“And please, sir, do not tell Mrs. Skegg that I have told you. She would scold me, or perhaps even send me away.”

“Mrs. Skegg shall not scold you. Go on, child.”

“You may not know the room where I sleep, sir; it is a large room at one end of the house, looking towards the sea. I can see the dark line of water from the window, and I wonder sometimes to think that it is the same ocean I used to see when I was a child at Yarmouth. It is very lonely, sir, at the top of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Skegg sleep in a little room near the kitchen, you know, sir, and I am quite alone on the top floor.”

“Skegg told me you had been educated in advance of your position in life, Maria. I should have thought the first effect of a good education would have been to make you superior to any foolish fancies about empty rooms.”

“Oh, pray sir, do not think it is any fault in my education. Father took such pains with me; he spared no expense in giving me as good an education as a tradesman’s daughter need wish for. And he was a religious man, sir. He did not believe” – here she paused with a suppressed shudder – “in the spirits of the dead appearing to the living since the days of miracles, when the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul. He never put any foolish ideas into my head, sir. I hadn’t a thought of fear when I first lay down to rest in the big lonely room upstairs.”

“Well, what then?”

“But on the very first night,” the girl went on breathlessly, “I felt weighed down in my sleep as if there were some heavy burden laid upon my chest. It was not a bad dream, but it was a sense of trouble that followed me all through my sleep; and just at daybreak – it begins to be light a little after six – I woke suddenly, with the cold perspiration pouring down my face, and knew that there was something dreadful in the room.”

“What do you mean by something dreadful? Did you see anything?”

“Not much, sir; but it froze the blood in my veins, and I knew it was this that had been following me and weighing upon me all through my sleep. In the corner between the fireplace and the wardrobe, I saw a shadow – a dim, shapeless shadow—”

“Produced by an angle of the wardrobe, I daresay.”

“No, sir. I could see the shadow of the wardrobe, distinct and sharp, as if it had been painted on the wall. This shadow was in the corner – a strange, shapeless mass; or, if it had any shape at all, it seemed—”

“What?” asked Michael eagerly.

“The shape of a dead body hanging against the wall!”

Michael Bascom grew strangely pale, yet he affected utter incredulity.

“Poor child,” he said kindly; “you have been fretting about your father until your nerves are in a weak state, and you are full of fancies. A shadow in the corner, indeed; why, at daybreak, every corner is full of shadows. My old coat, flung upon a chair, will make you as good a ghost as you need care to see.”

“Oh, sir, I have tried to think it is my fancy. But I have had the same burden weighing me down every night. I have seen the same shadow every morning.”

“But when broad daylight comes, can you not see what stuff your shadow is made of?”

“No, sir; the shadow goes before it is broad daylight.”

“Of course, just like other shadows. Come, come, get these silly notions out of your head, or you will never do for the workaday world. I could easily speak to Mrs. Skegg, and make her give you another room, if I wanted to encourage you in your folly. But that would be about the worst thing I could do for you. Besides, she tells me that all the other rooms on that floor are damp; and, no doubt, if she shifted you into one of them, you would discover another shadow in another corner, and get rheumatism into the bargain. No, my good girl, you must try to prove yourself the better for a superior education.”

“I will do my best, sir,” Maria answered meekly, dropping a curtsey.

Maria went back to the kitchen sorely depressed. It was a dreary life she led at Wildheath Grange – dreary by day, awful by night; for the vague burden and the shapeless shadow, which seemed so slight a matter to the elderly scholar, were unspeakably terrible to her. Nobody had told her that the house was haunted; yet she walked about those echoing passages wrapped round with a cloud of fear. She had no pity from Daniel Skegg and his wife. Those two pious souls had made up their minds that the character the house should be upheld, so far as Maria went. To her, as a foreigner, the Grange should be maintained to be an immaculate dwelling, tainted by no sulphurous blast from the underworld. A willing, biddable girl had become a necessary element in the existence of Mrs. Skegg. That girl had been found and that girl must be kept. Any fancies of a supernatural character must be put down with a high hand.

“Ghosts, indeed!” cried the amiable Skegg. “Read your Bible, Maria, and don’t talk no more about ghosts.”

“There are ghosts in the Bible,” said Maria, with a shiver at the recollection of certain awful passages in the Scripture she knew so well.

“Ah, they was in their right place, or they wouldn’t ha’ been there,” retorted Mrs. Skegg. “You ain’t agoin’ to pick holes in your Bible, I hope, Maria, at your time of life.”

Maria sat down quietly in her corner by the kitchen fire, and turned over the leaves of her dead father’s Bible till she came to the chapters they two had loved best and oftenest read together. He had been a simple-minded, straightforward man, the Yarmouth cabinet-maker – a man full of aspirations after good, innately refined, instinctively religious. He and his motherless girl had spent their lives alone together, in the neat little home, which Maria had so soon learned to cherish and beautify; and they had loved each other with an almost romantic love. They had had the same tastes, the same ideas. Very little had sufficed to make them happy. But inexorable death parted father and daughter, in one of those sharp sudden partings which are like the shock of an earthquake – instantaneous ruin, desolation and despair.

Maria’s fragile form had bent before the tempest. She had lived through a trouble that might have crushed a stronger nature. Her deep religious convictions, and her belief that this cruel parting would not be forever, had sustained her. She faced life, and its cares and duties, with a gentle patience which was the noblest form of courage.

Michael Bascom told himself that the servant-girl’s foolish fancy about the room that had been given her was not a matter for serious consideration. Yet the idea dwelt in his mind unpleasantly, and disturbed him at his labours. The exact sciences require the complete power of a man’s brain, his undistracted attention; and on this particular evening Michael found that he was only giving his work a part of his attention. The girl’s pale face, the girl’s tremulous tones, thrust themselves into the foreground of his thoughts.

He closed his book with a fretful sigh, wheeled his large armchair round to the fire, and gave himself up to contemplation. To attempt study with so disturbed a mind was useless. It was a dull grey evening, early in November; the student’s reading-lamp was lighted, but the shutters were not yet shut, nor the curtains drawn. He could see the leaden sky outside his windows, the fir-tree tops tossing in the angry wind. He could hear the wintry blast whistling amidst the gables, before it rushed off seaward with a savage howl that sounded like a war-whoop.

Michael Bascom shivered, and drew nearer the fire.

“It’s childish, foolish nonsense,” he said to himself, “yet it’s strange she should have that fancy about the shadow; for they say Anthony Bascom destroyed himself in that room. I remember hearing it when I was a boy, from an old servant whose mother was housekeeper at the great house in Anthony’s time, I never heard how he died, poor fellow – whether he poisoned himself, or shot himself, or cut his throat; but I’ve been told that was the room. Old Skegg has heard it too. I could see that by his manner when he told me the girl was to sleep there.”

He sat for a long time, till the grey of evening outside his study windows changed to the black of night, and the war-whoop of the wind died away to a low complaining murmur. He sat looking into the fire, and letting his thoughts wander back to the past and the traditions he had heard in his boyhood.

That was a sad, foolish story of his great-uncle, Anthony Bascom: the pitiful story of a wasted fortune and a wasted life. A riotous collegiate career at Cambridge, a racing-stable at Newmarket, an imprudent marriage, a dissipated life in London, a runaway wife, an estate forfeited to Jew money-lenders, and then the fatal end.

Michael had often heard that dismal story; how, when Anthony Bascom’s fair false wife had left him, when his credit was exhausted, and his friends had grown tired of him, and all was gone except Wildheath Grange, Anthony, the broken-down man of fashion, had come to that lonely house unexpectedly one night, and had ordered his bed to be got ready for him in the room where he used to sleep when he came to the place for the wild duck shooting, in his boyhood. His old blunderbuss was still hanging over the mantelpiece, where he had left it when he came into the property, and could afford to buy the newest thing in fowling-pieces. He had not been to Wildheath for fifteen years; nay, for a good many of those years he had almost forgotten that the dreary old house belonged to him.

The woman who had been housekeeper at Bascom Park, till house and lands had passed into the hands of the Jews, was at this time the sole occupant of Wildheath. She cooked some supper for her master, and made him as comfortable as she could in the long untenanted dining-room; but she was distressed to find, when she cleared the table after he had gone upstairs to bed, that he had eaten hardly anything.

Next morning she got his breakfast ready in the room, which she managed to make brighter and cheerier than it had looked overnight. Brooms, dusting-brushes, and a good fire did much to improve the aspect of things. But the morning wore on to noon, and the old housekeeper listened in vain for her master’s footfall on the stairs. Noon waned to late afternoon. She had made no attempt to disturb him, thinking that he had worn himself out by a tedious journey on horseback, and that he was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. But when the brief November day clouded with the first shadows of twilight, the old woman grew seriously alarmed, and went upstairs to her master’s door, where she waited in vain for any reply to her repeated calls and knockings.

The door was locked on the inside, and the housekeeper was not strong enough to break it open. She rushed downstairs again full of fear, and ran bare-headed out into the lonely road. There was no habitation nearer than the turnpike on the old coach road, from which this side road branched off to the sea. There was scanty hope of a chance passer-by. The old woman ran along the road, hardly knowing whither she was going or what she was going to do, but with a vague idea that she must get somebody to help her.

Chance favoured her. A cart, laden with seaweed, came lumbering slowly along from the level line of sands yonder where the land melted into water. A heavy lumbering farm-labourer walked beside the cart.

“For God’s sake, come in and burst open my master’s door!” she entreated, seizing the man by the arm. “He’s lying dead, or in a fit, and I can’t get to help him.”

“All right, missus,” answered the man, as if such an invitation were a matter of daily occurrence. “Whoa, Dobbin; stond still, horse, and be donged to thee.”

Dobbin was glad enough to be brought to anchor on the patch of waste grass in front of the Grange garden. His master followed the housekeeper upstairs, and shattered the old-fashioned box-lock with one blow of his ponderous fist.

The old woman’s worst fear was realised. Anthony Bascom was dead. But the mode and manner of his death Michael had never been able to learn. The housekeeper’s daughter, who told him the story, was an old woman when he was a boy. She had only shaken her head, and looked unutterable things, when he questioned her too closely. She had never even admitted that the old squire had committed suicide. Yet the tradition of his self-destruction was rooted in the minds of the natives of Holcroft: and there was a settled belief that his ghost, at certain times and seasons, haunted Wildheath Grange.

Now Michael Bascom was a stern materialist. For him the universe, with all its inhabitants, was but a stupendous machine, governed by inexorable laws. To such a man the idea of a ghost was simply absurd – as absurd as the assertion that two and two make five, or that a circle can be formed of a straight line. Yet he had a kind of dilettante interest in the idea of a mind which could believe in ghosts. The subject offered a curious psychological study. This poor little pale girl, now, had evidently got some supernatural terror into her head, which could only be conquered by rational treatment.

“I know what I ought to do,” Michael Bascom said to himself suddenly. “I’ll occupy that room myself tonight, and demonstrate to this foolish girl that her notion about the shadow is nothing more than a silly fancy, bred of timidity and low spirits. An ounce of proof is better than a pound of argument. If I can prove to her that I have spent a night in the room, and seen no such shadow, she will understand what an idle thing superstition is.”

Daniel came in presently to shut the shutters.

“Tell your wife to make up my bed in the room where Maria has been sleeping, and to put her into one of the rooms on the first floor for tonight, Skegg,” said Mr. Bascom.

“Sir?”

Mr. Bascom repeated his order.

“That silly wench has been complaining to you about her room,” Skegg exclaimed indignantly. “She doesn’t deserve to be well fed and cared for in a comfortable home. She ought to go to the workhouse.”

“Don’t be angry with the poor girl, Skegg. She has taken a foolish fancy into her head, and I want to show her how silly she is,” said Mr. Bascom.

“And you want to sleep in his – in that room yourself,” said the butler.

“Precisely.”

“Well,” mused Skegg, “if he does walk – which I don’t believe – he was your own flesh and blood; and I don’t suppose he’ll do you any hurt.”

When Daniel Skegg went back to the kitchen he railed mercilessly at poor Maria, who sat pale and silent in her corner by the hearth, darning old Mrs. Skegg’s grey worsted stockings, which were the roughest and harshest covering that ever human foot clothed itself withal. “Was then ever such a whimsical, fine, ladylike miss,” demanded Daniel, “to come into a gentleman’s house, and drive him out of his own bedroom to sleep in an attic, with her nonsenses and vagaries.” If this was the result of being educated above one’s station, Daniel declared that he was thankful he had never got so far in his schooling as to read words of two syllables without spelling. Education might be hanged, for him, if this was all it led to.

“I am very sorry,” faltered Maria, weeping silently over her work. “Indeed, Mr. Skegg, I made no complaint. My master questioned me, and I told him the truth. That was all.”

“All!” exclaimed Mr. Skegg irately; “all, indeed! I should think it was enough.”

Poor Maria held her peace. Her mind, fluttered by Daniel’s unkindness, had wandered away from that bleak big kitchen to the lost home of the past – the snug little parlour where she and her father had sat beside the cosy hearth on such a night as this; she with her smart work-box and her plain sewing, he with the newspaper he loved to read: the petted cat purring on the rug, the kettle singing on the bright bras trivet, the tea-tray pleasantly suggestive of the most comfortable meal in the day.

Oh, those happy nights, that dear companionship! Were they really gone forever, leaving nothing behind them but unkindness and servitude?

•   •   •   •   •

Michael Bascom retired later than usual that night. He in the habit of sitting at his books long after every other lamp but his own had been extinguished. The Skeggs had subsided into silence and darkness in their dreary ground-floor bedchamber. Tonight his studies were of a peculiarly interesting kind, and belonged to the order of recreative reading rather than of hard work. He was deep in the history of that mysterious people who had their dwelling-place in the Swiss lakes, and was much exercised by certain speculations and theories about them.

The old eight-day clock on the stairs was striking two as Michael slowly ascended, candle in hand, to the hitherto unknown region of the attics. At the top of the staircase he found himself facing a dark narrow passage which led northwards, a passage that was in itself sufficient to strike terror to a superstitious mind, so black and uncanny did it look.

“Poor child,” mused Mr. Bascom, thinking of Maria; “this attic floor is rather dreary, and for a young mind prone to fancies—”

He had opened the door of the north room by this time, and stood looking about him.

It was a large room, with a ceiling that sloped on one side, but was fairly lofty upon the other; an old-fashioned room, full of old-fashioned furniture – big, ponderous, clumsy – associated with a day that was gone and people that were dead. A walnut-wood wardrobe stared him in the face – a wardrobe with brass handles, which gleamed out of the darkness like diabolical eyes. There was a tall four-post bedstead, which had been cut down on one side to accommodate the slope of the ceiling, and which had a misshapen and deformed aspect in consequence. There was an old mahogany bureau, that smelt of secrets. There were some heavy old chairs with rush bottoms, mouldy with age, and much worn. There was a corner washstand, with a big basin and a small jug – the odds and ends of past years. Carpet there was none, save a narrow strip beside the bed.

“It is a dismal room,” mused Michael, with the same touch of pity for Maria’s weakness which he had felt on the landing just now.

To him it mattered nothing where he slept; but having let himself down to a lower level by his interest in the Swiss lake-people, he was in a manner humanized by the lightness of his evening’s reading, and was even inclined to compassionate the feebleness of a foolish girl.

He went to bed, determined to sleep his soundest. The bed was comfortable, well supplied with blankets, rather luxurious than otherwise, and the scholar had that agreeable sense of fatigue which promises profound and restful slumber.

He dropped off to sleep quickly, but woke with a start ten minutes afterwards. What was this consciousness of a burden of care that had awakened him – this sense of all-pervading trouble that weighed upon his spirits and oppressed his heart – this icy horror of some terrible crisis in life through which he must inevitably pass? To him these feelings novel as they were painful. His life had flowed on with smooth and sluggish fade, unbroken by so much as a ripple of sorrow. Yet tonight he felt all the pangs of unavailing remorse; the agonizing memory of a life wasted; the stings of humiliation and disgrace, shame, ruin; the foreshadowing of a hideous death, which he had doomed himself to die by his own hand. These were the horrors that pressed him round and weighed him down as he lay in Anthony Bascom’s room.

Yes, even he, the man who could recognize nothing in nature, or in nature’s God, better or higher than an irresponsible and invariable machine governed by mechanical laws, was fain to admit that here he found himself face to face with a psychological mystery. This trouble, which came between him and sleep, was the trouble that had pursued Anthony Bascom on the last night of his life. So had the suicide felt as he lay in that lonely room, perhaps striving to rest his wearied brain with one last earthly sleep before he passed to the unknown intermediate land where all is darkness and slumber. And that troubled mind had haunted the room ever since. It was not the ghost of the man’s body that returned to the spot where he had suffered and perished, but the ghost of his mind – his very self; no meaningless simulacrum of the clothes he wore, and the figure that filled them.

Michael Bascom was not the man to abandon his high ground of sceptical philosophy without a struggle. He tried his hardest to conquer this oppression that weighed upon mind and sense. Again and again he succeeded in composing himself to sleep, but only to wake again and again to the same torturing thoughts, the same remorse, the same despair. So the night passed in unutterable weariness; for though he told himself that the trouble was not his trouble, that there was no reality in the burden, no reason for the remorse, these vivid fancies were as painful as realities, and took as strong a hold upon him.

The first streak of light crept in at the window – dim, and cold, and grey; then came twilight, and he looked at the corner between the wardrobe and the door.

Yes; there was the shadow: not the shadow of the wardrobe only that was clear enough, but a vague and shapeless something which darkened the dull brown wall; so faint, so shadowy, that he could form no conjecture as to its nature, or the thing it represented. He determined to watch this shadow till broad daylight; but the weariness of the night had exhausted him, and before the first dimness of dawn had passed away he had fallen fast asleep, and was tasting the blessed balm of undisturbed slumber. When he woke the winter sun was shining in at the lattice, and the room had lost its gloomy aspect. It looked old-fashioned, and grey, and brown, and shabby; but the depth of its gloom had fled with the shadows and the darkness of night.

Mr. Bascom rose refreshed by a sound sleep, which had lasted nearly three hours. He remembered the wretched feelings which had gone before that renovating slumber; but he recalled his strange sensations only to despise them, and he despised himself for having attached any importance to them.

“Indigestion very likely,” he told himself; “or perhaps mere fancy, engendered of that foolish girl’s story. The wisest of us is more under the dominion of imagination than he would care to confess. Well, Maria shall not sleep in this room any more. There is no particular reason why she should, and she shall not be made unhappy to please old Skegg and his wife.”

When he had dressed himself in his usual leisurely way, Mr. Bascom walked up to the corner where he had seen or imagined the shadow, and examined the spot carefully.

At first sight he could discover nothing of a mysterious character. There was no door in the papered wall, no trace of a door that had been there in the past. There was no trap-door in the worm-eaten boards. There was no dark ineradicable stain to hint at murder. There was not the faintest suggestion of a secret or a mystery.

He looked up at the ceiling. That was sound enough, save for a dirty patch here and there where the rain had blistered it.

Yes; there was something – an insignificant thing, yet with a suggestion of grimness which startled him.

About a foot below the ceiling he saw a large iron hook projecting from the wall, just above the spot where he had seen the shadow of a vaguely defined form. He mounted on a chair the better to examine this hook, and to understand, if he could, the purpose for which it had been put there.

It was old and rusty. It must have been there for many years. Who could have placed it there, and why? It was not the kind of hook upon which one would hang a picture or one’s garments. It was placed in an obscure corner. Had Anthony Bascom put it then on the night he died; or died he find it there ready for a fatal use?

“If I were a superstitious man,” thought Michael; “I should be inclined to believe that Anthony Bascom hung himself from that rusty old hook.”

“Sleep well, sir?” asked Daniel, as he waited upon his master at breakfast,

“Admirably,” answered Michael, determined not to gratify the man’s curiosity.

He had always resented the idea that Wildheath Grange was haunted,

“Oh, indeed, sir. You were so late that I fancied—”

“Late, yes! I slept so well that I overshot my usual hour for waking. But, by-the-way, Skegg, as that poor girl objects to the room, let her sleep somewhere else. It can’t make any difference to us, and it may make some difference to her.”

“Humph!” muttered Daniel in his grumpy way; “you didn’t see anything queer up there, did you?”

“See anything? Of course not.”

“Well, then, why should she see things? It’s all her silly fiddle-faddle.”

“Never mind, let her sleep in another room.”

“There ain’t another room on the top floor that’s dry.”

“Then let her sleep on the floor below. She creeps about quietly enough, poor little timid thing. She won’t disturb me.”

Daniel grunted, and his master understood the grunt to mean obedient assent; but here Mr. Bascom was unhappily mistaken, The proverbial obstinacy of the pig family is as compared with the obstinacy of a cross-grained old man, whose narrow mind has never been illuminated by education. Daniel was beginning to feel jealous of his master’s compassionate interest in the orphan girl. She was a sort of gentle clinging thing that might creep into an elderly bachelor’s heart unawares, and make herself a comfortable nest there.

“We shall have fine carryings-on, and me and my old woman will be nowhere, if I don’t put down my heel pretty strong upon this nonsense,” Daniel mattered to himself, as he carried the breakfast-tray to the pantry.

Maria met him in the passage.

“Well, Mr. Skegg, what did my master say?” she asked breathlessly. “Did he see anything strange in the room?”

“No, girl. What should he see? He said you were a fool.”

“Nothing disturbed him? And he slept there peacefully?” faltered Maria.

“Never slept better in his life. Now don’t you begin to feel ashamed of yourself?”

“Yes,” she answered meekly; “I am ashamed of being so full of fancies. I will go back to my room tonight, Mr. Skegg, if you like and I will never complain of it again.”

“I hope you won’t,” snapped Skegg; “you’ve given us trouble enough already.”

Maria sighed, and went about her work in saddest silence. The day wore slowly on, like all other days in that lifeless old house. The scholar sat in his study; Maria moved softly from room to room, sweeping and dusting in the cheerless solitude. The midday sun faded into the grey of afternoon, and evening came down like a blight upon the dull old house.

Throughout that day Maria and her master never met. Anyone who had been so far interested in the girl as to observe her appearance would have seen that she was unusually pale, and that her eyes had a resolute look, as of one who was resolved to face a painful ordeal. She ate hardly anything all day. She was curiously silent. Skegg and his wife put down both these symptoms to temper.

“She won’t eat and she won’t talk,” said Daniel to the partner of his joys. “That means sulkiness, and I never allowed sulkiness to master me when I was a young man, and you tried it on as a young woman, and I’m not going to be conquered by sulkiness in my old age.”

Bedtime came, and Maria bade the Skeggs a civil goodnight, and went up to her lonely garret without a murmur.

The next morning came, and Mrs. Skegg looked in vain for her patient handmaiden, when she wanted Maria’s services in preparing the breakfast.

“The wench sleeps sound enough this morning,” said the old woman. “Go and call her, Daniel. My poor legs can’t stand them stairs.”

“Your poor legs are getting uncommon useless,” muttered Daniel testily, as he went to do his wife’s behest.

He knocked at the door, and called Maria – once, twice, thrice, many times; but there was no reply. He tried the door, and found it locked. He shook the door violently, cold with fear.

Then he told himself that the girl had played him a trick. She had stolen away before daybreak, and left the door locked to frighten him. But, no; this could not be, for he could see the key in the lock when he knelt down and put his eye to the keyhole. The key prevented his seeing into the room.

“She’s in there, laughing in her sleeve at me,” he told himself; “but I’ll soon be even with her.”

There was a heavy bar on the staircase, which was intended to secure the shutters of the window that lighted the stairs. It was a detached bar, and always stood in a corner near the window, which it was but rarely employed to fasten. Daniel ran down to the landing, and seized upon this massive iron bar, and then ran back to the garret door.

One blow from the heavy bar shattered the old look, which was the same lock the carter had broken with his strong fist seventy years before. The door flew open, and Daniel went into the attic which he had chosen for the stranger’s bedchamber.

Maria was hanging from the hook in the wall. She had contrived to cover her face decently with her handkerchief. She had hanged herself deliberately about an hour before Daniel found her, in the early grey of morning. The doctor, who was summoned from Holcroft, was able to declare the time at which she had slain herself, but there was no one who could say what sudden access of terror had impelled her to the desperate act, or under what slow torture of nervous apprehension her mind had given way. The coroner’s jury returned the customary merciful verdict of “Temporary insanity.”

The girl’s melancholy fate darkened the rest of Michael Bascom’s life. He fled from Wildheath Orange as from an accursed spot, and from the Skeggs as from the murderers of a harmless innocent girl. He ended his days at Oxford, where he found the society of congenial minds, and the books he loved. But the memory of Maria’s sad face, and sadder death, was his abiding sorrow. Out of that deep shadow his soul was never lifted.

—

The Cold Embrace

(1860)

He was an artist – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to artists.

He was a German – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to Germans.

He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless.

And being young, handsome, and eloquent, he was beloved.

He was an orphan, under the guardianship of his dead father’s brother, his uncle Wilhelm, in whose house he had been brought up from a little child; and she who loved him was his cousin – his cousin Gertrude, whom he swore he loved in return.

Did he love her? Yes, when he first swore it. It soon wore out, this passionate love; how threadbare and wretched a sentiment it became at last in the selfish heart of the student! But in its first golden dawn, when he was only nineteen, and had just returned from his apprenticeship to a great painter at Antwerp, and they wandered together in the most romantic outskirts of the city at rosy sunset, by holy moonlight, or bright and joyous morning, how beautiful a dream!

They keep it a secret from Wilhelm, as he has the father’s ambition of a wealthy suitor for his only child – a cold and dreary vision beside the lover’s dream.

So they are betrothed; and standing side by side when the dying sun and the pale rising moon divide the heavens, he puts the betrothal ring upon her finger, the white and taper finger whose slender shape he knows so well. This ring is a peculiar one, a massive golden serpent, its tail in its mouth, the symbol of eternity; it had been his mother’s, and he would know it amongst a thousand. If he were to become blind tomorrow, he could select it from amongst a thousand by the touch alone.

He places it on her finger, and they swear to be true to each other for ever and ever – through trouble and danger – in sorrow and change – in wealth or poverty. Her father must needs be won to consent to their union by and by, for they were now betrothed, and death alone could part them.

But the young student, the scoffer at revelation, yet the enthusiastic adorer of the mystical, asks:

“Can death part us? I would return to you from the grave, Gertrude. My soul would come back to be near my love. And you – you, if you died before me – the cold earth would not hold you from me; if you loved me, you would return, and again these fair arms would be clasped round my neck as they are now.”

But she told him, with a holier light in her deep-blue eyes than had ever shone in his – she told him that the dead who die at peace with God are happy in heaven, and cannot return to the troubled earth; and that it is only the suicide – the lost wretch on whom sorrowful angels shut the door of Paradise – whose unholy spirit haunts the footsteps of the living.

•   •   •   •   •

The first year of their betrothal is passed, and she is alone, for he has gone to Italy, on a commission for some rich man, to copy Raphaels, Titians, Guidos, in a gallery at Florence. He has gone to win fame, perhaps; but it is not the less bitter – he is gone!

Of course her father misses his young nephew, who has been as a son to him; and he thinks his daughter’s sadness no more than a cousin should feel for a cousin’s absence.

In the meantime, the weeks and months pass. The lover writes – often at first, then seldom – at last, not at all.

How many excuses she invents for him! How many times she goes to the distant little post-office, to which he is to address his letters! How many times she hopes, only to be disappointed! How many times she despairs, only to hope again!

But real despair comes at last, and will not be put off any more. The rich suitor appears on the scene, and her father is determined. She is to marry at once. The wedding-day is fixed – the fifteenth of June.

The date seems burnt into her brain.

The date, written in fire, dances forever before her eyes.

The date, shrieked by the Furies, sounds continually in her ears.

But there is time yet – it is the middle of May – there is time for a letter to reach him at Florence; there is time for him to come to Brunswick, to take her away and marry her, in spite of her father – in spite of the whole world.

But the days and weeks fly by, and he does not write – he does not come. This is indeed despair which usurps her heart, and will not be put away.

It is the fourteenth of June. For the last time she goes to the little post-office; for the last time she asks the old question, and they give her for the last time the dreary answer, “No; no letter.”

For the last time – for tomorrow is the day appointed for her bridal. Her father will hear no entreaties; her rich suitor will not listen to her prayers. They will not be put off a day – an hour; tonight alone is hers – this night, which she may employ as she will.

She takes another path than that which leads home; she hurries through some by-streets of the city, out onto a lonely bridge, where he and she had stood so often in the sunset, watching the rose-coloured light glow, fade, and die upon the river.

•   •   •   •   •

He returns from Florence. He had received her letter. That letter, blotted with tears, entreating, despairing – he had received it, but he loved her no longer. A young Florentine, who had sat to him for a model, had bewitched his fancy – that fancy which with him stood in place of a heart – and Gertrude had been half forgotten. If she had a richer suitor, good; let her marry him; better for her, better far for himself. He had no wish to fetter himself with a wife. Had he not his art always? – his eternal bride, his unchanging mistress.

Thus he thought it wiser to delay his journey to Brunswick, so that he should arrive when the wedding was over – arrive in time to salute the bride.

And the vows – the mystical fancies – the belief in his return, even after death, to the embrace of his beloved? Oh, gone out of his life; melted away forever, those foolish dreams of his boyhood.

So on the fifteenth of June he enters Brunswick, by that very bridge on which she stood, the stars looking down on her, the night before. He strolls across the bridge and down by the water’s edge, a great rough dog at his heels, and the smoke from his short meerschaum pipe curling in blue wreaths fantastically in the pure morning air. He has his sketchbook under his arm, and, attracted now and then by some object that catches his artist’s eye, stops to draw: a few weeds and pebbles on the river’s brink – a crag on the opposite share – a group of pollard willows in the distance. When he has done, he admires his drawing, shuts his sketchbook, empties the ashes from his pipe, refills from his tobacco-pouch, sings the refrain of a gay drinking-song, calls to his dog, smokes again, and walks on. Suddenly he opens his sketch-book again; this time that which attracts him is a group of figures: but what is it?

It is not a funeral, for there are no mourners.

It is not a funeral, but it is a corpse lying on a rude bier, covered with an old sail, carried between two bearers.

It is not a funeral, for the bearers are fishermen – fishermen in their everyday garb.

About a hundred yards from him they rest their burden on a bank – one stands at the head of the bier, the other throws himself down at the foot of it.

And thus they form a perfect group; he walks back two or three paces, selects his point of sight, and begins to sketch a hurried outline. He has finished it before they move; he hears their voices, though he cannot hear their words, and wonders what they can be talking of. Presently he walks on and joins them.

“You have a corpse there, my friends?” he says.

“Yes; a corpse washed ashore an hour ago.”

“Drowned?”

“Yes, drowned; – a young girl, very handsome.”

“Suicides are always handsome,” says the painter; and then he stands for a little while idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas-covering.

Life is such a golden holiday for him – young, ambitious, clever – that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny.

At last he says that, as this poor suicide is so handsome, he should like to make a sketch of her.

He gives the fishermen some money, and they offer to remove the sailcloth that covers her features.

No; he will do it himself. He lifts the rough, coarse, wet canvas from her face. What face?

The face that shone on the dreams of his foolish boyhood; the face which once was the light of his uncle’s home. His cousin Gertrude – his betrothed!

He sees, as in one glance, while he draws one breath, the rigid features – the marble arms – the hands crossed on the cold bosom; and, on the third finger of the left hand, the ring which had been his mother’s – the golden serpent; the ring which, if he were to become blind, he could select from a thousand others by the touch alone.

But he is a genius and a metaphysician – grief, true grief, is not for such as he. His first thought is flight – flight anywhere out of that accursed city – anywhere far from the brink of that hideous river – anywhere away from memory, away from remorse – anywhere to forget.

•   •   •   •   •

He is miles on the road that leads away from Brunswick before he knows that he has walked a step.

It is only when his dog lies down panting at his feet that he feels how exhausted he is himself, and sits down upon a bank to rest. How the landscape spins round and round before his dazzled eyes, while his morning’s sketch of the two fishermen and the canvas-covered bier glares redly at him out of the twilight!

At last, after sitting a long time by the roadside, idly playing with his dog, idly smoking, idly lounging, looking as any idle, light-hearted travelling student might look, yet all the while acting over that morning’s scene in his burning brain a hundred times a minute; at last he grows a little more composed, and tries presently to think of himself as he is, apart from his cousin’s suicide. Apart from that, he was no worse off than he was yesterday. His genius was not gone; the money he had earned at Florence still lined his pocketbook; he was his own master, free to go whither he would.

And while he sits on the roadside, trying to separate himself from the scene of that morning – trying to put away the image of the corpse covered with the damp canvas sail – trying to think of what he should do next, where he should go, to be farthest away from Brunswick and remorse, the old diligence comes rumbling and jingling along. He remembers it; it goes from Brunswick to Aix-la-Chapelle.

He whistles to his dog, shouts to the postillion to stop, and springs into the coupé.

During the whole evening, through the long night, though he does not once close his eyes, he never speaks a word; but when morning dawns, and the other passengers awake and begin to talk to each other, he joins in the conversation. He tells them that he is an artist, that he is going to Cologne and to Antwerp to copy the Rubenses, and the great picture by Quentin Matsys, in the museum. He remembered afterwards that he talked and laughed boisterously, and that when he was talking and laughing loudest, a passenger, older and graver than the rest, opened the window near him, and told him to put his head out. He remembered the fresh air blowing in his face, the singing of the birds in his ears, and the flat fields and roadside reeling before his eyes. He remembered this, and then falling in a lifeless heap on the floor of the diligence.

It is a fever that keeps him for six long weeks laid on a bed at a hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle.

He gets well, and, accompanied by his dog, starts on foot for Cologne. By this time he is his former self once more. Again the blue smoke from his short meerschaum curls upwards in the morning air – again he sings some old university drinking-song – again stops here and there, meditating and sketching.

He is happy, and has forgotten his cousin – and so, on to Cologne.

It is by the great cathedral he is standing, with his dog at his side. It is night, the bells have just chimed the hour, and the clocks are striking eleven; the moonlight shines full upon the magnificent pile, over which the artist’s eye wanders, absorbed in the beauty of form.

He is not thinking of his drowned cousin, for he has forgotten her and is happy.

Suddenly someone, something from behind him, puts two cold arms round his neck, and clasps its hands on his breast.

And yet there is no one behind him, for on the flags bathed in the broad moonlight there are only two shadows, his own and his dog’s. He turns quickly round – there is no one – nothing to be seen in the broad square but himself and his dog; and though he feels, he cannot see the cold arms clasped round his neck.

It is not ghostly, this embrace, for it is palpable to the touch – it cannot be real, for it is invisible.

He tries to throw off the cold caress. He clasps the hands in his own to tear them asunder, and to cast them off his neck. He can feel the long delicate fingers cold and wet beneath his touch, and on the third, finger of the left hand he can feel the ring which was his mother’s – the golden serpent – the ring which he has always said he would know among a thousand by the touch alone. He knows it now!

His dead cousin’s cold arms are round his neck – his dead cousin’s wet hands are clasped upon his breast. He asks himself if he is mad. “Up, Leo!” he shouts. “Up, up, boy!” and the Newfoundland leaps to his shoulders – the dog’s paws are on the dead hands, and the animal utters a terrific howl, and springs away from his master.

The student stands in the moonlight, the dead arms round his neck, and the dog at a little distance moaning piteously.

Presently a watchman, alarmed by the howling of the dog, comes into the square to see what is wrong.

In a breath the cold arms are gone.

He takes the watchman home to the hotel with him and gives him money; in his gratitude he could have given that man half his little fortune.

Will it ever come to him again, this embrace of the dead?

He tries never to be alone; he makes a hundred acquaintances, and shares the chamber of another student. He starts up if he is left by himself in the public room at the inn where he is staying, and runs into the street. People notice his strange actions, and begin to think that he is mad.

But, in spite of all, he is alone once more; for one night the public room being empty for a moment, when on some idle pretence he strolls into the street, the street is empty too, and for the second time he feels the cold arms round his neck, and for the second time, when he calls his dog, the animal slinks away from him with a piteous howl.

After this he leaves Cologne, still travelling on foot – of necessity now, for his money is getting low. He joins travelling hawkers, he walks side by side with labourers, he talks to every foot-passenger he falls in with, and tries from morning till night to get company on the road.

At night he sleeps by the fire in the kitchen of the inn at which he stops; but do what he will, he is often alone, and it is now a common thing for him to feel the cold arms around his neck.

Many months have passed since his cousin’s death – autumn, winter, early spring. His money is nearly gone, his health is utterly broken, he is the shadow of his former self, and he is getting near Paris. He will reach that city at the time of the Carnival. To this he looks forward. In Paris, in Carnival time, he need never, surely, be alone, never feel that deadly caress; he may even recover his lost gaiety, his lost health, once more resume his profession, once more earn fame and money by his art.

How hard he tries to get over the distance that divides him from Paris, while day by day he grows weaker, and his step slower and more heavy!

But there is an end at last; the long dreary roads are passed. This is Paris, which he enters for the first time – Paris, of which he has dreamed so much – Paris, whose million voices are to exorcise his phantom.

To him tonight Paris seems one vast chaos of lights, music, and confusion – lights which dance before his eyes and will not be still – music that rings in his ears and deafens him – confusion which makes his head whirl round and round.

But, in spite of all, he finds the opera-house, where there is a masked ball. He has enough money left to buy a ticket of admission, and to hire a domino to throw over his shabby dress. It seems only a moment after his entering the gates of Paris that he is in the very midst of the wild gaiety of the opera-house ball.

No more darkness, no more loneliness, but a mad crowd, shouting and dancing, and a lovely Débardeuse hanging on his arm.

The boisterous gaiety he feels surely is his old light-heartedness come back. He hears the people round him talking of the outrageous conduct of some drunken student, and it is to him they point when they say this – to him, who has not moistened his lips since yesterday at noon, for even now he will not drink; though his lips are parched, and his throat burning, he cannot drink. His voice is thick and hoarse, and his utterance indistinct; but still this must be his old lightheartedness come back that makes him so wildly gay.

The little Débardeuse is wearied out – her arm rests on his shoulder heavier than lead – the other dancers one by one drop off.

The lights, in the chandeliers one by one die out.

The decorations look pale and shadowy in that dim light which is neither night nor day.

A faint glimmer from the dying lamps, a pale streak of cold grey light from the new-born day, creeping in through half-opened shutters.

And by this light the bright-eyed Débardeuse fades sadly. He looks her in the face. How the brightness of her eyes dies out! Again he looks her in the face. How white that face has grown! Again – and now it is the shadow of a face alone that looks in his.

Again – and they are gone – the bright eyes, the face, the shadow of the face. He is alone; alone in that vast saloon.

Alone, and, in the terrible silence, he hears the echoes of his own footsteps in that dismal dance which has no music.

No music but the beating of his heart against his breast. For the cold arms are round his neck – they whirl him round, they will not be flung off, or cast away; he can no more escape from their icy grasp than he can escape from death. He looks behind him – there is nothing but himself in the great empty salle; but he can feel – cold, deathlike, but oh, how palpable! – the long slender fingers, and the ring which was his mother’s.

He tries to shout, but he has no power in his burning throat. The silence of the place is only broken by the echoes of his own footsteps in the dance from which he cannot extricate himself. Who says he has no partner? The cold hands are clasped on his breast, and now he does not shun their caress. No! One more polka, if he drops down dead.

The lights are all out, and half an hour after, the gendarmes come in with a lantern to see that the house is empty; they are followed by a great dog that they have found seated howling on the steps of the theatre. Near the principal entrance they stumble over—

The body of a student, who has died from want of food, exhaustion, and the breaking of a blood-vessel.

—

The Scene-Painter’s Wife

(1862)

“You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, sir,” said the old clown, as he shook the ashes out of his blackened clay, “but madam was once as handsome a woman as you’d see for many a long day. It was an accident that spoilt her beauty.”

The speaker was attached to a little equestrian company with which I had fallen in during a summer day’s pedestrianism in Warwickshire. The troupe had halted at a roadside inn, where I was dawdling over my midday meal, and by the time I had smoked my cigar in his companionship, the clown and I were upon a footing of perfect friendliness.

I had been not a little struck by the woman of whom he spoke. She was tall and slim, and had something of a foreign look, as I thought. Her face was chiefly remarkable for the painful impression which it gave to a stranger. It was the face of a woman who had suffered some great terror. The sickly pallor of the skin was made conspicuous by the hectic brightness of the large black eyes, and on one cheek there was a scar – the mark of some deadly hurt inflicted long ago.

My new friend and I had strolled a little way from the inn, where the rest of the company were still occupied with their frugal dinner. A stretch of sunny common lay before us, and seemed to invite a ramble. The clown filled his pipe and walked on meditatively. I took out another cigar.

“Was it a fall from horseback that gave her that scar?” I asked.

“A fall from horseback! Madame Delavanti! No, sir, that seam on her cheek was made by the claws of a tiger. It’s rather a curious sort of story, and I don’t mind telling it, if you’d like to hear it, but for goodness’ sake don’t let her know I’ve been talking of her, if you should happen to scrape acquaintance with her when you go back to the inn.”

“Has she such a dislike to being talked about?”

“I rather think she has. You see she’s not quite right in the upper story, poor soul; but she’s a clipper to ride, and doesn’t know what fear means. You’d scarcely believe how handsome she looks at night when she’s dressed for the ring. Her face lights up almost as well as it used to do ten years ago, before she had the accident. Ah, she was a beauty in those days, and used to be run after by all the gentlemen like mad. But she never was a bad lot, never – wild and self-willed, but never a wicked woman, as I’ll stake my life. I’ve been her friend through thick and thin when she needed a friend, and I’ve understood her better than others.”

She was only twelve years old when first she came to us with her father, a noted lion-tamer. He was a man who drank hard now and then, and was very severe with her at such times; but she always had a brave spirit, and I never knew her to quail before him or before the beasts. She used to take her share in all the old man’s performances, and when he died and the lions were sold off, our proprietor kept a tiger for her to perform with. He was the cleverest of all the animals, but a queer temper, and it needed a spirit like Caroline Delavanti’s to face him. She used to ride in the circus as well as perform with the tiger, and she was altogether the most valuable member of the company, and was very well paid for her work. She was eighteen when her father died, and within a year of his death she married Joseph Waylie, our scene-painter.

I was rather surprised at this marriage, for I fancied Caroline might have done better. Joe was thirty-five, if he was a day – a pale, sandy-haired fellow, not much to look at, and by no means a genius. But he was awfully fond of Caroline. He had followed her about like a dog ever since she came among us, and I thought she married him more out of pity than love. I told her so one day, but she only laughed and said—

“He’s too good for me, Mr. Waters, that’s the truth. I don’t deserve to be loved as he loves me.”

The newly-married couple seemed to be very happy together. It was a treat to see Joe stand at the wing and watch his wife through her performances, ready to put a shawl over her pretty white shoulders when she had done, or to throw himself between her and the tiger in case of mischief. She treated him in a pretty patronizing sort of way, as if he had been ever so much younger than she, instead of twelve years her senior. She used to stand upon tiptoe and kiss him before all the company sometimes at a rehearsal, much to his delight. He worked like a slave in the hope of improving his position as he improved in his art, and he thought nothing too good for his beautiful young wife. They had very comfortable lodgings about half a mile from the manufacturing town where we were stationed for the winter months, and lived as well as simple folks need live.

Our manager was proprietor of a second theatre, at a seaport town fifty miles away; and when pantomime time was coming on, poor Joseph Waylie was ordered off to paint the scenery for this other theatre, much to his grief, as his work was likely to keep him a month or six weeks away from his wife. It was their first parting, and the husband felt it deeply. He left Caroline to the care of an old woman who took the money, and who professed a very warm attachment for Mrs. Waylie, or Madame Delavanti, as she was called in the bills.

Joseph had not been gone much more than a week when I began to take notice of a young officer who was in front every evening, and who watched Caroline’s performance with evident admiration. I saw him one night in very close conversation with Mrs. Muggleton, the money-taker, and was not over-pleased to hear Madame Delavanti’s name mentioned in the course of their conversation. On the next night I found him loitering about at the stage door. He was a very handsome man, and I could not avoid taking notice of him. On inquiry, I found that his name was Jocelyn, and that he was a captain in the regiment then stationed in the town. He was the only son of a wealthy manufacturer, I was told, and had plenty of money to throw about.

I had finished my performance earlier than usual one night soon after this, and was waiting for a friend at the stage door, when Captain Jocelyn came up the dark by-street, smoking his cigar, and evidently waiting for someone. I fell back into the shadow of the doorway, and waited, feeling pretty sure that he was on the watch for Caroline. I was right. She came out presently and joined him, putting her hand under his arm, as if it was quite a usual thing for him to be her escort. I followed them at a little distance as they walked off, and waited till I saw Joe’s wife safe within her own door. The captain detained her on the doorstep talking for a few minutes, and evidently would have liked to have kept her there longer, but she dismissed him with that pretty imperious way she had with all of us at times.

Now, as a very old friend of Caroline’s, I wasn’t going to stand this sort of thing; so I taxed her with it plainly next day, and told her no good could come of any acquaintance between her and Captain Jocelyn.

“And no harm need come of it either, you silly old fellow,” she said. “I’ve been used to that sort of attention all my life. There’s nothing but the most innocent flirtation between us.”

“What would Joe think of such an innocent flirtation, Caroline?” I asked.

“Joe must learn to put up with such things,” she answered, “as long as I do my duty to him. I can’t live without excitement, and admiration, and that sort of thing. Joe ought to know that as well as I do.”

“I should have thought the tiger and the horses would have given you enough excitement, Caroline,” I said, “without running into worse dangers than the risk of your life.”

“But they don’t give me half enough excitement,” she answered; and then she took out a little watch in a jewelled case, and looked at it, and then at me in a half-boastful, half-nervous way.

“Why, what a pretty watch, Carry!” said I. “Is that a present from Joe?”

“As if you didn’t know better than that!” she said. “Country scene-painters can’t afford to buy diamond watches for their wives, Mr. Waters.”

I tried to lecture her, but she laughed off my reproaches; and I saw her that night with a bracelet on her arm which I knew must be another gift from the captain. He was in a stage box, and threw her a bouquet of choice flowers after her scene with the tiger. It was the prettiest sight in the world to see her pick up the flowers and offer them to the grim-looking animal to smell, and then snatch them away with a laugh, and retire, curtseying to the audience and glancing coquettishly towards the box where her admirer sat applauding her.

Three weeks went by like this, the captain in front every night. I kept a close watch upon the pair, for I thought that, however she might carry on her flirtation, Joe’s wife was true at heart, and would not do him any deliberate wrong. She was very young and very willful, but I fancied my influence would go a long way with her in any desperate emergency. So I kept an eye upon her and her admirer, and there was rarely a night that I did not see the captain’s back turned upon the door of Mrs. Waylie’s lodgings before I went home to my own supper.

Joe was not expected home for another week, and the regiment was to leave the town in a couple of days. Caroline told me this one morning with evident pleasure, and I was overjoyed to find she did not really care for Captain Jocelyn.

“Not a bit, you silly old man,” she said; “I like his admiration, and I like his presents, but I know there’s no one in the world worth Joe. I’m very glad the regiment will be gone when Joe comes back. I shall have had my bit of fun, yon know, and I shall tell Joe all about it; and as Captain Jocelyn will have gone to the other end of the world, he can’t object to the presents – tributes offered to my genius, as the captain says in his notes.”

I felt by no means sure that Joseph Waylie would consent to his wife’s retaining these tributes, and I told her as much.

“Oh, nonsense!” she said; “I can do what I like with Joe. He’ll be quite satisfied when he sees Captain Jocelyn’s respectful letters. I couldn’t part with my darling little watch for the world.”

When I went to the theatre next evening I found the captain standing talking to Caroline just inside the stage door. He seemed very earnest, and was begging her to do something which she said was impossible. It was his last night in the town, you see, and I have very little doubt that he was asking her to run away with him – for I believe the man was over head and ears in love with her – and that she was putting him off in her laughing, coquettish way.

“I won’t take your answer now,” he said, very seriously. “I shall wait for you at the door tonight. You can’t mean to break my heart, Caroline; the answer must be, ‘Yes’.”

She broke away from him hurriedly. “Hark!” she said, “there’s the overture; and in half an hour I must be upon the stage.”

I passed the captain in the dark passage, and a few paces farther on passed someone else whose face I could not see, but whose short, hurried breathing sounded like that of a person who had been running. We brushed against one another as we passed, but the man took no notice of me.

Half an hour afterwards I was lounging in a corner of the ring while Caroline went through her performances with the tiger. Captain Jocelyn was in his usual place, with a bouquet in his hand. It was New Year’s night, and the house was very full. I had been looking all round for some time, when I was startled by the sight of a face in the pit. It was Joseph Waylie’s face, ashy pale, and fixed as death – a face that meant mischief.

“He has heard something against his wife,” I thought. “I’ll run round to him directly I can get out of the ring, and make matters square. Some confounded scandalmonger has got hold of him, and has been poisoning his mind about Caroline and the captain.” I knew there had been a good deal of talk in the theatre about those two – talk which I had done my best to put down.

Captain Jocelyn threw his bouquet, which was received with a coquettish smile and a bright upward glance that seemed to express profound delight. I knew that this was mere stageplay; but how must it have looked to the jealous man, glaring with fixed eyes from his place at the back of the pit! I turned to look at him as the curtain fell upon the stage, but he was gone. He was going round to speak to his wife, no doubt. I left the ring immediately, and went to prepare her for the interview, and, if needed, to stand between her and her husband’s anger.

I found her at the wing, trifling with her bouquet in an absent way.

“Have you seen Joe?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “He hasn’t come back, has he? I didn’t expect, him for a week.”

“I know, my dear; but I saw him in the pit just now, looking as pale as a ghost. I’m afraid someone has been talking to him about you.”

She looked rather frightened when I said this.

“They can’t say any harm of me if they speak the truth,” she said. “I wonder Joe didn’t come straight to me though, instead of going to the front of the house.”

We were both wanted in the ring. I helped Caroline through her equestrian performance, and saw that she was a little nervous and anxious about Joe’s return. She did not favour the captain with many more smiles that evening, and she told me to be ready for her at the stage door ten minutes before the performance was over.

“I want to give Captain Jocelyn the slip,” she said; “but I dare say Joe will come to me before I’m ready.”

Joe did not appear, however, and she went home with me. I met the captain on my way back, and he asked me if I had been seeing Mrs. Waylie home. I told him yes, and that her husband had come home. Joe had not arrived at the lodgings, however, when Caroline went in, and I returned to the theatre to look for him. The stage door was shut when I went back; so I supposed that Joe had gone home by another way, or was out drinking. I went to bed that night very uneasy in my mind about Caroline and her husband.

There was an early rehearsal of a new interlude next morning, and Caroline came into the theatre five minutes after I got there. She looked pale and ill. Her husband had not been home.

“I think it must have been a mistake of yours about Joe,” she said to me. “I don’t think it could have been he you saw in the pit last night.”

“I saw him as surely as I see you at this moment, my dear,” I answered. “There’s no possibility of a mistake. Joe came back last night, and Joe was in the pit while you were on with the tiger.”

This time she looked really frightened. She put her hand to her heart suddenly, and began to tremble.

“Why didn’t he come home to me?” she cried, “and where did he hide himself last night?”

“I’m afraid he must have gone out upon the drink, my dear.”

“Joe never drinks,” she answered.

While she stood looking at me with that pale scared face, one of our young men came running towards us.

“You’re wanted, Waters,” he said, shortly.

“Where?”

“Upstairs in the painting-room.”

“Joe’s room!” cried Caroline. “Then he has come back. I’ll go with you.”

She was following me as I crossed the stage, but the young man tried to stop her.

“You’d better not come just yet, Mrs. Waylie,” he said, in a hurried way. “It’s only Waters that’s wanted on a matter of business.” And then, as Caroline followed close behind us, he took hold of my arm and whispered, “Don’t let her come.”

I tried to keep her back, but it was no use.

“I know it’s my husband who wants you,” she said. “They’ve been making mischief about me. You shan’t keep me away from him.”

We were on the narrow stairs leading to the painting-room by this time. I couldn’t keep Caroline off. She pushed past both of us, and ran into the room before we could stop her.

“Serve her right,” muttered my companion. “It’s all her doing.”

I heard her scream as I came to the door. There was a little crowd in the painting-room round a quiet figure lying on a bench, and there was a ghastly pool of blood upon the floor. Joseph Waylie had cut his throat.

“He must have done it last night,” said the manager. “There’s a letter for his wife on the table yonder. Is that you, Mrs. Waylie? A bad business, isn’t it? Poor Joseph!”

Caroline knelt down by the side of the bench, and stopped there on her knees, as still as death, till the room was clear of all but me.

“They think I deserve this, Waters,” she said, lifting her white face from the dead man’s shoulder, where she had hidden it; “but I meant no harm. Give me the letter.”

“You’d better wait a bit, my dear,” I said,

“No, no; give it me at once, please.”

I gave her the letter. It was very short. The scene-painter had come back to the theatre in time to hear some portion of that interview between Captain Jocelyn and his wife. He evidently had believed her much more guilty than she was.

“I think you must know how I loved you, Caroline,” he wrote; “I can’t face life with the knowledge that you’ve been false to me.”

Of course there was an inquest. We worked it so that the jury gave a verdict of temporary insanity, and poor Joe was buried decently in the cemetery outside the town. Caroline sold the watch and the bracelet that Captain Jocelyn had given her, in order to pay for her husband’s funeral. She was very quiet, and went on with the performances as usual a week after Joe’s death, but I could see a great change in her. The rest of the company were very hard upon her, as I thought, blaming her for her husband’s death, and she was under a cloud, as it were; but she looked as handsome as ever, and went through all her performances in her old daring way. I’m sure, though, that she grieved sincerely for Joe’s death, and that she had never meant to do him wrong.

We travelled all through the next summer, and late in November went back to Homersleigh. Caroline had seemed happier while we were away, I thought, and when we were going back she confessed as much to me.

“I’ve got a kind of dread of seeing that place again,” she said; “I’m always dreaming of the painting-room as it looked that January morning with the cold light streaming in upon that dreadful figure on the bench. That room has scarcely been out of my dreams one night since I’ve been away from Homersleigh; and now I dread going back as if – as if he was shut up there.”

The room was not a particularly convenient one, and it had been used for lumber after Joe’s death. The man who came after him didn’t care to paint there by himself all day long. On the first morning of our return, Caroline went up and looked in at the dusty heap of disused stage furniture and broken properties. I met her coming away from the room.

“Oh, Mr. Waters,” she said to me with real feeling, “if he had only waited to hear me speak for myself! They all think I deserved what happened, and perhaps I did, as far as it was a punishment for my vanity and foolishness; but Joe didn’t deserve such a fate. I know it was their malicious talk that did the mischief.”

I fancied after this that her looks changed for the worse, and that she had a kind of nervous way in going through her work in the ring, as if there was a fever upon her. I couldn’t judge so well how she went through the tiger act, as I was never on the stage with her, but the brute seemed as submissive as ever. On the last day of the year she asked our manager to let her off for the next night. “It’s the anniversary of my husband’s death,” she said.

“I didn’t know you were so precious fond of him,” he answered, with a sneer. “No, Mrs. Waylie, we can’t afford to dispense with your services tomorrow night. The tiger act is one of our strong features with the gallery, and I expect a full house for New Year’s night.”

She begged him very hard to let her off, but it was no use. There was no rehearsal on New Year’s morning, and she went to the little cemetery where Joe was buried, a three miles’ walk in the cold and rain. In the evening, when she came to the wing, her eyes were brighter than usual, and she shivered a good deal, more than I liked to see.

“I think I must have caught cold in the cemetery today,” she said to me when I noticed this. “I wish I could have kept this night sacred – this one night – to my husband’s memory. He has been in my mind so much today.”

She went on, and I stood at the wing watching her. The audience applauded vociferously, but she did not make her accustomed curtsey; and she went about her work in a listless way that was very different from her usual spirited style. The animal seemed to know this, and when she had got about half way through her tricks with him he began to respond to her word of command in a sulky, unwilling manner that I didn’t like. This made her angry, and she used her light whip more freely than usual.

One of the tiger’s concluding tricks was a leap through a garland of flowers which Caroline held for him. She was kneeling in the centre of the stage with this garland in her hands, ready for the animal’s spring, when her eyes wandered to the front of the house, and she rose suddenly, with a shrill scream, and her arms outstretched wildly. Whether the sulky brute thought that she was going to strike him or not, I don’t know; but he sprang savagely at her as she rose, and in the next moment she was lying on the ground helpless, and the audience screaming with terror. I rushed upon the stage with half a dozen others, and we had the brute muzzled and roped in a few breathless moments, but not before he had torn Caroline’s cheek and shoulder with his claws. She was insensible when we carried her off the stage, and she was confined to her bed three months after the accident with brain fever. When she came among us again she had lost every vestige of colour, and her face had that set look which you must have observed just now.

“The fright of her encounter with the tiger gave her that look,” I said; “I don’t much wonder at it.”

“Not a bit of it,” answered the clown. “That’s the curious part of the story. She didn’t think anything of her skirmish with the tiger, though it quite spoilt her beauty. What frightened her was the sight of her husband sitting in the pit, as he had sat there a year before, on the night of his death Of course you’ll say it was a delusion, and so say I. But she declares she saw him sitting amongst the crowd – amongst them, and yet not one of them, somehow, with a ghastly glare upon his face that marked him out from the rest. It was the sight of him that made her drop her garland and give that scream and start which frightened the tiger. You see, she had been brooding upon his death for a long time, and no doubt she conjured up his image out of her own brain, as it were. She’s never been quite the same since that fever; but she has plenty of pluck, and there’s scarcely anything she can’t do now with Baber the tiger, and I think she’s fonder of him than of any human creature, in spite of the scar on her cheek.”

—

Eveline’s Visitant

(1867)

It was at a masked ball at the Palais Royal that my fatal quarrel with my first cousin André de Brissac began. The quarrel was about a woman. The women who followed the footsteps of Philip of Orleans were the causes of many such disputes; and there was scarcely one fair head in all that glittering throng which, to a man versed in social histories and mysteries, might not have seemed bedabbled with blood.

I shall not record the name of her for love of whom André de Brissac and I crossed one of the bridges, in the dim August dawn, on our way to the waste ground beyond the church of Saint-Germain des Près.

There were many beautiful vipers in those days, and she was one of them. I can feel the chill breath of that August morning blowing in my face, as I sit in my dismal chamber at my château of Puy Verdun tonight, alone in the stillness, writing the strange story of my life. I can see the white mist rising from the river, the grim outline of the Châtelet, and the square towers of Notre Dame black against the pale-grey sky. Even more vividly can I recall André’s fair young face, as he stood opposite to me with his two friends – scoundrels both, and alike eager for that unnatural fray. We were a strange group to be seen in a summer sunrise, all of us fresh from the heat and clamour of the Regent’s saloons – André in a quaint hunting-dress copied from a family portrait at Puy Verdun, I costumed as one of Law’s Mississippi Indians; the other men in like garish frippery, adorned with broideries and jewels that looked wan in the pale light of dawn.

Our quarrel had been a fierce one – a quarrel which could have but one result, and that the direst. I had struck him; and the welt raised by my open hand was crimson upon his fair womanish face as he stood opposite to me. The eastern sun shone on the face presently, and dyed the cruel mark with a deeper red; but the sting of my own wrongs was fresh, and I had not yet learned to despise myself for that brutal outrage.

To André de Brissac such an insult was most terrible. He was the favourite of Fortune, the favourite of women; and I was nothing, – a rough soldier who had done my country good service, but in the boudoir of a Parabère a mannerless boor.

We fought, and I wounded him mortally. Life had been very sweet for him; and I think that a frenzy of despair took possession of him when he felt the lifeblood ebbing away. He beckoned me to him as he lay on the ground. I went, and knelt at his side.

“Forgive me, André!” I murmured.

He took no more heed of my words than if that piteous entreaty had been the idle ripple of the river near at hand.

“Listen to me, Hector de Brissac,” he said. “I am not one who believes that a man has done with earth because his eyes glaze and his jaw stiffens. They will bury me in the old vault at Puy Verdun; and you will be master of the château. Ah, I know how lightly they take things in these days, and how Dubois will laugh when he hears that Ca has been killed in a duel. They will bury me, and sing masses for my soul; but you and I have not finished our affair yet, my cousin. I will be with you when you least look to see me, – I, with this ugly scar upon the face that women have praised and loved. I will come to you when your life seems brightest. I will come between you and all that you hold fairest and dearest. My ghostly hand shall drop a poison in your cup of joy. My shadowy form shall shut the sunlight from your life. Men with such iron will as mine can do what they please, Hector de Brissac. It is my will to haunt you when I am dead.”

All this in short broken sentences he whispered into my ear. I had need to bend my ear close to his dying lips; but the iron will of André de Brissac was strong enough to do battle with Death, and I believe he said all he wished to say before his head fell back upon the velvet cloak they had spread beneath him, never to be lifted again.

As he lay there, you would have fancied him a fragile stripling, too fair and frail for the struggle called life; but there are those who remember the brief manhood of André de Brissac, and who can bear witness to the terrible force of that proud nature.

I stood looking down at the young face with that foul mark upon it; and God knows I was sorry for what I had done.

Of those blasphemous threats which he had whispered in my ear I took no heed. I was a soldier, and a believer. There was nothing absolutely dreadful to me in the thought that I had killed this man. I had killed many men on the battlefield; and this one had done me cruel wrong.

My friends would have had me cross the frontier to escape the consequences of my act; but I was ready to face those consequences, and I remained in France. I kept aloof from the court, and received a hint that I had best confine myself to my own province. Many masses were chanted in the little chapel of Puy Verdun for the soul of my dead cousin, and his coffin filled a niche in the vault of our ancestors.

His death had made me a rich man; and the thought that it was so made my newly-acquired wealth very hateful to me. I lived a lonely existence in the old château, where I rarely held converse with any but the servants of the household, all of whom had served my cousin, and none of whom liked me.

It was a hard and bitter life. It galled me, when I rode through the village, to see the peasant-children shrink away from me. I have seen old women cross themselves stealthily as I passed them by. Strange reports had gone forth about me; and there were those who whispered that I had given my soul to the Evil One as the price of my cousin’s heritage. From my boyhood I had been dark of visage and stern of manner; and hence, perhaps, no woman’s love had ever been mine. I remember my mother’s face in all its changes of expression; but I can remember no look of affection that ever shone on me. That other woman, beneath whose feet I laid my heart, was pleased to accept my homage, but she never loved me; and the end was treachery.

I had grown hateful to myself and had well-nigh began to hate my fellow-creatures, when a feverish desire seized upon me, and I pined to be back in the press and throng of the busy world once again. I went back to Paris, where I kept myself aloof from the court, and where an angel took compassion upon me.

She was the daughter of an old comrade, a man whose merits had been neglected, whose achievements had been ignored, and who sulked in his shabby lodging like a rat in a hole, while all Paris went mad with the Scotch Financier, and gentlemen and lacqueys were trampling one another to death in the Rue Quincampoix. The only child of this little cross-grained old captain of dragoons was an incarnate sunbeam, whose mortal name was Eveline Duchalet.

She loved me. The richest blessings of our lives are often those which cost us least. I wasted the best years of my youth in the worship of a wicked woman, who jilted and cheated me at last. I gave this meek angel but a few courteous words – a little fraternal tenderness – and lo, she loved me. The life which had been so dark and desolate grew bright beneath her influence; and I went back to Puy Verdun with a fair young bride for my companion.

Ah, how sweet a change there was in my life and in my home! The village children no longer shrank appalled as the dark horseman rode by, the village crones no longer crossed themselves; for a woman rode by his side – a woman whose charities had won the love of all those ignorant creatures, and whose companionship had transformed the gloomy lord of the château into a loving husband and a gentle master. The old retainers forgot the untimely fate of my cousin, and served me with cordial willingness, for love of their young mistress.

There are no words which can tell the pure and perfect happiness of that time. I felt like a traveller who had traversed the frozen seas of an arctic region, remote from human love or human companionship, to find himself on a sudden in the bosom of a verdant valley, in the sweet atmosphere of home. The change seemed too bright to be real; and I strove in vain to put away from my mind the vague suspicion that my new life was but some fantastic dream.

So brief were those halcyon hours, that, looking back on them now, it is scarcely strange if I am still half inclined to fancy the first days of my married life could have been no more than a dream.

Neither in my days of gloom nor in my days of happiness had I been troubled by the recollection of André’s blasphemous oath. The words which with his last breath he had whispered in my ear were vain and meaningless to me. He had vented his rage in those idle threats, as he might have vented it in idle execrations. That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves, the earth would be peopled with phantoms.

I had lived for three years at Puy Verdun; sitting alone in the solemn midnight by the hearth where he had sat, pacing the corridors that had echoed his footfall; and in all that time my fancy had never so played me false as to shape the shadow of the dead. Is it strange, then, if I had forgotten André’s horrible promise?

•   •   •   •   •

There was no portrait of my cousin at Puy Verdun. It was the age of boudoir art, and a miniature set in the lid of a gold bonbonnière, or hidden artfully in a massive bracelet, was more fashionable than a clumsy life-size image, fit only to hang on the gloomy walls of a provincial château rarely visited by its owner. My cousin’s fair face had adorned more than one bonbonnière, and had been concealed in more than one bracelet; but it was not among the faces that looked down from the panelled walls of Puy Verdun.

In the library I found a picture which awoke painful associations. It was the portrait of a De Brissac, who had flourished in the time of Francis the First; and it was from this picture that my cousin André had copied the quaint hunting-dress he wore at the Regent’s ball. The library was a room in which I spent a good deal of my life; and I ordered a curtain to be hung before this picture.

•   •   •   •   •

We had been married three months, when Eveline one day asked, “Who is the lord of the château nearest to this?”

I looked at her with astonishment.

“My dearest,” I answered, “do you not know that there is no other château within forty miles of Puy Verdun?”

“Indeed!” she said; “that is strange.”

I asked her why the fact seemed strange to her; and after much entreaty I obtained from her the reason of her surprise.

In her walks about the park and woods during the last month, she had met a man who, by his dress and bearing, was obviously of noble rank. She had imagined that he occupied some château near at hand, and that his estate adjoined ours. I was at a loss to imagine who this stranger could be; for my estate of Puy Verdun lay in the heart of a desolate region, and unless when some traveller’s coach went lumbering and jingling through the village, one had little more chance of encountering a gentleman than of meeting a demigod.

“Have you seen this man often, Eveline?” I asked.

She answered, in a tone which had a touch of sadness, “I see him every day.”

“Where, dearest?”

