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diff --git a/old/69297-0.txt b/old/69297-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6532f7f..0000000 --- a/old/69297-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3710 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales for Christmas Eve, by Rhoda -Broughton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Tales for Christmas Eve - -Author: Rhoda Broughton - -Release Date: November 5, 2022 [eBook #69297] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FOR CHRISTMAS EVE *** - - - - - -TALES FOR CHRISTMAS EVE. - - - - - TALES - FOR - CHRISTMAS EVE. - - BY - RHODA BROUGHTON, - - AUTHOR OF - “COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,” - ETC., ETC. - - [Illustration] - - LONDON: - RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON. - 1873. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH 1 - - THE MAN WITH THE NOSE 33 - - BEHOLD IT WAS A DREAM! 83 - - POOR PRETTY BOBBY 131 - - UNDER THE CLOAK 191 - - - - -THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. - - - - -THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, - -AND - -NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. - - - - -MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR. - - “18, ECCLESTON SQUARE, - “_May 5th._ - -“MY DEAREST CECILIA, - -“Talk of the friendships of Orestes and Pylades, of Julie and Claire, -what are they to ours? Did Pylades ever go _ventre à terre_, half over -London on a day more broiling than any but an _âme damnée_ could even -imagine, in order that Orestes might be comfortably housed for the -season? Did Claire ever hold sweet converse with from fifty to one -hundred house agents, in order that Julie might have three windows to -her drawing-room and a pretty _portière_? You see I am determined not -to be done out of my full meed of gratitude. - -“Well, my friend, I had no idea till yesterday how closely we were -packed in this great smoky bee-hive, as tightly as herrings in a -barrel. Don’t be frightened, however. By dint of squeezing and -crowding, we have managed to make room for two more herrings in our -barrel, and those two are yourself and your other self, _i.e._ your -husband. Let me begin at the beginning. After having looked over, I -verily believe, every undesirable residence in West London; after -having seen nothing intermediate between what was suited to the means -of a duke, and what was suited to the needs of a chimney-sweep; after -having felt bed-ticking, and explored kitchen-ranges till my brain -reeled under my accumulated experience, I arrived at about half-past -five yesterday afternoon at 32, ---- Street, May Fair. - -“‘Failure No. 253, I don’t doubt,’ I said to myself, as I toiled up -the steps with my soul athirst for afternoon tea, and feeling as -ill-tempered as you please. So much for my spirit of prophecy. Fate, I -have noticed, is often fond of contradicting us flat, and giving the -lie to our little predictions. Once inside, I thought I had got into a -small compartment of Heaven by mistake. Fresh as a daisy, clean as a -cherry, bright as a seraph’s face, it is all these, and a hundred more, -only that my limited stock of similes is exhausted. Two drawing-rooms -as pretty as ever woman crammed with people she did not care two -straws about; white curtains with rose-coloured ones underneath, -festooned in the sweetest way; marvellously, _immorally_ becoming, my -dear, as I ascertained entirely for your benefit, in the mirrors, of -which there are about a dozen and a half; Persian mats, easy-chairs, -and lounges suited to every possible physical conformation, from the -Apollo Belvedere to Miss Biffin; and a thousand of the important little -trivialities that make up the sum of a woman’s life: ormolu garden -gates, handleless cups, naked boys and décolleté shepherdesses; not -to speak of a family of china pugs, with blue ribbons round their -necks, which ought of themselves to have added fifty pounds a year -to the rent. Apropos, I asked, in fear and trembling, what the rent -might be--‘three hundred pounds a year.’ A feather would have knocked -me down. I could hardly believe my ears, and made the woman repeat it -several times, that there might be no mistake. To this hour it is a -mystery to me. - -“With that suspiciousness which is so characteristic of you, you -will immediately begin to hint that there must be some terrible -unaccountable smell, or some odious inexplicable noise haunting -the reception rooms. Nothing of the kind, the woman assured me, -and she did not look as if she were telling stories. You will next -suggest--remembering the rose-coloured curtains--that its last occupant -was a member of the demi-monde. Wrong again. Its last occupant was an -elderly and unexceptionable Indian officer, without a liver, and with a -most lawful wife. They did not stay long, it is true, but then, as the -housekeeper told me, he was a deplorable old hypochondriac, who never -could bear to stay a fortnight in any one place. So lay aside that -scepticism, which is your besetting sin, and give unfeigned thanks to -St. Brigitta, or St. Gengulpha, or St. Catherine of Sienna, or whoever -is your tutelar saint, for having provided you with a palace at the -cost of a hovel, and for having sent you such an invaluable friend as - - “Your attached - “ELIZABETH DE WYNT.” - -“P.S.--I am so sorry I shall not be in town to witness your first -raptures, but dear Artie looks so pale and thin and tall after the -hooping-cough, that I am sending him off at once to the sea, and as -I cannot bear the child out of my sight, I am going into banishment -likewise.” - - - - -MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT. - - - “32, ---- STREET, MAY FAIR, - “_May 14th_. - -“DEAREST BESSY, - -“Why did not dear little Artie defer his hooping-cough convalescence, -&c., till August? It is very odd, to me, the perverse way in which -children always fix upon the most inconvenient times and seasons -for their diseases. Here we are installed in our Paradise, and have -searched high and low, in every hole and corner, for the serpent, -without succeeding in catching a glimpse of his spotted tail. Most -things in this world are disappointing, but 32, ---- Street, May Fair, -is not. The mystery of the rent is still a mystery. I have been for my -first ride in the row this morning: my horse was a little fidgety; I -am half afraid that my nerve is not what it was. I saw heaps of people -I knew. Do you recollect Florence Watson? What a wealth of red hair -she had last year! Well, that same wealth is black as the raven’s wing -this year! I wonder how people can make such walking impositions of -themselves, don’t you? Adela comes to us next week; I am so glad. It is -dull driving by oneself of an afternoon; and I always think that one -young woman alone in a brougham, or with only a dog beside her, does -not look _good_. We sent round our cards a fortnight before we came up, -and have been already deluged with callers. Considering that we have -been two years exiled from civilized life, and that London memories are -not generally of the longest, we shall do pretty well, I think. Ralph -Gordon came to see me on Sunday; he is in the ----th Hussars now. He -has grown up such a _dear_ fellow, and so good-looking! Just my style, -large and fair and whiskerless! Most men nowadays make themselves as -like monkeys, or Scotch terriers, as they possibly can. I intend to -be quite a _mother_ to him. Dresses are gored to as _indecent_ an -extent as ever; short skirts are rampant. I am so sorry; I hate them. -They make tall women look _lank_, and short ones insignificant. A -knock! Peace is a word that might as well be expunged from ones London -dictionary. - - “Yours affectionately, - “CECILIA MONTRESOR.” - - - - -MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR. - - - “THE LORD WARDEN, DOVER, - “_May 18th_. - -“DEAREST CECILIA, - -“You will perceive that I am about to devote only one small sheet -of note-paper to you. This is from no dearth of time, Heaven knows! -time is a drug in the market here, but from a total dearth of ideas. -Any ideas that I ever have, come to me from without, from external -objects; I am not clever enough to generate any within myself. My life -here is not an eminently suggestive one. It is spent in digging with a -wooden spade, and eating prawns. Those are my employments, at least; -my relaxation is going down to the Pier, to see the Calais boat come -in. When one is miserable oneself, it is decidedly consolatory to see -some one more miserable still; and wretched and bored, and reluctant -vegetable as I am, I am not _sea-sick_. I always feel my spirits rise -after having seen that peevish, draggled procession of blue, green and -yellow fellow-Christians file past me. There is a wind here _always_, -in comparison of which the wind that behaved so violently to the -corners of Job’s house was a mere zephyr. There are heights to climb -which require more daring perseverance than ever Wolfe displayed, with -his paltry heights of Abraham. There are glaring white houses, glaring -white roads, glaring white cliffs. If any one knew how unpatriotically -I detest the chalk-cliffs of Albion! Having grumbled through my two -little pages--I have actually been reduced to writing very large in -order to fill even them--I will send off my dreary little billet. How I -wish I could get into the envelope myself too, and whirl up with it to -dear, beautiful, filthy London. Not more heavily could Madame de Staël -have sighed for Paris from among the shades of Coppet. - - “Your disconsolate - “BESSY.” - - - - -MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT. - - - “32, ---- STREET, MAY FAIR, - “_May 27th_. - -“Oh, my dearest Bessy, how I wish we were out of this dreadful, -dreadful house! Please don’t think me very ungrateful for saying this, -after your taking such pains to provide us with a Heaven upon earth, as -you thought. - -“What has happened could, of course, have been neither foretold, nor -guarded against, by any human being. About ten days ago, Benson (my -maid) came to me with a very long face, and said, ‘If you please, ’m, -did you know that this house was _haunted_?’ I was _so_ startled: you -know what a coward I am. I said, ‘Good Heavens! No! is it?’ ‘Well, -’m, I’m pretty nigh sure it is,’ she said, and the expression of her -countenance was about as lively as an undertaker’s; and then she told -me that cook had been that morning to order in groceries from a shop -in the neighbourhood, and on her giving the man the direction where to -send the things to, he had said, with a very peculiar smile, ‘No. 32, ----- Street, eh? h’m? I wonder how long _you_’ll stand it; last lot -held out just a fortnight.’ He looked so odd that she asked him what he -meant, but he only said, ‘Oh! nothing; only that parties never _did_ -stay long at 32. He had known parties go in one day, and out the next, -and during the last four years he had never known any remain over the -month.’ Feeling a good deal alarmed by this information, she naturally -inquired the reason; but he declined to give it, saying that if she -had not found it out for herself, she had much better leave it alone, -as it would only frighten her out of her wits; and on her insisting -and urging him, she could only extract from him, that the house had -such a villanously bad name, that the owners were glad to let it for a -mere song. You know how firmly I believe in apparitions, and what an -unutterable fear I have of them; anything material, tangible, that I -can lay hold of--anything of the same fibre, blood, and bone as myself, -I could, I think, confront bravely enough; but the mere thought of -being brought face to face with the ‘bodiless dead,’ makes my brain -unsteady. The moment Henry came in, I ran to him, and told him; but -he pooh-poohed the whole story, laughed at me, and asked whether we -should turn out of the prettiest house in London, at the very height of -the season, because a grocer said it had a bad name. Most good things -that had ever been in the world had had a bad name in their day; and, -moreover, the man had probably a motive for taking away the house’s -character, some friend for whom he coveted the charming situation and -the low rent. He derided my ‘babyish fears,’ as he called them, to such -an extent that I felt half ashamed, and yet not quite comfortable, -either; and then came the usual rush of London engagements, during -which one has no time to think of anything but how to speak, and act, -and look for the moment then present. Adela was to arrive yesterday, -and in the morning our weekly hamper of flowers, fruit, and vegetables -arrived from home. I always dress the flower-vases myself, servants -are so tasteless; and as I was arranging them, it occurred to me--you -know Adela’s passion for flowers--to carry up one particular cornucopia -of roses and mignonette and set it on her toilet-table, as a pleasant -surprise for her. As I came downstairs, I had seen the housemaid--a -fresh, round-faced country girl--go into the room, which was being -prepared for Adela, with a pair of sheets that she had been airing -over her arm. I went upstairs very slowly, as my cornucopia was full -of water, and I was afraid of spilling some. I turned the handle of -the bedroom-door and entered, keeping my eyes fixed on my flowers, to -see how they bore the transit, and whether any of them had fallen out. -Suddenly a sort of shiver passed over me; and feeling frightened--I did -not know why--I looked up quickly. The girl was standing by the bed, -leaning forward a little with her hands clenched in each other, rigid, -every nerve tense; her eyes, wide open, starting out of her head, and -a look of unutterable stony horror in them; her cheeks and mouth not -pale, but livid as those of one that died awhile ago in mortal pain. As -I looked at her, her lips moved a little, and an awful hoarse voice, -not like hers in the least, said, ‘Oh! my God, I have seen it!’ and -then she fell down suddenly, like a log, with a heavy noise. Hearing -the noise, loudly audible all through the thin walls and floors of a -London house, Benson came running in, and between us we managed to -lift her on to the bed, and tried to bring her to herself by rubbing -her feet and hands, and holding strong salts to her nostrils. And all -the while we kept glancing over our shoulders, in a vague cold terror -of seeing some awful, shapeless apparition. Two long hours she lay in -a state of utter unconsciousness. Meanwhile Harry, who had been down -to his club, returned. At the end of the two hours we succeeded in -bringing her back to sensation and life, but only to make the awful -discovery that she was raving mad. She became so violent that it -required all the combined strength of Harry and Phillips (our butler) -to hold her down in the bed. Of course, we sent off instantly for a -doctor, who, on her growing a little calmer towards evening, removed -her in a cab to his own house. He has just been here to tell me that -she is now pretty quiet, not from any return to sanity, but from sheer -exhaustion. We are, of course, utterly in the dark as to _what_ she -saw, and her ravings are far too disconnected and unintelligible to -afford us the slightest clue. I feel so completely shattered and upset -by this awful occurrence, that you will excuse me, dear, I’m sure, if -I write incoherently. One thing, I need hardly tell you, and that is, -that no earthly consideration would induce me to allow Adela to occupy -that terrible room. I shudder and run by quickly as I pass the door. - - “Yours, in great agitation, - “CECILIA.” - - - - -MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR. - - - “THE LORD WARDEN, DOVER, - “_May 28th_. - -“DEAREST CECILIA, - -“Yours just come; how very dreadful! But I am still unconvinced as to -the house being in fault. You know I feel a sort of godmother to it, -and responsible for its good behaviour. Don’t you think that what the -girl had might have been a fit? Why not? I myself have a cousin who is -subject to seizures of the kind, and immediately on being attacked his -whole body becomes rigid, his eyes glassy and staring, his complexion -livid, exactly as in the case you describe. Or, if not a fit, are you -sure that she has not been subject to fits of madness? _Please_ be -sure and ascertain whether there is not insanity in her family. It -is so common nowadays, and so much on the increase, that nothing is -more likely. You know my utter disbelief in ghosts. I am convinced -that most of them, if run to earth, would turn out about as genuine as -the famed Cock Lane one. But even allowing the possibility, nay, the -actual unquestioned existence of ghosts in the abstract, is it likely -that there should be anything to be seen so horribly fear-inspiring, -as to send a perfectly sane person _in one instant_ raving mad, which -you, after three weeks’ residence in the house, have never caught a -glimpse of? According to your hypothesis, your whole household ought, -by this time, to be stark, staring mad. Let me implore you not to give -way to a panic which may, possibly, probably prove utterly groundless. -Oh, how I wish I were with you, to make you listen to reason! Artie -ought to be the best prop ever woman’s old age was furnished with, to -indemnify me for all he and his hooping-cough have made me suffer. -Write immediately, please, and tell me how the poor patient progresses. -Oh, had I the wings of a dove! I shall be on wires till I hear again. - - “Yours, - “BESSY.” - - - - -MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT. - - - “NO. 5, BOLTON STREET, PICCADILLY, - “_June 12th_. - -“DEAREST BESSY, - -“You will see that we have left that terrible, hateful, fatal house. -How I wish we had escaped from it sooner! Oh, my dear Bessy, I shall -never be the same woman again if I live to be a hundred. Let me try -to be coherent, and to tell you connectedly what has happened. And -first, as to the housemaid, she has been removed to a lunatic asylum, -where she remains in much the same state. She has had several lucid -intervals, and during them has been closely, pressingly questioned as -to what it was she saw; but she has maintained an absolute, hopeless -silence, and only shudders, moans, and hides her face in her hands when -the subject is broached. Three days ago I went to see her, and on my -return was sitting resting in the drawing-room, before going to dress -for dinner, talking to Adela about my visit, when Ralph Gordon walked -in. He has always been walking in the last ten days, and Adela has -always flushed up and looked happy, poor little cat, whenever he made -his appearance. He looked very handsome, dear fellow, just come in from -the park in a coat that fitted like a second skin, lavender gloves, and -a gardenia. He seemed in tremendous spirits, and was as sceptical as -even you could be, as to the ghostly origin of Sarah’s seizure. ‘Let me -come here to-night and sleep in that room; _do_, Mrs. Montresor,’ he -said, looking very eager and excited, ‘with the gas lit and a poker, -I’ll engage to exorcise every demon that shows his ugly nose; even if -I should find-- - - “‘Seven white ghostisses - Sitting on seven white postisses.’ - -“‘You don’t mean really?’ I asked, incredulously. ‘Don’t I? that’s -all,’ he answered emphatically. ‘I should like nothing better. Well, -is it a bargain?’ Adela turned quite pale. ‘Oh, don’t,’ she said, -hurriedly, ‘_please_, don’t; why should you run such a risk? How do you -know that you might not be sent mad too?’ He laughed very heartily, -and coloured a little with pleasure at seeing the interest she took in -his safety. ‘Never fear,’ he said, ‘it would take more than a whole -squadron of departed ones, with the old gentleman at their head, -to send me crazy.’ He was so eager, so persistent, so thoroughly -in earnest, that I yielded at last, though with a certain strong -reluctance, to his entreaties. Adela’s blue eyes filled with tears, -and she walked away hastily to the conservatory, and stood picking bits -of heliotrope to hide them. Nevertheless, Ralph got his own way; it was -so difficult to refuse him anything. We gave up all our engagements -for the evening, and he did the same with his. At about ten o’clock he -arrived, accompanied by a friend and brother officer, Captain Burton, -who was anxious to see the result of the experiment. ‘Let me go up at -once,’ he said, looking very happy and animated. ‘I don’t know when I -have felt in such good tune; a new sensation is a luxury not to be had -every day of one’s life; turn the gas up as high as it will go; provide -a good stout poker, and leave the issue to Providence and me.’ We did -as he bid. ‘It’s all ready now,’ Henry said, coming downstairs after -having obeyed his orders; ‘the room is nearly as light as day. Well, -good luck to you, old fellow!’ ‘Good-bye, Miss Bruce,’ Ralph said, -going over to Adela, and taking her hand with a look, half laughing, -half sentimental-- - - “‘Fare thee well, and if for ever, - Then for ever, fare thee well,’ - -that is my last dying speech and confession. Now mind,’ he went on, -standing by the table, and addressing us all; ‘if I ring once, _don’t_ -come. I may be flurried, and lay hold of the bell without thinking; -if I ring twice, _come_.’ Then he went, jumping up the stairs three -steps at a time, and humming a tune. As for us, we sat in different -attitudes of expectation and listening about the drawing-room. At first -we tried to talk a little, but it would not do; our whole souls seemed -to have passed into our ears. The clock’s ticking sounded as loud as a -great church bell close to one’s ear. Addy lay on the sofa, with her -dear little white face hidden in the cushions. So we sat for exactly -an hour; but it seemed like two years, and just as the clock began to -strike eleven, a sharp ting, ting, ting, rang clear and shrill through -the house. ‘Let us go,’ said Addy, starting up and running to the door. -‘Let us go,’ I cried too, following her. But Captain Burton stood in -the way, and intercepted our progress. ‘No,’ he said, decisively, ‘you -must not go; remember Gordon told us distinctly, if he rang once _not_ -to come. I know the sort of fellow he is, and that nothing would annoy -him more than having his directions disregarded.’ - -“‘Oh, nonsense!’ Addy cried, passionately, ‘he would never have rung -if he had not seen something dreadful; do, _do_ let us go!’ she ended, -clasping her hands. But she was overruled, and we all went back to our -seats. Ten minutes more of suspense, next door to unendurable, I felt -a lump in my throat, a gasping for breath;--ten minutes on the clock, -but a thousand centuries on our hearts. Then again, loud, sudden, -violent the bell rang! We made a simultaneous rush to the door. I -don’t think we were one second flying upstairs. Addy was first. Almost -simultaneously she and I burst into the room. There he was, standing in -the middle of the floor, rigid, petrified, with that same look--that -look that is burnt into my heart in letters of fire--of awful, -unspeakable, stony fear on his brave young face. For one instant he -stood thus; then stretching out his arms stiffly before him, he groaned -in a terrible, husky voice, ‘Oh, my God; I have seen it!’ and fell down -_dead_. Yes, _dead_. Not in a swoon or in a fit, but _dead_. Vainly we -tried to bring back the life to that strong young heart; it will never -come back again till that day when the earth and the sea give up the -dead that are therein. I cannot see the page for the tears that are -blinding me; he was such a dear fellow! I can’t write any more to-day. - - “Your broken-hearted - “CECILIA.” - -This is a true story. - - - - -THE MAN WITH THE NOSE. - - - - -THE MAN WITH THE NOSE. - -[The details of this little story are of course imaginary, but the main -incidents are, to the best of my belief, facts. They happened twenty, -or more than twenty years ago.] - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -“Let us get a map and see what places look pleasantest?” says she. - -“As for that,” reply I, “on a map most places look equally pleasant.” - -“Never mind; get one!” - -I obey. - -“Do you like the seaside?” asks Elizabeth, lifting her little brown -head and her small happy white face from the English sea-coast along -which, her forefinger is slowly travelling. - -“Since you ask me, distinctly _no_,” reply I, for once venturing to -have a decided opinion of my own, which during the last few weeks -of imbecility I can be hardly said to have had. “I broke my last -wooden spade five and twenty years ago. I have but a poor opinion of -cockles--sandy red-nosed things, are not they? and the air always makes -me bilious.” - -“Then we certainly will not go there,” says Elizabeth, laughing. “A -bilious bridegroom! alliterative but horrible! None of our friends show -the least eagerness to lend us their country house.” - -“Oh that God would put it into the hearts of men to take their wives -straight home, as their fathers did,” say I, with a cross groan. - -“It is evident, therefore, that we must go somewhere,” returns she, -not heeding the aspiration contained in my last speech, making her -forefinger resume its employment, and reaching Torquay. - -“I suppose so,” say I, with a sort of sigh; “for once in our lives we -must resign ourselves to having the finger of derision pointed at us by -waiters and landlords.” - -“You shall leave your new portmanteau at home, and I will leave all my -best clothes, and nobody will guess that we are bride and bridegroom; -they will think that we have been married--oh, ever since the world -began” (opening her eyes very wide). - -I shake my head. “With an old portmanteau and in rags we shall still -have the mark of the beast upon us.” - -“Do you mind much? do you hate being ridiculous?” asks Elizabeth, -meekly, rather depressed by my view of the case; “because if so, let -us go somewhere out of the way, where there will be very few people to -laugh at us.” - -“On the contrary,” return I, stoutly, “we will betake ourselves to -some spot where such as we do chiefly congregate--where we shall be -swallowed up and lost in the multitude of our fellow-sinners.” A -pause devoted to reflection. “What do you say to Killarney?” say I, -cheerfully. - -“There are a great many fleas there, I believe,” replies Elizabeth, -slowly; “flea-bites make large lumps on me; you would not like me if I -were covered with large lumps.” - -At the hideous ideal picture thus presented to me by my little beloved -I relapse into inarticulate idiocy; emerging from which by-and-by, I -suggest “The Lakes?” My arm is round her, and I feel her supple body -shiver though it is mid July, and the bees are booming about in the -still and sleepy noon garden outside. - -“Oh--no--no--not _there_!” - -“Why such emphasis?” I ask gaily; “more fleas? At this rate, and with -this _sine quâ non_, our choice will grow limited.” - -“Something dreadful happened to me there,” she says, with another -shudder. “But indeed I did not think there was any harm in it--I never -thought anything would come of it.” - -“What the devil was it?” cry I, in a jealous heat and hurry; “what the -mischief _did_ you do, and why have not you told me about it before?” - -“I did not _do_ much,” she answers meekly, seeking for my hand, and -when found kissing it in timid deprecation of my wrath; “but I was -ill--very ill--there; I had a nervous fever. I was in a bed hung with -a chintz with a red and green fern-leaf pattern on it. I have always -hated red and green fern-leaf chintzes ever since.” - -“It would be possible to avoid the obnoxious bed, would not it?” say -I, laughing a little. “Where does it lie? Windermere? Ulleswater? -Wastwater? Where?” - -“We were at Ulleswater,” she says, speaking rapidly, while a hot colour -grows on her small white cheeks--“Papa, mamma, and I; and there came -a mesmeriser to Penrith, and we went to see him--everybody did--and -he asked leave to mesmerise me--he said I should be such a good -medium--and--and--I did not know what it was like. I thought it would -be quite good fun--and--and--I let him.” - -She is trembling exceedingly; even the loving pressure of my arms -cannot abate her shivering. - -“Well?” - -“And after that I do not remember anything--I believe I did all sorts -of extraordinary things that he told me--sang and danced, and made a -fool of myself--but when I came home I was very ill, very--I lay in -bed for five whole weeks, and--and was off my head, and said odd and -wicked things that you would not have expected me to say--that dreadful -bed! shall I ever forget it?” - -“We will _not_ go to the Lakes,” I say, decisively, “and we will not -talk any more about mesmerism.” - -“That is right,” she says, with a sigh of relief, “I try to think -about it as little as possible; but sometimes, in the dead black of -the night, when God seems a long way off, and the devil near, it -comes back to me so strongly--I feel, do not you know, as if he were -_there_--somewhere in the room, and I _must_ get up and follow him.” - -“Why should not we go abroad?” suggest I, abruptly turning the -conversation. - -“Why, indeed?” cries Elizabeth, recovering her gaiety, while her pretty -blue eyes begin to dance. “How stupid of us not to have thought of it -before; only _abroad_ is a big word. _What_ abroad?” - -“We must be content with something short of Central Africa,” I say, -gravely, “as I think our one hundred and fifty pounds would hardly take -us that far.” - -“Wherever we go, we must buy a dialogue book,” suggests my little bride -elect, “and I will learn some phrases before we start.” - -“As for that, the Anglo-Saxon tongue takes one pretty well round the -world,” reply I, with a feeling of complacent British swagger, putting -my hands in my breeches pockets. - -“Do you fancy the Rhine?” says Elizabeth, with a rather timid -suggestion; “I know it is the fashion to run it down nowadays, and -call it a cocktail river; but--but--after all it cannot be so _very_ -contemptible, or Byron could not have said such noble things about it.” - - “The castled crag of Drachenfels - Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine, - Whose breast of waters broadly swells - Between the banks which bear the vine,” - -say I, spouting. “After all, that proves nothing, for Byron could have -made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” - -“The Rhine will not do then?” says she, resignedly, suppressing a sigh. - -“On the contrary, it will do admirably: it _is_ a cocktail river, and I -do not care who says it is not,” reply I, with illiberal positiveness; -“but everybody should be able to say so from their own experience, and -not from hearsay: the Rhine let it be, by all means.” - -So the Rhine it is. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -I have got over it; we have both got over it tolerably, creditably; -but after all, it is a much severer ordeal for a man than a woman, -who, with a bouquet to occupy her hands, and a veil to gently shroud -her features, need merely be prettily passive. I am alluding, I need -hardly say, to the religious ceremony of marriage, which I flatter -myself I have gone through with a stiff sheepishness not unworthy of -my country. It is a three-days-old event now, and we are getting used -to belonging to one another, though Elizabeth still takes off her -ring twenty times a day to admire its bright thickness; still laughs -when she hears herself called “Madame.” Three days ago, we kissed all -our friends, and left them to make themselves ill on our cake, and -criticise our bridal behaviour, and now we are at Brussels, she and I, -feeling oddly, joyfully free from any chaperone. We have been mildly -sight-seeing--very mildly, most people would say, but we have resolved -not to take our pleasure with the railway speed of Americans, or the -hasty sadness of our fellow Britons. Slowly and gaily we have been -taking ours. To-day we have been to visit Wiertz’s pictures. Have you -ever seen them, oh reader? They are known to comparatively few people, -but if you have a taste for the unearthly terrible--if you wish to -sup full of horrors, hasten thither. We have been peering through the -appointed peep-hole at the horrible cholera picture--the man buried -alive by mistake, pushing up the lid of his coffin, and stretching -a ghastly face and livid hands out of his winding sheet towards you, -while awful grey-blue coffins are piled around, and noisome toads and -giant spiders crawl damply about. On first seeing it, I have reproached -myself for bringing one of so nervous a temperament as Elizabeth to see -so haunting and hideous a spectacle; but she is less impressed than I -expected--less impressed than I myself am. - -“He is very lucky to be able to get his lid up,” she says, with a -half-laugh; “we should find it hard work to burst our brass nails, -should not we? When you bury me, dear, fasten me down very slightly, in -case there may be some mistake.” - -And now all the long and quiet July evening we have been prowling -together about the streets. Brussels is the town of towns for -_flâner_-ing--have been flattening our noses against the shop windows, -and making each other imaginary presents. Elizabeth has not confined -herself to imagination, however; she has made me buy her a little -bonnet with feathers--“in order to look married,” as she says, and the -result is such a delicious picture of a child playing at being grown -up, having practised a theft on its mother’s wardrobe, that for the -last two hours I have been in a foolish ecstasy of love and laughter -over her and it. We are at the “Bellevue,” and have a fine suite of -rooms, _au premier_, evidently specially devoted to the English, to -the gratification of whose well-known loyalty the Prince and Princess -of Wales are simpering from the walls. Is there any one in the three -kingdoms who knows his own face as well as he knows the faces of -Albert Victor and Alexandra? The long evening has at last slidden -into night--night far advanced--night melting into earliest day. All -Brussels is asleep. One moment ago I also was asleep, soundly as any -log. What is it that has made me take this sudden, headlong plunge -out of sleep into wakefulness? Who is it that is clutching at and -calling upon me? What is it that is making me struggle mistily up into -a sitting posture, and try to revive my sleep-numbed senses? A summer -night is never wholly dark; by the half light that steals through the -closed _persiennes_ and open windows I see my wife standing beside -my bed; the extremity of terror on her face, and her fingers digging -themselves with painful tenacity into my arm. - -“Tighter, tighter!” she is crying, wildly. “What are you thinking of? -You are letting me go!” - -“Good heavens!” say I, rubbing my eyes, while my muddy brain grows -a trifle clearer. “What is it? What has happened? Have you had a -nightmare?” - -“You saw him,” she says, with a sort of sobbing breathlessness; “you -know you did! You saw him as well as I.” - -“I!” cry I, incredulously--“not I. Till this second I have been fast -asleep. _I_ saw nothing.” - -“You did!” she cries, passionately. “You know you did. Why do you deny -it? You were as frightened as I?” - -“As I live,” I answer, solemnly, “I know no more than the dead what you -are talking about; till you woke me by calling me and catching hold of -me, I was as sound asleep as the seven sleepers.” - -“Is it possible that it can have been a _dream_?” she says, with a -long sigh, for a moment loosing my arm, and covering her face with her -hands. “But no--in a dream I should have been somewhere else, but I was -here--_here_--on that bed, and he stood _there_,” pointing with her -forefinger, “just _there_, between the foot of it and the window!” - -She stops, panting. - -“It is all that brute Wiertz,” say I, in a fury. “I wish I had been -buried alive myself, before I had been fool enough to take you to see -his beastly daubs.” - -“Light a candle,” she says, in the same breathless way, her teeth -chattering with fright. “Let us make sure that he is not hidden -somewhere in the room.” - -“How could he be?” say I, striking a match; “the door is locked.” - -“He might have got in by the balcony,” she answers, still trembling -violently. - -“He would have had to have cut a very large hole in the _persiennes_,” -say I, half-mockingly. “See, they are intact and well fastened on the -inside.” - -She sinks into an arm-chair, and pushes her loose soft hair from her -white face. - -“It _was_ a dream then, I suppose?” - -She is silent for a moment or two, while I bring her a glass of water, -and throw a dressing-gown round her cold and shrinking form. - -“Now tell me, my little one,” I say, coaxingly, sitting down at her -feet, “what it was--what you thought you saw?” - -“_Thought_ I saw!” echoes she, with indignant emphasis, sitting -upright, while her eyes sparkle feverishly. “I am as certain that I saw -him standing there as I am that I see that candle burning--that I see -this chair--that I see you.” - -“_Him!_ but who is _him_?” - -She falls forward on my neck, and buries her face in my shoulder. - -“That--dreadful--man!” she says, while her whole body is one tremor. - -“_What_ dreadful man?” cry I, impatiently. - -She is silent. - -“Who was he?” - -“I do not know.” - -“Did you ever see him before?” - -“Oh, no--no, never! I hope to God I may never see him again!” - -“What was he like?” - -“Come closer to me,” she says, laying hold of my hand with her small -and chilly fingers; “stay _quite_ near me, and I will tell you,”--after -a pause--“he had a _nose_!” - -“My dear soul,” cry I, bursting out with a loud laugh in the silence of -the night, “do not most people have noses? Would not he have been much -more dreadful if he had had _none_?” - -“But it was _such_ a nose!” she says, with perfect trembling gravity. - -“A bottle nose?” suggest I, still cackling. - -“For heaven’s sake, don’t laugh!” she says, nervously; “if you had seen -his face, you would have been as little disposed to laugh as I.” - -“But his nose?” return I, suppressing my merriment; “what kind of nose -was it? See, I am as grave as a judge.” - -“It was very prominent,” she answers, in a sort of awe-struck -half-whisper, “and very sharply chiselled; the nostrils very much cut -out.” A little pause. “His eyebrows were one straight black line across -his face, and under them his eyes burnt like dull coals of fire, that -shone and yet did not shine; they looked like dead eyes, sunken, half -extinguished, and yet sinister.” - -“And what did he do?” ask I, impressed, despite myself, by her -passionate earnestness; “when did you first see him?” - -“I was asleep,” she said--“at least I thought so--and suddenly I opened -my eyes, and he was _there_--_there_”--pointing again with trembling -finger--“between the window and the bed.” - -“What was he doing? Was he walking about?” - -“He was standing as still as stone--I never saw any live thing so -still--_looking_ at me; he never called or beckoned, or moved a -finger, but his eyes _commanded_ me to come to him, as the eyes of the -mesmeriser at Penrith did.” She stops, breathing heavily. I can hear -her heart’s loud and rapid beats. - -“And you?” I say, pressing her more closely to my side, and smoothing -her troubled hair. - -“I _hated_ it,” she cries, excitedly; “I loathed it--abhorred it. I was -ice-cold with fear and horror, but--I _felt_ myself going to him.” - -“Yes?” - -“And then I shrieked out to you, and you came running, and caught fast -hold of me, and held me tight at first--quite tight--but presently -I felt your hold slacken--slacken--and though I _longed_ to stay -with you, though I was _mad_ with fright, yet I felt myself pulling -strongly away from you--going to him; and he--he stood there always -looking--looking--and then I gave one last loud shriek, and I suppose I -awoke--and it was a dream!” - -“I never heard of a clearer case of nightmare,” say I, stoutly; “that -vile Wiertz! I should like to see his whole _Musée_ burnt by the hands -of the hangman to-morrow.” - -She shakes her head. “It had nothing to say to Wiertz; what it meant I -do not know, but----” - -“It meant nothing,” I answer, reassuringly, “except that for the future -we will go and see none but good and pleasant sights, and steer clear -of charnel-house fancies.” - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -Elizabeth is now in a position to decide whether the Rhine is a -cocktail river or no, for she is on it, and so am I. We are sitting, -with an awning over our heads, and little wooden stools under our -feet. Elizabeth has a small sailor’s hat and blue ribbon on her head. -The river breeze has blown it rather awry; has tangled her plenteous -hair; has made a faint pink stain on her pale cheeks. It is some fête -day, and the boat is crowded. Tables, countless camp-stools, volumes -of black smoke pouring from the funnel, as we steam along. “Nothing to -the Caledonian Canal!” cries a burly Scotchman in leggings, speaking -with loud authority, and surveying with an air of contempt the eternal -vine-clad slopes, that sound so well, and look so _sticky_ in reality. -“Cannot hold a candle to it!” A rival bride and bridegroom opposite, -sitting together like love-birds under an umbrella, looking into each -other’s eyes instead of at the Rhine scenery. - -“They might as well have stayed at home, might not they?” says my wife, -with a little air of superiority. “Come, we are not so bad as that, are -we?” - -A storm comes on: hailstones beat slantwise and reach us--stone and -sting us right under our awning. Everybody rushes down below, and -takes the opportunity to feed ravenously. There are few actions more -disgusting than eating _can_ be made. A handsome girl close to us--her -immaturity evidenced by the two long tails of black hair down her -back--is thrusting her knife half way down her throat. - -“Come on deck again,” says Elizabeth, disgusted and frightened at this -last sight. “The hail was much better than this!” - -So we return to our camp-stools, and sit alone under one mackintosh in -the lashing storm, with happy hearts and empty stomachs. - -“Is not this better than any luncheon?” asks Elizabeth, triumphantly, -while the raindrops hang on her long and curled lashes. - -“Infinitely better,” reply I, madly struggling with the umbrella to -prevent its being blown inside out, and gallantly ignoring a species of -gnawing sensation at my entrails. - -The squall clears off by-and-by, and we go steaming, steaming on -past the unnumbered little villages by the water’s edge with church -spires and pointed roof, past the countless rocks with their little -pert castles perched on the top of them, past the tall, stiff poplar -rows. The church bells are ringing gaily as we go by. A nightingale is -singing from a wood. The black eagle of Prussia droops on the stream -behind us, swish-swish through the dull green water. A fat woman who is -interested in it, leans over the back of the boat, and by some happy -effect of crinoline, displays to her fellow-passengers two yards of -thick white cotton legs. She is, fortunately for herself, unconscious -of her generosity. - -The day steals on; at every stopping place more people come on. There -is hardly elbow room; and, what is worse, almost everybody is drunk. -Rocks, castles, villages, poplars, slide by, while the paddles churn -always the water, and the evening draws greyly on. At Bingen a party of -big blue Prussian soldiers, very drunk, “glorious” as Tam o’ Shanter, -come and establish themselves close to us. They call for Lager Beer; -talk at the tip-top of their strong voices; two of them begin to spar; -all seem inclined to sing. Elizabeth is frightened. We are two hours -late in arriving at Biebrich. It is half an hour more before we can -get ourselves and our luggage into a carriage and set off along the -winding road to Wiesbaden. “The night is chilly, but not dark.” There -is only a little shabby bit of a moon, but it shines as hard as it can. -Elizabeth is quite worn out, her tired head droops in uneasy sleep on -my shoulder. Once she wakes up with a start. - -“Are you sure that it meant nothing?” she asks, looking me eagerly in -my face; “do people often have such dreams?” - -“Often, often,” I answer, reassuringly. - -“I am always afraid of falling asleep now,” she says, trying to sit -upright and keep her heavy eyes open, “for fear of seeing him standing -there again. Tell me, do you think I shall? Is there any chance, any -probability of it?” - -“None, none!” - -We reach Wiesbaden at last, and drive up to the Hôtel des Quatre -Saisons. By this time it is full midnight. Two or three men are -standing about the door. Morris, the maid, has got out--so have I, -and I am holding out my hand to Elizabeth, when I hear her give one -piercing scream, and see her with ash-white face and starting eyes -point with her forefinger---- - -“There he is!