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.