“Sometimes in the park, sometimes in the wood. You know the little cascade, Hector, where there is some old neglected rock-work that forms a kind of cavern. I have taken a fancy to that spot, and have spent many mornings there reading. Of late I have seen the stranger there every morning.”

“He has never dared to address you?”

“Never. I have looked up from my book, and have seen him standing at a little distance, watching me silently. I have continued reading; and when I have raised my eyes again I have found him gone. He must approach and depart with a stealthy tread, for I never hear his footfall. Sometimes I have almost wished that he would speak to me. It is so terrible to see him standing silently there.”

“He is some insolent peasant who seeks to frighten you.” My wife shook her head.

“He is no peasant,” she answered. “It is not by his dress alone I judge, for that is strange to me. He has an air of nobility which it is impossible to mistake.”

“Is he young or old?”

“He is young and handsome.”

I was much disturbed by the idea of this stranger’s intrusion on my wife’s solitude; and I went straight to the village to inquire if any stranger had been seen there. I could hear of no one. I questioned the servants closely, but without result. Then I determined to accompany my wife in her walks, and to judge for myself of the rank of the stranger.

For a week I devoted all my mornings to rustic rambles with Eveline in the park and woods; and in all that week we saw no one but an occasional peasant in sabots, or one of our own household returning from a neighbouring farm.

I was a man of studious habits, and those summer rambles disturbed the even current of my life. My wife perceived this, and entreated me to trouble myself no further.

“I will spend my mornings in the pleasaunce, Hector,” she said; “the stranger cannot intrude upon me there.”

“I begin to think the stranger is only a phantasm of your own romantic brain,” I replied, smiling at the earnest face lifted to mine. “A châtelaine who is always reading romances, may well meet handsome cavaliers in the woodlands. I daresay I have Mdlle. Scuderi to thank for this noble stranger, and that he is only the great Cyrus in modern costume.”

“Ah, that is the point which mystifies me, Hector,” she said. “The stranger’s costume is not modern. He looks as an old picture might look if it could descend from its frame.” Her words pained me, for they reminded me of that hidden picture in the library, and the quaint hunting costume of orange and purple which André de Brissac wore at the Regent’s ball.

After this my wife confined her walks to the pleasaunce; and for many weeks I heard no more of the nameless stranger. I dismissed all thought of him from my mind, for a graver and heavier care had come upon me. My wife’s health began to droop. The change in her was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible to those who watched her day by day. It was only when she put on a rich gala dress which she had not worn fur months that I saw how wasted the form must be on which the embroidered bodice hung so loosely, and how wan and dim were the eyes which had once been brilliant as the jewels she wore in her hair.

I sent a messenger to Paris to summon one of the court physicians; but I knew that many days must needs elapse before he could arrive at Puy Verdun.

In the interval I watched my wife with unutterable fear.

It was not her health only that had declined. The change was more painful to behold than any physical alteration. The bright and sunny spirit had vanished, and in the place of my joyous young bride I beheld a woman weighed down by rooted melancholy. In vain I sought to fathom the cause of my darling’s sadness. She assured me that she had no reason for sorrow or discontent, and that if she seemed sad without a motive, I must forgive her sadness, and consider it as a misfortune rather than a fault.

I told her that the court physician would speedily find some cure for her despondency, which must needs arise from physical causes, since she had no real ground for sorrow. But although she said nothing, I could see she had no hope or belief in the healing powers of medicine.

•   •   •   •   •

One day, when I wished to beguile her from that pensive silence in which she was wont to sit an hour at a time, I told her, laughing, that she appeared to have forgotten her mysterious cavalier of the wood, and it seemed also as if he had forgotten her.

To my wonderment, her pale face became of a sudden crimson; and from crimson changed to pale again in a breath.

“You have never seen him since you deserted your woodland grotto?” I said.

She turned to me with a heart-rending look.

“Hector,” she cried, “I see him every day; and it is that which is killing me.”

She burst into a passion of tears when she had said this. I took her in my arms as if she had been a frightened child, and tried to comfort her.

“My darling, this is madness,” I said. “You know that no stranger can come to you in the pleasaunce. The moat is ten feet wide and always full of water, and the gates are kept locked day and night by old Masson. The châtelaine of a mediaeval fortress need fear no intruder in her antique garden.”

My wife shook her head sadly.

“I see him every day,” she said.

On this I believed that my wife was mad. I shrank from questioning her more closely concerning her mysterious visitant. It would be ill, I thought, to give a form and substance to the shadow that tormented her by too close inquiry about its look and manner, its coming and going.

I took care to assure myself that no stranger to the household could by any possibility penetrate to the pleasaunce. Having done this, I was fain to await the coming of the physician.

He came at last. I revealed to him the conviction which was my misery. I told him that I believed my wife to be mad. He saw her – spent an hour alone with her, and then came to me. To my unspeakable relief he assured me of her sanity.

“It is just possible that she may be affected by one delusion,” he said; “but she is so reasonable upon all other points, that I can scarcely bring myself to believe her the subject of a monomania. I am rather inclined to think that she really sees the person of whom she speaks. She described him to me with a perfect minuteness. The descriptions of scenes or individuals given by patients afflicted with monomania are always more or less disjointed; but your wife spoke to me as clearly and calmly as I am now speaking to you. Are you sure there is no one who can approach her in that garden where she walks?”

“I am quite sure.”

“Is there any kinsman of your steward, or hanger-on of your household, – a young man with a fair womanish face, very pale, and rendered remarkable by a crimson scar, which looks like the mark of a blow?”

“My God!” I cried, as the light broke in upon me all at once. “And the dress – the strange old-fashioned dress?”

“The man wears a hunting costume of purple and orange,” answered the doctor.

I knew then that André de Brissac had kept his word, and that in the hour when my life was brightest, his shadow had come between me and happiness.

•   •   •   •   •

I showed my wife the picture in the library, for I would fain assure myself that there was some error in my fancy about my cousin. She shook like a leaf when she beheld it, and clung to me convulsively.

“This is witchcraft, Hector,” she said. “The dress in that picture is the dress of the man I see in the pleasaunce; but the face is not his.”

Then she described to me the face of the stranger; and it was my cousin’s face line for line – André de Brissac, whom she had never seen in the flesh. Most vividly of all did she describe the cruel mark upon his face, the trace of a fierce blow from an open hand.

•   •   •   •   •

After this I carried my wife away from Puy Verdun. We wandered far – through the southern provinces, and into the very heart of Switzerland. I thought to distance the ghastly phantom, and I fondly hoped that change of scene would bring peace to my wife.

It was not so. Go where we would, the ghost of André de Brissac followed us. To my eyes that fatal shadow never revealed itself. That would have been too poor a vengeance. It was my wife’s innocent heart which André made the instrument of his revenge. The unholy presence destroyed her life, constant companionship could not shield her from the horrible intruder. In vain did I watch her; in vain did I strive to comfort her.

“He will not let me be at peace,” she said; “he comes between us, Hector. He is standing between us now. I can see his face with the red mark upon it plainer than I see yours.”

•   •   •   •   •

One fair moonlight night, when we were together in a mountain village in the Tyrol, my wife cast herself at my feet, and told me she was the worst and vilest of women. “I have confessed all to my director,” she said; “from the first I have not hidden my sin from Heaven. But I feel that death is near me; and before I die I would fain reveal my sin to you.”

“What sin, my sweet one?”

“When first the stranger came to me in the forest, his presence bewildered and distressed me, and I shrank from him as from something strange and terrible. He came again and again; by and by I found myself thinking of him, and watching for his coming. His image haunted me perpetually; I strove in vain to shut his face out of my mind. Then followed an interval in which I did not see him; and, to my shame and anguish, I found that life seemed dreary and desolate without him. After that came the time in which he haunted the pleasaunce; and – Oh, Hector, kill me if you will, for I deserve no mercy at your hands! – I grew in those days to count the hours that must elapse before his coming, to take no pleasure save in the sight of that pale face with the red brand upon it. He plucked all old familiar joys out of my heart, and left in it but one weird unholy pleasure – the delight of his presence. For a year I have lived but to see him. And now curse me, Hector; for this is my sin. Whether it comes of the baseness of my own heart, or is the work of witchcraft, I know not; but I know that I have striven against this wickedness in vain.”

•   •   •   •   •

I took my wife to my breast, and forgave her. In sooth, what had I to forgive? Was the fatality that overshadowed us any work of hers? On the next night she died, with her hand in mine; and at the very last she told me, sobbing and affrighted, that he was by her side.

—

My Wife’s Promise

(1868)

It was my fate at an early period of my life to abandon myself to the perilous delights of a career which of all others exercises the most potent fascination over the mind of him who pursues it. As a youth I joined a band of brave adventurers in an Arctic expedition, and from the hour in which I first saw the deep cold blue of the northern sea, and felt the subtle influence of the rarefied polar air, I was for all common purposes and objects of life a lost man. The expedition was unfortunate, though its leader was a wise and scientific navigator – his subordinates picked men. The result was bitter disappointment and more bitter loss – loss of valuable lives as well as of considerable funds. I came back from my cruise in the Weatherwise, to the western world, rejoiced beyond measure at the idea of being once more at home, and determined never again to face the horrors of that perilous region which had lost me so many dear companions.

I, Richard Dunrayne, was the elder son of a wealthy house, my father, a man of some influence in the political world, and there were few positions which need have been impossible for me had I aspired to the ordinary career affected by British youth. I had been indulged in my early passion for the sea, in my later rage for Arctic exploration; and it was hoped that, having satisfied these boyish fancies, I should now settle down to a pursuit more consonant with the views and wishes of my people. My mother wept over her restored treasure, and confessed how terrible had been her fears during my absence; my father congratulated me upon having ridden my hobby, and alighted therefrom without a broken neck; and my family anxiously awaited my choice of a profession.

Such a choice I found impossible. If I had bartered myself body and soul, by the most explicit formula, to some demon of the icebergs, or incarnate spirit of the frozen sea, I could not have been more completely bound than I was. From the Christmas hearth round which dear friends were gathered, from my low seat at my mother’s knee, from worldly wealth and worldly pleasure, the genius of the polar ocean beckoned me away, and all the blessings of my life, all the natural affections of my heart, were too weak to hold me. In my dreams, again and again, with maddening repetition, I trod the old paths, and saw, ghastly white against the intense purple of that northern sky, the walls of ice that had blocked our passage. It seemed to me that if I could but find myself again in that dread solitude, success would be a certainty. It seemed to me as if we had held the magic clue to that awful labyrinth between our fingers, and had, in very folly, suffered it to escape us. “A new expedition, aided by the knowledge of the past, must succeed,” I said to myself; and when I could no longer fight against the prepossession that held me, I consulted the survivors of our unfortunate voyage, and found in their opinions the actual echo of my own convictions.

We met many times, and our meetings resulted in the organisation of a new expedition. Money was poured into our little treasury like water, so poor a dross did it seem to us compared with the jewel we went to seek. Our preparations had begun before I dared tell those who loved me that I had pledged myself to a second expedition. But at last, one bright spring evening, I went home and announced my decision. I look back now and wonder at my own heartlessness, and yet I was not indifferent to their grief. The cry that my mother gave when she knew the truth rings in my ears as I write this. No; I was not indifferent. I was possessed.

My second voyage resulted in little actual success, but was to me one prolonged scene of enjoyment. I was a skilled seaman and navigator, no indifferent sportsman, and having acquired some slight reputation during the previous voyage, now ranked high among the junior officers on board the Ptarmigan. We wintered at Repulse Bay, with a short stock of fuel, and a shorter supply of provisions; but we managed with a minimum of the former luxury, and supplied all deficiency of the latter by the aid of our guns. Never was a merrier banquet eaten than our Christmas dinner of reindeer steaks and currant dumplings, though the thermometer had sunk 79° below freezing-point, and our jerseys and trousers sparkled with hoar-frost.

The brief summer of that northern latitude brought us some small triumphs. We spent a second winter in snow houses, which resembled gigantic beehives, and were the snuggest possible habitations, and in the second summer turned our course homeward, in excellent health and spirits, but my gladness was to be sorely dashed on landing in England. I returned to find my mother’s grave bright with familiar autumnal flowers in a suburban cemetery, and to know that the tender arms which had clung about me in the hour of parting would never encircle me again. The blow was a severe one, and for some time to come I thought with aversion of that strange northern world which had cost me, and which was yet to cost me, so much.

Time passed, and I remained in England, at twenty-five years of age a broken man. With the men I met I had no point of sympathy. Their pursuits bored me, their paltry ambitions disgusted me. The pleasures of civilised life had not the faintest charm for me. A polar bear would have been as much at home as I was in a West End ballroom, and would have been as interested in the conversation of a genteel dinner-table. Away from my old comrades of the Weatherwise and the Ptarmigan, I had not a friend for whom I really cared; and as the civilised world grew day by day more distasteful to me, the old longing revived – the old dreams halmted my sleep. In my father’s handsome drawing-rooms I yearned for the rough stone cabin of Repulse Bay, or the snow-hives of Cape Crozier. Another expedition was afloat, and letters from my old messmates announced anticipated triumphs, and warned me of the remorse which I should suffer when the hardy victors returned to reproach the idler who preferred to live at home at ease, while old friends were drifting among the ice-floes, and bearding the grisly tyrant of the north.

I let them go without me, at what sacrifice was only known to myself. My father’s health had been declining from the hour of my mother’s death, and I was determined not to leave him. This duty at least I would not abnegate. This last sad privilege of attending a father’s death-bed I would not barter to the all-exacting demon of the frozen seas. For three empty, patient years I remained at home. My hands reverently closed the eyes that had never looked upon me but with affection, and I alone watched the last quiet sleep. This being done, I was free once more, and the old infatuation held me close as ever. My father’s death left me wealthy, and to my mind wealth had but one use. All the old yearnings were intensified by tenfold, for the saddest reason. The Ptarmigan had never been heard of since the hour she left Baffin’s Bay, and the fate of those familiar comrades with whom I had lived in the closest communion for two happy years was a dark enigma, only to be solved by patient labour. The expedition had not been of sufficient importance to attract much attention from the scientific world; there had been too much of a volunteer and amateur character in the business; but when the fact of the Ptarmigan’s disappearance became known, a meeting of the Royal Society gave all due consideration to the case, and promised help to a party of investigation.

My ample fortune enabled me to contribute largely to the expenses of the new voyage, while volunteers and voluntary contributions poured in from every quarter. I had difficulty in selecting officers and crew from so large a number of hardy adventurers; but I was prudent enough to engage the crew of a battered old whaler for the staple of my men. We were away in all six years, wintering sometimes in South America – once in New York, and getting our supplies as best we might. We made some discoveries, which the Royal Society received with civil approval; but of those we went to seek we found no trace; and I began to think that the fate of my old friends was a mystery never to be solved below the stars.

I came back to England at thirty-four years of age, a hardy wanderer, with a long brown beard that seemed lightly powdered with the northern snow, and with the strength of a sea-lion. For the best years of my life I had lived in snow-hives and stone-cabins, or slept at night amidst the wilderness of ice, in a boat which my stalwart shoulders had helped to carry during the day. Heavens! what a rough, unlicked cub, what a grim sea-monster I must have been; and yet Isabel Lawson loved me! Yes, I came back to England to find a fairer enchantress than the spirit of the frozen deep, and to barter my liberty to a new mistress. One of my sisters had married during my absence, and it was at her country house I took up my abode. The young sister of her husband, Captain Lawson, was here on a visit, and thus I met my fate.

I will not attempt to describe her; the innocent face, so lovely to my eyes, was perhaps less perfect than I thought it; but if perfection wears another shape, it is one that has no charm for me. Isabel was my junior by sixteen years, and for a considerable period of our acquaintance regarded me as a newly-acquired elder brother, whose age gave something of a paternal character to the relationship. For a long time I looked upon her as a beautiful picture, an incarnate presentment of all that is tender and divine in womanhood, and as far away from me as the stars which I pointed out to her in our summer evening rambles by the seashore near our country home.

How I grew to love her I will not ask myself. She was a creature whom to know was to love. How she grew to love me in a mystery I have often tried to solve; and when I have asked her, with fear and wondering, why I was so blessed, she told me it was because I was brave and frank and true, and worthy of a woman’s love. God help my darling, the glamour of the frozen north was upon me, and the mere story of the wondrous world T knew had magic enough to win me the heart of this angel. She was never tired of hearing me describe that wild region I loved so well. Again and again I told her the histories of my several voyages, and the record seemed always to have a new charm for her.

“I think I know every channel in Davis’s Strait and Baffin’s Bay,” she said to me a day or two before our wedding; “and the icebound coast, from Repulse Bay to Cape Crozier, and the ice-packs over which you carried your boats, and the shoals of seals and clouds of ducks, and the colony of white whales, and the dear little snow-houses in which you lived so snugly. Don’t you think we ought to spend our honeymoon at Cape Crozier, Richard?”

“My precious one, God forbid that I should ever see you in that wild place.”

“Be sure, Richard, if you went there, I should follow you.

And she kept her word.

•   •   •   •   •

Dreamlike, and oh, how mournful, seems the bright scene of my bridal day, as 1 recall it tonight beside a lonely hearth in the house of a stranger. My Isabel looked like a spirit in her white gown and veil; and I, to whom the memories of the North were ever present, could well-nigh have fancied she was clad in a snow-cloud. I asked her if she were content to have given her young beauty to a battered veteran like me; and she told me yes, a thousand times more than content – inexpressibly happy.

“But you will never leave me, Richard?” she said, looking up at me with divine love in her deep-blue eyes; and I promised again, as I had promised many times before, that the North should never draw me away from my beloved.

“You shall be my pole-star, dearest, and I will forget that earth has any wilder region than the woods and hills around our happy home.”

My darling loved the country, and I loved all that was dear to her: so I bought a small estate in North Devon – a grange and park in the heart of such a landscape as can only be found in that western shire. I was rich, and it was my pride and delight to make our home as beautiful as money and care could make it. The restoration of the house, which was as old as the Tudors, and the improvement of the park, employed me for more than a year – a happy year of home joys with as sweet a wife as Heaven ever gave to man since Adam saw Eve smiling on him among the flowers of Paradise – and during the whole of that time I had scarcely thought of the North. With the beginning of our second year of happy union, I had even less inclination to think of my old life; for God had blessed us with a son, pure and blooming and beautiful as the region in which he was born.

Upon this period of my life I dare not linger. For nearly two years we held our treasure; and if anything could have drawn us nearer to each other than our love had made us long ago, it would have been our affection for this child. He was taken from us. “The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” We repeated the holy sentences of resignation; but it was not resignation, it was despair that subdued the violence of our grief. I laid my darling in his grave under the midsummer sky, while a skylark was singing high up in the heaven, where I tried to picture him, among the band of such child-angels; and I knew that life could never again be to me what it had been. People told me I should perhaps have other children as dear as this.

“If God would give this one back to me, He could not blot from my memory his suffering and his death,” I answered impiously.

For some time my sorrow was a kind of stupor – a dull dead heaviness of the soul, from which nothing could raise me. Isabel’s grief was no less intense, no less bitter; but it was more natural and more unselfish. She grew alarmed by my state of mind, and entreated me to try change of scene.

“Let us go to London, Richard,” she said; “I shall be glad to leave this place, beautiful and dear as it is.”

Her pale face warned me that she had sad need of change; and for her sake, rather than my own, I took her to London, where we hired a furnished house in a western square.

Being in town, and an idle man, with no London tastes and no friends, it is scarcely strange that I should attend the meetings of the Royal Society. The fate of Franklin was yet unknown, and the debates upon this subject were at fever-heat. A new expedition was just being fitted out by the Government, and there could be no better opportunity for a volunteer band, which might follow in the track of the Government vessel.

In the rooms of the Society I encountered an old comrade who had served with me in my first voyage on board the Weatherwise, and he exerted his utmost powers of persuasion to induce me to join himself and others in a northward cruise, to search for Franklin and for our lost companions of the Ptarmigan. I was known to be an old hand, well provided with the sinews of war, adventurous and patient, hardened by many a polar winter; and my friend and his party wanted me for their leader. The proposal flattered me more than I can describe, and caused me the first thrill of pleasure I had known since my son’s death. But I remembered my promise.

“No, Martyn,” I answered; “the thing is impossible. I am a married man, and have given my word to the dearest wife in Christendom that I will never go out yonder again.”

Frank Martyn took no pains to conceal his disappointment at my decision, nor his contempt for my motives.

It was my habit to tell my wife everything; and I told her of the debates of the Royal Society, and of this meeting with an old comrade.

“But you will keep your promise, Richard?” she asked, with a sudden look of fear.

“Until the end of life, my darling, unless you should release me from it.”

“Oh, Richard, that is not likely; I am not capable of such a sacrifice.”

I went again and again to the Royal Society: and I dined at a club with my friend Martyn, who made me known to his friends, those eager volunteers who panted for the icy winds of the Arctic zone, and languished to tread the frozen labyrinth of polar seas. I listened to them, I talked with them, and the demon of the North resumed his hold upon me. My wife saw that some new influence was at work, that my home life was no longer all in all to me.

One day, after much anxious questioning, she beguiled me of my secret. The old yearning was upon me. I told her how every impulse of my mind – every longing of my heart – urged me to join the new enterprise; and how, for her dear sake, I was determined to forego the certainty of pleasure, and the chances of distinction. She thanked me with a sigh.

“I stand between you and the purpose of your life, Richard,” she said; “how selfish I must seem to you!”

“No, darling, only tender and womanly.”

Upon my persistent refusal to command the expedition, my friend Martyn was unanimously elected captain. A wealthy brewer of an adventurous turn provided the larger part of the funds, to which I gladly contributed my quota.

“I know Dunrayne will go with us,” said Frank Martyn. “He’ll turn up at the last moment, and beg leave to join. But remember, Dick,” he added, turning to me, “if it is the last moment you’ll be welcome, and I shall be proud to resign the command to a fellow who knows the Arctic zone as well as a Cockney knows the Strand.”

The preparations for the voyage lasted longer than had been anticipated. Months went by, and I still lingered in town, though I knew that Isabel would have preferred to return to Devonshire. I could not tear myself away while the Forlorn Hope, the vessel chartered by the brewer, was still in dock. I saw the adventurers almost daily, assisted in their preparations, pored over the chart with them, and travelled over every inch of the old ground with a pencil for their edification.

It was within a week of the departure, and the fever and excitement of preparation was stronger upon me than on any one of the intending voyagers, when my wife came to me suddenly one morning, and threw herself, sobbing, into my arms.

“My dear Isabel, what is this!” I asked in alarm.

“Oh Richard, you must go,” she sobbed; “I cannot hold you from your destiny. My selfish fears are killing you. I can see it in your face. You must go to that wild, awful world, where Heaven has guided you in safety before, and will guard and guide you again. Yes, darling, I release you from your promise. Is God less powerful to protect you yonder than here? He made that world of eternal ice and snow; and where He is there is safety. No, Richard; I will not despair. I will not stand between you and fame. I heard you talking in your sleep last night, as you have talked many nights, of that distant solitude: and I know that your heart is there. Shall I keep my husband prisoner when his heart has fled from me? No, Richard, you shall go.”

She kissed me, and fell fainting at my feet. I was blinded by my own selfish folly, and did not perceive how much of her fortitude was the courage of despair. I thought only of her generosity, and my release. It was not too late for me to accept the command of the Forlorn Hope. I thanked my wife with a hundred kisses as her sweet eyes opened upon me once more.

“My darling, I shall never forget this,” I cried; “and it shall be the last journey, the very last. I swear it, by all that is most sacred to me. There is no danger, believe me, none, for a man who has learned prudence as I have done – in the school of hardship.”

There was only a week for leave-taking.

“I can bear it better so,” said my wife: “such a blow cannot be too sudden.”

“But, my darling, it is no more than any other absence; and, remember, it is to be the last time.”

“No, Richard, do not tell me that. I think I know you better than you know yourself. A man cannot serve two masters. Your master is there. He beckons you away from me.”

“But for the last time, Isabel.”

“Well, yes,” she answered, with a profound sigh, “I think that when you and I say good-bye next week, we shall part for the last time.”

The sadness of her tone seemed natural to the occasion; nor did I remark the melancholy significance of her words, though they often recurred to my mind in the time to come.

“I will make you a flag, Richard,” she said to me next day. “If you should discover any new spot of land out yonder, you will like to raise the British standard there, and I should like to think that my hands are to be associated with your triumph.”

She set to work upon the fabrication of a Union Jack. I remembered a melancholy incident in the life of Sir John Franklin, and I hardly cared to see her thus employed; but I could not sadden her with the story, and she worked on, with a happier air than I could have believed possible to her. Alas! I little knew that this gaiety was but an heroic assumption sustained to save me pain.

My darling insisted upon examining my charts, and made me show her every step of our projected journey – the point where we hoped to winter – the land which we intended to explore on sledges – the spots where we should erect cairns to mark our progress. She dwelt on every detail of the journey with an interest intense as my own.

“I think I know that distant world as well as you, Richard,” she said to me on the last day of all. “In my dreams I shall follow you – yes, I know that I shall dream of you every night, and that my dreams will be true. There must be some magnetic chain between two beings so closely united as we are, and I am sure that sleep will show you to me as you are – safe or in danger, triumphant or despondent. And in my waking dreams, too, dear, I shall be on your track. My life will be a double one – the dull, commonplace existence at home, where my body must needs be, and the mystic life yonder, where my spirit will follow you. And, dear husband,” she continued, clinging to me and looking up with a new light in her eyes, “if I should die before you return—”

“Isabel!”

“Of course that is not likely, you know; but if I should be taken from you, dearest, you will know it directly. Yes, dear, at the death-hour my spirit will fly to you for the last fond parting look upon earth, as surely as I hope it will await you in heaven!”

I tried to chide her for her old-world Scottish superstition; but this speech of hers, and the looks that accompanied it, shook me more than I cared to confess to myself; and if it had been possible to recede with honour, I think I should have resigned the command of the Forlorn Hope and stayed with my wife. Oh God, that I had done so, at any cost of honour, at any sacrifice of friendship!

But my fate drew me northward, and I went. We started in July, and reached the point that we had chosen for our winter harbour at the end of August. Here we walled our vessel round with snow, and roofed her over; and in this grim solitude prepared to await the opening seas of summer. To me the winter seemed unutterably long and dreary. I was no longer the careless bachelor who found amusement in the rough sports of the sailors, and delight in an occasional raid upon the reindeer of the icebound coast. I had indeed tried to serve two masters; and the memory of her I had left behind was ever with me, a reproachful shadow. If, now, I could have recalled the past, and found myself once more by that hearth beside which I had languished for the old life of adventure, how gladly would I have made the exchange!

The long, inactive winter that was so dreary to me seemed pleasant enough to my companions. We had plenty of stores, and all were hopeful as to the exploits of the coining summer. We should find the crew of the Ptarmigan, perhaps, hardy dwellers in some inaccessible region, patiently awaiting succour and release. With such hopeful dreams my comrades beguiled the wasted days; but I had lost my old power of dreaming, and a sense of duty alone sustained my spirits. My friend Frank told me that I was a changed man – cold and stern as the veriest martinet.

“But all the better man for your post,” he added; “the sailors love you as much as they fear you, for they know that they would find you as steadfast as a rock in the hour of peril.”

•   •   •   •   •

The summer came, the massive ice-packs were loosened with sounds as of thunder, and drifted away before a southern breeze. But our freedom brought us nothing save disappointment. No traces of our friends of the Ptarmigan gladdened our eyes: no discovery rewarded our patience. Scurvy had cost us four of our best men, and the crew was short-handed. Before the summer was ended we had more deaths, and when the next winter began, Martyn and I faced it drearily, with the prospect of scant stores and scanter fuel, and with a sickly and disheartened crew. We had reason to thank God that the poor fellows were faithful to us under conditions so hopeless.

Before the coldest season set in, we left our vessel in tolerably safe harbour, and started on a land expedition, still bent on our search for traces of the missing Ptarmigan. We had a couple of sledges and a pack of Esquimaux dogs, faithful, hardy creatures, who thrived on the roughest fare, and were invaluable to us in this toilsome journey. No words can paint the desolation of this wild region – no mind can imagine that horror of perpetual snow, illimitable as eternal.

Martyn and I worked hard to keep up the flagging spirits of our men. One poor fellow had lost his foot from a frostbite, and but for our surgeon’s clever amputation of the disabled member, must have surely perished. He was of course no small drag upon us in this time of trial, but his own patient endurance taught us fortitude. We had hoped to fall in with a tribe of Esquimaux, but saw none after those from whom we bought our dogs.

So we toiled on, appalled by the grim change in each other’s forms and faces, as short rations and fatigue did their work. The dead winter found us again reduced in number. We built ourselves a roomy snow-house, with a cabin for the dogs; and here my friend Frank Martyn lay sick with three other invalids throughout our hopeless Christmas. My own health held out wonderfully. My spirits rose with the extremity of trial, and I faced the darkening future boldly, beguiling myself with dream-pictures of my return home, and my wife’s glad face when she looked up from her lonely hearth and saw me standing on the threshold of the door.

It was Christmas Day. We had dined on pemmican – a peculiar kind of preserved meat – biscuit, and rice. Spirit we had none, save a little carefully stored in case of urgent need. After our scant repast the able men went out in a body in search of sport for their guns, but with little hope of finding anything. The invalids slept, and I sat by the fire of dried moss which served to light our hut, with the aid of a glimmer of cold, dull daylight that came to us through a window of transparent ice in the roof.

I was thinking of England and my wife – what else did I ever think of now? – when one of the men rushed suddenly into the hut, and fell on the snow-bank that served for a bench. He was white to the lips, and shivering as no man shivers from cold alone.

“Good God, Hanley, what is the matter?” I cried, alarmed by the man’s terror.

“I went away from the others. Captain,” he began, in rapid, gasping accents, “thinking I saw the traces of a bear upon the snow; and I had parted from them about half-an-hour when I saw—”

His voice died away suddenly, and he sat before me, with lips that moved but made no sound.

“What? For pity’s sake speak out, man.”

“A woman!”

“Yes; and of an Esquimaux tribe, no doubt. Why didn’t you hail her, and bring her back to us! Why, you must be mad, Hanley. You know how we have been wishing to fall in with some of those people, and you see one, and let her slip through your fingers, and come back scared, as if you’d seen a ghost.”

“That’s it, your honour,” the man answered hoarsely. “What I saw was a ghost.”

“Nonsense, man!”

“But I say yes, Captain, and will stand by my word. She was before me, moving slowly over the snow; you could scarce call it walking, ’twas such a smooth gliding motion. She was dressed in white – no common dress – but one that turns the heart cold only to think of. While I stood, too scared to move hand or foot, she turned and beckoned to me, and I saw her face as plain as I see yours at this moment, a sweet face, with blue eyes, and long fair hair falling loosely round it.”

I was on my feet in a moment, and rushing towards the door.

“Great God of Heaven!” I cried, “my wife!”

The conviction that possessed me was supreme. From the moment in which the sailor described the figure he had seen, there was no shadow of doubt in my mind. It was Isabel, and she only. The wife who had promised that her spirit should follow me step by step upon my desolate journey was near me now. For one moment only I considered the possibility or impossibility of her presence, and pondered whether some northern-bound vessel might have brought her to an Esquimaux station near at hand that we knew not of; for one instant only, and then I was hurrying across the snow in the direction to which the sailor pointed as he stood at the door of our hut.

The brief winter day was closing in, and there was only a long line of faint yellow light in the west. Eastwards the moon was rising, pale and cold like that region of eternal snow. I had left our hut some two hundred yards behind me, when I saw a white-robed figure moving towards the low western light; a figure at once so dear, so familiar, and yet in that place so awful, that an icy shiver shook me from head to heel as I looked upon it.

The figure turned and beckoned. The sweet face looked at me, awfully distinct in that clear cold light. I followed, and it drew me on, far across a patch of snowy waste that I had left unexplored, or had no memory of traversing until now. I tried to overtake the familiar form, but though its strange gliding movement seemed slow, it eluded my pursuit, follow swiftly as I might. In this manner we crossed the wide bleak waste, and as the last glimmer of the western light died out, and the moon shone brighter on the frozen plain, we came to a spot where the snow lay in mounds – seven separate mounds ranged in the form of a cross beneath that wild northern sky.

A glance told me that civilized hands had done this work. The Christian emblem told me more. But though I saw the snow-mounds at my feet, my eyes seemed never to leave the face of my wife – O God, how pale in the moonlight!

She pointed with extended finger to one of the mounds, and I saw that it was headed by a rough wooden board, almost buried in snow. To snatch a knife from my belt, and throw myself on my knees, and begin to scrape the coating of mingled ice and snow from this board, was the work of a few moments. Though it was of her T thought only, yet it was as if an irresistible force compelled me to stop, and to obey the command of that pointing hand. When I looked up I was alone beneath the wintry sky. My wife was gone. I knew then what I had felt from the first – that it was her shadow I had followed over that wintry waste, and that on earth she and I would never look upon each other again.

She had kept her promise as truly as I had broken mine. The gentle spirit had followed me to that desolate world in the very moment it was liberated from its earthly prison.

It was late that night when Hanley and his messmates found me lying senseless on the snow-mound, with the open knife beside my stiffening hand.

They brought me back to life somehow, and by the light of the lanterns they carried, we examined the board at the head of the mound. An inscription roughly cut upon it told us we had found the lost crew of the Ptarmigan.

“Here lies the body of Morris Haynes, commander of the Ptarmigan, who died in this unknown region, Jan. 30th, 1829, aged 35.”

The other mounds also had headboards bearing inscriptions, which we dug out from the snow on the following day, and carefully transcribed. After this we found a cairn containing empty provision-tins, in one of which was a book that had evidently been used for a journal; but rust and snow had done their work, and of this journal nothing was decipherable but the name of the writer, Morris Haynes.

These investigations were not made by me. The new year found me laid low with rheumatic fever, and Frank Martyn had to take his turn as sick-nurse beside the snow-bank where I lay. Our provisions held out better than we had expected, thanks to the game our men shot, and the patience with which they endured privation. The spring came, and with it release. We contrived to make our way to Baffin’s Bay – a consummation I scarcely thought possible in my dreary reveries of midwinter – and a Greenland whaler brought us safely home.

I went straight to my brother-in-law’s house at the West end of London, he was at home, and came without delay to the library where I had been ushered, and where I sat awaiting him with a gloomy face.

Yes; as I expected: he was in mourning: and behind him came my sister, with a pale face, on which there was no smile of greeting.

Lawson held out both his hands to me.

“Richard,” he began in a faltering voice, “God knows I never thought it possible I could be otherwise than glad of your coming home – but—”

“That will do,” I said; “you need tell me no more. My wife is dead.”

He bent his head solemnly.

“She died on the twenty-fifth of last December, at four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“You have been told, then,” cried my sister; “you have seen someone?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I have seen her!

—

Sir Philip’s Wooing

(1870)

“Well, sirrah, what is your news of the house to which I directed you?” asked Sir Philip Stanmore of his servant, as that worthy entered the baronet’s lodging, flushed and breathless as if with hurried walking. “Is the lady I saw at the play last night maid, wife, or widow?”

“She is the lady of a wealthy gentleman from the country, Sir Philip,” answered the valet, “Master Humphrey Mardyke.”

“My cousin Mardyke, as I live!” exclaimed the baronet.

“Your cousin, sir?”

“Yes, fellow, a cousin I never met, but whose father T knew well enough twenty years ago. I have little cause to love this Humphrey Mardyke, for he inherited a fine old place in Warwickshire, which, but for his existence, might have come to me. And so that lovely girl is my cousin Humphrey’s wife! I saw her but a few minutes, when she removed her mask for coolness; but I swear I am head over ears in love with her. Never did I look upon a fairer face. Did you ask all the questions I bade you?”

“Yes, Sir Philip; I contrived to scrape acquaintance with Master Mardyke’s servant, a country fellow. The house is only a lodging-house, but the gentleman is rich. They see few visitors, and have been only six months married.”

“Good; I will call upon my cousin this afternoon.”

In all the libertine court of Charles Stuart there were few men more deeply dyed in sin than Philip Stanmore. He had begun life with every advantage, but had wasted his substance amongst the most profligate men of the day, and now lived chiefly by his profits at the gaming-table, and by the victimisation of younger men fresh from the provinces, who, in their ignorance of court and town, regarded the accomplished baronet as the arbiter of taste and fashion. He had spent a handsome fortune, and had yet the reputation of the wealth that he had wasted. At thirty-seven years of age he had learned the sharper’s wisdom, and contrived to hoodwink his friends and creditors as to the real state of his purse. Sir Philip had never married; but the time had now come in which he felt the necessity of some happy stroke in the matrimonial market. He was still an eminently handsome man, and on the strength of an occasional epigram and a few graceful love-songs modelled upon the verses of Dorset and Rochester, and popular among the beauties of the court, he enjoyed the reputation of a very pretty wit and poet. Trading upon these gifts, it must go hard with him if he failed to fascinate some wealthy maid or widow. But in the meantime Sir Philip was so ardent an admirer of beauty as to be won by the first glance of a lovely face, and so firm a believer in his own powers of conquest that he fancied he had only to secure access to the fair stranger whose charms had attracted his bold roving gaze in the crowded playhouse in order to obtain her good graces. His surprise on finding the name of the lady was very great, and not altogether unpleasant.

“Humphrey Mardyke,” he muttered, as he paced the room to and fro when his servant had left him, “Humphrey Mardyke, that smooth favourite of fortune, whom my rich uncle chose for his heir for love of a woman who had jilted him to marry the lad’s father! Was there ever such a reason for favouritism? And so that lovely creature is the wife of my country cousin – a woman born to adorn a court. I will call upon these newly-found relations without an hour’s delay.”

The baronet put on his plumed hat, and then paused to contemplate himself thoughtfully in the glass before leaving his lodgings.

“The crow’s-feet begin to show, Phil,” he said to himself; “’tis time thou wert promoted to the holy state of matrimony, couldst thou but find an object worthy so great a sacrifice.”

He strolled slowly down the staircase and out into the street, where he gave many a careless greeting to acquaintance as he made his way to the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, in which locality his kinsman’s lodging was situated.

Master Mardyke was out, the servant told him, but his lady was within, and alone.

Sir Philip was in no wise displeased to avail himself of this opportunity. He bade the man announce his name, and followed so swiftly on the lacquey’s heels that Mistress Mardyke had no time to decline his visit.

He introduced himself with a perfect grace that went far to set the lady at her ease. The lovely face that had caught his attention in the playhouse appeared to him still more enchanting in the broad light of day, and the girlish timidity of manner, which testified to the young wife’s provincial rearing, seemed to him only to enhance the charm of her youth and beauty. He set to work at once to ingratiate himself into her favour by his lively description of town life and town pleasures, of which she was completely ignorant.

“I cannot get my husband to take any interest in London,” she said. “He is always sighing for Holmwood and his rural occupations.”

“He is an ardent sportsman, I presume?”

“Yes,” replied the lady with a sigh; “he hunts from October to April, and in summertime is occupied wholly with the care of his farms.”

“A dull life for you, madam.”

To this proposition Constance Mardyke was fain to assent; but she hastened to declare that Humphrey was the most indulgent of husbands, and that it ill became her to be discontented.

Master Mardyke came in while his wife was praising him, and on Sir Philip introducing himself as a kinsman, gave that gentleman a hearty welcome to his lodgings.

“It is vastly kind in you to seek us out, cousin, all things considered,” he said. “I feared my Uncle Antony’s will might have set you against me; but I see you are too generous to grudge me the favour which habits and neighbourhood won for me from the old man, while you were following his majesty’s fortunes abroad.”

On this they shook hands a second time, and the baronet offered to introduce his kinsman to society which would make London pleasant to him during his sojourn.

“’Tis but a desert at best, unless one knows the right people,” said Sir Philip. “You must dine with me at half past twelve, cousin Mardyke – a mere bachelor’s dinner; and in the evening we will escort your lady to some pleasure-gardens, where she will see the beauties of the court. She will find their graces but faded and artificial beside her own fresh loveliness,” he added with a low bow.

After some slight hesitation, Humphrey Mardyke accepted his cousin’s invitation; and from this time the baronet scarce allowed a day to pass without showing some attention to the country gentleman and his wife. He contrived to make himself equally agreeable to both. Before a month had passed, Humphrey had learned to take pleasure in all the dissipations of his cousin’s profligate existence; while Constance had fallen into a fatal habit of making comparisons between her husband’s country-bred plainness of speech and manner, and the subtle charm of Sir Philip Stanmore’s discourse, which flattered without seeming to flatter. She would have recoiled with horror from the idea that this man was more to her than any acquaintance should be to a married woman, yet she found the hours between his visits long and heavy; and as the time drew near for the return to Warwickshire, she looked forward with supreme dislike to the dullness of her country home.

The time came at last, however, when the return journey could no longer be delayed. The London visit had cost Humphrey a year’s income; for he had lost considerable sums to Sir Philip at cards, and had paid heavy scores for tavern suppers given to that gentleman and his boisterous, hard-drinking friends. Nor was this the only objection to London dissipation. Constance Mardyke was beginning to lose the freshness of her beauty in the feverish atmosphere of pleasure-gardens and playhouses. Her spirits were fitful, her nights sleepless, and her manner was altogether changed from Its girlish gaiety to the weary, languid listlessness of a woman of fashion.

It was in vain that Sir Philip entreated his cousin to remain longer in London. The hunting season was close at hand, and Humphrey was obstinate.

“You must spend your Christmas at Holmwood, Philip,” he said, cordially; but Constance did not second the invitation. She stood a little way apart, yet the baronet saw she waited anxiously for his reply.

He made the answer a doubtful one. He had so many invitations for Christmas; but, if possible, would spend a few nights at his cousin’s house.

“I should like to see Holmwood once more,” he said. “I was there when a boy, and well remember the fine old place, which my father was foolish enough to tell me might be my own some day. Do not think I envy your ownership, Humphrey. You make a better squire than I should have done.”

With this they parted: with much cordiality between the two men – with a reserve that was almost coldness on the part of Constance. Her hand trembled faintly as she gave it to Sir Philip, and the one piercing glance which he shot into her eyes as she raised them timidly to his face told him that his tactics had been successful. He had played his cards with supreme caution, taking care that no word of his should offend the wife’s modesty, or give her an excuse for banishing him from her presence. By every assiduous attention he had made his friendship valuable to her, and he trusted to the future to recompense him for the trouble he had taken.

•   •   •   •   •

Christmas drew near, after an interval that had seemed long and dreary to Constance Mardyke, fair as was the home to which she and her husband returned when they left London. To Humphrey the autumn months had brought pleasant occupation; and he fancied the simple course of their country life must needs be as agreeable to Constance as it was to himself; especially as she made no complaint of the dullness of her existence, and indeed contrived to assume an air of gaiety in his presence which beguiled him into a complete belief in her happiness. She was no skilled hypocrite, but a secret consciousness of her own sinful folly had taught her artifice. The pain of parting with Philip Stanmore had awakened her to the shameful truth. It was not as a common acquaintance that she had learned to take pleasure in his society. Unconsciously she had allowed his influence to become paramount in her mind, to the utter destruction of her happiness.

As Christmas approached, she was tortured by suspense; now hoping for his coming, now praying that he might not come.

“What good can arise from his visit?” she asked herself; “the place will seem only drearier when he is gone.”

But however she might argue with herself, the secret feeling of her heart was an ardent desire to see Philip Stanmore again; and when his horse trotted up to the gothic porch of Holmwood House one fine December afternoon, it seemed to her as if dullness and sorrow vanished before the coming of that expected guest.

He came quite alone, unattended by his servant, who knew a little too much of his master’s life to be safely trusted in a country house, where his tongue might have been fatally busy to the baronet’s detriment.

Sir Philip was not a hunting man, and his mornings were given wholly to the society of his hostess. Humphrey had a perfect confidence in his wife, and knew no thought of jealousy. The baronet was, moreover, ten years his senior, and the simple country gentleman had no idea of the insidious power that lurks in the conversation of an accomplished courtier and diplomatist.

Left thus to their own resources, it was not long before the acquaintance between Sir Philip Stanmore and Constance Mardyke ripened into something more than friendship. Sir Philip knew himself to be beloved, and after a prudent delay ventured to reveal his passion. The avowal came when his victim’s entanglement made her too weak even to assume indignation, and she could only implore him to be silent and to leave her.

“It was an evil hour in which we met,” she said. “You know not how much I owe my husband for his disinterested affection. I was a penniless girl when he chose me for his wife, and from that hour to this have known nothing but the most indulgent kindness at his hands.”

Sir Philip responded to this speech by a lamentation of his own unworthiness, and an expression of his warm regard for Humphrey. He pretended that his avowal had escaped him against his own will, talked of a hopeless love which asked no reward from its object, and promised to offend no more.

“Forget what I have told you,” he said, imploringly. “Your friendship is more to me than the love of other women. Trust me, Constance, and I will try to prove myself worthy of that friendship.”

Reassured by this declaration, Constance no longer urged the curtailment of Sir Philip’s visit; nor did he again offend her by any allusion to his guilty passion. The days passed rapidly in the dangerous pleasure of his society, while the evenings were rendered profitable to him by games at cards, in which his superior skill generally made him a winner. Humphrey could afford to lose, and lost with a good grace, little knowing how welcome his coin was to the empty pockets of his elegant kinsman. The simple-minded country gentleman had a perfect belief in his cousin’s friendship, and gave him his entire confidence upon every subject.

“Yes,” he said once, when Sir Philip had been congratulating him on his good fortune, “there are few finer estates than Holmwood; and should anything happen to me in the hunting-field, my widow will be one of the richest women in the county.”

“What, are you so prudent as to have made your will already, cousin?”

“I made it a month after my marriage. A hunting-man had need be prepared for the worst. In default of a son, my wife will inherit every acre and every sixpence I possess.” Sir Philip had been artfully leading the conversation to this very point. Much as he admired, nay, after his own fashion, loved Constance Mardyke, it was far from his thoughts to encumber himself with a runaway wife, a penniless woman, whose dishonoured career would be a burden to himself in the future. Very different would be his prospects should some accident remove the owner of Holmwood from his path.

Once assured that the estate was secure to Constance in the event of her husband’s death. Sir Philip gave himself up to guilty dreams and guilty wishes; and if a wish could have killed Humphrey Mardyke, that gentleman would not have had long to live.

With Christmas came other guests to Holmwood: Constance Mardyke’s father, a grey-haired country parson, a squire and his wife with a couple of pretty daughters, from their home at some twenty miles distance, and a young man called Basil Hungerford, a bachelor cousin of Humphrey’s. To these guests Sir Philip contrived to make himself infinitely agreeable; and the festival season passed with much mirth and joviality on the part of all except the hostess, whose guilty conscience weighed heavily upon her amidst these simple domestic pleasures. On New Year’s Day there was to be a great meet and hunting-breakfast at a ducal mansion house thirty miles from Holmwood, and Humphrey Mardyke had given his promise to be present at the breakfast as well as in the hunting-field. This would oblige him to leave home on the previous day; and on hearing this, Sir Philip declared his intention to depart at the same time.

“I came here from Lord Scarsdale’s,” he said. “His place is but fifteen miles distant, as you know, and my road will be with yours for ten miles of the way. We can go together, cousin. I promised Scarsdale to return long before this; but you have made my visit so agreeable, it is hard to tear myself away.”

Sir Philip and his host set out together on the appointed morning, accompanied by Basil Hungerford. Constance came to the porch to bid her husband and guests good-bye. She was Looking paler than usual, and strangely careworn, as it seemed to her husband, who looked at her anxiously as he bent down from his saddle to give her his farewell kiss.

“Why, you are as pale as a ghost, mistress,” he said; “what is amiss?”

She assured him, in hurried accents, that there was nothing amiss; she was only a little tired.

Sir Philip Stanmore was the last to bid her good-bye, and as he did so he contrived to slip a letter secretly into her hand. Had she been inclined to reject the missive, she could not have done so without at once betraying herself and her lover; but she had indeed little inclination to decline this first letter which she had ever received from him. As the horses trotted gaily down the avenue leading to the park gates, she hurried to her room to read the baronet’s communication at her leisure.

It was a passionate love-letter, in which the writer dwelt despairingly on the agony of this parting, deploring in eloquent words the fate that severed him from the only woman he had ever truly loved. Weakly, fondly, Constance dwelt upon these passionate words, and her tears fell fast upon the letter before she folded it and hid it in the bosom of her dress. For two days she was to be alone; ample leisure in which to brood upon a missive that seemed to her like a first love-letter. Humphrey had written to her but seldom before their marriage, and his epistles were very poor and schoolboy-like when compared with the composition of the courtly wit and rhymester.

Throughout those two long days of solitude, Constance Mardyke was haunted by thoughts of the man who had won her heart from the path of duty. Vainly did she endeavour to banish his image from her mind. He had taken too complete a possession of her soft yielding nature, and happiness in a lifelong separation from him seemed impossible to her.

The day appointed for the hunt was wet and stormy, and she roamed listlessly through the empty rooms, listening to the rain beating against the windows, and towards evening trying to distinguish the sound of horses hoofs in the avenue. But night closed in, and her husband did not return. She sat up late waiting for him, but at midnight he had not arrived.

“He will come tomorrow, no doubt,” she said, as she dismissed the servants and retired to her own room. Strange dreams haunted her that night – dreams with which the sound of the falling rain mingled dismally. She fancied that she was walking with her husband through the rain and darkness upon the road by which he must needs return; but although they seemed to walk rapidly, they could make no progress. One particular turn of the road, with three gaunt poplars growing on one side, and on the other some pollard willows shading a stagnant pool, a spot she remembered well, was always before her in that weary, nightmare-like dream.

She woke in the morning, unrefreshed and low-spirited, to drag through another day. It was growing towards dusk, when she rose with a sense of weariness from her tapestry-frame, and opened the cabinet in which she had hidden Sir Philip’s letter. An idle fancy had seized her to read it once more before her husband’s return; and then she might perhaps bring herself to destroy the precious document. She opened the door of the cabinet, took out the letter, and began to re-peruse the lines that were already but too familiar to her. As she read the first words, a faint sound near at hand, like a half-suppressed sigh, startled her. She looked up suddenly, clutching the guilty letter to her breast, and in a mirror opposite the open door she saw the reflection of her husband’s face. He was standing on the threshold. She turned, in supreme confusion, to meet him. He stood within the doorway, his countenance, as it seemed to her, gravely reproachful; but before she could utter a word, the familiar figure melted into thin air. She hurried to the landing place outside the door, but there was no living creature there. The thing which she had seen was a shadow. She fell at the foot of the great staircase in a dead swoon, and it was not till an hour afterwards that her maid found her there, with Sir Philip’s letter clasped in her hand. Her first thought on recovering consciousness was a fear lest this letter should have been seen: but throughout her swoon she had clutched the crumpled paper in the palm of her clasped hand.

“Has my husband come home?” she asked.

“No, madam.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Yes, indeed, madam,” the girl answered, with surprise.

That night passed, and there were no tidings of Humphrey Mardyke, although his groom, who brought home the horse on which his master had hunted, said he had expected to find him at home.

“He left Wetherby before T did,” said the man, “but I believe he had some notion of breaking the journey at Scarsdale Castle. T heard Sir Philip Stanmore give him the invitation to lie there for a night as they parted company at the crossroads on Monday last.”

This seemed likely enough, and the prolonged absence of the master gave no uneasiness to the household at Holmwood, though Constance could not banish the memory of that pale, shadowy figure, so like and yet so different from life, which she had seen in the twilight. To the servants she had not dared to mention this figure, believing it an emanation of her own guilty mind, and fearing their ridicule of her folly, or possibly their suspicion of her sin. She waited anxiously for her husband’s return, resolved to welcome him with affection, and to struggle with all her might against her fatal regard for Sir Philip. Unhappily, the opportunity to fulfil this penitent resolve was not to be afforded to her. Next day passed without any tidings of the absent; and on the following evening there came the news of her husband’s murder. He had been found, shot through the heart, lying on the brink of the stagnant pool, at that very spot which she had seen in her dream.

The country was up in arms to discover the doer of this evil deed. Humphrey Mardyke had been as popular as he was wealthy, and people were eager to see his assassin brought to justice. Lord Scarsdale was one of the witnesses at the inquest. He described how his guest had left him at noon, intending to ride straight home. He had another guest, who left him at the same hour; but the roads of the two men lay in opposite directions, for Sir Philip Stanmore was to ride to a town twenty miles distant from Scarsdale on the London road, there to join a coach that plied to and from the metropolis.

This was all Lord Scarsdale could tell. He had seen the two gentlemen part company at the lodge-gates, and had then returned to his house.

The inquest was brief, and threw little light upon the circumstances under which Humphrey Mardyke had met his death. His pockets had been emptied of their contents by hasty hands, for they were found turned inside out. His horse was discovered loose in a field some distance from the scene of the murder, and the state of his mud-stained garments gave evidence to the fact that the fatal shot had been fired while he was still in the saddle. Who could doubt that the deed was the work of some highway robber? Humphrey Mardyke had not an enemy in the world; and what personal motive could prompt so vile an assassination except the vulgar greed of gain? A large reward was offered for the apprehension of the murderer; but days and weeks went by, and no information was brought to Holmwood, or to the little country town where the inquest had been held. News was slow to travel in those days, and three weeks elapsed before Constance received a letter of condolence from Sir Philip Stanmore – a letter in which he dwelt with generous warmth upon the merits of the deceased, and delicately forbore from any allusion to his passion for her who was now free to return his affection.

Weak and wicked as she had been, Constance Mardyke lamented her husband’s untimely fate with genuine grief. The thought of her own guilty preference for another man filled her with self-reproach, and now that it was too late to atone for her error, that error seemed doubly base. She was not, however, suffered to mourn long in her country solitude. Within two months of her husband’s death Sir Philip paid another visit to Holmwood, riding over from his friend Lord Scarsdale’s as on the previous occasion, in order to give a kind of accidental appearance to his coming.

He had not been many hours at Holmwood before he assumed the speech and bearing of a lover, nor did he fail to win the widowed girl from her penitential grief. In the presence of the observant old butler he was, however, carefully ceremonious. It was too early yet to show his cards, except to the weak girl, of whose heart and mind he had long ago made himself master. A faint flash of triumph brightened his eyes every time he glanced round the noble rooms, or towards the wide expanse of park and wood before the old Tudor windows. The only obstacle to his possession of this place and all its belongings had been removed from his pathway. He knew that he had but to wait a fitting time in which to claim the widow and her fortune, nor did he leave Holmwood until he had made Constance promise two things: first, that she would come shortly to London, where change of air and scene would help to banish the haunting memory of the dead; and secondly, that she would become Lady Stanmore as soon as a decent period of mourning had elapsed. While talking of her dead husband she had told Sir Philip, somewhat reluctantly, of the strange vision she had seen on the threshold of her bedchamber. Put this apparition he ridiculed as the work of a distempered fancy.

“It is little wonder for you to see ghosts in the solitude of this dull old house,” he said; and it was upon this that he persuaded her to consent to a sojourn in town.

Once in London, remote from village gossips, he knew that it would be easy for him to hasten the marriage which would make him master of Humphrey’s noble estate; and he had pressing need that this change should take place speedily, as his finances were at the lowest ebb.

His hopes were not disappointed. Constance Mardyke came to London accompanied only by her faithful serving woman. She occupied the lodgings in which she had lived with her husband during the previous year, and being utterly ignorant of all business matters, and without friends in the metropolis, she very soon allowed Sir Philip to assume the management and to obtain the complete control of her affairs. No suspicion of mercenary motives on his side had ever entered her mind; she supposed him to be as wealthy as he was fashionable, a delusion which he took good care to sustain. He thus became, even before his marriage with the widow, absolute master of Humphrey Mardyke’s fortune.

Sir Philip was not, however, less eager for the celebration of the marriage, and at the close of the summer Constance consented to become his wife. They started for Holmwood almost immediately after the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom secretly eager to inspect the estate which was now his own. He found it even wider in extent than he had hoped, and was much gratified by the reception he met with among the tenantry, who were fascinated by his easy, affable manners, and somewhat inclined to prefer him to the late lord of the soil, as a more friendly and familiar personage from whom greater favours might be expected.

For some months the novel duties and occupations of his position made life tolerably agreeable to the baronet; but he was a man of restless nature and long habits of dissipation. The time came when he grew weary of Holmwood; weary too of his wife’s society, as it seemed to Constance, who kept a close watch on the changes of her husband’s countenance. The accomplished courtier, who had been so devoted as a lover, was now often moody and absent-minded, and when his wife questioned him with tender anxiety, was sorely puzzled to account for his gloom.

“Nay, Constance, few men who think at all are without some subject for dark thoughts,” he said impatiently. “You must not watch me so closely by day and night. The truth of the matter is, Holmwood is too dull a residence for a man who has spent his life in the society of a court. We must live in London if you would see me cheerful. There is a funereal atmosphere in this place, as if it were haunted by the shadows of every master who ever inhabited it in the past.”

“What, Philip, have you seen a ghost?”

“No, Constance, I am too much a man of the world for that; but the dullness of the place gives me bad dreams,”

“Yes, I have heard you cry out in your sleep,” answered his wife thoughtfully.

“Indeed! Have I uttered words that you could distinguish?”

“Not often. Once you spoke of the place where they found my husband. ‘Under the willows by that black stagnant pool!’ you cried. Strange, is it not, that the place should haunt you in your dreams, as it haunted me on the night before the murder?”

Sir Philip’s brow darkened in gloomy thought, but he made no reply to his wife’s speech. He left her presently to ride alone, and an idle fancy took him to the spot of which she had spoken – the bend in the road where three tall poplars stood out black against the winter sky, and where the pollard willows bent their weird trunks across a shallow stagnant pool. Tie looked at the place for some minutes, lost in thought, and then turned and galloped home again, as if the foul fiend had been behind him.

From this time he daily became more restless in his habits and more gloomy in his temper. The wealth that he had won for himself could not give him happiness. His wife’s beauty had no longer power to charm the fickle mind that had ever sought new conquests; nor was her gentle, yielding nature calculated to maintain ascendency over his fitful soul. He had determined to go to London soon after the beginning of the new year, and if possible to go there alone.

•   •   •   •   •

On the anniversary of the night on which the shadow of Humphrey Mardyke had appeared to his wife, it came again, but this time to the new master of Holmwood, who met the ghostly form of his dead rival in the corridor upon which his bedchamber opened. Again it was in the early twilight that the vision appeared, pale, grave, reproachful of aspect, with fixed eyes and solemn motion; and again Sir Philip tried to convince himself, as he had tried to convince Constance, that the figure was but the emanation of a disordered brain. He did not succeed in this attempt, however. Men were prone to superstition in those days; and the baronet was inclined to regard this spectral visit as an omen of his own untimely death.

He was on the point of starting for London next day, after declaring that he would not spend another night in that accursed house, when a couple of messengers came from the nearest town to request his immediate presence there. Something had transpired which promised to throw light upon the circumstances of Humphrey Mardyke’s assassination, and the county magistrate wanted the attendance of Sir Philip and Lady Stanmore – the latter to identify some property which was supposed to have belonged to her first husband.

The baronet’s face grew ghastly pale as one of the men stated their errand. He was at first inclined to resist the summons on the plea of his journey to London; but the elder of the two men declared the magistrate’s orders to be imperative. They were not to leave Holmwood without Sir Philip; and Lady Stanmore was to follow immediately, in her coach or on horseback, as might be most convenient to herself.

“It is not a four miles’ ride,” said the man, with grim politeness, as Sir Philip and he rode abreast along the avenue. The baronet said nothing. This species of summons was strangely like an arrest; but any attempt at resistance would have been worse than useless. He saw that both men were fully armed, and that their horses were as good as his own.

Arrived at the town, he was conducted at once to the chief inn, where he found one of the county magistrates, Lord Scarsdale, and some other gentlemen seated in the principal room awaiting his coming.

The magistrate received him with stately politeness; but his familiar friend. Lord Scarsdale, saluted him coldly, and scarce touched the hand which he offered.

“You were not present at the inquest held on the remains of Mr. Humphrey Mardyke, I believe, Sir Philip Stanmore?” said the magistrate.

“I was not. I was in London at the time, and did not even know of my friend’s unhappy fate. Nor should I have been able to offer any evidence had I been present at the inquest.”

“Indeed! You were in London at the time. Can you swear to having reached London on the fourth of January in last year?”

“Certainly, if there is any occasion for my taking an oath on the subject, which I cannot myself apprehend. Lord Scarsdale is aware that I left his house at noon on the third of the month, with the avowed intention of riding to Gorsham, on the London road, there to join the mailcoach.”

“And you never saw Mr. Mardyke after bidding him good-bye at Scarsdale gates?”

“Never. Our ways lay separate from the moment of leaving the gates.”

“And how about your horse, Sir Philip – what became of him when you joined the coach?”

“I left him at the inn at Gorsham, to be brought up to London by a packhorse driver next day.”

“Will you swear that you were not in Haverfield village on the night of the third of January, several hours after the mail coach left Gorsham, and that you did not there exchange a broken-knee’d horse and a gold watch for a sound animal?”

Sir Philip started and grew deadly pale.

“I was never in any place called Haverfield in my life, that I am aware of,” he said, “nor did I ever make such a bargain as that you speak of.”

“Indeed!” replied the magistrate.

“Then, Lord Scarsdale’s groom must be mistaken as to the identity of a horse which was offered for sale here in yesterday’s market, and which he swore to be yours – a bay gelding, with a white streak on one side of the face. Did you ever own such a horse, Sir Philip?”

“Nay,” interposed Lord Scarsdale, while the baronet hesitated, “he cannot deny that the horse was once his. I remember the animal perfectly, and will swear to the watch as Humphrey Mardyke’s.”

“The watch?” gasped Sir Philip.

“Yes,” replied the magistrate, producing a massive gold watch. “On being questioned, the man who offered the horse for sale declared himself to be an innkeeper at Haverfield. He received this watch and a broken-knee’d horse from a traveller who took shelter at his house on the night of the third of January, after having broken his horse’s knees in the attempt to jump a five-barred gate that divided a short-cut across fields from the main road. The man exchanged a good horse of his own for the injured animal and this watch, which he was wearing yesterday. His account of the circumstance seemed thoroughly honest, and his voluntary description of the traveller tallies in every respect with your appearance. You will scarcely be surprised, therefore. Sir Philip, that I considered it my duty to order your arrest, under the suspicion of being a party to the death of Lady Stanmore’s first husband.”

“The story is a tissue of lies,” cried the baronet, “a conspiracy.”

“In that case you can have no objection to see the man who offered the horse for sale, and whom we found wearing this watch,” answered the magistrate; and at a nod from him a respectable-looking countryman was brought into the room.

He swore immediately to the identity of Sir Philip Stanmore with the traveller who had taken shelter at his house, drenched to the skin, and worn out with a cross-country ride on the night of the third of January. His evidence was perfectly clear and straightforward, and no questioning of Sir Philip’s could shake his statements. Lady Stanmore had now arrived, and on being shown the watch, at once recognised it as her late husband’s property. She had yet to learn the awful inference to be drawn from the manner of its recovery.

“If you are indeed unconcerned in this business, it will be easy for you to prove an alibi, Sir Philip,” said the magistrate; “but in the meantime you must consider yourself under arrest, and I shall be compelled to order your removal to the town gaol, there to await your trial at the next assizes.”

Constance uttered a cry of horror on hearing this, and sank, half-fainting, into the chair that had been placed for her. Sir Philip had by this time recovered his usual self-possession. He protested against his arrest as an infamous and preposterous proceeding.

“In all probability this man is himself the assassin,” he said.

“We have the evidence of Lord Scarsdale and his groom as to the identity of the horse, Sir Philip. It is that which justifies your arrest.”

“And I have twenty people at command who will swear that I was at home at Haverfield all through the day of the murder,” said the innkeeper.

Sir Philip Stanmore was removed to the town gaol, after having been compelled to surrender his sword and travelling pistols. He parted tenderly from his wife, who believed him the victim of some fatal error, and who would fain have accompanied him to his prison. This he forbade, and departed between his gaolers in haughty silence, after giving his wife the address of a London lawyer whom she was to summon immediately to his aid. A month would elapse before the assizes, and if the baronet were indeed as innocent as he protested himself to be, there could be no great difficulty in proving the fact of his journey to London. It was impossible for him to have reached London on the fourth, if he had been at Haverfield at the time sworn to by the innkeeper.

He was not destined again to face his accusers. His health, which had been in a declining state ever since his coming to Holmwood, broke down completely under the misery of his position, and an attack of gaol-fever brought him to a grave at least less shameful than that which would have awaited him as a condemned murderer. On the night before his death he sent for his wife, and to her ears alone confessed his crime. He had turned his horse’s head about immediately after leaving Scarsdale gates, had ridden across a common that skirted Humphrey’s road home, and had overtaken him by the three poplars, where he shot him through the heart without a moment’s parley. He stopped to rifle his victim’s pockets, in order that the act might seem that of a highway robber, and had then ridden off across country, reckless which way he went in the great horror and agony that came upon him after the commission of the crime. At Haverfield, finding his horse completely lame, and having very little money, he had been compelled to offer the dead man’s watch as a temptation to the landlord, who, seeing the traveller’s distress, drove a hard bargain for his own animal.

“It was for your sake I did the deed, Constance,” he said; and the unhappy woman believed him. “There was only his life between us. I knew that you loved me, and in the last half-hour before I left Scarsdale, I came to the desperate resolve that resulted in your husband’s death. The act was as mad as it was wicked, and I can truly swear that I have never known an hour’s peace of mind since it was done.”

He died at daybreak; and Constance returned broken-hearted to Holmwood, there to lead a life of solitude and repentant sorrow for a few years, at the end of which time she fell into a decline and died, leaving the fine old place to fall into the hands of her first husband’s distant relations, who came from a northern shire to take possession of the estate, and who were never troubled in their occupancy by the shadow of Humphrey Mardyke.

—

John Granger

(1870)

I

“Then there is no hope for me, Susy?”

The speaker was a stalwart young fellow of the yeoman class, with a grave, earnest face, and a frank, fearless manner. He was standing by the open window of a pleasant farmhouse parlour, by the side of a bright-eyed girl, who was leaning with folded arms upon the broad windowsill, looking shyly downwards as he talked to her.

“Is there no chance, Susy! none? Is it all over between us?”

“If you mean that I shall ever cease to think of you as one of the best friends I have in this world, John, no,” she answered; “or that I shall ever cease to look up to you as the noblest and truest of men, no, John – a hundred times no.”