--there!--there!” - -I look in the direction indicated, and just catch a glimpse of a tall -figure, standing half in the shadow of the night, half in the gaslight -from the hotel. I have not time for more than one cursory glance, as I -am interrupted by a cry from the bystanders, and turning quickly round, -am just in time to catch my wife, who falls in utter insensibility into -my arms. We carry her into a room on the ground floor; it is small, -noisy, and hot, but it is the nearest at hand. In about an hour she -re-opens her eyes. A strong shudder makes her quiver from head to foot. - -“Where is he?” she says, in a terrified whisper, as her senses come -slowly back. “He is somewhere about--somewhere near. I feel that he is!” - -“My dearest child, there is no one here but Morris and me,” I answer, -soothingly. “Look for yourself. See.” - -I take one of the candles and light up each corner of the room in -succession. - -“You saw him!” she says, in trembling hurry, sitting up and clenching -her hands together. “I know you did--I pointed him out to you--you -_cannot_ say that it was a dream _this_ time.” - -“I saw two or three ordinary looking men as we drove up,” I answer, -in a commonplace, matter-of-fact tone. “I did not notice anything -remarkable about any of them; you know the fact is, darling, that you -have had nothing to eat all day, nothing but a biscuit, and you are -over-wrought, and fancy things.” - -“Fancy!” echoes she, with strong irritation. “How you talk! Was I ever -one to fancy things? I tell you that as sure as I sit here--as sure as -you stand there--I saw him--_him_--the man I saw in my dream, if it was -a dream. There was not a hair’s breadth of difference between them--and -he was looking at me--looking----” - -She breaks off into hysterical sobbing. - -“My dear child!” say I, thoroughly alarmed, and yet half angry, “for -God’s sake do not work yourself up into a fever: wait till to-morrow, -and we will find out who he is, and all about him; you yourself will -laugh when we discover that he is some harmless bagman.” - -“Why not _now_?” she says, nervously; “why cannot you find out -_now_--_this minute_?” - -“Impossible! Everybody is in bed! Wait till to-morrow, and all will be -cleared up.” - -The morrow comes, and I go about the hotel, inquiring. The house is so -full, and the data I have to go upon are so small, that for some time I -have great difficulty in making it understood to whom I am alluding. At -length one waiter seems to comprehend. - -“A tall and dark gentleman, with a pronounced and very peculiar nose? -Yes; there has been such a one, certainly, in the hotel, but he left at -‘grand matin’ this morning; he remained only one night.” - -“And his name?” - -The garçon shakes his head. “That is unknown, monsieur; he did not -inscribe it in the visitor’s book.” - -“What countryman was he?” - -Another shake of the head. “He spoke German, but it was with a foreign -accent.” - -“Whither did he go?” - -That also is unknown. Nor can I arrive at any more facts about him. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -A fortnight has passed; we have been hither and thither; now we are at -Lucerne. Peopled with better inhabitants, Lucerne might well do for -Heaven. It is drawing towards eventide, and Elizabeth and I are sitting -hand in hand on a quiet bench, under the shady linden trees, on a high -hill up above the lake. There is nobody to see us, so we sit peaceably -hand in hand. Up by the still and solemn monastery we came, with its -small and narrow windows, calculated to hinder the holy fathers from -promenading curious eyes on the world, the flesh, and the devil, -tripping past them in blue gauze veils: below us grass and green trees, -houses with high-pitched roofs, little dormer-windows, and shutters -yet greener than the grass; below us the lake in its rippleless peace, -calm, quiet, motionless as Bethesda’s pool before the coming of the -troubling angel. - -“I said it was too good to last,” say I, doggedly, “did not I, only -yesterday? Perfect peace, perfect sympathy, perfect freedom from -nagging worries--when did such a state of things last more than two -days?” - -Elizabeth’s eyes are idly fixed on a little steamer, with a stripe of -red along its side, and a tiny puff of smoke from its funnel, gliding -along and cutting a narrow white track on Lucerne’s sleepy surface. - -“This is the fifth false alarm of the gout having gone to his stomach -within the last two years,” continue I, resentfully. “I declare to -Heaven, that if it has not really gone there this time, I’ll cut the -whole concern.” - -Let no one cast up their eyes in horror, imagining that it is my father -to whom I am thus alluding; it is only a great uncle by marriage, -in consideration of whose wealth and vague promises I have dawdled -professionless through twenty-eight years of my life. - -“You _must_ not go,” says Elizabeth, giving my hand an imploring -squeeze. “The man in the Bible said, ‘I have married a wife, and -therefore I cannot come;’ why should it be a less valid excuse now a -days?” - -“If I recollect rightly, it was considered rather a poor one even -then,” reply I, dryly. - -Elizabeth is unable to contradict this, she therefore only lifts two -pouted lips (Monsieur Taine objects to the redness of English women’s -mouths, but I do not) to be kissed, and says, “Stay.” I am good enough -to comply with her unspoken request, though I remain firm with regard -to her spoken one. - -“My dearest child,” I say, with an air of worldly experience and -superior wisdom, “kisses are very good things--in fact there are few -better--but one cannot live upon them.” - -“Let us try,” she says, coaxingly. - -“I wonder which would get tired first?” I say, laughing. But she only -goes on pleading, “Stay, stay.” - -“How _can_ I stay?” I cry, impatiently; “you talk as if I _wanted_ to -go! Do you think it is any pleasanter to me to leave you than to you -to be left? But you know his disposition, his rancorous resentment of -fancied neglects. For the sake of two days’ indulgence, must I throw -away what will keep us in ease and plenty to the end of our days?” - -“I do not care for plenty,” she says, with a little petulant gesture. -“I do not see that rich people are any happier than poor ones. Look at -the St. Clairs; they have £40,000 a-year, and she is a miserable woman, -perfectly miserable, because her face gets red after dinner.” - -“There will be no fear of _our_ faces getting red after dinner,” say I, -grimly, “for we shall have no dinner for them to get red after.” - -A pause. My eyes stray away to the mountains. Pilatus on the right, -with his jagged peak and slender snow-chains about his harsh neck; hill -after hill rising silent, eternal, like guardian spirits standing hand -in hand around their child, the lake. As I look, suddenly they have -all flushed, as at some noblest thought, and over all their sullen -faces streams an ineffable rosy joy--a solemn and wonderful effulgence, -such as Israel saw reflected from the features of the Eternal in their -prophet’s transfigured eyes. The unutterable peace and stainless -beauty of earth and sky seem to lie softly on my soul. “Would God I -could stay! Would God all life could be like this!” I say, devoutly, -and the aspiration has the reverent earnestness of a prayer. - -“Why do you say, ‘_Would God!_’” she cries, passionately, “when it lies -with yourself? Oh my dear love,” gently sliding her hand through my -arm, and lifting wetly-beseeching eyes to my face, “I do not know why -I insist upon it so much--I cannot tell you myself--I daresay I seem -selfish and unreasonable--but I feel as if your going now would be the -end of all things--as if----.” She breaks off suddenly. - -“My child,” say I, thoroughly distressed, but still determined to have -my own way, “you talk as if I were going for ever and a day; in a week, -at the outside, I shall be back, and then you will thank me for the -very thing for which you now think me so hard and disobliging.” - -“Shall I?” she answers, mournfully. “Well, I hope so.” - -“You will not be alone, either; you will have Morris.” - -“Yes.” - -“And every day you will write me a long letter, telling me every single -thing that you do, say, and think.” - -“Yes.” - -She answers me gently and obediently; but I can see that she is still -utterly unreconciled to the idea of my absence. - -“What is it that you are afraid of?” I ask, becoming rather irritated. -“What do you suppose will happen to you?” - -She does not answer; only a large tear falls on my hand, which she -hastily wipes away with her pocket handkerchief, as if afraid of -exciting my wrath. - -“Can you give me any good reason why I _should_ stay?” I ask, -dictatorially. - -“None--none--only--stay--stay!” - -But I am resolved _not_ to stay. Early the next morning I set off. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -This time it is not a false alarm; this time it really has gone to his -stomach, and, declining to be dislodged thence, kills him. My return is -therefore retarded until after the funeral and the reading of the will. -The latter is so satisfactory, and my time is so fully occupied with a -multiplicity of attendant business, that I have no leisure to regret -the delay. I write to Elizabeth, but receive no letters from her. This -surprises and makes me rather angry, but does not alarm me. “If she -had been ill, if anything had happened, Morris would have written. She -never was great at writing, poor little soul. What dear little babyish -notes she used to send me during our engagement; perhaps she wishes to -punish me for my disobedience to her wishes. Well, _now_ she will see -who was in the right.” I am drawing near her now; I am walking up from -the railway station at Lucerne. I am very joyful as I march along under -an umbrella, in the grand broad shining of the summer afternoon. I -think with pensive passion of the last glimpse I had of my beloved--her -small and wistful face looking out from among the thick fair fleece of -her long hair--winking away her tears and blowing kisses to me. It is -a new sensation to me to have any one looking tearfully wistful over -my departure. I draw near the great glaring Schweizerhof, with its -colonnaded, tourist-crowded porch; here are all the pomegranates as I -left them, in their green tubs, with their scarlet blossoms, and the -dusty oleanders in a row. I look up at our windows; nobody is looking -out from them; they are open, and the curtains are alternately swelled -out and drawn in by the softly-playful wind. I run quickly upstairs and -burst noisily into the sitting-room. Empty, perfectly empty! I open the -adjoining door into the bedroom, crying “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” but -I receive no answer. Empty too. A feeling of indignation creeps over -me as I think, “Knowing the time of my return, she might have managed -to be indoors.” I have returned to the silent sitting-room, where the -only noise is the wind still playing hide-and-seek with the curtains. -As I look vacantly round my eye catches sight of a letter lying on the -table. I pick it up mechanically and look at the address. Good heavens! -what can this mean? It is my own, that I sent her two days ago, -unopened, with the seal unbroken. Does she carry her resentment so far -as not even to open my letters? I spring at the bell and violently ring -it. It is answered by the waiter who has always specially attended us. - -“Is madame gone out?” - -The man opens his mouth and stares at me. - -“Madame! Is monsieur then not aware that madame is no longer at the -hotel?” - -“_What?_” - -“On the same day as monsieur, madame departed.” - -“_Departed!_ Good God! what are you talking about?” - -“A few hours after monsieur’s departure--I will not be positive as to -the exact time, but it must have been between one and two o’clock as -the midday _table d’hôte_ was in progress--a gentleman came and asked -for madame----” - -“Yes--be quick.” - -“I demanded whether I should take up his card, but he said ‘No,’ that -was unnecessary, as he was perfectly well known to madame; and, in -fact, a short time afterwards, without saying anything to any one, she -departed with him.” - -“And did not return in the evening?” - -“No, monsieur; madame has not returned since that day.” - -I clench my hands in an agony of rage and grief. “So this is it! With -that pure child-face, with that divine ignorance--only three weeks -married--this is the trick she has played me!” I am recalled to myself -by a compassionate suggestion from the garçon. - -“Perhaps it was the brother of madame.” - -Elizabeth has no brother, but the remark brings back to me the -necessity of self-command. “Very probably,” I answer, speaking with -infinite difficulty. “What sort of looking gentleman was he?” - -“He was a very tall and dark gentleman with a most peculiar nose--not -quite like any nose that I ever saw before--and most singular eyes. -Never have I seen a gentleman who at all resembled him.” - -I sink into a chair, while a cold shudder creeps over me as I think -of my poor child’s dream--of her fainting fit at Wiesbaden--of her -unconquerable dread of and aversion from my departure. And this -happened twelve days ago! I catch up my hat, and prepare to rush like a -madman in pursuit. - -“How did they go?” I ask incoherently; “by train?--driving?--walking?” - -“They went in a carriage.” - -“What direction did they take? Whither did they go?” - -He shakes his head. “It is not known.” - -“It _must_ be known,” I cry, driven to frenzy by every second’s delay. -“Of course the driver could tell; where is he?--where can I find him?” - -“He did not belong to Lucerne, neither did the carriage; the gentleman -brought them with him.” - -“But madame’s maid,” say I, a gleam of hope flashing across my mind; -“did she go with her?” - -“No, monsieur, she is still here; she was as much surprised as monsieur -at madame’s departure.” - -“Send her at once,” I cry eagerly; but when she comes I find that she -can throw no light on the matter. She weeps noisily and says many -irrelevant things, but I can obtain no information from her beyond the -fact that she was unaware of her mistress’s departure until long after -it had taken place, when, surprised at not being rung for at the usual -time, she had gone to her room and found it empty, and on inquiring in -the hotel, had heard of her sudden departure; that, expecting her to -return at night, she had sat up waiting for her till two o’clock in -the morning, but that, as I knew, she had not returned, neither had -anything since been heard of her. - -Not all my inquiries, not all my cross-questionings of the whole staff -of the hotel, of the visitors, of the railway officials, of nearly all -the inhabitants of Lucerne and its environs, procure me a jot more -knowledge. On the next few weeks I look back as on a hellish and insane -dream. I can neither eat nor sleep; I am unable to remain one moment -quiet; my whole existence, my nights and my days, are spent in seeking, -seeking. Everything that human despair and frenzied love can do is done -by me. I advertise, I communicate with the police, I employ detectives; -but that fatal twelve days’ start for ever baffles me. Only on one -occasion do I obtain one tittle of information. In a village a few -miles from Lucerne the peasants, on the day in question, saw a carriage -driving rapidly through their little street. It was closed, but -through the windows they could see the occupants--a dark gentleman, -with the peculiar physiognomy which has been so often described, and -on the opposite seat a lady lying apparently in a state of utter -insensibility. But even this leads to nothing. - -Oh, reader, these things happened twenty years ago; since then I have -searched sea and land, but never have I seen my little Elizabeth again. - - - - -BEHOLD, IT WAS A DREAM! - - - - -BEHOLD, IT WAS A DREAM! - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -Yesterday morning I received the following letter: - - “Weston House, Caulfield, ----shire. - - “MY DEAR DINAH,--You _must_ come: I scorn all your excuses, and see - through their flimsiness. I have no doubt that you are much better - amused in Dublin, frolicking round ball-rooms with a succession of - horse-soldiers, and watching her Majesty’s household troops play - Polo in the Phœnix Park, but no matter--you _must_ come. We have - no particular inducements to hold out. We lead an exclusively - bucolic, cow-milking, pig-fattening, roast-mutton-eating and - to-bed-at-ten-o’clock-going life; but no matter--you _must_ come. - I want you to see how happy two dull elderly people may be, with - no special brightness in their lot to make them so. My old man--he - is surprisingly ugly at the first glance, but grows upon one - afterwards--sends you his respects, and bids me say that he will meet - you at _any_ station on _any_ day at _any_ hour of the day or night. - If you succeed in evading our persistence this time, you will be a - cleverer woman than I take you for. - - “Ever yours affectionately, - “JANE WATSON. - - “_August 15th._ - - “P.S.--We will invite our little scarlet-headed curate to dinner to - meet you, so as to soften your fall from the society of the Plungers.” - -This is my answer: - - “MY DEAR JANE,--Kill the fat calf in all haste, and put the bake - meats into the oven, for I will come. Do not, however, imagine that - I am moved thereunto by the prospect of the bright-headed curate. - Believe me, my dear, I am as yet at a distance of ten long good years - from an addiction to the minor clergy. If I survive the crossing of - that seething, heaving, tumbling abomination, St. George’s Channel, - you may expect me on Tuesday next. I have been groping for hours in - ‘Bradshaw’s’ darkness that may be felt, and I have arrived at length - at this twilight result, that I may arrive at your station at 6·55 - P.M. But the ways of ‘Bradshaw’ are not our ways, and I _may_ either - rush violently past or never attain it. If I do, and if on my arrival - I see some rustic vehicle, guided by a startlingly ugly gentleman, - awaiting me, I shall know from your wifely description that it is - your ‘old man.’ Till Tuesday, then, - - “Affectionately yours, - “DINAH BELLAIRS. - - “_August 17th._” - -I am as good as my word; on Tuesday I set off. For four mortal hours -and a half I am disastrously, hideously, diabolically sick. For four -hours and a half I curse the day on which I was born, the day on which -Jane Watson was born, the day on which her old man was born, and -lastly--but oh! not, _not_ leastly--the day and the dock on which and -in which the _Leinster’s_ plunging, courtseying, throbbing body was -born. On arriving at Holyhead, feeling convinced from my sensations -that, as the French say, I touch my last hour, I indistinctly request -to be allowed to stay on board and _die_, then and there; but as the -stewardess and my maid take a different view of my situation, and -insist upon forcing my cloak and bonnet on my dying body and limp head, -I at length succeed in staggering on deck and off the accursed boat. I -am then well shaken up for two or three hours in the Irish mail, and -after crawling along a slow by-line for two or three hours more, am at -length, at 6·55, landed, battered, tired, dust-blacked, and qualmish, -at the little roadside station of Caulfield. My maid and I are the only -passengers who descend. The train snorts its slow way onwards, and I am -left gazing at the calm crimson death of the August sun, and smelling -the sweet-peas in the station-master’s garden border. I look round -in search of Jane’s promised tax-cart, and steel my nerves for the -contemplation of her old man’s unlovely features. But the only vehicle -which I see is a tiny two-wheeled pony carriage, drawn by a small -and tub-shaped bay pony and driven by a lady in a hat, whose face is -turned expectantly towards me. I go up and recognise my friend, whom I -have not seen for two years--not since before she fell in with her old -man and espoused him. - -“I thought it safest, after all, to come myself,” she says with a -bright laugh. “My old man looked so handsome this morning, that I -thought you would never recognise him from my description. Get in, -dear, and let us trot home as quickly as we can.” - -I comply, and for the next half hour sit (while the cool evening wind -is blowing the dust off my hot and jaded face) stealing amazed glances -at my companion’s cheery features. _Cheery!_ That is the very last -word that, excepting in an ironical sense, any one would have applied -to my friend Jane two years ago. Two years ago Jane was thirty-five, -the elderly eldest daughter of a large family, hustled into obscurity, -jostled, shelved, by half a dozen younger, fresher sisters; an -elderly girl addicted to lachrymose verse about the gone and the dead -and the for-ever-lost. Apparently the gone has come back, the dead -resuscitated, the for-ever-lost been found again. The peaky sour virgin -is transformed into a gracious matron, with a kindly, comely face, -pleasure making and pleasure feeling. Oh, Happiness, what powder, or -paste, or milk of roses, can make old cheeks young again in the cunning -way that you do? If you would but bide steadily with us we might live -for ever, always young and always handsome. - -My musings on Jane’s metamorphosis, combined with a tired headache, -make me somewhat silent, and indeed there is mostly a slackness of -conversation between the two dearest allies on first meeting after -absence--a sort of hesitating shiver before plunging into the sea of -talk that both know lie in readiness for them. - -“Have you got your harvest in yet?” I ask, more for the sake of not -utterly holding my tongue than from any profound interest in the -subject, as we jog briskly along between the yellow cornfields, where -the dry bound sheaves are standing in golden rows in the red sunset -light. - -“Not yet,” answers Jane; “we have only just begun to cut some of it. -However, thank God, the weather looks as settled as possible; there is -not a streak of watery lilac in the west.” - -My headache is almost gone and I am beginning to think kindly of -dinner--a subject from which all day until now my mind has hastily -turned with a sensation of hideous inward revolt--by the time that the -fat pony pulls up before the old-world dark porch of a modest little -house, which has bashfully hidden its original face under a veil of -crowded clematis flowers and stalwart ivy. Set as in a picture-frame -by the large drooped ivy-leaves, I see a tall and moderately -hard-featured gentleman of middle age, perhaps, of the two, rather -inclining towards elderly, smiling at us a little shyly. - -“This is my old man,” cries Jane, stepping gaily out, and giving him a -friendly introductory pat on the shoulder. “Old man, this is Dinah.” - -Having thus been made known to each other we shake hands, but neither -of us can arrive at anything pretty to say. Then I follow Jane into her -little house, the little house for which she has so happily exchanged -her tenth part of the large and noisy paternal mansion. It is an old -house, and everything about it has the moderate shabbiness of old age -and long and careful wear. Little thick-walled rooms, dark and cool, -with flowers and flower scents lying in wait for you everywhere--a -silent, fragrant, childless house. To me, who have had oily locomotives -snorting and racing through my head all day, its dumb sweetness seems -like heaven. - -“And now that we have secured you, we do not mean to let you go in -a hurry,” says Jane hospitably that night at bedtime, lighting the -candles on my dressing-table. - -“You are determined to make my mouth water, I see,” say I, interrupting -a yawn to laugh. “Lone lorn me, who have neither old man nor dear -little house, nor any prospect of ultimately attaining either.” - -“But if you honestly are not bored you will stay with us a good bit?” -she says, laying her hand with kind entreaty on my sleeve. “St. -George’s Channel is not lightly to be faced again.” - -“Perhaps I shall stay until you are obliged to go away yourselves to -get rid of me,” return I, smiling. “Such things have happened. Yes, -without joking, I will stay a month. Then, by the end of a month, if -you have not found me out thoroughly, I think I may pass among men for -a more amiable woman than I have ever yet had the reputation of.” - -A quarter of an hour later I am laying down my head among soft and -snow-white pillows, and saying to myself that this delicious sensation -of utter drowsy repose, of soft darkness and odorous quiet, is cheaply -purchased even by the ridiculous anguish which my own sufferings, -and--hardly less than my own sufferings--the demoniac sights and sounds -afforded by my fellow-passengers, caused me on board the accursed -_Leinster_-- - - “Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.” - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -“Well, I cannot say that you look much rested,” says Jane next morning, -coming in to greet me, smiling and fresh--(yes, sceptic of eighteen, -even a woman of thirty-seven may look fresh in a print gown on an -August morning, when she has a well of lasting quiet happiness inside -her)--coming in with a bunch of creamy _gloire de Dijons_ in her hand -for the breakfast table. “You look infinitely more fagged than you did -when I left you last night!” - -“Do I?” say I, rather faintly. - -“I am afraid you did not sleep much?” suggests Jane, a little -crestfallen at the insult to her feather beds implied by my -wakefulness. “Some people never can sleep the first night in a strange -bed, and I stupidly forgot to ask whether you liked the feather bed or -mattress at the top.” - -“Yes, I did sleep,” I answer gloomily. “I wish to heaven I had not!” - -“Wish--to--heaven--you--had--not?” repeats Jane slowly, with a slight -astonished pause between each word. “My dear child, for what other -purpose did you go to bed?” - -“I--I--had bad dreams,” say I, shuddering a little and then taking her -hand, roses and all, in mine. “Dear Jane, do not think me quite run -mad, but--but--have you got a ‘Bradshaw’ in the house?” - -“A ‘Bradshaw?’ What on earth do you want with ‘Bradshaw?’” says my -hostess, her face lengthening considerably and a slight tincture of -natural coldness coming into her tone. - -“I know it seems rude--insultingly rude,” say I, still holding her hand -and speaking almost lachrymosely: “but do you know, my dear, I really -am afraid that--that--I shall have to leave you--to-day?” - -“To leave us?” repeats she, withdrawing her hand and growing angrily -red. “What! when not twenty-four hours ago you settled to stay _a -month_ with us? What have we done between then and now to disgust you -with us?” - -“Nothing--nothing,” cry I, eagerly; “how can you suggest such a thing? -I never had a kinder welcome nor ever saw a place that charmed me more; -but--but----” - -“But what?” asks Jane, her colour subsiding and looking a little -mollified. - -“It is best to tell the truth, I suppose,” say I, sighing, “even though -I know that you will laugh at me--will call me vapourish--sottishly -superstitious; but I had an awful and hideous dream last night.” - -“Is that all?” she says, looking relieved, and beginning to arrange -her roses in an old china bowl. “And do you think that all dreams are -confined to this house? I never heard before of their affecting any -one special place more than another. Perhaps no sooner are you back in -Dublin, in your own room and your own bed, than you will have a still -worse and uglier one.” - -I shake my head. “But it was about this house--about _you_.” - -“About _me_?” she says, with an accent of a little aroused interest. - -“About you and your husband,” I answer earnestly. “Shall I tell it you? -Whether you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ I must. Perhaps it came as a warning; -such things have happened. Yes, say what you will, I cannot believe -that any vision so consistent--so tangibly real and utterly free from -the jumbled incongruities and unlikelinesses of ordinary dreams--could -have meant nothing. Shall I begin?” - -“By all means,” answers Mrs. Watson, sitting down in an arm-chair and -smiling easily. “I am quite prepared to listen--and _dis_believe.” - -“You know,” say I, narratively, coming and standing close before her, -“how utterly tired out I was when you left me last night. I could -hardly answer your questions for yawning. I do not think that I was -ten minutes in getting into bed, and it seemed like heaven when I laid -my head down on the pillow. I felt as if I should sleep till the Day -of Judgment. Well, you know, when one is asleep one has of course no -measure of time, and I have no idea what hour it was _really_; but -at some time, in the blackest and darkest of the night, I seemed to -wake. It appeared as if a noise had woke me--a noise which at first -neither frightened nor surprised me in the least, but which seemed -quite natural, and which I accounted for in the muddled drowsy way in -which one does account for things when half asleep. But as I gradually -grew to fuller consciousness I found out, with a cold shudder, that -the noise I heard was not one that belonged to the night; nothing that -one could lay on wind in the chimney, or mice behind the wainscot, or -ill-fitting boards. It was a sound of muffled struggling, and once I -heard a sort of choked strangled cry. I sat up in bed, perfectly numbed -with fright, and for a moment could hear nothing for the singing of -the blood in my head, and the loud battering of my heart against my -side. Then I thought that if it were anything bad--if I were going to -be murdered--I had at least rather be in the light than the dark, and -see in what sort of shape my fate was coming, so I slid out of bed and -threw my dressing-gown over my shoulders. I had stupidly forgotten, in -my weariness, over night, to put the matches by the bedside, and could -not for the life of me recollect where they were. Also, my knowledge -of the geography of the room was so small that in the utter blackness, -without even the palest, grayest ray from the window to help me, I was -by no means sure in which direction the door lay. I can feel _now_ the -pain of the blow I gave this right side against the sharp corner of the -table in passing; I was quite surprised this morning not to find the -mark of a bruise there. At last, in my groping, I came upon the handle -and turned the key in the lock. It gave a little squeak, and again I -stopped for a moment, overcome by ungovernable fear. Then I silently -opened the door and looked out. You know that your door is exactly -opposite mine. By the line of red light underneath it, I could see that -at all events some one was awake and astir within, for the light was -brighter than that given by a night-light. By the broader band of red -light on the right side of it I could also perceive that the door was -ajar. I stood stock still and listened. The two sounds of struggling -and chokedly crying had both ceased. All the noise that remained was -that as of some person quietly moving about on unbooted feet. ‘Perhaps -Jane’s dog Smut is ill and she is sitting up with it; she was saying -last night, I remember, that she was afraid it was beginning with the -distemper. Perhaps either she or her old man have been taken with some -trifling temporary sickness. Perhaps the noise of crying out that I -certainly heard was one of them fighting with a nightmare.’ Trying, by -such like suggestions, to hearten myself up, I stole across the passage -and peeped in----” - -I pause in my narrative. - -“Well?” says Jane, a little impatiently. - -She has dropped her flowers. They lie in odorous dewy confusion in -her lap. She is listening rather eagerly. I cover my face with my -hands. “Oh! my dear,” I cry, “I do not think I can go on. It was _too_ -dreadful! Now that I am telling it I seem to be doing and hearing it -over again----” - -“I do not call it very kind to keep me on the rack,” she says, with a -rather forced laugh. “Probably I am imagining something much worse than -the reality. For heaven’s sake speak up! What _did_ you see?” - -I take hold of her hand and continue. “You know that in your room the -bed exactly faces the door. Well, when I looked in, looked in with -eyes blinking at first, and dazzled by the long darkness they had been -in, it seemed to me as if that bed were only one horrible sheet of -crimson; but as my sight grew clearer I saw what it was that caused -that frightful impression of universal red----” Again I pause with a -gasp and feeling of oppressed breathing. - -“Go on! go on!” cries my companion, leaning forward, and speaking with -some petulance. “Are you never going to get to the point?” - -“Jane,” say I solemnly, “do not laugh at me, nor pooh pooh me, for -it is God’s truth--as clearly and vividly as I see you now, strong, -flourishing, and alive, so clearly, so vividly, with no more of dream -haziness nor of contradiction in details than there is in the view -I now have of this room and of you--I saw you _both_--you and your -husband, lying _dead_--_murdered_--drowned in your own blood!” - -“What, both of us?” she says, trying to laugh, but her healthy cheek -has rather paled. - -“Both of you,” I answer, with growing excitement. “You, Jane, had -evidently been the one first attacked--taken off in your sleep--for you -were lying just as you would have lain in slumber, only that across -your throat from there to there” (touching first one ear and then the -other), “there was a huge and yawning gash.” - -“Pleasant,” replies she, with a slight shiver. - -“I never saw any one dead,” continue I earnestly, “never until last -night. I had not the faintest idea how dead people looked, even people -who died quietly, nor has any picture ever given me at all a clear -conception of death’s dread look. How then could I have _imagined_ the -hideous contraction and distortion of feature, the staring starting -open eyes--glazed yet agonized--the tightly clenched teeth that go to -make up the picture, that is _now, this very minute_, standing out in -ugly vividness before my mind’s eye?” I stop, but she does not avail -herself of the pause to make any remark, neither does she look any -longer at all laughingly inclined. - -“And yet,” continue I, with a voice shaken by emotion, “it was _you_, -_very_ you, not partly you and partly some one else, as is mostly the -case in dreams, but as much _you_, as the _you_ I am touching now” -(laying my finger on her arm as I speak). - -“And my old man, Robin,” says poor Jane, rather tearfully, after a -moment’s silence, “what about him? Did you see him? Was he dead too?” - -“It was evidently he whom I had heard struggling and crying,” I answer -with a strong shudder, which I cannot keep down, “for it was clear -that he had fought for his life. He was lying half on the bed and half -on the floor, and one clenched hand was grasping a great piece of the -sheet; he was lying head downwards, as if, after his last struggle, he -had fallen forwards. All his grey hair was reddened and stained, and I -could see that the rift in his throat was as deep as that in yours.” - -“I wish you would stop,” cries Jane, pale as ashes, and speaking with -an accent of unwilling terror; “you are making me quite sick!” - -“I _must_ finish,” I answer earnestly, “since it has come in time I am -sure it has come for some purpose. Listen to me till the end; it is -very near.” She does not speak, and I take her silence for assent. “I -was staring at you both in a stony way,” I go on, a feeling--if I felt -at all--that I was turning idiotic with horror--standing in exactly -the same spot, with my neck craned to look round the door, and my eyes -unable to stir from that hideous scarlet bed, when a slight noise, as -of some one cautiously stepping on the carpet, turned my stony terror -into a living quivering agony. I looked and saw a man with his back -towards me walking across the room from the bed to the dressing-table. -He was dressed in the dirty fustian of an ordinary workman, and in his -hand he held a red wet sickle. When he reached the dressing-table he -laid it down on the floor beside him, and began to collect all the -rings, open the cases of the bracelets, and hurry the trinkets of all -sorts into his pockets. While he was thus busy I caught a full view -of the reflection of the face in the glass---- I stop for breath, my -heart is panting almost as hardly as it seemed to pant during the awful -moments I am describing. - -“What was he like--what was he like?” cries Jane, greatly excited. “Did -you see him distinctly enough to recollect his features again? Would -you know him again if you saw him?” - -“Should I know my own face if I saw it in the glass?” I ask scornfully. -“I see every line of it _now_ more clearly than I do yours, though that -is before my eyes, and the other only before my memory----” - -“Well, what was he like?