“But I mean something more than that, Susy, and you know it as well as I do. I want you to be my wife by-and-by. I’m not in a hurry, you know, my dear. I can bide my time. You’re very young yet, and maybe you scarcely know your own mind. I can wait, Susy. My love will stand wear and tear. Let me have the hope of winning you by-and-by. I’m not a poor man at this present time, you know, Susy. There are three thousand pounds of old uncle Tidman’s on deposit in my name in Hillborough Bank. I’ve been a lucky fellow in having an industrious father and a rich bachelor uncle, and with the chance of you for my wife, a few years would make me a rich man.”

“That can never be, John. I know how proud I ought to be that you should think of me like this. I’m not worthy of so much love. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate your merits, John; but—”

“There’s someone else, eh, Susy?”

“Yes, John,” she faltered, in a very low voice, and with a vivid blush on her drooping face.

“Someone who has asked you to be his wife?”

“No, John; but I think he likes me a little, and—”

Here she stopped suddenly, finding the sentence difficult to continue.

John Granger gave a long, heavy sigh, and stood for some minutes looking at the ground in dead silence.

“I think I can guess who it is,” he said at last; “Robert Ashley – eh, Susy?” The blush grew deeper, and the girl’s silence was a sufficient answer. “Well, he’s a fine handsome young fellow, and more likely to take a pretty girl’s fancy than such a blunt, plain-spoken chap as I am; and he’s a good fellow enough, as far as I know; I’ve nothing to say against him, Susy. But there’s one man in the world I should have liked to warn you against, Susan, if I’d thought there was a shadow of a chance you’d ever listen to any love-making of his.”

“Who is that, John?”

“Your cousin, Stephen Price.”

“You needn’t fear that I should ever listen to him, John. There’s little love lost between Stephen and me.”

“Isn’t there? I’ve heard him swear that he’d have you for his wife some day, Susan. I don’t like him, my dear, and I don’t trust him either. It isn’t only that he bears a bad character uptown as a dissipated, pleasure-loving spendthrift; there’s something more than that; something below the surface that I cant find words for. I know that he’s very clever. Folks say that Mr. Vollair the lawyer looks over all his faults on account of his cleverness, and that he never had a clerk to serve him so well as Stephen does. But cleverness and honesty don’t always go together, Susy, and I fear that cousin of yours will come to a bad end.”

Susan Lorton did not attempt to dispute the justice of this opinion. Stephen Price was no favourite of hers, in spite of those good looks and that showy cleverness which had won him a certain amount of popularity elsewhere.

John Granger lingered at the sunny window, where the scent of a thousand roses came floating in upon the warm summer air. He lingered as if loath to go and make an end of that interview; though the end must come, and the last words must needs be spoken very soon.

“Well, well, Susy,” he said presently, “a man must teach himself to bear these things, even when they seem to break his life up somehow, and make an end of every hope and dream he ever had. I can’t tell you how I’ve loved you, my dear – how I shall love you to the end of my days. Bob Ashley is a good fellow, and God grant he may make you a good husband! But I don’t believe it’s in him to love you as I do, Susan. He takes life pleasantly, and has his mind full of getting on in the world, you see, and he has father and mother and sisters to care for. I’ve got no one but you to love, Susan. I’ve stood quite alone in the world ever since I was a boy, and you’ve been all the world to me. It’s bitter to bear, my dear; but it can’t be helped. Don’t cry, Susy darling. I’m a selfish brute to talk like this, and bring the tears into those pretty eyes. It can’t be helped, my dear. Providence orders these things, you see, and we must bear them quietly. Goodbye, dear.”

He gave the girl his big, honest hand. She took it in both her own, bent over it, and kissed it tearfully.

“You’ll never know how truly I respect you John,” she said. “But don’t say good-bye like that. We are to be friends always, aren’t we?”

“Friends always? Yes, my dear; but friends at a distance. There’s some things I couldn’t bear to see. I can wish for your happiness, and pray for it honestly; but I couldn’t stop at Friarsgate to see you Robert Ashley’s wife. My lease of the old farm is out. I’m to call on Mr. Vollair this afternoon to talk about renewing it. I fancied you’d be mistress of the dear old place, Susy. That’s been my dream for the last three years. I couldn’t bear the look of the empty rooms now that dream’s broken. I shall surrender the farm at once, and go to America, I’ve got a capital that’ll start me anywhere, and I’m not afraid of work. I’ve old friends out there too; my first cousin, Jim Lomax, and his wife. They went out five years ago, and have been doing wonders with a farm in New England. I shan’t feel quite strange there.”

“Go to America, John, and never come back!” said Susan, despondently.

She had a sincere regard for this honest yeoman, and was grieved to the heart at the thought of the sorrow that had come to him through his unfortunate desire to be something more to her than a friend.

“Never’s a long word, Susy,” he answered, in his serious straightforward way. “Perhaps when a good many years have gone over all our heads, and when your children are beginning to grow up, I may come back and take my seat beside your hearth, and smoke my pipe with your husband. Not that I should ever cease to love you, my dear; but time would take the sting out of the old pain, and it would be only a kind of placid sorrow, like the thought of one that’s long been dead. Yes, I shall come back to England after ten or fifteen years, if I live, if it’s only for the sake of seeing your children – and I’ll wager there’ll be one amongst them that’ll take to me almost as if it was my own, and will come to be like a child to me in my old age. I’ve seen such things. And now I must say good-bye, Susy; for I’ve got to be up town at three o’clock to see Mr. Vollair, and I’ve a deal of work to do before I leave.”

“Shall you go soon, John?”

“As soon as ever I can get things settled – the farm off my hands, and so on. But I shall come to say good-bye to you and your father before I go.”

“Of course you will, John. It would be unfriendly to go without seeing father. Good-bye!”

They shook hands once more and parted. The yeoman walked slowly along the little garden path, and across a patch of furze-grown common land, on the other side of which there was a straggling wood of some extent, broken up here and there by disused gravel-pits and pools of stagnant water – a wild kind of place to pass at night, yet considered safe enough by the country people about Hillborough, as there was scarcely any part of it that was not within earshot of the high road. The narrow footpath across this wood was a short cut between Matthew Lorton’s farm and Hillborough, and John Granger took it.

He walked with a firm step and an upright bearing, though his heart was heavy, as he went townwards that afternoon. He was a man to bear his trouble in a manly spirit, whatever it might be, and there were no traces of his disappointment in his looks or manner when he presented himself at the lawyer’s house.

Mr. Vollair had a client with him; so John Granger was ushered into the clerks’ office, where he found Stephen Price hard at work at a desk, in company with a smaller and younger clerk.

“Good afternoon, Granger,” he said, in a cool patronizing manner that John Granger hated; “come about your lease, of course?”

“There is nothing else for me to come about.”

“Ah, you see, you’re one of those lucky fellows who never want the help of the law to get you out of a scrape. And you’re a devilish lucky fellow, too, in the matter of this lease, if you can get Friarsgate for a new term at the rent you’ve been paying hitherto, as I dare say you will, if you play your cards cleverly with our governor presently.”

“I am not going to ask for a new lease,” answered John Granger; “I am going to leave Friarsgate.”

“Going to leave Friarsgate! You astound me. Have you got a better farm in your eye?”

“I am going to America.”

Stephen Price gave expression to his astonishment by a prolonged whistle, and then twisted himself round upon his stool, the better to regard Mr. Granger.

“Why, Granger, how is this?” he asked. “A fellow like you, with plenty of money, going off to America! I thought that was the refuge for the destitute.”

“I’m tired of England, and I’ve a fancy for a change. I hear that a man may do very well in America, with a good knowledge of farming and a tidy bit of capital.”

“Ah, and you’ve got that,” said Stephen Price, with an envious sigh. “And so you’re thinking of going to America? That’s very strange. I used to fancy you were sweet upon a certain pretty cousin of mine. I’ve seen you hanging about old Lorton’s place a good deal of late years.”

John Granger did not reply to this remark. Mr. Vollair’s client departed a few minutes later, and Mr. Granger was asked to step into the lawyer’s office. He found his business very easy to arrange in the manner he wished. Mr. Vollair had received more than one offer for Friarsgate farm, and there was an applicant who would be glad to get the place as soon as John Granger could relinquish it, without waiting for the expiration of his lease. This incoming tenant would no doubt be willing to take his furniture and live and dead stock at a valuation, Mr. Vollair told John. So the young farmer left the office in tolerable spirits, pleased to find there were no obstacles to his speedy departure from a home that had once been dear to him.

II

John Granger’s preparations and arrangements, the disposal of his property, and the getting together of his simple outfit, occupied little more than three weeks; and it was still bright midsummer weather when he took his last walk round the pastures of
Friarsgate, and, for the first time since he had re- solved to leave those familiar scenes, realized hour great a hold they had upon his heart.

“It’ll be dreary work in a strange country,” he thought, as he leaned upon a gate, looking at the lazy cattle which were no longer his, and wondering whether they would miss him when he was gone; “and what pleasure can I ever take in trying to get rich! – I who have no one to work for, no one to take pride in my success? Perhaps it would have been better to stay here, even though I had to hear her wedding bells some fine summer morning, and see her leaning on Robert Ashley’s arm, and looking up in his face as I used to fancy she would look up to me in all the years to come. Oh God, how I wish I was dead! What an easy end that would make of everything!”

He thought of the men and women who had died of a fever last autumn round about Hillborough – people who had wished to live, for whom life was full of duties and household joys; whose loss left wide gaps among their kindred, not to be filled again upon this earth. If death would come to him, what a glad release! It was not that he suffered from any keen or violent agony; it was the dull blankness of his existence which he felt – an utter emptiness and hopelessness; nothing to live for in the present, nothing to look forward to in the future.

This was the last day. His three great sea chests, containing his clothes, books, and other property which he could not bring himself to part with, had gone on to London by that morning’s luggage train. He had arranged to follow himself by the night mail, which left Hillborough Station at half-past nine, and would be in London at two o’clock next morning. At the last he had been seized with a fancy for prolonging his time to the uttermost, and it was for this reason he had chosen the latest train by which he could leave Hillborough. He had a good many people to take leave of, and it was rather trying work. He had always been liked and respected, and on this last day it surprised him to find how fond the people were of him, and how general was the regret caused by his departure. Little children clung about his knees, matronly eyes were dried in lavender cotton aprons, pretty girls offered blushingly to kiss him at parting; stalwart young fellows, his companions of old, declared they would never have a friend they could trust and honour as they had trusted and honoured him. It touched the poor fellow to the heart to find himself so much beloved. And he was going to sacrifice all this, because he could not endure to live in the old home now his dream was broken.

He had put off his visit to Matthew Lorton’s house to the very last. His latest moments at Hillborough should be given to Susan, he told himself. He would drain to the last drop the cup of that sweet, sad parting. His last memory of English soil should be her bright tender face looking at him compassionately, as she had looked the day she broke his heart.

It was half-past seven when he went in at the little garden gate. A warm summer evening, the rustic garden steeped in the low western sunshine; the birds singing loud in hawthorn and sycamore; a peaceful vesper calm upon all things. John Granger had been expected. He could see that at a glance. The best tea-things were set out in the best parlour, and Mr. Lorton and his daughter were waiting tea for him. There was a great bunch of roses on the table, and Susan was dressed in light blue muslin, with a rose in her bosom. He thought how often in the dreary time to come she would arise before him like a picture, with the sunshine flickering about her bright hair, and the red rose at her breast.

She was very sweet to him that evening, tender and gentle and clinging, as she might have been with a fondly loved brother who was leaving her forever. The farmer asked him about his plans, and gave his approval of them heartily. It was well for a sturdy fellow with a bit of money to push his way in a new country, where he might make fifty per cent. upon his capital, instead of dawdling on in England, where it was quite as much as a man could do to make both ends meet at the close of a year’s hard work.

“My little Susy is going to be married to young Bob Ashley,” Mr. Lorton said by-and-by. “He asked her last Tuesday was a week; but they’ve been courting in a kind of way this last twelve-month. I couldn’t well say no, for Bob’s father and I have been friends for many a year, and the young man’s a decent chap enough. He’s going to rent that little dairy farm of Sir Marmaduke Halliday’s on the other side of Hillborough Road. Old Ashley has promised to stock it for him, and he hopes to do well. It isn’t much of a match for my girl, you know, John; but the young people have made up their minds, so it’s no use setting my face against it.”

They had been sitting at the tea-table nearly half an hour, when the sunny window was suddenly darkened by the apparition of Mr. Stephen Price looking in upon them in an easy familiar manner, with his folded arms upon the sill.

“Good evening, uncle Lorton,” he said. “Good evening, Susy. How do, Granger? I didn’t know there was going to be a tea-party, or I shouldn’t have come.”

“It isn’t a tea-party,” answered Susan; “it is only John Granger, who has come to bid us good-bye, and we are very, very sorry he is going away.”

“Oh, we are, are we?” said the lawyer’s clerk, with a sneer; “what would Bob Ashley say to that, I wonder?”

“Come in, Steph, and don’t be a fool,” growled the old man.

Mr. Price came in, and took his seat at the tea-table. He was flashily dressed, wore his hair long, and had a good deal of whisker, which he was perpetually caressing with a hand of doubtful cleanliness, whereon the inky evidence of his day’s work was unpleasantly obvious.

He did not care much for such womanish refreshment as tea, which he denounced in a sweeping manner as “cat-lap;” but he took a cup from his cousin nevertheless, and joined freely in the conversation while he drank it.

He asked John Granger a good many questions about his plans – whether he meant to buy land, and when, and where, and a great deal more in the same way – to all of which John replied as shortly as was consistent with the coldest civility.

“You take all your capital with you, of course?” asked Stephen Price.

“No; I take none of my capital with me.”

“Why, hang it all, man, you must take some money!”

“I take the money I received for my furniture and stock.”

“Ah, to be sure; you came to the office yesterday afternoon to receive it? Over six hundred pounds, wasn’t it? I drew up the agreement between you and the new man; so I ought to know.”

“It was over six hundred pounds.”

“And you take that with you? Quite enough to start with, of course. And the rest of your money is as safe as houses in old Lawler’s bank. No fear of any smash there. I wish I was going with you, Granger. I’m heartily sick of Hillborough. I shall cut old Vollair’s office before very long, come what may. I can’t stand it much longer. I’ve got a friend on the look-out for a berth for me up in London, and directly I hear of anything I shall turn my back upon this dismal old hole.”

“You’ll have to pay your debts before you do that, I should think. Steph,” his uncle remarked, bluntly.

Stephen Price shrugged his shoulders, and pushed his teacup away with a listless air. He got up presently and lounged out of the house, after a brief good evening to all. He made no attempt to take leave of John Granger, and seemed in his careless way to have forgotten that he was parting with him for the last time. No one tried to detain him. They seemed to breathe more freely when he was gone.

John and Susan wandered out into the garden after tea, while the farmer smoked his pipe by the open window. The sun was low by this time, and the western sky flooded with rosy light. The garden was all abloom with roses and honeysuckle. John Granger fancied he should never look upon such flowers or such a garden again.

They walked up and down the narrow path once or twice almost in silence, and then Susan began to tell him how much she regretted his departure.

“I don’t know how it is, John,” she said, “but I feel tonight as if I would give all the world to keep you here. I cannot tell you how sorry I am you are going. Oh, John, I wish with all my heart I could have been what you asked me to be. I wish I could have put aside all thoughts of Robert.”

“Could you have done that, Susan?” he cried, with sudden energy.

His fate trembled upon a breath in that moment. A word from Susan, and he would have stayed; a word from her, and he would never have taken the path across the common and through the wood to Hillborough on that fair summer evening. He was her valued friend of many years; dearer to her than she had known until that moment. It seemed to her all at once that she had thrown away the gold, and had chosen – not dross, but something less precious than that unalloyed gold.

It was too late now for any change.

“I have promised Robert to be his wife,” she said; “but oh, John, I wish you were not going away.”

“My dear love, I could not trust myself to stay here; I love you too much for that. But I will come back when I am a sober elderly man, and ask for a corner beside your hearth.”

“Promise me that. And you will write to me from America, won’t you, John? I shall be so anxious, and father too, to know that you are safe and well.”

“Yes, my dear, I will write.”

“What is the name of the steamer you are to go in?”

“The Washington, bound for New York.”

“I shall not forget that – the Washington.”

John Granger looked at his watch. The sun had gone down, and there was a long line of crimson yonder in the west above the edge of the brown furze-grown common. Beyond it, the wood dipped down, and the tops of the trees made a black line against that red light. Above, the sky was of one pale tender green, with stars faintly shining here and there.

“What a lovely night!” said Susan.

John Granger sighed as he looked at that peaceful landscape.

“I did not know how much I loved this place and all belonging to it,” he said. “Good night, Susy; good night, and good-bye.”

“Won’t you kiss me the last time, John?” she said, shyly.

She scarcely knew what she had asked. He took her in his arms, strained her to his breast, and pressed one passionate, despairing kiss upon her brow. It was the first and last in his life.

“Time’s up, Susy,” he said, gently releasing her.

He went to the window, shook hands with the farmer, and took leave of him in that quiet, undemonstrative way which means a good deal with a man of John Granger’s mould. A minute more, and he was gone.

Susan stood at the garden-gate, watching the tall dark figure crossing the common. Twice he turned and waved his hand to her – the last time upon the edge of the common, before he took the path down to the wood. After this night the still twilight hour seldom came without bringing the thought of him to Susan Lorton.

It seemed to grow dark all at once when he was gone, and the house had a dreary look to Susan when she went indoors. What was it that made her shiver as she crossed the threshold? Something – some nameless, shapeless fancy shook her with a sudden fear. Her father had strolled out to the garden through the wide open back door. The house seemed quite empty, and the faint sound of the summer wind sighing in the parlour chimney was like the lamentation of a human creature in pain.

III

The summer passed, and in the late autumn came Susan’s wedding day. She was very fond of her good-looking generous-hearted young suitor, and yet even on the eve of her marriage her heart had turned a little regretfully towards absent John Granger. She was not a coquette, to glory in the mischief her beauty had done. It seemed to her a terrible thing that a good man should have been driven from his home for love of her.

She had thought of him a great deal since that summer night upon which he had looked back at her on the verge of Hawley Wood – all the more because no letter had come from him yet, and she was beginning to be a little anxious about his safety. She thought of him still more, by and by, as the winter months passed without bringing the promised letter. Her husband made light of her fears, telling her that John Granger would find plenty to do in a new country, without wasting his time in scribbling letters to old friends. But this did not convince Susan.

“He promised to write, Robert,” she said; “and John Granger is not the man to break his promise.”

Susan was very happy in her new home, and Robert Ashley declared he had the handiest, brightest, and most industrious wife in all Woodlandshire, to say nothing of her being the prettiest. She had been used to keeping her father’s house since her early girlhood, and her matronly duties came very easy to her. The snug little farmhouse, with its neat furniture and fresh dimity draperies, was the prettiest thing possible in the way of rustic interiors; the Dutch-tiled dairy was like a temple dedicated to some pastoral divinity, and Susan took a natural womanly pride in this bright home. She had come from as good a house; but then this was quite her own, and young Robert Ashley was a more romantic figure in the foreground of the picture than her good humdrum old father.

Stephen Price did not stay at Hillborough long enough to see his cousin’s wedding. He left Mr. Vollair’s employment about three weeks after John Granger’s departure, and left without giving his employer any notice of his intention.

He went away from Hillborough as deeply in debt as it was practicable for a young man in his position to be, and the tradesmen to whom he owed money were loud in their complaints about him.

He was known to have gone to London, and there were some attempts made to discover his whereabouts. But in that mighty metropolis, it was no easy thing to find an obscure lawyer’s clerk, and nothing resulted from the endeavours of his angry creditors, except the mortification of defeat, which made them still more angry. No one, except those to whom he owed money, cared what had become of him. He had been considered pleasant company in a tavern parlour, and his manners and dress had been copied by some aspiring clerks and apprentices in Hillborough; but he had never been known to do anyone a kindness, and his disappearance left no empty place in any heart.

The new year came, and still there was no letter from John Granger. But early in January Robert Ashley came home from Hillborough market one afternoon, and told his wife she needn’t worry herself about her old friend any longer.

“John Granger’s safe enough, my lass,” he said. “I was talking to Simmons, the cashier at Lawler’s bank, this morning, and he told me that Granger wrote to them for a thousand pounds last November from New York, and he has written for five hundred more since. He is buying land somewhere – I forget the name of the place – and he’s well and hearty, Simmons tells me.”

Susan clapped her hands joyfully.

“Oh, Robert, how glad I am!” she cried. “It isn’t kind of John to have forgotten his promise; but I don’t care about that as long as he’s safe.”

“I don’t know why you should ever take it into your head that there was anything amiss with him,” said Robert Ashley, who did not regard John Granger’s exile from a sentimental point of view.

“Well, I’m afraid I’m rather fanciful. Bob; but I could never explain to you what a strange feeling came over me the night John Granger went away from Hillborough. It was after I had said good-bye to him, and had gone back into the house, where all was dark and quiet. I sat in the parlour thinking of him, and it seemed as if a voice was saying in my ear that neither I, nor anyone that cared for him, would ever see John Granger again. There wasn’t any such voice, of course, you know, Robert, but it seemed like that in my mind; and whenever I’ve thought of poor John Granger since that time, it has seemed to me like thinking of the dead. Often and often I’ve said to myself, ‘Why, Susan, you foolish thing, you ought to know that he’s safe enough out in America. Ill news travels fast; and if there’d been anything wrong, we should have heard of it somehow.’ But, reason with myself as I would, I have never been able to feel comfortable about him; and thank God for your good news, Robert, and thank you for bringing it to me.”

She raised herself on tiptoe to kiss her husband, who looked down at her in a fond, protecting way from the height of his own wisdom.

“Why, Susy, what a timid, nervous little puss yon are!” he said. “I should have been getting jealous of John Granger by this time if I’d known you thought so much of him.”

The winter days lengthened, and melted into early spring. It was bright March weather, and Susan had an hour of daylight after tea for her needlework, while Robert attended to his evening duties out of doors. They had fires still, though the days were very mild; and Susan used to sit at the open window, with a jug of primroses on the wide wooden ledge before her, executing some dainty little repairs upon her husband’s shirts.

One evening Robert Ashley was out later than usual, and when it had grown too dark for her to work any longer, Susan sat with her hands lying idle in her lap thinking – thinking of her wedded life, and the years that had gone before it – years that she could never recall without the image of John Granger, who had been in a manner mixed up with all her girlish days. It had been very unkind of him not to write. It seemed as if his love for her could not have been very much after all, or he would have been pleased to comply with her request. She could not quite forgive him for his neglect, glad as she was to know that he was safe.

The room was rather a large one; an old-fashioned room with a low ceiling crossed by heavy beams; half parlour, half kitchen, with a wide open fireplace at one end, on which the logs had burnt to a dullish red just now, only brightening up with a faint flash of light now and then. The old chintz-covered armchair, in which Robert Ashley was wont to smoke his evening pipe, stood by the hearth ready for him.

Susan had been sitting with her face towards the open window, looking absently out at the garden, where daffodils and early primroses glimmered through the dusk. It was only the striking of the eight-day clock in the corner that roused her from her reverie. She stooped to pick up her work, which had fallen to the ground. She was standing folding this in a leisurely way, when she looked towards the fireplace, and gave a little start at seeing that her husband’s armchair was no longer empty.

“Why, Robert,” she cried, “how quietly you must have come into the place! I never heard you.”

There was no answer, and her voice sounded strange to her in the empty room.

“Robert!” she repeated, a little louder; but the figure in the chair neither answered nor stirred.

Then a sudden fright seized her, and she knew that it was not her husband. The room was almost dark; it was quite impossible that she could see the face of that dark figure seated in the armchair, with the shoulders bent a little over the fire. Yet she knew, as well as ever she had known anything in her life, that it was not Robert Ashley.

She went slowly towards the fireplace, and stood within a few paces of that strange figure. A little flash of light shot up from the smouldering logs, and shone for an instant on the face.

It was John Granger!

Susan Ashley tried to speak to him; but the words would not come. And yet it was hardly so appalling a thing to see him there that she need have felt what she did. England is not so far from America that a man may not cross the sea and drop in upon his friends unexpectedly.

The logs fell together with a crashing noise, and broke into a ruddy flame, lighting up the whole room. The chair was empty.

Susan uttered a loud cry, and almost at the same moment Robert Ashley came in at the door.

“Why, Susy!” he exclaimed, “what’s amiss, lass?”

She ran to him, and took shelter in his arms, sobbing hysterically, and then, calming herself with an effort, told him how she had seen John Granger’s ghost.

Robert laughed her to scorn.

“Why, my pet, what fancies will you be having next? Granger is safe enough over in Yankee land. It was some shadow that took the shape of your old friend, to your fancy. It’s easy enough to fancy such a thing when your mind’s full of anyone.”

“There’s no use in saying that, Robert,” Susan answered, resolutely. “It was no fancy. John Granger is dead, and I have seen his ghost.”

“He wasn’t dead on the tenth of last December, anyhow. They had a letter from him at Lawler’s bank, dated that day. Simmons told me so.”

Susan shook her head mournfully.

“I’ve a feeling that he never got to America alive, Robert,” she said. “I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve a feeling that it was so.”

“Dead men don’t write letters, Susy, or send for their money out of the bank.”

“Someone else might write the letters.”

“Nonsense, lass! they know John Granger’s handwriting and signature well enough at the bank, depend upon it. It would be no easy matter to deceive them. But I’ll look in upon Simmons tomorrow. He and I are uncommonly friendly, you know, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to oblige me, in a reasonable way. I’ll ask him if there have been any more letters from Granger, and get him to give me the address.”

Susan did not say much more about that awful figure in the armchair. It was no use trying to convince her husband that the thing which she had seen was anything more than a creation of her own brain. She was very quiet all the rest of the evening, though she tried her uttermost to appear as if nothing had happened.

Robert Ashley saw Mr. Simmons the cashier next day, and came back to his wife elated by the result of his inquiries. John Granger bad written for another five hundred pounds by the very last post from America, and reported himself well and thriving. He was still in New York, and Mr. Simmons had given Robert Ashley his address in that city.

Susan wrote to her old friend that very afternoon, telling him what she had seen, and begging him to write and set her mind at ease. After all, it was very consoling to hear what she had heard from her husband, and she tried to convince herself that the thing she had seen was only a trick of her imagination.

Another month went by, and again in the twilight the same figure appeared to her. It was standing this time, with one arm leaning on the high mantelpiece; standing facing her as she came back to the room, after having quitted it for a few minutes for some slight household duty.

There was a better fire and more light in the room than there had been before. The logs were burning with a steady blaze that lit up the well-known figure and unforgotten face. John Granger was looking at her with an expression that seemed half reproachful, half beseeching. He was very pale, much paler than she had ever seen him in life; and as he looked, she standing just within the threshold of the door, she saw him lift his hand slowly and point to his forehead. The firelight showed her a dark red stain upon the left temple, like the mark of a contused wound.

She covered her face with her hands, shuddering and uttering a little cry of terror, and then dropped half fainting upon a chair. When she uncovered her face the room was empty, the firelight shining cheerily upon the walls, no trace of that ghostly visitant. Again when her husband came in she told him of what she had seen, and of that mark upon the temple which she had seen for the first time that night. He heard her very gravely. This repetition of the business made it serious. If it were, as Robert Ashley fully believed it was, a delusion of his wife’s, it was a dangerous delusion, and he knew not how to charm it away from her mind. She had conjured up a new fancy now, this notion of a bloodstained temple; the ghastly evidence of some foul play that had been done to John Granger.

And the man was alive and well in America all the time; but how convince a woman of that fact when she preferred to trust her own sick fancies?

This time Susan Ashley brooded over the thoughts of the thing she had seen, firmly believing that she had looked upon the shadow of the dead, and that there was some purpose to be fulfilled by that awful vision. In the day, however busy she might be with her daily work, the thought of this was almost always in her mind; in the dead silence of the night, when her husband was sleeping by her side, she would often lie awake for hours thinking of John Granger.

No answer had come to her letter, though there had been more than time for her to receive one.

“Robert,” she said to her husband one day, “I do not believe that John Granger ever went to America.”

“Oh, Susy, Susy, I wish you could get John Granger out of your head. Who is it that writes for his money, if it isn’t he?”

“Anybody might know of the money – people know everything about their neighbours’ affairs in Hillborough – and anybody that knew John Granger’s hand might be able to forge a letter. I don’t believe he ever went to America, Robert. I believe some accident – some fatal accident – happened to him on the night he was to leave Hillborough.”

“Why, Susy, what should happen to him, and we not hear of it?”

“He might have been waylaid and murdered. He had a good deal of money about him, I know, that night; he was to sail from London by the Washington, and his luggage was all sent to an inn near the Docks. I wish you’d write to the people, Robert, and ask if he arrived there at the time he was expected; and I wish you’d find out at the station whether anyone saw him go away by the train that night.”

“It’s easy enough to do as much as that to please you, Susy. But I wish you wouldn’t dwell upon these fancies about Granger; it’s all nonsense, as you’ll find out sooner or later.”

He wrote the letter which his wife wanted written, asking the landlord of the Victoria Hotel, London Docks, whether a certain Mr. John Granger, whose travelling chests had been forwarded from Hillborough, had arrived at his house on the 24th of July last, and when and how he had quitted it. He also took the trouble to go to the Hillborough Station, in order to question the station-master and his subordinates about John Granger’s departure.

Neither the station-master nor the porters were able to give Robert Ashley any satisfactory information on this point. One or two of the men were not quite clear that they knew John Granger by sight; another knew him very well indeed, but could not swear to having seen him that night. The station-master was quite clear that he had not seen him.

“I’m generally pretty busy with the mailbags at that time,” he said, “and a passenger might very well escape my notice. But it would only have been civil in Granger to bid me good-bye; I’ve known him ever since he was a lad.”

This was not a satisfactory account to carry back to Susan; nor was the letter that came from London in a day or two much more satisfactory. The landlord of the Victoria Hotel begged to inform Mr. Ashley that the owner of the trunks from Hillborough had not arrived at his house until the middle of August. He was not quite sure about the date; but he knew the luggage had been lying in his place for something over three weeks, and he was thinking of advertising it, when the owner appeared.

Three weeks! and John Granger had left Susan Lorton that July night, intending to go straight to London. Where could he have been? What could he have been doing in the interval?

Robert Ashley tried to make light of the matter. Granger might have changed his mind at the last moment – at the railway station, perhaps – and might have gone off to visit friends in some other part of the country. But Susan told her husband that John Granger had no friends except at Hillborough, and that he was not given to changing his mind upon any occasion. She had now a settled conviction that some untimely fate had befallen her old friend, and that the letters from America were forgeries.

Ashley told his friend Simmons the story of the ghost rather reluctantly, but it was necessary to tell it in explaining how the letter to the London hotel-keeper came to be written. Of course Mr. Simmons was quite ready to agree with him that the ghostly part of the business was no more than a delusion of Susan’s; but he was a good deal puzzled, not to say disturbed, by the hotel-keeper’s letter. He had talked over John Granger’s plans with him on that last day, and he remembered that John had been perfectly decided in his intention of going straight to London. The three weeks’ interval between his departure from Hillborough and his arrival in that city was a mystery not easily to be explained.

Mr. Simmons referred to the letters from New York, and compared the signatures of them with previous signatures of John Granger’s. If they were forgeries, they were very clever forgeries; but Granger’s was a plain commercial hand by no means difficult to imitate. There was one thing noticeable in the signatures to the American letters – they were all exactly alike, line for line and curve for curve. This rather discomposed Mr. Simmons; for it is a notorious fact that a man rarely signs his name twice in exactly the same manner. There is almost always some difference.

“I’m going up to London in a month,” said the cashier; “I’ll call at the Victoria Hotel when I’m there, and make a few inquiries about John Granger. We can make some excuse for keeping back the money in the meantime, if there should be any more written for.”

Before the month was out, John Granger’s ghost appeared for the third time to Susan Ashley. She had been to Hillborough alone to make some little purchases in the way of linen-drapery, and came home through Hawley Wood in the tender May twilight. She was thinking of her old friend as she walked along the shadowy winding footpath. It was just such a still, peaceful evening as that upon which he had stood on the edge of the common looking back at her, and waving his hand, upon that last well-remembered night.

He was so much in her thoughts, and the conviction that he had come from among the dead to visit her was so rooted in her mind, that she was scarcely surprised when she looked up presently, and saw a tall familiar figure moving slowly among the trees a little way before her. There seemed to be an awful stillness in the wood all at once, but there was nothing awful in that well-known figure.

She tried to overtake it; but it kept always in advance of her, and at a sudden turn in the path she lost it altogether. The trees grew thicker, and there was a solemn darkness at the spot where the path took this sharp turn, and on one side of the narrow footpath there was a steep declivity and a great hollow made by a disused gravel-pit.

She went home quietly enough, with a subdued sadness upon her, and told her husband what had happened to her. Nor did she rest until there had been a search made in Hawley Wood for the body of John Granger.

They searched, and found him lying at the bottom of the gravel-pit, half-buried in loose sand and gravel, and quite hidden by a mass of furze and bramble that grew over the spot. There was an inquest, of course. The tailor who had made the clothes found upon the body identified them, and swore to them as those he had made for John Granger. The pockets were all empty. There could be little doubt that John Granger had been waylaid and murdered for the sake of the money he carried upon him that night. His skull had been shattered by a blow from a jagged stick on the left temple. The stick was found lying at the bottom of the pit a little way from the body, with human hair and stains of blood upon it.

John Granger had never left Hillborough; and the person who had contrived to procure so much of his money, by sending the deposit receipts and forged letters from America, was, in all probability, his murderer. There was a large reward offered for the discovery of the guilty party; the police were hard at work; and the inquest was adjourned several times, in the hope that new facts might be elicited.

•   •   •   •   •

Susan Ashley and her father were examined closely as to the events of that fatal evening of July the 24th. Susan told everything: her cousin Stephen Price dropping in while they were at tea, the questions and answers about the money John Granger carried upon him – to the most minute particular.

“Then Price knew of the money Granger had about him?” suggested the coroner.

“He did, sir.”

“And did he know that he had money on deposit in Hillborough Bank?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Price leave your father’s house after Granger, or before him?”

“Before him, sir: nearly an hour before him.”

The inquest was adjourned; and, within a week of this examination, Matthew Lorton received an application from the police, asking for a photograph of his nephew Stephen Price, if he happened to possess such a thing.

He did possess one, and sent it to London by return of post.

The landlord of the Victoria Hotel identified this portrait as that of the person who represented himself to be John Granger, and who carried away John Granger’s luggage.

After this the work was easy. Little links in the chain were picked up one by one. A labouring man turned up who had seen Stephen Price sitting on a stile hard by Hawley Wood, hacking at a thick jagged-looking stake with his clasp-knife, on the night of the 24th of July. The woman at whose house Price lodged gave evidence that he broke an appointment to play billiards with a friend of his on that night; the friend had called at his lodgings for him twice, and had been angry about the breaking of the appointment; and Stephen Price came in about half-past ten o’clock, looking very white and strange. The lad who was his fellow-clerk was ready to swear to his having been disturbed and strange in his manner during the two or three weeks before he left Hillborough; but the boy had thought very little of this, he said, knowing how deeply Stephen was in debt.

The final examination resulted in a verdict of wilful murder; and a police-officer started for New York by the next steamer, carrying a warrant for the apprehension of Stephen Price.

He was not found very easily, but was ultimately apprehended, with some of John Granger’s property still in his possession. He was brought home, tried, found guilty, and hung, much to the satisfaction of Hillborough. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Vollair produced a will, which John Granger had executed a few days before his intended departure, bequeathing all he possessed to Susan Lorton – the interest for her sole use and benefit, the principal to revert to her eldest son after her death, the son to take the name of Granger. The bank had to make good the money drawn from them by Stephen Price. The boy came in due course, and was christened after the dead man, above whose remains a fair white monument has been erected in the rustic churchyard near Hawley Wood, at the expense of Robert and Susan Ashley; a handsomer tomb than is usually given to a man of John Granger’s class, but it was the only thing Susan could do to show how much she had valued him who had loved her so dearly.

She often sits beside that quiet resting-place in the spring twilight, with her children busy making daisy-chains at her knee; but she has never seen John Granger’s ghost since that evening in the wood, and she knows that she will never see it again.

—

At Chrighton Abbey

(1871)

The Chrightons were very great people in that part of the country where my childhood and youth were spent. To speak of Squire Chrighton was to speak of a power in that remote western region of England. Chrighton Abbey had belonged to the family ever since the reign of Stephen, and there was a curious old wing and a cloistered quadrangle still remaining of the original edifice, and in excellent preservation. The rooms at this end of the house were low, and somewhat darksome and gloomy, it is true; but, though rarely used, they were perfectly habitable, and were of service on great occasions when the Abbey was crowded with guests.

The central portion of the Abbey had been rebuilt in the reign of Elizabeth, and was of noble and palatial proportions. The southern wing, and a long music-room with eight tall narrow windows added on to it, were as modern as the time of Anne. Altogether, the Abbey was a very splendid mansion, and one of the chief glories of our county.

All the land in Chrighton parish, and for a long way beyond its boundaries, belonged to the great Squire. The parish church was within the park walls, and the living in the Squire’s gift – not a very valuable benefice, but a useful thing to bestow upon a younger son’s younger son, once in a way, or sometimes on a tutor or dependent of the wealthy house.

I was a Chrighton, and my father, a distant cousin of the reigning Squire, had been rector of Chrighton parish. His death left me utterly unprovided for, and I was fain to go out into the bleak unknown world, and earn my living in a position of dependence – a dreadful thing for a Chrighton to be obliged to do.

Out of respect for the traditions and prejudices of my race, I made it my business to seek employment abroad, where the degradation of one solitary Chrighton was not so likely to inflict shame upon the ancient house to which I belonged. Happily for myself, I had been carefully educated, and had industriously cultivated the usual modern accomplishments in the calm retirement of the Vicarage. I was so fortunate as to obtain a situation at Vienna, in a German family of high rank; and here I remained seven years, laying aside year by year a considerable portion of my liberal salary. When my pupils had grown up, my kind mistress procured me a still more profitable position at St Petersburg, where I remained five more years, at the end of which time I yielded to a yearning that had been long growing upon me – an ardent desire to see my dear old country home once more.

I had no very near relations in England. My mother had died some years before my father; my only brother was far away, in the Indian Civil Service; sister I had none. But I was a Chrighton, and I loved the soil from which I had sprung. I was sure, moreover, of a warm welcome from friends who had loved and honoured my father and mother, and I was still further encouraged to treat myself to this holiday by the very cordial letters I had from time to time received from the Squire’s wife, a noble warm-hearted woman, who fully approved the independent course I had taken, and who had ever shown herself my friend.

In all her letters for some time past Mrs. Chrighton begged that, whenever I felt myself justified in coming home, I would pay a long visit to the Abbey.

“I wish you could come at Christmas,” she wrote, in the autumn of the year of which I am speaking. “We shall be very gay, and I expect all kinds of pleasant people at the Abbey. Edward is to be married early in the spring – much to his father’s satisfaction, for the match is a good and appropriate one. His fiancée is to be among our guests. She is a very beautiful girl; perhaps I should say handsome rather than beautiful. Julia Tremaine, one of the Tremaines of Old Court, near Hayswell – a very old family, as I daresay you remember. She has several brothers and sisters, and will have little, perhaps nothing, from her father; but she has a considerable fortune left her by an aunt, and is thought quite an heiress in the county – not, of course, that this latter fact had any influence with Edward. He fell in love with her at an assize ball in his usual impulsive fashion, and proposed to her in something less than a fortnight. It is, I hope and believe, a thorough love-match on both sides.”

After this followed a cordial repetition of the invitation to myself. I was to go straight to the Abbey when I went to England, and was to take up my abode there as long as ever I pleased.

This letter decided me. The wish to look on the dear scenes of my happy childhood had grown almost into a pain. I was free to take a holiday, without detriment to my prospects. So, early in December, regardless of the bleak dreary weather, I turned my face homewards, and made the long journey from St Petersburg to London, under the kind escort of Major Manson, a Queen’s Messenger, who was a friend of my late employer, the Baron Fruydorff, and whose courtesy had been enlisted for me by that gentleman.

I was three-and-thirty years of age. Youth was quite gone; beauty I had never possessed; and I was content to think of myself as a confirmed old maid, a quiet spectator of life’s great drama, disturbed by no feverish desire for an active part in the play. I had a disposition to which this kind of passive existence is easy. There was no wasting fire in my veins. Simple duties, rare and simple pleasures, filled up my sum of life. The dear ones who had given a special charm and brightness to my existence were gone. Nothing could recall them, and without them actual happiness seemed impossible to me. Everything had a subdued and neutral tint; life at its best was calm and colourless, like a grey sunless day in early autumn, serene but joyless.

The old Abbey was in its glory when I arrived there, at about nine o’clock on a clear starlit night. A light frost whitened the broad sweep of grass that stretched away from the long stone terrace in front of the house to a semicircle of grand old oaks and beeches. From the music-room at the end of the southern wing, to the heavily framed gothic windows of the old rooms on the north, there shone one blaze of light. The scene reminded me of some weird palace in a German legend; and I half expected to see the lights fade out all in a moment, and the long stone facade wrapped in sudden darkness.

The old butler, whom I remembered from my very infancy, and who did not seem to have grown a day older during my twelve years’ exile, came out of the dining-room as the footman opened the hall-door for me, and gave me cordial welcome, nay, insisted upon helping to bring in my portmanteau with his own hands, an act of unusual condescension, the full force of which was felt by his subordinates.

“It’s a real treat to see your pleasant face once more, Miss Sarah,” said this faithful retainer, as he assisted me to take off my travelling-cloak, and took my dressing-bag from my hand. “You look a trifle older than when you used to live at the Vicarage twelve year ago, but you’re looking uncommon well for all that; and, Lord love your heart, miss, how pleased they all will be to see you! Missus told me with her own lips about your coming. You’d like to take off your bonnet before you go to the drawing-room, I daresay. The house is full of company. Call Mrs. Marjorum, James, will you?”

The footman disappeared into the back regions, and presently reappeared with Mrs. Marjorum, a portly dame, who, like Truefold the butler, had been a fixture at the Abbey in the time of the present Squire’s father. From her I received the same cordial greeting, and by her I was led off up staircases and along corridor, till I wondered where I was being taken.

We arrived at last at a very comfortable room – a square, tapestried chamber, with a low ceiling supported by a great oaken beam. The room looked cheery enough, with a bright fire roaring in the wide chimney; but it had a somewhat ancient aspect, which the superstitiously inclined might have associated with possible ghosts.

I was fortunately of a matter-of-fact disposition, utterly sceptical upon the ghost subject; and the old-fashioned appearance of the room took my fancy.

“We are in King Stephen’s wing, are we not, Mrs. Marjorum?” I asked; “this room seems quite strange to me. I doubt if I have ever been in it before.”

“Very likely not, miss. Yes, this is the old wing. Your window looks out into the old stable-yard, where the kennel used to be in the time of our Squire’s grandfather, when the Abbey was even a finer place than it is now, I’ve heard say. We are so full of company this winter, you see, miss, that we are obliged to make use of all these rooms. You’ll have no need to feel lonesome. There’s Captain and Mrs. Cranwick in the next room to this, and the two Miss Newports in the blue room opposite.”

“My dear good Marjorum, I like my quarters excessively; and I quite enjoy the idea of sleeping in a room that was extant in the time of Stephen, when the Abbey really was an abbey. I daresay some grave old monk has worn these boards with his devout knees.”

The old woman stared dubiously, with the air of a person who had small sympathy with monkish times, and begged to be excused for leaving me, she had so much on her hands just now.

There was coffee to be sent in; and she doubted if the still-room maid would manage matters properly, if she, Mrs. Marjorum, were not at hand to see that things were right.

“You’ve only to ring your bell, miss, and Susan will attend to you. She’s used to help waiting on our young ladies sometimes, and she’s very handy. Missus has given particular orders that she should be always at your service.”

“Mrs. Chrighton is very kind; but I assure you, Marjorum, I don’t require the help of a maid once in a month. I am accustomed to do everything for myself. There, run along, Mrs. Marjorum, and see after your coffee; and I’ll be down in the drawing-room in ten minutes. Are there many people there, by-the-by?”

“A good many. There’s Miss Tremaine, and her mama and younger sister; of course you’ve heard all about the marriage – such a handsome young lady – rather too proud for my liking; but the Tremaines always were a proud family, and this one’s an heiress. Mr. Edward is so fond of her – thinks the ground is scarcely good enough for her to walk upon, I do believe; and somehow I can’t help wishing he’d chosen someone else – someone who would have thought more of him, and who would not take all his attentions in such a cool offhand way. But of course it isn’t my business to say such things, and I wouldn’t venture upon it to anyone but you, Miss Sarah.”

She told me that I would find dinner ready for me in the breakfast-room, and then bustled off, leaving me to my toilet.

This ceremony I performed as rapidly as I could, admiring the perfect comfort of my chamber as I dressed. Every modern appliance had been added to the sombre and ponderous furniture of an age gone by, and the combination produced a very pleasant effect. Perfume-bottles of ruby-coloured Bohemian glass, china brush-trays and ring-stands brightened the massive oak dressing-table; a low luxurious chintz-covered easy-chair of the Victorian era stood before the hearth; a dear little writing-table of polished maple was placed conveniently near it; and in the background the tapestried walls loomed duskily, as they had done hundreds of years before my time.

I had no leisure for dreamy musings on the past, however, provocative though the chamber might be of such thoughts. I arranged my hair in its usual simple fashion, and put on a dark-grey silk dress, trimmed with some fine old black lace that had been given to me by the Baroness – an unobtrusive demi-toilette, adapted to any occasion. I tied a massive gold cross, an ornament that had belonged to my dear mother, round my neck with a scarlet ribbon; and my costume was complete. One glance at the looking-glass convinced me that there was nothing dowdy in my appearance; and then I hurried along the corridor and down the staircase to the hall, where Truefold received me and conducted me to the breakfast-room, in which an excellent dinner awaited me.

I did not waste much time over this repast, although I had eaten nothing all day; for I was anxious to make my way to the drawing-room. Just as I had finished, the door opened, and Mrs. Chrighton sailed in, looking superb in a dark-green velvet dress richly trimmed with old point-lace. She had been a beauty in her youth, and, as a matron, was still remarkably handsome. She had, above all, a charm of expression which to me was rarer and more delightful than her beauty of feature and complexion.

She put her arms round me, and kissed me affectionately.

“I have only this moment been told of your arrival, my dear Sarah,” she said; “and I find you have been in the house half an hour. What must you have thought of me!”

“What can I think of you, except that you are all goodness, my dear Fanny? I did not expect you to leave your guests to receive me, and am really sorry that you have done so. I need no ceremony to convince me of your kindness.”

“But, my dear child, it is not a question of ceremony. I have been looking forward so anxiously to your coming, and I should not have liked to see you for the first time before all those people. Give me another kiss, that’s a darling. Welcome to Chrighton. Remember, Sarah, this house is always to be your home, whenever you have need of one.”

“My dear kind cousin! And you are not ashamed of me, who have eaten the bread of strangers?”

“Ashamed of you! No, my love; I admire your industry and spirit. And now come to the drawing-room. The girls will be so pleased to see you.”

“And I to see them. They were quite little things when I went away, romping in the hayfields in their short white frocks; and now, I suppose, they are handsome young women.”

“They are very nice-looking; not so handsome as their brother. Edward is really a magnificent young man. I do not think my maternal pride is guilty of any gross exaggeration when I say that.”

“And Miss Tremaine?” I said. “I am very curious to see her.”

I fancied a faint shadow came over my cousin’s face as I mentioned this name.

“Miss Tremaine, yes, you cannot fail to admire her,” she said, rather thoughtfully.

She drew my hand through her arm and led me to the drawing-room: a very large room, with a fireplace at each end, brilliantly lighted tonight, and containing about twenty people, scattered about in little groups, and all seeming to be talking and laughing merrily. Mrs. Chrighton took me straight to one of the fireplaces, beside which two girls were sitting on a low sofa, while a young man of something more than six feet high stood near them, with his arm resting on the broad marble slab of the mantelpiece. A glance told me that this young man with the dark eyes and crisp waving brown hair was Edward Chrighton. His likeness to his mother was in itself enough to tell me who he was; but I remembered the boyish face and bright eyes which had so often looked up to mine in the days when the heir of the Abbey was one of the most juvenile scholars at Eton.

The lady seated nearest Edward Chrighton attracted my chief attention; for I felt sure that this lady was Miss Tremaine. She was tall and slim, and carried her head and neck with a stately air, which struck me more than anything in that first glance. Yes, she was handsome, undeniably handsome; and my cousin had been right when she said I could not fail to admire her; but to me the dazzlingly fair face with its perfect features, the marked aquiline nose, the short upper lip expressive of unmitigated pride, the full cold blue eyes, pencilled brows, and aureole of pale golden hair, were the very reverse of sympathetic. That Miss Tremaine must needs be universally admired, it was impossible to doubt; but I could not understand how any man could fall in love with such a woman.

She was dressed in white muslin, and her only ornament was a superb diamond locket, heart-shaped, tied round her long white throat with a broad black ribbon. Her hair, of which she seemed to have a great quantity, was arranged in a massive coronet of plaits, which surmounted the small head as proudly as an imperial crown.

To this young lady Mrs. Chrighton introduced me.

“I have another cousin to present to you, Julia,” she said smiling “Miss Sarah Chrighton, just arrived from St Petersburg.”

“From St Petersburg? What an awful journey! How do you do, Miss Chrighton? It was really very courageous of you to come so far. Did you travel alone?”

“No; I had a companion as far as London, and a very kind one. I came on to the Abbey by myself.”

The young lady had given me her hand with rather a languid air, I thought. I saw the cold blue eyes surveying me curiously from head to foot, and it seemed to me as if I could read the condemnatory summing-up – “A frump, and a poor relation” – in Miss Tremaine’s face.

I had not much time to think about her just now; for Edward Chrighton suddenly seized both my hands, and gave me so hearty and loving a welcome, that he almost brought the tears “up from my heart into my eyes.”

Two pretty girls in blue dresses came running forward from different pans of the room, and gaily saluted me as “Cousin Sarah”; and the three surrounded me in a little cluster, and assailed me with a string of questions – whether I remembered this, and whether I had forgotten that, the battle in the hayfield, the charity-school tea-party in the vicarage orchard, our picnics in Hawsley Combe, our botanical and entomological excursions on Chorwell-common, and all the simple pleasures of their childhood and my youth. While this catechism was going on, Miss Tremaine watched us with a disdainful expression, which she evidently did not care to hide.

“I should not have thought you capable of such Arcadian simplicity, Mr. Chrighton,” she said at last. “Pray continue your recollections. These juvenile experiences are most interesting.”

“I don’t expect you to be interested in them, Julia,” Edward answered, with a tone that sounded rather too bitter for a lover. “I know what a contempt you have for trifling rustic pleasures. Were you ever a child yourself, I wonder, by the way? I don’t believe you ever ran after a butterfly in your life.”

Her speech put an end to our talk of the past, somehow. I saw that Edward was vexed, and that all the pleasant memories of his boyhood had fled before that cold scornful face. A young lady in pink, who had been sitting next Julia Tremaine, vacated the sofa, and Edward slipped into her place, and devoted himself for the rest of the evening to his betrothed. I glanced at his bright expressive face now and then as he talked to her, and could not help wondering what charm he could discover in one who seemed to me so unworthy of him.

It was midnight when I went back to my room in the north wing, thoroughly happy in the cordial welcome that had been given me. I rose early next morning – for early rising had long been habitual to me – and, drawing back the damask curtain that sheltered my window, looked out at the scene below.

I saw a stable-yard, a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by the closed doors of stables and dog-kennels: low massive buildings of grey stone, with the ivy creeping over them here and there, and with an ancient moss-grown look, that gave them a weird kind of interest in my eyes. This range of stabling must have been disused for a long time, I fancied. The stables now in use were a pile of handsome red-brick buildings at the other extremity of the house, to the rear of the music-room, and forming a striking feature in the back view of the Abbey.

I had often heard how the present Squire’s grandfather had kept a pack of hounds, which had been sold immediately after his death; and I knew that my cousin, the present Mr. Chrighton, had been more than once requested to follow his ancestor’s good example; for there were no hounds now within twenty miles of the Abbey, though it was a fine country for fox-hunting.

George Chrighton, however – the reigning lord of the Abbey – was not a hunting man. He had, indeed, a secret horror of the sport; for more than one scion of the house had perished untimely in the hunting-field. The family had not been altogether a lucky one, in spite of its wealth and prosperity. It was not often that the goodly heritage had descended to the eldest son. Death in some form or other on too many occasions a violent death had come between the heir and his inheritance. And when I pondered on the dark pages in the story of the house, I used to wonder whether my cousin Fanny was ever troubled by morbid forebodings about her only and fondly loved son.

Was there a ghost at Chrighton – that spectral visitant without which the state and splendour of a grand old house seem scarcely complete? Yes, I had heard vague hints of some shadowy presence that had been seen on rare occasions within the precincts of the Abbey; but I had never been able to ascertain what shape it bore.

Those whom I questioned were prompt to assure me that they had seen nothing. They had heard stories of the past – foolish legends, most likely, not worth listening to. Once, when I had spoken of the subject to my cousin George, he told me angrily never again to let him hear any allusion to that folly from my lips.

That December passed merrily. The old house was full of really pleasant people, and the brief winter days were spent in one unbroken round of amusement and gaiety. To me the old familiar English country-house life was a perpetual delight – to feel myself amongst kindred an unceasing pleasure. I could not have believed myself capable of being so completely happy.

I saw a great deal of my cousin Edward, and I think he contrived to make Miss Tremaine understand that, to please him, she must be gracious to me. She certainly took some pains to make herself agreeable to me; and I discovered that, in spite of that proud disdainful temper, which she so rarely took the trouble to conceal, she was really anxious to gratify her lover.

Their courtship was not altogether a halcyon period. They had frequent quarrels, the details of which Edward’s sisters Sophy and Agnes delighted to discuss with me. It was the struggle of two proud spirits for mastery; but my cousin Edward’s pride was of the nobler kind – the lofty scorn of all things mean – a pride that does not ill-become a generous nature. To me he seemed all that was admirable, and I was never tired of hearing his mother praise him. I think my cousin Fanny knew this, and that she used to confide in me as fully as if I had been her sister.

“I daresay you can see I am not quite so fond as I should wish to be of Julia Tremaine,” she said to me one day; “but I am very glad that my son is going to marry. My husband’s has not been a fortunate family, you know, Sarah. The eldest sons have been wild and unlucky for generations past; and when Edward was a boy I used to have many a bitter hour, dreading what the future might bring forth. Thank God he has been, and is, all that I can wish. He has never given me an hour’s anxiety by any act of his. Yet I am not the less glad of his marriage. The heirs of Chrighton who have come to an untimely end have all died unmarried. There was Hugh Chrighton, in the reign of George the Second, who was killed in a duel; John, who broke his back in the hunting-field thirty years later; Theodore, shot accidentally by a schoolfellow at Eton; Jasper, whose yacht went down in the Mediterranean forty years ago. An awful list, is it not, Sarah? I shall feel as if my son were safer somehow when he is married. It will seem as if he has escaped the ban that has fallen on so many of our house. He will have greater reason to be careful of his life when he is a married man.”

I agreed with Mrs. Chrighton; but could not help wishing that Edward had chosen any other woman than the cold handsome Julia. I could not fancy his future life happy with such a mate.

Christmas came by and by – a real old English Christmas – frost and snow without, warmth and revelry within; skating on the great pond in the park, and sledging on the icebound high-roads by day; private theatricals, charades, and amateur concerts by night. I was surprised to find that Miss Tremaine refused to take any active part in these evening amusements. She preferred to sit among the elders as a spectator, and had the air and bearing of a princess for whose diversion all our entertainments had been planned. She seemed to think that she fulfilled her mission by sitting still and looking handsome. No desire to show off appeared to enter her mind. Her intense pride left no room for vanity. Yet I knew that she could have distinguished herself as a musician if she had chosen to do so; for I had heard her sing and play in Mrs. Chrighton’s morning-room, when only Edward, his sisters, and myself were present; and I knew that both as a vocalist and a pianist she excelled all our guests.

The two girls and I had many a happy morning and afternoon, going from cottage to cottage in a pony-carriage laden with Mrs. Chrighton’s gifts to the poor of her parish. There was no public formal distribution of blanketing and coals, but the wants of all were amply provided for in a quiet friendly way. Agnes and Sophy, aided by an indefatigable maid, the Rector’s daughter, and one or two other young ladies, had been at work for the last three months making smart warm frocks and useful under-garments for the children of the cottagers; so that on Christmas morning every child in the parish was arrayed in a complete set of new garments. Mrs. Chrighton had an admirable faculty of knowing precisely what was most wanted in every household; and our pony-carriage used to convey a varied collection of goods, every parcel directed in the firm free hand of the chatelaine of the Abbey.

Edward used sometimes to drive us on these expeditions, and I found that he was eminently popular among the poor of Chrighton parish. He had such an airy pleasant way of talking to them, a manner which set them at their ease at once. He never forgot their names or relationships, or wants or ailments; had a packet of exactly the kind of tobacco each man liked best always ready in his coat-pockets; and was full of jokes, which may not have been particularly witty, but which used to make the small low-roofed chambers ring with hearty laughter.

Miss Tremaine coolly declined any share in these pleasant duties.

“I don’t like poor people,” she said. “I daresay it sounds very dreadful, but it’s just as well to confess my iniquity at once. I never can get on with them, or they with me. I am not simpatica, I suppose. And then I cannot endure their stifling rooms. The close faint odour of their houses gives me a fever. And again, what is the use of visiting them? It is only an inducement to them to become hypocrites. Surely it is better to arrange on a sheet of paper what it is just and fair for them to have – blankets, and coals, and groceries, and money, and wine, and so on – and let them receive the things from some trustworthy servant. In that case, there need be no cringing on one side, and no endurance on the other.”

“But, you see, Julia, there are some kinds of people to whom that sort of thing is not a question of endurance,” Edward answered, his face flushing indignantly. “People who like to share in the pleasure they give – who like to see the poor careworn faces lighted up with sudden joy – who like to make these sons of the soil feel that there is some friendly link between themselves and their masters – some point of union between the cottage and the great house. There is my mother, for instance: all these duties which you think so tiresome are to her an unfailing delight. There will be a change, I’m afraid, Julia, when you are mistress of the Abbey.”

“You have not made me that yet,” she answered; “and there is plenty of time for you to change your mind, if you do not think me suited for the position. I do not pretend to be like your mother. It is better that I should not affect any feminine virtues which I do not possess.”

After this Edward insisted on driving our pony-carriage almost every day, leaving Miss Tremaine to find her own amusement; and I think this conversation was the beginning of an estrangement between them, which became more serious than any of their previous quarrels had been.

Miss Tremaine did not care for sledging, or skating, or billiard playing. She had none of the “fast” tendencies which have become so common lately. She used to sit in one particular bow-window of the drawing-room all the morning, working a screen in berlin-wool and beads, assisted and attended by her younger sister Laura, who was a kind of slave to her – a very colourless young lady in mind, capable of no such thing as an original opinion, and in person a pale replica of her sister.

Had there been less company in the house, the breach between Edward Chrighton and his betrothed must have become notorious; but with a house so full of people, all bent on enjoying themselves, I doubt if it was noticed. On all public occasions my cousin showed himself attentive and apparently devoted to Miss Tremaine. It was only I and his sisters who knew the real state of affairs.

I was surprised, after the young lady’s total repudiation of all benevolent sentiments, when she beckoned me aside one morning, and slipped a little purse of gold – twenty sovereigns – into my hand.

“I shall be very much obliged if you will distribute that among your cottagers today, Miss Chrighton,” she said. “Of course I should like to give them something; it’s only the trouble of talking to them that I shrink from; and you are just the person for an almoner. Don’t mention my little commission to anyone, please.”

“Of course I may tell Edward,” I said; for I was anxious that he should know his betrothed was not as hard-hearted as she had appeared.

“To him least of all,” she answered eagerly. “You know that our ideas vary on that point. He would think I gave the money to please him. Not a word, pray, Miss Chrighton.” I submitted, and distributed my sovereigns quietly, with the most careful exercise of my judgement.

So Christmas came and passed. It was the day after the great anniversary – a very quiet day for the guests and family at the Abbey, but a grand occasion for the servants, who were to have their annual ball in the evening – a ball to which all the humbler class of tenantry were invited. The frost had broken up suddenly, and it was a thorough wet day – a depressing kind of day for anyone whose spirits are liable to be affected by the weather, as mine are. I felt out of spirits for the first time since my arrival at the Abbey.

No one else appeared to feel the same influence. The elder ladies sat in a wide semicircle round one of the fireplaces in the drawing-room; a group of merry girls and dashing young men chatted gaily before the other. From the billiard-room there came the frequent clash of balls, and cheery peals of stentorian laughter. I sat in one of the deep windows, half hidden by the curtains, reading a novel – one of a boxful that came from town every month.

If the picture within was bright and cheerful, the prospect was dreary enough without. The fairy forest of snow-wreathed trees, the white valleys and undulating banks of snow, had vanished, and the rain dripped slowly and sullenly upon a darksome expanse of sodden grass, and a dismal background of leafless timber. The merry sound of the sledge-bells no longer enlivened the air; all was silence and gloom.

Edward Chrighton was not amongst the billiard-players; he was pacing the drawing-room to and fro from end to end, with an air that was at once moody and restless.

“Thank heaven, the frost has broken up at last!” he exclaimed, stopping in front of the window where I sat.

He had spoken to himself, quite unaware of my close neighbourhood. Unpromising as his aspect was just then, I ventured to accost him.

“What bad taste, to prefer such weather as this to frost and snow!” I answered. “The park looked enchanting yesterday – a real scene from fairyland. And only look at it today!”

“O yes, of course, from an artistic point of view, the snow was better. The place does look something like the great dismal swamp today; but I am thinking of hunting, and that confounded frost made a day’s sport impossible. We are in for a spell of mild weather now, I think.”

“But you are not going to hunt, are you, Edward?”

“Indeed I am, my gentle cousin, in spite of that frightened look in your amiable countenance.”

“I thought there were no hounds hereabouts.”

“Nor are there; but there is as fine a pack as any in the country – the Daleborough hounds – five-and-twenty miles away.”

“And you are going five-and-twenty miles for the sake of a day’s run?”

“I would travel forty, fifty, a hundred miles for that same diversion. But I am not going for a single day this time; I am going over to Sir Francis Wycherly’s place – young Frank Wycherly and I were sworn chums at Christchurch – for three or four days. I am due today, but I scarcely cared to travel by cross-country roads in such rain as this. However, if the floodgates of the sky are loosened for a new deluge, I must go tomorrow.”

“What a headstrong young man!” I exclaimed. “And what will Miss Tremaine say to this desertion?” I asked in a lower voice.

“Miss Tremaine can say whatever she pleases. She had it in her power to make me forget the pleasures of the chase, if she had chosen, though we had been in the heart of the shires, and the welkin ringing with the baying of hounds.”

“Oh, I begin to understand. This hunting engagement is not of long standing.”

“No; I began to find myself bored here a few days ago, and wrote to Frank to offer myself for two or three days at Wycherly. I received a most cordial answer by return, and am booked till the end of this week.”

“You have not forgotten the ball on the first?”

“Oh, no; to do that would be to vex my mother, and to offer a slight to our guests. I shall be here for the first, come what may.”

Come what may! so lightly spoken. The time came when I had bitter occasion to remember those words.

“I’m afraid you will vex your mother by going at all,” I said. “You know what a horror both she and your father have of hunting.”

“A most un-country-gentleman-like aversion on my father’s part. But he is a dear old bookworm, seldom happy out of his library. Yes, I admit they both have a dislike to hunting in the abstract; but they know I am a pretty good rider, and that it would need a bigger country than I shall find about Wycherly to floor me. You need not feel nervous, my dear Sarah; I am not going to give papa and mama the smallest ground for uneasiness.”

“You will take your own horses, I suppose?”

“That goes without saying. No man who has cattle of his own cares to mount another man’s horses. I shall take Pepperbox and the Druid.”

“Pepperbox has a queer temper, I have heard your sisters say.”

“My sisters expect a horse to be a kind of overgrown baa-lamb. Everything splendid in horseflesh and womankind is prone to that slight defect, an ugly temper. There is Miss Tremaine, for instance.”

“I shall take Miss Tremaine’s part. I believe it is you who are in the wrong in the matter of this estrangement, Edward.”

“Do you? Well, wrong or right, my cousin, until the fair Julia comes to me with sweet looks and gentle words, we can never be what we have been.”

“You will return from your hunting expedition in a softer mood,” I answered; “that is to say, if you persist in going. But I hope and believe you will change your mind.”

“Such a change is not within the limits of possibility, Sarah. I am fixed as Fate.”

He strolled away, humming some gay hunting-song as he went. I was alone with Mrs. Chrighton later in the afternoon, and she spoke to me about this intended visit to Wycherly.

“Edward has set his heart upon it, evidently,” she said regretfully, “and his father and I have always made a point of avoiding anything that could seem like domestic tyranny. Our dear boy is such a good son, that it would be very hard if we came between him and his pleasures. You know what a morbid horror my husband has of the dangers of the hunting-field, and perhaps I am almost as weak-minded. But in spite of this we have never interfered with Edward’s enjoyment of a sport which he is passionately fond of; and hitherto, thank God! he has escaped without a scratch. Yet I have had many a bitter hour, I can assure you, my dear, when my son has been away in Leicestershire hunting four days a week.”

“He rides well, I suppose.”

“Superbly. He has a great reputation among the sportsmen of our neighbourhood. I daresay when he is master of the Abbey he will start a pack of hounds, and revive the old days of his great-grandfather, Meredith Chrighton.”

“I fancy the hounds were kenneled in the stable-yard below my bedroom window in those days, were they not, Fanny?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Chrighton answered gravely; and I wondered at the sudden shadow that fell upon her face.

I went up to my room earlier than usual that afternoon, and I had a clear hour to spare before it would be time to dress for the seven o’clock dinner. This leisure hour I intended to devote to letter-writing; but on arriving in my room I found myself in a very idle frame of mind, and instead of opening my desk, I seated myself in the low easy-chair before the fire, and fell into a reverie.

How long I had been sitting there I scarcely know; I had been half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when I was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to me.

It was a huntsman’s horn – a few low plaintive notes on a huntsman’s horn – notes which had a strange faraway sound, that was more unearthly than anything my ears had ever heard. I thought of the music in Der Freisckutz; but the weirdest snatch of melody Weber ever wrote had not so ghastly a sound as these few simple notes conveyed to my ear.

I stood transfixed, listening to that awful music. It had grown dusk, my fire was almost out, and the room in shadow. As I listened, a light flashed suddenly on the wall before me. The light was as unearthly as the sound – a light that never shone from earth or sky.

I ran to the window; for this ghastly shimmer flashed through the window upon the opposite wall. The great gates of the stable-yard were open, and men in scarlet coats were riding in, a pack of hounds crowding in before them, obedient to the huntsman’s whip. The whole scene was dimly visible by the declining light of the winter evening and the weird gleams of a lantern carried by one of the men. It was this lantern which had shone upon the tapestried wall. I saw the stable doors opened one after another; gentlemen and grooms alighting from their horses; the dogs driven into their kennel; the helpers hurrying to and fro; and that strange wan lantern-light glimmering here and there is the gathering dusk. But there was no sound of horse’s hoof or of human voices – not one yelp or cry from the hounds. Since those faint faraway sounds of the horn had died out in the distance, the ghastly silence had been unbroken.

I stood at my window quite calmly, and watched while the group of men and animals in the yard below noiselessly dispersed. There was nothing supernatural in the manner of their disappearance. The figures did not vanish or melt into empty air. One by one I saw the horses led into their separate quarters; one by one the redcoats strolled out of the gates, and the grooms departed, some one way, some another. The scene, but for its noiselessness, was natural enough; and had I been a stranger in the house, I might have fancied that those figures were real – those stables in full occupation.

But I knew that stable-yard and all its range of building to have been disused for more than half a century. Could I believe that, without an hour’s warning, the long-deserted quadrangle could be filled – the empty stalls tenanted?

Had some hunting-party from the neighbourhood sought shelter here, glad to escape the pitiless rain? That was not impossible, I thought. I was an utter unbeliever in all ghostly things – ready to credit any possibility rather than suppose that I had been looking upon shadows. And yet the noiselessness, the awful sound of that horn – the strange unearthly gleam of that lantern! Little superstitious as I might be, a cold sweat stood out upon my forehead, and I trembled in every limb.

For some minutes I stood by the window, statue-like, staring blankly into the empty quadrangle. Then I roused myself suddenly, and ran softly downstairs by a back staircase leading to the servants’ quarters, determined to solve the mystery somehow or other. The way to Mrs. Marjorum’s room was familiar to me from old experience, and it was thither that I bent my steps, determined to ask the housekeeper the meaning of what I had seen. I had a lurking conviction that it would be well for me not to mention that scene to any member of the family till I had taken counsel with someone who knew the secrets of Chrighton Abbey.

I heard the sound of merry voices and laughter as I passed the kitchen and servants’ hall. Men and maids were all busy in the pleasant labour of decorating their rooms for the evening’s festival. They were putting the last touches to garlands of holly and laurel, ivy and fir, as I passed the open doors; and in both rooms I saw tables laid for a substantial tea. The housekeeper’s room was in a retired nook at the end of a long passage – a charming old room, panelled with dark oak, and full of capacious cupboards, which in my childhood I had looked upon as storehouses of inexhaustible treasures in the way of preserves and other confectionery. It was a shady old room, with a wide old-fashioned fireplace, cool in summer, when the hearth was adorned with a great jar of roses and lavender; and warm in winter, when the logs burnt merrily all day long.

I opened the door softly, and went in. Mrs. Marjorum was dozing in a high-backed armchair by the glowing hearth, dressed in her state gown of grey watered silk, and with a cap that was a perfect rose-garden. She opened her eyes as I approached her, and stared at me with a puzzled look for the first moment or so.

“Why, is that you, Miss Sarah?” she exclaimed; “and looking as pale as a ghost, I can see, even by this firelight! Let me just light a candle, and then I’ll get you some sal volatile. Sit down in my armchair, miss; why, I declare you’re all of a tremble!”

She put me into her easy-chair before I could resist, and lighted the two candles which stood ready upon her table, while I was trying to speak. My lips were dry, and it seemed at first as if the power of speech had left me.

“Never mind the sal volatile, Marjorum,” I said at last. “I am not ill; I’ve been startled, that’s all; and I’ve come to ask you for an explanation of the business that frightened me.”

“What business, Miss Sarah?”

“You must have heard something of it yourself, surely. Didn’t you hear a horn just now, a huntsman’s horn?”

“A horn! Lord no, Miss Sarah. What ever could have put such a fancy into your head?”

I saw that Mrs. Marjorum’s ruddy cheeks had suddenly lost their colour, that she was now almost as pale as I could have been myself.

“It was no fancy,” I said; “I heard the sound, and saw the people. A hunting-party has just taken shelter in the north quadrangle. Dogs and horses, and gentlemen and servants.”

“What were they like, Miss Sarah?” the housekeeper asked in a strange voice.

“I can hardly tell you that. I could see that they wore red coats; and I could scarcely see more than that. Yes, I did get a glimpse of one of the gentlemen by the light of the lantern. A tall man, with grey hair and whiskers, and a stoop in his shoulders. I noticed that he wore a short waisted coat with a very high collar – a coat that looked a hundred years old.”

“The old Squire!” muttered Mrs. Marjorum under her breath; and then turning to me, she said with a cheery resolute air, “You’ve been dreaming, Miss Sarah, that’s just what it is. You’ve dropped off in your chair before the fire, and had a dream, that’s it.”

“No, Marjorum, it was no dream. The horn woke me, and I stood at my window and saw the dogs and huntsmen come in.”

“Do you know, Miss Sarah, that the gates of the north quadrangle have been locked and barred for the last forty years, and that no one ever goes in there except through the house?”

“The gates may have been opened this evening to give shelter to strangers,” I said.

“Not when the only keys that will open them hang yonder in my cupboard, miss,” said the housekeeper, pointing to a corner of the room.

“But I tell you, Marjorum, these people came into the quadrangle; the horses and dogs are in the stables and kennels at this moment. I’ll go and ask Mr. Chrighton, or my cousin Fanny, or Edward, all about it, since you won’t tell me the truth.”

I said this with a purpose, and it answered. Mrs. Marjorum caught me eagerly by the wrist.

“No, miss, don’t do that; for pity’s sake don’t do that; don’t breathe a word to missus or master.”

“But why not?”

“Because you’ve seen that which always brings misfortune and sorrow to this house, Miss Sarah. You’ve seen the dead.”

“What do you mean?” I gasped, awed in spite of myself.

“I daresay you’ve heard say that there’s been something seen at times at the Abbey – many years apart, thank God; for it never came that trouble didn’t come after it.”

“Yes,” I answered hurriedly; “but I could never get anyone to tell me what it was that haunted this place.”

“No, miss. Those that know have kept the secret. But you have seen it all tonight. There’s no use in trying to hide it from you any longer. You have seen the old Squire, Meredith Chrighton, whose eldest son was killed by a fall in the hunting-field, brought home dead one December night, an hour after his father and the rest of the party had come safe home to the Abbey. The old gentleman had missed his son in the field, but had thought nothing of that, fancying that master John had had enough of the day’s sport, and had turned his horse’s head homewards. He was found by a labouring-man, poor lad, lying in a ditch with his back broken, and his horse beside him staked. The old Squire never held his head up after that day, and never rode to hounds again, though he was passionately fond of hunting. Dogs and horses were sold, and the north quadrangle has been empty from that day.”

“How long is it since this kind of thing has been seen?”

“A long time, miss. I was a slip of a girl when it last happened. It was in the wintertime – this very night – the night Squire Meredith’s son was killed; and the house was full of company, just as it is now. There was a wild young Oxford gentleman sleeping in your room at that time, and he saw the hunting-party come into the quadrangle; and what did he do but throw his window wide open, and give them the view-hallo as loud as ever he could. He had only arrived the day before, and knew nothing about the neighbourhood; so at dinner he began to ask where were his friends the sportsmen, and to hope he should be allowed to have a run with the Abbey hounds next day. It was in the time of our master’s father; and his lady at the head of the table turned as white as a sheet when she heard this talk. She had good reason, poor soul. Before the week was out her husband was lying dead. He was struck with a fit of apoplexy, and never spoke or knew anyone afterwards.”

“An awful coincidence,” I said; “but it may have been only a coincidence.”

“I’ve heard other stories, miss – heard them from those that wouldn’t deceive – all proving the same thing: that the appearance of the old Squire and his pack is a warning of death to this house.”

“I cannot believe these things,” I exclaimed; “I cannot believe them. Does Mr. Edward know anything about this?”

“No, miss. His father and mother have been most careful that it should be kept from him.”

“I think he is too strong-minded to be much affected by the fact,” I said.

“And you’ll not say anything about what you’ve seen to my master or my mistress, will you, Miss Sarah?” pleaded the faithful old servant. “The knowledge of it would be sure to make them nervous and unhappy. And if evil is to come upon this house, it isn’t in human power to prevent its coming.”

“God forbid that there is any evil at hand!” I answered. “I am no believer in visions or omens. After all, I would sooner fancy that I was dreaming – dreaming with my eyes open as I stood at the window – than that I beheld the shadows of the dead.”

Mrs. Marjorum sighed, and said nothing. I could see that she believed firmly in the phantom hunt.

I went back to my room to dress for dinner. However rationally I might try to think of what I had seen, its effect upon my mind and nerves was not the less powerful. I could think of nothing else; and a strange morbid dread of coming misery weighted me down like an actual burden.

There was a very cheerful party in the drawing-room when I went downstairs, and at dinner the talk and laughter were unceasing – but I could see that my cousin Fanny’s face was a little graver than usual, and I had no doubt she was thinking of her son’s intended visit to Wycherly.

At the thought of this a sudden terror flashed upon me. How if the shadows I had seen that evening were ominous of danger to him – to Edward, the heir and only son of the house? My heart grew cold as I thought of this, and yet in the next moment I despised myself for such weakness.

“It is natural enough for an old servant to believe in such things,” I said to myself; “but for me – an educated woman of the world – preposterous folly.”

And yet from that moment I began to puzzle myself in the endeavour to devise some means by which Edward’s journey might be prevented. Of my own influence I knew that I was powerless to hinder his departure by so much as an hour; but I fancied that Julia Tremaine could persuade him to any sacrifice of his inclination, if she could only humble her pride so far as to entreat it. I determined to appeal to her in the course of the evening.

We were very merry all that evening. The servants and their guests danced in the great hall, while we sat in the gallery above, and in little groups upon the staircase, watching their diversions. I think this arrangement afforded excellent opportunities for flirtation, and that the younger members of our party made good use of their chances – with one exception: Edward Chrighton and his affianced contrived to keep far away from each other all the evening.

While all was going on noisily in the hall below, I managed to get Miss Tremaine apart from the others in the embrasure of a painted window on the stairs, where there was a wide oaken seat. Seated here side by side, I described to her, under a promise of secrecy, the scene which I had witnessed that afternoon, and my conversation with Mrs. Marjorum.

“But, good gracious me, Miss Chrighton!” the young lady exclaimed, lifting her pencilled eyebrows with unconcealed disdain, “you don’t mean to tell me that you believe in such nonsense – ghosts and omens, and old woman’s folly like that!”

“I assure you, Miss Tremaine, it is most difficult for me to believe in the supernatural,” I answered earnestly; “but that which I saw this evening was something more than human. The thought of it has made me very unhappy; and I cannot help connecting it somehow with my cousin Edward’s visit to Wycherly. If I had the power to prevent his going, I would do it at any cost; but I have not. You alone have influence enough for that. For heaven’s sake use it! do anything to hinder his hunting with the Daleborough hounds.”

“You would have me humiliate myself by asking him to forgo his pleasure, and that after his conduct to me during the last week?”

“I confess that he has done much to offend you. But you love him, Miss Tremaine. Though you are too proud to let your love be seen, I am certain that you do love him. For pity’s sake speak to him; do not let him hazard his life, when a few words from you may prevent the danger.”

“I don’t believe he would give up this visit to please me,” she answered; “and I shall certainly not put it in his power to humiliate me by a refusal. Besides, all this fear of yours is such utter nonsense. As if nobody had ever hunted before. My brothers hunt four times a week every winter, and not one of them has ever been the worse for it yet.”

I did not give up the attempt lightly. I pleaded with this proud obstinate girl for a long time, as long as I could induce her to listen to me; but it was all in vain. She stuck to her text – no one should persuade her to degrade herself by asking a favour of Edward Chrighton. He had chosen to hold himself aloof from her, and she would show him that she could live without him. When she left Chrighton Abbey, they would part as strangers.

So the night closed, and at breakfast next morning I heard that Edward had started for Wycherly soon after daybreak. His absence made, for me at least, a sad blank in our circle. For one other also, I think; for Miss Tremaine’s fair proud face was very pale, though she tried to seem gayer than usual, and exerted herself in quite an unaccustomed manner in her endeavour to be agreeable to everyone.

The days passed slowly for me after my cousin’s departure. There was a weight upon my mind, a vague anxiety, which I struggled in vain to shake off. The house, full as it was of pleasant people, seemed to me to have become dull and dreary now that Edward was gone. The place where he had sat appeared always vacant to my eyes, though another filled it, and there was no gap on either side of the long dinner-table. Light-hearted young men still made the billiard-room resonant with their laughter; merry girls flirted as gaily as ever, undisturbed in the smallest degree by the absence of the heir of the house. Yet for me all was changed. A morbid fancy had taken complete possession of me. I found myself continually brooding over the housekeeper’s words; those words which had told me that the shadows I had seen boded death and sorrow to the house of Chrighton.

My cousins, Sophy and Agnes, were no more concerned about their brother’s welfare than were their guests. They were full of excitement about the New-Year’s ball, which was to be a very grand affair. Everyone of importance within fifty miles was to be present, every nook and corner of the Abbey would be filled with visitors coming from a great distance, while others were to be billeted upon the better class of tenantry round about. Altogether the organization of this affair was no small business; and Mrs. Chrighton’s mornings were broken by discussions with the housekeeper, messages from the cook, interviews with the head-gardener on the subject of floral decorations, and other details, which all alike demanded the attention of the chatelaine herself. With these duties, and with the claims of her numerous guests, my cousin Fanny’s time was so fully occupied, that she had little leisure to indulge in anxious feelings about her son, whatever secret uneasiness may have been lurking in her maternal heart. As for the master of the Abbey, he spent so much of his time in the library, where, under the pretext of business with his bailiff, he read Greek, that it was not easy for anyone to discover what he did feel. Once, and once only, I heard him speak of his son, in a tone that betrayed an intense eagerness for his return.

The girls were to have new dresses from a French milliner in Wigmore Street; and as the great event drew near, bulky packages of millinery were continually arriving, and feminine consultations and expositions of finery were being held all day long in bedrooms and dressing-rooms with closed doors. Thus, with a mind always troubled by the same dark shapeless foreboding, I was perpetually being called upon to give an opinion about pink tulle and lilies of the valley, or maize silk and apple-blossoms.

New-Year’s morning came at last, after an interval of abnormal length, as it seemed to me. It was a bright clear day, an almost springlike sunshine lighting up the leafless landscape. The great dining-room was noisy with congratulations and good wishes as we assembled for breakfast on this first morning of a new year, after having seen the old one out cheerily the night before; but Edward had not yet returned, and I missed him sadly. Some touch of sympathy drew me to the side of Julia Tremaine on this particular morning. I had watched her very often during the last few days, and I had seen that her cheek grew paler every day. Today her eyes had the dull heavy look that betokens a sleepless night. Yes, I was sure that she was unhappy – that the proud relentless nature suffered bitterly.

“He must be home today,” I said to her in a low voice, as she sat in stately silence before an untasted breakfast.

“Who must?” she answered, turning towards me with a cold distant look.

“My cousin Edward. You know he promised to be back in time for the ball.”

“I know nothing of Mr. Chrighton’s intended movements,” she said in her haughtiest tone; “but of course it is only natural that he should be here tonight. He would scarcely care to insult half the county by his absence, however little he may value those now staying in his father’s house.”

“But you know that there is one here whom he does value better than anyone else in the world, Miss Tremaine,” I answered, anxious to soothe this proud girl.

“I know nothing of the kind. But why do you speak so solemnly about his return? He will come, of course. There is no reason he should not come.”

She spoke in a rapid manner that was strange to her, and looked at me with a sharp enquiring glance, that touched me somehow, it was so unlike herself – it revealed to me so keen an anxiety.

“No, there is no reasonable cause for anything like uneasiness,” I said; “but you remember what I told you the other night. That has preyed upon my mind, and it will be an unspeakable relief to me when I see my cousin safe at home.”

“I am sorry that you should indulge in such weakness, Miss Chrighton.”

That was all she said; but when I saw her in the drawing-room after breakfast, she had established herself in a window that commanded a view of the long winding drive leading to the front of the Abbey. From this point she could not fail to see anyone approaching the house. She sat there all day; everyone else was more or less busy with arrangements for the evening, or at any rate occupied wit an appearance of business; but Julia Tremaine kept her place by the window, pleading a headache as an excuse for sitting still, wit a book in her hand, all day, yet obstinately refusing to go to her room and lie down, when her mother entreated her to do so.

“You will be fit for nothing tonight, Julia,” Mrs. Tremaine said, almost angrily; “you have been looking ill for ever so long, and today you are as pale as a ghost.”

I knew that she was watching for him; and I pitied her with all my heart, as the day wore itself out, and he did not come.

We dined earlier than usual, played a game or two of billiards after dinner, made a tour of inspection through the bright rooms, lit with wax-candles only, and odorous with exotics; and then came a long interregnum devoted to the arts and mysteries of the toilet; while maids flitted to and fro laden with frilled muslin petticoats from the laundry, and a faint smell of singed hair pervaded the corridors. At ten o’clock the band were tuning their violins, and pretty girls and elegant-looking men were coming slowly down the broad oak staircase, as the roll of fast-coming wheels sounded louder without, and stentorian voices announced the best people in the county.

I have no need to dwell long upon the details of that evening’s festival. It was very much like other balls – a brilliant success, a night of splendour and enchantment for those whose hearts were light and happy, and who could abandon themselves utterly to the pleasure of the moment; a faraway picture of fair faces and bright-hued dresses, a wearisome kaleidoscopic procession of form and colour for those whose minds were weighed down with the burden of a hidden care.

For me the music had no melody, the dazzling scene no charm. Hour after hour went by; supper was over, and the waltzers were enjoying those latest dances which always seem the most delightful, and yet Edward Chrighton had not appeared amongst us.

There had been innumerable enquiries about him, and Mrs. Chrighton had apologized for his absence as best she might. Poor soul, I well knew that his non-return was now a source of poignant anxiety to her, although she greeted all her guests with the same gracious smile, and was able to talk gaily and well upon every subject. Once, when she was sitting alone for a few minutes, watching the dancers, I saw the smile fade from her face, and a look of anguish come over it. I ventured to approach her at this moment, and never shall I forget the look which she turned towards me.

“My son, Sarah!” she said in a low voice – “something has happened to my son!”

I did my best to comfort her; but my own heart was growing heavier and heavier, and my attempt was a very poor one.

Julia Tremaine had danced a little at the beginning of the evening, to keep up appearances, I believe, in order that no one might suppose that she was distressed by her lover’s absence; but after the first two or three dances she pronounced herself tired, and withdrew to a seat amongst the matrons. She was looking very lovely in spite of her extreme pallor, dressed in white tulle, a perfect cloud of airy puffings, and with a wreath of ivy-leaves and diamonds crowning her pale golden hair.

The night waned, the dancers were revolving in the last waltz, when I happened to look towards the doorway at the end of the room. I was startled by seeing a man standing there, with his hat in his hand, not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. My first thought was of evil; but in the next moment the man had disappeared, and I saw no more of him.

I lingered by my cousin Fanny’s side till the rooms were empty. Even Sophy and Aggy had gone off to their own apartments, their airy dresses sadly dilapidated by a night’s vigorous dancing. There were only Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton and myself in the long suite of rooms, where the flowers were drooping and the wax-lights dying out one by one in the silver sconces against the walls.

“I think the evening went off very well,” Fanny said, looking rather anxiously at her husband, who was stretching himself and yawning with an air of intense relief.

“Yes, the affair went off well enough. But Edward has committed a terrible breach of manners by not being here. Upon my word, the young men of the present day think of nothing but their own pleasures. I suppose that something especially attractive was going on at Wycherly today, and he couldn’t tear himself away.”

“It is so unlike him to break his word,” Mrs. Chrighton answered. “You are not alarmed, Frederick? You don’t think that anything has happened – any accident?”

“What should happen? Ned is one of the best riders in the county. I don’t think there’s any fear of his coming to grief.”

“He might be ill.”

“Not he. He’s a young Hercules. And if it were possible for him to be ill – which it is not – we should have had a message from Wycherly.”

The words were scarcely spoken when Truefold the old butler stood by his master’s side, with a solemn anxious face.

“There is a – a person who wishes to see you, sir,” he said in a low voice, “alone.”

Low as the words were, both Fanny and myself heard them.

“Someone from Wycherly?” she exclaimed. “Let him come here.”

“But, madam, the person most particularly wished to see master alone. Shall I show him into the library, sir? The lights are not out there.”

“Then it is someone from Wycherly,” said my cousin, seizing my wrist with a hand that was icy cold. “Didn’t I tell you so, Sarah? Something has happened to my son. Let the person come here, Truefold, here; I insist upon it.”

The tone of command was quite strange in a wife who was always deferential to her husband, in a mistress who was ever gentle to her servants.

“Let it be so, Truefold,” said Mr. Chrighton. “Whatever ill news has come to us we will hear together.”

He put his arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the blow that was to fall upon them.

The stranger, the man I had seen in the doorway, came in. He was curate of Wycherly church, and chaplain to Sir Francis Wycherly; a grave middle-aged man. He told what he had to tell with all kindness, with all the usual forms of consolation which Christianity and an experience of sorrow could suggest. Vain words, wasted trouble. The blow must fall, and earthly consolation was unable to lighten it by a feather’s weight.

There had been a steeplechase at Wycherly – an amateur affair with gentlemen riders – on that bright New-Year’s Day, and Edward Chrighton had been persuaded to ride his favourite hunter Pepperbox. There would be plenty of time for him to return to Chrighton after the races. He had consented; and his horse was winning easily, when, at the last fence, a double one, with water beyond, Pepperbox baulked his leap, and went over head-foremost, flinging his rider over a hedge into a field close beside the course, where there was a heavy stone roller. Upon this stone roller Edward Chrighton had fallen, his head receiving the full force of the concussion. All was told. It was while the curate was relating the fatal catastrophe that I looked round suddenly, and saw Julia Tremaine standing a little way behind the speaker. She had heard all; she uttered no cry, she showed no signs of fainting, but stood calm and motionless, waiting for the end.

I know not how that night ended: there seemed an awful calm upon us all. A carriage was got ready, and Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton started for Wycherly to look upon their dead son. He had died while they were carrying him from the course to Sir Francis’s house. I went with Julia Tremaine to her room, and sat with her while the winter morning dawned slowly upon us – a bitter dawning.

•   •   •   •   •

I have little more to tell. Life goes on, though hearts are broken. Upon Chrighton Abbey there came a dreary time of desolation. The master of the house lived in his library, shut from the outer world, buried almost as completely as a hermit in his cell. I have heard that Julia Tremaine was never known to smile after that day. She is still unmarried, and lives entirely at her father’s country house; proud and reserved in her conduct to her equals, but a very angel of mercy and compassion amongst the poor of the neighbourhood. Yes; this haughty girl, who once declared herself unable to endure the hovels of the poor, is now a Sister of Charity in all but the robe. So does a great sorrow change the current of a woman’s life.

I have seen my cousin Fanny many times since that awful New-Year’s night; for I have always the same welcome at the Abbey. I have seen her calm and cheerful, doing her duty, smiling upon her daughter’s children, the honoured mistress of a great household; but I know that the mainspring of life is broken, that for her there hath passed a glory from the earth, and that upon all the pleasures and joys of this world she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow.

—

Three Times

(1872)

I

THE FIRST TIME

“Positively the last night of Herr Rudolph Prusinowski and the performing lions! Positively the last night! For the benefit of Herr Rudolph Prusinowski. Under the distinguished patronage of their Majesties Queen Victoria, the Emperor of China, the Cham of Tartary, his Serene Highness the Grand Duke of Baden, Simeon Muddlebrain, Esq. M.P., the Mayor and Corporation of Spindlecum, and other august personages too numerous to mention. Come early. Positively the last time. Come and see the lions. Herr Rudolph Prusinowski, the favourite of crowned heads and the élite of Europe. Take notice! The great Prusinowski has had the honour of performing before the Mikado of Japan. The world-renowned Prusinowski has been decorated with the order of Rouge et Noir by the Grand Duchess of Selzerwasserburg. Don’t miss the lions!”

The above sentences, and many others of the same character – in which a picturesque fancy, aided by the experience of a public career, trifled with the sobrieties of fact and tripped lightly across the borderland of fiction – appeared in gigantic black letters upon a yellow poster on the side wall of the Queen’s Theatre, Spindlecum, and in the streets and marketplace, upon the quays, and in the back slums of the same town. Spindlecum was a large manufacturing town – a town that did a good deal of business in the export way, and had much commerce by land and sea; and Spindlecum could boast of two theatres: the Royal, an elegantly-appointed edifice in a side-street off the quay, with a stone portico surmounted by a bust of Shakespeare; a house about which elderly inhabitants of Spindlecum cherished traditions of Edmund Kean, and where Macready and Harley were remembered as stock actors, but a house which had never paid a manager within the memory of man: and the Queen’s, a vast barn-like building, with a lofty roof supported by iron girders, three tiers of boxes, and Alpine heights in the way of galleries, which, contemplated from the broad valley of the pit, seemed inaccessible to the foot of man. The Queen’s was making a fortune for its managers. There was a sixpenny pit, and there was a threepenny gallery, whereby the house was never empty, and on Mondays and Saturdays overflowed with noisy human life. The audience at the Queen’s was critical, but on the whole good-natured; requiring plenty of life and movement in the pieces, and what may be called showy action in the performers. The Queen’s liked stars, and was tolerably universal in its appreciation of these luminaries: this week clamorous in their applause of some stalwart Othello or loud-voiced Hamlet, next week gaping entranced upon the contortions of a family of acrobats; now crowding to see Mr. Reginald Montmorency and his celebrated mare Black Bess in the grand spectacular drama of Dick Turpin, or the Ride to York, anon rushing to behold Signor Poloni and his striped Zebra of the Prairie.

A man with a pale sallow face, blue chin, and close-cut hair sat in a lounging attitude upon a low wall opposite the stage-door of the Queen’s, smoking a meditative pipe, and contemplating the big yellow poster with a dreamy fondness. He had a little group of satellites about him, also close-cropped, blue-chinned, and tobacco-consuming; minor lights in the dramatic heaven, the stock company of the Queen’s, who were thrown a little into the background by the lions, shuffling through a preliminary melodrama nightly, before an audience who beheld them with impatience, and heard them sometimes with derision, eager for the grand business of the evening.

“I think that ought to hit ’em up,” said the Herr thoughtfully (he spoke excellent English for a foreigner, but seemed scarcely to have acquired the language in the most aristocratic or aesthetic circles). “The Mikado looks well, doesn’t he?”

“First rate,” replied Mr. de la Zouche, the walking gentleman. “Was he a nice kind of chap, the Mikado?”

Herr Prusinowski turned his contemplative eyes upon the inquirer with a look of placid scorn.

“You ain’t so jolly green as to suppose I ever set eyes upon him,” he said, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “I was never in Japan in my life; never nearer than a japan candlestick. The Mikado is a safe card, he is; who’s to ask any questions about him? And so’s the Cham of Tartary; I always bring out them two for the last night. Queen Victoria’s legitimate business. I did perform once before the royal servants, and got a fiver from the royal seckitary. That is immediate patronage.”

“I expect you’ll have a clipping house, cully,” remarked Mr. Tiddikins, the low comedian, a small man with a falsetto voice.

“I look forward to it, Tiddikins; and if it goes over eighty, I’ll stand a supper, mind that.”

There was a subdued murmur of applause.

“Hot or cold?” inquired Mr. de la Zouche.

“Hot,” replied the lion-tamer. “None of your cold fowls and ’am, your pastry and rubbish, for me. A sirloin of beef at top, and a prime goose at bottom, a veal pie and a stewed steak at the sides, and plenty of smoking hot vegetables; a prime old stilton and a bowl of salad to wind up with, and as much champagne as you can swallow, with brandy-and-water to settle it on your stomachs. That’s what I’ll do, at the Lion and Lamb, if the house goes over eighty when the half price to the boxes is in.”

This time the applause was louder.

“I always said you were a jolly good fellow, Bill,” said Mr. Tiddikins, “and I don’t mind how often I say it again.”

It is to be observed that Mr. Tiddikins addressed the distinguished Rudolph by the simpler cognomen Bill, one of the playful licenses of friendship, no doubt.

“It’s wonderful how those animals draw,” said Mr. de la Zouche thoughtfully, as if he were contemplating the feasibility of setting up on his own account as a lion-tamer. “You’ve been here three seasons, Prusinowski, and, egad, the people ain’t tired of ’em yet. They seem as eager as ever. One would suppose they liked to see a poor beggar hazard his life every night.”

“There’s something in that,” replied the Herr. “If it wasn’t for the danger, the wild-beast business would be as flat as ditch-water.”

“Were you ever frightened?” asked the walking gentleman. “I know what a plucky fellow you are, and that you handle those three brutes as if they were so many tabby cats; but still sometimes, you know, a man’s nerve must fail. Come, now, Prusinowski, were you never frightened?”

“Never but once,” answered the lion-tamer, “and then I thought it was all over with me.”

He grew suddenly grave, gloomy even, at the mere recollection waked by the walking gentleman’s inquiry.

“Never but once,” he repeated, “and God grant I never may be so again! When a man in my trade loses his head, it’s all up with him.”

“How did it happen, old fellow?” asked Mr. Tiddikins.

Herr Prusinowski stopped to fill his pipe before answering the question. It was four o’clock upon a blazing July afternoon, rehearsal was over, her Majesty’s servants of the Queen’s Theatre, Spindlecum, had dined in the intervals of the day’s work at their several lodgings, and had nothing particular to do with themselves until tea-time. An actor of this class has generally a rooted aversion to going home.

“Well, you see,” the lion-tamer began in a leisurely way, stopping to take a few preliminary whiffs after those three words of prelude, “I was at Manchester nigh upon five years ago, and it was my last night and my ‘ben,’ as it might be tonight.” A pause and a few more puffs.

“We was doing first-rate business, fizzing, and I don’t think I was ever in such high spirits in my life. My pockets were stuffed with money that I’d been taking about the town for tickets, and I hadn’t a place to let in my dress-circle.

“‘Why, Bill,’ says my little woman, when I kept running in and out of our lodgings between whiles at rehearsal – we was close agen the slum – taking her in a handful of money every time, ‘you seem as if you was bewitched; I don’t like to see you like that. I had a Scotch friend once as said it was a bad sign – a sign of something going to happen.’

“‘Lord love your little foolish heart,’ I answered, ‘it’s a sign of nothing except that I’m going to have a screaming house tonight. I don’t suppose there’ll be a corner you can screw yourself into if you want to see me.’ For she’s a rare one for going in front of a night, you know, is the missus.”

Mr. de la Zouche and Mr. Tiddikins murmured their acquaintance with this domestic fact. Herr Prusinowski smoked his pipe for a minute or so, and then went on:

“‘Why, there’s the family box!’ she said.

“That’s a large private box on the opposite prompt, that don’t often let, unless there’s Italian Opera, or Charles Mathews, or something out of the common.

“‘No, there ain’t,’ I answered, laughing. ‘What!’ cried the missus, ‘is that let too?’ ‘Let this morning,’ said I, ‘and there’s the money – three pound three – thirty-one-and-six of which comes to us.’

“For I had a half share clear of expenses, same as here. Lizzie – that’s my wife, you know – was quite proud to think I was going to have such a good box audience, for it isn’t every box audience as will take to wild beasts. You may get schools and pious people, that object to the drama, but consider a man patting his head into a lion’s month improving – there’s quite a run upon lions in the Scriptures – but as a rule, your boxes are shady. So my Liz was proud of my dress-circle that night.

“‘I wonder whether it’s the mayor and his family,’ she said, speculating about that big private box.

“‘No,’ I told her, ‘it’s a gentleman and a stranger, no name.’

“Well, the night came, a sweltering hot summer evening, such as it will be tonight. The performances began with one of your talkee-talkee genteel comedies, and the house was so full and noisy the actors couldn’t hear themselves speak. They got through it somehow, there was a short overture, and then the curtain went up for my performance. The three lions discovered in a forest, to slow music, which gets a round for them, and gives me my entrance and reception.

“You know the beasts, they were the same three I’ve got now – Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Old Brown’s a harmless old chap enough, not a sound tooth in his head, and no more harm in him than in an elderly jackass; Jones is a deep old dodger, but there isn’t much harm in him; but Robinson’s a nasty-tempered beast, a brute you never can be sure of, an animal that will lick your hand one minute, and be ready to snap your head off the next.

“Well, I got a first-rate reception; I thought the gallery would have never left off applauding; and the sight of the house, crammed to the ceiling, made me almost giddy. Perhaps it was the heat of the place, which was like an oven; perhaps, as I’d been standing treat or being stood for off and on pretty well all day, I may have taken a little more than was good for me; anyhow, I felt the house spinning round me, just as if I’d been some duffer of a novice, instead of the old stager I am.

“I looked at the family box o.p., curious to see who’d taken it. There was only one gentleman there, a man of fifty or thereabouts, with a cadaverous lantern-jawed face, and light reddish hair, very straight, combed neatly on each side of his forehead. He was dressed in black, regular evening dress, white choker and all complete, and, do you know, the instant I set eyes upon that man, he gave me a turn.”

“That was a queer fancy,” said Mr. de la Zouche, helping himself to tobacco from the Herr’s gutta-percha pouch, which lay open on the wall.

“Perhaps it was; but if that night was to come over again, I should have the fancy over again,” replied Prusinowski. “It was partly his own looks, I think, partly the way he looked at me; not like the rest of the audience, all good nature, expecting to be amused, but with a steadfast ravenous kind of look, that made my blood run cold. ‘That’s a man who’d like to see something happen to me,’ I said to myself.

“I didn’t give way to the fancy all at once. I began the performance; but I stole a glance at my sandy-haired pale-faced gentleman now and then, and always found him looking at me in the same way. He had large light-grey eyes, very light, and very prominent. I can see them now, and they followed every move I made, like a cat’s following a mouse. He never moved his eyes from me, he never smiled, he never applauded; he sat in a half-crouching attitude, leaning over the front of the box, watching me, and he made me feel as if I had a ton weight tied to each of my legs.

“Everything went well for some time, though I felt I’d never done things worse. Brown and Jones behaved beautifully; but just towards the last, when I had to put my head into Robinson’s mouth to bring down the curtain, I saw that the brute was in one of his nasty tempers. I suppose the heat had put him out – I know the perspiration was pouring down my face – or perhaps he didn’t like the look of that cadaverous gentleman in the private box. Anyhow, he turned nasty, and when I wanted to collar him bounced away from me.

“The house turned as still as death all in a moment, and I could see the audience was frightened. I gave a look at my gentleman in the box. He was leaning a little farther over the cushion, with something like a smile on his face. Such a smile; I could fancy anyone going to see a man hung smiling like that.

“‘Bray to not pe vrighened, laties and shentle-mens,’ I said in my broken English (old Sauerkraut, the ophecleid at the Lane, taught me that dodge), ‘id is nozing. Te peast vill to all I veesh;’ and then I gave Robinson a pretty smart cuff, and began to drag his jaws open.

“The brute snarled, turned upon me, and in the next instant would have had his teeth in my shoulder, if I hadn’t given the signal for the curtain. Half-a-dozen carpenters rushed upon the stage and helped me to tackle him. We had him safe in less than a minute; but just at that one moment, before the curtain dropped, it was as near as a toucher.

“There was a good deal of applause; not that I’d done anything to deserve it, for the business of putting my head in the brute’s mouth was in the bill, and the audience had been swindled out of that; but they evidently knew I’d been in danger, and they called me before the curtain. I looked up at that white-faced devil in the private box. He was standing up, rubbing his hands in a satisfied kind of way, as if he had seen what he wanted to see; and as I passed just under him he said in a slow measured voice that gave me the shivers,

“‘A narrow escape, Herr. Very well done indeed! I congratulate you.’

“I gave him a look, which he ought to have understood if he didn’t, made my bow to the house, and went off the stage. Robinson was quiet enough by this time. My man Joe Purdy had walked him off to his box, and there he was growling over his shin-bones, as mild a lion as you’d wish to see. ‘Only let me get you safe back to London, my friend,’ says I, ‘and I’ll take you down to Jamrack’s and swop you for something better tempered. Talent is all very well; but temper’s worth all the talent in the world.’ However, that’s five years ago, and there’s Robinson still performing with me. The brute has such a wonderful gift for his profession! and his heart and soul’s in it too. Take that animal in the middle of the day, when he ain’t particular hungry, and he’s a decent fellow enough; but come between him and his business, and you’ll find out what a lion is. He’s the vainest beast out, and cuts up rough if he don’t get a round of applause for every trick he does. But, Lord bless you, there’s no such thing as genius without vanity. He’s been a fortune to me first and last, has that animal. Brown and Jones are nothing more than supers to him.”

“You didn’t see any more of your friend in the box?” inquired Mr. de la Zouche, who was not particularly interested in these praises of the gifted Robinson.

“Curse him, no! By the time I’d changed my clothes he had left the house. I went round to the boxoffice to see if the box-keepers could tell me anything about him. No; he was a stranger. He had taken his box that morning, finding there was no stall to be had, and paid his three guineas without a question.

“Now I daresay you’ll think me an out-and-out fool when I tell you I couldn’t sleep that night, nor many nights after, for thinking of that man. I couldn’t get his pale cheeks and lank jaws and light grey eyes, with that horrid gloating look in them, out of my mind. ‘That’s a fellow who’d go to see a man hung,’ I said to myself. ‘That’s a man who’d stand by to see his fellow-creatures hung, drawn, and quartered, and enjoy it – especially the drawing.’ I hadn’t a doubt in my mind that he was on the look-out for an accident all the evening; I hadn’t a doubt in my mind that it was through him I made a mess of it at the end.”

“Did you never see him again?” asked the low comedian.

“Never; God forbid I ever should, for I’ve a notion that if I did, it would be the death of me. I’m not a nervous man in a general way, nor superstitious either; but I’d give up the biggest haul I ever made by a benefit rather than act before that man.”

“A queer notion,” said the humorous Tiddikins.

“A very queer notion,” echoed the gentlemanly De la Zouche.

He was not a fine actor, the walking gentleman, belonging rather to that class of performer who is contemptuously likened to a stick, and his dramatic path had been by no means strewn with roses; yet he was fain to congratulate himself that it had not been beset by lions. He had been somewhat inclined to envy Rudolph Prusinowski the distinction and prosperity of his career; but just now it occurred to him that there were two sides to the picture. He rubbed his shoulder thoughtfully, and was glad to think that he was exposed to the assaults of no fiercer animals than those rampant tragedians who snubbed him when he played Horatio, and made light of him in Cassio, but who melted a little on their benefit nights, and treated him to beer.

II

THE SECOND TIME

The Spindlecum people showed their appreciation of the British drama as represented by lion-taming by giving Herr Prusinowski a bumper. Whether it was the influence of the Cham of Tartary, or the Mikado, the Grand Duchess of Selzerwasserburg, or the local member, or the simple merits of the performance, is a moot question; but the Spindlecumians assembled in full force; and before the Herr had left the family tea-table to repair to the theatre, he received the pleasing intelligence that the crowd at the pit and gallery doors was half-way across the street.

“If we only go on like this for another year or so, Liz, I’ll cut the profession,” exclaimed Herr Prusinowski cheerily, “and start a theatrical public, somewhere on the Surrey side. It’s a trying life, is the wild-beast business.”

“And a dangerous life too, William,” said the little woman, with a sigh.

(The renowned Rudolph’s name in private life was William.)

“Not much of that, old girl. I’m more than a match for Robinson by this time. There isn’t a move he’s up to that I’m not down upon; and he’s the cunningest beast that ever picked a bone. You’re going into the front tonight, eh, Liz?”

“Oh, yes, I shall get a seat at the back of the boxes. Mrs. Prodger’s going with me. She’s took her ticket, and paid for it, you know, William, like a lady.”

Mrs. Prodger was the Prusinowski’s landlady, a ponderous matron of fifty, who had let lodgings to “theatricals” for the last twenty years.

“Ta-ta, Liz, then; I’m off.”

“It’s early, William. There’s the Miller and his Men – that’ll last an hour and a half, surely.”

“I don’t believe it’ll play an hour. You ought to know what my benefit audiences are – all agog for the lions. I want to have a look at the beasts before I begin, and I’m always a little nervous on my ben. Good-bye.”

This was a mere conjugal excuse. The theatre to a man bred at the side-scenes is his club. The Herr preferred smoking his pipe in the free-and-easy atmosphere of the dressing-room at the Queen’s to the tamer delights of the domestic tea-table. He had very little anxiety about his beasts. Joe Purdy, his factotum, a keeper who had served his apprenticeship with the great Wombwell, had the custody of them.

•   •   •   •   •

The house was an excellent one. The boxes were not so well filled as on that memorable night at Manchester, which Herr Prusinowski had described to his friends; but the pit was a seething cauldron of humanity, the gallery looked like a wall of eager faces piled one upon the other up to the iron roof. The Miller and his Men was performed almost in dumb show, or seemed so to be, though the leading tragedian retained on the establishment was roaring himself hoarse in the character of Grindoff, with a faint hope of snatching a stray leaf from the crown of wild olive which would be cast at the feet of the lion-tamer by and by.

Grindoff did not bate a syllable of his part or the minutest detail of his stage business; not a stamp of his russet boot, or a scowl of his heavily-corked eyebrows; but the rest of the company, less enthusiastic, scamped their work to the best of their abilities and the drama was raced through in one hour ten minutes and seven seconds by the prompter’s chronograph.

Then came a stirring overture – the “Bronze Horse” – during which the audience cracked nuts and became momentarily more excited; and then the act-drop rose to slow music of a soul-appalling character, and revealed Brown, Jones, and Robinson picturesquely grouped in the stock primeval forest.

There was a pause. The house applauded vociferously. There was something stirring in the notion that these three unfettered beasts might leap into the pit at any moment. It was quite a pleasant sensation – especially for the gallery. Brown, who was elderly and decrepit, yawned and stretched himself out as if for slumber, with the air of having been untimely disturbed from his after-dinner nap. Jones, who was of a lively temperament, whisked his tail, and snapped at an imaginary fly. Robinson stared full at the audience, as if he really did understand and appreciate their plaudits.

The music quickened, broke into a stirring march, and then, at a fortissimo chord from the full orchestra, the lion-tamer bounded onto the stage – a striking figure, broad-shouldered and muscular, in close-fitting flesh-coloured raiment, a scarlet girdle round his waist, and a leopard’s skin over his shoulder.

There was a good strong Sheffield knife in his belt, but he had no appearance of being armed.

His reception was tremendous. He stood bowing and moving his lips in vague murmurs, with an air of being quite overcome by his feelings, for nearly five minutes before he could begin his performance. His eyes wandered all round the house with the gaze of calculation, till they grew suddenly fixed, glaring at the stalls.

Now the stalls at the Queen’s Theatre, Spindlecum, were a delusion and a snare. Spindlecum at its best was not an aristocratic town, and the Queen’s was not the aristocratic theatre of Spindlecum. Except on a mayor’s bespeak or under masonic patronage, the stalls were rarely tenanted. But there they were, two long rows of partitioned seats, covered with dusty red cloth.

Tonight there were three people in all the length and breadth of them – two faded-looking elderly women in opera-cloaks at one end, and in the middle, in a position that commanded every inch of the stage, a middle-aged man, with a cadaverous face, prominent light-grey eyes, and lank reddish hair, carefully dressed in full evening costume.

He sat in an attitude of extreme attention, with his arms folded on the back of the seat in front of him – he was in the back row – and his eyes fixed upon the lion-tamer. For the moment the sight of him seemed to turn Rudolph Prusinowski to stone. It was the man he had been talking of that day.

The cold sweat broke out upon his forehead; but he stamped his foot savagely, angry with himself for this folly, muttered an oath, and began his business with the lions – standing upon their backs, riding round the stage upon all three at once, leading them through a kind of dance movement, described in the bills as a set of quadrilles, with garlands of paper roses, and otherwise disporting himself with them, the red-haired man in the stalls watching his every movement and every movement of the animals breathlessly, and never stirring by a hair’s-breadth from his attentive attitude, or turning his eyes away from the stage.

Then came the feature of the evening – a single combat between Herr Prusinowski and Robinson – who was described in the bills, by the way, as “Moloch, the royal brindled lion, presented to Herr Prusinowski by one of the native princes of the Punjab” – at the end of which the Herr dragged asunder the animal’s jaws, and put his head into the red-hot-looking mouth.

Tonight, in spite of that deadly terror which had come upon the Herr at the sight of that one detested spectator, everything went smoothly enough. Robinson, otherwise Moloch, kept his temper, suffered his jaws to be opened to their widest extent, and the tamer’s head to repose upon his tongue as on a pillow for half-a-dozen seconds or so, and the curtain came down to vociferous applause; but when the bénéficiare was called for, there was no response. The prompter found him leaning against one of the wings, white to the lips.

“Did you ever see a man tremble?” he asked, in a voice that shook so much as to be scarcely intelligible. “If you want to see one, look at me.”

He was shaking in every limb, like a man stricken with ague.

“Why, what’s the matter, cully?” asked the prompter, with more friendliness of tone than elegance of diction. “They’re calling for you like mad. You’d better go on.”

“I’m going as soon as I can steady myself. I never neglect my business; but I’ve had a turn. I never thought I should come off the stage alive tonight.”

“Why, the animals were quiet enough.”

“Yes, as mild as lambs; but there’s a man in front that’s my evil genius. I never felt superstitious about anything else before – none of your ghosts or that kind of rot – but I’ve got my fancy about that man. He’d like to see me killed, and – he’ll contrive to see it.”

“Prusinowski,” said the prompter, “I couldn’t have believed it of you. I thought you was a man of sense.”

But the prompter felt uncomfortable nevertheless. The human mind is especially open to uncomfortable sensations of this kind.

“Come, my boy,” he exclaimed, “they’re losing temper.” This in allusion to the audience, who were clamouring hoarsely for their favourite. “You’d better go on.”

Prusinowski wiped his damp forehead, pulled himself together, as it were.

“All right,” he said, and followed the prompter to the first entrance, and went through the narrow opening which that functionary made for him by pulling the heavy drop-scene a little on one side. He went on, made his accustomed mechanical bow, and crossed the stage, to disappear with renewed bowings on the opposite side. He was looking at the stalls all the time. The man was gone.

“Curse him!” muttered the lion-tamer. “If he’d given me time to change my clothes, I’d have been in front of the house in time to see him come out. I want to know who he is; I want to know what he means.”

He dressed hurriedly, tearing off his close-fitting garb, and shuffling on the costume of everyday life anyhow, and then went back to the prompt entrance before the curtain had risen for the farce, and took another survey of the stalls, thinking it just possible that his evil genius had returned. But the man’s place was empty. There were only the two dreary women, waiting meekly for one of the stalest inanest farces known to dramatic literature, and fanning themselves with their pocket-handkerchiefs.

Herr Prusinowski went round to the public doors of the theatre, and hung about there, with a vague idea that the man might be lingering also. There was a large tavern just opposite the Queen’s, where the audience were wont to refresh themselves – even the stalls and boxes – with brandy-and-soda. The Herr crossed the road by and by, went into the crowded bar, still looking for his man, and looking vainly.

While he was staring about him a friendly hand tapped him on the shoulder.

“It was well over eighty, my boy,” said the voice of De la Zouche, upon whose youthful cheek still lingered some trace of the vermilion it had worn in theMiller and his Men, and whose upper lip was still stiff with the glue that had secured his horsehair moustache. “Nearer ninety, Tiddikins tells me, and he knows how to reckon up a house with any man in the profession. I wish you joy.”

“Thank you, old fellow,” replied the lion-tamer vaguely. “Yes, I think it’s a good house.”

“Think! There’s no room for thinking. The perspiration was running down their faces in the pit all through the Miller. The house was like a furnace; and uncommonly thirsty that kind of thing makes a man. The pongelow you sent in was very acceptable. I thought Fitz Raymond would never have taken his head out of the pewter. He’s awful coally on his Grindoff – goes in a perisher, even when he can’t hear himself speak for the noise in front. But I say, Prusi, how about that little supper you talked of?” This in an insinuating tone.

Prusinowski stared at him blankly for a moment, and then said carelessly,

“The supper – oh, to be sure. I’d forgotten all about it.” The noble countenance of De la Zouche fell, and his open brow was overshadowed by a sudden gloom. “But it’s all right,” continued the bénéficiare. “It’s ordered for twelve o’clock sharp. I ordered it on spec. I thought I should have a good house.”

“Prusinowski, you are a gentleman!” exclaimed the actor. “You are one of Nature’s nobility, sir, and daily contact with the brute creation has not degraded your lofty mind. At twelve sharp, I’ll go home and put on a clean collar. I think you mentioned a goose?”

“Roast beef at the top, roast goose at the bottom,” said the Herr absently.

“It is a bird which, on the supper-table, I appreciate above any of the feathered tribe,” replied the walking gentleman. “Au reservoir.”

He departed, wondering at the silence and gravity of a man who could draw an eighty-pound house.

Herr Prusinowski left the tavern and strolled listlessly along the street. It was not quite eleven. He had a clear hour before him, in which he could do what he pleased with himself. Under ordinary circumstances he might have gone home, to have a few words with his “little woman,” and make some amendment in his toilet; but tonight he hardly cared to face his wife. She would see that something was wrong, and question him. The impression that man’s appearance had made upon him was a subject he did not want to talk about, not even with her. He presently turned out of the busy thoroughfare in which the Queen’s Theatre was situated, into a broad, quiet, old-fashioned-looking street leading down to the quay – a street of broad square red-brick houses of the Georgian era, grim and respectable, with a shop only here and there, and then a superior class of shop. It was a very quiet street at this time of night. The summer moon was shining full upon the broad pavement and empty road, and there was just a glimpse of moonlit water at the end of the street where it opened on the quay.

There was only one shop open at this hour, a tobacconist’s at a corner. Prusinowski felt in his coat-pocket with a dim recollection of having allowed Mr. Fitz Raymond to empty his tobacco-pouch that evening, and then strolled across the road towards the tobacconist’s shop. While he was in the act of crossing, a man came out of the shop and walked slowly away towards the quay. The lion-tamer recognised him at a glance, and darted after him. It was the occupant of the stalls, a tall angular figure in the moonlight, with more or less the air of a gentleman.

It was an unjustifiable thing to do, of course; but Rudolph Prusinowski did not stop to consider the etiquette of the situation. He was resolved to accost this man. He would have done the same wherever he had met him.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, at the stranger’s shoulder, “I believe you were in front tonight in the stalls at the Queen’s?”

The man turned and faced him. It was not a prepossessing countenance by any means, that long cadaverous visage, with the pale prominent eyes and lank sandy hair. The moonlight made it look more than usually cadaverous.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been at the Queen’s Theatre this evening. Dear me! you are the lion-tamer, I believe. This is really curious!”

He spoke in a formal deliberate way that was strangely irritating to Herr Prusinowski’s nerves. These artists – even professors of the lowest arts – are apt to be sensitive.

“You have some kind of business with me, Herr Prusinowski?” the stranger said interrogatively, the lion-tamer standing for the moment staring at him like a newly-awakened sleepwalker, utterly lost and helpless.

“I – I wanted to ask you a question,” he said abruptly, rousing himself with an effort. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you. You took a private box at Manchester five years ago for my benefit.”

“I did,” replied the stranger. “I congratulate you on the possession of an excellent memory, Mr. Prusinowski. You had a narrow escape that night at Manchester, I imagine. One of your animals turned restive.”

“Yes,” said the lion-tamer moodily, “that brute Robinson cut up rough. I lost my nerve, and he saw it. It was a narrow escape – a disappointment for you, wasn’t it?”

“Excuse me, I hardly catch your meaning.”

“You thought it was all over with me, didn’t you? Come now, I want to know your motive for coming to see me that time – I want to know your motive for coming to see me tonight.”

“Motive?” repeated the stranger. “I should suppose the motive must be sufficiently obvious. People generally attend that sort of entertainment, and every sort of entertainment, in search of amusement.”

“Other people, perhaps – not you. I know what a man’s face means, and I watched yours, as close – well, almost as close as you watched me. It wasn’t the face of a man that came to be amused.”

“You seem to have a peculiar way of looking at things, Mr. Prusinowski,” replied the stranger, rubbing his bony close-shaven chin thoughtfully. “However, to be candid with you, I am somewhat interested in lion-taming. I am an idle man, you see. My means enable me to live pretty much as I please and where I please, and a man without occupation is in a manner compelled to create an interest for himself in things outside his own life. I am an amateur of wild-beast shows. There was a man called Green – you may have heard of him, perhaps. I saw that man Green perform seventeen consecutive times. I was peculiarly interested in him.”

“Yes,” said Prusinowski, “I know all about Green. He was killed – killed by a tiger that he’d made a good deal of money out of.”

“He was,” answered the stranger; “I saw it.”

Herr Prusinowski shuddered.

“I thought so,” he said; “I thought as much. You’ve tasted blood.”

“Upon my honour, that is a very unpleasant way of putting it,” replied the stranger. “I look at these things entirely from an artistic point of view. I have heard it asserted that men of your profession always do meet with some fatal accident sooner or later. Since you push me so closely, I am bound to admit that has formed one element of interest for me in this kind of performance. I can understand the delight of the Roman people, from the emperor down to the humblest freedman, in their gladiatorial shows. I have a somewhat classical turn of mind, perhaps, and am proud to acknowledge a taste which connects me with a classic age.”

“I don’t understand half that palaver,” said Herr Prusinowski rudely; “but I trust in God I may never see your face again.”

“Really, now! but why?”

“Because you are a cold-blooded scoundrel, and you would like to see me killed.”

“My dear Mr. Prusinowski, that is a style of language which, if I were an ill-tempered man, I might resent. Happily I am not an ill-tempered man, so let it pass. You have no right to remark that I should like to see you killed by one of those brutes of yours. But if you are destined to meet your death in that manner, which it is to be hoped you are not, I freely admit that I should wish to be a spectator of the catastrophe. It would not make the smallest difference to you, and it would be highly interesting to me. Is this your way? No? In that case, good-night.”

He lifted his hat ceremoniously, and departed towards the patch of moonlit water at the end of the street, leaving the lion-tamer standing on the pavement, transfixed and brooding.

It was just as he had imagined – the man was an amateur of sudden death.

•   •   •   •   •

The supper at the Lion and Lamb public-house – a snug little hostelry five doors from the theatre, and much affected by the actors – was a gastronomic success, but not a social one. The fare was excellent. The giver of the feast ordered liquors on a liberal scale, and eatables and drinkables disappeared with a celerity cheering to witness. Yet the banquet was not a cheerful one. Nothing could rouse Prusinowski from the gloom that had fallen upon him. The actors did their utmost to beguile him into gaiety, with boisterous talk and laughter, racy anecdotes, and an unlimited amount of that humorous converse commonly known as “chaff,” to which the theatrical mind is especially prone; but all their efforts failed. Once or twice he did make some faint show of rallying – gave a smart answer or two, threw a lobster-claw at the tragic and dignified Fitz Raymond when that great artist was engaged in argument, and pushed a stick of celery down the coat-collar of the absent-minded De la Zouche. But these were the feeblest spurts of gaiety, and by degrees the talk fell flat, and the revels, which under happier auspices would have lasted far into the summer dawning, broke up abruptly at a quarter past two.

Mr. Warbeck the prompter walked home with Tiddikins and De la Zouche, and told them what had happened after the fall of the curtain.

“Prusinowski’s as good a fellow as ever breathed,” he said in conclusion, being thoroughly warmed through with gin-and-water. “If he was my own brother, I could not like him better than I do. But I’m afraid there’s something queer hereabouts.”

He tapped his forehead significantly.

“A loose slate,” said Mr. Tiddikins.

“A bee in his bonnet,” said Mr. de la Zouche.

III

THE THIRD TIME

It was three years later in the life of the lion-tamer, and he was performing for three nights only at a sea-coast town in the north of England, a dreary little place enough, whither he had strayed from the rich manufacturing districts where his harvests were wont to be so plenteous – a dismal little town, beside which the sea seemed to howl more dolefully than by other shores; a stony High-street, a damp windy fish-market, a beach of great loose pebbles, and a long wooden jetty stretching out to sea, and slippery always with slime and weed, dead fish, and other refuse of the great ocean.

Three years! – and yet on his benefit night at Spindlecum, Herr Prusinowski had talked about retiring on his laurels in a year. He had not been doing badly either; prosperity had followed all his wanderings; but the human mind is elastic in its estimate of money, and Herr Prusinowski’s notions of the fortune he ought to retire upon had widened with the passage of time.

“Another six months, little woman,” he said, “and I’ll sell the beasts by auction, and take a public-house,” which was his notion of peace and retirement.

“I wish it was to be tomorrow, William,” the little woman answered sadly. “I shall never know a happy moment till you’ve done with those animals.”

The first two nights at Lowshore, this obscure northern seaport, had been tolerably successful. The theatre was the mouldiest old barn perhaps that had ever been dedicated to public entertainment, and was opened about once in two years for a week or so of transient splendour, when some wandering star of the dramatic firmament, more wildly speculative than his brethren, essayed his fortunes at Lowshore, and informed the nobility and gentry of the district that he was about to appear for six nights only in a round of favourite characters. Rarely as the doors of the temple were open, the denizens of Lowshore were not wont to rush with remarkable unanimity to the shrine. It would have seemed, indeed, as if the drama were a dead letter in the seaport, the audience which came to be subdued by pity and terror being generally restricted to some two or three dozen seafaring men smelling strongly of fish, a sprinkling of boys, and a dash of brightness and colour in the shape of young women in service, or fishermen’s wives and daughters.

But what the drama, whether legitimate or illegitimate, failed to do, the lions succeeded in doing. They drew very fair houses – not the nobility and gentry, as represented by one elderly peer, whose estates bordered Lowshore, but who was rarely known to inhabit his great stone castle, preferring a little box at Richmond, stuffed with rare old silver and costly curios; and the vicar; but the shopkeepers and their young men and maidens; the few visitors and the lodging-house proprietors; all the seafaring men and their families; the maids-of-all-work and fisher-boys; the policeman off duty, and a sprinkling of farmers from inland farms. It was late in October, the very dreariest time of the year, and Herr Prusinowski had come to Lowshore in a speculative humour, just to fill up a blank week in his winter programme.

The house was nearly full the first night, a trifle less well attended the second, and on the third a considerable falling-off was apparent. Still it was a very fair house for Lowshore. There was a cheerful sprinkling in the pit, a very good gallery. The boxes alone had a cavernous and dismal aspect. The box audience – the upper middle-class of Lowshore, tradespeople and lodging-letters – had exhausted itself. Herr Prusinowski had brought a dramatic company of three with him to support the lions, and to eke out the evening’s entertainment with a couple of farces or comediettas. This company consisted of a light comedian, a low comedian, and a comedy lady. The light comedian was the aspiring De la Zouche, who had blossomed from a walking gentleman into the popular provincial Charles Mathews – white hat, patent-leather boots, light-green trousers, cane, and rapid utterance. The performances began with Delicate Ground, and were to conclude with the Secret, a farce of an ancient and respectable character.

The lion-tamer, who was a spoilt child of fortune, had a supreme contempt for bad houses, and with a flagrant injustice was wont to wreak upon the innocent few who did come to see him that wrath inspired by the guilty many who stopped away. That is to say, he punished the scanty but admiring audience by scamping his performance, and depriving them of their just due. The dramatic company were accustomed to empty benches and a barren dress-circle.

The weather was against Herr Prusinowski on this particular evening. The north winds came howling across the German Ocean as if they were intent upon sweeping Lowshore from the face of the earth, driving a salt-flavoured sleet before them, which well-nigh blinded the adventurous pedestrian. The Herr expressed himself very forcibly about the weather, as he took leave of his family before setting out for the theatre. The comedietta was just over as he went in at the stage-door, and he had to dress in a hurry, struggling into his close-fitting raiment, and girding himself with scarlet and gold, while a feeble little orchestra of four – clarionet, flute, and two fiddles – played some old-fashioned country-dance tunes, what time the audience regaled themselves with prawns and porter. The three lions looked tremendously big on the small stage, awfully real against the background of faded scenery. Robinson was out of sorts. He was sensitive upon the subject of weather, and had an especial aversion to high winds; perhaps some hereditary yearning for Libyan sands or Asia’s burning sky – personally he could know nothing about either, having been born in Whitechapel – may have affected him at such times; at any rate the fact remained, cold or blusterous weather disturbed his leonine mind.

The feeble little orchestra made a great struggle to produce a soul-inspiring chord, and came out superbly, the second violin a trifle in the rear. Herr Prusinowski bounded on to the stage from a rocky set piece, and began his work rather languidly, handling Robinson with a certain amount of caution.

He had got through half his performance, and was leading the three lions round the stage on their hind feet, to the stirring music of the march in “Blue Beard” – stirring even from those poor feeble players – when he heard the opening and shutting of a door at the back of the boxes. He looked up quickly. A gentleman in evening dress was seating himself deliberately in the centre place, a pale-complexioned man, with straight reddish hair. The lion-tamer’s heart turned cold. It was the man he had seen at Manchester and Spindlecum, the man whose presence, by some morbid fancy, he associated with the idea of peril to himself. During the last three years he had been always more or less on the look-out for this man, and had never seen him – had begun to congratulate himself upon the probability that he would finish his public career without ever performing before him again; and here he was, in this remote seaport town, watching him with the same eager eyes and hungry face, watching as men watched the gladiators in old time, greedy for their blood.

If he could have brought the entertainment to an abrupt conclusion that instant, he would have done so. He would have willingly returned the people their money, and sacrificed the night’s profits to escape performing before that man. He was half inclined to plead sudden illness, bring down the curtain with an apology; but to do that would be to confess himself afraid of that man.

“Damn him!” he muttered to himself, “he shan’t see that I’m afraid of him. Faster!” he called out to the orchestra, “faster and louder!” and as the music quickened, he urged the animals with his whip.

Robinson, alias Moloch, resented the impertinence with a suppressed roar, and from that moment Rudolph Prusinowski lost his presence of mind and lost his temper. He was determined to bate not one of his tricks, to demonstrate to that cold-blooded wretch in the boxes that he was not afraid of him. He made the animals do more work than usual, looking defiantly at that watchful face in the boxes all the while. The little theatre shook with applause, the pit rose to him, as the good old actors were wont to say; the gallery rang with bravoes.

All in a moment, at the last, in the crowning feat which was to conclude the performance, the bravoes changed to an awful shout of horror. No one could say how it happened, the brute’s movements were too rapid for human eyes to follow. Herr Prusinowski was lying on the stage mauled and torn, the lion crouching upon him.

The keeper and a couple of brawny scene-shifters rushed upon the stage; they dragged him from under the infuriated beast, insensible and covered with blood, and carried him off to the dressing-room, where the two rival surgeons of Lowshore came rushing in to him five minutes afterwards. Surgery could do nothing; his ribs were crushed to powder, and there was a perforation of the lung and haemorrhage. He breathed stertorously for about half an hour, and then died, without one ray of returning consciousness.

“Strange,” the red-haired gentleman used to say afterwards, when he told the story as a pleasant kind of thing after dinner, and in some manner reflecting distinction upon himself; “the poor devil was the second of his trade I saw killed, and I had come across him three times at long intervals in the course of my travels in the north. I take a considerable interest in that sort of thing; there’s more excitement about it than there is in the drama. Prusinowski was a very respectable fellow; had saved money, I believe; and left his wife and children comfortably provided for.”

—

Her Last Appearance

(1876)

I

HER TEMPTATION

“He is a scoundrel,” said the gentleman.

“He is my husband,” answered the lady.

Not much in either sentence, yet both came from bursting hearts and lips passion-pale.

“Is that your answer, Barbara?”

“The only answer God and man will suffer me to give you.”

“And he is to break your heart, and squander your earnings on his low vices – keep you shut up in this shabby lodging, while all the town is raving about your beauty and your genius – and you are to have no redress, no escape?”

“Yes,” she answered, with a look that thrilled him, “I shall escape him – in my coffin. My wrongs will have redress – at the day of judgement.”

“Barbara, he is killing you.”

“Don’t you think that may be the greatest kindness he has ever shown me?”

The gentleman began to pace the room distractedly. The lady turned to the tall narrow glass over the chimney-piece, with a curious look, half mournful, half scornful.

She was contemplating the beauty which was said to have set the town raving.

What did that tarnished mirror show her? A small pale face, wan and wasted by studious nights and a heavy burden of care, dark shadows about dark eyes. But such eyes! They seemed, in this cold light of day, too black and large and brilliant for the small white face; but at night, in the lamplit theatre, with a patch of rouge under them, and the fire of genius burning in them, they were the most dazzling, soul-ensnaring eyes man had ever seen; or so said the cognoscenti, Horace Walpole among them; and Mrs. Barbara Stowell was the last fashion at Covent Garden Theatre.

It was only her second season on those famous boards, and her beauty and talent still wore the bloom of novelty. The town had never seen her by daylight. She never drove in the Ring, or appeared at a fashionable auction, or mystified her admirers at a masquerade in the Pantheon, or drank whey in St. James’s Park – in a word, she went nowhere – and the town had invented twenty stories to account for this secluded existence. Yet no one had guessed the truth, which was sadder than the most dismal fiction that had floated down the idle stream of London gossip. Barbara Stowell kept aloof from the world for three reasons – first, because her husband was a tyrant and a ruffian, and left her without a sixpence; secondly, because her heart was broken; thirdly, because she was dying.

This last reason was only known to herself. No stethoscope had sounded that aching breast – no stately physician, with eyeglass and gold-headed cane, and chariot and footman, had been called in to testify in scientific language to the progress of the destroyer; but Barbara Stowell knew very well that her days were numbered, and that her span of life was of the briefest.