--be quick, for heaven’s sake.” - -“The first moment that I caught sight of him,” continue I, speaking -quickly, “I felt certain that he was Irish; to no other nationality -could such a type of face have belonged. His wild rough hair fell down -over his forehead, reaching his shagged and overhanging brows. He -had the wide grinning slit of a mouth--the long nose, the cunningly -twinkling eyes--that one so often sees, in combination with a shambling -gait and ragged tail-coat, at the railway stations or in the harvest -fields at this time of year.” A pause. “I do not know how it came to -me,” I go on presently; “but I felt as convinced as if I had been -told--as if I had known it for a positive fact--that he was one of -your own labourers--one of your own harvest men. Have you any Irishmen -working for you?” - -“Of course we have,” answers Jane, rather sharply, “but that proves -nothing. Do not they, as you observed just now, come over in droves at -this time of the year for the harvest?” - -“I am sorry,” say I, sighing. “I wish you had not. Well, let me finish; -I have just done--I had been holding the door-handle mechanically in -my hand; I suppose I pulled it unconsciously towards me, for the door -hinge creaked a little, but quite audibly. To my unspeakable horror the -man turned round and saw me. Good God! he would cut my throat too with -that red, _red_ reaping hook! I tried to get into the passage and lock -the door, but the key was on the inside. I tried to scream, I tried to -run; but voice and legs disobeyed me. The bed and room and man began -to dance before me; a black earthquake seemed to swallow me up, and -I suppose I fell down in a swoon. When I awoke _really_ the blessed -morning had come, and a robin was singing outside my window on an apple -bough. There--you have it all, and now let me look for a ‘Bradshaw,’ -for I am so frightened and unhinged that go I must.” - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -“I must own that it has taken away appetite,” I say, with rather a -sickly smile, as we sit round the breakfast table. “I assure you that -I mean no insult to your fresh eggs and bread-and-butter, but I simply -_cannot_ eat.” - -“It certainly was an exceptionally dreadful dream,” says Jane, whose -colour has returned, and who is a good deal fortified and reassured -by the influences of breakfast and of her husband’s scepticism; for a -condensed and shortened version of my dream has been told to him, and -he has easily laughed it to scorn. “Exceptionally dreadful, chiefly -from its extreme consistency and precision of detail. But still, you -know, dear, one has had hideous dreams oneself times out of mind and -they never came to anything. I remember once I dreamt that all my teeth -came out in my mouth at once--double ones and all; but that was ten -years ago, and they still keep their situations, nor did I about that -time lose any friend, which they say such a dream is a sign of.” - -“You say that some unaccountable instinct told you that the hero of -your dream was one of my own men,” says Robin, turning towards me with -a covert smile of benevolent contempt for my superstitiousness; “did -not I understand you to say so?” - -“Yes,” reply I, not in the least shaken by his hardly-veiled disbelief. -“I do not know how it came to me, but I was as much persuaded of that, -and am so still, as I am of my own identity.” - -“I will tell you of a plan then to prove the truth of your vision,” -returns he, smiling. “I will take you through the fields this morning -and you shall see all my men at work, both the ordinary staff and -the harvest casuals, Irish and all. If amongst them you find the -counterpart of Jane’s and my murderer” (a smile) “I will promise -_then_--no, not even _then_ can I promise to believe you, for there is -such a family likeness between all Irishmen, at all events, between all -the Irishmen that one sees _out_ of Ireland.” - -“Take me,” I say, eagerly, jumping up; “now, this _minute_! You cannot -be more anxious nor half so anxious to prove me a false prophet as I am -to be proved one.” - -“I am quite at your service,” he answers, “as soon as you please. -Jenny, get your hat and come too.” - -“And if we do _not_ find him,” says Jane, smiling playfully--“I think I -am growing pretty easy on that head--you will promise to eat a great -deal of luncheon and never _mention_ ‘Bradshaw’ again?” - -“I promise,” reply I, gravely. “And if, on the other hand, we _do_ find -him, you will promise to put no more obstacles in the way of my going, -but will let me depart in peace without taking any offence thereat?” - -“It is a bargain,” she says gaily. “Witness, Robin.” - -So we set off in the bright dewiness of the morning on our walk over -Robin’s farm. It is a grand harvest day, and the whitened sheaves are -everywhere drying, drying in the genial sun. We have been walking for -an hour and both Jane and I are rather tired. The sun beats with all -his late-summer strength on our heads and takes the force and spring -out of our hot limbs. - -“The hour of triumph is approaching,” says Robin, with a quiet smile, -as we draw near an open gate through which a loaded wain, shedding -ripe wheat ears from its abundance as it crawls along, is passing. “And -time for it too; it is a quarter past twelve and you have been on your -legs for fully an hour. Miss Bellairs, you must make haste and find the -murderer, for there is only one more field to do it in.” - -“Is not there?” I cry eagerly, “Oh, I _am_ glad! Thank God, I begin to -breathe again.” - -We pass through the open gate and begin to tread across the stubble, -for almost the last load has gone. - -“We must get nearer the hedge,” says Robin, “or you will not see their -faces; they are all at dinner.” - -We do as he suggests. In the shadow of the hedge we walk close in front -of the row of heated labourers, who, sitting or lying on the hedge -bank, are eating unattractive looking dinners. I scan one face after -another--honest bovine English faces. I have seen a hundred thousand -faces _like_ each one of the faces now before me--very like, but the -exact counterpart of none. We are getting to the end of the row, I -beginning to feel rather ashamed, though infinitely relieved, and to -smile at my own expense. I look again, and my heart suddenly stands -still and turns to stone within me. He is _there_!--not a hand-breadth -from me! Great God! how well I have remembered his face, even to the -unsightly smallpox seams, the shagged locks, the grinning slit mouth, -the little sly base eyes. He is employed in no murderous occupation -_now_; he is harmlessly cutting hunks of coarse bread and fat cold -bacon with a clasp knife, but yet I have no more doubt that it is -_he_--he whom I saw with the crimsoned sickle in his stained hand--than -I have that it is I who am stonily, shiveringly, staring at him. - -“Well, Miss Bellairs, who was right?” asks Robin’s cheery voice at my -elbow. “Perish ‘Bradshaw’ and all his labyrinths! Are you satisfied -now? Good heavens!” (catching a sudden sight of my face) “How white you -are! Do you mean to say that you have found him at last? Impossible!” - -“Yes, I have found him,” I answer in a low and unsteady tone. “I knew I -should. Look, there he is!--close to us, the third from the end.” - -I turn away my head, unable to bear the hideous recollections and -associations that the sight of the man calls up, and I suppose that -they both look. - -“Are you sure that you are not letting your imagination carry you -away?” asks he presently, in a tone of gentle kindly remonstrance. “As -I said before these fellows are all so much alike; they have all the -same look of debased squalid cunning. Oblige me by looking once again, -so as to be quite sure.” - -I obey. Reluctantly I look at him once again. Apparently, becoming -aware that he is the object of our notice, he lifts his small dull eyes -and looks back at me. It is the same face--they are the same eyes that -turned from the plundered dressing-table to catch sight of me last -night. “There is no mistake,” I answer, shuddering from head to foot. -“Take me away, please--as quick as you can--out of the field--home!” - -They comply, and over the hot fields and through the hot noon air we -step silently homewards. As we reach the cool and ivied porch of the -house I speak for the first time. “You believe me _now_?” - -He hesitates. “I was staggered for a moment, I will own,” he answers, -with candid gravity; “but I have been thinking it over, and on -reflection I have come to the conclusion that the highly excited -state of your imagination is answerable for the heightening of the -resemblance which exists between all the Irish of that class into an -identity with the particular Irishman you dreamed of, and whose face -(by your own showing) you only saw dimly reflected in the glass.” - -“_Not_ dimly,” repeat I emphatically, “unless I now see that sun dimly” -(pointing to him, as he gloriously, blindingly blazes from the sky). -“You will not be warned by me then?” I continue passionately, after -an interval. “You will run the risk of my dream coming true--you will -stay on here in spite of it? Oh, if I could persuade you to go from -home--anywhere--anywhere--for a time, until the danger was past!” - -“And leave the harvest to itself?” answers he, with a smile of quiet -sarcasm; “be a loser of two hundred or three hundred pounds, probably, -and a laughing-stock to my acquaintance into the bargain, and all -for--what? A dream--a fancy--a nightmare!” - -“But do you know anything of the man?--of his antecedents?--of his -character?” I persist eagerly. - -He shrugs his shoulders. - -“Nothing whatever; nothing to his disadvantage, certainly. He came -over with a lot of others a fortnight ago, and I engaged him for the -harvesting. For anything I have heard to the contrary, he is a simple -inoffensive fellow enough.” - -I am silenced, but not convinced. I turn to Jane. “You remember your -promise: you will now put no more hindrances in the way of my going?” - -“You do not mean to say that you are going, really?” says Jane, who is -looking rather awed by what she calls the surprising coincidence, but -is still a good deal heartened up by her husband’s want of faith. - -“I do,” reply I, emphatically. “I should go stark staring mad if I were -to sleep another night in that room. I shall go to Chester to-night, -and cross to-morrow from Holyhead.” - -I do as I say. I make my maid, to her extreme surprise, repack my just -unpacked wardrobe and take an afternoon train to Chester. As I drive -away with bag and baggage down the leafy lane, I look back and see my -two friends standing at their gate. Jane is leaning her head on her old -man’s shoulder, and looking rather wistfully after me: an expression of -mingled regret for my departure and vexation at my folly clouding their -kind and happy faces. At least my last living recollection of them is a -pleasant one. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -The joy with which my family welcome my return is largely mingled with -surprise, but still more largely with curiosity, as to the cause of my -so sudden reappearance. But I keep my own counsel. I have a reluctance -to give the real reason, and possess no inventive faculty in the way of -lying, so I give none. I say, “I _am_ back: is not that enough for you? -Set your minds at rest, for that is as much as you will ever know about -the matter.” - -For one thing, I am occasionally rather ashamed of my conduct. It is -not that the impression produced by my dream is _effaced_, but that -absence and distance from the scene and the persons of it have produced -their natural weakening effect. Once or twice during the voyage, when -writhing in laughable torments in the ladies’ cabin of the steamboat, I -said to myself, “Most likely you are a fool!” I therefore continually -ward off the cross-questionings of my family with what defensive armour -of silence and evasion I may. - -“I feel convinced it was the husband,” says one of my sisters, after a -long catechism, which, as usual, has resulted in nothing. “You are too -loyal to your friend to own it, but I always felt sure that any man -who could take compassion on that poor peevish old Jane must be some -wonderful freak of nature. Come, confess. Is not he a cross between an -ourang-outang and a Methodist parson?” - -“He is nothing of the kind,” reply I, in some heat, recalling the -libelled Robin’s clean fresh-coloured _human_ face. “You will be -very lucky if you ever secure any one half so kind, pleasant, and -gentleman-like.” - -Three days after my return, I receive a letter from Jane: - - “Weston House, Caulfield. - - “MY DEAR DINAH,--I hope you are safe home again, and that you - have made up your mind that two crossings of St. George’s Channel - within forty-eight hours are almost as bad as having your throat - cut, according to the programme you laid out for _us_. I have good - news for you. Our murderer elect is _gone_. After hearing of the - connection that there was to be between us, Robin naturally was - rather interested in him, and found out his name, which is the - melodious one of Watty Doolan. After asking his name he asked other - things about him, and finding that he never did a stroke of work and - was inclined to be tipsy and quarrelsome, he paid and packed him off - at once. He is now, I hope, on his way back to his native shores, - and if he murder anybody it will be _you_, my dear. Good-bye, Dinah. - Hardly yet have I forgiven you for the way in which you frightened me - with your graphic description of poor Robin and me, with our heads - loose and waggling. - - “Ever yours affectionately, - “JANE WATSON.” - -I fold up this note with a feeling of exceeding relief, and a thorough -faith that I have been a superstitious hysterical fool. More resolved -than ever am I to keep the reason for my return profoundly secret from -my family. The next morning but one we are all in the breakfast-room -after breakfast, hanging about, and looking at the papers. My sister -has just thrown down the _Times_, with a pettish exclamation that -there is nothing in it, and that it really is not worth while paying -threepence a day to see nothing but advertisements and police reports. -I pick it up as she throws it down, and look listlessly over its tall -columns from top to bottom. Suddenly my listlessness vanishes. What is -this that I am reading?--this in staring capitals? - - “SHOCKING TRAGEDY AT CAULFIELD. - DOUBLE MURDER.” - -I am in the middle of the paragraph before I realise what it is. - - “From an early hour of the morning this village has been the scene - of deep and painful excitement in consequence of the discovery of - the atrocious murder of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, of Weston House, two - of its most respected inhabitants. It appears that the deceased had - retired to rest on Tuesday night at their usual hour, and in their - usual health and spirits. The housemaid, on going to call them at - the accustomed hour on Wednesday morning, received no answer, in - spite of repeated knocking. She therefore at length opened the door - and entered. The rest of the servants, attracted by her cries, rushed - to the spot, and found the unfortunate gentleman and lady lying on - the bed with their throats cut from ear to ear. Life must have been - extinct for some hours, as they were both perfectly cold. The room - presented a hideous spectacle, being literally swimming in blood. - A reaping hook, evidently the instrument with which the crime was - perpetrated, was picked up near the door. An Irish labourer of the - name of Watty Doolan, discharged by the lamented gentleman a few days - ago on account of misconduct, has already been arrested on strong - suspicion, as at an early hour on Wednesday morning he was seen by a - farm labourer, who was going to his work, washing his waistcoat at a - retired spot in the stream which flows through the meadows below the - scene of the murder. On being apprehended and searched, several small - articles of jewelry, identified as having belonged to Mr. Watson, - were discovered in his possession.” - -I drop the paper and sink into a chair, feeling deadly sick. - -So you see that my dream came true, after all. - -The facts narrated in the above story occurred in Ireland. The only -liberty I have taken with them is in transplanting them to England. - - - - -POOR PRETTY BOBBY. - - - - -POOR PRETTY BOBBY. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -“Yes, my dear, you may not believe me, but I can assure you that -you cannot dislike old women more, nor think them more contemptible -supernumeraries, than I did when I was your age.” - -This is what old Mrs. Wentworth says--the old lady so incredibly -tenacious of life (incredibly as it seems to me at eighteen) as to have -buried a husband and five strong sons, and yet still to eat her dinner -with hearty relish, and laugh at any such jokes as are spoken loudly -enough to reach her dulled ears. This is what she says, shaking the -while her head, which--poor old soul--is already shaking a good deal -involuntarily. I am sitting close beside her arm-chair, and have been -reading aloud to her; but as I cannot succeed in pitching my voice so -as to make her hear satisfactorily, by mutual consent the book has been -dropped in my lap, and we have betaken ourselves to conversation. - -“I never said I disliked old women, did I?” reply I evasively, being -too truthful altogether to deny the soft impeachment. “What makes you -think I do? They are infinitely preferable to old men; I do distinctly -dislike _them_.” - -“A fat, bald, deaf old woman,” continues she, not heeding me, and -speaking with slow emphasis, while she raises one trembling hand to -mark each unpleasant adjective; “if in the year ’2 any one had told me -that I should have lived to be that, I think I should have killed them -or myself! and yet now I am all three.” - -“You are not _very_ deaf,” say I politely--(the fatness and baldness -admit of no civilities consistent with veracity)--but I raise my voice -to pay the compliment. - -“In the year ’2 I was seventeen,” she says, wandering off into memory. -“Yes, my dear, I am just fifteen years older than the century and _it_ -is getting into its dotage, is not it? The year ’2--ah! I that was just -about the time that I first saw my poor Bobby! Poor pretty Bobby.” - -“And who _was_ Bobby?” ask I, pricking up my ears, and scenting, with -the keen nose of youth, a dead-love idyll; an idyll of which this poor -old hill of unsteady flesh was the heroine. - -“I must have told you the tale a hundred times, have not I?” she asks, -turning her old dim eyes towards me. “A curious tale, say what you -will, and explain it how you will. I think I _must_ have told you; but -indeed I forgot to whom I tell my old stories and to whom I do not. -Well, my love, you must promise to stop me if you have heard it before, -but to me, you know, these old things are so much clearer than the -things of yesterday.” - -“You never told me, Mrs. Hamilton,” I say, and say truthfully; for -being a new acquaintance I really have not been made acquainted with -Bobby’s history. “Would you mind telling it me now, if you are sure -that it would not bore you?” - -“Bobby,” she repeats softly to herself, “Bobby. I daresay you do not -think it a very pretty name?” - -“N--not particularly,” reply I honestly. “To tell you the truth, it -rather reminds me of a policeman.” - -“I daresay,” she answers quietly; “and yet in the year ’2 I grew to -think it the handsomest, dearest name on earth. Well, if you like, I -will begin at the beginning and tell you how that came about.” - -“Do,” say I, drawing a stocking out of my pocket, and thriftily -beginning to knit to assist me in the process of listening. - -“In the year ’2 we were at war with France--you know that, of course. -It seemed then as if war were our normal state; I could hardly remember -a time when Europe had been at peace. In these days of stagnant quiet -it appears as if people’s kith and kin always lived out their full time -and died in their beds. _Then_ there was hardly a house where there was -not one dead, either in battle, or of his wounds after battle, or of -some dysentery or ugly parching fever. As for us, we had always been -a soldier family--always; there was not one of us that had ever worn -a black gown or sat upon a high stool with a pen behind his ear. I -had lost uncles and cousins by the half-dozen and dozen, but, for my -part, I did not much mind, as I knew very little about them, and black -was more becoming wear to a person with my bright colour than anything -else.” - -At the mention of her bright colour I unintentionally lift my eyes from -my knitting, and contemplate the yellow bagginess of the poor old cheek -nearest me. Oh, Time! Time! what absurd and dirty turns you play us! -What do you do with all our fair and goodly things when you have stolen -them from us? In what far and hidden treasure-house do you store them? - -“But I did care very much--very exceedingly--for my dear old -father--not so old either--younger than my eldest boy was when he went; -he would have been forty-two if he had lived three days longer. Well, -well, child, you must not let me wander; you must keep me to it. He was -not a soldier, was not my father; he was a sailor, a post-captain in -his Majesty’s navy and commanded the ship _Thunderer_ in the Channel -fleet. - -“I had struck seventeen in the year ’2, as I said before, and had -just come home from being finished at a boarding-school of repute in -those days, where I had learnt to talk the prettiest _ancien régime_ -French and to hate Bonaparte with unchristian violence from a little -ruined _émigre maréchale_; had also, with infinite expenditure of -time, labour, and Berlin wool, wrought out ‘Abraham’s Sacrifice of -Isaac’ and ‘Jacob’s First Kiss to Rachel,’ in finest cross-stitch. Now -I had bidden adieu to learning; had inly resolved never to disinter -‘Télémaque’ and Thompson’s ‘Seasons’ from the bottom of my trunk; had -taken a holiday from all my accomplishments with the exception of -cross-stitch, to which I still faithfully adhered--and indeed, on the -day I am going to mention, I recollect that I was hard at work on Judas -Iscariot’s face in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’--hard at work at -it, sitting in the morning sunshine, on a straight-backed chair. We -had flatter backs in those days; our shoulders were not made round by -lolling in easy-chairs; indeed, no _then_ upholsterer made a chair that -it was possible to loll in. My father rented a house near Plymouth at -that time, an in-and-out _nooky_ kind of old house--no doubt it has -fallen to pieces long years ago--a house all set round with unnumbered -flowers, and about which the rooks clamoured all together from the -windy elm tops. I was labouring in flesh-coloured wool on Judas’s left -cheek, when the door opened and my mother entered. She looked as if -something had freshly pleased her, and her eyes were smiling. In her -hand she held an open and evidently just-read letter. - -“‘A messenger has come from Plymouth,’ she says, advancing quickly and -joyfully towards me. ‘Your father will be here this afternoon.’ - -“‘_This afternoon!_’ cry I, at the top of my voice, pushing away my -heavy work-frame. ‘How delightful! But how?--how can that happen?’ - -“‘They have had a brush with a French privateer,’ she answers, sitting -down on another straight-backed chair, and looking again over the large -square letter, destitute of envelope, for such things were not in those -days, ‘and then they succeeded in taking her. Yet they were a good deal -knocked about in the process, and have had to put into Plymouth to -refit, so he will be here this afternoon for a few hours.’ - -“‘Hurrah!’ cry I, rising, holding out my scanty skirts, and beginning -to dance. - -“‘Bobby Gerard is coming with him,’ continues my mother, again glancing -at her despatch. ‘Poor boy, he has had a shot through his right arm, -which has broken the bone, so your father is bringing him here for us -to nurse him well again.’ - -“I stop in my dancing. - -“‘Hurrah again!’ I say brutally. ‘I do not mean about his arm; of -course I am very sorry for that; but at all events, I shall see him at -last. I shall see whether he is like his picture, and whether it is not -as egregiously flattered as I have always suspected.’ - -“There were no photographs you know in those days--not even hazy -daguerreotypes--it was fifty good years too soon for them. The picture -to which I allude is a miniature, at which I had stolen many a deeply -longingly admiring glance in its velvet case. It is almost impossible -for a miniature not to flatter. To the most coarse-skinned and -mealy-potato-faced people it cannot help giving cheeks of the texture -of a rose-leaf and brows of the grain of finest marble. - -“‘Yes,’ replies my mother, absently, ‘so you will. Well, I must be -going to give orders about his room. He would like one looking on the -garden best, do not you think, Phœbe?--one where he could smell the -flowers and hear the birds?’ - -“Mother goes, and I fall into a meditation. Bobby Gerard is an orphan. -A few years ago his mother, who was an old friend of my father’s--who -knows! perhaps an old love--feeling her end drawing nigh, had sent for -father, and had asked him, with eager dying tears, to take as much care -of her pretty forlorn boy as he could, and to shield him a little in -his tender years from the evils of this wicked world, and to be to him -a wise and kindly guardian, in the place of those natural ones that -God had taken. And father had promised, and when he promised there was -small fear of his not keeping his word. - -“This was some years ago, and yet I had never seen him nor he me; -he had been almost always at sea and I at school. I had heard plenty -about him--about his sayings, his waggeries, his mischievousness, his -soft-heartedness, and his great and unusual comeliness; but his outward -man, save as represented in that stealthily peeped-at miniature, -had I never seen. They were to arrive in the afternoon; but long -before the hour at which they were due I was waiting with expectant -impatience to receive them. I had changed my dress, and had (though -rather ashamed of myself) put on everything of most becoming that my -wardrobe afforded. If you were to see me as I stood before the glass on -that summer afternoon you would not be able to contain your laughter; -the little boys in the street would run after me throwing stones and -hooting; but _then_--according to the _then_ fashion and standard of -gentility--I was all that was most elegant and _comme il faut_. Lately -it has been the mode to puff oneself out with unnatural and improbable -protuberances; _then_ one’s great life-object was to make oneself -appear as scrimping as possible--to make oneself look as flat as if -one had been ironed. Many people _damped_ their clothes to make them -stick more closely to them, and to make them define more distinctly -the outline of form and limbs. One’s waist was under one’s arm’s; the -sole object of which seemed to be to outrage nature by pushing one’s -bust up into one’s chin, and one’s legs were revealed through one’s -scanty drapery with startling candour as one walked or sat. I remember -once standing with my back to a bright fire in our long drawing-room, -and seeing myself reflected in a big mirror at the other end. I was so -thinly clad that I was transparent, and could see through myself. Well, -in the afternoon in question I was dressed quite an hour and a half -too soon. I had a narrow little white gown, which clung successfully -tight and close to my figure, and which was of so moderate a length as -to leave visible my ankles and my neatly-shod and cross-sandled feet. -I had long mittens on my arms, black, and embroidered on the backs in -coloured silks; and above my hair, which at the back was scratched -up to the top of my crown, towered a tremendous tortoise-shell comb; -while on each side of my face modestly drooped a bunch of curls, nearly -meeting over my nose. - -“My figure was full--ah! my dear, I have always had a tendency to fat, -and you see what it has come to--and my pink cheeks were more deeply -brightly rosy than usual. I had looked out at every upper window, so as -to have the furthest possible view of the road. - -“I had walked in my thin shoes half way down the drive, so as to -command a turn, which, from the house, impeded my vision, when, at -last, after many tantalising false alarms, and just five minutes later -than the time mentioned in the letter, the high-swung, yellow-bodied, -post-chaise hove in sight, dragged--briskly jingling--along by a pair -of galloping horses. Then, suddenly, shyness overcame me--much as I -loved my father, it was more as my personification of all knightly and -noble qualities than from much personal acquaintance with him--and I -fled. - -“I remained in my room until I thought I had given them ample time to -get through the first greetings and settle down into quiet talk. Then, -having for one last time run my fingers through each ringlet of my two -curl bunches, I stole diffidently downstairs. - -“There was a noise of loud and gay voices issuing from the parlour, -but, as I entered, they all stopped talking and turned to look at me. - -“‘And so this is Phœbe!’ cries my father’s jovial voice, as he comes -towards me, and heartily kisses me. ‘Good Lord, how time flies! It -does not seem more than three months since I saw the child, and yet -then she was a bit of a brat in trousers, and long bare legs!’ - -“At this allusion to my late mode of attire, I laugh, but I also feel -myself growing scarlet. - -“‘Here, Bobby!’ continues my father, taking me by the hand, and leading -me towards a sofa on which a young man is sitting beside my mother; -‘this is my little lass that you have so often heard of. Not such a -very little one, after all, is she? Do not be shy, my boy; you will not -see such a pretty girl every day of your life--give her a kiss.’ - -“My eyes are on the ground, but I am aware that the young man rises, -advances (not unwillingly, as it seems to me), and bestows a kiss, -somewhere or other on my face. I am not quite clear _where_, as I think -the curls impede him a good deal. - -“Thus, before ever I saw Bobby, before ever I knew what manner of man -he was, I was kissed by him. That was a good beginning, was not it? - -“After these salutations are over, we subside again into -conversation--I sitting beside my father, with his arm round my waist, -sitting modestly silent, and peeping every now and then under my eyes, -as often as I think I may do so safely unobserved, at the young fellow -opposite me. I am instituting an inward comparison between Nature and -Art: between the real live man and the miniature that undertakes to -represent him. The first result of this inspection is disappointment, -for where are the lovely smooth roses and lilies that I have been wont -to connect with Bobby Gerard’s name? There are no roses in his cheek, -certainly; they are paleish--from his wound, as I conjecture; but even -before that accident, if there were roses at all, they must have been -mahogany-coloured ones, for the salt sea winds and the high summer sun -have tanned his fair face to a rich reddish, brownish, copperish hue. -But in some things the picture lied not. There is the brow more broad -than high; the straight fine nose; the brave and joyful blue eyes, and -the mouth with its pretty curling smile. On the whole, perhaps, I am -not disappointed. - -“By-and-by father rises, and steps out into the verandah, where the -canary birds hung out in their cages are noisily praising God after -their manner. Mother follows him. I should like to do the same; but a -sense of good manners, and a conjecture that possibly my parents may -have some subjects to discuss, on which they would prefer to be without -the help of my advice, restrain me. I therefore remain, and so does the -invalid. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -“For some moments the silence threatens to remain unbroken between us; -for some moments the subdued sound of father’s and mother’s talk from -among the rosebeds and the piercing clamour of the canaries--fish-wives -among birds--are the only noises that salute our ears. Noise we make -none ourselves. My eyes are reading the muddled pattern of the Turkey -carpet; I do not know what his are doing. Small knowledge have I had of -men saving the dancing-master at our school; a beautiful new youth is -almost as great a novelty to me as to Miranda, and I am a good deal -gawkier than she was under the new experience. I think he must have -made a vow that he would not speak first. I feel myself swelling to -double my normal size with confusion and heat; at last, in desperation, -I look up, and say sententiously, ‘You have been wounded, I believe?’ - -“‘Yes, I have.’ - -“He might have helped me by answering more at large, might not he? But -now that I am having a good look at him, I see that he is rather red -too. Perhaps he also feels gawky and swollen; the idea encourages me. - -“‘Did it hurt very badly?’ - -“‘N--not so very much.’ - -“‘I should have thought that you ought to have been in bed,’ say I, -with a motherly air of solicitude. - -“‘Should you, why?’ - -“‘I thought that when people broke their limbs they had to stay in bed -till they were mended again.’ - -“‘But mine was broken a week ago,’ he answers, smiling and showing his -straight white teeth--ah, the miniature was silent about _them_! ‘You -would not have had me stay in bed a whole week like an old woman?’ - -“‘I expected to have seen you much _iller_,’ say I, beginning to feel -more at my ease, and with a sensible diminution of that unpleasant -swelling sensation. ‘Father said in his note that we were to nurse you -well again; that sounded as if you were _quite_ ill.’ - -“‘Your father always takes a great deal too much care of me,’ he says, -with a slight frown and darkening of his whole bright face. ‘I might be -sugar or salt.’ - -“‘And very kind of him, too,’ I cry, firing up. ‘What motive beside -your own good can he have for looking after you? I call you rather -ungrateful.’ - -“‘Do you?’ he says calmly, and without apparent resentment. ‘But you -are mistaken. I am not ungrateful. However, naturally, you do not -understand.’ - -“‘Oh, indeed!’ reply I, speaking rather shortly, and feeling a little -offended, ‘I daresay not.’ - -“Our talk is taking a somewhat hostile tone; to what further amenities -we might have proceeded is unknown; for at this point father and mother -reappear through the window, and the necessity of conversing with each -other at all ceases. - -“Father staid till evening, and we all supped together, and I was -called upon to sit by Bobby, and cut up his food for him, as he was -disabled from doing it for himself. Then, later still, when the sun -had set, and all his evening reds and purples had followed him, when -the night flowers were scenting all the garden, and the shadows lay -about, enormously long in the summer moonlight, father got into the -post-chaise again, and drove away through the black shadows and the -faint clear shine, and Bobby stood at the hall-door watching him, with -his arm in a sling and a wistful smile on lips and eyes. - -“‘Well, we are not left _quite_ desolate this time,’ says mother, -turning with rather tearful laughter to the young man. ‘You wish that -we were, do not you, Bobby?’ - -“‘You would not believe me, if I answered “No,” would you?’ he asks, -with the same still smile. - -“‘He is not very polite to us, is he, Phœbe?’ - -“‘You would not wish me to be polite in such a case,’ he replies, -flushing. ‘You would not wish me to be _glad_ at missing the chance of -seeing any of the fun?’ - -“But Mr. Gerard’s eagerness to be back at his post delays the -probability of his being able to return thither. The next day he has -a feverish attack, the day after he is worse; the day after that worse -still, and in fine, it is between a fortnight and three weeks before -he also is able to get into a post-chaise and drive away to Plymouth. -And meanwhile mother and I nurse him and cosset him, and make him odd -and cool drinks out of herbs and field-flowers, whose uses are now -disdained or forgotten. I do not mean any offence to you, my dear, -but I think that young girls in those days were less squeamish and -more truly delicate than they are nowadays. I remember once I read -‘Humphrey Clinker’ aloud to my father, and we both highly relished and -laughed over its jokes; but I should not have understood one of the -darkly unclean allusions in that French book your brother left here -one day. _You_ would think it very unseemly to enter the bedroom of a -strange young man, sick or well; but as for me, I spent whole nights -in Bobby’s, watching him and tending him with as little false shame -as if he had been my brother. I can hear _now_, more plainly than the -song you sang me an hour ago, the slumberous buzzing of the great -brown-coated summer bees in his still room, as I sat by his bedside -watching his sleeping face, as he dreamt unquietly, and clenched, -and again unclenched, his nervous hands. I think he was back in the -_Thunderer_. I can see _now_ the little close curls of his sunshiny -hair straggling over the white pillow. And then there came a good and -blessed day, when he was out of danger, and then another, a little -further on, when he was up and dressed, and he and I walked forth into -the hayfield beyond the garden--reversing the order of things--_he_, -leaning on _my_ arm; and a good plump solid arm it was. We walked -out under the heavy-leaved horse-chestnut trees, and the old and -rough-barked elms. The sun was shining all this time, as it seems to -me. I do not believe that in those old days there were the same cold -unseasonable rains as now; there were soft showers enough to keep the -grass green and the flowers undrooped; but I have no association of -overcast skies and untimely deluges with those long and azure days. -We sat under a haycock, on the shady side, and indolently watched the -hot haymakers--the shirt-sleeved men, and burnt and bare-armed women, -tossing and raking; while we breathed the blessed country air, full -of adorable scents, and crowded with little happy and pretty-winged -insects. - -“‘In three days,’ says Bobby, leaning his elbow in the hay, and -speaking with an eager smile, ‘three days at the furthest, I may go -back again; may not I, Phœbe?’ - -“‘Without doubt,’ reply I, stiffly, pulling a dry and faded ox-eye -flower out of the odorous mound beside me; ‘for my part, I do not see -why you should not go to-morrow, or indeed--if we could send into -Plymouth for a chaise--this afternoon; you are so thin that you look -all mouth and eyes, and you can hardly stand, without assistance, but -these, of course, are trifling drawbacks, and I daresay would be rather -an advantage on board ship than otherwise.’ - -“‘You are angry!’ he says, with a sort of laugh in his deep eyes. ‘You -look even prettier when you are angry than when you are pleased.’ - -“‘It is no question of my looks,’ I say, still in some heat, though -mollified by the irrelevant compliment. - -“‘For the second time you are thinking me ungrateful,’ he says, -gravely; ‘you do not tell me so in so many words, because it is towards -yourself that my ingratitude is shown; the first time you told me of it -it was almost the first thing that you ever said to me.’ - -“‘So it was,’ I answer quickly; ‘and if the occasion were to come over -again, I should say it again. I daresay you did not mean it, but it -sounded exactly as if you were complaining of my father for being too -careful of you.’ - -“‘He _is_ too careful of me!’ cries the young man, with a hot flushing -of cheek and brow. ‘I cannot help it if it make you angry again; I -_must_ say it, he is more careful of me than he would be of his own -son, if he had one.’ - -“‘Did not he promise your mother that he would look after you?’ ask I -eagerly. ‘When people make promises to people on their death-beds they -are in no hurry to break them; at least, such people as father are not.’ - -“‘You do not understand,’ he says, a little impatiently, while that hot -flush still dwells on his pale cheek; ‘my mother was the last person -in the world to wish him to take care of my body at the expense of my -honour.’ - -“‘What are you talking about?’ I say, looking at him with a lurking -suspicion that, despite the steady light of reason in his blue eyes, he -is still labouring under some form of delirium. - -“‘Unless I tell you all my grievance, I see that you will never -comprehend,’ he says sighing. ‘Well, listen to me and you shall hear -it, and if you do not agree with me, when I have done, you are not the -kind of girl I take you for.’ - -“‘Then I am sure I am not the kind of girl you take me for,’ reply I, -with a laugh; ‘for I am fully determined to disagree with you entirely.’ - -“‘You know,’ he says, raising himself a little from his hay couch and -speaking with clear rapidity, ‘that whenever we take a French prize a -lot of the French sailors are ironed, and the vessel is sent into port, -in the charge of one officer and several men; there is some slight -risk attending it--for my part, I think _very_ slight--but I suppose -that your father looks at it differently, for--_I have never been -sent_.’ - -“‘It is accident,’ say I, reassuringly; ‘your turn will come in good -time.’ - -“‘It is _not_ accident!’ he answers, firmly. ‘Boys younger than I -am--much less trustworthy, and of whom he has not half the opinion -that he has of me--have been sent, but _I_, _never_. I bore it as well -as I could for a long time, but now I can bear it no longer; it is -not, I assure you, my fancy; but I can see that my brother officers, -knowing how partial your father is to me--what influence I have with -him in many things--conclude that my not being sent is my own choice; -in short, that I am--_afraid_.’ (His voice sinks with a disgusted and -shamed intonation at the last word.) ‘Now--I have told you the sober -facts--look me in the face’ (putting his hand with boyish familiarity -under my chin, and turning round my curls, my features, and the front -view of my big comb towards him), ‘and tell me whether you agree with -me, as I said you would, or not--whether it is not cruel kindness on -his part to make me keep a whole skin on such terms?’ - -“I look him in the face for a moment, trying to say that I do not agree -with him, but it is more than I can manage. ‘You were right,’ I say, -turning my head away, ‘I _do_ agree with you; I wish to heaven that I -could honestly say that I did not.’ - -“‘Since you do then,’ he cries excitedly--‘Phœbe! I knew you would, I -knew you better than you knew yourself--I have a favour to ask of you, -a _great_ favour, and one that will keep me all my life in debt to you.’ - -“‘What is it?’ ask I, with a sinking heart. - -“‘Your father is very fond of you----’ - -“‘I know it,’ I answer curtly. - -“‘Anything that you asked, and that was within the bounds of -possibility, he would do,’ he continues, with eager gravity. ‘Well, -this is what I ask of you: to write him a line, and let me take it, -when I go, asking him to send me home in the next prize.’ - -“Silence for a moment, only the haymakers laughing over their rakes. -‘And if,’ say I, with a trembling voice, ‘you lose your life in this -service, you will have to thank me for it; I shall have your death on -my head all through my life.’ - -“‘The danger is infinitesimal, as I told you before,’ he says, -impatiently; ‘and even if it were greater than it is--well, life is -a good thing, very good, but there are better things, and even if I -come to grief, which is most unlikely, there are plenty of men as good -as--better than--I, to step into my place.’ - -“‘It will be small consolation to the people who are fond of you that -some one better than you is alive, though you are dead,’ I say, -tearfully. - -“‘But I do not mean to be dead,’ he says, with a cheery laugh. ‘Why are -you so determined on killing me? I mean to live to be an admiral. Why -should not I?’ - -“‘Why indeed?’ say I, with a feeble echo of his cheerful mirth, and -feeling rather ashamed of my tears. - -“‘And meanwhile you will write?’ he says with an eager return to the -charge; ‘and _soon?_ Do not look angry and pouting, as you did just -now, but I _must_ go! What is there to hinder me? I am getting up my -strength as fast as it is possible for any human creature to do, and -just think how I should feel if they were to come in for something -really good while I am away.’ - -“So I wrote. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -“I often wished afterwards that my right hand had been cut off before -its fingers had held the pen that wrote that letter. You wonder to -see me moved at what happened so long ago--before your parents were -born--and certainly it makes not much difference now; for even if he -had prospered then, and come happily home to me, yet, in the course -of nature he would have gone long before now. I should not have been -so cruel as to have wished him to have lasted to be as I am. I did -not mean to hint at the end of my story before I have reached the -middle. Well--and so he went, with the letter in his pocket, and I -felt something like the king in the tale, who sent a messenger with a -letter, and wrote in the letter, ‘Slay the bearer of this as soon as -he arrives!’ But before he went--the evening before, as we walked in -the garden after supper, with our monstrously long shadows stretching -before us in the moonlight--I do not think he said in so many words, -‘Will you marry me?’ but somehow, by some signs or words on both our -parts, it became clear to us that, by-and-by, if God left him alive, -and if the war ever came to an end, he and I should belong to one -another. And so, having understood this, when he went he kissed me, as -he had done when he came, only this time no one bade him; he did it of -his own accord, and a hundred times instead of one; and for my part, -this time, instead of standing passive like a log or a post, I kissed -him back again, most lovingly, with many tears. - -“Ah! parting in those days, when the last kiss to one’s beloved ones -was not unlikely to be an adieu until the great Day of Judgment, was -a different thing to the listless, unemotional good-byes of these -stagnant times of peace! - -“And so Bobby also got into a post-chaise and drove away, and we -watched him too, till he turned the corner out of our sight, as we had -watched father; and then I hid my face among the jessamine flowers -that clothed the wall of the house, and wept as one that would not be -comforted. However, one cannot weep for ever, or, if one does, it makes -one blind and blear, and I did not wish Bobby to have a wife with such -defects; so in process of time I dried my tears. - -“And the days passed by, and nature went slowly and evenly through her -lovely changes. The hay was gathered in, and the fine new grass and -clover sprang up among the stalks of the grass that had gone; and the -wild roses struggled into odorous bloom, and crowned the hedges, and -then _their_ time came, and they shook down their faint petals, and -went. - -“And now the corn harvest had come, and we had heard once or twice from -our beloveds, but not often. And the sun still shone with broad power, -and kept the rain in subjection. And all morning I sat at my big frame, -and toiled on at the ‘Last Supper.’ I had finished Judas Iscariot’s -face and the other Apostles. I was engaged now upon the table-cloth, -which was not interesting and required not much exercise of thought. -And mother sat near me, either working too or reading a good book, and -taking snuff--every lady snuffed in those days: at least in trifles, if -not in great things, the world mends. And at night, when ten o’clock -struck, I covered up my frame and stole listlessly upstairs to my room. -There, I knelt at the open window, facing Plymouth and the sea, and -asked God to take good care of father and Bobby. I do not know that I -asked for any spiritual blessings for them, I only begged that they -might be alive. - -“One night, one hot night, having prayed even more heartily and -tearfully than my wont for them both, I had lain down to sleep. The -windows were left open, and the blinds up, that all possible air might -reach me from the still and scented garden below. Thinking of Bobby, -I had fallen asleep, and he is still mistily in my head, when I seem -to wake. The room is full of clear light, but it is not morning: it is -only the moon looking right in and flooding every object. I can see my -own ghostly figure sitting up in bed, reflected in the looking-glass -opposite. I listen: surely I heard some noise: yes--certainly, there -can be no doubt of it--some one is knocking loudly and perseveringly -at the hall-door. At first I fall into a deadly fear; then my reason -comes to my aid. If it were a robber, or person with any evil intent, -would he knock so openly and clamorously as to arouse the inmates? -Would not he rather go stealthily to work, to force a _silent_ entrance -for himself? At worst it is some drunken sailor from Plymouth; at -best, it is a messenger with news of our dear ones. At this thought I -instantly spring out of bed, and hurrying on my stockings and shoes and -whatever garments come most quickly to hand--with my hair spread all -over my back, and utterly forgetful of my big comb, I open my door, and -fly down the passages, into which the moon is looking with her ghostly -smile, and down the broad and shallow stairs. - -“As I near the hall-door I meet our old butler, also rather -dishevelled, and evidently on the same errand as myself. - -“‘Who _can_ it be, Stephens?’ I ask, trembling with excitement and -fear. - -“‘Indeed, ma’am, I cannot tell you,’ replies the old man, shaking his -head, ‘it is a very odd time of night to choose for making such a -noise. We will ask them their business, whoever they are, before we -unchain the door.’ - -“It seems to me as if the endless bolts would never be drawn--the key -never be turned in the stiff lock; but at last the door opens slowly -and cautiously, only to the width of a few inches, as it is still -confined by the strong chain. I peep out eagerly, expecting I know not -what. - -“Good heavens! What do I see? No drunken sailor, no messenger, but, oh -joy! oh blessedness! my Bobby himself--my beautiful boy-lover! Even -_now_, even after all these weary years, even after the long bitterness -that followed, I cannot forget the unutterable happiness of that moment. - -“‘Open the door, Stephens, quick!’ I cry, stammering with eagerness. -‘Draw the chain; it is Mr. Gerard; do not keep him waiting.’ - -“The chain rattles down, the door opens wide, and there he stands -before me. At once, ere any one has said anything, ere anything has -happened, a feeling of cold disappointment steals unaccountably over -me--a nameless sensation, whose nearest kin is chilly awe. He makes -no movement towards me; he does not catch me in his arms, nor even -hold out his right hand to me. He stands there still and silent, and -though the night is dry, equally free from rain and dew, I see that he -is dripping wet; the water is running down from his clothes, from his -drenched hair, and even from his eyelashes, on to the dry ground at his -feet. - -“‘What has happened?’ I cry, hurriedly, ‘How wet you are!’ and as I -speak I stretch out my hand and lay it on his coat sleeve. But even as -I do it a sensation of intense cold runs up my fingers and my arm, -even to the elbow. How is it that he is so chilled to the marrow of his -bones on this sultry, breathless, August night? To my extreme surprise -he does not answer; he still stands there, dumb and dripping. ‘Where -have you come from?’ I ask, with that sense of awe deepening. ‘Have you -fallen into the river? How is it that you are so wet?’ - -“‘It was cold,’ he says, shivering, and speaking in a slow and -strangely altered voice, ‘bitter cold. I could not stay there.’ - -“‘Stay where?’ I say, looking in amazement at his face, which, whether -owing to the ghastly effect of moonlight or not, seems to me ash white. -‘Where have you been? What is it you are talking about?’ - -“But he does not reply. - -“‘He is really ill, I am afraid, Stephens,’ I say, turning with a -forlorn feeling towards the old butler. ‘He does not seem to hear what -I say to him. I am afraid he has had a thorough chill. What water -can he have fallen into? You had better help him up to bed, and get -him warm between the blankets. His room is quite ready for him, you -know--come in,’ I say, stretching out my hand to him, ‘you will be -better after a night’s rest.’ - -“He does not take my offered hand, but he follows me across the -threshold and across the hall. I hear the water drops falling drip, -drip, on the echoing stone floor as he passes; then upstairs, and along -the gallery to the door of his room, where I leave him with Stephens. -Then everything becomes blank and nil to me. - -“I am awoke as usual in the morning by the entrance of my maid with hot -water. - -“‘Well, how is Mr. Gerard this morning?’ I ask, springing into a -sitting posture. - -“She puts down the hot water tin and stares at her leisure at me. - -“‘My dear Miss Phœbe, how should _I_ know? Please God he is in good -health and safe, and that we shall have good news of him before long.’ - -“‘Have not you asked how he is?’ I ask impatiently. ‘He did not seem -quite himself last night; there was something odd about him. I was -afraid he was in for another touch of fever.’ - -“‘Last night--fever,’ repeats she, slowly and disconnectedly echoing -some of my words. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, I am sure, but I have not -the least idea in life what you are talking about.’ - -“‘How stupid you are!’ I say, quite at the end of my patience. ‘Did not -Mr. Gerard come back unexpectedly last night, and did not I hear him -knocking, and run down to open the door, and did not Stephens come too, -and afterwards take him up to bed?’ - -“The stare of bewilderment gives way to a laugh. - -“‘You have been dreaming, ma’am. Of course I cannot answer for what you -did last night, but I am sure that Stephens knows no more of the young -gentleman than I do, for only just now, at breakfast, he was saying -that he thought it was about time for us to have some tidings of him -and master.’ - -“‘A dream!’ cry I indignantly. ‘Impossible! I was no more dreaming then -than I am now.’ - -“But time convinces me that I am mistaken, and that during all the -time that I thought I was standing at the open hall-door, talking to -my beloved, in reality I was lying on my bed in the depths of sleep, -with no other company than the scent of the flowers and the light of -the moon. At this discovery a great and terrible depression falls on -me. I go to my mother to tell her of my vision, and at the end of my -narrative I say, - -“‘Mother, I know well that Bobby is dead, and that I shall never see -him any more. I feel assured that he died last night, and that he came -himself to tell me of his going. I am sure that there is nothing left -for me now but to go too.’ - -“I speak thus far with great calmness, but when I have done I break out -into loud and violent weeping. Mother rebukes me gently, telling me -that there is nothing more natural than that I should dream of a person -who constantly occupies my waking thoughts, nor that, considering -the gloomy nature of my apprehensions about him, my dream should be -of a sad and ominous kind; but that, above all dreams and omens, God -is good, that He has preserved him hitherto, and that, for her part, -no devil-sent apparition shall shake her confidence in His continued -clemency. I go away a little comforted, though not very much, and -still every night I kneel at the open window facing Plymouth and the -sea, and pray for my sailor boy. But it seems to me, despite all my -self-reasonings, despite all that mother says, that my prayers for him -are prayers for the dead. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -“Three more weeks pass away; the harvest is garnered, and the pears -are growing soft and mellow. Mother’s and my outward life goes on in -its silent regularity, nor do we talk much to each other of the tumult -that rages--of the heartache that burns, within each of us. At the end -of the three weeks, as we are sitting as usual, quietly employed, and -buried each in our own thoughts, in the parlour, towards evening we -hear wheels approaching the hall-door. We both run out as in my dream -I had run to the door, and arrive in time to receive my father as he -steps out of the carriage that has brought him. Well! at least _one_ -of our wanderers has come home, but where is the other? - -“Almost before he has heartily kissed us both--wife and child--father -cries out, ‘But where is Bobby?’ - -“‘That is just what I was going to ask you,’ replies mother quickly. - -“‘Is not he _here_ with you?’ returns he anxiously. - -“‘Not he,’ answers mother, ‘we have neither seen nor heard anything of -him for more than six weeks.’ - -“‘Great God!’ exclaims he, while his face assumes an expression of -the deepest concern, ‘what _can_ have become of him? what _can_ have -happened to the poor fellow?’ - -“‘Has not he been with you, then?--has not he been in the _Thunderer_?’ -asks mother, running her words into one another in her eagerness to get -them out. - -“‘I sent him home three weeks ago in a prize, with a letter to you, and -told him to stay with you till I came home, and what can have become of -him since, God only knows!’ he answers with a look of the profoundest -sorrow and anxiety. - -“There is a moment of forlorn and dreary silence; then I speak. I have -been standing dumbly by, listening, and my heart growing colder and -colder at every dismal word. - -“‘It is all my doing!’ I cry passionately, flinging myself down in an -agony of tears on the straight-backed old settle in the hall. ‘It is -my fault--no one else’s! The very last time that I saw him, I told him -that he would have to thank me for his death, and he laughed at me, but -it has come true. If I had not written _you_, father, that accursed -letter, we should have had him here _now_, this _minute_, safe and -sound, standing in the middle of us--as we never, _never_, shall have -him again!’ - -“I stop, literally suffocated with emotion. - -“Father comes over, and lays his kind brown hand on my bent prone head. -‘My child,’ he says, ‘my dear child,’ (and tears are dimming the clear -grey of his own eyes), ‘you are wrong to make up your mind to what is -the worst at once. I do not disguise from you that there is cause for -grave anxiety about the dear fellow, but still God is good; He has kept -both him and me hitherto; into His hands we must trust our boy.’ - -“I sit up, and shake away my tears. - -“‘It is no use,’ I say. ‘Why should I hope? There is no hope! I know it -for a certainty! He is _dead_’ (looking round at them both with a sort -of calmness); ‘he died on the night that I had that dream--mother, I -told you so at the time. Oh, my Bobby! I knew that you could not leave -me for ever without coming to tell me!’ - -“‘And so speaking, I fall into strong hysterics and am carried upstairs -to bed. And so three or four more lagging days crawl by, and still we -hear nothing, and remain in the same state of doubt and uncertainty; -which to me, however, is hardly uncertainty; so convinced am I, in my -own mind, that my fair-haired lover is away in the land whence never -letter or messenger comes--that he has reached the Great Silence. So -I sit at my frame, working my heart’s agony into the tapestry, and -feebly trying to say to God that He has done well, but I cannot. On the -contrary, it seems to me, as my life trails on through the mellow mist -of the autumn mornings, through the shortened autumn evenings, that, -whoever has done it, it is most evilly done. One night we are sitting -round the little crackling wood fire that one does not need for -warmth, but that gives a cheerfulness to the room and the furniture, -when the butler Stephens enters, and going over to father, whispers to -him. I seem to understand in a moment what the purport of his whisper -is.’ - -“‘Why does he whisper?’ I cry, irritably. ‘Why does not he speak -out loud? Why should you try to keep it from me? I know that it is -something about Bobby.’ - -“Father has already risen, and is walking towards the door. - -“‘I will not let you go until you tell me,’ I cry wildly, flying after -him. - -“‘A sailor has come over from Plymouth,’ he answers hurriedly; ‘he -says he has news. My darling, I will not keep you in suspense a moment -longer than I can help, and meanwhile pray--both of you pray for him!’ - -“I sit rigidly still, with my cold hand tightly clasped, during the -moments that next elapse. Then father returns. His eyes are full of -tears, and there is small need to ask for his message; it is most -plainly written on his features--death, and not life. - -“‘You were right, Phœbe,’ he says, brokenly, taking hold of my icy -hands; ‘you knew best. He is gone! God has taken him.’ - -“My heart dies. I had thought that I had no hope, but I was wrong. ‘I -knew it!’ I say, in a dry stiff voice. ‘Did not I tell you so? But you -would not believe me--go on!--tell me how it was--do not think I cannot -bear it--make haste!’ - -“And so he tells me all that there is now left for me to know--after -what manner, and on what day, my darling took his leave of this pretty -and cruel world. He had had his wish, as I already knew, and had set -off blithely home in the last prize they had captured. Father had -taken the precaution of having a larger proportion than usual of the -Frenchmen ironed, and had also sent a greater number of Englishmen. But -to what purpose? They were nearing port, sailing prosperously along on -a smooth blue sea, with a fair strong wind, thinking of no evil, when a -great and terrible misfortune overtook them. Some of the Frenchmen who -were not ironed got the sailors below and drugged their grog; ironed -them, and freed their countrymen. Then one of the officers rushed on -deck, and holding a pistol to my Bobby’s head bade him surrender the -vessel or die. Need I tell you which he chose? I think not--well” (with -a sigh) “and so they shot my boy--ah me! how many years ago--and threw -him overboard! Yes--threw him overboard--it makes me angry and grieved -even now to think of it--into the great and greedy sea, and the vessel -escaped to France.” - -There is a silence between us: I will own to you that I am crying, but -the old lady’s eyes are dry. - -“Well,” she says, after a pause, with a sort of triumph in her tone, -“they never could say again that Bobby Gerard was _afraid_! - -“The tears were running down my father’s cheeks, as he told me,” she -resumes presently, “but at the end he wiped them and said, ‘It is well! -He was as pleasant in God’s sight as he was in ours, and so He has -taken him.’ - -“And for me, I was glad that he had gone to God--none gladder. But you -will not wonder that, for myself, I was past speaking sorry. And so the -years went by, and, as you know, I married Mr. Hamilton, and lived with -him forty years, and was happy in the main, as happiness goes; and when -he died I wept much and long, and so I did for each of my sons when in -turn they went. But looking back on all my long life, the event that -I think stands out most clearly from it is my dream and my boy-lover’s -death-day. It _was_ an odd dream, was not it?” - - - - -UNDER THE CLOAK. - - - - -UNDER THE CLOAK. - - -If there is a thing in the world that my soul hateth, it is a long -night journey by rail. In the old coaching days I do not think that -I should have minded it, passing swiftly through a summer night on -the top of a speedy coach with the star arch black-blue above one’s -head, the sweet smell of earth and her numberless flowers and grasses -in one’s nostrils, and the pleasant trot, trot, trot, trot, of the -four strong horses in one’s ears. But by railway! in a little stuffy -compartment, with nothing to amuse you if you keep awake; with a dim -lamp hanging above you, tantalizing you with the idea that you can -read by its light, and when you try, satisfactorily proving to you -that you cannot; and, if you sleep, breaking your neck, or at least -stiffening it, by the brutal arrangement of the hard cushions. - -These thoughts pass sulkily and rebelliously through my head as I -sit in my salon, in the Ecu at Geneva, on the afternoon of the fine -autumn day on which, in an evil hour, I have settled to take my place -in the night train for Paris. I have put off going as long as I can. -I like Geneva, and am leaving some pleasant and congenial friends, -but now go I must. My husband is to meet me at the station in Paris -at six o’clock to-morrow morning. Six o’clock! what a barbarous hour -at which to arrive! I am putting on my bonnet and cloak; I look at -myself in the glass with an air of anticipative disgust. Yes, I look -trim and spruce enough now--a not disagreeable object perhaps--with -sleek hair, quick and alert eyes, and pink-tinted cheeks. Alas! at six -o’clock to-morrow morning, what a different tale there will be to tell! -dishevelled, dusty locks, half-open weary eyes, a disordered dress, and -a green-coloured countenance. - -I turn away with a pettish gesture, and reflecting that at least there -is no wisdom in living my miseries twice over, I go downstairs, and get -into the hired open carriage which awaits me. My maid and man follow -with the luggage. I give stricter injunctions than ordinary to my maid -never for one moment to lose her hold of the dressing-case, which -contains, as it happens, a great many more valuable jewels than people -are wont to travel in foreign parts with, nor of a certain costly and -beautiful Dresden china and gold Louis Quatorze clock, which I am -carrying home as a present to my people. We reach the station, and I -straightway betake myself to the first-class Salle d’Attente, there to -remain penned up till the officials undo the gates of purgatory and -release us--an arrangement whose wisdom I have yet to learn. There are -ten minutes to spare, and the salle is filling fuller and fuller every -moment. Chiefly my countrymen, countrywomen, and country children, -beginning to troop home to their partridges. I look curiously round -at them, speculating as to which of them will be my companion or -companions through the night. - -There are no very unusual types: girls in sailor hats and blonde -hair-fringes; strong-minded old maids in painstakingly ugly -waterproofs; baldish fathers; fattish mothers; a German or two, -with prominent pale eyes and spectacles. I have just decided on the -companions I should prefer; a large young man, who belongs to nobody, -and looks as if he spent most of his life in laughing--(Alas! he -is not likely! he is sure to want to smoke!)--and a handsome and -prosperous-looking young couple. They are more likely, as very -probably, in the man’s case, the bride-love will overcome the -cigar-love. The porter comes up. The key turns in the lock; the -doors open. At first I am standing close to them, flattening my -nose against the glass, and looking out on the pavement; but as the -passengers become more numerous, I withdraw from my prominent position, -anticipating a rush for carriages. I hate and dread exceedingly a -crowd, and would much prefer at any time to miss my train rather than -be squeezed and jostled by one. In consequence, my maid and I are -almost the last people to emerge, and have the last and worst choice -of seats. We run along the train looking in; the footman, my maid, and -I--full--full everywhere! - -“Dames Seules?” asks the guard. - -“Certainly not! neither ‘Dames Seules,’ nor ‘Fumeurs,’ but if it must -be one or the other, certainly ‘Fumeurs.’” - -I am growing nervous, when I see the footman, who is a little ahead of -us, standing with an open carriage door in his hand, and signing to us -to make haste. Ah! it is all right! it always comes right when one does -not fuss oneself. - -“Plenty of room here, ’m; only two gentlemen!” - -I put my foot on the high step and climb in. Rather uncivil of the two -gentlemen! neither of them offers to help me, but they are not looking -this way I suppose. “Mind the dressing-case!” I cry nervously, as I -stretch out my hand to help the maid Watson up. The man pushes her from -behind; in she comes--dressing-case, clock and all; here we are for the -night! - -I am so busy and amused looking out of the window, seeing the -different parties bidding their friends good-bye, and watching with -indignation the barbaric and malicious manner in which the porters -hurl the luckless luggage about, that we have steamed out of the -station, and are fairly off for Paris, before I have the curiosity to -glance at my fellow-passengers. Well! when I do take a look at them, -I do not make much of it. Watson and I occupy the two seats by one -window, facing one another. Our fellow travellers have not taken the -other two window seats; they occupy the middle ones, next us. They are -both reading behind newspapers. Well! we shall not get much amusement -out of them. I give them up as a bad job. Ah! if I could have had my -wish, and had the laughing young man, and the pretty young couple, for -company, the night would not perhaps have seemed so long. However I -should have been mortified for them to have seen how _green_ I looked -when the dawn came; and, as to these commis voyageurs, I do not care -if I look as green as grass in their eyes. Thus, all no doubt is for -the best; and at all events it is a good trite copy-book maxim to say -so. So I forget all about them: fix my eyes on the landscape racing -by, and fall into a variety of thoughts. “Will my husband really get -up in time to come and meet me at the station to-morrow morning? He -does so cordially hate getting up. My only chance is his not having -gone to bed at all! How will he be looking? I have not seen him for -four months. Will he have succeeded in curbing his tendency to fat, -during his Norway fishing? Probably not. Fishing, on the contrary, -is rather a _fat-making_ occupation; sluggish and sedentary. Shall -we have a pleasant party at the house we are going to, for shooting? -To whom in Paris shall I go for my gown? Worth? No, Worth is beyond -me.” Then I leave the future, and go back into past enjoyments; -excursions to Lausanne; trips down the lake to Chillon; a hundred and -one pleasantnesses. The time slips by: the afternoon is drawing towards -evening; a beginning of dusk is coming over the landscape. - -I look round. Good Heavens! what can those men find so interesting in -the papers? I thought them hideously dull, when I looked over them -this morning; and yet they are still persistently reading. What can -they have got hold of? I cannot well see what the man beside me has; -vis-à-vis is buried in an English _Times_. Just as I am thinking -about him, he puts down his paper, and I see his face. Nothing very -remarkable! a long black beard, and a hat tilted somewhat low over -his forehead. I turn away my eyes hastily, for fear of being caught -inquisitively scanning him; but still, out of their corners I see that -he has taken a little bottle out of his travelling bag, has poured -some of its contents into a glass, and is putting it to his lips. It -appears as if--and, at the time it happens, I have no manner of doubt -that he is drinking. Then I feel that he is addressing me. I look up -and towards him: he is holding out the phial to me, and saying-- - -“May I take the liberty of offering Madame some?” - -“No thank you, Monsieur!” I answer, shaking my head hastily and -speaking rather abruptly. There is nothing that I dislike more than -being offered strange eatables or drinkables in a train, or a strange -hymn book in church. - -He smiles politely, and then adds-- - -“Perhaps the _other_ lady might be persuaded to take a little.” - -“No thank you, sir, I’m much obliged to you,” replies Watson briskly, -in almost as ungrateful a tone as mine. - -Again he smiles, bows, and re-buries himself in his newspaper. The -thread of my thoughts is broken, I feel an odd curiosity as to the -nature of the contents of that bottle. Certainly it is not sherry or -spirit of any kind, for it has diffused no odour through the carriage. -All this time the man beside me has said and done nothing. I wish he -would move or speak, or do something. I peep covertly at him. Well! -at all events, he is well defended against the night chill. What a -voluminous cloak he is wrapped in; how entirely it shrouds his figure; -trimmed with _fur_ too! why it might be January instead of September. -I do not know why, but that cloak makes me feel rather uncomfortable. -I wish they would both move to the window, instead of sitting next us. -Bah! am _I_ setting up to be a timid dove? I, who rather pique myself -on my bravery--on my indifference to tramps, bulls, ghosts? The clock -has been deposited with the umbrellas, parasols, spare shawls, rugs, -etc., in the netting above Watson’s head. The dressing-case--a very -large and heavy one--is sitting on her lap. I lean forwards and say to -her-- - -“That box must rest very heavily on your knee, and I want a -footstool--I should be more comfortable if I had one--let me put my -feet on it.” - -I have an idea that, somehow, my sapphires will be safer if I have them -where I can always feel that they are _there_. We make the desired -change in our arrangements. Yes! both my feet are on it. - -The landscape outside is darkening quickly now; our dim lamp is -beginning to assert its importance. Still the men read. I feel a -sensation of irritation. What can they mean by it? it is utterly -impossible that they can decipher the small print of the _Times_, by -this feeble shaky glimmer. - -As I am so thinking, the one who had before spoken lays down his -paper, folds it up and deposits it on the seat beside him. Then, -drawing his little bottle out of his bag a second time, drinks, or -seems to drink, from it. Then he again turns to me-- - -“Madame will pardon me, but if Madame _could_ be induced to try a -little of this; it is a cordial of a most refreshing and invigorating -description; and if she will have the amiability to allow me to say so, -Madame looks faint.” - -(What _can_ he mean by his urgency? _Is_ it pure politeness? I wish -it were not growing so dark.) These thoughts run through my head as I -hesitate for an instant what answer to make. Then an idea occurs to -me, and I manufacture a civil smile and say, “Thank you very much, -Monsieur! I am a little faint, as you observe. I think I will avail -myself of your obliging offer.” So saying, I take the glass, and touch -it with my lips. I give you my word of honour that I do not think I -did more; I did not mean to swallow a drop, but I suppose I must have -done. He smiles with a gratified air. - -“The other lady will now, perhaps, follow your example?” - -By this time I am beginning to feel thoroughly uncomfortable: _why_, -I should be puzzled to explain. What _is_ this cordial that he is so -eager to urge upon us? Though determined not to subject _myself_ to -its influence, I _must_ see its effect upon another person. Rather -brutal of me, perhaps; rather in the spirit of the anatomist, who, in -the interest of science, tortures live dogs and cats; but I am telling -you _facts_--not what I ought to have done, but what I _did_. I make -a sign to Watson to drink some. She obeys, nothing loath. She has -been working hard all day; packing and getting under weigh, and she -is tired. There is no feigning about her! She has emptied the glass. -Now to see what comes of it--what happens to my live dog! The bottle -is replaced in the bag; still we are racing, racing on, past the hills -and fields and villages. How indistinct they are all growing! I turn -back from the contemplation of the outside view to the inside one. Why, -the woman is asleep already! her chin buried in her chest; her mouth -half open; looking exceedingly imbecile and very plain, as most people, -when asleep out of bed, do look. A nice invigorating potion, indeed! I -wish to Heaven that I had gone in Fumeurs, or even with that cavalcade -of nursery-maids and unwholesome-looking babies in Dames Seules, next -door. At all events, I am not at all sleepy myself: that is a blessing. -I shall see what happens. Yes, by-the-by, I must see what he meant -to happen: I must affect to fall asleep too. I close my eyes, and -gradually sinking my chin on my chest, try to droop my jaws and hang -my cheeks, with a semblance of bonâ-fide slumber. Apparently I succeed -pretty well. After the lapse of some minutes, I distinctly feel two -hands very cautiously and carefully lifting and removing my feet from -the dressing-box. - -A cold chill creeps over me, and then the blood rushes to my head and -ears. What am I to do? what am I to do? I have always thought the -better of myself ever since for it; but, strange to say, I keep my -presence of mind. Still affecting to sleep, I give a sort of kick, -and instantly the hands are withdrawn and all is perfectly quiet -again. I now feign to wake gradually, with a yawn and a stretch; -and, on moving about my feet a little, find that, despite my kick, -they have been too clever for me, and have dexterously removed my -box and substituted another. The way in which I make this pleasant -discovery is that, whereas mine was perfectly flat at the top, on the -surface of the object that is now beneath my feet there is some sort -of excrescence--a handle of some sort or other. There is no denying -it--brave I _may_ be--I may laugh at people for running from bulls; for -disliking to sleep in a room by themselves, for fear of ghosts; for -hurrying past tramps: but now I am most thoroughly frightened. I look -cautiously, in a sideways manner, at the man beside me. How very still -he is! Were they _his_ hands, or the hands of the man opposite him? I -take a fuller look than I have yet ventured to do; turning slightly -round for the purpose. He is still reading, or at least still holding -the paper, for the reading must be a farce. I look at his hands: they -are in precisely the same position as they were when I affected to -go to sleep, although the pose of the rest of his body is slightly -altered. Suddenly, I turn extremely cold, for it has dawned on me that -they are not real hands--they are certainly false ones. Yes, though the -carriage is shaking very much with our rapid motion, and the light is -shaking, too, yet there is no mistake. I look indeed more closely, so -as to be quite sure. The one nearest me is ungloved; the other gloved. -I look at the nearest one. Yes, it is of an opaque waxen whiteness. I -can plainly see the rouge put under the finger-nails to represent the -colouring of life. I try to give one glance at his face. The paper -still partially hides it; and as he is leaning his head back against -the cushion, where the light hardly penetrates, I am completely baffled -in my efforts. - -Great Heavens! what is going to happen to me? what shall I do? how much -of him is _real_? where are his _real_ hands? what is going on under -that awful cloak? The fur border touches me as I sit by him. I draw -convulsively and shrinkingly away, and try to squeeze myself up as -close as possible to the window. But alas! to what good? how absolutely -and utterly powerless I am! how entirely at their mercy! And there is -Watson still sleeping swinishly! breathing heavily opposite me. Shall -I try to wake her? But to what end? She, being under the influence of -that vile drug, my efforts will certainly be useless, and will probably -arouse the man to employ violence against me. Sooner or later in the -course of the night I suppose they are pretty sure to murder me, but I -had rather that it should be later than sooner. - -While I think these things, I am lying back quite still, for, as I -philosophically reflect, not all the screaming in the world will help -me: if I had twenty-lung power I could not drown the rush of an express -train. Oh, if my dear boy were but here,--my husband I mean,--fat -or lean, how thankful I should be to see him! Oh, that cloak, and -those horrid waxy hands! Of course I see it now! They remained stuck -out, while the man’s real ones were fumbling about my feet. In the -midst of my agony of fright, a thought of Madame Tussaud flashes -ludicrously across me. Then they begin to talk of me. It is plain that -they are not taken in by my feint of sleep: they speak in a clear, -loud voice, evidently for my benefit. One of them begins by saying, -“What a good-looking woman she is--evidently in her première jeunesse -too”--(Reader, I struck thirty last May)--“and also there can be no -doubt as to her being of exalted rank--a duchess probably.”--(A dead -duchess by morning, think I grimly). They go on to say how odd it is -that people in my class of life never travel with their own jewels, -but always with paste ones, the real ones being meanwhile deposited -at the bankers. My poor, poor sapphires! good-bye--a long good-bye to -you. But indeed I will willingly compound for the loss of you and the -rest of my ornaments--will go bare-necked, and bare-armed, or clad in -Salviati beads for the rest of my life, so that I do but attain the -next stopping place alive. - -As I am so thinking, one of the men looks, or I imagine that he looks, -rather curiously towards me. In a paroxysm of fear lest they should -read on my face the signs of the agony of terror I am enduring, I throw -my pocket handkerchief--a very fine cambric one--over my face. - -And now, oh reader, I am going to tell you something which I am sure -you will not believe; I can hardly believe it myself, but, as I so lie, -despite the tumult of my mind--despite the chilly terror which seems -to be numbing my feelings--in the midst of it all a drowsiness keeps -stealing over me. I am now convinced either that vile potion must have -been of extraordinary strength, or that I, through the shaking of the -carriage, or the unsteadiness of my hand, carried more to my mouth, -and swallowed more--I did not _mean_ to swallow any--than I intended, -for--you will hardly credit it, but--I _fell asleep_! - - * * * * * - -When I awake,--awake with a bewildered mixed sense of having been -a long time asleep,--of not knowing where I am--and of having some -great dread and horror on my mind--awake and look round, the dawn -is breaking. I shiver, with the chilly sensation that the coming of -even a warm day brings, and look round, still half unconsciously, -in a misty way. But what has happened? how empty the carriage is! -the dressing-case is gone! the clock is gone! the man who sat nearly -opposite me is gone! _Watson is gone!_ but the man in the cloak and -the wax hands still sits beside me! Still the hands are holding the -paper; still the fur is touching me! Good God! I am tête-à-tête with -him! A feeling of the most appalling desolation and despair comes over -me--vanquishes me utterly. I clasp my hands together frantically, -and, still looking at the dim form beside me, groan out--“Well! I did -not think that Watson would have forsaken me!” Instantly, a sort of -movement and shiver runs through the figure: the newspaper drops from -the hands, which however continue to be still held out in the same -position as if still grasping it; and behind the newspaper, I see by -the dim morning light and the dim lamp-gleams that there is no real -face but a mask. A sort of choked sound is coming from behind the mask. -Shivers of cold fear are running over me. Never to this day shall I -know what gave me the despairing courage to do it, but before I know -what I am doing, I find myself tearing at the cloak,--tearing away the -mask--tearing away the hands. It would be better to find _anything_ -underneath--Satan himself,--a horrible dead body--anything--sooner than -submit any longer to this hideous mystery. And I am rewarded. When the -cloak lies at the bottom of the carriage--when the mask, and the false -hands and false feet--(there are false _feet_ too)--are also cast away, -in different directions, what do you think I find underneath? - -Watson! Yes: it appears that while I slept--I feel sure that they must -have rubbed some more of the drug on my lips while I was unconscious, -or I never could have slept so heavily or so long--they dressed up -Watson in the mask, feet, hands, and cloak; set the hat on her head, -gagged her, and placed her beside me in the attitude occupied by the -man. They had then, at the next station, got out, taking with them -dressing-case and clock, and had made off in all security. When I -arrive in Paris, you will not be surprised to hear that it does not -once occur to me whether I am looking green or no. - -And this is the true history of my night journey to Paris! You will -be glad, I daresay, to learn that I ultimately recovered my sapphires, -and a good many of my other ornaments. The police being promptly set -on, the robbers were, after much trouble and time, at length secured; -and it turned out that the man in the cloak was an ex-valet of my -husband’s, who was acquainted with my bad habit of travelling in -company with my trinkets--a bad habit which I have since seen fit to -abandon. - - * * * * * - -What I have written is literally true, though it did not happen to -myself. - - -THE END. - - -BILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. - - An incorrect page number in the Table of Contents has been corrected. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FOR CHRISTMAS EVE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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