She was not in the first freshness of her youth. Three years ago she had been a country parson’s daughter, leading the peacefullest, happiest, obscurest life in a Hertfordshire village – when, as ill luck would have it, she came to London to visit an aunt who was in business there as a milliner, and at this lady’s house met Jack Stowell, an actor of small parts at Covent Garden – a cold-hearted rascal with a fine person, a kind of surface cleverness which had a vast effect upon simple people, and ineffable conceit. He had the usual idea of the unsuccessful actor, that his manager was his only enemy, and that the town was languishing to see him play Romeo, and Douglas, and the whole string of youthful heroes. His subordinate position soured him; and he sought consolation from drink and play, and was about as profligate a specimen of his particular genus as could be found in the purlieus of Bow Street. But he knew how to make himself agreeable in society, and passed for a “mighty pretty fellow.” He had the art of being sentimental too on occasion, could cast up his eyes to heaven and affect a mind all aglow with honour and manly feeling.

Upon this whitened sepulchre Barbara wasted the freshness of her young life. He was caught by her somewhat singular beauty, which was rather that of an old Italian picture than of a rustic Englishwoman. Beauty so striking and peculiar would make its mark, he thought. With such a Juliet he could not fail as Romeo. He loved her as much as his staled and withered heart was capable of loving, and he foresaw his own advantage in marrying her. So, with a little persuasion, and a great many sweet speeches stolen from the British Drama, he broke down the barriers of duty, and wrung from the tearful, blushing girl a hasty consent to a Fleet marriage, which was solemnized before she had time to repent that weak moment of concession.

The milliner was angry, for she had believed Mr. Stowell her own admirer, and although too wise to think of him as a husband, wished to retain him as a suitor. The Hertfordshire parson was furious, and told his daughter she had taken the first stage to everlasting destruction without his knowledge, and might go the rest of the way without his interference. She had a stepmother who was very well disposed to widen the breach, and she saw little hope of reconciliation with a father who had never erred on the side of fondness. So she began the world at twenty years of age, with Jack Stowell for her husband and only friend. In the first flush and glamour of a girlish and romantic love, it seemed to her sweet to have him only, to have all her world of love and hope bound up in this one volume.

This fond and foolish dream lasted less than a month. Before that moon which had shone a pale crescent in the summer sky of her wedding night had waxed and waned, Barbara knew that she was married to a drunkard and a gambler, a brute who was savage in his cups, a profligate who had lived amongst degraded women until he knew not what womanly purity meant, a wretch who existed only for self-gratification, and whose love for her had been little more than the fancy of an hour.

He lost no time in teaching her all he knew of his art. She had real genius, was fond of study, and soon discovered that he knew very little. She had her own ideas about all those heroines of which he only knew the merest conventionalities and traditions. She sat late into the night studying, while he was drinking and punting in some low tavern. Her sorrows, her disappointments, her disgusts drove her to the study of the drama for consolation, and temporary forgetfulness. These heroines of tragedy, who were all miserable, seemed to sympathize with her own misery. She became passionately fond of her art before ever she had trodden the stage.

Jack Stowell took his wife to Rich, and asked for an engagement. Had Barbara been an ordinary woman, the manager would have given her a subordinate place in his troupe, and a pittance of twenty shillings a week. But her exceptional beauty struck the managerial eye. He had half a dozen geniuses in his company, but their good looks were on the wane. This young face, these Italian eyes, might attract the town – and the town had been leaning a little towards the rival house lately.

“I’ll tell you what, Stowell,” said the manager, “I should like to give your wife a chance. But to take any hold upon the public she must appear in a leading part. I couldn’t trust her till she has learnt the A B C of her profession. She must try her wings in the provinces.”

They were standing at noontide on the great stage at Covent Garden. The house was almost in darkness, and the vast circle of boxes shrouded in linen wrappings had a ghostly look that chilled Barbara’s soul. What a little creature she seemed to herself in that mighty arena! Could she ever stand there and pour out her soul in the sorrows of Juliet, or the Duchess of Malfi, or Isabella, as she had done so often before the looking-glass in her dingy lodging?

“Jack,” she said, as they were walking home – he had been unusually kind to her this morning, – “I can’t tell you what an awful feeling that great, dark, cold theatre gave me. I felt as if I were standing in my tomb.”

“That shows what a little goose you are,” retorted Jack, contemptuously; “do you think anybody is going to give you such a big tomb as that?”

Mrs. Stowell appeared at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and tried her wings, as the manager called it, with marked success. There could be no doubt that she had the divine fire, a genius and bent so decided that her lack of experience went for nothing; and then she worked like a slave, and threw her soul, mind, heart – her whole being – into this new business of her life. She lived only to act. What else had she to live for, with a husband who came home tipsy three or four nights out of the seven, and whose infidelities were notorious?

She came to London the following winter, and took the town by storm. Her genius, her beauty, her youth, her purity, were on every tongue. She received almost as many letters as a prime minister in that first season of success; but it was found out in due time that she was inaccessible to flattery, and the fops and fribbles of her day ceased their persecutions.

Among so many who admired her, and so many who were eager to pursue, there was only one who discovered her need of pity and pitied her.

This was Sir Philip Hazlemere, a young man of fashion and fortune – neither fop nor fribble, but a man of cultivated mind and intense feeling.

He saw, admired, and, ere long, adored the new actress; but he did not approach her, as the others did, with fulsome letters which insulted her understanding, or costly gifts which offended her honour. He held himself aloof, and loved in silence – for the instinct of his heart told him that she was virtuous. But he was human, and his sense of honour could not altogether stifle hope. He found out where she lived, bought over the lodging-house keeper to his interest, and contrived to learn a great deal more than the well-informed world knew about Barbara Stowell.

He was told that her husband was a wretch, and ill-used her; that this brilliant beauty, who shone and sparkled by night like a star, was by daylight a wan and faded woman, haggard with sorrow and tears. If he had loved her before, when the history of her life was unknown to him, he loved her doubly now, and, taking hope from all that made her life hopeless, flung honour to the winds and determined to win her.

Could she be worse off, he asked himself, than she was now – the slave of a low-born profligate – the darling of an idle, gaping crowd – scorned and neglected at home, where a woman should be paramount? He was rich and his own master – there was all the bright glad world before them. He would take her to Italy, and live and die there for her sake, content and happy in the blessing of her sweet companionship. He had never touched her hand, never spoken to her; but he had lived for the last six months only to see and hear her, and it seemed to him that he knew every thought of her mind, every impulse of her heart. Had he not seen those lovely eyes answer his fond looks sometimes, as he hung over the stage box, and the business of the scene brought her near him, with a tender intelligence that told him he was understood?

If John Stowell should petition for a divorce, so much the better, thought Philip. He could then make his beloved Lady Hazlemere, and let the world see the crowning glory of his life. He was so deeply in love that he thought it would be everlasting renown to have won Barbara. He would go down to posterity famous as the husband of the loveliest woman of his time; like that Duke of Devonshire, of whom the world knows so little except that he had a beautiful duchess.

One day Sir Philip Hazlemere took courage – emboldened by some new tale of Jack Stowell’s brutality – and got himself introduced to the presence of his beloved. She was shocked at first, and very angry; but his deep respect melted her wrath, and for the first time in her life Barbara learnt how reverential, how humble, real love is. It was no bold seducer who had forced himself into her presence, but a man who pitied and honoured her, and who would have deemed it a small thing to shed his blood for her sake.

He was no stranger to her, though she had never heard his voice till today. She had seen him in the theatre – night after night – and had divined that it was some stronger feeling than love of the drama which held him riveted to the same spot, listening to the same play, however often it might be repeated in the shifting repertoire of those days.

She knew that he loved her, and that earnest look of his had touched her deeply. What was it now for her, who had never known a good man’s love, to hear him offer the devotion of a lifetime, and sue humbly for permission to carry her away from a life which was most abject misery!

Her heart thrilled as she heard him. Yes, this was true love – this was the glory and grace of life which she had missed. She could measure the greatness of her loss now that it was too late. She saw what pitiful tinsel she had mistaken for purest gold. But, though every impulse of her heart drew her to this devoted lover, honour spoke louder than feeling, and made her marble. On one only point she yielded to her lover’s pleading. She did not refuse him permission to see her again. He might come sometimes, but it must be seldom, and the hour in which he should forget the respect due to her as a true and loyal wife would be the hour that parted them forever.

“My life is so lonely!” she said, self-excusingly, after having accorded this permission; “it will be a comfort to me to see you now and then for a brief half-hour, and to know that there is someone in this great busy world who pities and cares for me.”

She had one reason for granting Sir Philip’s prayer, which would have well-nigh broken his heart could he have guessed it. This was her inward conviction that her life was near its close. There was hardly time for temptation between the present hour and the grave. And every day seemed to carry her further from the things and thoughts of earth. Her husband’s cruelties stung less keenly than of old; his own degradation, which had been the heaviest part of her burden, seemed further away from her, as if he and she lived in different worlds. Her stage triumphs, which had once intoxicated her, now seemed unreal as the pageant of a dream. Yes, the ties that bind this weak flesh to earthly joys and sufferings were gradually loosening. The fetters were slipping off this weary clay.

II

HER AVENGER

Sir Philip showed himself not undeserving of Barbara’s confidence. He came to the sordid London lodging – a caravansera which had housed wandering tribes of shabby-genteel adventurers for the last twenty years, and whose dingy panelling seemed to exhale an odour of poverty. He brought his idol hothouse flowers and fruits – the weekly papers – those thin little leaflets which amused our ancestors – a new book now and then – and the latest news of the town – that floating gossip of the clubs, which Walpole was writing to Sir Horace Mann. He came and sat beside her, as she worked at her tambour frame, and cheered her by a tenderness too reverent to alarm. In a word, he made her happy.

If she were slowly fading out of life, he did not see the change, or guess that this fair flower was soon to wither. He saw her too frequently to perceive the gradual progress of decay. Her beauty was of an ethereal type, to which disease lent new charms.

One day he found her with an ugly bruise upon her forehead; she had tried to conceal it with the loose ringlets of her dark hair, but his quick eye saw the mark. When pressed hard by his solicitous questioning, she gave a somewhat lame account of the matter. She had been passing from the sitting-room to her bedchamber last night, when a gust of wind extinguished her candle, and she had fallen and wounded herself against the edge of the chest of drawers. She crimsoned and faltered as she tried to explain this accident.

“Barbara, you are deceiving me!” cried Sir Philip. “It was a man’s clenched fist left that mark. You shall not live with him another day.”

And then came impassioned pleading which shook her soul – fond offers of a sweet glad life in a foreign land – a divorce – a new marriage – honour – station.

“But dishonour first,” said Barbara. “Can the path of shame ever lead to honour? No, Sir Philip, I will not do evil that good may come of it.”

No eloquence of her lover’s could move her from this resolve. She was firm as the Bass Rock, he passionate as the waves that beat against it. He left her at last, burning with indignation against her tyrant.

“God keep and comfort you,” he cried at parting. “I will not see you again till you are free.”

These words startled her, and she pondered them, full of alarm. Did he mean any threat against her husband? Ought she to warn Jack Stowell of his danger?

Sir Philip Hazlemere and John Stowell had never yet crossed each other’s path. The surest place in which not to find the husband was his home. But now Sir Philip was seized with a sudden fancy for making Mr. Stowell’s acquaintance – or at any rate for coming face to face with him in some of his favourite haunts. These were not difficult to discover. He played deep and he drank hard, and his chosen resort was a disreputable tavern in a narrow court out of Long Acre, where play and drink were the order of the night, and many a friendly festivity had ended in a bloody brawl.

Here on a December midnight, when the pavements about Covent Garden were greasy with a thaw, and the link-boys were reaping their harvest in a thick brown fog, Sir Philip resorted directly the play was over, taking one Captain Montagu, a friend and confidant, with him. A useful man, this Montagu, who knew the theatres and most of the actors – among them, Jack Stowell.

“The best of fellows,” he assured Sir Philip, “capital company.”

“That may be,” replied Sir Philip, “but he beats his wife, and I mean to beat him.”

“What, Phil, are you going to turn Don Quixote and fight with windmills?”

“Never mind my business,” answered Philip; “yours is to bring me and this Stowell together.”

They found Mr. Stowell engaged at faro with his own particular friends in a private room – a small room at the back of the house, with a window opening onto the leads, which offered a handy exit if the night’s enjoyment turned to peril. The mohawks of that day were almost as clever as cats at climbing a steep roof or hanging on to a gutter.

Captain Montagu sent in his card to Mr. Stowell, asking permission to join him with a friend, a gentleman from the country. Jack knew that Montagu belonged to the hawk tribe, but scented a pigeon in the rural stranger, and received the pair with effusiveness. Sir Philip had disguised himself in a heavy fur-bordered coat and a flaxen periwig, but Mr. Stowell scanned him somewhat suspiciously notwithstanding. His constant attendance in the stage box had made his face very familiar to the Covent Garden actors, and it was only the fumes of brandy punch which prevented Stowell’s recognition of him.

The play was fast and furious. Sir Philip, in his character of country squire, ordered punch with profuse liberality, and lost his money with a noisy recklessness, vowing that he would have his revenge before the night was out. Montagu watched him curiously, wondering what it all meant.

So the night wore on, Sir Philip showing unmistakable signs of intoxication, under which influence his uproariousness degenerated by-and-by into a maudlin stupidity. He went on losing money with a sleepy placidity that threw Jack Stowell off his guard, and tempted that adventurer into a free indulgence in certain manoeuvres which under other circumstances he would have considered to the last degree dangerous.

What was his astonishment when the country squire suddenly sprang to his feet and flung half a tumbler of punch in his face!

“Gentlemen,” cried Stowell, wiping the liquor from his disconcerted countenance, “the man is drunk, as you must perceive. I have been grossly insulted, but am too much a gentleman to take advantage of the situation. You had better get your friend away, Captain Montagu, while his legs can carry him, if they are still capable of that exertion. We have had enough play for tonight.”

“Cheat! swindler!” cried Sir Philip. “I call my friend to witness that you have been playing with marked cards for the last hour. I saw you change the pack.”

“It’s a lie!” roared Jack.

“No, it isn’t,” said Montagu, “I’ve had my eye on you.”

“By God! gentlemen, I’ll have satisfaction for this,” cried Jack, drawing his sword a very little way out of its scabbard.

“You shall,” answered Sir Philip, “and this instant. I shall be glad to see whether you are as good at defending your own cur’s life as you are at beating your wife.”

“By heaven, I know you now!” cried Jack. “You are the fellow that sits in the stage box night after night and hangs on my wife’s looks.”

Sir Philip went to the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket, then came back with his rapier drawn.

Montagu and the other men tried to prevent a fight, but Sir Philip was inexorably bent on settling all scores on the spot, and Stowell was savage in his cups and ready for anything. PreHminaries were hurried through – a table knocked over and a lot of glasses broken; but noise was a natural concomitant of pleasure in this tavern, and the riot awakened no curiosity in the sleepy drawer waiting below.

A space was cleared, and the two men stood opposite each other, ghastly with passion; Sir Philip’s assumed intoxication thrown off with his fur-bordered coat, John Stowell considerably the worse for liquor.

The actor was a skilled swordsman, but his first thrusts were too blindly savage to be effective. Sir Philip parried them easily, and stood looking at his antagonist with a scornful smile which goaded Stowell to madness.

“I’ll wager my wife and you have got up this play between you,” he said. “I ought to have known there was mischief on foot. She’s too meek and pretty-spoken not to be a—”

The word he meant to say never passed his lips, for a sudden thrust in tierce from Philip Hazlemere’s sword pierced his left lung and silenced him forever.

“When I saw the mark of your fist on your wife’s forehead this morning, I swore to make her a widow tonight,” said Sir Philip, as the actor fell face downward on the sanded floor.

The tavern servants were knocking at the door presently. Jack Stowell’s fall had startled even their equanimity. Tables and glasses might be smashed without remark – they only served to swell the reckoning – but the fall of a human body invited attention. Captain Montagu opened the window, and hustled his friend out upon the slippery leads below it, and, after some peril to life and limb in the hurried descent, Sir Philip Hazlemere found himself in Long Acre, where the watchman was calling “Past four o’clock, and a rainy morning.”

III

HER FAREWELL SIGH

Before next evening the town knew that Jack Stowell the actor had been killed in a tavern brawl. Captain Montagu had bribed Mr. Stowell’s friends to keep a judicious silence. The man had been killed in fair fight, and no good could come of letting the police know the details of his end. So when the Bow Street magistrate came to hold his interrogatory, he could only extort a confused account of the fatal event. There had been a row at faro, and Stowell and another man, whose name nobody present knew, had drawn their swords and fought. Stowell had fallen, and the stranger has escaped by a window before the tavern people came to the rescue. The tavern people had seen the stranger enter the house, a man with flaxen hair, and a dark green riding coat trimmed with grey fur, but they had not seen him leave. The magistrate drew the general conclusion that everybody had been drunk, and the examination concluded in a futile manner, which in these days would have offered a fine opening for indignation leaders in the daily papers, and letters signed “Fiat Justitia,” or “Peckham Rye;” but which at that easy-going period provoked nobody’s notice, or served at most to provide Walpole with a paragraph for one of his immortal epistles.

Sir Philip called at Mrs. Stowell’s, and was told that she was ill, and keeping her room. There was a change of pieces announced at Covent Garden, and the favourite was not to appear “until tomorrow se’nnight, in consequence of a domestic affliction.”

Sir Philip sent his customary offerings of hothouse fruits and flowers to Mrs. Stowell’s address, but a restraining delicacy made him keep aloof while the actor’s corpse lay at his lodgings, and the young widow was still oppressed with the horror of her husband’s death. She might suspect his hand, perhaps, in that untimely end. Would she pity and pardon him, and understand that it was to redress her wrongs his sword had been drawn? Upon this point Sir Philip was hopeful. The future was full of fair promises. There was only a dreary interval of doubt and severance to be endured in the present.

The thought that Barbara was confined to her room by illness did not alarm him. It was natural that her husband’s death should have agitated and overwhelmed her. The sense of her release from his tyranny would soon give her hope and comfort. In the meanwhile Sir Philip counted the hours that must pass before her reappearance.

The appointed night came, and the play announced for representation was Webster’s “Duchess of Malfi, concluding with the fourth Act:” “the Duchess by Mrs. Stowell.” They were fond of tragedies in those days, the gloomier the better. Covent Garden was a spacious charnel-house for the exhibition of suicide and murder.

Sir Philip was in his box before the fiddlers began to play. The house was more than half empty, despite the favourite’s reappearance after her temporary retirement, despite the factitious interest attached to her as the widow of a man who had met his death under somewhat mysterious circumstances a week ago. There was dire weather out of doors – a dense brown fog. Some of the fog had crept in at the doors of Covent Garden Theatre, and hung like a pall over pit and boxes.

The fiddlers began the overture to Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” Philip Hazlemere’s heart beat loud and fast. He longed for the rising of the curtain with an over-mastering impatience. It was more than a week since he had seen Barbara Stowell; and what a potent change in both their destinies had befallen since their last meeting! He could look at her now with triumphant delight. No fatal barrier rose between them. He had no doubt of her love, or of her glad consent to his prayer. In a little while – just a decent interval for the satisfaction of the world – she would be his wife. The town would see her no more under these garish lights of the theatre. She would shine as a star still, but only in the calm heaven of home.

The brightness of the picture dispelled those gloomy fancies which the half-empty theatre and its dark mantle of fog had engendered.

The curtain rose, and at last he saw her. The lovely eyes were more brilliant than ever, and blinded him to the hollowness of the wan cheek. There was a thrilling tragedy in her every look which seemed the very breath and fire of genius. The creature standing there, pouring out her story of suffering, was wronged, oppressed; the innocent, helpless victim of hard and bloody men. The strange story, the strange character, seemed natural as she interpreted it. Sir Philip listened with all his soul in his ears, as if he had never seen the gloomy play before – yet every line was familiar to him. The Duchess was one of Barbara’s greatest creations.

He hung with rapt attention on every word, and devoured her pale loveliness with his eyes, yet was eager for the play to be over. He meant to lie in wait for her at the stage door, and accompany her home to her lodgings, and stay with her just long enough to speak of their happy future, and to win her promise to be his wife so soon as her weeds could be laid aside. He would respect even idle prejudice for her sake, and wait for her while she went through the ceremony of mourning for the husband who had ill-used her.

The play dragged its slow length along to the awful fourth act, with its accumulated horrors – the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bell-man, the dirge, the executioners with coffin and cords. Barbara looked pale and shadowy as a spirit, a creature already escaped from earthly bondage, for whom death could have no terrors. Thinly as the house was occupied, the curtain fell amidst a storm of applause. Sir Philip stood looking at the dark-green blankness, as if that dying look of hers had rooted him to the spot, while the audience hurried out of the theatre, uneasy as to the possibility of hackney coaches or protecting link-boys to guide them through the gloom.

He turned suddenly at the sound of a sigh close behind him – a faint and mournful sigh, which startled and chilled him.

Barbara was standing there, in the dress she had worn in that last scene – the shroud-like drapery which had so painfully reminded him of death.

She stretched out her hands to him with a sad, appealing gesture. He leaned eagerly forward, and tried to clasp them in his own, but she withdrew herself from him with a shiver, and stood, shadow-like, in the shadow of the doorway.

“Dearest!” he exclaimed, between surprise and delight, “I was coming round to the stage door. I am most impatient to talk to you, to be assured of your love, now that you are free to make me the most blessed of men. My love, I have a world of sweet words to say to you. I may come, may I not? I may ride home with you in your coach?”

The lights went out suddenly while he was talking to her, breathless in his eagerness. She gave one more faint sigh, half pathetic, half tender, and left him. She had not blessed him with a word, but he took this gentle silence to mean consent.

He groped his way out of the dark theatre, and went round to the stage door. He did not present himself at that entrance, but waited discreetly on the opposite side of the narrow street, till Barbara’s coach should be called. He had watched for her thus, in a futile, aimless manner, on many a previous night, and was familiar with her habits. .

There were a couple of hackney coaches waiting in the street under the curtain of fog. Presently a link-boy came hurriedly along with his flaring torch, followed by a breathless gentleman in a brown coat and wig of the same colour. The link-boy crossed the road, and the gentleman after him, and both vanished within the theatre.

Sir Philip wondered idly what the breathless gentleman’s business could be.

He waited a long time, as it appeared to his impatience, and still there was no call for Mrs. Stowell’s hackney coach. A group of actors came out and walked away on the opposite pavement, talking intently. The gentleman in brown came out again, and trotted off into the fog, still under guidance of the link-boy. The stage doorkeeper appeared on the threshold, looked up and down the street, and seemed about to extinguish his dim oil lamp and close his door for the night. Sir Philip Hazlemere ran across the street just in time to stop him.

“Why are you shutting up?” he asked; “Mrs. Stowell has not left the theatre, has she?”

It seemed just possible that he had missed her in the fog.

“No, poor thing, she won’t go out till tomorrow, and then she’ll be carried out feet foremost.”

“Great God! what do you mean?”

“It’s a sad ending for such a pretty creature,” said the doorkeeper with a sigh, “and it was that brute’s ill usage was at the bottom of it. She’s been sickening of a consumption for the last three months – we all of us knew it; and when she came in at this door tonight I said she looked fitter for her coffin than for the stage. And the curtain was no sooner down than she dropped all of a heap, with one narrow streak of dark blood oozing out of her lips and trickling down her white gown. She was gone before they could carry her to her dressing-room. They sent for Dr. Budd, of Henrietta Street but it was too late; she didn’t wait for the doctors to help her out of this world.”

Yes, at the moment when he had looked into that shadow face, seen those sad eyes looking into his with ineffable love and pity, Barbara’s troubled soul had winged its flight skyward.

—

My Dream

(1889)

We were to be married in three weeks – an autumn wedding, amidst falling leaves and the ceaseless drip of soft October rain.

It had been a rainy year, a year of dull grey skies and frequent showers, and long days of rain which kept people close prisoners within four walls; but it had been the one golden summer of my life, and I looked back to it afterwards as a spirit in torment might look back upon a year in Paradise. I was seven and twenty years of age, and the man I had loved ever since I was sixteen had come home from the Punjab war. He had escaped out of battles which seem like the warfare of giants, as we read the history of them today; and he had found out all at once, as it were by accident, that he had thought me a nice little girl eleven years ago, and that he loved me now. He had been in love – madly, passionately in love – with a girl in India, his commanding officer’s daughter; and she had jilted him, and married a rich civilian, with a bald head and an irascible temper, and my dearest one had worn the willow for three years and a half before he came home and proposed to poor little me.

I was inclined to be sorely jealous of the inconstant lady, and I fancied that the love he gave me could be only second-best – a rose with withered edges, a peach without the bloom – and I fear I tormented him with my suspicious questionings. But little by little that warm flame of love which breathed round me comforted my doubting heart; little by little I grew to believe that this new love was all in all.

He, Gilbert Strangford, was thirty-four, and I was twenty-seven – sober ages both, years at which we ought to have done with romance, perhaps – yet we were both as romantic as boy and girl lovers, and for both of us life was glorified with the mystic colouring of dreamland, and all things about and around us, except our love, seemed half unreal.

I was an orphan, well provided for, and with aunts and uncles who had done much to fill the empty places in my life. Gilbert’s father and mother were living, an ideal squire and squire’s wife, delightfully old-fashioned in their habits and ideas, and deeply attached to the soil which had belonged to the Strangfords from the reign of King Charles the Martyr, and to the house in which many generations of Strangfords had been born. They had known me from my childhood, and they were fond of me, which made my cup of bliss all the sweeter.

I had spent the season with my aunt, Lady Chittenden, in Bruton Street, and I had been on a round of short visits to country houses in August and September – houses to which Gilbert had been invited sometimes for my sake, sometimes for his own. Life had been one perpetual holiday for both of us. My books, that daily tale of serious reading which I had accomplished ever since I was twenty, had been put aside; my work-basket had become a dusty tangle of silks and wools; my friends were all indignant at unanswered letters; my piano practice was a thing of the past; and I had discovered that it had never been worth while to cultivate my insignificant faculty for art. In a word, I, who had hitherto been considered a rather remarkable example of order and industry, had become as idle as a butterfly in the sunshine.

My round of visits to old friends of my parents, and girl-friends of my own who had become matrons, was finished, and my last visit of all had begun. I was at Strangford Court, where I was to spend a fortnight, while my trousseau was being completed under the experienced and watchful eye of my aunt in Bruton Street. On the 20th day of October I was to transfer myself to Hilberry Manor, my uncle’s place in Hampshire, the next county; and on the last day of the month Gilbert and I were to be married at Hilberry Church, a long narrow early Norman church on the edge of a wood, very dreary and dripping at that season, no doubt. But what would dismal weather matter to us, who were to follow the swifts and the swallows to bluer skies, above the deep dark blue of the Mediterranean? Our long winter honeymoon was to be spent in Southern France and Italy. We sat side by side, going over maps and guidebooks, living in fond expectation the days that we were to live together in reality. I had travelled very little beyond the most conventional British watering-places, and Gilbert had only skimmed across Italy on his way from the East. The names of historical Italian cities – Pisa, Bologna, Verona – were as dreamlike to him as they were to me.

Dreamlike – all life was dreamlike in that golden season; and after the dreamy days, the saunterings in garden or meadow, the morning rambles in woodland or on hill, the lazy afternoons upon the river, his sculls scarce moving in the rowlocks as we drifted with the tide: after the dreamy days came the dreams of night and slumber – dreams in which the image of my second self was always present in some form or other; sometimes in the wildest entanglement of events and circumstances, in the strangest combination of people and places – he ever with me in my dreams, I ever with him.

We used to tell each other laughingly of these wild adventures in the dim slumber-land, with their curious interweaving of the ridiculous and the sublime, the awful and the absurd. We were both interested in the psychology of dreams, and read everything we could discover that had been written upon the subject. Those keen impressions, those vivid images, so strangely real for the moment, so wildly impossible when looked back upon by our waking minds, were a source of endless speculations and discussions.

On two or three occasions I had what I called an uncomfortable dream about my dear love – a dream which left me nervous and depressed, only to be reassured by his actual presence, the warm grasp of his strong hand, the cheery sound of his voice, his laughing assurance that he had not fallen from his horse, or been capsized in a friend’s yacht, or suffered from any such misadventures as my dream-fancies had touched upon.

“You are a most assiduous dreamer, Bessie,” he said, laughing at me. “You must dream a three-volume novel per night, I think. It would be strange if some of your dreams were not to come true. That perpetually revolving kaleidoscope of yours must develop an occasional hard fact.”

“God forbid that any of my bad dreams should come true, Gilbert!”

“So say I; but I would have no objection to one of your good ones turning up trumps. That dream you told me of the other day, for instance, in which Rothschild left me a million or so, and in which you and I began to build a malachite palace on the banks of the Neva.”

How we laughed at those foolish fancies of sleep, and how lightly we passed over the gloomiest visions! The morning brought the glad reality of a life that seemed without a cloud, in whatever strange and shadowy places we might have wandered through the night.

The pheasant-shooting had begun when I arrived at the Court. Gilbert and his mother – my future mother – met me at the junction, and drove me to the old house which henceforward was to mean home for me as well as for the only son. His married sister, Lucy Rawdon, was in the portico, with her two small boys, as we drove up, and the little boys were very eager to make friends with me, and held up rosy lips to be kissed.

“Mother says you’re to be our new aunt,” the elder boy said as I kissed him.

Captain Rawdon was out with the shooters, and all the other men of the house-party were engaged in the same manner. Strangford Court was famous for its pheasants, and I felt that my fiancé was making a great sacrifice in staying at home morning after morning, when his visitors all went tramping off in their shooting gear for a long day in the copses.

“It is a part of my apprenticeship,” he said laughingly, when I apologized for my selfishness in absorbing: him; “it is a condition of my servitude. Ten years hence, when we are old married people, I may turn sportsman again.”

So we spent our days together at Strangford Court as we had done in other people’s houses – wet days many of them, on which I used to sit in a deep bow-window in Mrs. Strangford’s morning-room, pretending to work, while Gilbert read aloud, his mother busy about her own affairs, going in and out, and leaving us frequent opportunities for confidential talk about the near future.

He was to leave the army – that had been agreed between us when I accepted him as my husband. I loved him too well to endure the hazards of a soldier’s life: and he had seen a good deal of active service, and had more than one scar to tell of peril past and hair’s-breadth escapes. His father was old and infirm, and the heir was wanted at home to look after the estate. Mrs. Strangford was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, and her life for the last ten years had been one of dullness and self-sacrifice. Gilbert’s marriage and establishment at the Court would be the beginning of a new existence for her; and I, who had never known a mother’s love, was very delighted at the idea of being cherished and cared for by a mother-in-law.

How tenderly she welcomed me on that fateful visit – a tenderness that never failed me until her life’s end!

The second week of my visit had begun, when there was great talk, at dinner, one evening, about a shooting tournament that was to begin next day in some ducal covers fifteen miles from Strangford – an annual business lasting two or three days – at which Gilbert had always assisted when he was at the Court. This year he was not going to the Castle, though the Duke’s invitation for him and his house-party had come in due course, with hospitable offers to put up a party of six at the Castle.

He had accepted the invitation to the shooting for his friends, and Captain Rawdon and the others were to start early next morning in a four-horse brake.

When we were in the drawing-room after dinner, I begged Gilbert to go with the others. I had heard him talk of the sport at Hainsleigh as one of his most enjoyable experiences, and at dinner there had been a good deal said about the men who were to be there – men who were distinguished in more than one walk of life, and whom I knew Gilbert would like to meet – his friends, some of them; others, men whom he admired for their intellect and their achievements.

“Don’t stay away from such a brilliant party for my sake,” I said.

“My dearest, do you think that men have much margin for being brilliant when they are bent on filling their bags. In a shooting-party the best shot is the best man.”

“But the dinner afterwards.”

“Delightful; and the smoke-room after that. But a nice knight I should be if I could stay away for four and twenty hours from my liege lady. No, Bess, the Duke is a very good fellow, and a capital neighbour; but I have new duties, and home has new charms.”

I was not so easily answered. I wanted to fight against my own selfishness, which would have kept him always at my side. I pleaded against myself, feeling all the time that I was making a stupendous sacrifice, and, as it were, forestalling my duty as a wife, which would be to make my pleasure subservient and secondary to his. In the end I conquered his reluctance, and he made up his mind to go in the brake with the others, and to take his portmanteau with him, in the event of being persuaded to stay the night.

“The party will have to be monstrously attractive if they are to keep me, Bess,” he said; “for, be the men as brilliant as they may, there will be a magnet to draw me home against whose force I shall have the smallest power of resistance.”

The house-party, strengthened by half a dozen or so of visitors from the neighbourhood, was particularly merry that evening – merry to the verge of inanity, I thought, my own spirits being overshadowed by the forecast of the blank tomorrow, the first day for a long time that I should have to pass without my own true love.

“‘What can I do to cheat the time away?’” I thought; and then I resolved to ask Mrs. Strangford to take me on a round of visits to the poorest among her cottagers – the people whom she was in the habit of helping – so that I might learn to know them, and to help them too, by-and-by, when I should take up my abode at the Court.

All things had been planned for that new life. The rooms my husband and I were to occupy had been duly fixed upon, and were to be improved and renovated during our long winter abroad. One wing of the Court had been given over to us for our private use, with ample room and verge enough for stateliest occupation; and I was to have my own garden, where I might make and meddle as I pleased, without fear of reproof from the mistress of the house, or the head gardener.

“I fear, before many years are over, I shall be only the dowager, Bessie,” Mrs. Strangford said sadly, “and my poor old man’s rooms yonder will be empty.”

•   •   •   •   •

It was very late when we dispersed to our rooms that night, as generally happens in a country house when some members of the party have to rise at an abnormal hour next morning, and when officious friends have been obtrusively insistent about that fact from nine o’clock upwards. There is a spice of pigheadedness in humanity, perhaps – a tendency in most minds to go in the opposite direction to that in which other people try to drive them. I know it was long after midnight when a little flight of chamber candlesticks went fluttering up the broad oak staircase and through the dusky corridors, with more noise of talk and laughter than becomes a sober house-party.

Great God! how happy I was that night, despite the shadow of tomorrow’s parting, as we two pressed hands, and bade each other good night, and good-bye.

“I shall come home tomorrow evening, if I can, Bess,” he said; “though I do take a portmanteau.”

•   •   •   •   •

Oh! the awful distinctness of that dream – clear and sternly cut against the dark of dreamland. I was standing at the corner of a woodland ride, in a damp and drizzly atmosphere, grey, and dull, and dim. I could hear the shooting in the coverts all round me, but no sound of voices, no tramp of feet. Then suddenly the wood on my right hand seemed to open, and I saw a silent procession coming slowly towards me along a leafy glade. Four men carrying another man, prostrate and bleeding, on some kind of litter.

Then that awful dream-feeling of utter helplessness and dumbness, of limbs that seemed like water, and dry lips and throat that tried to shape a cry of terror and could not, came upon me as I had never felt it before. The men came slowly on with their lead, the prostrate figure, one arm hanging loose by the side of the litter. I saw it swing as they came along with their burden – hanging from shoulder to wrist with flaccid lifeless hand.

The face was hidden as they came towards me; but I knew whose face it was, the one face upon earth for me. I knew, I knew – and in my great and bitter agony I awoke with a half-strangled cry. I sprang out of bed. There was the dim cold glimmer of day outside, but my watch told me that it was only half-past five – and the brake was not to leave till after six. It was not too late, perhaps. I might stop him yet. I dressed myself with hands that trembled a little, for I was still shaken by the agony of my dream. I would wait for Gilbert at the head of the stairs, waylay him as he was hurrying down to the carriage, and entreat him to forego the day’s sport. I should have little difficulty in dissuading him from the journey, I fancied, after what he had said last night. I should seem capricious, perhaps exacting; but what did that matter? I could tell him about my dream afterwards, and he might laugh at me as much as he pleased. I was plaiting up my hair before the looking-glass, in the brightening morning light, when I heard wheels. The brake coming round from the stables perhaps, I thought. No, the sound was of wheels driving away towards the park.

Then in an instant it flashed upon me that my watch might have stopped. It had a knack of stopping occasionally. I rushed to the window, opened it, and leant out to look along the avenue. The brake was disappearing in the distance, with its load of shooters, and I heard the stable clock chime a quarter; the quarter after six, no doubt.

I rang the bell violently, and a housemaid came, scared and wondering at my vehement summons.

“Is the carriage with the gentlemen gone?”

“Yes, ma’am. It started five minutes ago.”

“But I didn’t hear it drive up to the hall-door?”

“No, ma’am, the gentlemen all got into the carriage in the stable-yard, to save the horses standing at the door in the cold morning, Mr. Strangford said. The guns and things were all put in there.”

“Is it past six?” I asked, holding my wretched dumb watch to my ear. “Yes, ma’am; twenty minutes past.”

He was gone – gone beyond my power to recall him. I might have stopped him; might have watched for him in the corridor, between his room and mine; but that accursed watch had deceived me.

I suppose the housemaid must have thought me mad, for I dashed the poor little Geneva watch down upon the floor, shivering the glass to atoms, and marking the enamelled case with a bruise which it bears to this day; a watch that never went again, and which has lain in the secret drawer of my dressing-case for thirty years – witness of my life’s sorrow.

He was gone, and I was powerless to recall him. There was no telegraph in those days. I had no power to intercept him with a message, at this or that point of his journey, imploring him to come back to me. He would have obeyed such a summons gladly, proudly, I knew. Never was lover more devoted. I had but to lift up my finger, and he would come at my beckoning. But there were no means of communication – none – none.

Suddenly an idea flashed across my brain. I thought of a story which my sweetheart and I had read together, within the last few weeks – a novel of rugged power, and an eloquence that had held us like a spell. I remembered that appealing cry of love which Jane Eyre heard across the bleak Yorkshire hills – blind, broken-hearted Rochester’s cry to the woman he adored; and I too called aloud to my lover, called with all the strength of anguish, “Gilbert! Gilbert! come back to me, come back. My beloved, my life, come back to me.”

I was standing before the open window, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, gazing through my tears far off to the purple horizon above the leafless elms. I was calling upon him with all the strength of my being, physical and mental, trying to put the concentrated forces of mind and body into that one despairing cry.

There had been much discussion about mesmerism, animal magnetism, and electro-biology of late; and a great deal had been said about Will-power. Surely, if my will could have power and influence over anyone, it would be over him: over the man who loved me with all the strength of his brave true heart. But I felt my cry go out into the empty air; felt the futility of that appeal from soul to soul, while souls were bound and clogged by tabernacles of clay.

I flung myself upon the sofa, buried my face in the cushions, and sobbed in a paroxysm of grief and disappointment. And then the storm of passion gradually died away, and I tried to reason with myself; tried to persuade myself that all this grief of mine was mere childish folly – a dream; only a dream, and I was fretting myself into a fever about it: I, the dreamer, who had seen so many baseless visions, and had never known one to be realized by waking fact. I had not even seen the face of the wounded man, I argued with myself. Even were that ghastly dream-picture to be the fore-shadowing of a reality, the victim on the litter might be any other member of the shooting-party. He need not necessarily be Gilbert. And then I told myself, no, the dream-figure was Gilbert’s and no other. It had appeared to me – conjured out of emptiness and darkness by the fever of an unresting love. I had no need to see the face. Instinct told me that it was the face of my lover.

So, tempest-tossed by contending emotions, I wasted an hour pacing up and down the room; trying to finish my toilet, but too agitated to do so; and then at half-past seven o’clock my maid came, and remonstrated with me for having risen so early, and having made such a hopeless confusion of my hair; and took me in hand and dressed me as if I had been a child, and thus made it possible far me to go down to the dining-room, when the bell rang at half-past eight for morning prayers.

His mother was there with her sweet kind smile, and her welcoming look.

Three other ladies of the party were down, and one of them remarked on my wretched appearance.

“You must have had a very bad night. Miss Lester,” she said.

“You haven’t been fretting about Gilbert’s absence, I hope, Bessie,” said Mrs. Strangford. “Only one short autumn day and you will have him back again.”

“Do you think he really will come back tonight?” I asked, trying not to seem too anxious, lest I should alarm her.

“I do indeed, Bessie. I believe he is foolish enough for anything where you are concerned.”

The servants filed slowly in, and Mrs. Strangford opened the book of family prayer, solemn and somewhat old-fashioned prayers, which carried very little comfort to my mind. I listened for a verse of good augury in the psalm which followed; but all was gloom, a soul snared in the pit, misery, pain, death!

I know not how that dull autumn day dragged itself out to twilight. I know that I counted every stroke of the clock, the hours and the half-hours, with their cathedral-like reverberation in the large lofty hall. There was no visiting among the cottagers, nothing to take me out of myself by making thought impossible. The weather was damp and depressing, just like the atmosphere of my dream, and as Mrs. Strangford had taken cold the day before in a latish drive in an open carriage from the market town, it would have been brutal to ask her to walk or drive about muddy lanes, and go in and out of dripping cottage gardens.

I passed the day, therefore, in hopeless, helpless idleness, wandering aimlessly from room to room, or standing in one of the deeply recessed drawing-room windows, looking along the avenue; as if there were any hope of anyone I cared for appearing there before dark!

Dusk came at last, and I grew a shade more cheerful at the thought that the day was done – the shooting must be all over now. Most of the men would have made up their minds to stay at the Castle, no doubt; but Gilbert would have set his face homewards. I pictured him starting in some light trap, dog-cart, or phaeton, for the long, long, damp and dreary drive; pictured the fast horse, with its hard square trot, forging along the muddy road; the lamps flashing through the darkness, the driver sitting straight and tall, with his face towards home.

I had made, not one, but twenty inquiries about the road and the distance. Was it a good road? Yes, a very good road, level as a billiard table for a great part of the way. And how long would the journey take if he had a good horse?

With a good horse about two hours, Mrs. Strangford told me. She had made the journey very often, and ought to know.

The ladies of the house-party had spent the day cheerfully enough, sitting round one of the capacious fireplaces in the long drawing-room, each absorbed in her particular kind of needlework, enlivened with a good deal of talk about absent friends and acquaintance – other people’s incomes, other people’s children. They had taken very little notice of me, seeing my inclination for solitude. I had excused myself from going in to luncheon on the ground of a headache, and Mrs. Strangford had understood my feelings and had let me follow my own bent.

And so in the deepening dusk I found myself alone in the library, a large room at the end of the house, a somewhat gloomy room, but with a solemn air which I loved. It seemed the very home of learning and grave meditation.

I had watched for Gilbert’s coming till it was too dark to see anything in the avenue except the dense masses of the leafless elms, and the dull grey of a starless sky. Within there was the glowing light of a large wood fire; but the lamps had not yet been brought in. I had no inclination to read, and, indeed, no power to fix my attention upon a book, however interesting, so I preferred the fitful light of the fire, and sat half buried in a deep armchair, telling myself that my long day of anxiety was over, and that all would be well.

The dream was only a dream, after all.

I was sitting looking into the fire, with my hands clasped listlessly above my head, when a sudden chillness told me that a door had been opened and that the cold night air was blowing in. I started up and looked round.

Yes, the door had opened and closed again; for he was in the room, my dearest, my life’s delight. He was coming slowly towards me through the deep shadows of the long low room. My natural impulse would have been to run to him, to fling my arms round his neck and sob out my delight at his return.

But I was taken too much by surprise, perhaps. My nerves had been overstrung, and for some moments I stood rooted to the ground, my heart beating violently, and that dreary coldness, which I had felt just now, freezing every nerve of motion.

“Oh, Gilbert,” I faltered at last, as he came and took up his position in front of the hearth and stood there looking down at me with that fond smile I knew so well, “Gilbert, dearest, I have been so miserable all day because of a dreadful dream I had about you last night; but thank God, thank God, you are at home, safe and well! It was like all my other dreams – only idle fear – idle fear for him I love!”

He did not answer, except with that tender smile. He stood looking down at me, with the firelight shining on him one moment, and in the next leaving him in deepest shadow, as the flames rose and fell like a sea of light.

“If there were any truth in that romantic idea about will-power you would have felt the force of my will today,” I said; “but I suppose that notion is just as foolish as my dream.”

“I did feel the power of your will today,” he said, “and obeyed it. I should not be here else.”

It was the first time he had spoken since he came in. He spoke much slower than usual, and his voice had a tone that was strange to me – such a dull, tired voice.

“My dearest!” I exclaimed, “you are dead beat. Let me order you some wine – some tea – something to restore you after the long drive!”

I was rising to go and give the order myself, anxious to bridge the distance between the butler’s pantry and the room we were in, and to quicken the dignified movements of the butler; but Gilbert motioned me back to my seat.

“Don’t go,” he said; “I want you here, dear love!”

“And was it really my summons that hastened your return?” I asked, thrilled at the thought of this mystic link between soul and soul. “But it was early this morning that I called to you – called with all the force of my fear and my love. I was panic-stricken when I found you had gone – the dream seemed like a warning. Did you feel that I wanted you then?”

“I felt your influence all the day. On the road, in the early morning, yes; in the spinney, yes.”

“And why did not you come sooner?”

“I was not free to come.”

He was silent after this. I took his hand, which hung loose at his side, and lifted it to my lips. It was cold as ice.

“Dear love, you are chilled to the bone. You will be ill if you don’t take some means to restore yourself. I must and will get you a hot drink.”

“No, no – stay, Bess, stay; I want you here.”

There was neither life nor gladness in his voice. I looked at him anxiously, waiting for the flash of the firelight. It flashed and showed me his face, ghastly, greyish white, with darkened lips and glassy eyes. “My God,” I shrieked, “there was truth in my dream after all. You are hurt – seriously hurt!”

I rang the bell violently, and rushed to the door screaming, “Mother, mother!”

It was the name by which I had learnt to call his mother. A deadly fear had seized me – fear, of I knew not what. That shrill cry of terror was heard through the house, silent and shut in at this hour. The vehement ringing of the bell alarmed the whole household.

Mrs. Strangford was the first to enter. She came hurrying in, alarmed and bewildered.

“Bessie, Bessie, what is the matter with you?”

“He is ill, he is hurt,” I cried; “send for the doctor this instant.”

“Who is ill?”

“Gilbert.”

I turned and pointed to the hearth where the logs were burning with a brighter, steadier glow than before.

There was no one there – no one. The footman brought in the large shaded reading lamp, and placed it on the table in front of the fireplace by which Gilbert had been standing three minutes before.

“He must have gone out at the other door as you came in,” I said. “He came home ten minutes ago. I know there is something wrong. I had a bad dream about him last night, and the dream has come true, in part. He was not killed, as I thought in my dream, but I know he has been hurt. Yes, yes, he has been wounded. See,” I cried, showing her my hand in the light of the lamp.

It was the hand that had clasped and fondled his death-cold hand, and it was smeared with blood. The smears showed faintly, but there could be no doubt as to their existence or their nature.

His mother ran from the room without a word, telling the footman to send off a mounted messenger for the doctor. I followed her to the threshold of her son’s room. It was empty. She went along the upstairs corridor calling to him, I with her. We searched for him in every likely and unlikely part of the house, but in vain. No one had seen him come in. The hall-door had been locked at dusk. No servant had heard the opening of any other external door or had heard footsteps in the vestibule or passages.

He had come and gone as the shadows come and go, and the only trace of his presence was the bloodstain upon my hand.

Then I knew that my dream-picture was the picture of that which had been, and that my call had been answered from the land of shadows.

•   •   •   •   •

It was after midnight when a carriage drove up to the door, and my mother and I – sitting silent in the room where I had seen my dear love’s white dead face – heard Colonel Walsingham’s voice in the hall. He was a very old friend of the family, the eldest member of that merry party which had set out in the chill autumn morning. It was only natural that he should bring the tidings. I had not an instant’s doubt as to his errand, and I don’t think Mrs. Strangford had either. He came in to us quietly, and our faces told him he had very little to tell us.

“You have heard something,” he said, with an amazed look.

“We know,” I answered.

And then he told us – a common story – a gun had burst, and the contents were lodged in the true heart of my first and only lover.

My dream was fulfilled to the letter. They had carried him on a litter of beech boughs to the nearest gamekeeper’s lodge, and he was lying there to await the home-bringing.

You will not wonder, now you have heard my story, that my hair was grey and my habits of life had grown grave and elderly before I was eight and twenty. But you will wonder, perhaps, when I tell you that the vision in the wood was my last vivid dream. I have been a light sleeper, and at times a very bad sleeper, for the last thirty years, but the faculty of dreaming for good or for evil, went from me forever after that fatal dream.

—

His Oldest Friends

(1890)

PART I

Maxime de St. Vallier was no longer a young man when he succeeded to the family estate of St. Vallier le Roi, which had belonged to his race from the time of the Fronde, when a certain Hector St. Vallier commanded a regiment of light cavalry in Condé’s army, and in the course of an adventurous career, including two wealthy marriages, managed to accumulate a considerable fortune, and to leave behind him the château and lands of St. Vallier le Roi, adjoining the insignificant Bourg of that name, which lies ten miles from a station on the Lyons railway and in the heart of a richly wooded district. There is no more beautiful château in France of its size than this of St. Vallier, with its four tall towers under steep conical roofs, its carved balconies and oriel windows, its decorated gables and floriated ironwork; a château planted on a knoll that lifts the dainty edifice just high enough above the rolling woods and fertile valley to make it a picturesque point in the landscape.

Maxime inherited the estate and a handsome fortune in stocks and shares from an eccentric bachelor to whom he was but distantly related, but who had been passionately in love with his mother before her marriage, and who had been refused by her in favour of a much poorer man. It may be that Maxime de St. Vallier’s early manhood would have taken a different and a better course had he known all about this good fortune which was waiting for him in the future; if he had known that at nine and thirty years of age he would be rich in wealth and lands, and endowed with all that weight and respectability which dignify the possessor of a fine estate.

“I should have tried to educate myself up to my fortune,” he said, “and instead of wasting my nights in singing-cellars and dancing-gardens, I should have been studying scientific agriculture and the landed interest. But the old fellow never took any notice of me, and I thought no more of him than of the Grand Lama of Tibet or the Khan of Tartary.”

Yes, he would have shaped his life differently, and might have shaped it better had he but known. The vision of a sweet pale face and pathetic violet eyes rose before him in the first hour of his new and unexpected fortune. That lovely face had vanished forever, as he thought, from Maxime St. Vallier’s adoring gaze, even years before the coming of his inheritance. He had loved the only daughter of one of Napoleon the Third’s generals, had modestly offered himself and the possibilities of a journalistic career, which had been full of golden opportunities, all flung to the winds. He had enlarged upon the great things he might and would do in literature and politics if he were but urged by the noblest incentive to labour, the responsibilities of a husband who idolized his wife.

General Leroux listened to his fervid harangue with calm politeness, and smiled the bland pitying smile of age that has forgotten the sensations and dreams of youth.

“I cannot marry my daughter to possibilities, however brilliant,” he said. “I am an old man. I should die before your efforts had begun to realize these great rewards which you say are within your power to gain. I should die harassed by the apprehension that my daughter and her offspring would starve. I am a poor man, remember. Lucie’s dot would not do more than furnish an apartment in a respectable street. And you, sir, admit that you have saved nothing, though you tell me your earnings on the press have been considerable.”

“No, I had no motive for hoarding.”

“No more had Balzac, or Alexandre Dumas, or Gerard de Nerval, or Alfred de Musset, or a good many more whom I remember – geniuses all; and since you have lived to the age of two and thirty without having put by anything out of your earnings, you can hardly ask me to believe in your capacity for saving money in the future, when your expenses are to be increased by the maintenance of a wife and a possible family.”

“I have flung away as much money as would support a wife and a home every year of my life, since I was five and twenty.”

“Yes, you have had a brilliant career, I know, and you have taken life at breakneck time, as if it were a waltz at the Mabille. I admire your talents, my dear St. Vallier, and I like yon, in any other relation of life than as a possible husband for my daughter. Frankly, too, the question of her future has long been quietly settled between her mother and me on the one part, and a couple of old friends of ours on the other part.”

“Does Lucie know? Is Lucie content?” questioned St. Vallier, with pallid lips and fast-beating heart.

No, he was sure she had been told nothing of this parental scheme, even before his question was answered. He knew that she loved him, and would marry no one else of her own free will.

“Lucie will know all in good time, and she is too dutiful to oppose the wishes of her parents,” replied the general.

He added some friendly words, he grasped the lover’s cold hand, and Maxime went out into the streets of Paris, feeling as if he had a stone in his breast in the place where his heart had beaten with glad emotions when he entered General Leroux’s house an hour earlier.

He knew Lucie Leroux well enough – knowing her soft pliable nature, her love of father and mother, her severely religious training at an Ursuline convent – to be very sure that she would obey her parents and marry the suitor they had chosen for her. It was hopeless to fight against his fate; the bourgeoise Nemesis called Prudence barred his path to happiness.

He went off to Algiers with one of the most brilliant imaginative writers of the day, and in the society of that gifted young man, and amidst scenes of romantic beauty, he tried to live down his love, and at least succeeded in finding life endurable, and full of inspiration for his pen.

He was still in Africa when he saw the announcement of Lucie’s marriage. The bridegroom was Charles Colnet, the junior partner in Colnet & Cie., a firm of iron-founders of established position and large wealth. Looked at from the materialistic standpoint of modern Paris the match was a good one, and General Leroux and his wife were to be congratulated upon having done remarkably well for their daughter.

Maxime’s business in life was to forget her. He was not able to do that all at once, but he was able to fling himself heart and soul into his literary work – embittered and hardened, but also strengthened by the one honourable passion of his life, a stronger and a better man for having loved nobly and in vain. From being known as one of the cleverest journalists of his day, he became famous as the author of a novel which struck a new string upon the seven-stringed lyre of earthly passion and heavenward-looking hope. It may have been this sudden blast of Fame’s trumpet which made the childless old sybarite’s eyes turn towards his distant kinsman; anyhow, his latest will was dated after the success of St. Vallier’s first and most remarkable story. When a man has been writing for eighteen years, and then in the maturity of his powers takes upon himself to write a book, it is probable that this first book will be better than anything he produces afterwards.

St. Vallier found himself a landowner of some importance, and furnished with means which justified his taking life exactly as his own inclination suggested. He might spend the greater part of his days as a man of fashion in Paris, where he could afford to set up a bachelor establishment on the most splendid scale. He might have courted notoriety in twenty different ways in the city of pleasure; and might have won for himself that ephemeral renown which is the most brilliant and the most intoxicating of all earthly glories, while it lasts. All this he might have done, and would have done, perhaps, had fortune dropped her favours into his lap just ten years earlier. But he had lived his life, had been famous in Bohemia as the scribbler of the squib and the entre-filet, pungent criticisms and risky stories, famous in the great world as the writer of the cleverest book of the season. He had no vanities or ambitions which Paris could gratify. He told himself that he wanted restful days, the tranquil autumn of a life whose summer was faded and sped; so he settled quietly down in the Louis Treize château, and for the first year of his possession devoted himself to the almost impossible task of improving upon perfection. If he could not exactly improve he could at least elaborate. The old man who was gone had prided himself on his library, had deemed himself a connoisseur in books and bindings; but his taste, though excellent, had been old-fashioned, and new generations are in advance of the old. So the wonderful collection of books new and old grew under the hand of the new lord, and a taste which was simpler and yet more splendid prevailed in the new acquisitions. As in the library, so in every room in the château, in gardens and stables, in home-farm and falcon-house, the improving hand was seen, the artistic taste was at work. Maxime St. Vallier made his campagne, as he called it, the religion of his sober middle-age. He told his friends that he only lived to expand and beautify St. Vallier le Roi.

It has been said by a French classic that the greatest luxury is that which is least observable. The perfection of the Château St. Vallier was a perfection in those minor details which in many splendid houses are neglected. Maxime’s guests found themselves lapped in luxury, but were never oppressed with a too obvious splendour or profusion. Every desire, every need of humanity, was foreseen and provided for. An unsleeping prévoyance attended the guest from his arrival at the station till his departure from the same place. Not till his friends were comfortably seated in their railway carriage did Maxime’s care, personal or vicarious, cease in their behalf; and were the journey long his attentions followed to the very end, in the shape of a carefully provided pique-nique basket, and as much light literature as the book-stall would furnish in the way of novelty. Hence it came to pass that a visit to St. Vallier le Roi was among the choicest privileges of the few who yet survived of that gallant band with whom Maxime had begun life at the Sorbonne and on the “Boul Mich.” He had not the temperament which makes new friends, and he clung with a warm affection to those he had known in the freshness of his morning hours.

Alas! they were so sorely diminished a crew. Life on the “Boul Mich” uses itself quickly. Of Maxime’s bosom-friends one had hanged himself in a blind alley; another had cut the knot of a difficulty with his razor in a miserable garret behind the church of St. Sulpice; and more than one had been sacrificed to the demon absinthe. Three had been killed in the war and the siege, and pulmonary complaints had accounted for others. The list of those who had fallen by the wayside in that march of life from twenty to forty was appalling. St. Vallier, who was of a thoughtful temper, had many a gloomy hour in which he pondered over the days that were gone, and the friends who were numbered with the dead. It seemed to him in these hours of despondency that fortune had come too late to be of any real value.

He might perhaps have fallen into a habit of settled melancholy but for a new and most unlooked-for happiness that came to him three years after his inheritance. Charles Colnet, of Colnet & Cie., went the way of all flesh with an awful suddenness early in the spring of that year; and in the following summer Maxime met his old sweetheart at La Bourboule, ill, nervous, and fragile as a pale March primrose – shaken and scared by the shock of an unloved husband’s death, childless and despondent.

There could be but one result of such a meeting. To Maxime’s eye, the pensive and ailing woman was more interesting, if less lovely, than the girl he once had hoped to win. And then what exquisite delight it was for him to watch the return of the old loveliness, like the gradual glow and glory of a summer sunrise, as the widow’s heart reawakened to the old love! Yes, she had loved him always, she confessed, when they parted late in September, she to return to Paris to arrange her affairs and prepare for a second wedlock, he to go back to the woods and gardens of St. Vallier, and to elaborate that which he had been elaborating for the last three years. He had to prepare the apartments of the new chatelaine. Everything had been pronounced complete from garret to cellar; but nothing in existence could be good enough for the new mistress of his home and the old mistress of his heart.

The wedding was solemnized in Paris a year after Charles Colnet’s death. It was a very quiet ceremonial, an arrangement in a minor key; yet the newspapers had a great deal to say about the bride and bridegroom, the wealth of the iron-foundry, the historical associations of St. Vallier le Roi; but most of all about the lady’s bridal gown and trousseau, her jewels and wedding gifts.

This was the beginning of a new existence for Maxime St. Vallier. All things took brighter colours in the sunlight of domestic happiness. But youth that is spent is spent. No man can make himself young again, least of all the man who has taken those strong years of manhood between twenty and forty at a swinging pace. The later years of that man are like the tired hunter’s return stablewards after a grand run with the hounds. The horse may have done prodigies between noon and sundown; but he has had his day, and must creep quietly home to rest. The most famous physician in Paris told St. Vallier to be careful of himself.

“You have burnt the lamp of life rather too fiercely,” he said; “there is, however, oil enough left for a good many years to come if you will only husband it.”

This was a sage warning, but it is difficult for a man who has won the fruition of his fondest hopes to remember the shadow on the dial, creeping on with slow, inevitable progress. St. Vallier gave himself up to the gladness of his new life, and to the delight of his wife’s society. She was charmed with her surroundings at the château, pleased at the idea of spending the greater part of every year in that tranquil home, far from the excitements and dissipations of Republican Paris. Her husband’s friends were her friends; and although there was a faint flavour of the Quarter Latin and the Bal Bullier still clinging to those old comrades, they were all of them men of intellect, and some of them men of mark – poets, romancers, painters, who had made themselves famous or at least fashionable; advocates whose florid eloquence had but too often made the forger or the parricide appear rather the victim than the criminal, and had found extenuating circumstances in the darkest story of crime.

It was in the second autumn of St. Vallier’s wedded life that a party of these friends arrived at the château, intent upon enjoying all the sports and pleasures which St. Vallier le Roi could afford – hawking, shooting, hunting, yea, even the music of village Orpheonistes, and the dances at the village fairs. Maxime’s friends were all men. Lucie supplied the feminine element, and brought around her half a dozen of the most elegant women in Paris: widows, or wives on furlough, fresh from their seaside holiday, or their “cure” in Auvergne or Savoy, Schwalbach or the Pyrenees.

Everyone was charmed with the château. Pretty women went buzzing up and down the corridors, peering into the grim seventeenth-century turrets, fluttering up and down the corkscrew staircases, with much music of light laughter, and frou-frou of silk and lace.

Madame’s friends were delighted with everything, but perhaps most of all to find that very audacious painter of Parisian boudoirs, Tolpache, and that daring analyst of the female heart, Vivien the novelist, on the premises.

“There is something very awful in the idea of living for a fortnight in the same house with two such men,” said Madame Evremonde, the banker’s widow; “one feels one’s principles in danger of being gradually undermined. If Vivien’s conversation is anything like his books—”

“Thank Heaven it isn’t!” said St. Vallier, “or M. Vivien would be intolerable. Social analysis is a very good thing to dream and doze over, with a cigar between one’s lips, and one’s feet on the fender, but to have to listen to the analyst expounding his theories – quelle corvée!”

One of the first inquiries from the lady visitors was for the family ghost.

“Of course there is a ghost – some sad story of a jealous husband and a murdered lover, perhaps, or a faithless wife shut up in one of those too delicious turrets?” said Madame Belfort, who was stout and sentimental – a kindly adipose creature, who offered to the fashionable faiseur the problem of how to make the best of a jellyfish.

“Unhappily, chere dame, there is no ghost.”

“What! in a château built in the middle of the seventeenth century – a château built when men wore long hair, and velvet doublets, and cannon sleeves, and Point d’Alençon ruffles. That cannot be! There must be a ghost. You have not hunted up the family traditions. A house without a ghost-story, a family without traditions, would be hardly respectable.”

“I said there is no ghost, but I did not say there are no family traditions.”

“There are traditions, then?” asked the stout lady.

“Yes.”

“Ghostly ones?”

“There is one that savours of the supernatural; but as I never yet believed in a story of that kind when I heard it told of another man’s family, I am not likely to believe in this legend because it is told of my own ancestors.”

“A legend! The very word has a fascination!” cried Madame Evremonde. “Please let us hear it.”

“Then you own to a ghost!” exclaimed Madame Belfort, who had the density of large bodies. “Pray show us the haunted room. I feel sure it is one of the turret-rooms, so quaint, so historical, so uncanny.”

“Again, chere dame, must I protest that no ghost – not the shadow of a shade – has ever been asserted to walk these corridors, or harbour in any room, garret, or cellar of this château. If you good ladies will graciously wait till after dinner, I will tell you the story of St. Vallier le Roi while we take our coffee.”

“It is a long story, then?”

“Not very long, but too long to be told in this passage while your maids are running about with your luggage, and while my chef is doubtless in a fever of impatience lest the dinner should be delayed so long as to spoil his best efforts.”

His guests took the hint, and ran off to their various rooms, Madame St. Vallier and her housekeeper going about with them to show them where they were lodged. Lamps were being lighted in the corridors; many wax candles were burning upon toilet tables and mantelpieces. As the great clock chimed the half-hour after six, all the windows in the château gleamed and twinkled through the October twilight. It was still early in the month. The evenings were soft and grey. The woods were still green.

The dinner was excellent. The guests were full of vivacity and light airy talk. The dining-hall, with its dark oak panelling, family portraits, gobelin tapestry, and Henri deux pottery, was a picture which delighted the eye of Adolphe Tolpache, the painter – a background which he was likely to use in many a little pictured tête-à-tête, confidential, risqué, suggestive. On the appearance of coffee and liqueurs, Madame Evremonde turned to her host, by whose side she was sitting.

“Your family tradition, Monsieur,” she said. “The moment has come.”

Maxime bowed a smiling assent.

“We’ll get rid of the servants first,” he murmured in her ear.

“That will do, Robert,” to the major-domo; “you and Jacques can put your salvers on the table yonder,” pointing to a table in a recess.

The well-trained servant understood the dismissal, and at once withdrew with his underlings. As the heavy oak door closed upon them, Maxime leant forward with his folded arms on the tablecloth.

“Now then for the ghost-story,” he said. “It is a ghost-story, but, I am happy to say, the ghost has nothing to do with this house. We have no haunted room from which the too-daring guest emerges, after a self-imposed ordeal, with his hair blanched and his brain turned. Our ghosts are out-of-door ghosts. The legend of St. Vallier is the legend of the phantom char-à-bancs.”

“A phantom char-à-bancs. A new manner of ghost, par Dieu. What does it do, this char-à-bancs?”

“Very little. It is supposed to be seen driving through the woods in the evening dusk; seen by the owner of the estate. A curious old-world carriage, a carriage belonging to a period in which coaches were a novelty, and when a Court beauty was known to barter her reputation for a gilt coach; a beauty of rank and social status, mark you, who had resisted every other lure.”

“We know our de Grammont, merci,” laughed Vivian; “revenez à votre char-à-bancs.”

“It is seen in the gloaming, somewhere along that wooded road which leads to the home-farm; at least, that is the traditional place. It is seen by the owner of the estate; and in that strange antiquated vehicle he sees a strange set of passengers – the friends he cared for in his youth, the friends he valued most, the friends who have gone before.”

“Que diable! Your estate is well provided,” exclaimed Tolpache. “Not a single ghost, not the old-established family spectre, but a whole company of apparitions, a coach-load of phantoms. Après, mon ami? When the lord of the soil has seen the spectral char-à-bancs, what then?”

“He is forewarned of his approaching death. If the legend is to be believed, no man ever long survived the apparition of that vehicle, the passing of those noiseless wheels.”

“India-rubber tires,” said Tolpache; “a carnival trick of some roue St. Vallier’s fast and furious friends. A thing done once, perhaps, in the wild days of the Regency, and exaggerated by rumour into a family custom. Histoire de rire. That is the way ancestral ghosts are made!”

“My dear Tolpache, if you are a sceptic, so am I. I no more believe in my family apparition than you do; only these ladies wanted the story, and there it is for them.”

“These ladies” were charmed with the story, and were inclined to believe in the phantom char-à-bancs. Madame Belfort insisted upon being told in what direction the road lay by which the char-à-bancs was supposed to travel, in order that she might take her morning constitutional on that very road.

PART II

When a man has a beautiful wife and a circle of intimates, however well he may have chosen his friends, and however long he may have known them, there is always a traitor among them. There is always one man who holds no law sacred where a lovely woman’s favour is, or may be, the reward of treachery. There is always one man who disbelieves in woman’s chastity, and who thinks every man’s wife a possible prize, if not for other men, at least for himself.

There was one such traitor in Maxime de St. Vallier’s circle, and that traitor was Vivien, the novelist, a writer who had painted duchesses from models picked out of the Parisian gutter, who had dissected and analysed, and poetized and bedevilled his own idea of woman, evolved out of his own very nasty inner consciousness, and who could not recognize purity when he saw it.

Hector Vivien was neither a shooting nor a hunting man, cared for neither foxhounds nor falconry. He would have bored himself to death at St. Vallier le Roi if he had been without an object. Every man who lives in the country must hunt something, even if that something be only a beetle or a butterfly. Vivien hunted Lucie St. Vallier. The calm, high-souled, beautiful woman was the quarry which he had chosen; and he fully believed that he should succeed in the chase.

“If not today, tomorrow.” That was his motto where women were concerned. Elated by a succession of facile conquests, he thought all conquests easy. Lucie’s matronly dignity was, to his mind, only the mask worn by all well-bred women. Behind the Roman wife there was always a potential Messalina.

He pursued his accustomed arts very carefully, varying his tactics in accordance with his surroundings. He was so subtle that neither husband nor wife suspected his motives. St. Vallier apologized to him for the monotony of life at the château. “You, who care neither for hawk nor hound, must find it a very dull business,” he said.

“My dear Maxime, you forget that I have to finish my novel, and find a title for it, before the end of the year. Nothing could suit me better than the repose of this uneventful life.”

“I fear you did not make much progress with your story yesterday. Monsieur,” said Lucie, gaily; “you were loitering about the gardens and the farm all the afternoon.”

“Dear madame, I was thinking of my title. That is the hardest work of all.”

It was to be observed that Vivien spent day after day in the same leisurely meandering between garden and farm, park and pleasaunce, or in accompanying the ladies of the party to distant ruins or rustic villages, or, indeed, in any direction that Madame de St. Vallier proposed for the day’s drive. He was not averse from riding, was a light weight, and rode fairly well for a literary man; so, having found a mount of St. Vallier’s that suited him to perfection, he took to accompanying his hostess and Madame Evremonde in their morning rides, and thus familiarized himself with every path and glade in the extensive woods.

Lucie showed him the spot where the phantom char-à-bancs was said to have appeared; a point where the footpath branched off from the road, and where a giant oak spread his gnarled and withered limbs, alive and flourishing on one side, and dead on the other – fitting landmark for a haunted spot. Vivien was very jocose about the char-à-bancs, but Lucie checked him with a sigh.

“What if the legend were true!” she said gravely; “what if some day Maxime were to tell me he had seen the phantom carriage!”

“You would guess, dear madame, that he had supped with the widow Cliquot overnight,” the novelist answered gaily. He was not going to encourage sentimentality about a husband.

October wore towards its close. A pack of English foxhounds had been brought over to a neighbouring quasi-royal château by an Irish nobleman, a man in whose family sport and fine riding were a tradition. The hounds afforded splendid sport, and the peer was a social success, dined at St. Vallier le Roi twice in a fortnight, and made himself particularly agreeable to the ladies of the party. It was curious that, coming upon the scene as a stranger, he should have been the only visitor who saw threatened mischief in Hector Vivien’s languid saunterings and close attendance upon Madame de St. Vallier and her friends.

“If I were a little more intimate with St. Vallier, I should try to open his eyes about that particular friend of his,” said the peer, communing with himself as he drove home after his second dinner at the château. “A fellow who is able to sit a horse, and yet does not care for riding to hounds in such a splendid country as this, must have some darker game in view, I think I know pretty well what the Parisian novelist is aiming at.”

Maxime had been completely happy during those short autumn days. He had not been husbanding his strength, for he had ridden as hard as anybody else, yet he had felt in better health than he had enjoyed for the last ten years, full of life and vigour, and with an appetite which made him think with a pitying smile of the days when he had trifled fretfully with the choicest entrée at Bignon’s, and disdainfully rejected the costliest primeurs of the season. He felt that he was rapidly acquiring the hardy vigour of the genuine campagnard, and that henceforth he might laugh at doctors and diagnosis.

The month was waning, and several of the visitors had left the château; but the party seemed only cosier and more lively as the circle grew smaller; “just the right number for sitting round the fire and telling stories,” Maxime said, as they drew their chairs in a semi-circle about the wide hearth in the central hall, a hearth whereon burned huge logs of red fir, exhaling aromatic odours; just the right number to appreciate Lucie de St. Vallier’s low sweet voice as she sang Heine’s ballads, or De Musset’s passionate love-songs, in the pensive hour between daylight and darkness.

“Ninon, Ninon, que fais tu de la vie

Toi, qui n’a pas l’amour?”

“What does she do with her life, this tranquil, dignified chatelaine?” Vivien asked himself; she who seemed to know nothing of love – certainly not of love as he interpreted the passion – a transient fever, prompting to all manner of falsehood and treachery; a burning fiery furnace, from which a woman emerges scathed and seared, marked with the ineffaceable brand of infamy.

•   •   •   •   •

The meet had been more remote than usual, and the hounds had gone in a direction that led farther and farther away from St. Vallier le Roi; so on this particular evening Maxime was riding home alone, having left his friends, Tolpache the painter, and the advocate Bartrond, to take their own line. He knew that his wife would be full of anxieties and morbid fancies about him, should he not return till long after dark, and to stay with the hounds this afternoon would mean a very late homecoming. He had left the hounds at three o’clock, by which time they had lost their first fox and were drawing a wood fifteen miles from St. Vallier le Roi. In all probability the fox would take them farther away from that point, and the day’s sport might finish with death or disappointment thirty miles from home.

Maxime was riding a second horse, which took him homeward at the rate of seven miles an hour, and the sun was just beginning to set as he rode out of a bridle-track through a thickly planted fir wood, and came upon the carriage-road which Madame Belfort had christened the Phantom’s Highway. Nothing was further from his thoughts than family traditions upon that particular evening. He was in excellent health and spirits, and was thinking how delightful it would be to get home in advance of the other men, and to enjoy a quiet hour with Lucie, tête-à-tête, in that quaint old turret-room which she had made her boudoir. How sweet it would be to sit beside the fire in the curious hooded chimney corner, talking confidentially, and all in all to each other, just for that one quiet hour before it was time to dress for dinner!

He rode slowly along, thinking of the woman he loved so dearly, with such a pure and placid affection; a love so strong in its unbounded faith; a love across whose brightness there had never fallen the shadow of change. He thought how blessed life had been made for him within the last three years, blest by earthly prosperity, blest how much more in this perfect and happy union, and his heart swelled with gratitude to Providence. Lucie had reawakened in his mind the devout feelings of early boyhood, the faith learnt at his mother’s knees; and now he told himself he might look forward to long years of this serene and full existence – years of prosperity, social influence, and wedded love – for all those threatening signs of nervous decay, fatigued brain, wasted strength, which had scared him when he consulted the famous doctor, had gradually disappeared, and he felt as fit for the battle of life as he had felt at five and twenty. Full of these self-congratulations, he rode slowly along the road, towards a sharp curve where the woodland opened upon a lovely glade, sloping down to a level stretch of marshy pasture, where the cows stood breast-deep in the flowering grasses.

The sun was dipping towards this grassy expanse at the bottom of the glade, a great crimson disk. As Maxime reached the turn of the road, and saw the glade in a slanting line before him, with that red orb facing him, he was startled by the sound of a horn, curiously faint, yet seeming near. Could the hounds have been following in his direction all this time? Had the fox, as if out of sheer perversity, set his nose towards St. Vallier le Roi?

While he was asking himself this question, turning in his saddle to look back and listen, a strange chill crept through his veins, colder and more sudden than the chill that comes after the sinking of the sun, and, looking straight before him, he saw a carriage approaching, and mechanically pulled his horse out of the narrow road to make way for it. The carriage was large and heavy-looking, drawn by four horses, and neither wheels nor horses’ hoofs sounded on the hard gravel road.

It drove slowly past him as he stood watching it; a char-à-bancs, filled with men whose faces were all turned towards him, pallid in the grey faint light; the face of Gerard de Nerval, who hanged himself in the Rue de la Vielle Lantèrne; the face of Alfred de Musset, who wrecked his constitution by drink and dissipation; faces of men less famous than these two – all gone before. One, his oldest, dearest, trustiest friend in the long ago, stood up in the carriage, and, looking at him earnestly, pointed with solemn gesture to the setting sun. The red-gold edge of the orb dropped as he pointed, and the day was dead.

“Ce cher Horace,” sighed Maxime, as the carriage vanished into the shadows of the wood. “That means a rendezvous. We are to meet soon.”

He rode homeward very slowly. He had never believed in this legend of the char-à-bancs, and yet the fact of having seen it, and the faces of his dead friends, gave him no surprise. It seemed to him, now that the thing was over, as if he had known always that he should see those familiar faces, and receive this warning of approaching death. Yet only a few minutes ago he had been rejoicing in the idea of long and happy years lying before him, a quiet leisurely journey, hand in hand with his beloved, down the hill of life. The effect of that strange vision upon him was like the effect of a blow that produces brief unconsciousness. The man who has been stunned awakens with a confused sense of time ; feels as if years had gone by in those few minutes of total oblivion. Not for a moment did he try to reason away the vision, to think it a delusion of a mind prepossessed by that particular image. To him the thing was a truth, a positive indisputable fulfilment of the family legend. He was doomed shortly to die. In the midst of his calm delight in life the fateful summons had come, and he must obey. He could not misunderstand that look in his dead friend’s face, the hand pointing to the sinking sun. For him, too, the sun of life was going down. He had fancied himself so much improved in health, so much stronger than of old. A fallacy born of a contented mind, perhaps. That decay which he had once dreaded was going on within the citadel of life. In brain, or heart, or lungs, somewhere there must be hidden mischief, and the finger of death had marked him.

“I’ll see what science says of me,” he thought, “and if the doctor’s verdict coincides with the spectral warning, I shall know that my race is run. There is always some comfort in certainty. I will go to Paris by the Rapide tomorrow and let Bianchon overhaul me.”

Having come to this decision, he put his horse at a trot, and rode rapidly home, arriving in time for a cup of tea, which Lucie called “le five o’clock,” in the turret boudoir, and for that long cosy talk with his wife, which he had anticipated. She praised him for his devotion in leaving the hounds and coming home alone, lest she should spend uneasy hours after dark. She was gay, caressing, charming, and it was exquisite happiness to snatch this hour alone with her. Not by one word or sigh did Maxime reveal the mental shock he had experienced; yet, in the midst of their light talk and laughter, he was thinking of a day near at hand when she would be sitting lonely and widowed in that room; and he was recalling the provisions of the will which he had made directly after his marriage – a will which left his wife everything.

Before going to her boudoir he had despatched a mounted messenger with a telegram, asking Dr. Bianchon to expect him at a certain hour on the following day. He would take the omnibus train from St. Vallier le Roi to Dijon that night, in time to start from Dijon by the Rapide. After much happy talk, he told Lucie that he had to go to Paris on particular business, and that he meant to travel at night, both in going and returning, so that he might be absent for the shortest time possible.

“But you will fatigue yourself dreadfully by two night journeys!” said Lucie, growing sad at the prospect of even this brief separation.

“Not at all. I shall take a wagonlit each way.”

“Be sure you do. And you will be back—”

“The day after tomorrow, much too early for breakfast.”

“I will have breakfast ready for you, however early you may be. I shall be at the station with the carriage.”

“I beg that you will do no such thing. A long drive on a cold wintry morning might give you a dangerous chill!”

“I am too hardy a plant for that, Maxime. The life I lead in these delicious woods has made me as strong as a lioness!”

“My lioness!” he cried, smothering the fair bright face with kisses, “Queen of my forests and of my heart!”

The gong sounded loud in the vaulted hall, signal to dress for dinner. Maxime hurried off to change his clothes, and to give orders about his departure. A carriage was to be ready at ten to take him to the station. The omnibus train left St. Vallier le Roi at twenty minutes past eleven, reached Dijon in time for the Rapide, and he would be in Paris in the early morning, with two or three hours to waste before he could hope to be admitted to the great Bianchon’s consulting-room.

He was full of talk and laughter at the dinner-table that evening, in the small, snug circle of seven, with the exaggerated vivacity of a man who is trying to hide a canker in his heart. Vivien, too, was unusually gay: told his best stories, flashed his brightest repartees, a shade more recklessly than usual; and it may be that if Maxime de St. Vallier had not been preoccupied with his own gloomy thoughts he might have taken objection to some of the novelist’s sallies. As it was he talked and rattled on, scarce hearing, certainly not heeding what was said by others, and hardly knowing what he said himself. In this feverish state he sat over the coffee and liqueurs till the butler announced the carriage that was to take him to the station. His servant and his valise were ready.

He took a hasty farewell of wife and friends, and was gone.

•   •   •   •   •

Dr. Bianchon received M. de St. Vallier before any other patient, although even at nine o’clock the great man’s waiting-room was crowded. He had met his patient often in society, and received him as a friend.

“My dear St. Vallier, I have to congratulate you upon the improvement in your appearance. You look ten years younger since you were last in this room. In what Medea’s cauldron have you been stewing?”

“My only Medea is my wife. My only medicine has been a year and a half of supreme happiness!”

“Ah, that is a kind of physic we often prescribe; but there are no chemists who make it up. And so you have come to tell me how well you are, and to get a little friendly advice that will enable you to become a centenarian,” concluded Bianchon laughingly.

A consulting physician has so often occasion to look grave that he gladly snatches any excuse for being cheerful.

“I have come to ask you to make a thorough examination, and to find out if there is any hidden mischief in my constitution.”

“Do you suspect anything?” asked the doctor, with his keen look – a look which suggested that for him the outward semblance of a man, coat and waistcoat included, was but a glass case through which he saw the inner machinery.

“No; I never felt better in my life.”

“And you deliver yourself over of your own accord to the stethoscope and the sphygmometer! Prudent man. Kindly take off your coat and waistcoat.”

Dr. Bianchon made a most studious examination of his patient, sounded, rapped, and listened, and then with a smile gave him a clean bill of health.

“Your pulse is capital, so we won’t trouble the sphygmometer, which I find very useful with my alcoholic patients,” said the doctor. “I told you when you were here last that there was nothing organically wrong. I can tell you now, in all good faith, that you are as sound within as you are well-looking without – no whited sepulchre here, mon ami,” with a friendly tap on the patient’s chest.

“And there is no fear of my dying suddenly, within the next three or four days?”

“Not unless you get yourself under the wheels of an omnibus, or by the side of some clever friend who will scramble through a hedge with the muzzle of his gun pointed at your ribs. Death by internal disease you have no need to fear. Heart and lungs are as sound as a bell.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Maxime, fervently.

“What put these fears into your head? You must have felt nervous about yourself, or you would hardly have come all the way from your country place to see me.”

“A foolish fancy. I am too happy in my surroundings not to fear. Good-bye; come and see me at St. Vallier if ever you can find time.”

“That is just the thing I never can find; but I should like to spend a couple of days at your château when all Paris is out of town. Unfortunately, when all Paris is away, there are generally some very interesting cases at the hospitals; and I take that opportunity to go on with my education.”

Maxime and his wife possessed a pied-à-terre in the Rue de Varennes. It had been Lucie’s house during her widowhood – a dainty little house entre cour et jar din – and here a couple of old servants kept all things in order while their master and mistress were in the country. Maxime had sent his servant on before him, and found a comfortable breakfast, neatly set out in the well-furnished library, which his wife had given him as his own den.

Small as the house was, and although all things in it were in perfect order, the rooms had an aspect which weighed upon Maxime’s spirits. There was an atmosphere of emptiness and desolation. He was glad to put on his hat, and go out and wander aimlessly about Paris, finding his way to the Champs Elysees, and the Bois, counting the hours till the eight o’clock Rapide would take him southward.

In spite of the physician’s positive assurance he was not altogether at ease. He could not feel as calm and hopeful as he should have done, under the circumstances. That vision of his old friend pointing to the setting sun, and looking at him with solemn prophetic eyes, was with him wherever he went, came between him and every cheerful thought. His mind travelled back to those old days, under the shadow of St. Sulpice, fifteen years ago, when he and that dead friend had eaten the vache enragée together, and when in the midst of their struggles they had been hopeful and gay. Then had come literary successes – for him who was dead, the poet’s laurel wreath, that withered all too soon, and left nothing behind it but the absinthe-madness, and a premature grave in Père la Chaise.

He had engaged places in the sleeping-car for himself and his valet. He was at the terminus half an hour before the train started, tired out with his rambles about Paris, and with the wakeful night in the express; so he took off coat and boots, and laid himself down under a fur rug which his servant arranged for him, and was soon asleep.

He must have slept some hours, for it was the voice of the porters shouting “Tonnerre!” that awoke him, and most of the travellers were getting out for supper. He did not care to eat or drink – felt weary in limbs and head, and composed himself to sleep again. This time sleep did not answer to his call. Two men in berths near his were gossiping in a subdued murmur, which was more exasperating to St. Vallier’s nerves than the loudest talking might have been.

“Know him?” said one of the speakers, “I should think I did know him – much better than he knows the women he pretends to analyse in those sickly novels of his. I tell you he is a lump of vanities – thinks himself irresistible – thinks that where he is concerned there is no such thing as virtue or honour in woman. A woman may have resisted every other tempter; but when he comes, he comes like Caesar, to see and to conquer.”

“I don’t believe he will succeed with Madame de St. Vallier, irresistible as he may consider himself,” said the other man.

“Do you know the lady?”

“I knew her when she was Madame Charles Colnet, and knew her to be a perfect wife; and yet I believe she was married to Colnet by her parents, when she was very young. He was hardly the kind of man a beautiful girl would have chosen for herself – a rough diamond, ce cher Colnet – but she never allowed society to see that he was not the first man in the universe for her; and if this fellow, Vivien, brags of her favours, he must be an arrant scoundrel.”

“He does not actually claim to be favoured; but he declares that he will be. You know his device: ‘If not today, tomorrow.’ I saw a letter he wrote to Julot, of the Sancho Panza, in which he vapoured as if tomorrow were near at hand.”

They talked of other things, and by-and-by the murmuring ceased; but St. Vallier lay broad awake till the train steamed into Dijon, and he counted every minute that must pass before the tardy morning train would take him back, stopping at three village stations on the way, to St. Vallier le Roi.

His wife was at the station to meet him with a coupe and pair, more fur rugs, and a bouillotte.

She was there to meet him, radiant, loving; yet his soul sickened at the thought that her fondness might be a disguise to hide a heart that was already faithless. Yet no; he would not doubt her purity, even though the tainted breath of the seducer had passed across her name.

“Is Vivien still at the château?” he asked carelessly, as they drove away from the station. He had lost so much time on the way with that accursed omnibus train that it was already daylight, and he could see his wife’s face darken suddenly at the sound of the novelist’s name, and he felt the arm within his own tremble slightly.

“Yes; but he leaves this evening, by the same train by which you travelled.”

“That is rather sudden, isn’t it? He talked of staying as long as we would have him, in order that he might finish his novel in the quiet of the country.”

“He may have found that his novel made very little progress, and that the air of St. Vallier was not conducive to literary work.”

“Lucie! I believe that man has been guilty of some impertinence to you.”

“Not the least in the world,” his wife answered, with a little laugh, which was meant to be reassuring; “only he has somewhat outstayed his welcome. Laure and I are of the same opinion in being tired of his company, and we ventured to let him perceive our sentiments – of course in the politest way – during your absence. Literary men are sensitive, and he was quick to understand the situation, and devise a sudden necessity to be in Paris.”

“God bless you, my dearest!” cried Maxime, clasping his wife to his heart. “If Eve had been like you, the serpent would have crawled out of Eden baffled and humiliated.”

“Dear Maxime, I really don’t know what you are thinking about,” his wife said gaily. “The whole business was as simple as bon jour; and I hope you will be especially polite to M. Vivien on the last day of his visit.”

•   •   •   •   •

Maxime had not the slightest doubt that Hector Vivien had taken advantage of the husband’s absence to declare himself to the wife, and that he had been repulsed with the fearless scorn of unassailable purity. He took an opportunity to question Laure Evremonde in the course of the day, and though she would tell him very little, her admissions, and even her reservations, confirmed him in his belief.

Vivien and his host did not meet till dinnertime. The novelist was in his room all day, busy packing, and arranging his papers. He travelled without a valet, and refused all offers of assistance from St. Vallier’s household. Consumed with rage and agitation, he felt that he could not trust himself in the society of another man’s servant. His irritation might break out at any moment and wreak itself upon some rustic wretch who had only offended by sheer stupidity.

Yes, he had wooed his friend’s wife. He had found his opportunity in the afternoon solitude of the pleasaunce, screened from the windows of the château by ten-foot hedges of ilex and yew, as secure from observation as in a forest labyrinth. He had brought to bear all those arts and fascinations which he had always found irresistible with duchesses – in his novels – and occasionally triumphant with middle-class matrons in actual life; and his reward had been the scorn of scorn: such scorn as a pure-minded woman who loves her husband must needs feel at the folly of any man who dares to suppose that he can supersede that husband in her affections.

The dinner-table was not so gay as it had been on many another evening. Vivien talked as much as usual; but an angry light in his eyes, and a keener cynicism in his conversation, indicated latent irritation.

Maxime, who had been hysterically vivacious on the evening before his journey to Paris, was now grave and watchful. He and Tolpache had talked together for half an hour before dinner, walking up and down the terrace on the edge of the moat, in the wintry darkness; and Tolpache, like his host, was silent and aux aguets.

The dinner was long, and the carriage was announced while the men were still lingering over coffee and cigarettes. Madame de St. Vallier and her friends had retired to the music-room, whence came the sound of lightest opera-bouffe melodies played by Madame Evremonde, who was passionately fond of the music that lives for a Parisian season, to be as completely forgotten afterwards as the butterflies of last summer.

Vivien began his adieux with a cordial round of handshaking, taking the men at random as they happened to be standing. His host was the last to whom he came, with sinister smile, and outstretched hand.

Maxime stood straight and stern in front of him, and did not take the hand.

“You know the old saying, Monsieur, ‘Speed the parting guest’?” he said grimly. “I have the utmost pleasure in speeding your departure, which I believe was hastened by the particular request of my wife.”

A quiver of surprise shook Vivien for a moment; but in the next he collected himself, and accepted the situation with all its consequences.

“I am leaving hurriedly, I admit,” he said; “but although I am in some haste to leave this part of the world, I can spare you an hour tomorrow morning, in the wood on the other side of the railway. I shall spend tonight at the inn in your village, and shall be at your service at whatever hour may suit your convenience, and that of your friends.”

“Tolpache, you were prepared for this. Loisin, I know I can rely on you?” said Maxime, turning to his two most intimate friends. “For my own part I have only one desire to express. Let our meeting be at sunset tomorrow: weapons as you please. That delay will give me time to arrange my affairs.”

He turned on his heel, and went to the music-room, leaving Vivien to choose his own seconds, and settle details.

He felt, in his choice of the sunset hour, that he was obeying an old friend’s summons, and accepting his fate.

•   •   •   •   •

The next day passed like a peaceful dream. Maxime and his wife were alone together for the greater part of their time, Lucie having excused herself from an excursion to a village race-course in order to be her husband’s companion. No cloud upon his brow forewarned her of approaching doom. He wanted that day to be cloudless – that day which he told himself would be his last of love and of life. He parted with her at half-past three o’clock, straining her to his breast, with one long passionate kiss, as he bade her good-bye.

There was despair in that embrace; and for the first time since his return she was startled from her happy security.

“Why good-bye?” she asked. “How pale you are, Maxime! Is there anything wrong?”

“Wrong? No, dearest. I am only going as far as the village, to settle some farming business with my bailiff.”

“You will be back to dinner?”

“I hope so.”

•   •   •   •   •

When the sun dipped at the bottom of that wooded hollow, where Maxime had seen it sink three days before, the augury of the earnest face and the pointing hand had been fulfilled.

—

The Island of Old Faces

(1892)

“The mourned, the loved, the lost,

Too many, yet how few!”

I have always thought that there is something mystic and unearthly in the light of a summer dawn – that early light of midsummer, that mysterious day within the night which lights the world while most of its inhabitants are sleeping – a glory and a loveliness of which so few of us are aware; a banquet of colour spread by Nature’s lavish hand, while her ungrateful children lie unconscious, or wander in the dark labyrinths of dreamland. It is sad to think how many troubled sleepers lie bound in the thrall of horrible dreams while the meadow-dews sparkle under heaven’s canopy of opal and rose, and every forest glade and every streamlet is lighted with the magic of sunrise.

Never had I more keenly felt the beauty of those soft gradations from darkness to dawn – the imperceptibleness of the change which makes the new day always something of a surprise – than I felt it as I stood on the deck of the Zouave, waiting while a couple of sailors lowered the dinghy that was to carry me to a tiny island which the dawn had shown me – a cluster of cocoa palms lying on the placid breast of the sea, a tuft of verdure in mid-ocean. It seemed no more than that.

Three months before that summer dawn my doctor had told me that I was overworked, and that my nerves were in a very bad state; so, as I really felt somewhat shaken, I placed myself in the hands of my nearest friend, and let him do what he liked with me.

What my friend liked was to hire a yacht that was to cost me four hundred pounds a month, to engage an intelligent young navy surgeon as my companion de voyage and ship doctor, in the event of anyone on board wanting medical aid, and to send me off to the South Seas for a half-year’s holiday. I was to do nothing and to think of nothing, to forget even that I had lately engaged myself to a beautiful and high-born lady, who had, I believe, fallen in love with my celebrity in the law courts rather than with my very self. Years and years ago someone had loved me – this very me – but when a man has come within measurable distance of the woolsack, he can hardly hope for that kind of love.

The Zouave was lying at anchor, and my clever young medico was fast asleep in his berth when I stepped lightly from the accommodation ladder to the dinghy, and bade the men row me as fast as their oars could go, to yonder tufted islet. Did they know the name of it?

No; as far as they knew it had no name. It was a mere speck on the chart, an uninhabited island.

The dinghy crept into a tiny cove under the shadow of an hibiscus tree, whose gold and orange flowers dropped on the luminous green water. I landed, and sent the men back to the yacht.

“You can return for me in the afternoon.”

“At what o’clock, sir?”

“Say three o’clock, and at this place.”

I walked away quickly, leaving the man saying something that was unheard by me.

Oh, the loveliness of that wooded islet in the pearly light and in the depth of shadow, where the tree-ferns spread and mingled their fans and made a canopy above my head, a leafy roof of texture so light that it trembled with every breath of the summer wind, letting in sudden arrowy flashes of morning sunshine and then growing dark again in a moment – a perpetual flicker of lights that came and went, amidst the warm green darkness!

The mosses beneath my feet were so thick and soft that earth seemed to lose its common substance, and to have all the spring and buoyancy of water. The air was filled with the scent of irises, jasmines, and lemon-grass that here grew wild; and the blossoms that leapt from tree to tree, that flashed out in gleams of vivid scarlet, orange, azure, purple, rose, with every flash of sunlight, or deepened into a dark glow of colour with every interval of shadow – how shall poor words of mine depict that splendid loveliness of flowers that were like living creatures, and seemed to flit past me on translucent wings, and flowers that sparkled like jewels and seemed to irradiate light? Among some of that brilliant bloom I saw clusters of purple berries. I tasted some of them, very cautiously, lest they should be poisonous; but they had only a sweet insipid taste that could belong to no deadly juices, and I ate a handful of them slowly as I strolled along.

I thought the island uninhabited, when suddenly a form that I knew sprang into the emerald vista, and drawing nearer each other, Lionel Haverfield and I met face to face, after many years of severance.

Until this moment I had believed him dead. We clasped hands, and he turned and walked beside me.

“My dear old friend, is it really you?”

“Yes, dear Hal.”

That was all we said to each other just at first. There was little need of speech between friends who were in such perfect sympathy as Lionel and I. We had been together at a famous public school, at Oxford, and then again in London, at the beginning of the great life-struggle, the young man’s fight for fame and fortune. We had been such close friends, had so thoroughly understood each other. And I had thought him dead. Was it strange that tears rushed to my eyes and blinded me for a moment or two, or that I flung my arm about his neck almost as a woman might have done?

“Lionel, I am so glad, so glad my fancy brought me here. I knew nothing of this island till I saw a tuft of palms on the horizon in the dim early light, and I had the boat off the davits and was on my way here, in a wild haste, to see what it was like. I am so glad.”

“And so am I glad, Hal; for my own sake, very glad.”

“For your own sake, and for my sake. Surely you don’t grudge me my happiness?”

“No, no, no. It is your happiness I am considering when I say I am not wholly glad.”

“But I am utterly happy in finding you. What need a man be more than happy?”

“It is of by-and-by I am thinking. When you go back to the world, and may regret—”

“Regret having seen you! Why Lionel, what a thought! Regret! Why, there is hardly anything in the world that could make me gladder than to see your dear old face. Upon my soul, Lionel, I believed you were dead.”

He looked at me gravely, but made no answer.. Then, after a pause, he said, “The world has used you well, I dare say, and you love the world.”

“Oh, I have what you called succeeded. I put on the pace. Ten years of my life, from twenty-five to thirty-five, were years of unmitigated drudgery – and then the reward came in a day, and after labouring in the trough of the sea, I found myself on the crest of the wave, floating along in the sunshine without a single stroke of my own, just tossed like a cork from success to success. But, in spite of it all, I am very tired, and this sleepy hollow of yours is ever so much better than the strife and babble of the law courts, or the row and riot of the bear-pit at Westminster. I should like to stay here with you forever, on an island which reminds me of the charmed repose that Odysseus and his companions found in the Western sea – an island where it seems always – no, not afternoon, but morning; the still freshness of the new-born day. Whatever I may have done, you have chosen the better part – rest, and for ever rest; no work, no care, only the soft sad lullaby of the sea, and the blue sky, and

“Flowerets of a thousand hues …

… the quaint enamell’d eyes,

That on the green turf suck the honied showers.”

I quoted Lycidas, remembering how he loved the lines, in those old days when he was a poet, and when we all thought he ought to have won the Newdigate.

“You cannot stay here,” he said, in that serious voice which was so unlike the voice of his youth. “The world calls you; there are claims you cannot deny. You must live out your life.”

“Yes, there are claims,” I admitted, almost reluctantly.

And then I told him of my recent betrothal to a young and beautiful woman – told him as unreservedly as I used to tell him all my thoughts and feelings, hopes and resolutions, when we were young.

When we were young, did I say? Why, he was young still. I had aged in the strife and turmoil of the great race for wealth and fame, but he, in this island of rest, showed no trace of the passing years. There was only one thoughtful line upon the broad fair brow, the line I remembered when he was a student of the Inner Temple twenty years ago. The face was the face that had looked at me so kindly in the summer dusk the night I started for Scotland. And when I came back from my holiday, somebody told me he was dead. Surely I had been taught to think him dead! I looked back, trying to remember – and I could recall a visit to his empty rooms, and the figure of his sister passing me in the street, six months afterwards, in deep mourning. I had only seen her once before, in the Commemoration week, in my second year at Balliol, and I made no attempt to recall myself to her. She flitted by me, and vanished like a shadow in the busy London street.

I remembered this dimly now, with a vague wonder that he should be here, bright and young, he whom I had mourned for among the dead.

He led me into the heart of the island, a wooded valley, through which there wound a stream of rushing waters, deep and dark in mid-channel, where the strong current swept towards the sea, but with many a reedy inlet and pool, where waterlilies, white and golden, lifted their shallow cups from the level expanse of broad leaves, and where the still water only showed here and there in patches of emerald light amidst the darker green of leaf and flower.

We sat in the shade of a cluster of coconut palms, with, one of those shallow pools stretching at our feet, between the low grassy bank and the rush of the stream; a level garden of waterlilies, over which birds and butterflies hovered and flitted, creatures of tropical splendour that flashed and sparkled in the light, too swift, too brilliant for human eye to follow them.

We talked of the past, of days that had been happy and gay enough while we lived them, and which when looking back to them seemed a period of unalloyed bliss. We recalled only the brightest hours – we remembered nothing of what had been distasteful. Lionel’s soft low laugh sounded in the balmy stillness as I lay stretched indolently on the grass at his feet, looking up at the milky blueness of the tropical sky, basking in the slumberous warmth of the tropical noontide.

Presently – I know not how it came there – her face was looking down upon me. Lucy Marsden’s face – my love, my betrothed of five and twenty years ago. Ah, what a lovely face it was! – features delicately chiselled, complexion of an almost alabaster fairness touched with hectic bloom upon the somewhat wasted cheek, a flush that added depth and brilliancy to the large violet eyes. I remembered how those pathetic eyes had grown brighter and larger day by day, and how I had noted that increasing brightness with an unspeakable terror, and then one dreary November her people took her away to Mentone, and I was told to stay in London, and work and hope, and look forward to her return with the March daffodils; and then – and then – Well, it was all a dark dream – that which followed upon our sorrowful parting. The letters, the telegrams, for which I sat and waited in my dismal Temple Chambers, pretending to read law, with my thoughts far away, following the progress of Lucy’s malady. It was only a dreadful dream, which I recalled shudderingly today, as our hands clasped again and her eyes looked down at me.

I sprang to my feet, and we sauntered side by side under the palm trees, and talked and were happy; I with a quiet gladness which asked no questions; she, sweetly, gravely kind; changed greatly, and yet the same. Gentle as she had ever been, humble as a child in her modest estimate of her own gifts of mind and person, I felt today an overmastering awe in her presence. I adored as a good Catholic adores a saint, but hardly dared to love her with the warm glow of human love – or to question – or to talk lightly of past and future. She was with me, and that was enough.

My mind was not troubled about my betrothed of the later time, the girl I was to marry early in the coming year, and who was said to have distinguished me by her regard. She belonged to that far-off world of whose existence I was scarcely conscious all through that golden day, while those living flashes of light and colour flitted over the broad white chalices, and the level leaves rose and fell with the throb of the water, moved with slow swaying motion by that hurrying tide in the middle of the stream, where a fleet of hibiscus blossoms marked the swiftness of the current as it moved towards the sea.

How could I remember the outside world, with its grovelling desires, its base ambitions, self-consciousness, self-love, envy, hatred, and malice, its sordid fight for pounds, shillings, and pence! If I thought of it for a moment in this haven of calm delight, it was only to think with loathing, to hate myself for the base desires whose gratification I had called happiness – the gold fever – the hunger for lands and houses, and empty honours, and petty distinctions, the relentless striving for success, the struggle to be just a little higher placed than this man or that man.

Here I was young again, and all my thoughts had the freshness of young thoughts, before the mind is hardened and the fancy staled by friction with the world of middle age; the cold, calculating period of man’s existence, the age in which he thinks he can do without affection if he can but achieve success.

My thoughts were the thoughts of youth; and every picture of those vanished years returned in vivid colouring. I lived again in the unforgotten hours, clasped the unforgotten hands. All I have ever lost of nearest and dearest were gathered together in that nameless island; father, mother, the sister who vanished, ah, so inexplicably, out of the sunshine and the playtime, before I had quite learnt to speak, leaving only the memory of tearful faces and hushed voices in a darkened house. All were there – the familiar faces, the gentle hands, the low, sweet voices of the long ago.

And if I wondered, it was only with a child’s wonder – easily satisfied. And if I questioned the things I saw, I had my own answer ready for my own question.

I had always known that the black shadow of death which swallows up all we love best in the early years, is but a transient cloud. I had always known that somewhere, somehow, those we love are living yet, and we want but the clue to find them. And to me the clue had been given. That eager instinct which had urged me to come to this enchanting islet was the spirit of love leading me. So my question was answered as easily as it was asked. There is no death. I had always known that it must be so. The God who made us in His own likeness will not obliterate the image He has made.

And so I gave myself up to the unclouded happiness of that golden day. The bright summer noontide melted into the mellow light of summer afternoon. My first day in this happy spot had long passed its meridian.

“And in the all-golden afternoon A friend, or happy sister, sung ,” I quoted, from that book which had been as a second gospel for Lucy and me – my first gift to her, the gift of small means and large heart. To my later love I gave diamonds of the first water, but my heart did not go with them as unquestioningly as it went with the little green cloth book.

Alas! The day came, too soon, when I could not read a page of that long lament without blinding tears, when it seemed almost as if I myself had written that elegy for her whom no ship brought home, whose bed of rest had been made on a hill by the historic sea.

“Sing to me, Lucy!” I pleaded; “one of the old favourites – ‘I arise from dreams of thee.’”

She would not sing; but we talked of the old time – the days before they took her to Mentone.

Something I said of never leaving her again. I had found my anchorage at last, I told her. I renounced ambition – all that the outside world could give. I would have no world beyond this coral reef with its mantle of ferns and flowers, its populace of birds and butterflies, and the friends of other days.

Those others came and went as the day wore on. Sometimes one, sometimes another, was at our side; but Lucy was there always, constant and true as she had been from the hour her faltering lips first confessed her love – blessed, unforgettable hour! – in a Warwickshire garden, within sound of the classic Avon. As she had been on that day in the gardens of her father’s rectory, so she was today, in the shadow of the tufted palms, in the paradise of winged creatures – just as lovely, as guileless, and as young. But when I talked of never leaving her, she shook her head gravely, and laid her fingers lightly on my lips.

“Dear love, this is no life for you!” she said seriously; “you will have to go back to the world.”

“Never, Lucy! This shall be my world.”

“It cannot be. You have seen us and lived with us for one golden day; that is all. You will go back to the world, and – oh, my dear, my dear, I am so sorry for you!”

“Dearest, why sorry? I say again that nothing shall part us any more – nothing but death! Death, did I say? No, there is no such thing. We will never part. This island shall be our home forever.”

“Alas, that cannot be! It is your misfortune to have found us. You will go back, and you will never be happy again. That is the bitterness of it. You have drunk of the fountain of memory, the fatal fountain which makes all that is seem worthless compared with all that has been. The world will be barren and dull and empty; but you must go back to it. Oh, my dearest, yours is so hard a fate! To have seen us, and to remember the days of your youth, and never to know earthly happiness again!”

I would not believe her – would not believe in that stern “must” which she repeated with sorrowful look and tone. My life was my own, to do what I liked with, I told her, and I meant to spend my life by her side.

And then we talked of lighter things – gaily recalling many a bygone jest, happy as the birds that shot with gleaming wing across the lustrous water. The tropical twilight came down upon us suddenly, like a dim grey veil, and my darling’s voice fell on my ear as softly as the murmur of a far-off sea – and then all was blank.

•   •   •   •   •

It was daylight again when I awoke, again the cool pearly light of earliest morning. I sprang to my feet, fearing to find myself in some different place – to have been spirited back to the yacht during that long dreamless sleep.

No, I was on the island still. There were the sleeping waterlilies with their closed cups, and their broad leaves heaving faintly with the slow pulses of that quiet back-water; there was the ripple of the current yonder, where the river ran towards the sea; and now and again, as I looked and listened, came the call of some newly awakened bird; but human presence there was none within my ken, as I stood by the lily pool looking about me. So I walked on hurriedly, searching for the friends of yesterday.

Through open glade and shadowy wood, by hill and hollow, over wide stretches of level greensward, through the moist hot tangle of tropical verdure, I wandered and searched, till the meridian sun made those open spaces intolerable, and till the fervour of my search had to yield to overmastering fatigue, and I sank down in the shadow of a great plane tree, tired to death, disappointed and almost despairing.

“Where were they gone? Why had they left me? How cruel to abandon me thus – to hide themselves from me! It seemed to me that I had searched the island from shore to shore; but there were forest caves, perhaps – secret sanctuaries amidst the wild luxuriance of the wood – which I, as a stranger, must needs be slow to discover. In spite of my utter weariness I meant to continue my search as soon as I was able to walk again. In my present state of exhaustion I could hardly stand.

I lay stretched along the mossy ground at the foot of the tree, staring idly at a vista of light and shadow, where clusters of scarlet lilies flamed like torches as they glanced here and there amid the foliage, shooting up towards the light. Nothing was changed in the aspect of external nature; and yet I felt that I was in another atmosphere, and the change in my own feelings between yesterday and today was a change from hope and gladness to dull despair.

Oh! the silence of all human voices after the familiar voices of yesterday – the sense of utter desolation that had grown and strengthened with every hour of that long weary morning, till now my heart sank within me under the icy sense of fear. I felt the child’s fear, who sees itself deserted and solitary in a place where all things are strange – the fear of the unknown.

•   •   •   •   •

Voices – human voices – sounded faint in the distance, grew nearer, louder – near enough to be recognizable – before I could walk half a dozen yards to meet them.

Alas! not the dear voices of yesterday. Coarse common voices these – the strident hail of one of my sailors, and then a loud shrill cooey, piercing this tropical garden; familiar voices, and welcome in my present humour; but bringing little beyond the promise of material comfort, rest for my aching bones, drink for my feverish lips.

The sailors who had brought me from the yacht yesterday came running towards me as I faintly hailed them. They would never have heard that low cry, they told me afterwards. It was the sight of my white clothes gleaming in the sun that guided them to me from the other end of a long glade. They had been looking for me since daylight, having come back to the island in the late evening and camped there, after an ineffectual search for me.

“We waited in the dinghy, in the creek where we landed you, from three o’clock till dark,” the mate explained. “Then, as you didn’t turn up, we went back to the yacht for further orders, and the sailing master sent us back to the island with provisions for the night, and the doctor he came with us, and we’ve been roaming about all the blessed morning on the look-out for you!”

My young friend and medical adviser came up while the man was talking, and was full of concern about me in his easy pleasant manner, which never made a trouble of anything. I had been more than thirty hours on the island, he said, without food or shelter. He was eager to get me back to the yacht, and in the meantime he wanted to ply me with brandy from a flask which he carried.

“Where are the people,” I asked him – “the people who were with me all yesterday?”

“My dear sir, there are no people – the island is uninhabited.”

I could not argue with him, or tell him of those whom I had seen and mingled with in that long golden day. I was heart-broken at the thought that I should see them no more, that my Lucy had been right, and I must go back to the world – whether I would or no. There are some things too sacred to be talked about except to one’s nearest and dearest, and I could not tell this light-hearted young doctor that I had been among the faces of the past, and that the recollections of my youth had been brought nearer to me than the realities of the present.

So I just let them take me back to the yacht, and allowed myself to be nursed through a sharp touch of fever; and I came slowly out of the cloud land of feverish fancies to remember those dear faces, and to know that they were the faces of those who had crossed the unknown river, and that for me on this hither side life held nothing worth caring about.

The first English ship that we spoke after my recovery carried home my letter of renunciation to the lady who was to have been my wife. I told her that quiet hours of meditation in the solitude of my long holiday had convinced me that any bond between beauty and youth, like hers, and a worn-out life like mine would be ill-advised, and must prove an unhappy union, for her at least, and that I therefore declined to take advantage of the girlish enthusiasm which had led her to mistake admiration for the famous advocate for love of the middle-aged man. My betrothed was prompt in sending her reply, which I found waiting for me three days ago at Aden. Only a packet of letters – my own to her – and a diamond half-hoop ring.

The atoms that were once those letters are floating somewhere in space, and the ring lies in a little silver tray on my dressing-table among other unconsidered trumpery; and, in the oppressive heat of the Red Sea, I sit on deck under an awning and meditate on the life that awaits me in the country which I must needs call home.

Oh, how barren and dry-as-dust it all seems! The labour, the success, the troops of friends – the friends of middle-age – picked up in the dust and strife of the arena, too busy to care very much if I were to drop and die in the crowd, like a mustang, newly harnessed, and dragged off his feet in the wild rush of a stagecoach team on the Pampas. What, is the brute down again? Unrope him, and leave him for the crows and the kites; and on with the journey, lashing the rest of the team the harder to keep up the pace.

—

The Ghost’s Name

(1891)

I

WHAT PEOPLE SAID OF THE GHOST

The most singular feature of the Halverdene ghost was that it never appeared twice in the same shape and fashion. The main fact that a certain room at Halverdene was haunted, and a place of horror, had been borne witness to by so many conscientious people as to be placed beyond the regions of doubt. There were records of the ghost nearly a century old; there were histories as it were of yesterday, all vouched for by witnesses most unlikely to lie; but the ghost, though an old-established fact, verified by nearly a hundred years of varied experiences, was by no means a distinct personality of Shadowland. The ghost was a very Proteus of ghosts; now man now woman; now old now young; but mostly horrible, and sometimes deriving its chiefest horror from a hideous indistinctness, a gigantic overpowering presence which weighed on the chilled spectator like a mountain of iron; a shapeless oppression to which he awakened shrieking, with icy water-drops upon his forehead.

Lucilla, Lady Halverdene’s younger, lovelier sister, called the cedar-room at Halverdene the room of dreadful dreams. She had insisted on sleeping there once in a skittish Christmas mood, when the house-party at Halverdene overflowed every attic; but vowed afterwards that not to be sure of the best match in the county would she go through that ordeal again.

When pressed with questions as to what she had seen, she answered, “Caliban, ten times larger than life. He was there all night. I knew of him in my sleep, though I could not open my eyes to look. My eyelids were sealed with lead, and oh, I had such a headache! He gripped me by the throat, he sat upon my chest. Never, no, never again, Beatrice; not for twenty Halverdenes would I endure a night in that room!”

Everybody in Lucilla Wilmot’s generation, a generation now mostly dust – for it was in the days when Lord Melbourne was minister, and railroads were a new thing in the land – everybody at Halverdene, in Beatrice Lady Halverdene’s time, regretted that the ghost should have chosen so fine a room as the cedar-room for its headquarters, since this cedar-panelled bedchamber was one of the most spacious, if not one of the best rooms in the house. It was in the oldest part of the house, the Stuart wing, which comprised hall and library, a summer parlour, and this large cedar-room which was known as the garden bedroom.

The old wing was on a level with the most delicious old garden in Yorkshire; or so Beatrice Halverdene called it when she came as a bride with the husband of her choice to the old north-country manor. A garden needs perhaps to be two hundred years old in order to be perfectly beautiful. This was a garden planned in Bacon’s time, and with many of the quaint features of that time still remaining, but without the sage’s more fantastic and tea-gardenish ornamentation, the mere suggestion of which in the famous essay might convince any reasonable person that if Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare did not write Bacon’s essays: for he whose lightest line can conjure visions of Arcadian beauty would never have recommended stately arches upon pillars of carpenter’s work, crowned with little turrets containing bird-cages, or “broad plates of round coloured glass, gilt, for the sun to play upon,” in his scheme of an English garden.

Beatrice in those early days of happy wedded love called that fair enclosure her garden of Eden; but seven years of childless wedlock had sobered her enthusiasm, and the union between my lord and my lady seemed hardly that of the Miltonic Adam and Eve. There were those in the neighbourhood who said that my lord cared more for the health of his hounds than for the happiness of his wife; and that an outbreak of distemper in the kennel would have distressed him more than a threat of phthisis in the partner of his life.

There are men with whom love is only a transient fever; lovers to whom it comes natural to love and ride away, and who, when riding away is impossible, are apt to become churlish, companions by the domestic hearth.

Those were days in which it was counted no disgrace to a man of high station to be a hard drinker. The memory of the Prince Regent, of Fox, of Sheridan, was still fresh in the minds of men. Brougham and other great intellectual lights were carrying on the old tradition. Port, Burgundy, Madeira, and other heady vintages were much more popular than Bordeaux and light wines from the Rhineland. Port was a part of an Englishman’s patriotism, almost of his religion. It was a sound orthodox wine which churchmen loved. Rural benevolence found its best expression in port. Your Lady Bountiful no longer brewed unsavoury decoctions of healing herbs and called that charity. She sent strong soup and strong wine to the weak and ailing, and every villager in England smacked his lips at the name of the rich red vintage of Portugal.

Thus, it was counted no shame to Lord Halverdene that after a day in the saddle he recruited himself with a night over the mahogany and a couple of bottles of his famous wine. It was counted no shame if his valet had to help him up the slippery oak staircase now and again, and was occasionally sworn at for his pains. My lord was excused even for occasional rough language to my lady; for, as the village gossips said, “it was a sad pity she had no children, and it was only human nature that his lordship should feel disappointed at the non-appearance of an heir.”

Horses, hounds, and wine were my lord’s idea of happiness. My lady loved her garden, her books, and her harp, and contrived to preserve an outward semblance of contentment under circumstances which might have driven a woman of lesser nature to open revolt against hard fate.

My lord had a house in Grosvenor Square and a park in Sussex, besides this manor and park of Halverdene, between York and Beverley. He was fondest of Halverdene, because of its accessibility from York, Doncaster, and Pontefract, where the frequent race-meetings afforded him the amusement his soul loved best. He had a small racing stud at Halverdene, but his best horses were kept at Malton, under the invincible eye of John Scott. The chief ambition of his mind was to win the Leger, or for second best, the Great Ebor.

After three seasons in London, Lady Halverdene withdrew altogether from Metropolitan society, and was to be heard of only in Yorkshire or in Sussex, generally in Yorkshire, where for the first four years of her married life there were large house-parties, and where Lucilla Wilmot found life very enjoyable, attending all the county race-meetings with her sister, and riding to hounds. But in the last two years there had been very few visitors of my lady’s choosing at Halverdene. Lucilla was always there, her sister’s only companion in the long autumn evenings when his lordship was away at race-meetings; but, of the fashionable world, the dowagers and wives, the young men and maidens, who had once filled all the rooms and corridors with voices and laughter, there was nothing left but the memory of those days when Halverdene House had been hospitable and gay. Visitors there were, it is true, racing men brought home by his lordship without word of warning to wife or housekeeper. Sometimes, after one of the northern meetings, three or four post-chaises would drive up to the door, late at night, and a bevy of half-intoxicated men would come reeling in. Some of these were underbred men whose talk was half made up of turf slang, and from whose society Lady Halverdene and her sister shrank as from a pestilence.

People shrugged their shoulders when they talked of Lord Halverdene.

“There is a mystery of some kind,” said old General Palmer, to a little knot of men at the Rag.

“The mystery is that Halverdene beats his wife,” answered Mr. Soaper-Snarle, the famous wit and reviewer. “We don’t call that kind of thing a mystery in St. Giles’. There it’s only wife-beating; but when an English nobleman turns brute and bully we call it a social mystery.”

“Is that true?” cried an eager voice, strong and stern of accent. “Is it true that Lord Halverdene ill-treats his wife?”

The inquiry came from a tall broad-shouldered young man, with a sunburnt face and a cavalry moustache, a man just returned from the Punjab, and to whom most English scandals were new.

“I can only answer for what I saw myself when I was at Halverdene two years ago,” answered Snarle, blandly. “Halverdene was uncommonly disagreeable to his wife then, and she looked as if she was used to it. There was nothing of the snivelling Griselda about her, mind you, but her resistance was quiet and dumb. She met his brutality with an icy scorn; but the house was no longer a comfortable house to stay in. One felt oneself on the crust of a volcano. Since then there have been very few highjinks at Halverdene. I saw her ladyship and her sister at York races last August, and they were both very nice to me, as they always were; only there was no talk of my going to Halverdene, although I was in their neighbourhood.”

“I have heard things,” said General Palmer; “but one never knows how much to believe. It was a love-match, wasn’t it? I was told so when they were married.”

“Yes, it was a love-match. Miss Wilmot was one of the beauties of her year – a belle in her first season – a ward in chancery, with a fortune that came very handy to Halverdene.”

The sunburnt soldier from Kabul had left the group and was looking out of the window. His half-smoked cheroot lay forgotten where it had dropped from his hand, and his thoughts were in a Devonshire orchard, where he was a boy again, fresh from a military school, playing battledore and shuttlecock with two fair-haired girls in white frocks – girls whom, by some right of cousinship, he called by their Christian names. The Wilmots and the Donellys were very distant cousins, but still it was a cousinship, and Oscar Donelly had many privileges in the house of the jovial maiden aunt by whom these orphans were reared. He was a favourite with the elder lady, and the girls were frankly cordial to him. He brought them news of the great world, of which they knew absolutely nothing. Even Beatrice, the elder, would have to wait three or four years before she was to be presented and spend her first season in London, under the wing of a married aunt who had a house in Curzon Street, and was said to know only the best people.

The young cornet sailed for India with his regiment at the beginning of the Afghan war. The campaign had been a long and bitter one, and the subaltern came back to England a captain, but not altogether assured that the hero of Kandahar was more to be envied than the cadet who played battledore and shuttlecock in the orchard between Starcross and Exeter. Home letters had told him of the Wilmots’ appearance in society – the sisters had been presented at the same drawing-room, and made their début in the great world side by side. There was only a year between them, and Beatrice had begged that they should go through the ordeal together, and had prevailed against her aunt’s opinion.

“You will not be thought half so much of,” she said, “if there are two of you.” The event proved her mistaken. The fact that there were two girls equally handsome and equally dowered, both bright and spirited and in the first freshness of youthful bloom, impressed people. The two Miss Wilmots were admired and run after wherever they went. No smart party was complete without them. When the two Miss Wilmots took influenza and were laid up together, Mayfair was in mourning.

Each had numerous offers between April and August. Both were difficult, but Lucilla was impossible. She refused some splendid opportunities of doing well for herself and improving the status of her family. Her aunt, Mrs. Montressor, who had married three portionless daughters with businesslike celerity, was irate at this capriciousness.

“Do you expect to marry the Pope?” she asked.

“I believe a triple crown would tempt me; but then he would be old; they always are,” said Lucilla, who had not been so severely educated as to trouble herself about the arrangement of nominatives in familiar conversation.

Everyone was surprised when Lord Halverdene was announced to the world as Beatrice’s successful suitor. His reputation was by no means spotless; his passion for the turf was notorious; but he was handsome, and had that grand open manner and rather haughty bearing which a very young woman is apt to admire; especially when she has seen very little of the world, or of the dark abysses that may lie under that fine candid manner.

No doubt in the beginning of things Halverdene was deeply in love, and a sincere passion gave fire and force to his pursuit of the heiress.

They were married, and for the first year of her wedded life Beatrice was completely happy. Then came the shadow of trouble, and then the cold wind of a husband’s indifference blew with deadly breath across the home paradise. Slowly and gradually the wife grew to understand the character of the man she loved. She heard stories of his past; she knew of damning facts in the present. Hymen reversed his taper, and the sacred flame went out forever.

Beatrice was what is called a woman of spirit. She had made her choice matrimonial, and had stuck to it in the teeth of opposition, disregarding her London aunt’s hints and insinuations, her country aunt’s prejudices and cautions. Having taken her own course, she was too proud to complain of her disappointment even to her nearest and dearest. The world only knew of her troubles through the gossip of servants and rustic neighbours, and from the cessation of all pleasant hospitalities.

Lucilla, who insisted upon living with her sister, to the hindrance of all matrimonial opportunities for herself, alone knew what that sister had to suffer, and even to her Beatrice never opened her heart.

The affection between the sisters was of the strongest, or Lucilla would hardly have endured life in a house where she was subject to the rough insolence of a host for whom her presence was often an incubus; but Lucilla was not the kind of young woman to be scared by any man’s rudeness, and she laughed his lordship’s attacks to scorn.

“You don’t suppose I stay at Halverdene to please you,” she said, “or that I care whether you are glad or sorry to have me here?”

Beatrice had urged her sister to find a happier home, even if she did not care to accept any of those offers which would have ensured her a kind husband and a good social position. Any home would have been more congenial to a handsome young woman than Halverdene, where the dullness was only broken by an occasional irruption of noisy racing men. Lucilla was adamant.

“I don’t mean to marry till I fall honestly in love,” she told her sister; “and I don’t want to set up a house of my own and establish myself in permanent spinsterhood. As for his lordship, je m’en fiche. It amuses me to quarrel with him. I am perfectly happy here. We have the horses and dogs, old servants who are fond of us, and a garden which we both adore. What more can we want for happiness? If you plague me about leaving you, I shall order my goods to be taken to the garden bedroom, and establish myself there; and then perhaps I shall see the ghost, and die, as those poor children did.”

This was an allusion to the earliest well-authenticated tradition of the ghost-chamber.

In the days when the garden bedroom had been a night nursery, two children of the first Lord Halverdene, a boy and a girl of nine and seven years old, had been frightened by some ghastly appearance in that fine old room, and had told their nurses vague stories of the something that brooded over their beds. The visions had occurred at longish intervals, and their vagueness had suggested childish dreams; but the death of the two children, which had happened within a year, had given a new aspect to the story in the minds of the superstitious and ignorant. The formless visions childishly depicted were placed on record as ghostly warnings fore-shadowing doom, and the reputation of the garden bedroom as a ghost-chamber was firmly established. A century and a half of occasional appearances had maintained the traditions of the house, and to hint a doubt of the ghost in the village of Halverdene, or even in the Vicarage drawing-room, was to be assured with gravest head-shakings that this particular case was established by indisputable evidence. Other ghost-stories might be foolishness; but the ghost at Halverdene House was fact.

“And nobody can tell me the nature and appearance of the thing,” cried Lucilla, taking tea in the bosom of the Vicar’s family, which was not too grand to dine at three o’clock in summer and take tea at six, for the sake of an evening walk after tea. “That is what worries me about this particular ghost. Nobody seems to know anything about him. When I slept in the room myself—”

The two younger daughters – both in the pinafore period of their existence – crowded upon her at this point, and nearly squeezed her off her chair, interrupting her with breathless interrogation.

“Did you – did you really sleep there, Miss Wilmot? How awful!”

“How lovely!”

“And did you see anything? Oh, did you see it?”

“No, Dolly, I didn’t see it; but I knew it was there.”

“Oh, tell us, tell us, do tell us!” with growing breathlessness. “How sweet of you, how brave of you to sleep there! Let me take your cup. Do tell us.”

“There is very little to tell. It was Christmas-time, and we had a big house-party. I had been dancing all the evening, and I was dead beat. I slept like a top for two or three hours; and then I woke suddenly in the pitch darkness, and I felt that there was something – something holding me by the throat and strangling me – something huge and horrible, with red-hot claws that pressed into my chest. I don’t know if I fainted, or fell into a dead sleep, or what happened to me; but when the housemaid brought me my tea in the morning, I woke with a splitting headache, and I felt ill, and shivering, and wretched for two or three days after; and then Beatrice insisted on carrying me off to Bridlington to get the ghostly feeling blown out of me by the:North Sea.”

“And you don’t even know what the ghost was like?” said Dolly, disappointed.

“How could I? The room was pitch dark.”

“How tiresome! There is generally some kind of light,” pursued Dolly, falling back on her knowledge of the stories of Ghostland she had read in gorgeous half-guinea annuals, among the portraits of beautiful peeresses. “The moon suddenly shines in through an opening in the damask curtains; or the wood fire, which has burnt low, flames up with a last flash, and one sees the ghost’s face, and dress, and jewellery.”

“Ah, Dolly, that is the ghost of fiction; a lady in a sacque; a gentleman in a Ramillies wig. The thing that haunts Halverdene is a reality, and the fact that nobody has ever been able to describe the thing goes to prove that it is real.”

Dolly and her sister listened open-mouthed as Lucilla soared into that region of the abstract where their young minds could not follow her.

“The thing that haunts the room may be an unresting conscience burdened with a crime unatoned, or a wicked soul that died and made no sign, and even in the grave is tortured with its lust of sin, hate, jealousy, wicked love – who knows? Oh, my dears, forgive me! I am raving. Don’t let me talk of that horrid room any more. When I remember what I suffered there I always get a little mad.”

“It had red-hot claws,” said Dolly, dwelling on the one descriptive touch which appealed to her juvenile ideality.

“Dolly, if you insist upon talking about it, I vow I’ll make you sleep in the room,” cried Lucilla, shaking herself free from the two pinafores.

“I should like to sleep there,” said Dolly, opening her eyes very wide.

“Yes, and die like those other children who slept in the garden bedroom when it was a nursery. That room has always been fatal to children. It was not the first Lord Halverdene’s children only – there were others who died ninety years afterwards, three children in one family – a younger son’s family – three children in one summer.”

“Had they seen the ghost – all of them?” asked Dolly, awe-stricken; while Cecily, the younger pinafore, could only shape the words dumbly with dry lips.

“I don’t know; they had been frightened in the room. The old woman at the lodge told me about them. They were nervous, sensitive children – not great bouncing creatures like you and Cis – and they died in one summer. That’s all the old woman could tell me about them, and she was nursemaid at Halverdene fifty years ago. But it’s very wrong of me to talk to you of such horrors.”

“We like it,” said Dolly; “we dote upon ghosts.”

“Silly, morbid little things! Why, all sensible people know that ghosts are nonsense. Come and show me your gardens.”

“She has a lettuce in hers,” said Cicely, pointing to the elder pinafore. “It isn’t very big yet, but we water it every evening.”

“You’ll drown it,” Lucilla told them. “It will turn into a watercress.”

They took hold of her, one hanging onto each hand, and dragged her out through the French window, and across the lawn to that obscure portion of the vicarage grounds where her children had their allotments. They were two funny little figures in long white pinafores, and plaited pigtails tied with brown ribbon, and they really were children, which was not so wonderful a fact in the early part of the forties as it might seem now.

II

HOW CAPTAIN DONELLY HEARD OF THE GHOST

Captain Donelly could not banish the thought of the Devonshire orchard and the girls whose bright faces had made the homely scene paradisaic. He was deeply moved at the notion of Beatrice’s domestic troubles. That she should be ill-used by a husband, she whose love should have made the meanest of men great and noble, she whom he would have loved kneeling, as devout Romanists love the saints. She was only seventeen in those innocent boyish days, before ever his battle of life began, as fresh and as confiding as a child. He would have deemed it sacrilege to tell her of his love – selfish to ask her to wait for him. What of this world’s gear could he ever have worthy to lay at her feet?

They had been boy and girl together, she seventeen, he under twenty, and his love had been but a boy’s love. A lad just beginning life in a profession which he thinks the finest in the world, with his future all before him, and the novel delights of uniform, mess, and parade ground, is apt to think just a little more of himself and his own ambitious hopes than of the girl he loves. It was afterwards at a lonely hill-station, where the long evenings hung heavy on his hands, that Oscar Donelly began to discover how fondly he had loved that third or fourth cousin of his. It was afterwards when a letter from his father’s Irish vicarage brought him the news of Beatrice’s marriage, that he knew how deep he had been in love with her, by the sharpness of his agony at knowing that she was lost to him. His happy-go-lucky Irish temper had made him ignore the probability of her marrying in her first season. He told himself that she would be difficult to please; he flattered himself that he had a corner in her heart which might help to keep out a stranger, and that after a few years of hard fighting he might go home to find her still free, and willing to be won. He knew how daring had been his hopes now that all hope was over.

He had only been in London a few days when he heard his old friend General Palmer and Mr. Soaper-Snarle talking about Lady Halverdene. His first duty was to his father and sisters in the south of Ireland, where he spent the second half of July and the beginning of August. That visit finished he set his face towards Yorkshire, a long cross-country journey from Holyhead; but he contrived to arrive at York in time for the summer meeting. He had been told that Lord and Lady Halverdene were sure to be at the races.

It was brilliant weather, and the old city was full of gaiety, and overflowing with visitors. Beds, even in the shabbiest lodging-houses, over shabby shops, were at a premium. Happily Oscar had friends at the barracks who were able and willing to put him up for the three nights, and on their drag he went to the Knavesmire.

He did not stop with the party on the drag, but left them in order to look for his friends on the grandstand, after a careful review of the carriages had convinced him that the Halverdenes were not among that giddy and unbusinesslike part of the community to whom a race only means picnicking among a smartly dressed crowd, with all the troublesome accompaniments of gipsies, acrobats, itinerant musicians, and beggars of every description. The nigger minstrel – otherwise Ethiopian Serenader – had not been invented at that period of English history.

The comparative quiet of the grandstand, though it was pretty well filled, was positively soothing after the noise and racket of the course, and Captain Donelly had no trouble in finding the people he wanted. They were in the front seat at one end of the stand, two tall women dressed almost alike in lavender muslin gowns, straw bonnets, and black silk scarves, a style of dress which would seem very dowdy to the modern idea, but which was then graceful and elegant. The reader may refer to “Nicholas Nickleby,” or to the illustrations of Balzac’s novels, where he will see a simplicity of drapery which is not unbecoming to a graceful figure.

Captain Donelly thought he had never seen a lovelier face than the one which smiled at him in the shadow of a cottage bonnet.

“Beatrice!” he exclaimed, holding out his hands, and seizing both of hers.

“No, Lucilla. Beatrice is so absorbed in the horses that she has not even seen you. How sunburnt you are! When did you come home?”

“Four weeks ago. I need not ask if you are well. Those blooming cheeks answer for themselves.”

“If I were a milkmaid I should curtsy my thanks for your compliment, but blooming cheeks are about the last thing a young woman of ton would choose to be accredited with. Pallor and fragility are the essentials of a fashionable belle.”

“I have had a surfeit of pallid beauty in India, and I am charmed to see health and good looks at home. How is Lady Halverdene?”

“You must ask that question for yourself. Beatrice, here is Captain Donelly waiting to be welcomed as a hero after his perils in the Punjab.”

Beatrice rose and came towards them. She was changed from the happy girl he had known in Devonshire. Trouble had set its mark upon her. In the old days Lucilla had been an insignificant chit of sixteen, with hardly the promise of beauty, while Beatrice was radiant in budding loveliness; a rosebud just expanding into a rose. Now Lucilla was the rose, and Beatrice had a faded look, but withal so noble a carriage of head and throat, and so exquisite a smile, that she was to Oscar’s eyes even more interesting than in the bloom of her girlhood.

She blushed as she welcomed him, and then sighed. The blush was for an innocent love-story that had long been ended and all but forgotten. The sigh came with the thought of all she had suffered since they two had parted. Then the woman of society asserted herself.

“Have you seen Halverdene? No! He is in the ring, or in the paddock, I dare say. He has two horses in the next race, both doomed to lose, I fear. Are you not glad to be back in England after that terrible war? What horrors, what suffering! My heart bled – every English heart bled – as I read of that awful tragedy.”

They sat down side by side and talked gravely, frankly, as if they had been brother and sister – talked of himself and of his experiences; but of herself and of what she had done and suffered in the long interval of severance there was very little said.

“You have a place near here, I think?” he said, by-and-by, when the race was over.

One of Lord Halverdene’s horses had come in a bad third, the other was nowhere. Beatrice looked distressed at the failure, though it had seemed inevitable before the race began.

“Nineteen miles. I don’t know if you call that near.”

“Do you go back tonight?”

“No. Lucilla and I are stopping at the hotel with Halverdene. We shall go back tomorrow evening; but I dare say Halverdene will stay for the last of the racing, and come home on the coach on Saturday.”

Halverdene came up to the stand presently, very angry at the failure of his horses, but flushed with wine, and with a kind of savage mirth which showed itself in his effusive recognition of his wife’s kinsman.

“You’ll dine with us at the Royal, of course. Captain Donelly, seven sharp, and as good a brand of Moet as you need wish to drink.” The captain explained that he was staying at the barracks, and could hardly excuse himself from the mess dinner.

“Damn the mess! I know all those fellows, and they know me. Bring as many of them as you like. We’ll make a night of it.”

“I’d rather come in for an hour after dinner, if you’ll allow me.”

“Do as you like, my dear fellow,” cried his lordship; and then swaggered away and was speedily absorbed into a group of rather disreputable-looking men, and laughing and talking louder than the loudest of them.

His presence had silenced his wife, and Oscar could see that every tone of that loud voice, every peal of reckless laughter, was pain to her. She sat looking across the Knavesmire with eyes that took no delight in the varied crowd, the play of summer light upon the landscape and the people, the movement and the gladness of the scene.

•   •   •   •   •

Captain Donelly dined with his friends at the mess, and adjourned to the Royal Hotel at nine o’clock. He found Lady Halverdene and her sister in a dimly lighted drawing-room, while from the adjoining dining-room came the sound of several voices and frequent bursts of laughter.

“Halverdene asked some of his racing friends to dinner,” Beatrice told him; “so Lucilla and I dined tête-à-tête, and have been moping here in the dark ever since. I think there is hardly anything so disheartening as an inn sitting-room for birds of passage, as we are. No belongings, books, work, anything. We have been looking at the engraving of the Queen’s marriage as if we had never seen that work of art before.”

“I should have asked the waiter to bring us a pack of cards if I had not been afraid he would laugh at me. We might have played Beggar my Neighbour or Casino,” said Lucilla.

“Will you join Halverdene and his friends in the dining-room?” asked Beatrice.

“What, desert you when you own to being moped! No, Lady Halverdene, I mean to be as amusing – or at least as flippant as a walking gentleman in a five-act comedy. How I wish I were witty for your sakes! Or, a happier idea; you two who have lived in the world, while I have been living out of it, can amuse me with a few of the scandals that have been town-talk while I have been in the Indian hills.”

A waiter brought in an urn and a tea-tray, and Lucilla made tea, and the talk soon drifted out of an artificial channel to the days that were gone, when these three had been happy without fear or even thought of the future. Oscar and Lucilla were the chief talkers, Lady Halverdene sitting in the shadowy region beyond the light of those candles which made so formidable an item in an old-fashioned hotel bill, and yet left a room so dark. Once there came a faint sigh from among the shadows, but there was for the most part silence.

Presently the doors burst open and Lord Halverdene and his boon-companions poured into the room, most of them like the sons of Belial, “flown with insolence and wine.” The talk became noisy almost to riotousness. Halverdene had obviously been drinking, and if his guests seemed less affected by liquor, it was only because they were hardened by longer habit, and that while he had been gradually degenerating into a drunkard, intemperance was with them a second nature.

Tonight he was good-natured in his cups, and he treated Donelly with boisterous friendliness.

“You must come to Halverdene,” he said; “you can go post with me tomorrow. We’ll manage to put you up: the old house will bear a good bit of squeezing, though my lady and her sister contrive to absorb a whole wing. Your fine lady is a bird that must have a very roomy cage, nowadays. Let me see,” advancing an uncertain finger and pointing first at one of his companions and then at another; “there’s you, and you, and the major, and Parson Bob,” here the wavering finger indicated a seedy man in a clerical neckcloth, “and the rest of you,” half a dozen in all, but to Halverdene’s blinded vision they may have seemed half a score; “but we can find a shakedown for her ladyship’s cousin; yes, old file, even if we have to put you in the haunted room.”

He stood in front of the empty fireplace, with his coat-tails under his arms, swaying backwards and forwards, laughing long and loud at what he thought a capital joke. No one noisier than my lord when he took his wine good naturedly.

This was the first that Oscar Donelly had heard of the haunted room.

“What, have you a ghost at Halverdene?” he exclaimed lightly.

“Dozens of ‘em. Not that I ever saw anything; but the ghosts have been there time out of mind, and the room they haunt is a plaguey unlucky room. It may be only a coincidence,” said Halverdene, sinking from loud joviality to a solemn whisper; “but any young people who have slept in that room have come to an untimely end. It used to be a nursery! a nice nursery, by Jove! The children saw something, took it to heart, and died. If Providence – gave me an heir – wou’dn lerr him sleep in that nur-er-y,” concluded Halverdene, becoming suddenly unintelligible.

Captain Donelly thanked him in general terms for his invitation, and declared his intention of profiting by it, not immediately, but at some future time. “When your house may not be quite so full,” he said; “though I am not afraid of a night or two in your haunted room. I always carry a pistol-case; and I think your ghost would come off second best.”

“Ah, that’s a dangerous dodge, popping at ghosts,” said the seedy parson; “generally turns out badly. You may shoot the footman who brings you your shaving-water, or a sportsman who has got up at three o’clock for cub-hunting, and happens to look into the wrong room. No use shooting at a ghost! If he is a ghost you can’t hurt him, and if he isn’t it may mean manslaughter.”

Captain Donelly did not court conversation with the cleric whom his friends addressed as Parson Bob. The old clock on the stairs struck eleven, and Oscar bade his cousins good night, and slipped out of the room while Halverdene’s back was turned. His lordship was standing at a card-table with his friends clustered round him, betting on the cut, in that highly intellectual game known as Blind Hookey. The captain’s heart ached for the lady whom he remembered so lovely and light-hearted, with life and its chances of happiness all before her.

Yes, he meant to avail himself of Lord Halverdene’s invitation. He wanted to see what manner of life his cousin led in her own home, with such a husband as the man he had seen tonight. He had not asked for Beatrice’s approval of her husband’s invitation, for he divined that she would shrink from admitting even a kinsman to the secrets of her domestic life. His blood burned within him at the thought that such men as those battered roués, those second-rate racing men he had seen tonight, were free to enter the house where a refined and beautiful woman was mistress.

•   •   •   •   •

Captain Donelly travelled further north, spent a fortnight at a friend’s shooting lodge in Argyleshire, shot a good many head of game, tramped over a good many miles of heather, ate a good many bannocks, drank his share of the famous Lochiel whisky, and bored himself stupendously. His heart was not in the business, and his friends found it out.

“You are a deuced good shot,” said one of them, “but a damned dull companion;” and Donelly owned that he was out of spirits and unhappy about someone whom he – whom he cared for.

He could not get Beatrice Halverdene’s face out of his mind, with its wan smile and frequent look of pain. He could not forget Halverdene’s brutal manner, the drunken laughter, the thickened utterance, and, worst of all, the raffish dissipated companions, the reprobates who were allowed to sit at meat and drink with this drunken sinner’s wife.

To think that she had married this man for love, and that the first year of her wedded life had been an idyll! His home letters had told him, in a young sister’s enthusiastic language, of Lady Halverdene’s happy marriage, adoring, and adored by her husband. It was not his coronet that had won her. She had married for love.

That yearning to see more of the woman he had loved in his boyhood grew upon Oscar Donelly in the lonely Scottish hills. His companions of the shooting lodge were sportsmen and nothing more. Their everlasting talk of sport wearied him. He was among them, but not of them; and one morning he pretended that his letters brought him an urgent summons southward, on family business, and a post-chaise took him to Glasgow the following afternoon in time for the coach which left that city at eight in the evening.

It was evening again when he left York in another post-chaise on his way to Halverdene, and it was past ten o’clock when he alighted from the chaise in front of the Queen Anne doorway, with its stone shell-shaped pediment, and tall narrow window on either side; windows within which the light showed dimly, as if the hall of the mansion were but sparely lighted.

“I hope everyone has not gone to bed,” thought Oscar.

He felt that this night attack was rather a desperate style of acting upon a general invitation; but Lord Halverdene was not a man with whom he need be over-ceremonious, and the captain wanted to take his lordship’s household by surprise, in order to arrive at the better knowledge of his cousin’s domestic life. And yet, alas! what good could come of that knowledge to the lady or to himself? If her husband were unkind, what could he do to help her? If her life were unhappy, what could he do to make it happier?

A sleepy-looking servant opened the door and admitted him into a large and lofty hall, paved with black and white marble, and adorned with the most conventional and uninteresting of family portraits. The weather had been wet and gusty from early morning, when Captain Donelly left Newcastle outside the mail coach, preferring to be wet in the open air than to be dry in a stuffy vehicle with its full complement of passengers. He was chilled to the bone, and he looked almost resentfully at the wide fireplace with its sculptured marble chimney-piece surmounted by a bust of Minerva, forgetting that it was only the first week in September, and that people were still pretending to think it summer.

“Be good enough to bring in my portmanteau, and pay the postilion for me,” said Oscar, counting some money into the sleepy footman’s palm.

“Yes, I’ll see to that,” the footman answered in rather an offhand tone. “You’re the person that was sent for, I suppose?”

“The person that was sent for! What do you mean? I am Captain Donelly; her ladyship’s cousin.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” stammered the man, much humbled; “there was a person expected – from York – and I thought, seeing the portmanteau – and – I beg your pardon, sir.”

“His lordship is at home, I conclude?”

“Yes, sir, but he is not very well, and he went to bed two hours ago. Her ladyship and Miss Wilmot are in the morning-room. If you’ll step this way, sir, I’ll look to your portmanteau afterwards.”

He led the way to a room at the other end of a long narrow corridor, which looked of older date than the entrance hall, flung open the door with the true London air, and announced—

“Captain Donelly.”

The sisters were seated far apart, Lucilla at the piano, but not playing. Lady Halverdene half hidden in a large armchair by the fireplace, where there was a cheery little fire, which revived Oscar’s sinking spirits almost as much as the sight of his cousins.

“Oscar!” they cried simultaneously, and in neither face was there any pleasure mingled with the look of surprise.

It was not a cheering welcome. Captain Donelly could hardly misread the face of his cousin Beatrice, which expressed something akin to fear.

“You didn’t expect me,” he said, “but I hope you are not vexed with me for taking his lordship at his word so completely, and bursting in upon you without notice. You remember he said I might come at any time, there would always be room for me, even if it were only the ghost’s room,” he concluded, trying to be jocose.

“Yes, I remember,” answered Beatrice, looking from her visitor to her sister with such obvious embarrassment that Oscar felt he ought not to remain, even although she was his kinswoman, and he had travelled a night and a day for the sole purpose of finding out what her home life was like.

“I see that my unexpected arrival embarrasses you,” he said. “I have been very inconsiderate. A man’s invitation counts for nothing when there is a lady in the case. I ought to have waited for you to ask me here. And I am so atrociously late, too. I thought I should have been here by eight o’clock at the latest, but the Newcastle Lightning is about the slowest coach I ever travelled by. If there is an inn within a walk I’ll go there for tonight. I can come back to breakfast with you tomorrow morning; and then you can decide at your leisure whether you would like to have me for a few days or not. If Halverdene is ill you may prefer to be without visitors.”

“Nonsense!” cried Lucilla. “Of course you must stay; even if we do put you in the ghost-room,” she added, as if answering a look of her sister’s. “Would you mind? It is really one of the best rooms in the house – and as the ghost is so very shifty and intangible nobody need be afraid of him, need they?”

“I would not be afraid if he were the most palpable and clearly defined apparition in England,” said Donelly, trying to infuse some cheerfulness into the situation.

Lucilla rang and ordered the cedar-room to be got ready for Captain Donelly.

“Be sure there is a good fire, and that everything is thoroughly aired,” she said peremptorily; “and see that Captain Donelly’s portmanteau is unpacked for him. And you must have supper,” she said to Oscar, taking the matter into her own hands, while Lady Halverdene sat inert, and apparently uninterested, looking at the fire. “I dare say you dined early, and perhaps badly into the bargain.”

“Both,” admitted Oscar; and Lucilla gave her orders for a snug little supper to be served in the room where they were sitting.

Her cousin could but admire her grace and brightness, her prompt decided way of settling things. All of energy and vivacity that Beatrice had once possessed – and he recalled the light-hearted shuttle-cock player in the Devonshire orchard – seemed to have left her. Tonight she was dull and silent, and it wounded him to think that she was bored and annoyed by his uninvited presence.

“Come and sit by the fire,” said Lucilla, “Beatrice is out of spirits because of his lordship’s illness. You mustn’t mind her.”

“But I do mind. I feel very sorry to have intruded at such a time. Is Lord Halverdene really very ill?”

“Yes, he is very bad.”

“What is it?”

“The doctors hardly give it a name. You know how mysterious doctors are. It is some kind of nervous complaint. They say it has been coming on for a long while, and that is about all they say. We have sent to York for a skilled attendant; and in the meantime Halverdene’s valet is a very good nurse. There is no use in Beatrice moping. She can do nothing.”

“That is the saddest part of it all,” said Lady Halverdene, and then relapsed into silence.

“What a delightful room!” said Oscar, looking about, and admiring the panelled walls and low ceiling with its carved oak cross-beams.

“Yes, it is one of the old rooms. This wing was built in Charles II.’s time, when the place was only a hunting-lodge; the Queen Anne front and wings were added fifty years later, so that the principal part of the mansion is only an afterthought! Your quarters are close by. I am very fond of this room, and Beatrice and his lordship are kind enough to let me call it my own, as it is in the unpopular end of the house, and nobody cares about it.”

“I hope the ghost doesn’t intrude here.”

“Oh no; he, she, or it is a conscientious ghost, and never breaks bounds.”

And then Lucilla told him how she had spent one night in the haunted room for her own pleasure, and he questioned her as to what she had seen there.

“I don’t believe I saw anything – really,” she said. “Looking back at my experience in the sober light of common sense, I think the thing which scared me was only a bad dream – a very horrid dream – of the nightmare nature; the sense of some huge indescribable presence squatting on my chest, weighing me down into a bottomless pit of horror and suffocation. I went there prepared to be frightened, and the hideousness – the horrid feeling of the visitation – was quite equal to my darkest imaginings; but after all I believe it was only a dream, and that my own imagination was to blame for all I suffered.”

Oscar moved about the room looking at the books and china, the pictures, which were few but good, and lastly at a row of miniatures mounted upon faded red velvet, which hung upon a panel near the fireplace.

“These are interesting,” he said. “Family portraits, I conclude?”

“Yes, those two at the top are the boy and girl who used to sleep in the cedar nursery, and who both died. I believe that was what first gave the room its evil repute. And after, when another occupant of the room died young, people talked of it as an unlucky room, and it began to be considered fatal.”

“It was not fatal to you, I am glad to think.”

“No, and it is not going to be fatal to you, unless those servants are careless in the matter of airing things. Perhaps you would like to see the room before you sup?”

“Very much. I should like to make what our neighbours call un brin de toilette before I sit down to eat with my esteemed cousins.”

“Then let it be only un brin” said Lucilla; “don’t put yourself into dress clothes at this hour of the night, just because Beatrice and I are in evening gowns.”

“I will do nothing that will deprive me of your society for more than ten minutes,” said Oscar, gallantly; “but I am dying to see the ghost-room.”

“You shall not be allowed to expire,” Lucilla said gaily, as she rang the bell.

Her life and brightness charmed him. He began to wonder whether he had ever been in love with Beatrice – poor Beatrice, sitting by the fire, dull and despondent, weighed down by anxiety about a sick husband who was reported to have neglected and ill-used her when he was well. Oscar pitied the downtrodden wife with all his heart; but he found it very difficult to associate her with the sparkling young beauty of the Devonian village. The sparkling beauty was here, but her name was no longer Beatrice. She was Lucilla, whose brilliant eyes, sunny curls, and white shoulders shone out in the sombre old panelled parlour, a revelation of unexpected beauty; Lucilla, of whom his earlier memories could only recall pigtails and a pinafore.

He was conducted to a room close by – the room, a spacious wainscoted chamber with three windows, one opening to the ground, a noble fire burning in a wide iron grate with old-fashioned hobs and an elaborately floriated back. The bedstead was a fine mahogany four-poster, with slim-fluted columns and handsome green silk curtains, nothing hearse-like or gloomy about it. Altogether, the room in the light of that glorious coal and wood fire, and with a pair of candles alight on the dressing-table, had a cheerful and comfortable aspect. The footman had unpacked the portmanteau, had laid out brushes, and combs, and razors on the dressing-table, and placed all things ready for the guest. Oscar made a rapid toilet, and returned to the sitting-room, splendid in a dark brown coat, and a black velvet waistcoat worked with gold thread, and one of those all-conquering black satin stocks which are familiar to us in the early portraits of Dickens and D’Orsay. He felt that although he had been forbidden to put on evening dress he was not looking his worst.

A light impromptu supper was laid on a Pembroke table near the fire, and the trio sat down together in the friendliest way. Lucilla carved a chicken with skill and aplomb – those were the days in which a lady was expected to be able to carve – while Oscar operated upon a ham. The footman opened a champagne bottle and filled the three tall narrow glasses. ‘No butler had appeared on the scene, and Oscar concluded that functionary had gone to bed before his arrival.

Lucilla persuaded her sister to eat a little chicken and drink a little wine.

“You had positively nothing at dinner,” she said; “you are killing yourself,” at which Lady Halverdene looked at her reproachfully, and then with an evident effort put on an appearance of cheerfulness, and finally, beguiled into self-forgetfulness, joined in the light talk of the other two, and seemed almost happy.

They sat talking till the fire went out, and a loud clock in the distance struck twelve.

“Every stroke sounds a reproach,” said Lucilla. “Upon my word, Oscar, you have tempted us into most unholy dissipation. Do you know that we usually light our chamber candlesticks and stalk solemnly up to bed at half-past ten?”

“I am ashamed of having made you so late.”

“You have done us a kindness,” said Lady Halverdene. “The nights are always too long when one is anxious.”

“You ought not to be so anxious,” Oscar said cheerfully; “with his lordship’s fine physique he is sure to pull through, whatever the nature of his illness. He is the kind of man to make a good fight for life.”

The candles were lighted. The footman reappeared, sleepier than ever, to put out the lights in the sitting-room. The little party dispersed, the two ladies to their distant apartments, the captain to his room close by, and silence and darkness came down upon the lonely country house.

III

HOW CAPTAIN DONELLY MET THE GHOST

In spite of the fact that he was in a house whose master lay seriously ill – a fact which, no doubt, ought to have saddened him – Oscar Donelly was in excellent spirits as he paced slowly about the spacious cedar bedroom in the cheerful firelight. He had just made a discovery which had gladdened him, which opened up a bright vista of possible happiness. He had found out that his romantic passion for Beatrice Halverdene – the flame which had been fed by absence and fond imaginings – had burnt itself out, and that a newer and brighter flame had risen from the ashes of the old love.

He was in love with Lucilla – Lucilla, with whom he had an indisputable right to be in love if he pleased, and who was free to respond to his passion. Lucilla, who by the brightness of her smiles and the friendly accents of her voice, by all her pretty cares for his comfort, and the unqualified cordiality of her welcome, had shown him that he was by no means disagreeable in her eyes.

He walked up and down in the fireglow, thinking of her looks, her words, her vivacious turns of speech, her arch smiles, her shrewd common sense; and anon meditating ways and means, and wondering whether he were financially worthy. He was neither rich nor poor. A dear old maiden aunt had left him an income which made him independent of his father, who had a small estate in County Limerick which must come to his only son by-and-by. The look-out was by no means desperate. He could afford to sell out and settle in Yorkshire, if Lucilla wanted to be near her sister. He had seen a good deal of hard fighting. He loved his profession, and would leave the army with regret; but Lucilla was worth a sacrifice. He was sure she would want to stay near her sister. She was the stronger spirit, the protector, the guardian angel. One brief hour of Halverdene’s society had been enough to show him that some such sustaining influence was needful for Halverdene’s wife.

He replenished his fire, heaping up the coals from a big copper scuttle, and looked about the room, admiring the play of light and shadow on the rich brown wainscote, the bright glints on the green silk curtains and pierced brass fender.

He had forgotten all ghostly traditions when he lay down to rest, full of happy fancies about the home that he was to create for Lucilla and himself within a few miles of Halverdene. A smallish house would do, if it were pretty, and picturesque as to situation. There must be a good stable, and some shooting; and no doubt he would have the run of the Halverdene covers.

The bed was of the old-fashioned luxurious order. A delightful bed for a good sleeper, a downy paradise for the first half-hour, but after that half-hour a couch of fever and unrest to the wakeful occupant. Happily, Oscar was tired with many hours of journeying on the top of stage coaches, and, while bodily weary, he had a mind at ease, no carking cares to pluck him from the verge of slumber’s comfortable abyss. So for him the bed of downy feathers was the gate of paradise, and he was speedily threading dreamland’s fairest labyrinth, albeit Lucilla had christened that very chamber the room of dreadful dreams.

He had laughed at the notion of supernatural manifestations. He had slept the long deep sleep of youth and health and hope.

A wan and sickly daylight was in the room when he woke suddenly to a revelation of horror, which in its spectral hideousness and its grim reality was worse than any vision of dread that Lucilla’s stories had suggested to his imagination last night. A figure was kneeling upon the bed, crouching over him, with the strong grip of a burning hand upon his throat. A face, pallid and ghastly, was bending down close against his face, and two fiery eyes were glaring into his eyes.

If this were the ghost, verily it was a vision of fear to bring death or madness upon any young and sensitive creature that looked upon it. He who had never quailed before the Afghan guns, the savage Afghan faces, felt his blood run cold and his heart beat faster.

His first thought between sleeping and waking was, “No wonder the children died!” Then, as the shadows of sleep were shaken off, reason reasserted herself.

Could a ghost’s hand hold him as this hand was holding him? Would a ghost’s breath sound thick and laboured like the panting breath he felt upon his face; and was that hideous sound of grinding teeth a sound of any spiritual visitant? No: common sense told him that this was no inexplicable impalpable horror, but a very real and very human assailant – a madman, with one hand clawing him by the throat, and the other hand uplifted and flourishing an open razor.

It was not till he had torn himself free from the clutch of those burning fingers and had leapt to the other side of the wide bedstead, that he recognized his assailant as Lord Halverdene.

In the struggle to free himself he had thrown his enemy from the bed to the floor. He scrambled to his feet immediately, and the two men stood looking at each other with the width of the bed between them, one with a deadly weapon in his hand, the other totally unarmed.

Oscar looked despairingly towards the fireplace, which was on Halverdene’s side of the bed. To reach it and get possessed of that useful weapon for emergencies, the poker, he must pass the madman, who stood at the corner of the bedstead ready with his razor, grinning and muttering, his body stooping forward, like an Indian trapper lying in wait for his quarry. He had wounded himself in the scuffle on the bed, and the blood was pouring from a gash on his cheek. He was in his night-shirt, with bare feet.

The bell-rope was on Oscar’s side of the bed. He pulled it violently, and in that violence destroyed all chance of communicating his peril by means of the bell, for the hook and loop had both rusted with disuse, and that one sharp tug brought down the bell-rope. No hope there.

Should he try to parley with his foe – try to talk reasonably with a man who was evidently for the time being a homicidal maniac thirsting for his blood? That blood-bedabbled face mopping and mowing at him yonder by the bedpost, that threatening hand with the razor, did not promise much advantage from the force of persuasion.

The faint and sickly light that filtered through the close-drawn blinds told Oscar that it was, at latest, five o’clock. He and the maniac were perhaps the only mortals stirring in the rambling old house. He remembered the long narrow corridor, the isolated position of the room in which he had slept.

“God knows how far off the occupied rooms may be,” he thought. “I shall be massacred here, and nobody the wiser, till the footman brings my shaving water at eight o’clock.” He had time to think this while he stood at bay, considering what was his best course. He would give the wretched man a chance, he thought, before encountering violence with violence.

“My dear Halverdene, this is too absurd!” he said, in a loud firm voice, looking fixedly at the gibbering face by the bedpost. “What have I done to offend you that you should break in upon me in the middle of the night? It’s a curious kind of hospitality, after having invited me to take you unawares. By Jove! you have taken me unawares!” he added, trying to laugh off the situation, with that bloodstained face staring at him.

“My wife’s lover,” muttered Halverdene – “my wife’s lover! Kill him! kill him! kill him! That’s what the devil said when he woke me out of my sleep just now – kill him! But Turner had hidden my pistols, and had locked my dressing-case with the razors for every day in the week – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Today’s Wednesday, ain’t it? I wanted Wednesday’s razor, to cut your throat; but the box was locked – curse that man of mine!”

All this was uttered rapidly, and sounded more like a monkey’s chattering than human speech. Donelly was looking about him for a weapon, and as Halverdene came towards him with a wild leap, razor uplifted, he snatched up a heavy Chippendale chair, flung it straight at his assailant, knocking him down, and made a rush for the door.

The door was locked, the key gone. The madman had struggled up onto his knees, and was laughing at him, pointing at the door.

“Turner hid the pistols, and I hid the key,” he said. “We’ll have it out! We’ll have it out! I can cut your throat with your own razor as well as with mine for Wednesday. We’ll have it out!”

He was upon his feet by this time, and bounding across the room like a stag. Donelly remembered that his pistol-case was in a saddlebag that had been left in the hall. Before he could reach the hearth to snatch the poker the madman’s clutch was upon him, and the razor would have been at his throat had not the assailant interrupted the business in hand by a violent peal of laughter at the facetiousness of the situation. That laughter gave Oscar time to grapple his foe; and then came a fight for life, reason against unreason, the well-knit limbs and hardened sinews of athletic youth, matched against the hypernatural strength of lunacy in a frame impaired by habitual intemperance.

The razor seemed everywhere. It wounded both men, again and again. They were blinded with each other’s blood. Again and again Oscar threw off his foe, and made his despairing rush for door or window, but that foe was always too quick for him. Before he could tear open the casement or batter down the door, the madman had him in his clutch again, and the fight had to be fought again.

The noise, the fury of it, the crashing of chairs, the thud of footsteps, should have waked the seven sleepers, Oscar thought in his despair. Now and again he made a monstrous effort and called aloud for help; but breathless and choking as he was, the cry was not loud enough to reach the end of the corridor, and the grey light was only just beginning to brighten into broader day.

He fought for his life, as a man to whom life was newly and wonderfully dear – and fell at last, aching in every bone, bruised and battered, as if he had been broken on the wheel: fell with Lucilla’s name upon his lips, in the last moment of consciousness, which he believed the last moment of life.

“Lucilla!” echoed the savage, glaring down at him. “That’s his hypocrisy.”

His foe lying at his feet senseless, and to all appearance dead. Lord Halverdene looked stupidly at the razor, dripping blood, and then let it fall.

He had forgotten to cut his victim’s throat. He had also forgotten where he had hidden the key of the door, which was lying in the ashes under the grate; so he opened a window, and clambered out of it into the dewy garden, in his night raiment and with bare feet.

•   •   •   •   •

Before that deadly struggle in the cedar-room was finished, the butler who had been told off to take charge of Lord Halverdene, turn and turn with his lordship’s body-servant, had awakened from a nap in his easy-chair, and had missed his patient from the bed where he had lain tossing, and muttering, and groaning, and whimpering all night, a victim to delirium tremens in its worst form.

When the watcher dropped asleep the door was locked, the key artfully hidden behind the candlestick on the mantelpiece; but not so artfully as to prevent Halverdene’s finding it and opening the door of his prison. He had seen the man put the key there, with an elaborate pretence of looking for a box of matches; and he had waited his opportunity of getting out of the room.

He had a fixed idea in his mind, engendered of a conversation he had heard overnight from the adjoining dressing-room. The door of communication between the two rooms had been left ajar while the watcher ate his supper, brought to him by a housemaid, who explained that the reason she was so late in bringing the “tray” was the unexpected arrival of her ladyship’s cousin, Captain Donelly, from the north.

“I’ve had to get his room ready,” said the housemaid; “they’ve put him in the cedar-room – because it’s farthest from this end of the house. He won’t hear his lordship’s goings on.”

“Ah,” said the butler, “he makes a pretty hullaballoo sometimes, I can tell you. I shall be very glad when the nurse comes from York.”

That name of Donelly had been the red rag to the mad bull. In the first year of his marriage, someone had said something about Oscar Donelly which had sown a germ of jealousy in Halverdene’s mind.

Civil as he had been to Donelly at York – ostentatiously civil – the embers of angry feeling had been smouldering, and with the drink-madness, they burst into sudden blaze, and the madman had but one thought – how to be revenged on his wife’s first sweetheart.

The rest followed in natural sequence. Through the weary night of fever and unrest the patient watched his watcher as he sat in the easy-chair, now attentive to every movement of the restless form upon the bed, now trying to beguile his own weariness by spelling through a county paper. Halverdene had watched his custodian till the man fell asleep, and had seized the opportunity of escape.

•   •   •   •   •

They found him in the gardens, exhausted, and shivering in every limb, bloodstained from head to foot. He had not been in a good plight before, but this morning’s work hastened the inevitable end. The wild excitement, the chill of that quarter of an hour in the garden, in the sunless dawn, half naked, barefoot on the wet grass – these experiences were fatal; and within a month of that conflict in the haunted room Lord Halverdene was a dead man, and Lady Halverdene had descended to the minor position of a childless dowager.

She had her own fortune, and she had Lucilla, and the devoted friendship of Oscar Donelly, Lucilla’s affianced husband.

The struggle with the madman had left its mark upon the captain in more than one scar, which, although not so deep as a sabre-cut, would be slow to disappear; while the loss of blood from the cuts and gashes inflicted at close quarters had resulted in a serious attack of low fever which detained him at the village inn, where he was removed on the morning of his adventure, until a month after his lordship’s funeral.

During that long and wasting illness, and tedious convalescence, Lucilla was his guardian angel. She and her maid went every day to supervise his rustic attendants and his faithful soldier servant, who had followed his master from the north, and who proved himself an admirable nurse.

The captain was just able to accompany his cousins to London when they left Halverdene, which had now passed into the possession of the dead man’s uncle, a dry-as-dust county magistrate and scientific farmer, with a stout, homely wife and a prodigious family of children, descending in an unbroken chain from the accomplished eldest daughter of nineteen, to the prattling infant of two and a half.

When this gentleman and his wife came to take possession of Halverdene House, there was a tremendous exploration of rooms, and a tremendous talk of where such and such members of the ruddy-cheeked and healthy band should be bestowed. If there was one point upon which the new Lord Halverdene valued his own intelligence more than another, it was his profound mastery of the laws of health. He was a perambulating book of extracts from Andrew Combe and Southwood Smith.

“Sleep in a ground-floor bedroom! My children!” exclaimed his lordship, contemplating the cedar-room, which the housekeeper informed him had been once a nursery, and which she suggested might again serve for the same purpose, so many of the upstairs bedrooms being wanted for young ladies and gentlemen, tutor, and governesses. “Does the woman think I am mad? A ground-floor room, on a level with the garden, a north-east aspect, and on clay! A murderous room!”

The housekeeper shook her head, gave a deep sigh, and on being interrogated, told how that room was a haunted room, and had on more than one occasion proved fatal to the race of Halverdene.

“And yet no one has ever put a name to the ghost, or said what it was like,” concluded the housekeeper.

“Ghost – bosh! fatal – yes, no doubt. This room would be pernicious to infant health, and possibly fatal to infant life. I know what country houses are – cesspools under drawing-rooms, rotten brick drains. None of my family will be allowed to occupy this old wing. Ceilings low, floors too near the earth, windows with only one small casement made to open; picturesque – abominable!”

His lordship the seventh baron was a great improver – a man of energetic temper who could not have endured life without something to build, improve, or spoil. He improved Beatrice Halverdene’s old Caroline garden off the face of the earth; he pulled up the floor of the cedar bedroom, and was amply rewarded for his pains by finding an ancient cesspool, and a comparatively modern brick drain, both in the loathsome condition in which neglect and ignorance left half the fine old houses in the land when Queen Victoria’s reign was young.

“Shall I tell you the ghost’s name?” asked the seventh Lord Halverdene, when people pestered him for the secret of the haunted room. “The stories of strange apparitions in that room are all nonsense; but there is no doubt the little children had bad dreams, and no doubt their little innocent lives were sacrificed to the criminal ignorance of their parents. The ghost’s name was Typhoid Fever.”

—

Dr. Carrick

(1878)

I

THE DOCTOR

Dr. Carrick was a man of genius whose life had been a failure. On his five-and-fortieth birthday he looked back with a gloomy gaze, upon a career that had not been brightened by one solitary success. Most men have their intervals of good luck; but in the desert of this man’s life there had been no green spot. People spoke well of him, lauded him for his high principles and rugged honesty; but they began to call him poor Carrick. That was bitter.

He had practised as a physician in many places. First in a quiet country town, where he kept his gig, and pinched himself in order to feed his horse, and where he simulated success by the respectability of his appearance and surroundings. But the cost of his house and servants, his horse and gig, sleek broadcloth and fine linen, crushed him. He succumbed under the severe proprieties of provincial life, and migrated to London, thinking to find there a wider field for his abilities.

He found the field wide enough, so wide indeed that nobody seemed aware of his existence. If he had been a clever quack who made bread pills he might have advertised his way to fortune; but he was only a man who had adopted a difficult profession from sheer love of science, and who asked for nothing better than to be able to live by his labour, and to go on extending his experience and adding to his knowledge.

Dr. Carrick tried London, from the western suburbs to the heights of Pentonville, from Bloomsbury to Blackfriars, from Lambeth to Bow, and he left it, after fifteen weary years, as poor a man as when he entered that stony wilderness, save for a legacy of three hundred and forty pounds from an octogenarian great aunt, whose very existence he had forgotten till this godsend dropped into his lap.

His professional labours in the metropolis had given him just a bare livelihood. He was a man of exceptional temperance and self-denial, and could live upon a pittance which, for a less Spartan mind, would have meant starvation. He left London without a debt, and with a decent coat on his back; and perhaps the monster city, beneath whose feet many a pearl is flung to be trampled into the mire, has seldom cast out of its bosom, unknown and unvalued, a cleverer man than Theodore Carrick.

That legacy – the first boon which fortune had ever bestowed upon him – was a turning-point in Dr. Carrick’s life. It can hardly be said to have made him richer, for, with the three hundred and forty pounds, his great aunt had left him something else – a distant cousin of two-and-twenty, a gentle, patient, willing girl, with a pale placid face, dark hazel eyes, and dark brown hair that had a tinge of ruddy gold in the sunshine. This fourth or fifth cousin of the doctor’s was one of those waifs which the sea of life is always throwing up on the bleak shores of adversity. No shipwrecked princess in sweet Shakespearian story, was ever more helpless and alone than Hester Rushton at the beginning of life. Old Mrs. Hedger, hearing of the untimely end of the girl’s parents, had taken her at the age of twelve as companion, protégée, drudge, and victim. As a child, Hester had endured the old lady’s tempers with unvarying patience; as a girl she had waited upon her, and nursed her with unfailing care. But she never learned to flatter or to fawn, so Mrs. Hedger left her old servant Betty a thousand pounds, and Hester only a hundred.

When Dr. Carrick went down to the little Hertfordshire village to attend his aunt’s funeral, in the character of a grateful legatee, he found Hester Rushton among the other goods and chattels in the house of death, and with very little more idea as to her future destiny than the chairs and tables, which were to be sold by the auctioneer on the following Monday.

“And what are you going to do, Miss Rushton?” asked Dr. Carrick, when the funeral was over.

“I don’t know,” said Hester simply.

And then the tears came into her eyes at the thought of her loneliness. The old lady had never been particularly kind to her, but she had given her lodging, and Food, and raiment; and life, though joyless, had been sheltered from the bleak winds of misfortune.

“I suppose I shall go and live – somewhere,” said Hester vaguely. “I can get a room in the village for four shillings a week, and perhaps I might get some children to teach – very little children, who would not want to learn much.”

“I think you had much better come and live with me,” said Dr. Carrick. “I am going to buy a county practice, somewhere in the West of England, where living is cheap; you can come and keep house for me.”

Hester accepted the offer as frankly as it was made.

“Do you really think I could be useful to you?” she asked, “I used to look alter the house, and indeed do a good deal of the housework for aunt Hedger, but, I shouldn’t like to be a burden to you,” concluded Hester, very seriously.

She was a conscientious little thing, and had never had a selfish thought in her life.

The idea that it might not be strictly correct, or in accordance with the laws of society, that a young lady of two-and-twenty should keep house for a gentleman of five-and-forty never entered her mind. Her only anxiety was not to impose upon her cousin Carrick’s goodness.

“You will not be a burden to me,” answered Dr. Carrick, “Poor as I am, I have always been cheated by my servants. Yes, even when I have been so low in the world as to have nobody but a charwoman, that charwoman has stolen my coals, and taken toll of my tea and sugar. You will save me more than you will cost me.”

So it came to pass that Dr. Carrick gave a hundred and fifty pounds for a practice in a Cornish village, within half-a-dozen miles of Penzance, and set up housekeeping in a roomy old house, on a hill above the broad Atlantic; a house whose windows looked down upon a wild rockbound shore, where the wide-winged cormorants perched upon the craggy pinnacles of serpentine, and where the sea in sunny weather wore the changeful colours of a dolphin’s back.

II

HIS PATIENT

For the first three years, Dr. Carrick’s life at the village of St. Hildred was, like all that had gone before it, a hard struggle for the bare necessities of existence. Provisions were cheap at St. Hilda, and it was the fashion to live simply, or else in those first years the doctor could hardly have lived at all. He soon won for himself a reputation for skill in his profession, and people believed in that grave, earnest manner of his, the dark, deep-set eyes, pale, passionless face, and high, bald brow. He was more respected than liked by the lower orders, while he was too grave and wise for the fox-hunting squires and their homely wives; but, happily, all agreed in believing him clever, so that by the end of those probationary years, be had acquired a practice which just enabled him to maintain his small household decently, keep his horse, and indulge himself with a new suit of clothes once a year.

This was not much to have gained at the end of eight-and-twenty years of toil and study, and anyone who looked in the doctor’s face, could see there the stamp of a disappointed life. His spirits had sunk into a settled melancholy, from which he rarely took the trouble to rouse himself. In his professional work his manner was quick, decisive, trenchant; at home he gave himself up to thought and study.

Hester – or Hettie as she was more familiarly called – had proved a domestic treasure. She kept the big, rambling old house as neat as a new pin, with only the aid of a ruddy-cheeked buxom Cornish girl, whose wages were five pounds a year. She had brightened up the old furniture – left by the doctor’s predecessor, and bought cheap by the doctor – in such a marvellous way, that the clumsy old chairs and tables looked almost handsome. The bedrooms, with their low ceilings, wide fireplaces, huge four-post bedsteads, and dark damask draperies, had a gloom which even her art could not dispel; and there were abiding shadows on the darksome old staircase, and in the long narrow corridors, that suggested ghostly visitors. Indeed, it was because the house had long enjoyed the reputation of being haunted, that the doctor had taken it. The Cornish mind was averse from ghosts, so the rent of St. Hildred House was ridiculously small.

One bleak March evening, Dr. Carrick was summoned to a patient at a distance. The night was wild and rough for a long ride upon a lonely road, and the doctor was tired after his day’s work; but the words Tregonnell Manor, pronounced by the rosy-faced maid-of-all-work, acted like a charm. He started up from his comfortable armchair, flung his book aside, and went out into the dimly-lighted hall. The door was open, and a man on horseback was waiting in front of it.

“Has Mr. Tregonnell came back to the manor?” asked the doctor.

“Yes, sir. Master came home this morning. He’s not been well for some time – a nasty low fever hanging about him; but he kept out with his yacht as long as he could coasting about Spain and the south of France. Yesterday we put in at Plymouth, and came home early this morning by the night coach. He’s looking right down bad, and he sent me to ask you to ride over.”

“I’ll come directly. Is there a medicine chest at Tregonnell?”

“There be a chest, I know; but I can’t say as there’s anything in it.”

“I’d better bring what I’m likely to want. I’ll go and saddle my horse.”

Throughout his residence at St. Hildred, the doctor had groomed his horse. There was no horse better groomed or better fed in the neighbourhood.

Tregonnell Manor was the most important place between the Land’s End and the Lizard; a good old house of the Elizabethan period, with a fine estate attached to it. The Tregonnells, once a large family, had dwindled down to a single descendant, a bachelor of three-and-thirty, who was rumoured to have lived a wild life in London and other great cities, to have made shipwreck of a fine constitution, and to be not altogether right in his mind. His appearances at Tregonnell Manor were fitful and unexpected. He never stayed there long, and he never seemed to know what to do with his life when he was there. He avoided all society, and his only pleasure appeared to be in yachting. He was an excellent sailor, commanded his own yacht, and went everywhere, from the Start Point to the Black Sea.

Dr. Carrick had heard a great deal about this Squire Tregonnell – the last of the good old Tregonnell race – men who had worn sword and gown, and had played their part in every great struggle, from the Wars of the Roses to the Battle of the Boyne. He knew that Eustace Tregonnell was one of the richest men in this part of the country. A valuable patient for a struggling physician, assuredly.

The stable clock at Tregonnell Manor was striking ten as the doctor and the groom rode in at the open gate, between tall stone pillars crowned with the Tregonnell escutcheon. By the half light of a waning moon, drifting in a sea of clouds, the grounds of the manor-house looked gloomy and unbeautiful, the house itself sombre and uninviting. Within, all had the same air of abiding gloom. The dark oak panelling and old pictures, the rusty armour, the low ceilings, and deep-set doors were unbrightened by any of the signs of occupation or family life. Tregonnell Manor looked what it was, the house of a man who had never found, or hoped to find, happiness in his home. An old servant opened a door and ushered the doctor into a large room, lined with books. Mr. Tregonnell sat by the wide hearth, where the neglected logs were dropping into grey ashes, a small table with a reading-lamp by his side. This lamp was the only light in the room, it illuminated the table and a narrow circle round it, and left all else in deep shadow.

“Good evening, doctor,” said Mr. Tregonnell, pleasantly enough, shutting his book, and motioning the doctor to a chair on the opposite side of the hearth.

The face which he turned to Dr. Carrick was a remarkable and interesting one. Ruins are always interesting; and this face was the ruin of one of the handsomest faces Dr. Carrick had ever seen. A face pale as marble, eyes of that dark grey which looks black, a broad brow, whose whiteness was made more striking by the blackness of the thick, short hair that framed it, features well and firmly carved, and about all an expression of intense melancholy – that utter weariness of life, which is more difficult to cure than any other form of depression. Premature lines marked the broad brow, the cheeks were hollow, the eyes wan and haggard. If this man was indeed the last and sole representative of the Tregonnell race, that race seemed in sore danger of extinction.

Dr. Carrick felt his new patient’s pulse, and looked at him thoughtfully for a minute or so, in the vivid light of the reading-lamp.

He made none of the stereotyped inquiries.

“What is the matter with you?” he asked bluntly. “You know much better than I can tell you.”

“A restlessness that impels me to be continually shifting the scene of my life; an indescribable disgust at everything, and a hatred of all places; a feeling that I have lived too long, and yet that I don’t quite want to die.”

“You have made a mistake common to young men who have fine constitutions and fine fortunes. You have fancied both inexhaustible.”

“I have been extravagant, but I have hardly spent my income,” answered Mr. Tregonnell, frankly, “but I daresay I have used my constitution rather badly. I had a disappointment early in life – I daresay yon have heard the story. I wanted to marry a woman whom my father was pleased to call my inferior, though she was as much my superior then in her stainless womanhood, as she is now as a sinless soul in paradise, He gave me a yacht, for which I had been longing, and sent me abroad in the hope that I should cure myself of my fancy. I was happy enough in the bustle and variety of my life, thinking that things would work round in time, and that I should come home and find my darling true to me, and my father more indulgent. I wrote to her from every port, and in every letter told her the same story. We had only to be true to each other, and to wait for happier days. I should wait, if need were, till my hair grew grey. I was away a year, and my life during all that time was such a wandering one, that it was no surprise to me to find my letters unanswered. When I came back, I found a grave, and discovered later, that my sweet girl had been sent to drudge as an articled pupil in a school at Exeter. Not one of my letters had been given to her. They would only have unsettled her, her wicked old hag of a grandmother told me. I knew afterwards that my father had bought her people over to his interests. She had no mother. Her father was a weak-minded drunkard; her grandmother a greedy, time-serving old harridan. Between them they killed her, and broke my heart. That was the beginning of my wild career, Dr. Carrick, Not a very cheerful one, was it?”

“A common story, I fear,”

“Yes; wrecked and ruined lives are common enough, I daresay. They fill the midnight haunts in the Haymarket, and keeping gambling-houses going, and swell the excise. I went to London after my father’s death, and from London to Paris, and from Paris to Vienna. There is very little wildness or wickedness in those three cities that I could not enlighten you about. A man cannot touch pitch without defilement. I didn’t steep myself to the lips in pitch, or wallow in it, and enjoy it as some men do; but I touched it, and the taint cleaves to me. There is nothing in this world that men call pleasure which has the faintest charm for me. My nights are restless, and troubled with feverish dreams. And sometimes – sometimes – I start up with a sudden thrill of horror going through me like an arrow, and feel as if the hair of my head were lifted up, like Job’s, at a vision of hideous fear.”

“What is it you fear?”

“Madness,” answered Eustace Tregonnell, in a half whisper. “It has appeared more than once in my family. My grandfather died mad. Sometimes I fancy that I can feel it coming. It has seemed near at hand, even. I have looked in the glass, started at my haggard face, hardly recognizing myself, and have cried out involuntarily, ‘That is the face of a madman.’”

“A not unnatural result of sleepless and troubled nights,” answered the doctor, quietly. “Do you know that a week’s insomnia – one little week absolutely without sleep – has been known to result in temporary lunacy? That was an extreme case, of course; but the man who can’t sleep comfortably, is always in a bad way. You must have refreshing sleep, Mr. Tregonnell, or your fears may be realized.”

“Where are the drugs that will give it me? I have tried them all. The sole effect of opiates is to send me into a fever, and to make me twice as wakeful as I am without them.”

“I should not recommend opiates in your case.”

“What would you recommend then?”

“Mesmerism.”

Mr. Tregonnell smiled, a smile at once contemptuous and impatient.

“I sent for a physician, whose sagacity I have heard highly lauded. I did not expect to meet—”

“A quack,” said Dr. Carrick. “Yes, I know that mesmerism ranks with table-turning and other juggleries. A striking proof of the ignorance of the popular mind upon all scientific questions outside the narrow range of old established orthodoxy.”

And then Dr. Carrick went on to discourse eloquently upon mesmerism as a curative agent. He told Mr. Tregonnell about Dr. Esdaile’s experiments in the native hospital in Calcutta; he argued warmly in favour of an influence which was evidently with him a favourite subject of study.

“Have you tried this wonderful agent upon any of your Cornish patients?” asked Mr. Tregonnell.

“I am not such a fool. A century ago they would have punished mesmerism under the head of witchcraft; today they would scout it as quackery. I talk freely to you, because I take you for a reasonable and enlightened being.”

“Do you think I am a subject for mesmerism?”

“I know you are, and an excellent one.”

“Mesmerise me, then,” said Mr. Tregonnell, quietly throwing himself back in his chair, and fixing his dark, haggard eyes upon the doctor.

“In this house? Impossible! I should throw you into a sleep which would last for hours; a sleep of deepest unconsciousness, from which the loudest noises would not awaken you; a sleep in which you would be even insensible to pain. Your servants would take alarm. My coming and going might seem strange; and, in short, if I am to cure you by means of mesmerism, as I know I can – yes, tame that wild fever of your blood, reduce that unhealthy restlessness to placid repose, banish fears which are not wholly groundless; in a word, give you that which ancient philosophy counted as the highest good, a sane mind in a sound body; if I am to do all this, Mr. Tregonnell, I must have the case in my own hands. I must have you under my care by day and night. My house is large and commodious. You must come and live with me.”

“Humph!” muttered. Mr. Tregonnell “Is not that rather like going into a private lunatic asylum?”

“My house is not registered as an asylum, and I never had a lunatic in my care. No, Mr. Tregonnell; you will be farther from lunacy under my roof than you are here, eating your heart out by this dismal fireside.”

“Yes, it is dismal; the sort of house that ought to be occupied by a large family. Well, I am half inclined to go to you. I shall be a free agent in your house, I conclude; able to roam about as I like by day, provided I keep decent hours at night. You will put no restraint upon my movements?”

“None.”

“Can you find room for my horse and for my servant?”

“For both.”

“Then I will come. Mind, I do not promise to stay with you for any given time. I must be free as the wind. If you can give me sound and peaceful sleep with your mesmeric passes, I shall be grateful to you – and mesmerism. But can you not give me a taste of your quality at once, here?”

“No; I am expected home. If I mesmerised you tonight, I should want to stay with you and see the result of my experiment. Come to me for a week. If by the end of that time your spirits are not tranquillized, and your general health is not improved, call me a charlatan, and have done with me.”

“I am very much inclined to believe in you,” said Mr. Tregonnell, gazing steadily at the doctor. “You look as if you were in earnest.”

“I have been in earnest all my life,” answered Dr. Carrick. And then inwardly he added: “But I never had an object worth being in earnest about until tonight.”

III

HESTER FINDS A FRIEND

The best rooms in St. Hildred House were swept and garnished for Squire Tregonnell. Hester Rushton, who had a natural womanly love of household duties, was in her element while she bustled about, polishing, dusting, and arranging things for the reception of an honoured inmate. She caught herself singing at her work that busy morning, with a sense of pleasant expectation that was new and sweet. It was a relief to think of a stranger coming to live in that big empty house. Dr. Carrick was of so reserved a temper, that Hester seemed no more intimate with him now, after three years’ domestic companionship, than on the day of her aunt’s funeral. She could complain of no unkindness. He never spoke harshly to her, even when most troubled in mind. He thanked her courteously for all her attentions; praised her economies and clever management of his house; but he gave her none of his confidence. She felt that she knew no more of his heart and mind than if he had been a man of stone.

About his new patient, Dr. Carrick had told his cousin only that he was a man of wealth and position; that he was to have the best rooms in the house; and that his valet was to be made comfortable in the servant’s office. Hester was more frightened at the idea of the valet than at the grandeur of the master.

Happily. Mr. Tregonnell’s body-servant was not a pampered cockney, corrupted by the luxurious idleness of chambers in the Albany, but a clever, handy fellow, used to roughing it on board his master’s yacht, and with a genius for every art that can make the wheels of daily life work smoothly. He was a first-rate cook, and an accomplished butler; and took upon himself all those delicate labours which were beyond the power of Dr. Carrick’s maid-of-all-work.

Mr. Tregonnell finished his first week at St. Hildred House, and looked considerably better and brighter at the end of it. He spent his mornings in roaming about the cliffs, or riding in the Cornish lanes; his afternoons in reading; his evenings in the society of Dr. Carrick and Miss Rushton. He was a man who had seen men and cities, and read much. His conversation, therefore, was full of interest; and Hester, to whom all intellectual conversation was new, listened with unvarying delight It was to be observed, however, that he never talked of himself.

The week ended, and Mr. Tregonnell had no wish to return to the manor. He now firmly believed in the power of mesmerism. Nightly, in the silence of his bedchamber, the doctor exercised his potent, but seeming simple art. A steady pressure of his hands upon the shoulders of the patient, a series of mystic passes before the dreamy eyes, and the charm worked. First a new sense of warmth, comfort, and lightness stole through the frame; then the heavy eyelids drooped involuntarily, the will lost its waking power; then came deep, prolonged, and restful sleep, bringing healing and regeneration to mind and body.

This treatment was known to none save the patient and the physician. David Skelter, the valet, had never been in very close attendance upon his master, who was a man of independent habits. His bedroom was on an upper floor, remote from Mr. Tregonnell’s apartment, and the valet saw nothing of his master after he had arranged his room for the night.

Hester Rushton’s ideas as to the treatment of the patient were of the vaguest. Dr. Carrick had told her only that Mr. Tregonnell required rest and retirement.

So the days went on, and Hester’s life took a new colour from the presence of a man of intellect and refinement, who treated her as a being of equal intelligence, and opened his mind to her freely on all subjects that were not personal. Of his opinions she knew much, of himself very little.

Spring advanced. The blusterous March winds softened into the gentle breezes of April. St. Hildred House had a good old-fashioned garden – a garden where departed generations had planted homely flowers, which blossomed year after year, unaided by the gardener’s art. Everything about the place had been sorely neglected till Hester came, but this garden was her chief delight. Her household duties occupied her all the morning, but she spent every fine afternoon in the garden – her bright young head bared to the spring breeze, her clever little hands encased in thick gardening-gloves – digging, transplanting, weeding, clipping, pruning, with skill that would have done credit to a professed gardener. Labour was cheap at St. Hildred, and for sixpence a day she could get a strong lad to mow the grass and roll the gravel-walks once a week or so; an extravagance which the doctor hardly approved.

Mr. Tregonnell’s sitting-room looked into the garden. One warm afternoon towards the close of April, he threw aside his book, and went downstairs to join Hester, who was budding a rose on the lawn.

“How fond you seem to be of this garden of yours, Miss Rushton,” he said at her elbow.

His footfall had been noiseless on the thick, soft grass, and his speech startled her. The cheek – turned a little from him, but not so far but that he could see its change of colour – flushed crimson, and the scissors shook in her hand.

“How you startled me!” she exclaimed. “You don’t know what a critical business budding is.”

“It looks rather like a surgical operation. Did Dr. Carrick teach you?”

“Dr. Carrick!” laughed Hester. “I don’t think he knows a rose from a dandelion, except when he uses them in medicine. No; it was a dear, deaf old gardener in Herfordshire who taught me, years and years ago,”

“Years and years ago,” echoed Mr. Tregonnell. “What an eternity of time you seem to express by that phrase. Pray how many centuries old may you be, Miss Rushton?”

“In actual years I believe I am twenty-five,” answered Hester, smiling; “but I feel dreadfully old. I suppose it is because I have known a great deal of sorrow. I don’t mean to complain. Indeed, I should be very wicked if I did; for my aunt Hedger and my Cousin Carrick have both been very good to me; but it is hard to lose those one fondly loves in the morning of life.”

“It is,” assented Mr. Tregonnell earnestly. “I have known that loss, Miss Rushton, and it has made me what you see – a man without aim or purpose in life – a mere shuttle-cock to drift about in a yacht, buffeted by the winds and waves, and caring very little what port I put into, or whether I go down some stormy night in mid-ocean, unlamented and unknown. And you, too, have drawn a mournful lot out of the urn, have you, little one?”

“I lost my father and mother when I was fourteen. They both died in the same week. Dear, dear papa was a curate in a Bedfordshire village. A fever broke out, and he took it, and then mama. It was all like a dreadful dream. In a week they were gone, and I was alone with two coffins. Then aunt Hedger sent for me, and I lived with her. She was old and ailing when I went to her. Her life seemed like one long illness, and then the end came, and I was alone again. I haven’t the least idea what would have become of me if cousin Carrick had not asked me to come and take care of his house.”

“You are very much attached to Dr. Carrick, I suppose?” said Mr. Tregonnell, looking at her searchingly.

He was wondering whether any hidden evil lurked beneath this outward simplicity; whether the relations between the doctor and his cousin were pure and free from guile.

“He has been very good to me,” answered Hester, innocently.

“And you like him very much, no doubt?”

“I like him as much as he will let me. He is my benefactor. I should be base and ungrateful if I did not honour him. I do honour him for his kindness to me, and for his patience and fortitude, and skill in his profession. I see how much good he does. But he is as much a stranger to me now as when first I crossed the threshold of his house. It is his nature to live alone.”

This speech made Mr. Tregonnell thoughtful, He remembered a line of Schiller’s:

“Fear all things in which there is an unknown depth.”

Yet what had he to fear from Dr. Carrick? All the doctor could possibly desire from him was liberal payment for service rendered, and to have his praises sounded in the neighbourhood by a grateful patient. Mr. Tregonnell had already pressed a cheque for a hundred pounds upon the doctor’s acceptance, and had found it difficult to persuade him to receive so large a fee. There was to all appearance no desire to take advantage of his natural recklessness.

Henceforward it became quite a usual thing for Mr. Tregonnell to loiter in the garden while Hester worked with her pruning-scissors or trowel. He even volunteered his assistance, but Hester laughed at his offer, and declined such clumsy help. They became very confidential during those sunny afternoons; Hester telling the doctor’s patient all about her happy childhood, and sad girlhood, freely confessing her want of education, and her ardent desire to learn. Mr. Tregonnell rode over to the manor one morning to select a heap of volumes for her instruction, and ordered them to be sent to St. Hildred House the same day. He took as much pains to choose books that would at once arouse her interest, as if he had been a father catering for a favourite child.

Sometimes, when the fair May afternoons were especially tempting, he insisted upon Hester’s going down to the beach with him; and they idled together upon the rugged strand, picking up masses of many coloured seaweed, watching the black cormorants perching on the rocky pinnacles, and listening to the great strong voice of the sea. It was altogether a new life for simple Hester Rushton, but the firm, fresh young mind was in no wise injured by the association. The clever little housekeeper performed her daily tasks just as diligently as of old. The eager young student, to whom all the world of intellect was new, only applied herself to her books when her domestic duties were done.

IV

MR. TREGONNELL MAKES HIS WILL

While the acquaintance between Mr. Tregonnell and Hester Rushton thus ripened gradually into a very close friendship, Dr. Carrick was too busily occupied by his daily round of professional work to be aware of the change. He was away from home all day. When he saw his cousin and his patient in the evening, he perceived no more than that they got on very well together. This was as it should be. He wished his patient to be comfortable in his house. Mr. Tregonnell had now been with him three months, and had pressed a second cheque for a hundred pounds upon his acceptance. This was very well, and Dr. Carrick felt that if it could go on forever his fortune would be made. But how could he hope that the thing would last? Eustace Tregonnell’s fitful temper was proverbial. Some morning he would feel the old longing for the wide salt sea, and be off and away in his yacht, leaving the doctor as desolate as Dido. Dr. Carrick’s only wonder was that his patient had stayed so long. It never entered into his mind that Hester Rushton’s hazel eyes and gentle childlike ways could have any influence upon Mr. Tregonnell. Even the valet noticed the change which his new mode of life had wrought in his master. He talked of it in the village, and lauded Dr. Carrick’s skill.

“He’s the first doctor that ever did Mr. Tregonnell any good,” he said, leaning over the counter of the chief shopkeeper in St. Hildred – grocer, chemist, stationer, and postmaster – for a comfortable gossip. “I never saw anybody so tamed down and quieted as master. He used to be all fits and starts, and as restless as if life was a burden to him. Now he seems to find pleasure in the simplest things.”

“Ah,” said the shopkeeper, “he’s been a wild one, I reckon. The Tregonnells always were wild. It’s in the blood. But he hasn’t been taking any more chloroform, I hope. That’s a dangerous habit.”

“What do you mean?” asked David.

“Why, he’s been in the habit of taking chloroform for pains in his head. You must know that, surely. Dr. Carrick warned me not to sell him any, if he should come here for it.”

“I don’t know anything about his taking chloroform,” said David. “I know he’s taken all sorts of things on board his yacht, to make him sleep; but I never heard of his taking chloroform in particular. He’s got a little bottle in his medicine chest, but I don’t believe he’s ever taken the stopper out.”

“Ah,” said the village trader, “that’s all you know about it. Dr. Carrick warned me against letting him have chloroform, and there was that in the doctor’s manner which made me think it was a serious matter.”

David Skelter ruminated upon this disclosure of the shopman’s. His sturdy English self-respect was offended at the idea of Dr. Carrick’s interference with his master’s liberty. That any man should go behind Mr. Tregonnell’s back, and warn a shopkeeper against treating him as a reasonable being, roused the faithful David’s indignation. It was treating the master of Tregonnell Manor like a lunatic.

That evening, after he had arranged his master’s room for the night, David looked at the medicine-chest, which had been brought from the manor with Mr. Tregonnell’s effects, and stood on the dressing-table, unlocked.

There was the little bottle of chloroform, three parts full. David remembered his master sending him to get it at a chemist’s in Genoa, three years ago, when he was suffering from spasmodic pains in the head. The bottle was carefully stoppered.

“I don’t believe master has ever opened it since we left Genoa,” David said to himself.

A few days after this Mr. Tregonnell began to talk of his yacht, ominously for Dr. Carrick. It was just the weather for a cruise, neither too cold nor too hot.

“I shan’t go far afield,” said Mr. Tregonnell, “but I feel that a breath of the sea would do me good. I shall go and cruise about the Scilly Isles, for a week or so, or perhaps sail as far as Madeira, and then come back and settle down again.”

David, who was of a roving temper, was delighted at the idea of getting to sea again. His master sent him to Falmouth next day, to buy certain things that were wanted on board the Water Fay.

Mr. Tregonnell went to his room a little earlier than usual upon the evening after David’s departure. He had ridden a long way that day, and his horse had been restive and troublesome. He had come home late in the afternoon, much fatigued.

“Oh, by-the-way, Hester,” said Dr. Carrick, after his cousin had wished him good-night, “I must ask you not to go to bed just yet, and you can tell Betsy to wait up for an hour or so. I shall want you both in Mr. Tregonnell’s room for a minute or two, to witness a deed he is going to execute.”

Hester looked puzzled.

“Mr. Tregonnell did not say anything—” she began.

“No; he forgot that the deed would require to be witnessed. He is not very businesslike in his habits. The fact is, Hester – it would be a foolish delicacy to withhold the truth from you – Mr. Tregonnell has taken a very noble view of the professional services I have rendered him. He is going to make his will before he goes to sea, and he intends to put me in for a handsome legacy. Of course, taking into consideration the difference in our ages, it is to the last degree improbable that I shall live to profit by his generous intention, but I am not the less grateful.”

“It is very good of him,” said Hester, thoughtfully; “but I wonder that he, who is so careless about all business matters, and so indifferent to money, should think of making his will.”

“It is a thing that every man ought to do, and which a man must be an idiot if he neglects to do. Especially a man in Mr. Tregonnell’s position, whose property would go to some remote heir-at-law, or possibly to the Crown. Remember he is the last of his race!”

“How sad that seems,” sighed Hester.

She, too, had every reason to believe herself the last frail sprig upon a withered tree. She knew of no kinsman living, save this distant cousin, who had sheltered her.

An hour later, Dr. Carrick summoned Hester and the servant Betsy to Mr. Tregonnell’s sitting-room. Eustace Tregonnell was seated in front of the table at which he usually read and wrote. The shaded reading-lamp threw its light on the papers lying on the table, and left all things else in shadow.

Dr. Carrick stood beside his patient.

“Now sign,” he said, with his fingers laid lightly on Mr. Tregonnell’s wrist.

Mr. Tregonnell signed the paper before him.

“This is Mr. Tregonnell’s will,” said Dr. Carrick to the two girls, “written entirely in his own hand, upon a single sheet of paper. You, Hester Rushton, and you, Betsy Thomas, are now to sign as witnesses.”

He showed them where they were to put their names, still standing by his patient’s chair. Hester had not seen Mr. Tregonnell’s face since she entered the room.

She signed her name as the doctor directed, and Betsy signed after her.

“You acknowledge this as your will?” said the doctor to Mr. Tregonnell.

“I acknowledge this as my will,” repeated the patient.

“That is all. Good-night, Hester; good-night, Betsy. Remember you are neither of you to mention this business of tonight to anybody. Mr. Tregonnell doesn’t want it talked about.”

V

MYSTERY

That night scene in Mr. Tregonnell’s room made a curious impression upon Hester. She was angry with herself for dwelling upon it so continually, angry at the weakness of mind which made her look back upon the occurrence with a kind of superstitious horror. What was more natural than that a man should make his will? What more praiseworthy than that a grateful patient should reward his physician with a legacy? Could she blame Dr. Carrick for accepting such a boon? Assuredly not. Yet the memory of her kinsman’s conduct that night troubled her. It seemed to her as if Mr. Tregonnell, though to all appearance a free agent, had been acting under the influence of the doctor.

She felt that to doubt Dr. Carrick’s honour, was to be guilty of base ingratitude, and hated herself for her formless suspicions.

“What would have become of me without his help?” she asked herself. “I might have starved.”

Eustace Tregonnell said not a word about the will, and this puzzled her; for, as their friendship ripened, he had fallen into the habit of confiding all his thoughts to her attentive ear. He had told her much about himself of late. She had listened tearfully to his story of that early blight which had ruined his life – his first and only love.

“There was a time when I thought that I could never love again,” he said to her one day; “but God is good, Hester, and now I begin to hope that even for me there may be some deep unspeakable joy waiting in the future. I would not hasten or anticipate the hour of its coming. I would not rush impetuously to meet my fate. I would rather let my happiness come gently, by degrees, like the morning light. And those are the brightest days, you know, on which the dawn creeps over the hilltops gradually, mysteriously, pale, soft, placid.”

One afternoon the conversation turned unawares upon Dr. Carrick.

“I don’t think I can ever be half grateful enough to him,” exclaimed Mr. Tregonnell; “he has made a new man of me.”

“There are few patients so grateful as you,” said Hester.

“How do you mean?”

“Do you forget the will you made the other night?”

“What will? I make a will? Why, Hester, I never did such a thing in my life. I never even thought of such a thing; though I ought to think of it, by-the-by. If I were to die unmarried, my estate would go to some remote next-of-kin; some Mr. Snooks, perhaps, who would call himself Snooks Tregonnell, and come and lord it over my Cornish tenantry. The idea is hateful. I’ll go up to Plymouth next week, see my lawyer, and make a will that shall, at any rate, shut out all possible Snookses.”

Hester turned her face towards the rose-bush she was clipping, to hide her sudden pallor. All her doubts, all her fears, all her vague horror of that unforgotten scene in Mr. Tregonnell’s room, came back upon her with new force. In this quiet nature of hers there were latent powers which had never been exercised. This gentle creature was a woman of strong will. She determined to question Dr. Carrick, and get to the bottom of this mysterious business, even at the risk of offending her benefactor.

Next morning, when she was pouring out the tea at Dr. Carrick’s early breakfast, she attacked the subject boldly.

“Do you know that Mr. Tregonnell denies that he ever made a will?” she said. “I happened to speak to him about it yesterday, by accident.”

“You had no right to speak to him about it,” exclaimed the doctor, white with anger – Hester had never seen such a look in his face before. “I told you that the subject was not to be mentioned.”

“Not to other people, but my speaking of it to him could not matter.”

“It does matter a great deal. Men are sensitive about such things. He chose to make his will, but he may not choose to be reminded of it.”

“He most distinctly denied having made a will.”

“He chose to deny it.”

“What, he chose to tell a deliberate lie? No, Dr. Carrick; I would never believe that of Eustace Tregonnell.”

“You would not believe, indeed; and pray what do you know of Eustace Tregonnell, or of psychology? What do you know of the eccentricities of the human intellect? Mr. Tregonnell is extremely eccentric. There are people who call him mad.”

Hester was pale as death. Mad! That awful word froze her young blood. Might not that be indeed a clue to the mystery? She had heard Eustace Tregonnell acknowledge that will with the same lips which afterwards denied having made it. There could be no cheat, no joggle there. His own voice had declared the fact.

“If he is mad, the will is useless,” she said.

“You are a clever lawyer, no doubt, young lady. I suppose you have never heard of testamentary capacity, which may exist in a patient subject to intervals of mania. A holograph will, executed by a madder man than Eustace Tregonnell, would stand against stronger opposition than is likely to be offered to any will of his.”

“He is not mad,” protested Hester. “His brain is as clear as mine.”

“Very likely. He merely reproves your impertinence in speaking of a forbidden subject, by denying that he ever made a will.”

Hester was more unhappy, after that conversation with Dr. Carrick, than she had been before. She had formed a high estimate of Eustace Tregonnell’s character. The idea that he could tell a deliberate falsehood was horrible to her. Yet it was almost worse to think of him as a madman. And who but a madman would have looked her calmly in the face, and denied a fact which she had seen with her eyes, and attested with her signature?

“If he is mad,” she said to herself, “my woman’s wit must keep watch for him.”

And then, for the first time, a secret that had lain hidden in her heart for many days past came boldly forth into the light, and looked Hester Rushton in the face. She loved him – she, the obscure orphan, the dependant on a poor man’s charity, blest with neither beauty nor accomplishments, a humble household drudge – she loved Eustace Tregonnell, the proudest and richest landowner in that part of the country. She blushed rosy-red, and hid her face from the bold, glad sunlight, abashed and stricken by the discovery. How could she dare to lift her eyes to that perfect face, to think of Eustace Tregonnell as a being on the same level with her insignificant self?

“But I don’t think of him as my equal,” she said to herself; “not for worlds would I have him come down to my level. He is my bright particular star. I only want to look up to him, and worship him all the days of my life.”

The idea of some evil mystery in that scene of the will haunted her perpetually. She began to have a horror of the house that sheltered her – that strange old house, with its long narrow passages, winding stairs, queer little closets, many doors, and ghostly reputation. She began to have a horror of her benefactor, Dr. Carrick. Precious as Eustace Tregonnell’s society was to her, she longed for him to depart upon his yachting expedition.

June began with stormy winds and driving rains, and the yachting expedition was put off. Indeed, Mr. Tregonnell seemed in no hurry to leave St. Hildred House. He appeared perfectly happy, idling in the garden while Hester weeded her flower-beds, or reading to her while she worked in her favourite seat by a window that looked seaward.

One evening, however, he announced his intention of running up to Plymouth at the end of that week.

“I want to see my lawyer. Can you guess what I am going to do, Dr. Carrick?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” answered the doctor, sipping his tea.

Hester and the doctor were seated at the lamplit tea-table. Eustace Tregonnell was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, looking down at them.

“I am going to make my will. It’s a disagreeable operation, and reminds one unpleasantly of one’s mortality. But I suppose every man ought to go through it. I shan’t forget you, doctor; nor you, Hester. Let me see: a mourning ring, I suppose, will be an appropriate mark of my gratitude to you, doctor; and a silver thimble will form a pleasing memento of my friendship for you, Miss Rushton.”

Dr. Carrick joined in Mr. Tregonnell’s cheery laughter, but he cast a furtive glance at Hester, who sat looking downward, very pale in the lamplight.

VI

FOR LOVE AND LIFE

St. Hildred House was said to be haunted. There was hardly an inhabitant of the village who would not have vouched for the fact. Noises had been heard; ghosts had been been, at intervals, and by divers persons, ever since the oldest inhabitant’s childhood. The exact form of the apparition, or the precise nature of the noises, was not easy to determine, since everyone gave a different description, and almost everyone’s knowledge was derived from hearsay. Till very lately, Hester Rushton had laughed at these rumours, and had never known what it was to feel a thrill of fear in the musty old passages, or to shudder as the gathering twilight peopled the corners of the panelled rooms with shadows. Now all was changed, she was nervous and apprehensive. She started at a shadow, and fancied she heard a human voice mixed with the night winds that sobbed in the wide old chimneys. One night she was disturbed by sounds that seemed distinctly human: heavy breathing, footsteps moving close to the head of her bed.

She started up, and lighted her candle, convinced that there was someone in the room. Yet she had bolted her door before going to bed.

The room was empty, but again she heard footsteps moving stealthily, close at hand.

“The cupboard,” she thought. “There is someone in that cupboard.”

It was a long narrow cupboard, a kind of enclosed passage between her room and Mr. Tregonnell’s. There was a third door in this cupboard, opening onto a corkscrew staircase that led down to the servant’s offices. But this staircase was rarely used, the door leading into Mr. Tregonnell’s room was never opened, and the cupboard was only a receptacle for disused and forgotten lumber.

Hester unlocked the cupboard, and looked in. A man was in the act of escaping by the door that opened on the staircase. She pursued him, candle in hand, her heart beating violently.

Something told her that this was Dr. Carrick, who had been paying a stealthy visit to his patient’s room; but, to her surprise, on the first step of the stairs David Skelter turned and faced her, with his finger on his lip, and a look that implored her forbearance.

“Oh, please, miss, don’t say anything. I’m not doing any harm.”

“But why are you here – hiding in this cupboard – in the middle of the night?”

“It isn’t the middle of the night, miss. I was uneasy about master.”

“Why?”

“Well, miss, to be candid, I don’t like the doctor’s goings on. I’ve had my suspicions of him for a long time. It’s too much like witchcraft, the power he’s got over my master. It isn’t natural you know, miss, and I happened to find out that he’d been putting it into people’s heads that my master wasn’t to be treated like a rational being, and that turned me against him, and made me think that there was something wrong going on.”

“But what wrong can Dr. Carrick do your master, David?” asked Hester, with her earnest eyes searching the young man’s face.

“Oh, miss, can I trust you? Are you a friend or a foe?”

“I am a friend to Mr. Tregonnell, David; a sincere one.”

“Yes, I believe it, miss; I’ve seen that, and I know something more. I know that he’s a friend to you – more than a friend, nearer and dearer. He’s been happier and better since he’s known you. But I can’t make the doctor out. He’s too dark for me. Do you see that cupboard door?” pointing to the door opening into Mr. Tregonnell’s room. “The other morning, when I was putting away my master’s things, it struck me that we might as well have the use of this cupboard. I tried the door, and found it locked inside. I could see the nozzle of the key in it. Then it struck me that this cupboard-door must communicate with some other room or passage, and then I remembered the door at the head of these stairs, which I’d never seen open. I came round by the stairs, and examined the cupboard, and I found a little shutter or flap opening in that door – it had been made for ventilation, I suppose – through which I could look into my master’s room. And that very night, feeling uneasy about him in my mind, after I’d gone up to bed, I crept down again, and looked through the little shutter to see if he was all right. And there I saw—”

“What, David? It was very wrong to play the spy upon your master.”

“I saw the doctor conjuring him – hocussing him, miss.”

“What do you mean?”

“So, miss – like this.”

And David made solemn passes with his hands before Hester’s face.

“He did that, miss, and sent master to sleep as quiet as a lamb. Now, I don’t like to think that any man should have the power of sending my master to sleep.”

Hester heard him in silence, deadly pale, breathless. She had the clue to the mystery now. It was mesmeric influence that composed the patient’s restless mind to sleep; it was under mesmeric influence that Eustace Tregonnell had written and signed the will, of which in his waking state he knew nothing. Among the books which Mr. Tregonnell had brought her, and one which she had read with deepest interest, was Bulwer’s “Strange Story.” She had read also that thrilling story, by the same author, “The House and the Brain,” and the theory of magnetic influence was not unknown to her. Dr. Carrick was just the kind of man – studious, passionless, self-contained – to exert such influence, to be familiar with that unholy art. He had used his power to get a will executed – a will which doubtless bestowed more upon him than the legacy he had spoken of to Hester. But that will would give him nothing so long as Eustace Tregonnell lived, and Eustace Tregonnell was at least eighteen years his junior. How remote must be the benefit which Dr. Carrick could hope for from that will. Again, it would be cancelled, mere waste-paper, the moment Mr. Tregonnell made another will, and he talked of doing so at the end of the week. All through the night Hester lay broad awake, thinking of Dr. Carrick, and trying to fathom his motive for a deed, which was, to her mind, as dark a crime as the worst forgery that had ever been perpetrated.

“The will is made, and he will be eager to profit by it,” she thought, with an icy thrill of horror creeping through her veins. “He is no longer interested in prolonging his patient’s life. He must wish for his death; for he would not have committed this crime if he were not greedy of money. He will want to prevent Mr. Tregonnell’s making a second will, and how is he to do that?”

How, save by the worst and last of crimes – secret murder?

A wild terror seized upon Hester, as she saw herself face to face with this hideous thought. The idea, having once taken hold of her, was not to be thrust out of her mind. How else, but by Eustace Tregonnell’s speedy death, could the doctor profit by his crime? His profession gave him a fatal power. He had the keys of life and death in his hand: and Eustace trusted him with blind, unquestioning faith.

“I will not leave him in a secret enemy’s hand,” she thought; “I will tell him everything tomorrow. I owed gratitude and affection to my cousin, while I believed him a good and honourable man. I owe nothing to a traitor.”

She rose at her usual early hour, with a torturing headache and hands burning with fever. She was startled when she saw her altered face in the glass.

“I hope I am not going to be ill,” she said to herself, “just when I want the utmost strength and clearness of mind.”

It was an effort to dress, an effort to crawl downstairs, and take her place at the breakfast-table. She was obliged to omit those small duties which had been her daily task – the dusting and polishing of the furniture, the arrangement of a bowl of freshly-cut flowers for the table.

The day was hopelessly wet, a dull grey sky, a straight downpour, that shut out everything except the sullen waste of leaden sea, crested with long lines of livid white. There was no chance of Mr. Tregonnell going to Plymouth on such a day as this.

Dr. Carrick looked curiously at his cousin’s pale face, but said not a word. Mr. Tregonnell, who rarely appeared so early, joined them before the doctor had finished his first cup of tea.

He was not slow to perceive that something was wrong with Hester.

“Good heavens, Miss Rushton, how ill you are looking,” he exclaimed,

“I do not feel very well. I had a wakeful night.”

“Why, what should keep you awake?” asked Dr. Carrick, looking sharply up at her.

“I hardly know. My mind was full of queer fancies. That awful story of Bulwer’s haunted me, the story you read to me a few days ago, Mr. Tregonnell.”

“Well, it is rather uncanny,” answered Eustace; “I am so sorry I read it to you. I ought to have considered that your nerves would be more sensitive than mine. I read it to you merely as a work of art, a masterpiece of graphic style.”

“I was very foolish to think of it as a reality,” said Hester.

Dr. Carrick laid his fingers on her wrist.

“You had better go to bed, and stay there, if you don’t want to be seriously ill,” he said; “you are in a high fever as it is.”

“Impossible,” answered Hester; “I have all sorts of things to do.”

“Of course. A woman always fancies the earth will stop, if she takes her hand off the machinery that makes it go round. I am sure you can have nothing to do today that can’t be as well done tomorrow. If it’s a question of dinner, that clever fellow, Skelter, will cook for you. If it’s any fiddle-faddle about the house, a muslin curtain to be ironed, or a chintz chair-cover to be mended, let it stand over till you are well. I shall be at home all day, if I’m wanted. I’ve no urgent cases, and it would be too cruel to take a horse out of his stable unnecessarily on such a day as this.”

Hester remembered many such days on which Dr. Carrick had spared neither himself nor his horse. She was obliged to submit to his orders and go back to bed, for she was too ill to resist him. She laid herself down dressed upon the outside of the counterpane, with her thick winter shawl wrapped round her, for although her head and hands were burning, a feeling of deathlike cold crept over her at intervals.

It seemed the longest day she had ever lived through. The ceaseless drip of the rain upon the leaves of the sycamore, whose spreading branches obscured half her window, the unchanging grey of the sky, the sullen murmur of the sea – all added to her gloom of mind. She would have given worlds to have seen Eustace Tregonnell alone, to have told him all she had discovered, all she feared; but she felt powerless to rise from her bed, and, even if she could muster strength and courage to go downstairs in quest of Mr. Tregonnell, she knew that Dr. Carrick was on guard below, and would do his uttermost to prevent her being alone with his patient. There was nothing for her to do but to lie there with aching head and anxious mind, waiting for night.

The good-natured maid-of-all-work came to her several times in the course of the day, bringing her broth which she could not touch, and divers cups of tea, which were welcome to her parched lips. She ate nothing all day, but drank deep draughts of cold water. Night came at last. She heard the doors shutting below, and footsteps ascending the stairs. How well she knew each footfall. The doctor’s soft, deliberate step; David Skelter’s tread, quick, yet heavy; Mr. Tregonnell’s firm, light step: the maid-of-all-work’s slipshod ascent. And then all was quiet. The church clock struck ten. The rain was still falling. There was not a star in the sky.

Hester lifted her head with an effort from the pillow where it had lain so heavily all day long. She crawled to her door, and noiselessly set it ajar, so slightly, that anyone passing would hardly notice that it was not shut. Then she opened the door of the closet. The light in Mr. Tregonnell’s room shone brightly through the crevices in the sliding shutter. Then she crept back to the room door and listened with all her might.

After about ten minutes she heard the doctor’s step coming along the passage from his own room. He knocked softly at Mr. Tregonnell’s door, was told to enter, and entered. Before the door closed, Hester heard the patient say:

“Upon my word, doctor, I don’t believe I need your ministrations tonight. I feel honestly sleepy.”

Here the door was firmly shut, and on this side Hester could hear no more.

She went quietly back to the closet, and drew near the sliding shutter. At the same moment the door leading to the servant’s staircase was cautiously opened, and David Skelter crept in.

All was dark in the closet. It was by intuition only that Hester knew the intruder. One rash exclamation from him and she would be betrayed. She put one hand over his mouth, grasping his wrist firmly with the other, and whispered in his ear:

“Not a word, not a movement. I am going to watch with you tonight.” And then, with infinite caution, she slid back the shutter for about an inch, and looked into the room.

Eustace Tregonnell was lying outside the bed, wrapped in his long velvet dressing-gown, in an attitude of supreme repose. Dr. Carrick was seated beside the bed, his hands moving slowly in mesmerical passes before the patient’s dreamy eyes. In less than a quarter of an hour Mr. Tregonnell had sunk into a mesmeric sleep, profound, peaceful, deathlike.

So far there was no wrong done. The patient was consentient; mesmerism had exerted a healing influence over mind and body; mesmerism had been Dr. Carrick’s only treatment.

“That’s all, miss,” whispered David. “He’ll go away now, and leave master to sleep it out. It’s against nature that one man should be able to send another to sleep, and I don’t like it.”

“There is no harm in it, David,” replied Hester.

But the doctor did not leave his patient. He withdrew from the bed, and stood, with his back to the mantelpiece, intently watchful of the sleeper. This lasted for more than five minutes; Hester still watching from the shutter, David close at her side.

And now Dr. Carrick crept stealthily across the room to the dressing-table, opened the medicine-chest, and took out a bottle.

“It’s the chloroform, miss,” whispered David. “I know the bottle.”

This word chloroform awakened a vague fear in Hester’s wind. She felt as if she were on the threshold of some hideous discovery.

“David,” she whispered, close in the valet’s ear, “run down softly, as fast as you can go, open the street door, and ring the bell. Quick, quick!”

The man obeyed without understanding her. His shoeless feet ran swiftly down the stairs.

Dr. Carrick went back to the bed, took the stopper out of the bottle, and deliberately poured the whole of the contents on Eustace Tregonnell’s pillow. The patient lay on his side with his face towards the fireplace. The doctor sprinkled the chloroform exactly under his nostrils. Then with a delicate hand, as carefully as if he had been covering the face of a sick child, for whom sleep was the sole chance of cure, he drew the light coverlet over Eustace Tregonnell’s head, and stood looking down at the shrouded figure with an evil smile on his face.

In the next instant the street door bell was ringing violently.

“Great Heaven, who can it be at such a time?” cried the doctor, hurrying from the room, with a backward, uneasy glance at the bed.

Hester unlocked the closet door, and rushed into Mr. Tregonnell’s room as the doctor disappeared. She threw back the coverlet from the sleeper’s face, snatched the pillow from under his head, dashed cold water over head and face, flung open the window to the cool, moist, night air, all without loss of an instant. She, who all day had been powerless to lift her head from the pillow, seemed in those terrible moments endowed with unnatural strength.

Eustace stirred, faintly at first; then, as Hester dashed more water into his face, his eyes slowly opened, he gave a struggling sigh, and at last raised his head, and looked at her, with eyes that expressed only vague wonder.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“I think I have saved your life,” she said quietly; and then her brain suddenly reeling, she fell in a heap on the floor beside his bed, not unconscious, only giddy and helpless.

Dr. Carrick came back, saw his intended victim sitting up with his eyes open, and his cousin on the ground by the bed. A glance told him that the game was lost. He did not understand how it had happened – how Hester came there – but he knew that his scheme was a failure.

“What the devil have you been doing to me, Dr, Carrick?” asked Eustace, not in the most amiable mood after awakening from deepest unconsciousness to find himself in a pool of water. “Have you been experimenting in hydropathy? And, good Heavens, what a smell of chloroform! My shirt must have been drenched with it.”

“You were restless, and I sprinkled a few drops on your pillow. In the name of decency, Hester, what are you doing here?”

The girl rose to her feet, steadied herself with a great effort, and looked her kinsman full in the face. David Skelter had followed the doctor upstairs, and stood on the threshold, ready to rush to his master’s aid the moment he was wanted.

“I know all that has happened tonight,” said Hester, with those steady eyes on the doctor’s face. “I saw all – David and I – we were both watching you through the little shutter in that closet door. You forgot that shutter, did yon not? I saw you empty the bottle of chloroform on the pillow, and draw the coverlet over your patient’s head. You were trying to suffocate him. I suppose suffocation of that kind leaves no trace. You have got your patient’s will – the will that leaves you everything, no doubt; and all you wanted was to get rid of your patient. You have failed this time. David, take care of your master. Neither his property nor his life is safe in this house.”

“Devil!” cried the doctor, beside himself. “Liar! Dirt that I picked up out of the gutter – a pauper who must have begged or starved but for my help! A pretty story to hatch against me, forsooth! Mr. Tregonnell, David, I call you both to witness that this woman is either a lunatic or the most outrageous liar that ever drew the breath of life.”

“This woman is my future wife,” said Eustace Tregonnell, rising from the bed, and supporting Hester’s tottering figure with his arm. “Yes, Hester, you will let it be so, will you not? I offer you the life you have saved. It is no new thought, love; it has been my pleasant day-dream for a month past. David, you scoundrel, pack my portmanteau this instant. Dr. Carrick, I shall have the felicity of leaving your hospitable abode early tomorrow, but I shall take Miss Brighton with me, and find a more desirable residence for her with our good old vicar and his family, until the marriage service shall have made her mistress of Tregonnell Manor. Now, Hester, my dear, go back to your room, and lock your door. I don’t think Dr. Carrick will try his chloroform treatment on you; he knows that David and I understand him.”

The baffled villain stood, pale, silent, scarcely breathing – an image of humanity frozen into marble. Then he roused himself slowly, gave a profound sigh, and walked to the door.

On the threshold he turned, and looked steadily at his patient.

“The night I first saw you I was inclined to think you a madman, Mr. Tregonnell,” he said deliberately; “now I know that you are one. I shall be heartily glad to get rid of such a dangerous inmate. My house is not certified for the reception of lunatics; and if your habits were known, I should get into trouble. Take care of your master, David. He’ll want a strait-waistcoat before you have been much longer in his service.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it,” David retorted bluntly.

Mr. Tregonnell took Hester to the vicarage early next morning. He told the vicar everything, and confided the young lady to his friendly care, pending her marriage. The vicar had a comfortable wife, and grown-up daughters; and Hester spent a month among these new friends – a month that was like one long dream of delight, for did not Eustace Tregonnell dedicate all his days to her society?

St. Hildred House was left empty within a few hours of Mr. Tregonnell’s departure. The maid-of-all-work was paid and dismissed without warning. Dr. Carrick told her that he had received a letter from London which obliged him to leave St. Hildred without an hour’s delay. A rich relative was dying, a relative likely to leave Dr. Carrick a handsome fortune.

This fiction decently covered the doctor’s retreat. He was soon lost in the labyrinth he knew so well. Despair had fastened its grip upon his soul. He had tried honesty; he had tried fraud and crime. Both had failed.

“I am one of those unlucky mortals born to fail,” he told himself. “Pas de chance. Neither God nor the devil will help me.”

Dr. Carrick made another appeal to the devil. He started in a disreputable neighbourhood as a practitioner of the lowest order – a practitioner who stuck at nothing. For a time things went well with him, and he made money. Then came a scandal, imprisonment, disgrace; and Dr. Carrick went down to the very bottom of the social gulf, never to rise again.

For Hester and her lover, life holds nothing but happiness. They spend six months of every year cruising in the brightest waters, anchoring by the fairest shores, and the rest of their days at Tregonnell Manor, where, being wealthy and generous, they are universally beloved.

—

Good Lady Ducayne

(1896)

I

Bella Rolleston had made up her mind that her only chance of earning her bread and helping her mother to an occasional crust was by going out into the great unknown world as companion to a lady. She was willing to go to any lady rich enough to pay her a salary and so eccentric as to wish for a hired companion. Five shillings told off reluctantly from one of those sovereigns which were so rare with the mother and daughter, and which melted away so quickly, five solid shillings, had been handed to a smartly-dressed lady in an office in Harbeck Street, W., in the hope that this very Superior Person would find a situation and a salary for Miss Rolleston.

The Superior Person glanced at the two half-crowns as they lay on the table where Bella’s hand had placed them, to make sure they were neither of them forms, before she wrote a description of Bella’s qualifications and requirements in a formidable-looking ledger.

“Age?” she asked curtly.

“Eighteen, last July.”

“Any accomplishments?”

“No; I am not at all accomplished. If I were I should want to be a governess – a companion seems the lowest stage.”

“We have some highly accomplished ladies on our books as companions, or chaperon companions.”

“Oh, I know!” babbled Bella, loquacious in her youthful candour. “But that is quite a different thing. Mother hasn’t been able to afford a piano since I was twelve years old, so I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to play. And I have had to help mother with her needlework, so there hasn’t been much time to study.”

“Please don’t waste time upon explaining what you can’t do, but kindly tell me anything you can do,” said the Superior Person, crushingly, with her pen poised between delicate fingers waiting to write. “Can you read aloud for two or three hours at a stretch? Are you active and handy, an early riser, a good walker, sweet tempered, and obliging?”

“I can say yes to all those questions except about the sweetness. I think I have a pretty good temper, and I should be anxious to oblige anybody who paid for my services. I should want them to feel that I was really earning my salary.”

“The kind of ladies who come to me would not care for a talkative companion,” said the Person, severely, having finished writing in her book. “My connection lies chiefly among the aristocracy, and in that class considerable deference is expected.”

“Oh, of course,” said Bella; “but it’s quite different when I’m talking to you. I want to tell you all about myself once and forever.”

“I am glad it is to be only once!” said the Person, with the edges of her lips.

The Person was of uncertain age, tightly laced in a black silk gown. She had a powdery complexion and a handsome clump of somebody else’s hair on the top of her head. It may be that Bella’s girlish freshness and vivacity had an irritating effect upon nerves weakened by an eight hours day in that over-heated second floor in Harbeck Street. To Bella the official apartment, with its Brussels carpet, velvet curtains and velvet chairs, and French clock, ticking loud on the marble chimney-piece, suggested the luxury of a palace, as compared with another second floor in Walworth where Mrs. Rolleston and her daughter had managed to exist for the last six years.

“Do you think you have anything on your books that would suit me?” faltered Bella, after a pause.

“Oh, dear, no; I have nothing in view at present,” answered the Person, who had swept Bella’s half-crowns into a drawer, absentmindedly, with the tips of her fingers. “You see, you are so very unformed – so much too young to be companion to a lady of position. It is a pity you have not enough education for a nursery governess; that would be more in your line.”

“And do you think it will be very long before you can get me a situation?” asked Bella, doubtfully.

“I really cannot say. Have you any particular reason for being so impatient – not a love affair, I hope?”

“A love affair!” cried Bella, with flaming cheeks. “What utter nonsense. I want a situation because mother is poor, and I hate being a burden to her. I want a salary that I can share with her.”

“There won’t be much margin for sharing in the salary you are likely to get at your age – and with your – very – unformed manners,” said the Person, who found Bella’s peony cheeks, bright eyes, and unbridled vivacity more and more oppressive.

“Perhaps if you’d be kind enough to give me back the fee I could take it to an agency where the connection isn’t quite so aristocratic,” said Bella, who – as she told her mother in her recital of the interview – was determined not to be sat upon.

“You will find no agency that can do more for you than mine,” replied the Person, whose harpy fingers never relinquished coin. “You will have to wait for your opportunity. Yours is an exceptional case: but I will bear you in mind, and if anything suitable offers I will write to you. I cannot say more than that.”

The half-contemptuous bend of the stately head, weighted with borrowed hair, indicated the end of the interview. Bella went back to Walworth – tramped sturdily every inch of the way in the September afternoon – and “took off” the Superior Person for the amusement of her mother and the landlady, who lingered in the shabby little sitting-room after bringing in the tea-tray, to applaud Miss Rolleston’s “taking off”.

“Dear, dear, what a mimic she is!” said the landlady. “You ought to have let her go on the stage, mum. She might have made her fortune as a hactress.”

II

Bella waited and hoped, and listened for the postman’s knocks which brought such store of letters for the parlours and the first floor, and so few for that humble second floor, where mother and daughter sat sewing with hand and with wheel and treadle, for the greater part of the day. Mrs. Rolleston was a lady by birth and education; but it had been her bad fortune to marry a scoundrel; for the last half-dozen years she had been that worst of widows, a wife whose husband had deserted her. Happily, she was courageous, industrious, and a clever needle-woman; and she had been able just to earn a living for herself and her only child, by making mantles and cloaks for a West-end house. It was not a luxurious living. Cheap lodgings in a shabby street off the Walworth Road, scanty dinners, homely food, well-worn raiment, had been the portion of mother and daughter; but they loved each other so dearly, and Nature had made them both so light-hearted, that they had contrived somehow to be happy.

But now this idea of going out into the world as companion to some fine lady had rooted itself into Bella’s mind, and although she idolized her mother, and although the parting of mother and daughter must needs tear two loving hearts into shreds, the girl longed for enterprise and change and excitement, as the pages of old longed to be knights, and to start for the Holy Land to break a lance with the infidel.

She grew tired of racing downstairs every time the postman knocked, only to be told “nothing for you, miss,” by the smudgy-faced drudge who picked up the letters from the passage floor. “Nothing for you, miss,” grinned the lodging-house drudge, till at last Bella took heart of grace and walked up to Harbeck Street, and asked the Superior Person how it was that no situation had been found for her.

“You are too young,” said the Person, “and you want a salary.”

“Of course I do,” answered Bella; “don’t other people want salaries?”

“Young ladies of your age generally want a comfortable home.”

“I don’t,” snapped Bella; “I want to help mother.”

“You can call again this day week,” said the Person; “or, if I hear of anything in the meantime, I will write to you.”

No letter came from the Person, and in exactly a week Bella put on her neatest hat, the one that had been seldomest caught in the rain, and trudged off to Harbeck Street.

It was a dull October afternoon, and there was a greyness in the air which might turn to fog before night. The Walworth Road shops gleamed brightly through that grey atmosphere, and though to a young lady reared in Mayfair or Belgravia such shop-windows would have been unworthy of a glance, they were a snare and temptation for Bella. There were so many things that she longed for, and would never be able to buy.

Harbeck Street is apt to be empty at this dead season of the year, a long, long street, an endless perspective of eminently respectable houses. The Person’s office was at the further end, and Bella looked down that long, grey vista almost despairingly, more tired than usual with the trudge from Walworth. As she looked, a carriage passed her, an old-fashioned, yellow chariot, on cee springs, drawn by a pair of high grey horses, with the stateliest of coachmen driving them, and a tall footman sitting by his side.

“It looks like the fairy godmother’s coach,” thought Bella. “I shouldn’t wonder if it began by being a pumpkin.”

It was a surprise when she reached the Person’s door to find the yellow chariot standing before it, and the tall footman waiting near the doorstep. She was almost afraid to go in and meet the owner of that splendid carriage. She had caught only a glimpse of its occupant as the chariot rolled by, a plumed bonnet, a patch of ermine.

The Person’s smart page ushered her upstairs and knocked at the official door. “Miss Rolleston,” he announced, apologetically, while Bella waited outside.

“Show her in,” said the Person, quickly; and then Bella heard her murmuring something in a low voice to her client.

Bella went in fresh, blooming, a living image of youth and hope, and before she looked at the Person her gaze was riveted by the owner of the chariot.

Never had she seen anyone as old as the old lady sitting by the Person’s fire: a little old figure, wrapped from chin to feet in an ermine mantle; a withered, old face under a plumed bonnet – a face so wasted by age that it seemed only a pair of eyes and a peaked chin. The nose was peaked, too, but between the sharply pointed chin and the great, shining eyes, the small, aquiline nose was hardly visible.

“This is Miss Rolleston, Lady Ducayne.”

Claw-like fingers, flashing with jewels, lifted a double eyeglass to Lady Ducayne’s shining black eyes, and through the glasses Bella saw those unnaturally bright eyes magnified to a gigantic size, and glaring at her awfully.

“Miss Torpinter has told me all about you,” said the old voice that belonged to the eyes. “Have you good health? Are you strong and active, able to eat well, sleep well, walk well, able to enjoy all that there is good in life?”

“I have never known what it is to be ill, or idle,” answered Bella.

“Then I think you will do for me.”

“Of course, in the event of references being perfectly satisfactory,” put in the Person.

“I don’t want references. The young woman looks frank and innocent. I’ll take her on trust.”

“So like you, dear Lady Ducayne,” murmured Miss Torpinter.

“I want a strong young woman whose health will give me no trouble.”

“You have been so unfortunate in that respect,” cooed the Person, whose voice and manner were subdued to a melting sweetness by the old woman’s presence.

“Yes, I’ve been rather unlucky,” grunted Lady Ducayne.

“But I am sure Miss Rolleston will not disappoint you, though certainly after your unpleasant experience with Miss Tomson, who looked the picture of health – and Miss Blandy, who said she had never seen a doctor since she was vaccinated—”

“Lies, no doubt,” muttered Lady Ducayne, and then turning to Bella, she asked, curtly, “You don’t mind spending the winter in Italy, I suppose?”

In Italy! The very word was magical. Bella’s fair young face flushed crimson.

“It has been the dream of my life to see Italy,” she gasped.

From Walworth to Italy! How far, how impossible such a journey had seemed to that romantic dreamer.

“Well, your dream will be realized. Get yourself ready to leave Charing Cross by the train deluxe this day week at eleven. Be sure you are at the station a quarter before the hour. My people will look after you and your luggage.”

Lady Ducayne rose from her chair, assisted by her crutch-stick, and Miss Torpinter escorted her to the door.

“And with regard to salary?” questioned the Person on the way.

“Salary, oh, the same as usual – and if the young woman wants a quarter’s pay in advance you can write to me for a cheque,” Lady Ducayne answered, carelessly.

Miss Torpinter went all the way downstairs with her client, and waited to see her seated in the yellow chariot. When she came upstairs again she was slightly out of breath, and she had resumed that superior manner which Bella had found so crushing.

“You may think yourself uncommonly lucky, Miss Rolleston,” she said. “I have dozens of young ladies on my books whom I might have recommended for this situation – but I remembered having told you to call this afternoon – and I thought I would give you a chance. Old Lady Ducayne is one of the best people on my books. She gives her companion a hundred a year, and pays all travelling expenses. You will live in the lap of luxury.”

“A hundred a year! How too lovely! Shall I have to dress very grandly? Does Lady Ducayne keep much company?”

“At her age! No, she lives in seclusion – in her own apartments – her French maid, her footman, her medical attendant, her courier.”

“Why did those other companions leave her?” asked Bella..

“Their health broke down!”

“Poor things, and so they had to leave?”

“Yes, they had to leave. I suppose you would like a quarter’s salary in advance?”

“Oh, yes, please. I shall have things to buy.”

“Very well, I will write for Lady Ducayne’s cheque, and I will send you the balance – after deducting my commission for the year.”

“To be sure, I had forgotten the commission.”

“You don’t suppose I keep this office for pleasure.”

“Of course not,” murmured Bella, remembering the five shillings entrance fee; but nobody could expect a hundred a year and a winter in Italy for five shillings.

III

“From Miss Rolleston, at Cap Ferrino,
to Mrs. Rolleston, in Beresford Street, Walworth.

“How I wish you could see this place, dearest; the blue sky, the olive woods, the orange and lemon orchards between the cliffs and the sea – sheltering in the hollow of the great hills – and with summer waves dancing up to the narrow ridge of pebbles and weeds which is the Italian idea of a beach! Oh, how I wish you could see it all, mother dear, and bask in this sunshine, that makes it so difficult to believe the date at the head of this paper. November! The air is like an English June – the sun is so hot that I can’t walk a few yards without an umbrella. And to think of you at Walworth while I am here! I could cry at the thought that perhaps you will never see this lovely coast, this wonderful sea, these summer flowers that bloom in winter. There is a hedge of pink geraniums under my window, mother – a thick, rank hedge, as if the flowers grew wild – and there are Dijon roses climbing over arches and palisades all along the terrace – a rose garden full of bloom in November! Just picture it all! You could never imagine the luxury of this hotel.

“It is nearly new, and has been built and decorated regardless of expense. Our rooms are upholstered in pale blue satin, which shows up Lady Ducayne’s parchment complexion; but as she sits all day in a corner of the balcony basking in the sun, except when she is in her carriage, and all the evening in her armchair close to the fire, and never sees anyone but her own people, her complexion matters very little.

“She has the handsomest suite of rooms in the hotel. My bedroom is inside hers, the sweetest room – all blue satin and white lace – white enamelled furniture, looking-glasses on every wall, till I know my pert little profile as I never knew it before. The room was really meant for Lady Ducayne’s dressing-room, but she ordered one of the blue satin couches to be arranged as a bed for me – the prettiest little bed, which I can wheel near the window on sunny mornings, as it is on castors and easily moved about. I feel as if Lady Ducayne were a funny old grandmother, who had suddenly appeared in my life, very, very rich, and very, very kind.

“She is not at all exacting. I read aloud to her a good deal, and she dozes and nods while I read. Sometimes I hear her moaning in her sleep – as if she had troublesome dreams. When she is tired of my reading she orders Francine, her maid, to read a French novel to her, and I hear her chuckle and groan now and then, as if she were more interested in those books than in Dickens or Scott. My French is not good enough to follow Francine, who reads very quickly.

“I have a great deal of liberty, for Lady Ducayne often tells me to run away and amuse myself; I roam about the hills for hours. Everything is so lovely. I lose myself in olive woods, always climbing up and up towards the pine woods above – and above the pines there are the snow mountains that just show their white peaks above the dark hills. Oh, you poor dear, how can I ever make you understand what this place is like – you, whose poor, tired eyes have only the opposite side of Beresford Street? Sometimes I go no farther than the terrace in front of the hotel, which is a favourite lounging-place with everybody. The gardens lie below, and the tennis courts where I sometimes play with a very nice girl, the only person in the hotel with whom I have made friends. She is a year older than I, and has come to Cap Ferrino with her brother, a doctor – or a medical student, who is going to be a doctor. He passed his M.B. exam at Edinburgh just before they left home, Lotta told me. He came to Italy entirely on his sister’s account. She had a troublesome chest attack last summer and was ordered to winter abroad. They are orphans, quite alone in the world, and so fond of each other. It is very nice for me to have such a friend as Lotta. She is so thoroughly respectable. I can’t help using that word, for some of the girls in this hotel go on in a way that I know you would shudder at. Lotta was brought up by an aunt, deep down in the country, and knows hardly anything about life. Her brother won’t allow her to read a novel, French or English, that he has not read and approved.

“‘He treats me like a child,’ she told me, ‘but I don’t mind, for it’s nice to know somebody loves me, and cares about what I do, and even about my thoughts.’

“Perhaps this is what makes some girls so eager to marry – the want of someone strong and brave and honest and true to care for them and order them about. I want no one, mother darling, for I have you, and you are all the world to me. No husband could ever come between us two. If I ever were to marry he would have only the second place in my heart. But I don’t suppose I ever shall marry, or even know what it is like to have an offer of marriage. No young man can afford to marry a penniless girl nowadays. Life is too expensive.

“Mr. Stafford, Lotta’s brother, is very clever, and very kind. He thinks it is rather hard for me to have to live with such an old woman as Lady Ducayne, but then he does not know how poor we are – you and I – and what a wonderful life this seems to me in this lovely place. I feel a selfish wretch for enjoying all my luxuries, while you, who want them so much more than I, have none of them – hardly know what they are like – do you, dearest? – for my scamp of a father began to go to the dogs soon after you were married, and since then life has been all trouble and care and struggle for you.”

This letter was written when Bella had been less than a month at Cap Ferrino, before the novelty had worn off the landscape, and before the pleasure of luxurious surroundings had begun to cloy. She wrote to her mother every week, such long letters as girls who have lived in closest companionship with a mother alone can write; letters that are like a diary of heart and mind. She wrote gaily always; but when the new year began Mrs. Rolleston thought she detected a note of melancholy under all those lively details about the place and the people.

“My poor girl is getting homesick,” she thought. “Her heart is in Beresford Street.”

It might be that she missed her new friend and companion, Lotta Stafford, who had gone with her brother for a little tour to Genoa and Spezzia, and as far as Pisa. They were to return before February; but in the meantime Bella might naturally feel very solitary among all those strangers, whose manners and doings she described so well.

The mother’s instinct had been true. Bella was not so happy as she had been in that first flush of wonder and delight which followed the change from Walworth to the Riviera. Somehow, she knew not how, lassitude had crept upon her. She no longer loved to climb the hills, no longer flourished her orange stick in sheer gladness of heart as her light feet skipped over the rough ground and the coarse grass on the mountain side. The odour of rosemary and thyme, the fresh breath of the sea, no longer filled her with rapture. She thought of Beresford Street and her mother’s face with a sick longing. They were so far – so far away! And then she thought of Lady Ducayne, sitting by the heaped-up olive logs in the over-heated salon – thought of that wizened nut-cracker profile, and those gleaming eyes, with an invincible horror.

Visitors at the hotel had told her that the air of Cap Ferrino was relaxing – better suited to age than to youth, to sickness than to health. No doubt it was so. She was not so well as she had been at Walworth; but she told herself that she was suffering only from the pain of separation from the dear companion of her girlhood, the mother who had been nurse, sister, friend, flatterer, all things in this world to her. She had shed many tears over that parting, had spent many a melancholy hour on the marble terrace with yearning eyes looking westward, and with her heart’s desire a thousand miles away.

She was sitting in her favourite spot, an angle at the eastern end of the terrace, a quiet little nook sheltered by orange trees, when she heard a couple of Riviera habitués talking in the garden below. They were sitting on a bench against the terrace wall.

She had no idea of listening to their talk, till the sound of Lady Ducayne’s name attracted her, and then she listened without any thought of wrong-doing. They were talking no secrets – just casually discussing an hotel acquaintance.

They were two elderly people whom Bella only knew by sight. An English clergyman who had wintered abroad for half his lifetime; a stout, comfortable, well-to-do spinster, whose chronic bronchitis obliged her to migrate annually.

“I have met her about Italy for the last ten years,” said the lady; “but have never found out her real age.”

“I put her down at a hundred – not a year less,” replied the parson. “Her reminiscences all go back to the Regency. She was evidently then in her zenith; and I have heard her say things that showed she was in Parisian society when the First Empire was at its best – before Josephine was divorced.”

“She doesn’t talk much now.”

“No; there’s not much life left in her. She is wise in keeping herself secluded. I only wonder that wicked old quack, her Italian doctor, didn’t finish her off years ago.”

“I should think it must be the other way, and that he keeps her alive.”

“My dear Miss Manders, do you think foreign quackery ever kept anybody alive?”

“Well, there she is – and she never goes anywhere without him. He certainly has an unpleasant countenance.”

“Unpleasant,” echoed the parson, “I don’t believe the foul fiend himself can beat him in ugliness. I pity that poor young woman who has to live between old Lady Ducayne and Dr Parravicini.”

“But the old lady is very good to her companions.”

“No doubt. She is very free with her cash; the servants call her good Lady Ducayne. She is a withered old female Croesus, and knows she’ll never be able to get through her money, and doesn’t relish the idea of other people enjoying it when she’s in her coffin. People who live to be as old as she is become slavishly attached to life. I daresay she’s generous to those poor girls – but she can’t make them happy. They die in her service.”

“Don’t say they, Mr. Carton; I know that one poor girl died at Mentone last spring.”

“Yes, and another poor girl died in Rome three years ago. I was there at the time. Good Lady Ducayne left her there in an English family. The girl had every comfort. The old woman was very liberal to her – but she died. I tell you, Miss Manders, it is not good for any young woman to live with two such horrors as Lady Ducayne and Parravicini.”

They talked of other things – but Bella hardly heard them. She sat motionless, and a cold wind seemed to come down upon her from the mountains and to creep up to her from the sea, till she shivered as she sat there in the sunshine, in the shelter of the orange trees in the midst of all that beauty and brightness.

Yes, they were uncanny, certainly, the pair of them – she so like an aristocratic witch in her withered old age; he of no particular age, with a face that was more like a waxen mask than any human countenance Bella had ever seen. What did it matter? Old age is venerable, and worthy of all reverence; and Lady Ducayne had been very kind to her. Dr Parravicini was a harmless, inoffensive student, who seldom looked up from the book he was reading. He had his private sitting-room, where he made experiments in chemistry and natural science – perhaps in alchemy. What could it matter to Bella? He had always been polite to her, in his far-off way. She could not be more happily placed than she was – in this palatial hotel, with this rich old lady.

No doubt she missed the young English girl who had been so friendly, and it might be that she missed the girl’s brother, for Mr. Stafford had talked to her a good deal – had interested himself in the books she was reading, and her manner of amusing herself when she was not on duty.

“You must come to our little salon when you are ‘off,’ as the hospital nurses call it, and we can have some music. No doubt you play and sing?” upon which Bella had to own with a blush of shame that she had forgotten how to play the piano ages ago.

“Mother and I used to sing duets sometimes between the lights, without accompaniment,” she said, and the tears came into her eyes as she thought of the humble room, the half-hour’s respite from work, the sewing-machine standing where a piano ought to have been, and her mother’s plaintive voice, so sweet, so true, so dear.

Sometimes she found herself wondering whether she would ever see that beloved mother again. Strange forebodings came into her mind. She was angry with herself for giving way to melancholy thoughts.

One day she questioned Lady Ducayne’s French maid about those two companions who had died within three years.

“They were poor, feeble creatures,” Francine told her. “They looked fresh and bright enough when they came to Milady; but they ate too much and they were lazy. They died of luxury and idleness. Milady was too kind to them. They had nothing to do; and so they took to fancying things; fancying the air didn’t suit them, that they couldn’t sleep.”

“I sleep well enough, but I have had a strange dream several times since I have been in Italy.”

“Ah, you had better not begin to think about dreams, or you will be like those other girls. They were dreamers – and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery.”

The dream troubled her a little, not because it was a ghastly or frightening dream, but on account of sensations which she had never felt before in sleep – a whirring of wheels that went round in her brain, a great noise like a whirlwind, but rhythmical like the ticking of a gigantic clock: and then in the midst of this uproar as of winds and waves she seemed to sink into a gulf of unconsciousness, out of sleep into far deeper sleep – total extinction. And then, after that blank interval, there had come the sound of voices, and then again the whirr of wheels, louder and louder – and again the blank – and then she knew no more till morning, when she awoke, feeling languid and oppressed.

She told Dr Parravicini of her dream one day, on the only occasion when she wanted his professional advice. She had suffered rather severely from the mosquitoes before Christmas – and had been almost frightened at finding a wound upon her arm which she could only attribute to the venomous sting of one of these torturers. Parravicini put on his glasses, and scrutinized the angry mark on the round, white arm, as Bella stood before him and Lady Ducayne with her sleeve rolled up above her elbow.

“Yes, that’s rather more than a joke,” he said, “he has caught you on the top of a vein. What a vampire! But there’s no harm done, signorina, nothing that a little dressing of mine won’t heal. You must always show me any bite of this nature. It might be dangerous if neglected. These creatures feed on poison and disseminate it.”

“And to think that such tiny creatures can bite like this,” said Bella; “my arm looks as if it had been cut by a knife.”

“If I were to show you a mosquito’s sting under my microscope you wouldn’t be surprised at that,” replied Parravicini.

Bella had to put up with the mosquito bites, even when they came on the top of a vein, and produced that ugly wound. The wound recurred now and then at longish intervals, and Bella found Dr Parravicini’s dressing a speedy cure. If he were the quack his enemies called him, he had at least a light hand and a delicate touch in performing this small operation.

“Bella Rolleston to Mrs. Rolleston – April 14th.

“Ever Dearest, – Behold the cheque for my second quarter’s salary – five and twenty pounds.

“There is no one to pinch off a whole tenner for a year’s commission as there was last time, so it is all for you, mother, dear. I have plenty of pocket-money in hand from the cash I brought away with me, when you insisted on my keeping more than I wanted. It isn’t possible to spend money here – except on occasional tips to servants, or sous to beggars and children – unless one had lots to spend, for everything one would like to buy – tortoise-shell, coral, lace – is so ridiculously dear that only a millionaire ought to look at it. Italy is a dream of beauty: but for shopping, give me Newington Causeway.

“You ask me so earnestly if I am quite well that I fear my letters must have been very dull lately. Yes, dear, I am well – but I am not quite so strong as I was when I used to trudge to the West-end to buy half a pound of tea – just for a constitutional walk – or to Dulwich to look at the pictures. Italy is relaxing; and I feel what the people here call ‘slack’. But I fancy I can see your dear face looking worried as you read this. Indeed, and indeed, I am not ill. I am only a little tired of this lovely scene – as I suppose one might get tired of looking at one of Turner’s pictures if it hung on a wall that was always opposite one. I think of you every hour in every day – think of you and our homely little room – our dear little shabby parlour, with the armchairs from the wreck of your old home, and Dick singing in his cage over the sewing-machine. Dear, shrill, maddening Dick, who, we flattered ourselves, was so passionately fond of us. Do tell me in your next that he is well.

“My friend Lotta and her brother never came back after all. They went from Pisa to Rome. Happy mortals! And they are to be on the Italian lakes in May; which lake was not decided when Lotta last wrote to me. She has been a charming correspondent, and has confided all her little flirtations to me. We are all to go to Bellaggio next week – by Genoa and Milan. Isn’t that lovely? Lady Ducayne travels by the easiest stages – except when she is bottled up in the train de luxe. We shall stop two days at Genoa and one at Milan. What a bore I shall be to you with my talk about Italy when I come home.

“Love and love – and ever more love from your adoring, Bella.”

IV

Herbert Stafford and his sister had often talked of the pretty English girl with her fresh complexion, which made such a pleasant touch of rosy colour among all those sallow faces at the Grand Hotel. The young doctor thought of her with a compassionate tenderness – her utter loneliness in that great hotel where there were so many people, her bondage to that old, old woman, where everybody else was free to think of nothing but enjoying life. It was a hard fate; and the poor child was evidently devoted to her mother, and felt the pain of separation – “only two of them, and very poor, and all the world to each other,” he thought.

Lotta told him one morning that they were to meet again at Bellaggio. “The old thing and her court are to be there before we are,” she said. “I shall be charmed to have Bella again. She is so bright and gay – in spite of an occasional touch of homesickness. I never took to a girl on a short acquaintance as I did to her.”

“I like her best when she is homesick,” said Herbert; “for then I am sure she has a heart.”

“What have you to do with hearts, except for dissection? Don’t forget that Bella is an absolute pauper. She told me in confidence that her mother makes mantles for a West-end shop. You can hardly have a lower depth than that.”

“I shouldn’t think any less of her if her mother made match-boxes.”

“Not in the abstract – of course not. Match-boxes are honest labour. But you couldn’t marry a girl whose mother makes mantles.”

“We haven’t come to the consideration of that question yet,” answered Herbert, who liked to provoke his sister.

In two years’ hospital practice he had seen too much of the grim realities of life to retain any prejudices about rank. Cancer, phthisis, gangrene, leave a man with little respect for the outward differences which vary the husk of humanity. The kernel is always the same – fearfully and wonderfully made – a subject for pity and terror.

Mr. Stafford and his sister arrived at Bellaggio in a fair May evening. The sun was going down as the steamer approached the pier; and all that glory of purple bloom which curtains every wall at this season of the year flushed and deepened in the glowing light. A group of ladies were standing on the pier watching the arrivals, and among them Herbert saw a pale face that startled him out of his wonted composure.

“There she is,” murmured Lotta, at his elbow, “but how dreadfully changed. She looks a wreck.”

They were shaking hands with her a few minutes later, and a flush had lighted up her poor pinched face in the pleasure of meeting.

“I thought you might come this evening,” she said. “We have been here a week.”

She did not add that she had been there every evening to watch the boat in, and a good many times during the day. The Grand Bretagne was close by, and it had been easy for her to creep to the pier when the boat bell rang. She felt a joy in meeting these people again; a sense of being with friends; a confidence which Lady Ducayne’s goodness had never inspired in her.

“Oh, you poor darling, how awfully ill you must have been,” exclaimed Lotta, as the two girls embraced.

Bella tried to answer, but her voice was choked with tears.

“What has been the matter, dear? That horrid influenza, I suppose?”

“No, no, I have not been ill – I have only felt a little weaker than I used to be. I don’t think the air of Cap Ferrino quite agreed with me.”

“It must have disagreed with you abominably. I never saw such a change in anyone. Do let Herbert doctor you. He is fully qualified, you know. He prescribed for ever so many influenza patients at the Londres. They were glad to get advice from an English doctor in a friendly way.”

“I am sure he must be very clever!” faltered Bella, “but there is really nothing the matter. I am not ill, and if I were ill, Lady Ducayne’s physician—”

“That dreadful man with the yellow face? I would as soon one of the Borgias prescribed for me. I hope you haven’t been taking any of his medicines.”

“No, dear, I have taken nothing. I have never complained of being ill.”

This was said while they were all three walking to the hotel. The Staffords’ rooms had been secured in advance, pretty ground-floor rooms, opening into the garden. Lady Ducayne’s statelier apartments were on the floor above.

“I believe these rooms are just under ours,” said Bella.

“Then it will be all the easier for you to run down to us,” replied Lotta, which was not really the case, as the grand staircase was in the centre of the hotel.

“Oh, I shall find it easy enough,” said Bella. “I’m afraid you’ll have too much of my society. Lady Ducayne sleeps away half the day in this warm weather, so I have a good deal of idle time; and I get awfully moped thinking of mother and home.”

Her voice broke upon the last word. She could not have thought of that poor lodging which went by the name of home more tenderly had it been the most beautiful that art and wealth ever created. She moped and pined in this lovely garden, with the sunlit lake and the romantic hills spreading out their beauty before her. She was homesick and she had dreams: or, rather, an occasional recurrence of that one bad dream with all its strange sensations – it was more like a hallucination than dreaming – the whirring of wheels; the sinking into an abyss; the struggling back to consciousness. She had the dream shortly before she left Cap Ferrino, but not since she had come to Bellaggio, and she began to hope the air in this lake district suited her better, and that those strange sensations would never return.

Mr. Stafford wrote a prescription and had it made up at the chemist’s near the hotel. It was a powerful tonic, and after two bottles, and a row or two on the lake, and some rambling over the hills and in the meadows where the spring flowers made earth seem paradise, Bella’s spirits and looks improved as if by magic.

“It is a wonderful tonic,” she said, but perhaps in her heart of hearts she knew that the doctor’s kind voice and the friendly hand that helped her in and out of the boat, and the watchful care that went with her by land and lake, had something to do with her cure.

“I hope you don’t forget that her mother makes mantles,” Lotta said, warningly.

“Or match-boxes: it is just the same thing, so far as I am concerned.”

“You mean that in no circumstances could you think of marrying her?”

“I mean that if ever I love a woman well enough to think of marrying her, riches or rank will count for nothing with me. But I fear – I fear your poor friend may not live to be any man’s wife.”

“Do you think her so very ill?”

He sighed, and left the question unanswered.

One day, while they were gathering wild hyacinths in an upland meadow, Bella told Mr. Stafford about her bad dream.

“It is curious only because it is hardly like a dream,” she said. “I daresay you could find some common-sense reason for it. The position of my head on my pillow, or the atmosphere, or something.”

And then she described her sensations; how in the midst of sleep there came a sudden sense of suffocation; and then those whirring wheels, so loud, so terrible; and then a blank, and then a coming back to waking consciousness.

“Have you ever had chloroform given you – by a dentist, for instance?”

“Never – Dr Parravicini asked me that question one day.”

“Lately?”

“No, long ago, when we were in the train de luxe.”

“Has Dr Parravicini prescribed for you since you began to feel weak and ill?”

“Oh, he has given me a tonic from time to time, but I hate medicine, and took very little of the stuff. And then I am not ill, only weaker than I used to be. I was ridiculously strong and well when I lived at Walworth, and used to take long walks every day. Mother made me take those tramps to Dulwich or Norwood, for fear I should suffer from too much sewing-machine; sometimes – but very seldom – she went with me. She was generally toiling at home while I was enjoying fresh air and exercise. And she was very careful about our food – that, however plain it was, it should be always nourishing and ample. I owe at to her care that I grew up such a great, strong creature.”

“You don’t look great or strong now, you poor dear,” said Lotta.

“I’m afraid Italy doesn’t agree with me.”

“Perhaps it is not Italy, but being cooped up with Lady Ducayne that has made you ill.”

“But I am never cooped up. Lady Ducayne is absurdly kind, and lets me roam about or sit in the balcony all day if I like. I have read more novels since I have been with her than in all the rest of my life.”

“Then she is very different from the average old lady, who is usually a slave-driver,” said Stafford. “I wonder why she carries a companion about with her if she has so little need of society.”

“Oh, I am only part of her state. She is inordinately rich – and the salary she gives me doesn’t count. Apropos of Dr Parravicini, I know he is a clever doctor, for he cures my horrid mosquito bites.”

“A little ammonia would do that, in the early stage of the mischief. But there are no mosquitoes to trouble you now.”

“Oh, yes, there are, I had a bite just before we left Cap Ferrino.”

She pushed up her loose lawn sleeve, and exhibited a scar, which he scrutinized intently, with a surprised and puzzled look.

“This is no mosquito bite,” he said.

“Oh, yes it is – unless there are snakes or adders at Cap Ferrino.”

“It is not a bite at all. You are trifling with me. Miss Rolleston – you have allowed that wretched Italian quack to bleed you. They killed the greatest man in modern Europe that way, remember. How very foolish of you.”

“I was never bled in my life, Mr. Stafford.”

“Nonsense! Let me look at your other arm. Are there any more mosquito bites?”

“Yes; Dr Parravicini says I have a bad skin for healing, and that the poison acts more virulently with me than with most people.”

Stafford examined both her arms in the broad sunlight, scars new and old.

“You have been very badly bitten, Miss Rolleston,” he said, “and if ever I find the mosquito I shall make him smart. But, now tell me, my dear girl, on your word of honour, tell me as you would tell a friend who is sincerely anxious for your health and happiness – as you would tell your mother if she were here to question you – have you no knowledge of any cause for these scars except mosquito bites – no suspicion even?”

“No, indeed! No, upon my honour! I have never seen a mosquito biting my arm. One never does see the horrid little fiends. But I have heard them trumpeting under the curtains, and I know that I have often had one of the pestilent wretches buzzing about me.”

Later in the day Bella and her friends were sitting at tea in the garden, while Lady Ducayne took her afternoon drive with her doctor.

“How long do you mean to stop with Lady Ducayne, Miss Rolleston?” Herbert Stafford asked, after a thoughtful silence, breaking suddenly upon the trivial talk of the two girls.

“As long as she will go on paying me twenty-five pounds a quarter.”

“Even if you feel your health breaking down in her service?”

“It is not the service that has injured my health. You can see that I have really nothing to do – to read aloud for an hour or so once or twice a week; to write a letter once in a way to a London tradesman. I shall never have such an easy time with anybody else. And nobody else would give me a hundred a year.”

“Then you mean to go on till you break down; to die at your post?”

“Like the other two companions? No! If ever I feel seriously ill – really ill – I shall put myself in a train and go back to Walworth without stopping.”

“What about the other two companions?”

“They both died. It was very unlucky for Lady Ducayne. That’s why she engaged me; she chose me because I was ruddy and robust. She must feel rather disgusted at my having grown white and weak. By-the-by, when I told her about the good your tonic had done me, she said she would like to see you and have a little talk with you about her own case.”

“And I should like to see Lady Ducayne. When did she say this?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Will you ask her if she will see me this evening?”

“With pleasure I wonder what you will think of her? She looks rather terrible to a stranger; but Dr Parravicini says she was once a famous beauty.”

It was nearly ten o’clock when Mr. Stafford was summoned by message from Lady Ducayne, whose courier came to conduct him to her ladyship’s salon. Bella was reading aloud when the visitor was admitted; and he noticed the languor in the low, sweet tones, the evident effort.

“Shut up the book,” said the querulous old voice. “You are beginning to drawl like Miss Blandy.”

Stafford saw a small, bent figure crouching over the piled-up olive logs; a shrunken old figure in a gorgeous garment of black and crimson brocade, a skinny throat emerging from a mass of old Venetian lace, clasped with diamonds that flashed like fire-flies as the trembling old head turned towards him.

The eyes that looked at him out of the face were almost as bright as the diamonds – the only living feature in that narrow parchment mask. He had seen terrible faces in the hospital – faces on which disease had set dreadful marks – but he had never seen a face that impressed him so painfully as this withered countenance, with its indescribable horror of death outlived, a face that should have been hidden under a coffin-lid years and years ago.

The Italian physician was standing on the other side of the fireplace, smoking a cigarette, and looking down at the little old woman brooding over the hearth as if he were proud of her.

“Good evening, Mr. Stafford; you can go to your room, Bella, and write your everlasting letter to your mother at Walworth,” said Lady Ducayne. “I believe she writes a page about every wild flower she discovers in the woods and meadows. I don’t know what else she can find to write about,” she added, as Bella quietly withdrew to the pretty little bedroom opening out of Lady Ducayne’s spacious apartment. Here, as at Cap Ferrino, she slept in a room adjoining the old lady’s.

“You are a medical man, I understand, Mr. Stafford.”

“I am a qualified practitioner, but I have not begun to practise.”

“You have begun upon my companion, she tells me.”

“I have prescribed for her, certainly, and I am happy to find my prescription has done her good; but I look upon that improvement as temporary. Her case will require more drastic treatment.”

“Never mind her case. There is nothing the matter with the girl – absolutely nothing – except girlish nonsense; too much liberty and not enough work.”

“I understand that two of your ladyship’s previous companions died of the same disease,” said Stafford, looking first at Lady Ducayne, who gave her tremulous old head an impatient jerk, and then at Parravicini, whose yellow complexion had paled a little under Stafford’s scrutiny.

“Don’t bother me about my companions, sir,” said Lady Ducayne. “I sent for you to consult you about myself – not about a parcel of anaemic girls. You are young, and medicine is a progressive science, the newspapers tell me. Where have you studied?”

“In Edinburgh – and in Paris.”

“Two good schools. And you know all the new-fangled theories, the modern discoveries – that remind one of the mediaeval witchcraft, of Albertus Magnus, and George Ripley; you have studied hypnotism – electricity?”

“And the transfusion of blood,” said Stafford, very slowly, looking at Parravicini.

“Have you made any discovery that teaches you to prolong human life – any elixir – any mode of treatment? I want my life prolonged, young man. That man there has been my physician for thirty years. He does all he can to keep me alive – after his lights. He studies all the new theories of all the scientists – but he is old; he gets older every day – his brain-power is going – he is bigoted – prejudiced – can’t receive new ideas – can’t grapple with new systems. He will let me die if I am not on my guard against him.”

“You are of an unbelievable ingratitude, Ecclenza,” said Parravicini.

“Oh, you needn’t complain. I have paid you thousands to keep me alive. Every year of my life has swollen your hoards; you know there is nothing to come to you when I am gone. My whole fortune is left to endow a home for indigent women of quality who have reached their ninetieth year. Come, Mr. Stafford, I am a rich woman. Give me a few years more in the sunshine, a few years more above ground, and I will give you the price of a fashionable London practice – I will set you up at the West-end.”

“How old are you, Lady Ducayne?”

“I was born the day Louis XVI was guillotined.”

“Then I think you have had your share of the sunshine and the pleasures of the earth, and that you should spend your few remaining days in repenting your sins and trying to make atonement for the young lives that have been sacrificed to your love of life.”

“What do you mean by that, sir?”

“Oh, Lady Ducayne, need I put your wickedness and your physician’s still greater wickedness in plain words? The poor girl who is now in your employment has been reduced from robust health to a condition of absolute danger by Dr Parravicini’s experimental surgery; and I have no doubt those other two young women who broke down in your service were treated by him in the same manner. I could take upon myself to demonstrate – by most convincing evidence, to a jury of medical men – that Dr Parravicini has been bleeding Miss Rolleston, after putting her under chloroform, at intervals, ever since she has been in your service. The deterioration in the girl’s health speaks for itself; the lancet marks upon the girl’s arms are unmistakable; and her description of a series of sensations, which she calls a dream, points unmistakably to the administration of chloroform while she was sleeping. A practice so nefarious, so murderous, must, if exposed, result in a sentence only less severe than the punishment of murder.”

“I laugh,” said Parravicini, with an airy motion of his skinny fingers; “I laugh at once at your theories and at your threats. I, Parravicini Leopold, have no fear that the law can question anything I have done.”

“Take the girl away, and let me hear no more of her,” cried Lady Ducayne, in the thin, old voice, which so poorly matched the energy and fire of the wicked old brain that guided its utterances. “Let her go back to her mother – I want no more girls to die in my service. There are girls enough and to spare in the world, God knows.”

“If you ever engage another companion – or take another English girl into your service, Lady Ducayne, I will make all England ring with the story of your wickedness.”

“I want no more girls. I don’t believe in his experiments. They have been full of danger for me as well as for the girl – an air bubble, and I should be gone. I’ll have no more of his dangerous quackery. I’ll find some new man – a better man than you, sir, a discoverer like Pasteur, or Virchow, a genius – to keep me alive. Take your girl away, young man. Marry her if you like. I’ll write her a cheque for a thousand pounds, and let her go and live on beef and beer, and get strong and plump again. I’ll have no more such experiments. Do you hear, Parravicini?” she screamed vindictively, the yellow, wrinkled face distorted with fury, the eyes glaring at him.

•   •   •   •   •

The Staffords carried Bella Rolleston off to Varese next day, she very loth to leave Lady Ducayne, whose liberal salary afforded such help for the dear mother. Herbert Stafford insisted, however, treating Bella as coolly as if he had been the family physician, and she had been given over wholly to his care.

“Do you suppose your mother would let you stop here to die?” he asked. “If Mrs. Rolleston knew how ill you are, she would come post haste to fetch you.”

“I shall never be well again till I get back to Walworth,” answered Bella, who was low-spirited and inclined to tears this morning, a reaction after her good spirits of yesterday.

“We’ll try a week or two at Varese first,” said Stafford. “When you can walk half-way up Monte Generoso without palpitation of the heart, you shall go back to Walworth.”

“Poor mother, how glad she will be to see me, and how sorry that I’ve lost such a good place.”

This conversation took place on the boat when they were leaving Bellaggio. Lotta had gone to her friend’s room at seven o’clock that morning, long before Lady Ducayne’s withered eyelids had opened to the daylight, before even Francine, the French maid, was astir, and had helped to pack a Gladstone bag with essentials, and hustled Bella downstairs and out of doors before she could make any strenuous resistance.

“It’s all right.” Lotta assured her. “Herbert had a good talk with Lady Ducayne last night and it was settled for you to leave this morning. She doesn’t like invalids, you see.”

“No,” sighed Bella, “she doesn’t like invalids. It was very unlucky that I should break down, just like Miss Tomson and Miss Blandy.”

“At any rate, you are not dead, like them,” answered Lotta, “and my brother says you are not going to die.”

It seemed rather a dreadful thing to be dismissed in that offhand way, without a word of farewell from her employer.

“I wonder what Miss Torpinter will say when I go to her for another situation,” Bella speculated, ruefully, while she and her friends were breakfasting on board the steamer.

“Perhaps you may never want another situation,” said Stafford.

“You mean that I may never be well enough to be useful to anybody?”

“No, I don’t mean anything of the kind.”

It was after dinner at Varese, when Bella had been induced to take a whole glass of Chianti, and quite sparkled after that unaccustomed stimulant, that Mr. Stafford produced a letter from his pocket.

“I forgot to give you Lady Ducayne’s letter of adieu,” he said.

“What, did she write to me? I am so glad – I hated to leave her in such a cool way; for after all, she was very kind to me, and if I didn’t like her it was only because she was too dreadfully old.”

She tore open the envelope. The letter was short and to the point:

“Goodbye, child. Go and marry your doctor. I enclose a farewell gift for your trousseau. – Adeline Ducayne.”

“A hundred pounds, a whole year’s salary – no – why, it’s for a – A cheque for a thousand!” cried Bella. “What a generous old soul! She really is the dearest old thing.”

“She just missed being very dear to you, Bella,” said Stafford.

He had dropped into the use of her Christian name while they were on board the boat. It seemed natural now that she was to be in his charge till they all three went back to England.

“I shall take upon myself the privileges of an elder brother till we land at Dover,” he said; “after that – well, it must be as you please.”

The question of their future relations must have been satisfactorily settled before they crossed the Channel, for Bella’s next letter to her mother communicated three startling facts.

First, that the enclosed cheque for £1,000 was to be invested in debenture stock in Mrs. Rolleston’s name, and was to be her very own, income and principal, for the rest of her life.

Next, that Bella was going home to Walworth immediately.

And last, that she was going to be married to Mr. Herbert Stafford in the following autumn.

“And I am sure you will adore him, mother, as much as I do,” wrote Bella. “It is all good Lady Ducayne’s doing. I never could have married if I had not secured that little nest-egg for you. Herbert says we shall be able to add to it as the years go by, and that wherever we live there shall be always a room in our house for you. The word ‘mother-in-law’ has no terrors for him.”

—